Ask The Tech Guys Episode 1956 Transcript

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for our brand new show as the tech guys coming up. Lots of c e s tech news from Sam Abuelsamid, and Father Robert Ballacer.

Mikah Sargent (00:00:08):
And if you're tuning in, well you gotta know how to call into the show. So I will show you how to do that

Leo Laporte (00:00:12):
And what to do if you wanna get off. Last pass. Yes. Ask the Tech guys with Mikah and Leo is next. Podcasts you love

Mikah Sargent (00:00:24):
From people you trust.

Leo Laporte (00:00:26):
This is TWIT.

(00:00:30):
This is Ask the Tech Guys episode 1956, recorded January 8th, 2023. You had one job. Ask the Tech Guys is brought to you by Fast Mail. Reclaim your privacy, boost productivity and make email yours with fast mail. Try it free for 30 days@fastmail.com slash twit. Fast mail's also giving twit listeners a 15% discount on the first year when you sign up today. And buy eight Sleep good. Sleep is the ultimate game changer and the pod is the ultimate sleep machine. Go to eight sleep.com/twi to check out the pod and save $150 at checkout eight. Sleep currently ships within the us, Canada, uk, and select countries in the EU and Australia. Thanks for listening to this show. As an ad supported network, we are always looking for new partners with products and services that will benefit our qualified audience. Are you ready to grow your business? Reach out to advertise at twit tv and launch your campaign now. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Look at this. It's a brand new show. A brand new day,

Mikah Sargent (00:01:44):
A brand new

Leo Laporte (00:01:45):
Way's time for the ask the tech guys show. Hello everybody. Leo LePort here

Mikah Sargent (00:01:50):
And Mikah Sargent

Leo Laporte (00:01:51):
Here. Mikah is on your left. I'm on your right. No, Mikah is on your right. I'm on your left. I don't know where anybody is, but it's it is the podcast version of the radio show, which as you know, I did and you helped me towards the end for 19 years. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we got to episode 1955. This is episode 1956. A little bit different, little bit different format. We're still gonna take calls, we're still gonna talk tech. We're gonna hear from many of our contributors next week. Chris Marco will give us a photo assignment. Yes. Sam Abuelsamid, our car guy was at c s He's gonna call in about 45 minutes to talk about what he saw at ces.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:31):
Exciting stuff. In

Leo Laporte (00:02:31):
Fact, CES is the big story this week. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> in Vegas. They, it used to be the consumer electronic show and then for some reason it's weird, like Prince, they decided, oh, don't call us that. Just call us C

Mikah Sargent (00:02:42):
Ess. That's what we are now.

Leo Laporte (00:02:43):
So you know what that means. We're gonna call it the show, formerly known as ces, which is not great. But that's

Mikah Sargent (00:02:50):
Where they have a bunch of consumer electronics.

Leo Laporte (00:02:52):
Yeah. And I think to just set expectations, I do this every year. People, aunt loves it. S pertz with us today in the other, on the other side of the camera. Hey aunt. Aunt loves it. He loves going down there. A lot of people love ces. I think mostly they love it cuz it's a social event. I don't actually think there's that much important stuff. Maybe the TV stuff, Scott Wilkinson's gonna give us a tv update, I think Yeah. As well. But mostly what you see at CES is crap. Mm. That companies are hoping somebody will buy. And if they do, then they'll make it. And that's really the history of ces. It was a dealers show where technology, electronics dealers would go to the show. They'd see stuff. They'd say, yeah, I'll take take 10,000 of those from my store. And then the manufacturer would go home and said, good, you get it in November, because most of the stuff at CES you don't see until later. Right.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:47):
If at all. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:03:48):
I'll give you some examples of things that ces, <laugh>, PC Gamer. This was a great little article on PC gamer. I wanna give her credit. Katie Wickers, the tech that went too far at ces. Apparently there was a lot of stuff having to do with

Mikah Sargent (00:04:04):
P Oh, I think this is interesting, Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:04:07):
So that is a, I'm showing if you're watching the video, by the way, we will continue to do audio and video. Of course you have to subscribe to the podcast, but you'll have the choice when you subscribe. Tech guy labs.com still the place to go. This is a pebble, looks like an egg that you put in your toilet. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I presume you suspend it somehow.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:26):
Yeah. It kind of sits in the front part of the bowl of the toilet.

Leo Laporte (00:04:28):
And you're supposed to, when you go to the bathroom, pee on it, you pee on it. It's called the ucan. Katie writes Yeah. The UCAN is a health monitor in the form of a little piss pebble to put in your toilet. I don't think I could say that on the radio. So I feel like the freedom we have now.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:43):
Yeah. I, my blood pressure just went up a

Leo Laporte (00:04:45):
Little bit there. It monitors vitamins, estrogen, pH level and more. I, this is like the hot thing at ces. Every year there's a hot thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Mikah Sargent (00:04:56):
Wait, the urine is urine

Leo Laporte (00:04:58):
Tracking hot. There's many apparently devices. This is why I'm not sad. I didn't go to see <laugh> <laugh>. It can tell who's peeing it knows the difference between toilet water and pee. And it, not only that, but it knows different people can use it in the house. You have to have the app, but because it knows it's yours,

Mikah Sargent (00:05:15):
It says, oh, this is definitely my

Leo Laporte (00:05:17):
It's your in. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:19):
I think Okay. I understand

Leo Laporte (00:05:21):
With things, I

Mikah Sargent (00:05:22):
Think. Yeah. Yeah. And so why things makes a bunch of different devices that have these kind of health tracking features. And while on the face of it, it kind of fits in that there was kind of a backlash of everybody getting a, a cgm, a constant glucose monitor because the, you're going, oh, if you don't have blood sugar issues and why do you need it?

Leo Laporte (00:05:40):
I was, I was using one of those. It's pretty cool. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (00:05:41):
It's cool. It's nice to have, like, we have these ambulatory flesh sacks that we walk around with for the entirety of our lives and many of, say that again. A what? An ambulatory flesh

Leo Laporte (00:05:52):
Sack. Oh, that's us.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:53):
That's a human body.

Leo Laporte (00:05:54):
<Laugh>. He said flesh

Mikah Sargent (00:05:55):
Sack. No. Flesh

Leo Laporte (00:05:57):
Sack. Okay. Got

Mikah Sargent (00:05:58):
It. And we don't have, by the way, access

Leo Laporte (00:06:01):
It isn't usual that we have the show title so early in the show, but I think I have to know that

Mikah Sargent (00:06:06):
Today we've done it. It's, we don't have access to the underlying operating system Very often we have to go to the doctor to get that. Yeah, that's a good point. So I do like that there are these opportunities to learn more about ourselves without needing to go to the person who digs in

Leo Laporte (00:06:20):
<Laugh>. A little late. There was a lot of automotive stuff too. I think the automotive tech usually is very forward looking. A lot of self-driving cars, a lot of cars with that. Well, for instance, the Honda A which Sam will talk about, which has no steering wheel. So the, there, there's a lot of that. Anyway, we'll get, we're gonna get some reports. Robert will, I'm sure have some interesting things coming up in just a little bit. Sam, bill Salmon in just a little bit. If I can get Scott on, I, I emailed him. I can't remember if he emailed back. I think I might not have his correct address. But anyway, that's, that's kind of the first show. We're gonna cut cover a little bit of ces. There is also big story that's been going on. It actually broke just before Christmas.

(00:07:00):
We didn't have a chance to talk about it because I did the last radio show on the 18th. But last pass admitted, finally admitted that the breach that they had talked about, going back to the last summer, eh, it turned out it was a little bit wor a lot worse than anybody had remitted to. A significant amount of information wasn't even encrypted. Like the sites you'd saved passwords for your name, email address, stuff like that. So bad guys for sure got that, but worse. And then this is, you know, you have one job if you're a password manager, it's to keep the password vaults those encrypted blobs safe. All of them, or some of them in at LastPass is another thing I'm gonna fault them for. Not very clear about what happened, but all, or some, I'm guessing all Steve Gibson said, if it was some, they would've said some. Mm-Hmm.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:49):
<Affirmative>

Leo Laporte (00:07:50):
<Laugh>. So I'm guessing all of our password information on LastPass was snag by a bad guy. Now, a little bit later on the show, we're gonna talk about what that means, what you should do about it. And I will show you, actually, it's fairly easy to move off of any password manager, but to move off of last pass to another password manager. So we'll do a little demo later on how to do that. You have a demo too with your phone? You wanna show

Mikah Sargent (00:08:15):
Us? Yeah, it's a simple one. I there's news about Apple upping the cost of battery replacements. And I just over the, the break was talking to someone whose battery was getting worse and they were thinking about getting a replacement for that. And so I wanna talk about battery health and just a little bit of information so that, you know, Hey, should I go get this fixed? Because on March that cost could go up if you've got an older phone. So we'll do a, a quick demo just showing you battery health information and

Leo Laporte (00:08:44):
For people who are new to this show who you know, who were listening to the radio, but perhaps don't know the mechanics of how the podcasts work. Again, you can download every show, audio and video as before from Tech Guy labs.com. You can watch us do it live. Now I think a lot of people like the idea of the live radio show. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And we're gonna continue to do it live just as we did with the radio show. But, and you can't turn on your radio. You can, however, go to live.twi.tv. Twitter is our podcast network t wt. So you can go to live dot twi tv and there is a live video stream there and a live audio stream. And you could do that on your phone. If you're driving around town as one often and does on the weekend, and you wanna listen to the show as you used to you could do that as well on your phone.

(00:09:27):
Just go to live dot twit tv. There's a live stream there. You can also call it up on your Amazon Echo, your Google Assistant. The syntax seems to change, but it's roughly echo play Twit Live. And sometimes you have to say on TuneIn mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, because TuneIn is one of the services that carries it. So you should be able to listen just like you did on the radio. The only difference is there's no towers, there's no antenna. And just like before, we have an IRC at chatroom, at IRC dot twit tv and I'm so glad to see all of you in the chat room there. They are good looking bunch of people including by the way, father Robert, who's gonna do our CES report in a bit, Sam Abuelsamid, who is our car guy. So it's really kind of a a party in the chat room.

(00:10:16):
We also have a twit club for people who want to support us financially. Seven bucks a month, they get a discord. We're also in the Discord. There is an ask the Tech guys discord. So the, the only real change is we now call the show, ask the tech guys. It will now feature Mikah. Hello every time. And that there's a couple of reasons for that. First of all, I'm old. What Mikah's Young? So I thought it'd be kind of good to get the idea <laugh> the perspective of somebody under 30 on the show. A he's an expert in many things, including iOS. He does a show called iOS today for us on the TWIT network. And an Apple expert, but you're also these days Windows as well. He is absolutely a tech guy in many ways. So it's gonna be nice to have that. It's nice for me not to be all by myself, all by yourself sitting here. That's no fun. And why else do we bring you in here? Oh, if I, if I should break my leg, you could take over. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. <Laugh>. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Actually, I'll come in here in a cast <laugh>. What else? We are gonna take calls now. This is a little different too because I have a demo. We don't have a phone number. Could you show us how somebody could call? I

Mikah Sargent (00:11:24):
Would love to. And just to show you the dynamics of how this show's going to work. Folks, we're gonna go live to Radio Corner for this demo.

Leo Laporte (00:11:32):
Oh, good. So this is another thing. We have a studio. We've always had a studio, and we have the ability to move around. Now. You don't have to sit on Mikah's empty microphone. There you go. <Laugh>. Yes, we know he left. So we're gonna go over it now. Something I really wanna emphasize. This was a radio show to begin with. It was audio only for some years. Not a whole lot, but for a few years. And I know many of you listen to audio on, we will continue to make this as best we can a show that as friendly to audio only listeners. But we're gonna take advantage of the fact that we do have cameras. We do have video and we can show stuff, but we'll describe it as we show it. So let's go on over to another set across the room. We call it Radio Corner because there is in fact a big radio transmitter and some ham radios and stuff. Hey

Mikah Sargent (00:12:20):
Mikah. Hello Leo. Here

Leo Laporte (00:12:23):
I am. Hey, get that. It took, it only took him half an hour to cross the room,

Mikah Sargent (00:12:27):
<Laugh>. So we wanted to make this as simple as possible for folks. And as Leo's mentioned, the idea is that a lot of people may be using their computer for work and trying to get those calls to go through there, but it's not simple to figure all of that out. And so if you've got your phone in front of you, we have made it simpler to pull this off. So I think we'll switch to this overhead view. So you can see here okay, I'll airplay it. So I'm going to airplay

Leo Laporte (00:12:59):
My phone. We have both of the capability of shooting over the camera, but also,

Mikah Sargent (00:13:02):
And I'll need the code for airplay too.

Leo Laporte (00:13:04):
There. We can do it on a airplay device. We have set up, hooked up Indoor studio. You can say it out loud. Nobody's gonna, nobody's gonna snaf it.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:13):
6, 6 38. Alright, so now we can show you on screen what that looks like. Looks

Leo Laporte (00:13:19):
Like. Oh look, there's Mikah's phone. Da

Mikah Sargent (00:13:20):
Da. Yay. So what I'm going to do

Leo Laporte (00:13:23):
Wait a minute. You're wait a minute. Your MacBook airs named Elina.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:27):
It is. That's an actual, that's an Apple varietal. It's a type of of fruit. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:13:31):
You do

Mikah Sargent (00:13:32):
Apples? Yeah, I do all sorts of apples. Oh, that's clever. So all

Leo Laporte (00:13:36):
You do, do you have a

Mikah Sargent (00:13:36):
Honey crisp? No. Cuz that's boring. Okay. So I do, I kind of, I look for the sort of strange ones. Mcclellan.

Leo Laporte (00:13:44):
Elina

Mikah Sargent (00:13:45):
Is good. Freberg. Yeah. I love, I love Elina.

Leo Laporte (00:13:46):
You know, there's a, I've started doing that too. There's a good reason to do that because you're visible on Bluetooth by name. So if you say Mikah's MacBook Air as your name of your device, people can see and they, oh, there's Mikah's, MacBook Air, he's here. So Avelina, they're going well, I don't know who that <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (00:14:01):
That is. Who that, yeah. So normally our URL is going to be call C A L l.twit.tv. Yep. But this is our first episode. It's got some growing pains. So today we're going to go to calls TWI tv, but going forward you'll do call twit tv, but it works either way in terms of how this is gonna look. So I'm going to type in calls.twit.tv. So

Leo Laporte (00:14:28):
You just do that, your browser, it could be on your phone. It could be Safari, it could be some other browser. It will work in any browser. You could even do it on your desktop because Zoom allows you to do this via the web.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:39):
Absolutely. And here, because I have Zoom the app on my phone, you'll see where it see says underneath already installed Zoom question mark launch meeting. I will tap on that. But

Leo Laporte (00:14:49):
What if they don't have Zoom in?

Mikah Sargent (00:14:50):
If they don't have Zoom installed, then you do have the option here to download from the app store.

Leo Laporte (00:14:54):
Or can you do it from the web or no? I, I

Mikah Sargent (00:14:57):
Thought you could on the phone, but maybe that's only, maybe only on the desktop, desktop option. I'll have to explore that some more because you might be able to trick Zoom into thinking that it's a desktop option. But for now, I will tap launch meeting and then it says, Hey, can we open this in Zoom? You say Open Zoom's gonna pop up here and then,

Leo Laporte (00:15:13):
And because you've entered calls dot twit tv, that's all you need to say. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Zoom is gonna say, can we see the camera? Please do turn on your camera. Unless you haven't made your bed, then you don't have to.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:23):
So I'll say, okay, I give you my permission.

Leo Laporte (00:15:25):
And we definitely want you to join with video if you can. Exactly.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:28):
So we'll tap on, join with video and then I am now connecting to the call that says, Hey, can we have access to the microphone as well? You will need to do that so that we can actually talk. And then I will choose wifi or cellular data. And now I am in the call.

Leo Laporte (00:15:45):
I'll tell you why we do this. Should I actually add you to and see if this works? Let me see. It's alphabetical. So I have to scroll down to the am o There you are. Let me, so this is now what we have to do to pick up, we assigned to OnAir. I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna be picking up on Mikah. Let's see. I'm gonna pick up your call Mikah. 

Mikah Sargent (00:16:05):
Oh. And I should mention, I just got a notification that said, Hey, hey, Leo wants you to join this breakout room. And I said, join. I

Mikah Sargent (00:16:11):
Said join.

Leo Laporte (00:16:12):
Okay. So turn off his mic. So turn off his mic.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:14):
Oh, lemme on there

Leo Laporte (00:16:16):
Too. And then we should be able to hear him in the Zoom

Mikah Sargent (00:16:20):
Testing, testing.

Leo Laporte (00:16:22):
No, no, wrong mic. I want you to turn off his computer. Turn on his Zoom mic. Uhoh. What was that? <Laugh>? Did I do something?

Mikah Sargent (00:16:32):
Yeah, we're good. We're good. Okay. So now I can talk. Yeah, we're

Leo Laporte (00:16:35):
Good now. I hear you

Mikah Sargent (00:16:36):
In Zoom. Yeah, there we

Leo Laporte (00:16:37):
Go. And can you, well you, I don't know if you can hear me. I don't really care if you can hear me because this is a demo. Can't we put 'em in here? In here? You're supposed to show up in the

Mikah Sargent (00:16:47):
Something.

Leo Laporte (00:16:49):
This is a brand new show. We're working out some of the kinks

Mikah Sargent (00:16:53):
Indeed. But with this, that's all I needed to do. And Leo's able to hear my audio. And of course if I'm over there as well, you'll be able to hear my audio. I can hear it. See my video. Yeah. Yeah. Which is nice in comparison to whenever you're doing it front a computer where sometimes something doesn't work. Right. That's

Leo Laporte (00:17:10):
Kind of why we wanna encourage you to do it with your, you can turn off the, turn off extra audio now. Oh, wait a minute. There he is.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:16):
There we go.

Leo Laporte (00:17:18):
Hey, you're cute. Look at that cute guy. So why we'd like you. So why we'd

Mikah Sargent (00:17:23):
Like you,

Leo Laporte (00:17:24):
You can turn off that sound now. So why we'd like you to do it this way is because we, I would think almost all of you, it's your phone, camera and microphone is working. We know it works. It's actually fine quality as you can see. The audio is good. So we wanna make it easy for you without having to set up a microphone, a computer and all of that. If you have a very fancy, nice setup, of course you're welcome to use it. But our experience has been even with people who have it all set up and know what they're doing, a lot of times there are hitches as you just saw, things don't work so well. And so I think with the phone it's gonna work better. But there are other ways to work with us. You can email us. We have an email address.

(00:18:04):
I want everybody to use this too. Ask the tech guys. Ask the tech guys twit.tv. That's the email address. I also want you to be able to send us videos. And there are of course, a lot of ways you could email us a video. If you could keep it under a minute, that'd be good. But a video questions, welcome to, or even just an audio question cuz you know you know, if I'm gonna rank 'em in order, I'd prefer you were a live call. Cuz then we can ask you questions. Next best would be a Eli, a video recording that we could see and hear you next. Best of that, an audio recording. And then the, the kind of the final stage would be just a plain old text email, which we'll read out loud. It's nice though if we can interact with you.

(00:18:44):
So those are the ways you can do it. Somebody asked me Kev Brewer, who is in Britain, said, can we use WhatsApp? We will in by the next show we'll have a WhatsApp account set up so that you can send us videos via WhatsApp. The easiest thing to know though, really, honestly, on an Android or an I iOS phone is record a video. You can even do it in your Messenger app and, and send it to us. Share it to us and that way you'll get it off automatically. So, snail mail, <laugh>, Marty's asking snail mail. Yeah, you wanna mail us something? If you could figure out the address, you can mail <laugh>. You can mail it to us. You know, actually, I, I should say this. We do have a number of people who are incarcerated who listened to this show.

(00:19:26):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I didn't realize this. We got a really a sweet email from a guy who was in jail for a month in Massachusetts. He says, ah, I don't want to go into what happened. But they issued him in this jail, an iPad or a tablet, probably a cheap Andrew Android tablet and some limited number of podcasts of which some of our podcasts Yeah. Are included. And he said, you got me through that month. Thank you. So there are people who are listening who are incarcerated, and the only way they can reach us, obviously, is snail mail. So you can also mail it to our studios. It's twit TV 1351 B Redwood Way, Petaluma, California 9 4 9 5 4. You don't have to be incarcerated to use snail mail, <laugh>, but if you are hey, we're thrilled that you're, you're listening and watching. Yeah. Thank you. So did we cover everything?

(00:20:16):
We did. I didn't get to do a sermonette this week. I was gonna do one, but I'll save it for my last pass. Sermonette, should we take our first real call? This is, well, you saw how it worked. <Laugh>, this is a little, a little we're it's early days. We're working this out. I really, I'm looking forward to this as a chance for us to spend some time Yeah. Together and talk to you in a much more casual way. You know, one of the things radio does that only the people listen to the radio show knew this. If you listen to the podcast, you didn't, didn't notice. There's 19 minutes of commercials, plus about five or 10 minutes worth of local news traffic and all that stuff. So, of the hour, the tech guy show only had about 40 minutes an hour. You know, if you listen to the podcast, it was a two hour podcast, but the, the radio show takes three hours.

(00:21:03):
30% of that is, is not the tech guy. So we don't have that issue. We do have some ads but there'll be podcast ads. There'll be no more than three per show. In fact, you know what, this will be a good time to do a podcast ad and then, and then we'll take a call and then we will get to our first call. And coming up in about 15 minutes, Sam Abuelsamid with his CES report. Very exciting. Lot of automotive news at ces. Are you feeling good? I'm feeling good. I'm excited. I'm really thrilled that we're gonna get to do this.

Mikah Sargent (00:21:31):
I already, I loved getting, I got up, I walked over there, showed something offline

Leo Laporte (00:21:36):
Back here. Yeah. I think that's gonna be fun to be able to do that. I also have to say that I did the radio show for 19 years mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it's, I I felt a little bad stopping before I hit 20 years. It is the longest I've ever done anything including twit. Wow. Ever including two of my marriages. So <laugh>, 19 years is a long time. It is my goal. I'm gonna say it here to do 20 years of Asthe Tech guys. Okay. You will be my age. Before we get to stop doing this <laugh>, I will, I will be coming in in a walker, but I want to do 20 years of this 20, what do you say?

Mikah Sargent (00:22:14):
All right. I'll be 50.

Leo Laporte (00:22:15):
The other. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:16):
That's awesome. I just turned 30. Did

Leo Laporte (00:22:17):
You just turn? Happy birthday. I didn't know that. Thank you. Congratulations. And when did

Mikah Sargent (00:22:21):
You turn? December 19th.

Leo Laporte (00:22:22):
Oh, you have one of those birthdays next to Christmas. I'm so sorry.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:25):
Six days before.

Leo Laporte (00:22:27):
Yeah. Mine's actually November 29th. So I'm pretty, I'm not so far. Yeah, you're pretty close away either. Yeah. and my birth year mm-hmm. <Affirmative> is the same as the episode number 19. Now I didn't plan it that way, but that's a little

Mikah Sargent (00:22:41):
Weird. I think the World planet something up that way. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:22:44):
Like, that's significant. Yeah. it is interesting. This new show is born on the same year I was

Mikah Sargent (00:22:50):
Born. That is cool.

Leo Laporte (00:22:51):
That's pretty cool. And again, if we do 20 years of shows mm-hmm. <Affirmative> 52 shows a year. That's a thousand shows. We will eat episode 2,956. Wow. And I'll just pass out.

Mikah Sargent (00:23:06):
I was gonna say that because I think

Leo Laporte (00:23:07):
That's it. I think

Mikah Sargent (00:23:08):
That's it. We'll have done your opus. That is your Charlotte's Web moment for sure.

Leo Laporte (00:23:13):
Speaking of Charlotte's Web, yes. You notice the cap. It's not like I've gone bald, I'm wearing this cap. I dunno why, cuz I thought it goes with a jacket.

Mikah Sargent (00:23:20):
I like it. You look like you came in from wrangling the horses or something.

Leo Laporte (00:23:24):
I only got, I only have three words to say with this cap. That'll do pig. That'll do. All right. I'm gonna take off the hat and we're gonna do our first ad. And we, I am thrilled to be able to do this one. The thing I've said over it's become my mantra in the last year is if you, if email's important to you, if you care about email, you shouldn't use free me email. You should pay for it. How many calls have we gotten over the years from people said, Google disconnected my email. Our AOL no longer works free email is worth every penny. You pay for it. Nada. Now I have a better solution. It's not free, but it's not expensive. And it's what I've been using for more than a decade. It's the best Fast mail. Make your email yours. The thing to understand is free email is not free.

(00:24:07):
You're paying for it with your eyeballs, with your attention, with those ads, your privacy in effect. Right? For over 20 years fast Mail's been a leader in email and email privacy with fast mail. Your data stays yours. Their servers are in the United States. Fast mail is fully GDPR compliant. You get better productivity features and it's as little as $3 a month. If email matters to you. $3 a month, folks, fast mail prioritizes your privacy, your personal data is kept safe. It's away from 30 parties. They don't need to sell that information. You pay them. They have better spam filters than anyone else and absolutely no ads. So I use fast mail because they're a leader in email. Their server technology is open source. They contribute back to the open source. They've contributed to the community by implementing and recommending email authentication standards. They allow you to do some other interesting things.

(00:25:06):
For instance, masked email. This is a little, little complicated. We're not talking the Lone Ranger here. It allows you to create multiple addresses to, to use when you sign up for websites. So I have my personal email address. Matt FastMail is the host for that. So all my email goes to them. If you send email to asthe Tech guys at twit tv or leo leoville.com or any of my other addresses, it all ends up in the fast mail inbox. But I can also, and this is so great, when you sign up, let's say you sign up for a Verizon account, Verizon leoville.tv. I love the masked email option. I just signed up for a last pass for this demo later last pass@leoville.com. I have a variety of these addresses. So that's one thing. Also, if you use a password manager like Bit Ward one password, it integrates with them.

(00:25:58):
So every time you create a new password for a site, you can also create a unique email. So that's like having two passwords for every site. It doubles your security. Of course, fast mail has web mail just like your Gmail or yahoo mail or outlook.com. I think it's much, much better. You can organize your inbox. So they have scheduled sends snooze folders, labels as well as folders. So you got the Google style labels, but also the IMAP style folders. You get a search bar that works through your entire giant email box. If you use Google Calendars, a Google contact and you want to get off the Google, they do a completely compatible calendar. An address solution you can use as well as well as notes. Great for desktop. They have a Fast mail mobile app, which I use and love. It's the best. Try out the new features that they're, it's the most up to date.

(00:26:52):
Their support team is in the US full of email experts that are always there within reach. They put you first cuz your customers not the product. Look, if you care about email, it's time to use fast mail, fast mail, reclaim your privacy, boost your productivity, make email yours with fast mail. You can even try it free right now, 30 days fast mail.com/twit. Please use that address so they know you saw it here. Okay. Fast mail.com/twit. In fact, if you do go there, you'll get a 15% discount on the whole first year when you sign up Fast mail.com/twit. I know so many of you are still using, you know, those free email solutions. Don't stop it. Stop the insanity. Actually probably next week or the week after at some point in the show, I definitely want to take advantage of that demo area to show you how I use fast mail and work with, with many email clients.

(00:27:52):
But how I use fast mail's filtering and spam filters and all that to keep my email box usable. Cuz I, you know, nowadays there's so much junk in your email, <laugh>, it's hard to overload to use it. All right, I think we have put this off long enough. <Laugh>, I think <laugh>, I think it's time. Who should I pick though? Let me, you know what? I'm gonna pick Joe cuz Joe, I can see his picture. It's a beautiful picture. And, and I know we've had Joe on before, so I know his microphone works. All his stuff works. Joe, I'm inviting you into the on air room. Let's see if it's working. You should be coming up. And there's a little delay here. <Laugh>, he's raised his hand. There's Joe. Joe, there's Joe. Joe helped us out in our rehearsal. Unmute your mic Joe and we will hear your dset tones. Oh, can't hear us. Okay. That's the universal signal for my ear is a little itchy <laugh>.

Caller 1 (00:28:53):
There we go. Huh. There. I wasn't able to hear you there for a second. Sorry about

Leo Laporte (00:28:57):
That. I don't know if there might be. I wonder we're, you know, this is all new to us. I, there might be a little bit of a lag in when I invite you in when everything kind of mm-hmm. <Affirmative> turns on. Now here's one of the advantages of using Zoom. He doesn't sound like a, the, you know, football phone you got for subscribing to Time Magazine. Sounds much better than that. Hello, Joe, where are you calling from?

Caller 1 (00:29:19):
New York.

Leo Laporte (00:29:20):
Joe is a street photographer in New York who has some very nice images. And I've become a real fan. He participates in our various photography events. In fact, you've had a few, haven't you picked by Chris Mark Warren?

Caller 1 (00:29:38):
I have, yes, actually. Which was very exciting to see. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:29:42):
It's good to get New York, New York on the line. Joe. You don't, you don't have to have a question, but if you do, this show would help Are here. <Laugh> <laugh>. We got nothing else to do.

Caller 1 (00:29:54):
I do have a question. First of all, thank you for taking my call. Is, it's it's an honor to be the number one first caller. Yeah. On number one. Not

Leo Laporte (00:30:01):
Your first time though. You called, you've called the tech guy before. I think

Caller 1 (00:30:04):
I have. Yes I have. Yeah. so yeah, so my question is about advanced data protection. I haven't enabled it took, it took some doing cuz I had to like mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, do you authorize some ancient MacBook that I had or something that I haven't touched in a decade or so. But it's on and it's working. As far as I can tell my question is, so I'm traveling overseas next month and I'm wondering what happens when I do travel, cuz I know it's, it's not available to enable if you're outside of the US And I know that different countries have different data repatriation policies in place, like your server data stored on certain servers depending on where you are. So does anything change if you travel, if you have it enabled or does that not,

Leo Laporte (00:30:51):
First of all, I want to congratulate you because I've been trying to turn on advanced data protective. This is a new feature. Apple has shipped with iOS 16.1. I think at the beginning of the year. They, that is kind of was a stunner. We didn't, we didn't expect it. That encrypts your iCloud data in such a way that even Apple can't see it. So it's always been encrypted, but Apple has had the keys in the past. Now the keys are generated on your device and only you can unencrypt. Extremely powerful and I think a really, really good thing, but hard to turn on because as you note Joe, you have to have every device that you own.

Mikah Sargent (00:31:29):
<Laugh> updated to updated 16.2

Leo Laporte (00:31:31):
To 16, two

Mikah Sargent (00:31:32):
Or 13 one for the Mac. I mean the, and it looks at everything. That means TV os needs to be updated to 16. My home pods HomePod. Yeah. And if you have Windows, then your window computer needs to have iCloud for Windows 14.1. So everything has to be updated. And what they'll do is they'll show you a list of the devices that aren't, I was logged in to Leo's Mac Mini and so I had to just remove

Leo Laporte (00:31:56):
That. No, that's the good news is you can just say I don't Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (00:31:58):
Yeah. I don't care about that. I'll just take that off and not worry about it. But this

Leo Laporte (00:32:02):
Is, Leo should update his MAC mini. That

Mikah Sargent (00:32:04):
That is important. <Laugh>. you were on vacation at the time, so Oh, I think that's probably why. The thing

Leo Laporte (00:32:09):
About Joe, did you have to drop any devices or were you able to get 'em all up today?

Caller 1 (00:32:14):
I, I dropped devices, but the devices I dropped, I you

Leo Laporte (00:32:17):
Just update

Caller 1 (00:32:17):
Later. Don't use anymore. I don't even know if I still have them. It's just, they just, you know, you, I, it's a good time timed in, I don't know, 10, 12 years ago and just, you don't, I don't really go in and de authorize devices. It's

Leo Laporte (00:32:28):
Quite it for somebody who uses Apple stuff. It's quite a long list. <Laugh> mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Anyway, I'm impressed you got it working. Now that you ask a really great question. I don't know if we know the answer. I think because you're in the US and a US customer, you don't, you can take it with you into another country.

Mikah Sargent (00:32:45):
That's so I can't say with all certainty, I've looked at these documents cause I actually did an episode of Hands on Mac about this very feature. And I didn't see any conversation surrounding that. My understanding is that basically it needs to happen where it is enabled because the rules surrounding encryption are locked in and steadfast there and they know them. So if you go ahead and encrypt it while you're in the us I'm thinking you're able to use that. But what you might check, Joe, so

Leo Laporte (00:33:16):
You have to be at least right now, a US U customer mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to turn it on. Although they say they will roll it out to other countries this year. But I think once it's turned on,

Mikah Sargent (00:33:25):
Yeah. Then you should be good to go. I would suggest because there is an extra option whenever you enable this, and it's called web access to your data@icloud.com. Toggling that on whenever you take your trip might be worth it. But that does is it still gives your icloud.com account the option to access your information even though it is all encrypted end to end. So the, the way that

Leo Laporte (00:33:51):
It, it's quite clever what they did.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:53):
Yeah. Because didn't Steve talked about it. Yeah. remind us if you will, cuz on

Leo Laporte (00:33:57):
Our security now mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, so they generate a temporary password actually has to be generated from your phone from the secure enclave, which they then have access to, but it ro it, it expires. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So it gives you temporarily in, in other words, in order for their web access to work, clearly they have to serve your content back to you over the iCloud website. So they have to be able to unencrypt it, but they only do it temporarily. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It's really, I think Apple has, it's kind of a surprise because remember this is something law enforcement does not want Apple to do. The, the rumor was a couple of years ago, apple was gonna turn on end-to-end encryption. That's what this is called for the iCloud. And the FBI asked them not to and they decided not to. So they're doing this in an environment where law enforcement really doesn't like you to have everything encrypted.

(00:34:48):
That means they can't serve a search warrant on Apple and say give us all a Joe's pictures, for instance. And that's for good for Joe <laugh>, maybe bad for law enforcement. But I think it's a net gain in privacy. Apple is definitely gonna face some headwinds from US law enforcement. And that's I think why it's slow to roll out around the rest of the world. What happens when they get to the uk where they have laws against this mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or Australia or China or Russia, where it's actually com completely against the law. Will Apple ever roll it out in those countries? My suspicion is no, because they, the, the laws are specific in those countries that you cannot have end-to-end encryption. We're lucky we still can in the us I think Apple wanted to roll this out before Congress changed, that there was some movement in Congress last session to to prevent end-to-end encryption.

(00:35:44):
It's a terrible thing. Just bottom line on end-to-end encryption. I think a lot of people saying, well what's wrong with helping law enforcement? I agree. Catch those crooks. Law enforcement has many, many tools more than they've ever had before for surveilling you. That's what technology has given them. But if there's a back door, if there is somehow a way to get into encryption, there's always the risk that not only law enforcement will be able to get in there. Not only app will be able to get in there, but somebody else will be. And all you have to do is look at the last pass breach to see why this is a problem. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Right. And in fact, there have been breaches of iCloud usually user error. In fact we think always user error. But remember when those movie stars got their pictures exfiltrated from iCloud, it was very embarrassing. Within the encryption, that's not gonna happen. The user error will have to be even more egregious. You'll have to actually send it to the bad guy. So Joe, I think I know you let us know.

Caller 1 (00:36:42):
I was gonna say, yeah, we are sending you into the world. Where

Leo Laporte (00:36:44):
Are you going

Caller 1 (00:36:45):
Certainty? I'm going to Hong Kong next month. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:36:49):
So that will be interesting cuz you are now in China, so that will be very

Caller 1 (00:36:54):
Interesting. Yeah. But their, their laws are a little bit weirder. Like cuz it's a little bit different. I mean, I look, I'm not, I'm not attending protests or anything. I'm not concerned about it. I'm just,

Leo Laporte (00:37:04):
I will be very interested in see what happens. You know, this is a good test. Yeah, absolutely. Get back to us. And I'm envious cuz I'd love to go to Hong Kong. We were scheduled to go there twice during Covid and we had of course couldn't I won't be able to go. So

Caller 1 (00:37:19):
They just lifted. Yeah. Yeah. They just had, they had some onerous covid restrictions in place and they just lifted pretty much all of them. You have to test negative on the way there. Test negative on the way back. But otherwise you're, you're good.

Leo Laporte (00:37:31):
Are you going for fun?

Caller 1 (00:37:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going for fun. And to visit some family. I expect to see

Leo Laporte (00:37:37):
Some fantastic pictures. Where can we see your pictures, Joe?

Caller 1 (00:37:42):
I don't really use Instagram all that much anymore. I'm, I'm on glass. You can find me there. You can also just go on my website, which is my first name, last name joseph acra.com. A k b r u d j o s e p h a k b r u d.com. And you'll see, you'll see them

Leo Laporte (00:37:59):
Over there. Joseph Ebrd, A K B R U d. Joe, great to talk to you. Thanks for being

Caller 1 (00:38:03):
Likewise. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (00:38:04):
My first caller. Now I have to figure out how I hang up on people. <Laugh>. It is actually a two-step process. It's kind of complicated and I'm, I'm, I'm still learning the ins and outs of this. I have to move back in. I've lost the assigned capability now. So Joe, be nice. Don't come back.

Caller 1 (00:38:25):
<Laugh>. Thanks Joe. <Laugh>. Alright. <Laugh>, be nice. Don't come

Leo Laporte (00:38:28):
Be nice. Don't come back. There's a No. There we go. Now I can move them. There's a, it's, it will get easier. Yes, but it's not us. It's Zoom.

Mikah Sargent (00:38:38):
When you first started the radio show Yeah. And you had all those buttons to press it, it took you some time to, to get locked in. Right? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:38:45):
Hey, by the way, I listened to rich Tomorrow took over for me. I listened to his first show yesterday. Did a great job. Congratulations, rich. Yeah. well done. I know it's scary to do a national radio show. In fact, I realized after 19 years of doing it that I still got a little knot in my stomach every single day. I had to do it. And it's kind of nice that I don't get that <laugh> <laugh>. I don't get that with you. I don't know why should we see Sam Abul Salmon and see what's going on? I know that with Sam now I don't see Sam in our zoom. So Sam, he's got his own thing. Yeah. Oh, he's his own call special. Sam Abuelsamid Principle researchers at Guide House Insights. He hosts the Wheel Bearings podcast. And just so you feel Okay, he has tested negative <laugh> who for Covid

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:38):
I also tested negative for both flu A and flu B. So, wow. Nice.

Leo Laporte (00:39:42):
You took your life in your hands and went to Vegas. CES is still going on. It started late this year because of a late holiday and it continues through the end of the day today. But you left early.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:54):
Well, I had meetings. I, I, I flew out on Monday, so I got there Monday afternoon and I had meetings starting Tuesday morning. Wow. so I, I got in a full four days of, you know, that's what, nine? No, 9,600 and yeah, 96 hours. At least 96 hours. Well over 96 hours in Vegas.

Leo Laporte (00:40:12):
Scott Wilkinson always took a speedometer with him to measure how many steps he took. Did you do that?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:19):
I don't, I didn't use a pedometer, but the Google Fit app on my pixel. Oh, there you go. What I was doing, doing about 15,000 steps a day.

Leo Laporte (00:40:26):
Oh. Oh, fantastic. We are so glad to have you on the show. People maybe were a little concerned with the change from radio to podcast that we'd lose some of our great contributors. I intend to get every one of them back on and man, we're not giving up Sam because he's the king. And this is a great week to talk to Sam. There was a lot of stuff, automotive stuff at ces.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:40:48):
There was, I mean, I, I had a crazy schedule while I was there. I didn't even actually get to see all of the stuff that I'm gonna talk about in person because I, I have meetings, you know, usually my, my CS schedule is booked solid by about mid-December. So I had meetings from like eight in the morning until about 5 30, 6 o'clock every night. Dinner with a different company, different events to go to. So, you know, it was a very long week and I was glad to get home Friday

Leo Laporte (00:41:15):
Night. <Laugh>, you were.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:16):
Yeah. But but there was some really cool stuff. A lot of the stuff that I did see, you know, is stuff that's relevant to my work that, you know, I'm sure we, you know, if we had like a 16 hour show, I could probably share most of that stuff. Well, we

Leo Laporte (00:41:31):
Gotta take a break for the network sounder at, at the bottom of the hour, so thanks. No, we don't have to do that anymore.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:41:36):
But there are a few things that I would that, that, you know, that the, I think the audience is gonna be interested in, in looking forward to learning a little bit more about you know, it's electric vehicles that are coming to market over the next couple of years. And I would say the big one, literally and figuratively was the Ram Revolution concept. 

Leo Laporte (00:42:00):
Dodge Ram Truck Ram,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:42:02):
Well, it's not, it's not Dodge Ram anymore. Back about 2010. I'm Ram it's on standalone brand in what was in Fit Chrysler. Okay. So it's just ram, you know, at Ram 1500, the coming next year is the Ram 1500 ev and the revolution concept is a preview of that truck. And we will actually be seeing the production intent version of that truck in a few months. I had a chance to chat with Mikah Coval earlier this week, who is the head of the Ram brand at Stelmanis. And so they're, he told me they, they will be showing the, the, the production intent truck in, in sometime this spring. So we will see that soon. But the, the truck that they showed, the concept truck that they showed has some really interesting features, some of which will come to production almost certainly. Others probably not. So among the things that we probably won't see are the the, the cab with the rear hinged doors and no B pillar. So the, the classic suicide doors. This is one of those classic things that designers like to put on concepts because you can open up the doors. Everybody can see inside, get an uninterrupted view of the beautiful cab design that they created. The, the production.

Leo Laporte (00:43:21):
And then they never ship 'em. <Laugh> me nuts mean it's cause I want a suicide, a car with suicide. I want a Lincoln with suicide doors. Well,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:43:29):
You can, you can get those. You, you could find a a a used Continental like they did a, a limited run of Lincoln Continentals a couple of years ago with what they call coach doors. They're not suicide doors, they're coach doors.

Leo Laporte (00:43:40):
Why do they not? Because there are some of what they're in production are they somehow less reliable?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:43:45):
It adds a, it adds a lot of complexity. Yeah. in terms of the safety requirements, although there, there are, there are reg other regular production, well, sort

Leo Laporte (00:43:55):
Of regular super people. I mean, I, I love that the doors open does it from the central pillar out instead you have seen it on a rolls, which is weird

Sam Abuelsamid (00:44:02):
Looking. Yeah. The Rolls Royce Phantom and the, the Don and the ghost all have the, the rear hinged back doors. So anyway,

Leo Laporte (00:44:10):
Don't get your hopes up if you see this ram with the, with the doors set open that way they're not gonna probably do

Sam Abuelsamid (00:44:15):
That product. But, but the overall look of the production truck will probably be pretty close to what what was shown on that concept. So

Leo Laporte (00:44:24):
See that's something also I wanted to mention is that a lot of times at CS you see concept vehicles that are never gonna ship. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, <affirmative>. If Sony keeps showing this Aila thing, <laugh>, who knows? We'll get to, we'll to that. We'll get to that. But, but, so this, you think though, will ship in pretty much the same forms she

Sam Abuelsamid (00:44:41):
Showed? Oh yeah. Yeah. It, it, the they are definitely shipping an electric pickup truck next year, year an electric Ram 1500. That,

Leo Laporte (00:44:46):
That's a hot

Sam Abuelsamid (00:44:47):
Category is absolute.

Leo Laporte (00:44:48):
I oh yeah, of course. Jerry, our, our, our marketing CMO has a, a, a lightning he loves I have a friend who has a Silverado they are sell like hot cakes. You can't get 'em in stock. So this is a hot area. So Ram is joining the fray, I guess.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:04):
Absolutely. Yeah. Rivian, the RIV there, the Silverado EV goes on sale this spring. Yeah. and he ordered

Leo Laporte (00:45:11):
GMC I should say. He hasn't driven it. He used to ordered it. <Laugh>. Yeah. Good luck getting it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:14):
Yeah. So those are coming, those are coming this year. And someday there might even be a cyber truck. Who knows? Yeah. but a couple of interesting elements of the

Leo Laporte (00:45:23):
Cyber truck when it comes out is gonna look dated, isn't it? Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:26):
<Laugh>. It, it will, it's

Leo Laporte (00:45:27):
Gonna, it looks so cool and weird and then, and now it's five years later and it's gonna be just some dated old thing. <Laugh>. Oh yeah. We don't want that one.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:36):
So

Leo Laporte (00:45:36):
Does your ram look cooler than the cyber try? I heard people say that. I think

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:39):
It does. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't look like a flying door. Stop <laugh>. So, so there's that, there's that

Leo Laporte (00:45:44):
Going. It's got that going for it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:46):
Yeah. do you have,

Leo Laporte (00:45:48):
Do we have a picture? Let me see if I can find a picture. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:45:50):
I, someone can

Leo Laporte (00:45:52):
Show my screen. Yeah. Oh, we got, actually we also have B-roll. Yeah. We so I'm sorry. The people who watch live will not see the B-roll cuz I haven't given it to the editors, but they will put it in the show. There you

Sam Abuelsamid (00:46:03):
Go. There, there you go. There's a picture of the

Leo Laporte (00:46:04):
Revolution. It does look cool. That's cool. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:46:06):
Yeah. So one of the couple of interesting details about the, the revolution that will almost certainly make it to production. It will have a mid gate like the the Sierra and Silverado EVs. So the, the, the wall between the cab and the bed will fold down into the into the cab of the truck. So, and you can fold down the back seats, so then it'll open up so

Leo Laporte (00:46:30):
You get a much bigger bed all of a sudden. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:46:32):
Yeah, yeah. And then the seats and the center console are actually mounted on tracks in the floor, what they call a Ram track system. The center console is removable and there's a pass-through from the center console or from the, from the cab into the front. And they say that with that, with the mid gate down and that with the tailgate closed, you can put in objects up to 18 feet long,

Leo Laporte (00:46:58):
18 foot two by four can 18, slide two by fours. So a lot of people in construction that's that's good news. Or get rebar in there or rails or, yeah. Very

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:07):
Cool. Yep. And the the, the dual screens there that you see in the picture right now that it's two 14 inch screens, the top display can be adjusted up or down a little bit. Oh, it's top and then the bottom display can slide up underneath it slide to different angles. And it's also completely removable, so you can use it as a standalone tablet. So that's

Leo Laporte (00:47:29):
Great. Again, I is that they're, they're aiming this at the, at the working person, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> who's gonna maybe have yeah. Something on the tablet like his specs or something in and pull it out and you can take it with him. That's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:40):
Great. Or do invoices,

Leo Laporte (00:47:41):
Invoicing, ticket it

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:42):
And do do your invoicing and all that stuff. It's actually really

Leo Laporte (00:47:45):
Pretty. Yeah, it is good looking.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:46):
It's good looking truck.

Leo Laporte (00:47:47):
It's, it's kind of interesting cuz it's got a sh it looks like the, the windows are a little short

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:51):
Compared to Yeah. And that's one detail of the design that I think will change for the production truck. So this one's got kind of a chopped look to it. Yeah. I think the production version will have a slightly taller cab. But other than that, the overall shape should be pretty similar. It really

Leo Laporte (00:48:05):
Is. They are, the cyber truck is now gonna look like something Yeah, that was good in the sixties. <Laugh>, we, we've got something modern here, but

Sam Abuelsamid (00:48:11):
This is actually usable as a truck.

Leo Laporte (00:48:13):
Well, that's the other side. Yeah. And,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:48:14):
And, and speaking of usable, oh, the one other really interesting technical detail. I mean, there's a lot of interesting technical details, but one I wanna talk about is the Ram Charger system. So the this, this truck is equipped with a wireless power transfer system, a wireless inductive charging system. And there have been some vehicles that have that before the Genesis GV 60 currently offers it in Korea, and it'll soon be offering it here. But those systems use a transmitter pad that is mounted on your, on the floor of your garage, and you bolt it down so it doesn't move around. And then a receiver pad on the bottom of the body of the, the vehicle. And then you have to drive in, you have to maneuver it and locate it over that pad in just the right spot, so you get optimum charging.

(00:48:58):
 And if, if you're off a little bit, the charging rate drops off and you, you guys have used your iPhones, you know, with mm-hmm. <Affirmative> with wireless charging. You know what that's like the Ram charger instead of the, the transmitter pad being bolted to the floor of your garage. It's kind of like a Roomba. And I sent over a little video clip that I recorded I dunno if you guys have access to it. But it looks like a big Roomba with a, a tail hanging out. So it's, it's tethered, you know, for the power transfer. But when you pull into the garage, this Ram charger rolls under your truck and using sensors, it figures out the exact right spot to stop and it sits there and locates itself, ideally. That's awesome. So you don't have to mess around with it, and then it'll start charging. And that's something that probably will be coming to production when at some point either when the truck launches next year or shortly

Leo Laporte (00:49:55):
Afterwards. So, so you said you sent a video what's it called?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:00):
It's a, there's a Google Photos link to,

Leo Laporte (00:50:02):
I see the photo to a little, yeah. The, the Ram Charger. It looks like a, okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:05):
Yeah, it's just a, like a short 13 second clip that just shows the RAM charger moving around underneath the the chassis of the truck.

Leo Laporte (00:50:12):
Yeah. wow. That's, this is still, but it's pretty cool looking. Yeah. oh, there you go. So that's the charger, huh? Let me see if I can launch the I got your your email here. So I guess the second link might have the yeah, here's the video link of it. Let me, let me, let me explain.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:29):
There you go. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:50:31):
To full screen here. So, so when you pull into the garage, so where would you, this is your, for your garage, you would do

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:38):
This? Yeah. You pull into the garage. So you see, you can see the plate there that's mounted on the bottom of the chassis. That's the receiver plate. And it just pulls in underneath the truck and locates itself, it's

Leo Laporte (00:50:48):
Like

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:48):
Fueling, it's done, it pulls back a

Mikah Sargent (00:50:50):
Plane while it's in midair, like they do with the Yeah. Yeah. A little helicopter. Wow. That's really cool.

Leo Laporte (00:50:55):
Gimmicky. I mean, honestly, it's not so hard to just plug in my car every night, but

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:59):
True. But I think where this will be useful is for fleet operators. Cause a lot of fleets use these trucks. Oh.

Leo Laporte (00:51:05):
Or, you know, if you have

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:06):
Multiple cars in your garage, you know, you go in garage, automatically charge each one of 'em and then

Leo Laporte (00:51:10):
Move on the next one. That would be cool. Yeah, we do have that. We do have that. We have the little dance where Lisa pulls her car in and I have to unplug mine and plug hers in. And then Michael pulls his car in. So we do have the charger dance. So this be nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:24):
The, the next one you already mentioned, Aila

Leo Laporte (00:51:27):
Aila. This is Sony co joint. Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:31):
So, yeah, so back in 2020, before, you know what was almost certainly the, the original Covid Super Spreader event the 2020 c e s <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:51:42):
Which I went in a press conference and did not get c sick, but yeah, Sony showed this 10,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:48):
Right? Yeah. They showed, they showed a, a concept called the the vision. So one or something like that. And they said, no, we're not gonna build EVs. We just wanna highlight some of the technologies that we build for cars, like the camera sensors and, and everything else. And then last year when there was a sort of halfhearted return to live cs, they, the second concept, which is similar to this, but it was a crossover. And then a few months later they did a deal with Honda and formed a joint venture called Sony Honda Mobility Corporation, and said, yep, we're gonna build car, build electric cars with Honda. And, you know, since Sony Honda Mobility Corporation just flows off the tongue so easily, they, they undoubtedly paid some marketing, branding agency, some absurd amount of money to come up with a new name. And and they came up with a

Leo Laporte (00:52:38):
Fila, I feel ya <laugh>. It actually is Arabic for something, I think.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:43):
Yeah. It's, I think it's actually a girl's name in, in Arabic. Okay. Or so, something like that. Yeah. so they came up with a feeling, that's the word,

Leo Laporte (00:52:50):
Feeling in it. That's what they really want. Right. I have a

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:52):
Good feeling. So this is, this is coming in 2026,

Leo Laporte (00:52:55):
So I was wrong. It does have a steering wheel. It's got one of those yolk steering wheel. Yeah. Which even Elon is finally given up on apparently. Yeah, yeah. He offers, he offers that now. And

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:05):
This, this will be built in Ohio. Okay. at, at at a Honda factory in Ohio. And coming in 2026, or actually production late 2025 on sale, probably early 26. So it's about I guess about three years away. The next one, would

Leo Laporte (00:53:22):
You buy a car? I mean, Honda knows what they're doing.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:24):
Oh, yeah. Honda knows what they're doing. I'm sure it'll

Leo Laporte (00:53:27):
Part Sony's involvement bringing

Mikah Sargent (00:53:29):
To the

Leo Laporte (00:53:30):
Table. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:32):
Well, it's basically gonna have essentially a PS five into the dashboard. Great. Uhs. So

Leo Laporte (00:53:38):
I play call Judy driving

Mikah Sargent (00:53:40):
And the camera's on there. Well,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:41):
No, I mean, while you're sitting there charging, waiting for, you know, sitting there waiting, waiting to charge during the world

Leo Laporte (00:53:45):
Trip, actually, a lot of electric vehicles do have games now. Yeah. In their center, center consoles, just because you do have to spend half an hour charging

Mikah Sargent (00:53:52):
Off them, then maybe it should be Honda Sony Mobility. And why aren't we putting Sony first?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:56):
Well, I mean, Honda's got their own thing that they're doing, you know, is Honda. And this, you know, basically they're, they're kind of acting like a contract manufacturer for Sony.

Leo Laporte (00:54:05):
Oh, couple more things before we wrap. We have to kinda

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:08):
Move on. So the next one is the the Volkswagen ID seven. This is a new very

Leo Laporte (00:54:14):
Popular sedan. This is a very popular electric vehicle with the ID three and four people love it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:19):
Right? Yeah. And so the ID seven is a mid-size sedan coming next year. They showed it they showed, they showed a concept a couple years ago called the ID arrow. This is based on that. It'll look very close to that. And they showed the, the sedan oh, this

Leo Laporte (00:54:34):
Is this concept vehicle,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:35):
This, well, no, this is the production model. It's just, it's got, they're, they want to tease out, you know, showing off the interior. So this is the product or showing off the design. Okay. This is the production model. It just has this funky coating on it. Right. that allows it to change the patterns on there. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:54:53):
Aw. W was back with that silly

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:56):
Ink. So if

Mikah Sargent (00:54:57):
I hold my phone up to it, will it send me to a website?

Leo Laporte (00:54:59):
Oh, look at this

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:59):
Qr. Oh, yes, it will. Wait. It's a QR code? Yes. Oh,

Mikah Sargent (00:55:03):
It to make a dumb. Oh my God. It was real. Oh

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:05):
My God. <Laugh>. I don't want a cure.

Leo Laporte (00:55:07):
Go

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:07):
To more information about the ID seven. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:55:09):
Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:11):
That the production model won't have this stuff on it. Oh, okay. Okay. So the final one I wanted to, to mention is the it's hysterical. The BMW iVision D d e e, which stands for Digital Emotional Experience,

Leo Laporte (00:55:24):
<Laugh>. So they showed this last year with black and white

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:26):
E ink. Well, they showed a different mo, they showed the ix, the BMW ix, which is a current production model an electric crossover with a coat with a black and white I ink display. Yeah. This one has color e ink all over the body. Woohoo. for what? So you can change the color of your car, whatever, whatever mood you're in on a given day. There's also a video clip that I sent another Google Photos link that shows it changing color. And again, this, the, the color changing E ink is probably not something you will see on a production model or one, but the, the shape of this car is very likely, very close to the 2025 NOA class. Noa NOA class is literally German for new class. It's their next dedicated EV platform. And so it will probably look a lot like this, although just with static colors. Yeah. one detail that of this car that they did say will be on the production model is the full width heads up display. So this car, when you get in the dashboard is bare. There's no touch screens, there's no instruments instrument cluster or anything. There's a full width heads up display along the base of the windshield. And how

Leo Laporte (00:56:43):
Do I, how do I do the turn signals? That's what I want to

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:46):
Know. There's turn signal stocks on the Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:56:48):
They have on the steering wheel. Oh, have, oh, good. Okay. Yeah. They haven't gotten rid of the all. Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:51):
So there is a steering. There is a, there is a steering wheel. There's a steering wheel. Okay. and then when you, when you, when your finger gets close to the dashboard, it lights up from behind with what they call a mixed reality slider that lets you select the degree of information you want on the hud. So from, you can go from a basic analog display of gauges right in front of you up through showing the infotainment system and showing the an augmented reality display that shows you a multi plane display. So when you're using navigation, for example, it'll look like the turn prompts are hovering over this intersection where we're supposed to turn. As you get closer to it, it looks like it's getting closer to you. And finally, the one that probably won't be there is the virtual reality display that basically creates a new virtual reality on, on the environment as you're driving down the road. That probably won't be there, I hope. But the, the full width heads up display will be in production on the 2025 model.

Leo Laporte (00:57:48):
Nice. Wow. You didn't show in your image the grill BMW has of late been very aggressive <laugh> about the grills on their

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:59):
Car. Yeah, they've kind of on this model, on this car. They've kind of gone back on that. I think they've heard some criticism. So instead of the big vertical twin kidney grills, it's gone to a more subtle horizontal grill. Oh, okay. Good. and again, that's covered in e ink. So they, they have some, some photos of it with the car all in white. And the, the headlamps, which look like just a couple of white slashes you know, just kind of blend in there. And then there's other images of it showing the that grill area's flipping to black. And then you see the headlamp the headlamp slashes in there. Wow. L e d headlamps. So there's there's some interesting stuff on that, on that vehicle.

Leo Laporte (00:58:42):
I always worry though, if I have an e ink wrap on my car and I get an fender bender mm-hmm. <Affirmative> how much it's gonna cost all wraps.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:49):
It's very expensive. It's not gonna be cheap.

Mikah Sargent (00:58:51):
Even the head up, heads up display on there. I, I hate to go all Boomer, but like, what? I, I I can fix my car

Leo Laporte (00:58:58):
By myself. Okay, dad. Okay. Okay. Dad, you can't, you can't fix new, you can't fix a car. <Laugh> the, they get to, they get to be like their parents after a while.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:08):
<Laugh>. Yeah. That is what happens. We all become our parents.

Leo Laporte (00:59:11):
Yeah. It's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:12):
Inevitable. You get old.

Leo Laporte (00:59:15):
Leave the Boomer to me. Okay. <laugh>. Hey Sam, you're a great guy. I appreciate you joining us. Sam is of course, course not going away. He'll continue to be a great part of the Twit family, both on the twit round table show and, and on. Ask the tech guys whenever there's big car news, we know who to ask. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Thank you, Sam. It's a, it's a great pleasure.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:33):
My pleasure to be on the first episode of

Leo Laporte (00:59:35):
Ask. First episode, guys with you again. Listen to the wheel Bearings podcast. Sam's podcast you just recorded this morning wheel bearings.media with Robbie. And who's it? Nicole is your Co Nicole. Yep. Nicole, Roberta

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:47):
Baldwin, and Nicole Wakeland. I love friends and co

Leo Laporte (00:59:49):
Hosts. I love them both. They're great. And it's a really good show. So if you like Cars, wheel Bearings Media, I'm,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59:54):
I'm editing that right now. And it, it'll be up tomorrow morning including an interview with Mikah Coval talking more about the, the Ramm Revolution.

Leo Laporte (01:00:01):
Yeah, that's a really interesting, I have to say, of all of the stuff you showed, that's the one that looks like they, they're going to go someplace with that one. That's very exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you Sam. Thanks so much. Thank you. You're watching Ask the Tech guys brand new show. Mikah, Sargent Leo LaPorte, again calls TWI TV for this week only. Next week it'll be called twit tv. If you wanna zoom to us. The IRC is irc, that's the chatroom irc twi.tv. You can also email ask the tech guys twit.tv. We are running out of time. Should we take an ad break? We are running out of time. I wanna do an ad break. I have a couple of emails I really want to get to, including a I think a, a really good email from Lynn about Last Pass.

(01:00:46):
And I think we want to do a little demo of shifting that's right away from Last Pass. And also explain a little bit about what this whole LastPass thing means to LastPass users on my, I'm seeing some questions in the chat room as well. We're really glad you're here for this first episode. It's gonna be a little short today cuz we took a little longer to get started than we usually do. But fear not, we will be three hours if, if I have anything to do with it, <laugh>, maybe five, six, I don't know, before before too long. But this will be a kind of a briefer episode of the show. We're glad you're we're really glad you're here. Let me talk about our ad for today. We're also really glad to have advertisers. Thank you. Yes. <laugh>. Our show today brought to you by Eight Sleep.

(01:01:32):
Oh, I know all about this one because I love my eight sleep. In fact, we just got, we just upgraded. We have the original pod. We have the pod three now. And I'm gonna give the pod two to our sun Eight. Sleep is the best way to sleep. Last night it was a little chilly. You might have noticed winter is in the North, Northern Hemisphere. Maybe if you're an Australian listener or viewer, you were a little sweltering in the heat of summer down south. In both cases, the eight sleep is the best solution. Look, sleep is, is the holy grail for all of us. Nature's Gentle Nurse, the ultimate game changer. And the eight Sleep pod is the ultimate sleep machine. It's just, just like a mattress pad you put over your mattress. They actually sell a mattress as well, if that's, if that's what you prefer.

(01:02:23):
We like our mattress, so we just put it on top of it and it changes everything. I am falling asleep in record time cozier than ever, thanks to my eight sleep pot. And when I wake up, I feel great. Eight sleep, sleepy, only sleep technology that dynamically cools and heats each side of the bed. Let me tell you what that means. You can go as cool as 55 degrees or as hot as 110 degrees hot in the winter, cool in the summer. But you may even change temperatures as you sleep. The eight sleep, sleep doctor keeps an eye on it has biometric tracking and it keeps an eye on your movements. Your heart rate, your breathing, and it knows when you're going to a deeper sleep. And actually, what I have it set to do, and the way the doctor works is it's cozy when I get in bed so I feel good and I fall asleep fast.

(01:03:12):
But as I go into a deeper sleep, it slowly cools me down. I never wake up hot in the middle of the night. Isn't that the worst? And it turns out your body expects to be cooled in the middle during the deep sleep cycles, up to 34% more deep sleep. What does that mean? A huge improvement in your recovery, how you feel the next day. 19% increase in, in, in recovery, up to 32% improvement in sleep quality. That comes from clinical data with eight sleep users. And because it's two different sides, my wife has a completely different experience. She likes it hotter than I do. She turns it all the way up to 10 every night. I don't know how she does it, but she loves it. It's, but that's what she wants. And I have to say, you can even have the temperature adjust to wake you up in the morning.

(01:04:00):
There's even a little vibration it'll do for you. So it's a very gentle way to wake up in the morning. And man, you feel great with more deep sleep. You can be confident. Your mind and your body have moved through those restorative sleep stages. As you know Mikah did a sleep podcast for a long time. That is absolutely critical. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the REM sleep, you know where your eyes are moving and you're dreaming, but also the deep sleep where you're as still as possible. You, you're just kind of, and your brain is cleaning out all the garbage, all the, all the chemicals in your brain restoring you for a, a great morning. The pot is not magic. The eight Sleep pod feels like it. Go to eight sleep.com/twi. You'll save $150 a checkout on the pod. Kevin Rose told me about this years ago. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(01:04:47):
And then it was funny was on a twit. And then Amy Webb heard him talk about it. She said, that sounds good. She got it. She started singing its praises. So finally I had to get one. You've had it now. Seems like every time someone gets one they start singing. It's praises. Yeah. Yes. So good. Yes. Just ask we've had it for more than a year. It's fantastic. Eight sleep.com/twi. Good news. They ship in Australia. So if you're sweltering right now, down under this is a great solution. US Canada, the uk select countries in the EU as well. Eight sleep.com/t w I t. Please use that address so they know you heard it on Ask the tech guys, Leo LaPorte and Mikah Sargent, brand new show. Ask the tech guys. Let's get, I gotta get, we gotta get a few more calls in. Okay. Can we just, can we just try maybe? Yeah, we'll try to do some quick ones. All right. Let me get quick questions. We'll see. Yeah. Quick, quick questions. Who's been hanging on the longest? I see Howard's about to fall asleep. I don't know which Howard this is. There's two Howards the duck. I'm gonna take a chance, not the duck. Oh not the duck. And, and we're gonna go to a Howard. I don't know if it's the Howard <laugh>.

(01:05:58):
It takes a little while. Howard is gonna join us in the in the, on-air booth. And Devou. Then we'll get to you. Cause he says, I have a quick question. So that's good. Do we have Howard, did I do it right? Did I press the buttons? I see Chris from Miami is in there too. Mr. Coffee nerd. Maybe we lost Howard. We got you got him right here. Hey Howard. How are you doing? Where are you calling from?

Caller 2 (01:06:25):
Laguna Nigel.

Leo Laporte (01:06:26):
Beautiful. Laguna Nigel. Welcome. It's

Caller 2 (01:06:29):
Great to have another crummy day in Orange County.

Leo Laporte (01:06:31):
<Laugh>. You know, we had so much rain up here yesterday of the thunder. It's warming. Yeah. And lightning. It sounded like a war zone. What is it? Is it sunny in Laguna Nael?

Caller 2 (01:06:43):
Slightly overcast.

Leo Laporte (01:06:44):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, Howard, welcome. What can we do for you today?

Caller 2 (01:06:48):
Thank you. Oh, I got a real easy one for you. Yay. You may have covered this before. Is there a free upgrade to 11?

Leo Laporte (01:06:56):
To Windows 11? Yes. If you meet Microsoft's cookie requirements

Caller 2 (01:07:03):
Well, for the computer, mine is pretty old

Leo Laporte (01:07:05):
That, and they can't, you can't do it officially. There are unofficial ways to do it. So Windows, you're using Windows 10 right now.

Caller 2 (01:07:15):
8.1.

Leo Laporte (01:07:16):
Okay. So I would absolutely take the free upgrade to 10. And you should be able to do that. Almost all computers that can run Windows eight can run, can upgrade to 10. You may remember when 10 came out years ago, Microsoft said, Hey, for the first year, you can upgrade for free. Well, they never turned that off. So the upgrade to 10 is free. Once that computer is on 10, Microsoft makes a note of that. And you don't need a serial number anymore. You can be Windows 10. You can erase the hard drive. You can even put in a new hard drive. Install Windows 10. And I would certainly do that. That's a, that's a well worth, worth it. Upgrade. The upgrade to 11 is very minor. It's really cosmetic more than anything else. And Microsoft, in order to keep 11 more secure, they say I think it's to sell more PCs says you have to have an eighth generation Intel processor later.

(01:08:09):
You almost certainly do not. Right? Yeah. And you also have to have a security module. The trusted platform module or TPM 2.0 installed on the motherboard. You probably don't have that either. So if you don't have a eighth generation or later Intel, you don't have TPM 2.0 or like I would say or later, except there isn't a later. But you have to have at least T 2.0. You cannot uninstall Windows 11 anyway. But you know what? You don't want it Howard, you definitely want the upgrade. I think it will look different. Eight one is no longer supported. So for security reasons alone, go to 10. And the good news is you should be able to just do the upgrade. They may don't, they may say, well, give us money. We want $139. Don't worry about that. You should be able to just do the upgrade and to 10, you mean to 10. And it will authorize and you will have an official version of 10. And that should be absolutely free. They never turned off the authentication server for that.

Caller 2 (01:09:10):
Well, they're supporting 10

Leo Laporte (01:09:12):
And they are supporting 10. 10 will be supported till 2025. So you've got two more years of support. And at that point you're gonna, and I think this is what Microsoft did, that you're gonna have

Caller 2 (01:09:23):
To buy a new, the new computer.

Leo Laporte (01:09:24):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> either that or put Linux on it. That is

Caller 2 (01:09:29):
Awesome. Well, I went to a Lennox class a hundred years ago. Good man.

Leo Laporte (01:09:33):
I love that. You know, I think by 2025 Linux may well be a perfectly reasonable path for that computer. It'll run just as well as it does now. It'll be they'll be UpToDate browsers, it'll be UpToDate software, it'll be secure. You just have to kind of get the mindset where you feel comfortable using it. But I honestly, I honestly think even this year, maybe for, for a lot of people, Linux is a good choice. And in a couple of years, maybe even more so. Hey, great question.

Caller 2 (01:10:05):
Go ahead. I can't upgrade to 11 then at all.

Leo Laporte (01:10:09):
Well do ten first. Do

Mikah Sargent (01:10:11):
Ten first and then this is great. We've got a free episode of Hands-On Windows where Paul Throt actually walks you through the process of upgrading to Windows 11. And

Caller 2 (01:10:20):
Well, I looked at Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
But you took around mi Microsoft won't let you do it because of your, the age of your computer. If you Google. There are ways around that. I

Mikah Sargent (01:10:29):
Think he talks

Leo Laporte (01:10:30):
About that too. Does he talk

Caller 2 (01:10:31):
About it? Well, yeah, he did talk about it, but kinda lost me.

Leo Laporte (01:10:34):
Yeah. I you, there's there's no advantage to going to 11. Yeah. maybe in 2025, if you're saying, oh, now I've gotta do something, maybe then. But I see no advantage to going to 11. It is Windows 10. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> with, with, when they move the start menu to the middle <laugh> and things like that. It's dopey. There's no need for that.

Caller 2 (01:10:55):
Well, I'll call you then.

Leo Laporte (01:10:57):
Yeah. Call me in three years. Howard, thank you for li did you listen to the old show?

Caller 2 (01:11:01):
I did.

Leo Laporte (01:11:02):
I really appreciate you making the transition. I know that for a lot of people that might be a little confusing. So I'm glad you did.

Caller 2 (01:11:08):
Well, I didn't hear the retiring episode, and then when I

Caller 3 (01:11:13):
Tried to listen on the computer, I got all your new stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:11:16):
Yeah. So that's the beauty of it. It's still tech Guy labs.com. It's the same r url. If you already subscribe to the podcast, you'll just keep getting this. You'll only get one a week instead of two. But that's kind of what we what we are hoping is to, to make that a pretty trans easy transition. Howard. I'm welcome. I'm glad, I'm glad you made it. Thank you for the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you Howard. And I have, I have lost Howard, so I don't know if I can move him to the second stage that I needed to. Little technical talk there. Yes. I don't know what I'm doing. Devou said he had a very quick question. And he is on the Zoom again, calls TWI TV for today and call TWI tv going forward in future Devou.

(01:12:05):
There seems to be like a little delay in like Zoom going. Oh, still in there? I th Howard's still in there. Oh boy. Oh boy. Now I don't know what to do. Oh yeah, I see Howard. Yeah, there's Howard. Okay. There's Howard. One day we'll just have poster buttons we can press to make all these. No, no, this is good. Oh, actually this is for now. You could probably, you could probably do that. Script it eventually. And, and yeah, you could probably do that now. Devou, ah, dev Devou. How are you sir?

Caller 3 (01:12:39):
I have been good. I, I should say I am good. I have been. Quick comment and then I'll ask my question for you. Please. sorry. You can move forward. I have been watching Yu Leo since 2000 on Tech TV and I have been a twit fan since you started it.

Leo Laporte (01:13:00):
Thank

Caller 3 (01:13:00):
You. And I am so, so thankful. I've been on podcast overload in 2022, <laugh> <laugh>. And I literally, there were weeks where I would delete the Sunday show.

Leo Laporte (01:13:15):
Yeah, that's fine.

Caller 3 (01:13:16):
Listen to the, listen to the weekly news thing at

Leo Laporte (01:13:19):
Night. I, I kind of worry that we make too many shows and then that it's a burden so you don't have to listen to them all. We're giving you permission

Caller 3 (01:13:26):
<Laugh>. Well, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not saying podcast overload cuz it's twit. Oh, I'm saying podcast overload in general cuz I listen to a lot of They're

Leo Laporte (01:13:33):
Great,

Caller 3 (01:13:34):
Aren't they? Motivational stuff. God,

Leo Laporte (01:13:35):
God bless it. That is, this is a new medium. Well, 20 years old now, but has transformed how we listen. It's

Caller 3 (01:13:43):
Great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So long story short, in 2020 when Apple made their announcements and announced the iPhone Mini, they also announced the redesigned iPad Mini, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:13:59):
Mm-Hmm.

Caller 3 (01:13:59):
<Affirmative> and I had not had an iPad in about four or five years, and I was not gonna buy one even a mini until they also announced, and I think they actually announced it at wwdc, some of the screen sharing features where you could use your MacBook on the iPad. Ah, yes.

Mikah Sargent (01:14:17):
Mm-Hmm.

Caller 3 (01:14:17):
<Affirmative>. So with a lot of the trade-in offers the sell deals, the carrier deals, all that. I'm, I'm based outta Chicago. I happen to be four hours south of you in Hanford right now. I'm going home tomorrow.

Leo Laporte (01:14:34):
<Laugh>, I hear a little Chicago in there.

Caller 3 (01:14:36):
Yeah. Well, I I've called before too on the radio show. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:14:40):
Just say, can you do me a favor? Just say, dub bears, <laugh>

Caller 3 (01:14:43):
Dub Bears Dub

Leo Laporte (01:14:44):
Bears <laugh>.

Caller 3 (01:14:46):
Even though they suck, I'll do a for Oh.

Leo Laporte (01:14:48):
But

Caller 3 (01:14:48):
I love them. So my question, they

Leo Laporte (01:14:49):
Beat us <laugh> in a very rainy

Caller 3 (01:14:53):
Sense. I'm, I'm not really a football person. Yeah. That's, I'm not really a football person. I'm Chicago fan. All Chicago teams. I wrote Me too.

Leo Laporte (01:15:00):
Cubbies. Cubbies. Yeah. Yeah,

Caller 3 (01:15:03):
Yeah. So, but back to what I was asking. So cuz of all the trading deals, I ended up paying like 200 bucks for both devices. Nice. When all was said and done.

Leo Laporte (01:15:12):
Wow.

Caller 3 (01:15:15):
I will admit I have two cousins, father and son who work for Apple. So that kind of contributed to as well. Okay. Yeah. They give me the family discount and all of that. Nice. so I ended up selling back in November, December the mini mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, because I have a plan to buy either an iPad Pro or an iPad. My question is, being a web developer, I don't think I need the pro and I wanted the opinion of both you and Mikah to just kind of make the right decision. Yeah. I'm basically gonna be using it as a second screen and maybe a reading device and maybe to watch Hulu and Netflix.

Mikah Sargent (01:15:58):
So as a, when you say as a second screen, that is where, because I was gonna say there's not really a reason to go for that pro model, but I have noticed that because of all the processing power that's kind of involved behind the scenes with using that as a, now do you use a plugged in or do you like to use it just over the network? Because you can do both.

Caller 3 (01:16:18):
When you say plugged in, do you mean power?

Mikah Sargent (01:16:20):
The Yeah, so when the, well, you can plug the iPad into the Mac that you're using as the primary monitor and then it actually uses that cord as opposed to just doing it over wifi

Leo Laporte (01:16:30):
So I can do it wirelessly or wire

Mikah Sargent (01:16:32):
Wired. Exactly. Yeah. So if you plan to be wired, and of course it will power it as well.

Caller 3 (01:16:38):
When I'm at my desk. Yes. It'll be wired. They're, I wanna add one thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I see. And I'm also the laptop I'm on as a MacBook error. I'm also gonna be getting probably an M two MacBook Pro eventually when

Leo Laporte (01:16:52):
They ever release them. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:16:54):
<Laugh>.

Caller 3 (01:16:55):
So, well I may do them one I haven't decided. But what I wanna add is I see the iPad Pro as a MacBook Air replacement

Mikah Sargent (01:17:05):
Fair

Caller 3 (01:17:05):
For me. Yeah. And I'm just trying to decide which one is right. I'm gonna get the laptop first and then trade my MacBook Air in for a couple hundred towards the iPad.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:16):
Are you doing any visual? Like, so you, you said a web development, will there be instances where you are doing any kind of color involved processes? So you need to make sure that, you know, the accessibility stuff lines up so the website has the right color of

Caller 3 (01:17:32):
Color. That's actually one of my big goals for 2023 here, is to help my clients make sure those sites are all accessible.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:38):
Okay. So then that is where I wanna push you more towards the pro again, because the display is a much better display, a much better display than you're going to get with the non. It

Leo Laporte (01:17:47):
Has, it has true tone.

Mikah Sargent (01:17:48):
It has true tone. It has special refresh rates of course. But it also I

Leo Laporte (01:17:54):
Really like the color,

Mikah Sargent (01:17:55):
The pro Yeah. As much,

Leo Laporte (01:17:56):
It's crazy expensive as

Caller 3 (01:17:57):
That's what I was taking away from reading online.

Leo Laporte (01:17:59):
It's as expensive as a computer. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> as is literally as expensive as a Mac Bulger, maybe even more so. But it's such a nice machine and it has a lot. The, the real issue with the MacBook Pros, I mean the Air iPad Pros is that they have probably more power than they need.

Mikah Sargent (01:18:16):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:18:16):
Yeah. But that means it has a lot of headroom for the future. If you're just using it as a second screen, you know, you could just buy a cheap second screen, you'd be better off. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> there are lots of USB screens that work with the Mac. You just put it next to it. They're even bigger. They're 14 inches.

Caller 3 (01:18:31):
Yeah. I'm looking for the true tone. I'm looking for like

Leo Laporte (01:18:34):
Get the,

Caller 3 (01:18:35):
If you, the reason I like, the reason I like it is maybe a replacement for the MacBook error once I have the MacBook Pro.

Leo Laporte (01:18:41):
See now the only thing that you

Caller 3 (01:18:43):
Said, because I could then just take that to a coffee shop and do my

Leo Laporte (01:18:46):
Writing. No, it's great. It's right for writing as a developer, it's not a good choice unless you're gonna SSH into a <laugh> Right. Surfer somewhere.

Caller 3 (01:18:55):
Yeah. No, no, no, no. I'm looking

Leo Laporte (01:18:57):
Something.

Caller 3 (01:18:58):
Yeah, I'm looking at it as a MacBook Air replacement. If I get the pro.

Leo Laporte (01:19:02):
Well that's the thing. It good replacement

Caller 3 (01:19:04):
For why it was like, it's not, do I spend the extra money or not? It sounds like because of the color, it's really that Michael was talking

Leo Laporte (01:19:12):
About, it's a, it's a beautiful machine. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I love it. I don't have the current, the most recent one. I think they came out with a new one, right? They did. Yeah. But I Nervous last, the last and it's incredible. And that's the beauty of this, this thing is gonna go for years because they put so much power, so much ram and so much storage. I think I got a two terabyte one. I think I, I don't know how big it is, but it's

Caller 3 (01:19:31):
Just what I'll be doing. It's

Leo Laporte (01:19:32):
A laptop. Yeah, it is. But it's iOS, it's not Mac os. So if you, if you're are a developer, it's not, you're not gonna run Visual Studio Code. You're not even gonna run Apple's own X code. You're, so it's, it's not good for some things, but for writing for a lot, if even for video editing mm-hmm. <Affirmative> for photo editing. Fantastic. It's probably the best photo editing.

Caller 3 (01:19:57):
And those are, those are the three things I'd be using the pro for if I

Mikah Sargent (01:20:00):
Got it. Perfect. I think that's an answer then for sure.

Leo Laporte (01:20:02):
Yeah. If you're doing video and photo editing, get the pro you want the true tone and you want the power for sure.

Caller 3 (01:20:07):
Yeah. And I, I was kind of, eh, like I'm not gonna do a lot of photo editing. I'm gonna be doing some video editing cuz I'm gonna be starting a YouTube channel

Leo Laporte (01:20:16):
For myself. Yeah. It's perfect for that.

Caller 3 (01:20:17):
That kind of thing. Yep. So,

Leo Laporte (01:20:19):
All right. And by the way, good news Da Vinci Resolve is now out for the iPad. That is right. So I think frankly, the other choices were very good, but now you've got probably one of the best editors in the world on the iPad native. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Holy cow. Finally we're seeing, seeing some pro software. Hey Devo, thank you so much. Thank you so much for calling. I appreciate it. Yeah, have, thank you. Have a, have a wonderful day. Stay warm in Chicago. He's smart to be in Hanford right now. Chicago's probably a little chilly. All right. We need to move on because we have so much to do and we wasted a lot of time before the show trying to get things working. I really wanna get in Father Robert Baller report. Yes. And then I'm gonna do the last pass. We got a great question and I'm gonna talk a little bit about what happened at LastPass, what it means to you if you were a last pass user. And I will do a quick demo of how you can move off of LastPass Beautiful. Which I think bottom line is gonna be my recommendation. But first let's let's welcome. It's good to have you as the tech guys, Mikah Sargent and Leo LaPorte and our very own digital Jesuit father Robert Baller is in Vegas. He is at c e s and sent us this report.

Fr. Robert Ballacer (01:21:35):
Hey, good arm, young Father Robert Baller, the Digital Jesuit. Now every year there are more than a hundred thousand people who make a pilgrimage to Las Vegas for ces, what used to be called the Consumer Electronic Show. It's the largest gathering of geeks and nerds and yes, state-of-the-art products that you'll find on the planet. Now behind me is just a tiny sliver of what you'll find at the show. For the next five minutes, I'm gonna take you through some of my favorite bits and bobs gadgets, technologies and services that I found and, and yes, some of the swag. So stay tabbed because this is c e s

Fr. Robert Ballacer (01:22:27):
Electric and self-driving vehicles. We're all over CES this year from cars like the light year with solar panels that can give you 47 miles of range a day just by sitting at the sun to hydrofoils for the high seas and everything in between. This isn't a new trend. We've seen these concepts for at least the last 10 years of ces. But what is new is that several vendors, including Mercedes, have announced their intention to build out their own charging networks. That is a tremendous step by a major manufacturer that shows their willingness to invest in long-term infrastructure for electric vehicles. Another trend was the increasing number of vendors who were offering bare all electric or hydrogen platforms. From self navigating drones of all sizes to minivans and full rigs. These vendors are making the highly technical bits and letting customers build out for their needs that is going to drive innovation and make the electric vehicle a commodity, much like its internal combustion counterpart. I'm an enterprise geek, so it's no surprise that I gravitate to Kingston Technologies and Sonology

Fr. Robert Ballacer (01:23:44):
Off the bat. This has an encryption engine, so that's gonna speed it up. It's gonna make sure that you get your 2 56 BID AEs encryption without really slowing down your throughput. But it also has a feature that I love. You remember me talking about bad USB where you can compromise the firmware of a USB device and forever have it well corrupt. Well, in this case, the firmware is signed and there's a dedicated piece of hardware inside the enclosure that checks the signature of that firmware. This has got me so excited as a networking geek. This is a 10 gig networking module and it's replaceable, which means that you can upgrade the speed on all your new nas. You can give yourself a 10 gigabit per second backbone to your network.

Fr. Robert Ballacer (01:24:26):
Audio, audio, audio. There were hundreds of vendors offering audio devices of one type or another, but I moved towards three really well made products. Quiet on Poly and Audio Technica.

Fr. Robert Ballacer (01:24:39):
They cancel high frequency, low frequency noise. They provide a nice seal. And the best part about this and very different from most of the other products that I've tested, they are flush in your ear, which means you can side sleep. It's almost as if they're not there at all. These are the poly Voyager free 60 series wireless earbuds, which can give you between eight and 24 hours of listening enjoyment, 5.5 hours of talk. And you triple that if you include the battery that's inside the case. Now the case also does CHI charging as well as u s bbc. If you are on a plane, you can use your earbuds just by plugging this BA into the back of the case and it becomes your Bluetooth broadcaster. They call it the stream set. It's a streaming headset. Now what makes it a streaming headset? Well, it uses the M 50 as its base, which is one of their most popular headphones. They're comfortable, they sound phenomenal. But then they've taken the capsule from their 20 series microphones, which has phenomenal sound rejection and they've put it into the boom mic.

Fr. Robert Ballacer (01:25:38):
This is the Wally Grip too. It's extremely stable but very easy to take off. And best of all, you can put your credit cards in it and there's a pop integration where you can just use your NFC on your phone and share your business card digitally on your phone with one tap.

Fr. Robert Ballacer (01:25:55):
Now these are wafer thin credit card size tracking devices that work with Apple. Find me. Now, if you are one of these people who is always looking for a way to keep track of your stuff, this is a great way to do it. If you have a pet that's a bit skittish, this is actually whisper quiet. But the nice thing about this is they've included these five different attachments. You've got the clipper, you've got the de shedder, you've got one that that can be used for cleaning your clothes. You've got this groomer and you've got the edge remover. Now all of these are self-cleaning. You push a button and boom, it actually removes the fur that is collected on the tines. Of course,

Fr. Robert Ballacer (01:26:31):
AI was a hot trend, maybe spurred by the chat G B T Buzz being AI enabled as cool. Again, self-driving lawnmowers that recognize people in pets webcams that enhance your zoom sessions. Health systems that can monitor the elderly to determine if they are under or overmedicated to something like this. The noco noco, it uses digital intelligence, a tiny operating system and sensors that can pick up your digital devices to learn your behaviors. All in the name of reducing your carbon footprint. It's essentially an AI nanny that learns from your environmental preferences from a c to your entertainment devices and does what it can to reduce your power usage.

Fr. Robert Ballacer (01:27:12):
It's been a long and exhausting c e s Thank you for coming along. I'm Father Robert Beiser, the Digital Jesuit and we'll see you next time.

Leo Laporte (01:27:21):
Wow. Amazing. So the if <laugh>, I wanna explain who that is because if you only listen in the radio show, Robert has not been on the radio show more than a couple of times over 19 years. He is on our other podcast all the time. He is, yes. A Jesuit priest works in fact in the Vatican. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, where he does a digital technology for the Pope. He is the first to set up the poke with Skype. He also has a really good YouTube channel called Digital Jesuit. And it, I know that move very, very fast. You could see more of all of those products on his YouTube channel digital Jesuit. And he joins us. I think he's gonna join us next week on twit on this week in tech. Our tech news roundtable to give us more of his take on ces.

(01:28:04):
That guy is the Energizer Bunny. <Laugh> indeed. That was impressive. I don't know how he covered so much stuff. In fact, I want a lot more of that stuff. Anyway. Great job from Father Robert. You'll see a lot more of him I think on our shows. You're gonna see all the regulars, you're gonna see more of, of other people and I think we're gonna get more calls in. That is our hope for the future. I apologize. We didn't get any grilling, many, many calls. It's just be the technology we're getting used to it. But we will do that. We have a coup. I wanna go to the email back. That's another way you can reach us. We'd love to get recordings, audio or video. Keep 'em under a minute so you can ask your questions. That way. The email is ask the tech guys at TWIT tv.

(01:28:49):
 But we have already got some emails and I have one from Lynn that I thought was quite good. She says now that I'll be moving from last pass to Bit Warden, help me understand how something open source that everybody can get, get into to know around is more secure than non-op open source software. That's actually a really good question. A good question. So, but I want to take a step back cuz she's moving away from Laspas. So I wanna talk a little bit about Laspas and then why Bit Warden, which is a sponsor. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and other open source software is actually safer in my opinion than closed source software especially for cryptography and, and, and password management is kind of in that realm because it's very easy to do crypto wrong. But when something is open source crypto, a lot of eyes are looking at it and it's much more likely that the cryptography is done properly.

(01:29:39):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> never, in my opinion, trust cryptography. That's, you know, the scrambling of data that is an open source. You just don't know what they've done. And there's so much pressure on companies now to give the government hand the keys over to the government. You just can't trust it because bit warden is open source. We know exactly how they do what they do to encrypt your passwords and we know it's good. Now, last pass and one password and dash lane and all the others Robo form and all the others pretty much do the same thing. They all encrypt your password vault but to a greater or lesser degree. And there are some, you know, gradations some differences. They all pretty much use AEs 2 56 and something called pbk DF two for the hashes. Now this all comes up and is important because as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, just before Christmas last pass revealed that they had lost control of the vaults.

(01:30:35):
These are the encrypted blobs with our passwords in them. And I feel a little responsible because last pass was a sponsor for many years and I know a lot of you are using Last Pass because I said they were safe and it at the time I believed, fully believed they were safe. The question is, should you stay on last pass? And the answer is not completely black and white. There, there was somebody in the chat room earlier who said, well I'm on last pass. It was hard enough to get my family to move to it, right? Any password manager is better than none. Even not a great one is better than no password manager. Because what happens if you don't have something keeping track of your passwords? You tend to reuse passwords. Use easy to remember passwords, easy to remember means easy to crack.

(01:31:19):
So you're gonna, your password hygiene won't be very good unless you're using a password manager, which generates long, strong, impossible to remember passwords. But you don't have to remember 'em cuz the password manager remembers 'em. But there is always this risk when you're using a password manager that it might get hacked and that somebody's gonna get your vault. Now that vault is encrypted without your master password. A bad guy cannot open it. So the real question for last pass users at this point is, how much danger am I in? And again, still better to have last pass than nothing. But it is problematic if you had a vault on last pass. And that vault now is in the, the hands of bad guys. They have at their leisure, they have all the time in the world to run brute force password cracking software and they're gonna attack these vaults worse.

(01:32:10):
Lastpass did make a poor choice. They didn't encrypt some what we call metadata. Things like your name, your address, and most importantly the list of sites you visit and have a password for. Those are in the clear, which means bad guys can prioritize which password vaults they want to break. They can look at what sites are in there. It gives them some information about what you've got in this encrypted blob and whether it's worth attacking. There's a another question that a number have asked me. I used two factor with last pass. Does that mean it's gonna be harder for the bad guy to crack it? Unfortunately, I asked Steve Gibson as he said, no, the two factor is for your use when you're unlocking it on your computer. But if they have the vault, they won't need the two factor to get into the vault.

(01:33:00):
So all they need to do is crack your master password. Are you at risk? Yes. If you don't have a good master password and this is the problem, that's the one you have to remember. So people tend to use something they can remember. Don't use Monkey 1 23. It needs to be long. It needs to be hard to remember. You're gonna memorize it, but it shouldn't be. It should look random at least. Okay. There's one other thing and I'm gonna show you this. So I I no longer, I'm grateful cuz I got rid of last pass a couple of years ago. Replaced it with bit warden, our sponsor. And after a period of time about six months, I said, okay, I can now delete my vault. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So I'm hoping that my vault isn't in that thing that the bad guys got. But you know, you don't know because LastPass hasn't told us w what vaults when are they vaults from a year ago?

(01:33:51):
Or they, because they're back. They said that LastPass did say it was a backup. When was the backup done? Was it done last month? Was it done a year ago? If it was done two years ago, my vault's in it. And by the way, all my passwords, which I have not changed, are in it. So that is something to really be concerned about. There's a, if you're gonna stay with last pass, there is something I strongly recommend you do. I'm gonna go into the last pass interface. Right now I've set up a dummy account. As I said, I no longer have a a LastPass account, but I'm gonna go into the account settings on LastPass, which is actually in the, in the browser. And you see I have a few things set up here, but let's go into our account settings and we're gonna go to the advanced settings. Remember I mentioned there's two things going on with the encryption. There's AEs 2 56, but the passwords are hashed using something called pbk D F two. And they do something quite clever. They run that hashing algorithm many, many times. Leo, could I ask you for

Mikah Sargent (01:34:56):
Folks who might not know, what does it mean when you say hash?

Leo Laporte (01:34:59):
So you don't wanna obviously store anything in plain English. You, it's what? It's a, it is a form of encryption and it's a one way encryption. So one of the ways sites work when you enter in a password in a site is they don't need the password. They need the hash. That is a, a number that they created that if it ma and then they take your password that you entered the text, you entered, they hash it again. And if the hashes match, they know, oh, that's him. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Last pass does the same thing. It doesn't actually have your master password, but it does have a hash

Mikah Sargent (01:35:32):
Of the master password.

Leo Laporte (01:35:33):
So the question is, how many iterations did they use when they made that hash? In early days of last pass, it was 5,000 in modern. You know, here we are 10 years later, the modern times A G P U based password cracker came burned through that quickly. Five thousand's, not enough a few years ago, last pass, and you could see on my screen, went to 100,000, 100 iterations. If your password vault has that number, you're good. If it had 5,000, you're even at a greater risk. So this is really important. Can you turn that up? You sure can. You can make as high as you want. What's the disadvantage of it? The bigger it is, the slower will be when you first log into your account. Especially a problematic on a mobile device with a slower processor. But I, I think as you said, OASP says what? 300,000 iterations, three times what LastPass is using. That's fine. Set it. Hi, if you're gonna keep using LastPass, set it high. The problem is, again, we don't know, oh, I gotta enter monkey 1, 2, 3.

Mikah Sargent (01:36:40):
I like that. They'll show how much it would cost a, a cracker to do this based on, you know, the energy usage and things like that.

Leo Laporte (01:36:48):
This is oasp

Mikah Sargent (01:36:49):
Y. Yeah. And so at just at 4,300 or rather depending on the generation scheme, it can cost $4,300 up to as, as you have looked at, you know, 1 million.

Leo Laporte (01:37:03):
You want it to cost a lot because the, the, the more, when they say cost, they really mean how much energy, how much time mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, the harder it is to get that vault, the less likely they're gonna crack it. So turn up your iterations. If you're gonna steal, actually this is true on any password vault, but turn those up. They all use PPV Kdf two. Actually one doesn't. Dashlane doesn't, they use another one that's actually probably better, but a little slower called Argon two. Hmm. if you're gonna keep using last pass, at least turn that up. The problem is that's not gonna change anything in your vault. That, that, that old vault, that backup vault that the bad guys now have. It's whatever it was set at the time. And I've heard from many people who said, I looked and you know what, it's still 5,000.

(01:37:41):
That means that backup is 5,000. That means you're at risk. So what should you do? At the very least, you should go in and change the passwords of your most important accounts, your banking credit cards, anything where there's money involved. Those are the things the hackers want. Change those passwords to a better password. A long, strong password manager generated password. Okay. And turn on two factor. If you have an important account that does not have two factor, that's the first thing you should change. Two factor does protect you against the bad guys. Stealing your stuff doesn't protect them against getting into the vault, but even if they get into the vault, they get your password, they still don't have that second factor. That's good. So that's why you should always use two Factor. And if you're going to, you know, if you've, if you think you were in this breach and anybody used Last pass, I think was you should change those most important passwords.

(01:38:39):
Should you move off last pass? That's a little more nuanced. Again, it's better to be on last pass than nothing, but it's very easy to move. Let me show you how easy it is actually to move. And what should you move to? Well, Lynn was asking about Bit Warden. I like Bit Warden. They are a sponsor, but I, beyond that, I used them before. They were a sponsor. They're open source. I think that is an advantage. Open source means more secure. But one password's very good. Robo Formm is very good. What are you, what are you doing? You show me a j a gesture. I think celebrating. Celebrating war. Yeah. Using, celebrating. Bit word and we're thrilled that they're a sponsor because but ag but again, this is, it's also a little bit on you. You gotta use a good master password.

(01:39:20):
You gotta use two factor and you gotta make sure that those iterations are turned up. Here's my account my last pass account. And you see I have not only passwords in here, but as I've done with most password vaults, I have credit cards in there and I have a driver's license. You might have a passport or social security numbers in there. All of that is really important. Can you export it? Yes. All password managers allow you to do this. That's gonna want the master password. Do you want me to tell you what it is? Yeah, what is it? It's capital I, it what? I know now. Okay, good. <Laugh>.

(01:40:02):
 I, it's notation. It's not an important, it's not an important password cuz it's not a real account, but we still are probably couldn't, shouldn't. My battery's running low. Well, can't log you in your battery. That means, that means the show is over right when the battery dies. Let's see. Ah, <laugh>. Hey everybody, it's Leo Laport, the founder and host of many of the TWIT podcasts. I don't normally talk to you about advertising, but I want to take a moment to do that right now. Our mission statement at twit, we're dedicated to building a highly engaged community of tech enthusiasts. That's our audience. And you, I guess, since you're listening, by offering them the knowledge they need to understand and use technology in today's world. To do that, we also create partnerships with trusted brands and make important introductions between them and our audience.

(01:40:56):
It's how we finance our podcasts, but it's also, and our audience tells us this all the time. A part of the service we offer, it's a valued bit of information for our audience members. They wanna know about great brands like yours. So can we help you by introducing you to our highly qualified audience? And boy, do you get a lot with advertising on the TWIT podcasts. Partnering with twit means you're gonna get, if I may say so humbly the gold standard and podcast advertising. And we throw in a lot of valuable services. You get a full service continuity team supporting everything from copywriting to graphic design. I don't think anybody else does this or does this as well as we do. You get ads that are embedded in our content that are unique every time I read them. Our hosts read them. We always over-deliver on impressions and frankly, we are here to talk about your product.

(01:41:52):
So we really give our listeners a great introduction to what you offer. We've got onboarding services, ad tech with pod sites that's free for direct clients. We give you a lot of reporting so you know who saw your advertisement. You'll even know how many responded by going to your website. We'll also give you courtesy commercials that you can share across social media and landing pages. We think these are really valuable people like me and our other hosts talking about your product sincerely and informationally. Those are incredibly valuable. You also get other free goodies mentions in our weekly newsletter that's sent out to thousands of fans. We give bonus ads to people who buy a significant amount of advertising. You'll get social media promotion too, but let me tell you, we are looking for an advertising partner that's gonna be with us long term.

(01:42:42):
Visit Twitter tv slash advertise. Check out our partner testimonials. Tim Broom, founder of it Pro tv. They started it pro TV in 2013, immediately started advertising with us and grew that company to a, a really amazing success. Hundreds of thousands of ongoing customers. They've been in our network for more than 10 years. And they say, and I'll quote Tim, we would not be where we are today without the twit network. That's just one example. Mark McCrery, who's the c e o of authentic he was actually one of the first people to buy ads on our network. He's been with us for 16 years. He said, and I'm quoting, the feedback from many advertisers over those 16 years across a range of product categories is that if ads and podcasts are gonna work for a brand, they're gonna work on Twitch shows. I'm proud to say that the ads we do over-deliver.

(01:43:37):
They work really well because they're honest. They have integrity. Our audience trusts us and we say this is a great product. They believe it, they listen. Our listeners are highly intelligent. They're heavily engaged, they're tech savvy. They're dedicated to our network. And that's partly because we only work with high integrity partners that we have thoroughly and personally vetted. I approve every single advertiser on the network. If you're ready to elevate your brand and you've got a great product, I want you to reach out to us, advertise@twit.tv. So I want you to break out of the advertising norm, grow your brand with host Red authentic ads on twit.tv, visit twit.tv/advertise for more details, or email us advertise@twit.tv if you're ready to launch your campaign. Now, I had to, I actually did this yesterday. I set up a whole thing.

(01:44:38):
You know what they don't do that makes me mad. What's that? They don't have a option that I can show what I'm typing. Oh, right. That would be helpful. Yeah. That's by the way they do those dots in case somebody like Mikah's looking over your shoulder. But I need to see what I'm typing. Are you are you not a touch typer? I am, but I'm trying to do a show here. <Laugh>, don't forget the zero zero. Let's see if this one works. Yeah. Okay, I got it. Thank you. Boom, boom, boom. Now I've downloaded it and it's a CSV file that stands for comma separated values. Let's open that up. This is not encrypted. Okay, this, let me say that again. This is not encrypted. So very importantly, you're gonna delete this file as soon as you're done with it, as soon as you're done with it.

(01:45:36):
Cuz you see it has in here my password monkey 1 23, monkey 1 23. It's not real kids. So that csv com separated file can be read in by almost any, any password manager I've seen bit warden last pass, whatever. You can import that in. Now, there is one thing to note. It did take everything except for, oh, I have a binary image in my notes. I have actually a picture of my driver's license in here. Did that come through? No. So if you have any images, those don't get translated in comma separated values. Okay? So you'll al but what you get is your passwords. So here's my suggestion. What I would do if, if you're still using LastPass, I would get off of it. The fact that LastPass has not been very forthcoming in all of this is really concerning. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, time to get off of it.

(01:46:34):
 I I think there's also a larger concern. This is such a black mark on their record. I wonder what's gonna happen to the company going forward at some point if they're not making money, are they gonna turn off the servers? What's gonna happen? So it's time. So you're gonna move to another password manager. I don't care what you move to. They're all good. I I would say the, excuse me, I would say the, the three top choices would be the, the, the number one password manager in my book, pa bit warden. But last one password is very good and dash lane is very good. There are others. There's open source choices, like key Pass and stuff. That's fine if you feel comfortable with that. But I would pick one of the top three. I'd pick pick bit Warden, frankly.

(01:47:23):
That's what I did pick. That's what Steve Gibson picked by the way as well. Again, Lynn, open source. Good, not bad. Open source. Good. Once you move it in there, you're moved on all those old passwords, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. In fact, this is the first step. Don't do it. Don't change the passwords. And last pass, if you're moving off of last pass, we don't know what's going on. Get it outta last pass. You probably should delete that vault at some point. Maybe don't do it right away. Make sure every, you got everything you want. If they're binary images, for instance, like my driver's license image, you're gonna save that out separately and then add it to your bit warden, things like that. But move that stuff over and then in the new password manager, go change those passwords. And again, the priority is important. Passwords, money related passwords that don't have two factor. Very important. Do those right away.

Mikah Sargent (01:48:12):
Did you hear that? Change the passwords.

Leo Laporte (01:48:15):
Change the passwords. Really important cuz we don't know. At what point will those pass, will the bad guy finally get into those vaults and start using those passwords? If it's, if there's money involved, change that first. If there's no two factor, if there's two factor, you can take a little more time, but get the money ones first, credit cards, bank accounts, that kind of stuff. Then you can slowly go through the other ones. Honestly, I don't care if a bad guy steals my New York Times account, so I'm not gonna worry about it.

Mikah Sargent (01:48:41):
<Laugh> really needed to read the news, so

Leo Laporte (01:48:44):
<Laugh>, I'm not gonna worry about that. Anyway. Lynn, great question. I thank you for that. I really appreciate that. Ask the tech guys at TWIT tv. I think the time is now the time has coming to move on <laugh>. Yeah, it really is. And last pass. I, I feel bad about it. Remember they got acquired first by LogMeIn, which then got sold to an equity capital company. That's always a bad sign. Those guys try to extract money. They load up a lot of debt to buy something, then they need to pet off pay off that debt service. So that's usually a bad sign. It's my guess that's when things started to go south that they started to focus more on the, on the profits and less on the security. In any event, they have now spun out last passing to a standalone company. I don't know what the future holds for that company. I think it is time to move. I apologize for getting you on last pass. But at the time we thought it was safe. And there's still this risk. You know,

Mikah Sargent (01:49:40):
Somebody asked a good question that I hadn't considered the way that we were seeing when you export the vault, it doesn't have those images in there. But do the vaults that were stored with last pass actually have the images? Yeah. So then yeah, your driver's license in that instance, yeah, your

Leo Laporte (01:49:55):
Social would be on. Yeah, your security, your passport, your driver's license. Bad guy has all of that. Good luck changing your social. Not easy. He can, but it's not easy. He also, by the way, or she has your name, address, your birthdate, all the stuff that you gave last pass. That last pass didn't encrypt.

Mikah Sargent (01:50:10):
It's awful.

Leo Laporte (01:50:11):
It's awful. It, it's pretty bad. It's about as bad as it can get that you had one job last pass. <Laugh>. It's as bad as it can get. Alright, where do we stand time-wise? I think we need to wrap it up. We

Mikah Sargent (01:50:23):
Do need to wrap it up.

Leo Laporte (01:50:24):
I hate to say that we have more questions. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:50:26):
We've got loads

Leo Laporte (01:50:27):
More questions. A lot of you on zoom, I promise next week because there won't be CES reports. We'll have more time for you Chris. Mark will join us next week. We were gonna do a photo thing.

Mikah Sargent (01:50:36):
I'm excited we're keeping that

Leo Laporte (01:50:37):
Going. New assignment. I said keep the Fish Bull. Chris <laugh>. Let's see what else. More calls. The new law number will be called out to.tv. That worked pretty well. We'll, we'll refine that process. Ask the tech guys at twit TV's the email. You, if you're not subscribed to the show, you can subscribe. Go to ask the tech guys. Actually don't go to tech guy labs.com com mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or twit.tv/atg. That's the website. Audio and video be there. Show notes. Yes. We're still gonna put those up. I guess we'll still do a transcript. Why not put a transcript up? We hadn't actually talked about that <laugh>. But we will surprise, there'll be a show page there. Yeah. there's also information there about subscribing and your favorite pod catcher. There'll be a YouTube channel dedicated to this show. That's useful cuz if you wanna share clips from the show, you can easily do that. Or you wanna see video after the fact. What else?

Mikah Sargent (01:51:30):
I think that covers it other than you know, join club twit tv slash club twit. We'd love it if you did. Starts at $7 a month, $84 a year. And in doing so, you help to support the show and the network. And we get to do great shows like Hands-on Windows from Paul Throt, HandsOn Mac,

Leo Laporte (01:51:44):
You do Hands-on Mac, which is our

Mikah Sargent (01:51:46):
You truly. And the Untitled Linux Show. Plus you get access to the Discord server, which is a fun place to chat with fellow club TWIT members and also those of us here at twit. And you get access to the TWIT plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else. It's a lot of fun. And we would appreciate it if you joined.

Leo Laporte (01:52:03):
One more thing, I forgot. We are doing our annual survey. We like to know about you so we know that we're serving you. And it's a, it's not obligated of course, but we would really appreciate it if you go to twit.tv/survey 23. It shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. Answer the questions you feel comfortable answering. You don't have to answer anything you don't feel comfortable answering. But what it does is it helps us a, tell advertisers when they, they want to track you. We won't let them do that, but at least we can say, oh yeah, well this is what we know about our audience. That's very helpful to us. It also helps us understand what you like, what you're interested in. And it helps us, you know, attune our programming to make it better for you. We thank our new studio sponsor. You're seeing it right there. ACI Learning it, pro Audit, pro Practice Labs and hubs. We're thrilled to have them as studio sponsors for this show and all of our shows on the Twit Network. Mikah, Leo, good job. Fist Bump, <laugh>. Wait a minute, what is it the kids do? Who knows these? I mean this. Yeah.

(01:53:04):
<laugh>, something like

(01:53:05):
That. Thank you for joining us and we'll see you next week. On Aask the Tech guys. Bye-Bye everybody. Good. Goodbye.

Jason Howell (01:53:12):
The world is changing rapidly, so rapidly in fact that it's hard to keep up. That's why Mikah, Sargent and I, Jason Howell talk with the people Macon and breaking the tech news on Tech News Weekly every Thursday. They know these stories better than anyone, so why not get them to talk about it in their own words? Subscribe to Tech News Weekly and you won't miss a beat every Thursday at twit tv.