Ask the Tech Guys Episode 1989 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):
Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Mic's got the week off. It's me, Leo LaPorte, and ask the tech guys coming up. Sam, I'm Bull Sam and our car guy answers the question, can Toyota really come up with a 785 mile electric vehicle battery that charges in just 10 minutes? Also, trouble free frolicking with Dick de Bartolo and the world's largest bubble gun. And then we're going to spend a lot of time talking about some very geeky topics, including using a Raspberry Pi for Ham Radio and s s Hing into your myth box. If you don't know what that means, stay tuned. Ask the Tech Guy is Next.

This is TWiT (00:00:45):
Podcasts you love

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This is TWiT

Leo Laporte (00:00:51):
This is Ask the Tech guys with Leo LaPorte, episode 1989, recorded Sunday, August 27th, 2023. Trouble Free frolicking. Ask The Tech Guys is brought to you by cash fly, delivering content up to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods and 30% faster than other major CDNs. Join cash, fly the world's fastest c D n for a limited time cashflow is offering a free five terabyte to your plan for other plans. Learn how to get your first month free@cashfly.com. Listeners of this program, get an ad free version if they're members of Club twit. $7 a month gives you ad free versions of all of our shows plus membership in the club. Twit Discord, a great clubhouse for twit listeners. And finally, the twit plus feed with shows like Stacey's Book Club, the Untitled Linux Show, the GIZ Fizz and more. Go to twit tv slash club twit and thanks for your support.

(00:01:52):
Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? It's time for as the tech guy knows because our dear friend Micah Sargent is out today, but that's all right. I'll take care of it. I used to do this show all by myself for about 19 years. This is the show where you answer your questions, help you understand what's going on with your compute air. There's three different ways you can reach us. Two of them are live. You can use Zoom. We kind of thought this would be the Zoom show. That would be the big difference from the radio show is that you could go to and do this on your phone call dot twit tv. And if you did that, then your Zoom would launch and your microphone would work and your camera would work because you'd have a phone and you'd be on with us in Zoom.

(00:02:37):
And some people still do that, although almost everybody does it from their computer, even though I keep saying do it from your phone. You can also phone if you want a phone, phone, phone, (888) 724-2884 and you're still going in the Zoom, but you won't know it. You'll hear a nice little welcome and then we'll put you in the lobby. So you'll be hearing the show and then when you come on the air, is it star six? They press to unmute. I think the instructions will explain it. You can also email ATG at twit tv and I understand we have a stack of upside down email

John Ashley (00:03:15):
All

Leo Laporte (00:03:15):
Three. He told me, John, producer, producer man, John Ashley said, would you just read the gosh darn email?

John Ashley (00:03:24):
Well,

Leo Laporte (00:03:27):
It's been piling up

John Ashley (00:03:28):
Too many emails, but so many

Leo Laporte (00:03:30):
Questions, too many emails. Who's coming up in just a little bit? Dickie d Dickie Barolo. He's going to join us at noon or one you said? I think noon. Noon, okay. And this is the new Mad magazine. See Wednesday and Wednesday's, Alfredy Newman. And the funny thing is cousin it or I'm sorry, that's the thing, isn't it? That's his

John Ashley (00:03:51):
Finger up. That's the thing. The thing. And if you look closely, you can see all the different iterations of the Adams family over the years. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:03:57):
I like that. Starting with the original cartoon from Charles Adams. That's pretty cool. Anyway, we'll talk to Dickie T about his gadget or gizmo of a week and of course lots of your calls.

John Ashley (00:04:09):
Oh, and don't forget 1:00 PM Sam.

Leo Laporte (00:04:11):
Oh and Sam Abbo, Sam our car guy at 1:00 PM That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So there's a really interesting story I've been watching develop over the last few months. A few months ago there was a story saying something weird is going on in Solano County, which is near us. It's about an hour away to the east of us, somebody, some mysterious person's buying up the land and it was around Travis Air Force base. So there was some people, some concern they're buying up the land around the Air Force babies. Maybe it's the Chinese if somebody bad happens, it used to be, remember in the old days it used to be the Soviets, the Roos, then it was the Arabs and now it's the Chinese. It isn't the Chinese, it's the new villain. Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley. Reed Hoffman, who you may know from LinkedIn, he's one of the PayPal Mafiaa.

(00:05:07):
So Mike Moritz and others have bought up, I think it was 85,000 acres, $800 million worth of land around Travis Air Force base. There's Mark Andreessen also one of them, Chris Dixon. So the company is Flannery Associates, and I think when the news started to bubble around that, it might be the Chinese or some foreign nation state doing it. Flannery finally said, we better tell people, but this started, believe it or not, six years ago, Mike Moritz was going around saying, Hey, fellow billionaires, fellow kids, would you like to buy some land in the San Bay area for cheap? Solano County is undeveloped. It's mostly agricultural, it's kind of arid land.

(00:06:10):
They have been buying it up in the last six years, $800 million they've spent. What you may ask, what are they thinking? Is it an investment in America's food infrastructure? Bill Gates is the number one landowner in the US because of that. He wants to buy up farmland because he figures that's going to be valuable. No, no. This was the brainchild according to the New York Times of a guy named Jan Shreek, a former Goldman Sachs trader who thought up the idea, here's what we're going to do. Silicon Valley will buy up these arid dry brown hills in this rural area and convert it into the city of the future.

(00:06:55):
As soon as I heard that, I thought I'm going to live there. Tens of thousands of residents, clean energy, public transportation, a dense urban life. And part of this is because it's so expensive to buy a house or a land in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay area, all these Silicon Valley people are suffering. So this guy goes around, talks to some of the billionaires out there. Mike Moretz is a big vc. Reed Hoffman from LinkedIn. Mark Andreessen who created the Netscape browser and got his own VC firm, Chris Dixon. Why do I know the name Chris Dixon. I feel like Chris Dixon's associated with Kevin Rose somehow. I don't know. Patrick and John Collison, they founded Stripe. There's this too. The brother Reen Powell Jobs. Steve Jobs widow. Anyway, this is so Silicon Valley. We know how to make a utopia on earth. All we need is the land.

(00:07:56):
So they have it. We'll see what they do with it. Part of the problem is it is not zoned for residential zoned agricultural. So the very first thing they're going to have to do is convince the state or the county, I guess it's the county. Can we build a city here? And by the way, $800 million, that's just the land. It's going to be billions, right? To build a city on this land. There's a two lane freeway leading to it and that's it. So has nothing to do with Travis Air Force Base. I bet you they thought this will be one of the bases to be closed someday and then we can buy that now we really have some.

(00:08:37):
The problem was the farmers who were selling this land were making some bank. They started to realize somebody's buying this up, we should raise the price. So they were coming in with offers four to five times market. So the farmers obviously sold multimillionaires were being created, but no one knew what was going on. So it was last week that Flannery finally stepped up and said, yeah, it's us. Yeah, we're going to have 10,000 acres of a new city, tens of thousands of homes, a large solar energy farm. Orchards with a million new trees, make it 1 billion and over 10,000 acres of new parks in open space.

(00:09:24):
Okay, good luck Silicon Valley. They get these nutty ideas and actually in some ways I admire them. They read a lot of sci-fi and so they're trying to create some sci-fi utopia and we all kind of believe in that, right? Let's go to Mars and stuff. At the same time, reality does eventually sit in, I guess they got the money to lose. This is bad news from the tech dirt. It is very unclear what can happen to you when you cross the border, whether you're a US citizen or not into the United States. It seems to be that law enforcement, the border patrol has the right to strip search you and download the contents of all your hardware and anything they want. The Fourth Amendment, the right to unreasonable search and seizure without due cause is null and void on the border. In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that you had to have a warrant to search somebody's phone, that the phone is precious because everything is in our life is there. But now the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has confused everything. A immigration lawyer named Adam Mallick crossed the border and without probable cause, law enforcement, the border Patrol took his phone, downloaded everything from it. He said, wait a minute, I'm an attorney. There is privileged communications on there. You can't have that.

(00:11:06):
They kept it. The phone and the data for months eventually appointed somebody to delete the client attorney client privilege stuff. The d h s seized the phone without probable cause. We talked about this story when it happened. The attorney was very upset. They held it for five months. Imagine if you crossed the border and they take your laptop, your phone, all your hardware and keep it and then give it back to you, but it kept all the data that was on it. Fifth Circuit says you don't need a warrant to do that. That's okay. The court decided in favor of the D H SS ruling. It had not violated Attorney Malick's rights with a search of his.

(00:11:59):
So I wish I could tell you whether you should worry about this when you cross in the United States, if you travel to Mexico or Canada or anywhere in the world and you come back in the us, it really does seem like D H Ss and the Customs and Border Patrol are going to assert their rights if they wish to search your phone. They don't need probable cause to even keep your devices. People I've talked to, advocates of privacy and security say never ever, never bring anything private across the border because of that. And I don't know what the rules are going into other countries, but we know the rules going to the us. It looks like probably in all likelihood, even though the courts have kind of disagreed back and forth on this, you could be searched and your stuff could be seized and that's it. Bye-bye. Don't do not phone home, do not pass. Go. Do not collect your $200.

(00:13:02):
YouTube is testing. We talked about this on Twig, a new button. There's a skip ads button on YouTube videos. Maybe if you're watching on YouTube right now, you can see that they're testing a really small one. It's too big, too obvious gets in the way of your video. So they're going to try a little small one. This is funny because YouTube for years has said, oh no, no, advertisers love the skip ads button because they don't want to show an ad to somebody who doesn't want to see it. And it gives them information about you and what you're interested in. And so, oh, don't worry about that. Advertisers love it. Well, maybe they don't love it. Or maybe YouTube doesn't love the loss of revenue because we're going to make it really hard to see now just in case. Alright, the phone number eight, eight eight. Show me the phone. I don't know. I don't know. There it is. 7 2 4 2 8 8 4. See, it's on the screen if you're watching the video, Leo doesn't know it. I should memorize it. It spells something right? Eight eight eight seven. Call

John Ashley (00:14:05):
Eight. I think when you started doing that, the first thing you were just taking up random suggestions.

Leo Laporte (00:14:10):
I was making things up. You're making

John Ashley (00:14:11):
Things up or taking suggestions from the

Leo Laporte (00:14:12):
Chat. That's why I'm confused now. I don't know. 8 8 8 7 2 4 2 8 8 4. That's the mbba. I want to take a call. You should tell me though, which one I should take Mr. Producer man. Should I do Kevin or Peter?

John Ashley (00:14:28):
Let's do Peter.

Leo Laporte (00:14:30):
Peter has his hand up. Alright Peter, come on down. Bob Barker passed away at the age of 99. That's a good life. He had a good life. 99. It was days short of his hundredth birthday. The host of Let's Make a Deal and the Price is right. Hello Peter, how are you? When I Stargate?

Caller Peter (00:14:53):
First time, long time as we used to say love. Good to talk to

Leo Laporte (00:14:55):
You. Welcome.

Caller Peter (00:14:58):
So Leo, a few years back, I gave up video games because wife and kids responsibilities, but then my son got this Batman AUM asylum game

Leo Laporte (00:15:10):
And

Caller Peter (00:15:10):
I was like, oh, I have to play these games.

Leo Laporte (00:15:13):
It's a great game. That's a really fun game.

Caller Peter (00:15:16):
But then I wanted to play all of them city. So I did a very sneaky thing. I convinced my wife it was time for a new Macintosh computer. I know that's not ideal for gaming, that I had a whole plan and I got one that I knew the specs would work for the games. I then got bootcamp.

Leo Laporte (00:15:35):
Oh, you're running in Windows. That's hard. My smart drive. Yeah, yeah,

Caller Peter (00:15:38):
Yeah. I got steam through the

Leo Laporte (00:15:40):
Whole thing. So basically you got a PC in Maca,

Caller Peter (00:15:45):
Right? And I also was getting away for it, but let me give some advice to everybody out there. The day your wife finds a hidden partition on the

Leo Laporte (00:15:53):
Computer,

Caller Peter (00:15:54):
You immediately have to fess up, show her

Leo Laporte (00:15:57):
Everything. Yeah, don't pretend that you, because she's going to assume the worst. Honey, it's me, not the Joker. What's the attractive young lady? Oh, Harley Quinn. Harley Quinn. Just me and Harley Quinn voice actress passed away recently. I know she just died.

Caller Peter (00:16:17):
Yeah, Harley Quinn and I making a haha,

Leo Laporte (00:16:19):
That's it.

Caller Peter (00:16:21):
So anyway, we had a good run, but my computer is now getting old. I'm going to have to get a new back computer as I call it. Yes. And my question for you, I kind have two one's quick and one's a little more involved maybe, but is bootcamp still a thing if I get a new computer? So what do I do?

Leo Laporte (00:16:40):
So bootcamp was a thing when they were Intel's and it was an easy thing to do. You basically were buying the same hardware as a pc, so all Apple had to do was provide drivers for Apple's hardware that was proprietary, but the chip was the same and so you could run, in fact, Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal famously said the best pc, the best Windows PC is a Mac. Those days are long gone. Once the apple silicon started coming out, there really was no way to do bootcamp anymore and Apple has made no attempt to do it. You can run Windows and emulation, but even then it's not going to be Intel Windows. It's going to be Windows and Arm and it does run quite well in parallels, but most of those games will not run because they are Intel games. So probably if you really want to keep playing steam games, you should get a pc.

(00:17:33):
Now you know me, I'm not a huge Windows fan, so at home I actually run Linux on my high-end gaming pc and because of the steam deck, a lot of steam games do run well on Linux. Not all, but I'm running Gate three. For instance, the hot new R P G, I run that on Linux even though it doesn't say it can play on when Linux, it plays fine. So you probably should get a pc. I hate to say it, but for gaming Mac, it's not ideal. I understand and even I hate to, you probably weren't getting the best performance even with AUM asylum because you weren't using Nvidia cards. It's true. If your fancy Mac happened to have a radio on, well, the graphics were okay, but it's going to always look better. That's why when I wanted to do PC gaming, I bought a PC because that's really how you have to do it.

(00:18:26):
The other option that you might want to look at is buying an Xbox cheaper, easier. You don't have to figure out how to get Windows working or Linux working or any of that stuff. You just buy the game. You don't even buy a disc anymore. You just buy the game, download it and play it. And the modern Xbox is four K, PlayStation five maybe, depending on which games you want to play. A Sony is notorious for having exclusives, so Microsoft a little less, but you should look at what games you want to play. AR asylum for instance, is available in Xbox.

Caller Peter (00:18:58):
My son has an Xbox, but my obsession has even led me into the modding world.

Leo Laporte (00:19:05):
Ah, mods. Yeah. PC

Caller Peter (00:19:06):
World you could mod. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:19:07):
You can't really do mods. Yeah, you can't do much on an Xbox but a pc. So you kind of need a pc. I hate to say

Caller Peter (00:19:15):
It. Can I ask one follow-up question? Yeah. With the hunt for a new computer too. The other kind of old timey thing was every time I would get a new computer for all my life, I'd get one with twice as much hard drive space. And now that hard drives are no longer spinning their sd, it seems like it might be cost prohibitive. So if I want to do a two terabyte drives, no,

Leo Laporte (00:19:35):
Here's the good news. S SSD prices have tumbled, so they're not much more expensive than spinning drives and they're much better don't get one from Western Digital, that's all

Caller Peter (00:19:44):
Because

Leo Laporte (00:19:45):
They have some issues, but don't get those SanDisk SSDs. We talked about that last week, but no, no, absolutely. In S S D, I get all of my computers now with a two terabyte SS s D two terabytes about 150 bucks.

Caller Peter (00:19:59):
Oh, that's great. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:20:00):
Much cheaper than they used to be. Incredibly cheaper. And there were some concern from people and even Steve Gibson echoes this still to this day about SSDs being less reliable over the long run. They wear out faster and that's not been my experience at all. In fact, I would say SSDs we're going to see in the long run are more reliable. They have different kinds of failures, but they don't have the physical failures that spinning drives have. I think SSDs absolutely, and it's much, much faster. Absolutely. The way to go. Yeah, maybe you don't get, I don't know, two terabytes is plenty for me. I rarely use more than one terabyte, but I like having that since I do use one terabyte, I don't want to run out of 'em, so I like having a little extra. Exactly. Yeah.

Caller Peter (00:20:43):
Great advice as always, Leo. Thank you so

Leo Laporte (00:20:44):
Much. Yeah, I'm trying to think, oh, and the way, if you do get a pc, be careful not to get one of the proprietary S S D because then you're going to pay an arm Inal lane, get one that uses standard ones. Are you going to desktop or laptop?

Caller Peter (00:21:00):
This would be for a

Leo Laporte (00:21:00):
Desktop. Yeah. I have an Alienware that's from Dell, but I'm very happy with that. That uses standard M two SSDs. And by the way, that's another thing you can do, and I do do this on my Alienware. I have a SS s D for the boot drive, but the data drive is spinning drive so you can have more capacity, lower cost, although I think if you price it out, it's not that much different. I think that was four years. That was at the beginning of Covid, so I think probably now I would get all S s D thinking, who else? Look at Falcon Northwest. Look at some of the gaming rigs. What are you guys like in the chat room, I R C or Discord for gaming rigs these days? Berk says Dell, which is Alienware. They have,

John Ashley (00:21:47):
There's another company I've been seeing pop up called Star Forge. People have been talking about that.

Leo Laporte (00:21:51):
Star Forge. I don't know that one.

John Ashley (00:21:52):
That one's just within the last year or so.

Leo Laporte (00:21:55):
There are companies that make these gaming pieces and nice thing is they're usually able, you can customize 'em more. The one thing I don't agree with is they do all this case mod stuff with lights and stuff. That's silly and it's just going to cause your wife to pay more attention. Don't attract attention. Be box, go with a beige box. The reason I ask if you want a laptop or desktop is because I do like the frameworks I've ordered the framework. These are laptops. So the 16 inch framework, it uses standard everything and it's replaceable and upgradable. So when that comes, that'll come late this year, early next year, I will give you a demo, but it's probably not the best. You want to want a real game machine, you're going to get a desktop. Asus makes the Republic of Game gamer machines. I have one of those, I bought one of those for my son.

(00:22:49):
He's had good results with that. Falcon Northwest Origin. Oh, Puget Systems. I often forget them. They're really, I like those guys. They're really good. So there's some good ones. We'll put a link in the show notes. Mars Worm and our I R C has a link to a Tom's Hardware article on the relatively recent article on the best gaming PCs of 2023. These are pre-built, but see all that silly LEDs and all that stuff, I don't go for that man. I can't go for that. No can do. Plus that's just going to get spousal. This is for teenage boys. This is not, or older men who there's an alien wear. That's the one I have as the Aurora

John Ashley (00:23:29):
Speaking as a older person. Yes, I do like those colors. You like those? I have a symbol. Nothing fancy

Leo Laporte (00:23:35):
Though. I got mine with an A M D in it, Aris, because I really think those give you a good bang for the buck. So you want to save money. An AMD is good, but you definitely want an Nvidia video card. You don't have to get this top of the line 40, 90, but Corsair makes nice stuff. I like Corsair. Oh, that Lenovo Legion. I've heard some people say good things about the Legions, Lenovo's Gaming pc, so those are all in the list. I bought the Alienware Aurora and I'm very happy with that thing. It sounds like a jet taking off. That's the only negative.

(00:24:11):
Hey, it's great to talk to you. Thank you for being our first call today and it's nice to hear from you. Thank now that you know the way, come back and call us again. I'll, alright, take care. Have a great day. Yeah, somebody saying, and you're right, user 58 19. The Alienware tends to use weirdly shaped proprietary stuff. They have such weird cases. Get a square beige case. Coursera would be a good one. That'd be very standard phone number. (888) 724-2884. Very good. Thank you. You noticed I paused. I wasn't sure. Should I go to Byron? Sure, let's go to Byron. I'm having fun talking to people on Zoom today. Mike has the day off, little under the weather. He went to the podcast movement, the big podcast expo with my wife and Max, our sales guy and Ryan all but Ryan got sick. I'm not going to any conferences.

(00:25:07):
We are going though I should mention we're going to Green Bay and we're going to have a meetup in Green Bay. I'm hearing from more and more people in the Midwest who want to come. So that'll be September 29th. We haven't yet found a venue, but it'll be in Green Bay proper. We're going out because our son is a Packers fan. I don't know where we've gone wrong, but we're going to go out and see a Packers game, which actually I'm really excited about. We're going to get the stadium tour at Lambo and all that stuff, so put that in your save the date, I guess is what the brides call it. September 29th in Green Bay, Wisconsin. If you're out there, we would love to see you. Did Byron show up in the, oh,

Caller Biren (00:25:51):
Hey man,

Leo Laporte (00:25:52):
You scared me. Hi Byron.

Caller Biren (00:25:55):
Hi. This is Bien from St. Augustine, Florida.

Leo Laporte (00:25:58):
I should know it by now. You've called before Bien. Hi Baren.

Caller Biren (00:26:01):
Actually. So long time listener. First time caller. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:26:05):
First time, okay. Must be another bien. Yeah. Okay. Welcome to the show. Look at that beautiful sun you've got going or is that a sunrise? Sunrise?

Caller Biren (00:26:15):
It's a sunset. I took it on a Baltimore Harbor cruise.

Leo Laporte (00:26:18):
Oh nice. I love the Baltimore Harbor. That's a great place. Oh, it's beautiful. They have those little bugs going. That's so much fun. Anyway, what can I do for you, bien?

Caller Biren (00:26:27):
Yeah, so I'll kind of give you a little bit of background and then I'll lead up to my question. So our primary TV is a projector, and in 2005 when we designed this house, I had a conduit put in. We've gone through four projectors since. Oh my Finally. Yeah. Well it was seven 20 p, the first one in 2000, whatever. And then finally got to the latest one, which just got last year, which is the Epson LSS 12,000. Kind of had to wait about eight months because of supply chain issues and Best Buy finally went to them. They apparently have a direct contract with them or a buyer's contract with Epson. So anyway, within about a month the projector arrived. I had it installed now. So as you know, it's an upscale four K projector, right? It's not a native 4k. I've upgraded my Denon receiver early last year, so everything's pretty much upgraded all the way up to eight K capable. The problem is when they were installing the wire, the H D M I through the conduit, at that time, 25 feet was the longest they had and I need about 35 feet Oh

Leo Laporte (00:27:59):
Feet.

Caller Biren (00:28:01):
So they installed H D M I 2.00

Leo Laporte (00:28:04):
No.

Caller Biren (00:28:06):
Yeah, and I wasn't home and my wife is here.

Leo Laporte (00:28:10):
So you're not getting four K?

Caller Biren (00:28:13):
I'm not getting four K. I've got Apple tv, I've got Blueray, everything else, all the other components, including DirecTV, everything's been upgraded. It's all four K compatible except my wire. So I did some research Go ahead. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so I did my research and read through mono price and some other sites that cables longer than 25 feet. For hdm, I 2.1 would not produce the best or maybe some kind of a signal loss. And so there's a company that I've found called fiber command, fiber command.com, and they actually have fiber optic cables and then you can attach H D M I ends or

Leo Laporte (00:29:09):
Lemme tell you what I would recommend that's cheaper. You need a Ballen or Balen, B A L U N. Fortunately because they did pull the cable, you can attach something to it, pull it out and pull the new one in behind it as you pull it out. Yeah. 2.0 is a bad idea. You can go a lot longer. You can go as long as you want using CAT five or CAT six with a H D M I. Bain. So what this does is it connects the H D M I on one end, converts it into a signal that can go over ethernet and then on the other end converts it back and that way you can get four K, eight K, you can get as much as you want over as much as 150 feet. I've gone about 80 feet with mine and it works fine.

(00:30:04):
So you want to look for one that supports four K. So what you'll do is you'll take that HT M I 2.0 cable, attach an ethernet, a good CAT six or better ethernet to it. It's not that long so you can get it. It won't be that expensive and pull it through. So you've got the ethernet at both ends and now you put the Bains on the ethernet and that gives you an H D M I output on either side and the H M I goes right through it. It works great. I've had great results doing that. That's probably the simplest way to do it, I think. Fiber, how much is the fiber optic solution?

Caller Biren (00:30:41):
So here's the thing, I actually already bought it. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:30:44):
Okay. Nevermind. Forget I mentioned anything.

Caller Biren (00:30:49):
No, no. I can always return it. It's like $350 for a 50 foot and I read the reviews. That's

Leo Laporte (00:31:00):
Not bad. That's not bad. Yeah.

Caller Biren (00:31:03):
Yeah. I think I was going to expect that kind of a cost and the reviews on their website are all good. They're all,

Leo Laporte (00:31:14):
It's doing the same thing a Bain does except instead of converting it to ethernet, it's converting it to fiber because you have H D M I on both ends, right? You have a little box and then you have fiber optic cable going through. Yeah, that's probably just as good. In fact, probably better because it's going to be in the long run, more capable. That fiber can carry a lot of data, but clearly you have a problem

Caller Biren (00:31:37):
And the mismatch of signals, you tin for one thing to the next. It takes like five to 10 seconds or whatever longer.

Leo Laporte (00:31:44):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. For the handshake.

Caller Biren (00:31:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:31:48):
I'm shaking my hand.

(00:31:51):
Yeah. So the TV has to go, well what can you do? Projector and then, or not the tv, the streamers, what can you do projector. And they go back and forth until they agree on resolution frame rate, not just that protocol call. And then once they've agreed they can do it. Five seconds seems kind long. It's not unusual though to see a little while it's doing it. Remember the old days in the modems? They would go, they were handshaking, they were trying to figure out what can you say I can do this? Can you do that? And figuring it out. I don't know if there's any way to shorten that. That's just how HTM I works. I'm surprised its how long.

Caller Biren (00:32:45):
And what I did is I did a pass through the receiver so that it doesn't do any processing and I play around with the settings with the dent on it. It still kind of, it's not perfect. What I did do is buy fiber for the DirecTV, so all the components have their short three liter fiber cables and that's working just fine. It's just, of course the main one is it's HDMI 2.0. So

Leo Laporte (00:33:23):
You haven't put in this new fiber solution yet?

Caller Biren (00:33:27):
Not yet. So I'm waiting for an install to happen.

Leo Laporte (00:33:31):
Yeah, I think this, so where's the handshake problem now? Is it with the 2.0?

Caller Biren (00:33:40):
I've isolated to the 2.0? Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (00:33:44):
This will all be better when you have more bandwidth. I think this will go away.

Caller Biren (00:33:48):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:33:49):
Probably it's because the TV really wants to send U H D or the Danon wants to send U H D and the cable is just, what's this cable? This thing's terrible. It's fighting it. I think it'll be better once you get the new system in. Good for you's a good solution. Thank you. Yeah, I think you did a good thing. Now when you get ready to, I'm really sad. Don't tell anybody, don't tell Lisa this. We had that high sense a hundred inch beautiful projector. It was a short throw, which I like, unlike yours, which you have to position just right and all that across the room. Mars was right now underneath it, which I really liked. It looked like this. Well except our living room doesn't look like this, but the short throat projectors are nice. They sit right under where it's like a regular TV set and I loved it, but I didn't like the projectors a little washed out compared to a direct view. As you know, you have to darken the room and stuff and I thought I like having 120 inch screen, but I am going to get this Q D ole. It's a really good deal right now from Samsung. It's qd. It's the best OLEDs out there. 77 inches. That should be plenty sigh.

(00:35:15):
I really miss the giant screen, especially for football. I really miss having that big screen. I gave it to Micah, so if I ever want to have fun, I'll go over to Micah's. Did you get the short throw or did you get the normal Epson?

Caller Biren (00:35:28):
The normal seating mounted? Yeah. And it's about 12. That's

Leo Laporte (00:35:32):
Fine. If you don't mind. Sounds like you got a pretty nice home theater. If you don't mind mounting it on the ceiling and all that. That's fine. That's why you have such a long, now I understand why your cable's so long. It's up in the ceiling. Yeah, so that's one way to solve this. Yeah, we solve

Caller Biren (00:35:45):
The

Leo Laporte (00:35:45):
Conduit. Yeah, I get it. And it's good. Once you have the conduit, that's great. Short throw really solves that because the TV is right there. It's where everything else is. So you don't have long cables or anything like that. You enjoy your lovely project. How big is the screen?

Caller Biren (00:36:03):
It's 92 inches.

Leo Laporte (00:36:05):
Isn't that nice?

Caller Biren (00:36:06):
Which is big enough for us.

Leo Laporte (00:36:08):
I miss having that big screen. It was so much fun. We'd have parties, people come over. We have 20 people watching the Super Bowl and it was so much fun to have that giant screen. Now I'm going to be embarrassed when people come over to see that 77 inch. I'm just going to be humiliated. I'm sorry we have such a small screen. Hey, it's a pleasure talking to you, Byron. Thank you. I'm glad you found a Buren. I'm sorry. I'm glad you found the place and come back again.

Caller Biren (00:36:39):
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Enjoy

Leo Laporte (00:36:41):
Your new set. Enjoy. Thank you. Appreciate it. Sounds pretty nice. It sounds really great. Yeah, the modern Bains do support U H D, but I think fiber probably is better. More bandwidth is better, right? Always nice. Let's take a little time out. Coming up in about 10 minutes a visit from Dick e d. We'll do more calls before that though. But I do want to mention our sponsor, our show today brought you by literally cash fly. When I say literally, I mean Cashflow is our C D N, our Content delivery network. So when you go to the website and watch a show or listen, when you use your podcast client to download and listen to a show, you're getting it directly from Cashflow. Why do we do that? Because we're not crazy. We tried in the early days of twit, you might remember if you've been around 20 years or 18 anyway, in the early days, we just had it on the website.

(00:37:34):
You download it for the website Constant problems because so many people were downloading it at the same time. That's one of the problems. They're all downloading it at the same time, right? If they had spread it out throughout the week, it wouldn't be so bad. So then we went to BitTorrent, tried that. That was awful. I had to ask beg people, could you please seed our content because we can't get it to our audience. That's when Matt Levine, the great Matt Levine, founder of Cashflow came and said, I can help. And they have ever since they have been our C D N, they are innovators. They're celebrating their 20th anniversary of T C P, any cast. They've been doing this since 2000 two's, 20th anniversary since 1999. Cash Flow has had the track record for high performing, ultra reliable content delivery. They started using T C P, any cast, they were, I think the first in 2002.

(00:38:25):
It's an innovation CDNs continue to build on this day with more than 3,500 clients, including twit in over 80 countries. Organizations choose cashflow for several reasons, scalability, reliability, and unrivaled performance. We get all three, and I should mention the best service ever. Their support is so good. Cashflow's smart Image optimization is great for websites. Yeah, they do websites for gaming, for streaming, for podcasts, for content of any kind, including websites. Try the smart image optimization. It's a fast, secure image processing service that actually automatically will transform and optimize images on the fly. So your website's got images on there, you know, can't use those big, large uncompressed images, it slows it down. Users will hate it. You get bad search rankings, but at the same time, you want to have images on your site that look great, of course. And you want 'em to look great on every size screen from Behren's 92 inch screen down to somebody's six inch smartphone.

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Smart image optimization does it. Cashflow gives you everything you could ever want. Ultra low latency video streaming to more than a million concurrent users. Lightning fast gaming downloads of faster zero lag glitches, outages that mobile content optimization I was talking about. They're the only C D N built for throughput delivering rich media content up to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods, 30% faster than other major CDNs. And we love the billing. It's flexible. This is the problem for most content's. Spiky, right? There's a big bunch of downloads all at once and then nothing for a while and then a big bunch of debt. How do you do that in billing? Well, cashflow will work with you. They'll give you a month to month billing as long as you need it, discounts for fixed terms. Once you're happy, you really design your own contract. That's what we did when you switched to cashflow. Join cashflow, the world's fastest C D N for a limited time cashflow is offering a free five terabyte tier plan. I would check that one out. Cash fly.com. You can also get your first month free on other plans. C A C H E F L y.com. Cash fly free. This is new, the five terabyte free tier. That's an awful lot. Now I have to say we send I think three petabytes a month through cly just a little bit.

(00:40:57):
So we couldn't use the five terabyte dear, but you might be able to. Thank you. Cly, C A C A G F L Y com. Let's see, Johnny, should I do? I got so many calls. Let let's do a phone call. Alright, I'll do the wireless caller, see who that is. All we know is your wireless, but press star six to unmute and say hello. Hello. Hey, what's your name and where are you calling from? Hey, Leo, this is

Caller Kenny (00:41:32):
Kenny Cottontown in Tennessee calling.

Leo Laporte (00:41:34):
It's Kenny from Cottontown. Hi Kenny.

Caller Kenny (00:41:39):
Hey, I just want to let you know that. Give you a little bit of update. I still don't have a IT job yet, but I have been learning what the job that I'm at right now as far as some of the processes go where I have been allowed to communicate with some people in the field. And I have kind of an understanding of it, but the way things have been going right now with my job, I'm kind of comfortable where I'm at and hopefully down the road I might take advantage of some of it, but I have been learning a little bit of it just from the communications of it and watching when they do remote connections. So I try to pay attention as much as I can, but

Leo Laporte (00:42:18):
That's the best way to learn.

Caller Kenny (00:42:19):
I can go back to course. Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:42:22):
Is on the job training. For people who don't know, we've been following Kenny's progress now for how many years? Couple of years you wanted to retrain, go back to school, become an IT professional, and we've been just kind of keeping up and I'm glad to always hear about this. That's great. That's great. This is the hard thing again, that real IT job is you have to have some practice, some skills. They don't want you to be your first job. So I think this is a good way to do it. I think that's great.

Caller Kenny (00:42:51):
And along the way, I actually did go back to course and took a couple of Python classes so that way I could get, it's

Leo Laporte (00:42:58):
Good to know Python figured out

Caller Kenny (00:42:59):
On

Leo Laporte (00:42:59):
That. Very useful. Python is used to automate things, to script things. A lot of IT professionals will use PowerShell Bash scripting, command line scripting. But when it gets a little bit more serious, it's really nice to have a real coding language under your belt. And Python is a very good one that's so versatile, knowing that will be extremely useful. So good job. I think that's good. You did that at Coursera, huh?

Caller Kenny (00:43:27):
Yeah, and it wasn't with Google this time. It was actually with the University of Michigan. Nice. They have a professor, and I don't know if you know his name, Dr. Charles Severance. He had a couple of programs. He was involved in Python for everybody, and I think it was Python three related because the first class I took with him, it was mostly with Python 2.7.

Leo Laporte (00:43:51):
Yeah, you want to know three? Although it doesn't hurt to know 2.7, but you really need three now. Three one. One is the current version of Python. In fact, Microsoft just announced that you can use Python with Excel spreadsheets, which is really cool.

Caller Kenny (00:44:06):
Yeah, that's what I was calling about. Yeah, I mean that's really cool that they're doing that. And that kind of ties in because a lot of what I've been learning is that, so it's going to help out in that field for sure. For where I'm kind of doing clerk related material.

Leo Laporte (00:44:20):
Yeah, all of these skills are valuable. I look at our IT guy, he's an M S P Russell. Great. He's not our employee. We've to hire him a million times. He said, no, I like having my own business. But he comes here every Wednesday he's in, really helps us. And he knows so many things about so many things that he's really useful. He can code. He knows about video transmission, he knows everything. So the bigger your bag of skills, the better off you're going to be. So nothing you're learning at this point is not going to be of use in an IT career. I think it all really helps. So I'm glad you're doing well. That's true. Yeah. Now it's weird the way they're doing Python and Excel, you actually, it doesn't run the Python in Excel. It uploads it and downloads the result. It's running in the cloud, which of course that's Microsoft's business is in the cloud.

(00:45:17):
But that way they didn't have to modify Excel so much. They didn't have to put a Python interpreter into Excel. Just the ability to send the code up, get it run, and get the result back. Still from your point of view, the user's point of view doesn't matter how it's doing it, you do have to have an internet connection, but everybody does nowadays. And it's really nice to have that capability. Good learn Python, that's fantastic. Plus I have to say, knowing how to code, even if you're not a coder, is really valuable in understanding better what's going on inside the machine. Once you understand the logic of the machine and the logic of programs that makes you much better at diagnosing issues that you're going to come up against because you kind of understand how the bits are flowing, it really helps. So keep up the good work. I think you're doing a great job, Kenny. I'm really proud of you. You've come a long way, haven't you?

Caller Kenny (00:46:12):
Yes, I have. And I am getting my coding work right now because Perel has just announced that they have, with their upgrade to Perel Desktop 19, they're adding binaries X 86 slash 64 in the Linux. There's a emulation for Otu Linux on that. Nice. And I'm trying to learn a little bit of how to navigate certain things like when you're trying to install programs. I was trying to install a Dropbox because they don't have an ARM 64

Leo Laporte (00:46:41):
Available and you're doing it in the command line. So this is where I admire you. First of all, perseverance. You're determined, you really want to do it. You're working hard, which is really great, and you're open to new skills and your attitude is really good. I think everything's going great, Kenny. I'm really proud of you. Well done. Keep up the good work. Okay. Alright. It's good to talk

Caller Kenny (00:47:06):
To you. Alright, well I appreciate it. It's good to talk to you and I hope you have a good rest of the show. And so Micah said hi and get well soon.

Leo Laporte (00:47:12):
Yeah, I hope so too. He's feeling all right actually. So is Lisa. Congratulations to our friend Marquez Brownley. Did you see this champion ultimate Frisbee guy? That is one hell of a big trophy. I don't know what he won, but if you've ever seen him, there's his team. If you've ever seen him play Ultimate Frisbee, he is amazing. He is really, really good. And his team won. Feels like the world championship, the size of that cup. I don't know what it was. Does anybody know? Was it the New Jersey State Champion? The US Champions? Figure the size of that. Hey, Siri, play Empire State of them. Oh, empire Ultimate is the name of his. The New York Empire is the name of his ultimate Frisbee and they are the 2022 Auto Champions East Division. Okay. That is a heck of a big cup for New York Empire. Ultimate Frisbee team. Is Dickie D ready or should I do another call?

 Dick DeBartolo (00:48:24):
Oh, I'm set.

Leo Laporte (00:48:25):
You're set. You're ready. You know what? I feel like you're always here. You never really leave.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:48:31):
No, I never leave. I go just to do giz whizz. And then I sit back for you.

Leo Laporte (00:48:40):
Here is I think a shot of the game-winning moment in the Empire State's Ultimate Frisbee Championship. If you show that on the screen, you can Dick, e d Dick d Martello, mad Magazine's, Mads writer, a member of the usual gang of idiots for more than five decades. And I am proud to say our Gizmo wizard. We call him the GIZ Whizz. He's coming to us from beautiful downtown Disneyland. Hello, Dickie

 Dick DeBartolo (00:49:17):
Leo. How you doing, pal?

Leo Laporte (00:49:19):
I've been reading the most amazing book and when I say I've been reading, I mean it. It's 1300 pages considered to be one of the greatest biographies of all time. Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, the man who really built New York City. And one of the things he built is Riverside Drive, that yacht harbor where you parked your boats for so many years.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:49:43):
Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (00:49:44):
And the park where I played in as a two year old, and to read about this, it used to be in the thirties, that was railroad yards. It was ugly, it was slag heaps. It was smoke from the trains. And he would go by in a boat and look at it and dreamed of building this beautiful Riverside Park and Riverside Drive. And he did. And that's the good side of Robert Moses. There's some bad sides as well. He tore you in a lot of communities in order to do that. But he really is the architect of New York City and it's a fascinating

 Dick DeBartolo (00:50:20):
Biography. When I moved here like 45 years ago, the lady upstairs was an older, and she said that she lived here when the railroads still ran steam trains and you could not get to the river every 10 blocks. There was a bridge across the railroad tracks. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:50:46):
Sounded like it was pretty ugly.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:50:49):
Yeah. Although steam trains.

Leo Laporte (00:50:52):
Well, I know I had mixed feelings about this because one of the things most did is he basically highway fired, New York City used to have to drive over city streets to get to Long Island or to get to the Bronx, and then he built the Cross Bronx Expressway and the Triborough and all that. But it also really promoted car traffic and kind of demoted mass transit to some degree. So I have mixed feelings about that too. I do love the trains. I do the same.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:51:20):
The same with me. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:51:22):
Well anyway, good biography. I highly recommend it if you've got about 60 hours of free time lying around. It's taken me a long time. I'll bring the book in. I bought the book. I've been listening to it and I thought I should have the book. It's got pictures of, it's literally, it's a great door stop though, in case you ever need one dick. This is no door. This will not work as a doorstop. This is the new Mad magazine. Can I show this?

 Dick DeBartolo (00:51:46):
Absolutely enough.

Leo Laporte (00:51:47):
Sometimes you say it's embargoed. It's not embargoed.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:51:50):
No, no, it's not embargoed. It's the October issue, but it's out now.

Leo Laporte (00:51:53):
It says Mad Goes back to Go. And there's Wednesday Adams and Thing is picking her nose. And what I really liked about this is it's all the different iterations of the Adams family. Going back to Charles Adams famous New Yorker cartoons.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:52:10):
Absolutely. And I actually wrote the satire on the movie version, the ad nauseum family.

Leo Laporte (00:52:17):
Of course you did. I love your movie parodies. They're so great. Who illustrated the Mort Drucker? One of my favorites. I love Mort Drucker. He's so good. Oh, this is great. The Ad Naum family. The crazy.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:52:38):
Yeah. And then I did, gosh, I did another thing there that Tom FileMan, Tom Tom Richmond illustrated. Oh, Val. Hell stink the movie Van. Hell.

Leo Laporte (00:52:54):
You're the king of movie parodies, aren't you? How do you get the ideas for that? Do you just sit there? Does it start with a name?

 Dick DeBartolo (00:53:03):
The worst is when the movie has a single name like airport.

Leo Laporte (00:53:08):
Yeah. Not much you could do with it. Yeah,

 Dick DeBartolo (00:53:09):
Yeah, yeah. The same with Val Hellsing, but at least Val Hell sing. It was

Leo Laporte (00:53:16):
Stic is good.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:53:17):
That's a, every once in a while you'll get a long title that like a TV show, VO Voyage to the Bottom of the

Leo Laporte (00:53:26):
Sea. Oh, that gives you lots of room.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:53:28):
Yeah. Voyage to see what's on the bottom.

Leo Laporte (00:53:37):
Does it start for you? Does the parody start with the name?

 Dick DeBartolo (00:53:42):
No. Sometimes if I can't think of a name, I just jump into the panels. And then along the way, sometimes I just walk through the park and think, what can I possibly do with this?

Leo Laporte (00:53:55):
See, we could thank Robert Moses for Van Hell Stink. Yes, yes. Without Robert Moses, there would be no movie parodies. That's fun. Go for a walk, gets the brain working, gets the juices

 Dick DeBartolo (00:54:08):
Wisdom. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And Tom Richmond did the art on that. Yeah. This

Leo Laporte (00:54:12):
One's color, which is kind of nice.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:54:14):
Oh yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:54:16):
Most of Mad in my lifetime was black and white. When did it start doing color stuff?

 Dick DeBartolo (00:54:20):
It started, Warner was always after mad to do ads and

Leo Laporte (00:54:26):
Mad never had ads in my time in my day. No. It only had ads like this. Look, mom. No More cavities. Yeah. His teeth were knocked out.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:54:35):
Yeah. But then when they said Mad did one mad in color and it sold really well. And then W said, if you take four ads, the ad companies have to pay for the color

Leo Laporte (00:54:53):
Press,

 Dick DeBartolo (00:54:54):
And that way you can get as much color as you want kind of as a free ride. So that's when Mad started taking ads, but adding a lot of color.

Leo Laporte (00:55:04):
I do like in this Van sti, the Marginalia, is it Sergio Aragonez? Who did the

 Dick DeBartolo (00:55:11):
Sergio? Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:55:12):
Oh gosh. I love his little drawings in the margins there. This is so great. When I was a kid, I mean, I grew up with this and I devoured every issue. I remember. I would go bring my 35 cents to the Liggetts drugstore and I'd give them sometimes in pennies, the 35 cents come home with the new Mad Magazine. Well, we're going to tell you how you could win this without a penny in just a little bit. But first let's get a gidget or a gadget or a gizmo. Okay.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:55:42):
Well, a couple months ago when I was on the show, I showed you a bubble maker. That was great fun

Leo Laporte (00:55:48):
That Micah bought immediately. Yes.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:55:50):
Yes. Well, Micah, he better get his credit if he's watching. I'm sure he is the double bubble blaster. So now let me see. I put this on very low because I don't want to know.

Leo Laporte (00:56:02):
Oh my God. Stop blasting me with bubbles, dick. Holy moly. That's fun.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:56:10):
This is two motors, two spinning bubble wands. And Leo,

Leo Laporte (00:56:16):
This is so over the top.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:56:19):
It's just hysterical. Not only Leo, it takes the whole of bubble soap right inside. You open the back.

Leo Laporte (00:56:28):
And how long does that last?

 Dick DeBartolo (00:56:30):
You know what? I haven't run through it yet. Oh, good. But yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:56:34):
Because bubbles are thin.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:56:36):
Yes. And then you close the back and then it comes with a rechargeable battery and a little rechargeable plug for, oh, there you go. There's your

Leo Laporte (00:56:47):
Video of doing it it in your backyard.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:56:50):
So yeah, there's the little battery that goes into the handle of the bubble blaster and there's a little cable for charging it. And they call it the engineering bubble car because I think from the side it's supposed to look like a truck.

Leo Laporte (00:57:08):
Oh yeah. It looks like a bulldozer.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:57:09):
Yeah, it looks like a bulldozer.

Leo Laporte (00:57:11):
Exactly. Yeah. It's a bubble bulldozer.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:57:13):
Yeah. So you take the whole bottle of bubble. It

Leo Laporte (00:57:16):
Seems to be the ultimate bubble tech.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:57:19):
Oh my gosh, yes. Absolutely. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:57:22):
My gosh.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:57:23):
But wait, there's more.

Leo Laporte (00:57:25):
Yes,

 Dick DeBartolo (00:57:25):
Yes. It has LEDs

Leo Laporte (00:57:28):
So that

 Dick DeBartolo (00:57:30):
If you're doing bubbles at night, not only I want

Leo Laporte (00:57:32):
To see in the dark,

 Dick DeBartolo (00:57:34):
I have it as the bubbles themselves are colorful, but at night it can add some more color from the LEDs. I think this is really

Leo Laporte (00:57:44):
Good. You are having so much fun in your backyard and the neighbors are going, what the hell is going on? No,

 Dick DeBartolo (00:57:50):
There were no neighbors. I got on a ladder and I was shooting stuff into yards thinking, is someone going to come out and say, what is that?

Leo Laporte (00:57:58):
Nobody. Nobody. They all ran for cover. Wow. The double Bubble Blaster. Who's this from?

 Dick DeBartolo (00:58:07):
Blaster. You know what, they just call it the bubble machine engineering car. And you know what, look on your, oh, it's still there today. I went and looked and there's a 20% off coupon.

Leo Laporte (00:58:20):
Oh wow.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:58:21):
So it's down to

Leo Laporte (00:58:23):
30 bucks, what?

 Dick DeBartolo (00:58:24):
24 bucks?

Leo Laporte (00:58:25):
Right. Well this says 29.99. But you're saying with, oh, apply the 20% coupon. I

 Dick DeBartolo (00:58:29):
Applied 20% off. Oh, look at

Leo Laporte (00:58:31):
That. I don't even know why they bother. Yeah.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:58:35):
So that'll bring it down to 24 bucks and it comes with four bottles of bubble goo.

Leo Laporte (00:58:40):
Oh my gosh. That's 40,000 bubbles according to the manufacturing.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:58:45):
Yeah. Well Dennis is still in the yard counting them

Leo Laporte (00:58:49):
Two, not one, but two powerful built-in motors, two fans, 18 spinning ones, 10,000 bubbles a minute.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:59:00):
I couldn't actually check. Yeah. But it's great fun. I think kids, the thing that Six and up, I

Leo Laporte (00:59:07):
Love this. All in every letter is capitalized. The built-in design of the bubble solution is the pinnacle work, allowing children to play with the bubble machine while frolicking. There is no longer the distress of adding bubble liquid after playing for two seconds. So this is for frolicking basically? Yes. Made for frolicking.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:59:29):
Yeah. And you should be six and above in order to frolic. We should point,

Leo Laporte (00:59:34):
I think Lawrence a Well, I had to decent machine in the back with Be sisters. Wow. Wow. For a wedding. My, you bring these out though. Be careful because it looks dangerous. It's got heavy duty grips and stuff. Wow. That is hysterical.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:59:55):
It's great fun. It's

Leo Laporte (00:59:56):
Very fun.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:59:57):
Perfect

Leo Laporte (00:59:57):
Trouble free frolicking.

 Dick DeBartolo (00:59:59):
Yes. Yeah. And a very inexpensive gadget I thought is so clever. And it's called the Carry Around and it's a little pocket-sized device to carry three or four cups of soda or coffee. When you are that, when

Leo Laporte (01:00:17):
You're frolicking.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:00:18):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:00:19):
Yeah. You can never have when f too much, much soda pop when you're frolicking.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:00:23):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:00:24):
Wow.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:00:26):
There's a little guy that fold up for your pocket and

Leo Laporte (01:00:29):
You never know. Sometimes you get to the counter and you get the four cups and you're trying to hold fork cups with your two hands and they don't give you a tray. Now you just, I could see Kramer whipping this out of his pocket and being ready to bring the entire gang. This will

 Dick DeBartolo (01:00:46):
Be Kevin when he brings Starbucks.

Leo Laporte (01:00:48):
Kevin does that by hand, right? When he goes out to Starbucks, he's carrying them like this. We should get this for Kevin. Yeah. Alright, let's get one for Kevin. Maybe he'll get us coffee. Yes.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:01:00):
But when you flip the handle up, you'll see a little thing that says three with an arrow and four with an arrow. I don't know how it works. If you open it to the right, four rings come out. What if you open it to the left three rings. It's a miracle. Can find my little video? Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:01:17):
Oh, you got a video too. All

 Dick DeBartolo (01:01:19):
A tiny little video. It says,

Leo Laporte (01:01:20):
Here's Dick with the tiny little three

 Dick DeBartolo (01:01:22):
Ring

Leo Laporte (01:01:23):
Versus four rings. Alright,

 Dick DeBartolo (01:01:25):
So that's the little guy there, and now I'm going to open it to the left. You've been elected to go to Starbucks or whatever, and so you start that click one and they lock in the place. Two clicks. That's

Leo Laporte (01:01:44):
Look at that

 Dick DeBartolo (01:01:44):
Three. And now I'm going,

Leo Laporte (01:01:45):
It's amazing. How did they do that? Wow. It's a miracle. It's a little cup carrying miracle.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:01:55):
But if you do it in the other direction,

Leo Laporte (01:01:57):
How can you have four red solo cups just lying around?

 Dick DeBartolo (01:02:02):
Well, I was going to go to Starbucks and get four specialty coffees, but I didn't want to spend

Leo Laporte (01:02:06):
No, this is a lot less expensive.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:02:07):
Definitely. So now Helen said, no, I don't want coffee today. Oh, it's just coffee for three. Now they are balanced. The

Leo Laporte (01:02:21):
Three. Well, now how much would you pay?

 Dick DeBartolo (01:02:24):
Wow. It's 10 bucks.

Leo Laporte (01:02:25):
10 bucks for the person who has to go get coffee. Dick d Barolo, MAD's maddest writer. And see, this is Oh, so wimpy compared to the new one.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:02:39):
Oh, what is,

Leo Laporte (01:02:40):
And somebody put the safety on. I can't.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:02:42):
That's for a child. This is

Leo Laporte (01:02:44):
For a child. You can't frolic with a single motor and one outlet. That's no frolicking.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:02:51):
All you can do is you can fall in that, but no

Leo Laporte (01:02:54):
Frolic. Yeah,

 Dick DeBartolo (01:02:54):
You just fall. That's a frog gun.

Leo Laporte (01:02:57):
You left the hole open here. It's all drained out of my thigh. Thank you so much. Dick, by the way, happy anniversary to you and Dennis.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:03:09):
Thank you. Thank you. Now,

Leo Laporte (01:03:10):
You've been together a lot longer than 11 years

 Dick DeBartolo (01:03:14):
Since 1980.

Leo Laporte (01:03:16):
Holy. 43. 43 years. But the state didn't allow you to recognize your true love until 11 years ago, 11 years ago. Congratulations on so 11th anniversary. Thank. What is the 11th anniversary? And is there frolicking involved? I

 Dick DeBartolo (01:03:33):
Think it's bubbles. I'm not sure.

Leo Laporte (01:03:38):
Congratulations. That's a wonderful anniversary.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:03:41):
You that very kind.

Leo Laporte (01:03:43):
I'm very happy for you and Dennis. Dennis is a wonderful guy. And by the way, Dennis brings snacks and you got to love somebody who brings snacks whenever you visit the giz. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's why Myra keeps showing up.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:03:57):
I

Leo Laporte (01:03:57):
See every Wednesday right after this week in Google, it's the evening version of the GIZ Fizz with Dickie D right here on our live stream. And of course, club members can watch that anytime on demand on the twit plus feet. And make sure you catch the weekly Gizz with Dick d Barolo and Chad Johnson. Gizz tv. Dick's website is Gizz Bizz. Now, I promised you I was going to get you a free copy of this fine Mad magazine. How can we win a copy of Mad Magazine? Are we playing for the October Mad?

 Dick DeBartolo (01:04:36):
Yes. We're playing for that issue because it ends in, what, four days I guess? Oh, it's

Leo Laporte (01:04:43):
At the end of August. Holy

 Dick DeBartolo (01:04:45):
Moly. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:04:45):
Yeah, it's the July, August. What the heck is it Game?

 Dick DeBartolo (01:04:49):
Exactly. Go to my website, click on what the heck is it? And you'll see a gadget there And take a guess. I can tell you now. Lots of people knew what it was really. So if you want to be

Leo Laporte (01:05:01):
Clever, be clever.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:05:02):
Yes, yes. Be clear. You have a better chance. It's six magazines for the right answer. We're going to do a poll here to pick out six, but 12. Were silly and clever judges decision. And you have to be the end of August 31st.

Leo Laporte (01:05:20):
Yeah, just a few more days. Whatever it is, it clearly does a lot of things. It's like it's a little busy little box of something. I can't

 Dick DeBartolo (01:05:30):
That's very good. So accurate. That's the kind of pointing, that's the kind of tech report. That's why you are the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (01:05:38):
Hey, let me ask you, do you have any memories of Bob Barker passed away this week at the

 Dick DeBartolo (01:05:42):
Age of

Leo Laporte (01:05:43):
99

 Dick DeBartolo (01:05:46):
In 1980, Goodson had a summer show called, that's My Line, not What's My Line. That's my line. And it was about people with unusual, really unusual occupations. I mean, the most terrorizing to me was the blind carpenter who built bookcases. And I'm thinking, did they have

Leo Laporte (01:06:07):
Bandages on

 Dick DeBartolo (01:06:08):
All See him on every, no. No. Anyway, I was writing scripts and going to Goodson and Goodson said, Bob Barker won't say this. And I said, mark, is it okay with you if I just call Bob Barker and ask if I can? He said, alright. So I called Bob Barker and I explained, I said, Bob, is it okay if we go over the stuff that he said? What? Are you kidding? I want to be funny. I want to look good. Yeah. Come on over to the house. And we worked together for 13 weeks. He was great. Wow. And a huge animal lover.

Leo Laporte (01:06:42):
Oh yes. Just like you. And we know that he ended every show with spay and new to your pets for the last few years of he

 Dick DeBartolo (01:06:49):
Got furs taken off the prices. Right. At one point he said, good. He said, I am not going to continue hosting the prices. Right. If we continue giving furs away. Of course. I don't believe in that. Wow. And he got his way. Of course.

Leo Laporte (01:07:06):
Yes.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:07:07):
It was

Leo Laporte (01:07:08):
Super. One of the greats. Well, that's a nice little story. Yeah. He seemed like a real,

 Dick DeBartolo (01:07:15):
I'm trying to get a nice little story about you, but

Leo Laporte (01:07:18):
Keep

 Dick DeBartolo (01:07:19):
Working, having trouble.

Leo Laporte (01:07:20):
Keep working.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:07:22):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:07:22):
Alright, and have a good fun, you and Dennis have some frolic fun with your bubble master. 9,000.

 Dick DeBartolo (01:07:29):
Okay. Thank Powell.

Leo Laporte (01:07:30):
Dickie. Barolo. Mads. Madis writer. Thank you. Dickie D see

 Dick DeBartolo (01:07:32):
In a month. Okay, buddy. Take care. See

Leo Laporte (01:07:34):
You in a month. Actually, I see 'em every Wednesday, but we don't have a long conversation like this. Let's see. I think we should do a call. We can take a break in a few minutes. I think there's a, what was it? Should I do north of Detroit? Yeah, I was going to say we haven't had, yeah, I know a small town boy, born and raised in South Detroit. I don't know anybody north of Detroit. So maybe Aaron can give me a geography lesson. Aaron, join us. Welcome. Who am I on? You're on. Join us in the Stargate north of Detroit. What is north of Detroit.

Caller Aaron (01:08:21):
Oh, right in between Flint, Detroit's community. Clarkston,

Leo Laporte (01:08:24):
Clarkston. Nice. Very nice. Well, welcome. The joke is there is no South Detroit. That's Canada. So we always liked that song for that reason. What can I do for you, my friend?

Caller Aaron (01:08:42):
I've been using Linux for a long time, but I've never become proficient in it. I mean, I love Linux, but there's a few things that I can't seem to connect with. Just to let you know, I've got a Myth TV box.

Leo Laporte (01:08:58):
Oh yes, very nice.

Caller Aaron (01:09:01):
I've got four raspberry pies that I use around the house. I have a server that I'm trying to get going, but the one thing I really struggle with, and that is just being able to connect from one computer to another to manipulate it. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:09:19):
You're doing more, for all your apologies, you're doing more with Linux than most Linux users. Most Linux users. Linux is a free open source operating system that competes with Windows and Macintosh runs on almost all PC hardware. Most of us are just playing with it. You're actually, you've got Myth tv, which is a Linux distribution that does A D V R. It's a media streamer. It's been around for a long time and I was pleased to see that it's still around, so that's really good. You're using it for other things as well. But networking is a little bit Trixie. We usually, when we network Linux machines, we use Linux ISS version of Microsoft's samba. It's called SS M B, and you have to make sure that SS m b is enabled. And it's further complicated because the older versions of S M B stands for Server Message Block have been deprecated and are no longer in use. Linux open source version of this is called, and I think this is one of the best names in all of Linux Samba. I love it. So do you have Samba installed and enabled on all of your machines? You should be able to see them on a machine and do file sharing. I agree. This is one of the more advanced things people do with Linux. You want to transfer files from one Linux box to another? Mostly put stuff on your Myth TV box or take it off?

Caller Aaron (01:10:53):
Not necessarily, but just control it. Just desktop to desktop.

Leo Laporte (01:10:56):
Oh, you want to control it like V L C? Yeah. Yeah. V N C I should say. Yeah. Okay. There's some very good Linux tools. V N C is the thing you're looking for. And there are a variety of VNC for Linux. If you look in your distro manager, rasp on the Raspberry Pies is basically Debian. I don't know what myth runs on, it's its own distribution, but all of them will have access to some sort of virtual network computing. And then, so generally what I'll do is I, I'll search for V N C in my package manager or my software ad remove software program, and there'll be a number. There might be, my favorite name is chicken of the V N C, but there's tight V N C. There's a variety of different open source VNC Ultra V N C, real V N C, tiger V N C.

(01:11:58):
What these will do is it's a client server relationship. You'll put the server on the machine you want to access, you'll put the client on the machine you want to use to control the other machine, and then it's remote desktop basically. So that's the version of remote desktop that Linux most commonly uses. If you didn't want to have a whole desktop and you wanted to send commands, that's of course a lot more complicated. I would say probably V N C is going to be the best way to go on this, I think. Sounds like you want to maybe use one of the raspberry pies to control your myth box. Something

Caller Aaron (01:12:39):
Like that. Well, just sitting here on the computer, I can actually see my myth box and I'll try to connect to it and it just refuses. That's where I run into problem

Leo Laporte (01:12:51):
I've, that's probably an authentication error.

Caller Aaron (01:12:54):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:12:56):
Make sure on the myth box, and this may not be easy to do, but you want to log into the myth. Can you log into the myth box and get a command line?

Caller Aaron (01:13:09):
It seems like I've done it once and then all of a sudden I go to log back in again and it just fails and it refuses the connection.

Leo Laporte (01:13:17):
Okay.

(01:13:22):
Yeah. So I'm not an expert on Myth tv and I am not sure what remote access they build in. Typically, if I'm going to, for instance, I have a Linux box here that is running my website and a variety of other things. And I have computers at home, not just Linux, but Mac and Windows and Linux. And typically I'll use a protocol called SS s H to log into this, and it gives me a command line on the computer here from any computer anywhere else. S S H is good, strong and powerful, but you do have to set it up. I am not sure if Myth uses S S H. If it does, then you're going to need, and I'll tell you what it is conceptually, I can't tell you exactly the steps involved, but you're going to need to on the myth box, say this person is allowed to log in.

(01:14:16):
You could do it by password. That's a little risky. I usually do it. This is why I didn't want to kind of get into this. It gets more complicated. I usually do it with a public key crypto. So I'll have a public key that I publish on the myth box and a private key that I keep on the computer I'm going to access it with. And when I open an SS s H session on the remote box, it sees me and it validates me without any password or anything, but it's very strong. Unless somebody has access to my private key, they can't get into it. That's the most secure way to do it. Because in effect, what you're doing is you're probably going to put this on the internet in effect. You don't have to, but I do. Certainly I can S ss H in from any computer.

(01:15:00):
So you want to make sure that's absolutely secure. So the first thing I would do is look at Myth and SS S H and see if Myth supports SS s h. If it does, you're going to want to make sure the Ss s h server is running and that you've given it permission to let these other computers, the rasp, the Raspberry Pi computers get into it. It doesn't have to be, by the way, S S H works on Windows and Mac as well. So it's very handy just to have your laptop and be able to SS s H in, I probably could do it from here. Let me open a terminal.

Caller Aaron (01:15:33):
That's the problem. Sometimes I'll connect once and I go to do it again. I think, all right, I'm all set. And it says, no, I don't know who you are. Forget it.

Leo Laporte (01:15:42):
Right, right. So I'm going to SS s h to my computer across the room from my Macintosh. You can show this because it won't ask for a password or it shouldn't, oh, it asks for my pass phrase to validate the key, and now I'm in. You're not looking at it. So when I do an lss, now that is not this computer. This is a Macintosh. This is the computer across the room, sshd into it, so I can run any program. In fact, I use a program called Tux to keep these programs running. These are Minecraft servers. I think it looks like it's a Minecraft server.

(01:16:33):
I'm trying to remember. I just exited out. Let me start my Minecraft server. So I'm starting a Minecraft server on a remote machine. If I do control B n, I'll go to the next one. And b n, this is the I R C running WeChat. These are all running in the background remotely on another machine. So I've logged in using SS s H to these other machines, and I can see I'm running four different Linux servers. I actually accidentally killed the Survivor server. So if you were on our Minecraft server, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to kill it. I'm sorry, but I'm starting it up again. So that's the best way. If you want that kind of command line access from one machine. In this case, I'm calling from a Mac in the terminal to another machine, and then I'm going to troll B and D, which will detach the T Muck server, but I'm still logged into the remote machine. It's called Beast. That's how I know. And then if I exit, I am now back to, my connection is closed. I'm back to my Mac. So that's s s H.

(01:17:36):
So the thing I can't tell you exactly how to do, because I'm not familiar with Myth, but myth is probably running an Ss SS H server. It sounds like you've been able to get in at one point, make sure that you have authenticated yourself with that S S H server. You're going to have to do a man S S H to read all the commands for that, and you should be able to log into it from any machine. Again, if you're going to put it up to the public, you're going to want to use public key crypto to make sure that that is really secure, because you don't want bad guys to start logging into your myth box. I don't know if that's helpful or not. That's pretty high-end stuff. Does that make sense?

Caller Aaron (01:18:17):
Everything you talk about, I understand. It's like there's just that Why

Leo Laporte (01:18:21):
Isn't it working? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure.

Caller Aaron (01:18:23):
And so is there a website that you'd like to go to that maybe to start you off from fresh, simple things? Well,

Leo Laporte (01:18:30):
Right now I'm on the Myth TV wiki, which is a really good resource that describes installing. I think you may not have an S SS H server running if you don't. This describes how to set it up. It describes how to secure it. It's very important that you do that. And then you can, oh, that's interesting. And then you can actually run the GUI through SS s h, which is s ss h is kind of an amazing program. So I would start with the Myth TV wiki, because that's going to have a lot of valuable information in there and how to use ss s H and that kind of thing.

Caller Aaron (01:19:12):
Yeah. So I use Myth TV just to record over the air

Leo Laporte (01:19:16):
Tv. Well, I'm sorry, I just assumed that was the box you want to log into.

Caller Aaron (01:19:19):
Yeah, that's just one of 'em, but I can't seem to do it.

Leo Laporte (01:19:22):
Raspberry Pi or Raspberry Pie either, huh? Yeah.

Caller Aaron (01:19:25):
So maybe I just haven't installed ss s h like I should have.

Leo Laporte (01:19:30):
So are you using s s H to try to log in and then sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Caller Aaron (01:19:35):
Yes. Yep. So I'll just keep working on it. But I understand everything you're talking about, but I think I'm missing a step here and

Leo Laporte (01:19:45):
There. But this is how you, by the way, you know something about Linux. Obviously, despite your warning, this is how you learn, right? This is how I learn is I'm famous for seeing, okay, remember a few years ago the audio wasn't working on our Linux box over here. And I said, well, let's go to the terminal. And we spent about half an hour in terminal commands getting the audio working. I don't know how to do it until I do it. And the good news is there is for Linux, especially the best resources, because Linux is basically buy hobbyists and enthusiasts for hobbies and enthusiasts. And so there's a lot of material out there. You're probably running Debian or Ubuntu or one of the Debian derivatives. You certainly are on your raspberry pie. But I always strongly recommend something called the Arch Wiki. Now, this is the most high end information out there, but it's also the most complete arch is a version of Linux.

(01:20:47):
Not Debbie. And not Ubuntu. That is self-install. You're doing all the work yourself. So the Arch Linux, Wiki wiki dot arch linux.org is in an incredible resource of basic all kinds of Linux information. Now, some of it doesn't apply to Ubuntu and other Debian derivatives, but a lot of it does. For instance, if I search for Ss, s H, the S s H information will be very good here. Very good here. So there's a lot of information. Here's a different ss, ss, H servers, different ways to access it. There will be information in here, how to use public key crypto to secure your Ss, s H, things like that. So you asked me for a site that I go to when I am puzzled in Linux. Even if I'm not using Arch, I will often go to the arch Wiki because everything is heavily documented over there. Really a great resource.

Caller Aaron (01:21:50):
Yeah, I'm stuck on Abuntu. I've tried others, but I always seem to go back to Ubuntu.

Leo Laporte (01:21:54):
Nothing wrong with Ubuntu. It's a very good, very solid distro. Yeah,

Caller Aaron (01:21:59):
I like Arch because, well, I always like the newest thing,

Leo Laporte (01:22:03):
Whatever pops. That's why. Yeah, I use Manjaro, which is an arch derivative, but these are called rolling distributions. So Ubuntu is a stable distribution, but you are like me, you always want to have the latest Firefox, the latest ss, s h, and all of that rolling Distros update that stuff all the time. In fact, if you're on, in fact, I could do it right now. Actually. I think the Beast Box over here is actually Debian because it's a server and I want it to be more stable. So I was going to go see if I have updates. I definitely do over here. I'm using Arch over here, and every time I do a Pac-Man, which is the arch package manager, they'll think 30 things that have to be updated. But that's what you want. If you want a rolling dis, you want to always keep up to date.

(01:22:52):
It sounds like you're doing pretty well. You know what you're doing. And I think just keep playing with it. The fact it's a little puzzling that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. That sounds to me like firewall rules or something going on in your network. You might want to look at that myth tv, ss, s h, port forwarding. That might help a lot for the Myth TV box. It might need something in your network, your firewall that says, yeah, it's okay to SSS H from this machine to that machine, that kind of thing. Yeah. I just feel I can do a lot more just seeing my, yeah, you know how you do it. You don't get scared, you don't freak out. You try it and it's nice to have those raspberry pies. I wouldn't mess with your myth box, but it's nice to have those raspberry pies.

(01:23:38):
It's nice to have a Linux box that you can mess with and know, Hey, if I screw it up, I'll just reinstall. I can't tell you how many times I've reinstalled Linux on my Linux machines. I screwed 'em up somehow. That's how you learn. I even have an open source firmware on my router. Yeah, nice. I love that. Oh, you know what you're doing. Not easier than I thought. You're trying to hide your light under a bushel. You're a full geek. You're full on geek. And I say that with love. Well, thanks a lot. It's a pleasure meeting you. Call anytime. Alright, take care. Call twit TV for the Zoom for the phone. (888) 724-2884. This is ask the tech guys. Mike a sergeant has the week off, so it's just ask the tech guy. We should just tape that over. But I did this show by myself for some time. I think I can fake it coming up in a half an hour. Salmon bull, salmon, Mr. Car guy. Lots of car news going on out there. Eric's been lounging. I'm going to make Eric sit up. Eric, you look too comfortable. You don't have your hand raised, but I'm going to take a chance. Come on down.

(01:24:53):
We're doing that in honor of Bob Barker this week. Actually, I say that all the time.

Caller Eric (01:25:01):
How you doing?

Leo Laporte (01:25:02):
Oh, you sat up now. Come on. You look pretty comfortable in that chair over there.

Caller Eric (01:25:07):
Yeah, I'm just enjoying my time off on Sundays now. You had me on my floor to my truck on Sundays driving. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:25:17):
You're You're that Eric. Oh, I'm. So you're at home with your 3D printer. Nice. Tell me what you do with that sucker.

Caller Eric (01:25:29):
Mostly RC hobby stuff, but

Leo Laporte (01:25:31):
Yeah, I see your bench on the other side where your soldering gun and all that stuff. That's

Caller Eric (01:25:37):
Nice. Yeah, I just put that in yesterday.

Leo Laporte (01:25:39):
Oh, very nice.

Caller Eric (01:25:41):
Yeah, no, I have Sundays off now and a week ago you couldn't walk in my room here. So I've been cleaning up my hobby office.

Leo Laporte (01:25:49):
Isn't that nice? Have a nice place to go. A little man cave where you can hide out with your soldering gun and some men's magazines and watch some hunting and shooting and fishing. That's what I like.

(01:26:02):
I don't know what I'm talking about. Although with Lisa being ill with Covid, I am happy. I have a man cave. I got a couch in there and I can hide out in there until she's feeling a little bit better. There you go. So you didn't have your hand raised. You were just watching. We just pretend we're driving somewhere. Just pretend the universal drive, we were talking about this the other day. This either could be driving or milking a cow. If you want to make it like driving, you have to go like this. Do you have anything you want to talk about Eric or you just

Caller Eric (01:26:39):
No, I do have something maybe in the future, but no problem. I got to relearn myself. It's a ham topic. I don't know if, okay,

Leo Laporte (01:26:47):
I'm a bad ham, but I can maybe help you. I'll try

Caller Eric (01:26:50):
Right up here. Here, I'll show it to you.

Leo Laporte (01:26:54):
What's that? What has he got there? That's the world's tiniest radio.

Caller Eric (01:27:00):
This is a raspberry PI four with a ham hat.

Leo Laporte (01:27:04):
How fun. So it's an S D F software defined radio.

Caller Eric (01:27:09):
Yeah. And I built this though as a all in one and it uses p o e power over ethernet. So you just plug it in your ethernet. Oh, nice.

Leo Laporte (01:27:20):
Anywhere you, but

Caller Eric (01:27:22):
It uses, it's an all-star mode, so it's ham over VoIP or whatever, but with just a cheap handheld radio sitting here in the office, you could connect anybody around the world without

Leo Laporte (01:27:40):
That is so cool. So Allstar is a network of hams using raspberry pies basically.

Caller Eric (01:27:53):
Yeah. So this basically works. I mean, I haven't used it in a while and I really don't know anybody that's built one like this. That's usually, it's two boxes, but I built it very cool so that it's all in one unit.

Leo Laporte (01:28:05):
Very nice. That's really good. It's running asterisk, which is kind of cool. Which the old P B X system that allowed you to set up a P B X in your house so you could have 20 lines in your home. This is really cool. So you need a radio on one end. It is ultimately goes to radio. You're not using link?

Caller Eric (01:28:26):
No, you need a handheld ham radio. Then you program a simplex, a radio frequency in it. You put it on low power and then you could just talk anywhere throughout your building office, whatever. But if you have two of these, and because the room that I have, everybody has their own own individual room. So in theory, I could have one or you could have one. You'd have one at your house, but then you'd be able to walk around you, your location there and just use ham radio to communicate between two locations. That

Leo Laporte (01:28:58):
Is sweet. And you can also talk to the moon if you want wanted to. That's really, really cool. So ultimately the backend is not radio, but the internet,

Caller Eric (01:29:13):
Right? Correct.

Leo Laporte (01:29:14):
Yeah. Yeah. So it is like echo link in that respect. That's really cool. That's really cool. I remember going on a cruise and there was a guy sitting in the lobby with his hand held and I said, are you able to talk to people? He said, no, no, I'm Echo Link. I'm using Echo Link. It's connected to my phone and then to the internet. But this is what's cool about amateur radio these days. It's much more than just radio. It is all sorts of neat stuff. Well, thank you Eric for sharing some of your home life with us. That's fantastic.

Caller Eric (01:29:44):
No problem. Eventually I like to make a second one and I'll send it to you. Then you can set it up and run

Leo Laporte (01:29:49):
It. Oh, no, no, no. You don't need to do that, but I am very interested in it. That's very cool. Hams are amazing. I just love that community. Thank you, Eric.

Caller Eric (01:29:58):
No

Leo Laporte (01:29:58):
Problem. Have a great day. Sorry to bother you and your day off. I didn't recognize him because he wasn't driving. No, because normally when we've seen him in the past, he's driving. He's going through places and stuff. That's really cool. I'm glad you got Sunday off. Kevin's been hanging on for a long time. He's in Las Vegas, let's say. This has become a real geek fest without Micah today. This is me in my element, man. I love this stuff. Hey Kevin, welcome to ask the tech guys. Micah usually keeps me down to earth. Hi. Hey, I world, you live in an I world?

Caller Kevin (01:30:33):
Oh yeah. Back in the day from the old Mac World conventions, that many that I went to, but now r I p of course. Yeah. But definitely wanted to welcome you almost to Vegas because I know you're going to be coming

Leo Laporte (01:30:51):
Out in November.

Caller Kevin (01:30:54):
Formula One. Yeah, thanks for all.

Leo Laporte (01:30:56):
Is it crazy now? The are the road systems completely messed up now?

Caller Kevin (01:31:01):
Road construction and highway? What a mess. Yeah, I'm definitely staying away from the Strip.

Leo Laporte (01:31:08):
Whoever thought it would be a good idea to turn the Las Vegas strip into a Formula One track, really. I don't know. I mean, it's great for Vegas. There'll be probably three or 400,000 people over the race weekend, and it's going to be cool for us to watch because it's 10:00 PM Saturday night, so it'll be a beautiful race, and I can't wait to see what they put on that M S G sphere because the track goes around the M S G sphere. So it is going to be a spectacular view to rival Singapore and some of the other beautiful races. But boy, I'd hate to be living in Vegas for the next couple of months. It's going to be nuts.

Caller Kevin (01:31:51):
You don't need to see my command center here, so I'll give you a little,

Leo Laporte (01:31:56):
That's right where we're going to be sitting right in front. Right in front of the fountain.

Caller Kevin (01:32:00):
It's going to go right by there. In fact, I think they're going to be charging a lot more money for hotel rooms.

Leo Laporte (01:32:05):
Oh, I know they are. I already have one. We were staying at the Bellagio and it's several thousand a night. I can't remember, but it was, you know what? I didn't, didn't really look. I just pressed the buy button and kind of hid my eyes. It's very expensive. The tickets alone for the three days of the event are I think $3,000. They're very expensive.

Caller Kevin (01:32:29):
Oh yeah. It's nuts. It's just crazy. We're sitting

Leo Laporte (01:32:32):
In the grandstands in front of the fountains right on the strip, which will be a nice high speed straightaway. So basically we're going to sit there and see them go 69 times and it'll be over.

Caller Kevin (01:32:45):
Well, that's crazy because we've got new, well, they're always doing new construction on casinos, but we've got a new one just about couple of blocks from you, the Durango that's opening up June. And then of course we've got the Super Bowl coming in February.

Leo Laporte (01:33:01):
Unbelievable. Crazy

Caller Kevin (01:33:02):
Coming from my old launch of the Bay Area are going to be out here. Well, in probably visiting in another ballpark until they build the new one, which is going to be right where the Tropicana is right now. Oh, wow. So we've got a lot of sporting events coming. Of course, the ACEs, the female basketball team, which you've

Leo Laporte (01:33:23):
Got the Golden Knights, you got the Raiders. This has become, I mean, Vegas is always fun to go to just for the, I don't even gamble just for the shows and the restaurants and the hotels, but now there'll be so much to do. It really makes Las Vegas a destination. I mean, ultimately I think that's good.

Caller Kevin (01:33:45):
Yeah. I retired here just in time from the Bay Area about two years

Leo Laporte (01:33:49):
Ago. We have been thinking about retiring to Vegas, just like we want to be able to go downstairs and party. It looks like so much fun.

Caller Kevin (01:34:03):
Oh, it is. When the shows and stuff, I mean, I do a little bit of gambling, but mostly it's the shows and going out to dinner. And

Leo Laporte (01:34:11):
If I had a gambling problem or Lisa did, we would not even consider it because it's too expensive. But Lisa, this is funny. She'll basically say, I can't remember what it is. I have $200. And once it's gone, it's gone. Unfortunately, the last two times, once when in Reno and once in Vegas, she played the slots. She won 800 bucks one time and 600 bucks another time. So I'm afraid now I'm a little worried that she might say I'm a winner. No one's a winner in the long run. They don't build this hotel on a bunch of people winning money from M G M. Well,

Caller Kevin (01:34:50):
The thing you have to do is say, I'm going to take money to spend on gambling not

Leo Laporte (01:34:55):
To lose. That's exactly what she says. Yeah, this is what I'm going to spend. This is my entertainment budget.

Caller Kevin (01:35:02):
Well, I wanted to kind of reminisce a little bit about a week and a half ago when you had the Mac break weekly on the 25th anniversary of the iMac. I'd never had an iMac, but I did have previous, my first computer actually was a PowerMax 7,600. So I know about making the transition from older technology to U S B where the serial ports and a d B ports and the scuzzy and all of that, and having to try to make that last a little while by using good old I Omega zip drives, which until the death always was a standby to get some more storage. I had something called an orb drive. I was doing everything. Oh, I

Leo Laporte (01:35:46):
Had an orb. I remember those. How big were, they seemed like they were huge at the time, but I think in hindsight there probably, maybe it was a hundred megabytes. How big were the orbs?

Caller Kevin (01:35:58):
I think it was like 500 megabytes. They were

Leo Laporte (01:36:02):
Big. Yeah, they were ulli boxes, I think. Yeah, and

Caller Kevin (01:36:07):
Those didn't last either. So I mean, I tend to do that. We've talked about this before because I just recently got last year a Mac Studio Max to replace my cheese grater 2008 tower, and I kept that for 14 years, and I had that Power Mac for probably about six years. And I had, after I went to the graphite G four for seven, eight years, I'm

Leo Laporte (01:36:31):
Going to start calling you vintage, Kevin.

Caller Kevin (01:36:34):
I'll tell you, I keep those machines on the Power Mac. I actually replaced the 6 0 4 processor with a G three Power Mac company, and I added whatever, I think it was like five 12 megs or something.

Leo Laporte (01:36:49):
That was a lot in those days. That was

Caller Kevin (01:36:51):
Like of memory and I think of maybe a 500, I forget how much storage I got, but it was just crazy trying to keep it going. So I tend to keep things going as long as possible. The technology, because it works. I mean, Macs do fine over the years. But now actually the lead into my question about speaking of older technology I'm using right now that my 10, iPhone 10 as on continuity on my Mac, which is doing great. And I was surprised that it was still supported, and I'm still getting such a good picture as you can hopefully see,

Leo Laporte (01:37:32):
Oh, is that what you're using right now? Wow, that's good.

Caller Kevin (01:37:34):
Yeah, it's one looks great on continuity. Yeah. So yeah, it's been great. And whenever I've done any Zoom calling, I've used it and I want to continue to use it. And I was thinking, well, now we've got a good reason to dedicate it to that because we've got iPhone 15 coming up and it's been over five years now. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:37:55):
Maybe get yourself a 15, put that 10 on a tripod and leave it there.

Caller Kevin (01:38:01):
Well, that's what I'm thinking. Either one of those rigs they have on your monitor or just you get Eric

Leo Laporte (01:38:09):
To three D print you a little thing. The hold up. The only reason I don't like the ones on the monitor is because it's looking down on you. And for Zoom, ideally you'd be looking at the person you're talking to. So what I do is I set up a little tripod and I actually put a small O B SS cam, which is only about a three quarters of an inch cube on that. It doesn't block much of the screen, but I am now looking straight ahead at the person on the call, and I think that, well,

Caller Kevin (01:38:41):
That's what I have right now. I have an iPad.

Leo Laporte (01:38:42):
Yeah, this looks pretty good. This is at an eye level. It looks really good. Yeah. Yeah.

Caller Kevin (01:38:45):
I'm using an iPad, a stand that I use for my iPad Pro, but I'm using it right now with the camera, and I think it works better that way. So I was looking at probably getting one of those stands for it. The only question I have is I know we've got, besides all the hardware coming up, we've got iOS this and

Leo Laporte (01:39:06):
17 is coming macOS Sonoma, all of this is imminent. I just got, I think probably the last public beta of iOS 17 on my iPhone. I think they're very close to the release, as you know. It'll be the 12th. They'll announce September 12th, they'll announce the new iPhones. That's what we think. And by the 22nd, you'll be getting new iPhones, which means they have to have iOS 17 pushed out probably on the 20th, thereabouts, so that everybody will get that up

Caller Kevin (01:39:34):
Updated. So now the only question is is that either Sonoma or iOS 17 going to Brick my 10 in any way, or am I going to still have support? I know I won't. All the features because I don't have the little notch. Lemme

Leo Laporte (01:39:50):
See what the Apple's supported device list is for iOS 17. Yeah, the 10 is at some point they're going to stop. They're going to stop supporting it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the 10 is they were supporting, the last update was the six Ss, as I remember. So maybe the 10 will be supported for a while. That's fairly modern.

Caller Kevin (01:40:16):
I mean, I was surprised that I could still use it as continuity camera.

Leo Laporte (01:40:20):
Oh, scooter X says it's going to be the iPhone 11 and later.

Caller Kevin (01:40:28):
No.

Leo Laporte (01:40:31):
So it's just going to fall off the edge. Well, you're going to get what you're getting now. You're already using Continuity camera with it, right? Yeah. So it just means you won't get the newest stuff, but it doesn't mean it'll stop working. It just you won't get iOS 17.

Caller Kevin (01:40:49):
Oh yeah. Because that's really the only thing I would use it for. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:40:52):
I think be fine.

Caller Kevin (01:40:54):
I wasn't planning to really repurpose it for anything else. If

Leo Laporte (01:40:58):
For some reason that stops working, there are very good third party solutions that will let you continue to use it, that basically do what continuity Cam does even better. There's ECA Camm, which is probably a little more than you need, although I love EEC Camm, and then there's, I wish Micah were here. There's the one I'm using this, the one he wreck. He uses ECA at home. The one I'm using is a little simpler. It's called Camo from a company called Yeah, I've heard of, yeah, from a company called Re Incubate. It's at re incubate.com and it will work just fine. It is basically continuity camera plus, so it gives you a lot more control over it. I'm a very big fan, and that will absolutely continue to work on the iPhone 10. Some features at some point, I don't know, maybe. I don't know. I think it'll continue to work. It works with, I love camo. I use that instead of continuity camera. So what you do is you put the camo app on your phone, and then you put Camo Studio on your Mac. By the way, it works with Windows too. I think we've showed this working with Windows, the best camera you have probably most people have is your iPhone. Even an iPhone 10 is better than most net cams that you put on your computer. Most Logitech

Caller Kevin (01:42:24):
Terms of stuff like that. Yeah, I've got a crappy Logitech. I think it's 10 80 p, but it's terrible. Yeah. So yeah, definitely.

Leo Laporte (01:42:33):
CAMO is fantastic. It isn't free. I think there is actually, there is a free version, and then for $50 a year, you can get the Pro version, but you try it for free. Put it on your iPhone 10 right now. I think you'll be very impressed. That's what I use.

Caller Kevin (01:42:55):
Is it a subscription or,

Leo Laporte (01:42:58):
Well, the free version is free forever. There are some things it doesn't do. The Pro is a $50 a year subscription. I pay for the Pro. They do sell a lifetime license for a hundred bucks. So if you just said, I know I'm going to use this, I want to use it forever, a hundred bucks, and that lets you use two different,

Caller Kevin (01:43:18):
Well, I'm not sending money on a new webcam. The old, you've

Leo Laporte (01:43:22):
Got the best webcam, it's better than, yeah,

Caller Kevin (01:43:25):
That's the Logitech. But let's go back to the not

Leo Laporte (01:43:29):
Nearly as good. The iPhone camera's remarkable, even in the iPhone 10, and it's better than the laptop. Look at that. The color's better. The lighting.

Caller Kevin (01:43:40):
We don't use that Logitech. I

Leo Laporte (01:43:42):
Don't think you're going to need, I think continuity will continue to work. They're not going to say, oh, yeah, yeah, now that you can't get I 17, it's not going to work. It'll continue to work. So you don't need to worry about anything. But if for some reason it doesn't work to your satisfaction, there's always ECA and camo and camo. Ecamm is more for broadcasting. That's why Micah uses it for iOS today. He can switch and stuff like that. But camo is everything you need. I use camo at home and I love it. I have both actually, but I use camo.

Caller Kevin (01:44:12):
Okay, well, I'll definitely look into that. I'll see. I know, like I said, it's about time to pull the trigger on a new phone. I keep the technology for a while, but after there's a point where, well, but

Leo Laporte (01:44:23):
This is a good use for an, you're going to get an iOS 15, I mean iPhone 15, but you don't want to throw the 10 out. You got something you can do with it.

Caller Kevin (01:44:32):
And I know I'm not going to get much for a trade-in they, apple does new trade-in thing, but I can't imagine they'd give me any more than 10 bucks for it. If they give me anything, they

Leo Laporte (01:44:41):
Might give you more than you think. There's a very brisk market and used phones. In fact, I just read an article about the company that does all of Apple's recycling, and they said they're still selling, I think they said 15,000 iPhone eights every month. There's a brisk market in old iPhones because they're still quality. They still work for, well, isn't

Caller Kevin (01:45:03):
That the s c model that used that eight?

Leo Laporte (01:45:07):
The SE did, but this is an actual iPhone eight because yeah, I'll find that article. It was a really interesting article about the company that basically it was a two or three man company. They went to Apple and they said, we would like to do all of your trade-in recycling. And somehow they convinced them, and now it's a massive company with warehouses all over the world. Lemme see if I can find this. So a really interesting article. I think it was in the New York Times. We talked about it on Mac Break Weekly a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, I'm looking through my old stories. I bookmark all these old stories, but can't find them. Anyway, it was a very, I'll find it before the show's over. We'll put it in the show notes if you want to read about it. And yeah, they said, we sell a huge number of iPhone eights. There's a massive market for that for some reason,

Caller Kevin (01:46:14):
Because on the refu section, they only go back to twelves, I think, and it doesn't make sense to buy any from me to buy

Leo Laporte (01:46:22):
Anything. So that's what happens is that's one of the reasons they sell a lot of these. Apple won't sell 'em, so Apple will sell the more recent ones and the ones that Apple can't sell, this company gets and they sell 'em and they have a marketplace. I can't remember the name of it. It was a really good article. Darn. And I just can't remember the name of it. Anyway, I'll find it for you and put it in

Caller Kevin (01:46:44):
The sheet. Well, the good thing is also you still have Alchemy

Leo Laporte (01:46:47):
Where you, they're called Alchemy. They're in Ireland, and they do all of, when you do a trading in an Apple, they do all of the stuff. They refurbish 'em. They have software that does it. When you trading an Apple device, it's Alchemy system that takes title from the consumer. They have the secondhand dealer license. They use special software to immediately wipe the phone. Then they inspect and grade them. If it's an iPhone eight that's not in great shape, it gets recycled to using Daisy, which Apple, remember that's the robot that Apple showed. It can disassemble 1.2 million phones a year, a hundred thousand phones a month. Alchemy works more on the refurb side of the supply chain, less than 1% of the goods it handles go to recycling. 99% get refurbished at Alchemy plants all around the world there. Miami Plant does 60,000 devices a month. I got the number wrong. Alchemy sells 15,000 iPhone eights a day, not a month a day. There is a brisk market. This was from tnw.com, the next web.com and 300 employees. They made four 42 million in revenue last year. Apple gives them all the business alchemy. Wow. Yeah, it's a great story. Here is a picture. I want your background. Next time you call, this is the Bellagio, after they put up the grandstand.

Caller Kevin (01:48:27):
Oh no,

Leo Laporte (01:48:28):
That's me right there. No, I don't know where I'll be sitting. Nice seeing you there. Yeah, I don't know where I'll be sitting, but that is going to be so much fun.

Caller Kevin (01:48:40):
I'll wave at you. That's okay. Not a big Formula One fan, but that's all right. I guess it'll bring in a lot of revenue.

Leo Laporte (01:48:49):
Yeah, I mean, the Super Bowls are going to be crazy too, but nothing brings in the size. I don't think that this will be the biggest crowd Vegas has ever seen. Typically, the race is the Miami race. The Austin race, Austin gets 400,000 people in one race weekend. So it is a massive influx. So basically, if I were you, I'd be out of town November 19th I think it is,

Caller Kevin (01:49:12):
Or hunkering down.

Leo Laporte (01:49:14):
The cop don't leave the house. Hey, a real pleasure. Thank you, Kevin. I'm glad to talk to an old time M fan.

Caller Kevin (01:49:22):
Oh, definitely. And an old San Francisco resident. In fact, just before Covid, I was going to come out to see you guys there, but then of course that locked everything down and then I retired and moved. We shut it down. I went, oh no. Just before I get a chance to see Mac Break weekly in person and a twit also, but okay,

Leo Laporte (01:49:45):
Don't tell anybody, but if you let me know you're coming, I'll sneak you in the back way.

Caller Kevin (01:49:52):
Alright, well, next time I make a visit back to my old haunts up there in the Bay Area. I'll stop by.

Leo Laporte (01:49:57):
The real problem is now, it's not Covid so much anymore, although it's coming back, apparently, is that we would have to have a full-time staffer. We used to have Moses the Guard, and we'd have to have a full-time taffer at the front door to welcome people to get 'em and ushered in and stuff like that. And there's nobody manning the front door anymore. We don't.

Caller Kevin (01:50:13):
Well, also to make you feel at home,

Leo Laporte (01:50:17):
There's the Golden Gate Bridge,

Caller Kevin (01:50:19):
Which that's where I would be coming across to see you.

Leo Laporte (01:50:21):
People come and say, wait a minute, it's not golden. It's Orange

Caller Kevin (01:50:25):
International. The next time I come, it'll be as a tourist instead of a resident. But sometime in the future, we'll see.

Leo Laporte (01:50:31):
Great to talk to you, Kevin. Have a great day.

Caller Kevin (01:50:33):
Thanks.

Leo Laporte (01:50:34):
Thanks. You too. Take care. Coming up, speaking of cars, our car guy, Sam Abbu Salmon. Hey, the Prince, a principal researcher at Guide House Insights. He hosts the Wonderful Wheel Bearings podcast@wheelbearings.media with Nicole Wakeland and my good friend Robbie. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Sam Abuelsamid, our car guy. Hi, Sam. We missed you. Last time, were you on vacation or were you out driving a car?

Sam Abuelsamid (01:51:06):
No, my wife and I and our dog decided to take a long weekend away on the west side of Michigan, hanging out in a tiny little cabin and had a lovely time.

Leo Laporte (01:51:18):
Everybody that I know in Michigan has a lake house or a cabinet by the lake. I guess that's the thing to do. Well, this

Sam Abuelsamid (01:51:26):
Wasn't ours, we just rented it. There's actually a chain of a place called Getaway House, and they have these little spots tucked away in the woods. They have about 30 or so of these little cabins at each of these locations. And it's got a bed, a little kitchenette, shower and bathroom inside, so you don't have to go to use an outhouse. And the

Leo Laporte (01:51:49):
Weather that time of year is perfect. The lake is beautiful. It's beautiful time to do that. Yeah, well, I never let work get in the way of a little getaway with a wife. I think that's a very important

Sam Abuelsamid (01:52:02):
Thing. Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (01:52:03):
So what's up these days?

Sam Abuelsamid (01:52:06):
So I wanted to talk a little bit about batteries. Ev batteries.

Leo Laporte (01:52:11):
It's funny that you should say this. I had my annual physical the other day, and my doctor and I,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:52:18):
Did your doctor replace your batteries? No,

Leo Laporte (01:52:20):
But for some reason we spent, at least the nurse was giving him the stink eye. She actually called and said, would you get Leo out of there? Because we start talking about electric vehicles and batteries. And he was asking me, what's the latest in battery tech? I heard there's new lithium ion batteries. I heard that there's companies that, there's new batteries that charge up very quickly. So what's state of the art? Because if we're going to move to EVs, this is the biggest pain point right now is you got to stop somewhere and it takes a half an hour to an hour to fill it up.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:52:56):
So let's back up just a little bit. So first of all, lithium ion batteries, that is a very broad category that covers a lot of different types of battery chemistries in there. The one thing they have in common is that they have lithium in them, lithium atoms inside the cells, the individual cells. And basically what happens is when you charge it up, the electrons are stripped off of the lithium atoms. They go out through the circuit and go over to the anode and the lithium ion. So an ion is a charged particle. Normally an atom is neutral, so it's not positive or negative. So when you strip off an electron, what's left of the lithium become positively charged, that travels through the cell from the cathode to the anode, and it gets temporarily embedded in the anode material, which in most cases is modern batteries is usually either graphite or a mix of graphite and silicon.

(01:54:05):
And then the cathode itself has some material is coated with some material that holds those lithium ions. And then when you discharge it, when you run, take power from the battery, the electrons flow back from the anode through the circuit to the cathode, and the lithium ions go back through the cell and they reconnect. So the cathode material, when we talk about lithium ion chemistries, the cathode material is the chemistry that we're talking about there. And there's a bunch of different ones. Most of what you find today in EV batteries, at least in North America, are what we call nickel rich chemistries. And they use nickel usually in combination with cobalt, maybe manganese or aluminum or both. And that's because the nickel rich cells have the highest energy density of the ones we have today. And that's what you want is you want a lot of energy density.

(01:55:04):
You want as much energy stored in as little volume as possible and as little weight as possible. The problem is that chemistry that because you've actually, the cobalt is actually cobalt oxide. So it's cobalt, cobalt dioxide. So cobalt with two oxygen atoms on there. And when you've seen battery fires, what has happened is you've gotten a short circuit in the battery, either because maybe the battery's been punctured or damaged in some way, or there's manufacturing defect and it heats up when you get that short circuit and that cobalt oxide and the nickel release oxygen atoms. And so you get a combination of a lot of heat being released simultaneously. And it's also generating oxygen that can feed a fire. And for a fire, you need three things. You need fuel, something that'll combust oxygen and an ignition source. And when you have a thermal runaway and a battery, yikes, that's what's happening. And so that's why it's really hard to extinguish a battery fire because

Leo Laporte (01:56:16):
You normally can smother it because it's got its own oxygen.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:56:19):
It's generating oxygen internally. So you basically just have to let it burn itself out. So nickel is just one of the types. There's several others, but there's another one that is actually really interesting that actually in China, about two thirds of all the EVs in China use this type. It's called lithium iron phosphate. So there's no nickel in it, no cobalt. This is

Leo Laporte (01:56:45):
Lipo.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:56:46):
Yeah, no. What's referred to as lipo is lithium polymer, which is actually another broad term, which can be any number of chemistries. The polymer is actually referring to the electrolyte. Most cells have a liquid electrolyte and lipo batteries. It's a polymer gel electrolyte.

Leo Laporte (01:57:07):
This is really fascinating because of all the technologies we use day-to-day batteries have been the slowest to evolve, and this EV market has really driven them to some very interesting stuff. It's not lipo, it's LiFi O or lippo.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:57:25):
Yeah. Well, okay, so yeah, FP, that's different from lipo. So this is L F P, so lithium iron phosphate, and if you're watching the screen right now, you'll see that the chemistry there, the phosphate is PO four, which is oxygen phosphorus with four oxygen atoms attached. What happens with this is if you damage the cell in some way and it starts, gets a short circuit, it will release oh four instead of oh two. Well, oh four won't contribute to a fire. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:58:00):
Interesting.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:58:01):
So the beauty of this is basically, it's essentially resistant to thermal runaway. So it's much, much safer than nickel rich batteries. And on top of that iron, one of the most common elements on the planet, most of our planet is made of iron. Phosphorus is also very common, very prevalent. It's available everywhere. And oxygen is fairly common as well. So the materials, the raw materials for this are much cheaper than for nickel rich batteries. And it's safe and it's extremely stable. There is, however, one slight downside.

Leo Laporte (01:58:43):
Oh, there's always a downside.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:58:44):
Yes. So the energy density of an L F P cathode is usually about 30% or so less than a nickel rich cathode. So that would mean bigger

Leo Laporte (01:58:58):
Battery, less power,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:59:00):
All things equal, you'd have about 30% less range.

Leo Laporte (01:59:03):
Yeah, that's not

Sam Abuelsamid (01:59:04):
Correct. However, there are ways to get around this problem. And so one of the changes by the changes

Leo Laporte (01:59:11):
LSPs are used in model threes and model Ys from Texas

Sam Abuelsamid (01:59:15):
In the standard range model three, or sorry, the standard range model three and also

Leo Laporte (01:59:19):
Not the high range because for what you just described,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:59:24):
And that's in North America, in other markets, in Europe and in China, they use it in both the model three and the model Y for the standard range versions. And that's actually the bestselling version of the Model Y. And the model three is the L F P version, particularly in China, because they're more price conscious. Fires are more price conscious there.

Leo Laporte (01:59:44):
So this is good. This means we'll see fewer out of control vehicle fires with EVs as this starts to take over.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:59:50):
So lemme talk a little bit about how we get around that energy density problem and that is what we call a cell to pack architecture. If you look at typical modern EV batteries today, they use a modular setup. So the cells are installed into a box we call a module, and those modules are installed into a bigger box. So you got a box in a box and as you've talked about many times over the years, going back to when Apple started getting rid of removable or replaceable batteries in their laptops and then did that with the iPhones. The reason why they do that is because when you have a battery that you can remove move that has a casing around it, and there's a structure in the device as well, those take up physical space. If you get rid of those and just put the cell directly in there, you can put a bigger cell in because you're not using up space for this packaging.

Leo Laporte (02:00:48):
The packaging is the phone or the car. Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:00:51):
And so in this case, modular EV batteries, the modules take up a bunch of volume within that pack. And so if you look at a typical modular battery pack today for an ev, only about 30 to 35% of the volume of that pack is actually active cell material that's storing energy, which is pretty poor. And you think about how big these packs are, basically a third of it is actually storing energy. The rest is just these boxes and other associated components. And that also adds to the cost of the battery. So what we're starting to see now is a shift to what we call a sell to pack architecture. So you get rid of the modules, they've found that the batteries are actually durable enough and reliable enough. They last long enough that the reason they use the modules in the first place was to enable serviceability. So if you had a problem, you could pull out the pack, remove a module, replace the module, and that's in fact what they did to your Chevy Bolt is they did the battery recall, they tested every module and they only replaced the modules that were suspect.

Leo Laporte (02:02:04):
Oh, interesting.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:02:04):
Instead of replacing the entire pack, smart, but for the most part they don't really need to do that. So they're moving to cell to pack. So they just stack all the cells directly in the box, in the big box, glue them together. In some cases, like Tesla's 46 80 structural pack, they're using cylindrical cells that have, when you pack in a bunch of cylinders, you're going to have space in between the cylinders. They're filling it with a structural foam to bond everything together. But when you do that, especially if you have prismatic cells, rectangular cells, you can really fill up the space in the pack with cells. And there's a company here in Michigan called our Next Energy or one that is doing this now. They're delivering their current Aries battery pack. It's a lithium ion iron phosphate battery pack that now the fill ratio of active material in there is about 75%. So you've doubled the amount of active material in the same size pack

Leo Laporte (02:03:12):
More than compensating for the 30% loss in capacity. Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:03:15):
That's great. A couple of years ago they took a Tesla model ss when they first started up, they built their first prototype pack, they put it in a Model ss, so they used the same package dimensions, battery pack dimensions as a standard Model S battery, but they filled it with their L F P cells in this cell to pack format, so no modules and they put it in there. So even though the iron phosphate has a lower direct energy density, because they were able to put so much more of it in the pack, they were able to drive it to Northern Michigan and back again 752 miles on a single charge.

Leo Laporte (02:03:53):
That's pretty good. That's okay. Like double what I get or more than double what I get right now. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (02:04:01):
That's fantastic. The standard model S with it's original Tesla battery pack would go a little over 300

Leo Laporte (02:04:08):
Miles, although we know Tesla exaggerates some of the range, but still apples to apples.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:04:13):
Yeah, they went 752 miles. Real world driving on a single charge with

Leo Laporte (02:04:18):
This. Yeah, well I remember when I got my model X, they showed us the 1866 fifties that they put in there and they looked like regular Duracell batteries without surrounding their cells. iCal

Sam Abuelsamid (02:04:31):
Cells, they're a little bit larger than a double A

Leo Laporte (02:04:34):
Cylinders don't pack very well. There's lots of empty space. You could see how that would not be the most efficient way to pack in batteries. Now I have to

Sam Abuelsamid (02:04:45):
Ask you, it's always a trade off though, because the cylindrical cells are cheaper to manufacture than they're easily

Leo Laporte (02:04:53):
Replaced one by one. Yeah, yeah. So I got to ask you though, if we're talking about this, and this is what my doctor wanted to know, what about these solid state batteries from Toyota they charge in 10 minutes and go 745 miles. I remember by the way, Toyota's first EVs, they had to recall the wheels fell off. So I'm not going to necessarily believe anything Toyota says credible.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:05:21):
Well, yes and no. These solid state cells. So the difference between what a solid state sell and what we have today, you mentioned earlier lipo or polymer lithium polymer, the electrolyte that they put in the cells that allows the ions to travel back and forth between the anode and the cathode today is a liquid or a gel. And that also, and when you get overheating, there's also oxygen released from that. And so that's a problem. What they're doing with these solid state cells is they're replacing it with a conductive ceramic material, solid ceramic material. So once you inject it in there and it cures, it becomes a solid. So now you potentially have a battery, a cell that can't have a short circuit the way you can if you have a gel or liquid electrolyte because it's one solid, it becomes one solid block. And so there's no way for the anode and the cathode to ever come in contact. You

Leo Laporte (02:06:32):
May already have, if you have a pacemaker, they're using those solid state batteries today.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:06:37):
Right. The problem with solid state cells, yes, they do work really, really well and they can have very high energy density and they can charge really fast. You can get a lot of power out of 'em. The problem is actually scaling up the manufacturing, building them in enough volume to do EVs. And so this is where everybody has struggled back. I dunno if you remember, probably six or seven years ago, Dyson wanted to build an ev and when they started their EV project, they bought a company here in Ann Arbor where I am. It came out of University of Michigan that had been developing solid state batteries and they bought it because they wanted that technology, so they bought 'em. And the problem is like everybody that's been doing solid state, they have not been able to get it to scale the manufacturing to the point where it's actually usable. So yeah, solid state batteries can work in very small cells, very small volumes, but for the quantity that you need for EVs, they still haven't figured out how to actually manufacture those in large format sells and large high volumes. So Toyota is claiming around 20, 27, 28, there's a bunch of companies doing this and all making similar claims. We'll see. It's still, most companies are saying probably late this decade we'll start to see some solid state batteries.

Leo Laporte (02:08:15):
By the way, fun fact, the first solid state batteries were invented by the late John. Good enough, he just passed away in June at the age of 101. He was a brilliant battery scientist. We can thank him for a lot of what we know about batteries and a lot of the battery inventions. And he was the first to suggest a solid state EV style battery. So there's hope. There's hope, but it's not around the corner yet

Sam Abuelsamid (02:08:44):
Before we

Leo Laporte (02:08:44):
Get the best bet in the long

Sam Abuelsamid (02:08:46):
Run, certainly in the near term near to midterm, we're going to start seeing Tesla said you mentioned already is shipping the standard range model three with an L F P battery pack this fall, the 2024 model year mach e like your car, the standard range version of that is getting an L F P pack. Oh good. The F one 50 lightning is getting one early next year and Ford is building a very large L F P production plant here in Michigan. That should be online in 2026. GM just announced an investment in a Silicon Valley company, a materials company that's developing some interesting L F P chemistries and you're going to see a lot more L F P. As I said, two thirds of the EVs in China are already using L F P batteries and a bunch of them in Europe and you're going to start seeing a lot more of them here in North America over the next couple of years as well because it's so much cheaper. It's about 30 to 40% cheaper than nickel rich cells. And when you use this kind of structural architecture or sell to pack architecture, you can basically get to parody with the energy density of nickel cells at a much lower cost and it's safer. You'll never have a thermal runaway. And another thing, they also last a lot longer, a nickel cell can do about 808 to 900 charge cycles. L F P cells can do thousands of charge cycles.

Leo Laporte (02:10:24):
Interesting.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:10:26):
So when have

Leo Laporte (02:10:27):
For laptops and smartphones as well.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:10:30):
Yeah. You may have heard in the past Elon talk about a million mile battery. That's what he's talking about is L F P. Interesting. L F P cells can conceivably last a million miles. Take guess they're

Leo Laporte (02:10:41):
Not ideal for a phone or a laptop though because battery life would be lower.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:10:47):
Yeah, you're much more size volume constraint and so that energy density, you don't really want to sacrifice that energy density in a handheld device.

Leo Laporte (02:11:00):
You've already got as much

Sam Abuelsamid (02:11:01):
As you're ever going to have in a vehicle. It's a little easier.

Leo Laporte (02:11:06):
Sam Bull Sam principle researcher at Guide House Insights. Listen to the Wheel Bearings podcast@wheelbearings.media and every month here it's always a good thing to see you.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:11:18):
Good to see you too, Leo.

Leo Laporte (02:11:19):
Yeah, I'm glad you took a little time off, but I'm glad we could get you back. Thanks Sam. Yep,

Sam Abuelsamid (02:11:23):
Thank you. Have a great one.

Leo Laporte (02:11:24):
Alright, you're watching. Ask the tech guys with just one. It's half the tech guys half the fun more in a moment. I think you know what, I haven't done all day. Should I do a phone, another phone call and then I'll do some email. I see somebody on the horn, on the heater, on the blower. How many different names do we have for, did I pick up the wrong one? It looks like it was on the horn heater blower. Hello. What's your name and where are you calling from sir?

Caller Cliff (02:12:07):
I'm Cliff from Colton.

Leo Laporte (02:12:08):
Hi Cliff from Colton. Colton where? Colton. What state?

Caller Cliff (02:12:13):
Colton, California. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:12:15):
I imagine there's Colton's in other areas. So I just wanted to clarify that. Cliff, what

Caller Cliff (02:12:20):
Can I do? Probably right.

Leo Laporte (02:12:21):
What can I do for you Cliff?

Caller Cliff (02:12:25):
Well a buddy of mine is having to put his website on the shelf. He's been trying to develop it and he asked me to try to back it up and it is on Amazon Web services

Leo Laporte (02:12:44):
Really

Caller Cliff (02:12:45):
Do

Leo Laporte (02:12:47):
That's an interesting,

Caller Cliff (02:12:50):
That's where he hosted, it's where it's hosted now.

Leo Laporte (02:12:53):
So a

Caller Cliff (02:12:53):
Website

Leo Laporte (02:12:54):
Is actually a very simple thing to back up because a website really is a bunch of text files, H T M L and C S Ss and then whatever media is included. But it's all just a bunch of files that are sitting in one or more folders at the root of the server directory.

Caller Cliff (02:13:19):
That's why

Leo Laporte (02:13:20):
Go ahead.

Caller Cliff (02:13:22):
I was just going to say that's why I initially didn't think anything of it. Go up there with an FTP client and grab it. But this Amazon web services is insane because they really want you to back it up online

Leo Laporte (02:13:40):
Wants, wants to retire. They sell, what do they sell? Hard drive storage. Yeah. So when he says he wants you to back it up, does he mean back it up so that he could at some point in the future host it somewhere else?

Caller Cliff (02:14:00):
Correct. Because he spent a lot of money on this. They, he didn't write it himself. He paid for India to do it and there's a lot of AI in it and apparently it's fairly advanced because when he downloaded from them to begin with, they're the ones who transferred it to him was on web services when he downloaded from them to begin with. What he has is everything on it is identified as a Trojan. So

Leo Laporte (02:14:37):
He's got a more complicated website which has code on it and is running a code engine and I don't know what language it is, probably P H P, but it might be other stuff as well. So it is a, I

Caller Cliff (02:14:53):
Would guess pH.

Leo Laporte (02:14:54):
Yeah, it's a more complicated site. So I mean all of that still is stored as text files. It sounds like Amazon doesn't support F T P into it, but there must be other ways of getting those files from a, in fact, it should be easier because it's a W Ss to get to the files that are on that drive and just copy them. I am trying to think of, I mean if you had another a w S account that was yours and it's easy to set one up and it's free and maybe get an SS three, get some SS three storage, you could probably easily copy it over there. The Amazon wants you to do that and once it's in your own S three bucket, it would be easy to download it to copy it and get it all that way. I was going to show you, well

Caller Cliff (02:15:55):
Then why can't I just copy his bucket?

Leo Laporte (02:16:00):
That's what I'm saying. You're going to copy his bucket to your bucket and then get it. He could copy it. I'm sure he can copy it. I'm going to ask our esteemed team tech guy in the I R C and Discord if anybody has a W Ss and how can you, does a W S not support F T P or F T P? Did you tried ftp?

Caller Cliff (02:16:28):
They say kind of do, but it was a nightmare trying to get the information out of them.

Leo Laporte (02:16:35):
Yeah, they don't want to do it in other words.

Caller Cliff (02:16:38):
Right,

Leo Laporte (02:16:39):
But they can't not let you do it. Obviously you have the right to access it. Let me just see A W Ss SS F T P A W S transfer is what they want you to do, but I wonder if this transfers, can you transfer it to local, map your domain to the server endpoint, select authentication, integrate transfer the data. This looks like this transfer is from one SS three to a bucket to another S three bucket. So that's a fully managed, I'm just looking at different ways you can do it. They do support SS F T P and they want you to use transfer because that's keeping it in the family. But if you want to download everything here, Mike B has found a little article. Let's take a look at this. Create an S F T P enabled server. The other way to do it is if it supports S S H, we were talking about that earlier, secure shell SS s h creates a tunnel that you could then use S C P or secure copy over it and literally copy the files. So that would be the next thing to do is can I ss s H into this bucket? Frankly, I prefer S P to F T P. So rather than do this all this fancy thing, ask your friend, is he giving you credentials to log in?

Caller Cliff (02:18:24):
I've got all the credentials. He knows nothing. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:18:26):
Yeah. So you don't need to ask him. I am sure they support S S H I mean, and if they do, you ss s h into it. Now you're looking at it as if it's a local hard drive and you can use SS c P which has syntax very similar to SS s h to copy you, SS c P, the server name and the file. You could use star Star if you want. And then you say to my local drive and you should be able to copy everything. I think you probably don't want to use the services, the managed services that Amazon provides because I think

Caller Cliff (02:19:09):
I was pulling my hair off track of that.

Leo Laporte (02:19:10):
Yeah, yeah. I think that they, you're exactly right. Do not really want to make that easy, but I think that's where I would approach it. This is the second call. I've thought it second call about SS s h, but I think SS S H on A W Ss, they must have an S s H port that they let you connect to and then you could download everything from that. Yeah, I'm looking at some had an S S H to an e c two instant on Amazon Connect, e C two. That's the elastic computing server. I bet you that they support it. So look at the documentation for whatever a w s services he's using. See if you can turn on S S H if you can. Then you're going to ss, ss H. You're actually not going to even use S S H. You're going to use SS c P, which is copying over s ss h. You're going to S C P space server name, file name. That's the start. And then you're going to put the destination, the source and the destination. I think you should be able to do that. Do you know if he's using what he's using? Is it e C two? Is it light sale? This is the other problem is a W S has a bunch of services, SS three, they're a bunch of different services.

Caller Cliff (02:20:29):
I think he's using s3. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:20:32):
I would be shocked if they didn't have S S H in there. In fact, if you log into his Amazon console, I bet you can see the Ss SS H Service. Make sure that's turned on and then use S C P to copy it and that

Caller Cliff (02:20:45):
Would be, well, thank you very much. Very

Leo Laporte (02:20:47):
Intuitive and normal and fast and simple. I was going to show you, but until you mentioned the ai, I was going to show you a tool that Andy showed me that is really great for copying websites, but this is more for copying, so you can read them offline. This is an add-on for Mozilla called single file. The problem is it would not get the code. So if he's got code running on his site, P H P or other code running on his site, it's not going to get that. It's going to get all the other files of the H T M L, et cetera, et cetera. He probably should be aware if he went to somebody and got somebody to design this, it's probable that it uses code blobs on their server. I'm going to bet JavaScript and other code blobs that he might not have access to without an account with them. That's how they keep you in there in their fold. So this is the, yeah,

Caller Cliff (02:21:42):
Apparently the people who designed the thing did the complete migration to Amazon Web

Leo Laporte (02:21:50):
Services. Okay, we'll see, that means it runs on a S, but this was the problem. Even going back to things like Microsoft's front page was these proprietary code blobs that you really couldn't run. You couldn't just move it to another server, a well-designed website. You should be able to take it, put it somewhere else and it should be able to run. But these guys who are web design services don't want you to do that. And they may well have done something proprietary that you can't just transport over. So don't give them false hope. Maybe that's the case, but give it a try. Does he no longer have a contract with them? And it still works.

Caller Cliff (02:22:34):
It works for the time being. It'll be down at the end of the month

Leo Laporte (02:22:38):
And even if you copy it, it may still be down because as I said, it may call stuff on their server that they're no longer going to give you access to.

Caller Cliff (02:22:47):
That's

Leo Laporte (02:22:47):
True. That's the risk. That's why you should always use a non-pro. It's fine to use third party designers, but they should give you something that runs like our website, TWI tv. We went to a wonderful company in Texas for kitchens to design it, but we don't have to have four kitchens service it. It's a thing they gave us and we can run it somewhere else now without their involvement. And that's I think, really important. Anyway, try the Ss s h route. I can't believe Amazon doesn't offer that on a w Ss. They've got to

Caller Cliff (02:23:20):
Thank you. Thank you very much. I've been listening to you for year since the beginning.

Leo Laporte (02:23:25):
Thank you, cliff. I'm so glad you called. It's a pleasure talking to you. Thank you. A lot of fun. I have to say, we got really geeky on this show. I think this is the Geekiest one we've done without Micah Sargent here to bring us down to earth. I hope we didn't leave you all hanging, but you know what? This is how you learn, right? I mean, this is how we all learn. When I first started doing this, none of it made sense. Still doesn't make sense in many cases. You just keep banging on it and eventually it all comes clear and then it'll make sense. Micah, feel better soon. Mike will be back if he does on Tuesday for iOS today, even if he doesn't, as long as he can talk, we're worried about him losing his voice. He's apparently lost his voice. But if he can talk, he'll be on iOS today, on Tuesday, and of course, tech News Weekly on Thursday.

(02:24:12):
I will be back on Tuesday with Mac Break Weekly and security now. And of course we do this show every Sunday wither without Micah, and Micah does it without me. I do it without him. That's why we got two of us. We do the show Sunday's 11:00 AM well, all right, 11, 11:00 AM to 1:35 PM but we'll make it 11 to two. How about that? That is two to 5:00 PM Eastern Time, 2100, I'm sorry, 1800 utc. You can watch us do it live if you wish that way you can call in, right? If you're watching live at, I'm sorry, live TWI tv, live twit tv, there are live audio and video streams there. If you are watching live, you can absolutely chat with us live in our I R C. That's where the team tech guy lives, including Mike B and Scooter X and Reverb Mike, who hates it.

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When I tell people that somebody died, he doesn't like to hear that. Doesn't like to hear that nobody dies in his life and all the other folks, irc TWI tv, open to all. You can use your browser to go there. Now, I do mention from Time Time our other team, tick Guy behind the Rope. There are the people in the Discord. They are the Club Twit members. Now, this is an elite core of the very smartest, brightest, best people in the family. We want you to join too open to you only. Don't tell anybody about it at twit tv slash club Twit. Okay? Yes, there is a slight charge for membership, $7 a month, but look at all the benefits, ad free versions of this show and all of our other shows, access to the Discord. We've reorganized the Discord to make it even more fun.

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Great place to hang out and chat. It's a wonderful community plus shows we don't put out anywhere else. Micah Sergeants, HandsOn Macintosh. We got Hands on Windows, was little Pauly Throt. We've got the Untitled Linux Show with Johnny Bennett, the GIZ Fizz with Dickie D. We've got all sorts of great shows including little Scotty Wilkinson's, home Theater Geek, it's Back in the Club. All of that because of our wonderful members whose seven bucks a month goes towards supporting those projects, keeping the lights on here, keeping the staff employed. None of it goes into my pocket. It all goes into the projects, the programming here at twit. We really appreciate your membership. If you're not a member yet, please actually, I know you're not because you wouldn't hear this if you were a member, go to twit tv slash club twit this week at Tech is coming up next. We've got a great show planned for you, so stick around if you're watching live. Otherwise, I will see you next week and ask the tech guys, have a great geek week.

Tech News Weekly Promo: Mikah Sargent (02:27:03):
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