The Tech Guy Episode 1898 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 (00:00:02):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT. Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my tech guy podcast. This show originally aired on the premier networks on Sunday, May 29th, 2022. This is episode 1,898. Intro The Tech Guy podcast is brought to you by Cachefly. Cachefly is giving away a complimentary detailed analysis of your current CDN bill and usage trends. See if you're overpaying 20% or more, learn more at twit.cachefly.com. Whoa. Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo LaPorte here. Memorial day edition of The Tech Guy show. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo is the phone number. If you want talk high tech 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. Toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. That's my phone number (888) 827-5536 website tech guy labs.com will put all the links there. So you don't have to search around for it. Tech guy labs.com today. Your phone calls Sam Bo.

Leo Laporte (00:01:16):
Sam is coming up our car guy rod pile's giving a talk. So no space guy today and Chris Marwars in, in on route is traveling. So he's got the day off. So it's just you, me, Sam. That's good. More calls. So be fun today. In the annals of NFTs, non fungible tokens, you've heard about NFTs, right? They're to tightly tied in some obscure way to cryptocurrencies, not so much Bitcoin, more a cryptocurrency called Ethereum E E th but it doesn't matter. The whole idea of an NFT is, I don't know what <laugh> you let's let's use something. We all understand baseball cards, right? Let's set. Let's use that. Let's say you happen to have one of the, what is it? Four HAIs Wagner baseball cards worth millions, right? Problem with that. And, and, you know, any kind of sports memorabilia or collectables is, are they genuine?

Leo Laporte (00:02:28):
<Affirmative> is it is it the real Hauns Wagner card or a, a good fake happens with art too, right? So the idea of NFTs sort of is the Providence. The, you know, where this thing came from is stored in a decentralized imutable unchangeable thing called the blockchain. Am I losing you here? It's as if you put it, there was a ledger where you put, you know, this, this thing, item 1, 4, 3, 4, 4, looks like this belongs to this guy do do do that's in a ledger. And then the ledger is distributed to everybody. Everybody has a copy. So I can't go in and go, oh, no, it's not because everybody else will say, well, Leo, we know cuz we have a copy too. You can't change that.

Leo Laporte (00:03:30):
So in, you know, in, in theory, this is a good idea. And and there have been lots of proposed uses for this NFTs are a way of making a collectible that it can be provably yours, but there's a little weirdness going on because an NFT isn't usually something physical, like a HAIs Wagner baseball card, but it's a digital item, a drawing or, or something like that. Video NBA sales NFTs of highlights from the game. Now this is a little puzzling because everybody saw the highlight. In fact, even if you own that, highlight Steph Curry's three pointer to win the championship. They say you own that. I own that. It's on the, I got bought the NFT. And by the way, these are expensive. These N NBA NFTs doesn't mean nobody can have a copy of it. No, that doesn't work that way. It just means you own it. And they can proably own it. If you go to NBA top shot.com coming June 7th by officially licensed NBA, NFTs of magic. Johnson's greatest moments. I mean, everybody saw it. You, everybody can have the video. I can have the video. I can watch it over and over again. But you technically, and boy, that's a, that's the word technically own it, cuz you paid for it.

Leo Laporte (00:05:01):
I wonder what the let's see. Let's let's just look at the marketplace right now. For NM, NBA, NFTs videos, that kind of thing. So, you know, they're pretty cheap you for 135 bucks, you can watch Chris Paul from November 30th, 2021, <laugh> do something. I don't know, dunk it, slam dunk. It here's a dunk from Edmond, Sumner. Only $35. It's a deal. There's other stuff too. You can sell it. Of course you could sell it. There would be no point if you couldn't sell it, right. <Laugh> that's the real point. And if you sell it and you, you know, sell it for twice, what you bought it for now, you've doubled your money, but there's even better because you also retain some rights. So it fits sold. Again, you get a percentage of that and on and on and on. So it's a, it's a pyramid scheme. Let's face it. Anyway. one of the, the, one of the very hot NFTs are some cartoons of board apes. Yeah, monkeys, the board ape yacht club, the board ape yacht. And they sell for a lot of money. I mean, these are not cheap. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Leo Laporte (00:06:22):
You know, the, by the way, the person who drew the board's apes doesn't get it. It was work for hire. They hire went out, hired some poor artists who did a, you know, hundred board apes pictures. And and then, then they paid them and now they owned it outright the board, a yacht club, people, the peoples <laugh> and then they sold them on and then owners sold them on and I sold them on and they're worth quite a bit board ape yacht club number 8, 3 9, 8, 8,000 98, which was a a board ape with a halo. <Laugh> I think he's smoking something it's unclear what he's got some, a cigarette hanging from his lips and yeah, he looks pretty bored was purchased by Seth green actor and producer Seth green, because these NFTs are nothing. If you don't get celebrities buying them and then, you know, and then you get Matt Damon going courage favors the brave or fortune favors the brave. So be brave, buy some NFTs. Can I just make some advice, be smart and don't buy NFTs. <Laugh> brave, I guess is one way to describe buying NFTs. Anyway, Seth was brave bought. I think he spent a lot of money on this NFT, but then he was dumb because he did something kind of foolish. <Laugh> he designed an entire television show around board ape 83 98. The forthcoming show, according to Buzzfeed was developed from characters in Green's expansive NFT collection. And then he got fished.

Leo Laporte (00:08:10):
Somebody said, somehow, I don't know exactly the details of the fish, but he got convinced to. So when you own <laugh> this gets you more complicated. When you own an Ft, there's it's uses something called public key cryptography. You have a public key. You can hand out that's my, if you wanna give me money, if you wanna give me Bitcoin or Ethereum, I can give you the public key of my wallet. Anybody can have that. Cuz it's it's inbound only. There's also a private key that I use to access the wallet, to sell it, to add to it, to, you know, whatever don't give out the paw private key, cuz then anybody could do it. And that's it. That's all it takes by the way. So make sure you understand <laugh> when you got an NFT or any cryptocurrency, you, you can give out the public key, put a QR code on your webpage.

Leo Laporte (00:08:59):
People will give you Bitcoin or whatever. That's what I did, but never, ever reveal your private key. Now, if you're smart, you also have a password and you know, your private key is stored safely and so forth. Seth Seth green apparently got tricked into giving his private key. I guess he didn't understand what he was doing to a, a bad guy who then sold <laugh> board ape 83, 84 to a or to an Australian doctor physician who goes by the name, dark wing, 84. He bought it. Okay. Now get ready. He bought it for $200,000.

Leo Laporte (00:09:48):
Probably didn't know it belonged to Seth green probably didn't know that. But unfortunately Seth green has planned an entire TV show around it and now no longer owns the rights cuz he accidentally lost it. It's kind of unclear. Like there's a, supposedly you have the copyright, if you own the NFT that's I mean, what else do you have besides two less, 200,000 less dollars, fewer dollars. So he's, you know, the, the doctor dark wing, 84 has been going back. He said, I'm not giving it back. <Laugh> I'm not, I'm not giving it back. And it's unclear. The law is unclear. Like this is stolen goods, but did he know it was stolen? Does he have to give it back? He's not the thief. Apparently.

Leo Laporte (00:10:40):
I don't know. It's it's it's just a mess. And Seth is just over clumped. He has said, you know, this attack could be the machinations of a person, a foreign financial conglomerate or some massive scam house somewhere. But guys, if there's a door to kick in, I promise I'm gonna kick in the door for us. You know what? Guess what Seth? No, no door. Just a big hole in your heart where board ape, 83, 98 used to live. Aww, by the way, if you want, you could see pictures of this cuz even though he owns it, he doesn't, you, you, it doesn't keep you from tweeting it or putting it in your home page. It's a very weird thing. This should just be a cautionary tale. When somebody comes to you and says, boy, this is the next big thing. There was a big conference in Minneapolis, V con tens of thousands of people went to see celebrities like Snoop, dog and others promoting NFTs.

Leo Laporte (00:11:47):
It's a con game. It's a con game. And the people who own them need you to think they're still valuable. Otherwise they're stuck with those beanie babies new in case. And they've lost a lot of money. So be very skeptical. If somebody comes to you and says, oh no, this is the next best thing thing. It's gonna transform the world. You watch, you watch. I will get emails. I will call you calls today. All these people say, oh no, you don't understand. It was on the super bowl. Remember Larry David, he just didn't get it. He was a boomer. Okay. Boomer. You don't get it. Well, guess what? We boomers have been around enough to recognize a con. When we see one <laugh> do not fall for this and Seth, I'm sorry, but board ape, 83 98 is gone forever. Eighty eight, eighty eight. Ask Leo that's the phone number? (888) 827-5536. Tell free from anywhere in the us or Canada. No, I have never made an NFT and you know, God willing, never will. We'll take your calls next. <Laugh> text me in the morning, but we don't have a text number. It's not a cell phone. So please don't text Kim Schaffer. She's the phone angel. Hello Kim.

Kim Schaffer (00:13:02):
Good

Leo Laporte (00:13:04):
Day.

Kim Schaffer (00:13:05):
<Laugh> I'm always reluctant to say morning, cuz I do know that it's daytime in some of the places we air.

Leo Laporte (00:13:11):
So it's really, we're the, you know, unless you're listening in Hawaii, we're pretty much the last people that make it the morning. Correct,

Kim Schaffer (00:13:18):
Sir.

Leo Laporte (00:13:19):
Yeah. Yeah.

Kim Schaffer (00:13:21):
So you've been watching the the race before you got here.

Leo Laporte (00:13:24):
I, you know what I love I know this is like a big race day cuz we've got the indie 500 coming up. But in the morning it was the Monaco grand pre the F one. And I always like to watch that cuz we stayed in the hotel once many years ago, that's on the hairpin turn the Fairmont Monte Carlo. So I know those streets. I know those streets,

Kim Schaffer (00:13:44):
Man. <Laugh> you could

Leo Laporte (00:13:46):
Drive those. I've walked those streets man. And I've never driven. 'em I've ridden in a double Decker bus on them that's but I've never driven them anyway. It's fun to watch and I love, they've got an announcer David Croft. They call him Croy. Who makes it, you know, a lot of racing formula one even is kind of dull. Just people, you know, going around in a circle, but he makes it so exciting. <Laugh> and I love it. Cuz he, he starts, the race is the way they start at formula one, race, the lights go out. Not on, it's not like a green light. It's like, oh red light, red light, red, light, red light off. And then you go, which is, you know, formula one. It's European, it's different. But crafty goes and he lights out in Portugal and I love the way he does it. So do

Kim Schaffer (00:14:27):
They do it at nighttime?

Leo Laporte (00:14:29):
No. No, they do it usually in the afternoon. Sometimes at night in the, in the middle east, you know they do it in Bahrain places where it's so hot during the day that they have to do it at night. But in Monaco it was a 3:00 PM starting, except it started raining

Kim Schaffer (00:14:43):
<Laugh> oh, rain delay, rain

Leo Laporte (00:14:45):
Delay. <Laugh> and it's so funny cuz I think, you know, we're used to rain delay that happens all the time in baseball. Yeah. The announcers make no big deal about it, but the poor crafty I'm so sorry. I know you tuned in and you took time out of your day to watch this race and was sitting here and it's raining.

Kim Schaffer (00:15:00):
It was like, that would be me over apologetic.

Leo Laporte (00:15:03):
Yeah, he was over apologetic. It was pretty funny. Who should I who should I start? You

Kim Schaffer (00:15:08):
Just mentioned Portugal. So let's go to John and Villa real day. Santo Antonio

Leo Laporte (00:15:14):
<Laugh> I wanna go to Villa Al day. Santo Antonio. Hi John. Thank you very much, Kim. Hi John.

Caller 1 (00:15:21):
Hey Leo. How's it going?

Leo Laporte (00:15:22):
It's good. Are you an expat or are you traveling?

Caller 1 (00:15:25):
I'm an expat. Nice. And I've I called you before I called you? Before my process of moving over here and we talked about,

Leo Laporte (00:15:33):
I remember that. So how's it been now? You've been there. How long?

Caller 1 (00:15:38):
About almost a year.

Leo Laporte (00:15:39):
And and you're happy with the choice you retired there.

Caller 1 (00:15:43):
Oh gosh. Yeah. It's wonderful. Portugal is very sweet.

Leo Laporte (00:15:47):
You know, I was looking for no apparent reason at the safest countries to move to <laugh> in the world and Portugal's right up there. I think it's number three, Iceland port something in Portugal. Japan may be Portugal. So you're in a safe place. Your money, your dollar goes farther. People are warm and wonderful. The food is great. Sun is shining. What could go wrong? Are you in the Algarve in Villa reality, San Antonio?

Caller 1 (00:16:16):
Yes we are right on the Quadi on the river, which is beautiful right on the Spanish border.

Leo Laporte (00:16:21):
Beautiful. But you know, you can live in paradise, ladies and gentlemen, but your technology's still gonna break. So what can I do for you?

Caller 1 (00:16:31):
And that's what we got going on. We have very, very affordable internet access fiber for like, you know, gigabit fiber for like 30 bucks. Wow. 30 euros. It's just awesome. But unbelievable. Unfortunately it's you have to pay for tech support when you call them. And I, I just loads to call anybody, but it's so cheap. That's that's a, that's an okay. Trade off. You know,

Leo Laporte (00:16:57):
It's cheaper though to call the tech guy. So that's what you're

Caller 1 (00:17:01):
To call you, but they couldn't help me with this anyway. So what I've done is I have, I wanted to set up a failover router. It's it's a little bit outta my depth. Yeah. On the it side because I have two internet connections, beautiful that one for free with my phone. Beautiful. And then it doesn't flake all the time, but sometimes I trade stocks and stuff like that, you know, you want real consistent.

Leo Laporte (00:17:23):
So you really need a router that understands failover. That's the trick.

Caller 1 (00:17:28):
Yeah. I got one at the TP link TL R four 70 T you know? And I was configuring it. The question I had is, is can I do dynamic IP assignments with those? Or, or do I need to find the PPO? E I don't even know PPO E and DH C P

Leo Laporte (00:17:48):
<Laugh>. Okay. PPO E has nothing to do with it. It's just power over ethernet. So some routers, you don't have to plug into the power wall. You just get you plug 'em into an ethernet. Jack that has power. DHCP is relevant. So when you fail over cha so that's an interesting question. I hadn't really thought about it. The router is handling DHCP completely independently of the internet service provider. So nothing should change except that your packets, instead of coming from ISS, P a are coming from ISSB P B the IP addresses and everything should remain the same. Leo Laport D tech guy. That's why. Oh, it's P P O E. I thought it was Poe. P P P P P O E too many, too many peers. Too many PS.

Caller 1 (00:18:40):
Yeah. Yeah. And it's like uppercase lowercase P yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:18:43):
Yeah, I got it. So if you've got a TP link that, that has two, two land ports, two, two ways to get data in. And it's smart enough to know if one goes dead, fail over to the other one. That's what you need fail over. It should handle everything else. Trans

Caller 1 (00:19:01):
It fail over setting in it. It's got like four ports and you can

Leo Laporte (00:19:05):
Beauty.

Caller 1 (00:19:05):
It's got up to four land ports and you can assign which ones are when you're great. And then, and then you tell it, but I didn't understand if I could do the dynamic IP, cuz I can't, you know, I can't afford it. Ecstatic. That's oh,

Leo Laporte (00:19:16):
I see. Okay. So to the inside world, everything's the same cuz the router is not changing any assignments, but you're right. Your IP address is now different, your public IP address because that comes from the ISP. So you you're suddenly your public IP address will change. This. Isn't really something the internal guys need to know about. Unless you have a server, are you running a server?

Caller 1 (00:19:41):
No, no. That's that's where it got. I that's where it got a little, it, you know, kind of like it professional work and stuff. It was like, okay, now, now usually you would have something like this and then hook it to a switch and then go across these networks and stuff. And I was just don't

Leo Laporte (00:19:56):
Yeah. You're over complicated to mine. If you had a, if you had a a web server internally on the network, right? It you've set up the router to say, Hey, if any traffic comes over port 80 or 4 43, the web ports go to the server. That's fine. And that won't change. But if somebody's surfing to you, they're going to you know John's Vilo al.com that in the DNS setup, you know, in the DNS phone book is, is to a particular address, the address of your main IP ISP. Sure. But now it's gonna be a new address. So somebody surfing to your server will have a problem because they won't. And there are ways to fix this with something called dine DNS. But you're not running a server.

Caller 1 (00:20:44):
No, no. I'm just trying to, just trying to get really consistent internet and yeah. I'm not even trying to do load balancing. Cause the main title of this router is load balance. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:20:54):
That's interesting.

Caller 1 (00:20:55):
I'm not even, I don't even care about combining the bandwidth. Right. But there is a failover setting, right? When you go in the log into the router. Good. And then, and then go in, should just work mission side and, and

Leo Laporte (00:21:04):
Should just work. But you can try it. You can unplug, unplug one <laugh> and see what happens as the only the oh yeah. You're right. Your public, your public visibility changed. Your IP address has changed. That shouldn't make much of a difference. It'd be kind of like using a VPN on a machine inside the network. Suddenly your IP address is gonna change. What does that affect? Well, anybody who's associating you to your IP address, but that's most people don't do that anymore. They use cookies and other systems. So it, it only matters to inbound traffic that says, well, no, wait a minute. John's here and you aren't you're over there. But if you don't have any inbound traffic, if you're not doing a server, it shouldn't, it shouldn't impact you. I can't, I can't think of any other. Maybe somebody in the chatroom will come up with a scenario, but I can't think of any other scenario where that would be you

Caller 1 (00:21:54):
Would've to. So that's what those settings are for. It's more for advanced inbound traffic stuff.

Leo Laporte (00:21:58):
If I, you might run, if you don't know. Yeah. IPS sometimes. Yeah. This is typical for people who don't pay for static addresses from their internet service provider. So my internet service provider might at random change my IP address. Well, if I've got a server that's problematic. So you use something called dine DNS, which automatically senses the change and communicates that to the outside world. Oh, my IP address has changed. So if you're surfing in my website, this is the address. Now it's not an issue unless you are hosting video games you're hosting a web server, a mail server, anything like that, where people aren't coming into you, you wouldn't worry about it, but just try it, unplug it and see what happens.

Caller 1 (00:22:38):
That wasn't F that F1 race. Wasn't a great today.

Leo Laporte (00:22:41):
Hey, don't tell me. I only saw the first happen.

Caller 1 (00:22:44):
Oh, always. That's what mean I is one of the first times I was able to watch it live

Leo Laporte (00:22:47):
<Laugh> yeah, I know. That's the only province at 6:00 AM here.

Caller 1 (00:22:50):
I so spoil alerts. I almost did, but, but Croy talking about the raining. Love

Leo Laporte (00:22:54):
It. Well, I'm so sorry that everybody took their day off to see it. Oh, I apologize. He

Caller 1 (00:22:59):
Was more worried about his. He was more worried cuz he didn't have Martin Brundle was like,

Leo Laporte (00:23:03):
I know

Caller 1 (00:23:04):
Rib him. Cause he is like what? You don't have a hotel or something

Leo Laporte (00:23:06):
On that he literally had to get out that night is a Hyster. Anyway. Don't tell me, Hey, it's good to talk to you. I'm so glad you're having fun. No spoilers, no spoilers. Our show today brought to you by Cachefly. As it always is Cachefly is our C D N our content delivery network. And we know how Cachefly, how good Cachefly is cuz we've been using them for more than a decade. Really? Pretty much since we first began back in the way, way, way back days when we first started doing podcasts, you may remember some of our podcasts were courtesy of AOL. They stored it. That's how long ago this was or other places or on our own hard drive. And after a while we started using bit torrent and so forth. But when Matt Levine of Cachefly, he was the, one of their founders came to me and said, we can do a better job.

Leo Laporte (00:23:54):
I listened. And boy was he right? Cachefly has been a Boone for our network. In fact, it's gonna be a Boone for anybody who serves content over the internet. What do we love about Cachefly? Well, with over 50 points of presence all over the world, we know our listeners, our, our viewers are getting copies of these podcasts from servers that are near them. That's good. That means they get it faster. It also means because every server has its own copy. If something goes wrong, it doesn't fail. It goes to the next nearest server and gets it from there. So we know that they're very reliable. They have other services too. You might wanna check out like their ultra low latency video streaming. That's amazing which less than one second latency, you can have literally millions of viewers. Incredible. They also have something we've been using for a while storage optimization system, which increases to a hundred percent.

Leo Laporte (00:24:50):
So that saves you money in in outside server costs. It's really an amazing solution. Cashflow ultra low latency, video streaming lightning, fast gaming, mobile content optimization. So images are loading faster on any device, multiple CDNs, which means redundancy and failover intelligently balances your traffic across multiple providers, 10 times faster than traditional methods. It's on six continents, 30% faster than other major CDNs, 98% cash hit ratio, a hundred percent availability and 24 7 365 priority support it's Cachefly. Get a complimentary detail analysis of your current CDN bill and usage strengths. See if they can do for you. What they've done for us, you might even be overpaying as much as 20% or more go to twi.cash, fly.com. Thank you. Cash line. We really appreciate all you do for us. Twi.Cash, fly.com. Baba BA it's time to talk automotive with our friend Sam bull, Sam. This is a big day for motor sports F1 this morning. The big Indy 500 this afternoon, but that's not what we're here to talk about, cuz we don't wanna give any spoilers cuz I know you're all listening to this show, not watching motor sports. Hi Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:14):
Hi Leo. How are you

Leo Laporte (00:26:15):
This week? I am great principal researcher at guide house insights. He also has a wonderful car podcast@wheelbearings.media. Let me say, I always like to see what you're sitting in front of. It looks like a very nice Kia. Is that an EV?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:31):
It is. That is the Kia EV six. This past week I went to, I drove to Wisconsin. I'm a member of the Midwest automotive media association and they hold an annual event every year, the week before Memorial day at Rhode America in Elkhart lake, Wisconsin. And they have about dozen or so auto makers bring out this year they brought out about 70 cars trucks and SUVs, and we got to evaluate 'em all back to back. Some, we got to drive on the track and some most on the street, some off road. But I decided to take the opportunity to do an EV road trip. Ooh, since it's it's about from my house to Rhode America is about 395 miles each way. And so I asked for a Kia EV six from the press fleet to to use for this one.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:31):
Cause I haven't driven the EV six previously and decided, wanted to see what the charging experience was gonna be like. You know, we've one of the things from, you know, talking to some of my friends, you know, who live in various parts of the country that have been evaluating EVs and, and listening to some of the comments from, from various EV owners around the country there's been a lot of complaints from various places about charging stations that were not functioning properly or charging slowly or, you know, having various other, other challenges with them. And so I wanted to see what, what this charging experience was gonna be like on this road trip the, the EV six all wheel drive version that I had has a EPA rated range of 274 miles. And since it's almost 400 miles to to Elkhart lake, I, you know, figured it'd be a good opportunity.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:26):
I'd have to do some charging along the way. And one of the things I, I learned from this particular experience is that while the, the experience has gotten a road tripping with an EV has gotten a lot better it's probably still best right now with a Tesla and the supercharge network that is the most comprehensive network right now. But as, as, as more and more charging stations have been installed, especially from electrify America, the experience is getting better for EV owners that wanna take long trips. But it also does still require more planning than you would do with an internal combustion vehicle with, if you're driving a gasoline or even a diesel vehicle you know, you can be fair. You can pretty much count on being able to find fuel almost everywhere that you're gonna go. It's about 120,000 roughly fuel stations around the country. And you can also be fairly confident that no matter which gas station you stop at, it's gonna take you roughly the same amount of time to fill the tank with gas, you know, usually, but, you know, three to five, maybe six, seven minutes, you know, depending on how big your tank is just enough

Leo Laporte (00:29:41):
Time to run in, get a slim jam and a big SLRP and come

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:44):
Out and, and a bio break. Yeah. You know of course, you know, you gotta join the bladder too. So you know, that's a, a fairly consistent experience, no matter where you go in the country, the same is not true with EVs. While the number of especially DC fast charging stations has increased dramatically over the last several years, the experience is far from consistent. Most up, up until electrify America started deploying nurse stations about three years ago. Most of the fast chargers that were non Tesla, fast chargers. So Tesla's right. Currently got two levels of fast chargers. They've got their old version, two chargers, that'll charge it up to 150 kilowatts. And they're newer version three which they're gradually deploying across the network. That'll go up to 250 kilowats. Electrify America was the first network to start doing chargers with up to 350 kilowats of charging power.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:46):
And that, that the kilowat rating is how fast it can pump electrons into your battery. So it's basically kind of the flow rate for the electrons. You can think of it that way. And if you're looking at most of the other networks, companies like ChargePoint, EV go blank, various others, mostly what you're gonna find is most of them are still limited to about 50 kilowats, which means it's a lot slower to put energy into your battery at 50 kilowatts with the EV six, I think that worked out to, it works out to about a adding about 145 miles of range per hour. So, you know, if you're doing a 400 mile trip and you need to do a near full charge on your battery, you're looking at potentially well over an hour at 50 kilowats sitting there at the charger. So

Leo Laporte (00:31:38):
That's where, that's why generally, where you would want to time it, where you could go eat lunch, maybe exactly. Do shopping, maybe go to home movie

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:46):
<Laugh> you know? Yeah. So you, well, although what you wanna do is you

Leo Laporte (00:31:50):
Can't leave your car after it's fully charged unattended, they'll start charging you for parking,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:55):
Right? Because yeah, because they, you know, they want people want your car wants your EV charged. They want you to move it so that somebody else can use the

Leo Laporte (00:32:01):
Dude. So your phone you'll have an app and your phone will say, you know, you're getting close, you're you almost there. Okay. You're fully charged to give you warning. You go out, you move your car and you finish the rest of the movie, but you know, right. This is a, this is kind of the downside. Now the good news is for most people, this never comes up because how often you go on a road trip, most of your trips are short.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:23):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:32:24):
I, I start every day if I wanted to, I could start every day with a full tank because

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:28):
I, right. And that's what most people are gonna do. So charging overnight at home. And so you start with a, a full battery every morning, but

Leo Laporte (00:32:34):
The road trip is, is relevant. You know, if you're, yeah. Especially if you're buying a, I know you're driving a lightning soon or a Rian, if you're buying a pickup truck and you're towing a boat, going up to the lake, all of this becomes, you know, an issue.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:47):
It, it certainly does. You know, and as an example I, I, I was driving the EV six. I stopped let's see, when I stopped in Milwaukee on my way home I got into the charging station at, with about 10% charge and I charged it up to 94% in about 26 minutes, which is really good. I mean, that, that was charging a little over 220 kilowats the maximum for the EV six is about two 40. So I was pretty close to the maximum charging rate so that, you know, that worked out well. But, you know, then I had to think about where I was, where I was going to stop, you know, because I was driving doing almost all highway driving. You know, I'm not getting much regen and to get back to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where there was another 350 kilowat charger, it was about 250 miles.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:39):
I and that was about what I had available this range in the EV six. And so what I opted to do was rather than risk running out of juice, cause I wasn't sure how much reserve there was gonna be in there. I made a quick stop in Chicago at 150 kilowatt electrify America station for about seven minutes, which gave me about another 80 miles of range. So I had plenty of buffer to get to my next stop. So these are the kinds of things that you have to think about if you're gonna take an EV road trip and this, this also applies, even if you're driving a Tesla, you still have to think about cuz you know, the supercharges while there's about 1300 of them right now across the country. They're not necessarily everywhere. Like where I was in Elkhart lake, the closest DC fast charger was a Tesla supercharge, 35 miles away. Yeah. And the closest CCS charger was in Milwaukee, 50 miles away. So I had to make sure when I got to Elkhart lake, I had enough charge to get back to Milwaukee. So because there's no other public chargers in that area. So especially rural areas, you have to be more careful about where you're go, you know, planning ahead to make sure you have enough juice.

Leo Laporte (00:34:49):
Well, I really enjoyed uncle Sam's story about his road trip. <Laugh> bottom line. You should consider this before you buy an EV that's for sure. Sam a bull Sam principal researcher guide how's insights.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:16):
Awesome.

Leo Laporte (00:35:18):
Let me pull up your

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:21):
And speaking of racing next weekend, next Saturday and Sunday, are you racing? I will not be racing, but I will be hanging out at the races at the Detroit grand Prix. Oh fun. So I will be, I will be down at bell isle on Saturday and Sunday.

Leo Laporte (00:35:36):
I'll so we'll miss you. So I take it. That means no, no segment that's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:39):
Right. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:35:40):
Yep. Great. What kind of race is the Drake grand Prix?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:45):
They have, let's see they it's generally they have two indie car races one on Saturday, one on Sunday and also an IA sports car race on Saturday. And this year they've also added an indie lights race. I think on Sunday morning for the indie lights, cars

Leo Laporte (00:36:02):
Fun. Are you are there in an official capacity or just for fun?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:06):
Just for fun. Hanging out with some of my other media friends at the the Honda hospitality booth.

Leo Laporte (00:36:15):
Well, that sounds like fun. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll miss you next week, but I think you're gonna be having a good time.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:24):
Yeah. As long as it's not pouring rain, which it has done on occasion. It's it's usually a good time,

Leo Laporte (00:36:31):
Day race in the rain or no.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:34):
It depends on how hard it's raining. Right. Okay. You know, so if it's, if it's coming down really hard then they do they stop, they wait, you know, they may red flag race or delay, delay the race. Yeah. Because even, even Rainers

Leo Laporte (00:36:50):
God,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:36:50):
It's dangerous. Yeah. Vis visibility is really tough and you know, the bell aisle race is also, you know, kind of a street course as well. Ah okay. And so they, they they, they won't race if it's, if it's coming down too hard. Right. but you know, light rain, they will, they will definitely run in light rain. The only time they don't is at ovals like Indianapolis. Right. because you, you can't run in the rain, just keep on an oval like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:37:18):
Cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:21):
So let's see what else I had? Oh one other thing I wanted to to bring up was about, I guess, about a month and a half, maybe two months ago, there was a story that popped up on social media and a little video clip that showed up with somebody recorded a Tesla crashing into a serious vision jet at an airport. Oh yeah. So this is a

Leo Laporte (00:37:46):
Slow emotional scratch cause it was yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:48):
Yeah. Yeah. So the, the owner of the Tesla was using, was using the summon mode on the Tesla. And you know, this is a mode that that's part of the full self-driving package that is nominally supposed to allow you to retrieve your car from a parking space and have it drive to you. So you're, you know, you have to press the button on your, the app on your phone and hold it, and you're supposed to be watching the car as it's doing this. And then it's supposed to be able to navigate around obstacles. Well, it, in this case it did not navigate around this airplane. It just drove straight into it as if it was not even there.

Leo Laporte (00:38:26):
I can get under that. <Laugh>.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:27):
And, and so I, I I shared this story with the, the guys,

Leo Laporte (00:38:34):
The hosts at the airplane geeks podcast were are Micah from Maine hangs out a lot because one of the hosts, there is a flight instructor that specializes in Sears aircraft and spends a lot of time flying the vision jet. I thought they might find it. Interesting. Yeah. So I will tell the rest of the story at the next yes. Cause we only have a few seconds left, but yeah. So that's a cliff hanger kids. Yeah. So stay tuned. I had a, a summit on my model X and I never dared use it. Of course this was some years ago. I imagine it's better now, but I just, it always, the only time I would consider using it is if you, if it's, if you're in a tight parking spot or a garage. Yeah. And you're just pulling it straight out or straight in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't get into, get into the car. All right. We'll see you in the top, right? Yeah. Yep. Stay tuned. Leo. LePort the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number, Tom on the line from Jacksonville, Florida. Next caller. Hi Tom.

Caller 2 (00:39:33):
Hey Leo. It is great to talk to you.

Leo Laporte (00:39:36):
Well, it's great to have you, what you said you, you own a small business. What's your business?

Caller 2 (00:39:43):
I, I'm a cat behavior consultant. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:39:45):
That's cool. I need you. <Laugh> I need you badly. <Laugh>

Caller 2 (00:39:52):
My, my, my problem is that I basically, I don't have a lot of money to spend on advertising. And when I look at my options online, I am just confused and baffled. I mean, between people using ad blockers to block, you know, a lot of ads and, you know, companies that I don't really agree with. Like <laugh> Facebook, let's say. And, and, and like the confusing sort of parameters put forth by Google where you don't really know exactly what you're getting for, what you're spending. It's all really confusing. And I thought I would call you because I mean, you, you obviously have seen both sides of this picture cuz you, you accept ads as well as place ads. And, and I just wonder what your opinion is as to what is the, the best value out there for someone who's trying to reach a narrow audience?

Leo Laporte (00:40:46):
Well, my wife is gonna hate me for saying this. She sells the ads on our podcasts, but the most efficient ads you can buy are the Facebook and the Google ads. And this is all because Facebook and Google know exactly who they're advertising to. For instance, you don't wanna buy an ad that, that somebody who doesn't own a cat sees, I mean maybe, you know, this person might recommend it to their sister who does have a crazy cat, but and I'm sure we don't call them crazy, but

Caller 2 (00:41:16):
<Laugh> no, no, that's not the

Leo Laporte (00:41:21):
It's funny. You should call because this morning my wife said I've never had such crazy cats, but <laugh>, but we'll, we'll save that discussion for another time. So, well,

Caller 2 (00:41:34):
Let's just say that they're not, you know, as a, as an animal, as a species, they're not fully domesticated.

Leo Laporte (00:41:41):
Yes. That's

Caller 2 (00:41:41):
Pretty clear. A lot of people don't quite grasp

Leo Laporte (00:41:44):
And they also have attitude. So our cat different, our cat wants to look out the window. So sh and she's 20 some pounds. She's very big. So she'll get up on furniture and, and not, and she's clumsy knocks stuff over on, on dressers and things to get to the window so she can sit there and stare at the birds. I know what's going on, that's fine with me. But it is disturbing in the middle of the night when you hear this big crash <laugh>

Caller 2 (00:42:14):
Well, unfortunately the, the best thing to do, you know, that a lot of people don't want to hear is to not put those things in their way. That's

Leo Laporte (00:42:21):
Exactly right. Cause you're not gonna change the cat. That's the

Caller 2 (00:42:23):
Truth. No, no. I mean, if, if the noise of the thing crashing, doesn't bother them. They're not going to tell

Leo Laporte (00:42:29):
Them. Right. Exactly.

Caller 2 (00:42:31):
You can though, you know, I always tell people the, the best thing is to reinforce an alternative behavior. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:42:38):
So, so we have lots

Caller 2 (00:42:39):
Of give them a better place to sit exactly out the window. They might choose that.

Leo Laporte (00:42:42):
That's what we do. We have lots of play structures for the cats.

Caller 2 (00:42:47):
Yes,

Leo Laporte (00:42:47):
Sigh. Anyway, I love cats and I don't mind, and I know this is how they are and it's fine. It's like, it's kind of fun to have a, not fully domesticated wild animal in your home who would given the opportunity, eat you compared to a dog who, who just wants nothing more than your love

Caller 2 (00:43:03):
And dogs have been bred for behaviors. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:43:07):
Cats, cats. Good luck. <Laugh>

Caller 2 (00:43:10):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:43:12):
Anyway, to get to your question <laugh> although I think you have an excellent business Facebook probably would be a really good place for you because you could literally in Facebook in fact, this, this was interesting to watch political campaigns discover this chiefly in 20 in 2012 and 2016, you can spend a hundred dollars. I mean, these are campaigns spending millions of dollars, but if you looked at their purchases, they were all $100 purchases because they were highly targeted. So you can go into Facebook, say, I want a cat owner who lives in this area. You probably know something about your perfect client, so you can even narrow it down more sure. And so these are very efficient buys because of what Facebook and Google works the same way, what Facebook and Google know about you. Now, the problem with Google compared to Facebook is Google's very smart about this and they'd actually do a weird auction system for keyword. So

Caller 2 (00:44:11):
Let's, that's, what's so confusing.

Leo Laporte (00:44:13):
Yeah. So let's say you wanted to buy cat behavior as your keywords, right? In search. Now this, if you can get it, this is really good. Cuz we already, now we know, instead of targeting people, we're just seeing people who are searching for your services, right? So we, and by the way, we do this for our shows, we will buy keywords, but you, but the price of the keyword is not fixed. It there's an auction and the more, the better the keyword and the more, the more competition you have to buy that keyword, the higher, the price is gonna be, nevertheless, these are still buying search than, and Google calls this ad sense. Buying search keywords is really powerful. Again, you're getting somebody at the point where they're deciding they're making a purchase. And so that's ideal time to get 'em. So Facebook,

Caller 2 (00:45:02):
Right? It's not, it's not just blasting out to all cat owners. Yeah. But cat owners that are looking because they have a problem.

Leo Laporte (00:45:07):
Exactly. So that's the advantage Google has over Facebook. Facebook has the advantage. It's going kind of the other way, it's saying, you know, let's narrow really narrow it down to people of this type. But Facebook can do some really interesting things. For instance, if you already have a mailing list of clients which I'm sure you do that, and these are people, you know, love your services and want your services. You can literally send Facebook that mailing list with those addresses and they will then deliver to you a list of people, not those people, but tho, but people just like those people. Wow. So you don't even have to know in your head what makes the perfect client? You just know these are good clients. They've subscribed to my mailing list. I know the, they really want my services and Facebook can actually say, well, people like this, here's another a hundred people like that. And you don't even know what it is. Wow. That makes them, you know, maybe they wear orange shoes. You don't know what it is that makes them perfect. But there is, but Facebook knows because of this commonality. So there are two different things, but I would say, and by the way, they are eating, the vast majority of digital advertising goes to these two companies for this reason. They're very efficient and it works very well.

Caller 2 (00:46:19):
So let me ask you this, just to clarify, you know, because I do virtual consults. I'm not, you know, based in

Leo Laporte (00:46:25):
Just like everybody now, so you have a national or international audience. That's great.

Caller 2 (00:46:30):
Right. Since zoom, you know, everybody, everybody with zoom exactly. Now. Yeah. It's much easier. I find it much. The barrier to entry is much lower than it used to be. Although

Leo Laporte (00:46:42):
It's harder to be a cat whisperer over zoom. You just can't get 'em to wear the headphones iPhone. <Laugh>

Caller 2 (00:46:48):
Well, I will say this though. They, they, it's easier sometimes to see the genuine behavior. If I'm not in the home.

Leo Laporte (00:46:55):
Yes, that's

Caller 2 (00:46:56):
Right. My presence really affects,

Leo Laporte (00:46:57):
Immediately affects it. That's a very good point. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I think you've got a great business. You're right. You're now competing, but this is the world in the internet. Even if you just made dishes, you know, I make, I make, I'm a Potter. I make beautiful clay wear. It used to be, I was only competing against the people within a mile of my, of my studio right now. I'm competing against every person in the world who makes pottery. Yes. That's a very different world. So every business, my concern,

Caller 2 (00:47:25):
Yeah. With Facebook is Facebook seems to be a lot of small businesses and business owners like myself, tend to use Facebook for local because they can pinpoint local. But from what you're saying, it sounds like they can do better than that.

Leo Laporte (00:47:39):
Oh, it's still very efficient. Yeah. At least it eliminates people don't have cats. <Laugh> so that's, that's a, that's 50% of your, there's a famous adage from an admin many years ago who says I know that 50% of my ads work, I just don't know which 50%

Caller 2 (00:47:58):
<Laugh> right. That's exactly right. And I can afford to just throw money around like co Cola, no, or apple or somebody.

Leo Laporte (00:48:04):
Right. So they they're, what they're doing is something called brand advertising where they know if we spread, if we just get people to think Coca-Cola, we're gonna sell more Coca-Cola especially since they have a commodity product, they, their product is almost indistinguishable from other soda pops. So they brand is really important to them, apple, same thing, but you're not selling a brand, you're selling a, a service that's very specific. So this is, this is the opposite of brand advertising. This is targeted advertising. And I think it's gonna be by far the most efficient thing for you to do. And I I've never heard anybody and I've read a lot on this and, and I try to sell ads on radio and podcasts. I've never heard anybody beat Google and Facebook ever. Leo LaPorte, the tech guy. Yeah. It's it's pretty clear now it's kind of, I understand it's complicated. So you kind of have to, there are books,

Caller 2 (00:48:57):
Google is, is more complicated than Facebook.

Leo Laporte (00:48:59):
Yeah. There books on how to buy AdWords. I would, I would buy because the auction is complicated and, and, and actually what you do, you have a website.

Caller 2 (00:49:10):
I do. It's at kitty help desk.com.

Leo Laporte (00:49:13):
<Laugh> good name kitty help desk. So you have, from your Google analytics, Google will help you determine what search terms work for you. So they will help you. This is, but you're right. It's a, there's a steep learning curve. Facebook's a little easier. It's just a, you know, you just go in, you say, I want this, this and this, but it's worth learning AdWord. And, and how Google does the auction and how you can get glean insights from your website into who you're looking for.

Caller 2 (00:49:43):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, that's the part I really had no clue about when you were talking about you know, what Facebook could do with an email list. I, I really didn't know that was even possible.

Leo Laporte (00:49:52):
Oh, it's scary. What Facebook can do.

Caller 2 (00:49:55):
Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:49:56):
Honestly, <laugh>

Caller 2 (00:49:58):
I, I really, I really it's

Leo Laporte (00:49:59):
Good for business owners.

Caller 2 (00:50:00):
I, you know, I, I don't, I don't particularly want to patronize Facebook, to be honest with you. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:50:05):
Do Google then. Yeah. Do Google. Google's very effective. It's just a steeper learning curve. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you're getting people who are looking for behavior cat behavior therapists.

Caller 2 (00:50:15):
Right.

Leo Laporte (00:50:16):
But then you're gonna be competing in the price for other people buying those keywords. That's the, that's the trick. Sure. And choosing the keyword is maybe not as intuitive as, as I'm making it sound. That's why it's, it's really important to understand. And you've got in, you've got insights from the Google analytics on your website and that you want to use those insights. That's very valuable.

Caller 2 (00:50:34):
Hmm. Okay. All right.

Leo Laporte (00:50:36):
I think you're in a good business. You're in a great business. It's fun.

Caller 2 (00:50:39):
Thank you. I, yeah. You know, I've learned a lot from you. I I'll be honest. I, I pay attention. I've, I've, I've been a fan of yours since the tech T TV days. Ah, thanks, Tom. And I have really paid attention to how you speak the language of the student, not the teacher.

Leo Laporte (00:50:57):
Oh.

Caller 2 (00:50:57):
And that's something I try to do every single day. And I think you're a prime example of how well that works.

Leo Laporte (00:51:03):
Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I guess that makes sense, cuz that's what you need to do. That's what you need to do. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:51:10):
Am I talk about scientific terms about behavior and psychology, right. People are gonna just blank out. You know, they don't wanna listen to that. I have to really be able to speak in a way to each person, each individual. Really? What, what are they? Yeah. Where are they? I have to meet them where they are, you know?

Leo Laporte (00:51:26):
So you studied, you studied animal behavior in school. Yes. How fascinating

Caller 2 (00:51:32):
Applied animal behavior

Leo Laporte (00:51:33):
Applied animal behavior. Wow. Fascinating. Fascinating. 

Caller 2 (00:51:41):
It's a wonderful, a wonderful job. I love it. Every

Leo Laporte (00:51:44):
Day. I'm telling you, I'm gonna give your I'm gonna give this address to Lisa kid help desk.com. Nice to meet you Tom. Sure. And thanks for the kind to that's really nice. Thank you. I appreciate it. And now ladies and gentlemen, guess who Sam Abu Sam on electric EV help desk.com. <Laugh> go ahead, Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:06):
All right. So let me, let me finish the story. I just dropped a link in the chat to an image. So the week after the airplane geeks guys talked about what I had sent them on the show, the following episode, they got a follow up from another, from a Tesla owner who also happens to be a pilot. And he wanted to see what would happen. He took his Tesla on the, the tarmac at his local airport, pulled up behind his plane and had the the F SD feature turned on so that when you're, when you're using it, it shows you on the screen of the car, what things the, the system, the F the full self-driving system is seeing with its sensors, which are just a bunch of cameras. And if you look at the picture, you can see that you looking out the, the windshield, there's an airplane sitting directly in front of them with three cones around it.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:05):
Oh, it sees on the screens. All it sees is the three cones. It does not see the airplane. And this is one of the fundamental flaws with Tesla's approach which is that they're using cameras only for self-driving. And they're also using a full end to end AI machine learning system without any deterministic algorithms, you know, so algorithms that, you know, actually measure things, you know, and, and aren't relying on inference. And so what happens is because they didn't train their, their system to recognize aircraft because they don't expect to encounter aircraft on the road. It just ignores, it, it, it doesn't even see it as being there. And that's a bad thing. You know, this is why you, you know, in addition to cameras, which are passive sensors, which are measuring the reflected light off of an object that it sees, you also need active sensors like radar, or LIDAR, you know, or, you know, some other any type, any other type of active sensor that sends out its own signal and measures the reflection, and can actually tell where there's an object there, because it gets that reflection and exactly how far away that object is and how, how fast it's moving and what direction it's moving.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:24):
And you need to use both of these things. You need both AI and deterministic approaches because even though, you know, a, a VE a car on the road is probably not going to encounter an aircraft on the road in front of it very frequently, hopefully not at all. It still needs to be able to recognize that there's actually something there, because as we all know, anybody that's driven knows you will see things on the road that shouldn't be there for whatever reason. And so, as, as a result you know, even if you don't necessarily know what it is, you have to know that there is something there and how far away it is, and be able to take appropriate action, either, you know, hit the brakes and stop or steer around it, or whatever. You don't want to run into things that shouldn't be there.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:16):
And this is, this is why the you know, why I remain fairly C fairly certain that the approach that Tesla's taking will never be entirely successful. Let's see. Maverick 56 is asking me, is there anything good Tesla does compare to other EV manufacturers? Absolutely. you know, as, as I said earlier in the chat, you know, I, Tesla, you know, has done an, an enormous service to the world in legitimizing, the EV as something that can be an appealing vehicle in its own, right? Regardless of whether what the propulsion system is, you know, regardless of what kind of energy it's using, they made the, they popularized the EV they've also shown the world how to do modern, electronic architectures in vehicles and the benefits of doing software defined vehicles you know, and having software that is updateable and having an electronic architecture that can be safely updated.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:13):
They've done amazing things with that. The way that they have deployed their supercharge network is a model for the rest of the industry. Some companies like electrify America are trying to emulate that, but their system, their network is still not as reliable as Teslas is, and it's not as what quite as widespread yet. It's, it's getting there, it's catching up, but it's not as good. And they, the other companies need to do better. Tesla is still doing a lot of things better than than other manufacturers when it comes to EVs. Now, when it comes to automated driving, it's a totally different story. I, I totally disagree with the approach Tesla's taking and you know, what Elon Musk has been promoting for that. And I think that they're fundamentally wrong in putting beta software into customer hands and relying on untrained, regular drivers to test safety, critical software systems.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:10):
This is not something any ethical engineer should ever do this should, this is something, this is something sorry about that. Just had to SWAT a fly that landed next to me. <Laugh> this is this is something that engineers that are working on this stuff and, and technicians working on this stuff should be testing. Out sync says Tesla batteries and motors are years ahead of anyone else. I think their motors and their power electronics are very efficient. I would not necessarily agree that their batteries are years ahead. Especially the stuff they have in production. You know, they're, they're good, but they're, they're not necessarily significantly better. You know, and Tesla is actually the

Leo Laporte (00:57:51):
Motors that makes 'em so efficient. That's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:57:53):
The motors are very efficient, but so is the power electronics that does the conversion between AC and DC. And

Leo Laporte (00:57:58):
Is that proprietary? I mean, is that something others can't duplicate?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:02):
No other others are starting to duplicate that. In fact, the Hyundais and Kias are also using the same kind of Silicon carbide MOSFETs and their power electronics that are at about eight to 10%, more better efficiency and that power conversion. So that helps them get better range from,

Leo Laporte (00:58:16):
So he's focused on that early on. And now they're,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:18):
Yeah, they're starting to learn about that and lucid is doing the same thing as well. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:58:24):
Thank you, Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:58:25):
You're welcome. Have a great talk. You in two

Leo Laporte (00:58:28):
Weeks, have fun at the race. Thanks. Take care. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo LaPorte here, the tech guy. Yeah. Time to talk computers, the internet home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz. Eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number (888) 827-5536, toll free from anywhere in the us or the or the Canadian region of the great Northwest or east outside that area though. You have to use Skype out to call me eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo Greg's on the line from speaking of the great north. Great white north new Brunswick Canada. Hello, Greg. Hey, good afternoon, Leo. Good to talk to you. Welcome.

Caller 3 (00:59:22):
Hey. Oh, good. No problem.

Leo Laporte (00:59:25):
Wh what's going on in new Brunswick that you would need to call me?

Caller 3 (00:59:30):
Yeah, well actually my father has got some issues right now with his computer, but I'm gonna describe it as best as I can. And then I'll ask the question after that.

Leo Laporte (00:59:41):
Okay. Sure.

Caller 3 (00:59:43):
So this all happened like yesterday when when, when first, first when we reinstalled like win windows office was gone. So what, what my father had to do was wanted to like quote, install office, but he had to like use a new, like email account that was not associated with his or my mother's accounts at, at best. So he, he did, he did that then all of a sudden sound didn't work. So he, he had to mess around with it and he unplugged the speakers. And this was earlier this morning and then it required a reboot. Then all of a sudden the computer ended up being, being locked. Now he removed all the administrator codes. And then, and then this is where we get into a, a bit of, an bit of an issue. So they, they, so BA basically what, what happened is that you know, no, he, he said like he forgot his pen.

Caller 3 (01:00:43):
And then what we were trying to do is we were trying to recover the account is said Gmail, N 57 outlook.com. That was the one associated with office. So app apparently we were, we tried to we was asking for administrative password and apparently that was something that didn't exist. Let alone the email account that did not quote exist. So what we tried to do was we, we did this on my father's Gmail account and then mine we reset the password, the code verification, we did that, but even then it still asked us to verify. So I don't know how that could happen.

Leo Laporte (01:01:27):
So did he buy office online? He bought the downloadable version of office. Is that what happened?

Caller 3 (01:01:35):
He's running office 2016.

Leo Laporte (01:01:38):
Oh, oh. So it's not a current version. So he has the discs.

Caller 3 (01:01:44):
It, it, I think he had the, I think he had the license or something, which, which is what it is. Okay. But here's my, and he

Leo Laporte (01:01:54):
Associated it with his Microsoft account or he created a, a new email and a new Microsoft account, or

Caller 3 (01:02:00):
He created his, he created a new one that was, that would be used for quote office. But here's my question. I wanna know whether or not, if my father can bypass the administrator codes on the Microsoft account that he's trying to recover so that he can like get back to his desktop and use office 2016. Is there a way

Leo Laporte (01:02:24):
I'm trying to understand exactly what's going on? So he can't. Can he log into the computer at this point?

Caller 3 (01:02:32):
No. He's, he's

Leo Laporte (01:02:33):
Locked. Hold on. So on we'll just answer my questions. So he can't log into the computer. It's off, he's running windows 10.

Caller 3 (01:02:41):
Yeah. 10 the latest version.

Leo Laporte (01:02:43):
So he can't. So when he goes to the computer and he types, what, what account is he trying to get into his own account?

Caller 3 (01:02:51):
He's trying to get into his out his account.

Leo Laporte (01:02:56):
Has he, has

Caller 3 (01:02:56):
He office?

Leo Laporte (01:02:57):
Okay. Well, office is different than windows. So when he is logging into windows, he has to use the login that he got into windows in the first place that when he set up windows.

Caller 3 (01:03:06):
Yeah. And that he

Leo Laporte (01:03:08):
That's, well, that's a Microsoft account, almost always. So in which case he can go to another computer log into his Microsoft account and say, I've forgotten my login for my computer. If he's used a local account. That is that's another matter entirely did he use? Yeah. And that's what I need to know. Is did he use a local account or a Microsoft account to set up windows 10? How old is the computer?

Caller 3 (01:03:35):
It's, it's somewhat, it's somewhat old,

Leo Laporte (01:03:38):
But so it came with windows seven and he upgraded to windows 10.

Caller 3 (01:03:44):
Yeah. And then we reinstalled it like we reinstall it was a clean installation. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:03:50):
Good, good. Okay. So you did a clean install of windows 10 at some point?

Caller 3 (01:03:54):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:03:54):
Were you there?

Caller 3 (01:03:57):
I was there to 

Leo Laporte (01:03:58):
So you under you understand what happened then? That's what I'm. I need to know if, you know, when he set it up to install windows 10 with a local account, you have to disable the internet. You have to go through some hoops. So presumably unless he did that, he, he set up windows 10 with a Microsoft account.

Caller 3 (01:04:14):
Yeah. It was the internet con internet connection. And then apparently he disabled all the admin.

Leo Laporte (01:04:20):
You can't disable admin accounts. <Laugh> if you logged in with a, I'm still trying to get the lay of the land here. If he logged in with a Microsoft account, he can get that recovered. That's one of the reasons they've pushed people to use that instead of, you know, in the old days of windows, you'd just make up a name Leo and you'd make up a password monkey 1, 2, 3. And that's your log into windows. Those days are pretty much gone. They want you to do it with a Microsoft account. And the main reason they wanna do that is at least according to them is for this very thing, is if people forget their passwords, they can recover it by going to their Microsoft account. So, which

Caller 3 (01:05:02):
Go ahead, which, which we tried, which, which we tried doing, we tried password resetting code verification. But it still asked me to verify or still asked my father's account to like verify in this Gmail account,

Leo Laporte (01:05:18):
This Gmail account. Is it a Microsoft account that he used the Gmail address for?

Caller 3 (01:05:26):
No. He used it like on his it's his Google account. You can,

Leo Laporte (01:05:30):
You can U oh, wait a minute. Say again.

Caller 3 (01:05:32):
It's his Google account.

Leo Laporte (01:05:33):
Okay. But you can use your Google email address for your Microsoft account

Caller 3 (01:05:39):
Yeah. To rec recover.

Leo Laporte (01:05:40):
Well, no, no, no. You have to have, you can't recover anything unless you have, you used a Microsoft account to set it up. So it's still unclear what, what he did. And also this thing about him, disabling administrators is puzzling as well.

Caller 3 (01:05:58):
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:05:59):
Is the Gmail a backup email address? Cuz that's not gonna help much.

Caller 3 (01:06:06):
He, he, it says, where should we contact you and says, enter the email address. That's different from the one you're trying to recover.

Leo Laporte (01:06:14):
Okay. So that's the recovery. Yeah. Yeah. That's the backup address. Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:06:17):
That's the backup. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:06:19):
So you've gone, you tried the reset password and you couldn't do it.

Caller 3 (01:06:27):
Yeah, we tried, we tried doing that on, on the laptop that I'm

Leo Laporte (01:06:32):
Running. So there is a now the next step is there is a recovery forum you have to do.

Caller 3 (01:06:41):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:06:41):
Okay. And I think that's the main thing you wanna do account.live.com. Yep. Slash C S R.

Caller 3 (01:06:52):
Yep. Yep. I went on to that.

Leo Laporte (01:06:54):
Okay. And you went through, it says what Microsoft account are. You're trying to get back into now, make sure you don't use that backup address for that use the first address, the, the, the official Microsoft email address. And then that's where it's saying, give me the backup address. And that's where you give it the backup address. And you did all that. And then what happened? I did. Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:07:16):
So, so apparently it then, and then it said, when, when we like reset the password and then we verified the code and then all of a sudden said it still asked my father to verify the Gmail account. It's basically endless loop.

Leo Laporte (01:07:30):
Yeah. The old endless loop problem.

Caller 3 (01:07:35):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:07:37):
Is there stuff on that computer that he can't afford to lose?

Caller 3 (01:07:42):
Office 2016? Well,

Leo Laporte (01:07:44):
But how, yeah. See, this is my concern is how he installed that. It's a little suspicious, this Microsoft office, 2016, if he doesn't have the discs, he was able to download it. Yeah.

Caller 3 (01:07:58):
I think that's what he, he

Leo Laporte (01:08:00):
Sure. It's not a pirate version of office.

Caller 3 (01:08:03):
No, it, it was the, it was the one that he used like previously, before we did the clean installed a reset. So,

Leo Laporte (01:08:14):
So then you can reinstall it if he has the, the serial number, he can reinstall it.

Caller 3 (01:08:24):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:08:25):
The real thing he wants to do at this point is, is see if his, if he can get his micro forget office for the moment. Okay. I'm trying to figure out what's going on with your Microsoft account and maybe do this on a different computer.

Caller 3 (01:08:37):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:08:38):
See if he can log in to his Microsoft, you know, outlook.com using his Microsoft account. That's the first thing to do? The computer seems like there's something going on with it. That makes me a little suspect. So do this on a different computer or your phone even go to go to outlook.com and see if you can use that Microsoft to account, to log in if he can. Hallelujah. Good. Then, then the next question is can he reinstall office, does he have a legit serial number? If he can. Then what I would do is wipe the computer reinstall windows log in using your Microsoft account that you have verified now you're good. And you're golden you're in and reinstall office. And I think he'll be good. I'm a little nervous about where he got this office 2016 make sure, you know, that's the question is, do you have an official license key? But if you've, and then again, I wouldn't use this computer to try to reactivate your Microsoft account. It sounds like this computer is something's going on 88, 88. Ask Leo if you have any suggestions. That's. That's, that's, it's hard for me to know Greg what's going on. Exactly. maybe this has happened to somebody else and they can call or join our chair from irc.twi.tv. We'll see if we can find an answer for you, Leo. Leport the tech guy.

Leo Laporte (01:10:12):
I'm not sure I'm puzzled about what's going on, Greg.

Caller 3 (01:10:16):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:10:17):
I, I don't, I don't, I don't quite understand why you're getting this loop. So that's why I want the, I guess the first thing I would do is see if that he got a password for his Microsoft account. See if he reactivate his Microsoft account on another system, just to make sure you go to outlook.com and log in.

Caller 3 (01:10:36):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:10:37):
Nowadays what Microsoft does is an they send you an authentication notice on authenticator.

Caller 3 (01:10:45):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:10:46):
If you can get that to work, then try using that Microsoft login on that computer, not with the Gmail address, don't use that. That's a recovery address. Use the Microsoft address.

Caller 3 (01:10:58):
Yeah. Right? Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:11:01):
And then he should be, if he, if you verify that it works on another computer, you can go to outlook.com. Use his Microsoft account address to log in the Microsoft account password to log in, then use that to log into that computer. Then you've solved. At least the first problem. <Laugh> I'm really worried when he says I delete I, why did he delete the administrator accounts? I don't understand that one.

Caller 3 (01:11:25):
Yeah. Because, because he thought, you know, he, he want, he thought that was safe or something like that.

Leo Laporte (01:11:34):
Yeah. I'm not sure what he, I don't even know how you would do that or what he did. So that's yeah. That might be germane to this. He might have deleted something critical.

Caller 3 (01:11:44):
Yeah. That's probably what I thought. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:11:46):
If you can get a Microsoft account working and you should be able to on another system, then log in, try logging into that system with that account. If you can, then everything is gonna be fine. If you can't, the, the system is probably hosed by whatever he did. And now just reinstall, you already did this once. You're gonna do it again. Reinstall windows, set it up with a Microsoft account that you have now verified and reinstall office as he did last time.

Caller 3 (01:12:17):
Yeah. And he said he would contact Microsoft's phone number support.

Leo Laporte (01:12:20):
Yeah. They'll be, it'll be, you know, honestly, if there's a good tech, you know, company in the neighborhood, he needs it today though.

Caller 3 (01:12:28):
Sounds. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:12:29):
He sounds like, yeah.

Caller 3 (01:12:30):
Yeah. He,

Leo Laporte (01:12:31):
Greg, you're a Saint <laugh>

Caller 3 (01:12:34):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:12:38):
Cuz yeah, this is some sort of, he did something. I don't know what he did delete the, the, the words deleted, the administrative accounts are puzzling to me. Yeah. I don't think, I don't think you can do that. So what he did, whatever he deleted, you know, maybe he went to look at the user profiles and deleted the profiles or something. I don't know what he did. He did something. But so do you know what I'm saying about trying to do the recovery of the Microsoft account on another computer? Do you think you can try that?

Caller 3 (01:13:10):
Yeah. I'll he'll I'll give it a shot. Don't

Leo Laporte (01:13:12):
Do that. Cuz that I think the loop is something. Do that. Something just, you know, here's, you know, you might not even need that form. I mean, the fact that I don't, it's bizarre that you needed the form, to be honest with you. So yeah. You should be able to just reset the password.

Caller 3 (01:13:31):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:13:32):
And then next time, turn on two factor, cuz then he'll have the authenticator account on his, on his app on his phone. There's always there. There's always gonna be one active administrator account.

Caller 3 (01:13:47):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:13:47):
There has to be. So that's what you're trying to figure out what that is. Probably in all likelihood. That's the main login, the Microsoft account login. If not, you can try, you know, logging in his admin and he can play with some passwords. I mean, but there, there will be at least one administrative account.

Caller 3 (01:14:08):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:14:09):
And that if you can get that, then everything else can be fixed I think.

Leo Laporte (01:14:13):
Okay. Good luck Greg. <Laugh> bye. Bye. Leo LaPorte tech guy, eighty eight, eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. Gary in our discord chat is saying you can have a Gmail account and have an outlook account. That's right. You can sign into your Microsoft account. Your MSA will call it with a Gmail address. You can use anything you want, but he says, I'm thinking that his dad set up an outlook account, forgot the password on outlook, your MSA. But he says something else is not adding up. And that's my, the same thing. <Laugh> Gary and I have the same feeling with Greg and he says, I'm wondering if he got caught with piloting office 2016. That's truthfully. That's what it sounds like to me. And that maybe as a result, the MSA got block got locked out. The, the, the origination of this Microsoft office 2016 is the thing that's concerning me. He doesn't wanna lose his office. He says, well, you wouldn't lose it if you had a legit serial number for office. So maybe that's what's going on. Lewis is on the line from Riverside, California. Our next call. Hi Lewis.

Caller 4 (01:15:31):
Hello, Leo. Great to talk to you.

Leo Laporte (01:15:33):
Great to talk to you. What can I do for you?

Caller 4 (01:15:37):
I got a LG Q seven plus phone on the Metro PCs network. Nice. And evidently they had a problem. This is my mother's phone. All she does is talk text and get pictures from her grandkids. Aw. She doesn't have a Gmail account or anything on it. And the phone she couldn't call out. So I, I go and I, I try a couple things. Didn't work. I go down to Metro PCs and after they tried to reset it, all it had was a a sign on it where it, the, it came on and said, you know, LGQ seven plus. Yeah. And then it had a thing. It says, I wrote it down. Your device has failed a routine safety check and will not boot

Leo Laporte (01:16:28):
Well, well, well,

Caller 4 (01:16:30):
This may be a temporary problem. If this message occurs repeatedly, visit this link on another device and enter two red code Scott G slash BH.

Leo Laporte (01:16:46):
Yeah.

Caller 4 (01:16:46):
Did did that. My cousin who's he's he's he's real good with computers. He, I took it to him and he plugged in a cord. We charged it and he got it to come on. Oh. And, and now it says, I'm looking to the phone right now and it says secure startup interpass do unlock. <Laugh> 27 of 30 attempts remaining. My mother never set

Leo Laporte (01:17:15):
Up. There's no password <laugh>

Caller 4 (01:17:17):
Yeah. She never set up a password or anything. And I, I, so we need to know if there's a factory password for this.

Leo Laporte (01:17:26):
No, there's not awesome. No, there's not. He, he must have put, he, it sounds like he put a RO on the phone. You might ask him this, where he got this thing that he did to fix the phone that has a pass. He

Caller 4 (01:17:42):
Put a RO on it.

Leo Laporte (01:17:43):
Yeah. I think he put a RO on it that has its own password. Now, if he knows what the rom is, some ROS, by the way, what a rom is. It's it's it's reading. Yeah, I know, but it's not, it's not meaningful. What it really is, is the LG comes with its own firmware, LG firmware, but you can put other firmware on an Android phone. Once you route the phone, you could put any other firmware on it. It, it sounds to me like there's some other firmware on it, like lineage OS or something else that has its own password. So find out what he put on that phone to get it to work. Does it

Caller 4 (01:18:19):
Okay? Yeah. I can go back to him with that. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:18:21):
Does it still say LG when you turn it on?

Caller 4 (01:18:26):
I haven't turned it off. I left it on. I got it here. If I turned it off. Let's

Leo Laporte (01:18:29):
See. But I mean, is it, I mean, it'll say LG cuz the hardware is LG, but then past that, it might tell you what, what, what, what operating system's coming up? Android. Cuz it's open source. Lots of people have made various versions of Android. And it sounds, and that, by the way, that would be one way to fix this. In fact, it'd be a good idea with this phone. It's so old that it's running Android eight Oreo and we're up to Android 12 now and it's probably very insecure now. Sounds like the way she's using it. It's probably okay.

Caller 4 (01:19:01):
That's yeah. She talks texts and pictures of her grandkids. She doesn't have a Gmail

Leo Laporte (01:19:05):
Account. Yeah. Where do the pictures come from though? Does she take them or does she get 'em from the internet?

Caller 4 (01:19:13):
She had 'em sent to her in like a text.

Leo Laporte (01:19:16):
Yeah. Okay. 

Caller 4 (01:19:18):
And

Leo Laporte (01:19:18):
It could still, it could still get

Caller 4 (01:19:20):
Takes herself.

Leo Laporte (01:19:20):
It's still, yeah. I mean it's safe even if,

Caller 4 (01:19:23):
And we, we don't know, we haven't got the phone to come back on yet to see if the pictures are still there.

Leo Laporte (01:19:28):
They may not be depends on what your brother-in-law did. <Laugh>

Caller 4 (01:19:32):
My, my cousin. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:19:33):
Cousin. He may have you can get it working, but there might be a price to pay. So find out what he did. Did you put, did you put a ask him? Did you put a custom rom on here?

Caller 4 (01:19:49):
Yeah. Yeah. I'll I'll take it back to him. I,

Leo Laporte (01:19:51):
I think that's what he did.

Caller 4 (01:19:52):
He plugged it in he's at his desk and there's three monitors up there and he's hook.

Leo Laporte (01:19:58):
He's going he's that guy <laugh>

Caller 4 (01:20:00):
Faster us

Leo Laporte (01:20:02):
He's and he's typing. Yeah. So he, he ran a program. The Android debugger program did something. The fact that you're getting asked for a password tells me he put a custom Ram on there. So you just wanna find out to say, dude, what did you put on here? And does it have a password, some custom ROMs do, but it'll be a a default password. It's a mess. Leo Laport, Lee tech guy. <Laugh> it's such an old phone. I, the other thing you could do is run down to the Metro PCs store and say, Hey, my mom is a happy customer. She doesn't want to go somewhere else, but they're offering her a free phone over at Verizon. What can you do do for me here?

Caller 4 (01:20:49):
Yeah. It's actually it's on my account and it's one of four.

Leo Laporte (01:20:52):
Oh yeah. They'll love you. Just say, Hey, Liz is a, this phone is old. It's time to get a new one. You got any free phones for my mom.

Caller 4 (01:21:00):
<Laugh> yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:21:01):
And they will

Caller 4 (01:21:02):
She's yeah, she's had it. It still has the original screen protector on it. This phone is pristine. It would look like it's almost, it's practically brand new.

Leo Laporte (01:21:11):
Nice. Yeah. My mom loves her. Iphone loves it. And pretty much the same thing. She uses it for texting and playing games. Yeah. and this is a perfectly fine phone. The biggest concern is that it's it's so out of date now with the operating system that it's not getting security patches anymore, which means it is it's, you know, she's not doing, she's not doing banking or anything on it, so it's probably fine. Yeah. It's probably fine. Yeah. If you can't, if, if, if your cousin doesn't can't figure out why he would know why there's a password popping up. Sounds like he put a customer arm on it. If he did that and he can get it unlocked, it's not gonna look like what she's used to. It's not gonna look like Android. I'm it's the initial message is also a little puzzling. You didn't give this to your cousin before, did you?

Caller 4 (01:22:02):
No. If we took it during the first time, that was, I guess there's a list at T-Mobile. They have a bunch of phones. There's +1 236-789-1011 phones that have this problem. They're all LG.

Leo Laporte (01:22:17):
Oh, so it's a known issue.

Caller 4 (01:22:20):
LG. And I thought, well, do you just want me to buy a new phone? And you,

Leo Laporte (01:22:25):
They need, they should replace it. They should replace it for free because you know, it's not it's I can't use it. I need, you need to replace it. I think that's fair for me.

Caller 4 (01:22:37):
Yeah. That was an LG thing and not their thing.

Leo Laporte (01:22:40):
Oh, that's what they told you. I got it

Caller 4 (01:22:41):
From you.

Leo Laporte (01:22:42):
Yeah. Well that's yeah. And they're gonna say, well, you got it, you know, a few years ago. So we don't, we're not respond. You, you, you, you, it is, it does do LTE. So it's not that it's stopped working on 3g. I, you know, I don't, I don't. That's interesting. So this is a known thing with these LG phones. Ah, that's not good that ain't good. That's called enforce stop ESCE. They should give you and you probably can get a cheap phone from them, but I bet you they'll give you a free phone. If you say, look, we're gonna go somewhere else. I have, I have four accounts with you. I need a free phone for this.

Caller 4 (01:23:18):
I'll see what I can do. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:23:21):
You might get, you might get,

Caller 4 (01:23:22):
If my cousin can get it to work. Yeah. We'll stay with that. He

Leo Laporte (01:23:25):
Put, I think he put a customer arm on there and that's why it's asking for a password.

Caller 4 (01:23:30):
Yeah. He's he's quite the computer guy. He he's the guy that did his company. If they have a computer problem, they all go to him.

Leo Laporte (01:23:41):
So, so there is LG doesn't make phones anymore. They got outta the business. Yeah. Did you get LG? IMS has stopped. Is that, is that the message you got

Caller 4 (01:23:56):
LG IMS stopped? No, just 

Leo Laporte (01:23:59):
Security issue, huh?

Caller 4 (01:23:59):
Yeah. Just your device failed a routine safety check and will not. That's bizarre. Now the here's the, the crazy thing is I have an LG phone. I have the lowest end phone. It's an LGK 20. Yeah. And it still works. Yeah. And

Leo Laporte (01:24:18):
I'm gonna put a link. There's a link in the show notes. That might be relevant. There's apparently T-Mobile did an update. You're on a T-Mobile network, even though it's Metro PCs, they own Metro PCs. T-Mobile did an update that caused a problem with some LG phones. I'm gonna send you this link. This, you can probably use this to get them to give you a new phone, cuz it was their fault. We'll put it in the show notes. It's Android police. How to fix LG phones. You can Google for that. That might help too. I gotta run the sound of no. Chris Markk is what actually what you're hearing silence. Chris is taking the week off Leo Laporte. The tech guy would just keep on going, keep on answering your calls at 88 88 ask Leo Neil on the line from Chandler, Arizona. Hello Neil.

Caller 5 (01:25:10):
Hey Leo. Thanks. Taking my call.

Leo Laporte (01:25:12):
My pleasure.

Caller 5 (01:25:14):
You know, I thought of a question this morning when I heard your opening about the NFTs.

Leo Laporte (01:25:20):
Yes. And,

Caller 5 (01:25:22):
But the question I had is what is Bitcoin? And like, why would I want this or need it? I guess I, I, for the Bitcoin once, I didn't know what, I didn't feel. I could do anything with it. And why would we mean as we have dollars? So maybe I'm just piss. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:25:38):
I mean, people who are in favor of Bitcoin, I'm not against Bitcoin, particularly or cryptocurrencies of any kind. They describe a few benefits things like it's decentralized. I guess the, I guess I'm gonna have to start at the beginning, which is that currency, the money we use, the dollars, the Franks, the bucks, the pounds, the yen or the pound. They're all what we call Fiat currencies. Fiat is the Latin word for faith. They're Fiat currencies because they have you, you, you know, when you give somebody a dollar, a piece of paper with some green ink on it, there's really no real value to it, but we all agree that's worth a dollar, whatever that means. And it does have the first full faith and credit of the United States government behind it, which mostly means you can pay your taxes in it.

Leo Laporte (01:26:32):
You know, it used to be in the old days, you could give, go to the bank, give 'em a dollar to give you a dollars worth of gold. That's long gone or silver. That's long gone. It's really imaginary. We all it's only has value cuz we all agree. So the Bitcoin folks say, well, this is also a Fiat currency. If everybody agrees, you know what a Bitcoin is worth, then that is as good as a dollar. You can't pay your taxes with it though. And it's not backed by any government, but I don't. I think that probably doesn't make that much difference. The real problem with Bitcoin is you nailed it. What can I do with it? And while there are some things you can do with it for a while, you could, you know, there was a, a pizza restaurant was letting you pay in Bitcoin which caused somebody to give them what would now be $10 million worth of Bitcoin for a pizza.

Leo Laporte (01:27:27):
Tesla briefly, briefly, I mean briefly accepted Bitcoin to buy a Tesla automobile. They stopped doing that when people pointed out the environmental hazards caused by Bitcoin, cuz this is part of the problem with Bitcoin is the way it's minted. You know, we mint dollars, but at on a printing press and and the government has the right to mint, more dollars anytime they want Bitcoin is kind of clever. It was it's a mathematical process. Computers do hard math problems and generate Bitcoin. And as more Bitcoin is generated, it gets harder and harder to do the math problems, which means those computers use more and more energy to do it. And at this point, the cost of the energy is now so high that it doesn't make sense to mine Bitcoin on your computer, unless you live somewhere where energy is almost free. So that's problem.

Leo Laporte (01:28:20):
Number one, it's bad for the environment. And by the way, there are other coins that are pretty much the same problem. Number two is it's extremely volatile and you probably have noticed this, you know, at one point Bitcoin was worth about 60,000 us dollars, which means you could go to an exchange and say, I have a Bitcoin give me $60,000 and they would do it today. It's half that tomorrow might be half that, or it might be twice that it's unknown. This is unfortunately the country of El Salvador is learning this. They they, they, they used to use the us dollar. They changed a Bitcoin last year and now they can't pay their they're debts because the Bitcoin has dropped so much in value. Bitcoin is theoretically interesting for normal people. It's not I think important. And the thing note is that a lot of the people promoting Bitcoin are speculators who bought it for a B or two and are anxious to find somebody who will pay them $30,000 for it. So it's a very interesting technical story. The technology is very interesting, but many, many economists, including eight Nobel laureates think it's basically speculative. It's an economic bubble. It's not, it's a P the central bank of Estonia called it a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid scheme. I don't think it's that bad, but I think I would probably not worry about it. It's not gonna change the world as its proponents say it will or thought it would. It's just a very interesting computer science problem. Well,

Caller 5 (01:30:01):
Thank, thank you for answering that. Cause I I've never, I paid about a hundred dollars worth of it and then I got, I just, so I got a hundred made $106 out of it. I mean, got $6 more out of it.

Leo Laporte (01:30:11):
You'd actually be, if you'd kept it, you might be worth quite a bit now. Right?

Caller 5 (01:30:16):
What was a hundred? It was a hundred. I dunno if it was Bitcoin. And I was, I mean, I put a hundred dollars into it

Leo Laporte (01:30:20):
And yeah, I, I recommend people not unless they really have their eyes open, not invest in cryptocurrencies because it is a complicated thing. You know? I mean, look, to some degree, the stock market is also kind of crazy, but in theory, when you buy a stock, its value is somewhat tied to the company that issued the stock in truth. It's probably not just look at AMC or games, stop stocks, which went all over the place for no good reason at all. But in theory, a stock is somewhat tied to the economic fortunes of the company that it's issued. It Bitcoin's tied to nothing. So it goes up, it goes down and why it goes up and goes down. No one knows, you know it's very unpredictable. It's interesting. It's very interesting from a technical point of view the idea I think behind this is somewhat libertarian right now.

Leo Laporte (01:31:15):
It's the banks of the world that tell you how much money you have, right? They have a ledger in effect that says, well, you know, I, you know, I put a thousand dollars in bank of America. Bank of America says you have a thousand dollars. I can then pay somebody $500 bank of America. Tell me I have 500 and tell that guy, he has 500. That's a that's that's that ledger is maintained by the banks. Bitcoin's ledgers is maintained by every single person who owns Bitcoin, which is by the way, a whole nother problem. They call that the blockchain in the blockchain's quite huge now because it has every transaction ever made, but because it's decentralized like that, no bank controls it. A lot of libertarians say, well, this is good. You see, no, there's no government that could tell us what it's worth.

Leo Laporte (01:32:00):
Okay. But no one could tell you <laugh> what it's worth. So it's, it's kind of crazy. So I, you know, it's, it's certainly worth studying up on learning about the, the person or persons who created Bitcoin person named Satoshi Nakamoto. That was a pseudonym. It might be a group of people. It might be one person, no one knows who it is. He wrote a brilliant mathematical paper describing Bitcoin describing how it would work. It was very exciting. A lot of people jumped on that. But I don't think it is yet changing the world. If you're interested. Wikipedia has a good article on Bitcoin that I think is fair. That describes all the pros and cons describes the history of it. I think it's fascinating, but I don't think in the long run, it's gonna make a huge difference. Now, central banks, government banks, like our own federal reserve and others are looking at cryptocurrencies and they like to call 'em digital currencies and most agree that at some point nations will have to issue digital currencies.

Leo Laporte (01:33:07):
If you think about it, we already really do live in a digital world. You know, most of your money doesn't come to you in form of a, you know, silver dollars paid to you. <Laugh> an counter by a guy with advisor and, and and sleeve guarders. Here's you pay for the week in a paper envelope? No, it appears magically in your bank account. Or maybe you get a check that you deposit then appears magically in your bank account and, and most of the bills you pay these days, digital. So we really live in a digital world. So it's just a matter of time probably before the us government and other governments declare a digital currency, but it will not be like Bitcoin. It will be tied to a stable store of value. Something like the us dollar. It's very complicated. Yeah. John Oliver had a very good Bitcoin for dummies description on his show last week tonight, some years ago, Leo Laporte the tech guy. It's a really good question. I don't, you know, I don't know if I've answered it very well. It's a hard question to answer,

Caller 5 (01:34:21):
But well, no, I, my, you know, I have a friend of mine who buys themselves, not necess say Bitcoin, but other currencies. I just thought of that when, when you were talking this morning about those NFTs and I really didn't understand what

Leo Laporte (01:34:30):
It's, it's very closely related and your friend is basically a speculator just like buying anything. You know, the hope is that somebody will pay more for it down the road and you can really make the, the case. I think these days that stocks are kind of speculative as well. So it's not so very different than that, but it's not tied to anything of value. So it, the, the, the value of it just fluctuates wildly. It's very volatile. And then there is very much this issue of the amount of energy it uses, which I think may be something we should consider, cuz it's, it's very costly in terms of energy. Great. Well, thanks again for, Hey, thanks for the question. I, I don't know if I did it justice <laugh> but I tried.

Leo Laporte (01:35:18):
Let me see if I can find that was a very good article. Nicholas Weaver at UC Berkeley, he's a senior staff researcher at the international computer science Institute lecturer in Berkeley's computer science. He says Bitcoin should die in a fire. Cryptocurrency should die in a fire. Let me put this in the show notes, cuz this is probably the strongest worded case against Bitcoin. He says cryptocurrencies, although a seemingly interesting idea are simply not fit for purpose. They do not work as currencies. They're grossly inefficient and they are not meaningfully distributed in terms of trust risks involving cryptocurrencies occur in a four major areas, technical risks to participants, economic risks, to participants, systemic risks to the CRI cryptocurrency ecosystem and societal risks.

Leo Laporte (01:36:20):
A couple of years later in a lecture this year, actually on YouTube, he said, this is a virus it's harms are substantial. It has enabled billion dollar criminal enterprises. It has enabled venture capitalists to do securities fraud as their business. It has sucked people in, so either avoid it or help me make it die in a fire. <Laugh> he also says your apes are fudged because the cryptocurrencies are often used for buying these non fungible tokens that have pictures of ugly little apes. They just get liberated. But the result is you cannot store cryptocurrency on an internet connected computer because what will happen is if your computer ever gets compromised, all your money gets stolen and there's nothing you can do about it. And that's a fundamental problem. Yes <laugh> there are so many problems. We, I mean, ransomware is exploded because of Bitcoin Leo Laport, the tech guy I'll enter into the record as the senators will say, I will.

Leo Laporte (01:37:23):
In my case post on our website tech I labs.com a really good article from current affairs magazine this month an interview with UC Berkeley's, computer science professor Nicholas Weaver who has been very outspoken about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. They quote him from 2018 and by the way, I'm gonna link, put the link in cuz it's worth reading the whole thing he describes in great detail, the problems with cryptocurrency, which I have been describing. I've been probably more judicious than he has been. He says, cryptocurrencies are viruses. Its harms are substantial. It has enabled billion dollar criminal enterprises. Ransomware has exploded. Thanks to Bitcoin. It has enabled venture capitalists to do securities fraud as their business. It has sucked people in, so either avoid it or help me make it die in a fire. That's Nicholas Weaver from UC Berkeley. <Laugh> help me make it die in a fire.

Leo Laporte (01:38:30):
All I would say is if somebody wants you or starts and you'll, by the way you'll meet 'em. If somebody you meets tries to convince you to buy an NFT, which is closely related or invest in cryptocurrency, watch your wallet, watch your wallet because the, they need people to buy it. Like any pyramid scheme, you need new suckers. So just watch your wallet. And if you feel like <laugh>, if you look around at the table and and you feel like I, these people are suckers, I can take them in <laugh> okay. Good luck. <Laugh> good luck promise you, you know, just like any casino, you always see the winners. You don't see so much about the losers.

Leo Laporte (01:39:21):
And with cryptocurrency, you hear of about the Bitcoin bros where billionaires they're billionaires. I tells you living in big mansions, driving fancy cars. Yeah. But that's not you. <Laugh> all of those billions that they have. And by the way, notice they quickly converted that cryptocurrency into dollars to buy all those things. All of, all of those dollars came from people like you and me. That's, that's how you build the casinos in Las Vegas. That's how you turn a scammer into a Bitcoin billionaire don't fall for it. Again, tech guy labs.com. I'll put the link. It's a good question. And I, you know, when this, when this first started happening, I was interested as many were in the technology of it and blockchain. And there's some perhaps, you know, perhaps some real value to the idea of a decentralized ledger and all of that. But over time I've become more and more skeptical. I, as I've seen more and more people get ripped off to golf to lose, you know, lose their shirts to this stuff. And now at this point, I, I really, I think it's time to, to, to speak the truth and say, this stuff is a pyramid scheme. Stay away. Joe, Santa Barbara, California, Leo Laporte the tech guy.

Caller 6 (01:40:38):
Hi Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:40:38):
Hi, welcome. 

Caller 6 (01:40:41):
Before I, before my question, I'd like to thank you. I called a while back and I wanted to replace my battery on a Mac error. I wanted to do it myself. Oh yeah. And you first yeah. You turned me on to I fix it, which is, which turned out to be a really nice company.

Leo Laporte (01:41:01):
Isn't a great company. I love them. Yeah. Yeah.

Caller 6 (01:41:03):
Yeah. Just wanted to give 'em some props and good. And I had a question for them and I called them and believe it or not, they actually called me back. You know, you never hear that from companies anymore. No,

Leo Laporte (01:41:15):
They're great. In fact, I know Kyle wins the, the founder they have advertised in the past in our podcast, but I'm a big fan of I fixit.com highly recommend that. Yeah.

Caller 6 (01:41:25):
Yeah. Yeah. And my question is, since we retired my wife and I, we made a little pack to travel and we've been traveling up till COVID kind of shut us down. And when we're traveling, I use sling box to watch my home television. Yes. My home

Leo Laporte (01:41:53):
DDR. Yeah. We used to do ads for them for a long time. Cuz it was a really clever idea.

Caller 6 (01:41:59):
Right. Well, I, I have a little problem with it. So I called them up and they said that they're gonna quit support yeah. Of the sling box.

Leo Laporte (01:42:08):
They, they kind of got out that business. Yeah.

Caller 6 (01:42:10):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:42:12):
So what wonder the idea was, which is really clever. You spent a lot of money on your home theater system at home, including all your subscriptions to cable and HBO and all that. Why should you, when you're on the road have to, you know, pay for a movie when you already bought it at home. So the you'd put the sling box in your house and it would essentially turn your home theater system into a, an internet stream a server. So you could watch anything you could watch at home. You could watch on the road. It's a great idea, but even they are abandoning it because they now sling now sells subscriptions to streaming services. So as of last year they discontinued their products. They've moved into a new business which is, you know, essentially streaming it directly. Why, you know, eliminating your home theater.

Caller 6 (01:43:02):
So what do you have any options for me to be

Leo Laporte (01:43:07):
Able to? Does it still work?

Caller 6 (01:43:10):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:43:11):
Well cross your fingers. <Laugh>

Caller 6 (01:43:15):
You're

Leo Laporte (01:43:15):
Right. I would continue to use it. There's nothing wrong with it. The reason that they have stopped doing it is because nobody's buying 'em anymore because all people are doing is subscribing to, in fact, this is probably what I'd recommend, sling TV, sling.com, which sells, you know, all your locals all the stuff you want, just stream it from them. Instead of having to, you know, it's kind of a clue to get to your home theater system and all that. And if somebody, I remember people calling in, you know, if somebody changes the channel at home, your channel gets changed on your sling and vice versa. So there's all sorts of issues with it. Sling sells streaming TV services starting at 35 bucks a month. I use YouTube TV, which is Google's version the same thing. It gives me the local stations in my area, the San Francisco bay area, plus a bunch it's like basic cable, 65, it's expensive.

Leo Laporte (01:44:12):
It's 65 bucks a month. But I, I really like it because it also has a built in DVR. So for instance, I did not want to get up at 6:00 AM to watch the formula one race in Monaco this morning, but I have it, I just told it, record all formula, one events, just like I say, record all San Francisco 49ers games. And then I can watch 'em at my leisure anywhere, not just at home, but anywhere I can get online and that's the real strength of it. So even what I would do is keep using your sling box, you know, until it breaks. And if they won't fix it, which they, you know, it's not, it's solid state, it's probably gonna go forever. Definitely. I don't know. The real question is do they provide, and they may some sort of backend net what we call net traversal. It, it, in order to get through firewalls in all likelihood, I'll have to check. I don't remember your sling box and you and your RV are connecting to Sling's servers to, to get around any firewall issues. So they, you, you know, and that means they have to run some, a service. If at some point they turn off that service, your sling box will just stop working. They say, they say, it's not gonna happen yet. Let me see if they have a, a date

Caller 6 (01:45:33):
It totally November.

Leo Laporte (01:45:34):
Oh really? So they are gonna turn that. They're gonna turn that off. So it'll work right up until they turn that off. And then you're gonna probably, they're gonna probably offer you a deal. I would bet saying, Hey, you can get sling TV for half off or something. So watch for that offer.

Caller 6 (01:45:52):
Cause you know, we really liked the, the main thing we liked about Slingbox was we were able to, you know, record and, you know, just like we were at home right. And watch back

Leo Laporte (01:46:03):
Right. Our program. So I can do the same thing with sling or with the YouTube TV there a number of companies that offer this it's expensive, but you, but you know, honestly you can eliminate your cable subscription at home because it's doing the same thing, watch it at home or watch it on the road. And it, it kind of ends up the same.

Caller 6 (01:46:23):
Yeah. And I recommend if you ever retire and I think you would love it. Just travel as much as you can.

Leo Laporte (01:46:31):
I, oh, I love to travel. I miss traveling the last couple of years. I agree with you a hundred percent. Yeah. Leo LaPorte, the tech guy, that's the only problem with this job. I can't go anywhere. <Laugh> yeah, we have, I mean, I'm getting close to figuring out how I can do the radio show anywhere. Right.

Caller 6 (01:46:50):
Right. Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:46:52):
And at some point, you know, we do it now over the internet. I connect back to the studio using the public internet. So I guess I could put these boxes that I use here in an RV and drive around. Yeah,

Caller 6 (01:47:04):
We, yeah, we, we, we, we don't have an RV, but we, we just travel when we're in the United States and we just stay in hotels.

Leo Laporte (01:47:14):
I, I think that's probably what we do cuz

Caller 6 (01:47:17):
It's RV's just too much work.

Leo Laporte (01:47:19):
Yeah. I don't wanna drive. Well, it's anything that big, but we don't have a car,

Caller 6 (01:47:24):
Right?

Leo Laporte (01:47:24):
No, I like the idea and we, we, you know, we love to travel and Lisa and I have booked a bunch of adventures for the next few years. In fact, the one I'm really looking forward to is in 2025, we're gonna do a river boat down the Mississippi. We're going from the twin cities to new Orleans.

Caller 6 (01:47:42):
Nice. I can't

Leo Laporte (01:47:42):
Wait. Can't wait.

Caller 6 (01:47:44):
Cause we, we started and we do well, we haven't for years, but like two month United States road trips, just take off.

Leo Laporte (01:47:52):
I really wanna do that. I can't wait to do that. No.

Caller 6 (01:47:55):
Yeah. I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:47:56):
We're gonna, we're gonna do that, but you're right. I have to be retired cuz you know, I have to be able to, you know, do all that.

Caller 6 (01:48:03):
Yeah. One, couple things I'd really recommend. Cuz you seem like the traveler is we went to the Galapagos islands.

Leo Laporte (01:48:10):
We've been loved it. Oh really? We've only been on the fir we did the one week, which was the Western side. So Lisa says we gotta go back and do the Eastern side.

Caller 6 (01:48:20):
Yeah. It's wonderful. Yeah. And the trip of a lifetime for me was taking an African safari.

Leo Laporte (01:48:28):
Oh that's the one we haven't done. My travel agent Jane is saying, you gotta do it. You gotta do it. So it's on the list for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Wasn't the Galapagos amazing that made us think we wanna do more nature tours like, like Africa like the Amazon and stuff and cuz we really had fun. That was so I got so many great images and oh I love the Galapagos. That was so

Caller 6 (01:48:50):
Cool. I would, I would it's a little more expensive, but I would highly recommend traveling to those kind of places with national geographic.

Leo Laporte (01:48:59):
Okay.

Caller 6 (01:49:00):
Yes. And sometimes, sometime they even have certain tours that specify that they're going to be photo tours. So. Oh, and I know you're in the cameras.

Leo Laporte (01:49:15):
Yeah. So yeah, we get, we get the, they sent us their brochures and I've been looking at the Linblad to Antarctica. That's kind of the, the one I'd like to do the national grid geographic Linblad yep, yep, yep.

Caller 6 (01:49:27):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:49:27):
So we've been talking to the travel agent much. Hey it's great. I'm glad you're doing it, Joe. Okay. It's awesome. Take care. Bye bye. Well Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy, time to talk computers and the internet home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, obsolete technology, brand new technology technology. Watch your wallet technology. It's all. It's all about technology. Eighty eight eighty eight ask Leo is the phone number (888) 827-5536 toll free or anywhere in the us or Canada. Jeff is on the line from New York, New York. Hi Jeff.

Caller 7 (01:50:11):
Hi. How you doing Leo? Can you hear me? Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:50:13):
I hear you. Great. What's up?

Caller 7 (01:50:15):
All right. First thing is swing box is great. I actually it's funny cause I used to use it and hook up my nanny cam to it to turn it into 

Leo Laporte (01:50:23):
Device. Oh yeah. And basically any input. Yeah. Yeah. It's a shame. And I guess they're gonna turn off the intermediate server that lets you access your home stuff, which means it'll stop working and end

Caller 7 (01:50:36):
Of the evening on the ninth. Yeah. 9Th of November. That's a

Leo Laporte (01:50:39):
Bummer. That's a bummer.

Caller 7 (01:50:40):
I know. I know. Well while I have you quick, I was telling the last couple weeks my iPhone died and I finally got it like back like completely dead and I charged it. But a lot of the messages from two of my emails subscribers are saying the subject line is from no sender, like a lot <laugh> oh, coming back. Oh. I tried turning it off and rebooting it and I worked on my computer, but on my phone it just says no sender, no sender like thousands of messages.

Leo Laporte (01:51:08):
So you see, when you look at the messages on your computer, you see? Yeah. You're saying it's a subject line says no sender or there the send the front lines. No there

Caller 7 (01:51:19):
No the front line. I'm sorry. The front line looking at wouldn't right now.

Leo Laporte (01:51:22):
That makes more sense. The line. Yeah. Yeah. No sender. But when you look at it on a computer, you'll see the email, the sending email address.

Caller 7 (01:51:29):
Correct. How, how do I get it back?

Leo Laporte (01:51:32):
Why is the iPhone not doing it and are using Apple's built in mail program?

Caller 7 (01:51:38):
Yeah. Well I'm using AOL and Gmail,

Leo Laporte (01:51:41):
But the app you're using to look at them on the iPhone is, is mail.

Caller 7 (01:51:46):
Yes. Correct.

Leo Laporte (01:51:47):
Yeah. And it's the same thing for both AOL and Gmail.

Caller 7 (01:51:51):
Yes. Correct.

Leo Laporte (01:51:52):
That's interesting. So it sounds like this, the what the iPhone is doing is trying to look up the name of the sender in your contacts. How are your, how are your contacts on your phone? Are they okay?

Caller 7 (01:52:09):
Yeah. I mean, they go back for years. They're all here.

Leo Laporte (01:52:12):
Right. But they're all there and

Caller 7 (01:52:13):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:52:14):
Huh. Okay. And which iPhone do you have is an iPhone? 

Caller 7 (01:52:19):
It's a 12.

Leo Laporte (01:52:20):
It's a 12. That's the one I have too. Yeah. Scooter X has found an article from nine to five Mac for iOS 13. It is a apparently a known bug. The no sender bug iOS 13 is renowned for having a bug email app. Now we're up to iOS 15. Have you updated the iOS 15?

Caller 7 (01:52:41):
Yeah. I'm I'm I'm the latest

Leo Laporte (01:52:43):
Software. Okay. So you're, you've got the latest mail app 2.5. Yeah. Yeah. So let me the most common issue. This is back a couple of years with the iOS 13 mail appears to be the no sender glitch. What happens is every message in the inbox is not show the actual sender instead, sewing, no sender. Well, this's exactly what's happening to you. And you're not even on iOS 13. So what what the nine to five Mac article says is force quit the mail app, turn off the phone, completely reboot and it should be fixed. I might even go a step further on this, which is to, to clear, remember that when you're doing Gmail, I think AOL is the same when you're downloading it. You're not deleting the messages unless you've said specifically from the website. In fact, I know you're not, cuz you said you could go to the website and see them.

Leo Laporte (01:53:39):
So it's completely safe for you to erase, to, to go to the mail, the mail app and and St force stop it and delete the cashed data, delete everything. It knows as if it's brand new and start over. It sounds like there is a database. And I know there is a database that mail uses and it sounds like it's corrupted. And so by deleting it, you're forcing it to rebuild it. Okay. So I will try that. So that should, it sounds apparently this is not the first time it's happened, which is ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. So just and then it says reboot the phone as well. Okay. All right. So you're not alone. Thank you. <Laugh> you're not alone in this world. And I will we'll put a link to this article, even though it is, you know, from 2019, and it's an older version of iOS, it's interesting that it's still happening.

Leo Laporte (01:54:32):
It's still happening. HD editor. Our chatroom says also pull the battery point, the phone at the north star under a full moon, and then put some incense smoke underneath it to, to get the bad spirits out. I don't think you'll need to do that though. That would be an extreme case. <Laugh> probably don't need to do that. It, in this case, I don't think it's a bug actually. Despite what nine to five max says, it sounds like the database is getting corrupt. So the way mail, modern mail programs work, all these servers, Gmail, AOL, outlook, all of them are some form of what we call an IMAP server. The old days in the old days of email, when hard drive storage was was dear and the ISP did not want to store all your messages forever on its hard drive, they would use a mail protocol called pop point post office protocol, P O P later P O P three.

Leo Laporte (01:55:34):
And the whole idea of pop was when you, once you got the mail, you got it on your computer. They would delete it, save space on their servers. Of course, if you've got a phone, a laptop, a desktop, a computer at work, a computer on at home, you don't want that mail deleted. It's kind of a pain. What you really want is the mail to stay on the server and the email program. Just to show you what's on the server. Once Gmail became popular, everybody kind of moved to that. Gmail. Isn't technically IMAP, it's IMAP related, but it's the same idea. That's why you can use a browser and look at your email on Gmail and use the phone and look at your email on Gmail because it's not being deleted. It's being preserved on the server. So when you are using apple mail or almost any modern email program with a modern email provider like Google, and I presume AOLs move to IMAP as well.

Leo Laporte (01:56:25):
They're not exactly modern, but let's, let's assume they've become a little more modern. Your mail program is just showing you a view of what's actually on the server. Now, typically what these programs do to speed it up. If it had to download the message every single time you looked at your email that would be slow is cash. It, they download a chunk of it and they save it, but they don't save it forever. They download a chunk of it and delete it as they need space. So older messages, you know, aren't stored on your phone. They're still stored in the, on the Gmail server, but they're not stored on your phone now in order to quickly load those messages to move between them, to reply to them. It's a database really. And the, and the database has to index ahead of time, all your messages.

Leo Laporte (01:57:12):
That way it'll quickly jump to the message if you search for it and so forth, otherwise it's, it's slow. All of these are techniques, all computers use in a variety of places to speed things up. They cash things. They store things, you know, hidden spots on the hard drive and they index them. They go through them to make sure that they know everything there. And then when you do a search, it's effectively going, looking in the index index is saying, yeah, that's there. And then it goes to the message. But if the index is corrupted, particularly with the, you know, in your case, the sender information, it's gonna re report. I, you know, there's something wrong. I don't know. There's no sender. Obviously there's a sender, but it says there's no sender. It could just as easily and probably should say error, or maybe even better error rebuild your database, you know, but the way to fix an error in a database or an, and this is a cash database is to start over, delete the cash, delete all the messages.

Leo Laporte (01:58:08):
The good news is the reason I've gone through this extensive explanation is so that, you know, deleting it locally on your phone does not delete it on the server. Gmail still has it. AOL still has it. You're just deleting your local cashed version of it and starting over. And then the first time you open it, it'll be a little slow. It's gonna have to load all that mail index it, store it in a cash, but one hopes at that point, it will fix it. So delete the cash, delete the stored mail, you know, force stop the mail program, restart the phone. All of that is intended to just kind of clear it out and start from scratch. Then it should redownload it and say, oh yeah, somebody did send you this message. There really was a sender. Eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo that's the phone number? (888) 827-5536, toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada. More calls still to come. You stay right here. Leo LaPorte, the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo. That's the phone number? June's on the line from Chino Hills, California. Hello, June.

Caller 8 (01:59:12):
Hi. Hi. How are you?

Leo Laporte (01:59:14):
I'm great. What's up with you? I'm good.

Caller 8 (01:59:17):
I am trying to sort out four generations of photographs in my family. I ended up with everything when everybody died. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:59:28):
Oh Lord. <Laugh> so,

Caller 8 (01:59:31):
So now I'm trying, but

Leo Laporte (01:59:32):
It's all on you. That doesn't seem fair.

Caller 8 (01:59:35):
I know. And I also have, I have like essays that family members have written about their lives. Oh. Which I'm gonna be copying and sending out to my family, but I have members that want the pictures. Sure. They do. They go back to the 18 hundreds. Oh, that's

Leo Laporte (01:59:53):
So great. And maybe it, you shouldn't do it cuz you're gonna do the hard work. Somebody will upload them to ancestry.com or somewhere. So that future generations, when they finally wise up and say, Hey, you know, there must have been some interesting ancestors in this family tree.

Caller 8 (02:00:09):
There was,

Leo Laporte (02:00:10):
I bet

Caller 8 (02:00:10):
Finding out

Leo Laporte (02:00:13):
My dog. I'm really proud. My daughter's only 30. Usually it's older people that do this. My daughter's only 30 has, has shown a lot of interest. She's been going to her grandfather and grandmother saying, tell me stories and so forth. It's great. When the younger generation. Oh, that's

Caller 8 (02:00:25):
Great. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I found out that we have a Lord master mayor. Oh. From London. Oh my family. And I almost fell over when I read that.

Leo Laporte (02:00:35):
Wow. The Lord mayor of London. Wow. Yeah. You know, he gets a really nice chain. I wonder maybe they <laugh> they hang around your neck. No,

Caller 8 (02:00:45):
I, we had five members fight in the revolutionary war on wow.

Leo Laporte (02:00:49):
Out. Oh yeah. You definitely wanna save this. So they're paper paper pictures, right? They're are they in books or what? Yeah.

Caller 8 (02:00:56):
Well I do have some 10 types, but somebody, oh my made some copies off of that.

Leo Laporte (02:01:02):
Oh my. But so we we had a bunch of slides in my family and we, my sister took 'em down to a local service bureau who scanned them Uhhuh <affirmative>. But once you get this stuff digitized, it's great. Cuz then everybody who wants a copy can have one.

Caller 8 (02:01:15):
That's what I thought.

Leo Laporte (02:01:16):
They never go bad. You know, those prints, some of them are starting to wear, wear out, you know, wear away, fade out. So it's be really good to digitize them. Now if you,

Caller 8 (02:01:26):
Yeah, it would. Well,

Leo Laporte (02:01:27):
If you wanna do, there are companies that will do this for you, like scan cafe.com or scan my photos.com. But if you wanna do it yourself, you certainly, you know, it's certainly a worthwhile project. It can take a while.

Caller 8 (02:01:41):
Well, I'm retired <laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:01:45):
You got plenty of time.

Caller 8 (02:01:47):
I have plenty of time and I have all the photographs.

Leo Laporte (02:01:51):
So you can, what you need then is a scanner. So a scanner will take the image, even a tin type. If you get the right scanner, well, take the image, put it, convert it to a digital format, which you can then store on a hard drive. You could upload it to a, a photo sharing site like flicker, Google photos, or, you know, there are lots of them. 

Caller 8 (02:02:12):
Well I was thinking, I was trying to find out about the Epson printer that you averaged

Leo Laporte (02:02:18):
That you oh yeah. Scanner about before. Yes. It's called that does the fast photo. Yeah.

Caller 8 (02:02:23):
Yeah. And I was thinking that would be a good way to do it at home.

Leo Laporte (02:02:27):
So the fast photo is good for a photo that you can sheet feed. It's a sheet fed scanner. So you put 'em in a stack and it goes, it's really fast, like one per second. And it does. Oh,

Caller 8 (02:02:39):
So you might rip them up when you think

Leo Laporte (02:02:40):
Them out. Well, yeah, I be certainly you can't do that with a tin type, obviously it's glass and if they're fragile for, so what I would say is the Epson is good for, you know, old style, you know, got 'em at the one hour photo prints. It'll do those fine. It's designed for that.

Caller 8 (02:02:56):
Yeah. But we have a lot of, we have like, I have a picture of a log house that my family built in the 18 hundreds in Oklahoma territory. And I don't know who they got to take the picture, but they have a really good picture of it. But it's FA like you said, it's fading. Yeah. And I wanna make copies of that type of thing. And I have, you know, like formalized photographs of uncles and great uncles and great, great uncles and grandfathers and family reunions

Leo Laporte (02:03:32):
And oh yeah. You wanna save these and, and what you, once you get 'em digital, you can upload 'em to a site like you know, genealogy.com or ancestry.com. You can also put them on, you know Google photos and, and, and share it with everybody. Everybody can have a copy, which is really nice. You don't have to fight over that copy of the log cabin. Everybody can have a copy,

Caller 8 (02:03:57):
But do we need to have like a special computer because

Leo Laporte (02:04:00):
No, just a regular computer will do.

Caller 8 (02:04:03):
I have no computer at this point. Okay. I also need to know what is the best one I did use well I'm 77 years old. And so I taught for 34 years and we used computers at the last 20 or 25 years. Sure. But then they took the computers away from us when we left. So I got a computer, but then it broke down. Yeah. And I couldn't get it fixed.

Leo Laporte (02:04:29):
I'm thinking how many photos do you think there are total?

Caller 8 (02:04:34):
I have a legal size box that stack.

Leo Laporte (02:04:38):
Wow. So thousands.

Caller 8 (02:04:40):
Yeah. I think there's probably about 5,000. So I'm just guessing our family was very prolific. My father was a mayor in city council for like 15 years in a town here in Southern California. So we have all that kind of pictures that my brothers want. And we have, you know, I mean, it's just, they're so varied. We had five ministers in the family. I found out

Leo Laporte (02:05:08):
I love all this stuff. I think it's so great to preserve this. Usually though, the younger people in the family go, oh, who cares? It's the older people. Oh, they do who care? Right. They

Caller 8 (02:05:18):
Do mine because they have babies in them.

Leo Laporte (02:05:21):
Good, good. So, so the Epson would be fine, but it's very limited to those things that you could put in the sheet feeder. It's not what we call a flatbed scanner. The problem with a flatbed scanner, which is just like a Xerox machine. You know, you open the lid, it's got a glass plate, you put it on the lid, you close the, you put it on the glass, you close the lid. Those are slow. So that's a long process, cuz you're gonna put it on there. It's gonna go. And then, you know, so you need a computer, you need the flatbed scanner. Dr. Mom gave her one of our chatters gave her husband a Caesar, C, Z U R. And these are scanners. You could actually take to a library because they're just like a lamp, an overhead lamp, the camera's in the arm and you put anything under it, which means that tin type or a book or a print, you put it under it and it takes a picture. But all of these you're gonna need a computer too. So now you're talking a thousand bucks for the scanner, another thousand bucks for the computer. We're talking some real money and some real time.

Caller 8 (02:06:24):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:06:25):
So it might well be worth finding as a, a, a service that would do this for you. They do this as a professional thing. They're gonna take good care of it. They'll clean up the images and they'll give you a CD or a DVD with all the images or they'll put it online. And then you don't have to worry about that either. So you, I, if you don't have a computer, this is kind of an elaborate thing. That you're well,

Caller 8 (02:06:50):
What, one of the, my brothers recommended that I get an a S U S computer.

Leo Laporte (02:06:57):
Yeah. But now you gotta learn the computer. You gotta get the scanner. It just depends. I think for the same prices, buying the scanner in the computer, you could send it to somebody like scan cafe.com, S C a N C a e.com. You send them the box, they do the whole thing for you. And it, and it probably wouldn't cost anymore. I think that's probably the way to do it. Leo. LePort the tech guy. I mean, if you wanted a computer and a scanner, if you really wanted that and you would use it afterwards. Okay. But if it's just for this project, no,

Caller 8 (02:07:30):
In the service, you said you gave the name of

Leo Laporte (02:07:33):
A, yeah. There's a number of services. The best thing to do would be see if there's a service in your area. And you, you know, because then you can bring it to them if you go to, so scan cafe is a national service, but, but you're trusting the males.

Caller 8 (02:07:49):
Yeah. I know. And there's

Leo Laporte (02:07:50):
Only one copy of that log cabin, photo. That's

Caller 8 (02:07:53):
Right. That's right.

Leo Laporte (02:07:54):
And you can look, go to S C a N C afe.com and you can see what they do and understand, and they do this. This is, this is their business. Yeah. And they do it with any kind of anything, photos, even, you know, super eight videos, all that stuff. And they'll send you a box and you put it in the box and you ship it. And, you know, chances are 99.9%. It won't get lost. Yeah. But, but if it did, it would be disaster. Right. So that's the other thing to do is to find somebody that does the same thing in Chino Hills, then you can bring it to them. That's what my sister did. She actually brought it to somebody, but if there isn't.

Caller 8 (02:08:35):
Okay. So scan cafe,

Leo Laporte (02:08:37):
Scan cafe. It's very, just look at it cuz you'll see, this is exactly what they do. Yeah. And they have better scanners cuz they spend thousands of dollars on their scanners.

Caller 8 (02:08:47):
Right. Okay. That sounds like a great idea.

Leo Laporte (02:08:49):
And then you'll have it. It'll be high quality. They'll they'll, you know, put it online so you can share it. They, they have, they do, they fix it up, they clean it up. So that's probably the better way to do it and it wouldn't cost you much more than buying, you know, you're, you're talking now at least $2,000 plus the learning curve, you know? Yeah. And unless you wanna become a computer, w maybe you do.

Caller 8 (02:09:15):
I don't know. Maybe <laugh> I did do. I did do a lot of things. I did my daughter's wedding online, everything. Nice.

Leo Laporte (02:09:23):
Well, so you have some ex it wouldn't be too steep of a learning curve. You know what you're doing? No.

Caller 8 (02:09:28):
Yeah, no. Okay. Thank you very much.

Leo Laporte (02:09:31):
Hey, you're welcome. I'm really glad you're gonna do this June. This is very worth it.

Caller 8 (02:09:36):
Oh yeah. It is. Yeah, it is. Yeah. For the family, if nothing else. Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (02:09:41):
And you get them to chip in the, the advantage of putting it online. Like if you put it somewhere like shutter fly.com is they pay for the print <laugh>

Caller 8 (02:09:52):
Cause

Leo Laporte (02:09:53):
What? You don't want them to just go, oh Andy June, would you send us a print of that? <Laugh>

Caller 8 (02:09:59):
Oh, I know. You know he had,

Leo Laporte (02:10:01):
Yeah, you don't want that. So you put it online and then they can order prints or you know, mouse, pads or calendars or whatever they want,

Caller 8 (02:10:09):
Whatever they want. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (02:10:13):
<Laugh> you're welcome June. This is a great project.

Caller 8 (02:10:16):
Thank you. Take

Leo Laporte (02:10:17):
Care. Bye

Caller 8 (02:10:18):
You.

Leo Laporte (02:10:22):
Yeah, it's complicated. But I, you know, somebody's gonna have to go through 'em after that she scans them and say, oh yeah, that's uncle Jack. That's that's great. Grandpa, you know, Ernesto. Oh, there's Lord mayor shuffle worth the there's lots of ways to do it. The other way to do it. If you already had a computer and a fancy, a relatively good camera, I guess you could even do it with a smartphone is to set up an easel with lights and just take pictures of everything. Leo Laporte the tech I eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. Harold on the line. Tusin, California. Hello, Harold.

Caller 9 (02:11:05):
Hi there.

Leo Laporte (02:11:06):
Hey, welcome to the show. What can I do for you?

Caller 9 (02:11:09):
Just to let you know, 99% of what you talk about. I have no clue. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:11:15):
Why do you listen then Harold? Why? <laugh>

Caller 9 (02:11:18):
Well, maybe I pick up something. I can just sit on the

Leo Laporte (02:11:21):
Same reason I watch French movies. I'm hoping I'll pick up a little French on the way. Exactly.

Caller 9 (02:11:26):
Well, it's like that scanner thing, you know, it was kind of a good,

Leo Laporte (02:11:29):
Yeah. See, see. Yeah. See, I try to throw in some useful tidbits here and there.

Caller 9 (02:11:36):
<Laugh> I have a Samsung smart TV.

Leo Laporte (02:11:40):
Hmm.

Caller 9 (02:11:41):
And I've had it four or five years. So I don't know what I have. It's a Samsung. I just bought it. <Laugh> 

Leo Laporte (02:11:50):
By the way, that is what a normal person says. A geek says, I have a Samsung SM 43 92, it's a 10 80 P full HD and then goes on and on it. You just say, I don't know what it is. I bought it. It was a TV. I watched TV on it.

Caller 9 (02:12:05):
Yeah. I heard you talking about that. Other, the new models around the G E D or G. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:12:12):
Yeah, yeah.

Caller 9 (02:12:14):
I don't, you know, and my, my question is related to that, my question is after four or five years of watching the baseball games, all of a sudden my volume button doesn't work.

Leo Laporte (02:12:29):
Oh man. On the remote. On the remote.

Caller 9 (02:12:33):
Yes. Yeah. I don't have any buttons on the TV itself.

Leo Laporte (02:12:37):
Oh, they, they isn't that funny now I think there is a button somewhere, but it may not be obvious, but yeah, that drives me nuts. If I can't find the button to cause if the remote batteries die or something, you wanna turn on the TV, how are you supposed to do it?

Caller 9 (02:12:51):
Well, well, I've have switched remotes a couple times. Yeah. With I don't remember. I keep saying scan from, but what is it if what's the, what's the what's the internet company starts with S

Leo Laporte (02:13:12):
No, <laugh> let me think. I'm gonna go look at my directory internet companies that start with S Snapchat app chat. I don't know. Anyway, you get other, you get other, other remotes, not, not Samsung brand, but other other brands. Oh, you're talking about your cable company. Spectrum.

Caller 9 (02:13:32):
That's what I'm talking about.

Leo Laporte (02:13:33):
Oh, I got it. Okay. Yep. Yep. Chatroom, chatroom understood. They figured it out.

Caller 9 (02:13:40):
Anyway. I got a couple of those and then I got a new box that connects and all that neat stuff. And I have enough comment set to know how to plug it in, but I don't know how it works inside. So it doesn't go on. I mean, it goes on just fine, but I can't get it to go louder or,

Leo Laporte (02:13:59):
Well, that's no fun. Now. This is not the remote. This is the spectrum remote.

Caller 9 (02:14:07):
Got

Leo Laporte (02:14:07):
It. Okay. And

Caller 9 (02:14:10):
My son hooked up something when he was out here at Christmas. Like a Roku, but it was firely or fire something or other

Leo Laporte (02:14:21):
Firestick yeah, Amazon. Yeah.

Caller 9 (02:14:23):
And, and he gave me a few of his sites. I'm on his family plan.

Leo Laporte (02:14:28):
Nice. <laugh>

Caller 9 (02:14:30):
But I've never used it because I used it once and I got everything so screwed up. I just said Uhuh. So I got it working again on spectrum and everything's fine. We got the games and we got what we want.

Leo Laporte (02:14:45):
That's what you care about the darn baseball game. So the spectrum remote has to be taught how to control the Samsung TV. This is the problem does, in fact, if you could find your Samsung remote it and turn your volume up and down just to verify it, it probably works. It's just the spectrum. I dunno. Well, that's the question, right? If, if there was something big, bigger, wrong, then your Samsung remote wouldn't work. But I can, I'm almost promise you. It does. It's the spectrum.

Caller 9 (02:15:14):
Well, anyway, yeah. Anyway, I got my wife lost the Samsung remote.

Leo Laporte (02:15:20):
Oh, there's the problem right there in a nutshell.

Caller 9 (02:15:24):
But I went and bought a generic one.

Leo Laporte (02:15:29):
Oh, does that work?

Caller 9 (02:15:32):
Everything worked just fine until recently. And now the sound is random. Sometimes you turn the TV on and you have sound up and down. You can change it. Sometimes you turn it on and nothing will happen. So I went to best buy cuz it's close to me. And I went into the geek squad. Well, that's no help. They don't touch TVs. Only computers.

Leo Laporte (02:16:01):
They saw you coming. They said, uhoh here comes Harold. Hide behind the counter quick.

Caller 9 (02:16:08):
Yeah. Well they, they know me.

Leo Laporte (02:16:10):
They do know you. I have,

Caller 9 (02:16:12):
Yeah. I have four. I have four computers and I have a year service and I take each one in when it needs something. I don't

Leo Laporte (02:16:19):
Fiddle with it. I figured they knew you <laugh>. So Harold, so the trick is we gotta get that spectrum remote to understand what kind of TV you have. It has to be taught. So if you think about it, that spectrum remote is what we, sometimes we call a universal remote. It's not, it's supposed to work with a variety of devices. So

Caller 9 (02:16:43):
It works just, and, and I went to the TV section to look for a new TV. I said, I'm not gonna screw around with this concept.

Leo Laporte (02:16:53):
Don't buy it. Wait a minute. <Laugh> don't buy a new TV. Just cause the remote won't turn the volume up. I don't think

Caller 9 (02:17:00):
What I did. Yeah. What I did is I talked to a TV guy.

Leo Laporte (02:17:05):
Yeah. What'd he say?

Caller 9 (02:17:07):
He's an experienced guy. He says, you know, I have the same problem.

Leo Laporte (02:17:12):
<Laugh>

Caller 9 (02:17:13):
And the only way I can fix it is I unplug it. <Laugh> from the power source.

Leo Laporte (02:17:20):
I think he's giving you the wrong advice. I don't think it's the TV.

Caller 9 (02:17:24):
Okay. Well, anyway, if I do that and then when I plug it back in, everything works just fine.

Leo Laporte (02:17:29):
No, well I'm wrong. He was right. The TV. If you unplug it and plug it in, then the volume up and down works.

Caller 9 (02:17:37):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:17:39):
And then after a, while it stops working,

Caller 9 (02:17:42):
It just could be a week, two weeks. And that poof, it's not working again. So we unplug it. Wait a minute, plug it in. And we're back to where we should be.

Leo Laporte (02:17:53):
Which team are you a Dodgers? Are you a Dodgers fan? I have to know whether I can help, whether I should help you or not

Caller 9 (02:17:59):
Angels.

Leo Laporte (02:18:00):
Okay. There you go. All right. <Laugh> I'm a giants fan.

Caller 9 (02:18:03):
I only, I, I only wave wear blue when the Rams play.

Leo Laporte (02:18:07):
Okay. Well I'm not a Rams fan either. They beat us in the playoffs last season. You betcha. Yeah. Yeah. You betcha. Yeah. Well, we're gonna get ya this time. Let me tell ya. 

Caller 9 (02:18:20):
They already got me

Leo Laporte (02:18:22):
<Laugh> they did. How'd they get you

Caller 9 (02:18:27):
My remote

Leo Laporte (02:18:29):
Thing. Oh, you think the Niners have something to do with that? I think that's really now it's interesting. This guy, cuz I was, I was thinking he was completely wrong, but this guy does know his TVs. He says, turn the, unplug the TV and then plug it in again and it'll work. And then it'll stop working for a while. That is a really unusual, so I'm completely wrong then. And he's right, because there is apparently something wrong with the TV, not the spectrum remote cuz I that's not uncommon. The remote gets so fix Samsung TV control problems. The chat room scooter X has come up with something power down the TV, reset the audio settings, remove the batteries from the Samsungs remote, go to the options menu, turn off auto run smart features. Ah, so what's going on with this TV? This has, this TV has a smart feature called smart hub. And apparently there's a bug in this, a known bug. So there is a long article on remove and replace.com that actually describes this bug you're talking about. And apparently your, your friend there really does know his TVs and how you do it. And yes, you could unplug the TV, but there is better more permanent solutions to this or at least easier solutions. Wow. This is a messy thing. I'll put this link@techguylabs.com and and cuz it's lots of steps. You can follow it from there. Leo Laporte the tech guy. Wow.

Leo Laporte (02:20:15):
So you were right in, in, in pinpointing the TV. That's interesting. So does it go up and down automatically or not?

Caller 9 (02:20:27):
I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte (02:20:28):
Does the volume change sometimes or not?

Caller 9 (02:20:31):
No, no. I either have volume or

Leo Laporte (02:20:34):
I don't. Oh you don't okay.

Caller 9 (02:20:36):
But I always, but I have sound when I turn on the TV, whatever the last setting on sound was is what it,

Leo Laporte (02:20:43):
It's still doing it. I think it's this. I think it might be wow. This, this article has all of these steps in. It says if you're experiencing sound or volume problems with your Samsung TV, there are a few things you can try. 

Caller 9 (02:21:03):
Remember what I remember what I told you about understanding what you

Leo Laporte (02:21:07):
Said. I know this is complicated. I think it's time to buy a new TV. <Laugh>

Caller 9 (02:21:12):
Well, that, that, that was my, he said he thought it was a motherboard.

Leo Laporte (02:21:17):
Well, no, I don't think it is. It's interesting that that works though. I think it's a piece of software called the smart hub that as Samsung put in there that doesn't work very well. And I think what you wanna do is disable the auto run smart hub, which is in your TV settings under smart features.

Caller 9 (02:21:44):
Wait a minute. TV,

Leo Laporte (02:21:45):
TV settings, smart features.

Caller 9 (02:21:50):
I'm running all this down. Cause I will remember it when it gets down to the corner there. TV

Leo Laporte (02:21:56):
Settings, general smart features disable autorun smart hub.

Caller 9 (02:22:04):
Okay. Settings general features,

Leo Laporte (02:22:09):
Settings, general smart features. That's three menus, deep autorun smart hub. There's under smart features. You can uncheck that box. Autorun smart hub. I think that's, that's part of the problem. There's also in the diagnostics. If you go to settings support, there's a diagnostics that you can run that might help as well. That will go through it and figure out what's going on. The other thing you can do instead of turning the TV off and on is there's a, a factory reset which I think is also under setting support that might fix this more longer term. They, this is ridiculous. This article says replace the batteries in your remote reset. The smart hub. Turn off auto run on the smart hub. Hold down the down and pause button. I'm reading this fast. You don't have to remember this the down and pause button simultaneously until a message report. Oh my God, this is crazy, but there's a BU so it's really a bunch of different fixes depending on what's wrong from remove and replace.com. This article came out last September.

Caller 9 (02:23:22):
We've to the point where I get

Speaker 13 (02:23:29):
Now I understand now I understand

Caller 9 (02:23:35):
All this

Leo Laporte (02:23:36):
It's complicated,

Caller 9 (02:23:38):
Right? What's a good 55 inch TV right now.

Leo Laporte (02:23:41):
Well, I guess not a Samsung. I would look at the, get an LG OLET is the room it's really bright.

Caller 9 (02:23:50):
Yeah, it can be.

Leo Laporte (02:23:51):
But and you're watching day games, probably

Caller 9 (02:23:56):
I'm watching night games mostly.

Leo Laporte (02:23:58):
Okay. The old LED's gonna look amazing. I think any new TV, even a Samsung is gonna be better. I think this sounds like this TV maybe starting to get a little tired.

Caller 9 (02:24:12):
Well, that's what he said. His is kinda worn out too, but

Leo Laporte (02:24:15):
Yeah, they, they wear, you know, the old days you buy a TV, you'd keep it 20 years now. They really, every five years maybe get a new TV. So LG makes really good ones. And so does Samsung.

Caller 9 (02:24:29):
Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:24:32):
And

Leo Laporte (02:24:32):
On that note,

Speaker 13 (02:24:39):
Thank

Leo Laporte (02:24:40):
You for letting me be your tech guy, such as I am not perfect, not perfect. Had a great call with Harold <laugh> to which we believe it or not finally concluded. He should just buy a new TV sometimes. And then he says, what's a good 55 inch TV. And right now is a good time to be in the market for TVs. The prices are pretty good cuz the super Bowl's over, you know, all the things people buy TV's for gone by the wayside. New models are coming out. You can get last year's for instance, L G O L E D C one, the 55 inches is lower than I've ever seen. And I think it's around a thousand dollars. It's really, and these are beautiful TVs. And even though he had problems with the old Samsung, I think Samsungs are very good too.

Leo Laporte (02:25:23):
I wouldn't, I wouldn't hesitate recommending Samsung, but yeah, maybe this sometimes, you know, in the old days you know, I mean like the days of Zenni, RCA, Westinghouse, you'd buy a TV and you'd keep it for years, 10, 20 years. Right. But nowadays you know, and we had our old Sony Trinitron for forever. Nowadays these TVs they're like computers. They are computers. And I think, you know, maybe the technologies change probably worth getting a new one. Maybe think about it when you buy it. Think it's gonna last five to seven years at most new ones are good. New ones are good. If it's the spectrum, remote spectrum will fix it for you. But now I'm thinking because you can unplug the, he sent you unplug the TV, plug it back in, it works for a few weeks. That's the Samsung problem. Definitely Def definitely Randy Huntington beach, Leo LaPorte. The tech guy. Hi Randy. Nope. Yes, yes. Here we are. Welcome.

Caller 10 (02:26:33):
Oh, Leo or Mr. Marrin as I call you

Leo Laporte (02:26:38):
You that, you know what? I've never heard that one. I thought I'd heard 'em all. Oh Leo.

Caller 10 (02:26:43):
Yes. Anyway, I have a 27 inch HP all in one it's an I five chip, like 4,500 or something. So it's relatively slow. It's never worked quite right, but I really like the monitor. Yeah. And I pick up a nice laptop and I'm trying to figure out is, is there a way I can output the video from my new I seven laptop

Leo Laporte (02:27:09):
Into that old nice monitor, right? Yeah. So I'm not familiar with all the HP Allin ones. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> generally speaking. It's rare for these all in ones to have a video in port, you know, it, the computer itself may have an HTM I port, but that's gonna be for out to another device. What you need is a video in port. And I don't think that these have it. I don't know enough about HP all in ones to know for sure. What's the, what's the model number? Do you know?

Caller 10 (02:27:44):
I actually it's on my phone, which is next to my ear, but I could

Leo Laporte (02:27:47):
<Laugh> well, don't worry. Don't worry about it. It's very rare for all in ones. I don't know of any, all in ones that have video in,

Caller 10 (02:27:54):
Which is, I'm not familiar with that either. There was a gentleman at one of the tech stores who suggested there should be a Bluetooth solution and I

Leo Laporte (02:28:01):
No, no, no, no. Bluetooth isn't fast enough for video. Just for audio. That's

Caller 10 (02:28:05):
What I thought.

Leo Laporte (02:28:05):
Yeah. so what you'll wanna do is look at the specs for this particular computer and see if it has video in HT. M I in, I do, I have seen some all in ones. A Lenovo makes one that have HT, M I in the idea being, oh, this is gonna the TV, your TV set for your college kid or, or something like that. Right. And then they could get a Roku and plug it in. But that's, I think it's pretty rare apple for a while, allowed you to do that with their IMAX, then they discontinued it. So I, I think it's pretty rare. It's a shame, isn't it? I, it might be possible. It might be possible for you to disassemble. I hate to say, do this, but to disassemble the HP or somebody with some electronics background, cuz that monitor is just a plain old monitor. You just need a way to get into it. Yeah, yeah. Be careful though. Dissembling a monitor is, is risky business.

Caller 10 (02:28:57):
Yeah. Capacitors can can

Leo Laporte (02:29:00):
Surprise you, you know that. Yeah. The power supply could be dangerous. It's always a little risky. I don't want you get shot

Caller 10 (02:29:06):
Issue with, I've got some old IMAX too, and I never figured out how to use the monitors. Cause they're just

Leo Laporte (02:29:10):
Beautiful. Some of them, not all have what they call target video mode, you hold down a key. This is, this is a weird thing. And that was only a few years worth. But yeah, those were beautiful monitors. And it's why I've kind of soured on the idea of all in one. This is exactly why I stopped buying all in ones because I, I have so many beautiful monitors that the computer is at a date.

Caller 10 (02:29:35):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:29:35):
And just like you you know, I, I can't, I can't use it for anything and I think that's kind of a mistake. So now I buy separates. I get an, a Mac mini for instance, with a separate monitor. And when I can replace either one individually, so only the IMAX in 20 11, 20 12, 20 13 and mid 2014 <laugh> would do what's what's called a target video or target display mode. You could try at those on, on these old ones you connect them using a mini display port or Thunderbolt cable, press command F two on the keyboard of the Mac. And you should see the desktop of the other computer on your IMAX screen.

Caller 10 (02:30:23):
Interesting.

Leo Laporte (02:30:23):
Yeah. So if you look up target display mode, you'll see the very limited models and they phase that out. I don't know why, but yeah. So to me I'd rather buy a separate monitor and a computer these days for that very reason

Caller 10 (02:30:35):
Planned obsolescence, you know, the, the television program, your last caller, the television issue, your last caller had, I've experienced something similar with, I've got a a Sony Bravia about a 23 inch or 24, about 27 inch, I think. And when I turn it on, the volume goes all the way up to max. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:30:56):
God.

Caller 10 (02:30:57):
<Laugh> and the, you can't, you can't turn it down, have it down. The only solution anybody's ever given me is you have to unplug it and let it sit for a minute and then plug it back

Leo Laporte (02:31:06):
And then it works. It fixes it

Caller 10 (02:31:08):
Yeah. For a while.

Leo Laporte (02:31:09):
Oh, weird. So yeah, I guess I'm, I'm gonna add this to my Rolodex of known problems. I had never heard of this idea, but I guess, you know, they are computers and I guess there's something going on. I don't really quite understand it.

Caller 11 (02:31:24):
Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. All right. Well thank you

Leo Laporte (02:31:27):
Kindly. So wait a minute. There is an HP. So wait a minute. We just, the chat just sent me a link to a particular HP pavilion does have one H D M I input. So not all of them do, but don't throw it out yet. Look just, you know, you gotta look and see, look at the specs and see if you have H D M I in. So apparently HP does make at least one model that does that. That's good to know. Chat room to the rescue as always Brian West Hollywood. Think Brian's gonna be the last call today. Hi Brian.

Caller 11 (02:32:01):
Yes. Good to be on your program. Welcome.

Leo Laporte (02:32:03):
Thanks for calling. What can I do for you? Oh, did you press the mute button? Hello? Hello. I'm right here. Oh, there we go. Okay. What can I do for you?

Caller 11 (02:32:18):
Yeah, I guess you have me as your final caller.

Leo Laporte (02:32:21):
Last call of the show.

Caller 11 (02:32:23):
<Laugh> I don't know what that tells us nothing

Leo Laporte (02:32:25):
Anyway, nothing we're driving off a cliff. That's all.

Caller 11 (02:32:28):
Anyway. Yes. I noticed that internet service providers provide us with a lot of good good information to contact the internet, but I've heard of a company called starry S T a R R Y. Mm. They're always trying to push a little extra to everybody as best as they can. Sometimes they're successful. Sometimes they're quite not reaching their goals. What do you know about that company with regards to the context that you have had with them perhaps?

Leo Laporte (02:33:01):
So starry is an, is P with fairly good speeds. I don't know anybody who has starry, are they available in your neck of the woods?

Caller 11 (02:33:13):
Recently? They have, yes.

Leo Laporte (02:33:15):
Sarah, what we call a wisp, but wireless internet service provider. So there's, you know, most internet service providers have a wire into your house, whether it's the phone company or the cable company, but they do it via a radio towers. Mostly that means they're in urban areas. West Hollywood might well be in, in their urban area. It it's a it's, you know, you're gonna have to get a little receiver that you put on the side of the building. I would say in general, the, if you have a wired option, a cable company, you're probably better off starry is an interesting thing though. And we, I like seeing it cause I like to see some competition. So if you get it, let me know what to think. Leo Laporte the tech, I don't have any experience. However, reviews are very positive. So yeah, I think it might be, might well be worth a, a, a try. Who do you have right now? Do you have a cable company? Do you have frontier? Who do you have right now?

Caller 11 (02:34:26):
I use a very good company. It's widely in respected, but with respect to starry, they caught my attention because of some of their particular features. But I think they boast a little higher than what they really produce.

Leo Laporte (02:34:42):
Yeah. I mean, that's always the thing to, to, to check. I mean, I, the internet speeds are okay. They're not great. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> if you have a cable company, you probably have better than this.

Caller 11 (02:34:54):
Right? Right. I, I, I, I've been a little question questioning their, their ability to produce what they say. Right. I did a little check with them on the securities and exchange commission, and I noticed that they merged with another company.

Leo Laporte (02:35:08):
Oh, that's interesting. Huh.

Caller 11 (02:35:09):
And they used their name, but they're not completely on their own with respect to their financial.

Leo Laporte (02:35:14):
This happens a lot with ISPs. It's a tough business. There's not a lot of money to be made. That margins are thin the advantage they have, you don't, they don't have to run cable. So it's cheaper from their point of view. But it won't be as fast or reliable. The other thing to check is you know, how they work in rainstorms or poor weather conditions. A lot of times wireless doesn't work that well, I would go best way to, if you wanna check the service is go to broadband reports.com and, and, and and do a search. That's a place people go to review internet service and those reviews are trustworthy. So I would go to broadband reports.com and see what others say about story. Yeah. You can't really trust the reviews on their site. Obviously. You're not gonna put the negative negative ones. And does anybody in the chat room? I don't think anybody in our chat room has tried starry, so I don't have any

Leo Laporte (02:36:13):
Direct reviews of them here. Well, that's it for The Tech Guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget Twit TWIT. It stands for this week in tech. And you'll find it at twit.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about windows and windows weekly, Macintosh, a Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS today. Security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this in tech, you'll find it all@twi.tv and I'll be back next week with another great tech guy show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.