The Tech Guy Episode 1950 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. The show originally aired on the Premier Networks on Sunday, December 4th, 2022. This is episode 1950. Enjoy the Tech Eye Podcast is brought to you by IT Pro from ACI learning ITProTV is now ITPro from ACI learning. Join a community of IT learners who access more than 6,800 hours of i t skills and training courses to better themselves. Their organizations and their careers get 30% off when you sign up at itpro.tv/twit. Don't forget to use that offer code TWiT 30 at checkout. And by mimo monitors the global leader and industry expert in award-winning small format displays, touch screens and tablets. And don't forget to try Unify for all your video conferencing needs. Visit unify meeting.com and enter the Code Tech Guy 50 for 50% off a year's subscription.

(00:01:12):
Or use the code Tech guy and get 25% off any of Mimo'S displays. Limited time offer and buy OnLogic. On Logic is helping innovators around the world solve their most complex technology challenges using on logic industrial computers, engineered for reliability, even in environments that would challenge or destroy traditional computer hardware. Learn more and find out about OnLogic's 30 day risk free hardware trial by visiting on logic.com/twi. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Leo Laporte. Here I am the tech guy and that means, well, it's time to talk. Tech, computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphones, smart watches, augmented reality, virtual reality, real reality, and computers that are starting to think artificial intelligence. 88. 88 lio is the number. Use your real intelligence to dial that 88 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6 tollfree in the US or Canada. Really tollfree worldwide, except that outside the US or Canada, you'll have to use Skype out or some computer thing that will let you call a phone number. And because it's a free number, shouldn't cost you anything. 88 88. Ask Leo. There is a website. Of course there is. What kind of tech guy would I be without a website? <Laugh>?

(00:02:38):
I'm thinking about 2004 when I started this, the website was a little bit different. You could probably find it if you looked on the internet archive. You know, the way back machine. It was a wiki <laugh> see my idea in the early days was, oh, we'll just let all the listeners edit the website so I don't have to. I put in the initial stuff and then they, it didn't work. <Laugh>. Eventually I had to shut it down to the public cuz it was just filled with spam. Oh, those spammers. Yes. Even 19 years ago, spam was a problem. Yes. So I just, you know, I made it a wiki that only I could edit. And eventually we moved on to better and nicer things. And now we're on a fancy, fancy system that's far too complicated to explain@techguylabs.com. But here's, well, it's funny, ironically, there is an irony to this because you may remember there was an old tech guy, labs.com looked completely different.

(00:03:42):
It was running on this fancy system called Droople, the system with a weird name droople. And we had to shut it down about I don't know, three or four months ago because Droople was was outta date and it was gonna cost too much to fix it. See if I'd still put on the Wiki, I could have fixed it myself. It would be still the same site. But no. Now you know, this is what happens. You, you get the experts in and the experts have to do, and the experts are expensive. And when they quoted us a quarter of a million dollars to fix the site we decided the yikes. That's what we decided. No. And so we took that site down and merged it into the other site. That's still gonna cost more than I think it's now we got it down to $180,000 to update, but it will be updated.

(00:04:33):
It has to be for security reasons. So Tech i labs.com now goes to the podcast site, twi.tv. We're still running that. You will see all the shows. This is episode 1950. What will you see there? Well, it's a, again, it's a little less rich in features cuz we had to close the old site down. But what we, we try to give you all the information. So all the links to things I mentioned will be in there. We'll also put it takes us a little while, a transcript of the show up there with little time codes so you can jump to that port portion of the show. And we put audio and video of the show up there as well, the podcast versions. So I think that's a pretty complete record of what happened today. Episode 1950. <Laugh>, you, there you go. It's all there. That's a long way of explaining it. No, there's no charge. There's no, this is why I, I mean, honestly, that's why if I had been charging you, I could have, I could have done this. This is what happens. It gets, in the early days of the internet, it was simple. A human, an individual could kind of just do it. But the experts got involved, it got more and more complicated. And now we have you know, expensive, hard to maintain, but much more capable. Okay, I'll give you that much more capable sites.

(00:05:49):
 Of course one of the things that's changed over time is we be, tech companies now are global, right? Started kind in the us but it's become global, the internet anyway. And as a result, companies like Apple, I'll single them out. Do a lot of their manufacturing overseas. Well, in fact, let's be honest, apple does almost all of its manufacturing in China. In fact, half of all iPhones are made in a place called iPhone. City Foxcon is the company that makes it. It's a assembler. It's an assembler. So they, they put it together. But all the bits and pieces are also made in China. In fact, that's why iPhone City, it's in Jang, Joel, China, iPhone City is in China because it's just a short piece of down the road from the company that makes the screen, that makes the, the accelerometer, that makes the chip, that does the du hickey that does the thing that does the da, the button maker, all of them <laugh> live just down the road and they make 'em, and then they put 'em in the truck, I guess, and they drive it over to the iPhone city.

(00:06:56):
And then people with very dextrous people with some very helpful machines assemble this thing. Apple's been doing it that way for a long time, since the iPhone pretty much started. In fact, it's Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple who put this all together. He was, they called him the supply chain wizard. He figured out how to do all of this and, and you know, interestingly, in a fashion that's now very modern called just in Time. So everybody does this now Ford makes their cars this way. Everybody does this. They order the parts, but they don't warehouse them. They have them arrive just in time to make the phone. So it's this conveyor belt. That's why there was the, these supply chain issues because one little thing stops. The whole thing stops, right? The company that makes the seat warmers in your bmw, that chip that drives the seat warmers and it is a chip.

(00:07:49):
If they can't get that chip, well you can't get the seat warmers and BMW can't make the car. In fact, they shipped a bunch of cars last year without seat warmers cuz it was the only way they could put 'em out. Well, there's big, you've probably seen this as quite a bit of unrest in China right now, over their zero covid policy. People have been locked in, you know, in the early days of Covid. I remember stories of them welding the doors to apartment building shut. Nobody can get out. You stay in there with your sickness. You and there, you know, there's probably reasons for this. The vaccine they use in China is half as effective as the one we use here. But for reasons of national pride, there's two words that always end poorly for reasons of national pride. They don't want to use the Western vaccines.

(00:08:34):
Plus they've had a pretty poor record I hear of vaccinating older people who are of course more vulnerable to Covid. So anyway, that's why they did the Covid Zero pod. They locked it all down, but people don't like it. After a while, after a couple of years, it's like, come on, let me outta here. We're starving. We don't have enough water. And this, it's even worse in the in the iPhone city. Cuz they, they, the workers live in the factory and it's just, you know, looks like terrible conditions. Plus, in order to get more people to work in iPhone City, Foxcon, the company offered them all big bonuses. $1,400, which is like, you know, couple months wages and then didn't pay it. Well, that led to strikes. Apple now is kind of get some egg on its face. They save about iPhone production will be cut 40%, 40% this month.

(00:09:30):
Cuz they can't, they can't crank 'em out. So finally Apple you know, they've been slowly moving to, well, maybe we should have some other factories. We got some Foxcon factory in Brazil. They built one in India, built, they built in a factory in Vietnam. They're building factories in the us. My wife asked a good question. She said, well, why don't we make 'em in the US anyway? And I said, well honey, you just don't know. I didn't say it like that. <Laugh>. I hope I didn't, honey, you just don't understand. They've got all these other factories in China, they don't want to drive the, the trucks just go into the factory and they make the things and it's faster that way. And plus Apple's invested huge amount of money into Foxcon. And one of the reasons, for instance, you get inexpensive and very sophisticated drones, you know, drones just took off all of a sudden it's because Apple built these machines and Foxcon created these technologies to build really tiny, miniaturized parts that it turns out not only are good in an iPhone, they're good in other things like drones. So most of your drones are made there too. Two. And and you can't just say, well, we're gonna take it all to the us or could you Apple, according to the Wall Street Journal has accelerated plans to shift its production outta China. It's telling suppliers to plan more actively for assembling Apple products elsewhere in Asia, particularly India and Vietnam looking to rouse dependence on mainland China companies. But, you know, Foxcon is owned by Taiwan. There's also some concern that China may at some point embrace Taiwan.

(00:11:10):
Then there's this turmoil iPhone city, I I said the wrong number, 85% according to the journal, 85% of the iPhones, the current iPhones are made there. Why don't they just move 'em here? Is that, that's maybe a naive point of view. Would you? Here's the question, and by the way, I've seen research that says it wouldn't cost that much more, but obviously you pay an American worker a heck of a lot more than you do a Chinese worker, right? And then they, you know, they want things like lunch breaks. They don't wanna live in the factory, they want to go home. All of that means it's more expensive. How much would you be willing to pay? How much more for an iPhone already expensive, right? Already, you know, a thousand bucks. Would you be willing to pay 1200 bucks for an iPhone if it was made in the US 1500 bucks?

(00:11:59):
I, the actually, the studies I've seen say, you know, it might be more than like 50 bucks, but the problem is it's 50 bucks to make it for Apple, but then Apple's gotta tack on. And so it would end up maybe, I don't know, being let's say a hundred, 200 bucks more, would you pay a hundred bucks more for your iPhone knowing that it was built in the good old usa? 88. 88? I don't know. I would, I guess 88. 88 <laugh>. 88 80. I can never stop in the middle of the phone number. I'll never get it out. 88. 88. Ask Leo. That's the phone number. Let's talk Dick, Sam, Abu Sam car guy coming up too. You stay here. How much more does a fender guitar made here? That's an interesting question. So Fender makes guitars here and there. How much more would a fender cost? It's about double. Yeah. Or are they making 'em in Mexico? It's twice as much in the US than a than a Mexican version. That's markup. That's Fender saying. Well, we got 'em now. Put that American flag on there. Wow. There's also, yeah, there's not a lot, not as many workers. I didn't, I didn't mention that, but there's hundreds of thousands of people. They think maybe as many as 300,000 workers at iPhone City. Where would you go in the US to get 300,000 low wage assembly workers? Mexico. That's where you'd go. You'd go to Mexico. I think we should call someone on the hotline. Oh, there she is on the hotline. Kim Shaa, the phone. Angel. Hello Kim. Hello.

Kim Schaffer (00:14:02):
In the studio. It should be called The Cold Line.

Leo Laporte (00:14:04):
Are you freezing

Kim Schaffer (00:14:05):
<Laugh> Not as bad today as other times.

Leo Laporte (00:14:09):
It's pouring rain outside. It's

Kim Schaffer (00:14:11):
Pouring, which I hope this rain stays up here in Petaluma and does not go down to Santa Clara.

Leo Laporte (00:14:15):
Why is

Kim Schaffer (00:14:16):
That? I don't wanna wash out.

Leo Laporte (00:14:18):
Oh, we have a football game.

Kim Schaffer (00:14:19):
A football game.

Leo Laporte (00:14:20):
They don't, they play in the mud. I thought football players were brave. I know, I know. Baseball players don't play in the rain.

Kim Schaffer (00:14:28):
There was one delayed recently, I thought. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:14:30):
But maybe remember that first season, the first game of the season in Chicago where there was like a slip and slide. Remember that?

Kim Schaffer (00:14:37):
Yes. That field was a swimming pool by the end of the game.

Leo Laporte (00:14:40):
That's good football.

Kim Schaffer (00:14:42):
So maybe they won't play anyway.

Leo Laporte (00:14:43):
<Laugh> Kim

Kim Schaffer (00:14:44):
Hands won't

Leo Laporte (00:14:45):
Be too happy. Kim Shaffer and I, I'm sorry to say are are nfl

Kim Schaffer (00:14:50):
I wore of red for it,

Leo Laporte (00:14:52):
<Laugh>, and I forgot, you know, a guy gave me it was very generous of him. That jacket? A foot? No, a a sweater. A sweatshirt from the Super Bowl. Oh, right, yeah. The last one they won. And wait, you know, I forgot to wear it. I will wear it next week.

Kim Schaffer (00:15:05):
Okay. I will send you a reminder.

Leo Laporte (00:15:07):
<Laugh>, send me a reminder. Who should I talk to on the phone?

Kim Schaffer (00:15:11):
Let's talk to Bob and Elmwood Park, New Jersey. Help convince his wife to go to an iPhone instead of her S

Leo Laporte (00:15:19):
Nine. I am an expert in spousal persuasion. Just ask my wife. No, she'll tell you immediately. No, right? He's not, he's not at all. She's not the boss. Not the boss of me. Thank you, Kim. Hello, Bob. Leo LaPorte. Oh, how are you? I'm well.

Caller 1 (00:15:36):
Very good. So I've got a, a kind of a, a simple question, but it's not, my wife has got a Galaxy nine. Yes. And she loves it. Great phone primarily for the calendar.

Leo Laporte (00:15:49):
Oh, interesting. It's the calendar she likes. Huh? She likes the calendar.

Caller 1 (00:15:55):
The calendar is is kind of all colored. Yeah. So you keep her

Leo Laporte (00:15:59):
It's

Caller 1 (00:16:00):
Pretty agenda on there. Yeah. You know, for, for her mom and for her and her doctor's appointments. So I ran up the steps. That's

Leo Laporte (00:16:10):
Okay. It's okay. Take it, take it easy. You know, <laugh>. Breathe. Breathe.

Caller 1 (00:16:14):
So anyway, she says, well, if I get an iPhone, I have an iPhone. And she goes, your calendar can't do anything like mine can do. Then the second issue is she's got ongoing chats for like the last three months with all her friends. Oh yeah. And she's like, if I switch phones, she goes, are those chats gonna follow me to the new phone?

Leo Laporte (00:16:36):
Hmm. and so what would be helpful to know is if she's, what she's using for chats, is she using just whatever was built into the Samsung, right?

Caller 1 (00:16:47):
Yeah, exactly. And that was one of the things, if she was using, you know, a, a secondary app, I figured, you know, once you log into that, it would carry

Leo Laporte (00:16:54):
It over. Exactly. If it was what or WhatsApp or whatever. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:16:57):
Yeah. My carrier is T-Mobile.

Leo Laporte (00:17:00):
So Samsung in the, in that era shipped a Samsung Messages program as opposed to Google's messages program. It's very confusing. They're both, they're both called the same thing. Yeah. and let me look at the Apple calendar and see. So let me, let me address this one at a time. We'll start with the calendar

Caller 1 (00:17:19):
Or, you know, or if there was a secondary calendar app.

Leo Laporte (00:17:22):
Yeah, I use, I use Fantastical, which yeah, she's right. It's not very colorful. And she, this is, I'm using the, on the left, it's radio. You can't see it. I'm using the Google calendar, which has kind of got colors and stuff. Samsung's even more colorful. This is actually, yeah, really this is a more, a deeper aesthetic issue, which is that Samsung kind of is a toy, especially older. Samsungs kind of have that toy appearance with lots of colors. It was like Candy Crush. They toned that down.

Caller 1 (00:17:54):
Yeah. Leo. It's not colors from the aesthetics, you know, so for example

Leo Laporte (00:17:58):
No, I understand. My

Caller 1 (00:18:00):
Schedules are green.

Leo Laporte (00:18:01):
Yeah. Yeah. And, and so, so, so one thing she should do, first thing she should do is synchronize her calendar to Google. I hope she's doing that anyway, it's kind of part of all Android systems, but you have to create the, you have to log into your Google account and then go on the web to go contacts.google or calendar.google.com and see that it's doing that.

Caller 1 (00:18:20):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:18:21):
So that, that's good. That means she, the Google calendar has those colors for each, you know calendar. Each calendar has a different color. In fact, that's very typical. Right? Apple's calendar does that. There is a better calendar app for iPhones that you might wanna buy. But I would say start with Apple's calendar apps. But Fantastic Cal is what a lot of, you know, kind of heavy duty calendar users use on the iPhone. Both of those though, will have color coded calendars and color coded events and stuff. So you'll get that organizational tool. She's not gonna miss that message is a little more complicated because right now she's using I would assume because she's using Samsung's messages. She's her care mostly their sms, and her carrier has them, and Samsung has them, but she can download the messages. The problem is she can't really import them right into the, into the Apple messages. She's gonna have to use Apple messages if she were using WhatsApp or whatever yet would just go right across. Apple messages will start from scratch. So she's gonna, she's gonna lose all of those messages. She can save them. Right. But she can't just import them. She won't be able to go into messages and see what mom said eight months ago anymore.

Caller 1 (00:19:43):
Yeah. And, and that's, I mean, that's why I said, why do you have to keep them? And I said, well, how many times have you gone back three or four months to reference to them? And you know what the answer is? Well, I haven't,

Leo Laporte (00:19:51):
Yeah. Except it is useful. I do it sometimes. You know, mom, I told you <laugh> honey, I, it's instant replay for your for your spousal requests. So sometimes you'll do that if you're using I sure she's using Samsung's messages. That's was the default. And you know, most people don't ever I know for sure. Yeah, definitely. So I'm pretty sure she can, if she's backing up to her Samsung account, she It will, it will, she will have those messages in her Samsung account. It's just, there's no Samsung messages for iOS. Right. And even if there were, she's gonna use Yeah. But now Scooter X is reminding me that Apple has made, and it's worth a try. Problem is you won't know until you use it. A tool for moving from Android to Apple. It's called Move to iOS. Oh. So that will get some of the, the data. It might even get the messages. If it does, that's your solution. Leo LaPorte, the tech guy, Sam, apple, Sam coming up.

Caller 1 (00:20:55):
Appreciate

Leo Laporte (00:20:56):
It. Yeah. So, yeah, hold on a sec. We had to, we had to let the thing do the thing and now it's done. Let me just quickly check transferring now. See, it doesn't, this release adds support for, I don't know if it gets text messages. Mm. It's gonna be a, it's gonna be an uncomfortable move.

Caller 1 (00:21:16):
Yeah. So this move to iOS program, is this something that if I went into the Apple store, that they would Yeah. Be able to

Leo Laporte (00:21:22):
Do it? No, no, no. It's in the Google Play Store. It's a Google. Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's an Android app that Apple made for Android. It's not perfect. It's far from perfect and I don't think it's gonna take the messages to be honest with you. Right. And I gotta tell you, she's gonna be uncomfortable because she's used to the Android way of doing things. And it, even though, you know, it's not much different in concept. It is in a, in, in looks.

Caller 1 (00:21:49):
Yeah. The, the reason I really want to do it is she's got some, some cardiac issues and I wanna get the Apple watch for her.

Leo Laporte (00:21:56):
Yeah, that's a very good reason to do it. Yeah. Although Samsung's watch does do some of that now, the new Samsung watch. So you should look at the capability, see if that's sufficient. I think nothing is as good as the Apple watch. Apple has really doubled down on health for the Apple watch.

Caller 1 (00:22:10):
Yeah. I've got a, I've got a friend of mine that just saved his life. He was about to go in for surgery and it said, Hey, you're an AFib.

Leo Laporte (00:22:16):
Oh my God.

Caller 1 (00:22:17):
Cancel the surgery the night before. So it literally saved life.

Leo Laporte (00:22:22):
Oh wow. That's a, so that is a very, you know what it, to save her life, she can live with a little bit of discombobulation they're telling me now according to the specs, Knox Harrington, our chairman, says, move to iOS does move message history. So, gosh, you know, the problem is you won't know until you get an iPhone.

Caller 1 (00:22:44):
Right? Yeah. Well that's, that's no problem. You know, once it's done, it's done. I,

Leo Laporte (00:22:48):
Yeah, that nine is pretty old. I mean, Samsung is gonna announce the Galaxy S 23 <laugh> in February. <Laugh>. Yeah. They skipped a few. So it's not like, it's not like, you know, 14 better, but it, it's maybe eight, nine years later. So it's certainly worth, yeah. Yeah. You, I think that's a really good reason to get an Apple watch and an iPhone. You can, I'll give you, I'll give you one other thing. You can set up an iPhone for an Apple watch for her with your iPhone. There is a way to do that.

Caller 1 (00:23:22):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:23:22):
So if you re you can at least get her the Apple Watch. Yeah. And it will do all that stuff. You can set it up for her with an iPhone. But the truth is, it's a, everything's easier if you have the Apple Watch and the iPhone.

Caller 1 (00:23:32):
Well, that's exactly what I'm gonna do. You know, that's gonna be for Christmas presents, so

Leo Laporte (00:23:37):
Good. Just get it for her. It's say, honey, I love you. I don't wanna lose you. So please

Caller 1 (00:23:42):
Listen. 38 years, I'm not getting rid of

Leo Laporte (00:23:45):
Her yet. Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Thanks so

Caller 1 (00:23:47):
Much. And you have a

Leo Laporte (00:23:48):
Great holiday. All right. You too. Take care. Hey, Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:23:52):
Hey Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:23:54):
How are you? How you I'm good. <Laugh>. what

Sam Abuelsamid (00:23:58):
Up? Got a cough switch.

Leo Laporte (00:24:00):
Oh, wow. You're, aren't you fancy, Mr. Fancy? What do you wanna, what do you wanna talk about today? I don't think scooters, I don't think SMS backup and restore will back up from I Android and then restore to iOS. But maybe it will. That's a, maybe it will. I wouldn't count on, let's put it that way. So what do you wanna talk about today, Sam? Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:28):
Press yeah. Te Tesla Tesla delivered the first of their semis this week. Wow. And they announced some new stuff for charging megawatt charging. So

Leo Laporte (00:24:39):
Megawatt

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:41):
Ultra high speed charging.

Leo Laporte (00:24:42):
It's gotta be bad for your battery.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:45):
It's probably not great for it. Yeah. It's also probably not as energy efficient as as slower speed charging

Leo Laporte (00:24:56):
At all. People really worry about this charging thing when they, I haven't. I charge once a week. <Laugh> overnight. Anyway, here we go.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:03):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:25:05):
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They're doing it right now, it started November 28th. They'll go right through December 9th. And you can win when you visit. Go.It pro.tv/one two days. Go.It pro.tv/twelve days. December 9th. The winners will be announced live on YouTube. They make it fun. Tim Broom and Donette, the co-founders of IT Pro tv. Love these guys. They're good friends. Make they make it learning absolutely fun. And I love this quote from them. They said we created it because it's the IT training. We wanted to have ourselves engaging, conversational, affordable, and convenient. 30% off. When you sign up right now, ITPro TV slash twi use the code TWiT 30, 30% off when you use the code. TWI three zero IT Pro Builder expand your IT career. Enjoy the journey and congratulations to IT Pro their new partner ACI learning. You'll see as we go over the next 12 months, a lot more of them.

(00:29:45):
We have a big announcement we're gonna make in a couple of weeks. You're gonna see a lot more of them and we have a lot more to tell you about them. This is very, very exciting news. It pro.tv/twi offer code TWiT 30. Thank you. It pro. Here he comes. He's got a little chain for a steering wheel. It's about the size of a coffee can lid. His car goes up and down even though it's a Mazda Miata. Ladies and gentlemen are very own low rider Sam Bull Samid principal researcher at Guide House Insights, his podcast wheel bearings. He's the best car podcast anywhere. He's the best car guy ever and he joins us every week. Hi Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:22):
Hello Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:30:23):
How are you today? I am, I am great. Elon Musk, even though he's preoccupied these days, <laugh> with other things is still delivering Tesla's.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:35):
Yeah. this week they delivered the first production semis to PepsiCo right on schedule, which is to say about three years late. <Laugh>. 

Leo Laporte (00:30:44):
He says he's gonna make a what, a million of these by next year. A hundred thousand

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:49):
<Laugh>. No, no, 10. You know, the, the mark, the market for class A semis is total market's only. About 150,000. Yeah. between 150,000 and 200,000 here.

Leo Laporte (00:31:02):
There's two, there's two things going on here. One is the electrification mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And the other is autonomous driving a lot. I mean, this is at, of all the different things we can do with self-driving vehicles, trucking seems like the most likely, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:17):
Yeah. And in fact we recently published a couple of reports guide house on this topic, a leaderboard report and a forecast report. And automated trucking is definitely one of the areas we think where driving automation is going to really starts to take hold more quickly and more broadly than in for light duty vehicles like robo taxis and, and last mile delivery vehicles. Because, you know, there, there are, first of all, there's a shortage of truck drivers. You know, nobody really wants to do long haul truck driving anymore, or, or fewer and fewer people wanna do it. And it's projected that by mid, you know, by latter part of this decade. Here in the US we have a shortage of probably somewhere between 150 and 200,000 drivers. Plus there are, you know, a lot of regulations on how many hours a day driver, you know, drivers can operate the vehicle and, you know, the rest time that's required.

(00:32:15):
And that's perfectly legit. I mean, that's, that's a good thing. It's good, good for safety, it's good for the drivers, it's good for other people on the road. But what that means is that there's, there's definitely a shortage of of drivers you know, especially as we wanna move more and more freight over the roads. And so there's a bunch of companies that are working on automated truck trucks. And in fact when Tesla first announced the semi five years ago, they talked about full self-driving for the for the semi notably this week when they actually delivered the first truck to to PepsiCo for delivering chips. There was no mention of that. There was no, no discussion of that because, you know, frankly, Tesla's system is just not up to snuff for, for what's needed for that.

(00:33:06):
 So then this was all about electric. Yeah, this was about electrification and, and fleet electrification. Fleet decarbonization is, is an important area across all kinds of industries. Most big companies over the last several years have declared their intention to go carbon neutral follow science-based targets initiative, go carbon neutral by sometime around 20 40, 20 45. And what that means, excuse me, with the, the science-based targets is not just a matter of taking carbon out of their own operations, but also out of the supply chain. So going down multiple levels in the supply chain. And part of that means, you know, reducing emissions from trucking. We've, you know, from the research that we've done at, at my company you know, looking at commercial vehicles you know, of all types, you know, from last mile delivery vehicles to buses and, and long haul trucks, long haul trucks only represent about 14% of the total unit market for commercial vehicles.

(00:34:12):
But they represent almost half of all the carbon emissions. Wow. Bec well, because they're, they're large, they're heavy. And you know, they also run a lot of miles. Most of these vehicles, you know, these long haul trucks are running, you know, 150, 200,000 miles a year, you know, and they're, they're running continuously. So there's a, a lot of miles being racked up by these trucks, which, you know, in turn means, you know, a lot of emissions associated with it. Yeah. You know, when, when you look at it, you know when you factor in, you know, how much freight they're carrying and how much they're moving, things like that, it, you know, the, the numbers aren't as crazy, but still they do, they do account for a lot of the emissions from ground transportation. So electrifying where they can is, is really important. And one of the ar you know, obviously Tesla is focused on battery electric, but a lot of other truck manufacturers are also working on fuel cell trucks because the problem with hydrogen Yeah, yeah. Hydrogen fuel cells. Yeah. which are also electric by the way. They just, they're not, instead of storing electricity in a battery Sure. They're using, they're generating the electricity on the fly in a fuel cell that takes hydrogen and that's stored and oxygen from the atmosphere combines them to produce electricity and water. And the emissions are water. Yeah. Yeah. The emissions are water.

Leo Laporte (00:35:37):
Yeah. So hydrogen has the advantage of quick refuel, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that would

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:42):
Be the biggest thing. You can, you can, you can refuel a hydrogen fuel cell truck in about 15

Leo Laporte (00:35:46):
Minutes. Also less weight. Right. Or batteries are very happy,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:49):
Much less weight. And this is one of the big challenges with going to battery electric trucks. One of the, during the presentation this week, Tesla talked about, you know, they, they did a demo, a test recently. They ran their truck from somewhere I think Fremont or no, sorry, I think from, actually from their Nevada plant all the way down to San Diego, about 500 miles. They went 500 miles on a single charge with a full load, 82,000 pounds gross vehicle weight. What they didn't talk about though, was how much of that 82,000 pounds was actually the cargo versus the weight of the truck. A diesel power train and a conventional class eight truck weigh somewhere around 1200 pounds or so including the fuel system, the engine transmission for an electric truck to have a 500 mile range, it needs at least a megawatt hour battery pack. So a thousand kilowatt hours, so about 10 times the size of the battery in your ma Wow. Which is gonna weigh somewhere on the order, somewhere between 10 and 12, 13,000 pounds.

Leo Laporte (00:37:01):
You gotta load, you gotta load already

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:03):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Truck trucks, trucks, you know, have a weight limit on them. Yeah. you know, which is typically 80,000 pounds for, for electric trucks, they actually give them an extra 2000 pounds allowance, which I'm not sure why they're doing because that just puts more wear and tear on the roads. But even at 82,000 pounds, you're take, you're looking at adding an extra 10,000 pounds just for the weight of the battery. It's

Leo Laporte (00:37:28):
More than 10%. That's bad.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:30):
Yeah. And, you know, so a typical 80,000 pound truck, the, the tractor and the trailer is about 35,000 pounds. You got about 45,000 pounds of payload capability, and now you're taking 10,000 pounds of that, putting it into the battery. So now instead of 45,000 pounds, you've got 35,000 pounds. That's, and the revenue for these trucks is based on how much freight they can carry.

Leo Laporte (00:37:53):
Do they save money not using diesel? Is there a little

Sam Abuelsamid (00:37:56):
They absolutely save a lot of money compared to, to these. There should be less maintenance cost. But the question is, you know, how, you know, how's that gonna play out in terms of payload capability? And that's, those are the numbers we don't really have yet. How

Leo Laporte (00:38:11):
Can, my friend asked me a question. He's got a, he's, he's a, he tows a boat up to Tahoe all the time. And he, he, he can't really buy an electric vehicle because when you start towing, it cuts the mileage in half and you just can't get to Tahoe.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:26):
Same is true for a gas or diesel

Leo Laporte (00:38:28):
Vehicle. Right. I

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:28):
Understand. You cut, you cut your fuel economy in

Leo Laporte (00:38:30):
Half as well. Yeah. why aren't they, he wanted to know hybrid trucks where you have a, a little gas engine in there.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:38):
Well, there are hybrid trucks. Ford has a hybrid F-150 available. Oh, that's

Leo Laporte (00:38:43):
Right. They did that a long time ago. How about

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:44):
Version of thet? How

Leo Laporte (00:38:45):
About in, in the, in the big rigs? Could you do hybrid?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:38:50):
You probably could. It gets a, it gets a lot more complicated and it, at this stage, it's probably not worthwhile. Yeah. hydrogen's probably a better solution right now. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:39:01):
Well, it's an interesting world we live in someday. I'll ask you about the fun times they're having in San Francisco with those cruise vehicles that just seem to get very confused, but that's for another day. Salmon, old salmon principle researcher guide, house insights 900 kilowatts. That's a lot of watts. Would you like to stick around or no? Sure. Oh, good. I will set you up here. Thank you.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:39:35):
All right. So yeah, the, the other thing I was gonna talk about with this truck is that they announced a megawatt charging system for it. Currently, supercharges are limited to 250 kilowatts. And, excuse me, kilowatts are the, the measure of power. How much, basically how many electrons can you put into the battery per unit time? And so we're talking four times the charging speed with a thousand kilowatts or one megawatt. But that of course, you know, has some challenges associated with it. And if you're watching the stream, you can see the diagram I have over my shoulder, which shows they showed during their presentation, they showed a cross section of the charging cable. So one on the top, which is probably about three quarters, you know, maybe seven eighths of the area of this cross section of the charging cable is, is the conductors, the copper wire that actually transfers the electricity back and forth.

(00:40:40):
 And then the other two are cooling tubes. Because with DC fast charging, the cables have to be liquid cooled because you get, otherwise you get too much heat built up in the cable. And because of the resistance the electrical resistance in there with their megawatt charging cable, they've come up with an interesting design where the, with, with the, the DC fast charging today, like with the supercharges today they run at 480 volts. And with, with electricity you have power, which is voltage times current, but you also have resistance in the wires. And the higher the current is, the more resistance you have. Whereas if you go to higher voltage, you can use a lower current, maintain the same power, and and then when you, cuz when you, you generate resistance that generates heat, which is why you have to cool the cables.

(00:41:36):
So Tesla's come up with an interesting design for their megawatt charging cable, which is supposedly about the same overall size, same overall diameter, but as much smaller conductors cuz they've gone from 480 volts to a thousand volts. And but it's also gone from about 300 amps to a thousand amps. And the, the cable, the, the charging wires, the conductors in there are actually surrounded by a cooling jacket, a liquid coolant jacket. And there's additional cooling which dissipates takes the heat away from that so the cable doesn't overheat and melt all good. What we don't know yet is how long it will actually be able to maintain that megawatt charging speed before even that cooling system can't sustain it. And then, you know, also for the battery, there's also the challenges for the heat in the battery.

(00:42:36):
And then the other big problem is even though those cooling jackets are cooling the cable, they, it doesn't really it's not reducing the resistance in there. So you're still generating a lot of heat and that heat is loss of efficiency. So to put a kilowatt hour of energy into a battery with a typical DC fast charger, it might take 1.1 kilowatt hour or maybe 1.05 kilowatt hours. So you're losing about five to 10%. With this one, we don't know how much efficiency loss there's going to be. So charging at this speed is actually going to be significantly more expensive than it would be for a slower speed charging system. And I will hand it back to Leo and you, sir, I'll be back to in the next break.

Leo Laporte (00:43:24):
Well, you stick around. Good. Thank you. That's, that's about all I can play in the piano right there. I'm gonna stop. Leo LaPorte D Tech I 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number if you wanna talk high tech with me. Let's do it. Let's do it. What do you say? Next, Brent from Riverside, California. Hello, Brent.

Caller 2 (00:43:45):
Hi. How you

Leo Laporte (00:43:45):
Doing Leo? Welcome. I'm great, how are you?

Caller 2 (00:43:48):
Good, good. And before I ask my question congratulations on your upcoming retirement and I'll miss listening to you on the radio.

Leo Laporte (00:43:54):
Well, rich is coming in Rich tomorrow, rich on tech, taking over this time slot on the radio, which is good news. And I'll be still doing a podcast. So if you, you know, if you have a hanking for a little more tech talk, you just download that. You can even, we'll even do it live on Sunday, so you could even watch it if you were listening, if you were really, you know, crazy about it. But I think Rich is gonna be a great replacement.

Caller 2 (00:44:18):
I think so. I think so. And I'll, I'll definitely tune into your podcast.

Leo Laporte (00:44:21):
Thank you. I appreciate it. 

Caller 2 (00:44:23):
So I'm, I'm getting a new TV in the new sound bar. I I I I'm getting a, I have a 4K right now, but it's, it's, it's, it's an older one. I've never really set it up for the 4k. I think there's some settings in there, but I'm getting a Sony X 85.

Leo Laporte (00:44:40):
Ooh, nice. Oh, one of the best. Yeah,

Caller 2 (00:44:43):
I didn't go all the way to the oed but I, I just, I was okay with this. It's a 65 inch and I'm getting the Sony ht the 3000, the sound bar. Good. They'll be Atmos good. And also a suber with it. Perfect. So I guess my, my main question is, is I I don't wanna say the company, but I went through a local company, I dunno if I can't say it or not. Sure. And they send out a a tech crew that's geek Squad. Geek

Leo Laporte (00:45:11):
Squad Best Buy.

Caller 2 (00:45:12):
Yeah. So they send out, and I paid the, the $200.

Leo Laporte (00:45:16):
It's not a bad idea with a setup, especially if it's a big, old, bulky device and the wiring is crazy and all that 200 bucks. Okay, well

Caller 2 (00:45:24):
That's kind of what I wanted to ask. I love setting my own stuff up. I I've always kind of set my own phones up and, and done all that, but I know what these TVs, there's just a ton of settings to, to make it.

Leo Laporte (00:45:32):
Well, you, you answered your own question cuz you never did finish set up of the old tv, right?

Caller 2 (00:45:38):
I guess this is true. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:45:39):
So I'll have to be honest with you, 200 bucks is a lot you know, if they're calibrating it maybe, but they're not calibrating it. All they're doing is taking it out the box. I mean, it's, I can't tell say whether it's worth it for you. They're taking outta the box, putting it where you want it, putting on up the soundbar, connecting the TV to whatever your input is, your cable box or whatever. And connecting the TV to the soundbar, turning it on, saying see and leaving. And then the nice, I tell you what, one of the nicest things they take the box with them. But other than that, you know, you could do that. I think you could do all of that. I, I have faith in you

Caller 2 (00:46:17):
That I can do. I, but I guess what they're selling me is that they're supposed to spend like two hours with me and go through all this setup stuff and I, I don't know, I

Leo Laporte (00:46:24):
I'm, I would pay them $200 not to do that. But that's just me. I honestly, you know, if you ever get to a hotel and the the guy who brought your luggage up wants to give you a tour of the room, I always go, no, no, no. Here, here take some money and leave me alone <laugh>. I don't want to know how to open the curtains, turn on the lights in the bathroom. I don't need the tour of the room. So it's really a question of do you need a tour of that room? And I don't, you know, honestly, I think you're gonna get a manual. They still send sell man you know, ship TVs with manuals. They're not very good. But there's something and you're gonna get a remote. And my suggestion is if you feel like you can connect it and I think you can, that's not hard. You're gonna what do you have as the input device? What's going into it?

Caller 2 (00:47:12):
So I was gonna use the HCM I arc cuz it's got the, the

Leo Laporte (00:47:16):
ARC setup, you see you're thinking, so that's gonna go to what a cable box or an AV receiver, what is it gonna go to?

Caller 2 (00:47:22):
So I actually plan on, it's got a ethernet input on it. So I'm gonna plug my ethernet cable right into it so it's wired good. And then I'm gonna, and then I'll that, well it goes from the cable, from the cable modem to the, to the tv. So I'll set that up and then I plan on hooking the sound bar up through the H D M I arc. Perfect. And running it down to the sound bar. And then I was also going, I have a, a PS4 hoping to update to a PS five. So I'll, I'll hook that into the HD I 2.1 port. Perfect. One perfect. Port is good. And then that's a setup. I guess the main thing for me was like going through like the TV settings. Is that something that you feel like

Leo Laporte (00:47:59):
I have to say general line, this is up to you. I would say the first thing I would do, I'd sit down, turn that TV on and I would go through every menu setting and I would look at every single one. And Okay. The problem is every TV even different models within the same manufacturers line have completely different names for different, for things. For instance, one of the first things you're gonna wanna turn off is the, is the it vi you know, there's different names for it, but video inter interpolation, the video's smoothing that allows you to run a higher frame rate than you're actually getting. Now you do want on your PS five when you get it, you want 120 hertz, cuz the PS five does put out 120 frames a second, but your cable box does not. So if you have it, your TV set to 120 for your cable box, it's doing video inter interpolation. It won't call it that, it'll call it something else. Depends on the manufacturer. But it'll call it something, you know, marketing e like, you know, high, high smooth frame rate for, for sports or something. But it's terrible. It makes everything look like it's plastic. It looks like soap opera.

Caller 2 (00:49:05):
You cut the cord a long time ago. Oh good. Right. Do do, I only do apps and all the apps are gonna be on the tv. So I don't know how that plays into it, but I'm assuming that's 60.

Leo Laporte (00:49:14):
Yeah, they still don't. So depends. It really depends. Like some, some higher end streaming companies will send you, sell you high, send you higher frame rate. I think most won't most will be 60. So Okay. But you know, you play with it I think, boy, I it's up to you and the Geek Squad is a varying quality. You might get somebody really great who knows, you know, for instance, there's a secret menu on there and he might know how to get into the secret menu <laugh>. Okay. I would honestly take that money and send and spend it with a calibrator, which is somebody who is certified by THX or Doby or one of the calibration certifiers. Scott Wilkinson is a calibrator. He comes in with a special device and sets your TV to be color accurate. That's less important I think nowadays than it used to be.

(00:50:02):
In fact, he came in with my lgo like five years ago. I said, well I don't have to really do anything, it's fine. But some older TVs and I won. I wonder, you know, might need to be calibrated. That might be a better better cuz you're gonna get a better result. You know, but it really is, I can't tell you whether you need it or not. There are definitely people who need it. My mom not only would need it, but would go right through her head and would be useless. So that's the other end of the spectrum where it's like, pay 200 bucks, but you're never gonna remember any of this. So it, it really depends. It seems like a lot of money to set up a tv.

Caller 2 (00:50:38):
It does. It's not just a, and they give you like 12 months of like, I guess it's some kind of, of warranty in person service. But I, I kind of feel like the Sonys, I mean, I don't even know.

Leo Laporte (00:50:47):
You're probably gonna be all right. Sony warranties good enough. I would, I wouldn't personally I wouldn't, I would, like I said, I would give 'em 200 bucks not to do that. But it, everybody's, your mileage may vary as they say.

Caller 2 (00:50:59):
I'm kind of thinking the same thing. Yeah. So I will make sure to turn off that video inter interpolation. Cause that that kind of, if somebody had mentioned then my, my neighbor had a problem and they called it the soap opera effect. I guess

Leo Laporte (00:51:10):
That's it exactly what I was just talking about. Yeah. By setting the frame rate higher than the input that's inter interpolation, the soap opera effect. That's the one thing you definitely want. Well there's two things you definitely wanna turn off, but you'll do this probably naturally. Tvs are set, you know, a demo mode so they're brighter and more vivid for the store. You don't want that. So you're gonna immediately go to cinema mode or or something like that. You know, they'll have games, sports, cinema, you know, they'll have a variety of settings. I usually just put it in cinema mode. It initially looks darker and more muted because it is, but it's more, it's real, it's more natural. It's more accurate. Okay. So that's, you're gonna wanna change. And if there is any video interpolation on, and that will be something around this high frame rate, 120 hertz.

(00:51:53):
You don't for the video, for the PS five. Once you get it, that's great. In fact, this is a great TV for the PS five cuz it will do one 20 and the PS five will do one 20 at 4k. And that looks fantastic, but nothing you're getting over streaming is one 20. I can't think actually. Okay. I, I thought maybe some, maybe Disney plus, but I don't think so. I don't think so. The, the best you're can do is four K HDR at 60 frames a second. I'll have to check chatroom. Is there anybody who streams more than 60 frames per second? I don't think so. There's a, we'll put a little video Tom Cruise made a couple of years ago when one of the Mission Impossibles came out telling you to turn off motion smoothing <laugh>. I remember that. You remember that. So that's that. Those are the two things I would do. The rest of it you can learn, read the manual, go through it. I think you're smart. I think you can do it. Leo Laport, the tech guy. Let me see if I can find that real quickly just to play it and then I'll get you, get you Sam here.

(00:53:09):
Tom Cruise turn off. Motion smoothing. Oh, I'm typing but it's not doing anything. Tom Cruise. <Laugh>

(00:53:21):
<laugh>.

Obviously Tom Cruise (00:53:28):
Hi, I'm Tom Cruise, obviously. And I'm Chris McCoy obviously. And we're talking to,

Leo Laporte (00:53:33):
Oh, this was for Top

Obviously Tom Cruise (00:53:33):
Gun of Top Gun Maverick. Oh. We're very proud to present mission and possible fallout and we want you to enjoy the fullest possible effect.

Leo Laporte (00:53:39):
Yeah, he, you wouldn't Top Gun two years

Obviously Tom Cruise (00:53:41):
Ago. A moment of your time to talk to you about video interpolation. Video interpolation or motion smoothing is a digital effect on most high definition televisions and is intended to reduce motion blur in sporting events and other high definition programs. The unfortunate side effect is that it makes most movies look like they were shot on high speed video rather than film. Now this is sometimes referred to as the soap opera effect without a side by side comparison. Many people can't quite put their finger on why the movie they're watching looks strange. Most HDTVs come with this feature already on by default. And turning it off requires navigating a set of menus with inter interpolation, often referred to by another brand name. If you own a modern yet, that's the problem. Television, there's a good chance you're not watching movies the way the filmmakers intended and the ability to do so is not simple for you to access. Filmmakers are working with manufacturers to change the way video and interpolation is activated on your television <laugh>, giving you easier access

Leo Laporte (00:54:34):
And greater over when to use this leave. The vast effect

Obviously Tom Cruise (00:54:37):
Internet search should provide you with step by step instructions on how to quickly disable the feature so that you're can enjoy the movie you're about to see exactly as the

Leo Laporte (00:54:45):
Filmmakers turn off motion smoothing who works or whatever the hell they

Obviously Tom Cruise (00:54:47):
Call it, bring you the very best

Leo Laporte (00:54:49):
Portion. <Laugh>. All right. We have motion smoothing turned on for you, Sam, will Salmon.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:53):
Oh no, please don't <laugh>. That that is one of, that is one of the most annoying things about hotel rooms is you turn the TV on and they always have the motion smoothing turned on. And of course they have some generic remote, you know, that's not the, the remote for the tv, so you can't get into the settings and you can't turn it off. Bugs the hell outta it.

Leo Laporte (00:55:14):
I'm glad you know, awareness is high now though, though, which is good. People are aware of it. Yeah. Yeah. All yours.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:20):
All right, thank you. So uhm had a comment in the chat about he was watching I think modern marbles or something. They were talking about EV batteries, you know, it all being AA batteries, you know, just packed in different containers and that's not exactly right. The, it's not

Leo Laporte (00:55:40):
Close

Sam Abuelsamid (00:55:41):
<Laugh>. No. Well, when, when the Tesla roaster and, you know, subsequent Teslas were developed and actually before that the, the roads, the Tesla roads, the original Tesla Roadster was inspired by a car built by a company called AC Propulsion in Southern California. It was called the T zero. And basically they, they took a, a kit car and made it electric. And they, they were the first ones to use a lithium ion battery for an ev. And what they did was they used 18,006 50 cells, which are, they look like double A's, but they're actually longer and a bit thicker than a double A battery. And they used several thousand of these in the battery pack, and that's what Tesla did, starting with the Roadster and then the Model S and the Model X. And, and then when they got to the model three, they went to a different form factor, which is 2170. It's still a cylindrical cell. So when you look at it in isolation, it looks kinda like, kinda looks like it, but it's it's bigger. Yeah. Yeah. Double A doesn't be too small. This

Leo Laporte (00:56:40):
Doesn't do it justice cuz you can't tell it's, it's actually scale.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:43):
Yeah. You don't have any scale sets of scale there. Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:56:46):
When I bought my Model X, they showed me these cells. Yeah, they had a demo of it. So,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:52):
Yeah. And they, they're 18 6 50 s which means they're 18 millimeters in diameter, 65 millimeters long. So a little bit bigger than a double A. And you know, in the, in the s and the x in the, the long range versions of those, it had something like 8,000 cells in there, which you know, the, those cylindrical cells are cheaper to manufacture than the larger format pouch cells and prismatic cells that most other EV makers use. But it also means that the battery pack is a lot more complex cause you've gotta weld the, the wire, the connections between all these batteries and series and in parallel. And it does get a lot more complex to actually manufacture the pack. So not quite a, a's the, the newest Teslas, they've gone to a different, yet another cell format still cylindrical, but it's now up to 46 millimeters and 80 millimeters in diameter, 40, 80 millimeters long.

(00:57:51):
So it's about five times the size of the 2170 cell. They're, they're having some challenges with manufacturing those. And so they haven't made very many vehicles with those in them yet. But in a model Y that has the 46 80 cells instead of 4,400 cells, now it's down to about 820 cells. Which is, you know, getting, reducing the number of cells helps a lot with manufacturing complexity. One, somebody else in the chat had asked about wireless charging lanes for trucks for electric trucks. And this idea of dynamic wireless charging is, is pretty cool. It's a nice idea. It's a lot more difficult to do in practice than it is in theory. There's actually a stretch of Michigan Avenue here in Detroit about a one mile stretch where they have built in wireless charging, and they've been using it for some testing for about the last year or so.

(00:58:55):
 And the, the, the challenge is you lose, when you've got a dynamic wireless charging system, you lose a lot of efficiency because the, ideally, you know, you want the vehicle perfectly placed over the coils and the road, the road itself becomes much more expensive to build and to maintain durability is, is uncertain especially in places like Michigan here, where we get a lot of potholes because of the cold winters and hot summers. So dynamic wireless charging is, is probably not something we're gonna see widely spread. What we probably will see though is for things like buses, transit buses, building a static wireless charging pad at certain bus stops where the buses might be sitting stopped for say, three to five minutes. You know, and do two or three of those along a bus route. Then, you know, with that you can, you can charge the, the bus give it, you know, give it a top up.

(00:59:55):
 You know, at about 200 kilowatts is what I've seen so far as the top speeds for that wireless charging. You can add a bunch of energy into that in five minutes and then keep, keep the bus going, you know, and keep going around its route. And the nice thing about that is when, when you can charge it, you know, every, you know, 20, 30 minutes or so along a route, maybe every, every 40 minutes, you can have a much smaller battery. You don't have to have a battery that's gonna last you the entire day of the bus route. You, you know, it only has to last, you know, say 45 minutes. So you can have a smaller battery that dramatically reduces the cost of the bus and makes going electric much more affordable for transit systems. And then somebody else had a question about battery performance and cold weather.

(01:00:46):
And this is something I've talked about before. Basically a couple of things happen with batteries. When they get cold you get less power out of them. So they, when they, when they get out outside of their, their optimal temperature range, the power output drops off quite a bit, which when it's cold is probably not a bad thing. Cuz if it's cold, it's a good chance that the roads might be icy or slippery and you probably don't want the full power of the battery going to the wheels anyway. And then once you, once you do that you know, once the battery warms up, once you've been driving around for a little bit, then the battery won, the resistance in the battery heats it up and you, you, it, it'll eventually start to release the full power. The other problem you get with cold weather though, is having to heat the cabin of the vehicle for, for vehicle comfort. With an internal combustion engine, you've got a source of waste heat from the engine and you can run that coolant through a heat exchanger, heat up the air in the cabin. Everybody's nice and comfort.

Leo Laporte (01:01:46):
That's why I have mice with heated steering wheel and heated seat

Sam Abuelsamid (01:01:49):
In my, my feet. With an ev you've got, you've gotta use some sort of heating system that draws power from the battery. Older EVs used a resistance heater, which significantly reduce your range. Now companies are starting to shift towards heat pump systems, which are much more efficient. That's, and so there's gonna be a lot less impact on your cold weather range.

Leo Laporte (01:02:09):
Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. I remember my in the Model X they really wanted you to do is the seat warmers cuz that's much more efficient. So

Sam Abuelsamid (01:02:17):
Oh yeah. And warming your body keeps you more comfortable. Yeah. Without having to warm all of the

Leo Laporte (01:02:23):
Air in the cabin. That's why I use an eight sleep mattress pad, our sponsors. Thank you Salmon Full seven a Great you next week. Talk to you next week.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:02:30):
Bye.

Leo Laporte (01:02:32):
Why? Hey, hey, how are you today? Leo LaPorte here, the tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet home theater, her digital photography, smartphones, smart watches, electric vehicles, self-driving vehicles, self crashing vehicles. Eighty eight eighty eight Ask Leo is the phone number. If you have a question, a comment, a suggestion. 8 8 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. That's still free from anywhere in the US or Canada. Website. Tech guy labs.com has links to all the things we talk about. Tech guy labs.com. I was asking Mike, hes who is a expert and expert on on all of this home theater stuff. He's a colleague of Scott Wilkinson's. If any of the streaming systems out there does more than 60 frames per second. And, and in fact I don't even know if they do 60 frames a second, they might do 30 frames a second. So as far as I know, I don't know if Mike has answered, but I think I think that it is not the case that anybody does that.

(01:03:40):
So and also you should definitely, he says not to any degree at all. As they say in New Zealand, it's all about the bandwidth. <Laugh>, is that what they say in New Zealand <laugh>? Is that cause they have lots of sheep with their bandwidth? Mike, he has also pointed us to a website all about turning off inter interpolation filmmaker mode.com. Hollywood really doesn't like this filmmaker mode.com. And they even have on the website how to get it for various models. I noticed though, they <laugh> they don't have Sony on here. They have Beque, lg, Phillips, viens, Panasonic, Samsung. There is definitely a way to to turn off the soap opera effect on Sonys, but maybe they couldn't figure it out. <Laugh>, let me see, let me see if they have Sony, no <laugh> on Samsung, which is probably the number one TV out there. Well now see I clicked the link and all I did is set me to Samsung's mobile phone site. Well forget that filmmaker mode. Are you trying to make a little money on the side that way? 88. 88 as Leo, back to the phones we go. Michael, on the line from Denton, Colorado. Hello Michael.

Caller 3 (01:05:07):
Hi Leo. Thank you so much for taking my call. Hopefully you can hear me okay. I'm on Skype.

Leo Laporte (01:05:11):
You sound great. In fact, you sound better. It reminds me when I first started doing this show back in 2004, everybody called on the phone, but one guy, maybe it was you, I don't know, called on Skype and it sounded so good. I said, wait a minute, hold on there <laugh>, we could do podcasts this way. And it changed my life. So you sound great. Thank you for calling my

Caller 3 (01:05:34):
Absolutely. We, and I gotta tell you before I get to my tech question just thank you so much for your show. I wanted to get in one more time before you retired. I actually called you back in 2020 when Mixer was shutting down and I wanted to get your thoughts on that. But

Leo Laporte (01:05:49):
Yeah, that's, Microsoft bought a streaming site and paid a lot of money to entice people like Ninja, who's a famous streamer over and then killed it. <Laugh>. Exactly. Ninja made that like a bandit, like a, like a ninja. He made millions going to Mixer and then now he's back where he belongs on Twitch and YouTube and everywhere else and he is still making millions. Smart man.

Caller 3 (01:06:13):
Oh yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm a huge Fortnite fan. I'm a huge fan of Ninja and he's, he's doing very well for himself. I

Leo Laporte (01:06:19):
Think he is. Hey, how did you like the new Fortnite, by the way? Did you go to the launch party?

Caller 3 (01:06:24):
You know I did. I I was there for the, the end of chapter three, season four. And then I've played the new map. The new map. I'm not a huge fan of it, but I missed the old map, but but I mean,

Leo Laporte (01:06:38):
I love they have the Witcher in it, right? Exactly

Caller 3 (01:06:44):
Right, exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:06:45):
Gerald de Rivian is actually, or whatever his name is, is actually in Fortnite four at five, I should say. Wow.

Caller 3 (01:06:52):
Yeah. But Leo, I was gonna ask you real quick before my tech question. I, I love radio. I've been listening to you all throughout my twenties. Has radio always been something you've been passionate about? Yes. How did you first get interested in radio?

Leo Laporte (01:07:08):
I was in college and I was lucky many colleges have campus radio stations. Even to this day I was in college and I was, I my my job working my way through college was working in the dining hall serving food. And I would be at the, you know, the, the cafeteria line slurping mashed potatoes into the thing <laugh> and, and and I was always doing voices and, you know, accents and stuff. And somebody, somebody came down the line and said, oh, you should be on the radio now. In hindsight, I realized what he meant is you should not be doing that here, <laugh>. But I took it to mean, oh, I should go down to the campus station and audition. And this was, I hate to say it, 1976. I did. I fell in love with it, you know, I like radio.

(01:07:53):
 It's, it's an interesting medium because of our imaginations, our brains. It, as a radio listener, it turns on parts of your brain. You don't get with TV and film because you don't have any picture. So you your imagination. That's why I like listening to audio books for the same reason, you know, a science fiction book as an audio book or even as reading it is much more vivid than any movie could ever be because you build it with your brain. And I feel like the intimacy that we forge talking directly to people with their almost with their eyes closed, is a wonderful medium. I feel like in some ways radio is underutilized. I wish they'd bring back radio theater, things like that. There's so many things you could do with just audio, you know, and using your listener's imagination. So yeah, I, I'm passionate for it.

(01:08:40):
What's interesting is at the time we thought, you know, we name radio and TV based on the transmission medium. We thought, well, in order to do this, you need to have a transmitter and a tower, you know, and an FCC license turns out I can talk into a microphone and broadcast on the internet with none of that. So once podcasting came along right about the same time I started being the tech guy in 2004 that kind of changed my perspective. It turned out I wasn't in love with radio. I was in love with my voice. No, I was in love with talking to people you know, in audio, in an audio medium. I was in love with the audio medium. And so I think audio is bigger. Just look at how many podcasts there are. Audio is bigger than ever before and that's really what, what it's all about.

(01:09:29):
The only thing radio has that podcasting doesn't, and I do think that this is important, is it's live and it's local. So right now I'm talking to you live, I'm here sitting here, you're sitting there. We're live. Right? It's not a recording. And and in the old days it was locals your town in, you know, I think of this show as being local in the sense that we're all geeks, right? So we have a certain community of interest and and you kind of lose that. You still get the community of interest, but you lose that live. And, and I think as, as radio stations have gone to more national programming, and I shouldn't knock it cuz I'm one of them, but as they go to more national program, they also lose that local thing. So when you listen to WGN in Chicago or KFI in Los Angeles or KGO in San Francisco, you should be listening to somebody who's in town talking about what's going on in town. And that's when radio is different from podcasting. And it really is amazing. That's kind of dying out, unfortunately because Well how, how old are you?

Caller 3 (01:10:29):
I'm 26 now.

Leo Laporte (01:10:30):
See, I don't think many people your age listen to the radio. Do you?

Caller 3 (01:10:35):
Well, you know, I grew up with radio. I mean, it was always something I could relate to more than video games, even as a kid or TV for some reason.

Leo Laporte (01:10:44):
So, you know, you're weird right, <laugh>,

Caller 3 (01:10:47):
I know that. But I listen to you and, and Rush Limbaugh and I, I just have always loved radio. So he was always really inspired me.

Leo Laporte (01:10:53):
I I'm not, I don't agree with his politics at all, but he was a master of the medium. He really was.

Caller 3 (01:10:59):
He saved AM radio. Yeah. I mean, you know, when, when all the AM radio stations were flipping to music he brought back the talk radio format for am I mean, AM radio would not be what it is today without him or you or

Leo Laporte (01:11:14):
Well, Michael

Caller 3 (01:11:15):
And 

Leo Laporte (01:11:16):
I will say <laugh>, I know that because I was doing a midday show in San Francisco and the program director brought me in back in the nineties, early nineties and said, we're gonna take you off the air. There's this guy in Sacramento named Rush Limbaugh, we think is really good. We'd like to put him on instead of you. And of course they were right to do so. Rush got a hundred times the ratings I ever got. But I was one of those, I was one of those radio guys who was replaced by Rush Limbaugh. So I know that very well. But I, I give him a lot of credit not for his politics, but for his ability to communicate. He's very, and there are other people, there are many other people in this business who communicate through a microphone in, in an amazing way. I think it's really a communication medium more than almost anything else.

Caller 3 (01:12:02):
Absolutely. And I think, I think the biggest thing is how do we attract younger listeners back to terrestrial radio? Wow. It's, you know, because there's so many other mediums out there

Leo Laporte (01:12:12):
Streaming, I don't think it's gonna happen. Michael, you don't listen to music on the radio anymore cuz you have an infinite supply of music on your phone and you pick the songs you don't listen to to am radio because you've got podcasts. I think that the internet has like so many other things, the internet has changed forever. The landscape of broadcasting. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I agree with you and I think the best thing you could do is support your, if you have in your town a live, and I know you do in Denver a live local, you're in Koa koa, the, there's the Great Station in Denver. If you have a live local station that broadcast during the week weekends, I understand. But if broadcast in the week, live local content, support them, support their advertisers, send 'em letters, call in when they have callin shows, make sure people know that this is a successful format and we wanna keep it. Cuz KOA is a great station and deserves to survive as a real radio station. You know. Do you listen to KOA on am a 50 or do you listen on the fm?

Caller 3 (01:13:15):
Yes, well 94 1 FM and 8:50 AM I listen to the Mandy Connell show. I mean, you know, like you said, she's great, you know it is. She is. She's an amazing broadcaster. Yeah. And but so are you. And we thank you so much for your time. I'll get to my tech question if you want me to, if we have hang

Leo Laporte (01:13:31):
On, I'll do it. I'll do it. But I have to take a break cuz this is Radio <laugh>, ad supported <laugh>. We'll be back with more Leo Laport, the tech, Chris Mark, a photo guy coming up in just a little bit. Stay right here. So now we're on the podcast cast, but, but we can do, we can, Hey Chris, be with you in a minute. We can do the podcast question and answer right now. If, if you would like go right ahead, Michael. Yeah,

Caller 3 (01:14:07):
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Well first of all, Leo, just thank you so much. I I so much appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. 

Leo Laporte (01:14:16):
Oh Michael, thank you. Cuz you, what you're saying speaks to me cuz it really is, it really is true. The one of the things I'm gonna do, I'm not gonna be on terrestrial radio anymore on on Saturdays, but on Sundays, Micah and I are gonna do a live call-in show, but we'll just do it on the internet. Wow. Yeah. Right. So I, this is an experiment. Can you do the same thing without a transmitter at Tower? I think you can, but we'll see.

Caller 3 (01:14:41):
Well, I think you're gonna get younger listeners and younger callers because it's gonna be, you know, exclusive to the internet. But nobody,

Leo Laporte (01:14:48):
I would guess nobody in your age group, nobody, you know, listens to the radio. They probably think you're strange.

Caller 3 (01:14:55):
Yeah, they do. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:14:58):
<Laugh>. But I agree with you and you know what you've done, which I think we lose a little bit, you know, for Mandy and Rush and all those people, you have this relationship, they call it Parasocial relationship. You have a relationship with them relat that is much more personal than anything you'd have with a TV broadcaster. I think. You know, you feel like you know them, right?

Caller 3 (01:15:18):
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's like, it's so much different than TV and the way of just connecting to someone without seeing them. Because like when you're, you know, if someone's on TV and they say something that is like a little bit out of line, like one sentence from DISA disaster, you're gonna see them make that mistake. But if it's on the radio, there's a little bit more room for leeway. And that's the one thing I've always been so impressed about you is you're always so confident on the radio, like you're always so calm. Like how do you always,

Leo Laporte (01:15:49):
Oh, that comes with on the radio, it comes with time. I've been doing it so long and also, you know, I didn't really start getting good in radio. It took me about 15 years before I felt comfortable. And I think the thing that really transformed it was when I stopped worrying about it, I didn't give a damn well as soon as I stopped worrying about what people thought I was 10 times better. Because up to that point I was really kind of ingratiating and a guy I worked with said, you're too smiley, smiley, <laugh>. I was too. I was like trying to get people to like me. Once I gave up on that, I was much, much better. So I think it's just age, you know, it's just doing it for a long time, you know. Hey, what was your tech question?

Caller 3 (01:16:31):
Iquestion question. Yeah. so I was, I have a wireless charger. It's a Mofi four and one charger. Yeah, good one. I've been thinking about upgrading it actually because it's not working as efficiently as it was when I first got it. It's kind of like charging a lot slower. I read a review about the, it's called the sit touchy doc five multi device charging station. I was gonna ask you just like what you would recommend in terms of, you know, what

Leo Laporte (01:17:00):
Is it a, is it a, do you want a doc or just a charger? So that's the first question. The sati is more like a doc, right? It connects to a computer and then connects your devices, your computer. So that's different than charging. If you just want a charger. Look at these new g these gallium nitride chargers, they're smaller because they're, they're using a new technology and they have more wattage. This is an anchor pd, so that's for type C, the power delivery spec. But wireless, actually, I take it back, there's no, I don't even know if there's GaN wireless chargers. That's an interesting question. Wireless, there is a fast charging technology's not nearly as fast as the wired charging, so, but SAT tech's a good company, they make good stuff. I I've, I have a lot of SAT tech gear. I often get anchor gear. The wire cutter did a review of the best wireless chargers for phones. I don't know if you, if it's for phones you care about or

Caller 3 (01:18:00):
Yeah, I have an iPhone 14,

Leo Laporte (01:18:01):
So I'm just so they like the be and boost, but that's, see none of these are as, that's 10 watts be they liked a lot. The boosts are fast. 15 watts is the fastest. Nothing compared to hardwired. Hey, gotta run. Leo LaPorte, the tech guy. 88. 88. Ask Leo. Michael wanted to know about wireless chargers. That's a, there's a can of worms you're opening up. I like wireless charging for phones. Right? in fact, I think phone manufacturers kind of want you to do it. It's not as efficient, I gotta say it's not as efficient as powered, you know, plugging it in and plugging it into the port, charging in the long run, you gonna charge much faster by plugging into the, the phone directly. But wireless, if you're charging overnight, you're not in a hurry. It's a little easier on the phone's battery cuz it's not as fast.

(01:18:53):
It's at most 15 watts and most phones you're probably talking 10 watts which is slower. There is a little loss of efficiency. So you're wasting some electricity. I don't, I mean I think it's not a huge amount, but it's just convenient because you don't have to in the middle of the night find the port and go, let me plug that in. The other reason the manufacturers are interested, I think especially Apple. I think Apple wants to get rid of the port on the phone. Rumors were that they're probably gonna do it in 2024 or 2025. It won't be next year. But that they will get rid of all the ports and so you'll have to wireless charge. I told Michael that the best wireless chargers these days I, you know, it, it varies depending on the kind of phone and, and how fast you wanna charge wire cutter likes the 10 wat be and boost stand I like stands too because it's harder to miss. <Laugh>.

(01:19:55):
One of the problems with wireless charging is you gotta, and that's why Apple invented this MagSafe charging where it has a little magnet and it goes right on, right on the sweet spot on the phone. <Laugh>. But that's one of the problems with wireless charging. If you miss, you're not charging overnight and you wake up and oh, the phone's dead. But the charging stands work really well because it's like a little ease. Plus you can see the phone. I use a charging stand here during the show so I can see the phone and it's charging $25 from Amazon for the be and Boost charge Wireless charging if you want a little bit faster charging. The Boost Charge Pro is 38 bucks from Amazon. That's a 15 wat iPhone device. Each manufacturer has its own high speed wireless charging standard too. That's another thing that complicates all of this.

(01:20:41):
I prefer, instead of a pad, I prefer like an easel just cuz it's harder to get it wrong. Anchor. I have a number of anchor power wave stands. I bought I think three or four when they were on sale. They're still pretty cheap. 16 bucks. It's not super fast. If you're charging overnight, it's fine. And it's an easel and it's the prices, right. And I have, I bought like four of them so I can have 'em everywhere and everywhere I go, <laugh>. So there's a couple of recommendations on we go to Jamie in Watertown, New York. Hi Jamie.

Caller 4 (01:21:13):
Hello. Welcome. Thank you. I am one of your podcast listeners, but I can support my local radio station. Yay. we have a great weekend thing where the, they have flashbacks where they, they talk about history in the area while playing music from different years.

Leo Laporte (01:21:35):
Isn't that fun? See, that's one way to save radios do innovative stuff like that, right?

Caller 4 (01:21:41):
Yes. A matter of fact, the gentleman who was hosting that passed away a couple of years ago and they're playing the reruns now.

Leo Laporte (01:21:47):
Well, why not? It's history

Caller 4 (01:21:49):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:21:50):
Yes. But that's I think why podcasts have become so successful. You can, you can find any subject you're interested in and, and find a podcast on it and listen to it when it's convenient for you. So, you know, that's, I think even the company that that does this show pre Premier, which is owned by iHeart calls itself an audio company these days, not a radio company. They understand it's about audio. What can I, anyway, what can I do for you? Thank you Jamie, for saving the Watertown radio. That's good.

Caller 4 (01:22:18):
Okay. I have planned a trip to Germany in April. Exciting for 10 days. Great. Yes. It's, it's a, it's a geocaching trip is a it's a group trip, so it does not line up with my son's spring break. Oh. So he will miss 10 days of school.

Leo Laporte (01:22:38):
This'll be better. He'll get an education. Just take him to some educational sites. There's a lot of history in Germany. Yes,

Caller 4 (01:22:45):
Yes. Yes, there is. I have, I actually have been in Germany before and I am excited about sharing it with him. But because of that, I know his school uses Google Classroom. I'm going to coordinate with his teachers and I don't know if he might need to actually at this point, I don't know. Cause I ha I'm gonna talk to the teachers at the conferences, but he may need to be sending schoolwork back during the arts and days in

Leo Laporte (01:23:10):
Germany. I've taken my kids traveling and I've gone with giant stacks of homework, which they never did of course, but I've gone with it. <Laugh> the good news is every hotel Germany's great. Every hotel you go to will have high speed wifi in the hotel. So if he brings a, a laptop or even a tablet, he probably is using a Chromebook in school. Is that right?

Caller 4 (01:23:29):
He's, he's using a Chromebook in school. Okay. But I was thinking we would use his iPad cuz I'm not comfortable taking his school Chromebook

Leo Laporte (01:23:36):
Over. Okay, that's fair. So yeah, bring your iPad. As long as you can do everything you need to do on the iPad, you will be able to get online at high speed anywhere in the hotel. I wouldn't worry so much about, as you travel around, pay attention to the geocaching, have some fun and then just say, Hey, tonight Junior, you're gonna be doing some homework between seven and 10 while mom goes down and corr espouses with the Germans in the bar

Caller 4 (01:24:01):
<Laugh>. Okay. All

Leo Laporte (01:24:02):
Right. Or something like that. Not exactly that, but you understand. It's, you know, because the ho once you're in the hotel, you get great speed.

Caller 4 (01:24:10):
Okay. All right. So that's good to know. What about if I need to access, you know a phone? Should I, I've got the 14.

Leo Laporte (01:24:19):
Who's your carrier? Who's your carrier

Caller 4 (01:24:21):
At at t?

Leo Laporte (01:24:22):
So at and t like modern most US phone companies has an international plan. It's not cheap. Most of the time you want to use the wifi, which is, you know, you're already paying for in the hotel. Perhaps download maps. So you don't need to use data as much, but at and t will sell you an international package. Just turn it on before you leave and make sure you turn it off when you get back. It's not too, I've done it before. It's not too expensive. And that way you keep your number and everything. We'll go to Germany with our photo guy, Chris Marwat, as a matter of fact, right after this. Where should she go? Chris <laugh>.

Chris Marquardt (01:24:58):
There's so many places

Leo Laporte (01:25:00):
I know.

Chris Marquardt (01:25:00):
Awesome.

Leo Laporte (01:25:01):
We're gonna be in Germany next Christmas. We start in Munich. We're gonna do a you know, one of those Christmas market riverboat trips.

Chris Marquardt (01:25:15):
<Laugh> awesome.

Leo Laporte (01:25:16):
It's gonna be fun. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:25:18):
I can't you fall in love with the German rivers.

Leo Laporte (01:25:20):
I, man, we've had so much fun. It, it was our favorite riverboat trip ever was going get

Chris Marquardt (01:25:28):
To see a lot of things you

Leo Laporte (01:25:29):
Do and you're not like, it's not like cruise ports. You're seeing, you know, like real towns. I did,

Chris Marquardt (01:25:34):
I did teach photography on a, on a, on a German river cruise once. And they at, I can think the fifth stop they called it, they began calling it an ABC cruise. Another bloody castle <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:25:48):
It is, if you go down the Rhine, it's the, it's be as we'll call it castles on the Rhine. We're

Chris Marquardt (01:25:53):
It's castles at cities. Castles

Leo Laporte (01:25:54):
On the, yeah, we're starting off Stone Road. I think we start in Passau. We go to Nuremberg, Regensburg de Andorf <laugh> Passau and

Chris Marquardt (01:26:05):
All beautiful places.

Leo Laporte (01:26:06):
Beau I've been to them all before, so that's okay. And then I love Regensburg. I, I look forward to going back there. Nurnberg great. Loved the love Nurnberg verse as they say it's the best and they might be right.

Chris Marquardt (01:26:17):
The Nurnberg right? Worst is the best. It's

Leo Laporte (01:26:20):
The best <laugh>.

Chris Marquardt (01:26:21):
I can't confirm

Leo Laporte (01:26:22):
It. And then and then we end up in Austria. We're going to Linz down the Wau Valley, which is a beautiful river cruise. Bernstein, Vienna for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. And then we end up in Budapest, which is always fun to sail. How's

Chris Marquardt (01:26:38):
It German?

Leo Laporte (01:26:40):
Terrible. I wish we were ringing my son. We had planned this with my son, but it got canceled cuz of Covid. He's, he's loves, he's advanced German speaker. It's funny. I'll listen at the door while he's talking to his tutor in German and I'm like, wow. We can never get him to do it in person though. He's always, you know, we were gonna go in 2020 to ob ow to see the, the passion play.

Chris Marquardt (01:27:04):
The fe shappi

Leo Laporte (01:27:05):
Fish got canceled Shappi. But and they actually did it the next year, but it was, I wasn't gonna go in 2021 either, so we'll have to wait till 2030. So yeah, I'm, I'm really looking forward to this. It's gonna be a lot of fun. We go the that sounds fun down the, the Rhine Mine canal.

Chris Marquardt (01:27:26):
Which even though, even though if you come around Christmas, Germany usually doesn't have a white Christmas rain.

Leo Laporte (01:27:32):
Oh, it better snow when I'm there. Yeah. Well we're in Southern, no that we're in southern Germany too, which I'm sure Hamburg up your way

Chris Marquardt (01:27:39):
Higher possibility for that. Yeah, there's a higher possibility for

Leo Laporte (01:27:42):
Our snow. Mm

Chris Marquardt (01:27:45):
Huh Well, we do an assignment review today. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:27:48):
Boy. Let me pull it

Chris Marquardt (01:27:50):
Up. And and as it's the last one, I would like to, at the end, do a a fishbowl drawing of three ones to give people like just for

Leo Laporte (01:28:00):
Themselves to take with them forever.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:02):
Take with them as a, as a general type of homework thing.

Leo Laporte (01:28:06):
That's a good idea. And then you can, you can decommission the

Chris Marquardt (01:28:10):
Fishbowl and then I'll auction off the, the fish bowl. How about that?

Leo Laporte (01:28:16):
Hysterical. Let me paste this into our chats.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:19):
Or, or I go buy a fish. How about that?

Leo Laporte (01:28:21):
Yeah. Or buy a fish.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:24):
Remember? Should get a fish. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:28:25):
Buy a fish. <Laugh>, no fish fishbowls are cruel. They, they say don't keep a goldfish in a fishbowl.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:36):
I, yeah. Captive keeping animals captives. They have never been my thing. But

Leo Laporte (01:28:41):
You like kitty cats?

Chris Marquardt (01:28:43):
Well what that they had, but they were, they were half of the time they were outside. They had access to the outside when they wanted. So

Leo Laporte (01:28:50):
Did I screw this up? I might have screwed that paste up. Let me go back. Now it's one. Oh, I see, I see. Was one Long Lincoln then two shirt ones. Let me get the other ones. Our show today brought to you by MIMO Monitors the global leader and industry expert in award-winning small format displays in touch screens in tablets. You've seen MIMO monitors everywhere at mimo. They pride themselves on innovative high quality, cutting edge touch screen technology ranging in size from little seven inches, which are actually just perfect for some things, right to 21 inches. Designed to be inherently flexible to suit your needs. Bring your vision to life. They don't stop there. Their displays are sleek, they're premium, they're intuitive, easy to use, easy to deploy, durable. In fact, a lot of cases these displays are in use in kiosks and other places with durability is number one.

(01:29:46):
They are created with maximum reliability to stand the test of time, even when they're in used 24 7. You'll also see 'em on a factory floor. You'll see 'em in Fortune 500 companies around the world. Google uses 'em, Sonos, Grainger, John Deere, Hertz. Now the thing about MIMO monitors is they design these with kind of a solutions focused approach, not a generic monitor, right? They're high value, small footprint displays are used. Well, digital signage, maybe you've seen them, you know behind the counter in conference rooms for, for conference calls. They're in kiosks, point of sale. They're widely used education, healthcare museums like 'em cuz they last forever. They're easy to read, they're crisp, they're clear. You even see MIMO monitors outdoors. So you know, they've got monitors for every situation. And if you don't find the solution you're looking for, you can reach out to them.

(01:30:38):
They literally will create a custom solution for you that makes sure to meet your needs. And at mimo, all their touch screens are designed with the human touch customer service right at the forefront. Their US based customer service team ensures that when you give 'em a call, a team member will get back to you promptly deliver a premium customer experience with a goal to exceed your expectations. You know why? You know why? Because that's how MIMO makes a difference. People know this is a great quality product and with great service and people behind it. And that makes, that's how you be successful in the monitor business. Oh, and by the way, they also designed software like Unify meeting, unify meetings. Great. I've talked about before for video conferencing. One unified UI that handles Zoom teams, Google Meet. And I have to tell you, somebody who's do does all three, it's so confusing.

(01:31:29):
But Unify meeting makes it simple. If you're working at home in the office, if you're hybrid combines all those solutions in one reliable user interface. Now it, it's also true that Unify meeting is great on one of those like get a seven inch MIMO monitor and just leave unified meeting running on it. It, when you're not in a call, it's your calendar. So you see it there at all times. And when you see others a call, you tap it on the MIMO monitor, it opens up, it knows whether it opens Zoom teams or Meet, opens the right thing with the unified interface on the seven inch and full screen on your laptop or desktop, the solution you're using. So you still have access to that. I just, I think it's the best way to go. If I were you, I would try unify for your team at work.

(01:32:15):
Try it yourself. You can visit U N I F Y M E e t i n g.com. Find out all about it. In fact, we've got a great deal if you enter Tech Guy 50 as the offer code@unifymeeting.com. 50% off a year subscription. It's not very expensive, but it's a great thing to have throughout the office. On the other hand, and this is what I did and I would suggest you do, go to unify meeting.com and buy a MIMO display cuz it comes with Unify meetings. So you kind of get the best of both worlds. You get that display with the meeting on it and you can get 25% off if you use the offer code Tech guy, 25% off offer code Tech guy, any of nemo's displays. Now this is a limited time offer. Simplify with Unify. Now let me give you the complicated part. <Laugh>, you get the software unify meeting.com with 50% off for a year. Tech Guy 50, you get the hardware unify meeting.com, 25% off and the software's free with the offer code. Tech guy, tech guy for the hardware tech guy 50 for the software. I think it'll all be clear if you just go to unify meeting.com. We thank him so much for their support. Make sure you use those offer codes though, cause that's how they know you saw it on the Tech guy show. Now, back to the radio.

(01:33:29):
Chris Marwat is here, our photo guy. He is of course@sensei.photo, but more importantly he does those one and

Chris Marquardt (01:33:39):
That discover the top short.

Leo Laporte (01:33:40):
Yeah, that's what I was about to say. Does those wonderful expeditions <laugh> at discover the top floor.com and there's a chance to go travel eastern Europe with Chris and and have a great time taking photos with one of the most accomplished photo teachers in the world. My personal photo sensei. Chris, I'm sad because we only have a couple more episodes this week, next week and the week after the 18th will be our last time together. So we're gonna retire the fishbowl today on the episode. But before we do that,

Chris Marquardt (01:34:14):
A fish bowl,

Leo Laporte (01:34:15):
<Laugh>, let's do a photo review. What do you say?

Chris Marquardt (01:34:19):
Yep, let's review the last assignment, the blue assignment. And we had some nice participation, some great, great stuff. And I've chosen three pictures out of the whole bunch of look at the blueness here. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:34:34):
Blue was the assignment. Blue, blue, blue, blue,

Chris Marquardt (01:34:37):
Blue was the assignment. And so let's, let's look at these pictures. Maybe, maybe let's do a little guess the title. So this is by Scott McLean. Oh. And well, I love this picture. It has, it has, there's a dog on the top of stairs and then there's this blue old door that frames it just as in an inverted L shape kind of thing. So I like the, the way this is put together, of course, the title of this photo is Blue Dog, 2 22 Oh

Leo Laporte (01:35:09):
Dog's Not Blue, but the Arches.

Chris Marquardt (01:35:12):
Well the arches, the, the, the door frame is and I, yeah, I, I like how it, how it's, everything is spaced out. It's a very clear subject in the photo, which is the dark. So the blue is more of a framing thing and there's interesting lines and old derelict, like a flooring there. It's very old. And I'm, yeah, I'm a, I'm a fan of that. So nice

Leo Laporte (01:35:36):
Job there. Nice.

Chris Marquardt (01:35:37):
Second one I chose is, oh no, I shouldn't have shown you the title. Can you guess the title of

Leo Laporte (01:35:43):
That one? Boy, there's nothing blue in the picture. It's a black and white photo of a, a rural mailbox with slightly open with some mail coming out. 

Chris Marquardt (01:35:52):
I don't, the title is No check today.

Leo Laporte (01:35:53):
<Laugh>. Just Pills. No check. Oh, I

Chris Marquardt (01:35:58):
Love it. Just pills. No check. So that, that gives you a bit of the blues for sure.

Leo Laporte (01:36:02):
Come on. You gave that one a prize for the title <laugh>.

Chris Marquardt (01:36:06):
Of course, of course. And it's a black and white photo and it, it, it, it's, it's not a photo that has blue in it, but that just shows the idea of being

Leo Laporte (01:36:14):
Blue. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:36:15):
In some way. I like this a lot. So good. Good job. Cool. Florida guy submitted that one.

Leo Laporte (01:36:22):
Thank you. Cool Florida guy. And

Chris Marquardt (01:36:23):
Then the third one is, okay, hold on, hold

Leo Laporte (01:36:29):
On. Wait a minute. It's just

Chris Marquardt (01:36:30):
Blue full screen. This Speedo submitted that picture. Yeah. And I <laugh>, this is a bit on the technical side, so I'm not sure how well it translates to the compression of the video, but Well, it's this place of blue sky. Yeah. And I looked at that first a few. Oh, I see. And

Leo Laporte (01:36:48):
Then there's a defect.

Chris Marquardt (01:36:51):
Speedo titles it looking for the dust on the CMOs. Check sensor cleaning. That's hyster.

Leo Laporte (01:36:57):
He does the same thing I do. You have here I take a picture of the blue sky to look for dust on my sensor. Yes,

Chris Marquardt (01:37:03):
Yes. And you can see a spec here. And he, he put little squares around it. You can do this on flicker. So here's a dust a dust spec, and this is the clean area more on the right. And then there's a little one that has like, just a little bit. And this is, okay, so if, if you have, if you have a camera with an interchangeable lens, then of course you will open that up, that dust gets in and some of that dust sooner or later will end up on the sensor. It's just a given. Even if you don't change your lenses, if you, if you zoom and focus and stuff, it's like a, a lens, like, like here, one of these bigger ones that's like, that's like a that's like, that's like a bicycle pump, right? Comes air in and out.

Leo Laporte (01:37:47):
Oh, when you zoom in and out. So

Chris Marquardt (01:37:48):
That means dust will come into the camera and as soon as the dust sits on the lens for a a while it won't bother you. But then in some, some of these dust specs end up in the sky and they will show as little specs. So if you are, if, if you don't give your camera to a shop for a sensor cleaning, if you wanna do this yourself, this is one way to find out if you have specs of dust. Don't get too paranoid about it. Usually they don't really bother you. But

Leo Laporte (01:38:17):
Took the last trip, a whole bunch of pictures and I started going through 'em and I started seeing, oh, there's a big blob right there. Oh, there. See if you see five pictures and the blobs, you know, it's on the,

Chris Marquardt (01:38:28):
It's the same on all the pictures.

Leo Laporte (01:38:29):
It's on the sensor. And I went, oh.

Chris Marquardt (01:38:31):
But as long as it, as long as it's in the, in the lower two thirds, that's usually where you have landscape and buildings and stuff. And you won't really notice it. If it's up in the sky, then

Leo Laporte (01:38:42):
Drives me nuts.

Chris Marquardt (01:38:43):
Hey, there's a clone tool in in your Lightroom.

Leo Laporte (01:38:46):
Yeah. So do you clean your sensor yourself?

Chris Marquardt (01:38:50):
I do, but I, I wait as long as I can. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm usually, I'm usually spending a lot of time cloning out specs to the point where when, as soon as I get really annoyed. And if you, if you give it a lot of, if, if you, if you shoot with a more wide open aperture, you don't see 'em as much. If you shoot at F 22 or something, then you will see they

Leo Laporte (01:39:10):
Show up. I I have a bulb air blower. That's the first thing. Of course, modern cameras also will shake the sensor. And then if it's really bad, I go out by the, the little swabs and they

Chris Marquardt (01:39:23):
A little, they do a good

Leo Laporte (01:39:24):
Job. You just swab it off and yeah, then you add, then you oosh it around. You have to take a picture of the sky, then you gotta go back and do it again. They have the picture of the sky. Finally, I gotta clean. But it's, I gotta remember to do that before the trip. Not after the

Chris Marquardt (01:39:38):
Trip. If, if you bought the camera at a, at a local dealer somewhere, bring it to them and they do it for you.

Leo Laporte (01:39:45):
So we we are not gonna do another assignment because Chris won't be here to review it, but he wants to give you something, leave you with something to remember him by.

Chris Marquardt (01:39:56):
Well for, for a while at least. I would like to give everyone, okay, I'm gonna pull out of the fishbowl last time. I'm pulling something out of the fishbowl. Three adjectives for you to take with you and make those into your little own photo assignments. Nothing to win, but you can win some, gain, some experience. So let's do a drawing. First one is average. That's the first

Leo Laporte (01:40:23):
One. Average.

Chris Marquardt (01:40:25):
Average. The second one is, oh, I like that one. Another one with a alive,

Leo Laporte (01:40:32):
Average, alive. And,

Chris Marquardt (01:40:37):
And then last but not least, inexpensive.

Leo Laporte (01:40:41):
Inexpensive. They seem to go together.

Chris Marquardt (01:40:43):
And if you're really good, you can take those three adjectives and make them into a short story. How about that?

Leo Laporte (01:40:48):
Average, alive and inexpensive. And you know what this means, Chris? This means either Rich is gonna have to put you on his show, which is a possibility. I've sent him all the names of all our contributors so that he can do that. And if not, then in three weeks now we're not gonna start the podcast until next year. So it'll be it'll be January 8th, 16th, 23rd, January 30th. You might have to come on and give us more assignments. Can we do that?

Chris Marquardt (01:41:21):
You know, you know where I am <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:41:23):
Right? I'm not going anywhere. We'll do that on the podcast. How about somebody said, well, what, what? Can't he be on the podcast? Yes, you can be on the podcast <laugh>.

Chris Marquardt (01:41:29):
Sure can. I'm a podcaster. I know how he

Leo Laporte (01:41:32):
Knows how these things work. Chris, mark, right now let me tell everybody how they can go to discover the top floor.com and find all of Chris's. He's got two exciting adventures, just, but do you have any spots left at all?

Chris Marquardt (01:41:46):
Yes. well, I'm talking to several people right now, but they're might be one or two filling

Leo Laporte (01:41:51):
Up fast.

Chris Marquardt (01:41:52):
Get, get any contact, it's on the website. Discover the topper.com. And photo,

Leo Laporte (01:41:58):
I presume this is the beginning of you getting back into the photo expeditions. I hope it is. Cause I, I'm counting on you to do a an expedition to the land where the gross national happiness is number one. Buton, I want to go with you there. I'm

Chris Marquardt (01:42:13):
Trying to still on the list

Leo Laporte (01:42:15):
For sure. Okay. That's, that's the, that's my bucket list with Chris Mark War, of course. Photo, essentially that photo is his photo coaching site. He is on Flicker as N U B U I Nabu. And his tips from the top floor is the longest running photography podcast. Still the best tf ttf.com. Chris will talk next week.

Chris Marquardt (01:42:38):
Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:42:39):
Thank you, Chris. Mark, see you then. Starting to get a little sad in here. Starting to get a little blue.

Chris Marquardt (01:42:48):
Little blue. The fish ball. What am I gonna do?

Leo Laporte (01:42:54):
Tire? The fish bowl. It's blue

Chris Marquardt (01:42:57):
<Laugh>. I could make that into like a space helmet or

Leo Laporte (01:43:01):
Something. If the hole were bigger. You could, you could put it on one of your cat's heads.

Chris Marquardt (01:43:06):
I'll, yeah. Well, they're not around anymore and you'll never, I'll I'll use the, I use the Dremel and, and open that thing up. How about that?

Leo Laporte (01:43:16):
Very nice. Very nice.

Chris Marquardt (01:43:18):
All right. Very

Leo Laporte (01:43:19):
Nice. All right. Hey, thank you Chris. Have a wonderful week and we'll see you next time.

Chris Marquardt (01:43:26):
See you next week. Take care. Bye

Leo Laporte (01:43:28):
Bye. I'll Aza. Yeah, my mom was a Weaver. Golia. That's why I ask. I I <laugh> spent a lot of time with wool doing the warp. Yes. Yeah, that looks like an industrial loom. Her, her her wool never looked so, so fancy. And congratulations to everyone on your excellent advent of code work. Now it will get hard. Leo LaPorte the tech guy. 88. 88. Ask Leo the phone number. Mitch is on the line for Beverly Hills, California. I bet. I'm Mitch.

Caller 5 (01:44:12):
Hey Leo. How you

Leo Laporte (01:44:13):
Doing? I'm well. How are you?

Caller 5 (01:44:15):
Terrific. I got a question for you. Yes. I'm a I'm a lawyer and as you know, we have legal and professional rules that require confidentiality. But all my programs that I use every day, like office and Adobe and QuickBooks and Time Slips and Act all want me to go to online you know, versions. And I'm very concerned about, you know, the confidentiality of,

Leo Laporte (01:44:48):
And rightly so in theory you know, stuff in the cloud is secure, but it is not encrypted end to end. So that means it's sitting on Apple's iCloud or Microsoft's OneDrive or Google's Google Drive encrypted. But any, but, but the keys are also next door. So if you had a malicious actor at Google or Apple or Microsoft or Drop Bots, et cetera, et cetera, they could see it. It's not unencrypted, but it is, it is. The keys are, you know, held there and if somebody broke in, they could get it. So

Caller 5 (01:45:28):
That's not good.

Leo Laporte (01:45:29):
Yeah, it's not good. You know, there is, there isn't a HIPAA for lawyers. Maybe there should be. There's a, you know, of course in, in the medical profession, the health insurance, privacy and Portability Act. HIPAA has requirements for legal requirements for secrecy. And very few cloud services are HIPAA compliant. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I would, I would actually you know, as an attorney, you probably should consider that would be the minimum you would need as well is HIPAA compliance. So there are you know, it's,

Caller 5 (01:46:03):
Go ahead. I fought with Microsoft for six months to get office 2019 on a, on my pc. Yeah, I, how hard it is.

Leo Laporte (01:46:14):
Oh, I know. Trust me. There is though Microsoft has added, I think Google has also added an encrypted sub drive on your OneDrive, and I'm sure that that is intended for law firms. I have from Lex Workplace, you know, as you know, Lex is a, you know, trustworthy source for legal information. I think it's part of Lexus Nexus, I'm assuming. Anyway they have a list which I will put in the show notes on cloud storage for law firms.

Caller 5 (01:46:48):
Oh, that'd be good.

Leo Laporte (01:46:49):
So it'd be worth seeing, I would say, you know, it just depends on how seriously you take this. You know, it actually is an interesting thing that just came up. As you might know Elon Musk released yesterday, or was the day before the deliberations Twitter had over blocking the Hunter Biden laptop posts, chiefly posts of Hunter Biden naked. And among the materials released were, were memos from Twitter's chief counsel, which probably were protected,

Caller 5 (01:47:27):
Probably were

Leo Laporte (01:47:29):
Cuz there were memos to Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter. Presumably as chief counsel, he, his communications with Jack were protected. So those were released. So that's the other thing to think about is you, you, you don't know who's gonna own that cloud service tomorrow. If Elon comes along, he may not be paying much attention to, you know, what's protected and what's not.

Caller 5 (01:47:50):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Leo Laporte (01:47:51):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So that's another issue that comes up. So, but you have to, I mean, it depends on, you know, how seriously you take all this, who your clients are. If you had marquee clients, well known names, so forth, there would be much more incentive for hackers to try to get this material. So you, the onus would be on you to work even harder to keep it protected. There is, but is there, you tell me, is there any, anything like HIPAA for the legal profession?

Caller 5 (01:48:17):
No. I mean, you just have a duty to keep your clients

Leo Laporte (01:48:21):
Confides. Right. My guess would be in that case, you know, trust HIPAA compliance because it's very similar if you were in an accounting profession, and you're dealing with tax returns exactly the same thing. Don't you know, people email tax returns? That is a

Caller 5 (01:48:37):
Bad practice. Believe me, I <laugh> I am a tax lawyer. And I, I'm intimately familiar with

Leo Laporte (01:48:42):
That's crazy. And, and you probably know this, but every time I get a, a communication from a lawyer, it's got a disclaimer at the bottom saying, don't read this if it's not for you. I don't know how binding that is.

Caller 5 (01:48:56):
I don't think it's binding at all. I

Leo Laporte (01:48:58):
Don't think it's binding at all. This is not intended for if this is the, if you're not the intended recipient, don't read this. Yeah, well, good luck. I just read it.

Caller 5 (01:49:06):
Yeah. Listen, I hear people discussing lawyer, client confidentiality that in loud voices <laugh>, where I go to on their phones.

Leo Laporte (01:49:15):
So get ready because the EU has just approved the use of cell phones on airplanes. I imagine it's just around the corner for the us. And you know how people are on cell phones. You can hear the conversation in the entire cabin.

Caller 5 (01:49:28):
Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (01:49:29):
I have, as a tech journalist, overheard many a conversation out of respect that I don't repeat, but I'm not bound not to repeat it. That guy was announcing it.

Caller 5 (01:49:39):
Right. But what about the programs themselves? You know, they,

Leo Laporte (01:49:42):
Well, that's another question. One of the things you probably noticed when you went to 2019 is office by default stores it on one drive. You have to turn it off.

Caller 5 (01:49:51):
<Laugh>. That's why I say I had to fight for six

Leo Laporte (01:49:53):
Months. Yeah. All of a sudden your stuff is being uploaded. Hey, wait a minute. What Apple does the same thing. Apple, when you get a new Macintosh will upload your entire documents folder everything to one to iDrive unless you say otherwise. Thanks Apple. You have to know to turn it off. And oh, by the way I, I got a new laptop from Apple and I forgot to turn that off when I set it up a couple of weeks later, I went, oh shoot, I'm uploading my entire desktop and documents folder to one Drive. I'm sorry. I drive, I turn it off and it erased it all on my local computer. It did, it popped up a warning said, when you do this, you're gonna erase it everywhere. Thank goodness I had a backup for crying out loud. So you asked, I'm I wish more at, yeah, I wish Mitch, I wish more attorneys were like, you, you back up.

(01:50:42):
You care about your client's secrecy and privacy. You do what you can probably, if I were in your shoes, I would learn everything you could about encryption. And encryption is your best friend. Because if you encrypt, for instance, let's say you've got a folder full of IRS tax forms. If you encrypt that locally using a, a program that does strong encryption, you can then upload it anywhere. Even if somebody broke in, even if the Dropbox people said, oh, look what we got here. They couldn't see it without, you know, the encryption is strong, they couldn't get to it. That's probably your, your best friend. So I would, I would bone up on that.

Caller 5 (01:51:24):
Okay. Do you have a recommendation?

Leo Laporte (01:51:26):
It really sorry. You on Windows, I presume?

Caller 5 (01:51:29):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:51:33):
For whole disk encryption, you can trust Microsoft's BitLocker. The problem with that is as soon as you log in, everything's unencrypted and then is uploaded to the cloud. So there's a program called Vera Crypt that will encrypt your drive or individual folders that's trustworthy and open source. That's probably the best one. I, you know, there are many other choices, truthfully zipping it and using a zip password nowadays is actually a good way to do it. Zip incorporates RSA encryption, strong encryption. So zip it, <laugh>, zip it good. And then, but use a good password. Don't use a, you know, don't use Monkey 1 23 as I often do

Caller 5 (01:52:15):
You remember the scene from space Balls, right? Yes. <laugh>, well,

Leo Laporte (01:52:21):
Go ahead. Act it out for us.

Caller 5 (01:52:25):
Yeah. Can I ask you a quick a nonprofessional question? Sure. Mitch's s up on theater, Rick. Yeah, I have had, there, is there a really a universal remote, because I've had two, two harmonies. I've had a, I've had one of those, the fancy one that's supposed to be be installed by

Leo Laporte (01:52:46):
Nowadays, a lot of devices come with a remote. For instance, the Apple TV or the Google, Android Chromecast, that actually is a universal remote that you can teach to use for everything. Harmonies were the best.

Caller 5 (01:52:57):
My rig is about 10 years old. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:52:59):
That's the problem. Harmony was the best cuz they have a database of all this old gear. So you didn't even have to teach them, but they went out, didn't go outta business. But Logitech has decided to stop, make them the Harmony one was the best for years. Leo LaPorte, the tech guy, I would say. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I think because everything now I don't know that for some reason Logitech got out of the business and I think it's because there isn't much of a business these days for universal remotes. And I, I'm guessing that's because everything kind of is on streaming, I guess. I don't know.

Caller 5 (01:53:39):
Yeah. But I, I mean I have a Roku, which interestingly enough, although it's RF also has an IR function to turn on.

Leo Laporte (01:53:47):
Yeah, the Roku's a good one. And you can teach the Roku I think because it's both, it's both rf I RF is preferable obviously cuz you can do it when you're in the kitchen. I'm trying to think of what the best, there is no good harmony one was the only one. What, you know, believe it or not, there is a, the fire TV cube, which has Amazon's echo built in, is surprisingly capable. If you were saying, if you said to me, I want a streaming device that is gonna work with all my stuff, that would be what I would say. Cuz it has an IR blaster you can plug in and then put in your cabinet. So it'll blast infrared through the cabinet. And then you can use Amazon's Echo voice. So you can say something, turn on the 49ers game and it will know oh, for that I need to turn on the cable box, turn it to this channel. I need to turn on the tv, I need to turn on the AV receiver. It knows all of that stuff come kinda like the Harmony one did. It knows your, the Harmony one was programmable. You could write computer programs practically with that thing. So we have a link. Somebody just put in the chat room from Tom's guide, the best universal remotes. Okay. Okay. So I'll put that in the chat room. I honestly don't think there's anything very good anymore, but

Caller 5 (01:55:04):
I appreciate it. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:55:06):
It's a pleasure talking Great questions Mi Thank you.

Caller 5 (01:55:09):
Bye-Bye.

Leo Laporte (01:55:10):
Bye. So in Canada, apparently there are regulations. That's interesting. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Leo La Portier, the tech guy. Time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smartphone, smart watches, virtual reality, augmented reality. Or as Apple apparently wants to call it. What? Wait a minute, I gotta look it up now cuz it's a strange name. <Laugh>, was it X Reality? Something like that. Apple has they it's the X R O S. That's right. They patented or trademarked reality os. And so everybody said, oh Apple, when they do their their AR headset, they're gonna call it the operating system Reality os But now, now the news arrives again. It's just a rumor that perhaps it will not be till the end of next year, more than a year from now that Apple will release these virtual reality headsets and they think it's gonna be called XR os. Which is terrible. Terrible. <laugh> Terrible. 88. 88. Ask Leo. Come on Apple. You could do better. Back to the phones we go. Tim is on the line from Niagara Falls. Hi Tim.

Caller 6 (01:56:31):
Hey, good afternoon Neil. Great to talk to you. I wanna congratulate you on your long run with the tech guy on Terrestrial radio. Thank you. Although since it's through the radio waves, it maybe should be called extraterrestrial.

Leo Laporte (01:56:42):
Extraterrestrial. It is right above the earth.

Caller 6 (01:56:46):
Yeah, for sure. I talked to you a couple months ago and before I hang up I wanted to re give you your fantastic recommendation for your first trip to the Falls. 

Leo Laporte (01:56:58):
Yes, I really wanna go. We don't, we have never been. Lisa really wants to go, so maybe a second honeymoon at Niagara Falls, but I'll wait for that. Give me your question first.

Caller 6 (01:57:09):
Sure. I'll try to make this as concise as possible. It's pretty specific. In regards to the Apple Studio I know when it came out you reviewed it, you said that it was a little bit of overkill because a lot of software only a single one time and this was really overloaded.

Leo Laporte (01:57:28):
That's changing by the way. That was a whole year ago. And that is absolutely changing. But, but for a lot of people you don't need a Stu Mac studio. I have a Mac Studio, my wife has a Mac studio. And I think in both cases it's overkill. We both end up using our laptops as much or more because, you know, you carry it around. We use it everywhere.

Caller 6 (01:57:48):
Okay. My question in regards to is I have a friend who's a composer who uses expensive musical software. With

Leo Laporte (01:57:55):
That's different.

Caller 6 (01:57:56):
Several library drive.

Leo Laporte (01:57:58):
That's different. Yeah. So there's an example of something that does use multiple processors. And if your, if your friend is a composer who uses more than a handful of instruments which I'm sure is the case he will notice as he adds instruments, it can slow the machine down a lot. And one of the things Apple showed showed off with their new Apple silicon processors is how logic, which is their music program can use 50, 60, a hundred. You could do score an entire symphony without bogging down at all. And that's remarkable.

Caller 6 (01:58:34):
Would you also recommend maxing out the RAM for that as well?

Leo Laporte (01:58:37):
Sure. I mean, not necessarily maxing out because I think you can go, go to a ridiculous, like 128 gigabytes, but I would get at least 32. And if you can afford it, 64 gigs and a max studio with the Ultra, which is the highest range chip is gonna be the highest performance. Not cheap. We're talking about six grand now. But he does his professionally or for fun

Caller 6 (01:59:00):
Professionally.

Leo Laporte (01:59:00):
Yeah. So this is a tool A, it's tax deductible. B professionals. Apple designs these for professionals and prices, 'em for professionals cuz professionals can justify this. This is gonna make the money, so it's worth it. Right. So yeah, that would be the highest end right now. Now remember Apple has gone from the M one chip to the M two chip and is very slowly, slower than I thought they would rolling out upgrades to everything. We, we should see an upgrade to the Mac Studio next year sometime. Okay. Warn him so he doesn't go, oh man, I just bought this. The truth is the M two is only a s is maybe 10, 15% faster than the M one. If you got an M one alter today, you would not be unhappy for years to come, I think.

Caller 6 (01:59:50):
Yeah. And I think we're gonna wait a little while for the New Mac Pro. I think we've been holding off for that, but it's

Leo Laporte (01:59:54):
Yeah, who knows? <Laugh>, who knows? They said they would announce it by the end of 2022. They have not. And I guess they have a few more weeks, but I don't know. I'm not sure what's going on with Apple. I it may be supply chain problems. It may also be, they're right now focused on saving the iPhone because their iPhone, as we talked about at the beginning of the show, iPhone production is going through the floor thanks to unrest in China. So they may have more problems than that. But I, you know, M two is next year. I, there will be upgrades and the Mac Pro will probably have, I dunno what comes after ultra <laugh> Extreme. They'll have an M two extreme chip in it.

Caller 6 (02:00:35):
Great. Can I give you your Yeah. Give you your travel plans

Leo Laporte (02:00:39):
For you? Yeah. So Niagara Falls. Yes.

Caller 6 (02:00:42):
April 8th, 2024. The, the total eclipse is going right over Niagara. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:00:48):
Oh, oh. You just solved my whole conundrum. I I, we're going on a Mississippi River cruise in the fall of 2024. If the river comes back, we don't have anything planned for the spring. Niagara Falls for the Eclipse. Brilliant. Now, yes. You're on the US side, right? Would you go on the US or the Canadian side?

Caller 6 (02:01:09):
I bet it's gonna be an easier view on the American side. Cause there's a lot more open park land. You can probably get out there with the lawn chair. Perfect. 

Leo Laporte (02:01:17):
Just, oh,

Caller 6 (02:01:18):
You just right from the ramps.

Leo Laporte (02:01:20):
You just gave me a very good reason to come out your way in April of 2024

Caller 6 (02:01:25):
Up online. If you look it up online, you'll see the path goes right across the country and right over the falls with an amazing experience. It'll be,

Leo Laporte (02:01:32):
It's so funny. I was looking at that, that demarcation line where it's total totality and thinking, where should we go there? You just solved. You just, oh, Lisa's gonna be thrilled. That's great.

Caller 6 (02:01:45):
Fantastic.

Leo Laporte (02:01:46):
Now, somebody told me that it's more touristy on the Canadian side. Is that true?

Caller 6 (02:01:51):
It's very true. It's more commercialized. It's almost like a baby Vegas on the Canadian side. 

Leo Laporte (02:01:57):
A baby

Caller 6 (02:01:58):
Vegas <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:02:01):
All right, Lisa, you're ready? We're going to the baby Vegas <laugh>. No, no, we'll go to the American side. We'll go to the American side. You can do both. Can should we do the maid of the mist? Should we ride the boat?

Caller 6 (02:02:13):
Absolutely. The ma of the mist. The cave of the winds. Go to Devil's Hole. You'll have a great

Leo Laporte (02:02:18):
Time. And where do you get your barrels for going over the falls?

Caller 6 (02:02:22):
<Laugh>. we just tube

Leo Laporte (02:02:25):
It. Oh, good. All right. Just, I'll get a, I'll just bring my inner tube. Good idea. No, I'm kidding. Obviously, Tim, it's a, I thank you for calling. That's great. And you're very, I mean, your friend, it's really gonna depend on what he wants to spend. I have to say, I do everything now on an M two MacBook Air, which is, you know, it's, doesn't have a fan, doesn't, it only has 24 gigs of ram. And it is the most, it is a sweet ride, as the kids would say for sure. So he will be happy with no matter what, but get 'em to watch. When they launched the apple silicon, they brought out logic and they had, I don't know how many tracks running. And it was so impressive. And of course it's only gotten better since he is he's gonna be, I don't even, and I, I imagine, I'm not sure, but Ableton and all the other programs that composers use will be also just as multi-threaded and just as powerful when you get the lawn on a very high end. M one or M two Mac. Those, those are really nice.

Caller 6 (02:03:22):
Thanks for the great advice, Liz. Honor to talk to you.

Leo Laporte (02:03:26):
Thank you, Tim. Waiting days. I will see you. I'll look for you in your lawn chair on April 8th, 2024.

Caller 6 (02:03:34):
That'll be sparkling <laugh>.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:03:36):
You know, you're right. The falls to see the falls first sparkling in the sun and then dimming and going dark and then coming back. That's gonna be a sight. I gotta bring some cameras. That's gonna be something to see. Oh, wait a minute. I'm saying this in public. Nobody should go stay home, please. All right, Tim, we'll see ya in Niagara Falls. 20 24 88. 88. Ask Leo the website. Tech guy labs.com. Is the website 88? 88? Ask Leo is in fact the phone number. Although I think I did register that as a website at one point. <Laugh>, Leo Laport, the tech guy. More calls still to come. Rod Pile two, our space guy. Nah, Niagara Falls.

(02:04:32):
Hello Roderick. Hello, sir. So you've completely upset my plan to go to Texas now. I I feel like I, wouldn't it be fun to go to Niagara Falls? Yeah, it really would. Jammer Bll probably go to Texas. I have to look at, take cameras, you know, put 'em on inter kilometers cuz you wanna be staring at the eclipse. I, well not, not staring directly at it, but Yeah. But I mean, join us in Niagara Falls. We, we'll go together. That would be fun. Yeah. I ain't doing the barrel though. Primarily because they don't make a big enough to fit me. <Laugh>. Do I imagine people still do that? Let me look at the map here. Oh, great. American eclipse.com You mean go over it in a barrel? No, no, don't, I'm just, I'm looking at the map to see cuz you wanna be, if you can, where the, the length of totality is the longest.

(02:05:20):
Right. And I'm just seeing it's along the center line. Yeah. So it looks like actually, ooh, Niagara Falls is very close to the center line. Montreal is right on the edge. Hey, so is Dallas my friend <laugh> to say it? Ooh, no, no. Niagara Falls is closer to the center than Dallas. You're gonna get more minutes for your, for your ecliptic dollar if you go to, does it say how long it is this time? Yeah, let's see. Buffalo, New York. It'll be three minutes. 45 seconds. Yeah, that's long. Rochester three 40. Grand Falls Island Falls. Let me, I'm just looking at this table to see if they have Niagara Falls. I think Buffalo is probably pretty close, right? Buffalo would be kind of nice. Yeah. No, I don't wanna go to Buffalo. I to Niagara. I know you wanna go to the Falls. Niagara. Let me see.

(02:06:13):
Dallas is gonna be 3 47. So Dallas would be a good place to go. Fort Worth I drive there. Wait a minute. That can't be right. Wait a minute. This table's bad. Hear Island. No, no, I think you're, this table says Dallas is three minutes 47 seconds. Fort Worth is two minutes, 34 seconds. That can't be right. Fort Worth's right next to Dallas. Well, it's, it's a bit further. It you, I I'm looking at the map of the center line. That could be close. I don't know. I just remember seeing the 20 17 1 when we went up to Prineville. We were off the center line and it was shorter, but there was nobody there and it was fantastic. Oh yeah, that's the thing. Everybody will be at night. 200 people sitting in a park. And how many people expected to visit by state? Texas is number one.

(02:07:01):
Oh really? Oklahoma, your best place to go would be New Hampshire. Newfoundland. Newfoundland. Yeah. Let's go to Newfoundland. Newfoundland. Newfoundland. Wow. Three 31 million people in the US live inside the path of the total eclipse. That's pretty cool. Hey, guess what I did last week? What? I was interviewed for Ancient Aliens <laugh>. I had, you know, no, tell me it. So they had called in the past and I said no thanks. You know, cuz the show was kind of wonky. But it turns out that it was the same company that does does that William Shatner unexplained show. And I really liked them when I did those. And I thought, oh, you know, they were really, they let you talk about facts, you know? Yeah, but you didn't, you haven't seen the edit yet. No, but I made 'em promise and I'm, I'm sure that's worth <laugh> Quarter or maybe 50 cents <laugh>. Oh, we promise we won't make, like, make you look like you believe in aliens. Well, you know, I mean, you've, you've given me all the fame. I'm likely to have my life. That's time already. It's okay. It's fun. It's fun. Yeah. The world famous, right? Wait a minute. Niagara Falls. I'm looking total. Oh, the totality is really good at Niagara Falls. Lease is probably buying the tickets already.

(02:08:20):
Ali says it's not Niagara. False. All right. <Laugh> path of the Eclipse. Rochester's right in the middle too. So we're gonna get ya three and a halfs pretty good. All right, well talk a bit Rod, little Fats Domino from 1950. Yeah. Coke. Take your fats. Leo Laport, the tech guy. Yes. It's episode 1950. Episode 1,950. Yes. I started at one. Believe it or not. And that means when you go to the website, tech Eye labs.com, you look for episode 1950, you can get the audio, the video, you can get the links, the transcript, everything. Episode 1950, herb Next, Rancho Santa Fe, California. Hello Herb.

Caller 7 (02:09:13):
Hi Leo. Get to the point. I think you may have answered a couple questions, but I have, I've been a MacBook Air user for years, but mine is now two hold up update, but get ready to buy. And they come out with a MacBook probe about the same numbers same size, close enough. And I'm just wondering, they're both in through trips, chips. What's the difference and how

Leo Laporte (02:09:40):
I would not, I would just recommend the 13 inch MacBook Pro with the M two chip. It is unless you love the Touch bar it probably is the last Mac that'll have a touch bar. It's a pretty old design is what I'm saying. The M two MacBook Air, if you like the air, you like the lightweight, right? Oh yeah. The thinness is no longer a wedge. It's squared. But in every respect, this is the best MacBook Air, which is their best selling Macintosh they've ever made. I mean, it is really, it's fantastic. I own it and I love it. If you wanna save money, frankly, the M one MacBook Air is not much less I mean, not much slower. It is much less, but not much slower. But don't get the 13 inch. The 13 inch is in generally is bad.

(02:10:30):
Now you might wanna wait because in March, probably it'll be my guess, March or April, apple will update the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 and put the M two chip in those. Right now they have the M one, it's, they're due for the M two upgrade. But the only reason to wait is maybe for a better deal on the M one, because again, the M two isn't massively faster than the M one. For most people, m one's plenty fast. What, what do you do with, with, with most of, with your computer? What kind of stuff do you do?

Caller 7 (02:11:01):
Just local home stuff. I have handled in Photoshop, but

Leo Laporte (02:11:07):
Even for Photoshop, it's great. It's fine. M one Air right now is on sale for as little as 700 bucks. 7 99. I mean, they've really, the, the prices are very low because it's last year's M one, you know, not the, this year's M two. Oh,

Caller 7 (02:11:22):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:11:23):
So stay, my general advice, stay away from the 13. I know they put the M two in it, but it's such an old design. It's got the touch bar. It's just not a great design. Unless you, well, there'd be another reason if you hate the notch, and I have to say, I'm not a fan of the notch. And Apple, all of Apple's laptops going forward in order to put a decent camera in there will have a notch. Much like the the, the phones. Do you know, they have that now. They have a little island, but the same idea. They have a little, little notch in the top. Let me see. I don't think the notch is maybe it is on the 13 inch. That would be maybe one other reason. Not to do it. Apples, you know, it's hard to find.

(02:12:08):
I'm looking at Apple's site and it's hard to find out if it has a notch cuz they don't wanna even tell anybody <laugh>, but okay. But if you, if you hate the notch, that might be another reason. Otherwise, I don't really like I think the design isn't great. I had the 13 inch M one and I sent it back, got the 14 inch when it came out. Get the air. The air is the best seller for a good reason. It's a great device. Get 24 gigs of ram. If you get the M two, that's a reason to get the M two, the, the M one tops app at 16 gigs. 24 is nice. You know, a terabyte or more hard drive for sure. It's gonna be more than 800 bucks, but still that's also their most affordable. That's the one I would go with.

Caller 7 (02:12:49):
Does either one hook up to an external monitor?

Leo Laporte (02:12:54):
Okay, now you're getting complicated on me. So the heirs do not, if you, that's a good, another reason you might wanna look at the 13 inch the heirs are designed for just that internal monitor. You can with some effort, get a second monitor. Honestly, if I were you, if you want an external monitor, the 14 and the 16 from last year, the M one 14 sixteens both have HTM I ports, which makes it very easy. You can have two external monitors. Actually you can have three technically. So you can have a lot more expandability. And I, I, to me, I really love the fact that it's got an htm I port, it's got an SD card port, so it's great for photographers. So there are more ports on last year's. This is so confusing. I know 14 and 16 than there are on the MacBook Airs. That's the big drawback on the airs is they only drive one monitor and they only have two Thunderbolt for ports. That's a, that's it. I'm glad you asked that. Yeah. Do you want, so you want a second monitor?

Caller 7 (02:13:57):
Well, I have a, an oh I iMac another 2015 computer and I love it, but I can't upgrade the operating system anymore. Yeah. And just thinking it's nice to have that big monitor.

Leo Laporte (02:14:14):
If it supports target display mode. Have you used it as a monitor before I, you know, 2015? It might.

Caller 7 (02:14:21):
No, I've never never used it separately.

Leo Laporte (02:14:24):
Okay. So it may not be able to do that. A lot of, most IMAX don't, there's only a few that supports something called target display mode. The 13 inch that you were talking about does support an up to six K external display. So you know that, that, that, if that's an important thing to you, but I don't know if you can, I would figure out first <laugh> if you can if you can use oh actually, you know, I take it back. The MacBook here does support one external. It's not just doesn't support two. So if you only compare one, you're okay. You'd have to have an adapter for it. Cause it only has those two USBC ports. So you'd have to get an adapter to drive it. And again, before you assume that your Mac, your iMac can support it, you should check to see if it supports target display mode. I don't I don't think any 2015 iMac does. So that means you can, which is one of the reasons I'm mad about the iMac. Right? You've got this beautiful display, it's now out of date and you can't use the display even, you know, that's frustrating. Yeah,

Caller 7 (02:15:25):
It is. Yeah. Okay. Well you've left me

Leo Laporte (02:15:29):
I've left you hanging <laugh> given you a lot of questions. I like the air. You can use an external display with the air. I was wrong. You can use just one. If you want more than one, then you need a different model. The air is very lightweight. It's biggest, you know, lacking as it only has two USB type four ports. You know, those type C thunderbolt four ports and only two means you, you know, you're gonna live the dongle life, but it's not the end of the world.

Caller 7 (02:15:59):
Yeah. Okay. Great. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (02:16:02):
Hey, thank you. I I probably just confused you more than solved the problem. <Laugh> <laugh>, I honestly, anybody's still using Max based on the intel chip. This is, this is the year, this is the year you wanna move. These new apple silicon chips are so dang good. They're so fast. And maybe even more importantly, they're so sparing in their power use. You get incredible battery life. The air is also the champion of battery life all day. Easy, 18 hours, no problem. Charge it when you go to bed and you'll have it for the rest of the day going along Flight to Europe, no problem. And there's a, I think for some people that's a very important factor. Low power, high performance chips, they beat Intel. Silly. So if you still have an Intel Mac, then 2023 is gonna be the year that you're gonna wanna look at upgrading. And there will be many more choices at some point. We just don't know when Apple. I thought they would do it this year and they didn't. They're due for some M two upgrades and on all of their laptops. And where's the Mac Pro Rod pile Spaceman coming up next.

(02:17:19):
Where's the 27 inch iMac?

(02:17:24):
There's a star man waiting in the sky. He loved to come and see you, but he knows. You'll wonder why or something like that. <Laugh>. You're just making it up. I'm making it up as I go. Yeah. Oh, they should have had you on for the launch of the Falcon Heavy. Oh. Could have been the guy. So where are we now? Where's Orion now? Oh, it's on, its it's gonna be on its way home tomorrow. I mean, it's on its way home now, but it'll do its fi final. Do the moon fly by you tomorrow? It already did the moon fly by you? They did the inbound fly by. They're gonna do the outbound fly by tomorrow. That's I think 79 miles. Oh, that's close. That's, I had the, an item for Slingshotting. This is the, the, yeah, this is, so it's a big looping orbit that goes out about 40,000 miles past the moon.

(02:18:15):
Nice. And then nice comes back. Nice. Nice. Right past it with a gravity grab. Fires it, angels to break loose at wow. What do I have? Oh, I have reentry time. Nine 40 Pacific time. So it gets home really quick after it does that slingshot? Yeah. A few days. Well it's it splashes down the 11th, so it's not that big. Oh, okay. Oh, we're, it's not as quick as the Apollo flight were. Cause we're in this big loopy goofy orbit. Loopy goofy. But yeah, that, we'll, we'll talk about that. And we'll talk about 3D printing on the moon. No, just don't, just don't. No, no, no buildings. 3D printing buildings. Yeah, we're building, making buildings. We don't have to, we don't have to do that out of a lunar sand pool. We're gonna have aliens to help us. See. There they are.

(02:19:04):
I'll now see, you're just not gonna let me go on that one. Are you <laugh>? What? Take me to your lean. Where you look at that. Take me. Oh, those are itching, exes. Take, take me to your I am here. Those are the suits with the fabric taken off, huh? Yeah, I guess so. Look how big those things are. Yeah. That's ridiculous. They're pretty I on the mood. It works cuz it's only 16% of earth gravity on Mars. It'd be a little, little clunky. Where's the where's that wonderful site with the thing? The site with the thing. You know what I'm saying? Oh, the thing. The thing with the site. With the thing. Talk about the ar the Artemis tracking site. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Heard it. No, that's a map. No, they had a it's a what to call. That's alright. With art or something. I know how to use Google <laugh>.

(02:19:53):
I know how to use Google. I know how to use the goo. Oh, it's Unity. Hey, unity. Good to see ya. Get ready. Here we go. Oh, there it is. Okay. Woo. It takes a long time to get around to giving you what you're actually waiting for on this site. Doesn't it? Like, oh, we gotta give you the whole show. Sure. You're pew, pew, pew. Don't need side effects. You know, I'm sorry. Is there, are there sound effects on this? No, no. I'm liking, I'm, I'm grooming on yous like silence. Oh, okay. <Laugh>. No yours. You're the radio guy. Oh, <laugh>.

(02:20:34):
Look at this shot. Mannu, please don't make the, the El Kabong sound. That would be a bad end. Ka ka. So they went out, they went out, they went all the way out here. Now they're right here. There's the moon. They're gonna slingshot past it. Well, they shot past it once. Went out, out to go out. They, but they're going even closer to come in right now. They're coming back, yeah. About the same. 79 miles. About the same. Which isn't as close as Paula got. But I got up at 5:00 AM to watch what not. You know, the other night when they went close to the moon before wasn't great <laugh>. Was it animation? Was it animation? I, well, think of the 1960s. They had guys holding model, you know, Walter Cronkite holding them over. Here's the, here's a more jewel going around the moon. I, I shouldn't even try to do Cronkite around the moon. Yes, there's the camera. And here's the moon. And here's we go's Rocket man. Here. Here's red pile. Look at these. These are so cool. Here's the Carbon 400. What am what am I showing you? Our sponsor OnLogic. This is amazing hardware. You know, you're probably no more than a few feet from a personal computing device right now. It's changed your life, your phone in your pocket, your laptop, maybe your tablet.

(02:21:58):
But there is an entire hidden world of computing that is everywhere. It's ubiquitous and you may not even see it. They're bringing smart cities to life. They're driving sustainable agriculture out in the field. They're revolutionizing the way things are made. Almost everything's made on the factory floor. And that's where you're gonna find these distinctive orange industrial embedded computers from on logic, on logic designs. These are amazing designs and creates computing solutions that can fit in the palm of your hand while powering everything from advanced robotics and AI to manufacturing automation, digital media solutions, smart agriculture technologies. You know, that's one of the neat things about On Logic. They will have a computer for your needs. And if they don't have it in stock, they will design it. Or you design it on their website. They're passively cooled, they're ventless. You see those fins. Nice internal components can be sealed, protected from dust and other airborne contaminants.

(02:22:56):
You get a solid state device. No moving parts designed to protect against shock and vibration. Other designs can protect you against extreme temperatures. Radio interference. This one, look at this. It has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 connections for wifi antennas. That's for a factory floor, right? Or maybe in agriculture. So you can control your, you know, your sprinkler systems and your harvesting systems and all of that. Very cool. The team at On Logic is kind of, they take pride in creating perfectly tailored solutions for unique technology challenges. Call 'em, give 'em a challenge. They partner with leading software companies like aws. They make an entire line of AWS I o t Greengrass compatible computers that have been approved, vetted by aws. So, you know, it'll work right out of the box. If you need a computing solution that can easily be configured to your particular needs, supported by industry experts who are just a phone call, website chat, or email away that care about your success and can get you this computer fast, the team at On Logic is ready to help if you'd rather do it yourself.

(02:24:09):
In fact, this I would suggest anyway, it's fun to play on the On Logic website. You can configure and order your next industrial computing device quickly and easily. And you can do it right online. All in stock, online orders are custom-built, thoroughly tested and shipped fast and as little as five days. So you're just a few days away from something like this. This baby here, when you need a custom configured industrial computer or an Edge server, these are great servers or Panel PC delivered quickly OnLogic should be your first destination to get started and learn more about OnLogic's 30 day risk free hardware trial. Connect with their experts or visit on logic.com/twi O N O G I C on logic.com/twi. And you know what? Look for these little orange babies all over the place. You'll, you'll be amazed how many you'll see cuz it's the best on logic.com/twi.

(02:25:06):
We thank on logic for supporting the Tech Guy show. And now back to the radio. He's known for his love of Little Green Men. Our spaceman rod piles here. Hello Rod, author of Space 2.0, editor in chief atra space dots.org. That's a terrible impression. <Laugh>. And this week in space on your very own network host of this week in space. And this week we spoke to astronaut, former astronaut Doug Hurley, who flew the shuttle and the first crude flight of crude dragon. See, you know, people always talk about, you know, plastic Man and four, my heroes are real life astronauts. Those are the heroes. And even if it was just like a little up jump on the shuttle, that's like, you're a hero man. You wrote a giant explosive Yeah. Thing into the sky. And, and went weightless. And then of course, you know, I met Buzz Alden, I interviewed him once and like I was practically on my knees.

(02:26:14):
My God, you're the, you're, you're the living epitome of of the right stuff. And you kept waiting for him to answer your question. But it never quite happened, did it? <Laugh> I like it because I like us. You know, he has so many ideas. Yeah. It, it's like there's multiple brains trying to talk your one mouth. I have his autographs. The guy is so brilliant. Yeah. And well never met Neil. I would've loved to have meet met Neil. He's the what? Wonderful man. The ultimate hero. Yeah. so we have, you know, we worship Superman and Batman. Dude, we have real life heroes walking the earth. Well, and I have to say, if you're an astronaut that flew in the sos that's for, that's personal space. That's about as close to the mercury capsules that got, cause you see those guys, you know, they shoot down from the hatch.

(02:27:02):
You see these guys in their shoulder to shoulder with their arms kind of crunched in with all this crap packed around 'em. And it's like, you're really flying in that thing. It was designed in 1965. You can, right. So frosting on the moon frosting we have, we have a company called Icon Yeah. That did the first livable 3D house in the US and has now this year actually, or next year, 2023 is gonna be offering houses in full blown communities in Texas. And I guess eventually in Mexico, New Mexico. So they've been printing on the earth for years. They just got a 57 million contract from NASA to study printing habitats. What? And Laing pads and roads on the moon. And this company's only five years old. The guy who founded it graduated from college in 2006. So he's younger than my kids. That's ridiculous. Yeah. It makes me a little, little queasy.

(02:27:54):
Ridiculous to read that. But anyway, now why do you say frosting? Well, because, so I was, I was working at JPL about five years ago and they had a thing there called Athlete, which was an earlier version of what these guys are doing, which is a big wheeled robot with a huge arm. And one of the things it could do is attempt 3D printing. And it was pretty crude, but it basically on the end of the arm, it's got a nozzle just like you're doing frosting and a French bakery. And it goes and moves it along. Sounded it's not a And unfortunately, you know, if you don't get the, the mixture quite right, it starts to to dribble and look kind of disgusting. But these guys have really nailed it. Now, in the past, the idea was always to use lunar regularly or sand and dust.

(02:28:35):
Yeah. Because you bring anything with you. You've got it All right. Well, exactly. Yeah. But the idea was you'd bring a binder or glue or something to help help it hold its shape. These guys have actually managed to or are developing a system that uses enough heat that it melts the outer layer of that tube of smart of dust so that it binds to the next one. So it's, it's kind of like centering the way you do with when you're printing 3D metal. So this cr this solves a lot of problems. It, it, you need a landing pad because if you land on the moon without a landing pad and you've got a habitat or heaven for bad astronauts nearby, all that dust do kick up becomes like buckshot and will just wipe you out. So you either need a berm or a landing pad or both.

(02:29:22):
So it solves that. It'll help make berms. You need roads if you're gonna be driving rovers here, here and there, cuz it's a pretty rocky surface. And you can print habitats. And because you're printing 'em out of soil, if you make 'em thick enough, they'll protect you from radiation. Nice. Pretty thick. I mean, we're talking like 10 feet. So it's a lot of printing. But it solves a whole bunch of problems with one, with one technology technique. You're gonna need a bunch of of technologies within this. Will there be a series of flights to test this? There will be. Right. This is gonna be a while. Yeah. They're gonna tester G and then they're gonna fly it they hope on Artemis three, which is the first crude landing mission. Wow. So that's 20 27 9. Right. About when the M five chip comes out. But there's a lot of other cool things you could do as space flight with 3D printing.

(02:30:13):
And this company's looking into some of them NASA's been looking into others. You know, if you're printing a component for a spacecraft instead of subtractive manufacturing, which is what they've always done, where you, as, you know, you machine out a piece of Illumina or titanium or something and 80% of it goes to waste when you're printing it. You can actually print circuitry into the part. You can print channels in there for cooling. You can print in antenna components. You can make it some kind of complex lattice structure. So it's lighter and stronger than just a solid patient. Well, and it's better than living in a tent on the moon. Yeah. But what I'm talking about now is actual parts for the spacecraft. Right. Wait a minute. So normally they have a spacecraft. You mean build more on the moon? Sorry, I I did a whole subject shift here.

(02:30:58):
So if you're talking about, you know, I'm confused like a robotic spacecraft going out the Jupiter, right? Oh yeah. Mass is a big problem. But if you print a lot of the functionality in the parts Yeah. Cause you gotta gravity. Well, every pound you take into space is extraordinarily expensive and difficult. Yeah. It's not. But once you're there and slows down the journey, if you can use, you know, know there's a lot of space rubble. If you can use that, you're golden. Yeah. And also by printing these, if you print electronic and functional components into say a strut, it's normally just gonna hold something. Now it's doing triple quadruple duty. Yeah. Oh sure. So you've lowered the mass and increased the functionality and blah, blah blah, which is what they love to do. Yeah. Saves us taxpayer dollars. Well, and also this is cool research that may have benefits at home.

(02:31:47):
Oh, absolutely. And you know, a lot of times this feels like very blue sky, so to speak, research. But you know, hey, we have space pens and Tang thanks to Apollo and hang was around dog. Got it. Tang was around before the space program. How about the Fisher Space pen? Was that around? Yeah. No. And that was developed, but I think with Fisher's money. Yeah. Not nasa. Russian cots used pencils and it works. Pencils fine. <Laugh>. Yes. Well, they're worried about the conductivity of graphite, but it turns out like so many other things we obsessed about, well, you need a b in space. So but, but I really seriously, this, this kind of printing can have all sorts of valuable uses at home as well. I think that's really cool. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. especially when you can multi, you can have multiple features within one item.

(02:32:40):
Imagine your home walls, your home, be printed with pipes for the water and, and, and a conduit for the electrical and the ethernet. Right. Already built into it. I mean, it's just a much better idea. Or printing batteries into the frame of your maee. Perfect. Right. That's a And then, and then when, when, when they don't work anymore, they can sell you a whole new car home. Get a whole new car. Sorry. We can't can't fix that. That's that's part of the charact Sigal. Yeah. so when are you gonna be on that space? Astronaut alien show is that soon Ancient aliens comes out. Ancient aliens. Not till May. And they took to Rod Piles space expert. But I was, you know, I was the, the co contextualize of reason. So what, mainly we're talking about the new NASA study, what that's gonna look at, why we don't think they're extraterrestrial.

(02:33:32):
But you never know. But you're right. Did they, until the final edit's done, you know Yeah. Did they, did they get you saying yes and extraterrestrials? No. Okay. Cause if I was, I'm very, I've learned enough from talking to people like you, not that you would do that, but just would listening to how you do your thing, I would never do that. At moments like that. You run your words together. There's no place to make an edit. <Laugh> watch Doug Hurley or listen to him anyway on this week. Still base this week. Yeah. talking about Artemis to the Moon and more a real life astronaut with rod Powell here and Tar Malik from space.com, their fabulous show this week in space. You could find it at twit tv slash t w i s or wherever better podcasts are stored for your download. Pleasure. Whatever it is. Thank you, rod. Thank you sir. Leo Laport, the tech guy. One final segment still to come.

(02:34:32):
Aliens exist. Yes. <laugh>. Well, I think I told you my buzz story. I was in the next edit bay where they were cutting an interview they had done with him for that show. Geez, 10 years ago, 12 years ago. Yeah. And not even more than that, I think. And because it spit on forever, or maybe it was, I'm not sure it was Ancient Aliens. It was one of those documentaries. It was definitely History channel. And you know, they said, so have you ever seen a ufo? And he said, yeah, I've seen him just means it's unidentified. But he left that pause in there. Yeah. I've seen him. And they dropped the blade. And I, I literally walked over to that at bay and say, guys, come on. Really? Can't buzz Alre. Hey, it's entertainment. I'm going, but it's Buzz. He's the God the new one gave me that look, which ever is like number one on Netflix, is this guy saying, you know, there probably were spacemen here on Earth, or ancient civilizations that have sunk blue.

(02:35:30):
That's just such big a Gladys Atlantis. Yeah. Such people. Well, it's all that, remember Eric Mon, when we were young, Eric Konan, everybody read that book. Chariots of the Gods. And you looked at it and you thought, really? You stretch it? Dude, you're really stretching here. Oh, it's absolutely true. But the layperson loved it, right? Yeah. Just adds to the mush in the brain. Pan <laugh>. There's already too much of Yeah. You need mush extractors. Not mush adders. There's, they're, they're building, what do you call it again when they slurry it out? Icing on the cake. Additive Manufacturing. Additive Manufacturing. So how many more episodes do you have of radio? This is, this is Countdown is five. Five more week. Four. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, then three the week after, then two, then one. So there's four more after this one. There's four, four shows and 15 minutes left.

(02:36:28):
Okay. Last one's gonna have to be a, a big blowout cover. December 18th party. No, this is why I didn't want, you know, I know Premier forced my hand. This is why I don't, I didn't want to tell anybody because what I was gonna do is on December 18th, in the waning minutes of the show, I was gonna say, well that is my last ticket. I buy. Help us see you somewhere around. Bye bye bye. Right Uhuh? No. Cuz I don't want, that's the, I dunno. I just, so now you're gonna have to wonder what all us Oh, I know that you're gonna, at Lisa is gonna bring a marching band in or something. I know, I know. She, I wouldn't worry about your staff. I'd worry about us. Well, now you can say nice things, but you don't have, but don't make a production out of it.

(02:37:14):
Remember, we're still trying to serve the audience up to the very last second. I know. I'm just kidding. And it doesn't serve the audience to go all mushy about me. Especially should have my Labrador sit in my lap. And you can do whatever. You can have a Labrador. Yeah, that's fine. You can have your sad Labrador moment. No, it's, it's fine. I don't mind that. And the, the problem is in a way that I'm, it gives the people the impression I'm leaving. Yeah. And all I'm really doing is quitting my day job. So, right. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> the nerve of some people wanting to enjoy their lives on the weekends. I mean, really, I'm still gonna work my butt off on Sundays. I know. But I am looking forward to, I will have Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off. Just imagine the things I can do. So Sunday will be still a call in Sunday.

(02:38:06):
I'm gonna do this exact same show with Micah. Okay. And then I'm gonna do Twi. So my Sundays are gonna still be my, my big show. Okay. So I can call in regularly and try and fool you that Yeah. Well, what we had thought, we, what we thought, what we thought we would do is like, well if, certainly if anybody asks a question about any one of the subject matter experts what we'll do is we'll say, oh, great. Ask that question. And we will get them on the horn during the week and you can, you'll get your answer next week. And then, so I would send you this question and then you could answer it, record an, you know, just on your phone, record an answer. Yeah. But, and we'll also get you on live cuz you know, and you're never going anywhere cuz you're this week in space. But you are leaving now. <Laugh>.

(02:38:53):
Oh, thank you so much for letting me be your tech guy on the radio. Thank you to Professor Laura, musical director does such a good job spinning the discs. Thanks to Kim Shaffer, the phone Angel. She's the one who gets you ready for your appearance on Live National Radio. Thanks for those of you who take that chance or call in and get on the air. And of course, thanks to all of you who listen, all of you are vital to this operation. Me. I'm just your, I'm just the guy here who sits here and, and pulls the strings. But I will be back next week. Four more shows before I retire from the Airwaves. Rich d Mero will be taking over. His first show will be January 8th eights. So we will have some, we don't like to call 'em reruns best ofs for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, new Year's Eve, new Year's Day. And then right Laura, you're gonna do all that. Laura does all that work. She pulls from old shows, mixes it up in their little salad spinner, chops it up, puts it out on the air. And then all new shows starting with Rich Durrow, k TLAs, rich on Tech. Very exciting. January actually, he's on January 7th will be his first episode. Let me get that right. January 7th. Meanwhile, back to the phones, we go, go to Charlotte, North Carolina and the astro nerd Hello Astro nerd.

Caller 8 (02:40:19):
Hello, Leo. You were talking about the Eclipse a while ago. Yes. And you were wondering why Fort Worth is only let's see, two minutes and 35 seconds. And then Dallas is three minutes and 51 seconds.

Leo Laporte (02:40:35):
So I went to a website called the Great American Eclipse or something like that. There's

Caller 8 (02:40:42):
A better,

Leo Laporte (02:40:42):
Oh, there's a better one. Better

Caller 8 (02:40:43):
One. There's a better one for calculating these time.

Leo Laporte (02:40:47):
Give me the better site.

Caller 8 (02:40:50):
It's called mr eclipse.com <laugh>. It's run by the guy who used to do all this stuff for nasa. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:40:59):
Well, Mr.

Caller 8 (02:40:59):
Eclipse on the mr eclipse.com website. You scroll down and you'll find the

Leo Laporte (02:41:05):
Totality. I want the, the Great American eclipses of 2024. We're talking about the by about two years from now. Yeah. Yeah. So is there a map, is there a totality map somewhere

Caller 8 (02:41:19):
On Mr clips.com it will show you a Google map with the the eclipse Perfect. The center line, the edge line. And if you go from the center line towards the edge line, you keep getting shorter and shorter and shorter durations. That's why Fort Worth is a whole lot shorter than Dallas.

Leo Laporte (02:41:39):
But I thought Fort Worth was practically next door to Dallas. They share an airport.

Caller 8 (02:41:44):
Well, here's a good thought experiment. If you're right on the edge of the total totality area, you could have one foot outside of the eclipse and one foot inside the eclipse. That's

Leo Laporte (02:42:00):
True. And I believe that. Yep.

Caller 8 (02:42:03):
You could also be standing with your feet inside the eclipse and your head is high enough to be outside of the eclipse and you won't, you won't see any totality. Well,

Leo Laporte (02:42:13):
That's no good.

Caller 8 (02:42:14):
But your feet will.

Leo Laporte (02:42:15):
How so they're say when they show these these maps, it's a, it's a ribbon that goes across the kind of diagonally across the United States. Like a, like Miss America's sash and the middle. Correct. The line down the middle, the median there is the longest totality. Right. And then it gets shorter and shorter. You go to the edges. How wide is that ribbon? Do you know?

Caller 8 (02:42:38):
Oh, I wonder from Fort Worth to Palestine, Texas, that's maybe a hundred, hundred 50 miles.

Leo Laporte (02:42:49):
So it's pretty wide. It's, but Fort Worth is on the edge is what you're saying. It's right on the edge.

Caller 8 (02:42:55):
Fort Worth is right on the edge, but Austin, Texas is right on the edge and San Antonio is right on the edge. In fact, half of San Antonio won't see totality, but the other half will.

Leo Laporte (02:43:08):
Well, that's gonna be a problem. Everybody's gonna run over to the other side and San Antonio's gonna develop a list. All right. That's good to know. Right.

Caller 8 (02:43:16):
There's another, there's another thing you were talking about where you're gonna go. Nier Falls, you gotta remember that from tech, from the border of Texas and Medi Mexico all the way up to where it goes off the edge of the earth, the weather will get more and more iffy.

Leo Laporte (02:43:35):
Yeah. We were for in, what was this, many years ago, maybe 10 years ago, we were in Cans Australia for the total eclipse down there. We were actually on a boat and it got cloudy and that kinda spoiled a total eclipse. So you think it'd be better to be in Texas where there's unlikely to be any clouds.

Caller 8 (02:43:57):
It will be better to be in Texas for those two reasons. One, be unlikely for clouds. And two, the further south you go on that center line, the longer the eclipse gets.

Leo Laporte (02:44:11):
Ah, like that too. Now where are you gonna go, Mr. Castro nerd?

Caller 8 (02:44:18):
I will be somewhere south and a little east of Dallas on the center line.

Leo Laporte (02:44:26):
Nice. Cause you wanna, do you, have you done this before? Have you chased eclipses before?

Caller 8 (02:44:31):
I've seen six total.

Leo Laporte (02:44:33):
Wow.

Caller 8 (02:44:34):
Wow. And I barely escaped by the skin of my teeth in France standing on the Inus channel. It was clouded out all the way up until the time the moon finally covered the sun. And then we got to see totality. But it was close.

Leo Laporte (02:44:53):
That would be, you know, you go all the way to do this. We were we were on a cruise ship with Lawrence Krause from Arizona State, very well known theoretical physicist. And I remember him after the eclipse, he was a, he was hopping mad at the Captain <laugh>. He said, dude, <laugh>, we're watching the eclipse and you move the boat <laugh>. And the captain said, well, I was, I was, it was gonna get cloudy and I was just trying to stay somewhere where you could see it. 

Caller 8 (02:45:20):
That happened, that happened to us in Mo Lawn, Mexico. Yeah. In 91. Yeah. We were on a crew, a cruise and mo line was socked in and about 60 of us got together, talked to the captain and said, well, if you don't take the ship out, we will sink it here in the harbor.

Leo Laporte (02:45:39):
<Laugh> people take these things a little seriously, don't they?

Caller 8 (02:45:45):
Yeah. Yeah. We went out to the Gulf of Cortez or whatever, see a Cortez, whatever that is between Baja and Mexico. Yeah. And we saw almost seven minutes of token.

Leo Laporte (02:45:58):
Oh, wild. One of the

Caller 8 (02:46:00):
Longest ones you

Leo Laporte (02:46:01):
Can get. Isn't that wild? I would love to see that. Well, I wish you will. I mean, we are, you know, almost two years away from this. But I wish a little less than two, a little less than two years rather. Cuz it's April, 2024, April 8th. But I wish you well on April 8th. So you're saying if you go to Niagara Falls, maybe be prepared for some cloudy weather. Might not be the ideal viewing. Maybe you should go down to Texas, is what you're saying?

Caller 8 (02:46:29):
That is correct.

Leo Laporte (02:46:30):
<Laugh>. Thank you Spencer. Our as nerd and he recommends Mr eclipse.com. One last call before we go, Kevin, on the line from Missoula, Montana. Hello, Kevin.

Caller 9 (02:46:43):
Good afternoon, Leo. Hey, Leo. Just to brief you on what we got here. I got Samsung Television, two Samsung Television tablets in the family, a couple Samsung phones under your advice. I went and upgraded from an S 10 Samsung Galaxy to an S 22.

Leo Laporte (02:47:01):
Very nice. Aren't they nice phones? Yep. Yep.

Caller 9 (02:47:04):
I, yep. And what happened is, I'm trying to get my audio files to play on my from the Samsung 10 to 22 when I transferred. It says I can't open up my audio files and that I have to go to the Samsung Music or the Spotify to open up my downloaded. What

Leo Laporte (02:47:25):
Kind of files are the audio files?

Caller 9 (02:47:28):
Either the MP files,

Leo Laporte (02:47:29):
MP three. All right. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> eh, boy, I would, you know, you don't have to get the Samsung or Spotify apps. There are many Android MP3 players. I guess there's something about that mp3. You must have a music player on there, right? Yeah.

Caller 9 (02:47:46):
It says, I tried to open up the audio and it says audio will not open.

Leo Laporte (02:47:51):
Yeah. So there, maybe there's something about that. There are a number of very good MP3 players available. Most of them free on the Google Play Store. I would just go look for another MP3 player. Maybe those MP3s are too high quality or too low quality for the existing device to play. You don't have to use Samsung or Spotify. There are many, many other choices. Hey, thanks for the call. Thanks for listening to everybody. Leo LaPorte, your tech guy. Have a great geek week. I it's kind of funny, I would I, you know, maybe there was something about it that some kind of some, is it a, are they very, where'd you get these mp3 s do you know?

Caller 9 (02:48:37):
Well, I had 'em, I, I've, I've recorded them off my old USB turntables. Okay. And I've had 'em on my old Samsung phones. And so like let's see here. Let me open up my,

Leo Laporte (02:48:48):
And they played in the old phone just fine.

Caller 9 (02:48:50):
Yep, exactly. Yeah. Yep. You opened up audio files and now it just seems like you, you know, they want you to open up. So I go to my let's see here. I'll go to my,

Leo Laporte (02:49:01):
So we know there's a couple things. We know that they are not copy protected, so that's good. You should be, be able to play it with any MP3 player. Here's one that's free. That is, that is pretty good that you might want go to the play store and download. You don't have to use Spotify or Samsung. They're saying that A, cuz there's Samsung B probably cuz they get a kickback from Spotify. But there's a free one called A I M P A I M P that is in the Google Play Store. It's safe to download. It plays almost every kind of music I can come up with. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna say if it doesn't play it, maybe they're damaged in some way, but I think that that's just that's just Samsung trying to get you to download their music

Caller 9 (02:49:45):
App. Right? So, so I used to go, just go to like Samsung, open up Samsung, go to my files and then go to your audio files.

Leo Laporte (02:49:53):
Yeah. And if you open it, whatever the default, just like on a pc, whatever the default player is, will open. 

Caller 9 (02:50:01):
It doesn't tell you what player it is. It just shows my audio files in my artist that I have my,

Leo Laporte (02:50:06):
And when you tap it, it says I can't play this.

Caller 9 (02:50:09):
Let's see, let's see here. I'll just do this one. Let's do some Boston here for you. So I'll open up smoking. It says nope, you gotta open it with Samsung Music, Spotify or YouTube music.

Leo Laporte (02:50:19):
They're wrong, wrong, wrong. All those are commercial programs. And, and I think that that's a mistake. Install p which is an extremely powerful player that plays every format I've ever seen. And when you install it, it should, as part of the installation process, say, would you like me to take over playing your MP3 files? And you say, yes please. Probably the easiest thing to do would be to open I MP and tell it where those files are and it will then import them all. And then you can use a i p as your music player.

Caller 9 (02:50:52):
Now I have external hard drive, you know, Western Digital external hard drive. I downloaded all those audio vis on there. But a real quick question if I can ask you, Leo. Sure. I have, I have the I've done the one drive and I've done the Google. Yeah. I currently have the Google and then also I have the Samsung Cloud. And I kind of feel like I'm kind of confused, but I'm kind of, I feel like I'm, I got so much going on, I don't know what I should be using since I'm at Samsung, Android. 

Leo Laporte (02:51:23):
I would use Android. I would use a Google solution. Samsung has a history of discontinuing solutions. They used to have a milk music system. They discontinued it. They they, I would not, I would say go with Google. They're, they're most likely to be around the longest.

Caller 9 (02:51:38):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:51:39):
So Google won and Google one's a great deal. It works with everything. The other advantage is if at some point you said, man, I wanna get an iPhone, Google would continue to work. Samsung would not.

Caller 9 (02:51:51):
Okay. Okay. Alrighty. I guess I'm just gonna just do Google one and stay with Google

Leo Laporte (02:51:57):
One. I would stay with Google one. It's a good price. It's got great services. It's what I use. I think it's great.

Caller 9 (02:52:04):
Okay. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (02:52:04):
Later. Hey, great. Pleasure talking to you. Tight. Take care Kevin. Thank you. Well, that's it for the Tech Guy Show for today. Thank you so much for being here. And don't forget twit, t I t it stands for this week at Tech and you find it@twit.tv, including the podcast for this show. We talk about Windows and Windows Weekly, Macintosh, MacBreak Weekly iPads, iPhones, apple Watches on iOS today, security and Security Now, I mean, I can go on and on. And of course, the big show every Sunday afternoon this week in tech. You'll find it all@twit.tv. And I'll be back next week with another great tech guy show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.