Ask The Tech Guys Episode 1990 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.

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
Well, hey, hey, hey, it's me Leo Laporte. Micah has the day off again this week, but we've got lots to talk about Visits from Johnny Jett and Scott Wilkinson, our home theater, geek two not one, but two printer questions and the case of the mysterious IR signal. It's all coming up. Next I'll ask the tech guys. This is Ask the Tech Guys with Micah Sargent and Leo Laporte, episode 1990. Wow, recorded Sunday, september 3, 2023, labor Day weekend: fatal error. This episode of Ask the Tech Guys is brought to you by Mylio. Mylio Photos is a smart, powerful system that lets you easily organize, edit and manage years of important documents, photos and videos in an offline library Hosted on any device and it's free. Visit mylio.com/twitter. And by Lectric eBikes. Make every day feel like an endless summer vacation with an XP 3.0 from Lectric. Visit lectricebikes.com to learn more and explore the epic models Lectric has to offer. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? It's time for Ask the Tech Guys Once again. Poor Micah Sargent A little under the weather. He's doing well, but he had a little relapse of the old COVID, so it's just me today, sorry. Ask the Tech Guy.

If you would like to ask the Tech Guy, there's three ways. You can Of course, there's always the Zoom Use your phone and open the browser. Go to calltwittv. That will either open Zoom or it'll do it in the browser. We know your camera and microphone and your phone works. So that's why I like you to use the phone. You can use your PC if you don't work, calltwittv. The phone number eight and this is a normal phone number okay, 888. Well, it's not exactly normal 888-724-2884. 888-724-2884. When you call that, you're gonna get put into a Zoom room so you'll be able to hear the program and then, when it's time for you to come on the air, you'll kind of sense a change in the atmosphere. What does he press? Star nine, star six, star six, star six to unmute, star six to unmute, and you will be on the air. Okay, we're gonna take a lot of calls.

We have a ever-growing stack of email. I didn't mention the third way. Atg at twittv is the email. Leo, there are two emails. I want you to read the top two. Yes, Well, I'll get to the top two emails. I bet you. I bet you by Golly. Well, we hardly knew it 28 years in.

And Microsoft's killing WordPad. I didn't even hear any sighs. That was the last free app that you could use to edit rich text on Windows or even Word documents on Windows. I kind of I liked WordPad. It was like a very simple word. Now Microsoft says we'll just use Word, but Word's not free. So thanks very much, microsoft. You of course still have NotePad, which is kind of the bare bones version of WordPad. I always used WordPad. I liked it for word processing. Anyway, 28 years, microsoft announced today it will deprecate WordPad in a future Windows update because no one was working on it. How does that happen at a company that size? Hey, anybody want to do WordPad? No crickets, nope, okay, we'll just kill it. That's fine. These things happen.

We are now 10 days away, nine days away, from Apple's September 12th event. I will be out of town for that event, but I think I can do the show from my mom's basement, which is all podcasters know is really the place a podcast should be done from. I will be in Cranston, rhode Island, so Micah and I will do the event 10 am. If Micah's feeling better, A week from Tuesday September 12th, he will be by then and then, immediately after Mac break weekly, we're gonna see the new iPhone 15, usb-c connector. That's the big change. You can finally get rid of your lightning. Oh, wait a minute. You'll need it for your old Apple TV remotes and your AirPods. What do you have? Apple updates both of those. They did actually update the remote. They have that nice new remote which is Type-C and now they're gonna have to update the AirPods and maybe some old iPads, that kind of thing.

What else is going on? Kind of you know, the California Public Utilities Commission had a very contentious vote about a month ago in which they decided it was a close vote, but they decided to allow Waymo and Cruz, the self-driving vehicles, to ply their trade in San Francisco unlimited, so they could have as many cars on the road as they want, they could operate anywhere in the city they want and they could do it day and night if they want. And ever since I don't know if it's a coincidence or if it's activists or what, but ever since there have been stories about these vehicles causing problems, the most recent on August 14th two Cruz self-driving vehicles no safety driver, no driver in the front were stopped in the right two lanes of a four-way, four lane one-way street South of Market neighborhood. Victim had been hit by a car. All lanes were blocked because they had emergency vehicles in the other two lanes and the ambulance couldn't get out. The Cruises would not move, they had to move a police car to get the ambulance out and the victim died before they could get him to the hospital. Did Cruz kill the patient? Probably not, but this is yet one again one example and this happened before of emergency vehicles being hampered by driverless vehicles.

People in San Francisco have mixed opinions on this. Some think it's cool. It's a little weird, if you get a chance to drive around Phoenix I think LA, now San Francisco, somewhere where these vehicles are operating to be driving down the street and look over and there's still a steering wheel. It's a normal looking car, except for all of the two hikis on the top, but there's no one. It's like a ghost. There's no one in the car, it's just driving along. It's. I guess it's cool. It seems to cause some problems.

And then, of course, you probably saw the video of Elon Musk showing off his full self-driving vehicle when it tries to run the red light into traffic and Elon screams intervention, grabs the wheel, intervention. Actually, he didn't scream it. I commend Elon for his calm in the face of danger. I would have screamed ah, we're gonna die, but no intervention. What else? What else is going on? Spacex has launched speaking of Elon is going to launch satellites into space for GlobalStar. That's the satellite company that provides emergency satellite servers for iPhones. They're gonna be launched by SpaceX. They're gonna launch the satellite. They're gonna be launched by SpaceX. They're gonna launch 64 million dollar a deal for that one.

But here's it, to me the most interesting news of the week. This from the LA Times Caltech, famous school right, especially for science and math. Caltech, which normally requires that you have calculus before you can get in as a freshman to Caltech, they are going to change their incoming requirements. No high school calculus, chemistry or physics class, says the New York Times. Caltech has a workaround you can take those classes online, like Khan Academy, and show proficiency, and you won't have had to get those credits in high school. This is a first. For years Caltech has been adamant that you have to have those basic classes. They're gonna drop the admission requirements for calculus, physics and chemistry courses If you don't have access to them in your high school and you could take them somewhere else, like Khan Academy. Salman Khan, the Academy Founder, said "'This is a huge deal for equitable access to college". I agree, especially if we see more schools doing this. 46 Nobel laureates at Caltech and only a 3% admission rate it's hard to get in. So that's. I think that's more than just good news for high school kids who wanna go to Caltech. I think that's a really good news for people who are taking online courses that that could actually be a path to success. Those are great courses at Khan Academy. All right, coming up, johnny Jett, we're gonna talk travel. Scott Wilkinson, we're gonna talk home theater. And I've got a review.

You may remember, back on the new screensavers when we rode our segues around the city of San Francisco, lisa and I had so much fun so did Father Robert and the gang Megan's there that we ended up buying those segues Well, just two of them and keeping them in our garage, and we had lots of fun, the kids had lots of fun. Lisa and I would go tootle into town looking like dorks on our eight foot tall segues. But the batteries died a couple of years ago and I found out after I searched around that it was gonna cost, I think, $7,000 to replace the batteries in those segues, which cost $7,000 each, and I thought wait a minute. Stop the insanity. This has to end, especially when I saw that the company that bought the segues nine bought Chinese company was selling the new segues for only $1,000. In fact I was able to get it on Amazon for less than that. Even so, I have a nine bought segues and I'll show you the difference between the original segues and these new. 10th the cost it's almost a 10th the cost segues. A little bit later on Phone number again 8887242884hike.

Maybe better if I put the parenthesis around the 8887242884. But let us take our first call today. Mr John Ashley, producer man, I see some hands raised in the zoom. What should I do? I'm gonna send Dan. Let's send Dan on. Come on down, hi Dan, join us in the Stargate. Ask the tech guys Stargate Dan where are you calling?

from. I hear you great. Where are you calling? From Portland, oregon, beautiful Portland.

0:11:54 - Caller 1
Hello, I'm hiking in my favorite state park.

0:11:59 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I'm out of breath, isn't it kind of, I mean, it takes us for granted. But here he is, he's hiking through the wilderness, but he's got this cell phone. You're everywhere you go these days. You could be reached or you could call us. I love that. Yes, I hear you. Great, now take a breath. Oh, let's see. Let's see the beautiful Oregon Trail. Wow, very nice. I'm jealous.

0:12:24 - Caller 1
So this is Trian Creek State Park in Portland, oregon, beautiful. I'm lucky enough to do this almost every day, usually with my A7-4. Nice, your Sony camera.

0:12:36 - Leo Laporte
What kind of you get nature shots?

0:12:38 - Caller 1
You know I bring the long lens for the birds but I have to say for just about everything else the iPhone really rivals any big 30 pound camera that I carry in it. The iPhone just does such a good job with everything except those couple exceptions like birds and astro, and you know some of those other niche.

0:13:00 - Leo Laporte
Is astro your dog. Astrophotography oh astrophotography yeah, so extra zoom is nice, but also the Sony is super fast focusing on fast moving creatures.

0:13:14 - Caller 1
Oh, yeah, and that's it. You know you get the bokeh or the bouquet or whatever you want to call it you get. You know all the advantages that full frame sensor are certainly fun, but you got to weigh that penalty of a big, heavy camera bag as opposed to doing a quick jaunt with your iPhone.

0:13:33 - Leo Laporte
I agree, last trip we took to Europe, lisa and I just took my iPhone. She took a nice camera and I figured, well, if we want anything really good, she can use the Olympus to get those shots and I was very happy. The fact that I had the iPhone with me all the time made a big difference. So yeah, it's sad.

0:13:50 - Caller 1
Hey, leo, I was with you. I was with you when you did the very first ever live stream of a crowdsurf with a live you on your back.

0:14:00 - Leo Laporte
You were at Stubbs barbecue in Austin, texas, during the day.

0:14:04 - Caller 1
Oh, I was online oh you were online.

0:14:06 - Leo Laporte
Okay, you weren't one of the people buoying me up. It turns out after I did that which is I'm so glad I did that, it's something I'll look back on and say, yes, see, I did that, but it was I didn't realize highly dangerous. There have been many examples of people leaping into the crowd and not being caught.

0:14:27 - Caller 1
And you had an extra what? 50 pounds on your back.

0:14:30 - Leo Laporte
I had that big old live live view backpack that was doing the live streaming. And then I remember I had a camera on a like a wizard staff. There is a picture of me leaping backwards into the crowd. What a mistake that was. But it turned out fun and it is the first ever, I believe, and probably the last live stream of a crowdsurf in the world.

0:14:51 - Caller 1
Remember you also live streamed your first, I think, in-person meeting of Trey Ratcliffe. Yes, and you bumped into Tony, the founder of Zappos.

0:15:01 - Leo Laporte
Zappos Tony Shade In the back room.

0:15:03 - Caller 1
That's right, before you hopped on stage or left soft stage. I should say yeah, when I went to South by Robert.

0:15:10 - Leo Laporte
Scoble said oh, forget the events, forget the seminars. South by is all about the parties. He said you should have a mobile rig and get the parties. So I took his word for it and that's what I did. I carried around a camera on a stick. It was. It was interesting, shall we say. We, we tried a lot of stuff in the early days.

0:15:31 - Caller 1
That was fun, as well as your 24 hour live stream.

0:15:34 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, new years as Mike B in RIRC says that crowdsurf wasn't the last time Leo did something stupid. Remember shaving his head and getting a tattoo during the 24 hours as a new year celebration. Well, tell me what I can do for you Dan.

0:15:51 - Caller 1
Yeah, absolutely so. My mom is about the same era as your mom and I had been trying to hook up her TV to some headphone solution for years now and it can't be Bluetooth because it's too complicated. When you plug in a mini jack it steals the audio from the soundbar. It doesn't seem that there's a good solution where you can just have a pair of headphones on the, on the coffee table or on the side table and, you know, pick up those headphones and put those on when you're having a little trouble hearing and maybe other people are in the room hearing. Fine. But she needs a little help and just needs to put on a pair of headphones, and it doesn't seem you can do like two parallel audio streams One to the soundbar and one to the headphones.

0:16:39 - Leo Laporte
I think that's actually a limitation of the TV as opposed to the headphones. But I agree, I've had this same struggle. Mom needs headphones, otherwise she blares the TV so loud that the people down the block can hear it. I ended up getting her some Sennheiser wireless. These are not Bluetooth, they're RF, so that means she can turn her head. She can even get up and go to the kitchen of the bathroom and still hear not cheap, and I think you're going to have the same problem because I suspect these plug in to the headphone jack, which is you know Leo, I have those plugged in right now.

Yeah, that's what I got, mom.

0:17:23 - Caller 1
And they're in the. They're in the, the mini jack port on the TV, and you got to go into the settings and you got to select, you know, your audio out, which she has. No capability to go into the settings and constantly switch that back and forth. Plus, you know there's others in the room that would like to continue watching, while she just needs a little boost. Yeah, this is.

0:17:44 - Leo Laporte
This is yeah, I, yes, I agree 100%. This says connects to RCA jacks. So if you had I mean, this is ridiculous. I don't have this for my mom, but if she had an AV receiver she could connect to that. The problem really is the or if you had a sound bar that had audio out, you could probably get audio out of the sound bar. The problem is the TV. As you know, this used to be the case. You plug in headphones, it mutes the other sound and the TV has decided that's the right way to handle it. When it's not and that's a TV issue it does say that you could plug into a quarter inch, eighth inch, headphone jacks as well as RCA jacks. So maybe the answer is does the sound bar, do you know, have any output?

0:18:38 - Caller 1
You know it's a, it's a Sony. I got it to match the Sony TV. You know a matched pair would give me better luck. Yeah, but I don't think it has anything. But you know it's got the optical to connect to the TV. It's got the HDMI arc. I don't think it's got our CA jacks anymore.

0:18:56 - Leo Laporte
Well, even if it out of any kind, you could get a converter, I guess it automatically turns off.

You know, whatever other inputs or you know the TV does, but maybe the soundbar. But what I'm saying is don't tell that, yeah, as soon as you plug into the headphone jack and the TV, you go it, forget it. So even you. I guess you could have a Splitter. Here's one other way to do it. The best way to hook up a soundbar, as we now know, is HDMI. That's the highest bandwidth. Optical is second.

I don't know how you're connecting it, but you could get whatever you're connecting into the TV, split Into some sort of headphone amp and then use it that way. It's gotten really crazy complicated, I understand, and maybe more than it's worth. I had the same problem with mom. I just said mom, sorry, when you're wearing the headphones, you're wearing the headphones. That's where I'm at. Leo IT professional.

It shouldn't be this. Well, a split, a splitter would do it, and it depends just really on how much effort you want to put into it what you're gonna. The problem is, as soon as you plug in a headphone jack, the TV says got it, you don't want any other sound. So don't Take the arc out of the TV or the optical out and split it on its way To the soundbar, and then that way your soundbar will be fine. For instance, here's scooter exes got a little link to an Amazon HDMI audio extractor splitter. It's a little box. The problem with this is oh no, it does have out, so it's only 15 bucks. So this, plug it, you know I. I hope it would work fine. Plug into the TV, this end goes into the soundbar, and Then you have a little headphone jack and what this is gonna do is At least it's cheap, right it's gonna Plug your RF headphones then into that exactly.

Yeah, exactly, let me just 15 bucks.

0:21:01 - Caller 1
It's worth it.

0:21:02 - Leo Laporte
You know it's worth a try, I guess.

0:21:05 - Caller 1
This is you know, they take things back. You can return.

0:21:07 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Amazon's really good about taking things back and then they burn them or send them to I don't know what they do with them. They don't. They don't try to resell them usually.

0:21:16 - Caller 1
Yeah, this is From the doctors who make videos of the palette loads of return exactly as it's a wild channel.

0:21:23 - Leo Laporte
This is a VP. Fet makes this made-up name $15 HDMI audio extractor splitter. So that's probably the only way to do it, because the TV is being smart, smart and saying, oh, you're listening headphones. I guess you don't want the soundbar anymore. So don't tell the TV. Plug in to the TV as normal, split the output. You can get one for optical as well, depending on what you're using. This is cheap $15.99. It splits off the audio into a separate channel. You know and I'll get this from my mom- Actually it's not gonna be any more.

0:21:56 - Caller 1
How?

0:21:56 - Leo Laporte
old's, your mom.

0:21:59 - Caller 1
She will be 83.

0:22:00 - Leo Laporte
New Year's Eve. My mom is 90 and the reason I'm not gonna be here In a week is because I'm going to help her move into an assisted living facility and I suspect that she will be listening on headphones from now, from now on, because I'm sure it's an apartment. I'm sure she won't, that people won't want her to be blasting your TV, although my guess is she wouldn't be the only one doing that. I Do it too, by the way. Now I I'm turning up the sound. Lisa's gone. Can you what's up? You can't hear that. It's kind of loud.

0:22:35 - Caller 1
So my wife and I already use the closed cap.

0:22:38 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we all do the time. Even the young. I would like.

0:22:41 - Caller 1
Yeah, I would love to have a pair of headphones to throw on. Yeah but it's too complex of a setup. So you know, with all these boomers coming of age and now I'm Gen X, we're gonna come of age and we've been listening to headphones since. You know the original Walkman Exactly. We need, we need this invention out there. Sony, are you listening?

0:23:00 - Leo Laporte
Stop muting the TV when we plug in the headphones, please. That's all we ask. It's a TV function and I bet you there are some. You know Scott Wilkinson when he comes on in a little bit. I bet you there are some that don't do that. That's just up to the TV and it's from the old days. You remember that when you, when you have your stereo on, you're listening to Led Zeppelin, kashmir and you don't want mom and dad and your cost pro 440 a's to hear it, you plug it in and immediately the receiver mutes the speakers and you're hearing on the headphones only. That's how it used to work and that's how they continue to work, apparently.

0:23:35 - Caller 1
Leo, I'm a huge fan. Thanks for listening.

0:23:38 - Leo Laporte
Enjoy the rest of your life. How far? How far is the hike?

0:23:42 - Caller 1
Oh, my typical circuit here is just over four miles, so about what an hour and 15 or 20 minutes, except when I get through to a popular radio show.

0:23:54 - Leo Laporte
Very nice. Hey, it's a pleasure meeting you, dan. Thanks for calling huge fan. Take care, leo, appreciate it. Call that Twitter TV. See it works, it's easy. You could also phone 8887242884. Should I go? Where should I go next?

0:24:10 - Caller 2
I did suggest an email, oh oh, whoo email.

0:24:15 - Leo Laporte
You said the top two.

0:24:16 - Caller 2
Huh, those are the ones to why would I say specifically the top two emails?

0:24:21 - Leo Laporte
Leo, think about it because they're both printer questions. I already got it HP 1012 laser printer old friend may be dead From red ninja, long-time listener from SoCal, retired graphic designer, was very happy with my legacy. I'm shouting, aren't I? You have to turn up my headphones. Sorry.

Oh, sorry, I'll come down. Very happy with my legacy printer 2007. Oh, that is legacy. 16 years old, connected to my 2017 iMac, never printed more than 1,000 black and white copies. Oh, printed, finally stopped working. The three lights on the printer stay on red, amber and green Print monitor displays. Printer needs intention. So I pleaded, praised it, threatened it. I even took the side covers off to explore its inner guts, thinking I could find a broken gear. The inside is clean. Hp website does not supply any more updates. I hate to get rid of it, since I just bought two new toner cartridges. Can anyone help? Hp 1012 and All three lights are on. I guess that's the diagnostic. All three lights are on. So there's a couple of possibilities.

Hp, somewhat famous for At least with his inkjet printers, saying oh it's, it's dead, you get it, got to get a new one. Now you know after a few years, like Even when, nothing's wrong. My guess, though, that that's not what's going on here. So you know how a laser printer works as a drum, that the toner is. It's electrostatically charged, the toner sprayed on it. It sticks only where the drum is magnetized, so that's the print, and then it prints off the drum. I'm gonna bet that that drum that does that can wear out. So I'm gonna bet that that's worn out. However, 16 year old printer, it's gonna be hard to get parts. You might be able to go to eBay and find another 1012 that's you could scavenge parts from. Since you say you're a do-it-yourselfer that's always a possibility, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna suggest that is probably time you've had, it's had a good run. I know you just print, but two cartridges that might have been a tactical mistake. Wow, I, I just, I Just don't know how likely it is. You're gonna be able to fix this, and you know HP is. You know, obviously they just want you to get a new one. Any thoughts from our team tech guy? I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet you, you know it's, it's wear on. You said, though, you haven't print more than a thousand prints. It's so many things. It could be electrical, could be. One of the circuit boards has failed. There was maybe a power surge. All three lights on does not sound good. If you can't figure out that diagnostic, perhaps you can get parts. I think, 16 years old, you're probably out of luck here.

By the way, is Tay-ku, which is, I think, short for quarter main, who says he has an LG TV that has Will do both speakers and headphones at the same time. So it is a TV specific thing. You see, he can have a Couple of checkboxes simultaneously sound out with internal TV speaker. So it is gonna be TV specific. Thank you, tay. Sell the toner cart. Wizard link says sell the toner carts and eBay, buy a new printer.

I like brother lasers. He says I do too. That's the laser printer I have and the thing is you probably paid for that old HP over a thousand bucks. You can now get a good laser printer for a couple hundred bucks. So I think that's probably the solution. We do have a link Because we are completists here. We do have a link from the discord. Our club twit discord, scooter X has found the HP laser jet 1012 service manual.

How much, how much farther should I go in this? Shall I go to troubleshooting? Control panel lights, lights. That's what we want to see On the. Where's the 1012? Well, I'll do. The 1010, maybe the 12, control pattern, light patterns. There's the. There's where you're, there's where your Information is. Look at those lights.

Continuable error, attention state, fatal error. All three LEDs are on continuously in the fatal error state. Press the go button to see the secondary information For the fatal error. When you release the button, the printer returns to the initial fatal error state. So well, you probably already knew this. Fatal Sounds pretty and a life Sounds like the end Fatal error. But what is it? I understand you said, but wait, I want to fix it. Here's what fatal errors. Press the go button. The printer shows a secondary error error pattern. If the attention light luminates as the secondary Pattern, the formatter and engine are not communicating. Check the ribbon cable. Replace the ECU. If the error persists, replace the printer.

I Think that we could probably cut to Step three profit. All right, I you know what, since you're gonna, you're gonna stack up all the printer questions together, aren't you? I know you're gonna do this all. I dropped it. It's lost forever to the ages. Any tips on workarounds for printers Not supported by Chrome OS?

This is from Mike in the UK Long oh, this gives me a chance to do my bad Scottish accent. I Won't do that long time listening for a mover side of the pond in sunny Edinburgh, scotland. Sorry, I can't call in live today. Any tips on setting up unsupported printers on Chromebooks? I Like Chromebooks simple, fast to start up, secure a great solution for many the seniors we support. Oh, look at this in the digital inclusion non-profit that I run, which is tap into it, orguk, tap into it, orguk, tapi NTO IT, except when it comes to printer support. I'm great in everything except when it comes to printer support, like the Canon MG 42 50 I was trying to set up for an 88 year old gentleman this week. I did say something about a PPD for. So Google kill, I'm Google, don't start me on Google.

Google had a solution called cloud print. You might remember that was for Chromebooks and Android phones, where they would print to Google, the Google server, and then the server would start enough to send it to the right computer in, or a printer rather, and you could print to a Printer. But now in that case the printer had to support the Google cloud. I'm suspecting that the MG 42 50 does not. So it.

There's a couple of ways to do it. If the printer supports Wi-Fi, which most do I mean if it's a USB printer, maybe not, but if the printer supports Wi-Fi, you could put it in infrastructure mode. You can make it be a Wi-Fi access point. It'll be on the settings and the LCD. You put it in Wi-Fi infrastructure point and then it is a Wi-Fi access point. Your Chromebook will see it and Should be able to print to it. So that's what Google wants you to do in in lieu of cloud print. They killed it Now connecting.

Here's a a Google Document on printing from your. Oh Actually, this is not a Google document. This is a website called Chromebook Chromebook CHRM book from your Chromebook without cloud print. So this might be worth. We'll put this in the show notes. Yeah, this is, he's talking about the Wi-Fi Workaround.

But if that doesn't have Wi-Fi, if it only has USB, I I Wonder if you can connect it via USB. Yeah, it looks like not, because in that case it's gonna need a driver and the Chromebook doesn't. Really, I don't think it comes with a whole lot of drivers. Any other solutions? Irc team tech guy. I think you're kind of. I think you're kind of Stuck if your printer is not a Wi-Fi printer.

If it is, you're gonna. You're almost guaranteed it to be able to print it. You just have to turn on the. They have to name for it. I'm trying to remember with it, with the printer companies call it. It's what the Wi-Fi folks call Infrastructure mode, where it it becomes, instead of a member of a Wi-Fi network, it becomes a Wi-Fi network of its own and once it does that, your Chromebook says oh look, there's a Wi-Fi network named printer. I'm gonna join it, and then it should, in most cases, be able to print to it as long as it can see it. Otherwise, what could you do? You could email it to another device. Yeah, I'm print it. That way, that's probably what most people ended up doing is just, you know making, make a PDF if you, if you're worried about formatting, you know, print to PDF and then email that PDF to somewhere else. I bet you there are people online who will print for you at at some expense. Yes, not ad hoc mode. There's a name that, or maybe it is. The printers call it ad hoc mode. Maybe that's what it is Scooter X. Okay, ad hoc infrastructure mode. Let's take a little break. When we come back, mr Scott Wilkinson is coming up our home theater geek.

This episode of ask the tech eyes is brought to you by my Leo. I want to tell you about photography, in particular, about a Damn. I found a digital asset management. I Take a lot of pictures. You take a lot of pictures. I have a lot of documents. You have a lot of documents. The problem is they're all in that hard drive or your phone and in the cloud and all over the place. You'd like to organize them. You'd like to have them all in one place and maybe, like me, you'd also like to keep them off the cloud, keep them private. This is the solution. My Leo, my Leo, comm slash to it and it's free. It is the solution and I can't tell you how Amazing it is. I could just show you real quickly, my, my Leo. I have now over 200,000 photos in there, because one of the things my Leo did that I really enjoy is it allowed me to download From my Google Docs. Look at all the ways you can organize. And, by the way, it does it Intend in intelligently and it doesn't set it to the cloud.

Do we want hills? Do I have any hill pictures? I do. Do I have any pictures of Mount Fuji? Well, close, looks like Mount Fuji. It's the pyramids. Do I have any other mountainous pictures? Yes, I have quite a few. Actually, this is Mostly, I bet you, mount Fuji. I know I have pictures of Mount Fuji in here. These are all the pyramids pyramids I Also can tag by person With eyes closed, eyes open, not smiling. This is an amazing. Oh, there's Kate and me.

You see, I have every photo I've ever taken in here, 200,000 photos. I could share them 206, 750 to be precise. I could share them with different devices. I also have it backing up to my Synology NAS. You could back it up, if you wish, to any other cloud service, but you get to choose. You can encrypt before you back it up. You get to choose each device whether it has thumbnails see, it even tells you how much space is going to take off Optimized or if you want original. I don't have original, I don't want to waste this the space on here, but anytime I see something that I want to edit, I Can pull down the original and and edit it. So I have full access. Oh, it even stores videos. This is the studio right here. Oh, you know, this is that silly video I made the other day With that app on MBW. This is this is wonderful, I have to say, incredible the solution here.

These are photos I took on my phone, without any effort there, on my Mac. They go on your windows, on your iPhone, on your Android phone. They automatically will tag and organize. You can organize it by camera and lens. You can order, organize it by any category, any person. I tag a few people and then it then finds everything. Here's, you know, in the, in the 200,000 photos. This is an amazing. These are photos taken with my Canon. These are photos taken with a Casio. These are photos taken with my DJI drone.

I didn't do any of this manually. Milo did it all with AI. It is the most amazing Organizational tool I have ever used. And did I tell you? It's free and Completely offline. Create your own backup system, decide how you want to do it, put your photos on everything and even imports photos from Instagram automatically, flickr automatically. I was able to get all of the photos out of my Google photos. I use Google takeout. It read the files I didn't have to do any processing, automatically imported them and then, using their very powerful deduplication tool, I eliminated the duplicates. So when I say have 206,000 photos, that's 206,000 unique photos. I Don't have to fumble through several libraries and several devices, everything I have.

Plus. Add your documents folder. It will automatically import your documents. It does optical character recognition, so if you've got PDFs or photos with text, it'll automatically turn them into editable text suitable for searching this. I mean, I can go on and on, I I think what you should do is you should download it for free and Try it. They do have a Milo photos plus subscription, which I did, which lets me use multiple devices as a variety of other features. They have very good photo editing, but it will also open automatically your photo editor.

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I immediately Subscribed. I immediately did it. I said this is this, is it, and I have it on everything, all my devices Milocom slash twit. Download it for free Right now. Could not recommend it more highly. It is. You know we get a lot of. We used to get a lot of calls saying all they killed Picasso. Google bought and killed Picasso. Yes, google photos Well, that's nice, but I don't want to give Google all my photos. Yeah, I understand. Plus, it won't do half the things Milo does. This is the solution. Milocom slash twit. All right, more calls. I love it. We're taking a bunch of calls. Should I do? What do you? What do you get to choose John Ashley, because you're. I gotta give you something to do. He's the producer should.

0:41:05 - Leo Laporte
Robert on the phone. I like Robert, let's do Robert. Hello Robert, star six. Robert, remember to print. There is where you call it from.

0:41:15 - Caller 3
Why did I eat the far things correctly? You did. I am calling from Haynes, Alaska.

0:41:24 - Leo Laporte
Oh my gosh, that's great. When does winter begin in Haynes?

0:41:29 - Caller 3
Well, it's colder than it was two weeks ago. We got Alaska got a first snowfall yesterday, so here, but up further north, yeah, so Labor Day which ends summer all over the northern hemisphere.

0:41:44 - Leo Laporte
Probably is the really the re, the end of summer, for you guys, do you? Do you winter, all winter? Yeah?

0:41:52 - Caller 3
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have a, I have a business here repair, repairing heating systems and appliances. So yeah, I'm here.

0:41:58 - Leo Laporte
You're a good business in Alaska. Yes, it is.

0:42:02 - Caller 3
Yes, it is especially here.

0:42:04 - Leo Laporte
I'm well one of very few how far north are you, are you?

0:42:11 - Caller 3
I'm uh. Well, you took a cruise up your last year and went to Juneau, didn't you? Yes, uh, we're about 90 miles north of Juneau.

0:42:19 - Leo Laporte
A little south of Skagway, very nice.

0:42:24 - Caller 3
Uh, about west of Skagway. Sounds beautiful. Well, skagway is a about a 350 mile drive, or, uh, the nine mile flight from here.

0:42:39 - Leo Laporte
In mile or nine. Oh, as the as the crow flies, I see what you're saying, yeah.

0:42:44 - Caller 3
Yeah, we have to drive. We drive up through Haines Junction to the up in Canada to get the, but we have back to Skagway.

0:42:49 - Leo Laporte
So oh nice, you're right on a fjord too. That looks really pretty. How beautiful. Yeah, right at the end of the fjord. Yep, that's great. What can I do for you today?

0:42:59 - Caller 3
Well, I took the project about a year ago, uh stopped using windows and uh have almost exclusively used a Kibun to uh Linux. And there's a couple of three, two or three questions I have that I haven't been able to find answers to. Um with windows you can buy a CD or download software and you actually know where it is. You have, you know the piece of software sitting there on your computer. Yeah, Is there a way to do that with Linux? Because with Linux it seems like everything just installs. And where is it?

0:43:32 - Leo Laporte
Uh well, there is a place where it is. I should tell you that there are several places that Linux stores uh binaries of applications. The easiest way to see it on a Linux is to check your path. So this is the same on windows as well. In fact, all computers have the concept of a path, which is telling the operating system when I want to run a program, I just want to double click it and run it. Where do you look to find that program? And it looks on the path. So if you on your command line in your terminal type, echo, space, dollar sign path, it will give you a long list of directories. That's where they are, if you want to know. Usually, typically, uh, depending, depending on the version of Linux, it's in slash opt or it's in slash usr, slash bin. There are a few standard places. But I understand you also say, yeah, you're installing everything from the internet, which, by the way, is the future of installation, even on windows.

right Is installing everything from the internet Right.

0:44:40 - Caller 3
But I'm actually looking at those places. It seems like, um, and this might be what flat pack is with windows. You get this one cause we have very slow internet here and if I want to reinstall something it might take an hour to download. Yes, I would like to be able to have it in a download folder somewhere and be able to reinstall it from that, rather than having to read out.

0:45:02 - Leo Laporte
Snap and flat pack are two solutions to that same idea that your app is much more like a windows app. Now here's the deal. I think that Linux has one big advantage over windows. Windows has started to catch up, which is the package manager. When you install K, ubuntu, for instance, you're going to use apt, apt to install programs as you use, you know, the apt install or something related, but it all uses apt to install programs. And what apt does when it installs a program is it creates a manifest that says here's the program, here's what I installed, here's the version, and you can run apt periodically and upgrade, and it'll upgrade everything it's installed. And then I think is a real advantage, because on Linux it's very, it's, it's one line, it's the same thing.

On a Mac, I use brew to install stuff. So if I type brew upgrade on my Mac, it will say, oh, look at, these things are have gone out of date, would you like to update them? And I'll say yes. So that is one of the advantages of a package manager. Linux is now I mean, windows is now it's updating these apps. Linux, linux, windows is now starting to do this. There was a third party package manager called Chocolaty Paul Therat, if you've watched Windows Weekly, has done a actually I think it was on Hands on. Windows has done a show about that. And now Microsoft has its own package manager called WinGet. And because the problem with Windows is you, you had CDs you've been stolen from the store you installed from a website, from all over the place, and Windows sprays when you install stuff and Windows sprays files all over the place.

Linux is a little bit more disciplined. So first trust your package manager. If you're going to use flat packs, that's fine. Flat pack will also do the same kind of updating I'm doing right now with brew. It will go out and say well, here's all the things you installed with flat pack, let me update those. I have mixed feelings about flat pack, but that's because I'm an old timer, right. So I just like. I think a package manager is look see, now it's. It's downloaded all the files, it's installing those files. So my Mac is up to date, you know. I think that that's really nice to be able to do that Now because I'm running a Mac.

It's not doing that with the stuff I installed from the Apple store or installed from the web, so it's a little bit of a hybrid system. But your K Ubuntu will do that for everything you install, unless and I would really have look for the discipline not to do this you install it manually. Then you're responsible for keeping it up to date.

0:47:39 - Caller 3
Okay, Now that kind of leads me into my second question, that updating seems to occur basically on its own, from what I'm seeing. Well, not exactly. It's almost every day. You'll get a notification. Yeah, you'll get a notification.

0:47:58 - Leo Laporte
You're getting a notification from apt and then apt has a GUI that it will. You know it's I can't remember what it's called on Ubuntu. It's a package manager or software install. It'll run and you'll see a list of updates. And you're right, it's almost every day because, as you can see, you have a lot of stuff installed. But that's good, that's an advantage Sorry.

0:48:21 - Caller 3
That leads me into the second question. I have K Ubuntu installed on a XPS 17,.

0:48:28 - Leo Laporte
Xps 17, 97, 20 laptop Nice Dell laptop and I also have it installed on a Nuke 10th generation i5.

0:48:37 - Caller 3
On the laptop, it does these updates and it life just goes on Like it's supposed to. But on the Nuke, every time it does an update, it has to be rebooted. Okay, so the reboot is required.

0:48:54 - Leo Laporte
In general. I suppose there could be something different about the Nuke, I don't know. In general, with Linux you only have to reboot if you update the kernel. If you're getting a, it may be that you're getting this Nuke up to date and once it's that fully up to date, you won't have any more reboots. Usually you don't have to reboot. It's been a year. Yeah, that's why. So that's so it's getting it's getting them up to.

0:49:21 - Caller 3
It's been a year since I installed.

0:49:23 - Leo Laporte
Linux that you're continuing.

0:49:24 - Caller 3
Better all the up to date.

0:49:25 - Leo Laporte
I don't know. That might be something to check. I wonder if there's a setting that could say now you shouldn't, you should not have to reboot. Are you using flat pack on both or are you using the standard app? Done both?

0:49:38 - Caller 3
Well, I just discovered flat pack I've been using. Well, what's the um?

0:49:44 - Leo Laporte
here's the here's the reason flat pack exists, and there are other technologies, like snap, that do that too. But flat pack is kind of the accepted one. First of all, it makes everybody happy because you can go to the Linux app store, as I have here in flat pack, and you can see apps and install them as apps. So you don't have all that command line nonsense, right.

0:50:03 - Caller 3
But the real reason is yeah, I've been using the discoverer. I guess is what I'm using.

0:50:08 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, and then. Yeah, the real reason for this is is dependency hell. So, unfortunately and this is a problem on windows as well uh, applications often need libraries or dependent libraries that come from elsewhere, and different applications might be using different versions of that library and you get in dependency hell. These are called dependencies because they're dependent on those libraries, and then you get in this situation where you've got conflicting dependencies, and that's a real problem on Linux.

So flat pack is designed to solve that by having all the dependencies in the package. The problem is, of course, it's going to take a more disk space. That's the tradeoff, but this space is not exactly the premium these days. So with the flat pack it is much more like the windows install, where pretty much everything you need is in the pack. You install that you don't have to worry about Python dependencies, different versions of Python for different applications, things like that. So that solves it. I'm a big fan of just using apt and letting or discover which uses apt and letting it handle it, because then it knows about everything.

But yeah, flat pack is a good solution and you can use both. By the way, you don't have to.

0:51:24 - Caller 3
Yeah, the main reason I'd like to know, know that is because, like I said, we have very you know, if there's a cruise ship here in town, our internet's like 20 filibits, they all get on the.

0:51:36 - Leo Laporte
Haynes internet and that stinks.

0:51:40 - Caller 3
Oh man, oh yeah, how often is it, even like today. Even like today, when there's not a cruise ship in town, it's very rarely above four or five megabits. Yeah.

Yeah, you probably don't have a big, fat pipe back to the continental us? No, we don't. Yeah, One other thing that you helped with about a year ago when you were still on the radio, Paramount. I called you about Paramount Plus and getting the locals out of Seattle as opposed to here because of not being able to locate correctly. I finally figured something else out about Paramount Plus. They kept telling me that it could be neared or casted onto a television screen and I finally got someone after a year and a half to tell me no, it cannot be.

0:52:30 - Leo Laporte
It's drives me crazy. That's because they don't want to. I have a they're trying not to get in trouble. I have a mobile.

See, that's the real problem. Paramount Plus is owned by an NBC universal which is owned by Comcast. So they don't. They don't want to. They don't want to get in trouble with the parent company by allowing you to cause. They want Comcast to sell cable subscriptions too. This will all change. The cable companies, I think, have finally seen the writing on the wall. We're history, we are internet providers and they've kind of bitten the bullet, but streaming is also suffering. I mean, it's like it's we're going to go through a disruption period of five years or so where everything is all crazy. Paramount Plus is not NBC, that's oh, it's via com. Okay, sorry, doesn't matter. Yeah.

0:53:21 - Caller 3
Well, the strange thing is, though, with this is I have an old, older Motorola phone that has a desktop mode on it, so it gives the, gives the uh uh HDMI out over over USB. Oh, there you go, but I call about a year, about a year ago, purchased a uh Pixel seven pro which does not do that. Um, and with the pixel seven pro, even if I go to the library and download stuff from Paramount Plus, it tries to, it can't mirror it and it can't cast it. It tries to read downloaded as I'm watching it, but on the, on the older phone or the older one that has the HDMI up, I can plug the HDMI out, or the USB over USB over USB, hdmi over USB-C. I can plug into a cable to convert to HDMI. I can then take that HDMI, plug that into an HDMI to USB cable, plug that into my video server.

I'm actually getting digital video into my computer plug that computer into an HDMI cable. But that's a loud which is really straight.

0:54:24 - Leo Laporte
Well, they think, and then somehow you're getting by it. They think that the HDCP copy protection will keep you from doing that. They again via a constant cable company just like Comcast. And even if it weren't, they, these guys don't want to annoy the cable company. So they, they really say this is streaming you can't put on the big screen. Now, you could, and this is how I watch it. I have an Apple TV. You could get a Roku or Apple TV or fired TV and have Paramount plus on those and watch it on your big screen TV. You just have to pay for it.

0:54:55 - Caller 3
Well, that uses my home internet, which isn't fast enough. I go to the library and download from the library.

0:55:01 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I, see what you're doing. You're downloading and then going home and watching the downloaded thing. I get it.

0:55:07 - Caller 3
Right.

0:55:08 - Leo Laporte
I get it Okay.

0:55:10 - Caller 3
Yeah, yeah.

0:55:13 - Leo Laporte
Get a Plex server or some sort of media server Sounds like you've got that and you just put them on the hard drive and now you can watch them on your big screen TV.

0:55:22 - Caller 3
Yeah, yeah.

0:55:24 - Leo Laporte
That's. That's. That's what you get for living in the beautiful part of the world, Right.

0:55:30 - Caller 3
Yeah, probably is yeah.

0:55:32 - Leo Laporte
I mean this is this is a universal complaint. I live in a beautiful area of the country. It's a rural area. We got no internet. It's a shame. We need to fix that because, as you, as you, understand, I can get wired.

0:55:47 - Caller 3
I can get wired internet. It's still limited to 600 gigabyte per month, but it's also $140 a month.

0:55:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, probably they're paying for the same.

0:56:00 - Caller 3
I use AT&T. I use AT&T. I use AT&T cellular off of my because I get unlimited hot spots.

0:56:04 - Leo Laporte
So just stop watching TV and go fishing. That's you know. I think it's a good idea. That's why you live in Haynes. No, I understand, I'm sympathetic and honestly, I think internet access at this point is not a luxury, it's a necessity, and so the solution really is, and the FCC is working on this. The infrastructure bill had billions of dollars. I, alaska's got money. It's got good oil money. I would hope that Alaska would spend some energy getting a faster connection to the mainland.

0:56:39 - Caller 3
Well we're, we're kind of lucky here as compared to the Western part of the state, because the first part of this summer somebody drug dug it drug up, I guess with an anchor or something. Fiber cable went to the Western state and they didn't have internet or telephone telephone for almost six weeks. Yikes.

0:56:57 - Leo Laporte
You're living on the, on the hard edge of the world. That's great, that's where you wanted to be, and I think it's fantastic. Enjoy. That's all I could say. Enjoy. Go ahead and use flat pack. If you feel better using flat pack, it's the nice thing about, even with flat backer can I download it and actually see it and then tell it to install it?

I see you want to. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. It's a file, in fact, it's true, even it's a file, even of the apt files. They are files, so you just have to not, you have to download the binary file. So yeah, I see now what you want to do. You want to go to the library, download these binaries and then bring them home and install them on the two computers. That makes sense.

It does mean your updating is a more complicated because you know you have to kind of manually update, but honestly I think that's fine. All it means is you have to kind of pay attention if there's security issues and stuff and make sure you get the latest updates there. We are fat and happy down here in the lower 48 because we just update all the time. But I understand now why that's an issue for you. Don't worry about it. Linux is very secure. Just keep the elicit of security now. Yeah, just listen to security. Now. If Steve says, oh, you got to update up an SSH, then you. Then you can have to go to the library and get an update. I think you'll be all right, don't worry so much. Well, thank you. Enjoy the. Enjoy the beautiful Alaska winner on its way. Hey a pleasure to talk to you.

Thanks, robert, take care. I think it would be a good time to say hello to our home theater geek, scott Wilkinson, and I might even ask him about this audio thing. Hi Scott, hey Leo. How you doing man, we haven't seen you in a long time.

0:59:04 - Scott Wilkinson
How's the new house? Oh it's fantastic. Love it. Just loving life in Santa Cruz. Got to tell you, oh, I bet.

0:59:11 - Leo Laporte
There he is, and he's slowly adding to the, the ambience of his studio, set behind me. Yes, very nice, and I like it that you're wearing your twit shirt. Thank you very much. How's it going on your show? By the way, we I don't know if people know, but we brought home theater geeks back in club twit. I'm so happy about that, and you're doing it every week now you, you record it ahead of time. You do a batch?

0:59:34 - Scott Wilkinson
I do, yeah, I do, and it's a. It's a club twit show, and so you know if members of club twit can come into the discord and watch us record. Oh, that's good. Okay, how many shows at once do you do? I do usually like four shows at once, okay. So normally they're on Thursday afternoon, but this, I think a week from tomorrow, we're going to do a special show with a guest who will have just come back from the CDia trade show and there's some interesting stuff going on at CDia. This year. I was unable to go, unfortunately, but I've got a good friend. My good friend, mike Heiss, will be there. Oh, good, you know, I know Mike. Well, yeah, he's, he's a great guy and a great journalist and knows his stuff, and he's going to go scouting for me and come back on a Monday. We're going to record a special show with his impressions and what he saw fantastic CDia. So that's going to be great.

1:00:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, we usually put your record information in the club twit events. I don't see it there now, but it'll be there, so that's how you can keep up with that. In fact, if you're not a member of club twit, I should point out that September 7th, this Thursday, is our fireside chat with Daniel Suarez and Hugh Howie about their books, two of our favorite sci-fi authors. Josh Scalzi's coming up later in the in the oh man, that sounds great, I know. And a little note Hugh Howie was or is at Burning man. So whether, oh no, really whether he'll make the Thursday record, I don't know. Oh, now, that's a good question. Is it going to get out or not? Well, as you know, they closed the exit and entrance of Burning man Be 70,000 people stuck there because of Stuck there Turingial rain, yeah, over the last couple of days Interesting mud everywhere, mud pit, although I saw that Chris Rock and Diplo.

What's the five miles?

to the mud to the interstate and thumb to ride must have been something to see, would it be funny? You're driving along I 35 and you go. Is that? That can't be Chris Rock? Let me see that, couldn't. It's Chris Rock. That's a story for the rest of your life. I gave a. I gave a lift from Burning man to Chris Rock. So, scott, before you get into the subject that you wanted to talk about I don't know if you saw earlier this is comes up a lot A listener with a older mom like mine who needs headphones to watch your TV, and every time he plugs the headphones into the TV it cuts out the sound of the soundbar so nobody else can watch at the same time. Yep, that's a TV function isn't it.

1:02:18 - Scott Wilkinson
It is and in fact somebody sent in a question I was going to talk about today about a slightly different topic, but as I was researching it I discovered that that TV, which is an LG 48CX OLED, has an option in the sound menu to output its sound to both the headphones and the speakers. So that's a setting in the sound menu that you can set to say send it everywhere. So that may or may not be possible on the TV that the listener is. Yeah, Because sometimes it is sometimes it's not.

1:03:00 - Leo Laporte
That's what I kind of came to the conclusion, and he can always get a splitter. I think that's what we ended up. He could.

1:03:04 - Johnny Jet
Yeah.

1:03:06 - Leo Laporte
If you don't have that feature, but the LG's do, which is very, very nice.

1:03:08 - Scott Wilkinson
Yeah, at least the more more recent ones. Yeah, the CX is, I believe, two or three years old. That's the one I have. I should check.

1:03:15 - Leo Laporte
Yeah yeah, mom, I saved money and I got her a TLC, so I'll have to see TCL A TCL rather.

1:03:21 - Scott Wilkinson
Yes, tlc is tender loving care TCL is a Chinese which you express to your mother by getting her a TCL. I gave her that by giving her a TV.

1:03:28 - Leo Laporte
That's right. That's right. So what's up in Scott Wilkins's world today?

1:03:33 - Scott Wilkinson
Well, first of all I wanted to ask you. I heard that you went and saw Oppenheimer. I did Down in San Francisco.

1:03:41 - Leo Laporte
I did the IMAX theater, the AMC Metrion. I did the 70 millimeter film version, one of the 30 IMAX, 70 millimeter film theaters in the world. And that's why we did it, because I, christopher Nolan, the director, had said that's the only way to see my movie, the only way to see it.

1:04:01 - Scott Wilkinson
It was big.

1:04:01 - Leo Laporte
We were in the fifth row from the front. I thought we were in the fifth row from the back and then I looked more closely and I realized I called my friends and said you know, we're sitting in the front. They said that's okay. So the very first shot is a closeup of Oppenheimer yeah, you know, silly and Murphy's head, and it is big. It's not going to be like this the whole time. But the other thing I don't know if anybody's watching. You know, I have on my watch Apple's smartwatch, the sound monitor and the sound level went to 99 dB several times during that movie.

Hearing damage level.

1:04:40 - Scott Wilkinson
Exactly right, Exactly right. Now. The question is what was the average? Does your watch record at the average over a period of time?

1:04:49 - Leo Laporte
I don't know, I don't it just says it warns you when there's a peak.

1:04:54 - Scott Wilkinson
Yes.

1:04:54 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, let me see and 99 is very high.

1:04:57 - Scott Wilkinson
You know you don't want to have too many of those.

1:04:59 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, right now it's 38 dB in here, oh wait a minute. It just got loud when I started talking. I'll have to look and see. It's probably on my phone, not my watch, but I'll have to look and see if it recorded the average. I'm sure it did. I mean it's recording all the time. That's how it knew that we had peaked.

1:05:15 - Scott Wilkinson
Right, exactly. Well, if the average stays at around 85, then they are in compliance with the guidelines for movies. It's just the same as the guidelines for workspace workplaces 85 dB is considered safe for eight hours of exposure. Okay, so here's the graph.

1:05:38 - Leo Laporte
I don't know if they did the average, but here's the graph. I don't know if can you see over my shoulder, do you have that one set up? And it looks like it was between 50 and 100, but when it was at 100, it was at 100 for a long long time?

1:05:56 - Scott Wilkinson
Yeah, 100. You don't want to be, you don't want to be exposed to that for more than a few minutes.

1:06:03 - Leo Laporte
Well, I have to say I wish I had brought my earplugs.

1:06:07 - Scott Wilkinson
Yeah.

1:06:08 - Leo Laporte
Yeah To be the other question.

1:06:09 - Scott Wilkinson
Here's the average, here's the average.

1:06:12 - Leo Laporte
Well, this is the last seven days. It's okay 75 dB for two days the average show. So I'll have to go back in time and look at the history and see if it's got, because if you can find the average of the top, just the time of the movie, yeah, which? Is a three hour movie. Oh God, it's just so long.

1:06:33 - Scott Wilkinson
Now let me ask you this Did you, did you find the dialogue difficult to understand? Not at all. It was quite loud.

1:06:41 - Leo Laporte
No, I did not. No, I didn't Okay.

1:06:43 - Scott Wilkinson
Cause a lot of people are complaining about this. Well, nolan's famous for this, for this inaudible dialogue in his back and, in fact, he, he made a point of saying about Oppenheimer I recorded the dialogue on set and I I absolutely refused to have my actors come in and re-recorded in the studio.

1:07:00 - Leo Laporte
That's very unusual. I think people may not know that in movies, because there's so much noise from the cameras and other things, they often loop the dialogue. The actors come in after the fact and loop the dialogue and usually it's indistinguishable because it's the same person and they're carefully matching and they're watching themselves and they're exactly.

1:07:18 - Scott Wilkinson
But he doesn't do that. He says I want the emotional performance. That explains.

1:07:22 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I have also seen reviews that said this was not as hard to hear understand as other, like Tenet, or you know that it wasn't as bad as some of Nolan's interstellar was really bad. Yeah, tenet was the worst for me. Yeah, but I didn't know I had. No, I didn't even notice it, I was able to understand what was going on.

1:07:42 - Scott Wilkinson
Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, oh, that's great. My podcast, I believe posting next week, I think, is my show on or no, maybe it was last week. Anyways, on on the Oppenheimer question, I got a question from a listener. He said why is it so hard to understand? That's good to know he went to two different theaters.

1:08:04 - Leo Laporte
He doesn't do looping.

It might be that it was better on the IMAX, because it's so. The sound is better at the IMAX, right? I mean, generally speaking, we were right in the middle. We, you know, because we were so close, we were getting optimal sound. I do want you'll be proud of me this is my key chain. I do keep a pair of earplugs on my key chain for you, because I am very caught. You know, I have tenetus, tenetus. My ears are ringing constantly. I don't want to get any worse. So I do have these earplugs, and even when we just go out in the evening and there's music at a restaurant or bar, it's often very loud, and so I carry these on my key chain because I I didn't.

1:08:41 - Scott Wilkinson
I applaud you.

1:08:42 - Leo Laporte
I did not have an Oppenheimer, unfortunately, so I just had to suffer. I didn't, to be honest, I didn't notice until I saw it on my watch. I didn't even notice, because it's atomic bombs exploding. Of course I know. I know, of course it's loud.

I really enjoyed it. I think it could have been an hour shorter. It was probably he did not. Among other things, nobody tells Christopher Nolan how to edit his movies, right, right, I think he could have used a little editorial help on that. But it's a great movie and, and you know what? It'll be great to watch, even in the comfort of your own home.

1:09:20 - Scott Wilkinson
Oh, yeah, yeah. See, I don't have in Santa crew. I love living in Santa Cruz, but we don't have an IMAX 70 millimeter film theater here. The closest one is probably San Francisco.

1:09:32 - Leo Laporte
Well, I want to see it also because I felt this is probably a format that isn't going to last much longer.

1:09:39 - Scott Wilkinson
Well, except people like Christopher Nolan are supporting it and using it.

1:09:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but that's. I mean, there's a handful of directors who have the clout to get movies made that way. Correct, there's only 30 theaters in the world. In the world. There's not much incentive for Sony or Paramount or anybody to make a movie like that. It's more expensive.

Yeah, so you have to have enough clout to say I don't care if it's going to cost you, I want it this way and I don't. There's going to be a handful more movies like that. When IMAX was originally created, especially this giant 70 millimeter IMAX, it was for nature movies, short nature films. It wasn't intended to be for motion pictures. That came later and yeah yeah, it's true.

1:10:21 - Scott Wilkinson
Now you did get to experience the movie exactly as Nolan wanted, which is there are some scenes that are wide and there are some scenes that are much taller, and it goes back and forth.

1:10:31 - Leo Laporte
So I had seen his dark night in the same theater. It was very annoying because it switched, yes, and in fact, as I remember, it was also 3D. So they would say, okay, put on your glasses, okay, take off your glasses. It's like I want to enjoy a movie, I don't want to have to do an exercise class. So this one, this one, it was seamless. There was no sense of oh. In fact I had to remind myself look at the picture, look at the screen. How? What's the resolution? Does it feel you know it's more than eight K. Does it feel like you're really seeing the detail? And I have to say, especially in the close ups of actors faces, maybe a little too much detail? They they're brave to do that, because you well, sure it is.

It is more detail than you see in real life, even if you're nose to nose. It is huge. It's like under a magnifying glass.

1:11:32 - Scott Wilkinson
Well, yeah, it's been estimated that step that I'm at, 70 millimeter film has a resolution equivalent to digital resolution of 16 K Wow, which you know most most of us at home these days who have a modern TV or at four K.

1:11:49 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it looks really good and I love that. He did a lot of it in black and white. He had a. Actually they had to invent a black and white 70 millimeter IMAX film just for him, and so there's stuff shot in the period that's black and white and you know, kind of documentary style and that was, by the way, the 16 nine stuff for the most part, I think Right and it was. It was. It was good, it was very helpful. Unlike some of Nolan's other movies, there was no trouble. You know, like Inception, there was no trouble. Understanding or tenant was the worst. What was going on? I understood what was going on.

1:12:27 - Scott Wilkinson
Wow, well, that's great. I think it was difficult because of the concept conceptual time kept going backwards and forwards, which he loves.

1:12:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah right, he loves playing with that. Yeah, true, enough, true. So I, you know, I respect him as a director. I think he's very good. I think he could have used a little editing on this. It is a great subject and philosophically it's a very important film and for that reason alone I I hope everybody gets to see it. It doesn't have to be 70 millimeter IMAX, it'll be fine, no, no it doesn't your beautiful LG CX screen?

1:13:00 - Scott Wilkinson
That's right.

1:13:02 - Leo Laporte
Was there anything else? Or does that cover the waterfront for Mr Home Theater geek?

1:13:07 - Scott Wilkinson
That covers the waterfront for me.

1:13:09 - Leo Laporte
So great to see you. Please give my love to your wife, I sure will. And we're looking forward to two but Christmas, just a few months off.

1:13:17 - Scott Wilkinson
Two, but Christmas just a few months off, are you?

1:13:19 - Leo Laporte
going to do it.

1:13:20 - Scott Wilkinson
I am. I'm going down to LA to do two, but Christmas LA Awesome, and it's going to be great, awesome.

1:13:26 - Leo Laporte
So we will, of course, let everybody know about that as we get closer to the event, usually early December and December 3rd this year, sunday December 3rd.

1:13:37 - Scott Wilkinson
So we will certainly I'll certainly talk about it on on this show. I can't believe we're getting close to.

1:13:43 - Leo Laporte
Christmas. Can you believe it? It's Labor Day weekend. This is it. Summer's over. Back to work. Back to work. That's right. Scott Wilkinson, home Theater geek. Make sure you watch the Home Theater geeks. If you're a club twit member, if you're not, twittv slash club twit. Seven bucks a month. You get all of the shows ad free. You get Scott's show, you get hands on Macintosh with Micah and hands on windows with Paul. I mean so much great stuff. All those events, that Hugh Howie event coming up with Daniel Suarez this Thursday he gets out of black rocks.

I think he's going to get out. I think he will have some tales to tell.

1:14:20 - Scott Wilkinson
Let's put that in. That'll be fascinating.

1:14:22 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, might be worth tuning in just for that, just for that.

Twittv slash club twit and aunt is telling me in our uh discord, we want you to vote on the next book club book. If you're a Stacy Stacy's book club fan, good news Stacy's going to keep doing it. I know she retired from her podcasts, including this week in Google, but she does want to keep doing the Stacy's book club in our club. So four more days to vote, if you're in club twit, on the next book. We've always been here more perfect or the kaiju preservation society. That's always a lot of fun. Thank you, scott, my pleasure. Thank you. Oh, wait a minute. Now somebody tech Dino has has a question in IRC, says he wants you to answer. Uh, let me, let me go back and look and see if I can find it before we let you go. We are a full service podcast here, indeed. Um, what about?

1:15:27 - Caller 2
the question is what is the model of earbuds that Scott recommended?

1:15:31 - Leo Laporte
some months ago. I could have answered that one. So you recommended some inexpensive and good ear buds. Was it the one mores, or what was it that you?

1:15:39 - Scott Wilkinson
recommended One mores Certainly. Uh, you're talking about true wireless earbuds presumably.

1:15:44 - Leo Laporte
Um, I use one mores, um these are very inexpensive and you say under a hundred bucks, I think sound almost as good as the big boys.

1:15:54 - Scott Wilkinson
Oh yeah, oh, at least as good. Yeah, they're very, very good. So I go to that's what I, it's what I use when I go out on walks and whatever. So there you go, as a bot. Yeah, absolutely One, it's, it's the numeral one. And then M O R E yeah, dot com.

1:16:10 - Leo Laporte
And you could see. I mean they're all mostly under a hundred bucks. Yeah. And that's uh. That's pretty amazing for uh if. If they're as good as you say they are, and I know they are I bought some uh uh one mores on your recommendation and I had to agree. They were really spectacular sounding. Yeah, thank you, Scott Wilkinson. My pleasure, Home theater, geek, you're watching uh ask the tech guy.

Mike has the day off. We'll have some more calls, emails, questions at eight, eight, seven, two, four, two, eight, eight, four. In just a moment. This episode of ask the tech guys is brought to you by electric e-bikes. I like, you know, I like electric. We have electric vehicles. Uh, we love our segues. But in my opinion, after going through all the different kinds of electric vehicles, I think electric bikes are actually the sweet spot for mobility, comfort, safety. Normally they're very expensive, but electric e-bikes has great e-bikes, starting at seven, 99. Now I know it's labor day, but uh, let's make it an endless summer with electric e-bikes. Keep the good times rolling with electric XP three.

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A wide range of abilities and preferences Make every day feel like an endless summer vacation with an XP 3.0 from electric. Visit electric e-bikescom to learn more and explore the Epic models electric has to offer. L E C T R I C electric e-bikescom. They are really fun to ride after trying them all, even electric car I mean. Obviously if you're going hundreds of miles you need an electric vehicle. But just forgetting around. In fact, when I was in Rome, everybody in Rome rides a Vespa, right, and there's all that gas in the air. But I'm seeing more and more e-bikes in Rome. It's perfect for getting around town, it's just perfect, and so you know just kind of the natural way to ride around. I really love it. They do have an expedition battery, a dual battery that lets you go for long halls if you want to. All right Now. Now, my friends, we can go back to the calls. Let's go to main man Micah, our airplane enthusiast, hi. Micah.

I see him, so I know he's there. Yes, you should be able to hear me too.

1:21:20 - Caller 4
And I hear you. Hi, micah, hey Leo, thank you so much for taking my call. I was actually hoping to get on with Scott, because this question that I have might be something he can help me with as well. Shoot, I'm sorry. I tried to put a note in the chat room, but you know you guys are too busy to read all that stuff, yeah, but that's okay.

I've got a poltergeist in my bedroom where I have a number of IR receivers and a number of IR remotes. There have been two different times now where the IRs don't work, and it doesn't matter which device I'm using or which remote I'm using, they're just not working. I check the batteries. Batteries are fine. I make sure all the remotes are not touching one another and not pointing anywhere. Fine, I turn off all the lights, I pull the shade, so it's perfectly dark, nothing's happening, and that happens for a few hours or a few minutes or whatever. And then all of a sudden it all comes back. Wow, and I can't for the life of me I've done everything I can to troubleshoot and I can't for the life of me figure out what it might be.

1:22:26 - Leo Laporte
Are the remotes controlling different things?

1:22:29 - Caller 4
Yes, there are seven different remote IR devices in the room and there are eight different remotes. All of them stop working. All of them stop working, every single one of them, whether it's Wi-Fi radio or the sound bar or the TV or the cable box, all with different remotes. I can use the individual remotes or I can use the group remote that I have from Spectrum I hate to say that word.

1:22:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, spectrum's in the doghouse right now because you just lost all your ABC, disney and ESPN content.

1:23:01 - Caller 4
Yeah, but anyway it doesn't matter. And again, I've checked everything and I can't figure out what it might be or if you have any thoughts on what else I can do to troubleshoot.

1:23:11 - Leo Laporte
So the first thing to do is you know you can actually see the infrared light, I think with your iPhone. Do you have an iPhone or an Android phone? I have an iPhone. I'm trying to remember how you do this.

1:23:37 - Caller 4
I think it's something about taking a picture of it with the iPhone turned on, or maybe putting it in video mode and pointing it at the iPhone.

1:23:44 - Leo Laporte
You can use your camera app to make infrared light visible If your camera wants to. Okay, if you want to try it out, turn on your phone's camera, aim it at the remote, at the end where the light comes out, and look for a small light. Apparently, the IR is, while invisible to your eye, is not invisible to your camera. Now, if the back camera doesn't work, try the forward-facing camera. Sometimes this is a capability that not all sensors have, but that's the first thing to do.

1:24:17 - Caller 4
I'm trying it right now and guess what? It doesn't work.

1:24:23 - Leo Laporte
Okay. So what are the IRs working right now, or not working?

1:24:27 - Caller 4
Absolutely Everything's fine right now. It happened earlier in the week, but you can't see the light. It happened about two weeks ago, yeah, and where you I love it.

1:24:36 - Leo Laporte
I love this question, isn't it great? Now, you did the right thing because you pulled the blinds, because sometimes the sunlight can cause interference.

1:24:47 - Caller 4
Yep, and one of these times was at night, but I still pulled the shade so that no light was getting in from the outside. I turned off all the lights in the room, closed the door, made sure it was pitch black.

1:24:58 - Leo Laporte
Now one thing to be careful of. It sounds like do you have a lot of sun in that room, because direct sunlight on the infrared receiver can blind it, not sometimes permanently.

1:25:12 - Leo Laporte
I do have some light, but it's none of it shining directly in the room. Make sure it's not hitting the receiver right, but again, this the first time it happened. It was at night, it was totally-.

1:25:22 - Leo Laporte
The second thing to do is to take all but one remote out, yep and, and you know somewhere that it's not visible. Ir works, infrared works, line of sight, because it has to see the light, right.

1:25:34 - Caller 4
Take a Buried them under the blanket, put it in a bag. Yeah, exactly.

1:25:37 - Caller 4 / Leo Laporte
I took one out of the front. I made sure I'm not interfering with one another.

1:25:41 - Caller 4
Yeah, absolutely.

1:25:42 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, tried that. Scooter X is suggesting that if the key of one of them is accidentally stuck, it's IR signal will then prevent all the others from working as well.

1:25:58 - Caller 4
Yep, and that's why I took the batteries out of all of them. Oh, you did.

1:26:01 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, Wow, Okay Well yeah, Once you take the battery out, it's not emitting any light. Right, you got us a. You got us a good mystery. I like this. This is we need Sherlock Holmes here.

1:26:15 - Caller 4
So I and again it's. It's intermittent, I mean it's. It's only happened twice, but when it does. You know I'm I'm the first time. I was trying to go to sleep and I'm in bed and I'm turning everything off. You know, I hit the button and it shuts off the, the sound bar, and the TV, and and and the cable box. It wouldn't go off.

1:26:31 - Leo Laporte
So, you know, I Do we have an infrared remote here somewhere? I just want to see if I can get a picture of the light. We must have something. Yes, john's bringing me his infrared remote Just to see. Oh, we have a few. By the way, do we ever have trouble with these interfering with one another? No, all right.

Well, let me, um, see now I can't see any light there. But let's see if my, my camera can see. No, it can't. Let's see if the other side can see it. Let's see if I can point it there. No, it can't. Oh, yeah, see, I don't know if you can see that, but there is a slight. I could see the blinking, and that's on the front facing camera on this one. Let me try it with a, uh, samsung, just to add a curiosity, so I can see the light on the front facing camera on my iPhone. I can see that it's. It's actually, it looks like it's blinking, not very bright, but I can at least see it. Here is my Samsung. Let's see if I can see the. Yeah, I can see it pretty clearly in my Samsung on the on the back one. So, yeah, keep looking.

1:27:51 - Johnny Jet
Uh, I mean that's not going to help you. Maybe I'm in too bright a room right now. No, it works sometimes so.

1:27:54 - Leo Laporte
I don't know how that's going to tell you anything. But next time this happens Sure, you could. You could at least put it pointed at your camera and see if you see. It's not real bright, it's just a dim, but you could just see a dim flicker.

1:28:09 - Caller 4
But what's interesting is that I have like for my sound bar. I can operate the sound bar with either the remote from the sound bar, with the remote that works with time, water, that's the, you know, the complete spectrum, the full remote, or I can operate it with my TV remote because I have it keyed that way. It didn't work with any of them Very odd.

1:28:32 - Leo Laporte
Uh and I have a prankster friend, do you?

1:28:35 - Caller 4
No, no, and for my I have a C crane Wi-Fi radio that also has a great remote on it. I have two different remotes for it.

1:28:42 - Caller 4
I have the exact same model remote, but I have two remotes, one in one place, one in another.

1:28:47 - Caller 4
Neither one would work.

1:28:49 - Leo Laporte
You got us, you got, you've stumped, you've stumped everybody.

1:28:53 - Caller 4
I knew it would be a butte and I wasn't sure if there'd be a solution, but at least I thought you might find it interesting. Yeah, very interesting. It's not a printer question.

1:29:01 - Leo Laporte
But but, micah, you know if somebody will eventually send me an email or call in and say, hey, I know what it is. But I can't imagine you can build infrared jammers. That's why I asked if you had a prankster friend. It's possible to jam infrared. So I'm going to. Here's what I'm going to guess. There is something emitting infrared in your room, maybe a alarm clock, I don't know what, but there's something emitting periodically infrared in your room that's jamming everything. Be my guess, and it's obviously something you're not thinking of as a remote it's something else that's transmitting. That'd be my. I think that has to be, doesn't it?

1:29:45 - Caller 4
The only thing I can think of too. But you know, like I said, I've gone through it all and I thought you might have some other thoughts and love it, it's a beaut.

1:29:53 - Leo Laporte
Somebody will come up with something that's fantastic. I hope so. Thank you.

1:29:57 - Caller 4
Thank you so much. Always a pleasure to talk to you. My call.

1:30:01 - Leo Laporte
Any big airplane news these days.

1:30:04 - Caller 4
Well, there's always big airplane news. The latest airplane geeks podcast was about the disaster of the R 101 airship, which was a huge airship disaster that took place before the Hindenburg, killed more people, destroyed an entire, the whole British airship program, and nobody knows about it, so it was a fascinating story. We had an author that just put a book together about it, and that's the latest airplane geeks episode that came out on Wednesday.

1:30:30 - Leo Laporte
Oh, sounds great. Was it also a hydrogen airship?

1:30:33 - Caller 4
Oh, yes, for sure. Yeah, it was a big one. It was a big one yeah.

1:30:36 - Leo Laporte
Obviously.

1:30:39 - Caller 4
And then the other thing I'll tell you, which isn't quite airplane related, but I was a guest on the US Naval History Podcast. Oh, interesting, my grandfather served on a ship, the USS Memphis, which back in 1916 was picked up by a huge rogue wave off the shore of Santo Domingo. This was a huge cruiser and thrown onto the rocks by this wave, battered about and again, the greatest peacetime naval disaster in the history of the US Navy. Nobody knows about it. There was a group of survivors that I met when I was 12 and 13 years old, and when I was 20 years old they put me on the board, the executive board of this organization, and they're all gone. Now I'm probably the last member of this group, but nobody knows the history of this ship and I wanted to do my best to let them not be forgotten. So I was invited on this podcast and we had a wonderful conversation about it, the US Naval History Podcast.

1:31:33 - Leo Laporte
If you want to hear about the wreck of the USS Memphis, you know who's a fan of rigid airships is Daniel Swaritz will be on with the club on Thursday. In fact he in. Was it Swaritz, I think, or no. Maybe it was Neil Stevenson. It was in Neil Stevenson's terminal shock term right, wasn't it? Was there with termination shock? Were there blimps in that? Or yes? And he envisioned a future where we would travel by airship. Because you can make them safe, you don't have to fill them with hydrogen.

1:32:06 - Caller 4
Well, but it's not the hydrogen. There is an airship that's being developed called the airlander in I can't remember whether it's Germany or the UK and it's filled with helium and they think that it's going to be an airship. That's going to be for cargo and passengers. But the problem is the airships travel in the troposphere. They don't fly above the weather, so the weather is going to bring them down. The USS Akron and the USS Macon, two huge naval airships, weren't destroyed because they were filled with helium. They weren't destroyed because of the helium. They were destroyed because they got tossed around and thrown into the sea.

1:32:39 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's terrible.

1:32:40 - Caller 4
Okay, and that's what happens. And an airship this is my opinion and I have many people that argue with me about it, but I just don't believe that an airship is really going to be something that we will see long term, because you can't get around the weather Right, blimps are one thing, and they only fly in good weather, right, and. But a long distance airship, just you know, it can happen and it can work, but it was even the weather that destroyed the Hindenburg and probably would have brought it down if it, if it weren't for the hydrogen, because it was a weather that made it crash.

1:33:14 - Leo Laporte
Right. Hey, we've got one more thought from Dr Mom. She says space heaters and electric blankets can interfere with infrared signals.

1:33:27 - Caller 4
Thank God, I don't have either in my room.

1:33:30 - Leo Laporte
Damn, I thought we had it. This is the IR remote control jammer from Instructables, and you see it has a number of light emitting diodes here on the end. There are six different frequencies used by infrared, so a jammer has to actually jam on six different frequencies in order to work.

1:33:53 - Caller 4
That's like the. Have you ever heard of the device called the TV be gone?

1:33:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I love TV be gone, I think we had the inventor on our show way back in the day. It was years ago, but they still work. You go in a bar, you press a button, all the TVs go off.

1:34:08 - Caller 4
Or if you're in a doctor's waiting room or an airport, all those places where they have those things blaring. It's great, nice Thank you, micah.

1:34:17 - Leo Laporte
Thank you for giving us the puzzler of the week.

1:34:19 - Caller 4
We'll we'll see if we can help and thank you so much for having me on have a great day.

1:34:23 - Leo Laporte
Take care, micah, we'll see if we can, uh, think about that. Get our Sherlock Holmes caps on and try to figure out what's going on there. We'll have more in just a bit. You're watching. Ask the tech guy. Micah has the week off phone number eight eight eight seven. Two four. Two eight eight four. We welcome your calls. You can also use zoom. If you calltwittv that's the website Do that in your browser on any device. That should open zoom. Calltwittv. Emery is on the line on an iPhone. That's what it says anyway. Maybe Emery can tell us how the jammer is working. Emery, are you there? I believe on there. Yeah, can you hear me? I can't. Where are you calling from? Uh, griffin, georgia, beautiful, oh, we can see you too.

1:35:16 - Caller 2
Look at that I'm Lister and a first time caller, so excited to talk to you, welcome, and I don't think I can help you with your previous question. But I have what I think might be kind of a fun question for you. My wife and I are building a house, and so what considerations do I need to think about as we're building this house? As far as I know, you've spoken before about putting Ethernet in there. I currently have a mesh routing system and I'm pretty happy with that. But just kind of wondered, if you were building a house tomorrow, what thoughts would you?

1:36:00 - Leo Laporte
have? Yeah, and this is funny, because for years I would say, oh yeah, put Ethernet in. But Wi-Fi has really taken over and, as you say, with your mesh you're getting a pretty good signal. It's not so much of a problem, I think. If you wanted a future proof it, though, I would not put in any particular kind of cable, but I would put conduit in some of the areas, especially where you're going to have a TV set a TV set where I dated myself with that Do people call them TV sets anymore? A television display, your home entertainment system because even though Wi-Fi works great, it's nice to have hardwired in some places, maybe where your desks would be, if you've got a home office, or if you've got a student where their desk might be in their bedroom. Having conduit go to there is kind of an inexpensive, relatively way to future proof it, because you can always pull whatever wire you need. I imagine someday we'll have fiber in our homes everywhere and you'll, 20 years from now, be saying, gosh, I wish I had that 20 gigabit fiber coming out of my wall here for my super duper hollow deck room, and then you'll say, well, I could just pull it through the conduit. So that's the one thing I do.

We actually retrofitted our house. It wasn't built that way. It wasn't built with Ethernet, so we had somebody come in and run it down through the walls and so forth, and it's not so expensive. It's so horrible to do that, but I think if I were building it today, I'd probably put in a conduit. Now there are a lot of other things. I'm sure you're thinking about things like using a heat pump instead of an air conditioner and heater. You know, if you're building and starting, it's more expensive. We have retrofitted with heat pumps in our house and it was a very costly retrofit you might want to look at. You know, I'm looking ahead to the future, where power cuts are perhaps going to be common. Might be worth having a generator. There are great propane generators out there right now. That'll keep your house running. Or we put in Tesla power wall batteries. Same thing. I'm a big fan of solar Having power. Your own power is very nice.

1:38:15 - Caller 2
Yeah, we definitely had planned on that. I haven't looked into the Tesla power wall too much at this point. What's your experience been with that?

1:38:29 - Leo Laporte
It's expensive also there are thousands of dollars each. You have to have enough units to power the whole house. The reason we got it is because we do have a number of power cuts here because of wild fires and we have a well, so we need electricity to get water. You know, I can survive without the TV and the computer for a day or two, but I can't survive without water and toilets that work and things like that. So we decided to have the power walls as backup and it's at great expense.

Put in I think 60 solar panels and two power walls. It's a nice feeling. I don't know if it's economical. It's a nice feeling to know that I could live off the grid if I had to, because the power walls were charged during the day. But I have no negatives. We haven't had to rely on them particularly. They fail over automatically. So the one time that we noticed it, there was a millisecond or two between the failover, which was enough to kill some things like computers. I don't know if that might have been a firmware issue, because I haven't seen it happen since. And I think the funny thing is that we don't know when the power goes out anymore, because it switches over and we continue to operate and I suspect we've had more power outages and that there was no delay.

1:39:54 - Caller 2
You have a one power wall or two for your house.

1:39:56 - Leo Laporte
We have two. I should probably have gotten a third, because it's not only a 5,000 square foot house. The real issue is that well, which takes a lot of juice to start up, a lot of amperage to start up. Probably would have done better with three, but two has worked. Two would get us through the night with reduced use. Solar is great and again, whether it's economical is going to depend on your area and so forth. I suspect you get a lot of sun in Georgia but it's expensive still to put in solar. I love having it. I'm glad we did.

1:40:36 - Caller 2
But yeah, we're trying. We definitely thought about either, like you said, the generator or a Tesla power wall.

1:40:45 - Leo Laporte
Generator is much more economical and if your power doesn't go out a lot, probably a better solution. Yeah. Yeah.

1:40:53 - Caller 2
But the main thing?

1:40:54 - Leo Laporte
from a tech guy point of view, the main thing is that conduit run. When your installers do it, they'll run fishing If they don't tell them to run fishing line through it. So you have an easy way to pull cable through it.

1:41:05 - Caller 2
So at this point you wouldn't necessarily suggest a cat five or cat six cable or anything like that.

1:41:12 - Leo Laporte
No, because I think that that's changing. That's why you do the conduit. That means you could put anything in there If you're happy with the mesh. You don't ever have to wire it. But it's there and that's the main thing. Yep, sounds good. Hey, it's really nice to talk to you Now that you say that you found us. I hope you'll come back again. Alrighty, thank you Great. Take care, I'll see you guys next time. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.

1:42:42 - Voicemail
Hey, leo, scott Robinson calling from California. Scott, I just want to figure out. I need to get a DVR. It's for cable and I just want to know what DVR is the best one to get. I want to spend a lot of money, but I want to be able to record all this stuff and I don't know if DVRs require a subscription. I know some do, but I need some info, please help. Thanks, yeah, so I have.

1:43:08 - Leo Laporte
T-Vos. Now you said with cable. That's important. There are DVRs that do over the air and there are DVRs that do cable. The FCC requires your cable company to offer something called a cable card, and T-Vos, for instance, offers versions of the T-Vos DVR that take the card. It looks like it is a PCMCIA card, if you remember those. It's credit card sized card that has in it the chip that verifies that you are in fact a subscriber. It turns the T-Vos into a cable box. But you have to be able to get that from your cable company. So and they are, despite the fact that they're required to offer it, they are reluctant. You'll also pay rent for it and they may charge you a lot. So first thing is inquire from your cable company. Do you support cable card and if you do, how much is it going to cost me? But I have T-Vo devices. I think T-Vo probably makes the best DVR. They've been at the longest If you don't want to go with us. But it does require a subscription, either lifetime or month to month, if you don't want to go with a T-Vo.

There are some other companies that do this kind of thing. I think probably the best is the HD Home Run. Let me pull this site up. They also from Silicon Dust. Now I have to look and see if they support the cable card, because they were. They had offered something or said they were going to offer something. That did. And then, yeah, looks like they do. And this has six tuners in it, which is great. It means you can record six different shows.

The nice thing about the HD Home Run is you only have one device hooked up to the cable and then it's hooked up to your network, which means you can then use the Channel Master app iOS, android, windows, linux, mac, xbox and so forth I'm maybe not Linux To Roku to watch on any TV. So, in effect, you don't have to get multiple cable cards. We have a cable card for every T-Vo. That's kind of annoying. You only have to get one cable card for this Channel Master. Make sure you get the one that supports cable. It will record, or you can hook up a hard drive to it or attach it to a NAS, but it will also play content, including protected content, across the network, so you can watch it on an E-TV in the house. So that's probably the best idea, and I don't believe this requires a subscription. You might want to pay a subscription to get the Channel Guide. That's one of the things you're paying for often with these things.

So, to get the cable TV, you want the HD Home Run Prime, and they finally did ship it. It looks like. I was checking this every day for a year and they finally did ship it. So this Nope, they didn't ship it in development, I gotta. It's been in development now for three or four years, oh dear.

And it looks like, unfortunately, the cable companies are no longer required to offer cable card, which is very disappointing. So that means yes, you absolutely have to contact your cable company, the FCC, let them off the hook. Oh, come on, man. So check with your cable company first to make sure that they will offer a cable card. That's what lets you watch. The cable content is what says I'm a customer, these cable companies, I swear.

As I said, I think the cable companies already see the writing on the wall. Cable subscriptions are plummeting rapidly, the number of subscribers, and I think they finally have understood Comcast and Cox and Spectrum and the rest that they're really internet service providers. That's why their internet service costs have gone up and eventually I think that you'll get everything, what they call over the top over your internet, so this cable card thing will go away. Maybe that was the FCC's reasoning. I think they did it prematurely. So check with your provider to see they don't have to anymore, but many still do.

Verizon does, I know, comcast, or I think Comcast does my cable card still works. They haven't turned it off. I haven't tried to get a new one. We have one for every Tivo. That's how we had to do it. All right, I think it's time to go do a little traveling. Our traveling guy, johnny Jett. In just a moment he's been everywhere. Man, I'll do the Johnny Cash honors. He's Johnny jet, traveling guy, johnny jetcom. His travel newsletters are free from Johnny jetcom. You still do the YouTube and the Insta and the yes, insta not as much, but YouTube.

1:48:29 - Johnny Jet
I just started picking it up again.

1:48:31 - Leo Laporte
Good, you interviewed me, I know for your YouTube.

1:48:34 - Johnny Jet
I need to do it again.

1:48:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think it is. The is the locus, the heart of the Johnny jet operation.

1:48:40 - Johnny Jet
Definitely hey. Thanks to Google, I've had some stories go viral this week.

1:48:45 - Leo Laporte
All right, tell us about them. What are the big stories in travel?

1:48:48 - Johnny Jet
Well, what I'm sure you already just talked about. I missed the beginning of the show, but I'm sure you've been talking about spectrum. I heard a little bit just now.

1:48:54 - Leo Laporte
I just mentioned it briefly. Tell us what's happening.

1:48:57 - Johnny Jet
Well, I mean, this is just a personal thing, but I ended up making a newsletter out of a post and wrote it, put it in my newsletter yesterday. I'm just saying you know, this is one way I'm saving on for saving money for travel. I just saved over a hundred dollars a month by calling them up the other day when I found out that they you know, I tried to log on and see a ESPN they're like you know had a big notice on my, on my screen saying you know, sorry.

1:49:22 - Leo Laporte
They're at a TIF with Disney, which owns ABC Disney plus all the ESPN channels.

1:49:29 - Johnny Jet
Free form. I mean there's a lot of channels.

1:49:31 - Leo Laporte
They own it all national geographic, and at this point was it spectrum that said bye-bye Disney.

1:49:40 - Johnny Jet
I'm not sure the whole inside story, but I think Disney's the one that said you know what you know, take it. And they just they basically said sorry, we're pulling our stuff.

1:49:51 - Leo Laporte
And I've heard that this is not your usual carriage fight. You know this happens all the time where you know direct TV doesn't want to pay the extra money for a channel and says we're going to pull you and blah, blah, blah and eventually they, they work it out because people you know it always, by the way, seems to happen the week before NFL season. They before college football. College football began this weekend. Next week it's the NFL. It's interesting how that happens, isn't it? Yes, because they know people like Johnny will get very upset.

1:50:23 - Johnny Jet
I mean, listen, mike bill has been going up. It creeps up like every six months or so and finally I'm. This was like the camel that broke the straw.

1:50:30 - Leo Laporte
Can we agree that cable companies are the evil empire and we need a rebellion Cause?

1:50:36 - Johnny Jet
I was paying two, 33 a month. This is before the streaming services, and I've been meaning to call them, but you know they don't give you a callback option. You got to wait on hold. I waited over an hour on hold and I was fuming, anyway. Anyway, I got my bill lowered by over a hundred dollars. He gave me the highest wifi speed, internet speed, which I thought I already had, and through and peacock premium. So I wrote a post about it.

1:51:03 - Leo Laporte
It's real breaksmanship on spectrums part, because there is that risk that people will finally say time to cut the cord.

1:51:10 - Johnny Jet
screw you Well people are and I was ready to. It wasn't like I was bluffing, I was ready to cut it. I was going to YouTube TV, I was going to get a T mobile hotspot and I was just going to say see you. But you know, now I'm paying a hundred and $14, I think here's spectrums.

1:51:26 - Leo Laporte
Here's spectrums site. What happened to my Disney owned channels? Now, this is spectrums point of view. But essentially Disney and spectrum couldn't come to an agreement on what to pay. Spectrum says we offered Disney a fair deal, but they're demanding excessive increase. Disney, for their part, is hoping you will notice the lack of the US open college football, the NFL and we'll. We'll call spectrum and say what the heck is going on.

1:51:52 - Johnny Jet
They lost a lot of money. I mean the guy, the reservation guy or whatever you want to call him the agent. He couldn't be any nicer and we talked to fans.

1:51:59 - Leo Laporte
He knew what was going on. He knew it was like listen people are pissed yeah.

1:52:03 - Johnny Jet
And I was one of them and you know I got my bills. I'm saving a $1200 a year now, which is going right to my travel job.

1:52:10 - Leo Laporte
You should always do this Every year, make a note in your calendar, call the cable company and complain, because they'll. Often what you'll get is the retention expert, who will have some deals in her pocket that she can offer you Right. Here is, just to be fair, the Disney version of this. Keep my networkscom, where they're explaining what happened. So switch providers? That's their answer. Switch providers, no, I think. I think it's a brinksmanship on both parts, because we know Disney's losing a lot of money on their, on their Disney plus property. We know this is, this is. These are two troubled industries fighting over the last scraps of their dignity. It's sad.

1:52:59 - Johnny Jet
Yeah, I think spectrum is going to lose on this one.

1:53:02 - Leo Laporte
Well, usually that's what happens. They almost always come to a deal right before kickoff. Exactly, they'll solve this. But I think maybe it's time for us users to stand up and be counted and say you know what the heck with cable? We're going to cut the cord. It's not going to save you money. You're going to still need to buy internet from them. But I think it's time for me and there's some good services out there, like Hulu and YouTube TV. They'll give you your local channels If you have to have those. You know again, not to save money, but just to send us message to these rapacious cable companies. But what about?

1:53:40 - Johnny Jet
travel. Yeah, so the other. My other post that went really viral was I wrote a post saying now he desperately needs visitors, hawaiian Airlines offering $82. Wait a minute.

1:53:50 - Leo Laporte
No, wait a minute, Wait a minute. I know the Hawaiians are saying go away, stay home, I know.

1:53:57 - Johnny Jet
So you know, right after the fire, the government, maui tourism you know the Hollywood actors like joint the rock and Jason, whatever the guys, yeah, they're saying stay away. I wrote a post saying stay away from Maui, do not go, even stay away from Hawaii. And then a few days later, the government started changing their tune.

1:54:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Because you know why that's the number one resource for money. Yeah, tourism.

1:54:29 - Johnny Jet
So then I thought I was doing a favor. I wrote this post a few days ago. Hawaiian Airlines sent an email right when I was finishing my post, saying that we're putting flights on sale for $82 one way, which is unheard of to Maui. And this was Wednesday. This was this Wednesday. I wrote the post and I was like my God, we should go this weekend. I almost went this weekend. It was a 197 round trip to go Friday and come back on Monday.

1:54:55 - Leo Laporte
But when you get there, how friendly are Hawaiians going to be to you?

1:55:01 - Johnny Jet
So this was my big thing. I interviewed a local. One of my friends owns a business there. I talked to the Maui Visitors Bureau sorry, and they're all like we need people, tell them to come. People are, businesses are closing, but I could not get a native Hawaiian from Maui on camera to say please come. So I've been getting a lot of nasty comments and even gotten phone calls from people who I mean the last thing I want to do is cause more stress. I thought I was helping people by you know they're saying they need visitors.

1:55:36 - Leo Laporte
Well, there's a, there's a disconnect here, my, my physician. I was talking to my doctor, dr Pike. He was there for a conference at the new hotel in Kanapali I think the Ritz and Monday he said the winds were really strong, we could hardly walk. Tuesday, they look over and there's this glow coming from Lahaina. Everything was cut off Power, water. They didn't leave, they were stuck there for five days. But this is the reason I'm bringing this up. He said no matter where we went, dirty looks from the Hawaiians. They were not happy to have us there. And I still think that you're going to get those dirty looks if you go. And that's the problem. Now I guess I agree. Now I agree, yeah, if you stay in the resort, but the promise they're staffed by people who lived in Lahaina. He said everybody in the resort had lost their home in Lahaina. Of course they were angry, right? So I don't. You know, I understand that this is it. This is their chief source of money.

1:56:41 - Johnny Jet
Well, 80% of their money comes from tourism and actually today is the first day in Norwegian cruise lines going back to Maui. Today they're, they're, I'm waiting to find out how that goes over. But you know, they're saying definitely do not go near West Maui, you stay away from Lahaina, kana, pali, kapalua, you can't even go over there.

1:57:00 - Leo Laporte
But why is it? Okay, it's untouched.

1:57:02 - Johnny Jet
Why? Is fine, they're people.

1:57:03 - Leo Laporte
How about Hana? I love Hana.

1:57:05 - Johnny Jet
Yes, yes, they're saying go to Hana too, although hotel prices are still high, but there's a lot of vacancies. And I've read some articles that other people like New York Times they interviewed all these different restaurants and people are like we've been living here for 30 years. We were trying to get people to come here and work. Now we're telling people to stay home because there's not enough business you quote.

1:57:26 - Leo Laporte
Mike Bender is saying respect the, respect the West, but visit the rest.

1:57:32 - Johnny Jet
Well, actually that's, that's the Maui tourism slogan. Now I think Mike Binder who my buddy Mike, he lives part time in Maui, he owns the zip line in Kapalua near the Ritz and you know they shut down he's like, listen, I'll survive, it's fine, but you know he's going to go back. I think they're telling everyone, like October 17th.

1:57:52 - Leo Laporte
Remember this is right on the heels of two years of no tourism because of COVID. So this is really hard and I have such respect for the Polynesian culture, for the Hawaiian culture, for the native Hawaiians. We have done them dirt for years, centuries, and I understand that they want to protect what's left of their island home. I don't blame them.

1:58:22 - Johnny Jet
It's a sticky situation and I love, I love Hawaii.

1:58:25 - Leo Laporte
Now we have somebody in our chat room Big Island says of course we welcome tourists. Most Hawaiians are very welcoming. Of course that's on the Big Island, no, but even in Maui.

1:58:35 - Johnny Jet
they work too. It really depends on the person. Like you know, as a traveler, as an expert traveler, I know to go into places with an open, open heart and open head. You know you really got to adapt to their cultures.

1:58:50 - Leo Laporte
You never want to be one of these real no, that's one of the beautiful things about Hawaii is there is a culture there that's amazing, yes, and that deep Polynesian culture is a beautiful culture and fascinating, and that's one of the that's one of the things I enjoy. I really loved going to Hana because it was somewhat unspoiled and there really was a sense of going back to old Hawaii that I really liked. I'm not a fan of Waialaea.

1:59:15 - Johnny Jet
It's so built up and so different it's really become yeah, and I remember there in January we stayed in Waialaea, but we also stayed in Kana Pali at the beach.

1:59:23 - Leo Laporte
I love Zord, which now I'm just bought by Outrigger. I'm very sad about what's happened to.

1:59:28 - Johnny Jet
Lina, it's crushing. I mean I can't imagine what people are going through, but anyway, so that post went viral, I do have.

1:59:35 - Leo Laporte
So what's the conclusion is go or don't go.

1:59:39 - Johnny Jet
You know they're all saying go, but stay away from West Maui and go. With respect, you know, and, and, and you know there's going to be some, and also volunteer, send money, there's going to be. You know some of the restaurants will be short staffed, don't complain, um. And you know there's not going to be a lot of things going on, like Luaus.

1:59:59 - Leo Laporte
So just not a lot of celebration and, yeah, this is so important for their local their revenue, um yeah support the small businesses.

2:00:10 - Johnny Jet
Go and support the small businesses. Yeah yeah, so that's what they're saying, but it's very tempting Stay away from the West.

2:00:16 - Leo Laporte
Now it's Hawaiian airlines owned by a Hawaii. Is it a Hawaiian company? It feels like it is. It's definitely Hawaiian, you say. They say Aloha and Mahalo and they were.

2:00:26 - Johnny Jet
When you step on the plane, you feel like you're in Hawaii. I love it.

2:00:30 - Leo Laporte
So if they say it's okay, I guess, and then stay somewhere begging people, they're begging people. But yeah, Well, our good friend Becky Whirly who grew up in Maui, uh, and of course is ABC Good morning America anchor. Uh, went back to a line out to her home and is helping people out. Um, that's another thing you could do. I wonder if there is some sort of eco tourism you could go and help out and be interested.

2:00:58 - Johnny Jet
The Hawaiians that I've spoken to all say just send money to their Maui. Send money, yep, is the best thing you can do right now, but, yeah, tourism depends on it and there's a lot of, there's going to be a lot of difficult decisions.

2:01:09 - Leo Laporte
You say in your story that West Maui is losing $9 million a day in lost tourist revenue.

2:01:17 - Johnny Jet
Right, yikes, but you, but you can't put a figure on someone's life. And they lost so many friends.

2:01:24 - Leo Laporte
I like this. It's go visit, but it's not Disneyland. Go with respect.

2:01:29 - Johnny Jet
Right.

2:01:31 - Leo Laporte
I like that too. Uh and and thoughtful. Yes, I love Hawaii. I just uh never had anything but an incredible experience there, and I love Hawaiians I've been, I've probably been 30 times. Yeah. And for us on the.

2:01:45 - Johnny Jet
West coast, that's the place to go. Yeah, yeah.

2:01:48 - Leo Laporte
Right. Um, we have time for for tech, or no?

2:01:52 - Johnny Jet
Yeah, what else? So you know this. Uh, I think it was this week or last week Google came out. They have a new survey. They also released a new um product where you know if they're really confident in one of the flights that you're pricing out in Google flights, that they'll put a colorful price batch, colorful guarantee price batch, um saying that if you know they're so confident that that, that the price they're showing, that it will not drop, and if it does, they'll check the flight every day before departure and they'll pay you the difference via Google pay, where the pilot program.

2:02:29 - Leo Laporte
This is the price guarantee for some flights. Google pays you the difference of the price drops. That's nice, but it has to have that special colorful.

2:02:39 - Johnny Jet
It does. Is that it? Is this it? What does it look like? I don't um. You know I have a screenshot on my story. I'll pop it in the chat.

2:02:48 - Leo Laporte
Okay, Everybody just go to johnnyjetcom and uh, I'll just pop in a chat room, right now too. I already bought my tickets to uh, rhode Island. I'm going, uh, I'm going next week, actually a week from tonight. Good to see your mom. Good to see my mom, Yep.

2:03:05 - Johnny Jet
Great. Well, listen, even when I buy my flights, after I buy my flights, I use Google flights and I will put a fair alert on it. So if it drops significantly and you don't buy a basic economy ticket, you can then cancel that ticket, rebook and get a travel credit. And I've done that actually on United on a flight to Hawaii once, and we've I'm sure we just used it on that flight to San Francisco. That we did a few weeks ago.

2:03:29 - Leo Laporte
It is going to depend on the airline, though, right.

2:03:32 - Johnny Jet
It does, and you can't buy the basic economy tickets. But for Google flights, I'm pretty sure they're only using Alaska airlines, spirit airlines, I think, hawaiian actually, and it's only for flights departing from the U? S. Okay, so keep that in mind, but they also came out. What's interesting is that they have a new booking trend. They had one last year, but they changed it. So they're saying you know, the best time to buy Christmas flights is 71 days before departure. That's the sweet spot. And that's the date, which is October 12th, if you want to leave on December 22nd, which is a Friday here is.

And also they have a sweet spot for Europe anytime. And they say that is how many days? I think it's 72 days. You know I gotta read my own story, but anyway, it's April 20th. If you want to leave July 1st.

2:04:23 - Leo Laporte
Okay, this is good. This is good. By the way, you got this story from our friend Rich DeMurro. It looks like which one? The Google flight story? No, as rich tomorrow of LA's KTLA. As reported, the Google price guarantee is still in testing. No, you knew about it beforehand, but he says Google sent.

2:04:44 - Johnny Jet
Google sent it to me directly. I mean but listen, Rich, I am friends with rich and I get some stuff from him, but it did not get this one.

2:04:50 - Leo Laporte
Okay, Credit work. Credit is not due.

2:04:55 - Johnny Jet
And I love rich.

2:04:57 - Leo Laporte
Johnny jetcom. We love you, johnny jet, our traveling guy. Go there, read his articles, subscribe to the newsletter, check out his YouTube channel. There's going to be more stuff there soon. Thank you, johnny jet. Thank you, take care to talk to Lisa. Mahalo and Aloha. Bye, you're watching. Ask the tech guy. We have a few more minutes. What do you think, mr Producer man.

2:05:24 - Caller 2
Oh, daniel, on the phone, we can try that.

2:05:28 - Leo Laporte
I see Michelle came back. Should I try again with Michelle?

2:05:31 - Caller 2
I would suggest, let's try Daniel.

2:05:34 - Leo Laporte
Oh, okay, let's try Daniel and we'll see if we can get Michelle. We will check on Michelle first to make sure her audio is working. Daniel joining us. Star six to unmute, and welcome to ask the tech guys. Join us in the stargate.

2:05:51 - Caller
I don't know why.

2:05:52 - Leo Laporte
I called the stargate. Hi Daniel, where are you calling? From Fresno, beautiful Fresno, where it's a thousand degrees right now, I bet.

2:06:02 - Caller
No, actually it's about 78. Yeah.

2:06:05 - Caller 3
How nice yeah.

2:06:10 - Leo Laporte
I don't know why. But yeah, we noticed the same thing up here and Lisa's saying I don't know why, but let's keep it this way.

2:06:18 - Caller
It's been a couple of days It'll yeah, it'll start to work a little bit more, but hopefully the last of our 105 160 year gone.

2:06:27 - Leo Laporte
It was so hot this summer, daniel, what can I do for you, my friend?

2:06:32 - Caller
Well, I think I'm thinking about creating my, my iPhone 12,. Uh, to one thing announced a new one.

2:06:39 - Leo Laporte
There's a new one coming week, from week, from Tuesday, yeah.

2:06:44 - Caller
But I'm tired of buying all these charging cables.

2:06:47 - Leo Laporte
Well, good news, it's going to use type C yeah.

2:06:50 - Caller
Yeah Well, I'm actually trying to see if just going with wireless would be better.

2:06:55 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, I think Apple so Apple is doing type C now that shift from the uh lightning cable to type C only because it's kind of being mandated by the EU and Apple's kind of going oh all right if you insist. But truthfully, we've long thought that Apple's plan is to go fully. Why fully? Uh wireless? Not to have any openings on the phone. They got rid of the headphone jack, as you know, and they'd like to get rid of the lightning port or the type C port because it helps with uh, it helps with a waterproofing the phone. So I think the MagSafe solutions they've got are quite good. Now when you do get your phone, you use a case, probably right.

2:07:39 - Caller
Right, I'm using one of the Palakken cases.

2:07:42 - Leo Laporte
Yeah. So you should check to see if you can do MagSafe charging, that's their wireless charging through that case. For instance, this nice leather wallet case is too thick, so I mean a kind of sort of can. But you're really. Apple sells MagSafe cases. You know they're MagSafe cause they have that circle on the back. That's where the magnets line up, and if you have a MagSafe you could use a regular G charger and non MagSafe charger. The nice thing about the MagSafe is they attach very securely magnetically. So you just know and this is the only negative on wireless charging is when you put it on the wireless charger sometimes it's not charging, it slips off or it moves, cause it's just kind of wobbly. And so for that reason I think get the MagSafe compatible chargers, cause those really hold on tight and you know you're charging. You will very clearly know you're charging All cells of your items.

2:08:39 - Caller
That's one of the things that I was kind of kind of, you know, kind of worried about that too because of you know the placement, because I'm blind. I'm never sure if I would get you know then it's a must.

2:08:49 - Leo Laporte
Then it's a must because you can feel it, it'll, it'll, it'll grab it and you'll know it's in place. It even makes a sound. It'll let you know that it's charging. That's absolutely a must, even for those of us with sight. It's hard If you're, if you're blind, I think, absolutely get the MagSafe. And there's a third party, magsafe, as well. No, it is fast ish. It's thinking about this overnight.

2:09:16 - Caller 1
I think it's 15 watt, I don't think it.

2:09:18 - Leo Laporte
I don't think it's faster than that. I can't remember the exact speed. You should check. Apples will be faster than some of the third parties. For sure we use I have. Lisa loves her MagSafe charger, which is a little stand. She charges her watch and her stand at the same time. That's from a nomad, nomad case. Is it nomad casecom? It's nomad they. They make a very nice one. There are a lot of very nice MagSafe chargers from Apple and others. Apples are always going to be a little more expensive but you know you're already buying the most expensive phone on the market. Probably rumors are there's going to be a bump in the price on the on the top of the line iPhone 15s. We will see a week from Tuesday.

2:10:05 - Caller
Let me ask you something else. I use an app called well, it was a be my eyes, yes, and now they switched it over to be my AI Right, and they're using artificial intelligence to be able to describe pictures even in more detail than than they were before. You can actually ask a question and you can say you know, if it's a picture, say, um, and while Disney world and you've got the castle in the background, you can ask it from our details and it actually will go out and describe in detail what's in the picture. So I've been wanting to ask you about this.

2:10:44 - Leo Laporte
I wanted to talk to a be my eyes user. Be my eyes is such a great idea, but it used humans, so you would open be my eyes and you might have to wait a while for a human to say, yeah, I'll volunteer, I'll let you see what you're looking at. Now they're using AI. What's your experience been? Has it been pretty reliable?

2:11:03 - Caller
It's been pretty reliable and the details that it can give is impressive, and you're not, and you don't have to wait now right For a human to get on the line Right.

Yeah, yeah, and I don't know what it is. If it's, you know just the quality of the cameras on the iPhone, but I mean it's reading like monitors. You know screens and keep television screens. Just just out of curiosity, the other night I did a. I was flipping through the channels and I took a picture of my, of my TV and it was on this pro wrestling show. It could tell that they were pro wrestlers. They could describe the audience. They described what they were wearing the little logo on the mat. I mean it was just. It was. It was amazing.

2:11:49 - Caller 1
That was like.

2:11:50 - Caller
I've never been able to grow down to a. You know a. You know a. You can't do a detailed and give you that is fantastic.

2:11:58 - Leo Laporte
That is so good and this is a free service. Um, you know, if you're blind, uh, you absolutely have to have this on your iPhone or your Android phone be my eyescom. Uh, and now and I was very curious I saw that they were using AI and I thought that if that works, that's revolutionary, because now unlimited number of people can use it. You don't have to have volunteers to help. So it was pretty cool to volunteer for be my eyes. That was a really fun.

2:12:25 - Caller
Yeah, I mean you can do a little more with that If, if you have, you know, the camera, you have trouble getting the right angle on a picture or whatever it's nice to be able to do the video and in human you can ask him questions and, and, and and drop down a little bit better probably than the AI, Although I have to say the one thing I do, the one thing I do wish it would do and it was doing it before, but it's not anymore. And that's describe people you know. So probably for privacy, what people?

I'm wondering if that's, I'm sure that's what it is, yeah, yeah.

2:12:58 - Leo Laporte
Cause it certainly has the capability Um there's no question about it.

2:13:02 - Caller
I just wish there was a way of getting a say like an exemption for people who are you know we don't get the same information that everybody's side of person gets you know in a picture because of that you know.

2:13:15 - Leo Laporte
So you wanted to say you wanted to say, oh, he's got a big red beard and, uh, he's wearing sunglasses and that kind of thing. Yeah.

2:13:24 - Caller
Yeah. That would be nice yeah. Uh, but I mean I get it People. Some people don't like that, but especially.

2:13:32 - Leo Laporte
AI. They're really sensitive about that, which is odd because, yeah, honestly, ai is more privacy focused, because it's just a machine. It doesn't keep track of it. Um human, you know you're, but I guess that's just how they're going to do it.

2:13:50 - Caller
Um, and it's, you know, really detail oriented. It's not, you know, is this person pretty or ugly or whatever? You're not asking for value judgments, right.

2:14:00 - Leo Laporte
Although I guess you could with a human, couldn't you?

2:14:04 - Caller
Hey, you think I should ask her out.

2:14:06 - Leo Laporte
Tell me, what do you think Is she?

2:14:08 - Caller
I mean with with the AI. It would be better because you would get detailed, you know values, but that's it.

2:14:15 - Leo Laporte
I never thought of that, but I think that's probably a privacy, uh concern.

2:14:19 - Caller
Yeah.

2:14:20 - Leo Laporte
I just think these guys are doing a great thing. They have had uh. According to the website, over the span of the app, 6.8 million volunteers have helped 525,000 blind and low vision users see in 150 countries in 180 languages. But adding AI just really makes it even more accessible. I think it's, especially if it's accurate. That's the real key. It has to be accurate too.

2:14:50 - Caller
Well. I mean, like I said, the details are impressive. I was kind of surprised that you were doing a slow rollout of the AI feature.

2:14:59 - Caller 3
Yeah.

2:15:00 - Caller
And, uh, I just got it a couple of days ago, nice, so I've been playing with it a lot and and, yeah, I mean it's amazing.

2:15:08 - Leo Laporte
What a world. There's a really good example. You know, for all the negatives I and others have, you know, mentioned about AI, this is a really great use of it. That's fantastic. It's using a chat GPT for, which is very, very smart. Hey, daniel, a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for listening to the show. Okay, thanks, have a great day. Take care you too. Bye, I don't want to pick up another call because it's so late in the day. I think we're. I hate to say it, I think we're done. I think we're done. Don't you hate it when the show ends? I do. Well, we'll come back next week and we can talk some more.

We do the show. If you want to call in live, we do the show every Sunday from 11 11 am Pacific time, cause we never can quite start 11, 11, 11 am Pacific time to 130 Pacific. So that translates, let's just say, from you can come in a little bit early, wouldn't hurt? Wouldn't hurt? Maybe we would start early. That's 2 pm to 5 pm Eastern time, that's 1800 UTC, and so if you want to call live, that's the time to do it. On Sundays, the live stream, if you want to watch live, is livetwittv. You saw already. You can call that twittv to zoom in live. Now I should mention, if you call our phone number during any other time of the week 888-724-2884, you can leave a voicemail, like we just did and that, I think, was Scott. That way you can leave a question and we'll do more voicemails. We'll do more emails to ATG at twittv.

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Don't forget to join the club club Twitter seven bucks a month, lots of benefits. Twittertv slash club to it helps us out, helps us keep the show going. What else? Anything else I need to mention? Thursday on the club Hugh Howie and Daniel Suarez. That should be amazing for our friends at Burning man, including Corey Dr O, rebecca Giblin. Stay safe. Save some crackers for tomorrow. I hope you get that soon. We'll see y'all next time. Have a great geek week. Bye.

2:18:49 - Jonathan Bennett
Hey, we should talk Linux, see operating system that runs the internet, but the game console, cell phones and maybe even the machine on your desk. You already knew all that. What you may not know is that Twitter now is a show dedicated to it, the untitled Linux show. Whether you're a Linux pro, a burgeoning sisit man or just curious what the big deal is, you should join us on the club twit discord every Saturday afternoon for news analysis and tips to sharpen your Linux skills. And then make sure you subscribe to the club twit exclusive Untitled Linux Show. Wait, you're not a club twit member yet. We'll go to twit.tv/clubtwit and sign up. Hope to see you there.