Ask The Tech Guys 2012 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 time for Ask the Tech Guys. Leo Laporte, over here coming up, we're gonna talk to a guy who wants to buy 4-Max just to preserve his privacy, is he crazy?

0:00:10 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, boy, and I'm Mikah Sargent. We also talk about generally lowering tech anxiety and how to keep yourself from wanting to tweak every part of your device all the time.

0:00:20 - Leo Laporte
Calm down. Then Chris Marquardt, our photo guy, shows us some sparkling images. It's all coming up next on Ask the Tech Guys.

0:00:31 - VO
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This. Is TWiT.

0:00:37 - Leo Laporte
This is Ask the Tech Guys with Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte, episode 2012,. Recorded Sunday, february 18th 2024. The radioactive priesthood. This episode of Ask the Tech Guys is brought to you by Wix. Web agencies. You're gonna love this one.

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It's time for Ask the Tech Guys. Hello Mikah Sargent, hello Leo Laporte, I see you don't have a vision pro on.

0:02:15 - Mikah Sargent
The vision pro is not on my face, it's in a box and it's going back. It better have gone back. Well, I've got until February 29th to send it back. Oh, I thought it was only two weeks, isn't it wild? This is an interesting pro tip. If you well and this, of course, depends on the product but if you go online and you mark it for return, the company gives you a period of time to get it back to the delivery service, to ship it, and so it just has to be in the companies, in whatever shipping service you're using, hand by February 29th. It will go back long before February 29th, you could?

0:02:48 - Leo Laporte
be still wearing it Exactly If yeah, I know it's your not.

0:02:52 - Mikah Sargent
No, I'm not wearing it. We finished our because we did a lot of different videos and content about it. Yeah, we did a ton of stuff Question and answer and finally, on Thursday, we did the kind of post hype review of the Apple vision pro, spending two weeks with it and kind of getting a final judgment call for how I was feeling about it and who I felt it was for, et cetera, et cetera. I don't have to watch that. Yeah, so that will be coming out very soon. Anthony, of course, is working his magic on it and, yeah, it was an interesting time, but it was time for it to go back to the Apple vision.

0:03:32 - Leo Laporte
We weren't going to let you keep it, even if you want.

0:03:33 - Mikah Sargent
Exactly yeah, it was going back, no matter what. Yeah.

0:03:36 - Leo Laporte
This is the show where you answer your tech questions mostly. 888-724-2884 is the phone number. Questions are live right now. When we're not on the air, you can leave a message, but right now, if you call, you will get into the lobby waiting to get put on the air.

0:03:51 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, and if you are on the phone, when you are brought on to actually ask your question, remember to hit star six, so that way you can unmute yourself Moving along. Calltwittv is the URL, the URL that you could go to on your phone, your computer, wherever, to be able to join the Zoom. That is an opportunity to have your video and audio brought on and you'll be able to ask your question there. We just ask that, wherever you are on your phone or your computer, you look toward the bottom of the screen and you find the little place that says raise hand and you tap or click on that. That lets us know you have a question that you're not just hanging out. And then the other way to get in touch with us is our email. At twittv you can send us an email with audio, video or just text, and we will answer your questions that way too.

0:04:50 - Leo Laporte
So it is a call-in show. We definitely want to hear from you, but we also like to chit chat. I only see Mikah once a week. This is our big opportunity. This is our time to hang out. We'll try to keep the chit chat to a minimum. It's funny. I've been alive with Regis and Kelly for many years. I did it for about 12, 13 years and you never would know how much time you were going to get in your segment. I would go with a bunch of gadgets. It all depended on how long the host chat went. Where Kelly and Regis. Now it's Kelly and her husband Mark. But at the time when I was doing this, kelly and Regis, how long they would talk, and sometimes it'd be 10 minutes. Sometimes they'd go for half an hour and you'd just be watching the clock and watching your segment go shh shh, shh as they talked, so I hope that our good friend Chris Marquardt isn't doing this right now.

Chris will be coming up in just a little bit. Our photography guy Sparkle was the assignment. And I submitted a sparkly picture, so we'll see. I don't know if you'll. You know, I don't like to submit pictures because I don't want to use my influence, right.

0:05:55 - Mikah Sargent
Hey, if you want to come back on the show, you better make sure my photos.

0:05:59 - Leo Laporte
If you ever want to appear again. No, no, no, chris wouldn't do that, no, so wait. We did cover topic number one. I mean, look, if I gave you $3,500 right now, would you keep the? Uh, not me. I feel like, yeah, you know they. There have been stories about returns of varying amounts. Some people say more than usual, but that's very anecdotal because Apple's not going to tell us Right. Some people say less. Bloomberg says about normal, maybe a little bit above normal, just really varies.

0:06:28 - Mikah Sargent
Uh, you know, it's hard to call what's normal. Normal, though, when there's so few of them in comparison, and there aren't as many out there in the first place. So the number of returns is that's a little odd.

0:06:40 - Leo Laporte
I think a lot of people would if they weren't going to use it. Sell it on eBay probably make money yeah.

0:06:46 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's a good point too, because it's somewhat in demand.

0:06:50 - Leo Laporte
So I think, uh, you know that's not one way, that's not really a way to judge it. I think the way to judge it will be to watch over the next six months. Is the number of articles about it dwindle? The number, the amount of interest in it dwindle? There are going to be some people who are just crazy about it and some uses in surgery or whatever, where people will stay. This thing is a life changing, but I don't, I don't see the world changing over the next six months.

0:07:13 - Mikah Sargent
No, and to, to, to pull it out and look at this from sort of a little bit of a meta perspective. I have found it really fascinating and it I always come back to this sort of general understanding of human behavior whenever it comes to, uh, technology reviews and technology reporting. Uh, seeing the reactions to people who say, as I did, this thing causes me physical pain and mental distress and so I do not want to wear it. And uh, I've seen other people who say this and I want to make you aware that the 30 minute demo gives you all of the highlights with none of the potential uh concerns that you would have. You really need a little bit longer to try this, and the number of people who just lose their mind and anger that someone says this thing hurt me is kind of wild to me it is surprising, isn't it?

It's wild to me.

0:08:09 - Leo Laporte
You're experiencing, the first time ever in your life, the wrath of Apple fanboys, and it can be brutal, I agree.

0:08:17 - Mikah Sargent
I just yeah and ultimately, um, it is. I've my metaphor for this. I'm holding to. This metaphor is that the Apple vision pro is like the first space suit that got us onto the moon. This is a good analogy, actually, and I really I that's how I feel about it. It was not a comfortable thing, it was hard to move around in, but I'm on the fricking moon so it's super cool. I just can't be in that space suit for very long.

0:08:44 - Leo Laporte
Did you see, uh, mark Zuckerberg's? Yes, I saw a video uh, saying well, the you know the. The bottom line is well, the meta, the meta quest three, is one seventh of price and it's just a better VR experience period, he said. He may not be wrong. I don't know. Yeah, personally, my problem is not the Apple vision pros not as good as the meta. My problem is I don't want to put anything on my head, and it sounds like you're along with me in that camp of people and there are some percentage of people who just find it uncomfortable.

0:09:17 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, uncomfortable, little daunting, and it's not how I want to do computing.

0:09:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Fortunately we don't have to. Exactly, we have the choice not to how nice and if you and I have no problem that somebody loves it, that's great, it's you know yeah, exactly, that's the thing, right.

0:09:32 - Mikah Sargent
Ultimately, it's not shaming the people who think that it's great and who enjoy it, and I'm glad that it's able to be something for someone, because I want anyone who spends that much money on something to if they're going to keep it. I hope you really like it. I hope you're not keeping it out of some strange like pride or some sort of strange.

0:09:51 - Leo Laporte
Well, I imagine there's a certain amount of that. You spend $3,500 for something and you go crazy about how great this thing is. You can't. It's hard to back down at that point. You got to, you got to keep it around the they. There were vision pro cameras capturing immersive video at the NBA slam dunk contest. So the NBA jumped on this early and so there will be at some point. I don't know if it will be an app or or what, but there'll be some, you know, stereoscopic slam dunk stuff. For people who are NBA fans, that's good news. I think. So far everything is kind of gimmicky. It's like oh, that was fun.

0:10:29 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, it does feel there are all of these little toys in the toy box For the thing, yeah, makes you go oh, I have to use this, I must have this. And I thought you know, there were a few times as we made clear that we go oh, that's the killer experience, oh, that's really the cool experience, oh, they're very cool stuff, but it's, it's, yeah, it doesn't outweigh again the cons, in that sense, I guess.

0:10:54 - Leo Laporte
I've been burned because I've been saying that for 20 years. Every time I put on one of these things like, oh my God, this is amazing, it's good, and then I go, yeah, but I'm about to throw up. Yeah, but I, you know, I noticed I don't use it that much after I bought them all, believe me, except for the Vision Pro and I just I never use them.

0:11:12 - Mikah Sargent
There's some sort of operant conditioning happening.

0:11:14 - Leo Laporte
I accept that it could be me. Could be me, you and other people, but there's going to be other people like you.

0:11:20 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and I was ready to be. Just well, that's the thing. I was really ready to be blown open. I was open.

0:11:26 - Leo Laporte
I didn't poison you. No, no, no, because.

0:11:28 - Mikah Sargent
I wanted to be excited. I really did. I thought you know Apple's going to nail this. It's going to be great, it's going to be different, it's great. And I? It was very fair in saying that there were experiences that were truly amazing. Yeah, but when you're being stabbed in the temple while you're experiencing something truly amazing, it doesn't make it truly amazing.

0:11:49 - Leo Laporte
Apple is going to get a half billion dollar fine in the EU for antitrust. This is not the digital markets act. This is not the newer stuff that Apple's being investigated by. They're going to have to pay a five million euro fine for stifling competition, again in Apple music. Oh, and if you think about this, this kind of makes sense. According to the Financial Times, it's a complaint from Spotify saying look, we can be on the iPhone, but we have to give them 30% of any subscriptions you buy on the iPhone. That's why we no longer offer that option. You have to go to Spotify to get it.

Apple has its own music app. The advantages Apple gives it. It's pre installed. You have to install Spotify. The 30% obviously goes right back into their pocket. They don't pay 30% on music, which means the music that they play for you costs them 30% less. Right, and um, uh, you know they have advertising, they have promotion. They've definitely. I mean, there's no question. If you use an iPhone, apple music is the favorite choice. Spotify says that's anti competitive and even though we don't sell in the app store, that's an opportunity cost for us because we would probably sell a lot more subscriptions. But we're not gonna because we don't want to give you 30% or 15%. So, um, the EU says there's merit in that and we're going to charge them half a billion. Now, apple can afford half a billion, right? Maybe that's just the cost of doing business. Maybe that's the 30% one time.

0:13:21 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, how does the EU? That's a good question?

0:13:24 - Leo Laporte
probably not, probably. Apple has to pay 500 million euros and change its behavior. This just came down this weekend, so we'll we'll pay attention. I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen with that. Congratulations to my friend, kevin Rose. He sold his moonbirds. Kevin formed a company called the proof collective that had, um, uh, this. You know these NFTs cartoon moonbirds sold $50 million worth to people, to suckers, who you know, I don't know what $2 million of nothing.

Nothing you bought. You bought nothing. Literally bits Um, and now we don't know how much. You collapsed. The creators of the board, apes Yacht Club, bought it. I'm going to think it was a fire sale. I don't understand.

0:14:12 - Mikah Sargent
Half of the words you're saying is the. I know it just sounds. Can you imagine some alien transmission or alien reception? Yeah, I think I've watched it. You, you got moonbird. It's just like NFTs. Exactly, exactly.

0:14:28 - Leo Laporte
Well, anyway, uh, good on Kevin. So you know he didn't own it outright. There were other partners. But 50 million plus whatever he got paid in the end of it Good work grifters.

Good job, good job. Speaking of grifters, uh, the standard performance evaluation corporation, creators of the spec benchmark, have withdrawn 2,600 of their results 2,600 of their results testing Intel's Xeon processors last year, in the year before the spec CPU 2017 test because, after investigation, spec found Intel had cheated. Intel used compilers that were, quote, performing a compilation that basically looked and said are you running a benchmark? Okay, here we go. Wow, this is giving Volkswagen.

0:15:20 - Mikah Sargent
This is very much like dieselgate, but it's not even the first time it's happened, right.

0:15:26 - Leo Laporte
So benchmarks, you know, I've always said don't trust, don't trust benchmarks.

0:15:30 - Mikah Sargent
but it was never. We weren't saying that because of this thing, this is, this is bad. Yeah, intel have anything to say in return, or they keep them quiet about it?

0:15:39 - Leo Laporte
I haven't. Let's see. I've got a PC world article where I read this see if Intel has a response. What is Intel's response? Looks like nothing. I don't see a. I don't see a response. Maybe they haven't asked. Anyway, uh, I will report the response when it emerges. Probably they say hey, I didn't do it, I don't know what you're talking about, what proof you got.

And finally, here's a good one Amazon. They've been, you know, been hit over labor relations, the violating labor relations. A lot of companies Starbucks allegedly does this to, apple does it where they kind of do things that are against labor law to prevent unionization. And Amazon has been fined and accused of doing this by the National Labor Relations Board, which has been around for 88 years to enforce laws these aren't. They're not making up laws, these are enforced laws. Amazon is so mad they filed on Thursday with the court saying that's unconstitutional. Your honor, wow, they're trying to get the 88 year old National Labor Relations Board dissolved Because it's unconstitutional, violating the separation of what is it, the checks and balances.

I'll tell you what it's violating. It's violating the right of companies to get as much money as they can, no matter what they say. It violates articles one in three of the constitution and your honor, as well as the fifth and seventh amendments, so where they intoxicate Elon Musk has also said this, by the way, so you?

0:17:24 - Mikah Sargent
know you're in good company.

0:17:26 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, anyway, that's too bad. Maybe you know it would be cheaper. Just to you know, give your employees more money and better breaks, you know, keep this in court I got I was last week, I was sitting, I was doing Windows. Week leave is kind of bored and I'm not that into Windows, right Right. I got a text message. I thought, oh, maybe there's something. And it was hey, you want to take a survey? I said yeah, whatever. Take a survey. I'm not doing anything.

I'll take a survey. I'm just sitting here, I was on my phone and it starts off what do you think of this company? Apple and Intel and charts, all these different companies. The fine account Hones down on them. What are you thinking of Amazon? And then I'd finish it, and then it says you want to take some more questions, and they're all about Amazon, right? Do you think Amazon is an unfair employer? Do you think Amazon takes good care of its employees? Do you think Amazon is an innovator? Amazon's really trying to figure out? Is this hurtness? Oh wow, is this hurtness? Are people? Are people especially I'm an Amazon Prime subscriber are Amazon's subscribe subscribers going? Maybe I don't want to do business with this company anymore. They're worried. Hmm, that's interesting, they're worried. Anyway, I was just bored. I was doing a show, so I didn't finish it.

0:18:37 - Caller
All right.

0:18:38 - Leo Laporte
Enough of us chitty chatting along here. Chitty, chitty, bang bang. I would really. You know what? We have an email that. What is his new name? It's not boy genius. I don't know what you're talking about what's his new name? Oh yeah.

0:18:51 - Mikah Sargent
Producer to the stars. Producer to the stars.

0:18:53 - Caller
John Ashlet.

0:18:55 - Leo Laporte
That sounds like a little bit of a backhanded compliment.

0:18:58 - Mikah Sargent
For me. I wish Producer to the stars. I wish, oh that yes.

0:19:03 - Leo Laporte
I wish you guys were anything but B level players in an industry that's dying. I wish, if only.

0:19:11 - Mikah Sargent
I'm going to take a survey. I'll be back. I left something in the microwave while you're back.

0:19:19 - Leo Laporte
I once had somebody tell me you're nothing but a low level star on a minor cable channel that nobody watches. Yes, you're right, Congrats.

That's very good, good observation. Thank you for that insight. This comes from Andre, andre. Andre M Seeking professional advice. Well, that's you. There For advanced, because I'm not obviously a professional For enhancing tech usage efficiency. This is a really interesting question. I think that's why John Ashlet pulled this Genius producer to the stars. I hope this message finds you well, says Andre. I'm reaching out to seek your professional advice regarding a matter that affects my everyday tech usage. Well, that's us.

I find myself constantly compelled to meticulously examine and adjust all settings on my various devices due to what I believe to be tech related obsessive compulsive disorder, or trocta, tracha, tracha, tracha. Although striving for perfection in my device configurations, I'm aware this may be an inefficient use of my time. My research indicates that software coding often falls short and privacy may not be adequately protected. I'm considering your expertise in the tech industry. I kindly request your assistance in persuading me to move away from incessantly examining my device settings and instead encourage me to embrace and enjoy the seamless functionality of my devices. I love you, andre. Your valuable insights and guidance in this matter would be highly appreciated. Thank you for your time and consideration.

We have a phrase for this. Actually, we have many phrases for this In the E-Max world. You know E-Max is a text editor. It's been around for 50 years or something written by Richard Stallman and I use it. I'm like a major fan, but it really lends itself to tweaking. I mean, really lends itself to tweaking. It's hard. Not a day goes by for many people that they don't Do something, make a little adjustment.

Add a little code here, a little library there, and it's gotten so bad in the E-Max world. E-max is from the GNU project right, and their mascot is a yak. They call it yak shaving.

0:21:25 - Mikah Sargent
I love it.

0:21:26 - Leo Laporte
Yak shaving Don't yak shave Show time and really honestly, you're shaving the yak anytime you're spending energy. But I see I also have a theory about this. Maybe you know how. There's a whole bunch of technologies for getting things done and we've had to do this forever. But then, all of a sudden, dave Allen came along. David Allen, he created the Getting Things Done and you create. You know how the methodology for that is. You create 43 folders and you know a little bit of little folders, and then there's a. It's complicated.

0:21:59 - Mikah Sargent
It's very complicated. You have to learn the whole process before you can even get anything done.

0:22:02 - Leo Laporte
And then by the time you learn the process, you go. You know, maybe I'll try the other one.

0:22:05 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, oh, this one's cool, so let me go over here Zettlecast what I notice yeah, zettlecast is the new one, right?

0:22:11 - Leo Laporte
Or PKMS Personal Knowledge Management System. What I notice is, instead of getting things done, people spend a lot of energy getting the system to get things done done. When I was in college, I made a. I had a giant. I got a giant piece of probably I don't know drywall or something, bulletin board stuff and a thousand texts in every color and I drew my entire week schedule. It was five feet tall and this wide and I put different colored thumb tacks in every portion. It took me days, days to get this whole thing beautifully set up. I'd seen somebody else do it. I thought, oh, that's great, that'll cause I could never get anything done in college. That will get me, cause I'm very ADD. That will solve my problem. Yeah, beautiful thing. Never it was that was it?

0:23:00 - Mikah Sargent
You made the monument, I made the monument, and then it just served as like a guilt totem.

0:23:05 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's the other side of it, right? Then you feel bad cause you made the monument, but you know it doesn't help you at all. So I don't know. These are just. I bet you've done a few things. You're a little OCD in here.

0:23:15 - Mikah Sargent
So a lot of this boils down to what's called avoidant anxiety, and essentially, when we feel anxious about something, we don't like to feel anxious about things, and so we will pull ourselves from that and focus on something else. And so, in the case of of tasks, getting tasks done, it's why some people talk about how their house is suddenly clean because they had a big project that they were supposed to be working on. Instead of doing the project you're supposed to be working on, it's like oh, suddenly that laundry that I haven't done yet really feels like a good thing to do. You get anxious about it, and so you go do something else that will take your mind off of it.

0:23:55 - Leo Laporte
Every writer I know has done this. Yeah, absolutely. I knew a writer who would use Windows but he would make sure to take off a solitary and Minecraft and every possible distraction. And there's even writers now who have simple computers with just a screen, but really that's treating the symptom Exactly.

0:24:13 - Mikah Sargent
That's not getting to the root of it and the root of it is the root. Of Vega is truly sitting with that anxiety and feeling it and understanding it and, in some cases, pushing through it If it comes to true diagnosed. It's why I'm careful not to say that I'm sort of OCD.

0:24:30 - Leo Laporte
Some people are actually literally OCD.

0:24:32 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, genuine OCD, that's a whole other thing that requires a lot of work and a lot of therapy and everything that's involved with that to kind of get it under control. But I think that what's interesting is there's almost a fatigue that can happen and I think that that's something that I recognize in myself and maybe you recognize in you where maybe we once were the people who did so much of that. Every single setting needs to be this way and that needs to be that way.

But you do it for so long that a fatigue kind of sets in and it's like you know what I'm going to let the system do what it does. Just the other day I can't remember what show you were doing, but I saw a conversation going on in the Discord that you were involved in where somebody was talking about oh, it was about smartphone batteries, and the person claimed that they had a bucket full of smartphones whose batteries had swelled. I doubt it, but you had mentioned that. You know that whole battery management thing these days is really just a waste of time in almost every case.

0:25:36 - Leo Laporte
My am, it's the old. Let go and let God. Yeah, let go and let jobs Almost always. You know, in the early days of Windows you spend a lot of time defragging your hard drive and tweaking your configuration.

Yes, it was a big thing, and maybe in the early days of Windows it was such a rocky operating system you kind of needed to do that you don't need to anymore. Right, we've matured enough that you don't need to mess around, and you probably should look at the underlying causes for this as opposed to saying well, the technology really needs my tweaking. I think it's a way of averting, it's a way of avoidance, as you said, avoiding doing what you need to do. There's a wonderful book which I really like by a guy named Neil Fiore he's a psychologist called the Now Habit. There's a lot of these books, by the way.

If you really want to procrastinate, start reading all the books about how to ending procrastination and you will. You will find you never have to worry about it again. But this one I really like, and one of the things he says which I really like about it is you need leisure time, right? Yes, you know that you actually should schedule time not to do anything, which is now increasingly my life. It's okay to play, it's okay to relax. Anyway, maybe, andre, this is a book the Now Habit you might want to take a look at. Unlike a lot of other books about creating habits, it isn't really so much about creating habits, it's about letting go.

0:27:11 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, because there is. I mean, it is by our nature. We've spent so many years as these creatures that needed to move from place to place to track our food to be able to stay alive, and that results in us having this primal desire to be in control. And when we are in control and we feel in control, it reduces anxiety, and that anxiety can be anything. So it could be. I always bring this up and then my partner gets upset with me. A lot of people during the pandemic bleach their hair, and the reason that that, like the underlying reason for that is because you're feeling out of control of this thing and so you know that within yourself you have autonomy. You can do something to yourself. You maybe bleach your hair. I didn't do that.

0:28:00 - Leo Laporte
I made sourdough bread. Yeah, you made sourdough bread In excess.

0:28:03 - Mikah Sargent
This is something that you have control over, that you can understand.

0:28:05 - Leo Laporte
You know what I did yesterday. It's completely unrelated. I threw out my sourdough.

0:28:09 - Caller
I just said you know what Poor baby.

0:28:10 - Leo Laporte
This is so dopey. I spent hours a week feeding a piece of dough. I threw it out. I don't need sourdough and then I made a non. I used yeast from the store and made it made a baguette and it was fabulous.

0:28:26 - Mikah Sargent
You let go and let go.

0:28:28 - Leo Laporte
And let go and let the yeast. There is a philosophy.

0:28:32 - Mikah Sargent
There's our answer.

0:28:34 - Leo Laporte
We can all get behind Other good ones. Atomic habits is a very good one, but I think the now habit is really a good one just because it's really more about playing instead of, you know, striving. I think it's an interesting question. I love it Anyway. Thank you, andre. I think we all suffer from this, don't we? It's kind of why we're in tech. Right, tech is a way of avoidance. Your phone is a way of avoidance. That's one of the reasons I was worried about the Vision Pro. It's just one more way of avoiding everything. Now you can seal yourself into a helmet.

0:29:08 - Mikah Sargent
I just have a blanket for that.

0:29:10 - Leo Laporte
I mean. Anyway, thank you for the question, let's get to another one, john Ashley, producer man, wait a minute. Actually, before we do that, let's pause the pause. That refreshes. If you're watching video, nothing will happen. If you're listening to audio, god willing. And if the creeks don't rise, you will hear an advertisement and we will return. You're watching. Ask the Tech Guys. Mike Assargent, leo Laporte. Ask the Tech Guys. Somebody said where did all your old radio shows go? They're still there. It's just we renamed them. Ask the Tech Guys on the website.

0:29:41 - Mikah Sargent
It's all in the. I was confused by the question. Yeah.

0:29:45 - Leo Laporte
TechGuyLabscom still has all the shows, it's just they're not called the tech guy, they're called Ask the Tech Guys, because we continue to offer shows on that podcast feed with a new name. That's all. Who are we talking to? I see him right now. I believe it is Chris. Hi, chris, you're joining us in the Stargate, the AT&T Stargate, hi.

0:30:06 - Caller
Chris, where are you?

0:30:06 - Leo Laporte
from.

0:30:08 - Caller
This is Chris from Brooklyn Park, minnesota. Love it how you doing. What can we do for you? I am doing well, so long time listener, first time caller. I remember back watching you on tech TV and ZDTV and G4TV and it goes on and on and on.

0:30:25 - Leo Laporte
All the TV's Right On, and on, and on, yeah Well thank you I appreciate your many years of passion. I appreciate your time.

0:30:33 - Caller
I appreciate it. I'm a big fan of patronage, yeah Club twit member.

0:30:36 - Leo Laporte
Oh, thank you, oh, thank you, double thanks. So we're going backwards. We're going from big time ad supported media back to the old days of a patronage a club in this case and you give us money and we give you content. I kind of like that. Thank you, medici family. Thank you, thank you.

0:30:57 - Caller
My question is I run the live stream for my church and we're using a Steinberg UR 22 to capture the audio from the board and then using OBS to broadcast it.

0:31:10 - Leo Laporte
Nice, the problem I keep having is so you're only doing audio, you're not doing video.

0:31:16 - Caller
No, we're doing video as well, you are doing video, so we have a oh, the. It starts with an E. I can't think of the company name E-cam, but the HD no, no.

0:31:30 - Leo Laporte
It's all right.

0:31:31 - Caller
You've talked about it all the time it's the HDMI.

0:31:35 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, blackmagic oh. Elgato the 8M Elgato yeah, Elgato the 8M yeah.

0:31:39 - Caller
So we use that for the video. We use the UR 22 to capture from the soundboard. But it seems that we have to crank that all the way up to where it starts peaking, but then our users still have to have their volume cranked all the way up and they still barely can hear it.

0:31:55 - Leo Laporte
And just wondering Sounds like an OBS mixing issue.

0:31:59 - Caller
So you said you're going through OBS as the streaming capability right, correct, yeah, and then you'll know, in the OBS interface there is a mic interface and then that one we have to, where it's going into the yellow or the red, even on there with the volume, but it starts to where, if we get it any louder than that, it starts distorting and clipping the volume.

0:32:23 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, you don't want to do that, so I guess you, john.

0:32:26 - Mikah Sargent
John has a suggestion.

0:32:27 - Caller
Yeah, hi, this is John Ashley behind the board. So you're using OBS, right? Yes, okay, so there is an option. If you right click on your audio source in OBS, go to Advanced Audio Properties, normally you use the limit to how much you could crank the audio up. You can actually go beyond that by going to the volume tab next to your audio source. You can actually go a little bit further by boosting up your audio if you want to do that as an option.

0:32:52 - Leo Laporte
So you have a default pad that they put in and you can remove that pad. There may be also other places where it's padded or artificially lowered. Can you see on the Steinberg? I don't think it has meters, does it? It just has a peak. You can't really see.

0:33:06 - Caller
Yeah, it just has the peak on that the.

0:33:08 - Leo Laporte
Steinberg is a USB interface. So you've got analog microphones for the minister and the music and stuff and that's all going into a Steinberg. Is that right?

0:33:17 - Caller
Nope, so going into, we have a Yamaha TS5, I believe.

0:33:23 - Leo Laporte
Got it, they go into a mixer.

0:33:26 - Caller
And then we have a mixed out that we control by the tablet because we have a streaming mix directly, because we can't do the copyrighted music on the stream and different things like that. So you, punch it out. Okay, got it yeah.

0:33:41 - Mikah Sargent
So going into the mixer you can see the audio levels are fine and see okay. So what I think you need to do is, if you can I don't know, I understand it can be expensive so maybe you rent or something, you get some device that you can use in place of that Steinberg for a week so you can see if the audio levels going into it are low. That gives you. You know what I mean. You need to find where these audio levels are suddenly dropping.

0:34:09 - Leo Laporte
I have to just say maybe this will make you feel better we're troubleshooting this all the time on our audio level. That is true, they're all over the place and you know, the way I always want to do it it's just a lot of work is get a tone generator on the other side of the Yamaha coming into the Yamaha and set a hundred, set a zero DB tone going into that and watch the attenuation and try to figure out where the tone is getting attenuated. So in other words, you've got a known zero DB input going in and then you can calibrate everything. And if you have to take pads out on OBS, you could do that. Maybe the Yamaha's attenuating the signal a little bit. But that's kind of the way. In my opinion that's the way to do it is to send a tone down every channel that you know the level coming in is zero DB and then if you calibrate everything to be zero DB all the way through, you should be alright. Something somewhere is attenuating. Yeah.

0:35:09 - Caller
Because, like I said, every soil, if we get too high on the you know you don't want to click and that peak, you know, is clipping on the UR 22. And so I didn't know if also if there was a better you know input on that, and then, on the same thing, trying to get the balanced audio out of a PC to go into the mixer.

0:35:28 - Leo Laporte
Right, I mean, that's the problem. You may, it's yeah, I mean it's a nightmare. We go through it all the time. It's a nightmare. What we end up doing is running it through a compressor, the Omnia at the other end, and trying to get it level up, and that might be one thing is to get a box that is in, but it's the last thing in the chain. Go, before you go into the streaming hardware, what is doing the actual streaming?

0:35:57 - Caller
It's a PC. Yeah, okay.

0:36:00 - Leo Laporte
It's a PC running OBS. Yep, yeah, and maybe that's the. That's the place we put an expander or compressor in between that and the rest of the mix. I don't know. I would try, I would try to tone first, just to see if you can see somewhere where it's getting notched down, okay. And then then there are, yeah, there are ways to handle it. You know, the best thing to do, frankly, is not to call us but to get on office hours where there are a thousand audio experts and you know, there. Now the difference is they may mock you, yeah.

0:36:34 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, we will never mock you.

0:36:36 - Leo Laporte
Yes, you do. But they may say well, you want to get using that for the Steinberg year 22? Oh my God, I don't think they will. They're pretty generous, but you know office hours, office hoursglobal. It's a. It's a zoom call every morning, seven days a week, but you can call in. They have a specific time where you can join the zoom call for free and ask the people who are there, and there's usually 20 or 30 people there. Alex Lindsay leads it and I'm not sure if there's a specific day that's better for audio or not, but that's the. Those are the real experts. They may not have practical solutions. Spend $40,000.

0:37:13 - Mikah Sargent
They may say why don't you use it as sound?

0:37:15 - Leo Laporte
devices. I don't understand. Yeah, yeah, it's funny. You, we bought you a sound devices USB interface. You hated it. It never worked, right yeah?

0:37:25 - Mikah Sargent
You wanted a cheaper one, exactly.

0:37:28 - Leo Laporte
You can also leave a question for them and they have a. They don't have a discord. They have their own uh, matanka or Katana or some sort of weird name for their uh, for their uh inter question interface. But you can find out about that at office hoursglobal. And Andy Carluccio, who is an audio wizard of him on his own right, he works for zoom, he does our zoom ISO uh says that he thinks Wednesdays are the day for audio on office hours.

0:37:56 - Caller
Yeah, so I think, uh, there's a discord as well.

0:37:58 - Leo Laporte
So, oh there you go. There's also a discord, got that on one monitor.

0:38:02 - Caller
I've got you on one monitor, nice, I've got Chrome open and another monitor.

0:38:05 - Leo Laporte
Nice. Well, that's one of the advantages of this, of the show. It always has been from day one. I never did this show by myself. Even when I was doing it on radio 20 years ago, I always had a chat room going, an IRC or a discord or something, because we, we can help each other and that's the best way to do it. I think hey, chris, that's great. I appreciate the work. Are you doing a pro bono or is this your, your full time job?

0:38:26 - Caller
Uh, for the church. I do it pro bono, but I also do a lot of AV events and cons and stuff like that and lovely computer support for people. So there's there is weeks I won't be honest that I'm yelling it when I've listened to the stream. After the time I'm yelling at the thing. This is what the answer.

0:38:43 - Leo Laporte
Oh well, from now on, just send me an email and I'll correct myself at the following show. Appreciate it, yeah, no, that's, that's why we have that group right.

0:38:54 - Mikah Sargent
Get in the discord yeah.

0:38:55 - Leo Laporte
Our user group. Hey, thank you so much, Chris. It's great to talk to you.

0:38:59 - Caller
Thank you, and I love the show.

0:39:00 - Leo Laporte
You should be going to work, though it's Sunday morning. What do you think?

0:39:03 - Caller
Oh, maybe services are already done, we're done, we're done. So we're. We're in the church from 10 to noon. So thanks, chris, thanks so much Thank you.

0:39:14 - Leo Laporte
I don't go to church on the NFL season or or any other time. I was going to say but I have an excuse on Sundays and I do owe you a I don't know what, that case of lobsters, because congratulations to your team for beating our team. I think I are you some sourdough.

0:39:30 - Mikah Sargent
I thought you meant because you, because I'm missing church, you were and I thought a case of lobster, because I'm missing church, I need like sacramental oil or something.

0:39:37 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, no, but but. But your team beat my team in that my mom's team did beat your team. Was your mom ecstatic Just?

0:39:43 - Mikah Sargent
beyond herself. She was worried at first. We both were.

0:39:47 - Leo Laporte
And then it was a very good game, a very tough game and a hard game to lose.

0:39:50 - Mikah Sargent
And that the only, isn't it? This only the second overtime um Super Bowl kills me, I think so.

0:39:58 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it was a very tough one. Our third Super Bowl loss in it and our second to you in the of late. So we're very sad, but congratulations to your team.

0:40:09 - Mikah Sargent
Good job, casey and Taylor Swift. Honestly the biggest thing for me is that Beyonce released new music. That's what I was excited about. I was talking to.

0:40:19 - Leo Laporte
Lisa, this morning, as you might, as, as you would, as one does, yeah, since she's my wife, uh and uh, she said people seem to be upset that Beyonce made a country song. I said, well, I don't think it's that country, so we listen. There's two new songs. The first one we listen to is is something about 10 horse carriages? Yeah, 16 carriages, 16 carriages. Is not that country?

0:40:41 - Mikah Sargent
No, but Texas hold them is country and you know what.

0:40:44 - Chris Marquardt
It's the better song I love it, it is, it's a fantastic song.

0:40:48 - Leo Laporte
I can't wait for Beyonce's country album.

0:40:50 - Mikah Sargent
Neither can I she. So she's from Houston and has long talked about doing this. Um, and I mentioned daddy lessons in lemonade. Is was her sort of first homage to country, so I'm looking forward to it.

0:41:05 - Leo Laporte
Uh and uh, by the way, dr Mom said uh team rough. Uh did win the puppy bowl and got the Lumbarki trophy. Trophy. Oh, that's delightful. It means uh to to team rough, and I'm sorry I've we're gonna have to apologize. Scott Wilkinson, he's team fluff.

0:41:23 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, that's right. Oh sorry, scott. Good going Everyone's winners.

0:41:28 - Leo Laporte
Everybody's a winner at the puppy bowl because, because puppies, puppies, we're all winners, all right, another call. Let's go. I have a wireless caller ready, all right.

0:41:38 - Mikah Sargent
Call it A phone call so here's how it works you just need to press star six to unmute yourself. That's how it works.

0:41:47 - Leo Laporte
I don't know. Press star six and join us in the star gate. Hello, what's your first name? Where are you calling from?

0:41:55 - Caller
This is Juan from Texas.

0:41:57 - Leo Laporte
Hi, is it Zayquan? Yeah, hi.

0:42:01 - Caller
Juan.

0:42:01 - Leo Laporte
Welcome. What can we do for you?

0:42:06 - Caller
Um, I'm thinking about buying, once I get the budget ready, uh, four different Mac books and know how you feel about redundancy, but I like to spread out my workload across different machines. Um, my question is assuming I can't take Apple's word about privacy, how likely would that be for a privacy issue if I were to set up four different Apple IDs and assign them to each one of them?

0:42:37 - Leo Laporte
So the first thing to understand about privacy is.

Apple gets information, of course, as its first party. They make all the equipment, they make the operating system when your phone and all that stuff. They get all the information. So question one is do you trust Apple with that information? I'm sure Apple doesn't give it to anybody else. They do put advertising in there, absolutely. I, yeah, I think that mostly the Apple keeps it to themselves. Uh, uh, they don't tell advertisers anything about you. They don't go. Well, here's Juan from Texas. Let me tell you a little bit about him. But they offer you in a bundle with others from maybe perhaps from Texas or if your age group or whatever. Uh, to advertisers, um, the real privacy loss is all the software you use on top of that, you know, because they get all that information too. So as soon as you open a browser and go out on the internet, apple can't control what the internet sees. They try with it. They have the private relay, you know, and they, they have some, you know stuff, but Apple, you know. So I wouldn't worry about the Apple ID.

0:43:38 - Mikah Sargent
Um, I, I would be more concerned about what else you, yeah, yeah, exactly where you're going. You know you want to have a VPN and all that kind of jazz.

0:43:48 - Caller
Yeah, Like one would be strictly for social media, another would be for casual web browser, other could be for, like security, research, like different ones. I would just want to make sure that that sort of model with different ID Apple IDs, is going to make me less likely fall victim to something like a target advertising scandal. So let me ask you this um why do you?

0:44:15 - Mikah Sargent
because if you really want to, to you know, avoid Apple tracking the things. Are there things that you need that are part of having an Apple ID that are important to you? Do you plan on using iMessage? Do you plan on using uh photos?

0:44:31 - Leo Laporte
Because I see where you're going. Yeah, you're going to say you don't have to have an Apple ID, doesn't matter if you have an Apple ID or not.

0:44:37 - Mikah Sargent
I don't know who you are. No, no, I know yes, but go ahead, go ahead.

0:44:42 - Caller
I'm one of those um like I don't everyone um like. It's not something that's like concerning, but it's more like how should I put it? I want to control the amount of information and if they have different information on the on different like aliases like how far Father Robert is.

0:45:09 - Leo Laporte
The is the king of this, by the way. Robert Ballasare, the digital Jesuit, one of our regulars. He is boasted many times about his fuzzing, his, his digital fuzzing. Where he puts, he creates personas, he creates different IDs and he blasts the internet with conflicting information so that, at some point, who he is is irrelevant. He's just a dot in all of this cloud of information and so he feels like that's a good way for him to preserve his privacy. And I think that that you know I personally, and I think you're probably the same. I mean, here we are, we're sitting on a camera letting anybody watch us. We don't. We're not really privacy fanatics.

0:45:59 - Mikah Sargent
In terms of management, I do have two Apple IDs, because I have one that I keep for work and then one that I have for personal, and it's not difficult as long as you remember the password.

0:46:13 - Leo Laporte
But but remember, apple knows, oh, you know, you have a unique identifier for that Mac. They see your IP address.

0:46:19 - Mikah Sargent
They pretty much know it's you, yeah, and if you're logging in the same router and the same, I'll come from the same IP address.

0:46:25 - Leo Laporte
Maybe use a VPN, that would help. But if you ever accidentally GPS, you know your location, the only really the only way to be truly private in this modern world, because we're so interdependent, is to move to a cabin in the woods and not have any utilities no phone or electricity.

0:46:47 - Caller
Yeah.

0:46:47 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's going Amish, I think if you, it's really. It's a very interesting question we deal with all the time, which is well, how much privacy is needed and how do you achieve it? Is a little privacy better than no privacy?

0:47:07 - Caller
I'd say to the level of like, like, casual women, like, where I have different, I guess, machines for different purposes.

0:47:19 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but I, but you're not separating it really from Apple's point of view or anybody's point of view. They, they. This is you've heard of the term fingerprinting, right, this is a big thing that Google's trying to find. I've heard of it. Yeah, and Steve talks about this. On security, now the idea is I can see when you come to my website. Sure, I can see, and I. There's a couple of things that are public your IP address if you sign in. I know it's you, but there's also all this information that I'm getting from your browser about how much RAM you have. I mean, I go, I mean it's amazing. You know what the screen resolution is. So much stuff that with about 10 to 20 data points, they can uniquely fingerprint you and at that point they know who they. They don't know it's Quan. They know there's this dot on the map in Texas that we know who that is and we can associate all the stuff that happens.

0:48:14 - Mikah Sargent
Right, this user. It doesn't matter if we've got their name. We don't have their name, but the yeah, this, this behavior at all is linked and we can. We can track it to that person. I think you're wasting your money if you buy four Mac books to try to avoid this it's just, it's a wash.

0:48:27 - Caller
I don't think you're doing yourself a favor. You're not doing yourself a favor, I wouldn't say, but mitigate as much as humanly possible.

0:48:35 - Leo Laporte
And if I use anti fingerprinting browsers, Well, you know, you remember that brave was had a feature which blocked fingerprinting and was very aggressive about it. They turned it off because guess what it turned out, if you were using that any fingerprinting software, that was another data point in the fingerprinting and it really actually was made harder to be anonymous. So they actually have turned off that anti fingerprinting technology in the brave browser. And this is the problem. Is you're, you're, you're, we're, we're all spewing data exhaust around us at all times, and you can mix it up and you can try to plug up the exhaust pipe a little bit and stuff like that, but all it takes is one slip and all of a sudden, all these separate data points. Remember, they've got, they've got massive amounts of data and lots of processing and AI and they go oh, I got it, it's gone, and then you're done.

And so I think you could spend so much time and energy trying to prevent that, but you just never know if you're doing it. And there's, there's you're. You're fighting a losing battle, in my opinion. Now I could people say well, leo, don't you believe in privacy? Sure, but I think it's almost impossible in our modern interdependent age to be truly private, and I don't know what mitigation I mean. If you've got a, if you've got a leaky sieve and you plug a few of the holes, the water's still going to come out.

0:50:16 - Mikah Sargent
And if you have more than one leaky sieve, you still have more leaky sieves.

0:50:23 - Leo Laporte
Look I, I, I honor what you want to do, and I and I, I think it's a great idea.

0:50:30 - Caller
It's more about taking back control.

0:50:33 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and you may be that More than any. Yeah, I understand It'll make you feel better. I think you could have one be do better with one Mac and say four Docker containers that each one went separate, where it looked like different machines, or emulators look like different machines, or I mean it's just, it's pretty hard. Yeah, I don't, it's pretty hard.

0:50:55 - Mikah Sargent
Again, because this is what it you have one chance to mess up and then it's all of the money and the time that you've spent is done. I think that there's certainly a level of sort of reasonable taking back, which is to the things that you talked about. Yes, use of browser that protects you a little bit more. Yes, use of VPN as much as possible. Yes, in every app that you're using, try to turn off analytics, but to take it to the next level, which is, you know, more complicated than that, and then to even take it to the next level of I have a label on the outside of this machine it's the only one that I do the security research on and this and that then it's. It's so much, the onus is so much on you and the opportunity for undoing all of the work that you've done is so great that I don't know. I'd feel sad thinking of you coming to that day, whenever you accidentally reveal information about yourself and then, suddenly, all of those four machines use.

0:52:00 - Leo Laporte
Linux instead of Mac at cheap PCs you might have a little more privacy.

0:52:04 - Caller
There are certainly Linux uh, uh, kroen books that doesn't have a little bit tree. Yeah, I think it's minimal.

0:52:13 - Leo Laporte
I think. Apple has telemetry, microsoft has telemetry, the commercial operating systems will always have telemetry. It's hard to know Uh. I mean, I'm inclined to trust Apple because, uh, privacy is their brand and they certainly make money being private, but there's still a for-profit company yes, exactly. And and they have a duty uh to their stakeholders to maximize profit.

0:52:39 - Caller
I think that Apple tax is a lot of the peace of mind Like, yeah, that's an interesting point of view.

0:52:48 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I'm paying extra for Apple hardware so they don't need to, but why do they put ads then on on iPhones? Why are they putting ads in the Apple's app store on iPhones? Why are they selling those ads? I don't, you know, I don't they don't probably don't need that money but why are they doing this?

We had this conversation last Tuesday on a Mac break, weekly, and you know, I think it's both Alex Lindsey was a fervid Apple supporter and Andy and Aco, who's perhaps a little bit less uh, a little bit less Apple fan boy, both agreed that this was a. Alex called an unforced error on Apple's part that that selling ads really kind of undercuts their promise of privacy. Uh, it gives them a financial incentive to collect data about you and then we have to question everything. So, but they, you know I don't know why they do it, but they do it, uh, I guess pressure from.

0:53:46 - Caller
Other question is how? How much protection do I get from the sandboxing and the extra profiles are built into the operating systems, as opposed to doing manually everything myself, the way, my method, I propose you know, I think you should do it If it makes you feel good.

0:54:07 - Leo Laporte
I hate to see you spend all that money on three extra laptops, but if that makes you feel good, I think you should do it. Um and uh, and it's a kind of a fun little hobby and it might make you feel better about uh. It can reduce that anxiety we were talking about being out on in public.

0:54:23 - Caller
Uh, I would say they only get harder at the information, not the whole thing, and they don't know who it is exactly. They don't have enough information to work with, right I'm? I'm okay with having a little bit of information, but not like that. It's based on the amount that they're expecting or wanting, you know.

0:54:51 - Leo Laporte
I uh, it's about taking back control. Yeah, I understand. Who is it that you don't want to have your information?

0:55:01 - Caller
Uh, that that's a I'd say. The social media is that have no regard to privacy at all. I think you know who I'm referring to like Facebook and well, yeah, Um. TWiTter is quite and very selective about what I post.

0:55:27 - Leo Laporte
I such it. So here's a story, uh that you might be interested in. Um, you may remember, this week, earlier this week, there was a leak that said there's Russians have some. So I want, uh, I want out the world to know what the Russians are up to. It turns out we think it was, uh, they're planning a sat at nuclear satellite destruction system.

But this is a wired uh piece by a Dell camera on in which he says you know what it's really about is section seven, oh two of the foreign intelligence surveillance act. This allows uh, basically the pork, the, the Patriot act allows uh intelligence agencies to buy information about us, and there are plenty of us who believe that that should not be legal, that they should have to get a search warrant or a subpoena to do that. But this is the. This is the paragraph, the impetus for killing the deal. Wire is learned was an amendment that would end the government's ability to pay us companies for information rather than serving them with a warrant. This includes location data collected from cell phones that are capable, et cetera, et cetera. The data reportedly purportedly gathered for advertising purposes, but is collected really by data brokers and frequently sold to us spies and police agencies. Congress is never going to pass a bill that will prevent that, even though it's in our interests, in our privacy interest.

So the reason I ask you, who are you worried about? Is it's one thing if you're worried that Procter and Gamble knows that you're buying adult diapers. It's another thing to worry about if the federal government has decided, for whatever reason, to collect information about your location everywhere. Um, they're both reasonable things that people would like to block. But, honestly, as long as our Congress is so deep in the pockets of the intelligence agencies that they will never prevent them from collecting data, I think it's not going to matter that much that that that this information is is going to be gathered and is going to be sold. It's going to be sold to Procter and Gamble and the CIA and the FBI and your local cops, and I don't blame you for worrying, but there's two different threat models there, you know it's also the bad actors that that the information gets sold to, that that will try to scam innocent victims out of.

That's the absolutely there's a third, you're right, there's a very good. In fact, if you just said to me I don't want to be a victim, that would be. That would be a by itself a good reason to protect yourself. Um, in fact, we have an advertiser that's part of the ad. Uh, is it? Uh? And I actually added it to the ad because we experienced this I've mentioned this before when, uh, our CEO supposedly sent out a message to all her direct reports saying buy Amazon gift cards. I'm in a meeting, I can't do it, can you send them to me? And fortunately, they all were smart enough not to respond. But the reason that this bad actor knew our CEO's phone number and her direct reports and their phone numbers and was able to do this campaign was because of data brokers who have collected all this information. So we you know, we do, we can, and every company should probably do this, and maybe even individuals to scrub this information.

But I don't have high hopes If, when you see the the Congress is active is so active in saying, well, we don't. We wouldn't want to hobble our law enforcement in any way. Um, I just, I just uh, it's the third bill of its kind to fail in as many months uh, because long. That's pretty chilling. Yeah, it's just not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. And so government's buying it. As long as these data brokers can sell to governments and private individuals, by the way, there's nothing that stops a bad guy from buying this information, or the Chinese government from buying this information. So I just don't know what the? I think you're right to want to protect yourself, but then I don't know how to do it. I really don't. In fact, even if Congress passed a law against section seven, no two, and said, well, you have to have a subpoena, I think in the long run it won't change much.

1:00:05 - Caller
And also comes out if one of those systems is compromised hopefully not the all the information that they'll get is like pretty much useless Cause they won't get all that information. That's why there's one that machine dedicates the web browsing. Yeah, I guess the security research that has very little yeah, little to no personal information about myself and that's stored somewhere else.

1:00:32 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, Our argument here. It's not even an argument Our. The point that we're trying to make in the end is that, unlike a burner phone which costs 60 bucks or whatever, this is a much bigger investment. So we understand where you're coming from and understand the idea here. You've made the. You've made the point. It's just simply a matter of whether the two of us suggest that you should spend that much money when you run the risk of not actually being able to do that much to mitigate your privacy in the end, that the investment may not be worth it. But we get what you're saying and understand the idea that you have here and again, it's a very noble cause to want to fight back, particularly when it comes to privacy, because you know we're all a little bit like the the frogs in the boiling water at times, although that in itself is a fallacy.

1:01:20 - Leo Laporte
This is a. This is a really good question and I don't know what the answer is and I don't know if there is any effective way to do it. I would say don't buy four laptop.

1:01:27 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's. That's where it boils down to for us.

1:01:29 - Leo Laporte
It's just I think that that you're you're not going to gain much and you're going to lose $10,000 by one laptop. Thank you for your question.

1:01:38 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you for your question.

1:01:39 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, Kwan. Hey, is Chris Markwart ready? And waiting in the. We have always at once, so we got another hour to Chris Markwart, but I think this would be a good time for you and me to have a moment of zen.

1:01:53 - Mikah Sargent
The pause that refreshes. That was a crossword hint the other day. The pause that refreshes, yeah, and I said Coke Very good, so thank you for that.

1:02:04 - Leo Laporte
Did I tell you that? Yeah, this is why I would be so good at Jeopardy. It's all the old stuff that I still know.

1:02:12 - Mikah Sargent
It's just your anxiety that's keeping you from doing it. It is Let go, leo. No.

1:02:16 - Leo Laporte
I don't want to be humiliated. I know, I understand there was a. Oh, it's just, there was a woman.

1:02:22 - Mikah Sargent
You can't pay, you can't do those, you don't pay attention to those stories.

1:02:26 - Leo Laporte
If you're negative at the end of the first two rounds, you just disappear and you don't get to do final Jeopardy. And the other day there was just a hole where she used to be and the CIA came and took her away.

1:02:38 - Mikah Sargent
So it would be so humiliating.

1:02:40 - Leo Laporte
You're watching as the tech guys Mikah Sargent, leo Laporte let's do another thing. Do we have voicemails? We have emails and we have calls. I have another call. I just picked up on. Let's see what, uh. Let's see who uh, john. Ash has been picking up Star six. Please press star six.

1:03:00 - Caller
Hey there.

1:03:01 - Leo Laporte
Hey, what's your name and where you're calling from.

1:03:07 - Caller
Hey, it's. Tim on Minnesota two.

1:03:10 - Mikah Sargent
Another Minnesota.

1:03:11 - Leo Laporte
Minnesota. Well, sure, what's, uh, what's up? What can we do for you?

1:03:18 - Caller
I'm on some sketchy blue two headphones, Um, but that's not what I'm calling about. Uh, question. And the last one, um. I'm moving from one Mac to another and avoid it back up on time machine. I really don't want to clone everything on the first one. For the second one I'm going to back up clone using super duper copy. I don't really want to. Yeah, I really don't want to clone A little hard drive to save all my files.

1:04:00 - Leo Laporte
You know what you're cutting in on. Cutting out the point where I can't really figure out what you're saying. You want to clone your Mac. You using carbon copy Cloner is super duper, both are excellent. You don't want to clone, you just want to backup. Is that what you're saying?

1:04:13 - Caller
Okay, yeah, I switched. Hopefully this is better, much better. Yeah, great. So yeah, I don't really want an external hard drive that has a clone on my first computer. I just want to have all my files. Is there a way just to copy all my files to an external SIT?

1:04:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, Absolutely yeah. So there are multiple ways. One Apple, has it all built in with Time Machine.

1:04:36 - Leo Laporte
Which works very, very well?

1:04:37 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it does work quite well. Yeah, when you go through the Time Machine process of transferring to the new machine, you can choose not to do a full clone, but you can instead kind of select oh yes, I want my documents, I want these to come over, I want my photos, my videos, and so you kind of get to choose piecemeal what you want to come over. That's one way of doing it. The other way of doing it is to simply open up your new computer and make it like new. You basically say, no, I don't want to do that Time Machine transfer, and then from there you can just take the files from your old machine, put them on an SSD and then bring them over to the new machine. So in that way it would take a little bit longer, but you'd have more kind of individual control if you wanted to do it that way. But yeah, apple has it built in with Time Machine.

1:05:28 - Leo Laporte
And I think about Time Machine. Is files focused right? It's not your operating system.

It's not a bootable system, it's just, and it's even better, it's not just one copy of the file, it's every version of the file going back in time. That's what they call it, time Machine. So you can say, well, oh gosh, I made a change to my novel. I changed Mrs Higgins to Mr Higgins. Whoops, I want to go back to Mrs Higgins. Time Machine will have that previous version and all the way back. So I think Time Machine is a good choice.

I believe in Belton's wouldn't just use Time Machine. I also think Super Hipper is great, or Carmen copy cloner or even just a simple synchronization program. I actually think that I'm fully protected because I use a free, open source program called Sync Thing which works Linux, mac and Windows and it synchronizes folders between machines. So, for instance, sync Thing is on this machine. I think I can even show you, I think, sync Thing running and it is connected to a bunch of my other machines. So let me open the Sync Thing interface here and it's always kind of running in the background and it's copying what I choose to have it copy. Now, in this case I have my audio folder, my documents folder, my photos, my source code folder. This is the default Sync folder. That's where I put things like tax return stuff I want on machines but I don't want stored on a public cloud anywhere.

And then these are the devices, the other machines. Brayton is a Synology NAS, so right now it's disconnected, but that's where that would go there. And these are all other machines. We say disconnected because Sync Thing is sleeping on those machines. This is my main machine at home and you could see it's synchronizing these files. So this is a really great way for free of copying things to multiple computers or even to a NAS, to a backup, and it's very granular. You can say exactly what gets copied and if you want it to be a backup, you could say only receive, don't receive, or rather only send, don't receive changes. You can change how it works so that it is not copying deletions. So I would say use Time Machine Excellent, easy to use, always there, very simple, built-in that Apple and then Sync Thing, which is the one more yeah it's easy.

1:07:53 - Caller
Go ahead. Okay, start. I didn't want to move any of the files on the old computer to the new one. I wanted to have them available though as an external hydra, but I could access them in a computer.

1:08:03 - Leo Laporte
Well, you don't have to restore from the Time Machine. That's why you use the Time Machine and just don't restore from it. That's all.

1:08:09 - Caller
Okay, so I'll be able to access those files on a backup drive that are on the Time Machine backup.

1:08:14 - Mikah Sargent
I see what you're saying. Okay, so let me clarify and you can say yes, this is what I'm saying. You're saying that you will go from the start. You got a new machine and you plan on just having that be a brand new machine, None of that old stuff, None of the old stuff. And then what you want is to be able to plug in a drive and then from that drive you can pull up the files. But you don't want to take those files off of that drive and put them on the computer necessarily.

1:08:38 - Leo Laporte
SuperDubrille do that perfectly.

1:08:39 - Caller
Yeah, that is where you would not use.

1:08:41 - Mikah Sargent
Time Machine. That is correct.

1:08:43 - Caller
Yeah, that's exactly right. I do have a Time Machine backup on it, but I didn't want to put anything on the new computer and I didn't want to copy the operating system under another backup. You can't really dig through a.

1:08:55 - Leo Laporte
Time Machine folder without the Time Machine running, and it's so yeah that would be a bad choice for that yeah use Carbon Copy or SuperDubrille and just don't make a bootable backup, just have it copy and it can copy just the folders you want or all the folders. And again, I would still look at Sync Thing. I find that really useful because this computer is here at work but it's still syncing in the one at home. I mean just really love that. It's a very, very handy tool. So there's two ways to do it.

1:09:24 - Caller
Do you need to be able to copy SuperDubrille? Do you need to have a carbon?

1:09:26 - Caller
copy.

1:09:26 - Caller
I use SuperDubrille I use. Carbon Copy I like.

1:09:28 - Mikah Sargent
SuperDubrille. Superdubrille, I think, has fewer compatibility issues. I've run into some compatibility issues with Carbon Copy Cloner.

1:09:35 - Caller
Yeah, I've used SuperDubrille for years, okay, and they're both paid options. Now, right, you can use SuperDubrille for free except for a few features.

1:09:44 - Leo Laporte
I think you could just use the free version of SuperDubrille to do what you want to do, okay Shirt pockets Okay great Thanks for the call. Here is an example.

1:09:53 - Caller
Put in all your shows. Club TWiT member. Oh yay.

1:09:57 - Leo Laporte
We love our Club TWiT members. You want to know how to become a Club TWiT member.

1:10:00 - Mikah Sargent
I would love to know how to become a Club TWiT member. It's easy.

1:10:02 - Leo Laporte
You go to twit.tv/clubtwit, that's it. That's all Seven bucks a month. Add free versions of all the shows, you get a lot of content. Although we've changed something a little bit, I should mention this you get a lot of content in Club TWiT that you don't normally get outside of Club TWiT. It's kind of a soft paywall, though, because we've decided, as of this week, to make all the shows we do Club TWiT and non-Club TWiT available via audio, so you can subscribe to, for instance, ios today audio version. Now, if you want the video version, you need to be in the club, and for some of our shows, like Hands on Mac Adage, hands on Windows, ios today, the video is a huge part of it, but we thought, well, at least put the audio out. People can get that because we understand not all of you can afford seven bucks a month. You also get access to the Discord, and we've mentioned that several times. It's a really great place to hang. And then you get some stuff that we don't put out anywhere, like things we talk about before and after shows and Stacey's Book Club and other things like that. twit.tv/clubtwit.

The most important thing to know is, financially speaking. You've probably seen it a lot of podcast networks going out of business, a lot of shows disappearing forever, and that's because the ad support for podcasting has dwindled, just as it's dwindled for the web and a lot of other places. We don't want to be beholden to ad revenue. We want to keep going, even if we have no ad revenue. So please support us and we will. That's all it takes If everybody who listens contributes seven bucks a month. Actually, I might move to Mexico and take all the money. If that happens, it would be no, I won't do that. But seriously, we only need about 5% and we wouldn't need advertisers. We'd go forever. That would be making us as much money as we make from ad sales. So right now it's about 2%. So if you're not yet a member, if you're not one of the one in 50 people who listen who actually pay the seven bucks, would you please consider it? TWiTtv slash Club TWiT In our club, scooter X, in our discord, posted this story and it really brings home.

Remember, last week Johnny Jett got scammed. Yeah, charlotte Coles writes for New York magazine. She writes for the cut. She's their financial advice columnist, and good on her for being honest, because it would be so tempting just to hide this, but it's so valuable to tell people it can happen to anybody. The day I put $50,000 in a shoebox and handed it to a stranger, I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam.

1:12:38 - Mikah Sargent
It is. That is, in one word, brave of this person. Yeah cause.

1:12:42 - Leo Laporte
It makes her sound like she's stupid, but she's not. This happens to anybody, can happen to anybody. There was a guy called, knew her home address or social security number, the names of her family members. He knew that our two year old son was playing in the living room. He said my home is being watched, my laptop has been hacked, we're in imminent danger. I can help you, but only if you cooperate. Don't tell anyone about our conversation, not your spouse. Don't talk to police or talk to a lawyer. Put $50,000 in a shoebox and meet me outside. Um what? Okay, so I would read this if you want to see it read. But you can see how scary that must have been for her. Gosh, horrifying, right. Uh, he said he was an investigator with the FTC. Uh and it. And she believed it.

It was a. It was a. It's a fairly common but fairly sophisticated scam. Um, everyone should read this because it it helps defend you against this and, more importantly, cause. I think everybody who watches our show is probably smart enough not to fall for this, except for Johnny Jett. But no, poor Johnny. But it's really important. We get emails and calls from people all the time and said this guy says he's got my. He's got my computer control my computer. He's got my camera. He's got videos of me watching porn that he's going to distribute. Oh my God, what can I do Not do anything. This is all a scam. I know so many people have fallen for these various scams. They're horrific. Um good, on a a Charlotte Coles for for writing this piece, because I'm sure it's deeply embarrassing for her, but it will help you all. And it's just tragic. Of course she's never going to see that money again. Uh, all, right, do you want to do a voicemail?

1:14:48 - Caller
Yeah, Hi, this is Tom from Atlanta and, based on a recent episode, y'all mentioned next DNS as a valuable tool, so I went and downloaded it and generally think it's great. However, I've got an Android phone and when I try to connect to Android auto in my car, it tells me that it can't connect because of the VPN. Obviously, I can turn that off, but that's rather inconvenient. So I'm trying to figure out how to whitelist Android auto. However, it doesn't seem like in whitelist apps only domains, and when I look at the logs I can't figure out the domain for Android auto. I'm looking as I'm actually trying to connect to it, and it doesn't seem to show up as what, they, what domain is being blocked, but appears more of the app itself. So I just didn't know if there was a way to whitelist an app in next DNS or if I'm kind of out of luck. Thanks so much for all you guys do. I appreciate it and have a wonderful day.

1:15:47 - Leo Laporte
Take care, maybe the easiest thing is, what I would say would be to get a program called Tasker on your Android device that can be set up, that every time you pair to a Bluetooth or even that you go near your car, there's a variety of triggers. It turns off next DNS. Next DNS has an app. If you haven't yet installed that on your on your Android device, install that and then use a. It's like shortcuts. You could use shortcuts to do the same thing on an iPhone. Use a program, a third party program, that notices that oh you're, you're getting in the car. Let's disable this now.

1:16:25 - Mikah Sargent
I checked in. Oh, I checked the knowledge base from next DNS and here's what people are suggesting for this particular method. So normally on Android, what you do is you download the next DNS app and you have it installed a VPN that way. If, instead of doing it that way, you go into your Android settings and you choose private DNS and then you pop in the details from next DNS, that seems to mitigate the issue. Yeah, so it's just that it's using let me say, it's using DNS over TLS, slash Q, uic instead of a different method, and so, because of that, for some reason, it seems to let it bypass Android auto. So, again, that's a good trick. Yeah, instead of using the next DNS app itself, just go into your settings for your Wi-Fi or for your network settings, click private DNS and then type in the ones from next.

1:17:22 - Leo Laporte
This is a common problem uh all, even on uh iPhones and with relay. You know the iPhone private relay. Yes, it's not unusual, if you're using VPN, like software uh, to have problems with pairing with your car, a variety of things. So it's always good to know how to disable that. I think car play uses Wi-Fi, so car play looks like you're going on a website to your phone and next DNS is going to say well, I don't know what this is and it's going to turn on and it's not going to work. So this is next DNS. I'm in my configuration Uh, now, um, uh, it's, it's a free service for the first 300,000 queries a month. You'd think that'd be enough, but I've put it on everything, so I pay, but it's not. It's a buck a month, I think. Uh. Next, dns allows you to have multiple configurations. That's another choice. You perhaps could have a configuration that's specifically for your Android device and one for your home. I have several uh, there are a variety of ways to do it. I really like it.

Next DNS uh dot IO. It's um, I guess it's security. It's a security tool, would be the way I'd talk about it. These are the tabs, uh things, but it's all doing all of this simply by being your DNS provider. So these are all things you can turn off or on. It's got ad blockers very much like any of the other ad blocking uh things you can. You can even add block specific stuff. So next, dns has a, has a workaround. It sounds like that works pretty well. Here's the parental control. Here's the denial list, the allow list, obviously, uh, if you knew, yes, if you knew exactly what uh address it was your phone, let me think, yeah, I don't know enough about how a carplay works, right To know what IP address or a server it would be using. But you could see here in the last 30 days on all my devices, 43,000 blocked queries. Those are mostly ads, but some of them could be even security queries. So 12.69% of all my work out there is is blocked. A lot of it is metrics.

See is iCloud metrics. This may be for Kwan. This would be something to look at blocking things that um you know I don't want to have my information.

Sometimes, though, notice it's blocking Apple and, uh, Milio, some things. You might want it on Dropbox there. There may be reasons you want to block that. There may be reasons you don't. Milio probably don't want to have it blocking because it's sharing photos. Um, you see most of the queries, uh, from Apple, of all things. Uh, these of the five dominant internet companies. That's cause I'm on a GoFam GoFam, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. Um, um, you can also see where traffic is coming from. These analytics are really fantastic, Uh, I really like. Next, DNS. There's also a full log, uh, which you could go to and see everything that's happening. But that's the work, right? Can we put that? Uh, we'll have a link to it.

1:20:26 - Mikah Sargent
From them into the show notes. Good question.

1:20:31 - Leo Laporte
Thank you for the call. What else now, john Ashley? What else, my friend, I refresh my little dashboard. Refresh your dash.

1:20:38 - Mikah Sargent
Refresh the dash. Refresh the dash. Car play has disconnected.

1:20:44 - John Ashley
Uh, I'm going to pick up on Randy next, randy, randy.

1:20:51 - Leo Laporte
Randy, where are you calling from? Welcome Sarasota, florida, beautiful Sarasota. Hi, I'm a little old and look, we see the. Is that the okey finoki behind you?

1:21:04 - Caller
That's my name, is garden, oh wow, nice.

1:21:07 - Leo Laporte
Very pretty. I was over there for one time. I love that.

1:21:12 - Caller
Anyway, my question is about what Apple used to call universal control, and it's gone through different changes and never really worked very, very well. And, um, now, rather than really being able to control uh two, uh computers with one, are you still there? Mm, hmm.

Okay, rather than being able to control two computers, what it does is it extends. I have I have a two minis M two and M one. It extends the M two mini to a monitor attached to my M one and I'm basically running all my programs from the M two. I'm not sure why I need to have the M one, except when I first uh started start up, all the sound comes through speakers connected to my M one, but I can always switch that back, so it's it's. It's a little bit of an uh an effort, but I can get it done.

But the other problem is now um, if I wanted to stream, and I I from Comcast, it may only be from Comcast. I have no other issues with, like you know, apple or or Disney and anything like that. It'll play the audio but not the video, uh huh. So a couple of weeks ago, father Robert um talked about it at the CES. Um, this uh new dock from Targus and it's very complicated and I was just sure if this would be something which which might work. It has multiple ports and and do I need any special cables? And where do I? There are enough ports to hook up my microphone and my camera, and I don't know if you guys have any insight to this.

1:23:00 - Mikah Sargent
Well, so, going back to the Comcast thing, um, that does sound like a. So a lot of these streaming services have built-in protections that prevent someone from essentially streaming content to a device that is actually capturing the content that's on that device. And so the idea is, you don't want this content that isn't yours, uh, to be able to be captured and then shared online, and so, over time, there've been these little uh tools that get added. There's a little uh, this little extra flavor that gets added to the signal, and people will use special methods like an HDMI splitter that will take out that little extra bit and allow it to to stream to where it needs to. And so it sounds to me like with Comcast, it's misrecognizing, uh, what you're doing with universal control, thinking that you're using the universal control, thinking that you were trying to stream it to a device that is actually capturing it, and that happens from time to time.

I've had it happen where I move uh something that I'm streaming from one screen to the other and in the moment it goes oh no, you, this, this uh monitor doesn't support I can't think of what it's called off the top of my head but, um, the technology that allows it to realize that it's just a screen. So that's where that issue might be coming into play. Um, overall, yeah, universal control, because it tries to do what Apple does, which is just work. At times it can be a little bit um hard to go in and properly set the settings how you want them. It sounds like you're kind of having to configure them every time. But let's talk about the doc from targets.

1:24:43 - Leo Laporte
So what do you? What do you want to do? You want to have both minis operating, and then sometimes you're using one, sometimes you're using the other.

1:24:51 - Caller
Well, I have, I like to use three monitors. So I, with these minis, I can only connect the most monitors to one I see, so I'd like to have the one, the one keyboard mouse, running both of them, so I can have my, uh, my three monitors.

1:25:06 - Leo Laporte
So if you had one device that could run three monitors, you'd be happy with that. Yeah, yeah, sure That'd be better. Right, that would probably be better. Yeah, um, these are. It's a weird I don't know if it's an artificial limitation or not that Apple puts on its Apple silicon hardware as to the number of Monitor monitors it can drive. You know the, the, you know the air that you have can only drive one external. Yeah.

I think it's, but I've seen companies come up with solutions that let you drive multiple monitors, so I'm not sure.

1:25:40 - Mikah Sargent
I've never. I've never been able to get this to drive more than one monitor. The Mac studio that I have it has. I have three monitors connected to it, right, uh, it required an external dock, kind of like that, but um yeah.

1:25:55 - Leo Laporte
So this I don't know if this would do it or not?

No, this is what, uh, Father Robert was showing. It's a it's kind of a KVM really, from Targus. It's expensive, it's $500. So I would only buy it if you could get return on it. Um, the idea is that you have two computers. This is why I was asking what your use case is. I don't know if this is really what you, what you want, uh, but you could have. They call it their triple video, which I guess implies, yes, you can have three monitors, full KVM control, with single or dual host PC. Um, but what, but what you really? I mean this is really to answer the problem. Somebody had well, I had two computers and wants to use them both. That's not what you're trying to do. You're trying to just have three monitors, period.

1:26:44 - Caller
Well, that's true, but I mean I have, I have the two computers, you have the hardware right. So I started to see if I could still make it to work that way.

1:26:53 - Leo Laporte
Um.

1:26:55 - Mikah Sargent
Don't know if it'd be smooth.

1:26:57 - Leo Laporte
What do you do with the three monitors? You're not playing games in all three right. Yeah, I have different programs on on the different one, so speed may not be important on at least one of those right. Can you run a USB Monitor? There are ways around getting multiple monitors on these things, right?

1:27:19 - Mikah Sargent
I don't think so no, not that I've been able to achieve. Okay, yeah, okay, remind me again. What is your main gripe with using universal control for this, because that does seem to be, as I'm thinking about, the best. How did it change?

1:27:34 - Caller
right, but they kept changing how it would work and never really worked all that well. And now it seems to be working fairly well, except for this issue with the got it like homecast. And every time, every time I kind of have to, you know if I, if I wake my computers up in the morning, I have to kind of rearrange all the windows and everything. That's that's, you know?

1:27:53 - Mikah Sargent
No, that's yeah, but it is a no. I understand okay. So there is one thing that you can try. When you're saying that you're having to reset the displays regularly, if you reset the, what is it? The nv ram? Yeah, if you reset the nv ram on your Mac the P there we go the PRAM and the SMC. That can sometimes fix this issue. So I've had this issue in the past and we'll include a link in the show notes to an Apple support document and it will Essentially clear out the part of the system that is holding on to your display configurations. And if those get corrupted, then you will often have this issue where, when you start the machine, everything's rearranged every time instead of sticking how it is. So it could be that it's something as simple as that, and Fixing this would give you what you're asking for, which is to have universal control working and for you to not have to have the Unfortunate issue of trying to redo it every time. So that's a short. You ever tried the star?

1:29:03 - Leo Laporte
tech. Star tech solution. This is. This is I in. You know, I always wonder if this is a good solution or not. I see it all the time. Star tech makes a display link driver, startech comm, and then also makes a Dual head graphics adapter.

1:29:24 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, see now that that's the part that you would need, right, yeah?

1:29:28 - Leo Laporte
and, but it will apparently.

1:29:31 - Mikah Sargent
I mean, I'm seeing somebody just treats it as one on the.

1:29:33 - Leo Laporte
Apple discussions group who says he's running Three monitors connected to an M1 Mac and my flight simulator. He also has two additional iPads connected into it. You know he's playing x-plane. He uses a display link driver from Star Trek, start tech, sda, are Tech com and of course he has to use the star tech dual head graphics adapter to USB. See on Mac mini. He says they're not mirroring, they're all unique, distinct displays. So that's why I was wondering. I mean, I've heard people talk about this.

1:30:09 - Mikah Sargent
Successful. Yeah, if, yeah, I guess conceptually, if the system is kind of tricking it into thinking it's just one display, but it's actually to. You know, it's as if it's one panel, yeah, and, but because I'm I don't know how Mac OS is built-in display management is gonna work with that.

1:30:31 - Leo Laporte
Even there, even their. Their ad copy on their website shows three monitors on a Mac, mac laptop. Well, so something that's a Mac book. So I, you know what, this is probably our. I mean, if you, if you really wanted to try to get this working, I would take a look at this, rather than the, the Targus All right, they. I do see people using this. You know what? We should probably order one and just see if we can get it to work.

1:31:02 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I would be good to check it out yeah, the problem.

1:31:06 - Caller
Even now I kind of run out of ports when trying to hook in them by a Camera and the microphone and external driver is all that's normal.

1:31:15 - Leo Laporte
Yeah. So let me see this is. This is star-tex. See how much this is 200 cheaper than the Targus $293. It's their USB, a USB-C docking with hybrid universal triple monitor support. It's got display port and HDMI. You don't you have to run a driver on the Mac to make this work. Anybody in the discord to use a solution like this? I'm I'm curious now, since you, since you have a Dual, dual computers, but maybe you just don't even want to do this. I mean, though, advantage of this is, you can have one program using all three screens, like like Explain, like a flight simulator, but if you don't mind having two different computers running, I guess you continue to do that. That if continuity isn't work, is that what they call it now, continuity, universal control?

It's universal if that's not working for you, there are third-party solutions. For years I use something called synergy. Now I think synergy has been up and down. Harold Finch, in our discord, says he's still using this. They were open source wrong. They got acquired they. They can maybe have gone through periods of buggyness, but at least you could download this and try this in there in a replacement For Apple's universal control.

So you put synergy on all the computers, or both. Well, in your case both computers. One is a server, one's a client. You set them up properly. You can stragg your mouse across all three screens. You can use the same keyboard on all three screens. It solves that problem and I've used it with Linux and Windows and Mac. So, but I haven't used it in some time and I had and I seem to remember there were some issues With it. So synergy is a software, only KVM that's. We're giving you a bunch of solutions. This is from a company called Simless S-Y-M ESS and I think you can try this. It's a. It's a commercial program, but I think you can try this for free and I see that they've updated it, which is good news, because I think it was getting a little creaky. So this, this might be exactly what you want to want to do to replace universal control.

All right that's another choice gave you a variety of ways to do this awesome, all right.

1:33:34 - Caller
Thanks for the car I appreciate it.

1:33:36 - Leo Laporte
Enjoy the swamp. I Feel bad. I bothers me that Apple Can't seem to. Is it a? Do you think it's their graphics Processor? They just can't seem to make these multi.

1:33:52 - Mikah Sargent
And there's a lot of people want multiple monitors. Yeah, I think that it's. I think that it's simply, if you're going to, if you don't want any issues, then you keep people from adding too many. You know what I mean.

1:34:06 - Leo Laporte
It's like a performance drop, kind of right, right, we use synergy on the Skype of source. I remember that, yeah, yeah, way back in the day. Huh, it's very interesting.

1:34:18 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and an interesting solution that you had two machines going yeah, that's one way to do it.

1:34:23 - Leo Laporte
I would you know. I mean, if you only have one computer, I should. I should probably buy this Star-tech thing and try it, because I keep seeing people talk.

1:34:30 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I'd like to know if it actually does work. It must right.

1:34:34 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean, if people are saying 300 bucks Cheaper than the targets, you get more doc, you get more cheaper than another Mac too, yeah but he's got an M1, he's got a couple of Mac mini slander, and so All right, john Ashley, I see you Getting ready to speak. I'm just pick up on another caller. Yes, Star six caller. Oh, we picked you up, but now you have to unmute.

1:35:07 - Mikah Sargent
Something happened.

1:35:11 - Leo Laporte
Hello, what's your first name and what's the city? Greg from Knoxville. Hey Greg, how are things in Knoxville today? Hi, it's a little chilly, but we'll take it. Chilly, for Knoxville is what.

1:35:27 - Caller
This morning was about 24.

1:35:33 - Leo Laporte
We. Sometimes it's about 45 degrees here and we go oh my god, you're dying, it's freezing, it's so cold and people mock us. But that's because we're thin-blooded Californians. So what's up? What can we do?

1:35:45 - Caller
for you. I Need help with the New Year's resolution. Oh, yes, me too. What's yours? Okay, so so I had a 2010 iMac with an i3 processor. I had like an iPhoto library on, and when iPhoto was sort of discontinued and photo became the primary library, yes, I switched to photo, but didn't import my iPhoto library because I had a corruption problem. Oh, and I'm trying to figure out how I can Bring those photos over in the iPhoto.

1:36:28 - Leo Laporte
Can you still access the i3? Can you still get on the old computer? I Can, I can, it's still run. So what you want to do is you're gonna go to your photos folder or maybe it's your pictures folder and and you're gonna find the iPhoto's library, which is a giant block. Okay, right now you said it's corrupted. If it's, if it's really corrupted, this isn't gonna work. But if, if it's just a little corrupt- I can still.

1:36:54 - Caller
I can still like access them, but like when I go in, like there would be like a thumbnail version and then the higher resolution version.

1:37:02 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, okay, you, what you want is the originals, right, and they'll import them into your new photos library. So it's there, right? And this is a trick of the way Apple Does its file system. What looks like a single file called the iPhoto's or the yeah, I guess is iPhoto's library, is actually a folder. It's just they hide the contents of the folder. If you right-click it, the drop-down menu, see package contents. Have you ever done this? You could open the package contents. Yeah, I have gone in there. Okay, in there there's a folder called originals. That is the actual original photos in that library. That's all you really want, okay.

1:37:43 - Caller
I'll have to look. I don't remember seeing that I'll have to.

1:37:46 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's in there, original photos, and you can drag it out of that On to an external driver, a USB thumb drive, anything it'll fit on and copy it. Okay, and now you've got the original photos and then you just put that in the new computer and you import from photos those, all those photos, and they'll now suddenly be in your photos library. Gotcha okay there was a man an automatic way to do this when that when you Apple first moved for my photos.

1:38:15 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, the file was called masters. At the time, the folder was called master.

1:38:19 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that goes way back. Yeah, okay, I haven't seen masters, I've only seen original photos. But you'll dig around, you're gonna see there's a bunch. There's a folder with all the photos in it, not that not the thumbnails not the edits, nothing, just the originals.

1:38:32 - Caller
But that's what you want, yeah, so my, if I can't find that because like it got corrupted if I brought all the JPEGs over, is there any way for? Is there a program or something that can sort through those and We'll do the thumbnail and just find the?

1:38:51 - Mikah Sargent
next version. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there are there a couple of ways to do that? I wouldn't be surprised if the photos app itself could detect that they're you could take the library and import from the photos app. Yeah Well, so you could. So there's a built-in duplicates tool and it's possible that, even though they're different sizes, the photos library Could determine the difference, but I think the best way to do it is to use the third-party tool, gemini. You've?

1:39:20 - Leo Laporte
recommended this before and I love it.

1:39:22 - Mikah Sargent
It's not free, but it is not free it's called Gemini photos and it is a great tool from Mac Paul that will Immediately realize that you've got low quality thumbnails and then the full-size photos and give you the ability to select basically all Of the thumbnails and say I don't want those, I only want the full-size photos. And I think it has a free trial so you could at least give it a go, see if it's right for you and then, you know, make the choice to purchase it from there. It is again Gemini photos, like the twins.

1:40:00 - Leo Laporte
That's a great program to have.

1:40:04 - Caller
Yeah, okay, well, I will give it a try, because there's about 30,000 pictures in that library.

1:40:10 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you really don't want to lose them. Yeah, yeah, it's so corrupted you can't get to the masters or the originals. Then I, yeah, that's the problem is it's corrupted, which we, we don't know what that, what that means really, how, what is, how is that gonna? Yeah, how, how is that gonna affect your export? Don't give up on it.

1:40:30 - Mikah Sargent
Make a copy of it. Yeah, whatever what, save it yeah.

1:40:34 - Caller
Yeah, I have, I have multiples and I have had some time machine backups that I could go through as well. But yeah, I don't know when it originally got corrupted, right, so that's, that's part of the problem, trying to go back to find it at state before it got corrupted, because it really screwed up the dates.

Like I had a lot of albums and things, and now everything kind of has like a default date or something on them. So it's oh, that's frustrating work with them. Okay, well, I appreciate the suggestion and I'll I'll give it a shot.

1:41:07 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, good luck, good luck, absolutely Okay, take care, bye, Bye. You're watching. Ask the tech guys with Mikah Sargent, leo Laporte, chris Markwart coming up in about 15 minutes, our photo guy to review your sparkly sparkle photos. As we continue though you don't need to let me do a, you know one more email. Just you got such a stack here, maybe we could do a few. Maybe I should just do it like a speed round.

1:41:35 - Mikah Sargent
We always say that, but it's never a speeder.

1:41:37 - Leo Laporte
We never do a speed round and I know people you're probably watching the show saying could they please answer a few more questions? But we like to take our time. We like to deeply dive, deep dive into powerful outdoor Wi-Fi extender for Starlink. I think I asked Jim Hi Leo and Mikah, longtime listener back to Leo's days on KGO. Wow, I installed Starlink that's Elon Musk's SpaceX Internet service on a friend's ranch near Los Baños and I want a powerful Outdoor Wi-Fi extender to use with Starlink. Any recommendations? Oh, it doesn't matter if using Starlink or anything else, I presume at some point and that installation it turns it into normal ethernet or Wi-Fi or something right. So I like there's a.

There's a great place to go to get information about Wi-Fi extenders. It's called Radio Lab. That's what I was, yeah, and I and they have, they have all these incredible solutions. Let me just pull it up so I can show you designed for Far radio labs pardon me, it's plural. Designed for farms, barnes, you know, look at that, see that antenna things, because that's a microwave. So they have all kinds of stuff designed to do what you want to do. I'm not gonna recommend one just because it really is. Gonna depend on how much tough art's gotta go, you know, and so forth. Normally, if you know, there's omnidirectional which spreads it all over the place. But if you really just want to point the, the Starlink, back to a barn or something like that, you might have a directional one. But all of that is here Incredible. Plus, they've got a knowledge base and and I you know, I think you can find the information you need here. But they also have good support Radio labs, plural, and I think it's calm.

1:43:35 - Caller
Yep, yep.

1:43:37 - Mikah Sargent
That's a that's a really good choice.

1:43:39 - Leo Laporte
That was a speed round part two From Chris in New York, new York. Hi, chris, dear Leo and Mikah, big fan of the show, proud club to a member since 2021, yay, wow. And that means the very beginning. Leo been watching you since high school on call for help. He was in high school, not me. Yeah, I was a grown adult and you've been a tremendous influence of my curiosity and love for technology and media. That's wonderful, chris. I know you're too humble about it, but you are a national treasure. Oh, did you write this? John Ashley, are you trying to get a raise for the tech community? You're gonna leave an impactful legacy On the moon.

My question is my mom has been using family tree maker To keep genealogy for a family for the past few decades. Good on her. While FTM is excellent, we never know what the future holds for these companies. Yeah, there's servers. Yeah, or even the technology platforms they rely on.

I want a way to back up all this information in a more universally accessible format for the years to come. Is there a particular file type? Yes, or database? Yes, I should try to export everything into and save on USB sticks or print it out on archival paper and save it in the safe. Chris, you have been watching. How do I protect it for future generations? Obviously, archival paper is great Because that's gonna be format independent. If somebody's got eyes and the English is still the language You're gonna, that's gonna a thousand years from now somebody could read that. No digital solution is guaranteed to last that long. So I would do both. But there is a genealogical Standard Jedcom, jedcom. It's the format that you should put everything in, because all GED, com, org, all the Programs all read and write Jedcom. So that way you're gonna get Something that will have the most likely ability to be later it was made by the LDS church, so it's gonna last like actually, that's a good point.

1:45:42 - Mikah Sargent
They genuinely are one of the most Amazing resources for genealogy in the United States and elsewhere, do you?

1:45:50 - Leo Laporte
know about this, so you are a genealogy guy.

1:45:51 - Mikah Sargent
No, no, no.

1:45:52 - Leo Laporte
So I started to do research for it, and then I also have a friend who's an anthropologist and told me all about how the LDS church does have some like vast religious belief of theirs and which I won't go into because I'll misstate it, but they have the as you probably know, or your mom does anyway the best genealogical library in the world. They've been keeping all this stuff not just Mormons, but everybody and so very often when you do a genealogical search you end up at the LDS Database and so forth. So the fact yeah, you're exactly right, that might even be better than archival paper. Mormons are gonna be here forever, so that's a good format. Put it in the Jedcom format GEDC. Oh, em, your, your Program will undoubtedly do that, by the way, and then I Think that's, that's about it, right, what else would you do? I agree with you family tree makers pretty old, and there's been ancestry. Comm is kind of Taken over, but unfortunately they charge him arm and a leg.

So much money. It's ridiculous.

1:46:55 - Mikah Sargent
And you can do it more open source and well, I don't know.

1:46:58 - Leo Laporte
I mean, access to a lot of these databases and libraries is Is, I guess, expensive. I don't know. Every family should have at least one person who does this, though I'm glad that you do. That's really good. And yeah, yeah, work with your mom to make sure that this stuff stays. Print out a family tree Yep, you can always do that.

1:47:16 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, keep, keep as much of a physical as you do the digital version, yeah, and then you just pass that along to the next family member who keeps it physical as much as a. Yeah, you kind of need both. Yeah, did you know? I just the reason why, again with the religious aspect of it, that you can kind of trust that I just learned, yes, that they are they. We humans are talking about creating what is essentially a Radioactive priesthood, and it is the father.

Robert gonna be involved. Well, that we should have a group of people, yes, kind of like Along the information about radio activity because there will be waste go for so long.

Yeah, and the way that we talk about radio activity changes over time. What we used to use is symbology, for this is a radioactive waste. Because it becomes part of pop culture, then we don't have much aversion to it. And so a radioactive priesthood. These would be the people who would, over time, continue to pass along and be responsible for Educating the population, saying don't go near Chernobyl, because for the next, you know 20,000 years, this is still dangerous. I just found that really fascinating.

1:48:30 - Leo Laporte
I think what's fascinating is the signs they're trying to make up so that people won't go. Oh, what is this?

1:48:37 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, okay, interesting.

1:48:39 - Leo Laporte
I'm looking see what's in there.

1:48:41 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, they've. They've literally done Contests with artists to create horrible, grotesque imagery that would keep you away from something. But how do you know what people have?

1:48:50 - Leo Laporte
five thousand years from now what they would be will think of these signs and how they'll interpret it.

1:48:56 - Mikah Sargent
And that's where the radioactive priesthood comes into play. Yeah, so you need, you need. I kind of want to join. I Just want a really cool radio.

1:49:04 - Leo Laporte
It's an interesting question, you know you know, you know about the clock of the long now and all that. Yeah, the idea is that, I mean, we don't know anything about people who were on this planet tooth. Well, maybe three or four thousand years ago we could speculate. Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I don't think your genealogical tree needs to last five thousand. No.

Just five generations. But even then I mean, can you go back five generations and your family tree, Um, I don't know. I think you're see your mom, your grandma. Yes, great grandma, you're great, great grandma, you're great, great grandma. That's about the cutoff, right there.

1:49:40 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I was gonna say great, great, great, I can. Yeah, on both sides which is surprising on my black side that we can go back.

1:49:47 - Leo Laporte
Somebody has kept the record. Yeah, and that's exactly that's what you want. Yeah, you need that. This is from Patrick Delahanti. Oh, no, sorry, it's from Bob Pat, via Patrick Bob. Bob, adobe sent me an email. They're discontinuing Adobe fill-in sign. This is a big bummer for me because I rely on the program so much I could shoot a picture of reform, then fill it in and check the boxes with my iPhone. Do you know of another iOS app like this? Adobe wants to sell me another Apple than enormous annual fee and it doesn't even come close to fill in sign.

1:50:22 - Mikah Sargent
So Apple, you're the iOS guy. I was gonna say iOS just added this functionality, did they? Yeah, so you can fill out forms that you take a photo of what's it called it's just built into. Your just take a picture. Yeah, you take a picture of a form and it has a scan button on your, on your iPhone.

1:50:40 - Leo Laporte
I've seen this and I've always wondered. So when I take, I need a document, yeah, you take a document here. All right, here's a document, I'm gonna take it. So now it sees the document and as soon as it sees the text, it gives me that little scan button right, yeah, and that lets you.

1:50:57 - Mikah Sargent
It should highlight the text that's there and it becomes selectable. It does, and delectable. It's selectable, yeah, and then select all, yeah. So that's not the, that's not the feature. Oh, it's. After you've taken the photo, you will be presented with a form. Yeah, exactly.

1:51:15 - Leo Laporte
It turned into a force, so we had to have a problem to show it, but it's probably why Adobe killed this.

1:51:19 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, because a lot of I know this may be something that's available on Android. I don't know. It's possible that Android has so it's built-in.

1:51:26 - Leo Laporte
Look for a built-in feature in your iPhone that will do this.

1:51:29 - Mikah Sargent
Yes.

1:51:30 - Leo Laporte
Wow, very clever.

1:51:32 - Mikah Sargent
Let me see, oh, let me see what it's called iPhone fill in form.

1:51:37 - Leo Laporte
This is why you want to watch iOS today and again. You can now listen to iOS today. In fact, all of our shows are now available via audio, if you, if you, well, how would you subscribe? I guess? Go to the website right TWiTter TV, and you'll see the the subscription. If you were subscriber to iOS today, it's the same.

1:51:58 - Mikah Sargent
Yes correct it's.

1:51:59 - Caller
we are using that same, we are also uploading at least back up to the beginning of January's some of the older episodes of like Untitled Linux show iOS. Today it's on YouTube audio only.

1:52:12 - Leo Laporte
Nice. So YouTube or subscribe in your podcaster so you don't have to be a club member now to hear all of these shows the untitled Linux show, home theater, geeks, but it's audio only we wanted to give. I Know it's, it's cheesy, but we need to give people some reason to give us seven bucks. So we thought, well, we, but we want everybody here, the shows too. Yeah, you know it's a bit. So we're kind of, yeah, we're kind of trying to figure this out. So at least the thought, and I think it's a good idea, maybe if we put the audio of everything out and you'll listen to you, go boy, you know, I really should give these people seven bucks so I could see Mikah and Rosemary smiling faces and we're hoping that you will do that. We do, but if not, that's okay, we understand, yeah, we understand. Thank you very much.

Mr Chris Marquardt is here. Are you ready to talk photography? I'm ready. Let me get my camera out so I could take a picture of Chris. He is our photo guy. He is at discover the top floor, calm. That's where his. That's where his, his workshops are. Christy, hold the lens above it or underneath it? How do you? How do you hold that? I think?

1:53:18 - Chris Marquardt
You have to turn around, so the bigger lens faces you this way. Oh good, all right, so much Don't ask me about photography.

1:53:26 - Leo Laporte
You know there's a debate over who took the first selfie and I found a picture my dad took 60 years ago with his camera, like this right and you can tell his arm is out and he's like this.

1:53:41 - Mikah Sargent
He's. My dad invented the selfie. Your dad invented the selfie. He invented the selfie. Ladies and gentlemen, Count.

1:53:45 - Chris Marquardt
We didn't call it selfie back then. It was a self-portrait and that is not a selfie. That's not a selfie. Okay, I think it starts with a point when someone actually called it a selfie. That's when it began, yeah.

1:53:59 - Leo Laporte
Yeah Well, chris is the king of photography in our book anyway. He's written many books about photography wide-angle photography, film photography. He's got classes online and he does these great workshops. You'll find it all at discoverthetopfloorcom. But for me, the most important thing is I've known him since God knows when, since the early days of podcasting, and he's always been 2006, I think my photo guru. Yes, that's a long time, chris. What's bizarre is I look older and fatter. You don't, and I don't understand how you're eating. I beg to differ. Okay, anyway, our topic this week was, or this month was, sparkle, sparkle. I want some sparkly photos.

The actual word was sparkling, which caused a few mis tags so it looks like when you look at it.

1:55:02 - Chris Marquardt
it only looks like. Yeah, it looks like. We only have four pictures, but there are a few more, so I went down into the photos and checked them out, so let's just dive into the three I chose.

1:55:15 - Leo Laporte
Sparkly photos. Oh, it's Linda.

1:55:19 - Chris Marquardt
Yeah, by Gregory Chesney. It's a winter photo and of course it's sparkly. Of course, I think it would be more sparkly if there was like sunlight on it.

But then you don't really have the choice in winter all the time. No so, but snow is sparkly, isn't it? So nice photo. But just in general. I mean, what I like about winter photos is that they almost have a monochrome vibe a lot of the time. In this case, it's the red of the brick building in the background at the white and it just warm colors next to the white, and that's a nice mixture.

1:56:00 - Leo Laporte
It's hard to take pictures of snow, isn't it, though? I mean, there's some credit to where credit is due. That is not an easy thing, yeah To get the snow.

1:56:09 - Chris Marquardt
Snow depends on what else is on your photos. Snow can blow out and be all white and lose all its detail. So it takes a bit of skill, more skill than in many other situations. All right, second one yes, is by Gregory. Again, I had to choose this one because it is a sparkly. I think the title of the picture is deliciously fake. It looks more muddy than sparkly to me actually.

1:56:39 - Leo Laporte
I don't know if I want to. There's melted snow.

1:56:41 - Chris Marquardt
There's some glittery stuff in the background there, sparkly in a different sense of the word for sure. So yeah, looks again.

1:56:53 - Leo Laporte
this one would typically need snow to be like radio-thin, but I like how kind of drab and I like the color, the color and it is beautiful.

1:57:05 - Chris Marquardt
It tells a bit of a sad story, and sad there's that.

1:57:09 - Leo Laporte
It's sad after the party.

1:57:14 - Chris Marquardt
All right. And the third photo is by let me find it Doug Burba, and it's a night scene in Bogota, colombia.

1:57:26 - Mikah Sargent
I like that Nice. The way that the light shines through the trees. That makes it feel sparkly. That's quite beautiful, yeah, yeah.

1:57:34 - Chris Marquardt
And there's some sparkle to that, for sure. So night photos in general of cityscapes and things. I like that a lot. And then I have a bonus photo which was mislabeled, but I chose it anyway. Oh, I know that photo?

1:57:48 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's a sparkling personality is what that is. That's. I had a really stretch to get to Two sparking personalities. Now we should say members of the TWIT family are not allowed to submit. But I couldn't resist on that one.

1:58:04 - Chris Marquardt
That's why I brought it in as a bonus photo.

1:58:07 - Leo Laporte
That's our cat, sammy, who is our surviving of the pair. So we lost Paris last week, so I thought I'd submit that, and that's, of course, the beautiful Lisa, my wife, watching yeah.

1:58:19 - Chris Marquardt
Lovely photo. Shallow death of yield. You captured a real moment there, yeah.

1:58:26 - Leo Laporte
When that came out of the camera, I jumped up and down.

1:58:28 - Chris Marquardt
Yeah it's a very good photo, absolutely, so we do have a fishbowl. Back to the bowl, baby.

1:58:39 - Leo Laporte
We're going to get the tag right this time, because I don't, you know, I miss tag mine. Got to get this one right. Right, the next one will be easier.

1:58:45 - Chris Marquardt
Let me find one. Oh yeah, this is going to be a lot easier. Modern Modern, interesting Modern. That leaves a lot of things yeah, that's a lot of things, yeah, open to interpretation huh.

1:59:07 - Leo Laporte
Sure, that's fun. Actually I like modern things. So here's how that works. You're going to first of all get the tag right, so you're going to take a picture. We want new pictures, so no pictures taken before today will be accepted. You got to take a picture from now on, because the whole point of this is get out there and take some pictures. I've started just for this. I've been carrying my camera around with me now so I will get some good images, which is hard for somebody of my weak talent. But you know you take enough. Maybe you'll find one that's modern when it hits you and you go that's modern.

You upload it to flickercom. That's the photo sharing site. We love the photo sharing site Flickr. There is a tech guy group on there. So after you've uploaded to Flickr, tag it TG for tech guys and modern for this particular months assignment, tg modern and then submit it to the tech guy group. You'll know you're in the right group when you see more than 11,000 members Big group. Renee Silverman is our moderator. She'll welcome you, accept your photo into the batch and then we're going to have more than we had this month, I hope.

2:00:15 - Chris Marquardt
Yes, and we have one more thing. This last time we started something, and I think I want to continue that. As we live in the age of artificially created pictures and not everyone has the proper camera, let's add a second tag TG modern AI for pictures that have been generated.

Did we get any AI submissions this time? No, we didn't, but I still want to keep this open because I think, with the tools getting better almost by the week and getting more accessible for people, I have an idea that we'll probably get more of those in the future. Nice TG modern.

2:00:54 - Leo Laporte
AI TG modern and submit it to the tech guy group. You could do one of each. Yeah Right, that sounds like fun. There's so many good images like generating AI's. Now there's Dolly and there's the hugging face, one Mid journey. Mid journey is my favorite, so do something cool, or maybe apply some AI to an existing photo.

2:01:19 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, you can do that.

2:01:20 - Leo Laporte
You can do that too, chris, you're going to write a book on AI and photography. I think that'd be a good book.

2:01:25 - Chris Marquardt
I'm writing a different book right now but it's just starting and I hope it gets translated to English, but it's a book for beginners. That is a book that I wish I had when I started photography, which is around giving new photographers a bit of a map of where photography can go in a creative sense. So it spans between the things you learn online, you learn in workshops, you learn like the established knowledge and then breaks out into the creative Well, I'm always a beginner at this one, but it's a fun thing.

2:02:04 - Leo Laporte
Oh, me too.

2:02:05 - Chris Marquardt
It's wonderful to bring yourself back to that level, Um, because it's yeah, it's not easy.

2:02:12 - Leo Laporte
I'm using my German cameras now almost exclusively, so I want to, I want to get some really good, and this one's a rangefinder, which, which is kind of fun, because I have to manually focus it and it's kind of painstaking. It's not a great camera for like pets I've not yet been able to get a picture of Burke's dog because she just doesn't sit still or children, but it's a. It's a fun camera to kind of think about what you do. There's a lot of control. Yeah, I really like it. I took the picture of Lisa. That was when I first images from it, so I'll come up with something modern today or this week or this month. You have four weeks till Chris returns. Chris, discover the top floor. Any exciting stuff coming up there?

2:02:55 - Chris Marquardt
Um, yeah, I'll go back to Eastern Europe. It's not on the website just yet, but it will be in a few weeks. Oh, exciting. If anyone wants to come on a photo road trip to Eastern Europe in September, then I'll keep an eye on the website.

2:03:11 - Leo Laporte
Chris Markwart, thank you for joining us again this month. We appreciate it. Thanks so much. And I just looked at the tech guy group 14,000. Wow, it's wild, it's growing.

2:03:22 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you, let's get them all to join club. TWiT, yeah, yeah, we actually we're getting close to that number.

2:03:29 - Leo Laporte
That's exciting. Uh, all right, golly, we've had a lot of calls today.

2:03:34 - Mikah Sargent
I do see that we have our photo archivist who?

2:03:39 - Leo Laporte
might be on her.

2:03:39 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, she might, and she might have an answer for the earlier question, oh, the genealogy question, or the one before that about photos in the corrupted libraries.

2:03:49 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, the I photos.

2:03:50 - Mikah Sargent
We shall see, we'll see.

2:03:52 - Leo Laporte
We're guessing at what our caller will want to talk about. Hey, welcome back. Remind me your first name and where you're calling from.

2:04:03 - Caller
I'm Susan Wallach and I'm calling from Longmont Colorado. Hi.

2:04:06 - Leo Laporte
Susan, good to see you again.

2:04:09 - Caller
Yes, I'm, I'm the founder and owner of save a memory. Yes, and you had two back to back callers. One was in regards to duplicates, like 30,000 or whatever they said yeah, he had a lot of pictures. 30,000 is is a small number for me when I'm dealing with people's catalogs. What's?

2:04:33 - Leo Laporte
the biggest catalog you've ever dealt with.

2:04:37 - Caller
Well, today it's been my own.

2:04:40 - Leo Laporte
And how many images.

2:04:41 - Caller
I had over 150,000 that really, when I dedupe things, it resolved down to about 50.

2:04:50 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, wow.

2:04:52 - Caller
And the reason being you know when, when you are very concerned about your data, you tend to make backups and then you know you might delete stuff in a in a moment that you think you don't need. And so when you're about to look at a hard drive and say, gosh, is there anything on here I need? Maybe I should check and then you see photos and then you go, maybe I should just import this again into my catalog.

2:05:20 - Leo Laporte
So then that's where your troubles begin.

2:05:23 - Caller
Right and then you get dupes. And then early on when I was learning Lightroom, lightroom is a very powerful program. However, it can also be confusing and if you don't make the right choices when you import, you could be causing dupes. And so when two images are roughly the same, that's a similar image. But when they're identical meaning that the file name is the same, the size is the same, the resolution is the same, all things are equal then it's very easy to remove those dupes. It's the. The creation date has been removed somehow, maybe it's a scanned image of a digital things like that Then it can get really hard to to remove and find those dupes. Well, I think you mentioned Gemini, and that's a very good program. However, one of the ones that professionals use is called Photosweeper. I don't know if you've ever heard of that Photosweeper. Yeah, so that's a Mac only program and that is one of my go-tos. And I know that Apple has included the duplicate finder in Apple Photo Libraries, which is great, but again, it doesn't help with the similars.

2:06:39 - Caller
Right.

2:06:41 - Caller
It has to be an exact. So I would recommend Photosweeper to this gentleman I would also, so that he can feel confident when he pulls that trigger and starts deleting things is to create a hub. So gather up all these different catalogs that he was talking about Right, put it on a brand new external hard drive. I've been really loving these Samsung T7s.

2:07:07 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I love those. Yeah, the little USB drives are great.

2:07:10 - Caller
They're very fast and so he can put. He can create a folder called hub and then bring in folders of from other places on his different devices and put them in there and so that he's got one good copy of his photo library archive and all the backups that he wants to remove the duplicates from. Then make a copy of that hub. Put that second copy somewhere on your shelf so that as you run these programs on it you can be confident that when you hit delete and they go in the trash and you remove your trash, you're okay because you know you have all those files back on your shelf, all right.

2:07:52 - Leo Laporte
That's smart.

2:07:53 - Caller
The other thing is, you know when you're going through this Photosweeper, there are a lot of great tweaks in regards to what is your preference on when it identifies an image. Do you want a longer folder path? Do you want a shorter folder path? Do you want, do you want, to ignore Hi-Rez? You know raw files or do you want to keep them and it's got anyway?

2:08:20 - Mikah Sargent
it's quite a wonderful frame. Sounds really yeah, it sounds really powerful, which is great.

2:08:26 - Caller
Very powerful, and so that's why I encourage people to make that duplicate of all your hub files before you dive in, because until you've tweaked your settings, you could be removing things that you would otherwise want to keep. Next point Mylio. When you talk about managing images from multiple devices, I would encourage people to try the Mylio program. It is free for one computer, but when you try to connect your other mobile devices then you will need to upgrade to the plus Photosplus account, and that's only $99 a year. That, too, can help you de-dupe. When you start to import those folders, you can ask it to not import presumed duplicates. One thing to note on that where was I going?

2:09:22 - Leo Laporte
I have my Mylio library here with 208,000 images 208,000. But that's the beauty of Mylios, it's been put. You know they were a sponsor for a long time. It's been pulling photos from all the different this is my hub from all the different collections. So I do have that many and I ran the Mylio de-duplication because I think a good de-duplication tool and it cut it down considerably, probably by half. But I still have 208,000 unique images because I've been taking digital photos now for 20 years. But I love having them. I love the categorization it does.

2:10:00 - Caller
I'm actually happy to hear you say that you approve, because yes, and thinking of your second caller right after that, or no? It was an email, I think, about genealogy. Did you know, leo, that Mylio is a big fan of genealogy and they're now allowing you to do this family history, where you can start tagging people as your relative?

2:10:23 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I'm going to do that.

2:10:25 - Caller
Oh, how exciting. And they're going to be at RootsTech, and so am I.

2:10:30 - Leo Laporte
That's a genealogy conference.

2:10:32 - Caller
Yep Coming up at the end of February and they're going to have a booth. Along with the photo managers, we're going to have a booth there, and so I encourage people that if you want to keep your genealogy records personal and private and only share them with your family, to check out Mylio because you can when you go to these places like ancestrycom or any of these other places that have records that other people have submitted or maybe it's census documents that you want to download you can download all those images and create a separate space, a private space, for genealogy in your Mylio catalog and start linking all these documents to people and people to other people based on relationship.

2:11:14 - Leo Laporte
Cool. Oh, I'm going to do that because, of course, I've been using it for a year now and so it has all the face recognition is already in there, but now I can say that's my aunt, that's my grandma, that's my mom, that tree, cool, that's my co-host, your son, and we'll just add them all together. I love that. Oh, this is great. Yeah, mylio has turned out to be I've toured still because I use Apple Photos also. I have everything stored in both, so I guess that's okay. But Mylio, I love the features on Mylio and I have it on all my systems now. It's just, it's a really great thing to keep track of, and I'm a certified Mylio consultant.

So I didn't know that. Oh, that's great.

2:11:54 - Caller
Yeah, so if people have questions and I also wanted to reach out to you when I heard that you, your mom, handed over a lot of her photo albums and things- that you like to scan.

2:12:06 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, I got to scan those. Maybe I'll send them to you, Susan.

2:12:09 - Caller
I would love the opportunity to have you with me.

2:12:11 - Leo Laporte
Oh deal, okay deal. They're right now. They're with her in the nursing home because it's it's not. One of the things she loves to do is look at those old photos and even though her memory is failing, she remembers the old days really really well and so it's really fun to sit with her and she says, oh, that's speaking of great, great great grandfather, that's your great, great great grandmother, uh Grugra D.

2:12:34 - Caller
But you got to capture those memories because I know. So if you can digitize them, I will and then she could look at them through Mylio and add comments, because you could lock down a space and invite her using an iPad and you can lock down the settings so she can't do anything destructive except to add comments.

2:12:56 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's a great idea. Yeah, what I did is I got a Amazon Echo show and you can set it up that it has Amazon. I use Amazon photos as well Another hub and uh cause it's free If you're a prime member. It has all my photos there and I set up the family pictures and the slides and the old stuff so that it's a slideshow on the Amazon uh show. It's not perfect because everyone's at all. Amazon tries to sell her a toothbrush, but for most part it's just those pictures and she loves it.

She really loves it because it's it's random slideshow of more than a thousand old photos, so it's really it's nice to have that. Do you have a recommendation, susan, for a photo frame? Do you use those? Do you know about them?

2:13:37 - Caller
I do, and you know what? I am just looking um because I do have a recommendation we use um what was it called? I? I have one in my living room Um is it?

2:13:55 - Leo Laporte
is it big and is it so? One of the problems with the Echo is only seven inches and there's the Amazon Cruft. I've turned that all off, it turns out. I didn't know this, but if you dig down into the settings you can clear up the home screen a lot on the Echo, so it's mostly just the slides. The nice thing is I can copy new photos into my account and it will show her. I can add those to her library. So even though I'm 3000 miles away, I can put no photos there, but there are there are a number of uh, digital photo frames out there. I've got the Knicks Play at home.

2:14:25 - Mikah Sargent
That's the one. Is that the one you have here? Knicks Play.

2:14:28 - Caller
That is the one that we have Great minds, wow, and I recommend and one of the great things about that is that you can uh just email photos to the frame. So, you get a you get a unique email and, uh, you can. Uh, so if it's not the frame that's in your house, let's say you get it for your, your parents or your grandparents, or vice versa. You want to share stuff with your children? Um, then you can get the address to it and surprise them with new images.

2:14:57 - Leo Laporte
They've just put out a 15 inch. That would be nice for mom, yeah.

2:15:03 - Mikah Sargent
See what's great about it? Cause I got one for my mom and I gave all of my siblings the email, so anytime they can email photos that they've been taking to that photo frame. Then suddenly they pop up mom gets new photos of us doing, isn't that exciting. It's so fun.

2:15:17 - Leo Laporte
Do they uh? So they have a, a, a cloud storage. That the photos. Can I also upload photos to it or oh yeah, directly through a browser.

2:15:25 - Caller
Yes, you can.

2:15:27 - Mikah Sargent
That's how you manage your frame for other people who maybe don't want to have the logins and all that kind of stuff to manage.

2:15:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and you can do video too, yep.

2:15:34 - Mikah Sargent
Videos.

2:15:35 - Leo Laporte
Oh, mom's getting a present.

2:15:38 - Caller
So I have to tell you a quick story. One of my partners, um, uh, she and I we do the uh the podcast inside photo organizing together, and she, um, has one of those frames that she gave to to the grandparents and her son, would record these uh jokes and send it to the frame, and they finally had to turn off something on the frame because they'd be walking through the room and then, all of a sudden, the video would come on and there'd be this voice.

2:16:05 - Caller
It'd be a joke hey why does a chicken cross the road?

2:16:11 - Leo Laporte
Now I got a question Should I send this frame to mom or do I need to get it, set it up and then bring it to mom?

2:16:19 - Caller
You need to get it and set it up. Yeah, if you get it, get the registration code, follow all the setups, get it, test it, make sure that when you email that things show up. You can even set a time where it turns on and turns off. So I only run mine during the day.

2:16:34 - Leo Laporte
That's a good idea, cause I don't want it to keep it up.

2:16:37 - Mikah Sargent
I can't remember if it's motion or if it's IR, but there's a little sensor and so it will awareness, yeah, awareness sensor, so that if you're, if no one's in the house, then it doesn't need to be on, and you know wow, this is a deal.

2:16:48 - Leo Laporte
Right now, this 15 inches 350 bucks. But if you buy one, you get one free. No way Would you like pictures of my mom.

2:16:55 - Mikah Sargent
That's awesome. No, you should have one for your house.

2:16:58 - Leo Laporte
I'll have one for our house and we could put it on the wall. Can you hang them on the wall, Are they? They're too thick.

2:17:03 - Mikah Sargent
You can hang them on the wall, but I do think they're really slim.

2:17:07 - Caller
You know, I've had digital frames for years and when I when I look back at the ones I've had before this, this is really amazing.

2:17:15 - Leo Laporte
you know where things are going with this Somebody emailed me asking and I said I don't have any experience, I didn't know that you had right, but both both Susan and Mikah say the Knicks play from Knicksplaycom. Okay, it's a good one, yeah, oh, I'm going to buy this one right now. That's exciting. I'm going to go out to see mom. I'll just take it with me. It'll be all set up.

2:17:36 - Caller
And then when you send me your photos that I can scan and digitize and backgate, oh, those can go in there too. Yeah, so it's to go in there too.

2:17:42 - Leo Laporte
Now can I send them. I guess I should take them out of the albums. That's ridiculous.

2:17:46 - Caller
No, no, no, no no, Actually I like to capture because somebody took the time to put them into the album in a certain way she did yeah. Right, so we've got those old ones that have the comments on the page.

2:18:02 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

2:18:03 - Caller
I want to capture the page. I use camera scanning, so I have a very high end Nikon D850. And I camera scan the full page to capture what it is before I disassemble the album and if there's any captions, all of that goes into your file, your digital file. In the metadata, the XF right.

2:18:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

2:18:22 - Caller
And I also add any keywords. If there's birthdays or celebrations or I can tell that you went on a trip to Yellowstone, I will tag that. Through Lightroom you can add GPS, as you know. So I do all of that. I backdate the images so that if it was taken in 1940, then it should show up in your album in 1940, in your digital catalog.

2:18:45 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, that's so cool. This is St Clairwork, I think, yeah. It must be cool too for you, though, that you get to experience so many different lives through photos.

2:18:56 - Caller
Oh, the stories are amazing and that's my goal. You know we're getting so many just horrific weather related storms and you know when those prints are gone you don't realize that that is the emotional pain of these disasters really, and so one of my goals is to really help people if they want suggestions as I grow my business. What I hope to do is have like a little membership club where I provide videos to people and give them DIY tips, but right now we're doing the podcast, which Sorda does that but I do hands-on help. You pay me and I take care of it and I hand you back a well-curated catalog that's been backdated and all your prints go into archival quality boxes with index tabs for all the years so that you can just flip through it like a cat, those old card catalogs, and see all the different photos from the you know various years.

2:20:05 - Leo Laporte
Well, I just ordered the next play, so we'll be calling you.

2:20:09 - Caller
Susan, you are so fast.

2:20:11 - Leo Laporte
I've been looking for. I thought you know the Alexa's. Okay, yeah, but I thought it'd be nice to have an actual frame.

2:20:17 - Mikah Sargent
A purpose-built device.

2:20:18 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, she uses the Echo for other things. She talks to it and stuff and plays music on it.

2:20:23 - Caller
But your pictures don't stay on there, I'll put the pictures on the Nick's play on her dresser in her bedroom.

2:20:30 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it's really nice and you can even change how it transitions between photos.

2:20:34 - Leo Laporte
Oh, she's going to love this.

2:20:36 - Mikah Sargent
It's great.

2:20:37 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so I sent it to my house so I can set it up. Good, I sent one up for her, one up for you, and then not me, I already have one, it's for you. No, but I thought you would. When you want to see my pictures, yeah, definitely, yeah, sure you can have one here at the twin.

2:20:51 - Mikah Sargent
I'll put it on my desk, Susan always a pleasure.

2:20:53 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, give us again the address of your business so I can send you my photos.

2:20:59 - Caller
It's save a memory dot photo.

2:21:01 - Leo Laporte
Save a memory dot photo. Very good, nice. Thank you, susan.

2:21:06 - Caller
All right, have a great day guys, you too, take care, bye-bye.

2:21:08 - Leo Laporte
I'm a big fan of the voice mail. I feel I've. Why not, unless you have some of you really, really want to get on. We only have time for one more call. No, your choice. Dealer's choice.

2:21:18 - Caller
I will play the voicemail Right. I got this, but there we go.

2:21:24 - Caller
Hi Mikah, hi Leo. This is Todd out of Oregon, utah. Hello, todd, I am looking for a Mac replacement for iTunes. I hate audio and podcasts apps so much that what I've done is installed Windows 11 and downloaded iTunes for Windows and use that to take care of podcasts on my iPod. I would like to find something native to the Mac that will do everything that the old iTunes used to do. The main thing is I have subscribed to some podcasts that have four or five coming out per day, so I can't listen to them all, and as I get the old ones done, I mark them listened, I delete them, I put some new ones on. So what they have now does not allow me to do that. Please, a good iTunes like replacement on the Mac. Bye-bye.

2:22:25 - Leo Laporte
Okay. So I'm going to say you want two different programs.

2:22:28 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, because that's what I was going to say. The problem that we're experiencing here, that a lot of people do like, is the unbundling of these different technologies. It did used to be that iTunes kind of did everything and over time.

2:22:41 - Leo Laporte
I should point out, they're killing iTunes on Windows, exactly so you're not going to get to use it much longer anyway.

2:22:47 - Mikah Sargent
So now it's all been separated, you've got the.

2:22:49 - Leo Laporte
Music App. You've got the.

2:22:50 - Mikah Sargent
Podcast. App. When it comes to podcasts, listening on any platform, I use Pocket Casts yeah, I agree, and that's what I would suggest for you or Apple's Podcasts.

2:23:03 - Leo Laporte
Well, it sounds like they won't do what he wants to do Exactly. Pocket Casts would absolutely yeah absolutely.

2:23:08 - Mikah Sargent
The whole thing is like creating lists and removing and saying I'm done with this I haven't set up. As soon as I listen to something that's gone Uh-huh, I have it automatically downloaded and you can listen via the web if you decide you don't want to use the app itself. Yeah, and then it works on your app. It'll work everywhere. So that's what I recommend for that. And then it looks like you've got a URL for music.

2:23:24 - Leo Laporte
This is my favorite music player, replacing the one that I've been using on the Mac. This is nice because it's cross-platform Mac iPhone. It works on CarPlay, works on your Sonos. It's called Vox, the Vox music player at voxrox. Oh, john, you like it too. All right, so one of the reasons John Slanina and I got it is because it plays high-res music back. So if you buy the higher quality sound, itunes will not play it back necessarily, but this does. It plays all the formats.

It is a really nice, simple interface. It's small. I think I have it on here. Let me see I can show you it doesn't take up a lot of space. Oh, I guess I haven't signed it on this one yet, but there's some of the information about it. It's got Gap and Crossfade. It's got what they call Hog Mode for high resolution. There's a lot of nice features.

I keep Vox. Actually, I'm going to log in on my Vox account. I keep Vox on the cloud as well as on all my devices. So let me just log into Voxrox so that will authorize, yes, authorize, yes, please, yes, please. Now I've authorized my player and let's see, I thought I had Vox Premium. Maybe I turned that off. I have so many music services. But anyway, this is the player. It's very small here we'll put it here. Do you want to sync your favorite radio stations? Oh, that's another thing. It does do radio stations, which I think is kind of nice. So you see, this is the player. It's just a tiny little Look at it, tiny little thing, it's a little baby.

It's going to get bigger when I put some music in it. You can put playlists in it and so forth, but it's just a little and I think I like this. I don't want it taken over my screen, right. So this is like the mini, the iTunes mini player. Basically, Vox will also sit in the background and has a little playing interface on the menu bar.

2:25:27 - Mikah Sargent
I just If you have an Apple Music subscription, though, can you? Can you not? Can you listen to the music that you have via Apple Music? You can listen to the music you've downloaded, got it.

2:25:38 - Leo Laporte
You can't log into the Apple Cloud through this, so you use the app, be logged in, then download.

2:25:44 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah.

2:25:45 - Leo Laporte
And it Vox has its own cloud, which you know you may not want to pay additionally, but if you want to get out of the kind of the, the Apple world, maybe that's what you're looking to do. This is it. There's the. There's the player with the whole album in it. Let me this is close this get this out. I don't know, I got too many, too many things on my screens. It's going to be a little confusing, but there's. This is the little player. You see, it's got a whole album here. It's playing wheeled out Yankevich greatest hits, volume two. Oh, volume. Did you know there's a second volume, second volume Out now. Unfortunately, because, stop it now. Unfortunately, because my entire music library is in here. Even some poor choices that I made in a younger time are also in here. And weird Al comes up first because he's got a quote in the weird Al, so it's always at the top of my playlist.

2:26:39 - Mikah Sargent
Hey, I'm here A little bit too much.

2:26:41 - Leo Laporte
Weird, al, to be honest with you, nice little player. Vox it's not free. I think there's a free version, but you're going to want to pay for business. It's not hugely expensive and I like the cloud because then I can play it on everything on my iPhone, I could play it in my car, wherever I want, so that's my favorite. There are many players. There are so many players. Apple for a while kind of killed the ecosystem by making iTunes, but now others have come along and the. You know I think they've made some very good, good choices, good, some good apps out there. And I just I've been using Vox forever and ever and ever.

2:27:16 - Mikah Sargent
I think we're out of time. That brings us to the end of this episode of as in the Dead Guys. I hate to say that.

2:27:21 - Leo Laporte
We've got a great episode of TWiT coming up, but we're going to wrap up things here. Once again, a reminder all of our shows are now available audio only, even the shows that have been in the past behind a paywall, like Mikah's Hands On Macintosh and iOS today. If you're new to the audio, if you like it, subscribe and get the video to twit.tv/clubtwit. Mikah will be back on Thursday Thursday yes, for Tech News Weekly, exactly. 

2:27:50 - Leo Laporte
And, of course, ask Tech Guys and iOS today. We hope you'll come back and watch this show. We do it every Sunday about 11, 11 am Pacific time. That would be 2, 11 pm East Coast time.

2:28:09 - Mikah Sargent
In the UTC time zone.

2:28:11 - Leo Laporte
We go for a couple of hours. We usually end around this time, which is 1.30 Pacific, 4.30 Eastern. If you're watching or listening during those hours, you can call direct at 888-724-2884. Outside those hours you can still call that number, but you can leave us a voicemail like the last call. What else should I tell?

2:28:30 - Mikah Sargent
people. You can also join the call by heading to calltwittv on your device. It's a Zoom, it's a Zoom, a Zoom, a Zoom call. And, of course, you can email us at at twittv with your audio, your video or your text for answering there as well. We would love it if you did that we would indeed.

2:28:48 - Leo Laporte
What else? I feel like there seems to be more, but I can't. I think that's it. Is that everything Other than saying goodbye? Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time. He's Mikah Sargent and it's Leo Laporte. Oh, we're wishing you a happy geek week. Take care, bye-bye.