Ask The Tech Guys 2025 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, how are you today? Mikah Sargent on your left, I'm Leo Laporte on your right and this is Ask the Tech Guys Coming up blue blockers Is it okay to have one on your screen and wear blue blocker glasses Like double blue blocking?

0:00:13 - Mikah Sargent
Double the blue Plus. We get an email from someone who wants to know how they can access their work email and their private email all together without worrying about merging all of their accounts.

0:00:25 - Leo Laporte
And then book recommendations galore. Mike has got a 400-hour book that he wants you to listen to. And not only that, this is the second time around. It's all coming up next on Ask the Tech Guys

0:00:38 - VO
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is TWiT.

0:00:43 - Leo Laporte
This is Ask the Tech Guys, with Mikah Sargent and Leo Laporte, Episode 2025. Recorded Sunday May 19th 2024. Bitcoin Pizza.

Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? That's Mikah Sargent.

0:01:04 - Mikah Sargent
Hello, leo Laporte, you're just wearing a t-shirt today. This is not a t-shirt, this is a sweater and blue jeans. They're black jeans.

0:01:12 - Leo Laporte
Just all wrong. What the hell's wrong with you? Black jeans and a purple sweater. This is work day, not cash day.

0:01:18 - Mikah Sargent
This is me bringing about a change. Once in a generation we get to make a change. No, I I'm mixing it up, do you? I? I there was. It was funny. We got a uh email not too long ago and I I kind of laughed. Somebody said why are you so dressy? The faux hipster dressy thing oh, please.

0:01:41 - Chris Marquardt
And I said no, I didn't.

0:01:42 - Mikah Sargent
I didn't take it to heart. It's just coming up now, but I really like this purple sweater and I don't take that no.

0:01:46 - Caller
I didn't.

0:01:46 - Leo Laporte
I didn't take it to heart, it's just coming up now, but I really like this purple sweater and I don't get to wear it.

0:01:49 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, you look great. I'm not complaining, you look gorgeous you look nice too.

0:01:50 - Leo Laporte
No, I don't, but anyway, thank you for saying that I like the socks.

0:01:53 - Mikah Sargent
Are they Italian? What's going on there?

0:01:55 - Leo Laporte
Yes, Celebrating day for italy. No, you know what it's really celebrating. What's that? Bitcoin pizza day, which is thursday. I hate bitcoin, I hate cryptocurrency and you probably love pizza, but the two combined in a unique way on this day in may 20. Well, not this day, but it'll be this week, may 22nd 2010. 14 years ago, the first cryptocurrency purchase. Laszlo Hanich bought two pizzas from Papa John's, the first ever purchase with Bitcoin, paving the way for the financial revolution brought about by cryptocurrency. How much guess? Well, you don't have to guess, it's right on the screen there. How many Bitcoin do you think that Papa John's pair of pizzas cost?

0:02:45 - Mikah Sargent
Well, I'd want it to be like 0.08, but I think you're going to tell me it was 10,000 Bitcoin Are you kidding me?

0:02:53 - Leo Laporte
Today, worth around $650 million. So you might also say it's not merely Bitcoin pizza day, it's the most expensive pizza of all time day, wow, and it had no gold leaf on it, sadly. Yeah, I hope he enjoyed those pizzas. He must be. Do you think he looks back on that and goes well, what did I know? Right?

0:03:16 - Mikah Sargent
Because 10,000 Bitcoin now, yeah, but well, I don't know if he looks back and goes. What did I know? I think he looks back and goes. Did I know I?

0:03:22 - Leo Laporte
think he looks back and goes why he uh he was a florida based programmer offered 10 000 bitcoins to anyone who would order him two pizzas from papa john's. He did this on the bitcoin talk forum. I will pay 10 000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas uh, two large ones, so I have some left over for the next day. That was that, was that was thinking ahead. Uh, you can make the pizzas yourself or bring it to my house, order it for me, a delivery place. What I'm aiming at is getting food delivered in exchange for bitcoin. You further added what toppings? If you're interested, we can work out a deal. A british man, a bitcoin enthusiast, took him up on the offer, bought him two pizzas at papa john's for 10 000 bitcoin. It was worth $41. Pizzas were worth $25. So it was a bad deal all around. Even back then, bad deal. I don't understand the court's slideshow on this. Yeah, this is weird. It's like okay, great, you got something from Getty Images. It's a delivery guy. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing?

Now, bitcoin is currently struggling a little bit. Let me just see what, uh, what Bitcoin's at right now. But I think, um, I think it's. People are saying it might get to a hundred thousand. That's not bad 66,000. It's not a. It's not a high ever. Let's look at the all time high of bigs. Close, though. All-time high was 72 000, so we're getting close. Wow.

0:04:49 - Mikah Sargent
So bitcoin, do not buy pizza, do not do not however many pizzas you would get, unless the pizza is itself a cryptocurrency, that is worth more than bitcoin that's a good idea.

0:05:00 - Leo Laporte
We should do, we should.

0:05:01 - Mikah Sargent
There's some money in that we are going to mint 40 000 coin pizza coins and you out there can be the first to purchase them now.

0:05:10 - Leo Laporte
I I see you walking around with I do walk around a brand new device. Oh, yes, your ipad.

0:05:17 - Mikah Sargent
This is a beautiful 11 inch ipad Pro with M4 chip.

0:05:23 - Leo Laporte
This is the beautiful 12.9-inch iPad Pro. What's it saying? What's it saying Nearby personal hotspot? No, no thanks, we're good. These are some pictures I took, you know, as an experiment. The car show was this week in Petaluma the American Graffiti Car Show. Because American Graffiti was shot Perfect time for photos. It's the only time really that I can get good photos. So I went out and I took and I actually got some great photos. And then the test was can I import them from my camera into my iPad Pro and then use the iPad Pro to manage them in Apple Photos and edit them in?

0:06:04 - Mikah Sargent
Without involving a computer. I'm no computer involved.

0:06:08 - Leo Laporte
And I'm happy to say it worked quite well. The screen is so beautiful you almost wonder is it making it more beautiful than the actual image? I guess that's possible, but I was very pleased. I got some good images, one of which I submitted to Chris Marquardt for later in the day. We'll see if I get picked. I don't really have an inside track, you know, with Mr Marquardt, but I thought it was a really fun day. Here's one of the pictures. I think the oh there, you got it. There you go. The color. Well, I don't want to airplay it because you wouldn't see the color, but then again you're not really seeing how gorgeous it is either because you're looking at the.

0:06:48 - Mikah Sargent
Wait, can I see that on the screen? I can actually see it.

0:06:52 - Leo Laporte
You can see it. Judge, judge, if you will. That looks like it came from a magazine, it looks it's really a great screen, that's gorgeous, it's a gorgeous, and also, you did a great job with the photography Well, and I have to credit these you know, it's so funny. These beautiful people were wandering around the car show and I said, may I take your picture? And they said they kindly assented. And they said you know our picture's hanging right now in San Francisco's DeYoung Museum.

Irving Penn took a picture of us in 1967, which is now on the museum walls and I thought, well, if the young museum wants this, you can do it side by side. Uh, I was very, very pleased with the workflow. Uh, that was the test, was this? It wasn't a test of can I take great pictures. It was a test of whether the iPad can do a good job. Wow, with uh pictures. I think it does. Leo, these are really good photos.

0:07:50 - Mikah Sargent
Well, I hope chris marquardt thinks yeah, I mean I, I don't know yeah, I'm just.

0:07:54 - Leo Laporte
I had some fun. I just think, and I'm using uh capture one to do the editing, so that's. I was going to use darkroom. Yeah, there's some beautiful. These cars are gorgeous, they're works of art. I mean mean credit to the cars. Wait, that's impractical. Oh, there's more impractical to come. You want to see the most impractical car in the bunch? I would love to see. This is the most, but it has the merit of being a really noisy car when it goes down the street. Oh, batman, I called it the Annihilator, I don't really know what it is the Eardrum Piercer. They're really, really, really, really, really, really, really loud. That's pretty.

0:08:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah.

0:08:32 - Leo Laporte
It was a lot of fun. We had a great time, a lot of color, those cars people put their life into.

0:08:39 - Chris Marquardt
There's so much texture as well.

0:08:40 - Leo Laporte
I call this one Distracted Dad Because he's got his beautiful babies there One's sleeping, but he's really much more interested in that. Chevelle, that could be a meme right there. Yeah, it really is. Yep, it's a meme in the making, anyway. So at least. But you know what? I bet you it would have been almost as good in the old iPad Pro. The only thing is this OLED screen, which is really gorgeous.

0:09:01 - Mikah Sargent
Speaking of that, we talk about how it's hard for the folks to see what the screen looks like. There's a video that I want us to play from Twitter, where someone has a 2018 iPad Pro, which has the mini LED side, by side to the new iPad Pro, which has OLED, and from the get go of the video you can see the clear difference. On the left is the mini LED. There's something wrong with the one on the left it's blue. Well, it's simply that there's too much light. It's trying too hard.

There's just too much light shining through because those are mini-LEDs as opposed to all of the pixels being lit up independently.

0:09:34 - Leo Laporte
We could have done the same thing. I should have brought my 2018 iPad Pro with me.

0:09:46 - Mikah Sargent
But yeah, I have to say from a point of view of photography and the color is a good choice.

0:09:48 - Leo Laporte
It just looks so much richer with the oled ipad. For sure, I think it's. I think it's pretty good. I was very pleased. I don't normally, uh, submit photos to chris marquart because I feel like you know you don't want to, I don't want to be embarrassed.

0:09:59 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, I see, but you don't want to be vulnerable.

0:10:01 - Leo Laporte
See the picture I, because the assignment which is coming up at one, uh, this afternoon a couple hours is tough. You want to see the picture I, because the assignment which is coming up at one this afternoon a couple of hours is tough. You want to see the picture I took for tough. I want to see tough. This is my tough photo. Let's see if Chris Marquardt agrees. Oh, that is one tough cookie coming down the street. Black and white even looks very nice. Good golly, that looks amazing. Huh, burke and Lilly.

0:10:23 - Mikah Sargent
Burke and Lilly in about 20 years.

0:10:25 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, this was another one I was considering. Wow, that's just funny.

0:10:31 - Mikah Sargent
I love that. Can we zoom in a little bit on the pistons or whatever they're called?

0:10:34 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, this is called a rat rod Wow.

0:10:37 - Mikah Sargent
The way it just kind of breaks through is really the car shows are fun.

0:10:41 - Leo Laporte
Car shows are really fun because you get all sorts of interesting people or not people, as the case may be and a lot of color. It's really great for the Giants. Hum Baby Mobile. Oh, that's what that says. Hum Baby, hum Baby. There's the Annihilator. I thought about that for tough.

0:10:59 - Mikah Sargent
That looks pretty tough too.

0:11:01 - Leo Laporte
But I like the one you chose. That's called the Hudson Hornet. Tough too, but I like the one. There's a that's called the hudson hornet, I would drive that old car. Look at that. It's a zeppelin bus from 1937. I don't know if that is original or uh modified. I think it's original crazy stuff. And there's our beautiful couple and there's my beautiful wife oh nice.

0:11:24 - Mikah Sargent
Her shirt says enjoy the journey.

0:11:28 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, I don't know, joe is a photographer. He also bought the ipad pro in our club twit. I'm just curious if joe has done anything yet. But I I feel like, uh, it justifies if you're a photographer. Yeah, he said he edited these on his M4 iPad. The M10R was no match for the M4 processor. Yeah, we're both Leica shooters. Wow, yeah, I didn't feel any hesitancy. My images are 60 megapixel, so they're gigantic and it was just flawless. Nice shots there on Coney Island. Anyway, that's the news across the nation Bitcoin, pizza and new iPads, be on the lookout.

0:12:14 - Mikah Sargent
We are shooting our iPad Pro review on Wednesday, as I will have had a week so at least seven days to spend with it, and so you'll get some more detail and in-depth understanding of what's going on. I'm really excited to talk about the Apple Pencil Pro and what all that brings to the table, and, as we start to see a few more developers update their apps to take advantage of some of that stuff, I think it'll be fun to dive into that.

0:12:42 - Leo Laporte
Also coming up Rod Pyle, Spaceman. Blue Origin is announced. After a hiatus of several years, they're going to send another rocket almost into space and nobody died.

0:12:54 - Mikah Sargent
Six as far as we know no, they haven't did.

0:12:56 - Leo Laporte
They do it already. Yeah, oh it's over. Yeah, it's so quick.

0:12:59 - Mikah Sargent
You know, these days, one of the parachutes failed to deploy.

0:13:03 - Leo Laporte
Oh but nice, nobody died as far as we know, just was a sudden descent a little more vigorous than expected. What do a lot of people do if they want to ask a question? Because it is called ask the tech guys, I see if you want to ask.

0:13:17 - Mikah Sargent
We've got several ways for you to ask. The first one is while the show is going on. If you head to call dot twit dot tv on your ipad or your phone or your computer, you will be taken to a zoom room where you'll hang out and wait to ask your question live on air. Now, importantly, if you do choose to use that method, you need to look toward the bottom of the screen, whether you're on your ipad, your whatever, and find a little whatever device on your whatever you want to use, find a little hand and click or tap on that hand. That lets us know that you do indeed have a question that you want to ask. Please, sir, please.

I've got a question. Sir, if you are chosen, you will be brought into our little Stargate here where you'll be able to ask your question. There are two more ways to get in touch with us. There's the phone number 888-724-2884, otherwise known as 888-724-ATTG. Calling that phone number while the show is going on will also bring you into Zoom. You don't really need to know that, but that's where you are. And then, if you were brought up to ask your question, you will hit star six to unmute yourself so that you can ask your question. If you do call that phone number during the week while we're not recording the show, you will be able to leave a voicemail that we can play back live on air. Isn't that clever, so clever. And then the last method is to email us at atg@twit.v. Emailing us will, if you're sending text, means we'll print that out and it'll be available for us to read and answer. You can also send audio or video that way as well.

0:14:51 - Leo Laporte
Loads of calls lined up. We are jam packed today. That's great. We will get to those calls in just a bit. But first a word from our sponsor. You may have noticed I am sporting something a little bit light, a little springy, a little svelte. This is my new HP EliteBook 1040 G11. From HP and Intel. There are sponsors for this segment of Ask the Tech Guys. This is that AI PC that everybody's been talking about. It's HP's first commercial AI PC with an Intel Core Ultra processor that's designed with AI acceleration, to empower your workforce and deliver excellent performance. By the way, the battery life on this is mind-boggling. You also get world-class security with HP's Wolf Security with the HP EliteBook 1040 G11. You get SmartSense Now that's running right now. It's monitoring my PC's vitals, making automatic adjustments.

This is how you get great battery life To energy hogging resources. You can get up to 29 hours of battery life on this, and that's all because it's balancing the battery fan processor everything that runs inside your laptop To just sip battery when you don't need it and to use all the battery you do need when you've got work to do. All you have to do is allow your focus to remain on bringing your biggest ideas to life. Hp recently acquired Poly Studio and the Poly AI driven audio on this is incredible, along with the Windows Studio effects. So if you are, as many of us are these days, stuck on the Zoom, you will love the automatic face framing. This is all. With AI Eye contact built in, you've got adaptive dynamic voice leveling for optimal voice clarity based on your environment, background noise reduction and more Copilot. See the copilot key. It's on here. The copilot is the AI assistant that automates your workflow by suggesting personalized optimizations and streaming for efficiency. You can use learning, deadlines and personal productivity patterns to help you set priorities and manage your time effectively. It's really nice to have your little pal, your copilot, right there. You just press the key. Windows 11 pro on this, the latest Intel core ultra five or seven processor you choose. The OLED is great. I should show you. You got the over the shoulder, I see, let me see. I have to disconnect this, but I'll show you the same pictures on the OLED screen. I'm only buying laptops with OLED from right because the screens are such an improvement on the old stuff. I don't know, it's getting a little glare on it, but it really is a gorgeous, gorgeous screen. I love OLED and that's nice because you've got the great speakers.

When you're done with your Zoom call, you can enjoy yourself. This is it. Oh yeah, this is it. You can enjoy yourself. I just want to show you the Copilot key. There you go, right there, you can enjoy yourself. I just want to show you the Copilot key. There you go, right there. Pop up Copilot wherever you are, your little buddy will help you. Look, there's the pictures I drew of Paul Thurrott and Richard Campbell doing Windows Weekly. Copilots did a little illustration. Nice, isn't that funny? I said two middle-aged podcasters, and I guess I decided to them in the in the beards or something beards and a beanie, beards and a beanie. Anyway, I love this thing. Very, very nice laptop.

I've always been a fan of hHP laptops. Uh, at least in the new era of HP laptops and this just shows firing on all cylinders can do the brand new HP 1040 G11, 14-inch OLED, 5-megapixel camera, HP Wolf Security for business and so much more. This is a great laptop. Here's what your employees will love it and you'll love it too, because the price is right. It adapts to your workers' personal needs and behaviors. They can regain meaningful time and focus to meaningful work. That means your bottom line is improved.

Go to hp.com, search for the HP EliteBook 1040 G11 to learn more today. We'll have a link on our show page for you. Go to hp.com, search for the HP EliteBook 1040 G 11. And I was showing it to Paul and, uh, richard on Wednesday and Paul said I agree, HP makes the best keyboards now these days. A really nice keyboard, wonderful touchpad. Uh, in all respects, this is this is everything you'd want a laptop. Very happy with it. Thank you, uh. HP for the 1040 G11. I'll be using it all day today and I dropped the plug so we'll get to test the battery life I got. I got three days out of occasional use, so it's pretty impressive what it can do. Nice, we're starting now with 83.

0:19:41 - Mikah Sargent
We'll see how we can, how we do through the show it seems like the more you use it, the better it's going to get. Since it's smart stuff, you know it's smartens up.

0:19:49 - Leo Laporte
Let's take our first call of the day, mr john ashley. Producer man.

0:19:52 - Mikah Sargent
All right, uh. So this person actually called in very early, early on in the uh in the morning, so I'm gonna pick up on them first.

0:19:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they've been on hold for eight hours eight hours waiting in line.

0:20:03 - Mikah Sargent
if you're in line, stay in line.

0:20:06 - Leo Laporte
Yes, but don't give water to anybody in line. Okay, I'm just saying Hello. What's your first name and what city are you calling from?

0:20:16 - Caller
I'm Anne from San Diego. Can you hear me, okay?

0:20:19 - Leo Laporte
Great to hear you Welcome.

0:20:22 - Caller
Thank you so much. I listened to your show when it was on the radio and it's so great and I'm so happy to be on. So this is my question. I'll just give you a couple of details. I have a 17 inch Dell laptop over 10 years old. I love it. It's like a workhorse. It's sitting on a stand, a cable to the wall. I kind of like use it as a desktop. Great, and it's really good. I'm having problems now suddenly with glare and I wanted to ask you. I went on Amazon and it was overwhelming. I just didn't know what to pick. So I wanted to ask you your recommendation for a good screen protector in terms of anti-glare and blue light blocking, and then after that, if I could, just quickly ask a follow-up question to your answer.

0:21:17 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I haven't used any, so I can't give you my personal recommendations. They're all probably from the same company I hate to say this.

Ultimately imported. These Chinese companies, you know, make all of them and then people buy them and brand them. There's two ways to do it. This one from EasyPro is kind of like a, a screen protector. You put on like that, uh, if you're watching the video you can see. But they also make some that magnetically kind of snap on to the screen. Now, how big is this? You said 17 inch 17 inch yeah, so um that.

So that's a giant laptop. It looks like this is big enough. This is intended actually for desktops, so it might even be too big. Ideally, you'd want to get one that fits the laptop you've got Anybody in our chat room have experience with these. I think the blue blocking is a good idea and the anti-glare is a good idea. You could see I was getting some glare on this laptop from the studio lights because it's a very bright environment. I just don't have a direct experience with any of these companies. We can send you to some websites that have reviews. I'm going to go with ZDNet. I kind of trust them. The seven best blue light protectors from Forito, allen, ocushield. I would take any of these. Zdnet is a reliable source. I don't think Lena Borelli is an AI, but I hope she's not.

0:23:11 - Caller
Is that Zeus and Zebra? Zeus and Davis ZDNet.

0:23:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, ziff Davis is the old company, okay, and so in the past I've really trusted them and their stuff. But the good news is, because of the reviews, it'll give you some idea of pros and cons. For instance, this has a high hardness rating, which is probably good if you I don't know if you touch the screen a lot, and so forth. There are a variety of these and some of them will be anti-glue, some of them just will be blue light and I don't see anybody in our chat room who has used them.

0:23:52 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I've honestly never used one on my laptop before, mostly because and it's a good I'm going to say this it's a good thing that this is an older laptop, because newer laptops they are in many cases purpose built to be very slim, as slim as possible, and so there's not a lot of space in between the laptop and the keyboard to even have that screen protector on there and it can cause damage to have it in the way.

0:24:21 - Leo Laporte
So the fact that this is an older one is good, because it's less likely that closing it down is going to cause issues so the the one I think I I like the most and the one I've kind of heard people talk about, is the ocu shield, oca, ocu shield, okay, and uh, it's not cheap it's about 65 bucks and but it does have both the blue light and the glare protection You're going to want to get.

The one they've got here is 15 inches. That's not big enough. Let me see if they offer a 17 inch. Yes, they do, and make sure also you get the right aspect ratio. You probably have a 19, a 16 by 10, 17 inch, so make sure you get the right aspect ratio. This this looks like based on the reviews. Uh, the material they're using. Um, it is a little pricey Wow, that's 80 bucks but I think it'll work. You said you had a follow-up question.

0:25:17 - Caller
Um, so just two quick questions what is the aspect ratio? And then also, if I do get this, which I think I'm going to, aspect ratio. And then also, if I do get this, which I think I'm going to, since it has a blue light protection and anti-glare, can I also wear blue light blocking glasses with it?

0:25:32 - Leo Laporte
double blue light. I don't think there's any point. I don't think you'd get any more blue light protection. But you could try, it wouldn't hurt. Are you worried that it'll be too dark or something? You just it the blue light is filtered out. I wear blue. I agree you. I think I wear blue light computer glasses that just have the the filter in the glasses and I really like that.

0:25:51 - Caller
I think that's that's another question, so I guess the final questions would be and. Thank you so much. This is awesome.

0:25:56 - Leo Laporte
Which Dell laptop is it?

0:26:07 - Caller
I'm going to look up the aspect. Okay, sure, it's really an old one, but I love it. So it's Dell Intel Premium. Let me see what this says over here.

0:26:11 - Leo Laporte
Dell has Latitude. They have different types. There's XPS, there's Latitude. It's probably a Latitude, I'm going to guess.

0:26:19 - Caller
I have no idea. I'm very like, kind of ignorant with computers. It might say. Underneath it, it's just an Inspiron.

0:26:27 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it's an inspiron. Okay, yeah, that's okay. So inspiron is another one. Let me just see what they're some more. It says in front 15 okay, let me just see if I can see what the aspect ratio is. All modern laptops are either 3 by 2 rarely or 16x10. So yeah, you want to get the right one, Otherwise it'll be the wrong aspect ratio is the width by height. Okay, let me see Del Inspiron.

0:27:02 - Caller
Now you said it was 17 or a 15? Well, when I measured it yesterday, I measured it yesterday, I measured it like that, diagonally. Yeah, yeah, I measured it diagonally from the very edge.

0:27:12 - Leo Laporte
go with it. Go with what dell says, not what your measurements are. So it's a 15, and let me just see it's 1920 by 1080. So, um, you can also see that in the display monitor. So that's's 16 by nine, I think. Yeah, let's see 1080 divided by nine, it's 120. And, yeah, that's 16, nine, okay, 16. So it's so. The aspect ratio is it's 16 units wide by nine units high, in this case 1920 by 1080. That's what aspect ratio is. It's how width by height.

0:27:48 - Caller
So in other words, when I go to buy it, it should say 16 by 9?.

0:27:55 - Leo Laporte
It should say either 16 by 9. Yes, it should say 16 by 9. And I don't think you want the 17-inch. I think you want to make sure. Go by the model number. Look up the model number and see what it is. You may be confusing the i7 with I don't know what. I don't. Measuring it diagonally isn't going to give you the right particularly if there's bezel around the outside.

0:28:16 - Mikah Sargent
Bezel is the part that's just black. If you're measuring from the true left corner to the top right corner and you're measuring more than just what is lit up on the screen, that's going to make a difference. And so, yeah, you want to go by. If it says dell inspiron 15, that sounds like that's. That's a 15 inch laptop okay.

0:28:34 - Caller
So, um, I'm a little confused, but that's okay. So, in other words, it's a 15, but when I go to like buy it, I should order a 16 by nine, you should get that correct.

0:28:45 - Leo Laporte
Yes, you should get the 15 inch 16 by nine 15 inch.

0:28:51 - Caller
16 by nine.

0:28:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so okay, 16 by nine is width by height, right, uh, but it could be two inches 16 by nine, or it could be a thousand inches 16 by nine. So what you want to know is not merely the ratio of the width of the heights, but also you're right to measure it diagonally. But I think that if it says it's an inspirin 15, I'd say it's a 15 inch okay, okay.

0:29:18 - Caller
So I guess and I think, get that shield that looks good to me.

0:29:22 - Leo Laporte
That's the one I would get if I were spending my 70 dollars. Wow, I'm surprised these are that expensive there are some on there for like 20 dollars. But yeah, I just yeah, it's the material that is makes it expensive. Weirdly enough, new york magazine has a review of these as well. That seems odd to me.

0:29:47 - Mikah Sargent
I didn't know. You were in New York, maybe they know their audience.

0:29:49 - Leo Laporte
It's the strategist. Oh, these are glasses, not.

0:29:53 - Caller
And this would be a snap-on. Is that correct? No, this one is a screen protector type.

0:29:58 - Leo Laporte
So you want to clean your screen thoroughly. They'll have instructions in the box Clean your screen thoroughly and you put it on one corner at a time and you know it's nice to have a credit card or something like that you can get the bubbles out. Because that's what happens with those, is you get bubbles on them and you don't want any bubbles.

0:30:14 - Caller
If they have a magnetic snap-on option, is that okay.

0:30:17 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I prefer that, because then you can take it off. Yeah, but I'll tell you the difference because it's not against the screen, it doesn't look quite as good.

0:30:31 - Caller
Okay, I wish I could find.

0:30:32 - Mikah Sargent
The minuscule amount of space between the screen and the screen protector will make a difference.

0:30:37 - Caller
I see 3M makes these as well. If I do adhere it to the screen, can it be peeled off?

0:30:44 - Leo Laporte
Yes, Is that necessary? Okay, yes, in, in fact. I see the 3m makes these. Now, that's a name. I, yeah, I'm comfortable. We know the makers of post-it notes. Uh, I, you know, 3m makes some nice computer accessories. I'm I'm gonna think that this would also be a a good choice. I don't see one for your size, though. This one's made for computer monitors. Oh yeah, 19 inches is the smallest. Yeah, it's not a laptop. Wait a minute. Here we go for laptop. Oh, it's even less. Look at this. Can't go wrong buying 3M, can you?

Here you go, the 3M anti-glare filter for 15 widescreen laptop. That's yours. That's what you've got a widescreen, 15 inch. You see, it's actually 15.6 and it's uh 33. It's a lot more affordable, so that's what I would do?

0:31:38 - Caller
is you think 15.6 is okay?

0:31:43 - Leo Laporte
yes, that's the. I think that's what you have.

0:31:47 - Mikah Sargent
They simplify it for the sake of making it simpler, oh you're absolutely right.

0:31:51 - Caller
You're absolutely right because it says here on a little label write 15.6 HD widescreen display there we go, there you go.

0:31:59 - Leo Laporte
That nails it. We know it's 16.9. We know it's 15.6. This is the 3Mm. It doesn't mention blue blocking on this, but you've got the blue blocker glasses, so, uh, but this is definitely going to help with the anti-glare and I think 3m does probably make the best stuff so either 3m or either, or ocu shield yep, I know, 3m is a lot less expensive.

0:32:24 - Caller
I can't thank you enough.

0:32:26 - Leo Laporte
Well, I'm glad we can help. That's a great question. If anybody is listening and wants to call in with their experience with these, that would be great, or you could mention it when you're in the Discord chat. We'd love to hear from you. Thank you, it's great to hear from you. I'm glad you're still listening, even though I've departed the great KF. Actually, you were listening on KOGO in San Diego.

0:32:50 - Caller
I think it was. Was it 600? Yeah, I think it was the 600 or 700. Yeah, I think it was. I really, really, really enjoyed it and I have your email and I'm going to be emailing you questions for sure, I will look for it. Thank you for being a fantastic resource for us, our pleasure.

0:33:09 - Leo Laporte
Thank you for listening. I really appreciate it. I think we shed quite a few listeners when we left COGO and KFI, I better let you go, thank you so much.

Thank you for listening. Take care, bye-bye. Yeah, yeah, you know, going off the radio as I did, it's now almost two years. Well, it's a year and a half, I guess. Uh, some thought was crazy, but I wanted to work with this guy right here and uh, and actually it's nice to do a podcast. Plus, I can come in late. So the truth comes out. We are just minutes away from Rod Pyle Going to find out about that Blue Origin launch. Six people went up and, as far as I know, six people came down. So that's good. You want that right.

That's something you're looking for. We'll talk about that and all the space news in just a second, but first something as long as we're talking about photography. Mikah and I are huge fans of Mylio Photos Our show today brought to you by Miley O M-Y-L-I-O. There was no great place to put your photos. You can store it in the cloud with Google or Amazon, but I don't know. I feel like they're using it for AI training and all sorts of stuff. I wanted something I could store locally, something affordable, something, in this case, free, and I found Mylio M-Y-L-I-O.

If you are a little nervous about storing photos and videos in the cloud, are you worried about the cost, duplicates, storage, space, finding what you need, which is always the hard part? I would recommend Mylio Photos. We love Mike and I both use it, Mylio Photos. So here's how it works it's a private cloud, independent platform, so you can use the cloud, but it's encrypted. Independent platform, so you can use the cloud, but it's encrypted. So even if you use Google or Microsoft or Apple, your data will be scrambled in a way that they can't use it for anything. It's yours and yours alone. You don't even have to use the cloud. I don't. I use my network attached storage to store my photos, which is free and easy. Mylio works on Mac, works on Windows, works on Android, works on iPhone and if you want to use Mylio Photos+, it'll work on all of those at the same time. So when I'm taking pictures and I upload them to my iPhone, they're in the Mylio Cloud or on my Mylio devices. Across all of the devices I use With Mylio Photos. You can get started for free, get downloaded now, in fact, this is the best way to find out about it. Go to mylio.com/twit25. Put it on one device for free, pick the one that you have the most. Storage is what I would suggest. That way you can get all your photos in there, stored there and then, if you like it, sign up for their paid plan. You'll get automatic backups. You'll get syncing between devices, duplicate file cleanup. They do the best, and more In fact. One of the things I do did immediately as soon as I got Mylio, was import all my Insta photos, all my Facebook photos and all my Google all the stuff stored in Google photos. Now, as you might imagine, there's a lot of duplication there. Mylio Photos not only imported all that stuff automatically, but deduped it, so I have one high quality copy of everything, which I love. If you decide for Mylio Photos+, it's $9.99 a month, $99 a year. I bought the $99 a year plan immediately.

You can organize, manage and protect an unlimited number of photos and videos across all your devices. I have more than 200,000 photos in Mylio. And then, with the automatic tagging and person recognition, you tell it that's Mikah Sargent, that's my wife, Lisa, and on a few photos, and then it goes through all your photos and tags them all. It automatically tags pets, dogs, cats, mice. Tags them all. It automatically tags pets, dogs, cats, mice. It tags things like mountains and lakes. Suddenly, all your photos are all organized without you lifting a finger, and not just photos, documents too, but we'll save that for another day. Take control of all your digital assets photos, videos and documents. It even does OCR.

With Mylio Photos today, get started for free with their basic version. Take advantage of the full platform. With Mylio Photos+. We've got a special offer. Get 25% off your annual or monthly subscription. That's a really good deal to Mylio Photos+. Sign up, get 25% off.

Go now to mylio.com/twit25, m-y-l-i-o.com/twit25. I use this in conjunction with all the different photo editing software with, I mean basically I consider it both backup and organization for everything. It's incredible. Mylio Photos at the very least, try it for free. mylio.com/twit25. I think you might become a full-fledged customer quickly. You know what? There's a brand new machine. I forgot to put Mylio on it, so let me put it on right now and log in and you'll see I'll immediately have all my photos available on this new HP, which is pretty cool. Are you ready to go into space? I'm so ready for space. Rodney pile is our spaceman. He is, uh, the editor of the ad astra magazine for the international space society, the author of many wonderful books, including, first on the moon, the story of the apollo land moon landing, uh, which actually, you know, I just learned the other day was real. So that's pretty cool. This is where I punch and anyway, he's massaging his temples. He's also the host of our wonderful show this Week in Space, mr Rod Pyle, hello.

0:39:02 - Mikah Sargent
Rod. I always thought it was Roderick.

0:39:03 - Rod Pyle
I don't know, I made up the rest. Actually, that is my real name. Can you hear me okay, roderyle? Hello, rod. I always thought it was Roderick. Hello, I don't know, I made up the rest. Actually that is my real name. Can you hear me okay, roderick?

0:39:08 - Caller
Yeah, we can hear you Hello.

0:39:09 - Rod Pyle
Roderick, yeah, I'm on a different setup because my Ethernet failed upstairs for some reason. Where's the space I see?

0:39:19 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I get it. Yeah, I understand. Below decks, how are you guys? We are wonderful. And how are the six people who visited the stratosphere? Did they make it Earlier?

0:39:30 - Rod Pyle
today. They made it and good to see them flying again. This is their first flight since 2022. Wow, they had a problem with an uncrewed one, where the booster failed and the capsule was okay, but they didn't want to fly again until they figured it out, so they got it all set good. Remarkable about this flight is that, uh, among the passengers was ed dwight, who was the first african-american astronaut candidate ever selected back in 1961 oh, that's so mean, they never put him in space put him in space.

0:40:02 - Mikah Sargent
Never put him in space.

0:40:04 - Rod Pyle
Well, so he was in the Air Force. He was a captain. He was sent to Edwards Air Force Base to train and he had a little bit of a problem. I should say Chuck Yeager had a little bit of a problem with him. Chuck was running the program, not the most open-minded mind in the world, and even though Chuck's deputy said this candidate is entirely qualified to fly as an astronaut, for reasons never made clear NASA did not select him and it took 22 years for Guy Bluford to fly on the space shuttle.

0:40:34 - Leo Laporte
So he was the first black astronaut. Oh, so he has been in space. No Guy.

0:40:38 - Rod Pyle
Bluford, the other guy flew. So, this was Ed's first opportunity. Now he was recently made an honorary officer in the Space Force, which is something that you know. This is decades later, you guys. So when he wasn't selected, he worked for years, stayed in the Air Force for a few more years, then worked as an engineer, was an entrepreneur, ran a restaurant and, interestingly to me, became a sculptor for most of his career.

That's awesome became a sculptor for most of his career. That's awesome. So you know he had a great life. But it was just a blot on the country that he was not selected to fly because he was entirely qualified and actually the Russians flew someone of color before we did. So what are you going to do? But the flight was successful, so Blue Origin's back in business. So we now have two tourist rockets them and Virgin Galactic for as long as they fly, and that's good. That's good. When are you going? But I have another Me yeah, on this paycheck. I think last I checked it was $400,000. So you know, micah, how Leo buys you equipment sometimes I'll buy you a trip, sure why?

not. Yeah, I appreciate that, you know. Shut down the studio, shut down the whole thing, mortgage your house? I'd appreciate that, sure. But here's another cool story. So just when you thought the swing in 60s were gone forever, back comes the atomic rocket. What so? Back in the 60s there was a program being penned out on paper called project orion, which ranged anywhere in size from something the size of the top of a saturn 5 to up, to get this, a million tons the size of a small town. Freeman dyson was involved in this and his tagline was Mars by 1965, saturn by 1970. So this gigantic rocket.

0:42:31 - Leo Laporte
Well, that was a good timeline, yeah.

0:42:35 - Rod Pyle
This gigantic rocket, up in its cargo hold, had thousands of atomic bombs that it would shoot out the back of the rifle and each time one of those blew up it would pulse the rocket forward.

0:42:50 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that was the plot in the three-body problem.

0:42:54 - Rod Pyle
You could reach incredible in a couple of other science fiction books. How interesting Is this dangerous?

0:43:00 - Leo Laporte
No Great velocities. What could possibly go wrong. Wouldn't you scramble the brain of the person in the spaceship?

0:43:09 - Rod Pyle
No, actually the acceleration was manageable because it had a plate on the back that would absorb the shock. It had big springs on it, but it was not practicable and you had to launch it from Earth using atomic bombs, and that was not the best idea. But now the new company wait, partner with nasa, yes, and their nasa advanced innovation concepts program and they're going to make a smaller one that actually just it has uh, uranium pellets instead of bombs oh, it's just gonna put out little pellets like a reactor.

0:43:41 - Mikah Sargent
It's just a little goat well yeah.

0:43:43 - Rod Pyle
And so to make them go critical, it shoots them down a barrel of uranium and they go critical right at the end of the barrel and then release this big plasma blast when they go out the back. So it'll be launched by a traditional chemical rocket. But once it's up there they think it will reach appreciable speeds and this could cut the transit time to Mars from six or seven months to two. Oh wow. So, this is pretty exciting stuff. This makes the solar system attainable, finally after all these decades.

0:44:10 - Leo Laporte
So let's do it. Yeah, actually, what could possibly go wrong, wait?

0:44:14 - Mikah Sargent
what happens to the pellets after they get to the end of the spring deal?

0:44:19 - Rod Pyle
You drop them off on the moon, on the way, I believe they vaporize the way out and you know, and space is very big, so radiation isn't really a problem. There's so much radiation out there already that this is very minimal. It also allows you to fly heavier things, so you can actually now start talking about putting enough shielding on the spacecraft so that the astronauts don't cook as they're crossing space, because that's been one of the big problems for long journeys how do you protect these people? One of the big problems for long journeys is how do you protect these people?

0:44:45 - Mikah Sargent
And maybe we'll have the added benefit of taking out a few of those ridiculous satellites that Elon keeps putting up all over the place. A little pellet will take out a few.

0:44:57 - Rod Pyle
You don't have to worry about those. You should worry about the suspected Russian satellites that have nuclear weapons on them.

0:45:05 - Leo Laporte
Those are great, didn't know about those.

0:45:06 - Mikah Sargent
Now I do the suspected Russian satellites that have nuclear weapons on them. Those are great. Didn't know about those.

0:45:11 - Rod Pyle
Now.

0:45:11 - Mikah Sargent
I do Love that.

0:45:13 - Leo Laporte
Love that for us. Is that real or is that just propaganda? Russian propaganda?

0:45:17 - Rod Pyle
Well, I don't know. There's Russian propaganda. I think you could almost characterize as American propaganda, because the concerns came up from space force, but through intelligent channels. So we don't really know what the plan is. But there is an international agreement against the fielding of any kind of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in space. That's signed back in 1967. So you know it's bad on all levels. You know when you put things up there that are that are not agreed upon, that are nuclear, so the tensions just keep escalating.

0:45:50 - Mikah Sargent
I just need $400,000 and I'll go check it out myself.

0:45:54 - Leo Laporte
You're not going to get that high.

0:45:55 - Rod Pyle
They don't go high enough, Mikah.

You need a telescope Binoculars out. Two more things Boeing Starliner to nobody's surprise, was delayed again. They've been delaying since 2017. The latest delay this is the other capsule that's supposed to work with SpaceX's Crew Dragon to get astronauts up to the space station and back had a helium leak. You know, had it not had a crew on it they would have flown it, but they want to make sure they get it right and that everything's safe. Helium sneaky stuff. It's a very small molecule so it tends to leak easily. So they're rolled it back into the barn and they're working on it and hopefully they'll. They'll launch towards the end of march. We'll see. You know, I wouldn't take any bets on that, but the other cool one March of next year.

0:46:45 - Leo Laporte
Do you remember, jared Isaacman? March of next year? You're talking about this year, sorry, may, may, may. Oh, okay, you know, we are in May now. You know that right, yeah, yeah.

0:46:55 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, they know that too they may, launch it in May.

0:47:00 - Leo Laporte
oh, I get it, I get it.

0:47:02 - Rod Pyle
But but here's another cool story. Remember jared isaacman, the internet billionaire no, he was.

0:47:07 - Leo Laporte
Wasn't he gonna go up and one of them launch the starship things thing?

0:47:13 - Rod Pyle
well he went up, he, he went up in the dragon capsule that's a dragon, yeah, other people right um he paid for that yeah, out of his own pocket. Yeah, high school dropout paid for it out of his own pocket.

0:47:24 - Leo Laporte
Nice and uh, kids, you don't need to go to high school just drop out, he's, he's just.

0:47:29 - Rod Pyle
You know I I met him a year ago and he's kind of like space jesus, he is the nicest genuine guy.

0:47:38 - Leo Laporte
I mean he's, he's modest what did he make his fortune? Do you do you know what's that? What did he make his fortune in? Do you know what's that? What did he make his?

0:47:45 - Rod Pyle
fortune in Credit card processing.

0:47:49 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, I was going to guess nuclear pellets, so I was clearly wrong.

0:47:53 - Leo Laporte
Nice Is he going?

0:47:54 - Rod Pyle
back. Is he going to do more? Well, he's got three more missions planned, two or three on Crew Dragon and maybe one on Starship if it gets flying in time. But this one, that's kind of interesting. This program he's put together again which is self-funded by him. It's called polaris dawn and he called nasa and said hey, you know, we're going to go up to this really high orbit. It's about the same altitude as the hubble space telescope.

We're having some some wear and tear problems on that and it needs to be boosted back up or it's going to reenter in a number of years. So what do you say? We fly up there and fix it for you for free. Yeah, it's awesome, that's a pretty good deal. Now some at NASA are like, yeah, let's do it. Others are a little more concerned because you know, when they did these space shuttle servicing missions I think they did four of them you know the astronauts would go train in the big water tank in Houston for months floating around the water and figuring out how to connect things and all that. And Hubble's you know it's kind of dangerous being near a big thing like that when you're just flying next to it in a space.

0:48:58 - Leo Laporte
You know what? Some amateurs going up there just fixing it Right. That's kind of the concern.

0:49:04 - Rod Pyle
Now they wouldn't have to do much. They swap out, I think, one instrument board and then they're docked to it. They added this docking collar to it last time they went up there. So they're actually docked to it and they would fire their rockets and boost it into a higher orbit so it would stay there longer.

And you know it's tough. You know because on the one hand it would be risky and you know SpaceX nobody's done an EVA or a spacewalk sent out of a spacecraft like that that you have to depressurize, unlike the shuttle since the 1960s. But at the same time, when you look at what shuttles, what Hubble's done for us over the decades, you know it's this gift that keeps on giving, it's this amazing inspiration. So we'll see. They have to get up there. They have to test the EVA suits that SpaceX is building, because nobody's really done that for a long time either since the 80s in terms of designing those things. So we'll see. But, as one of the people at NASA said, in the best case scenario, a successful private mission could improve Hubble's ability to point at celestial objects and, by boosting its orbit, extend its life by years, maybe a decade. In the worst case scenario, however, an accident could leave the multi-billion telescope broken and, even more tragically, dead astronauts tethered to it. So that's a sobering vision.

0:50:21 - Leo Laporte
But that's always true. I guess the difference is this is a private mission versus a NASA mission.

0:50:29 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, and they're not government astronauts, so it gets kind of thorny. But you know, this is part of this new space age we're in, where these private entrepreneurs are doing these amazing things.

0:50:39 - Leo Laporte
And he's offering to do it for free.

0:50:40 - Rod Pyle
God bless him.

0:50:41 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and they'll sign whatever's waivers are necessary, so well I would imagine nasa would say, okay, but we want to train them, we want to train you, we want to oversight of your procedures, we want to see how you're going to do this, we want to oversight of the vehicle and so forth and so on. I bet you they end up doing it. I mean, it's not like they have an infinite budget no, and we're we're feeling that more and more.

0:51:03 - Rod Pyle
I've got got the space conference I helped put together coming up next week here in LA. It's called the International Space Development Conference and one of the speakers we have, who will actually be on this Week in Space next week, is the just retired chief engineer up at NASA, and part of what we're going to talk about. Largely what we're going to talk about is the sort of tapering end of the Mars program, because the money's running out and while we'll still be working with those rovers up on Mars, there aren't any new missions planned and JPL is getting very concerned because that's their bread and butter and that's what they do best and they build machines that work for 15 years at a time up there. So yeah, the money is finite and we got astronauts to land on the moon, so we got to figure out where to put our chips on this one guts to get going yeah, pile editor-in-chief at astra spacenssorg if you want to subscribe to that fabulous publication.

You got any books coming out soon I'm working on one in stealth mode that I can't talk about yet, but we're looking at about nine months nice, oh, biogasational period, first biography a biography?

0:52:13 - Leo Laporte
oh, I love that they're harder. Yeah, you gotta.

0:52:18 - Rod Pyle
You gotta research and stuff yeah, I've been talking to this guy. I, I think about 35 hours so far.

0:52:25 - Leo Laporte
It's a guy who's alive. Is it Space?

0:52:27 - Mikah Sargent
Jesus.

0:52:28 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, no, it's not Space Jesus, but hey, he could be next. You know he hasn't had one yet, that's a good idea. I'm sending you 5%. How exciting.

0:52:40 - Leo Laporte
Rod Pyle also hosts this Week in Space with Tarek Malik of Spacecom. What's your record day?

0:52:47 - Rod Pyle
We record Friday morning and we post three or four in the afternoon. Okay, all depending on Anthony's staggering workload.

0:52:54 - Leo Laporte
So subscribe at twittv. Slash twist D-W-I-S.

0:53:01 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, because if you don't subscribe you don't get to see the video, and that's half the fun with us, oh yes, that's right.

0:53:06 - Leo Laporte
So we should explain. We put out audio for the unwashed masses. But for those of us, for those of you in the club, you get the video. You can see this shining space face, the space face, is that? No? Well, you get to see Tarek fall out of his chair.

0:53:20 - Rod Pyle
There's video for everybody.

0:53:22 - Leo Laporte
It's video for all yeah, guess what it turns out. We put out video for everybody, you and me. We do. Yes, oh no, we can't do that. I don't know. They're nodding at me. They're looking at me and going what are you talking about, leo? So I apologize. Anyway, subscribe Twittertv. Slash TWI. Yes, that it'll all become clear.

0:53:44 - Caller
Thank you, Rod.

0:53:46 - Leo Laporte
Rod. Thank you, sir, it's great to speak with you.

0:53:49 - Chris Marquardt
What do?

0:53:50 - Leo Laporte
we say what is the official space?

0:53:52 - Rod Pyle
greeting Live long and prosper, live long and get wealthy. Yes On podcasting.

0:54:00 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I can tell you right now that's a bad choice. Thank you, rod Bye. Thank you, sir, take care. Thanks so much. Bye-bye, take care. I installed, while we were talking, miley O photos on my Windows machine and I have downloaded the thumbnails for 195,656 photos. Yeah, those haven't come up yet, but down below they have. These are the ones that are still downloading, because there's more than 200,000 total. So I think that's good. That's a lot of photos. That's a lot of photos like that. You got them all. Bada bing, bada, bada hum Bada. Heine heine hei and a heine heine ho. What should we do now, mr John Ashley?

0:54:44 - Mikah Sargent
I'm going to try and pick up on Randy.

0:54:47 - Leo Laporte
Randy. Randy, by the way, there's a little picture of our kitty cat. Oops, don't show that it's got my address on it. Nevermind, randy, Welcome. Join us on. Ask the Tech Guys. Hello, hello.

0:55:03 - Caller
Randy, where are you? Calling from sarasota, florida, beautiful sarasota, florida. What's up? Uh, two things. First of all, I called a few weeks ago about the universal control and I finally found what worked. We had to. We decided to paint in the room, so I didn't take everything down and put it back together. I put it back together, I stacked the two minis on top of each other and now it seems to work pretty well. What do?

0:55:32 - Leo Laporte
you think you fixed.

0:55:34 - Caller
Well, I think I had them separated. They were on both ends of the monitor. Maybe the distance or whatever was in between.

0:55:42 - Leo Laporte
So having them next to each other did it?

0:55:45 - Caller
yeah, but my primary question is photography. We're going to south africa in a few weeks. Oh, the safari stuff, how fun. And I really don't want to. I can't carry my heavy uh, you know, slr, yeah, and I'm afraid of dropping my phone and having an elephant crush it. Fair enough. So do you recommend some type of like a point and shoot type camera which is less expensive than the phone? If I lose it, I lose it. Golly, I mean.

0:56:18 - Leo Laporte
I know if I were going, I would be bringing the longest lenses I have in my arsenal, because you're not going to go right up to the lion and say, can I shoot your photo? But there are certainly point-and-shoots with a lot of zoom that would probably work fine. Yeah, and the other thing is you can get point-and-shoots that are a little more dust proof. I'm a pentax, uh, or olympus fan. Do you want to interchangeable lenses or you just want one body one?

0:56:55 - Caller
this is just for you know, for memories and that kind of stuff, so I don't have to get the best pictures, but I want something which is you know, at least you know, not totally blurred, yeah yeah, uh, I'm just thinking what the best point and shoot would best quality point and shoot would be for that.

0:57:17 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, because the nice thing about point shoots they have smaller sensors, which means you don't have to have a giant lens. You can have a lens that has 10x zoom. That is really quite pocketable. I've always carried a Pentax waterproof camera with me. Let me see what. Yeah, it goes from 28 to 140 millimeters. These are these WG90s the latest one of these. These are dustproof, waterproof, they give you 16 megapixels, so it's better than your smartphone, and they give you a big zoom 140 millimeters, that's probably adequate to capture the line. Look at that thing.

That's so cool looking and this is easily pocketable. So I've used earlier models of this this, and I've been very happy with these. So that's that's certainly one choice that I would uh consider. I'm on the dp review site. Hello you, hallelujah. Dp review has been saved. So they, uh, they, uh and they, they seem to like it. Uh, let me see what what the reviews say here. This came out a year ago. Take anywhere rugged compact camera. Rico owns pentax now. So, um, that's why the the rico cameras and the pentax have been kind of merged together in capability. I think that that would be my first choice and that's a. That's a pretty lightweight, easy to carry camera. The image quality is good. It's great. Really, it's better than your smartphone. Um, any other recommendations? Let's see. We're looking.

0:58:56 - Mikah Sargent
Looking at the chat room yeah, the wire cutter has a recommendation, but it is a very expensive sony camera sony makes excellent.

0:59:04 - Caller
Yeah, yeah it'd be a similar size to an slr, so I'm not quite sure how.

0:59:09 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't think that would save you anything. This pentax is pocketable. Yeah, it's that small. Um, I always so in the old days. This has changed a lot. The old days, a camera, a serious photographer, always have his big dslr with the big long lenses and then have a little pocket point and shoot Used to be the Canon was very popular. I don't think they even make them anymore that you'd carry around because you didn't want to always be carrying or lugging around your stuff. For me that was the Pentax. I would carry that little Pentax around with me. Somebody's recommending the RX100 Mark VI. You can get a Mark IV or V still. Still, I think that are less uh what's the zoom?

on the rx when a pack of playing cards. Yeah, these, I think they have a one inch sensor. Um, they're quite nice. Let me just see there's even a seven. Now. These are sony cyber shots. Remember the cyber shot? It says 8.3 x zoom lens. Okay, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. I think a lot of people like this. This was another very popular choice. Um, when it came to um, uh, pocket point and shoot cameras. I like the fact that it has an articulatable lcd that makes it much easier to take shots from the waist and so forth. It says one a one-inch sensor, 200-millimeter equivalent. Yeah, this is probably the one I'd get. These are notoriously good. 20 megapixels stacked CMOS sensor. Sony makes the sensors in many of the very, very high-end cameras Not cheap it's over $1,000, but 85%. Review from DP Review. It's a few years old. This came out about five years ago. There may be a newer one, even than the 7. I don't know, but yeah, I think this is a good choice.

1:00:55 - Caller
Would you be concerned about anything to pop up? Sorry, it looks like it has the parts which kind of pop up.

1:01:05 - Leo Laporte
it has a pop-up flash which you're never going to use unless the lion really is six feet away in a cave and you're in the cave uh, I don't know what that. Is that a viewfinder?

1:01:15 - Mikah Sargent
I know, I don't know what that other pop-up weird looking thing.

1:01:18 - Leo Laporte
It might be a pop-up viewfinder.

1:01:20 - Caller
Let me just look on amazon and see what these uh I've been worried about getting you know dirt in there and having it uh stick or something well, if you, if dirt's your problem, that pentax is perfect, that'd be great.

1:01:32 - Leo Laporte
Um, yeah, see, you can get an older rx. You know they still. You still get a two, six. Um, yeah, the new ones are more expensive. I think these look. It depends on your budget. Obviously. These are really nice. The RX100s are very, very, very nice cameras. You can see it's got Zeiss glass. Yeah, I would say this if price is no object, that's a good way to go. And again, you can get a lower model, an older model for less, and those are all very good.

1:02:11 - Caller
This is a once-in-a-lifetime trip.

1:02:13 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's exactly why I would take my longest, biggest, heaviest lenses. But I don't blame you. I think you're probably right that that's going to be. You're going to regret doing that.

But telephoto is, of course, a must. Now this is 200 millimeters, so that's pretty good. That's pretty good. Here is uh from rtings, which I think does a good job the four best point and shoot cameras, and this is from this. This year, spring of 2024, let's see what they, what they liked at rtings looks like the rx 107 is the one that they choose yeah, I would agree.

I mean, I, this is kind of the king of cameras. If you want the ultimate portable, rugged, waterproof camera, I love those pentaxes. The image quality with this, because it's a one inch sensor, it's going to be somewhat better. It's not? You're going to be? Yeah, and there's. There's the other one. Every pro used to carry the canon power shot, the g5. They still make that.

That's interesting and for vlogging you have a zv1, you're not be, you won't be vlogging. I would say your choice is the rx100 or the pentax and you could choose depending on budget and needs. The rx100 is is not exactly rugged. It's not. It's not, as you know, vulnerable as your dslr, but it's not exactly rugged all right.

1:03:34 - Caller
Well, thank you for the suggestions stay tuned.

1:03:37 - Leo Laporte
In half an hour, chris mark red will join us and I'll ask him what he uses for his quick point and shoot and what he would take to africa for a safari. Where are you going?

1:03:48 - Caller
uh, we're going to south africa and then we're going to botswana and zimbabwe trip of a lifetime.

1:03:55 - Leo Laporte
It sounds like, yes, yes, I've always wanted to do this. Our travel agent is begging us. She said you will never forget it. I said okay, but someday soon. We're not in exactly, uh, the budget to do this, but uh, is it. Is it uh in you going tense like glamping through the?

1:04:16 - Caller
well, we, if we're gonna, when we decided to do, we wanted to do a comfortable, so it's a high-end type thing. A small group sounds great. So a few days in cape town, then we, you know, fly from the different uh, I guess lodges and we'll stay in the other sounds wonderful.

1:04:35 - Leo Laporte
It sounds fantastic. Have a great trip. I want to see pictures when you get back. All right, enjoy take care somebody's suggesting you could just rent good ones and insure them, and that way, when the lion eats it, Then you could say look the lion, ate it. What am I going to do? What are you going to do? I hate it when that happens. The pronunciation of Zeiss is Zeiss, zeiss, zeiss.

1:05:00 - Mikah Sargent
I always said Zeiss, because the Zeiss is the site. I always said Zeiss, because Zeiss Die Zeit is the site. Die Zeit, the German Zeiss, yeah, the.

1:05:08 - Leo Laporte
Publication Zeitung. Well, okay, I'll trust you on that one, igor is, you can always Probably.

1:05:15 - Mikah Sargent
Consult A native speaker Michael.

1:05:18 - Leo Laporte
I will.

1:05:20 - Mikah Sargent
What should we do next?

1:05:26 - Leo Laporte
I want to pick up on another phone call. Yes, remember phone caller press star six. Hello, hey, what's your first name and where are you calling from?

1:05:36 - Caller
This is Becky calling from Denver.

1:05:38 - Leo Laporte
Hi Becky. Hi Becky, from Denver, welcome, what's up.

1:05:42 - Caller
Thanks, nice to talk to you guys First time. I want to say I'm a club member, I'm also a first-time caller, woo, and I'm a TwitLive viewer since 2012. You check? All the boxes. Thank you for continuing the live viewing, because we live viewers, even though we're not always watching. We might be doing other things and just listening, but it's nice to feel part of the studio by getting to watch live.

1:06:12 - Leo Laporte
I agree.

1:06:13 - Caller
The other reason I'm happy that I was able to call today is because you just had on another woman caller and you don't have enough women callers. I agree, becky, so I thought let's get two in a row, hey man, let's get three in a row.

1:06:27 - Leo Laporte
Let's keep going.

1:06:29 - Caller
Okay. Anyway, I'm calling on something that you might know something about, leo, because you are a Kaiser Permanente member. I am, indeed, and a friend asked me a question about this today. The other thing before I give you my question is another thing I'm involved in that you don't know that there's many that exist anymore is Mac user groups oh, wow, and I'm in a Mac user group in Denver and this week we had Joe, yeah yeah, called Mac and tech.

Anyway, we had a Joe kiss along this week talking about online privacy and I asked him about this too, but Kaiser sent out a letter a couple weeks ago to its members and I read this letter and I went what are they talking about that? Kaiser determined that certain online technology, commonly known as cookies or pixels, installed on our website and mobile applications may have transmitted personal information to our third-party vendors Google, microsoft, bing and Twitter when members access the websites or mobile applications. And then they went on to say they didn't get any personal information. And I was just sitting there and going. I don't even know what they're talking about. I don't know if they just and Joe Kissel thought this too if they just felt like because of the latest stuff that Congress was talking about with online services, and maybe because there's the Twitter bird on every website, that they felt like they needed to get in touch with people and tell them oh, none of your personal information got sent out via pixel information got sent out via pixel or so.

1:08:28 - Leo Laporte
Here's here's what the technology can do. Uh, it can merely see that you were on the kaiser site. So kaiser probably had to do this, because that's a violation of hipaa, because it revealed that you were a kaiser customer to a third party. That's all. It revealed that this ip IP address is a Kaiser customer. Kaiser is a what's it called an HMO health maintenance organization. It's a health insurer that provides our health insurance and our health protection. I have to say, kaiser's up to something, though. I just went to the Kaiser app and you see this says Kaiser Permanente uses tracking technologies in this application and may share data with its third parties. In other words, they haven't stopped to enhance your experience. Well, thank you for enhancing my experience. By the way, you cannot say no. By using this application, you agree to use these technologies as described in our privacy statement. Furthermore, I got a blocking message about a month ago from Kaiser that I had to agree to this sharing. So there's something going on at Kaiser.

1:09:43 - Caller
Well, I do have to say that a friend of mine texted me today because I had talked with her about this and I told her I don't even know what they're talking about Cookies, everybody has them. But she said she's now starting to get this from other vendors, and she didn't tell me who. But but I don't know if this is just a general thing that companies are suddenly feeling like they have to send out.

1:10:07 - Leo Laporte
That's what I think it is. I don't think this is anything new. I think that recent scrutiny and government regulations and, by the way, new laws, like the California Privacy Act a new one just passed, which is, I think, really good news. It hasn't been signed by the governor yet. In Vermont, A new one just passed, which is, I think, really good news. It hasn't been signed by the governor yet in Vermont. This data privacy law is very aggressive. It allows residents of Vermont to sue companies for collecting or sharing sensitive data without consent. So now it's not the law yet in Vermont. The governor hasn't signed it, Unknown whether he will sign it.

Tech companies are up in arms. But these state laws? There's no federal law yet. There is HIPAA, but there's no federal law. But these state laws are starting to become problems for these companies and I think they're being proactive, saying well, you know, we are going to be required to get consent sooner or later in Vermont, for sure in California and other states. So we're going to go ahead and turn these things on. It's not that they're doing anything new.

1:11:11 - Caller
It just worries me yeah, it just worries me that this will start many people worrying about cookies in general.

1:11:19 - Leo Laporte
Well, they are worried and I'm not completely against them being worried about cookies, third-party cookies. Remember Google was going to eliminate third-party cookies in Chrome Right third-party cookies. Yeah, that's the ones that you care about. You don't care if Kaiser knows you're a Kaiser member. You care if Pfizer knows you're a Kaiser member. The question for me is why is Kaiser putting embedding tracking links in their Kaiser website, in their Kaiser app? That, to me, is the bigger problem. Why are they doing this?

1:11:56 - Caller
And I think it is. Why are they also mentioning? Why are they mentioning?

1:11:59 - Leo Laporte
pixels. Well, that's just another way of doing it. That's a worse way of doing it. So you know, when you get an email sometimes, or when you go to a website, there is a one-by-one pixel. It's invisible. That is actually an image from a third-party site. It's the same thing as putting a Facebook Like button on or other third-party. It's the same thing as a third-party cookie.

The whole idea is that the person who has put a tracking pixel on your website or on your app is, in effect, getting access to the information that you are on that website and any other information your browser will send over. By the way, that can be used to fingerprint you, because your browser, when queried and anybody with a tracking pixel on there can do this will say, for instance, what your screen resolution is, what extensions you have, a variety of stuff that browsers, I guess, say well, we got to tell the website that because they need to know. But in aggregate, if you get 20 of these data points, it pretty much can say that's Becky, by the way, oh, that's Becky. So that's the real concern of third-party cookies in general and tracking pixels specifically, is it can be used to fingerprint you and then a third party not Kaiser. Kaiser knows everything. They want to know about you. They know your blood type, Becky, they should. They're your healthcare provider, but what's disturbing to me is that they are putting any kind of tracking on their app or website.

1:13:27 - Caller
that should not be happening, and and they're going to say well, I'm blocking all third party cookies, so I'm not, I'm not worried about that, I use ad blockers for that.

1:13:38 - Chris Marquardt
Yeah, and.

1:13:38 - Caller
I know that other people who will really be concerned.

1:13:42 - Leo Laporte
Right, and I understand you're also saying that this is the reason we see those cookie pop-ups everywhere now, that some of this concern is overblown. But that's a really good example of why third-party cookies and tracking pixels are problematic in the health care site. Yeah, because that's your, you know. Do I want Pfizer to know what drugs I'm taking so they can send me ads for their versions of that drug? No, I don't think so. Health care is a very sensitive issue. You know. If, all of a sudden, I get a cancer diagnosis and I start getting emails from chemo providers, that's upsetting. So I can understand why this is an issue. My real question is what are you doing not being, you're not being forthright on this? Why are we? We're getting alerted not because they have never done this before and they're starting something new. We're getting alerted because the law of the land is starting to change to me the most upsetting aspect of this.

1:14:37 - Mikah Sargent
I've just kind of um figured, figured out the whole timeline. It goes goes back to 2022. In 2022, that is when the markup and an independent organization came together and discovered that many of the top 100 hospitals in America were sharing this data using pixel tracking. Then, in 2023, the mental health startup Cerebral got in trouble when they admitted that they had used or shared private health information with Facebook, google, tiktok and others.

And then, as is the way of these large companies and kind of a herd mentality after that disclosure to the US Department of Health and Human Services, other companies had to follow suit and start telling the US Department of Health and Human Services oh, we looked at our code, too, and we found that exact same thing. So these companies either didn't know, which is what they will probably say, or knew and didn't think that it was a violation. Oh, we found this. It was sharing with a third party and this does violate HIPAA, according to the HHS. Then more companies started following suit and telling everyone that that was the case. Why? Because then they could protect themselves from lawsuits. So this has been going since 2022. And we're just now hearing from Kaiser that they too had at one point had code that was sharing the information with third parties.

1:16:04 - Leo Laporte
In fact, if you read their privacy statement, which I would suggest reading, they talk about this and they say who's they're sharing it with. They talk about what they call web beacons, which is the same thing as tracking pixels. Web beacons are used in conjunction with persistent cookies. Our mobile applications, for instance, contain software development kits that may collect and transmit information back to us or third-party partners about the usage of the mobile application or other applications in your device. They say it's de-anonymized, that it's anonymized right, that your identity is removed, but we've also seen lots of evidence that de-anonymization is not very effective. I am not, and Joe's not either, like an adamant privacy Nazi, right, but so I don't think Kaiser's doing anything. They haven't always done. I think they're proactively warning us because they realize times are changing. I think you know they say you can block this, which you and you are becky, but uh, your, uh, we, uh, your functionality may be limited. Block it because the reason you block it is not merely to protect your privacy, but to send them a signal that this is wrong and you're not going to play this stupid game. Right, but you're right about there are a lot of people who don't run ad blockers. I was kind of heartened by the news last month that 52% of Americans use ad blockers. I thought, wow, I guess the message is penetrating. Kaiser may use third party vendor to help us manage some of our email and voice text messaging communications with you.

I mean, read the privacy statements quite long, and they have to, as you know. This is the good news about those laws. Reveal everything they do, and you know they claim that we're anonymizing it. But, um, you know we may also disclose your personal information in a variety of ways when we believe good faith, that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect you or others safely from threats, harm or imminent harm. Investigate fraud or active activity in violation of the law. Respond to the lawful request. Keep the site secure. If kaiser's involved in a merger, acquisition or sale of all over its portions of assets, you'll be notified by mail and a prominent notice of any change of ownership.

Uh, but you know I, you know you can opt out. They say it'll harm functionality. Look at the size of this thing, jeez Louise, the stuff they collect. It's worth reading it, I don't know. By the way, this is last revised in October of 2021. So that proves that probably was that study right about that same time, but also proves they've been doing this for at least three years. I wouldn't worry about it. Um yeah, if you know, becky, when we had kids, we some reason. All of a sudden we got lots of ads for pampers and the hospital sells that information they have forever, for years yeah, I wasn't worried about it.

1:19:21 - Caller
I just uh. When I heard from a friend today that she's starting to see more of those from other organizations and you had some other woman on today I thought I have not called.

1:19:31 - Leo Laporte
I haven't I'm glad you did uh, have something to call about.

1:19:35 - Caller
so I just wanted to call in today and I also just want to say I'm pitching the group, the club, to as many people as I can. Thank you so much and I love all your shows. And to Rod Pyle, I just want to say that I love this Week in Space and I've seen him now two weeks in a row on the Unexplained with William Shatner.

1:19:56 - Leo Laporte
Yes, he likes that. He does that. Hey, it's such a pleasure, Becky Bless you Thank you for watching. We love our live viewers. I'm glad we were able to come to a good solution and put it on YouTube, which makes it a lot easier to watch. We're so glad you joined the club. Thank you for your support.

1:20:13 - Caller
I sit here every Sunday afternoon and put Twit on my main television so that I can sit down and actually watch the reason.

1:20:24 - Leo Laporte
I love that. The reason I got into radio in the first place 50 years ago is because it's a medium that you keep companies you in your life right. We keep you company and I love that and I want to keep doing that as long as we can and I'm glad, I'm so grateful to know that you, as they used to say in the old TV shows, thank you for inviting us into your living room.

1:20:47 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah.

1:20:48 - Leo Laporte
I really appreciate it, Becky. It's an honor. It is an honor.

1:20:52 - Caller
Well, thanks very much. I'm very glad to be able to speak to you guys today.

1:20:57 - Caller
Thank you, and I'll let you get on to other calls All and I'll let you get on to other calls.

1:21:00 - Caller
All right, thanks.

1:21:01 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, there's already a big lobbying effort to keep the government of Vermont from signing that privacy bill. Really, a number of businesses like Orvis, which is in Vermont. Orvis said the state senator's limiting data collection to put Vermont businesses at a significant, if not crippling, disadvantage. Ll Bean's opposing a similar privacy bill in Maine, so we shall see what happens. There's a good article today in Politico on the Vermont data privacy law which has passed the assembly there, or the state lawmakers, but does not yet have the signature of the governor. And big tech is coming in and saying hold on there please just a moment here, please.

You know I understand it's going to hurt your business. I think it would be nice to find a way to um, to make to do a business without invading your customers privacies. How about that? There's a thought, there's an idea. We refuse.

We are often asked to put tracking pixels, web beacons, in our feeds and so forth. We we, you know a lot of advertising. We've lost some big agencies because we won't do it. A lot of advertisers have settled, though, for kind of a halfway that we've agreed upon, which is we put uh, if you download our shows, you go through a third party. I can't remember who it is these days. Is it Podsites? I think it is, or maybe it used to be Chartable. Anyway, you go through a third party and they aggregate the IP addresses of people down that's all they know, by the way, we don't know anything else about you the IP addresses of the machines that downloaded the show, your phones, your laptops, whatever. And then, independently, our sponsors many of them, not all of them, some of our sponsors will put a web beacon, a tracking pixel, in their website which does the same thing, collects all those addresses. Now, what we don't do is give those addresses to the advertiser, nor does the advertiser give his addresses to us. The third party is like an escrow service it preserves privacy, compares them, doesn't give information to either side and then tells the advertiser.

56% of the IP addresses that got downloaded to show went to your website, and for some advertisers that's sufficient. That's what they want. They want some sort of did our ad work is what they want to know and that's the best we can do for them. We've lost many advertisers because that's all we'll do for them. Many advertisers want direct tracking pixels. It's one of the reasons a lot of advertisers refuse to buy independent podcasts like ours RSS-based podcasts reasons a lot of advertisers refuse to buy independent podcasts like ours rss based podcasts instead will only buy podcasts that come off your amazon app or your spotify app, because then they don't have to use tracking pixels. They know they have everything they need to know.

So, uh, it's a hard. That's one of the reasons we go to you and say, can you join the club? Because, uh, there's a lot of pressure these days from advertisers that want to know more and more. And I would just say to every business in America if you can find a way to make a living without invading the privacy of your customers. You might consider that Might just want to try that. I know it's anti-American for me to say that. You know, I'm in favor of the Americans, not the American businesses, right? Let's see if we can figure out a way to do that. John Ashley, should we take a little? Let's do a little break. Let's take a little break and then we will come back. We have lots more calls, lots more to talk about.

You're watching Ask the Tech Guys with Mikah Sargent, Leo Laporte and our fine advertiser, 1bigthink. I love this name, but you've got to know what it is. It's the number 1 B-I-G-T-H-I-N-K.com. And what does 1bigthink do? Dot com, and what does one big think do?

Well, if you're a big company or a little company, you know we were just talking about this that the law now requires you in many cases to be careful about privacy, security compliance. Big companies can afford to have a data protection officer, a DPO, a full-time staff member that will keep an eye on all these things. Regulations it's not just in the US, it's all over the world are in constant flux. There's new regulations like that. Vermont law organizations are forced to embrace concepts like and I encourage them to do so. Privacy by design, bravo, transparency, purpose limitation, data minimization and data subject rights. You know that you have to. Problem is if you're a medium-sized business, you also know that's a hard thing to do. Most mid-sized high-growth organizations are trying to focus on getting the job done, focus on their core offerings. They don't have the volume of work to keep a full-time privacy and, by the way, now AI same thing or AI team busy, nor can they honestly compete in the market for the top talent to fill those jobs. Right, you're trying to compete against Microsoft and Facebook. It's pretty hard if you're a medium sized business. That's why I love 1bigthink.

With 1bigthink services, you get a DPO. You're guided by an experienced executive. You get the capacity and abilities of a data protection officer. Just in case you don't know, that's an enterprise security leadership role responsible for overseeing data protection strategy, compliance and implementation so that you're compliant with CCPA, CPRA, GDPR and all of these new privacy regulations. The role includes expert knowledge of data protection law and practices, broad and deep information, privacy compliance and data processing skill sets across all industries. This person becomes your ally, with a complete understanding of IT infrastructure, technologies, technical and organizational structures in your industry so they can come in and they can help you get the job done with minimum distraction for you. And, of course, from one big thing, you get excellent management skills and the ability to interface easily with internal staff at all levels. This is what you want An AI expert. Yes, one big thing is AI compliance service is designed to integrate with your organization's privacy program and provide the required governance, compliance and assessment activities under these regulations. They'll even help you raise awareness of and train staff on AI regulatory requirements and issues.

It's a changing world. You need a partner. You need somebody who can help you navigate these tough new regulations. To learn more about how to give your organization sustainable privacy and AI compliance got to go to 1bigthink.com. That's the number 1-B-I-G-g-t-h-i-n-k. 1bigthink.com and you know, in the context of what we were just talking about, this is a responsible company's doing this right. You know an irresponsible company goes ah well, wait till we get sued. Yeah, no no responsible companies.

Go to 1bigthink.com and handle it. Just handle it now and in the long run. It's good for your business, it's good for your customers and you should do it. That's all I have to say thank you. I'll get off my soapbox now. We will take another. What?

1:28:37 - Mikah Sargent
how about an email email email so good.

1:28:43 - Leo Laporte
Every you know, once a week I stretch only one arm. Maybe you can put the mailbox on the other side sometime and then I'll get the other arm. No, actually I do, uh, I do tai chi, now you know, yeah, and there is a wonderful crane sunning its wings where you do this. That feels so good.

1:29:03 - Mikah Sargent
That does feel good, does that?

1:29:04 - Leo Laporte
feel good, everybody, just sun your wings for a moment.

Sun your wings. Ian writes hi, Ian. He even puts his phone number in here. Oh well, we won't be calling. I don't have an answer for Ian, though. Uh-oh, I can just tell from the subject. Oh boy, here we go. How to merge Google Workspace email with free Gmail. Okay, so, to have a professional email. You know, Ian, at mygreatcompanycom, I had to purchase a Google Workspace account because my cPanel email that was being sent and received to a free Gmail account was running into authentication problems due to Gmail's new DKIM standards.

1:29:42 - Mikah Sargent
Leo has thoughts for those listening. He's doing some gestures of frustration.

1:29:46 - Leo Laporte
Don't buy email from google buy it from well, a good email company like our sponsor, fast mail. But we used, you know, corporate yeah, we do we use workstv is google worksman.

I have decades of email, youtube videos, google Google photos, g drive data on my free Google account, of course and now I'm finding that the new Google Workspace account is completely different. It's a new account and in order to merge it with my original free Google account requires tedious merging of many apps individually. I would just like to send and receive mail from my Workspace to my free gmail account to avoid all this merge stuff. Oh well, you could do that. Yeah, that's easy. What's the best way to do it? Will I run into authentication problems? For instance, should I forward mail, fetch mail, etc. So we have in fact, I'm in your same boat twits email. You know, when you email at twittv like atg at twittv, for example, uh goes into a google workspace account, but I don't want to log in to my google workspace account. In fact, I have a free gmail account, but I also have our sponsor fast mail account. This will work either. In either case, forward the mail. Forward the mail now.

Gmail will allow you to have multiple email aliases. So when you send mail, you want to make sure that it's being sent from your google workspace email address. That will solve dkim, spfd, mark all of the authentication problems because google will be sending it. So use google's outbound mail program and tell it my personality. My alias is my workspace account, even though I am sitting in my Gmail, my free account, right? Yep, I do the same thing with fast mail. You should be able to do with any email program which is fetch the mail from somewhere else and then, if you respond to the mail, tell it. Oh, and by incidentally, this is how I'd like to say this is coming. Pretend this is coming from the other account. I don't think it will use. If you're using Gmail, it doesn't really matter, but fast mail will be the one sending it out.

Yeah, but it'll be sent out. The reply to field will be Leo at Twitter TV. So, in fact, here's, here's my. I can show you my fast mail account and you'll see what I've done is. Uh, using organizational tools, I have my regular email. That's, that's just the regular email address and here's my twit. So this is all stuff that's gone to uh. Twit at Leo at twittv. You can see right there If I reply to it, what I want to do. And you know, if I don't choose this, I have to go down and choose Leo at twittv as one of the reply to addresses.

Um, actually, I don't see that here, but in Gmail you would have this as one of your aliases, right, and you can even make that the default. So that way, that's the whole idea of why you might have this choose box. You know what's the outbound email coming from? I don't think. I just don't think I've set up twittv, but for you you'd want to. So, just in this case, fastmail goes out and fetches the email. If you're on a Workspace and Gmail account, you can have it either way. You can say fetch the email from my Workspace account, or you can say to the Workspace account forward the email to my regular account. Yeah, I think it might be better to fetch it, because then you wouldn't have all that forwarding stuff and I wonder why?

1:33:23 - Mikah Sargent
because for me, what I have is just an email application that I use independent. Yeah, and I'm logged into my work account.

1:33:31 - Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, you can do that.

1:33:32 - Mikah Sargent
And then if a male if male comes in and it goes, because sometimes I'll get mail to Mikah at Chihuahua coffee from a PR person, right, and I see that and I choose in the reply field because I'm logged into Mike at twittv that email address as the reply, then that also works. So there are multiple ways to do this for sure.

1:33:53 - Leo Laporte
Igor says Leo, you just showed all your secret email addresses. Did you notice how long?

that list was that's one of the nice things about Fastmail. Every domain that I have has an email address, so I can respond from any of those domains. Yeah, any, you do it the smart way. I made it more complicated. Um, I'm not sure. I guess I just all want it. I don't know. You're right, just do it your way. Just use multiple accounts. Yeah, have multiple days? Duh, oh, that's why, so I can use my web mail. That's why, yeah, because that's the only way to use it. Yeah, that's why, so I can use my web mail. That's why I do it. Yeah, because that's the only way to use it. That's why I do it. Have it your way. All right, that was fun Should we do that again.

1:34:32 - Mikah Sargent
Let's share their phone number. I'm just kidding, I'm kidding. Do you want? To do another email, 867-5309. Hi, jenny, it's me Leo. Sorry, what was the question? Do you want to do another email?

1:34:50 - Leo Laporte
Do you want to go to Chris Marquardt, who's ready right now? Well, let's talk photos After one brief pause. Take a breath.

That's Mikah Sargent, I'm Leo Laporte, and when you Becky are watching Ask the Tech Guys and I'm sure more than just becky, but I'm glad he's watching. Chris marquardt is our photo guy. He does those great photo expeditions all over the world at discover the top floorcom. He's written many wonderful books on photography, including my favorite film photography book and wide angle photography book. He's also, of course, uh, a expert on coaching and helping people take better photographs. He joins us from the viewfinder villa.

1:35:30 - Mikah Sargent
Mr chris, mark quartello, chris do we have you muted or do you have you muted?

1:35:40 - Chris Marquardt
is this better? Yeah, hello, wrong, wrong button. Sorry, how are you, gentlemen?

1:35:47 - Leo Laporte
right button and a wrong button, I'm great, how are you, chris?

1:35:50 - Chris Marquardt
I'm doing good picture, very good. I just returned from one week of teaching photography, the annual abbey workshop. Oh, I'm all fired up. That sounds delightful, do you find that people are?

1:36:03 - Leo Laporte
coming to photography. Still I worry that photography might be one of those things that AI and point and shoot cameras, camera phones has kind of hurt the field a little bit.

1:36:15 - Chris Marquardt
You know what, during this entire week of photography and I'm talking 24, seven, 7 photography people being up at night, being out with flashes, lighting up the church around the corner, that kind of stuff um, we didn't see a single ai picture. People are loving photography, they love to have their cameras to capture a moment and the the ai photos have their place. They're really good, but the people come to a photo workshop to learn a skill and you do not learn a skill by at least not that kind of a skill by prompting a system. So I don't mind AI, I love it, but this is photography and photography is still something where you try to create art.

1:37:05 - Leo Laporte
I think that's what's going to happen in this AI era. I say this all the time because I play chess and there was a great fear 20 years ago, when the first chess computers started beating the best humans in the world, that chess would be dead. Like well, chess is solved. There's no point in playing it anymore. And it turned out. No, not at all. There's still great pleasure in watching humans play. We don't want to watch machines play each other right, but watching humans play and playing another human art will survive, whether a computer can make it or not. We love making music, we love painting, we love taking pictures, and that's what this segment is all about celebrating. Uh, what was our assignment this week, chris?

1:37:44 - Chris Marquardt
Last assignment was the tough assignment, and did you get any wonderful photos? We have some great submissions here and I picked three and let's have a look at them. First one is by Ron Hikes 816 Cali Scenes it's a flower.

1:38:05 - Caller
But what's tough about that flower? It's a little tough flower.

1:38:08 - Chris Marquardt
Well, look at the surroundings.

1:38:09 - Caller
There's like a bridge.

1:38:11 - Chris Marquardt
in the background there's weeds. All around there's some human stuff. Oh, that doesn't look like a weed. That looks beautiful. It's a beautiful flower. Surviving in a field of weeds. Yes.

I love it. So that one. I like this a lot. It's just, it's a very simple photo, like the bokeh, the sky and the bokeh, and it just works for me. So second one Tough Day at the Office. It's by Demi Lente, and I like the irony in this because, of course, what we're looking at is a lady on a beach in the sun, nice, and there's nothing really tough about that.

1:38:52 - Mikah Sargent
Unless you have a sun allergy, then that's probably a tough place or you know your skin will get tough over time if you keep putting it out in the sun.

1:39:01 - Leo Laporte
That's true, it's a good time if you keep putting it out in the sun. That's true, it's a good point.

1:39:05 - Chris Marquardt
All right, and last but not least, this one from Mitch XX a raven and great horned owl, who's tougher? So this is what happens when you introduce two subjects and some form of communication between them. So there's the crow, there's the owl, they're looking, they're sitting on the roof, they're looking at each other. I'm pretty sure there's like a hundred different speech bubbles that you can put on that picture. Yes, this is a meme for sure.

1:39:39 - Mikah Sargent
I love that yeah, can I ask you, chris, if you had taken this photo, would you consider editing out the poo? Yes, I would, or is it? It's birds? It's birds, right? No, I understand, so for me, I found that distracting and I would do that. However, that does creep into an area of it not being the real moment, and so I was just curious you, as a photographer who's been doing this for as long as you have, if you feel like that's part of the photograph for you, that realism of, well, there's some bird poop.

1:40:17 - Chris Marquardt
Well, it is realism and I think I would. I'd probably not take it out. It adds a bit of interest. Of course it might disgust a few people, but hey, it's nature.

1:40:28 - Leo Laporte
Would it be wrong to take it out? I guess would be the next question.

1:40:32 - Chris Marquardt
Well, it depends. In these kind of situations, what I will often do is, if I'm not sure, I'll make two versions of it, one with the poop and one without it, and then just compare them and decide by gut feel. So, that would be my approach. That's a nice idea.

1:40:48 - Mikah Sargent
We did have someone who gave us a call earlier and they are planning on going to South Africa on a safari and they were asking about what point and shoot camera uh, they should take with them now they specifically were looking for a point and shoot camera. Um, as opposed to something like a dslr or just using their phone because they didn't want their phone to get stomped on by an elephant was quite literally what they said um, do you have a modern point and shoot recommendation?

1:41:23 - Chris Marquardt
So the one camera that I usually recommend is and it doesn't have a zoom lens or anything has a fixed lens. It's the Ricoh GR3, which is very small, fits in a pocket, but has really, really amazing image quality. So have a look at that. Again, fixed lens, I think 35 millimeters equivalent, so you've got to be okay with having one focal length and then using your feet to get closer to things, but other than that, that's a perfect camera for me to carry around and take high quality snapshots.

1:42:04 - Leo Laporte
I have a. Also, there's a little bit of poop in this version of a picture that I took. I love that. In the Galapagos of a similar confrontation, I love that. I think it's a tern and a sea lion. That's interesting. Sometimes animals are very interesting.

1:42:24 - Mikah Sargent
The bird just looks like whoa. What is up with you right now? In fact, that's exactly what happened.

1:42:30 - Leo Laporte
The bird just stood his ground and the sea lion backed out.

1:42:32 - Mikah Sargent
I love that the bird's like, can you?

1:42:34 - Chris Marquardt
calm down. Again. Communication there's a story there.

1:42:37 - Leo Laporte
There's two things communicating with each other, but I did not offer that because I didn't take that this past three weeks and that's the whole point of these photo assignments is to get you out taking pictures and an excuse right for using your camera Now, chris.

1:42:57 - Chris Marquardt
You did take a picture though. You did take a picture, though, and I want to have a quick look at that because you submitted one for this assignment for tough, um, for tough, and it's a little cropped at the top there. It's not, uh, black and white photo. Oh, something happened here, because I guarantee you you could see the top of that guy's head yes leah said I did not, I did not cut his head off honest there we go this is better, all right, so so I took this yesterday.

Yeah, perfect last minute leo huh yeah, but what I like is what I like. First of all, it's black and white, which lets you concentrate on the subjects really. Well, so, um, there's the tough guy, the tough dog in well, tough, tough vehicle. I don't know, but just imagine that be a person with, like a bright red dress on or something in the background that would be so distracting. So, having this subject, these two subjects there again, sort of a story there, or maybe multiple stories there, nothing that distracts from them Perfect, the black and white is a perfect choice for this. Thank you, I really like this.

1:44:05 - Leo Laporte
I really enjoyed, uh. We have a annual uh photo, or a car show, rather, called the american graffiti days, and I always that's a, you know that's a great opportunity to take some fun pictures. So I had fun, absolutely. The other thing, though, that I've been doing, which is crazy, but, uh, I bought my. I bought my um holy grail lens the grail lens they call it um, and you know I've I've kind of, uh, I went from being a canon shooter to a sony shooter and I've kind of even moved on from sony. Now I'm only shooting likeica. I have a Leica Q2, and I recently got an M series, leica M11. And gosh darn it, it's an expensive hobby. But you know, I had a nice 50 millimeter lens. I thought, well, I'm going to shoot with this. But then I kept looking at this F.95 lens.

Look at the size of that. Which one are you talking about? F.95, lens f. Look at the size of that f 0.95. Now, here's the problem with it. If you get a lens, that's that fast. Look how big that aperture is. You want to always shoot with the aperture wide open, but as soon as you go out in daylight, yeah, because, because I would, yeah, because, oh, and man, that's how I show much light there's too much light, so I got, I got, and you've always recommended ND filters and I got a variable.

I shot that one actually with a six and ND six, which is three stops. But I got recently a variable ND filter so that I can shoot this indoors and out, and now I can't get it on, so but uh, but the idea is uh, so that I can keep it wide open even in broad daylight, and you know it's, it's brought back the fun for me in photography.

1:45:53 - Chris Marquardt
I have to say I'm really enjoying I, I, I usually tell people hey, use, learn to use what you have, because that will make a better photographer. But then I'm absolutely with you. Sometimes a new piece of equipment can make all the difference and give you motivation back and make you go out again. So um, now.

1:46:12 - Leo Laporte
I bought it used. I did not buy a new cause it's a. It is absolutely out of control, expensive, but I was able to find a good. Yeah, it's just a Leica, but I was able to find a good. Um, it's just a leica, but I was able to find a good um, a good deal on it, and so so I've been shooting this wide open and the what's great is the bokeh is, uh, phenomenal on it, and so you, it's gorgeous yeah so.

So you get uh, shots like that one, um, of the guy and his dog, uh, you know, and the backgrounds are just so, so creamy and creamy, creamy in the background. I really love it. Thank you, chris Marquardt. Now go to the bowl and select for us.

1:46:55 - Chris Marquardt
I put new words in there and I'm pulling one out and this oh yeah, this is right up my alley Minimalist, minimalist, so don't put too many things in your foot.

1:47:15 - Leo Laporte
Oh, minimalist, minimalist, Minimalist.

1:47:17 - Caller
Hmm, hmm, all right.

1:47:21 - Leo Laporte
Well, here's what the way this works. You've got four weeks now. We had three weeks in the last one because time scheduling, but four weeks now. Chris will be back in four weeks to take a picture or pictures illustrating the idea minimalist. Now how does this work? So you first of all get out there and take pictures. That's the inspiration. Get out there and take pictures because it has to be something you take from now till four weeks from now. If you get one, you go dang, that's it. I nailed it. Then upload it to Flickr. It's free to join.

Flickr is our favorite photo sharing site, costs you nothing to join and once it's there, you want to tag it, and in this case, you want to tag it with TG for Tech Guy and then Minimalist for the subject matter. Once you've done that, you can submit it to the Tech Guy group. The group is wonderful. We are now 14,000 strong group of photographers and listeners and you know I was just looking at Flickr is now celebrating its 20th anniversary. It was started in 2004. I was just looking. I joined in 2005. Probably you too, chris, members Somewhere around that, the very beginning. Yeah, but we're really happy to keep using it. So tag it TG Minimalist. Are you still doing the AI? Are you allowing people to do AI? Do we get?

1:48:47 - Chris Marquardt
any AI. You know we're not getting that many submissions none for this one. So it shows that people want to take photos and not make photos for the computer.

1:48:57 - Leo Laporte
Yes, so TG Minimalist upload it. Renee Silverman, our wonderful moderator, a great photographer in our own right, we'll say thank you, I appreciate the submission, and and it's in the pool there, and then Chris will pick three, as he did. Sometimes he gives me a little extra mention and talk about it in it in four weeks, tg minimalist, we had some great shots. It was really fun this week, or this month, I should say. Not the only owl, by the way, a couple of a couple of birds, a couple of three birds those tough birds.

1:49:36 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you, mr marquardt.

1:49:37 - Leo Laporte
Thanks so much have a wonderful week. Thanks for having me all right you too, and discover the top floorcom. If you want to join chris on a photo expedition, he's got all sorts. Take care, chris, bye-bye. 14,000, 23 members, 7.7 thousand photos, 7,700 photos, 330 discussions and one great moderator, renee silverman. Thank you, renee, for the work you do. And she always has a new banner shot too, which is fun. Oh, that is fun. Yeah, that's the cat from last month.

1:50:08 - Mikah Sargent
I love that cat from last. Yeah, I remember that that's a good photo.

1:50:11 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think I actually downloaded that photo, yeah all right, uh, by the way, this group, the tech guy group's been going on since 2007, so 17 years may 25th, our 17th birthday is coming up this week. Holy moly, wow, uh, I guess we started doing these reviews early on in the tech guy show. All right, your choice. Ooh, have a phone caller. How about a phone?

1:50:35 - Mikah Sargent
How about it? How now Brown cow?

1:50:52 - Leo Laporte
Callers, stars, I remember, yes, star six. Brown cow caller. Star six. Yes, star six, to unmute yourself. Oh, by the way, we just got an email from mike who said you missed the point of the woman on the beach. There were huge tire tracks in the sand near her head. I missed that. I, that's okay. Yeah, that's scary. Thank you, mike for that update. What city, hey guys? Hello, oh, it's our third woman on the show. Yay, what's your first name?

1:51:12 - Caller
Where are?

1:51:12 - Leo Laporte
you calling from.

1:51:14 - Caller
This is Camille again. I talked to you guys a couple weeks ago. Hi, camille, I'm from Pennsylvania.

1:51:19 - Caller
How are you?

1:51:23 - Caller
Welcome back, hi. What's up? Hi, I hope you can hear me. It's kind of windy. I wondered, leo, have you ever had Ben Goertzel on any of your shows?

1:51:30 - Leo Laporte
I don't even know the name. Who is Ben Goertzel?

1:51:33 - Caller
You don't know.

1:51:34 - Caller
Ben Goertzel. He's the Singularity Net guy. What is it called Open Cog Hyperion? He's building the agi.

1:51:44 - Leo Laporte
He says we're three to eight years away oh well, I better get him on then, because we're running out of time. Who does he work?

1:51:52 - Caller
for does he work?

1:51:52 - Leo Laporte
for himself, or is he?

1:51:55 - Caller
I think he's. I think he works with a bunch of people, but I know he did work with hansen robotics for sophia nice, and he's currently at singularity netio. It says on his linkedin yeah profile and just a couple months ago he said that it was three to eight, eight years away. But he he's looking at it. If I understand correctly, he's saying that it's not one program to rule them all. It's like a program that's really good at this and this one and this one, and then managers manage these things?

So it's a bunch of tiny programs.

1:52:29 - Leo Laporte
You know it's funny as much as we talk about AI. I've never really had any AI experts on the shows because I feel like they're a little biased. I don't think it's that weird. Now, presumably they have expertise. Yeah, so I should have them on. Yeah, but they also often have their own angle one way or the other about what's happening, and I will definitely. I'm going to look into Ben Goertzel. It's a great recommendation.

1:53:00 - Caller
I always have him open to me. Yeah, it would be awesome to have him with Amy Webb. That'd be really fun. But yeah, he actually just. I heard him a couple months ago. I heard him talk and he was saying that he could be biased but that he's part of his things. Line up with what Ray Kurzweil says. That would be. I haven't interviewed Ray Kurzershmer not in many years, but years ago.

1:53:25 - Leo Laporte
And I. I think I might have the same resistance to interviewing Ray. These days, Everybody's, everybody's doing their own thing and I think we are in a wonderful competitive environment. I don't know, Okay, I you know what. Maybe we should just do a whole AI show and have people like Ben and Ray and some others on and really have a little debate because I don't want to give you just one person. We need to get a bunch of them on multiple perspectives so that they could say no no, you're wrong.

1:53:53 - Caller
She would be great, yes she's very much would be great to have with.

1:53:57 - Leo Laporte
She's very much so on top of it and she's very in touch. Yeah, yeah, very interesting, and I had a book thing?

1:54:04 - Caller
I wondered yes, Camille Guys, I wondered about another book.

1:54:07 - Leo Laporte
Yes.

1:54:07 - Caller
Have you read, do you know? I'm sure you know, the Dan Brown the Da Vinci Code series? Yes, yes, yes, okay, did you read the last one? I did not. It's from 2017. It's called Origin and it's an AI one and it's the last one in the story, but it's super interesting. I have to read it. Another little AI.

1:54:28 - Leo Laporte
I read the first one, yeah.

1:54:32 - Caller
Oh, the first one's horrid. It's like the worst book of the series. He really improved or he got some help on thinking as he went on, but all the other ones were good. Inferno was terrifying. It brought up memories of on sinking as he went on, but all the other ones were good. Inferno was terrifying, it bringing up. It brought up memories of watching children of men, the movie children of men. Couple that with inferno horrible yeah, okay, so all right I'm gonna now admit origin.

1:54:54 - Leo Laporte
I am gonna now admit that, having read dan brown's first book, uh, I thought I'm never reading anything else of his. So it's good to know that that was a bad start, but the Da Vinci Code was a huge hit. The other ones are pretty interesting reads. I thought it was interesting because Opus Dei and the Catholic Church and you know a 2,000-year conspiracy and I like the mystery of running around Paris trying to find stuff. Is Robert Langdon in all of the books, or all of them.

1:55:27 - Caller
I never saw any of the movies or the tv show that they did on the one, but. But yeah, robert Langdon's in all of them.

1:55:33 - Leo Laporte
But the writing is the writing has improved it has.

1:55:38 - Caller
I'm not saying it's like a classic or anything, but the story is good, but the first one. If that's the only one you read, Leo, it's horrid Okay.

1:55:46 - Leo Laporte
Now you've reassured me, I will now read some others. Do it.

1:55:52 - Caller
Did you guys check out the Circle again?

1:55:54 - Leo Laporte
I haven't. It's on my list. Yeah, I have it on my bookshelf.

1:55:57 - Mikah Sargent
I actually bought it for Audible, but I'm in the middle of a series right now, so it's next.

1:56:04 - Leo Laporte
Well, let's share with Camille our current reading list. What are you reading? Well, I'm going. Is it Twilight?

1:56:12 - Mikah Sargent
No, it's not Twilight. I think I already said that I'm going back to the Wheel of Time again.

1:56:16 - Leo Laporte
Oh, good for you.

1:56:17 - Caller
Yeah, oh, I know Big fans of that.

1:56:19 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and that takes time. Oh yeah, that's a big one.

1:56:21 - Leo Laporte
I bought on Amazon. They were selling like the complete Wheel of Time on Kindle, oh nice. So I started listening on Audible. There's something that readers of the Wheel of Time call the slog yes, which is around book six. There are 13 of them, so about halfway through and they're huge. And they're huge, they're all like 40 hours. About halfway through you get to the slog, which which kind of you know. It's funny. Harry potter also had a slog where it's like nothing much is happening and there's there's a lot of exposition and like get on with the story please. And I'm stuck at the slog. So how?

1:57:00 - Mikah Sargent
how far have you gotten? I'm back through it. You've gone all the way through. I don't find any of it to be slog. I genuinely love how they, how all of these characters, have their own little stories, and I think that part of it is because by audio I'm going to call it as a verb by audio booking it instead of reading it I'm able to do other things. A verb by audio booking it instead of reading it, I'm able to do other things.

1:57:25 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's a good way to get through long books.

1:57:26 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I don't have to worry about it feeling like a slog, and it's the payoff is so worth it when it comes to wrapping up in the final two, three books, because you've just you. You have so much rich character for each of the characters and the sort of resolutions that take place. Have you read that, Camille?

1:57:46 - Leo Laporte
The Wheel of Time.

1:57:48 - Caller
I have not, but I know big fans of it. I'm halfway through the Name of the Rose.

1:57:54 - Leo Laporte
What a great book that is Umberto Eco. Yeah, yeah, that is a mystery that takes place in the. Yeah, there's a lot of Latin, isn't there? There's a mystery, but Mike and I read Latin, so we'll help you out.

1:58:07 - Mikah Sargent
If you need any assistance, let us know, it's a mystery that takes place in a

1:58:11 - Leo Laporte
14th century monastery and our detective is a monk and it's a wonderful book that sounds good. Now this is the one I'm reading right now and I have to say, uh, despite the cheesy cover, it's very much a dime novel cover. This series it won a hugo award for best novel. Dan simmons hyperion came out in 1989. There are two more. I was really nervous. I got to the end of the first one and it kind of leaves you hanging. I thought, oh, is this gonna be like Dune, where each successive book is going to be a little worse? But so far I'm in the second book of the they call it the Hyperion Cantos, and it is just as good. So I can recommend this without hesitation. Dan Simmons Hyperion series, If you like. If you like scifi, it's very good sci-fi.

1:59:06 - Caller
I have a feminism novel from the 70s that's super interesting. What?

1:59:11 - Leo Laporte
is feminism, oh feminism.

1:59:14 - Caller
Yeah, a feminism novel, but it's two-faced. Actually, I think it was in an Ed Regis book, I think, where they were saying that it is looked at as the positive version of the Brave New World. But it's Marge Piercy. Do you know the author? Marge Piercy? It's called. Woman on the Edge of Time. Oh, I will read it Woman on the Edge of Time. The beginning is kind of harsh, but it's super interesting, so much 70s. Elon should read it because it's the brain chips so much.

1:59:45 - Leo Laporte
Should read it, because it's the brain chips. I will read it so much. 70s, um science fiction is massively sexist and has not stood the age of time. Thinking of robert heimlein in particular. So it's nice. I would like to read something from that era woman on the edge of time by margaret pierce yeah, she did several.

2:00:00 - Caller
he did a good bit. I also read her he, she and it. That was like building a Gollum sort of thing I like Gollum Ooh, I do like Gollum, always a fan of Gollum, Big Gollum fan.

2:00:11 - Leo Laporte
you know, Camille. Thank you for doing Camille's book club.

2:00:14 - Caller
I don't know right. I'm pitching ones for Stacey. I'm pitching them. Thank you For Stacy's. That'd be super fun. Thank you, but hey, get Ben on. That'd be awesome. I would watch that show.

2:00:26 - Leo Laporte
And you guys have a great day. I will track him down, camille, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, take care, our little Camille's Book Club. I love it. It's funny, you know it's not really our purview to recommend books, but Steve has always done it and we have a very literate audience. We have Stacy's Book Club now, so why not?

2:00:46 - Mikah Sargent
I'm thrilled what book where are you in the wheel of time? I'm thrilled that you're reading. I'm on the last book again. So yeah, I am. Wow, how long does it take? Because it's huge. It's huge, I mean, it takes me. It's taken me a long time to go back through it. I decided to go back through it months ago.

2:01:03 - Leo Laporte
And back through it.

2:01:03 - Mikah Sargent
I decided to go back through it months ago and you're making me feel like I should pick it back up. I, I think you should. I think you should get through the slog. Get through the slog. And people ask me should I skip the slog?

2:01:11 - Leo Laporte
no, I promise you that, yeah, you can't skip the resolutions that take place with the character no, I realized that, yeah, can't skip the slog, don't skip, don't skip the slog, speaking of which let's do another journey.

2:01:24 - Mikah Sargent
What?

2:01:24 - Leo Laporte
should we do next? Let's pick up on another caller yes, john ashley, pick up on another caller, please. Uh, star six to unmute first name and please, is there a boop or anything that lets them know that we're picked up on them? There's no way that they can know. Can you hear me? That's how you know. You talk and we go whoa, what's your first name? Where are you?

2:01:54 - Caller
calling from Jeff New City, new York. How are you? Hi, jeff Great, how are you? A little under the weather? I'm sorry to hear that my covid made a return.

2:02:09 - Leo Laporte
Oh no, oh yeah it's not as bad the second time I hope I had that third time.

2:02:13 - Mikah Sargent
Third time holy I, I had it and then I took the stuff that uh helps you kind of get rid of it, and then it came back. Anyway, that resurgence, I had that too. That was not fun.

2:02:23 - Caller
No not fun, but I'm calling really quick question, but really quick. I know, uh, that mini atari that you got. I'm the one that told dickie d to get it, so I know you guys I love it it's so cute.

2:02:32 - Leo Laporte
I'm gonna bring it in and play with it. I've been. I've been playing all my old favorite games. It's so cute. Thank you for telling me about that, ben appreciate, no problem.

2:02:41 - Caller
No, no problem, no problem. So I have a quick question. I travel for work sometimes and I kind of use my iPad Pro as the I guess, the streaming device. I'll get into the hotel with an HDMI cable so I can watch, like Netflix and stuff like that. My question is do they sell a remote control for an iPad or something like that, like something you recommend? A?

2:03:03 - Mikah Sargent
Bluetooth keyboard would be your. Yeah, in fact, a Bluetooth, you could get a little bit of Bluetooth keyboard, you could get a little bit of Bluetooth keyboard and also one of Apple.

this is the problem is that the iPad Pro doesn't like most mice and so the Apple trackpad. It would be your best bet if you're trying to basically run it from a distance. If you're only trying to do play and pause, you could probably connect a Bluetooth. So they used to make these things and they probably still do. They have them for cars sometimes and they're like a little circular puck and they have play and pause, volume up, volume down and the next track, previous track, those. If you Bluetooth connected one of those to the iPad, it should do play and pause as long as the app that you're using supports the standard play pause functionality.

2:04:01 - Leo Laporte
Look at this. This is so cute, oh cute. Look at it. This is like the mini atari and notice, by the way, in the background, apple tv. So, uh, they're asserting that it works. It says wi-fi, but it also uses bluetooth. Uh, it has a trackpad, so that you see that has the buttons there for up, down, left, right and so forth, so you'd be able to use that to press pause and so forth. And it's only $27. It's cheap, so I might try this myself. There are others like it, but this looks cool because it does have a trackpad. You'd want a trackpad, wouldn't you?

2:04:37 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, in fact, that's what I want to make sure. That's what I want to make sure. I remember that the iPad had a limitation with what you could use, whether you could use a mouse or not. So let me double check this. Oh, okay.

2:04:54 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they keep showing it with Roku and Apple TV, so I feel like they think this will work. It says Android, mac, windows. I'd read the reviews.

2:05:08 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, I guess it does let you um when. Yeah, you can use just a blue ipad. Os doesn't support scrolling or other gestures with the. Oh, that's for the first generation, so that's fine. Um, yeah, so apparently you can use this goes well with your mini atari.

2:05:26 - Leo Laporte
It's about the same size.

2:05:28 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so in theory that that would work, um, and you'd be able to use it to as a pointer for your screen. And I remember my dad. He was a cable guy and so he and he did like installations and fixed all the stuff and like out of the power lines or whatever or the cable lines. But he also, because he was a cable guy, he got a lot of the tech early on and I remember him having a keyboard and trackpad combo that he had sitting on his table and he was able to control the screen with it.

2:05:56 - Leo Laporte
I thought it was the coolest thing at the time so the real question is whether the iPad will allow full Bluetooth.

2:06:03 - Mikah Sargent
Correct. And it does seem to, because there's a page. Use a Bluetooth mouse or trackpad with your iPad and it shows how to connect those.

2:06:10 - Leo Laporte
I'm just going to buy this and next week we'll tell you Boom. How about that? I appreciate that. It says it'll come tomorrow?

2:06:16 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome, I think that'd be a little handy little thing to have. We have a big version of it with the trackpad.

2:06:20 - Leo Laporte
This it's a little handy little thing to have. We have the big version of it with the trackpad. This is from Logitech, but this one's like the size of that Atari.

2:06:26 - Mikah Sargent
Right. My concern is that, because it's a one device that it might not work.

2:06:32 - Leo Laporte
It needs to have it as two separate and you're not using it with an Apple TV, you're using it with an iPad.

2:06:35 - Caller
Specifically, yeah, I have it hooked up with like an HDMI TV.

2:06:45 - Leo Laporte
If this works, I'm gonna take my ipad on the road with me because, you know, more and more hotels are starting to support, like google's, chromecast or airplay, that kind of thing, but when you get to a hotel it doesn't. It's so frustrating, you know you have to watch. You plug it into the hdmi yeah, so you're just plugging in the ipad to the hdmi?

2:07:01 - Caller
have an hdmi dongle that's a great idea, and then sometimes I just connect it, hook up my work laptop to it, so I have a bigger screen. Now use the well.

2:07:10 - Leo Laporte
This might even be nice to carry around with your ipad is a little uh mini. I mean, both of us have keyboards. Actually, could you use uh one of apple's uh smart keyboards with this? Yeah? Absolutely um, so you could also well, as long as you have it connected because remember that's it's, it's got to have the three prongs of connection in the back. Uh, it's not bluetooth, right, right, um, so yeah, as long as you have but then you'd have to be sitting next to the tv because the ipad's connected with the hdmi.

2:07:40 - Mikah Sargent
I get the reason why you want a remote yeah, as long as you have an ipad that supports ipad os 13.4 or later, then you will be able to use a blue. Exactly, you'll be able to use a bluetooth mouse. So nice, we'll be able to. I appreciate it thank you guys.

2:07:55 - Leo Laporte
Great travels, enjoy. Uh, what do you watch on your ipad? Oh, he's long gone. I put one of my other pictures as wallpaper. I thought it'd be kind of nice to take pictures of the rocks in our backyard and I made it into my little desktop wallpaper. Oh wait, you took that photo. Well, you know, anybody could. It's just a picture of rocks, I know, but it just looks. Is it famous? What did you take it with? Um, guess what? My that's.

2:08:25 - Mikah Sargent
It looks so pretty.

2:08:26 - Leo Laporte
No, no it, I'm sorry this makes the world look pretty look I should show you the pictures I took of you. It's genuinely gorgeous. I want that rock photo. I will send you, please. I will send you my, my rocks. Please send me your you know what, you know what it is. It's kind of interesting because it has a very narrow depth of field, right? So only those rocks are in focus.

2:08:46 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's why I like it.

2:08:47 - Leo Laporte
And everything else is kind of, it's really pretty, it's silly. By the way, I am now using widgets on my iPad home screen and that's why I actually had to change the backdrop. I'm sorry this keeps going off. That's why I had to change the backdrop, because I couldn't see the widgets. They're white, white. So what I used for my backdrop I there was no way to see like half the widgets because I had darkness. So I found a picture that I could see my widgets. You know, you can make them any color you want. You what you can. You can make them any color. Oh man, I me here I am thinking how clever I was by changing, well, no, but the backdrop. So, uh, so how do you change the color? The clock, yeah, but what? But does that change it for everything? So let's do, uh, black. You're right, it's, it's tied to.

2:09:43 - Mikah Sargent
Oh my gosh the world has just opened up for leo. We are learning many things today and then you could do a color that looks great with the stone.

2:09:53 - Leo Laporte
I could do uh it's kind of weird that you have to pick one color for everything, but like, isn't that how? That's not how widgets behave on the home screen. True, yeah, so what?

2:10:06 - Mikah Sargent
looks good with the stones. I thought like a light tan, but that might actually make it fade light tan bright yellow grain.

2:10:16 - Leo Laporte
How about that? It's certainly visible?

2:10:19 - Mikah Sargent
I don't. I'm not a big fan of the color yellow, to be honest, so it's it's hard for me to look at that and think it looks good. How about magenta?

2:10:27 - Leo Laporte
magenta. All right, anyway, that's no reason to spend any time in your life. Uh, I apologize on behalf of all of us here but there's a pro tip if you've got an ipad.

2:10:39 - Mikah Sargent
I didn't know that you can change the color of the witches.

2:10:42 - Leo Laporte
Live and learn. Now I've ordered this silly tiny keyboard and we'll find out if it works, but I will play with it next week on Ask the Tech Guys. That's what we do here we buy stuff we don't need so we can play with it on Ask the Tech Guys. That's what I tell my wife. That is Mikah Sargent. He's going to be back on Tuesday with iOS, today with Rosemary Orchard, right before MacBreak Weekly, so about 9 am Pacific, noon Eastern. And then he'll also be here Thursday for Tech News Weekly and that's the latest tech coverage. Each week a new co-host, which is fun. You have some wonderful co-hosts, they're great. And then, of course, sunday for Ask the Tech Guys.

If you're watching live, camille, stay tuned. Was it Camille that was watching? No, it was Becky. Becky, stay tuned, because we are going to do this Week in Tech in just a moment after we reset. You can watch this show live every Sunday as soon as Leo gets in, to about 1.30 in the afternoon. It was late today. I'm sorry. I had to watch the F1 race. I had to see who won.

2:11:47 - Mikah Sargent
Wait wasn't fast enough to be done so you could get to work.

2:11:50 - Leo Laporte
No, they should be faster. These F1 races, we do it nominally from 11 am Pacific to 2 pm Eastern, that is 2 to 5 pm, I'm sorry, pacific, that is 2 to 5 pm Eastern, that is 1800 UTC. I tell you that because, like Becky, you can watch us live. There's two ways. If you're a member of the club, of course, the Club Twit Discord has the live stream You'll even get to see the stuff between shows On YouTube. We turn it on the minute the show begins, turn it off the minute the show ends ends youtubecom slash twit, slash live.

2:12:29 - Mikah Sargent
Nice, you remember live. Uh, what else? Oh, you can still call us, even during the week, you can 888-724-2884 is the phone number.

2:12:34 - Leo Laporte
Leave a message and we'll. We didn't do any voice messages today, but we'll get to some next week. We also do the emails ATG at twittv and that's it. That's it. Join the club.

2:12:46 - Mikah Sargent
twit.tv/clubtwit.

2:12:47 - Leo Laporte
Don't forget to join the club. With your help, your support, you can get ad-free versions of all the shows. You can get the Discord. Sure, you can get all the special stuff we do, but really including Stacy's Book Club stuff we do, but really what you including stacy's book club but? And uh, you know, we did a live watch party, uh, in our house and serve brisket and guess what you're the.

2:13:09 - Mikah Sargent
This is the second show to learn about this. I am, once a month going to be doing something called Mikah's Crafting Ccorner oh, I'm so happy you're doing that where people, you can all stop by. I'll be doing my crafts, you'll be doing yours.

We can share oh that's so cute talk about what we're doing and I'm really what is your craft my craft is going to most likely and most often be crochet or knit um, but everybody can bring their own crafts. I think John Ashley might stop by and build some lego from time to time. We're really looking forward to that, so I'm planning on doing it one Wednesday a month, uh, so stay posted for that. Anthony has created some great uh artwork for the little um event, so oh, very fun, Mikah's Crafting Corner.

2:13:52 - Leo Laporte
Well, now I've got to come up with something cross stitch painting sleeping with leo. No, watch me sleep, no, that, no, no, no, I didn't mean not an adult, just watch me sleep. No, I, I always have wanted to do this the bedtime with leo. No, again, you guys have such dirty minds. I would read you a bedtime story.

2:14:15 - Mikah Sargent
Well, please don't do that during crafted corner, because we need people to stay away no, but but uh, maybe that'd be kind of fun.

2:14:21 - Leo Laporte
To bedtime story late night I always want. The reason is that when I got into radio I always thought it'd be really fun to do all night, late night, nonstop talk shows.

2:14:28 - Mikah Sargent
That's when the interesting people come out right.

2:14:30 - Leo Laporte
As soon as I did that, I realized this is not a good idea. However, maybe it would be okay with you guys in the club. So if you're not a member of the club, please join. It's seven7 a month. The main thing is it helps us continue to do what we do. Employ all these great people, keep the studio, keep the lights on. We really need your support more than ever. twit.tv/clubtwit. Tell your friends. Thank you to all our Club Twit members. Thanks to everybody who watches. We will see you next time. In the mean time, you know what I always say: Have a great geek week.

2:15:10 - Mikah Sargent
Bye-bye.