The Tech Guy Episode 1855 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. 

... (00:00:02):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:10):
Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my Tech Guy podcast. Our new year's day edition is a best of some memories from last year 2021, some of the best moments. Thank you for listening all year long. I look forward to having a great time with you in 2022. Here you go. Episode 1,855. Enjoy.

Leo Laporte (00:00:33):
Thanks for listening to TWiT podcasts. As an ad-supported network, we are always looking for new partners who have services and products that will benefit at our audience. Do you want customized host read ads that stand out then the TWI network is the perfect place for your next advertising campaign. Twit ads are original specialized in all shows include video, which means we can show off products, websites, and customized videos. Visit twit.tv/advertise and launch a tailored campaign today. That's twit.tv/advertise.

Leo Laporte (00:01:03):
Hello everybody. It's Leo. Leport taking the week off for the holidays. I hope you get to do the same. We're relaxing on this new year's day and I'm very glad you tuned in, of course, we're not gonna do a brand new show for you, but I did think it'd be kind of fun to put together some of our best moments from 2021, starting with little Nathan <laugh> you wanted to know. Should I switch to Linux? Hi, Nathan. Hello? Like hot, like the hot dog. Do you know? Nathan's hot dogs? Yeah. Okay. What is, what do you say when, when cause when I was a kid, I, I used to say my name is Leo as in Mayo. That, that was a bad idea. What do you say when people ask you what's your name again?

Caller #1 (00:01:49):
I say Nathan. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:01:51):
<Laugh> simple. Short and sweet. So what can I do for you, Nathan?

Caller #1 (00:01:56):
Yeah. So I have a question about the Linux operating system.

Leo Laporte (00:02:01):
Okay. You are the few nice. Okay.

Caller #1 (00:02:05):
So,

Leo Laporte (00:02:07):
Okay Leo, calm down he says, yeah.

Caller #1 (00:02:12):
And on Windows and I was wondering, would it be a good idea to switch to Lenux

Leo Laporte (00:02:17):
For you? Yeah. So are you pretty comfortable with windows these days? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're comfortable. You're happy. You're good. You, you know how to use technology and all that. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, here's, here's why Linux would be an interesting thing for you to do. It's gonna be a little frustrating. Nathan, you're gonna do stuff. And you're gonna say, I don't know how to do this. I know how to do this in windows. How do you do this? And, but you will learn so much and really the most important thing you'll be learning is about Unix based operating systems. U N I X, you know that term. Have you heard that term before?

Caller #1 (00:02:53):
I don't. I think, but I don't know what it means.

Leo Laporte (00:02:55):
Yeah. It, so back in 1970, before there was windows before there was Mac, before there was dos, there was Unix, U I N U N I X. And it was the most powerful computer operating system out there. And it lives on, in a lot of different ways about when you surf the net, for instance, most of the version that you're going to are running on a Unix, variant Linux is the most common, but there are others as well, BSD and even Macintosh is based on a form of Unix. So Unix is kind of the original operating system and I think learning it would be great. Do you, do you wanna have a tech career when you, when you grow up?

Caller #1 (00:03:40):
Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:03:42):
I think people who have an understanding, there's a whole bunch of people who just work in windows, they use.net, the program and C and JavaScript or what are type script. And, you know, they use Microsoft products and they can, and there's certainly, there are plenty of jobs for those people, but the people who really have the world is their oyster. Whether they wanna develop websites or they wanna get a great job as an it person or as a programmer, those people, I believe are also familiar with Linux. So what you would be doing is you'd be kind of getting a jumpstart on your future and you know, maybe the thing to do it's a little more complicated is make a dual boot. So you have one machine that can run either windows or Linux, depending on your mood when you first started up. So if you need to do schoolwork, for instance, are you using this computer for school?

Caller #1 (00:04:35):
No. We, the school gave us Chromebooks.

Leo Laporte (00:04:37):
Oh good. Oh, guess what? Chromebook are running Linux, but you, you can't really, you, you, in fact, if you wanna get to Linux, I don't know how well the school has locked it down, but there are ways to our computer. Yeah. They lock it down. They won't let you do anything. But Chromebook, the operating system for Chromebooks is called ChromeOS. It's a Linux, it's a version of Linux, which is a free O open source operating system. And what they did is, is they basically made it Chrome running on top of the Linux. And that's what you use is the Chrome browser. But Lenox is under the hood. And if you have a normal Chromebook, it's very easy to get to the terminal and start using Linux commands. You can even install without removing the Chrome OS part of Linnux. So you are already using Linux. You just, they just cut down. So you can't see it. That's I think you're, I think, yes, you should learn it. It would be a great, how, what do your folks think? Cause, I mean, they're the ones who I presume they own the computer, unless you bought it with your allowance or something.

Caller #1 (00:05:36):
Oh no. They, they don't, they don't have an opinion. They don't know <laugh> they

Leo Laporte (00:05:40):
Don't know you're, you know, you're the, a tech guy in the family, right.

Caller #1 (00:05:45):
I guess so.

Leo Laporte (00:05:45):
Yeah. So you get to yes. If, if you're allowed, just ask, ask mom and dad say, can I, can I modify this computer? Cuz I, I wanna, and you know what, if you say, I wanna learn more about computers. Cause I think I might want a career in computers, et cetera, et cetera. The other thing you could do get them to give you 35 bucks and buy a raspberry pie. Hey Paul.

Caller #2 (00:06:08):
Hey. Hi Leo. Thank you for taking the call. Talking about traveling. I'm absolutely agreeing as soon as as soon as they give us the green signal we're out of here. We've already got reservation. Can't wait for Kauai in April and France in September.

Leo Laporte (00:06:24):
Oh, you're a man after my own heart. I love Kauai and I love France. Awesome. Awesome. Well meet you there. Yes, you deal.

Caller #2 (00:06:33):
Hey I've got 35 old HS tapes. I, I, I solicited one of those services that they send the tapes and they wanted $650 to convert them to digital. How many tapes I'm wondering? 35, 35.

Leo Laporte (00:06:51):
Well, that's not bad for 35 tapes. Yeah. Well, cause that's a lot, you know, they have to transfer. It's hard to do that, but you could do it yourself. My advice would be do it soon because the the material they use for magnetic recordings like that VHS or audio recordings, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it's a Mylar backing with a magnetic, you know, material and kind of iron material on top of it. And boy, 10, 15 years down the road, it starts to flake off they're they're not gonna be real playable much longer. So they, they may already, how old are they?

Caller #2 (00:07:29):
Well, some 'em are longer older than that. Of course. Yeah. And I hate, I hate sending them to a service and then finding out that they're gonna charge me even though there's nothing on the tape, so

Leo Laporte (00:07:39):
Right. I don't blame you. Yeah.

Caller #2 (00:07:41):
So do do, do I buy an old VHS player and, and do you think that these converting what do they call it? Quick, clear click DVD wizard. Yeah. You could

Leo Laporte (00:07:52):
Do that when I would do instead. And I don't know how much longer these devices are gonna be around, but they make VCRs or VHS machines that have built in DVDs. They were, they were really designed for you <laugh> they made it for you for people who are kind of in this intermediate where they have VHS tapes, but they want to digitize them and they're not expensive. So what you do on these, I mean it's real time. So 35 tapes gonna take a while, but what you do is you put the tape in, you put a blank DVD D in you press play and it records copies 'em over. And because it does it all in one fell swoop, you know, it's, it's a lot easier and probably a lot less expensive. Sure. So let me just make sure they're still selling. Yeah. They're still selling 'em they, they call 'em combo players, some of them. Wow. They're so they're, they're going up in price. They used to be a few hundred bucks <laugh> it might be cheaper to, to get the surface to do it, but I would, I would look around maybe on EBA. See if you could find one of those it's you know, your, your risk is if you put a tape in there that's flaking off, it could have destroy the VHS player.

Caller #2 (00:09:09):
I'll start with the old, the newer ones.

Leo Laporte (00:09:11):
Yeah. Start with the newer ones, get them put, put 'em in reverse first chronological of order of age. So you're most likely to survive them. Sometimes what they'll do is what we used to do with audio tape is bake it which would harden the Ferris coat, but would only give you one playback <laugh> you'd have one chance to digitize it. So cuz there are people, you know, if you think about it, there are magnetic audio recordings going back 50, 60 years more, you know, miles Davis kind of blue recorded in the fifties. You know, you wanna get those things digitized as quickly as you can. There's lots of Beatles recordings still on eight track tape at a road studios. You wanna get those digitized if you can. I think they did a big, they did a big digitization plan program on the happy road tapes a while ago.

Leo Laporte (00:10:02):
Well let me think of what else. Yeah. If you, if you can't find one of the converter packages and it may be, you know, that's, there really was a, a limited timeframe where they were useful, whether people had a lot of tapes. Now it's kind of a dwindling, massive people. If you can't find that, yes, you can buy a V VHS player they're cheap 30 bucks. Yeah. Nobody wants 'em and then connect it up to one of these video capture cards. The output of the VHS player will be what we call there may be a couple of choices. There'll a red, white and yellow RCA plugs. That's composite video. If it has an S an S video, that's better quality. It's not digital still. Nobody will have digital probably, but S video would be the best, but then you'd need a capture card that supported an S video in and ideally you'd have a capture card that was in, well, you don't have much choice, but you want USB two is so slow that the card, the device has to highly compress the video.

Leo Laporte (00:11:06):
I think with VHS, it probably doesn't matter, but you'd you want the fastest converter box you can get, if it supports USB three, that would be better because then it will, then it won't have to compress the video as much. And then you'll input it. They usually come with some sort of software to record. If not, there are lots of choices out there. It, I would say you probably don't want to burn it to D V D because it's better just to keep digital. Then you have all sorts of flexibility. You could, if, if an, if an an Florence wants a copy of it, it you and she only has a DVD player, you can burn it to DVD as needed, but the digital copies are gonna be the best quality. Super

Caller #2 (00:11:46):
Thanks so much.

Leo Laporte (00:11:47):
My pleasure. Yeah. There's even, you know, if you have a tower PC, most people these days, I don't know if people have slots anymore. If you have slots, you could buy PCI capture cards as well. Those will work a little bit better. In fact, a lot better. <Inaudible> used to make those lots of companies promise H a U P P a U G E worst name in technology. It's a town in long island, and I guess they're very loyal to this town in long island, but good luck. <Laugh> finding Aug on the web, H a P P a U G e.com. And they also make these capture cards. They're, they're pretty good. They've been doing that for a long, long time. They love long island. Apparently they love their town so much. They named themselves after it might have been a mistake. I don't know. Yeah. PAC makes TV, tuners. You don't want a tuner. You want a capture card? For, for windows El Gado used to make great ones for the Mac, but they got purchased. But I think they, they sold their ITV brand. So it's yeah, somebody else bought it, gene tech. So that's another good one. If you're on a Mac, the IRA ITV, E Y E T V.

Caller #3 (00:13:09):
Anyway, I've got a question. I've heard you talk about Google photos changing in

Leo Laporte (00:13:14):
The future. Yes. Soon now. Yeah. June

Caller #3 (00:13:17):
And I use the, what I do is the feature that I'm concerned about is I take pictures with my pocket phone mm-hmm <affirmative> and did I get home? And it's on my iPad.

Leo Laporte (00:13:30):
I know. Isn't that awesome.

Caller #3 (00:13:32):
And I want you to lead us into something else that will do that. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:13:36):
Well, fortunately, there are lots of choices. So goo the change Google's making in June is it used to be unlimited low quality and ly weren't low quality. There really were high quality JPEGs, but there were, there were slightly compressed from the originals unlimited storage for those forever. And in fact, everything you upload until June will continue to be stored there forever for free. So it's not like at least according to Google, it's not like at some point they're gonna start charging for you. It's only after June, I guess it's June 15th, that Google's gonna start charging you for storage, everything already up there is there and will be continue to be free. So I think they, they handle that as well as you can expect, people are unhappy when anything that was free now is not, but I think they're handling it fairly well.

Leo Laporte (00:14:26):
So if you don't want to pay for Google drive storage, which is fairly economical, so you may make the decision to do that. The key is you want something for free, you know, you already know cuz you're, if you're using an iPhone, you can use and an iPad, you can use iCloud to do exactly the same thing and the same results, but it's not free. You have to pay for iCloud storage and apple storage is not the cheapest. It's, Google's actually less expensive. I think there are other ways to do this. If you're an Amazon prime customer, are you an Amazon prime customer? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Oh, good news. They offer unlimited storage of originals for free. So that's one of the benefits of Amazon prime. You need the Amazon photos app to do that. And you could put that on your, on your camera phone, and you could put that on your iPad, free unlimited storage, as long as you're a prime member.

Leo Laporte (00:15:18):
And you know, Amazon prime has gotten more and more expensive. I just got, my bill was a hundred. I think it's 120 bucks now. But they're giving you more and more features. So, and the nice thing is unlike the Google deal, this is a full resolution. They're, they're not compressed. So you get the, the originals, you also get five gigs of video storage. So you can store your videos up there too. And and Amazon is pretty much the low price lit for storage. It's two bucks a month for every additional a hundred gigabytes. But again, that's just for video. Cause photos are free. There are some other companies that do this a company that has been around for a long time. You might remember as a photo printing company, Shutterfly sure. Also offers free storage of originals unlimited. The reason is they make their money on print.

Leo Laporte (00:16:09):
And so they figure, well, if all your images are there, you might well sent aunt Judy the link. And she might, well, well, wanna make a, a mouse pad or a calendar or a mug or just a photo print. And so we're gonna make some money. So yeah. Okay. Shutter flies. Another one, you can put the app on your phone, it'll automatically copy it up. And then you'll be able to see it on your iPad at the Shutterfly website, they say free, unlimited, secure photo storage. We will never delete your photos. That doesn't mean we'll never charge you for it. Although, as I remember, I think Shutterfly is about to do an IPO. What did I, there's some financial thing that just happened with Shutterfly. Yeah. They're gonna do an IPO. They're gonna issue common stock, which means they'll probably be cash cash rich for a little bit a little while.

Leo Laporte (00:16:54):
Well, they're already public. What is going on with Shutterfly? Did they just get acquired something in the back of my mind's tickling? My, my mind anyway, there's, there's a couple of extras. Amazon prime members, shutter. Those are free unlimited storage. Okay. Sounds good. Yeah, you're losing is some of the features, the smart features that Google gives you. I, I love it. That I can upload photos to Google and it will automatically do recognition. Now, some people might get very nervous about that, but it'll automatically I can then search for pictures of dogs. I can then search for pictures of Paris. I can even picture search for pictures of dogs in Paris, and it does a very good job of finding them. There are a few cats in my dog pictures. I admit it, but it's a pretty good way. So the idea with, for me with Google is you just upload everything you take a picture of might as well, because you're, you don't have to categorize 'em or organize 'em you just just do a Google search SP Shutterfly, this chairman's television talks to go public through a merger with a blank check company.

Leo Laporte (00:18:01):
Okay. Is that a spec? Okay. So Shutterfly went public in 2006, went private again couple of years ago. <Laugh> and now I was thinking about going public again. I, you know, it's, I would, I would use 'em all. Why not? I that's what I do. I upload it to everything. I even have my own local cloud storage. That's another way to do it. That's a little more expensive up front, cuz you have to buy local storage. If you have a network attached storage device or something like that. We have a sponsor called helm@thehelm.com that does a local storage using next cloud, which is an open source thing. Sonology NASAs will do it be another way to store your photos is pay for this storage yourself. And you know, if you didn't trust the cloud, I guess that's, that's what you would do. Of course, that was a big topic all year long you know, especially starting in the spring, I think we've all survived, right? The transition to paid Google photos. As many of you know, I am a ham radio operator. I think it's a great hobby. Amateur radio is pretty darn exciting. We got you called and asked how they could join the fun. Julian's next on the line from Los Angeles. Hello Julian.

Caller #4 (00:19:17):
Hey, good afternoon, Leo. Good to talk to you again.

Leo Laporte (00:19:20):
What's up?

Caller #4 (00:19:21):
Not much by the way, quick suggestion for songs for for Kim telephone call by craft work, I think is an excellent choice T

Leo Laporte (00:19:31):
From craft book. Okay. Professor, write it down phone sounds.

Caller #4 (00:19:36):
It's it's really neat. But anyway aside from mobile device accessibility that I am very passionate about and talk about quite regularly one of my other passions is ham radio

Leo Laporte (00:19:48):
And oh, I didn't know you were ham.

Caller #4 (00:19:49):
Yes, I am nice. So as a blind person, this could be a little challenging and I have found some great resources, including information on a radio that with just a little bit of modification can be made to be fully accessible to a blind person. And the best part is it's you, you could buy a radio that's less than a hundred dollars handheld radio. Yeah. And by uploading this open GD 77 firmware into it, and some voice packs, you now have a, a totally blind friendly amateur radio that is not very hard on the wallet. That

Leo Laporte (00:20:30):
Would be the most challenging thing is knowing we're you're tuning to what band you're tuning to. And I, I gather it announces it. It says you're on the 24 meter band, 24.1 24.2 24.3. That kind of thing.

Caller #4 (00:20:43):
It, it gives you access to the whole menu system of radio. Oh wow. Everything capable. One of the digital modes, that's now popular on ham radio called DMR. And you can have access to all the talk groups, all the contact lists, you know, all the settings in the radio, it's, it's a wonderful device. So the way you find out about it is you go to www.blindhams.com. There's a link there that says ham radio links, you click on that. And then you go to open GD 77 project for blind hands. And there, you can find all the information on how to get this radio, how to upload this firmware to the radio. It's very easy to do. And for those who can't do it getting involved with the blind hands network is a wonderful way to meet other blind hands who are doing this sort of thing.

Caller #4 (00:21:33):
Oh, neat. So, and, and even for people who are not hams yet, who may be blind and maybe think, oh, well, how could I do this? If I can't see, you can actually go to that website, you can find links to listen to our network live. And there's even a Madam a skill that if you tell her to enable the blind hand network skill, she'll enable it. And now you can tell her monitor blind hands network and you can listen in on our conversations. And we got all kinds of conversations going on there from tech to regular life and we help each other out. It's it's just a wonderful thing to be. And I wanted to share it with the listeners.

Leo Laporte (00:22:10):
Always great to hear from you, Julian. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Caller #5 (00:22:15):
I'm I'm an older kid. I didn't grow up with computers. I'm 68 and this summer I'll be 69. And I, I just wondered if I, I took let's say seminar a while ago, like 20 years ago and I got heart palpitation. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:22:33):
You know, there, by the way, I'm 64. So you're not, oh, you're just a kid. You're not too old for computers. I just have to tell you. Yeah. But I think there is a gene, to be honest with you. How, how are you with mass? Did you, do you have math phobia in school?

Caller #5 (00:22:50):
Oh math. I didn't like I didn't do well with geometry related algebra. I could do. Okay. If I worked at it, I could do it. If I home did my homework. It's

Leo Laporte (00:23:01):
Not that you need math. I just feel like there it's a, maybe it's a similar brain area or something like that. Yeah. That people have math anxiety often when faced with a computer have the same kind of phobic reaction. It's not a rational reaction, but it's, it's very much physical and it makes it very difficult. It sounds like you've got that. It makes it very difficult for you to, it's a phobia. It's a phobia and it's, I think purely psychological, but, but I do acknowledge that it it's real and it exists. I know many people with it. I obviously do not have it. <Laugh> obviously,

Caller #5 (00:23:35):
You know, rub it in, rub it in.

Leo Laporte (00:23:38):
But so, and I don't know how to cure it necessarily, except to, except to remind you that it a computer isn't actually difficult to understand or I'll use a term from our generation rock. It is not it is not out to get you that the, that it is, it is, it's a block that you have. It's not something that is actually real. And so maybe that helps transcend it. You, you probably want a gentle, gentle introduction to it. What do you, I think the best way to start using technology is to have a purpose. Yeah. Because what, what often happens with people is it's overwhelming. You don't know, you don't have one thing that you want to do, so you try to learn everything and it's like and especially you go to a class they're gonna teach you things like file systems and you know yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:24:31):
You know, and that's not. So is there something like photography cooking would be one that you want to do with a tech with technology? That sounds good. I, I cook a bit and I'd like to be able to look up different recipes. Wouldn't that be nice to have to have an online recipe book. Right. I actually use a wonderful program it's available on every platform, computers as well as mobile devices called paprika. Oh, okay. Paprika. I love that paprika. And what, what paprika does is great. Has a browser built in and you can go to any, you know, there's wonderful recipes on the web and this is transformed cooking. I used to have five shelves of cookbooks while I still have 'em. Cause I can't throw one away, but right. But I don't need them anymore because if you wanna look how to make, you know so Monier yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:25:18):
You type in, so Monier into the browser and you'll find a dozen recipes. You look until you see when you like, and then you all open it in paprika and paprika extracts the recipe from it and turns it into a format we're used to with ingredients instructions. If there's a picture on the site, it'll put that in there. It might even put nutrition information in if that's available on the site. Yeah. And then it adds it to your database and you have a local database which can be synced from your phone to your tablet, to your computer and the, okay. So this is an example. This is something you could get into. Okay. And use and go, gosh, I really, I get it. I like it. And in the process completely transparently without any confrontation, no triggering of anything of the phobia, you'll be using a computer.

Leo Laporte (00:26:09):
You'll, you'll learn a lot of the skills that translate to other computer programs just by doing that one thing. But because you're doing something you love. Yeah. It helps. It helps a lot. It TA it transfers the phobia to some other portion of your brain cuz cuz you're going, oh, look at that soul. Monier that looks great. I wanna make that. Yeah. In a garden has a good one, but so does New York times cooking? That's the point? You can look at the different ones and decide. So that's one thing photography for a lot of us yeah. Is a good entry way into it as well. Yeah. So do you have any devices at all? Well,

Caller #5 (00:26:45):
A friend gave me an old laptop.

Leo Laporte (00:26:48):
Well that's another problem. Old is generally not good.

Caller #5 (00:26:51):
Well like 10 years

Leo Laporte (00:26:52):
Old. Yeah. And, and so <laugh> practice on this is, this is also part of the problem is people who have this a version of technology will often get something yeah. Or something old. Okay. And the problem is cheap and old is harder to use than modern and new and maybe a little more expensive. Not a lot, but a little more expensive. So I would, do you think about what form fact do you don't have a smartphone?

Caller #5 (00:27:18):
No, I'm still on the landline. Okay. I missed the sixties. I'm stuck in the where's Donna Reed. When

Leo Laporte (00:27:26):
I think for you an iPad would be a good first computer. Okay. Okay. And there, what should I pay for that? Well, they range the least expensive iPads around 3 29. Okay. That's fine.

Caller #5 (00:27:39):
What is the definition of an iPad?

Leo Laporte (00:27:41):
It's from apple. You can and get 'em online or you can go to the apple store if it's not too difficult. <Laugh> yeah, yeah. Go into the apple store and look at 'em. Okay. The, the base model, the original, the basic iPad, which is modern. It's got the latest process and everything is 3 29. And sometimes on sale down to 300, they go up, you can spend a lot more for an I there be a new iPad pro probably on Tuesday. That'll be announced, but that'll be a thousand bucks, so oh wow. That's the range. I would start with the, I would start with the 3 29 iPad. Okay. Put paprika on it. Okay. And just use that. Okay. There's a browser on there. Do you get email? You probably don't get email now. Right now. Now here's the other problem. You don't have an internet connection. I'm guessing. Does the apartment have an internet? I think they do. Yeah. Okay. So you can want inquire about that and they'll, they'll help you set it up and they'll probably be a fee for that. Yeah.

Caller #5 (00:28:37):
Okay. Now my other thing I wanted to say is, oh, okay. Years ago when I took that sent, it was when they gave you sort of a ruler that had all of these yeah. Instructions. Yeah. Way too. Yeah. One for this. No wonder

Leo Laporte (00:28:55):
I'm getting a stomach ache. Just thinking about it. Yes.

Caller #5 (00:28:58):
And, and the, it was really disgusting and I, I got really upset. And then, then I took a class at a local community college. Yes. But in every single day it was a different thing.

Leo Laporte (00:29:11):
Don't take a class anymore. Okay. And that's exactly why I'm saying pick one thing and get proficient with that. One thing. Ipad is very simple, very secure. Nothing to worry about as you use that pep pre and you get used to that. It's a great device for the kitchen. Yeah. You know, get a little smart cover so you can stand it up and as an ease and look at it while you're cooking. That's a great start. Okay. And then you'll get proficient with that. You'll dig a little deeper into the iPad. I think it won't be long before. You're fairly proficient in that. Forget the ruler with instructions on it. We don't need that anymore. Forget different things every day. Why do they do that to people and Rogers stay in touch so I can help you on your next steps. Hi John.

Caller #3 (00:29:59):
Hello. Welcome. I was upgraded from a CDMA to a VTE. Got a Moto G seven. Nice optimal max. Love those

Leo Laporte (00:30:12):
Good choice. Yeah.

Caller #3 (00:30:14):
Lately it starts re rebooting itself. When I entered the supermarket. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:30:20):
Six times. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Just the supermarket. Like it doesn't do it anywhere else. Yeah.

Caller #3 (00:30:28):
Yeah. It's VA and Albertson's <laugh> it. Doesn't do it at trader Joe's.

Leo Laporte (00:30:33):
What? All right. There's a couple of things I want you to try cuz we have to diagnose this. I'm gonna guess they're using some sort of, I bet you it's electronic theft protection, but some sort of radio signal that your phone is getting confused by. So one thing to try, just to see, and you know, you don't have to leave it this way is put it in airplane mode before you get near the store. That's turning off all the radios, Bluetooth, wifi, everything, and see if it does that.

Caller #3 (00:31:02):
But sometimes I want to look up a, just for you coupon. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:31:06):
I know. I understand. Likely it not. I understand. <Laugh> I understand this is just, this isn't a permanent thing. This is just a test to see if there's something going on. Oh, wait a minute. Look at this chat room is found a Google support note. My super Bart market reboots my phone. <Laugh> turn off Bluetooth. Turn off Bluetooth. Safeway stores have started deploying, oh, it is not a security. It's not anti theft. It's Bluetooth beaconing. They can use these for a variety of things. This has been something that been towned for a while. Museums sometimes use this stores use it. The idea is it's a little low power, Bluetooth beacon, all over the store. They use it for two reasons to track your movements in the store, cuz then they can make a map of how people customers use the store and they can make it a more efficient layout.

Leo Laporte (00:32:11):
That kind of thing. It also, if you have a safe way or a Vons app on there, it will interact with that. It'll pop up a coupon when you walk next to something. So I'm wondering. Yes, yes. Right, right, exactly. No tr so this is, this is what the poster and this, this is from February, so it's fairly recent. He said turning off Bluetooth fixed it. Okay. So that is a weird effect. And honestly they ought to fix this <laugh> because that's a problem for everybody turn off Bluetooth. You still can use your internet. You can still look up coupons. I wonder if you put, you said it happens at Safeway and vs

Caller #3 (00:33:00):
Uhon and

Leo Laporte (00:33:00):
Albertson Albertson's are they all? I think they're all the same owner. They're both. It's all the same, I think. Yeah. It's all Kroger. They're probably doing the same thing. So try turning off Bluetooth. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> it, it might be. Why would it crash the phone? It, it, it's not, it's not probably the phone, there's an app. Maybe that's seeing the beacons and, and overreacting getting way too excited and going. Yeah. And then the phone goes or something. I don't know. It's very, very weird. Do you have the V

Caller #3 (00:33:32):
Like the, it seems like it hangs on the blue Moto yeah. At startup for a longer time than a, a normal startup

Leo Laporte (00:33:45):
Too. So annoying apparently Dr. Mom and is saying the malls managed by Simon. The biggest mall company in America also are using that also reboot phones. So <laugh> geez, little, it isn't just that one company. I, do you have a Vons or Albertson's app on your phone? Both. Okay. So that may also be that the vs and Albertson's app are waking up and then crashing the phone. So first turn off the Bluetooth, if that fixes it. Okay. Yeah. We've narrowed it down. It's the Bluetooth beaconing. It may be that deleting either the Vons or the Kroger app fixes that as well, but, but you don't need Bluetooth in the store. So turn off Bluetooth. In fact, this might be a good advice for anybody who doesn't wanna be tracked as they shop. You know, I'm not saying necessarily they're using it for nefarious purposes that probably using it to map you know, traffic in the store to figure out, you know, well, there's lots of things you could figure out. And of course in the high traffic areas is where you're gonna put the end caps that, you know, Pepsi-Cola pays extra money for. You're gonna put those there, things like that. If you don't like being tracked in the grocery store, turning off Bluetooth will eliminate that. And it won't, and you're Chrome to should not crash. John. I'm so glad you called because I wasn't aware of this. That is very interesting.

Caller #3 (00:35:09):
Will you have a link to that? Google article?

Leo Laporte (00:35:13):
I shall, I shall it specifically mentions the G seven, which is interesting. Oh, so it may be a, it may be in the G seven S software. And I suspect if it is that they'll fix this, you know, that that either Motorola or Google X Android will, will have a patch at some point, cuz that's exactly what you don't wanna have happen when somebody enters your store. Right. That's kinda kinda that. I mean, you're a good person. You you're trying to figure this out. I think that some people would just say, well, I'm not going there anymore. <Laugh> I'm not going there anymore. Several

Caller #6 (00:35:50):
Of the the managers in the store, if it happens to anyone else and no one's ever heard of it,

Leo Laporte (00:35:55):
So well I'm sending you the link. You can give them the link and say, well, guess what? Yeah. And Safeway's doing it, Safeway's doing it. And apparently Simon malls are doing it. So this is gonna be more common. All, all round. Hey, I'm, I'm really glad you called what an interesting bug. I'm glad I did too. Thank you much. Thanks, John. It's kind of amazing. Thanks to our fabulous chat room. All of our listeners there's probably very few mysteries that we can't solve. <Laugh> I mean they could come up, but that that's fascinating.

Caller #6 (00:36:32):
How are you, sir? I am. Well, how are you so much better a week ago? My apple watch reported AFib. Oh my in Kona, Hawaii.

Leo Laporte (00:36:46):
Wow. You were on vacation.

Caller #6 (00:36:49):
I was on vacation.

Leo Laporte (00:36:51):
And what did the watch do? Did buzz, did it buzz? Did it say, Hey, Hey, Hey, get a doctor. What did it do?

Caller #6 (00:36:58):
I was taking a nap and the alarm. Of course, I honestly, I don't remember one question you have. I don't remember. It woke me up from a nap and I literally had to drive myself 30 miles to a hospital. Holy cow, the doctor, the doctor in the hospital said that it's possible. The apple watch saved my

Leo Laporte (00:37:24):
Life. It sounds like it did. Had you ignored it. Who knows what would've happened? Wow. That, you know, we hear these stories from time to time, but this is the first time I've ever talked to anybody that actually saved your life. That is pretty cool. Pretty cool.

Caller #6 (00:37:42):
I have become, I have become an apple fan and one of the byproducts of this is my wife can no longer say anything when I wanna upgrade my <laugh> for the honey. It's

Leo Laporte (00:37:56):
A life saving tool. So how are you feeling now? Are you okay?

Caller #6 (00:38:05):
I'm I'm well on the road to recovery, I've never had a food before and I'm, I'm quite healthy. I have been a fan of yours for decades since a screensaver day. Thank you, Richard.

Leo Laporte (00:38:21):
You know, I wear one love my apple watch. You know, when it first came out, I was skeptical word a little bit, but now thanks to the variety of things it does. And you just added one more I'm I don't take it off. I got my 88 year old mom, an apple watch too, because I wanted the fall protection in the emergency call feature. But that's another great feature had you turn, do you have to turn something on, on the watch to have it be monitoring for that or it just does that automatically.

Caller #6 (00:38:51):
It's as far as I know, it's a default. And if I give, can give you another, maybe 15 seconds, this thing goes off. I wake up from min nap. And of course the first thing you do is go down the river at denial, right?

Leo Laporte (00:39:06):
Oh, it's just a watch. How could it know none of this is happening? I feel fine. That's one of the problems with AFib is you might feel fine.

Caller #6 (00:39:18):
Anyway, I cleaned off the sensors and I used the pulse the ability to take a pulse quickly. Yes. Which I had on my watch face. Yes. And one pulse came in a little over 50. Another pulse came in over one 50. Whoa. And I said, I've got, I've gotta go. Now,

Leo Laporte (00:39:37):
Let's go to the doctor. Wow. Good for you. Now I'm sure your doctor told you about this, but there's another device that you can get for under a hundred bucks that friends of mine who've had AFib swear by it's called the car. Are you familiar with a Caria? You might have seen it. I'm right.

Caller #6 (00:39:55):
I'm

Leo Laporte (00:39:57):
Yeah. Live core.com. It is a very interesting two thumb EKG. It's not as good as the multi lead EKG though. EKG they'll give you in the hospital obviously, but it is a really great thing for people who've had AFib it'll send it, it'll detect it. Atrial fibrillation, bra Brady, cardio tachycardia. And you can send it off to a doctor or your doctor. So as a public service announcement on your behalf, a live core, a L I V E C r.com and it's inexpensive. It works with your smartphone. And I think it's a really, really good idea. So I am so Richard, I'm so glad to hear that. You're all right. And I'm thrilled to hear that the watch saved your life. That's fantastic. Well done.

Caller #6 (00:40:49):
This was the right place to share it. I have, of course become an evangelist. I bet. To be honest with you, I can't even get my own family to wear apple watches. So we're all caught up in it.

Leo Laporte (00:41:03):
Listen, it saved Richard's life. It could save yours. That's really great. Richard, thank you for the call. It's a pleasure talking to you. I'm glad you're safe and sound. We're gonna be going out to the big island ourselves in a couple of months. Was it a nice visit? Other than that,

Caller #6 (00:41:19):
It, I can't say enough about living in a postcard. Yeah. and the people, the people of Hawaii, I love the people extraordinary. Yeah. And I kept joking that it must be something in the

Caller #7 (00:41:33):
Water.

Leo Laporte (00:41:36):
<Laugh> well, there's a lot of it. <Laugh> especially on the wet side. <Laugh> Hey, it's a pleasure talking to you, Richard. I'm glad you're okay. That is such a great story. What a great, by the way, my apple watch is telling me I should stand up right now. I guess I should listen to it. Thank you, Richard. Yeah. Thank you. Have a great day. My watch tells me to stand up. It tells me to sit down, tells me to breathe, and I know it's doing it out of love. Well, I don't think the watch loves me, but it's, but it cares about me. Wow. What a story from a Richard? You know, you hear these stories, you see him in the news and so forth, but to actually talk to somebody for whom the apple watch was such a lifesaver is, is, is pretty dramatic.

Leo Laporte (00:42:21):
Pretty, pretty amazing. I wear mine all the time. I hope I never have to use it like Richard did, but it's really, it's really good to have really good news. We've got more in our best of that guy show. I will be back by the way. Tomorrow, January 2nd, we're gonna have a regular tech guy show be answering your calls again. And I hope you had a wonderful holiday happy new year to y'all. Here's a, <laugh> a question from a guy <laugh> that's an interesting project he's working on. Hey Leo, how you doing? I'm wonderful. How are you?

Caller #7 (00:42:56):
Oh, I don't know. It depends on your answer.

Leo Laporte (00:42:58):
Oh oh, what's a matter. Oh no.

Caller #7 (00:43:01):
So I'm staring at my neighbor's house right now, but I have decided is the greatest movie projector screen I could ever have.

Leo Laporte (00:43:09):
<Laugh> the wait a minute. Do the neighbors know about this?

Caller #7 (00:43:12):
They do not, but they never will. No windows on this side. <Laugh> they've got three sheds lined up that they never go to. So they will never know.

Leo Laporte (00:43:21):
They'll never know that you are watching movies on the side of their house. Now, is it a flat surface? It's not shingles or anything?

Caller #7 (00:43:28):
Nope. It's a flat stowed surface.

Leo Laporte (00:43:31):
Nice. Okay. Stucco might be a little problematic, but okay.

Caller #7 (00:43:35):
So what I'm wondering, it's not white. It's kind of a, I guess you'd call it a grayish light. Gray

Leo Laporte (00:43:42):
Light. Gray might be okay. I, so movie screens, as you know, are usually white. And in fact, they go beyond that. They have often reflective materials in them. You can buy, and if you, your neighbors aren't paying attention, you could use <laugh> projector, screen paint, they sell it that has this reflective material in it and makes it a brighter picture. It won't. So the gray is neutral, so it won't ruin the picture, but it will mean it's not as bright and whites. Won't be white. They'll be gray. Okay. But they won't, they might be usable. <Laugh>

Caller #7 (00:44:21):
Is there a projector that will help to contrast out the gray with

Leo Laporte (00:44:26):
White? The brightest projector you can get is the answer. Okay. How far away from the projector with the house be

Caller #7 (00:44:33):
Where I'm gonna be sitting, I'd say 25 foot. I shouldn't really

Leo Laporte (00:44:38):
Help you with this <laugh> so 25 feet is a <laugh>. Yeah.

Caller #7 (00:44:45):
I mean, honestly, for the super bowl.

Leo Laporte (00:44:47):
Yeah. Just invite him over. Say, Hey, look, Ray watching the super bowl on your house house. Right? So 25 feet is a fairly distant screen for a TV projector. You're gonna, you may, you may be pricing yourself out of the picture here, cause this is you're gonna wanna get a very expensive projector

Caller #7 (00:45:09):
At this point, as I've told my wife, the it, the remodel of the backyard, it's only money at this point. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:45:17):
Well, there are projectors. What you're looking for is something called a long throw projector and you're looking for one that's bright. You know, a thousand lumens would be nice. That's gonna be a little hard to get, but I mean, if you think about it, your movie theater, 25 feet, that's, you know, at least right from the projector to, but your movie theater, if it's running you know, a, a DLP projector, the kind that you would want, you're not gonna have, obviously you're not gonna have film reels. If they're running a digital projector, they're spending maybe 10 to $50,000 on, at least on that now again, getting a nice big run co for instance projector, but there are you know, Epson makes a long throw projector that has 3,300 lumens. That's pretty bright. The home cinema, that's not expensive. It's 600 bucks.

Leo Laporte (00:46:08):
Are you gonna, one thing you're gonna want is to get the projector as much as possible pointing at the middle of the house or the middle of the picture, not the middle of the house, the middle of where you want the picture, cuz you don't want, okay. Most of these, most of these will have a skew feature where you can turn a dial and it'll skew the picture a little bit. But if, if the projector's not shooting ex exactly perpendicularly to the house, then to the screen, then it'll then the, then the, the screen will be Keystone a little bit. The picture will be Keystone a little bit. So you want ideally to have, if you think about it, the house is a, is a, a straight up and down vertical plane and you will want to have the projector perpendicular to that, to the center of that image as best you can. I would look at the, you know what? This isn't that expensive. The Epson home cinema. It's a 10 80 P projector. That's fine. 3,300 lumens. That's pretty bright. I think you're gonna get a, a good result out of that. It's got very good white brightness and that's not expensive. It's about 600 bucks.

Caller #7 (00:47:10):
Oh, perfect. My wife won't kill me after all. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:47:12):
Yay. Now the other thing you could do is get a drone. No, no, no. Nevermind. <laugh>

Caller #7 (00:47:18):
Well, I went through that. Leo broke my drone. I was using it to chase the birds off my line. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:47:25):
You're good. You're a do it yourself for Brian. I could tell. I love it. Yeah, there are lots of companies, you know, this would be good question for Scott, lots of companies that make long throw projectors designed for, you know, a lot of 'em are designed for outdoor use. To be honest, you're gonna bring it in. You're not gonna leave it out in the outside, but you know, there is, there is a, I'm looking at a projector that has a, a 10,000 lumen projector. Just the, the brighter, the bulb, the more expensive it's gonna get. That's all. Okay. Hey, have fun. I hope your neighbor never finds out. How would your neighbor know? Right. They were not gonna know exactly unless they go for a walk and they see, they see bill Murray project eight feet tall on the side of their house. I, why would they know? <Laugh> you have a wonderful, you do. It sounds like you're planning one.

Caller #8 (00:48:19):
What I'm calling about. My wife and I are both retired recently after the last two or three years. <Laugh> yeah. Anyway, I I'm, I'm a, I keep bees and oh, neat.

Leo Laporte (00:48:34):
I have all, do you do it for honey?

Caller #8 (00:48:36):
Oh yeah. I've got, I just harvested some the other day.

Leo Laporte (00:48:39):
Do you sell it commercially or do you just do it for fun? This

Caller #8 (00:48:43):
For fun. Nice. But there is a local children's science museum that I here at, back in the nineties when my kids were young and due to work and other things I got away from that. And then now that I'm retired, I'm getting back into it. Good. And there were, you know, beekeeping has changed. I got my first hives when I was 12 I'm 65 now. Wow. Beekeeping thing has changed. Cause we didn't back then. We didn't have all the issues with mites and now a high beetle issue.

Leo Laporte (00:49:18):
Yeah. We're, we're worried about our beat population. Yes. So

Caller #8 (00:49:22):
I'm reworking a high for the museum. Nice. Instead of just a plain, plain Jane White boxes, I've got a laser and graver to, so I stuck the high through that and lasered stuff in hand, panted it back in. Oh, how nice. And one of the things I'm wanting to do and probably won't be this year. Next year. Once we get the hive reestablish and going, I wanna do a, like a classroom presentation, but I want, I will be outside with hive is working the hive. Oh, neat stuff. And I want to, and I'll have a, a screen inside. Right. And I wanna

Leo Laporte (00:50:00):
Do too, because the kids don't wanna get anywhere near those PEs. I know the bees are not are, are harmless, but they don't want to go anywhere near 'em. I know <laugh>

Caller #8 (00:50:08):
Actually, this year they have been do as can be. Yeah. 

Leo Laporte (00:50:10):
Yeah. But anyway, so you want a camera? You wanna do it live, right?

Caller #8 (00:50:14):
I want, yeah. I want a, I wanna know a good recommendation for a camera. What to do for audio.

Leo Laporte (00:50:22):
Honestly, you could do this with your smartphone. If you don't mind streaming to Facebook or YouTube, you could stream to YouTube live that if you put the YouTube app on your smartphone, the camera nowadays on most up to date, smartphones is as good as you're gonna get on a, any camcorder. And the, and the microphone's probably pretty good too. Although you can with either an iPhone or Android phone, get an external mic or even a, a wired mic that would then you know, you could put on your lapel and that would be a little bit better audio, but I don't think you need to go out and get a whole lot of extra stuff. I think that that smartphone streaming to YouTube and then the kids, of course, on their computers open up YouTube. It could be a private stream and they watch it and they'll probably be very comfortable that no bees, anyway, Leo Laport, the tech guy, what kind of phone do you have? A, a, a late model smartphone. Joe,

Caller #8 (00:51:15):
I have a, a Samsung, I think it's an S 10 or yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:51:19):
That'll do it. Yeah.

Caller #8 (00:51:21):
And, but you know, they have a, a, a good network and a main hub is close to where the hi is actually located at. So I was looking at some, doing some cameras, and I'm also looking at taking a raspberry pie and adding some sensors and doing a temperature and humidity sensor inside the hi and outside the hive. Those kids are

Leo Laporte (00:51:40):
So lucky.

Caller #8 (00:51:42):
And I also have looking a way to fit a camera inside the hive. Yeah. I found a streaming site that has one, and it's, you know, you know, new, fascinating to watch. I used to do outreach program observation, highs to the schools. So, and I also do used to do a astronomy programs. We had a portable planetarium that take the school. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:52:04):
That's so cool. This is, those kids are lucky. You know, Amazon sells very cheaply. They call 'em endoscopes because the doctors used them to, to go down your throat. <Laugh> yeah, but you could, but they're very small basically pinhole cameras, tiny little cameras that you could put in a hive and it has a wire coming out and it can go to your phone or can go to another device. And they're not very expensive. They plumbers use 'em to inspect pipes,

Caller #8 (00:52:35):
Got one in a box right now. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:52:37):
You all, you know all about

Caller #8 (00:52:38):
It. So yeah. But yeah. It's, you know, it's, it's a lot of fun. One of the things interesting and, and bees, I, I have a, my workshop. I used to keep a observation hive out the, there in the wintertime and I don't heat my shop unless I'm working out there in the wintertime, it can be 20 or 30 degrees out there inside the beehive 95

Leo Laporte (00:52:58):
Degrees. They keep it warm. Don't they isn't that interesting. Oh,

Caller #8 (00:53:01):
It it's amazing how they can heat. The hives

Leo Laporte (00:53:03):
Bees are remarkable.

Caller #8 (00:53:05):
Yeah. They are. And it's, it's watching, you know, watching the, what they call the B dance. When, you know a worker goes out and finds Anex source, they come back to the hive, they do a little figure, eight pattern on the comb and it tells some yeah. Other B and the hive, which way. Isn't

Leo Laporte (00:53:19):
That amazing? What kind of honey do you get?

Caller #8 (00:53:22):
Well, right now is we have a lot of sweet Clover in bloom. Oh, I love Clover

Leo Laporte (00:53:27):
Honey on the ground.

Caller #8 (00:53:28):
Oh. But these are taller bushes and some of the honey I've harvested off recently is lighter and color than vegetable oil. I mean, it, it almost, it's almost water clear. Wow. Is that good? On the time of the it's it's it's nice. I darker honey. And depends on the time of the year. What trees are in blossom.

Leo Laporte (00:53:48):
Lisa joined a honey of the month's club. We'd get two bottles of honey from all over the country. In fact, I think Tennessee's one of them, but from Texas, from all over new England, all different flavors you know, depending on what flowers the bees were eating and it, I love it. And it's, there's such variety. There's raw, there's dark, there's light. There's such variety. It's amazing. Well, a

Caller #8 (00:54:12):
Lot of what you buy at the store is so ultra process.

Leo Laporte (00:54:15):
I don't like that. Yeah. So this club was good because it was a lot of, it was raw and it, it was all, it was all small producers, people like you. And it was so good.

Caller #8 (00:54:24):
I have a friend who into it, big time, he has over 300 hives and he's harvest. I mean, he keeps his hives in several different states and he's also head of their state association. I might,

Leo Laporte (00:54:40):
I might wanna do this when I retire. This sounds like fun, Joe. Hey, I gotta run. I appreciate it. It's it's good to talk to you. I think you got it all set up. It sounds like you're gonna be a great teacher.

Caller #8 (00:54:51):
Yeah. Renew your ham license.

Leo Laporte (00:54:53):
I will. I will. I'm I'm gonna do that right now before UJC oh, w six T WT seven three, Joe. Bye. Bye. Unfortunately she never followed up with a call about about using whether she was able to get this working. I hope she did. One of the best parts of this show is when people call and say, you know what? You I always get nervous cuz they say, you know, I asked you a question three weeks ago, you gave me an answer and I always go. And, but most of the time it's it's happy. So if, if you're still listening let us know how your beekeeping went. Meanwhile, Micah wants to move outta Maine. Mike is a regular on the show and he's looking to find a good email provider. This is one of those calls that got me up on my soapbox. I've been talking about this all year long email, listen,

Caller #9 (00:55:47):
Hey Leah. So great to talk to you as always. I really need your help today. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:55:51):
No, nothing

Caller #9 (00:55:53):
Terrible, nothing broken, but this is stuff, you know, you could, you could be talking about this in your sleep. You get it. And you get the question kind often too. I'm afraid, but it's time for me to get a domain. Not because I need a domain, but because eventually I'm gonna be able to get rid of spectrum. I don't know when, but with all the infrastructure improvement and everything that's happening here in Maine, I may be able to change my internet service provider, which means I'll need to give up my main dorr.com oh email,

Leo Laporte (00:56:22):
Which is my <laugh>. Hey, what, what what's happening? You said everything that's happening in Maine. What's happening in Maine.

Caller #9 (00:56:29):
Oh, there's a huge internet thing going on where they want to expand high speed internet into the Northern parts of Maine and all through the rest of Maine where it isn't available. If you get up into a ROIC county yeah. You know, up there, press aisle and, and, and caribou in those areas. It's really hard to, to find

Leo Laporte (00:56:47):
Southern Southern Maine is basically, you know you know, I dunno what Massachusetts, or what's the Southern. Yeah. I mean it's Northern Massachusetts, Northern Massachusetts. It's it's, it's urban. Yeah. But then it, so everybody, I think when they hear Maine, they think, you know, Rocky beaches and, and pioneers and log cabins and stuff. That's up north <laugh>

Caller #9 (00:57:08):
Right. That's north and west, north and west when you're on the Southern coast where, where we're spectrum and, and Xfinity and net, you know, all those other horrible

Leo Laporte (00:57:16):
Guys. So the state is, is doing this though, which is kind of cool. I like that.

Caller #9 (00:57:21):
Oh yeah. There's been bond issues and we're gonna a lot of our, our infrastructure money that we're getting from all this is is going, going to go this way. It's wonderful.

Leo Laporte (00:57:28):
Nice. But are you in rural Maine or are you in Massachusetts north?

Caller #9 (00:57:34):
I'm in Massachusetts. North. I'm in Portland and, and, and I'm, and I'm stuck with spectrum and I've been with them since, oh, I know, you know, a local company and, and you know, there's nothing you can do. It's a monopoly. If the FCC would require these monopoly cable companies to open up their fiber cables. Oh, I agree. They required, you know, it required the regular copper company. I'm you open up their copper. Yep. You know, then we wouldn't have this, but

Leo Laporte (00:57:56):
The cable companies, wh that back when this was you know, rooted about, they said, no, if you make us do that, we're we can't, it won't, we can't afford to dig all those trenches and we'll just stop expanding. Which of course is a lie. It's the same lie. Every, you know, at and T told a Comcast told when they, these mergers, they just lie. They say, oh no, that'd be bad. You can't do that. Oh, we'd just have to leave the B we'd go bankrupt. No,

Caller #9 (00:58:23):
<Laugh> no like Comcast acquiring NBC. Yeah. So they violated the, the, the act that was put together with the movie theaters. Yeah. How can you both be creating and distributing

Leo Laporte (00:58:34):
Micah you're preaching to the choir? I love it. You're absolutely right. Absolutely. Right. So, but anyway, if you were gonna leave spectrum, you're gonna leave them. What's going on.

Caller #9 (00:58:43):
I, when the time comes, I want to be able to, but I need to have really good email. Mm. So what, I

Leo Laporte (00:58:50):
You've been listening to me preaching for this. So absolutely. I'll say it again. Email's too important to be treated as just like, oh, it's a benefit I get for my internet service provider or, oh, I'll use the free Gmail or whatever. It's too important. So spend a little money and get it up, set up. Right. Once you do this once and it'll be yours for life. And the first thing to do is just, as you said, get a domain name. Like, you know, now

Caller #9 (00:59:16):
Here's where the question comes in Leo. Yes. Because you, you, you, I know that one of your sponsors has been, and I hope maybe still is hover.

Leo Laporte (00:59:24):
So I'm looking, so where did airline pilot guy go?

Caller #9 (00:59:28):
Oh no, no. Airline pilot guy is a podcast that belongs to someone else. I confuse you

Leo Laporte (00:59:34):
With airline pilot. You're who,

Caller #9 (00:59:37):
And I'm the air with the airplane. I'm with the I'm friends, with the airline airplane geek. I love them. Jeff Nielson, who runs that is great. But I'm part of the airplane geek. Where did

Leo Laporte (00:59:46):
Airplane geeks.com come from? Who, where do they go to? We

Caller #9 (00:59:50):
Have that. I don't know where they register it. And I have an email address with them, but I wanna get my own <laugh>. So,

Leo Laporte (00:59:57):
So this is the, you want Micah geek.com or something like that. And I agree with you. You should absolutely do that.

Caller #9 (01:00:04):
But the question is this, I know you also like fast mail, so I'm looking at fast mail and I'm looking at the prices, cuz I'm a cheap scape too. I don't mind. $90 a year is fair for a hundred gigabytes. But if I get my email with hover, it's cheaper. Yes. One terabyte a year. Yes. But $30. Yes. Am I making a mistake?

Leo Laporte (01:00:25):
No hovers, good, good email system. I here's why I like to, I like to decouple in the ideal world, money being the, all other things being equal, you know, the money being the same, it would be nice to have an email service decoupled from the main registrar. In fact, I, my preference is to only use a domain registrar like hover for domain names so that it's easy to move stuff around. Right. and it still would be easy. Even if you used hover for email, if at some point you said, I don't want to use Gmail instead. It wouldn't be so hard to do, but I just like separate rating the two for some, you know, it's just, I'm like separate. It's not, I'm a components guy, not in all in one guy, but it's nothing wrong with it. Hovers email is good. FA the reason I spend money on fast mail and by the way, I think I don't spend quite as much money as, as 90 bucks a year.

Leo Laporte (01:01:19):
It's well, it's close. It's $230 for three years. So it's, what is that? That's a little less than 80 bucks, 78 bucks a year. To me that's worth it. But again, if you, you are right hovers a lot cheaper for more storage. So maybe it's very similar. There's, there's some things I can do. For instance, I use fast mail as a DOMA D NS system. They offer domain names as well. So I register. So for instance, I registered, let me, let me find a domain name. I don't mind giving out lale.fund L otl.fund Lale fund at hover. They are still the registry of records, so it'll renew through them, but then I hover now let fast mail handle the DNS, including the mail. And that's actually a little bit better because hover does a lot of thing or not hover. Fast mail does a lot of things with the email for authentication.

Leo Laporte (01:02:20):
There's a several different email authentication technologies and H and fast mail like D Kim and S P does that automatically? I know hover might actually, I, I would look, I just, technically I think fast mail is a little bit more advanced, but you pay for that. So the short answer to your question, I just gave you the very long answer is yes. Get a domain name at hover or anywhere else. Most registrars open offer email as well. That's the easiest to set up, go for that. I'll tell you why. I actually the biggest difference from for me and the reason I use fast mail hover charges for additional addresses. So if you get you know, Micah email.com and you want mic@micahemail.com, but also info@michaelemail.com or my grandma, Micah, email.com. Each one of those will cost you more with fast mail. You have an infinite number. So in other words, it depends how you want to use it, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with using hover. I have just never, I've never used them for email, so I, I'm not sure what the capabilities are, but I do remember that was the big one for me was I like to have a lot of aliases with every email account

Caller #9 (01:03:38):
And I was hoping for two, and I assumed that I could with one terabyte that I'd be able

Leo Laporte (01:03:43):
To create, ah, it's not merely the storage, figure that out. Yeah. It's not merely the storage. They charge you for additional addresses.

Caller #9 (01:03:51):
Okay. What, so I would check that

Leo Laporte (01:03:53):
There's a difference. Yeah. I would check that. Unless there's now add as many email addresses as you need, but they don't tell you is I, they char I would, I would look at their pricing and, and see yeah, terabyte $29 a year. But how many addresses do you get? I don't know. And they do web mail and I map both of which you'd want I think you charge, I think they charge for additional retire mail, if you're, they don't say specifically, let me see if I can find adding email addresses. Well, I would look into that FAQ under billing and payments that probably explain that.

Caller #9 (01:04:40):
Yeah. And I think they have a, a help phone number. So if I get that bad, I could always call. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:04:45):
That's the that's for me. The big one, cuz what I do with my fast mail addresses is I say, look, anything at Lale fun goes to my inbox. But then when I sign up for stuff, I will sign up. When I sign up for Verizon, it was Verizon at Lale fund or you know blue apron at Lale fund. I always use the name of the company at the email address. I don't use LA fund for that, but that's what I do. So that's a nice little thing. You know, just so that everybody has a unique address, it makes it easier to filter. And also lets you know, if they're selling your address.

Caller #9 (01:05:25):
Absolutely. No that makes complete sense.

Leo Laporte (01:05:27):
So having in ability to create infinite email addresses at that domain is a big thing for me. Leo Laport, the tech guy, what happened?

Caller #10 (01:05:36):
Good

Leo Laporte (01:05:36):
Morning, Leo. How are you? Good morning. I'm fine. How are you more to the point? Well,

Caller #10 (01:05:41):
Yeah, well we're great. Unfortunately, my wife dumped a whole bowl of sugar on my laptop.

Leo Laporte (01:05:47):
Computer that not on purpose, right?

Caller #10 (01:05:50):
No, no, no. Is it complete in total

Leo Laporte (01:05:52):
Accident? How do you dump a bowl? Okay. I, I don't even need to know

Caller #10 (01:05:56):
The laptop stop was on a kitchen counter partially my

Leo Laporte (01:05:58):
Fault. Yeah. That's what she's saying. That's her story and she's sticking with it. Was it wet sugar or just dry sugar? Dry granulated sugar. That's good. Cuz if it had been wet that would've been a problem. It would've penetrated in. And and that's like, if you spilled a soda pop on your keyboard, that used means it's over. So this is a laptop and it, and it, and it didn't penetrate. Right. It's just granules. Exactly. Right? Yeah. Can you shake it out

Caller #10 (01:06:30):
It's a little bit crunchy now.

Leo Laporte (01:06:31):
<Laugh> okay. So here's, here's what I would suggest most laptops. You can remove those key caps before you, you do that. Take a picture please. And I only know this from all my personal experience, <laugh> having removed the key caps and then going, oh crap. I know it's Q w E R T Y, but where does where does this go? So take a picture. So you know where all the key caps are gonna go and then you can gently use a butter knife since you're in the, and pry off the key caps. And what that's gonna do is expose the switches underneath. And that's where the crunch where the, the crunchy goodness lies. And you could blow it out with a compressed air or I wouldn't use your breath, but and I wouldn't use a hair dry, nothing warm, but you could blow it out with compressed air. Be careful when you use co there on a computer, cuz if you keep pressing the squeezing the button, it starts getting condensation. It's so cold. And then you're blowing moisture in the computer. Moisture is the enemy.

Leo Laporte (01:07:30):
So remove the key caps, shake it, shake it, shake, shake, shake. If you've got a little, you know, they make little computer vacuum cleaners, little tiny vacuum cleaners that would work Burke, who is our repair guy here at the studio says, no, don't blow on it. No, no compress air vacuum. But nobody probably has a vacuum small enough, but you can get those Gras out. This chances are it hasn't penetrated into the mechanism. Most laptops, the keyboard is kept somewhat separate from the in insides, not maybe waterproof. So whatever you do, don't get it wet at this point. Take off the key caps, shake it out, put 'em back. You're good to go. So <laugh> and one of the things I love about doing the radio show is I talk to real people with real problems, including granulated sugar in the, in the laptop.

Leo Laporte (01:08:20):
It is so much fun talking to everybody on the tech eye. And if you listen, whether you listen on your local radio station or you listen on a podcast, I'm so glad that you listen. You know, I do it every weekend, Saturday and Sunday from two to 5:00 PM Eastern. If you have a local station that broadcast the show, you can listen and call in live there. Of course you can always consume the podcast or even stream it live. So if you don't have a local radio station, you go to twit.tv/live and watch the live streams there two to 5:00 PM Eastern time, Saturday and Sunday, or subscribe to the podcast or both or both. Thank you so much for listening to the show for subscribing to our podcast. For those of you who are Club TWiT members, I thank you, especially for your support this year, we launched Club TWiT.

Leo Laporte (01:09:06):
It's been a great success. Thousands of members making a big difference in our operating budget, but also I think helping form an amazing community in the special TWI Club, TWiT Discord server, the events we have, the untitled Lennox show Stacy's book club. The ask me any things that we do the game nights. They've all been so much fun. If you're interested, if you're not a member, go to twit.tv/clubtwit. And again, if you are a member, thank you for your support. I really appreciate it. Thanks to all of of you have a wonderful new year happy new year. I'll be the last to say it happy new year, and I'll be back tomorrow with the tech guy show. We'll see that. Well, that's it for the tech guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget TWiT, it stands for This Week in Tech and you'll find it at TWiT TV, including the podcast for this show. We talk about windows and Windows Weekly, Macintosh, a MacBreak Weekly iPads, iPhones, Apple watches on iOS today. Security on Security Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, This Week in Tech, you'll find it all at twit.tv and I'll be back next week with our great Tech Guy shows. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.