Speaker 1: The following program is produced by the Tech Talk Radio Network.
Speaker 2: Hi, this is a Colin Macria. Whose line is it?
Speaker 3: Anyway you're listening to tech talk Radio. I don't know
Speaker 3: how it works. It's all magical stuff to me.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor,
Speaker 1: I'm Shonda Weird, and I'm Justin Lemey.
Speaker 3: Welcome. Look at that we got Justin. But you've been
Speaker 3: gone for a while. How you doing, dude, I'm doing.
Speaker 3: I'm just I've been busy, man, I've been busy with work.
Speaker 3: And then, as I was mentioned in a pre show, man,
Speaker 3: I'm getting old. Man, I'm going to bed. I'm going
Speaker 3: to bed by the time you guys start recording. But
Speaker 3: now that we're on daily savings time, you know, it
Speaker 3: actually helps me because I'm like, hey, I can do
Speaker 3: this now, but no to bed.
Speaker 4: You know the number of times that I've missed the
Speaker 4: show because I've fallen asleep with my kids.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, happened.
Speaker 1: I mean it happens. It happened one time when it
Speaker 1: was just you and me. I was sitting here, correct,
Speaker 1: where is he?
Speaker 4: Where is he?
Speaker 3: I'm actually falling asleep at the microphone when I was
Speaker 3: working at KLPX. I fell asleep at the microphone. I
Speaker 3: think I remember.
Speaker 1: Hearing about that. That was quite We got quite a
Speaker 1: bit of fodder for that one.
Speaker 3: That was good. Yeah, you hear about that overnight guy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Jonas had to call in and I was like, I
Speaker 3: was like answering the phone, and I'm like, He's like like,
Speaker 3: first off, like why are you calling me so late?
Speaker 3: And You're like, why are you sleeping?
Speaker 1: This supposed to be on the air of one of
Speaker 1: the many stations that I work at, or have worked at.
Speaker 3: I'll say it that way.
Speaker 1: One day I was driving into record Yeah, not this show,
Speaker 1: another show, and I noticed that the top of the
Speaker 1: hour came by and I didn't hear the DJ on
Speaker 1: the air, and matter of fac it was twenty minutes
Speaker 1: in my drive. I'd never heard the DJ once and
Speaker 1: there was certain parts that that DJ had to do.
Speaker 1: So I called the boss and apparently she had forgot
Speaker 1: to come in and her shift.
Speaker 3: Was at two. This was at four. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: They didn't realize it for two hours. Computer systems nowadays
Speaker 3: do they just keep on just going right? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Radio automation is interesting because if you're in the studio. Uh,
Speaker 1: and like this show that we do here, and of
Speaker 1: course my show that I do in the afternoon and
Speaker 1: throughout the day, we.
Speaker 3: Have live d days.
Speaker 1: They're they're, they're in there, and you know, yes, you
Speaker 1: could say, all right, I wanted to play the next
Speaker 1: three songs without having to interact with them, but generally
Speaker 1: you you just play each one. I mean, we're there live,
Speaker 1: and it's rare these days unless.
Speaker 3: It's a morning show.
Speaker 1: When I was working for one of the big network groups,
Speaker 1: I could say Westwood One, I was on seventy stations,
Speaker 1: and while is while I was working here as well,
Speaker 1: seventy stations. I go home and I would record. And
Speaker 1: the thing is, you'd record two hours ahead. But if
Speaker 1: something happened in that radio town, you know, whether it
Speaker 1: was in you know, Florida or Pitty News.
Speaker 3: I was in Pittsburgh, it was in DC. I was everywhere.
Speaker 3: But if something happened, how what am I gonna do?
Speaker 3: There's nothing you had. Everything had to be recorded an
Speaker 3: hour ahead of time. That's that's That's the one thing
Speaker 3: I never understood about canning. Like, Okay, I understand, you know,
Speaker 3: radio stations they want to save money. A lot of
Speaker 3: it is canned. Now. When I say canned, I mean
Speaker 3: like pre recorded. But the thing is is, if you
Speaker 3: go back in history, radio DJs are technically I mean
Speaker 3: they started out as journalists. I mean they they were
Speaker 3: there to provide you news and entertainment. And radio used
Speaker 3: to be just simply news.
Speaker 1: When I was in broadcasting school, we had to go
Speaker 1: rip the news off the teletype.
Speaker 3: They actually had a teletype and.
Speaker 1: It would it would, you know, give you news, the
Speaker 1: biggest news stories, and then you would always have to
Speaker 1: do the news at the top of the hour.
Speaker 3: How do sit back in the Old West? Are you
Speaker 3: you making a reference to my age young man? Maybe
Speaker 3: just a little bit, No, But I mean, seriously, you
Speaker 3: think about it. This is what they were designed to do.
Speaker 3: They were They weren't designed to just simply do like,
Speaker 3: uh music. They were you know, radio DJs were there
Speaker 3: to uh one, run a station. Make sure that you know,
Speaker 3: you take your meter readings and make sure the towers,
Speaker 3: you know, all lights are everything's yeah, the lights are on,
Speaker 3: and the towers are broadcasting at the right frequency and
Speaker 3: the right wattage. You're there to provide news, you provide
Speaker 3: entertainment and then music in between and then eventually just
Speaker 3: kind of got less and less news and more and
Speaker 3: more entertainment radio, more and more commercials, more and more commercials.
Speaker 3: And then and then everything became automated, so then you
Speaker 3: don't have to take your readings anymore. Everything was automatically
Speaker 3: logged by a computer. And then and then it just
Speaker 3: got to eventually was like, oh, we don't even need
Speaker 3: DJs anymore. And and now some radio stations are even
Speaker 3: using AI DJs.
Speaker 1: Let's face it, guys, it's getting really good. Some of
Speaker 1: the some of the stuff they're able to do is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. And you know, one of the big worries
Speaker 1: that some radio people that you know, I know have
Speaker 1: is that you think about all the audio we've recorded
Speaker 1: over the years, that's an audio print, it's you, yeah,
Speaker 1: that could be manipulated now using AI to say the time,
Speaker 1: the weather, the song that was just played, the song
Speaker 1: that's being played. AI is is scary not only for
Speaker 1: radio but also for television. There is it's gotten so
Speaker 1: good that you know, at some point those that are
Speaker 1: delivering the news on TV have to be concerned.
Speaker 3: But have you also heard about and this is this
Speaker 3: is starting to make kind of waves in the tech industry,
Speaker 3: is this thing that they they're calling the AI bubble.
Speaker 3: They're they're talking about this as if this is going
Speaker 3: to be another one of the dot com busts, you know,
Speaker 3: back from the two thousands, you know, when everybody was
Speaker 3: all in on the internet and the Internet was the
Speaker 3: big thing, and then all of a sudden, boom, everything
Speaker 3: just failed. And all these companies are putting so much
Speaker 3: money into AI, you know, open Ai getting like a
Speaker 3: five hundred billion dollar investment from like Nvidia, and then
Speaker 3: blah blah blah blah blah. People are saying this is
Speaker 3: this is a yeah, like this, it's gonna fail. And
Speaker 3: I kind of think that's the way I think. I
Speaker 3: think the hype has just gotten too big and AI
Speaker 3: is really not going to do what everybody thinks it's
Speaker 3: gonna do.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Yes, granted, maybe in I don't know, five, ten, twenty years, yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe we'll all be redundant. But I think right now,
Speaker 3: I think it's a bubble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's I think people are gonna get burned, well,
Speaker 1: if they're not already burned out, because every time you
Speaker 1: turn around, oh ai AI, somebody wrote on and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna just say I saw this on next door and
Speaker 1: it was AI with a round circle and a slash
Speaker 1: through it, you know, And so I went ahead and asked,
Speaker 1: I said, just wondering what facet of AI do you
Speaker 1: dislike the most, And the person responded said everything.
Speaker 3: I dislike how it's incorporated into every app.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: I just like how many people were fired. Let's face it,
Speaker 1: that's happened because they were replaced by AI. I just
Speaker 1: like how people normalizing it when it shouldn't.
Speaker 4: I just like it's coming from toys. Right. We talked
Speaker 4: about this a couple of months ago. Right, has Bro
Speaker 4: is looking at putting AI and toys, Yes, and that
Speaker 4: just doesn't sit right for me. We talked about this
Speaker 4: a couple months ago. There was an article that came
Speaker 4: out that said Hasbro is looking at incorporating AI into toys.
Speaker 3: Right for what reason? Yeah? This is it's ridiculous.
Speaker 4: My frustration with AI is you are sucking the creativity
Speaker 4: and the artistic vision out of the human soul. And
Speaker 4: when you start taking that away from people, what's left?
Speaker 4: And it if kids are now just going to be know,
Speaker 4: they're going to be entertained by AI? What why do
Speaker 4: they need to be creative anymore.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 4: Did they need why did they Why do they need
Speaker 4: to think anymore?
Speaker 3: This is exactly what I was having a conversation with
Speaker 3: my family about. This is that, you know, with AI
Speaker 3: and what we weren't centered on the AI aspect of it,
Speaker 3: but we were more centered on the creativity portion of childhood.
Speaker 3: And Eric, you know, Eric is constantly like, I'm bored.
Speaker 3: I'm bored. And I saw a post. I didn't remember
Speaker 3: it was read it or Facebook or whatever, but it
Speaker 3: was like talking about it. It's like, it's okay to
Speaker 3: be bored. Children should be bored because that's what sparks creativity.
Speaker 3: That's what makes them go, hmm, what can I make?
Speaker 3: What can I do? You know? And if they have
Speaker 3: a screen in front of them the whole time, it's
Speaker 3: never gonna spark that creativity. It's gonna just give that
Speaker 3: dopamine hit and then that's it. And and so now
Speaker 3: then they're gonna be addicted to the dopamine hit, which
Speaker 3: is the screen. You know. My My also concern is reading.
Speaker 1: Uh, let's face it, there's stories that kids aren't reading
Speaker 1: as much as they used to. Teachers will say that
Speaker 1: as well, And now we're finding books that will read
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 3: Now they're reading along. But I don't know that that
Speaker 3: that makes me.
Speaker 1: That makes me nervous as well. You want your kids
Speaker 1: to learn the words and learn how how that sentence
Speaker 1: is going and read, and now it's just reading it
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 4: And I just just think of like even just from
Speaker 4: like the safeguard, get to put into place, like what's okay,
Speaker 4: So let's say this children's toy has AI in it.
Speaker 4: Does it connect to the cloud? Does it? Is it
Speaker 4: learning connect? Right? So it's like we all know that
Speaker 4: everybody has a recording device in their phone, you know,
Speaker 4: in their pocket with their phones, like it's always listening
Speaker 4: to your TV's, listening your whatever. But now just adding
Speaker 4: all these other kids toys in kids spaces, listening to
Speaker 4: what your kids are doing, listening to what I just it,
Speaker 4: It's just freaks me out.
Speaker 1: I'm starting to see TV commercials where and I think
Speaker 1: we're becoming a little more attuned to what artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: is in the media. And I'm seeing TV commercials where
Speaker 1: they'll cut to a shot of a couple sitting around
Speaker 1: a table. I can tell right away, well that's AI.
Speaker 1: You know it's the filmmaking.
Speaker 4: You see. Coca Cola released their new AI generated holiday commercial.
Speaker 3: Oh no, they did it again, so.
Speaker 4: Last year, so they've they've Last year they did it
Speaker 4: and it was really bad. You could truly tell this
Speaker 4: year's just not any better. The animals look awful, the
Speaker 4: backgrounds look awful, the ending is awful. The whole thing
Speaker 4: is just awful. One of the one of the other
Speaker 4: frustrated things I have about AI is everybody thinks AI
Speaker 4: is just going to make everything cheaper, cheaper and easier. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but you've sacrificed a lot of quality. You sacrificed a
Speaker 4: lot for that. Like it's getting to the point where
Speaker 4: it's what is becoming acceptable to the viewer.
Speaker 3: I just I just watched that Coca Cola ad. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, honestly, I don't know, man, it feels Coca Cola.
Speaker 3: I watched it, and I can tell certain aspects of
Speaker 3: it or AI. But but the thing about Coca Cola ads,
Speaker 3: especially the holiday ads, they've done CGI for so many years,
Speaker 3: this doesn't feel that different. Friend, then they're normal c
Speaker 3: g I ads.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just pushing the boundaries of that uncanny
Speaker 4: valley where it's just you know, the polar bears are animated, right,
Speaker 4: that's just a fundamental fact. But this just pushes it
Speaker 4: to another level with some of the other animals they
Speaker 4: put in there, the transitions, the snow, the the driving.
Speaker 4: If you look at the shot at the end with
Speaker 4: the semis, it plows over some people, Like what, just
Speaker 4: just watch the end. Watch the end again.
Speaker 3: I watch the end.
Speaker 4: Watch people tell you that Semi does not run over people.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, all right, I'm watching the end of it.
Speaker 4: Just watch the end and tell me it does not
Speaker 4: plow over people at the end.
Speaker 3: All right, Oh my gosh, this is Oh my god,
Speaker 3: I'm telling you, dude, it's it's and and okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: the wide shot of the crowd, all of the people
Speaker 3: in the last wide shot, right, their their legs.
Speaker 4: Are moving funny. Their arms are moving funny.
Speaker 3: It used to be it was the fingers. Right now,
Speaker 3: it's the way they move.
Speaker 1: It's it's probably up on YouTube or will they take
Speaker 1: it down, you know, will Coca Cola.
Speaker 3: Say no, way to the official Coca Cola channel on
Speaker 3: YouTube and just look for the one. It's called Coca Cola.
Speaker 3: Holidays are coming.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, we're a subject of media and I would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you our listeners. You're listening to this,
Speaker 1: you're thinking, you know, guys, I'm tired of it too.
Speaker 3: Let us know.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to get your thoughts or
Speaker 1: if you do use it, you know I've had fun
Speaker 1: with it, like uh, Sora is a part of Chat GPT,
Speaker 1: which you know I use Chat GPT. It was weird
Speaker 1: because the other day I needed I needed a graphic
Speaker 1: and I wanted a video graphic, a moving video graphic
Speaker 1: for a news story that was on Fox eleven, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, why didn't I try and.
Speaker 3: See if it used to be?
Speaker 1: It was baked right into chat GPT, and I asked,
Speaker 1: all would do was give me the stills, And I asked,
Speaker 1: I said, well, where's the video and they said, oh, it's.
Speaker 3: Not incorporated anymore.
Speaker 1: And it base lied to me because it is with
Speaker 1: a CHATGBT account open AI. It's just you have to
Speaker 1: access it a different length Sora dot and then you know,
Speaker 1: go to the full web length. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's kind of where I found that out the next
Speaker 1: day when I was doing some research, Sora too is
Speaker 1: now going to be available on Android devices and so
Speaker 1: I found it.
Speaker 3: Now Sora is a part of my Android. And the
Speaker 3: other day my grandson was over.
Speaker 1: He brought up one of those you remember those little
Speaker 1: horses that have the stick, They have the head and
Speaker 1: then they have the stick they run around with. So
Speaker 1: of course I asked Sora to put them on a
Speaker 1: horse with a picture of head, and it did and
Speaker 1: it was great. You couldn't have told I mean, it
Speaker 1: did not look AI generated. So again it's it's it's
Speaker 1: frustrating because now we're seeing so many tools coming out
Speaker 1: on so many different sites that do so many different things.
Speaker 1: You have to wonder, like, really, this is where we're going.
Speaker 4: I wanted to get Justin's opinion on this, right, So
Speaker 4: with the Sora stuff, you mentioned the Sora the video generator, right,
Speaker 4: have you seen the stuff where Studio Ghibli is suing
Speaker 4: Sorrow because that copyright in fringement.
Speaker 3: Not necessarily just Sora, but I knew know that about
Speaker 3: eight nine months ago, chat GPT was in hot water
Speaker 3: with Studio Ghibli because people were basically taking photos and
Speaker 3: saying make this in a style of Studio Ghibli. And
Speaker 3: I even have some photos of my family in the
Speaker 3: studios a police. Remember you did that, and it does
Speaker 3: the very very good job. Now, I don't know about
Speaker 3: the Sora aspects. So if again, if you're trying to
Speaker 3: if you're listening to this, you're like, what is Sora?
Speaker 3: Sora is the video generating application built into chat GPT,
Speaker 3: so it uses AI to generate video instead of just
Speaker 3: text or photos. Yeah. No, I had not heard about
Speaker 3: the video aspect of it.
Speaker 4: So the content oversees distribution Association, which represents a ton
Speaker 4: of Japanese anime. Yeah, is basically written a very strongly
Speaker 4: worded letter to open AI and Sora saying you got
Speaker 4: to stop using our stuff to train your models. Yeah,
Speaker 4: because it's pumping out copyrighted content. So yeah, that's the
Speaker 4: kind of stuff that is inevitable.
Speaker 3: We're talking about media.
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk a little bit about something we've
Speaker 1: talked about for the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 3: Justin was out. Justin said, hey, I found this website.
Speaker 1: This website is really cool. I would love to, you know,
Speaker 1: give my thoughts on it. And of course that website
Speaker 1: TV Garden. Justin, you finally got a chance to check
Speaker 1: it out, right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Actually, uh yeah I did. You guys were talking
Speaker 3: about it. I missed lost a couple of shows, but no.
Speaker 3: I also I also check out TV Garden and it's
Speaker 3: actually really cool. I mean, you know, it's I like
Speaker 3: how you're you're presented with a map, colored map of
Speaker 3: the globe and you just pick on the country and
Speaker 3: then it lists what channels are available. I'm personally right
Speaker 3: now as we're doing the show, I'm watching a Japanese
Speaker 3: news channel, isn't that. Yeah, And it's all and it's
Speaker 3: done via YouTube, so it's like a YouTube embedded channel,
Speaker 3: but it's streaming live. And yeah, I mean there's there's
Speaker 3: there's like at least thirty channels from just Japan alone,
Speaker 3: not to mention the other countries. But yeah, TV dot
Speaker 3: Garden is really cool.
Speaker 4: So I will mention that Andy and I talked about
Speaker 4: this about two weeks ago, and when we watched it,
Speaker 4: it had every available ESPN channel.
Speaker 3: Oh really, it does not anymore.
Speaker 4: Oh, so for we're talking about tv TV dot Garden,
Speaker 4: which is a great resource for fighting local televisions just
Speaker 4: really kind of niche TV stations around the world, but
Speaker 4: a lot of people this past weekend. Yeah, we're really
Speaker 4: we're really upset, specifically Notre Dame football fans. So Notre
Speaker 4: Dame's game was on ESPN this past weekend. If you
Speaker 4: have had YouTube TV, you lost access to ESPN the
Speaker 4: night before the football game, yep.
Speaker 3: And also Monday Night football. I wanted to watch Monday
Speaker 3: Night FOOTBA last night because I like to watch the
Speaker 3: Peyton and Eli Manning cast on ESPN two, and they
Speaker 3: had Baker Mayfield, which is one of my favorite NFL players.
Speaker 3: I just like Baker and he was on it, and
Speaker 3: I couldn't watch it because ESPN and well Disney, Disney
Speaker 3: and YouTube are just having a spat. And the craziest
Speaker 3: part is I heard a story this morning or maybe
Speaker 3: yesterday yesterday yesterday morning talk about how Disney approached YouTube
Speaker 3: TV and said, look, well, actually Google, because that's the
Speaker 3: parent company. They said, look, we got elections, We got
Speaker 3: elections on Tuesday. We want our viewers to be able
Speaker 3: to know what's going on with the elections. Can you
Speaker 3: please just put our channels back on at least at
Speaker 3: least just for Tuesday, May May maybe Wednesday morning. And
Speaker 3: YouTube was like nope, wow, wow, yeah.
Speaker 4: And the a lot of the driving for this decision
Speaker 4: was that ESPN launched their own complete content streaming application.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so a lot of people were just like, like,
Speaker 4: I don't want to like what is happening with the
Speaker 4: streaming world right now, Like we're just it's worse than
Speaker 4: it was when cables a thing. It's more this is
Speaker 4: the thing.
Speaker 3: That ever mentioned in the beginning.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's more confusing, it's more frustrating, it's more expensive.
Speaker 1: I have been contemplating making the change to YouTube TV,
Speaker 1: and people are saying, oh, wait, you might want to
Speaker 1: wait a little bit because you may not get all
Speaker 1: the channels you want.
Speaker 3: That's been my problem with the cable company.
Speaker 1: You don't spending two hundred dollars a month, and yet
Speaker 1: I really don't get anything.
Speaker 4: I want to go back, go back, go back seven
Speaker 4: months ago when my or eight months ago, maybe a
Speaker 4: year ago, when my in laws got YouTube TV. If
Speaker 4: we go back and listen to that episode, you should
Speaker 4: pull a clips to that episode. Yeah, because it was like,
Speaker 4: they're gonna save a ton of money because they're cutting cable,
Speaker 4: they're not using it, they're bundling out the Internet. It's
Speaker 4: gonna be fantastic. They're paying seventy bucks a month or
Speaker 4: whatever for everything. It's like over one hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: Now, oh yeah, I pay like one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: five just for YouTube TV.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they're even going at it like this was
Speaker 4: a good deal when we got it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now that's how they do it. That's how they
Speaker 3: gettin I kind of wonder if it's corporate greed.
Speaker 1: If people decide, Okay, I'm gonna leave you to TV,
Speaker 1: then their options are well. Of course the antenna and
Speaker 1: ATSC three might change some of that for some people.
Speaker 1: But I'm thinking, okay, so maybe TV Garden it's gonna
Speaker 1: be that's gonna be the next place to fall fall
Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole with. I want to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about this because I've never been, and I
Speaker 1: want to go justin you did take a little vacation.
Speaker 1: Uh you made a trip to Aspen, Colorado, and I've
Speaker 1: never been to Aspen. I've always thought that's where the
Speaker 1: celebrities skied, that's where you know you went.
Speaker 3: I mean, is it really like a ski town to
Speaker 3: go there. I'm a celebrity. Of course I'm gonna go there.
Speaker 3: Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 5: He's the voice of the Voice of the water World.
Speaker 5: The co host of tech Talk Radio. No, people say, wait,
Speaker 5: tech talk radio, what's that a water world? Oh my god,
Speaker 5: and I have your autograph.
Speaker 3: So how was it? It was interesting. Uh. We went
Speaker 3: up there on a Friday, and I expected, you know,
Speaker 3: traffic was going to be bad. So from from our
Speaker 3: house to Aspen is about four and a half hours
Speaker 3: by car because you got to take I seventy up
Speaker 3: into the mountains to Glenwood Springs and then you drop
Speaker 3: south into Aspen and that's about an hour from Glenwood Springs.
Speaker 3: So I expected it. I was like, okay, it says
Speaker 3: four and a half hours, it's probably gonna be more
Speaker 3: like six, you know, because of the traffic. There was
Speaker 3: no traffic. It was great. It was no traffic. The
Speaker 3: weather was beautiful. The colors. Everybody also said, oh, you
Speaker 3: missed all the fall colors. They are all gone. No,
Speaker 3: it was great. It was awesome. The colors were amazing.
Speaker 3: We got into Aspen on the afternoon of a Friday
Speaker 3: and Mesa and her friend wanted to go walk around
Speaker 3: and do some shopping. They wanted to go to some
Speaker 3: of the high end stores. I mean, there's it really
Speaker 3: truly is. I mean, there's there's a lot of high
Speaker 3: end stores there. Now, I gotta say, though, I do
Speaker 3: think that when I went there, I kind of imagined
Speaker 3: aspen As being more like a picturesque mountain town with
Speaker 3: like Rodeo drive of LA with all the shops lined up. No,
Speaker 3: it's not it. It truly feels like just a normal
Speaker 3: like mountain town. I mean, with just people living there.
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like a rich escape. You know, there
Speaker 3: is one street that has a lot of the high
Speaker 3: end shops, but there's also just a lot of regular
Speaker 3: shops mixed in too. So it was very interesting to
Speaker 3: be where we're at, and I was just kind of like, wow,
Speaker 3: this it doesn't feel like a rich person's place. So
Speaker 3: me and me and the the husband of of of
Speaker 3: of Mysa's friend, you know, we walked around with the kids,
Speaker 3: We went out to lunch, we got some beers, and
Speaker 3: we we we we met up with Mesa then and
Speaker 3: her friend at a I don't know what the name
Speaker 3: of what was called. There was a high end leather
Speaker 3: store of something like like Italian leather, like bags and
Speaker 3: shoes and things like that. Anyway, she was looking at
Speaker 3: buying something there, and I was talking to the storekeeper
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh, I bet you guys serve
Speaker 3: a lot of you know, a lot of celebrities around.
Speaker 3: She's like, oh yeah all the time. She's like, as
Speaker 3: a matter of fact, if you were here, just just
Speaker 3: like a couple hours ago, Leo was in here. WHOA.
Speaker 3: I was like, wait, Leo me like Leo DiCaprio, and
Speaker 3: she's like, yeah, he was.
Speaker 2: She was.
Speaker 3: He was in here with his girlfriend and they were shopping.
Speaker 3: And I was like, wait, Leo's in town. That's cool.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we got you know, that was really cool,
Speaker 3: and then kind of fast forward, went out to dinner.
Speaker 3: We had a good dinner. Walking back to our hotel,
Speaker 3: we had to walk across a large park. They called
Speaker 3: it a rugby pitch. I'm sure they probably play a
Speaker 3: lot of rugby up there. But anyway, walking across this
Speaker 3: rugby pitch, I really wasn't paying attention, and I'm approaching
Speaker 3: this black object in the middle of this rugby field
Speaker 3: and I finally look up and I focused my eyes
Speaker 3: on it, and it is a black bear. Oh did
Speaker 3: you turn around an aisle? A juvenile black bear. Now
Speaker 3: I'm not talking about a baby, because baby is the
Speaker 3: most dangerous, because that means mom was around. Yeah, this
Speaker 3: was a juvenile black bear just strolling through the park. Wow.
Speaker 3: And he just kept on walking. He just kept on walking.
Speaker 3: He walked right down the shopping street and people were
Speaker 3: coming out of the shops and they were like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, you know, like screaming and running back in
Speaker 3: the shops and they were locking the doors. And the
Speaker 3: bear was just like dude, yeah, yeah, do doo. Like
Speaker 3: he was just walking around town.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: He was just chilling, having a good times. Cool. And
Speaker 3: it was like the closest I ever come. I probably
Speaker 3: came within about I want to say, probably within about
Speaker 3: fifty yards of a black bear. That's cool. And I
Speaker 3: didn't even realize it. That could have been bad, but
Speaker 3: it's good. That could have been really bad. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 3: we got to.
Speaker 1: Take a quick break. We come back. We talked more.
Speaker 1: We've got some great lengths. We've got a couple of
Speaker 1: listener questions and some news and of course you had
Speaker 1: a problem with the laptop, which will play nicely to
Speaker 1: one of our questions as well when we come back.
Speaker 3: I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean Twird, and I'm Justin. Let
Speaker 3: me find us on the web at Tech talk radio
Speaker 3: dot Com. We'll be right back now back to tip
Speaker 3: talk Radio. So y'all know that I have a smart home.
Speaker 3: I run Home Assistant, which is an open source, free
Speaker 3: home smart home management software, and I've got a lot
Speaker 3: of smart home devices.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I've got Zeus, I've got Loutron, I've got a little
Speaker 3: bit of phillups. I've got a lot of different things
Speaker 3: that operate different light switches, mostly light switches and light bulbs.
Speaker 3: But I've been yearning to just get back into the
Speaker 3: smart home thing because it's been a long time since
Speaker 3: I built my smart home and it just kind of
Speaker 3: it does its thing, but I'm like, I just want
Speaker 3: to make it better. We even reached out at one point.
Speaker 3: This is a couple of years ago. We reached out
Speaker 3: to Reed's Smart Home, who's a YouTuber. He was actually
Speaker 3: gonna come on the show. I just never followed up
Speaker 3: with him. I really need to reach back out to him.
Speaker 3: But anyway, there's this new thing that is really taking
Speaker 3: the smart home world by storm, and it's this little
Speaker 3: sensor and it's called an ESP thirty two. Now, this
Speaker 3: little this little microcontroller is the brains of the sensor.
Speaker 3: Now you can build whatever kind of sensor you want,
Speaker 3: but this is the brains of it. So what you
Speaker 3: do is you plug that into your Raspberry Pie or
Speaker 3: wherever you're running your home assistant. You set it up.
Speaker 3: Then you introduce the sensor that you want. Now, it
Speaker 3: could be a temperature humidity sensor. In my case, I
Speaker 3: bought five of these what are they called here, capacitive
Speaker 3: soil moisture sensors. Oh wow. So what this does is
Speaker 3: I basically stick this sensor in a plant, a potted plant,
Speaker 3: with my ESP thirty two next to it. Now, I
Speaker 3: can run the ESP thirty two off of a small
Speaker 3: solar panel, or I can run off a battery pack,
Speaker 3: or I can just find an outlet and plug it into.
Speaker 3: But anyway, you stick this capacitive soil sensor into a plant,
Speaker 3: and then you program the ESP thirty two to say, hey,
Speaker 3: when soil moisture reaches less than twenty percent, send me
Speaker 3: an alert that tells me, hey, it's time to water
Speaker 3: the plate. So you don't overwater, you don't underwater. It's exactly.
Speaker 3: And then there's other sensors you can do. Like I said,
Speaker 3: you can do temperature humidity. A lot of people do that.
Speaker 3: And if you try to buy like a temperature humidity
Speaker 3: sensor off of Amazon that's off the shelf, that basically
Speaker 3: is an ESP thirty two chip built in with a sensor,
Speaker 3: you're looking at spending thirty forty to fifty sixty bucks
Speaker 3: even on a single sensor. You can build an ESP
Speaker 3: thirty two with a temperature humidity sensor for a total
Speaker 3: of fourteen dollars. Oh wow, that's amazing. That's great. And
Speaker 3: so I've got these capacitive soil sensors. I've also got
Speaker 3: I got some millimeter wave sensors. Now, what that does
Speaker 3: millimeter wave is a is a presence detection. But it's
Speaker 3: not like a true motion detector. Because motion detectors they'll
Speaker 3: read anything across the room. A cat, a cat thirty
Speaker 3: free away, walks across boom, it triggers the motion sensor.
Speaker 3: Your alarm goes off. No no, no, no, no, no no,
Speaker 3: you don't want that. A millimeter wave sensor uses millimeter waves,
Speaker 3: that's why it's called that, and it's very accurate and
Speaker 3: it's very short range. So what I can do, for instance,
Speaker 3: is I put a millimeter wave sensor just around the
Speaker 3: corner of my stairwell leading up to the upstairs, just
Speaker 3: kind of out of view of anybody walking around the
Speaker 3: living room. But the moment that I crossed that threshold
Speaker 3: onto the stairwell, that millimeter wave sensor says, hey, there's
Speaker 3: somebody here, and it sends a signal to home assistant says,
Speaker 3: my sensor just went off. Now Home assistant says, okay,
Speaker 3: I've been programmed to say that when this millimeter wave
Speaker 3: sensor goes off or on, excuse me, I'm supposed to
Speaker 3: turn on the stairway lights. Wow, and it does that.
Speaker 1: Could this be used in a case too, and you
Speaker 1: dealt with this unfortunately flooding in a basement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely yes, Now not the ones I have here.
Speaker 3: The capacity of soil moisture will not work for that.
Speaker 3: But there are just straight moisture sensors that you can
Speaker 3: just simply lay on the floor. And I just you know,
Speaker 3: the one that I had with my with my flooding
Speaker 3: thing that I had a year ago or a little
Speaker 3: bit over a year ago. I ended up buying a
Speaker 3: two d and fifty dollars sensor that also has an
Speaker 3: automatic shut off, so like if it detects moisture on
Speaker 3: the ground. It will automatically shut off the hot water
Speaker 3: of the hot water heater, the tankless water heater, it'll
Speaker 3: shut off the supply line to that water heater. That
Speaker 3: was two hundred and fifty bucks. Now that I look
Speaker 3: at this with an ESP thirty two, I probably could
Speaker 3: have built that same thing with an actual physical device
Speaker 3: to turn off the valve. I probably could have built
Speaker 3: that for about eighty bucks. Wow, that's pretty good. I'd
Speaker 3: never heard of this technology. What is it again, it's
Speaker 3: called E S E SP Now, I don't know what
Speaker 3: ESP stands for. Maybe Sean has done some wiggle ESP
Speaker 3: dash thirty two and again they are they are powered
Speaker 3: by USB. So I got the ones with the USB
Speaker 3: C connector because it's just a little bit easier because
Speaker 3: everything's USB C now. And they have pinouts just like
Speaker 3: a g P IO. I don't know if you can
Speaker 3: see this on the screen. I'm trying to put it
Speaker 3: on here, but yeah, little little pinouts that you can
Speaker 3: then put into a bread board to program it or
Speaker 3: put it into your own circuit. But but now that
Speaker 3: I also have a three D printer, I can print
Speaker 3: custom cases for these little sensors nice and then put
Speaker 3: them wherever I want.
Speaker 4: So ESP just stands for Expressive Systems, which is the
Speaker 4: company that made yem H and it's thirty two bits
Speaker 4: p thirty two thirty two bit micro controller. They've come
Speaker 4: out they can about twenty sixteen, so they've been around
Speaker 4: for a long time. But just with the with IoT
Speaker 4: and does the world of that, you could just do
Speaker 4: so much more now. So there's tons of tons more
Speaker 4: and I mean it's it's on the same line of
Speaker 4: like Adrenocord, Raspberry Pies, et cetera. So if you're into those,
Speaker 4: this is gonna be very familiar territory for you.
Speaker 3: Well, first off, though the ESP is it does not
Speaker 3: run an OS like Raspberry Pie. Raspberry Pie is much
Speaker 3: more powerful. Yeah, yeah, so the ESP runs very basic
Speaker 3: like a Python or a basic basic color like Python
Speaker 3: or something like that.
Speaker 4: Right, So, just to clarify though, Raspberry Pie does make
Speaker 4: a Pie zero, which is essentially an EESP.
Speaker 3: Yeah sure, o, yes they do.
Speaker 4: So there are versions of Raspberry Pie that are very
Speaker 4: similar to ESPs, but you can't get full fledged in
Speaker 4: OS zero.
Speaker 3: The Pie zero even runs Linux. These ESPs cannot run
Speaker 3: Linux correct, all right, Yeah, so so they're even even
Speaker 3: the zero is a little bit more powerful than ESP.
Speaker 3: But yes, Sean is correct. One other thing I can
Speaker 3: do with this is, you know I have an outdoor freezer, well,
Speaker 3: I mean well garage freezer. Yeah. I can buy a
Speaker 3: temperature sensor, mount an ESP controller on the side of
Speaker 3: the freezer, and I can monitor the temperature of my freezer.
Speaker 3: So and like what happens, Like, oh my god, I
Speaker 3: left the freezer door open accidentally. I'll get an alert saying, hey,
Speaker 3: the temperature has risen in the outdoor freezer. Oh shoot,
Speaker 3: I need to go close the door to the freezer, right,
Speaker 3: Like those are the kind of things you can do
Speaker 3: with this. That is pretty cool. I like that. Where
Speaker 3: would somebody find this? Amazon? Amazon? Nice Amazon.
Speaker 4: You can buy a six pack for twenty dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, cool. I just bought a five pack
Speaker 3: for like fifteen. Yeah all right. We got a listener
Speaker 3: email and from Rick in Selwarita.
Speaker 1: Rick says, Hey, I'm wanting to get a new PC
Speaker 1: with Windows eleven for the house. A friend told me
Speaker 1: to build it myself, and I'm not that tech oriented.
Speaker 1: Would that be too much of a challenge. I don't
Speaker 1: play games, only use it to read news stories and
Speaker 1: check out videos on YouTube. Should I try it? Or
Speaker 1: am I better off buying ready to Go at Costco
Speaker 1: or best Buy? If so, which is a brand to
Speaker 1: look at?
Speaker 3: Rick? Rick? If all you do is to read news
Speaker 3: stories and check out videos on YouTube, you don't need
Speaker 3: to build a PC. Just go buy a Chromebook really chromebook, or.
Speaker 4: A or a relatively inexpensive bottom end of your budget laptop.
Speaker 3: Dude, he's talking about using it to browse the web.
Speaker 3: He doesn't need to build a PC for that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's true. That's true.
Speaker 4: So on the topic of building computers, have you seen
Speaker 4: RAM prices recently?
Speaker 3: No? Are they up or down?
Speaker 4: So RAM prices have tripled in price over the last
Speaker 4: three or four weeks. Yes, No, it's the it's the AI.
Speaker 4: It's it's all of the d d R five rand
Speaker 4: that's being eaten up for AI computing and all the GPU.
Speaker 3: It's just any RAM.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I mean you just go and look at
Speaker 4: PC par picker, New Wag and look at the trending
Speaker 4: prices for RAM, and you are gonna see double, if
Speaker 4: not triple.
Speaker 1: There is a story we talked about this Sean. If
Speaker 1: you remember this that people are ditching the desktop. You know,
Speaker 1: you had that desktop, you had that tower. I think
Speaker 1: we all started with. You had that Square one that's sat.
Speaker 1: I had a laser one eight I think it is
Speaker 1: what it was.
Speaker 4: We had a Hewett packard at home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you went to a tower gateway, oh
Speaker 1: the gateways yeah, uh and then uh. But people are
Speaker 1: ditching them now to have a laptop because you can
Speaker 1: put a laptop on your desk if you want, buy
Speaker 1: a monitor attached another monitor, or.
Speaker 3: You buy the station.
Speaker 1: Yeah, buy a docuentation and get two monitors on it.
Speaker 1: And they're saying that they're pretty happy with it because
Speaker 1: it does what they needed to do if you're going
Speaker 1: to game. Though, I wouldn't. I wouldn't do that for
Speaker 1: a gaming situation. No, I know about that, dude. I
Speaker 1: got you know that new Hpomen. I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: about my problem with that Hpomen.
Speaker 3: But that Hpomen's got a fifty seventy in it, an
Speaker 3: RTX fifty seventy with thirty two gigs a ram Man.
Speaker 3: I can run any game I want on that line.
Speaker 4: And I've got I've got an older a sus Rog
Speaker 4: that's got a twenty eighty in it so twenty eighty
Speaker 4: mobile in it, and that was great for what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think I got a twenty eighty TI
Speaker 3: in my desktop that I'm doing the show with. Right.
Speaker 3: I don't play games on this computer anymore. I basically
Speaker 3: just play them on the laptop.
Speaker 1: But you know, yeah, and that's the thing. We play
Speaker 1: them on the laptop or our phones. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the whole bit.
Speaker 4: They're even saying that computer literacy is down.
Speaker 3: Oh that's not good with.
Speaker 4: How how little, how little children interact with computers now,
Speaker 4: you know, like when I grew up and I had
Speaker 4: computer lab, like we had a lot of computer this
Speaker 4: week in typing, yeah maybe speaking type a Mario Mario
Speaker 4: racing type, Like you were interacting with computer a day
Speaker 4: to day basis, typing, writing, you know, whatever, Internet, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Now everybody does on their phones. So you're you're getting
Speaker 4: into this newer generation with.
Speaker 3: The kids that are in there bell correct.
Speaker 4: Yes, the kids that are into into their teens don't
Speaker 4: know how to navigate an operating system on a computer.
Speaker 4: They don't know how to do keyboard shortcuts, they don't
Speaker 4: know how to do basic functions on a computer. Because
Speaker 4: they're always on a mobile or a tablet or another
Speaker 4: handheld device that has a completely different functioning operating system.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what I went through when I was, you know,
Speaker 3: when I was working back at Fox five in San Diego,
Speaker 3: you know, being an IT person. We would get remember
Speaker 3: remember remember the girl, the reporter girl that came in
Speaker 3: and I was like, here's your laptop and then here's
Speaker 3: your USB hotspot dongle, and she's like us B. That
Speaker 3: was like a famous little story because she's like us B,
Speaker 3: I don't know what USB is. And I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, like what what this is? Back in
Speaker 3: like twenty twelve, it's even gotten worse, But now I
Speaker 3: understand it. You know, I was like, how can you
Speaker 3: be in the year of twenty twenty five and not
Speaker 3: know how to use a computer? Sean just perfectly summed
Speaker 3: it up right there. Yeah, yeah, you're seeing you're seeing it.
Speaker 4: So with some of my younger, young, younger cousins or
Speaker 4: my friends that have kids that are, you know, fifteen, sixteen,
Speaker 4: seventeen years old, it's it's bizarre how they just don't
Speaker 4: know how to navigate a computer.
Speaker 3: And it's gonna get worse with Ai.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have somebody new at the station and uh,
Speaker 1: she needed to get her laptop configured for our printer.
Speaker 1: So I said, well, just bring it on in and
Speaker 1: we'll go through it. And it did not have any
Speaker 1: USB A ports at all on it.
Speaker 3: It was everything just two USB C ports and that
Speaker 3: was it.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing when you're out buying a laptop,
Speaker 1: make sure you get what you're gonna need, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's the thing you just go especially now we're
Speaker 1: coming up to Black Friday, we're gonna see sales. Make
Speaker 1: sure it has everything you need.
Speaker 3: Oh basically, don't buy an Apple Apple. You don't get anything.
Speaker 3: You get one port and then you have a bit
Speaker 3: of dongle for everything. I don't know.
Speaker 4: They've got they've, they've they've it's historically been that way.
Speaker 4: You can't get some of their newer MacBooks do have
Speaker 4: a USBA, a guesty card slot and four usbcs plus
Speaker 4: an plus an actual HDMI output.
Speaker 1: All right, we gonna take another quick break. We come
Speaker 1: back with more of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor,
Speaker 1: I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm justin.
Speaker 3: Let me send us an X at tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 3: We'll do rep back and now back to tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 4: So during the break we talked a little bit about
Speaker 4: a segment that we want to talk about. This was
Speaker 4: posted on the IT Humor and Memes group on Facebook.
Speaker 4: Love that group between nineteen ninety one and two thousand
Speaker 4: and nine. So take a trip back to the early
Speaker 4: days of the Internet. What's the most memorable computer game
Speaker 4: you played in that timeframe?
Speaker 3: There were so many good ones.
Speaker 4: So let's start with Justin. Justin, so between nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: one in two thousand and nine. So that's a pretty
Speaker 4: it's a pretty good chunk of time.
Speaker 3: I mean, I see the list that you provided here,
Speaker 3: These are some of the ones that were in the
Speaker 3: in their their Oh yeah, we just.
Speaker 4: We populated our own list of games that we played
Speaker 4: at that time frame. And remember PC games console games
Speaker 4: is a whole different category.
Speaker 3: Yeah sure, yeah, a lot of a lot of this stuff,
Speaker 3: but yeah, definitely PC games. I gotta say my first
Speaker 3: my eyes move it right to Wolfenstein three D. That
Speaker 3: was one of the very first games I ever played.
Speaker 3: But my favorite, I have to say, my favorite was
Speaker 3: probably either Command and Conquer or The SIMS.
Speaker 1: The SIMS was fun. My daughter still you know, still
Speaker 1: plays the SIMS. She has SIMS four. I think they're
Speaker 1: up to now, I mean, or maybe even beyond that.
Speaker 1: She still has fun with it. That was a that was.
Speaker 3: A lot of fun to play. I also did really
Speaker 3: like Roller Coaster Tycoon. But Sean, what for you? I
Speaker 3: think I know the answer? Can I can I say what?
Speaker 3: I think the answer is going to be absolutely World
Speaker 3: of Warcraft.
Speaker 4: So I think this timeframe is a little too unfair
Speaker 4: because it covers such a prop progression in the computer
Speaker 4: gaming world. Right, Yeah, ninety one to two thousand and nine.
Speaker 4: That's that's a long time. It's almost two decades, right,
Speaker 4: So I have to break this up into I think
Speaker 4: three different games for this time period.
Speaker 3: I just I have to because there's.
Speaker 4: Just like you, I grew up getting PC Magazine with
Speaker 4: the discs and the demos and stuff.
Speaker 3: I still have it.
Speaker 4: It's a disc that is a demo disc for APIG games. Oh,
Speaker 4: they made some of the best shareware games that existed.
Speaker 4: You had Wolf Centred, which is a classic. But there's
Speaker 4: an apergy game called Blakestone Aliens of Gold. I still
Speaker 4: play that game to this day because it's on gog
Speaker 4: It's if I shooter. It's just fantastic first person or
Speaker 4: it's a first person shooter. Really, it's a very doom.
Speaker 4: It's a very doom doom. Wolvenstein asked, you know a
Speaker 4: platformer it's so good. Then Diablo too, Lord of Instruction
Speaker 4: probably the game I've spent the most time in my
Speaker 4: life playing. Then World of Warcraft, and then into some
Speaker 4: other games down the road. But those ones, the Blizzard games,
Speaker 4: Blizzard North.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you probably played a game or
Speaker 1: two back then I did. Doom was one of those
Speaker 1: that I played a lot. I loved Duke Nukem. Duke
Speaker 1: nukemb was just an absolute blast.
Speaker 3: Uh. But there's one Okay.
Speaker 1: So I was looking over the list of some of
Speaker 1: the ones that people were mentioning, and Loom was on
Speaker 1: the list.
Speaker 3: But I don't remember Loom. I like I can.
Speaker 1: I remember it was a big game, but I don't
Speaker 1: remember exactly what it did.
Speaker 3: I don't remember Loom, but I I'm I'm actually a
Speaker 3: little bit of fan. Did that Leisure Shoot, Larry did
Speaker 3: not make this list? Good old Lasry. Yeah, leisures all right,
Speaker 3: So what have you got there?
Speaker 4: Okay, So there's a couple that I missed for sure,
Speaker 4: So I'm gonna rattle off a couple in my seat.
Speaker 4: I have my actual install jet Fighter.
Speaker 3: To gosh, look at that.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, I've got all my I've got Oh
Speaker 4: my god, I've got so many.
Speaker 3: What are those shiny discs?
Speaker 4: So these are gonna be some. These are a ton
Speaker 4: of These are so many good memories. Jet Fighter, Super VG,
Speaker 4: A Harrier nice of the Old Republic. This classic deer.
Speaker 3: Hunting I remember, I remember Deer Hunters.
Speaker 4: The Medal of Honor, Games worl Wind jet Fighter to
Speaker 4: Battlefield nineteen forty, the Original Diablo, I've got that in
Speaker 4: there too, Commanded Conquers, Age of Empires.
Speaker 3: Wow, it's great if you most.
Speaker 4: Of my PC childhood in there.
Speaker 3: If you go to that group on Facebook again, a
Speaker 3: great group. It humored memes.
Speaker 1: You can see what other people have said and maybe
Speaker 1: reminists a little about some of the games that you
Speaker 1: played and had a good time with.
Speaker 3: Speaking of video games, there is an anniversary edition of
Speaker 3: a famous video game and it's actually I'm just all
Speaker 3: about this series right now because of the TV show
Speaker 3: second season coming out here next month. But it is
Speaker 3: Fallout four fall for anniversary Edition. Now it has been
Speaker 3: over ten years since Fallout four was released. Over ten years,
Speaker 3: I don't want to say eleven or even twelve. Actually
Speaker 3: right now comes out on November tenth. It muddles the
Speaker 3: base game, yeah, Monday. It bundles the base game with
Speaker 3: several expansions. Fallout four Anniversary Edition will be available digitally
Speaker 3: on the Xbox Series S, X, Xbox One, PC, PlayStation five,
Speaker 3: and play Station four. Now I'm actually playing Fallout four again.
Speaker 3: So in the last few weeks. I guess maybe I
Speaker 3: probably started this one last time. I was on the
Speaker 3: show here a few weeks ago, but I really got
Speaker 3: back into Fallout seventy six. Now seventy six is the
Speaker 3: MMO version of Fallout. It's online, you're playing with real people.
Speaker 3: But I've been playing Fallout seventy six like mad. And
Speaker 3: then I wanted to get Eric. I wanted Eric to
Speaker 3: be able to play fall Out with me, so I
Speaker 3: signed up. I got him a copy of Fallout seventy six,
Speaker 3: and I put it on his computer and we launched
Speaker 3: the game. And Bethesda, who's the maker of Fallout, the
Speaker 3: first message as soon as he launched the game. It says,
Speaker 3: we have detected this is a child account. He is
Speaker 3: not allowed to play this game. Wow. And I was like,
Speaker 3: wait what? So I contacted Fallout, I contacted Bethesda support
Speaker 3: and I said, look, i'm his parent, I'm I am
Speaker 3: granting permission for him to play this game. And because
Speaker 3: you know, yes there is there's blood and gore in it,
Speaker 3: but it's kind of like a cartoonish blooding gore. It's
Speaker 3: not like super realist. So I was like, I allow
Speaker 3: this and they're like, okay, well, you got to fill
Speaker 3: out this legal document. They sent me a legal document
Speaker 3: that I had to fill out, signs scan, then email
Speaker 3: back to them, and then they were like okay, we'll
Speaker 3: go ahead and process this and then boom, you're good. Nope.
Speaker 3: Even after I said that, Bethesda was like, no, we
Speaker 3: are not allowing your child to play unless he's thirteen
Speaker 3: years old. Oh. And I'm like, okay, then give me
Speaker 3: the reason why I have already provided you parental consent,
Speaker 3: and they said, we don't care about parental consent. It's
Speaker 3: because the reason why is because it has online chat.
Speaker 3: There's voice chat. Okay, there's no text chat, but there's
Speaker 3: voice chat in the game, right, and they cannot control
Speaker 3: the voice chat because they don't have moderation.
Speaker 1: Yea in some of the safeties. Now there there are
Speaker 1: list faces. There are a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: that are gonna pray on kids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I get that, and that's why I don't
Speaker 3: allow him to play Roadblocks. So then I said, okay, fine, fine,
Speaker 3: fine fine. He was really upset. He's like, I just
Speaker 3: want to play Fallout with you. So what I did
Speaker 3: was I installed Fallout four, which is a single player game.
Speaker 3: You know, there's no multiplayer aspect single player. I installed
Speaker 3: Fallout four to his computer and I said, look, Bud,
Speaker 3: here you go. You can play Fallout now. He started
Speaker 3: playing it. Dude, he doesn't even play Minecraft anymore. Wow,
Speaker 3: that's crazy. That is his favorite game of all time.
Speaker 3: He's like, nope, I want to play Fallout. Fallout is
Speaker 3: so amazing. He's like, and I'm like, thank you. This
Speaker 3: is this is what I'm telling you. There's so many
Speaker 3: other games out there besides just Minecraft. I've never played
Speaker 3: Fallout oh, like at all. God, dude, fall so good.
Speaker 4: They're fun. They're not my style of game. I'm not
Speaker 4: a big fan. I mean, they're good. I will give them,
Speaker 4: but it's.
Speaker 3: Just not it's not for me, right right. I was
Speaker 3: just thinking though, when you mentioned seventy six.
Speaker 1: One of the games that I used to like playing, well,
Speaker 1: two of them Redneck Rampage and the other one is
Speaker 1: Interstate seventy six, which was.
Speaker 3: Kind of like the Mod Squad Car. You're driving around
Speaker 3: in a car. It was. It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: That one was a good game too. The reason they
Speaker 3: called this one Fallout seventy six is because it's supposed
Speaker 3: to be that you're in vault seventy six. Oh, that's right,
Speaker 3: that's what it means. All right.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to find out a little
Speaker 1: bit about the problem you've been having with your HP omen,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty high end HP computer laptop.
Speaker 3: I just I just got this computer like six months ago,
Speaker 3: and it's a it's a very high end laptop. It's
Speaker 3: got the AMD Rizin nine, it's got thirty two gigs
Speaker 3: of RAM, it's got the RTX fifty seventy graphics card.
Speaker 3: I mean, this thing is a beast and it's been
Speaker 3: great for me this whole time. And I've never really
Speaker 3: been an HP fan. All of a sudden, this last Saturday,
Speaker 3: I go to get my laptop at night. I'm i'm, i'm,
Speaker 3: it's in my bag. I grab it out to go
Speaker 3: do something, and the computer is just slow as molasses
Speaker 3: to boot up. Like I finally get to the login
Speaker 3: screen where I can log into Windows, and then the
Speaker 3: screen goes blank and I can barely move my mouse.
Speaker 3: When I move my mouse, it's like it's like one
Speaker 3: frame a second, where the mouse is like it kind
Speaker 3: of jumps around the screen one frame a second. And
Speaker 3: then there's no Windows Explore at the bottom, like you know,
Speaker 3: you got the Windows button and all the all the
Speaker 3: pinned icons. Nothing was at the bottom. And it took about,
Speaker 3: I want to say, about ten minutes, and then all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, everything just got really smooth. And I
Speaker 3: was like, Okay, think about this from an IT perspective.
Speaker 3: What causes this kind of thing to happen? And I'm thinking, Okay,
Speaker 3: it's got to be a bad SSD because everything is
Speaker 3: being loaded into RAM, and once it gets loaded into RAM,
Speaker 3: it's all nice and smooth. So I downloaded the HP
Speaker 3: Diagnostics tool. I ran it within Windows. I even ran
Speaker 3: it with Uefi before Windows boots. I ran all the tests,
Speaker 3: everything said everything passed with flying colors and I'm like, okay, fine,
Speaker 3: So then I went I ran check disc and I
Speaker 3: did check disc slash C, slash F or whatever the
Speaker 3: commands are. It went talk about thirty five minutes. It
Speaker 3: scanned my entire tear a bit hard drive. It said
Speaker 3: everything was fine. Then I'm like, okay, it's still not fixed.
Speaker 3: What is going on? Why is this so slow? I
Speaker 3: went to Windows Update and I noticed a couple updates,
Speaker 3: but they weren't installed right around that same time. They
Speaker 3: were installed a couple of days earlier. But I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: well that doesn't make any sense, but I want to
Speaker 3: Oh you know what, I'm just gonna uninstall the last
Speaker 3: three updates that Windows made. I uninstalled those three updates.
Speaker 3: I rebooted the computer, Bam, every is back again. So
Speaker 3: it's a Microsoft update that didn't one one more time.
Speaker 3: It's Microsoft's fault. Wow, they released a faulty dude. Microsoft
Speaker 3: is getting really bad, like they're they've been releasing updates
Speaker 3: lately that have just been bricking computers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's the SSD one. And well Microsoft said no, no,
Speaker 1: that didn't really happen. Other people are saying no, no,
Speaker 1: we we had this issue where it was wiping on
Speaker 1: an SSD.
Speaker 4: Hold on, we can't talk about about Microsoft. We might
Speaker 4: get canceled.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, you.
Speaker 4: Can't talk about how to bypass Windows local logins either
Speaker 4: anymore because you might get booted form YouTube?
Speaker 3: What really?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, so you're talking about the issues with Microsoft,
Speaker 4: and the content creators on YouTube have been getting videos
Speaker 4: removed that have been talking about how to bypass local
Speaker 4: logins for Windows leven. I've talked about it on the
Speaker 4: show before, so I just know that they're really cracking
Speaker 4: down on anything.
Speaker 1: Like RUFUS, pulling videos that talked about RUFUS. Really yep, Wow, amazing.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take another quick break. We come
Speaker 1: back with more of tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor,
Speaker 1: I'm Sean de Weird.
Speaker 3: And I'm Justin. Let me find us on the facebooks
Speaker 3: at Forward Slash tech Talkers. We'll be right back and
Speaker 3: now back to tech talk Radio.
Speaker 2: I don't want to buy just the absolute primo system
Speaker 2: out today. That usually wastes money, So I'll be doing
Speaker 2: some digital photography, maybe some video editing, don't do any
Speaker 2: gaming at all, so I don't have that demand on
Speaker 2: the computer. It's wondering what you guys would suggest, either
Speaker 2: brands or just in general speed. And where do you
Speaker 2: go to get the maximum bang to the buck right now?
Speaker 3: Sounds like you want to max. So websites are the week.
Speaker 3: Cool websites. We found a couple. I know we normally
Speaker 3: don't do this because we never find any cool websites,
Speaker 3: but I found one that's kind of cool. It's a
Speaker 3: Pong style clock. Wait pong like in the game Pong. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like the game, like the game where you're basically a clock,
Speaker 3: but you're watching two computer characters just play pong, but
Speaker 3: it keeps up with the time. And so the website
Speaker 3: is big job by dot com, Big job By dot
Speaker 3: Com Forward slash Pong, and somebody actually has watched these
Speaker 3: two little ai things. They just bounce the thing back
Speaker 3: and forth and eventually, when the minute is up, one
Speaker 3: of them loses, and then the minute goes to the
Speaker 3: next minute, and then it just kind of repeats.
Speaker 1: Just like watching sports. Pretty much perfect. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: website to get to that is Big Jobby Jobby dot
Speaker 1: Com Forward slash Pong. Have some fun with that one, schun.
Speaker 4: And so we've been talking a lot about classic games,
Speaker 4: so there if you want to. So two places you
Speaker 4: can go that I know of half the time my
Speaker 4: head Internet archive. Oh yeah, and Classic reload dot com
Speaker 4: will allow you to play doss games in your browser.
Speaker 4: Doss boxes a right application if you want to.
Speaker 3: What was that Classic Reload Classic.
Speaker 4: Reload dot com? All right, so go there check those out.
Speaker 4: But during the break we were talking about being distracted
Speaker 4: on the Internet. With the TV Garden website, you can
Speaker 4: stream the NASA ISS TV, which is just basically like
Speaker 4: a live stream of the ISS going flying.
Speaker 3: Where is that one on TV?
Speaker 4: It's just scrolled down you'll see NASA TV. I've got that.
Speaker 4: I had that full screened up and I was just
Speaker 4: mesmerized of staring at it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, watching it go by a little more visual than
Speaker 3: three D punk or punk.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So the TV Garden stuff is just incredible. We
Speaker 4: talked about it a while back on the show. Another
Speaker 4: one of my favorite. If you we're talking about TV,
Speaker 4: we're talking about radio garden. WebSDR dot org is for
Speaker 4: ham radio people. We've talked about that one. We talked
Speaker 4: about it when we talked about TV Garden two weeks ago.
Speaker 4: WebStar dot org. If you're in the hand radio at
Speaker 4: all right, I encourage you go check that out, tune in,
Speaker 4: tune into your your local net, or tune in a
Speaker 4: net around the world.
Speaker 3: It's all right. I got one.
Speaker 1: We talked about background remove dot BG last week, where
Speaker 1: you can remove the background out of a photo. Here's
Speaker 1: another one, cleanup dot pictures. Cleanup dot pictures, and it's
Speaker 1: online image editing. So if you're looking for you just
Speaker 1: want to remove somebody out of a picture real quick.
Speaker 1: You know, I wouldn't say use this all the time,
Speaker 1: but if you're looking for something real quick, you want
Speaker 1: to test it out, play around, cleanup dot pictures might
Speaker 1: work for you. All right, that's it for this week's
Speaker 1: Tech Talk Radio. Thanks for tuning in. If you have questions, comments,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you again on We're on YouTube,
Speaker 1: so you send us a comment there, TikTok, of course,
Speaker 1: Facebook X, wherever you want to reach out to us.
Speaker 1: I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm just
Speaker 1: let me have yourselves.
Speaker 3: Great week, We'll see you next time.