Speaker 1: The following program is produced by the tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 1: Now everybody out there in radio, and this is James
Speaker 1: Young from the rock band Stick. If you are technically challenged,
Speaker 1: if you got trouble with that computer.
Speaker 2: Yours, because Lord knows, I do you need to listen to.
Speaker 1: Tech Talk Radio. Welcome to another episode of tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm Justin Lemmey. Welcome.
Speaker 1: It's good to see all all Mack.
Speaker 3: What a great show that was last week, right, I
Speaker 3: mean yeah, we had a lot of fun with it
Speaker 3: because you know, there was there was a longer video
Speaker 3: discussion then you know we we were able to put
Speaker 3: on the air. But I'll tell you what it was,
Speaker 3: the blast talking to Ted Sellis and Jason Sikorski from
Speaker 3: the Postal documentary. And I don't anybody got a chance
Speaker 3: to see that yet. They said they wanted to send
Speaker 3: us out copies.
Speaker 2: And luck would behold, it came in the mail today.
Speaker 2: You're watching the video. I'm holding it up. It's it's sealed,
Speaker 2: which is great, and it's signed by the two guys
Speaker 2: who talked to last week and the two guys from
Speaker 2: Running with scissors, So I don't even know if I
Speaker 2: want to seal it.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I went ahead and unsealed it. I noticed
Speaker 1: that the autographs are actually on the inside, so they
Speaker 1: actually took the slip cover out and autographed it so
Speaker 1: that way you're not gonna ruin it. They didn't sign
Speaker 1: the plastic on top, they signed it inside of it.
Speaker 1: Oh that's cool, that's cool. There was a lot going
Speaker 1: on this week.
Speaker 3: I kind of wanted to ask you guys too about
Speaker 3: this Fortnite money claim that every It's like the press
Speaker 3: is talking about it because Fortnite obviously a pretty huge
Speaker 3: game and now they're saying that there's a lot of
Speaker 3: money going to be coming back to people who played
Speaker 3: the game and maybe made some in game purchases. Which
Speaker 3: this is not the only game that's ever happened on, right, No, this.
Speaker 1: Is this is this is something that's not new. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of games, I mean, maybe not a lot.
Speaker 1: I'd say, maybe you know a handful of games that
Speaker 1: have done something like this, but I think that this one,
Speaker 1: because Fortnite is such a huge ip that this kind
Speaker 1: of sets a precedent for this type of situation. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Fortnite is a very very popular game with
Speaker 1: children especially you know, maybe let's say tweens or teams
Speaker 1: that play it, not not so much like younger kids
Speaker 1: and stuff. What's the premise in Fortnite? What are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? It's a Battle Royale sean, you know Battle Royale, right,
Speaker 1: it's at.
Speaker 2: The Battle Royal game, right. You basically parachute in it's all.
Speaker 2: You can play in teams of four duos or solo
Speaker 2: and you basically try to survive to the end. But
Speaker 2: there's a couple different modes, like there's a builder mode
Speaker 2: where you can build platforms and houses and stuff, and
Speaker 2: then there's a no building mode. But like any other game,
Speaker 2: there's micro transactions, right. You can buy skins, you can
Speaker 2: buy weapons, you can buy avatars, you can buy whatever
Speaker 2: X people. Yeah, you can buy xpoples and stuff. So
Speaker 2: so back in twenty twenty two, the FDC basically said,
Speaker 2: if you bought or if you you were charged in
Speaker 2: game currency for items you didn't want, your childman unauthorized charges,
Speaker 2: your Fortnite account was locked between these days whatever. After
Speaker 2: disputing charges, you're basically eligible for refunds on some of
Speaker 2: that stuff.
Speaker 3: Wait, so wait, they so people maybe saw these charges
Speaker 3: on there that maybe their kids made, and then the
Speaker 3: people of Fortnite locked the game out so nobody could
Speaker 3: play it.
Speaker 2: Correct and because if you disputed the charges, Fortnite would say, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're you bet, you're done your kids back. So basically
Speaker 2: they've reopened it currently distributing one hundred and twenty six
Speaker 2: million dollars in refunds, and has reopened the claim's process
Speaker 2: until the July till July ninth of this year, so
Speaker 2: in next this later this week, you know, in a
Speaker 2: couple couple of days.
Speaker 1: So okay.
Speaker 3: The good question is for some of our listeners that
Speaker 3: are not gamers, maybe they have kids that are gamers
Speaker 3: or grand kids or whatnot, would one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: six million dollars seem like a lot of money to
Speaker 3: some of these companies.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is a pro.
Speaker 2: Section lawsuit, you might it's probably not that much money
Speaker 2: to Epic Games.
Speaker 1: Fortnite makes like thirty million dollars a day.
Speaker 4: It's wow, wow, I know it's I play a game
Speaker 4: called tune Blast, and it's you know, it's a game
Speaker 4: you play on your your smartphone and it's a lot
Speaker 4: of fun.
Speaker 3: And they and lately I've been seeing ads for another
Speaker 3: one of their properties, Royal I think it's Royal Match
Speaker 3: or Royal.
Speaker 1: Kingdom, one of those.
Speaker 3: And they they talk about the fact that you could,
Speaker 3: you know, get the app, you can download the app,
Speaker 3: you can play the game.
Speaker 1: Uh. No Internet is needed for you to play the game.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't cost you anything, and there's no in
Speaker 1: game ads.
Speaker 3: And you know, I had somebody at work ask me
Speaker 3: how do they make their money? I said, well, it's
Speaker 3: all in the artificial intelligence within the game that if
Speaker 3: you're doing good, you're gonna get to a point where
Speaker 3: you're not doing good now to get past certain levels,
Speaker 3: you can then buy like they do in Fortnite, luke
Speaker 3: crate or you buy you know, boost, you buy a
Speaker 3: boost package. You can buy you know, for twenty bucks,
Speaker 3: you get this. For fifty dollars, you get this, you know,
Speaker 3: for five dollars, you can get this, you buy that,
Speaker 3: and that gets you over that hump. And it really
Speaker 3: is quite addicting for people who play the game. And yeah,
Speaker 3: they're being told by celebrities. I mean, they've got some
Speaker 3: big endorsers that are are on television, you know, saying
Speaker 3: play this game because you don't have to be on
Speaker 3: the internet.
Speaker 1: There's no in game ads, so why not have fun
Speaker 1: with it?
Speaker 3: Because they will make money off you because they know
Speaker 3: they actually have from what I've heard, they have psychologists
Speaker 3: who decide at what point, Oh, absolutely, the game is
Speaker 3: gonna get harder. They've been doing that in games for
Speaker 3: quite some time.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, it's all about psychology, and it's all about
Speaker 2: the gambling mindset, right, it's getting people hooked. Give them
Speaker 2: that competitive advantage. I'm doing really good, really good, and
Speaker 2: then you slowly just trickle them back down and you
Speaker 2: get them to where they're like, oh, oh I might,
Speaker 2: I might, I might not be breaking even anymore. He
Speaker 2: boot them up a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a I have a very good example,
Speaker 1: and that's actually happening right now. I just picked up
Speaker 1: a new game, and I've been wanting this game for
Speaker 1: a while, but I've been reading the reviews on it
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's on Steam because we got the
Speaker 1: Steam Summer Sales, so there was a bit of a discount.
Speaker 1: But it's PGA Tour two K two five, so really
Speaker 1: the latest edition of the PGA Tour golf simulation. I
Speaker 1: wanted this game a long time ago because I've been
Speaker 1: itching for a golf simulator, but there isn't anything out
Speaker 1: there except for this. And I kept reading the reviews,
Speaker 1: and the reviews kept saying the same thing. It's micro transaction, heaven,
Speaker 1: Like they constantly want you to buy by by get
Speaker 1: your player to the next level, buy this, buy that,
Speaker 1: buy this new shirt, buy this new hat, buy this
Speaker 1: new golf club. And I'm like, okay, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I really don't want to do that, you know, I
Speaker 1: just want to play the game. But then I finally,
Speaker 1: before I bought it, I read a review, and this
Speaker 1: review is super long, and the guy was like, look,
Speaker 1: if you're sitting here looking at this game like it's
Speaker 1: a Fortnite like extremely, you know right away just succeed
Speaker 1: with everything you do that this is not the game
Speaker 1: for you. This is a simulation. This is a golf simulation,
Speaker 1: and golf is hard. You have to grind through it,
Speaker 1: you have to learn, you have to get better. If
Speaker 1: you think you can just simply buy your way to
Speaker 1: the top, then you better have a lot of money.
Speaker 1: If you don't enjoy the game just as it is,
Speaker 1: because this game is perfect, and I read that review
Speaker 1: and I was like, Okay, I'll give it a shot.
Speaker 1: I bought it, and I'm killing it. I'm killing it.
Speaker 1: I am like, I'm like twelve under par compared to
Speaker 1: like everybody else is like three over par. So I'm
Speaker 1: winning every single match. But here's the thing. To Sean's point,
Speaker 1: they're gonna get you to that spot where you're addicted.
Speaker 1: You're like, hey, i'm doing good. I'm doing I'm doing good,
Speaker 1: and then they're gonna hit you with that tournament, in
Speaker 1: this case, the golf tournament, and you're gonna suck and
Speaker 1: they're gonna be like, hey, for an extra ten bucks,
Speaker 1: we can bump up your stats a little bit. I
Speaker 1: bet you that's coming down the line because I'm like,
Speaker 1: I am not this good of a gamer. I don't
Speaker 1: understand how I'm beating these guys so hard, but it's
Speaker 1: so much fun.
Speaker 3: It's funny because I do play Royal MATCHROI O Kaydom
Speaker 3: and tune Blast. I did notice, like if on my iPhone,
Speaker 3: which you know I still have an iPhone.
Speaker 1: I don't use it. It's there.
Speaker 3: I've got my eye watch, my Apple watch, you know,
Speaker 3: tied to that and once in a while I'll say, oh, oh, hey,
Speaker 3: I've got tomblasts or royal match on this.
Speaker 1: Let me open it up.
Speaker 3: I haven't played it for a while, and it will
Speaker 3: right away just it'll say welcome back, and it will
Speaker 3: give me all these this loot. It just gives it
Speaker 3: to me, and I'll be like, oh cool, and I'm
Speaker 3: playing it and these levels are the easiest I've ever played.
Speaker 3: I'm like getting through them in just so many moves
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking that's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: And then I'll just stop playing.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing, like you said, they want you to,
Speaker 3: because they'll get to a point where all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: you'll have one move left to get to the next
Speaker 3: level and you won't be able to.
Speaker 1: Do it unless you buy this. And so it's I mean, hey, do.
Speaker 2: You want to know what the January twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: monthly revenue was for tune Blast?
Speaker 1: What was it?
Speaker 2: Thirty seven million just in January, Just in January. They
Speaker 2: have made two point six billion lifetime since twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Right, and to put this, to put this into.
Speaker 2: Perspective, right, so take that thirty six thirty seven million
Speaker 2: monthly average and Fortnite in twenty twenty four grossed four
Speaker 2: point nine billion.
Speaker 1: Oh my lord, which.
Speaker 2: Is thirteen million, four one hundred and thirteen million, four
Speaker 2: hundred and whatever, four point thirteen point four two million
Speaker 2: dollars a day.
Speaker 3: When it comes to your games, then would you prefer
Speaker 3: and would most gamers prefer a game that you just
Speaker 3: buy outright fifty bucks and you don't have to buy
Speaker 3: any loose or.
Speaker 1: Do you still have to do that?
Speaker 2: You're never going to see that again because the lifetime
Speaker 2: of games is so long, and they have to support
Speaker 2: they have to be able to support server side content.
Speaker 1: Well it's not even just that too. So we have
Speaker 1: gotten to the point now where developers are Developers are
Speaker 1: the ones that actually make the game. They're the coders,
Speaker 1: they're the artists, they're the producers, they're the directors. These
Speaker 1: are the people that actually make the game. These people
Speaker 1: are given such an unrealistic timeline by the producers. These
Speaker 1: are the ones that are giving them the money to
Speaker 1: make this game. And these developers are releasing games that
Speaker 1: are unfinished, full of bugs, and full of micro transactions
Speaker 1: because the publisher just wants to make a quick buck.
Speaker 1: And then what happens is whatever is left over of
Speaker 1: the player base after most of the players have vacated
Speaker 1: the game, they will finally then say, all right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna start improving the game. We're gonna make patches stick around.
Speaker 1: Don't worry. It's another psychological thing, like, yes, we understand
Speaker 1: the game sucks, but bear with us. We're working on it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna make it better. And this is just simply
Speaker 1: putting the carrot on the stick in front of the horse.
Speaker 1: It's literally just stringing you along to keep you engaged,
Speaker 1: to keep you playing as long as they possibly can,
Speaker 1: to get every single penny out of you.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be difficult though, for kids, because I mean
Speaker 3: I think as adults we get suckered into that pretty easily.
Speaker 1: But for kids, I think it could be worse. It's
Speaker 1: always just a dog. Oh my god, it's so horrible.
Speaker 1: Kerk has already spent like over one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: bucks on Minecraft. Yeah, what was the game, my money?
Speaker 3: What was the game that we were playing a few
Speaker 3: years back where all of us were all of us
Speaker 3: were spending money on it. It was an action game
Speaker 3: top down.
Speaker 1: Oh you're talking about Fall guys. No, you're talking about
Speaker 1: like the oh gosh, Supercell. Yeah, yea Clash the Clans.
Speaker 1: That was the one. Okay, I've told you this before.
Speaker 1: I have over the years. Now I don't play it anymore,
Speaker 1: but from let's say twenty fourteen to twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: maybe I've spent probably close to three thousand dollars on
Speaker 1: that game. It was a very addictive game.
Speaker 3: I got into that as well, and you get to like, oh, wait,
Speaker 3: now you could do this.
Speaker 1: At their heyday, Supercell was making one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars a day.
Speaker 3: Wow, you know there's another one I play. But you see,
Speaker 3: and this is the opside of it. Would you prefer
Speaker 3: ads in a game rather than that because I play
Speaker 3: Words with Friends no, which I get ads? Yeah, And
Speaker 3: I would prefer a game that costs me one hundred
Speaker 3: dollars that has no ads, no micro transactions. But yet
Speaker 3: there's going to still be updates. Yeah, if there's a bug.
Speaker 1: But those updates would cost no. No, no no. If
Speaker 1: it's a bug, it's a bug, you fix it right.
Speaker 1: If it's DLC. If it's like, hey, we expanded it,
Speaker 1: we added new content, yes, I will pay for that,
Speaker 1: But micro transactions and anything else, no, I would rather
Speaker 1: just pay one hundred bucks straight up for the game.
Speaker 3: When you look at a company like Microsoft and you
Speaker 3: look at you know, Windows eleven, that's uh, we're now
Speaker 3: less than what five months. October fourteenth is the day
Speaker 3: that they say, you know only you want everybody.
Speaker 1: What's to change it?
Speaker 3: They keep putting out, Well, we may just extend it
Speaker 3: with those ten they've lost some like four hundred thousand differently,
Speaker 3: you know, licensees over the last over the last.
Speaker 2: Three years, widows has shed over four hundred thousand Windows licenses.
Speaker 1: So where are they going to? Are they going to
Speaker 1: Mac or are they going to Linux? Even?
Speaker 2: But even Mac even I just read an article about
Speaker 2: this today because those numbers are coming out. Even Max
Speaker 2: subscriptions are down, like not subscriptions, but the Mac shares down.
Speaker 1: Could always be too our smartphone? About Linux? What about Linux?
Speaker 2: Linux is still the bottom obviously, but their shares are up.
Speaker 2: People are using Linux, but more people day to day
Speaker 2: are using os io iOS or Android or Google. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean more people are using their phones than PCs.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You could do everything, whether you play games, you could
Speaker 3: do rep papers, you could do reports.
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, it just makes sure, you're
Speaker 2: onto this market where tablets and phones are going to
Speaker 2: supersede PCs.
Speaker 1: Right, just because of the convenience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's uh, it's going to be interesting to see
Speaker 3: where it's going to be in the next few years.
Speaker 3: But I just wonder about this whole you know, is
Speaker 3: Microsoft just doing a cash grab? I mean, they've got
Speaker 3: the manufacturers. I'm sure love it because this is an
Speaker 3: opportunity to sell more PCs. And the fact is, let's
Speaker 3: face it, when Windows XP came out, we held onto
Speaker 3: it for a long time, and you know, we weren't
Speaker 3: buying anything else. Microsoft kind of changed their strategies over
Speaker 3: the years and finally said no, no, we need to
Speaker 3: we need to change these up a little more often
Speaker 3: so that I mean, the company can make money.
Speaker 1: So then you know, they instead of.
Speaker 3: Putting out Microsoft Office as a package, it became a
Speaker 3: software in service.
Speaker 2: So so we just talked about this today. Right. XP
Speaker 2: was officially released on October twenty fIF two thousand and one. Right,
Speaker 2: There wasn't another Windows release until two thousand and seven
Speaker 2: with Vista.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So it was six full years of development into Vista
Speaker 2: with it with no new operating system, and then eight
Speaker 2: came along five years later, twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: That was awful.
Speaker 2: Well, actually two thousand and seven, two thousand and nine, right,
Speaker 2: so no, I'm sorry you missed you missed seven. They
Speaker 2: were out of order when I started seven. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: twan only three years, less than three years went by
Speaker 2: before Windows seven, then three more years and then it
Speaker 2: was six years until ten.
Speaker 1: So we we talked about this before. I don't remember
Speaker 1: how many months ago it was, but we all know
Speaker 1: that there are two teams that work on Microsoft Windows
Speaker 1: operating systems. There's the Blue team and there's the Gold team,
Speaker 1: and I know which one is which responsible for which,
Speaker 1: but they alternate operating systems. So if you look back
Speaker 1: all the way back to Windows ninety five, okay, Windows
Speaker 1: ninety five, it was okay, it was pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then Windows ninety eight came out sucked two Windows ninety
Speaker 1: eight second Edition, which was amazing. Then they came out
Speaker 1: with Windows two thousand, not really that good. It was
Speaker 1: more geared towards servers. Then they came out with Windows
Speaker 1: XP amazing. Yeah, And they came out with Windows EM sucked,
Speaker 1: was awful. Then they came out with Windows seven, right
Speaker 1: or no, wait, wait I'm sorry, Thista awful. Yeah, then
Speaker 1: they came out Windows seven amazing. Yeah, Windows eight sucked,
Speaker 1: Windows ten awesome, Windows eleven sucked. What does that pattern
Speaker 1: show you that we will see Windows twelve by next year?
Speaker 1: Windows twelve is gonna be awesome? And what team knows
Speaker 1: what the hell they're doing? The other team doesn't, it
Speaker 1: seems because every team that works on the ones that
Speaker 1: have been sucky continues to work on the sucky ones,
Speaker 1: whereas the other team works on the good ones. So if, if,
Speaker 1: if the history holds true, Windows twelve should be amazing.
Speaker 3: I'm just so, I know we've talked about this, So
Speaker 3: I'm going to talk about this new laptop that I bought.
Speaker 3: We've talked about co Pilot and how we're.
Speaker 1: Just so ugh.
Speaker 3: The other day, I was going through this new laptop
Speaker 3: and it has the co pilot key on it, and
Speaker 3: I was trying to figure out, how do we change this?
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, I'm trying to remember the steps.
Speaker 3: So I hit the I hit the key, I went ahead. Oh,
Speaker 3: I took the step and I hit the key, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to wanted to do I wanted to do
Speaker 3: everything do. I wanted to run this do I No,
Speaker 3: I just want an answer to my question. And I
Speaker 3: asked my Google assistant the question, and I asked the
Speaker 3: co pilot and actually copilot gave me a pretty good
Speaker 3: answer as well as the uh, the Google assistant. So
Speaker 3: you know, the thing is, we're I think we're going
Speaker 3: to continue to see them integrating stuff like that that
Speaker 3: is going to feedback more information that than that information
Speaker 3: could be used for advertising, and then we're going to
Speaker 3: see more ads in the os sean.
Speaker 1: You've talked about this before.
Speaker 3: The ads within Windows itself are getting a point that
Speaker 3: kind of annoying.
Speaker 2: Well, it's I'm never gonna get it, but I can
Speaker 2: have a wish that I get a bare bones copy
Speaker 2: of Windows. It exists for government clients, bare bones, no ad, no.
Speaker 1: Tracking, do it with PowerShell, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Know, I just I don't want to. I want to
Speaker 2: be lazy without I'll pay for it. I'm already paid
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 1: Come on, come on, bro.
Speaker 2: But the one that really irks me is when I
Speaker 2: hit the windows key and I type in what I
Speaker 2: want to do and it opens a bing window and
Speaker 2: searches it. Oh that's what that's what just really, I
Speaker 2: don't I don't want to open Edge. I just want
Speaker 2: you to search my computer for the thing game? Why
Speaker 2: I don't I don't want recall. I don't want this recalls.
Speaker 2: They're thrown out there. I don't want it taking a
Speaker 2: snapshot of my computer and putting it into the clottery
Speaker 2: fifteen seconds. I don't want to ask Copilot for it.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to search my computer. How hard is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the ingrained Windows search used to be great, and
Speaker 1: now it is. It's so bad and nobody I'm sorry Microsoft,
Speaker 1: mister ceo, if you're listening. Nobody likes Edge, nobody likes Copilot,
Speaker 1: nobody likes bing. You know, just just seriously, stop, just stop.
Speaker 1: Can you bring back word Pad? Can you bring back Clippy?
Speaker 1: That's what that's That's what the AI is. It's because
Speaker 1: everybody likes Clippy. Nobody like I hated Edge ahead of
Speaker 1: his time. The only reason you use Edge is to
Speaker 1: download Firefox or Chrome. That is true. And then that
Speaker 1: that got blocked.
Speaker 3: Did you I know, if you saw the story from
Speaker 3: a few weeks ago that for some reason Google was
Speaker 3: not showing up on Windows eleven machines that were having
Speaker 3: a hard time with that, and it was taking off
Speaker 3: a lot of people trying to figure out why, and
Speaker 3: it turned out that some of the content that people
Speaker 3: had been seeing on Google, they said, oh this is
Speaker 3: a this is a problem, so you weren't able to
Speaker 3: run it. I don't know if they've since fixed that,
Speaker 3: but that was one of the stories.
Speaker 1: People are going to Linux because Linux is open source
Speaker 1: and it's getting better and better by the day.
Speaker 3: It's just still so confusing because there's so many different distributions.
Speaker 2: What do I do?
Speaker 1: There's there's linux Mint. Honestly, if you're looking at the
Speaker 1: one hint right there, bam Linux Mint.
Speaker 2: And for everybody that says, oh it's so hard. If
Speaker 2: you use a you get to get chatg EPD and
Speaker 2: ask it questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like how do.
Speaker 2: I do this in Linux Mint, there's your answer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but Linux Mint looks exactly like Windows, and it
Speaker 1: behaves exactly like Windows.
Speaker 2: It has a guy, it has a software center, it
Speaker 2: has everything you need. It's what I run my Pluck
Speaker 2: server on. It's what I run some servers at work on.
Speaker 3: It's I'll tell you a funny story when when my
Speaker 3: laptop died unexpectedly the other day and I I use
Speaker 3: my laptop every day. I I went and I found
Speaker 3: the Asus that had been in uh, the travel bag
Speaker 3: that Gloria has and has not fired up for at
Speaker 3: least a couple of years. So I went ahead and
Speaker 3: fired it up, you know, and then Don't had to
Speaker 3: run a ton of updates. It took a whole day
Speaker 3: to do the updates. And then I looked went to
Speaker 3: look at it. Oh, this is a Celeron processor. Oh
Speaker 3: this is no was It was dog slow, and I
Speaker 3: was like.
Speaker 1: Oh man, what are we gonna do?
Speaker 3: And then I found that old Dell, the old Dell
Speaker 3: computer that we used to use back on tech Talk radio.
Speaker 3: I want to say back in two thousand and two.
Speaker 3: I mean this, It probably was later than that, but
Speaker 3: either way. I found this whole laptop that I installed
Speaker 3: Linux Mint on Lenux Min twenty two, and I fired
Speaker 3: it up and I was able to get a couple
Speaker 3: things done with it, and I thought, wow, this is
Speaker 3: an old computer. Couldn't do that anymore, you know, they
Speaker 3: make it so difficult. But Linux, Yeah, Lenox worked on that.
Speaker 1: That's why people are going to Linux. Honestly, Linuxmith the
Speaker 1: only downside to Linux Mint, or just Linux in general.
Speaker 1: I should say is you can't run every single program
Speaker 1: on it because most programs are written for either Windows
Speaker 1: or they're written for Mac. However, with that being said,
Speaker 1: now that more and more people are choosing to go
Speaker 1: with Linux, the Linux application library is growing, growing, growing.
Speaker 1: You can even run video games. You can get Steam,
Speaker 1: you can get Xbox, you can get them on Linux. Right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, I would say at this point
Speaker 1: in time, as of you know what, July first, July second,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, you can probably run about ninety percent
Speaker 1: of your programs on Linux. And Sean, you're familiar with
Speaker 1: Alternative two, can you find lyncs.
Speaker 2: Well, it's one of my favorite sites.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Can you find Linux programs within Alternative two dot now?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, you can find Linux
Speaker 2: distributions on there. So if you don't know which one
Speaker 2: you want to get, just type Linux or just type
Speaker 2: in Linux Mint or Dbian or Ubuntu and it's going
Speaker 2: to give you a list of all the other distros
Speaker 2: that you can get and depending on how text heavy
Speaker 2: you want to get. I mean, but like Justin said,
Speaker 2: Linux Mint is the easiest it it takes.
Speaker 1: It's based on a BOOTO, It's based.
Speaker 2: On a BOOTU and it take it took me. I'm
Speaker 2: good with computers, but it took me less than five
Speaker 2: minutes to download the software, burn it to a USB drive,
Speaker 2: and get it started installing on another computer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And once you get it set up, it looks
Speaker 1: and acts and feels just like Windows.
Speaker 2: And with with the emergence of AI and l l
Speaker 2: m's right, it's so easy to if you have a
Speaker 2: question about Linux that you don't want the answer to,
Speaker 2: just type it into chat g ept or type it
Speaker 2: into rock or and it's gonna spit you out a
Speaker 2: really good answer. Yeah, it's it's gonna help you learn. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a little bit more involved with Linux, but just
Speaker 2: just give it a shot if you if you will
Speaker 2: like computers, if you think you're good with computers, give
Speaker 2: Linux a shot. Just try it. If you have if
Speaker 2: you have a four year old laptop or a five
Speaker 2: or six year old tower that's just sitting on shelf
Speaker 2: collucking dust and you don't know what to do it
Speaker 2: because it can't run Windows eleven, put Linux Min's on it.
Speaker 1: There you go. One work quick point. The best part
Speaker 1: about Linux is that they're not a lot of viruses
Speaker 1: for Linux because Linux is very, very secure, so keep
Speaker 1: that in mind. All right, we'll be back with more
Speaker 1: of tech talk Radio.
Speaker 2: I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Seonda Weird, and I'm Justin.
Speaker 1: Let me find us on tech talk radio dot com.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back now, back to tech talk Radio.
Speaker 2: So before the break, we're talking about Windows eleven Linux
Speaker 2: moving to Windows eleven. We're in the process of right
Speaker 2: now because the service, the support for Windows ten ends
Speaker 2: in October, so we're migrating all of our Windows Tech
Speaker 2: machines to Windows eleven per the university policy, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 1: Now are you are you having to pull motherboards and
Speaker 1: all this other stuff or did you just need to
Speaker 1: to for the moment.
Speaker 2: For the most part, it's been pretty smooth, right. We've
Speaker 2: been able with the security policies get the most up
Speaker 2: to date version of Windows eleven pushed forward. But we've
Speaker 2: had some troubles with some other older motherboards that are struggling.
Speaker 2: One K one specific server. You have a server that
Speaker 2: runs a TriCaster justin probably knows that it's a little
Speaker 2: video switching software. I tried to put Windows eleven on there.
Speaker 2: So we moved up the motherboards that everything supports Windows
Speaker 2: Windows eleven. It just doesn't have secure boot enabled. Perfect cool,
Speaker 2: I'll go into the bios enable secure boot. It didn't
Speaker 2: reboot after that?
Speaker 1: Did what did you get? Nothing?
Speaker 2: Nothing I could do would get it to reboot. It
Speaker 2: wouldn't even post.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't even post, would even post.
Speaker 2: So I did a little Google Foo. This specific gigabyte
Speaker 2: motherboard had issues when enabling secure boot with a MBR
Speaker 2: partitioned hard drive. It would try to read the NBR
Speaker 2: petition hard drive and it would corrupt the BIOS.
Speaker 1: Oh but you couldn't you just do a c Moss
Speaker 1: reset on it.
Speaker 2: Tried it. The bios was at the chip level. The
Speaker 2: bios was crossed. So I was like, this is a
Speaker 2: production model, Like, this is a piece of production that
Speaker 2: we use. Like, I have to get this back. What
Speaker 2: can I do? Emailed New Tech and said what can
Speaker 2: I do with this box? Doesn't sport? When I was eleven,
Speaker 2: that's what they told me. They said it doesn't support.
Speaker 2: When I was eleven, I was like, that's a lie.
Speaker 2: The hardware can support it, so what's the deal? They said,
Speaker 2: that's it. You don't guys don't pay for a service contract.
Speaker 2: So therefore I can't help anymore. Doesn't suport on was.
Speaker 1: Left, We're gonna hear a lot of that.
Speaker 2: So I kept searching on I've got to be able
Speaker 2: to fix this. I can reflash the bios. So I
Speaker 2: was like, you know what, I'm gonna take on a challenge.
Speaker 2: So I bought a I bought a H three forty one,
Speaker 2: a programming tool really on Amazon.
Speaker 1: Wait, what is what exactly? It is?
Speaker 2: It? It's a USB stick and I bought a dongle
Speaker 2: that it's four pins or it's eight pins that clips
Speaker 2: onto the motherboard. I literally clipped it to the bios
Speaker 2: chip on the motherboard, plugged it into USP, into my
Speaker 2: into a Windows computer, and downloaded the proper new, updated
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five version of the iOS for this motherboard,
Speaker 2: and flashed it to the motherboard the bios chip.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: It was worked, and it worked.
Speaker 1: How did you feel when you rebooted and then it
Speaker 1: came back up?
Speaker 2: I stood up a little dance.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was. It was one of those things where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is the last thing I can try. It's either
Speaker 2: this works or doesn't.
Speaker 1: So so how much did that little chip thing cost.
Speaker 2: You fifteen dollars on Amazon, And did.
Speaker 1: You pay that yourself or did you use it?
Speaker 2: I bought it by myself because it's like I screwed
Speaker 2: it up.
Speaker 1: Okay, how much did they pay you back for that?
Speaker 2: I got the fifteen dollars back.
Speaker 1: That's it. You only get the fifth. Did they not
Speaker 1: even buy you lunch? No?
Speaker 2: I did buy me lunch all the time. But it's
Speaker 2: I got back what I paid for it, right, because
Speaker 2: my boss is on vacation, so I had to make
Speaker 2: a call. I paid for it. Whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got my money back.
Speaker 2: But it was pretty cool to like, I'm in this
Speaker 2: programming software called Neo Loader.
Speaker 1: Neo all right it yeah, let our listeners.
Speaker 2: All it's if you feel like up to the challenge
Speaker 2: and you have access to your physically access to the
Speaker 2: mother board, you can buy this flasher and the adapter.
Speaker 2: I actually you actually it's a clip. It looks like
Speaker 2: like a gator clip and I clipped it right onto
Speaker 2: the chip. Wow, read read the bios off of it.
Speaker 2: So I backed up the bios that was on it
Speaker 2: and then downloaded the new one from Gigabyte and flashed
Speaker 2: and just clicked flash and it read it, wrote it
Speaker 2: to the memory, plugged everything back in, plugged in the
Speaker 2: graphics card, plugged in their custom PC express board, and
Speaker 2: they booted.
Speaker 1: You got to link that on our website.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's pretty cool. I'll make sure that the
Speaker 3: links are there.
Speaker 2: But and now it will post and it will load
Speaker 2: into Windows eleven.
Speaker 1: So so what whatever you were told by New Tech,
Speaker 1: that wasn't the case, because now it's working.
Speaker 2: I think right New Tech they said their software doesn't
Speaker 2: spport on whatever's that's a whole different thing that I've
Speaker 2: got working, and I've improved.
Speaker 1: Well, their software doesn't, but the hardware, when you flash it,
Speaker 1: it works fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so now it supports Windows level. See.
Speaker 3: I I make it the point though, Sean, and justin that,
Speaker 3: I think we're going to see a lot of this.
Speaker 3: There are even in the last three four years, there
Speaker 3: are companies that have sold software and hardware that you
Speaker 3: buy it, you use it. I'm going to give an
Speaker 3: example radio stations that bought a automation system. So they've
Speaker 3: got it worse. Fine, they didn't opt to buy in
Speaker 3: for the you know, the the service contract, and suddenly
Speaker 3: now they're being faced with, oh we got upgrade to
Speaker 3: Windows eleven. We don't have a service contract. You're not
Speaker 3: going to be able to do that because if you
Speaker 3: hose the machine, that's it for you, and all that
Speaker 3: money you spent is gone.
Speaker 2: The fun part is. The fun part is is some
Speaker 2: companies even tell you if you don't opt for the
Speaker 2: service contract now, and you want the service contract, then
Speaker 2: when we have to upgrade, you have to pay us
Speaker 2: for that entire duration that you didn't have the service contract.
Speaker 1: Oh my lord, really, whoa wow?
Speaker 3: It was not even illegal, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So that's how it works in some of the broadcasting
Speaker 2: business where you don't don't have support and you want
Speaker 2: support going forward on certain products, unless you're buying new
Speaker 2: and getting getting a new service contract, do you have
Speaker 2: to back pay for support?
Speaker 1: Do you remember that that array that we had back
Speaker 1: at KSWB and San Diego, that Unix storage array, I
Speaker 1: can't remember. It was like a start with N no,
Speaker 1: not start with an N. It was like where we
Speaker 1: would put all of our long term storage and it
Speaker 1: was all Mac based and it was like a budget
Speaker 1: XAN something like that.
Speaker 2: XAN was max like long term file store like they
Speaker 2: had Server store.
Speaker 1: It was something like that anyway. But yeah, it was
Speaker 1: the same thing where we had a problem where we
Speaker 1: cannot get it to work, and I was tasked to
Speaker 1: try to figure it out. And I contacted the you know,
Speaker 1: the support and they're like, yeah, well, you haven't had
Speaker 1: support on this for you know, X amount of years,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna owe us, you know, you know, fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand dollars if you want to, you know, catch up
Speaker 1: with your support contract and then we can actually help you.
Speaker 1: And you know, Kyle, our boss at the time, was like,
Speaker 1: there's no way we're gonna do this. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: to figure this out on your own. I turned to
Speaker 1: Reddit and I actually found a former engineer that used
Speaker 1: to work for that company, and he was like, look,
Speaker 1: i'll help you out. Oh and so we got we
Speaker 1: got on like a screen share with him multiple times,
Speaker 1: and he got in and because he knew Unix. Now
Speaker 1: Unix is different than Lenox. Lenox is based off of Unix,
Speaker 1: but like Unix is like hardcore command line only type
Speaker 1: of interface, this guy went in and just completely upgraded
Speaker 1: our entire infrastructure and got everything to work again, and
Speaker 1: you know, and he was like, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: charge you anything. I just do this for fun. But
Speaker 1: I told my boss. I was like, look man, we
Speaker 1: got to do something for this guy. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: just because he was awesome. So I convinced my boss
Speaker 1: to buy him like a five hundred dollars gift card
Speaker 1: visa gift card on company dime. And we just bottom
Speaker 1: a five hundred dollar gift card and send it to them,
Speaker 1: because if it wasn't for him, we would have lost
Speaker 1: all this long term storage that this company was gonna
Speaker 1: charge us fifteen thousand dollars to try to catch up on.
Speaker 1: And this guy's like, I'll do it for a five
Speaker 1: hundred buck, you know. Actually, well he said it for free,
Speaker 1: but we just gave him for five hundred bucks, you see.
Speaker 3: And that's something it's not gonna affect just technical companies.
Speaker 3: It's gonna affect auto repair shops that are using technology
Speaker 3: to discover and fix and repair because let's face it,
Speaker 3: cars are elect you know, pretty much, there's so much
Speaker 3: electronic computer engineering in those It's gonna affect so many
Speaker 3: different businesses that they don't have.
Speaker 1: The service contracts.
Speaker 3: Something happens, then you know, they can lose a lot
Speaker 3: of business because they're not able to work, and yeah,
Speaker 3: I think we're gonna see a lot of that. You know,
Speaker 3: it's interesting because my problem this past week.
Speaker 1: I have a Lenovo. It is a it was I
Speaker 1: think it was a yoga or Yogi yoga laptop. It's
Speaker 1: been great.
Speaker 3: When my Asus died about four years ago, I went
Speaker 3: out and I bought this at a It was an
Speaker 3: open box from Best Buy, previous display model.
Speaker 1: And I've loved it. It's been great.
Speaker 3: I was able to update it to Windows eleven and
Speaker 3: it's been fine. The other day I needed a file
Speaker 3: off of there, and I, you know, took it out
Speaker 3: of my laptop bag, put it on the little square
Speaker 3: table that I have put in a flash drive.
Speaker 1: You know. I had started it up, got it working,
Speaker 1: grabbed the files I needed, and then close, you know,
Speaker 1: shut it off, pulled the drive and put it back
Speaker 1: in my laptop bag. When I got to work here
Speaker 1: at station, I went to hook it up.
Speaker 3: I hit the power. Nothing's happening with it. You hit
Speaker 3: the power, but but it feels smushy. It feels like
Speaker 3: it's not connecting right. I'm like, what the heck's going on?
Speaker 1: I tried shutting it down on plugging it. I look
Speaker 1: at the power. It's full power.
Speaker 3: Because I used it the night before and had it
Speaker 3: plugged in, and I'm thinking, what the heck is going
Speaker 3: on with it?
Speaker 1: Couldn't do it?
Speaker 3: What does elevens on it? Couldn't figure it out. So
Speaker 3: I went ahead and I removed the bottom. Okay, the
Speaker 3: bottom holds. You know, you no more user serviceable ports,
Speaker 3: which I absolutely hate. There's only one company that I
Speaker 3: think does it unless you want to buy by a
Speaker 3: high end.
Speaker 1: And I look this company up called Framework. Have you
Speaker 1: guys heard about them? Oh? Yeahramework.
Speaker 3: They make PCs that you could buy parts and basically
Speaker 3: build it yourself or they'll do it for you. So anyway,
Speaker 3: so I'm going through it and then I'm reading in
Speaker 3: the documentation that there is a button, a small little
Speaker 3: hole in the side of my laptop and you can
Speaker 3: depress that and it goes into a special post mode.
Speaker 3: And I'm thinking, this is after a day of fiddling
Speaker 3: with this string, trying to get you know, disconnecting the
Speaker 3: hard drive, disconnecting the battery, disconnecting the sea moss, doing
Speaker 3: all of that, and I went ahead and pushed this
Speaker 3: little button, and all of a sudden, I got power.
Speaker 1: It's spinning.
Speaker 3: So I'm thinking, okay, I know now it is not
Speaker 3: the motherboard, because I would not get that if the
Speaker 3: motherboard was dead, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, am I am? I correct? Yeah, So it
Speaker 1: goes to post.
Speaker 3: I went ahead and I pok it back up and
Speaker 3: I control healthily and it comes right back up. Logs
Speaker 3: in the windows. You know it's working. I'm so happy.
Speaker 3: And I go ahead and do a couple of things
Speaker 3: on it, and then I shut it down.
Speaker 1: Next day.
Speaker 3: Nothing can't get it to work, and so again I
Speaker 3: pulled everything again, hit the button. Nothing get nothing coming
Speaker 3: out of that special button now. And then one moment
Speaker 3: it came up. But I had to put the case
Speaker 3: back on because the case was off and it was
Speaker 3: plugged in.
Speaker 1: So I didn't want to take the chance, so I
Speaker 1: plugged it, put the case back.
Speaker 3: And couldn't get it. And I have not been able
Speaker 3: to get it respond yet. So I'm you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know why it would do that. I was thinking, well,
Speaker 3: one person had recommended sea moss battery and said that,
Speaker 3: you know, if you replace your sea moss, you might
Speaker 3: find that that's the only thing that was holding it up.
Speaker 3: The other one said the battery itself might be doing it.
Speaker 3: Even though you disconnected the battery h and it still
Speaker 3: started up, that still could be part of the issue. So,
Speaker 3: I it's one of those things. Those are fun to
Speaker 3: track down. I wish there was an easy way to
Speaker 3: do it, any thoughts, It's just one of those things. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, I have troubleshooted so many different laptops that
Speaker 3: have done stuff like this weirdly, honestly, at I mean,
Speaker 3: not personally, professionally, professionally, I would rather just buy another
Speaker 3: laptop because I'm I'm not here to sit there and
Speaker 3: waste my time when I've got a thousand other things
Speaker 3: to do than to troubleshoot one single laptop when I
Speaker 3: can buy another one.
Speaker 1: You usually you know third party. I buy a lot
Speaker 1: of my stuff from a website called uh Evergreen Electronics.
Speaker 1: There there's basically a secondhand refurbished Great Laptops three year Warrantye. Wow,
Speaker 1: I would rather just buy another one for like six fifty.
Speaker 2: Right, there are like two things I'll do. I'll try
Speaker 2: a new power supply mm hmm, change the Seamus battery
Speaker 2: right well, reflash the bios now apparently, Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: Those three things, that is enough of my time. If
Speaker 2: it's beyond that, unless unless there's sentimental value in a
Speaker 2: soldered on hard drive or something I can't get to,
Speaker 2: it's done. I'm done. I'm moving on. It's a waste
Speaker 2: of my time at that point. Well, there I could.
Speaker 2: I could probably buy a new or faster one for
Speaker 2: a little bit more money and just get my move
Speaker 2: my data over from the hard drive. But like I said,
Speaker 2: unless there's sentimental data there that I need that's soldered
Speaker 2: on that I can't access without the motherboard, I'm moving
Speaker 2: on after those three things.
Speaker 3: All right, Well one more question too, Sean. You talked
Speaker 3: about moving the data over with this new laptop. When
Speaker 3: I logged in, and I logged in with my our
Speaker 3: email address, right, it said do you want to move
Speaker 3: over these previous backups that have been stored in one drive?
Speaker 3: And it was backups from the previous laptop, And I thought, WHOA,
Speaker 3: look at that. I can actually do that.
Speaker 1: So I went in and did that. But I've had
Speaker 1: so many little issues here and there.
Speaker 3: You still have to install certain programs and all that.
Speaker 3: Is it better just to go just brand new, get
Speaker 3: the software that you want to do? Just start over
Speaker 3: from scratch, or let it do this where it's installing
Speaker 3: little bits and pieces to get it to work.
Speaker 2: I've always been under the adage of stall fresh. I
Speaker 2: rarely go more than two years without recompletely reformatting my computer.
Speaker 2: You just get to a point where it starts to
Speaker 2: get bogged down. You get junk, you stuff. It also
Speaker 2: helps you curate your date your data a little bit,
Speaker 2: so you're not just hoarding a bunch of junk on
Speaker 2: your computer. And it gives your computer a new breath
Speaker 2: of fresh air. You get the most up to date
Speaker 2: version of Windows, you get the most up to date
Speaker 2: version of drivers, you get you know, it's just but
Speaker 2: it helps just kind of speed things along and give
Speaker 2: your computer a little bit extra life. But you know,
Speaker 2: I know a lot of people that don't ever do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're you know, this whole segment, we've been
Speaker 1: talking about computers that have been having problems booting up
Speaker 1: or I don't know, just performance in general. I guess
Speaker 1: maybe you could say, right, yeah, I have Again, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna mention this one more time because I mentioned it
Speaker 1: so many different times. But I've had computers at work
Speaker 1: where we're like we don't know what's going on here.
Speaker 1: The thing's not working right, something's not right. Blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. We run driver easy. Driver easy is
Speaker 1: the program that I've been recommending for years now. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find it driver easy dot com. All right,
Speaker 1: and it is a subscription service. I think it's like
Speaker 1: about thirty bucks a year whatever. Okay, we have a
Speaker 1: technician license, so we get fifty licenses. Each license is
Speaker 1: good for three days, so it allows us to install
Speaker 1: it on you know, fifty different computers. We have three
Speaker 1: days to run it, update the drivers, and then we're good.
Speaker 1: But I also have my own personal license to it
Speaker 1: for my home computers. I absolutely love driver easy. It
Speaker 1: finds drivers that Microsoft won't give you, your your computer
Speaker 1: manufacturer won't give you, Like, I don't know where they
Speaker 1: find these things, yeah, but they are they're updated BIOSes.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've gone to a SUS's website. I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: where's my bios It's not there. Driver easy is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is actually signed off by a SUS. It's right
Speaker 1: here on this website. They will tell you the source
Speaker 1: where they got it, and every one of their drivers
Speaker 1: is signed vetted it works. I have brought computers back
Speaker 1: to life from computers that are dead by just simply
Speaker 1: running Driver Easy and updating like the chipset and the motherboard,
Speaker 1: the firmware, the other drivers. I have brought computers back
Speaker 1: to life. I brought computers that are like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this thing is so slow. I don't understand what's going on.
Speaker 1: Run Driver easy update about thirty or forty drivers that
Speaker 1: aren't listed on Microsoft Boom reboot.
Speaker 2: Computer's great, they're running a special right now.
Speaker 1: They are looked.
Speaker 2: I looked it up. Just said it was about thirty
Speaker 2: bucks a month.
Speaker 1: No year, thirty bucks a year. It's all lot better.
Speaker 2: So one PC is a year, okay, right now you
Speaker 2: can get it be locked in for three PCs for
Speaker 2: twenty nine year.
Speaker 1: Oh so three, I'm buying it right now, three three
Speaker 1: for thirty three for thirty thirty thirty.
Speaker 2: Two dollars and five cents after text, oh my god,
Speaker 2: a year for a year for three PCs, I'm buying.
Speaker 2: I'm literally putting my PayPal information right now.
Speaker 3: What is what is your what is that program? Also,
Speaker 3: so you get driver easy and there's a program that
Speaker 3: can load the most common used software programs you have
Speaker 3: on a new PC N night nine night. That's it
Speaker 3: nine night and that's spelled N I N I T
Speaker 3: H that you can find that in.
Speaker 1: All right, we haven't used it too much, but a
Speaker 1: Shaan house. I know Matt.
Speaker 2: It came recommended from from Matt right because I was
Speaker 2: telling him all I had. I was spending all this
Speaker 2: time installing all these things like us that. I was like,
Speaker 2: what's that? And He's like, click on all these buttons
Speaker 2: and installs all the programs for you.
Speaker 1: Perfect. All right, we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: come back.
Speaker 3: Justin's got a listener question he's going to share with us.
Speaker 3: We'll be back with more of tech talk Radio. I'm
Speaker 3: Andy Taylor, I'm sir, and I'm Justin.
Speaker 1: Let me send us an X at tech talk Radio.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back and now back to tech talk Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm computer and and.
Speaker 2: Everything even for the Internet.
Speaker 1: It's pretty shocking. Now we have a listen to questions.
Speaker 1: This is a This is an interesting because I have
Speaker 1: a very simple answer this one. But the question is
Speaker 1: from Shannon and Tucson. It says, how do you clean
Speaker 1: soda pop that has been spilled on a keyboard. Oh no, Shannon,
Speaker 1: The simple answer is you don't you buy a new keyboard?
Speaker 1: You really should? You respond with popp it in the dishwasher? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, hold on, there are people that have
Speaker 1: done that. Sean probably is one of them. Sean, how
Speaker 1: did it go? Not?
Speaker 2: Well? Yeah, we have very hard we have very hard
Speaker 2: water here in Indiana. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unless you have like like filtered water, it's probably
Speaker 1: not the best idea. Honestly, the prices of keyboards have
Speaker 1: dropped down. Now if you're talking about a super expensive
Speaker 1: mechanical keyboard with the LED lights like I have here,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if I can show this on
Speaker 1: the screen, but yes, like that that's a course theraah
Speaker 1: of course here I I would say, you are just
Speaker 1: gonna be just just buy a new keyboard. It's gonna
Speaker 1: take you so much more time, so much more effort
Speaker 1: to try to clean up that soda than it is
Speaker 1: for you to buy another keyboard.
Speaker 2: Now, if you've spilled it on a laptop keyboard, you're
Speaker 2: extra you're extra screwed.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, if you.
Speaker 2: Spilled it on a laptop keyboard especially, I mean you
Speaker 2: have some that have the mechanical butterfly switches. If some
Speaker 2: that have the membrane switches, if you have them, one
Speaker 2: of the membranes s which is it's never coming out.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, no, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: At that point you need you need to take it
Speaker 2: to a shop, say how much do you give this
Speaker 2: for me? If I give it to you for scrap
Speaker 2: and buy a new computer.
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting with this new laptop that I bought,
Speaker 3: which is also a Lenovo, it's the Yoga seven.
Speaker 1: It's a two in one. I get pop ups.
Speaker 3: Now, which are a little frustrating, but I get pop
Speaker 3: ups from all state that I can. I can actually
Speaker 3: get an insurance package to protect my laptop.
Speaker 1: You can disable all that stuff. I'm still going through it.
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 3: I did the the install where I let it run
Speaker 3: data from you know, the other computer, and now I'm just, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm not liking it. So I think I'm gonna start over,
Speaker 3: just start over, deactivate some of the programs that I'm
Speaker 3: on there, and this just start over from scratch.
Speaker 1: We got one more listener question from Nick and green Valley.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: He says, I was looking at USB flash drives and
Speaker 1: saw a lot of different ones.
Speaker 2: Questions.
Speaker 1: Kingston sand disk, et cetera, and wondering is there a
Speaker 1: better drive than the others or are they all the same?
Speaker 1: I mean, and I'm I know, Sean, I know you're
Speaker 1: gonna have an opinion on this, but there are different
Speaker 1: caveats to it. But overall, you're almost kind of just
Speaker 1: akin to like comparing like Ford, Chevy, Dodge. Okay, programs,
Speaker 1: they're all gonna they're all gonna do what they say
Speaker 1: they're gonna do. Some might last a little longer than others,
Speaker 1: some might perform a little bit better than others. Depends
Speaker 1: on the engine, right, or or what the what the
Speaker 1: specs are on the on the USB drive. But in general,
Speaker 1: like Sean said, so.
Speaker 2: I think I think you're you're you're looking at form
Speaker 2: factor at this point. Right, Do you want USBC? Do
Speaker 2: you want one that'll do both because they make them?
Speaker 1: Do you want FireWire? You have to be difficult?
Speaker 2: So it's funny, so you said firewaar. But the new
Speaker 2: version of Mac os iOS twenty six is ending FireWire
Speaker 2: support just after a gazillion years. But it's it's akin
Speaker 2: to personal preference, right, it doesn't matter what brand, it's
Speaker 2: all about size, it's going to be about whether you
Speaker 2: want sand Disk or Kingston or of course the Air
Speaker 2: or whatever whatever brand you want, but just make sure
Speaker 2: you're buying from a reputable source. I would personally go
Speaker 2: and buy it physically in the store, because you it's
Speaker 2: buying on Amazon, you're likely to get you're not. I mean,
Speaker 2: the chances are low, but it's not zero that you
Speaker 2: will get a drive that is incorrectly modified or improperly
Speaker 2: modified and will be fake.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm not sure about that because my wife
Speaker 1: has always told me that size doesn't matter, and I
Speaker 1: just don't quite make I don't know if I be
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: Justin it's because you're stuck in the eighties, dude, and
Speaker 2: you're still using a floppy drive. Wh okay with the times.
Speaker 1: Dude, Okay, all right, all right, okay, I'll give you
Speaker 1: that one. I'll give you that one here.
Speaker 3: I've had a problem lately with P and Y drives.
Speaker 3: I don't know what happens, but after a while, nothing
Speaker 3: out of them, nothing, not a thing. And then I've
Speaker 3: had a couple of sand discs, which I really like
Speaker 3: sand disk drives. I've had a couple of those go
Speaker 3: as well, where suddenly you can't. You can access them,
Speaker 3: but you can store anything else on him. You can't
Speaker 3: move anything. I've tried using different programs in there to
Speaker 3: to you know, wipe them.
Speaker 1: Nah, you can't do it. So I don't know. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't spend a lot of money on them on a
Speaker 1: USB flash drive. But again, just I mean.
Speaker 2: You're okay, you're looking at like one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: eight or two hundred and fifty six gig forty bucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sixty bus. I mean, I guess it also
Speaker 1: depends on what you're gonna use it for. Are you
Speaker 1: gonna use this? Is this you gonna be your daily driver?
Speaker 1: Are you gonna be constantly writing and reading to this
Speaker 1: flash drive? Because if so, yes, you're gonna want to
Speaker 1: spend the extra money. But if this is gonna be
Speaker 1: something you're gonna put a file on it and then
Speaker 1: come back a year later and access it, dude, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you if just a reminder, if you're
Speaker 2: using it for like archival storage, right, it moves you
Speaker 2: to every year or so copy the data to a
Speaker 2: new drive or copy to an exist a third party. Right,
Speaker 2: it's the three to three to three three point solution
Speaker 2: right on prem on computer, in cloud. Right, those are
Speaker 2: your three points of failure for backups. So like you
Speaker 2: should always have a copy on your computer, you should
Speaker 2: always have a copy on a flash drive in a
Speaker 2: copy inche in the cloud or off prem So just
Speaker 2: that data does degrade over time. It takes a long time,
Speaker 2: but it can degrade over time. So you want to
Speaker 2: make sure if it's important, if it's security, if it's
Speaker 2: your bitcoin key, if whatever, you want to make sure
Speaker 2: that you're making sure that you copy that data. I
Speaker 2: would say at least every every one year.
Speaker 3: Also, be careful where you're storing your flash drives too,
Speaker 3: if you got them, don't leave them in the car
Speaker 3: where it might be, especially during the summer where it
Speaker 3: might get hot for us out here.
Speaker 1: You know that that's bad.
Speaker 3: You don't want to leave any technology, even your your
Speaker 3: dash cams.
Speaker 1: You want to pull pull off off.
Speaker 3: Your windshield if you can do that, especially in the
Speaker 3: summer heat.
Speaker 1: Definitely don't leave your kids in the car. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a given. That's that's totally technology.
Speaker 3: Or your kids in the car, Yeah, exactly, But you
Speaker 3: got to be careful where you keep them. You know
Speaker 3: you put them near magnets. You put them near other
Speaker 3: devices that can also be a pain. I think I've
Speaker 3: seen that before, where somebody had a flash drive on
Speaker 3: a file cabinet being held by a magnets.
Speaker 1: I've seen, I've seen. I've seen the old ones with
Speaker 1: people like put old floppy discs.
Speaker 2: That's I showed you guys that because I did it
Speaker 2: as a joke where I wrote system boot drive and
Speaker 2: stuck it with a hard drive magnet to this side
Speaker 2: of my desk.
Speaker 1: Hard Drive magnets are the best.
Speaker 3: I've been destroying and pulling apart hard drives and that's
Speaker 3: the best thing about him is getting the magnets.
Speaker 2: And one and one more tip. Don't plug your flash
Speaker 2: drive anywhere you don't want your data to be taken,
Speaker 2: Like if you don't want it, don't take in somebody
Speaker 2: else's computer plug it in unless you're you know them.
Speaker 2: Don't take it to the airport and plug it into something.
Speaker 2: It's like just like USB ports, right, you don't plug
Speaker 2: in unknown sources into your computer. Don't plug in flash
Speaker 2: drives you pick up off the street. But like, just
Speaker 2: be careful where you're plugging your USB sticks.
Speaker 1: Good point, Well, that could also go for just mail
Speaker 1: in general being a male in general. Good, yeah, sir, Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll be back with more of tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm justin
Speaker 1: Let me you can complain at Facebook dot com forward slash.
Speaker 1: Tech Talkers will be right back, Thank you, and now
Speaker 1: back to the tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 3: Well, I know that Sean has experimented with astral photography
Speaker 3: has introduced us into some really cool content. When it
Speaker 3: comes to you know, out of space and you've talked
Speaker 3: to uh I think you've talked, haven't you talked to.
Speaker 1: Some of the astronauts. You listen to the astronauts up
Speaker 1: on the space station.
Speaker 2: So I've done QSOs with the space station with other people.
Speaker 2: That's bouncing off. But the QSO is basically confirming, basically
Speaker 2: confirming a radio signal.
Speaker 1: Like amateur radio.
Speaker 2: When this when the space station goes over, there is
Speaker 2: a transceiver up there, so you can send send a
Speaker 2: VHF signal and receive a UHF signal. So I can
Speaker 2: with my ham radio talk and then other people can
Speaker 2: then talk back to me off off the repeater on
Speaker 2: the space station. This past weekend they had the abr
Speaker 2: L Field Day and they activated the space station. There
Speaker 2: were two astronauts on board. I don't remember what their
Speaker 2: names were, but they actually did activation. So you could
Speaker 2: actually contact and talk to one of the astronauts on
Speaker 2: the space station this past weekend during the field day.
Speaker 2: So didn't get just to do that, unfortunately. But you
Speaker 2: can actually see my antenna is sitting back there because
Speaker 2: I was trying to do it the other night. It
Speaker 2: is as it's a it's a seventy centimeter YAGY tuned
Speaker 2: for like right in the middle of that band. But
Speaker 2: it's incredible to fun. It's fun to do, and you know,
Speaker 2: through the university, we actually did a live chat with
Speaker 2: an astronaut in the space station. Because it was like
Speaker 2: three years ago. I think. Yeah, there's a whole program
Speaker 2: called the aris ar ISS. It's a whole program dedicated
Speaker 2: for education on the space station. They track it, they
Speaker 2: do they do contesting, and they do they schedule interviews
Speaker 2: and stuff with schools around the country on the world
Speaker 2: really but I still track it. I get notifications when
Speaker 2: it goes over. I can turn my radio on and
Speaker 2: hear it. The people talking on the repeaters and stuff.
Speaker 2: There's a whole community just around.
Speaker 3: But I I don't know if you saw this, Sean,
Speaker 3: and I know that you would be totally into this.
Speaker 3: This is cool because when there have been launches or
Speaker 3: you know, these events that have taken place, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of people tune in, a lot of people
Speaker 3: will check it out, people that maybe don't normally follow it.
Speaker 1: Netflix.
Speaker 3: There's been some kind of an announcement that NASA is
Speaker 3: going to be streaming on Netflix, that people are gonna
Speaker 3: be Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just I didn't. I didn't know about this. This
Speaker 2: is really cool though. Yeah. So NASA plus it's gonna
Speaker 2: be live programming will be available on Netflix.
Speaker 1: So yep, I'm curious if they'll hap uh.
Speaker 2: The article came out today. Ye, So NASA announced Monday
Speaker 2: it's latest plants the team up with the streaming service
Speaker 2: to bring space a little closer to home starting this summer.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be great, Okay, all right, sometime in
Speaker 1: the or two all right, yeah, all right, that'll.
Speaker 2: Be that'll be really cool. I mean, I there's a
Speaker 2: really great app called NSF Next Space Flight if you're
Speaker 2: interested in watching and tracking space flights. It tracks all
Speaker 2: of the major companies. Blue Origin, a couple companies out
Speaker 2: of New Zealand, China, India, the US SpaceX. Look you
Speaker 2: on your phone?
Speaker 1: So awesome?
Speaker 3: All right, listen, we had a lot to cover this
Speaker 3: week on this week's show. We'll have more next week,
Speaker 3: so definitely please tune in. As a reminder, to be
Speaker 3: sure to check out our YouTube page. You could sign
Speaker 3: up there. Check out some of the YouTube shorts that
Speaker 3: we put up from the show, as well as video
Speaker 3: content from our Fox eleven segments. Again, all of that
Speaker 3: on our YouTube YouTube dot com forward slash tech talk Radio.
Speaker 3: I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm justin
Speaker 3: Let me fight us on the web at tech talk
Speaker 3: radio dot com.
Speaker 1: Have yourselves a great week. We'll see you