In This Episode: Pretend voices for good or evil. VOIP can do anything.
This week the TEH Podcast is hosted by Leo Notenboom, the “Chief Question Answerer” at Ask Leo!, and Gary Rosenzweig, the host and producer of MacMost, and mobile game developer at Clever Media.
Our guest is … a virtual Randy
(You’ll find longer Bios on the Hosts page.)
Top Stories
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- LN: Audio synthesis… making pretend voices
- 2:00 Using https://beta.elevenlabs.io/ – Playing some samples of virtual voice.
- 5:40 Audio deep fake is trivially easy
- 8:00 banking software
- Sound passwords come over POTS – Plain Old Telephone System lines
- 11:30 GR – Content creation possibilities
- Easier audio setup
- 13:25 Speaking clearly
- 15:00 Other voices
- 20:00 Redo – virtual voice overs
- 21:00 If you can’t speak
- 25:00 GR: Moving a Landline
- Google fiber makes VOIP possible
- 28:00 Porting your number. Easier than expected
- 33:00 So many configurations
- 34:00 number of phones in the house
- 36:00 Vonage
- 45:00 Google number
- https://voip.ms
- https://www.grandstream.com/products/gateways-and-atas/analog-telephone-adaptors/product/ht802
- 48:00 LN: Massive external drive
- 51:00 GR: 22 Terabytes!!!
- LN: Audio synthesis… making pretend voices
Ain’t it Cool
- 52:00 LN: Picard. Mandalorian. The Last Of Us. Carnival Row.
- 54:00 GR: Off Satellite TV. YouTube TV… testing.
- 1:00:00 Buffy the vampire slayer
BSP: Blatant Self-Promotion
- 1:04:00 LN: My free resources page, where my most important book – The Ask Leo! Guide to Staying Safe Online – was updated while we were out.
- 1:05:06 GR: Avoid This Mistake When Emailing Images
One use for that is to record an actor’s voice and have them read e-books to you. You can record James Earl Jones and have Darth Vader read to you,
Depending on who’s doing it, the legalities might get … interesting.
We moved from POTS to Comcast voice many years ago (20?) when it became available. After doing that we realized how easy it was, we switched to Vonage, saving a little more a month with their low monthly fee. Then we switched to MagicJack saving considerably more, since their’s is just a low annual fee. And while MagicJack is a USB adapter, it doesn’t need to be plugged into a computer. We just had our plugged into a regular USB charger.
Our last change was back in 2018, when we ordered an Obihai OBi200 VoIP SIP box and ported our home number to Google Voice. Of course, Google doesn’t make it easy and only allows porting from cellular numbers. So we first ported to an old prepaid cellular phone we had, and then to Google Voice. Now our home phone has a $0 annual fee, since all Google Voice calls are free (for the most part). We do pay approximately $25 per year for an Anveo.com account that gives us E911 support. The Obihai box has direct support for Google Voice accounts and Anveo accounts, making it extremely easy to set up.
At this point, there’s not much reason to eliminate our “home” phone, since it is essentially free. We still almost never use it. But it’s kind of nice to still have that phone hanging on the wall.