Leo [00:00:00]:
Hey, Gary. How's it going?

Gary [00:00:01]:
Good. How are you, Leo?

Leo [00:00:03]:
Doing okay. Yeah. You know, it's the it's the pre Christmas, I wanna say, doldrums. There's just not a whole lot going on here other than, you know, it's raining. We're looking at another wet Christmas. So

Gary [00:00:14]:
so beat. Indeed. Well, there is actually, yeah, there's a lot going on kinda in the Apple world because of, you know, how Apple did things this year. It's, you know, with all the new OSes that came out, usually they come out in September or early October, and then that's it. You know, you get these minor, minor updates, but because of all the Apple intelligence stuff, and there was just no way they could deliver all of it in one big lump right there in September. They that meant that, the iOS the iOS 18 versions and the Mac OS 15 versions, the 0.1 and the 0.2 included lots of updates, lots of new features and things like that, so, so yeah, so it's been like this super cycle really.

Leo [00:01:01]:
Definitely not boring. Yeah.

Gary [00:01:02]:
Yeah, like every 4 weeks like dull new things to talk about, like it's, it's very different kind of thing, and we did in fact get, since we last did a show, the, the new versions, the point 2 versions of those operating systems, which included actually quite a bit of new AI features, in those operating systems. And a lot of those revolve around, image generation. Okay. On the Mac, there's a whole new app called Image Playground, which is basically like an image generator. You just type in a prompt of what you want, and it creates an image. But it's done the Apple way where, there are suggestions. You can, like, you know, it'll suggest things, and you could click on it like a forest or volcano or something like that. It also, also is linked deeply into your photo collection.

Gary [00:02:00]:
So what it does is it really encourages you to select the subject, and since the photos app already knows, like, there's you and there's your spouse and there's your kids and all that stuff, it'll, like, allow you to pick one of those. And, so you can get a subject and then make them look like a wizard or a lion tamer or, you know, whatever you wanna do.

Leo [00:02:18]:
So you can say you can say things like, create me a picture of Gary as a wizard.

Gary [00:02:23]:
Exactly. Wow. And and then keep adding bits to it. It's very, it's very easy for anybody to use, which, you know, really I mean, it's come a long way. I mean, 2 years ago, right, we were still going to what? Discord and entering in prompts through Discord to get midjourney. This is like, you know, it was this whole secret thing. It was like, oh, you know, normal people can't figure that out. And now we're to the point where there's this fun little app, you know, that that's not just on your Mac, but on your iPhone and your iPad, to allow you to create these images.

Gary [00:02:53]:
They are pretty sanitized images, you know. It's not gonna let you create something naughty or even something like with a gun in it or something like that.

Leo [00:03:02]:
Right.

Gary [00:03:03]:
It's going so it's, you know, trying to be playful and fun. There are only 2 styles, you know, we compare that to, like, something like Adobe's, Adobe's thing, Firefly, where there's, like, tons list of styles you can choose from. And this is you can just do cartoon or illustration. That's it. 2 different styles.

Leo [00:03:21]:
So no photo realistic?

Gary [00:03:23]:
No photo realistic. So Apple's avoiding the whole, like, oh, you can make people look like they're doing things they're not doing, you know, by just saying, this is always gonna look cartoony. Right? This is just a, you know, a fun thing to do. And, and and, you know, that actually kind of leads a lot of people to hating the feature. But I think the people that are hating the feature a lot are the, like, professionals. People that it's like, why are you even using this? You probably already used, like, Midjourney or DALL E or, you know, Adobe or something to generate images. This isn't for you. This is not your image generator.

Gary [00:04:00]:
You've got yours. And, you know, it it makes it makes very goofy, funny images, you know, of things. Very light, very pixar ish kind of look to it. So, yeah, it is and it kind of I've been surprised at the reaction. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised at the reaction where there's, you know, some people saying this is neat and other people just pouring hate onto it. And it's just like, yeah, you're not gonna the thing you want is something Apple's not going to make, you know, to make be able to make anything you want, you know, do you have those image generation, AI things, but, this is not what this is. This is like for everybody else, and you can use it. I I actually have a video where I talk about, like, different uses for it.

Gary [00:04:51]:
You know, you can use it for for work, you know, it but it depends on what you want. Like, if you're making a keynote presentation and you just think, oh, I should have a picture on the slide or something Mhmm. You can use this to make that picture without ever, you know, having to go to one of these other, image generation apps. Matter of fact, one thing that makes this unique is it's done on your device.

Leo [00:05:16]:
Right.

Gary [00:05:17]:
So this is not calling out the Internet, which makes it different than a lot of the others. The, so, yeah, you can generate things for presentations, you know, just do fun stuff, make icons, you know, for your, you know, avatars for social media or for, you know, whatever. Stuff like that is what it's really good at and what it kind of is made for. But but, yeah, you're always gonna get the people that want, like, super serious use. The same people that will complain that numbers looks too pretty and it should just look more professional like Excel or something like that. You know, it's just not made for those people.

Leo [00:05:57]:
That's funny.

Gary [00:05:59]:
Yeah. And so and there's actually so there are several different variations on it. So there's the image playground is a full app that's available Mac, iPhone, and iPad, but in addition to being a full app, you can access it in other apps. So for instance, if you're in messages and you wanna, you know, send somebody a message and you think it would be fun to attach a funny picture of them, you're like, hey, yeah, we're gonna have fun fun going out tonight, and then you could go into Image Playground and you could get a picture of them, make them into a cartoon with a party add on and, you know, like in a bar or something.

Leo [00:06:34]:
Right. Right. And then

Gary [00:06:34]:
you could send them that picture. Right? But you could also, in messages, you could hit the little, like, you know, attach button, and then one of the options, like in addition to attaching a file or a photo is like Image Playground, and then Image Playground comes up in a little interface in messages, and you could do all that without ever having to go to the app.

Leo [00:06:54]:
Oh, interesting.

Gary [00:06:55]:
So yeah. So so they're using it. It's like a system wide thing you can get to. But in addition to that, there's also, in the Notes app, only on the iPhone and iPad where you have a touchscreen, there's another variation called Image Wand, and Image Wand first makes you draw something with your either your finger on an iPhone or perhaps the Apple Pencil on, an iPad. So you can draw a sketch of something, and then you can take this wand tool, which is, like, right next to, like, there's pen, marker, eraser, you know, the usual stuff, and then wand, and you could circle the thing that you want it to focus on, and then it will generate an AI image from that. So you could draw like a snowman and then use Image Wand and your sketch of a snowman will turn into a full cartoon, like, high resolution snowman.

Leo [00:07:50]:
Wow.

Gary [00:07:51]:
And then you could add additional things, so you could say, oh, you know, like forest and suddenly the other trees around the snowman or, you know, something like that. So ImageWand is another really interesting tool that you could use. Unfortunately, not on the Mac because you don't really have the drawing tools there on the Mac. You only have those in the iPhone and iPad. And then a third variation is something called Genmoji, and whenever you evolve emoji, you always get certain a certain element online that will, you know, cry that they're useless. Why does why do why are, you know, why is Apple or Microsoft or anybody wasting time on emoji? Who uses these things etcetera etcetera. So this is a new feature where you can create your own emoji characters, and it's similar to Image Playground in that you can start with a, like, a person, like, oh, you know, myself or my spouse or something, and then you can, you know, add things to it like an expression or whatever, and it will generate a an emoji looking version of, say, yourself, you know, doing whatever it is, you know, holding, you know, thumbs up or whatever, you know. And you could also just pick from, like, oh, I just want a masculine character, you know, and then it will generate random ones.

Gary [00:09:06]:
Right. So you can just keep flipping through, and there'll be, like, all these random just characters that just will generate forever. And you could say you want them, you know, doing what? Holding a cup of tea, you know, whatever, and it'll generate emoji. But you could also generate objects, you know, you could you could say, you know, a tree and then get a different tree than the one emoji tree that everybody uses. Mhmm. That kind of thing, and and basically the technology there is similar except no background because it's an emoji, so it's kind of this object without a background, and then it's combined with a kind of an inline text thing where, obviously the emoji isn't something somebody has on their computer. So when you send it to them, what happens is it's basically doing inline imaging images in the text. So not in

Leo [00:09:51]:
the text,

Gary [00:09:51]:
inline images. So, yeah, imagine that, you know, it's it's got the encoded bits for the image in there, And, yeah, it has to be a fairly an app that's fairly robust enough to be able to hand handle that, which I'm

Leo [00:10:05]:
gonna say most most of the messaging apps that I'm familiar with, be it, you know, Facebook, WhatsApp, etcetera, they don't.

Gary [00:10:13]:
No. No. No. They're not gonna be able to

Leo [00:10:14]:
do You're limited to the unicode emojis. Yeah.

Gary [00:10:17]:
Yeah. At least not now, but I think, you know, this might push them all into doing that. Apple, of course, updated its stuff and then if you're if you're texting with somebody who doesn't have that, it's going to default to basically just being an image, like there's the image as as opposed to it being in line.

Leo [00:10:35]:
Right. Right. Yeah. There's just an image with it.

Gary [00:10:36]:
Still get it. Yeah. Yeah. So so it's kind of neat because certainly I've run into situations where I'm frustrated that there doesn't seem to be an emoji character for this thing I want to express or whatever, which is incredible considering there are so many. And and now I can just generate those. Matter of fact, I've even, I do a kind of a newsletter for the building I live in, and when I list events that are coming up, I've been using emoji characters next to the event, like if it's a, you know, an event at a bar, I might have a beer mug emoji next to it. You know, it's like instead of bullets, I've got a beer mug emoji or like a music emoji or picture or artist emoji. Well, there's several times I've run into situations where I can't find a good emoji to to, you know, represent that situation.

Gary [00:11:24]:
But now I can use this and I could do it and since it's a printed piece of paper, it doesn't matter for compatibility.

Leo [00:11:30]:
Exactly.

Gary [00:11:31]:
I could just put this in to my pages document which will use it as an inline image and then print it out and it's it saves me for having to go to a clip art site and find something that's close. But, again, you get people that are like, why, you know, more emoji. Great. That's just what we want. Meanwhile, they haven't fixed my insert favorite bug here, you know, kind of thing.

Leo [00:11:53]:
Yeah.

Gary [00:11:54]:
You know, and and it does it does make it I don't know. It makes me I just wish people could see it as, like, if it's not for you, it's not for you. That's fine. Like, a standard response I've got that I use a lot, when somebody complains about something, saying that this is useless or there are no good new features in this update, is I say, I'm sure that there's a feature that you use all the time that other people don't use at all. What does the same apply? Yep. Is that, is that useless because they don't use it? Certainly not because you use it. So consider that the opposite has to be true as well with all emoji and these image generation things and all of that.

Leo [00:12:35]:
I was just reviewing an article that I wrote some time ago. I can't think of the name real quick. But in it, I definitely talked about the, I don't even know what you wanna call it, but it's a there's a known fallacy that basically says if it's happening to me, it's happening to everybody. And that just is not the case. Be it, something bad or something you like or, you know, something that that isn't isn't working on your computer. Yes. You and I probably get this all the time. Somebody have a bug or something will fail on their machine.

Leo [00:13:06]:
And, oh, my god. You know, it's the worst thing ever, except it's happening only to them and maybe one other person in the on the entire planet. So

Gary [00:13:12]:
Yeah. I see it a lot when people just say, well, I guess I'm going to have to wait. You know, I've been waiting a while for Apple to fix this problem, like, in an update. Right. And I'm like, guess what? Nobody else is having that problem.

Leo [00:13:26]:
Right.

Gary [00:13:26]:
It's gotta be something to do with what you're doing, how you're doing it, an extension you have, something. Maybe that one file, have you tried it on another file? You know, that kind

Leo [00:13:35]:
of thing. Even be them. That's the thing. It may it may actually be a legitimate problem.

Gary [00:13:40]:
Yeah. But

Leo [00:13:40]:
the problem, of course, is that it's being experienced by so few people. Yes. A, it's not making it on the radar. It's not raise rising to the, priority level. And what I think a lot of people don't quite understand is that fixing a bug introduces risk. Yeah. Sometimes lots of risk. So it's a case where they really have to make a decision about, do I fix this one bug for a handful of people and risk putting in another bug that might affect a bunch of more people? Of course not.

Leo [00:14:11]:
We'll live with it. So

Gary [00:14:12]:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, yeah, it's a big picture problem. People have well, sometimes it's a big picture and sometimes it's a little picture problem. I mean, you have to see the big picture that they're all these people using the same maybe the same hardware, but in a different way Yep. Than you are. But also the little picture is don't assume that, you know, what what you're seeing is typical and that it's happening to everybody because it may not be.

Gary [00:14:42]:
It may be, but it may also not be. And in that case, the only way it's going to be fixed is for you to do something, which may actually be realizing there's 3 ways to do what you want. Stop doing it the way you're doing it Right. And doing it one of the 2 other ways.

Leo [00:14:57]:
Yep.

Gary [00:14:57]:
And there you go, problem solved. You never have to think about this again the rest of your life. But otherwise, you might just go for I know people that have gone for years just assuming that something's broken and I guess there's nothing I can do. But anyway, yeah. So so exciting features, but I challenge people to get excited about them because they're just they're fun. They're they're fun and they might be useful. I did get a few comments on the video, where I said here's 10 uses for Image Playground. For a few people said, I oh, yeah.

Gary [00:15:31]:
Reason number 8 didn't occur to me. Now I see, like, I might be able to use this.

Leo [00:15:36]:
Right.

Gary [00:15:36]:
It's like, yeah. You got you can't just I've seen people comment other places, like, on Reddit and stuff. It's like, I played with this for 5 minutes and deleted it. It's like, 5 minutes? Wow. I mean, you did not consider all the possibilities if all you did was play with it for 5 minutes. So I'm glad you're so sure that you'll never use this. And, of course, these are the people that will be asking, like, in 6 months. It's like, how do I I deleted this off my computer.

Gary [00:16:00]:
How can I get it now that I realized it does something I I

Leo [00:16:03]:
What I appreciate is that they said they only spent 5 minutes on it, which means I can completely disregard their opinion?

Gary [00:16:09]:
Yeah. Exactly. So so Yeah.

Leo [00:16:13]:
What else is going on?

Gary [00:16:15]:
Well, I I think, you know, the the biggest thing that's being talked about in the tech world right now, if in general, is the TikTok ban. Right? The looming TikTok ban.

Leo [00:16:26]:
Right.

Gary [00:16:26]:
We've got, I what pushed this forward was, you know, there was always this January 19th deadline, but it was in some high level court, and people, I guess, just assumed, they'll probably knock it back another, you know, 6 months or they'll rule out. And, no, the court said it can stand.

Leo [00:16:43]:
Right.

Gary [00:16:43]:
January 19th, it's dead. Right? And, so it's interesting. If you if you do are on TikTok, you get lots of people, talking about it. A lot of a lot of creators I see are really pushing their like, by the way, you could find me at YouTube.

Leo [00:16:58]:
Just in case.

Gary [00:16:59]:
You may wanna subscribe to me at YouTube now. Right? There's that. There's also a lot of people talking about, you know, like, what you could do to, you know, all this stuff. It's it's interesting because one of the things I have not been able to figure out for for sure is what will happen on January 19th? Because one, the the the the lowest level of it is that the app is removed from the 2 big app stores from the, Apple 1 and the Google Play Store. That's that I can definitely see is happening because numerous reports have said that the US government has told both those companies that they need to do this. In the past

Leo [00:17:43]:
That could be it.

Gary [00:17:44]:
That could be it. That could be it. Happens. Yep. Yeah. In the past, we've had apps that the government has said it had to be removed, but they never went to the trouble of telling the companies. They just issued, like, legal, like, here's what it is. It's banned or whatever.

Leo [00:17:56]:
Right.

Gary [00:17:57]:
And it's been up to the companies to basically try to interpret that. Like, what do we do? What do we need to do on that date and all this? Here, they've said, yeah. You don't need to figure that out. We're telling you it has to be out of your stores. Now if that's the case, if that's all that happens for the vast majority of people using TikTok, nothing's gonna happen on January 19th. You already have the app. Right. New people won't be able to get the app, and, of course, the app won't update.

Gary [00:18:24]:
If you go with the theory that the ban will be temporary as administrations change, then you really nothing's gonna happen. The ban will be a big nothing. It'll be like 1 or 2 days, maybe a week where you can't get, get it. They may have a bug fix that they wanna push out, but they have to delay it by a couple days, but otherwise it won't be a big deal. However, there are other reports that say that's not true at all, that the app will actually just stop working on the 19th, and there's one big thing that verifies that, and that is the fact that TikTok itself in appealing to the supreme court has said that they need an answer by, I think it's, like, January 7th or something because if they need to start, you know, like blocking the United States, if they need to start actually, like, shutting down services, doing putting things in in line for that, like more than a week in advance. Now that makes me think, oh, they really are going to, like, on January 19th. Like, you you go to your TikTok app and then there's a message there that says, sorry. You know, unable to contact server or, you know, we are down while things are worked out, that kind of thing.

Leo [00:19:42]:
Right.

Gary [00:19:42]:
But we don't know, and and there's still a chance that, you know, there is an easy, like, the current administration can actually say, hey, let's push this back 90 days. And there also is the thing of, like, what happens when the new administration comes in because there's mixed signals there too. There's been definitely a statement saying that the ban would be reversed, and there's definitely been a, well, we don't know. So we've getting completely mixed signals over one

Leo [00:20:12]:
There's actually one more scenario that I ran into just yesterday. Somebody was claiming that, unless you turn off a feature on your Android phone that removes harmful

Gary [00:20:26]:
apps.

Leo [00:20:27]:
Mhmm. That that feature will be instructed to remove literally remove TikTok from your device.

Gary [00:20:33]:
Interesting.

Leo [00:20:34]:
They were advocating turning that off, which of course, lowers lowers everybody's security because now all of a sudden, you know, known bad apps could potentially get installed. But I just I that made me wonder exactly what's the what's really going to happen here. And as we said, the from one extreme to another, it could be nothing. It could be, the network stops working. Right? And, it could be that the, the app is is actually prevented from even firing up anymore.

Gary [00:21:01]:
Yeah. It's, it's a lot of confusion, which TikTok probably likes because if we were sure what was going to happen, then you would have all these articles out there starting about now saying, here's what you need to do to move to YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels or whatever. But because there's confusion about it, the the, you know, the people that post those kinds of articles and things haven't really said much yet because they don't know

Leo [00:21:25]:
Right.

Gary [00:21:25]:
What's going to happen. It's it's a very interesting situation. And even if they do that thing like you were saying, because Apple's got that too, they have a kill switch for, for, you know, harmful apps. Even if they do that and you switch that off, well, what's TikTok gonna be? Because, you know, 99% are not going to do that. They're not gonna know to do that. They're not gonna read that article or whatever. So all of a sudden, you know, if you're a creator and you're used to getting, you know, 100,000 views on your on your latest video, now you're gonna get, like, 75 views. And if you're somebody who wants to, like, watch, you're gonna notice that there's nothing new, you know.

Gary [00:22:01]:
So, yeah, it it's it's a weird situation where we don't know what's going to happen. I do think

Leo [00:22:06]:
the creators are correct in the sense that, they need to be preparing their own plan b. Yeah. There's just too much risk. My biggest concern for most of the creators, the ones that, you know, there are creators I care about that I know are making money on TikTok, and it takes a while to get there. And it really takes a while to get there on other platforms.

Gary [00:22:28]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:22:28]:
So they're basically having to reset their financial expectations as well.

Gary [00:22:32]:
Yeah. They don't know they don't know if I mean, the range of things could be this has no impact because it's delayed, and then then the band is reversed, or it has complete total impact because it shut down, and they aren't able to get traction anytime soon on any of the other platforms.

Leo [00:22:49]:
Exactly.

Gary [00:22:49]:
It's probably super scary for them. Certainly something creators on all you know, it's not like YouTube creators don't go through that all the time, and, you know, creators on Instagram as well.

Leo [00:23:01]:
Every algorithm change is kinda scary.

Gary [00:23:02]:
Every algorithms change, people get banned, shut down for confusing odd reasons. Not just that, but even places like Etsy, you know, eBay, I mean people that have built businesses on these platforms and there are so many various ways to get shut down, for lots of reasons and sometimes completely wrong, like you didn't do anything wrong and you get shut down. And it's, it's tough it's tough to build a business around somebody else's platform. So it's gonna be I don't know. We got this weird situation with the change of the administrations and how how this is all working. And then, you know, there's the whole other factor of the most people don't even understand why the ban is happening because

Leo [00:23:48]:
I'm sure don't understand or they don't agree with a line, right, with what's being said.

Gary [00:23:53]:
Right. Well but there's a ton of people out there based on comments that think it's being done because it's like, oh, social media is bad for you. You know, it's like the government is stepping in. You know, it's, you know, not this, oh, Chinese government ties to an app and all this stuff, and then there are people that that get it, you know, it's like, oh, okay. So it's okay for Facebook to know everything about you because they're not they're not Chinese.

Leo [00:24:17]:
They're not Chinese, exactly.

Gary [00:24:19]:
But TikTok, who knows far less about you except basically what you like to watch, yeah, they they're they're not allowed. So it's the kind of thing where it's like if you are up in arms about, like, yeah, privacy, let's not have this company have it so much information about us. Consider the fact that this just shuts down one company, and it's definitely not the biggest threat in terms of privacy by far. It's just that there's a foreign government attached to that. That's a little funny

Leo [00:24:45]:
if there's believe the foreign government or the even the same company has other apps, and those other apps are not being banned. So

Gary [00:24:54]:
yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I know.

Leo [00:24:56]:
It's funny. One of the things that I thought of as we were as I was preparing for this was the comment or the the quote from, it's from Ghostbusters, actually. It's fairly lengthy. I've got it in the show notes, but it's basically, you know, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. And that's kinda sort of what it feels like. I mean, the the it's, you know, on 20th, which I think is a very interesting day just in and of itself since that's inauguration day. There could be a lot of TikTokers running around with their hands in the air going, oh my gosh. Mass hysteria.

Gary [00:25:30]:
Yep. Yeah. Well, so interesting times ahead. Yeah. We'll have to see if by our next show after the holidays here Right. You know, if anything's changed or if the mass hysteria is building. And then, of course, there's tons of people that don't use TikTok at all, don't even know, you know No.

Leo [00:25:50]:
No. Don't care.

Gary [00:25:50]:
Never have seen it. Don't care. But yeah. I mean, there are but, you know, that doesn't change the fact there are millions of people in the US that do. So, yeah, it's just just because you don't use it directly doesn't mean it won't affect, you know, kind of society in general. So I have we'll have to see what see what happens.

Leo [00:26:09]:
Let's let's

Gary [00:26:10]:
Interesting stuff.

Gary [00:26:11]:
Let's flip into the next I mean, the the, the next one, the controversy or the conspiracy one that I added because this is something that I think dovetails with some of the things we've been talking about already today. One of the reasons I threw this on our little agenda here is because I have reposted updated and reposted an article just I think it was last week about why does Google and Microsoft and a few other services, why do they require that you provide them with a phone number? And in fact, in most cases, that's not just a phone number. It has to be a phone number capable of receiving SMS text messages, which, you know, those those that requirement basically annoys a lot of people and actually leaves a number of people out, because they don't have a phone that's capable of text messaging nor do they want one. So that kind of sort of left out in the cold. But it's it's funny because one of the things that, I have just noted in reviewing the comments, especially the comments on the YouTube video, is the amount of mistrust and conspiracy thinking, that is out there. There are way more people than I actually would have expected who are absolutely convinced the reason these services are asking for a phone number is data harvesting and tracking. And that's the only reason. It has nothing to do with their purported statement about it being about account recovery or anything like that.

Gary [00:27:54]:
It's all about some evil plot in the back end to collect your data or track your motion or your movements. So there's a couple of things I find ironic about that is that they don't need your phone number to do that. Right? Especially if you're using one of their devices, an Android phone, for example, Google already knows pretty much everything about where you're at and what you're doing. But the other thing, and it dawned on me there actually was another reason that phone numbers could be required, and that is to slow down the number of fake accounts being created because you can automate creating fake accounts with email addresses as recovery, but not so much with telephone numbers because telephone numbers are a scarce resource, and you need to be able to, specify a unique one for each account. But like I said, it's just just so frustrating to see this level of conspiracy, thinking going on. And I gotta say, I just you know, I've been doing this now for 20 plus years. And I swear, if there were one thing that would cause me to just walk away from it all, it's just having to, listen to because I don't I don't react. But I I I mean, I don't respond.

Leo [00:29:15]:
But just having to read this kind of stuff over and over and over again, it really makes me, kind of sad for the people that believe this. And honestly, I get that it's a societal problem. I mean, I'm not saying that you know, Google and Microsoft and all these other companies are, you know, are all wonderful, wonderful players. You know, they they could be doing one hell of a lot more to establish trust with their customers. But the fact that these folks are just jumping to these wild extremes just really bothers me, and it really wears me down. And I'm sure you're seeing it too.

Gary [00:29:56]:
Yeah. I mean, like, just this week, just as an example, there was, there's a this thing where, I guess, on on TikTok and other places, people are are telling you to turn off AirDrop on your iPhone because it can be used to, basically steal your credit cards. Right? You've got your credit cards on your phone, as part of Apple Pay, for instance, and the idea is what they're saying is, oh, you can you can, some bad actor could basically walk by you and then, steal, like, all the credit cards. And the, it's, of course, totally not true. That would be ridiculous if that's you know, that that information is even that airdrop where you can basically choose to say, here, I'm gonna send you this photo. I'm gonna send you this file that that could actually be, used to act first of all, it can't be used to pull anything from you. Right? And second of all, the the fact that your credit card information would somehow there would be multiple walls up between all that. But yet, that persisted without any kind of like, oh, here's, you know, it's oh, it works like this.

Gary [00:31:04]:
This is what's happening. It was just basically, oh, people can steal this from you. Here's what you need to do to turn off airdrop.

Leo [00:31:10]:
Yep.

Gary [00:31:11]:
And it's just persistent and, people are posting about it. People are not tech people. Like, these are they're not like, oh, here I am, tech guru, 10 years of this. Let me tell you how why I need to turn this off. No. It's just normal people that are like, oh, I wanna take a break from the my latest recipe or a cool thing that I found at the thrift store or whatever, and I'm gonna tell you about how why you should turn this off. And it's kind of, it's kinda ridiculous, and it creates it does create paranoia, and all of this. And, it's Yeah.

Gary [00:31:43]:
And it's disturbing.

Leo [00:31:44]:
Goes back to the whole social media issue of of clickbait and ragebait and so forth. The thing that happens to people that make these kind of claims, and we see it in other industries as well, is they get views. They get lots of views no matter how wrong.

Gary [00:32:00]:
Exactly. That's why they're there. Yeah. They don't care if they're true or not.

Leo [00:32:03]:
One of the things that I have I said earlier that I don't engage or I don't respond. Honestly, a couple of times I do. It depends on my perception of the commenter. But sometimes I will respond by saying, I would love to see some proof. Yeah. And honestly, I would. I would absolutely love to see here's proof that this and this is happening. Here's proof that the credit cards are being stolen from your Apple phone using Airdrop.

Gary [00:32:35]:
Mhmm.

Leo [00:32:35]:
Here's how like I said, here's how it's happening. But silence. Soon as you ask the question, they either come back with silence or just research it yourself. No. No. No. No. No.

Leo [00:32:46]:
People who are making extraordinary claims are responsible for produce you know, are responsible for producing this, and this is definitely an extraordinary

Gary [00:32:55]:
claim. Right. So Exactly. Yes. Yeah. You cannot go and say, do your you know, do research. No. You have if you're the one making the claim, then you need to You can provide the proof.

Gary [00:33:06]:
Yep. The, and it goes in all sorts of different directions. Another, and sometimes I could see these things kind of almost getting born, and a a example from this week is, somebody posted somewhere, I think it was, might have been to Reddit, and, about a feature on the iPhone where you could it's a security feature. You can go in, and you could set your iPhone to erase itself after 10 failed passcode attempts. K. So you try to enter in 10 in a row, wrong, and the phone, if this is turned on, will just erase itself as a security measure. It doesn't completely to say, it doesn't brick the phone. You can get the phone back and you could restore it from your Icloud backup for instance, but, it will there there'll be no data on the phone anymore.

Gary [00:33:57]:
It'll be wiped. Now seems like a good security feature, and I think the original poster was in fact saying you gotta turn this on. But there was pushback, and the pushback was because somebody spotted, and not somebody, a lot of people spotted what they think is a big flaw in this. Can you guess what the flaw that they they thought is, like, why you should never turn this on? Any ideas?

Leo [00:34:20]:
I I can only think of 2. Okay. 1, button presses in your pocket. Yeah. And 2, a a a quote unquote friend who gets their hands on your phone Yeah. Exactly.

Gary [00:34:32]:
Exactly. Or or a lot of people were saying a kid. Oh, my kid my kid will get the handle on my phone, and just for fun, they'll just enter numbers in and lock out. Now amazingly or not amazingly, Apple's thought of this, and there's a very simple way to protect against that. After 6 of those 10 attempts Uh-huh. You're locked out for a minute. You can't do attempt 7 for a minute.

Leo [00:34:58]:
Okay.

Gary [00:34:58]:
If if you still do it wrong, attempt 8, I think is I forget if it's 5 or 10 or 15 minutes or whatever.

Leo [00:35:05]:
Excellent.

Gary [00:35:05]:
The temp between attempts 9 and 10 is an hour. Excellent. Okay. Perfect. Well executed. Right? So the kid getting your hand on their phone on your phone yeah. It's not or, you know, whatever. It has to be out of your hands for more than an hour.

Gary [00:35:22]:
An hour Over an hour. Yeah. Yeah. For somebody to do this, in which case if somebody is trying to get into your phone and is that persistent and you don't have the phone anymore, you want to you want it to be erased. But despite the fact that people were saying, no. It it actually works like this. There's these lockout times. The last one is an hour.

Gary [00:35:41]:
So your kid getting hold of your phone is not a concern. Despite that, further down, somebody says, I can't do this because I have a kid. They might accidentally trigger this. And then somebody says, no, they can't because of this. Further down, a friend of mine may may try to play a joke on me and, you know, and it's just over and over and over again. And eventually, the overwhelming tide of people saying that a friend or a kid or in their pocket or whatever will lock them out just became too overwhelming. And the people that were saying, no. The Apple's thought of that just stopped responding.

Gary [00:36:20]:
Right. Yep. And It

Leo [00:36:21]:
just came to the

Gary [00:36:22]:
end of the month. Yeah. Yeah. So now you could see like, I could see the next step probably has already happened. I don't monitor all social media, but there's probably already been several people that have posted, do not turn this feature on on your iPhone because because of this. And, yeah, it's almost like the beginnings of one of these conspiracy theories, how information can be misinterpreted or ignored, in order to to, you know because you're not going to get as many if you say, do not turn this feature on on your iPhone, you may erase all your data, we'll get more clicks than a here's a handy security feature you should turn on on your iPhone.

Leo [00:37:03]:
Right.

Gary [00:37:03]:
So yeah. Yep. So why why do do the one that'll get you the more interaction.

Leo [00:37:09]:
Yep. Absolutely. Mhmm. It's it's unfortunate that that's the way that it's happening, but that's the way that it's happening.

Gary [00:37:17]:
Yep. So I I I did have one more thing I wanted to talk about, which would take us away from all of this, social media, AI Yay. Security stuff completely because, you know, tech is is more than just that. It's this cool little article I saw in in our local newspaper here in Colorado, about a really cool power supply thing. The idea is that to supply power to an area like a town or even a city, to instead of having a power plant that's burning coal or natural gas or nuclear or whatever, or having solar, a solar farm, which is not in the city because there's not room for it, and it has these power transmission lines that have to go from the solar farm into the city. This one company thinks it may actually work out if there's solar farms out in the country, and those solar farms charge up huge batteries, train car sized batteries. And then once the batteries are charged up, the train then takes them into town where the batteries are hooked up at a power station.

Leo [00:38:30]:
Interesting.

Gary [00:38:31]:
And then the batteries are drained into the grid. The idea is that, yeah, it would be nice to actually have a solar farm out in the country and have power lines coming in, but it's not always possible, especially in situations where you need this to deal with power, like, extreme power use, like, on certain days.

Leo [00:38:53]:
Right.

Gary [00:38:54]:
When there's more power use or when, like, say, if a station needs to be shut down for some reason for a couple days for maintenance, or maybe it's just a hot hot few days in the summer. Right. You know, that kind of thing. Having transmission lines that are basically cost effective only when they're always being used, might not make sense, but actually having, batteries and the train move the batteries actually makes more sense. And they're going to test it out here in Colorado, at some point, probably next year, I think. It's an interesting thing.

Leo [00:39:28]:
The question that comes immediately to mind for me being the electrical engineer that I'm in Mhmm. Is there is, transmission loss. Yes. When you send power across these high voltage lines, especially in its, you know, proportional to distance. I'm wondering how that compares with any inherent loss. To the, battery storage technique.

Gary [00:39:51]:
Yeah. That's one factor. I mean, they seem convinced that this is far more efficient

Leo [00:39:56]:
Yeah.

Gary [00:39:56]:
Cool. Any other way. And it's interesting also because you may think, well, how's the train gonna operate? And initially, the train's just gonna be a normal diesel train. But it turns out that the amount of diesel power needed to transport these batteries along rail lines, isn't isn't that big a deal. Like you're still saving a lot, but if the tests are successful, and this becomes something that's adapted in many places, that event the idea would be to actually use electric train engines. Of course. You've got at the initial station, you've got power from the solar panels, so you can charge up the the electric chains and, you know, power source. And then the the same solar that is being put in the batteries can be put into the train itself and then making it not only efficient but carbon free.

Leo [00:40:48]:
Well, that and and the the train's pulling a bunch of batteries.

Gary [00:40:52]:
Yeah. It could Oh, yeah.

Leo [00:40:53]:
One of the batteries. Yeah.

Gary [00:40:55]:
You take one of the batteries. And and there. Yeah. So, anyway, it's it's it's really a a fascinating, thing to to just keep our eye on. So I'll have a link to that article. I'd love to see just innovative uses, and sometimes the it it doesn't seem logical at first to put batteries on a train and and move them into position, but it, it does. And and also cool thing about it that it uses is the fact that so many power stations have train lines going to them because of the coal. So the idea is that they don't have to build train lines for this.

Leo [00:41:29]:
Right.

Gary [00:41:29]:
They could already take the train to the power station. There's already equipment there to hook these batteries up to the grid. So a lot of the infrastructure that you think you would need for this to build is just already there as a matter of, like, how these power stations have been operating all along.

Leo [00:41:49]:
On a slightly related note, one of the I think I mentioned a while back, one of the YouTube channels that I like to zone out from zone out to from time to time is one called CabView Holland. It's basically, a, a train engineer, a, who takes I don't know if it's a GoPro or some other camera, sticks it, you know, in the cab pointing forward and then just records the various trips around the country. It's actually, like I said, both both beautiful and, somehow very therapeutic.

Gary [00:42:19]:
I could definitely see that. Yeah.

Leo [00:42:20]:
Yeah. But, it just highlights the fact that, well, yes, all of their trains are electric. And the way they did that was by stringing a single wire across the top of the train track. That's where it gets its power from. And, that seems like, I mean, I absolutely. The distances are dramatically different here. I get that.

Gary [00:42:45]:
Mhmm.

Leo [00:42:46]:
But it does seem like one of the I don't want to call it least expensive ways, but it does seem like something that could be an effective approach to electrifying even the trains that you're talking about. All they really need to do, as I understand it, is, you know, have that one wire powered across the entire line.

Gary [00:43:07]:
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, trolleys. Right? Yes. So the trolley is in the city. And the funny the you know, the weird thing is is I live in one of these cities. I don't know if Seattle's like this, but Denver certainly was one of those cities that a 100 years ago I don't know.

Gary [00:43:23]:
Maybe a 100 yeah. Maybe a 100 years ago had a an intricate trolley public transportation system that was electric. Yep. And and, you know, people are amazed when they see pictures of this or or maps of how extensive this was, and it was, like, none of it's here. We actually got to a point, I think I think it was dismantled in the fifties, And then we spent decades with no electric public transportation. And then in the nineties, started going to some light rail lines, and the light rail lines have expanded, and that's electric. But it's interesting, you know, that there was this gap. And even today, these most of the stuff that these trolleys did has now been replaced by buses that run on gasoline and, not electric.

Gary [00:44:10]:
So, you know, it's the local, the small local stuff that used to be handled by trolleys, And, of course, there's a lot of people today who says, why don't we bring this back? Why don't we have trolley lines back? You know, we could the thing just in terms of the emissions, not having these buses. Yeah.

Leo [00:44:26]:
So Seattle has light rail. They've been working on it for, well, they've been working on it for decades. They've been physically implementing it for something less than that. And the answer is very simple. The costs have skyrocketed.

Gary [00:44:39]:
Oh, yeah.

Leo [00:44:39]:
There's it's so expensive to put in, you know, to put a new rail line somewhere. It's funny. Like you said, Seattle, too, had extensive trolley lines throughout the city. There's the old pictures, and there's one preserved at one of our historical societies and so forth. There is even a place in Seattle that is a steep hill

Gary [00:45:04]:
Mhmm.

Leo [00:45:04]:
That is referred to as the counterbalance. Because under the street, there is a large heavy thing that was the counterbalance that would help the trolleys go up that Hill. So they would clamp onto a cable and the counterbalance would go down. They'd go up, and the reverse would happen the other way. Yeah. It's really sad. What I understand now, this might be me falling into conspiracy theory territory.

Gary [00:45:36]:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I know what you're going to say.

Leo [00:45:38]:
Yeah. My understanding was it was the tire companies that, basically lobbied very hard, to replace all of these trolleys with buses that would need tires.

Gary [00:45:51]:
Yeah. But I've heard the tires tire companies. I've heard the automobile companies, and I've heard the, the oil companies, of course Yep. Yep. Or some combination thereof, to basically get those all gone so that everybody would have to buy cars and then, use tires, gasoline, and all of that. So I yeah. I don't know. It's probably you know, the truth is probably somewhere Yeah.

Gary [00:46:14]:
Like, you know, the the those companies probably definitely encouraged encouraged it, and there was probably a lot of other things going on. So, yeah, it's a kind of a shame. And, you know, Denver at least, you know, it's funny because things keep changing because now we have a pretty extensive, you know, e bike and e scooter, system where there are competing companies with tons of scooters and ebikes everywhere. Those are all of course electric and, a half electric half manpowered. Well, the bikes are half manpowered. I guess the scooters are all electric, but it's interesting to see those, develop and, as, like, yet the next the next iteration of, like, getting how to get around in the city, plus all the bike lanes too. We you know, we've been approving bike lanes as most

Leo [00:47:03]:
Just gonna say that I mean, obviously, talking about the Netherlands, that's the one thing that everybody thinks of right away, and it's very, very true. The Netherlands is designed for bicycles now, and it's a major major component of, of certainly in city travel and in some cases, even intracity travels.

Gary [00:47:22]:
Yep.

Leo [00:47:23]:
So, you know, I mentioned this one thing I like to zone out to on YouTube, which leads me wonderfully to the ain't it cool that I basically came up with this week. Yeah. It's a YouTube channel called calmed by nature. It basically features, gosh, 8 12 hour videos, with, you know, a pleasant a pleasant view on the screen playing what essentially boils down to lofi jazz or as what I was listening to earlier today, lofi Christmas music and jazz style. And you've probably heard of lo fi. That seems to be something

Gary [00:48:02]:
Oh, definitely.

Leo [00:48:03]:
Picked up dramatically in the past couple of years. And in fact, there's a YouTube channel I also pay attention to from time to time called lo fi girl, who I think has probably been around the longest. But these channels, it's just pleasant music with, you know, a pleasant thing on your screen. It's been wonderful to have it running, for example, while I'm working. You have some nice background music. It's not grabbing my attention, but it's also very calming, and it's not quiet. So, anyway, the YouTube channel, obviously, there's a link in the show notes, but it's calmed by nature. And there are other channels like this as well.

Gary [00:48:40]:
Cool. I have been enjoying, my wife and I have been enjoying, nothing it's not new, but it's a a show, long running show, in Britain, and it's on BritBox here in the US called Death in Paradise, and it's a a detective show. Very, you know, in some ways, a very typical detective show, you know, where it's a a detective working for with, you know, for the police, has murders to solve every week, and, and then these always end up in a the last 10 minutes are always gather all the suspects, and then he reveals Right. What actually happened based on all the clues that he's discovered through the show. And, actually, this show has at least, I believe, 3 different main detectives because the first two season was one actor playing the the main detective. But I guess the show was successful enough that even though he left the show, they decided to continue it. So so somebody else comes in. It takes place on a fictional island in the Caribbean that is somehow still controlled by Britain.

Gary [00:49:46]:
So for this position of chief inspector or whatever is fulfilled by some agency in Britain and sends somebody there to to fill that position. So it all takes place on these, you know, beaches and resorts and towns in this fictional Caribbean island. And it's a lot of humor, but it's definitely it's one of those It's so satisfying just to have a a kind of a no nonsense. There's a murder. There's suspects. There are clues. What you know, it seems impossible to solve, and then the detective sees one thing and says, ah, I've got it. Gather everybody together.

Gary [00:50:24]:
And then the whole thing is, like, shown. It's like, this is what actually happened, and this is the guilty person. So it's a lot of fun to watch. Plus, of course, if you like British shows like I do, it's just like every other British show. Every episode is a guest the like, where where else have I seen that actor? Because there's tons of guest actors in every show. So for me, it for my wife, it's like, what other show is what other British movie has that been in? And for me, it's like, what episode of doctor who was this person on?

Leo [00:50:51]:
It's funny because someone. Yeah. So my wife has been has, I think she's fully up to date on it. She's been basically she binged it over the course of a few months. And, I watched the first couple of episodes and had that exact same reactions like that first detective. I've seen him somewhere. I've seen him in multiple. So this is another case of, watch with IMDB in in hand.

Gary [00:51:15]:
Oh, yeah. IMDB or just chat GPT and ask them. So yeah. Good good, fun show if you like to, if you like detect no nonsense detector shows.

Leo [00:51:25]:
And confirm. In terms of self promotion, I'm going to just link to the article I talked about earlier that was setting off alarm bells for so many, you know, conspiratorial alarm bells for people. Why do services like Google and Microsoft ask for a phone number? It's askleo.com/3648. And yeah. Read the article, watch the video, and then read the you know, go for a ride in the comments. It's crazy.

Gary [00:51:54]:
Yep. And I'll link to the video I mentioned earlier called 10 creative uses for Apple Intelligence Image Playground, that came out a few days ago.

Leo [00:52:03]:
Excellent. I need to look at that too because it's just good ideas on how to use these things.

Gary [00:52:07]:
Yep.

Leo [00:52:08]:
Alrighty. Well, that wraps us up for today. And given that this is we are recording this the week before Thanksgiving

Gary [00:52:15]:
Christmas.

Leo [00:52:16]:
I'm sorry. Christmas. Wow.

Gary [00:52:17]:
You might be recording the week before Thanksgiving. I'm recording the week before thing before Christmas. But, yes, we are we are,

Leo [00:52:23]:
You bet you are much further apart than I thought. So, yes, given that this is the week before Christmas, we won't be recording next week, and then it'll be New Year's. We won't be recording next week. So we will be recording again in the new year. Yep. With all that, on behalf of both of us, we wish you very happy holidays and a very, very happy new year. Indeed. And we'll see you again here next year.

Leo [00:52:46]:
Take care, everyone.

Gary [00:52:47]:
Bye bye. Bye.