Leo [00:00:23]: Hey, Gary. How's it going? Gary [00:00:25]: Okay. Pretty good. How are you? Leo [00:00:27]: You sound good. Gary [00:00:29]: Yeah. So, last episode, I switched to using the Apple Studio Display microphones, which are great by the way, but they're not, like right up at my mouth. Right? So Exactly. They are on the screen and they and they're really good for like video conferencing and stuff. And, I just was trying to to make it more, I don't know, casual and not have this headset on which you can't see but it's a full headset to your you know pads over my ears a an arm coming down on the microphone and it's what I usually use for the show and for anything kinda like this But I decided, well, maybe it doesn't make any difference anymore, with, you know, how good microphones are and Zoom is with noise canceling and all that. So we tried it, but, at least one, one person was bothered by it. Leo [00:01:17]: I think we actually had two pieces of feedback on it, which surprised me, you know. So yeah. So it Gary [00:01:23]: and and the funny thing is, here's the thing, the headset I'm wearing is a Plantronics headset that I bought in 1926 Leo [00:01:34]: years old. Gary [00:01:35]: And it's it's so old. First of all, it's USB one. Right. Okay? Because that was all there was. It is so old that the makers of it did not yet realize, because I think it was the first headset that Plantronics or maybe almost any headset company had made that had USB on the end. In other words, it's doing the digital conversion inside either the headphones or the cable, and it's going right to USBs. And this was, like, not the norm back then. The norm was you still had audio jacks, and then you would get an adapter that would translate it to USB. Gary [00:02:11]: So they did it, and they didn't realize or didn't care that there should be a name attached in inside the device. Like when you plug in, you know, your ABC headset or ABC microphone, it comes up as ABC microphone or whatever, and you see it with that name, and that's embedded there in the hardware. This one comes up as unknown USB device, and it's the only thing I've got that's ever done that. It's be probably because engineers were like, here's the spec'd USB. Let's figure this out, And they did it, and they just ignored the part where it says you could optionally put the name here. So, yeah, my unknown USB device is a Plantronics headset that is excellent. And at the time I bought it because I was like, Plantronics, they make the headsets for the space shuttle. I mean, that was literally why I bought it. Gary [00:02:59]: It was like the headsets that you see the astronauts wearing are Plantronics headsets. I was like, well, I can't do any better than that. So I bought it and over the years I've said there's gotta be something better. Years have gone by and I have a little graveyard of headsets I bought that while have looked really good and it's supposed to be, you know, state of the art. When I try them, it's like, Leo [00:03:21]: no. Gary [00:03:21]: They're not quite as good as the Plantronics headsets. Leo [00:03:25]: It's funny. When I think of Plantronics, I think of call centers. I think that that's the stuff that they populate call centers with. Well, yeah, they quality isn't is clearly not the most important thing in a call center. These days, what I'm paying attention to is, one of the videos that I like to watch occasionally on YouTube are, pilot videos. Folks that are recording like their land I just was watching a landing of seven forty seven in Amsterdam from the cockpit. Gary [00:03:53]: Right? Mhmm. Leo [00:03:54]: And, I don't know if this particular video did, but I did take a look at the various headsets that pilots are using themselves. Apparently, they're bringing their own, and very often they're Bose, which I found kind of interesting. I have not invested in a Bose, headset with microphone. I've got Bose noise cancelling headphones, which are awesome, but I don't have the headset scenario. One of the reasons I added this to the list just because, I discovered a different microphone, that I'm going to switch over to here real quick. Oh, it claims that I'm already using it. So should sound different. Do I sound different? Gary [00:04:38]: Yeah. That that was definitely a big change. Leo [00:04:40]: Okay. So that's so what I'm using right now is what I've been using for all the prior episodes, this Yeah. A t twenty twenty that's hanging in front of me. This other microphone actually, this little wireless lapel microphone, and you can hear Gary on the on the Gary [00:04:56]: I can see it, yeah. Leo [00:04:58]: It actually, there we go. It comes with a pair of them. So I've got another one here. That's how big it is. It's very small and it's great. It also, I've got a, it's a USB C adapter, so I just got that plugged into my PC, and they apparently pair up through Bluetooth. You can do two of them at a time. There's this little adapter, which I don't know if you can see it, but it is an adapter that fits on a camera's hot shoot, and you can then have a patch cable, which is a very short patch cable, from this adapter to the camera's audio input, and I actually used that a couple of weeks ago because we were recording a discussion with two people, two microphones, two people, wireless in front of a crowd, it turned out great, But I definitely understand that it sounds different. Leo [00:05:51]: So I'm gonna go ahead and switch back to the, to the, which, again, I've been down the same path. I have a, a graveyard of microphones, actually, in my basement, that I have gone through occasionally to see if, okay. Is there anything better than this? Is there anything better than this? Yeah. I just keep coming back to this microphone. It's a little bit awkward, depending on where you have it, but it works, and it seems to work well. Gary [00:06:20]: Now we should for completeness here, I should test out my various input sources. So I've been talking using the Plantronics old 1999 headphone. Right. Or or microphone headset thing. And, now I'm going to switch to the Studio Display, the Apple Studio Display array of microphones. And let's see. Leo [00:06:44]: Oh, yeah. Gary [00:06:45]: Yeah. Okay. So that's what I use. Leo [00:06:47]: Is is what's coming through. Yep. Gary [00:06:48]: Yep. And I let me see if this works. So neither of these are what I use on a daily basis to actually record my videos. I don't do either one of these. Obviously, I'm not wearing a headset. You can't see that at all me. But I'm not using the Studio Display either. I am using the Rode VideoMic Pro Plus. Gary [00:07:06]: They're top end, U S no, it's not U S B. It actually plugs into the camera. It's not a USB. So the camera itself is actually doing the digital conversion, and merging that with the video and setting it as one stream. And that's what I use my regular videos. And if I switch to that let's see if you could hear. This is with that microphone. Leo [00:07:28]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, that's not better than the other two. Yeah. Gary [00:07:33]: Yeah. Well, it should. It's, cost wise, it's way more. And, yeah. The the only thing is is that I'm wondering if I move my head away and it's not pointed at me. If you Leo [00:07:44]: hear much difference Oh, Gary [00:07:44]: you're fine. Yeah. Okay. It's enough of a range. Leo [00:07:47]: Yeah. Gary [00:07:48]: Is it a shotgun? It's a shotgun pointed right at my mouth, and it's not very far away. It is a lot closer than it might normally be if you were filming somebody using it because I just have it right over my screen. It's actually leaning over my screen Right. Pointing at me. I'll switch back here to the Plantronics. And, and yeah. So that's a comparison of different ways that I record things currently. Leo [00:08:13]: Interesting. Yep. Yeah. It's funny. It's one of those things that we've always been tinkering with as long as we've been doing this kind of stuff, microphones and cameras for that matter. I keep coming back to, all of my videos, for example, are recorded with a BRIO, Logitech BRIO webcam Yeah. Because I've had the most success with it. It hits the quality that I need for, for the kinds of videos that I do. Leo [00:08:37]: Every once in a while, I'll pull out my Sony z v one, which gets me, you know, definitely a higher quality video, but it's a lot much bigger pain to, to set up and make happen. Yeah. I have to thing is that these wireless microphones plug right into it. So I get that. Right? Gary [00:08:54]: Well, yeah, they're I I have to add two d two experiment codes. Of course, one difference you're hearing when I was, over the RODE VideoMic Pro is I am processing it using AI tools afterwards for echo cancellation for from the room I'm in and noise cancellation from the fact that I sit in the middle of a city. And I cannot get through a single video without some loud horn, siren, construction noise, or something. And, of course, I wasn't using that there. We were going direct. Unfortunately, there was silence outside for that twenty seconds that I was doing it. But, anyway Leo [00:09:29]: The video that I recorded of the two people making a presentation, it was actually an outdoor presentation, in what turned out to be a fairly noisy environment because it was also very windy. There's a lot of stuff going on. And even with the little windsocks over the microphone, there's a lot. Yeah. But, the microphones did their job, and then I pulled it all into a DaVinci Resolve. And DaVinci Resolve has some awesome, awesome, audio processing that allows you to isolate voice, and, it just nailed it. It just nailed the the voice only part of that. So, anyway, so that's microphones. Leo [00:10:07]: One of the things that happened last week I don't know if it was before or after our last recording, but it certainly hit the news last week, was Troy Hunt. Do you know who Troy Hunt is? Gary [00:10:19]: No. I do not. Leo [00:10:20]: Troy Hunt is the person who runs haveibeenpwned.com. Gary [00:10:26]: Ah, okay. Leo [00:10:27]: So he is big in the security cybersecurity world. And the article that he posted on his own blog last week is a sneaky fish just grabbed my Mailchimp mailing list. Yes. The owner of have I been pwned was pwned in the sense that he fell for a phishing attempt, on his Mailchimp account. Uh-huh. And well, short answer the the longer answer is that he was traveling. Gary [00:11:04]: Yeah. Leo [00:11:04]: He was on his way home, very tired. At least that's his excuse. And he got a message from Mailchimp saying, hey. We're we're, disabling your ability to send because you've been sending too much spam. And he looked at it fine, clicked on the link, went to Mailchimp, tried to sign in, and of course, the sign in failed. Now there's a couple of really interesting pieces to that puzzle because he had two factor authentication turned on which means that even though this fake Mailchimp page ended up asking him for his two factor code, what had to have been happening in the background is that that was actually a live intercept of a connection to Mailchimp. So even though he was entering his credentials, including the two factor code into this scammers website, the scammers website then in real time was passing that information on to Mailchimp in order to sign in. And in fact, apparently, it was so automated. Leo [00:12:17]: It was fairly clearly targeted for Mailchimp accounts because within moments, they had generated an API key apparently that's necessary, and they downloaded the, the subscriber list for his mailing list. They didn't change his password. That's all they did. They just very quickly went in, grabbed his stuff, and downloaded it. The and, of course, he realized right about then that, oh, darn you know, this is what happened. He turned right around, went in, changed the password quickly, like, within minutes, but that leads to believe that this was all automated because even within just a few minutes, that whole mailing list had been downloaded in Slurkit. So one of my takeaways here, I think, is that two factors. Great. Leo [00:13:09]: Absolutely. Use two factor authentication all the time, everywhere it's possible. But as I've said in in some of my posts, there's no such thing as perfect security. Almost everything can be warded with enough effort. What we're trying to do is make it harder for malicious individuals to, you know, do the kinds of things that we're protecting trying to protect ourselves from. And, yes, two factor intercept man in the middle attack is what this boils down to, is a thing. And clearly, it can happen. As it turns out, there was another clue that Hunt missed. Leo [00:13:52]: And not I'm not even talking about, like, you know, previewing the URL you're about to click on or something like that. He uses one password. Gary [00:14:00]: Yeah. Leo [00:14:01]: Yay. He uses one password. So do I. When he went to this Mailchimp account sign in page that was fake, one password did not automatically fill in or offer to fill in his credentials. Gary [00:14:18]: I was gonna ask that. Leo [00:14:19]: Yeah. That's a clue. Now the problem is it's not a consistent clue because a lot of sites, password managers in general, can't quite figure out. Gary [00:14:30]: Right. Exactly. Yeah. Leo [00:14:31]: Trouble pasting things in. But if you know that normally when you go to your Mailchimp account, it automatically fills things in for you, then when it doesn't, that's a clue. But again Gary [00:14:42]: Oh, yeah. Leo [00:14:43]: He was tired. He was he had this sense of urgency right from the message, which is another sign of of, scammers trying to make things happen. So he kind of avoided that and did the copy paste thing for whatever reason and signed himself in supposedly, but, of course, didn't. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And I think that's also something that a lot of people don't think of when it comes to password and one of the reasons, like I said, is because password managers are inconsistent across the board about whether or how how automatically they can do that. Gary [00:15:19]: Yes. Well, one of the problems that bugs me all the time is when you go to a website to log in, and the log in process goes through multiple domains. Like, they use a third party company, you know, identify secureincorporated.com or whatever. They they throw you over to so you start off at abc.com and they're like, oh, it's all good. You go to log in, you're thrown over to this completely different company, the site, which is the legitimate thing, but it's not abc.com. So now the you have to enter in your password there, and then it throws you back to the site having verified your identity and passed on your credentials, which from their perspective looks good. Hey, we've got this company. Now it's gonna do this extra great security. Gary [00:16:08]: But from your perspective, you're going between this from a site you know to a site you don't know back to the site you know. And that site in the middle is something your password manager may not know about. If they made that change recently, your password manager says, I don't have a a login for that. I have a login for abc.com. Right. And they, and then you are forced to actually have to say, oh, let me go and get the password for that. But now at this point, you're giving up your security and saying, I hope this isn't a phishing attempt. And and very often, it isn't. Gary [00:16:47]: So that just reassures you that, oh, this happens sometimes. And there's a lot of different, sites that do that and sites that change all the time. Restaurants are bad one. Not that restaurants are big targets for, like, you know, problems, but if you store your payment information on them, maybe. Restaurants are always like you go to their website, you go to order, and from week to week, they change what company they're using to allow you to do online orders. And it it it's it it could be yeah. It it could be a pain. Leo [00:17:18]: The good news I mean, I've seen on on the restaurant side of things. I've seen it a couple of different ways. I know folks who, who are running, these kind of establishments, and they're having trouble with their their payment system. So they're changing. They're trying different things. Yeah. And that's one of the side effects. But indeed, my favorite pizza place, pizzabankrestaurant.com here, not far from here. Leo [00:17:40]: If I go to online order there, which I do relatively frequently, yeah, it goes to something or other heartland.com, which is clearly right. A third party service provider who's handling the online ordering and payment processing and so forth. But it's not pizza bank. Right? Gary [00:17:59]: Yeah. Leo [00:17:59]: And you have to know that. One of the neat things about one password for those that understand how it works is you can add multiple URLs to the list of URLs that will trigger a specific entry. The problem, of course, is that it's not trivial to do. It's not something that the quote, unquote average consumer is going to know to do or be able to do very easily, but it actually is relatively straightforward to have just a long list of different domains that are somehow associated with these credentials, and they will. Gary [00:18:29]: I know. It's a it's a pain, and it's weakening, security Leo [00:18:33]: Yes. Gary [00:18:34]: Which is actually, tied in something I was gonna talk about later. Cool. But I wanna you know? Leo [00:18:40]: The so the oh, and another example of what you were saying, heck, outlook dot com or hotmail dot com. Right? The Microsoft email service. You get redirected to, like, about three or four different times through variations of outlook.com, Microsoft Com, live Com. I mean, yes. Mhmm. It's it's very disconcerting to go to outlook.com and then finally end up at some domain that doesn't even include the word outlook in it. Gary [00:19:08]: Yep. So Leo [00:19:09]: Yep. Now the one thing that I thought was interesting is that, the the traveling that Hunt was doing was, of course, giving, like, keynote or topic, talks at various security conferences. And one of the things that he's doing is he is promoting passkeys. Yes. Passkeys. I think they're wonderful. I get them, which I think is the big hurdle for a lot of people. I get how they work. Leo [00:19:37]: They're way more secure. And the point here is that the very thing that he's been on the road talking about would have prevented this from happening. If this had been a passwordless account, then the fact that the passkey would not work for whatever he was trying to log into, not only would have been a big sign, but it would not have worked. Right? He would have had to have gone to the real site in order to try and log in. So passkeys are one of those things that, there's a lot of work to be done, but it's all about user education because people don't understand them. People don't trust them. People are afraid of them. And yet this is a classic example of here's someone that knows security. Leo [00:20:27]: If the the statement that a lot of people have been making, and he even quoted it in a subsequent entry on his own blog, if he can make this kind of you know, if he can get fooled, anybody can get fooled. And that means we definitely need to take the steps to make sure that it is harder than ever to actually fool us. And passkeys is one step in that direction. He's promised a passkeys for normal people article, and I'm looking forward to that because I've tried to I've tried to describe it a couple of times, and I've made some progress. But, it's it's not an easy not an easy concept to get people comfortable with. Gary [00:21:05]: No. And I've always had difficulty. I've never done a video on like, I would love to do a video called how to use passkeys. But the problem is is that every service is different. Mhmm. Depending whatever site, service, app, it it's all different. So if I were to do a video, I could do one on, like, how to do it for iCloud, for instance. It would just be for iCloud. Gary [00:21:26]: Right? It it would be a different process. You could not follow those steps if you wanna do a passkey for Amazon, for instance, or Right. Or Outlook or whatever. And it's frustrating. And also most sites, maybe all of this still, just basically, if you're gonna sign up for a new account, you're first signing up ID and password. Yes. Old fashioned. Now that you've got that set up, now you can set up a passkey, which makes it difficult to demonstrate because the idea of, like, if you wanna demonstrate something, you like, let's go to a site here that everybody's heard of and let's create a new account, like a social media site where you can create a new account from scratch. Gary [00:22:04]: Right. And it would be great to say, yes, new account from scratch, give me a passkey, and I could show you how to create an account with the passkey. But instead, I have to go and say, well, assuming you already have an account, you know, which for a lot of people would be like, oh, I don't have an account to that site, so I don't even know how to get to this part. Leo [00:22:20]: Right. Gary [00:22:20]: So it's it it is it defies tutorials, the whole pass case thing, and it's, it it it's rather annoying and hard. And it's it is easy for you and me to go and say, well, I'll just follow along with whatever, this one site says about, you know, that. And and that's great, but people want to know they wanna process. Passkey. Tell me how to use passkeys. I can't. You have to tell me what site it is first. And then maybe I haven't even done a pass key for that site, so I can't tell you. Gary [00:22:50]: You go figure it out. Use their help pages and stuff. Leo [00:22:52]: The the rule of thumb that I've been, using when I talk to folks is, most sites that support pass keys offer that to you at some point in their process. It's completely different point depending on what site. Right. But if it offers you a passkey, okay, set it up. Do that. Yes. Create one. Say yes. Leo [00:23:13]: Create a passkey. It's a way to start getting familiar with what it is. And and if it then says, hey. Do you wanna use your passkey to sign in instead of your password? Go for that too. Gary [00:23:22]: Yeah. The problem is there are still a lot of people that don't use, cloud services or, like, a like a solution like one password where the passwords are shared between devices. Leo [00:23:33]: Right. Gary [00:23:33]: They still isolate themselves sometimes in a false hope that that will give them some sort of security. So they sign up for something on one device, their computer, and they say, great passkey. I was told I should do this. And now they go to their iPhone, which is completely separated because they don't wanna do, you know, they don't wanna share with one password. They don't wanna use iCloud. And now it's like, how do I log on? Leo [00:23:56]: Right. Gary [00:23:57]: And you can't because the passkeys aren't shared with that device. Leo [00:24:01]: Well, okay. To be fair, the phrase you can't is wrong. Gary [00:24:04]: Right. Leo [00:24:05]: You can, It's just more difficult. Gary [00:24:07]: It's gonna be. Yes. Leo [00:24:08]: You end up having to go through one of the other mechanisms to authenticate, which is usually something like a message sent to an email address that you then have to respond to or a pop up on some other device that you're already logged into and so forth. You just don't have the convenience of the passkey on that device. But you bring up a good point, too, and that is that it's further complicated by the fact that for the most part, passkeys are defined as being device specific. You have a different passkey for the same account on every device. Your PC has a different passkey for your Google account than you would on your phone. Yeah. Except if you're using a password manager like 1Password, that will also save your passkeys for you, in which case then you set up a passkey once. And wherever you're using 1Password, the passkeys work all over. Leo [00:25:00]: Anyway Gary [00:25:01]: And I will suggest that there is a way this problem that, that Troy Hunt ran into. It could still exist even with pass keys because here's what happens. I ran into this the other day. I have a few so Amazon makes it pretty easy to use pass keys for Amazon accounts. Leo [00:25:17]: Yes. Gary [00:25:18]: I was messing around with creating a print book as a hobby kind of thing the other day. And it occurred to me, oh, I have an Amazon account that I set up a long time ago, and I published a couple books under that. So let me when I'm gonna log in and look at their tools for some things like specs and all that, let me go to that account. Because if I were to turn this hobby into something I was doing, I would use that Amazon account. And a passkey was set up for it many computers ago. I haven't logged in to the account for a couple of years. Leo [00:25:47]: Right. Gary [00:25:47]: Couldn't couldn't not find the passkey for that. So I went to the backup, which was to go and use the password that I had for that account, which allowed me to sign in and establish a new passkey. The same thing could have happened with a passkey set up. You go to the site. The site is fake because you've been fit it's a phishing attack. Right. And now passkey doesn't work. Oh, no. Gary [00:26:12]: What's gonna happen? Oh, hey. I do have a password for this account as a backup. Leo [00:26:18]: So passkeys are a step on a path. They're an important step, but they're a step on the path. What you just described cannot happen with my Microsoft account as an example. Yeah. Because my Microsoft account has no password. Gary [00:26:34]: Ah, okay. Leo [00:26:35]: There is no password associated with it. And honestly, I believe that that's where we're headed. It's gonna take a long time, but that's where we're headed, where you don't have passwords for your account, so you don't have that as a backup mechanism to get in. You have other backup mechanisms that are inherently secure in and of themselves. The ability to send an email to Yeah. Gary [00:26:55]: Reset your reset when they an email to you. Yeah. I wonder if Mailchimp has that though. So is Mailchimp like Amazon? And I don't know if Amazon is always like this. Like, they might be if I were to set up a passkey right now for an Amazon account. I might end up with no password, But because I set it up years ago when they first introduced pass keys, that account may still have had a password attached to it. Leo [00:27:21]: The only place, literally, the only place I know of that, allowed me to make a transition to from password to passwordless Yeah. It's Microsoft, and it was extremely expensive. Gary [00:27:33]: Okay. So probably Mailchimp had that vulnerability that a passkey may not. I mean, it would have been more it would have been more steps and given him more time to be like, you know, wait a minute here. Leo [00:27:46]: Maybe I need another cup of coffee. Gary [00:27:48]: Yeah. Another cup of coffee. Let me take a breath. I don't need to send out a message right now, you know. So, yeah, that's that's one thing. Now that actually ties into, something I ran into while traveling recently. Leo [00:28:04]: Excellent. Gary [00:28:05]: Two two things. Well, I traveled on a big trip, the one we talked about last time in New Zealand, and I did a shorter trip too to visit family. And once again, I've talked about this before, so I didn't feel the need to talk about it last time. VPN is annoying when traveling. Just when you really need it, when you wanna use a VPN to make your connection more secure, it gets annoying because you're dealing with things like hotel and airplane Wi Fi that have a variety of different ways to connect. And in the past, it's almost impossible to connect while you have the VPN on. You simply have to turn off the VPN, connect. Once this connection is established, you turn on the VPN, and you do your business. Gary [00:28:49]: It's gotten better recently. Some of the VPN apps that you're using to connect will be a little smarter about allowing you to do the connection with the VPN and then turning on the VPN for everything else. So for instance, if you wanna I'll just name names. If you wanna connect with the United Wi Fi on the plane, the VPN will be like, oh, I'll let you do that, but I'm going to not I've gotta hold all the other connections off. And once that's all established, then you will, you'll be fine. I I still struggled with this throughout my big trip to New Zealand where I definitely wasted minutes of my time connecting with the VPN on. It wasn't too bad, but it definitely felt like I'm on vacation air, and I'm just trying to spend five minutes catching up. Now I'm spending ten minutes catching up because of the VPN is causing me issues. Gary [00:29:47]: On the plane on this one plane ride, it went to an extreme level because and it's compounded by the fact that airplane Wi Fi doesn't always work. So you have this question of, is it my VPN that's causing the trouble? Or is it simply the WiFi is just not working right now? So nothing I could do will actually change that. And I fortunately, I wasn't like it wasn't like I was wasting time. I was sitting on an airplane. I was trying to waste time. I was trying to, you know, make the time fly by. But it was interesting that I just had no way of knowing whether or not the Wi Fi was working or not. I couldn't connect. Gary [00:30:26]: I had VPN on my iPhone, and there were various things with my VPN app that could have been getting in the way. One of them was there were two different options for protecting you while connecting. There was some DNS settings that I had there, and I kept I would switch one of them off and say, can I connect to the Wi Fi now? No. I can't. It's probably the Wi Fi. And then fifteen minutes later, it was bugging me. Oh, I'll try again. No. Gary [00:30:59]: It's still not connecting. Let me turn another of these things off. And I kept going step by step down and still I turned one off that was a special protection that, was there, that showed signs that it was actually getting in the way. But turning it off didn't really get rid of it because it kept showing that the VPN was stopping the connection. Like it it I would go and connect to the WiFi and it would put the logo of the b VPN service up under the WiFi. I was like, no, you shouldn't be doing that at this point. So eventually what I did was I said, forget it. I'm gonna remove the VPN profile. Gary [00:31:39]: Take basically uninstalling the VPN even though it was still there and see what happens. If there's no WiFi, then it doesn't matter. And sure enough, once I remove the VPN profile, I immediately connected to the VPN, confirming my suspicion the VPN was getting in the way from me establishing the connection in the first place. Leo [00:31:57]: Right. Gary [00:31:58]: Or the v p the Wi Fi on the plane magically just came online right at that moment. I can't be sure. Right? But it it's annoying and it erodes trust in a system that is there to create security because now I'm thinking in the future, it's like, oh, I really should have VPN on for this connection at this convention center, this hotel, this whatever. Oh, it's not quite working. I don't wanna waste any more time. Turn off the VPN, and now I'm a little bit less secure because of an annoyance that was there just like how, Troy Hunt was annoyed by, oh, something's going on. Oh, the password's not working. Let me just copy and paste. Leo [00:32:41]: I'll just make it work. Yep. Gary [00:32:43]: I'll make it worse. Leo [00:32:44]: It's funny. The worst Gary [00:32:45]: way making it work. Leo [00:32:47]: In defense of VPNs, and I know that there's so many different VPNs with different capabilities. Honestly, the weakest spot in those kind of connections has always been what I refer to as the interstitial. When you first connect without a VPN, when you first connect, you end up regardless of where you're trying to go, you get this page that says, you know, what's your room number if you're in a hotel? You agree to the terms of service. You're not gonna hold anybody liable. You're not gonna download porn. And all the usual things that, you know, those kinds of providers want you to agree to before they'll let you connect. Once you say yes, then they let you connect and they do whatever magic happens on the router to open up all the ports to let you do your thing. The reason I say it's often their I don't want to say fault, but their fault is that that process has been rough for years. Leo [00:33:46]: Mhmm. I do believe that it has gotten better that there's some standardization and some kind of a protocol between the devices and the routers providing that functionality because it's not uncommon now for you to turn on WiFi, have it connect to one of these hotspots, and then say, hey, sign in required. So the device you're using knows that there's an interstitial and that there's a next step. My suspicion is that some of the VPNs that work well in this scenario are paying attention to that same signal and allowing you to do exactly that that that sign in, so to speak, with the peep with a with a hotspot before they go full bore. Gary [00:34:28]: Oh, I'm sure that's what it is. And I also am sure based on all the steps you have to take to sign on to United Wi Fi that they have multiple levels of interstitial. There's a standard one that, you know, you connect to the Wi Fi and then a special dialogue comes Leo [00:34:45]: up. Right. Gary [00:34:46]: And you go through that. But then all that ends up with is you end up with your web browser loading a page that gives you a menu of choices. And the menu of choices is then you have to choose your you know, what do you want? Wi Fi, entertainment Leo [00:35:02]: Oh, right. Gary [00:35:02]: Messaging and all that. Yep. And I believe that whole opening up of ports takes place after that. So you have made a decision. Yeah. You have the interstitials, but you're using two at least two different methods of that. And I think that, you know, the VPN app I was using just was, like, maybe paying attention to one and then being like, okay, or and not the other. And, anyway, it's it's a pain. Leo [00:35:27]: The other thing that I've seen in flight on longer flights is every once in a while, it's not like the Wi Fi goes down Gary [00:35:36]: Yeah. Leo [00:35:36]: But the agreement the interstitial agreement Gary [00:35:39]: Yes. Leo [00:35:39]: Goes away. Yeah. So all of a sudden, you're happily doing whatever it is you're doing, and all of a sudden, you have to agree to the interstitial again. So it's very bizarre and and, yes, fragile, which, like you say, is getting in the way of Gary [00:35:52]: Fragile, and it gets in the way of of you paying attention to security. It weakens your own personal Yep. Security, unfortunately. So, anyway, enough said about that. But, so looking at, like, what's going on in the news Leo [00:36:12]: Should we talk politics? Let's not. Gary [00:36:13]: Well, let's well, the funny thing is is that, usually, tech stories revolve around the tech, engineering, coding, design, all those things. Leo [00:36:26]: All the difference. Gary [00:36:26]: The biggest tech story by far overshadowing everything else completely is actually political or or financial, of course, is, the the taxes, the tariffs, which are taxes. The, of course, the trade war, started by The US President, has overshadowed everything and has affected every tech company out there, to a huge degree, with tech companies basically stock falling between 1030%. Apple, of course, is at the top of that. With Apple stock is down 30% since the beginning of the year, most of that due to the tariff, trade war. And and I find it interesting because, of course, it overshadows it's such a big story. It not only overshadows any talk of technology, like rumors of new things, announcements of new things. Right. But it's it's not just overshadowing them. Gary [00:37:22]: Those things are not happening. I don't know if Apple has had any announcements planned for the last week or two. I mean, maybe a little something, a new adapter, a new update to whatever. But they certainly, if they have, I think they've said, put that off. We don't wanna even be talking about anything else right now. And certainly, any rumors coming through about stuff, nobody really is paying too much attention to it because the idea of, like, what will tariffs do to prices of these things, of course, as as the recording of this, things are at a at a high. Technically, at midnight tonight, the tariff on China will be 105%. Leo [00:38:02]: Oh, wow. I hadn't heard of that. I haven't heard that one yet. Gary [00:38:05]: So, because a new set goes into effect based on retaliatory stuff. Leo [00:38:10]: Last I heard was 50, but hundred and 5 is new to me. Okay. Gary [00:38:13]: Yeah. So the world will go up another yeah. It's going up another level because there was a thing where China was supposed to take off a tariff and then it was but anyway, so a 5% if it goes through at midnight tonight. Now does it affect things immediately? Well, no. Because, rumors are that Apple shipped a whole bunch of iPhones over to The US very quickly, before the tariffs. Certainly, there's a certain amount of stock over here. There's other countries like India and Brazil that produce iPhones, where stock can come from that's not China. So, things like that will affect the prices. Gary [00:38:50]: Also, there's two ways to look at it. One is, okay, manufacturing remains the same. So the price will just go up because there's gonna be this big tariff of bringing it into The US once the iPhone is manufactured. The other way to look at is, okay, the phones won't come from China anymore, they'll come from The US. How much will they cost to produce in The US? And indeed, how long will it take for a manufacturing plant to start up in The US? That actually could be years. Right? Leo [00:39:17]: Years. Gary [00:39:18]: Which, so that might not be a full possibility. And, of course, there's deals to be made, deals with countries, deals with companies, all sorts of things to try to figure out, like, how much an iPhone will cost, next week or next month or next year is very difficult to do. The interesting thing I thought of at some point was, wait a minute. These tariffs only affect iPhones made in China that are imported to The US. Let me look up these numbers. How many iPhone users are there in The US? And it's estimated that a 50,000,000, nearly half the people in The US have iPhones. Leo [00:39:55]: Yes. Sounds about right. Gary [00:39:57]: And I I yeah. I guess so. I mean, I I hear that actually iPhone still are minority of the of the smartphone sales in The US, and certainly not everybody updates every year. So I can't imagine the numbers quite that big. But let's go with the big number like that. Now at a 50,000,000 iPhones, how many iPhones are, how many iPhone users are there worldwide? And there are a bunch of different numbers, but a rough estimate is 1,500,000,000, which is 10 times that number. So you could come up with an estimate that 10% of iPhones are sold in The US. Ninety Percent are not, meaning that 90% of the iPhones have no tariff change whatsoever. Gary [00:40:35]: They're made in China, India, Brazil, and sold in another country and never touch US soil. And so that 90% of Apple's iPhone bottom line is unaffected by this. Leo [00:40:46]: Right. Gary [00:40:47]: Which then there's a 30% drop in stock value. So at some point, I think investors might realize that, oh, wait a minute. Apple sells phones elsewhere. Matter of fact, they mostly sell phones elsewhere. So the hit the bottom line might not be as big. Leo [00:41:04]: And to be fair, it's about more than phones. I mean, I don't know what percentage of Apple revenue is iPhone related, but a big part of the majority. Sure. Yeah. But still, it also applies to Macs and iPads and all the usual stuff, Gary [00:41:19]: which also were sold outside The US. Majority of them. Leo [00:41:23]: But, yeah, it's definitely complicated. And like you said, they're coming from different countries as well with a hundred and five percent tariff on Chinese imports. Is there a tariff on Indian airport imports? Yes. And if there is Gary [00:41:37]: It is less. Leo [00:41:37]: How much smaller is it? Yeah. Gary [00:41:40]: There's a lot to a lot there, and it's it's interesting. But, of course, you know, it's it's affecting people's worries right now on iPhone cost just the same as it did a month ago. Leo [00:41:52]: Right. Gary [00:41:53]: And, of course, there's talk about rushes of people to, are just buying new iPhones as well as new anything, new cars and all sorts of stuff, to, you know, get ahead of any tariff price increases. There are, it it it's going to change things. Looking at, like, what Apple can do or any tech company can do to manufacture things for The United States, of course, you look at things like, of course, the higher cost of labor, the cost it will take to set up factories that have been established for years, overseas, things like that. But also, if Apple and other companies were to actually manufacture things in United States, they would have to import parts, which would also get a tariff. And sometimes those parts you could say, well, why don't why not manufacture those parts here? Eventually, you get down to, importing raw materials. Right. Some of which get down to actually mining, but you can't just simply say, let's mine more nickel in The United States. Leo [00:42:52]: You And now we know why Greenland is interesting. Gary [00:42:56]: Yeah. Exactly. It is interesting. I mean, because they, you know, there's a lot of countries, some of the which are hit by big tariffs now because they simply export raw materials that are available there and not in The US, but they don't import anything because based on their economy of just producing that raw material and sending it to The United States, they are poor, and they can't afford to buy things from The United States. So and not to mention the fact that if they were to buy things like, say, iPhones, they'd actually be buying them from China, not from The United States. Right. So you end up with this weird spiral of, like, reinforcing things where poor countries that don't actually import anything from The United States have huge tariffs trying to export things, but those things being exported are the exactly the things that you would need to import into The US in order to manufacture the things that yeah. So it it's really interesting and it's it's going to change a lot of supply line stuff. Gary [00:43:53]: A lot of our technology revolves around what can easily be made. Like, so many pieces of tech come from, like, say, a company produces a microprocessor, and the microprocessor, then they mass produce it or screen an LCD panel, alt drive, you know, memory, batteries, things like this. And a a company somewhere goes and set sets up a factory and says, we're going to produce this. And then tech companies look and say, hey. We can very easily get this battery and this microprocessor in this screen, and we could use these to build a a device designed around what we can get. That's all gonna change. Leo [00:44:40]: Right. Gary [00:44:40]: So that will make design decisions, differently. Our devices may end up looking and working differently, and new devices in the future may end up being different devices than would have been otherwise created because suddenly, oh, creating this cool AI microphone thing that talks to you isn't viable anymore because Right. It was only viable when it cost a hundred dollars to make. Now it makes no sense whatsoever. But this other device that helps in some other way that's a little camera device or whatever suddenly is a viable gadget. Right. And that's the gadget that we all buy next year or two years from now because of the way these things change. The other thing is, that companies themselves may make things more radical. Gary [00:45:26]: Think about how the iPhone, as well as Samsung phones and other phones, they make these gradual little changes. And you can go and do something like, oh, the camera now on the new iPhone is 48 megapixels as opposed to last year's model was 24 megapixels. And that's enough to push people to say, oh, I really want I want a better camera on my iPhone. This is the year I upgrade. If prices go up because of the tariffs or manufacturing them somewhere different or whatever, you're going to be looking at, oh, I've got this iPhone that's okay. The newer one's got a better camera, and that would have been worth a thousand dollars to me. Right. It's not worth $2,000 to Leo [00:46:06]: me. Right. Gary [00:46:07]: So in response, companies like Apple may decide to push things forward and say, we can't just say the new iPhone's got a better camera. We have to go forward with that folding screen idea or making it, like, you know, completely different configuration of how things work, adding just some features that we, you know, should have been a couple years out and should have been tested, should have had some some small company, should have produced little phones, some niche models, and and then people would have looked at them. How how did this outperform sales? You know? Are it showing that people are really interested in a folding screen or whatever? Or did this underperform? And companies like Apple and Samsung may just have to go and say, we need to take the risk and we need to do this new thing because having a slightly better camera and a screen that's a little bit brighter is not going to be enough to get people to buy phones that are twice as expensive. And that's going to be kind of, interesting to see. I don't see I see Apple already probably behind the scenes saying, the iPhone you know, the next model of the iPhone needs to we need to pack more into it. Leo [00:47:17]: Right. Gary [00:47:18]: I'll we're going to not sell as many because we're gonna have to increase the price by a lot. Leo [00:47:24]: My I'm I'm hanging on to my Pixel six. Yeah. Oh, for as long as I can. I'll tell you. I dropped it a while back and cracked the screen. Getting the screen replaced even for a couple hundred bucks was way cheaper, and I suspect that that's another thing that's gonna factor into it. Folks that have issues with their existing devices may be more likely to invest in cheaper repairs Yeah. Than replacement. Leo [00:47:53]: Absolutely. Did I mention to you that I purchased a new car? Gary [00:47:58]: No. You did not. Leo [00:48:00]: I purchased a new car about three weeks ago. And, this was before the whole tariff thing. So that actually wasn't a factor. Gary [00:48:10]: Yeah. Leo [00:48:12]: It was more a reaction to a lot of different things. Not I mean, I used to have a Tesla. I no longer have my Tesla. Gary [00:48:19]: Ah, interesting. Leo [00:48:21]: I know I now have a, a Rivian. Gary [00:48:24]: Excellent. I'm really interested in those. Leo [00:48:26]: Yeah. So far, I'm extremely happy with it. We're going to be testing it next week, pulling my trailer. That's the big test. If I can successfully pull my trailer with enough range, then I may also get rid of the Toyota Sequoia that I've had for sixteen years. Anyway, all that is to say, I did buy a new car at the right time because I think things are gonna get rockier in the car industry. But one of the things that I read that I think a lot of people don't get is that, yeah, there's a lot of cars assembled in The United States. The Rivian's came out of Illinois. Leo [00:49:05]: Yeah. But there is no car that is completely made in The United States. Every car has components, be it as small as electronic components to bigger assemblies of some sort that are coming in from out of the country, which means that even your American made in quotes automobiles are going to be affected perhaps dramatically by some of this tariff work that's going on. Yeah. So my in my case, like I said, this is before the whole tariff kerfuffle really kicked in, but I consider myself very lucky in terms of timing to have done it now because it's only gonna get worse. Gary [00:49:44]: Oh, yeah. And and, yeah, the interesting thing about cars is, of course, even the, quote, foreign, unquote, cars, many of the ones you buy in The US are made in The US even though the company is foreign. I owned, two, Toyota four Runners in my past, and I believe I looked into it, and I believe both of them were, I think, assembled in, I wanna say, North Carolina. Leo [00:50:09]: My wife is on her, her second Highlander. Yeah. And, over oh, wait. No. Like, we we keep our cars for, like, eight or ten years apiece. And, they were both assembled in The United States. Absolutely. The Sequoia that I drive, that actually came from Japan that was actually shipped over here. Leo [00:50:27]: And I suspect it has more to do with, economies of scale. Right? They they make a whole lot more Highlanders than they do Sequoias. So it's worth investing in the manufacturing plants in The United States. Gary [00:50:40]: Yeah. One final note on the whole tariff thing. Of course, and it ties it tech into technology is the tech story last week about the Nintendo Switch two, which for some people, right, was their whole the whole world. Right? If you're a Nintendo Switch fan. And I'm not I don't have a Nintendo Switch, but I I will admit to more than once many, many times going to various sales pages and looking at the Switch and looking at the games and being like to be. So, and then, of course so they announced the Nintendo Switch two, you know, the first major overhaul of the Switch, and they announced it right in the middle of all these tariffs. And the first thing that was interesting is they announced a price, $4.49 for for The US Switch. Now it's already I believe it's already for sale or been announced in Japan. Gary [00:51:31]: And a lot of people right away latched onto the fact that $4.49 is way more expensive than the Japanese price for the same thing. And the thought was, oh, is this is this a plan or was this like a last minute change the price on the on the keynote presentation really quick because the tariffs just are coming? And not only may that have been a factor, but almost immediately afterwards, the tariff war got even worse, and they pulled the preorder. They stopped preorders. Leo [00:52:02]: Mhmm. Gary [00:52:03]: So in other words, the $4.49 price that they said is, hey. This is what we think we're gonna price it at. They stopped the preorders, and now it's anything goes in terms of the price. And Nintendo probably, legitimately does not know what the price will be when this thing is actually on sale in The US. So directly, again, affecting people. And it's and yeah. The funny thing is, of course, is, you know, obviously, as everybody is learning, half of us knew and everybody is kind of knowing now, tariffs really, they're just passed on in the price they're a tax. You're gonna pay more for our iPhones, our Nintendo Switches, our automobiles, all of that. Gary [00:52:47]: The companies that sell the stuff, they'll suffer because they might might sell less of their items because they'll be more expensive. But, but, yeah, it's, it's a consumer that really pays the brunt of the tariff price. So it'd be interesting to see where this goes. I I say there's a zero chance that things will remain as they are now. This is true. Direction. What what's going to happen? You know, it seems kinda crazy to have this level Leo [00:53:17]: of be having a completely different discussion next week. Gary [00:53:20]: Oh, I know. I know. And it's overshadowing. Again, overshadowing stuff. There are people, companies, people at Apple that have had, like, oh, this is the week the new version of this was supposed to come out. This was the week they were supposed to announce this or I was supposed this is the week maybe internally that I was supposed to get approval or whether to move forward with the new Right. Whatever it was Yep. As a project in Apple or project in Samsung or Microsoft or whatever. Gary [00:53:44]: And they've been told, go back to your desk. Keep working on it. Leo [00:53:48]: Hold that back. Gary [00:53:49]: We won't be able to talk to you about this for a few weeks because Leo [00:53:53]: Yeah. Gary [00:53:54]: Tariffs are taking priority. So, anyway, here we go. So maybe we should, talk about, some other things. One of which I I this could have you know, we've done in the past. We've done the get off my lawn thing. I had one that's kinda like this, which is, I guess, it ties in because it's kind of Apple news. Right? So Apple came out with a new version of macOS, iOS, iPadOS a few weeks ago, or two weeks ago I think. Minor update, right? For macOS, it was 15.4. Gary [00:54:29]: And, the one feature that's being, pushed as like the top thing in this minor update has been a redesign of the Mail app. Except, it's not at all a redesign. But headline after headline has been about Yeah. Leo [00:54:49]: The redesign. Gary [00:54:49]: So if you loaded the Mail app on your Mac, and looked at it and said, it kinda looks the same as it did before, it's because it's not a redesign. It is an addition of a single tiny feature that can easily be turned off or used, but without really any change noticed by you. It is just that the simple feature is something that actually Gmail has had for a while, and I don't know if out Outlook has probably had this too. It's inbox categorization. It's this basic idea that an email comes in your inbox, and the old way of doing it is you have a new email that comes into your inbox. It's in your inbox. Doesn't matter what it is. Leo [00:55:30]: It could Gary [00:55:30]: be junk. It could be a newsletter. It could be an email from your mother. Right? It's all just in your inbox together. And the idea with categorization is it tries to look at the messages and sort them into a few small things, promotions, updates, and such. And Gmail's had this for a long time. They had a big kerfuffle when they introduced it, actually. A lot of people clamoring for how do you turn it off. Gary [00:55:55]: And the The Leo [00:55:55]: first thing I do. Gary [00:55:56]: The answer yeah. It's how you turn it off in Gmail is there is an on off switch Yes. That you turn off. Yes. It's not very hard to find. And the same thing here with, adding that to mail was there was an on off switch that's easy to find. Matter of fact, I did a video on this. I'll I'll be linking to that as the video for this, that I'll promote at the end. Gary [00:56:17]: Right. But you can turn it off completely, and then it's like it never was there. But there's also there's only five modes and one of those modes is to just view all fail. So in other words, you can have a view that looks exactly like it was before without even turning it off. So it's interesting. But the thing that bugs me the most, of the of the whole thing and I do wanna say before I even say that is, that people who are very adamant against, like, I didn't want this, nobody wants this, is ignoring the fact that there are actually a bunch of people that are that were saying, we want this. Leo [00:56:54]: Right. Gary [00:56:54]: And a bunch of people then when they got it said, yes, finally, we have this. Now it may not have been a majority, and it definitely wasn't you if you didn't want this feature. Right? Obviously. But don't assume that nobody wanted this because I, from my viewpoint, clearly saw there were people that wanted this. Okay? People that were happy and and rejoicing that Apple introduced this. Now, my problem simply with the feature is that all the news reports called it a redesign. Leo [00:57:26]: But let's let's be fair. We know how news reports work. Right? Yes. A headline that says redesign is gonna get clicked on. A headline that says new feature, it won't. Gary [00:57:36]: Yep. I suppose. I suppose. But, you know, they're gonna row trust when people find out. It's like, oh, everything's the same except this one tiny thing. And, oh, I just switched it off and everything's the same. Leo [00:57:48]: You would think that trust would have been eroded, but this is nothing new. Headlines have been doing this kind of stuff for years, and people continue to click. It continues to work, which is why they do it. Gary [00:57:59]: I guess. I guess. Leo [00:58:00]: I guess. Although I have to admit when Google, introduced the equivalent feature back in Gmail, nobody called it a redesign. Gary [00:58:08]: Yeah. But there you go. So yeah. I mean, I guess I guess it came down to a whole new version of macOS came out. And what's the big whatever the biggest feature is, we're going to we need to make that our headlines. Oh, it's this tiny thing. That won't do. Let's call it a redesign. Gary [00:58:25]: And site and maybe one site did it, and then the other site's kind of like, oh, they're calling it a redesign. We can call it a redesign. I certainly didn't call it a redesign. I said, hey, a bunch of little minor features. Here's one, and, and there you go. So Leo [00:58:39]: But you may like it. You may not. That's okay. Gary [00:58:41]: You may like it. I think for a lot of people, it made them if you if you didn't like the feature, it just made you angrier. Like, if you were told there's a tiny new feature, If you don't like it, there's two way there's a way to get around it and there's a way to turn it off. And I think people being told that would have been like, oh, yes. I don't think I'd like this. I'll just turn it off. But people being told, it's a redesign and you have to turn it off. It just kinda, I don't know, made them angrier. Gary [00:59:09]: But enough said about that. Leo [00:59:11]: Yep. Yep. Yep. I I I understand completely. Gary [00:59:15]: Mhmm. Leo [00:59:15]: So ain't it cool? I'm gonna jump ahead on that one because, since we were talking about VPNs, I wanted to talk about VPNs. You are having bad experiences using your VPN, as you were traveling. My wife just had a great experience using our VPN from our home. Now I, I'm kind of sort of all in with Proton. I don't use them for my day to day mail, but I've got email addresses out there. I use their VPN. I use their Proton drive, that kind of stuff. Proton VPN, especially when you pay for it, it works really, really well. Leo [00:59:50]: Here's what happened. My wife got hooked on a TV series. Yep. There's, like, eighteen seasons of this show. Gary [00:59:59]: Okay. Leo [01:00:00]: And, they were on I think they were on Hulu for a while, and then they got yanked. Then they showed up on, I think Amazon. But but you you know where this is going. Right? Gary [01:00:14]: Oh, yeah. Leo [01:00:15]: The show the show is produced in another country. Yeah. And only the first seventeen episodes or seventeen seasons are available on our streaming services. If you want season eighteen, you can watch it on that country's television channel online, but only if you're in the country. And indeed, ProtonVPN made my wife look like she was in Canada, and it just worked wonderfully. The only annoyance is that in the previous seventeen seasons she could watch on our TV sets. This one season that she's now caught up on, yeah, she had to watch it on her laptop, but it worked just fine. And typically I was always kind of a little bit nervous in that my experience with VPNs in general has always been kind of of spotty. Leo [01:01:14]: You kind of, especially for streaming media, you kind of expect there to be dropouts or stutters or all that kind of stuff. This apparently was rock solid the entire time. And I, too, will admit to in the past having used Proton to make myself look like I was in The Netherlands when I wanted to see some Dutch TV. So anyway, ProtonVPN worked really, really well for me and for my wife. Gary [01:01:35]: I wanna I wanna piggyback on that because this such a simpler thing happened to me with my wife and TV shows because we went to New Zealand, and she was excited because she got to watch a version a New Zealand version of a TV show she enjoys because she was down there. Leo [01:01:52]: Right. Gary [01:01:52]: It's not available in The US. But she was disappointed to find that the American version of that TV show, which she was in the middle of watching a season, wasn't available. So I said, oh, wait a minute. No problem. And I installed my VPN onto her iPad and showed her how she could watch it. Leo [01:02:10]: Uh-huh. Gary [01:02:11]: And then and then I she realized what was going on and said, wait a minute. So does this mean and I was like, yeah. I know where you're going with this. When you get back to The United States, you could actually watch these other shows the same for the same reason, these other seasons, these other shows because of the VPN. And, yeah, kind of an interesting, you know, a revelation. But my I'll eat it cool actually also deals with traveling. Leo [01:02:42]: Before. I Gary [01:02:43]: just read I just finished a book, I wanted to, plug. It's an old book. It's called Around the World in eighty Days. Not that one. This book is called Around the World in Eighty Days because it's based on the original Jules Verne book, but it's actually the Michael Palin book of the same name that he wrote about his Around the World in Eighty Days journey he took for the BBC, became a TV series. He did it in 1988. And the interesting thing was that I I decided at some point, I was like, oh, I'd like his books. I've read a few of them. Gary [01:03:15]: Let me just go through and go through the whole series, all the ones I haven't read. And this was, like, the first one. The interesting thing is that he recreates the journey of of, Phileas Fogg going around the going around the world in eighty days, no airplanes involved. And and it's it's a great read, as you can imagine. He's a a really good writer, and he read the audiobook himself. But, the interesting thing is is that he also is in the habit of really just putting you in the place and time where it's made. So he was writing this in real time, but he took the time to say, oh, I brought out my shortwave radio. Because remember, this is before the Internet. Gary [01:03:53]: He brought out a shortwave radio to catch up on the news from the BBC World Service, and this is what happened today. And it it was great because it really set like, oh, this day he's in the middle of the ocean. Right. In the, you know, the Indian Ocean traveling on a on a ship. And this is what was happening back in London today. But by doing that, it actually became this book that takes you back to the end of 1988. Right. He didn't plan on that, I'm sure, but reading it in 2025 was fascinating. Gary [01:04:24]: Right. He talks about Yugoslavia, not there. He talks about the Soviet Union. Leo [01:04:29]: Yeah. Longo. Longo. I mean Gary [01:04:30]: Almost not there. At one point, I had to laugh at an unintentionally funny statement that he made about Gorbachev announcing his five year agricultural plan, which doesn't matter at all to the Indians I'm with on this boat. And I thought, oh, it doesn't matter at all to anybody, including Gorbachev, but you don't know that yet. And then he talks about visiting Bombay, India Leo [01:04:55]: Right. Gary [01:04:56]: Before the name change. He talks about returning to British soil in the middle of his trip when when he lands Hong Kong. Hong Kong. Yeah. It was fascinating to have that snapshot of what the world was like. And even thinking about the fact that if he did it five years later in 1993, how much more similar everything would have been to today Mhmm. Because so much changed in the world between '88 and '93. I was thinking that was interesting. Gary [01:05:24]: Anyway, it's still it it's a good book, and it's probably a weird situation where it's a better book now than when it was originally written because it has this unintended snapshot of the world in 1988 as an extra theme in it. Leo [01:05:39]: Very cool. Gary [01:05:39]: You could find it, Audible or or get a a print copy of it. It's a lot harder to find the actual video of the BBC series. Leo [01:05:48]: That's surprising. Gary [01:05:49]: But not impossible. Enough said. Leo [01:05:53]: Hint hint. VPN hint hint. Gary [01:05:55]: Yeah. Anyway. Leo [01:05:58]: Self promotion. So the article that I wanna talk about this week is, called no. No one is forcing you to buy a new machine. It's askleo.com/17931four. It's turned out to be somewhat controversial. In fact, I've probably had the widest range of feedback on this one that I've had in a very long time. I've had people saying, yep, been planning to been doing that for some time. And people who have said you're being completely irresponsible to suggest what you're suggesting, which is that it is perfectly valid to keep running Windows 10 after the end of Windows 10 support. Leo [01:06:38]: There are ways to do it safely. If your machine does not meet the need for Windows 11, then you have alternatives, and one of them is indeed running continuing to run Windows 10. Anyway, I talk about that in detail. Nope. No one is forcing you to buy a new machine. Gary [01:06:54]: Yep. And I'll point to the video, using Mac mail categories and how to turn it off, which we talked about earlier in the show. Leo [01:07:03]: Very good. All righty. I think that looks like it wraps us up for another week. It's good timing, too, because we're in the middle of some very, very heavy rain and potentially some hail as I look out the window. And it's probably a good thing that my machine is on a UPS because we did have a flicker that would have probably kicked us off otherwise. Gary [01:07:21]: I didn't even notice. Good. Leo [01:07:23]: So before before the world comes to an end here, thanks as always for listening, and we will see you or talk to you again real soon. Take care, everyone. Bye bye. Gary [01:07:34]: Bye.