Leo [00:00:23]: And we're back. We had busy Septembers, both of us, I think. Gary [00:00:27]: Yeah. Leo [00:00:27]: Although yours sounded like it was a lot more fun. For whatever reason though, to be honest, you know, you still kind of sort of sound like you're in a cave. Gary [00:00:38]: I was never in a cave all of September. I was in the opposite of a cave. Leo [00:00:44]: What was it, the Grand Canyon? Gary [00:00:46]: The Grand Canyon, yeah. I went on a 16-day boat trip on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. So I was outside For 16 straight days. Like, no real inside. Leo [00:01:02]: No roof, right? Just tents and whatever. Gary [00:01:05]: Yeah, tents. But really, I don't— barely in a tent. Maybe in a tent with the doors open for periods of time, but that was about it. But I'll have a lot more to say later on about— Leo [00:01:17]: Yeah, yeah, no, I know it's on the agenda. Gary [00:01:19]: It's there. Yeah, that's our biggest explanation for our months Yes, that, that was a solid 3 weeks of, uh, being out of touch with the going to and from and all of that. Yeah. Leo [00:01:31]: Then you got back and I had a conflict or two, so— but anyway, here we are. Um, so one of the things that happened while you were gone is that I made a new Apple purchase. I haven't purchased anything from Apple for some time, and, um, I don't know if you can see it on camera, but I'm holding it. Yeah. Gary [00:01:52]: Yay, my favorite Apple product of all time. Leo [00:01:55]: AirPods. I got a pair of AirPods, the AirPod 5, I think it is, the most recent one. The new ones. Gary [00:02:02]: Yeah. Leo [00:02:02]: Yeah. And for they— I did not realize that they monogram the case. Gary [00:02:08]: You can if you want. Yeah, sure. Leo [00:02:10]: Yeah. So again, I don't know if it'll focus, but it actually— Gary [00:02:14]: Oh yeah, I see it right there. Yeah, nice. Leo [00:02:16]: You get 3 characters and mine says Leo. Anyway, um, I bring that up specifically because, um, I am an Android person, and as such, I was always somewhat concerned that the iPod or the AirPods would not work for me. But I did a little bit of research— thank you, Claude— and, uh, sure enough, not only do they work, uh, there's software you can get that people have written uh, apps you can get. LibrePods is what I'm using. I've got a link to the, uh, Google Play Store for that in our show notes because apparently there are a fair number of places where you can get things called LibrePods that look kind of shady. Um, so get it— if you're going to do this, get it from the, from the Google Play Store. But, um, I am very impressed. I have, um, had other earbuds before, and they were always either clunky, uh, or they just didn't really add a whole lot of value. Leo [00:03:22]: The thing that impresses me the most, honestly, is the noise cancellation feature. I turned that on, and there's a good chance that the noise cancellation is better than what I get with my Bose over-the-ear noise-canceling headphones. And that's pretty impressive given the size and the design of these things. So anyway, it's working with my Google Pixel 9. I'm very happy. There's a number of features that the LibrePod software enables. Obviously, there are things that you don't get if you were fully in the Apple ecosystem. But yeah, I just thought I would, I would start with that because I was actually pretty impressed and pretty happy with the result. Gary [00:04:07]: Well, it's interesting that that's the product you got because I also just bought a couple of days ago a different headphone product. I love the AirPods. The AirPods are my all-time favorite Apple product. I think they're just amazing. They're great. I hesitated buying them because I thought, oh, they would just fall out of my ears, which has never happened. Leo [00:04:27]: Right. Gary [00:04:27]: It turns out the main reason that the earbuds fell out of my ears was because the cord would get snagged on something. Not even snagged, but just, you know, just brushing against your arm is enough to pull them out. Leo [00:04:40]: Right. Gary [00:04:41]: And without the cords, suddenly there's nothing to make them pop out of your ears. Leo [00:04:44]: Right. Gary [00:04:44]: I've had many versions of AirPods, and I love them. And I feel they give me this great freedom to move around, walk around, bike around, travel anywhere I want with these headphones in my pocket that allow me to listen to audiobooks, and most importantly, music. Leo [00:05:01]: Right. Gary [00:05:01]: But that said, I sometimes do enjoy full-sized headphones, and particularly the over-the-ear. There's, you know, there's on-ear and over-ear. On-ear, you can wear for a short period of time, and then they start to bug. But over-the-ear are really good. And I had wired ones, and I also had some really old wireless ones that were just— I mean, we're talking like 15-year-old wireless ones. Leo [00:05:28]: Right. Gary [00:05:28]: And I thought it was time upgrade, and I got another Apple product, the Beats Studio Pro, which are— yeah, that's— why didn't I get the AirPods Max? Well, they're $500, and I just don't expect it. Like, I don't expect to be using them as my main headphones, but I have a lot of travel still coming up, and I wanted to have something noise-canceling that would be over my ear and I could wear for long periods of time. And you can get the Beats Studio Pros, they're like $300, but you could just watch the prices and you can get brand new ones for $150. Leo [00:06:06]: Wow. Gary [00:06:06]: If you just don't want to buy them the second, you're okay with buying them like tomorrow because you just— there's sales all the time. So yeah, it's interesting. Um, I'm using these, uh, actually right now as we're doing this, uh, and they seem to be working great. So just a nice alternative instead of having something stuck in my ears for many hours a day. Leo [00:06:28]: Right. So far, I'm enjoying it. I'm a big fan of over-the-ear. I've never had success with on-the-ear. It seems like, you know, they're, they're not, they're not good at blocking out sound and they're not good at providing sound. Right. So yeah, exactly. So I've got, um, the, the AirPods are probably the first in-ear earbuds that, um, I will probably use regularly after having tried many different kinds before. Leo [00:06:59]: But I still have my, you know, my Sony studio wired earphones, which is what I'm using right now. These are the ones that whenever you see like videos of musicians or people in an audio studio, these are kind of the headphones that they're wearing. They're not horribly expensive and they are really, really good. I run through them not because they wear out, but because the cushion on the ear deteriorates over time. And while you can replace them, uh, it's not easy, and the result isn't always what you, um, uh, what you expect. The, uh, Bose, uh, headphones— yeah, if you want over-the-ear, um, noise canceling, that's absolutely the way to go. And while I don't have any plans to fly anytime soon, My next flight will probably be an experiment to see which ones work better for me, the AirPods or the over-the-ear. Yep. Gary [00:08:03]: Indeed. Leo [00:08:04]: Yeah. All right. So of course, we must— it's a requirement now. We must talk about AI. And there have been a couple of interesting themes for AI over the course of the last month while we were off. There's 2 of them. I've got them both listed. AI regulation— does it stand a chance? And then of course there's lots of talk about the AI apocalypse, in which case, do we stand a chance? The regulation one is interesting. Leo [00:08:40]: Uh, I am skeptical that we will actually be able to do anything meaningful with respect to AI regulation. They call it— now they're saying, you know, well, we'll self-regulate. Yeah, sure. But in terms of actual legal regulation, uh, for one thing, the legal process, the, you know, the process of actually generating meaningful rules and regulations is just moving too slow in comparison to the progress that's being made on the AI front. And it also stands a pretty good chance of, if passed, putting us at a severe disadvantage on the world stage. And I think that that basically means that it's a non-starter. Um, I just don't see how any regulation can happen. What do you think? Gary [00:09:35]: No, you're right. It's very difficult to write any kind of regulation for this kind of thing. Plus, the technology is moving so fast, um, that it's like any— anything, any bill that would be put together first would, by the time it got passed, be out of date already. Leo [00:09:55]: Right. Gary [00:09:55]: Um, and yeah, I have mixed feelings about it, as I, as I sense you do as well, partially because I've read— already read so many science fiction books in which the, like, AI apocalypse comes about partially because the United States is unwilling to regulate AI because other countries aren't, and they don't want to fall behind. That's like a constant little, like, oh, this— how do we make it so that the obvious, uh, controls over AI weren't put in place? Yeah, you just got to say, well, China didn't do it, so the U.S. felt like they couldn't do it either, or they would somehow lose out. Leo [00:10:36]: Right. Yeah. Yep. So that'll be interesting to see where it goes. Regulation— there's been talk of global AI regulation is probably the wrong word, but at least coordination on what kind of limits and restrictions they might put on AI. And while I think that that is laudable, Again, I also think that that is doomed to failure because it relies purely on trust. And right now, uh, the United States in particular is not particularly trustworthy. Uh, and of course we don't trust China and China doesn't trust us and other countries should, could start, uh, you know, entering the, uh, the arena and nobody would trust them. Leo [00:11:22]: So it's just one of those situations where As much as I hate to say it, while the industry is planning on self-regulating, that's probably about all we've got. Gary [00:11:34]: Yeah. Yeah, it's a difficult topic and it's going to continue to be. Leo [00:11:38]: So given that there won't be any regulation, meaningful regulation, um, when's the apocalypse? Have you got it on your calendar yet? Gary [00:11:47]: Yeah, I know. Uh, this is, this is another tough one because it's like A lot of weird things are being said, aren't they, right now? First, some very weird statements. Not usually— you always get weird statements from— there's people on the fringes, uh, and journalists love to interview people on the fringes. You know, if you can't find somebody that will say there's an AI apocalypse coming, keep asking until you find somebody that will and quote them. I mean, it's very easy. Leo [00:12:16]: Right. Gary [00:12:17]: Uh, and that's exactly what's happened. Except that then they go back to some of the people in charge, some of the CEOs and some of the others, and they ask them about it. Instead of getting the good old-fashioned, oh, that's just nonsense, you get them saying, yeah, well, maybe. Leo [00:12:34]: Exactly. Gary [00:12:35]: Which is kind of disturbing. But also, when you try to talk to people about it, you get the thing, okay, so what exactly is going to happen? I don't know. It's like, what will the AI apocalypse be? The traditional movie thing, right? If we want to go back to 1971 and Colossus or whatever, you know, is the AI just takes control of the nukes. Leo [00:13:00]: Right. Gary [00:13:01]: But, you know, that is repeated over and over again. I've seen sci-fi things where it's more like, oh, you know, it starts to take over things for our own good. You know, like what we have access to, what, you know, Basically, AI that's given a task like improve, improve things, and then it says, okay, I can improve things by doing this or that. And then people feel like, oh, things are improving, but freedoms are being taken away, or I can't do something now because AI isn't allowing me to. So it's like, what exactly happens, especially now when we're talking about large language model stuff? large language model stuff basically doesn't do anything unless you ask it to. But that doesn't stop us from having automatic asks, like saying basically every hour, do something constructive. And then it tries to do something constructive or telling it to like, hey, gather this information by whatever means necessary. And then it works for a while. Gary [00:14:06]: And then part of that whatever means necessary was breaking into you know, the Department of Defense to gather statistics or something. Um, so there's a lot of that, but that doesn't mesh with the old sci-fi of just AI being a, like, a being that is thinking. Leo [00:14:25]: It's interesting that the scenarios— of course, everybody immediately goes to the Terminator scenario. Yeah. Which I think is completely unrealistic, but The other scenarios that I think people all have been mentioning are things like the power grid or the water supply. And I think that once you bring down the power grid, um, apparently it would take like weeks, if not months, to bring it all back. And in that duration, we're screwed. Gary [00:14:59]: Yeah. Leo [00:14:59]: Is it extinction level? I never think extinction level is possible because somewhere there's going to be a pocket of survivors. Maybe those survivalists are gonna, are actually gonna finally be able to tell all the, everybody else that, see, we told you so. Gary [00:15:13]: Yeah. Leo [00:15:13]: But the reality is that, um, there are potentials for a lot of ways that AI could be used in such a way that gives it access to things that it could then turn around and use against us. Use, even using against us is probably the wrong phrase because that implies intent. Right? Gary [00:15:33]: Yeah. Leo [00:15:34]: And I don't think there's intent. I think there's unanticipated side effects. Gary [00:15:40]: Yeah. So I think, I think it's actually much more likely that AI will be used by somebody to do something bad rather than AI itself will decide somehow. You know, the idea is like, oh, so how do you bring down the power grid? Leo [00:15:57]: Right? Gary [00:15:58]: I don't know. What if you just asked AI, hey, bring down the power grid, and then it figured it out, right? But then you say, oh, it would take weeks or months to get it back, except that somebody on the other side would ask AI to bring the power grid back up, you know, and it was down for 5 minutes, but, you know, between the 2 AIs battling it out. Leo [00:16:20]: So— That's funny because we had a 2-second power outage yesterday. I mean, literally complete silence for 2 seconds. Maybe that was it. Gary [00:16:28]: Yeah, really. It happened. And it's the kind of thing where we'll find out 3 months from now. Leo [00:16:33]: Right. Gary [00:16:33]: You know, there'll be some sort of report that says, hey, an AI from somebody else's AI brought the power grid down, and our AI brought it back up 2 minutes later. And that happened. So there's that kind of thing. I mean, you're finding a lot of the security stuff too. You know, the whole cycle of humans discovering security flaws, reporting them to Microsoft, Apple, Google, and such, them getting fixed, you know, was a months-long cycle. And with AI now, that shortens because an AI comes online, it finds 100 flaws, right? The engineers get notified of it and then use AI to fix those flaws, or the AI that reported them actually just said, here's how to fix them. And then you end up with a day or 2 cycle. Leo [00:17:19]: Right. Gary [00:17:20]: It's the same kind of thing with scenarios like this, you know, like somebody figuring out how to bring down the power grid. and then somebody trying to fix it, the whole thing gets sped up through AI. So I'm skeptical when people say, oh, it will take— if the power grid is brought down, it would take weeks to bring it back up. I don't think so. I think it would actually work very fast. And also, as somebody that was not part of the power grid for a full 16 days— Leo [00:17:48]: What a wonderful transition. Go for it. Let's talk about that. Gary [00:17:51]: It was not so bad. So yeah, so I have, of course, Every time I go on a trip, there's always some technology challenges, and, um, and I like to talk about them on our show. So there's plenty to talk about, uh, for my trip down the Grand Canyon. Basically, uh, I had to figure out how to power my devices for the 16 days. Now, I only really had one use for my devices during those 16 days, and that was take photos. Leo [00:18:24]: Right. Gary [00:18:24]: That was it. You know, back before digital photography, I wouldn't have worried about it. It would have been film. And my problem would have been, how do I carry all my film? Leo [00:18:34]: Yes. Gary [00:18:34]: And, and how do I store it and make sure it gets back safely? But now it's all digital stuff. So I had 3 cameras with me. My iPhone became just a camera. My camera was already just a camera. And I had a kind of adventure cam, which I'll talk about in a minute, all 3 of which took battery power, and I had no way to recharge them, to plug them in. The solution I thought for this was solar panels. Leo [00:19:04]: Mm-hmm. Gary [00:19:04]: I bought a big solar panel thing. It like folds up to book size, and then it unfolds into like 4 panels plus 1 panel that's just the electronics and like the COVID uh, and you unfold it. It has a nice big surface area. It can take in a lot of sunlight, and it can do things like charge your phone. Uh, I tested this thing out before I left, and it worked. It worked great. Uh, my goal was not to ever charge the phone or the cameras, but to charge my battery packs. Leo [00:19:36]: Okay. Gary [00:19:37]: So I had a decent-sized battery pack, a battery pack that I thought I would have described before the trip as being a large battery pack. When I saw what other people brought with them, now I describe mine as a medium-sized battery pack. It's still just about an inch thick, you know, and it's about the size of a paperback book, but an inch thick. And it could charge my iPhone maybe like 3 times total. That's what I brought with me. I also ended up throwing in at the last minute 2 older battery packs, and I'm glad I did. Because I really needed them. They were smaller and older, and then you could charge my phone a time and a half each. Gary [00:20:17]: But they, even though they were old, they still worked. So I thought, why not take them with me? After all, I'm not carrying anything. Everything goes into bags, the bags go on the boat. It's space I'm worried about, not weight. And these don't take up too much space. Now, the solar was a complete total failure. Leo [00:20:35]: Really? Really. Gary [00:20:37]: You would think being in one of the sunniest places on Earth, it would not be. But what I think caused the failures was heat. So I was in an environment where when the sun was out, it was never below 100 degrees. And if you were putting something in the sun, it was going to be even hotter than 100 degrees. And I had to put not only the solar panels, but the little electronics that were on the COVID part that converted the energy and the battery pack itself, that all had to be out in the sun in order for me to charge. Now, I did try some things like trying to hide the little top of the solar panels where the electronics were and my battery behind a rock or in the shade while the rest was visible. Leo [00:21:23]: Right. Gary [00:21:24]: That only worked so much, especially with rocks were the main way to do that. And, yeah, It's shaded from the sun, but guess what else is hot? That rock is really hot. So I, I think the electronics really kind of just failed because of the heat. The battery itself would sometimes just stop taking in power because it turns out it had a control in it to stop doing so when it was too hot. Leo [00:21:48]: Huh. Gary [00:21:49]: The solar panels itself really seem to not work very well being super hot. I think the ideal case for using panels like that is sunny and cool temperatures, which is what I was kind of testing with before. So I was amazed how little power I got out of these. Plus you add in the fact I'm in a canyon, which has a lot of— which has a lot of time when the, you know, this basically the day is like 4 hours long. Leo [00:22:18]: I was gonna say the canyon seemed like that was what I thought of when I saw that you were having Charging problems. Gary [00:22:23]: Yeah. And that did contribute to it, especially since you wanted to be— you wanted to camp somewhere where it was already shady by mid-afternoon. Leo [00:22:31]: Right. Gary [00:22:32]: And we did most of the time, and a couple times we didn't. And I did not really care very much about the batteries at times we didn't, because when you're trying to set up a tent and there's blaring sun and you're in the middle of Arizona, um, yeah, you're just— you're— it's so hot. Leo [00:22:50]: So I— Gary [00:22:51]: the times it was shady and I was like, well, I can't charge my batteries, but oh, thank goodness for this shade. Uh, you know, so yeah, I didn't get too much sun after we started camping. I started trying to charge at lunch. Leo [00:23:04]: Okay. Gary [00:23:05]: Um, and that's, uh, that just didn't produce very much because the heat— like, I would do things like, oh, my battery's at 52%, I'd set it out for 45 minutes while we ate, and then the battery would be at 53%. It was like, oh, come on, uh, you know, direct sunlight and everything. So it was very disappointing. One time I was semi-successful. I just plugged my Adventure Cam, which is made for extreme conditions. I plugged that directly into it thinking maybe it would deal better with charging in the heat, and it actually did charge up 30, 40%, something like that, over an hour. Um, wasn't great. But it was something. Gary [00:23:49]: One time I did get an afternoon at camp where I had some sunlight and I got a 6% charge on one of the batteries from 0 to 6%. And that 6% was actually good enough to charge one of my camera batteries from 0 to 30, which probably got me like 100 photos. Leo [00:24:08]: Right. Gary [00:24:09]: So it wasn't completely useless, but pretty much completely useless. Very disappointed in that. Here's what I would have done differently. I took, for my Sony camera, one extra battery. So, 2 small, lightweight batteries. Leo [00:24:26]: Right. Gary [00:24:26]: I should have taken 4. They were cheap. I should have bought 2 off— you know, not Sony brand, but off-market brand batteries, taking up very little space, very light. And I could have doubled the amount of battery power right from the get-go, and then just monitored, like, how am I doing with these 4 batteries as I go? I went along. My Venture Cam also had a spare battery. I should have taken 2 more. They were also not that expensive. 4 batteries with that would have gotten me through the trip, right? My phone, I should have just used the batteries that I brought with me and only charged my phone with them. Gary [00:24:58]: Matter of fact, I probably should have bought one of the bigger batteries I saw people taking, which were the size of my battery but maybe 3 times as thick. Leo [00:25:05]: Right. Gary [00:25:06]: And at the end of the trip, Somebody actually said, like, on the last day, oh, you know, I've got plenty of power left on mine. You could borrow it and charge up your phone. And I charged up my phone and it took up like 5% of that battery to charge up my phone with it. Leo [00:25:21]: Right. Gary [00:25:21]: So I was like, oh, I should have just brought one of these. And then I could have charged my phone many times over during the trip, left the whole solar panel behind. It would've taken up less space and probably would've not cost me too much more. Leo [00:25:34]: I hope you got the, uh, the make and model number of what they were using. Gary [00:25:38]: Oh yeah, I, I get the general gist of what they're using. Of course, things keep getting better and better. Of course, um, their, their batteries actually usually had a little solar array on the side of it, but that was kind of useless too. Like, don't need to spend the extra money on that. Or maybe I would have spent the extra money knowing that in some situations I might be in a cool environment, right, and be able to stick it in a sunny place while I went out for a day of whatever and then come back. Um, but anyway, so yeah, that's what I would have done better— just gone with batteries, not with the solar and, and all that. And I don't think I'll ever be in a super hot environment for that long without any power at all for 16 days again, so it probably doesn't really matter. But, uh, I probably won't be bringing the solar panel. Gary [00:26:25]: Like, if I go camping for 3 days I'm not bringing the solar. I'm just going to bring the battery. I'm not going to need the solar panel. Other type of technology stuff. So cameras, 3 cameras I mentioned. The star camera was the iPhone. Leo [00:26:40]: Really? Gary [00:26:41]: It was great. The reason it was great was because lighting, man, these phones can handle a variety of lighting in a single photo processing amazingly. And that's essentially what you're dealing with in the Grand Canyon. You're there in the morning or maybe the evening. You've got one canyon wall bright, one canyon wall dark, a distant feature, maybe another canyon wall on top of a canyon wall that's in direct sun that's super bright. You've got a bright sky. You've got the reflections of things on the river. You've got so many levels of light in a single photo. Gary [00:27:22]: Every time I took a picture of that with my iPhone with HDR and all the stuff it does, It came out looking great immediately. It's like some of my best photos. And I'm not talking about like doing a real comparison. I'm talking about just flipping through my photos and saying, ooh, look at that one. And then I hit the info button and sure enough, iPhone 17 Pro Max. I'm like, yep. It was that. Now with my Sony Alpha 7CR, 60-megapixel camera. Leo [00:27:51]: Mm-hmm. Gary [00:27:51]: Ultra-fine detail. Every time I took a photo, ultra-fine detail. Great landscape stuff, but the lighting, it was always stuff— the dark stuff was too dark, the bright stuff was too bright. It was trying to do its best, right? And since I took RAW, right, I could get that photo back. I could get it to look as good, if not better, than the iPhone photos I took. But it's going to take work every single time. Leo [00:28:17]: Extra step. Gary [00:28:17]: Yep. I've got it like 1,000 photos like that. Leo [00:28:20]: Right. Gary [00:28:21]: Over time, I will probably zero in on a few that I think are really nice. I will look at the— take the raw into Pixelmator Pro, or you could do Photoshop if you want, and I will make that photo look great. But the iPhone would have just done it, and I'd already have that photo ready to go. So the other reason that my big camera wasn't great for me was It was the only piece of equipment really, maybe also those batteries, that I needed to keep dry. The iPhone didn't need to be kept dry. Matter of fact, not only did the iPhone get wet all— I didn't bother to put it away during rapids. The thing got inundated with water during rapids. I even dropped it once straight into a stream. Gary [00:29:07]: And it went through the water into the silt below. Instantly buried, reached in, grabbed it out, wiped it off, didn't miss a beat. The screen was there to greet me. You know, it's incredible how good the current iPhones are with water. However, my Sony camera— weather resistant maybe is the best way to describe it. Leo [00:29:31]: Right. Gary [00:29:32]: It certainly could not get wet. That meant I couldn't have it out on the boat during the day. Every once in a while, I would take it out. Matter of fact, I eventually got a second dry bag that just held the camera because the problem with water on a rafting trip isn't that it— when the splashing is over, you're not out of danger. Now everything's covered with water and you're wet. If I'm going to reach in and grab a camera out of a dry bag, water is going to go into the dry bag and it's not going to come out. That means when I put the camera back in, I've now sealed it into a bag. Leo [00:30:07]: Right. Gary [00:30:07]: That's got water in it, right? And everything in those dry bags gets damp, and the camera really can't— it could be damp for a short period of time, but not for like all day in a hot bag, right? So having it in its own dry bag really helped because then I could basically only get the camera out by itself, not have to get into the bag for other things. I can make sure the bag is relatively dry before I put the camera back in. But what I should have had, what really would have helped me with the camera, was the simple piece of equipment of a good camera dry bag. Something that would have made it easier to open up to get the camera out, take a picture, put the camera back. Because I just had a standard dry bag, which means the whole thing has to be rolled, air pushed out, and then clipped onto the boat. And it's a whole process. I saw other people who had dry bags that were much easier to get into, that were— and I thought, yeah, there are products. I could have bought a dry bag, camera dry bag. Gary [00:31:08]: It would have been worth it. I would have used my camera a lot more. Um, so yeah, I didn't get to use the camera as much as I would like. Um, the other camera I bought was the Insta360 X5, which is a 360-degree camera. And that worked fantastically because first of all, in addition to being 360 camera. It is an adventure cam. I just called it my adventure cam because it's hard to describe what it is. It's not a GoPro or GoPro-looking thing because it takes 360, but it is an adventure cam in a sense. Gary [00:31:43]: It's waterproof. It's, for the most part, like bump-proof and scratch-proof. Like, you don't— except for the lenses, you don't have to worry about the rest of the camera. The lenses you got to worry about, but the rest of the camera can take a beating. And it could deal with the water, you know, great. I mean, I can actually stick— if it wasn't for the fact it was silty water, I could have stuck it under the water and gotten underwater photos, you know. Leo [00:32:11]: Right. Gary [00:32:12]: But the best thing about this camera is the 360. It's not so much that I'm recording in all directions, it's the fact I don't have to pay attention to where it's pointed. Leo [00:32:24]: Mm-hmm. Gary [00:32:24]: You turn it on and it will capture everything. So you— I can worry later about what it's pointed at. A GoPro kind of camera, it's like, am I pointing it the right direction? If I put a GoPro on a helmet and I turn away from the rapid as the water washes over you, I'm now filming something else. Leo [00:32:48]: Right. Gary [00:32:48]: But this 360, not only is it filming in all directions, But it's using gyros on it to always film forward. So I could have— I could extract anything I want from the 360 when I'm done, but it's actually going to figure out what direction is forward. And even though I'm moving myself all the time while holding it, it's going to keep forward as forward. Leo [00:33:12]: Right. Gary [00:33:13]: So you end up with these amazing videos right out of the box of like straight downriver into the rapid. Leo [00:33:18]: Right. Gary [00:33:18]: And I could just ignore the rest of the 360, extract the video straightforward, and edit with great video. And but the best thing is, and this was so important, is I didn't have to look at where the camera was pointed at all. All I needed to do was say go and then ignore the camera. Leo [00:33:38]: Did you have it on like a, a stick or on your helmet or something like that? Gary [00:33:41]: I did it— so I did it 2 ways. One is I had it on stick and I would stick the stick between the bags in the back of the boat so it was sticking up out of the raft as high as it could go. I did tie the end of the stick to something so if it got thrown away or whatever, it wouldn't just disappear into the river. But I didn't have to— once I hit record, extended the stick, I could then ignore it, which is great because then I can, number one, enjoy the moment. Leo [00:34:11]: Right. Gary [00:34:12]: Number 2, I didn't have to worry about it getting knocked around. Number 3, I didn't have to worry about the rapid because that's one of the things you want to do is like, I don't want to end up in the river because I was trying to grab my camera as it moved or something or trying to keep the camera pointed. I wanted to start recording and then forget about it. That worked great for that. Now, after a while, I decided the back of the boat was great because I could capture not only the rapid, But the guide rowing— Leo [00:34:41]: Right. Gary [00:34:41]: Which turned out to be much better video and video I don't see normally. Like, most of the video is GoPro stuff. People are like, I'm gonna be at the front of the boat, I'm gonna have GoPro on my helmet, and there's the rapid, and all you see is a bunch of water coming at you. I got the guide with the oars rowing and the whole front of the boat and the people in the front of the boat as the rapid washed over us. Turned out to be fantastic video. But I also, I wanted to get the front of the boat too. So what I did, as I, as I thought, oh, that sucks, you know, for like $10, I could have bought a GoPro adapter. The helmets had like GoPro mounts on them. Gary [00:35:20]: So for $10, if I had known, I could have gotten a GoPro adapter and stuck the thing on my head and looked— Leo [00:35:27]: Right. Gary [00:35:27]: Stupid as could be, but, but I would have captured that. And then it occurred to me, wait a minute, I've got my little tripod. My little tripod's got like a whole Velcro thing. I could just stick that into my life vest and then have the— and then because it's 360, I don't need to have it upright. I can actually stick the thing going straight out from my body. Leo [00:35:48]: Mm-hmm. Gary [00:35:49]: And then just ignored it, started it, and it's sitting right below me. And then ignored the fact that I've got the stick coming out of my chest with the camera on it, and it's going to capture everything. And it did. Not only did it capture everything, it captured me as well. I got like a selfie At the same time as I was getting like what it's like to be in the front of the boat for a rapid. And again, I was able to start recording and then forget about it. I didn't have to worry about where— how my body was turned. I didn't have to worry about like if, you know, it was pointed in any particular direction. Gary [00:36:23]: I could just go. So I loved it for that. And I got tons of great rapids video. Matter of fact, I'll link to a compilation that shows all of this in 10 different rapids that I posted to YouTube. Leo [00:36:35]: Oh yeah, I was hoping you'd share that. Gary [00:36:36]: All shot with the X5. Yeah, it was great stuff. So I was really happy with that camera for a whole variety of reasons. Plus I got some great starlapse photos because another mode of it is you could just stick it on the stick, put it outside, and then say starlapse go, and then let it record for a few hours. And then it gets all the stars in the sky, 30-second or 1-minute interval photos. Leo [00:37:00]: Right. Gary [00:37:00]: And I got some really cool video of that as well. So I was really happy with that. I got some great star stuff with my big camera too, because every night was clear, every night was beautiful. And you couldn't just see the Milky Way, you can see Andromeda. Like, you could stare at Andromeda and say, wow, I mean, it looks like a galaxy, like I'm actually seeing it, you know. Um, it was fantastic, uh, starry sky stuff and lots of shooting stars and all that. Um, so yeah, uh, another technology thing I do want to mention, uh, mention is the satellite communications. Now, I'm good. Gary [00:37:36]: Uh, a big thing here is that I'm totally offline, right? There's no communications, there's no mobile towers, you have no way to contact anybody except— Leo [00:37:44]: Right. Gary [00:37:44]: Now with modern iPhones, you do have satellite text messaging. So I had planned to use that not to stay really in touch with the world But to basically text good night to my wife every night that I could. Leo [00:37:58]: Sure. Gary [00:37:59]: And it worked every single night very easily. Uh, I just went to the Messages app, said, I'm going to send a message, and it was like, all I've got for you is satellite, do you want to use it? And I was like, yes. And then it would tell me how to point the iPhone. Oh, very easy to do once you realize that it's not asking you to actually point to the iPhone. but just turn so the back of the iPhone is pointed in a particular direction. Leo [00:38:27]: Mm-hmm. Gary [00:38:28]: Very quick and easy to do. It gives you a little graphic. It shows you like red, yellow, or green. And then the green, it suddenly shows little like pulses like, hey, I'm actually talking to the satellite right now. And I was able to send out a message and get one back from my wife pretty much— well, every night I was able to do one or both of those. So worked great. Leo [00:38:49]: I have questions because this is a technology that's very near and dear to my heart for a variety of reasons. Um, how quick were the text messages? Were they normal speed or did you end up having to wait for a while? Gary [00:39:03]: So, uh, once I spent maybe a minute just getting the satellite, you know, all pointed in the right direction and all of that. And it showed green and it showed pulsing. It took maybe 5 or 10 seconds for the message to send. And then sometimes while that was sending, I got— I received one. And sometimes while I was doing that, like receiving the one, I would get like another message or a thumbs up on my message. Leo [00:39:35]: Okay. Gary [00:39:36]: So my wife was seeing it in real time. and sending a thumbs up really quick, and then I got it before I shut it down. Of course, I wanted to shut it down as quickly as I could because I didn't want it to eat up battery life. It wasn't eating up a ton of battery life either, but every, you know, I figured every 10 seconds was probably another photo I couldn't take, right? So I— but it worked really impressively. Leo [00:39:59]: The reason I ask is because, um, the volunteer group that I work with does, um, some backcountry rescue for animals that are stuck. And one of the things we struggle with is that we're often out of range of pretty much everything. So we've been taking these Garmin inReach devices into the field, which do some slow SMS text messaging. The issue for us is that, and the reason I ask about speed, Is that not only is it a separate device with a separate subscription, yada yada, it can take 20 minutes for a message to go out and 20 minutes for the response to arrive. Gary [00:40:43]: Yeah, this is much faster. Leo [00:40:45]: Yeah, no kidding. Um, and you didn't have to do anything other than point your phone. So one of the things that we're, um, starting to advise our responders is that we're not going to be investing as much in the inReach devices anymore. But we do want to understand whose phones have a satellite capability. And the, I mean, honestly, the fact that it is a device this big can talk to a satellite that's 100 miles above is just absolutely incredible. Over one of the trips we took while we were off, we were up in Bellingham again for a few days. And, you know, yeah, we were borrowing the neighbor's Wi-Fi and it was, eh. But I happened to have my Starlink with, so I tossed that onto, you know, outside. Leo [00:41:38]: And all of a sudden we had our normal, like, high-speed internet. And it's a device that's, you know, like maybe a foot square. That's just incredible that we're doing this kind of stuff. Do you know if the text messaging, excuse me, on the iPhones is using the Starlink network? Gary [00:41:57]: No, it's definitely not. It is using another network, an older satellite system. Leo [00:42:02]: Probably the Iridium network then, because that's what the, um, uh, Garmins are using. Gary [00:42:07]: It's the one that Amazon just bought. Leo [00:42:10]: Oh, interesting. Okay. Gary [00:42:11]: So yeah, it's a weird little news item. It's a totally separate company or whatever. At Amazon, they— I think they invested a huge amount in it or something like that. So, uh, and people were like, uh-oh, because Apple uses that, you know, Apple should have bought it or whatever. So yeah, it's not Starlink, uh, and it probably wouldn't have to point it too much because there's so many Starlink satellites as opposed to these. These, you actually— it would show you like satellite is here, you know, and you're pointing it. So there's probably like 1 or 2 at a time that are the app actually over. Leo [00:42:45]: Of course, the app for Starlink, when you look at it, it will, um, show you, uh, like this dome with all these points on it. That are the satellites that it's currently talking to, but it's also telling you where the obstructions are. So like where I was, there were trees and a building surrounding us, and I was actually kind of curious to see if in fact the the the thing would even work with like a narrow view of the sky, and it did great. It really did. And again, I'm just impressed by the the ability to do that kind of stuff. So. Gary [00:43:26]: Yeah, it's impressive. Of course, it's also— there's a downside. Um, so the thing about going on, on this Grand Canyon trip is, you know, you're totally off-grid. You're totally not connected to the world, except of course I just demonstrated one way you are using these messages. Leo [00:43:45]: Right. Gary [00:43:45]: If I had not had a prior agreement with my wife to say, look, I'm gonna text you good night and you text me good night or whatever, But unless it's super important, I don't want to know anything. Don't tell me any news. Don't tell me anything that's going on that's with the world or with people I know in general. Like, unless there's an action I need to take, I don't want to know about it. So they were— these were simple little— for me, just saying, oh, I'm having a great time. I did this today. You know, I usually wrote the message out so I could copy and paste it, you know, before I connected. Leo [00:44:19]: Sure. Gary [00:44:19]: And then she just texts back, everything here is fine, love you, all that, you know, glad you're having a great time, that kind of thing. Um, the guides, they did have an inReach system, which was mostly used for weather stuff because it's very important, especially with all the flash floods that Grand Canyon's experiencing now. Leo [00:44:38]: Right. Gary [00:44:39]: So they did have a way to text and to get weather alerts. That— so it wasn't completely offline as it would have been, say, 20 years ago. It was that amount. That's going to go away. It was actually already rumored that the iPhone 18s may have Starlink. They didn't, right? But maybe the next year ones will. Leo [00:45:02]: I was going to say, sooner or later it's going to happen. You just know. Yeah. Gary [00:45:05]: Sitting around the chair circle, as we called it, a bunch of chairs in a circle and there's like stuffed snacks and drinks in the middle because no campfires, of course, national park and all that. There's no firewood anyway. Uh, the— you're just talking, you're completely engaged with everybody else around you. But— Leo [00:45:25]: Right. Gary [00:45:26]: Next year, will there be somebody in that chair circle with their phone out scrolling through Instagram? Leo [00:45:32]: Perhaps. Gary [00:45:33]: Will there be somebody else posting a TikTok video from today's rapid? perhaps. Are we at the end of the era of being completely cut off? I mean, when John Wesley Powell, the first to go down the river in a boat in 1867, '69, whenever it was, I mean, he was pretty much cut off from the world. Leo [00:45:55]: Right. Gary [00:45:55]: Which wasn't a big deal back then, but it was a level of being cut off. And here we are in 2026, and you're still pretty much cut off from the world when you go down. But this may go away completely, um, which is one of the reasons I really wanted to get this trip, you know, do this trip while I could, uh, to get this done, um, to be completely offline. And here's an interesting thing that I didn't realize till afterwards, uh, my withdrawal time from being cut off from the rest of the world was zero. Leo [00:46:27]: Yeah. Gary [00:46:27]: I didn't even— I, I thought about it before. It's like, oh boy, how long before I'm not like worried about my email, before I feel I need to know what's going on in the news or feel like, oh, I can't message people or whatever. Would it be a day, 2 days, 3 days, whatever? I didn't really think about it at all until I got back that the actual withdrawal time was zero. I put my phone into airplane mode when I left my hotel room. Not because I wouldn't have a connection in the hotel lobby or driving in the van to Lees Ferry where you begin, because a lot of the time there would have been a mobile phone connection, but I had no way to charge up for the rest of my laptop. Leo [00:47:11]: You're saving your battery. Yep. Gary [00:47:12]: So I decided, what difference does it make? 2 hours. Leo [00:47:17]: Right. Gary [00:47:17]: You know, but it'll make a big battery difference. So I said goodbye to my wife and I checked my email for the last time. the morning before leaving, and I put it in airplane mode. I noticed absolutely no withdrawal symptoms. Like, like, I was perfectly fine from that moment on. Leo [00:47:36]: Right. Gary [00:47:36]: I was excited for the trip during that time driving. I was excited to get on the river. I was excited for the first night of camping. I couldn't take my eyes off the stars at night. I couldn't stop talking to people and hearing their stories and who they were and getting to know people and getting to know the guides and getting into the rhythm of things. And when it was— when I did have a connection, when it— we came out at Pierce Ferry in Lake Mead, there was no connection there. But driving, at some point there was a connection. I had thought previously that, oh, when I get that connection, boy, okay. Gary [00:48:14]: I even thought, okay, I— here's a prompt, an AI prompt I can ask Siri. to be like, tell me what— go through my email, what was important? Like, what's the first page I could hit that would tell me what's been going on in the news? Leo [00:48:28]: Right. Gary [00:48:28]: You know, what things should I check to make sure everything I did for MacMost went correctly? This is what I'm going to do when I first get a connection driving back to Flagstaff at the end of the trip. Leo [00:48:39]: Right. Gary [00:48:40]: When it actually came time to do all that, I didn't do any of it. I didn't do any of it when I got back to the hotel room. I cleaned up, and actually, something for a future thing, I then went and spent the evening at the Lowell Observatory. Leo [00:48:55]: Oh, cool. Gary [00:48:55]: Seeing the telescope that discovered Pluto, seeing the telescope that supposedly said that there were canals on Mars, you know, enjoying this great museum, something I'll probably go into maybe in a— maybe we'll talk about it next week. Um, and, and I went to sleep that night I still hadn't checked. Leo [00:49:13]: Yeah. Gary [00:49:14]: Matter of fact, I started checking my email, started making sure things were okay with my business and with my family and friends, but I never really did actually check the news. It just kind of— I kind of got an idea of what happened here and there, bits and pieces. I never went and reviewed it. I never went and tried to figure out what had actually gone on. I'd never watched Apple's keynote speech I just read a 2-minute summary of it, looked at a couple web pages, moved on. Um, that totally surprised me. I did not expect that. I didn't expect it to be so easy. Leo [00:49:53]: Given how immersed we are every day in this stuff, it is surprising. So very cool. Yeah. Gary [00:49:59]: Anyway, I figured that's a, that's a pretty good way to end. I do have a lot of other stuff I wanted to talk about, but, you know, I think we'll say— I think I'll stay with this whole thing where I'm still not completely back. Even 2 weeks later, I'm still not completely like back in the real world. So I won't even talk about Apple's new stuff. Well, I can talk about that next week. Leo [00:50:18]: Very cool. Yeah. Uh, speaking of cool, um, yeah, so a couple of weeks ago, I think, um, it finally— it finished. It dropped. I think Amazon dropped all of the episodes. Um, what I'm going to mention for being cool this week is A show called Neely. It's spelled Neely, but if you listen to the pronunciation on the show, it's Neely. If you've ever watched Reacher on Amazon, the one with Richardson, that's actually a very entertaining show. Leo [00:50:53]: And Neely is a spin-off, and it delivers. It actually does a really good job of being entertaining in its own right. Reacher makes a cameo at the beginning and at the end of the series, but it's not Uh, plot-specific. Uh, so anyway, just something we really enjoyed watching. Uh, I think it was like an 8-episode, and I think it's been renewed. But, uh, Neely on Amazon Prime. Gary [00:51:17]: Cool. Uh, I'm going to recommend a book, um, because I just did this Grand Canyon trip. You can't go on a trip like this without thinking all the time about water. Conversation always turns to water, especially in the West. The whole idea of the Colorado River system and the water and the dams and Lake Powell and Lake Mead, it's in the news all the time now. it's constantly on your mind as you're actually floating in the Colorado River. So coming out of that, I felt I really need to learn more, especially living in Denver. Denver's like the first thing that takes water out of the Colorado River system. Gary [00:51:53]: We take it out before it actually gets into the system. We pull it— Leo [00:51:56]: Yes. Gary [00:51:57]: Across the Continental Divide. And I drink what should be Colorado River water, but never gets into the Colorado River. And I think I'm going to be on a bit of a run of reading up on this important issue. And I talked to a lot of people, like the river guides, that know a lot about this, and they all recommended a book called Where the Water Goes by David Owen as a book that's fairly recent but doesn't include, of course, the current few years of crisis. Leo [00:52:28]: Mm-hmm. Gary [00:52:29]: And it's a good starter a book, fascinating information about, uh, because it's not just like about, you know, a whole environmental thing. He looks at the kind of a history of the river, uh, both scientific history going back but also human history of the water use. And also like interesting stuff like what the different places and rivers and towns and everything all along the Colorado River and its tributaries are like. It's a really good starting point for learning about this. Leo [00:53:03]: Very cool. Yeah, water's always been a hot topic for me. One of the things that I like to highlight occasionally on Not All News Is Bad are the efforts to improve desalinization, because I think that worldwide, that's, that's one of the bigger um, opportunities to stave off a much bigger problem. In terms of self-promotion, so a couple of weeks ago my bank called me and, um, I elected to answer the phone and I documented, uh, what happened in askleo.com/195987. What happened when my bank called me? Uh, it was an interesting exercise in Noting what was possibly a scam, uh, turned out not to be, but how the bank reacted properly when I treated them as scammers. So anyway, that's something worth paying attention to. Gary [00:54:07]: Interesting. Leo [00:54:07]: A very, very common scam vector. Gary [00:54:11]: And maybe something I'd like to explore more, uh, on a future episode, because when I got back from the Grand Canyon, I found out that while I was in the Grand Canyon, apparently I bought $6,000 worth of concert tickets on my credit card. Leo [00:54:25]: Yikes. Gary [00:54:26]: Yes. So fortunately, yeah, of course, I noticed that right away and reported it. So, so yeah, I learned a little bit about some security measures that I now am taking to prevent that. So maybe something we can talk about next week. Leo [00:54:46]: Love that. Yeah. Gary [00:54:48]: Yeah, I'll promote Let's see. Obviously, new versions of macOS and iOS and everything came out. One of the things that it does is instead of having Spotlight does some things and Siri does other things— well, that's still kind of true, but now Apple has at least put them into one prompt. So instead of trying to figure out what button to press, You could press one button and then you could just search for a file or ask Siri something. So I talk about how that's changed and kind of an orientation video for that. Leo [00:55:27]: Very cool. Alrighty, well, I think that pretty much wraps us up for our first week back after a month-long hiatus. Man, there was a lot to talk about and it sounds like there's a lot more to come. As always, thank you everyone for listening. And we will see you here again real soon. Take care, everyone. Bye-bye. Gary [00:55:46]: All right. Bye.