Episode 446 - The Good Old Floppy!

This Week on TechtalkRadio:

Justin, Shawn, and Andy tackle the buzz around Epic Games’ $126 million Fortnite refund settlement as listed in this link for the FTC for unauthorized in-game purchases and account locks. The conversation dives into the psychology of microtransactions, with Justin sharing personal experiences from PGA Tour 2K25 and Clash of Clans, and Andy reflecting on mobile games that he plays like Toon Blast which also has come under scrutiny. Shawn breaks down jaw-dropping revenue numbers for these games, highlighting the lucrative—and addictive—nature of in-game purchases.

The discussion pivots to the shifting landscape of operating systems, as the crew critiques Microsoft’s pushy tactics with Edge, Bing, and Copilot, and sings the praises of Linux Mint as a cleaner, ad-free alternative. They explore how Linux is becoming a go-to OS for users tired of bloat and complexity, with helpful resources like Alternativeto easing the transition.

From BIOS repair using a CH341A programmer to Reddit-sourced tech fixes, the show is packed with DIY insights. Justin tells us about and swears by Driver Easy for driver updates which has Shawn signing up during the show for a special deal.  We are also reminded on one of Matts favorites, NiNite while Shawn also suggests regular reformatting every couple of years to keep machines healthy.

Listener questions lead to a conversation about USB drives—form factors, brand reliability, and best practices for storage and backups, including the 3-2-1 strategy. Plus, Shawn shares his ham radio experience connecting with the International Space Station and recommends the Next Spaceflight app, just as NASA gears up to stream live on Netflix.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following program is produced by the tech Talk Radio.
Now everybody out there in radio, and this is James
Young from the rock band Stick. If you are technically challenged,
if you got trouble with that computer.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yours, because Lord knows, I do you need to listen to.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Tech Talk Radio. Welcome to another episode of tech Talk Radio.
I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm Justin Lemmey. Welcome.
It's good to see all all Mack.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
What a great show that was last week, right, I
mean yeah, we had a lot of fun with it
because you know, there was there was a longer video
discussion then you know we we were able to put
on the air. But I'll tell you what it was,
the blast talking to Ted Sellis and Jason Sikorski from
the Postal documentary. And I don't anybody got a chance
to see that yet. They said they wanted to send

(00:45):
us out copies.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
And luck would behold, it came in the mail today.
You're watching the video. I'm holding it up. It's it's sealed,
which is great, and it's signed by the two guys
who talked to last week and the two guys from
Running with scissors, So I don't even know if I
want to seal it.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Oh man, I went ahead and unsealed it. I noticed
that the autographs are actually on the inside, so they
actually took the slip cover out and autographed it so
that way you're not gonna ruin it. They didn't sign
the plastic on top, they signed it inside of it.
Oh that's cool, that's cool. There was a lot going
on this week.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
I kind of wanted to ask you guys too about
this Fortnite money claim that every It's like the press
is talking about it because Fortnite obviously a pretty huge
game and now they're saying that there's a lot of
money going to be coming back to people who played
the game and maybe made some in game purchases. Which
this is not the only game that's ever happened on, right, No, this.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Is this is this is something that's not new. There's
a lot of games, I mean, maybe not a lot.
I'd say, maybe you know a handful of games that
have done something like this, but I think that this one,
because Fortnite is such a huge ip that this kind
of sets a precedent for this type of situation. Uh,

(02:01):
you know, Fortnite is a very very popular game with
children especially you know, maybe let's say tweens or teams
that play it, not not so much like younger kids
and stuff. What's the premise in Fortnite? What are you
gonna do? It's a Battle Royale sean, you know Battle Royale, right,
it's at.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
The Battle Royal game, right. You basically parachute in it's all.
You can play in teams of four duos or solo
and you basically try to survive to the end. But
there's a couple different modes, like there's a builder mode
where you can build platforms and houses and stuff, and
then there's a no building mode. But like any other game,
there's micro transactions, right. You can buy skins, you can

(02:39):
buy weapons, you can buy avatars, you can buy whatever
X people. Yeah, you can buy xpoples and stuff. So
so back in twenty twenty two, the FDC basically said,
if you bought or if you you were charged in
game currency for items you didn't want, your childman unauthorized charges,

(03:02):
your Fortnite account was locked between these days whatever. After
disputing charges, you're basically eligible for refunds on some of
that stuff.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Wait, so wait, they so people maybe saw these charges
on there that maybe their kids made, and then the
people of Fortnite locked the game out so nobody could
play it.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Correct and because if you disputed the charges, Fortnite would say, yeah,
you're you bet, you're done your kids back. So basically
they've reopened it currently distributing one hundred and twenty six
million dollars in refunds, and has reopened the claim's process
until the July till July ninth of this year, so
in next this later this week, you know, in a
couple couple of days.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
So okay.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
The good question is for some of our listeners that
are not gamers, maybe they have kids that are gamers
or grand kids or whatnot, would one hundred and twenty
six million dollars seem like a lot of money to
some of these companies.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
I mean, it is a pro.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Section lawsuit, you might it's probably not that much money
to Epic Games.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Fortnite makes like thirty million dollars a day.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
It's wow, wow, I know it's I play a game
called tune Blast, and it's you know, it's a game
you play on your your smartphone and it's a lot
of fun.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
And they and lately I've been seeing ads for another
one of their properties, Royal I think it's Royal Match
or Royal.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Kingdom, one of those.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
And they they talk about the fact that you could,
you know, get the app, you can download the app,
you can play the game.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Uh. No Internet is needed for you to play the game.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
And it doesn't cost you anything, and there's no in
game ads.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
And you know, I had somebody at work ask me
how do they make their money? I said, well, it's
all in the artificial intelligence within the game that if
you're doing good, you're gonna get to a point where
you're not doing good now to get past certain levels,
you can then buy like they do in Fortnite, luke

(04:56):
crate or you buy you know, boost, you buy a
boost package. You can buy you know, for twenty bucks,
you get this. For fifty dollars, you get this, you know,
for five dollars, you can get this, you buy that,
and that gets you over that hump. And it really
is quite addicting for people who play the game. And yeah,
they're being told by celebrities. I mean, they've got some
big endorsers that are are on television, you know, saying

(05:21):
play this game because you don't have to be on
the internet.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
There's no in game ads, so why not have fun
with it?

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Because they will make money off you because they know
they actually have from what I've heard, they have psychologists
who decide at what point, Oh, absolutely, the game is
gonna get harder. They've been doing that in games for
quite some time.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Right. Yeah, it's all about psychology, and it's all about
the gambling mindset, right, it's getting people hooked. Give them
that competitive advantage. I'm doing really good, really good, and
then you slowly just trickle them back down and you
get them to where they're like, oh, oh I might,
I might, I might not be breaking even anymore. He
boot them up a little bit.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, I have a I have a very good example,
and that's actually happening right now. I just picked up
a new game, and I've been wanting this game for
a while, but I've been reading the reviews on it
and it's it's it's on Steam because we got the
Steam Summer Sales, so there was a bit of a discount.
But it's PGA Tour two K two five, so really

(06:23):
the latest edition of the PGA Tour golf simulation. I
wanted this game a long time ago because I've been
itching for a golf simulator, but there isn't anything out
there except for this. And I kept reading the reviews,
and the reviews kept saying the same thing. It's micro transaction, heaven,
Like they constantly want you to buy by by get

(06:45):
your player to the next level, buy this, buy that,
buy this new shirt, buy this new hat, buy this
new golf club. And I'm like, okay, well, you know,
I really don't want to do that, you know, I
just want to play the game. But then I finally,
before I bought it, I read a review, and this
review is super long, and the guy was like, look,
if you're sitting here looking at this game like it's

(07:07):
a Fortnite like extremely, you know right away just succeed
with everything you do that this is not the game
for you. This is a simulation. This is a golf simulation,
and golf is hard. You have to grind through it,
you have to learn, you have to get better. If
you think you can just simply buy your way to
the top, then you better have a lot of money.

(07:29):
If you don't enjoy the game just as it is,
because this game is perfect, and I read that review
and I was like, Okay, I'll give it a shot.
I bought it, and I'm killing it. I'm killing it.
I am like, I'm like twelve under par compared to
like everybody else is like three over par. So I'm

(07:50):
winning every single match. But here's the thing. To Sean's point,
they're gonna get you to that spot where you're addicted.
You're like, hey, i'm doing good. I'm doing I'm doing good,
and then they're gonna hit you with that tournament, in
this case, the golf tournament, and you're gonna suck and
they're gonna be like, hey, for an extra ten bucks,

(08:10):
we can bump up your stats a little bit. I
bet you that's coming down the line because I'm like,
I am not this good of a gamer. I don't
understand how I'm beating these guys so hard, but it's
so much fun.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
It's funny because I do play Royal MATCHROI O Kaydom
and tune Blast. I did notice, like if on my iPhone,
which you know I still have an iPhone.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
I don't use it. It's there.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
I've got my eye watch, my Apple watch, you know,
tied to that and once in a while I'll say, oh, oh, hey,
I've got tomblasts or royal match on this.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Let me open it up.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
I haven't played it for a while, and it will
right away just it'll say welcome back, and it will
give me all these this loot. It just gives it
to me, and I'll be like, oh cool, and I'm
playing it and these levels are the easiest I've ever played.
I'm like getting through them in just so many moves
and I'm thinking that's kind of weird.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
And then I'll just stop playing.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
And that's the thing, like you said, they want you to,
because they'll get to a point where all of a sudden,
you'll have one move left to get to the next
level and you won't be able to.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Do it unless you buy this. And so it's I mean, hey, do.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
You want to know what the January twenty twenty four
monthly revenue was for tune Blast?

Speaker 1 (09:30):
What was it?

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Thirty seven million just in January, Just in January. They
have made two point six billion lifetime since twenty seventeen.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Right, and to put this, to put this into.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Perspective, right, so take that thirty six thirty seven million
monthly average and Fortnite in twenty twenty four grossed four
point nine billion.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Oh my lord, which.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Is thirteen million, four one hundred and thirteen million, four
hundred and whatever, four point thirteen point four two million
dollars a day.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
When it comes to your games, then would you prefer
and would most gamers prefer a game that you just
buy outright fifty bucks and you don't have to buy
any loose or.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Do you still have to do that?

Speaker 2 (10:19):
You're never going to see that again because the lifetime
of games is so long, and they have to support
they have to be able to support server side content.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Well it's not even just that too. So we have
gotten to the point now where developers are Developers are
the ones that actually make the game. They're the coders,
they're the artists, they're the producers, they're the directors. These
are the people that actually make the game. These people
are given such an unrealistic timeline by the producers. These

(10:53):
are the ones that are giving them the money to
make this game. And these developers are releasing games that
are unfinished, full of bugs, and full of micro transactions
because the publisher just wants to make a quick buck.
And then what happens is whatever is left over of

(11:14):
the player base after most of the players have vacated
the game, they will finally then say, all right, we're
gonna start improving the game. We're gonna make patches stick around.
Don't worry. It's another psychological thing, like, yes, we understand
the game sucks, but bear with us. We're working on it.
We're gonna make it better. And this is just simply

(11:36):
putting the carrot on the stick in front of the horse.
It's literally just stringing you along to keep you engaged,
to keep you playing as long as they possibly can,
to get every single penny out of you.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
It's gonna be difficult though, for kids, because I mean
I think as adults we get suckered into that pretty easily.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
But for kids, I think it could be worse. It's
always just a dog. Oh my god, it's so horrible.
Kerk has already spent like over one hundred and fifty
bucks on Minecraft. Yeah, what was the game, my money?

Speaker 3 (12:06):
What was the game that we were playing a few
years back where all of us were all of us
were spending money on it. It was an action game
top down.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Oh you're talking about Fall guys. No, you're talking about
like the oh gosh, Supercell. Yeah, yea Clash the Clans.
That was the one. Okay, I've told you this before.
I have over the years. Now I don't play it anymore,
but from let's say twenty fourteen to twenty twenty two,

(12:39):
maybe I've spent probably close to three thousand dollars on
that game. It was a very addictive game.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
I got into that as well, and you get to like, oh, wait,
now you could do this.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
At their heyday, Supercell was making one hundred and fifty
million dollars a day.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
Wow, you know there's another one I play. But you see,
and this is the opside of it. Would you prefer
ads in a game rather than that because I play
Words with Friends no, which I get ads? Yeah, And
I would prefer a game that costs me one hundred
dollars that has no ads, no micro transactions. But yet

(13:14):
there's going to still be updates. Yeah, if there's a bug.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
But those updates would cost no. No, no no. If
it's a bug, it's a bug, you fix it right.
If it's DLC. If it's like, hey, we expanded it,
we added new content, yes, I will pay for that,
But micro transactions and anything else, no, I would rather
just pay one hundred bucks straight up for the game.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
When you look at a company like Microsoft and you
look at you know, Windows eleven, that's uh, we're now
less than what five months. October fourteenth is the day
that they say, you know only you want everybody.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
What's to change it?

Speaker 3 (13:48):
They keep putting out, Well, we may just extend it
with those ten they've lost some like four hundred thousand differently,
you know, licensees over the last over the last.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Three years, widows has shed over four hundred thousand Windows licenses.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
So where are they going to? Are they going to
Mac or are they going to Linux? Even?

Speaker 2 (14:05):
But even Mac even I just read an article about
this today because those numbers are coming out. Even Max
subscriptions are down, like not subscriptions, but the Mac shares down.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Could always be too our smartphone? About Linux? What about Linux?

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Linux is still the bottom obviously, but their shares are up.
People are using Linux, but more people day to day
are using os io iOS or Android or Google. Yeah,
I mean more people are using their phones than PCs.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
You could do everything, whether you play games, you could
do rep papers, you could do reports.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
I don't know, you know, it just makes sure, you're
onto this market where tablets and phones are going to
supersede PCs.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Right, just because of the convenience.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Yeah, it's uh, it's going to be interesting to see
where it's going to be in the next few years.
But I just wonder about this whole you know, is
Microsoft just doing a cash grab? I mean, they've got
the manufacturers. I'm sure love it because this is an
opportunity to sell more PCs. And the fact is, let's
face it, when Windows XP came out, we held onto
it for a long time, and you know, we weren't

(15:12):
buying anything else. Microsoft kind of changed their strategies over
the years and finally said no, no, we need to
we need to change these up a little more often
so that I mean, the company can make money.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
So then you know, they instead of.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
Putting out Microsoft Office as a package, it became a
software in service.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
So so we just talked about this today. Right. XP
was officially released on October twenty fIF two thousand and one. Right,
There wasn't another Windows release until two thousand and seven
with Vista.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
So it was six full years of development into Vista
with it with no new operating system, and then eight
came along five years later, twenty twelve.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
That was awful.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Well, actually two thousand and seven, two thousand and nine, right,
so no, I'm sorry you missed you missed seven. They
were out of order when I started seven. Yeah, so
twan only three years, less than three years went by
before Windows seven, then three more years and then it
was six years until ten.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
So we we talked about this before. I don't remember
how many months ago it was, but we all know
that there are two teams that work on Microsoft Windows
operating systems. There's the Blue team and there's the Gold team,
and I know which one is which responsible for which,
but they alternate operating systems. So if you look back

(16:35):
all the way back to Windows ninety five, okay, Windows
ninety five, it was okay, it was pretty good. Yeah.
Then Windows ninety eight came out sucked two Windows ninety
eight second Edition, which was amazing. Then they came out
with Windows two thousand, not really that good. It was

(16:56):
more geared towards servers. Then they came out with Windows
XP amazing. Yeah, And they came out with Windows EM sucked,
was awful. Then they came out with Windows seven, right
or no, wait, wait I'm sorry, Thista awful. Yeah, then
they came out Windows seven amazing. Yeah, Windows eight sucked,

(17:19):
Windows ten awesome, Windows eleven sucked. What does that pattern
show you that we will see Windows twelve by next year?
Windows twelve is gonna be awesome? And what team knows
what the hell they're doing? The other team doesn't, it
seems because every team that works on the ones that
have been sucky continues to work on the sucky ones,

(17:42):
whereas the other team works on the good ones. So if, if,
if the history holds true, Windows twelve should be amazing.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
I'm just so, I know we've talked about this, So
I'm going to talk about this new laptop that I bought.
We've talked about co Pilot and how we're.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Just so ugh.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
The other day, I was going through this new laptop
and it has the co pilot key on it, and
I was trying to figure out, how do we change this?

Speaker 1 (18:09):
You know, I mean, I'm trying to remember the steps.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
So I hit the I hit the key, I went ahead. Oh,
I took the step and I hit the key, and
I wanted to wanted to do I wanted to do
everything do. I wanted to run this do I No,
I just want an answer to my question. And I
asked my Google assistant the question, and I asked the
co pilot and actually copilot gave me a pretty good

(18:33):
answer as well as the uh, the Google assistant. So
you know, the thing is, we're I think we're going
to continue to see them integrating stuff like that that
is going to feedback more information that than that information
could be used for advertising, and then we're going to
see more ads in the os sean.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
You've talked about this before.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
The ads within Windows itself are getting a point that
kind of annoying.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Well, it's I'm never gonna get it, but I can
have a wish that I get a bare bones copy
of Windows. It exists for government clients, bare bones, no ad, no.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Tracking, do it with PowerShell, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Know, I just I don't want to. I want to
be lazy without I'll pay for it. I'm already paid
for it.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Come on, come on, bro.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
But the one that really irks me is when I
hit the windows key and I type in what I
want to do and it opens a bing window and
searches it. Oh that's what that's what just really, I
don't I don't want to open Edge. I just want
you to search my computer for the thing game? Why

(19:44):
I don't I don't want recall. I don't want this recalls.
They're thrown out there. I don't want it taking a
snapshot of my computer and putting it into the clottery
fifteen seconds. I don't want to ask Copilot for it.
I just wanted to search my computer. How hard is that?

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, the ingrained Windows search used to be great, and
now it is. It's so bad and nobody I'm sorry Microsoft,
mister ceo, if you're listening. Nobody likes Edge, nobody likes Copilot,
nobody likes bing. You know, just just seriously, stop, just stop.
Can you bring back word Pad? Can you bring back Clippy?

(20:21):
That's what that's That's what the AI is. It's because
everybody likes Clippy. Nobody like I hated Edge ahead of
his time. The only reason you use Edge is to
download Firefox or Chrome. That is true. And then that
that got blocked.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
Did you I know, if you saw the story from
a few weeks ago that for some reason Google was
not showing up on Windows eleven machines that were having
a hard time with that, and it was taking off
a lot of people trying to figure out why, and
it turned out that some of the content that people
had been seeing on Google, they said, oh this is

(20:58):
a this is a problem, so you weren't able to
run it. I don't know if they've since fixed that,
but that was one of the stories.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
People are going to Linux because Linux is open source
and it's getting better and better by the day.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
It's just still so confusing because there's so many different distributions.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
What do I do?

Speaker 1 (21:13):
There's there's linux Mint. Honestly, if you're looking at the
one hint right there, bam Linux Mint.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
And for everybody that says, oh it's so hard. If
you use a you get to get chatg EPD and
ask it questions.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, like how do.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
I do this in Linux Mint, there's your answer. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
But but Linux Mint looks exactly like Windows, and it
behaves exactly like Windows.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
It has a guy, it has a software center, it
has everything you need. It's what I run my Pluck
server on. It's what I run some servers at work on.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
It's I'll tell you a funny story when when my
laptop died unexpectedly the other day and I I use
my laptop every day. I I went and I found
the Asus that had been in uh, the travel bag
that Gloria has and has not fired up for at
least a couple of years. So I went ahead and

(22:03):
fired it up, you know, and then Don't had to
run a ton of updates. It took a whole day
to do the updates. And then I looked went to
look at it. Oh, this is a Celeron processor. Oh
this is no was It was dog slow, and I
was like.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Oh man, what are we gonna do?

Speaker 3 (22:18):
And then I found that old Dell, the old Dell
computer that we used to use back on tech Talk radio.
I want to say back in two thousand and two.
I mean this, It probably was later than that, but
either way. I found this whole laptop that I installed
Linux Mint on Lenux Min twenty two, and I fired
it up and I was able to get a couple

(22:38):
things done with it, and I thought, wow, this is
an old computer. Couldn't do that anymore, you know, they
make it so difficult. But Linux, Yeah, Lenox worked on that.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
That's why people are going to Linux. Honestly, Linuxmith the
only downside to Linux Mint, or just Linux in general.
I should say is you can't run every single program
on it because most programs are written for either Windows
or they're written for Mac. However, with that being said,
now that more and more people are choosing to go

(23:10):
with Linux, the Linux application library is growing, growing, growing.
You can even run video games. You can get Steam,
you can get Xbox, you can get them on Linux. Right,
So yeah, I mean, I would say at this point
in time, as of you know what, July first, July second,

(23:30):
twenty twenty five, you can probably run about ninety percent
of your programs on Linux. And Sean, you're familiar with
Alternative two, can you find lyncs.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Well, it's one of my favorite sites.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah. Can you find Linux programs within Alternative two dot now?

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Oh yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, you can find Linux
distributions on there. So if you don't know which one
you want to get, just type Linux or just type
in Linux Mint or Dbian or Ubuntu and it's going
to give you a list of all the other distros
that you can get and depending on how text heavy
you want to get. I mean, but like Justin said,
Linux Mint is the easiest it it takes.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
It's based on a BOOTO, It's based.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
On a BOOTU and it take it took me. I'm
good with computers, but it took me less than five
minutes to download the software, burn it to a USB drive,
and get it started installing on another computer.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
Yeah. And once you get it set up, it looks
and acts and feels just like Windows.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
And with with the emergence of AI and l l
m's right, it's so easy to if you have a
question about Linux that you don't want the answer to,
just type it into chat g ept or type it
into rock or and it's gonna spit you out a
really good answer. Yeah, it's it's gonna help you learn. Okay. Yeah,
there's a little bit more involved with Linux, but just

(24:50):
just give it a shot if you if you will
like computers, if you think you're good with computers, give
Linux a shot. Just try it. If you have if
you have a four year old laptop or a five
or six year old tower that's just sitting on shelf
collucking dust and you don't know what to do it
because it can't run Windows eleven, put Linux Min's on it.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
There you go. One work quick point. The best part
about Linux is that they're not a lot of viruses
for Linux because Linux is very, very secure, so keep
that in mind. All right, we'll be back with more
of tech talk Radio.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Seonda Weird, and I'm Justin.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Let me find us on tech talk radio dot com.
We'll be right back now, back to tech talk Radio.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
So before the break, we're talking about Windows eleven Linux
moving to Windows eleven. We're in the process of right
now because the service, the support for Windows ten ends
in October, so we're migrating all of our Windows Tech
machines to Windows eleven per the university policy, et cetera,
et cetera.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Now are you are you having to pull motherboards and
all this other stuff or did you just need to
to for the moment.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
For the most part, it's been pretty smooth, right. We've
been able with the security policies get the most up
to date version of Windows eleven pushed forward. But we've
had some troubles with some other older motherboards that are struggling.
One K one specific server. You have a server that
runs a TriCaster justin probably knows that it's a little
video switching software. I tried to put Windows eleven on there.

(26:08):
So we moved up the motherboards that everything supports Windows
Windows eleven. It just doesn't have secure boot enabled. Perfect cool,
I'll go into the bios enable secure boot. It didn't
reboot after that?

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Did what did you get? Nothing?

Speaker 2 (26:23):
Nothing I could do would get it to reboot. It
wouldn't even post.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
It wouldn't even post, would even post.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
So I did a little Google Foo. This specific gigabyte
motherboard had issues when enabling secure boot with a MBR
partitioned hard drive. It would try to read the NBR
petition hard drive and it would corrupt the BIOS.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
Oh but you couldn't you just do a c Moss
reset on it.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Tried it. The bios was at the chip level. The
bios was crossed. So I was like, this is a
production model, Like, this is a piece of production that
we use. Like, I have to get this back. What
can I do? Emailed New Tech and said what can
I do with this box? Doesn't sport? When I was eleven,
that's what they told me. They said it doesn't support.
When I was eleven, I was like, that's a lie.
The hardware can support it, so what's the deal? They said,

(27:14):
that's it. You don't guys don't pay for a service contract.
So therefore I can't help anymore. Doesn't suport on was.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Left, We're gonna hear a lot of that.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
So I kept searching on I've got to be able
to fix this. I can reflash the bios. So I
was like, you know what, I'm gonna take on a challenge.
So I bought a I bought a H three forty one,
a programming tool really on Amazon.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Wait, what is what exactly? It is?

Speaker 2 (27:39):
It? It's a USB stick and I bought a dongle
that it's four pins or it's eight pins that clips
onto the motherboard. I literally clipped it to the bios
chip on the motherboard, plugged it into USP, into my
into a Windows computer, and downloaded the proper new, updated
twenty twenty five version of the iOS for this motherboard,

(28:01):
and flashed it to the motherboard the bios chip.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
That's amazing, that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
It was worked, and it worked.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
How did you feel when you rebooted and then it
came back up?

Speaker 2 (28:12):
I stood up a little dance.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
It was.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
It was. It was one of those things where it's like, Okay,
this is the last thing I can try. It's either
this works or doesn't.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
So so how much did that little chip thing cost.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
You fifteen dollars on Amazon, And did.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
You pay that yourself or did you use it?

Speaker 2 (28:27):
I bought it by myself because it's like I screwed
it up.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
Okay, how much did they pay you back for that?

Speaker 2 (28:32):
I got the fifteen dollars back.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
That's it. You only get the fifth. Did they not
even buy you lunch? No?

Speaker 2 (28:38):
I did buy me lunch all the time. But it's
I got back what I paid for it, right, because
my boss is on vacation, so I had to make
a call. I paid for it. Whatever.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yeah, I got my money back.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
But it was pretty cool to like, I'm in this
programming software called Neo Loader.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Neo all right it yeah, let our listeners.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
All it's if you feel like up to the challenge
and you have access to your physically access to the
mother board, you can buy this flasher and the adapter.
I actually you actually it's a clip. It looks like
like a gator clip and I clipped it right onto
the chip. Wow, read read the bios off of it.
So I backed up the bios that was on it

(29:19):
and then downloaded the new one from Gigabyte and flashed
and just clicked flash and it read it, wrote it
to the memory, plugged everything back in, plugged in the
graphics card, plugged in their custom PC express board, and
they booted.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
You got to link that on our website.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
Yeah, that's that's pretty cool. I'll make sure that the
links are there.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
But and now it will post and it will load
into Windows eleven.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
So so what whatever you were told by New Tech,
that wasn't the case, because now it's working.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
I think right New Tech they said their software doesn't
spport on whatever's that's a whole different thing that I've
got working, and I've improved.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Well, their software doesn't, but the hardware, when you flash it,
it works fine.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yeah, so now it supports Windows level. See.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
I I make it the point though, Sean, and justin that,
I think we're going to see a lot of this.
There are even in the last three four years, there
are companies that have sold software and hardware that you
buy it, you use it. I'm going to give an
example radio stations that bought a automation system. So they've
got it worse. Fine, they didn't opt to buy in

(30:21):
for the you know, the the service contract, and suddenly
now they're being faced with, oh we got upgrade to
Windows eleven. We don't have a service contract. You're not
going to be able to do that because if you
hose the machine, that's it for you, and all that
money you spent is gone.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
The fun part is. The fun part is is some
companies even tell you if you don't opt for the
service contract now, and you want the service contract, then
when we have to upgrade, you have to pay us
for that entire duration that you didn't have the service contract.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Oh my lord, really, whoa wow?

Speaker 3 (30:51):
It was not even illegal, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
So that's how it works in some of the broadcasting
business where you don't don't have support and you want
support going forward on certain products, unless you're buying new
and getting getting a new service contract, do you have
to back pay for support?

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Do you remember that that array that we had back
at KSWB and San Diego, that Unix storage array, I
can't remember. It was like a start with N no,
not start with an N. It was like where we
would put all of our long term storage and it
was all Mac based and it was like a budget
XAN something like that.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
XAN was max like long term file store like they
had Server store.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
It was something like that anyway. But yeah, it was
the same thing where we had a problem where we
cannot get it to work, and I was tasked to
try to figure it out. And I contacted the you know,
the support and they're like, yeah, well, you haven't had
support on this for you know, X amount of years,
and you're gonna owe us, you know, you know, fifteen
thousand dollars if you want to, you know, catch up

(31:58):
with your support contract and then we can actually help you.
And you know, Kyle, our boss at the time, was like,
there's no way we're gonna do this. You're gonna have
to figure this out on your own. I turned to
Reddit and I actually found a former engineer that used
to work for that company, and he was like, look,
i'll help you out. Oh and so we got we
got on like a screen share with him multiple times,

(32:22):
and he got in and because he knew Unix. Now
Unix is different than Lenox. Lenox is based off of Unix,
but like Unix is like hardcore command line only type
of interface, this guy went in and just completely upgraded
our entire infrastructure and got everything to work again, and

(32:44):
you know, and he was like, I'm not going to
charge you anything. I just do this for fun. But
I told my boss. I was like, look man, we
got to do something for this guy. Yeah, you know,
just because he was awesome. So I convinced my boss
to buy him like a five hundred dollars gift card
visa gift card on company dime. And we just bottom
a five hundred dollar gift card and send it to them,
because if it wasn't for him, we would have lost

(33:05):
all this long term storage that this company was gonna
charge us fifteen thousand dollars to try to catch up on.
And this guy's like, I'll do it for a five
hundred buck, you know. Actually, well he said it for free,
but we just gave him for five hundred bucks, you see.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
And that's something it's not gonna affect just technical companies.
It's gonna affect auto repair shops that are using technology
to discover and fix and repair because let's face it,
cars are elect you know, pretty much, there's so much
electronic computer engineering in those It's gonna affect so many
different businesses that they don't have.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
The service contracts.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
Something happens, then you know, they can lose a lot
of business because they're not able to work, and yeah,
I think we're gonna see a lot of that. You know,
it's interesting because my problem this past week.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
I have a Lenovo. It is a it was I
think it was a yoga or Yogi yoga laptop. It's
been great.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
When my Asus died about four years ago, I went
out and I bought this at a It was an
open box from Best Buy, previous display model.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
And I've loved it. It's been great.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
I was able to update it to Windows eleven and
it's been fine. The other day I needed a file
off of there, and I, you know, took it out
of my laptop bag, put it on the little square
table that I have put in a flash drive.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
You know. I had started it up, got it working,
grabbed the files I needed, and then close, you know,
shut it off, pulled the drive and put it back
in my laptop bag. When I got to work here
at station, I went to hook it up.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
I hit the power. Nothing's happening with it. You hit
the power, but but it feels smushy. It feels like
it's not connecting right. I'm like, what the heck's going on?

Speaker 1 (34:54):
I tried shutting it down on plugging it. I look
at the power. It's full power.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
Because I used it the night before and had it
plugged in, and I'm thinking, what the heck is going
on with it?

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Couldn't do it?

Speaker 3 (35:06):
What does elevens on it? Couldn't figure it out. So
I went ahead and I removed the bottom. Okay, the
bottom holds. You know, you no more user serviceable ports,
which I absolutely hate. There's only one company that I
think does it unless you want to buy by a
high end.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
And I look this company up called Framework. Have you
guys heard about them? Oh? Yeahramework.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
They make PCs that you could buy parts and basically
build it yourself or they'll do it for you. So anyway,
so I'm going through it and then I'm reading in
the documentation that there is a button, a small little
hole in the side of my laptop and you can
depress that and it goes into a special post mode.

(35:50):
And I'm thinking, this is after a day of fiddling
with this string, trying to get you know, disconnecting the
hard drive, disconnecting the battery, disconnecting the sea moss, doing
all of that, and I went ahead and pushed this
little button, and all of a sudden, I got power.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
It's spinning.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
So I'm thinking, okay, I know now it is not
the motherboard, because I would not get that if the
motherboard was dead, right.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
I mean, am I am? I correct? Yeah, So it
goes to post.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
I went ahead and I pok it back up and
I control healthily and it comes right back up. Logs
in the windows. You know it's working. I'm so happy.
And I go ahead and do a couple of things
on it, and then I shut it down.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Next day.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
Nothing can't get it to work, and so again I
pulled everything again, hit the button. Nothing get nothing coming
out of that special button now. And then one moment
it came up. But I had to put the case
back on because the case was off and it was
plugged in.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
So I didn't want to take the chance, so I
plugged it, put the case back.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
And couldn't get it. And I have not been able
to get it respond yet. So I'm you know, I
don't know why it would do that. I was thinking, well,
one person had recommended sea moss battery and said that,
you know, if you replace your sea moss, you might
find that that's the only thing that was holding it up.
The other one said the battery itself might be doing it.
Even though you disconnected the battery h and it still

(37:25):
started up, that still could be part of the issue. So,
I it's one of those things. Those are fun to
track down. I wish there was an easy way to
do it, any thoughts, It's just one of those things. Yeah,
I mean, I have troubleshooted so many different laptops that
have done stuff like this weirdly, honestly, at I mean,
not personally, professionally, professionally, I would rather just buy another

(37:49):
laptop because I'm I'm not here to sit there and
waste my time when I've got a thousand other things
to do than to troubleshoot one single laptop when I
can buy another one.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
You usually you know third party. I buy a lot
of my stuff from a website called uh Evergreen Electronics.
There there's basically a secondhand refurbished Great Laptops three year Warrantye. Wow,
I would rather just buy another one for like six fifty.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Right, there are like two things I'll do. I'll try
a new power supply mm hmm, change the Seamus battery
right well, reflash the bios now apparently, Yeah, there you go.
Those three things, that is enough of my time. If
it's beyond that, unless unless there's sentimental value in a

(38:39):
soldered on hard drive or something I can't get to,
it's done. I'm done. I'm moving on. It's a waste
of my time at that point. Well, there I could.
I could probably buy a new or faster one for
a little bit more money and just get my move
my data over from the hard drive. But like I said,
unless there's sentimental data there that I need that's soldered

(39:01):
on that I can't access without the motherboard, I'm moving
on after those three things.

Speaker 3 (39:05):
All right, Well one more question too, Sean. You talked
about moving the data over with this new laptop. When
I logged in, and I logged in with my our
email address, right, it said do you want to move
over these previous backups that have been stored in one drive?
And it was backups from the previous laptop, And I thought, WHOA,

(39:26):
look at that. I can actually do that.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
So I went in and did that. But I've had
so many little issues here and there.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
You still have to install certain programs and all that.
Is it better just to go just brand new, get
the software that you want to do? Just start over
from scratch, or let it do this where it's installing
little bits and pieces to get it to work.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
I've always been under the adage of stall fresh. I
rarely go more than two years without recompletely reformatting my computer.
You just get to a point where it starts to
get bogged down. You get junk, you stuff. It also
helps you curate your date your data a little bit,
so you're not just hoarding a bunch of junk on
your computer. And it gives your computer a new breath

(40:07):
of fresh air. You get the most up to date
version of Windows, you get the most up to date
version of drivers, you get you know, it's just but
it helps just kind of speed things along and give
your computer a little bit extra life. But you know,
I know a lot of people that don't ever do that.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Yeah, so we're you know, this whole segment, we've been
talking about computers that have been having problems booting up
or I don't know, just performance in general. I guess
maybe you could say, right, yeah, I have Again, I'm
gonna mention this one more time because I mentioned it
so many different times. But I've had computers at work

(40:43):
where we're like we don't know what's going on here.
The thing's not working right, something's not right. Blah blah
blah blah blah. We run driver easy. Driver easy is
the program that I've been recommending for years now. Oh yeah,
you can find it driver easy dot com. All right,
and it is a subscription service. I think it's like
about thirty bucks a year whatever. Okay, we have a

(41:07):
technician license, so we get fifty licenses. Each license is
good for three days, so it allows us to install
it on you know, fifty different computers. We have three
days to run it, update the drivers, and then we're good.
But I also have my own personal license to it
for my home computers. I absolutely love driver easy. It

(41:29):
finds drivers that Microsoft won't give you, your your computer
manufacturer won't give you, Like, I don't know where they
find these things, yeah, but they are they're updated BIOSes.
I mean, I've gone to a SUS's website. I'm like, hey,
where's my bios It's not there. Driver easy is like, yeah,
this is actually signed off by a SUS. It's right

(41:49):
here on this website. They will tell you the source
where they got it, and every one of their drivers
is signed vetted it works. I have brought computers back
to life from computers that are dead by just simply
running Driver Easy and updating like the chipset and the motherboard,
the firmware, the other drivers. I have brought computers back

(42:12):
to life. I brought computers that are like, oh my god,
this thing is so slow. I don't understand what's going on.
Run Driver easy update about thirty or forty drivers that
aren't listed on Microsoft Boom reboot.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Computer's great, they're running a special right now.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
They are looked.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
I looked it up. Just said it was about thirty
bucks a month.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
No year, thirty bucks a year. It's all lot better.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
So one PC is a year, okay, right now you
can get it be locked in for three PCs for
twenty nine year.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
Oh so three, I'm buying it right now, three three
for thirty three for thirty thirty thirty.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
Two dollars and five cents after text, oh my god,
a year for a year for three PCs, I'm buying.
I'm literally putting my PayPal information right now.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
What is what is your what is that program? Also,
so you get driver easy and there's a program that
can load the most common used software programs you have
on a new PC N night nine night. That's it
nine night and that's spelled N I N I T
H that you can find that in.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
All right, we haven't used it too much, but a
Shaan house. I know Matt.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
It came recommended from from Matt right because I was
telling him all I had. I was spending all this
time installing all these things like us that. I was like,
what's that? And He's like, click on all these buttons
and installs all the programs for you.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Perfect. All right, we're going to take a quick break,
come back.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
Justin's got a listener question he's going to share with us.
We'll be back with more of tech talk Radio. I'm
Andy Taylor, I'm sir, and I'm Justin.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Let me send us an X at tech talk Radio.
We'll be right back and now back to tech talk Radio.
I'm computer and and.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
Everything even for the Internet.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
It's pretty shocking. Now we have a listen to questions.
This is a This is an interesting because I have
a very simple answer this one. But the question is
from Shannon and Tucson. It says, how do you clean
soda pop that has been spilled on a keyboard. Oh no, Shannon,
The simple answer is you don't you buy a new keyboard?

(44:14):
You really should? You respond with popp it in the dishwasher? Well,
I mean, okay, hold on, there are people that have
done that. Sean probably is one of them. Sean, how
did it go? Not?

Speaker 2 (44:26):
Well? Yeah, we have very hard we have very hard
water here in Indiana. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, unless you have like like filtered water, it's probably
not the best idea. Honestly, the prices of keyboards have
dropped down. Now if you're talking about a super expensive
mechanical keyboard with the LED lights like I have here,
Like I don't know if I can show this on
the screen, but yes, like that that's a course theraah

(44:54):
of course here I I would say, you are just
gonna be just just buy a new keyboard. It's gonna
take you so much more time, so much more effort
to try to clean up that soda than it is
for you to buy another keyboard.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Now, if you've spilled it on a laptop keyboard, you're
extra you're extra screwed.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, if you.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Spilled it on a laptop keyboard especially, I mean you
have some that have the mechanical butterfly switches. If some
that have the membrane switches, if you have them, one
of the membranes s which is it's never coming out.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Yeah yeah, no, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
At that point you need you need to take it
to a shop, say how much do you give this
for me? If I give it to you for scrap
and buy a new computer.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
You know, it's interesting with this new laptop that I bought,
which is also a Lenovo, it's the Yoga seven.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
It's a two in one. I get pop ups.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
Now, which are a little frustrating, but I get pop
ups from all state that I can. I can actually
get an insurance package to protect my laptop.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
You can disable all that stuff. I'm still going through it.
I did.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
I did the the install where I let it run
data from you know, the other computer, and now I'm just, yeah,
I'm not liking it. So I think I'm gonna start over,
just start over, deactivate some of the programs that I'm
on there, and this just start over from scratch.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
We got one more listener question from Nick and green Valley.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
All right.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
He says, I was looking at USB flash drives and
saw a lot of different ones.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Questions.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
Kingston sand disk, et cetera, and wondering is there a
better drive than the others or are they all the same?
I mean, and I'm I know, Sean, I know you're
gonna have an opinion on this, but there are different
caveats to it. But overall, you're almost kind of just

(46:51):
akin to like comparing like Ford, Chevy, Dodge. Okay, programs,
they're all gonna they're all gonna do what they say
they're gonna do. Some might last a little longer than others,
some might perform a little bit better than others. Depends
on the engine, right, or or what the what the
specs are on the on the USB drive. But in general,

(47:12):
like Sean said, so.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
I think I think you're you're you're looking at form
factor at this point. Right, Do you want USBC? Do
you want one that'll do both because they make them?

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Do you want FireWire? You have to be difficult?

Speaker 2 (47:30):
So it's funny, so you said firewaar. But the new
version of Mac os iOS twenty six is ending FireWire
support just after a gazillion years. But it's it's akin
to personal preference, right, it doesn't matter what brand, it's
all about size, it's going to be about whether you
want sand Disk or Kingston or of course the Air

(47:51):
or whatever whatever brand you want, but just make sure
you're buying from a reputable source. I would personally go
and buy it physically in the store, because you it's
buying on Amazon, you're likely to get you're not. I mean,
the chances are low, but it's not zero that you
will get a drive that is incorrectly modified or improperly

(48:14):
modified and will be fake.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
I'm just I'm not sure about that because my wife
has always told me that size doesn't matter, and I
just don't quite make I don't know if I be
with that.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Justin it's because you're stuck in the eighties, dude, and
you're still using a floppy drive. Wh okay with the times.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
Dude, Okay, all right, all right, okay, I'll give you
that one. I'll give you that one here.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
I've had a problem lately with P and Y drives.
I don't know what happens, but after a while, nothing
out of them, nothing, not a thing. And then I've
had a couple of sand discs, which I really like
sand disk drives. I've had a couple of those go
as well, where suddenly you can't. You can access them,

(48:59):
but you can store anything else on him. You can't
move anything. I've tried using different programs in there to
to you know, wipe them.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Nah, you can't do it. So I don't know. I
wouldn't spend a lot of money on them on a
USB flash drive. But again, just I mean.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
You're okay, you're looking at like one hundred and twenty
eight or two hundred and fifty six gig forty bucks.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
Yeah, yeah, sixty bus. I mean, I guess it also
depends on what you're gonna use it for. Are you
gonna use this? Is this you gonna be your daily driver?
Are you gonna be constantly writing and reading to this
flash drive? Because if so, yes, you're gonna want to
spend the extra money. But if this is gonna be
something you're gonna put a file on it and then
come back a year later and access it, dude, it
doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
Yeah, And if you if just a reminder, if you're
using it for like archival storage, right, it moves you
to every year or so copy the data to a
new drive or copy to an exist a third party. Right,
it's the three to three to three three point solution
right on prem on computer, in cloud. Right, those are

(50:02):
your three points of failure for backups. So like you
should always have a copy on your computer, you should
always have a copy on a flash drive in a
copy inche in the cloud or off prem So just
that data does degrade over time. It takes a long time,
but it can degrade over time. So you want to
make sure if it's important, if it's security, if it's
your bitcoin key, if whatever, you want to make sure

(50:23):
that you're making sure that you copy that data. I
would say at least every every one year.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
Also, be careful where you're storing your flash drives too,
if you got them, don't leave them in the car
where it might be, especially during the summer where it
might get hot for us out here.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
You know that that's bad.

Speaker 3 (50:36):
You don't want to leave any technology, even your your
dash cams.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
You want to pull pull off off.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Your windshield if you can do that, especially in the
summer heat.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Definitely don't leave your kids in the car. Well, yeah,
I mean that's a given. That's that's totally technology.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
Or your kids in the car, Yeah, exactly, But you
got to be careful where you keep them. You know
you put them near magnets. You put them near other
devices that can also be a pain. I think I've
seen that before, where somebody had a flash drive on
a file cabinet being held by a magnets.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
I've seen, I've seen. I've seen the old ones with
people like put old floppy discs.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
That's I showed you guys that because I did it
as a joke where I wrote system boot drive and
stuck it with a hard drive magnet to this side
of my desk.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Hard Drive magnets are the best.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
I've been destroying and pulling apart hard drives and that's
the best thing about him is getting the magnets.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
And one and one more tip. Don't plug your flash
drive anywhere you don't want your data to be taken,
Like if you don't want it, don't take in somebody
else's computer plug it in unless you're you know them.
Don't take it to the airport and plug it into something.
It's like just like USB ports, right, you don't plug
in unknown sources into your computer. Don't plug in flash
drives you pick up off the street. But like, just

(51:52):
be careful where you're plugging your USB sticks.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Good point, Well, that could also go for just mail
in general being a male in general. Good, yeah, sir, Yes,
all right, we'll be back with more of tech Talk Radio.
I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm justin
Let me you can complain at Facebook dot com forward slash.
Tech Talkers will be right back, Thank you, and now
back to the tech Talk Radio.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
Well, I know that Sean has experimented with astral photography
has introduced us into some really cool content. When it
comes to you know, out of space and you've talked
to uh I think you've talked, haven't you talked to.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Some of the astronauts. You listen to the astronauts up
on the space station.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
So I've done QSOs with the space station with other people.
That's bouncing off. But the QSO is basically confirming, basically
confirming a radio signal.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Like amateur radio.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
When this when the space station goes over, there is
a transceiver up there, so you can send send a
VHF signal and receive a UHF signal. So I can
with my ham radio talk and then other people can
then talk back to me off off the repeater on
the space station. This past weekend they had the abr
L Field Day and they activated the space station. There

(53:06):
were two astronauts on board. I don't remember what their
names were, but they actually did activation. So you could
actually contact and talk to one of the astronauts on
the space station this past weekend during the field day.
So didn't get just to do that, unfortunately. But you
can actually see my antenna is sitting back there because
I was trying to do it the other night. It
is as it's a it's a seventy centimeter YAGY tuned

(53:28):
for like right in the middle of that band. But
it's incredible to fun. It's fun to do, and you know,
through the university, we actually did a live chat with
an astronaut in the space station. Because it was like
three years ago. I think. Yeah, there's a whole program
called the aris ar ISS. It's a whole program dedicated

(53:48):
for education on the space station. They track it, they
do they do contesting, and they do they schedule interviews
and stuff with schools around the country on the world
really but I still track it. I get notifications when
it goes over. I can turn my radio on and
hear it. The people talking on the repeaters and stuff.
There's a whole community just around.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
But I I don't know if you saw this, Sean,
and I know that you would be totally into this.
This is cool because when there have been launches or
you know, these events that have taken place, you know,
a lot of people tune in, a lot of people
will check it out, people that maybe don't normally follow it.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Netflix.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
There's been some kind of an announcement that NASA is
going to be streaming on Netflix, that people are gonna
be Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
I just I didn't. I didn't know about this. This
is really cool though. Yeah. So NASA plus it's gonna
be live programming will be available on Netflix.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
So yep, I'm curious if they'll hap uh.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
The article came out today. Ye, So NASA announced Monday
it's latest plants the team up with the streaming service
to bring space a little closer to home starting this summer.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
This is gonna be great, Okay, all right, sometime in
the or two all right, yeah, all right, that'll.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
Be that'll be really cool. I mean, I there's a
really great app called NSF Next Space Flight if you're
interested in watching and tracking space flights. It tracks all
of the major companies. Blue Origin, a couple companies out
of New Zealand, China, India, the US SpaceX. Look you
on your phone?

Speaker 1 (55:20):
So awesome?

Speaker 3 (55:21):
All right, listen, we had a lot to cover this
week on this week's show. We'll have more next week,
so definitely please tune in. As a reminder, to be
sure to check out our YouTube page. You could sign
up there. Check out some of the YouTube shorts that
we put up from the show, as well as video
content from our Fox eleven segments. Again, all of that
on our YouTube YouTube dot com forward slash tech talk Radio.

(55:44):
I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm justin
Let me fight us on the web at tech talk
radio dot com.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Have yourselves a great week. We'll see you