Episode 459 - “Old Tech, New Tricks: Ham Radios, Drones & Data Recovery!" - TechtalkRadio

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following program is produced by the Tech Talk Radio Network.
Hey guys, this is Al Petrelli from the Transient Orchestra.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Normally I'm not a nerd, but I am a tech
talk radio god bless, stay safe.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Welcome to another episode of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor,
I'm Sean de Weird. We have got a lot of
tech to talk about today. There's a lot going on.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
There's just a lot.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yeah. We Now we always get together like before the
show and we talk about like some of the things
that all what interested you and what was said, and
we were like going over going, well, I got this, Oh,
you got this, I got this, you got this, I
got this, you got this one.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, I mean I felt like we had a lot
last week.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
We did. Actually, I gotta tell you. Last week we
gave out a website address. And the website address I
thought that was kind of interesting. It was cool, right,
you were looking at it on the air and you
were kind of surprised by it. I had already, you know,
taken a glance at it and was looking through it,
and I was also impressed by it. That of course

(01:01):
was TV dot Garden and TV dot Garden In case
you missed last week's show or you haven't caught up
on a yet. Is a website where you can go
and there's a globe and you could point anywhere on
the globe you want, So if you point to the
United States, it'll show you pretty much every streaming television
channel that is available for you to watch online. Now

(01:24):
I know there's more than what they actually had, but
it still was cool. The only one I could find
a twoson was k Gun. K Gun nine was one
of those streaming options. But if you want to find
obscure channels, there are small mini channels that have been
launching out, low power TV whatnot. But also you could
find channels from around the world, so it was cool.

(01:45):
I posted that on social media and a lot of
people were loving it. Matter of fact, it's the highest
view count of any of the videos we had done.
But then somebody had commented in there and I didn't
know it. There's a Radio Garden as well, and Radio
dot Garden, and if you go there, it's the same premise.
You can listen to any radio station around the world.

(02:08):
I listened to stations from England, from India, from Spain,
from Italy, from the United States and matter of fact, KGVY,
the station we broadcast on, has just been added because
I found it and added our station to it by
suggesting that we be on there, and sure enough it
was added earlier this week. So you can listen to

(02:28):
streaming channels or listen.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
To another place. You can listen to us.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yes, Radio dot Radio.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
That's awesome. And so we talked about like the TV
Garden the radio garden rate. There's I'm gonna pitch in
one of my other another really great radio website, which
is WebSDR dot org, which is is a ham radio.
It's it's a website for ham radio people that have
built these web SDRs basically software defined radios that you

(02:55):
can have listened to Ham radio signals from around the world.
You can tune men, you can listen to him, so
you could from your computer listen to Ham radio signals
from around the world. It's pretty it's pretty cool. If
you're into amateur radio at all, at any capacity, or
if you're interested in it, dial this up. Webstdr out
of org. Find a webstr somewhere, even if it's in

(03:16):
your region or if it's in the if you want
to listen to something overseas, or it's just really cool
to tune in and hear Ham radio stuff around the world.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Well, it's kind of cool because I have a friend
named Fu that's from Myanmar, from Burma, and I mentioned
that last week of the show. She has been studying
in England and she has a boyfriend, and her boyfriend
is into picking up the radios now and doing the
shortwave radio. So if I found out when he was
going to be on, I'd be able to actually tune

(03:46):
in and listen.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Depending on where he's broadcasting from, you would have to
find something probably close ish to him, depending on when
he's broadcasting and how much power is put now, but
you could probably listen in and he'd pick him up. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Wow. We have an amateur radio club here in Green
Valley and I know where the show is and I've
thought about going in because honestly, I haven't had that
much time with my radio and I really want to.
I want to do it more because it just seems
like it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Well, I mean, you remember about two years ago on
the show, we all got our GMRS licenses right, and
and we were participating in the MYGMRS dot net, which
had the Internet connected repeaters all around the country. Well,
just over a year ago, the FCC put a kebash
on Internet connected repeaters because it violated the use like that.

(04:37):
There was some some legal ease they put in there
that said, you basically can't have a repeater connect to
the Internet because it violates the redistribution of the signal
or something something. So that really cut my GMRS use out.
Nobody here locally outside of like two people were talking
on the gm RS repeater. So the guy that I

(05:00):
was talking to every day while I was driving do
it from work or traveling, you know, from where we
go camping. They were all connected so I could just
keep talking to them, just picking up different repeaters along
the way. That just cut my amateur radio stuff in half,
which was a bummer.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
And then that the people locally to me, there was
one lady that was just kind of got crappy and
just kind of like ruined it for everybody, and the
owner of the repeater said, nah, I'm done, I'm not
dealing with this anymore and shut the repeater down.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Man.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
So outside of two meter, the two meter repeaters in
town and some simplex stuff like I don't do a
whole lot of ham radio stuff every day. I still
do some HF stuff and some listen. I do a
lot of listening.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
But it was kind of cool because one of the
things I remember you did, and this was a special event.
I don't know if they're still doing it, and there
was somebody who was on the space station flying overhead
and you were able to communicate or at least listen
the way.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
So that happens all the time, right, So the space
issue goes over all the time, right during the daytime
when you can't see it, but you can pick up
and listen to the VHF UHF repeater that's on the
space station. And so I bought an arrow high game
yaggy antenna so that I can have my radio set

(06:19):
to a frequency because it's UHF up and VHF down.
I'd have to look at the sheet to remember off
the top of my head. Can transmit on my radio
to talk to the repeater and then listen to the
to the other frequency on the down link. Here myself
bounce off of that repeater and then other people hear
it and can respond to me off that UHF repeater.

(06:41):
Now there's a schedule that when some of the astronauts
up there have their hand radio licenses, they will listen
in and can actually respond to those calls from the
space stations. There are specific times you can do it
to get to get on board the space station and
get actual contact from the space station. But yeah, I've

(07:03):
got QSOs from you know, because when you think about it,
think about it, right, it's it's way up. So when
it's really low on the horizon and i'm i can,
I can hit it with my antenna and talk to it.
Those signals are being bounced over the visible curve of
the Earth that I can see to the western part
of the country or the eastern part, depending on which

(07:25):
direction it's traveling. Right, So, yeah, I've got QSOs from
all over the West coast and other places. I'd have
to look at my log.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
But to anybody listening right now that has never thought
about doing it or never, it's not an expensive hobby,
is that? I mean? The radios they aren't too bad.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Getting into HF can be expensive getting getting getting into
the the HF bands can be a little bit prohibitive
to new users. If you don't have a radio or
have an antenna setup. You can really just build your
own antennas, really, but each of radios. It's fun. I
recommend listening for a while. First, right go to WebSDR
just pull it up and see what you can tune in.

(08:04):
Start it. You know, you have to get a license
to do. You know, there's three different tiers of licensee
of technician, general, an extra. I'm a general, so I'm
the the second tier of the three, and that gives
me enough privileges to do what I feel comfortable doing.
But it's fun. You get to experiment, you get to
play with it, and you know, you throw up a

(08:25):
random piece of wire and now you're talking across the country.
It's pretty wild.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
It's pretty cool. What would be a good website to
go to to get more inful? If if somebody is
like listening to this and I want to get into this.
I mean, obviously, like I said, the Green Valley Amateur
Radio Club, they've got one. They do all kinds of events.
But if they want to go to a web is
there a website for this?

Speaker 2 (08:43):
So aid Rlso the Amateur Radio Relay League, which is
like the kind of the catch all for the ham
radio world. They're kind of the governing arm of Ham
radio outside of the SEC, but find a local club.
To be honest, a lot of times your local clubs
are gonna be the ones they are gonna be. They
usually have monthly meetings, weekly meetings, et cetera. You'd be
surprised how many repeaters are actually around you. So rl

(09:06):
dot org. If you already have a radio and you
want to listen, go to repeater book dot com to
find repeaters around you. It'll give you put in your location.
It gives you a radius of repeaters around you with
their pl tones and whatever. Radio reference is another good one.
That one will give you frequencies that you can listen to.
So like it gives you your local municipality, It gives

(09:27):
you your fire ems emergency stuff. It gives you local repeaters.
It gives you other stuff like the university's public service
stuff is on their school you know, the different schools board.
You know the different school corporations have their stuff on there.
The airport frequencies are on there. A lot of what
I have fun doing with Ham radio stuff is just listening. Right,

(09:49):
You can do a lot of listening, but you can
get into it relatively inexpensively for two meter and seventy
centimeters two meter which is UHF or VHF Yeah, VHF
and UHF two meter, seventy centimeter which is gm RS,
and then the lower tier of the HAM radio bands.

(10:09):
But yeah, I mean it's fun. You gotta study a
little bit if you're interested in taking the test, or
you're thinking about taking the test. Hamstudy dot org. They
have an app you can deleraate your phone take practice tests,
is what I did.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, it's it's not completely hard to get into. It
takes a little bit of effort, just like any hobby
to get experience on. But if you find a local club,
you can go and ask questions, join their Facebook group,
you know.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, well here's something to think about too. And we're
speaking about hobbies, so we got to mention this one.
I went out this week buddy of mine, Chuck Taylor.
No relation is into radio. It's it's not radio controlled.
It's control line airplanes model airplanes. So they have they
sit in the circle. They stand in a circle and
basically these airplanes with motors they go around. I mean

(11:00):
they fuel him up and everything and then they go
and they can make do effects with him. And I
mean it's one of the oldest clubs in America, and
he asked, I go out there, you know, and just
shoot some drone footage, and I thought, wow, I haven't
taken out the drone in months. So I went ahead
and I said, yeah, I'll do it. So I charged
up the batteries and everything, made sure I had all

(11:21):
the cards, made sure the firmware was updated. I've got
the DJI Mini three, and I went out there and
it was a lot of fun, which then got me thinking.
Somebody the other day asked me about shooting a birthday
party a video going in video video graphing, you know,
as a paid service. Can I come out do videos,

(11:42):
take photos? And I yeah, sure, I've done that kind
of thing before. And then he wanted drone footage. And
it's like it's uncomfortable because they say, well, I can't
do the drone because if I'm charging you because I
have I don't have a Part one oh seven license.
So I started going online and looking at some of
these courses where they say, hey, we can help get
you part one o seven. We've got all the study

(12:03):
manuals and everything else. And then I thought of something.
I I after looking at this ready to sign up
right now. And I don't know if we never know
when it's going to end, but right now, the government
isn't shutdown, let's face it, right, So I looked it up.
Not doing any drone certifications right now, matter of fact anything.

(12:23):
When it comes to licensing, you got.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Hamber Ham radio licensing too, right, So you can't even
get an FRN number. You can't get you can't apply
for your license, et cetera. So until the shutdown gets
taken care of, yeah, you.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Can't even you can't even add your phone number to
a do not call registry radio license, drone license, you
can't do that. So you might as well wait until
we see when this blows over, and then you know,
all the agencies are back together and however long that takes.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah, So Jennifer, you ended up flying I intered flying
U and it was good.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
It was a lot of fun. It was at a
park open. There was somebody though that had that came
out and brought their drones too, and they had the
little mini drones. But they were sitting in their car
like they weren't standing like I'm standing there with the
remote control. They're sitting in their car. They're wearing a headset,
so they've got the I guess they call them FPV Yeah,

(13:20):
FPV drones, and they make a lot of noise, those
little guys. But yet they moved pretty fast, and I
thought that that would be kind of cool to check
out as well. But I was just having fun with
the controller, but it was you know, it's funny. I
don't know about you. With a hobby. You start doing
it and then you want to just go more into it,

(13:40):
you know, you wanted to like do more of it.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
You guys have seen my basement. How many hobbies do
you think I have?

Speaker 1 (13:45):
You have question?

Speaker 2 (13:46):
I have too many. And I get super invested in
one hobby for like eight months, nine months, twelve year,
and then I'm just like, eh, yeah, next, and then
I get supervolved in the next hobby, and then I
cycle back and then into the next the other hobby
again for a long time. Yeah. No, it's uh yeah,

(14:06):
I have a problem.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
All right. I'll get into some tech stuff. Kind of
interesting because I have seen a lot of people now
that are talking about and you know, some people it
took their their steps to get into chat, GPT, and
then they're trying out some of the other AI services now.
But now a lot of people are talking about Copilot,
which of course you know a big part of Windows
eleven and you know, they're really trying to get a

(14:30):
lot of people to use it and one of the
newest features of course voice chat on Copilot. Some people
have compared it to if you think about it in
your home, maybe you have an Alexa device, or you
have Siri, or you have you know, Google device, And
people are saying, well, you can actually have conversations. You
could have it do stuff for you, and you could

(14:50):
do it now if you wanted your microphone to always
be listening for you know, you to be able to
ask it something, it can do that, or you could
turn off and there's shortcuts. But again you could be
sitting in your computer just hit a button and now
have response from Copilot. But some people are saying, well,
Copilot is a lot different than with shat, GPT or

(15:11):
some of the other AI services out there. Just I
still have not come to the idea of running it
on my system. Have you had a chance to experiment
with it all?

Speaker 2 (15:19):
It's immediately it turned off for me. The Windows a
lot I just can't wrap my head around integrating an
AI into my machine. I just don't. I just don't.
I don't know. It's weird to think about it. I
understand AI's purpose, I understand it's a tool. I don't

(15:40):
know if I want it on my machine. What benefit
is it going to do on my machine that I
haven't used it? So maybe I don't know yet, But
I just don't foresee myself. Like anything I'm doing on
my computer, I already know what I want to do now.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
For our listeners that don't want to have this, it
can be stopped or removed. It's not yeah, or you
have it. It's like one drive. If you don't want
to use one drive, you don't have to. I have
one computer that uses well, two computers that use one drive,
and the rest of them don't.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, you can't. You can't completely delete copile from your computer,
but you can disable it and prevent it from running,
so it is possible to at least quickly. That's to
say a lot of people are just wanting to disable it.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
It's just like I.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Wish again, I wish Windows would just give us a
clean version, no bloat.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, they give us without the bloat, without the having
to do this, having to do that. Just here, this
is what it can do to get stuff done. But
then that's when people will say, well, that's why you
have Linux.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Right, which is outside of So I've got this rig
that I'm on now which has Windows on it, which
is my gaming rig and my streaming ring. I have
a Mac which runs Mac os Tahoe now and I've
just been installing Linux and everything else. It's just just
easier to use, Easier, faster to get up and running,
faster to install things, faster to do stuff, easier to

(17:09):
quickly do things. I just put it on a I
have an Aceus Rock laptop that I got from a
friend of mine who was getting a new one and
put Linux on it and it runs amazing on there.
And I've been using it for hard drive moving content
off hard drives into my mass and it's super quick.
And Linux doesn't care what file format your drives are.

(17:31):
It'll read NFS, it'll read or NTFS, it'll read x FAT,
it'll read whatever. So I can copy stuff quickly that
way and look at drives and format them, and I
just did. I was on a mission last night trying
to find I got my old this is going to
be a little bit, a little bit of a throwback.
This is kind of what I was getting at with

(17:53):
why I want a clean version of Windows eleven. My
mom gave me back a laptop that I had given
her for just used around the house, probably in two
thousand and seven. Right, it was the first laptop that
I had bought with my own money. I bought it
with my high school graduation money from when I went
to college.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
That's cool.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
It was a Toshiba Latitude or Toshiba Satellite, sorry, Toshiba Satellite,
single core petty and four running three point four gigaherts.
And so she gave that back to me, and I
pulled the hard drive out of it, and I was wondering,
you know what this is when I first started playing
World of Warcraft on I wonder if I can recover

(18:34):
any of my old screenshots.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
But that's kind of cool. Yeah, So of.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Course, like I had deleted stuff, but I never formatted
the hard drive.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Well, even if you formatted you might still be able
to get something.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
So what I did, and I haven't gone through all
the photos yet, is I ran I looked at I
just looked it up, but I got to look at.
Make sure I tell you guys to rate the right
software that I used for it was. I used the
a data recovery utility that's free. It's called PhotoRec Photo Recovery.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Wow, that's cool.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Via another open source service called test disc, which is
kind of there's a data hoarders subreddit and a data
recovery subrendit that I'm on just for curiosity, which is
this is highly recommended in there. It took me two
minutes to install it. Hold the followed the instructions on

(19:30):
their website and let it scan this old hard drive
which was an ide A two point five inch IDE drive,
which I have a USB to IDE adapter, so I
just plugged it in, plugged it in a USB, let it
read it saw that it was an eighty eighty gig

(19:50):
hard drive and let it rip and it found I
told it, just find any media images you can find
and just let it let it spin for took an
hour and a half to do it. And now I've
got you know this program if free?

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Just wow, sudo pseudo app to get discy too. Whatever.
This is. This is what I use chatty bt for.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
It's like, here's this program, I want, how do I
install in? How do I run it? One of the best,
one of the best ways to run the software, and
chatty bt does a does a really great job of
kind of it's not always accurate, which is unfortunate. But
this is what I like about Linux is that it's
all community based, right, so I can just go to
forums and look and search and find uh ways to

(20:34):
run this. I was up and running on this software
in a matter of minutes.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
So I've used for data recovery the first time, and
I've been doing data recovery for years. I've recorded recovered
drives that you know, they were formatted the whole bit.
The first one I ever used was super powerful, and
that was for a company called Kroll. It was held
on track and it was a very expensive program, and
we had them on the show and they gave me

(21:02):
a license to use and it was amazing at number one,
the speed and how it was able to recover files
on the whole bit. And then you know that it's
been years, so it kind of degraded a little and
at this point I didn't want to pay for another license.
I found another one called easy Us and they make
all kinds of they make backup software, they make security software,

(21:24):
the partition software, and of course they have a data
recovery software and that one works really well as well.
That one's not too expensive. Wasn't that bad, wasn't like
the other ones. But easy us works really good as well.
And again it'll do that whole bit. It'll look for
files that have been deleted on your current partition, even
look for files that have been that have just gone

(21:44):
and it will find them.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, this scan the whole drive, right, I told it,
I don't care about the petition, just scan the whole
drive bit for bit and tell me what you find.
So I was going through it now. My mom had
added a lot of photos to it, so it found
a lot of the photos my moment, but it found
some stuff that I even remember right from so I'm
still got you know. It ended up being like fifty

(22:07):
two folders worth of images or from different sectors on
the drives, and I went through about twenty of them
last night before I was like, oh, it's one o'clock
in the morning, I should probably go to bed, and
so I got to go through some more tonight after
the show. But it's really cool because it made it
really easy to back up content. Right this fall, we
just had a yard sale where I went through I

(22:30):
yard saled a ton of my old computers, a ton
of my old laptops that you know, had been given
to me from fam by family members, friends, my sister
in law, my wife, laptops that used in college that
they didn't care about anymore, pulled out the hard drives,
just sold the machines for petties on the dollar. But
then I was like, you know what, let's just back
up all these you know, maybe they want the pictures

(22:51):
that are on here, and or maybe they want Hey, Laura,
and my sister in law, Lauren, she went to Michigan
State and it pulled. I was able to pull stuff
from when she was in colleague back in two thousand
and five, two thousand and six, when she was in college.
So it's it's cool how easy it was to do.
Just pop the drive into this little reader and no lix,

(23:13):
Linux just sees it. I can mount it, I can
pull the copies over and.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
If you're a if you're a Windows user, you can
you can find the same kind of hardware. I used
Kingwin that's one of them I've used.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yeah, I don't want to confuse people to say you
can only do this on Linux, right. I could have
easily have just done this on my computer with the
same USB drive and stuff. It's just I was having
issues getting it to read some of the older drives
that may have not been Linux does a little bit
a better job of reading drives that may be corrupt
or may have issues in different file formats and stuff.

(23:45):
So I was just playing with Linux anyways. So it
was just a piece to play with.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
So I know that sand Disk. They put out a
drive and actually gave me a recovery software that came
with the drive when I bought it, and ISD.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah, they had a big promotion for a long time
where it was like, by the way, you buy your
your SD card, here's some photo recovery software. Now it's
either could be two things. Either they really want you
to have the software, or you're buying a bad batch
and you need the software. So here's here's the drive.

(24:24):
By the way, here's the recovery software you're gonna need
six months down of the road in the drive fails. Boy,
which if you said SanDisk.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Right, yeah, So do you remember Ocean Gate, Yes, yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
The Titan submercible that that imploded.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Oh, I'll tell you what. We are up against the clock.
So we got to take a break. You've got more
info on this uce gate and this is recent, so
we come back. We will talk more about that with
tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
I'm sean to weird. Find us on your favorite podcasting
platform and give us a like, subscribe, give us a comment,
review us. We'd love to hear from you. Check us
out on YouTube shorts.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
And with that you can also email us. Eat tech
guys at tech talk radio dot com Again te h
g u y s at tech talk radio dot com.
Now back to tech talk Radio.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Right before the break, we were talking about sand disk
and some file recovery software and stuff. Well, I think
this tops the list in terms of photo recovery.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
All right, photo recovery, and it has something to do
with Oceangate. If for our listeners don't remember, do you
want to explain with that?

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, So ocean Gate is the is the submersible that
the billionaire from overseas built and kept going to the
Titanic and took a bunch of people down and then
it imploded and killed the people on board.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Stuff everybody.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, at the depth of the ocean, right at that depth,
it's like this ridiculous pressure and all stuff. So they
ended up finding some They found the wreckage right by
going down with robotics submersibles and finding it, and they
found that one of their underwater cameras was discovered largely intact,
and it contained a sand disc memory card that they

(26:06):
were able to recover twelve stills and nine videos from
my so if you go, if you just go to
a tech tech spot has this on there on their blog.
But there's this whole investigation's happening, so it's all being
very very thoroughly investigated, and there's a really good write
up on here's what the camera was, Here's what they
did to clean it, Here's what they found, really detailed

(26:28):
images of the circuit board and the memory card and
like the actual camera that was damaged, and it's pretty oppressive,
but that's pretty cool for them to be able to
get down in there. The card was still encrypted, so
it must have been a proprietary camera platform they were using.
But like they were able to be able to they
were able to remove the env ramchip and copy it

(26:51):
to a surrogate card it was crazy what they had
to do, but it's suppressive that this little piece of
flash memory survived.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
And we're talking it's been underwater for a while. I
mean yeah, almost two years ago and we're just hearing
about that. I don't know if they recovered it right
away or if they just recovered it recently, but wow,
that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah. None of none of the photos or videos were
from from the final dive, unfortunately, well fortunately, I guess
I don't want to stand fortunately, but.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yeah, yeah, so be interesting though, maybe if it'll give
them any insight as to what really happened, what was
the situation that could have caused it. I think they
know anyways, but it's still that could be something else.
Wowty crazy SD cards still forget it's.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
A pretty good uh pr for sand disk.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah. I like their I like their backup drives of
use there there. I have had a couple of thumb
drives go south and where suddenly you can't write to
them anymore. That's happened.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
But other than that, no, I mean they have a
pretty cool PRK now, right, there's nothing more crushing than
losing your memories.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah that's true, right, It's true. Man, boy, are you.
We were talking about something else too that you want.
You wanted to mention this website that I thought was
actually kind of cool. I've got another one for you
to mention as well that you want to check out.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
So I thought about this the other night because I
was going through that old hard drive, right, and because
I still had the Windows the Windows file structure, I
was able to see some of the older software that
I had on there, like Ventrillo and team Speak, Wow
and MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger and the software that

(28:38):
I used in college, which to this would have been
two thousand and five, two thousand and six, two thousand
and seven. And so then I was like, man, where
I where can I even I even get these files,
these softwares anymore? And I was like, there's this website
that I remember, so I just google it during the break.
It's called old version dot com because new wor's not
always better old rights, right. So we were just talking

(29:02):
about how Andy was editing the show and his drive
footage in premiere and was having issues with the four
K footage having the wrong codec. He wasn't playing right,
ended up putting it into black Magic. DaVinci Resolve, which
is free for their base version.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
And completely handled it.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
And it completely handled it a problem. So what is
he getting out of premiere? He couldn't because he only
had this. He would have to pay for the newest version.
He would have to pay for the subscription. So sometimes
new work isn't always better because to pay for that
subscription before. It's like if you wanted an older version
of something, like if you upgraded to a new version

(29:41):
of a messenger platform or something, how do you go backwards?
Because a lot of places don't want you to go
backwards because they're updating bugs, security issues, et cetera. But
you can go back and there's just tons of different
I mean, there's hundreds of softwares on here that you
can go back and find.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
You actually a download these and use them.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
They have they have the old versions of them still
if you wanted to go all the way back, like
MSN Messenger probably the number one messaging platform that I
used since I started using the internet. I MEANAI it's
a well messenger, right, you can go and they it
looks like they have I don't know, they've got a
ton they have seven different builds. It looks like that

(30:23):
you can go all the way back. It doesn't tell
me when they were built, right, MSID Messenger seven point five.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
Will you have to be careful though about where you're
getting these from.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Oh, I'm sure everybody take this with a grain of salt.
Don't go here and just start downloading old files and
start installing them, right, do little research. This is just
me saying I like the site because I found one
old version of a software that I needed one time.
I haven't gone on here and downloaded a ton of these.
They could be malicious. They could have torrents, they could

(30:56):
have trojans whatever.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
Practice safe browsing, yeah, exactly, use common sense.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Don't just click because like this is gonna be one
of those websites that you click on the download link.
It's gonna pop up and say click this to download now, right,
But it really is the link to pages down that
you need to click on to download it. It's they
try and trick you. But if you are in search
of an old version of software that you know you
had or you know you need because you're running Windows X,

(31:25):
if you're running a legacy system that's running Windows ninety eight,
Windows XP, whatever, offline, I hope go here old old
version dot com, play out with it, see what works
for you. Maybe you can find the version of software
you're looking for.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
My daughter asked me the other day, the one that
lives in Phoenix that likes she likes you remembers the
old school video games. And I know that there's you
know what, what is it galic? Is it Galaxy at
Games or gog?

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, Good old games.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
Good Old Games is a website where you can find
some of the older games, whether it be tomb Raider
or Pack or whatever. You could find these tigns. And
she was asking if I could build a Windows an
old Windows computer, an xpeak computer with need for Speed
road Rash, the one with the motorcycles that you would
raise Redneck gram Page some of those games she would

(32:14):
play because I had them on my machine. And I'm like,
I think maybe it could happen. Just don't connect it
to the net. I wouldn't recommend that, but you could
have fun playing the local games yourself. That would be
something that would be kind of cool, and then maybe
have some fun with these these programs as well. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Yah, there's a there's always going to be a community
built around vintage gaming, classic gaming. There's a great suburb
that's just called Windows XP or wind XP. It's all
about building machines that are xpeak kept compatible and it's
fun because that community. What they do is they push
the boundaries of what Windows XP can run. So there's
a running list of what's the current generation of something

(32:55):
that Windows XP can run on. And I think they're
up into like some core to duo stuff. You can
run a GTX six sixty. There's very specific hardware requirements
for Windows XP that they're pushing the boundaries on for
custom drivers that are made for nvidio cards or AmfD

(33:18):
cards or certain hardware to push the boundaries of what
can be run on Windows XP, which is pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, that is really cool. All right, I've got a
website to mention now. We already mentioned radio dot Garden.
You can find radio stations from around the country. But
were just talking about video editing. I want to make
a point. While I have not been wanting to, I've
been upset because Adobe of course went the route of
subscription based. Heather row local reporter had commented. She showed

(33:48):
a picture She said, I wish I missed the days
of being able to own software that you could download
or you could you know, install and run on your computer.
And it was a picture of Creative Suite five to five,
which is the suite that I've had as well in
the past. And you know, the thing is, the new
Adobe software is powerful. Don't get me wrong. While I

(34:09):
maybe have not the idea of spending seventy dollars a
month on software that I may be able to use,
you know, at this point, it's just not beneficial for
me to eat that subscription costs. I am familiar with
the older software. It does what I needed to do,
you know, except in the case of the drone footage

(34:29):
where it couldn't handle the higher resolutions. But the new
software from Adobe is great. They can do some things
in Photoshop and stuff in Premiere after Effects that it's
just mind boggling. Right, Well, there's another site. While I'm
using Da Vinci Resolve now and I love it. I'm
now getting the flow of it. Oh, here's how you

(34:51):
do a fade. And I'm finding a lot of extras
that are a part of it that weren't a part
of the suite that I had with Premiere pro So
Graphics and some other effects. I'm like okay, cool, I'm
finding these out. But there's another one. It's called OpenShot now.
OpenShot dot org is a website for open shot. It's
a open source video editor that could be used for Linux,

(35:14):
mac Os, and Windows. It can be it's really designed
for you if you're like a beginner and you're getting
into it that you could do trimming, scaling, You could
do transitions, so if you have a couple of scenes
back to back, you can have you know, a wipe
or a fade or dissolve. It also could do audio mixing.
You could download it from their website safely. Also offers
a cloud API if you want to integrate video editing

(35:36):
and your own application. But again it's open source and
it's free, so again you can take a look at
OpenShot dot org and see if something that maybe could
work for you.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
I mean, you gotta remember open source stuff. It gets
built by the community, it get supported by the community,
it gets great ideas from the community. So it's like,
you got it. You can take a risk and try
it and it's not gonna hurt anything. And it's if
it does what you need to do are the open
source community.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
Absolutely, it's certainly worth it. All right, I'll tell you
what we have listener questions standing by. Let me this
is this. This is one of the questions that we got.
So I have an Android device and I'm sick of
the spam calls. Trust me, I feel that pain. I
get him too. Uh, she's some Sometimes I block them
and the next day, different number, same recorded message. How
can I block these? All right, So we're gonna give

(36:23):
a solution to you. If you've been looking to try
and block spam calls on your smartphone, It's actually not
that difficult to do. You'll still have to deal with voicemail,
but we'll do that when we come back. I'm Andy Taylor,
I'm Shonda Ward.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Find us on the web at TikTok radio dot com.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Hold you rebec and now back to tech Talk Radio.
So spam a lot of people get them. Whether you're
getting spam mail, that's one thing, but if you're getting
spam voice calls and voice messages, it could be really frustrating.
I've talked to other business owners that tell me they
get the same thing, whether it be somebody saying we

(37:00):
need to verify your Yelp account and they get two
or three of those A day, or they get them
that hey we're finalizing the loan deal. You feel like
you haven't applied for a loan or anything. So if
you want to block calls, you just don't want to
have to deal with them. Here's one of the things
you do. You could set your phone to ring only
for people on your contact lists. Now, that could be

(37:22):
difficult if you're running a business. However, it will allow
people to leave a message, and of course the spam
calls can still leave a message, but you don't have
to deal with it interrupting your day. So if you
have an Android phone, one of the things you could
do is use the do not disturb mode. Then you
could set an exception to allow calls from contacts only,

(37:45):
or even just favorite contacts like finally want to let
Sean get you know in touch or you know Gloria
or my boss. Those are the only three that can
get through. Everybody else goes to voicemail. It'll do the
same for messages as well, so somebody wants to text you,
it's not going to bother you. On an iPhone, Now
you go to settings, your phone enables silence unknown colors.

(38:06):
You can also use do not Disturb and set it
to allow calls only from your contacts.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
So I've got I've got mindset to silence unknown callers, right.
But I was just telling Andy during the break we
were talking about this segment. I got one that it
just came up. They can spoof the iOS contact cards,
so it just said healthcare and then the phone number underneath,
so it looked like a contact was calling me, but

(38:32):
it's AID Healthcare. And I was like, I don't even
have a contact called healthcare. So they were able to
spoof a contact card and it just had Healthcare. So
it's like a little freaked out of all that.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
But yeah, you know, and somebody, somebody said, we'll just
change your number.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
Okay, because that's a paid of the rear end, and then.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
You might change it to a number that's been getting spam,
so you know, that's that's one of the things. It's
really weird though, because we move moved a number that
we had originally as our Skype number, we moved it
to the iPhone. We never got spam ever on the
Skype number, but we do on the iPhone now, and
it's the same YELP calls that's not really Yelp.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
The listener that said, just change your phone number like that,
think about it twenty years ago, twenty years ago. All right,
that's I've had that same phone number twenty years I
think thirty years ago. Just back a over for there,
every ala line you could couldn't change your number without
paying a big fee.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Right.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
And then even then, when you got a cell phone number,
it was still kind of a pain in the around
to change it because you had to tell you had
to tell everybody to get rid of your own contact
phone number, new phone who dis right? So the question
is how long have you had your current phone number.
I've had the same phone number the entirety of my
cell phone existence. And it's interesting to think back. Okay,

(39:55):
well we got those phones because I had to share
a phone with my brother when I was in high school.
This would have been two thousand and two thousand and
one maybe, and we were on US Cellular. US Cellular
got bought by all Tel, all Tail, God Bob by.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Veracids, right, all of it. And the thing about it
the numbers floating around there. When there's a hack your
numbers out there, you know the number has.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
Been out there for who knows how long now, But
you know, there's some protections for consumers in place, but
it's still it just feels like it comes in waves. Right,
It'll be no spam calls for a while, and then
something will change in the law or somebody will figure
something out, and then all of a sudden, you're just
getting inundated with phone calls. And it's interesting because if

(40:39):
you're at work and you start getting spam calls, it's
kind of freaky when other people around you also get
spam calls at the same time, at the stay or
around the same time, or within the same time period.
They're like, oh, I'm getting a spam call. Five minutes
say hey, I'm geting a spam call. It's like they're
in some sort of algorithm that's like tracking us down.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
I'm wondering if forwarding your your call, if you you know,
have you have a Google Voice number, just forward everything
to a Google Voice number. But you're still dealing with
the same thing.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, you're so screening your calls.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Speaking of hacks, and there's a big story about Gmail
passwords about one hundred and eighty three million accounts apparently
could have been leaked. And while Google is saying that
it's really not. You know, that's not it's not a
big issue. It's not as it's inaccurate. Others are saying, no,

(41:34):
it is. And there's a website. If you've never checked
the website, have I been poned? It is one to
take a look at. Uh, and it's have I Been
pw nd D? Is it dot com or dot or
dot com? Yeah? Dot com. So if you go to that,
you can enter your information safely. Don't do a password,

(41:56):
but you could do your email and it will tell
you if your email is flowing out there in the
wild as being one that was recently leaked, and could
even tell you if your password could be one of
those that piece of information that's out there.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
So my Gmail's fine. There are two breaches, one from
December of twenty eighteen and one from August of twenty thirteen.
So my Gmail, my Gmail counts pretty good. Let's see.
Let's see my hotmail.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
It's my hot mail been okay, Yeah, you still use hotmail.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
That's my primary I've had that. Yeah, I still Yeah,
so I everybody, everybody, They they keep trying so hard. Microsoft,
just trying so hard to get me to switch it
to an outlook.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
But I'm like, nah, this is I created this. I
don't know why I decided to just pick Sean de
Weird at hotmail dot com back back. But this is
the same email address I've had, literally as I've had
an email address.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Yeah, so that would have been nineteen ninety eight, maybe
even earlier. It's like, I can't get it up. Sorry,
doesn't even exist. Yeah, twenty one.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
Data breaches for hot mil oh ouch ouch. Alright, So
hot Topic advanced, autoparts, hot topictt.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
Park, Mobile, Drive, sure Start, Tribune, zinga Store, Envy World,
twenty fifty, p X, live Journal, God live Journal.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
Oh yeah, they're got.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Split Adobe, Tumblr, Dropbox, there's a there's a couple of the.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
You know, they got more techie as as the years
from hot Topic to Dropbox. Yes, that's buddy, all right.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
I went through I don't want to call it like
a EMO phase. I I bought man. Well, so hot
Topic was the only place like this is back when
you actually had to go to stores to buy stuff.
For those people who are listening that don't buy stuff
from actually brick and more stores anymore. They were the
only place that was a legitimate place to buy gaming

(44:00):
T shirts. Right, because like you couldn't buy I bought. Yeah,
they were kind of like the off the cuff store,
the the rebellious store, right, so you could go buy
your Halo two T shirts or you know, your gaming
T shirts that were a little more violent than what
Jac Pennies would sell. Now you can just buy it

(44:22):
all online, right whatever. But hot topic was where I
bought a lot of my T shirts because I liked
you know, I had a super Mario Brothers T shirt,
I had a duck On T shirt, and I had
a bunch of retro gaming T shirts that you couldn't
get anywhere else. Success hot topic.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool though. Yeah, hot topic. That
brings back some memories though. All right, so you can
look this stuff up yourself. Have I been pooned? Ponned,
p a w poned p A p w just PWND
So have I been pwn d? Dot com? You can

(44:57):
type in that email address and see if that has
been the subject of a data More than more than
likely it had. But it gives you something to be
concerned with when that information is out there, what other
information goes along with it? Now, for anybody who has Gmail, Okay,
you want to be safe, change your password and use
a password manager. Don't use the same password. We see

(45:19):
this too often where somebody just says, I'll just use
the same password, use the same password for this and
that and that and that, and a lot of the
people out there that want to get into your accounts
and want to see what you they know that and
if they're able to hack one, they could possibly hack
the elbow.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
And that question comes up too, right. We've talked about
this on the show with Justin and Matt too. It's
like password managers, are they worth it? Yes, they are,
just there's one specific one I would highly tell you
to avoid, and this Last Pass, right because they got
hacked more than once and it's just been a nightmare
for Last Pass and if you go to their website

(45:55):
you would never know they got hacked, and it's just
kind of a shady thing. But the Apple pastor Manager
and one Pass are my two recommendations for people if
you're on a Mac and you want to stay in
the macworld. The Apple password manager across all your iclod
accounts that are super easy to.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Use, haven't they They've just updated that too with the
new iOS, haven't they.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
I believe. So I don't use it. It's just recommend
it because it's part of the Apple ecosystem and becomes
highly recommended across the Mac platform.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
One pass is phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
One pass is phenomenal. I use it personally and then
we use it at the enterprise level at work, and
it's just it's it's great. It's super easy to use.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
Caitlin and I have both have it on your phones.
You can sync it to your biometrics. You can use
it for your face ID, so if you have passwords
staved in it, you can set one password to do
face ID. You can have it to use the fingerprint
scanner like on my MacBook or you know. So it's
one password is by far, I think the best, the
best password manager that is out there right now.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
What do you think of the bio keys, Like I
have a Ubi key and you know, you plug it
into the USB port and your thumb can then set
like a biometrics can do that.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
So you're talking like a biometrics two factor Yeah. I mean,
if you're really concerned about security, sure, I think an
actual physical biometric security could be beneficial. I don't think
it's necessary. I think if you're if you're practicing and
using safe passwords and not using duplicates and not you know,

(47:25):
using your dog's name is your password or password one two, three,
four five or password or yeah, or filling out a
survey at Facebook that's the top ten targets for password
fishing is like what streets you grew up a what
was your first car? What was your pet's name? Every
survey that I ever filled out as a teenager on
the internet.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
Yeah, the when's your birthday? I've seen?

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Yeah, So I mean, yeah, I think if you're just
being safe and you're not and you're using good passwords
with a capital letter, a symbol, well you know, more
than twelve characters, et cetera, you're gonna be just fine.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
All right, I've got another website link to share with you.
I showed this on television this past week and I
thought it was pretty cool. It's called remove dot BG,
which stands for remove background. If you've scanned photos in
and you have a background you don't like and you
think that I want to change that, or maybe it's
like your old school photo that had that canvas background

(48:20):
that didn't look that good, you can upload your photo
to remove dot B you could change, you could choose
your background, or you could just use one of the
predetermined ones that they have and you know, have a
little fun with your photos. It's fun to do anyways,
It's fun to upload, take a look at it. It's safe,
you know, and then you can even download the photo
in like low resolution. If you want to pay for

(48:41):
a higher resolution you can. But it's one of the
many tools that are out there that if you want
to have some fun, it's remove dot BG. And it's
super easy to use, right because you.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
Can get it. You can downlo as p andgs, you
can donald with JPEGs. It's it's very easy to use.
I used it for when my d D player would
create minis right for using in our virtual tabletop. They
would just send it to me. I would just drop
it in room and beg and then it's perfect, and
then I have an actual, an actual mini looking token

(49:11):
on our virtual tabletop platform. Is very easy to use.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
All right, we go to take another quick break. We
come back with more of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor,
I'm Seanda Weird and now fact to tech Talk Radio.
If you're a parent, you know, sometimes finding the right
programming for your kid to watch or for you to
watch with them can be a challenge. Scholastic has launched
its first branded streaming app featuring Clifford, Goosebumps and other

(49:36):
kinds of shows, Big Red, The Magic school Bus.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
Uh, Miss Frezzo Man, that was my jam back to.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
The Magic school Bus. Did you like that? Well?

Speaker 2 (49:45):
I loved that show. It actually is probably one of
the like the most engaging video games ever played was
the Magic school Bus video game.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
It was cool and a lot of kids will look
at you know, you want you want your kids to
have good stuff. Miss Rachel is great. You know, there's
Lucas is great, but this is for kids two through
twelve and their families can watch along with them. They
got four hundred hours of premium content and it's free,
which is that makes it That makes it even better.
You can watch it on Roku devices if you've got

(50:12):
a Roku Amazon fire Stick. But you want to look
for Scholastic and you know, we've trusted them with some
of their content for years, and some of this video content.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
And I always loved going to the Scholastic book fairs
growing up. Well yeah, and you know, coming home with
a sheet and begging my parents to spend one hundred
dollars on books.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Well, do you remember there? Didn't they put out highlights?
Was that Scholastic?

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (50:33):
I think it was because I if you go to
the doctor's office, so we don't us.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
First Galantis, Goophus and Glantis or whatever it's called, always
love that stuff.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
They also have like Barney and Friends, Garfield, this something
to watch. So again look for that scholastic and you
know whether the grand kids coming over, the kids they
can enjoy that. And you you got something a little
more technical though you want to share.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
So we talked a little bit about AI, and I
was struggling to find an article that I had read
recently about AI and Linux, but I did end up
finding it. So Fedora, which is one of the leading
distributions of Linux for the for a kernel level, they
the Fedora's Governing Council, so they have an overarching government
council on how the development of Linux goes forward. They've

(51:15):
approved it an AI Assistant Contributions Policy, which officially allowing
responsible use of AI tools and project development. Supporters are
saying that it's going to keep Fedora relevant in a
rapidly shifting landscape acknowledging that AI is now a core
part of Linux development.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
But don't you think like some people are moving away
from some of the other OS's and going to, you know,
something like Linux because it doesn't have the AI. They're
getting away from it.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
But that's part of the reason why I was going
away from it to get rid of the blow. This
isn't necessarily meaning that AI is going to be used
in your face, right, It's just meaning they're going to
be using it to help develop Linux on the back end.
That this is my take on it, right, they're going
to use AI to help develop tools to make Linux better.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
We'll see you can talk more about it next week
on this show. In the meantime, you can reach out
to us tech guys at tech talk radio dot com.
Drop us an email. That's it for this week's tech
Talk Radio. I'm Ady Taylor, I'm Seanda Weird.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
Find us on your favorite podcasting platform, Apple, Spotify, Spreaker.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
You name it.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
Find us, like us, subscribe us, and drop us along.
We'll get you over there.

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Episode 459 - “Old Tech, New Tricks: Ham Radios, Drones & Data Recovery!"

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 459 - “Old Tech, New Tricks: Ham Radios, Drones & Data Recovery!"