The following program is produced by the tech Talk Radio Network.
Hey, this is Mike Nelson from Mystery Science Theater and rifftracks dot com and you're listening to the greatest show on the planet, tech Talk Radio.
Welcome to another episode of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm Justin len Me. Welcome, Welcome, and it's the Well, it's the last show before Christmas.
Are you guys excited about it?
No? I finally put lights on the tree.
You know.
I was so inspired by Justin doing the lights. I thought that's it this year, I'm gonna do lights, and I.
Just never did it.
I was told I can't climb up on the ladder because Laria fears that she'll come home and I'll be on the ground.
Well, that's why I hired somebody to do it. I don't get on ladders either.
Yours ended up coming up pretty good and you don't have to take them down.
No. I love them the end Brighton Eternity lights. I got them from Costco that it was like one hundred and sixty bucks for one hundred lights and I got two strings, so two hundreds, you know, a little over three hundred and then I paid. It's about three hundred dollars four hundred dollars.
Did it take a lot to have the long for him to install them?
No, the dude was like super super fast. I mean he he said, he does this like almost every day, you know. So, I mean he's a painter by trade, so he's already already always up on ladders. I think the whole thing took him like two and a half hours.
Amazing, Wow to do all of them. Wow. Now, and Sean, you got the lights up on the street. What kind did you do? The flashing lights?
And yeah, so.
We just have you know, it's like a thirty foot string of led you know, the little narrow LEDs, and then a shorter string of the c nine bulbs which are the bigger ones. And uh, I spent a little bit of times a day. I had to replace a couple of bulbs, and then I had to just bypass a couple because they didn't have any new ones. And so I just plist the wires together and made it work.
Now do you have do you have cats?
No? No, I have two toddlers.
Oh yeah, it's even worse.
Yeah, I have the one cat, but he's too old. He doesn't really care.
He won't climb in the tree and you know the stuff.
Now, he just looks at it and goes. So I'm going back to bed.
It happens to us all. Will we get to that certain age? Oh, there is a lot to talk about when it comes to tech, of course. One of the biggest stories this week has been the drones over the East Coast, and it just it doesn't stop. Is this really something? I keep thinking that'll come on, guys, it's not drones.
Okay, So weird going on.
There is so much misinformation about this story out there. It's out of control. If anybody, if anybody with a brain, goes and looks at some of these pictures, you can clearly tell their helicopters some of them, no, not not all of them. Right, there are drones flying around a Jersey. There a pictures. There are also a picture. There are people. Let me finish, there are clear identifiable pictures with tail numbers that have been public record identified as helliccupt that
people are claiming as drones. So I'm just putting it out there that people are taking pictures with their phones zoomed way in. Oh. Look it's a drone. It's got red and green lights. Now it's a helicopter. It's there. Yes, there are drones flying around a Jersey. People are concerned because they're out at all times of the day and at night. But some people are claiming that there there's five thousand reports a day or something they're getting now about drones they're coming in.
I've been cautious about wanting to fly my drone even you know, at the radio station to take take a look at the property because if one of the neighbors might either shoot it down or they're gonna you know, complain and next day and I have to deal with some kind of agency coming to the station wondering what's going on.
So much specification, there's there's theories about they're they're scanning for missing radioactive material there, it's there, it's China, it's you know, there's a company that is in the New York Bay area that is using ammonia as they're renewed or not renewable, but an alternative fuel for drones that's been flying them and they've confiscated drones from them. So there's all these articles and it's nobody knows what's going on.
So there are mysterious drones happening, right, but you can't just everybody's in a panic saying, oh my god, it's China. Oh my god, they're they're churching for radioactive material.
Like justin now, I know you were, you were kind of going down this way, and I'm thinking the size of the drugs. We're not talking about DGI many threes or many fours or our vadas. We're talking about, from what I understand, the full drone. There's a difference between the military drones and the consumer drones that we could go by.
Yeah, they're definitely not consumer drones. But I just I'm sorry, but I want to chime in here with what Sean was mentioning about misinformation. I would like to get an explanation on some things I've been following along with this story a lot as well. One, why were there let's just call them UFOs because we don't know what they are right now, Okay, Why were there UFOs flying over the US capital, the most restricted airspace in the world,
and the military was doing nothing about it? Two? Why are there videos of these floating orbs not a drone? An orb And maybe it's because of the focus, but why is it that an orb is floating and then you see a drone another drone come up to it and then just get knocked out of the sky and falls down to the ground. Three. Why why are these
orbs these orbs that people are filming? Why does that show is as what looks like a like an orb that is emitting light and then all of a sudden, as it gets a little bit closer, it switches and then it turns into what looks like a drone with its actual flashing lights. The camera never moves, the camera never shakes. The camera's following these things, these orbs. As soon as it gets a little bit closer, it just
immediately not like a focus thing. It immediately changes into red and green flashing.
Where where did you see this stuff? This is all over.
Reddit, dude. There's there's so much going on in Reddit right now that I've been following on this, especially with these UFOs flying over the Capitol Building, the US Capitol Building. They were people were showing really good quality videos of this and they were like these orbs flying right above the US Capital and then they would show They're like no, no, this is not this is not a helicopter because look over here, and he would pan over and say that's
a helicopter, and you could see the helicopter moving. These things were literally floating mid air, not moving right over the Capitol Building and the big Well. They can't tell because they're they're too far away. But these things were floating orbs. They were not flashing lights. They were just
floating orbs. And then on top of that, like I said, with with the ones that are were getting up close, you would see videos of other drones approaching these orbs and then all of a sudden, you see the orb. You see the other drone just fall out of the sky.
Well, okay, so couldn't an or I'll call it an orb be a reflection of light on a.
Material that is hitting up.
I mean anything true.
I've looked at my gas.
We're going back to swamp gas. I mean, but there are some I'm not like, I feel like Justin is saying like I'm not claiming there's drones, Like, I'm not saying that right, there are clearly there are things that are unexplained UFOs. There are clearly identifiable pictures that people are saying this is a drone. Reddit is all over it.
Read it is readit, identifying.
It as with public available information. That there's tail numbers for helicopters for some of these, not all of.
Them, some of these. And and the fact the biggest thing, the biggest one, the biggest red flag that I can see so far, is the one that is these things flying about the US Capitol. This is the most restrictive airspace in the world. Well, they have nothing.
They have a battery, they have area, a battery on top of the Capitol building.
No, no, no, this is not nothing attached to the Capitol around the Capitol.
They have a battery and armament battery.
Then they're not doing anything about it. And then and and then there was that one that they found they had the report of the one that went down, and I think it was in New jerseystenntyl Vania. Yes, And then the immediately the FBI stepped into the local law enforcement and gave the local LA enforcement instructions, do not approach this, get a bomb squad, and your radios may not work in the vicinity of this down this down
aircraft or whatever it is. Why would the FBI immediately jump in and tell them, do not approach this thing and get a swat team and a bomb squad ready, like why just in case, I mean, let's face it, and they don't know, they're not saying anything. A drone could be loaded with material that could be used in warfare, sure, but then why would your radios not work near it?
Radiation?
Okay? Then fine? If it even is truly from this earth and whatever it is, then why what is going on? Why is the military not say anything?
The first time I heard of this, and you know, it started a couple of stories people talking about it, and I will I will allude to the fact that that right away, I thought, uh, it's Elon because number one, the the you know, we know that starlink goes up satellites dispersed and usually they go in a line. There could be a row a row of lights, and people may mistake that for some kind of a drone.
Situation, right, And that's what I thought.
And then I are this like wicked story about drones flying over a navy base, a naval base, you know, off the east coast, and they thought that maybe they were controlled by you know, foreign government, and you know, I don't know the only thing I could think of is this is gonna affect the fact that we're set and I are not gonna be able to fly our drones anymore. Either that or you know they're gonna they're gonna request tail numbers on everything.
Well that's another thing too, is I was recently thinking about this. I was like, Wow, I can't even go and fly my drone because I might get shot down. Yeah, because everybody's on everybody's on high edge right now, so I don't.
Oh yeah, it's it's like I said, it's nobody knows what's going on. There's a lot of weird videos coming in in the age of technology where things are I'm not trying to be the conspiracy theorist here's sake, it's all faked again. Airplanes, helicopters, legally used drones flying in some spaces. Right, you have to nod over actor in it's Kham's razor.
Right, It's like it's aliens, bro, that's the orbs. Oh yeah, I would love to believe it would be aliens. I would love to believe it's aliens that are actually trying to communicate with us and saying, hey, we're here, we want to talk to you. We can't figure out how to do it. You know, people, Those are some of
the conspiracy theories on Reddit. I'll be honest. I read about these things saying that, oh, yeah, they're orbs, but once people look at them, they they shape shift into something that we're familiar with, and that would be a drone with the flashing lights with the FAA approved lighting patterns.
And I'm like, Okay, that's a little bit weird. But then but watching the video of the ORB floating, a drone approaching and then just immediately dropping out of the sky and the ORB didn't even get phased, I was.
Like, I want to believe, you know, to a certain extent of certain things. However, I've been not in my old age and in my knowledge of what AI can produce, I know that it could be faked. And I'm like, like I said, I don't want to be the one that is it. No, it's not real, it's not real. Then something happens. You remember Independence Day, Like I'm kind of thinking, all right, justin you would have been the guy on the roof with the sign holding it up.
Let's make it welcome.
Yeah, then you get blown away. But I you know, I just kind of wonder, you know, maybe we're going too fast. Everything's happening so quick. That is it?
Really?
Is this situation? Really?
I would love to get our listeners thoughts too. You can feel free to drop his line. We may share it again. Tech guys at tech talk Radio.
Get weird if we're if we're gonna take you listener questions about UFOs.
Yeah, this is this.
Is weird Bell Coast to Coast, baby, this.
Is this is the Aliens show. This is it?
Yeah, well you know that that exactly what it could be. Belle was still live. God, he would have a field day with this. There's a lot of unexplained things going on. Even today. I was literally watching News Nation just for a little bit during the day just to kind of
see what was going on. And they were holding a press conference with a two star general at the Pentagon and they were asking questions and this guy was dodging things left and right right, and it was just so odd, like the way that this person was just kind of shifting around and looking uncomfortable. It's like you know something, you know something is going on, but you won't tell us.
Well, are here's something to think about and Sean, you may be able to feel this one in a drone, I know that you know, my Dji can fly for maybe I think what forty five minutes on a charge. Can some of these drones that are used for broadcasts, like the one that they believe they found today. I mean that's a massive drone. They're very expensive. We're talking twenty or thirty thousand dollars. Can those fly extended range?
The larger the row, the larger the payload, Right, So the larger bat, larger of a battery you can put in, the larger controls, so you can put in and yeah, you could. Anybody could make a drone that's going to be up in the air for an hour to two hours at a time.
Right.
It's and some of these that they're they're claiming to have have identified or have been looking at, are a five foot wingspan. Like nobody knows what's going on is there's amateur video everywhere about this. I'm not as impressed with the quality of the amateur video as I hope to be. I feel like we're going back to the Sasquatch days and the you know, the the UFO settings where it's like you're not really sure what you're looking at, a blow around the lens or whatever. But some of
it is interesting. It's interesting to look at, it's interesting to see it.
So think is just fake.
I don't think it's alf fake. I think there are actually drones flying. There are millions million, There are millions in the US.
Millions are required to have now the FAA's rules that all drones are require to have that they radio broadcast their identification. Why is nobody able to detect any of these things? And nothing is showing up on any of these apps that can scan for this stuff if.
They're flying over the Capitol justin they don't want to get fied.
No, no, I mean anywhere anywhere. Nobody is able to find any information about any drones in the sky at any given time.
But yeah, okay, if I go and buy a consumer drone, it's gonna get locked out GEO fenced because it's you know, it knows where I'm at. Well, it doesn't take a genius to go build their own drone without a GPS GEO fence, Like you could build it without a without a GPS part of it.
So you're talking about building a drone the size of an suv as a hobby.
There are companies that build them for agriculture, there are companies that build them for for for gis, and.
Thousands of those thousands of those that they're just gonna randomly put up into the sky in front of the Capitol building.
Hey, there is a guy that set a world record this year for attaching clothes pins to his face one hundred and sixty six. If you if you build it, they will be there. So you know, maybe that this is the whole thing, you know, is somebody build a big old drone and make people think it's ufosh, you know, I.
Mean, I get I get one, I get one, but not thousands, and and they're not happening in just over one area. They're happening in the UK, They're happening in the Netherlands, They're happening in Australia, they're happening in Japan. They're happening on the East coast, West Coast of America. I mean, they're happening all over these places. What the hell is going on? Right?
Kind of wonder could this change legislation though? For those of us that want to have a drone.
Percent this is gonna that there are several high ranking officials that are already pointing fingers at China. There are several people's pointing fingers at they are China is usually underscand for radio active material that has gone missing. Of course it is right.
Well, they did say there was radioactive material the what was it the governor, governor or mayor of New Jersey, mayor of somewhere in New Jersey or governor said that there were was was radioactive material that went missing on December second of this year. But people are like, Okay, that doesn't explain it because these drones started showing up on November eighteenth, so so so that doesn't make any sense.
Oh, that's kind of trippy. I didn't know about that. How do you lose radioactive stuff?
Oh?
I remember it's the guys that were delivering it for Doc Brown and the the Larean.
The Libyans, right, the Libyans, yep, yep. And I do mean that in the sense of the actual movie. Okay, I'm not talking about I'm not trying to be you know whatever, the movie Back to the Future. The Libyans member the one that went down that that first report
of the one that went down in New Jersey. The people, now again this is all here says, but yeah, they were saying that when the one went down, ten other drones showed up right around it, like they all kind of came together and were like floating around the area that the one went down. And it's like, okay, there's no video proof of that, so I can't yeah, I can't say that. But people were saying this, and I was like, Okay, that would be interesting because why why
would that happen. People were saying, well, it could have been a part of a mesh network. You know, these all these drones could be part of a mesh network, and the one that went down, all the other ones lost their connection to the mesh so they all had to go back to the last known location of where that drone went down to re establish communication with the Mesh network. And I'm like, okay, that makes sense.
Here's an honest question.
And you mentioned reddit as being a a site where you may be able to find some of this stuff.
Why isn't the media sharing this then?
If that's the media first off, doesn't know anything.
Well, you know, why is it that Reddit is is such the you know trailblazer on this and why not Fox News or New.
Max or Newsmax or CBS News Nation or whatever. Yeah, I mean some of them are talking a little bit about it, but the part of it is they don't have credible information to go off of. Now. Mind you, the media, the mainstream media is not very credible, and we've all been aware of that for the past few years. The mainstream media is not very credible, but they still try to hold up to a little bit of a standard. And it's like, look, we're not just going to go
off of what people on Reddit say. Okay, they need a little bit more than that. So I think that's why the mainstream media is not talking about this now. Also, flip the coin reddit is very much of a conspiracy theory platform too, like certain subreddits. Y. Yeah, so you got to take everything with a grain of salt. But the fact that it has gotten to the point now where mainstream media is asking questions saying what is this
and they're asking the government what is going on? And the Government's like, I don't know what you're talking about, Like that's a little weird.
Let me ask you.
With the technology we have today, Sean, maybe you know this one. I have a small remote controlled spitfire you know from World War Two. It's very small and I can't fly it worth anything. Could somebody fit assessed no One or a piper cub because I've heard this has been described as a piper cub. Could they fit this with automation technology to fly like a drone but it being an actual aircraft, which of course then would give you more flight time and more range.
You got to think how much of autopilot stuff there is now? I mean, anybody with the means could do it. Anybody with the Yeah, somebody could do that. But to Justin's defense about this, right, like the videos that you're seeing, you can't fly a Cessna like that. You can't fly a pepper club like that right now, these videos you're seeing the.
Way, yeah there.
So this is either one ginormous elaborate prank that somebody's pulling.
That's what I'm hoping it is, yeah, or.
The government's not say anything because something serious.
Is going on, right Yeah, I mean I would I said, you know it's aliens.
Yeah, oh man, all right, well we'll have to kind of keep an eye on that one for sure. Either way, we would love to get your thoughts on this. Feel free to drop us a line tech guys at tech talk radio dot com.
We're gonna take a quick break. We come back.
A decision was made justin we'll share us the information about that coming up.
I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Scully, and I'm Moulder and you can find us on x files dot com. All I'm sorry, no opt wunk show tech talk radio dot com.
We were back and now back to tech talk radio.
So we talked was it last week, week before or something like that. I was talking about the issues with the car. Oh yeah, yeah, Well we went ahead and pulled the trigger.
Oh all right, so we know that you have a Tesla and you had a Ford Explorer, and you had the Tesla for quite a while and he suddenly what now.
Why did you end up getting a new one?
What was the deal? Well, it was it was so yeah, it was the the Tesla we've had for over a little bit over a year and where and we kept that it was the Explore And it's a twenty seventeen four Explorer. Really nice, I mean it's really good looking. I mean everything looks really nice and neat and new.
But it's the head unit, the radio head unit, was starting to show some issues where it would just never keep all the settings, so every single time I would get into the vehicle, it would ask me to do the whole setup process again. And talking to some people, it's like, Yo, this is a failing head unit and it's going to be about one thousand dollars. Now, if it was just simply a radio, it wouldn't be a
big deal. But this thing controls the climate, it controls the GPS, it controls all the other settings, I mean everything, So it's not just a radio. And I already knew that I was only going to keep the car for maybe another year or so, so I decided, well, maybe it's now time to get rid of the car before the head unit completely fails. So we went ahead and
did it. What I did was we went and bought a twenty twenty five Toyota Camry x L eight, which is not quite the top of the line but like one below the top of the line for the Toyota cameras, and then we traded in the Explorer towards that. And this is a hybrid vehicle, right, It is a hybrid, not a plug in hybrid, but it is a standard hybrid so I've been driving. I've been driving the Toyota Camera for the last few days.
Now.
I'm just trying to get myself familiar with the vehicle before I hand it over to Mysa, because Mysa will be the primary driver of the camera and I will take over the Tesla as my primary vehicle. Now. The reason behind that is because I told her, I said I wanted to get another Tesla, and she's like, no, we're gonna have one gas car one electric, and I said, well, I want the electric because I really like the Tesla. So she's like, fine, you take the Tesla and I
get a new car. And I was like, okay, So, but I'm really liking this Camray. I mean it is it is so smooth. The drive on it is just so just I can't there's no other word to describe.
It is so smooth, right all right.
The suspension, the handling, the acceleration, the features on it. I mean, everything about this car is just so awesome.
One of the things justin though, like and I have looked at cars because Gloria has been driving the same one since two thousand and one, and you know, one of the things that I thought about mine is twenty eleven is the package, the entertainment. And I know that seems silly. Most people say, no, you gotta look at your drive, you gotta look at the range, you gotta
look at all these other factors. But honestly, let's face it, what do you have on your dashboard is gonna make that trip a little more enjoyable.
So absolutely, yeah. I mean when I was looking at these things, you know, first off, you know, I was asking her what kind of car do you want? Because we had all the options in the world, and she's like, well, I don't want an suv, but I want all wheel drive and I want a big screen. And I'm like, okay, well that narrows you down to either a Toyota Camera or a Volvo. And she's like, vol those nice, but it's way too expensive. So you know, it kind of
basically ended up the Toide Camera. The Toide Camera comes with a really nice entertainment package. The Xle comes with a twelve point three inch screen, touch screen infotainment system. It's got you know, HD radio, it's got serious XM, it has h Android Auto, Apple car Play, it's got a wireless both of them. Actually, it's got the h you know, backup cameras. Actually it's got it's got full
surrounding cameras, which is really cool. They they I think Toyota actually took a little bit of inspiration from Tesla because they have full surround cameras that watch around the entire vehicle. They have lane departure warning, not not warning, but assistance, so when you're in cruise control mode, it will actually keep you in the lane no matter what. So it's just like the Tesla does. Wow, You've got parking cameras that will You've got cameras down below the
bumper to watch down below. It makes sure you're not hitting anything and if you if you happen to be pulling close to something, that camera will switch and show you what is close to you at that moment. So, I mean, it's just it's just so cool. And it's got a panoramic moon roof that that is a full panoramic. The entire top of the car is a moon roof that actually retracks opens up.
Now, does it have in car navigation or is it gonna be through your Android or.
It does have in car navigation. It's got SOS ability to you know, like basically nine to one one for collision automatic, uh that kind of stuff. It's got remote start. It has an app where you can keep track of the location, you can start it remotely, you can flash your lights. It does not have a built in century mode like the Tesla where it records you know, video, but you know, it does have cameras all the way around.
But yeah, it just doesn't record the video. But other than that, I mean, it is it is an amazing car. And then everybody knows, you know, Toyota, Toyota's last forever. Yeah, but but the but the but what's changed about that though? Is that not just with Toyota, It's almost with all auto manufacturers. It's not about the mechanical part of the car anymore. Now. People used to say Toyota's last forever
because the mechanical is just so good. These cars are every car, Volvo, Mazda, Hyundai, Toyota, Lexus, whatever, They're all just rolling computers. So your car is truly only as good as your computer system that's inside the car.
So true, So we want to see how that goes. Oh man, that's pretty good pricing. Was it a pretty good deal?
Yeah? I think I think sticker was forty three. We got them down to thirty nine, and honestly, you know, I was really impressed. I went to a dealership. They were like, look, I don't know when the last time you were at a regular dealership was. But a lot of dealerships nowadays don't do commission. We don't do haggling. This is the best price, and we show you we're very transparent what we paid for the car, what we intend to make on the car, because obviously we're a
business and we have to make a profit. So here's the best price we can give you take it or leave it. And there's no haggling, and it's just like boom, here's your price. This is it.
That's pretty good.
And again you're right they they those cars are built pretty good. I think we've all known somebody the I had a I had a camera as well. It was my when my mom passed, I needed a car because the engine on mine went out. So I drove or I flew to Honeting the beach and drove the car home. And I used that for a long time until some yeah who hit me on the freeway and then it burned up in that fire in the auto shop.
So, oh, yeah, that that was the one that I had to YEA, yeah.
Show that one.
I mean yeah, I mean, Toyota's are really good vehicles. I'm I'm impressed. I look forward to it. I mean, obviously it's gonna be Mesa's primary car, but we are going to go back and forth. You know, She'll take the Tesla one of the days and I'll take the camera or whatever, so but primarily I'll have the Tesla. And speaking of that, immediately after we did this, I went ahead and just bought all kinds of accessories for the Tesla nice. I mean I got I got wheel
covers to hide the scratches on the rim. I got a full full interior LED light kit. I got a USB charging doc that fits into the center console tray. I got a carbon fiber spoiler, a carbon fiber dash. I mean, I just went nuts. I bought all kinds of stuff. And She's like, can you just keep the Tesla like standard? And I'm like, nope, all.
Right, here's a question for you. This is good, all right?
In a household that has a gas vehicle and a electric vehicle, you go to South Dakota quite a bit, visit your Mom, Yeah, would you be taking the gas vehicle for convenience or have you found it to be just as convenient to be able to go in the electric?
So last Thanksgiving, not this one that just happened with Last Thanksgiving, we took the Tesla and we found that a normally five and a half hour drive turned into about seven hours because we did have to stop in charge three times, which wasn't a big deal. It was give us a chance to get up, stretch her legs around for a little bit. Each time was about thirty minutes.
This year we took the Ford Explore and honestly it was about six hour drives, So you're talking about an hour difference between, you know, what I had with the Explorer and then with the Tesla. In terms of the the Tesla, I really honestly like the self driving. It's not we didn't actually have the self full self driving, but we did have the enhanced autopilot, which would basically just follow your path for you if you were on navigation, and it would keep you in the lane and it
would watch for you. I really like that feature. So I would say I really like the Tesla on long road trips because of that it helps with the fatigue. However, obviously, convenience is being able to just pull into a gas station three minutes later, have your gas tank fold up, and you're back on the road.
Yeah, that's that's what I would think would be that. But people are telling me no, the electrics, they've been pretty comfortable with those. And again, there are enough charging stations throughout the country now that you're not going to run into an issue at least.
Yeah, for the most part. Yeah, absolutely, Sean, What do you drive?
I have a twenty seventeen Chevy Colorado and Caitlyn drives a twenty twenty three Rev four Toyota Rev four. She had she had a Prius, a Toyota Prius from twenty twelve until it got totaled in winter of early winter of twenty twenty two. What happened She got t boned at a four way stole. Ou Yeah, I loved that PRIs the Prius. You know, everybody gave a lot of grief to Prius. Right, there's no guts, you know, it just takes forever to accelerate river that car, especially in
the winter time. It was just for a wheel drive. But if you put decent snow tires on it. That car drove fantastic. It got amazing gas mile I was like forty eight to fifty on the highway, forty to forty five in the city. We drove it all over the country. We were looking at like, what did we want to get after it got totaled, and Caitlin wanted to get a small suv. So we looked at the you know, the Honda pilots. We looked at the crvs.
She looked at the Mazda c X five. She looked at a couple, you know, the Super Forrester, a couple of other things, but she ultimately settled on another Toyota with the raft Wour, which the raft war is also an incredible vehicle drive.
Well, we have a listener question, so let's go ahead and hit that right now. This is from David here in Celarita. A quick question for you guys. My neighbor is on a fixed income and asked me the other day if he could piggyback on my wif Fi. Now, I was surprised he knew that we had Wi Fi, but said that our name was the identifier. I guess they named their WiFi the family name he said, should I change that? And are there risks assuring my WI Fi with my neighbor again?
Don't So I would say, don't ever share your WiFi with anybody you don't immediately your immediate family, right. And some people can say, oh, just activate the guest network, And no, that's two consumer grade routers are so perceptible to Tomfoolery and Shanigan's it's not even worth activating the guest network.
And this time the neighbor might be upstanding, but anybody that's able to get into his system could then utilize it for their benefit.
Correct, Well, yeah, I mean but.
Okay, so you give your neighbor your password. Well, now your neighbor gives his grandkid the password. Well, his grandkid gives his two friends the password. Those two friends give their two friends the password. Right now, they're now they're over reasonably bandwidth for a Halo Land party.
Yeah, and and not only that, but just think about you know, your your neighbor. What if they're not upstanding citizens. What if they're out there browsing stuff that is illegal on the internet, or what if they're downloading you know, movies are not or yeah, or even worse, what if they're downloading these movies in stuff like, you know, pirating movies. Who's going to get the letter from from from you know,
the the ISP saying hey, you're doing illegal stuff. You are because it comes back to your account.
All right?
No, ever, ever, don't ever share your WiFi to anybody, David.
No.
Now here's here's the fun thing, right, what is your Let's go around the horn here? What is your WiFi called? Andy?
I named mine after God. I don't even know why I named it that. I named it something that is completely unrelated to the family.
It's unrelated to oh what they come on?
Just say it dark water, all right, that's what I named that is all right. I don't know why I named it that, and it's been that way for a while. I don't think I've ever maybe at one other time, had something different, but I would never ever name it the family name. Now, I like some of the names that are out there for you know, s s IDs to name your WiFi.
There are some great ones out there. I say, make it fun, right, oh, justin.
Justin, what's yours?
What is yours? The Wu Tang land, the Wu Tang land instead of the Wu Tang clan. It's the Wu tang Land.
Oh, there you go. That's the name of the show this week. Yeah. I like Sean What is yours?
Sean Land before Time, Land before Time nice? I like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's so many good ones, right, there's all these articles that have gone back.
There's another one I really like, tell my WiFi a lover. Oh my gosh, really, you know, tell my WiFi but when you say it fast, tell my WiFi love her? Yeah, landol Land. Yeah, I mean there's like, there's so many.
There's so many good so many good ones.
Oh my favorite is like NSA surveillance van number five. That's what that's actually what mine used to be. And way back in the day, I would have people like they would walk by my house and stuff, and I would see them walking by on their phones. Maybe they were just scanning for Wi Fi or whatever, but they would see potentially, I guess, they would see the name of my WiFi and they would stop and they start looking around like looking for like like looking for an inconspicuous van or something.
These are fun, but in essence, can you not broadcast your your SSID?
Oh yeah, of course you can make it it hidden you can make it hit. But even if you hide it, it's really not hidden. It's it's hidden for the most basic of people. If you have the most rudimentary uh wi Fi scanner, it's still gonna come up with with the hidden quote unquote hidden networks.
The wu tang Land, I love it.
Yeah, ip frequently, that's good. I pronounce you man and Wi Fi what land?
Yeah?
Look ma, no wires prouder. I hardly know her. Like those are all nicknames and stuff. Yeah, hid your kids? Hid your WiFi? Again?
Our listeners can let us know theirs if they want Again. Tech guys at tech talk radio dot another quick break, we come back. Another listener question from ROBERTA.
Tucson. That's standing by. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean.
De Weird and I'm justin Let me one more Wi Fi fo F. That's a pretty good one. We'll be right back now back.
To tech talk Radio. We have another listener question to come out of the break. Yes, and if my web browser will cooperate, I can read it.
You can drop us the line anytime you have a question. Tech guys at tech talk radio dot com, and we love that ask.
We love reading these questions because it it spurs up a conversation. We get a really good dialogue going. But this one is from ROBERTA from Tucson. All Right, the question is I was telling a friend of mine, I was thinking about getting Microsoft Office because there really is a lot you can do with it. She was telling me, and she's not two tech savvy. She said Open Office is just as good and it's free. I'm nervous about this.
Is it safe because it's free?
Because it's free? Yeah, Open Office or open libra office is a great open source tool that's free. It's got word processor, it's got a PowerPoint very similar to you know, similar to PowerPoint. It's got all those things that you can use. If you're looking for a basic word processor that's going to do it. Open Office is totally acceptable.
Can you save save it in files?
Like say your boss hey has Office and he wants to get it in a doc format, you know, doc x or whatever.
Can you save it in that format even from open Office?
I believe so. I'd have to check, but I believe you can expert And to be honest, most of the Microsoft suite can open just about any other document from other word processing softwares because it has to write.
You can't.
You can't be the leading web word processing software and not be able to open up other very common word word word file types. So now I'm gonna promote a website We've talked about previously on this website on the show Alternative to Great Resource. And that's alternative to Yeah,
alternative t o dot net. And if you have a piece of software that you're like, oh, I don't want to pay two hundred dollars for this piece of software, you can go to Alternative type it in and it's gonna give you a list of alternative softwares that are more often than not open source and free. So the common one that I talk about is Photoshop. Right, everybody
knows what Photoshop is. Type in Photoshop. You're gonna get Gimp, and you're gonna get a couple of other other solutions that are free that are just as powerful, if not
in some cases better than not necessarily Photoshop. Any alternatives that are better than the one you may have been looking at, So alternative to that, go check it out if you're if you're curious about open source software, and don't be afraid about open source software, open source software is community driven, right, It's driven by the people that care about the software, that are developing it for the users,
not necessarily for profit. So it's sometimes you get a little bit better community support, you get a little bit better product updates, you get a little bit you know, your feature requests may be heard by more people that can can tie those in. And then if you're savvy with software, you can take that piece of software because it's open source, the code lives out there for free and develop your own products or your own your own pieces of equipment or you know, your own software development.
Get that works with this piece of software.
So I can I can kind of see though, Sean though Roberta's hesitation, because how often are we saying, don't download this through a link, don't download this from a website.
You don't know. You have to be vigilant in what you're downloading from. I mean you do app oh yeah, no, for.
Sure, right, don't just go oh, here's a great free word processor app that I just searched forward. It was the first link at the top that had four pop ups that said download yeah. Right, there are there are clear and present dangers on the Internet, and you know, do a little bit of research, right, Don't just be like, oh here's this free, think download, right, do a little bit of research, read some reviews, read our blog, read
any other tech blog. Like, just do a little bit of research, do your due diligence, and don't just go download. Like she came to us, asked us the question, right, that's doing her due diligence and saying, hey, I'm worried about this. Is it safe? Yeah, it's safe. Download it, use it. It's gonna be a great tool for you and tell your friends.
Well, it's kind of like you know, when when I decided to start playing around with Linux, you know, Linux been Tony two and then the womb. It's free, but I was very careful about where I got it from, and man, it was great.
Actually it wasn't free for win Buntu.
That still cost me thirty five bucks for me to get the tools, but it was worth.
It, absolutely worth it to be able to do that.
And so yeah, I mean, just like you said, the due diligence, that is a that is a good thing. Just to be be careful where you're getting it from, because I'll tell you the scammers, the hackers, they're working really hard right now, right around the holidays. They're coming out of everywhere, and I'm seeing it in emails from what should be Amazon.
I go it.
So for many of us, our payroll processor is ADP, right, what is it? Advanced Data of something whatever?
ADP. I get an email.
Today Events Data Processing.
Yeah, I get an email today from APD APD yes, wanting me to log in to verify my employment so I could take a look at my paychecks and blah blah blah. Yeah, no, no gonna fall for that one. So they are trying to trick you in many ways. One thing we've heard this week, and I know you at least Justin and I think Sean you may be using it, is YouTube TV.
I have been on the fence. I've been waiting.
It looks like Ting is not going to be able to do our wiring till maybe April or May of next year. And that's when I was going to just switch completely from Xfinity but and go to YouTube TV and Ting YouTube TV has decided to raise this prices just like everything else, right yep. And apparently that a lot of people say that's it, I'm canceling, and they canceled I just.
Had a conversation with a co worker about this. We're coming full circle. Yeah, everybody's tired of buying pay per view or this and that and buying this over there and paying for this over there. It is all getting bundled again.
Yeah.
Now if I have Disney Plus, okay, well now I get Disney Plus, Hulu, Espn, Espn Plus. It's all in Disney Plus. Right, Well now, why so why am I playing like I just don't get it? The streaming wars are this is is so ridiculous. A lot of people are doing is They're they're going month to month, They're paying for a month and then canceling because they know they're only going to watch it for a month to
watch the one show or two shows that they want. Yeah, and then I just feel like that's such a hassle. But we're even thinking about trimming back on. Do we watch enough Prime Video to warrant us having a Prime account? You know, it's it's ridiculous.
Like, I don't know, I've had Prime for years, and I'm thinking do I I have Prime? Because I know we do a lot of purchases, you know, with Amazon. I think that's that's part of it, and I don't have to then worry about paying for shipping and handling because that comes with Prime.
Oh but they've got this video service. Am I paying more?
I don't even know what was? When was the last time you watched something on Prime Video?
Months? Like months?
Don't watch something and you'll see an ad. There's ads on Prime Video, like it just popped in, and it's it's frustrating as heck because I'm paying Prime. I'm paying them one hundred dollars a year and now get ads.
Right, Yeah, well, considering what the other streaming services are charging, right, I mean, one hundred bucks a year is not a lot. I mean you look at Netflix, you're paying almost twenty bucks a month. Really, yeah, I think.
I just I finally watched something on Netflix the other day. I watched that Carry On with Tarren Edgerson, and I thought it was pretty good. It was like totally like die Hard. I don't if you guys have seen that one yet. If you like Diehard, you'd like that, but i'd.
Like you mean, you're watching something other than Hallmark Christmas movies right now?
Yeah? Sorry?
Oh my gosh. And he's growing up. Our little boy's growing up.
I had already seen the Hallmark movie that was on. I'd already seen that one, so I needed to watch something else.
But now I watched all of Hallmark.
That's all I've watched.
On Netflix seriously in a long time, other than The Fight you know when that was on. So yeah, it's just it's it's kind of weird. Yeah, you're right, I mean the Wars are on. Now we've seen people going up from seventy what is it, seventy two dollars a month to eighty two dollars a month for YouTube TV?
People, do you still think it's worth it though?
At eighty two dollars a month?
I I so right, we're in an agreement with so Kale's Pairs pay for YouTube TV, we pay for Disney Place like we kind of do a sharing back and forth and where they.
Get them on me.
We pay for Netflix, they pay for you know, so and like Chris sister pays for whatever another streaming service that we use. So we kind of shared it on the horn. And now that they live, now that they live closer, we're no longer getting flagged for the out of Netflix.
Ah nice, right, because they live.
Much closer now, So within within the region. I guess if you will, but I don't know. I'd have to ask them what they paid, right, because we talked about this when they switched right, they were on Charter Internet, which is a local IP up in Luddington, and they switched to you Cable and they were they dropped their bill from like one hundred and twenty five dollars to it was like sixty five bucks a month. Now, I'd have to figure out what they're paying because I don't know.
Right when you start adding everything though Paramount plus Disney plus Hulu plus.
Peacock, it did.
That's where you it's people are suddenly going, wait a minute, how much am I paying for this?
Yeah, it's more expecially and people people don't think about it too.
It's on top of your what you're paying for your internet.
Right. I have HBO. I never watch it, but just in case something's gonna come on. You know. It's well, that's how.
They get you, right, That's that's physical media is king because they get you.
You know.
You go you go to Netflix and you're like, oh, man, I saw that the super manor Brothers movie was on and I wanted to watch that and they're like, oh, sorry, the last day to watch that was three days ago. Well yeah, now, now where do I go and watch it? I started, Let me go to let me let me go to Prime Prime Video, Prime Video? Has it great? You log into Prime Video? Oh rented for two d night? What rent it?
Yeah? That's what I got?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's consumers are frustrated, but consumers are also lazy, so they will pay the money to not have to go out of their way to get a disc out and play it or buy it. They know what they're doing, these companies, these streaming companies, they know what they're doing. And you are paying for a license to watch these
you don't own it. And I keep telling people it's gonna take one major internet out is for a period of three to four days where people don't have internet, and physical media sales are gonna skyrocket.
It's got a want more invice of DVDs.
Yeah, I know exactly out of the five dollars bin, that's what it's gonna be.
It's gonna be crazy, all right. I wanted to bring up.
The fact that chat GPT's doing something pretty cool. Uh And I don't know if you you used that as Sean, I know you use it for work and justin I know we have Gemini, so we've been used in that quite a bit.
I'm pretty good with Jemini most of the time.
It's it's pretty accurate. But chet JPT search has now been made available for free for all. It used to be only if you had a paid account. Now it's for free. What you do is you go to your chat GPT loggin you through open Ai. You set up a free account and you'll see where you can create and ask for an image, or you can ask for a little globe and do a search.
And I got to tell you I did a.
Search just before the show of something that happened here in Tucson and it pulled up so and it was recently like in the last week. So again it's not behind a subscription paywall.
It's free there.
They want people to use open Ai search instead of course Google Search to help build the brand for chat GPT. So if you want to try and do some searches on there, see how that comes.
Up for you. All Right, we can take a quick break. We've got more to wrap up a tech talk radio for this week. I mean Taylor.
I'm Sean de Weird and I'm justin Let me.
You can send us an X at tech talk Radio.
We'll be right back and now back to tech talk radio. Hey learning the cable guy and you're listening to tech cock Radio.
So normally ask website of the week. Yeah, and none of us ever have it.
We're like, I haven't been any websites this week.
I've actually got a couple of them that I found. I was just kind of, you know, browsing around, and I found something. I put them in a chat here. The first one is it's really good for people that are using like photographers or graphical artists or just people
that really want to know about the different colors. But there's a website called every hex dot Codes, every h e X, every hex dot codes, all right, and it is every color imaginable and you can just float your mouse cursser over it and it will give you the hexadecimal code for that particular color. So if you need to input it in to you know, uh, Photoshop or or your your game illustrator or illustrator or whatever you might be, this is every single hex color known. I mean,
it is insane. It's all sixteen point seven million colors. So for those who don't want a website.
Don't understand every color has a hex associated with it, and it's going to be just an identifier that this color, this these numbers and letters represent that color.
So that's what like like hashtag B nine dB three five is like a puke yellow kind of color. Randomly, I just picked one.
That's just nice.
This is pretty cool. It's every heex dot code. The other one I was gonna mention is open megahurts. Now I'm megahurts abbreviated open mh z, openmhz dot com. It is aware for you to be able to go and listen to unencrypted police fire ems radio channels, kind of like uhod castify, except this is more. It's again it's open, so it's uh, there's no one company behind it, and
you can easily record your own local radio system. So you can just get like a twenty five dollars SDR uh and plug it in and you can capture some some sort of frequency in your area and feed it into open SDR or open megat excuse me, open MHz dot com and so like right now you know the top trending ones right now are miss Watt Madison, Wisconsin. You know because of the recent tragic incident that happened there.
You've got DC fire and ems. You've got a Fairfox County, uh, and you've also got New Jersey because of all the drones. Everything always talking about the drones. Wants to be your own community? Yeah, yeah, if you wanted to do for your own community, all you'd have to do is just buy They have an instruction guide on it, but you just buy a twenty five dollars USB SDR and I forget SDR stands for Sean helped me out here software
defined software defined radio. Yes, And you would literally just hook an antenna to that and feed it into your computer, and then you could feed whatever channel you want into openmegaheurts dot com and and and let other people listen to it, like for instance, Arizona, I can listen to the p MC County Wireless Integrated Network is showing metro area.
If you are interested in getting an SDR device, a donkele, All right, U r T L DASH SDR dot com. This is a it's an amateur radio SUH SDR Donkele that you can then tie into any you know web s j X, any number of amateur radio softwares, and these can actually tune in HAM radio bands.
And they're only they're only listen only, right, they don't be able to trans.
Correct correct these are these are listening only. You would have to get some other fans. You'd have to get some other you'd have to have a radio radio. You'd have to actually have a the actual radio that can tie in USB to your computer to transmit. Now FT eight if you're anybody author's a Ham radio operator. FT eight is a very popular web based platform that ties in USPGR radio and is low wattage and you can dx around the world using your computer.
All right.
Also, I want to mention before your app twenty four h two that is the Windows update that takes out WordPad. It also messes with network sharing. I found out how we can get WordPad back. If you like using WordPad, I do. So I'm gonna put together a video. We'll put it up on the website at TikTok radio dot com on which files you need to grab so you have, but again that'll be up on our website.
Quick, real quick. What do you want for Christmas?
Justin I want Oh gosh, I have no idea. Man, put me on the spot. Another another camera lens.
Another camera lens. The one you got is a brand new one. It looks good, it really does. It's a fixed focused lens.
Yes, thirty five millimeter fixed focus f stop one point eight. It's really good, really good.
How about Sean, what do you think I want?
Either that Ebsen printer or that other printer that you showed me that can scan the four by sixes.
Hey, yeah, it's not a printer, it's this scanner. There's Visionaire.
Yeah. Scan.
That's what I met. So what I met scanner. But yeah, that's I want that because I am painstakingly doing three to four four by six is at a time.
All right, that Justin and you were I know what I want for Christmas? All right? We want the Denver Broncos to go to the Super Bowl.
Oh there you go. Is that possible?
It is?
Oh okay.
I like they made it into the playoffs for the first time and since twenty fifteen.
I like it very good. All right. That that is it for this week's TIK Talk Radio.
Wishing the best of holidays to all, Thank you very much, Merry Christmas.
Happy Hanaka. Thank you so much for listening.
I'm Ay Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm Justin let me. We'll see you in the new year. Have a great time.