The following program is produced by the tech Talk Radio Network. Hey everybody, this is Kelly Hansen from Foreigner and you're listening to tech Talk Radio. Welcome to another episode of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm Justin Lemey. Welcome. That's good to see you.
Last week we had a best of show, but everybody was doing something last week, and then Sean fell asleep.
Andy and I were supposed to record, and then Max.
Oh no, Max was up late, and then Caitlyn was out, and I.
Will fill asleep at your desk, didn't.
You No, I fall asleep in Max's bed with him.
Oh, it's totally what I pictured.
I totally pictured him with his head on the desk, drool, coming out onto his show notes.
Because we were going to record.
After about twenty minutes, I went in back into Gloria was in the TV room. She said, so did the fall asleep? I said, yeah, I think so.
It's not the first time.
Well, I mean you got to understand, though, the Shawn is three hours ahead of you. Yes, exactly. So yeah, when we record the show sometimes it's like seven pm your time. It's like you know, ten eleven o'clock even, Yeah, and then he has to be up. Oh yeah, what time you get What time do you get up to get get to Notre Dame.
Oh the boys are up at six am, So yeah, sometime you get up.
I mean, I mean I get up with the boys and then go to work.
Actually so okay, so okay, same time all right, yeah, I.
Mean I'm recording the show. It's eleven thirty. Yeah, usually go to bed after that.
So remember the battle day, Sean, when you and I would come home from our our night shift at Fox five and we would play like Daisy or something until like two am, two am. We wouldn't get home until eleven pm, right, you know, and then we would play you know, me, him and a couple of our other buddies.
When we lived in San Diego before before he moved out to San Tee, we were about the same distance from the office, right yeah.
We would be like, all right, let's.
See in fifteen fifteen minutes yep, and it would be would be on and we'd play Dais for hours. Days had Dais had just released as an alpha. Dais is a zombie mod of the game Armor two, which is oh yeah, was an incredible game that became wildly popular.
It's actually becoming popular again beyond yeah.
I will have to I've got some I'll dig them up. But I have some clips playing. Oh yeah, I remember the helicopters and oh yeah, yeah.
I remember the one we were like launching grenades off the side of the building and we were like attracting a bunch of zombies and we're like, oh, okay, well we're screwed. I was on I gotta teo you.
I was out and about and I ran into this guy who said he listens to the Tech Show right and then. But it was kind of cool because he said, I love it when you guys talk about gaming. I said, oh, what do you play? And he goes, I don't play anything. I don't play any games. I don't have computer that's fast enough. But I love you guys talking about it because it makes me want to upgrade my computer in play some games.
I tell it, just do it, do it? Do it? Now? Do it? Now? Do it.
Speaking of that you've been I know that justin you talked about that zombie game.
You were gonna maybe do some voices. How's that coming along?
Is it? Game?
Still popular.
I mean, we tend to have games that come out, they'll be out for a little while and then they just kind of disappear.
No, No, the So the game where you're referencing is Project Zomboid, and it is becoming more and more popular by the day. I mean, I'm seeing more and more posts on Reddit, more and more posts on x about the game and the developer apparently he has him or or his team. I guess they've expanded because remember this game came out in twenty thirteen and it was eh, okay, yeah, but like about about a year ago, not even a
year ago. It's been about six months since they released Build forty two, and Build forty two just changed everything, and now it's just getting better and better. Now they're on I think it's forty two dot six, So it's the sixth iteration that just came out yesterday of Build forty two. Now there's still no multiplayer in build forty two. Everybody that wants my multiplayer has to play on Build forty one, the previous iteration, but it is becoming more
and more popular by the day now. With respect to your question about the voiceover stuff, you know I did I did some voiceover work for this mod, which was in talks with the developer to become vanilla, which means just included in the base game. I don't know the status of it right now. Shortly after I did those voices, I got sick. And I don't normally get sick. But I'll be honest, this is really weird, Andy, And you'll know this being you know, a radio DJ. But my
voice was really bad for weeks on end. I mean it was just I sounded like I would wake up in the morning and I would have a very deep, perfect radio voice. But then but like halfway through the day, it just sounded like I was sick. You turned into Bobby Brady. Yeah, yeah, and and and it just got really bad. But you know what, I be honest, like I'm starting, you know, feeling better and I'm not doing it.
And I don't know what happened with this whole sickness thing, right, but it has changed my voice like permanently, Like I have that deep voice now, I feel like all the time. It's just it's it's like dropped down a half octave. You probably went through always you went through the change, you know, it's like you know, I finally hit puberty at forty four years old. I finally hit puberty. It happens, you know, some of us a little later than others, a little bit later. Yeah, yeah, there's there is.
If you ever want to watch a video when it comes to voices, I just and I've mentioned this before, I'm going to say it again. If you watch it when you're you're you're finished with this, justin the finest voices ever in voiceover work. It's called five guys in a level.
Dude, I showed you that.
I was the one that shows you the interesting Oh yeah, oh my god. That is one of the best, the best videos, some of the greatest. Don la Fontaine just great voice guys. Oh they're they're all of them.
The guy that did Disney, the guy that did Jurassic Park, the guy that did Ferris Bueler's Day Off. Yeah, all those, Yeah, the five best voiceover actors of our time. The only problem with that video is the quality. You cannot find a good quality version of it. So it's like it's not even four eighty p it's like three twenty p you know, and and the but the at least the audio is okay. So you can understand it. But yeah, five guys in a limo. Just look it up on YouTube. It is amazing.
You had something you were telling us before the break, but you didn't give us the info that you kind of did.
And it involves tech and okay, let's see, let's see what it is. Well, I've mentioned this before, so you know a lot of my my my normal daily routine is, you know, after I get off of work, I go pick up Eric from school, and a lot of times we'll stop over at the neighborhood brewery and I'll have a you know, a quick beer while I'm just kind of like unwinding from the day, and I'll bring my computer and I'll be you know, surfing the internet, or
I'll be on a game myself. And then Eric's got the little tablet next to him, and he tries to play Minecraft on the tablet, or he might try to play like Roadblocks or you know a lot of these mobile games. And I can just tell that he's he's just getting frustrated with the quality of the tablet and he's just he's just like, I'm getting bored, you know, Dad, I'm getting bored in the graphics, And well, ability. Yeah. Yeah,
the ability. I mean it's not a very I mean the tablet is a decent tablet, but it's just yeah, the ability to be able to play and and he's getting more and more interested in like Steam games and stuff. That's the stuff that I play, and he just can't do that on the tablet. So yeah, we went out and bottom a gaming laptop. Oh wow, which, well we got him the Acer Predator. Oh that's yeah. Yeah, and so it it has an I seven. Uh, it's it's the newest I seven. It's it's Core Ultra. It's so
it's yeah, the brand newest I seven. It's only got sixteen gigs a RAM, which is you know, fine, but it does have a forty sixty and RTX forty kidding make it. Well, my my laptop, my laptop that I use for work, it has a thirty seventy TI, which I think is still a little bit more powerful than the forty sixty in terms of overall performance. But the forty sixty. Yeah, so get this. So I get this laptop. It's got Windows eleven on it. I spend all of Sunday. Was it s mode? No? No, So you didn't have
to take it out of S mode. No, no, it wasn't S mode. It was it was straight Windows. So I spend all Sunday afternoon from like twelve until we actually about one let's say one o'clock until about four o'clock. Yeah, and I'm I'm updating it. I'm downloading all the updates. I'm downloading, you know, all the Driver easy drive because I love Driver Easy. I'm downloading Steam, I'm updating the Xbox app. And then I finally then I start downloading
some games. And then I oh, and then I signed up for a service because it's a it's a full fledged laptop, and he has the ability to go anywhere on the internet. I signed up for this particular where is it here because it's called custodio, right, because custodio q U s t O d io custodio And it is a parental control app that is on his computer,
but it's hidden and he's unable to disable it. And so what this app does is it monitors everything he does, every application he wants, launches every game, every YouTube video that he searches, every website that he goes to, every time he tries to bypass admin controls or whatever it might be. It will alert me immediately on my phone via the app, also via email. So then I can just completely just shut his computer down, like remotely. I can shut the computer down. So you get it.
You get a report of hey, he's looking at this. You don't want to move time, so real time, in real time, that is awesome. So like if he goes to YouTube and he's searching Minecraft videos, I don't get an alert. But if he goes and searches something more nefarious that an eight year old shouldn't search, it will alert me and say, hey, your kid is watching some stuff that he probably shouldn't be watching. But I mean
I'm usually right next to him. I mean, we're not like letting him go to his room and just you know, browse the internet like we're watching him. But anyway, this custodio is really cool and we got a good deal. I think it was like two years for like one hundred and sixty bucks, so it wasn't too expensive anyway. How about the installation of apps like Snapchat for the web that kind of thing.
Yeah, No, it won't let him install any apps. He's not an admin on the actually currently he is an admin on the PC because it's only been a day since we had it and I haven't had a chance to remove his administrator privileges. But I will take care of that. Ye But yeah, no, he won't be able to install any apps. He won't be able to do anything that I don't want him to do, which is it's great. So anyway, we get this thing set up on Sunday, Sunday afternoon, I'm like, hey, man, let's go celebrate.
I want a beer. Let's go over to Bruise. Let's bring your brand new laptop. Let's sit down. I'm gonna bring mine. I'm gonna play Assassin's Creed Shadows, the new Assassin's Creed that's set in Feudal Japan, you know, because it looks Eric's half Japanese. And he sets up his laptop. He opens up Minecraft and he starts playing Minecraft. Five minutes later, he's watching YouTube. I'm like, really, like really, dude, I didn't just spend one thousand dollars on a laptop
for you to go and watch YouTube. You can watch YouTube on the tablet, you know. He's like, well, I just want to watch YouTube. I want to watch Minecraft videos. I'm like, then, why did I buy you one thousand dollars laptop? Give him some of the classic games. He might have some fun with those. You know, I've been trying. I mean Doom, Yeah, Wolfenstein Yeah yeah, that's great for an eight role Nocturnal remember that one. Yeah? Anyway, No,
but I mean I've been trying. I've been trying to get them all kinds of games because I can share my Steam library with him, So I'm giving them like things like house Flipper, powerwash simulator, you know, uh uh. I even gave him Project Zomboid. But he doesn't want to play.
Though what every eight year old kid wants to play powerwashing?
No, he actually loves it. He does. He actually loves powerwash simulator. He likes Okay, so here's the thing. You don't wait, wait, what is what is powerwash simulator? It sounds it's exactly what it sounds like. You you're a guy that goes around houses and you powerwash things, and it's it's it's cathartic, dude, I'm telling you. It sounds like a joke, but it's not. It is so cathartic to sit there and just powerwash stuff.
A little cavat here, So simulation games with Justin and I don't go over. Well, well no, because when I lived in San Diego and we were playing farming simulator.
Oh my gosh.
The first thing he did in the game was ran me over with the tractor and then he said, I don't think.
I don't think. We were five minutes into the game. He just plows me over.
Yeah, and he's still sitting there. He's like, how did I survive that. I'm like, I don't know, dude. It's a simulator, that's what. Well, that's what I'm thinking. Maybe a simulator game would be cool. Like, well, no, because here's the thing. Here's the thing. Eric and I what
what what? What? We like to do Him and I at the end of the night, before he goes to bed, we like to watch a particular YouTube channel called Let's Game It Out, and it's a guy who all he does is he gets he gets these early access simulation games and he just completely makes fun of them and he destroys them. He doesn't he doesn't play the game as it's designed. He basically tests the game to its limits, and he does crazy things with these games that the
developers are like, oh my god. We got to fix these bugs. Like they do this on purpose. They'll send it the game and let him explore the game, and then they'll go back and they'll fix those bugs because he's able to expose those bugs. But it becomes really funny entertainment and Eric and I just love watching let's game it out on YouTube. So anyway, that's why he likes simulation games. So I've gotten him, uh a streamer simulator where you basically get to be like a Twitch streamer.
Oh no, that's cool. Yeah, well, no, the game is horrible. It's absolutely horrible. It's only like five. It can't be powerwa Washing Simulator. Oh no, no, Power Washing Simulator is a triple A title. It is like thirty or forty bucks, and it is actually worth it. It's actually a really good game. I got him Lawnmown Simulator, where like literally you're just mowing lawns. Yeah, no, he loves it. He hit our kids. We're supposed to get our kids outside
bone lawns were in the desert. We don't. Yeah, we don't have that. He has to has to learn somehow. Yeah, but anyway, he loves it. But I just I gotta get him to play the actual games because he just wants to watch. Let's game it out.
There is So you talked about Minecraft roadblocks. I know he's been real big with younger set. Minecraft has been huge. Now they got a movie coming out about and I'm thinking we look at other movies like Postal.
The movie did not do that great. There's other movies that came out that did not do that great. Wait, there was a Postal movie.
There was a Postal movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we had to wait. Yes, there was a screening we did in Tucson.
We were there. Tech Talk Radio was there. It was all five of you, all five people that was it. It was three of us.
And yeah, no, there were people there because you know, the guy who created the game was from Tucson, Vince DEDI I know, but but yeah, I mean and Udo Kerr I think was the director. It was a pretty awful movie it I mean, I'll be honest, it was.
The game was more fun to play.
But I'm thinking, will Minecraft and it's got some names in it, will it be good?
Oh? I I don't know. I don't know about you, Sean, but I'm looking forward to it because I mean, Jason Momoa, Jack Black are the two big characters in it. The final trailer that got released actually makes it look pretty darn decent. I mean when it first got announced, I was like, you gotta be kidding. Yeah, but no, but it actually makes it look pretty darn good. And we bought tickets, so Eric is really excited. We're gonna go see it. I think it's not next Saturday, but the Saturday after that.
Right, I just I just wonder will And for people who don't know Minecraft, not everybody's played Minecraft.
I don't know if I have. Is that the one where you run, you build things and you yeah, yeah blocks, everything's in like a square block. Yeah yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah, you do a lot of building.
The plot of this movie, I don't I mean a Call of Duty movie or a Metal of Honor movie.
Yeah, and there's a plot, but what would be the plot for this Sean? You played Minecraft?
Right, yeah?
I so, yeah, I've played Minecraft since it came out. Yeah, but it was well, however they call it the better Rock Condition or whatever.
Java one.
Yeah, it came on Java. Yeah. It's fun.
I mean, it's it's it's you could play an adventure mode, you can play in survival mode.
There's a couple of different motive mode.
Yeah, you just go in and you basically have to build.
You start with nothing and you literally have to go punch a tree until you have enough wood to make a wooden axe, and then you can you start developing tools faster and faster and faster. But it's it's one of those games where you can literally create anything.
Right, and and Eric has gotten so good at it.
Amazing There there is a collective of people that are doing a one to one scale replica of Earth as Minecraft.
I mean, the worlds have gotten this, like the the this the seed is going to literally be like it will be as big as like if if you were standing in one block, it would be you're standing in my house.
Like they're making a scale version of Oh wow, cities and everything.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's actually pretty crazy. I mean no, it's got a massive following and honestly, it got even bigger when my when Microsoft purchased it. What have they purchased it for? They purchased it from Notch. Notch was the original creator Marcus Pearson went by Notch. Microsoft purchased it. But I want to say, back in twenty twelve, I think, and they purchased it for like a billion dollars or something like that.
In twenty fourteen, Notch sold Minecraft Microsoft for two point five billion.
Okay, I was a little off, little off, but yeah, But anyway, Microsoft took this and ran with it, and they have actually done a pretty darn good job. I mean, first off, it was in Java, it was written in Java,
the language, the programming language. They recreated the entire game in what they call Bedrock, which is what is now the most the most played version because Bedrock can be played across all platforms PlayStation, Xbox, PC, mold, witch Switch, all of it, whereas Java can only be played on PC. Some of the more hardcore players will play on Java because there's a lot more modding allowed, but Bedrock is catching up with that. But instead of modding, Bedrock allows
you to just purchase add ons and purchase mods. So that's where Microsoft is making all their money off of. But Eric has already spent probably a good couple hundred dollars on Minecraft himself, wow, just buying like extra like skins and cities and worlds. But some of the things that he's created are just absolutely amazing, and he plays with his friends all the time. They're all jumping online at the same time, playing on a server. They just love it.
That's pretty cool. Now you're talking about the laptop. I showed one this couple weeks ago on KMSB and man, I have not said it back yet. It's got to go back this week. But it is from a sus It's the rock Flow Z thirteen. And what's what's really cool if you guys get a chance to look at this. It features the a m D three ninety five processor, it's got the uh, it's got a rising graphics card in it, and it is pretty darn amazing. It sells
for about seventeen ninety nine. But it's a tablet, so you know you're talking about, you know, a gaming laptop or a tablet. It's an actual tablet with a keyboard, and it's super thick. Does the Ara RGP so you get that in the back, got it in the front. But performance wise, and I haven't really played games with it. I've just got on it and I've been you know, just setting it through the ringer and jumping online doing this,
doing that, and I've been really pleased with it. I'm pretty sure with games it would be pretty pretty awesome. So if you know, if you get a chance to check out the video where we show the product, I'm going to do another video on it before I send it back that I want to show give you a better look because you can see all the ports on it that are available. Again, the pricing not too bad. The other one I'm gonna do is something that I
showed this past week. Now, Sean, I know you've been a big fan of the EPSOM Fast Photo six eighty W. We've talked about it for the last like four shows. This week I tested out. Unfortunately didn't go so good on live TV. You guys worked in TV, you know what I'm talking about. But I showed the EPSOM are our six hundred W. It's a rapid receipt scanner, and so if you're around tax time or you have a business justin you've got a business you want to organize your receipts.
You could scan up to one hundred receipts into your computer, or you could do it into your smartphone if you do the wirelessly and it scans it about thirty five pages per minute. Can also scan front and back. Can also scan photos six hundred dpi or three hundred dpi, not like the six's eighty, which can go I believe. Didn't you say that goes up to twelve hundred.
Chun do up to twelve Yeah, well I think it goes even higher than that. But twelve hundred is kind of like the if three hundred and six hundred twelve hundred those are kind of like the fast modes.
Right in three hundred.
DEPI it'll do like a photo every faster than every second. Six hundred it's at least one a second, goes really fast. Twelve hundred it takes about three seconds per photo scan. But the quality on the six hundred DEPI is way is it's so good.
This is good enough for yeah.
Digital archives, Like I'm not gonna sit there and scan all these any higher than six hundred DEPI. For I've printed some I'm already from just Walgreens with the Google Photos app and they look fine.
Yeah.
So it's it's pretty amazing stuff that it will do. It also, like I said, does front back, but it also using the scan smart software that is part of EPSOM. You could put it into quick books or TurboTax, or you could just organize it, and it will it uses it uses AI to look at it and say, this is a receipt for auto repair, this is a receipt for a home repair, This is a receipt for business supplies, and it will it actually will put that as far as where the product was bought, how much it was,
what the tax was, everything. So you know, if you're looking for a receipt to help you, get a receipt scanner to help you get organized.
This one's pretty good, and I've.
Used other ones, smaller ones like Visioneer EPSOM. This one though, is probably their top of the line now. And again that's the sixth it's the r R six hundred W. But when I went to demo in on TV, I didn't set it up for Wi Fi. I've set it up for USB. So we're going through the entire segment trying to figure out why is it not scanning. We hit the button, nothing is happening, and then I look down and I see it's not plugged into the computer.
And so of course I said, well that that means I will be putting a video up on our website. And then of course Tyler Butler said, yeah, Andy Taylor are tech expert through me under the bus. I love it so yeah, but I will I will be posting.
You should rewatch the show and point out any technical mistakes they make on TV, right the tech expert.
That would be kind of cool. All right, we got to take a break. We come back.
We're going to talk more about technology. What is going on with Microsoft? Why are they making so many changes? Somebody said, I think it's because they want everybody to go to Linux. Well I don't think that's the case, but we'll talk about that we come back. I'm Andy Taylor.
I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm justin. Let me find us online at tech talk radio dot com. We'll be right back and now back to tech talk Radio changes.
James like, we just keep seeing changes when it comes to Microsoft. And while we know that you know in October, that'll be it for Windows ten as far as support, it'll still work, if you have it, it'll still work. But we're seeing a lot of changes. This week, it was announced at one Note that a lot of people use for Windows ten will be going away.
Skype will be going away.
And I think I'm hard pressed. That's big the Skype one.
Yeah, oh yeah, are they just going to integrate it into teams. Now.
Well, yeah, here's my problem with it. So, and they just took the money out of my account. I pay for a Skype phone line. So Skype gave me a number. I pay for it, and that is a phone line that we use for if I have to do an interview with this somebody, I give them a phone line and instead of giving them an email address. And it's been great, but they're telling me that that's going away
in May. So my phone line is no longer going to work because Teams is not going to be using a phone line at least I don't think so.
I don't. I haven't heard anything about that. Yeah, that's weird.
Yeah, so you can still you can still call in.
You think so? Well, actually, yeah, you're right, you're right. If you host a team's meeting, it does give you call in phone. I could I can call it. I can call into this Zoom.
Meeting right now.
You could.
You could just open a Zoom call and say here's what you don't pay for it, and they'll just die.
They'll call into this Zoom meeting.
Yeah, but the phone number is a Skype phone number. So I'm wondering if Skype the interface could go away, so my phone number won't work anymore.
But it probably you probably won't be able to have a dedicated phone number because every time you launch a new Teams meeting, or just like with Zoom, every time you launch a Zoom meeting, it's going to give you a different phone number to call into or a different access code at least.
So I was thinking, Okay, I have to go back to Voipe, or go back to Vantage, or go back to No.
Just use the bill, use Zoom Zoom, use Zoom phone number.
Yeah, I like Zoom a lot better. I don't know, do you think that's the reason. I mean, even though you know, after the pandemic was Zoom. You know, Zoom user count was down quite a bit, and they were saying that, you know, people weren't using the service as much. They work from home, meetings aren't aren't as big. I pay for Zoom and I love it. I think it's one of the best out there. But I paid for Skype as well, just so I could have a phone number.
I would stop doing that.
Well, do you remember we used to That's how we used to do these shows.
We used to do it with with Skype. Yes, Skype.
Skype was how I before Discord was around before. That's how we did video chats and everything that my friends for gaming and stuff was all Skype.
Right, Uh, team I would I did a little you know, team speak and stuff. Yeah, yeah, OK.
Skype was also like Skype.
We used it a lot for confidence returns at work where we would feed it. We had a like a decling card or an SDI input into a computer running Skype and make the video source that your you know, your video signal in and it's sub it was sub one second latency over because Skype had the best lowest latency deliverable out of any of the video chat platforms.
So even over public internet you.
Could get a half a second to one second latency on video return.
So so we used to use it.
We used to use it for live shots where if you needed to see your return to call highlights or you know, see see your INTERVIEWEE or whatever, we would just put a laptop on Skype and view the program return from the station.
Now you should be able to do that the same feature with teams. You could do it with any.
Of them now and they're all so good now but at the time, Skype was just so ahead of the game in terms of bandwidth, and it was like, I'm hard pressed to find believe that they're going to moonlight it, but they just went with teams.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Well, you know the thing is that they've just been making so many changes every time you turn around, and I understand that sometimes you've got to remove some of the programs that aren't working or causing issues that maybe cause more work, and you have to make changes. You know, will people bail and suddenly go to Apple or will they look at Linux.
Type of distributions. Yeah, I don't.
I really don't think they will. And I think most people will just go with the flow to say, okay, well I'll deal with it.
You got like Slack, and you've got you know, other platforms out there. I mean, you can even just do like Discord. I guess you could do that too. Well. True, you're true.
I mean there are more options now than certainly we had before with some of those other choices for messaging communication software.
That's true. But what discord is more. You know, with computers, you're not going to have like a phone number or something to call into. Well, the quality. I like discords quality.
That you get with Zoom is pretty amazing. And I've been able to try what we pay for and then I've been able to try out the higher quality that actually is you know, HD, and it's pretty amazing. And it's only about five dollars more a month, So I was thinking I might just go ahead and bite the bullet and do that, so then you know, we could be all in HD, which.
Is yeah, kind of cool. Can try it, Let's see what happens. Yeah, So yeah, they're making a lot of changes. I don't know why. Why do you think they're doing it? It's just just Windows. I don't know. I part of the things that they're trying to get people ready for
Windows twelve. I mean I think Windows twelve is just right around the corner right personally now in the timeline of operating systems, you know, you had like great ones and then you'd have one in the middle that would just like Windows eight before that, ye, I mean you had it was it's like every other version of Windows right is good like and I think there was actually an article about it. But there are like two teams
that work on Windows. There's the one that works on the Vistas and the eights, right and the elevens, and then you got the team that works on the XP and the seven and the ten right right, So those are the ones that are good, whereas the Vista and the Windows eight and the Windows eleven they're the bad ones. Right. So that means like twelve by if logic follow, that means twelve is gonna have to be really good. Right. Well,
what the Windows ten we thought was great? And actually Windows ten have been around a while when you're looking at that same with seven. Seven was around forever yea. So it was XP right, and it was the same team that worked on XP, that worked on seven, that worked on ten. There was no Windows nine, was there? No, it was eight point one because the Windows eight was
so bad they had to release a Dot one update. Boy, I'll tell you I I had a build of a new computer for our studio this week that just went awry. It was awful.
I ended up, you know, buying part of it. I've had a seven ninety and ACWOC seven ninety motherboard for a while as wireless the whole bit, and I finally decided, okay, I need update the computer in here.
To Windows eleven. So I went ahead.
I bought a I found an eye set I want to say it was an I seven processor, not that much money and it uh. I got it in and I thought I had to have a graphics card with it. So I ordered a Zoe Tac ten eighty because it's just all that does is record audio.
That's it.
Got that got myself a sound blast Ology card because I thought, okay, cool, and then I put the I go to install everything, and halfway through it would just go to black nothing, no grap nothing, nothing.
No video.
And the only way I get it back reboot the computer. Nothing would come up.
You'd try to go into Windows nothing, I'd have to go into reinstalling and I have to reinstall Windows. That's the only way. And it was driving me nuts.
So eventually I found out that the insince where I got was was the kind that you didn't have to need a graphics card for.
And I thought, oh, what an idiot.
So I sent the gra I sent the graphics board back, got my money back for it. Then the fan that I was trying to install wouldn't spin. It would light up great, but it wouldn't spin. Then I went on, I went online. I'm reading everything nothing, and then I thought remembered I had a fan in the garage. I go in the griage, I grab it, I plug it in and it spins. So obviously it was the fan. So next morning I get a new one, plug it.
Everything's going good with it.
So right now it's working, but I can't get the sound right. And I'm using that sound blaster card. I'm ready to pull that thing out of there and just go with sound off the board. This is probably gonna be just as good, right.
Oh yeah, I mean it won't be right in terms of quality, right, if you're for your audio file, it'll make a difference. But for the general consumer, just using on board audios can be fine.
Yeah. But we've talked about this before.
Yeah, we've talked about this before.
You know, what were the days of needing a creole Creole D three D sound blaster voodoo yeah, whatever, you know, all those fun remember, you know, remembering all those specific you know, hardware cards that you can get that had you know, the optical outs and all that stuff.
Good stuff too. So but yeah, you'll be fine with just on board.
That's what I'm thinking. I may just do that if I can't figure this out because normally, and it's funny because I went to the old computer. I hooked up the old computer again, and I don't have the problems that I have with the new one. The new one, you crack the microphone and it plays out over the speakers. It shouldn't the I don't know why it does, so I'll have to figure it out. But yeah, you have
this has been the worst build I've ever had. Normally I have them put together in about forty five minutes to an hour.
No, not in this case. How many bills have you done in your life?
When I had a business, I would I would build them for companies. I mean I just a couple of years ago built one for a graphics design shop and they love it. It's still working great. But I would say close to about thirty maybe forty, and the rest have been support. So yeah, this is and but we're going back to three eighty six days I've built. I've built
three eighty sixes. I've built the old h Do you remember the AMD the original AMD processors, those d X d X forty and if you remember those, yeah, I.
Didn't really get into building my own PCs until like the Core two duo days, Right.
I just like it when you could put everything in and it just it works. Fine, everything's good, you don't have to worry about I really.
Liked it when I could build a computer without bleeding on it. I've done that.
That's never gonna happen. If you were building your own PC, you are going to blue, yes, because.
You're gonna you're gonna pull out you're gonna put it, pull out an expansion slot, or you're gonna you know, you're gonna try and put in the IO.
Shield, your finger on the motherboard or so.
Oh yeah, you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna bleed.
Yeah, it's it's the sacrifice for technology.
Yeah.
It was great though, because you know I have to do my blood tests. You know, I have to take the sample and make sure you know, that got too much glucose in it. So when I did was building the computer, I go, oh a slice, Oh better go take my test. Served the purpose all right? Listen, we got a great guest standing by that I talked to. UH that is all about safety and security for your kids. Justin you were talking about what's the service that you were using for UH, for your son, that.
The oh, the the uh shoot Custodio.
There's another one out there called Bark and Titanya Jordan uh is one of the grand poobas there at Bark has put together her second book called Parental Control, A Guide to Raising Balanced Kids in the Digital Era, and it talks to everything about the different the different things that are out there, like that many parents don't know about Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, there are other site Reddit, there's other sites that can be great but can also lead
them down a pretty dark path. So again she's gonna talk to us about that, going to talk to us about what's safer Android or iPhone when it comes to security for your kids.
So we're gonna do that.
And when we come back with tech Talk Radio, I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de.
Weird, and I'm justin. Let me send us an ex at tech talk Radio. We'll be right back now back to tech talk Radio.
Hey, go by the science guy here.
Whatever. I am listening to the radio, especially tech Talk Radio. It's such a party when it comes to our children.
We've talked quite a bit about safety when it comes to the Internet and some of the things that you know, we parents like to think we know, but honestly, there's a lot more going on in the Internet that maybe we're not aware of, and sometimes getting all the answers can be difficult. Some of us have relied on software, which really is not the end all solution.
We should really.
Understand what is going on with devices, tablets, computers, the whole bit. Tatania Jordan is CMO and Chief Parent Officer and I love that with Bart Technologies and like me, has done television segments about technology and how it affects business and families as well. And she has a book that she put out back in twenty twenty called Parenting in a Tech World, and then she's got a brand new one just released this week, Parental Control, a Guide
to Raising balanced Kids in the Digital Era. Tatanya, thank you so much for coming on tech Talk Radio.
Thank you for having me.
Now I tell you the book. You just held it up. Can you hold that up again, because I want our viewers to see this. It really indicates what parents should know because there are shark fins in the waters of the Internet, and you know what made you decide to kind of, you know, write this as a follow up book to the first book.
Well, the first book came out around twenty twenty, and now it's twenty twenty five, so we're half a decade in which is you and I both know in tech years is exponentially more and so much has happened since since I co wrote that first book, so wanted to give parents an update. We know more, and when you know more, you can do better, and wanted to give
parents the most current information possible. Also, in twenty twenty, my son was a lot younger, and now he's sixteen, And these past five years have been a doozy, and I've learned a lot as a parent that I wish I knew back then, and hopefully can impart to other parents so they don't make the same mistakes that I did.
Don't want to wait till it's too late.
They shouldn't wait until it's too late. When you're working in a time of crisis, it's a lot more stressful and a lot more difficult than if you're working proactively during a time of peace and calm and understanding. So better to get ahead of things than to have to be in crisis mode.
Now there's a lot going on. When it comes to texting.
We want our kids to have smartphones to be able to reach out to us for safety.
They can be good.
There's that question that always goes around about what age should a child have a smartphone. But they're pretty much going to start texting right away if they get one. But a lot of us don't understand that they can have full conversations with emojis. But some of these emojis are really not what they represent one.
Under a lot of people don't realize that texting is social media. It is a form of media that is social. So there's that emojis. There are so many emojis, so many acronyms that parents don't realize mean what they mean today. One example of that is the plate of spaghetti noodles. You know, if I sent you that, it might be like, hey, I'm inviting you over for Italian dinner, and you'd be like cool.
Yeah.
But if you're thirteen and that emoji gets sent, noodles sounds like nuds, and you can see how that can spiral very quickly pardon the pun with spiral and.
Possible Yeah, absolutely, Oh my gosh. See a lot of parents don't know this. We know of the obvious ones, the peach and the other ones. But that's again, this whole new language seems to come around every six months. Something changes, something is added, and while the consortium puts out the emojis, we have no idea how they're going to eventually be used.
Well, no human can keep up. And that's why I'm so proud of the algorithm at Bark. Our machine learning, our engineering, our data scientists are able to take that real time analysis of teen and tween speak, feed it back into the system and help alert parents because we can keep up with all of this.
Yeah. Now with Bark, can users then set up their smartphones, tablets, computers to i want to say, be monitored or be able to give this information to the parents.
Yes, yeah, If you want to utilize the Bark app for your child's iPhone or Android phone, or if you want to buy your child a safer smartphone, you can go with the Bark phone. If you want to buy your child a safer smart watch, you can go with the Bark watch. So those options will proactively alert you when your children are encountering dangerous content like emojis to ask for nudes or dangerous people.
Yeah, dangerous people that's the one to worry about as well. Now, when it comes to security on our devices, are androids better than iPhones? Do you find that there's some that work better for the for that younger set they're going to use them.
Yeah, it's such a problematic situation right now because the popular is the iPhone. Everybody wants it. It's the new shiny thing, right. But the safest for children and the easiest for a parent to manage is an android. So we have to be better parents and not give our children what they want, but what they need? Do they
need the ability to communicate safely? Great, there's plenty of options for that that you don't have to give your kid a Ferrari when they turned sixteen, So don't give them one thousand dollars smartphone that prioritizes privacy over their safety.
Now, what happens? This is going to show my age, all right? So I used to watch Mash on television. I loved it, and I remember going to the surplus store me and my buddy watched it and we bought the military jackets and we wore those to school and we were all decked out and it was cool.
We lived that. But what happens when my parents never tried to take away my military jacket. But what happens when a child has been so absorbed into the smartphone that those warning signs start coming up for a parent and they've got to do something? Time outs is there?
I mean, what's really going to be the best way to help enforce being a parent and saying no, no, I think you're going a little too far with this.
I would say again back to the being proactive point, Delay is the way. You know, it's so much better for you to wait, to let your child have access to all of the things. Don't feel pressured to do it just because all of their friends have. It doesn't mean it's right, doesn't mean that those parents are making the right choices. So delay is the way. If you are observing that your child's behavior grades, appetite, demeanor, interest in real life activities is changing as a result of
their screen time and use, it's time to change things. Yeah, and ps, they're not going to like it. There might be tantrums, things might get thrown. They're going to be mad at you. They might call you names. That's what an addict does. Right, If you take away my ice cream while I'm still eating it. I'm going to get mad at you, but doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. I'm not supposed to eat the whole thing in one sitting, So we have got to be the parent and do it's best for our children.
Now.
I'm on pretty much all the social apps and needed to do it, you know, of course, to know what I'm talking about, I've seen stuff on Snapchat that will quirrel my eyebrows, TikTok is.
I don't know. Is there one app.
That is a little more dangerous that maybe you don't want your kids to have.
Any application or game or tech that allows strangers to communicate with your child is inherently dangerous. That said, if I have to pick one or the most dangerous, I would say it's Snapchat. Snapchat has so many issues, and one of the reasons why it's so dangerous because so many children are flocking to it. The whole premise of Snapchat was built upon nudes sending nudes nudes that disappeared, So why are we allowing our children to support a platform that base their launch on that.
I didn't even know that, and I'm sure I'm saying I'm on it.
Yeah, but that's why they launched it. Yea was people send nudes. Snapchat has snap maps that shows your child's real time live location to anyone they're connected to. Not a problem if it's five of their closest friends. Most kids are connected to more than five people and people they don't know. With Snapchat, drug dealers are are able to distribute drugs to children as easily and quickly as a pizza, drugs that have fetanyl in them. It's just
there's so so many dangerous within Snapchat. There's a chat bought my AI that can lead chill, learn astray, give them misinformation or information that is harmful to them. Snapchat offers a photo vault inside of the app for my eyes only. You know, why does a child need a photo vault that is private and only accessible by them?
Exactly exactly and it opens a gateway. Kind of worries me because it could open a gateway to OnlyFans in some of these these other areas that the kids have no idea and they just think, oh, it's okay, everybody else is doing it.
Yeah, I mean, and from the mental health aspect, the gamification of it to encourage children to keep snapping with each other to have snapstreaks. It's the content they can encounter there, not uplifting, not helpful, not educational, not not always not, but a lot of times not. You might not want your children to have access to things like you know, HBO whatever, and.
It's or even violent content, right, I mean that's.
Violent content, sexual content, content that glorifies disordered eating and cutting and suicidal ideation, misinformation like it's not good.
Is some of this stuff covered in the book the new book that's out, which is of course, Parental Control, a Guide to raising balanced kids in a digital era.
Oh, we go deep on Snapchat and other apps you know here, here's what you aren't learning about these apps and what you need to know. And honestly, quick free tip before you allow your child to have anything app, game tech, spend some time on it yourself first and learn the landscape.
That's a good that's a good idea. That's great advice too.
When it comes to us being parents, do you think social media companies like Meta and some of the others that are out there are doing enough to protect not only our children but us when it comes to our interests.
No, no, not at all. And if you just zoom out out to like common sense? What is their goal as a for profit company to make money? How do they make money by the time we spend in their app? So what are they going to do? Try to keep us in their app for as long as possible, clicking around, engaging. So it's not in their interest to tell us to take a break or have us get outside and interact with humans in real life, right right, So they're not
going to do that. And who is the most impressionable demographic? Who is the most easily to influence children? And the largest social media platforms generated over eleven billion dollars in revenue off of children just over the course of twenty twenty three.
That says a lot right there. Now.
One of the other things, of course, during the pandemic, we saw the schools really you know, shifted and said okay, you're going to work from home chromebooks that we get chromebooks that would get you know, windows, you know, PCs to take home and that laptops and whatnot. Was there enough filtering on those and is there still filtering going on on those?
It's just not enough, not enough.
It really depends on the school and the school district. Some school districts and schools are doing a wonderful job of giving children a balanced, safe access to tech. I would say the general majority is not, though, and part of that is they're not educating the parents around the fact that the school has now given this child this really powerful tool. While the kid is on campus, there's
a set of rules and filters. But if the school is encouraging the child to take it home to do homework or whatever they had, I think have a care of duty to let the parent know what's capable there. Parents shouldn't just assume the same filters are applied. Unfortunately, I'm part of way too many instances of children accessing pornographic, violent, etc. Content on campus in class. And let's just think about
this for a minute. If my goal as a child is to learn from a teacher, I'm not going to do that when there's a screen in front of my face that allows me to play Solitaire. I'm not taking notes. I'm playing games, all right.
So the book is available now, It's available on Kindle and it's available right from Amazon is one of the places you can get that. And do you have information about bark as well that if our listeners or viewers are saying, you know what, I like what they're doing. How do I sign up to have you know this type of security feature added to my devices?
Yes, it's so easy. You just go to Bark like a dog. Barks dot us, not dot com, different website. Bark dot us will help you decide what you might need to implement for your family to keep your kids safer online.
I think this is important for every parent to look into and definitely want to thank you so much for coming on tech Talk.
Thank you for having me. It's always good to connect with you.
Once again.
The book is available now. It's called Parental Control, A Guide to Raising Balanced Kids in the Digital Era to Tanya Jordan, the author. And again you can find this available just about everywhere ere Amazon of course, is also available as a kindle book as well. Could provide some
very important information. Now, I want to remind you that Monday is World Backup Day once again, a day to just remind yourself to make a backup, whether it be of your smartphone, of your PC, your Mac, and your devices that are able to back up so in case of anything happening, you don't lose that data. World Backup Day all right, we'll be back with more of tech Talk Radio. I think Justin has a pretty good website of the week.
We're going to take a look at that's on the way and now back to tech Talk Radio. Am Eric Johnson. I play Flash Gordon on Sci Fi Flash Gordon, and you were listening to tech Talk Radio. Okay, I'm literally trying this today's website of the week. Here. Oh my gosh, I died again. Well we say, you know, we opened the show that made it. Wait, you actually made it.
I'm on level two now.
I've done it about ten times that I have not made it. Art side of the Week. It's called Lazyfly Dot Emmy's It's it's just like this. It's like, I don't know, it's not Flash. Obviously it's not Flash doesn't exist anymore. But it looks it looks like an old school Flash game, but you're you're literally just a fly
and you're trying to land on a platform. But you have to click left or right, and if you hit anything on the ment, anything, you die, Like if you go up too high, you'll yeah, yeah, oh my gosh, this is so hard, but it's actually kind of fun. Lazyfly Dot em is.
It's like got flappy, it's flatby Bird Like, yeah.
It's like flatbybird. Yeah, I remember flaty Bird. This is kind of a cool webisode of the week. How did you find this in?
I was going through notes for some stuff from years ago and I suddenly saw this and I said, is this still active? And then I looked at oh my god it is and about it and we never talked about it.
So this this reminds me a lot of my childhood in the computer class, just playing flash games.
Right yep, Bino black Sheep or oh yeah.
Well, wasn't there one that was like an Apollo capsule and you had to land the capsule like the same kind of on the moon.
Sure, there were all sorts of flash fun flash Oh.
By the way, it's actually much easier if you use your arrow keys. Yeah, lazyfly dot m E is the is the website? All right? Good? You have to get to show this one to the kids. Yeah, totally good.
If you want to embed it on your website, they have an I frame. You can bet it on your website.
Should we put it on our website?
What do you think put it on the website?
Yeah? Do it. We'll put it on the website.
Go to our website tik talk radio dot com, yep and play lazy Fly.
All right. We planned this for hours, all right, so we'll get that up on the website. We'll get the videos of the epsom r R six hundred W so I could show that it actually does work and it works really cool.
I did try it out as well as the ace who's rog flow z thirteen. Give you a better look at that so you can see all the ports and all that other fun stuff. All right, well, listen, that's it for this week's tech Talk Radio.
Thank you for tuning in.
We'll take your questions tech guys at tech talk radio dot com. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm shond To Weird, and I'm Justin Leme. I'm currently on level floor four of Lazy Fly yourself.
Is a great week, guys. We'll see you next time.