The following program is produced by the tech Talk Radio. Now everybody out there in radio, and this is James Young from the rock band Stick. If you are technically challenged, if you got trouble with that computer.
Yours, because Lord knows, I do you need to listen 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 Lemmey. Welcome. It's good to see all all Mack.
What a great show that was last week, right, I mean yeah, we had a lot of fun with it because you know, there was there was a longer video discussion then you know we we were able to put on the air. But I'll tell you what it was, the blast talking to Ted Sellis and Jason Sikorski from the Postal documentary. And I don't anybody got a chance to see that yet. They said they wanted to send us out copies.
And luck would behold, it came in the mail today. You're watching the video. I'm holding it up. It's it's sealed, which is great, and it's signed by the two guys who talked to last week and the two guys from Running with scissors, So I don't even know if I want to seal it.
Oh man, I went ahead and unsealed it. I noticed that the autographs are actually on the inside, so they actually took the slip cover out and autographed it so that way you're not gonna ruin it. They didn't sign the plastic on top, they signed it inside of it. Oh that's cool, that's cool. There was a lot going on this week.
I kind of wanted to ask you guys too about this Fortnite money claim that every It's like the press is talking about it because Fortnite obviously a pretty huge game and now they're saying that there's a lot of money going to be coming back to people who played the game and maybe made some in game purchases. Which this is not the only game that's ever happened on, right, No, this.
Is this is this is something that's not new. There's a lot of games, I mean, maybe not a lot. I'd say, maybe you know a handful of games that have done something like this, but I think that this one, because Fortnite is such a huge ip that this kind of sets a precedent for this type of situation. Uh, you know, Fortnite is a very very popular game with children especially you know, maybe let's say tweens or teams that play it, not not so much like younger kids
and stuff. What's the premise in Fortnite? What are you gonna do? It's a Battle Royale sean, you know Battle Royale, right, it's at.
The Battle Royal game, right. You basically parachute in it's all. You can play in teams of four duos or solo and you basically try to survive to the end. But there's a couple different modes, like there's a builder mode where you can build platforms and houses and stuff, and then there's a no building mode. But like any other game, there's micro transactions, right. You can buy skins, you can buy weapons, you can buy avatars, you can buy whatever
X people. Yeah, you can buy xpoples and stuff. So so back in twenty twenty two, the FDC basically said, if you bought or if you you were charged in game currency for items you didn't want, your childman unauthorized charges, your Fortnite account was locked between these days whatever. After disputing charges, you're basically eligible for refunds on some of that stuff.
Wait, so wait, they so people maybe saw these charges on there that maybe their kids made, and then the people of Fortnite locked the game out so nobody could play it.
Correct and because if you disputed the charges, Fortnite would say, yeah, you're you bet, you're done your kids back. So basically they've reopened it currently distributing one hundred and twenty six million dollars in refunds, and has reopened the claim's process until the July till July ninth of this year, so in next this later this week, you know, in a couple couple of days.
So okay.
The good question is for some of our listeners that are not gamers, maybe they have kids that are gamers or grand kids or whatnot, would one hundred and twenty six million dollars seem like a lot of money to some of these companies.
I mean, it is a pro.
Section lawsuit, you might it's probably not that much money to Epic Games.
Fortnite makes like thirty million dollars a day.
It's wow, wow, I know it's I play a game called tune Blast, and it's you know, it's a game you play on your your smartphone and it's a lot of fun.
And they and lately I've been seeing ads for another one of their properties, Royal I think it's Royal Match or Royal.
Kingdom, one of those.
And they they talk about the fact that you could, you know, get the app, you can download the app, you can play the game.
Uh. No Internet is needed for you to play the game.
Uh.
And it doesn't cost you anything, and there's no in game ads.
And you know, I had somebody at work ask me how do they make their money? I said, well, it's all in the artificial intelligence within the game that if you're doing good, you're gonna get to a point where you're not doing good now to get past certain levels, you can then buy like they do in Fortnite, luke crate or you buy you know, boost, you buy a boost package. You can buy you know, for twenty bucks,
you get this. For fifty dollars, you get this, you know, for five dollars, you can get this, you buy that, and that gets you over that hump. And it really is quite addicting for people who play the game. And yeah, they're being told by celebrities. I mean, they've got some big endorsers that are are on television, you know, saying play this game because you don't have to be on the internet.
There's no in game ads, so why not have fun with it?
Because they will make money off you because they know they actually have from what I've heard, they have psychologists who decide at what point, Oh, absolutely, the game is gonna get harder. They've been doing that in games for quite some time.
Right. Yeah, it's all about psychology, and it's all about the gambling mindset, right, it's getting people hooked. Give them that competitive advantage. I'm doing really good, really good, and then you slowly just trickle them back down and you get them to where they're like, oh, oh I might, I might, I might not be breaking even anymore. He boot them up a little bit.
Yeah, I have a I have a very good example, and that's actually happening right now. I just picked up a new game, and I've been wanting this game for a while, but I've been reading the reviews on it and it's it's it's on Steam because we got the Steam Summer Sales, so there was a bit of a discount. But it's PGA Tour two K two five, so really
the latest edition of the PGA Tour golf simulation. I wanted this game a long time ago because I've been itching for a golf simulator, but there isn't anything out there except for this. And I kept reading the reviews, and the reviews kept saying the same thing. It's micro transaction, heaven, Like they constantly want you to buy by by get your player to the next level, buy this, buy that, buy this new shirt, buy this new hat, buy this
new golf club. And I'm like, okay, well, you know, I really don't want to do that, you know, I just want to play the game. But then I finally, before I bought it, I read a review, and this review is super long, and the guy was like, look, if you're sitting here looking at this game like it's a Fortnite like extremely, you know right away just succeed with everything you do that this is not the game for you. This is a simulation. This is a golf simulation,
and golf is hard. You have to grind through it, you have to learn, you have to get better. If you think you can just simply buy your way to the top, then you better have a lot of money. If you don't enjoy the game just as it is, because this game is perfect, and I read that review and I was like, Okay, I'll give it a shot. I bought it, and I'm killing it. I'm killing it. I am like, I'm like twelve under par compared to like everybody else is like three over par. So I'm
winning every single match. But here's the thing. To Sean's point, they're gonna get you to that spot where you're addicted. You're like, hey, i'm doing good. I'm doing I'm doing good, and then they're gonna hit you with that tournament, in this case, the golf tournament, and you're gonna suck and they're gonna be like, hey, for an extra ten bucks, we can bump up your stats a little bit. I bet you that's coming down the line because I'm like,
I am not this good of a gamer. I don't understand how I'm beating these guys so hard, but it's so much fun.
It's funny because I do play Royal MATCHROI O Kaydom and tune Blast. I did notice, like if on my iPhone, which you know I still have an iPhone.
I don't use it. It's there.
I've got my eye watch, my Apple watch, you know, tied to that and once in a while I'll say, oh, oh, hey, I've got tomblasts or royal match on this.
Let me open it up.
I haven't played it for a while, and it will right away just it'll say welcome back, and it will give me all these this loot. It just gives it to me, and I'll be like, oh cool, and I'm playing it and these levels are the easiest I've ever played. I'm like getting through them in just so many moves and I'm thinking that's kind of weird.
And then I'll just stop playing.
And that's the thing, like you said, they want you to, because they'll get to a point where all of a sudden, you'll have one move left to get to the next level and you won't be able to.
Do it unless you buy this. And so it's I mean, hey, do.
You want to know what the January twenty twenty four monthly revenue was for tune Blast?
What was it?
Thirty seven million just in January, Just in January. They have made two point six billion lifetime since twenty seventeen.
Right, and to put this, to put this into.
Perspective, right, so take that thirty six thirty seven million monthly average and Fortnite in twenty twenty four grossed four point nine billion.
Oh my lord, which.
Is thirteen million, four one hundred and thirteen million, four hundred and whatever, four point thirteen point four two million dollars a day.
When it comes to your games, then would you prefer and would most gamers prefer a game that you just buy outright fifty bucks and you don't have to buy any loose or.
Do you still have to do that?
You're never going to see that again because the lifetime of games is so long, and they have to support they have to be able to support server side content.
Well it's not even just that too. So we have gotten to the point now where developers are Developers are the ones that actually make the game. They're the coders, they're the artists, they're the producers, they're the directors. These are the people that actually make the game. These people are given such an unrealistic timeline by the producers. These are the ones that are giving them the money to
make this game. And these developers are releasing games that are unfinished, full of bugs, and full of micro transactions because the publisher just wants to make a quick buck. And then what happens is whatever is left over of the player base after most of the players have vacated the game, they will finally then say, all right, we're gonna start improving the game. We're gonna make patches stick around. Don't worry. It's another psychological thing, like, yes, we understand
the game sucks, but bear with us. We're working on it. We're gonna make it better. And this is just simply putting the carrot on the stick in front of the horse. It's literally just stringing you along to keep you engaged, to keep you playing as long as they possibly can, to get every single penny out of you.
It's gonna be difficult though, for kids, because I mean I think as adults we get suckered into that pretty easily.
But for kids, I think it could be worse. It's always just a dog. Oh my god, it's so horrible. Kerk has already spent like over one hundred and fifty bucks on Minecraft. Yeah, what was the game, my money?
What was the game that we were playing a few years back where all of us were all of us were spending money on it. It was an action game top down.
Oh you're talking about Fall guys. No, you're talking about like the oh gosh, Supercell. Yeah, yea Clash the Clans. That was the one. Okay, I've told you this before. I have over the years. Now I don't play it anymore, but from let's say twenty fourteen to twenty twenty two, maybe I've spent probably close to three thousand dollars on that game. It was a very addictive game.
I got into that as well, and you get to like, oh, wait, now you could do this.
At their heyday, Supercell was making one hundred and fifty million dollars a day.
Wow, you know there's another one I play. But you see, and this is the opside of it. Would you prefer ads in a game rather than that because I play Words with Friends no, which I get ads? Yeah, And I would prefer a game that costs me one hundred dollars that has no ads, no micro transactions. But yet there's going to still be updates. Yeah, if there's a bug.
But those updates would cost no. No, no no. If it's a bug, it's a bug, you fix it right. If it's DLC. If it's like, hey, we expanded it, we added new content, yes, I will pay for that, But micro transactions and anything else, no, I would rather just pay one hundred bucks straight up for the game.
When you look at a company like Microsoft and you look at you know, Windows eleven, that's uh, we're now less than what five months. October fourteenth is the day that they say, you know only you want everybody.
What's to change it?
They keep putting out, Well, we may just extend it with those ten they've lost some like four hundred thousand differently, you know, licensees over the last over the last.
Three years, widows has shed over four hundred thousand Windows licenses.
So where are they going to? Are they going to Mac or are they going to Linux? Even?
But even Mac even I just read an article about this today because those numbers are coming out. Even Max subscriptions are down, like not subscriptions, but the Mac shares down.
Could always be too our smartphone? About Linux? What about Linux?
Linux is still the bottom obviously, but their shares are up. People are using Linux, but more people day to day are using os io iOS or Android or Google. Yeah, I mean more people are using their phones than PCs.
Yeah.
You could do everything, whether you play games, you could do rep papers, you could do reports.
I don't know, you know, it just makes sure, you're onto this market where tablets and phones are going to supersede PCs.
Right, just because of the convenience.
Yeah, it's uh, it's going to be interesting to see where it's going to be in the next few years. But I just wonder about this whole you know, is Microsoft just doing a cash grab? I mean, they've got the manufacturers. I'm sure love it because this is an opportunity to sell more PCs. And the fact is, let's face it, when Windows XP came out, we held onto it for a long time, and you know, we weren't
buying anything else. Microsoft kind of changed their strategies over the years and finally said no, no, we need to we need to change these up a little more often so that I mean, the company can make money.
So then you know, they instead of.
Putting out Microsoft Office as a package, it became a software in service.
So so we just talked about this today. Right. XP was officially released on October twenty fIF two thousand and one. Right, There wasn't another Windows release until two thousand and seven with Vista.
Wow.
So it was six full years of development into Vista with it with no new operating system, and then eight came along five years later, twenty twelve.
That was awful.
Well, actually two thousand and seven, two thousand and nine, right, so no, I'm sorry you missed you missed seven. They were out of order when I started seven. Yeah, so twan only three years, less than three years went by before Windows seven, then three more years and then it was six years until ten.
So we we talked about this before. I don't remember how many months ago it was, but we all know that there are two teams that work on Microsoft Windows operating systems. There's the Blue team and there's the Gold team, and I know which one is which responsible for which, but they alternate operating systems. So if you look back all the way back to Windows ninety five, okay, Windows ninety five, it was okay, it was pretty good. Yeah. Then Windows ninety eight came out sucked two Windows ninety
eight second Edition, which was amazing. Then they came out with Windows two thousand, not really that good. It was more geared towards servers. Then they came out with Windows XP amazing. Yeah, And they came out with Windows EM sucked, was awful. Then they came out with Windows seven, right or no, wait, wait I'm sorry, Thista awful. Yeah, then they came out Windows seven amazing. Yeah, Windows eight sucked,
Windows ten awesome, Windows eleven sucked. What does that pattern show you that we will see Windows twelve by next year? Windows twelve is gonna be awesome? And what team knows what the hell they're doing? The other team doesn't, it seems because every team that works on the ones that have been sucky continues to work on the sucky ones, whereas the other team works on the good ones. So if, if, if the history holds true, Windows twelve should be amazing.
I'm just so, I know we've talked about this, So I'm going to talk about this new laptop that I bought. We've talked about co Pilot and how we're.
Just so ugh.
The other day, I was going through this new laptop and it has the co pilot key on it, and I was trying to figure out, how do we change this?
You know, I mean, I'm trying to remember the steps.
So I hit the I hit the key, I went ahead. Oh, I took the step and I hit the key, and I wanted to wanted to do I wanted to do everything do. I wanted to run this do I No, I just want an answer to my question. And I asked my Google assistant the question, and I asked the co pilot and actually copilot gave me a pretty good
answer as well as the uh, the Google assistant. So you know, the thing is, we're I think we're going to continue to see them integrating stuff like that that is going to feedback more information that than that information could be used for advertising, and then we're going to see more ads in the os sean.
You've talked about this before.
The ads within Windows itself are getting a point that kind of annoying.
Well, it's I'm never gonna get it, but I can have a wish that I get a bare bones copy of Windows. It exists for government clients, bare bones, no ad, no.
Tracking, do it with PowerShell, yeah, I.
Know, I just I don't want to. I want to be lazy without I'll pay for it. I'm already paid for it.
Come on, come on, bro.
But the one that really irks me is when I hit the windows key and I type in what I want to do and it opens a bing window and searches it. Oh that's what that's what just really, I don't I don't want to open Edge. I just want you to search my computer for the thing game? Why I don't I don't want recall. I don't want this recalls. They're thrown out there. I don't want it taking a snapshot of my computer and putting it into the clottery fifteen seconds. I don't want to ask Copilot for it.
I just wanted to search my computer. How hard is that?
Yeah, the ingrained Windows search used to be great, and now it is. It's so bad and nobody I'm sorry Microsoft, mister ceo, if you're listening. Nobody likes Edge, nobody likes Copilot, nobody likes bing. You know, just just seriously, stop, just stop. Can you bring back word Pad? Can you bring back Clippy? That's what that's That's what the AI is. It's because everybody likes Clippy. Nobody like I hated Edge ahead of his time. The only reason you use Edge is to
download Firefox or Chrome. That is true. And then that that got blocked.
Did you I know, if you saw the story from a few weeks ago that for some reason Google was not showing up on Windows eleven machines that were having a hard time with that, and it was taking off a lot of people trying to figure out why, and it turned out that some of the content that people had been seeing on Google, they said, oh this is a this is a problem, so you weren't able to run it. I don't know if they've since fixed that, but that was one of the stories.
People are going to Linux because Linux is open source and it's getting better and better by the day.
It's just still so confusing because there's so many different distributions.
What do I do?
There's there's linux Mint. Honestly, if you're looking at the one hint right there, bam Linux Mint.
And for everybody that says, oh it's so hard. If you use a you get to get chatg EPD and ask it questions.
Yeah, like how do.
I do this in Linux Mint, there's your answer. Yeah.
But but Linux Mint looks exactly like Windows, and it behaves exactly like Windows.
It has a guy, it has a software center, it has everything you need. It's what I run my Pluck server on. It's what I run some servers at work on.
It's I'll tell you a funny story when when my laptop died unexpectedly the other day and I I use my laptop every day. I I went and I found the Asus that had been in uh, the travel bag that Gloria has and has not fired up for at least a couple of years. So I went ahead and fired it up, you know, and then Don't had to run a ton of updates. It took a whole day to do the updates. And then I looked went to look at it. Oh, this is a Celeron processor. Oh this is no was It was dog slow, and I was like.
Oh man, what are we gonna do?
And then I found that old Dell, the old Dell computer that we used to use back on tech Talk radio. I want to say back in two thousand and two. I mean this, It probably was later than that, but either way. I found this whole laptop that I installed Linux Mint on Lenux Min twenty two, and I fired it up and I was able to get a couple things done with it, and I thought, wow, this is an old computer. Couldn't do that anymore, you know, they make it so difficult. But Linux, Yeah, Lenox worked on that.
That's why people are going to Linux. Honestly, Linuxmith the only downside to Linux Mint, or just Linux in general. I should say is you can't run every single program on it because most programs are written for either Windows or they're written for Mac. However, with that being said, now that more and more people are choosing to go with Linux, the Linux application library is growing, growing, growing. You can even run video games. You can get Steam,
you can get Xbox, you can get them on Linux. Right, So yeah, I mean, I would say at this point in time, as of you know what, July first, July second, twenty twenty five, you can probably run about ninety percent of your programs on Linux. And Sean, you're familiar with Alternative two, can you find lyncs.
Well, it's one of my favorite sites.
Yeah. Can you find Linux programs within Alternative two dot now?
Oh yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, you can find Linux distributions on there. So if you don't know which one you want to get, just type Linux or just type in Linux Mint or Dbian or Ubuntu and it's going to give you a list of all the other distros that you can get and depending on how text heavy you want to get. I mean, but like Justin said, Linux Mint is the easiest it it takes.
It's based on a BOOTO, It's based.
On a BOOTU and it take it took me. I'm good with computers, but it took me less than five minutes to download the software, burn it to a USB drive, and get it started installing on another computer.
Yeah. And once you get it set up, it looks and acts and feels just like Windows.
And with with the emergence of AI and l l m's right, it's so easy to if you have a question about Linux that you don't want the answer to, just type it into chat g ept or type it into rock or and it's gonna spit you out a really good answer. Yeah, it's it's gonna help you learn. Okay. Yeah, there's a little bit more involved with Linux, but just just give it a shot if you if you will like computers, if you think you're good with computers, give
Linux a shot. Just try it. If you have if you have a four year old laptop or a five or six year old tower that's just sitting on shelf collucking dust and you don't know what to do it because it can't run Windows eleven, put Linux Min's on it.
There you go. One work quick point. The best part about Linux is that they're not a lot of viruses for Linux because Linux is very, very secure, so keep that in mind. All right, we'll be back with more of tech talk Radio.
I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Seonda Weird, and I'm Justin.
Let me find us on tech talk radio dot com. We'll be right back now, back to tech talk Radio.
So before the break, we're talking about Windows eleven Linux moving to Windows eleven. We're in the process of right now because the service, the support for Windows ten ends in October, so we're migrating all of our Windows Tech machines to Windows eleven per the university policy, et cetera, et cetera.
Now are you are you having to pull motherboards and all this other stuff or did you just need to to for the moment.
For the most part, it's been pretty smooth, right. We've been able with the security policies get the most up to date version of Windows eleven pushed forward. But we've had some troubles with some other older motherboards that are struggling. One K one specific server. You have a server that runs a TriCaster justin probably knows that it's a little video switching software. I tried to put Windows eleven on there. So we moved up the motherboards that everything supports Windows
Windows eleven. It just doesn't have secure boot enabled. Perfect cool, I'll go into the bios enable secure boot. It didn't reboot after that?
Did what did you get? Nothing?
Nothing I could do would get it to reboot. It wouldn't even post.
It wouldn't even post, would even post.
So I did a little Google Foo. This specific gigabyte motherboard had issues when enabling secure boot with a MBR partitioned hard drive. It would try to read the NBR petition hard drive and it would corrupt the BIOS.
Oh but you couldn't you just do a c Moss reset on it.
Tried it. The bios was at the chip level. The bios was crossed. So I was like, this is a production model, Like, this is a piece of production that we use. Like, I have to get this back. What can I do? Emailed New Tech and said what can I do with this box? Doesn't sport? When I was eleven, that's what they told me. They said it doesn't support. When I was eleven, I was like, that's a lie. The hardware can support it, so what's the deal? They said,
that's it. You don't guys don't pay for a service contract. So therefore I can't help anymore. Doesn't suport on was.
Left, We're gonna hear a lot of that.
So I kept searching on I've got to be able to fix this. I can reflash the bios. So I was like, you know what, I'm gonna take on a challenge. So I bought a I bought a H three forty one, a programming tool really on Amazon.
Wait, what is what exactly? It is?
It? It's a USB stick and I bought a dongle that it's four pins or it's eight pins that clips onto the motherboard. I literally clipped it to the bios chip on the motherboard, plugged it into USP, into my into a Windows computer, and downloaded the proper new, updated twenty twenty five version of the iOS for this motherboard, and flashed it to the motherboard the bios chip.
That's amazing, that's awesome.
It was worked, and it worked.
How did you feel when you rebooted and then it came back up?
I stood up a little dance.
It was.
It was. It was one of those things where it's like, Okay, this is the last thing I can try. It's either this works or doesn't.
So so how much did that little chip thing cost.
You fifteen dollars on Amazon, And did.
You pay that yourself or did you use it?
I bought it by myself because it's like I screwed it up.
Okay, how much did they pay you back for that?
I got the fifteen dollars back.
That's it. You only get the fifth. Did they not even buy you lunch? No?
I did buy me lunch all the time. But it's I got back what I paid for it, right, because my boss is on vacation, so I had to make a call. I paid for it. Whatever.
Yeah, I got my money back.
But it was pretty cool to like, I'm in this programming software called Neo Loader.
Neo all right it yeah, let our listeners.
All it's if you feel like up to the challenge and you have access to your physically access to the mother board, you can buy this flasher and the adapter. I actually you actually it's a clip. It looks like like a gator clip and I clipped it right onto the chip. Wow, read read the bios off of it.
So I backed up the bios that was on it and then downloaded the new one from Gigabyte and flashed and just clicked flash and it read it, wrote it to the memory, plugged everything back in, plugged in the graphics card, plugged in their custom PC express board, and they booted.
You got to link that on our website.
Yeah, that's that's pretty cool. I'll make sure that the links are there.
But and now it will post and it will load into Windows eleven.
So so what whatever you were told by New Tech, that wasn't the case, because now it's working.
I think right New Tech they said their software doesn't spport on whatever's that's a whole different thing that I've got working, and I've improved.
Well, their software doesn't, but the hardware, when you flash it, it works fine.
Yeah, so now it supports Windows level. See.
I I make it the point though, Sean, and justin that, I think we're going to see a lot of this. There are even in the last three four years, there are companies that have sold software and hardware that you buy it, you use it. I'm going to give an example radio stations that bought a automation system. So they've got it worse. Fine, they didn't opt to buy in for the you know, the the service contract, and suddenly now they're being faced with, oh we got upgrade to
Windows eleven. We don't have a service contract. You're not going to be able to do that because if you hose the machine, that's it for you, and all that money you spent is gone.
The fun part is. The fun part is is some companies even tell you if you don't opt for the service contract now, and you want the service contract, then when we have to upgrade, you have to pay us for that entire duration that you didn't have the service contract.
Oh my lord, really, whoa wow?
It was not even illegal, Yeah, exactly.
So that's how it works in some of the broadcasting business where you don't don't have support and you want support going forward on certain products, unless you're buying new and getting getting a new service contract, do you have to back pay for support?
Do you remember that that array that we had back at KSWB and San Diego, that Unix storage array, I can't remember. It was like a start with N no, not start with an N. It was like where we would put all of our long term storage and it was all Mac based and it was like a budget XAN something like that.
XAN was max like long term file store like they had Server store.
It was something like that anyway. But yeah, it was the same thing where we had a problem where we cannot get it to work, and I was tasked to try to figure it out. And I contacted the you know, the support and they're like, yeah, well, you haven't had support on this for you know, X amount of years, and you're gonna owe us, you know, you know, fifteen thousand dollars if you want to, you know, catch up with your support contract and then we can actually help you.
And you know, Kyle, our boss at the time, was like, there's no way we're gonna do this. You're gonna have to figure this out on your own. I turned to Reddit and I actually found a former engineer that used to work for that company, and he was like, look, i'll help you out. Oh and so we got we got on like a screen share with him multiple times, and he got in and because he knew Unix. Now
Unix is different than Lenox. Lenox is based off of Unix, but like Unix is like hardcore command line only type of interface, this guy went in and just completely upgraded our entire infrastructure and got everything to work again, and you know, and he was like, I'm not going to charge you anything. I just do this for fun. But I told my boss. I was like, look man, we got to do something for this guy. Yeah, you know,
just because he was awesome. So I convinced my boss to buy him like a five hundred dollars gift card visa gift card on company dime. And we just bottom a five hundred dollar gift card and send it to them, because if it wasn't for him, we would have lost all this long term storage that this company was gonna charge us fifteen thousand dollars to try to catch up on. And this guy's like, I'll do it for a five
hundred buck, you know. Actually, well he said it for free, but we just gave him for five hundred bucks, you see.
And that's something it's not gonna affect just technical companies. It's gonna affect auto repair shops that are using technology to discover and fix and repair because let's face it, cars are elect you know, pretty much, there's so much electronic computer engineering in those It's gonna affect so many different businesses that they don't have.
The service contracts.
Something happens, then you know, they can lose a lot of business because they're not able to work, and yeah, I think we're gonna see a lot of that. You know, it's interesting because my problem this past week.
I have a Lenovo. It is a it was I think it was a yoga or Yogi yoga laptop. It's been great.
When my Asus died about four years ago, I went out and I bought this at a It was an open box from Best Buy, previous display model.
And I've loved it. It's been great.
I was able to update it to Windows eleven and it's been fine. The other day I needed a file off of there, and I, you know, took it out of my laptop bag, put it on the little square table that I have put in a flash drive.
You know. I had started it up, got it working, grabbed the files I needed, and then close, you know, shut it off, pulled the drive and put it back in my laptop bag. When I got to work here at station, I went to hook it up.
I hit the power. Nothing's happening with it. You hit the power, but but it feels smushy. It feels like it's not connecting right. I'm like, what the heck's going on?
I tried shutting it down on plugging it. I look at the power. It's full power.
Because I used it the night before and had it plugged in, and I'm thinking, what the heck is going on with it?
Couldn't do it?
What does elevens on it? Couldn't figure it out. So I went ahead and I removed the bottom. Okay, the bottom holds. You know, you no more user serviceable ports, which I absolutely hate. There's only one company that I think does it unless you want to buy by a high end.
And I look this company up called Framework. Have you guys heard about them? Oh? Yeahramework.
They make PCs that you could buy parts and basically build it yourself or they'll do it for you. So anyway, so I'm going through it and then I'm reading in the documentation that there is a button, a small little hole in the side of my laptop and you can depress that and it goes into a special post mode.
And I'm thinking, this is after a day of fiddling with this string, trying to get you know, disconnecting the hard drive, disconnecting the battery, disconnecting the sea moss, doing all of that, and I went ahead and pushed this little button, and all of a sudden, I got power.
It's spinning.
So I'm thinking, okay, I know now it is not the motherboard, because I would not get that if the motherboard was dead, right.
I mean, am I am? I correct? Yeah, So it goes to post.
I went ahead and I pok it back up and I control healthily and it comes right back up. Logs in the windows. You know it's working. I'm so happy. And I go ahead and do a couple of things on it, and then I shut it down.
Next day.
Nothing can't get it to work, and so again I pulled everything again, hit the button. Nothing get nothing coming out of that special button now. And then one moment it came up. But I had to put the case back on because the case was off and it was plugged in.
So I didn't want to take the chance, so I plugged it, put the case back.
And couldn't get it. And I have not been able to get it respond yet. So I'm you know, I don't know why it would do that. I was thinking, well, one person had recommended sea moss battery and said that, you know, if you replace your sea moss, you might find that that's the only thing that was holding it up. The other one said the battery itself might be doing it. Even though you disconnected the battery h and it still started up, that still could be part of the issue. So,
I it's one of those things. Those are fun to track down. I wish there was an easy way to
do it, any thoughts, It's just one of those things. Yeah, I mean, I have troubleshooted so many different laptops that have done stuff like this weirdly, honestly, at I mean, not personally, professionally, professionally, I would rather just buy another laptop because I'm I'm not here to sit there and waste my time when I've got a thousand other things to do than to troubleshoot one single laptop when I can buy another one.
You usually you know third party. I buy a lot of my stuff from a website called uh Evergreen Electronics. There there's basically a secondhand refurbished Great Laptops three year Warrantye. Wow, I would rather just buy another one for like six fifty.
Right, there are like two things I'll do. I'll try a new power supply mm hmm, change the Seamus battery right well, reflash the bios now apparently, Yeah, there you go. Those three things, that is enough of my time. If it's beyond that, unless unless there's sentimental value in a soldered on hard drive or something I can't get to, it's done. I'm done. I'm moving on. It's a waste of my time at that point. Well, there I could.
I could probably buy a new or faster one for a little bit more money and just get my move my data over from the hard drive. But like I said, unless there's sentimental data there that I need that's soldered on that I can't access without the motherboard, I'm moving on after those three things.
All right, Well one more question too, Sean. You talked about moving the data over with this new laptop. When I logged in, and I logged in with my our email address, right, it said do you want to move over these previous backups that have been stored in one drive? And it was backups from the previous laptop, And I thought, WHOA, look at that. I can actually do that.
So I went in and did that. But I've had so many little issues here and there.
You still have to install certain programs and all that. Is it better just to go just brand new, get the software that you want to do? Just start over from scratch, or let it do this where it's installing little bits and pieces to get it to work.
I've always been under the adage of stall fresh. I rarely go more than two years without recompletely reformatting my computer. You just get to a point where it starts to get bogged down. You get junk, you stuff. It also helps you curate your date your data a little bit, so you're not just hoarding a bunch of junk on your computer. And it gives your computer a new breath
of fresh air. You get the most up to date version of Windows, you get the most up to date version of drivers, you get you know, it's just but it helps just kind of speed things along and give your computer a little bit extra life. But you know, I know a lot of people that don't ever do that.
Yeah, so we're you know, this whole segment, we've been talking about computers that have been having problems booting up or I don't know, just performance in general. I guess maybe you could say, right, yeah, I have Again, I'm gonna mention this one more time because I mentioned it so many different times. But I've had computers at work where we're like we don't know what's going on here. The thing's not working right, something's not right. Blah blah
blah blah blah. We run driver easy. Driver easy is the program that I've been recommending for years now. Oh yeah, you can find it driver easy dot com. All right, and it is a subscription service. I think it's like about thirty bucks a year whatever. Okay, we have a technician license, so we get fifty licenses. Each license is good for three days, so it allows us to install it on you know, fifty different computers. We have three days to run it, update the drivers, and then we're good.
But I also have my own personal license to it for my home computers. I absolutely love driver easy. It finds drivers that Microsoft won't give you, your your computer manufacturer won't give you, Like, I don't know where they find these things, yeah, but they are they're updated BIOSes. I mean, I've gone to a SUS's website. I'm like, hey, where's my bios It's not there. Driver easy is like, yeah, this is actually signed off by a SUS. It's right
here on this website. They will tell you the source where they got it, and every one of their drivers is signed vetted it works. I have brought computers back to life from computers that are dead by just simply running Driver Easy and updating like the chipset and the motherboard, the firmware, the other drivers. I have brought computers back to life. I brought computers that are like, oh my god, this thing is so slow. I don't understand what's going on.
Run Driver easy update about thirty or forty drivers that aren't listed on Microsoft Boom reboot.
Computer's great, they're running a special right now.
They are looked.
I looked it up. Just said it was about thirty bucks a month.
No year, thirty bucks a year. It's all lot better.
So one PC is a year, okay, right now you can get it be locked in for three PCs for twenty nine year.
Oh so three, I'm buying it right now, three three for thirty three for thirty thirty thirty.
Two dollars and five cents after text, oh my god, a year for a year for three PCs, I'm buying. I'm literally putting my PayPal information right now.
What is what is your what is that program? Also, so you get driver easy and there's a program that can load the most common used software programs you have on a new PC N night nine night. That's it nine night and that's spelled N I N I T H that you can find that in.
All right, we haven't used it too much, but a Shaan house. I know Matt.
It came recommended from from Matt right because I was telling him all I had. I was spending all this time installing all these things like us that. I was like, what's that? And He's like, click on all these buttons and installs all the programs for you.
Perfect. All right, we're going to take a quick break, come back.
Justin's got a listener question he's going to share with us. We'll be back with more of tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm sir, and I'm Justin.
Let me send us an X at tech talk Radio. We'll be right back and now back to tech talk Radio. I'm computer and and.
Everything even for the Internet.
It's pretty shocking. Now we have a listen to questions. This is a This is an interesting because I have a very simple answer this one. But the question is from Shannon and Tucson. It says, how do you clean soda pop that has been spilled on a keyboard. Oh no, Shannon, The simple answer is you don't you buy a new keyboard? You really should? You respond with popp it in the dishwasher? Well, I mean, okay, hold on, there are people that have done that. Sean probably is one of them. Sean, how
did it go? Not?
Well? Yeah, we have very hard we have very hard water here in Indiana. Yeah.
Yeah, unless you have like like filtered water, it's probably not the best idea. Honestly, the prices of keyboards have dropped down. Now if you're talking about a super expensive mechanical keyboard with the LED lights like I have here, Like I don't know if I can show this on the screen, but yes, like that that's a course theraah of course here I I would say, you are just
gonna be just just buy a new keyboard. It's gonna take you so much more time, so much more effort to try to clean up that soda than it is for you to buy another keyboard.
Now, if you've spilled it on a laptop keyboard, you're extra you're extra screwed.
Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, if you.
Spilled it on a laptop keyboard especially, I mean you have some that have the mechanical butterfly switches. If some that have the membrane switches, if you have them, one of the membranes s which is it's never coming out.
Yeah yeah, no, yeah yeah.
At that point you need you need to take it to a shop, say how much do you give this for me? If I give it to you for scrap and buy a new computer.
You know, it's interesting with this new laptop that I bought, which is also a Lenovo, it's the Yoga seven.
It's a two in one. I get pop ups.
Now, which are a little frustrating, but I get pop ups from all state that I can. I can actually get an insurance package to protect my laptop.
You can disable all that stuff. I'm still going through it. I did.
I did the the install where I let it run data from you know, the other computer, and now I'm just, yeah, I'm not liking it. So I think I'm gonna start over, just start over, deactivate some of the programs that I'm on there, and this just start over from scratch.
We got one more listener question from Nick and green Valley.
All right.
He says, I was looking at USB flash drives and saw a lot of different ones.
Questions.
Kingston sand disk, et cetera, and wondering is there a better drive than the others or are they all the same? I mean, and I'm I know, Sean, I know you're gonna have an opinion on this, but there are different caveats to it. But overall, you're almost kind of just akin to like comparing like Ford, Chevy, Dodge. Okay, programs, they're all gonna they're all gonna do what they say they're gonna do. Some might last a little longer than others,
some might perform a little bit better than others. Depends on the engine, right, or or what the what the specs are on the on the USB drive. But in general, like Sean said, so.
I think I think you're you're you're looking at form factor at this point. Right, Do you want USBC? Do you want one that'll do both because they make them?
Do you want FireWire? You have to be difficult?
So it's funny, so you said firewaar. But the new version of Mac os iOS twenty six is ending FireWire support just after a gazillion years. But it's it's akin to personal preference, right, it doesn't matter what brand, it's all about size, it's going to be about whether you want sand Disk or Kingston or of course the Air or whatever whatever brand you want, but just make sure you're buying from a reputable source. I would personally go and buy it physically in the store, because you it's
buying on Amazon, you're likely to get you're not. I mean, the chances are low, but it's not zero that you will get a drive that is incorrectly modified or improperly modified and will be fake.
I'm just I'm not sure about that because my wife has always told me that size doesn't matter, and I just don't quite make I don't know if I be with that.
Justin it's because you're stuck in the eighties, dude, and you're still using a floppy drive. Wh okay with the times.
Dude, Okay, all right, all right, okay, I'll give you that one. I'll give you that one here.
I've had a problem lately with P and Y drives. I don't know what happens, but after a while, nothing out of them, nothing, not a thing. And then I've had a couple of sand discs, which I really like sand disk drives. I've had a couple of those go as well, where suddenly you can't. You can access them, but you can store anything else on him. You can't move anything. I've tried using different programs in there to to you know, wipe them.
Nah, you can't do it. So I don't know. I wouldn't spend a lot of money on them on a USB flash drive. But again, just I mean.
You're okay, you're looking at like one hundred and twenty eight or two hundred and fifty six gig forty bucks.
Yeah, yeah, sixty bus. I mean, I guess it also depends on what you're gonna use it for. Are you gonna use this? Is this you gonna be your daily driver? Are you gonna be constantly writing and reading to this flash drive? Because if so, yes, you're gonna want to spend the extra money. But if this is gonna be something you're gonna put a file on it and then come back a year later and access it, dude, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, And if you if just a reminder, if you're using it for like archival storage, right, it moves you to every year or so copy the data to a new drive or copy to an exist a third party. Right, it's the three to three to three three point solution right on prem on computer, in cloud. Right, those are your three points of failure for backups. So like you should always have a copy on your computer, you should always have a copy on a flash drive in a copy inche in the cloud or off prem So just
that data does degrade over time. It takes a long time, but it can degrade over time. So you want to make sure if it's important, if it's security, if it's your bitcoin key, if whatever, you want to make sure that you're making sure that you copy that data. I would say at least every every one year.
Also, be careful where you're storing your flash drives too, if you got them, don't leave them in the car where it might be, especially during the summer where it might get hot for us out here.
You know that that's bad.
You don't want to leave any technology, even your your dash cams.
You want to pull pull off off.
Your windshield if you can do that, especially in the summer heat.
Definitely don't leave your kids in the car. Well, yeah, I mean that's a given. That's that's totally technology.
Or your kids in the car, Yeah, exactly, But you got to be careful where you keep them. You know you put them near magnets. You put them near other devices that can also be a pain. I think I've seen that before, where somebody had a flash drive on a file cabinet being held by a magnets.
I've seen, I've seen. I've seen the old ones with people like put old floppy discs.
That's I showed you guys that because I did it as a joke where I wrote system boot drive and stuck it with a hard drive magnet to this side of my desk.
Hard Drive magnets are the best.
I've been destroying and pulling apart hard drives and that's the best thing about him is getting the magnets.
And one and one more tip. Don't plug your flash drive anywhere you don't want your data to be taken, Like if you don't want it, don't take in somebody else's computer plug it in unless you're you know them. Don't take it to the airport and plug it into something. It's like just like USB ports, right, you don't plug in unknown sources into your computer. Don't plug in flash drives you pick up off the street. But like, just be careful where you're plugging your USB sticks.
Good point, Well, that could also go for just mail in general being a male in general. Good, yeah, sir, Yes, all right, we'll be back with more of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm justin Let me you can complain at Facebook dot com forward slash. Tech Talkers will be right back, Thank you, and now back to the tech Talk Radio.
Well, I know that Sean has experimented with astral photography has introduced us into some really cool content. When it comes to you know, out of space and you've talked to uh I think you've talked, haven't you talked to.
Some of the astronauts. You listen to the astronauts up on the space station.
So I've done QSOs with the space station with other people. That's bouncing off. But the QSO is basically confirming, basically confirming a radio signal.
Like amateur radio.
When this when the space station goes over, there is a transceiver up there, so you can send send a VHF signal and receive a UHF signal. So I can with my ham radio talk and then other people can then talk back to me off off the repeater on the space station. This past weekend they had the abr L Field Day and they activated the space station. There were two astronauts on board. I don't remember what their
names were, but they actually did activation. So you could actually contact and talk to one of the astronauts on the space station this past weekend during the field day. So didn't get just to do that, unfortunately. But you can actually see my antenna is sitting back there because I was trying to do it the other night. It is as it's a it's a seventy centimeter YAGY tuned for like right in the middle of that band. But
it's incredible to fun. It's fun to do, and you know, through the university, we actually did a live chat with an astronaut in the space station. Because it was like three years ago. I think. Yeah, there's a whole program called the aris ar ISS. It's a whole program dedicated for education on the space station. They track it, they do they do contesting, and they do they schedule interviews and stuff with schools around the country on the world
really but I still track it. I get notifications when it goes over. I can turn my radio on and hear it. The people talking on the repeaters and stuff. There's a whole community just around.
But I I don't know if you saw this, Sean, and I know that you would be totally into this. This is cool because when there have been launches or you know, these events that have taken place, you know, a lot of people tune in, a lot of people will check it out, people that maybe don't normally follow it.
Netflix.
There's been some kind of an announcement that NASA is going to be streaming on Netflix, that people are gonna be Yeah.
I just I didn't. I didn't know about this. This is really cool though. Yeah. So NASA plus it's gonna be live programming will be available on Netflix.
So yep, I'm curious if they'll hap uh.
The article came out today. Ye, So NASA announced Monday it's latest plants the team up with the streaming service to bring space a little closer to home starting this summer.
This is gonna be great, Okay, all right, sometime in the or two all right, yeah, all right, that'll.
Be that'll be really cool. I mean, I there's a really great app called NSF Next Space Flight if you're interested in watching and tracking space flights. It tracks all of the major companies. Blue Origin, a couple companies out of New Zealand, China, India, the US SpaceX. Look you on your phone?
So awesome?
All right, listen, we had a lot to cover this week on this week's show. We'll have more next week, so definitely please tune in. As a reminder, to be sure to check out our YouTube page. You could sign up there. Check out some of the YouTube shorts that we put up from the show, as well as video content from our Fox eleven segments. Again, all of that on our YouTube YouTube dot com forward slash tech talk Radio.
I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird, and I'm justin Let me fight us on the web at tech talk radio dot com.
Have yourselves a great week. We'll see you