A Dive Into USB-C and Future iPhones, Windows Updates, AI, Emergence Alert and Ahsoka.

Ever felt intrigued by the recent Star Wars spin-off series, Ahsoka, but couldn't grasp some underlying plots? Worry no more! We journey deep into this fan-favorite character, unraveling her backstory from the Clone Wars and Rebels series. Plus, Disney has you covered with a list of essential episodes if you missed out on the older series. But that's not all; ever wondered how Google, initially known as 'Back Rub,' transformed into today's tech giant? We've got some fun facts to share!

Moving on, let's talk tech efficiency. Picture a future where one USB-C cable powers all your devices. Sounds like a dream, right? With Apple's transition to USB-C technology, this could soon be a reality. Join us as we talk about iOS 17's anticipated perks and the upcoming releases of iPhone 14 and iPhone 15. That's not it. Our chat extends to the incorporation of historical topics in future episodes to add an intriguing dimension. So, gear up for a ride as we uncover the tech world!

Transcript

Adam: 0:00

So have you seen Ahsoka yet?

Ronnie: 0:03

I have have you no, why not?

Adam: 0:07

I really just have you watched Rebels?

Ronnie: 0:09

and have you watched Clone Wars?

Adam: 0:11

No I haven't.

Ronnie: 0:12

Well then don't watch Ahsoka.

Adam: 0:14

Why.

Ronnie: 0:14

You need to know what's happening, otherwise you don't. It's just a show.

Adam: 0:18

Yeah, you know, my son said that.

Ronnie: 0:20

So what they've done is on Disney Plus is they've actually taken the crucial episodes of Ahsoka from the Clone Wars, from Rebels, even from Mandalorian, and they've put them in order for you. I saw that you don't have to watch seven seasons of the Clone Wars to understand what's going on.

Adam: 0:39

Yeah, I saw that, but I didn't know what that was. It just happened out a lot of time.

Ronnie: 0:44

It's like five or seven shows.

Adam: 0:47

So Do you recommend that, or should I watch the whole thing If you?

Ronnie: 0:51

watch the whole thing it's more obviously. But if you watch just that, at least you'll get the understanding of what's going on with Grand Admiral Thrawn and the whole thing. And she mentions a couple characters that are only in Rebels and I think even the Clone Wars. So if you don't know those things you're not going to understand what she's talking about.

Alexa: 1:11

Right.

Ronnie: 1:12

So, yeah, I would definitely watch that, at least those episodes.

Adam: 1:17

Well, that'll be interesting. Maybe I'll wait. But before weI wait, why don't we talk?

Ronnie: 1:27

about this? Are we on the podcast? Did we?

Adam: 1:28

start. We started the podcast, we did.

Ronnie: 1:30

We did Okay.

Adam: 1:33

So let's talk about smart thermostats today. Emergency alerts there's a new one coming USB-C. Maybe We'll talk about that. Have you ever been scammed? I haven't by AI.

Ronnie: 1:52

Not by AI.

Adam: 1:55

And I don't know if you I was almost scammed once, but not by AI. Yeah, I think actually AI is going to even take over podcasts someday. I mean, something weird is going to end up happening, but it's really hard to tell if that's really a true thing. Did you do that?

Ronnie: 2:16

Nope, did you.

Adam: 2:17

No.

Ronnie: 2:19

Was it AI? I doubt it. Did the Echo do it?

Adam: 2:27

I have no clue. They're listening. You know they are listening. I'm Adam Oghan.

Ronnie: 2:52

And this is Ronny Tofty.

Adam: 2:53

And this is 5acreTech, so we have several things to talk about today.

Ronnie: 2:58

I want to talk about something before you start it Right. Let's do it. Last week we weren't in here, we were remote Right and we were sitting there doing our podcast and we got done. I listened to it and I realized that you took your microphone with you and sounded like a velvet throat. Is that the right? Is that the right? Is that what they call that?

Adam: 3:23

Someone's got a nice throat. Typically, that's how I sound.

Ronnie: 3:26

Yeah, and I sound like a tin can.

Adam: 3:29

Yes.

Ronnie: 3:30

But you didn't tell me that you were bringing your microphone and I had to use the other one. That wasn't. Yeah, that wasn't very nice.

Adam: 3:35

No, it wasn't. Well, probably because we're just new at this. Oh, is that it?

Ronnie: 3:40

Probably Okay.

Adam: 3:43

So you may want to purchase a microphone, I don't know.

Ronnie: 3:46

Now it's on me, huh.

Adam: 3:47

But you know, we do need to buy a couple more mics For visitors, for visitors and other things that will be coming soon, so maybe we'll do that. Okay, so interesting Emergency alerts coming.

Ronnie: 4:10

October 4th.

Adam: 4:13

So do you know what that's about?

Ronnie: 4:16

They're testing a nationwide system and it's going to be across our cell phones and radios and television all at once. Wow, it is so just to let everyone know that you're going to get a broadcast. What I read was the cell phone version was 30 minutes. I don't know if it's going to hijack your phone for 30 minutes or if it's just going to pop up and be a notification on your phone for 30. I don't understand what's exactly it's going to happen, but just be aware that around two 30 Eastern time, I think, is what I read that it's going to happen on October 4th. So that's, I guess that's good.

Adam: 4:59

I mean, they're testing the system to make sure everyone's you know what they're going to say when they do the test this time.

Ronnie: 5:04

They didn't say what they were going to say. They said the radio and television version was to be similar. It's going to be a one minute test, so it'd be similar to what we're used to with. You know, this is alert. This is a. What did they say? What?

Adam: 5:21

is that we should know this.

Ronnie: 5:22

Yeah.

Adam: 5:24

This is a public. Here's how it goes. This is the public. This is the public alert system. If this was an actual emergency, you would have been notified of news, weather and sports.

Ronnie: 5:37

I don't remember that.

Adam: 5:39

Oh, maybe that's what I always imagined it to be.

Ronnie: 5:42

Oh, it was something similar anyway.

Adam: 5:44

Yeah, I don't know where I heard that from. I heard that a long time ago somewhere. Pretty funny.

Ronnie: 5:52

Anyway. So yeah, that's, that's coming. It's just good information for people to know that. That, that little chunk of technology. Hey, I got a factoid for you. What was the original name of Google?

Adam: 6:08

Minus one.

Ronnie: 6:09

No, back rub, back rub. That's what it says. That's what Google says. Wow, and then eventually it was changed. Or, and do you know what Google stands for?

Adam: 6:23

One, followed by 1000 zeros, 100 zeros, 100 zeros. I meant.

Ronnie: 6:29

And then it was misspelled and so what we have now is. So it's a little bit different. But yeah, I was initially named back rub, had some sort of technical term and anyway they switched to Google, which makes way more sense than back rub, I think. If we were saying I need to back rub, that I don't know, I think that would be weird. I think it's a very weird, weird name, very weird.

Adam: 6:51

Anyway. So do you have a smart thermostat?

Ronnie: 6:56

I don't. I have an RV, and it's literally just still a spring.

Adam: 7:06

They don't have smart thermostats for RVs.

Ronnie: 7:08

I think they do, but I don't have one.

Adam: 7:10

Actually I have an RV also and it's interesting. You can't just take a nest and stick it in there and expect it to work, because one works AC and one works DC. So the thermostats we buy today for our homes, I believe, are AC, low voltage AC, and the ones for RVs or low voltage DC. So I've looked up some videos on YouTube. There is a way to do it. It's interesting, but the thing that I've had happen the most is I've gone. I started with the nest.

Ronnie: 7:52

So why would you even want to put a different thermostat in your RV?

Adam: 7:58

Well, just to have control. We live in a hot area. I don't want to know what happens when I'm not in it, since we leave it on, and I want to be able to control it ahead of time, maybe save a little money, because they are smart thermostats. They do save money. You know, rv in 100 degree weather, I don't think it's going to make any difference whatsoever, it's just too hot. But there's a lot of reasons to have it in there. I would like a lot of things automated, just so you know. I would like some security cameras and all sorts of stuff, which I've done. It's just probably a better being intact. I just want it.

Ronnie: 8:43

Yeah, it makes sense.

Alexa: 8:43

It's not a one.

Adam: 8:45

It's a necessity. Just because we can have it, you know, doesn't mean you should have it, but maybe you should.

Ronnie: 8:54

I think it's smart to have a smart thermostat to control your house or whatever.

Adam: 9:01

I've actually had issues. It started with the nest, wasn't the nest thermostat? It did go out eventually after about five years. The original, maybe the second version of the nest used to install Ness. I was on their list as an installer and I went to. I went from that to another brand, can't even remember the name off offhand and I had the same problems I had with the nest, which is it would come on the schedule, would come on at different times and it wasn't on the schedule that I put in the system. But I was using the Amazon Echo as the form of running the nest system, the back end system, at one point. And then I went with the thermostat from Amazon, which is very inexpensive, like $59. And had all sorts of trouble with it and to find out it was corrupt and the only way to fix it was to factory default the whole thing. Remove it, add it back, add the schedules back and it finally worked properly.

Ronnie: 10:17

But you don't have it anymore. You stop using it.

Adam: 10:19

No, I still use the Amazon one. I'm still kind of testing that one. It seems to be okay.

Ronnie: 10:26

And I noticed that you control it through your Echo.

Adam: 10:29

Yeah, I can. So, ziggy, what's the temperature inside? Of course, but that was my fault. I didn't give a long enough delay. Ziggy, what's the temperature inside Nice? The average temperature of the home is 73 degrees. So I got this for 72, just came on. You guys may have heard it, may not, don't know. Um, so it's keeping it at 72 today inside. Normally we keep it at 74 for the purposes of this recording, which we're doing it on a Monday at around 1129. Right now. We're a little bit late. Why are we so late?

Ronnie: 11:21

We're supposed to have this on. Yeah, this is supposed to come out three in the morning on Mondays and we're typically to be honest with you guys.

Adam: 11:29

we record it on Thursdays. This goes good with our schedule, but why?

Ronnie: 11:37

didn't we record it Thursday?

Adam: 11:38

The since we started doing it on YouTube. The camera that I bought it was a anchor camera, which is a fine camera, Don't? It's really good, Nice, wide angle For some reason just stopped working, and what I mean by that? It was very grainy. The picture was extremely grainy for uh 10, 1080p camera. So we use a stream yard to stream this and it would not work. Good with stream yard work, Perfect.

Adam: 12:13

Every test we've done until Microsoft did another update and I'm not sure what happened, but prior to that it worked perfectly everywhere and all of a sudden no longer works, you know, without being grainy, uh, before the update. So we did the update and it just took several hours to get everything going and it looked fine. So we decided to hold off. We'd do it over the weekend sometime and it'd be Monday and guess what? It was grainy again, even though all my computers got the update, which that update actually messed up one of the computers for one of my employees and he's got to reload it today from scratch, Wow. So sometimes that happens, Uh, don't know. So we went back to a logic camera and that I I had and it's 1080p. It's not as wide angle. We had to put it back a little further, but it's serving the point. If you're watching it on YouTube, um, it's working out absolutely fine at this point, so maybe we'll just use this one.

Ronnie: 13:17

There you go, that's why we're late so what that happens with tech.

Adam: 13:22

Yeah, it does happen. So this is something interesting. Since windows 10, every once in a while, microsoft will put out an update and things will break. So there'll be sound not working, ethernet port's not working, wireless not working. Why, don't know? Don't have an answer to it. It's just like there's a pending update, even though the update hasn't even downloaded. The fact that it must have downloaded something because they, it's like they put it in there you have an update available, but he hasn't even downloaded yet. It is literally just sitting there waiting for you to download.

Ronnie: 13:59

So that's strange.

Adam: 14:00

Not sure. Once that's complete, everything starts working again and we had to kind of troubleshoot through that and figure it out. It's rare when it happens and when it happened on the camera I just didn't see it and of course it worked right afterwards. Hey, great, you know we'll pick this up another time and of course today it didn't work even again. So we're using this camera, which is a very good camera, and made you stick with this one for this purpose and we'll go on.

Adam: 14:28

But this is something to know. If you're having a problem with your computer, check your Microsoft Windows updates and make sure that they're done. It's part of you know several things you should do Reboot your computer it still doesn't work. Try to see if there's any Windows updates. If it is the ethernet port or wireless port, try to use one or the other to connect to the internet to get to that portion of you know the internet so you can download it. And if it's both of those, you may have to take it to the geek squad. But you know you got to take it to somebody if you can't get to that point, but it's rare it happens.

Adam: 15:14

It may not be the end of things, but sometimes it does it definitely messed up. The other computer we use we're using a laptop today. You know the computer. I'm going to probably have to reload it when nothing will work on there or our mixer won't work on there, our camera won't work on there correctly. So something went definitely wrong with this last update. So it happens, it's just part of the business.

Ronnie: 15:42

Hey, did you hear that Apple's talking about going to the USBC instead of the lightning?

Adam: 15:48

Yeah, I keep hearing that rumor. Keep hearing the rumor. Why are?

Ronnie: 15:52

they doing that? Are they doing that because they want to make more money and have us everyone have to buy more cables?

Adam: 15:59

That's really not it.

Ronnie: 16:00

That's not it. That's what everyone thinks.

Adam: 16:03

I know I keep hearing that, but several years ago the European Union decided and voted upon going with one standard cable for that very reason not to have people go back and forth to cables, have to buy special cables so they decided that USBC would be the right way to go. The iPad's already got it, so it's just now moving to the iPhone. It can be faster. Yeah, it's more of a standard. I'm not sure if it's better or not. Do you read anything up on it?

Ronnie: 16:42

Yeah, that's the stuff that I had read. Was it did audio and and what's audio goes through faster. What's the other video? Yeah, audio.

Adam: 16:57

Just like right up there like the video. Yeah, hey.

Ronnie: 17:01

So audio and video are trans. Transmitted faster with it and it's charged charges a lot faster with it.

Adam: 17:08

Yes, it does.

Ronnie: 17:09

It's. It's reversible. Well, I guess the lightning is too, but unlike the micro USB, which has to be plugged in the right direction and it's frustrating whenever you're looking at it those tiny things and you got your old like me, and you can't see very well. So the USB C plugs in upside down or backwards and all that stuff, as the lightning does. But it's not a conspiracy to sell more quartz. I know that, yeah, and I know that for a long time, when we were going through the Cell phone, it seemed like every phone had a new charger and it was so frustrating because you end up with this rats nest of cables. You're like I don't want to throw this away, just in case, and the fact that they are going to a universal, across the board USB C, it's gonna be. It's gonna be nicer than we all charge together. We don't have to. My daughter's got an iPhone. I have I mean, my wife have Android. So we're always like, well, do you have an Apple charger? Do you have a? You know, it's nice to be all-in-one.

Adam: 18:10

That is the first I've heard. You've had a mutiny in your house. Well, your daughter. I blame my sister.

Ronnie: 18:18

My sister gave her an iPhone. And what do you do? I Refused to pay for it. So when she wants one, guess what she has to do.

Adam: 18:28

Yep, especially, have you seen the Perspective new price on the iPhone Pro Max, which is what I'm holding here? But this is the 14 for the 15 no 1299 dollars. Wow, yes, that's what they say. Of course, you don't know until Apple announces it. You know we don't know really if the USB C's coming to it or not right the rumors are quite a bit true on these things, but a lot of times they're not, so we're just gonna have to see if that's the case. You know where the when is it?

Ronnie: 19:06

when is that being released?

Adam: 19:07

You know, I know it's gonna be sometime in.

Ronnie: 19:10

September.

Adam: 19:11

I don't know the date. I think there is a date out there, I'm not exactly sure. Ask, ask, alexa, alexa, cancel. Sorry about that, guys. We don't use the a word. We're so sorry. We messed up your whole house. We just Everything just went off. Hopefully it's not playing music in the background where you're not there. But we apologize from the bottom of our hearts. We try not to use the a word. Anyways, can we use the z word? Yeah, we can use the z word. I think that may be safe. Ziggy, when is the new iPhone gonna release?

Alexa: 19:56

The iPhone 14 was available for regular purchase from September 16th 2022, followed by the iPhone 14 plus on October 7th.

Adam: 20:08

Ziggy, when is the iPhone 15 gonna be released?

Alexa: 20:13

From Mac rumors calm here. The iPhone 15 models will likely be released in September 2023 if Apple follows its traditional September launch timeline.

Adam: 20:23

So we really don't know yet, until Apple announces it sure, but they have an asset.

Ronnie: 20:28

That's that verifies that yeah.

Adam: 20:31

But there's. There's some really cool stuff coming to iOS 17. I know you guys aren't gonna be able to see this, but I don't have it usually. I am one of the first ones to get the beta, and I just got a text from a friend of mine and sent me this, and so it's a sticker that you can add of Yourself. Oh, wow, so it's actually me.

Ronnie: 21:01

Adam.

Adam: 21:01

Yeah, doing something, and it's got a black background and or transparent background. So he put that right into a text on top of the text message and I don't know he must have pulled it off from a video that he took or a picture he took, you know, of me when I was With them at one point. So it's kind of funny. So yeah, so he's got a, he's got iOS 17, so the beta, so that's another fun thing. I love the little fun things I do that's quite an advanced avatar.

Adam: 21:31

Yeah, that's a real avatar, but um, yeah, that's there. There's a lot of really neat functions coming out, so it's gonna be really neat to see. You know, hopefully the USB-C would be great, because it would be nice not to switch back and forth the cables. I do that, got to carry several different cables and it would be nice just have one.

Ronnie: 21:56

Yeah, even even like when you buy a piece of it, like your camera, right you know? Or or your little sound boxes that you have they all have. Like my sound box, it's got a USB-C not USB-C but a US micro USB, and so it's. And so you got to have all these extra cables. So just to have one USB-C cable will be.

Adam: 22:16

Yeah, you know and a lot of things are moving to it. It's, it's slow. Yeah, it's interesting. The mixer that I have, which is the zoom L8, still has micro. You know about a brand new, but it still has micro. Usb it would have been nice to have USB-C and does not seem to work well plugged into the computer to power it without batteries, so it's the only other way to power it. Is you power it through the USB or batteries. So but it last long enough self It'll work for this.

Adam: 22:50

So we're just running on battery power running on battery power, transmitting over to the laptop to get this on zoom. So, hmm, cool. Still a nice mixer, though, yeah.

Ronnie: 23:04

Is he exciting or happening on the property?

Adam: 23:08

We're. We are in the middle of deciding how we're going to split it up. Finally.

Ronnie: 23:13

Yeah, usually we were talking about maybe having a meeting. Have you had that? No, not yet. Hopefully next week.

Adam: 23:18

Yeah, and we'll figure out that I am going to change the cameras out. I'm not a big fan of the real link, even though I talked about the latest one. I bought a Wi-Fi one. Some of the things I thought is am I having trouble with the cellular side of it or am I having problems with the camera? And it seems to be. The cameras are quite slow. They work good. This is a super intelligent camera. It just I can't seem to get the video time to write.

Ronnie: 23:53

You think it's a self-service area, like maybe just a dead spot?

Adam: 23:56

No, because it's the same things happening on my property which I have outside access points made for outside long range and it's close enough and not too close to it where it's getting a great signal and I'm just not getting good reaction time getting to the camera. So I'm actually going to outfit. I mean, it's quite an expensive camera but you get a lot with it.

Adam: 24:22

I mean it's metal in most cases around it, the plastic parts. It's built really well. I'm telling you it's a great camera. If you're patient with it, I think it'll be fine, but I want something a little faster, so I figured I'd go with the wise cameras. I'm going to go with the PanTilt Zoom that has AI, that will follow also and do the same notifications, same everything. It's just a faster UI, user interface and records, local records in the cloud, and it just seems to be easier. And they're only $39.00. So compared to $265.00. So, even if it didn't last long, throw it away and get another one.

Ronnie: 25:11

Use it, give us an update.

Alexa: 25:13

So we're going to be putting those out soon.

Adam: 25:17

That's great man. Yeah, one of the things we talked about is AI voice scams. Oh yeah, what do you think about that?

Ronnie: 25:33

Well, I heard something about this and I seen a little video about it and it was quite alarming. So I had to warn my daughter because apparently they're able to mimic your phone number and your voice. So what people are doing supposedly is they're calling like parents or grandparents and saying, hey, I need some money. In that situation, can you just quickly send me some money quick because I need it desperate. And people are panicking, as anyone would if their child called and said I'm in desperate need of some money. And so what they're telling people is to take precautions. Have a safe word, yeah.

Adam: 26:25

Do you have a safe word Kind?

Ronnie: 26:27

of yeah.

Adam: 26:28

Yeah, my wife and I decided on a safe word and the safe word is oh yeah, I can't tell you. That would not be a good idea, but you should have a safe word and something that the people who are around you, if they can hear you, would not understand and it wouldn't tip them off. So a good, safe word of some sort would be extremely helpful.

Ronnie: 26:56

Not like password. Don't use safe word as your safe word.

Adam: 26:59

No, it's something totally different and you should regularly talk about it because it's something hopefully you'll never have to use, right, I mean? But it could be just alarming enough to the person on the other end of the phone to know if you ask the right question with this, having a safe word to tell somebody you're in trouble by adding that word into your sentence. They would know on the other end you're in trouble, but this is the other direction. So this is deep fake audio. It's alarming but it's cool. I mean, it's really neat, I mean the-.

Ronnie: 27:41

The ability to do it, I think just knowing the fact that it's there is gonna put you on alert. So if you get a weird phone call from anyone claiming to be someone you know, you're gonna have some questions.

Adam: 27:55

So here's what Apple's doing Apple personal voice. So basically by talking into the phone on iOS 17,. From what I understand, this is coming out and what I've read about it is basically you can have your voice kept forever so somebody could type something in, read it back, or they can be read back in your voice. It's neat. I really like it. But I mean not putting down the air tag. That's one of the greatest inventions that have come out recently. I've got several of them. I personally suggest people to use them, but bad actors have made it where it's more difficult to use the way it came out. So if you don't have it with you, you'll start beeping. Oh, that needs to happen, because somebody could throw one in a bag and track you wherever you're going. So it's kind of the same thing. They come out with great products and there's always these bad actors that are looking for some way to make money off of it somehow or stalk you.

Ronnie: 29:06

So it's really sad? Yes, it is.

Adam: 29:16

So yeah, when that starts coming out, it's gonna be extremely interesting to use. So I'm curious what else they'll come up with, and maybe an avatar that will have your voice, kind of like the Apple goggles that are coming out.

Ronnie: 29:37

Oh yeah, you talked about those a little bit.

Adam: 29:40

Yeah, we need to talk about that and at one point, maybe next time. Yeah, that would be really cool.

Ronnie: 29:49

Find out, do some research and talk about it.

Adam: 29:53

You got any other factoids or in history?

Ronnie: 29:56

Well, sometimes I do it in history and I had something, but my phone just went blank and I'll have to pull it up late next time.

Adam: 30:03

All right.

Ronnie: 30:04

So on this date in history, We'll talk to you next time. Thanks for the warning. I'll see you next time.