Gift Support Show - DTNS Live 5173

0:07This is the Daily Tech News for December 26, 2025. Happy Boxing Day to those who celebrate. This is the show where we tell you what you need to know. We give you important context and help each other understand. However, this is a fun, new kind of show. Welcome to our first ever gift support show. From Studio Animal House, I'm Sarah Lane. From Studio 7 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. From Petaluma, I'm Jason Howell. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Yeah, this is a cool new idea because it is Boxing Day. We know you are surrounded by boxes and you might be struggling to get new tech even out of the box or once it's out of the box to work at all.

0:59So consider us your personal brainstorming outlet. You could ask Claude, sure, but we're more fun. We're going to run through some of our favorite troubleshooting tips, free stuff that you can put on those new devices once you get it working. It may solve a problem for you, or it may just give you some knowledge to make you look like a hero when you pull out one of our ideas as your own during some tech catastrophe this week. And go ahead and take credit for it. We don't mind at all.

1:32All right, Sarah, let's start with you. Okay. So every time I move, which as an apartment dweller, it's one to two, three times per cycle around the sun, I am always like, why do I have this cable? Do I really need this old firewire cable? so um so so uh you might sarah exactly that's exactly where i'm going with this exactly where i'm going with this um so very recently um i got a five series three it's a it's a uh pet tracker uh you know that's designed to go on your um your dog or cat's collar and uh You know, it came in a very nice box and, you know, there's sort of the tracker itself. Then there's a Qi wireless charger.

2:32I was like, oh, that's cool. But then the Qi wireless charger was micro USB to USB-A. And I was like, do I even have a USB-A charger? I have dongles. But like, do I have anything that can just go into, you know, an outlet? And I did because it was an old iPhone device. But it was a great reminder for me to just keep that stuff in a box together, the old stuff that you might need, because you just don't know. Sometimes, you know, if you get gifted something like this, you want to open it and have fun with it, not, you know, spend the rest of your day, you know, going through closets looking for, you know, how you plug this stuff in or make it work.

3:17Yeah. I keep a, right over there. You can't see it, but there's a big old plastic set of drawers. And I have power cables in one, audiovisual cables in the other, and like various things that don't fall into either of those categories. And I go through it every once in a while and throw some really old stuff out that I know I'm never going to need. Or if I have like 20 of the same kind. Yeah, like if you have more than two, sometimes you're like, I don't think I'm going to need more than two. I would say that I keep a lot of USB cables. Like, I don't ever throw them away. And solely because over the lifespan of USB, depending on what you have, the connectors are going to be slightly different, right?

3:57Whether it's an A, a B type connector, USB type 1. So I always have it on hand in case I have to help someone who has a printer or a scanner and they lost the cable that goes with it. And it's not that replacement cables are hard to come by. It's just more convenient if I can just pull out a big Ziploc bag of USB cables. Definitely. I'm probably dating myself. I'm probably dating myself because not many people. We're all going to date ourselves here. It's the only person that we're dating. Sanford and Son, and he had the drawer in his house. Oh, yeah. No, I got it. It's full of glasses and stuff like that.

4:34I'm old enough to get that one. So, yeah, I have a drawer just like that, but it is full of cords. I guarantee you there's a parallel port cable in there. There's probably an RS-232 cable in there, a DivX cable or something like that. Yeah. And I store them the proper way the cable should be stored. Literally, it is an entangled rat's neck of this stuff. It'll take you 15, 20 minutes, and you have to reevaluate your life. It's survival of the fittest cable. You're trying to get to this cable. Well, and some of the kind of younger people coming around to old technology, this actually could be something that would save your life.

5:11You know, depending on the, you know, camcorder that your daughter or granddaughter or whoever, you know, it's like, I want to, I want to use this, but how, you know, do I have a fire? Like what's fire wire? Kids love retro tech. I have, I keep those fire wire cables because every so often, especially if you deal with audio people, you're going to find equipment that requires it. And they'll have like a weird like firewire to Thunderbolt connector, but they don't have the actual cable to connect them. And it's like, there you go. I should write them out. Well, and there are so many dongles that you can connect to.

5:49You know, for example, my Mac Mini that I'm using right now, it's all USB-C. I could use a dongle to connect, you know, various things to the Mac Mini. But then that starts to get messy. and not all USB-C cables are created equal anyway. No, they're not. And dongles historically just suck. I mean, I cannot tell you how many Amazon Basics dongles I have bought These are inconvenient and you lose them, and so you keep buying scores and scores of them until you find yet another one in between the couch cushions? All right, so moving on to other things that if you're getting a new device, firmware updates.

6:32Yes. Firmware updates. Thank you. Thank you for the applause. Thank you. For a lot of people who get a seemingly new device, it's like firmware update. I wouldn't need that. It's brand new. You don't know how long this box was sitting on a cargo ship or on a shelf somewhere in the back of Best Buy. You just don't know. And firmware updates are, it depends on the company, right? But sometimes going through the setter process of something is, you know, they say like firmware update. And you kind of have the choice to say yes or no. Or it's really buried. And you don't even get that option to say yes or no.

7:19And then your device doesn't work as described. And you're confused. Firmware updates. Yeah. I mean, we've seen it a lot in the roles that we have inhabited over the years in the world of technology. You get something, sometimes right when it's released, they have the firmware update because leading up to that, people have tested. They've found a couple of bugs or whatever, and they couldn't quite get it into the package and update it on the device before it goes out. But your best bet is to just run that right at the top. and I mean I've definitely had the scenario where if I didn't do that it's not doing one of the things that it was advertised it brings up a principle of troubleshooting which is the this principle of troubleshooting is important uh don't try to figure out what reasonably could have or should have been done just look for a software update like don't say well why would it be a software update just check because it may not be but there are weird situations where you're like why is there a software update and they didn't tell me or this, but it will fix a lot of stuff.

8:27And oftentimes it's not just fixing stuff. Sometimes they introduce new feature updates, which includes like a broader compatibility with file formats or that one instance where your wifi just magically disconnects whenever it wants to, because there's a setting that was never made open and available to the consumer, but you could do it if you were a service technician. Yeah. If you're looking at someone else's identical device and theirs does it right and yours doesn't, sometimes it's software update. The only thing I would caution is if it's something a little more complicated, like say a game console or a PC, just double check to see what that firmware does because the very rare once in a blue moon instance where I did an update, my screen went black.

9:18And thankfully, I could roll back to the previous setting. But it was the initial firmware update that they released that had a small bug in it. Those do happen. Those are edge cases. So yes, for people who listen to this show, that's something to be like, yeah, maybe check and make sure there's no issues with it. But for the general populace that we're helping people to go help, just tell them to update. Don't confuse them with the edge cases. Yeah, definitely update because a lot of the tech that we buy is not brand new. It's not cutting edge. You may have, you know, like if you're going to get a new camera, new cameras come out every year.

9:53But you don't necessarily need to buy the brand new, the hot, you know, the brand new camera that just came out from Sony. Sony releases cameras a couple times a year, every year. but they're still selling stuff that they released six, seven, eight years ago as brand new. And they have done multiple updates on them. So you just want to make sure that if you do get a piece of tech, something like a camera that does get updated and they update these things fairly regularly, if you get it brand new, you're going to want to have all the newest and hottest features on it. So it just makes sense to before you even get started doing it and get upset because there's something you think it's supposed to do that it doesn't do, just update it because it may have been sitting in a warehouse for like the last two, three years.

10:33And if you're getting something that's been gifted to you from a family member, like, hey, if you get my old laptop or my phone, definitely do the firmware updates because there's security updates that you want. Right. Well, Roger, speaking of getting something from a family member or a friend, my last tip here, and this is kind of specific to smart home device setups. Make sure that your router can access 2.4 gigahertz band Wi-Fi. because not all smart home devices, but many smart home devices can only be set up on that band. Now, you're going to have a lot of people who say, like, it's 5 gigahertz.

11:15That's my router. No, they're dual band routers. They all support 2.4. It's not like if you have 5, that includes 2.4 because 2.4 is a lower number. It's two separate things. Yeah, and this is by far the most tech support that I've done over the last couple of years with friends and family. Cause they're like, it just doesn't work. And I'm like, Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Preach it sister. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's not rocket science, but if you, if you're not familiar with the stuff, it, you know, you're turning to Sarah for these things. Just the other day, my friend was like, yeah, I got a smart bulb and it doesn't work.

11:56And I'm like, what's the manufacturer? She's like life acts. I'm like, you have to do 2.4. And she's like, I don't know. What is that? Right. Yeah. Now, this is a good one. Because even people who are tech savvy may not think to check that, right? They may be like, well, the Wi-Fi is on. You know, why isn't it working? Right. Yeah. It's kind of like you either have to say, you know what? I'm going to be home for the holidays. I'm going to help you out, set it up. Or think about how you would be able to help your friend or family member remotely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was good for all of us to gather around on this December 26th to share these tips.

12:33We've got more to come, but we also asked some folks to send in tips for you. So let's get to some from the CISO series own Rich Stroffolino. All right. Congratulations on all the new Christmas tech. It's very exciting. Maybe you got to switch to maybe got a smart birdhouse. That's on my wish list. I already have one. I want another one. But anyway, anything you buy with any kind of tech into it, the reality is if it has a microchip, you're going to be signing up for some kind of account, right? Whether it's creating a new account, you're signing in with Meta or Google or whatever the case may be.

13:07Apple ID. I don't care. New accounts will be created this holiday season, on Boxing Day. So I'm not saying I like it. I'm just saying that's where we're at. And we have to be prepared for it. So my number one and my number two tip are basically the same. Lie to your friends and family. First lie, number one. Tell them when they're asking you, oh, I need help signing up for this account for whatever, my new VR headset or whatever. Lie to them. Tell them you have to use a password manager to sign up for it. Okay? Download ProtonPass or another free password manager. I like ProtonPass because it has unlimited password storage.

13:48You can sync across devices for free. Basically, you get 2FA syncing for free in that. The only thing you don't get is, I think, passkey storage. That's on the paid tier. But the free service is open source. It's full-featured on the free tier. There's really not a lot of pressure to upsell on it. But there's a ton of other free password managers out there. I like it better than using the integrated one, unless you're kind of entirely in the Apple ecosystem. I'm not really a fan of their password manager. Android has one. Windows has one built in. But to me, having a quality third-party service that you trust allows you to be everywhere.

14:29And so the first thing you want to do, lie to them. Tell them they have to do that. Don't even give them the choice. Eliminate the tyranny of choice for them. You're doing them a favor. Lie. Lie number two, you need to tell your friends and family when they sign up. Oh, before you sign up, oh, we have to make sure your account's not registered already. just take them to have I been pwned, okay? HaveIbeenpwned.com. This will tell them, have them enter their email. This will show them where all of their accounts have been breached before in the past. You can show them, hey, remember the name of your street and your phone number growing up?

15:02It turns out you use that password in 60 different accounts and they're all available and it's like instantly, any password stuffing attack will instantly compromise all your accounts. So it's a one-two security attack. here with lies. The power, the beneficial power of lying is what I'm advocating. This is my number one tip for anybody setting up any new tech, especially for friends, family, get them on the, it's not too late. You can get them on the password manager train right now and then have them just set up a nice, secure, use a passphrase for their master password. I know, I know it's, it's turtles all the way down sometimes, but I highly advocate this.

15:43Lie to your friends and family and lie to yourself. Do it for yourself too. You're worth a lie as well. Um, hope everybody's having happy holidays, enjoying that tech and, uh, using the power of lies for good. Ah, yes. Uh, the, the white hat lies. I have definitely done this before. I'm like, no, you just have to do it this way. Oh no, you have to use, I've switched over to proton pass by the way. So I'll second that recommendation. It's really good. You know what I've come to find? I am my parents and aunts and one uncle's password manager. Yeah. I've tried. I have done what I can to try to get them to use it.

16:27They just won't. So I put their passwords into my password manager. So when they say, you know, it's usually, hey, son, how do I log in and such and such? You got it right there. You got it. It's just easier. Yeah. All right, Tom Merritt, it is your turn to give us some tips. What are some of your go-to tech support tips as we wrap up, rather, this holiday season? Yeah, some of these are the obvious ones, but always worth a reminder. Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again? I know that's a joke, but sometimes that does. Yeah, that is the problem. Reboot, turn it off. Yeah, just reboot or unplug and plug it back in again for some devices will work.

17:15It's worth a try. When you run out of ideas, sometimes that will fix it. This is one that has caught me a couple times and very embarrassingly. Did you pull off all those little plastic tags, those little tabs that they use when they ship it to make it look pretty? Now, how has that sent you astray? I can't get this to plug in. Why is this not going into the... Oh, I see. Or sometimes there's a tab that blocks the battery. Sometimes there's a tab that blocks the battery. It won't turn on. Why won't it turn on? The battery's in there. I will give you an embarrassing example. Seven months ago, I got a new TV.

17:50And I thought I got everything off. And I put it on the TV stand. And I was watching. It's like, oh, there's a weird shimmer. Maybe there's a setting in the TV. And I spent like 10 minutes on it. And then I realized I left a little plastic thing, the screen protector, on it. and I was like, oh, what is it? I can't get rid of it. I went up to the TV and I pressed it. It's like, oh, wait a minute. The little protector's still on it. It felt so good to strip that thing off, didn't it? It was like, yeah. I love that. It was very ASMR for me. I felt I was pulling something. Honestly, there was one in the fridge that we bought this year.

18:24We bought it in like April, I think. There was still one in there that we hadn't caught. I found it last month. What was in the fridge? No, they just put plastic in the fridge to keep it from getting scuffed during shipment. Oh, the fridge itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it was a brand new fridge. We got a fridge like a month ago. Same, same. Yeah. Those things were everywhere. And they're everywhere. So there was one that wasn't blocking anything, but I found it. I'm like, oh, we never took this one out. And it was so nice to just... So my 30-inch monitor I'm looking at right now, I still have the plastic film, not on the screen, but around the edges of it.

19:00On the bezel. and the thing is is like i didn't realize it was there five years ago when i bought it so i've got like stuff mounted to the sides but now because it's so old it's starting to fray back uh-huh it's like it looks like crap i was like i probably should you know take the cameras off and pull the here's the benefit though here's the here's the bright side your your monitor will look brand new again yeah you got five years out of it once you take that off it's like it's protected yeah i mean And listen, that's a reason people put plastic on their living room couches. Oh, yeah. No, my mom, we had one.

19:33The living room was the place we were never allowed to live in, and she had plastic over the couches until Christmas Eve. Then it came off. It's like, when are we going to enjoy this? Not sure. Yeah. Not clear. But, you know, this is keeping all the kids' grubby hands off of our furniture. Another one is check your permissions. If an app isn't working the way you expect it, Like, I can't get the camera to load or it won't do this one feature. An app may assume that you have permission set a one way because everybody does, but then you changed it. This is especially true on mobile where you've maybe set a deny all apps access to the camera unless I say otherwise.

20:16And the app doesn't ask for permission because it assumes some developers just assume, well, the camera will be available. So stuff like that. If you run into a problem, you may need to check your permissions and settings. That goes Android iOS, right? That's not a platform-specific one. This is one I have to tell myself. If setup is failing, maybe it's not. Just wait. Just wait longer than you think you need to. I have not bricked, but I have messed up some tech because I got impatient and I'm like, well, this is obviously hanging. Let me just reboot. uh and so going back to the earlier reboot don't reboot in the middle of setup and and if it seems like it's hanging some some things take an unreasonably amount of time to to set up but they will eventually get there most of the time i do a one one thousand two one thousand all the way to 30 when i get into situations like this because it's like because it's like it's a power cycle thing half the time yeah and you just if you do it too early then you're like oh no you know no, my device doesn't work anymore.

21:21No, you just got to wait. Well, and if you do it at exactly the wrong time, like if it's truly updating the firmware and it's mid-cycle and you power it off, you can totally and completely brick your device. So you got to be really careful with that. Exactly. And if you do start over, start over from the beginning. I've made that mistake too of like, oh, well, I can just jump in at this point because everything else worked. It's like now a lot of times these flows are set up where they need to proceed from the beginning to the end. And I would stress, don't do it when you're tired or really frustrated because you tend to make mistakes.

21:54Well, you just told people not to do it this week, basically. But be aware. Tired, frustrated. No, I went through a setup and I misread the instructions. And I was wondering why it wasn't working. And then I went away and came back the next day and it's like, wait a minute, I misread that. That meant this folder, not, you know. Oh, I've totally done that a million times. I think we've all been there. Sometimes you're just, I'm not in the right headspace. Yeah. Come back to it. It's not like wait until the world becomes perfect, right? It's more like just take a break. Just take a step away, sit down, take a breath.

22:32And then when you come back, it'll be better. Check the services webpage for an outage. Sometimes you might be trying to install something, especially at the holidays. If everybody got the same gift and they're all hammering the servers, that server just may not be responding. So you might want to go to another device, check the web and be like, oh, they're down right now. That's why it's not setting up. And then you'll just have to check back later. Power strips fail, especially around the holidays. Power strips are not forever, sadly. And because they get a lot more use this time of the year, sometimes you are plugged into the power strip and you're like, why isn't it working?

23:11Well, you actually don't have power. Maybe the power strip finally gave up the ghost. of Christmas past. And now you have to plug it into something else. Um, couple of free resources. Uh, this is, this first one's really good for giving to a family member to help them out. Nine night. I don't know if anybody's used nine night and I used to use it all the time. Yeah. Yeah. I've not used it. Uh, it's windows only, uh, but it will take your software, mostly free software, but some paid software too, and keep it up to date for you. So you tell it like, I want to install Chrome and Dropbox and whatever stuff, especially on a new device.

23:51It's really good for like, I just, these are all the programs I need, please install them. And then it will make sure that it checks for updates and install them for you, which is great for somebody who doesn't want to keep up on top of that stuff all themselves. So for example, right now, my Chrome browser says new Chrome available. I'm not going to do that because then I will get bounced out of the show. But that would do that for me. Yeah. Nine-Nine will just reboot it for you when you're not using it and keep stuff up. Do you not use it anymore, Roger? Ever since I moved to Windows 10, I kind of fell off the Apple card on that.

24:33Yeah. Okay. An alternative for good, free, open source software, if you're like, well, I got this new laptop, I can't really afford to spend money on Photoshop or whatever, go to alternative2.net. They are great for saying, if you're like, well, I know I want this, is there a free alternative that's pretty close? You can use alternative2 to search across multiple platforms, Mac, Linux, Windows, etc. And they will point you in the right direction. It's crowdsourced, but also curated by the crowdsourcing. So I've used it a lot. It's a really good place to go to find a piece of software that's not going to break your bank because it's free in a lot of cases.

25:16And that's alternative TO.net. Yes. And.net. And honestly, it saved my bacon a few times where either a piece of software was no longer supported on, for example, Windows 10 or a new version of OS X or macOS in this case. And you just scramble to find something that does something not maybe exactly, but very similar to because you have a report due or you have to do something for work and it needs to be done that day. So that's Ninite, which is N-I-N-I-T-E, not N-I-G-H-T. and alternative two, which as Sarah said is T-O, not the number two. And we'll have links in the show notes as well. All right, we're gonna take a break and let you know that if you got like a Visa gift card and you're like, I just don't know what to do with it.

26:07We have got cool stuff still at thedailytechnewsshow.com slash store. I'm actually wearing the DTNS hat right now. The DTNS pint glass is a hit. RW Nash in Wales is loving it. Len Toy Dow loves it. We still got some holiday stuff in there as well. We've got my e-book Synced in there as well. So go check it out. All the good stuff available at dailytechnewshow.com slash store. Get the holiday stuff before it goes out of business, okay? Dailytechnewshow.com slash store.

26:39All right. We're still going to try to save the holidays for your family and friends. Rob, you're up next. What do you got? Well, let's start off with batteries, batteries, batteries. It's always the batteries. So especially like the day after and the days after the gifts are open, a lot of kids' toys, they still need that 9-volt battery. They still need like 64 AAA or AA batteries. They need batteries. And oftentimes, they will come with batteries in the box. Now, the problem with them is that the batteries that come, and generally when you're talking about children's toys, they're like the worst batteries in the world.

27:21And if they've been sitting on a shelf for a while, they could literally be years old. So it's probably not that your child broke the toy within 24 hours of opening it. It's probably just the batteries have gone dead. So I always recommend that regardless of what you think has happened, put a good Duracell or an Energizer or a RailVac or a battery. you actually would go to the grocery store or to the drugstore and purchase yourself. None of these batteries that you have never heard of that seem like they are really, really light. Like this seems, you know, like batteries should almost feel like a weapon.

27:54Like you should be able to throw it and do some damage. If they feel like they're plastic, they're just not good batteries. So that is my first recommendation, especially in like children's toys, because the batteries that come in those things are just not good. And they're only going to get an hour or two of play out of them. Yeah. And recharge your batteries ahead of time. I know it's a little late to tell you that on December 26th, but keep it all that rechargeable stuff ready to go is a good idea, too. Yeah, I even put as a, you know, just as a plus here, rechargeable batteries are your friend.

28:24Because one of the worst things, if you do get a child a toy and they play with it and they run on batteries, they don't have their own internal battery that can be recharged or anything like that, they're going to run through the batteries. But what often happens is that the toy will get played with until the batteries run down and the parent never thinks, oh, I need to go get batteries for it. So that toy that might have been a hit ends up, you know, kind of getting relegated. And it's like, man, I got them this toy. They really play with it. It's like, well, they couldn't play with it because the batteries were dead.

28:50So, yes, rechargeable batteries are your friend. A lot of these devices actually have built-in batteries into them. So for the next tip is that it makes sense that you actually go out and purchase a good charger. It doesn't have to be a GAN charger, but just get a good battery charger or something that can charge things via USB-C or USB-A. because there's just there's a lot of toys now i've actually seen things to where the only way to power them up is to actually plug them into a into a brick that they didn't give you so you don't always want to use the one for your phone especially if it's for your kids toys so just get an extra you know charging brick and like i said if you want to get a good one get a gan you know charger that you can plug these extraneous things into i've actually seen like a coffee uh cup warmer that just keeps your coffee warm but you've got to plug it into something you've got to plug it into a USB port.

29:48If you're sitting near your computer, it's not a big deal. But if you're trying to have your coffee kept warm at a coffee table that doesn't have a USB port next to it, but it has a regular port, you got to plug something in to keep your coffee warm. So a good charger is always a good thing to have just to be able to keep the things charged up. Yeah. And you can get them that have A and C so that you're good for whatever situation you're in. I also, you know, talking about rechargeable batteries, when I first got my, well, it was the Oculus Quest at the time, but MetaQuest, you know, version one, I was running through AA batteries like nobody's business where I was like, this is insane.

30:30And then, you know, finally it was like, oh, wait, I can just get rechargeable batteries. And those are the batteries that I just swap out using, you know, this and not, you know, having to go to the hardware store and otherwise buy batteries, you know, every five weeks made a huge difference. So for anybody who's like, oh, yeah, you know, my, you know, this, that or the other thing, you know, needs batteries, really do think about investing in some rechargeable battery situation. It will change your life. So my next tip here is to and this is this is kind of a of a theme. So it's been kind of said before, but download your instruction manuals.

31:16the reason for this is because the chances that the instructions get thrown out the day after christmas are high because they're paper and when you're cleaning up you're just grabbing paper and it is so common for the instructions to whatever thing you just got to get swept up in the trash and they're thrown out i personally have had to go through the trash and try to find an instruction manual for a kid's toy years ago. So I just make it a point now. The instructions often will even have a QR code on them so you can take yourself to the instructions to see if there are any updates. Just make it a habit that if there are any online instructions, just go ahead and download them.

31:58In the day of LLMs, chances are is that even if they weren't online, they're now online. So you You can relatively easily find the instructions to just about anything if you just go to ChatGBT or Gemini or whatever and look them up. Yeah. Just take a picture of the toy and say, can you find the manual for this? What is this? Yeah. It'll find it for you. Yeah. So true. So, yeah, it's so easy to throw them away. And so here's a couple other things that, you know, you just need to know. So I am the tech support person for my family. It's like I probably in the one who has done the most as far as being into computers.

32:37Therefore, all computer related questions are delegated to me. As we move out of 2025 into 2026, if your computer was purchased at a big box store and it is the color of beige, it's time to let it go. Oh, come on. It's come full circle at this point. They have not made beige computers in over a decade. So if your computer is beige, if it has, if you could stick physical disk into it and you're asking questions, it's probably time. If it's running Windows 98, it's probably time to go. Yeah, yeah. No, that's fair. I mean, I think my last beige box was Windows XP, which, yeah. I actually have one of the new Commodore 64 reboots from Moss Technologies that's beige, but it was not bought at a big box store.

33:29So I'm glad you added that. But here's the other caveat. Is your Commodore 64, you would never need to call me to ask me a question about your Commodore 64 because you're the kind of person who would know everything there is to know about this cool Commodore 64 that you have. I'm talking about my family. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My family, I still have folks who are probably still trying to use the original 64 that came out in 80, wouldn't that come out like 80, 84? 84, 83, yeah. They still got that. If it's pays like that. That's a whole different situation. that's a different situation all right good good stuff man just one last thing here um don't fly drones indoors it's just not a good thing it shouldn't need to be said you can fly them indoors yeah i'm telling you right now if you don't want your children to be upset because they wrecked their drone they accidentally fly it into the ceiling fan or into the fireplace I ask you, both of those things happen.

34:25Do not fly drones indoors. Put clothes on, go outside, and have fun. Just don't do it. Just don't do it. It might seem funny. I mean, the companies who tried the whole indoor drone, I'm going to keep watch of your house when you're at your house. Oh, yeah. Amazon has one of those, right? That's a different situation, I guess. is the biggest one, certainly. But yeah, what Rob's talking about is like, no, you're just... Unless it was meant for... Something is going to fly into the ceiling fan and tears will ensue. You know, the DJI is whether we're going to be able to get these things, you know, too much longer is that that question remains to be answered.

35:10But if you're talking about one of those, those really, once again, they're not really designed to fly in the house. Some of them are. But if you're talking about like the drones you're going to the big box stores to buy for your kids, Even though they say they can be flown indoors, they have special blades to fly indoors. That is an accident waiting to happen. Just go outside where you've got space so that you at least aren't wrecking them into the. They can go up forever, but they can only go up 12 feet in your house. Yeah, that is good advice. Everyone, please listen to Rob. Please listen to Rob.

35:41And listen to Jason because it's Jason's turn. Jason, you are a family man. You've got kids, you've got a house, you've got all sorts of people using tech devices. Give us some family tips. I mean, when I thought about this episode, I was like, I'm coming last in the order. What am I going to say that's different from everyone else? Because all those nuggets, I totally co-sign on them. But I thought, why don't I approach this a little differently? When I visit my parents, my family back home in Boise, Idaho, almost certainly when I come for Christmas or the holidays, I walk through the door and they're like, well, you're here, by the way, you don't need to do it now, but there's this list of things like the printer isn't working or whatever.

36:24So I thought this was an opportunity to kind of recount the many ways in which I've helped my parents. And hopefully there's some universal truths here. So first and foremost, and tell me if you've heard this one before, but I get home and they've got issues and they need to sign into their account. They're like, hold on, let me get the thing. And they go the drawer and they pull out this stack of pages that is stapled at the top that is nothing but ids and passwords and all hands scribbled and multiple you know of the same on different pages so you don't know which is right the multiples that's oh my goodness that has driven me insane so magical opportunity like it was said earlier in the episode to introduce them to some sort of password manager rob i am the same i have their passwords in my password manager in case they encounter issues i at least have access to it but it's it's a challenge no question um to get everything moved over and to to instill habits and everything but it's an opportunity also so uh but boy that sheet anytime i see that yeah it scares me like oh i could actually just picture Like the orange and the yellow and the ruled lines.

37:37And yeah. And the scribbled, like the fun thing, like Comcast Internet and like five different passwords, four of them scribbled. And then the one you use actually doesn't work. Yeah. I'm saying like, well, wait, we don't use that password anymore. Or do we? Yes. And all the different ones that have the same password. Yeah, it's a nightmare. The printer's been broken for six months. We haven't used the printer for, I don't know, six or seven months. I'm like, what the heck is going on here? And it's happened a couple of times. And usually it traces back to some sort of change in the router setup or their Wi-Fi access point.

38:14Oh, that's right. We switched to a new provider, whatever the case may be. And they don't think that the cascading effect of something like that and how that impacts other things in the house. So I saw that as an opportunity to kind of teach them to think backwards a little bit. And yes, I helped them out on that. But teaching them to kind of like rewind a little bit or when you make a major change, infrastructure change in the house, oh, how is this going to impact the other things that we have going on in the house? It still might be a thing that you troubleshoot for your parents. Sure. Yeah.

38:48Well, I got a parallel port cable if you need it. You can go get a dot matrix printer. But here's another thing on printers. we're using them less and less and less oh yeah so a lot of times what is that the printer is just not being used in so long that the ink cartridge it didn't dry up it's just that the heads dried up so they're still getting the signal that says that there's ink in them but they won't print because they're dry so just take those printer heads out and take a you know like a cotton swab and just a little bit of that's a good one too uh you know to just loosen them or you might have to go buy new cartridges but that's that's a thing that happens to my parents printers all the time.

39:22You just draw it out. That's a good tip right there. It's also one reason why I ditched my ink chip printer for a laser printer. It's like, ah, I've got to do this again. Yeah, we have a laser now. Absolutely love it. We already covered it, but nothing works, Jason. This doesn't work. I don't get it. And you check the firmware, and it's out of date. So I think these two go hand in hand. firmware out of date or os updates on mobile phones right like i know time and time again with my parents it's like they're they're kind of afraid of the update and they put it off and they don't want to go there because like on their phone because it'll change something yes it's going to change i know how my phone works right now i don't want it to change and but i find but you know i try and instill in them like hey you know there's security things there's security reasons.

40:16It actually does bring some interesting things to your phone. So being there and walking them through that and kind of expressing the importance of it other than things change. But I get it. If I was set in my ways, I wouldn't want things to change on me either. But it's important, right? Those updates are important for a number of reasons. Even me, I just updated to the latest iOS and I was like, why do things look weird? I mean, I figured it out and I knew it was coming. But still, it can kind of be a little discombobulating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Now I'm slower because I have to learn how to use and interact with this new version of this thing I already knew so well.

41:00And so I get the resistance. But usually when I'm home, it's kind of like, no, allow me to update it. And then over the course of my time here, I'll help you through it. So when I leave, you'll feel really comfortable. You know, that sort of thing. And then this one, which I thought was interesting, not very long ago, I went home and realized that my parents, they would only check their email on their laptop. I was like, why is that? You have iPhones. You have smartphones. And they're like, well, I don't know. Our email's always been on the desktop. You go to this web page. It's a web interface.

41:34And I was like, you know, we can set it up so you have that on your phone. Do you want that? they were like oh that would that would make things so much easier i was like okay so modern technology i know so you know what it's it's my it's my duty as the son that works in technology to come and i am sure simplify their life i'm sure there are more than a few people out there who are like yep yep that's what my parents say too um or and not even parents you know kids aunts and uncles, you know, sisters, brothers, yeah, everybody, children of all ages. Yeah, it's not, it's not age related. It's just, you know, how people do things.

42:15Weirdly, when you say that, Jason, I'm like, well, I only check email on my computer. But it's not that I don't know how to do it on mobile. It's just that I like the bigger screen. Yeah, yeah. But you know, but if you don't have, if you don't realize that you have the option, you know, if you're out and about and you know something comes up and you're like oh man I can't get back to the house you know you know for the next hour but I really need to respond to somebody there you go yeah well I mean they then they would have the situation where they'd open up their laptop and try and log in to check their email and for whatever reason it wasn't working and they're like well we haven't checked our email in like a month because it just doesn't work I'm just like but if it was on your phone like you know it's there and it will happen yeah yeah you won't lose access email is coming in yeah so i know i know someone and they're not they're they're actually gen x they're they're just in their late 50s and she was telling me about how i mean i wished it every time i got a new iphone i could just keep my settings from one to the next one and i'm like no i don't i'm not an iphone user at all but i'm like well you absolutely can yeah she's like no every time i get a new one i gotta i gotta set the thing up all over again nope and i'm like are you not keeping your same account she's like well i just figured i'd start it fresh and like well there's your problem he literally is creating a new apple id so she's got like seven apple id it had no clue it's like what why didn't anybody ever tell me it's like well nobody ever knew it's just like we're just now fighting this out that you have literally for the last probably 11 years have been creating new accounts every time you get a new iphone i mean if you want to do that But that's totally your prerogative, right?

43:59But, you know, getting a new phone and restoring from a backup, you know, in iPhone's case, it would be an iCloud backup. I mean, that is, I mean, it takes you an hour. It's the same phone. I'm going to guess that it initially started off by a misunderstanding or a miscommunication with the person in the AT &T store when they said, hey, do you want to get all your stuff back? I was like, no, I think I want to just start fresh. And they just said, okay, brand new account and didn't ask any additional questions. And then she thought that's what I'm supposed to do. And it's like, no, that's not what she was looking to do.

44:34She was just looking to not have to have all her apps reinstalled, but she still wants the same iCloud account and didn't realize that until probably 10, 11 years into using an iPhone. Wow. All right, before we finish up, Tricia Hershberger has some excellent free stuff that you can play on your new game device. So you just got a brand new Quest 3 for the holidays. Congratulations! There are some free apps and games, yes free, that you can download right away to help get you started. Big screen is perfect for watching movies or using a remote desktop on a nice big screen in front of you. That's awesome.

45:14I also recommend a game called Blast On, which is a very fast-paced VR shooter where you're slowly moving your body to dodge bullets. And again, it's free. Finally, I recommend Steam Link. If you want to be able to play more advanced Steam VR games, think like Half-Life Alyx, on your Quest headset, this is the way to do it. So download those three right away and you'll be off to a really good start. Happy holidays. Yay, thank you, Trish Arsberger Indeed

45:49All right, we're finishing up with the person Who came up with the idea for this show And I think it was a really good one Roger Chang, round of applause, everybody

46:03Quite a round of applause All right, so what do you got for our friends out there? So as we all know, even if you're just very familiar with a lot of technology but don't consider yourself a technologist or a tech expert, you will be designated by your immediate or perhaps extended family if you're unlucky as the go-to person to help them with all their tech issues as I'm sure Rob and Jason can give you stories about. One of the things, of course, is not all family lives close by. If you live on one coast and they lived on the other coast, text supporting them can be sort of a challenge. If you've ever tried to describe a dialog box or a window screen over the phone by giving details and they're clicking on the X, but it won't close, but they're clicking on a different X for something else, very, very frustrating.

46:55And this is where, after the past 12 years of personal experience, I have really come to appreciate the concept of remote desktop. Now, a remote desktop is a set of software that allows you to remotely control a PC or a Mac, and in some cases, an Android or iPhone, and basically do things for them. So if they're managing or going through a site, you can just do it for them. Granted, they may not learn as much, but you will save that three hours and shrink it down to 30 minutes. One of the most popular tools I like using is Google's Remote Desktop Access. it is very simple and if you have a google account it will automatically show up you just need to go to remotedesktop.google.com slash access now you can either do remote support if you want someone to say your parents and they're familiar with how computers work they can access this they can give you an access code you just punch it down here and you can connect so there's some security that There's no unauthorized access.

47:56However, you can also set up unattended access. So in other words, you don't have to put in a password past the first time or a pass key to access the machine. And it does give you a little more automation in getting control. Once you do, you get presented with a screen of the machines that you're supporting. In this case, I have a Dell laptop. And when I go over to it, it just looks like your desktop or rather their desktop. and I can see already they need to do some firmware updates or system updates to their machine, I can go through this and click and access all these things that might go beyond their standard web browsing, especially if they're unfamiliar how to use anything else on their computer other than accessing email, perhaps their banking sites, or finding out what day the city collects garbage during the week.

48:50And you know what? I'm going to say this. I hate to say it, but it really saves me a lot of time. And it helps me skip over a lot of the confusion that the person I'm supporting may have. Like, oh, I thought it's like, yeah, it's okay. And I'll just go through and click it and I'm done in 10 minutes. Granted, I might be skipping on a little bit of the learning session, but it really, really does save you a lot of aggravation. And honestly, it saved me a lot of hair from being pulled out off of my head trying to just sort of describe it as what I used to do. Well, and the person who could have been part of the learning session often is like, I don't want to learn.

49:28Just fix it. Just get it for me. How do I scan? Like my dad used to ask me, like, how do I do a scan? Just put the paper on the scanner. I will do it. I'll handle it from here. And I do a scan. Okay, take the paper, flip it upside down. I'll get the other side. You know, in a convoluted way, it's my way of playing with Lionel trains, except instead of doing a train set, It's me just like, okay, I got your first page of your 27-page tax return. Let's do the other 26. Roger, I'm such a fan of remote desktop that I have actually gone into the registry and removed the ability to shut down a computer.

50:10So the only option is to either reboot or reboot. You can't shut down. And I guess technically they could put it to sleep, but I'm guessing that the people that I'm doing this for don't know how to put their machine to sleep because I go remove all of the sleep functions. So the machine is never shut down. The only way to turn it off literally would be for me to actually redo a registry hack or to physically just unplug it in no longer half power. But the reason I do that is so that I can always get to remote desktop because as long as that thing reboots, it comes up and there's internet, you can get into it and fix whatever problem.

50:48So I am a huge fan of remote desktop. And there are a lot of services that provide that. I find Google remote desktop to be not only free but actually very effective. All you really need is to have a Chrome browser and you go to the site and download and install it on the machine you want to remotely support. They don't need to have the browser open when they start the machine. It doesn't even need to be open. It's a little app that runs in the background. You can control everything once you're up onto the login screen. You can even log in for them and all that. It is a lifesaver. There are times, especially when you're dealing with older family members, where they might not understand some of the metaphors that are used in computer user interfaces.

51:28So it's very helpful. Now with my dad, he also had issues with his phone. And so I was using TeamViewer, which is the guys that now own LastPass, that allows you, if you pay for the$50 a month subscription, to remotely support Android phones. So you can literally control their phone. So if they don't know where certain apps are or they don't know how to access certain system functions in their phone, you can do it for them. There is a risk, of course, security risk by doing this. However, if it's something where, you know, my mom lives 300, 400 miles away, she really needs to have this functionality in her phone, you can do it and not have to worry about like, well, now she can't do it because this helps her with her medication or this helps her access her health care or this helps her access her banking or something like that.

52:20where if you didn't do it, you would have to rely on someone at perhaps the rest home that they're at or perhaps someone at their work that you're not comfortable with them having access to your family members' personal electronics. You said Android. Does it work for iPhone too? There are tools out there that support iPhone as well. I haven't personally used them because I don't have any family members that use iPhones, but there are. There's like two or three. Um, and I think, uh, if you do want to just do Android only and your team viewer does, uh, PCs, Macs and Android phones, but if you just want to do Android phones, uh, there's AirDroid and AirDroid allows you to do a lot of the same sort of control.

53:06You can actually control from a tablet as well, but it allows you to control a person's phone. Oftentimes, again, for the same reason, they may not be familiar with it or there might be a little older and it's a little confusing and it just, you feel more secure knowing that, okay, I got it set up. This is what they need. Mom, just hit this big red icon right here in your set. Older or younger or just not technically inclined. Do you have to be there to install these? Do you have to be there to always install these? Or walk them through it, which is kind of the point. That's my sister. I talk her through and she could do it.

53:44But if it's someone who's like, it's just a box of magic. You know, my bank information comes up when I go to this side and, you know, all the rest. In that case, you're just what, when you go home for the holidays or you come visit, do it all then. Just set it up. Make sure it all works. And then when you're back home, you're like, okay, that's good. All right. Any last tips to get, we got, we got a captive audience. They're like, please don't make me go back to do tech support for my family, but thank you for all these tips to help me do tech support for my family. There shouldn't be extra parts unless they're labeled extra parts.

54:21That's a very good one. I would like a new OLED TV screen. Thank you in advance. Okay. It's not really a tech support thing, but it is a support. Make sure they have the receipts. When you give stuff, give the receipts, because sometimes it's just broken, and they need to be able to take it back to wherever it was purchased from and get a replacement. Or you do it. with the receipt that you have for the gift. I don't know what happened. It must have fallen that way. Here's the receipt. Folks, get in the habit of when you get a paper receipt, you've already got your phone in your hand. Just take a picture of it.

54:59That's a great deal. Oh, yes. I do that all the time. You already have your phone in your hand. Whenever you get a paper receipt, just take a picture of it and save it. And you always have it. That gets you out of so much trouble when you're trying to return something or figure something out when you bought something, and where you bought it from. Just take a picture of your receipt. Take a picture of the receipt. And it used to be where, you know, with, I don't know, if you were talking to the IRS or something, it would be like you have to fax something. You know, now screenshots are widely accepted.

55:31Yeah, they are. Take that screenshot. It will save you later. Especially if you go to where? Oh, especially if you go to certain sites that don't give you the print option to print out a receipt or save it. You just take a screenshot of it. Works just as well. All right, that is it for today's show. Thank you everyone for supporting us all year long at patreon.com slash DTNS and dtns.substack.com or wherever you've supported us. We hope you're having a happy holidays and we will be back with live episodes on January 2nd. before we do that we do have more holiday fun for you be sure to watch our replay of our dtns panels tech predictions for 2025 to be clear this is what we predicted in 2024 that would come true in 2025 we'll see who did well and who didn't what terrible and exciting events did we predict you will find out tomorrow.

56:33So all next week, our holiday programming continues with the best of 2025 show on Monday. Our 2025 prediction results on Tuesday. Our tech predictions for 2026 on Wednesday. So tell a friend or a family member to watch or listen with you. Hope to see you there.

56:57Happy holidays and sending good vibes to the DTNS extended family. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker.