Tech Titans, AI Power Moves, and Safe Home Hacks

[00:00:19] Happy to have you along, my fellow Americans, to another edition of Tech Watch Radio.

[00:00:25] We keep an eye on tech so you don't have to.

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[00:00:40] That's NPITechGuys.com.

[00:00:43] And we got a lot of news today, kind of strange news.

[00:00:47] Because Dropbox looks like they're laying folks off.

[00:00:50] And this is kind of interesting because they always told us high tech was going to save us, Jay.

[00:00:53] But right now they're kind of having a pullback on tech, aren't they?

[00:00:57] Yeah, they are.

[00:00:58] And it's strange.

[00:00:59] You know, I see a lot of people doing these fourth quarter layoffs.

[00:01:03] And I don't know why people pick that.

[00:01:04] It seems like the worst time of the year to be doing layoffs of people.

[00:01:07] But Dropbox is laying off 20% of its workforce, which amazes me because I think Dropbox seems like they're doing pretty well.

[00:01:14] You know, they don't, you know, I would think they're doing well.

[00:01:17] But in a letter to say.

[00:01:18] Hey, man, I'm telling you right now the companies that I work for spend a fortune on Dropbox.

[00:01:22] And you say, Sam, why Dropbox?

[00:01:23] Why not do Teams?

[00:01:24] Or, you know, Microsoft has their OneDrive or, you know, some of these other different less expensive solutions.

[00:01:31] Because Dropbox has such a unique system that's so easy to use.

[00:01:35] When it's a problem, it's frustrating.

[00:01:37] But for the most part, it's so smooth, so easy, so simple to use.

[00:01:40] And they've added powerful, powerful features and capabilities to where it's just like really hard to consider something else.

[00:01:47] Even though it costs a lot of money, it's worth it.

[00:01:50] And they've also backed into, you know, digital signature stuff.

[00:01:53] They've backed into PDF editing stuff.

[00:01:56] They've backed into editing audio and video stuff.

[00:02:00] Downloading libraries of stuff.

[00:02:02] They've kind of replaced FTP for many situations.

[00:02:05] So they've really changed the game in terms of their upping the ante.

[00:02:08] And it's very hard to not use Dropbox, Jay.

[00:02:11] Yeah, they are.

[00:02:12] They're doing some really unique stuff.

[00:02:13] I'll tell you one unique feature that I use.

[00:02:15] I use the scanner on the app to scan images a lot with a mobile phone.

[00:02:21] You can adjust the points, and it does all of the correction for the, like, misalignment or the skewing of the image.

[00:02:28] And you can create a PDF, and it seems to work really well.

[00:02:32] But, you know, I think Dropbox is doing pretty good.

[00:02:35] Again, but their CEO, that's Drew Houston, said that the cloud company is undergoing a transitional period.

[00:02:40] And that their goal is to make cuts in areas where Dropbox has overinvested while designing a flatter, more efficient team structure.

[00:02:49] The reduction in headcount will affect 528 employees.

[00:02:55] What percent of employees is that, I wonder?

[00:02:57] I don't know, because I don't know how many employees they have total.

[00:03:01] But I don't know.

[00:03:02] Do you think that things like Microsoft OneDrive, do you think that's making a significant cut into Dropbox's user base?

[00:03:10] I think it is.

[00:03:11] The problem with Microsoft products is they're overly complicated to maintain.

[00:03:16] If you're the administrator or whatever, it's like, you know what?

[00:03:18] If you're going to do that, then you've got to deal with, first off, you've got a bunch of different versions of OneDrive.

[00:03:23] You've got the corporate version.

[00:03:24] You've got the Live 365 version.

[00:03:27] You've got the personal version.

[00:03:29] You've got the one that comes on every computer.

[00:03:30] And then you've got to back that into, oh, what's that technology that they used to use that it's tied to?

[00:03:35] It's where they used to publish sites.

[00:03:39] I can't remember the name of it right now.

[00:03:41] But anyway, you have to know that whole technology behind that just to get that figured out.

[00:03:46] And anyway, I'm just saying it's not easily usable, Jay.

[00:03:50] It just isn't.

[00:03:51] Yeah.

[00:03:52] I have trouble with my biggest thing with OneDrive is where it's automatically trying to save files out to OneDrive when I don't even have an account set up or want to do that.

[00:04:01] You know, they upgraded Office recently.

[00:04:03] I think we talked about it briefly in a previous show.

[00:04:05] And all of a sudden, you're saving files onto their cloud servers instead of your local cloud.

[00:04:11] Whether you want to or not, and then you're even having a hard time finding the things that you save.

[00:04:14] And if you're not careful and you're looking just on your computer, you're going, I don't have it.

[00:04:18] Yeah.

[00:04:19] And if I wanted to do that, I would use Google Docs or something.

[00:04:21] You know, that's not what I think of when I want to do Microsoft Office.

[00:04:25] I'm trying to edit something locally.

[00:04:27] Well, I have no problem with them saying, hey, would you like to set it up to automatically mirror what you do locally to your drive?

[00:04:34] Or do you want to save it in both places?

[00:04:36] Or do you want to, you know, I mean, I get giving people choices.

[00:04:39] My problem is when they make those choices for me, it's very difficult.

[00:04:42] Exactly.

[00:04:43] The term I was trying to think of is OneShare.

[00:04:45] I mean, I'm sorry, SharePoint.

[00:04:48] Yeah.

[00:04:49] Okay.

[00:04:49] So the old technology that used to drive this thing was called SharePoint.

[00:04:52] It was like the earlier versions of this kind of technology.

[00:04:54] The problem is to use OneDrive now, you've got to understand SharePoint.

[00:04:58] And SharePoint is the behind-the-scenes configurator, if you will, of kind of a OneDrive thing.

[00:05:03] It's way complicated.

[00:05:04] It's overly, it's a hassle.

[00:05:06] People don't like it.

[00:05:06] It's frustrating.

[00:05:07] And so it's all that kind of stuff.

[00:05:08] And so I think Dropbox is going to stay.

[00:05:10] I think that people are trying to save money.

[00:05:14] And as a result, I do think, to answer your question, yes, I do believe that they're starting to take a hit because of some of these other services that are cheaper.

[00:05:22] Well, OneDrive is incredibly cheap now.

[00:05:24] I mean, if you just buy Microsoft, you're getting like one terabyte of OneDrive.

[00:05:28] That's right.

[00:05:28] And so my point is what they're doing is you can go two ways.

[00:05:32] You can either decrease your price or you can add a bunch of features.

[00:05:36] And what Dropbox has chosen to do that I see right now is they're adding a ton of features.

[00:05:40] That's what I mean by you can edit PDFs.

[00:05:42] You can scan documents.

[00:05:43] You can do all these different things.

[00:05:47] They're adding more and more and more capabilities and functionality.

[00:05:49] Yeah.

[00:05:50] Have you used their signature feature?

[00:05:52] I haven't used their signature feature much, no.

[00:05:55] I have used their PDF editing a little bit stuff.

[00:05:57] I've used their scanning stuff a bit.

[00:05:58] I need to play with more of their video and audio editing stuff that they're building in too.

[00:06:02] Yeah.

[00:06:04] Yeah.

[00:06:04] I haven't used any video or audio editing features.

[00:06:08] It almost seems to me sometimes that a company like Dropbox is really good at what it does, starts to get feature creep.

[00:06:14] Kind of like Microsoft does, actually, where they try to do too much.

[00:06:17] And that's probably why they're saying in this article that they are overinvested and they're trying to be flatter and more efficient.

[00:06:27] Maybe they're trying to get back to their core.

[00:06:30] Dropbox reminds me of, I don't know if you remember this, the old X drive where you could mount a drive that was in the cloud on your computer as like a C drive.

[00:06:37] It would end up being the X drive.

[00:06:38] And that's what Dropbox has kind of become, and that's been a valuable tool in IT's tool set for a long time.

[00:06:45] And I hope they go more of that direction to make your point.

[00:06:48] And I do think they're wise.

[00:06:49] I don't think this is a melting down move by Dropbox by any means.

[00:06:52] I do think this is a resource reallocating discussion.

[00:06:56] And they might have had too many people invested in this area, and they don't want to go in that direction or whatever.

[00:07:00] And I think that's a smart, smart move from Dropbox.

[00:07:03] This statement does not concern me.

[00:07:05] It actually gives me confidence and hope in the Dropbox folks a little bit.

[00:07:08] Saying, hey, you know what?

[00:07:10] This is a good thing, not a bad thing.

[00:07:12] So, you know, I hope they streamline.

[00:07:14] But I'll give you an example.

[00:07:15] I used to have a Dropbox account.

[00:07:17] And it was a corporate Dropbox account with literally like 50 users, okay?

[00:07:21] And I was on an old grandfathered account.

[00:07:22] And I think I had, I think they gave you like six terabytes with that account or something like that or something.

[00:07:29] Five terabytes with that account.

[00:07:30] But I had talked them into in the early days.

[00:07:32] I've been with Dropbox forever.

[00:07:33] In the early days, I talked them into giving me 17 terabytes.

[00:07:37] So I thought I had this special account.

[00:07:39] It was cool.

[00:07:39] And I did for a while.

[00:07:41] But now they've changed the game.

[00:07:42] And now they have a business account that's got like nine terabytes just to get the account.

[00:07:47] And you've got to have three users at a minimum to get this business account.

[00:07:50] But it comes with nine terabytes.

[00:07:52] It's like $180 a year per user.

[00:07:56] But you get nine terabytes.

[00:07:57] And then every user you add, they give you three terabytes more.

[00:08:04] So in other words, three users, nine terabytes.

[00:08:07] So if you have 50 users, you have 150 terabytes now.

[00:08:10] They're becoming the storage kings.

[00:08:12] And they're really changing the game.

[00:08:14] So I changed my account and upgraded for free to this new account.

[00:08:17] Now on this one corporate account that I'm talking about, they literally have 150 terabytes available, Jay.

[00:08:22] That's incredible.

[00:08:23] That is really amazing.

[00:08:24] So that's what I mean.

[00:08:24] They're not backing away from real service.

[00:08:26] They're adding features and giving you tons of storage.

[00:08:29] They're going to be hard to beat.

[00:08:30] I'm telling you right now, if they stick with this core and this idea that they're re-allocating their resources tells me they're here to stay for the long term.

[00:08:37] And they're here to take these people on.

[00:08:39] So as of the end of last year.

[00:08:41] I think it's great news.

[00:08:42] Yeah.

[00:08:43] As the end of last year, Dropbox had 2,693.

[00:08:49] So they're dropping about 20% of their staff.

[00:08:53] See, I think that's smart.

[00:08:54] Keep 80% of the staff.

[00:08:56] Drop the 20%.

[00:08:57] Decide which redirections you want.

[00:08:59] Hire a few people that can do some different development in the areas that you need.

[00:09:02] Keep your best tech support people.

[00:09:04] Let them train a whole new, maybe a 5% growth after that.

[00:09:07] So you drop 20%.

[00:09:08] You grow back 5%, but retrain better people.

[00:09:11] You get rid of your worst people.

[00:09:12] I think it's smart.

[00:09:13] It's a little bit Elon Musk-ish.

[00:09:14] But I think it's wise.

[00:09:16] That's just my opinion.

[00:09:17] Yeah.

[00:09:17] Agreed.

[00:09:18] All right.

[00:09:19] Brought to us by TechCrunch, huh, Jay?

[00:09:21] That's right.

[00:09:21] Indeed.

[00:09:22] That's where the initial headline came from.

[00:09:25] Exactly.

[00:09:26] This is brought to you by NVIDIA, Jay.

[00:09:29] No doubt.

[00:09:30] NVIDIA is crushing it.

[00:09:31] They've silently crept up when nobody's looking, and they are absolutely crushing it.

[00:09:38] The reason why is, of course, AI.

[00:09:41] Maybe most people may not know.

[00:09:42] I mean, when you hear NVIDIA, you automatically think of graphics cards and gamers and their PCs.

[00:09:47] That's what I think of for sure.

[00:09:48] Yeah.

[00:09:49] You know, of course they do.

[00:09:51] But NVIDIA is now going to replace Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

[00:09:56] Can you believe NVIDIA has just knocked off?

[00:09:58] You know, we always hear, is AMD or somebody else going to compete with Intel?

[00:10:02] Is Intel ever going to have a competitor?

[00:10:04] And then you turn around and NVIDIA is like, sorry, yeah, we're actually way bigger now.

[00:10:09] Well, and I think that's because in the last 10 years, everything has gone video, Jay.

[00:10:13] I mean, we probably need to turn this podcast into a video at some point or something.

[00:10:16] I mean, all I'm telling you is things are going more and more and more video, video, video, everywhere, everything, all the time.

[00:10:21] Yeah, but video isn't the crunch thing.

[00:10:25] It's when you're rendering things.

[00:10:27] It's when you're creating video with a graphics engine or you're doing AI.

[00:10:33] It's all those millions and millions of calculations.

[00:10:36] In fact, I saw this thing recently about the calculations that happen inside of your average graphics card.

[00:10:42] And they're up to 36 trillion calculations a second now in the average graphics card.

[00:10:47] Yeah, I don't even understand that number.

[00:10:49] I don't understand.

[00:10:49] It's unfathomable.

[00:10:51] They said if you took everybody on the planet Earth and had them do like a long division calculation and they could do it within one second, you'd need like 46 Earths to get the kind of power that they could do in one second.

[00:11:04] And all that is a way to try to describe that number, right?

[00:11:07] Yeah.

[00:11:07] It's a way to make you just go mind boggling.

[00:11:10] What the heck?

[00:11:11] But my whole point is everything's gone video.

[00:11:13] And when I say everything's gone video, I don't even mean that everybody's using or doing video necessarily.

[00:11:19] What I mean is that the people that AI crunch this or the people that convert that or the people that render this or the people that watch that or the people that encode this or that, you've got just massive this happening all the time everywhere.

[00:11:33] I'm not just talking about the fact that people are watching video more and creating video more and all that kind of stuff.

[00:11:38] It's all those other subtasks that are along the way that relate to this, right?

[00:11:43] Yeah.

[00:11:44] I mean, but video playback is like easy for a CPU.

[00:11:48] It's the stuff on the fly that's amazing.

[00:11:51] And I think this is-

[00:11:52] It's the stuff on the fly and it's the encoding.

[00:11:53] I'll give you an example.

[00:11:54] What we do is we take our TechWatch radio show.

[00:11:57] We put the audio into a program.

[00:11:59] Gold Wave is what we use.

[00:12:00] We press a button and it basically goes to the auto and turns it into text.

[00:12:04] That's right.

[00:12:05] Well, that kind of stuff is the cycles we're talking about, right?

[00:12:08] Yeah.

[00:12:08] It's crazy how on the kitchen table,

[00:12:13] they've made this for the average user.

[00:12:15] For a card that can cost anywhere from $100 to maybe $1,000 or a couple of, you know,

[00:12:21] the really high-end ones can cost a couple grand.

[00:12:24] But it's interesting because, now this has actually happened a couple of weeks ago.

[00:12:29] We haven't had time to get to it so much on TechWatch,

[00:12:31] but we want to make sure that people know about this.

[00:12:33] Because when they announced this, Intel shares fell 4% and NVIDIA rose another 1%

[00:12:40] when they made this announcement that they were going to replace Intel on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

[00:12:48] NVIDIA's in-demand hopper chips, which power some of the world's most advanced AI models,

[00:12:52] have propelled the company to record high sales and resulting in a $3 trillion valuation.

[00:12:58] The chip maker's next-generation Blackwell AI chip performed well.

[00:13:02] It launched in March and it's seen a big surge in demand.

[00:13:05] They're going to do a stock split earlier this year.

[00:13:11] They've announced that they're going to.

[00:13:13] That has boosted their popularity and growth and keeps their price shares down.

[00:13:16] Their share price has surged by 173% in 2024 and 193% the year before that.

[00:13:25] It's astronomical.

[00:13:26] Their stock price has seen, over the last five years, an increase, Sam, of 2,498%.

[00:13:33] 2,500% increase in stock.

[00:13:36] It's just amazing.

[00:13:37] Jay, you know what?

[00:13:38] To me, the single way to describe this to everybody is AI hit the scene.

[00:13:42] Yeah, it is.

[00:13:43] Because we saw it hit in 2023.

[00:13:46] And it's just been gangbusters for them.

[00:13:51] People know this.

[00:13:52] They hear it a little bit on the news.

[00:13:53] But you just don't realize how big this is.

[00:13:56] And I'll give you another example.

[00:13:58] NVIDIA becomes the number one.

[00:14:00] They've exceeded Apple's market capitalization.

[00:14:03] They've become the world's largest company.

[00:14:04] At the close of the market earlier this year, this was a couple weeks ago, NVIDIA was valued

[00:14:09] at $3.43 trillion.

[00:14:12] That beat out Apple's $3.38 trillion.

[00:14:14] It's just incredible.

[00:14:16] Like the silent giant.

[00:14:18] Yes, it is.

[00:14:19] The other thing that's interesting about this, Jay, is it's happened in not a whole lot of time.

[00:14:23] And what are we talking?

[00:14:24] You said five years?

[00:14:25] Yeah, in five years they've just gone crazy.

[00:14:27] I mean, NVIDIA's been around for a long time.

[00:14:29] They've been around 10, 15, 20 years or whatever.

[00:14:32] And they've just kind of been in the background.

[00:14:33] They've been a niche thing for gamers and that kind of stuff.

[00:14:35] And maybe your video production guy or whatever.

[00:14:38] But now they're just letting loose.

[00:14:39] Well, they even tried to get into being on certain circuit boards or certain motherboards and this kind of stuff or whatever.

[00:14:46] I know there were iterations of computers that I'd get that would have NVIDIA chips on them.

[00:14:50] And they tried to get into that.

[00:14:51] It just didn't go that great or whatever.

[00:14:53] But now they've got kind of a niche that's taking over the whole market in so many ways.

[00:14:59] It's just shocking.

[00:15:01] And the question becomes now, well, we start to see a competitor now that that's such a growth market.

[00:15:05] Well, you see an NVIDIA competitor like you saw the Intel.

[00:15:09] Hey, the AMD people came.

[00:15:10] And then now the ARM processor people are coming or whatever else.

[00:15:13] Is that what we're going to see?

[00:15:14] Well, you have like ATX, Radeon, and some of these other companies that are doing graphics cards.

[00:15:20] And they're doing pretty well at it.

[00:15:22] But they're not getting the hype and the input and the market share that NVIDIA is just tearing it up.

[00:15:30] Not yet, but they will.

[00:15:31] Because I'm just telling you, whenever somebody does that well, it won't be long until there's a serious competitor.

[00:15:34] So we'll watch that.

[00:15:35] And to me, the competitor means competition.

[00:15:37] Competition means lower prices and more capabilities for you and I.

[00:15:41] So I'm digging it, Jay.

[00:15:42] Yeah, you and me both.

[00:15:43] It's interesting to watch.

[00:15:45] Anyway, that's fascinating.

[00:15:46] And that's brought to you by MSN Money.

[00:15:49] That's right.

[00:15:50] All right.

[00:15:51] So the Microsoft people, they got their arms in it, whether we like it or not.

[00:15:56] All right.

[00:15:57] I want to secure, educate, and protect for a second, Jay.

[00:16:00] All right.

[00:16:00] And what are we talking about with secure, educate, and protect?

[00:16:03] We're talking about seven things you should never plug into an extension cord or a power strip.

[00:16:09] See that with this piece.

[00:16:11] But I find it interesting.

[00:16:12] And I don't think people realize this.

[00:16:14] I mean, everybody kind of thinks you can just plug anything you want into an extension cord.

[00:16:17] It's nothing like, it's just like an outlet, right?

[00:16:19] Not so much.

[00:16:20] That's not really true.

[00:16:21] Extension cords should not be used ever.

[00:16:24] Let me say that again.

[00:16:26] Ever.

[00:16:27] On appliances, an expert warns.

[00:16:30] Yep.

[00:16:30] A lot of people don't have knowledge of extension cords, folks.

[00:16:35] But they say, hey, you've got to understand, if you're using a heating element or a washing machine or an appliance, microwave,

[00:16:44] the problem is most of these extension cords are, what, 14-gauge, Jay?

[00:16:47] And they won't support the circuits necessary for this kind of stuff.

[00:16:50] And if you're not careful, it'll start fires and do all kinds of stuff.

[00:16:53] Yeah, that's exactly right.

[00:16:54] A lot of extension cords are really thin.

[00:16:56] And they can be 16-gauge or smaller even.

[00:17:01] And, you know, they might be, hey, if you're trying to get your lamp, you know, behind your bed or something, that's fine.

[00:17:06] But when you look at appliances, especially space heaters, the maximum wattage normally in America is a 1,500-watt device.

[00:17:13] And it needs some pretty hefty wires to do that.

[00:17:15] And usually those appliances, the wire gauge not only on the appliance itself, but the length of the wire also is about at its maximum.

[00:17:25] It's meant to plug into the receptacle, not have any extension cords involved.

[00:17:29] Extension cords don't, unlike in places like the U.K., we don't have fuses built in.

[00:17:33] We don't have other things, circuit breakers.

[00:17:35] There are circuit breakers on the panel, but that's a whole different story.

[00:17:40] Not downstream, though.

[00:17:41] Yeah.

[00:17:41] You end up, your extension cord can end up being the fuse or the circuit breaker, and you don't want that thing melting down.

[00:17:47] So don't use extension cords, like especially with space heaters or toasters or those high-efforts things.

[00:17:52] Yeah, they say 14 and 12 gauge extension cords are some of the most common extension out there.

[00:17:59] Yeah.

[00:17:59] And 1,800 watts is what most extension cords can handle at the most.

[00:18:03] But, I mean, look, hair dryers and microwaves and all that kind of stuff can exceed that stuff if you're not careful or at least max it out.

[00:18:09] They say no extension cords whatsoever for such appliances.

[00:18:12] Then they say here's seven high-risk things in your home that you should never connect to an extension cord.

[00:18:19] Air fryers are one of them.

[00:18:21] Microwaves is another one.

[00:18:23] Refrigerators is another one.

[00:18:25] Toaster, toaster oven is another one.

[00:18:27] Five extension cords.

[00:18:28] In other words, you shouldn't plug extension cords into extension cords.

[00:18:31] I know people do that all the time, but you shouldn't do that either.

[00:18:35] Because, again, you might have a smaller extension cord somewhere and not realize that you're not carrying the load.

[00:18:39] Or the problem is you get too many outlets and people plug too many things in, creating a load that you're not aware of the concatenated load, if you will.

[00:18:48] In the election world, when you talk about these extension cords into other extension cords, the other term they use for this is no daisy chaining is the point.

[00:18:57] Six heaters, seven AC units.

[00:19:00] The bottom line, when it comes to extension cords, no appliances whatsoever.

[00:19:05] And if it has to do with heating and cooling, don't do it.

[00:19:08] You should also remember to pair power strips with only electronics, not extension cords to power strips to extension cords to whatever.

[00:19:17] And then they always say, remember, it's the load that we're talking about.

[00:19:20] When you talk about heating and cooling, the power is just too great for most extension cords.

[00:19:25] Now, if you're an electrician or you know what you're doing from a technology point of view and you're like, hey, listen, I've got an extension cord to my generator, but I understand the cord and I understand the generator's output.

[00:19:34] Look, I got this.

[00:19:35] Okay, fine.

[00:19:36] But what we're trying to get across for the average Joe, if you're not very careful, you don't mean to, but you can start a fire.

[00:19:41] You can destroy an appliance because it's not getting enough power or it's not getting enough whatever.

[00:19:46] It's getting fluctuating power.

[00:19:47] All those kind of things are very hard on equipment.

[00:19:49] And when you're talking about expensive items like appliances or heating and cooling devices and all this kind of stuff, hey, it can wear them out way faster than their normal.

[00:19:59] I don't know if I should use the term shelf life, but their normal expectations would be.

[00:20:04] That's a serious concern.

[00:20:05] Anyway, I wanted to bring it up, Jay, because I don't think most people really even think about it much.

[00:20:08] No, I don't think that they do.

[00:20:10] They don't think about that.

[00:20:11] And, you know, there are times when you have to do that in power outages or emergencies or you're using a generator.

[00:20:17] Your best thing to do there, though, is get really big extension cords.

[00:20:21] The lower the gauge, the bigger the wire.

[00:20:23] So get, you know, number 10 extension cords.

[00:20:25] Keep them as short as possible.

[00:20:27] The other thing is length adds resistance to an extension cord.

[00:20:30] So don't buy the 100 foot because you think, hey, this will be good for anything.

[00:20:33] Buy the 25 foot if that's all you need.

[00:20:37] And make sure that, you know, there's some things that you can get a little bit away with.

[00:20:40] It's always about the load.

[00:20:42] So you think of like a space heater or hairdryer that's going to be maxing out the total amount of load that it can do over a circuit.

[00:20:49] That, you don't ever want to put that on an extension cord.

[00:20:51] You might be able to get away with a refrigerator, though.

[00:20:53] If your refrigerator is running at 500 watts or 800 watts or something like that.

[00:20:56] But your hairdryer, your space heater, they're doing 1500 watts.

[00:20:59] That's the whole load.

[00:21:01] And that's calibrated to the cord that's on the unit without an extension cord involved at all.

[00:21:05] So be careful with that stuff and know what you're doing.

[00:21:08] And you've got to remember, too, even if you have to do this, as you mentioned, in emergency situations,

[00:21:12] you want to keep an eye on it, too, to make sure nothing's heating up the way you shouldn't.

[00:21:16] If you've got a heater, a hairdryer, or oven, or this or that, any heating and cooling things,

[00:21:21] you want to just basically say, look, we can only plug in one of these at a time.

[00:21:24] That's right.

[00:21:25] And another thing to watch for us.

[00:21:26] So there's ways to manage that, too, if you're paying attention.

[00:21:28] Yes.

[00:21:28] Another thing to watch for is if you have an extension cord and it's starting to heat up,

[00:21:32] like you can physically see or feel that it's heating up, you've got a problem and you need to stop it right now and fix that.

[00:21:39] Big time.

[00:21:41] Yes.

[00:21:42] So anyway, I know that sounds like it's kind of goofy.

[00:21:44] You know, Sam Durr, I already know this.

[00:21:45] If you're one of those techno people that already know this and it's, you know, your knowledge and great.

[00:21:50] Christmas and wintertime's here and people are doing that stuff, you know.

[00:21:54] But there's plenty of people that mean well and they're just like, hey,

[00:21:57] hey, you know what, I can do this and that.

[00:21:59] But you should always remember to only pair power strips with electronics.

[00:22:04] And you need to remember that you shouldn't use anything extension cord wise, et cetera, above like 15 amps.

[00:22:10] Unless you know, if you say, Sam, I've got a twist cord that goes to a generator.

[00:22:14] I'm not saying you can never do it.

[00:22:16] But I'm just saying day to day.

[00:22:18] Understand.

[00:22:18] And you've got to understand where or how the item operates.

[00:22:22] And then you've got to basically kind of pair your technology to that when you're doing this stuff.

[00:22:26] Beware of appliances, heating and cooling devices the most.

[00:22:29] Absolutely.

[00:22:31] All right.

[00:22:32] Anyway, I want people to understand this is Tech Watch Radio.

[00:22:34] We keep an eye on tech so you don't have to.

[00:22:36] Our goal is to put things on the kitchen table where the average Joe can learn and listen.

[00:22:40] We don't want it to be too technical to where it's kind of a pain to listen to and it's no fun.

[00:22:43] We want to do technology and security.

[00:22:45] We want to we want to make sure that tech serves you, doesn't own you.

[00:22:50] We want to make sure that when you're thinking about technology, that it's fun.

[00:22:54] Sometimes we talk about your TV.

[00:22:56] Sometimes we talk about your refrigerator or freezer.

[00:22:58] By the way, I just put a bunch of meat in my freezer.

[00:23:00] It's pretty cool.

[00:23:01] And it's keeping it ice cold.

[00:23:03] Sweet.

[00:23:03] Anyway, but, you know, we always want to talk about different technologies, cars and trucks.

[00:23:09] And speaking of that, my brother just got one of those one electronic Ford trucks.

[00:23:15] What are those called?

[00:23:15] The Lightning E 150s?

[00:23:17] It's the Lightning, yeah.

[00:23:18] Wow.

[00:23:18] Lightning E.

[00:23:19] He got one of those babies.

[00:23:20] He said he loves it, but he got it for work.

[00:23:23] So his work bought it for him.

[00:23:24] Yeah, he powers his house with that, though.

[00:23:26] And they say, he says, I said, do you like it?

[00:23:29] He goes, it's incredible, but I wouldn't buy one.

[00:23:30] I'm like, why?

[00:23:31] He goes, because I, in a limited range scenario, it's fantastic.

[00:23:34] But if you had to go anywhere like you'd want for your own vehicle, you're going to have

[00:23:37] a problem.

[00:23:38] Well, the good thing, though, is with a Lightning and you got a pickup truck bed, you can pop

[00:23:42] a big generator in the back of there and extend your range.

[00:23:45] You could do that.

[00:23:46] That's right.

[00:23:47] But his point is, hey, you know, for my own personal use, I need to go too many places

[00:23:50] that may not have connectivity.

[00:23:51] It won't work.

[00:23:52] But I said to him, I said, does it got the power we're talking about?

[00:23:55] He goes, it's the most powerful thing I've ever driven in my life.

[00:23:58] It's almost suicidal.

[00:23:59] It's crazy.

[00:23:59] Yeah.

[00:24:00] They said it's crazy.

[00:24:01] When you hit that thing, it'll throw you back with the G.

[00:24:04] He was shocked about it.

[00:24:06] Yeah.

[00:24:06] It's incredible torque from these electric vehicles.

[00:24:10] There was one recently.

[00:24:11] We don't have time for the story, but there was a new vehicle that came out and it's hitting

[00:24:16] under two second zero to 60 mile an hour runs.

[00:24:21] It's just amazing.

[00:24:23] Yeah.

[00:24:23] Try to hold on to the steering wheel, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:24:25] That's all I'm saying.

[00:24:26] There you have it.

[00:24:27] Incredible stuff.

[00:24:28] We keep an eye on tech so you don't have to check it out.

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[00:24:41] Make it a great tech day, will you?

[00:24:43] Hey, thanks.