Speaker 1: Threads is now on the web. Will it make you
Speaker 1: use it more? At and T has a new over
Speaker 1: the air option to get internet into your house. Samsung
Speaker 1: has something for Disney fans. Plus your tech questions answered.
Speaker 1: What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich
Speaker 1: on Tech, the show where I talk about the tech
Speaker 1: stuff I think you should know about, and it's the
Speaker 1: place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe
Speaker 1: that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. We are
Speaker 1: broadcasting live coast to coast from Los Angeles. Phone lines
Speaker 1: are now open at triple eight Rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: Email is also open. Just go to Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv and hit contact. That's Rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: Hit contact. All right, We got some great guests coming
Speaker 1: up this week. Scott Johnson, founder of the frog Pants
Speaker 1: Network and the host of a video game news and
Speaker 1: views podcast called Core. He will be joining us to
Speaker 1: talk about Sony's new PlayStation portal portable gaming system. We've
Speaker 1: got doctor Chris Pearson, founder of Black Cloak, to talk
Speaker 1: about AI and hacking, and a little bit later in
Speaker 1: the show. Emily dry Belbis, electric vehicle reporter for PC mag.
Speaker 1: We'll talk all things evs well in Hollywood. The big
Speaker 1: news right now is that Bob Barker has died. Legendary
Speaker 1: game show host ninety nine years old, nineteen time Emmy
Speaker 1: Award winning game show host. And Bob has a special
Speaker 1: place in my heart because I was actually on The
Speaker 1: Prices right in college. It was one of those things
Speaker 1: where I'm from New Jersey, come out to school in
Speaker 1: California and they say, hey, we're doing a field trip
Speaker 1: to The Prices, right, anyone want to go? And I said, sure,
Speaker 1: of course. I mean, who didn't grow up with that show?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And we get there. You stand in this long line
Speaker 1: in television city, which is CBS Studios kind of in
Speaker 1: the middle of the city here, and you just wait
Speaker 1: and the producers they kind of come up and talk
Speaker 1: to all the people in line, and they give you
Speaker 1: a name tag. Of course, that iconic name tag still
Speaker 1: have it, by the way. And then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden in the show, what do I hear rich de Mirro? Oh,
Speaker 1: I think it was Richard. You have to use your
Speaker 1: full name. It was Richard Demiro. Come on, down, and
Speaker 1: I mean, at that moment, it is so tough to
Speaker 1: explain what your brain feels like. But the best way
Speaker 1: I could describe it is it went to Jello. If
Speaker 1: someone asked what my name was, I wouldn't have known.
Speaker 1: The energy level. All the excitement in that place was
Speaker 1: so fun. I ended up not winning anything except the
Speaker 1: consolation prizes because I bid seven hundred dollars on a
Speaker 1: sewing machine. And how would I not a sewing machine costs?
Speaker 1: I had no clue, but I did find it interesting.
Speaker 1: Bob Barker's biography here. He worked part time in radio
Speaker 1: during college KTTS Radio in Springfield, Missouri. Then he worked
Speaker 1: in Florida at WWPG Radio. Then here in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: he got his own show, The Bob Barker Show, that
Speaker 1: ran for six years out of Burbank. He did a
Speaker 1: show on k and X Radio in Los Angeles and
Speaker 1: he was just on the radio and Ralph Edwards, I
Speaker 1: guess a big producer was looking for a TV host
Speaker 1: and he heard his voice. He loved it, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I would like to do a version
Speaker 1: of Truth or Consequences on TV. And Bob Barker said,
Speaker 1: the day I met Ralph Edwards. My life changed forever.
Speaker 1: It certainly did. He went on to host that show
Speaker 1: for many, many years and at the end of the show,
Speaker 1: we all remember what he said, This is Bob Barker
Speaker 1: reminding you to help control the pet population. Have your
Speaker 1: pet Spader newtered. When I was a kid, I had
Speaker 1: no idea what that meant. Like half the people watching
Speaker 1: that as kids, we were just like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: It was like this mysterious thing he said every single
Speaker 1: time at the end of the show. And now, of
Speaker 1: course we know Bob Barker died of natural causes at
Speaker 1: ninety nine. And you know, by the way, I posted
Speaker 1: the video clip of me on prices right on my
Speaker 1: Instagram at rich on Tech if you want to watch it.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit dated, I'll be honest, a little
Speaker 1: bit dated because it was a long time ago. But
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because you know, this is my birthday
Speaker 1: week actually, and so whenever it's my birthday, I always
Speaker 1: kind of think I'd be get very retrospective about things,
Speaker 1: and I kind of think about my life and where
Speaker 1: I've come and where I've been and what I'm doing
Speaker 1: and where I'm going, and I don't recommend you do
Speaker 1: that because it can really mess with you a little bit.
Speaker 1: So just anyway, I tell you that because I've just
Speaker 1: been very, very retrospective, and I feel like when people
Speaker 1: that you grew up with, your idols start passing away
Speaker 1: as you get older, it's a check, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like you're really sitting there thinking about this stuff,
Speaker 1: and that's where I'm at. So anyway, rest in peace,
Speaker 1: Bob Barker and all the other folks from my child
Speaker 1: hood that are now passed it. Really, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want this show to be a downer. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm a very positive guy, but it's like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: you know you're getting old. When let's see what happened
Speaker 1: this week? Oh yesterday, Okay, So I went through this
Speaker 1: whole thing of switching to the pixel fold. Okay, Google
Speaker 1: pixel Fold. I got the phone into test and I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna see what Android is like.
Speaker 1: We got a couple of weeks until the Apple event.
Speaker 1: I know I'm gonna switch the iPhone fifteen. Let me
Speaker 1: see what Android's all about by putting my SIM card
Speaker 1: in there. And so I put my SIM card in
Speaker 1: there and it was great. Everything was good, but it
Speaker 1: became this whole thing of my I message and this
Speaker 1: is like this lock that Apple has on Americans with
Speaker 1: this I message situation, and people would it. Really. It
Speaker 1: was fine for a bit until someone sent me a
Speaker 1: video and the video was like postage thumbnail sized, and
Speaker 1: I was like, what is this video? I couldn't even
Speaker 1: My friend was trying to explain something to me in
Speaker 1: a video and I couldn't even see it. He was
Speaker 1: actually to show me how to cut open a I
Speaker 1: think it was a papaya that he grew in his backyard.
Speaker 1: He's like this, how you open it? And so I
Speaker 1: couldn't watch the video because it was so small. I said,
Speaker 1: all right, I got to go back to my iPhone.
Speaker 1: So I tried to switch my my SIM card back
Speaker 1: to my iPhone, and oh my gosh, what a hassle.
Speaker 1: All these phones have switched to what's called e sims,
Speaker 1: electronic SIMS or embedded SIMS, which means there's no physical
Speaker 1: SIM card. So theoretically you can do the switch online,
Speaker 1: but that did not work. So I was on phone
Speaker 1: on the phone with a customer service representative yesterday for
Speaker 1: over an hour trying to get my old phone to work,
Speaker 1: and meantime I had no phone line, so I was
Speaker 1: using my test phone to actually call the customer service rep.
Speaker 1: But it was a mess and we spent an hour
Speaker 1: doing this. I said, I got to go. I got
Speaker 1: to pick up my kids at school. I have no
Speaker 1: phone line. I'm growing to pick up my kids. And finally,
Speaker 1: you know, I get back home and I said, let
Speaker 1: me call again, let me try again. I get someone
Speaker 1: on the phone and I'm like, I've you know, it's
Speaker 1: been very frustrating. This has taken over an hour with
Speaker 1: the last person, do you think you can do it?
Speaker 1: And she goes, well, what's the eSIM number that you're
Speaker 1: trying to activate on the new phone. I said, here
Speaker 1: you go. I got a message on my phone that
Speaker 1: said your phone's active. I said, wait, what you just
Speaker 1: did in thirty seconds when it took the last person
Speaker 1: an hour to try to figure out? And I tweeted
Speaker 1: about this, I said, you know this happened, and people
Speaker 1: are calling it customer service rep roulette. Sometimes when you're
Speaker 1: not getting the satisfaction you need from a customer service rep,
Speaker 1: it is okay to just go ahead and say, you
Speaker 1: know what, we're not getting anywhere here. Let me just
Speaker 1: call back, and you call back, you get someone else,
Speaker 1: and they change your life. It happened to me. I'm
Speaker 1: not getting thirty seconds, and it was it was all
Speaker 1: figured out eSIMs. I also get some messages from time
Speaker 1: to time on the show about talking about things and
Speaker 1: not thoroughly explaining them. So let me explain what eSIM is.
Speaker 1: So physical sim cards, if you've ever seen one, is
Speaker 1: that little tiny card. It looks like a chip that
Speaker 1: you pop into your phone and it helps you get
Speaker 1: the cellular signal connects the phone to the cellular network.
Speaker 1: And so we've used these for many, many years. But
Speaker 1: an e SIM is now built into the phone, so
Speaker 1: you no longer have to put that physical sim card
Speaker 1: into the phone. Now. Apple was the first to introduce
Speaker 1: this back in like twenty eighteen, and they did it secretly.
Speaker 1: They didn't really tell a lot of people. But they've
Speaker 1: started activating these things in the in the Apple stores
Speaker 1: without really making a big deal out of it. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to test it out and see how it worked,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, it became good enough. We're on the
Speaker 1: iPhone fourteen, which is the phone I have it on
Speaker 1: they just did away with the physical simcard slot, so
Speaker 1: there's no way to put a physical SIM card in
Speaker 1: this new iPhone. And so Apple said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we've been testing this secretly for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: It seems to work out and it's all good. So
Speaker 1: now we're ready to jump off the you know, off
Speaker 1: the dock into the water and just let everyone do this. Well,
Speaker 1: that's great until you have a situation like mine yesterday
Speaker 1: where it just didn't work. So what's the benefit. Well,
Speaker 1: you don't have to go into a store. You can
Speaker 1: have multiple SIM cards on your phone, so if you
Speaker 1: travel internationally, you can have your regular simcard plus an
Speaker 1: international SIM. It makes it really easy to switch carriers.
Speaker 1: By removing the simcard slot, you can make sleeker and
Speaker 1: smaller devices. In fact, one of the first devices that
Speaker 1: Apple had this on was the Apple Watch because it
Speaker 1: was an embedded simcard, just a little piece of technology inside.
Speaker 1: Now pretty much every major phone that comes out has eSIM. Google,
Speaker 1: Samsung has it, and there is a phone I tested recently,
Speaker 1: the Nothing Phone, which didn't have it, which was a
Speaker 1: little odd because I was like, oh, that's weird to
Speaker 1: not have an e SIM. Also, this enables things like
Speaker 1: laptops and tablets to have cellular connectivity. Basically, with eSIM,
Speaker 1: every single device in the world could theoretically be connected
Speaker 1: to cellular, which is what the cellular companies want. They
Speaker 1: want to make sure every device can have it, and
Speaker 1: it's cheap enough and small enough where they can just
Speaker 1: build it into this device and now you can have
Speaker 1: a cellular line or a data line for ten bucks
Speaker 1: a month, whatever it is. So eSIMs are really handy.
Speaker 1: If you are wanting to switch carriers, you don't have
Speaker 1: to go to a store, you don't have to go
Speaker 1: get a SIM card. If you want to travel internationally,
Speaker 1: it theoretically makes things more competitive because you have the
Speaker 1: choice of all these carriers. If you don't like who
Speaker 1: you're on, you can switch instantly to a new one.
Speaker 1: If you go overseas, you can download an eSIM. Now
Speaker 1: that's all when it works out perfectly. Many people have
Speaker 1: had issues with this, including myself recently. But now I'm
Speaker 1: wondering was it just the customer service person I was
Speaker 1: talking to, because the other person did it in about
Speaker 1: thirty seconds, So is it really the technology or is
Speaker 1: it maybe someone that wasn't as trained on this technology.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is, now you know what an
Speaker 1: eSIM is. Electronic simcard is probably in your phone, so
Speaker 1: next time you go to activate your phone, they may
Speaker 1: not have to put any sort of simcard in. The
Speaker 1: Samsungs have both eSIM and a physical SIM. The Google
Speaker 1: phone still have an eSIM and a physical SIM. The
Speaker 1: iPhones just have the eSIM. So now you know all
Speaker 1: about ESM All right. Coming up on this week's show,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Threads. Remember Threads. This is
Speaker 1: Meta's answer to Twitter. They took a big step this week.
Speaker 1: It is now available on the web. So will it
Speaker 1: make you use Threads more? I don't know, we'll find out. Also,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about AT and t's new option to get
Speaker 1: internet into your house. If you want wireless internet, at
Speaker 1: and T now has that for you. And the phone
Speaker 1: lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: Give me a call if you have a question about
Speaker 1: technology at eight eight eight seven four to two, four
Speaker 1: to one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you talking technology at triple eight rich one O one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to
Speaker 1: one zero one. I was talking about my peer and
Speaker 1: on the price is right. I posted it to my
Speaker 1: Instagram at rich on Tech and Steven says, question, do
Speaker 1: you still own that rug doctor? That is? That is
Speaker 1: what I got. That was my departing gift. I got
Speaker 1: a rug doctor. I got a encyclopedia set. That's how
Speaker 1: old this was. It was like a something like that,
Speaker 1: and then a jewelry box. And I sent it all
Speaker 1: to my house back home in New Jersey. Like so
Speaker 1: I never actually even saw this stuff. My parents just
Speaker 1: had it. But anyway, let's go to uh, let's go
Speaker 1: to Scott to kick things off in Atlanta, Georgia. Scott,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: Hey, Rich, I heard you talking about not having a
Speaker 3: message on Android on your Samsung found Why didn't you
Speaker 3: use paper? I'm sure you received an invite today Abitude.
Speaker 1: Good question.
Speaker 4: Uh so, I actually I've been using it, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: for a month or so. When it works great with
Speaker 4: that message, you don't have to worry about those little
Speaker 4: I mean that comes through on our list.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's you know, and there's several I actually
Speaker 1: don't have an invite to Beeper, but I have been
Speaker 1: using another program called Sunbird. And it's funny because I
Speaker 1: feel guilty doing this, Like I feel like I'm doing
Speaker 1: something wrong by getting my I messages on an Android phone.
Speaker 1: But if you talk to almost any tech person, it's
Speaker 1: the biggest non kept secret in the tech world that
Speaker 1: you know, most tech people are using an iPhone plus
Speaker 1: an Android device because you've got to keep up with
Speaker 1: both platforms. But for some reason, and Apple knows this.
Speaker 1: The reason why Apple does not open up I message
Speaker 1: to the world is because they know people would switch
Speaker 1: away from the iPhone. The iPhone's an amazing device, but
Speaker 1: what really locks people in, at least here in the US,
Speaker 1: is the fact of those blue bubbles. You can debate
Speaker 1: me all day you want on that, but that is
Speaker 1: what keeps people locked into that platform. Yes, the iPhone
Speaker 1: is amazing, but people would quickly forget it if they
Speaker 1: use something else like a Samsung or a Google Pixel
Speaker 1: or the variety of other Android phones out there. I mean,
Speaker 1: the iPhone is special, but it's not that special. It's
Speaker 1: really more about the ecosystem. And so anyway, I tell
Speaker 1: you that because yes, I do have a system that
Speaker 1: uses Sunbird, which we've actually had them on the show here,
Speaker 1: and there's a couple of things I'll go through Scott.
Speaker 1: You mentioned one, you mentioned Beeper, But there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of companies working on the cross message solution. And by
Speaker 1: the way, Apple does not condone any of this, and
Speaker 1: Apple try well, you know, they don't allow this, they
Speaker 1: don't want it, they don't build an easy way to
Speaker 1: do this. But these companies have found solutions around Apple's
Speaker 1: lack of support for cross messaging solutions. By the way,
Speaker 1: I Message is proprietary and it's fantastic, but there are
Speaker 1: cross messaging solutions that would make every phone in the
Speaker 1: world function like I Message. It's called RCS, and Android
Speaker 1: incorporates RCS, which means if you go from Android to Android, yes,
Speaker 1: you can send big videos, you can send you know,
Speaker 1: read red receipts, responses, people can see when you're typing,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff. It was a long time coming
Speaker 1: on Android, but now it's across the board. And what
Speaker 1: Apple does is with you know, if they're not if
Speaker 1: you're not sending an I message, like if you're sending
Speaker 1: from Apple to an Android. The reason it pops up
Speaker 1: green is because they're using just SMS, which is you know,
Speaker 1: short Messaging service, which has been around forever, but it's
Speaker 1: an old standard. The new standard is RCS, and Apple
Speaker 1: refuses to adopt that because again I explain why, because
Speaker 1: if they did, it would make everyone happy, and it
Speaker 1: would make people forget about this whole iPhone versus Android
Speaker 1: message debacle. I tell you all this because yes, you
Speaker 1: mentioned Beeper. That's one of them, and all of these
Speaker 1: things are either really tricky to set up or still
Speaker 1: invite only. So Beeper is one b E E P
Speaker 1: E R dot com. The one I'm using is Sunbird.
Speaker 1: And then there's one called Blue Bubbles and this is
Speaker 1: open source and you can install this yourself, but it
Speaker 1: is very complicated, so just fair warning there. It requires
Speaker 1: you to have like an Apple computer on at all
Speaker 1: times in your house acting as a server or another setup,
Speaker 1: which is also equally tricky. Then there's one called air
Speaker 1: Message dot org and they do I message. But if
Speaker 1: you have a Windows computer, Windows actually has a solution.
Speaker 1: Microsoft has what's called phone Link for iOS, and this
Speaker 1: is available for Windows eleven and this will effectively allow
Speaker 1: you to see your I messages on your Windows computer,
Speaker 1: not necessarily on your Android phone. So those are a
Speaker 1: bunch of solutions you can do. But again, like the
Speaker 1: one I'm using is not necessarily secure because I do
Speaker 1: have to log in with my Apple ID to a
Speaker 1: third party service, and whenever you're doing that, you are
Speaker 1: really opening yourself up to a variety of issues security
Speaker 1: wise and elsewise. So while I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people use these solutions, I can't necessarily say for the
Speaker 1: average person they're very good. I personally wish that Apple
Speaker 1: made an I message app for Android overnight. It would
Speaker 1: be the number one messaging app at least here in
Speaker 1: the US. They could charge ninety nine cents a month
Speaker 1: for it and people would buy it, people would use it,
Speaker 1: But Apple knows on the flip side there would be
Speaker 1: people who deflect to Android. So great question, Scott. To
Speaker 1: kick us off, if you have a question, It's triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Coming up, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk to Scott Johnson about the PlayStation Portable. This is
Speaker 1: a new way to play your PS five games on
Speaker 1: the go. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 5: Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out talking technology with you, and
Speaker 1: on the line is Scott Johnson, founder of the frog
Speaker 1: Pants Network and host of the Video Games News and
Speaker 1: Views podcast Core Scott, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2: Really happy to be here. Rich Thanks all right.
Speaker 1: So of developments this week in the video game world.
Speaker 1: The first is this PlayStation remote play device called the
Speaker 1: PlayStation Portal. This is a one ninety nine dollars and
Speaker 1: ninety nine cent, so two hundred dollars device that allows
Speaker 1: you to play your PS five.
Speaker 5: And I'm a little confused.
Speaker 1: You have to explain to me, is this something that
Speaker 1: lets you play the games outside your house or just
Speaker 1: inside your house.
Speaker 2: Well, the good news it's a little bit of both.
Speaker 6: And that's one been one of the big complaints about
Speaker 6: remote play in the past is it hasn't been great
Speaker 6: for out of the house Wi Fi use, like if
Speaker 6: you went to a hotel or a resort or something
Speaker 6: like that. And a big part of that is just
Speaker 6: you know, remote play has been a little fishy for
Speaker 6: a long time, for years really in terms of quality
Speaker 6: and what you can sort of expect. This device promises
Speaker 6: we'll see if it delivers to be able to take
Speaker 6: you out of the house or anywhere that there's a
Speaker 6: decent Wi Fi connection and be able to remotely not
Speaker 6: only wake your PlayStation five up, but also play that
Speaker 6: game with as little latency as humanly possible.
Speaker 2: And they're making some really big promises in that regard.
Speaker 1: So the idea of this, it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: Nintendo switch, but it's tethered almost to your console, so
Speaker 1: you have to have a PlayStation five to use this,
Speaker 1: and it's not actually doing the processing on board. It's
Speaker 1: kind of using your system to process the games. Has
Speaker 1: anyone done this before?
Speaker 2: Yes, in a sense.
Speaker 6: There are some portable devices that are exclusively for streaming
Speaker 6: games from various streaming services, a little bit different than this,
Speaker 6: where you've got, you know, the server housing the games
Speaker 6: is your own PlayStation five. But Logitech, for example, makes
Speaker 6: a device that works with game Pass within vidia's service
Speaker 6: called g Force now various other services, including remote play
Speaker 6: from PlayStation and its job is to just pull from
Speaker 6: the cloud and let you play these games remotely. The
Speaker 6: big difference here is this is a you device, meaning
Speaker 6: this is not a server on the internet somewhere. It's
Speaker 6: not a service you subscribe to. It is your PlayStation
Speaker 6: five at home, running and using your home Wi Fi
Speaker 6: and the Internet to send it to you wherever you
Speaker 6: are so that you can play it. And that may
Speaker 6: sound a little maybe a little out there to a
Speaker 6: lot of people, like maybe this is just a weird
Speaker 6: way to play your games. But if you can have
Speaker 6: a successful connection and keep that latency low, there's some
Speaker 6: value in saying, well, I spent three hours last night
Speaker 6: playing this game. I'd sure like to take my progress
Speaker 6: on the road, and that's what this is designed to do.
Speaker 5: Now, you use the term called latency.
Speaker 1: We often hear this with audio and also video games.
Speaker 5: What does that mean exactly?
Speaker 6: Well, latency is just really when you push a button
Speaker 6: or do an action, how long does it take for
Speaker 6: that to show up on screen?
Speaker 2: Is the simplest way to describe it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like depending on your network setup, some
Speaker 1: people are going to have a great set up. Some
Speaker 1: people are a little techier than others. They want a
Speaker 1: minimum of what speed for this. It also kind of
Speaker 1: depends on your router and just your you know, you
Speaker 1: could have a great router and a great setup, then
Speaker 1: some days you're just like, what's going on with my WiFi?
Speaker 5: Why is it not very good today?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 6: That is absolutely true. What Sony is saying is if
Speaker 6: you have a five megabyte connection, that you'll be able
Speaker 6: to play, and you'll play okay. If you have up
Speaker 6: to fifteen, that's even better. They recommend fifteen or higher,
Speaker 6: but if you're down to as low as five you
Speaker 6: can get by, that's probably good news. For when you
Speaker 6: are in hotels, I can't imagine. I can't think of
Speaker 6: a hotel I've been to in the last fifteen years
Speaker 6: that had great Wi Fi.
Speaker 2: They're not known for that.
Speaker 6: So it seems like a lot of the on the
Speaker 6: road opportunities are going to be places like hotels and
Speaker 6: resorts and things, and I think you're going to find
Speaker 6: that your experience there may be a little mixed, But
Speaker 6: knowing that five is kind of the bare minimum is reasonable.
Speaker 6: I think for a lot of modern setups, most people
Speaker 6: are kind of they're already. But I think you are
Speaker 6: going to have situations where some people just don't have
Speaker 6: a good setup in their house, so they haven't replaced
Speaker 6: their router in twenty years, and they don't know why
Speaker 6: it's slower there, and so they're going to be a
Speaker 6: lot of tech calls about why isn't this working right?
Speaker 6: Some of those issues and That's why I'm encouraging people
Speaker 6: before they slap the two hundred bucks down that they
Speaker 6: maybe look into try and remote play on other devices.
Speaker 6: Try it on your phone, your Mac, your PC, whatever,
Speaker 6: and see what you're already getting in that environment. Chances are,
Speaker 6: if that's a decent experience, it'll be even better with
Speaker 6: the portal.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the whole audio aspect of this, isn't
Speaker 1: there kind of a weird audio aspect.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's a little bit of funky going on with
Speaker 6: this bit, and it feels a little like old Sony,
Speaker 6: like memory stick, PlayStation portable, Vita Sony, where they wanted
Speaker 6: to push a proprietary thing to players in that case
Speaker 6: of with storage and cartridge type. In this case, it's
Speaker 6: a new audio technology that they call PlayStation Link, and
Speaker 6: PlayStation Link is a lossless potentially format or audio technology.
Speaker 6: It will allow you to connect to these devices your
Speaker 6: PlayStation portal and be able to hear audio in a
Speaker 6: lossless way. It's also got two channels and by the
Speaker 6: way they're making these heads they're making a headset and
Speaker 6: a pair of earbuds to coincide with this launch. One
Speaker 6: is called PlayStation Pulse Elite that's the large over the
Speaker 6: ear headset, and the buds are called PlayStation Pulse Explore.
Speaker 6: The real thing to know about those is both of
Speaker 6: these support that link technology, which means this device will
Speaker 6: work wireless wirelessly with those very low latency lossless audio.
Speaker 6: That's really good if you're into the ecosystem and that's
Speaker 6: what you want to hear. But this device does not
Speaker 6: support Bluetooth. So if you've got existing headsets, earbuds or
Speaker 6: whatever laying around and you want to use them with
Speaker 6: this device, you're out of luck. Ironically, though, those devices
Speaker 6: support Bluetooth from other sources, so you could use those earbuds,
Speaker 6: for example, with your iPhone or Android phone, and it
Speaker 6: would recognize it as a Bluetooth device. So it's kind
Speaker 6: of weird it's serving one side and not the other.
Speaker 6: They really want you to buy one of these headsets,
Speaker 6: otherwise you're stuck with speakers or some sort of dongle adapter,
Speaker 6: or at the very least you just you know, plug
Speaker 6: it in with a with a wired headset, which it
Speaker 6: does have support for.
Speaker 1: What about someone who maybe, because this is probably going
Speaker 1: to launch during the holidays, someone is purchasing a gift
Speaker 1: for a friend or family member that has a PS five,
Speaker 1: is this a good companion to that device if they
Speaker 1: don't mind spending the money.
Speaker 6: Let's say you're somebody who is one hundred percent in
Speaker 6: the PlayStation ecosystem. You really just care about your PlayStations,
Speaker 6: and right now the five is your PlayStation of the day,
Speaker 6: and you're not dabbling in Steam decks or other you know, switches,
Speaker 6: this sort of thing. If that's the case, and you
Speaker 6: are that level of purest PlayStation player and you play
Speaker 6: all the hoteny releases and you subscribe to their service,
Speaker 6: I think this might be a good buy for those
Speaker 6: for that very specific kind of person, which is what
Speaker 6: I mean about it being kind of a weird, not niche.
Speaker 6: But it's a smaller percentage of even the PlayStation market.
Speaker 6: I think they could have passed a wider net, maybe
Speaker 6: even made this device work with other services. They're not
Speaker 6: going to make it work with xCloud, obviously, but maybe
Speaker 6: it could have worked with in videos service or somebody else's,
Speaker 6: but they chose to keep it all in house. And again,
Speaker 6: if that's all you care about is your PlayStation games
Speaker 6: and you continuing to play them in bed or off
Speaker 6: on your trip, or on the plane or wherever you
Speaker 6: can get that connection. Then yeah, I think two hundred
Speaker 6: bucks is okay, especially if you already spent the six
Speaker 6: hundred a couple of years ago, and you've already you know,
Speaker 6: you've forgotten about that loss of cash in your wallet.
Speaker 5: Scott, what game are you playing these days?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 6: I have so many on my list, but right now
Speaker 6: it's all about Balder's Gate three. The good news is
Speaker 6: Balder's Gate three within a week or two, I believe,
Speaker 6: launches on PlayStation five, and for a while it will
Speaker 6: be a PS five console exclusive until the Xbox versions
Speaker 6: ready later this year. This game is breaking every possible
Speaker 6: record you can think of, including reviews and scores. Kind
Speaker 6: of just shattered the world this year and a year
Speaker 6: that has already got amazing games in it, Balder's Gate
Speaker 6: three is the place to be, and PlayStation five owners
Speaker 6: are about to get it, so I'm excited for them,
Speaker 6: and it probably will plague really well on this device,
Speaker 6: so I guess look forward to that, all right.
Speaker 1: Scott Johnson, founder of the frog Pants Network and host
Speaker 1: of the video games news and views podcast Core.
Speaker 5: Where can folks find you online?
Speaker 6: Best place to go would be FrogPants dot com. If
Speaker 6: you're looking for Core or any other podcasts we do
Speaker 6: frog pants dot com. We'll have a whole listing there
Speaker 6: of those podcasts, and if you want to check me
Speaker 6: out online, you can usually find me in all the
Speaker 6: socials is either Scott Johnson or frog Pants.
Speaker 2: So I look forward to seeing you there.
Speaker 5: Scott, thanks so much for joining me today. If you
Speaker 5: have a question about technology, hop on the phone is
Speaker 5: triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 5: seven four two four one zero one more.
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech right after this, welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking
Speaker 1: technology at triple A rich one on one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Speaker 1: Let's go to John in Mission Viejo, California. John, you're
Speaker 1: on with.
Speaker 8: Rich Well, thank you very much. My question has to
Speaker 8: do with two models of iPhone. The first one is
Speaker 8: the fourteen Promax and the second one is the se model.
Speaker 8: We're traveling to Europe in a couple of months and
Speaker 8: I need to know if I need a converter to
Speaker 8: go from sixty cycles to fifty cycles for each phone,
Speaker 8: or can I just buy an adapter. That is each phone,
Speaker 8: can it detect fifty cycles all by self?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So here's my experience with this. The only time
Speaker 1: you need a travel there's two things. There's a travel
Speaker 1: conver and then there's there's a voltage converter, and then
Speaker 1: there's a travel adapter. So what you need is just
Speaker 1: to travel adapter because if you look on the you know,
Speaker 1: if you look on the tiny tiny print on these
Speaker 1: plugs that you've got, they pretty much do fifty and
Speaker 1: sixty hurts like you mentioned, So it's it's automatically going
Speaker 1: to handle that part. The main thing you need to know,
Speaker 1: and this, I think is is really tricky for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, and myself included when I when I
Speaker 1: was going to Europe for the first time, this was
Speaker 1: I had no idea what to expect. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't know if my phone was going to melt when
Speaker 1: I plugged it in, right, But the reality is most
Speaker 1: of the I guess you would call it the plug,
Speaker 1: you know, the thing that you plug into the wall
Speaker 1: here in the US, right, what would you call that, John.
Speaker 8: I would call that the electrical receptacle.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, no, what okay? The thing that you plug
Speaker 1: into that what would you call that, the little like
Speaker 1: square thing, what would you call that?
Speaker 8: I would call that an adapter?
Speaker 1: Okay, So the adapter, So the adapter that we have
Speaker 1: here in the US, the one that you plug your
Speaker 1: iPhone like USB cord into. Those typically handle a range
Speaker 1: of If you look on the back, it says input
Speaker 1: one hundred to two hundred and forty volts one point
Speaker 1: five amps, and then fifty to sixty hertz. So what
Speaker 1: that means is that this device itself can handle a
Speaker 1: little bit of fluctuation with the power supply. But I
Speaker 1: think what it comes down to is, you know, the
Speaker 1: plug on the end needs to be converted to be
Speaker 1: able to plug into a European plug, you know, wall
Speaker 1: outlet or something like that. So I don't The short
Speaker 1: answer is all you need is an adapter. Do you
Speaker 1: have an adapter?
Speaker 9: So far?
Speaker 8: If you have that, no, But I can go down
Speaker 8: and I can buy a couple of adapters. We're going
Speaker 8: over to Greece and then we're going to go over
Speaker 8: to Italy and then also Craotia.
Speaker 1: Oh very nice, very exciting. Well, one adapter should handle that.
Speaker 1: The one that I like, that's it's very inexpensive. I've
Speaker 1: used this in various countries. It's on Amazon. It's not
Speaker 1: just me that likes this. It's got eleven thousand ratings.
Speaker 1: It's pretty popular. It's the Epica EPI CKA and this
Speaker 1: is a travel adapter that works in you know, different countries.
Speaker 1: It's got USB on the bottom, the large USB and
Speaker 1: it's on sale for eighteen dollars and thirty nine cents.
Speaker 1: So I like that one. And it's got one USBC.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that you can actually plug that
Speaker 1: into the wall and then you don't even need your converter.
Speaker 1: You can just or your wall adapter. You can just
Speaker 1: plug your USB directly into that. Now that's going to
Speaker 1: work nicely. But if you want something that powers up
Speaker 1: devices faster, I do also like this one called one
Speaker 1: Adapter one World one hundred, and this is a little
Speaker 1: bit more expensive. It's closer to like ninety dollars, but
Speaker 1: this will power things like your laptop and your tablet
Speaker 1: without the need for your adapter at all. So you
Speaker 1: can plug that directly into the wall, then plug your
Speaker 1: USBC into it. It's got two USB C two USBA
Speaker 1: and you can plug that. But what you need to
Speaker 1: know when you travel is that most of your regular gadgets,
Speaker 1: like your phones and your tablets and your laptops, those
Speaker 1: will all be fine with the adapters that you already have,
Speaker 1: and you just need a travel adapter. It's when you
Speaker 1: look at things like appliances. So if you're talking about
Speaker 1: a hair dryer or a hair straightener, that's when you
Speaker 1: need a travel voltage converter. And so that's where it
Speaker 1: gets a little bit trickier because those have a different
Speaker 1: power requirement, and so those those definitely are not definitely
Speaker 1: but many times need a converter. So that's the answer
Speaker 1: to that. I know it's so complicated because it's but basically,
Speaker 1: what I've found is that most of the things just
Speaker 1: sort of work. So that's the good news, all right, John,
Speaker 1: thanks for the question today from a mission Viejo. Appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Let's see here. Let me talk about two things that
Speaker 1: I think you should know about here. Number one, Meta
Speaker 1: Meta has rolled out a new version of threads, and
Speaker 1: Threads is now on the web. So remember we talked
Speaker 1: about threads. This is sort of their answer to Twitter
Speaker 1: from Facebook. It is now available on the internet. I
Speaker 1: know it does not sound weird, but it was. It
Speaker 1: was previously available on the apps on iOS and Android
Speaker 1: and on the internet you can only view someone's thread.
Speaker 1: But now you can actually go to the website threads
Speaker 1: let's see, is it threads dot net and you can search,
Speaker 1: you can post, you can repost whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1: You can basically do most of the functionality that you
Speaker 1: can do on the app version on the web. So
Speaker 1: what does that mean, Well, it just gives Twitter a
Speaker 1: little bit more of a competition because before, if you
Speaker 1: were a really hardcore user of this, you had to
Speaker 1: go on your phone, and it was tough to just
Speaker 1: leave this on on your computer all day because it
Speaker 1: wouldn't do anything. But now you can leave it on
Speaker 1: your computer. You can do the same stuff you can do.
Speaker 1: So if you haven't checked out threads lately, check it
Speaker 1: out again threads dot net. You just log in with
Speaker 1: your Instagram and you can read, you can write, you
Speaker 1: can post, you can repost, and it just gets a
Speaker 1: little bit closer to a product that is easier to
Speaker 1: use more so. You know, they had one hundred million
Speaker 1: sign ups within five days of launch back in July,
Speaker 1: and then a lot of people dropped off, so according
Speaker 1: to let's see Reuters and Let's see similar Web says
Speaker 1: daily active users on threads dropped to ten million from
Speaker 1: a peak of fifty million within a month. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I could tell this myself and just kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, casually observing that. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: didn't really use it that much because you had to
Speaker 1: go on the phone app and I just forgot. If
Speaker 1: you have a LinkedIn account, they are under attack. Cyberint
Speaker 1: says their research team has observed an alarming trend lots
Speaker 1: of people getting hacked on LinkedIn and this is happening
Speaker 1: to people around the world. And what they do once
Speaker 1: they get into your account, they post bad links, they
Speaker 1: post mean things, They try to use your account to
Speaker 1: trick other people. They do a whole bunch of the
Speaker 1: standard stuff that they do when people hack you. People
Speaker 1: always say, why do they want to hack me? What
Speaker 1: do they want to do with my account? Well, they're
Speaker 1: trying to trick your friends. They're basically when you have
Speaker 1: a hacked account, that account is legitimate, and so because
Speaker 1: it's a legitimate account, you can do things on that
Speaker 1: account and fly under the radar for longer, which means
Speaker 1: you can message a lot of people and ask for money.
Speaker 1: You can post a lot of stuff without the spam
Speaker 1: flags getting you because it thinks that you're a regular account.
Speaker 1: So that's why spammers don't just set up a new account.
Speaker 1: They love to have your account because your account is
Speaker 1: marked as a legitimate account. Computer systems can figure out
Speaker 1: when spammers sign up for thousands of accounts all at
Speaker 1: the same time because it all comes from the same
Speaker 1: IP address, and there's other things that kind of indicate
Speaker 1: that that those are not real people, their bots. But
Speaker 1: when they take over your account, it says, oh, this
Speaker 1: is an account that's been around for a while, it's
Speaker 1: been used for a while, and so it's more trusted
Speaker 1: and that's why they like those accounts better than setting
Speaker 1: up new accounts. Anyway, if you have a LinkedIn account,
Speaker 1: it is now a good time to go through and
Speaker 1: make sure that there are no other email addresses or
Speaker 1: old email addresses on your account. Change your password, make
Speaker 1: sure that it is a specific password just for LinkedIn,
Speaker 1: don't reuse one, and turn on two step verification. This
Speaker 1: will send you a text when someone tries to log
Speaker 1: into your account. Definitely secure your LinkedIn account because you
Speaker 1: do not want something posted to your LinkedIn and your
Speaker 1: boss sees it, right, and it's something that's really bad.
Speaker 1: That would be a really look because this is what
Speaker 1: people use for work and all that good stuff. So
Speaker 1: all right, if you have a question for me, give
Speaker 1: me a call Triple eight rich one on one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: If you hear something that I mentioned on the show,
Speaker 1: you can go to the website rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: I keep very good show notes and I put links
Speaker 1: to everything I mentioned right there, Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: on one. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
Speaker 1: talking technology with you. This is the show where I
Speaker 1: talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
Speaker 1: It's also the place where I answer your questions. Phone
Speaker 1: lines are open at triple eight rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up this hour, we're gonna talk to Chris, doctor
Speaker 1: Chris Pearson. He is going to talk about def Con,
Speaker 1: all things AI and hacking. Plus, uh, maybe you got
Speaker 1: an email from Shutterfly. I'll explain what that is. I've
Speaker 1: got a cool new app that is a good alternative
Speaker 1: to IMDb, and plus I'll tell you about AT and
Speaker 1: t's new way to get internet to your house. Let's
Speaker 1: kick things off of John John in Los Angeles. You're
Speaker 1: on with Rich.
Speaker 10: Hi.
Speaker 11: Rich.
Speaker 9: I switched my home internet last week, and I have
Speaker 9: a Gmail account that it won't let me log in
Speaker 9: since I switched the internet. So I go to log
Speaker 9: in and I'm getting a message that says we need
Speaker 9: to verify that it was you. And I put the
Speaker 9: correct security word ahead written down, and it still won't
Speaker 9: let me log in. And then I put the correct
Speaker 9: password and I get the same message again that says
Speaker 9: we can't verify that it's you.
Speaker 7: So I'm I'm sort of at a lot.
Speaker 9: Of what to do about it. I called Google's eight
Speaker 9: hundred number and stayed on on hold for about four hours.
Speaker 3: Oh, they didn't answer.
Speaker 1: I don't even know they had an a hundred number.
Speaker 1: They do Google, Okay, So number one, is this your
Speaker 1: primary account?
Speaker 9: It's not, It's a it's like a backup account. One
Speaker 9: of the problems I'm having is I use it to
Speaker 9: verify a subscription service, so now I can't I can't
Speaker 9: cancel the subscription because I can't log into that email,
Speaker 9: so it's preventing me from doing that.
Speaker 1: And okay, so I think I think what's happening here
Speaker 1: is your your change of provider has triggered some sort
Speaker 1: of security situation with Google. That's what I'm understanding. Have
Speaker 1: you logged into this account on any other device that
Speaker 1: you still have, like your cell phone?
Speaker 9: Perhaps no, I haven't, And that's sort of the problem
Speaker 9: because there's a message that says, go to a device
Speaker 9: where you're already.
Speaker 11: Logged in, right right, you'll be able.
Speaker 9: To confirm it. But because it's a backup email, I only,
Speaker 9: you know, on purpose, ever used it on my laptop,
Speaker 9: so I never had a reason to log into it
Speaker 9: on a phone.
Speaker 1: Okay, well I would, Okay, So what email Google is
Speaker 1: trying to do is, yeah, they're trying to verify that
Speaker 1: it is you. And it's interesting that it's still triggering
Speaker 1: all of these security alerts when you're logging in with
Speaker 1: the correct information. That's what's a little bit concerning. And
Speaker 1: this is kind of a bigger message to everyone that
Speaker 1: has an account that you know, anything can happen at
Speaker 1: any time. So if you think that just because you've
Speaker 1: got your stuff backed up or sorry, not backed up.
Speaker 1: If you think you have your you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: you wrote down your code word, you have your password,
Speaker 1: and you still can't get access to this account. Now,
Speaker 1: remember these are free accounts, so I mean, you know
Speaker 1: you're always giving and taking with that because I'm sure
Speaker 1: in the terms of service at some point it says
Speaker 1: somewhere like we don't guarantee anything. You know, we may
Speaker 1: take this away from you at any time. So I
Speaker 1: say that because you know, we got to back up
Speaker 1: our information just in case something like this happens. Now,
Speaker 1: I think that you will get regain access to this account.
Speaker 1: So what I would do is I would try logging
Speaker 1: in from another device that you have, like your smartphone.
Speaker 1: I would try logging in from there see if that works.
Speaker 1: And you know, I know that you didn't log in
Speaker 1: from that before, but it may. It may like the
Speaker 1: fact that you're logging in from another device that you've
Speaker 1: either surfed the web on with Google or done something
Speaker 1: on there, even though you didn't log into there. You
Speaker 1: can you know, obviously, you can go to the account recovery,
Speaker 1: which it sounds like you've already done. But on that
Speaker 1: account recovery page, if you Google and you got to
Speaker 1: be careful with the phone numbers that you call, because
Speaker 1: if you just Google for a phone number, I don't
Speaker 1: recommend doing that. But if you type in Gmail recovery
Speaker 1: into Google, and Gmail help page comes up says how
Speaker 1: to recover your Google account or Gmail, and it gives
Speaker 1: you some tips on there, and I think, John, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of good tips on there. Where it says
Speaker 1: let's see here, it says that there's a way to
Speaker 1: you know, like log in from a device that you've
Speaker 1: already logged in from. It gives you like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: here we go some a tip from Tips for Recovery. Okay,
Speaker 1: answer as many questions as possible. Use a familiar device
Speaker 1: and location. Use a computer, phone or tablet where you
Speaker 1: frequently sign in, use the same browser being a location
Speaker 1: that you usually sign in from home or work. Be
Speaker 1: exact with passwords and answers to security questions. And let's
Speaker 1: see what else here? Enter an email connected here account.
Speaker 1: So those are all kind of ways you can do it.
Speaker 1: If you look in the upper right hand corner of
Speaker 1: this help page, there is a contact us and I
Speaker 1: think that that would be easier to contact Google than
Speaker 1: calling them. I have chatted with Google before with issues,
Speaker 1: and they absolutely do help. And I think that the
Speaker 1: chat is a much better way of getting some help
Speaker 1: with this than calling in the phone number. Like you said,
Speaker 1: I feel for you. I like that you had things
Speaker 1: written down, and you've got your recovery word and your password.
Speaker 1: Everything is written down. It sounds like you're doing the
Speaker 1: right thing. But this is indeed frustrating. And I know
Speaker 1: how frustrating is because in this very room that I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in, the first time that I logged into my
Speaker 1: Google in this room, I set off some sort of
Speaker 1: red alert at Google that locked out every single one
Speaker 1: of my Google features. And I about had a heart
Speaker 1: attack when I saw every single one of my systems.
Speaker 1: I saw my computer, my phone, my tablet, everything logged
Speaker 1: out because it said, sorry, we noticed unauthorized access to
Speaker 1: your account. I guess because it was the first time
Speaker 1: I was logging in from here and they didn't like it.
Speaker 1: And my heart stopped because I said, what if I
Speaker 1: don't get access to my account again? That would be really,
Speaker 1: really bad. And what you've just described is the fact
Speaker 1: that even if you take the time to make sure
Speaker 1: you have all of your login info, these systems can
Speaker 1: lock you out for any reason, even as simple as
Speaker 1: changing your ISP your Internet service provider, and it's saying, hmm,
Speaker 1: we don't really like this. We've never seen John log
Speaker 1: in this way before. So it is a scary reminder
Speaker 1: that we need to back up our information. We need
Speaker 1: to write down those recovery passwords and those codes that
Speaker 1: they give us, and we need to keep good notes
Speaker 1: about our passwords because sometimes they ask you for an
Speaker 1: old password and they say, hey, what was your password
Speaker 1: before this? And you know, Google is up against a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff here. They're up against a lot of
Speaker 1: people that are trying to break into accounts twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven, and so they come up with these systems
Speaker 1: that are not perfect, but hopefully they filter out a
Speaker 1: lot of the bad actors. So John, check out that
Speaker 1: support page, try to chat with Google. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this, make sure that you back
Speaker 1: up your stuff. I'm guilty of not having a backup
Speaker 1: of everything, so I need to do that, and so
Speaker 1: do you, especially your pictures, your files, anything that's important.
Speaker 1: Your Gmail. You can use what's called Google takeout. So
Speaker 1: if you have a Google account, check out Google Takeout.
Speaker 1: You can download your data from Google using that service,
Speaker 1: and it may take a while depending on how much
Speaker 1: you have, but it can definitely help. Thanks for the call, John,
Speaker 1: and I hope you get recovery on your account and
Speaker 1: email me and let me know if you do. Speaking
Speaker 1: of shutting down accounts, shut or fly has been setting
Speaker 1: a lot of emails. At first, they were going to
Speaker 1: shut down any accounts that had not been active for
Speaker 1: eighteen months, so if you didn't make a purchase, or
Speaker 1: if you didn't do anything on your account, basically, if
Speaker 1: you didn't make a purchase in the past eighteen months,
Speaker 1: they were going to delete all of your photos. Well,
Speaker 1: apparently a new CEO has taken over and they said,
Speaker 1: we're gon, we're gonna pause this idea because we don't
Speaker 1: like it anymore. So now accounts that even if you
Speaker 1: didn't make a purchase in the past eighteen months, they're
Speaker 1: going to keep your photos on Shutterfly. But if you
Speaker 1: haven't done anything in five years, they're still going to
Speaker 1: delete them. So you may have gotten that email from Shutterfly.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is if you want to keep your
Speaker 1: photos on Shutterfly that you've had there forever, you need
Speaker 1: to make a purchase within five years, So that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of the bottom line that I'm reading here. If
Speaker 1: you haven't made a purchase in eighteen months, we still
Speaker 1: designate your account as inactive, but we're not going to
Speaker 1: delete those pictures. Very very confusing, shutterfly. You need someone
Speaker 1: better to write your emails, because it took me about
Speaker 1: an hour to read this email and figure out what
Speaker 1: you're trying to tell me. So this app is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are talking about it. It's called
Speaker 1: call Sheet c A L L S H e e T.
Speaker 1: This is an iOS alternative to IMDb. IMDb is really
Speaker 1: cool because it can keep track of all the movies
Speaker 1: you want to watch. You can look up people, but
Speaker 1: it's gotten really cluttered ever since Amazon purchased it, and
Speaker 1: it's just got a lot of junk on there. So
Speaker 1: if you want something that's really clean, check out call Sheet.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are talking about this. I downloaded it.
Speaker 1: It is very clean. It's only on iPhone for now,
Speaker 1: and you do have to pay after a bunch of
Speaker 1: free searches. It's either a dollar a month or nine
Speaker 1: dollars a year, But don't let that dissuade you. I
Speaker 1: would still download this if you are looking for an
Speaker 1: app to keep track of your movies and you know
Speaker 1: you just want to look things up. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So it's got a way to look up actors, see
Speaker 1: what movies are in. You can keep a list of
Speaker 1: the things you want to watch, and it also links
Speaker 1: out to just watch to see where a TV show
Speaker 1: or movie is streaming. It's not quite as detailed IMDb,
Speaker 1: but it still works. It's called call Sheet c A
Speaker 1: L L S H E E T. I will put
Speaker 1: it on the show links. And by the way, if
Speaker 1: you want to get in on the feedback segment, which
Speaker 1: is at the end of the show, if you have
Speaker 1: something to say about this show or about me or anything,
Speaker 1: you can go to my website rich on Tech dot tv,
Speaker 1: hit the contact button and I'll make sure you get
Speaker 1: in the feedback segment at the end of the show.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, we'll talk about AT and t's
Speaker 1: new Internet air plus more of your calls at Triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here at
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one oh one that's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Judy in San Diego. Judy, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 12: Hi.
Speaker 13: Rich.
Speaker 7: I'm thinking I'm an older person. I'm thinking of getting
Speaker 7: my first smartphone. However, I do have an Apple iPad Mini,
Speaker 7: so I'm somewhat familiar with devices. I've had the rugged
Speaker 7: kios Era uh duraphone XB I think that you get
Speaker 7: from you buy them to Verizon.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 7: So I have really liked this phone because you can
Speaker 7: drop it in the pool, you can drop it on concrete.
Speaker 7: It really holds up. They call the military garade grade
Speaker 7: for durability. Oh yeah, so what would what would your
Speaker 7: Are you familiar with the these and I wondered what
Speaker 7: your opinion would be if I went for the latest
Speaker 7: one that is coming out, the Kyosera Dura Force Ultra
Speaker 7: five G. It's eight ninety nine and I can drop it,
Speaker 7: and I dropped stuff all the time. I wouldn't worry
Speaker 7: about it cracking and breaking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the Dura Force Pro three smartphone military.
Speaker 7: Standard they have. They have a newer one coming out now.
Speaker 7: You can even get a new battery.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Yeah, this is on Verizon this just just
Speaker 1: came out. It looks like July I got the information.
Speaker 1: IPX IP sixty eight Dust and waterproof Military. It's more
Speaker 1: than a set of specs. Let's see here. Let's see
Speaker 1: enterprise level durability, Hazardous Location Protection, Wi Fi sixty Blazing
Speaker 1: five g dual SIM Enhanced Security, Outdoor Visible Display X
Speaker 1: frame structure adds reinforcement to withstand drops, dirt, water, and more,
Speaker 1: washed and sanitized Qualcom Snapdragon seven six gigs a RAM.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else here. Forty two seventy million hour
Speaker 1: battery slide lock to prevent unintended displacement. Oh, removable and
Speaker 1: replaceable battery. That's what you were talking about. Huh. Now
Speaker 1: here's the thing. This is aimed towards construction workers. So
Speaker 1: that's are you. Are you dropping your phone a lot?
Speaker 1: Or are you on construction side?
Speaker 12: No?
Speaker 7: I have arthritis in my fingers, so I find I
Speaker 7: dropped stuff a lot. Plus I do ride a bicycle.
Speaker 7: I have an e bike, and even though I'm older,
Speaker 7: I do this stuff.
Speaker 1: But oh, wow, you have an e bike. That's cool.
Speaker 1: You're a little high techie Judy, Well not.
Speaker 7: Really high Techee. I mean I just do a lot,
Speaker 7: but I'm not techie because I've never had a smartphone yet,
Speaker 7: and I'm thinking because I have really liked this other
Speaker 7: phone so much and dropped it so many times and
Speaker 7: never had a problem, I'm thinking of going with that.
Speaker 7: But it is Android, and so is this one I have.
Speaker 7: But I don't get data on it because I use
Speaker 7: my iPad for that. So I'm wondering what the drawbacks
Speaker 7: would be of not going with a more well known
Speaker 7: brand like Samsung or a smartphone iPhone.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so good question. I think number one, probably
Speaker 1: the top drawback is the price. You're paying a very
Speaker 1: premium price for this device, and I think it has
Speaker 1: a lot of features that you may not need per se.
Speaker 1: At nine hundred dollars. Now, it may be cheaper if
Speaker 1: it's you know, if they give you a deal or
Speaker 1: something through Verizon. But the other thing is that the software.
Speaker 1: I'd have to look at the the software kind of
Speaker 1: like what they say, and I'm trying to see if
Speaker 1: it says it on here, you know, because a lot
Speaker 1: of the new Android phones the software is updated for
Speaker 1: about three to five years, so it depends if this phone,
Speaker 1: you know, has that many years of lasting out. I
Speaker 1: think you can be just fine with a phone that
Speaker 1: has a really nice case on it. Like if you
Speaker 1: went with like, let's say you want to stick to Android,
Speaker 1: you can get a Pixel seven a for like four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty bucks something like that, and a case
Speaker 1: that is like maybe fifty dollars, and you could have
Speaker 1: a case that's pretty much going to be almost as
Speaker 1: protective as this device.
Speaker 7: Because well, I probably probably go with the with the
Speaker 7: Apple then, because I already have the Apple device for
Speaker 7: the iPad Mini. And my concern too was I used
Speaker 7: my phone for basics. I don't use it like oh
Speaker 7: yeah with all these apps and stuff, but I do
Speaker 7: like the camera on my old iPad mini, and for
Speaker 7: if I get a smartphone, i'd probably want to transfer
Speaker 7: the pictures over to my iPad mini. Yeah, I know
Speaker 7: if you can do that with the Androids do switch
Speaker 7: them over?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you can. You can switch that over. There's
Speaker 1: a there's an app actually called switch to iOS, and
Speaker 1: so you could download that to your Android. Sorry move okay,
Speaker 1: let me see what the app is called. It's called
Speaker 1: move to.
Speaker 7: I don't have a computer, no, it would just have
Speaker 7: to go to the.
Speaker 1: iPad yep, This is called move to iOS and that
Speaker 1: will help you move your your pictures from there to
Speaker 1: your uh to the iOS phone. So you would install
Speaker 1: that on your Android and it would help you do that.
Speaker 1: I would recommend for you. I think the iPhone SE
Speaker 1: and I think that that would be a good phone
Speaker 1: to get. And I think the benefit of getting this
Speaker 1: is that you put a good case on there. And
Speaker 1: the case. I mean, there's so many rugged cases out
Speaker 1: there that you know. I mean, I love the case
Speaker 1: the stuff from Spec so those are great cases. But
Speaker 1: I mean you can get one that's our zag. They
Speaker 1: have them that are you know, rug it up to
Speaker 1: like thirteen feet drops and then you get a nice
Speaker 1: screen protector on there and you're pretty much covered, and
Speaker 1: this will have a home button. I think the iPhone
Speaker 1: SE would probably be a good one for you. It
Speaker 1: starts at four hundred and thirty dollars. By the time
Speaker 1: you get the case and the screen protector, you're talking
Speaker 1: maybe five hundred dollars. And once you've got to protected,
Speaker 1: this is going to be easier because it has everything
Speaker 1: you need. You've got friends and family to help, You've
Speaker 1: got the Apple stores to walk into if you need
Speaker 1: help with that, so, Judy, I think that that might
Speaker 1: be a better bet. But if you like the Kyo
Speaker 1: Sarah and you like the rugged phone, I just think
Speaker 1: you're gonna be paying more for something you may not need.
Speaker 1: So good question. Thanks for calling today. Coming up next,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to doctor Chris Pearson, founder of
Speaker 1: Black Cloak. We're gonna talk about AI and hacking right
Speaker 1: here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here talking tech with you at triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Give me a call
Speaker 1: if you have a question about technology, or hop on
Speaker 1: the internet and send me an email. Just go to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech dot tv hit the contact button. And yes,
Speaker 1: you are all having a field day with my old
Speaker 1: school video of me on the Price is Right. Yes
Speaker 1: I had a different haircut, Yes I was younger. No
Speaker 1: I didn't win anything. Yes I got down to contestants
Speaker 1: row And actually I didn't mention this when I first
Speaker 1: told you about Bob Barker, but he actually scolded me
Speaker 1: on the show because I was going to USC and
Speaker 1: the guy next to me was going to Pepperdine and
Speaker 1: here in Los Angeles, Soo's are kind of rivals. Not really,
Speaker 1: but I made a jab at Pepperdin and Bob Barker
Speaker 1: just barked at me. He was like, don't make fun
Speaker 1: of his school, and I was like, whoa. It was like, okay.
Speaker 1: Joining me on the line is doctor Chris Pearson, CEO
Speaker 1: and founder of Black Cloak. Doctor Chris, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 11: Hey Rich good here.
Speaker 1: Okay, So tell me first off about black Cloak. What
Speaker 1: do you do with black Cloak?
Speaker 14: Black Cloak provides concierge, cybersecurity, and privacy protection to high
Speaker 14: net worth ALDR high networth individuals, celebrities, sports stars, rock stars,
Speaker 14: folks that are in the public eye, Folks that people
Speaker 14: want to get their personal information on, want to get
Speaker 14: their pictures, want to hack into their homes or their
Speaker 14: camera feeds.
Speaker 11: They're really having a you know, either an obsession with.
Speaker 14: Them or more importantly, they want to go ahead and
Speaker 14: steal their money or steal information or documents or things
Speaker 14: about them. And we protect those individuals through our black
Speaker 14: Cloak platform. So kind of a higher end solution for
Speaker 14: those people that have very very high end knee and
Speaker 14: high end targets after them.
Speaker 1: Gosh, I never really thought about that, But that must
Speaker 1: be so wild. If you're a celebrity, you must be
Speaker 1: almost under attack twenty four to seven by these security threats.
Speaker 1: Like if you, let's just say, you get like a
Speaker 1: Nest camera for your house and it's set up wrong
Speaker 1: and someone taps into that, it's like, oh, that could
Speaker 1: be really bad. So do you actually physically go to
Speaker 1: like these people's places and like see their setups or
Speaker 1: is it more like you know how to secure their Gmail?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 11: Well, it's definitely how to secure their Gmail.
Speaker 14: But I mean our platform actually goes in ahead and
Speaker 14: assesses their homes every seven days. So literally, we have
Speaker 14: an entire team of individuals that every seven days tries
Speaker 14: to break into our clients' homes.
Speaker 11: Let's just say celebrity it breaks.
Speaker 14: It tries to break into the celebrities' homes and we
Speaker 14: try to see if we can get in. Can we
Speaker 14: get into the camera, can get into their internet, can
Speaker 14: we get into their Wi Fi? Can we get into
Speaker 14: their systems? All done remotely through our platform, And if yes,
Speaker 14: then we'll work with their AB company, their AB probrider
Speaker 14: to go ahead and close those gaps. And if no,
Speaker 14: then they can rest with the kind of peace of
Speaker 14: mind and kind of be safe from all those digital threats.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that is so wild. So what is
Speaker 1: your advice for the average person that obviously, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: just wants to stay protected. Do you think that you
Speaker 1: would be able to break into the average person's home
Speaker 1: network or Wi Fi or you know, security cameras very
Speaker 1: easily or do you think that these systems have gotten
Speaker 1: to a place where they're pretty good out of the box.
Speaker 14: Well, what's interesting is the ones that are you know,
Speaker 14: kind of the consumer DIY solutions right, A lot of
Speaker 14: them now auto update, they auto apply patches. Really, the
Speaker 14: number one way to get in on a consumer grade
Speaker 14: solution is going to be because they're using a username
Speaker 14: i e. Your email address and a password that has
Speaker 14: been breached and it's the same password you use everywhere else.
Speaker 14: It's like all the usual stuff you talk about of, Hey,
Speaker 14: have a unique password for those key sites, a camera system.
Speaker 11: Your ring, doorbell, your nest, all the rest of this.
Speaker 14: You're going to want a unique pass for all those
Speaker 14: but more importantly, more importantly, turn on dual factor authentication
Speaker 14: for all of those accounts, all of those devices. And
Speaker 14: the email that controls them, your Gmail, your Yahoo, whatever
Speaker 14: it might be. Turn on dual factor for that. That's
Speaker 14: going to be the single greatest piece of advice that
Speaker 14: we can give to consumers. On the celebrity side, these
Speaker 14: are really expensive, high end solutions, high end cameras. There's
Speaker 14: a whole other extra layer of patching that needs to happen,
Speaker 14: security updates, and really system architecture. These homes are kind
Speaker 14: of like small businesses, so to speak. So there's a
Speaker 14: lot more there. But for the everyday consumer, phrase told
Speaker 14: you to do one thing, it would be this, turn
Speaker 14: on dual factor authentication onto your IoT, your Internet of
Speaker 14: Things device, your camera system, whatever it might be. Turn
Speaker 14: on dual factor authentication on there. That is going to
Speaker 14: protect you up at that ninety five percent plus mark.
Speaker 1: Now you're recently at the black Hat conference. There's so
Speaker 1: there's black Hat and there's def Con. They go on
Speaker 1: kind of simultaneously in Vegas. Explain the difference.
Speaker 14: So black Hat ends up being a conference that is
Speaker 14: maybe more corporate focused. So it's kind of the summer
Speaker 14: summer activity for chief information security officers. So at all
Speaker 14: large companies, they have chief information security officers CISOs, and
Speaker 14: so they'll come to black Hat and they'll be looking
Speaker 14: for the latest and greatest technology. Talk to the vendors,
Speaker 14: talk to suppliers, figure out how new things can either
Speaker 14: automate more make more simple their corporate structure, the corporate
Speaker 14: security posture, and also to integrate and talk to and
Speaker 14: collaborate with one another. It's probably one of the biggest
Speaker 14: benefits of me as a former chief information security officer.
Speaker 11: It's one of the biggest benefits of black Hat.
Speaker 14: In a relaxed environment in Las Vegas, be able to
Speaker 14: get together, sit, have a beer of people, talk to people,
Speaker 14: chat with people that are your peers.
Speaker 11: What are you doing well on? What could you better on?
Speaker 14: Ask people about things that you have problems with, and
Speaker 14: there's a lot of information sharing and knowledge sharing there.
Speaker 14: Then def CON's a little more can we call it
Speaker 14: summer camp for hackers. It's more where the higher intent
Speaker 14: behind def con is to push the envelopes, push the limits.
Speaker 11: They have a whole bunch of like hacker villages that
Speaker 11: are set up.
Speaker 14: It might be an electric system, might be voter machines,
Speaker 14: it could be anything, and the folks actually will break
Speaker 14: in and try to hack into those devices and they'll compete.
Speaker 14: They'll compete for awards, so compete for prices, they'll compete
Speaker 14: for notoriety, and.
Speaker 11: So all that is at def Con.
Speaker 14: Two very very different conferences, but a great way to
Speaker 14: grow your mind no matter which audience you fall into.
Speaker 1: That is amazing and it's so interesting, the whole idea
Speaker 1: of being in person, Like I go to a bunch
Speaker 1: of these shows every year, and it's just so great
Speaker 1: to be with your peers, to actually talk about stuff
Speaker 1: in person, because that's when you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: over the drinks, over the beer, over the meetings, where
Speaker 1: you actually get to like say, hey, I'm seeing this,
Speaker 1: like what do you think of that? And just see
Speaker 1: what they say.
Speaker 2: Let's totally agree.
Speaker 1: What were some of your big takeaways? Like, I assume
Speaker 1: that AI was a big topic of conversation this year.
Speaker 1: What were your big takeaways from the conference?
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean, I will tell you a lot of
Speaker 14: us were talking about AI and where we're actually at
Speaker 14: there's a lot of hype here right now. I mean
Speaker 14: as we take a look at things, there's kind of normal.
Speaker 14: There's kind of normal machine learning, which is more if
Speaker 14: this than that. So it's ways of looking at things
Speaker 14: and saying, if a then go ahead and turn a
Speaker 14: red switch and then turn a blue switch. And then
Speaker 14: it allows you to predictively analyze and assess certain things.
Speaker 14: It could be for anti fraud purposes, for into money laundering,
Speaker 14: for cybersecurity. But machine learning has really grown up a
Speaker 14: lot and been integrated into a lot more corporate cybersecurity products.
Speaker 11: Generative AI.
Speaker 14: This kind of chat GPT that we're all talking about,
Speaker 14: generative means it actually creates something for you. You know, hey,
Speaker 14: I want you to go ahead and write a story
Speaker 14: about a man walking on the beach and he meets
Speaker 14: his a favorite new dog. Whatever it might be, you know,
Speaker 14: you can put that into chat GPT. It will generate
Speaker 14: it for you. It could be a picture, it could
Speaker 14: be an image, could be a story. Of course, that
Speaker 14: has enabled AI to get out into the hands of
Speaker 14: the everyday person. Corporate security AI, I mean it is evolving,
Speaker 14: but not quite there yet.
Speaker 11: I mean there's a.
Speaker 14: Lot of a lot of kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 14: marketing going.
Speaker 11: On about AI. AI AI. We're not all the way
Speaker 11: there yet. But what is.
Speaker 14: Happening is that to the extent things are growing and
Speaker 14: becoming better. They are being integrated into corporate systems, but also,
Speaker 14: quite honestly, it's aber criminals are doing the same thing.
Speaker 14: I'll give you an example. So generative AI allows for
Speaker 14: you to write something in better English to make it
Speaker 14: sound better right now, kind of the crutch of a
Speaker 14: lot of phishing emails is ooh, it has some spellings.
Speaker 14: It doesn't use words or language that we would find
Speaker 14: in common parlance here in the United States. And so
Speaker 14: I want to write an email that tells you that
Speaker 14: your username and password has expired and you need to
Speaker 14: click here on the link. Well, I can tell that
Speaker 14: to chat GPT and it will push out something that
Speaker 14: is grammatically correct, looks accurate, has much better English, no
Speaker 14: broken English, and therefore it makes it for a consumer
Speaker 14: to spot whether it's a phishing email or not because
Speaker 14: it's been generated correctly.
Speaker 11: That's probably one of the biggest things that we see
Speaker 11: and upward trend on right now.
Speaker 1: Ooh, that's scary. So basically, these AI systems can help
Speaker 1: these even if you don't really have a commanding use
Speaker 1: of the English language, it can help them write in
Speaker 1: that method. What about this yes scam that you were mentioning?
Speaker 14: Oh yeah, so I mean, we're seeing a lot more
Speaker 14: in terms of phone scams out there, you know, tech
Speaker 14: support scams where somebody calls and says, hey, I'm Microsoft
Speaker 14: on Apple you have something wrong with your computer?
Speaker 11: Can we jump on it and help you?
Speaker 14: And the person says, yeah, of course you can, and
Speaker 14: you download a program. They get on and right, you've
Speaker 14: now paid money to somebody and also they've taken all
Speaker 14: your data. What we're actually seeing right now is some
Speaker 14: of the what we call the the yes scams. So
Speaker 14: this is where a scammer goes ahead and calls you
Speaker 14: and gets you to say, you know, hey, am I
Speaker 14: talking too rich? And the answer is yes, and they'll
Speaker 14: record your voice saying yes, this is rich and they
Speaker 14: can use that to replay back into bank systems for
Speaker 14: voice identification and fingerprinting, so to speak. So what we're
Speaker 14: seeing is this happening a lot more. You know, can
Speaker 14: you hear me? And then the answer is yes, Oh wow,
Speaker 14: that's tricky. Yeah, Well it's one of those things where
Speaker 14: you know, you say, hey, is this rich? It's your bank?
Speaker 14: On answer is yes, hey rich, can you hear me?
Speaker 14: Is this call going okay?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 14: That gets you to immediatelicit that yes response, and so
Speaker 14: it becomes very very very dangerous and potentially can be
Speaker 14: used in the future.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I was on the phone yesterday with my
Speaker 1: wireless company and they said, hey, can we make a
Speaker 1: voice fingerprint of your of your fingerprint of your voice
Speaker 1: to read for biometrics, And I was like, I said, no,
Speaker 1: but what's your advice on that? Should people be saying
Speaker 1: no to that or yes?
Speaker 11: I don't know how many times you and I have
Speaker 11: said yes or no on this call. I know here
Speaker 11: at the bottom.
Speaker 14: Line is that many corporations are actually using your recorded
Speaker 14: voice when you call in so they can get a
Speaker 14: what's called a baseline. They can know how you sound.
Speaker 14: It doesn't really change all that much, you know, once
Speaker 14: you're in your twenties and thirties, it's not really changing
Speaker 14: that much.
Speaker 11: And so if that is your bank doing it.
Speaker 14: Or even your wireless carrier, I mean, that's kind of
Speaker 14: interesting because on the wireless carry side, there's a lot
Speaker 14: of what's called sim swapping going on, and so if
Speaker 14: you actually were to have said yes you can and
Speaker 14: have I don't know, let's just save horizon record your
Speaker 14: voice and do a baseline.
Speaker 11: It actually can.
Speaker 14: Enable the better protection of your account and your phone
Speaker 14: and the ability to text you and get dual factor
Speaker 14: and all the rest. That's probably paramount to them having
Speaker 14: a you know, fifteen second thirty second clip of your voice.
Speaker 14: So in that case, I would actually opt to say, yes,
Speaker 14: you can, you go ahead and record it, so you
Speaker 14: now have a baseline of what I sound like. So
Speaker 14: any anomaly, any differential from there will be flagged as
Speaker 14: a variance, and then they will go into stepped up
Speaker 14: authentication a you know, rich, when what type of phone
Speaker 14: do you have? When was the last time you up
Speaker 14: your service? When was the last time you're actually in
Speaker 14: a Verizon store?
Speaker 11: So to speak? Right, And that allows them to do
Speaker 11: some sip up authentication.
Speaker 14: This one thing the sembercriminals are not necessarily able to
Speaker 14: do is go ahead and replicate fool your voice down.
Speaker 14: We are seeing some of it start in terms of
Speaker 14: proof of concepts, but nothing that's been mass scale applied everywhere.
Speaker 1: All right, Chris, We're gonna leave it there, Doctor Chris Pearson,
Speaker 1: CEO and founder of black Cloak. You can go to
Speaker 1: the website black cloak dot io. Always so interesting and
Speaker 1: the irony of my call yesterday, I was actually trying
Speaker 1: to do a simswap for my own phones. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for calling Triple eight rich one O one more
Speaker 1: of your calls at eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one is the phone
Speaker 1: number to all. Let's go to Alex in Nuevo California.
Speaker 1: Is that how I say it? Nuvau Neuvaux, California. Oh, okay,
Speaker 1: we gotta. I can't hear you, Alex. Uh, maybe call
Speaker 1: back Alex. We had a back connection there. Let's go
Speaker 1: to carry in mission via ho is this our second mission?
Speaker 1: Viejo call today? Carry your on with rich Huh. Oh,
Speaker 1: we're having problems with all of our callers right now. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well maybe it's us. It's not you, it's me. I
Speaker 1: was explaining to my kids. They asked me last night, Uh, Carrie,
Speaker 1: I can't hear you either, so maybe carry there? Yes,
Speaker 1: oh there you are, Okay. I was explaining to my
Speaker 1: kids last night. They said, how do you break up
Speaker 1: with someone? And I said, well, you just say it's
Speaker 1: not you, it's me, And they laughed. What can I
Speaker 1: help you with.
Speaker 12: Yes, I were on my computer doing Zoom and I've
Speaker 12: been having a problem figuring out what's wrung with the audio.
Speaker 12: At this point, I can hear the person speaking, but
Speaker 12: they cannot hear me. And I've gone through.
Speaker 15: All the Zoom fixes of how to fix it. I
Speaker 15: don't know what I'm doing wrong. I have not contacted Zoom.
Speaker 15: I've been trying to see but there's a fix. I
Speaker 15: have had problems previously with the audio, but it's been fixed,
Speaker 15: and now it's been like three weeks. I've been having
Speaker 15: a problem.
Speaker 1: Are you on a Mac or a PC?
Speaker 7: PC?
Speaker 1: Okay? And can you record audio on other programs?
Speaker 15: Actually I had another program and it was working fine,
Speaker 15: and all of a sudden it went out.
Speaker 8: The same way.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 5: Well that.
Speaker 1: Sounds like it's a computer problem and not a Zoom problem.
Speaker 1: So there's a website called mic tests dot com. You
Speaker 1: can go there and uh test your microphone to see
Speaker 1: if it's working. So I would go there. If it's
Speaker 1: not working, then I would I would look into an
Speaker 1: external microphone. Have you tried that?
Speaker 15: No?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 15: I will.
Speaker 1: So do you have a do you have a pair
Speaker 1: of headphones or earbuds or any sort of external microphone.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I've been using those. Those don't work either. That
Speaker 15: At first it was the earbuds, and then the earbuds
Speaker 15: went out, and then I was just using the computer
Speaker 15: and it worked for a while and then that went out.
Speaker 1: Hmm okay, so so and how how old is this computer?
Speaker 3: Two years old?
Speaker 1: Oh well, that shouldn't be happening. So and you're running
Speaker 1: Windows on this yes, okay. So have you tried to
Speaker 1: do the mic tests in a different like in a
Speaker 1: different program like this website I was talking about.
Speaker 15: Uh No, I haven't.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think yeah, I think that would be because
Speaker 1: I think what you need to do is you need
Speaker 1: to narrow down if this is a computer hardware problem
Speaker 1: or if this is a software problem. It sounds to
Speaker 1: me like this is a hardware problem if none of
Speaker 1: these mics are working. Now, when you say you've tried
Speaker 1: different mics you've tried, are they all plug in or
Speaker 1: they bluetooth?
Speaker 5: What type are they plug in?
Speaker 1: And you're plugging him into the same thing USB.
Speaker 15: Or what I'm plugging him into the computer.
Speaker 1: Like through does it look like a headphone jack plug
Speaker 1: or does it look like a USB plug.
Speaker 15: A headphone jack plug.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, So I would if I were you,
Speaker 1: I would try to get a inexpensive USB mic and
Speaker 1: I would try that and see what happens, because I
Speaker 1: think that it sounds like this headphone jack is either
Speaker 1: wonky or it's just not working properly. But you can
Speaker 1: get a USB mic if you go. You can go
Speaker 1: to best Buy, or you can go to Amazon. I
Speaker 1: mean there's I'm at them right now. On Amazon, you
Speaker 1: can get one for sixteen bucks. So I would probably
Speaker 1: try a USB mic because I think that that's going
Speaker 1: to be that'll get you around this other issue of
Speaker 1: this microphone plugin situation. Now here's my other question. Does
Speaker 1: your computer have a built in microphone? Yep?
Speaker 15: And I've been trying and if that was working for
Speaker 15: a while and now it's not.
Speaker 1: Okay, the part I was trying to say, And you
Speaker 1: do know on Zoom there is an area where you
Speaker 1: can oh, just you can hear my zoom. You don't
Speaker 1: know on Zoom there is a way to select your microphone.
Speaker 1: And you've tried that and switched between the different mics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's not working. Interesting, Okay, I would try to
Speaker 1: narrow down if this is hardware software. Sounds like it's
Speaker 1: a hardware issue. If you ask me, I think that
Speaker 1: you should try an external USB MIC and see if
Speaker 1: that works. But try this this website first, this mic
Speaker 1: test website, and do that and then see if your
Speaker 1: MIC is detected if it's you know, actually going into
Speaker 1: the computer with the audio, and that's the first place
Speaker 1: I would start if it. If it doesn't work there,
Speaker 1: then the microphones that you're having and that's that jack
Speaker 1: on your computer is just not working anymore. What concerns
Speaker 1: me is the fact that the computer microphone also doesn't work,
Speaker 1: so there's something a little funky there. Do you have
Speaker 1: any apps that are interfering with this, like any sort
Speaker 1: of audio routing apps?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: No, okay, uh yeah, so that's what I would say.
Speaker 1: I would say, you got to figure out if this
Speaker 1: is hardware or software. But I would say try the
Speaker 1: USB mic see if that works, because USB is pretty
Speaker 1: direct and uh, I think that that's probably the best
Speaker 1: way to get this to work again if it's not
Speaker 1: working through the standard headphone jack. So uh, keep me posted. Carrie.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call today. If you have a question,
Speaker 1: give me a call at Triple eight. Rich one on
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. There's nothing more frustrating then something not working
Speaker 1: on your computer, like a microphone, and you're just sitting
Speaker 1: there trying and trying and trying and plugging and unplugging.
Speaker 1: It happens to the best of us. You are listening
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here talk in technology with you at Triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. You know I've mentioned
Speaker 1: this before, but I'm always testing something new. So this
Speaker 1: week I've been testing the Pixel fold, which is Google's
Speaker 1: foldable smartphone, and I've got to say it's actually pretty fun.
Speaker 1: It's a great it's it feels like a passport, like
Speaker 1: that's the form factor is like a passport. So it's
Speaker 1: got a screen, nice big screen on the outside and
Speaker 1: you open it up to a bigger screen on the inside.
Speaker 1: It's very heavy and very hot, so it runs very
Speaker 1: very hot for some reason, and it's probably one of
Speaker 1: the heavier smartphones I've used. But with all that said,
Speaker 1: it's very endearing. It is a very very endearing phone,
Speaker 1: and it better be for eighteen hundred dollars. But it is.
Speaker 1: It's a nice little device. It takes good pictures.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 1: I'm still forming my opinions on it, but and I
Speaker 1: don't think it's for everyone. And I think that Google
Speaker 1: has some work to do with their processor and figuring
Speaker 1: out how to make it run a little bit cooler.
Speaker 1: But the software is just incredible. The software that Google
Speaker 1: does on this pixel is really really incredible. You're listening
Speaker 1: to rich Demiro here on Rich on Tech. Phone lines
Speaker 1: are open at triple eight Rich one oh one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: I'm also I just got this today. It's called fabric
Speaker 1: fab ri c dot so and this is one of
Speaker 1: those kind of like everything all at once bookmarking services.
Speaker 1: So you can just put like a link in there,
Speaker 1: you can put a photo, and then you can search everything,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of like a smart search. And then
Speaker 1: later on they're gonna have connections so you can search
Speaker 1: all of your stuff, like Google Drive will be included,
Speaker 1: your bookmarks, your notion, your dropbox, your screenshots, your email,
Speaker 1: your text messages, so your history on Chrome. So they've got,
Speaker 1: you know, all these connections. They're going to add soon.
Speaker 1: So basically be like a search engine for all of
Speaker 1: your own stuff that you remember. That's called fabric fabric
Speaker 1: dot so and I've been testing that. What else I've
Speaker 1: been testing so many little things. Oh, a new car
Speaker 1: this week, the Nissan Aria. It's an ev We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk to our I'm gonna talk to my guests about that.
Speaker 1: Coming up, Emily dry Belbis, electric vehicle reporter for PC
Speaker 1: mag will be joining us this hour. She can talk.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk. I've got a little bone to pick
Speaker 1: with evs because charging a non Tesla is not as
Speaker 1: easy as I thought, and we're gonna talk about that
Speaker 1: with her as well. Let's see. AT and T has
Speaker 1: a new thing called Internet Air. This is a home
Speaker 1: Wi Fi that is delivered over a wireless network. You
Speaker 1: can install this in your house in less than fifteen minutes. Now,
Speaker 1: you may say, Rich, I already know that T Mobile
Speaker 1: has this and Verizon has this. Yes, but now AT
Speaker 1: and T has it. And it's a good thing that
Speaker 1: these companies all have this because it gives some competition
Speaker 1: to the cable companies that service your house. Traditionally, homes
Speaker 1: have like one, maybe two options for Internet. Most of
Speaker 1: the time's either your phone company or your cable company,
Speaker 1: or both. If you're lucky, now you have a third option.
Speaker 1: But in many cases it's also a phone company because
Speaker 1: it's AT and T, Verizon or T Mobile. So what
Speaker 1: they're doing is they're using these strong five G networks
Speaker 1: that they have to supply internet to your house. So
Speaker 1: you get this box, it's called the Internet Air. You
Speaker 1: scan the QR code and then you set up the
Speaker 1: box near your your strongest area of the house with
Speaker 1: your five G signal. They have a little app that
Speaker 1: tells you how to find that, and then you turn
Speaker 1: on the box and it takes the five G wireless
Speaker 1: signal and it broadcasts it out as Wi Fi. So
Speaker 1: it's very similar to having the Internet come through a
Speaker 1: cable to your house, but it's just delivered wirelessly. And
Speaker 1: I know it's confusing, you say, Rich, why not just
Speaker 1: use the five G signal. Well, it's easier to have
Speaker 1: your devices connecting to a Wi Fi signal than a
Speaker 1: five G signal because not all of them could do that.
Speaker 1: AT and T Internet Air is available in parts of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Pennsylvania, Las Vegas, Phoenix, specifically Prescott
Speaker 1: let's see Chicago, Detroit, Michigan, New Haven, Minneapolis, Portland, Salt
Speaker 1: Lake City, Seattle, and Tampa, Florida. So if you're in
Speaker 1: one of those places, this is fifty five dollars a month.
Speaker 1: There are no overage fees, there's no price increase at
Speaker 1: twelve months, let's see, no annual contract. And if you
Speaker 1: qualify for this Affordable Connectivity Program, that's the government program
Speaker 1: that'll give you thirty dollars off a month. Basically, if
Speaker 1: you're on Snap or some sort of government assistance, you
Speaker 1: can qualify for that ACP program that'll give you thirty
Speaker 1: dollars off the price of this. So I think this
Speaker 1: is a great thing. I have not tested it yet.
Speaker 1: AT and T is supposedly going to send me one
Speaker 1: to test. We'll see, but I have tested the one
Speaker 1: from Verizon and it works as advertised. And the downside
Speaker 1: is really just the speed of the service. So you're
Speaker 1: limited by the speed of what the five G signal
Speaker 1: that comes into your house offers. So what I would
Speaker 1: do if this is available at your house, whether it's
Speaker 1: T Mobile, Verizon, or AT and T, check the speed
Speaker 1: on your phone using either fast dot com or an
Speaker 1: app called Medior met Eo r Medior Speed app that
Speaker 1: will that will test the speed of your Internet connection.
Speaker 1: So if you have AT and T, go ahead and
Speaker 1: test the signal on your phone. That'll give you an
Speaker 1: indication of how fast this might be. If you have Verizon,
Speaker 1: test the signal on your phone. If you have T Mobile,
Speaker 1: test the signal on your phone. If you want to
Speaker 1: switch to one of these other companies and get you know,
Speaker 1: your Internet from AT and T. When you have a
Speaker 1: friend over, I know it's a nerdy thing to do,
Speaker 1: but say, hey, can I test the speed on your
Speaker 1: phone to see what it's like? Because I'm curious about this.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Paul Paul's in Long Beach.
Speaker 3: You're on with Rich.
Speaker 1: I'm doing fantastic.
Speaker 10: I love your show and your Katla segments are very informative.
Speaker 1: Thank you. That is my goal. That is my one
Speaker 1: goal is to uh to help people. So what can
Speaker 1: I help you with?
Speaker 10: Well, you're just talking about internet and I have the
Speaker 10: traditional cable model along with you know, TV at home,
Speaker 10: and the price just keeps going up and I'm looking to,
Speaker 10: you know, look at an alternative, but just want to
Speaker 10: how really good they are. I've had people try the
Speaker 10: wireless ones and they weren't impressed with it, But maybe
Speaker 10: that's just based on their signal in that area.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think it comes down to the
Speaker 1: signal that you get and what you need to do.
Speaker 1: Like for me personally, I couldn't use one of these
Speaker 1: things because I'm uploading and downloading video all day long
Speaker 1: with my job, you know, like my KTLA segments were
Speaker 1: always exchanging stuff on Dropbox that are like five ten
Speaker 1: twenty gigabyte files which take a while to upload. Now
Speaker 1: I've got a thousand speed on my Internet which is
Speaker 1: up and down, so it's extremely fast. But does anyone
Speaker 1: else need that? No, most people, unless you're a video editor,
Speaker 1: you do not need that sort of speed up and down.
Speaker 1: So I think for many people the wireless does work
Speaker 1: if you are just using you know, Netflix, and you're
Speaker 1: just surfing the web and you're doing your email and
Speaker 1: you're doing your zooms, as long as you have a
Speaker 1: good signal. If you don't have a good signal, like
Speaker 1: if your cell phone is spotty in your house, this
Speaker 1: is going to be spotty. Now it's going to probably
Speaker 1: pull down a little bit of a better signal just
Speaker 1: because it's a box that's dedicated with a better antenna
Speaker 1: than your phone, you know, your phone. Even though it's
Speaker 1: it's pulling in a good signal, it is regulated by
Speaker 1: how much you know radio frequency. It wants to emit
Speaker 1: and also capture, so it's not going to be the strongest.
Speaker 1: You don't want this thing that's like, you know, as
Speaker 1: strong as a dedicated box in your pocket because it,
Speaker 1: you know, it may not be safe. So what what
Speaker 1: are you looking to change your Internet? Or are you
Speaker 1: looking to change your cable TV? Which are all the above?
Speaker 10: Yeah, maybe all above. I'm just trying to figure out
Speaker 10: the best way to consume that kind of stuff now,
Speaker 10: and just based upon what we watch, and uh, you know,
Speaker 10: we do stream some We use Disney Plus and Paramount
Speaker 10: Plus and we have Amazon Prime, but we do watch
Speaker 10: network TVs. So I guess there's ways to get around that.
Speaker 10: But I guess maybe looking at what some coming down
Speaker 10: the future too, is perhaps satellite what yeah, in the air.
Speaker 1: Yes, starlink, but I mean starlink at this point is
Speaker 1: really for people who are in a more rural area
Speaker 1: or in a place that's not serviced. You're in Long Beach,
Speaker 1: so I assume what you have a cable company and
Speaker 1: any do you have more than one provider to your home.
Speaker 10: No, yeah, they all.
Speaker 8: About the same.
Speaker 10: I have both Spectrum in Frontier available.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you have two available, which is good, so
Speaker 1: that means you can play them off each other. But
Speaker 1: the problem is these cable companies know they've got us,
Speaker 1: and they know there's not many options. They're not doing
Speaker 1: as many deals as they used to do. But when
Speaker 1: it comes to options, look, if you want like a
Speaker 1: cable alternative, I think a really good option is is YouTube.
Speaker 1: TV is probably the most popular. It's got unlimited V
Speaker 1: got all the channels, including the local channels. I just
Speaker 1: think it's too expensive unless you are consuming a lot
Speaker 1: of TV and then you by the way, also sports
Speaker 1: is the trickiest thing about getting you know, these streaming services,
Speaker 1: because you either have to have the cable or you know,
Speaker 1: like if you like the Clippers, they have their own service.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of different factors when it
Speaker 1: comes to what you watch. I think is the biggest
Speaker 1: issue when it comes to switching to just sort of
Speaker 1: a streaming service. Now, for me personally, I switched to
Speaker 1: streaming about I'd say maybe four or five years ago,
Speaker 1: and it was a big decision and my wife was
Speaker 1: very much against it because it's very complicated and she saw,
Speaker 1: you know, like me Chrome casting stuff to the TV,
Speaker 1: and I decided none of that. But now it's pretty easy.
Speaker 1: You've got Netflix, you've got Hulu, you've got Prime Video.
Speaker 1: Like you said, you've got Paramount, so you can get
Speaker 1: a bunch of the movies and things and content. It
Speaker 1: just really comes down to the traditional network television that
Speaker 1: you want to watch those shows, and also the cable
Speaker 1: shows and also sports. So I think when you decide
Speaker 1: to make that jump, you have to figure out what
Speaker 1: you want to watch and do your research and see
Speaker 1: if you can get those on streaming. For instance, if
Speaker 1: you're a big sports fan, a lot of the sports
Speaker 1: in many cities are not on a dedicated streaming service.
Speaker 1: Some cities have it, some cities don't, and so that
Speaker 1: really comes into play whether you want to subscribe to
Speaker 1: like an NBA League Pass or something like that, but
Speaker 1: even with that, you may not get the local games.
Speaker 1: So there are many, many considerations when it comes to streaming.
Speaker 1: I think, both for Internet and when it comes to
Speaker 1: your television service. At the end, of the day. If
Speaker 1: you're watching a ton of stuff and you like a
Speaker 1: bunch of shows on the traditional cable networks, it may
Speaker 1: just be cheaper to go ahead and do a bundle.
Speaker 1: But otherwise, if you want to piecemeal it together and
Speaker 1: subscribe one thing here, one thing there, it can be cheaper.
Speaker 1: But when you cancel that cable service, many times your
Speaker 1: internet price will go up. So that's when these other
Speaker 1: alternatives like the the air, you know, the wireless internet
Speaker 1: services may work because T Mobile, Verizon, AT and T
Speaker 1: they're really trying to push these new ways of getting Internet,
Speaker 1: so they're giving you a deal right now, and it's
Speaker 1: a little bit cheaper, but the signal may not be
Speaker 1: as strong or may not be as fast. Triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one is the phone number. This
Speaker 1: is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here. Yeah, it's my birthday week. I call
Speaker 1: it birthday week because we've been celebrating for a while now,
Speaker 1: can you tell now, I'm just kidding. Counting Crows one
Speaker 1: of my all time favorite bands. They're actually playing in
Speaker 1: the LA area like right now, and anyway, we didn't
Speaker 1: get tickets, so wampwomp for made. We have a wamp
Speaker 1: womp sound. Let's go to Andrea in h Are you
Speaker 1: Andrea in LA or Louisiana a Los Angeles? Okay? Says
Speaker 1: la here. When I lived in Louisiana and I say la,
Speaker 1: it meant like when I see the letters, it meant
Speaker 1: something different. But you know, anyway, what can I help
Speaker 1: you with? Welcome to the show?
Speaker 16: Thank you. I have an iPhone and I believe I
Speaker 16: need to replace the battery and when I called Apple,
Speaker 16: they said that I need to back up everything on
Speaker 16: the iCloud. So what are my options besides the iCloud.
Speaker 1: Ah, you don't like the cloud or what I've.
Speaker 16: Never had it. I just don't want to get involved
Speaker 16: with it. And then if I want to get off
Speaker 16: the cloud, how would I do that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's impossible. Once you're on. It's like the Hotel California.
Speaker 1: You can check in, but you can't check out. It's
Speaker 1: really tough, and of course they want you know. And
Speaker 1: the cloud is great because it's all backed up and
Speaker 1: it's simple and it's all wireless, but it does have
Speaker 1: its downsides. It gets cluttered, you can't find stuff. You
Speaker 1: don't know where you stand. You don't know if things
Speaker 1: are actually backed up, so you kind of have to
Speaker 1: stay on top of those things. You are sending in
Speaker 1: your phone for service.
Speaker 16: Is that what I'm bringing it?
Speaker 1: You're bringing it and they said basically that it could
Speaker 1: come back wiped clean.
Speaker 16: Right, Well, I thought I would wait there, but.
Speaker 1: Maybe not uh oh at the Apple store. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it depends. You may. But here's the deal. I mean,
Speaker 1: no matter what, when you bring in any device to
Speaker 1: get fixed, you always want to have a backup of
Speaker 1: it because there is a chance that they will have
Speaker 1: to either wipe it clean or they may replace the
Speaker 1: drive on it. You just don't know, so you always
Speaker 1: want to have a backup. What do you have on
Speaker 1: your phone that you need to back up?
Speaker 16: Photos?
Speaker 1: Okay, just photos?
Speaker 16: Well, I don't know what would be wiped clean, Like
Speaker 16: would my email stay there?
Speaker 1: Emails are generally linked to your email account, so those
Speaker 1: would probably come back if you logged back in. For
Speaker 1: most people, I would say the main thing on your
Speaker 1: phone would be your photos. Your contacts are generally in
Speaker 1: the cloud already through your service provider, whether it's Gmail
Speaker 1: or Yahoo or whoever you're using a lot of times
Speaker 1: your contacts are linked to them. So if it's just photos,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of things you could do. Do you
Speaker 1: have a computer?
Speaker 16: I haven't used it in years?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, so that may not be the best
Speaker 1: solution then, So I think without a computer that if
Speaker 1: you don't want to plug this into a computer, the
Speaker 1: way you could back up photos is with a USB drive.
Speaker 1: How long do you have to get this figured out?
Speaker 16: Hours?
Speaker 1: Hours? Oh? Okay, but I can change that, okay. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're I think the cloud might be the easiest
Speaker 1: way to do this. Now, you don't have to use
Speaker 1: iCloud per se. Are you an Amazon Prime member by
Speaker 1: any chance?
Speaker 16: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean there's many ways to back up photos
Speaker 1: that don't use Do you have Google?
Speaker 16: Do I have Google?
Speaker 1: Like? Do you use like Gmail at all?
Speaker 16: I have something that I've never used. Well, I haven't
Speaker 16: used it in like years.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: I mean I think without going through the cloud, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to either plug something into this phone, which
Speaker 1: is a USB drive. So I like one from sand Disk.
Speaker 1: There's also one from pmy. What's did you say you
Speaker 1: have one of those? What a USB drive?
Speaker 16: Well, there's one in the computer.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, but it may not plug into the bottom
Speaker 1: of your phone because it's your bottom of your phone
Speaker 1: is lightning and the computer is probably USB. So unless
Speaker 1: you had a specific lightning USB drive, it would not
Speaker 1: work with your phone. So I think the easiest way,
Speaker 1: there's two things you could do. I think the easiest
Speaker 1: way is to plug this into your computer and use
Speaker 1: iTunes to just make a complete backup of this device.
Speaker 1: That is the easiest way to do it. If you
Speaker 1: don't want to do that, there's an you know, if
Speaker 1: you don't want to use iTunes and you don't want
Speaker 1: to use your computer. The other way is really a
Speaker 1: flash drive, and you can plug the flash drive into
Speaker 1: the bottom of the phone. But you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: get one of those. So if you can go to
Speaker 1: like best Buy and look for either the sand Disc,
Speaker 1: you need what's called a lightning USB drive, So it's
Speaker 1: the brand from sand Disc is called I expand the
Speaker 1: letter I expand, and then pn Y has one as well,
Speaker 1: and pn Y is again but it's brand new, so
Speaker 1: they may not have in the stores just yet. But
Speaker 1: again you need what's called a lightning to a lightning
Speaker 1: flash drive. So if you go into the store and
Speaker 1: ask for that, you can plug that into the bottom
Speaker 1: of your phone and then use the software to download
Speaker 1: the photos onto that flash drive. That's probably the best
Speaker 1: way to do it. If you don't want to do that,
Speaker 1: I think that a backup using Google Photos would work well.
Speaker 1: There's also a website called i drive which is really
Speaker 1: fast and easy. I might just use that. You can
Speaker 1: download the app for i drive and download your photos
Speaker 1: to there and they'll be backed up. It's in the cloud.
Speaker 1: You didn't want the cloud, but those are the two
Speaker 1: best ways to do it. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking
Speaker 1: technology with you at triple eight Rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to
Speaker 1: one zero one on the line. Emily dry Beelbis, electric
Speaker 1: vehicle reporter for PC mag Emily, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining me today.
Speaker 13: Thank you, Rich.
Speaker 1: So you cover all sorts of electric cars. We actually
Speaker 1: met at a show out here called what was it
Speaker 1: electrify something, Yeah, Electrify Expo, which was really cool. They
Speaker 1: had like almost every sort of car on display. Like
Speaker 1: if you're in the in the market for like an
Speaker 1: electric car. It was like, not just that, but it's
Speaker 1: like bikes and scooters and every kind of thing.
Speaker 17: So yeah, I think we met when I was going
Speaker 17: around the track on the electric motorcycle.
Speaker 1: Yes, the one that I wouldn't go on because I
Speaker 1: had to like sign a wave and it was like
Speaker 1: too much effort. So I was like, never mind, I'll
Speaker 1: just you know, So, let's talk about this whole situation
Speaker 1: with electric cars. Where do you see kind of the
Speaker 1: state of the union with EV's, because I'm always talking
Speaker 1: about them on the show. I live in California, which
Speaker 1: has a ton of them. Where do you think we're at?
Speaker 13: Yeah, so there are some numbers recently on the state
Speaker 13: of the union with the EV's.
Speaker 17: In the past couple of years, adoption rate has been
Speaker 17: doubling and kind of going up really quickly, almost exponentially,
Speaker 17: And they look at it in terms of new car sales.
Speaker 17: So maybe five years ago it was one two three
Speaker 17: percent of new cars for EV's and this year it
Speaker 17: hit seven percent, which is quite a jump. But I
Speaker 17: will say it kind of stagnated and the seven percent
Speaker 17: number we hit in January and it was still seven
Speaker 17: percent later in the year.
Speaker 13: More recently, so we are.
Speaker 17: A little bit at people are wondering, are the early
Speaker 17: adopters through and it's next step to be mass production,
Speaker 17: mass market.
Speaker 13: That's what all the.
Speaker 17: Car companies I talk to are talking about. I talked
Speaker 17: with Ford, Kia, Nissan, GM, all of them are kind
Speaker 17: of talking about, all right, it's ready to figure out
Speaker 17: what evs need to be applicable and useful and enjoyable
Speaker 17: for the rest of the population that's not those early adopters.
Speaker 13: So I would say that's where we're at.
Speaker 1: Well, I think one of the big concerns, well, there's
Speaker 1: probably two concerns. Number one is the technology, like is
Speaker 1: it ready? Am I getting a car that's going to
Speaker 1: be you know, useful in five ten years? And then
Speaker 1: also the charging situation. Now, I feel like the charging
Speaker 1: situation is twofold. If you are commuting to and from
Speaker 1: work and you have a charger at home or at work,
Speaker 1: you're going to be fine with pretty much any car
Speaker 1: because you can charge. You know, if you're just commuting,
Speaker 1: it's not unless you're commuting like three hundred miles a day,
Speaker 1: you're going to be fine. Now, when it comes to
Speaker 1: road trips, that is a different world. Entirely. And I
Speaker 1: do feel like, and I think that this was reinforced
Speaker 1: this week with my test drives, that Tesla is really
Speaker 1: the only game when it to road trips at this point.
Speaker 1: And you can debate me on this, but I feel
Speaker 1: like it's really tricky to go on a road trip
Speaker 1: in a non Tesla because of the charging situation. What
Speaker 1: do you think of that?
Speaker 13: I would agree, Yeah, of course you can do it.
Speaker 17: It's just the the infuriation of going to a charging
Speaker 17: station and not working for you, and then doing that
Speaker 17: over and over again is just going to bring you
Speaker 17: down on the road trip. And of course you're traveling,
Speaker 17: you have a million other logistics. The last thing you
Speaker 17: want to think about is how to power the actual car.
Speaker 17: You just want to get it done and keep moving,
Speaker 17: and I will say Tesla is probably our.
Speaker 11: Best bet for that.
Speaker 1: So I've been testing this Nissan Aria, which is a
Speaker 1: great car. I love it. It's really really nice. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like a Nissan Rogue. It's a crossover suv
Speaker 1: and it gets three hundred miles, which I think is
Speaker 1: the sweet spot for mile edge at this point. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you know five hundred and six hundred be nice,
Speaker 1: but three hundred. Really, I've had no range anxiety. But
Speaker 1: when I've gone to charge this car, I'm not kidding,
Speaker 1: I've been I went yesterday to three different charging stations.
Speaker 1: The first one I couldn't get to work. The second
Speaker 1: and the two fast chargers were used, and then the
Speaker 1: second one the charger was broken. It was like out
Speaker 1: of service, and the other chargers were in use. And
Speaker 1: then the third time, both chargers were in use. And
Speaker 1: because you're not doing supercharging, these chargers sometimes take a
Speaker 1: little bit longer. And so I realized the frustration of like,
Speaker 1: here I am talking about these electric cars and how
Speaker 1: great they are. But if you're getting one of these
Speaker 1: cars and you're spending a lot of money on it,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden you're not you know,
Speaker 1: you're not charging at home or you think you can
Speaker 1: do this, it could be really, really frustrating.
Speaker 17: Yeah, I had the same experience, So it was funny
Speaker 17: you said that. So yesterday I have an aud EQ
Speaker 17: eight E trond right.
Speaker 13: Now, beautiful car.
Speaker 17: I think it's the top trim, so I think it's
Speaker 17: eighty or eighty five thousand dollars. It comes with two
Speaker 17: years free charging with electric five America, which is an
Speaker 17: awesome perk. Anyone who wants to buy and ev should
Speaker 17: look at these types of promotions. You don't have to
Speaker 17: buy an eighty five thousand dollars car to get that.
Speaker 17: So that's and there's a target near my apartment that
Speaker 17: has eleven Electric America stations. Okay, cool, I'm gonna go charge.
Speaker 17: We're gonna go get some groceries, no big deal. And
Speaker 17: I get there in all the stations, all eleven are
Speaker 17: just out to get for maintenance and improvements. And the
Speaker 17: issue there is, you know, I navigated there on Google Maps,
Speaker 17: and Google doesn't know that they're that they're out. So
Speaker 17: we have kind of an app component to it as well,
Speaker 17: and you know, the vehicle navigation needs to know that
Speaker 17: Google if you use that other apps like plug share,
Speaker 17: So there's a lot of factors that go into what
Speaker 17: charger you choose and kind of how it works with
Speaker 17: your car, the port, and then why you go there,
Speaker 17: what you want to do when you're charging. So that
Speaker 17: one didn't work on a good day, that would have
Speaker 17: been a fantastic option for me. And then I also
Speaker 17: went to two others and the other one was in
Speaker 17: a parking garage, and I had to get a ticket
Speaker 17: and everything.
Speaker 13: I was desperate at this point. It was my third
Speaker 13: one I had to pay to get in a garage.
Speaker 17: So I actually just turned around and went back home
Speaker 17: with less at charge than I even had when I
Speaker 17: set out to charge.
Speaker 13: So demoralizing for sure.
Speaker 1: That is so frustrating. Now it's getting better. I did
Speaker 1: see because I was using I don't know which Google
Speaker 1: Maps you were using. I was using it on Android
Speaker 1: on this car that I was testing, and it did
Speaker 1: seem to have some like live data about the charging station,
Speaker 1: so it seemed like it was not for all of them,
Speaker 1: but it did say like zero of two or something,
Speaker 1: so it seemed to be getting some sort of live data.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I noticed is that, and this
Speaker 1: really really bugs me, Please car manufacturers, there should not
Speaker 1: be an icon for gas stations, like on the main
Speaker 1: screen on your built in navigation software. And I get it.
Speaker 1: My wife is debating me. She's like, well, maybe you
Speaker 1: want to find a restroom or like a soda. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just like bad form, like show
Speaker 1: me ev stations, Like I don't know anyway, So do
Speaker 1: we feel like the battery tech is getting better because
Speaker 1: people always you know, we've seen the cars, they've been
Speaker 1: around for a while. Is battery technology getting better, Yes,
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 13: And the interesting thing about range is that it's not
Speaker 13: all about the battery.
Speaker 17: So what these cars our companies are doing is they're
Speaker 17: learning how to connect the motor and the software.
Speaker 13: To the battery. So there's a lot of different areas
Speaker 13: you can see range improvements.
Speaker 11: It could just be a.
Speaker 13: Software update in your cargets ten more miles.
Speaker 17: It could be something that they figure out in the
Speaker 17: production line that will make the motor connect to the
Speaker 17: battery in a different.
Speaker 13: Way, and okay, you get twenty more miles.
Speaker 17: But of course the biggest jumps are going to be
Speaker 17: from the battery technology.
Speaker 13: And what I'm.
Speaker 17: Seeing really is that China is far, far, far ahead
Speaker 17: of the US. And this can be hard to wrap
Speaker 17: our minds around for the average American in some ways.
Speaker 17: But I write about what they're doing with battery technology,
Speaker 17: and it's just far and away what we have going
Speaker 17: on here. I don't hear announcements from US automakers like
Speaker 17: I do from.
Speaker 13: Battery makers in China.
Speaker 17: So they are cooking up batteries that are going to
Speaker 17: go in EBS there that can go six hundred miles
Speaker 17: on charge. I just heard another announcement from CAATL they
Speaker 17: made a battery that can charge I think.
Speaker 13: It was two hundred and fifty miles and ten minutes.
Speaker 17: So that's of the cars on the road have two
Speaker 17: hundred and fifty miles range.
Speaker 13: You're saying you can charge it in ten minutes.
Speaker 17: And these are still future technologies, but they are listing
Speaker 17: models that will have these new batteries, and that is
Speaker 17: far ahead of what we're hearing in the US. And
Speaker 17: then COATL I just mentioned they've partnered with four to
Speaker 17: build a plant in Michigan using their battery technologies. So
Speaker 17: we're kind of seeing some overseas innovation with batteries. Nissan,
Speaker 17: not Nissan, actually Toyota and Honda have had breakthroughs, so
Speaker 17: I mean Chinese battery makers and then Toyota, Honda. That's
Speaker 17: where I'm hearing the big battery announcements, and it seems
Speaker 17: like at least in the short term, US automakers will
Speaker 17: be partnering with them for those big advancements. And then
Speaker 17: Biden has allocated billions of dollars to stimulate US battery production.
Speaker 17: Because we are so far behind, and we get ninety
Speaker 17: five ninety seven percent of our batteries are from overseas,
Speaker 17: so we have brilliant engineers in the US. We do
Speaker 17: have startups working on fantastic technology. We are just a
Speaker 17: little bit far behind, and we will be partnering probably
Speaker 17: with overseas companies who are doing an amazing job with
Speaker 17: the technology. So we could benefit from that, and I
Speaker 17: think probably in the next maybe five.
Speaker 13: Years, we could start to see some of that. Certainly
Speaker 13: in ten years.
Speaker 1: I've got about a minute. What You've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of cars, you test drive a lot of stuff. What
Speaker 1: are you excited about right now? What's kind of like
Speaker 1: exciting in the EV space.
Speaker 17: I'm always looking for evs that are getting cheaper with
Speaker 17: better battery performance. So in PC mag I maintain a
Speaker 17: list of eb's under forty thousand dollars. I love adding
Speaker 17: new cars to that list. I think that is the
Speaker 17: most exciting. It's great to have a huge EV that
Speaker 17: costs two hundred thousand dollars. We've seen that before. What
Speaker 17: I get excited about is a new car like the
Speaker 17: Volvo Ex thirty, which is thirty five k and has
Speaker 17: great range. So any car under forty k I am
Speaker 17: all in on it and.
Speaker 13: That's what gets me going.
Speaker 1: All right, Emily dry Belbis, electric vehicle reporter for PC mag,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thanks rich all right, I'm gonna put a link to
Speaker 1: the forty evs under forty thousand dollars on the PCMAC website.
Speaker 1: I'll put that online at richontech dot tv. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we're gonna close out the show, and of course it's
Speaker 1: your favorite segment, the feedback segment, all the stuff that
Speaker 1: you've emailed me throughout the week. I'll be reading it.
Speaker 1: For better or for worse, rich on Tech come back
Speaker 1: after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech, closing out
Speaker 1: the show here with your feedback. If you like the show,
Speaker 1: you can follow me on social media at rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: I'm on Instagram, Facebook x formerly, Twitter, and threads. You
Speaker 1: can also listen to this show as a podcast. Just
Speaker 1: go to rich on Tech dot tv, click the podcast
Speaker 1: icon and you can subscribe there. I also have show
Speaker 1: notes for the show and you can watch my TV
Speaker 1: segments on the website. Yes, I do TV segments as well.
Speaker 1: So get through a couple of news items before we
Speaker 1: get to the feedback. As promised, Samsung has a special
Speaker 1: TV for Disney fans celebrating Disney's one hundredth anniversary with
Speaker 1: a special edition of the Frame. The Frame is a
Speaker 1: TV that displays artwork when it's not in use, and
Speaker 1: it looks like real artwork. I mean, this thing, if
Speaker 1: you've seen it in person, is very, very impressive. It's
Speaker 1: available in sixty five, fifty sorry, fifty five, sixty five
Speaker 1: and seventy five.
Speaker 2: Ah, there we go.
Speaker 1: Oh it's Disney's Wait is it Disney's birthday? I guess
Speaker 1: Oh that's for me. Oh that's for me, thank you. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is my birthday week. I'm running out of here
Speaker 1: to go have a birthday dinner. Actually, let's see Disney's
Speaker 1: one hundredth anniversary. The frame has it gets one hundred
Speaker 1: special pieces of artwork from the Disney collection, a Mickey
Speaker 1: Mouse inspired remote, and do I have a price on
Speaker 1: this thing? I don't have the price anyway. Limited edition
Speaker 1: while so applies last, Samsung dot Com, slash US, slash Disney,
Speaker 1: and Best Buy Atari bringing back the twenty six hundred
Speaker 1: with a recreation The twenty six hundred plus a recreation
Speaker 1: of the console that first appeared in nineteen eighty will
Speaker 1: be launching worldwide on November seventeenth for one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty dollars. It'll include ten games. It looks just like
Speaker 1: the original. It actually uses the same cartridge slot. And
Speaker 1: this is the coolest part. I think that the original
Speaker 1: cartridges will plug into this new machine. So if you
Speaker 1: have some old Atari twenty six hundred or seventy eight
Speaker 1: hundred cartridges, they will work with this machine, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Then the cartridge it comes with has ten
Speaker 1: games built in, including Adventure, Combat, Dodgeum, Haunted House, Mays, Craze,
Speaker 1: Missile Command, Real Sports, Volleyball, Surround Video, Pinball, and Yars Revenge.
Speaker 1: Does not include Pong. Was that not on the original?
Speaker 1: I thought it was. It also has some modern necessity
Speaker 1: like an HDMI output and USB, plus a recreation of
Speaker 1: the original c X forty plus joystick. And finally I
Speaker 1: tested this out Samsung. Remember a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 1: I did the Apple AI Voice clone. Well, now Samsung
Speaker 1: has it. So if you have a Samsung Galaxy and
Speaker 1: it's got the latest software, you can train Bixby on
Speaker 1: your voice and then you can have the voice assistant
Speaker 1: talk in your voice.
Speaker 15: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know why you'd want your phone talking back
Speaker 1: to you and your voice, but you can do it.
Speaker 1: So how to do it? Open the bix b app.
Speaker 1: I know it's probably the first time you've ever opened
Speaker 1: that app in your life. Go to settings, Language and
Speaker 1: voice style, and then create custom voice. You only have
Speaker 1: to record like you saying ten things, and it takes
Speaker 1: about five minutes to create your voice. You can hear
Speaker 1: online on my Instagram at rich on Tech. It does
Speaker 1: not sound like me at all, So it didn't really
Speaker 1: work that well, but you know, it's a start, and
Speaker 1: it's just kind of fun. I mean, your results may vary.
Speaker 1: Maybe my voice is just not as clonable. All right,
Speaker 1: let's see. Can I get to a couple things people said?
Speaker 1: Jet says, Verizon's offering me seven hundred dollars for my
Speaker 1: iPhone thirteen? Should I trade it in or wait until
Speaker 1: the new iPhones come out? Wait, don't buy iPhones right now,
Speaker 1: just wait every either deals will get better, the price
Speaker 1: will come down. Just Senda says. Cox has two different
Speaker 1: affordable Connectivity programs. One is ACP, which can be applied
Speaker 1: to any Cox Internet. Then there are several different level programs.
Speaker 1: COX will assist with under Connect Assist and Connect to Compete.
Speaker 1: One of the benefits includes one hundred dollars off a laptop.
Speaker 1: Cox recently increased the broadband speed with no additional charge.
Speaker 1: Their customers just send to I don't know if you
Speaker 1: work for Cox or what, but thank you for the
Speaker 1: public service announcement, so ask for those discounts. David says,
Speaker 1: what's the best site for NFL on TV? Ooh, at
Speaker 1: this point, it's YouTube TV. They got the exclusive rights
Speaker 1: to Sunday tickets, so that's probably the best place at
Speaker 1: this point. Richie said as evs. Electrify America has its
Speaker 1: own app which shows if the charger is in use
Speaker 1: or not, making it easier to choose where to go. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is true, but I've also found like last night
Speaker 1: we went to the Electrify America stations, it was like
Speaker 1: a it reminded me of like a fifties like what
Speaker 1: are those places called, like where they the people on
Speaker 1: skates roller skates like a whatever? That's you know, like
Speaker 1: what bobo, what are those called?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like remember like the fifties, like the
Speaker 1: place where you go outside and there's a car hop.
Speaker 1: That's it. It reminded me of a car hop. There's
Speaker 1: so many people there. They're all kind of sitting out
Speaker 1: of their cars waiting to like charge and this and that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me either. And I can't even remember what I call
Speaker 1: a car hop. Yeah. So okay, all right, let's get
Speaker 1: to some Let's see do I have How long do
Speaker 1: I have here? Four minutes? Okay, so I've got let's see.
Speaker 1: Barry asks, I want to buy a watch for someone
Speaker 1: with dementia in case they wander. They are elderly. Is
Speaker 1: there a smart watch or device I can keep track
Speaker 1: of it? She does not have a phone. I would
Speaker 1: look into something called the geobit jiob t. This is
Speaker 1: real time location tracking. It's kind of like an air tag,
Speaker 1: but with a built in cellular signal. So gobit jiobit
Speaker 1: I think will be your best bet there. Roger asks,
Speaker 1: you always have great news. Thank you. I'm looking for
Speaker 1: a way to get rid of ads on my Android
Speaker 1: phone without cost. Is there a way? Ooh, great question,
Speaker 1: And I do have a good way, easiest way I
Speaker 1: know of. This is built into every Android phone. It's
Speaker 1: super simple. All you have to do is go to settings,
Speaker 1: Network and Internet Private DNS, private DNS provider host name,
Speaker 1: and you type in DNS dot adguard dot com and
Speaker 1: that will block all the ads on your phone without
Speaker 1: installing any programs. It just has to run your URLs
Speaker 1: through ad Guard. So obviously do your research and figure
Speaker 1: out if that's something you want to do, because it
Speaker 1: will send all of the websites that you go to
Speaker 1: to this website. But that's really easy. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: two minutes yea we go? Was that really two minutes?
Speaker 1: Let's see?
Speaker 9: Uh?
Speaker 1: Christina says, hey, Rich, number one fan here. I totally
Speaker 1: disagree with the fellow that stated your explanations were too
Speaker 1: difficult for the average person to understand. Your show is fabulous.
Speaker 1: Love how you communicate live via so many modalities, Christina,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Neil says Rich, another great show. The Solar
Speaker 1: Charger sounds fantastic. I'm shocked you've never used a UPS.
Speaker 1: Maybe you only have laptops, but in my home, even
Speaker 1: a one second glitch of power will reboot all of
Speaker 1: our servers and desktops. Even my TVs have a UPS.
Speaker 1: Beverly says your show is amazing. My family and I
Speaker 1: have listened since your first show where you appreciate your
Speaker 1: informative and entertaining program. You truly have content for every listener.
Speaker 1: I tell my friends about Rich on Tech and I
Speaker 1: encourage them to listen. Thank you. And Mark says, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: listen to you yesterday and was ready for you to
Speaker 1: make a joke when you aired voicemails the woman asked
Speaker 1: for a good computer cleaner, and I was waiting for
Speaker 1: you to say, Windex. You do have a good sense
Speaker 1: of humor and have done it a yeoman's job of
Speaker 1: replacing Leo Yeomen. I've never heard that word, have you, Yeoman.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that's like a good job, I would assume
Speaker 1: since it's a nice email. Thank you, Mark. Yes, I
Speaker 1: wanted to make that joke, but I try to be nice.
Speaker 1: All right, let's see. Oh and finally, oh gosh. I
Speaker 1: hate to end on a bad note. Ginger and your
Speaker 1: Blinda says, what happened to your Sunday show? I'm so disappointed.
Speaker 1: I listen on Saturday and I've looked for you on Sunday.
Speaker 1: Love your show. I don't do much TV. We haven't
Speaker 1: had a Sunday show since I started. This is only
Speaker 1: on it depends where you listen. I guess on different
Speaker 1: stations they play it on different days, but it's only
Speaker 1: one day a weekend. All right, that's gonna do it
Speaker 1: for this episode. You can find links to everything I
Speaker 1: mentioned on my website richon Tech dot tv. Next week
Speaker 1: we'll be talking from Ifa, Berlin. My name is rich Dmiro.
Speaker 1: You can find me on social media at rich on tech.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways
Speaker 1: you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending
Speaker 1: it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes
Speaker 1: this show possible. I will talk to you real soon