Speaker 1: How a software update brought down thousands of computers, make
Speaker 1: that millions of computers worldwide, The return of the iPod
Speaker 1: kinda sorta A major retailer stops accepting checks? Are you
Speaker 1: still writing them? Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on?
Speaker 1: I'm Richdmiro and this is Rich on Tech. This is
Speaker 1: the show where I talk about the tech stuff I
Speaker 1: think you should know about. It's also the place where
Speaker 1: I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech
Speaker 1: should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up those
Speaker 1: phone lines at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one
Speaker 1: zero one. Give me a call if you have a
Speaker 1: question or comment about technology. Got a hot take on something,
Speaker 1: Give me a call. Email also open. Just go to
Speaker 1: rich on tech dot tv hit contact. Great guests this
Speaker 1: week John Hammond, principal security researcher at Huntress, is going
Speaker 1: to join to talk about the major IT outage. We've
Speaker 1: got Zach Hall, editor at large at nine to five MAC.
Speaker 1: He's going to join to talk about iOS eighteen public beta.
Speaker 1: And Jared Newman of Advisorator friend of the show, will
Speaker 1: join to talk about his latest cord Cutting Guide. What
Speaker 1: a week it was with the global it meltdown all
Speaker 1: because of a company named CrowdStrike. Their update caused a
Speaker 1: wide spread outage heard across the world. Now, CrowdStrike is
Speaker 1: a cyber security company. They released this flawed software update
Speaker 1: on July nineteenth. The impact was pretty immediate. The update
Speaker 1: affected and estimated eight point five million Windows devices. Now,
Speaker 1: that is less than one percent of all Windows machines.
Speaker 1: But but the impact was so significant because CrowdStrike has
Speaker 1: a lot of heavy hitters as their customers, critical enterprises,
Speaker 1: companies big and small.
Speaker 2: Who was affected?
Speaker 1: Major airlines, hospitals, banks, retailers, emergency services all impacted. Even
Speaker 1: Starbucks people had trouble ordering their Ventae triple lattes from
Speaker 1: their phones. It was pure chaos. When the caffeine stops flowing,
Speaker 1: that's when America has a problem. So my takeaway from
Speaker 1: this incident it really highlights the interconnected nature of our
Speaker 1: global tech ecosystem, our global tech economy. It used to
Speaker 1: be things were not as interconnected, Companies were not as
Speaker 1: wide ranging, They didn't span the globe.
Speaker 2: It might have been a local impact.
Speaker 1: Now everything it seems has these It just seems like
Speaker 1: every incident we have continues to get bigger and more global.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Microsoft talked about the importance of safe deployment of resources
Speaker 1: like this and of course disaster recovery for us the
Speaker 1: average person. I think the big takeaway here is back
Speaker 1: up your system, Back up your system, back up your system.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: CrowdStrike did issue a pretty quick fix, but the problem
Speaker 1: is the fix wasn't as simple to deploy as the
Speaker 1: original software updates. The original software update went out quickly
Speaker 1: and was installed on a lot of these systems. The
Speaker 1: fix in many cases required manual repairs by IT staff. Yes,
Speaker 1: they are still dealing with this. In many cases, some
Speaker 1: of them had to manually bring the computer back to
Speaker 1: life from a backup. Otherwise you had to safe boot
Speaker 1: the computer, which, if you're doing a lot of remote
Speaker 1: access into your systems, a lot of times you weren't
Speaker 1: able to rete access in to do the fix that
Speaker 1: was necessary. And of course, the incident raises a lot
Speaker 1: of questions about software testing processes, like how did this
Speaker 1: software update go out that was flawed without someone figuring
Speaker 1: that out? Don't they test this stuff before it goes out?
Speaker 1: And also, who's liable is it? CrowdStrike are they are
Speaker 1: they gonna have to pay up for all these issues.
Speaker 1: I mean all these airlines, just the airlines alone, so
Speaker 1: many people had delayed flights or canceled flights. The airline's
Speaker 1: got to pay out or get those people on a
Speaker 1: new flight. Who's liable for all that? CrowdStrike stock fell
Speaker 1: eleven percent following the incident. Now things are coming back
Speaker 1: up online, but this was not an easy one to
Speaker 1: recover from. I got lots of comments on my Facebook,
Speaker 1: on my Twitter, on my Instagram, and of course this
Speaker 1: is just the high level stuff. We're gonna have our
Speaker 1: guest later in this hour, who is an expert over
Speaker 1: a million followers.
Speaker 2: On social media on YouTube.
Speaker 1: He is going to break it down and explain what
Speaker 1: went wrong here, what we can learn from this, and
Speaker 1: really just kind of break down how this even happened
Speaker 1: and what his take is on it. So that will
Speaker 1: be later this hour. I just wanted to give you
Speaker 1: the high level stuff. But here's some of the responses
Speaker 1: I got on my social media. Eric wrote, oh, he
Speaker 1: posted a jiff. When you're an IT director and your
Speaker 1: company doesn't use CrowdStrike, you're sitting easy because you're like, WHOA, Okay,
Speaker 1: Michelle says, it was a fun day today and the
Speaker 1: day's not over. Only one co worker is able to
Speaker 1: log on. Our IT department is working diligently to fix
Speaker 1: a lot of these computers. Crazy Bill says, this morning,
Speaker 1: I tried to buy a product from my local farm
Speaker 1: supply store. The clerk said their PC based register was
Speaker 1: down and not usable at all. He said, without their
Speaker 1: business system, he couldn't sell me anything, even with cash. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of people were saying, oh, got to carry cash.
Speaker 1: Sometimes these systems can't even accept cash because they're so
Speaker 1: dependent on these point of sale systems that they may
Speaker 1: not know how to accept cash. I know when I
Speaker 1: worked at office depot back in the day, we had
Speaker 1: those old school you know, those like bills, they those
Speaker 1: like little check systems they have at the this you know,
Speaker 1: like if you went to like a local diner, says
Speaker 1: like check it's like printed with red ink at the
Speaker 1: top and it has all the you know, you tear
Speaker 1: it off the book like we had that and pens
Speaker 1: underneath the registers. So in case the POS system ever
Speaker 1: went down, that's point of sale, by the way, we
Speaker 1: would we would go to pen and paper. I don't
Speaker 1: know if they still do that, but that's what we did.
Speaker 1: Lisa says, my daughter works at Starbucks. This morning, she said,
Speaker 1: this morning has been chaos. David said, what a day.
Speaker 1: More reason why I'm glad my work Mac is my
Speaker 1: primary machine. Blue screen free. Yeah, the main thing that
Speaker 1: people woke up to is this blue screen of death.
Speaker 1: You know that that screen you see on Windows that
Speaker 1: and by the way, it was mostly it was all
Speaker 1: Windows computers that were affected.
Speaker 2: Max, no Linux. But it's a blue screen of.
Speaker 1: Death that people saw, that screen that says there's been
Speaker 1: a problem with your computer. Let's try to recover from it.
Speaker 1: It's a screen nobody wants to see. Scott said, and that,
Speaker 1: my friend, is part of the reason one digital currency
Speaker 1: is a very bad idea. And to that, I say, wait,
Speaker 1: was bitcoin really affected? I don't think so. I think
Speaker 1: bitcoin it's like Titanic goes on. What's that song? My
Speaker 1: heart will go on? It's like bitcoin. It just I
Speaker 1: don't think bitcoin. Bitcoin's like the Internet, right, It's.
Speaker 2: Got a lot of redundancy there.
Speaker 1: Debbie says, I got stuck in an airplane on the
Speaker 1: last leg of a thirty hour trip and the final
Speaker 1: flight ended up getting canceled six hundred miles away from home,
Speaker 1: ended up renting a car and driving home the next morning.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 1: That's a real life example of the impact of something
Speaker 1: like this on actual people. Scott joked, just sky net's
Speaker 1: first strike. Barbara said, we're feeling it in my law firm.
Speaker 1: In the OC, John says Kaiser was hit for several hours.
Speaker 1: Doug says, Now, just imagine a cash list society and
Speaker 1: all it takes is a glitch and millions go without. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I do understand that. And there are places
Speaker 1: that don't accept cash, so I see how that could be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see how that could be concerning if we did
Speaker 1: go completely cashless. But a lot of places do and
Speaker 1: a lot of people do already. And you know, like yesterday,
Speaker 1: I was at Target and I was coming back from
Speaker 1: the gym and I need to stop at Target for something.
Speaker 1: I didn't have my wallet with me and I only
Speaker 1: had my phone with tap to pay, and so I said,
Speaker 1: I hope this works, and it did, thankfully. Frank said,
Speaker 1: so is CrowdStrike a national slash international security risk? Seems
Speaker 1: so h that's an interesting take. Brian says, this is
Speaker 1: why backups are important. Imagine if your drive daily image
Speaker 1: or drive daily if not weekly. Yeah, that's how a
Speaker 1: lot of people did get through. This was an image
Speaker 1: of their drives and they just kind of back to
Speaker 1: or reloaded the computer from that. And then Kevin cautions,
Speaker 1: please clarify why they might need physical access. I think
Speaker 1: you should tell people not to trust or allow people
Speaker 1: to access your computer. I understand understand scammers already phishing
Speaker 1: with this outage.
Speaker 2: Oh, that is true.
Speaker 1: I did say in my posts that a lot of
Speaker 1: times the IT folks might need physical access to the computers. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't mean they need to pop open the hood
Speaker 1: and open it up like a car and replace the
Speaker 1: spark plugs. But yes, they did need to get hands
Speaker 1: on with a lot of these machines because if they're
Speaker 1: in that boot loop, which they were, it might have
Speaker 1: been tough to actually get access to them from a
Speaker 1: remote standpoint and do something. But yeah, that don't That's
Speaker 1: the thing. Anytime something like this happens, the scammers are
Speaker 1: immediately ready to make sure that they can capitalize on
Speaker 1: this issue. And so what's the issue, Oh, did your
Speaker 1: computer have the the great crowd strike outage of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. We can help. Let's protect your computer. Let's
Speaker 1: get your computer back up and running. So you do
Speaker 1: need to be aware of the fact that these scam
Speaker 1: artists do capitalize on anything. And yeah, I'm sure the
Speaker 1: scams involving this are already out there.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Definitely an interesting day, that's for sure. Yeah, let's hope
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen again. Coming up later in the hour,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have John Hammond, an actual security researcher, talk
Speaker 1: about the IT outage in detail, explain what his takeaway
Speaker 1: is and what we should all take away from it.
Speaker 1: Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. You are
Speaker 1: listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two.
Speaker 2: Four one zero one. Let's go to.
Speaker 1: Cameron in Huntington Beach. Cameron, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 5: Rich, I hope you're having a great Saturday. So I
Speaker 5: had a question about.
Speaker 6: The YouTube app on both Android and iPhone, but particularly iPhone.
Speaker 6: So I had an iPhone twelve since twenty twenty and
Speaker 6: I had the app on there for many years in
Speaker 6: paying premium and all of that, and then around twenty
Speaker 6: twenty four because this was the year, I got recently
Speaker 6: upgraded to an iPhone fifteen because I had credits and
Speaker 6: all that.
Speaker 5: But besides that, what I've recently.
Speaker 6: Noticed is that after a couple of YouTube updates, I've
Speaker 6: noticed that the app has started to really melt the
Speaker 6: phone down. And what I mean by that is is
Speaker 6: what happens is when I'm watching videos, maybe like for
Speaker 6: two minutes, maybe maybe ten minutes, not even an hour,
Speaker 6: the phone starts to really drain down the battery, even
Speaker 6: when I'm on Wi Fi. I do have cellular, but
Speaker 6: I mostly use it when I'm on Wi Fi sometimes,
Speaker 6: and I just it's weird because it's never done that before.
Speaker 6: Whenever it was on Wi Fi before, it would not
Speaker 6: be at these high temperatures. I know it does this
Speaker 6: when you're on sailor because it's using data, but I
Speaker 6: was just wondering if it could be an Apple thing.
Speaker 6: I don't think so, because I took it to Apple
Speaker 6: and they said, you know, they noticed that eighty eight
Speaker 6: percent of the battery is taken by YouTube, and they
Speaker 6: said that's a little abnormal. And so when I got
Speaker 6: the iPhone fifteen, I was thinking maybe it was the
Speaker 6: twelve because I've had it for so long. But from
Speaker 6: what I read online, it says some people were having
Speaker 6: problems with YouTube updates. So I don't know if that's
Speaker 6: an app issue or if that's a phone battery.
Speaker 1: Well that okay, that's that was your first mistake, cameraon
Speaker 1: looking at what people say online, because because I'm not kidding,
Speaker 1: you can support whatever you want by looking at comments online.
Speaker 1: So yes, if you google YouTube app heating up on iPhone,
Speaker 1: of course you're gonna see reports about people saying that
Speaker 1: this thing is heating up on the iPhone because guess
Speaker 1: what's happening. Everyone else is googling that, and then they
Speaker 1: are adding to the conversation. Now, YouTube has millions upon
Speaker 1: millions upon millions of people that are using this app
Speaker 1: on iPhone. I have not heard of a widespread issue.
Speaker 1: I pay for premium on YouTube as well. I watch
Speaker 1: videos on YouTube on my phone. I've yet to see
Speaker 1: any significant issue whatsoever with YouTube on my phone. So
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that you don't have a problem with
Speaker 1: this or you're not noticing something now I think you
Speaker 1: were right about something. The cellular streaming, of course, is
Speaker 1: going to use more battery, it's going to heat up
Speaker 1: your phone more. But in general, just the architecture of
Speaker 1: apps on the iPhone and the fact that they're updated
Speaker 1: so often, typically they do not have a lot of
Speaker 1: issues for very long. Now, yes, are there issues, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and they happen, and they come and they go. But
Speaker 1: I find and this is my general advice to people,
Speaker 1: when you're having an issue with an app, basically it's
Speaker 1: because of an update. Something in that app is causing
Speaker 1: an issue. Now with YouTube, I do not know of
Speaker 1: a widespread issue with this app. So here's what I
Speaker 1: would say to get what's happening fixed on your phone.
Speaker 1: So number one, I would delete the YouTube app, because
Speaker 1: on iPhone, when you delete the app, that'll really clear
Speaker 1: things out. That'll get it back to the start. Once
Speaker 1: you clear out that app, I would make sure you
Speaker 1: have all of your software updates completed on the phone.
Speaker 1: So do the main software updates, which is like the
Speaker 1: iOS updates, and then of course do any of the
Speaker 1: updates for the other apps. And then I would restart
Speaker 1: your phone. So once you restart your phone, then I
Speaker 1: would go in, I would reinstall YouTube, and then I
Speaker 1: would see if it's still happening. The other thing I
Speaker 1: can think of is that perhaps you have something like
Speaker 1: smart downloads turned on on YouTube, or you're downloading stuff
Speaker 1: in the background for offline. They've got a new feature
Speaker 1: that downloads shorts automatically. That would use more battery, and
Speaker 1: that would also be doing things in the background, which
Speaker 1: could be kind of slowing things down and using up
Speaker 1: more of the battery and causing the phone to heat up.
Speaker 1: But once you reinstall everything and use it again, if
Speaker 1: it's still happening, I don't really have a good solution.
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, just wait for an update
Speaker 1: for the app, because you know, again there are many
Speaker 1: people using YouTube. I've not heard of a widespread heat
Speaker 1: issue with the YouTube app on the iPhone, but if
Speaker 1: you are using it a lot, yes, especially in the summer,
Speaker 1: it would cause your phone to heat up. The eighty
Speaker 1: eight battery percentage is a little concerning. That is a lot,
Speaker 1: but it depends on what you're doing on your phone.
Speaker 1: If you're using YouTube a lot of the time. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the call, camera and appreciate it. Eighty to eight
Speaker 1: Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Uh Amazon Prime Day. It's
Speaker 1: the hangover right Amazon Prime Day?
Speaker 2: This week?
Speaker 1: Amazon says record breaking sales. Yes, they say that every time.
Speaker 1: Let me just give you some of the numbers. Number one,
Speaker 1: more items sold than any previous Prime Day. Adobe Analytics
Speaker 1: says fourteen point two billion dollars was spent across US
Speaker 1: retailers during Prime Day. That includes other retailers as well.
Speaker 1: That's up eleven percent year over year. So yes, people
Speaker 1: are shopping. Average order size according to Numerator fifty seven
Speaker 1: dollars ninety seven cents. Average households spent just about one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars in place two orders. Top selling
Speaker 1: items Amazon, fireTV sticks, Premiere Protein shakes, what Bobo?
Speaker 2: Were you ordering stuff? Liquid IV?
Speaker 1: People want to get fit, and they want to get hydrated,
Speaker 1: and they want to watch stuff on TV. Back to
Speaker 1: school shopping obviously a big growth, a big driver for
Speaker 1: all the sales. People shopped at Target, they shopped at
Speaker 1: Walmart as well. Discounts were deeper this year. I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but I definitely thought Prime Day was
Speaker 1: a success. I found a lot of stuff I needed
Speaker 1: was on sale, and to me, that means it was
Speaker 1: a success. Eighty to eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up, we're going to talk to a security researcher
Speaker 1: about this week's major IT meltdown. This is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. We'll get back to the phone lines
Speaker 1: in just a moment. But joining me now is John Hammond,
Speaker 1: principal security researcher at Huntress. He's going to talk about
Speaker 1: this major IT outage we experienced this week.
Speaker 2: John, thanks for joining me.
Speaker 4: Hey, they're rich Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: So, uh, let's see, John, you've got one point seven
Speaker 1: million subscribers on YouTube as a offering free cybersecurity education
Speaker 1: and ethical hacking. So what do you talk about that's
Speaker 1: so interesting that people want to follow you because that's
Speaker 1: an incredible number.
Speaker 7: Well, goodness, I'm flattered, Thank you so much. Well, it
Speaker 7: really runs the gamut on hey, cybersecurity, whether it's looking
Speaker 7: at nowwhere trying to see what hackers are up to
Speaker 7: in their tradecraft or seeing all that shady stuff on
Speaker 7: the dark web, but hey, trying to bring that education
Speaker 7: and that awareness to the masses.
Speaker 1: What do you think the average person is up against
Speaker 1: the most right now? When it comes to all the
Speaker 1: stuff you talk about.
Speaker 7: Oh goodness, well, you know you see all the news
Speaker 7: and headlines about this thing ransomware, but often that's hey,
Speaker 7: maybe targeting a business or a company organization, but for
Speaker 7: the end user, the individual and the person, oftentimes you
Speaker 7: see infost dealer malware. Hey, some things that will try to, hey,
Speaker 7: grab your passwords, see what sensitive information you might have
Speaker 7: saved or cash in your computer, like credit cards or addresses.
Speaker 7: All those things certainly make for juicy details they could
Speaker 7: then sell or turn into some more lets later on.
Speaker 1: So a question I get, and we'll get to the
Speaker 1: CrowdStrike stuff in a second, but the question I get
Speaker 1: all the time is the Windows defender on your computer
Speaker 1: good enough for it to protect you? Or do you
Speaker 1: need something like additional I know it's.
Speaker 7: A hot topic, but I will say I am a big,
Speaker 7: big fan of a Windows defender. I know thinks say, oh,
Speaker 7: you get what you pay for, it's free, it's everywhere,
Speaker 7: But genuinely you know. That means it's got a lot
Speaker 7: of telemetry, a lot of hey, insight into what the
Speaker 7: average users might be up to, and a better way
Speaker 7: to defence with that data pool.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, there you have it.
Speaker 1: So initial thoughts on this crowd strike meltdown what happened here?
Speaker 7: Well, well, I don't know if we need to dig
Speaker 7: into a whole long story. I know folks are already
Speaker 7: feeling the effects. But around I guess ten pm Pacific
Speaker 7: what would have been Thursday nights, there was a post
Speaker 7: online on reddits where folks are saying, hey, is anyone
Speaker 7: else seeing this blue screen of death outage presumably from
Speaker 7: the CrowdStrike agent their software, And then the floodgates kind
Speaker 7: of open. See it spread like wow, to fire individuals
Speaker 7: chiming in saying yeah, I've got an organization with However,
Speaker 7: many thousands of computers, servers and workstations all down, stuck
Speaker 7: in a boot loop, and that's gone on to effect
Speaker 7: as you know, airlines, banks, schools, really I've seen hospitals
Speaker 7: in the mix. It's been quite a mess.
Speaker 2: So what is CrowdStrike supposed to do?
Speaker 1: They do what's called like endpoint security software, right, Like,
Speaker 1: can you explain what that means?
Speaker 4: Correct?
Speaker 7: Absolutely, so, CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity provider. There, a vendor
Speaker 7: that's really trying to work hard to protect you from
Speaker 7: malware and hackers.
Speaker 4: And all those threats on the landscape.
Speaker 7: What that means is they have a certain amount of
Speaker 7: sensitive access because you want to be able to protect
Speaker 7: your computer at all the different levels and layers there.
Speaker 7: So they've got what a lot of nerds and geeks
Speaker 7: call sort of root access. Working in the kernel is
Speaker 7: kind of the topic and word there, but that is
Speaker 7: a little bit sensitive, a little bit fragile. You want
Speaker 7: to make sure that that's all correct and buttoned up
Speaker 7: to the best that it can be. Is if there's
Speaker 7: any of these mistakes, any unfortunate misconfigurations, well the machine
Speaker 7: can very well crash. As we've seen widespread.
Speaker 1: And what do you make of this? Have we seen
Speaker 1: something like this happen before on this scale with an
Speaker 1: update like this?
Speaker 7: Short answer is no, I don't think I'm going too
Speaker 7: far out in a limb to say, yeah, this mass
Speaker 7: outage and seeing this as widespread as it is, I
Speaker 7: don't think we've ever seen anything of this scale and severity.
Speaker 4: You know, you've got your run of the mill Windows.
Speaker 7: Updates and maybe patches that put it in maybe an
Speaker 7: unstable state, and some computers have their own trouble in
Speaker 7: some cases, but nothing quite like this.
Speaker 1: So now, obviously the conspiracy theories have been flying around,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's you think about what this could
Speaker 1: impact in the future, Like, this was pretty bad. So
Speaker 1: what if a company like someone got in at a
Speaker 1: company that has all this access to the kernel and
Speaker 1: did something maliciously Like this was a mistake. Clearly I
Speaker 1: hope it was, But what if there was malicious intent?
Speaker 1: Could that potentially happen?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 7: Well, if I may say, to dispel the myst by
Speaker 7: no means this is not a vulnerability, This is not
Speaker 7: an exploit, this was not a hack. It is really
Speaker 7: just an unfortunate accident and a mistake, as you mentioned.
Speaker 7: But I will say, yeah, when we've seen this effect,
Speaker 7: it's not too far of a stretch to say, Wow,
Speaker 7: is this what a digital war might.
Speaker 4: Look like in the future. I don't know.
Speaker 7: I really can't say that with any certainty, but it
Speaker 7: is that doomsday or nightmare scenario when yes, all the
Speaker 7: technology that we lean on, we have such reliance on,
Speaker 7: and we want to keep that secure.
Speaker 4: We are trying to lock all the doors and windows here.
Speaker 7: Well, when that's abused and taking advantage of it's quite
Speaker 7: a scary situation.
Speaker 2: So the interesting part to me is how this got out.
Speaker 1: So I assume that they tested this on computers before
Speaker 1: it went out, So what do you think went wrong
Speaker 1: in that process? I know they're still in investigating with
Speaker 1: their internals and all that stuff, and they may know
Speaker 1: more than they've let on, but like, how do you
Speaker 1: think this got out there when it was messing with computers?
Speaker 7: This is, truthfully, I think the harshest critique, and rightfully
Speaker 7: so is well, we have to wonder about that QA
Speaker 7: process or the workflow of hey rolling things out?
Speaker 4: Really did it start as a small sample pool? Hey?
Speaker 7: Was it one hundred hosts that went to first and
Speaker 7: then grew to a thousand and expanded and more of
Speaker 7: that testing QA process? But unfortunately it sounded like everything
Speaker 7: really just had this incident occur at the same time.
Speaker 7: So I think there are some lessons learned, room for improvement,
Speaker 7: and all of.
Speaker 4: Us could take that lesson just as well.
Speaker 7: But as to how it happened, unfortunately, again I mentioned
Speaker 7: that sensitive kind of fragile portion layer of the computer. Well,
Speaker 7: there might have just been a mistake and a flop
Speaker 7: and some of those configuration files what they call channel files.
Speaker 7: Not to get too far in the weeds, but it
Speaker 7: has made quite a booboo.
Speaker 2: So how are people recovering?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: How are it? Folks?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: Just I mean, I know that a lot of these
Speaker 1: computers have are back up and running, but I am
Speaker 1: sure it's still a long process for some organizations. So
Speaker 1: is the process to get to recover from this pretty rough?
Speaker 7: Absolutely, And this is the crux of the issue. On Friday,
Speaker 7: you can imagine, Hey, a lot of technicians and engineers
Speaker 7: running around to each computer individually and really having to
Speaker 7: roll out a workaround or some mitigation manually because this
Speaker 7: problem left all the computers in kind of an unstable state.
Speaker 7: You've seen the blue screen of death, that blue picture
Speaker 7: with the sad frownie face. Well, that means the computer
Speaker 7: hasn't fully started up, and you won't be able to
Speaker 7: roll out any automatic changes or a push a solution
Speaker 7: at scale. So unfortunately, and I don't know how long
Speaker 7: this might take. Whether it's the weekend, whether it's a
Speaker 7: week time will tell but it's one by one manual
Speaker 7: efforts and that's why, Hey, all the nerds and geeks
Speaker 7: are having a rough week.
Speaker 1: Something like this happened with our iPhones or androids or
Speaker 1: Mac or Linux computers.
Speaker 7: I I hm, yes, is again the short answer, but
Speaker 7: let me add the little disclaimer and an asterisk because
Speaker 7: it does depend. It varies us using the technology that's
Speaker 7: provided by a vendor or company and the folks maybe
Speaker 7: making that hardware and software. There is trust, there is
Speaker 7: a certain layer of hey, understanding and hope that that
Speaker 7: will be done the right way, but accidents like this
Speaker 7: can happen, and it's funny. You normally have the conversations
Speaker 7: of our the business owners or system administrators actually using
Speaker 7: automatic updates and applying patches as they're released, and normally
Speaker 7: you have the conversation is the onus of the responsibility
Speaker 7: on them the end user, But in this case it
Speaker 7: was truly the provider and that is what made this
Speaker 7: quite a disaster.
Speaker 1: Okay, so for the average person, we've got to wrap
Speaker 1: this up. I know, people get scared to do updates
Speaker 1: in general because it changes the way their computer works
Speaker 1: or it changes the way their phone works, and you know,
Speaker 1: but they do contain software or security updates.
Speaker 2: So what's your advice to people?
Speaker 1: Should they be hesitant to do these updates like the
Speaker 1: day they come out?
Speaker 2: Or are we still okay? And this was kind of
Speaker 2: a fluke.
Speaker 7: Oh, let me be bold and confident here without a doubt,
Speaker 7: you still absolutely should be applying those automatic updates and
Speaker 7: getting the hey, new patches as they're released. I think
Speaker 7: the best that we can because look, that is going
Speaker 7: to improve your security posture and have a better defense.
Speaker 7: But we CRIB should do some strategic planning, some thinking
Speaker 7: and oh can we get ahead of this if we
Speaker 7: were ever prepared for a situation like this, do we
Speaker 7: know who to call? Do we have our checklists and
Speaker 7: documentation outlined? What's a operating procedure that we can roll with.
Speaker 7: That's the best we can do to try to prepare
Speaker 7: for what we might not realize we have to prepare for, all.
Speaker 1: Right, John, I see why you've got nearly two million
Speaker 1: folks following you on YouTube. You explain stuff in a
Speaker 1: very clear and easy to understand method. How can folks
Speaker 1: follow you online?
Speaker 4: Thank you so much? Hey, you can track me down.
Speaker 4: I am on YouTube?
Speaker 7: Just my name John Hammond and you'll track me on
Speaker 7: LinkedIn Twitter on Hey I'm out there, don't hesitate, Happy
Speaker 7: to be a friend.
Speaker 1: All right, There you have it, Thanks for joining me.
Speaker 1: John Hammond, h A M M O N D. Principal
Speaker 1: Security researcher at Huntress. Coming up, more of your calls
Speaker 1: at Triple A Rich one O one. That's eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Plus
Speaker 1: it's the end of an era for a technology I'll
Speaker 1: tell you which one coming up. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking
Speaker 1: technology at Triple eight rich one O one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: I hope you're having a fantastic day. I know I am.
Speaker 1: The website for the show is rich on Tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: While you're there, you can sign up for my newsletter.
Speaker 2: It is free.
Speaker 1: You can get it to your inbox basically every Friday
Speaker 1: or Saturday. Paid subscribers actually get it a little bit earlier.
Speaker 1: Paying is just supporting it. But it is completely free.
Speaker 1: So I do that to keep you posted. It's fun.
Speaker 1: Today's is all about the global software update or the
Speaker 1: glitch and all. But I just it's basically like this show,
Speaker 1: but in a newsletter form, so it's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: Rich on tech dot TV. Let's go to Dawn in Tucson, Arizona.
Speaker 1: Down you're on with Rich oh Rich.
Speaker 8: I have a conundrum. I have an older computer. It's
Speaker 8: an Apple computer. It is a Nassbook Pro fifteen inch
Speaker 8: of belief from twenty sixteen. I recently received a thumb
Speaker 8: drive and there are some data on there that I'd
Speaker 8: like to get onto my computer. And I don't know,
Speaker 8: I must need some sort of an adapter or dongle
Speaker 8: or something because the ports on my computer are of
Speaker 8: a mini type size. I don't know if they're USB
Speaker 8: three or or what not all that familiar with the
Speaker 8: USB stuff.
Speaker 1: So you have your your your flash drive is I'm
Speaker 1: guessing your flash drive has like the older style bigger
Speaker 1: connector Yeah, okay, so that is that is likely USB A,
Speaker 1: and so A is like the big it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the USB we all know. It's like that big
Speaker 1: kind of USB connector. There's actually a whole bunch. There's
Speaker 1: USB A, there's B there's three point zero, there's Mini,
Speaker 1: there's micro, there's C, there's b U. Don there will
Speaker 1: be a quiz when we're done. Okay, So what you
Speaker 1: need is an adapter, and you need a USB. Let's see,
Speaker 1: you need a type C to type A adapter. So
Speaker 1: if you go on Amazon and let me confirm. Now,
Speaker 1: I've I've got a bunch of these at home, because
Speaker 1: I am you know, I've got like a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of these little phones that they send me to test,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them contain this little adapter.
Speaker 2: So let me just make sure that's the right one.
Speaker 8: Could I just send me one and I can be
Speaker 8: done with it?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, But I think you'll get it faster on Amazon. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it's so easy. So what you want, yep, it's right here. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Anchors got one. It is USB C high Speed Data,
Speaker 1: USB C two USB three point zero female adapter for
Speaker 1: MacBook Pro twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: That'll work. That is ten bucks.
Speaker 1: They also have other ones on there that are there's
Speaker 1: one for five ninety nine.
Speaker 2: But what you need?
Speaker 8: What did you what did you put in the search bar?
Speaker 8: Because that was a whole lot of numbers and letters.
Speaker 1: But I didn't get very very easy USB C two
Speaker 1: to the word to t o a adapter, and that
Speaker 1: will bring it up, okay, and you'll see it's a
Speaker 1: little tiny adapter. You should be able to identify the
Speaker 1: fact that it looks like it would plug in the
Speaker 1: flash drive on one side and USB C on the
Speaker 1: other side. Anywhere from six to ten dollars solves all
Speaker 1: of your problems. I think you said you had a conundrum.
Speaker 1: Your conundrum is solved quite easily. Actually, so thanks for
Speaker 1: the call. There in Tucson, Arizona. I've never been, but
Speaker 1: one of these days I will, hopefully. I love Soedona.
Speaker 1: Which is road drip, Yeah, road drip, I yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: saw my list. College town. I think TUCSONA is sor right.
Speaker 1: I think they've got a college there. Let's see here.
Speaker 1: Do we have time for another call?
Speaker 2: I think so? Why not?
Speaker 1: Let's go to Let's go to Chris in Rancho, Cucamonga.
Speaker 1: Chris dround with Rich.
Speaker 5: Hey, Rich. I have a Galaxy S twenty one that
Speaker 5: I use Wi Fi calling everywhere except at work. When
Speaker 5: I get to work, it will not accept a call,
Speaker 5: make a call, or accept a text, or make a text.
Speaker 5: And everybody else seems to be okay. I asked our
Speaker 5: IT department about it, and they said, we don't use
Speaker 5: Wi Fi calling, so I don't know what you're talking about,
Speaker 5: and they use iPhones as well. I'm wondering, what do
Speaker 5: you think I can do to make it work.
Speaker 2: Hmm, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't connect to the Wi Fi at my
Speaker 1: work for this reason because A I don't like to
Speaker 1: be tracked, and B I don't want to deal with
Speaker 1: It's funny that they said we use iPhones. They just
Speaker 1: shrugged their shoulders when it's an Android, because it's funny.
Speaker 1: At my work, it's the same thing. The androids are
Speaker 1: like impossible to connect to the corporate WiFi, and the
Speaker 1: iPhones connect really easily. So the only thing I can
Speaker 1: think of is they may have this type of communication
Speaker 1: blocked at a network level and they may not know it,
Speaker 1: like they're whoever their provider is may just block that
Speaker 1: sort of track thick because I don't know, maybe it's insecure,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just not what they want on their traffic.
Speaker 1: Why do you need the Wi Fi calling? Is your
Speaker 1: Does your phone not work well in the in the area.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a few dead spots in the building. You know,
Speaker 5: we're in a four five story building. And then we're
Speaker 5: on the fourth floor. A few dead spots, and uh,
Speaker 5: I can use it. But the the thing is is
Speaker 5: I have to remember every time we come to work
Speaker 5: to you know, switch it off of Wi Fi and
Speaker 5: you know, because I use Wi Fi at home because
Speaker 5: we have terrible sale service at home, you know, so
Speaker 5: I use Wi Fi calling there, but occasionally it does
Speaker 5: get spotty in.
Speaker 2: The building with the cellular connection.
Speaker 1: You're saying, with the cellular connection, yeah, because I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, but on the Samsung there is a routine yeah. Sorry,
Speaker 1: there is a routines functionality on the Samsung where you
Speaker 1: can actually have your device disconnect from the Wi Fi
Speaker 1: at work and you can manually connect and.
Speaker 2: You want it when you want to use that. So
Speaker 2: that's one option.
Speaker 1: I don't know what your data plan is like, but
Speaker 1: the fact so the only thing I would do is
Speaker 1: maybe troubleshoot the connection. Can you make any voiceover IP calls?
Speaker 1: Like can you try like a like a Google Voice
Speaker 1: call or something like that. You have Google Voice?
Speaker 5: I don't, but I don't have. Like I said, I
Speaker 5: don't have a problem with Wi Fi anywhere else except
Speaker 5: in the building. They had a problem with the Wi
Speaker 5: Fi they upgraded it and then this happened.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, well that see. I think that gives me
Speaker 1: a little hint here. I think I think it's something
Speaker 1: that whoever their service provider is, it may be blocking
Speaker 1: this sort of traffic. And that's that's my hunch. And
Speaker 1: that's the only thing I could really think of. The
Speaker 1: Other thing I would do is maybe talk to some
Speaker 1: of your colleagues if they have, you know, an iPhone,
Speaker 1: and say, hey, do you use Wi Fi calling? As
Speaker 1: it turned on, a lot of people don't even know,
Speaker 1: you know, you ask them this stuff and they're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's just however it's set up, but
Speaker 1: it's it sounds like it's something that's being blocked at
Speaker 1: the network level, because there really shouldn't be a reason
Speaker 1: why it wouldn't work on that Wi Fi network. The
Speaker 1: other thing you can try is I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: if you can use like a hotspot or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's that Wi Fi. The only other
Speaker 1: thing I can think of is sometimes in the Wi
Speaker 1: Fi settings there are a couple of things where it
Speaker 1: uses like a private IP address or something. You may
Speaker 1: try to turn off some of that cloaking in the
Speaker 1: Wi Fi settings and see if that helps.
Speaker 2: But that's that's an interesting one.
Speaker 1: But I know that these corporate networks, you know, they
Speaker 1: block what they want, and it's it's sometimes a mystery
Speaker 1: what you're allowed to do and what you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to do. Eight eight eight rich one o one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: More rich on Tech coming up right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology at triple A rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. Well, it's the end of an
Speaker 1: era for a couple of different technologies. First off, red box,
Speaker 1: red box is shutting down. You know what red boxes
Speaker 1: DVD rentals, that little kiosk outside the grocery store or
Speaker 1: the Walgreens or the cvs.
Speaker 2: You would rent a DVD.
Speaker 1: And then later Blu Ray it started, I think it
Speaker 1: was ninety nine cents and then it got to like
Speaker 1: a dollar fifty or something, and it was great because
Speaker 1: you could rent like a new movie for pretty cheap,
Speaker 1: cheaper than like Blockbuster back in the day.
Speaker 2: Wait was Blockbuster around? Let me see these?
Speaker 1: I guess red Box was like no Blockbuster was gone.
Speaker 1: So red Box has been around for twenty years. I
Speaker 1: guess they were bought by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.
Speaker 1: So those are those books. Remember everyone was reading them
Speaker 1: back in the day. The Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Speaker 1: They have one for like everything. It was like Chicken
Speaker 1: Soup for the Soul. For cats, You're like, what, I
Speaker 1: don't even know cat's red, but I think kats would
Speaker 1: probably enjoy Chicken soup. So that company, I guess bought it.
Speaker 1: But then they went from chapter eleven to chapter seven bankruptcy,
Speaker 1: which is bad. They had a thousand employees. Let's see
Speaker 1: they Oh they operated twenty four thousand DVD KIOSK rentals.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's wild. Twenty four thousand of those. What are
Speaker 2: they going to do with them?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 1: The business has been in decline since twenty twenty, and yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just end of an era. So DVDs were
Speaker 1: already kind of you know, nobody really used them anymore,
Speaker 1: but now that you can't rent them through red Box,
Speaker 1: it's even less now. The thing I liked about red
Speaker 1: Box is that I know we're all about streaming and
Speaker 1: all this stuff, but you know, if you if you
Speaker 1: rent a movie online like a you know, a new release,
Speaker 1: it's like at least six bucks, And theoretically the red
Speaker 1: box would be like a dollar fifty if you could
Speaker 1: return it like the next day, so it was still
Speaker 1: cheaper than like paying for a movie online. But now
Speaker 1: I again I've said this before on the show, I
Speaker 1: refuse to pay for a movie online, so I will
Speaker 1: only watch what's on my streaming services. So last night
Speaker 1: again took us like an hour to find something to watch.
Speaker 1: Because I'm not kidding Netflix, I love you, but like
Speaker 1: where are the good movies? Where is the stuff you
Speaker 1: actually want to watch? I don't know, maybe you know
Speaker 1: where it is. I can't find it. And it's all
Speaker 1: the problem with Netflix is that everything is like it's
Speaker 1: all like no name, Like okay, the actors might have
Speaker 1: a name, but they're just making money.
Speaker 2: That's why they're in these things.
Speaker 3: But like the.
Speaker 1: Actual movies, you're just like, oh, I didn't know that
Speaker 1: this person had a new movie because nobody did, because
Speaker 1: it's terrible. They just did it for the paycheck. And
Speaker 1: so next thing you know, you're watching this movie that
Speaker 1: you would never ever watch in your life unless it
Speaker 1: was free because you're subscribed to the service and you
Speaker 1: feel bad. No, I want to watch all Every single
Speaker 1: movie I want to watch is one that you have
Speaker 1: to pay for. Like I'm like, Oh, I want to
Speaker 1: watch Civil War, Nope, we got to pay five to
Speaker 1: ninety nine four. Oh I want to watch this, Nope,
Speaker 1: we got to pay six bucks for that. So there's
Speaker 1: a million movies I want to watch. They're just never
Speaker 1: on my streaming services. Anyway, I digress another another technology
Speaker 1: I guess was I guess technology is displacing this other thing.
Speaker 1: But this week Target said no more checks, no more
Speaker 1: payper checks. Target stopped accepting paper checks on July fifteenth. Oh,
Speaker 1: come on, boom, what was the last time you wrote
Speaker 1: a check? Citing extremely low volumes. Forty percent of Americans
Speaker 1: have used to check in the past thirty days in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. I think that's high, down from fifty
Speaker 1: percent in twenty twenty. Checks are used mostly for specific
Speaker 1: scenarios like rent payments, tax payments, and payments to contractors
Speaker 1: or professional services. Older consumers sixty nine plus prefer checks
Speaker 1: more than younger generations for bill payments. I get that
Speaker 1: my parents still like to write checks. Bobo, you want to.
Speaker 2: Chime in January. The last time I wrote a check
Speaker 2: was January, So there you go.
Speaker 1: See it's been six months now that you mentioned it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actively try not to write a check. I will
Speaker 1: literally go out of my way to not write a check.
Speaker 1: If I have to go to the ATM and grab money,
Speaker 1: I will do it to not write a check.
Speaker 2: I'm zelling more.
Speaker 1: Yes, Zelle is kind of like the new check. But see,
Speaker 1: Zell is like the most dangerous to me because the money,
Speaker 1: it's like it's gone and in their account instantly and
Speaker 1: there's no getting it back.
Speaker 9: But I like that at the same time because I
Speaker 9: don't have to budget because the moment is gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's already there. I agree with that. I
Speaker 2: like that. I use Venmo a lot.
Speaker 1: I was actually against if I was doing this show
Speaker 1: three years ago. If you would have heard me on
Speaker 1: my podcast before the show, I was a Venmo hater.
Speaker 1: I told people actively do not use Venmo because I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what I think is shady about Venmo. Okay,
Speaker 1: when you have a balance on Venmo, of like, let's
Speaker 1: say you have a balance of eighty dollars and you
Speaker 1: pay a bill for ninety.
Speaker 2: I know where you're going.
Speaker 1: Don't you think that the charge on your car would
Speaker 1: be ten dollars because they're like, oh, well, let's use
Speaker 1: the eighty dollars you have, plus we'll take the ten
Speaker 1: dollars from your card. No, no, they take the full
Speaker 1: ninety and leave that eighty in your account. Why do
Speaker 1: they do that? Why do you think profit for them?
Speaker 1: They're making interest on the money that's floating in these
Speaker 1: accounts month after months. So yes, if you let's say
Speaker 1: you get a haircut and it's forty bucks and you
Speaker 1: pay Venmo, they'll take it out of that eighty because
Speaker 1: the balance covers it. But my point is, I think
Speaker 1: that's a it's kind of like a it's a decision
Speaker 1: that benefits them, not me.
Speaker 2: For me Venmo. The issue was.
Speaker 9: When you had the money in your account and you
Speaker 9: wanted to take it to your main account, they charged
Speaker 9: you for it, and if they if you didn't want
Speaker 9: it to be charged, it took them longer, Yes, and
Speaker 9: it was harder to do but to just transfer an
Speaker 9: instantly as long as the card is on there, Oh,
Speaker 9: we do it right away.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but if not, like, it's okay, we'll give
Speaker 2: it to you.
Speaker 3: In my four or five days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we won't charge you, but you have.
Speaker 1: To wait that time. And people, of course aren't you know,
Speaker 1: we're in America. We're impatient, you know, drive through restaurant.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, you get your food in like
Speaker 1: ten seconds. So I understand. But they do have to
Speaker 1: make money, so I understand that. But you know, and
Speaker 1: also some people don't like cause if you like, I
Speaker 1: know some people that just pay on their credit card
Speaker 1: with Venmo, which they charge you like three percent.
Speaker 2: So don't do that. That's very expensive.
Speaker 1: Several major retailers, including Walmart, CVS, Cohle's Home Depot, and
Speaker 1: TJ Max apparently still accept personal checks. I like, I said,
Speaker 1: I have one, like a couple of checks.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: This this was a little got a lot of response
Speaker 1: on my Facebook page, Facebook dot com slash rich on tech.
Speaker 1: I asked people, do you still write a check? And
Speaker 1: of course I didn't know. You know, you know, you
Speaker 1: post something on Facebook, you never know if people care.
Speaker 1: Not this, oh, people cared hundreds of comments and like
Speaker 1: a second and so I'll read a couple. Carolyn says,
Speaker 1: I think that this electronic age has overlooked a huge population,
Speaker 1: our seniors, they have troubles with site and memory issues,
Speaker 1: slight or advanced.
Speaker 2: Leave them out.
Speaker 1: I think she's referring to the fact that we assume
Speaker 1: that everyone cannot write a check, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people still do that. Dana asks, your young adult children
Speaker 1: have checks. My sons are twenty four and twenty five,
Speaker 1: and I know neither has a checkbook, nor would they
Speaker 1: know how to write one if required. Yeah, in fact,
Speaker 1: they actually came out with a card because the main
Speaker 1: thing when I was, you know, a renter, is that
Speaker 1: you had to pay your rent by check. There was
Speaker 1: no real way to pay rent any other way, and
Speaker 1: so I think that's still a very popular way that
Speaker 1: people use a check is to pay like rent. But
Speaker 1: pretty much everything else you can do now ach like
Speaker 1: through your bank account, which, by the way, be very
Speaker 1: very selective on who you give access to your bank
Speaker 1: account too.
Speaker 2: With all these bills.
Speaker 1: You know, the reason why these companies want you to
Speaker 1: switch to your bank account is because they get their
Speaker 1: money very easily, right, there's no like buffer between you
Speaker 1: and them. It's like they just say, oh, your bill
Speaker 1: is eighty dollars and by the way, we just took
Speaker 1: it out of your checking account.
Speaker 2: Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Oh, I even do anything because I give you access
Speaker 1: to my account. Greg says, I still use them to
Speaker 1: pay people who do work on the house. If you
Speaker 1: use a card, they often add a percentage to the bill,
Speaker 1: which you can get pricey on home improvements. Oh, Greg, okay,
Speaker 1: you set me off. This is my biggest pet peeve
Speaker 1: in the world. When I say, oh, I'd like to
Speaker 1: use my card and they say, oh, look's an extra
Speaker 1: three percent or four percent or whatever. And this happened
Speaker 1: to me the other day, and I said, why, why
Speaker 1: are you charging me four percent? Three percent? Oh, that's
Speaker 1: that's how much they charge us. We're only charging well,
Speaker 1: excuse me, you're running the business. That's part of your
Speaker 1: costs of running a business. When I wrote my book
Speaker 1: one hundred and one hand Tech Tips for the iPhone,
Speaker 1: you know how much Amazon took from every single book
Speaker 1: I sold about forty percent.
Speaker 2: Books sold for every book from almost.
Speaker 1: Every well, I mean it was about when you add
Speaker 1: everything up, it was the processing fees that all the
Speaker 1: stuff you basically get about. You know, you basically just
Speaker 1: write forty percent off of the price of that book.
Speaker 1: So you sell a book for ten bucks, you're only
Speaker 1: making six dollars on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at the most, I mean.
Speaker 1: And by the way, that's just like you know, so
Speaker 1: I also sold some of them, like like a signed
Speaker 1: copy through like another service and like they would take
Speaker 1: a percentage. But my point is to me, I was
Speaker 1: happy because I was making money. And the same thing
Speaker 1: with your business. If you're like, I'm sorry. If you
Speaker 1: run a small business and you and you are accepting
Speaker 1: credit cards, you got to pay those fees, Like that's
Speaker 1: part of doing business.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to pay fees, but then don't accept credit cards.
Speaker 1: You go to these places and you're like, oh, here's
Speaker 1: my card, and they look at you like you got
Speaker 1: anything else. You're like, why do you accept it? Why
Speaker 1: do you accept a card if you don't want to
Speaker 1: accept the fees. That is my biggest pet peeve because
Speaker 1: I and I, you know, sometimes people want to pay
Speaker 1: with their credit card because it gives a little buffer
Speaker 1: between you and them, right, you know, maybe they're doing
Speaker 1: it for their budget reasons, maybe they're doing it for
Speaker 1: they want you know, they don't trust you and they
Speaker 1: just want to make sure if they want to return
Speaker 1: something or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, they can do it easily.
Speaker 1: But my my reality is, just please, if you're going
Speaker 1: to accept the form of payment, why are you actively
Speaker 1: trying to make people not use that form of payment
Speaker 1: and the Venmo stuff and all like.
Speaker 2: So I went.
Speaker 1: Actually where I get my haircut, and I love them,
Speaker 1: so no, no, you know, I'm not being mean to them.
Speaker 1: But they switched from like used to be able to
Speaker 1: pay them with ZEL to now they put an ATM
Speaker 1: in there and they said, no more Zel, So you
Speaker 1: have to go to this ATM and it now costs
Speaker 1: you three point fifty to use the ATM if you
Speaker 1: don't have cash. And so my point is it's like
Speaker 1: we're driving into the future in so many ways, but
Speaker 1: yet so many small businesses are keeping themselves in the past.
Speaker 1: And I say, just I hate to say this, but
Speaker 1: just raise your prices by a couple bucks if you
Speaker 1: need to, if it's if that's what it costs. And
Speaker 1: I know, okay, you know what, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: win in this argument no matter what. Anyway, if you
Speaker 1: want to chime in on the paper checks thing, Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com, slash rich on tech, can we go to break?
Speaker 2: I said enough.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. You know, there's
Speaker 1: not a lot that sets me off, but when it does, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I go there. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you, talking technology at eight eight eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. The website for the show rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot tv. If you want to link to anything
Speaker 1: I mentioned, just go to rich on tech dot tv
Speaker 1: and hit the light bulb at the top of the page.
Speaker 1: You can get show notes in real time. This is
Speaker 1: show number eighty one. If you can believe it, you're
Speaker 1: and a half of this by the way. Uh and
Speaker 1: if you want to contact the show, just hey, contact
Speaker 1: up at the top and you can send a message
Speaker 1: right to me. Let's go to Leslie in La Laguna Beach. Leslie,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich Hello, Leslie?
Speaker 2: Are you there?
Speaker 1: I tapped the right one? No, maybe I didn't.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I think I did, Leslie. Are you there? Nope? Okay,
Speaker 2: oh oh there you are.
Speaker 5: Hi.
Speaker 10: Hi, Hi, Rich Hello, Hi. I'm having t of logging
Speaker 10: onto my banking Bank of America on my phone. I
Speaker 10: can do it on my iPad, I can do it
Speaker 10: on my computer. I can. I have installed an uninstalled
Speaker 10: the app on my phone. I've gone into the website.
Speaker 10: I checked my password managers to see if I have
Speaker 10: anything old in there. But and I know for sure
Speaker 10: what my you know, use their name, the password is.
Speaker 10: But it's just not working. It's showing they can't find
Speaker 10: my account.
Speaker 1: Okay, so every time, okay, that's interesting. So you're you're
Speaker 1: on an iPhone or Android.
Speaker 4: iPhone.
Speaker 1: Okay, so iPhone you've got you've got your user name,
Speaker 1: you've got your password, and every time you try to
Speaker 1: log in, Now, is it auto filling from the password
Speaker 1: manager when this happens.
Speaker 10: No, I don't save my banking passwords on even a
Speaker 10: password manager. So I'm very careful that I know exactly
Speaker 10: what it is. I get this. The information you entered
Speaker 10: doesn't match our records. You have a few more times
Speaker 10: charge remaining.
Speaker 2: And this is just a Bank of America app.
Speaker 10: Just the Bank America app. And in the past I
Speaker 10: had no problem with it. In fact, I would use
Speaker 10: the phone most of the time, you know, gone, just fine.
Speaker 10: I would use the face thing too. That would look
Speaker 10: and then one day I decided to use my computer
Speaker 10: because I was going to do more stuff and I
Speaker 10: couldn't log on there. So I went ahead and changed
Speaker 10: my password, thinking, okay, I'll just go along with the thing.
Speaker 10: Dre's the password. And now I've been on my computer,
Speaker 10: but I can't get it on my phone.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what I think, okay, what I think is happening.
Speaker 1: I think there is like an extra character something that
Speaker 1: that's somehow being entered on the phone that's not being
Speaker 1: entered on the desktops. You're able to log into your account,
Speaker 1: just not on your phone, just.
Speaker 10: Not on my phone.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if you go to Bankfoamerica dot com, you
Speaker 1: type in your user name and password, you get in
Speaker 1: no problem.
Speaker 10: If I do that on my computer I do put
Speaker 10: on my phone, I can't get in through my app
Speaker 10: or my or the website.
Speaker 1: Are you running any sort of AD blocker on your
Speaker 1: phone or a VPN?
Speaker 10: Only thing I can think of? I mean, I I'm
Speaker 10: not playing no of I mean, what can how can
Speaker 10: I check that?
Speaker 11: Uh?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, so what type of network do you
Speaker 1: have at home? Like for your WiFi, but your computer's
Speaker 1: on the same network at home? Yeah, okay, have you tried, okay,
Speaker 1: So I would also try maybe toggling your Wi Fi
Speaker 1: off and then logging in on cellular and seeing if
Speaker 1: that if it gets the same error. But what I
Speaker 1: would do is, you know, it sounds like there's like
Speaker 1: I would say, if you're copying and pasting this password.
Speaker 2: Is that what you're doing? I know you're typing it? Okay? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean this.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting because these kind of these kind of
Speaker 1: things happen, and I've seen them happen even with myself
Speaker 1: on my phone. But typically there's something running on my
Speaker 1: phone that is interfering.
Speaker 10: But I'm thinking and I can't figure out what it
Speaker 10: is that's reading. It's got to be some blocker.
Speaker 1: Saying are you okay? So can you go into on
Speaker 1: Safari on your phone? Can you log into Bank of
Speaker 1: America through there? Like if you just go to the website.
Speaker 10: I've tried that.
Speaker 2: I tried it, okay, and it won't let you do
Speaker 2: it anywhere on your phone.
Speaker 1: No, okay, sounds like you've got some sort of ad
Speaker 1: blocker or VPN running on your phone. So v wise,
Speaker 1: have you installed a VPN there?
Speaker 10: No, I'm I'm not that savvy okay.
Speaker 2: And no ad blocker either, not that.
Speaker 10: I know of, no, but you know, strangers interesting, I
Speaker 10: don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: And then the other question is this just does this
Speaker 1: happen everywhere or just on Wi Fi or just on cellular,
Speaker 1: because that could be it is.
Speaker 10: Everywhere, because when you said that, that's kind of interesting
Speaker 10: because I do use Wi Fi calling it home just
Speaker 10: because of where we are, but everywhere it's the same.
Speaker 10: So even when I'm just on cellular too.
Speaker 1: And have you asked Bank of America? Have you asked
Speaker 1: like their tech support department and what have they said?
Speaker 10: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And what do they say?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I've asked them and they don't know. I've even
Speaker 10: gone to the right store to see if they can
Speaker 10: troubleshoot something they can't.
Speaker 2: Well, I think you stumped me.
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna we're gonna leave this one to
Speaker 1: the wisdom of the crowds and maybe I'll get some
Speaker 1: info on this from an email or something like that.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Coming up, We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk iOS eighteen public Beta. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: On Tech. Rich Demiro here, hanging out talking technology. We'll
Speaker 1: get back to those phone lines in just a bit.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Still got a
Speaker 1: lot of news to get through as well. Want to
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Zach Hall, editor at large at
Speaker 1: nine to five MAC. He is here to join us
Speaker 1: to talk about iOS eighteen Public Beta. This was released
Speaker 1: this week by Apple. You can install it on your iPhone,
Speaker 1: but before you do, we should talk about it.
Speaker 2: Zach. Welcome to the show. Hey Rich, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So iOS eighteen public Beta, what does that mean exactly?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 12: iOS eighteen is the next big software update for the
Speaker 12: iPhone without buying a new iPhone. It's it's when you know,
Speaker 12: usually it comes up in the fall, in September, and
Speaker 12: you download the new update and maybe things look a
Speaker 12: little bit different, but your phone can do some new things.
Speaker 12: And this is iOS eighteen public Beta. So the beta
Speaker 12: version was announced a few weeks ago, back in the
Speaker 12: beginning of June for developers only, and as of the
Speaker 12: beginning of this past week, you can download the public
Speaker 12: beta without being a developer. And this is more for
Speaker 12: early adopters, people who want to test out some of
Speaker 12: the new features before they get pushed to out all
Speaker 12: the new phones in September. So this is really just
Speaker 12: a preview of some of the new things coming to
Speaker 12: the iPhone later this fall.
Speaker 4: But for free.
Speaker 12: You can install on your iPhone now if you're willing
Speaker 12: to maybe deal with some bugs and try things out
Speaker 12: early before they're really polished and ready for everybody to use.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Apple has made it much easier in recent years
Speaker 1: for the average person to install this the beta. It's
Speaker 1: very very simple. So what is the caution here? Like
Speaker 1: that you can't just go back if there's a problem, right.
Speaker 12: Right, there's ways like you can back up your old
Speaker 12: data and you can kind of you know, use a
Speaker 12: computer and do a bunch of heavy lifting. Maybe you
Speaker 12: maybe you support to get back to the old version
Speaker 12: of things go pretty bad for you, But there is
Speaker 12: a risk of data loss. The big thing is is,
Speaker 12: you know, you don't want to put this on your
Speaker 12: main device if you're worried about losing information or you're
Speaker 12: worried about maybe some of your app's not working.
Speaker 4: The right way.
Speaker 12: Because it is a beta, you're not going to be
Speaker 12: able to say, you know, to your favorite app that
Speaker 12: you rely on to the developer, Hey, this isn't working.
Speaker 4: What's wrong.
Speaker 12: They're going to say, it's a beta version of the
Speaker 12: software of the of the iPhone software, so we can't
Speaker 12: do anything about it yet. So it really is just
Speaker 12: to try out some new features on the phone from Apple,
Speaker 12: and you know, at the risk of maybe not getting
Speaker 12: to have the same level of stability and everything that.
Speaker 3: You get from just using your phone.
Speaker 1: Order narrowly, right, like, basically, if you put this on
Speaker 1: your device and you have a problem with your work email,
Speaker 1: your IT departments can be like, ah, you're running a beta.
Speaker 1: We can't help with that, or pretty much anything that
Speaker 1: goes wrong, it's like, well, you're running a beta. That's
Speaker 1: kind of like the part that's part of it is
Speaker 1: that there's no guarantees with this software because Apple's still
Speaker 1: working on it to finalize it.
Speaker 12: That's the big disclaimer, right, even if it you know
Speaker 12: it is an issue with your IT work email, the
Speaker 12: you know, the disclaimer there is it is a beta,
Speaker 12: so they're not even gonna try to resolve it. And
Speaker 12: part of that is because it's a beta, it's it's
Speaker 12: not finished yet, and Apple pushes out new versions about
Speaker 12: every other week. The developer version of IOSA Team Beta
Speaker 12: usually has been out for they pushed it out to
Speaker 12: developers first developers to try it out, and then the
Speaker 12: public beta tends to be what's been out in the
Speaker 12: wild for developers for about a week, and then the
Speaker 12: public beta that's kind of a less risky version of
Speaker 12: you know, the previous software, but it's still unfinished and
Speaker 12: you're going to see updates to it every other week
Speaker 12: or so when you get closer to September, maybe every
Speaker 12: week we'll see a new update to it. So things change,
Speaker 12: and even if you have a good version this week
Speaker 12: where you're running IOSA Team Beata and you say everything's fine,
Speaker 12: things could break in the next couple of weeks. You know,
Speaker 12: if they've changed something they try to, you know, optimize
Speaker 12: one feature here or there.
Speaker 4: It can affect how your apps work.
Speaker 12: So it really is sort of you know, if you're
Speaker 12: an early adopter and you're trying to just you want
Speaker 12: to test this stuff out before it's available.
Speaker 4: The developer beta.
Speaker 12: Is for app makers to make sure that their apps
Speaker 12: are compatible. But what's happened over the past several years
Speaker 12: is because Apple is starting off new features, people want
Speaker 12: to people like me, you know, people like you. I'm
Speaker 12: sure I want to try these out early and get
Speaker 12: their hands on them. So it's also a way for
Speaker 12: the public, you know, without being an app maker, to
Speaker 12: try it out early at the risk of you're not
Speaker 12: going to have the same level of support you know,
Speaker 12: from your IT or even from.
Speaker 4: Apple for that matter.
Speaker 1: So before we get into some of these features, because
Speaker 1: I've been playing with this this this week, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've been probably since the developer beta, you know,
Speaker 1: just to be clear, let's say you install this on
Speaker 1: your phone, you need a backup of your iPhone and
Speaker 1: if you want to go back, like let's say you
Speaker 1: try this out for a day or two and it's like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, my battery is bad, my apps don't work,
Speaker 1: I can't log in on my banking app. The only
Speaker 1: way to go back is to erase your phone as
Speaker 1: far as I know, and then reinstall the backup from
Speaker 1: that erase on that erase iPhone.
Speaker 2: Does that sound about right?
Speaker 12: That's that's about right, and a lot of I'd say
Speaker 12: that the biggest risk there is that if you do
Speaker 12: a backup on a Monday and you decide on Friday,
Speaker 12: that the battery life is too big of a hit
Speaker 12: for you, or some apps aren't working the way that
Speaker 12: you want them to. Information from Monday to Friday. You know,
Speaker 12: between you doing that backup and you decide you want
Speaker 12: to go back, you might not have that last week
Speaker 12: of information. So it just depends on you know, what
Speaker 12: information is and how it's stored and everything. But that's
Speaker 12: the big thing though. You know, you can do it backup.
Speaker 12: You can, there's ways to get back to it. But
Speaker 12: it really is just say, I want to try this out,
Speaker 12: and I'm willing to have you know, worse battery life
Speaker 12: and slower performance at the cost of maybe trying out
Speaker 12: some cool new features you know, you know, a month earlier.
Speaker 1: So and with that said, the features are great, they
Speaker 1: are cool, they're a lot of fun. I put this
Speaker 1: on a secondary device that did not put it on
Speaker 1: my primary. But the number one thing is really customization.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more options for customization both on the
Speaker 1: home screen. You can place your icons anywhere you want.
Speaker 1: The control center is totally revamped, which I love because
Speaker 1: it's a lot more useful, so you can, you know,
Speaker 1: put a lot of different control center I guess shortcuts
Speaker 1: there more so than before because you can use third
Speaker 1: parties apps as well, and the lock screen you can
Speaker 1: customize those two little shortcuts as well. So what has
Speaker 1: been kind of like the notable features to U Zach.
Speaker 12: I mean, the home screens something you see every day,
Speaker 12: you know, you unlock your iPhone and you go to
Speaker 12: your apps. And a few years ago there was this
Speaker 12: big trend of kind of like insecure but really hard
Speaker 12: to do workarounds of making your home screen look the
Speaker 12: way you want it, to change all of your app
Speaker 12: icons to be one color, and that's baked into the
Speaker 12: phone now that I was eighteen in beta now and
Speaker 12: you know about this fall where you can just you know,
Speaker 12: long person your home screen, tap and edit and customize
Speaker 12: button and then take what color you want your icons
Speaker 12: to be and like what shade and you can change
Speaker 12: it on the fly. So Apple's taking a lot of
Speaker 12: what people have been doing with their devices anyway, and
Speaker 12: like finding really incredible workarounds that they've been doing and
Speaker 12: just making it part of the system itself, which is wonderful.
Speaker 12: And even things like if you're used to running your
Speaker 12: phone in dark mode or you like to go between
Speaker 12: light and dark mode, Apple's doing official icons for their
Speaker 12: apps for dark mode for the first time, and you
Speaker 12: can make those switch from light to dark like you
Speaker 12: do with the rest of the phone. Some really great
Speaker 12: stuff there. And you mentioned those lockscreen shortcuts. So from
Speaker 12: the iPhone ten and twenty seventeen, apples put the flashlight
Speaker 12: and the camera on the lock screen on the bottom
Speaker 12: right and left corners, and that's been what it is,
Speaker 12: those buttons for those two functions. And this past year
Speaker 12: with the iPhone fifteen Pro, they added a button, the
Speaker 12: Action button, that can be a launcher for the camera
Speaker 12: and you could even swipe in from the right side
Speaker 12: of the lock screen open the camera. So there's lots
Speaker 12: of ways to open your camera. Finally said, hey, if
Speaker 12: you want to make that button open your favorite app,
Speaker 12: you know, whatever you want it to be, you can
Speaker 12: do that instead or a third party camera app. So
Speaker 12: lots of ways to customize kind of what's already there.
Speaker 12: Just make it work the way you wanted to make
Speaker 12: it look the way you wanted to and just in
Speaker 12: using it from the beginning of June, like you kind
Speaker 12: of mentioned, I'm finding that I'm changing it, you know,
Speaker 12: every couple of weeks, learning especially with Control Center, which
Speaker 12: is super customizable. Now, like, what are the ways it's
Speaker 12: going to be different? How how does this work now
Speaker 12: that I've got control over it? You know, what are
Speaker 12: some ways that work better for my use cases? And
Speaker 12: that's kind of what I've been finding.
Speaker 1: The interesting note to me is that you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the people that like Android, they like it
Speaker 1: because it's customizable. But Apple is slowly but surely made
Speaker 1: their system very customizable as well. So I think that's
Speaker 1: a big side of this is that, you know, if
Speaker 1: people had a problem with like, oh, I can't really
Speaker 1: customize this, it's like, no, it's actually pretty good at
Speaker 1: this point. One of the things I noticed too is
Speaker 1: the the locked full You can lock apps down.
Speaker 2: You can also put them in a hidden folder.
Speaker 1: There's a new passwords app, which I think is probably
Speaker 1: going to be the most popular passwords app in the
Speaker 1: world after like the day one launch.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: The messaging between iPhone and Android, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: big one. Can you talk about that for a moment?
Speaker 1: We only have like a less than a minute here,
Speaker 1: sure so quickly.
Speaker 12: Our CS is this way to communicate between Android phones
Speaker 12: that iPhone hasn't supported and on the iPhone, you've got
Speaker 12: your blue messages I message where you've got like typing
Speaker 12: indicators and read receipts for whenever you send something and
Speaker 12: somebody reads it. You's a popular on all chat platforms now.
Speaker 12: RCS is kind of an upgrade to the old text
Speaker 12: message system where now you get typing indicators and read
Speaker 12: RECEI things like that just between green messages would agree
Speaker 12: on your iPhone and so now for the first time,
Speaker 12: you'll be able to text people on Android and they'll
Speaker 12: see when you're typing or when you've read it if
Speaker 12: their phone and their carrier supports RCS. So that's something
Speaker 12: that people are already seeing in the wild, like, oh,
Speaker 12: you switched to Android. No not, my iPhone has rcs NOW,
Speaker 12: So that's kind of a insider you know, uh set
Speaker 12: of letters.
Speaker 2: But once you see it in the wild, you kind
Speaker 2: of get used to it.
Speaker 1: And importantly you'll be able to send videos and photos
Speaker 1: full or maybe not full. They haven't said full, but
Speaker 1: like high resolution, let's put it that way, so it
Speaker 1: won't look like a postage stamp, you know, on either side.
Speaker 12: Yeah, which has gone from like two thousand and five
Speaker 12: technology to twenty twenty and beyond technology.
Speaker 1: With that, it's good, way better, way better. All right,
Speaker 1: There's a lot more in iOS eighteen the public beta.
Speaker 1: You can check out nine to five Mac to learn
Speaker 1: about it all. Zach Call, thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 1: Thanks having rich all right, eighty eight rich one O
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you why Samsung is
Speaker 1: suspending shipments of their new Galaxy Buds Pro. And Apple
Speaker 1: has a new home pod. I'll tell you what that's
Speaker 1: all about. Coming up right here. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich DeMuro here chatting about technology at eighty
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. The website for the
Speaker 1: show rich on Tech dot tv. There you can watch
Speaker 1: my TV segments to see what I cover.
Speaker 13: There.
Speaker 1: You can also sign up for my free newsletter, and
Speaker 1: you can follow me on social media as well at
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Apple has introduced a new HomePod Mini.
Speaker 1: How exciting. Oh, it's just in a new color Midnight.
Speaker 1: The last one I think was I don't know what
Speaker 1: what was the last color. I think they was like
Speaker 1: going around online like I think it was just black.
Speaker 1: And now it's called Midnight, but anyway, HomePod Mini and
Speaker 1: a new color. HomePod Mini, if you're not familiar, is
Speaker 1: a small speaker. This thing is great. It's a powerhouse.
Speaker 1: It's only a couple inches tall, but sounds great. Comes
Speaker 1: in a bunch of different colors yellow, orange, blue, and white.
Speaker 1: It's available now. It's ninety nine bucks. I was giving
Speaker 1: these out like candy for holidays a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago when they came out, because they're just such an
Speaker 1: easy gift. If someone has an iPhone, this is like
Speaker 1: a no brainer. HomePod Mini now in Midnight. Meanwhile, Samsung
Speaker 1: is suspending shipments of its Galaxy Buds three Pro. I've
Speaker 1: been using these, got a pair in Paris and they
Speaker 1: sound great. They're amazing. I have had zero issues with them.
Speaker 1: They don't even launch. They don't even launch until July
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, but now that's being pushed until August twenty eighth.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: Early users reported quality issues, including easily torn eartips.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've had no problems with that. I wore them for
Speaker 1: a long time, like a week, no problems whatsoever. Amazon
Speaker 1: removed the listing from its site. Samsung's conducting an evaluation
Speaker 1: to see what's happening here. They apologize to customers. I
Speaker 1: don't know who would have these yet because obviously most
Speaker 1: people didn't get them yet. But yeah, if you were
Speaker 1: hoping to get your Galaxy Buds three pro, can't get
Speaker 1: them just yet. And my favorite AI assistant is now
Speaker 1: available for Android. Yes, Claude. Claude is my preferred AI assistant.
Speaker 1: It is now available as an Android app. It was
Speaker 1: available as an iOS app a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and now they've caught up and Claude is just fantastic
Speaker 1: if you're working with anything text based documents, summarizing notes,
Speaker 1: all that stuff.
Speaker 2: It is really good at that.
Speaker 1: Chat GBT is sort of a jack of all trades,
Speaker 1: like a Swiss army knife. Claude is much more focused,
Speaker 1: i would say, on language, and it's really good at
Speaker 1: thinking and processing and all that stuff. So if you
Speaker 1: have an Android, definitely download the Claude Android app. You
Speaker 1: can use it for free. Obviously there's paid plans as well,
Speaker 1: but bulk of it's free. You can also get it
Speaker 1: for iOS.
Speaker 5: Two.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Tim and Moore Park. Tim, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 14: I'm Tim Callum Carrion, how do I for free print
Speaker 14: labels for honey for different ounced jars? And what name
Speaker 14: was the program that you use on an old Windows
Speaker 14: computer to replace the Windows? And number three? The reason
Speaker 14: why I can only call you on a station, the
Speaker 14: radio station on a corded phone is because somebody is
Speaker 14: black my portable house phone because they don't want me
Speaker 14: to talk on the radio, probably because I'm running for president.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Well that's interesting. Well, good luck with that.
Speaker 1: I think we've got two pretty good candidates.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, I take that back.
Speaker 4: Don't.
Speaker 1: I am not endorsing any candidate here. I'm saying we
Speaker 1: have two We we have two candidates for president. That's
Speaker 1: I'll leave it at that. Wow, I don't know how
Speaker 1: to break down your questions. Yes, something about different sized
Speaker 1: jars of honey, And you need labels. I think I
Speaker 1: think that you're gonna use something like Canva for that.
Speaker 1: Are you printing like nutrition facts labels? I'm guessing Let's
Speaker 1: see there is a website. Let's see if they can
Speaker 1: do custom labels. Hmm, you might be able to do
Speaker 1: something like I mean, look, there's so many websites available nowadays.
Speaker 1: To print things like a Vista print. There's a website
Speaker 1: called online Labels dot com. If you're just trying to
Speaker 1: print labels for stuff, you can do that now. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to convert, I'm reading the notes here from Kim.
Speaker 1: If you're trying to convert stuff, I would say AI
Speaker 1: might be your best bet. So if you're trying to
Speaker 1: convert things, you know, just like different sized jars, maybe
Speaker 1: that's the way to do it.
Speaker 2: I don't know what to say. Oh, what is happening here?
Speaker 11: Bobo?
Speaker 2: What is that is the moon? What is the phase
Speaker 2: of the moon today? This is the most fun I've
Speaker 2: had in a long time. I just want to say
Speaker 2: thank you. Yeah, me too? What is the moon phase?
Speaker 2: And it's got okay? See I knew it.
Speaker 1: I knew the moon was weird today because and I'm
Speaker 1: not one of these like astrology guys.
Speaker 9: You just looked it up, so that makes you an
Speaker 9: astrology guy.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I think the moon can be separated from astrology. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying people get weird when the moon is doing
Speaker 1: weird things. And right now it's a ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: waxing gibbus illumination ninety nine percent. That means it's it's
Speaker 1: almost a full moon. Tomorrow's a full moon. See where's
Speaker 1: my bell?
Speaker 4: I knew it.
Speaker 1: I knew there was a weird moon because we're getting
Speaker 1: some weird stuff.
Speaker 2: I am not I.
Speaker 1: When my mom starts talking astrology, you could see the
Speaker 1: eyes rolling into the back of my head.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: People are describing me.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, you're this, You're you're the strong, sensitive type.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what what you're talking about? Here?
Speaker 1: Let's go to James and Los Angeles. James, can you
Speaker 1: bring some sanity to the show today? James?
Speaker 2: Are you there?
Speaker 1: See?
Speaker 2: This is what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: What? Okay, that's it. We're done. I just turned off
Speaker 1: the phone lines.
Speaker 2: We're done. Clear off the lines.
Speaker 4: No more.
Speaker 1: Don't even call eighty eight rich one on one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four.
Speaker 2: One zero one. But he's running for president, funny. I
Speaker 2: haven't heard uh, I haven't heard that candidate. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know what, I don't know. I just so, what's
Speaker 2: the problem with the airport? I'm sorry at the Samsung.
Speaker 1: Ear Apparently the tips the tips had a problem, the
Speaker 1: torn ear tips.
Speaker 2: But they're not There's.
Speaker 9: Nothing I'm excited for them, like when you showed me
Speaker 9: the other day.
Speaker 2: I want to get a pair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean obviously now you can't until you until
Speaker 1: they ship them again. But no problems, I you know,
Speaker 1: maybe this is what Samsung is. What I like about
Speaker 1: Samsung is that they try a lot of stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they have you know, there's an issue, and
Speaker 1: they and they admit when there's a problem. So you
Speaker 1: know that was a problem. All right, let me tell
Speaker 1: you about something real quick before we go to break here.
Speaker 1: Tiny pod. This is a device that got some buzz
Speaker 1: this week. This is a case that you put your
Speaker 1: Apple Watch into and it turns your Apple Watch into
Speaker 1: kind of like a tiny iPod. So it's it makes
Speaker 1: your Apple Watch kind of a companion for your phone,
Speaker 1: but that you can hold in your hand. And the
Speaker 1: idea is, you know this whole We've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: this minimalist movement. People want less distractions. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that you can leave your phone at home, but
Speaker 1: you've got your Apple Watch inside this little tiny iPod
Speaker 1: like device. Remember, you'll need you know, cellular if you
Speaker 1: want to get your calls and messaging. But if you
Speaker 1: think about it, the apple Watch has pretty much everything
Speaker 1: you need.
Speaker 2: Eighty bucks shipping this summer. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Apple Watch has an iPod. Everything old is new again.
Speaker 1: You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology at Triple A Rich one oh one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Kim has cleared the phone lines. We have what's that
Speaker 1: that incense that you you spray around the place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we saved the whole studio. So we are ready for
Speaker 1: a fresh hour here where we're gonna get real and
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna actually have some Oh man, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have some fun. Eighty eight rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. You
Speaker 1: can find me on social media at rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about the new app from Microsoft that's
Speaker 1: kind of like their answer to Canva. Google is already
Speaker 1: putting details out about the Pixel nine and we've got calls.
Speaker 1: Let's go to uh, let's go to where is James
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2: James? You're on with Rich. Oh I'm doing great? How
Speaker 2: are you for.
Speaker 11: Your information regarding the moon. It's not a full moon.
Speaker 11: I'm a nostrophysicist. There's an alignment between Jupiter and seven.
Speaker 11: You'll be going on for maybe three days, and it's
Speaker 11: very unusual.
Speaker 1: Okay, see there you go. I knew, I knew there
Speaker 1: was something unusual though. That's okay, so you can confirm that.
Speaker 2: What did you say? You are an electra?
Speaker 11: What physis public?
Speaker 2: Okay? Very cool sound.
Speaker 11: That you can look. You can look at it to
Speaker 11: night in the sky right a man, about nine o'clock
Speaker 11: you can see the moon lining up with two pilots.
Speaker 2: Okay. I love when that happens.
Speaker 1: I actually saw there was one a couple of I
Speaker 1: don't know, months ago where it was like I think
Speaker 1: it was like three or four planets in a row.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, anyway, anyway, how can I help?
Speaker 11: I'm doing your website with my photography. I've been doing
Speaker 11: photography for twelve years. I have slide shows and I
Speaker 11: have date eggs. I mean, besides the copyright protection in Washington, DC,
Speaker 11: with all that stuff complicated, it takes a while. What
Speaker 11: do you suggest before I post anything on the website
Speaker 11: that I want to, you know, tell the public about
Speaker 11: my photography.
Speaker 1: Are you taking pictures of like, is this planetary stuff
Speaker 1: or is this just general?
Speaker 11: Well it's mixed. I have, That's that's a good question.
Speaker 11: I have some planetary stuff which requires like a very
Speaker 11: precise equipment to get like, you know, some pictures. So
Speaker 11: I'm reluctant to, uh to put them on the you know,
Speaker 11: on the web, because they can crop them into a
Speaker 11: kind of now you know, you know how it goes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally understand.
Speaker 1: So, James, my advice is number one, if you're going
Speaker 1: to start putting this stuff out there, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: there will be people taking it, reusing it, resharing, no
Speaker 1: matter what you do. So you have to be prepared
Speaker 1: for that reality. And you just have to understand that
Speaker 1: that is kind of what happens these days.
Speaker 14: Now.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying people should not be paid for their work.
Speaker 1: Of course you should. And if you're selling these things,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a whole nother thing. But if you're
Speaker 1: just putting your stuff out there, you want people to
Speaker 1: enjoy it.
Speaker 2: You want them to see it.
Speaker 1: Ninety nine point nine percent of people will come to
Speaker 1: your website, they'll see it, They'll see it on social media.
Speaker 2: Whatever you're doing.
Speaker 1: But there will be some people that will download it,
Speaker 1: they'll share it, they'll redo it. AI systems will take
Speaker 1: it and regurg it to their own. This is just
Speaker 1: the reality we live in. But with that said, I
Speaker 1: think that number one you should follow my friend Jefferson Graham.
Speaker 1: He does photo walks TV. He is all things photography.
Speaker 1: So go to photowalks. Let's see what is the website
Speaker 1: photowalks dot tv and follow him. He's got a great newsletter.
Speaker 1: He does everything with photography, So photo walks dot TV.
Speaker 1: Photo walks dot TV. His name's Jefferson Graham. Columns for
Speaker 1: the USA Today for a long time now. He travels
Speaker 1: around just showing people how to take great pictures with
Speaker 1: their phones and also some professional equipment. But it's actually
Speaker 1: I think all phones nowadays.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: What I would do your your basic thing to do
Speaker 1: is just watermark your photos. So you can go to
Speaker 1: something like Canva dot com. They give you free watermarking
Speaker 1: on your photos, so you can upload a picture and
Speaker 1: you can put your watermark on there. You can make
Speaker 1: it your logo whatever you want. That's probably the simplest,
Speaker 1: easy way that's going to be the best thing you
Speaker 1: can do now. I know YouTubers and people that you know,
Speaker 1: they have hands on with products before everyone else, and
Speaker 1: they they put watermarks on their pictures. People still use it,
Speaker 1: they still share it. It's gonna happen. But for you,
Speaker 1: I think the main thing is just you know, water market.
Speaker 1: You can also do it on a website like smug mug.
Speaker 1: This is the one that Jefferson recommends. That's where he
Speaker 1: puts all of his photos. Now, this is a more
Speaker 1: professional website, so they have things like watermarking built in.
Speaker 1: So if you upload your pictures to that website, it
Speaker 1: will water mark them automatically for you. And so you
Speaker 1: may want to look for a website that lets you
Speaker 1: do that. Otherwise, if you're just looking for like an
Speaker 1: iPhone app or an Android app, there are thousands of
Speaker 1: them out there. I would just search watermark photos and
Speaker 1: you can watermark your photos one by one. That's going
Speaker 1: to be a little bit more of a manual process,
Speaker 1: but it's going to be something that's it's your first
Speaker 1: line of defense.
Speaker 2: Let's put it that way.
Speaker 1: So thanks for the call, thanks for the clarification. And
Speaker 1: I knew something was up today.
Speaker 2: I knew it.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Actually, while I'm
Speaker 1: talking about Canva, let me just tell you about Microsoft Designer.
Speaker 1: This is Microsoft's answer to Canva. It's an AI powered
Speaker 1: creativity tool, so you can use it to generate all
Speaker 1: kinds of great stuff.
Speaker 2: I've got it on my phone.
Speaker 1: It just came out this week as an iPhone and
Speaker 1: Android app, so it's called Microsoft Designer. You can download
Speaker 1: it for free. You can use AI to make images, stickers,
Speaker 1: social media posts, wallpapers for your phone, avatars that's kind
Speaker 1: of a fun one, and coloring book pages. You can
Speaker 1: also do a couple of simple things like remove the
Speaker 1: background from a picture. You can blur the background on
Speaker 1: a picture. You can start with a blank design. You
Speaker 1: can describe what you want and it will help you
Speaker 1: make what you want using AI. So again it is
Speaker 1: called Microsoft Designer, and it's pretty much Microsoft's answer to Canva.
Speaker 1: I love Canva, but this is just another alternative. It's
Speaker 1: not as full featured as Canva. I pay the fifteen
Speaker 1: bucks a month for Canva.
Speaker 5: I love it.
Speaker 1: Even if I use it once a month to create something,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's worth it because just having that
Speaker 1: tool at my disposal is incredible. By the way, the
Speaker 1: Microsoft Designer gives you fifteen free uses per day. You
Speaker 1: can pay for more, so download it iOS Android Microsoft Designer. Okay,
Speaker 1: now let's go to Debra. Are you still there in Carson?
Speaker 1: I am all right here, welcome to the show. What
Speaker 1: can I help you with?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 15: I currently have a bundle package for my home phone
Speaker 15: that's part of my you know, goes with my internet
Speaker 15: and cable.
Speaker 5: And I want to.
Speaker 15: Disconnect using the bundle package for my home phone and
Speaker 15: go with another device. And I saw something the company Oma. Yes,
Speaker 15: oh om A, And I'm I'm trying to understand how
Speaker 15: that works and how reliable you might think it might be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and why do why do you want to separate
Speaker 1: from your cable company because you're going to get the
Speaker 1: best deal going through them.
Speaker 15: Actually, for my for my through my cable company, they're
Speaker 15: charging me forty dollars a month for my home phone.
Speaker 2: Oh dump them? Yeah, this is this is much fun.
Speaker 15: I kind of dumped the whole lot. Okay, I'm kind
Speaker 15: of taking it in bits and pieces.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, for sure. So if it's forty bucks a
Speaker 1: month and you could still keep your high speed Internet.
Speaker 1: And that's really all you need to get something like UMA.
Speaker 1: UMA's been around forever. It's it's reliable, it works. You
Speaker 1: pay one time for the device, and the device will
Speaker 1: connect to your internet, your high speed internet. They have
Speaker 1: two versions. One is wired, so you plug it in
Speaker 1: with an Ethernet cable to your modem. The other one
Speaker 1: is Wi Fi, which you would just connect like any
Speaker 1: other Wi Fi device, and then you would plug a
Speaker 1: phone into the UMA, like an old school phone, and
Speaker 1: now you can use that phone just like you would
Speaker 1: dial a phone number, call someone, they can call you.
Speaker 1: The only thing is the service is free monthly, like
Speaker 1: you pay one time for the actual phone device. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the device is anywhere between sixty and ninety, you know,
Speaker 1: sixty one hundred dollars. But then after that the service
Speaker 1: every month is free. So you do have to pay
Speaker 1: taxes though, that's the main thing to know. So, but otherwise, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then now do I have to.
Speaker 15: I don't have to use a special phone with their device.
Speaker 2: Nope.
Speaker 1: You can just buy a phone at Walmart anywhere, best
Speaker 1: buy it just you know, this standard phone will plug
Speaker 1: into this that has like a standard phone jack on it.
Speaker 15: Uh, huh. And what about a wireless phone hands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, yea anything anything, any phone that you could
Speaker 1: plug into like an old school I feel like you
Speaker 1: remember the days when we used to have like a
Speaker 1: phone jack in the house, right, Like any phone, any
Speaker 1: phone that you can plug into there, you'll be able
Speaker 1: to plug into the back of the UMA uses that
Speaker 1: same technology. So the only difference is back in the
Speaker 1: day there would be a copper cable that went from
Speaker 1: your house to the phone company. Nowadays it's all being
Speaker 1: converted into ones and zeros. It's all digital, and it's
Speaker 1: it's arriving over the internet. It's it's traveling over the internet.
Speaker 1: That's basically the only issue. So yeah, UMA's been around forever.
Speaker 1: I had it in my house for a long time
Speaker 1: and it works as advertised, and it's a good thing
Speaker 1: to a good.
Speaker 2: Thing to have.
Speaker 15: Okay, okay, all right, that steals the deal for me.
Speaker 2: All right, Thank you, rich Debor.
Speaker 1: You get the gold star today for for actually having
Speaker 1: a question that we can answer and your succinct and
Speaker 1: you are fantastic.
Speaker 15: So I'm okay, I'm bless you with pride.
Speaker 1: Thank you all right, take care bye eighty to eight.
Speaker 1: Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. You are listening to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one. Email also an option. Just go
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech dot tv. Get a lot of
Speaker 1: emails there, hit contact you can send them in. Randolph
Speaker 1: from Florida writes in love your show and how responsive
Speaker 1: you are?
Speaker 2: Articles for help.
Speaker 1: I'm going on my first cruise and reading article articles
Speaker 1: has confused me about how to handle Internet. They say
Speaker 1: to turn on airplane mode whenever on the ship. But
Speaker 1: if I buy the AT and T Cruise Internet Package
Speaker 1: add on, do I still need to do that? Or
Speaker 1: does phone Internet add on make airplane mode unnecessary? So
Speaker 1: if you're buying from AT and T, which is like
Speaker 1: available through your cruise ship, you would use your phone
Speaker 1: as you typically would, but there's going to be data limits.
Speaker 1: So if you look up what the plans are, they've
Speaker 1: got a cup love them. You've got AT and T
Speaker 1: Cruise Plus that gives you one gigabyte of data which
Speaker 1: you're going to burn through in about two seconds, or
Speaker 1: AT and T Cruise Basic even worse. You get a
Speaker 1: one hundred megabytes. After that you're going to be charged
Speaker 1: overage fees of ten dollars per one hundred megabytes, which
Speaker 1: adds up quickly. So personally, Randolph, I would just turn
Speaker 1: your phone off just enjoy the cruise Internet on cruise ships.
Speaker 1: I have never been on a cruise, so I need to.
Speaker 1: I probably need to go on a cruise to see
Speaker 1: what the deal is with this, because I get so
Speaker 1: many questions about it, and I really just I've never
Speaker 1: been on a cruise. I was actually invited on one
Speaker 1: this week and I said no. I should have said yes,
Speaker 1: because I would I would understand this more. And it
Speaker 1: turns out, what Bobo, you like the cruises? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just went on a cruise in May.
Speaker 2: And did you connect to the internet. No, yes, the
Speaker 2: ship's internet and just to pay for that, yeah, you do.
Speaker 9: You do pay for the ship's internet, and everything on
Speaker 9: your phone is Wi Fi, so you're just connected to it, okay.
Speaker 9: And then if you get an international plan, when you
Speaker 9: dock and where you go, you're on your international plan,
Speaker 9: so it doesn't affect anything, right, Okay, But the cruise
Speaker 9: ship had its own The cruise ship does have its
Speaker 9: own Wi Fi you just have to pay for it's
Speaker 9: a little maybe about things like twenty bucks a day
Speaker 9: or yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot.
Speaker 2: It's a lot.
Speaker 1: But if you're on a cruise for like a week
Speaker 1: or something like that, you know it's part of you know,
Speaker 1: it's part of traveling. It's like when you're on the plane.
Speaker 1: But to be honest, even when I'm on the airplane, like,
Speaker 1: unless I have a reason to connect to the Internet,
Speaker 1: I usually don't. Like my last flight from Paris to
Speaker 1: lax I did not connect. I specifically said I'm not
Speaker 1: connecting to the internet. It was expensive and I just
Speaker 1: didn't want to pay for it, and why not. Let's
Speaker 1: see here. Joanne, a travel writer and photographer, writes, and
Speaker 1: I've been a follower of years, for years, I appreciate
Speaker 1: all you do for your listeners. As a travel writer
Speaker 1: and photographer, having an Instagram account is key to my outreach.
Speaker 1: You can imagine how devastated I was after waking up
Speaker 1: yesterday's see I had been locked out of my site.
Speaker 1: To make matters worse, the hacker cloned my site and
Speaker 1: my original site is nowhere to be found. It contained
Speaker 1: nearly a thousand original photos, which I stupidly thought were
Speaker 1: safe and will be a nightmare to restore. I immediately
Speaker 1: contacted what I thought was Instagram help, and I got
Speaker 1: a message back asking for a fee to attach more
Speaker 1: securities to my account. How is it possible that Instagram
Speaker 1: can send me such an obvious new hack even though
Speaker 1: I went through their reporting process. I'm devastated, beyond belief.
Speaker 1: My original Instagram is gone without a trace. Uh yeah, Joanne,
Speaker 1: I hear this all the time. And the problem is
Speaker 1: there's two ways that people hacked. Number One, they're not
Speaker 1: really hacking in they are, but they aren't. So when
Speaker 1: people say their Facebook was hacked or their Instagram was hacked, tip,
Speaker 1: people are being tricked into sharing their password and they
Speaker 1: don't have two factor authentication enabled. So if you have
Speaker 1: two factor authentication enabled, which I'm guessing you didn't on
Speaker 1: this account, that is what's going to protect you from
Speaker 1: even if you gave up your password by accident. Like
Speaker 1: what happens is you get a notification that says, hey,
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with your Facebook account, there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with your Instagram account, and you go what, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? And you click that URL you
Speaker 1: log in without thinking and that URL is actually phony,
Speaker 1: and so immediately what they do is they take your
Speaker 1: information that you just gave them and they run with
Speaker 1: it and they take over your account and you're never
Speaker 1: going to get it back. So if you have two
Speaker 1: factor authentication enabled, the trick would be that as soon
Speaker 1: as you log into that account number one, you know,
Speaker 1: you'd realize that. But then when they try to log
Speaker 1: into your account, they're gonna get that message that says
Speaker 1: to get that two factor code texted to them. Now
Speaker 1: you're probably going to get that texted you and you'd say,
Speaker 1: wait a second, I didn't what And so that would
Speaker 1: keep them from getting in, but also it would be
Speaker 1: a clue to you that something went wrong. So please
Speaker 1: have two factor authentication enabled on any account that is
Speaker 1: vital to you. And Facebook dot com slash hacked or
Speaker 1: Instagram dot com slash hacked is the only way to
Speaker 1: try to get your account back. And I've done many
Speaker 1: stories with folks. It takes a very long time. It
Speaker 1: is a long process.
Speaker 2: It's not easy.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of going through hoops, but you
Speaker 1: stay on it and you might get your account back.
Speaker 1: It just could take a long time. Sorry that happened
Speaker 1: to you. Let's say so many questions that we get.
Speaker 1: Marcia writes in I have a Samsung Galaxy S twenty
Speaker 1: one ultra cell phone. What would be the best luggage
Speaker 1: tracking tags? My husband and I do a lot of
Speaker 1: international traveling for pleasure. I was looking at the Samsung
Speaker 1: tags and the tile. I'm confused by all of them.
Speaker 2: What is the range?
Speaker 1: How many months do they last? Also, what's a good
Speaker 1: tag for my dog? If you have a Samsung phone,
Speaker 1: it depends with Android. You can go two ways. Google
Speaker 1: has their own called find my Device. You can go
Speaker 1: with a tag that works with that and that will
Speaker 1: work with any Android phone. Or if you want to
Speaker 1: go just Samsung specific, they have their own tags called
Speaker 1: the smart tag too. That might be a better bet
Speaker 1: because you have a Samsung phone, but it only uses
Speaker 1: other Samsung phones to find them. I'd say the Android
Speaker 1: ones are probably better, but those tags are more limited
Speaker 1: and they work anywhere there's phones. All right, Coming up,
Speaker 1: We're going to talk to Jared Newman about streaming services.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology. The website for the show
Speaker 1: rich on Tech dot TV. What a show it's been today.
Speaker 1: Jared Newman writes a great newsletter called Advisorator, and recently
Speaker 1: he came out with an entire guide on cord cutting.
Speaker 1: Jared friend of the show, So welcome back.
Speaker 3: Hey Rich, thanks for having me on again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, always enjoy getting your newsletter. I think you're one
Speaker 1: of the first guests on this show. This is your
Speaker 1: cord cutterweekly dot com newsletter. So one of the cool
Speaker 1: things you do is you have an entire list of,
Speaker 1: like all the streaming deals that you keep track of.
Speaker 1: So that's one cool aspect. But tell me about this
Speaker 1: complete guide to chord cutting. What was the reason why
Speaker 1: you wrote this.
Speaker 13: It's just something I've wanted to do for a really
Speaker 13: long time, basically assembling all this knowledge that I've put together.
Speaker 13: I mean, I've been writing a weekly column for tech
Speaker 13: Hive about We're Cutting for almost a decade now, so
Speaker 13: I helped a lot of people get rid of cable,
Speaker 13: get read of satellite TV, save money on streaming, and
Speaker 13: I just kind of wanted to put together like a
Speaker 13: big collection of things on like where to start answering
Speaker 13: all the common questions that I've gotten over the years.
Speaker 13: Just walking through every step of the process of like
Speaker 13: you're starting at square one. You know you need to
Speaker 13: get rid of Spectrum TV or Comcast or whatever it is.
Speaker 13: And you know where do you go from just that
Speaker 13: wanting to do it to actually doing it?
Speaker 3: So I put together a.
Speaker 13: Set of online guides and then I made a PDF
Speaker 13: version because there was a lot of people that wanted
Speaker 13: that document and that I launched that maybe a month
Speaker 13: or a month and a half ago, and it's been
Speaker 13: a great, great response.
Speaker 3: Really glad that I finally put that all together.
Speaker 1: So I guess to start, the number one question is
Speaker 1: should you cut the cord? I mean, it used to
Speaker 1: be it was a lot cheaper to cut the cord.
Speaker 1: Now that has changed depending on what you subscribe to.
Speaker 1: Do you still think it's a better way to go?
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 13: I mean I think one thing that often gets lost
Speaker 13: sight of is cable got more expensive too, right, and
Speaker 13: satellite got more expensive.
Speaker 3: Every time there's a price site for Netflix or what
Speaker 3: have you.
Speaker 13: There's a lot of grousing about that, obviously, but you
Speaker 13: look at your cable bill and those are going up
Speaker 13: by the same or more on a yearly basis. And
Speaker 13: that's why a lot of people are still looking at
Speaker 13: this and figuring that they have to do it. And yeah,
Speaker 13: there's a lot of different ways to.
Speaker 3: Cut the cord. In some ways, it's easier now because you.
Speaker 13: Can get a lot of the stuff that you couldn't
Speaker 13: get at all when I dropped cable in two thousand
Speaker 13: and eight, and you know, it was kind of like
Speaker 13: if you wanted to watch something on HBO, you were
Speaker 13: just out of luck. And so now you can just
Speaker 13: subscribe to Max by itself and get that content.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, there's talk to them. I talk a lot
Speaker 3: in the guide about is just sort of this path.
Speaker 13: You go down of do you subscribe to one of
Speaker 13: these big TV packages that's kind of like cable or
Speaker 13: do you kind of go your own way with things
Speaker 13: like Netflix and Max and Hulu.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember when I finally convinced my wife to cut
Speaker 1: the cord. This was a couple of years ago. It
Speaker 1: was kind of like a big deal in our house,
Speaker 1: Like she was very concerned and with some reasoning. You know,
Speaker 1: it was kind of validated over the years because, yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's tricky to figure out like where's this streaming?
Speaker 1: How do we watch this game? Like I remember watching
Speaker 1: like specifically like award shows. You know, she wanted to
Speaker 1: watch like a certain award show. I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: really have a good way of doing that, because you know,
Speaker 1: we have all the Netflix and stuff, but we didn't
Speaker 1: have at that time, like a good you know, you
Speaker 1: just need like over the air or like maybe something
Speaker 1: was on like E back in the day, you know,
Speaker 1: like I remember that Channel E. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't really have a way of
Speaker 1: accessing that because there was no service to get it on.
Speaker 1: But now that's all changed because so many people are
Speaker 1: getting cable streaming packages, like on their streaming service, which
Speaker 1: is kind of like the same price.
Speaker 13: So my parents cut the cord. I think it was
Speaker 13: maybe like a year ago. I'd been trying to get
Speaker 13: them to do it for forever. You know, they had
Speaker 13: Verizon FiOS on Maryland, and you know I got them
Speaker 13: on YouTube TV, which is seventy three dollars a month.
Speaker 13: It's not super cheap, but compared to what they were
Speaker 13: getting with Verizon, you know, I think it would end
Speaker 13: up saying like hundred dollars a months when you.
Speaker 3: Take out all the boxes and DVR and all that stuff.
Speaker 13: And of course once they did it, they were like, man,
Speaker 13: we really should have done this years ago, and they're
Speaker 13: very happy.
Speaker 1: So I think, and I think what I always tell
Speaker 1: people is that it's really about the flexibility that the
Speaker 1: cord cutting gives you. You know, if you want to pause,
Speaker 1: if you know, budgets tight whatever, or maybe you just
Speaker 1: want to watch free stuff on like what's the one
Speaker 1: to be I think it's called it's like the you know,
Speaker 1: they have like a lot of Pluto. You know, there's
Speaker 1: like so many like free ad supported services. But the
Speaker 1: number one thing I always tell people is you have
Speaker 1: to figure out what do you want to watch? Like
Speaker 1: is there a particular sports team? Is there a particular channel?
Speaker 1: Like for some people it's like I just want to
Speaker 1: watch Bravo. It's like, okay, well let's find the streaming
Speaker 1: service that's the cheapest that offers that channel. Is there
Speaker 1: is there ways of doing that?
Speaker 3: It depends on the content.
Speaker 13: So, like like I was kind of saying before, I
Speaker 13: always start from the perspective of like, are you just
Speaker 13: wanting to drop in these very specific cable channels, in
Speaker 13: which case you're going to need something like YouTube TV
Speaker 13: or Sling TV. You know, live TV streaming services what
Speaker 13: I kind of kind of call them, but you can.
Speaker 13: It's like, all right, well am I willing to be?
Speaker 13: Think of it on the spectrum of like how flexible
Speaker 13: am I willing to be? Because I want to save money?
Speaker 13: Because if you are more flexible, then you go down
Speaker 13: that path like you said of oh, well, you know,
Speaker 13: if I look at Peacock, it turns out they have
Speaker 13: a lot of Bravo content. I don't think they offer
Speaker 13: like a direct one to one equivalent of like the
Speaker 13: Bravo live stream, but they have the same shows. So
Speaker 13: are you willing to have that versus like I want
Speaker 13: a DVR and I want this like very specific DVR
Speaker 13: concept of recording shows. You know, the more rigid you are,
Speaker 13: maybe maybe the more you end up having to pay
Speaker 13: or maybe it just doesn't end up working out for you.
Speaker 13: But if you're very flexible, you can save a ton
Speaker 13: of money.
Speaker 2: So what is your guidance? What did you learn in
Speaker 2: the in the creating of this guide?
Speaker 13: Well, you know, one thing I've learned, maybe not in
Speaker 13: the creation this guide, but just like over the years,
Speaker 13: Like the number one question that I get is like
Speaker 13: I want DVR, So it really like that is like
Speaker 13: a big thing I put in the guy's like, yes,
Speaker 13: you can have DVR if you sign up for one
Speaker 13: of these live TV streaming services. They all include DVR.
Speaker 13: I do like to there's kind of these other workarounds
Speaker 13: you can go down where you can record from services
Speaker 13: like Netflix or skip commercials and services like Netflix if
Speaker 13: you use the right tools. They're kind of hacky, nerdy workarounds,
Speaker 13: but I like to highlight those two for people who
Speaker 13: have a little bit more technical wherewithal and maybe want
Speaker 13: to have a little bit more control over that.
Speaker 1: So that's the number one question, the DVR. What's number two?
Speaker 1: Is sports always kind of like the big driver of
Speaker 1: all of this, Not.
Speaker 3: Necessarily, I mean, I guess I would say like the
Speaker 3: number two.
Speaker 13: It's just kind of that, like you said, the catch
Speaker 13: all of like I want X, Y or Z specific program,
Speaker 13: specific show. Sometimes it is like I want to watch
Speaker 13: this specific team, And of course the answer is always
Speaker 13: going to vary depending on where you are and what
Speaker 13: show or channel it is, but usually there's a way.
Speaker 1: This is like the most thorough guide I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in my life on streaming, Like I'm reading through some
Speaker 1: of these things like you know, you you go into
Speaker 1: like how to watch CBS, how to watch ABC, how
Speaker 1: to watch NBC, how to watch Fox, how to watch PBS,
Speaker 1: how to watch your local news, how to watch national
Speaker 1: and international news. Also you've got a great uh you
Speaker 1: linked up to the streamable which has like a matchmaker.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a pretty useful tool as well. Can
Speaker 1: you tell me about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a few tools like that.
Speaker 13: I think I'll linked to at least two or three
Speaker 13: of them, where you basically you plug in the channels
Speaker 13: that you want and they will tell you the live
Speaker 13: TV streaming services that match.
Speaker 3: So if you are like, you know, I want to
Speaker 3: watch ABC, CNN.
Speaker 13: And PBS, okay, you put those in and it will
Speaker 13: tell you which services have those those particular channels. I
Speaker 13: think I may have linked to a service called my
Speaker 13: Bundle dot tv, which is a little a little more
Speaker 13: interesting because they do have that kind of thing. But
Speaker 13: then they also will recommend some of those standalone services
Speaker 13: that may be cheaper. So if you say, you know,
Speaker 13: I want to watch NBC, they might say, well, have
Speaker 13: you considered just subscribing to peacock where some of these
Speaker 13: other services don't They don't recommend those smaller, uh cheaper
Speaker 13: streaming services like that. So yeah, I mean it's just
Speaker 13: a it's just a matter of kind of helping people
Speaker 13: figure out exactly what they need. Like you said, there's
Speaker 13: so many different paths you can go down, and it's
Speaker 13: just a matter of choosing the right one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like I choose your own adventure book.
Speaker 1: But in a uh in a guide, what do you
Speaker 1: what do you like for uh, you know, streaming versus
Speaker 1: you know, people get these smart TVs.
Speaker 2: What's your guidance on that?
Speaker 1: Do you think people should get like separate device to
Speaker 1: stream or just use what's included on their TV?
Speaker 2: And what device do you like?
Speaker 13: People have strong opinions on that. I tend to say, like,
Speaker 13: if you have a smart TV and it's fairly recent,
Speaker 13: there's really no harm in like using it, And if
Speaker 13: it has the apps that you want and you're fine
Speaker 13: with the interface and it's fast enough, then that's fine.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: You can always add a streaming device later. You already
Speaker 3: bought this TV. You may not need to like throw
Speaker 3: more money at more hardware if it's not necessary, So
Speaker 3: at least give it a try, you know, in my case,
Speaker 3: I have a.
Speaker 13: High Sense TV that runs Android Google TV, I should say,
Speaker 13: and it's okay, but I prefer Apple TV.
Speaker 3: I just like the interface. It's faster and cleaner.
Speaker 13: There's no annoying like banner ads or things that kind
Speaker 13: of glutter up the UI, and I like what they
Speaker 13: generally do around surfacing shows that you're already watching and
Speaker 13: making it easier to pick up where you left off.
Speaker 13: So that's our default in the living room is Apple
Speaker 13: TV four K connected to that TV, and I just
Speaker 13: had it set up to like bypass the default smart
Speaker 13: TV interface and it just skips directly to the Apple
Speaker 13: TV input when I turn it on.
Speaker 1: I also have a High Sense TV, and I just
Speaker 1: realized that I can press the Google Assistant button and
Speaker 1: it overlays on my Apple TV.
Speaker 2: That I'm using.
Speaker 1: So I was like, wait a second, what I thought
Speaker 1: I had to be on their home screen? But Apple
Speaker 1: TV is the last holdout that does not have ads
Speaker 1: on the home screen. Fire TV is littered with them,
Speaker 1: and so is Roku, and they're now they're like auto playing,
Speaker 1: and so it's really gotten like where the Apple TV
Speaker 1: is pretty calm compared to everything else that's going on
Speaker 1: these other ones, Jared, how can folks find this cord
Speaker 1: cutting guide?
Speaker 13: So if you want to just type in chordcutterweekly dot
Speaker 13: com slash guide that will take you to it. Yeah,
Speaker 13: I appreciate if you sign up for my news life
Speaker 13: Atcordcutter Weekly dot com as well. I usually link to
Speaker 13: the guide somewhere in the newsletter so you can find
Speaker 13: it that way.
Speaker 1: And the definitely check out the big list of streaming
Speaker 1: deals that's regularly updated by you on cord Cutter Weekly
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: Jared Newman, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 3: Thanks Rich as always.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, we'll do the feedback. Plus, I've
Speaker 1: got a handy website for you that helps you use
Speaker 1: Siri to do all kinds of stuff with your voice.
Speaker 1: You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology. The website for the show rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. If you want to link to anything that
Speaker 1: I mentioned here, just go there and look for the
Speaker 1: light bulb at the top of the page. You tap
Speaker 1: the light bulb, it will bring you to the show notes.
Speaker 1: We keep great notes for every single show, so if
Speaker 1: I mentioned something a link website. Whatever it is all there.
Speaker 1: Rich on tech dot TV hit the light bulb. A
Speaker 1: couple of more items of note. This week, Google unveiled
Speaker 1: the Pixel nine Pro and Pixel nine Pro Fold ahead
Speaker 1: of their official event. This is a weird thing that
Speaker 1: Google does. Not only are they holding their event earlier
Speaker 1: than ever this year for these new phones, now they're
Speaker 1: showing them off online, so you can just go online
Speaker 1: and like see what they look like. Now, it's not everything,
Speaker 1: not all the details, but still AI is a huge
Speaker 1: part of these phones. You can see what the design
Speaker 1: of the Pixel nine Pro fold. It's flatter, kind of
Speaker 1: a rounder footprint Pixel nine Apparently they're going to come
Speaker 1: out with the Pixel nine Pro in two sizes, which
Speaker 1: is kind of nice. You can you can choose, do
Speaker 1: you on a smaller phone, bigger phone, but it's still
Speaker 1: gonna have the same features. The official event is scheduled
Speaker 1: for August thirteenth. I'm looking forward to it. I will
Speaker 1: be there and if you want to check these out,
Speaker 1: you can go to the Google Store and see what
Speaker 1: that's all about. Came across a handy website this week.
Speaker 1: If you like to use Siri siriuserguide dot com. This
Speaker 1: is a website that it helps you understand what Siri
Speaker 1: is capable of. Now, there's lots of user guides on
Speaker 1: Apple's website, but this one kind of shows you a
Speaker 1: lot of cool different things you can do with Siri.
Speaker 1: So if you're just looking to expand your knowledge of Siri,
Speaker 1: it'll tell you you know how to use Siri to
Speaker 1: listen to music, how to use it to send audio messages,
Speaker 1: how to all kinds of stuff, read text to you, WhatsApp,
Speaker 1: whatever you want, siriuserguide dot com. And it keeps activating
Speaker 1: my phone, so I apologize if it's activating yours. And
Speaker 1: if you're a college student or if you have a
Speaker 1: college student there max is offering fifty percent off the
Speaker 1: streaming service. Now, when I was in college, I couldn't
Speaker 1: afford any streaming service, so I don't know. You may
Speaker 1: have to put the bill on this one for your kids.
Speaker 1: But it's five dollars per month instead of the usual ten,
Speaker 1: So you can look for this promotion. HBO Max is
Speaker 1: fifty percent off for US college students. I'll put the
Speaker 1: link on the website time for feedback. These are the emails,
Speaker 1: the comments, and the questions I get from you. Guermo
Speaker 1: from Los Angeles writes in regarding the caller about Spectrum
Speaker 1: Wi Fi, I had a similar problem.
Speaker 2: I was getting slow internet speed. I called Spectrum.
Speaker 1: They ran the test from their end, saying I was
Speaker 1: getting the proper speed, but I set up an appointment
Speaker 1: for a tech to come out. Anyway, the tech came
Speaker 1: out and found one of my cables to the modem
Speaker 1: was loose. Why didn't I think of that? No problems now,
Speaker 1: and I was not charged for the visit. Also, Spectrum
Speaker 1: will supply you with Wi Fi extenders for three dollars
Speaker 1: a month.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: I got some feedback on the crazy callers earlier. Catherine
Speaker 1: from Upland rights in rich being a labor and delivery nurse,
Speaker 1: we are all aware of what the quote full moon
Speaker 1: can mean craziness. Also, on this day in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: we walked on the moon. I'm assuming she means like
Speaker 1: people walked on the moon, not her.
Speaker 2: As care about it. I'm not an astrologist. That's not
Speaker 2: even a word, is it.
Speaker 1: Marie from Los Angeles writes in maybe the person with
Speaker 1: the Bank of America issue should reset their password again yesterday.
Speaker 2: That's a good idea. Always try the password reset.
Speaker 1: Mark writes in, you suggested that the best one can
Speaker 1: hope for for speed over Wi Fi is about half
Speaker 1: compared to connecting via Ethernet. Actually, I have a supplied
Speaker 1: cable modem SLASH router on a three hundred megabits per
Speaker 1: second plan. I get about three hundred and thirty megabits
Speaker 1: per second. I'm in the office where the router is located.
Speaker 1: I get the full speed over the five gigahertz Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: The two point four gigaherts is slower, but doesn't everyone
Speaker 1: have a router with five gigaherts these days?
Speaker 2: Even down the hall, I still.
Speaker 1: Get about two fifty All right, Well, Mark, Yes, I
Speaker 1: was just giving people kind of an idea that you
Speaker 1: may not get the full speed over Wi Fi that
Speaker 1: you would get via wired.
Speaker 2: But I'm glad it's working out for you.
Speaker 1: Peter from San Pedro writes in, my wife ran across
Speaker 1: a TikTok video recently warning to check your Amazon Prime
Speaker 1: Day Deals receipt as some deals were less expensive. The
Speaker 1: next day, after Prime Day Deals ended, she tallied up
Speaker 1: her receipts and did find a seven dollars difference. Might
Speaker 1: seem like not like a lot, but I'm sure it
Speaker 1: makes you question Prime Day. Is that really their best
Speaker 1: deals of the year.
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 1: My wife feels kind of cheated and questions Amazon's motives.
Speaker 1: She did contact customer service and they offered a refund
Speaker 1: of ten dollars. Here's the deal with Prime Day.
Speaker 5: You got it.
Speaker 1: If it's a deal to you, it's a deal. So
Speaker 1: the stuff I bought, it was definitely cheaper on Prime
Speaker 1: Day than it was on other days. All the random
Speaker 1: stuff they're selling, I can't vouch for it, but yes
Speaker 1: it is. Some of it's better, some of it's not.
Speaker 1: That's why you got to check those prices. Let's get
Speaker 1: some other stuff here. We got more about Prime Day.
Speaker 1: Gheramo writes in is this Garmo? Do we have two
Speaker 1: Gharamos this time? He said, you can get Vic's Premium
Speaker 1: with ads if you're a Spectrum customer. It's a Spanish
Speaker 1: language streaming service similar to Peacock. Good service. I'm not
Speaker 1: able to listen to your show live. I listened via
Speaker 1: podcast in parts. I'm glad you make it available this way.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Joanne and Tony from San Diego write in, my husband
Speaker 1: and I listen to your podcast religiously and are so
Speaker 1: grateful for the knowledge you impart to your listeners. Many
Speaker 1: of us, many of them like us, really need to
Speaker 1: know what's going on in the tech world out there.
Speaker 1: Warmest regards and thanks, thank you, Joanne and Patricia. Finally,
Speaker 1: with so many apps and items to subscribe to, I'm
Speaker 1: deeming this the year two power back for our family.
Speaker 1: I could never delete your newsletter. Your information is way
Speaker 1: too valuable in our techy world and most of us
Speaker 1: I trust your and most of all, I trust your
Speaker 1: reporting wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2: Smile.
Speaker 1: You're the best out there, Patricia. Thank you, Patricia. That's
Speaker 1: going to do it for this episode of the show.
Speaker 1: You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.
Speaker 1: Just go to rich on tech dot tv. You can
Speaker 1: find me on social media. I am at rich on tech.
Speaker 1: Coming up next week, I've got some tips and tricks
Speaker 1: for traveling internationally with your smartphone.
Speaker 2: I learned a lot when I was over in Paris.
Speaker 1: I've got a whole list of the things you can
Speaker 1: do to make sure your prep to avoid those roaming charges,
Speaker 1: get around like a local, stay connected, watch your stuff
Speaker 1: on the go. I'll have that all next week. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much, for listening. There are so many ways you
Speaker 1: can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it
Speaker 1: right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this
Speaker 1: show possible. I'm rich Tomiro.
Speaker 2: Talk to you real soon.