Speaker 1: Samsung says it won't make a note this year. Zoom
Speaker 1: comes to Fire TV PlayStation is a hit. Well, if
Speaker 1: you can get one plus your tech questions answered? What's
Speaker 1: going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech,
Speaker 1: the podcast 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 the questions you send me. I'm the tech
Speaker 1: reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Hope you
Speaker 1: are having a fantastic day. Wow, the summer is coming
Speaker 1: to a close. I did a story with some kids
Speaker 1: the other day at a camp and if you can
Speaker 1: believe it, school starts August sixteenth for a lot of
Speaker 1: the schools in Los Angeles, which when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: we always started after a labor day, which I feel
Speaker 1: like makes more sense. But I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: what do I know? As a parent, it's it's I
Speaker 1: guess you want your kids to go back, But I
Speaker 1: don't know. It seems so early, Like I'm like, how
Speaker 1: many weeks is the summer nowadays? One thing I do like, though,
Speaker 1: is that reviews are coming in for Villo. This is
Speaker 1: the Mesh networking system I talked about. That's sixty dollars,
Speaker 1: and it's always you know, as a tech person, it's
Speaker 1: always interesting to do reports on things that are brand
Speaker 1: new and nobody's ever seen them before, because typically, you know,
Speaker 1: a manufacturer will send me something and I'll have hands
Speaker 1: on time before anyone else. And you know, they have
Speaker 1: this thing called an embargo, and then they lift that
Speaker 1: embargo at a certain time and everyone who had it
Speaker 1: secretly or I guess, comes out and says, oh, I've
Speaker 1: had this for two weeks and here are my thoughts
Speaker 1: on it. And so that's what happened with this Villo
Speaker 1: Vlo by the way, And I was like, okay, well
Speaker 1: I think it's really good. But I put my review
Speaker 1: out there and you know, started seeing other people's and
Speaker 1: you know, people were saying it was pretty good. But
Speaker 1: then I really wait for all the folks that write
Speaker 1: me to tell me if they purchased one and what
Speaker 1: they think of it. And the good news is, oh,
Speaker 1: music's still on there. Look at that. The good news
Speaker 1: is the reviews are in and people are telling me
Speaker 1: they love it. So they're saying they're getting a great signal.
Speaker 1: They're liking it. It's boosting their Wi Fi and I'm
Speaker 1: very happy because you know, it's like, Okay, I thought
Speaker 1: this was really good, I shared it, and clearly it is.
Speaker 1: Let's start with Samsung this week. Samsung is having an
Speaker 1: event on August eleventh, and Samsung is not like Apple
Speaker 1: where they just keep everything sort of secret until the
Speaker 1: big day. They keep some stuff secret, and you know,
Speaker 1: but they get a lot of hints, right, at least
Speaker 1: Samsung does. Apple doesn't really give any hints. So Samsung's
Speaker 1: been coming out with a couple of blog posts in
Speaker 1: anticipation of their big event, and the latest is a
Speaker 1: blog post that is titled the next era of smartphone
Speaker 1: innovation is about to unfold. And I'm guessing the pictures
Speaker 1: they're showing at the top are of the old foldable
Speaker 1: phones because they wouldn't show the new ones, right, But
Speaker 1: they say, you know, all kinds of well, let's just
Speaker 1: get to the good stuff basically. Well, one thing they
Speaker 1: they did a little knock on the open ecosystem. They said,
Speaker 1: as we enter this new era of agile transformation, I
Speaker 1: believe that open ecosystems are the only way to accelerate
Speaker 1: innovation and give people more freedom to create their own
Speaker 1: experiences that are best for their lifestyles. Now, I got
Speaker 1: to give that a major because that's really a knock
Speaker 1: against Apple. Apple's been going through this lawsuit with the
Speaker 1: whole you know, Epic games and all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: basically Apple is saying the reason why they're so closed
Speaker 1: down is because they want to keep things secure, and
Speaker 1: that's probably true, but only to an extent. And I
Speaker 1: will say that I am continually impressed with how much
Speaker 1: Apple has been able to do with such a closed system.
Speaker 1: Like the other day, I asked to play a song
Speaker 1: on my phone and it did go to Spotify automatically,
Speaker 1: which historically that didn't happen, but now Siri apparently learns
Speaker 1: which music service you're using, and I flip between a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of them, and so clearly I've been using
Speaker 1: Spotify the most lately to test the whole downloading to
Speaker 1: Apple watch the music thing, and Siria apparently has taken
Speaker 1: notice of that. So anyway, in a few weeks, they
Speaker 1: say they're gonna unleash their latest and greatest Galaxy Z series,
Speaker 1: and they say they completely improved or we kept improving
Speaker 1: the category with our second generation of foldables, the Galaxy
Speaker 1: Z Fold two and the Galaxy Z Flip with more
Speaker 1: screens and more of the features. Now they're saying the
Speaker 1: third generation are going to open up amazing multitasking capabilities
Speaker 1: and enhanced durability. Let's see what else at Samsung, Open
Speaker 1: and Secure are never mutually exclusive again, that knock on Apple.
Speaker 1: And for our third generation of Galaxy Z phones, we
Speaker 1: have more partner apps that make use of the versatile
Speaker 1: fold out format, optimize video with Google Duo watching videos,
Speaker 1: and flex Mode on YouTube which they've already done. Multitasking
Speaker 1: in teams. So what else? Oh, the Z flip is
Speaker 1: more durable with stronger materials. But here's the thing they
Speaker 1: buried all the way, talk about we have this phrase
Speaker 1: in journalism called burying the lead, right, and talk about
Speaker 1: burying the lead all the way. At the end of
Speaker 1: this blog post they mentioned, oh yeah, by the way,
Speaker 1: instead of unveiling a new Galaxy Note this time around,
Speaker 1: what so no note this year? Spoil alert, no Galaxy Notes,
Speaker 1: so they said, but they're going to build an s
Speaker 1: pen into one of the Galaxy Z family devices, which
Speaker 1: is probably going to be the fold not the flip.
Speaker 1: I know, all these things are so complicated, all these
Speaker 1: terms but anyway, August eleventh, if you were excited for
Speaker 1: a new note, not happening. And that's kind of a
Speaker 1: big change for Samsung because typically the note is where
Speaker 1: Samsung puts all of its best new things, so all
Speaker 1: of its best new camera tech, all of its best
Speaker 1: new screen tech, all of its best new tech in general.
Speaker 1: And so now I guess the Fold is going to
Speaker 1: be the new flagship. And remember that they did make
Speaker 1: the S pen compatible with the last generation of S
Speaker 1: twenty one devices, I think just the high end devices
Speaker 1: like the S twenty one Ultra, but you can see
Speaker 1: they're getting away from that reliance on the S twenty
Speaker 1: one Ultra basically became a note device, just without a
Speaker 1: little sleeve to put the note in or the stylus in.
Speaker 1: So anyway, August eleventh, all things will be answered. Let's
Speaker 1: get to the first question. AJ says, Hey, Rich, I'd
Speaker 1: like to download Oregon Ducks football picks from Instagram from
Speaker 1: my own entertainment. How do I do that with efficiency? Thanks?
Speaker 1: Love your content. You know that when I first came
Speaker 1: to California, I called Oregon Oregon, and I'll never forget
Speaker 1: being in my freshman dorm room and my friends were like, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's Oregon, Oregon. I was like, Oregon, there's no Oregon,
Speaker 1: no Oregon. So anyway, maybe it is Oregon, but I
Speaker 1: think it's more Orgon at this point. But anyway, I digress,
Speaker 1: as I typically do on the show. But the thing
Speaker 1: that I like the best, and I use this pretty
Speaker 1: much every day, it is a Chrome extension called Image Downloader.
Speaker 1: I know, such a complicated name, image downloader, and I
Speaker 1: give you a website, but I don't really have a website.
Speaker 1: It just search image downloader on Chrome. And you should
Speaker 1: see the extension. Let me see how many users are
Speaker 1: using this extension. See if I'm the only one? No,
Speaker 1: a million plus users from Vlad Sabev, So clearly people
Speaker 1: like this. But what I love about this little Chrome
Speaker 1: extension is that no matter what web page you're on,
Speaker 1: this does not handle videos, but it does handle any
Speaker 1: image on a page. So whatever web page you're on,
Speaker 1: you just hit the downloader button and next thing you know,
Speaker 1: it will show you all the images on that page
Speaker 1: and you can download them like get you get individual
Speaker 1: download links for all of those and so it's just
Speaker 1: a really simple way of capturing an image and on
Speaker 1: a you know, a full resolution of that image versus
Speaker 1: like a screen shot. And also it shows you sort
Speaker 1: of the multiple versions of that image on a page,
Speaker 1: so if there's like a little thumbnail image, you'll be
Speaker 1: able to tell and that's not the one you want
Speaker 1: to download. You want to download the one that's bigger.
Speaker 1: And you can also set parameters like I only want
Speaker 1: pictures that are bigger than you know, one hundred pixels
Speaker 1: or you know, images that are only on a link.
Speaker 1: So it's really a really great little app and I
Speaker 1: use it every day for my job, you know, for
Speaker 1: editing purposes if I need a picture off a blog
Speaker 1: post or something really really easy. And I did test it.
Speaker 1: It does work with Instagram. And you may want something
Speaker 1: that's for your phone, and I'm sure there are apps
Speaker 1: out there that can do this on your phone. I
Speaker 1: just did not research that, so I don't know, nor
Speaker 1: have I used that, but I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people use that, like repost app, which may do it,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if it downloads it. But if
Speaker 1: you search the app store, are you on iPhone? Doesn't
Speaker 1: say if you're on iPhone or not. But I would
Speaker 1: just try it on your desktop, just go to the
Speaker 1: Instagram page that you want. Once you download that and
Speaker 1: click the little image downloader and you should get the
Speaker 1: pictures that you need. All right. So two way video
Speaker 1: calling with Zoom is now available on Amazon Fire TV
Speaker 1: Cube and this is big. I tweeted about this and
Speaker 1: I kind of always imagine this, you know, we call
Speaker 1: it a lean back experience, right, the idea of just
Speaker 1: sitting on your couch and be able to watch you know,
Speaker 1: streaming services or looking at your family pictures. But the
Speaker 1: idea of video chatting, for some reason, has yet to
Speaker 1: come to the television, and I don't know why. Now, yes,
Speaker 1: there are some solutions out there, like Facebook's portal, but
Speaker 1: what is the deal? Why is there such a holdout?
Speaker 1: Is it just because people use their phones? But if
Speaker 1: you've ever video chatted on a phone, I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of pressure. There's a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: to hold your phone in front of you. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure to hold your phone steady. People are
Speaker 1: moving around all the time. So I don't feel like
Speaker 1: the phone is a good way of video chatting unless
Speaker 1: you know, it's quick, it's simple, it's easy. You know,
Speaker 1: most people have a phone nearby but I feel like
Speaker 1: this idea of video chatting on the couch would just
Speaker 1: be so much better if you had a webcam on
Speaker 1: top of your TV and you just to sit back
Speaker 1: and you just talk to the other people on the
Speaker 1: other end. And for me, you know, I've got my
Speaker 1: family on the East Coast, it would be so nice
Speaker 1: to just have my parents or my siblings just in
Speaker 1: front of their TV because we just relax, you know,
Speaker 1: and we all just could sit there in our houses
Speaker 1: and chat with each other. Well, anyway, this is a
Speaker 1: reality with the fire TV Cube. Last year they launched
Speaker 1: a lex Oh alex A. I had someone write me
Speaker 1: in and said, of Rich, if you want to say
Speaker 1: that word on your podcast, you can say alex A.
Speaker 1: So I'll say alex A. So if you want, you
Speaker 1: can use alex A to video chat on your Fire TVQ.
Speaker 1: But Zoom is much more popular, and so now you
Speaker 1: can use the Zoom ap. But here's the thing. Look
Speaker 1: at all the stuff you need to access to a
Speaker 1: video calling. You'll need to connect a webcam that supports
Speaker 1: USB video class whatever that is with at least seven
Speaker 1: to twenty P resolution and thirty frames per second, using
Speaker 1: a micro USB to USB adapter. Now, who in their
Speaker 1: right mind, that's the average person that this is targeting,
Speaker 1: is going to know how to do that. And I
Speaker 1: like to use my mom as an example. That's the
Speaker 1: example here. If I'm like, mom, we can finally video
Speaker 1: chat on the TV. Just go out and get a
Speaker 1: UVC USB video class camera with a seventy seven to
Speaker 1: twenty P resolution and thirty frames per second. Plus you
Speaker 1: know that micro USB to USB adapter you've been wanting
Speaker 1: to use, Yeah, you can use that too. No, no
Speaker 1: one's going to know how to do this, So why
Speaker 1: don't you just make a software update that lets you
Speaker 1: plug in a regular video camera to a regular I
Speaker 1: guess it's only micro USB on the back, but it's
Speaker 1: just one of these things that like this is why
Speaker 1: this stuff hasn't taken off. This is way too complicated.
Speaker 1: And yes, all the techies that Amazon are saying this
Speaker 1: is so cool, we can finally do this, but no
Speaker 1: real person knows how to do this, and even myself,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go out there and buy all
Speaker 1: this stuff. I will to try it out, but it
Speaker 1: just needs to be easy. We've got Apple TV, We've
Speaker 1: got firetvqube by the way. Firetvcube is a high end
Speaker 1: fire TV, so not even a lot of people have that.
Speaker 1: Most people have the sticks, and you're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to plug a webcam into the stick Roku same thing.
Speaker 1: They've got USB on the back of the big ones.
Speaker 1: But most people have the sticks. And so until we
Speaker 1: get a very simple method for plugging a webcam, a
Speaker 1: normal webcam into the back of these TV it's just
Speaker 1: not gonna happen. And yeah, the TV manufacturers just do
Speaker 1: it themselves, cut out the middleman. Why do we need
Speaker 1: why do we need all these boxes? I mean, I
Speaker 1: like them, but a lot of people just use your
Speaker 1: smart TV. Oh, look at Amazon, put the links. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the webcam I have, the Logitech C nine twenty
Speaker 1: does have. It is compatible. They actually were kind enough
Speaker 1: to include a list of compatible webcams and a list
Speaker 1: of compatible micro USB to USB adapter so you know, look,
Speaker 1: it's not tough. It's just one of these things where
Speaker 1: to do all this is kind of a lot. But
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm tempted. I'm tempted to literally gift
Speaker 1: My mom does use fire TV, so I'm tempted to
Speaker 1: now gift her a cube and then all these other
Speaker 1: little bells and whistles so that we can video chat.
Speaker 1: But I think the other side of this is who
Speaker 1: really wants a video camera on top of their TV
Speaker 1: staring at your living room the whole time. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just one of these things where maybe if there's
Speaker 1: a shutter on these Let me see, do any of
Speaker 1: these video cameras have a shutter, because that would be
Speaker 1: probably the only way that the average person would do that. Okay,
Speaker 1: that one does not have a shutter. This one does
Speaker 1: not have a shutter. This one does not have a shutter,
Speaker 1: and that one does not have a shutter. So there
Speaker 1: would probably have to be some sort of shutter mechanism
Speaker 1: to really make this thing take off. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's gonna happen. Anyway, it is available. It's
Speaker 1: available now, and you can join zoom meetings using a
Speaker 1: fire TVQ. All right, Robert has the next question. Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I bought a Fitbit Charge four and was wondering if
Speaker 1: the fitbit app is the best choice to use with
Speaker 1: an iPhone. I see there are other apps that claim
Speaker 1: to connect better with Apple Health. What have you heard, thanks, Robert? Robert,
Speaker 1: I would say stay away from the third party apps,
Speaker 1: they are not. I guarantee you they're not going to
Speaker 1: connect to Apple Health better than what Fitbit does. And
Speaker 1: quite honestly, I think the reason why you're looking is
Speaker 1: because Apple Health probably and I don't know this for certain,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure that Apple Health does not connect
Speaker 1: to Fitbit at all. Now I may be wrong on that,
Speaker 1: and you can you can correct me on that if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, But I think that because Fitbit is made
Speaker 1: by Google, and Google is warring is you know, frenemies
Speaker 1: with Apple, as is everyone these days, I think that
Speaker 1: the Fitbit app would be your best way to do it. Now,
Speaker 1: there is one other thing you can do, and I
Speaker 1: think this actually would be your best bet if you
Speaker 1: want that. Now. Here's the thing. What Apple Health does
Speaker 1: really well is it integrates health data from various places.
Speaker 1: And so if you want sort of one thing, you know,
Speaker 1: to look at all of your data, Like let's say
Speaker 1: you do a yoga class through an app, and let's
Speaker 1: say you do something on your fitbit and then you
Speaker 1: go for a run using Apple Health. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like or Apple Workout app or whatever. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: you want all that stuff in one place and so
Speaker 1: I understand why you'd want Apple Health. But here's what
Speaker 1: I've done, and it actually works pretty well. And I
Speaker 1: know Fitbit works with it because they're both Google. But
Speaker 1: you can download the Google Fit app, and as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell on my phone, Google Fit does
Speaker 1: somehow siphon the information out of Google Health and it
Speaker 1: will also take the information from the fitbit app. So
Speaker 1: if you have both those things feeding into the fitbit app,
Speaker 1: now you've got a one stop shop where you can
Speaker 1: have all of your fitness data in one place. And
Speaker 1: Google Fit is actually quite nice. It's simple. I really
Speaker 1: like the design. They have some good tips on you know,
Speaker 1: some insights into what it learns from you as you
Speaker 1: work out. So I think that's that's probably the way
Speaker 1: that I would go. So good question. And again this
Speaker 1: is what bugs me. It bugs me that all these
Speaker 1: tech companies force us into these silos. And I just
Speaker 1: hate being forced into a silo because it doesn't give
Speaker 1: us as much freedom to choose the services and the
Speaker 1: products that we want to use. And don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of it that works together,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it does not, and it gets
Speaker 1: kind of tricky. When you know, things just arbitrarily say well,
Speaker 1: we're not going to work together because you know that's
Speaker 1: a that's a product that's kind of in competition with us,
Speaker 1: or you know, you got to build things our way,
Speaker 1: or you know, it's the highway. So that's where we're at.
Speaker 1: It's just a reality of the tech world, and maybe
Speaker 1: that'll change in the future. We're seeing some progress with that,
Speaker 1: especially as these anti trust you know, there's inklings of
Speaker 1: anti trust always kind of pitter pattering through the through
Speaker 1: the hallways of tech. So as that kind of scare
Speaker 1: stays with these tech companies, it sort of you know,
Speaker 1: makes them want to do things that help the consumer.
Speaker 1: And so if those you know, if that threat wasn't there,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine the world we live in because I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of stuff is kind of you know,
Speaker 1: I test a lot of stuff, and I just see
Speaker 1: the silos that people build, and so I don't like those.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the next story. Instagram, this
Speaker 1: is everyone's favorite social media app. Instagram has some new
Speaker 1: privacy what do you call it, some new safety measures
Speaker 1: for teens. So number one, obviously we know that there's
Speaker 1: this big push and pull when it comes to young
Speaker 1: people on social media. If I, as a parent, had
Speaker 1: my way, I would never allow my kid to have
Speaker 1: a cell phone until they were like thirty five. But
Speaker 1: that's just not the reality. You know, you want to
Speaker 1: be able to get in touch with their kids, and
Speaker 1: next thing, you know, they want to be able to
Speaker 1: get in touch with their friends, and they want to
Speaker 1: be on social media. They want to become an influencer.
Speaker 1: They want to be on YouTube, they want to watch it,
Speaker 1: then they want to make videos, and all of this
Speaker 1: stuff is theoretically forbidden under thirteen, but we know that
Speaker 1: that's not happening. You know, kids are signing up, they're
Speaker 1: using different you know, data births, they're they're using their parents' phone.
Speaker 1: So it look, the reality is it's there. Kids are
Speaker 1: on these things, and so Instagram knows that and they're
Speaker 1: trying to do things to make it a bit of
Speaker 1: a safer experience. One of those new things is defaulting
Speaker 1: people under eighteen into private accounts. Now depends where you
Speaker 1: are in the US. It's well, let's see, starting this week,
Speaker 1: everyone who is under sixteen years old or eighteen in
Speaker 1: certain countries will be defaulted into a private account. When
Speaker 1: they join Instagram. Now, so in the US, I believe
Speaker 1: it's sixteen. But here's the thing this is when they
Speaker 1: say defaulted, it sounds better than it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: the kids who are signing up for this are the
Speaker 1: most tech savvy people out there in the world. So
Speaker 1: they're not gonna miss a little tiny menu that says,
Speaker 1: you know, do you want to be you know, they're
Speaker 1: gonna miss the thing where says private, where they can
Speaker 1: switch it to public. They're not going to keep kids
Speaker 1: from switching it to public. They're just going to default. Now,
Speaker 1: if that saves or if that you know, deflects ten
Speaker 1: percent of sign ups to being into or defaulting them
Speaker 1: into you know, private, then I guess that works. I mean,
Speaker 1: anything's better than nothing. Now, if they have a private account,
Speaker 1: obviously you know the rules. So people have to follow
Speaker 1: you to see your posts, you have to choose to
Speaker 1: allow others to reshare your content. People can't comment on
Speaker 1: your content, they can't see your content at all in
Speaker 1: places like Explore or on hashtags. So that's a that's
Speaker 1: a good thing I think for kids. Now, Again, like
Speaker 1: I said earlier, a lot of kids want or these
Speaker 1: are teens, a lot of teens want to become influencers,
Speaker 1: and so they're probably going to go to public or
Speaker 1: you know, hey, they might just say, oh yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: stay private, like all I care about my friends. So
Speaker 1: that's cool. Now for the teenagers or young people they
Speaker 1: say that already have a public account on Instagram, Instagram
Speaker 1: is going to show them a notification saying here's why
Speaker 1: we think you should be private, and then show them
Speaker 1: how to change their privacy settings. The other thing they're
Speaker 1: doing is using AI to not only identify adult accounts
Speaker 1: even if you lie about your age, but also to
Speaker 1: identify creepy adults. And they don't use that term, but
Speaker 1: they call it potentially suspicious behavior. These are accounts that
Speaker 1: belong to adults that have been blocked or reported by
Speaker 1: a young person for example. So this is not everything,
Speaker 1: it's just one thing. And so using this technology, they
Speaker 1: won't show young people's accounts and explore or anything suggested
Speaker 1: to adults. And let's see, if they find young adults
Speaker 1: accounts by searching for their user names, they won't be
Speaker 1: able to follow them. So I mean, Instagram, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of weird. I would call this like shadow
Speaker 1: banning almost except you know, shadow banning is kind of
Speaker 1: like when your stuff is not really shown to a
Speaker 1: lot of people because you've broken some sort of rule.
Speaker 1: That is, you're not really aware of that, but Instagram
Speaker 1: doesn't really tell you. They just kind of don't show
Speaker 1: your stuff to as many people. And you know, this
Speaker 1: kind of happens with Instagram accounts as well. There's a
Speaker 1: thing you can do called restrict and so if I,
Speaker 1: let's say, for example, I'm on my Instagram and someone's
Speaker 1: really annoying me with their comments, I can restrict them
Speaker 1: and they can still comment, they can still see my stuff,
Speaker 1: they can still interact with my stuff, they can like it.
Speaker 1: But guess what, anything that they do is not viewable
Speaker 1: by anyone except them. So it's kind of like this.
Speaker 1: It's a shadow ban I mean, it's a shadow band
Speaker 1: that any Instagram user has the ability to enable. So
Speaker 1: the other thing they're doing is changing how advertisers can
Speaker 1: reach young people. Basically, they're only going to let them
Speaker 1: target on age, gender, and location and not interests. All right,
Speaker 1: Mike says, my seventeen Honda Pilot did not come with
Speaker 1: a CD player. I'd like to have my entire CD
Speaker 1: collection on an MP three player. I want the ability
Speaker 1: to play by artist, by genre, or by album. What
Speaker 1: do I buy? Thanks, Mike, Mike, I would recommend an
Speaker 1: iPod Touch. That's you know, two hundred dollars for an
Speaker 1: iPod Touch. If you don't want to spend that much,
Speaker 1: then I would look on eBay. I am sure you
Speaker 1: can find an iPod Touch for cheaper than that price
Speaker 1: if you want to. Yeah, that's all i'd recommend. I
Speaker 1: would not go back further because the iPod like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you go with like an iPod Classic or an
Speaker 1: iPod you know, clickwheel, whatever, these I forget the little
Speaker 1: one that I have at home, Like it's an old
Speaker 1: school one that I bought my wife a long time ago,
Speaker 1: but it's like a really thin one. It's like the
Speaker 1: solid state drive. I would go with an iPod Touch.
Speaker 1: And the reason why I would go with that over
Speaker 1: any other sort of MP three player, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a million ways you can do this. But you said
Speaker 1: you want the ability to play by artists, by genre,
Speaker 1: or by album, and I'm guessing a twenty seventeen Honda
Speaker 1: Pilot probably has some iPods smarts built into it. And
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is that it will interface
Speaker 1: with your iPod to show the the sorting methods that
Speaker 1: you want, which is artists, genre, or album, and so
Speaker 1: I think that is probably the best way to do it.
Speaker 1: You can easily hook it up into your car. You
Speaker 1: probably you probably have a USB pour in there. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think my old car. Oh, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that'll Yeah, you'll be fine. Twenty seventeen is not even
Speaker 1: that old, so I think you'll be okay. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get just a standard Apple lightning connector you
Speaker 1: pop it into the bottom of the iPod Touch and
Speaker 1: now you've got your whole collection. You can throw the
Speaker 1: iPod touch and your you know, run that wire nice
Speaker 1: so it looks nice and clean, and you know, put
Speaker 1: the thing in your compartment or something, or just you know,
Speaker 1: stow it out of out of view. And you can
Speaker 1: do that now if you want me to recommend some apps.
Speaker 1: So for the CD player, you know, you can still
Speaker 1: rip CDs using iTunes, I believe. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: think they took that out of there, but if you can't,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of yeah, well, I don't know if
Speaker 1: they still do this. Let's see on iTunes on PC.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that Mac does it anymore. Ooh, that
Speaker 1: could be a problem. I don't see anything on the uh,
Speaker 1: let's see iTunes Mac. Oh you know what, let me say,
Speaker 1: let me just see something because this says Windows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so weird. I don't know if you can do
Speaker 1: it on a Mac anymore. I know they've got finder
Speaker 1: how to rip. Yeah, okay, let's see this was updated.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yes, of course you can. Okay, yeah, so
Speaker 1: you can do it. Oh, use the music app on
Speaker 1: your Mac. Choose music preferences in general. When a CD
Speaker 1: is inserted, choose the option import CD, and you import
Speaker 1: the CD into your library and then you can put
Speaker 1: it onto your iPod. The other thing you can do,
Speaker 1: if you want to just a one off kind of
Speaker 1: thing or just a dragon drop, is a program called
Speaker 1: Walter wa lt R. And that's a great dragon drop option.
Speaker 1: Walter Pro just transfers pretty much any file onto your
Speaker 1: iPhone or iPad. It's thirty bucks and it's really easy,
Speaker 1: and it puts it in the right place. So it'll
Speaker 1: put like a book into the booksapp, it'll put the
Speaker 1: MP three's into your music app, it'll put photos into
Speaker 1: the photos app, so it's really really smart and very easy.
Speaker 1: That's a Dragon drop method. Good question. I know it's
Speaker 1: been a while. I mean, I used to have this
Speaker 1: car that I really wanted. I'm trying to remember what
Speaker 1: the deal was. It was an old BMW and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to remember what the deal with this car was.
Speaker 1: It was gosh, there were some there. It had like
Speaker 1: support for the iPod but it was very like limited,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to use like a streaming service, but
Speaker 1: I wanted I don't know anyway, I can't really remember
Speaker 1: what the story was. But anyway, I got rid of it.
Speaker 1: And you know, now my new car is car Play,
Speaker 1: so it's all good. It wasn't my car anyway. It
Speaker 1: was my wife's car, so I never I never had it.
Speaker 1: I would just drive it once in a while, and
Speaker 1: it did drive very nice. I have to say, all right,
Speaker 1: PlayStation five, let's see. PlayStation five now has surpassed ten
Speaker 1: million units sold, and Sony says it's their fastest selling
Speaker 1: console in history. It is outpaced to PlayStation four, So
Speaker 1: I don't think this means that it's sold more than
Speaker 1: the PlayStation four, because clearly that's probably sold a lot.
Speaker 1: This is the fastest selling console. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of ways to mix, you know, in slice and dice
Speaker 1: numbers and present them in a way that makes things
Speaker 1: look very successful. But the reality is this has sold
Speaker 1: more units in a short amount of time. But here
Speaker 1: is what the interesting part about this is. To me,
Speaker 1: I find it fascinating that this is so hard to get.
Speaker 1: So the fact that they've sold ten million. If you
Speaker 1: were able to get this device, how many would they
Speaker 1: have sold? So that's what I find interesting about this.
Speaker 1: And Sony does acknowledge in this little post about the shortages,
Speaker 1: because this has been really bad. I mean, the PlayStation
Speaker 1: five launched on November what was it, November twelfth, twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Hard to believe it's been you know, seven almost eight
Speaker 1: months now. I mean we're almost coming up to another
Speaker 1: holiday season where this thing is still going to be
Speaker 1: you know, could be potentially tricky to get. Apple and
Speaker 1: their earnings call this week said that the iPhone could
Speaker 1: be tough to get because there's some little pieces in
Speaker 1: there that are are getting held up on the supply chain.
Speaker 1: So again we're seeing these shortages for everything, and Apple
Speaker 1: gave a little hit that the iPhone could be a problem.
Speaker 1: Now I don't. I don't know if a lot of
Speaker 1: people are gonna be upgrading this time around, because the
Speaker 1: iPhone twelve was so good, but and I think they
Speaker 1: called it like a super cycle or whatever. It was
Speaker 1: like a big upgrade for a lot of people. But
Speaker 1: I think that who knows, I mean people up to me.
Speaker 1: People just upgrade their phone when they need a new
Speaker 1: one after three four years, so it's no longer a
Speaker 1: yearly thing except for the real enthusiasts. So anyway, just
Speaker 1: be prepared if anything gets a little tight with the
Speaker 1: iPhone supply. But Sony does say we have a lot
Speaker 1: of work ahead for us as demand for PS five
Speaker 1: continues to outstrip supply. I want gamers to know that
Speaker 1: while we continue to face unique challenges throughout the world
Speaker 1: that affect our industry, improving inventory levels remains a top
Speaker 1: priority for Sie Sony Interactive Entertainment. All right, next question
Speaker 1: here from Bernadette. Hey, I'm working on a book about
Speaker 1: my one hundred and one year old mom. Wow. Mom
Speaker 1: has a lot of tape recordings that are that are
Speaker 1: that after trying to write down and then input into
Speaker 1: word has turned into a logistical nightmare. Working on a
Speaker 1: PC with Windows ten. I was told Dragon was a possibility,
Speaker 1: but as you know, there's no refund policy once purchasing software.
Speaker 1: Another plan B was recommending hiring someone recommended it was
Speaker 1: hiring a freelance stenographer. However, at a rate of two
Speaker 1: twenty five an hour, that's a little too rich. No
Speaker 1: pun intended for my almost empty pocket, FYI a proceed.
Speaker 1: A portion of the proceeds will be donated to nonprofit charities.
Speaker 1: Any assistance will be greatly appreciated. Bernadette, Well, Bernadette, I
Speaker 1: have just a solution, and it's so dang easy. It
Speaker 1: is already on your computer. Or let's see. Uh, did
Speaker 1: you say you're using Word? Yes? You did, Okay, so
Speaker 1: you've already got Word if you have a subscription to
Speaker 1: Office three sixty five, which is like seven bucks a month.
Speaker 1: I know you said you've got an only almost empty pocket,
Speaker 1: but this is about your cheapest solution. You can upload
Speaker 1: these audio recordings into Word and it will transcribe them automatically,
Speaker 1: and it's amazing. I've done this before. It I think
Speaker 1: it's unlimited. I've uploaded like an entire podcast episode and
Speaker 1: I did get the entire transcript and it's pretty pretty good.
Speaker 1: So for my Larry David fans out there, I'd say
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty pretty good. Bad bad impression, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean that's what I would do now. I
Speaker 1: think the biggest challenge here reading your question is I
Speaker 1: have a lot of tape recordings, so I don't know
Speaker 1: what format these tape recordings are in. But that is
Speaker 1: what you're gonna have to do. You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: get those into a digital format to get those into Word.
Speaker 1: So you got to figure out how to do that.
Speaker 1: You might need some help with that. An easy way
Speaker 1: to do that is just to buy a cable on
Speaker 1: Amazon which is like a you know, a standard headphone
Speaker 1: jack cable, but it has two headphone jacks on either end.
Speaker 1: You plug one into the device that plays the tape,
Speaker 1: you plug the other into the input jack on your computer,
Speaker 1: and you use whatever recording app that's on your computer
Speaker 1: to record these into a digital format. Then you take
Speaker 1: that digital file and you upload it to Microsoft Word.
Speaker 1: How do you upload it to Microsoft Word? Well, I
Speaker 1: need I need to go into let's see, let me
Speaker 1: look in Microsoft Word. Because if you're listening and you're like, rich,
Speaker 1: that's a cool feature. How do I do it, and
Speaker 1: I don't really tell you how to do it. That's
Speaker 1: not very useful, now, is it. So you open up
Speaker 1: a new Word document and we just happen to have
Speaker 1: a subscription to Word through our com company. There is
Speaker 1: a dictate button on the toolbar there should be, and
Speaker 1: the I'm talking this is the web version of Microsoft Word. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you have to use that. Now. Next to that
Speaker 1: dictate it looks like a little microphone. There is a
Speaker 1: down arrow or a carrot pointing down. You press that
Speaker 1: and then it reveals a transcribe button and yes, I know,
Speaker 1: I say button weird, and it says generate a transcript
Speaker 1: by uploading your audio data, which can be a wavefile,
Speaker 1: an MP four, an M four A, or an MP
Speaker 1: three to start a recording and or start a recording.
Speaker 1: So you can upload audio. Oh wow, you can just
Speaker 1: start a recording. You can do it right from there.
Speaker 1: But I would just upload the audio and you can
Speaker 1: do three hundred minutes a month, so you may, you know,
Speaker 1: depending on how long these things are that I think
Speaker 1: is new but maybe not interesting. I've never seen the
Speaker 1: three hundred minutes a month, but okay, well, three hundred
Speaker 1: minutes a month is definitely a bummer, but that might
Speaker 1: depend on your subscription minds of corporate. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the deal is. So the other thing you can
Speaker 1: do is use what's called descript de script descript dot com.
Speaker 1: And this is gonna cost you a little bit. Again,
Speaker 1: it's none of these things are free. When things, when
Speaker 1: things are truly useful, they are not free. And I've
Speaker 1: noticed this over and over. If you want real software
Speaker 1: that does and solves real problems, it's gonna cost you.
Speaker 1: And so let's see. You can do three hours of
Speaker 1: transcription one time for free twelve dollars. You can do
Speaker 1: ten hours a month. So basically you're looking at if
Speaker 1: you don't want to do the word thing, you can
Speaker 1: just use descript and it would be twelve dollars for
Speaker 1: a month of ten hours. So depends on how much
Speaker 1: you got. I mean, I don't really know how many
Speaker 1: recordings you have, but the ten dollars a month might
Speaker 1: be fine. Now, if you want to go twenty four
Speaker 1: dollars a month, you can go thirty hours of transcription,
Speaker 1: So maybe that's it. Maybe all you need is one month,
Speaker 1: And I would do, believe me, if I pay the
Speaker 1: twenty four dollars. You definitely definitely want to go and
Speaker 1: use the entire thirty hours. Do not split that job up,
Speaker 1: like make it your your job every day to do that.
Speaker 1: So thanks for the question. Verizon has some new mobile
Speaker 1: hotspot plans, and I'm getting a lot of questions about
Speaker 1: mobile hotspots because people are still really hip on this
Speaker 1: whole work from wherever thing. And I understand. I mean,
Speaker 1: I came back to work and we had, you know,
Speaker 1: no masks on, and next thing, you know, a week later,
Speaker 1: all this is changing, and it's very it's very dynamic
Speaker 1: right now. When just when I thought things were getting
Speaker 1: a little bit better, all of a sudden, it's like, nope,
Speaker 1: put on those brakes. I'll keep my thoughts about that
Speaker 1: to myself, but you know, nonetheless, this is what we
Speaker 1: find ourselves in. And so we are in a world where,
Speaker 1: you know, businesses continue to delay people going back to
Speaker 1: the office and for some people they really like that.
Speaker 1: And you know, a mobile hotspot is a way to
Speaker 1: get a nice solid internet connection wherever you are. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course your phone can do that, but you know,
Speaker 1: a dedicated hot spot definitely has its advantages. So the
Speaker 1: new plans Essential twenty bucks a month for Verizon customers,
Speaker 1: and that is that's going to give you fifteen gigs
Speaker 1: of data. Forty dollars a month for Verizon customers, gives
Speaker 1: you five g and fifty gigs. Sixty dollars for Verizon
Speaker 1: customers will give you five g and one hundred gigs.
Speaker 1: And then you've got Premium, which is eighty dollars for
Speaker 1: Verizon customers, and that gives you five g and one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty gigs. So if you're really really a
Speaker 1: road warrior, the eighty dollars one hundred and fifty gigs
Speaker 1: will be fine. Now, if you have a Verizon plan,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously a lot of these plans come with
Speaker 1: mobile Internet and you can use that, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: start with that before you get a dedicated hotspot. So yeah,
Speaker 1: whether you need this is kind of up to you.
Speaker 1: But some of these plans are more expensive if you
Speaker 1: don't have a Hoverzon plan. So you know, it all
Speaker 1: depends on what you're doing. If you're traveling every month,
Speaker 1: you know, a standalone plan would be nice, you know,
Speaker 1: or standalone sorry I should say standalone hot spot. But
Speaker 1: if you're not traveling that much, I mean I find
Speaker 1: that the hotspot on the the phone works pretty well.
Speaker 1: I mean, the dedicated hotspot is just nice because you
Speaker 1: can set it up and just leave it there, like
Speaker 1: if you go to a hotel room, you know, and
Speaker 1: I talked about this before on the podcast. It's just
Speaker 1: nice to just like kind of leave it there. You know.
Speaker 1: You don't have to really think about it much. When
Speaker 1: you come into the room. It connects, when you get out,
Speaker 1: it disconnects, and that's it. So I do like that
Speaker 1: aspect of it. All right, Let's get to another question here,
Speaker 1: speaking of vaccinations, Patricia says digital vaccinated passport. Hey, which
Speaker 1: I don't know if you covered this already, but which
Speaker 1: digital passport is best to use as proof of COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen vaccinations? Patricia, Patricia, there is not a one size
Speaker 1: fits all solution for this just yet. I know we've
Speaker 1: heard of some of the you know, some of the
Speaker 1: companies trying to come up with this, but your best
Speaker 1: bet at this time is really to just download the
Speaker 1: app from the company that gave you. I feel like
Speaker 1: I talked about this before, but I think your best
Speaker 1: bet is just to download the app from the company
Speaker 1: that gave you. The vaccine. So whether that's you know,
Speaker 1: carbon Health here in Los Angeles or Clarity whatever, just
Speaker 1: look into that and see if they have an app.
Speaker 1: And sometimes in those apps they have a way to
Speaker 1: sort of integrate the proof of vaccination into you know,
Speaker 1: either Apple Wallet or Google Pay. And actually Google itself
Speaker 1: announced that they are actively working to bring the vaccination
Speaker 1: codes into Google Pay. Now. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: status of that is. It's probably gonna be a while,
Speaker 1: but you know, and it always takes longer than you think.
Speaker 1: But I think the best thing right now is just
Speaker 1: to keep a copy of that of that vaccination card
Speaker 1: on your phone and obviously just keep it safe somewhere,
Speaker 1: you know, in your house, you know, but keep a
Speaker 1: snapshot of it. I've the only time it came in
Speaker 1: handy for me so far is at Krispy Kreme. When
Speaker 1: I was at Krispy Kreme buying a donut and I
Speaker 1: saw a little sign that said if you're vaccinated, you
Speaker 1: get a free Krispy Kream, and I said, oh, I
Speaker 1: have this, And sure enough, I showed the card on
Speaker 1: my phone, which I had taken a picture of because
Speaker 1: I was traveling, and they were like, here you go.
Speaker 1: Free Krispy Kreme, and I thought that was great. So
Speaker 1: I anyway, I enjoyed that. It was a very delicious donut.
Speaker 1: Krispy Kreme, by the way, seven seconds in the microwave,
Speaker 1: and it tastes just like it would fresh out of
Speaker 1: the oven, you know, or if you are been to
Speaker 1: a Krispy Kreme, you know how they do it. They
Speaker 1: do this thing like where they have the the Krispy
Speaker 1: Kreme's hot like they're coming off this like conveyor belt.
Speaker 1: And I think back in the day you used to
Speaker 1: be able to ask for one if you came in
Speaker 1: there while it was physically making the donuts. You could
Speaker 1: be like, hey, can I have a sample, and they
Speaker 1: would give you one along with a little hat like
Speaker 1: a paper hat. Now I don't know if they still
Speaker 1: do that, but I specifically remember doing that when I
Speaker 1: was living in Shreveport, Louisiana, when Krispy Kreme came to town,
Speaker 1: it was like a big deal. And Los Angeles, I
Speaker 1: don't think they have as many locations, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things. Story from the Associated Press
Speaker 1: says that if you want to keep your phone safe
Speaker 1: from hackers, all you have to do is reset it.
Speaker 1: And this little article or this I don't know what
Speaker 1: you call it. I don't know where this originated from. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it says. Let's see, as a member of
Speaker 1: the secretive Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Angus King has reason
Speaker 1: to worry about hackers. That a briefing by security staff
Speaker 1: this year, he said he got some advice and had
Speaker 1: keep his cell phone secure. Turn it on, turn it off.
Speaker 1: That's it, And this is actually some decent advice. The
Speaker 1: reasoning that this that they give for turning the phone
Speaker 1: on and off is the fact that a lot of
Speaker 1: what Apple and Google have done is protected kind of
Speaker 1: the core base of your phone. So if a hacker
Speaker 1: is trying to get into it, they can't really get
Speaker 1: into like the deep dive of your device where they
Speaker 1: would need to really kind of do whatever they want,
Speaker 1: like wreck havoc on your phone. Now, especially with the iPhone,
Speaker 1: this is the case, and you know it's happening more
Speaker 1: and more with the androids as well. But the iPhone,
Speaker 1: you know, I always talk about this idea of things
Speaker 1: being sandboxed, right, so when you have an app, it
Speaker 1: only kind of works with itself. It doesn't really interface
Speaker 1: with other apps, and if it does, it only does
Speaker 1: it in a way that Apple allows. We're on Android.
Speaker 1: There's definitely more leniency. But is that a word leniency
Speaker 1: more lenience? I don't know, but it you know, it
Speaker 1: does more, but it's you know, they're tightening things too
Speaker 1: over there. But anyway, the reality is how a lot
Speaker 1: of these hacks now work is you know, they're called
Speaker 1: zero day exploits, where it's kind of like a hole
Speaker 1: that they find that they exploit very quickly. And so
Speaker 1: for that reason, a lot of these things run in
Speaker 1: like the main memory, like the quick memory, not the
Speaker 1: deeper memory that stores all the info on your phone.
Speaker 1: And so if this idea of restarting your phone is right,
Speaker 1: what would happen is when you restart, the phone kind
Speaker 1: of takes stock of what's running in the local memory
Speaker 1: and it basically doesn't allow anything it doesn't recognize to
Speaker 1: run because it's highly secure. So, yes, is there a
Speaker 1: way around that? Of course there always is, you know,
Speaker 1: hackers will find a way. But this is saying to
Speaker 1: restart your phone about once a week if you really
Speaker 1: want to protect your privacy. I mean, I can't say
Speaker 1: not to do that. I probably restart my phone. Now,
Speaker 1: when I'm on Android, I restart much more often than
Speaker 1: iPhone iPhone. It could probably go a couple I mean,
Speaker 1: probably a month without restarting, But sometimes I will restart
Speaker 1: just to kind of clean things up, clear things out,
Speaker 1: do whatever you do to, you know, to get the
Speaker 1: phone kind of back to you know, a fresh restart
Speaker 1: kind of situation. But that's the idea of this, of
Speaker 1: this turn your phone, turn your phone on and off
Speaker 1: once a week. I don't know. I'm not gonna not
Speaker 1: recommend doing it. It's definitely an interesting take on the
Speaker 1: whole hack your phone thing, I would say, and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm loath to say this, but I feel like most
Speaker 1: people's phones are not really at risk of hacking. I
Speaker 1: think that there are much bigger concerns out there, and
Speaker 1: I think that clicking on nefarious links is a big concern.
Speaker 1: I think that you know, subscriptions that you subscribe to
Speaker 1: that you forget about and you get charged twenty bucks
Speaker 1: and sometimes even more. I think that's a problem. I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of other things, you know, stealing
Speaker 1: your personal information willingly like handing it over. So I
Speaker 1: think that there are a lot of things that happen
Speaker 1: on smartphones that are pretty bad. I think that a
Speaker 1: lot of these high level, you know, hack attacks that
Speaker 1: we hear about, you know, for the average person, if
Speaker 1: you're not a journalist or you're not someone that's you know,
Speaker 1: government agent, you know, regular person, you know, is it
Speaker 1: going to happen to you? It could. Chances are you
Speaker 1: know that you're not the target, but you could be
Speaker 1: in a drive by. I don't know, it just it
Speaker 1: just sort of depends. But anyway, I would say, think
Speaker 1: about it. At least you know about it. But I
Speaker 1: think that it's one of those things that if you
Speaker 1: don't do it, it's not like it's not like you
Speaker 1: have to sit there and set a time or to
Speaker 1: restart your phone once a week. But it's not gonna
Speaker 1: hurt if you do it, just for the mere fact
Speaker 1: that it's a nice thing to do. Anyway. But it's
Speaker 1: an interesting thought, and it's one that I hadn't really
Speaker 1: heard before. I've interviewed a lot of security people, and
Speaker 1: I've never really heard this take. So whenever I haven't
Speaker 1: heard something before, it's always like, Okay, that's that's interesting,
Speaker 1: and I can see why they recommend it. But I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily know if I'm going to adopt that practice,
Speaker 1: even though I probably do it anyway. I mean, I
Speaker 1: do turn my phone on and off once in a while,
Speaker 1: maybe not once a week, but anyway, Now when you
Speaker 1: think about turning on and off your phone, you think
Speaker 1: about making it more secure, and so maybe you'll do
Speaker 1: it more often. All right, Bob writes in and says
Speaker 1: I did get an Euro router, but I've had connection
Speaker 1: problems with my Canary. I'm told by Canary that Canary
Speaker 1: will not work with mesh routers. All other connections are fine, regards, Bob. Yeah, Bob,
Speaker 1: you bring up a point that we hear every once
Speaker 1: in a while, This whole idea of these mesh routers
Speaker 1: not playing nice with some of these IoT devices, Internet
Speaker 1: of things, and the Canary that you're talking about, if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar, if you're listening, is a it's kind
Speaker 1: of an all in one security camera slash security system.
Speaker 1: And the reason I think it's not working with it
Speaker 1: is because Canary probably works on a two point four gigahertz,
Speaker 1: whereas the Euro is spitting out a five gigahertz, and
Speaker 1: they do this thing where it kind of they call
Speaker 1: it band steering. It tries to get the devices to
Speaker 1: connect to the five G because that's the better signal.
Speaker 1: Now it's not always the better signal. So there's two
Speaker 1: signals typically put out by a Wi Fi router five
Speaker 1: g five gigaherts and then two point four gigarherts. Two
Speaker 1: point four gigahertz travels further, but it's not as fast.
Speaker 1: Five gigaherts doesn't travel as far, but it is faster.
Speaker 1: It's a faster connection. So that's why a lot of
Speaker 1: the new gadgets that you're using, like your iPhone and
Speaker 1: your you know, your laptop, are using mostly five gigahertz connections.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of these Internet of things that use
Speaker 1: just a two point four and a lot of times
Speaker 1: it's fine, but I've definitely run into situations myself now, Bob.
Speaker 1: What I would recommend is on the Euroo app, there
Speaker 1: is a little setting in there that will temporarily disable
Speaker 1: five gigahertz connections, and it's pretty smart how euro did this.
Speaker 1: So what they did is they give you kind of
Speaker 1: a timed option. So if you go into the app,
Speaker 1: you go into i think it's like Advanced Settings, and
Speaker 1: it says you know, force something to the effect of
Speaker 1: force two point four or you know whatever, and you
Speaker 1: click it and next thing, you know, the router will reset.
Speaker 1: It'll reset into just two point four, and that's when
Speaker 1: you can set up your canary. And then once your
Speaker 1: canary is on board with a two point four, it's
Speaker 1: gonna stick there, it's gonna stay there, and then you can,
Speaker 1: you know, just continue to use it and the rest
Speaker 1: of your network will actually the EURO will then restart
Speaker 1: and it will still continue doing dual band two point
Speaker 1: four and five. I know this is very tricky, but
Speaker 1: it's a smart way of Eero to get around this
Speaker 1: problem of something's not connecting. Now, it doesn't always work,
Speaker 1: because I was testing a plug like an outdoor plug,
Speaker 1: and it would only connect to two point four and
Speaker 1: I could not get it to connect to my EURO
Speaker 1: no matter what, it just would not do it. It
Speaker 1: was actually a wise plug. And it was quite embarrassing actually,
Speaker 1: because I was on a Facebook or an Instagram live
Speaker 1: trying to show people how easy it is to set
Speaker 1: up a plug, a smart plug outside and it just
Speaker 1: would not connect. And I'm like, all right, let me
Speaker 1: take a pause here, let me try this again, and
Speaker 1: I probably spent an hour on that thing trying to
Speaker 1: get it to work. I emailed whys and they were
Speaker 1: not really aware of the issue. They said it it
Speaker 1: shouldn't have happened. So I ended up buying just another
Speaker 1: another plug, a smart plug from Greenie or is it
Speaker 1: Greeny or Genie. I forget, but it's one of the
Speaker 1: cheaper brands on Amazon, and it works just fine. It
Speaker 1: was like eighteen bucks still working. So now the Villo
Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier, that's a sixty dollars meshrouter. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing about that is that they're well aware of
Speaker 1: this issue, just like ero Is, but they made it
Speaker 1: even easier. They they basically set up the router so
Speaker 1: it automatically figures this out and it will just kind
Speaker 1: of help these devices connect to the two point four.
Speaker 1: So what I'm guessing they do is they must ping
Speaker 1: the device say okay, can you accept a five gigahertz connection? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: Well here's the other one we can do. And so
Speaker 1: I think that's what they're doing, just to make that
Speaker 1: a little bit easier and make people have less issues
Speaker 1: with these with these things connecting. So Dell is this
Speaker 1: is an article out of the Register. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know this, but I used to edit this
Speaker 1: website called tech Meme tech meme dot com. It's still
Speaker 1: my favorite tech website of all times. And they actually
Speaker 1: don't write tech stories. They do write headlines. But the
Speaker 1: way this website works is the person who started it,
Speaker 1: Gabe Rivera, He basically programmed in an algorithm that kind
Speaker 1: of takes into consideration all these different tech websites, so
Speaker 1: they get fed into this entire system, and then it
Speaker 1: kind of figures out the way of laying out stories
Speaker 1: on a web page that are popular and what people
Speaker 1: are clicking, what people are reading, and not just one story.
Speaker 1: You can see all the sources of these stories. So
Speaker 1: what's really powerful about tech Meme is, like, let's say
Speaker 1: pretty much every story out there except for reviews, has
Speaker 1: one source, and then all the blogs rewrite that story
Speaker 1: just citing that source, or sometimes they don't cite it
Speaker 1: at all. But what tech Meme does is it brings
Speaker 1: them all together. And then the magic part is that
Speaker 1: it figures out who had the original story. And when
Speaker 1: it figures out who had the original story, it generally
Speaker 1: puts that as the main link and all the other
Speaker 1: ones below it. Now it doesn't always put that as
Speaker 1: the main link because sometimes it's trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: show stories that are you know, a little bit more
Speaker 1: easy to read. Like there's a lot I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's a magic sauce to it that I'm not at
Speaker 1: liberty to explain, but you know, there's definitely a rhyme
Speaker 1: and reason to the way things are laid out on
Speaker 1: this website. But anyway, it's a great website. And they
Speaker 1: have an article from the Register that talks about how
Speaker 1: if you're trying to buy a high powered gaming PC,
Speaker 1: well you better not be shipping it to California and
Speaker 1: five other states that include Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
Speaker 1: And so specifically it's this alien ware Aurora Rise in
Speaker 1: addition R ten Gaming desktop. And if you go to
Speaker 1: the website, which I did, it's literally like a big
Speaker 1: giant warning label that says, if you try to let me,
Speaker 1: let me read you exactly what it says, this configuration
Speaker 1: cannot be shipped to California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont or
Speaker 1: Washington due to power consumption regulations. Any orders bound for
Speaker 1: those states will be canceled. And so this computer is
Speaker 1: so you know, power hungry that you can't you can't
Speaker 1: have it in California. I mean, it's pretty wild with
Speaker 1: you know, you think, okay, I've got a computer my
Speaker 1: house and it's like it's using too much energy for
Speaker 1: the state of California. It's pretty wild. Next thing that's
Speaker 1: going to happen is on let's see December ninth. They're
Speaker 1: going to target computers with high speed networking capability, multi
Speaker 1: screen notebooks, and computers with cyclical behavior whatever that is,
Speaker 1: and also monitors with high refresh rates. Those are gonna
Speaker 1: be covered by these rules as well. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that you kind of it's
Speaker 1: like a little bit of a head scratcher. But you know,
Speaker 1: we've heard how bitcoin computers can really use a lot
Speaker 1: of energy. I guess gaming computers do too, But in general,
Speaker 1: I guess my takeaway is if you have a computer
Speaker 1: and it's not going to sleep or the you know,
Speaker 1: the monitors not going off, it's probably best to go
Speaker 1: into your power settings and make sure that that thing
Speaker 1: shuts off or goes to sleep after a certain amount
Speaker 1: of time. If you have a laptop, most of the
Speaker 1: time they do that anyway. But I've walked past plenty
Speaker 1: of computers in my lifetime. They're just on like twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven like all the time, and so you
Speaker 1: don't want to be contributing to that problem. So because
Speaker 1: maybe if we you know, if we do this right,
Speaker 1: we won't have to ban these energy hungry PCs. Valerie emails.
Speaker 1: I get this email every probably every other day. Valerie says, Rich,
Speaker 1: have you heard of the bolts Pro charger? What do
Speaker 1: you think about it? Thanks? Valerie. I hope I didn't
Speaker 1: answer this in my last Did I answer this in
Speaker 1: my last one? Let me say I might have answered
Speaker 1: this question in my last podcast, but I'll just say
Speaker 1: I'll give it. I'll give the answer again because I
Speaker 1: get this email so often. Clearly, boltz Pro is advertising
Speaker 1: on social media. Clearly, it's just unbelievably amazing what it does. Clearly,
Speaker 1: the first ad is for boltz Pro. And if you
Speaker 1: look at all the reviews, I'm looking at one, two, three,
Speaker 1: the first four websites. Now, typically if there was a
Speaker 1: big review on this thing, it would you know, it'd
Speaker 1: be pretty clear. I'm looking at this and yeah, the
Speaker 1: first review that I see is from a website called
Speaker 1: the Signal Santa Clarita Valley, Santa Clarita Valley's number one
Speaker 1: local news source. And this is totally advertorial because it's
Speaker 1: not talking about the charger as a review. It's literally
Speaker 1: just linking to the charger, so that's bogus. Then we've
Speaker 1: got a Quora website and yeah, people are saying that
Speaker 1: it's probably not legitimate there. Then we have the bolts
Speaker 1: Pro Oh wow. Then we have the Kent Reporter and
Speaker 1: it's another sponsored content, so that's definitely. And then we
Speaker 1: have the Lifestyle and tech looking blog and written by
Speaker 1: John our resident tech gadget expert. He's an avid gardener
Speaker 1: and has a black belt in karate. And this is
Speaker 1: their actual website, but it looks like a style blog,
Speaker 1: a lifestyle blog, and it says advertorial right at the top.
Speaker 1: And this is just a standard USB charger. This is
Speaker 1: something you can order on Amazon from anchor and you know,
Speaker 1: no big deal, so don't don't buy it. That's that's
Speaker 1: my recommendation. By the way, at the end of the
Speaker 1: website it says this is an advertisement and not an
Speaker 1: actual news article, blog or consumer protection update, so clearly
Speaker 1: you know it's just one of these things that it
Speaker 1: all adds up to just don't just stay away from it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so it's so interesting that there's this
Speaker 1: entire cottage industry of stuff advertised that's just so good
Speaker 1: and so too good to be true that people buy
Speaker 1: it and it's just total like you don't need to
Speaker 1: buy it, like just just go to a website like
Speaker 1: Amazon and buy the real thing. All right, If you
Speaker 1: have SiriusXM, you might want to check into the Platinum
Speaker 1: VIP subscription. This is brand new, and I should qualify
Speaker 1: that if you have SERIOUSXM in two cars, that's when
Speaker 1: you should look at this. So Serious XM I think
Speaker 1: with the new Pandora owners is definitely kind of cleaning
Speaker 1: things up a bit. I've always joked how every year
Speaker 1: my wife has Serious XM in her car, and every year,
Speaker 1: you know, I call and it's like a three hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty dollars renewal fee, and then I call in
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh no, sir, we can It'll be
Speaker 1: sixty bucks for the year. Oh okay, but you have
Speaker 1: to do that every year. You got to call in.
Speaker 1: Now I've noticed they actually let you do it online.
Speaker 1: It used to be when you said I want to cancel,
Speaker 1: you had to call in. Now they're giving you some
Speaker 1: offers on the website. Now they may not be as
Speaker 1: good as calling in, but you know, you can still
Speaker 1: kind of do it without any human interaction, which is
Speaker 1: my preferred way of doing things. But the Serious XM
Speaker 1: Platinum VIP gives you up to two cars, so you
Speaker 1: can have a radio in each car, you know, a
Speaker 1: Serious XM login for each as well as special perks
Speaker 1: including Serious XM events whatever, but nobody cares about that.
Speaker 1: Plus VIP customer service with priority call handling. So it
Speaker 1: says it's thirty five dollars a month. This includes every channel,
Speaker 1: so you get all the channels. It says it's thirty
Speaker 1: five dollars a month, which you know, for two cars,
Speaker 1: it's not too bad. But I guarantee you can get
Speaker 1: it for cheaper. The offer that I saw when I
Speaker 1: logged in was it was either like one hundred bucks
Speaker 1: for six months or one hundred bucks for twelve months,
Speaker 1: which I tried to change for my wife's subscription so
Speaker 1: that I can get it in my car as well.
Speaker 1: You know, I like to sample what's going on, you know,
Speaker 1: in different mediums and so you know, but it would
Speaker 1: not let me switch for some reason. It just was
Speaker 1: not having it. So but if you have two cars
Speaker 1: with serious XM and you like what you have there,
Speaker 1: then I would definitely check into the new platinum offering.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you know what that sound means? Is going
Speaker 1: to do it for this show? Wow? How does the
Speaker 1: time go by so fast when I do this show?
Speaker 1: If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer,
Speaker 1: it's very easy. You can just go to rich on
Speaker 1: Tech dot tv and hit the email icon, or you
Speaker 1: can go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash
Speaker 1: rich on Tech hit the big blue send email button. Also,
Speaker 1: I would love it if you would rate and review
Speaker 1: this podcast. Just write a quick line about what you
Speaker 1: like about this podcast. That way other people that are
Speaker 1: reading through can see like, oh yeah, okay, I do
Speaker 1: that's that's a good point. First is just like I
Speaker 1: love rich I love the podcast. It's such a great podcast,
Speaker 1: Like tell people why, give them the why and that
Speaker 1: way people will will you know, be interested and maybe
Speaker 1: download it. You can find me on social media at
Speaker 1: rich on Tech and no matter where you live in
Speaker 1: the US, you can download the free KTLA plus app
Speaker 1: on Apple TV, fireTV, and Roku. Then scroll to the
Speaker 1: technology station or section. Why is it say station here? Oh?
Speaker 1: Now I just gave it away that I read this.
Speaker 1: Scroll out to the technology section and watch all of
Speaker 1: my TV segments on demand. My name is rich Demiro.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways
Speaker 1: you can spend an hour of your time. I do
Speaker 1: appreciate you spending it with me. Stay safe, I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you real soon.