Speaker 1: Celebrity impersonation scams drain billions from fans. Well, I didn't
Speaker 1: see this one coming. Disney and Open Ai team up
Speaker 1: to let fans create AI videos with Disney characters. A
Speaker 1: new smart ring turns your finger into a memory button.
Speaker 1: Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich
Speaker 1: Demiro and this is Rich on Tech. This is the
Speaker 1: show where I tech 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 one zero
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Give me a call. If you have a
Speaker 1: question about technology. Email is also open. You love to
Speaker 1: email me, Just go to Richontech dot TV hit contact.
Speaker 1: That will get your message to my screen. We got
Speaker 1: a couple of guests this week. Peter Kafka, chief correspondent
Speaker 1: at Business Insider, is going to break down that whole
Speaker 1: big deal between Netflix and Warner Brothers, and now Paramount's
Speaker 1: trying to squeeze in there as well. Later, we've got
Speaker 1: Nick Merrill, he's gonna explain he's got a new carrier,
Speaker 1: new wireless carrier they just launched. It's called Freely pH
Speaker 1: R E E L I Freely like speak Freely. It's
Speaker 1: a privacy first carrier sign up. I think they only
Speaker 1: require a ZIP code. That's it. That's interesting. And then
Speaker 1: later on Roberto Baldwin, he is a mobility journalist. He's
Speaker 1: going to talk about some of the trends in the
Speaker 1: transportation world. Well, I hope you are having a fantastic day.
Speaker 1: It is the holiday season. I am doing great wearing
Speaker 1: my Windows Ugly Christmas sweater. So if you're tuning in
Speaker 1: on the stream, it's not live stream, but on KTLA
Speaker 1: Plus we stream the first ten minutes of the show
Speaker 1: every week. You can download that app just about anywhere.
Speaker 1: You can see what I'm wearing. And it is the
Speaker 1: For a couple of years now, Microsoft has sent me
Speaker 1: their annual Ugly Christmas sweater. I hate to call it
Speaker 1: an ugly Christmas sweater because I think it's great. It's
Speaker 1: got Clippy on it, it's got all their icons from
Speaker 1: over the years. It's so great. Oh, it's a fun one.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I get sent so many ugly Christmas sweaters.
Speaker 1: Every party I go to I get to wear one
Speaker 1: of them, and it's always a conversation starter. But this
Speaker 1: week I went to Amazon Studios. Amazon. It's just truly
Speaker 1: unbelievable what they've done. So when I was in college,
Speaker 1: I interned at these studios. It used to be called
Speaker 1: Culver Studios, I believe. And the house you might recognize it,
Speaker 1: I believe. Don't quote me on this. I believe it's
Speaker 1: the house from Gone with the Wind. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that's or it inspired it or something. I should really
Speaker 1: look up this stuff before I let me say Gone.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. Let's see correct. The famous Tarra mansion
Speaker 1: from Gone with the Wind was a temporary set built
Speaker 1: on the backlot of Culver Studios. So I interned there.
Speaker 1: Back when I was in college, it was Columbia TriStar
Speaker 1: and it was just a regular studio. Now it is Amazon.
Speaker 1: It is impressive what they've done with this place. I
Speaker 1: was there for an event. They were showing off their
Speaker 1: new Echo speakers that just came out. There's smaller than before.
Speaker 1: There's two of them. They've got the Echo Studio and
Speaker 1: then they've got the Echo dot Max. Now, don't let
Speaker 1: the name of the echo dot max deceive you. It
Speaker 1: is still a very small echo device. And so I
Speaker 1: did a whole demo. We went into a sound studio
Speaker 1: where they had the demo with all these things linked
Speaker 1: up to the fire TV. And I did not know this,
Speaker 1: but you can link up to five of these speakers
Speaker 1: with an Amazon fireTV. Now it has to be very particular.
Speaker 1: You have to have one of the recent generation fireTV
Speaker 1: sticks most of them, I think are the four K
Speaker 1: versions in the last couple of years. And also you
Speaker 1: can link them up to a fireTV cube and it
Speaker 1: has to be a certain generation. I believe it's a
Speaker 1: third generation. But I got through this demo and I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there, I'm like, wait a second. You can do
Speaker 1: surround sound just by plugging in a couple speakers around
Speaker 1: a room without running all these wires and cables and
Speaker 1: speaker wire and all this stuff. Said, hold on, I
Speaker 1: want to try this. And so the programming also included
Speaker 1: a fireside chat with OSCAR winning composer Chris Bauers. Young guy,
Speaker 1: great guy, very cool. He did the audio for Wild
Speaker 1: Robot or I guess I should say soundtrack for Wild
Speaker 1: Robot and also The Last Repair Shop, which I've not seen.
Speaker 1: I did see Wild Robot. It was incredible, and he
Speaker 1: just talked about how sound shapes what we see on
Speaker 1: the screen, and how of course, because it was an
Speaker 1: Amazon event and they're promoting this immersive audio, he talked
Speaker 1: about how immersive audio is changing storytelling. So he said
Speaker 1: two things that I really like. Number one, he said,
Speaker 1: sound shapes what we see. There's so much about sound
Speaker 1: we don't realize that defines how we experience a story.
Speaker 1: And think about that when you're watching a horror movie.
Speaker 1: The music, the way the things happen in the background
Speaker 1: or in the corners of the screen, or the jump
Speaker 1: scares that drives the storyline. Just what you hear, what
Speaker 1: they're playing in the background as a character is doing something,
Speaker 1: affects not only how you feel about what's happening on screen,
Speaker 1: but how you feel personally. Are you scared, are you tired,
Speaker 1: are you angry? Are you happy? So that was really interesting.
Speaker 1: And then the other one was on creativity, which I
Speaker 1: really liked too. He said, I chase the naivete of
Speaker 1: being a kid when you're young. Fear doesn't stop you.
Speaker 1: You just try things now. That one really resonated with me,
Speaker 1: because the last time I was at those studios, I
Speaker 1: was a college student and I was fearless. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course I respected my elders, but I was going
Speaker 1: to conquer the world back then. Now I will say,
Speaker 1: I'm very happy with what I've done in life, but
Speaker 1: as an adult, I don't take half the risks I
Speaker 1: took as a kid. I call myself a kid, but
Speaker 1: as a college student, I would cold call people, I
Speaker 1: would email people, I would send my resume to jobs
Speaker 1: that I had no reason to be hired for whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And nowadays, of course, it's just not that way. And
Speaker 1: so I loved what he said. I chase the naivety
Speaker 1: of being a kid when you're young, Fear doesn't stop you.
Speaker 1: You just try things. And I see that in one
Speaker 1: of my kids, actually probably both, but my older kid,
Speaker 1: he's fourteen, and he's just ready to take on the world,
Speaker 1: kind of like the way I felt when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, where I was going to do better than
Speaker 1: my parents. That's the way he feels about me, which
Speaker 1: is ironic because I feel like I've done pretty decent
Speaker 1: for what I wanted, what I set out to do anyway.
Speaker 1: So they showed us, you know, the fireside presentation. Then
Speaker 1: they showed us a clip of a movie with these speakers,
Speaker 1: and it sounded great, and I immediately they sent us
Speaker 1: home with one of the speakers. I connected it to
Speaker 1: my fire Cube, I dusted off the dust, I did
Speaker 1: all the software updates, and I connected this thing and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh MG, this sounds incredible. And I
Speaker 1: immediately went on Amazon and ordered three more of the
Speaker 1: speakers to build out the full round. But I made
Speaker 1: a mistake that I did not realize until I got
Speaker 1: the speaker. So I got you know where I live,
Speaker 1: you get stuff so quick from Amazon. So it came
Speaker 1: the next day, next morning, basically, and I set them
Speaker 1: all up. And I realized I was not being able
Speaker 1: to set up all four of them together. It just
Speaker 1: would only show me two at a time. And I
Speaker 1: realized I bought two of the big speakers and two
Speaker 1: of the small, or I had two of the big
Speaker 1: two of the small. And I looked, of course, typical guy.
Speaker 1: I look in the directions afterwards, and it's like, oh no,
Speaker 1: all speakers have to be the same. You have to
Speaker 1: buy either four of the big ones or four of
Speaker 1: the small ones. So my little mix and match thing
Speaker 1: did not work. And I didn't realize that until I
Speaker 1: read the help page, which, by the way, read the
Speaker 1: help page in advance before you do something like this.
Speaker 1: So I went back on Amazon. I said, okay, I
Speaker 1: got to order two more of these speakers. Amazon cut
Speaker 1: me off the website literally said sorry, you've reached your
Speaker 1: purchase limit for these speakers. I said, what, So okay,
Speaker 1: So I couldn't order those the big ones. I had
Speaker 1: to order the smaller ones, and I had to order
Speaker 1: them in a different color. That's the only way it
Speaker 1: would let me order more. And so now I've got
Speaker 1: so many of these speakers at my house. I set
Speaker 1: them up. Last night we watched our first movie. I
Speaker 1: was expecting it to be f one. It was not,
Speaker 1: because we ended up watching a holiday movie. But it
Speaker 1: just sounded great and it was so easy. I'm very impressed.
Speaker 1: So if you have my thesis here, if you have
Speaker 1: an Amazon fireTV, check the help page. I'll link it
Speaker 1: up on the website. Rich on tech dot tv. If
Speaker 1: you can connect a couple of these echo speakers to
Speaker 1: your device, I'm not kidding. It changes everything. And by
Speaker 1: the way, you get all the benefits of having smart
Speaker 1: speakers in your living room, which I know some people like,
Speaker 1: some people don't. But you know, this morning, I was
Speaker 1: just able to call out what I wanted to listen to,
Speaker 1: ask Alex of questions, all kinds of stuff because these
Speaker 1: speakers are now in my living room. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I've had Sonos for many years, and I thought about it.
Speaker 1: Sonos has sort of been keeping me from being on
Speaker 1: the cutting edge with all of this smart speaker stuff
Speaker 1: because I've been so invested in what they've done, and
Speaker 1: they've been way behind the eight ball. I guess, okay,
Speaker 1: are you behind the eight ball when you're bad at
Speaker 1: something or you're behind Okay, so they're bad. They've been
Speaker 1: bad about the smart speaker stuff. It's just it's not
Speaker 1: very good. So now I feel like I am very much.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to watch more movies. So check it out.
Speaker 1: I'll link it up on the website. I also figured
Speaker 1: out fire TV auto plays a whole bunch of ads
Speaker 1: when you first turn on your screen. I don't like that.
Speaker 1: You can go into your settings and turn that off.
Speaker 1: Did you know that? No, they're not going to advertise
Speaker 1: that to you. So go into your settings preferences featured Content,
Speaker 1: and you'll see two options to turn off auto auto
Speaker 1: play for video and auto play for audio. You can
Speaker 1: mix and match those two, but I turn them all off.
Speaker 1: So now my screen still shows ads, which, okay, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? But it's much easier on the
Speaker 1: eyes and the ears when you first turn it on
Speaker 1: less Jarring rich on tech dot TV. I'll link up
Speaker 1: all this information there. Rich on tech dot tv eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight rich one oh one. We are gonna
Speaker 1: take your calls right after this. I meant to tell
Speaker 1: you earlier, ran out of time, but I want to
Speaker 1: tell you about the other systems that can do this
Speaker 1: with the speakers. So Apple TV, if you have that,
Speaker 1: you can connect home pods, Roku TV, not Roku players,
Speaker 1: but Roku TV. They've got these Roku wireless speakers you
Speaker 1: can add. And then TCL has this thing called Dolby
Speaker 1: at most flex connect. So that's a new thing that
Speaker 1: I guess more TVs are probably gonna adopt over the years,
Speaker 1: but they're the first out of the gate with it.
Speaker 1: I love the name of the speakers, z one hundred
Speaker 1: wireless speakers like our station in New York. I love it.
Speaker 1: We're not on that station. I mean, we have a station,
Speaker 1: a prominent radio station in New York, and I did
Speaker 1: see those at the Denver CDA show and very easy
Speaker 1: to set up Google TV streamer. That's Google's version of
Speaker 1: all this stuff. I cannot find any documentation that says
Speaker 1: you can add speakers to that. Minus you could add
Speaker 1: Bluetooth speakers, for sure, but I'm not sure that their
Speaker 1: Nest speakers work with it. So anyway, lots of options
Speaker 1: out there other than just getting a third party soundbar
Speaker 1: with all that good stuff. All right, let's go to
Speaker 1: Let's go to Brian in Atlanta. Brian, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 2: Hey, how you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm doing well? What can I help you with?
Speaker 3: I got a new Comcast or Extinity router, and my
Speaker 3: old iPads and a couple of old laptops will no
Speaker 3: longer connect, and I'm wondering if there's anything I can do.
Speaker 1: About Ooh, okay, so you're saying the word old. So
Speaker 1: I'm guessing immediately that your Wi Fi router is putting
Speaker 1: out a five gigahertz signal and your your iPads are
Speaker 1: probably on the old two point four, That's what I'm guessing.
Speaker 3: Yes, the router does both a five and a two
Speaker 3: point whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay does Yeah. So when you when you go
Speaker 1: on that iPad, do you see well, first off, did
Speaker 1: you use the same SSID, like the same Wi Fi
Speaker 1: network name and password on your new router or no?
Speaker 2: Oh boy, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, like, when you connect on it, is it the
Speaker 1: same whatever your Wi Fi network name was. Is it
Speaker 1: the same as before? Is just something different?
Speaker 3: The slower speed is the same, the five G.
Speaker 4: Has got a new name.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it sounds to me like maybe these iPads
Speaker 1: are trying to connect to the old network. So you
Speaker 1: have to go in there, go in your list of
Speaker 1: networks and delete the old network and then try to
Speaker 1: reconnect them. I think that's going to work. So if
Speaker 1: you go into settings on these I'm doing this on
Speaker 1: the iPhone, but I think it's the same. You go
Speaker 1: to settings, you go to Wi Fi, and then you
Speaker 1: go into let's see edit in the upper right hand corner.
Speaker 3: Okay, when I'm on Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be on Wi Fi to do
Speaker 1: this just yet. You can just do this on your iPad,
Speaker 1: but just go you know, make sure the WiFi is
Speaker 1: turned on, but just again go to settings Wi Fi
Speaker 1: and then the upper right hand corner. If you're on now,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit different. I'm on iOS twenty six.
Speaker 1: If you're not. If these iPads are running older software,
Speaker 1: there may be a different way to do this. But
Speaker 1: you basically have to find a way to look at
Speaker 1: your saved networks and so on the new iPhone, it
Speaker 1: just says edit or no networks, and then you go
Speaker 1: in there. You'll see a whole list of all the
Speaker 1: saved networks. Find your old network and delete it. Press
Speaker 1: the little red button and delete it. So I'm looking
Speaker 1: at mine. I've got hundreds of networks saved on my iPhone.
Speaker 1: Everything for my barber shop, to Snap when I went
Speaker 1: to their offices, to Samsung, to all the very I
Speaker 1: got a lot of stuff. I gotta clean this up.
Speaker 1: But I think it's getting confused because it's still trying
Speaker 1: to use the old credentials on the new network that
Speaker 1: might have the same name. So go in there, delete
Speaker 1: the saved networks and if I'm just seeing saved Wi Fi.
Speaker 3: The new network has a different IP address or what No, I.
Speaker 1: Think it's just it might have a different password but
Speaker 1: the same name, and I think it's just messing it up.
Speaker 1: And I think in general, if you forget that network,
Speaker 1: it's probably going to be better just to do that. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm looking at the uh yeah on the Wi
Speaker 1: Fi on the Apple. Okay, let's see settings Wi Fi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's the thing you need to do. You need
Speaker 1: to find your old network and reset it. Now if
Speaker 1: none of that works, if you can't figure out how
Speaker 1: to do that, there's something called the network settings network
Speaker 1: settings reset. So if you go on your iPad and
Speaker 1: find that setting, you can reset all of those settings
Speaker 1: and then it'll probably find the new network that way.
Speaker 1: So I'll tell you where that is. That's under settings General.
Speaker 1: Scroll all the way down where it says transfer or reset.
Speaker 1: You tap that, and then you say, you tap reset
Speaker 1: one more time, and you'll get a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: options reset all settings, reset, network settings reset, there's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of other stuff. But you want to do
Speaker 1: the reset network settings. That'll clear out all the old
Speaker 1: settings on these iPads and then hopefully when you log
Speaker 1: onto your new Wi Fi network or you go to
Speaker 1: attached to it, connect to it, it will find it.
Speaker 1: So try that, Brian, let me know, send me an email,
Speaker 1: let me know if that works or not. Here's the deal.
Speaker 1: My recommendation. When you get a new Wi Fi router,
Speaker 1: you know your cable company says, hey, you got an
Speaker 1: old router, you gotta gotta upgrade to a new one.
Speaker 1: Use the same network settings that you used on your
Speaker 1: old router. That's the SSID, that's your Wi Fi network name,
Speaker 1: and then also the password. And the reason why I
Speaker 1: tell you to do that is because when you turn
Speaker 1: on that new router, all your old gadgets will seamlessly
Speaker 1: connect to that new router, that new Wi Fi hotspot
Speaker 1: whatever you call it in your house. So that is
Speaker 1: a little trick. I made that mistake one time, and
Speaker 1: I've got so many smart gadgets in my house, all
Speaker 1: these smart devices that are connected, and I upgraded my
Speaker 1: router and I used a different SSID and a different password,
Speaker 1: and guess what, I had to go around the house
Speaker 1: for an hour and a half trying to reconnect everything.
Speaker 1: So if you upgrade your WiFi, use the same Wi
Speaker 1: Fi network name and password exactly as it is on
Speaker 1: your old router and all your gadgets will seamlessly find
Speaker 1: the new router. Good question, Brian eight to eight rich
Speaker 1: one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. The website for the show is
Speaker 1: rich on tech dot tv. While you're there, be sure
Speaker 1: to sign up for my free newsletter. This is show
Speaker 1: episode one fifty two. All the show notes are right there.
Speaker 1: We'll be back right after this. Instagram this week is
Speaker 1: kind of peeling back the kind of the just letting
Speaker 1: you see your algorithm. This is an interesting new feature
Speaker 1: that basically they say they're letting you choose the topics
Speaker 1: that you want to see more or less of. I
Speaker 1: think this is very basic and water down, but if
Speaker 1: you want to see it, you can open up Instagram,
Speaker 1: tap the reels tab at the bottom, and then there's
Speaker 1: a menu icon on the upper right hand looks like
Speaker 1: two little hearts with lines, and that will bring up
Speaker 1: what they're calling your algorithm.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: I think they have a lot more data on you
Speaker 1: than what they're revealing here, but it shows you a
Speaker 1: couple of topics that you've been into recently, and you
Speaker 1: can go in. You can kind of tweak those, change
Speaker 1: them a little bit. Let me see what mine is
Speaker 1: saying this morning. My algorithm this morning is saying, let's
Speaker 1: see here. It's taking a second to come up. Lately,
Speaker 1: you've been into innovation in the tech world, parenting life,
Speaker 1: and Arizona's desert destinations. Okay, whatever that means. I mean
Speaker 1: I did go to Arizona a couple weeks ago. And
Speaker 1: then you can add things you want to see more of.
Speaker 1: So again, open up Instagram, tap reels at the bottom
Speaker 1: menu icon upper right, and you can see your algorithm.
Speaker 1: You can review your topics, add or remove topics to
Speaker 1: customize your feed. All right, big, big deal that's happening
Speaker 1: in play right now. Netflix is trying to buy Warner Brothers,
Speaker 1: and then Paramount is kind of squeezing in there as well.
Speaker 1: So here to talk about all of that and what
Speaker 1: it means for us is Peter Kafka, chief correspondent at
Speaker 1: Business Insider. He is the guy you want to follow
Speaker 1: for all of this media information. He knows it all. Peter,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me Rich.
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about this. So what did you
Speaker 1: think when you saw this news? Was it a surprise?
Speaker 6: It was surprising that Netflix won this auction for Paramount,
Speaker 6: Sorry for Warner Brothers Discovery. Lots of folks, including myself,
Speaker 6: assumed the Paramount who started the bidding really earlier this
Speaker 6: fall was going to end up winning Warner Brothers Discovery
Speaker 6: in large part because David Ellison, who runs Paramount, his father,
Speaker 6: Larry Ellison, is the second richest man in the world
Speaker 6: depending on what day you ask, So they've got essentially
Speaker 6: unlimited money.
Speaker 1: Way, let me get that right. Hold on the guy,
Speaker 1: the guy who runs Paramount, his dad is the guy
Speaker 1: who started Oracle correct. Oh my gosh, wow. Yes.
Speaker 6: So you'll often see headlines saying David Ellison wants to
Speaker 6: do this, or David Ellison wants to do that. It's
Speaker 6: really Larry Ellison, his dad, because his dad is bankrolling it.
Speaker 6: In the same way that when I got out of college,
Speaker 6: I bought a car, I bought a Toyota tur Cell,
Speaker 6: but it was really.
Speaker 7: My parents Toyota turtseell So.
Speaker 1: That's what's going on there.
Speaker 6: So, in addition to be very rich, Larry Elson is
Speaker 6: also a longtime Donald Trump's supporter, and David Elson, who
Speaker 6: was not really a Trump supporter but has really become
Speaker 6: one in the last year as he's tried to get
Speaker 6: this Paramount deal through, has been sort of nakedly sucking
Speaker 6: up to Donald Trump, contorting himself to please Donald Trump
Speaker 6: in the hopes that won he'd allowed him to buy
Speaker 6: a Paramount, and now that he allowed him to buy
Speaker 6: Warner Brothers Discovery. So that's the longest. The short answer is, yeah,
Speaker 6: I thought Paramount would get it, not Netflix.
Speaker 1: So Netflix, Okay, So why does Netflix want this? They've
Speaker 1: built this business from scratch, They've got, you know, incredible
Speaker 1: market share with their streaming. Everything they've done I think
Speaker 1: I believe is uh, you know, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the new way of doing things versus the old way,
Speaker 1: which is Warner Brothers.
Speaker 6: So why do they want this studio? Yeah, it's a
Speaker 6: good question. It's unlike anything Netflix has ever done. They
Speaker 6: never do big acquisitions. Really, They've bought almost nothing to date,
Speaker 6: and their argument has always been why should we go
Speaker 6: buy a media company when we can create our own
Speaker 6: media company and take the money we'd use to buy
Speaker 6: an HBO or something like that and just put it
Speaker 6: into programming. So we don't really know if they're thinking
Speaker 6: this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to own
Speaker 6: a giant movie studio and to own HBO, and it's
Speaker 6: just too good to pass up, or is it. Hey,
Speaker 6: our growth is slowing and we have more competition, and
Speaker 6: we need something to help differentiate us. It can be
Speaker 6: a little bit of both. It's one of the ironies.
Speaker 6: If you're old, you remember in twenty thirteen, when Netflix
Speaker 6: was just starting to do its own original programming, it
Speaker 6: did House of Cards, which is deliberately an HBO style show,
Speaker 6: and Ted Sarandos, who's now the CEO of Netflix, famously said,
Speaker 6: the goal is to become HBO faster.
Speaker 7: Than HBO can become us.
Speaker 6: And so for a long time, a lot of us
Speaker 6: thought that Netflix was trying to be HBO because that's
Speaker 6: what they said. It turns out Netflix was just trying
Speaker 6: to become TV, and that's what they've done. They've become
Speaker 6: sort of just everything that's on TV. That said, I
Speaker 6: think they could probably still use HBO's higher end content
Speaker 6: to help differentiate themselves. So I think on a simple level,
Speaker 6: that's what they're looking at, because.
Speaker 1: They're gonna get a lot of back catalog of shows
Speaker 1: and movies and things like that. Is there stuff they're
Speaker 1: not getting like I see on Warner Brothers, they've got
Speaker 1: like CNN, Discovery, Food Network, is all that part of this?
Speaker 6: Or no, No, Warner Brothers only wants the movie Studio
Speaker 6: and HBO. That's also what Comcast, who is also bidding, wanted.
Speaker 6: It's also, frankly what anyone who was looking at at
Speaker 6: Warner Brothers Discovery wants. We don't really think Paramount wants
Speaker 6: CNN and those cable channels. The plan their pitch is
Speaker 6: to buy them. Our thought, I'm just speaking is sort
Speaker 6: of the conventional wisdom is they they were just doing
Speaker 6: that because they thought it'd be a cleaner deal, just
Speaker 6: easier to buy all of Warner Brothers Discovery than to
Speaker 6: buy part of it. That's no longer an issue, but
Speaker 6: for now they're saying we will buy the whole thing,
Speaker 6: including CNN. That's also relevant because Donald Trump has said
Speaker 6: I think CNN should have new owners, which again suggests.
Speaker 7: That maybe he will favor that Paramount bid.
Speaker 1: So what about consumers and all this? I mean, I
Speaker 1: am already paying thirty four dollars a month for Netflix. Yes,
Speaker 1: I pay for my mom's Netflix. So that's why I'm
Speaker 1: paying a little bit more than a lot of people.
Speaker 1: But what does it mean? I mean, and I'm also
Speaker 1: paying for HBO max. Am I going to be a
Speaker 1: cheaper bundle here or are we expecting this to be
Speaker 1: more expensive come the future.
Speaker 6: I have never seen prices come down for anything anywhere. Ever,
Speaker 6: prices are always going to go up. I think is
Speaker 6: there potential that there's a Netflix HBO bundle?
Speaker 1: I think absolutely.
Speaker 6: I think there's an offer at some point where Netflix
Speaker 6: says to its customer, like half or more of HBO
Speaker 6: customers have Netflix, but not all Netflix customers have HBO,
Speaker 6: and Netflix could say, hey, if you're already paying sh
Speaker 6: for Netflix, instead of paying fifteen or twenty bucks for HBO,
Speaker 6: we can sell it to you for.
Speaker 7: Eight bucks or ten bucks.
Speaker 6: Netflix hasn't come out and said that's what their plan is,
Speaker 6: but I wouldn't be surprised if they do that eventually.
Speaker 6: Important thing is, even if this deal gets sort of
Speaker 6: finalized in the next few weeks, probably months, none of
Speaker 6: this is going to happen for at least twelve months,
Speaker 6: really closer to eighteen months, maybe even two years before
Speaker 6: any of this actually goes into effect.
Speaker 1: What do you make of all the changes we've seen
Speaker 1: in streaming. I mean, I get that this is a
Speaker 1: relatively young industry, and we've watched it kind of grow
Speaker 1: from the Rokus of the world and the Netflixes of
Speaker 1: the world to now you know, Apple TV Studios and
Speaker 1: Amazon owns owns MGM. I mean, there's just so much
Speaker 1: going on with these tech companies. What else is going
Speaker 1: to happen?
Speaker 6: Do you think, Well, we assume there's going to be
Speaker 6: more consolidation every All of the big media companies that
Speaker 6: own what we would call basic cable stations are all
Speaker 6: trying to get rid of them.
Speaker 1: Warner Bros.
Speaker 6: Discovery is trying to get rid of CNN and Discovery
Speaker 6: and Food Network.
Speaker 1: MTV is shutting down. Is that true?
Speaker 6: Don't that part confuses me? I don't think it is
Speaker 6: shutting down. It's it's a brand that is important to Paramount. Still,
Speaker 6: they don't have many brands, but Comcast is handing over
Speaker 6: most of their cable channels. They're turning that into a
Speaker 6: new company called versant A and E is dumping theirs.
Speaker 6: So we're seeing the slow death of cable television. That's
Speaker 6: not a surprise. Most people listening to this probably don't
Speaker 6: pay for cable television. Directly anymore. But still people still
Speaker 6: do those businesses still exist, They're going away. They are
Speaker 6: going to get replaced with streaming, and there is going
Speaker 6: to be more consolidation.
Speaker 1: You will see more of this if sports was not
Speaker 1: part of the cable tv package, which right now they're
Speaker 1: still hanging on to that because a lot of the
Speaker 1: cable TV companies own the sports streaming or the sports channels,
Speaker 1: would be a much faster kind of downward spiral. I
Speaker 1: think let's talk about this real quick before you go.
Speaker 1: Disney open Ai. Did you see that one coming? I mean,
Speaker 1: this is like, these are two huge companies teaming up
Speaker 1: in this one billion dollar at least a billion dollar
Speaker 1: agreement where you'll now be able to use Disney characters
Speaker 1: to generate AI images and video.
Speaker 6: It's a little interesting that open ai got that deal
Speaker 6: done just because open ai has been sort of like
Speaker 6: stumbling around when it comes to intellectual property and Hollywood.
Speaker 6: They came out with this image video generation app earlier
Speaker 6: this year called Sora, which was just kind of a
Speaker 6: free for all kind of let you take your friends
Speaker 6: but also people who are actual celebrities and famous people
Speaker 6: and do mashups of videos with them. And didn't really
Speaker 6: get permission for it. They seem to be following the
Speaker 6: you know, ask for forgiveness not permission thing that most
Speaker 6: of the big tech guys do. But you have thought
Speaker 6: that they would eventually make some deals. Disney is more
Speaker 6: so because Disney is so protective of their intellectual property,
Speaker 6: and here they're saying to open AI yep, take two
Speaker 6: hundred of our famous brands, characters, et cetera, and let
Speaker 6: people do user generated content with them. The upside for
Speaker 6: that is maybe they do cool stuff and people discover people.
Speaker 6: This helps to expose Mickey Mouse to a whole bunch
Speaker 6: of new people. The bad side is who knows what
Speaker 6: people are going to make with that user generated content.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to.
Speaker 6: Be guardrails against that, but if you've ever gone onto
Speaker 6: YouTube or Back of the Day in MySpace or TikTok,
Speaker 6: you know there's a real limit to how much policing
Speaker 6: you can do when the users are creating content.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting, all right, Peter Kafka, We're going to
Speaker 1: leave it there, Chief correspondent at Business Insider, Go follow him,
Speaker 1: read his stuff if you're interested in media and technology.
Speaker 1: Really great stuff, Peter, Thank you, so much for joining
Speaker 1: me today.
Speaker 7: Thank you, rich Sie.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, we're going to take some more
Speaker 1: of your calls at Triple eight rich one on one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 7: God.
Speaker 1: Email from Steve said, thanks a lot, rich I just
Speaker 1: ordered four Max speakers and fire TV. It's all your fault, Hey,
Speaker 1: don't blame me. I'm just a messenger back after this.
Speaker 1: Lewis is in Riverside. Lewis you're there, Yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Am rich Okay, here's my question. I have a Moto
Speaker 5: gene stylist five Gen twenty twenty two on the Metro
Speaker 5: PCs network subsidiary, you know, key Mobile.
Speaker 3: Sure, and I don't.
Speaker 5: Have the ability to schedule sending a text message?
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 5: I do not know my friend, you know, different phone,
Speaker 5: different network. I'm he can hit the little three buttons
Speaker 5: and it says, you know, in the up right hand corner,
Speaker 5: schedule sending.
Speaker 2: A text message.
Speaker 5: Sure, And I hit that little button and that option
Speaker 5: doesn't come up it. I can add people on a
Speaker 5: text message, different stuff, but not that that's the thing
Speaker 5: I want? And is there a way to add that?
Speaker 5: Or is that not offered on this phone? Or offered
Speaker 5: by metro PCs.
Speaker 1: Well it should be offered. So a couple of things
Speaker 1: to look at. Number one, the messaging app that you're using.
Speaker 1: Do you know what app you're using, or using Motorolas
Speaker 1: or using Google Messages.
Speaker 5: I'm just using whatever came out phone it we have
Speaker 5: to be Motorolas.
Speaker 1: Okay, so download this is this is actually a pretty
Speaker 1: easy fix. You just have to download Google Messages. And
Speaker 1: are you yeah, so Google Messages, you know you're talking.
Speaker 1: Your phone is from twenty twenty two, so they probably,
Speaker 1: you know, Motorola might have had their own messaging app
Speaker 1: that they were using. Almost all of the major providers
Speaker 1: have on Android have switched over to Google Messages because
Speaker 1: it supports what's called RCS. So RCS is Rich Communication Services.
Speaker 1: It basically allows Android users to text with iPhone users
Speaker 1: and each other in a much better way. It's a
Speaker 1: much more modern texting protocol. And so you can send
Speaker 1: through large photos, large videos, you can see typing indicators
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. And part of that is the
Speaker 1: ability to schedule a message as well. So I'm looking
Speaker 1: at Google Messages right here on my phone, and it's
Speaker 1: saying that if I want to schedule a message, I
Speaker 1: just dial a number, get into that sort of call
Speaker 1: area or that text area, and there's a plus sign
Speaker 1: lower left hand corner, a whole bunch of options, including
Speaker 1: attach a file, location, contacts, and one of them is
Speaker 1: schedule send, and I get the options for later today,
Speaker 1: later tonight, tomorrow, or I can pick a date in time.
Speaker 1: So again to review Lewis Google Messages, look for it
Speaker 1: in the apps in the Google Play Store and you
Speaker 1: can download that. All your text messages will follow over.
Speaker 1: So if you have a whole bunch of texts already
Speaker 1: on your phone, they will all follow over to the
Speaker 1: new app and they'll just be there. And then you
Speaker 1: should make sure that RCS is enabled on your device
Speaker 1: and is enabled on Google Messages. You can go into settings.
Speaker 1: It should automatically kind of activate, but it should be
Speaker 1: activated there in the settings, or you should be able
Speaker 1: to check if it's activated in the settings. And then
Speaker 1: once you've got that, then you can use this feature. Now,
Speaker 1: I know that on iPhone you can only use the
Speaker 1: scheduled messaging if you are texting another person on I Message,
Speaker 1: and so that's just a limitation that Apple is built
Speaker 1: into the phone. I don't know why, but it's something
Speaker 1: that you can do with anyone that's using rcs on
Speaker 1: the Android side of things, which includes Android users and
Speaker 1: of course iPhone users as well, because when Apple does things,
Speaker 1: they only do it to favor the people that use iPhones,
Speaker 1: and when Google does stuff, they do to favor everyone.
Speaker 1: They don't kind of pick and choose where things work,
Speaker 1: and that's what I really like about how they kind
Speaker 1: of approach things. Apple's great, it's amazing. They do great stuff,
Speaker 1: but ninety nine percent of it is favoring their other products.
Speaker 1: Whereas Google and Android, a lot of people say, oh,
Speaker 1: why doesn't Android have this, Why doesn't Google have this?
Speaker 1: Why don't you just build this in They have one
Speaker 1: hundred different vendors, all building their own phones, all making
Speaker 1: slight little tweaks on the software, all different hardware specs,
Speaker 1: and so it's not as easy for Google on Android
Speaker 1: to roll something out to everyone all at once like
Speaker 1: it is on Apple, where they control every single aspect
Speaker 1: of every single phone running iOS. They know exactly how
Speaker 1: to tweak things for iOS because they're the only company,
Speaker 1: they're the only pump place that makes it. So with
Speaker 1: Android it's a lot tougher because a much bigger open ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and that's why we don't always get everything on Android
Speaker 1: first day, you know, like some of these features that
Speaker 1: they roll out, it takes a while. Like they just
Speaker 1: added air drop to the pixel or I guess their
Speaker 1: version of it. It's compatible with air drop, and all
Speaker 1: these Samsung people of course want the same thing, but
Speaker 1: they can't get it first day because now Samsung has
Speaker 1: to go in and like check out one thousand phones
Speaker 1: that they make and figure out how to make this
Speaker 1: work with that. So it's a lot. New gadget this week.
Speaker 1: Gadget of the Week is the Pebble Index oh one.
Speaker 1: This turns your finger into a memory button. It's a
Speaker 1: tiny ring that lets you capture ideas, reminders, and notes
Speaker 1: without pulling out your phone. So it's a small smart ring.
Speaker 1: It's got a physical button in a microphone. You press
Speaker 1: the button, you say what you want, and it's sent
Speaker 1: to your phone and you can capture reminders, notes, calendar items,
Speaker 1: simple actions, no wake words. It's not always listening. It
Speaker 1: only records when the button is pressed. It does work offline.
Speaker 1: It is not needed an Internet connection. Nothing's sent to
Speaker 1: the cloud, no paid subscription, battery lasts, about two years.
Speaker 1: Works with iPhone and Android, and if your phone's not
Speaker 1: in nearby, it'll still store about five minutes of audio.
Speaker 1: So it's a ring that makes your finger smart and
Speaker 1: remembers things. I can't wait to get this thing. I
Speaker 1: love taking voice memos. It's seventy five dollars on pre
Speaker 1: order now. The price will write to ninety nine dollars
Speaker 1: when it ships. It's gonna ship March twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: And again, this is the guy who created the Pebble Watch.
Speaker 1: He also created Beeper, remember that back in the day,
Speaker 1: not the Beeper, but Beeper app. It was like a
Speaker 1: app that would bring all your messaging in line together.
Speaker 1: They still have it, but the people who bought people
Speaker 1: who make WordPress, bought it from them anyway. Pebble Index
Speaker 1: zero one. I cannot wait to get that very very
Speaker 1: simple smart ring coming up. Uh Android gets live video
Speaker 1: to nine one one calls. Tell you about that and
Speaker 1: more of your calls. Next. Welcome back to rich on
Speaker 1: Tech Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology
Speaker 1: at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. The website
Speaker 1: for the show is richontech Dot TV. If you're not
Speaker 1: following me on Instagram, I am at Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Do you see the theme?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think figured it out. This week. Android added live
Speaker 1: video to nine one one calls. Now I say they did,
Speaker 1: but this is rolling out, and in Google's terms, when
Speaker 1: they say rolling out, I'm not kidding. I just got
Speaker 1: access to Gemini on my home speakers and they're rolling
Speaker 1: it out for like months. I saw that feature last year,
Speaker 1: so it takes them a while. And again it goes
Speaker 1: back to what I was saying about all the different
Speaker 1: makes and models of these phones and Android software versions.
Speaker 1: But they're doing this through Google Play Services, which very complicated.
Speaker 1: But let me just explain the way an Android phone works.
Speaker 1: There's sort of two levels of updates. You've got the
Speaker 1: updates that the manufacturer makes on their software, that's the
Speaker 1: operating system, and then you've got something called Google Play Services,
Speaker 1: and those are the core updates that Google makes to
Speaker 1: Android itself. Like basically, they could roll out little features
Speaker 1: and push them onto phones no matter who the maker
Speaker 1: of that phone is, you know, within reason. So that's
Speaker 1: what they're doing here with emergency live video. Role out
Speaker 1: allows you to share a live video feed with nine
Speaker 1: one one responders obviously designed to help in medical emergencies.
Speaker 1: They can walk you through CPR. If you're lost, you
Speaker 1: can show them where you are, you're under high stress,
Speaker 1: you're hiding like a hostage situation, you can, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe just show some video and they can help figure
Speaker 1: out where you are or what to do. Responders must
Speaker 1: request the video. You have to approve it. It's all encrypted.
Speaker 1: You can stop it at any time. Apple got this
Speaker 1: feature last year on the iPhone. They call it Apple's
Speaker 1: Emergency SOS Live Video. So this is rolling out. Keep
Speaker 1: in mind all the nine one one dispatch centers, they
Speaker 1: all have varying levels of ability because they all have
Speaker 1: different software, they all run different programs. It's not nine
Speaker 1: on one is not a national thing here in the US,
Speaker 1: so it's individual jurisdictions that run nine one one, and
Speaker 1: so you have to just keep in mind this may
Speaker 1: not be available everywhere and you can't start it anyway.
Speaker 1: They have to ask for it. So if you get that,
Speaker 1: if you ever call nine one one, hopefully you don't
Speaker 1: have to, but if you ever get that, request live video,
Speaker 1: like wait, what is this now? You know? Email from
Speaker 1: Beverly Beverly says information on my Google calendar disappears after
Speaker 1: a few weeks. I feel like I should go back
Speaker 1: to paper. My event history is missing. Is there a
Speaker 1: way to keep everything available? Or is my past gone? Beverly,
Speaker 1: no matter how many ghosts you have in your past,
Speaker 1: still never be gone. Those skeletons in the closet are
Speaker 1: following you around everywhere. Now I'm just kidding. We're talking
Speaker 1: about your Google calendar. Here. Here's what happens. I get
Speaker 1: this question. No less than once a week someone says
Speaker 1: my calendar is gone. No, it's not gone. Go to
Speaker 1: If you're using Google Calendar, you can confirm I have
Speaker 1: every single calendar appointment from the beginning of time on
Speaker 1: my calendar. You can go to calendar dot Google dot
Speaker 1: com from a desktop computer and just tap the search
Speaker 1: and search for something from whenever. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: search birthday and I can go back to the beginning
Speaker 1: of time on my calendar whatever, whatever restaurant you go to,
Speaker 1: so it's there. Google does not delete this stuff. They
Speaker 1: do not delete your calendar entries. Now, the app that
Speaker 1: you're using to access your calendar on your phone or
Speaker 1: your computer may not sink all of the calendar entries.
Speaker 1: Why because it's a big project to sink ten years
Speaker 1: worth of calendar entries. So typically they only sink a
Speaker 1: certain amount. Now, if you go on the iPhone, if
Speaker 1: you're using the iPhone calendar, which Beverly maybe you are,
Speaker 1: go to settings Apps Calendar and you'll see where it
Speaker 1: says sink.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: I have mindset to all events because I just like
Speaker 1: to roll that way. But typically you can do two
Speaker 1: events or two weeks back, one month back, three months back,
Speaker 1: or six months back. I mean, how many times have
Speaker 1: you had to look at an event more than six
Speaker 1: months back? So I think, Beverly, you got to change
Speaker 1: those settings on your sink. And then on Android, let's
Speaker 1: look at the Google Calendar app. I've not looked at this,
Speaker 1: so I'm going into settings. I'm guessing it's all there.
Speaker 1: Let me see general, let's see is there a way
Speaker 1: to sink a certain amount? Let's see here does not say,
Speaker 1: does not say? Okay, so I don't think they have
Speaker 1: a sink amount on here because it's just Google. I
Speaker 1: think they just pull it from the cloud. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you don't need to really sink on there. It's just
Speaker 1: gonna automatically come up anyway, whatever app you're using, you
Speaker 1: may just have to sink more time. Let's go to
Speaker 1: DEVN in Las Vegas. Devin, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 8: Hey, what's going on?
Speaker 9: Rich?
Speaker 10: Happy Saturday, my brother. It's always a pleasure to listen
Speaker 10: to the show. Yeah, thank you, Oh oh my pleasure.
Speaker 10: Thank you man. There's so many questions that I didn't
Speaker 10: know I had just by listening that you answered.
Speaker 3: So thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh that's good. I thought you were going to say
Speaker 1: you have more questions after you listen, because that's a problem.
Speaker 9: Rich.
Speaker 1: I love what you talk about, but I don't understand
Speaker 1: any of it. I'm like, well, I'm not doing my
Speaker 1: job right then, No, You're.
Speaker 10: Doing an excellent job, man, And and that's why I'm
Speaker 10: tuned in every Saturday with.
Speaker 4: You, brother.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 10: My question here, of course, my question today. So I
Speaker 10: have a project I'm trying to do, probably some maybe
Speaker 10: i'll say, sixty sixty five inch TVs. I want to
Speaker 10: buy four of those and put them on the wall
Speaker 10: here and put two side by side and two on top.
Speaker 2: Of each other.
Speaker 10: And my question is if I do that as opposed
Speaker 10: to having all the TVs on at the same time
Speaker 10: and me watching the same game on four different to
Speaker 10: four different sets. Is there a way, Well, I'm sure
Speaker 10: there's a way. How can I make all of those?
Speaker 10: Or is it possible in this case to make all
Speaker 10: one game in this situation instead of playing on all
Speaker 10: four TVs, just be playing as it's just the four
Speaker 10: making one.
Speaker 1: Okay, you want to merge you want to merge the
Speaker 1: four TVs into what's you want to make a video wall? Basically?
Speaker 5: Yes, sir?
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean have you done this before? Have you
Speaker 1: tried this? What's this for? Is it for a bar
Speaker 1: like your house or what?
Speaker 10: No, it's it's just for the house.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, well, I mean it can be done.
Speaker 1: And I saw it's funny you say this because I
Speaker 1: sat and I was mesmerized by a YouTube video about this.
Speaker 1: I watched the whole thing. It was like thirty minutes
Speaker 1: the guy and there's there's so many of them. So
Speaker 1: the best place to look for this is really YouTube.
Speaker 1: They have so many of these people, these YouTubers, they
Speaker 1: you know, these DIY people. They change their basement into
Speaker 1: a video wall because you know, you can use it
Speaker 1: for various reasons. You can make you know, like you're
Speaker 1: saying you can watch content on it, but you can
Speaker 1: also make it look like an outdoor windows and things
Speaker 1: like that. So there's a lot you can do with this.
Speaker 1: The main thing is it takes a little bit to
Speaker 1: do this. It's not straight forward. It is not as
Speaker 1: simple as taking the output from your cable box and
Speaker 1: just splitting it four ways and it's all gonna work. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that would be way too easy. You know, these TVs,
Speaker 1: it's you need number one, you need a video wall
Speaker 1: kind of controller and so it's an HDMI device that's uh,
Speaker 1: some of them, you know. For you you're talking four TVs,
Speaker 1: so a two by two, right, and so you would
Speaker 1: get this little video controller. You'd have to plug your
Speaker 1: HDMI into that, and then the four HDMI cables from there,
Speaker 1: the out you know, the outbound would go into the TVs,
Speaker 1: and then of course you'd have to mount the TVs
Speaker 1: on the wall. You'd have to make sure you want
Speaker 1: ones that are really thin with thin bezels, because you
Speaker 1: know there's gonna be a black bar in between all
Speaker 1: four of them. And then you may depending on how
Speaker 1: the TVs are mounted, some people mount these horizontally. Some
Speaker 1: people mount them vertically to make like a window. You know,
Speaker 1: you can do things like rotate the screen or the picture,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot you can do. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a simple thing. So if you want a good DIY project,
Speaker 1: it's fun and I think it'll work. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, I've not done this personally, and
Speaker 1: I would also suggest before you embark on this, I
Speaker 1: would take a look at some of the projector screens
Speaker 1: and projectors that they have nowadays, because especially these short
Speaker 1: throw projectors they're called, they sit about a foot from
Speaker 1: the screen, like at the base of the screen, and
Speaker 1: they throw up a one hundred and eight inch picture
Speaker 1: or something or even bigger, so you can get significantly
Speaker 1: and the video quality is so much better than it
Speaker 1: was in the past. So but I think this is
Speaker 1: a fun project. If you want to do it, and
Speaker 1: you want to make this in Las Vegas, sounds like
Speaker 1: a fun thing to do. Just know that you need to,
Speaker 1: you know, definitely need one of those video wall controllers.
Speaker 1: I'm looking on Amazon. They've got a two x two
Speaker 1: four K video wall processor with eleven spice splicing modes
Speaker 1: for one hundred and twenty bucks. Then they've got another
Speaker 1: one for two hundred and sixty nine, same thing two
Speaker 1: by two, So you know, the price varies, and I
Speaker 1: think I would be I would go somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at one for fifty nine dollars. If you're
Speaker 1: going to buy four of these TVs you said at
Speaker 1: fifty five sixty five inches and put them on your
Speaker 1: wall and go through all that. I would definitely spend
Speaker 1: a little bit more on this HDMI controller for sure.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind, I would test all this stuff
Speaker 1: before you mount it, make sure it works, make sure
Speaker 1: you can get it to work. That's a fun project.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I've actually I love that you're doing
Speaker 1: this because I've always wanted to do one of those windows.
Speaker 1: They it looks like an out window to the outside,
Speaker 1: but it's just really a TV. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of TV studios use them. I just think that would
Speaker 1: look really cool in the House'd be fun. If I
Speaker 1: ever have a home studio for the radio show, that'd
Speaker 1: be a fun thing to do. Devin, thanks for the call,
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. I
Speaker 1: saw one of these windows at CES and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to see. Hold on, I'm looking at CS. This is
Speaker 1: how I search for stuff that I've done in the past.
Speaker 1: It just search like CS, Rich Tomuro virtual window. Let's
Speaker 1: see if I can find it. Uh here it is Liquidview.
Speaker 1: That's what it was called. Check out liquid View. Such
Speaker 1: a cool thing and make virtual windows. I'm looking at it.
Speaker 1: It's exactly what you're talking about, except it's just like
Speaker 1: a Oh, it's so cool. Digital windows for windowless rooms.
Speaker 1: And what they do is they take it a step further.
Speaker 1: They don't just sell you the actual screen. They sell
Speaker 1: you the content as well. So they've gone out around
Speaker 1: the world and they've recorded content for like twenty four
Speaker 1: hours in like four K or eight K, and so
Speaker 1: that the sun rises and sets it like it's synced
Speaker 1: with your wherever you live. And that's called Liquidview thoughliquidview
Speaker 1: dot com. I'll link it up on the website, all right,
Speaker 1: eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Remember anything I mentioned,
Speaker 1: It's all on the website. Rich on tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: If you got one of these Aura frames, my favorite
Speaker 1: digital Wi Fi frame, I'll tell you about the great
Speaker 1: new feature it just picked up rich on tech more
Speaker 1: show coming up next eight eight a rich one on
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero
Speaker 1: one got a message from Kim says that Lewis called
Speaker 1: back and said, Uh, your scheduling text recommendations worked like
Speaker 1: a champ. Thank you so much and that's why he
Speaker 1: listens to you. Thank you, Lewis. I'm glad it worked
Speaker 1: out for you. Let's go to Mark in uh Saint Petersburg.
Speaker 1: By the way, Adam is in for Bobo today. I
Speaker 1: was giving him the hand signal to give me a ding,
Speaker 1: you know that bell. He said, he doesn't know what
Speaker 1: that signal meant. Mark, welcome to the show. What's up? Oh?
Speaker 11: Thank you rich Patsy Outlea, and I just wanted to
Speaker 11: ask you a question. I have a iPhone and I
Speaker 11: was wanting to try to figure out the easiest way
Speaker 11: to clean out all duplicate files and stuff. But every
Speaker 11: time you get on one, they after three days or
Speaker 11: seven days, they want you to make a subscription. And
Speaker 11: I would like to see if there's like an affordable
Speaker 11: way or one that's more recommended than others or.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 11: I get all kind of pop up eds for the
Speaker 11: same type of services.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're all going to well, okay, so a couple
Speaker 1: things here. Number one, great question mark. Number one, there
Speaker 1: is no cleaner app for the iPhone that does what
Speaker 1: cleaner apps do on Android, or on Windows IT or
Speaker 1: even on the Mac. It just doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1: The way that iPhone the operating system is engineered is
Speaker 1: everything is sandboxed, which means apps cannot see data from
Speaker 1: other apps unless Apple specifically allows them to. So there's
Speaker 1: not an app that can just sit there and access
Speaker 1: everything across your phone. That's for security reasons and that's
Speaker 1: just by design. So there's not really an app that says, okay,
Speaker 1: let's run this app and it finds all the gunk
Speaker 1: on your system, the duplicate files, all that stuff. It
Speaker 1: can't do that. There are apps that can do parts
Speaker 1: of that, and there's also some built in tools on
Speaker 1: the iPhone that can do that as well. So let
Speaker 1: me show you a couple of these. Number one, the
Speaker 1: app that I like to clean up the iPhone with
Speaker 1: duplicate photos and things like that is called Clever Cleaner
Speaker 1: c l e v Er Cleaner. Now, if you type
Speaker 1: it into search on your iPhone, you may come up
Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of different random apps that are
Speaker 1: going to try to charge you. This one has no
Speaker 1: ads and it does not charge you at all. Ever,
Speaker 1: Just I'm gonna double check that because the last time
Speaker 1: I looked at it, that's the way it was. So
Speaker 1: if I type in clever Cleaner, you got to be
Speaker 1: sure you're getting the right one too. It's got forty
Speaker 1: two thousand reviews right now now, and it's called clever
Speaker 1: Cleaner AI cleanup app. And I'm scrolling down the way
Speaker 1: I always kind of assess an app is you scroll
Speaker 1: all the way down to the information section. And this
Speaker 1: is great advice for just any app that you're downloading.
Speaker 1: Always scroll down on the app Store and look under information.
Speaker 1: It tells you seller size, category, compatibility an app. It
Speaker 1: also tells you if an app charges you. So I'm
Speaker 1: looking at this other random cleanup app and I scroll down,
Speaker 1: and oh, what does this say in app purchases one
Speaker 1: week seven dollars ninety nine cents, one year twenty nine
Speaker 1: ninety nine. Now, I'm not against paying for ads, especially
Speaker 1: or paying for apps, especially helpful ones, but you have
Speaker 1: to be aware of what you're getting into. Ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of the apps out there on the App Store.
Speaker 1: They just want you to download their app, and then
Speaker 1: eventually you're gonna try it and you're gonna use it,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna say, oh, I'm running up against this wall.
Speaker 1: I need to pay for this now. So I always
Speaker 1: like to see what I'm what I'm getting myself into
Speaker 1: before I actually download an app. So always when you
Speaker 1: download an app, before you download it, check all the
Speaker 1: way down under information and look for that in app
Speaker 1: purchases area. Nobody looks at that, but it's the best
Speaker 1: thing about the App store is that it shows you that.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Clever Cleaners is from cleverfiles dot com, So
Speaker 1: you can go to that website and that's gonna do
Speaker 1: all the cleanup you need for your photos. And it's
Speaker 1: really good and it's completely free. Like I said, now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the rest of your iPhone storage,
Speaker 1: you can go to iPhone you can go to General
Speaker 1: set sorry getting ahead of myself, go to Settings, then
Speaker 1: tap General and then tap iPhone Storage and you'll see
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of things under recommendations. And that's where
Speaker 1: you can review your photos and videos. It'll show you
Speaker 1: large photos and videos recently deleted offload unused apps, review
Speaker 1: your downloaded media. Messages in iCloud. You can turn that
Speaker 1: on to save some space, you large attachments in your
Speaker 1: in your messages, optimize storage, you can enable that auto
Speaker 1: delete old conversations, review your TV downloads. Oh, they've added
Speaker 1: a lot to this. So that is really what you
Speaker 1: want to do is Apple will go through and help
Speaker 1: you with all that. And again you go into Settings
Speaker 1: General and then iPhone Storage and then under your recommendations
Speaker 1: tap show wall and I'll give you all the different ways.
Speaker 1: By the way, one of the best ways to clear
Speaker 1: up space on your phone two ways. Number one, delete
Speaker 1: a large video. Number two your podcasts. A lot of
Speaker 1: times it downloads a whole bunch of podcasts just keeps
Speaker 1: them forever. So if you going on a trip or
Speaker 1: something you need to free up some space, quickly check
Speaker 1: your podcast downloads. But those are the ways to do it.
Speaker 1: Mark Those are the ways to get your iPhone cleaned
Speaker 1: up again, not just one app that's going to just
Speaker 1: go through everything and help you do that. Those are
Speaker 1: pretty much scams. Eighty eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: I will link up clever cleaner on the website. Just
Speaker 1: go to rich on Tech dot TV. This is episode
Speaker 1: one two. It's right on the home screen. Or scroll
Speaker 1: down to radio show and you'll see the episodes. Just
Speaker 1: tap one fifty two. All the show notes are there.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, I'm still going to tell you
Speaker 1: about this Aura feature on the new Aura feature, and
Speaker 1: we'll get to more of your calls right here on
Speaker 1: rich on tech. Okay, this Aura frame one of my
Speaker 1: favorite gifts of the holiday season. If you have not
Speaker 1: gotten one of these, I'm telling you it's a crowd pleaser.
Speaker 1: I saw it at Costco yesterday. I was selling for
Speaker 1: like a hundred bucks. It is such a great thing,
Speaker 1: and I've got one. My family has one, my wife's
Speaker 1: family has one. We love it. But anyway, the neat
Speaker 1: thing about these frames is there's a lot of Wi
Speaker 1: Fi photo frames out there, but the neat thing about
Speaker 1: this one is that the software is really good, the
Speaker 1: design is really good, and you know, it's just simple.
Speaker 1: You can you can email, or you can send a
Speaker 1: photo from your phone right to a family member or
Speaker 1: a friend's frame, you know, with a little bit of setup.
Speaker 1: But now you've got a new feature where you can
Speaker 1: text to a frame, so friends and family can text
Speaker 1: photos directly to your Aura frame or vice versa. So
Speaker 1: that means you don't have to download the app and
Speaker 1: you don't need an Aura account for the sender, so
Speaker 1: that means it's super super easy. So if you have
Speaker 1: like a less tech savvy person in your family, you
Speaker 1: can just say, oh, yeah, here, if you want to
Speaker 1: send you know, you want to text me a picture
Speaker 1: to my frame, here you go. So that's really really cool.
Speaker 1: You can, as the frame owner, can approve the phone numbers.
Speaker 1: So let's say you've got three people you want to
Speaker 1: be able to, you know, that can send photos to
Speaker 1: your frame. You just approve their phone numbers in the app.
Speaker 1: So this is really really cool. You have to go
Speaker 1: into the Aura app as an owner and link your
Speaker 1: own phone number and then you can set it all up.
Speaker 1: But it's a really really neat way to kind of
Speaker 1: it's already easy to add pictures to this frame, but
Speaker 1: now the ability just to text them in, I think
Speaker 1: adds another layer of awesomeness. Let's see here, let's go
Speaker 1: to Stephen in Hawthorn. Steven you're on with.
Speaker 2: Rich, Yes, Rich, thank you, thanks for packing this pall Rich.
Speaker 2: I just had a question about these AirPods Prove three version, okay,
Speaker 2: And the reason why I purchased those is because it
Speaker 2: has a language translation feature. Sure, and I've discovered that
Speaker 2: it only works it apparently it only works with the
Speaker 2: Apple Intelligence.
Speaker 7: Is that true?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 5: Why?
Speaker 2: Okay? The reason why because I have an old version
Speaker 2: of the iPhone iPhone eleven.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you need you need you need an iPhone
Speaker 1: fifteen Pro or later exactly.
Speaker 2: And it makes me think, is it the Apple Intelligence
Speaker 2: that's actually doing the translation rather than the AirPod Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a little bit of both. I mean they're
Speaker 1: using Look, I mean they need to there's got to
Speaker 1: be a driver for the you know, the translation. I
Speaker 1: think Apple Intelligence is part of that. I think that
Speaker 1: it's just part of what makes it work. I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly how they're doing it, you know, but that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of the way that they position it on
Speaker 1: the website. They say, look, if you want live translation,
Speaker 1: you've got to have the AirPods four with the noise
Speaker 1: cancelation AirPods Pro two or AirPods Pro three, iPhone fifteen
Speaker 1: Pro or later iOS twenty six or later. Apple Intelligence
Speaker 1: turned on Apples, Translate app downloaded, and the latest AirPods firmware,
Speaker 1: So it requires a lot of things. And I would say, Stephen,
Speaker 1: this kind of falls under what I was talking about
Speaker 1: earlier in the show where I didn't read the help
Speaker 1: page before I ordered all the speakers. So it's like, oh, shoot,
Speaker 1: I need that. Oh my gosh. With that said, you know,
Speaker 1: there's also some limitations on the languages too. There's only
Speaker 1: a handful of languages that are supported right now. What
Speaker 1: language were you trying to translate?
Speaker 2: Well, mostly Spanish, you know, okay, pa, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's a relatively easy one. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, there's a lot of Spanish is
Speaker 1: usually like kind of like in the basics of all
Speaker 1: these translation apps. I think they added Japanese. The one
Speaker 1: that they demoed with me was I think it was Portuguese,
Speaker 1: which was kind of unique. The other thing, there's some
Speaker 1: news this week too that I believe Google I think
Speaker 1: they actually made their translation and this puts a little
Speaker 1: pressure on Apple is I think they made their live
Speaker 1: translate available to any earbuds now. Yeah, so look at this.
Speaker 1: So Google expanded their real time speech translations to any headphones.
Speaker 1: This used to be just a Pixel buds thing, so
Speaker 1: now it's rolling out in beta. All you need is
Speaker 1: a compatible Android phone and Google's Translate app to use
Speaker 1: their live Translate feature, which was pretty amazing. That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: So hopefully Apple will follow suit and maybe they'll open
Speaker 1: this up to more stuff. But it sounds like at
Speaker 1: this point you need to use that Apple intelligence. Are
Speaker 1: you willing to update your phone or upgrade your phone
Speaker 1: for this feature or no?
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely up to upgrade apparently.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, all right, sounds like it sounds like an
Speaker 1: upgrade might be in your future if you really want
Speaker 1: to use that translate Live Translate. It's so funny. I've
Speaker 1: got it on my I've got this on my docket
Speaker 1: of things to do. I get so many calls and
Speaker 1: questions about this live Translate feature. People love this feature.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's amazing because it's going to just kind
Speaker 1: of continue to to, you know, make our world smaller.
Speaker 1: But you've got it on a bunch of devices. So
Speaker 1: you've got it on the pixel buds they were the
Speaker 1: first to have it. Now you've got it on a
Speaker 1: couple models of air pods. AirPods Pro three, AirPods Pro two,
Speaker 1: and the air POD's four, but the higher end, the
Speaker 1: ones that have active noise cancelation. Now Google, oh, you
Speaker 1: also have it on the Meta ray band glasses, so
Speaker 1: you've got it there. There's a device called time Kettle,
Speaker 1: which I'm still waiting for them to send me a
Speaker 1: sample so I can try that. That's a standalone device,
Speaker 1: and they also make earbuds, and then you've got now
Speaker 1: Google expanding it to any earbuds if you have an
Speaker 1: Android phone. That's amazing the fact that you can do
Speaker 1: real time speech translation. And don't forget you also have
Speaker 1: all of the ais that can do this too. So
Speaker 1: you've got Gemini, You've got CHATCHYBT. You flip those into
Speaker 1: the live voice and they can translate anything too. I mean,
Speaker 1: traveling the world and interacting with people that speak a
Speaker 1: different language has gotten so much easier. It's it's quite incredible.
Speaker 1: All right, I think we got our guest here. Let's see.
Speaker 1: I think Nicholas Merrill is on the line. Nick, are
Speaker 1: you there, I'm here, Okay, Welcome to the show. Nick
Speaker 1: Nick is founder of a new privacy first carrier called
Speaker 1: Freely p h R. E E L. I. So the
Speaker 1: big deal about this carrier is that it's a privacy
Speaker 1: first and you only sign up with your ZIP code.
Speaker 1: So it's really nick, why did you come up with this?
Speaker 12: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on
Speaker 12: the show.
Speaker 13: I've been working in the privacy space for a few
Speaker 13: decades now, and basically, I feel like the telecom industry,
Speaker 13: it collects a lot of information about us, and that
Speaker 13: sort of leads to a degradation in our privacy, and
Speaker 13: I feel like it's sort of reached a point where
Speaker 13: people are upset about it and they want a better
Speaker 13: option that doesn't hand over all their info to all
Speaker 13: kinds of third parties. So I've been doing research and
Speaker 13: development on free software for a bunch of years and
Speaker 13: how to make privacy easier. But I understood that to
Speaker 13: most people, it's still feels like a lot of work,
Speaker 13: and it feels like you need to have a lot
Speaker 13: of sort of esoteric knowledge. And we're trying to do
Speaker 13: is build it into the service provider, into the mobile provider,
Speaker 13: so that all you really have to do is switch
Speaker 13: to this company and you get a big privacy game
Speaker 13: just by doing that.
Speaker 12: So the idea is like, if you can only do
Speaker 12: one thing to.
Speaker 13: To sort of advance your mission to get yourself better
Speaker 13: privacy today, switch to freely.
Speaker 1: So why would I want that? Why do I want
Speaker 1: more privacy with my cell phone? Like I you know,
Speaker 1: let's say I'm with one of the big carriers. Why
Speaker 1: do i want more privacy from my cell phone carrier.
Speaker 13: I mean, from what I'm understanding, most people really do.
Speaker 13: Private carriers are essentially selling customer data.
Speaker 7: To data brokers.
Speaker 13: And sometimes it's freeze in advertising, but sometimes it's not.
Speaker 13: Sometimes it ends up in the hands of all kinds
Speaker 13: of scammers, people that do identity theF Like, once the
Speaker 13: information is out.
Speaker 12: There, it's sort of beyond your control.
Speaker 13: When you sign up for typical phone company account, you know,
Speaker 13: you end up having to really give them a lot
Speaker 13: of info, right if they if they run your credit
Speaker 13: you may have to give a driver's license number, a
Speaker 13: social security number, You give them your home address, You
Speaker 13: may give them you know, those.
Speaker 12: Extra security questions like your mother's maiden name.
Speaker 13: Now, when this information ends up getting hacked from the
Speaker 13: phone company or getting stolen, your information is out there
Speaker 13: and like I've experienced it in the past where I
Speaker 13: was using a mainstream phone company and they got hacked,
Speaker 13: and then they said, oh, hey, we'll pay for a
Speaker 13: credit monitoring service for you for six months. But in
Speaker 13: the end, it's sort of like, why do you want
Speaker 13: to put your information out there when you don't have to?
Speaker 1: So you've got all these different plans, you know, ranging
Speaker 1: from twenty five to eighty five dollars a month. What
Speaker 1: about I mean, you're running on a main carrier. I'm guessing.
Speaker 1: Can you say which carrier you're on?
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah, we're on T mobiles network.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're on T Mobiles network. I mean they
Speaker 1: were okay with you saying, hey, we're not going to
Speaker 1: collect any data from our customers. We're just going to
Speaker 1: ask for a ZIP code to sign up. I mean,
Speaker 1: why doesn't just T Mobile do that? Then it would
Speaker 1: be nice.
Speaker 13: If they would. I wish they would. I really do think,
Speaker 13: like I say, I'm so old. I remember when you
Speaker 13: could walk up to a payphone and drop a din
Speaker 13: in and make a phone call without having.
Speaker 7: To show ID.
Speaker 13: I really think that the right to communicate should universal
Speaker 13: and you shouldn't have to.
Speaker 12: Hand over all of.
Speaker 13: Your most personal info to a company in order to
Speaker 13: just communicate. It's a it's a thing that we can't
Speaker 13: really almost get away without these days having a cell phone.
Speaker 13: So no, I really wish all the cell phone companies
Speaker 13: would would collect less info.
Speaker 1: Is there a security risk here? I mean the government?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure you know what about the security
Speaker 1: aspect of things, like people have been, you know, buying
Speaker 1: burner phones for a long time. Sure is this similar
Speaker 1: to that? I mean, you're not positioning this says hey,
Speaker 1: do bad things. You're just saying, protect our privacy, But
Speaker 1: I mean, can't Is there an opportunity for people to
Speaker 1: use this for nefarious reasons or is that just everything tech?
Speaker 13: We're saying the exact opposite of that, do not do
Speaker 13: anything wrong on our phone company. We do not want that.
Speaker 13: We don't support that. You know, we're not We're not
Speaker 13: against law enforcement's mission. We want law enforcement to catch
Speaker 13: the bad guys who are doing bad stuff.
Speaker 12: However, we don't think that all.
Speaker 13: Of the rest of us, who are not bad guys
Speaker 13: should have to give up our privacy in order to uh,
Speaker 13: in order to try to deceaver and like, as you noted,
Speaker 13: the option to use a burner phone already existed, So.
Speaker 12: What we're doing.
Speaker 13: Doesn't really get someone more privacy than having a burner phone.
Speaker 12: But what it does is it makes it convenient.
Speaker 13: You know, you could be on auto pay, you have
Speaker 13: all the convenience of using like a regular phone company,
Speaker 13: but with more privacy. So I think the thing is
Speaker 13: if you want to do the whole go to a
Speaker 13: gas station and buy a sin thing and then.
Speaker 12: Top it up in cash. That's that's a lot of work.
Speaker 13: And that's inconvenient and it's not fun. But you know,
Speaker 13: if criminals want to do that, then that's.
Speaker 1: What they're going to do.
Speaker 13: And you know, honestly, if someone's doing something wrong, as
Speaker 13: I said, I hope law enforcement conches for them. But
Speaker 13: what we're out to try to protect the privacy rights
Speaker 13: of the ninety nine point nine percent of people who
Speaker 13: aren't bad guys.
Speaker 1: What about when I put in my credit card? Isn't
Speaker 1: that now I've you know, we've done a lot of
Speaker 1: stories on data and data collection, and as I understand it,
Speaker 1: there's layers of data that these marketing companies and brokers
Speaker 1: just sort of layer together. So if they only have
Speaker 1: my zip code, now they narrow it down to like
Speaker 1: other things that they'll figure out and kind of match
Speaker 1: up about me. So once they have my credit card,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, well now you've got your credit card
Speaker 1: and your zip code. Now we know who this person is.
Speaker 1: So is that possibility here?
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, I mean, like one.
Speaker 12: I want to make clear we have not solved the
Speaker 12: problem of privacy.
Speaker 13: There's still there's still many aspects of it that remain
Speaker 13: to be worked on. So part of the issue is,
Speaker 13: like I mentioned, for getting privacy really really right, it's hard.
Speaker 12: It takes a lot of work.
Speaker 13: And if I don't know, if you remember those books
Speaker 13: from childhood, they were called Choose your Own Adventure.
Speaker 1: Of course you know they have there's.
Speaker 12: Like decision trees, right, Hey, do you want to go
Speaker 12: down this path or that path? Do you want to
Speaker 12: go behind this door or that door.
Speaker 13: We offer people the option to pay for their phone
Speaker 13: service with cryptocurrency if they want, including some of the
Speaker 13: more private cryptocurrencies like z cash and Monero.
Speaker 12: Now, if you do that, that information doesn't go into
Speaker 12: the credit bureaus, that doesn't go to the data brokers.
Speaker 13: So we're offering the option to have different levels of
Speaker 13: privacy depending on how much work our customers are interested,
Speaker 13: willing and interested to put into the effort. We understand
Speaker 13: that most people are going to use their regular credit
Speaker 13: card with their name on it from their bank because
Speaker 13: that's what's easy. And we we we want to give
Speaker 13: super private options, but we also want to meet regular
Speaker 13: people where they are today, and then you know, there's
Speaker 13: always the option to sort of increase your privacy, you know,
Speaker 13: security as you as you go down the path.
Speaker 1: Well, it's certainly a hot topic and something that I
Speaker 1: think is on top of mind for so many people.
Speaker 1: I hear. I get privacy emails all the time from
Speaker 1: people asking questions about how they can better protect their privacy.
Speaker 1: Nick Merrill, thank you for joining me today with the
Speaker 1: carrier Freely p h R E E l I dot
Speaker 1: com freely cool name cool. Spin on that and I'll
Speaker 1: put the link on the website. Nick, thanks for joining
Speaker 1: me today.
Speaker 12: Thank you so much for your time. Rach I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: All right, looking forward to testing that out. I'm got
Speaker 1: I gotta get a test see how that works. I'm curious.
Speaker 1: All right, eighty eight rich one on one. The lines
Speaker 1: are packed. We will get to some of your some
Speaker 1: more of your calls after this. Plus what can I
Speaker 1: tell you. Oh, I found a uh an Apple Watch
Speaker 1: AI app that you know, you can put little AI
Speaker 1: on your Apple Watch so you can ask it questions.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about that coming up right here. I'm
Speaker 1: rich on tech Joy in San Diego. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 9: Hi, rich Am I supposed to be on speaker?
Speaker 7: Is it okay?
Speaker 1: I can hear you? Fine, so it's uh, I'll take it.
Speaker 1: What's up?
Speaker 9: Okay? Well, I'm almost embarrassed to ask because I've gotten
Speaker 9: an iPhone fifteen, iPhone, I Pad, I'm AC and I
Speaker 9: Mac is still in the box because I'm so h
Speaker 9: not picking up even on my iPhone, very very very basic.
Speaker 9: And I'm used to being older having a textbook that
Speaker 9: I can go back to. I know I can go
Speaker 9: to Apple support, and someone told me I can simultaneously
Speaker 9: set up the iPad and the iPhone to try to
Speaker 9: learn things. But all of this is like so far
Speaker 9: above my learning capacity right now. And I was wondering
Speaker 9: if you had a suggestion for a textbook.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's funny. I wrote one of these couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. It's not updated anymore, but I did
Speaker 1: write an iPhone because I saw how many questions I
Speaker 1: was getting about iPhones, and so I wrote a book
Speaker 1: called one hundred and one Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone.
Speaker 1: And I'm not kidding. It was incredible. I mean people
Speaker 1: were buying it like crazy because it was just the basics,
Speaker 1: I mean, so simple. I started. The first page was
Speaker 1: like how to take a screenshot, and it's just like
Speaker 1: little things like that, like how to turn your phone on,
Speaker 1: how to turn it off. And people loved it because
Speaker 1: it was just simple. It didn't assume that you knew anything.
Speaker 1: What phone did you switch from?
Speaker 9: I still have my landline?
Speaker 1: Okay, so you switch from landline? Okay.
Speaker 9: Problem is I for the past twenty thirty whatever year
Speaker 9: since I've been retired, I got out of working when
Speaker 9: all the technology started to take hold, and I've never
Speaker 9: had incremental periods of time to learn these little things
Speaker 9: that sort of multiply and exactly what you said. I'm
Speaker 9: going to look up that book because I don't know
Speaker 9: what an icon is, what a widget is, or what
Speaker 9: a green shot is that you just mentioned.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're really learning, Yeah, you're going for the basics. Well,
Speaker 1: I understand, and I totally you know, you grew up
Speaker 1: in a different time and these are all kind of
Speaker 1: new to you, and it's once you figure it out,
Speaker 1: it's going to be great, and you're going to get
Speaker 1: the hang of it. And believe me, everyone does eventually.
Speaker 1: So oh, what I would say is you already know
Speaker 1: about the Apple website. So Apple does have an official
Speaker 1: Apple Support phone guide, so you can go there iPhone
Speaker 1: user Guide and again, yeah, like your friend said, put
Speaker 1: that on your iPad and then you can follow along
Speaker 1: on your iPhone. That's number one. But I would probably
Speaker 1: buy a book, a couple of books. There's and I
Speaker 1: don't want to I'm not gonna insult you here. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna but there's an iPhone for seniors for dummies.
Speaker 1: I'd probably recommend something like that because it's paperback, you
Speaker 1: can doubt you can physically hold it and flip through
Speaker 1: it and have your phone in your other hand, and
Speaker 1: you can go through it and learn all the features.
Speaker 1: And I think that's probably going to be one of
Speaker 1: the best ways to learn this. And they've been making
Speaker 1: those those books for a long time. The other thing,
Speaker 1: David Pogue used to make something called the Missing Manual.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's there anymore. I don't think they've
Speaker 1: updated it. It looks like the last time they updated
Speaker 1: it was a couple of years ago. But I think
Speaker 1: the the I hate to even use the term, but
Speaker 1: the Dummies book, I think is going to be the
Speaker 1: best way to learn joy And I'm here for you.
Speaker 1: Sign up for my newsletter. I'll give you the tips,
Speaker 1: the tricks, and I'm always here on email as well.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call today, Good luck with that. Eighty
Speaker 1: eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Welcome back to Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Eight
Speaker 1: eight eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Get a lot
Speaker 1: of feedback about the Amazon Echo speakers and set up
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about that. Clearly I was not
Speaker 1: the only one that didn't realize that you can connect
Speaker 1: those and make a home theater system. Let's see so
Speaker 1: many emails.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: Also, I want to just tell you about my newsletter
Speaker 1: real quick, rich on tech dot TV. If you're not
Speaker 1: signed up for the newsletter, you are doing yourself a disservice.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you why. It's because everything that I
Speaker 1: mentioned on a weekly basis all the most important stuff
Speaker 1: that comes through my desk. I put in this newsletter.
Speaker 1: It's stuff that, like this show, I think you should
Speaker 1: know about. So I put it all in there, I
Speaker 1: write it up, I sit there and I send it
Speaker 1: out to you, and it's free and people, you know,
Speaker 1: it's become like this community. Now, this episode, this issue
Speaker 1: is my favorite. I'll just tell you some of the things.
Speaker 1: So I talked about the ECHO stuff. I talked about
Speaker 1: how I built my own personal AI wine recommendation AI
Speaker 1: system with chat GIBT. Basically, I took a picture, uploaded
Speaker 1: a picture or whatever of all the different wine that
Speaker 1: I like over the years, and I told it, here's
Speaker 1: what I like. And then now if I'm at a
Speaker 1: restaurant and I see a menu, I can literally just
Speaker 1: upload that menu to my chat GBT project and it
Speaker 1: will give me the best wine glass to purchase based
Speaker 1: on all of my tastes. And what's smart about that
Speaker 1: is that number one. I don't know, if you've noticed
Speaker 1: prices of things over the years, they've gone up. And
Speaker 1: so if you're like, hey, I want to spend this
Speaker 1: much on a glass of wine, give me the best
Speaker 1: bang for my buck that'll fit my taste. That's number one.
Speaker 1: Number two, you get a wine list, you have no
Speaker 1: idea what's on. There could be Italian wines, French wines,
Speaker 1: Spanish wines, whatever. You can feed that in and we'll
Speaker 1: still say, okay, here's the wines we've identified that you
Speaker 1: will like based on what you like. So that was fun.
Speaker 1: I spent like an hour doing that, and you could
Speaker 1: easily do it. So I talk about how to do
Speaker 1: that my newsletter. I got the tech Tidbits. Oh, I
Speaker 1: also mentioned this. I'll tell you about this app. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the tech Tidbits, and then people share their emails. There's
Speaker 1: so much in there. Just go to Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot TV, pop in your email address and you'll get
Speaker 1: this every weekend. And then I'm doing a secondary one
Speaker 1: that's just like Q and A. So all the emails
Speaker 1: I get, I picked like maybe ten each week to
Speaker 1: feature in the the other newsletter. It's like a Q
Speaker 1: and A. And by the way, a picture of Bobo's
Speaker 1: in here. Bobo's not here today, but there's a picture
Speaker 1: of them. Let's see. Alex requested a picture of Bobo,
Speaker 1: so I put them in there. But I told you
Speaker 1: about this app. It's called Chirp c Hirp Chirp, and
Speaker 1: it's an Apple Watch app that adds like a voice
Speaker 1: assistant chirp dot Watch. And there's no there's no proper
Speaker 1: AI assistant on the Apple Watch right now. Don't tell
Speaker 1: me Siri is because that's not true. So if there's
Speaker 1: no like Google Gemini, there's no chatgybt as far as
Speaker 1: I know. But this kind of emulates that. So it's
Speaker 1: a little tiny app. You put it as a complication
Speaker 1: on your screen. You tap it and then it gives
Speaker 1: you an answer. So I can say something like, let
Speaker 1: me try it in lifetime. So I did that. I
Speaker 1: tapped it, and now I just tap press and hold
Speaker 1: and let's see what is the best movie coming out
Speaker 1: next weekend? Now it's sending the info to Google Search.
Speaker 1: It uses Gemini. See if you can do this. I
Speaker 1: have no signal in here. Oh that's great. There we
Speaker 1: go nothing no nothing. What's the best movie at the
Speaker 1: box office right now? SquarePants are some of the bigger ones.
Speaker 1: Is also David and so Five Nights at Freddy's two
Speaker 1: is currently the top earner at the box office, and
Speaker 1: Zotopia two is also doing pretty well. Okay, so there
Speaker 1: you go. You can choose your little voice. I didn't
Speaker 1: even know those movies were out. Wow. Okay, five days
Speaker 1: of Freday's too. I never even saw the first anyway.
Speaker 1: It's called Chirp dot Watch. Check it out. They also make,
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, a tiny little web browser for your Apple
Speaker 1: Watch screen. I know crazy, I'll link it up on
Speaker 1: the website. Rich on tech dot TV. All right, let's
Speaker 1: go to Brad in Los Angeles, line five. Wow, we
Speaker 1: have so many calls. We're using all the lines, Brad,
Speaker 1: you're own with Rich.
Speaker 8: I'm currently I'm currently on an iPhone eight with Verizon,
Speaker 8: and I want to keep the home button. And I've
Speaker 8: been researching and it looks like the iPhone se third
Speaker 8: generation might be my only hope at this point because
Speaker 8: I've aged out on a few apps already that want
Speaker 8: iOS seventeen, which is my eight won't get.
Speaker 4: So what do you think?
Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah, so I'm looking at the list you want.
Speaker 1: You still want the home button? Okay, so the eight
Speaker 1: and the eight plus for the last kind of mainstream
Speaker 1: iPhones to get that. Then you've got, like you said,
Speaker 1: the iPhone sees all three read them, have it. The
Speaker 1: iPhone SC three was last made in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Hold on, I'm checking this on the website and then
Speaker 1: it looks like I got to go to iOS twenty
Speaker 1: six and just see if that's still supported. So at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the iOS website they have all the
Speaker 1: supported models. Let's see if the se three is still supported,
Speaker 1: s oh ow SC two and later. So yes, you're
Speaker 1: in luck, Brad. That's your best bet because you can
Speaker 1: still run the modern operating system, the latest version of
Speaker 1: iOS on there, and so you'll still have access to
Speaker 1: all your apps and it'll work pretty well. Have you
Speaker 1: heard of backmarket dot Com? No, okay, it's a good
Speaker 1: place to buy it. They are a well reputable, refurbished
Speaker 1: sort of you know, gadget place, and they sell all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff, not just iPhones but everything. iPhone SC
Speaker 1: from twenty twenty two unlocked will run you one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty eight dollars. How does that sound?
Speaker 8: But listen, what's your astimate on how long the that
Speaker 8: third generation will last? Because I know then Weimo is
Speaker 8: the one that I've been out. It needs the seventeen
Speaker 8: and I think it was LA three eleven one is
Speaker 8: seventeen as well. iOS seventeen. Those they only two so
Speaker 8: far that I've noticed.
Speaker 1: Okay, well with this one, you'll you'll have iOS twenty six,
Speaker 1: which is great, and iOS twenty six, I will tell you,
Speaker 1: will last for at least, let's see, at least two
Speaker 1: more years if you'll have support. So and the reason
Speaker 1: I'm telling you that is because you've got the iPhone
Speaker 1: se second generation and later right now for iOS twenty
Speaker 1: six next year, what Apple usually does is they drop
Speaker 1: support for the last model. So now iOS twenty seven
Speaker 1: will just support the iPhone SE three, and then when
Speaker 1: iOS twenty eight comes out, they'll drop support for that
Speaker 1: iPhone SE three. So I think you have a good
Speaker 1: solid two years of software support. So you got to
Speaker 1: do the math. One hundred and thirty eight dollars for
Speaker 1: two years is that worth it it versus just buying
Speaker 1: a new iPhone that's going to give you another six
Speaker 1: years of use out of it. So do the math.
Speaker 1: But that's that's my thought.
Speaker 8: What's that website back market?
Speaker 1: Backmarket dot com? Yeah, check it out, and you know
Speaker 1: it's a reputable place you can buy it. It's got
Speaker 1: oh that's for fair condition. So if you want excellent
Speaker 1: is one hundred and fifty four dollars. But they inspect everything,
Speaker 1: they refurbish it, they make it really nice. It's a
Speaker 1: good place to buy. People really like it. So why
Speaker 1: you're not ready to give up the home button?
Speaker 8: Huh No, I tried it. Too frustrating for it.
Speaker 1: Okay, you'll get used to it. I know you will,
Speaker 1: but I know it's it's tough to uh. I know
Speaker 1: it's tough sometimes because we get used to things. We
Speaker 1: like things a certain way. And yes, I totally understand that.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Tom in Tustin. Where's Tom? You would
Speaker 1: think it'd be easy to choose the line. That's the
Speaker 1: only thing I have to do is tap the number
Speaker 1: of the line. It is not easy. It's like there's
Speaker 1: so many things blinking and this and that. Tom, you're
Speaker 1: on with Rich?
Speaker 3: Hey, Rich, First of all, thanks for everything you do
Speaker 3: for all of us tech dumbings out there.
Speaker 1: Oh well, don't call yourself that, but yes, I you know,
Speaker 1: I just try to help. So you know, I understand.
Speaker 1: This is my world. You've got your world, I've got mine.
Speaker 3: This is not really a tech problem. It's an odinity.
Speaker 3: I ran into for Amazon last night. I wanted to
Speaker 3: order a.
Speaker 6: A Gillette.
Speaker 4: Razor.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's a Styler three and one. It's about close
Speaker 3: to thirty bucks.
Speaker 1: Okay. I was gonna say, do you have to mortgage
Speaker 1: your house to do that? Did you have to? I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, do you have to mortgage your house
Speaker 1: to buy this razor? Because they're very expensive.
Speaker 3: Much but it's well, it's electric and yeah, anyhow, sure.
Speaker 3: So I you know, normally, for fast delivery on Amazon,
Speaker 3: and I am an Amazon member, you have to meet
Speaker 3: a twenty five dollar minimum.
Speaker 4: So when I.
Speaker 3: Placed the order, it shifted me over to Amazon Fresh
Speaker 3: and then you have to meet a fifty dollars minimum
Speaker 3: in order to get the rapid delivery, right, So I
Speaker 3: just thought, you know, it was kind of irritating when
Speaker 3: I ran into that. Have you ever heard of that before?
Speaker 1: Yes? And the reason why is because the razor was
Speaker 1: sold by Amazon Fresh and not Amazon. So it's a
Speaker 1: little confusing. And this is actually, I think, getting way better.
Speaker 1: But so the thing was basically whatever specific razor you wanted,
Speaker 1: it was sold by Amazon Fresh and not Amazon. It's
Speaker 1: very confusing of the same company, but for certain products
Speaker 1: they parse it out and they say, okay, this company
Speaker 1: and this happened to me the other day. I wanted
Speaker 1: to buy this product and it was only sold by
Speaker 1: Amazon Fresh, and I had to do a huge order
Speaker 1: just to get it, and so I ended up not
Speaker 1: getting it. But again that's kind of what happens. Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm looking at this because I looked
Speaker 1: up Gillette. This is so cool. They have Gillette razors
Speaker 1: for all the NFL teams. How cool is that? What
Speaker 1: a good gift. I got to get my kid one
Speaker 1: of these. That is awesome. Wow, look at this they've got. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the forty nine ers right here, but
Speaker 1: they've got Gelette Labs Special, NFL, all these different editions.
Speaker 1: That is so super cool. Anyway, So the thing is
Speaker 1: when you're looking at Amazon, if you don't want that
Speaker 1: to happen in the future, you've got to use the
Speaker 1: the kind of selectors on the side, so it'll say
Speaker 1: like prime delivery overnight by eight am, eleven am, and
Speaker 1: you got to make sometimes it sells, it says the seller,
Speaker 1: and you can choose Amazon. See right now, I can
Speaker 1: see there's a there's a check for Amazon Fresh. So
Speaker 1: if I check Amazon Fresh, I'm only going to see
Speaker 1: stuff that I can get from that store versus Amazon.
Speaker 1: So that is what happened to you. The different the
Speaker 1: thing that Amazon is doing that they've been changing now
Speaker 1: is they're actually in co operating fresh food into standard
Speaker 1: Amazon deliveries. So for instance, I got a delivery last night,
Speaker 1: and my delivery just came in a bag because it's
Speaker 1: not being shipped from anywhere. They're just going into a
Speaker 1: warehouse that's nearby and they're just pulling the two items
Speaker 1: and they're bringing them to me. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like almost like an Amazon's version of door Dash, and
Speaker 1: we're going to see a lot more of that because
Speaker 1: Amazon is now mixing in fresh items, like we're talking
Speaker 1: milk and fresh food into your traditional Amazon orders, and
Speaker 1: they can't do that by shipping. They're not going to
Speaker 1: put that on a truck to ship to you in
Speaker 1: a box that takes you know, overnight or two days.
Speaker 1: They're just taking it from a smaller warehouse that brings
Speaker 1: it right to you, kind of cutting out the middleman
Speaker 1: of any sort of like delivery time. So anyway, it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting concept, but I think we'll see less
Speaker 1: of this, hopefully, But I get it, Tom. It's frustrating
Speaker 1: when that happens, for sure. All right, eighty to eight
Speaker 1: rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. We got more calls. We
Speaker 1: got to talk about this social media band over in Australia.
Speaker 1: Kids over there must be losing their minds. No more
Speaker 1: social media for them. Probably a good thing for the world.
Speaker 1: Australia probably become the smartest country. Now, all right, more
Speaker 1: rich On Sack coming your way. Right after this, Let's
Speaker 1: go to Frank in Apple Lake, New York. Frank around
Speaker 1: with Rich Hi.
Speaker 4: Rich got a question for you. I'm a senior and
Speaker 4: I happen to have a lot of art writers in
Speaker 4: my fingers, which means that when I'm you know, typing
Speaker 4: on the computer, it's oftentimes the big problem for me,
Speaker 4: is there? So here's my question in this AI age,
Speaker 4: does anybody manufacture a Star Trek voice activated computer where
Speaker 4: I could just say computer, go to E they or
Speaker 4: computer print what's on my screen? Something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that there is something built into Windows
Speaker 1: that is really good. Let's see voice Access Windows eleven,
Speaker 1: so that it's it's I believe this is brand new
Speaker 1: and this lets you control your entire PC with voice
Speaker 1: and I just set it up on my Windows computer here,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling you, Frank, it's very impressive. Like I'm talking,
Speaker 1: I'm looking. It's it's going through like the practice like screens.
Speaker 1: And so here's what I said. I said, voice access
Speaker 1: wake up. That'll turn on your microphone number one. Then
Speaker 1: you can say, uh, click animal friend and it will
Speaker 1: select the box on the screen that says dog or cat,
Speaker 1: and then you can do that and then it says
Speaker 1: click cat and it'll click the cat show numbers. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's basically everything you're talking about. This is what
Speaker 1: you want now. You said you have you have some
Speaker 1: decksterity like you can and you can turn on the
Speaker 1: computer and turn it off and like if you needed to,
Speaker 1: like peck a key, you could, right, Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: this is mostly just for everything in between. So I
Speaker 1: think this would be a very good thing for you
Speaker 1: to try. Do you have a Windows computer and.
Speaker 4: It's Windows, Well my computer is broken right now, but
Speaker 4: I'm about to get a new one.
Speaker 1: Well I would get a Windows eleven then for sure,
Speaker 1: because yeah, I mean, I'm telling you and I think
Speaker 1: this is a pretty new feature. It's because I remember
Speaker 1: them announcing it and it's yeah, it's it's in the
Speaker 1: new version of Windows, like the latest update. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: link this up on the website because this is incredible
Speaker 1: what they've done. And it's just basically, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: telling all the things that you can do here. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just so much you can do. I mean, it
Speaker 1: looks like you can go right to websites, you can
Speaker 1: surf websites. I mean, it's I think that the main
Speaker 1: thing is what you're talking about with Star Trek is
Speaker 1: natural language commands, and I think that these are not
Speaker 1: necessarily natural language just yet. But it does give you
Speaker 1: a full voice access guide which you can just like
Speaker 1: print out. But I think what's going to happen is
Speaker 1: there is a web browser called chat gbt at list
Speaker 1: and chat gbt And have you used any of the
Speaker 1: AI yet at all? Okay, Well, the AI, what you're
Speaker 1: talking about AI is already there. So the idea of
Speaker 1: just telling a computer what you want to do and
Speaker 1: what like, we're already there with chat GBT. So i'd
Speaker 1: recommend what kind of phone do you have a smartphone
Speaker 1: or no? Yeah, okay, download the chat GBT app to
Speaker 1: your phone. Make sure you get the official one. And
Speaker 1: there's a special there's a special let me see where
Speaker 1: it is on here. Go to chat GBT and there's
Speaker 1: a special mode called voice. And I'm not kidding. You
Speaker 1: will not believe how much you can do with just
Speaker 1: that voice. You can just talk back and forth, you
Speaker 1: can do calculations, you can ask things, you can ask
Speaker 1: it to search a website, bringing you back information, brainstorm.
Speaker 1: It is quite incredible, and it's all natural language. And
Speaker 1: by the way, it's I believe it's free. I think
Speaker 1: anyone could access that for free. But I think whereas
Speaker 1: a computer, we're not there. I don't think just yet
Speaker 1: with the computer. But this thing on Windows I think
Speaker 1: is the closest you're going to get. And since you're
Speaker 1: telling me you have, you know, it's more of a
Speaker 1: convenience thing where you don't want to sit there and
Speaker 1: type everything. You want to be able to call out commands.
Speaker 1: I think this is gonna be really a good combination
Speaker 1: for you. Now, the other thing we have, there's a
Speaker 1: program called whisper Flow, and this will also change your life, Frank.
Speaker 1: It's basically a voice dictation app. So when you're sitting
Speaker 1: there trying to do your emails and things like that.
Speaker 1: You can use this whisper Flow and it is going
Speaker 1: to convert what you say into text in probably the
Speaker 1: best way you've ever seen in your life. Like you're
Speaker 1: not going to believe how good it is. And it
Speaker 1: does that with the help of AI on the beat
Speaker 1: back end. But I basically do not type out my
Speaker 1: my anything on my computer anymore, including my newsletter, my emails.
Speaker 1: I do all voice to text because it's gotten so good.
Speaker 1: So again, just to review Windows Voice Access. It's called
Speaker 1: whisper Flow and chat EBT. Download that toolkit and Frank,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's really going to improve things for you.
Speaker 1: And that justn't doesn't just go for Frank, that's for
Speaker 1: anyone you know you're struggling with, you know you want
Speaker 1: to We've got We're almost there. We're almost to the
Speaker 1: point where you can control an entire computer with just
Speaker 1: your voice and in a really good way. Rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot TV. Coming up, we'll talk to uh, let's
Speaker 1: see Roberto. We're going to talk to him about the
Speaker 1: car world, transportation, what's going on there with Rivian and others.
Speaker 1: Coming up right here, I'm Rich on Tech Roberto Baldwin
Speaker 1: is a mobility journalist with sae ME Media Group. We
Speaker 1: met in New York City at a GM event. We
Speaker 1: talked the entire Uber ride to the airport. I figured,
Speaker 1: you know what, I got to bring this guy in
Speaker 1: the show because he knows his stuff about cars. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, Roberto, thanks for having me on. Super excited,
Speaker 1: absolutely so. It took me forever to get you on
Speaker 1: this show because you travel so much. What are you
Speaker 1: doing all the time?
Speaker 7: I travel pretty often, mostly with automakers. I went to
Speaker 7: Poland to learn about their supply chain. I went to
Speaker 7: the Alps Austrian and then I went to Germany to
Speaker 7: learn about the new the Mercedes Benz CLA. I went
Speaker 7: to Toyota to talk to them about their proving. It's yeah,
Speaker 7: it's anything automotive. It's a lot, it's a very it's varied.
Speaker 7: It's not just me going and driving cars, which is
Speaker 7: a lot of it. There's a lot of like really
Speaker 7: sort of deep in the weath of the automotive industry.
Speaker 1: You've been covering this stuff for a long time, right.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, for well over a decade before that, I
Speaker 7: was a tech journalist. But before all that, I was
Speaker 7: a kid in the driveway every Saturday morning with my
Speaker 7: dad being told to go get a ratchet or a wrench, or,
Speaker 7: in the worst case scenario, I hammer.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So I assume you know how to drive
Speaker 1: stick I do.
Speaker 7: I own a manual super vr Z.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Okay, I never learned. And my dad also
Speaker 1: like to restore cars too. But when he asked me
Speaker 1: for any sort of like help, like hey, can you
Speaker 1: hold this oil pan or something, I'm just like, no,
Speaker 1: I got to go do something.
Speaker 11: See.
Speaker 7: I tried that, but that wasn't really an option. Unfortunately.
Speaker 7: It was. The hilarious part is I was just as
Speaker 7: uninterested it seems as you were doing it. But then
Speaker 7: as I got older, I found that when I'm working
Speaker 7: on a car, I'm very calm. I'm very relaxed. It's
Speaker 7: such a departure from our very digital world just to
Speaker 7: sit there with a ratchet or a wrench or a
Speaker 7: host clamp or whatever and sort of fix some vehicle.
Speaker 1: Oh one hundred percent. Don't get me wrong. I on
Speaker 1: my street there's a car that's like an old Mustang
Speaker 1: or something that's just sitting in a driveway for like
Speaker 1: ten years now, And every time we walk past that.
Speaker 1: I tell my kids, I go, do you think you
Speaker 1: could see me as like the dad who like restores
Speaker 1: this car? They're like no, but I but I have
Speaker 1: the urge to do it, even though I have no
Speaker 1: idea what I'm doing. All right, let's talk. Let's talk.
Speaker 7: You learned by doing yes, and.
Speaker 1: Now with the Internet, of course, there's so many ways
Speaker 1: of learning. So let's talk about Rivian. They had their
Speaker 1: they had their big autonomy day this week, so give
Speaker 1: me an update on what they announced, Like, was there
Speaker 1: anything that stood out to you about Rivian? And is
Speaker 1: this company like in a good place or should we
Speaker 1: be worried?
Speaker 7: I think they are in a good place. I think
Speaker 7: part of that has to do with Volkswagen had issues
Speaker 7: with their software a couple of years ago. They're in
Speaker 7: car software, the ID four when it launched ID three
Speaker 7: in Europe, when it launched both of those, the software
Speaker 7: is very buggy, very laggy, and it really hurt initial
Speaker 7: sales for those vehicles and maybe long term sales. Rivian,
Speaker 7: on the other hand, they're in car software which really well.
Speaker 7: So Volkswagon has given billions of dollars to Rivian in
Speaker 7: order to help them with their software as a partner,
Speaker 7: and so Ribbon's able to use that money to a
Speaker 7: you know, produce vehicles. B are the R you know,
Speaker 7: the R ones. So we're talking about the R two,
Speaker 7: which is their sort of mid size suv. That's the
Speaker 7: next item coming up from their lineup. But they're also
Speaker 7: looking at enhancing their sort of future of self driving vehicles.
Speaker 7: Their their level their level three vehicles. Level three is
Speaker 7: is hands off and eyes off, so you could be
Speaker 7: reading a book, you could be reading a newspaper. A
Speaker 7: lot of automakers are working towards this right now in
Speaker 7: the United States, only encountering Nevada. Does Mercedes Benz have
Speaker 7: something like this, But on the way they're working on,
Speaker 7: you know, beginning next year with the updated R ones,
Speaker 7: you should be able to hands off but eyes on.
Speaker 7: You're still in charge of everything that happens. Use that
Speaker 7: system on any road, any road with painted lines, so
Speaker 7: you could do it on a dirt road, but on
Speaker 7: a you know, like a country road, on a back road,
Speaker 7: potentially in town. It is sort of a big leap.
Speaker 7: If you know anything about Blue Crewise or Super Crews,
Speaker 7: those both of those systems typically require you to be
Speaker 7: geo fenced onto a highway or a freeway. This goes
Speaker 7: beyond that. That said, it's still a very difficult proposition.
Speaker 7: It's still very difficult for vehicles to understand the road
Speaker 7: contextually the same way that a human does. And you
Speaker 7: still all in charge. So when you come to a
Speaker 7: stop sign, when you come to a stoplight, when you
Speaker 7: come to intersection, you still have to take over and
Speaker 7: do you know, you have to drive while as if
Speaker 7: you're just on a long straightaway, the vehicle for the
Speaker 7: most part should be able to stay in its lane
Speaker 7: without you having to take over control of the storiate.
Speaker 1: Well, how does what Rivin announce compared to what Tesla's
Speaker 1: already doing.
Speaker 7: So with Rivian's announcing and Tesla's actually already doing this
Speaker 7: as well, is they had their they're building their own silicon,
Speaker 7: which is really actually quite difficult. And when you think
Speaker 7: about your iPhones, all the chips inside of there, they're
Speaker 7: making millions and millions of those phones. You have the
Speaker 7: economics of scale, and the economics that scale comes with
Speaker 7: the ability to find, you know, problems like weird edgu cases.
Speaker 7: For automakers, you're not making millions and millions of vehicles.
Speaker 7: If you're lucky you're selling a million, most likely you're
Speaker 7: selling a couple hundred thousand a year, So they're going
Speaker 7: to have that issue. But one of the really interesting parts,
Speaker 7: and actually probably what everyone should be doing, is they're
Speaker 7: adding LEDR to their vehicles. When they're talking about a
Speaker 7: sort of hands off, eyes off vehicles, so that that
Speaker 7: means they have the redundancy of light ar, radar and
Speaker 7: cameras watching the road. It's that sort of full suite
Speaker 7: that allows if something goes, if one sensor can't figure
Speaker 7: out what's going on in the world, the other two
Speaker 7: can pick up the select.
Speaker 1: This is a really big debate. I mean it's really
Speaker 1: only a debate with Tesla because you know, Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and Tesla they continuously say like, we don't need this,
Speaker 1: we're not building this in but every car maker that
Speaker 1: I've seen is pretty much using it. And I'll be
Speaker 1: honest as someone who has a Tesla, like in the fog,
Speaker 1: I don't trust self driving because it can't see anything
Speaker 1: that I can't see. And so with light R you
Speaker 1: can you can see like two four football fields ahead
Speaker 1: with these you know this laser I get. I don't
Speaker 1: know what is it laser vision?
Speaker 7: It's it's so radar is you know, it's it's radio waves.
Speaker 7: They bounce off something, it sends this, It sends information
Speaker 7: back and the vehicle or whatever you're using, processes of
Speaker 7: that information and tells you, oh, this is so far
Speaker 7: away and it's so big. With light R it's using light.
Speaker 7: So it's lasers, that's what.
Speaker 9: It was.
Speaker 1: Later Okay, I'm just saying that sounds weird, but okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it can it can see things more. And
Speaker 1: I feel like that, I mean, that seems to be
Speaker 1: the way to go. I mean, Tesla's doing a good job,
Speaker 1: but like I feel like for overall, it's like all
Speaker 1: these companies are doing they're all doing light R now
Speaker 1: and they're really pushing to use that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the issues
Speaker 7: I think Tesla early on, you know, especially with the
Speaker 7: Model three and everything, cost their concerns are really cost base.
Speaker 7: They wouldn't say it. You know, there's no dash cam
Speaker 7: in or I'm sorry, not a dash can dash cluster
Speaker 7: in the Model three and Model why, And they'll tell
Speaker 7: us all day it's a design issue. Really, it's about costs.
Speaker 7: That's a that's an additional screen, that's an additional wine hardness,
Speaker 7: that's additional software and development you have to do. So
Speaker 7: Tesla has always been very cost conscious and light are
Speaker 7: you know, when especially when it first came ten thousand
Speaker 7: dollars per unit, is that's a lot of money. Now
Speaker 7: they're getting down, you know, five hundred dollars, one thousand
Speaker 7: dollars and so the you know, the costs of those
Speaker 7: have come down, and compound that with the fact that
Speaker 7: they really do add an additional it's just this additional
Speaker 7: sense of redundancy. And when it comes to self driving cars,
Speaker 7: the more redundancy you can add to a vehicle, the
Speaker 7: better off your you are. And it's going to make
Speaker 7: you know, like like you said, for you you don't
Speaker 7: trust it because you know, there's other technology out there
Speaker 7: they can do additional information if if if the driver
Speaker 7: doesn't trust it, then what's the point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I think it's mostly just an inclement
Speaker 1: you know, conditions and things like that. But you know, overall,
Speaker 1: it's it's come a long way, I mean a really
Speaker 1: long way on the Tesla for sure. I do want
Speaker 1: to talk about this because I get these questions all
Speaker 1: the time. People say, why can't we get these cheap
Speaker 1: Chinese evs here in the US, I mean over in China,
Speaker 1: don't they have all these like super inexpensive EV's And
Speaker 1: that's just not the case here. What's going on with that?
Speaker 7: So the cheap evs in China has to do with
Speaker 7: a lot of different For one thing, there's a lot
Speaker 7: of incentives that the government has given it to Chinese
Speaker 7: automakers and the Chinese battery manufacturers in order to essentially,
Speaker 7: uh supercharge that industry. Chinese battery technology is lead, you know,
Speaker 7: light years ahead of everyone else right now. But you know,
Speaker 7: they have they've they've gotten a lot of uh, you know,
Speaker 7: influx of money, you know, so incentives from the government.
Speaker 7: So there's that. But the ham alligation is a is
Speaker 7: a weird word, hamuligation, they want to say it out loud,
Speaker 7: but it is creating a vehicle that will meet the
Speaker 7: regulatory rules of a region. So in China, their homoligation,
Speaker 7: their regulatory rules are different than the United States. And
Speaker 7: in China people don't really drive all that last, most
Speaker 7: people are living in cities that there's a lot of congestion.
Speaker 7: It's not the United States, not you know, the big
Speaker 7: highways where people are flying down the road to eighty
Speaker 7: ninety miles an hour. Over here, we have different rules.
Speaker 7: So in order for those really cheap let's say five
Speaker 7: thousand dollars, ten thousand and fifteen thousand dollars evs to
Speaker 7: be built so that they meet the regulatory rules of
Speaker 7: the United States, they're going to be more expensive. There's
Speaker 7: really not much that I think the bid dolphin or
Speaker 7: the seagull is also sold in Mexico and it's like
Speaker 7: five ten thousand dollars more than the Chinese version.
Speaker 1: Ah okay, yeah, so.
Speaker 7: So you know they're in Mexico's f mulligation. Their regulatory
Speaker 7: system isn't quite as strict as the United States. So
Speaker 7: if you bring that car over the United States, you know,
Speaker 7: now you're talking about you know, sometime that's maybe ten
Speaker 7: fifteen being twenty five thousand United States, which is still
Speaker 7: a deal. I mean, that's really like sort of the
Speaker 7: big selling point for the slates. So we are looking
Speaker 7: at potential for less sense of evs. But you can't
Speaker 7: just grab a car from China and bring it over here.
Speaker 7: There's there's so many things that have to happen to
Speaker 7: that vehicle before you can bring it over and then
Speaker 7: of course we have you know, we can get into
Speaker 7: the tariff debate and what that means for bringing vehicles
Speaker 7: into this country, but it really does come down to
Speaker 7: making sure that the vehicle is built safely for the
Speaker 7: region it's going into and in order for those Chinese
Speaker 7: evs that we all see very they are very cheap.
Speaker 7: You're like, why can't I get a fifteen thousand dollars EV. Well,
Speaker 7: because if you bring that car over here and it
Speaker 7: get hits, it gets hit by an F one fifty,
Speaker 7: or if it hits a wall or another car or whatever,
Speaker 7: it's not going to have the same crash worthiness as
Speaker 7: the cars that are built specific for this country. And
Speaker 7: to be on it, you want to be safe when
Speaker 7: you're in.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes you do. As someone who was in an accident
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago, Yes, yes you do. It
Speaker 1: means the world ham alligation new word. Okay, thank you all.
Speaker 1: Add that to the list. Roberto Baldwin, Roberto Baldwin, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining me today. Uh what's the best
Speaker 1: way for folks to follow you? Is it on like Instagram? Twitter?
Speaker 7: I am on Instagram and I am on blue sky
Speaker 7: and it's.
Speaker 11: St r g w y s.
Speaker 1: Okay, it looks like stringways. I'll link you up on
Speaker 1: the website. Rich on tech dot tv, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today. Great conversation. Learned a lot, including
Speaker 1: a new word. Coming up. We are going to open
Speaker 1: up the feedbag rich on tech dot tv. Submit your
Speaker 1: your feedback right now. We've got some of it here.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get some more, I guess right back after this.
Speaker 1: The celebrity impersonation scams billions of dollars. They cost fans
Speaker 1: and estimated five point three billion dollars in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish the most targeted artists.
Speaker 1: So here's what happens. Hackers take over verified social media
Speaker 1: accounts and then they push fake tickets, merchandise, crypto and
Speaker 1: all kinds of VIP offers. One in five concert tickets
Speaker 1: sold on social media part of a scam or was fake.
Speaker 1: This comes from Billboard and Spikers. Spikers is a company
Speaker 1: that protects these social media accounts, so it's in their
Speaker 1: best interest to let people know that this happens. Fans
Speaker 1: are often tricked by fake meet and greets, pre sale links,
Speaker 1: giveaways and AI. Of course, as you know, is making
Speaker 1: all this stuff harder to spot. But imagine you know,
Speaker 1: you're a tailor Swift fan. You want to get tickets
Speaker 1: to the concert, and they text you and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we can offer you these tickets. They just came available
Speaker 1: one hundred bucks. Here you go times you know, hundred
Speaker 1: people they text that too. I mean it's really wild,
Speaker 1: So be careful. And like we learned last week, celebrities
Speaker 1: do not want to become your friends. They are not
Speaker 1: texting you. They're not trying to win your love. It's
Speaker 1: a one way street. Let's be real with celebrities. You
Speaker 1: see them, you love them, They're not really loving you back.
Speaker 1: I mean it's great to feel that they do, but
Speaker 1: let's be real. Australia first, I think it's the first
Speaker 1: country in the world to have a social media ban
Speaker 1: for kids under sixteen. They've officially banned TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, snapchat,
Speaker 1: x Reddit, twitch threads and others. Platforms have to remove
Speaker 1: kids that are under sixteen and block new sign ups. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is actually happening in the world. Companies that don't
Speaker 1: can pay fines. Now the government says the ban is
Speaker 1: not perfect on day one. Obviously, there's two sides to this.
Speaker 1: The kids probably don't want it, parents are probably split
Speaker 1: on it. Tech butanies obviously don't want it. But think
Speaker 1: about the addiction and mental health improvements that it will
Speaker 1: have on this country. When no kid has it, you know,
Speaker 1: nobody worries about the other kid having it. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. I've not been to Australia during this ban.
Speaker 1: I'd be curious to see, like on the ground, what
Speaker 1: it's like like our kids just completely figuring out how
Speaker 1: to get around this, our parents helping them get around it.
Speaker 1: Or is everyone just like, oh cool, we have no
Speaker 1: longer have to worry about this in our lives until
Speaker 1: after sixteen life is better. And yeah, it probably is.
Speaker 1: So we know that kids are really addicted to this stuff.
Speaker 1: Their brains are still forming, and it's probably a good
Speaker 1: thing that Australia took that, even though the tech companies
Speaker 1: do not want that to happen here in the US.
Speaker 1: Let's get to the feedback. John Wrights in, I liked
Speaker 1: your story on the ring Doorbell. I actually bought one
Speaker 1: of the first models and the company invited me to
Speaker 1: their Ring Deep Explorers group to beta test new products.
Speaker 1: It was a blast trying out all the new gear.
Speaker 1: They even gave me professionally monitored devices for life. Oh wow.
Speaker 1: They ended up using one of my suggestions, adding alarm
Speaker 1: profiles so you can switch to preset alerts and device settings.
Speaker 1: It's been a fun ride. Holden in Orange County says
Speaker 1: I first found you because you featured my company on
Speaker 1: your show. But I believe the best part is I
Speaker 1: became a fan. I really enjoy what you do. Your
Speaker 1: stories are interesting, entertaining, and you've saved my bacon more
Speaker 1: than once. A couple months ago, I was in a
Speaker 1: panic about being forced to move my desktop and laptop
Speaker 1: to Windows eleven. Then you did a segment about installing
Speaker 1: Windows security updates. Now I've got an extra year of support. Brilliant.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Holden. Yes, I remember you coming to the
Speaker 1: studio do a story. Diana in California. Thanks for your
Speaker 1: hard work and incredible knowledge. We are blessed. May God
Speaker 1: richly bless your family always. Thank you, Diana. Let's see
Speaker 1: Cammy in California. I really appreciate you. It's amazing what
Speaker 1: you do and you still answer all your emails, not
Speaker 1: all of them, but I do answer a lot. Your
Speaker 1: knowledge is so helpful, and you explain things in a
Speaker 1: way anyone can understand. And on top that, you've got
Speaker 1: a lovely family life. Thank you so much. Tell me
Speaker 1: that my kids are screaming at me because I'm trying
Speaker 1: to take their screen time away, but yes, I do
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Carolyn says, I'm a Substack newsletter subscriber. I
Speaker 1: was delighted when you took over the tech news on KFI.
Speaker 1: You're an everyman nerd in the nicest way. You're down
Speaker 1: to earth and explain things so everyone can understand. Keep
Speaker 1: it up. Thank you, Carolyn. Don we got a lot.
Speaker 1: I think it's just the holiday spirit. So many kind
Speaker 1: words this week. Don says, thank you for trying to
Speaker 1: make tech simple for the rest of us. I always
Speaker 1: appreciate how you break things down, even when topics are
Speaker 1: way beyond my brain. Dust blessings Don and Jules in
Speaker 1: Hawaii says we were on vacation and so you pop
Speaker 1: up on the Hawaii News. Very cool moment. Congratulations on
Speaker 1: your success. Jules. You know I know I'm on in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: I know we're on on TV. I'm not sure on
Speaker 1: the radio, but I always say, like, shouldn't I be
Speaker 1: able to go to Hawaii at any time? And like
Speaker 1: right off that entire trip because I'm on TV there, Yes,
Speaker 1: I would think so. But it's so funny. I don't
Speaker 1: advertise the fact that we're on in a bunch of
Speaker 1: different places, but people always text me when they're in
Speaker 1: their hotel room and they see my TV segment show
Speaker 1: up on their hotel room TV and they're like, Rich, wait,
Speaker 1: what how am I watch? It always throws people for
Speaker 1: a loop. So yes, and then the radio show, obviously
Speaker 1: we're on in different places. People don't take a picture
Speaker 1: of their radio, but they do text me and say
Speaker 1: I was traveling or I was driving through and I
Speaker 1: found you anyway, thank you. No matter how you consume
Speaker 1: this show, that's going to do it. For this episode,
Speaker 1: you can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.
Speaker 1: Go to rich on tech dot tv. I'm on social media.
Speaker 1: Please follow me there at rich on Tech. Next week
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to Matt Mazenko. He is the
Speaker 1: general manager at Nomo Robo. We've talked about them on
Speaker 1: the show. They are the big spam call and text
Speaker 1: blocking app. So he's going to talk about all the
Speaker 1: things that's happening during the holidays with scams. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. There are so many ways you
Speaker 1: can spend your time. I really do appreciate you spending
Speaker 1: it right here with me. If you want to get
Speaker 1: your feedback in for next week, submit that now at
Speaker 1: the website. Rich on tech dot TV, hit contact and
Speaker 1: I may read your message on the show. One reminder
Speaker 1: before I go, please please don't text and drive. It's
Speaker 1: not just for your safety, but for the safety of
Speaker 1: everyone around you. I know it's tempting you get that
Speaker 1: message it pops up. Turn on the feature on your
Speaker 1: phone where your phone doesn't even ring or doesn't even vibrate,
Speaker 1: or doesn't even do a notification. Put that driving mode on.
Speaker 1: It'll save you. Just I'm telling you from someone who
Speaker 1: had an accent recently. Just you don't want to get
Speaker 1: involved in that. Please. Thanks to everyone who makes the
Speaker 1: show possible. Adam in today for Bobo. Fantastic job. We
Speaker 1: got Kim on the phones. Thank you for dealing with
Speaker 1: all the calls today. My name is rich Demiro. I
Speaker 1: will talk to you real soon.