Speaker 1: Big Mobile sells out to T Mobile, YouTube TV hikes prices,
Speaker 1: the FCC fights to stop robotexts, plus your tech questions answered.
Speaker 2: What's going on.
Speaker 1: I'm Rich Dmiro and this is Rich on Tech, the
Speaker 1: show where I talk about the tech stuff I think
Speaker 1: you should know about and answer your questions about technology.
Speaker 1: I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Phone lines are now open one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give
Speaker 1: me a call if you have a question about technology
Speaker 1: or otherwise just want to chat.
Speaker 2: A big news this week.
Speaker 1: Two big stories, actually a lot of big stories, but
Speaker 1: two that really resonated on my Twitter, and that's usually
Speaker 1: where I figure out what people care about, for better
Speaker 1: or for worse. But T Mobile is buying mint Mobile,
Speaker 1: which the irony is so strong here because Mint Mobile
Speaker 1: was for folks who wanted to stick it to the
Speaker 1: man by not subscribing to a big wireless company. And
Speaker 1: now Mint Mobile sells out to the man. So Mint Mobile,
Speaker 1: which you know, you know them for their quirky advertising.
Speaker 1: Ryan Reynolds is an owner. They had these plans that
Speaker 1: were kind of like Costco. The more you bought in advance,
Speaker 1: the cheaper it was. So if you bought three months
Speaker 1: of service, six months of service, you paid for a
Speaker 1: year in advance. That's how you saved money. They had
Speaker 1: plans as low as fifteen bucks a month. It was
Speaker 1: a good value. In fact, I have a Mint line
Speaker 1: as a tester line, not my main line, and I've
Speaker 1: got a family member that has been on Mint for
Speaker 1: many years. And they would tell a lot of people
Speaker 1: about Mint saying I pay fifteen bucks a month, and
Speaker 1: you know, I get everything I need And people would
Speaker 1: be like, how do you do that? I don't understand.
Speaker 1: That's of course with some limited data. But T Mobile
Speaker 1: why did they buy Mint Mobile? Well, they want their marketing.
Speaker 1: They want the way that they market things. That's really
Speaker 1: what they purchased here for oh a cool one point
Speaker 1: three five billion dollars.
Speaker 2: So Ryan Reynolds made out in this deal.
Speaker 1: They also get two other companies that this two other
Speaker 1: brands that this company owns. Kayena Corporation is the is
Speaker 1: the parent company. They get Mint Mobile, Ultramobile, and then
Speaker 1: a wholesaler called Plum. So this is the quote that
Speaker 1: really stuck with me over the long term will benefit
Speaker 1: from applying the marketing formula Mint has become famous for
Speaker 1: across more parts of T Mobile, so that's what they want.
Speaker 1: They want the marketing, they want the way that Mint
Speaker 1: Mobile does business, and they're going to keep the Mint
Speaker 1: Mobile brands around. But realistically, the way I see this
Speaker 1: not good for consumers. It's never good for consumers when
Speaker 1: a big company gobbles up a competitor, small company because
Speaker 1: people went to that small company. They didn't want to
Speaker 1: be with the big company, and now they have no choice.
Speaker 1: They are folded into them, and many people probably wondering
Speaker 1: do I stick with Mint Mobile. Nothing's going to change overnight,
Speaker 1: but over time realistically T Mobile are they going to
Speaker 1: compete with themselves? I mean, these are two different kind
Speaker 1: of segments. T Mobile trying to push the ultra premium
Speaker 1: you know, eighty dollars a month plans for unlimited everything,
Speaker 1: whereas Mint Mobile is pushing the lower end plans for
Speaker 1: the value oriented consumer. So, if you're with Mint Mobile,
Speaker 1: do you need to switch right now? Probably not, but
Speaker 1: you might have your eye on a different carrier, a
Speaker 1: more independent brand. Even though we all know that all
Speaker 1: of these brands are the same. They all run on
Speaker 1: one of three networks in America, which is T Mobile,
Speaker 1: Verizon or AT and T. I've got a guest coming
Speaker 1: on the show from whistle Out, Sherry Riggs.
Speaker 2: She is going to talk more about this. It's not
Speaker 2: really a merger.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a purchase and some of the alternative
Speaker 1: plans out there, and just kind of get her take
Speaker 1: on this whole thing. She covers wireless all day long,
Speaker 1: so we'll hear what she has to say. The other
Speaker 1: big story is a price increase, and we've gotten a
Speaker 1: lot of these price increases. YouTube TV now the latest
Speaker 1: to raise their prices. I was very excited about YouTube TV.
Speaker 1: I'm a subscriber there as well, and it was very
Speaker 1: exciting because the other company I work for, KTLA in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, they announced that they are coming to YouTube tv,
Speaker 1: so the channel I work for on TV would be
Speaker 1: available streaming first time ever, and that was exciting. At
Speaker 1: sixty five dollars a month, now it's going to seventy
Speaker 1: two to ninety nine a month, So we take the good,
Speaker 1: we take the bad. Eight extra dollars a month not
Speaker 1: make or break for a lot of folks, but it's
Speaker 1: the principle of things, you're getting more and are you
Speaker 1: really watching eight more dollars worth of stuff?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Current subscribers will see this new update on April eighteenth.
Speaker 1: That's when the price change kicks in to soften the
Speaker 1: blow a little bit. The four K add on, which
Speaker 1: used to be twenty dollars a month, which is wild,
Speaker 1: is only nine to ninety nine now. So realistically, if
Speaker 1: you're subscribing to YouTube TV, you're now paying seventy three
Speaker 1: dollars a month for one hundred channels you don't watch
Speaker 1: and three channels that you actually watch. And YouTube TV
Speaker 1: is fantastic, don't get me wrong. They give you unlimited DVR.
Speaker 1: They just gave you the new feature where I can
Speaker 1: watch four different things at once, which is perfect timing
Speaker 1: with the final four happening March Madness.
Speaker 2: So it's cool, but is it worth seventy three dollars
Speaker 2: a month?
Speaker 1: I mean, we all canceled cable because we wanted to
Speaker 1: get away from these giant cable prices, and now here
Speaker 1: they are again. So I don't know, but this made
Speaker 1: me think about the idea of the bundle.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Companies love bundling because math is hard for us. We
Speaker 1: all wanted a la carte, right, this is what we
Speaker 1: all went to streaming for. But now, as we've all realized,
Speaker 1: you start subscribing to all these individual streaming services and
Speaker 1: they add up really fast. See, you get more money
Speaker 1: for a bundle, but you also get stuff that you
Speaker 1: don't need. For example, the Triple Play. How many people
Speaker 1: have paid for phone lines they don't need, just to
Speaker 1: get that deal on cable TV and Internet. I know
Speaker 1: many many people, including myself, did this. The Triple Play
Speaker 1: was like ninety nine bucks for everything you needed Internet,
Speaker 1: cable TV, your phone line that you never needed, and
Speaker 1: if you bought them separately, it'd be way more. YouTube Premium.
Speaker 1: I've got a subscription to that. I get YouTube music included.
Speaker 1: I don't need YouTube music. I already pay for another
Speaker 1: music service, but yet there it is, and I feel
Speaker 1: guilty because I need to stream on it, because I
Speaker 1: need to pay, you know, get my money's worth YouTube Premium.
Speaker 1: By the way, price for that just went up. Apple One,
Speaker 1: I'm a subscriber there. I pay like thirty three dollars
Speaker 1: a month. I know it's absolutely insane how much I
Speaker 1: pay for Apple One, but I need two out of
Speaker 1: these seven things I get included there, I get two
Speaker 1: terabytes of storage, which I love because my kids have
Speaker 1: their iPads and they're recording things all the time. And
Speaker 1: you know, you get that message on your iPhone that
Speaker 1: you're out of iCloud storage. And we had that for
Speaker 1: many years because I resisted, and now I finally gave in.
Speaker 1: We don't get the message anymore. But now we have
Speaker 1: Apple News. We have Apple Fitness, which I do like.
Speaker 1: We have Apple Music, which again don't really want, but
Speaker 1: I have and I use it. Nothing against Apple Music,
Speaker 1: but it's just one of these things that I feel
Speaker 1: guilty because I pay for it that I want to
Speaker 1: use it.
Speaker 2: What else do I get with Apple One?
Speaker 1: I get like, a, oh, there's so many things Apple
Speaker 1: News I mentioned that I get.
Speaker 2: Let me let me look down the list here.
Speaker 1: Oh, Apple TV. My wife watches one show on there,
Speaker 1: so we get that Apple Arcade. My kids used to
Speaker 1: play games on that iCloud. Okay, we use that Apple
Speaker 1: News plus three hundred newspapers and magazines. I haven't looked
Speaker 1: at one of them. Apple Fitness plus I do like
Speaker 1: and I do use. So again, a couple of things
Speaker 1: I like, but I don't need it all. Verizon now
Speaker 1: they're doing a bundle. They're giving people Netflix free for
Speaker 1: a year, but you have to described to something else
Speaker 1: to get that.
Speaker 2: Disney Plus.
Speaker 1: I subscribe to Disney plus, Hulu plus, ESPN plus, so
Speaker 1: many pluses in these things. It's cheaper to get them
Speaker 1: together than to get them separate. Bundles are sticky. Companies
Speaker 1: know this. They know we love the bundle because it
Speaker 1: feels like we're getting a value. T Mobile plans, they
Speaker 1: include Netflix, they include Major League Soccer. Airlines they offer
Speaker 1: a bundle. You buy a ticket. They say, hey, for
Speaker 1: an extra sixty bucks, you can board the plane faster,
Speaker 1: you can get a better seat. In the end, we
Speaker 1: are spending more, but we're probably using less. But yet,
Speaker 1: as consumers, we have these brains that are just wired
Speaker 1: a certain way. You feel good when you're getting a value.
Speaker 1: You go to a fast food place. It's cheaper to
Speaker 1: buy the value meal than it is to buy the
Speaker 1: fries and the burger by themselves.
Speaker 2: It's just the way it works.
Speaker 1: It's marketing one oh one, and we fall hook line
Speaker 1: and sinker. So YouTube TV, yes, what I like to
Speaker 1: just choose the fifteen channels that I might actually watch
Speaker 1: on YouTube TV for ten fifteen twenty dollars a month. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: will they ever let me do that? No, nobody lets
Speaker 1: you do that. You always have to buy a bundle.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, this show is a package deal. We've
Speaker 1: got three hours of tech to talk about coming up
Speaker 1: on today's show. We've got so much great stuff to
Speaker 1: talk about. The FCC has new rules to help stop robotexts.
Speaker 1: We'll see if those are gonna work. I've got three
Speaker 1: great guests this week. Ben Parr is gonna join us.
Speaker 1: He's gonna talk AI and the impact on your job. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's gonna affect me, it's gonna affect you, It's gonna
Speaker 1: affect everyone this week alone, Microsoft, Google, and Chat GPT
Speaker 1: all have brand new developments when it comes to AI.
Speaker 1: Like I mentioned, Sherry Riggs from Whistle Out, She's gonna
Speaker 1: join us to talk alternatives to mint Mobile and just
Speaker 1: talk about the state of the wireless industry in general.
Speaker 1: And then later Ember CEO Klay Alexander is gonna join us.
Speaker 1: He's gonna talk about their new self warming baby bottle. Now,
Speaker 1: thankfully I am out of that stage with the whole
Speaker 1: baby bottle thing. But I remember warming these things up.
Speaker 1: They're like a gremlin. The baby bottle you can't you
Speaker 1: can't put it in the microwave. There's so many rules
Speaker 1: about the baby bottle. So we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: that as well. You are listening to Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Your calls at triple eight Rich.
Speaker 2: One oh one.
Speaker 1: The phone lines are open right now. Give me a
Speaker 1: call eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. If you have a question, you've got a
Speaker 1: thought about technology, I want to hear from you. We've
Speaker 1: got so much more to talk about in this show. Ah,
Speaker 1: can you tell them fired up today? Yes, that's the
Speaker 1: energy I want on this show. Give me a call
Speaker 1: if you share that enthusiasm. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich
Speaker 1: dmiro online at richontech dot tv. You can find me
Speaker 1: on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all the regular places. Taking your
Speaker 1: calls right now at triple eight Rich one O one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Gilda is in La Mesa, California. Gilda, you are on
Speaker 1: with Rich How you doing?
Speaker 4: Excuse me? Hi, Thank you for taking my call. I
Speaker 4: need to purchase a new modem, and I'm wondering if
Speaker 4: a separate router is better or just a combo of
Speaker 4: a modem and router together and it whichever, And also
Speaker 4: if you could recommend a brand to me?
Speaker 2: Okay, So what company are you going?
Speaker 5: With?
Speaker 4: Cox? From my internet service?
Speaker 1: And so they offer you, pardon me, they offer you
Speaker 1: a selection of Is it a rental fee every.
Speaker 2: Month or what?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 4: I buy my own?
Speaker 2: Oh so you have to buy your own?
Speaker 4: No, I don't have to, but I prefer to buy
Speaker 4: my own.
Speaker 2: Why And they.
Speaker 4: Did send me a list of all the compatible products
Speaker 4: is quite a huge list.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, why do you want to buy your own?
Speaker 2: I'm just curious.
Speaker 4: Mine is about fifteen years old and it's been kind
Speaker 4: of slowing down. So when I contacted them, they could
Speaker 4: tell on my end that my router is making my
Speaker 4: internet flow. And I don't have cable, I just stream everything.
Speaker 4: I have Roku, right.
Speaker 2: And so, how you've been with this company for how
Speaker 2: many years? Fifteen?
Speaker 1: You said?
Speaker 4: Oh, my router, I mean my modem is about fifteen,
Speaker 4: but I've been with cos for probably like twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, So, and do they charge a rental fee?
Speaker 1: I don't know, because every company's a little differ.
Speaker 2: They do. How much is that do?
Speaker 4: I really don't know. I would imagine about fifteen dollars
Speaker 4: a month.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, at fifteen dollars a month, you should probably
Speaker 1: purchase because.
Speaker 2: You'll break you.
Speaker 4: I would rather do the math.
Speaker 2: So okay.
Speaker 1: So the question is do you get an all in
Speaker 1: one or do you get you know, two separate devices.
Speaker 1: I personally would get one that's all in one. I
Speaker 1: mean that isn't that just a little bit easier?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, I prefer to have an all in one.
Speaker 1: The question is if you get in all in one.
Speaker 1: There's a list that they have on their website, so
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you can't. It depends like kind
Speaker 1: of what you want out of this. Do you have
Speaker 1: like a mesh network already? Like are you using how
Speaker 1: like how many rooms are you trying to get this in?
Speaker 4: Oh? Just in one room?
Speaker 2: Oh? Okay, just in one room?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: In that case you can go with one room. Okay.
Speaker 1: In that case, you can go with a very simple router.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm looking at their list that they have
Speaker 1: on here of the combo ones, and I mean any
Speaker 1: of these will work. You probably want a Doosis three
Speaker 1: point oh. Have they mentioned that because that gives you
Speaker 1: the highest speeds?
Speaker 4: No, they did, but yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's different levels of modems, and the three point
Speaker 1: zero is the most recent one, So that's the one
Speaker 1: that I would recommend getting. As for the specific brand,
Speaker 1: I mean there's really any of these are going to work.
Speaker 1: A linksis you know, rus is the brand that they
Speaker 1: use that most of the time they give out, But realistically,
Speaker 1: any of these are going to work. I would just
Speaker 1: kind of see which one's available on Amazon, like just
Speaker 1: look down their list. I mean Cox has it on
Speaker 1: their website of all the different cable modems that they certify. Okay,
Speaker 1: but I would definitely go with a three point zero
Speaker 1: to get the fastest speed, and that'll keep. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: if it's fifteen years old, it's it's it doesn't. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't accommodate the faster speed. So you may upgrade
Speaker 1: to the one. What internet speed are you getting? What
Speaker 1: are you paying for?
Speaker 4: I think is I have the lowest one. I think
Speaker 4: it's fifty fifty.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I mean you don't need the three point
Speaker 1: oh to get the fifty, but I'm just future proofing things.
Speaker 1: If you ever feel like you want to upgrade to
Speaker 1: a faster speed, you'll want that faster modem.
Speaker 4: But okay, excellent, But.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would just do a little quick price comparison
Speaker 1: of a couple of brands. You're when you start searching
Speaker 1: down the list of the ones that are available, you're
Speaker 1: going to see very quickly, like which one is on Amazon,
Speaker 1: quickly and easily, Like if it's Prime next day, that's
Speaker 1: a pretty popular one.
Speaker 2: I just go with that.
Speaker 1: I would stick to like the main brands, whether it's
Speaker 1: net Gear or I mean they have a TP link
Speaker 1: on here. I mean, there's so many that they give you.
Speaker 1: There's probably the list of like fifteen of them.
Speaker 4: Okay, wonderful, Thank you so much for your health.
Speaker 2: All right, Gilda, enjoy the new modem.
Speaker 4: Okay, thank you.
Speaker 2: All right, take care. All right.
Speaker 1: Let me talk about the FCC with its new rules
Speaker 1: on scam text. This is such a problem that I
Speaker 1: don't know if the FCC is going to solve them
Speaker 1: with these new rules, but they are working to do it,
Speaker 1: and we've seen the amazing progress they've made with spam calls.
Speaker 1: Kind of kidding, we still get those two. But they
Speaker 1: do have new rules so these new rules are going
Speaker 1: to require mobile service providers to block certain robotext messages
Speaker 1: that are highly likely to be illegal. They say illegal.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's gone to jail for setting a robotext.
Speaker 1: But you know, legitimate companies do by these rules. The
Speaker 1: problem is it's folks that are not legitimate that are
Speaker 1: sending these things.
Speaker 2: They don't really care about the rules. The FCC says that.
Speaker 1: Robotechs pose a unique threat to consumers because they are
Speaker 1: hard to ignore. That is very true. They also contain
Speaker 1: links to phishing websites or websites that inn install that
Speaker 1: can install malware, and of course we're tempted to click
Speaker 1: these links even though we know many of them are fake.
Speaker 1: The FCC the new rule requires blocking of text messages
Speaker 1: that appear to come from phone numbers that are unlikely
Speaker 1: to transmit text messages. This includes invalid, unallocated or unused numbers.
Speaker 1: So they're going to go through sort of a process
Speaker 1: to figure out, Okay, is this number legitimate?
Speaker 2: Should it be setting a text?
Speaker 1: No, okay, We're going to criticize and look at this
Speaker 1: number a little bit closer and hopefully block those texts.
Speaker 1: And that's of course on the provider, so these providers
Speaker 1: have to start doing this. The FCC recommends that consumers
Speaker 1: take steps to protect themselves, and I would recommend this
Speaker 1: as well. Do not interact in any way with suspicious texts,
Speaker 1: do not click on the links, or do not write
Speaker 1: back to them.
Speaker 2: That's the best thing you can do.
Speaker 1: You can also forward unwanted spams to our spam texts
Speaker 1: to spam spam seven seven two six, and just delete
Speaker 1: suspicious texts. I know a lot of these things are
Speaker 1: going around right now because it says you've got a
Speaker 1: package delivery or your Netflix account is canceled.
Speaker 2: You got to take action right now. Just ignore them.
Speaker 1: The best thing to do is not to reply because,
Speaker 1: just like a spam email, the second you reply to
Speaker 1: these messages is sends a signal to these spammers that
Speaker 1: this is a good phone number. And you do not
Speaker 1: want them to know that your number is good because
Speaker 1: guess what they're going to send more?
Speaker 2: All right, Coming up.
Speaker 1: Next, we're going to talk to Ben Parr about AI
Speaker 1: and the impact on your job. Plus your calls triple
Speaker 1: eight Rich one oh one. You are listening to Rich
Speaker 1: on tech more or right after this welcome back to
Speaker 1: Rich on tech. My name is Rich DeMuro and another
Speaker 1: week in the tech world, and just another major announcement
Speaker 1: by tech companies when it comes to AI. In fact,
Speaker 1: three major announcements. Google they embedded AI into Docs and Gmail.
Speaker 1: Microsoft put AI into Office three six or now they
Speaker 1: call it Microsoft three sixty five. We're talking word Excel,
Speaker 1: PowerPoint outlook, teams, all those good things. And then open
Speaker 1: Ai released GPT four, the next version of their AI,
Speaker 1: just as we're getting used to the old version. Let
Speaker 1: me let me tell you about some of these some
Speaker 1: of these developments here. Okay, So Google first off says
Speaker 1: that they are embedding generative AI into Google Docs and
Speaker 1: into Gmail. So, like I've mentioned on the show before,
Speaker 1: you no longer need to do a first draft of
Speaker 1: anything AI is going to write that first draft. Then
Speaker 1: you've got Microsoft three sixty five. They're calling it Copilot,
Speaker 1: so they're embedding this in word Excel, PowerPoint Outlook, and
Speaker 1: teams and in teams specifically. This is how wild it is.
Speaker 1: The Copilot, which is their AI name, is gonna listen
Speaker 1: to what everyone's saying on that team's call and teams
Speaker 1: is kind of like zoom if you're not familiar with it.
Speaker 1: They're gonna listen to what everyone's saying and discussing. Then
Speaker 1: if you come to the meeting late, the AI will
Speaker 1: just summarize what everyone's saying, and not just summarize, but
Speaker 1: also give you kind of an update. How are people
Speaker 1: feeling about this? Here to talk about all these developments
Speaker 1: is Ben Parr, journalist and author of The Social Analyst,
Speaker 1: a newsletter available on substack at benpar dot subsack dot com.
Speaker 1: I'll put the link on my website. Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. All right, I think we got Ben here.
Speaker 6: Ben?
Speaker 2: Are you there? Yeah, okay, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: And congratulations, I heard that you just got engaged, faccurate.
Speaker 7: Thank you really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: That's the start of a whole new journey and very exciting.
Speaker 1: So congrats on that. Let's talk about AI. So these
Speaker 1: announcements by Google, Microsoft and Chat GPT to GPT four
Speaker 1: this week, which one struck you as the most interesting?
Speaker 7: So GPT four is a fundamental change to the large
Speaker 7: language models that are powering this big raws and AI.
Speaker 7: So for everyone out there, GPT is the technology behind Chat.
Speaker 7: GPT the fastest growing tech product in human history. Which
Speaker 7: is crazy when you think about it. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 7: it was run on a product called GPT three and
Speaker 7: GPT three point five. So this week the company behind
Speaker 7: chat GPT released GPT four and it is significantly better
Speaker 7: at sounding humans, at giving more detailed results, at not
Speaker 7: making mistakes and errors as often, at speaking other languages,
Speaker 7: and to do it can see And what that means
Speaker 7: is if you uploaded a picture to GPT four, as
Speaker 7: you asked what was going on in the picture.
Speaker 2: It could tell you, which is incredible.
Speaker 1: And you know, I kind of tweeted about this, but
Speaker 1: this whole reality of kind of implications of this, there's
Speaker 1: just so many. But I'm sure that like the social
Speaker 1: media networks like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok are all using AI
Speaker 1: to scan what we upload, especially images. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like we've used hashtags in the past, but do you
Speaker 1: think there will be a need for those in the future.
Speaker 7: It's going in a crazy direction so fast it's hard
Speaker 7: to tell what will exactly happen. So let's break down
Speaker 7: a little bit. Both Google and Microsoft announced tools that
Speaker 7: will automatically help you write your documents and turn those
Speaker 7: documents into presentations and help you write your email. If
Speaker 7: it's in all of your Gmail, for example, a lot
Speaker 7: of your emails back and forth, you might be AI
Speaker 7: generated or at least partially AI generated. You're going to
Speaker 7: see a whole different way in which people are doing productivity.
Speaker 7: I saw, for example, somebody earlier this week who asked
Speaker 7: GPT four or advice on how to make the most
Speaker 7: money possible and started following it's advice and started making money.
Speaker 7: I'm actually going to ask it to tell me how
Speaker 7: to triple my newsletter subscribers, and it gave really good advice.
Speaker 7: There's like a lot of crazy things that are happening
Speaker 7: all at once.
Speaker 1: What's wild about this is it's so much more natural
Speaker 1: than the previous way of searching. Right if you wanted
Speaker 1: to look to see how to increase your newsletter subscribers,
Speaker 1: there's a million websites that can tell you little tips
Speaker 1: and things. But the way that this sort of summarizes
Speaker 1: and just makes it so clear is really what's most
Speaker 1: interesting to me. Like, for instance, i wanted to cook
Speaker 1: a dinner, a corn beef dinner right for Saint Patrick's Day,
Speaker 1: and I just asked the chat GPT and also being AI,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to try them both. I said, hey,
Speaker 1: make me a shopping list for a traditional corn beef dinner,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, they both did it in different ways.
Speaker 1: But it's just that kind of idea of just asking
Speaker 1: our computers to do stuff and they really give us
Speaker 1: the results that we're kind of looking for very quickly
Speaker 1: and easily.
Speaker 7: The chat is the most natural interface that we are
Speaker 7: used to and that we as humans used, and so
Speaker 7: it makes sense to have this go give me back
Speaker 7: and forth in chat, and I kind of think of
Speaker 7: chat GPT and some of the AI to was kind
Speaker 7: of like a brainstorming buddy, somebody who is not going
Speaker 7: to judge you, somebody who has access to the Internet
Speaker 7: and can give you lots of advice, will not always
Speaker 7: be right, but will often be correct. And I think
Speaker 7: that's how a lot more people are starting to use
Speaker 7: it to boot too as well. It's just really smart
Speaker 7: at a lot of things. So GPT three point five
Speaker 7: it tested in the Mottom ten percent of test takers
Speaker 7: for the bar exam, GPT four tested in the top
Speaker 7: ten percent. That's how quickly this technology is advancing month
Speaker 7: by month.
Speaker 1: It can also do ap calculus. According to your newsletter,
Speaker 1: the Social analyst. It can do AP calculus, AP chemistry,
Speaker 1: AP physics better. Like you said, it does the visual inputs,
Speaker 1: So now you can pop a picture into this and
Speaker 1: it can describe what's happening in that picture. My kid
Speaker 1: watched the video about Google Docs and how it was
Speaker 1: doing AI in there, and he was like, this is incredible, Dad,
Speaker 1: this is just wild what it's going to be able
Speaker 1: to do. So what I've been saying is the first
Speaker 1: draft is pretty much always going to be AI at
Speaker 1: this point, and then we're going to be, as humans
Speaker 1: the ones to to sort of figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: how do we polish this, Which brings me to the
Speaker 1: job situation.
Speaker 2: What is the impact on jobs when it comes to AI.
Speaker 7: This is one of the big debates that we are
Speaker 7: all having right now. And the founder of Open AI,
Speaker 7: his name is Sam Maltman. He also founded an incubator
Speaker 7: called by Combinator. He's said before that he believes when
Speaker 7: there's this thing called AGI artificial general intelligence basically an
Speaker 7: AI where you could it's like a human, that the
Speaker 7: idea of capitalism itself will will be obsolete. I'm not
Speaker 7: sure where I fall on that debate, but what I
Speaker 7: will say is that you can be two or four
Speaker 7: times as productive as you were before as a writer
Speaker 7: or a presentation maker or as an artist with AI.
Speaker 7: And the results may very well be that, while we're
Speaker 7: not going to eliminate all jaw that a company could
Speaker 7: be built with a lot less people, it's entirely plausible
Speaker 7: that someone builds a billion dollar company with just a
Speaker 7: small handful of people as a result of AI. So
Speaker 7: there's real questions to be asked. Politicians and epsids are
Speaker 7: asking those questions. It's not like past times, in my opinion,
Speaker 7: where we were able to immediately find a whole brand
Speaker 7: new set of jobs.
Speaker 8: We are going to.
Speaker 7: Be navigating this in real time. It's going to be both.
Speaker 7: I was writing this in my newsletter. It's both bogs
Speaker 7: firing and a little scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's scary.
Speaker 1: It's also scary how fast it's all changed and how
Speaker 1: and how right on it is. So, just for one example,
Speaker 1: so I write scripts for TV. I write like my
Speaker 1: little script of my we call it a package. It's
Speaker 1: a story that I air on TV, and it's written
Speaker 1: in a certain way for TV. Right, it's short, it's sweet,
Speaker 1: it's got sound bites. And then I asked chat ebt
Speaker 1: or rewrite this as a blog post yesterday, because then
Speaker 1: I post it to the website. But you know, you
Speaker 1: can't write a script on the website because it's just
Speaker 1: it's not the way you read stuff. And so I
Speaker 1: watched this transform what I had written into something that
Speaker 1: was much more a blog post, and it was It
Speaker 1: was interesting to me because I'm sitting there going hmmm,
Speaker 1: this is like ready to go, but I didn't feel
Speaker 1: right using it because the AI wrote it. And so
Speaker 1: it's like these little questions we're going to have along
Speaker 1: the way of how do we navigate this new landscape?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 7: Absolutely, and look, you know, the AI does not understand
Speaker 7: human condition. There are certain things like writing the you know,
Speaker 7: a super amazing script that people will love that the
Speaker 7: AI probably can't get to. It's still too generic, but
Speaker 7: it's getting more advanced, and if someone really knows how
Speaker 7: to talk to an AI like chow ChiPT, they can
Speaker 7: get a really strong first result and start moving from there.
Speaker 7: And yes, transforming content from one type to another is
Speaker 7: a real strength of AI. I feel like in the
Speaker 7: next year, the idea that you would build a presentation
Speaker 7: from scratch, like a PowerPoint will not exist anymore. You
Speaker 7: will literally just type in some notes in a doc,
Speaker 7: ask it to translate into a presentation, and it's going
Speaker 7: to make that. And that's in the next couple months
Speaker 7: with both Microsoft and Google. Who knows what will happened
Speaker 7: three months from now.
Speaker 2: Absolutely well, I think we're gonna leave it there.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people will be happy to
Speaker 1: not have to do a presentation ever. Again, well, this
Speaker 1: still have to make the presentation, they just won't have
Speaker 1: to build it. Ben Par, thanks so much for joining
Speaker 1: me today. I appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Thank you and everyone.
Speaker 8: It will be only right, I promise.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we need that reassurance, all right, Benpar dot
Speaker 1: substack dot com. The newsletter is the Social Analyst. I'll
Speaker 1: put a link there on my website. Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot TV.
Speaker 2: All right, coming up.
Speaker 1: If you have a comment or a question about technology,
Speaker 1: give me a call at triple eight rich.
Speaker 2: One oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. If you've got a Samsung or a Pixel phone,
Speaker 1: you want to hear about how hackers might be able
Speaker 1: to take control with just your phone number, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you about that and how to protect yourself. All coming
Speaker 1: up here. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro hanging out with
Speaker 1: you here talking technology. Let's see we got Ryan and
Speaker 1: North Hollywood. Ryan, you have a comment about the T
Speaker 1: mobile acquisition.
Speaker 9: All right, Well, I'm a met Mobile customer and I'm
Speaker 9: gonna keep using online prepaid through October of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 5: But I'm on Apple now.
Speaker 9: But I kind of soured on them for security reasons
Speaker 9: about a month ago. Based on the custom APN. They
Speaker 9: have Android users user, they direct Android users use.
Speaker 2: Oh what, well, what, what's what's wrong with that?
Speaker 5: Well, there's stop instructions directly to an APN where if
Speaker 5: like if you just pop the sin cardon and go,
Speaker 5: or if you're using Apple that you know Apple's walled
Speaker 5: garden doesn't let you do that. But T Mobile by
Speaker 5: default forces you to connect using IBV six and the
Speaker 5: mobile custom APM has a i TV four connections that
Speaker 5: it shoots you to almost every time. And if you
Speaker 5: check like your IP address using third party site, that
Speaker 5: shows the carrier. But if you look on internal Android settings,
Speaker 5: that APN redirects to IP addresses that four out of
Speaker 5: five times will show up as the Department of the Fense,
Speaker 5: and like that fifth or sixth time will show up
Speaker 5: as a Ministry.
Speaker 3: Of Defense in the UK.
Speaker 9: And if you who is query those IP addresses, like
Speaker 9: mornings come up saying you're not allowed to query this
Speaker 9: except for certain legal reasons. And I think it's because
Speaker 9: all these MVNOs there, a lot of them are sold
Speaker 9: to people traveling to the US that are not registering
Speaker 9: them or therefore GPS tracking the quip more alarm systems.
Speaker 9: But from a security standpoint, I don't think it's good.
Speaker 9: I think, you know, I'm not overly word. I'm going
Speaker 9: to keep using them. I have private d DNS, I
Speaker 9: use encrypted chat, I'm on Apple.
Speaker 8: You know, I feel.
Speaker 9: Okay about it, but I think ultimately and the enos
Speaker 9: are not a good way to go forward with the.
Speaker 1: Consumer Interesting, all right, well, that's uh, you got a
Speaker 1: lot packed in there, and I see wow. I mean
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of a conspiracy theory in there.
Speaker 1: I understand that, and I think that for most people
Speaker 1: it's probably you know, maybe not a consideration, but I
Speaker 1: would agree that if you feel like this is redirecting
Speaker 1: to places that may be monitoring your traffic. Then yeah,
Speaker 1: I would definitely use a VPN or use some sort
Speaker 1: of cloaking mechanism if you're worried about that. But that's
Speaker 1: that's an interesting point, Ryan, and thank you for bringing
Speaker 1: that up. Just one more thing to think about when
Speaker 1: we when we make these decisions. All right, let's go
Speaker 1: to Dennis in Marina del Rey. Dennis, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: Hey, Rich, I appreciate your program. You're doing a great job,
Speaker 3: my friend.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 3: Hey. I've got a Windows ten machine. It's a desktop machine,
Speaker 3: and it's a four K monitor, an LG monitor, and
Speaker 3: I but older guys seventy eight head cataract surgery, so
Speaker 3: I don't see things quite as clearly, even with corrective classes.
Speaker 3: But when I go in and I see the list.
Speaker 3: In other words, if I open a drive, I see
Speaker 3: the list of everything on the left hand side, and
Speaker 3: then if I click on a folder on the left
Speaker 3: hand side, it opens it on the right and you
Speaker 3: can adjust the size from small icons the larger icons
Speaker 3: to a list. That's not a problem. How do I
Speaker 3: adjust the list on the left hand side so that
Speaker 3: it's much larger.
Speaker 1: So you're talking when you're inside a folder, right Okay,
Speaker 1: well I think at this point you so, have you
Speaker 1: gone through the standard kind of right click the desktop
Speaker 1: going into view.
Speaker 2: Have you done that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have it, and it will work on the
Speaker 3: right hand side. It'll make the folders larger. But the
Speaker 3: list on the left hand side, the list all of
Speaker 3: the files on the drive, it's just too small.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: It sounds like this point you might want to go
Speaker 1: into the accessibility settings.
Speaker 2: Have you gone into there? Okay?
Speaker 1: So, uh, Windows Icon plus, set Windows icon settings, and
Speaker 1: then ease of access and I believe, I believe you
Speaker 1: can press Windows key plus you to get there directly.
Speaker 1: Uh you know the Windows key right, the little one
Speaker 1: next to the keyboard. So that is where you're going
Speaker 1: to find all of the bigger I should say, the
Speaker 1: deeper settings for specifically for accessibility. So we're talking ways
Speaker 1: to make the text bigger across everything, make everything bigger.
Speaker 1: If you just want to make everything bigger on the screen,
Speaker 1: you can do that. If you want to change the
Speaker 1: size of the mouse pointer, the colors, the contrast, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. The main settings that you're seeing when you
Speaker 1: go into the view is just the standard kind of
Speaker 1: you know, do you want your icons bigger, smaller, whatever.
Speaker 1: But accessibility is really where you're going to get those
Speaker 1: those fine controls, and I think that's what you're looking
Speaker 1: for at this point because that's going to make everything
Speaker 1: bigger on the screen, which is what you're saying right
Speaker 1: you need you need right now.
Speaker 3: I appreciate that. And a great shout out to your
Speaker 3: screender at Kim chapter. She's still there, so she's doing
Speaker 3: a great job for you. Really love your program. Just
Speaker 3: wish you guys growing on Sunday too. I miss you on.
Speaker 1: Sunday, man, I know, but you know I do work
Speaker 1: five days a week at my other job. So as
Speaker 1: much as my wife was excited to have me gone
Speaker 1: both days on the weekend, I said, I think one
Speaker 1: day is enough for three hours.
Speaker 3: So absolutely all righty God bless you have a great day.
Speaker 1: All right, Dennis, appreciate the call, Thank you, and thanks
Speaker 1: for the kind words.
Speaker 2: So many things.
Speaker 1: So what I love about this show is the unique
Speaker 1: aspect of what everyone everyone has different sort of like
Speaker 1: wants and needs when it comes to tech, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, we all come from this certain perspective that
Speaker 1: we have in our world. Because let's be honest, our
Speaker 1: world revolves around us. And so what I love, and
Speaker 1: I also love this as a journalist is I get
Speaker 1: to see the world from so many different perspectives, and
Speaker 1: I love that aspect of things because if you're just
Speaker 1: involved in yourself, there's a whole nother world out there.
Speaker 1: Believe me, it's not just all about you. I mean
Speaker 1: sometimes it feels like it is, and in your life
Speaker 1: it is, but there's so much more out there. All right,
Speaker 1: let me tell you about this story, the Samsungs and
Speaker 1: the Pixels. Okay, so there is a security issue that
Speaker 1: a lot of phones have already gotten an update, but
Speaker 1: some have not. So if you have a Google Pixel
Speaker 1: or a Samsung phone, Google has said hold on, there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a problem. Hackers could take over
Speaker 1: your phone without you knowing. So there's a couple of vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: If you have a Samsung device S twenty two, the
Speaker 1: M thirty three, whole bunch of these M lines and
Speaker 1: the A lines, a Vivo device, or a Pixel six
Speaker 1: or a Pixel seven, or pretty much any phone that
Speaker 1: uses the Xenos Auto T five to one twenty three chipset.
Speaker 1: This is a motem inside the phone. Now, this bug
Speaker 1: lets hackers take over your phone. Pixel seven series already
Speaker 1: got thisecurity update to fix it. That's the March security update.
Speaker 1: Pixel six series doesn't have it yet. Google says if
Speaker 1: you have that phone, you should disable voice over LTE
Speaker 1: and void and Wi Fi calling. So do that for
Speaker 1: the time being until you get your security updates. And
Speaker 1: do your security updates. This is why we do them.
Speaker 1: We don't want hackers to take over our phone, all right,
Speaker 1: more of your calls Triple eight rich one O one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to
Speaker 1: one zero one. You are listening to Rich on tech
Speaker 1: more after this, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you. Uh our number two
Speaker 1: taking your calls at triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four.
Speaker 2: One zero one.
Speaker 1: You know I love telling you about when I find
Speaker 1: good new apps, right, so I'm gonna go over a
Speaker 1: couple of apps.
Speaker 2: Kind of thought about this.
Speaker 1: Last weekend was the Academy Awards, And I've talked about
Speaker 1: this before, but it's really tough to find things to watch,
Speaker 1: even if you subscribe to a bunch of streaming services.
Speaker 1: It's really really tricky because what you end up doing
Speaker 1: is going to Netflix checking to see if there's anything
Speaker 1: on there. Then you go to Hulu you see if
Speaker 1: there's anything on there. Then you go to HBO you
Speaker 1: see if there's anything on there. And I hate that method.
Speaker 1: I hate like sitting down with you know, at the
Speaker 1: TV and trying to figure out something to watch at
Speaker 1: that moment. I want to have this all figured out before.
Speaker 1: So with that in mind, I did find my new
Speaker 1: absolute favorite, but I'm gonna save that for the last one.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna tell you all the different solutions that
Speaker 1: you have. Okay, So number one and by the way,
Speaker 1: this all comes down to like making the most out
Speaker 1: of the streaming services that you already pay for.
Speaker 2: That's what it's really about.
Speaker 1: So the app that I've liked in the past that
Speaker 1: I've used is called Real Good ore e E l
Speaker 1: g oo D Real Good Get It Movie, Real Real Good.
Speaker 1: So what I like about this one is it's clean,
Speaker 1: it's modern, it's up to date. It works with over
Speaker 1: three hundred streaming services according to them. I mean, I
Speaker 1: hope you don't pay for that many, but it's really
Speaker 1: nice because you can keep a watch list and it
Speaker 1: divides your watch list into two things, stuff that's on
Speaker 1: your streaming services and stuff that's not on them, and
Speaker 1: anything that becomes available, they'll move it to the other one.
Speaker 1: So what I like about that is you can save
Speaker 1: any movie, whether it's on your streaming services or not,
Speaker 1: and then when it comes time to watch a movie,
Speaker 1: you just go to this little list you have and
Speaker 1: the ones that you want to watch that are on
Speaker 1: your services are at the top, and then you can
Speaker 1: sort them. You can sort them by your favor you know,
Speaker 1: the top rated, the most popular, however you want to sort.
Speaker 1: I usually do either top rated or most popular, and
Speaker 1: then you can decide what to watch. And of course
Speaker 1: the movie that pops up at the top is never
Speaker 1: the thing I want to watch when when I sit
Speaker 1: down on the couch and watch TV. So that's real good.
Speaker 1: That's available for iOS and Android. Next up is this
Speaker 1: service called just Watch, and just Watch is another one
Speaker 1: that I've used in the past that's pretty good. What's
Speaker 1: neat about this one is it shows you this matrix
Speaker 1: of streaming, rental and purchase options, so you can see
Speaker 1: how much this movie rents or is available for purchase
Speaker 1: on different services. So it's almost like buying a plane ticket,
Speaker 1: you know the dates and everything, but it shows you
Speaker 1: the price. So what I've noticed is most of the
Speaker 1: time the prices these days are the same, but sometimes
Speaker 1: they could be different, like it might be on sale
Speaker 1: on YouTube or on sale and iTunes whatever. So that's
Speaker 1: just watch that's also available for iOS and Android. The
Speaker 1: neat thing about this, if you have caught up to
Speaker 1: all of your different services, you can see a timeline
Speaker 1: of new releases, so it literally shows you as you
Speaker 1: scroll down. Yesterday, these three movies were released on Netflix.
Speaker 1: These two movies were released on HBO Max, and so
Speaker 1: if you really want to up to this stuff, you
Speaker 1: can see that timeline. It also tracks sports if you're
Speaker 1: into that. There's this app called ydeo y idio. Now,
Speaker 1: this is one of the early apps that track the
Speaker 1: streaming stuff, and I used to use it. When I
Speaker 1: revisited it for this comparison, not so great. The neat
Speaker 1: thing about this it does have preset filter, so if
Speaker 1: you're searching for the same sort of thing over and over,
Speaker 1: you can save that as a filter and then you
Speaker 1: can just tap that filter and.
Speaker 2: It will show you those items.
Speaker 1: So if you want to see new movies that are
Speaker 1: streaming on Netflix that are you know, indie films that
Speaker 1: are thrillers. You can save that and then you can
Speaker 1: just tap and see what's new in that preset filter.
Speaker 1: I feel like the interface on this app is a
Speaker 1: little confusing, so not the best one. I gave that
Speaker 1: one two stars out of five. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I put all of this on my Instagram at rich
Speaker 1: On Tech. I did a little swipe through, so you
Speaker 1: can go to my Instagram profile and look for the
Speaker 1: movie Night, Popcorn and all these apps I'm talking about
Speaker 1: are there all right?
Speaker 2: Apple TV app.
Speaker 1: You might not realize, but you can actually use the
Speaker 1: Apple TV app to not only see where things are streaming,
Speaker 1: but also save those items in sort of a watch list. Now,
Speaker 1: of course this is Apple, so it only works on
Speaker 1: Apple devices, and it works best if you have an
Speaker 1: Apple TV as well. So Apple is really confusing at
Speaker 1: this point with the streaming because you've got the Apple
Speaker 1: TV box, which has been around forever. Then you have
Speaker 1: the Apple TV app, which is available across the iPhone
Speaker 1: and the tablets that they have. But then you have
Speaker 1: Apple TV Plus, which is a streaming service, and that's
Speaker 1: available across a whole bunch of different platforms, not just
Speaker 1: Apple devices. Gets really really confusing with Apple. They need
Speaker 1: to sort of figure this stuff out. About the Apple
Speaker 1: TV app is, if you're totally invested in the Apple ecosystem,
Speaker 1: this is going to be a great way to keep
Speaker 1: track of things that you want to watch because you
Speaker 1: can go on your phone. It's beautifully designed, as many
Speaker 1: Apple things are, and it will show you where that
Speaker 1: item is playing. So if you search for a movie
Speaker 1: in the Apple TV app, it'll tell you, oh, this
Speaker 1: is streaming on HBO Max and you can just open
Speaker 1: it up in HBO. The only streaming service that is
Speaker 1: really not there is Netflix, and that's a pretty big one.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what the war is between Apple
Speaker 1: and Netflix, but it seems like it's Apple against the world.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's like, Okay, you're either going to do it
Speaker 1: our way or you're not included in this. And Netflix
Speaker 1: has been out of this process since day one, so clearly,
Speaker 1: again frenemies, this is iOS only. So the Apple TV
Speaker 1: app is pretty handy. And the other cool thing is
Speaker 1: that if you add something to your what's called it
Speaker 1: up next list, which is sort of your watch list
Speaker 1: when you sit down at your Apple TV. On your
Speaker 1: Apple TV home screen, you'll see the stuff that you
Speaker 1: want to watch and you can just click into it
Speaker 1: and watch it. Then you've got Google TV. Their app
Speaker 1: is very similar to Apple TV, except it's available across
Speaker 1: iOS and Android. It is one of the few apps
Speaker 1: that includes Rotten Tomatoes scores, so if you live and
Speaker 1: die by Rotten Tomatoes scores, which a lot of people like,
Speaker 1: those are included in the Google TV ratings, which is
Speaker 1: kind of cool. Obviously it's Google. It's going to give
Speaker 1: you really good personalized recommendations. It's very easy to see
Speaker 1: what's free and what's paid. One more time, Netflix is
Speaker 1: notably absent, So I guess maybe it's not Apple. I
Speaker 1: take it back, it's really Netflix. That is kind of
Speaker 1: the person that's the problem here. What is a Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift song?
Speaker 2: It's me? No, wait, what is it? It's me? It's
Speaker 2: no whatever, I can it's me. You, I'm the problem.
Speaker 2: It's me. That's it.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Netflix should be singing that song from Taylor.
Speaker 1: And then the cool thing about this, kind of like Apple,
Speaker 1: the watch list sinks with chrome casts, so if you're
Speaker 1: a big chrome cast person, you can see.
Speaker 2: All the stuff there.
Speaker 1: Then of course Roku has their own app, so this
Speaker 1: is a great companion to Roku hardware. Their interface is okay,
Speaker 1: it's really focused on just getting you to watch stuff fast.
Speaker 1: Their search is good, it'll go across all the different
Speaker 1: providers and tell you where something is streaming, but they
Speaker 1: don't have many filters to narrow down all. Right, Now
Speaker 1: we get to the one that I've discovered doing this research,
Speaker 1: and I absolutely love it and this is my new favorite.
Speaker 1: It is not an app, it's only a website, but
Speaker 1: it is called flick Metrics flick me t Rix, and
Speaker 1: this is I'm giving five stars to this website. It
Speaker 1: is the best that I've seen. What's great about this
Speaker 1: website is that it is fast, it's simple, it's easy,
Speaker 1: and it works across all the major providers, all the
Speaker 1: big ones Netflix, Amazon, Disney Plus, BritBox, Hulu, Paramount, Peacock,
Speaker 1: Showtime Stars, Hbo, iTunes, Apple TV, and Movie. And what's
Speaker 1: great about this is it's just very simple. You can
Speaker 1: choose you want movies, you want TV shows. You can
Speaker 1: do the different categories, so if you want action, adventure,
Speaker 1: documentary and then so basically there's three things to do.
Speaker 1: You choose what you want to watch, then you choose
Speaker 1: the services that you want it on, and then you
Speaker 1: can choose the year and the rating, and it does
Speaker 1: an average rating among Metacritic, IMDb, Letterboxed, and critics and
Speaker 1: so it is super easy. It has found so many
Speaker 1: great movies on the services that I subscribe to. You
Speaker 1: can also do a list like a watch list if
Speaker 1: you want. You can favorite things, you can mark things.
Speaker 1: This scene doesn't really give recommendations as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, but you don't need them because now you
Speaker 1: can just sort by like all the stuff you want
Speaker 1: to watch again. The website is flick Metrics flick met
Speaker 1: ri i X. So far this has served me up
Speaker 1: two really good good movies. Well, i'd say one and
Speaker 1: a half. My wife didn't like the movie you watched
Speaker 1: last night.
Speaker 2: It was weird.
Speaker 1: She's not really into weird movies. It was called Black
Speaker 1: Bear and it's starring what's her name. I keep forgetting
Speaker 1: her name, even though we've watched so many things with her.
Speaker 1: Aubrey Plaza. She's the actress from White Lotus and of
Speaker 1: course Parks and rec back in the day. But she
Speaker 1: was in this movie that was pretty quirky, very odd,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those movies that you kind of
Speaker 1: like you're watching and it's kind of like White Lotus
Speaker 1: where you're just you're watching because you're not sure if
Speaker 1: it's gonna get good. It's like, but then you've gone
Speaker 1: the whole movie and you're like, Okay, I just watched
Speaker 1: that whole movie. I'm not sure if that's good, even
Speaker 1: though I watched the whole thing. So but the other
Speaker 1: movie it helped me find was called Vengeance, and this
Speaker 1: was a movie Oh gosh, how do you say it?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, how you say it? Maybe it's maybe it's not. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it was. It takes place in Texas and it stars
Speaker 1: the guy from bj Novak, which is you know, from
Speaker 1: the office. And I thought this was a great movie
Speaker 1: and I hadn't known about it, and this flick metrics
Speaker 1: helped me find it. Anyway, flick metrics is that my
Speaker 1: new top pick for finding movies. I think you'll like it.
Speaker 1: Let me know if you find a movie that you like.
Speaker 1: Through it again on Instagram at rich on Tech. Look
Speaker 1: for the movie logo on my profile and you can
Speaker 1: swipe through all those movie services that I just mentioned
Speaker 1: I'm all about finding the stuff that I'm paying for.
Speaker 1: My kids are like, Dad, will you rent a movie?
Speaker 1: I said, no, I'm paying for all these services. I'm
Speaker 1: not paying six ninety nine to rent a movie. I
Speaker 1: barely want to go to the movie theater because I'm
Speaker 1: paying so much for these streaming services that when I
Speaker 1: when I watch a movie on one of these services,
Speaker 1: even if I watched just one a month, I am
Speaker 1: happy that.
Speaker 2: I'm totally good.
Speaker 1: Like if I got one good movie out of these
Speaker 1: services I pay for, I'm like, Okay, I'm good.
Speaker 2: I made it.
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one oh one phone number to call
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four to one
Speaker 1: zero one. Coming up, we're going to talk to Sherry
Speaker 1: Riggs of Allout. She's going to talk about some of
Speaker 1: the alternatives to mint Mobile and just kind of some
Speaker 1: of these low cost carriers in general, the pros, the cons,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff. Plus more of your calls. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you about ways's new feature. If you have
Speaker 1: an EV you'll probably like it. You're listening to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. There's the
Speaker 1: song I was trying to think of the lyrics to
Speaker 1: how do I not know anti hero? My kids are
Speaker 1: singing this NonStop. My wife is singing it. I mean,
Speaker 1: if I admit it, I yes, I'm going to the
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift concert. You know, look, what can I say?
Speaker 1: My wife's a fan. I mean, I don't mind the music.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: I think my wife wasted like two hours at work
Speaker 1: getting those tickets. You know, is that day when everyone
Speaker 1: was having trouble with ticket masters, somehow she got in.
Speaker 1: She only got two tickets, and then my kids are like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're not going. She's like, no, I didn't of you.
Speaker 1: When you have kids, everything is more expensive. It's like
Speaker 1: times four. Like when I used to fly by myself
Speaker 1: back home to New Jersey, it was like one ticket. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's you know, a couple hundred bucks. Now it's like
Speaker 1: anywhere I go it is times that by four. And
Speaker 1: that's just the price of admission for anything. Yeah, kids
Speaker 1: are expensive. Eight eight eight rich one o one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one.
Speaker 1: Michael is in Livermore, California. You didn't call to hear
Speaker 1: me complain, did you?
Speaker 4: No? No, I didn't.
Speaker 2: Well, how can I help?
Speaker 8: I'm having an issue logging into my mode. I put
Speaker 8: in the user name, I put in the password, and
Speaker 8: when whenever I clicked the login button or even the
Speaker 8: enter button on my keyboard, it adds three extra characters
Speaker 8: to the password.
Speaker 1: M like little asterisk or what? Okay, yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: it's not showing you what you're typing right.
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 1: So what why are you trying to log in just
Speaker 1: out of curiosity? Trying to change some settings or something?
Speaker 8: The IP address on my devices?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: So, uh, there's apps that can do that, by the way,
Speaker 1: that can help. I can't remember the one I used
Speaker 1: off the top of my head, but there are some
Speaker 1: apps that can do that, like a network kind of
Speaker 1: sniffer app. Okay, So have you set the password on
Speaker 1: this modem or using the one that's built in?
Speaker 8: I believe this one that's built in. It's been a
Speaker 8: long time since I've logged in. I don't think I've
Speaker 8: changed it from the basic one.
Speaker 1: And is the motive is the password on the bottom
Speaker 1: of the modem and that's the one that you're trying
Speaker 1: to type in right. Interesting, now, when you type on
Speaker 1: your computer in general, are there extra characters kind of
Speaker 1: happening anywhere else.
Speaker 8: No, And the thing is even if I've tried it
Speaker 8: on my phone also and it does the same thing.
Speaker 1: Now, the password that you're entering, is it a small
Speaker 1: number of characters?
Speaker 2: Like, is it like only like five digits or something.
Speaker 8: Well, it's it's a Motorola modem and the password is Motorola.
Speaker 1: Oh well, that's that's a great password.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So what I would do in this case, and it's
Speaker 1: probably not I mean, it's probably not the easiest thing
Speaker 1: to do, But are you okay with trying to reset
Speaker 1: this modem to factory?
Speaker 8: That wouldn't involve me having to call up my provider
Speaker 8: or anything.
Speaker 1: No. There there's basically a little tiny pinhole on the
Speaker 1: back that you can press, you know, put like a
Speaker 1: paper clip into and press and hold for like thirty seconds,
Speaker 1: and it would bring it back to factory. That's probably
Speaker 1: the thing that I would do with this situation, because
Speaker 1: there's only so many times I could enter the same
Speaker 1: exact password and it's not working, and it just keeps
Speaker 1: giving me this page. Have you tried a different web browser?
Speaker 1: You said you try it on your phone?
Speaker 3: I have, Yes, I have yet.
Speaker 2: And the same thing every time. Huh.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: That's really frustrating. Hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And were you ever able to log into this when
Speaker 2: I first got it.
Speaker 8: I've had it for probably close to two years now.
Speaker 2: Hm.
Speaker 1: Now the other I mean, because the problem is once
Speaker 1: you reset this to factory, now, have you changed the
Speaker 1: the Wi Fi network that this puts out? Have you
Speaker 1: changed that to it's something custom?
Speaker 2: Okay? You haven't, Okay. So the good news is when you.
Speaker 1: Reset this fact to factory, it's going to put out
Speaker 1: the same Wi Fi password like SSI D and password
Speaker 1: for your for your devices, so those are going to.
Speaker 2: Still connect to this.
Speaker 1: So that's what I would do, and I would see
Speaker 1: if that works, because it seems like there's something going
Speaker 1: on here. Once you do that, by the way, and
Speaker 1: once you log in, I would also look to see
Speaker 1: if there's a software update for this modem because it
Speaker 1: might be that there's some sort of security thing going
Speaker 1: on here.
Speaker 2: All right, Michael, all right, keep me posted.
Speaker 1: Let me know, all right, thanks, alrighty, all right, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's an odd one. I've seen that I've seen
Speaker 1: that happen when I copy and paste a password into
Speaker 1: a field, and I've seen where I copy and paste
Speaker 1: one thing, but then it becomes like much longer and
Speaker 1: clearly whenever that happens, there's something wrong. The other thing, Michael,
Speaker 1: you might want to try, and this could this could
Speaker 1: be a solution to to try is try typing out
Speaker 1: motorola on a on a website, like on a different page,
Speaker 1: copy it and then paste it into that field and
Speaker 1: see if that works. And maybe the act of pasting
Speaker 1: it will will work to get that password in it
Speaker 1: correctly and kind of trigger things to to log you in.
Speaker 1: All right, I said, I was gonna mention this new
Speaker 1: feature on Ways, pretty simple feature but one that if
Speaker 1: you drive an EV you're gonna love. You can now
Speaker 1: put in your EV car type and plug type into
Speaker 1: the Ways app and it will find EV charging stations
Speaker 1: along your route that are compatible with your car. Now,
Speaker 1: you may not have this feature immediately. It is rolling out,
Speaker 1: which are my two most hated words in the tech world,
Speaker 1: because you never know when you're gonna get it. But
Speaker 1: Ways is crowdsourced, so they're saying the information in there
Speaker 1: hopefully is more up to date, more comprehensive. And if
Speaker 1: you drive a non Tesla EV, the whole thing is
Speaker 1: that you want to find compatible charging stations along your route,
Speaker 1: which is different than just finding one somewhere that's where
Speaker 1: you're going. So update the ways app look for the
Speaker 1: EV charging information inside your app. More calls a Triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one on one and we're gonna talk to
Speaker 1: Sherry Riggs of whistle Out about cheap cell phone provider plans.
Speaker 2: Coming up next.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech, rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology. Phone lines are open Triple
Speaker 1: eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. My next guest is
Speaker 1: Sherry Riggs. She works for a website called whistle Out.
Speaker 1: This is a great website if you are looking to
Speaker 1: compare cell phone plans, internet plans, all that good stuff.
Speaker 2: Sherry, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 6: Hi, Yeah, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1: So the mint Mobile news this week. It did you
Speaker 1: see that coming? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know it.
Speaker 6: There had been whispers of it, and I think it
Speaker 6: was only a matter of time before T Mobile was like, Ah,
Speaker 6: these guys are getting too big. We need to help them.
Speaker 1: I mean, isn't it frustrating for folks that picked mint
Speaker 1: Mobile as an alternative to the big mobile companies and
Speaker 1: then they get purchased by the big mobile company even
Speaker 1: though the service always ran on the big mobile companies network, right.
Speaker 6: So it's kind of a complicated relationship, I would say,
Speaker 6: because yeah, mint Mobile was a separate entity although it
Speaker 6: ran on T mobiles infrastructure. And I think the big
Speaker 6: worry for most people is that, Okay, now that one
Speaker 6: of the big three has acquired mint Mobile.
Speaker 7: What's going to change?
Speaker 6: And don't I don't think much is going to change.
Speaker 6: I think T Mobile is just still going to give
Speaker 6: the reins, mainly to mint Mobile to handle everything, and
Speaker 6: I think T Mobile just wanted a piece of the pie, really.
Speaker 1: So explain the concept of an mv and O. This
Speaker 1: is what mint Mobile is pretty much. If you're not
Speaker 1: using T Mobile, Verizon or AT and T, if you
Speaker 1: have another company that's providing your service, it's an mv
Speaker 1: and O. Because we only have three networks here in
Speaker 1: the US. I think Dish is building their own, right.
Speaker 6: Dish is trying, and you know, if that works out,
Speaker 6: then we'll have four again. But but yeah, So an
Speaker 6: MVNA is a mobile virtual network operator, basically meaning a
Speaker 6: smaller carrier rent space on a major carrier network. So
Speaker 6: mobile is a perfect example of that kind of because
Speaker 6: they aren't T Mobile. And then Visible Mobile is another
Speaker 6: good example of an MVNL and they rent space on
Speaker 6: Verizons network. So yeah, it's really like buying a generic
Speaker 6: cereal at a grocery store or something like that.
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing is that Visible has always been
Speaker 1: owned by Verizon. And then you've got Cricket, which is
Speaker 1: I think AT and T purchased them, right, They weren't
Speaker 1: always AT and T.
Speaker 6: Right, right, Yeah, Cricket was purchased by AT and T
Speaker 6: most recently. But yeah, so I think what's happening is
Speaker 6: the major carriers are seeing how much success can come
Speaker 6: with these smaller carriers offering lower prices, and they still
Speaker 6: just want a little bit more money, so they're they're
Speaker 6: dishing out and buying up these smaller guys and hopes
Speaker 6: of pumping up their own numbers.
Speaker 1: So why do people go with one of these alternative
Speaker 1: carriers versus the big carriers?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, I.
Speaker 6: Think mainly it is its costs. So all of these
Speaker 6: smaller carriers come at a cheaper price, and that's mainly.
Speaker 6: They offer the same service as the main carriers. It's
Speaker 6: the exact same coverage, So how do they keep it
Speaker 6: lower while with smaller carriers come less a customer service
Speaker 6: and potentially less help if you run into a problem.
Speaker 6: Most of these smaller guys all of it's run online
Speaker 6: and you kind of have to troubleshoot yourself if you
Speaker 6: run into problems. So that's where you pay more money
Speaker 6: is generally the customer service with the big carriers, and
Speaker 6: even that doesn't go well people.
Speaker 1: So the fact that I can walk into a Verizon
Speaker 1: store is to justifying the extra fifty bucks a month
Speaker 1: that you pay for a Verizon plan pretty much.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that.
Speaker 6: And generally the main carriers offer a bit more in
Speaker 6: terms of turks, like Verizon will give you the Disney
Speaker 6: Bundle and then T Mobile will offer Netflix, and so
Speaker 6: you do get a few other per along with those
Speaker 6: bigger cell phone plans. But but yeah, the big, in
Speaker 6: my opinion, the really big difference here is a is
Speaker 6: a brick and mortar store, a person to talk to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a big when I did a story.
Speaker 1: So the first like MV and O that I did
Speaker 1: a story with at KTLA was Visible, and I mean
Speaker 1: I'd heard of them, but Visible was very appealing because
Speaker 1: it was so cheap, and it was on Verizon's network,
Speaker 1: and I was like, and it was unlimited. So I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: what's the catch here? And sure enough that you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people did switch after our story. But
Speaker 1: the biggest feedback I got is that when they had
Speaker 1: any sort of problem, it was tough to you know,
Speaker 1: you couldn't walk into a store. You had to do
Speaker 1: you had to troubleshoot everything, either online on the phone
Speaker 1: or through chat that you know which people if you're
Speaker 1: used to that hands on service at like a Verizon store,
Speaker 1: at and T store, it's like, uh, sorry.
Speaker 2: Can't go. You can't get help with that inside the store.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm looking at I'm looking at some of
Speaker 1: these whistle Out expert picks on the website. So can
Speaker 1: you explain what whistle out does, by the way, like
Speaker 1: how the website works.
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Absolutely, So the best way to describe it is whistle
Speaker 6: Out compares cell phone plans and internet plans like Expedia
Speaker 6: can compare flights. So you can put in all of
Speaker 6: the requirements you want in a cell phone plan, and
Speaker 6: we have a database that will list out every single
Speaker 6: option for you, and you can sort it by price.
Speaker 6: You can sort it by carrier. It really helps simplify
Speaker 6: the process of either switching carriers or finding a new carrier.
Speaker 1: Whistleout dot com is the website, so I'm going through
Speaker 1: some of your expert picture. Best unlimited phone plan is
Speaker 1: Visible by Verizon. Why does whistle out like that one?
Speaker 6: So this is a new one. We recently changed this one,
Speaker 6: but we do love Visible because a it runs on
Speaker 6: Verizon's network and they have the most for GLT coverage
Speaker 6: in the country, so you'll pretty much always have coverage
Speaker 6: wherever you are. And then Visible's new cell phone plan
Speaker 6: options of Visible Plus offers some incredible perks in terms
Speaker 6: of data allotments and a gig a hotspot alignment as well,
Speaker 6: so you get a lot for the cost which is
Speaker 6: really low. I believe thirty five dollars a month.
Speaker 2: Now, this one the best cheap phone plan. US Mobile.
Speaker 1: I actually really like this company because it's all online.
Speaker 1: Obviously they rent from Verizon and T Mobile, but it's
Speaker 1: really good and it's like very customizable. So for five
Speaker 1: gigs of data it's just ten bucks a month. That's
Speaker 1: I mean, should we feel concerned going to US Mobile
Speaker 1: because we haven't heard of them before?
Speaker 6: No, not at all. You know, US Mobile is one
Speaker 6: of those hidden gems. I like to call it. It's
Speaker 6: a unicorn cell phone carrier because their prices are so
Speaker 6: low and incredibly customizable, and on top of that, you
Speaker 6: get to choose which carrier you want to be with,
Speaker 6: either T Mobile or Verizon, and it's the same price
Speaker 6: across the board. So yeah, it can be scary going
Speaker 6: with a name you don't know, but it doesn't take
Speaker 6: away from how good they are as a carrier, and.
Speaker 1: I've personally tested them and they were excellent. I've talked
Speaker 1: to the CEO of this company and it's just one
Speaker 1: of those companies that literally I never heard of because
Speaker 1: they don't advertise as far as I can tell, maybe
Speaker 1: online or something that I just haven't seen.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they don't do a whole lot of advertising, I
Speaker 6: think mainly because the proof is in the pudding, as
Speaker 6: they say, once you've tested it out and looked at
Speaker 6: the prices and you make the switch, it's it's pretty
Speaker 6: incredible to see how much money you can save and
Speaker 6: still get incredible quality service. And in fact, US mobiles
Speaker 6: new Unlimited plan is one of my favorites at forty
Speaker 6: five dollars a month. You get premium data at one
Speaker 6: hundred gigabytes, a giant hotspot, a lotminut fifty and it's
Speaker 6: one of the best deals out there. It's quickly going
Speaker 6: to the top of my list as most recommended unlimited plan.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, best fan plan. Reach Mobile. I've never heard
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Reach is a small one, but Reach does some
Speaker 6: really great work. And they also have family pricing, which
Speaker 6: is which is awesome, and you don't often get that
Speaker 6: with MBN out so keeping that in mind, you don't
Speaker 6: with the major carriers. You generally get a discount for
Speaker 6: multiple lines. With many nbnos they don't do multi line discounts,
Speaker 6: but some do and that is an awesome perk.
Speaker 1: And finally, the best prepaid phone plan, Mint Mobile, still
Speaker 1: has it right now, unlimited data. So I have a
Speaker 1: family member that has Mint and they've been telling all
Speaker 1: their friends about it because they've had it for years.
Speaker 1: And they pay once a year, so it's a one
Speaker 1: time fee. They pay for the whole year at once,
Speaker 1: and they love it because they don't have to think
Speaker 1: about their bill.
Speaker 2: And people are like, I don't believe you.
Speaker 1: I don't see how you can have the same service
Speaker 1: that I have for paying one bill a month, it's
Speaker 1: like three hundred bucks or whatever it is.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, it's there. That can be an upside and
Speaker 6: a downside. Right, paying for service for one year might
Speaker 6: seem like a big bill at one point, but it
Speaker 6: is incredibly cheap. And once you just pay it, you
Speaker 6: set it aside for one year and you're good to go.
Speaker 6: That's one of the best things that I appreciate about
Speaker 6: mint Mobile is that you are able to buy in
Speaker 6: bulk and so far in advance, and if you love
Speaker 6: the service, it makes it that much easier and that
Speaker 6: much better.
Speaker 1: In fact, I got an email for I have a
Speaker 1: mint Mobile test line, and I've got an email today.
Speaker 1: How funny is this that my three months? I guess
Speaker 1: I had three months that I bought and I got
Speaker 1: three months free and today is the anniversary of that date.
Speaker 10: I don't know, so funny.
Speaker 2: Thank you, so exciting.
Speaker 1: And I've used an average of three point nine gigs
Speaker 1: a month on this test line, so anyway, Wow, I know,
Speaker 1: all right, Cherry, tell folks how they can find you.
Speaker 1: I know you do a lot of YouTube videos. Tell
Speaker 1: folks how they can find you on there?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so we're on YouTube on the internet. You just
Speaker 6: need to search whistle Out USA and you will find
Speaker 6: us and you will hopefully find a better deal than
Speaker 6: you have right now. I promise we'se save you some money.
Speaker 1: All right, Sherry Riggs of whistle Out, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today on the show.
Speaker 2: Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: All right, Coming up, I'm gonna tell you about a
Speaker 1: new podcast app that I really like. Plus, I'm going
Speaker 1: to dive into that Verizon deal where they're giving you
Speaker 1: like a free year of Netflix. I'm gonna explain what
Speaker 1: the catch is there, and we'll have more of your calls.
Speaker 2: Give me a call.
Speaker 1: Phone lines are opens triple eight rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich Timuro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
Speaker 1: I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: All right, DK Wrights, Hey, Rich, I hope you read this.
Speaker 1: My niece accidentally deleted all thirteen thousand pictures on her phone.
Speaker 1: She has a Galaxy S twenty two Ultra. She has
Speaker 1: tried everything she can to restore the photos. They were
Speaker 1: backed up to Google one eighteen hours ago, but when
Speaker 1: she checked there was nothing there. I'm hoping you might
Speaker 1: be able to help. Would greatly appreciate any suggestion. Thank
Speaker 1: you kindly, Debbie Huh. Okay, So first off, I'm very
Speaker 1: curious how thirteen thousand pictures were deleted because you got
Speaker 1: to work really hard to delete that many pictures off
Speaker 1: of your phone, and also it takes a while to
Speaker 1: delete thirteen thousand pictures. So my first question is how
Speaker 1: did this happen because that's nearly impossible to I mean
Speaker 1: on the iPhone, you know, and all these phones, you
Speaker 1: basically have to go in, select all your photos and
Speaker 1: then say delete all. And there's like a couple of
Speaker 1: steps to do that. It doesn't just say like delete everything.
Speaker 1: So okay, that aside, I'm just curious about that. So
Speaker 1: what I would do is a couple of places. Number One,
Speaker 1: you said that they were backed up in Google one.
Speaker 1: The good news about it an Android phone is that
Speaker 1: typically things are backed up automatically like it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: rare that they're not. So the first place I would
Speaker 1: go is one dot Google dot com, and once you
Speaker 1: go there, you can check to see your different devices.
Speaker 1: So go to storage and you have different It says
Speaker 1: your device backups and you should see the Galaxy S
Speaker 1: twenty two Ultra in there, and mine says backup incomplete.
Speaker 1: So if you see backup incomplete, that means that things
Speaker 1: are not.
Speaker 2: Backed up properly.
Speaker 1: So that's the first place I'd look and see if
Speaker 1: that backup is in there, and then you can click
Speaker 1: see details and it will show you photos and videos.
Speaker 1: In my case, it says they're in Google Photos. Now
Speaker 1: on the Samsungs, they have a thing where they also
Speaker 1: sync to one drive. Samsung has a deal with Microsoft,
Speaker 1: so your photos may be in one drive, and so
Speaker 1: that's what I would check as well, and look in
Speaker 1: one drive and see if your photo's there.
Speaker 2: And that's one edrive.
Speaker 1: Dot Microsoft dot com and you can log in there
Speaker 1: and it might be your Samsung log in. You might
Speaker 1: have a link to your Microsoft login, so check there.
Speaker 1: The other thing I would do is go to photos
Speaker 1: dot Google dot com and if these were backing up
Speaker 1: to Google Photos, they should still be in there, because
Speaker 1: even if you deleted them, they would be in the trash.
Speaker 1: And so you can go to photos dot Google dot com,
Speaker 1: click the trash and items in the trash are deleted
Speaker 1: after sixty days, so all these thirteen thousand pictures should
Speaker 1: be in there now. If she went through and emptied
Speaker 1: the trash, that's a whole nother problem. And again, you know,
Speaker 1: these tech companies try to do their best to protect
Speaker 1: us from ourselves. And again there's a lot of steps
Speaker 1: involved in deleting thirteen thousand pictures. That process physically takes
Speaker 1: a little bit of time. So hopefully it's in one
Speaker 1: of those places, Debbie. And once you find these pictures
Speaker 1: and recover them, please back up your photos. I know
Speaker 1: there's a lot of confusion when it comes to photos,
Speaker 1: but I'm just gonna give you my advice. On your phone,
Speaker 1: you want your photos backed up somewhere, choose a program
Speaker 1: to back them up. If you're on the iPhone, you
Speaker 1: can use iCloud. It's not my favorite, but you can
Speaker 1: use it. And just remember, if you delete a picture
Speaker 1: off your phone on your iPhone, it mirrors iicloud, so
Speaker 1: it will delete it off iCloud as well. I personally
Speaker 1: like Google Photos. I think it's the best easiest way
Speaker 1: to figure out where your photos are. Yes, you might
Speaker 1: have to pay for a little bit of storage, but
Speaker 1: that to me is the best one. The other thing
Speaker 1: you can do is if you're an Amazon Prime member,
Speaker 1: you can use this as a secondary backup Amazon Photos.
Speaker 1: Download it, sign in with your Amazon account. As long
Speaker 1: as you have an Amazon membership, that's a secondary place
Speaker 1: to do it. The only thing is on the iPhone,
Speaker 1: if you're using Amazon Photos, it doesn't automatically back up
Speaker 1: in the background necessarily. You do have to you open
Speaker 1: up the app every once in a while to back
Speaker 1: it up. Just remember that on the iPhone you have
Speaker 1: to open up the app. You can use one drive.
Speaker 1: I don't care if you use, you know, whatever app
Speaker 1: you want to use. Just make sure that you open
Speaker 1: it up and check to make sure your stuff is
Speaker 1: backed up every once in a while.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: I said that Verizon was giving away a free year
Speaker 1: of Netflix Premium twenty dollars a month value if you
Speaker 1: have a Verizon Unlimited plan. They're trying to promote this
Speaker 1: new Verizon Plus Play program that they have, which is
Speaker 1: a hub for all of your streaming subscriptions. So if
Speaker 1: you want to get free Netflix, the catch is that
Speaker 1: you have to subscribe to some other service. Those services
Speaker 1: include AMC Plus, Stars, Paramount Peloton. Subscribe to one of
Speaker 1: those services, you'll get Netflix for free. The tricky part
Speaker 1: is the timing getting it all right. But if you
Speaker 1: want to save two hundred and forty bucks a year
Speaker 1: on Netflix, try it out. Go to the website. If
Speaker 1: you've got one of these other services anyway, you might
Speaker 1: as well. I'm gonna try it out. We'll see I
Speaker 1: do Peloton all right. Eight eight eight rich one on
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to
Speaker 1: one zero one. Give me a call if you got
Speaker 1: a tech question. More of your calls coming up next.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech Rich DeMuro hanging out
Speaker 1: with you, talking technology. Eight eight eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Got a couple of guests coming up later
Speaker 1: this hour. Xavier Journ again. This is a really cool interview.
Speaker 1: Xavier is the Spotify's first AI DJ. So if you've
Speaker 1: got Spotify, you might have seen this new little feature.
Speaker 1: It's an AI DJ. It's a DJ that's personalized just
Speaker 1: for you. Kind of interesting. So I talked to him
Speaker 1: about being that voice and what's that like and how
Speaker 1: they do it. Then I've got Clay Alexander He is
Speaker 1: the CEO and founder of Ember. You might know Ember
Speaker 1: as the company that the temperature controlled mug keeps your
Speaker 1: coffee or your tea at the same temperature the whole time. Well,
Speaker 1: now they have a new product. It's for babies, a
Speaker 1: baby bottle. So I'll talk about that. Ember, by the way,
Speaker 1: Westlake Village, California company.
Speaker 2: They just moved to new offices and.
Speaker 1: Wow, it reminded me of that movie or that TV
Speaker 1: show Severance on Apple TV.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you saw it.
Speaker 1: Very like futuristic like it just it looked like the
Speaker 1: headquarters of a tech company. It was just really cool
Speaker 1: lines and stuff. I put out my Instagram at rich
Speaker 1: on Tech if you want to see it. Apple this
Speaker 1: week introduced a new feature called Specialist Shop with a
Speaker 1: Specialist over Video. Say that ten times fast Shop with
Speaker 1: a Specialist over Video. This is a feature that's kind
Speaker 1: of like a video chat, but it's a one way
Speaker 1: video chat. They can't see you, but you can see them.
Speaker 1: So the idea is you're on the Apple website or
Speaker 1: on your phone and you want to shop for a
Speaker 1: new phone. You don't feel like going into the store,
Speaker 1: so you can fire up one of these retail specialists.
Speaker 1: Their video pops up on your screen while you're browsing
Speaker 1: the website. It's a one way video shopping session. You
Speaker 1: can ask them to do things like, Hey, can you
Speaker 1: show me the difference between the iPhone fourteen and the
Speaker 1: fourteen plus? Hey? Can you show me the different colors
Speaker 1: of the phones? Can I see them in hand so
Speaker 1: I can decide which one I want?
Speaker 3: Hey?
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about trade and offers different deals?
Speaker 1: And it's interesting A lot of people don't realize this,
Speaker 1: but you can go to the Apple Store and they
Speaker 1: can help you no matter which carrier you have, whether
Speaker 1: you have AT and T, Verizon, T Mobile, whatever. They
Speaker 1: can help you switch plans, switch to a new phone.
Speaker 1: You don't have to go to your carrier store. My
Speaker 1: sister was shopping for a phone and I told her that.
Speaker 1: She's like, wait, what, I don't have to go to
Speaker 1: whatever come because she has so Yeah, you could just
Speaker 1: go to the Apple Store. And I think it's almost
Speaker 1: better because their retail associates kind of know the different
Speaker 1: plans and the different deals from all the different carriers,
Speaker 1: so they might be able to help you. So this
Speaker 1: shop with a specialist over video is available to customers
Speaker 1: in the US seven am to seven pm Pacific every day. Again,
Speaker 1: they can't see you, you can see them, and it's
Speaker 1: all about just making things.
Speaker 2: Easier to shop. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder. I asked them, I said, hey,
Speaker 1: were these people located? Like where are they in the stores?
Speaker 1: And they didn't really answer the question. But it seems
Speaker 1: like it's a It seems like the retail associates are
Speaker 1: in stores and they're just you know, hey, can you go?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: The website phone calls for an hour, but I guess
Speaker 1: video calls in this case. Minecraft is coming to the Chromebook.
Speaker 1: This is a long time coming for kids that have
Speaker 1: a Chrome Book, and this is an early access version
Speaker 1: of Minecraft. Minecraft is available in a lot of different places,
Speaker 1: but the Chromebook is not one of them historically. So
Speaker 1: the Minecraft Bedrock Edition releasing on Chromebook. It'll give you
Speaker 1: access to cross device play with friends, the Minecraft marketplace,
Speaker 1: the ability to play on realms, and it's not going
Speaker 1: to be on all the chromebooks. I did check on
Speaker 1: my kids chromebook and it was available, so he's going
Speaker 1: to test it out for me. You can go to
Speaker 1: the Google Play Store and type in Minecraft. If you
Speaker 1: have a Chromebook and it will let you know if
Speaker 1: it's available to you. It has to have a certain
Speaker 1: spec count on your Chromebook, so it's not all of them,
Speaker 1: and you can go to the Minecraft website and tell
Speaker 1: you it'll tell you exactly what.
Speaker 2: The requirements are.
Speaker 1: Let me look them up here, Chrome OS one eleven
Speaker 1: sixty four bit system architecture. You've got to have a
Speaker 1: certain process or Intel cleron Media Tech Qualcom, four gigs
Speaker 1: of RAM and one gig for game installation. So I
Speaker 1: know that doesn't sound like very high end specs, but
Speaker 1: chromebooks are known for having notoriously low end specs. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make them a bad machine. It's just chromebooks don't
Speaker 1: require too much to run, but you do need four
Speaker 1: I mean, those specs aren't totally wild, but you do
Speaker 1: need those to run this. And the whole idea here
Speaker 1: is that they're going to test to see how the
Speaker 1: game performs on the chromebooks before they expand it to more.
Speaker 2: So expect some bugs.
Speaker 1: But if your kid is a fan of Minecraft and
Speaker 1: so far they have not been able to play it
Speaker 1: on their chromebook, it's kind of cool and some of
Speaker 1: the kids like having the keyboard because it's easier to
Speaker 1: play these games with a keyboard versus just having the
Speaker 1: touch screen on the iPad. So there you go. And
Speaker 1: then I told you that I found a new podcast
Speaker 1: app that's kind of cool. It's called Wonder This is
Speaker 1: from a of newsletter called Wonder Tools, and I suggest
Speaker 1: you subscribe to it. It's really good. It's a substack snipped.
Speaker 1: It's called snipd snipd. What's cool about this podcast app
Speaker 1: is that it allows you to snip little interesting parts
Speaker 1: of the shows that you watch and either save them
Speaker 1: for later or you can share them out to social
Speaker 1: media so you can build. And I always love this
Speaker 1: idea because when I'm listening in my car to like
Speaker 1: an audiobook or something, sometimes I want to bookmark a
Speaker 1: place for later to like listen, and it's really tricky.
Speaker 1: On the audiobook apps, you can do it, but it's
Speaker 1: not very easy. So same thing with podcasts. Like you
Speaker 1: hear something interesting, you're like, oh, I want to bookmark
Speaker 1: that for later, you can't.
Speaker 2: Well, this lets you do it. So the app is
Speaker 2: called snipd.
Speaker 1: What's also neat is that it actually does a transcript
Speaker 1: of the podcast, so you can kind of scour around
Speaker 1: and see if there's something interesting that the person talked
Speaker 1: about in the pot. So it seems to be free.
Speaker 1: I didn't take a deep dive into it, but I
Speaker 1: just kind of looked at it and tried it out
Speaker 1: and it was pretty cool. So SNIPD is the podcast.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to a question here. Tom writes
Speaker 1: in hey Rich, I'm looking to buy a Windows eleven
Speaker 1: Dell XPS laptop and wondering if it's better to buy
Speaker 1: it without the bloatwear for an additional charge or just
Speaker 1: remove it once I get it. Mainly it's the av software, Norton, etc.
Speaker 2: That I do not need.
Speaker 1: Thank you, good question. And the bloatwear on computers is
Speaker 1: out of control. I remember when I did a story
Speaker 1: with the Microsoft Store. They said, hey, by the way,
Speaker 1: you know, if you buy a computer here, we do
Speaker 1: not allow bloatwear to be pre installed. So if you
Speaker 1: want a good place to buy a computer, it's probably
Speaker 1: best to buy it for the Microsoft Store.
Speaker 2: I said, wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: And so the Microsoft stores, of course, have mostly gone
Speaker 1: out of business. They mostly just do their stuff online. Now.
Speaker 1: They might have a couple of them here and there,
Speaker 1: but they're not as elaborate as they used to be
Speaker 1: with their locations. So would I pay extra to get
Speaker 1: rid of the stuff I don't need? Absolutely, so I
Speaker 1: don't know how much. I didn't even know this was
Speaker 1: an option on Dell that you can say, hey, I
Speaker 1: don't want all this garbage on my computer. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's interesting if they even give you that option. It's
Speaker 1: sad that all this stuff is included on these computers.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people might call it helpful, but no. This was
Speaker 1: a big problem on cell phones as well, especially the
Speaker 1: Samsungs of the world. They would come pre installed. Not
Speaker 1: just Samsung, almost every phone except the Pixel would come
Speaker 1: pre installed with all this junkie software that you didn't need.
Speaker 1: Why because these companies pay to put it on there.
Speaker 1: So Facebook at some point would be pre installed on
Speaker 1: the Samsungs, they'd have LinkedIn Microsoft apps, whatever. And it's
Speaker 1: all because these companies pay for that placement, and as
Speaker 1: the end user, you're left with disabling it or trying
Speaker 1: to uninstall it. With the Samsung, I've noticed a lot
Speaker 1: of it's easily uninstalled nowadays. In fact, I don't think
Speaker 1: that there's a lot that comes on there if you
Speaker 1: get it from your carrier. Yeah, there's probably a lot
Speaker 1: of like AT and T, T Mobile Verizon software that
Speaker 1: comes pre installed that they do deals to get this
Speaker 1: stuff on there, but most of the time you can
Speaker 1: uninstall it. But yes, I would pay the extra money
Speaker 1: to not have this stuff pre installed. There's a feature
Speaker 1: on Windows machines called fresh Start that will let you
Speaker 1: reset your computer and do a clean installation of Windows.
Speaker 1: But do you really want to do that right when
Speaker 1: you get your computer.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It seems like a lot, so it will get rid
Speaker 1: of most of the stuff on your computer that's not
Speaker 1: supposed to be there. If you do this clean Start,
Speaker 1: it's basically inside Windows eleven, Windows ten you can go
Speaker 1: to settings, System Recovery and reset the PC. But I
Speaker 1: don't know that that's like icky to have to do
Speaker 1: that right when you get a new computer. So if
Speaker 1: Delle's giving you the option, yeah, I would say definitely
Speaker 1: take the option, because that's the other thing about the
Speaker 1: Chromebooks that people like is that they don't come installed.
Speaker 1: There's really no malware or viruses or things for these
Speaker 1: kind of computers because they don't come with stuff pre installed.
Speaker 1: It's just basically a Chrome web browser. But yeah, My
Speaker 1: favorite thing to do is a clean install. Mac computers
Speaker 1: don't really come with a lot of bloatwear. I mean
Speaker 1: it comes with a lot of Mac software pre installed,
Speaker 1: like numbers, pages, iMovie, keynote, garage band. I don't really
Speaker 1: use any of that stuff, news books, I don't use
Speaker 1: any of that stuff stocks, iMovie. Maybe if you need
Speaker 1: a video editing program, but anyway, yes, I would do that.
Speaker 2: Tom. Probably a good idea to just pay the extra
Speaker 2: money to do that. All right.
Speaker 1: Coming up, we're gonna talk to Xavier Journ again. He's
Speaker 1: gonna tell us what it's like to be Spotify's first
Speaker 1: AI DJ Plus, we'll talk about the new Ember product
Speaker 1: for babies, and yet another Google product is going away,
Speaker 1: one that I used personally. I'll tell you which one
Speaker 1: they're sending to the trash can. Coming up, you got
Speaker 1: a question, Give me a call Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: on one eight eight eight seven four two four one
Speaker 1: zero one, or give me an email Hello at Richontech
Speaker 1: dot tv is the email address, or find me on
Speaker 1: social media at rich on Tech. You are listening to
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro Here at
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four two four one zero one. Now you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a real person sitting behind this microphone. But in the future,
Speaker 1: you might be listening to someone that is AI inn
Speaker 1: AI voice. In fact, Spotify recently announced that they have
Speaker 1: a new feature called ai DJ on their app.
Speaker 2: I just got access to it this week.
Speaker 1: And when you press it, the person that comes on
Speaker 1: sounds like they're talking to you. They say your name,
Speaker 1: they say, Hey, we know you've been listening to this lately.
Speaker 1: Let's give you more of this, or let's introduce you
Speaker 1: to this song. It's all AI. It's an AI voice model.
Speaker 1: And recently I talked to the person that served as
Speaker 1: the model for the voice, Xavier x journ Again. He
Speaker 1: did a podcast and a morning show over at Spotify.
Speaker 1: He's also the head of Cultural Partnerships there, and he
Speaker 1: explained all about what it's like to be the voice
Speaker 1: of AIDJ.
Speaker 2: Take a listen, So tell me about being the voice
Speaker 2: of AIDJ. What does that entail?
Speaker 11: What entails in terms of how it works or how
Speaker 11: it came together. Let's start with how it came together,
Speaker 11: the way it came together. I've been at Spotify for
Speaker 11: six and a half years. I started out as the
Speaker 11: head of music editorial for play Listening.
Speaker 10: So I did that for a while and then one day.
Speaker 11: I got asked to host a podcast. Then that led
Speaker 11: to me getting as the host internal and external Spotify events,
Speaker 11: and then this came along and they said you're the
Speaker 11: perfect voice. It was a list of one they said
Speaker 11: you're the list, which is super flattering, and they said
Speaker 11: we're coming out with this thing. It's AIDJ and I
Speaker 11: had to wrap my mind around it, which was hard
Speaker 11: to because they're like, it's not voice recordings, it's text
Speaker 11: to voice and it's going to talk exactly like you.
Speaker 2: Are you in Yes, Oh, you have a great voice.
Speaker 10: Thank you. I have heard that for a while.
Speaker 11: I heard that a few times, but you know what
Speaker 11: it was like, not just my voice, but my personality
Speaker 11: and the fact that I'm rooted in the music industry
Speaker 11: and entertainment. It gave it a sense of authenticity, you
Speaker 11: know what I mean that I'm really in an industry
Speaker 11: and not just a voice actor.
Speaker 10: So it's really about.
Speaker 11: Going into the booth, training the voice model pow to
Speaker 11: sound like me. What does a period sound like? What
Speaker 11: does a comma sound like? What do I sound like?
Speaker 10: Excited? What I sound like calm.
Speaker 11: So we had to train it and that was a lot,
Speaker 11: you know, a lot of different sessions that we did
Speaker 11: training the model. They took a lot of audio from
Speaker 11: other podcasts ideas and then they took all of that
Speaker 11: they fed it into the voice model and that's how
Speaker 11: it came into being.
Speaker 10: And once my mama said it sounded like me, I
Speaker 10: knew it was legit.
Speaker 2: So okay, your mom said it sounded like you, What
Speaker 2: do you think?
Speaker 11: It sounds exactly like me. It blew me away. When
Speaker 11: we got to the final version, even the first version,
Speaker 11: we all thought, like everybody was like, don't head your beads,
Speaker 11: it's gonna be okay.
Speaker 10: We were like, this is crazy, Like this is unreal.
Speaker 1: Okay, So explain to me when you're introduced, Well, first off,
Speaker 1: what is the DJ doing?
Speaker 10: Yes, so you get segments of five songs. I'll welcome you.
Speaker 11: I'm your friend writing along with you. I may be
Speaker 11: slightly cooler than you because I know a little bit
Speaker 11: like a fun facts, know a little bit about the artists.
Speaker 11: It was very much built on my personality. So I'm
Speaker 11: giving you fun facts about the music. I'm giving you
Speaker 11: fun facts about how you listen. I'm giving you context
Speaker 11: because Spotify has been great in personalization for a long time.
Speaker 11: We're known for that. That's one of our hall But
Speaker 11: now you get the context. This is why you're getting
Speaker 11: this song. I'm gonna take you back to twenty sixteen. Now,
Speaker 11: I'm gonna tell you about twenty sixteen and when you're
Speaker 11: gonna get what you listen to and when that comes together,
Speaker 11: magic happens. And we also introduce you to new artists,
Speaker 11: new music based on your listening habits. So we're gonna
Speaker 11: introduce you to that with the context, and we know
Speaker 11: through our data, through our history, when you have that context,
Speaker 11: you're most likely to check it out, follow that artist,
Speaker 11: and then become a fan.
Speaker 1: Do you have to go in every day to say
Speaker 1: new things? Are you saying these artists names? Are you
Speaker 1: saying where they grew up, all these cities? You know
Speaker 1: what they're doing, who they collabed with? Did you have
Speaker 1: to say ten thousand words for all this suffer? Is
Speaker 1: it generating this based on new text?
Speaker 10: That's what it is. It's generating it now.
Speaker 11: I said a lot of different words, like when I
Speaker 11: was training the model, Like we said a lot of
Speaker 11: the artists names because they had to learn my intonation,
Speaker 11: my cadence, teach the voice model to learn all of that.
Speaker 11: But then once they learned it, Nope, it's a whole
Speaker 11: writer's room. Is generative AI that we use. We put
Speaker 11: in the hands of our music editors. So we put
Speaker 11: in the hands of our experts. I'm a part of
Speaker 11: a writer's room and we write. We have cultural experts,
Speaker 11: we have data curators, we have a whole ux writing team,
Speaker 11: we have actual script writers, and we put that into
Speaker 11: the AI as well.
Speaker 2: And as I get it, I'm just like my mind,
Speaker 2: I see it.
Speaker 10: I see a lot like you're trying to process.
Speaker 1: So have you had to go back in to re
Speaker 1: record like let's say a new artist comes out.
Speaker 2: No, do you have to re record their name?
Speaker 7: I do not.
Speaker 11: We can do it on the back end. The AI
Speaker 11: knows how to do it. So if there's something like
Speaker 11: we can train it on the back end. Now, so
Speaker 11: there's enough data that we put in, okay, and then
Speaker 11: so if.
Speaker 1: A name is pronounced a certain way, it puts the
Speaker 1: intonation somewhere else. If they can go in on the
Speaker 1: back end and tweak it and say, now that's.
Speaker 11: Where you put the intonation that's exactly right, and and
Speaker 11: we want to be authentic.
Speaker 10: We want to pronounce the names properly.
Speaker 2: This is really new to a lot of people. They're
Speaker 2: going to feel like they know you.
Speaker 10: Yes, I'm your friends.
Speaker 11: That's what Like when I was recording, I thought about
Speaker 11: one person, not a group of people. I'm talking to
Speaker 11: one person. I want to connect with that one person.
Speaker 11: This is about connection. So I feel the sense of
Speaker 11: purpose in doing this work because if somebody feels this connection,
Speaker 11: they'll feel seen, they'll feel value, they'll feel heard, and
Speaker 11: that's what magic happens. So I feel purpose in it.
Speaker 11: It's a little wild because it's so big and like
Speaker 11: it's blowing up. But I'm honored and humble to be
Speaker 11: the voice like around the World X, Around the World,
Speaker 11: X around the World.
Speaker 10: US and Canada.
Speaker 2: Start there, you go right.
Speaker 1: There, you have it, Xavier a Journeygain voice of dj
Speaker 1: X on Spotify AI DJs. It's so weird to think
Speaker 1: about that that's happening in our world when here I
Speaker 1: am lending my voice for three hours to this show.
Speaker 1: I understand why Spotify is doing it, but as a
Speaker 1: radio lover, I really appreciate the sound of someone that's
Speaker 1: telling me the songs, the you know, the artists, they're
Speaker 1: giving me the background. Like I get that we live
Speaker 1: in this world of streaming music where there's just random
Speaker 1: songs next to each other that play forever. But there's
Speaker 1: something so nice about someone behind the microphone that actually
Speaker 1: knows what that song is and introduces it for me.
Speaker 1: You're listening to rich on Tech. Coming up next, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about Ember's new product for babies. Yes,
Speaker 1: the world's first self warming baby bottle. You're listening to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. More of your calls and interviews after this.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here rich on Tech, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: I'm here in.
Speaker 1: Westlake Village, California with Clay Alexander, CEO of Ember. You
Speaker 1: may know this company for its temperature controlled mugs, but
Speaker 1: now they are branching out into all kinds of temperature
Speaker 1: control systems. The latest product is a self warming baby
Speaker 1: bottle system.
Speaker 2: Clay, welcome to the show.
Speaker 12: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 7: Rich.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to be here. So a lot of folks
Speaker 2: may know Ember for the mugs.
Speaker 1: This is the first product that I tried from Ember,
Speaker 1: and it's a temperature controlled mug, tell me the idea
Speaker 1: behind that.
Speaker 12: So actually it started with scrambled eggs.
Speaker 10: Okay.
Speaker 12: So in two thousand and nine, I had just sold
Speaker 12: my light bulb to GE. It was the world's large,
Speaker 12: brightest led light bulb, and GE had bought the rights
Speaker 12: to it. And I was sitting there, you know, thinking, Okay,
Speaker 12: what am I going to do next with my life?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 12: And I was eating scrambled eggs with my wife in
Speaker 12: the kitchen. I get about halfway through my eggs and
Speaker 12: my eggs get cold on my plate. This happens every
Speaker 12: time I eat scrambled eggs, so I thought. I remember
Speaker 12: looking down and thinking, okay, this is the twenty first century.
Speaker 12: At a bare minimum, my dinner plate should be able
Speaker 12: to keep my food at a decent eating temperature. So
Speaker 12: I've been an inventor since Berth and I thought, okay,
Speaker 12: let me make I started strapping RC car batteries and
Speaker 12: temperature control circuitry to the bottom of the dinner plates
Speaker 12: in my kitchen.
Speaker 2: I'm sure, I'm sure your wife loved you.
Speaker 12: No, I was making a big giant mass in the
Speaker 12: kitchen with electronics and wires and benchtop powers supplies and
Speaker 12: all that good stuff. So I created the world's first
Speaker 12: self warming interplay, and I started eating my meals off
Speaker 12: of at steaks, salmon, etc. You get halfway through the meal,
Speaker 12: thirty minutes later, you're taking your time. You cut into
Speaker 12: the salmon, steam still comes out. It's the perfect temperature,
Speaker 12: perfect bike. So I had invented this, and I remember
Speaker 12: thinking to myself looking around the kitchen going gosh, coffee mugs,
Speaker 12: soup bowls, shafing dishes, baby bottles, all the things that
Speaker 12: can benefit from temperature control. And the real question was, well,
Speaker 12: where do we start right And at that time, this
Speaker 12: is back in twenty fourteen fifteen when I was making
Speaker 12: this decision, coffee, high end coffee was on the rise
Speaker 12: big time. So we created the world's first self warming
Speaker 12: coffee cup, and we made prototypes and I remember drinking
Speaker 12: out of it, carrying it around town, and it looked
Speaker 12: like a crazy invention. It had batteries strapped to the
Speaker 12: side and wires and circuitry, but the user experience was
Speaker 12: phenomenal because you know, you got thermusigetti and all these others,
Speaker 12: and those are dual wall vacuum insulation. The temperature that
Speaker 12: you pour in is what it holds it at If
Speaker 12: you pour hot coffee, brood coffee comes out at one
Speaker 12: hundred and eighty degrees, burns your mouth, or you wait
Speaker 12: for a very long period of time for tacool, you
Speaker 12: get distracted, you go back, and now it's too cool cold.
Speaker 12: So I thought, gosh, what if I could What if
Speaker 12: we could create technology that actually locks your drinking temperature
Speaker 12: in whatever your preferred specific drinking temperature is. You set
Speaker 12: it in a number mug one thirty five for instances mine,
Speaker 12: and every time I pour a cup of coffee, no
Speaker 12: matter where I am, and I poured a number mug,
Speaker 12: it goes to one hundred and thirty five degrees on
Speaker 12: the nose. And every sip, every sip, no matter where
Speaker 12: I go. It's battery powered, carried around the meetings, et cetera.
Speaker 12: Is at one hundred and thirty five degrees.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk about the self warming baby bottle system.
Speaker 1: This is brand new from Ember, over ten years in
Speaker 1: the making. Where did the idea for this come from?
Speaker 4: Okay, this is a great story.
Speaker 12: So my beautiful daughter Charlotte was born eleven years ago
Speaker 12: and my wife did most of the feedings. Every once
Speaker 12: in a while. It was Dad's turn, and I remember
Speaker 12: Charlotte waking up in the middle of the night crying,
Speaker 12: you know, starving. It's like I'm carrying her downstairs, going
Speaker 12: into the kitchen, getting a bowl of water, running the
Speaker 12: water in the sink, warming up the water, putting the
Speaker 12: baby bottle in the water. It's bobbing around because you know,
Speaker 12: my wife didn't want me to use the microwave. And
Speaker 12: then you're like squirting milk on your wrists and you're going,
Speaker 12: I'm a new parent, I have all these other anxieties
Speaker 12: about parenthood, and I don't know if this temperature is right.
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to sense it on my wrist.
Speaker 12: So it was a very honestly, the anxiety level was
Speaker 12: very high at that time for me as a parent,
Speaker 12: and I thought, there's got to be a better way.
Speaker 12: And I thought, gosh, what if the baby bottle could
Speaker 12: warm the milk itself right up to the perfect body
Speaker 12: temperature and let you know when it's ready. And that
Speaker 12: was kind of the origin idea.
Speaker 1: And so now we've got the baby bottle. It comes
Speaker 1: with this sort of warming puck on the bottom. Can
Speaker 1: you explain how it works?
Speaker 12: There's a puck that you can throw in your back
Speaker 12: pocket or anywhere, and you can basically throw the bottle
Speaker 12: on the puck and it warms milk or formula up
Speaker 12: to body temperature within less than five minutes. And part
Speaker 12: of the beauty of it is if you want to
Speaker 12: keep the milk cold for on the go, we also
Speaker 12: have that comes in the kit that we just launched,
Speaker 12: a what we call a thermal dome. So the cold
Speaker 12: milk comes out of the fridge with the bottle and
Speaker 12: you throw it on the puck, you throw the thermal
Speaker 12: dome over it. It's all magnetic sucks together. The thermal
Speaker 12: dome will keep the milk in the bottle cold for
Speaker 12: up to four hours on the go. So you have
Speaker 12: this little like we call it like an infant feeding kit,
Speaker 12: throw in your diaper bag, throw it in your backpack
Speaker 12: on the go, and when your baby is hungry, you
Speaker 12: just open up your iPhone or Android device and you
Speaker 12: go to the Amber Baby app, you click warm Milk.
Speaker 12: It actually warms the milk while the baby bottle is
Speaker 12: in your bag, and then it just notifies you when
Speaker 12: you're ready on either your connected watch or on your phone.
Speaker 1: And if you don't want to necessarily use the app,
Speaker 1: which you probably want to because if you have something
Speaker 1: like this, you're into apps and phones and stuff. But
Speaker 1: there's also a physical button on the bottom of the
Speaker 1: puck that you can just.
Speaker 10: Press five lights.
Speaker 1: When they all light up, it lets you know that
Speaker 1: the milk is at the right temperature. The baby bottle
Speaker 1: is super lightweight, lighter than you would think.
Speaker 10: It is all dishwashers safe.
Speaker 1: All of the parts that touch the milk the puck
Speaker 1: obviously is the electronics, and you also the bulk of
Speaker 1: the electronics in the bottom, like the Bluetooth is not
Speaker 1: near the baby bottle itself.
Speaker 12: That's right. So in early in the early days, in
Speaker 12: our first version of the Umber baby bottle, we put
Speaker 12: the battery technology and the Bluetooth radio and such in
Speaker 12: the bottom of the bottle is part of the bottle,
Speaker 12: just like an Emmer mug. Right, And in a lot
Speaker 12: of early focus groups, parents said, you know, I don't
Speaker 12: really want a Bluetooth radio near my baby's face. I
Speaker 12: don't really want a batteries. So we pivoted and we
Speaker 12: re engineered the product so that we put the Bluetooth
Speaker 12: radio and the batteries and all that stuff into a
Speaker 12: little kind of hockey puck that you throw in your
Speaker 12: back pocket that's magnetic to the bottle. That way the bottle.
Speaker 12: The bottle has you know, a microprocessor, heaters and temperature
Speaker 12: control sensors all kind of embedded in there safely. But
Speaker 12: there's no you know, batteries or bluetooth radio or any
Speaker 12: of that kind of stuff. So it's it's all solid
Speaker 12: state electronics in there.
Speaker 1: And safety for this. This is something that you know,
Speaker 1: babies are going to be holding.
Speaker 12: Yeah, So safety has been a number one priority for
Speaker 12: us from the very very beginning. And one of the
Speaker 12: things that we really wanted to make sure we got
Speaker 12: right is the heating.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 12: We never wanted to be over body temperature, so you know,
Speaker 12: ninety eight point five degrees in this case. And so
Speaker 12: we actually designed the ember Baby bottle with three independent
Speaker 12: circuits that run inside the bottle. If the first circuit fails, right,
Speaker 12: if the milk goes up, you know, ninety eight point
Speaker 12: six boom, the second circuit kicks in senses that it
Speaker 12: went a point of a degree up and then opens
Speaker 12: the circuit, essentially killing heating. If the second circuit fails,
Speaker 12: there is a third circuit that can then catch it,
Speaker 12: so it is absolutely bomb proof, never go it will
Speaker 12: never go above that body temperature. And so that took
Speaker 12: us actually probably almost two years to engineer just what
Speaker 12: I was saying right there, this triple redundancy.
Speaker 1: The self forming baby bottle system from ember Cells for
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: Some people may balk at that price.
Speaker 12: So in the future we'll launch less expensive versions that
Speaker 12: just have maybe one bottle and one puck, but at launch,
Speaker 12: we want to have an entire system that really takes
Speaker 12: care of you, and it's an infant feeding system.
Speaker 2: Any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Speaker 12: I would say, honestly, grit to go from an idea
Speaker 12: in your mind to building a global brand. It's definitely
Speaker 12: the hardest thing I've ever done in my life X ten.
Speaker 12: And I would just say, you, like, the reason that
Speaker 12: I like can't sleep at night, work seven days a week,
Speaker 12: et cetera, is because of my passion of what I'm
Speaker 12: doing right Like, I'm so excited about every product that
Speaker 12: we create and launch. And if you don't have that passion,
Speaker 12: you're not going to have the grit and the determination
Speaker 12: to actually pull it off. And especially when you go
Speaker 12: through tough times, you just got to keep pushing that
Speaker 12: big giant boulder up the hill.
Speaker 1: Clay Alexander, CEO of EMBER and founder, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today.
Speaker 12: Thank you, Rich It was great to have you all right.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about what Ember's doing,
Speaker 1: check out the website. Just go to rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. I'm rich Tibureau more of rich on Tech
Speaker 1: after this welcome back to rich on Tech. I mentioned
Speaker 1: that a feature Google loves to just kill things. Google
Speaker 1: loves to kill products. Now they've got a new product
Speaker 1: they're killing Google trip summaries. This is a feature that
Speaker 1: I really liked. I thought it was kind of a
Speaker 1: fun hidden feature on Google. And I guess it was
Speaker 1: too hidden, so either people aren't using it or they
Speaker 1: just couldn't make money off of it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I like it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm looking at my upcoming trip to Nashville,
Speaker 1: and what's cool about this is Google as long as
Speaker 1: you're getting your travel itineraries in your Gmail, it kind
Speaker 1: of parses the information and puts it into an itinerary
Speaker 1: on Google Travel. So if you go to let's see
Speaker 1: what the website is here, Google dot com slash travel,
Speaker 1: and you know, you'll see the different places that you're
Speaker 1: going to, so I can see my flights here to Nashville,
Speaker 1: I can see where I'm staying. And then at the
Speaker 1: end it says discover Nashville. So it's using the you know,
Speaker 1: the itinerary information to give you ideas and what to
Speaker 1: see while you're there. And then it gives you what
Speaker 1: people ask see popular questions from Google search. Is Nashville
Speaker 1: worth visiting? What's the best best month to visit? What's
Speaker 1: the number one thing to do? Is three days enough?
Speaker 1: And then it gives you.
Speaker 2: Top travel articles.
Speaker 1: And I thought this was a really cool little feature,
Speaker 1: but apparently it's just not going to continue.
Speaker 2: So as of May.
Speaker 1: First, Google trip summaries are going away, and it's got
Speaker 1: this little message at the top of the screen that
Speaker 1: explains it says trip summaries won't be available anymore beginning
Speaker 1: May first, though, your travel reservations may still appear in
Speaker 1: other Google services, so that means that, in another word,
Speaker 1: they're scanning your Gmail travel reservations to still serve up
Speaker 1: ads based on where you might be going.
Speaker 2: That's the way I interpret that.
Speaker 1: To save a trip summary, click or tap on the
Speaker 1: share button, but you can only do that, by the way,
Speaker 1: if you put restaurant reservations, car travel, anything, it would
Speaker 1: just all go into there. It was really really a
Speaker 1: neat little feature. The other thing I would do, I guess,
Speaker 1: is just use an app like Tripsy trips Y, the
Speaker 1: one that I really like that I use. And this
Speaker 1: is probably why Google's going being done with this is
Speaker 1: because I switched to a ward wallet. So a ward
Speaker 1: wallet has this great thing called Timeline and if you
Speaker 1: give it access to your Gmail, which I know there
Speaker 1: is a security risk there, but you have to figure
Speaker 1: out if you want to do that or not. And
Speaker 1: once you do that, it can scan your Gmail for
Speaker 1: any confirmations you get and it will put this all
Speaker 1: on one big timeline. I love this. I even have
Speaker 1: my ticket Master tickets in here. It'll even find those.
Speaker 1: It's got hotel rooms, it's got car rentals, it's got
Speaker 1: car restaurant reservations, everything. Anything that gets sort of a
Speaker 1: confirmation email, Award Wallet will suck it up and put
Speaker 1: it into this great little timeline. It's really really convenient.
Speaker 1: So it's a good alternative as well. So Tripsy award Wallet,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can use tripe it as well. That'll
Speaker 1: do the same thing. Amazon this week showed off its
Speaker 1: new project Kuiper. This is their competition for Starlink. So
Speaker 1: Amazon is putting into low or orbit orbit orbit orbitbit
Speaker 1: a satellite network so they will be able to deliver
Speaker 1: a broadband across the globe. So this is starting now.
Speaker 1: I mean they're just gonna start kind of working on this.
Speaker 1: This is not going to happen for another couple of years.
Speaker 1: First sort of customers looks like twenty twenty four, so
Speaker 1: next year, so it's not we got a while. But
Speaker 1: they showed off their satellite I guess receivers for the
Speaker 1: home and so there's three different ones. Actually it's residential
Speaker 1: and small business, so there's three different receivers they have.
Speaker 1: So they've got this really high performance one that's the
Speaker 1: biggest one. They have five pounds without its bracking mounting bracket.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most powerful commercially available customer terminals
Speaker 1: of its size, delivering speeds up to four hundred megabits
Speaker 1: per second. That's really fast for space internet. Amazon says
Speaker 1: they're going to produce these terminals for less than four
Speaker 1: hundred dollars each I don't know if that means they're
Speaker 1: going to sell it for that price or that's how
Speaker 1: much's going to cost them. Then they've got this ultra
Speaker 1: compact design. This is really cool. This is a seven
Speaker 1: inch square So this is Project Kuiper's smallest and most
Speaker 1: affordable customer terminal. It weighs just a pound. It will
Speaker 1: give you speeds up to one hundred megabits per second.
Speaker 1: It's portability and affordability will create opportunities to serve even
Speaker 1: more customers around the world. This is for residential customers
Speaker 1: who want a low cost model.
Speaker 2: So cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could bring this thing anywhere, get speeds
Speaker 1: up to one hundred megabits anywhere you can see a satellite.
Speaker 1: That's really really cool. The fact that it's portable is fun.
Speaker 1: Then they've got this high bandwidth design. This is the
Speaker 1: biggest one they have. This measures nineteen inches by thirty inches.
Speaker 1: It will deliver speeds up to one gigabit per second
Speaker 1: for space Internet.
Speaker 2: I love this.
Speaker 1: I love the fact that Starlink is doing this. I
Speaker 1: love the fact that now Amazon is doing it, although
Speaker 1: I'm a little concerned about Amazon's following through with this.
Speaker 1: You know, Amazon likes to start a lot of things,
Speaker 1: but maybe not finish them, so I hope that they
Speaker 1: finished this. I think this is in their best interest
Speaker 1: because the more people that can get online around the world,
Speaker 1: the more people that can use Amazon products and services.
Speaker 1: So it's in their best interest to see this through.
Speaker 1: And launching satellite internet is not cheap, so once they
Speaker 1: get those satellites up in space, it's probably something they
Speaker 1: want to continue doing. Amazon says we have built and
Speaker 1: shipped hundreds of millions of devices for customers, including low
Speaker 1: cost products like the Echo Dot and the Fire TV stick.
Speaker 1: Project Kiper is applying that experience to its customer terminal
Speaker 1: design and production process. They are so excited to build
Speaker 1: tens of millions of units for customers. I'm excited for this.
Speaker 1: I mean, at this point, when it comes to home internet,
Speaker 1: you really have a couple of options. You've got the
Speaker 1: wired internet from the local providers, then you've got the
Speaker 1: five G Internet from the cellular providers. That's just sort
Speaker 1: of starting. It's not even available where I live, and
Speaker 1: now you're going to have space Internet, and space internet
Speaker 1: typically is more expensive, so it's been reserved for people
Speaker 1: that live in sort of rural areas or underserved areas
Speaker 1: by tradition means so the fact that now we have
Speaker 1: Amazon and starlink as an alternative, it's just it's letting
Speaker 1: more people live wherever they want, and work wherever they want,
Speaker 1: and do whatever they want in those places. You're no
Speaker 1: longer needing to run a line for something that's really cool.
Speaker 2: So thank you Amazon. All right.
Speaker 1: Final story Samsung this week, big brew haha about how
Speaker 1: Samsung phones take really good pictures of the moon, and
Speaker 1: a Reddit user said, not.
Speaker 2: So fast, this is fake.
Speaker 1: So what this user did is they took a picture
Speaker 1: of a moon picture on their computer screen from across
Speaker 1: the dark room and lo and behold the moon that
Speaker 1: they took a picture of looked amazing. All the details
Speaker 1: were there, even though it was a tiny picture to start,
Speaker 1: and so this of course made the rounds. Everyone was
Speaker 1: debating whether the samsungung photos are fake. So Samsum came
Speaker 1: out with a blog post and they explained how this
Speaker 1: is happening. They said, okay, ever since the S twenty
Speaker 1: one series, we've used this scene optimizer to recognize the
Speaker 1: moon and take a good picture of it. They apply
Speaker 1: detail enhancement so to explain how it works. They said, look,
Speaker 1: we take ten images at a twenty five times zoom
Speaker 1: or higher, and it needs all those images to enhance
Speaker 1: the clarity and other details. When the moon is recognized,
Speaker 1: this goes into effect. And they say they built their
Speaker 1: model on a whole bunch of shapes and sizes of moons,
Speaker 1: and they will actually at the last line they say,
Speaker 1: we're going to continue to make this better to reduce
Speaker 1: any potential confusion that may occur between the act of
Speaker 1: taking a picture of a real moon and an image
Speaker 1: of the moon. A reference to that Reddit thing. But yes,
Speaker 1: these Samsung phones do take really good pictures of the moon.
Speaker 1: They look very clear and very nice. I've done it.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many images of a moon you need.
Speaker 1: All Right, that's gonna do it for this episode of
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks so much for listening. Next week we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk NFTs. I'm headed to the NFT Expo in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. It's NFT LA. It's called Outer Edge LA
Speaker 1: this year. It's happening this week in Los Angeles. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hear about what the state of affairs is
Speaker 1: when it comes to NFTs. You can find me on
Speaker 1: social media. I am at rich on tech my website
Speaker 1: richontech dot TV. There you can see all the stuff
Speaker 1: I talked about here, watch my TV segments. Find me
Speaker 1: on social media. My name is Richdmiro. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for listening. There are so many ways you can spend
Speaker 1: your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here
Speaker 1: with me. I'll talk to you real soon.