Speaker 1: It's the summer of foldable phones with upcoming reveals from
Speaker 1: both Samsung and Google. Prime Day is back, How not
Speaker 1: to Get Scammed and Xbox comes to the Fire TV Stick.
Speaker 1: Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on on rich
Speaker 1: Demiro And this is Rich on Tech. This is the
Speaker 1: show where I talk about the tech stuff I think
Speaker 1: you should know about. It's also the place where I
Speaker 1: answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should
Speaker 1: be interesting, useful and fun. Let's open up those phone
Speaker 1: lines at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Once again the phone number to call if you have
Speaker 1: a question or comment about technology one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Email is
Speaker 1: also an option. Just go to the website rich on
Speaker 1: Tech dot TV. Hit contact. That will make your message.
Speaker 1: Your message will make its way right to my screen
Speaker 1: and I do share those on the show from time
Speaker 1: to time in real time too, guests. This week, I'm
Speaker 1: going to head to VidCon twenty twenty four. This is
Speaker 1: an annual convention that brings together digital content creators, their fans,
Speaker 1: and industry professionals all in one place. I was there
Speaker 1: this week in Anaheim. It was so inspiring and interesting.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to talk to some of the organizers
Speaker 1: and attendees at VidCon twenty twenty four this hour, next hour.
Speaker 1: Chris Mattman. He is the new Chief Data and Artificial
Speaker 1: Intelligence Officer at UCLA. So I thought that was really
Speaker 1: interesting because this is an entirely new job category. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk to him about what that means and
Speaker 1: what it means for you if you're thinking about a
Speaker 1: role like that. And finally, later on in the show,
Speaker 1: Bob Carpenter, President and CEO of g D one Us,
Speaker 1: is going to talk about the fiftieth anniversary of the barcode. Yes,
Speaker 1: that little thing that my kids like to scan at target,
Speaker 1: turning fifty years this week. Now, this week was a
Speaker 1: big week for foldable phones. Well, we don't know that
Speaker 1: to be the case just yet, but we expect it
Speaker 1: to be the case. So a couple of announcements. First off, Samsung.
Speaker 1: Samsung finally unveiled where they will hold their next Unpacked event.
Speaker 1: It will be held on July tenth in Paris, France. Yes,
Speaker 1: I am so excited. It is my first time going
Speaker 1: to Paris, France. I will be there for the unveiling,
Speaker 1: which will happen at three pm Parisian time and six
Speaker 1: am Pacific time nine am Eastern time, and of course
Speaker 1: the event will be live streamed on Samsung dot Com
Speaker 1: probably on YouTube as well. So what are they expected
Speaker 1: to unveil. Well, this is going to focus on their
Speaker 1: Galaxy Z series foldable phones, that is the Galaxy Z
Speaker 1: Fold six and then the Galaxy Z Flip six. Now,
Speaker 1: if you think about those two phones, the fold opens
Speaker 1: up like a book, where the flip opens up like
Speaker 1: almost a I don't know, keyboard, but the mad libs
Speaker 1: how would you describe that? I'm not really sure, but
Speaker 1: you know, one opens vertically, one opens horizontally. Now, last
Speaker 1: year these were some pretty good phones. They made some
Speaker 1: pretty good improvements to them. They made them close flat
Speaker 1: like they folded closed flat, which was really nice. This year,
Speaker 1: we're hoping for some better upgrades, like maybe to the
Speaker 1: cameras and also specifically to the outer screen on that fold.
Speaker 1: It is still way too narrow to be highly usable
Speaker 1: for the average person, so hopefully Samsung made some improvements
Speaker 1: there and made that phone just a little bit more usable.
Speaker 1: They're also going to focus a lot on their Galaxy AI,
Speaker 1: and this is their blend of different things you can
Speaker 1: do on the phone, whether or it's photo editing, whether
Speaker 1: it's translating text messages and summarizing notes, things like that.
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting because as much as Samsung
Speaker 1: likes to differentiate their phones, they're kind of running into
Speaker 1: an issue with Android at large because so many of
Speaker 1: the features that they're building into their phones eventually become
Speaker 1: a standard Android feature, and so they have to kind
Speaker 1: of make these adjustments later on where Google comes out
Speaker 1: with these features in Android. So a lot of these
Speaker 1: Galaxy AI features are sort of already now being baked
Speaker 1: into the Android phones in general, and so Samsung usually
Speaker 1: does it a little bit differently, puts their own spin
Speaker 1: on it, and sometimes it just becomes a standard Android feature. Now,
Speaker 1: the other thing that they are going to unveil is
Speaker 1: this highly anticipated Galaxy Ring. So this is their smart
Speaker 1: ring that is said to rival the Aura ring, and
Speaker 1: I've worn the Aurora ring. I think it's incredible. I've
Speaker 1: also been wearing a ring from a company called a
Speaker 1: maze Fit and it's really good. These rings, I see
Speaker 1: a lot of potential for them because they're simple, they're easy,
Speaker 1: they're always on your finger. They're very easy to wear
Speaker 1: to sleep, which means you can get really nice sleep
Speaker 1: metrics without a big thing on your wrist. And so
Speaker 1: the Galaxy Ring, of course, will fit into that whole
Speaker 1: ecosystem of the watch and the Samsung phones. And now
Speaker 1: you've got the ring, and so that will be really
Speaker 1: interesting to see what that's all about. I don't expect
Speaker 1: a lot of surprises there. It's probably gonna have a
Speaker 1: lot of AI features, but you know, it's going to
Speaker 1: do the standard stuff, you know, track your heart rate,
Speaker 1: track your oxygen, track your sleeping. And I think that'll
Speaker 1: be a nice growth area for Samsung because you've got
Speaker 1: a lot of Samsung fans out there and this will
Speaker 1: work nicely in that ecosystem. Right now, Samsung doing a
Speaker 1: deal where they will give you fifty dollars pre order
Speaker 1: credit if you give them your email address. They're also
Speaker 1: promising up to fifteen hundred dollars in trade in credit,
Speaker 1: so if you have one of these foldable phone owns,
Speaker 1: you might get a nice trade in that helps them
Speaker 1: pump the numbers, you know, for like the sales and
Speaker 1: pre sales and all that stuff. No obligation, you just
Speaker 1: give them your phone number or your email address rather. Now,
Speaker 1: not to be outdone, Google, just hours after Samsung's big announcement,
Speaker 1: they came out with their own announcement. They said, you
Speaker 1: know what, hold my beer. We're going to have an
Speaker 1: announcement on August thirteenth for our new Pixel devices. And
Speaker 1: let's see if I can find the actual invite that
Speaker 1: I got from Google. Hey, let's see August thirteenth, Mountain View, California.
Speaker 1: This email does not confirm your registration. Please click the
Speaker 1: RSVP button. Hey, Rich, You're invited to an in person
Speaker 1: made by Google event where we'll showcase the best of
Speaker 1: Google AI, Android software and the Pixel portfolio of devices.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean? Kind of a head scratcher,
Speaker 1: because two things going on here. Number One, these devices
Speaker 1: that Google are putting out, or is putting out, I
Speaker 1: should say, they're going right up against the Samsung devices. Now,
Speaker 1: Google and Samsung work very closely these days. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting that they're competing in this foldable space. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna see Pixel devices, including the new Pixel fold I'm
Speaker 1: guessing that none of this is confirmed. Obviously, they just
Speaker 1: said Pixel portfolio. So what does that mean? The rumor
Speaker 1: mill is saying there's gonna be the Pixel nine and
Speaker 1: two sizes of the Pixel nine Pro. Just what I said,
Speaker 1: I said, give me a Pixel nine Pro where I
Speaker 1: don't have to have this big phone I can have
Speaker 1: all the great features but in a smaller size. So
Speaker 1: it sounds like they may be doing that this time around.
Speaker 1: We're also looking at a larger pixel Watch three coming
Speaker 1: in two different sizes, so the standard size they've got
Speaker 1: right now forty one millimeters and also a forty five
Speaker 1: millimeter size, which that'll be nice because the bigger screen
Speaker 1: does give you a lot more benefit. And then maybe
Speaker 1: some new Pixel buds. Now, this is the interesting thing.
Speaker 1: This This event is typically held in October, so usually
Speaker 1: the cadence is Samsung shows off their devices, then Apple
Speaker 1: and then Google. But this year it is now Samsung,
Speaker 1: then Google, and then Apple brings up the rear. Now,
Speaker 1: we are not expecting any foldable phones from Apple, but
Speaker 1: you know, Apple kind of lives in a world of
Speaker 1: their own, so it's not like a lot of people
Speaker 1: are trying to decide between a foldable phone and the
Speaker 1: latest iPhone. But if these things have enough great features,
Speaker 1: maybe Samsung and Google might be able to win some
Speaker 1: of those potential upgraders from Apple who have already seen
Speaker 1: what iOS eighteen is going to bring, and maybe they're saying, eh,
Speaker 1: I'd kind of rather maybe try something a little bit different,
Speaker 1: little new this time around. Emphasis on AI once again,
Speaker 1: both Google and Samsung and Apple, they have all emphasized
Speaker 1: their AI offerings. I have been trying out a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff, both from Samsung and Google. It's kind
Speaker 1: of all over the place right now because because you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of this AI stuff, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of like not necessarily perfectly baked in. And I'm kind
Speaker 1: of curious to see what Apple's going to do because
Speaker 1: there's is much more baked into your device where it's
Speaker 1: accessing your text messages, it's accessing your email, whereas like
Speaker 1: Google's and Samsung's, you know, it's just kind of like
Speaker 1: more for translation, more for summarization, and I do like
Speaker 1: Gemini for getting some up to date answers, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of slow and it's not always like, you know,
Speaker 1: the best out there when it comes to these answers.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna have to see how this all shakes out.
Speaker 1: The other thing that's happening that was announced this week
Speaker 1: is Prime Day from Amazon. So Amazon's tenth annual Prime
Speaker 1: Day that will happen on July sixteenth and seventeenth. Of course,
Speaker 1: as usual, they are promising millions of deals across thirty
Speaker 1: five categories for Prime members. So that's the notable thing here.
Speaker 1: You do have to be a Prime member. Of course.
Speaker 1: They're giving a thirty day trial to Prime available for free.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Some of the things they're promising up to forty percent
Speaker 1: off Sony wireless headphones, thirty percent off Peloton products. Peloton
Speaker 1: sadly needs the help because you know they're not doing
Speaker 1: so great these days. Forty percent off Amazon Basics and
Speaker 1: Amazon Essentials. And right now you can get three months
Speaker 1: free of Audible and five months free of Prime Music.
Speaker 1: So again, Prime Day happening on July sixteenth and seventeenth.
Speaker 1: Coming up. I'll tell you how to avoid getting scammed
Speaker 1: on Prime Day, all right? The phone number four, the
Speaker 1: show eight eight eight rich one On one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one, the
Speaker 1: website rich On tech dot TV. We'll get to your
Speaker 1: calls next. You are doing something smart. You are listening
Speaker 1: to rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one
Speaker 1: zero one. If you have a question about technology, give
Speaker 1: me a call. We'll get back to the phone lines
Speaker 1: in just a moment. This week I visited VidCon Anaheim.
Speaker 1: This is an event that brings together creators, their fans, merchandise,
Speaker 1: and brands. It's basically a one stop shop to celebrate
Speaker 1: all things creators and the Internet. First, I spoke with
Speaker 1: Sarah Tortoreadi about how this event brings all these different
Speaker 1: elements together. So what is VidCon all about.
Speaker 3: It is about converging all of the things about digital
Speaker 3: media in one place. We've got the biggest creators, We've
Speaker 3: got all of the fans of those creators. We have
Speaker 3: up and coming creators who are here to learn how
Speaker 3: to be the next big creator.
Speaker 1: And we have the industry.
Speaker 3: Anybody who works in the digital media industry, all of
Speaker 3: them are here in one place, and it really makes
Speaker 3: it a magical experience.
Speaker 1: So what have people come to VidCon for all different things?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: The fans come to meet their creators, to see them,
Speaker 3: to hear from them, to meet and mingle with other
Speaker 3: like minded fans of those creators. The creator check is
Speaker 3: for people who are really trying to build their business
Speaker 3: online learn how to be the next big creator and
Speaker 3: the industry here is here to network here from the
Speaker 3: creators to learn about how to really drive their business
Speaker 3: forward with what's happening right now in the digital media
Speaker 3: and creator ecosystem.
Speaker 1: How do you define creator people?
Speaker 3: Anybody who makes content and content that people watch. You
Speaker 3: can be a creator and have five followers, you can
Speaker 3: be a creator and have a million followers. It's really
Speaker 3: about making engaging content and you know, things that people
Speaker 3: want to.
Speaker 5: See and hear about.
Speaker 1: Give me sort of a state of the industry of
Speaker 1: being a creator and what is that like right now?
Speaker 3: It is the celebrity right, Hollywood is no longer just Hollywood.
Speaker 3: It's really like the kids care about people who are
Speaker 3: making content, people who are on YouTube, who are on Instagram,
Speaker 3: who are on TikTok, And that is what is driving
Speaker 3: culture right now, gen z, Gen and Alpha.
Speaker 1: That's what they care about. And a VidCon holds events
Speaker 1: in different cities. Now it started out just in one place.
Speaker 1: Now you're in different cities.
Speaker 3: Why because we think that there's an appetite for what
Speaker 3: we do elsewhere. We have become Mexico in August. This
Speaker 3: is our going into our third year and we also
Speaker 3: are going to our second year in Baltimore. Content creation
Speaker 3: digital content creators are big around the world, and so
Speaker 3: what we do has relevance.
Speaker 1: Is this the biggest one, the biggest event? Yep.
Speaker 3: This is our thirteenth year. So this is our bread
Speaker 3: and butter, which is why it's so big and amazing.
Speaker 3: The other two are up and coming, but you know,
Speaker 3: we have confidence that we can build them moving forward.
Speaker 1: Colin Hickey, also from VidCon, has been with the event
Speaker 1: for a long time. He talks about how it's expanded
Speaker 1: and changed.
Speaker 6: So start in twenty ten by Hank and John Green
Speaker 6: degree brothers who are authors and YouTubers and entrepreneurs and philanthropists.
Speaker 6: And it was started in a high regency in Los Angeles.
Speaker 5: It was about twelve hundred people.
Speaker 6: You know, Hank and John just noticed that YouTube fandom
Speaker 6: and community was really becoming a thing, and they wanted
Speaker 6: to create a convention to kind of celebrate that. And
Speaker 6: so we went from twelve hundred people in la and
Speaker 6: to you know, fifty five thousand people last year in
Speaker 6: Anaheim and we're in We've been to five different countries
Speaker 6: and continents, and yeah, we're all over the place.
Speaker 1: What has changed in the thirteen years that you've been
Speaker 1: hosting vidcom?
Speaker 6: I think, obviously, I think the size of the convention
Speaker 6: is one thing. You know, it was there wasn't these
Speaker 6: giant booths back in twenty ten. But like the fandom
Speaker 6: has grown, the platforms have grown. Back then, it was
Speaker 6: normally just YouTubers and now it's TikTokers and snapchatters and Instagram,
Speaker 6: you know. So I think just online video as a
Speaker 6: whole was matured and grown up, and we're just making
Speaker 6: sure that we're trying to stay consistent with that and
Speaker 6: highlight every year.
Speaker 1: So for the people that want to become the next
Speaker 1: big thing, are you selling a dream or do you
Speaker 1: still think it's really possible.
Speaker 6: I think they're creating stars every day. But we have
Speaker 6: kids who was to come to Viccano and buy a
Speaker 6: community track ticket. Three years later, they might be on
Speaker 6: the side of the building and was one of our
Speaker 6: future creators and have a million fans. So I think
Speaker 6: some of these kids, we're probably creating superstars every day online, and.
Speaker 1: You've been doing this for a long time, So what
Speaker 1: do you like about this? What do you get out
Speaker 1: of it? Every year?
Speaker 6: I just love seeing the fans interact.
Speaker 1: A lot of these kids show up.
Speaker 6: They have liked interests, they like the same creators, they
Speaker 6: meet at Viccon in person, and they become friends for life.
Speaker 1: Alie Rodriguez, an attendee from Coasta Mesa, California, explains to
Speaker 1: me the concept of cosplay. Why'd you come to Viccon?
Speaker 7: I came last year and it was really fun, so
Speaker 7: I decided to come again.
Speaker 1: What do you like about it?
Speaker 7: I get to meet different creators and it also all
Speaker 7: get to waste my money on stuff, and I also
Speaker 7: get to dress up. One of the excuses to cosplay,
Speaker 7: and I really enjoy doing that.
Speaker 1: Explain that to someone who doesn't understand what cosplay is
Speaker 1: and why you would dress up.
Speaker 7: Cosplay is like Halloween is like dressing up as a
Speaker 7: character for Halloween, but you go to different conventions dressed
Speaker 7: up as this as that character, and sometimes you can
Speaker 7: make your own like how you do for a Halloween costume,
Speaker 7: and it's honestly, like really fun.
Speaker 1: Mara Rodriguez is shop running five kids at the event.
Speaker 8: You know what, It's a good outlet for them. It's
Speaker 8: a safe space for them to come and just kind
Speaker 8: of see their creators that they like to watch on
Speaker 8: YouTube or TikTok or whatever. So it's a good way
Speaker 8: for them to do in real life versus just always
Speaker 8: over the video. But it's good, you know, It's it's clean,
Speaker 8: wholesome fun and they just have a glass. It's it's
Speaker 8: kind of crazy and NonStop like for three days, but
Speaker 8: I think it's worth it.
Speaker 1: What do you think about the difference between the celebrities,
Speaker 1: you know, of the previous generation versus today's celebrities, which
Speaker 1: are streamers and YouTubers.
Speaker 8: It's really different because obviously you look at celebrities like
Speaker 8: in my time, where they were just on the big
Speaker 8: screen and you're like, probably not attainable to really get
Speaker 8: to meet one of them. But here you come to
Speaker 8: these conventions and they are celebrity in their own right
Speaker 8: and you get to meet them and they're like super
Speaker 8: cool and chill and just very down to earth that
Speaker 8: it's like cool, you know, So they don't feel like
Speaker 8: celebrity status, but they are just because of the viewers obviously.
Speaker 1: Finally, I spoke with Jordan Matter, a photographer turned YouTuber.
Speaker 1: He now has twenty three million subscribers on YouTube and
Speaker 1: makes a living off the platform. So how did you
Speaker 1: build your channel?
Speaker 9: So I started by doing photography challenges back in the day,
Speaker 9: and so the video is as popular as the person
Speaker 9: I was photographing. So if I was doing Charlie Demilio
Speaker 9: would get a lot of views that kind of thing.
Speaker 9: And then I eventually transition over to working with my
Speaker 9: daughter because I was missing her, so I wanted to
Speaker 9: work with her once in a while, and then that
Speaker 9: became very very popular and we've been doing.
Speaker 1: It ever since. And so why do you come to vidcom.
Speaker 9: Because this is where everybody is to talk about everything
Speaker 9: creator led and I'm interested and fascinating, and I also
Speaker 9: get an opportunity to meet a bunch of people who
Speaker 9: watch our videos.
Speaker 1: How long you've been doing this and are you still learning?
Speaker 5: Seven years?
Speaker 1: And yes, never stops. And so tell me about the
Speaker 1: life of a creator. What does it entail people? It
Speaker 1: looks very easy?
Speaker 9: Is it great question? Because it seems like it's really easy, right, Yeah,
Speaker 9: it is the greatest job you can have. So there's
Speaker 9: no complaint when I say that we work seven days
Speaker 9: a week, and six of the days is to plan
Speaker 9: a video and then one day is to shoot it.
Speaker 9: So we do all of it to plan out that
Speaker 9: one day.
Speaker 1: And what's your tips to aspiring creators? Because kids don't
Speaker 1: want to be an astronaut or a lawyer anymore. They
Speaker 1: want to be a YouTuber.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and it's a great career, but you got to
Speaker 9: do something that is truthful to yourself. So and don't
Speaker 9: copy people, do something original, and be consistent. Be consistent.
Speaker 9: That's the number of things. Don't give up. Just keep
Speaker 9: posting every week, pick a time, pick a day, and
Speaker 9: do it every week and eventually you'll find an audience.
Speaker 1: It's been a while since I attended Vidcom, but it
Speaker 1: was really impressive to see all of these young people
Speaker 1: so infatuated with creators that they can actually meet and
Speaker 1: talk to and really get inspiration from. I also love
Speaker 1: how Hollywood is changing, the idea of celebrity is changing,
Speaker 1: and really the only barrier to entry at this point
Speaker 1: is a smartphone. Next up, Vidcom will be held in
Speaker 1: Mexico in August, then Baltimore in September. And just to
Speaker 1: give you an idea of how big this show has become,
Speaker 1: the brand is now owned by Paramount More. Rich On
Speaker 1: Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eighty eight seven four to two, four to one
Speaker 1: zero one. The website for the show rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. If you want links to anything I mentioned,
Speaker 1: you can hit the light bulb at the top of
Speaker 1: the website. If you want to get in touch with me,
Speaker 1: just hit contact, and many of you do, so thank
Speaker 1: you for that. I do see all the emails. I
Speaker 1: can't get to every single one of them, but I
Speaker 1: do my best. And if you want to sign up
Speaker 1: for the newsletter while you're there, be sure to do that.
Speaker 1: I just sent out my new issue today, which talks
Speaker 1: about a lot of the things that I talked about
Speaker 1: on this show as well. Well you knew this was coming.
Speaker 1: The record labels are suing two AI music generators for
Speaker 1: copyright infringement. In fact, we played the music that we
Speaker 1: created from one of these on the show. So the
Speaker 1: RIAA taking action against Suno and Udio. Basically the RIAA,
Speaker 1: which is made up of all these major record labels, Sony, UMG,
Speaker 1: It's Universal Music Group, and Warner Records, they say, you
Speaker 1: know what, how did you train your AI to generate
Speaker 1: music on the fly? What did you program your AI with?
Speaker 1: What did it learn from? We have a hunch that
Speaker 1: it was our songs from our major artists. In fact,
Speaker 1: we've heard songs that sound just like Michael Jackson's, that
Speaker 1: sound just like Chuck Berry's. So this is going to
Speaker 1: go on and on. Obviously, this is one of the
Speaker 1: biggest questions in AI at this point. Where are you
Speaker 1: getting your training material? Now? Say, some AI systems are
Speaker 1: going kind of like the legal route and they're just
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're licensing things, and others are taking
Speaker 1: more of a fair use route where they're saying, you
Speaker 1: know what, we're just kind of using stuff that we
Speaker 1: see on the open web, just like anyone else would,
Speaker 1: like a human would. And this is kind of a
Speaker 1: gray area, and obviously these legal folks will kind of
Speaker 1: argue all of this stuff. But there are two sides
Speaker 1: to this. I mean, if you think about it, Let's
Speaker 1: say I wrote a book and I read all of
Speaker 1: the classics, you know, all the Moby Dicks of the
Speaker 1: world and all of the different things that people can read,
Speaker 1: and then I came up with my own book. Do
Speaker 1: you think that book would be influenced by the stuff
Speaker 1: that I read as a child or as a teen
Speaker 1: in my influential years. Probably, And that's kind of their
Speaker 1: argument with this AI. They're saying, look, AI is just
Speaker 1: like a human it's like a brain. It's just absorbing
Speaker 1: all the stuff that's around it in the world and
Speaker 1: then it's spitting out its own kind of stuff. But
Speaker 1: these companies that own the materials are saying, not so fast.
Speaker 1: You know, these artists need to be paid because you're
Speaker 1: you're making stuff that's kind of that's based on their art.
Speaker 1: You're writing articles that are based on the New York
Speaker 1: Times and the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal articles.
Speaker 1: You're creating music that's based on musical artists that we've
Speaker 1: paid to create. And so this is definitely the biggest
Speaker 1: issue going on with AI services. Where are they getting
Speaker 1: their training and we will continue to follow this. But yes,
Speaker 1: the record labels, they want their money. They say pay up,
Speaker 1: pay up. Let's go to Jenny and Jerry in Costa Mesa. Jerry,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich. Hi.
Speaker 10: Well, I've got a problem with my EPs and super
Speaker 10: printer the twenty.
Speaker 1: Well, you know I don't take any printer questions on
Speaker 1: this show. Jerry, you don't, I don't, so, but I'll
Speaker 1: take yours. We'll just hear you out. There's so many,
Speaker 1: I joke, because there are so many printer issues, literally
Speaker 1: every printer. I don't think I've ever met a printer
Speaker 1: that doesn't have an issue. Like even mine has an error.
Speaker 1: It's like the equivalent of the twelve o'clock flashing blinking
Speaker 1: time on the VCR. Everyone's printer has an error. What's yours? Jerry?
Speaker 10: Well, this is you. You have the four colors, and
Speaker 10: you go buy the big things and pill them up
Speaker 10: and they last forever, suppose So, okay, I usually just
Speaker 10: use the black. I don't use the color stuff ever,
Speaker 10: mostly all blacks. Why I got this one, I don't know,
Speaker 10: But anyway, I filled the black all up just fine,
Speaker 10: but the colors were starting to get down. Maybe like
Speaker 10: two thirds of the way down. So I figured, well
Speaker 10: out fill those all up, because there's something in the
Speaker 10: instructions that tell you if they get to a certain point,
Speaker 10: it won't print anymore. Well, about the time that I
Speaker 10: read that, it stopped printing. So I went out bought
Speaker 10: the four color or three other colors, filled those up.
Speaker 10: Now I've got all four of them filled perfectly. Followed
Speaker 10: the directions, followed the resetting all the stuff it won't print?
Speaker 1: What is it saying? Why I won't it print? What's
Speaker 1: it telling you?
Speaker 10: It's just it's just says it won't even turn onto printing.
Speaker 1: Okay, So is there is there a message on it
Speaker 1: at all? Or is there a message on the window?
Speaker 10: No message, just the little sing on the printer, you know,
Speaker 10: a little small thing, and it just is blanked.
Speaker 1: Okay. So have you unplugged this printer and plugged it
Speaker 1: back in?
Speaker 11: Yes?
Speaker 10: Okay?
Speaker 1: And what happens then? Okay, Now when you look at
Speaker 1: your the print heads, are they all seated properly? Have
Speaker 1: you popped the cartridges out and have you popped them
Speaker 1: back in to make sure that they're all seated properly,
Speaker 1: because sometimes if the door is not closed.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 10: I followed all the directions for all of that, and
Speaker 10: uh yeah, you know, each time set it back up
Speaker 10: the way you know, the original setup for the thing
Speaker 10: and saying nothing, okay. The other thing only about three
Speaker 10: years old, so.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, oh yeah, this thing should last for
Speaker 1: a long time. The other thing, it sounds like it
Speaker 1: could be a software issue or something. Is just not
Speaker 1: like when you when you've refilled it. It's just not
Speaker 1: like regis during again, Uh, is there a way to
Speaker 1: do a factory reset on this printer? Can you? Is
Speaker 1: there any what? What was the model number again?
Speaker 10: Let's see it's twenty seven, let me do it.
Speaker 1: Twenty seven sixty, twenty seven twenty yeah, okay, twenty seven,
Speaker 1: twenty seven, fifty seven fifty okay, so let's see if
Speaker 1: they're okay. So, uh, the twenty seven to fifty does
Speaker 1: have a reset button. So I think what you should
Speaker 1: do is basically reset this to factory defaults. And I
Speaker 1: think that that that's probably what's gonna help it. Now,
Speaker 1: this will take it off of your Are you connected
Speaker 1: via Wi Fi on this printer?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Huh okay, so it's gonna take it off your Wi
Speaker 1: Fi network and you're gonna have to reset it up
Speaker 1: on that Wi Fi network. But I think I think
Speaker 1: the reset should fix it, because it sounds like if
Speaker 1: you're not getting any message, do you see the printer
Speaker 1: on your computer when you go to print, like is
Speaker 1: it on? Oh it's not even okay, all right, then
Speaker 1: it sounds like it might have gotten disconnected from your
Speaker 1: WiFi network. I think I think the reset of the
Speaker 1: entire printer will will snap this thing back into action.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what happened in the clean and the
Speaker 1: refilling process, why why it went dormant on you. But
Speaker 1: if you're not seeing it when you go to print
Speaker 1: on your actual computer, like if it's not showing up
Speaker 1: as an option, then this printer has disappeared off your network,
Speaker 1: and so you're not gonna be able to do anything
Speaker 1: with it. So it may not be that it's actually,
Speaker 1: you know, not working. It may be that your computer
Speaker 1: is just not recognizing this printer. So you want to
Speaker 1: make sure find the reset button just you know, Google
Speaker 1: reset button or Factory Reset twenty seven fifty epsyn and
Speaker 1: then once you do that, it will go back to
Speaker 1: the factory settings, which means you're gonna have to set
Speaker 1: this up from scratch using your computer. So run the
Speaker 1: little program on your computer in the settings to find
Speaker 1: this printer on and to set this printer up so
Speaker 1: it should find it on your network and help set
Speaker 1: it up. That should take care of it hopefully. If not,
Speaker 1: you may have to get on the phone with EPSYN
Speaker 1: and do some troubleshooting with their tech support department. But
Speaker 1: that's uh. That's why I don't take printer questions because
Speaker 1: there's just too many variables. There's too many things that
Speaker 1: can go wrong with a printer in this day and age.
Speaker 1: With these printers, they should be very simple. But for
Speaker 1: some reason, like my printer, it gives me an error
Speaker 1: message that it can't connect to the internet when it's
Speaker 1: connected to the internet every single day. It's always been,
Speaker 1: nothing has changed, but it's like, hey, if you don't
Speaker 1: connect to the internet in the next couple of days,
Speaker 1: you're going to lose all your print privileges. Because I'm
Speaker 1: on that fancy program with HP where you pay every
Speaker 1: month for the privilege of printing from the printer that
Speaker 1: you bought at the store. I know, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a great everything's a subscription these days, including my own
Speaker 1: printer eighty to eight rich one on one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Jerry,
Speaker 1: thanks for the call, and please submit on the website
Speaker 1: and update so I know that you're able to print
Speaker 1: one of these days. All right, Coming up, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you how not to be scammed on Prime Day plus
Speaker 1: team viewer had to hack. I'll explain what that means
Speaker 1: for you. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology at Triple A rich one oh one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two, four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up this hour, we're going to talk to Chris Mattman.
Speaker 1: He is the new Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Officer
Speaker 1: at UCLA. I thought that was an interesting job title,
Speaker 1: one that probably didn't exist a year ago, and so
Speaker 1: we'll we'll hear what that's all about. Prime Day coming
Speaker 1: up here on July sixteenth and seventeenth. Do not get scammed.
Speaker 1: Amazon says suspicious email messages increased from five thousand per
Speaker 1: week to fourteen thousand per week during the last Prime Day,
Speaker 1: and so here's what they say to do. Number One,
Speaker 1: verify your purchases on Amazon if you get one of
Speaker 1: these text messages that says, hey, we're having trouble with
Speaker 1: your delivery. Do not click the link in that message.
Speaker 1: They will hack you, They will steal your information, They
Speaker 1: will try to do all they can to get info
Speaker 1: out of you. Everyone's ordered something on Amazon. Everyone has
Speaker 1: a pending package. Instead, go to your Amazon account or
Speaker 1: use the Amazon Mobile app to confirm that it's really
Speaker 1: a purchase, or if there's any issue, use Amazon's app
Speaker 1: and website. They do not ask for payment over the
Speaker 1: phone or over email. They will never ask for that,
Speaker 1: so it's always through the website. Be wary of any
Speaker 1: false urgency. This is a tactic scammers always use. They
Speaker 1: try to create a sense of urgency. Hey, we've got
Speaker 1: this thing to deliver to you, but we can't deliver it.
Speaker 1: We can't finish it because we need this final payment.
Speaker 1: Don't do it. Don't be pressured into buying a gift card.
Speaker 1: I know it sounds silly, but you know what, I
Speaker 1: don't even buy gift cards for people anymore because there
Speaker 1: are so many scams. My wife just try to use
Speaker 1: a gift card from the Holidays the other day. Didn't work,
Speaker 1: just didn't work, and it was like a two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars gift card. These things they're getting hacked so often.
Speaker 1: People just literally go to stores. They grabbed the gift cards,
Speaker 1: they grabbed the numbers off the back you activate it.
Speaker 1: They drained the funds. I went to Target to this
Speaker 1: was to buy a gift card a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't even they didn't even have them anywhere anymore.
Speaker 1: They're only behind the like the service desk, because they
Speaker 1: there's too many issues with it. So the last time
Speaker 1: I had to give one to someone, I said, you
Speaker 1: know what, Actually, Bobo, you were the last one I
Speaker 1: gave a gift card too. Did your just work? Use
Speaker 1: it quick? That's my other advice. Yeah, talk to Brittany
Speaker 1: when I get home. That's That was the last gift
Speaker 1: card I gave to Bobo for his birthday, and I
Speaker 1: had to go behind the counter. And you know, cash
Speaker 1: seems so like, you know, impersonal, like a gift card
Speaker 1: of somewhere where you might use anyway. So the last
Speaker 1: gift card I gave to my my niece and nephew,
Speaker 1: I just didn't. I just gave him cash because the
Speaker 1: gift cards I just didn't want to deal with the scams.
Speaker 1: And finally, you can contact Amazon if there's an issue.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Do not call a number that
Speaker 1: you google for Amazon. Go to Amazon's website. At the bottom,
Speaker 1: it says get in touch, chat with us. That's the
Speaker 1: way you should do it, and then check what others
Speaker 1: are saying. If you ever have any sort of scam
Speaker 1: issue where you're wondering if this is a scam, go
Speaker 1: to the Better Business Bureau scam tracker website. This is
Speaker 1: a great website because people are always reporting scams. So
Speaker 1: BBB dot org slash scam tracker and you can type
Speaker 1: in any keyword. So let's say someone gave you a
Speaker 1: job offer through LinkedIn to sell I don't know chihuahuas,
Speaker 1: Why would you do that? I don't know whatever? Or
Speaker 1: you're trying to adopt a I don't know. There's so
Speaker 1: many scams out there. Just search for one of the
Speaker 1: keywords on your BBB scam tracker and you will find
Speaker 1: other people talking about it. Don't sell pets, adopt them.
Speaker 1: Please don't get don't send me the angry. Let's go
Speaker 1: to uh Andrew in Huntington Beach. Andrew, you're on with
Speaker 1: Rich Hey rach.
Speaker 5: How's it going?
Speaker 1: It is going fantastic. What can I help you with?
Speaker 8: Kind I'm on the road right now.
Speaker 1: My iPhone is when I make a telephone call, I
Speaker 1: need to use the speakerphone because the piece by my
Speaker 1: ear is so quiet.
Speaker 4: I mean, I can't use it.
Speaker 1: Are you on speakerphone right now?
Speaker 4: Right now?
Speaker 8: I'm on my car phone?
Speaker 1: Okay, So what so the the ear piece doesn't work,
Speaker 1: it's too it's too soft, and you want to just
Speaker 1: switch to speakerphone. Well, I need to use the speakerphone.
Speaker 10: I've my wife to have a fixed Also, I can't.
Speaker 1: Play in the stereo music anymore. It just doesn't do it. Well. Okay,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it sounds like the ear piece on
Speaker 1: your phone is clogged, and that can happen. It can
Speaker 1: get blocked up. So I would try, and you have
Speaker 1: to be very careful and gentle. But there's kind of
Speaker 1: like a little area up to the top of your
Speaker 1: phone that, you know, depending on the phone model you have,
Speaker 1: you can kind of clean that area out a little bit,
Speaker 1: maybe you know, use a little canned air up there.
Speaker 1: But if you want to use speakerphone all the time,
Speaker 1: if that's the solution, if you can't get this little
Speaker 1: earpiece area cleaned out, and that's what the older phones
Speaker 1: they have, like kind of that speaker grill up there.
Speaker 1: So what I would do is turn on automatic call
Speaker 1: routing to speakerphone. And this is an accessibility feature that's
Speaker 1: on the iPhone, so you can just have it automatically
Speaker 1: answer in speakerphone every time you use it. So you
Speaker 1: can turn that on by going into Settings Accessibility and
Speaker 1: it's kind of weird. I don't know why they call
Speaker 1: it touch. You tap touch, which doesn't make sense because
Speaker 1: it's an audio feature, but whatever. And then there's an
Speaker 1: option called call audio routing and you want to select speakerphone.
Speaker 1: Usually it's set by default to automatic. Again, this is
Speaker 1: an accessibility feature, so every time your phone picks up,
Speaker 1: it will just automatically into that speaker phone. If you
Speaker 1: want to manually do it when you're in a call,
Speaker 1: you just go ahead and tap the sound and it will.
Speaker 1: It will give you all your options, whether it's Bluetooth,
Speaker 1: whether it is the headset piece or or the ear
Speaker 1: piece or the or the speakerphone there. So that is
Speaker 1: the way to do it, but you know, depending on
Speaker 1: your phone, I would I would clear out that little
Speaker 1: little earpiece area. Sounds like it got a little jammed up.
Speaker 1: So that that happens from time to time, especially when
Speaker 1: your phone is getting softer and softer. You're like, what's
Speaker 1: happening here, Like is my hearing going or is my
Speaker 1: phone just clogged up? And the fact that you're telling
Speaker 1: me that you can't hear audio either, like it's not
Speaker 1: in stereo anymore, tells me that it's just firing out
Speaker 1: of the speaker on the bottom of the phone and
Speaker 1: not the speaker on the top of the phone. So, Andrew,
Speaker 1: thanks for the call in Huntington Beach. Today, let's go
Speaker 1: to Ron in West Hollywood. Ron, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 11: They're Rich. You're a good replacement for Leo. I used
Speaker 11: to listen to him all design for years and years
Speaker 11: and years. Anyway, I have a Galaxy Galaxy ten. Uh,
Speaker 11: it's locked. I can't I've tried everything that I don't
Speaker 11: know how it got. My pin doesn't work, and anyway
Speaker 11: I'm trying to I don't want to lose all the data.
Speaker 11: Oh there's all the everything on it. And so yeah,
Speaker 11: everybody could unlock it T Mobile or Samsung or whatever,
Speaker 11: but I get to lose all my data. Yeah, and
Speaker 11: that's not acceptable. So I went out. I bought a
Speaker 11: went out and bought a Pixel eight. I know you
Speaker 11: love them. Yeah, I've had nothing but trouble with it.
Speaker 11: It just doesn't work like the Samsung. You know.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's different, it's it's sam Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: there's pros and cons of both. But okay, so you
Speaker 1: got the Pixel eight. You want to transfer your infoover
Speaker 1: or what.
Speaker 11: Well, I would I would happily do that. I can't
Speaker 11: do anything with the phone though, because it's locked. Okay,
Speaker 11: I mean with the Galaxy, the Galaxy ten, which I wanted.
Speaker 11: You know, I would transfer it anywhere. I'd transfer it
Speaker 11: to A twenty four or whatever. But you know, you're
Speaker 11: really sort of sol when you yeah, when you can't
Speaker 11: you can't unlock it. And I've tried everything that I
Speaker 11: can think of. And I've also talked to T Mobile
Speaker 11: and they said, no, we can't do anything with it.
Speaker 11: Will you lose all your data? And I've talked to
Speaker 11: Samsung over in Glendale and they said, no, we can't
Speaker 11: help you. And so it's like, great, that's fantastic. I've
Speaker 11: found one one email one website on the internet. Then
Speaker 11: they said, well give so they want twenty six bucks.
Speaker 11: I don't care about that. It's just I'd like to
Speaker 11: go with someone that's legitimate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean, look, we've had this, We've had
Speaker 1: this question before, and it happens often. And like you said, yes,
Speaker 1: if you forget the pin on your phone, you can
Speaker 1: easily load up the bootloader, which is what they were
Speaker 1: talking about and going to recover, and you can format
Speaker 1: this phone and load the software and start fresh. But
Speaker 1: with that pin number, there's really no way to access
Speaker 1: what's on that device. And this is for iPhone or Android.
Speaker 1: It's just it's a safety feature. It's a security feature,
Speaker 1: and it's just the way that these phones are built now.
Speaker 1: There used to be there used to be a Google
Speaker 1: kind of system recovery that when this phone was tied
Speaker 1: to your Google account, it would let you do it.
Speaker 1: But I have not seen that in many, many years,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that this phone would have that feature.
Speaker 1: So you may try to enter the code in a
Speaker 1: couple times wrong until it says, hey, do you want
Speaker 1: to recover your account? If that doesn't show up, this
Speaker 1: phone does not have that feature, so it sounds like
Speaker 1: because this phone is locked, you're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to recover it. And we actually had I remember now,
Speaker 1: I remember the caller. This same thing happened, except the
Speaker 1: caller had thousands of dollars of bitcoin stored on this phone.
Speaker 1: And now I'm remembering. We were going through all the
Speaker 1: motions and it was like hopeless, and I said, look,
Speaker 1: you have to make it your job to figure out
Speaker 1: what your pin code is. Now, Ron, I'm guessing this
Speaker 1: pin is just four digits. You got to think hard
Speaker 1: and long and figure out what was this code. And
Speaker 1: so maybe if you really want this data off of
Speaker 1: the phone, you can just kind of put in one
Speaker 1: code every day until this thing locks you out. And
Speaker 1: the problem is with the lockouts, they get longer and
Speaker 1: longer over time. So the first time it may lock
Speaker 1: you out for a little bit, next time it's going
Speaker 1: to be longer. One more thing you can do. You
Speaker 1: can check for a backup of this phone on your
Speaker 1: Google website. So go to one dot Google dot com
Speaker 1: and you will see it says storage and then backup
Speaker 1: and it will say how many devices on your account
Speaker 1: You can look through and it will say your device backup.
Speaker 1: So right now, I could see I've got four different devices.
Speaker 1: These are different devices I've been testing, and I can
Speaker 1: see my Galaxy S twenty four Ultra. The last time
Speaker 1: it was backed up was fourteen hours ago. I've got
Speaker 1: a pixel on there. The last time it was backed
Speaker 1: up was yesterday, and I've got an older phone that
Speaker 1: says back up incomplete. So you may have a backup
Speaker 1: of some of the basics of this device on your
Speaker 1: Google account. Check it out. Go to one dot Google
Speaker 1: dot com. Uh, I'm sorry, but uh yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: just what's happening here. Yeah, uh eighty eight rich one
Speaker 1: on one? What was that bubble? Is it O N
Speaker 1: E or the number one? Oh? Sorry, it's O N
Speaker 1: E O N E dot Google dot com. On e
Speaker 1: dot Google dot com. Uh eighty eight rich one O
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Please remember the pin number that you set
Speaker 1: up on your phone. Nowadays they ask you for six digits.
Speaker 1: Don't make it something that's easy to guess, but please
Speaker 1: make it something that you can remember. You are listening
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hang out with you talking to technology.
Speaker 1: The phone number for the show eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. Well it's happened again. I've been
Speaker 1: texting people with green bubbles, and what do they say?
Speaker 1: Rich What? What? What's changed?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 1: Why? The green? I am so sick and tired of
Speaker 1: this divide in America. You think there's a divide in America,
Speaker 1: The green and blue bubble is the real divide in America.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, these are just regular people that when
Speaker 1: I text them, I'm actually scared to text them because
Speaker 1: I don't know what they're gonna say to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's so wild that this is what's happening. So, yes,
Speaker 1: I put my sim into an Android phone. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know what I do for a living,
Speaker 1: but I test stuff out. So I'm always trying something new,
Speaker 1: and I'm always trying a new phone and a new feature.
Speaker 1: And yes, once in a while that involves a non iPhone.
Speaker 1: A lot of times it does, and so so it
Speaker 1: just cracks me up. It continues to crack me up
Speaker 1: when people will say something and I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: know what to say, Like I'm a tech person, like
Speaker 1: you know, and they're like, oh, well, it's just it's wild. Anyway.
Speaker 11: I know people that won't date somebody if they don't
Speaker 11: have an iPhone, I mean an iPhone.
Speaker 1: I mean that is so ridiculous, so ridiculous. So Samsung's
Speaker 1: and iPhones can't mesh. Apparently I don't. I don't get it. Okay,
Speaker 1: but here's the good news. Okay, Coming in September, iPhone
Speaker 1: will finally support something that's called RCS Rich Communications Services.
Speaker 1: What does that mean. It means when you are texting
Speaker 1: from an iPhone to an Android and vice versa, it
Speaker 1: will show you the delivered, it will show you the
Speaker 1: typing indicators. You will be able to send photos and
Speaker 1: videos at full resolution. Hall he loujah was my next question.
Speaker 1: That's what we need, yes, because I hate getting videos
Speaker 1: that looked like it will send over a Nintendo sixty four.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. And no, and the person on the iPhone,
Speaker 1: I mean, now people have an awareness, but you don't
Speaker 1: really realize that that's happening. But here's the thing there
Speaker 1: the iPhone and I'm not gonna blame Apple, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna blame Apple. I message is a it's literally
Speaker 1: the glue that holds together that three trillion dollar company
Speaker 1: or whatever their what's the what's the market cap? Hold on,
Speaker 1: let's see what's Apple market cap. I do like the
Speaker 1: fact that you can FaceTime anybody, but the iPhone has
Speaker 1: to send the Samsung personal link. Yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: FaceTime like that, where's our wom Yeah, three trillion dollar company.
Speaker 1: I message is the glue that holds together a three
Speaker 1: trillion dollar company. And Apple knows this. Why do you
Speaker 1: think they've been so protective of I Message? Why do
Speaker 1: you think there's not an I message app for Android? Why?
Speaker 1: Because it would make it too easy to use an
Speaker 1: Android phone and still enjoy those conversations and be on
Speaker 1: those group chats with the Apple people. The Apple people
Speaker 1: love their little club. It's a little club. They've got
Speaker 1: their air pods in nowadays it's just one air pod
Speaker 1: in you have you noticed that trend? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: one AirPod in the year and they say the battery
Speaker 1: on the other one, so one does they swap it off? Yes,
Speaker 1: my son does that. That is literally I actually asked
Speaker 1: people on my Facebook page like why you know, have
Speaker 1: they noticed this trend? And I got so many comments,
Speaker 1: and one of them was yes, you you have the
Speaker 1: two batteries, so you have the one battery, use that
Speaker 1: and then when that goes dead, you can swap the
Speaker 1: other one. And you know, some people said it's for
Speaker 1: safety reasons, so you could be aware of your surroundings
Speaker 1: with the one year pod. You know, I'm not knocking it,
Speaker 1: but anyway, my point is there's a little club and
Speaker 1: that club is finally going like like, you know, there
Speaker 1: are other people that are outside that door, behind that
Speaker 1: velvet rope, right, they got the androids, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: let me in, let me in, let me please please.
Speaker 1: I know him, Yeah, I see him. I see my
Speaker 1: friend there. Let me in. See the one with the
Speaker 1: new iPhone. He's got the iPhone sixteen. Wait what so
Speaker 1: come September, when when iOS eighteen comes out, all these
Speaker 1: issues between the blue and the green bubbles, they will
Speaker 1: be solved. Now, I'm not saying Apple's gonna make it,
Speaker 1: you know, perfect, because they're gonna They're still gonna keep
Speaker 1: a little bit back, right, They're still gonna keep green,
Speaker 1: They're still going to keep the blue. But if you
Speaker 1: do have these things, yeah, it will be a little
Speaker 1: bit better. Okay, enough of my rant team Viewer. This
Speaker 1: is a program that I recommend a lot if you
Speaker 1: want to help someone with their computer remotely. They were
Speaker 1: hacked on June twenty six. But here's the thing. This
Speaker 1: was only their corporate IT environment. This does not affect
Speaker 1: the consumer data or the consumer product. Something that's very
Speaker 1: important to know. So if you see a headline about
Speaker 1: Team Viewer being hacked and you say, oh, wait a second,
Speaker 1: I've that on my computer, is my computer part of
Speaker 1: this hack, which apparently was from a Russian state sponsored
Speaker 1: hacking group. This does not include customer data. Team Viewer
Speaker 1: says they keep a separate architecture, which means their corporate
Speaker 1: IT is separate from their product IT and their product environment.
Speaker 1: Team Viewer has been installed on two point five billion devices.
Speaker 1: And yes, if you need to help someone with their computer,
Speaker 1: this is a remote login software where you can kind
Speaker 1: of see their screen and help them do things. It's
Speaker 1: very handy, but when you give that power to someone,
Speaker 1: you know you have to understand what you're doing. All right,
Speaker 1: Coming up, we're going to talk to Chris Mattman. He
Speaker 1: has the Chief Data and AI Officer at UCLA. You
Speaker 1: are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back, to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
Speaker 1: The phone line eight eight eight rich one oh one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one
Speaker 1: the website rich on Tech dot TV got an email
Speaker 1: from Mark. I was mentioning one dot Google dot com.
Speaker 1: Mark says, hey, Fyi, the number or the spelling of
Speaker 1: the number will bring you to the right website. So
Speaker 1: that's always good when Google figures out stuff like that.
Speaker 1: All right, Joining me now, Chris Mattman. He is the
Speaker 1: new Chief Data and an Artificial Intelligence Officer at UCLA. Chris,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining me. Congrats on the new role.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the show, Rich, thanks for having me. Really
Speaker 5: excited to be here.
Speaker 1: So tell me number one. I imagine that the AI
Speaker 1: officer role is kind of new at a lot of companies.
Speaker 1: So I mean, what made you interested in AI? I
Speaker 1: know you have a background in data, but what specifically
Speaker 1: about AI do you like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Rich, it is new and really around the world,
Speaker 4: the artificial intelligence officer, and you know, basically in the
Speaker 4: United States that role is really being defined and guided
Speaker 4: by an executive order from the Biden administration that really
Speaker 4: focused internally on governments companies and academia to create this
Speaker 4: sort of senior level position to really help kind of
Speaker 4: guide the ethical use of these technologies which you know
Speaker 4: today are changing, already changing our lives, you know, everything
Speaker 4: from uh, you know, intelligent assistance by talking to them,
Speaker 4: I don't want to set off anyone's Amazon devices or
Speaker 4: things like that.
Speaker 1: Oh I've done it before, I believe me.
Speaker 4: Or you know, cars and computer visions, smart vehicles, testless
Speaker 4: things like that.
Speaker 5: I mean, AI is already here, it's changing our lives.
Speaker 4: And so the recognition of this position what interested me
Speaker 4: about it is it's a senior C suite position really
Speaker 4: focused on providing that kind of strategy advisement and helping
Speaker 4: kind of us get into the future, you know, of
Speaker 4: how we use and apply these technologies.
Speaker 1: So what do you see as some of the most
Speaker 1: pressing issues right now that not only universities but large
Speaker 1: organizations companies have to deal with when it comes to AI.
Speaker 1: We sort of talked about one earlier with these uh,
Speaker 1: you know, these record labels suing these AI music makers,
Speaker 1: and we've seen that over and over with the you know,
Speaker 1: the image generators and the text generators. I mean, everyone's
Speaker 1: being sued, right now because they're like, where's this uh,
Speaker 1: where's this training data coming from?
Speaker 4: Yeah, hundred percent, and that's the periphery that they can
Speaker 4: really kind of do legal stuff around right now. Because
Speaker 4: the challenge rich, you know, and to the audience is
Speaker 4: that even the big tech companies don't have sort of
Speaker 4: fundamental understanding of what some of these sort of trillion
Speaker 4: neuron neural networks, these biologically inspired models that are similar
Speaker 4: to our brains and things like that, even they don't
Speaker 4: know exactly what you know, layer a hundred of the
Speaker 4: neural network and neuron you know five million is actually learning.
Speaker 4: And so because of that, there's a big focus on
Speaker 4: how these neural networks, these AI models are trained. That's
Speaker 4: based on source data. Source data has bias in it.
Speaker 4: Famous story, you know, in the early development of smart cars,
Speaker 4: unfortunate unfortunate story is that early smart vehicles didn't stop
Speaker 4: when they saw disabled people and or people of color.
Speaker 4: The big challenge with that is that most of the
Speaker 4: data for training these things was you know, Silicon Valley,
Speaker 4: you know, Caucasian folks, and they just simply didn't have
Speaker 4: the presence of that data in the training. And so,
Speaker 4: you know, the AI models are only as smart as
Speaker 4: the data you train them on. So that's a big focus.
Speaker 4: Bias in the training data. A big focus is on
Speaker 4: the predictions, you know, which is what these models are
Speaker 4: actually telling us, and having the confidence in those predictions,
Speaker 4: not just well it's going to rain tomorrow it doesn't rain,
Speaker 4: but I never told you I was only fifteen percent
Speaker 4: confident in that and things like that.
Speaker 1: Interesting, So what do you you know, since you're in
Speaker 1: this world, you know, people always talk to me. It's
Speaker 1: one of the biggest things, you know, for the casual
Speaker 1: kind of AI conversation is like do you trust AI?
Speaker 1: Do you think it's going to take over the world?
Speaker 1: Do you think it's going to harm us? What are
Speaker 1: your thoughts on all of that? Like this these ethical
Speaker 1: kind of like considerations of AI.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean, for me, the advice that I
Speaker 4: would have for people, and you know, really the reason
Speaker 4: that I, you know, moved out of my role in
Speaker 4: government after twenty four years. You know, I spent a
Speaker 4: long career at NASA working on these longes and data
Speaker 4: and eventually in AI too, But the big thing that
Speaker 4: you know, reason that I got out of government was
Speaker 4: really just to spend the rest of you know, my
Speaker 4: remaining years focused on this because I really believe it's
Speaker 4: going to fundamentally change our lives, and in particular, you know,
Speaker 4: it's going to in the next twenty four to thirty
Speaker 4: six months up and existing jobs in particular areas.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 4: One quick thing you might you know have heard about
Speaker 4: is there's actually a Senate bill in the California Senate
Speaker 4: on the floor, you know, that is focused on customer
Speaker 4: call center Senate Bill number twelve twenty that's being debated
Speaker 4: right now and presented, and that's all about the use
Speaker 4: of AI and call centers. And you know, that's a
Speaker 4: really interesting area because you know, in twenty eighteen, Google
Speaker 4: demonstrated a technology that could effectively call up a nail
Speaker 4: shop make your appointment for you, you know, basically decide,
Speaker 4: oh it's not the right nail shop, we need to
Speaker 4: go to another one. You know, things like that, update
Speaker 4: your calendar, all through voice technology, all through AI and
Speaker 4: things like that. So customer call center jobs within the
Speaker 4: next twenty four to thirty six months definitely will be disrupted.
Speaker 4: You might have heard in the Midwest of trucking jobs,
Speaker 4: you know, a million truckers by some estimates could potentially
Speaker 4: be displaced if Tesla is successful in building these sort
Speaker 4: of autonomous trucks, you know, like the Tesla vehicles. And so,
Speaker 4: you know, the message that I have for people is
Speaker 4: the answer isn't really telling these these people, hey, well
Speaker 4: learn to code, you know.
Speaker 5: I hate that.
Speaker 4: I think that that's wrong. I think we need programs
Speaker 4: for a job of skilling, for extracting the subject matter
Speaker 4: expert knowledge from these folks whose jobs may be you know,
Speaker 4: not directly displaced, but you know, altered in the next
Speaker 4: few years.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was Google Duplex the I remember that when
Speaker 1: they demoed it on stage and at Google Io and
Speaker 1: it was wild. I mean, that video went viral because
Speaker 1: it was just so wild to hear a Google voice
Speaker 1: call a restaurant or whatever it was is hair salon
Speaker 1: to like make an appointment for you and uh yeah.
Speaker 1: So and that was before you know, AI was kind
Speaker 1: of a big daily talker, you know. That was that
Speaker 1: was in early days of this stuff. Okay, so the
Speaker 1: jobs now here. I tweeted this the other day. I said, basically,
Speaker 1: if a company could replace you with AI, they would,
Speaker 1: do you believe that to be true?
Speaker 4: I mean, my perspective on it is whether they would
Speaker 4: or not isn't exactly the issue in the sense of
Speaker 4: that they can't directly for all jobs right now. So
Speaker 4: that's you know the one now, yeah, right now. And
Speaker 4: so that's that's the one kind of thing I want
Speaker 4: to tell people. You know, It's like tomorrow, you know,
Speaker 4: people are like, well, you know, we have the capability
Speaker 4: of the terminator now, you know, are we suddenly going
Speaker 4: to start fighting wars, you know, with the you know,
Speaker 4: the AI based you know, nuclear weapons and all these things.
Speaker 5: And the reality is.
Speaker 4: Like humans control the business processes that still exist, and
Speaker 4: the ways that we use AI today are are basically
Speaker 4: dictated by them. Now, yeah, Like it's interesting that you
Speaker 4: said today. You know, in the future, I certainly could
Speaker 4: see companies like looking at headcount and saying, well instead
Speaker 4: of needing you know. I mean that was the heart
Speaker 4: of the WGA, the writer strike. You know, I helped
Speaker 4: to do some legal advisement on the Amendment twenty five
Speaker 4: for that, but it was all about the side. I mean,
Speaker 4: one of the key things was the size of writing teams. Right, So,
Speaker 4: I mean, do I think a studio would you know,
Speaker 4: like to not have seven people maybe they would like
Speaker 4: to have three and some intelligent assistance.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously these.
Speaker 4: Companies are bottom line driven for profit companies, and you know,
Speaker 4: they're always focused on rationalization and headcount and things like that.
Speaker 4: That said, you know, can AI do everything that we do?
Speaker 4: You know, the big difference is that a lot of
Speaker 4: the AIS that people think are AI today, like chat,
Speaker 4: GPT and things like that, they're missing elements that we
Speaker 4: call actuation.
Speaker 5: In other words, like they can think.
Speaker 4: I mean they can you know, it seems like they're thinking,
Speaker 4: they can respond, they can take prompts and whatever, but
Speaker 4: they're not like plugged into you know, a Terminator robot
Speaker 4: or a Boston Dynamics robot dog and things like that.
Speaker 5: Now people are looking at that.
Speaker 4: I always caution I always caution people that's not as
Speaker 4: far away as you think. But yeah, you know, all
Speaker 4: of this is and and so to your point, you know,
Speaker 4: to your original question rich that you asked me, you know,
Speaker 4: why did I basically you know, take this job on.
Speaker 5: Why did I leave these to me?
Speaker 4: These are the fundamental decisions, These are the fundamental things
Speaker 4: for the next fifteen to twenty years that aren't just
Speaker 4: going to guide a portion of our lives and guide
Speaker 4: all of our lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally believe that, and it reminds me. You know,
Speaker 1: I've been covering tech for a long time and specifically gadgets,
Speaker 1: and you know, we've had gadgets for a long time
Speaker 1: that are kind of like programmed to do something right.
Speaker 1: They you know, like, let's say you have a little
Speaker 1: toy truck that's you know, an RF truck or you know,
Speaker 1: radio frequency whatever. It like moves around, it does this,
Speaker 1: but like once you layer AI onto that and it
Speaker 1: can actually think and do stuff a little bit more autonomously,
Speaker 1: that's where it gets interesting. And yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: matter of time before we build these things into robots
Speaker 1: and cars and all this stuff. And it really is
Speaker 1: fascinating just how much this is going to change in
Speaker 1: the next year or too. Any closing thoughts we got
Speaker 1: to run, But any closing thoughts, any any tools people
Speaker 1: should check out, or any resources you find interesting that
Speaker 1: might be helpful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean thanks. And as a parent, you know,
Speaker 5: I'll say I got three kids.
Speaker 4: Certainly as parents, you know, there's a lot of thought
Speaker 4: right now about, oh, whether you should let your child
Speaker 4: use these things in school. My advice use them, use
Speaker 4: them because otherwise you're sort of sticking your hand head
Speaker 4: in the sand and you're going to be sort of
Speaker 4: left behind. Now should your kid write their papers using
Speaker 4: all of these things? You know, the things I tell
Speaker 4: my children are, hey, use this for creative idea, thinking, ideation,
Speaker 4: or whatever. But at the end of the day, make
Speaker 4: sure sort of the thoughts and the control are your own.
Speaker 4: And for what it's worth, that extends to life. Rich
Speaker 4: you know, is the reason that we don't have the
Speaker 4: terminators yet is because we're still in control now, you know,
Speaker 4: fast forward five or ten years. I hope that's still
Speaker 4: the case, but you know that's the case today, and
Speaker 4: that's the case for parents.
Speaker 5: So let your kids use it and try it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I know my kids are. Chris Mattman, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining me today the website. Matt Man A T. T.
Speaker 1: M A N. N. Dot Ai. Good luck with the
Speaker 1: new job.
Speaker 5: Thanks so much for having me on, Rick, You really
Speaker 5: appreciate you.
Speaker 1: All right eighty eight rich one on one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you how Xbox is coming to the Amazon
Speaker 1: fireTV stick and who has the best five g in America.
Speaker 1: The answer coming up. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, Talking Technology. The
Speaker 1: website for the show Richontech dot tv. There you can
Speaker 1: sign up for our newsletter. You can see my TV segments.
Speaker 1: You can read my newsletter and follow me on social media.
Speaker 1: I am at rich on Tech.
Speaker 12: Uh.
Speaker 1: Xbox is coming to Amazon Fire TV. How cool is this?
Speaker 1: You'll be able to play Xbox games on fireTV sticks
Speaker 1: without a console. This will open up gaming to a
Speaker 1: lot more people. Now, you do need a couple of things.
Speaker 1: You need a Fire TV stick four K Max or
Speaker 1: just the standard Fire TV stick four K. Both of
Speaker 1: those are anywhere between fifty and sixty bucks and Prime
Speaker 1: days coming up, which means those will be discounted. So again,
Speaker 1: my advice right now, don't buy anything on Amazon that
Speaker 1: you need, like something you have like your eye on,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, if you need like soap or something, sure,
Speaker 1: But if you have like your eye on something like
Speaker 1: a new pair of sneakers, like a fire TV stick, like,
Speaker 1: don't buy it right now. Ring doorbell. All this stuff
Speaker 1: gets discounted, especially Amazon branded stuff kindles. Add it to
Speaker 1: your shopping cart. And then on Prime Day July sixteenth
Speaker 1: and seventeenth, look at your shopping car and it will
Speaker 1: have like a little each item that's on sale will
Speaker 1: have a kind of like a badge that will say
Speaker 1: price drop or Prime Day Savings or something like that.
Speaker 1: So that's the way I do it. So if you
Speaker 1: want to get this Xbox Cloud Gaming again, you need
Speaker 1: the Fire TV stick. You need a Bluetooth enabled wireless controller.
Speaker 1: You can use an x Xbox controller, you coul use
Speaker 1: a PlayStation controller. You also need an Xbox Game Pass
Speaker 1: Ultimate membership that's seventeen bucks a month that will give
Speaker 1: you access to hundreds of games, including some of the
Speaker 1: newer titles like Starfield for as a Horizon five. You
Speaker 1: can play Fortnite completely free. So if you just want
Speaker 1: to play Fortnite, you don't need a membership, so you
Speaker 1: just need the stick and the Bluetooth controller. Pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So this is coming from the cloud, So this means
Speaker 1: that they're actually going to stream the games to your device,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like the holy Grail of game playing,
Speaker 1: you know, because you don't need a console, which means
Speaker 1: it opens it up to a lot more people. But
Speaker 1: the latency is an issue, and of course the quality
Speaker 1: of the stream is always an issue. So it's gotten
Speaker 1: better over the years, and clearly it's gotten to a
Speaker 1: point where Xbox and Microsoft and Amazon feel like they
Speaker 1: can offer this, but this is it's also on the
Speaker 1: flip side. You don't need a console, so they don't
Speaker 1: need to you know, people don't spend money on that hardware.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Lisa in Hollywood. Lisa, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 2: Hi. This is Lisa. I'm an empty nester mom with
Speaker 2: a twenty two year old son who still has a subscription,
Speaker 2: an Xbox subscription on our family Microsoft account. How do
Speaker 2: I support him or transfer him his information onto his
Speaker 2: own account so that he doesn't lose his data?
Speaker 1: Friends and history should be pretty straightforward. So he's part
Speaker 1: of the family group. Yeah, okay, so did you add
Speaker 1: did are you in charge of the family group?
Speaker 2: I am okay.
Speaker 1: So you should be able to go into family dot
Speaker 1: Microsoft dot com and sign in and find him on there,
Speaker 1: and there should be a way to remove him from
Speaker 1: that group, so you know, he can he can do
Speaker 1: it himself by going to family dot Microsoft dot com
Speaker 1: and signing in and then saying leave family groups. You
Speaker 1: can he can do that, or the organizer can remove
Speaker 1: the family member.
Speaker 2: So I was told that that the then he would
Speaker 2: lose all of that data and history.
Speaker 1: Well, he's going to lose access to the subscription if
Speaker 1: it's under your account, for sure, But.
Speaker 2: How do we do it so that he doesn't lose context,
Speaker 2: He doesn't lose all his friends and context from the
Speaker 2: past decade.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's going to lose that because it's
Speaker 1: under his account. So unless he's I mean, if he's
Speaker 1: signed in, if he has his own Microsoft account where
Speaker 1: he has friended people on that account. Okay, whether he's
Speaker 1: in your Family Plan or not, it doesn't affect that
Speaker 1: aspect of it.
Speaker 2: Now, see Okay, so he can just so I don't
Speaker 2: need to close down my account and then some how
Speaker 2: transfer all of that on his subscription to his account.
Speaker 2: He can just move it himself.
Speaker 1: Well, the subscription, the subscription is going to be separate.
Speaker 1: So if the subscriptions under your name, he's not going
Speaker 1: to have that subscription when he leaves the Family Plan
Speaker 1: or the Family Great. So he would have to sign
Speaker 1: up for that subscription on his own. But his contacts,
Speaker 1: you know, his Xbox gamer pals all that stuff should
Speaker 1: remain connected to his user name and user ID because
Speaker 1: that's his own. So whether it's in the Family Plan
Speaker 1: or not, as long as he has his user account,
Speaker 1: everything should be linked to him. Now, like I said,
Speaker 1: if he's playing games or under the family plan, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're paying eighteen dollars a month for the Xbox
Speaker 1: membership or whatever it is under your family plan, he
Speaker 1: will have to do that on his own, but his
Speaker 1: account should be his account. I mean, the way these
Speaker 1: things are set up is that you know, Microsoft wants
Speaker 1: you to set one up as soon as you can
Speaker 1: for your kid on your lamp and okay, sounds like
Speaker 1: you're close to where you need to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, this is really great. I really I
Speaker 2: could use your help.
Speaker 11: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, look, the thing is obviously I
Speaker 1: would verify this on the Microsoft website. But to me,
Speaker 1: an account is an account, So whether they're coming or
Speaker 1: going into the Family Plan, that person still has their account.
Speaker 1: So unless all of his friends are under your username,
Speaker 1: they would be under his name. So again family dot
Speaker 1: Microsoft dot com. That's typically where to go to remove someone,
Speaker 1: whether you're doing it yourself or if you're the family
Speaker 1: member so that's the same website, whether you're removing them
Speaker 1: or whether they are removing themselves. So I would say
Speaker 1: what I would do is sit down at your computer.
Speaker 1: If your kid is you know, in the city or
Speaker 1: you know, living nearby, have them come over, sit at
Speaker 1: the computer together. Make sure you go through all those
Speaker 1: screens very carefully, because it will tell you what the
Speaker 1: ramifications are of leaving that family account as you leave it.
Speaker 1: But I would you know, I would gather that all
Speaker 1: of his information will still be intact because it's still
Speaker 1: his account. It's just now being sent off. It's like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, when you send your kids off to do
Speaker 1: their own thing, It's like you gotta they gotta get
Speaker 1: their own wings and fly at some point. And that's
Speaker 1: what that's what he's going to be doing. Thanks for
Speaker 1: the question, Lisa, appreciate it. Eighty eight rich one On
Speaker 1: one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up, I'll tell you who has the best five
Speaker 1: G in the US. You are listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking
Speaker 1: technology with you. Eighty eight rich one On one eighty
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one the
Speaker 1: website for the show rich on tech dot TV. So
Speaker 1: who has the best five G data performance in the
Speaker 1: United States? Who do you think it is? I mean,
Speaker 1: there's really only three networks at this point, but T
Speaker 1: Mobile maintaining its lead in five G performance median download
Speaker 1: speed two hundred and eighty seven megabits per second in
Speaker 1: March twenty twenty four. This is from Ukla Ookla. They
Speaker 1: are the folks that whenever you do one of those
Speaker 1: speed tests like speed tests dot net that's the company
Speaker 1: behind it. So every time you do a speed test,
Speaker 1: they are logging that information where you're doing it, from
Speaker 1: what you're testing on, and they're putting it all into
Speaker 1: this major database. They can come out with facts like
Speaker 1: this number two Verizon median five G download speed. Now
Speaker 1: we're talking download. This is Cellular two D and twenty four,
Speaker 1: so not too far behind from T Mobile AT and
Speaker 1: T download speed of one five. Now, this is kind
Speaker 1: of tricky because there are some variations to this, like
Speaker 1: depends what I guess this is just averages or medians,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of different. So let's see other things
Speaker 1: that they said in this report. All carriers have seen
Speaker 1: significant performance improvements. Remember when five G came out, everyone
Speaker 1: said it was a dud. They're like, what's the big deal,
Speaker 1: It's the same as four G. Well it has gotten
Speaker 1: better for sure. As these networks continue to build out,
Speaker 1: consumer sentiment for five G has improved. The US has
Speaker 1: climbed from twentieth to eleventh place globally in UCLA's speed
Speaker 1: Test Global Index. Rural areas are starting to see performance gains,
Speaker 1: so that means they're getting as good as the city locations.
Speaker 1: Five G availability has increased seventy six percent having five
Speaker 1: G service somewhere. Let's see. Oh, download speeds have improved dramatically,
Speaker 1: but upload speeds in latency have not improved as much.
Speaker 1: And there's still a ways to go here because a
Speaker 1: lot of these companies are still building out these five
Speaker 1: G networks, Like we're just getting started here. So T
Speaker 1: Mobile just acquired US Cellular. That's going to improve their network,
Speaker 1: and you know we're gonna see improvements in things like
Speaker 1: video streaming and mobile gaming all because of five G.
Speaker 1: Let's see. Oh. Speaking of which, Verizon this week unveiled
Speaker 1: a new logo, a red V with a yellow glow,
Speaker 1: So basically they just took the name and put a
Speaker 1: little yellow glow on it symbolizing Veritas meaning truth and
Speaker 1: Horizon future possibility. Did you know that's what Verizon means,
Speaker 1: the truth of a new horizon. Yeah. Now you know
Speaker 1: if you're ever on Jeopardy and you need that, that's
Speaker 1: what it means. So what does this whole Verizon refresh mean.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, it's basically there. If you
Speaker 1: have home internet with them, I guess they're a big
Speaker 1: thing they're pushing right now. Or these bundled services, so
Speaker 1: they have like small discounts on streaming services like Netflix
Speaker 1: and Hulu and all these things you subscribe through your
Speaker 1: Verizon account. You bundle it, and it's a little bit cheaper, yeah,
Speaker 1: YouTube and all that. I personally, my advice is to
Speaker 1: not bundle, even though it saves you money, because in
Speaker 1: the long run, it's more of a headache because now
Speaker 1: everything is bundled together, so it's not as easy to
Speaker 1: drop services and to you know, take advantage of some
Speaker 1: of the deals that are out there, you know, with
Speaker 1: a paying for the year in advance and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But I guess whatever works for you, personally, I would
Speaker 1: rather not have these things bundled because it makes things
Speaker 1: very confusing. You know, you've got your Verizon bill and
Speaker 1: now you've got like ten add ons and you're like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, what am I paying for Verizon? What
Speaker 1: am I paying for streaming? It's much tougher to keep
Speaker 1: track of it. And by the way, the app I
Speaker 1: like for keeping track of all this stuff is Rocket Money.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've tried it, but I find
Speaker 1: it to be really, really helpful. So it used to
Speaker 1: be called True Bill and now it's called Rocket Money,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a nice way of keeping track
Speaker 1: of all of your subscriptions. It's free for iOS and Android.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Mike in Austin, Texas. Mike, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich.
Speaker 12: Hey, Rich, thanks for taking my call. Months ago, we
Speaker 12: were having a work with a Spectrum and almost daily,
Speaker 12: at least weekly, we were having to reset our router.
Speaker 12: So around the same time, we also had a printer
Speaker 12: that died. So Spectrum came out put in one of
Speaker 12: these new routers that can decide whether your equipment needs
Speaker 12: either two point four or five, and we got a
Speaker 12: EPSOM Eco printer. We could not get the eco printer
Speaker 12: at all to hook to the router, So it's just
Speaker 12: sitting here and I thought, okay, I got to get
Speaker 12: something going, so I went and bought a cannon, just
Speaker 12: a little cheapy sixty dollars cannon one. And we're having
Speaker 12: trouble getting back to hook to the router, so Spectrum
Speaker 12: I've called them and they said, well, it's not us.
Speaker 12: It all started when you changed it. So should we
Speaker 12: keep Spectrums router or are there better ones out there
Speaker 12: and we should just buy one and quit paying the
Speaker 12: monthly fee. That obviously something else works in the house
Speaker 12: on it, except that we can't get a printer to
Speaker 12: hook up to it.
Speaker 1: Well, the printer is probably using that two point four
Speaker 1: gigahertz network and this Spectrum device even though it's putting
Speaker 1: out both networks. The printer may not be smart enough
Speaker 1: to find that two point four gigaherts. I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: this router, except for the thing that throws me is
Speaker 1: the cheapy printer that you bought. Why that's not connecting
Speaker 1: because you think it would, but because it's new, But
Speaker 1: it's also inexpensive, so it may not have the smarts
Speaker 1: to do this. So you know, this is a very
Speaker 1: very common problem with routers. With IoT gadgets, you know,
Speaker 1: people trying to connect to them. The newer gadget's like
Speaker 1: your smartphone gonna have no problem. But it's a lot
Speaker 1: of these different peripherals, especially the smart home stuff. It's
Speaker 1: just all over the place. Sometimes it connects, sometimes it won't.
Speaker 1: So I pulled up the Spectrum support page, and clearly
Speaker 1: this is a known issue because it's like literally on
Speaker 1: the how to connect to your wireless network, It's like
Speaker 1: one of the bottom main things on the page says
Speaker 1: troubleshooting if you can't connect the connect to the two
Speaker 1: point four gigahertz frequency on your network. It says, sign
Speaker 1: into your Spectrum account. On your services page, select Internet,
Speaker 1: navigate and select smart, set up smart device two point
Speaker 1: four gigahertz, and then select switch to two point four gigaherts.
Speaker 1: So that is what you probably need to do. It's
Speaker 1: interesting that you sign into your Spectrum account. It must
Speaker 1: communicate with the router to switch it. So what it's
Speaker 1: going to do is it's going to tell that router, hey,
Speaker 1: we're trying to set up a device here. Can you
Speaker 1: just broadcast that two point four gigahertz network so you
Speaker 1: don't confuse the device that's trying to get set up
Speaker 1: with that five gigahertz network. So again, this is just
Speaker 1: from the Spectrum support website. Clearly a lot of people
Speaker 1: have this issue, so I would not give up on this.
Speaker 1: I think you'll be able to connect it again. Sign
Speaker 1: into your Spectrum account on your services page, select Internet,
Speaker 1: navigate to the set up smart device and select switch
Speaker 1: to two point four gigahertz, and then you can go
Speaker 1: into your device on your printer and set that up
Speaker 1: again through the you know, the way you typically set
Speaker 1: it up. If you can't get it to set up,
Speaker 1: I might reset the printer again. We had a similar
Speaker 1: question earlier, but I would do a factory reset on
Speaker 1: the printer. So I don't think that this router that
Speaker 1: they gave you is not going to work. I think
Speaker 1: that clearly Spectrum is a big company, they have a
Speaker 1: lot of customers. This is just a situation where you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different things happening. Wi Fi continues
Speaker 1: to evolve and that's one of the side effects of this.
Speaker 1: So Mike and Austin, thanks for the call. Appreciate it today.
Speaker 1: One of the apps that I recommend or have recommended
Speaker 1: in the past is being discontinued. It's called Google Stack
Speaker 1: And I was using this for a long time because
Speaker 1: it was a nice dedicated PDF scanner. But Google, in
Speaker 1: the typical Google fashion, has lost hope for this app
Speaker 1: and they are getting rid of it. Google there is
Speaker 1: a website. Let's see if I can find it. It's
Speaker 1: I think it's let's see Google dead projects. Yeah, killed
Speaker 1: by Google dot com. It's everything that Google has killed.
Speaker 1: They this company. Now I have to give them credit
Speaker 1: because if we didn't, if they didn't kill stuff, that
Speaker 1: means they weren't trying. But Google is a company that
Speaker 1: really tries a lot. They throw a lot at the
Speaker 1: wall and they see what sticks, and that's great. But
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that people use sort of gets discontinued.
Speaker 1: And so I'm just looking at some of these things
Speaker 1: that they've discontinued in the past, like year or so,
Speaker 1: Google jam Board, jam Board VPN by Google, one, Dropcam,
Speaker 1: Google podcasts, Keen. I don't even know what that one was.
Speaker 1: Google Domains, Google Optimize, Pixel Pass, Google album Archive, YouTube Stories, Grasshopper,
Speaker 1: Conversational Actions, Google street Views standalone. There's so many any
Speaker 1: Google Stadia, YouTube originals, YouTube, go, Google surveys. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many. Now let's add Google Stack to the list.
Speaker 1: Google Stack is being ended on September twenty third, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. Users have ninety days from the notification time
Speaker 1: to export their documents to Google Drive. They have a
Speaker 1: new export tool available to transfer your Stack documents to Drive,
Speaker 1: and Google recommends using Google Drive for future document scanning
Speaker 1: and organization. So there's two ways you can export this.
Speaker 1: You can bulk export to Drive. Go into the Stack
Speaker 1: app and go click settings and it says export all
Speaker 1: documents to Drive. Or you can individually open each document,
Speaker 1: share and then share them to wherever you want. But
Speaker 1: I really like this app, this PDF scanner, because it
Speaker 1: was simple, it was clean. So what do I recommend?
Speaker 1: You can use Google If you have an Android phone,
Speaker 1: Google Drive is typically installed in there. So if you
Speaker 1: long press on the icon on your Google Drive app,
Speaker 1: you will see there is a little option for scan
Speaker 1: and you tap that and now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you have a PDF scanner on your phone and just
Speaker 1: hold it over a document and it will instantly scan
Speaker 1: that document into a PDF. It's basically the same exact
Speaker 1: technology that was built into Stack, but it's now on
Speaker 1: your phone. Natively, it's been there forever, but it's just
Speaker 1: one thing if you need to scan receipts or whatever.
Speaker 1: The other app that I like that is cross platform
Speaker 1: is Adobe Scan. I have a little shortcut to that
Speaker 1: on my homepage. What I like about that is that
Speaker 1: it works really well. It scans documents very nicely, cleans
Speaker 1: them up greatly, and you can also save it as
Speaker 1: a PDF or a JPEG. So once it's saved as
Speaker 1: a I just did two scans, one with Google, one
Speaker 1: with Adobe. The Adobe Scan came out slightly better. But
Speaker 1: once it scans it as a PDF, you can save
Speaker 1: it as a JPEG as well, so it gives you
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, a couple options there, and it works,
Speaker 1: by the way, for both iOS and Android. So Adobe Scan,
Speaker 1: that's saying. You can also use Google Drive shortcut or
Speaker 1: this PDF scanner app called Google Stack that is going away.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Coming up, we'll talk
Speaker 1: evs right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you
Speaker 1: talking technology. The website for the show rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot TV I've got my latest newsletter front and center.
Speaker 1: The headline is Pixel Paris and Prime Day your tech
Speaker 1: summer preview. So in my newsletter this week, I've got
Speaker 1: all kinds of good information. I recap my trip to
Speaker 1: New York City and New Jersey, talk about the foldable
Speaker 1: events that are coming up Prime Day, some of the
Speaker 1: deals I like, some of the things I would buy
Speaker 1: right now, well, I mean I would put in my
Speaker 1: cart to see if they go on sale. I link
Speaker 1: up my phone stand that I like, a cord holder
Speaker 1: that I love for my desk, a portable charger, my
Speaker 1: favorite tripod slash selfie stick, and my favorite basic phone case.
Speaker 1: That's all in there. Then I've got my TV segments.
Speaker 1: This week. I covered text now, which you might have
Speaker 1: heard here on this radio show. I also talk about
Speaker 1: the Fitbit LTE. Let's see I answer some questions. I've
Speaker 1: got an app to download cybersecurity throwback tech. My brother
Speaker 1: built this cool I don't know what you call it,
Speaker 1: a rack, entertainment rack. And on the top is this
Speaker 1: old CRT TV with a VCR and we popped in
Speaker 1: the tape of a VHS of Jurassic Park, and I
Speaker 1: got to say it still looks pretty good now. The
Speaker 1: TV was like, must have been a thirteen inch TV,
Speaker 1: so clearly anything's going to look good on that. But
Speaker 1: I was pretty impressed that after all these years, I
Speaker 1: mean VHS, it's been a long time since we used VHS,
Speaker 1: long time and it still looked good. Anyway, that's all
Speaker 1: on the website. Rich on tech dot TV. You might
Speaker 1: have heard the news this week that Volkswagen invested in Rivian.
Speaker 1: I know it seems like an unlikely alliance, but Rivian
Speaker 1: needs the help. Volkswagen has the money, so they pledged
Speaker 1: up to five billion dollars into Rivian. Rivian stock pop
Speaker 1: for a bit. I just checked the price. It's not
Speaker 1: as high as it was. But this does give this
Speaker 1: This does give me hope for Rivian, because as much
Speaker 1: as I love Rivian, I'm still not convinced they're going
Speaker 1: to be around in a couple years because they are
Speaker 1: on the bubble. I would say they've got great cars,
Speaker 1: great technology, but you know they are. They've got some
Speaker 1: headwinds and their cars are very expensive. They're losing money
Speaker 1: on them and they need to come out with these
Speaker 1: cheaper models that they've teased. But it's still going to
Speaker 1: be two years twenty twenty six before they come out,
Speaker 1: so we've got a while or is it twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: Maybe it's twenty twenty five anyway, So the deal is
Speaker 1: initially Volkswagen is going to give them a billion dollars,
Speaker 1: then an additional four billion with all these like rules
Speaker 1: and regulations. So I don't care about that part. What
Speaker 1: I'm most interested in why are they doing this? So
Speaker 1: they are looking to accelerate software development and reduce costs
Speaker 1: for both companies, and they're talking about this zonal architecture
Speaker 1: in their cars. So what this means is it centralizes
Speaker 1: electronic control into sort of area specific computers. So instead
Speaker 1: of having a whole bunch of different computers in the car,
Speaker 1: like these control units, it has different computers that I
Speaker 1: guess control different zones of the car. I don't know
Speaker 1: what all that means. All I know is that it's
Speaker 1: probably like a different way of thinking about things. If
Speaker 1: you look at a lot of these like you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of these traditional car companies, they're still building
Speaker 1: their evs the way that they built their gas powered cars.
Speaker 1: And if you look at the pure EV companies like
Speaker 1: a Rivian or a Tesla. They are building their evs
Speaker 1: from the ground up as an electric vehicle, So I
Speaker 1: think Volkswagen's trying to capture a little bit of that
Speaker 1: magic for them and share a little bit of that
Speaker 1: money with Rivian. So we'll see what happens. A cool
Speaker 1: new app this week called charge ly c h A
Speaker 1: r G E l Y. Charge Ly is an app
Speaker 1: if you have an EV It's available for iOS and
Speaker 1: Android and it basically helps you find charging along the way.
Speaker 1: It's like a route, a charging routing app, and the
Speaker 1: neat thing about this is that you can plan your
Speaker 1: entire route from this app before you leave. Now, it's
Speaker 1: not perfect. I did test a couple of different routes.
Speaker 1: It didn't get everything right. But what's neat about this
Speaker 1: is that you can see where the chargers are, get
Speaker 1: a lot of detail about that. The community can offer
Speaker 1: kind of insights on the chargers, so if something doesn't
Speaker 1: work or it's broken, or it's not as fast as
Speaker 1: they say, that's really useful. But you can also find
Speaker 1: amenities like food and bathrooms near the charging stations. That's
Speaker 1: a big deal. When you stop for an EV charge,
Speaker 1: you want somewhere to go to the bathroom and maybe
Speaker 1: pick up a snack. So again, that app is called
Speaker 1: charge ly cha our g e l Y, and then
Speaker 1: tire Rack. I know they're sort of biased because they
Speaker 1: sell the tires, but they tested nine EV tire models,
Speaker 1: EV specific models and non EV's. They put them on
Speaker 1: a Tesla Model three. They checked them out for handling,
Speaker 1: noise and energy efficiency, and they came up with the
Speaker 1: best overall tires, the most energy efficient, the least energy efficient,
Speaker 1: the best overall performance, and then the best balance of
Speaker 1: performance and efficiency. I will link up that report on
Speaker 1: the website rich on tech dot TV. But spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: the Michigan Michelin Pilot Sport four S non EV was
Speaker 1: the best overall, but the most efficient was the Hancook
Speaker 1: rich on tech dot TV. Coming up, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: barcodes they're celebrating fifty years. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. We'll
Speaker 1: get back to the phone lines in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's talk about barcodees. Yes, the little thing
Speaker 1: on the back of your packaging. I actually scanned one today,
Speaker 1: just this morning. My guest is Bob Carpenter, President and
Speaker 1: CEO of GS one us here to talk about fifty
Speaker 1: years of the barcode. Bob, thanks for joining me, Rich,
Speaker 1: it's great to be here. So this is something that
Speaker 1: started in nineteen seventy four on a pack of Wrigley's
Speaker 1: Juicy Fruit gum, which I loved as a kid. Tell
Speaker 1: me about the history of the barcode.
Speaker 13: Well, the history of the barcode really stemmed from an
Speaker 13: opportunity to improve the speed of checkout at retail establishments
Speaker 13: in the US. And because before the barcode, as you
Speaker 13: and I may remember, you had to manually key in
Speaker 13: the price for every single item and a cash register,
Speaker 13: which was incredibly slow for the shopper. So the retail
Speaker 13: grocery industry got together and looked for ways to become
Speaker 13: more efficient and ultimately selected the UPC barcode and GS
Speaker 13: one to administer the barcode. And as you mentioned a
Speaker 13: few years ago, the first barcode scan occurred with a
Speaker 13: ten pack of Rigli's Juicy Fruit gum in Troy, Ohio,
Speaker 13: and today we estimate over ten billion items are scanned
Speaker 13: every single day using a barcode at retail establishments around
Speaker 13: the world.
Speaker 1: Now I'm old enough to remember, back in the day,
Speaker 1: Costco actually did not use barcodes. They went against the
Speaker 1: grain and they would like call out the number on
Speaker 1: the package, and you know, they type it in like
Speaker 1: you said. But now that's all changed. They've gotten on
Speaker 1: board as well.
Speaker 5: They've gotten on board.
Speaker 13: But you know you're right because people think it's intuitive.
Speaker 13: But when barcodes were first introduced, there was a lot
Speaker 13: of concern around I can't see the price in the product.
Speaker 13: How can I make sure that whatever's getting scanned is
Speaker 13: charging me properly as a shopper. So it was a
Speaker 13: pretty significant transition, let alone all the equipment that had
Speaker 13: to be installed at the front of a retail store
Speaker 13: and the commitment from brand owners to tag their products
Speaker 13: using barcodes.
Speaker 1: So explain to me what your company does. What is
Speaker 1: GS one us do with the barcode You said you
Speaker 1: administer them. How does that work exactly?
Speaker 13: So GS one is a global non for profit standards body,
Speaker 13: and we create the standards that is really the data
Speaker 13: syntax within a barcode, and barcodes are used at point
Speaker 13: of sale, but they're also used all the way through
Speaker 13: the supply chain. So think about additional information related to
Speaker 13: palettes or cases or batche and lot numbers or expiration
Speaker 13: dates or item counts. Barcodes that you see on those
Speaker 13: larger items in a warehouse follow GS one standards, And
Speaker 13: why the standards are important is irrespective of whether a
Speaker 13: technology I'm using in my warehouse management system or my
Speaker 13: point of sale systems, or whether I'm in the United
Speaker 13: States or France or China. Those standards allow technology and
Speaker 13: retail establishments to automatically read that information and understand what
Speaker 13: it means. So GS one is a standards body, and
Speaker 13: we administer that standard across one hundred and eighteen countries
Speaker 13: around the world.
Speaker 1: Well, my kids love to scan the barcodes at Target
Speaker 1: at the self checkout. They are very good at that.
Speaker 1: What exactly information is contained in a bar code, Like
Speaker 1: is it just numbers?
Speaker 13: Well, today, the UPC barcode that we've known for fifty
Speaker 13: years really contains one number called a Global Trade Item
Speaker 13: number that signifies the product. But tomorrow we anticipate barcodes
Speaker 13: are really going to migrate to QR codes. And QR
Speaker 13: codes can hold three thousand and four thousand characters of
Speaker 13: data within them, and so all of a sudden you
Speaker 13: have the opportunity to share with the shopper information around
Speaker 13: allergens sustainability content as to how I recycle the product
Speaker 13: or how it was grown, or in the event of
Speaker 13: a recall, I can scan that product and make sure
Speaker 13: that if I've heard about a recall, I don't mistakenly
Speaker 13: buy that product and take it home to my family.
Speaker 13: So QR codes are going to usher in the next
Speaker 13: generation of bar codes, and we're working with the industry
Speaker 13: to make sure those QR codes can go beep a
Speaker 13: checkout through GS one standards and the work we're doing
Speaker 13: with brand owners and retailers.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's interesting. So you imagine a future where we
Speaker 1: will see QR codes on products instead of that standard
Speaker 1: line looking barcode.
Speaker 13: I think it's going to be a long time before
Speaker 13: the UPC barcode maybe disappears, but I think increasingly, certainly,
Speaker 13: starting in twenty twenty seven, you're going to see a
Speaker 13: lot more products with a QR code and a UPC
Speaker 13: barcode together on the product. But over time, for some
Speaker 13: brand owners, they're eager to pick up the space on
Speaker 13: the package and just have a QR code.
Speaker 1: In the future, is there a standard for QR codes
Speaker 1: like there is for the UPC because I feel like
Speaker 1: there's different styles of QR codes out there.
Speaker 13: There is a standard. It was developed by Denzo in
Speaker 13: Japan thirty years ago. This year, ironically, they're celebrating their
Speaker 13: thirtieth year anniversary, and QR codes do have a standardized
Speaker 13: format that they need to follow in order to scan properly.
Speaker 1: Are there any security concerns around QR codes. We've heard
Speaker 1: that there could be malware embedded in these things. Is
Speaker 1: that realistic?
Speaker 13: Well, whenever you scan a QR code, you're likely offering
Speaker 13: up that information about where you were or your phone
Speaker 13: to the person that's providing the app or setting up
Speaker 13: the link. So you do need to be concerned about
Speaker 13: the fact that you may be revealing a level of
Speaker 13: information about yourself that you might not want. So if
Speaker 13: you're very concerned about that, you probably should hesitate to
Speaker 13: scanning QR codes, maybe outside a point of sale or
Speaker 13: at your home if you don't want to reveal that information.
Speaker 13: But increasingly, what we find is the benefits of scanning
Speaker 13: QR codes far outway the concerns around privacy that consumers have,
Speaker 13: and we're seeing seventy nine percent of consumers are more
Speaker 13: inclined to purchase products if they could scan a QR
Speaker 13: code to get that information that they want.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're saying that this QR code in the
Speaker 1: future could not only hold the information for the product,
Speaker 1: like the point of sale information, but also we might
Speaker 1: be able to scan it with our phone, or would
Speaker 1: be able to scan it with our phone to get
Speaker 1: more information about that product, something that we're already seeing
Speaker 1: on a lot of products. So people are taking advantage
Speaker 1: of that. Clearly rich that's exactly right.
Speaker 13: Well, we anticipate as a QR code powered by GS
Speaker 13: one that provides the benefits of QR codes today with
Speaker 13: a lot of rich information around allergens or sustainability content
Speaker 13: and also goes beep a checkout like the barcode we've
Speaker 13: enjoyed for the last fifty years.
Speaker 1: Ah. Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Now, are
Speaker 1: retailers going to have to upgrade their systems to take
Speaker 1: advantage of the QR code scanning at checkout?
Speaker 13: Retailers will likely need to make sure that they get
Speaker 13: the latest released from their technology providers that run their
Speaker 13: front end systems. Typically, that's a pretty simple release that
Speaker 13: they need to install because many front end scanners already
Speaker 13: are optically enabled because of QR codes that we use
Speaker 13: on coupons for examples, or driver's license. So most front
Speaker 13: end systems already have optical scanning, but they oftentimes need
Speaker 13: a new release from the solution provider to be able
Speaker 13: to ingest the price point into the back end systems
Speaker 13: that retailers operate.
Speaker 1: Now, most of what we talked about has been consumer
Speaker 1: product and retail, but what about other industries like healthcare?
Speaker 13: Yeah, healthcare has been using data Matrix, which is an
Speaker 13: equivalent of QR codes similar but a different type of
Speaker 13: two D code for a number of years now. But
Speaker 13: in healthcare, what we see is the need to connect
Speaker 13: the patient with the medical device or the pharmaceutical item
Speaker 13: that that patient is using to improve patient safety, to
Speaker 13: make sure that the patient gets the right medical device
Speaker 13: or the right drug, but also to optimize and improve
Speaker 13: operations within the hospital. So the same benefits that have
Speaker 13: revolutionize the supply chain in the retail space is also
Speaker 13: doing the same to provide better patient safety and lower
Speaker 13: cost in the context of healthcare.
Speaker 1: I know there were many downsides to the pandemic, but
Speaker 1: I think one of the upsides was really the adoption
Speaker 1: of the QR code. Do you think that makes this
Speaker 1: transition easier in the future. Absolutely.
Speaker 13: It's funny you mentioned that because I traditionally wasn't convinced
Speaker 13: that QR codes were going to be the way of
Speaker 13: the future. Back in the early twenty tens, it was
Speaker 13: a lot of promotion and merchandising activity that I didn't
Speaker 13: necessarily think was very prevalent with shoppers. But you're right,
Speaker 13: a lot changed with COVID in the United States. But
Speaker 13: when you go outside of the United States and Asia
Speaker 13: and Europe, QR codes have been pretty.
Speaker 5: Prevalent and growing very rapidly.
Speaker 13: So I think now we're just catching up, and I'm
Speaker 13: a believer in QR codes.
Speaker 1: Bob Carpenter, President and CEO of gs one US, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining me today.
Speaker 5: Thank you Rich for having me.
Speaker 1: The website gs one us dot org slash fifty.
Speaker 5: If you want to learn more about.
Speaker 1: Fifty years of the barcode, I'll put a link to
Speaker 1: the website on mine. Just go to rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. This is rich on Tech. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking
Speaker 1: technology with you. The website for the show Rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot TV. You can go there and hit contact
Speaker 1: to send me a message. Rest assured it does make
Speaker 1: it to my inbox. I may not be able to
Speaker 1: reply to everything, but I do my best, and I
Speaker 1: read selected emails here. Let's get to the feedback segment
Speaker 1: and open some of those emails up Neil from Ohio.
Speaker 1: I think Neil might be the most prolific writer on
Speaker 1: the website. He typically emails me. I would say every week, Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: enjoyed the last show, especially having your brother on cool.
Speaker 1: You should now know now by now know the first
Speaker 1: app that comes in here. Oh, you should know by
Speaker 1: now that the first app that comes up in your
Speaker 1: app store search is not going to be the one
Speaker 1: you searched for. It doesn't matter if it's Apple or Google.
Speaker 1: The stores have become just like search engines. Read carefully.
Speaker 1: Thanks for all that you do. That's right. I did
Speaker 1: tap on an app last week that was a total scam.
Speaker 1: But yes, tap on the second app, not the first.
Speaker 1: No name here. A listener from Newport Beach, California writes
Speaker 1: in I like your show, but I really really dislike
Speaker 1: your bumper music. I don't know what to say because
Speaker 1: I personally choose a lot of the bumper music. I
Speaker 1: curate it, and so does Bobo, so I don't know
Speaker 1: what to say. I like the bumper music mostly Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're Bobo is offended. That's it. He's done. Let's see.
Speaker 1: Dave writes in Rich someone called in with AT and
Speaker 1: T internet access and poor Wi Fi. You kept referring
Speaker 1: to it as cable. I have AT and T, and
Speaker 1: AT and T does fiber to the home. This is
Speaker 1: not like cable at all, as there is no modem.
Speaker 1: There is a router, but you cannot replace the AT
Speaker 1: and T router easily. In my case, the fiber goes
Speaker 1: to an ont optical network terminal. This converts the optical
Speaker 1: stuff to Ethernet, and then that goes to the AT
Speaker 1: and T router. The issue is that the router logs
Speaker 1: onto the AT and T network with an encrypted handshake
Speaker 1: that includes a certificate, so you cannot just replace the
Speaker 1: AT and T router. Newer AT and T routers include
Speaker 1: the OT built into the router. Okay, AT and T
Speaker 1: recommends router pass through if you don't want to use
Speaker 1: their router, however, it must remain in the path. However,
Speaker 1: you can turn off the Wi Fi on the router
Speaker 1: and use your own access point for Wi Fi, which
Speaker 1: is what I do and what you recommended. I do
Speaker 1: not get how AT and T forces you to use
Speaker 1: their router, but cable companies cannot do this. Okay, thanks
Speaker 1: Dave for the clarification. Yeah, that was That was a
Speaker 1: tricky one. The person called in they wanted to set
Speaker 1: up their EURO with the AT and T fiber and yeah,
Speaker 1: they were trying to turn off the pass through or
Speaker 1: turn on whatever it was. She writes in I agree
Speaker 1: with your advice about adding an Euro. Oh, this is
Speaker 1: the same topic or ORB to AT and T routers.
Speaker 1: I recently helped my sister who switched from Spectrum to
Speaker 1: T Mobile five G home. All of her devices went
Speaker 1: offline because the call center told her to turn off ORB.
Speaker 1: I had her plug the ORBI base into the T
Speaker 1: Mobile router, and instantly all her devices reconnected. I explained
Speaker 1: to her that the orby is like an extension cord
Speaker 1: to the Internet. For those of us in computer science,
Speaker 1: this is intuitive, but for most people it's not. We
Speaker 1: need to be patient when helping others with their tech issues.
Speaker 1: Chi I agree. That was the topic of my uh
Speaker 1: sort of my initial rant last weekend I just mentioned
Speaker 1: I said, look, you know, we take this stuff for
Speaker 1: granted that we know how it works, we know how
Speaker 1: we understand, you know, And I've said on this show,
Speaker 1: I do not have all the answers to every single
Speaker 1: tech question in the world. Right. What I can do
Speaker 1: is I can research, and I can understand, and I
Speaker 1: have kind of a general understanding of what the problems
Speaker 1: might be. It's not as if I can say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just go to this setting da da da like
Speaker 1: for something. Sure, but it's kind of an understanding of, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's think about this problem and how can we solve it.
Speaker 1: So I agree you do have to be patient. Chuck
Speaker 1: from Temple City, California writes in you mentioned texts Now.
Speaker 1: A few weeks ago, I ordered the SIM for a
Speaker 1: not too old phone. Yes, it sort of kind of works,
Speaker 1: but not really. The app kept closing slash locking up.
Speaker 1: Please tell the CEO to blame my Moto G seven
Speaker 1: at this point. So I went for Boost for ten dollars.
Speaker 1: I use it for a side hustle job. Every piece
Speaker 1: of software that sort of kind of works is a
Speaker 1: pretty big waste of time. Yes, I reinstalled the text
Speaker 1: now app and it's still locked up. I'd give it
Speaker 1: one star. Will Chuck from Temple City. I did test
Speaker 1: out the text now app. I did not have any
Speaker 1: problems with it locking up, so I would say it's
Speaker 1: probably your phone. But again, you know, this is why
Speaker 1: I test stuff out before I talk about it, because
Speaker 1: I want to have that firsthand experience of how things work.
Speaker 1: Bob writes in It's like people email me. They'll say, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: that gadget you just talked about it gets you know,
Speaker 1: five three stars on Facebook or Instagram or Amazon. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I can't speak for all the people reviewing it. I
Speaker 1: can only speak from my experience, and if it works
Speaker 1: for me, that's what I'm talking about. Bob writes in,
Speaker 1: Hey Rich, I thought i'd let you know about a
Speaker 1: scam I encountered. I got locked out of my Facebook
Speaker 1: account and I don't know why. A guy called me
Speaker 1: claiming he could fix my Facebook account. He used any
Speaker 1: desk to supposedly help me restore it, but it was
Speaker 1: a big lie. He was trying to get money for
Speaker 1: me and kept trying to get my Wells Fargo account number.
Speaker 1: The number he was used he used was a area
Speaker 1: code six oh five for South Dakota. I seem to
Speaker 1: remember seeing something about Indonesia. He somehow found my Facebook
Speaker 1: checkpoint page and was using that to get to me.
Speaker 1: I've tried to contact Facebook and Meta, but it's impossible
Speaker 1: to get through. I'm letting you know so you can
Speaker 1: make people aware of this scam. Old folks like me,
Speaker 1: aged seventy eight might get conned. Tell them about this
Speaker 1: number and hang up if they get such a call.
Speaker 1: Thank you Bob for the warning, and yes, this was
Speaker 1: a coincidence that you got locked out and someone happened
Speaker 1: to call you. They're just calling all kinds of people
Speaker 1: hoping one of them falls for their scam. Pat from Tokyo,
Speaker 1: Japan writes in Hey, Rich, I enjoyed your recent show
Speaker 1: and I'm glad to hear the L word Linux. It's
Speaker 1: not for everyone. Those contemplating moving from Windows to Linux
Speaker 1: and their PC should know that more often than not,
Speaker 1: their PC manufacturers have installed proprietary drivers for Bluetooth and
Speaker 1: Wi Fi. As an example, if Windows is reinstalled clean,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance the Bluetooth and Wi Fi will
Speaker 1: not work, and maybe even the display won't perform The
Speaker 1: same without the manufacturers drivers. The same story goes for Linux,
Speaker 1: which cannot use the manufacturers Windows drivers. Do know that
Speaker 1: it's possible to purchase a PC that is certified to
Speaker 1: run certain Linux distributions. It is best to do the
Speaker 1: homework before taking the plunge. Keep up the great work well.
Speaker 1: Number one. I love the fact that Pat you're listening
Speaker 1: from Tokyo, Japan, one of my favorite cities in the world.
Speaker 1: And yes, we did mention the L word last week. Linux.
Speaker 1: I don't mention it on the show very much because
Speaker 1: number one, I don't have a lot of experience in
Speaker 1: Linux because I don't use it. I understand the appeal
Speaker 1: and I understand why people love it. But we did
Speaker 1: discuss last week the pros and the cons. And if
Speaker 1: you think Android's complicated, Linux is like the next level.
Speaker 1: It's a real DIY kind of thing. I think that
Speaker 1: it has its place, and you know what, maybe I'll tinker,
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll have to get some sort of Linux device
Speaker 1: and figure out why I'm so hesitant to talk about that.
Speaker 1: But I think this show is for the average person,
Speaker 1: and I think that the average person is on a
Speaker 1: platform like Windows. The average person's on a platform like Mac.
Speaker 1: The average person's on an iPhone, the average person's on Android.
Speaker 1: That sort of covers it for what I talk about here.
Speaker 1: In addition to evs and smart home stuff and websites
Speaker 1: and apps and all of that. Linux, I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: I almost never get a question about Linux. Jerry from
Speaker 1: Atlanta writes in another great informative weekly Tech Update. I'm
Speaker 1: originally from northern New Jersey slash Ridgewood. I used to
Speaker 1: live in Orange County, and that's how I discovered you.
Speaker 1: Now I'm retired live in an Atlanta suburb. You provide
Speaker 1: a great service. Keep up the good work. And Ridgewood,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. I went to Christmas Eve in Ridgewood, New
Speaker 1: Jersey every year for my entire life until I moved
Speaker 1: to California. That's where my aunt and uncle live, and
Speaker 1: we had some great nights celebrating Christmas Eve there in Ridgewood.
Speaker 1: Nice town, and Forest writes in I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember, but the first time you filled in for LEO,
Speaker 1: I sent you an email to say you did great,
Speaker 1: and I meant that also. I love your newsletter. You've
Speaker 1: got the perfect format, short description of that section's topic
Speaker 1: with a link for further reading should the readers find
Speaker 1: something they want to know more about. On all aspects
Speaker 1: of you basically replacing Leo, but with the added advantage
Speaker 1: of TV. You are doing great. Keep up the good work.
Speaker 1: Aloha Forest and Forest. You made my day with that email,
Speaker 1: because take it over this show was no easy feat
Speaker 1: and I know a lot of people were wondering what
Speaker 1: direction was it going to take, how was it going
Speaker 1: to continue, and what was I gonna do with it?
Speaker 1: And by the way, this is episode number seventy eight,
Speaker 1: so year and a half. Woo. It's gone by very quickly,
Speaker 1: and that is gonna do it for this episode of
Speaker 1: the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned
Speaker 1: on my website. Just go to richon tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: I keep very good notes. You can find me on
Speaker 1: social media. I am at rich on tech. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. There are so many ways you
Speaker 1: can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it
Speaker 1: right here with me. Have a fun and safe fourth
Speaker 1: of July. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks to everyone
Speaker 1: who makes this show possible. Later