Speaker 1: YouTube TV hikes prices again, but there might be a workaround.
Speaker 1: Apple's latest AI features bring even more smarts to the iPhone.
Speaker 1: And Santa is on chat GPT talk to the big
Speaker 1: guy himself this holiday season. Santa, is that you?
Speaker 2: Oh yes, indeed, my dear, it is I Santa Claus.
Speaker 2: What a joy to hear from you. What can I
Speaker 2: do for you today?
Speaker 1: We'll talk to Santa in just a little bit. Plus
Speaker 1: your tech questions answered. Oh there.
Speaker 3: You wish to chat? Okay, jolly day, my friend.
Speaker 1: What's going on in Rich Demiro And this is Rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. This is the show where I talk about
Speaker 1: the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
Speaker 1: also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
Speaker 1: I believe the tech should be interesting, useful and fun.
Speaker 1: Let's open up those phone lines at triple eight Rich
Speaker 1: one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Give me call. If
Speaker 1: you have a question about technology. Email is also open.
Speaker 1: Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit
Speaker 1: contact guests. This week on the show, we've got Jared Schnader,
Speaker 1: Senior bus director at cal Start he's going to talk
Speaker 1: about California's first electric road charging system. Then later we've
Speaker 1: got cyber security expert Perry Carpenter. He's going to share
Speaker 1: insights from his new book about protecting ourselves against AI
Speaker 1: generated deep fakes and deceptions. And uh, even later, Miami
Speaker 1: parents Natalia Daniel and oded pelld are going to talk
Speaker 1: about first Ease. This is their new app that I
Speaker 1: wish I had when my kids were young. This helps
Speaker 1: you capture or organize and share your kid's milestone moments.
Speaker 1: We had one of those books, you know, where you
Speaker 1: write in it as your kid grows up, and I
Speaker 1: think we did the first entry, you know, and that
Speaker 1: was it. First smile, that was it. I hope you're
Speaker 1: having a great week. This week, I drove up to
Speaker 1: the San Francisco Bay area, where apparently Kim tells me
Speaker 1: right now, where she's answering calls, there's a tornado warning.
Speaker 1: What the heck? What is happening in California? So be
Speaker 1: careful up there. She's going to answer your calls best
Speaker 1: she can from her storm shelter. I think she's taking shelter.
Speaker 1: But I experienced something driving up there that I'd never
Speaker 1: experienced in my life the thickest fog I have ever
Speaker 1: driven through.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: I remember living in Louisiana and driving through a storm
Speaker 1: that was like you couldn't see in front of your car.
Speaker 1: This was like that, except there was no storm. It
Speaker 1: was just fog that was so thick that I was like,
Speaker 1: am I in a joke here? Like what is happening like?
Speaker 1: And I had to go so slow, following the car
Speaker 1: in front of me, which I couldn't even see. So
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I don't want to. The worst
Speaker 1: thing in that situation is like if there's a car
Speaker 1: that you come up on that's like stopped on the freeway,
Speaker 1: and of course you're gonna ram right into it, so
Speaker 1: you got to be very very careful. I considered pulling
Speaker 1: off the road, but I couldn't even see the place
Speaker 1: to pull off. I was like, well that's dangerous too,
Speaker 1: So I just went really slow and I posted about
Speaker 1: my Instagram at rich on Tech, and I got so
Speaker 1: many messages from folks and apparently this has a name.
Speaker 1: It's called tule fog, and so this is what it's.
Speaker 1: That's what it is, and I guess it's like really
Speaker 1: thick fog that collects a certain I don't know whatever.
Speaker 1: The weather is kind of weird anyway, that was a
Speaker 1: new one. I can't tell you what I went up
Speaker 1: to San Francisco for just yet, but in the new year,
Speaker 1: it's very very cool. All right, let's talk about Apple.
Speaker 1: You got some new features on the iPhone this week,
Speaker 1: iOS eighteen point two, So keep in mind you can
Speaker 1: update to iOS eighteen point two on a lot of iPhones,
Speaker 1: but only the latest iPhones, the iPhone fifteen Pro and
Speaker 1: the iPhone fifteen Pro Max, plus all the iPhone sixteen
Speaker 1: models get these Apple Intelligence features. This is a second
Speaker 1: round of Apple Intelligence features, and I think this is
Speaker 1: the better of the two so far. So you know
Speaker 1: you've got the new update when you see that new
Speaker 1: image playground app icon on your home screen. This is
Speaker 1: kind of like a little mini Pixar studio on your phone.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have a lot of fun with this because
Speaker 1: it lets you generate AI images. And of course Apple
Speaker 1: puts their own spin on just about every aspect of
Speaker 1: what they do, and this is no different. So most
Speaker 1: of the AI image generators, it's just a textbox and
Speaker 1: you say, okay, let me think about what I want
Speaker 1: to generate. But of course Apple gives you a couple prompts,
Speaker 1: so it has different themes, costumes, all kinds of things
Speaker 1: that you can add to your image without you having
Speaker 1: to think of them. So you can say, Okay, I
Speaker 1: want this person to be a birthday, a disco, a party,
Speaker 1: winter holidays. I want a costume like an artist, an astronaut,
Speaker 1: a chef, a scientist. I want an accessory like a
Speaker 1: beanie or a party hat or a hard hat. Or
Speaker 1: you can add the place like a city does, desert,
Speaker 1: stadium or space. So it's got a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: things to kind of get you started, and you can
Speaker 1: mix and match these. And the other neat thing is
Speaker 1: that you can start with a picture of a person.
Speaker 1: A lot of these AI generation tools don't want to
Speaker 1: use people, but Apple just went there and they're like,
Speaker 1: you know what, we know how to program this thing.
Speaker 1: We were going to make it safe. So you can
Speaker 1: just take a picture of yourself and literally just make
Speaker 1: yourself into like a Pixar character. That's what it looks like.
Speaker 1: So that's really fun. My brother texted me, I put
Speaker 1: my picture that I made of my newsletter this morning.
Speaker 1: First thing. I woke up to my brother said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm glad I had to see this first thing this morning.
Speaker 1: I was like, what, you didn't like it? I thought
Speaker 1: it was pretty cool. Jen Moji this is another feature.
Speaker 1: So this is the ability to make any emoji. So
Speaker 1: you know how you're texting with someone and you think
Speaker 1: to yourself, Ah, it'd be great if I had an
Speaker 1: emoji of a a jet squirrel riding a jet ski. Well,
Speaker 1: you probably never thought about that, but now you can.
Speaker 1: And so you can generate any emoji you want. They
Speaker 1: call them gen moojis. So to get to this, just
Speaker 1: go to your keyboard on the iPhone after you have
Speaker 1: the update and tap the emoji icon in the lower
Speaker 1: left hand corner and you'll see a new search field
Speaker 1: at the top that says describe an emoji, and you
Speaker 1: can just type in anything. And you know, obviously there's
Speaker 1: some guardrails on this, so go ahead test it out,
Speaker 1: see what the limits are. But it will generate an
Speaker 1: emoji for you on the fly, and if you swipe,
Speaker 1: it'll just keep generating new versions of it. So I
Speaker 1: did a cactus lollipop or a lollipop cactus, whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call it and you know it kind of
Speaker 1: like didn't really get it, but it kind of did,
Speaker 1: so I just kept swiping through. So that's fun. You're
Speaker 1: gonna see a lot more emojis in your conversations that
Speaker 1: are kind of random. Then the writing tools on the
Speaker 1: iPhone now integrate chat GBT. So the big difference here
Speaker 1: is that the writing tools used to be sort of canned.
Speaker 1: You can highlight some text on the iPhone. You could
Speaker 1: bring up writing tools and a little kind of like
Speaker 1: swiper selector up there when you select text. And now
Speaker 1: there's a new option when you select writing tools, it
Speaker 1: says describe your change. It used to be you could
Speaker 1: just like bullet point it, summarize it whatever you want
Speaker 1: like that. Like these canned responses, Now you can say,
Speaker 1: elaborate this in Shakespearean and it will change your text
Speaker 1: to do that. And that's also going to draw upon
Speaker 1: chat gibt if it needs to. And so the other
Speaker 1: side of this is that Siri now has chat GBT,
Speaker 1: So if Siri doesn't know the answer to your question,
Speaker 1: it will ask chat gibt for that answer. Now, of
Speaker 1: course you're in charge of this. It will say the
Speaker 1: first time you try it and say, hey, can I
Speaker 1: ask chat GBT for that answer? You can say yes
Speaker 1: or no, and then you can actually go into your
Speaker 1: settings and turn off the asking. So if you just
Speaker 1: always want it to go to chat GBT when it
Speaker 1: needs to, you can turn that feature off. That's something
Speaker 1: Apple didn't announce in the original keynote, but it's nice
Speaker 1: to see that that's there because so many of us
Speaker 1: are used to chat GBT at this point, and if
Speaker 1: you have a subscription to chat gbt, you could actually
Speaker 1: put that in on your settings so that you don't
Speaker 1: go over any sort of limits and you get some
Speaker 1: more advanced features as well. So check that out. Under Siri,
Speaker 1: it's called Apple Intelligence. You can add your account. And
Speaker 1: the other neat thing is that it's not just chat GBT.
Speaker 1: You can see they've set this up to accommodate almost
Speaker 1: any AI that wants to work with Apple in the future,
Speaker 1: so it's like you can see it says AI extensions
Speaker 1: in the settings under Siri, so you can understand a
Speaker 1: world where Gemini will be an option, Claude will be
Speaker 1: an option, Mistroll will be an option, Perplexity will be
Speaker 1: an option. But I think they have to craft their
Speaker 1: app to work with iPhone in a certain safe manner
Speaker 1: that it will work in that selection. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of cool as well. Let's see Visual Intelligence now. This
Speaker 1: is basically Apple's version of Google Lens, and this is
Speaker 1: exclude to the iPhone sixteen models that have that new
Speaker 1: camera control button on the side. If you press and
Speaker 1: hold that, you can take a picture of an object
Speaker 1: or a building or whatever, and it will give you
Speaker 1: information about that and it will use chat GBT to search,
Speaker 1: or it will use Google to search the image. So
Speaker 1: it's now pretty much Google Lens built into the iPhone.
Speaker 1: The other new feature is called image wand, and this
Speaker 1: is inside notes, so if you craft a new note,
Speaker 1: you can use your handwriting. This would be handy on
Speaker 1: the iPad. You can write down your notes and then
Speaker 1: you select this image wand tool down at the bottom,
Speaker 1: and the pallette of tools you circle what you want
Speaker 1: to change, and if it's a drawing, it will make
Speaker 1: your drawing into whatever you think it is. Like if
Speaker 1: you draw a house and say, oh, that's a house,
Speaker 1: it will literally make it into like the best looking
Speaker 1: house ever. Or it will change your handwriting into text.
Speaker 1: So those are the new features. The other thing is that.
Speaker 1: And Kim talked about this. She said, Hey, are you
Speaker 1: gonna mention the photos app? Yeah, Apple really messed up
Speaker 1: the photos app and the first version of iol Us
Speaker 1: eighteen Apparently they've cleaned it up a little bit. In
Speaker 1: iOS eighteen point two, it was really tough to find things.
Speaker 1: But my advice is open up the photos app, scroll
Speaker 1: all the way to the bottom. You'll see an option
Speaker 1: that says customize and reorder and get rid of almost
Speaker 1: everything except the things that you want to see, which
Speaker 1: for me is basically nothing except my recents, my favorites,
Speaker 1: and you know the pictures that I have. All Right
Speaker 1: there you have it. iOS eighteen point two available for
Speaker 1: the iPhone, fifteen Pro models and up, plus some iPads
Speaker 1: with the M chip and other Apple devices. Eight to
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. My name is rich Damuro
Speaker 1: and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: This week's music done by my friend Diana in the
Speaker 1: music industry works in the music industry for many, many years,
Speaker 1: and I'm learning her taste, learning her tastes in music.
Speaker 1: Mellow but classic, but also aclectic. Okay, So I mentioned
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in the beginning of the show
Speaker 1: website for the show rich on tech dot TV. If
Speaker 1: you want links to anything I mentioned, it's always there
Speaker 1: on the website rich on tech dot tv show notes
Speaker 1: by hitting the light bulb icon, or you can just
Speaker 1: go to the website. This is episode number one oh
Speaker 1: one right on the homepage there. So I mentioned that
Speaker 1: you can now chat with Santa in chat GPT. This
Speaker 1: is a limited time only. This is really cool, probably
Speaker 1: one of the best Santa chats I've ever experienced because
Speaker 1: it's smart and it sounds like Santa. So this is
Speaker 1: one of Santa's helpers. Obviously for the kids, you know,
Speaker 1: but if you want to access this, I think it'll
Speaker 1: be really fun to do with the kids. Go to
Speaker 1: chat EBT on the home screen and in the upper
Speaker 1: right hand corner you'll see a new chat. You tap that,
Speaker 1: and then once you get into that, you want to
Speaker 1: press the voice button, and so that's in the lower
Speaker 1: right hand corner, I know, kind of crazy. And then
Speaker 1: once you're there, you have to select the Santa voice,
Speaker 1: so it looks like the settings up in the upper
Speaker 1: right hand corner again, and you just swipe, you know,
Speaker 1: where you select your voice for chat GBT, you'll see
Speaker 1: a new one called Santa. So once you're there, you
Speaker 1: can chat with Santa. So let's bring them up. Hey, Santa,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today?
Speaker 2: I'm feeling merry and bright as always. How about you,
Speaker 2: my friend?
Speaker 1: I'm doing I'm doing great, just doing the rich on
Speaker 1: Tech radio show. Do you like that show?
Speaker 2: That sounds wonderful. It's always nice to tune into something
Speaker 2: that brings joy and information. I hope your show goes splendidly.
Speaker 1: Can you tune it in at the North Pole or what?
Speaker 2: The North Pole is quite magical, you know, we have
Speaker 2: our own ways of keeping up with all the wonderful
Speaker 2: things happening around the world. So in a way, yes, all.
Speaker 1: Right, I think I think he's dodging some of my
Speaker 1: questions there, But anyway, you get the idea. Now, if
Speaker 1: you're on the iPhone, you can actually save a chat
Speaker 1: that you have with Santa and share it, so you
Speaker 1: can there's a little share icon in the upper right
Speaker 1: hand corner and if you had a fun conversation with Santa,
Speaker 1: or you want to record something for your kids, you
Speaker 1: can do that on the iPhone on iOS. So kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Anyway, Neat Neat feature available seasonally and Chatchy BT.
Speaker 1: I you know, I've said in the past I used Claude,
Speaker 1: but I've sort of switched now to CHATCHYBT because they've
Speaker 1: added so many new features that it's gotten really really good.
Speaker 1: And in fact, they just added a new feature this
Speaker 1: morning that I've wanted for a while, and it's it's
Speaker 1: like these you can keep conversations onmost like pinned and
Speaker 1: so that's a really handy one. All right, eighty eight
Speaker 1: Rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. Let's go to Denis in Pasadena. Dennis,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 5: Hey, Rich, thank you. Here's my deal. I have an
Speaker 5: epsom Eco tank printer and I have an AT and
Speaker 5: T Internet Air Modem Wi Fi modem. When I want
Speaker 5: to print something, I turn them on my printer. I
Speaker 5: see the little Wi Fi icon come up. That's good.
Speaker 5: I go into my iPad, I fix something I want
Speaker 5: to print. It says searching for air printer. Half the
Speaker 5: time it finds it, half the time it doesn't. And
Speaker 5: I don't see any pattern in that, so it's kind
Speaker 5: of a crapshew. I never know if it's going to
Speaker 5: find a printer or not.
Speaker 6: Any thoughts on that.
Speaker 1: Huh. Okay, So it does work, you know, it does work.
Speaker 5: Yes, it does work. Seems to be half maybe sixty
Speaker 5: seventy percent of the time.
Speaker 1: Hmm, okay, well that's true, not always. So I would
Speaker 1: say two things here. It's either your Wi Fi signal
Speaker 1: is not you know, one of them. One of them,
Speaker 1: the Wi Fi signal is not reaching. So that's that's
Speaker 1: what I think is the issue, because if it's happening to.
Speaker 5: The print I'm really close to the Wi Fi router,
Speaker 5: if that makes.
Speaker 1: Any difference the printer is or your iPad both they're.
Speaker 5: Both in the same room and they're like two feet away.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing that you notice that's uh, that's changed
Speaker 1: when you're when you're trying to print, like sometimes there's
Speaker 1: just no rhyme or reason to this.
Speaker 7: That's how I can see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, okay, so I would my I
Speaker 1: guess what I would do is probably update the software
Speaker 1: for everything, and make sure the software is updated on
Speaker 1: the printer, make sure the software is updated on this router.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised you're one of the very few people that
Speaker 1: has AT and T Internet Air because it's a it's
Speaker 1: tough to get because they're only putting it in places
Speaker 1: where they don't have a strong fiber presence or DSL presence.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if they do DSL anymore, but
Speaker 1: fiber at least. So I think that I would update
Speaker 1: the software on those things, then the iPad, and then
Speaker 1: I would what I would do is disconnect both the
Speaker 1: iPad from your WiFi and the printer from your WiFi
Speaker 1: and reconnect both of those things. Have you tried doing that?
Speaker 5: Just just safe forget?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, safe forget and and and do those things.
Speaker 1: That is that is probably your best your best bet
Speaker 1: with that situation because it's it's frustrating, but it's like
Speaker 1: there's not a way to reproduce it. You know. I
Speaker 1: would say, if you had like your microwave going or
Speaker 1: something and it was like, you know, messing with the
Speaker 1: signal in your house, sure, but if there's no rhyme
Speaker 1: or reason, that's pretty frustrating. The only other thing is
Speaker 1: your your printer might be in sort of a deep
Speaker 1: sleep mode. I've noticed at times with my printer when
Speaker 1: I go to print sometimes it's not necessarily showing up,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, and I'll go there and I'll tap
Speaker 1: the screen on the printer and it will come to
Speaker 1: life and then it will be there. So that's the
Speaker 1: only other thing I can think of. But those those
Speaker 1: are the things that I would do and reconnect everything
Speaker 1: and then see if it still happens. Eighty eight rich
Speaker 1: one one eight eight eight seven four to two, four
Speaker 1: to one zero one. Coming up, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: wireless roads that can charge vehicles. This is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology. Eight eight eight rich one
Speaker 1: o one eighty eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. H Jim writes in from Let's see Central
Speaker 1: of California Central Valley, says grew up in Fresno regularly
Speaker 1: experienced the fog it's pronounced two leaf fog. I remember
Speaker 1: driving on roads with no lines with the windows rolled down,
Speaker 1: looking at the side of the road for guidance. Looking
Speaker 1: forward through the windshield was absolutely worthless. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: realize how thick fog can be until you feel this.
Speaker 1: LG is no longer making Blu ray players. LG will
Speaker 1: stop making Blu ray players, leaving Panasonic as the last
Speaker 1: manufacturers making Blu ray players. So Samsung has gotten out
Speaker 1: of the physical Blu ray player, Sony has gotten out
Speaker 1: of it, and that's it. Everyone wants you to go digital.
Speaker 1: You know why, because you don't own the digital stuff.
Speaker 1: You are renting it basically physical media like Blu ray
Speaker 1: and DVDs. You can't even find him anymore. Last year,
Speaker 1: I went into best Buy and I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: what's different about this store? Oh yeah, the whole middle
Speaker 1: of the store had no Blu rays or CDs in there.
Speaker 1: So I know a lot of people sad about this,
Speaker 1: but not really because come on, let's be honest. You
Speaker 1: know you're streaming your stuff, or most of us are.
Speaker 1: But it was fun at one point in life to
Speaker 1: kind of have that collection of physical media. I gave
Speaker 1: up on it a long time ago, but I understand
Speaker 1: it's like that feels like it's yours versus you know
Speaker 1: all these other services you're just paying four monthly and
Speaker 1: you don't really own any of it. Times are changing,
Speaker 1: all right, Let's bring up Jared Schnader. He is a
Speaker 1: senior bus director at cal Start. Jared, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 8: Thanks Rich, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So saw the story about this, I guess over in Westwood.
Speaker 1: Here in Los Angeles, they are going to make a
Speaker 1: small stretch of the street electrified and then the buses
Speaker 1: are going to charge as they drive along this. So
Speaker 1: can you explain? This is California's first electric road charging system.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 9: So the way it works is that it's known as
Speaker 9: dynamic inductive charging. So if you think of your cell
Speaker 9: phone that you may just set down on an inductive
Speaker 9: charging pad where you just set on top and it's
Speaker 9: able to charge. It's regular static inductive charging is where
Speaker 9: a vehicle comes over a pad and it just charges.
Speaker 8: It sits there and charges.
Speaker 9: Dynamic is where you're actually in motion and the vehicle
Speaker 9: is charging while it's driving over this system.
Speaker 8: So, yeah, first one in California.
Speaker 9: It's actually it's a really exciting project that we're going
Speaker 9: to be working on here.
Speaker 1: So how long is this street? Number one? Have you
Speaker 1: done this in other places yet?
Speaker 8: So this has been done across the world.
Speaker 9: Specifically in Europe, there are a number of roads that
Speaker 9: are electrified. The technology is still in kind of a
Speaker 9: nascent stage because you are having to pull up a
Speaker 9: road or pull up parts of a road install coils
Speaker 9: in it.
Speaker 8: For the dynamic part of it.
Speaker 9: Inductive charging has been done for years in terms of
Speaker 9: just the static sitting over top of a pad and
Speaker 9: vehicles charging. This has been done for a very long time,
Speaker 9: so nothing's really new about that. I think what we're
Speaker 9: actually seeing now and what makes this really exciting, is
Speaker 9: that we're changing the way that we're thinking about charging currently.
Speaker 9: You would have anyone that's seen an electric vehicle will
Speaker 9: know the pull up to a charger, you plug it in.
Speaker 9: I think the national average right now is about twenty
Speaker 9: five percent of those are down at any given time,
Speaker 9: whether that's for hardware malfunctions or software malfunctions. We're getting
Speaker 9: better at that year after year. These are improving. However,
Speaker 9: when you think about the number of vehicles that are
Speaker 9: out there and putting one charger, you know, kind of
Speaker 9: a one to one in the charger space, it doesn't
Speaker 9: really make much sense. When you're looking at something like
Speaker 9: long roadways, it's an opportunity for vehicles to be able
Speaker 9: to charge wilid motion instead of having to stop and
Speaker 9: charge back up. And again, when you think about this
Speaker 9: kind of linear progression of if your battery is one
Speaker 9: hundred percent full and you just start driving it, you know,
Speaker 9: as as you're driving along, it reduces the amount of
Speaker 9: energy within that battery, but it's not going back up.
Speaker 8: Really, when you start adding.
Speaker 9: In something like a dynamic inductive charging system, while you
Speaker 9: are still reducing the amount of power within the battery,
Speaker 9: it's also charging back up, so it's not a run
Speaker 9: down to twenty percent then go back up to eighty percent.
Speaker 9: I have to explain this to people all the time
Speaker 9: because they say, well, if you're driving, how long does
Speaker 9: it take to get from twenty percent of your battery
Speaker 9: life or your battery up to eighty percent. We have
Speaker 9: to think about the way that we do charging differently
Speaker 9: instead of thinking about, you know, twenty percent up to
Speaker 9: eighty percent. Look at from the flip side, if your
Speaker 9: battery is eighty percent charged and goes down to seventy percent,
Speaker 9: then it comes up to seventy two percent, then goes
Speaker 9: down to sixty five percent and up to call it
Speaker 9: sixty eight percent.
Speaker 8: Whatever it is.
Speaker 9: As it's driving along, it's extending the amount of range
Speaker 9: that you have. But also when you do come back
Speaker 9: to either your if you're at a fleet, like coming
Speaker 9: back to your lot or coming back to your home
Speaker 9: to charge up, you're not having to charge from you know,
Speaker 9: essentially a dead battery all the way up. The amount
Speaker 9: of energy that you're requiring is so much smaller because
Speaker 9: you've been able to charge throughout the day in these
Speaker 9: small increments.
Speaker 1: Okay, got it interesting? So and I know you know
Speaker 1: with my phone, obviously plug in chargings the fastest wireless
Speaker 1: chargings a little bit slower, but I imagine dynamic wireless
Speaker 1: charging has got to be a bit slower than sort
Speaker 1: of steady or static charging, is correct?
Speaker 9: Yeah, no, absolutely, it's not. This it solves everything kind
Speaker 9: of technology. What does is it helps enable the deployment
Speaker 9: on larger scale of vehicles because the way that the
Speaker 9: dynamic inductive charging is set up, it can be utilized
Speaker 9: in multiple vehicle classes. So when you're looking at kind
Speaker 9: of a heavy duty vehicle, or think about your iPhone.
Speaker 9: Let's just if you have an iPhone or an Android,
Speaker 9: you're charging plugs may be different when you're looking at
Speaker 9: charging for your car versus a bus. Those are different chargers,
Speaker 9: those are different connectors, different powers. However, with something like
Speaker 9: the inductive charging systems, we're talking about things that can
Speaker 9: now be utilized across all vehicle classes, so you can
Speaker 9: actually share the infrastructure. So instead of having to say,
Speaker 9: I've got one charger for this one bus, it can
Speaker 9: be a roadway that can be utilized for everyone driving
Speaker 9: up and down it if they have the rest receivers
Speaker 9: that are installed on the vehicle to be able to
Speaker 9: utilize the inductive charging.
Speaker 1: And do we know how long like this road is?
Speaker 1: Is it like a couple of miles or is it
Speaker 1: like a portion of a mile like what.
Speaker 9: This first one I believe is going to be just
Speaker 9: over a quarter of a mile I believe, But again
Speaker 9: we're talking about pilots here. We also have another one
Speaker 9: up in Detroit that we're working on, in another one
Speaker 9: in upstate New York that we're doing to show the
Speaker 9: technology and what it can do.
Speaker 8: The one at UCLA.
Speaker 9: One of the really exciting parts about this is not
Speaker 9: just the fact that it'll be utilized for the Olympics,
Speaker 9: for the Olympic Village but also that where it's located,
Speaker 9: there are seven other transit agencies that are coming in
Speaker 9: and laying over there. And the goal is that once
Speaker 9: this is proven out with the UCLA, these other seven
Speaker 9: agencies are going to be utilizing that same area. We
Speaker 9: would love to get them to kind of join in
Speaker 9: and say, yeah, we'd love to put some receivers on
Speaker 9: here to charge our vehicles while we're driving up and down.
Speaker 8: It's a way to expand the technology you into other
Speaker 8: transit agencies.
Speaker 1: Now, what about the safety of this, Like can I
Speaker 1: walk on this road?
Speaker 10: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Across? Am I going to be like blowing green? After
Speaker 1: I get across the road?
Speaker 8: If you're glowing green, it's not from the inductive charging?
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 8: But no, no, it is safe. This is like I said, this.
Speaker 1: Is metal shoes, Like what if there's metal in that?
Speaker 1: I mean, is there any way you could What if
Speaker 1: I put my phone on the ground and it's you know,
Speaker 1: an iPhone that has like the wireless charging, is it
Speaker 1: going to charge that?
Speaker 8: Great question?
Speaker 9: No, these are all because it's all bluetooth Like. There
Speaker 9: has to be an actual way to communicate between the
Speaker 9: the receiver and the charger itself to activate it can
Speaker 9: people have so uh, any look, let's be very honest.
Speaker 8: Anything could be hacked.
Speaker 9: But this the way that is set up is that
Speaker 9: it's it is like secure from a like the security
Speaker 9: envelope is much stronger than you would have from a
Speaker 9: traditional charger that you would have, but like you know,
Speaker 9: anything can be hacked.
Speaker 8: So I don't want to sit.
Speaker 9: Here and say it's one hundred percent like no one
Speaker 9: can ever do anything because any of your's asking for
Speaker 9: people to try something.
Speaker 8: But no, I mean, this is a very safe system.
Speaker 9: And it is like I said, it's a secure system
Speaker 9: for the infrastructure because they have to.
Speaker 1: Be wow, and so this is going to be when
Speaker 1: are they going to start this project? And what about that?
Speaker 1: Isn't there one already in Detroit? So did you work
Speaker 1: on that one or yes?
Speaker 9: Yeah we're yeah, so cal Start we are doing the
Speaker 9: data collection for the Detroit project, but the bus the
Speaker 9: bus system has not started yet, so we haven't been
Speaker 9: able to start collecting data on that one. The one
Speaker 9: for UCLA, which we'll be doing data collection on that
Speaker 9: as well. We're just to back up real quick. Cal
Speaker 9: Start is a nonprofit. We are the ones that kind
Speaker 9: of step in in a lot of these technologies to
Speaker 9: validate them, because you need a neutral third party to
Speaker 9: say whether or not something works, because our whole goal
Speaker 9: is to drive down emissions and decarbonized transportation across the country,
Speaker 9: and so we need technologies that work. So we are
Speaker 9: an honest broker when it comes to the information because
Speaker 9: the whatever we say, if it works or doesn't work,
Speaker 9: we're going to let people know about it. That said,
Speaker 9: with UCLA, one of the I guess one of our
Speaker 9: big challenges that we're going to be facing is not
Speaker 9: so much the technology but the construction because you do
Speaker 9: have to pull up parts of a road to install this.
Speaker 9: This is not a very a very heavily built out system.
Speaker 9: It's just coils within the road. Can be done in
Speaker 9: any kind of normal maintenance that may be done on
Speaker 9: the road anyway, because you know, we're always repairing asphalt,
Speaker 9: and so when we're pulling up certain parts, the coils
Speaker 9: can be installed and then asphalt go back over top
Speaker 9: of them. So this has a lot of potential and
Speaker 9: it's a really exciting thing to see, especially the fact
Speaker 9: that we're going to be utilizing this. I said, with
Speaker 9: seven agencies, all kind of circling around this. It has
Speaker 9: the ability to really transform the way that charging is
Speaker 9: done in southern California.
Speaker 1: Very cool. Well, good luck with it. Jared Schnader of
Speaker 1: Calstart the website calstart dot org. I'll be looking forward
Speaker 1: to seeing how this develops over the next couple of years.
Speaker 8: Thanks sounds great, Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Coming up YouTube TV.
Speaker 1: It's kind of sounding a lot like cable. They've hiked
Speaker 1: prices again, but there is a little hack that might
Speaker 1: work for you to save some money. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: about that coming up right here on rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, Talking Technology eight eight eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Email is also an option, as is
Speaker 1: social media. Got a message on Instagram, let's see from Tatiana.
Speaker 1: She said, are you on Spotify? Yes? You can download
Speaker 1: the podcast on any of your favorite audio apps. Just
Speaker 1: search rich on Tech to get the podcast version of
Speaker 1: the show. It's on all of them. iHeart Spotify, Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: I even founded on the serious XM app. I was
Speaker 1: surprised they just added that to test I saw searching
Speaker 1: around and sure enough we're on there as well. So
Speaker 1: lots of ways to listen. Let's go to Jamie in Tampa. Jamie,
Speaker 1: you're on with rich.
Speaker 11: On today.
Speaker 1: Man, I'm doing great, how about you?
Speaker 11: Better than I deserve?
Speaker 12: Man?
Speaker 11: And during this hot.
Speaker 1: Florid of weather, Oh wow, hot there, it's actually cold
Speaker 1: in LA, which is ironic.
Speaker 11: Right, So so we've all heard of inflation, right, sure,
Speaker 11: christ Tree inflation. That's what I'm battling, right it, because yeah,
Speaker 11: TV went up, went up, went up again, and uh
Speaker 11: and and just the thought of having dependent the boat
Speaker 11: makes me just want to pull my hair out. But
Speaker 11: since I don't really have much hair right now because
Speaker 11: it gets cut every month, I usually just screen, I
Speaker 11: hear you, So, so yeah, it keeps going up. And
Speaker 11: then the Disney Plus and because I'm tired of all
Speaker 11: the password crackdown and every it's like every week it's
Speaker 11: going up. Whatever service today, whether it's on demand or
Speaker 11: live TV, there's got to be something I can do,
Speaker 11: and I need some help because if I get I'm
Speaker 11: because I have a friend that sad, he's so much
Speaker 11: is going back to cables. But have been what he's
Speaker 11: doing now with big YouTube TV and Hulu and all
Speaker 11: this other stuff because he can't take it anymore. It
Speaker 11: neither can I.
Speaker 5: On Besty Kid, No, I hear you.
Speaker 1: I A yeah. So here's what's happening. So you've got
Speaker 1: a couple of things going on. So you've got uh,
Speaker 1: you've got YouTube TV raised prices this week, which you know,
Speaker 1: sent a lot of people into the tailspin of saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm done with this. Because when YouTube
Speaker 1: TV started, I was there at the launch event. It
Speaker 1: was thirty five dollars a month. This was in twenty seventeen. Now,
Speaker 1: given back then, they did not have a lot of channels,
Speaker 1: they did not have a lot of sports. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure they had the I think they had
Speaker 1: unlimited VR back then. But you know, they they've been
Speaker 1: slowly but surely adding all the features and all the
Speaker 1: channels that you want. And now they have a lot
Speaker 1: of channels, they have a lot of sports, they have DVRs,
Speaker 1: they have four K, but they have offline where you
Speaker 1: can download stuff, so they give you a lot, but
Speaker 1: the price just keeps going up. So thirty five dollars
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen last week it was seventy three dollars.
Speaker 1: Now it is eighty three dollars, effective immediately for new
Speaker 1: subscribers existing customers starting January thirteenth. So what do you
Speaker 1: do if you're a subscriber like myself. First off, Jamie,
Speaker 1: you got to try the subscription cancelation hack. So if
Speaker 1: you go to my Instagram at richon Tech, basically if
Speaker 1: you go to cancel your account, they might give you
Speaker 1: sixty dollars off the next six months, So ten dollars
Speaker 1: off each month for the next six months, which doesn't
Speaker 1: save you any money. It actually just fends off this
Speaker 1: price increase for the next six months. That gives you
Speaker 1: some time to breathe, some time to think about it,
Speaker 1: and some time to say, Okay, nothing's changed, but let
Speaker 1: me just see what I can do, what my options
Speaker 1: are now. Meanwhile, let me grab this. You've got other
Speaker 1: companies like Spec smells the Blood in the water, right,
Speaker 1: So Spectrum, of course perfectly timed press release says we
Speaker 1: are now including Max and Max. If you are following
Speaker 1: the streaming stuff. That's like basically it used to be
Speaker 1: called HBO Max. Now it's just Max. It's all the
Speaker 1: stuff from HBO, Warner Brothers, DC, all the different You know,
Speaker 1: they've got a whole bunch of stuff mixed in from
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers IP into this service. So now, if you're
Speaker 1: a Spectrum TV Select customer, you can get Max with
Speaker 1: ads for free, and that's usually ten dollars a month. Now,
Speaker 1: they include a whole bunch of streaming services with your
Speaker 1: Spectrum TV Select. So they include Disney Plus, ESPN Plus,
Speaker 1: Paramount Plus, and a couple others including Max, all included
Speaker 1: in your monthly fee. Now, I don't know how much
Speaker 1: Spectrum TV Select monthly is, but you know, it's probably
Speaker 1: about the same price as the YouTube TV, maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit more or less. I'm not sure, because you know,
Speaker 1: you got to go on their website and pray it
Speaker 1: all out. Now, here's the difference. The reason why we
Speaker 1: have switched to services like YouTube TV and Hulu Live
Speaker 1: tv is because, guess what. Signing up for Spectrum TV
Speaker 1: is very easy. It's when you want to change your cancel,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be so easy. They're probably going
Speaker 1: to make you talk to a representative. It's probably not
Speaker 1: self service. It's probably gonna be a little trickier because
Speaker 1: they have those retention tactics. And so that's the reason
Speaker 1: why we like these streaming services in the first place,
Speaker 1: because they put the customer in charge. When Netflix sends
Speaker 1: a price increase to you, what do they do. They
Speaker 1: don't say, please call our customer service hotline and we'll
Speaker 1: help you out and we'll maybe give you a better deal.
Speaker 1: They say, here's the cancelation link, go ahead, cancel. What
Speaker 1: do we care. We've got, you know, two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million people subscribe to us. And by the way,
Speaker 1: we know that you're going to stick with us because
Speaker 1: it's twenty three dollars a month or fifteen or seven
Speaker 1: whatever you're paying, and it's probably a pretty good value.
Speaker 1: It's less than the price of one movie ticket. So
Speaker 1: what do you do, Jamie? You can go to this
Speaker 1: website called the Streamable, the streamable dot com slash matchmaker,
Speaker 1: And what live TV really comes down to is what
Speaker 1: channels do you want to watch and what sports teams
Speaker 1: do you want to watch. That's what really drives what
Speaker 1: people subscribe to. If you just want to watch the
Speaker 1: Hallmark channel, it's not going to cost that much because
Speaker 1: you can subscribe to Filo for twenty eight dollars a month.
Speaker 1: It's when you want to watch the Yankees or the
Speaker 1: Jets or the Rams or whatever team is in your area,
Speaker 1: or whatever team you follow, that's when it gets a
Speaker 1: little bit more expensive. And that's when you need one
Speaker 1: of these premium services. So if you go to the
Speaker 1: streamabol dot com slash matchmaker, I really like it because
Speaker 1: you type in the channels and the teams that you
Speaker 1: want to watch, and it will tell you the services
Speaker 1: that actually have those channels and those teams. And I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, if you're talking sports, not going to be cheap.
Speaker 1: The other thing to do is go back to an antenna.
Speaker 1: You can easily. A lot of people emailed me said, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I'm going back to antenna. I'm putting that on my roof,
Speaker 1: or I'm putting it inside, or I'm putting in your window.
Speaker 1: Antennasdirect dot com you can check them out. They can
Speaker 1: tell you which antenna might be working for your house.
Speaker 1: But I've got an antenna on my roof. I might
Speaker 1: go back to that. But the problem is getting the
Speaker 1: DVR service. You can use something like Tableau t a
Speaker 1: b l O that will record live TV. But you
Speaker 1: know TVO used to do it. That might still be around.
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure, but an Amazon used to have
Speaker 1: a device that would record live TV, but they've just
Speaker 1: continued that. So those are your options. You've got to
Speaker 1: pay up or get rid of some of these services.
Speaker 1: This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four two four one zero one. This is the show
Speaker 1: where I talk about the tech stuff I think you
Speaker 1: should know about. It's also the place where I answer
Speaker 1: your question, so give me a call. You can also
Speaker 1: go to the website rich on Tech dot tv hit
Speaker 1: contact if you want to get in touch that way,
Speaker 1: send me a message, or you can let's see what
Speaker 1: else can you do? You can just go there and
Speaker 1: sign up for the newsletter Why Not. You get more
Speaker 1: information about the things I talk about here and the
Speaker 1: notes on everything I mentioned, so let's see. I am
Speaker 1: fascinated with this story about the drones in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: not just because I'm from New Jersey, but because I
Speaker 1: just find it really hard to believe that these drones
Speaker 1: are flying in the skies above New Jersey and nobody
Speaker 1: knows what they are. Now, I've got all my family
Speaker 1: that lives there, and so I asked him on our
Speaker 1: group chat, I said, hey, have you seen these things?
Speaker 1: And they've all said yes. So how in the world
Speaker 1: are there just thousands of drone sightings and nobody knows
Speaker 1: what they are? The government doesn't know, the police don't know,
Speaker 1: the firefighters don't know. My sister said, she took dozens
Speaker 1: of pictures and nobody knows who they are. Saw not
Speaker 1: a passenger plane, saw a jet flying super low and slow.
Speaker 1: Well what is that? I mean, come on, wouldn't we
Speaker 1: be freaking out if we saw this? I mean, I
Speaker 1: will tell you when I go outside, and here's what
Speaker 1: I think could be happening. Like there's a heat map
Speaker 1: online of all the different sightings in New Jersey. What
Speaker 1: happens is that when one person sees something, suddenly a
Speaker 1: lot of people see stuff.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And I don't know about you, but nine times out
Speaker 1: of ten, when I see a plane in the sky,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Oh, that's a UFO, And then I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: no it is, Oh that's Southwest. Sometimes they look like
Speaker 1: they're just slow and like hovering. But I'm all for it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love stuff like this, Like it just
Speaker 1: reminds you of a movie. Right, Like we're like we
Speaker 1: are literally you know, we're not under attack, but we're
Speaker 1: just like under surveillance, and they're just like kind of
Speaker 1: testing the waters, coming in, seeing what's happening, seeing how
Speaker 1: we react, seeing how far they can go, how close
Speaker 1: they can get, and then you know, who knows what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. But anyway, I am absolutely fascinated with this story.
Speaker 1: Now here's the funny thing. I've asked my family to
Speaker 1: send me the pictures they've taken of these things. Not one.
Speaker 1: No one sent me a picture or video, even though
Speaker 1: they've seen them so many times. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: draw your own conclusions there. Let's see, Mike and uh
Speaker 1: San Fernando. Mike, you're on with rich Hey, drones there
Speaker 1: in the y. I'm sorry, have you seen any UFOs
Speaker 1: or drones in the valley.
Speaker 10: Waiting for a night fall? Then I'll probably get a
Speaker 10: whole bunch of them there.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 10: I wish I called earlier when you had the gentleman
Speaker 10: on there discussing just dynamic charging, charging the vehicles while
Speaker 10: you're driving down a road via induction. Yeah, I have
Speaker 10: the pacemaker, and I'm supposed to stay away from anything
Speaker 10: magnetic electronic. I wear a harness that keeps myself on
Speaker 10: the right because all pocketed T shirts have it the
Speaker 10: pocket right over the heart. Yeah, would you happen to
Speaker 10: know anything, like if I'm coming up on one of
Speaker 10: these roads, pull off to the side, take a detour
Speaker 10: or whatever. Is it safe for the like me who
Speaker 10: have pacemakers.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. I would imagine that the folks
Speaker 1: who are creating these roads are thinking about that stuff.
Speaker 1: But I would also imagine that the magnets are probably
Speaker 1: pretty prevalent in these roads, because that's how this all works.
Speaker 1: I do know with the Apple stuff, you know, when
Speaker 1: they came out with the mag safe on the back
Speaker 1: of the iPhone, there was a lot of talk about
Speaker 1: pacemakers and the impact, and so I think there is
Speaker 1: a concern. I think that's some you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: an expert on this, but I think there is a
Speaker 1: level of like how strong the magnet is. I do
Speaker 1: know that myself and my photographer, we you know, shoot
Speaker 1: TV stories and we use these little wireless mics that
Speaker 1: have a really strong magnet on the back because they
Speaker 1: can just click it to your shirt. And I always
Speaker 1: uh ask people like, hey, do you have any medical
Speaker 1: like things we need to know about before we clip
Speaker 1: this thing too? Is it okay to put a magnet
Speaker 1: on your chest? Whatever? So it's something that I think
Speaker 1: that is prevalent in this kind of thought process. I
Speaker 1: don't have the answer for you, Mike, but I will
Speaker 1: ask the the guy we had on last Jared. I'll
Speaker 1: send him an email and see what he says about that.
Speaker 10: Now, that would be fantastic because I don't hear a
Speaker 10: but even at the airport, I don't recall seeing anything
Speaker 10: if you have a pacemaker or something like that, because
Speaker 10: I don't even think if you got wanded and you
Speaker 10: just have to do the old, good old fashioned at down,
Speaker 10: which is fine by me. Obviously you don't want to
Speaker 10: mess with a pacemaker with electronics or magnetics. And as
Speaker 10: you said, driving on a road to recharge a car,
Speaker 10: you probably have magnetics go lore and well they better
Speaker 10: set up detours before I hit that road, you know,
Speaker 10: or anyone like me?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I mean, well, what is what does your doctor
Speaker 1: say have they you know, when they put this thing in,
Speaker 1: do they say like, hey, be careful around this or that,
Speaker 1: or do they exactly.
Speaker 10: It was maybe a five minute conversation right after I
Speaker 10: came to from the surgery and all of that. No
Speaker 10: more magnetics, no more this. You can't, No, MRI, you
Speaker 10: cannot get wanded at the airport.
Speaker 7: You can't.
Speaker 10: Then I got it, and uh, well, where I work,
Speaker 10: it helps to have a pocketed T shirt. That's where
Speaker 10: I keep the cell phone, and it's like a thousand
Speaker 10: percent full pocket, and T shirts have the pocket over
Speaker 10: the heart. In fact, even some companies make a pacemaker
Speaker 10: friendly T shirt. All they do is shift the pocket
Speaker 10: to the other side. To me, that's still a little
Speaker 10: too close to the device. So I just wear a
Speaker 10: harness and keep the thing up to the side, and
Speaker 10: that's the best I can do.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 10: But the thing, the trend getting everything getting electronic and
Speaker 10: chargeable and chargeable on the go. I think that's fantastic,
Speaker 10: But you know, I got to see if it's safe
Speaker 10: for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, good question and good thing for them to
Speaker 1: think about as they keep things in mind. I've also heard,
Speaker 1: you know, the electric cars. I'm curious, like you know,
Speaker 1: that could be an issue too, so but I'm sure
Speaker 1: plenty of people have pacemakers that drive those as well.
Speaker 1: But always consideration with any of this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it falls on you, I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of it just falls on the
Speaker 1: person that has whatever medical condition or whatever medical you know,
Speaker 1: procedure or instrument in their body. I guess it comes
Speaker 1: to them to like kind of be aware of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And like you said, with the wanding and things like that.
Speaker 1: But great question, Mike, and I will pass it along
Speaker 1: to Jarrett to see what he says about that. This
Speaker 1: is you know, we hear about AI so much Google
Speaker 1: This week. Google had a bunch of news this week.
Speaker 1: They had this really super fast computer chip and now
Speaker 1: they've got this new Gemini AI. So Gemini is Google's
Speaker 1: version of AI. And I've said this before, but Google
Speaker 1: is pretty much they are feeling the heat right now.
Speaker 1: Because I was thinking about this the other day because
Speaker 1: I've been using chatchibt now ever since they added the
Speaker 1: web search. It's really really good. Now it's not perfect,
Speaker 1: but it's still pretty good that you can now search
Speaker 1: the web with chatch ebt. But now, you know, so
Speaker 1: Google is definitely feeling the heat. So they have been
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've noticed, but Google's kind of
Speaker 1: been ramping things up, especially in the AI department. They've
Speaker 1: been working on AI for a very long time, but
Speaker 1: now they seem to have new products all the time
Speaker 1: with their AI. So this new one this week is
Speaker 1: called deep Research, and this is basically an AI powered
Speaker 1: tool that will perform web based research for you and
Speaker 1: create a report. And I watched this thing work. The
Speaker 1: idea is that the AI can control your Internet and
Speaker 1: just go and browse the Internet for you and create
Speaker 1: a report. So, for instance, I asked it to make
Speaker 1: me a report on a topic and let's see if
Speaker 1: I can find it. I made like a So you
Speaker 1: have to go You have to be paying for this,
Speaker 1: by the way, so you have to go into it's
Speaker 1: called Deep Research. You go into Gemini Advance with Deep Research,
Speaker 1: and you can say, draft me a report on the
Speaker 1: prevalence of UFOs over the past decade in the US,
Speaker 1: and it will literally go on to the internet search
Speaker 1: all these different sites and it will show you what
Speaker 1: it's doing. So I have to press start research. So
Speaker 1: it's going to say, okay, find reports from reputable news
Speaker 1: organizations and scientific journals, find data and statistics, and it
Speaker 1: literally when I press start research, it shows me the
Speaker 1: internet as it's searching the internet. So it's going off
Speaker 1: on the web. And now this is AI searching the
Speaker 1: web and compiling all this information and then generating a report.
Speaker 1: And here it is. It's now it's going to YouTube.
Speaker 1: It went to History dot Com, went to some government websites, CIA,
Speaker 1: went to the BBC, went to the Pentagon's showing me
Speaker 1: all the websites that it is visiting right now, Reddit
Speaker 1: map of UFO sightings around the world. And then once
Speaker 1: it does all this, so it says researching thirty one websites.
Speaker 1: It's going to collect all that information and then draft
Speaker 1: a report that I can put into Google Docs. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is what we did in school. And by the way,
Speaker 1: all the sites, you know, they put that little you know,
Speaker 1: you have to cite all your stuff at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the report, like where do you get this info?
Speaker 1: It will put all that in there as well, so
Speaker 1: now AI can do your research for you. Now, my
Speaker 1: kids struggle with this stuff because you know, they're in
Speaker 1: school and they've got to do all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 1: and they're like, Dad, do you think it's okay if
Speaker 1: I use AI for this, Dad, Do you think it's okay?
Speaker 1: If I proofread with AI, I say go for it.
Speaker 1: Because AI is now rst lne. You ever watch Wheel
Speaker 1: of Fortune? What are the first letters people choose? Rst Lene.
Speaker 1: It's the table stakes and everything, every puzzle that they
Speaker 1: solve Wheel of Fortune gives that to you now, and
Speaker 1: so now it's like that's a given, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: those letters. Everyone in the world has access to AI now,
Speaker 1: so you have to move beyond that, and you have
Speaker 1: to use that to your advantage. So if you're scared
Speaker 1: of AI, you're intimidated by it, you're not using it.
Speaker 1: You think you're better than it, you think that you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be using it because it's cheating all. Throw all
Speaker 1: that out the window. Everyone is using it, Everyone is
Speaker 1: using it, Everyone has it as a tool. So if
Speaker 1: you're not using it, you're actually put at a disadvantage.
Speaker 1: If you're sitting here trying to come up with this
Speaker 1: UFO report on your own, Sure you can do that,
Speaker 1: and I understand at the base level you should know
Speaker 1: how to do that. But then once you know how,
Speaker 1: you can let these tools do it, and you have
Speaker 1: to build upon that eyda to eight rich one O
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four to
Speaker 1: one zero one. The website rich on Tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: If you're right back, welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four two four one zero one. You can find
Speaker 1: me on social media. I am at rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: I'm active on Instagram, I'm active on Facebook and X
Speaker 1: Trying to get into the blue sky thing. It's proving
Speaker 1: to be a little tough because it's kind of boring
Speaker 1: right now. I'll be honest, There's there's not a lot
Speaker 1: going on in there, but you know it's growing, so
Speaker 1: we'll see. Let's go to Jimmy in Los Angeles. Jimmy,
Speaker 1: you're on with rich.
Speaker 3: Jimmy.
Speaker 8: Hey, Hey, how you doing.
Speaker 12: Hey? My name is Jimmy Day. And sometimes when I'm
Speaker 12: talking on a cell phone like i'm talking now, I
Speaker 12: run into a few the podcasts or videos on woodworking
Speaker 12: and metallurgy metal working, and what I want to know
Speaker 12: is how can I transfer those to my desktop video,
Speaker 12: I mean desktop computer.
Speaker 1: So the podcasts or the videos.
Speaker 12: That I'm looking at on my cell phone. How can
Speaker 12: I transfer that to my desktop computer?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 1: The videos okay, so like on YouTube or what?
Speaker 13: Uh?
Speaker 12: Most of them are on YouTube somewhere on.
Speaker 10: Google.
Speaker 1: Okay, well typically, so I mean you probably want to
Speaker 1: access them. There are various third party tools that can
Speaker 1: download videos. Many of them operate in sort of a
Speaker 1: gray area. But there is a website called Cobalt Tools
Speaker 1: c O B A L T dot Tools, and that
Speaker 1: will let you pretty much download a video from almost
Speaker 1: any website including Blue Sky, daily Motion, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, YouTube,
Speaker 1: I mean pretty much everything, Twitter, TikTok x, whatever it is, Vimeo.
Speaker 1: So if you paste the link into that website, it
Speaker 1: will generate a download. And so it's called Cobalt Tools
Speaker 1: co O B A L T dot Tools. Now, the
Speaker 1: tool is not illegal in any way. I mean you could,
Speaker 1: you know, you can use this to download your own
Speaker 1: videos or whatever. It's it's depends on sort of the
Speaker 1: copyright of the video and the gray area that it's
Speaker 1: operating in when it comes to what you're downloading. So
Speaker 1: you have to you know, go by that with what
Speaker 1: you're you know, if you're just using it for your
Speaker 1: own personal stuff, you know, you got to figure out
Speaker 1: what the rules and regulations are around that. But that's
Speaker 1: the best way to do it. Cobalt Tools, uh, and
Speaker 1: it's Cobalt dot Tools. And this is a really really
Speaker 1: handy website. You can do video, you can do audio,
Speaker 1: and like I said, it works with almost every major
Speaker 1: video and audio website out there. So pretty simple, pretty easy.
Speaker 1: That's what I would recommend. Jimmy, Thanks for the call,
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Eighty eight Rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four two four one zero one. Talking earlier
Speaker 1: about the price increases on YouTube TV, Danny writes in
Speaker 1: from Charlotte, North Carolina. I said, Hey, Rich, I have
Speaker 1: I used TVO and have for over twenty three years.
Speaker 1: Still works for me. I have a four tuner model
Speaker 1: and yes, sometimes record over the air four channels at
Speaker 1: the same time. There you go, Danny, and Charlotte says
Speaker 1: that TVO still works. Michael in Sherman Oaks says Ota
Speaker 1: DVR lives. Hey Rich alone with Tableau, whose fourth generation
Speaker 1: products are a great way to DVR over the air.
Speaker 1: TVO still does have their Bolt models or even better,
Speaker 1: Zapperbox has an over the air DVR that not only
Speaker 1: records regular TV, but also the new ATSC three point
Speaker 1: zero next gen broadcasts. That's uh yeah, that's like a
Speaker 1: whole new thing. Hasn't taken off as much as I'm
Speaker 1: sure the broadcasters have wanted, but I also haven't really
Speaker 1: seen it promoted as much. But yes, the next gen broadcast,
Speaker 1: A lot of the channels are broadcasting in this new
Speaker 1: format that uh, I guess has more data with the show.
Speaker 1: So it's it allows you to do some different things,
Speaker 1: you know, like almost like interactive TV, where they can
Speaker 1: see if you're watching, they know if you've seen an AD.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a two way thing versus just
Speaker 1: you know, broadcast, which is just one way. So the
Speaker 1: broadcasters like that. But and then I saw some of
Speaker 1: these boxes at CES that take in the signal, and yes,
Speaker 1: a lot of them have DVRs built in. But also
Speaker 1: I think that the broadcasters can control that as well,
Speaker 1: like they can decide if they want you to be
Speaker 1: able to DVR or not. Don't quote me on that,
Speaker 1: but I think that's what they were saying. But if
Speaker 1: you want to learn about ats C three point oh,
Speaker 1: I think let's see what's what's the website at s
Speaker 1: C three point h uh. I thought it was like
Speaker 1: next gen TV dot com or something, but it's at
Speaker 1: sc dot org. That's the Broadcast Standards Association, so you
Speaker 1: can check that out. Let's see here. Let's go to
Speaker 1: Jerry Jerry and Palace Verdes. Jerry, you're on with Rich Hi.
Speaker 7: Uh I thowt the tenth generation ipada, you know, on
Speaker 7: Black Friday, and for some reason, the I download the
Speaker 7: countour which is the Cox cable ad, and the iPad
Speaker 7: doesn't allow me to use that for some reason. You
Speaker 7: any news for that?
Speaker 1: Does? It lets you down it lets you download it,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't let.
Speaker 14: You use it.
Speaker 7: I downloaded, but it doesn't work well.
Speaker 3: I it real life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking.
Speaker 7: At I called it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I called a cable company. They wanted ten dollars per month,
Speaker 7: and I say, you Daniel alternative. They told me you
Speaker 7: have to talk to a hebh. That's strange.
Speaker 1: Okay. So they want ten dollars a month to to
Speaker 1: to add this feature to your to your service. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it looks like it works on oh you know what,
Speaker 1: it doesn't say anything about Oh it does say iPhone okay,
Speaker 1: so it says iPhone and iPad iOS fourteen or higher.
Speaker 1: But it looks like I'd have to look at this,
Speaker 1: but I have to see if you if you need
Speaker 1: to pay extra to use this, I'll look at this
Speaker 1: and then talk about it on the way back from
Speaker 1: the break. Coming up, we're going to talk about deep
Speaker 1: fakes 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. Phone lines are open eighty eight rich one
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four four one zero one.
Speaker 1: My friend Diana did the music for this week's show,
Speaker 1: keeping things mellow, like real mellow like I usually am doing,
Speaker 1: like you know, I'm usually choosing like the you know,
Speaker 1: mood booster stuff, but this is mellow. Before the break,
Speaker 1: we had Jerry and Palas Verdes ask about Contour, this
Speaker 1: app for cocks. It looks like the app is free,
Speaker 1: but depending on what you can do, you know, depending
Speaker 1: on your your subscription through COS that determines what you
Speaker 1: can do on this app. So you might be able
Speaker 1: to download it to your iPad, but depending on what
Speaker 1: you have on your subscription, that determines if you can
Speaker 1: watch live TV or stream or manage your DVR. So
Speaker 1: it all depends and that's sort of like, you know
Speaker 1: what I was talking about earlier with the whole cable thing.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like it gets confusing because it's all
Speaker 1: about the package that you subscribe to. So that's probably
Speaker 1: why you're having issues with that on your iPad. All right,
Speaker 1: Joining me now, Perry Carpenter, cybersecurity expert, has a new
Speaker 1: book called Fake, A Practical Guide to Living in a
Speaker 1: World of Deep Fakes, different disinformation, and AI generated deceptions. Perry,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining me, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: So what was the reason for writing the book? What
Speaker 1: trend did you see happening that you figured people needed
Speaker 1: to know more about.
Speaker 6: Well, I think the trend is fairly obvious. Over the
Speaker 6: past two plus years, there's been a huge surge and
Speaker 6: AI generated stuff out there because of this whole field
Speaker 6: of generative AI, which is what chat, GPT and all
Speaker 6: the image generation technologies and video generation technologies that we're
Speaker 6: seeing falls under and that was creating a lot of questions, confusion,
Speaker 6: and then also excitement about what the future is. And
Speaker 6: the book was all around really giving people the right
Speaker 6: terminology to be able to talk about it, helping them
Speaker 6: understand what the opportunities are, what the dangers are, how
Speaker 6: it's going to be taken advantage of and is being
Speaker 6: taken advantage of by cyber criminals and disinformation artists, and
Speaker 6: then how to fortify our minds to deal with the
Speaker 6: new reality that we're all stepping into.
Speaker 1: So give me an example of what these people are
Speaker 1: doing with AI to trick us.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean the examples are many. So when you
Speaker 6: think about deep fakes that gets in this area that
Speaker 6: we call synthetic media, which is just computer generated media
Speaker 6: and by media that could be text. So if you've
Speaker 6: used chat, GPT, that's an example. Images things like Dolly
Speaker 6: and mid Journey and Stable Diffusion or programs that people
Speaker 6: are fairly aware of there, and then video and voice
Speaker 6: and of course in election cycles what we've been like
Speaker 6: what we have been in there was a lot of
Speaker 6: that for political purposes, and then in just well generally
Speaker 6: having fun and being on the Internet. There's lots of
Speaker 6: examples of that. But if we flash back to something
Speaker 6: that's a little bit old news right now. During the
Speaker 6: primary season for this presidential election, in the New Hampshire primary,
Speaker 6: somebody created a deep fake audio of Joe Biden's voice
Speaker 6: and put that on a robocall circuit to call people
Speaker 6: around and say, you don't need to go out and
Speaker 6: vote in the primary today, And.
Speaker 1: We talked about that story. I totally remember that, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and the voice was pretty good. It's not the
Speaker 6: best version of that that I have heard. But the
Speaker 6: thing that makes this an interesting example is that every
Speaker 6: deep fake, when it's intended for something other than fun,
Speaker 6: every deep fake, every bit of disinformation, every scam is
Speaker 6: after either two things or both money or mimes. And
Speaker 6: in this what they were after really is making people
Speaker 6: who would have voted for Joe Biden in the primary
Speaker 6: sit out. And we would immediately think, well, that that
Speaker 6: means that's a Republican challenger that was doing that. That
Speaker 6: was you know, somebody on the other side was doing that.
Speaker 6: Turns out it was actually another Democrat, but it was
Speaker 6: somebody that was on that party that was trying to
Speaker 6: challenge Joe Biden in the primary because they wanted their
Speaker 6: name on the ticket. So the thing that makes that
Speaker 6: really interesting to me is that there's, you know, that
Speaker 6: multifaceted aspect and trying to understand the motivations of the
Speaker 6: people that create these these bits of disinformation, propaganda, or
Speaker 6: just scam material.
Speaker 1: So I guess it depends on so the the products themselves,
Speaker 1: Like a deep fake is not necessarily illegal, but I
Speaker 1: guess it's how it's done or what it's used for,
Speaker 1: because I know we've seen stories about you know, teenagers
Speaker 1: in high schools are making deep fakes, usually sexually explicit
Speaker 1: deep fakes of fellow students, and that's obviously a used
Speaker 1: to is not good.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's uh, I mean every people think of yeah,
Speaker 6: they should because at that point, you're you're defaming people,
Speaker 6: you're also creating a fraud, You're I mean, there's so
Speaker 6: many things that are wrapped into that. But it's like
Speaker 6: any technology, any technology can be used for good or bad.
Speaker 6: And what I say over and over and over in
Speaker 6: the book is that every tool wields, every tool will
Speaker 6: mold to the hand and intention of the person who's
Speaker 6: picking it up. And deep fake technology, uh is like that.
Speaker 6: When when you look at what this country and the
Speaker 6: world is trying to deal with right now, it is
Speaker 6: the fact that there is that dual nature and we
Speaker 6: can create really interesting, good, productive, creative uses for AI
Speaker 6: technology that will their humanity and help people thrive. At
Speaker 6: the same time, it can become a cudgel, it can
Speaker 6: become a weapon, it can become a tool of disinformation
Speaker 6: or a tool that scam artists go to. And so
Speaker 6: when you look at the ability to curtail that darker
Speaker 6: use of it, that's what people are really struggling with.
Speaker 6: And in California, of course, there were a couple of
Speaker 6: bills that were passed prior to the to the election,
Speaker 6: and what those bills were really trying to struggle with
Speaker 6: is that dual use. They were trying to protect things
Speaker 6: like you know, good use and parity and even you know,
Speaker 6: the cynical, sarcastic use of these for political commentary, while
Speaker 6: at the same time recognizing the fact that people would
Speaker 6: weaponize deep fake technology to try to trick people and
Speaker 6: what they came to, which I think is a good start,
Speaker 6: but it's not all the way. There is that for
Speaker 6: social media platforms that are over a certain revenue threshold
Speaker 6: and have a certain user account, if they are alerted
Speaker 6: to or discover a use of the technology. You know,
Speaker 6: a piece of deep fake technology like a video or
Speaker 6: audio clip or an image, if it is if its
Speaker 6: purpose is intended to deceive. They have seventy two hours
Speaker 6: to take it down, So I call that.
Speaker 8: A good start.
Speaker 6: Their their hearts are are in the right place, but
Speaker 6: seventy two hours is an entire news cycle, and people
Speaker 6: will make actions and build belief systems based on that
Speaker 6: way before the chance to take it down ever rolls around.
Speaker 6: So it's a good start. But more than anything, it
Speaker 6: points into the direction of the fact that this is
Speaker 6: something we're going to wrestle with well.
Speaker 1: And as a journalist, you know, I've been a journalist
Speaker 1: for many, many years, and it used to be that
Speaker 1: people would turn to folks like myself for like, you know,
Speaker 1: vetted information, and I would post something on my Facebook
Speaker 1: and people would know, like, oh, that's rich and you know,
Speaker 1: he works for a major news outlet and obviously he's
Speaker 1: posting stuff that's real. But then I saw in the
Speaker 1: past couple of years people questioning even stuff that I'm posting,
Speaker 1: you know, is this real? Is this are you for
Speaker 1: real here? Which is just wild because that's now everything,
Speaker 1: you know, Like when I'm scrolling on social media, the
Speaker 1: first thing that comes to mind with every single video
Speaker 1: or image I see is is this real? And so
Speaker 1: how are we going, and I know they've got like
Speaker 1: water marks and all this a but there's always going
Speaker 1: to be ways around these things. So what is kind
Speaker 1: of the bottom line here is that are we kind
Speaker 1: of like we have to understand what to look out for.
Speaker 6: I think you're onto it, So I'm really glad you
Speaker 6: said that even though there's watermarks and other technologies, there's
Speaker 6: always ways around it, because there are, and those will
Speaker 6: be effective a percentage of the time, but we can't
Speaker 6: count on those. And so what I really advocate for
Speaker 6: is just this idea of cognitive security, And that's the
Speaker 6: mental piece of this, because technology, as good as it is,
Speaker 6: is never going to protect us from these things. They
Speaker 6: will slip into our social media feed they will get
Speaker 6: into our inbox, they will get into our text messages
Speaker 6: and so on. Because the people that are out there
Speaker 6: using these creating weaponized information with them, they're persistent and
Speaker 6: so it will get to us and they're not playing.
Speaker 3: By the rules.
Speaker 6: No, not exactly. So even when open AI or anybody
Speaker 6: else develops really good robust water marking, somebody will just
Speaker 6: use a different tool set that doesn't have that, or
Speaker 6: they'll find the way around, and then they'll weaponize that information,
Speaker 6: so we cannot rely on that, and I think we
Speaker 6: do a disservice to the population when we say, oh,
Speaker 6: you'll always be able to tell that something's a deep
Speaker 6: fake because of X, Y and Z. Instead, like you,
Speaker 6: I am directionally pushed people towards asking critical questions like
Speaker 6: why did this piece of media land in front of me?
Speaker 6: What story is it trying to tell? What emotion is
Speaker 6: it trying to invoke? And then ultimately what does it
Speaker 6: want me to do or believe? And when I ask
Speaker 6: those critical questions, for me, it doesn't matter if the
Speaker 6: thing that landed in front of me is real or fake.
Speaker 6: It starts to unpack the broader implications of it, because
Speaker 6: we were moving into a world where a lot of
Speaker 6: what we see will be fake for some of that
Speaker 6: for legitimate reasons, just because the tools exist, and so
Speaker 6: being able to tell whether it's synthetically created or not
Speaker 6: is going to be marginally important, but not really the
Speaker 6: be all, end all tell that we need to be
Speaker 6: looking out for. We need to understand the narrative and
Speaker 6: the intention.
Speaker 1: And I imagine, Perry, We're going to leave it there,
Speaker 1: but I imagine that there will be degrees in this
Speaker 1: stuff and how to tell you know, be an expert
Speaker 1: in deep fakes and how to tell this stuff is
Speaker 1: really or not?
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: The book is called fake f a Ik. The website
Speaker 1: this book is fake faik dot com. Perry Carpenter, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining me.
Speaker 6: Thank you eight eight eight.
Speaker 1: Rich one O one. We'll get to those phone lines
Speaker 1: coming up right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Eight
Speaker 1: eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four two four one zero one hop on. If you
Speaker 1: want to get on the air here and ask a question,
Speaker 1: you can also go to the website rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. Hit contact and uh you can get in
Speaker 1: touch that way. And if I mentioned something on the
Speaker 1: air that you want to get more information about, just
Speaker 1: go to the website rich on tech dot tv. Hit
Speaker 1: the show notes. That is the icon up at the top.
Speaker 1: It looks like a light bulb. Or you can just
Speaker 1: look for a show one O one and you'll see
Speaker 1: a nice list of everything that I mentioned here.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: Diana and Torrance has some feedback on the coxsapp. Diana,
Speaker 1: what's up?
Speaker 10: Hi, Rich?
Speaker 14: I was just calling in to give you my two
Speaker 14: cents based on my experience with that cocks app that
Speaker 14: your caller that you just from Palisferti contour, Yes, I
Speaker 14: I use, I downloaded and I used that app all
Speaker 14: the time on iPhones and an iPad airs. The iPad
Speaker 14: air I used is like a couple of years old.
Speaker 14: I know he mentioned he has a tenth generation iPad
Speaker 14: that he got from Black Friday. But so what I
Speaker 14: would say is my parents have the Cox table. They
Speaker 14: live in Palisberti's and I think he just needs to
Speaker 14: make sure that whatever his table subscription includes, the you know,
Speaker 14: allowed him to do the streaming.
Speaker 6: From that app.
Speaker 1: I think that's the main thing, is that because I
Speaker 1: was looking at you know, the environments is really iOS
Speaker 1: fourteen it says, which is like three, you know, four
Speaker 1: years old. So his iPad definitely runs that the tenth
Speaker 1: generation does. But I think what it comes down to is,
Speaker 1: like you said, what can you do with the subscription
Speaker 1: you have? You know you can't just like you can't
Speaker 1: just download this and expect it to work if you're
Speaker 1: I don't know if on a basic subscription or don't
Speaker 1: even subscribe to Cox, but how much are you pay
Speaker 1: in a month? For them, and what do you have
Speaker 1: to pay extra for this contour apples?
Speaker 15: Oh you know what?
Speaker 14: That I don't know for sure because it's my parents
Speaker 14: subscription and I don't have the breakdown, but I go
Speaker 14: there frequently and I kind of administer their stuff. So
Speaker 14: I'll have to take a look and see if that's
Speaker 14: like a I thought it was just included.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you're yeah, I.
Speaker 14: Don't know if it's a separate item that you have
Speaker 14: to subscribe to.
Speaker 1: It's tough to get the information on their website. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the Uh. The website doesn't really say like
Speaker 1: if you have to pay extra for it or if
Speaker 1: it's included. It doesn't say like it. Now here's the thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So on the facts, it's says can I watch live
Speaker 1: TV out of home depending on your subscription. So it
Speaker 1: must be based on your subscription what you can do,
Speaker 1: because I've.
Speaker 14: Done that too, and I do watch the live TV
Speaker 14: when I'm at their house on their home network.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 14: I also stream at when I'm on the go and
Speaker 14: not on their home network.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so and there's probably different rules for that too,
Speaker 1: So it all just depends.
Speaker 6: But okay, but check into it.
Speaker 14: And if I find out anything, I'll send you an
Speaker 14: email or something.
Speaker 1: All right, Dan, I appreciate it. My recorder on the
Speaker 1: ground there and tourans appreciate it today. Okay, thank you
Speaker 1: have a great one eighty eight rich one on one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Let's see here we've got David in Whittier. David, you're
Speaker 1: on with Rich Hi, Rich, I am doing great. What
Speaker 1: can I help with?
Speaker 13: Well, I had a little problem here. I had a
Speaker 13: I bought a satellite link from Startlingk's. The minimum is
Speaker 13: like fifty gigs per month, and which should be fine,
Speaker 13: But what I'm trying to do is get or create
Speaker 13: a security system. I had it with the telephone when
Speaker 13: I had access to a telephone out there five hundred
Speaker 13: miles away. But I don't have that anymore. So I
Speaker 13: bought the satellite service, and I didn't think far enough
Speaker 13: ahead to figure out how I can get it to
Speaker 13: What I really needed to do is just send me
Speaker 13: a notification and then connect the camera or cameras so
Speaker 13: I can see what's going on without having the cameras
Speaker 13: online all the time. And because I'm limited to fifty
Speaker 13: gigs a month, which is a lot, but I guess
Speaker 13: you're going if the camera got turned on and was
Speaker 13: going twenty four to seven, that might overrun that.
Speaker 1: Well, it depends on the camera. So most of these
Speaker 1: security cameras, they're not streaming twenty four to seven. They
Speaker 1: might be monitoring twenty four to seven, but they're not
Speaker 1: necessarily sending everything to the cloud. And so it depends
Speaker 1: on the camera that you have. And so you can
Speaker 1: get some cameras that will just send. So there's a
Speaker 1: brand out there called Kangaroo Ka and Ga Roo and
Speaker 1: so these cameras, you know, they can send you a
Speaker 1: snapshot of what they're seeing and then if you need to,
Speaker 1: you can stream in. And so that's like just one example,
Speaker 1: but there's the other one is called Blink. Have you
Speaker 1: looked at those cameras from Amazon?
Speaker 13: Was that blink?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Blink?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 13: I haven't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So those cameras their whole thing, and Amazon I
Speaker 1: think paid like I don't know how much for this company,
Speaker 1: probably a billion dollars. But they their whole thing is
Speaker 1: that they invented a system where these phones are these
Speaker 1: these cameras last like a year on like two double
Speaker 1: A batteries, so they are certainly not streaming twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven, but they're monitoring twenty four to seven. If
Speaker 1: you have them connected to this star link, they will
Speaker 1: send you a snapshot of what they're seeing.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: I think that's where the term blink came from, right,
Speaker 1: and so they'll send you a snapshot and then if
Speaker 1: you need to, you can get more and stream from
Speaker 1: that camera. So that's what I would look for, And
Speaker 1: you know, there's a bunch of cameras that can do this.
Speaker 1: I would say even the ring cameras, like my ring cameras,
Speaker 1: are not streaming up to the cloud twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1: Only two of them are because they're certain like they're
Speaker 1: connected hardwired. But the rest of them, they mostly they'll
Speaker 1: see the movement and then they trigger recording. So you know,
Speaker 1: unless you're getting one of these big systems like a
Speaker 1: Swan system or something like that, most of them are
Speaker 1: not twenty four to seven recording. The nest cams are.
Speaker 1: You can have them set up that way, but it
Speaker 1: all depends on the camera. So David, what are you
Speaker 1: trying to monitor?
Speaker 13: Just just the premises, just a vacation home.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, I mean I think I would check into
Speaker 1: the Blink cameras first. I would also check into the
Speaker 1: Wise cameras wy Ze, and you know, both of those
Speaker 1: cameras will do exactly what you're saying. And the Wise
Speaker 1: cameras have an SD card so they can record the
Speaker 1: whole time to that card if you put up a
Speaker 1: solar panel. But you'll get those notifications when they see motion.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight Rich one O one Rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: Back after this Rich on tech Rich Tamiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you. We should have played this song after
Speaker 1: In our interview the deep fakes man Elvis was talking
Speaker 1: about deep fakes back in nineteen sixty eight when he
Speaker 1: wrote this, that's wild edge of reality. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: where we are in our world right with all this
Speaker 1: deep fake stuff. Welcome to the show. Welcome back. My
Speaker 1: name is Rich Jamiro. This is the show where we
Speaker 1: talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
Speaker 1: I also answer your questions. Eighty eight Rich one O
Speaker 1: one is the phone number for the show. Eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to four one zero one. If you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch on the website, it's Rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot TV. A couple of feedback items to
Speaker 1: get through before we get to our caller. Let's see.
Speaker 1: Charlie in Tahunga says, watching YouTube videos on my phone
Speaker 1: creates a history in my YouTube account, which enables me
Speaker 1: to find them easily on my Apple TV or desktop computer,
Speaker 1: much easier than downloading them as was recommended to the caller. Yes,
Speaker 1: but Charlie, I didn't you know he wanted a recommendation
Speaker 1: to download them, like I didn't you know. There's many
Speaker 1: ways to do this, to watch a video that you
Speaker 1: see on your phone on your computer or TV. But
Speaker 1: he specifically was asking for the download. But yes, you're right.
Speaker 1: I have often do that myself. I will just watch
Speaker 1: a video for a second on my phone just to
Speaker 1: get it in that YouTube history, and then go to
Speaker 1: my TV and I can watch it there easily. Steve
Speaker 1: writes in from Fairfax, you are the bomb. I just
Speaker 1: saved sixty dollars from your tip about starting to cancel
Speaker 1: YouTube TV to get a six month EXCEP. Thank you. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to help, Steve. That's what I'm here for.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that I did it myself so I know
Speaker 1: it works. Darryl writes in, you can get a cheap
Speaker 1: converter box that also acts as a DVR. They're between
Speaker 1: twenty and forty dollars plus the cost of a thumb drive.
Speaker 1: They're available from Walmart and Amazon. The brands are Ematic
Speaker 1: and Medsnic. They record on they record HD on HD channels.
Speaker 1: I have two of them. Darryl Okay. Yeah, that must
Speaker 1: be like a converter box. Remember they were giving us
Speaker 1: out for free for a while because they wanted everyone
Speaker 1: to switch. Remember the big switch from analog to digital.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, but I think we made it through that.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Sandy in Huntington Beach. Sandy, you are
Speaker 1: on with rich Oh.
Speaker 15: I hope you can help me. I've got I just
Speaker 15: had to get a new phone. My other one pretty
Speaker 15: much died and I got an A thirty five. I
Speaker 15: just need the basics. I don't do anything financial. My
Speaker 15: other one was an A twenty one. It worked great.
Speaker 15: Never had a with that little guy. But this one,
Speaker 15: it's like, it took me forever to get into you.
Speaker 15: And then I was on hold and it disconnected, and
Speaker 15: it does it just goes blank. It goes blank, and
Speaker 15: then it disconnects. It hasn't done it on Bluetooth in
Speaker 15: my car but it does it in my house and
Speaker 15: out and about.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 15: So it's a new phone. I have to decide this week.
Speaker 15: Am I going to keep it and get my rebate
Speaker 15: or do I give it back? Is it an internal antenna?
Speaker 12: I have no idea.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, and I'm not.
Speaker 15: A checking person, but you're the wizard.
Speaker 1: I guess. I guess. The question is when it When
Speaker 1: this is happening, is the phone restarting or is it
Speaker 1: just dropping the call?
Speaker 15: It just robs the call, Okay, So I couldn't once.
Speaker 15: It did it when I was on with you, and
Speaker 15: it went away when I tried. When I called again,
Speaker 15: it said your phone is not connected to a network.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I couldn't.
Speaker 15: I couldn't call.
Speaker 1: Okay. It sounds like the antenna in this phone. What
Speaker 1: what service are you on?
Speaker 15: Uh Mobile?
Speaker 1: Okay, So it sounds like the service or the signal
Speaker 1: or the antenna on this phone is not as strong
Speaker 1: as the old one. That's what I'm thinking is happening
Speaker 1: here because you're using it in the same place, which
Speaker 1: is your house, but it's dropping the calls. So I
Speaker 1: think that it's the antenna and you might need to,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe think about getting rid of this phone.
Speaker 1: So here's the deal. I will tell you this because
Speaker 1: I know from Okay. So in my house over the
Speaker 1: over the well, this is the weekend. But over the
Speaker 1: week I had some work being done on my internet,
Speaker 1: and when that internet was being worked, one I didn't
Speaker 1: have Wi Fi for a while. And I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: I tried to make a phone call from the place
Speaker 1: I make a phone call all the time, and my
Speaker 1: phone wouldn't work. It kept just saying, you know, disconnected
Speaker 1: signal note call failed whatever. I was like, that's so weird.
Speaker 1: I never realized that I have no signal in this
Speaker 1: room because I've been on Wi Fi calling the whole time.
Speaker 1: So a couple of things you can do. First off,
Speaker 1: you can try to reset your network settings. But who
Speaker 1: set up this phone for you? Is it T Mobile
Speaker 1: at the store?
Speaker 15: Costco, Kiosk Mobile ko Okay?
Speaker 1: So, I mean I'm sure they set it up properly.
Speaker 1: You could. The problem is if you reset your network settings,
Speaker 1: which you can do yourself in the settings, it's going
Speaker 1: to reset everything like you know, Bluetooth, Wi Fi, your
Speaker 1: cellular that, yeah, and then you have to set it
Speaker 1: all up again. You got to connect it your WiFi,
Speaker 1: it might be worth it just to see if that helps.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that you could use Wi Fi
Speaker 1: calling when you're in your house. So have you set
Speaker 1: up that feature on your phone?
Speaker 16: Yes?
Speaker 1: Okay? And does that does that call drop when you
Speaker 1: have that on?
Speaker 15: My husband's here?
Speaker 7: So the Wi Fi the Wi Fi in the house
Speaker 7: is Spectrum okay, but the service for the phones is
Speaker 7: T Mobile.
Speaker 1: Right okay. So if you set up Wi Fi calling
Speaker 1: on your phone, and I don't think this is this
Speaker 1: is just a stop gap. I mean, you may have
Speaker 1: this problem forever. Does your husband have a Tea mobile
Speaker 1: in the house as well, and does his phone work?
Speaker 1: What phone does he have?
Speaker 15: He has an LG an old LG oh wow.
Speaker 1: Old LG okay, LG velvet Oh LG oh wow. The
Speaker 1: dulcet tones of the LG velvet look. I think it
Speaker 1: could be the antenna on this phone is just not
Speaker 1: pulling in the same signal that your old phone was.
Speaker 1: So I think it's.
Speaker 15: This model of phone for this particular phone.
Speaker 1: Well, it could be both. So what I would do
Speaker 1: first is I would just take it back to the Kiosk.
Speaker 1: I think it's since it's cost go they're going to
Speaker 1: be pretty accepting of it. Tell them what's happening. Say, look,
Speaker 1: you know, I used to have an old Samsung in
Speaker 1: a twenty one and this thing used to work in
Speaker 1: my house, no problem. Now I get the thirty five
Speaker 1: and it's worse, and I'm dropping calls left and right.
Speaker 1: And they may say, oh, you're the third person that's
Speaker 1: come back and told us this, or they may say okay,
Speaker 1: and you say, look, I want to swap out my
Speaker 1: phone for a new model, just to make sure it's
Speaker 1: not a hardware defect. Get the new model, see if
Speaker 1: it works. I know it's a pain because all your
Speaker 1: stuff is on this phone and everything, but you know,
Speaker 1: like you said, this is only a week old. You
Speaker 1: don't want to sit here and deal with this issue
Speaker 1: for the next couple of years. As you have this phone.
Speaker 1: Sounds like you keep your phone for a bit, So
Speaker 1: I would do that first. If you want to try
Speaker 1: the network settings reset, you can try that. And you
Speaker 1: can go into your settings and just search for network
Speaker 1: settings or just search for reset and you can look
Speaker 1: for that. That will not you know, you don't want
Speaker 1: to factory reset your phone because that will delete everything.
Speaker 1: But I would do that first. If it was me personally,
Speaker 1: I would do a network settings reset and then I
Speaker 1: would see if my phone works. If it doesn't, if
Speaker 1: it keeps dropping the calls, then I would take it
Speaker 1: back to the Kiosk, say hey, can we swap this
Speaker 1: out for a new hardware, And if that keeps dropping calls,
Speaker 1: then I would look into a different phone. But I
Speaker 1: will tell you you know, Sandy, I test every phone
Speaker 1: in the world, and they definitely, one hundred percent pull
Speaker 1: in different signals. Some phones have a greater signal than others,
Speaker 1: and it's just the way the phone is set up.
Speaker 1: It's just the way that the phone is created. So
Speaker 1: this phone may just pull in less of the T
Speaker 1: Mobile signal than your old phone. And that's just the
Speaker 1: reality of this device.
Speaker 6: Lovely.
Speaker 15: Another thing it does, and you were talking about AI earlier.
Speaker 15: When I with my other phone for texting, I could
Speaker 15: just talk, everything would come out perfect. This one it
Speaker 15: doesn't do that. It puts in its own punctuation, puts
Speaker 15: in its own words. It doesn't even come out what
Speaker 15: I've said. That is there a setting that can change that?
Speaker 1: There is. There's a couple settings. So it depends on
Speaker 1: the voice to text that you're using. Typically with Samsung,
Speaker 1: the default is Samsung's I like to change it to Google.
Speaker 1: So you can go ahead and download what's called g
Speaker 1: board g bo ar D. That's Google's keyboard, and that
Speaker 1: will use Google's own audio voice to text. You can
Speaker 1: also go into your settings on the Samsung and there
Speaker 1: are If you go to the keyboard settings, it says
Speaker 1: text to speech, says something like I don't have my
Speaker 1: Samsung in front of me, but it says something like
Speaker 1: text to speech driver or system and typically, well always,
Speaker 1: the default is Samsung.
Speaker 10: Turn off Google's AI.
Speaker 1: Well that's a little different. Turning off. Well, that's a
Speaker 1: whole other thing. Google is building the AI into all
Speaker 1: these devices that Google's AI s Okay, well that.
Speaker 15: Is right here when I'm talking to you, right above it.
Speaker 15: It has this little lift and it has it within
Speaker 15: a circle. It says text call. What does that have
Speaker 15: anything to.
Speaker 1: Do with it? I'm not really sure because I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what that what what that's saying on their screen
Speaker 1: right now for a text call. But but the bottom
Speaker 1: line is, look, I think that the Google Voice to
Speaker 1: text is going to be just fine if you switch
Speaker 1: that keyboard out. I think it's going to be much
Speaker 1: better to what you want. The Samsung one is fine,
Speaker 1: but I think Google's is better. The AI stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: you got to go into your settings and try to
Speaker 1: you know, turn some of that stuff off if you
Speaker 1: don't want that to toggle. But uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: might get used to some of that stuff as well.
Speaker 1: And and Android and Google well in general is you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're still figuring all this stuff out, so it's
Speaker 1: not you know, look, you've got a totally different phone.
Speaker 1: You've got a phone that's a little bit newer than
Speaker 1: your old phone, so there are going to be some changes.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I would do, Sandy, is make
Speaker 1: sure that your software is up to date on this
Speaker 1: device and see if that helps as well. But you
Speaker 1: can you can try toggling on the Wi Fi calling.
Speaker 1: If you're having issues with getting a signal in your home,
Speaker 1: or you're in a place where your signal is not
Speaker 1: that great, you could use Wi Fi calling to kind
Speaker 1: of paste that signal. What Wi Fi calling does is
Speaker 1: it routes the call. All calls these days, no matter
Speaker 1: what if you're making it over cellular or Wi Fi,
Speaker 1: they're all routed over the Internet. Your voice is changed
Speaker 1: into you know, a voice over IP, so it's not
Speaker 1: it's no longer analog. It's not taking that recording of
Speaker 1: your voice and sending it over the signal. It's actually
Speaker 1: just transforming it into little ones and o's and recompiling
Speaker 1: it at the other end, so you can go to
Speaker 1: Wi Fi calling. What Wi Fi calling does is it
Speaker 1: will transfer your call over your spectrum Internet, which is
Speaker 1: stronger than your T mobile signal. When you're out of
Speaker 1: your house, it'll still go T Mobile. When you're in
Speaker 1: your house, it'll go over the spectrum or your whatever
Speaker 1: your WiFi is. Eight eight eight rich one on one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one, the website rich
Speaker 1: on Tech dot TV. While you're there, sign up for
Speaker 1: my free newsletter. Thank you for enjoying that. I do
Speaker 1: enjoy the feedback I get from sending that out. Usually
Speaker 1: I send it out every Saturday morning, so thirty seven
Speaker 1: thousand of you getting it currently, that's been pretty pretty wild. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to submit your question, comments and more
Speaker 1: to the feedback, We're gonna get to that in just
Speaker 1: a little bit. Just go to Rich on tech dot
Speaker 1: TV hit contact and in this hour next segment, actually
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to Miami parents. They created an
Speaker 1: app called Firsties. This helps you capture, organize, and share
Speaker 1: your kids milestone moments. But first let's go to Mark
Speaker 1: in Woodland Hills. Mark, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 16: Yeah, good afternoon, Rich. This all came about because something
Speaker 16: a scam that was basically pulled on an in law.
Speaker 16: I guess she got into one of these dating sites
Speaker 16: or whatever. But it got me to thinking, there's sometimes
Speaker 16: I buy things online. I've never heard of the company before.
Speaker 16: I don't know if they're a scam artists, I don't know.
Speaker 16: I don't want my real credit card attached to anything
Speaker 16: that they may take advantage of like they did my
Speaker 16: in law.
Speaker 7: YEP.
Speaker 16: Is it possible to get like virtual cards that you
Speaker 16: can load up with money so that at least if
Speaker 16: that is attacked, it doesn't lead back to any of
Speaker 16: your financial institutions or whatever. I guess she got caught
Speaker 16: in one of these dating sites or something, and some
Speaker 16: fellow wanted her to send money to apply him to London,
Speaker 16: and I got a hold of her before she did it,
Speaker 16: and I thank god, I did you know?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is it's so it's so wild because
Speaker 1: we talk about this stuff all the time on this
Speaker 1: show and I hear these stories and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: who falls for this? But people do good people like
Speaker 1: everyday people, and it's happening all the time. So what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, Mark, is a virtual card number. So yes,
Speaker 1: and I think it's very smart. So a couple of
Speaker 1: things my wife and I, so I typically use a
Speaker 1: debit card. You know, I do have a credit card,
Speaker 1: but I most of the time use that when my
Speaker 1: card leaves my hand, right So if I am putting
Speaker 1: my card in on the internet, that's leaving my hand
Speaker 1: because it's out of my hands. So I will use
Speaker 1: a credit card for that. And then of course at
Speaker 1: restaurants and places where they take your card off site.
Speaker 1: But if I'm typically just using you know, tap to
Speaker 1: pay somewhere, Tap to pay protects your card number, I
Speaker 1: will use my debit card. But what you're talking about
Speaker 1: virtual card number, there's actually a great service which would
Speaker 1: really help in any situation. But it's called privacy dot com.
Speaker 1: And so privacy dot com, you sign up with this
Speaker 1: and you have to link your debit card or a
Speaker 1: bank account, I believe. But once you do that, you
Speaker 1: can generate cards one time use cards, or they can
Speaker 1: be reused, but you can control everything about them. So
Speaker 1: you can say, okay, let's say you're signed up for
Speaker 1: a free trial of something right and you know you're
Speaker 1: going to forget to cancel this free trial. You can
Speaker 1: go through and say, okay, here's my card for this
Speaker 1: free trial, and don't let it charge more than a
Speaker 1: dollar to this card. So they can do that authorization
Speaker 1: charge of one dollar. But then when they try to
Speaker 1: charge you ninety nine dollars, when you forget about that
Speaker 1: subscription in seven days, they will not be able to
Speaker 1: do that. That card number will not go through. So
Speaker 1: that's called privacy dot com. Now that's a whole other
Speaker 1: level of control. So you can say I only want
Speaker 1: this card to work for ten dollars a month, So
Speaker 1: if your subscription ever goes above ten dollars a month,
Speaker 1: it won't work. It'll the charge won't go through. So
Speaker 1: that is a service. Most of it is free. I
Speaker 1: think you get a certain amount. I've never paid for it,
Speaker 1: so I think that you get a certain amount of
Speaker 1: free usage per month, a certain amount of cards that
Speaker 1: you can generate. I'm sure that that's changed since I
Speaker 1: signed up. It's probably, you know, lesser than what I
Speaker 1: had when I signed up. It was you know, they
Speaker 1: probably gave much more back then, and I think it's
Speaker 1: like five whatever. I don't know what the point is,
Speaker 1: what the what the pricing is at this point, but
Speaker 1: that's how that works, and so you can really just
Speaker 1: control every aspect of your cards that you that you
Speaker 1: create on this website. I'm trying to see if they
Speaker 1: here we go pricing in plans. So for free, you
Speaker 1: can create up to twelve cards per month. For five dollars,
Speaker 1: you can create up to five dollars a month. Is
Speaker 1: up to twenty four cards a month, ten dollars a month,
Speaker 1: up to thirty six cards a month, and then twenty
Speaker 1: five dollars a month, up to sixty cards a month.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're doing for sixty virtual cards
Speaker 1: a month, but okay, so that's privacy dot Com. Now
Speaker 1: there's another way you can do this mark And there's
Speaker 1: also what's called a virtual card number from your credit
Speaker 1: card company, and so Capital One I believe has the
Speaker 1: City Bank has them, Discover has them. I think the
Speaker 1: Apple card lets you do a virtual card number. Now
Speaker 1: that's a little different because I don't think it gives
Speaker 1: you the same level of control, Like I don't think
Speaker 1: you can say, Discover, let me make this card number,
Speaker 1: and it only works once you may be able to
Speaker 1: I don't have experience doing those, but that's another way
Speaker 1: to do it, where you can call your credit card
Speaker 1: company or just google the name of your credit card
Speaker 1: and say one time card number and see what it
Speaker 1: comes up with or virtual card number. And some of
Speaker 1: the banks, the big banks, you know, the City, these
Speaker 1: big banks don't really necessarily like this idea because they
Speaker 1: just want, you know, they just want it simple, and
Speaker 1: they want it to be able to people, to be
Speaker 1: able to charge you whenever they want. And so I
Speaker 1: think that they haven't really embraced this in a big
Speaker 1: way that I would have liked to see. Like you
Speaker 1: would think every credit card company would say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we know people shop online. Let's give them these virtual
Speaker 1: card numbers to make it easier for them. And they
Speaker 1: don't forget about things and they don't get charged for stuff,
Speaker 1: and they can feel safe giving their card number out
Speaker 1: to people. But I haven't really seen the adoption in
Speaker 1: a big way, but I think privacy dot com is
Speaker 1: probably the best one. The only downside to it, I think,
Speaker 1: is that you have to use your debit or credit
Speaker 1: debit card or your bank account to actually sign up.
Speaker 1: I don't believe you can use a credit card to
Speaker 1: fund the virtual card that you're creating, so that's kind
Speaker 1: of the only caveat there. But I do have a
Speaker 1: couple of them set up there. They work really well
Speaker 1: and it's definitely saved me a couple of times from
Speaker 1: getting hit with charges when I forgot about stuff. Great
Speaker 1: question Mark and Woodland Hills, Oh my gosh, that already segment.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, We've got parents, a group of
Speaker 1: parents who created an app called first Ease. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk to them right after this. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology. The website for the show rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot Tv. There you can see the show notes by
Speaker 1: hitting the light bulb, or you can watch my TV
Speaker 1: segments that I do for KTLA TV in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: That's all there on the website. Rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: I was playing around this morning with an app, you know,
Speaker 1: Mint Money went away, so I was trying to find
Speaker 1: a replacement app for that, and I think I found it.
Speaker 1: The problem is it costs money, but it's called Monarch Money.
Speaker 1: And if you're looking to like kind of do all
Speaker 1: of your net worth, you know, put all your accounts
Speaker 1: into one place, which I know is a little scary
Speaker 1: to aggregate them all, but you know you want to
Speaker 1: see all your net worth on one page. This one
Speaker 1: is really good at that. It also does your you know,
Speaker 1: your car, your house, whatever you've got, plus your investments,
Speaker 1: your bank accounts, puts it all on one page, so
Speaker 1: you can see a net worth exactly what Mint used
Speaker 1: to do really well. The problem is they want to
Speaker 1: charge I think it's about one hundred bucks a year.
Speaker 1: So anyway, it might be worth just taking a look
Speaker 1: at it, because I have been testing out Rocket Money
Speaker 1: as well, which I like, but you know they don't
Speaker 1: do as good of a job with the net worth stuff.
Speaker 1: So if you're looking for a replacement for Mint Mobile,
Speaker 1: then Monarch Money might be the way to do it. Also,
Speaker 1: I was at Target yesterday and I was purchasing a
Speaker 1: gift card Bobo Hide Your Ears, and I noticed they
Speaker 1: have a whole new system to keep the thieves from
Speaker 1: draining gift cards. So now when you buy a gift
Speaker 1: card at least at Target, a Target gift card, they
Speaker 1: don't put the redemption barcode on the back until after
Speaker 1: you buy it. So it's actually so you know, the
Speaker 1: these thieves will go into stores, they'll scrape off or
Speaker 1: somehow tamper with the gift cards. They'll record the numbers
Speaker 1: off the back of the gift cards, and then when
Speaker 1: you buy it at the register, somehow they're alerted that
Speaker 1: it's been activated, and they will instantly go in and
Speaker 1: drain that account before you even get to use it.
Speaker 1: This happened to us last year. It's a very common occurrence,
Speaker 1: so I guess Target has found a way around that.
Speaker 1: So kudos to them for figuring out a more secure system.
Speaker 1: All right, Joining me on the show, Miami Parents, Natalia
Speaker 1: Daniel and Odd Pellet Pellett. They have a new app
Speaker 1: that they created. It's called first Ease. And this is
Speaker 1: an app that I wish I had when I originally,
Speaker 1: you know, had my kids. Back in the day, I
Speaker 1: think we wrote one thing down in a book and
Speaker 1: then we never wrote another thing, like first steps, first smile,
Speaker 1: and that was it. But this is an app that
Speaker 1: helps you capture, organize, and share your kids milestone moments.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the.
Speaker 5: Show, Hello, rich how about.
Speaker 1: I am doing fantastic. So tell me what gave you
Speaker 1: the inspiration for this this first d'z app.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's so as parents, we all had
Speaker 4: the same moments. We all just wrote a few pictures,
Speaker 4: you know, first steps and first smile, and that's about it,
Speaker 4: and we stopped. And so actually I realized that when
Speaker 4: I was trying to put together a book for our kids,
Speaker 4: and I realized there was a lot of moments that
Speaker 4: I didn't capture. You know, there was the basic ones,
Speaker 4: but there's so many other milestones and moments that go
Speaker 4: not record it. And when I found the picture, I
Speaker 4: also found that they were scattered on multiple devices and
Speaker 4: it was really time consuming to bring them all in
Speaker 4: one place. So I turned to my husband, who works
Speaker 4: in tech, and I'm like, we have to come up
Speaker 4: with something a little bit easier for parents and really
Speaker 4: help them in capturing those moments that you know, go
Speaker 4: away really quickly if you don't capture them and help
Speaker 4: them retrieve them in a very easy way.
Speaker 1: So this is firsties and I love that it's not
Speaker 1: just like you know, it actually gives you prompts. So
Speaker 1: it says like, hey, you know, capture their first haircut,
Speaker 1: Capture their first going to a restaurant, Capture their first umbrella,
Speaker 1: you know, using an umbrella. So it's like all these
Speaker 1: little things that we take for granted as adults, but
Speaker 1: as kids, it's all brand new to them. Like almost
Speaker 1: everything they do is like they're going to do it
Speaker 1: for the first time.
Speaker 8: Yes, for sure, we definitely take it all for granted.
Speaker 4: So we have five hundred plus milestone prompts to inspire
Speaker 4: parents in capturing all those moments.
Speaker 17: And like you said, there are so many sweet moments
Speaker 17: that we regret for not capturing, especially with our first son.
Speaker 17: And you know when you ask parents, for example, do
Speaker 17: you have a video when of your kid first time
Speaker 17: seeing the reflection reflection in the mirror, you know, it's
Speaker 17: such a sweet moment. And most of your parents we
Speaker 17: talked to like, oh, no, I wish I captured it.
Speaker 17: And you know, what's your excuse? You had the phone,
Speaker 17: you had the camera, but a lot of time with life,
Speaker 17: we just don't think, right, life goes by and suddenly
Speaker 17: your kid is like ten years old, and you were like, oh,
Speaker 17: I wish I captured this, and I wish I captured that.
Speaker 17: So that was really kind of like the thing that
Speaker 17: Natalia came to me with. And you know my background,
Speaker 17: I've been in consumer tech in mobile gaming for almost
Speaker 17: fifteen years, and I was like, that actually can be
Speaker 17: a really fun idea to also gamify, right, And there's
Speaker 17: a lot of apps and I always talk about due Lingo,
Speaker 17: the language learning app that did a fantastic job putting
Speaker 17: on top of it like a layer of gamification and
Speaker 17: rewarding the users for not skipping a day and for
Speaker 17: like having a continuous experience and engagement with the app.
Speaker 3: So we thought the same thing.
Speaker 17: We said, first, let's create and gather those hundreds of
Speaker 17: milestone suggestions, and we did it, you know, working and
Speaker 17: collaborating with a group of moms and parents and pediatricians.
Speaker 17: Right so right now it's actually almost seven hundred super
Speaker 17: cute suggestions prompts in different categories.
Speaker 18: And then on top of that, we said, okay, let's
Speaker 18: reward that the parents for capturing those moments, right, and you're.
Speaker 3: Probably familiar and all the audience is probably familiar. A
Speaker 3: lot of mobile games or games in general, give.
Speaker 17: You achievements for achieving certain things inside the game. In
Speaker 17: this case, it's an app. But for example, as soon
Speaker 17: as you capture or upload five Thirsties, you get gems.
Speaker 17: You get rewards inside the app that they can later
Speaker 17: on use, for example for making and we'll talk about
Speaker 17: it more. Hopefully you can make you know, beautiful musical
Speaker 17: videos of the child, or you can order a real
Speaker 17: photo books.
Speaker 3: So that that's.
Speaker 17: Really the the what we've been developing now for almost
Speaker 17: three years.
Speaker 3: Super excited about it.
Speaker 17: You know, our team is almost eighteen people working hard
Speaker 17: on creating this is this appened. And the other thing
Speaker 17: is as we were building and developing, all started with,
Speaker 17: you know, in Natalia's idea about like not missing capturing
Speaker 17: these moments. The other thing that we realize very quickly
Speaker 17: is that we as parents, we share those moments that
Speaker 17: we did capture across multiple channels.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 17: Some I share, you know, with my family via what'sapp.
Speaker 17: Some friend does not have what's PP, so I use
Speaker 17: SMS and here is on by email, and sometimes we
Speaker 17: live a digital footprint on on social media and suddenly
Speaker 17: you're like all this stuff.
Speaker 3: Like where is it? You know?
Speaker 17: And we wanted to create something that is like one
Speaker 17: centralized place, super secure, private.
Speaker 3: We can talk about that.
Speaker 18: There's a lot of technology that went into securing our app.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk about to talk about the privacy aspect, because
Speaker 1: you know, people are sharing their you know, their memories
Speaker 1: in this app. You know, how have you made you know,
Speaker 1: what is the privacy? Are their ads? Do you collect
Speaker 1: data on people?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What can you feel confident knowing that you know what
Speaker 1: you're putting in here is going to remain private.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent.
Speaker 17: And again that's the thing that we wanted to differentiate
Speaker 17: and build Here no ads. The platform was built not
Speaker 17: like traditional social media that was really built for broadcasting
Speaker 17: to the world.
Speaker 3: This is by invite only.
Speaker 17: When you send an invite to a close family member,
Speaker 17: a close friend, they have three days to accept the invites.
Speaker 17: Everything is encrypted. A lot of a lot of work
Speaker 17: went through encryption. I know you spoke about it, I
Speaker 17: believe last week in your podcast.
Speaker 3: What is Encryption? So a lot of effort went into that,
Speaker 3: and yeah, no, no ads, We don't collect data.
Speaker 17: It's really a private inner circle platform for sharing your
Speaker 17: most precious moments with the family.
Speaker 1: And what I know you've got So you can start
Speaker 1: for free. You've got a completely free version, and then
Speaker 1: you've got the premium version, So explain kind of the difference.
Speaker 1: What do you get with each?
Speaker 17: So we wanted to give enough for the users to
Speaker 17: really appreciate and enjoy the app.
Speaker 18: The app is, most of the features are free. It
Speaker 18: comes with a complimentary storage. You can upload almost one
Speaker 18: hundred photos and videos for free. You can upload one
Speaker 18: proof file or kid.
Speaker 17: We actually just added also inside a pet version, so
Speaker 17: if you have you know, we all have our pets,
Speaker 17: so you.
Speaker 3: Can add a child that part of the family.
Speaker 17: There's a lottery of stickers and filters and a lot
Speaker 17: of cute animations that you can add on.
Speaker 3: Their photos and videos. That's free as well.
Speaker 17: But obviously, if someone wants to use the app, and
Speaker 17: you know, and we we ourselves have been using it
Speaker 17: now for like a year and a half, and you know,
Speaker 17: the fos in the videos keep gathering, you know, you
Speaker 17: need more storage, and especially.
Speaker 3: If you want to have more of the advanced.
Speaker 17: Features, we're using a lot of the I of the
Speaker 17: apps for making the videos, for creating the photobook for you.
Speaker 17: That requires the premium subscription. The subscription both the subscription
Speaker 17: has a seven day free trial and it's nine ninety
Speaker 17: nine a month or sixty year, which comes to like
Speaker 17: five dollars and eighty three cents a month.
Speaker 1: And again, this is the This is the first das app.
Speaker 1: It is for kind of cataloging your child's milestones. It's
Speaker 1: available for iOS and Android Natalia. Are you happy with
Speaker 1: the way the app turned out? You had the idea?
Speaker 1: Are you happy the way it was executed?
Speaker 4: It's way better than I thought. And I wish I
Speaker 4: had it when our kids were younger because I would
Speaker 4: have captured so many moments. Not only it's super useful,
Speaker 4: but it looks really good and it's really well designed
Speaker 4: and very practical.
Speaker 5: So I'm more.
Speaker 4: I'm so happy with and I really hope people enjoy
Speaker 4: you as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, the website first D's dot com again catalog all
Speaker 1: the first moments with your child, all the milestones, and
Speaker 1: you can also share those privately with friends and family.
Speaker 1: Makes me want to have another kid. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Minor passed the first step though we're almost in high
Speaker 1: school now. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Natalia Daniel oded pelled first D's app creators. Coming up,
Speaker 1: We're going to open up the feedback see what you
Speaker 1: have to say about last week's show. This is rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech, rich Demiro.
Speaker 1: Here a couple items of note before we open up
Speaker 1: the feedbag. iHeartRadio app got a major redesign, so if
Speaker 1: you update your iHeartRadio app, you'll notice a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of new features. Number one, custom presets. You can now
Speaker 1: save up to fifteen of your favorite stations, playlists, or
Speaker 1: podcasts for quick access. I would recommend that you save
Speaker 1: rich on Tech my podcast kfive. You're in the LA
Speaker 1: area or whatever station you're listening on, you can save
Speaker 1: that as a preset, and of course KTLA if you
Speaker 1: want to listen to the morning news that I work
Speaker 1: on as well. They have a scan button now so
Speaker 1: you can scan different radio stations, kind of like back
Speaker 1: in the day in the radio car dial. Same thing.
Speaker 1: Then they have a live radio dial so you can
Speaker 1: see the live radio stations that are near you, organized
Speaker 1: by genre and location, lyrics and also what's trending. So
Speaker 1: the app rollout. The brand new app is rolling out
Speaker 1: to iOS and Android users, will be available to everyone
Speaker 1: by the end of December. It's a big one. I
Speaker 1: already got it on one of my phones and it's
Speaker 1: a nice upgrade. And Moxie. This is a robot that
Speaker 1: was for kids and it's gonna shut down so Embodied,
Speaker 1: the company behind it, says they don't have enough money,
Speaker 1: so they got to shut down their operations. This is
Speaker 1: an eight hundred dollars robot that was marketed as an
Speaker 1: emotional support and educational companion for kids, a lot of
Speaker 1: kids on the autism spectrum. It was also marketed as
Speaker 1: good for them. And the robot is going to stop
Speaker 1: functioning entirely. Shutdown could occur within days, so no refunds.
Speaker 1: Maybe someone who purchased within the last thirty days might
Speaker 1: get a refund, but if you're you know. And the
Speaker 1: other thing is that apparently people are still paying this
Speaker 1: thing off, So you're gonna be paying off a robot
Speaker 1: that you can no longer use. So what is the
Speaker 1: moral of the story. Why do I tell you this?
Speaker 1: It's because all these products nowadays, they all need sort
Speaker 1: of a cloud connection, not just Internet, but a proprietary
Speaker 1: cloud connection from the company that runs the product to
Speaker 1: operate properly. And so if that company shuts down or
Speaker 1: runs out of money, you're out of luck. And I
Speaker 1: think about this with the electric car companies. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to mention them by name, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of electric car companies, these startups that are
Speaker 1: kind of on the bubble, and you're like, what happens
Speaker 1: if they go out of business? What happens to my
Speaker 1: car is they's still going to run. As happens with
Speaker 1: electric bikes. Same thing, all these devices that require a
Speaker 1: cloud connection, not just an Internet connection, but a cloud
Speaker 1: connection to this company that runs it. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: let's open up the feedback. These are the emails, the questions,
Speaker 1: the comments, all the stuff that you wrote to me
Speaker 1: in the past couple of weeks. Stand Ward writes in
Speaker 1: Hey Rich, great one hundredth show. Wanted to share my
Speaker 1: experience after listening to your segment on Coinbase and crypto scams,
Speaker 1: a girl I was writing to tried convincing me to
Speaker 1: open a Coinbase account and act as a middleman for
Speaker 1: moving crypto red flag red Flag. She claims she needed
Speaker 1: money to get back to the US from Spain. Turn
Speaker 1: out to be total bs. Thanks to your advice, I
Speaker 1: gave her a big no, and I hope I avoided
Speaker 1: getting scammed. Wishing you and your family a great Christmas. Stanward,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you avoided that. Stacey from Westlake Village rights in.
Speaker 1: I've been watching you on KTLA for years. I love
Speaker 1: your newsletter. As the quote computer tutor, I teach seniors
Speaker 1: how to use their tech devices. Stacy we Shavy on
Speaker 1: the show, I use a MacBook and iPad, but prefer
Speaker 1: Google Pixel phones. I've had one since the Pixel three.
Speaker 1: Thanks to your tips, I got the ten dollars discount
Speaker 1: on YouTube TV for six months. You're so informative and
Speaker 1: fun to follow. Merry Christmas to you and your family. Well, Stacy,
Speaker 1: thank you, and Merry Christmas to you as well. Jeff
Speaker 1: from Frisco, Texas writes in on your recent show, the
Speaker 1: guy had the old Samsung phone. You wanted to move
Speaker 1: his pictures, You might consider an SD card reader like
Speaker 1: this the Anchor mag Go USB adapter USBC adapter. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is a great way to move pictures. I probably
Speaker 1: should have mentioned that I can't remember exactly what his
Speaker 1: problem was, but yeah, that would work as well. You
Speaker 1: can always Yes, you can plug an SD card reader
Speaker 1: right into the bottom of most modern smartphones, whether it's
Speaker 1: iPhone or Android, and answer files that way. Jeff says,
Speaker 1: By the way, as a retired school technology director of
Speaker 1: thirty years, I really appreciate how you never judge your
Speaker 1: callers and always do your best to solve their problems.
Speaker 1: Keep up the great work, love the show. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Jeff from Frisco. Pete from Avila Beach writes in hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I saw that starlink now offers a mini portable device
Speaker 1: for backpackers, starting at just fifty bucks a month for
Speaker 1: fifty gigs of service. It weighs about three pounds with
Speaker 1: the battery, perfect for anyone needing fast internet at the beach.
Speaker 1: I download and listen to your Saturday podcast every week.
Speaker 1: You're always so interesting. Keep up the great work, Pete. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Pee is referring to the caller that said he was
Speaker 1: doing metal detecting on the beach and needed like mobile
Speaker 1: internet access, And I said, I don't think starlink does
Speaker 1: it that portable, but I guess it does. So there
Speaker 1: you go. You can get Internet anywhere. Annie from Central
Speaker 1: Florida writes in Hey Rich, regarding the lady with the
Speaker 1: ray band OH with the I issue who needed the
Speaker 1: ray band metaglasses, she should first file an appeal. If
Speaker 1: that doesn't work, can file a complaint with her state's
Speaker 1: insurance commissioner, mentioning that other insurance companies are covering the cost.
Speaker 1: If she's low income on a Medicare advantage plan with Medicaid,
Speaker 1: she might have access to one thousand dollars in funds
Speaker 1: for items not covered by medical insurance. If she's legally
Speaker 1: blind and disabled, she might also qualify for SSDI and
Speaker 1: Medicare after two years of disability. It's a bit confusing,
Speaker 1: so it's best to contact her insurance agent for guidance.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Annie, that sounds like you got some good
Speaker 1: options there. Audrey from Chatsworth writes in Hey Rich, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to say thanks for all the helpful advice
Speaker 1: in your newsletters and podcasts. I showed my dad how
Speaker 1: to use his AirPods for the enhanced hearing, and it's
Speaker 1: been life changing. He hears me clearly now and his
Speaker 1: communication is so much better. His only complaint, there's an
Speaker 1: occasional echo, but otherwise it's been a game changer. Wishing
Speaker 1: you and your family a happy holiday season. OG podcast
Speaker 1: listener number seventy seven Audrey and I commented that I
Speaker 1: like that she gave herself a listener number, and I
Speaker 1: guess there's a show Mark and Brian on Klos back
Speaker 1: in the day that they used to sign their I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's like something that they used to do with,
Speaker 1: like listener numbers. I don't know the phone Yeah, me too,
Speaker 1: I have to look it up. I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: what so anyway, I guess not. Yeah, let's see here.
Speaker 1: Let's see Neil from Ohio. Not sure if you're doing
Speaker 1: an end of your recap, but here are the best
Speaker 1: things from your show. I'm thankful for the Aura frame.
Speaker 1: They do it right local send. I use it every month,
Speaker 1: replacing one drive. I amazing. Even though I didn't pay,
Speaker 1: it's still quite good, although the licensing model put me off.
Speaker 1: Wishing you and your impressive family a happy holiday season.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Neil. Uh okay, I think we're gonna get
Speaker 1: to uh that's it. That's gonna do it for this
Speaker 1: episode of the show. You can find links to everything
Speaker 1: I mentioned on the website just go to rich on
Speaker 1: Tech dot TV. If you want to get your feedback
Speaker 1: in just go there and hit contact. You can find
Speaker 1: me on social media. I am at rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Next week, our guests include Marcia Collier. She is author
Speaker 1: of Android smart Phone Owns for Seniors for Dummies. She's
Speaker 1: going to share tips from her new book. And we
Speaker 1: also have Jonathan Garner Mind over Tech. He's going to
Speaker 1: talk about how to develop a healthier relationship for technology,
Speaker 1: which we can all use going into the new year.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. There are so many
Speaker 1: ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you
Speaker 1: spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who
Speaker 1: makes this show possible. Bobo Kim, My name is rich Dmiro.
Speaker 1: I will talk to you real soon.