Speaker 1: Are you missing your iPhone notes after the iOS update,
Speaker 1: I've got the quick fix. If you've got your eye
Speaker 1: on a Pixel nine, there is a secret discount available.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you where to find it.
Speaker 1: And while you might be able to stop paying for
Speaker 1: antivirus software in twenty twenty four plus, your tech questions answered?
Speaker 1: What's going on? I'm 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. Once again, that's eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give
Speaker 1: me a call if you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: Email is also an option. Just go to Rich on
Speaker 1: Tech dot tv and hit contact.
Speaker 2: We've got some.
Speaker 1: Great guests this week. Two people I know very well,
Speaker 1: tech journalist Rob Pagerrero. He maintains Wirecutters cell Phone Plan
Speaker 1: cell Phone Plan Guide, and he's going to tell you
Speaker 1: how to choose the right carrier and plan for your needs.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a great conversation there and then later
Speaker 1: Dan Akerman, we'll talk about making an AI video clone
Speaker 1: and talk about the potential for this and also the
Speaker 1: implications of this. But first let me fire up my
Speaker 1: ray Ban metas here. You can't see this if you're
Speaker 1: listening obviously on the radio, but in person. Here I
Speaker 1: am wearing the new ray Ban Meta smart glasses. Went
Speaker 1: to the opening of the store here in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: this week. This is just a pop up store, but
Speaker 1: it was really really cool. I had the first version
Speaker 1: of these glasses and I was impressed with them, but
Speaker 1: not enough to really think that they were incredible or
Speaker 1: the next big thing. But now with this second version,
Speaker 1: I can conf say that this is an amazing gift
Speaker 1: this holiday season because these things make me feel smart.
Speaker 1: So what are the ray Band Meta glasses?
Speaker 2: Number One?
Speaker 1: They're basically sunglasses or just regular glasses made by ray Band, obviously,
Speaker 1: but Meta is the partner on this, so obviously the
Speaker 1: face Facebook parent. And so what do they have. They've
Speaker 1: got a camera, they've got a microphone, and they've got
Speaker 1: a speaker on board.
Speaker 2: So what does that enable you to do?
Speaker 1: You can take pictures and videos and You also can
Speaker 1: listen to music, you can take phone calls, and there
Speaker 1: is a little privacy light so when you're recording, you
Speaker 1: can see that other people can see that you're recording.
Speaker 1: So if I press and hold this button right now,
Speaker 1: hopefully on the on the radio on the weekly show
Speaker 1: on KTLA, you can see Bobo working the board there
Speaker 1: in the background. Hey Bobo, what's up. So you can
Speaker 1: get really interesting point of view. So you can get
Speaker 1: your point of view, and of course the whole point
Speaker 1: of that is for you to share more to social media,
Speaker 1: to share more of your life to social media, and
Speaker 1: it does work in that aspect because you're getting unique
Speaker 1: angles that you wouldn't typically see. So I'm having fun
Speaker 1: with that. You can take photos, you can take videos.
Speaker 1: But what's really interesting to me is the AI aspect.
Speaker 1: And this was not on the first generation, but they've
Speaker 1: built meta AI into this, so you can just ask
Speaker 1: meta AI for information about anything. So let's say you're
Speaker 1: holding something in your hand, or you're looking at a building.
Speaker 1: You can just say, hey, Meta, tell me what this is,
Speaker 1: and your glasses will snap a picture of that thing,
Speaker 1: look it up on the internet or using AI and
Speaker 1: tell you all about it, so it's quite incredible, it's
Speaker 1: quite fast, and it's really interesting. So these do connect
Speaker 1: to your phone, so that's how that works. So all
Speaker 1: the pictures kind of download your phone, the videos download
Speaker 1: to your phone, but it's also using that phone connection
Speaker 1: so that I can use that ask meta AI feature.
Speaker 1: I think that is probably the coolest feature about these
Speaker 1: classes because it makes you feel super hue. Now, yes,
Speaker 1: you can do this with a lot of different things.
Speaker 1: You can look up stuff on your phone, you can
Speaker 1: use Google lens. There are some earbuds that actually let
Speaker 1: you access AI in your ear, but there's something different
Speaker 1: about just having it sort of on your face, and
Speaker 1: it's something you're wearing anyway, especially here in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: we're wearing sunglasses all day long. And I guess that's
Speaker 1: my biggest downside of these meta AI glasses is that
Speaker 1: two things. The charging case. It's really weird because it
Speaker 1: charges in the case, but I think it's sort of
Speaker 1: like magnetic So getting these out of the case without
Speaker 1: smudging up the lenses is really tricky.
Speaker 2: I've noticed that.
Speaker 1: And then the second thing is that the transition lenses,
Speaker 1: they're supposed to go from dark to light. You know,
Speaker 1: outside inside kind of those transition lenses, they don't really
Speaker 1: get that dark. So for instance, this morning, I went
Speaker 1: on a run and I wanted to wear these, but
Speaker 1: I knew that the glasses wouldn't get dark enough to
Speaker 1: act as sunglasses. So they get a little bit dim,
Speaker 1: but not really enough for my taste. So you could,
Speaker 1: of course get a real pair or sunglasses that also
Speaker 1: do this functionality. You know, the meta smart glasses come
Speaker 1: in like a true sunglass version, or if you wear glasses,
Speaker 1: you can get these as your everyday glasses. I can't
Speaker 1: tell you much about the battery life because it's only
Speaker 1: been a couple of days, so I don't really know
Speaker 1: how good that is, but seems like the battery life
Speaker 1: is decent.
Speaker 2: But I have to say very impressed.
Speaker 1: So this is the second store in Los Angeles, some
Speaker 1: melrose Ave if you're in LA.
Speaker 2: In the next couple of months.
Speaker 1: They're also going to open one in Phoenix that's actually
Speaker 1: going to be a permanent installation. So they've got one
Speaker 1: store up in Menlo Park where Metas headquartered. This store
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles is a pop up, and then you've
Speaker 1: got the real store they're going to build in Phoenix.
Speaker 1: But apparently people really like this stuff. They start at
Speaker 1: three hundred bucks, so not cheap. But I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: I think if you've got some techie in your life
Speaker 1: during the holiday season, you're trying to figure out like
Speaker 1: what to get for them. These are incredible. Even though
Speaker 1: my wife said I look funny in them today, I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, she goes, you look nerdy.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what what do you mean? I look nerdy?
Speaker 2: That's who I am. I am a nerd. Now you
Speaker 2: do lock a little extra nerd today?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a little extra nerdy. I'm a little extra animal,
Speaker 1: little extra nerdy. That's just who I am.
Speaker 3: Well, his friend on faris Bueller, the Guyler's day off.
Speaker 2: I don't know, that's what you look like. That's what
Speaker 2: it looks like. I can't think of his name.
Speaker 1: There you go, so I look like Ferris Bueller's friend.
Speaker 1: That that's.
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Well, oh Cameron, look at Kim Kim popping in with
Speaker 1: the Cameron. I guess that's Kim knows everything. Kim are
Speaker 1: call screener Kim she is she really is? Or maybe
Speaker 1: she just looked it up.
Speaker 2: You don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, it's tough one thing I've noticed live on
Speaker 1: the radio. It is She said, no, she did not
Speaker 1: look it up. She knew it off the top of
Speaker 1: her head. See yeah, Kim is Our is our pop
Speaker 1: culture expert. She knows every reference, all right, So you.
Speaker 2: Know that well.
Speaker 1: I know that you are well aware of the election
Speaker 1: news this week. So I'm not going to rehash all
Speaker 1: of that, but suffice to say, uh, a new administration
Speaker 1: means there will be a new way of doing business. Now,
Speaker 1: let me caution you as a journalist, okay, because as
Speaker 1: a journalist with many, many years in the business, I
Speaker 1: can tell you what I'm seeing right now is a
Speaker 1: lot of speculation, a lot of stirring the pot, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people saying ooh ooh.
Speaker 2: I want to get in on this. Because people are
Speaker 2: clicking headlines.
Speaker 1: So if you see a headline right now that involves
Speaker 1: the new president Trump, President elect Trump, along with the
Speaker 1: words could should Mike would, you have to take a
Speaker 1: step back and understand that that is just someone putting
Speaker 1: their opinion out there. So this morning, for instance, I
Speaker 1: got an email from someone say, hey, should I get
Speaker 1: a laptop today? Because they're going to be twenty percent
Speaker 1: more in a couple of weeks. We don't know that
Speaker 1: laptops are going to be twenty percent more in a
Speaker 1: few weeks. Keep that in mind when you're looking at
Speaker 1: these headlines. They're there to sort of stir the pot.
Speaker 1: They're there to get you to click, They're there to
Speaker 1: get you to get angry. So just remember that while
Speaker 1: you're looking through this stuff, what do we know right now?
Speaker 2: Nothing?
Speaker 1: We know zero, And even what I'm about to tell
Speaker 1: you is a little bit of speculation. And if you
Speaker 1: listen to this show, I always say, I tell you
Speaker 1: the tech news that I think you need to know.
Speaker 1: It is stuff that's actually happened. I could talk all
Speaker 1: day long about the rumors and speculation of what the
Speaker 1: next Apple product's going to be, or what Google is
Speaker 1: going to do next, or what their next move might
Speaker 1: be or could be or should be, or here's what
Speaker 1: it means. But I don't I talk about the stuff
Speaker 1: that actually matters. So with that said, let me just
Speaker 1: give you kind of what I think is going to
Speaker 1: happen with big business and with the tech world. When
Speaker 1: it comes to a president elect Trump number one friendlier
Speaker 1: to mergers and acquisitions, we know that's going to be
Speaker 1: a thing. We've seen a lot of major acquisitions fall
Speaker 1: apart under the Biden administration because it's just not as
Speaker 1: friendly to these large mergers. So Adobe and Figma didn't happen,
Speaker 1: Amazon and I Robot didn't happen, Visa and Plaid did
Speaker 1: not happen. I think that that's going to change. I
Speaker 1: think that we're going to see more of these tech
Speaker 1: companies scoop up the smaller tech companies because that's just what's.
Speaker 2: Going to happen under this administration.
Speaker 1: It just makes a lot of senserypto friendly. So President
Speaker 1: Elect Trump has said multiple times and he's spoken at
Speaker 1: events that he's going to be more crypto friendly. His
Speaker 1: administration is going to embrace crypto in a way that
Speaker 1: we probably haven't seen. Now, if you're following crypto, you're
Speaker 1: following bitcoin, you know this already because bitcoin has shot
Speaker 1: up on speculation that this administration is going to be
Speaker 1: friendlier to it. Is the US going to switch to
Speaker 1: bitcoin as the as their dollar bill. No, that's not
Speaker 1: going to happen. But will it be more friendly to
Speaker 1: crypto and crypto regulations? Probably AI. When it comes to AI,
Speaker 1: we're probably going to see a lighter touch when it
Speaker 1: comes to regulations on AI. That's a good and a
Speaker 1: bad thing. It's going to allow the US to flourish
Speaker 1: when it comes to AI and continue to be a leader.
Speaker 1: If you look at just think about AI. It's only
Speaker 1: been two years, it's been two short years, and AI
Speaker 1: has changed everything. Every single product that I cover in
Speaker 1: the tech world since the introduction of chat GBT, he
Speaker 1: has some sort of AI component. You look at Apple,
Speaker 1: they just transform the entire iPhone into AI. You look
Speaker 1: at Samsung, the entire Samsung Galaxy phone is built with AI.
Speaker 1: You look at Pixel, it's all about AI. You look
Speaker 1: at Google, their entire business was upended because of AI. Now,
Speaker 1: not just yet, but that company. They've done a good
Speaker 1: job of building their AI into everything, and they've been
Speaker 1: working thankfully with machine learning and all that stuff for
Speaker 1: a long time. But these companies are standing to benefit
Speaker 1: from a lighter touch, probably because they know that they
Speaker 1: can push the limits a little bit more with AI. Now, again,
Speaker 1: we don't know, we don't know what's going to happen,
Speaker 1: but this is what sort of I'm expecting to happen.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Evs are an interesting one because we know from the
Speaker 1: last time that Donald Trump was in the White House,
Speaker 1: he was not a huge fan of evs. But here
Speaker 1: he comes back to the White House and look who
Speaker 1: is best friend is Elon Musk, the guy that really
Speaker 1: pushed for him to get this job once again.
Speaker 2: So this is a wild card.
Speaker 1: Now, he has not been favorable to electric cars in
Speaker 1: the past, but I think we are going to see
Speaker 1: a change because Elon Musk is going to have his
Speaker 1: ear this time around. And of course Elon Musk with Tesla,
Speaker 1: stands to benefit a lot from Trump administration that is
Speaker 1: friendlier on electric cars. Now, do we think we're going
Speaker 1: to see the same sort of regulations like we have
Speaker 1: here in California where they want to make that full
Speaker 1: switch to electric cars by a certain time period. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's going to be a national thing. We'll see,
Speaker 1: but we don't know. Again speculation. I'm just telling you
Speaker 1: what I expect to happen. But I think the EV
Speaker 1: part is a very tricky part for this new administration
Speaker 1: because people like their gas cars. That has been very
Speaker 1: clear to me on this show. I live in California
Speaker 1: where you go in every third cars electric bobo, I
Speaker 1: mean bobo. Can I out you here? With your new
Speaker 1: electric car. Bobo just got an electric car, and so
Speaker 1: it's one of these things and he loves it.
Speaker 2: You love about it. It's so easy, it's no maintenance.
Speaker 2: You just get up and go. The negative, though, is
Speaker 2: the wait time for charging? Is the charging?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's going to get better, and that's going
Speaker 1: to change in other states, you know, you go to
Speaker 1: other places.
Speaker 2: You know, I rented a car the other day.
Speaker 1: I specifically did not rent electric car because I knew
Speaker 1: charging would be a pain here in.
Speaker 2: La not a pain at all anyway. So there you go.
Speaker 1: That's the talk about the president elect. Now let's get
Speaker 1: to your calls. Eighty to eight rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four to one
Speaker 1: zero one. My name is rich Dmiro and this is
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at sriple
Speaker 1: eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Give me a
Speaker 1: call if something is bugging you, you need some help
Speaker 1: with something, you need to question answered eighty eight rich
Speaker 1: one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one.
Speaker 2: Coming up.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about this iPhone notes app bug. If
Speaker 1: you logged into your notes app and you found them
Speaker 1: all gone, there is a fix.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you about that in a moment.
Speaker 1: But we were talking about those ray Band Meta smart
Speaker 1: glasses and Russ in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Speaker 2: You've got a pair of these or why?
Speaker 4: Yes, sir, I've had them about two three months and
Speaker 4: I happen to be totally blind. Oh wow, Now, I'm
Speaker 4: sure if you go back in the way back the
Speaker 4: listeners remember when Radio Check used to make like clocks
Speaker 4: that talked. They were pretty gimmicky, but they happened to
Speaker 4: work with blind people. Okay, these metaglasses are wonderful for
Speaker 4: a couple reasons.
Speaker 5: Rich.
Speaker 4: First of all, if you go down to ray Band,
Speaker 4: say in Los Angeles, you pay the same three hundred
Speaker 4: dollars that I pay here in Grand Junction. So means
Speaker 4: a lot of a lot of technology for blind people
Speaker 4: is very because it's of users. Well, anyway, these glasses
Speaker 4: are wonderful and you you can't imagine the number of
Speaker 4: blind people that use them.
Speaker 2: Well, so how are you using them? Tell me?
Speaker 4: Well, I use them for scanning my mail.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: I had a very In fact, I was telling him.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 4: The other day, I had one of those big Maverick
Speaker 4: cups and I lost my straw. It fell down on
Speaker 4: the ground, and of course I couldn't find it, so
Speaker 4: I said, hey, Meta, help me find my straw. It
Speaker 4: told me.
Speaker 2: Exactly where it was.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 4: No, it was amazing.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah, I mean I was. I was in yesterday.
Speaker 1: I just said, like, what am I doing right now?
Speaker 1: And I said, oh, it looks like you are driving.
Speaker 1: Maybe I shouldn't be using while I'm driving, but it
Speaker 1: looks like it looks like you're driving. And knew the
Speaker 1: exact car that I was in.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: It just it described the whole scene, like the whole everything.
Speaker 1: And I was like, this is incredible, and I know
Speaker 1: what it's doing. It's taking a picture and then it's
Speaker 1: using AI to sort of analyze that picture. But you
Speaker 1: can put anything in front of you. Imagine you've done
Speaker 1: this as well. You can put anything in front of
Speaker 1: you and it will tell you what that is like.
Speaker 1: It'll describe it to you right.
Speaker 4: As long as you as long as you use the
Speaker 4: uh the responses. You know, you have to say, hey Meta,
Speaker 4: look at and then you get the response. It's amazing. Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, go into the freezer, grab a box of
Speaker 4: say pizza, y hay, Meta, Uh what do you see,
Speaker 4: It'll read the directions for you.
Speaker 2: No, way, that is incredible.
Speaker 4: It is amazing.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting you say this because I went to
Speaker 1: like an assistive tech conference and they had a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, these these glasses are kind of like
Speaker 1: the Holy Grail, right for for assistance for visually impaired,
Speaker 1: but they are very expensive, like the ones I saw
Speaker 1: were like five thousand.
Speaker 2: Bucks season yeah sea suns, yeah exactly. Yeah, well yeah,
Speaker 2: I would you like?
Speaker 4: I mean these naturally the glasses there are specialty glasses
Speaker 4: for blind people probably have other things. But as these
Speaker 4: move along, the people at Meta and ray Ben have
Speaker 4: realized that there are lots of users who want to
Speaker 4: use the glasses, and they're going to make them more
Speaker 4: intelligent for blind people.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: My question to you, as a sighted person is why
Speaker 4: would you want these? I mean, but I mean, if
Speaker 4: you think about it, you know, what do they do
Speaker 4: for you? Because you can see the use cases for
Speaker 4: somebody who can't see.
Speaker 2: Yes, But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: For me, it makes me feel superhuman because the fact
Speaker 1: that I can just look at any Let's say I'm
Speaker 1: traveling and you know, I might take a picture of
Speaker 1: a building and say to Google, like, you know, explain
Speaker 1: what this building is all about, or give me the
Speaker 1: history on it. But now to be able to just
Speaker 1: look at that building in let's say Paris, France or something,
Speaker 1: and just give me the history of this building. That's incredible.
Speaker 1: And it's just again, we are just the first couple
Speaker 1: of years of this stuff. These glasses have only been
Speaker 1: out for a couple of years. In the new model,
Speaker 1: I think is even better than the first model, and
Speaker 1: the AI is brand new. So I think for anyone
Speaker 1: that is you know, that just wants to you know,
Speaker 1: obviously on the cutting edge right now because he's our
Speaker 1: pricey But I think that this that super human idea
Speaker 1: of like before it was an address book, we would
Speaker 1: put our our phone numbers in an address book and
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have to remember them. Now this is like
Speaker 1: that time's a million. Imagine having the entire Encyclopedia UH
Speaker 1: in your ears at any given time. It's quite incredible.
Speaker 1: Russ in Grand Junction, Colorado, thanks so much for giving
Speaker 1: me a call today. Appreciate it. Eighty eight Rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four.
Speaker 2: To one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple eight Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero zero one.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: We've got the website rich on Tech dot tv. You
Speaker 1: can go there to get the show notes. Sign up
Speaker 1: for my newsletter. Be sure to do that. Every week
Speaker 1: I send out a newsletter with all kinds of great
Speaker 1: information and links and things, all the tech news you
Speaker 1: need to know, kind of like a version of this show. Basically,
Speaker 1: let's see. Then you can go to contact that'll send
Speaker 1: me an email. And if you want notes on anything
Speaker 1: I mentioned, you can hit the light bulb icon. And
Speaker 1: I've already posted to my Instagram at rich on Tech
Speaker 1: little video of me and the ray bandmetas so you
Speaker 1: can see what it looks like when I come into
Speaker 1: to the studio here. If you're trying to access chat GBT,
Speaker 1: you can do it a new way.
Speaker 2: You can go to chat dot com.
Speaker 1: Chat dot com will now take you straight to chat GPT.
Speaker 1: Apparently this was the previous person who owned this purchased
Speaker 1: a domain in twenty twenty three for about fifteen million
Speaker 1: dollars and he sold it to open ai for an
Speaker 1: undisclosed amount, but he apparently accepted company shares.
Speaker 2: I would do that. I'd accept company shares and open aim.
Speaker 1: Sure they're gonna be okay, but anyway, much easier Chat
Speaker 1: dot com if you want to access chat gbt. By
Speaker 1: the way, don't forget about perplexity AI, because chat gbt
Speaker 1: does web search. Now they've they've incorporated the web, the
Speaker 1: Internet into their search. It's it's okay, it's it's pretty good,
Speaker 1: but it's not like perfect. But because they've done that,
Speaker 1: I started going back to perplexity because they they are
Speaker 1: the originators of sort of the web. AI search and
Speaker 1: perplexity dot ai is really cool because I call a
Speaker 1: book report, So if you want like information about a subject,
Speaker 1: they're really good at coming up with a nice report
Speaker 1: about things. So perplexity dot ai I've been using a
Speaker 1: lot more, especially great for like answering questions that you have,
Speaker 1: So check it out. If you have an iPhone, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you had the iPhone bug where you opened up
Speaker 1: your notes app and all the notes were missing, there
Speaker 1: is a fix.
Speaker 2: This is quite scary.
Speaker 1: This is like everyone's biggest fear with the cloud, right,
Speaker 1: is that you go to open up this app or whatever,
Speaker 1: let's say Google Photos or your Google Drive or your
Speaker 1: iCloud drive or your iCloud photos, your notes, and they're
Speaker 1: all gone and you go what. So Apparently this was
Speaker 1: a bug affecting iPhones runningios eighteen, and it was because
Speaker 1: a lot of you. I didn't see this. Maybe I did,
Speaker 1: but I didn't. Maybe I just clicked through it really quick.
Speaker 1: But apparently there was a thing where you had to
Speaker 1: accept new iCloud terms and conditions, and if you didn't
Speaker 1: accept those, I guess the sink went away for a bit.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I didn't see this happen on MyPhone.
Speaker 1: I don't use Apple Notes. I use it I always,
Speaker 1: you know, I prefer third party platform program so I'm
Speaker 1: using Notion right now, which I really really like.
Speaker 2: But Apple Notes.
Speaker 1: If you're using it and all of your stuff went away,
Speaker 1: here's how you get it back. Go into settings, tap
Speaker 1: your name at the top iCloud and then notes and
Speaker 1: make sure sink this iPhone toggle is enabled, and if
Speaker 1: it's not, toggle it and reopen the notes app. It
Speaker 1: takes about ten minutes for your notes to come back in.
Speaker 1: If that doesn't work, then just toggle the sync off,
Speaker 1: toggle it back on and reboot your phone. But that's
Speaker 1: the main thing is I guess it was related to
Speaker 1: this iCloud terms and conditions, but no permanent data loss
Speaker 1: has been reported by people. And your notes are on
Speaker 1: other devices, so if you have it on your Mac
Speaker 1: computer or something like that, but kind of scary. That's
Speaker 1: like again, that's the biggest fear of logging in and
Speaker 1: your stuff is gone.
Speaker 2: That is not fun.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, we have another endorsement for the metaglasses.
Speaker 1: Julian and Woodland Hills. We've talked to you on the
Speaker 1: show before Welcome back.
Speaker 7: Yes, a little over a year ago, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 7: and you would have me on to talk about AI
Speaker 7: and how it's going to affect the lives of people
Speaker 7: with who are blind, the mole vision, and we had
Speaker 7: just started to talk about the be my I service
Speaker 7: and that they were offering an AI assistant. Well, speaking
Speaker 7: of the Meta glasses, something that was announced recently at
Speaker 7: Meta's big conference about their stuff is a partnership with
Speaker 7: that organization be My Eyes, where you can use the
Speaker 7: Meta Smart glasses to connect with it Be my Eyes Volunteer.
Speaker 7: It's currently in beta test right now. I'm one of
Speaker 7: the beta testers, and I can tell you that when
Speaker 7: this comes out to everybody, it's going to be amazing, because, yes,
Speaker 7: we've been able to do this with our phones before,
Speaker 7: but when you're blind in the vision and either using
Speaker 7: a cane or a guide dog or something like that,
Speaker 7: and carrying things, sometimes grabbing a phone is not the
Speaker 7: most convenient thing to do, right, And it's because we
Speaker 7: wear it. It's just so easy. You talk to it,
Speaker 7: you don't have to do anything with your hands. It
Speaker 7: just works. I'm in the midst of travel right now
Speaker 7: and I use it through the airport to find food,
Speaker 7: to find the gate, to find all kinds of things,
Speaker 7: and it's just I mean, I think these are definitely game.
Speaker 1: Changer, using the be my Eyes feature to find the gate,
Speaker 1: like so, so explain how that works. So let's say
Speaker 1: you're wearing these glasses. You say you connect to a volunteer.
Speaker 1: Can they see what you're seeing in live time or
Speaker 1: is it a snapshot or what?
Speaker 7: No, it seems in real life, so wow, like making
Speaker 7: a video call it It's like you know, right, Now
Speaker 7: anybody can make a video call through a Facebook, Messenger
Speaker 7: or WhatsApp, but it involves launching the app, making the call,
Speaker 7: hitting the shutter button two times to enable the video
Speaker 7: camera and the glasses. This makes it happen a seamless
Speaker 7: where the phone's in my pocket. It never has to
Speaker 7: come out. I just tell hey, m be my Eyes
Speaker 7: and it says, okay, connecting you to a volunteer from
Speaker 7: Be my Eyes. And within a matter of seconds, I'm
Speaker 7: connected to a lit volunteer who has a view through
Speaker 7: my camera in front of me and now can give
Speaker 7: me access to whatever information I need.
Speaker 2: That's wild.
Speaker 1: So people are just standing by, like as they signed
Speaker 1: up to be a volunteer for Be my Eyes. They've
Speaker 1: got the app on their phone and they're just waiting
Speaker 1: for someone to kind of ping them and they say okay, cool.
Speaker 1: And then they get that live shot or the live
Speaker 1: stream I should say live shot is TV talk. They
Speaker 1: get the live stream and they can just see and
Speaker 1: be like, okay, so I see Gate one thirty four ahead.
Speaker 1: If you look to the left, you can see the
Speaker 1: lounges over there. If you look ahead, there's a Starbucks
Speaker 1: and they can see all that.
Speaker 2: That's really amazing. Wow, it's just.
Speaker 7: Like having access to an assistant. There's another service that
Speaker 7: you've probably heard of as well, called IRA, and they
Speaker 7: also provide the same kind of service, but their agents
Speaker 7: are trained and paid and under NDA and bonded and
Speaker 7: all that stuff. And they've got a beta program going
Speaker 7: as well, so pretty soon that'll be available. So both
Speaker 7: visual interpreter services are going to be available to blind
Speaker 7: the television people all over the world through these glasses.
Speaker 1: Oh that so they're working with the IRA as well
Speaker 1: on the metaglasses.
Speaker 2: Wow, okay, that's a I r A. Is that the
Speaker 2: one AI r A?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 7: AIRA dot io is their website and yeah, they're in
Speaker 7: the process of getting that done and it's going to
Speaker 7: be wonderful. And plus that to mention the AI and
Speaker 7: these things is great. I use it all the time
Speaker 7: just for going shopping, browsing the shells. You know, you
Speaker 7: pick up something and wonder what is this? Now I
Speaker 7: can just ask the thing, you know, what is look
Speaker 7: and tell me what I'm holding, or look and read
Speaker 7: to me what this is, and I get all kinds
Speaker 7: of information.
Speaker 2: It's so wild. Julian.
Speaker 1: Thanks thanks for that, really really great insights, safe travels there.
Speaker 1: And this is what's so great about testing this stuff out,
Speaker 1: which is what I do for a living, is that
Speaker 1: I was aware of these glasses. I was aware of
Speaker 1: Meta AI. And sometimes you sort of I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: say pooh pooh, but you sort of dismiss stuff.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, Meta AI, another AI service.
Speaker 1: But when you put these things on and you realize,
Speaker 1: like this is one of the few tech products that
Speaker 1: I put on and tried, and it's like, immediately, I
Speaker 1: realized there's something special here, and we are just at
Speaker 1: the beginning. And then when you hear from folks like
Speaker 1: Russ and like Julian, you realize that there is something
Speaker 1: bigger at play here. And like Julian or like Russ said,
Speaker 1: you know these these visually impaired products, you know, the
Speaker 1: products for the visually impaired are typically very expensive because
Speaker 1: they're they're making them, maybe not at a mass scale,
Speaker 1: but something like the ray band metas they're making so
Speaker 1: many of them, millions of them for everyone, and so
Speaker 1: that's why they're they're able to be three hundred dollars
Speaker 1: versus five thousand dollars. There was that phone I saw
Speaker 1: at that Assistive Tech content thing Assistant Tech conference. The
Speaker 1: blind Shell Phone, which I thought was really incredible and
Speaker 1: it does everything you need if you're visually impaired. But
Speaker 1: it's expensive, and now it makes sense, it's because it's
Speaker 1: a limited audience, so they're not you know, it's not
Speaker 1: just a phone that everyone's going to buy, and they
Speaker 1: can make them at mass scale, but it does have
Speaker 1: all the features you need. That's Blindshell dot com anyway. Incredible.
Speaker 1: I guess I really my my inkling on these glasses
Speaker 1: was correct. They are really a game changer and I'm
Speaker 1: looking forward to more people kind of discovering the magic
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: The website is richon Tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: If you want to sign up to be a volunteer
Speaker 1: for b my Eyes, I put the link in the
Speaker 1: show notes.
Speaker 2: Just hit the light bulb icon. Coming up.
Speaker 1: Another free ride is over max is the latest to
Speaker 1: crack down on password sharing. This is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking
Speaker 1: technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Well,
Speaker 1: like I like to say, the free ride is over.
Speaker 1: This time it is Max. Remember it used to be
Speaker 1: called HBO Max. Now it's just Max. Not to be
Speaker 1: confused with anything else out there. So Disney and Netflix
Speaker 1: have done this. Now Max is going to do it
Speaker 1: starting gradually. So they said on the on the earnings
Speaker 1: call that password sharing restrictions will begin in the next
Speaker 1: few months with quote messaging to users. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: It means when you log in and they kind of
Speaker 1: know that you're cheating the system, they're gonna say, are
Speaker 1: you sure you don't want to get your own account,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna go No, as long as I can
Speaker 1: use my friends, why not, I'll keep using theirs. But
Speaker 1: next year they're gonna gradually put the uh you know,
Speaker 1: squeeze the uh the vice script's a little bit tighter
Speaker 1: and uh full implementation will be twenty twenty five, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six. Uh. They believe that this is Bobo's raising
Speaker 1: his hand. He has a question, the question from the class. Yes,
Speaker 1: mister mister Mitchell de Marrow.
Speaker 3: So let's say I have my account, sure, Okay, I
Speaker 3: go to my parents house quite often. Yeah, I watched
Speaker 3: my account there. Yeah, how are they gonna regulate that? Well,
Speaker 3: that's a good question. So I think that the they're
Speaker 3: gonna use an algorithm number one, but number two it's
Speaker 3: it's going to be sort of a two factor authentication.
Speaker 3: So if if you're logging in at your parents' house,
Speaker 3: it may bug you every time, But because you truly
Speaker 3: own that account, they're gonna say, hey, we're gonna email
Speaker 3: you a code and you're gonna put that in from
Speaker 3: your email. It's not gonna be that big of a deal,
Speaker 3: got you, But your friend over in you know, somewhere
Speaker 3: across the US, that's latching onto your account, it's gonna
Speaker 3: be after the third time annoying for you to be like, really,
Speaker 3: you got to get this code.
Speaker 2: Again for me.
Speaker 1: Now, some people won't have a problem with that, but
Speaker 1: I have noticed that there are you know, from what
Speaker 1: I've seen in my personal experience with family members. It
Speaker 1: only comes down to whether the company actually wants to
Speaker 1: enable these restrictions, like they know, they know if you're
Speaker 1: not like and it's very clear if you're logging into
Speaker 1: a TV, which is a fixed thing usually like you're
Speaker 1: not logging a TV around the nation. So if you're
Speaker 1: a traveler and you've got Netflix on your tablet or
Speaker 1: you're installing it on a tablet or a phone. They
Speaker 1: kind of know that, Okay, people travel, But if they
Speaker 1: notice that that phone you've installed on only stays in
Speaker 1: a certain place that's not near your household, that's when
Speaker 1: they'll start, you know, kind of pushing the password restrictions
Speaker 1: a little bit harder on that device. So again, this
Speaker 1: is not a perfect thing, but nobody's fooling anyone here.
Speaker 1: These companies know exactly when people are sharing. So subscribers
Speaker 1: that are sharing and that are part of that kind
Speaker 1: of sharing idea, they will be paying more, although there
Speaker 1: will be some sort of planet looks like where you
Speaker 1: can latch off onto your own or break off onto
Speaker 1: your own. Max has one hundred and ten million subscribers.
Speaker 1: They added seven million in the last quarter. Trying to
Speaker 1: think what that's attributable to, Like, do they have a
Speaker 1: good show or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: They raised their prices back in June twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: But again I say, the free ride is over all.
Speaker 1: These streaming services started so cheap, so so cheap, and
Speaker 1: now they are definitely getting a lot more expensive. All right,
Speaker 1: let's see, we've got a question here by email.
Speaker 2: Pat. Let's see Pat says, hey, does using.
Speaker 1: Your iPhone eight plus as a hotspot for a MacBook
Speaker 1: air M two harm your phone in any way? So,
Speaker 1: off the top of my head, not really. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really not a harmful thing for your phone. But
Speaker 1: there are some things to consider. Number one, your battery life.
Speaker 1: So if your phone is using hotspot, it definitely cranks
Speaker 1: through that battery a lot faster. Also, because it's using
Speaker 1: more on your phone for that modem, it's going to
Speaker 1: get hotter. So that's number two. And then of course
Speaker 1: your data that's number three. Is really it comes down
Speaker 1: to how much data do you have on your plan
Speaker 1: and are you going to burn through that? So I
Speaker 1: will tell you that it's interesting because if you look
Speaker 1: at the Wi Fi at your work, your company reserves
Speaker 1: the right to pretty much look at anything you're doing
Speaker 1: on your computer. I'm talking to anything, even if it's personal,
Speaker 1: even if it's private, they can look at it. And
Speaker 1: so there is this idea of people wanting to use
Speaker 1: their hotspot at work off their phone because things are
Speaker 1: a little bit more private and you can check your email,
Speaker 1: you could do things like that. And I'd probably recommend
Speaker 1: that if you want to stay more private at work,
Speaker 1: it's probably a good idea to do that, you know.
Speaker 1: But just understand that if you're on your work's WiFi,
Speaker 1: they can see anything that's happening on that computer. Just
Speaker 1: imagine that they can see it even if it's private.
Speaker 1: Maybe if it's encrypted, it doesn't really matter. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: have a certificate, the trust certificate that you accept when
Speaker 1: you get onto that Wi Fi that says, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what, you give us free rein to anything on
Speaker 1: this device. Because it's all in the idea of that
Speaker 1: they can monitor the network for anything that might harm
Speaker 1: the network. But anyway, all all that to say that
Speaker 1: if you have a hot spot, if you've got the
Speaker 1: hotspot feature on your cell phone planned schirp, go ahead,
Speaker 1: use it. There's nothing really that that's going to be
Speaker 1: a problem except for those three things I mentioned. And
Speaker 1: by the way, all of the computers nowadays do a
Speaker 1: pretty good job of connecting to the device seamlessly. So
Speaker 1: for instance, on my computer, I've got a Mac computer
Speaker 1: the iPhone. When I am out of range of Wi Fi,
Speaker 1: it immediately pops up if my phone's nearby, says Hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to connect to your iPhone as a hotspot.
Speaker 1: It's very very convenient. Windows does the same thing. You
Speaker 1: can set it up with your Android devices as well.
Speaker 2: It used to be.
Speaker 1: When you got a tablet you had to make a
Speaker 1: decision like do I want Internet on this tablet?
Speaker 2: Do I want a five G connection?
Speaker 1: And quite honestly, like unless you are you have a
Speaker 1: really specific use case for that. Ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: people can just connect to their phone, which is incredible,
Speaker 1: much easier than paying for a separate plan and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. And even you know, hotspot overseas has gotten easier.
Speaker 1: Just the idea of the phone being the everything, kind
Speaker 1: of the center of your tech universe has gotten a
Speaker 1: lot clearer over the last couple of years. So go ahead,
Speaker 1: pat your use the cell phone as your hot spot.
Speaker 1: No problem there, just understand those those downsides. Malvin from
Speaker 1: chess Shire, Where's that?
Speaker 2: Says?
Speaker 1: I'm kindly looking for step by step information on how
Speaker 1: to remove my unwanted information on Google. Great question. The
Speaker 1: feature you want is called results about you. So if
Speaker 1: you Google results about you, you can see this Google
Speaker 1: feature that's called results about you. And what you do
Speaker 1: is you put your information. You sign up, you put
Speaker 1: your information in here, so you say, here's my name,
Speaker 1: here's my address, here's my phone number, here's my email address.
Speaker 1: And I know it sounds scary to give Google all
Speaker 1: this information, but guess what, they've already got it anyway.
Speaker 1: They know exactly this information. You're just giving them that
Speaker 1: information so they can scan the internet to find when
Speaker 1: this information pops up. And you can give multiple email addresses,
Speaker 1: you can give multiple phone numbers, you can give them
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can give them variations on
Speaker 1: your name, but you can give them all that information.
Speaker 1: And so let's see, so I've got I'm looking at
Speaker 1: my Yeah, so you can give them full name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can a interesting It doesn't say I can add
Speaker 1: a name online, but.
Speaker 2: You can have Oh, I guess you can have one too.
Speaker 1: I've got three names on here, and so I guess
Speaker 1: you can have up to three names that it will
Speaker 1: scan for.
Speaker 2: And then you could have an address.
Speaker 1: You can have a couple addresses, you could have a
Speaker 1: couple phone numbers, you can have a couple of email addresses.
Speaker 1: So Google results about you, just so you understand it.
Speaker 1: Only it'll scan the web. It'll look for that information.
Speaker 1: If it finds a search result with that information, it
Speaker 1: will email you or give you a notification and say, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want us to take this down from our
Speaker 1: search results? Not off the internet. That is very very
Speaker 1: important to understand. The information is still out there on
Speaker 1: that website. Google is just taking the link off of
Speaker 1: their search results. So when someone searches for your name
Speaker 1: plus address, they will not see that search result to
Speaker 1: that website that contains your information. Your information will still
Speaker 1: be on that website. So if you want to take
Speaker 1: this step further and get it off that website, you
Speaker 1: would then have to contact that website, do a takedown request,
Speaker 1: or use one of these services like in Incogni or
Speaker 1: delete me, and they will go and take these down.
Speaker 2: But remember it's a game of whack a mole.
Speaker 1: For every site you take your information off of, five
Speaker 1: more sites pop up. But getting it off Google does
Speaker 1: disconnect that link. Eighty eight rich one oh one. This
Speaker 1: is Rich on Tech. Welcome back to another hour of
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology. The phone line for the show triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. The website for the
Speaker 1: show is rich on Tech dot TV. While you're there,
Speaker 1: be sure to sign up for my newsletter, send it
Speaker 1: out once a week. You can also click the light
Speaker 1: bulb if you want a link to this show anything
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the show. This is show number ninety seven.
Speaker 1: You can also look at all the things I do
Speaker 1: for TEA, watch my TV segments. You can listen to
Speaker 1: the podcast. Subscribe to the podcast version of this show
Speaker 1: and listen to some of the selected interviews. Plus, you
Speaker 1: can contact me. Just hit the contact icon up at
Speaker 1: the top, or the link, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 1: and that will send an email right to my inbox.
Speaker 1: Coming up this hour, we are going to talk about
Speaker 1: finding the best cell phone plan for you. Tech journalist
Speaker 1: Rob Pigararo has looked at all the different plans out there.
Speaker 1: He has picked his favorites, and we'll explain how to
Speaker 1: choose the right carrier and plan for your needs. We've
Speaker 1: been talking about the ray Band meta glasses all morning long.
Speaker 1: If you want to see my point of view here,
Speaker 1: you can actually see Bobo. I just posted it at
Speaker 1: richon tech on Instagram. You can see what I see
Speaker 1: while I do the show. We have a question from
Speaker 1: John and Fallbrook about the the the Meta ray bands.
Speaker 2: What's up?
Speaker 8: Hey, thank you very much, Richer and Joy your show
Speaker 8: every week.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I got an iPhone.
Speaker 5: We'll go work for me.
Speaker 8: I'm visually impaired.
Speaker 1: Great question. Yes it does work with the iPhone. That is, uh,
Speaker 1: something that I took for granted when I talked about these.
Speaker 1: But yes, it does work with iPhone and Android. You
Speaker 1: do need a an app from Meta It's called the
Speaker 1: Meta View app. You download that and it basically connects
Speaker 1: the glasses to your phone so that that way they
Speaker 1: can you know, tap into the uh, answering the questions,
Speaker 1: sharing the videos, the files, the you know, the photos
Speaker 1: that you take on it. It's all synced up and
Speaker 1: you could of course change the options for the classes.
Speaker 8: Can I get it? Best buy?
Speaker 2: Great question? Let's see.
Speaker 1: Uh, let's see if best Buy sells these best Buy
Speaker 1: Meta ray band. Let's see if they have them. It
Speaker 1: looks like they do have them there, So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean best Buy.
Speaker 8: How much where they can did you?
Speaker 6: I'll find that out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they started three hundred dollars. It depends, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously that's for the base model. So if you want
Speaker 1: like the transition lenses, or you want, you know, special
Speaker 1: color or special feature.
Speaker 2: It's all going to be.
Speaker 1: You know, there's different, there's various you know, options and
Speaker 1: upgrades and things.
Speaker 8: But three hundred bucks, cat you see what color of
Speaker 8: traffic light is.
Speaker 5: I don't care what color they are.
Speaker 2: So you did you say you're visually impaired?
Speaker 1: Yes, So so you're gonna you're gonna look into the
Speaker 1: kind of the AI features of these glasses.
Speaker 6: Huh.
Speaker 7: Oh that's the that's the secret for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I can go to a grocery store and look at
Speaker 8: the shelf and say pick me out some cereal or something,
Speaker 8: and it says, oh, but right there, man, I'd be
Speaker 8: My wife would be way happy. Then I could go shopping.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 1: Well, I you know, I think that again from what
Speaker 1: I heard with to be my eyes integration, it sounds
Speaker 1: like that's just starting up and that's just brand new.
Speaker 1: But it's I think that's going to be a huge
Speaker 1: use case scenario for these glasses, just based on the uh,
Speaker 1: the reaction I've heard today. So John, check them out
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, just make sure you check that return.
Speaker 6: Policy comment on your next article.
Speaker 9: Sure, I have the Internet, but I get my WiFi
Speaker 9: is cellular. So as you discuss your next plans or
Speaker 9: the best plans, remember some people use internet the cellular
Speaker 9: internet too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's definitely a yeah, absolutely thanks John, appreciate that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cellular internet is definitely a growing area of interest
Speaker 1: because the carriers have come in with their their nice
Speaker 1: five G spectrum and they said, oh we could do
Speaker 1: you know, we could easily make this home internet. And
Speaker 1: so I've tested the one from Verizon. I don't think
Speaker 1: I tested the T mobile on AT and T. They
Speaker 1: it's very limited apparently where they have it, and it's
Speaker 1: I keep asking them to test it and they have
Speaker 1: not let me test it. So but it's a great
Speaker 1: option if you live in a place where you can
Speaker 1: get your Internet over the air. I think it's a
Speaker 1: great option for you because it's less expensive. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's any contracts. You plug in play as long
Speaker 1: as you have a good five G signal at your
Speaker 1: house and they offer it to you. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: from what I've heard with AT and T, because they
Speaker 1: don't want to compete with themselves, they're only sort of
Speaker 1: offering their AT and T Internet air in places that
Speaker 1: don't have wired internet through AT and T, so again,
Speaker 1: they don't want to. They don't want someone that has
Speaker 1: fiber at their house for one hundred bucks to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I can get internet air for fifty bucks.
Speaker 2: I'll just go with that. I don't need all the
Speaker 2: speed of fiber.
Speaker 1: So I think the only downside of the five G
Speaker 1: home internet is probably maybe the speed and the bandwidth.
Speaker 1: But of course that all depends on what you need.
Speaker 1: Ninety nine percent of people are just checking their email,
Speaker 1: they're just going on Netflix. They don't really need a
Speaker 1: ton of stuff, and so I think that that's probably
Speaker 1: a great option for other people. So thanks for the
Speaker 1: call there, John in Fallbrook today and what are the
Speaker 1: chances of this?
Speaker 2: We got another call from Fallbrook, Curtis. You're on with Rich.
Speaker 10: Hey, Rich, thanks sticking my phone call? Is the fallow
Speaker 10: up to the last call you had. I am currently
Speaker 10: using the mobile home Internet at my home. I'm also
Speaker 10: on twelve book. It works great. It's dirt too, and
Speaker 10: they probably do serve your area, John, so you might
Speaker 10: want to look into that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no you could.
Speaker 10: I don't know who your sill phone plan who your
Speaker 10: sill phone planning is but you know, they have great
Speaker 10: prices too.
Speaker 2: How much are you paying for that?
Speaker 10: Uh mine, I'm at thirty five bucks from Long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's incredible. And this is the thing they started out.
Speaker 1: I think the prices have gone up a little bit,
Speaker 1: but they started out very competitive because they were really
Speaker 1: trying to you know, take it to the spectrums of
Speaker 1: the world and the frontiers of the world. The problem
Speaker 1: is Verizon just bought Frontier. So the bigger these companies get,
Speaker 1: the less competition or you know, the less they want
Speaker 1: to compete because they don't need to. So I love
Speaker 1: that T Mobile came in with a very aggressive pricing.
Speaker 1: Verizon came in with very aggressive pricing. But again it's
Speaker 1: it's it depends on whether it's available where you are
Speaker 1: and whether it's a good fit for what you need.
Speaker 1: For me, personally, I probably couldn't use it just because
Speaker 1: I'm uploading downloading a ton of big files every day
Speaker 1: for my TV stuff. So but it's great if you're
Speaker 1: you know, for someone like my mom, especially, she's paying
Speaker 1: a ton for Internet and I keep saying, maybe it's
Speaker 1: time to switch to one of these, you know, wireless providers.
Speaker 2: So anyway, check it out. So what's the question, Curtis.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so my question is I recently went to Vancouver
Speaker 10: and I'm on the T Mobile plan. They do offer
Speaker 10: a small price to buy like five gigs of data
Speaker 10: for about a week. I found out. I went through
Speaker 10: that extremely quickly. And my thoughts are to just buy
Speaker 10: another plan when I'm out of country, use it for
Speaker 10: a period of time, and you know, take advantage of
Speaker 10: you know, the prices that they offer and maybe get
Speaker 10: more utilization out of it. Then I'm getting too mobile.
Speaker 10: I mean, I didn't get the service. Wasn't bad once
Speaker 10: I was cooked up to it. But you can go
Speaker 10: through five g five each a day really quickly.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, especially especially recommendations. Okay, great question. What kind
Speaker 1: of phone do you have?
Speaker 10: I've got a Pixel nine.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, so here's the great Oh wow, look at
Speaker 1: you Pixel nine.
Speaker 2: Great phone. I love that device.
Speaker 1: And the good news about the Pixel is that, Curtis,
Speaker 1: you're already set up. You don't need to buy a
Speaker 1: different phone. You can do what's called an eSIM and
Speaker 1: so it's very seamless. And uh, hate to bring up
Speaker 1: my mom again, but she was able to figure this out.
Speaker 1: And no shade to my mom. But she's not a
Speaker 1: tech person and she was going on an international trip,
Speaker 1: and I said, look, you can easily use this eSIM
Speaker 1: and all you have to do is toggle it on.
Speaker 1: I set it all up in advance remotely, by the way,
Speaker 1: and I set it all up on her phone in advance.
Speaker 1: I said, when you get to the country, when you land,
Speaker 1: just toggle this on and it should work. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: she texted me she said it works. And she goes
Speaker 1: and all the girlfriends I'm with, none of their phones
Speaker 1: work except mine. I said, well, that's why you got
Speaker 1: a tech sun that knows what he's doing.
Speaker 2: So with that, said.
Speaker 1: Curtis, what I'd recommend is just an EA, and so
Speaker 1: this is what I've used in countries. So here's sort
Speaker 1: of my thought. Okay, so you experienced T mobile. Yes,
Speaker 1: they include international on a lot of their plans, and
Speaker 1: it's great. If you're just casually going to a different country,
Speaker 1: maybe for a couple of days, you just need access
Speaker 1: to maps, your email or text, that's fine. Absolutely, just
Speaker 1: stick with what you got, it's included in your plan.
Speaker 2: It works great.
Speaker 1: And then the next level of ease is a lot
Speaker 1: of these plans like the AT and t's of the world,
Speaker 1: the verizons of the world. They have where you get
Speaker 1: for ten dollars a day quasi unlimited.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's unlimited.
Speaker 1: It's like a certain amount of data that you get
Speaker 1: on a daily basis for ten bucks a day. And again,
Speaker 1: if you know, if that works for you and you're
Speaker 1: in a city for three days and you just want
Speaker 1: to pay thirty dollars to have your phone work the
Speaker 1: way it works, absolutely do that one hundred percent. That's
Speaker 1: what I've done in a lot of countries when I'm
Speaker 1: there for just a couple of days on business.
Speaker 2: Now, some plans actually.
Speaker 1: Give you an allotment of those I think they call
Speaker 1: it like a mobile passport day or some like that,
Speaker 1: where you'll get that. Let's say your plan is one
Speaker 1: of the expensive premium plans, they may give you a
Speaker 1: day or two of those a month. Every month that
Speaker 1: you have your plan, they may stockpile some of those
Speaker 1: for you. So the last time I went overseas, I
Speaker 1: had like ten international days, so I did not need
Speaker 1: to buy an eSIM for that trip on my primary phone.
Speaker 2: So that's the second thing.
Speaker 1: Now, the third thing, and what I think is probably
Speaker 1: the easiest for a lot of people that just want
Speaker 1: a lot of data and don't want to have to
Speaker 1: pay a lot of money.
Speaker 2: Is what's called an eSIM.
Speaker 1: And so the company that I like a lot is
Speaker 1: called Erlo air Alo. I'll link them up in the
Speaker 1: show notes. I've used them around the world. And what
Speaker 1: you do is you just download the app, you buy
Speaker 1: the eSIM, and then you install it on your phone,
Speaker 1: and with a Pixel or an iPhone or a Samsung
Speaker 1: any recent phone can handle multiple sims at the same time.
Speaker 1: So you don't even have to get rid of your
Speaker 1: old calling plan. You just install this in seconds on
Speaker 1: your phone without even interrupting your regular plan, and so
Speaker 1: you can go when you get to the other country,
Speaker 1: you can turn off your regular cell phone plan. There's
Speaker 1: a switch in the toggle in the settings, there's a
Speaker 1: toggle switch. You turn that off and then your regular
Speaker 1: plan will not be drawing any data or usage. And
Speaker 1: then you can toggle on the eSIM and now you've
Speaker 1: got this eSIM that generally either has a lot of
Speaker 1: data or unlimited data depending on the country. They're all
Speaker 1: a little bit different, but it's very very easy. Aerolw
Speaker 1: is one ola Fly is another h O L a
Speaker 1: f l y. There's a ton of them out there.
Speaker 1: I've tried a couple of them, but I like the
Speaker 1: Aero looks. It's straightforward, it's simple. They were one of
Speaker 1: the earliest. But great question, Curtis, and good job on
Speaker 1: the Pixel nine. That is a fantastic phone. I got
Speaker 1: to tell you about the deal they have on it.
Speaker 1: I talked about that yet. No, I'll tell you about
Speaker 1: the deal on the Pixel nines. Coming up right here
Speaker 1: on rich On Tech eighty to eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Our caller told
Speaker 1: me he had a Pixel nine from Google, and I said,
Speaker 1: that was a great phone. So if you are looking
Speaker 1: at a Pixel, if you are toying with the idea
Speaker 1: of purchasing one of these devices, I always say, uh,
Speaker 1: when you are looking at a Pixel device or a
Speaker 1: Samsung phone, wait for some sort of deal or discount,
Speaker 1: because these things are priced to get discounted. And we've
Speaker 1: seen this over and over with the Pixel and the
Speaker 1: Samsung devices. Apple devices are kind of weird because Apple
Speaker 1: never discounts their own stuff, but sometimes third parties will,
Speaker 1: or you'll get like, you know, they do that free
Speaker 1: phone upgrade through AT and T or Verizon or T Mobile,
Speaker 1: which we all know is not really free, but if
Speaker 1: it works out for you, fine, But the Pixel nine,
Speaker 1: there is a great discount thirty percent discount off of
Speaker 1: this device. But you have to know where to find it.
Speaker 1: So let me show you where to find it. And
Speaker 1: it's a I feel like this is probably the best
Speaker 1: deal we're going to see on this device throughout the
Speaker 1: holidays because thirty percent off is a reasonable amount. So
Speaker 1: if you have an Android phone, you have to go
Speaker 1: into Google Play. So open up your Google Play and
Speaker 1: when you open Google Play, up at the top, there's
Speaker 1: like some numbers. Those are your play points, so tap
Speaker 1: those and it brings you to an area where it
Speaker 1: says earn use or perks, And what you want to
Speaker 1: do is tap perks. And once you're inside Perks, you'll
Speaker 1: see all the little offers that Google's giving you. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you there's actually one more that popped
Speaker 1: up today that was actually pretty good. So if you
Speaker 1: look down it says get thirty percent off select pixel devices,
Speaker 1: and so you select that and then it'll give you
Speaker 1: a promo code. Now, this expires on December second, so
Speaker 1: you don't have too much time to kind of make
Speaker 1: your decision, but that gives you enough, gives you four weeks.
Speaker 1: And I've been checking Amazon because sometimes when these things happen,
Speaker 1: anytime there's a discount on one method of shopping, Amazon
Speaker 1: will notice that and it will say, ooh, we're gonna
Speaker 1: discount it too, so you don't even need to shop there.
Speaker 1: And so I've been watching Amazon to see if they
Speaker 1: discount the Pixel nine and I noticed they did discount
Speaker 1: the standard Pixel nine, which is now on sale for
Speaker 1: six hundred and fifty dollars regularly eight hundred. But actually
Speaker 1: I think thirty percent off of that is better. Right
Speaker 1: eight times three is twenty four, that'd be two hundred
Speaker 1: and forty bucks off, So it's still a better deal
Speaker 1: to buy it directly from Google. Also, the Pixel Pro,
Speaker 1: the Pixel nine pro fold is also discounted on Amazon,
Speaker 1: but the Pixel nine Pro is not. So that's where
Speaker 1: you find it. And if you want to get that deal,
Speaker 1: just say redeem and it will give you that code.
Speaker 1: And if it's not for everyone, apparently not everyone has
Speaker 1: access to it, but a lot enough do.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 1: The other deal I'm seeing here is a special offer
Speaker 1: from YouTube ad free YouTube and YouTube music for four
Speaker 1: months for free. So that's another great deal. And I
Speaker 1: last time I checked, and maybe you still have this one,
Speaker 1: but I found a deal for six months free of
Speaker 1: Hulu inside this little perks area. So if you have
Speaker 1: an Android phone, don't forget to check this little perks
Speaker 1: area because they often have things that are really really
Speaker 1: great and they're often sort of personalized just for you.
Speaker 1: So again, open up Google Play up at the top,
Speaker 1: you'll see the points hit perks and that's where you'll
Speaker 1: find all these perks. But Google nine Pixel nine at
Speaker 1: that price is really really good. Cannot be combined with
Speaker 1: any other offers. Obviously you could do a trade in
Speaker 1: with it though, so if you have a phone to
Speaker 1: trade in, you can still do that.
Speaker 2: Let's see here. Let's let's go to Craig and des Moines. Craig,
Speaker 2: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 10: How you doing it?
Speaker 2: I'm doing excellent. Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I'm the blind guy.
Speaker 12: From des Moin DA.
Speaker 2: How's life in des Moines these days.
Speaker 5: Oh, not too bad as cold.
Speaker 2: Oh it's cold.
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 1: I always forget how cold it gets everywhere else because
Speaker 1: you're in Lalla Land. You know, it's like fantasy land.
Speaker 1: Every day you wake up, you're like, oh, sun still shining,
Speaker 1: it's still beautiful. Oh it's a little shy sixty degree.
Speaker 5: I lived in la for forty years.
Speaker 11: Oh that came back here for drilled me.
Speaker 1: So you remember, you remember the days of just not
Speaker 1: having to look at the weather forecast? Right, So what's
Speaker 1: on your mind today?
Speaker 12: Okay?
Speaker 11: They made tell you I have a JB L.
Speaker 5: Head. They covered the complete.
Speaker 11: Hell Okay, Now on the box it said seventy hours. Okay,
Speaker 11: they were one hundred and sixty dollars, got them, but
Speaker 11: yesterday and I took the old hell bud back but
Speaker 11: they wouldn't pay in my heel. But anyway, how much
Speaker 11: playtime do I have on them?
Speaker 1: So it says seventy hours? Are these wireless or they
Speaker 1: plug in?
Speaker 5: They go see the blue No, they don't clog, so
Speaker 5: they're Bluetooth.
Speaker 2: Okay, and it says seventy hours that you get.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it said that on the bout.
Speaker 13: Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well I'm looking my woke redy to me.
Speaker 1: I'm looking here. Let's see here up to fifty hours
Speaker 1: of music, Okay, so yeah, I mean, look, these are
Speaker 1: these are over the year headphones, so they're they're probably
Speaker 1: gonna give you a decent amount of hours. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at their website. Some of them are rated for fifty
Speaker 1: summer seventy. But I think you're going to get a
Speaker 1: reasonable amount of time. I know with me personally, with
Speaker 1: the over the year headphones I have, they last almost forever,
Speaker 1: like I barely need to charge them ever.
Speaker 2: So I think you've got a good thing to go.
Speaker 2: And Craig, thanks for the call.
Speaker 1: Coming up, we're going to talk about cell phone plans,
Speaker 1: which one's the best for you? Right here on rich
Speaker 1: On Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you, talking technology. If you want
Speaker 1: to get in on the phone lines, they're open eighty
Speaker 1: to eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. We'll get back to
Speaker 1: them in just a moment, but first we've got a
Speaker 1: great guest to talk about your cell phone plan and
Speaker 1: choosing the right one for you. Rob Pegoraro, rights for
Speaker 1: Wirecutter and other uh all kinds of places, PC mag
Speaker 1: Fast Company, but just came out with a new guide
Speaker 1: on the best cell phone plans for Wirecutter.
Speaker 2: So, Rob, welcome to the show for having me.
Speaker 1: So you've been doing this for a while, You've been
Speaker 1: keeping track of these cell phone plans for a while.
Speaker 1: What do you think is the biggest thing that you've
Speaker 1: seen change over the past couple of years?
Speaker 2: If anything, I've actually.
Speaker 6: Realized this is I've been doing this guide for just
Speaker 6: over ten years.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 6: Wow, wait, before the Wirecutter was a New York Times property.
Speaker 6: I mean the biggest change obviously is the rise of
Speaker 6: Tea Mobile. When I started it, they were, you know,
Speaker 6: kind of an upstart, really improving rapidly, but they had
Speaker 6: a lot of work to do. It was a four
Speaker 6: carryer market. Now it's three. Care you might have four
Speaker 6: if boost Mobile continues growing.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, can you can you explain that
Speaker 1: real quick? Like, what is the deal Boost Mobile? Do
Speaker 1: they really have their own towers?
Speaker 6: They do? It's this weird sort of bank shot the
Speaker 6: government set up when they approved Team Mobile buying sprints.
Speaker 6: They said, okay, we want we don't want to see
Speaker 6: US be a three carrier market permanently, so we'll sort
Speaker 6: of cobble together one you sprint and give some spectrum
Speaker 6: to boost you sell off that band to the brand
Speaker 6: to Dish network, which already had a bunch of licenses.
Speaker 6: And they've got a government deadline they've met to them
Speaker 6: so far to build out a five G network from scratch,
Speaker 6: which is really hard, and they've done pretty well so far.
Speaker 6: But it's one of these things, you know, the ninety
Speaker 6: percent of the work is in the last ten percent
Speaker 6: of the coverage, so they have more work to do,
Speaker 6: but they've been building out rapidly. It seems to work well.
Speaker 6: I have not a chance to try it out yet.
Speaker 2: Okay, so big on them.
Speaker 1: But it is available, like like is it like so
Speaker 1: if I let's say, and I'm guessing so because I
Speaker 1: know they have like their infinite network, which was like
Speaker 1: using like the other carriers, So I'm guessing until their
Speaker 1: network is fully built out, they're kind of like relying
Speaker 1: on falling back so much.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 6: They say that the last deadline they met was to
Speaker 6: cover seventy percent of the US population. They meant that
Speaker 6: last summer. I think, yeah, last July. They've done that.
Speaker 6: They they backfill that with least coverage from AT and
Speaker 6: T and T Mobile and they say, with that we cover,
Speaker 6: we give people access to more towers we don't own
Speaker 6: them than any other service. That said, you have to
Speaker 6: look at their what they're selling carefully because they have
Speaker 6: very low prices. But you know, you asked me what
Speaker 6: the biggest change is, I would say, how many different
Speaker 6: ways carriers have learned to spell and pronounce unlimited.
Speaker 2: Ah, everyone will unlimited.
Speaker 6: But you got to read the fine print, the asterisks,
Speaker 6: the double asterisks. There's so many different wrinkles they'll put
Speaker 6: in so they can differentiate, charge some people more if
Speaker 6: they need more of an unlimited thing, and compete with
Speaker 6: other people to lett over priced by putting limits on
Speaker 6: their unlimited service.
Speaker 2: So I guess my first question.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I wanted to nerd out real
Speaker 1: quick about the Boost Mobile. It reminds me back in
Speaker 1: the day when Sprint PCs was starting up and they
Speaker 1: had their own brand new network that was like completely digital,
Speaker 1: and I was so hyped to get on that network
Speaker 1: because it was brand new and digital instead of the
Speaker 1: old analog networks. But I remember it worked in like
Speaker 1: literally driving around LA with like work in like three
Speaker 1: places for the beginning.
Speaker 6: Sprint spectrum lost in d C. I want to say
Speaker 6: that was I don't really date myself. This was like
Speaker 6: nineteen ninety four, ninety five, a prior millennium.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's that's a wild okay. So let's h okay.
Speaker 1: So the unlimited thing, So, first off, how do people
Speaker 1: figure out their coverage? Like I always tell people, get
Speaker 1: a cell phone plan that works where you work and
Speaker 1: where you live really well, but how do you figure
Speaker 1: out what works there?
Speaker 6: So obviously the carriers have their own cutge maps, and
Speaker 6: usually they'll say we have awesome coverage, no problem. That's
Speaker 6: not always the case. I've certainly seen gaps between like
Speaker 6: you know my I use T Mobile myself, and they'll
Speaker 6: say they have service in these places, but really they
Speaker 6: don't where it's very thin or patchy, and so you know,
Speaker 6: you might be able to post a picture to Instagram,
Speaker 6: but your video reel is just not going to happen
Speaker 6: in a feasible time. The biggest thing is just first
Speaker 6: person testimonials. If friends of yours, people you know, people
Speaker 6: at work can say, yeah, this carrier is great in
Speaker 6: this place, but in a vacation home. They're awful. That's
Speaker 6: a really VALIDATA point. There are third party resources you
Speaker 6: can do. It was just poking around. There's an app
Speaker 6: called Open Signal from one of the companies that do
Speaker 6: their own sort of testing and research of coverage and
Speaker 6: network performance, and you can zoom in on an area
Speaker 6: and see where people using the Apple's sort of coverage
Speaker 6: they've found through the app. And yeah, I've definitely seen
Speaker 6: there's a town in rural Virginia where a friend of
Speaker 6: mine has a house by the by the Jesse Bay.
Speaker 6: And yeah, the Open Signal map seems to be correct
Speaker 6: in saying that T mobile is not so great there,
Speaker 6: and AT and T and Verriison are a little bit better.
Speaker 1: Interesting because you've been there and it's kind of crowdsourced
Speaker 1: and you know from first person that doesn't really work there. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how do you know if you should go to
Speaker 1: prepaid because now we see all these prepaid plans they
Speaker 1: seem just as good as the big carrier plans.
Speaker 2: Like what's the delineation? Like why how do you decide?
Speaker 2: Two things?
Speaker 6: I would say to look at Number one, you know,
Speaker 6: are you ready to just pay full price for an
Speaker 6: unlocked phone, bring that to the carrier or the service
Speaker 6: usually prepaid, their offshoots, their third parties. You know, they're
Speaker 6: not actual network carriers like AT and T, T Mobile, Verizon.
Speaker 6: They'll sell you phones, but it will probably be you know,
Speaker 6: second tier stuff, maybe older iPhones. You won't get a
Speaker 6: Google Pixel phone number two. You know, see how they
Speaker 6: define on limited, they are much more likely to say, yes,
Speaker 6: we give you fifty gig as a prairie data instead
Speaker 6: of oh, your service is going to get a little slower.
Speaker 6: It will be your service will be cut down to
Speaker 6: like one point five megabits per second, which back in
Speaker 6: nineteen ninety five would have been very very fast. Now
Speaker 6: it's not or even like five hundred and twelve kilobits
Speaker 6: per second, which we're really getting back to the you know,
Speaker 6: dial up speeds almost that's much more likely. One of
Speaker 6: the things I'd look at if you travel internationally, prepaid
Speaker 6: services generally don't offer that. That's where if you buy
Speaker 6: the phone unlocked, you can just use an ESUM when
Speaker 6: you travel. Otherwise you know you won't have service.
Speaker 1: And I would add my wife, which I switched, not
Speaker 1: against her will, but she was like, why do I
Speaker 1: have to switch. I'm like, because you don't use any data.
Speaker 1: So I switched her one of these cheap carriers. And
Speaker 1: when there became a problem, like the sim wouldn't switch
Speaker 1: between two phones, everything had to be done over the
Speaker 1: app like chat, which was kind of a nightmare. And
Speaker 1: so the customer service aspect of the idea. If you're
Speaker 1: paying you know, ninety huns or bucks a month, you
Speaker 1: get the idea of you get that benefit of walking
Speaker 1: into a store and saying, here, fix this, whereas if
Speaker 1: you're on one of these smaller ones that don't have
Speaker 1: a store, you're going to be back and forth on
Speaker 1: chat messaging, which is not ideal.
Speaker 6: Good point.
Speaker 1: What about let's see, okay, you talked to International. How
Speaker 1: much data do you think the average smartphone user needs?
Speaker 1: You know, you mentioned that slows down, but like, do
Speaker 1: people really need an unlimited plan or what?
Speaker 6: In many cases they don't. And you know, the better
Speaker 6: prepaid service is the ones that offer real saving sort
Speaker 6: of recognize that. I would point to mint Mobile, which
Speaker 6: used to be an independent company. Tea Lebile owns them
Speaker 6: now they have very cheap prices, especially if you just
Speaker 6: commit to pay for the year's worth of service. This
Speaker 6: is sort of the old contract coming back, but at
Speaker 6: least you save money that way. So right now I'm
Speaker 6: going to pull up my own phone right here, Let's
Speaker 6: jump into the end roid settings. See how much I've
Speaker 6: used over the last internets. Now you're you're where to
Speaker 6: Google hide this feature of the scenario?
Speaker 4: Are you on? I on?
Speaker 2: You're on fifteen?
Speaker 6: This is this is a pixel eight a running indur
Speaker 6: at fifteen.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 6: Also, let's see so far just started billing cycle, so
Speaker 6: one point forty nine gigs used this month. Let's go
Speaker 6: take a look at last Monthember.
Speaker 2: Fourth, so where let's say, use.
Speaker 6: Fifteen gigs last month, And like to state the obvious,
Speaker 6: I'm not normal. I use my phone a lot more
Speaker 6: than many other people. You know, there was a lot
Speaker 6: of travel in that month, but fifteen gigs is below
Speaker 6: the limited data plans of a lot of prepaid services.
Speaker 6: Some of that service the data I used up was tethering,
Speaker 6: which is something you may not get on some prepaid plans.
Speaker 6: And that's another thing you have to watch out for.
Speaker 6: How often are you going to want to use your
Speaker 6: phone's been with and share it with your tablet or
Speaker 6: your laptop via the mobile hotspot function on the phone.
Speaker 6: That's that's a given on you know, the heavily advertised
Speaker 6: unlimited plans, the Big three, the many smaller services, prepaid brands, resellers.
Speaker 6: You don't get that, or it's very limited, or there's
Speaker 6: a speed limit on it. There's some other way that
Speaker 6: the unlimited thing becomes limited.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, we've got about a minute, and I want
Speaker 1: to Obviously we're talking to Rob about the Wirecutter article
Speaker 1: the best cell phone Plan, So instead of having you
Speaker 1: go through what you found to be the best, you
Speaker 1: can go to the article to read that. But I'm
Speaker 1: curious for your take on these cable companies cellular plans.
Speaker 1: I get a question like, hey, Rich, should I go
Speaker 1: to a Spectrum Mobile? Do I go to an Infinity Mobile?
Speaker 1: Are they worth it? And what's the catch?
Speaker 6: The catch is you have to be the cable company's
Speaker 6: internet customer. There's sort of a customer retention play. But
Speaker 6: the thing is, the cable companies seem to be running
Speaker 6: these services as well. Lots of people complain about comcasts,
Speaker 6: TV and broadband, but in customer satisfaction surveys, they love
Speaker 6: Exfinity Mobile.
Speaker 1: Okay, well that's good, and I know it's a good deal,
Speaker 1: but again it's like you have to stay a customer
Speaker 1: and so that.
Speaker 6: It's going to keep you from cutting that cable broadband cord,
Speaker 6: which if Comcast is the only customer that was given anyways,
Speaker 6: then you just need to see how the service works.
Speaker 6: And again check the pricing, because Exfinity Mobile is one
Speaker 6: of these things where they sell you unlimited, but above
Speaker 6: a certain level it gets slowed down a whole lot.
Speaker 6: Still usable, but not fast.
Speaker 1: All right, and tell us about the article. What else
Speaker 1: are we going to learn it. We're going to learn
Speaker 1: to your top picks.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we have picks for different scenarios. If you need
Speaker 6: a lot of data, if you need maximum coverage, if
Speaker 6: you're looking to optimize for price, if you travel a
Speaker 6: lot internationally. I talk about trends in the industry, how
Speaker 6: five views has finally become a reality and is basically
Speaker 6: a done deal. We're not letting up new frequencies. How
Speaker 6: we're moving on to satellite roaming, whether it's emergency messaging
Speaker 6: or actual broadband slower broadband coming to your phone from
Speaker 6: a satellite.
Speaker 1: All right, Rob Pegoraro, he wrote the Wirecutter Cell phone
Speaker 1: plan guide. I will link it up on the website
Speaker 1: rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 2: Rob, this was a pleasure. Thanks for joining me tonight.
Speaker 2: THANKIKS eighty eight.
Speaker 1: Rich one eight seven four two four one zero one
Speaker 1: more rich On Tech coming your way right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech. Ed is in Huntington Beach.
Speaker 1: Ed wanted to comment on the uh.
Speaker 2: The cell phone plans. Let's bring that up, Ed.
Speaker 7: What's up you doing?
Speaker 2: Rich good?
Speaker 5: Hey buddy, Okay, so, yes, you're looking. You're you're discussing
Speaker 5: the right payment plan or the right phone for you. Sure,
Speaker 5: and I agree.
Speaker 13: With you earlier.
Speaker 5: There is no such thing as a free phone when
Speaker 5: you sign up with anybody, correct, So I I I'm
Speaker 5: with Metro PCs. I've been with them for darn near
Speaker 5: fourteen years, right, okay, And that was back when it
Speaker 5: was taboo to be with Metro PCs.
Speaker 2: Yes, still with now.
Speaker 5: I only pay one hundred dollars a month for four
Speaker 5: phones and they're all iPhones. They do the same thing
Speaker 5: yours does, or anybody else's.
Speaker 4: Memory.
Speaker 5: All that gadget stuff you guys talk about, But the
Speaker 5: only niche in it is you got to buy your
Speaker 5: own phone. Each whatever a couple of years when your
Speaker 5: phone wears out, right, right, But I mean it was
Speaker 5: one hundred dollars when it was just me and my
Speaker 5: wife and my kids were babies, and now they're grown,
Speaker 5: they're in high school, and I bought two phones for them.
Speaker 5: It's still one hundred bucks because I have the same
Speaker 5: contract I kept. I mean, come on, who has the
Speaker 5: same contract before?
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1: So you're saying because on the big plans like the Verizon,
Speaker 1: like for me personally, like I just had to switch
Speaker 1: my entire plan because I got an email saying, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to raise your rates this amount, or you
Speaker 1: can switch your plan to this because I was on
Speaker 1: an older plan.
Speaker 2: And if you get one of those phones, the carrot,
Speaker 2: that's the carrot, right exactly.
Speaker 1: And then if you get an iPhone for free, quote unquote,
Speaker 1: you got to change that. You know, whatever the latest
Speaker 1: unlimited plan is, they want you on that. Whereas I
Speaker 1: remember when Metro was really being heavily promoted by T
Speaker 1: Mobile when they bought them, they were adding they're just
Speaker 1: tossing in lines like they were, you know, just free
Speaker 1: lines all over the place.
Speaker 5: Right, And essentially Metro is T Mobile. Yeah, people, with
Speaker 5: all my friends, it's kind of like a taboo question
Speaker 5: when you have somebody, hey, how much do you pay
Speaker 5: for your cell phone bill each month?
Speaker 1: Yes, it's right up there with with who you voted
Speaker 1: for two things you don't want to bring up at
Speaker 1: a dinner party.
Speaker 5: Ask me how much? I hey, three one hundred bucks
Speaker 5: a month for four phones?
Speaker 1: This is so so ed. You know my mom she
Speaker 1: has I moved her onto.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: She used to have Cricket. Now she's got Mint Mobile.
Speaker 1: And I'm not kidding. She tells all of her friends
Speaker 1: how much she pays. She pays one time of year.
Speaker 1: I think it's like three hundred bucks for the whole year.
Speaker 1: And she has the same service, same stuff, And you know,
Speaker 1: Min obviously runs on T Mobile as well. And her
Speaker 1: friends like, no, no, I have a ninety dollars plan
Speaker 1: from AT and T. It can't there's no way it
Speaker 1: could be the same. She's like, it's the same.
Speaker 2: I checked my Facebook.
Speaker 5: They also say that too, there's no way your phone
Speaker 5: can do what mine can do. Yes, yeah, it does everything.
Speaker 5: And I guess well, I'm trying to bring up a
Speaker 5: point as when when you're talking about the right plan
Speaker 5: for you. Of course you want the cheapest plan, but
Speaker 5: you don't want it to change. You want you don't
Speaker 5: want it to get more expensive. So I knew it
Speaker 5: a long time ago. As long as I keep this
Speaker 5: contract going and you can't miss a payment, there is
Speaker 5: no operators or anybody to call who cares. There's Google.
Speaker 5: But as long as you keep paying your pay payment
Speaker 5: each month, my bill does not change. Even when I
Speaker 5: buy new phones and bring them in or buy them
Speaker 5: from them. I know it's that's an expensive day, but
Speaker 5: it happens once in a while. But my I'm still
Speaker 5: paying one hundred dollars a month. That's what's that's what's important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're saving over the long term, and most people
Speaker 1: don't want to do that math of the long term
Speaker 1: versus the initial And thanks for the call there on
Speaker 1: hunting the beach.
Speaker 2: Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Metro is now for four lines
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy five bucks a month, so one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty for the first month, and that includes
Speaker 1: some unlimited things. You're saving like seventy five dollars a
Speaker 1: month for those four lines times twelve. That's nine hundred
Speaker 1: bucks a year minimum, So that's a free iPhone right there.
Speaker 1: Uh eighty eight rich one one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Talked about this
Speaker 1: a little bit earlier in the show. But bitcoin, if
Speaker 1: you happen to have some, you might want to take
Speaker 1: a look at your account because it is up, up, up,
Speaker 1: up up. We talked about bitcoin extensively on a recent show.
Speaker 1: Remember I went to that Bitcoin LA conference and uh, now,
Speaker 1: bitcoin and there are a lot of people that are
Speaker 1: very excited about bitcoin because of the election of President
Speaker 1: President elect Trump and his pro crypto stance. So the
Speaker 1: market is very optimistic. And in the past month, bitcoin
Speaker 1: is up twenty seven percent. In the past week, it's
Speaker 1: up ten percent. The past day it's down one percent.
Speaker 1: So you know, but people, I think, what's gonna happen here?
Speaker 1: We're seeing this has got to be almost an all
Speaker 1: time high. We're at seventy six thousand dollars today. Apparently
Speaker 1: it reached seventy seven thousand on Friday before the weekend happened.
Speaker 1: But people are buying this in their retirement plans as well.
Speaker 1: So you can buy bitcoin. Number one, you don't have
Speaker 1: to buy a whole coin. Right, you can buy a
Speaker 1: portion of a coin. So for instance, if you you know,
Speaker 1: there's no way you're gonna put seventy six thousand, maybe
Speaker 1: you would, I don't know, but there's you know, you
Speaker 1: buy a portion, so you can say I want to
Speaker 1: buy ten dollars of bitcoin. It will figure out the
Speaker 1: math and give you ten dollars. You want to buy
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars a bitcoin, you do the math. So
Speaker 1: there's various apps that can let you do this, something
Speaker 1: like a cash app, a PayPal app. There's a million
Speaker 1: coin base. I mean, there's so many ways to buy crypto. Again,
Speaker 1: from what I got from that bitcoin conference I went to,
Speaker 1: people are really hip on Bitcoin, but not so much
Speaker 1: the other coins out there. A couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: we saw a lot of coins being promoted and a
Speaker 1: lot of digital currency being promoted. Now we're mostly seeing
Speaker 1: the focus on bitcoin because it is where most of
Speaker 1: the emphasis is in the crypto world. So again, a
Speaker 1: lot of analysts predicting that this could go up to
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars or more by the end of
Speaker 1: the year. And I will go back to my original
Speaker 1: email from my friend who told me back in many
Speaker 1: many years ago. This is let me read this real quick,
Speaker 1: putting this on your calendar. This is in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of big coin news. Price just
Speaker 1: went to a new high over three hundred per coin.
Speaker 1: Last time I emailed you was one twenty five. It's
Speaker 1: growing like crazy, one hundred, twenty.
Speaker 2: Five, three hundred.
Speaker 1: Now it's at seventy six thousand dollars. What a difference
Speaker 1: ten years makes. Do your research before investing. This is
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at triple
Speaker 1: A rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. The website for
Speaker 1: the show rich on Tech dot TV. You've got the
Speaker 1: latest issue of my newsletter UH in it this week
Speaker 1: you can sign up for free. By the way, UH
Speaker 1: talk about how to download your information from various services
Speaker 1: like Instagram, Google, and Microsoft.
Speaker 2: Explain that whole thing.
Speaker 1: Then there's this idea of a you've heard of AI,
Speaker 1: but what about private AI? There is a private and
Speaker 1: uncensored AI chat bot. I mean, that's intriguing, right, So
Speaker 1: I had to check that out. I've got that linked
Speaker 1: up in the show note or as in the newsletter
Speaker 1: as well. And then by way of my brother Justin,
Speaker 1: who's been on the show, he sent me a link
Speaker 1: to a open source image generation one of these AI
Speaker 1: image generators. So there's a website hugging face and they've
Speaker 1: got all these like AI models and things. But this
Speaker 1: one's pretty cool because you use the latest AI stable
Speaker 1: diffusion to generate images, so you can put into prompt
Speaker 1: you don't have to sign in or anything, so it's
Speaker 1: pretty good. Anyway, it's all in the newsletter. Rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot TV. Just just hit the first thing on
Speaker 1: the page and you'll see it, and don't forget to
Speaker 1: leave your email address, says these smart glasses changed my POV.
Speaker 1: It's all about those metas. Oh oh yes, I want
Speaker 1: you to mention this too. Actually I might mention the feedbag,
Speaker 1: but I talk about the the app that I I
Speaker 1: used to email myself and I got an email about
Speaker 1: that ironically, and I talk about how I switched. Actually,
Speaker 1: one of the viewers or listeners that emailed me about
Speaker 1: their app, I think it's better than one I picked,
Speaker 1: So I talk about that as well. Eighty eight rich
Speaker 1: one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero. On this hour, we've got Dan Ackerman
Speaker 1: in front of the show. He's been on before. I
Speaker 1: used to work with him at c NEET. He is
Speaker 1: going to talk to us about AI video clones and
Speaker 1: also he uh he actually heads up sort of the
Speaker 1: content creation at Microcenter. Remember we talked about micro Center
Speaker 1: a couple couple weeks ago. How they're you know, they've
Speaker 1: got the physical stores and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: So might pick his brain a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Herbert in a Rancho, Santa Fe, California.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 12: Thank you, Rich. Quick question. I have a program that
Speaker 12: goes through the computer and finds duplicates. Okay, and it's
Speaker 12: called Jimminy two.
Speaker 7: I think it's by math Paw.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 12: And I went through it and I didn't have any
Speaker 12: idea I had that many dup with this. But I'm
Speaker 12: just picking pictures, and I picked all the ones that
Speaker 12: I would like to get rid of, but I'm afraid to.
Speaker 12: I don't know enough about the program to commit to
Speaker 12: getting rid of a several good advice of memory.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so first off, so Gemini to know it
Speaker 1: very well, really like that program I use it have
Speaker 1: used it in the past, and it's great. It does
Speaker 1: what it says it does. Typically it chooses the file
Speaker 1: that is either newer or smaller or something like that.
Speaker 1: Is that what you've noticed?
Speaker 12: You know, I didn't look into it enough. I glanced
Speaker 12: at it. That is a concern that if I have
Speaker 12: a picture in two different files, whether it takes it
Speaker 12: out of the right one, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, usually about that.
Speaker 1: Typically it uses smarts to kind of figure out, like
Speaker 1: it goes, you know, it has like little rules that
Speaker 1: are built in, so it's going to say, we know,
Speaker 1: you know obviously, like let's say you have two of
Speaker 1: the same pictures and it looks at the information on
Speaker 1: them and says, okay, this one's smaller, so clearly this
Speaker 1: is some sort of thumbnail or screenshot or a copy
Speaker 1: that you made of this picture. Also, this one is newer,
Speaker 1: so we know that there's an older version of it
Speaker 1: that's bigger. So it's going to go through and choose
Speaker 1: typically the one that it thinks it should keep, and
Speaker 1: it typically does that using you know, just it's smarts
Speaker 1: that are built into it. So that's that's probably what's
Speaker 1: going to happen now. The other thing that I would
Speaker 1: say is anytime you are going to make substantial changes
Speaker 1: to a collection of photos, you want to make sure
Speaker 1: that you have a backup before you do that. And
Speaker 1: I know that that's tricky. You know that that can
Speaker 1: be complicated. But if you just get a hard drive
Speaker 1: and use time Machine on your Mac, are these stored
Speaker 1: locally on your Mac?
Speaker 12: Yeah, I I do that, Okay, back up on an
Speaker 12: external hard drive.
Speaker 1: Then you're good to go. Then I think you're fine.
Speaker 1: As long as you have a double back or any
Speaker 1: sort of backup of these pictures, I.
Speaker 2: Think it's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the main thing, is that anytime you're
Speaker 1: making large, substantial changes to any of the files on
Speaker 1: your computer, you just want to be sure that, ay,
Speaker 1: you're doing it slowly and methodically. You don't want to
Speaker 1: just speed through this, and you're making sure you understand,
Speaker 1: you know, the prompts that come up and things like that.
Speaker 1: And with Jim and I, I believe that it puts
Speaker 1: them in like a the trash first and then you
Speaker 1: have to empty the trash. So if you you know,
Speaker 1: I would probably leave them in the trash for the
Speaker 1: next couple of days and then see if you need one.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you one time, Herbert, that I
Speaker 1: deleted a whole bunch of pictures one time out of
Speaker 1: my Google drive and I realized that it was my
Speaker 1: kid on like like some of the kid, like my
Speaker 1: kid when he was born, Like they were all gone,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh no, this is not good.
Speaker 2: And so thankfully I had a backup. I went back.
Speaker 1: I pulled all those pics sures back. But my point
Speaker 1: is it can happen. It's like once they're gone, you're
Speaker 1: looking and you're like, oh no, this is not a
Speaker 1: good thing. So but Gemini is a great program. They
Speaker 1: actually make another one for the iPhone called they used
Speaker 1: to make the version of this Gemini for the iPhone.
Speaker 1: Now they make one called Clean my Phone, which is
Speaker 1: also for the iPhone. It can kind of find the
Speaker 1: duplicates and things. But yeah, it's a great program. It
Speaker 1: does what you need. The other one I like that
Speaker 1: does the duplicates is Remo r E m O, and
Speaker 1: they've got a version of that, I believe, for it
Speaker 1: looks like I know Windows, And they also have one
Speaker 1: for Mac as well and the iPhone. So these are
Speaker 1: great programs. Gemini Remo, all good programs. But again, before
Speaker 1: you make any of those changes, please just make sure
Speaker 1: you have a backup. If you're on Windows, just use
Speaker 1: the built in backup. Just get a hard drive back
Speaker 1: up your computer. If you're on you know, the Mac
Speaker 1: side of things, just use time Machine. And if you're
Speaker 1: doing anything that's like working with your cloud stuff. You know, people,
Speaker 1: it took a while for people to realize that when
Speaker 1: you delete a picture on your iPhone to save space,
Speaker 1: it's also deleting it out of iCloud. So just be
Speaker 1: aware of that. You know, when you're deleting things, you
Speaker 1: have to be very aware of just how much you're
Speaker 1: doing and how permanent that deletion is. Thankfully, with most
Speaker 1: of these cloud services, things go into a deleted folder
Speaker 1: where they stick around for a good thirty days before
Speaker 1: they actually get deleted. So on iPhone, if you want
Speaker 1: to look into that, you can open up your photos
Speaker 1: app and if you scroll I mean they just change
Speaker 1: the way photos works.
Speaker 2: It's such a mess.
Speaker 1: But if you scroll down you'll see where it says
Speaker 1: utilities and recently deleted. So if you go into that album,
Speaker 1: that's where you're going to see the recently deleted. And
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, you know, if you're I just I
Speaker 1: see the evil uses of all this stuff, like if
Speaker 1: you're you know anyway, my point is that'd be the
Speaker 1: first place I looked on a phone if I had
Speaker 1: to like kind of see what's going on with this
Speaker 1: person in their phone.
Speaker 2: Thankfully Apple got hipped to that.
Speaker 1: And now if you notice there's a little lock next
Speaker 1: to the recently deleted, that's because let's say you grab
Speaker 1: someone's iPhone and you're like, oh, I bet you I
Speaker 1: can find some interesting stuff and they're recently deleted. They
Speaker 1: now lock that down, so you need to actually use
Speaker 1: face ID or passcode to open that up because they
Speaker 1: figured out that, yeah, people probably delete some stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want other people to see. Now, if you're in
Speaker 1: Google Photos, which is what I use for my photos,
Speaker 1: same thing. If you go into your collections, then you
Speaker 1: can go and find your trash in there. So if
Speaker 1: you go Google Photos collections and then trash it takes
Speaker 1: It says items will be permanently deleted after sixty days
Speaker 1: from trash, so that gives you enough time to do
Speaker 1: something like clean out your system and go, oh wait,
Speaker 1: where's that picture I just deleted. Oh there it is okay,
Speaker 1: and you can restore those pictures easily. So that's the
Speaker 1: way to do it. Great call Herbert. Thanks for the question.
Speaker 5: There.
Speaker 2: Let's see, do we have time to go to another question?
Speaker 1: Not really, we got might have to wait until after
Speaker 1: the break eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four to one zero one uh.
Speaker 2: Timothy Jacob Hudson.
Speaker 1: In this in how to Geek, the website says you
Speaker 1: can skip paid antivirus in twenty twenty four. This is
Speaker 1: an argument, and I've heard this idea before that what's
Speaker 1: built into Windows is probably good enough nowadays.
Speaker 2: But let me give you his argument.
Speaker 1: He says Windows Defender, which is Microsoft's built in antivirus,
Speaker 1: basically gets perfect or near perfect scores in security tests.
Speaker 1: So he says, the built in modern security on devices
Speaker 1: like Windows, iOS, Android in Mac has pretty much comprehensive
Speaker 1: protection without a lot of extra cost, and most common
Speaker 1: malware threats are already blocked by email, they blocked dangerous
Speaker 1: attachments built in firewalls and the default system protections that
Speaker 1: you have on Windows, iOS, Android in Mac. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing that I would say with the caveat. So yes,
Speaker 1: if you want to save money, you can use the
Speaker 1: Microsoft built in antivirus Windows Defender.
Speaker 2: Just make sure it's up to date. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: This only really works a if your software is up
Speaker 1: to date and current. So if you're you know, Mac software,
Speaker 1: your Windows software, your iPhone, you're Android or all up
Speaker 1: to date, that's number one, you have to have those
Speaker 1: latest security patches. Number two, this does not necessarily protect
Speaker 1: you against you So I've mentioned this a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago. Why I think Chrome is a great browser
Speaker 1: to use because it will scan the links that you
Speaker 1: click and it will tell you in real time, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a phishing link. But the problem is people
Speaker 1: still fall for this stuff on a daily basis, and
Speaker 1: that no antivirus software can really protect you from that.
Speaker 1: So if you're clicking links, your clicking links that you
Speaker 1: get in your text messages or in your email, you're
Speaker 1: putting in personal information, you're logging into websites when it
Speaker 1: says hey there's a problem with your payment, you can
Speaker 1: still get caught even if you're using these built in
Speaker 1: antivirus or built in protection, So be careful, understand what
Speaker 1: phishing is and how they're trying to get you. This
Speaker 1: is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. The
Speaker 1: website for the show richon Tech dot tv coming up
Speaker 1: this hour. We have the feedbag a little bit later
Speaker 1: on and Dan Ackerman formerly I've seen it now with Microcenter.
Speaker 1: He is going to talk about creating an affordable AI
Speaker 1: video clone. I guess he did this himself and has
Speaker 1: some thoughts on that. Let's see email for the show
Speaker 1: richon Tech dot TV got an email here from Michael
Speaker 1: from Duarte. Hey, Rich, I'm a seventy one year old
Speaker 1: and technology challenge.
Speaker 2: I still use my flip phone that serves me very well.
Speaker 1: I try to listen to your show whenever I can
Speaker 1: while i'm washing the car walking around the house. I
Speaker 1: find you're hosting and educational qualities to be very good
Speaker 1: and I do learn things from you and your guests.
Speaker 1: Just end the reading right there. Thank you, Michael, now,
Speaker 1: but I'll keep going. I guess he has a question.
Speaker 1: My Dell desktop with Windows ten serves my basic needs
Speaker 1: web surfing, eBay, forums and streaming TV. Microsoft keeps encouraging
Speaker 1: me to upgrade to Windows eleven. But I believe if
Speaker 1: it ain't broken, don't fix it, will I eventually be
Speaker 1: forced to upgrade. Keep up the great work, Rich, and
Speaker 1: thanks for not only educating us, but being entertaining as well. Wow,
Speaker 1: entertaining you hear that, Bobo entertaining. We are entertaining people here,
Speaker 1: he's being nice. That was auto draft. He just used
Speaker 1: that like auto like the Gmail helped me write, Oh,
Speaker 1: write a nice email to Rich like butter them up.
Speaker 2: So answer my question. No, I'm just kidding. Thank you, Michael.
Speaker 1: Okay, So here's the deal with Windows, and I totally
Speaker 1: understand what you're saying.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I used to be the person I still am where
Speaker 1: I like to upgrade the second it's available, right like,
Speaker 1: I want the cutting edge. And most of the time
Speaker 1: that's just because I'm a nerd. I'm a geek. I
Speaker 1: just like to have the latest, greatest, and of course
Speaker 1: I want to test it out. But I think when
Speaker 1: it comes this is something like Windows eleven. Why do
Speaker 1: you need to do that? I don't think you do,
Speaker 1: especially with the things you're telling me you do with
Speaker 1: your computer. So yes, it's in a Windows best interest
Speaker 1: to get people to upgrade and to upgrade early, and
Speaker 1: if there will be a deadline that you need to
Speaker 1: upgrade by, and that's October fourteenth, twenty twenty five, that's
Speaker 1: called end of support, end of life. That means that
Speaker 1: after that date, Windows will no longer support your system,
Speaker 1: and like we just talked about, that means no more
Speaker 1: security updates, no more bug fixes.
Speaker 2: But here's the catch.
Speaker 1: They just announced that for an extra thirty bucks, you
Speaker 1: can extend that by a year. So Michael, you're looking
Speaker 1: at at the very least, if you don't feel like
Speaker 1: changing anything on your computer, you can use your current
Speaker 1: Windows ten for thirty bucks all the way until well,
Speaker 1: you can use it for free until October fourteenth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. For thirty dollars you can use it all
Speaker 1: the way until October fourteenth, twenty twenty six. So you're
Speaker 1: looking at two more years from now. No big deal.
Speaker 1: I think that for what you need. If your computer's working,
Speaker 1: like you said, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Speaker 2: You don't need to upgrade.
Speaker 1: If you want the Windows eleven stuff, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit tricky because clearly your computer supports it, so that's fine.
Speaker 1: But the stuff that Windows eleven offers is mostly the
Speaker 1: AI stuff, So I mean it's if you want to
Speaker 1: play with that stuff, find the copilot stuff built in,
Speaker 1: but I don't really know if.
Speaker 2: You need it.
Speaker 1: It's it's you're not going to get a substantial change
Speaker 1: in the things that you're doing, because it sounds like
Speaker 1: most of the stuff you're doing is just web browser
Speaker 1: brace web browser based. So great question, and just just
Speaker 1: ignore that prompt until you have to.
Speaker 2: Let's go to.
Speaker 1: Mark in Woodland Hills. Mark and Woodland Hills is on
Speaker 1: the line. Welcome to the show, afternoon.
Speaker 13: You know, I have a question. But I've been listening
Speaker 13: to all this about plans and phones. I'd have to
Speaker 13: tell you that I was going to go to Visible
Speaker 13: for my mobile plan sure, but Mint and get a
Speaker 13: unlimited data. But Mint matched the price. So if people
Speaker 13: like Mint, you can approach them with that, they probably
Speaker 13: will do some. As far as my favorite phone ever,
Speaker 13: it was a Yoda three. I know all the security
Speaker 13: problems with it, but my friend who's a retired Special
Speaker 13: Forces officer, showed me his unplugged by Eric Prince. It's
Speaker 13: a fantastic phone. It's nine hundred and fifty bucks.
Speaker 5: You know it's not cheap, but.
Speaker 13: They have vetted everything, and everything on their app store
Speaker 13: is vetted. Plus, when you turn your phone off, it's off,
Speaker 13: it disconnects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, phone has a lot.
Speaker 13: Of security elements built into it, and if you know
Speaker 13: who Erik Prince is you can figure out why. But
Speaker 13: I just thought i'd share that with your listeners.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting the new phones actually, with both iPhone
Speaker 1: and Android, if you've got the latest operating system, they
Speaker 1: may turn off, but they're still findable with the fine miss.
Speaker 1: So if you look at the pixel and you look
Speaker 1: at the iPhone, things don't really go off on those.
Speaker 1: Do you have you heard of the graphene Graphene os?
Speaker 1: So this is like you can put this on your phone.
Speaker 1: I guess it's like a you know, it's an Android
Speaker 1: operating system that is completely secure and private and mobile.
Speaker 1: But the problem is, you know, since it doesn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of connections to the Google Play Store, it's
Speaker 1: going to be a little trickier to run things. So
Speaker 1: that's like if you really want, like to turn any
Speaker 1: phone into like a private phone. Anyway, I was going
Speaker 1: to tinker with that to just see what it was
Speaker 1: all about. So sounds like that's what that the other
Speaker 1: unplugged phone. You're talking about privacy. Look, privacy is going
Speaker 1: to become more important, more and more important in this world. Okay,
Speaker 1: now now that we've burned up, now.
Speaker 13: Nobody is your information with this phone.
Speaker 1: Now that we've burned up all your time, did you
Speaker 1: actually have a question. We only have a minute before coming.
Speaker 13: I have a lot of files and folders, I mean
Speaker 13: thousands of files and they're on various external hard drives
Speaker 13: and my laptop. Free software out there that would help
Speaker 13: me organize all my stuff and boil it down to
Speaker 13: one version so that I can both have that and
Speaker 13: you know, a copy of course.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a great question.
Speaker 1: I mean what I would do is probably just dump
Speaker 1: everything onto like get one drive and dump everything onto there,
Speaker 1: not one drive like Microsoft, but just one drive and
Speaker 1: jump dump everything in. That should take care of some
Speaker 1: of the duplicates. I'm trying to think if there's a
Speaker 1: across the board.
Speaker 2: I can't think of one off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: But the good news about this show is that someone
Speaker 1: else may have a suggestion. But you're saying one app
Speaker 1: that can just go through everything and consolidate. I know
Speaker 1: Dropbox has dash but that may not be exactly what
Speaker 1: you're looking for. That's more for search. We'll think about it.
Speaker 5: Mark.
Speaker 1: Coming up next, we're going to talk about AI clones.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at eighty eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Before the break, we had a Mark
Speaker 1: in Woodland Hills wanting to consolidate all of his files
Speaker 1: and he needed a good app to help him do that.
Speaker 2: I was looking online.
Speaker 1: I found one for Mac called space Drive, which sounds
Speaker 1: like it might actually help him out. It says design
Speaker 1: for creators, hoarders, and the painfully disorganized. So I think
Speaker 1: that one sounds like it might fit the bill for him,
Speaker 1: depending on what side of you know macro windows he's on.
Speaker 2: Joining me now.
Speaker 1: Oh by the way, if you want to comment on
Speaker 1: that or give me a suggestion, you can go to
Speaker 1: the website rich on Tech dot tv and hit the
Speaker 1: show notes and email me that Joining me now is
Speaker 1: Dan Ackerman, editor in chief at Microcenter.
Speaker 2: Dan, welcome to the show. Not good to be with you,
Speaker 2: Rich So.
Speaker 1: Dan and I worked together at cnet many moons ago.
Speaker 1: He is now the editor in chief at Microcenter. Explain
Speaker 1: what that means, because we wrote a love letter to
Speaker 1: micro Center a couple of weeks ago saying how much
Speaker 1: we love the idea of an in shopping in store
Speaker 1: shopping experience, and what does that mean to your editor
Speaker 1: in chief there?
Speaker 14: Explain, Oh, that's so great because you know, after like
Speaker 14: twenty plus years and traditional tech media working at c net,
Speaker 14: being the editor in chief of Gizmoto, I got recruited
Speaker 14: by Microcenter, which is a great organization. It's a series
Speaker 14: about twenty eight twenty nine stores. We can get all
Speaker 14: your computer stuff and TVs and three D printers, but really,
Speaker 14: if you're building a computer from scratch and you need
Speaker 14: all the graphless cards parts, you go there and you
Speaker 14: hang outs all community. And they wanted to start doing
Speaker 14: a news site because they saw that a lot of
Speaker 14: the traditional tech media sites were going out of business,
Speaker 14: laying people off, really downsizing, and they said, you know what,
Speaker 14: let's just hire some experts and get in on this.
Speaker 14: So they hired me, and then I have in turn
Speaker 14: hired many many rich of our former c net colleagues
Speaker 14: as freelancers. Is basically at Mini c net and we
Speaker 14: do reviews and five we talk about AI a lot.
Speaker 15: We're about to get into the holiday shopping season.
Speaker 14: So it's really a tech news site that just happens
Speaker 14: to be under the microsport.
Speaker 1: So if you go to microcenter dot com, is it
Speaker 1: the MC news? Is that what you tap?
Speaker 2: It is?
Speaker 15: And it's also at microcenter dot news.
Speaker 2: Oh, Microcenter dot News. All right, there you go.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some news first off, before we
Speaker 1: get to the AI clones that you tested out. PlayStation
Speaker 1: five Pro launched this week seven hundred dollars. What do
Speaker 1: we need to know about that? The PlayStation five Pro
Speaker 1: really interesting.
Speaker 14: They did this last generation with the PS four Pro
Speaker 14: and the Xbox one X, where before the whole next
Speaker 14: generation they had in between with slightly more powerful graphics,
Speaker 14: more memory to kind of keep up. Because when you
Speaker 14: buy a game console, you're buying something at set in Stone.
Speaker 15: The hardware is not going to change.
Speaker 14: And three or four or five years later, he ses
Speaker 14: gaming PCs are so much more advanced you need kind
Speaker 14: of a catch up, and the PS five Pro is
Speaker 14: that catch up. Basically, if you play PS five games
Speaker 14: a lot of the time, you're going to see.
Speaker 15: There's two graphics options.
Speaker 14: It's like fidelity, which means a lot of special effects
Speaker 14: and radtracing and stuff, but like thirty frames per second,
Speaker 14: or Performance, which strips a lot of the special effects
Speaker 14: out and gives you sixty frames per second. And the
Speaker 14: PS five Pro, because it's got a new GPU and
Speaker 14: more RAM and more storage space, it basically gives you
Speaker 14: the sixty frames and the higher end graphics, and.
Speaker 15: In some games it really makes a difference.
Speaker 1: We were just testing out a game on the one
Speaker 1: of the consoles and my kid came up against that screen.
Speaker 2: He's like, which one should I choose. I'm like, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: Do you want it the better graphics or you want
Speaker 1: the faster gameplay? I guess that's the main thing, right.
Speaker 14: Yeah, And most people go for the faster gameplay, and frankly,
Speaker 14: that's the right choice a lot of the time, because
Speaker 14: you want things to feel fluid, but you also don't
Speaker 14: want to miss out on, you know, rate tracing and
Speaker 14: those all THESS reflections and the cool water effects and
Speaker 14: the lighting. So something like the PS five Pro, and
Speaker 14: I'm sure there'll be an Xbox version of something similar
Speaker 14: not that far in the future, you get to have
Speaker 14: the best of both worlds, and even though it's more
Speaker 14: expensive at you know, seven hundred dollars, it's still less
Speaker 14: than buying a big gaming PC, which could cost you
Speaker 14: twelve hundred and fifteen hundred, two thousand dollars or more
Speaker 14: in order to get that frame rate plus really cool
Speaker 14: visuals combination.
Speaker 1: So would you recommend someone that has the PlayStation five
Speaker 1: to get this and trade in their old one, or
Speaker 1: who do you expect to buy it?
Speaker 15: Says this thing? The trade in is not a bad idea.
Speaker 14: If you have a PS five and you love it,
Speaker 14: I don't think you really need to step up to this.
Speaker 14: But if you're getting into it now and you're like, oh,
Speaker 14: I'm going to go buy a PS five, finally you
Speaker 14: should get the pro because it's going to have a
Speaker 14: longer lifespan than the regular PS five. Or if you
Speaker 14: have one and you're like, oh, I'm going to get
Speaker 14: a second one for the den or the bedroom or something,
Speaker 14: move the original back there, get the pro for your
Speaker 14: living room.
Speaker 1: Okay, And I'm looking at the trade in price on
Speaker 1: the PS five. It's about two hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 1: so that's not too bad for it's not.
Speaker 14: Too bad, but if you're happy with the PS five,
Speaker 14: you don't need to upgrade. But if you're getting into
Speaker 14: the platform now, or if you want to like add
Speaker 14: it to another room, that's a good excuse to this
Speaker 14: lurg to get the.
Speaker 1: Pro Okay, So in one of your latest articles for Microcenter,
Speaker 1: you you experimented with creating an AI clone of yourself.
Speaker 2: So you why'd you want to do that? You know,
Speaker 2: since we.
Speaker 14: Started talking about AI a couple of years ago, one
Speaker 14: of the topics that keeps coming up is people doing
Speaker 14: deep fakes, people making AI clones of themselves.
Speaker 15: You know, Can you trust video? Can you trust audio?
Speaker 15: And those tools have become available to just everyday folks
Speaker 15: like you and me.
Speaker 14: And I spent some time thinking about how it would
Speaker 14: create a clone of myself that could do video, that
Speaker 14: could have my voice, half my face, even half my
Speaker 14: style in terms of writing. It cut me up with content,
Speaker 14: but it was never really there. It was too expensive,
Speaker 14: too complicated, it didn't work well enough. Finally this spring
Speaker 14: it really started to come together, and I signed up
Speaker 14: with one app called hey Jen that's a cloud based
Speaker 14: AI app, and you give it some audio, audio and
Speaker 14: video and it makes a phone of you and does
Speaker 14: the video Okay, the voice is so su So then
Speaker 14: I signed up with another app called eleven Lamps and
Speaker 14: they do really good voice cloning, and then I could
Speaker 14: api the two of them together. So I give my
Speaker 14: script to one app and it does the video and
Speaker 14: pulls in my voice from the other app, and then
Speaker 14: it says, Hey, you've got a video.
Speaker 15: It's something that looks like you reading this script.
Speaker 14: And you know, if you know me very well, maybe
Speaker 14: like you do Rich, you'd be able to tell it
Speaker 14: wasn't really me, but the average person on the street.
Speaker 14: I could make a pretty convincing case that that's a
Speaker 14: real person talking to you.
Speaker 2: Wow, and what do you?
Speaker 7: So? Do you?
Speaker 2: What's your conclusion here?
Speaker 1: I mean, is this something that you would use for
Speaker 1: content creation or is it more just to show like
Speaker 1: this is just the beginning of we're going to see
Speaker 1: people that we don't even know if they're real or not.
Speaker 15: Yeah. I had two reasons I wanted to do this.
Speaker 14: One was to see what you could do and how
Speaker 14: inexpensively you could do it. The article I did on
Speaker 14: this was called basically how to make an AI clone
Speaker 14: yourself for under fifty bucks, Because if you want to
Speaker 14: play around with it for a month. Hey jen was
Speaker 14: like twenty nine dollars a month, eleven lamps was like
Speaker 14: five dollars a month to the basic planner ten dollars
Speaker 14: a month for a more advanced plan. I ended up
Speaker 14: doing a little Q and A session with my virtual
Speaker 14: self and I used the custom GPT I made and
Speaker 14: chat GPT that was trained on all my writing.
Speaker 15: So I would ask you a.
Speaker 14: Couple of questions like should I play Star Wars Outlaws
Speaker 14: or or a Space Marine two? Or what kind of
Speaker 14: power supply do my need for a gaming desktop of
Speaker 14: a forty eighty in video card? And it gave me
Speaker 14: some good answers, and I had my AI you know
Speaker 14: face read them out and.
Speaker 15: Do the split screen. So it's showing that you can
Speaker 15: do that, but it's more to.
Speaker 14: Show people that you should be careful what you watch,
Speaker 14: what you'd listen to, you know, be a smart consumer
Speaker 14: of media. But then I did find a practically used
Speaker 14: for it. I took articles I wrote and I made
Speaker 14: TikTok videos out of them by basically running some b
Speaker 14: roll in the background, giving the article to my AI
Speaker 14: self to read and putt of the little pop up
Speaker 14: end of myself in the bottom reading the article.
Speaker 15: The lighting is always good, the voice always sounds good.
Speaker 15: It's my words. And now you've got a quick TikTok.
Speaker 14: Video or a YouTube shorts video based on the articles
Speaker 14: that I wrote that I wouldn't have time to do
Speaker 14: a breakout video up necessarily.
Speaker 2: That is so wild, all right.
Speaker 1: If you want to see this, you can go to
Speaker 1: the website Microcenter.
Speaker 2: Dan has got it linked up. Let me see here.
Speaker 1: The article is titled how I turn myself into an
Speaker 1: AI video clone for under fifty dollars. And I got
Speaker 1: to say the video clone looked pretty good. I was impressed,
Speaker 1: so it's pretty good.
Speaker 14: The first version I did, I used just the stealthy
Speaker 14: camera on my phone and it was okay. The second version,
Speaker 14: I used the rear camera on the phone is really
Speaker 14: good natural lighting.
Speaker 15: That was a lot better.
Speaker 14: The third version I went to the Microcenter studio and
Speaker 14: they shot me in a studio with.
Speaker 15: A professional camera in professional lighting.
Speaker 14: And the better material that you give these AI apps,
Speaker 14: the better version of yourself that you're going to get back.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: And I've also seen you can make headshots. You know,
Speaker 1: people use these programs to make headshots of themselves as well,
Speaker 1: and it's like you need like a couple of pictures
Speaker 1: and it like makes you look like the best possible
Speaker 1: you've ever looked in your life.
Speaker 2: Like, how did they do that? Oh, it's ai.
Speaker 15: It's really funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very fun Dan, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. The website microcenter dot com and uh
Speaker 1: tell me again, it's microcenter dot dot news, dot news
Speaker 1: if you want to go.
Speaker 15: Directly new stories and reviews.
Speaker 1: Yep, and very exciting, very very cool. And I love
Speaker 1: that you're doing this this news site there.
Speaker 2: It's so cool.
Speaker 1: And we love micro Center because I was in New
Speaker 1: Jersey and I visited it and I talked about how
Speaker 1: much I liked it on the show, and then people
Speaker 1: were emailing me. They said, you know, you didn't have
Speaker 1: to go as far as New Jersey. We have one
Speaker 1: in Tustin, California that we love.
Speaker 15: The Tustin show loved the New Jersey store.
Speaker 14: New ones in Miami and Charlotte and Santa Clara coming
Speaker 14: next year.
Speaker 1: And what's the number one thing people buy there when
Speaker 1: they go in is it the computers?
Speaker 14: Right now, it's like a lot of graphics cards and
Speaker 14: CPUs and I bet next year, when we have the
Speaker 14: next generation Navidia cards, you're gonna see a huge run
Speaker 14: on those.
Speaker 1: All right, Dan Ackerman, editor in chief at micro Center,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2: Appreciate it.
Speaker 15: Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: Rich All right, coming up, Oh, we are opening up
Speaker 1: the feedback plus. I'm gonna tell you why Verizon is
Speaker 1: giving you a little extra time to switch your messaging app.
Speaker 1: This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite things to do every week. Also listening
Speaker 1: to one of my favorite songs right now. Good job,
Speaker 1: I'm playing that at the end, Bobo. So before we
Speaker 1: get to the feedback, which is just bursting open this week,
Speaker 1: let me tell you about Verizon Message Plus. Remember we
Speaker 1: talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Verizon Messages
Speaker 1: is going away and they want you to switch to
Speaker 1: Google Messages. And that was supposed to happen on November seventh,
Speaker 1: but guess what, the deadline has been extended to December ninth.
Speaker 1: So if you want to keep Verizon Messages for just
Speaker 1: a little bit longer, you do have a couple more weeks.
Speaker 1: But I think you should probably switch to a different
Speaker 1: app because this is going away on December ninth, unless
Speaker 1: they extend it again. But then you're really rolling the dice.
Speaker 1: But the reason why they want you to switch from
Speaker 1: Verizon Messages to Google Messages is because you'll get better
Speaker 1: cross messaging between iPhone and Android. Basically, you'll get the
Speaker 1: upgrade to RCS, which means you can send your Android
Speaker 1: friends and your iPhone friends larger quality pictures and videos,
Speaker 1: and you'll see the read receipts and the typing indicators.
Speaker 1: It's just a much better, better solution. All right, Let's
Speaker 1: open up the feedbag. These are the emails, the comments,
Speaker 1: and the questions you send to me every week on
Speaker 1: the website. Rich on tech dot tv hit contact, Leo
Speaker 1: writes in, Hey, Rich, just had a chance to listen
Speaker 1: to your last podcast, and I have a couple of notes.
Speaker 1: Rear dash cams work great through the rear windows, but
Speaker 1: I haven't found a tape that stays put when the
Speaker 1: sun beats down. Even heavy duty heat resistant tape melts off.
Speaker 1: I'd suggest mounting it on the package shelf or another
Speaker 1: part of the car. Also, you said the email me
Speaker 1: app is only available for iOS, but I've used it
Speaker 1: a long time on Android and it's free.
Speaker 2: Keep up the good work.
Speaker 1: So I had to look this up because I use
Speaker 1: email me on iOS and then I use email myself
Speaker 1: on Android. Email me is available on Android, but it's
Speaker 1: not the same app that's on iOS. Yes, so I
Speaker 1: did check out the email Me and I gotta say, Leo,
Speaker 1: I actually switched over because I like it. It's cleaner,
Speaker 1: it's simpler, it's easier. It is free, with the one
Speaker 1: caveat that if you want to change the subject line
Speaker 1: you have to pay. And that's actually a smart thing
Speaker 1: by the developer because for me, the way I filter
Speaker 1: all of my notes to self is with the subject line.
Speaker 2: I put a little hashtag in it. So I will
Speaker 2: be paying the.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is three dollars to upgrade this, but email
Speaker 1: me I'll link it up on the show notes. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the suggestion. It's rare that I switch an app
Speaker 1: that quickly. Terry writes in, Hey, Rich, love watching you
Speaker 1: on TV and also on social media. Your sessions are helpful.
Speaker 1: I have total av on my desktop some years ago.
Speaker 1: I took advantage of an introductory price. Each year, I
Speaker 1: call total AV and explain I'm a senior on a
Speaker 1: fixed income, before asking if they can help with the price.
Speaker 1: Much to my surprise, they are willing to assist. Recently,
Speaker 1: we agreed to fifty nine instead of one to fifty
Speaker 1: nine for my renewal. A few days later they offered
Speaker 1: twenty nine, which I accepted. I verified this low price
Speaker 1: was legitimate, calling their official number. Good job, Terry, And yes,
Speaker 1: I think that the less you pay for this probably
Speaker 1: the better they will get you on a high renewal
Speaker 1: rate if you don't pay less. And I find that
Speaker 1: this is a good thing to do. With anything that
Speaker 1: you're paying, always call in, because honestly, even with doctor's offices,
Speaker 1: just say, hey, is this the best deal I can get?
Speaker 2: Is this the best price you can give me?
Speaker 1: I've called doctor's bills and they literally just by asking them,
Speaker 1: they'll be like, oh, yeah, here, we'll take fifty bucks
Speaker 1: off or whatever. So same thing with all these things.
Speaker 1: Just call in if you want to get a better price.
Speaker 1: Steven from Orange rites in you might be interested in this.
Speaker 1: I always pay cash at brick and mortar merchants. Recently,
Speaker 1: at Trader Joe's, I pulled my wallet from my pocket
Speaker 1: and the cashier handed me my receipt.
Speaker 2: Wait, I hadn't paid yet.
Speaker 1: Turns out the reader had detected my credit card through
Speaker 1: my thick leather. Wallet management said, this can happen, Stephen.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you wrote me this, because I have
Speaker 1: actually experienced this myself, specifically at Trader Joe's. I don't
Speaker 1: know what their systems are, but they are the strongest
Speaker 1: RFI D NFC whatever you one, it's NFC. It is
Speaker 1: the strongest NFC antenna I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: I pull out my card and immediately it goes oop
Speaker 1: and I said, wait, what, I didn't even tap yet.
Speaker 1: And it's happened several times. So thankfully, I use a
Speaker 1: debit card most of the time, and it still wants that.
Speaker 1: It still wants that pin number. But if you use
Speaker 1: a credit card, yeah, it's just gonna authorize it instantly.
Speaker 1: A lot of people like these RFI D blocker wallets,
Speaker 1: so a lot of the wallets I've seen have that
Speaker 1: built in just for this sort of protection. So there's
Speaker 1: a company named Silent Pocket that makes these things and others,
Speaker 1: but you can just look for any RFI D blocker technology.
Speaker 1: My wallet actually has that now my new wallet does
Speaker 1: have that, and so I do. I do like that
Speaker 1: feature because you just never know. And it's only happened
Speaker 1: to me at Trader Joe's for some reason. But I
Speaker 1: love that place, so I'm fine with it, and it
Speaker 1: is me buying it, So there you go. Alan from Brookline,
Speaker 1: Massachusetts listens to the podcast. He says, listening to your
Speaker 1: November second podcast about the caller with Google Chrome quote
Speaker 1: performance issues. I tried your suggestion to perform a settings reset.
Speaker 1: I had the same issue on my MacBook Pro. It
Speaker 1: took about sixty seconds and it kept my bookmarks. I
Speaker 1: just had to reactivate some extensions like bitwarden and re
Speaker 1: log into your web into websites. Thank you for your knowledge. Well, Alan,
Speaker 1: this is what I love about this show. You listen
Speaker 1: to it and you'll learn and you hear things that say, huh,
Speaker 1: I didn't think about doing that, and it helps you out.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like the person who had all the
Speaker 1: different random things happened on their Chrome, they did a
Speaker 1: settings reset and it took care of it.
Speaker 2: Did the same thing for you. Oh, let's see.
Speaker 1: Don writes in a computer upgrade story, After my laptop
Speaker 1: started showing its age. I tried switching to a Mac
Speaker 1: Mini on a friend's recommendation. Despite his help, I struggled
Speaker 1: with the different interface, so I donated it to my church. Later,
Speaker 1: my tech savvy friend Josh found me a mull Form
Speaker 1: Factor PC for just twenty five dollars what after setting
Speaker 1: it up, It's working perfectly, a great alternative to big
Speaker 1: desktop towers.
Speaker 2: Two lessons learned.
Speaker 1: There are affordable solutions out there, and having a knowledgeable,
Speaker 1: helpful friend is invaluable. Keep up the great work, Rich,
Speaker 1: it's helping us all.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: And finally, Reg from the Bay Area listens on the podcast,
Speaker 1: says Rich, just a note of thanks for your segment
Speaker 1: on US Mobile for cell service. I've been an AT
Speaker 1: and T customer for years, paying almost one hundred bucks
Speaker 1: for two lines. After your information, I switched to US Mobile,
Speaker 1: where I'm now on Verizon's network with unlimited calls and
Speaker 1: texts plus five gigs a month for twenty three dollars
Speaker 1: a month, no extra fees. The transfer is easy. I
Speaker 1: wish I'd done it years ago. Thanks for all your
Speaker 1: good work and sound advice. Thank you, Reg. I do
Speaker 1: appreciate that, and that's what I aim to do help
Speaker 1: you just know about this stuff. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you have to make the decision on whether
Speaker 1: you want to switch or whether it's worth it, whether
Speaker 1: you want to do something. But that's why I'm here
Speaker 1: to explain this stuff that is going to do it
Speaker 1: for this episode of the show. You can find links
Speaker 1: to everything I mentioned on the website. Just go to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech dot TV. You can find me on
Speaker 1: social media. I am at rich on Tech. Before we go,
Speaker 1: I do want to mention one thing. Robin Bertolucci, program
Speaker 1: director at KFI, one of the primary stations we are
Speaker 1: on here with this show, is leaving KFI after twenty
Speaker 1: four years there as program director and I have to
Speaker 1: tell you Robin instrumental in getting me here to do
Speaker 1: this show. Robin was an amazing mentor. I don't know
Speaker 1: how she did it, but she seemed to listen to
Speaker 1: every word that came out of my mouth.
Speaker 2: Over the years.
Speaker 1: Has given me so much, so many opportunities, so much advice,
Speaker 1: always there for me, and I'm gonna miss her so
Speaker 1: much because even though she didn't directly oversee this show,
Speaker 1: she was always there to tell me what I did right,
Speaker 1: what I did wrong, what I could do better, And
Speaker 1: it's just one of those people that you meet in
Speaker 1: your life time that's just quite incredible and has an
Speaker 1: impact not only on you as a person, you as
Speaker 1: an employee and you as just a human. Just what
Speaker 1: an amazing person, Robin. I will miss you. Thanks to
Speaker 1: everyone else who makes this show possible. Kim on phones,
Speaker 1: Bobo on the board. My name is rich Demiro. I
Speaker 1: will talk to you real soon.