Speaker 1: The United States says Apple is an illegal monopoly. Hackers
Speaker 1: figure out a way to unlock millions of hotel rooms,
Speaker 1: the retro tech that's making a comeback, Plus your tech
Speaker 1: questions answered. What's going on on rich Demiro and This
Speaker 1: is rich on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast
Speaker 1: to coast. 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 that 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. Give me a call if
Speaker 1: you have a question about technology. Email is also open.
Speaker 1: Just go to richon Tech dot tv and hit the
Speaker 1: email icon. This week, I'll take you to the CSUN
Speaker 1: Assistive Technology Conference to learn about the latest assistive technologies
Speaker 1: for the disability community. Plus, I'll talk to Jason Rhodes,
Speaker 1: a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He's
Speaker 1: going to tell you everything you need to know about
Speaker 1: the total solar eclipse happening on April eighth, and later
Speaker 1: Joshua Browder, CEO of Do Not Pay, will join us.
Speaker 1: He'll tell us about the products they build to save
Speaker 1: people time and money. This was a very interesting week
Speaker 1: in the tech world. Apple is being sued by the
Speaker 1: US Department of Justice Anti Trust Division along with attorney's
Speaker 1: general from several states. If so is all filed in
Speaker 1: my home state of New Jersey. They're accusing Apple of
Speaker 1: monopolizing the US markets for smartphones in violation of Section
Speaker 1: two of the Sherman Act. They say that Apple has
Speaker 1: used its control over its iOS app distribution and also
Speaker 1: APIs that it runs on its iPhone to suppress technologies
Speaker 1: that threatn the iPhone monopoly. They focus on five key
Speaker 1: areas super apps, cloud gaming, cross messaging platforms, cross platform messaging,
Speaker 1: smart watches, and digital wallets. They say by impeding these innovations,
Speaker 1: Apple allegedly makes its own products worse and even sacrifice
Speaker 1: profits to maintain its monopoly and its ability to extract
Speaker 1: fees from developers. They say this has reduced consumer choice,
Speaker 1: it's raised prices, decreased quality, and stifled innovation in the
Speaker 1: smartphone industry here in the United States. When I started
Speaker 1: covering smartphones, there were many many brands now we are
Speaker 1: down to just about three Apple, Samsung, and Google. So
Speaker 1: let's break some of this down because there's a lot here.
Speaker 1: I read through all eighty eight pages of the complaint
Speaker 1: and let me just bring out some of the most
Speaker 1: interesting nuggets. So in twenty ten, then CEO Seeve Jobs
Speaker 1: was really concerned about how easy it was to switch
Speaker 1: from iPhone to android, and he said they would force
Speaker 1: developers to use its payment system to lock them in,
Speaker 1: both users and developers. Then they had Apple executives discuss
Speaker 1: discussing strategies to further lock customers into our ecosystem and
Speaker 1: make Apple's ecosystem even more sticky. No one can argue
Speaker 1: against that, it is very sticky. They say Apple deliberately
Speaker 1: made cross platform messaging a worse experience with a lack
Speaker 1: of encryption between iPhones and androids. This also locked in users.
Speaker 1: Even in an interview, CEO Tim Cook said, I remember
Speaker 1: this When Wall Street Journals Joanna Stern asked about this.
Speaker 1: He said, by your mom and iPhone, that was his answer.
Speaker 1: But they say Apple also compromises its best interests when
Speaker 1: it benefits financially, such as allowing Google to be the
Speaker 1: default search engine because they pay Apple so much, and
Speaker 1: survey show eighty eight percent of US teenagers expect to
Speaker 1: buy an iPhone next, which really goes to show just
Speaker 1: how powerful Apple is with this key demographic of the
Speaker 1: next generation of buyers, many of whom would never give
Speaker 1: up their iPhone. It's really interesting to see how this
Speaker 1: lawsuit paints Apple as a company is conniving and calculated
Speaker 1: in its rules surrounding the iPhone. Now, let's go through
Speaker 1: some of those five different places where they have contended
Speaker 1: that Apple is being really, really not so nice. Number one,
Speaker 1: the app store. All apps must be vetted and play
Speaker 1: by Apple's rules, which always seem to favor the company.
Speaker 1: Super apps is where they take issue with. Super apps
Speaker 1: are very popular over in Asia. It's one app that
Speaker 1: does a lot of things. So you might make a
Speaker 1: phone call through that app, you might chat with someone
Speaker 1: through that app, you might use it as a payment app,
Speaker 1: you might play games on that app. Some of the
Speaker 1: examples are we Chat and Line. The US really doesn't
Speaker 1: have anything like that because it's been held back in
Speaker 1: many ways by the app store. Now the second area
Speaker 1: cloud streaming games. This has long been a source of
Speaker 1: contention on the iPhone and the iPad. Apple doesn't like
Speaker 1: the idea of this because in app developers, once they
Speaker 1: have a app that a lot of people are using,
Speaker 1: a gaming app, they could just do whatever they want
Speaker 1: inside that app. Now here's the thing. Apple has changed
Speaker 1: its rules on this. On January twenty fifth of this year,
Speaker 1: they release new guidelines that will allow some level of this.
Speaker 1: So that may not be a big part of this case.
Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest sources of contention in
Speaker 1: this case is really going to be messaging. We have
Speaker 1: talked about the whole green bubble versus blue bubble situation
Speaker 1: many many times. Apple does not allow any messaging apps
Speaker 1: besides its own access to your text messages on the iPhone,
Speaker 1: which means even if a better app came along, which
Speaker 1: there are many that could, you can't use it. Sure
Speaker 1: you can use WhatsApp, and you could use Telegram, but
Speaker 1: they're very limited in what they can do because they
Speaker 1: can't actually replace your text messaging app. You have to
Speaker 1: use I Message, and by the way, I Message works
Speaker 1: really well with iPhone to iPhone. But guess what happens
Speaker 1: when you try to message someone that's on an Android.
Speaker 1: Everything falls apart. Now on Android there is something called RCS,
Speaker 1: and this is a standard that supports big videos, big pictures,
Speaker 1: full resolution. Apple has so far refused to put those
Speaker 1: standards on the iPhone. Later this year, they will do that,
Speaker 1: but we don't know how they're going to do that.
Speaker 1: And I think that a large part of this issue
Speaker 1: is the fact that Apple could have made an Android
Speaker 1: app for I Message a long time ago and made
Speaker 1: this whole thing kind of not so apparent. But now
Speaker 1: they're going to be forced to defend themselves in why
Speaker 1: they have refused to make cross messaging easy across two
Speaker 1: huge types of phones out here, Android and iPhone. Now
Speaker 1: smart watches. I thought this was interesting because you don't
Speaker 1: really think of the smart watch as a sticky part
Speaker 1: of Apple's web, but it really is. iPhone users are
Speaker 1: really loyal to their Apple Watch, and when it comes
Speaker 1: to third party smart watches, they just don't have the
Speaker 1: same functionality. I don't ever recommend a third party smart
Speaker 1: watch for the iPhone because it just doesn't work the
Speaker 1: same way. You can't get your eye messages on there,
Speaker 1: and Apple doesn't allow things like easy persistent Bluetooth communications
Speaker 1: to that third party watch. What does that mean? It
Speaker 1: means that if you turn off Bluetooth on your iPhone,
Speaker 1: your Apple Watch or your your third party watch is
Speaker 1: going to stop working. And that's not very nice. And
Speaker 1: people don't realize that that's a thing, and of course
Speaker 1: what do they do. They default to the Apple Watch.
Speaker 1: So that's going to be an interesting one. Now. It
Speaker 1: used to be that Google's app smart watches would work
Speaker 1: with the iPhone. It's been a long time since that's
Speaker 1: been the case. The other final area here is digital wallets.
Speaker 1: So we love Tap to pay. It's been amazing, it's
Speaker 1: been incredible. But did you know that Apple makes zero
Speaker 1: point one five percent of any every credit card transaction
Speaker 1: you tap to pay using Apple Wallet. That's fifty cents
Speaker 1: on a one hundred dollars purchase, which might not seem
Speaker 1: like a lot, but according to the lawsuit, two hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars flowed through Apple's Tap to Pay on the
Speaker 1: iPhone in just twenty twenty two, and that's growing in
Speaker 1: a big way. And by the way, Samsung and Google
Speaker 1: do not charge for this functionality. And guess what, no
Speaker 1: other payment app is allowed to utilize the NFC chip
Speaker 1: on the iPhone for Tap to pay purchases to work.
Speaker 1: So let's say something came along where you could switch
Speaker 1: to a tap to pay app that said, hey, we're
Speaker 1: going to give you one percent cash back on all
Speaker 1: of your tap to pay purchases. You couldn't even switch
Speaker 1: to that. You couldn't even use it. And yes, you
Speaker 1: could use different credit cards and different debit cards, but
Speaker 1: that's not the same as Apple, at this very high
Speaker 1: level taking a cut of every single transaction just for
Speaker 1: the beauty of guarding that NFC chip on the phone.
Speaker 1: So there's no doubt that Apple has built something really
Speaker 1: magical in the iPhone, something that's truly changed so many
Speaker 1: of the ways that we do things from music to
Speaker 1: content creation, fitness to photos. But could this all be
Speaker 1: cheaper and easier and more innovative for the end consumer?
Speaker 1: What if everything was built on widely accepted standards. Could
Speaker 1: switching to the next best thing be easier? No, A
Speaker 1: lot of people stick with the iPhone because it works,
Speaker 1: it's simple, and everything they have is sort of intertwined
Speaker 1: with this. By the way, before we had to break,
Speaker 1: Apple told mac Rumors it will vigorously defend itself. They
Speaker 1: set at Apple, we innovate every day to make technology
Speaker 1: people love designing products that work seamlessly together, protect people's
Speaker 1: privacy and security, and create a magical experience for our users.
Speaker 1: The lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that
Speaker 1: set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets. If successful,
Speaker 1: it would hinder our ability to create the kind of
Speaker 1: technology people expect from Apple where hardware, software, and services intersect.
Speaker 1: It would also set a dangerous precedent empowering government to
Speaker 1: take a heavy hand in designing people's technology. Now we
Speaker 1: all know what's been happening over in the EU where
Speaker 1: they have taken a very heavy hand in Apple. Just
Speaker 1: earlier this month, Apple has had to change the entire
Speaker 1: operating system to accommodate several new rules over in the EU,
Speaker 1: including when you first turn on that iPhone, it's going
Speaker 1: to ask you which browser do you want to use
Speaker 1: as your default? And also people can sideload apps or
Speaker 1: that means they can put an app on their iPhone
Speaker 1: that doesn't come from Apple's own app store, and they
Speaker 1: can pay for things using different in app purchase methods,
Speaker 1: not just the one that Apple runs. And by the way,
Speaker 1: that new USB sport that's on the bottom of the iPhone,
Speaker 1: we have the EU to thank for that too, because
Speaker 1: if they didn't require that change over in the EU
Speaker 1: for all devices to have a standardized USB sport, we
Speaker 1: would still be dealing with lightning, the one odd cable
Speaker 1: in all of this. Now, I do believe Apple has
Speaker 1: built a protected, a protected system that is protected average
Speaker 1: consumers from viruses, malware, confusing payment structures, and many general headaches.
Speaker 1: Think a Windows computer back in the day, with all
Speaker 1: kinds of viruses and malware and pop ups and things
Speaker 1: that people didn't really understand. That's what the iPhone would
Speaker 1: be like. Now. Android is very much open and we
Speaker 1: don't see a lot of those problems, even though there
Speaker 1: more are some more issues on the Android than there
Speaker 1: are on the iPhone. But are we paying an unknown
Speaker 1: price for all of this carefully guarded innovation from Apple.
Speaker 1: We don't know, But I guess we will see what
Speaker 1: happens with this lawsuit, and it will be very interesting
Speaker 1: to see what, if anything, Apple is forced to change.
Speaker 1: I know that I'd be very happy if we had
Speaker 1: cross messaging that worked extremely well across both iPhone and Android,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure a lot of other people would like
Speaker 1: that too. More choice for consumers. I think anyone would
Speaker 1: appreciate that. All right, coming up, we are going to
Speaker 1: have some more of your questions. Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two,
Speaker 1: four to one zero one. Give me Paul. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology at triple eight Rich one O one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: If you go to the website rich on tech dot tv,
Speaker 1: you might notice it looks a little bit different. I
Speaker 1: was working on it over the past week or so,
Speaker 1: trying to make it simpler, trying to make it easier
Speaker 1: for you to find the things that you want to
Speaker 1: find when you go to the website. So right at
Speaker 1: the top, while I'm doing the radio show, you'll find
Speaker 1: links to everything I mentioned. So just click the top
Speaker 1: link and it should say radio show links and the date,
Speaker 1: and so that'll be right at the top. When I'm
Speaker 1: live rich on tech dot TV. You've got the newsletter.
Speaker 1: You can watch my latest TV segments. Yes, I'm a
Speaker 1: reporter at KTLA in Los Angeles. You can watch what
Speaker 1: I do there. Then you've got the back catalog of
Speaker 1: all the radio show episodes and links. If you want
Speaker 1: to find something there, then you've got the back catalog
Speaker 1: of my recent TV segments, a way to subscribe to
Speaker 1: the podcast More about Me, and then products that I
Speaker 1: like a link to my Amazon store, So check it out,
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech. Also, don't forget to sign up for
Speaker 1: my newsletter. I share a lot of helpful tips and
Speaker 1: different things in there, so it's the best way to
Speaker 1: keep track of everything that I do. All right, Tammy
Speaker 1: wrote in this morning, Hey, rich while chatting with my
Speaker 1: dog sitter on Facebook Messenger, I got a window blocking
Speaker 1: me from replying. It says the way you access your
Speaker 1: chat history is changing. It gives me three options, create
Speaker 1: a six digit pin number, store this on my device,
Speaker 1: or use Google. After searching, I found an announcement from Meta.
Speaker 1: But of course I still need guidance. Can you explain?
Speaker 1: I chose Google, but then it continued with a window
Speaker 1: stating that Facebook wants access to my Google account. And
Speaker 1: I had all these options, It's just got more confusing
Speaker 1: and scary. As I continued, I would appreciate any guidance.
Speaker 1: A loyal listener, Sincerely, Tammy. So, Tammy, I've been getting
Speaker 1: a lot of emails and a lot of questions about this.
Speaker 1: So this is Facebook rolling out end to end encryption
Speaker 1: on Messenger by default. What does that mean. This means
Speaker 1: that your chats are super super private on Facebook Messenger
Speaker 1: and it used to be an optional thing, but now
Speaker 1: they're rolling it out as the default. And so what
Speaker 1: happens is once they roll out this end to end encryption,
Speaker 1: once you turn it on, nobody can access your messages,
Speaker 1: not even Facebook. So they are end to end encrypted.
Speaker 1: And the reason you have to pick that pin is
Speaker 1: because the only way you can unlock those messages if
Speaker 1: you move to a different device or if you sort
Speaker 1: of restarted or formatted your phone is they would need
Speaker 1: that pin number to unlock the encryption key so that
Speaker 1: you have access to your own messages. So, as you noticed,
Speaker 1: you've got a couple of different options. Create a six
Speaker 1: digit pin only store on this device or use Google.
Speaker 1: So that six digit pin I think is going to
Speaker 1: be the best way to do it. And so you
Speaker 1: just have to remember that pin number. So if you're
Speaker 1: using a password manager, write that six digit pin number
Speaker 1: in your password manager and don't use something like your
Speaker 1: data birth because that's way too easily guessable. By someone.
Speaker 1: But the six digit pin is going to do is
Speaker 1: that's going to unlock your messages if you move to
Speaker 1: a different device, and so if you get a new
Speaker 1: iPhone or if you switch to Android at some point,
Speaker 1: you can get your same message history list. The reason
Speaker 1: why they can't just store it on the cloud and
Speaker 1: restore it to your phone is because everything is encrypted,
Speaker 1: so it will be stored somewhere, but you need that
Speaker 1: pin to unlock that storage. Now, the store on this
Speaker 1: device only means that if you ever lose your iPhone
Speaker 1: or format it or erase it, everything is gone. They
Speaker 1: no one can restore your history. And then the Google
Speaker 1: option is going to use your Google account. Now, the
Speaker 1: reason you got all those scary messages about the Google
Speaker 1: access is because it's just using your Google account. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if it's going to store everything in Google Cloud.
Speaker 1: It probably is inside Google Drive, so that's why it
Speaker 1: wants the access to your Google So it's not that scary,
Speaker 1: but I think the six digit pin is probably the
Speaker 1: best way to go about it. Meta has talked about
Speaker 1: the rolling out and for some time now, but this
Speaker 1: is going to let you do a couple things. You're
Speaker 1: going to be able to edit your messages fro up
Speaker 1: to fifteen minutes after you send them. You're going to
Speaker 1: get higher quality media when you send them, and you're
Speaker 1: also going to have disappearing messages. You can also control
Speaker 1: your read receipts, so you can decide if you want
Speaker 1: others to see when you've read their messages, and photos
Speaker 1: and videos are going to be easier to access. There's
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff, but you have to set up
Speaker 1: that recovery method. When your chat is upgraded, it is
Speaker 1: rolling out. So if you see this option, I think
Speaker 1: the best option is to choose a six digit number
Speaker 1: and that way you can unlock your pins when you
Speaker 1: need or unlock your messages when you need them. So
Speaker 1: eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Thanks for the email.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it. By the way, Amazon, I don't even need
Speaker 1: to really talk about this, but I'll just mention it.
Speaker 1: Amazon is having a big Spring sale right now. I
Speaker 1: think that these Amazon sales are a little bit overrated
Speaker 1: at this point. I think was great when it first started,
Speaker 1: but now it's kind of fizzled out. But does that
Speaker 1: mean that you can't get deals? No, so this is
Speaker 1: deals on seasonal items, spring fashion, outdoor furniture, law and
Speaker 1: garden essentials, cleaning and organizing products, and also Amazon devices.
Speaker 1: Of course, Prime members get the best deals. The reason
Speaker 1: I tell you this is because I always keep a
Speaker 1: list of all this stuff in my cart that I
Speaker 1: sort of have my eye on with Amazon that I
Speaker 1: want to buy. So my point is look at your
Speaker 1: cart and see if anything that you have in there
Speaker 1: that you actually want that you've saved, is going to
Speaker 1: be on sale right now. It's going through March twenty five.
Speaker 1: All right, Coming up, we're going to go to the
Speaker 1: seasun Assistive Technology Conference. You are listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. This week
Speaker 1: I visited the thirty ninth annual seasun Assistive Technology Conference.
Speaker 1: It was being held in Anaheim, California, and I spoke
Speaker 1: with Julia Santiago, who's been leading it for twelve years now.
Speaker 3: We've been around for almost four decades with the conference.
Speaker 3: It pretty much provides a forum for practitioners, users, companies,
Speaker 3: pretty much the entire disability community globally to come together
Speaker 3: and share and learn from each other, connect and really
Speaker 3: grow the industry and trying to find better solutions for
Speaker 3: individuals with disabilities to live as barrier free as possible
Speaker 3: in the world. We'll see many from the blind, low
Speaker 3: vision community, deaf and harded, hearing learning disabilities. I mean,
Speaker 3: it really is a broad range and we don't focus
Speaker 3: in any one area.
Speaker 1: Has life gotten better? Has it gotten easier because of
Speaker 1: these technologies over the years.
Speaker 3: Well, certainly a lot of these technology geez are doing
Speaker 3: what we want, you know, to reduce any barriers that exists,
Speaker 3: But certainly the work isn't done. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: work ahead. And that's why thirty nine years later, you know,
Speaker 3: people we look around, people are still coming excited to
Speaker 3: take us to that next place.
Speaker 1: First up, I spoke with Christina Duarte, Senior director of
Speaker 1: Regulatory Affairs at Inno Caption.
Speaker 4: Our app is for individuals with hearing loss to get
Speaker 4: captioning of their mobile phone calls. We provide captions to
Speaker 4: the individual with hearing loss by either a car provider
Speaker 4: who's a live stenographer shorthand reporter or AI. It's the
Speaker 4: consumer that's in charge of what accessibility they use, and
Speaker 4: they can switch as there needs change.
Speaker 1: And what's the benefit of this.
Speaker 4: Sure, So the benefit of this is for individuals who
Speaker 4: can't hear on the phone, they're able to get captions
Speaker 4: in real time. We've had an individuals who haven't had
Speaker 4: to disclose their hearing loss because of the way the
Speaker 4: app and technology works. The benefit of using car Provider
Speaker 4: sonographer is that they can provide non verbal cues, so
Speaker 4: stuff like in parentheticals laughing, dog barking poor connection.
Speaker 1: And AI is very fast.
Speaker 4: However, with AI, with it being so fast and a computer,
Speaker 4: it doesn't have that human element of nonverbal cues. Also,
Speaker 4: not all speech patterns are going to process.
Speaker 5: Well with it.
Speaker 4: That's why we give consumers full choice to work within
Speaker 4: their accessibility needs to switch between even in the middle
Speaker 4: of a call.
Speaker 1: Next, I spoke with James Kaufman at Caption Call. They
Speaker 1: make physical phones that have loud volume and a touch screen.
Speaker 1: Plus you can connect them in various ways, whether that's
Speaker 1: a landline, voiceover IP or Bluetooth.
Speaker 6: This is the caption call phone. So it is a
Speaker 6: phone that it's for hard of hearing people. Even people
Speaker 6: wear hearing aids and they can see what the person
Speaker 6: is saying when they call them. So it's a captioning service.
Speaker 6: It's a no cost, federally funded service, and it helps
Speaker 6: change people's lives.
Speaker 1: Basically, it's just a really.
Speaker 6: Great reaction we get from people, and it's you know,
Speaker 6: you don't really know this is available until you kind
Speaker 6: of see it in person. No cost, that's the really
Speaker 6: great thing about it. It's federally funded. So what caption
Speaker 6: car will do will actually come out to your home,
Speaker 6: install this exact phone, hook it up, teach you how
Speaker 6: to use it, and you'll never see a bill. It's
Speaker 6: completely federally funded through the FCC.
Speaker 1: Next, I spoke with Yolanda Castillo of Bellman and Symphon.
Speaker 1: They make a device called Video.
Speaker 2: It's a Bluetooth bedshaker. It kind of looks like a puck,
Speaker 2: but it vibrates.
Speaker 1: You can put it underneath your pillow or just lay
Speaker 1: it on your side. It connects to your mobile phones.
Speaker 1: You can feel when you have an alarm, or an
Speaker 1: incoming phone call or a notification.
Speaker 7: Video is our latest product and is not only an
Speaker 7: alarm clock but because it's Bluetooth enable, you're also able
Speaker 7: to receive notifications when you get a text message or
Speaker 7: a phone call. You're able to set up different types
Speaker 7: of alarms, up to twelve different alarms depending on which
Speaker 7: one you have the ability of also snooze in your alarms,
Speaker 7: and if it rings and you want to snooze it,
Speaker 7: you pull the court once and it goes on the
Speaker 7: snooze time that you have set up. You want to
Speaker 7: turn it off, you pull the tap twice and it
Speaker 7: shuts down. It lasts up to ten days with only
Speaker 7: an hour and a half charge. The vibration patterns are
Speaker 7: very very strong, and not only will the flashing light
Speaker 7: will come out, and it will also indicate with a
Speaker 7: lead light color whether you're getting a phone call, whether
Speaker 7: you're getting in a text, whether the door bill is ringing,
Speaker 7: or your alarm is about to go.
Speaker 1: Brian Parsons from Sony Interactive Entertainment, the folks behind PlayStation
Speaker 1: was showing off PlayStation's accessibility initiatives. So we've got a
Speaker 1: few different things.
Speaker 8: We've got a system technology that's built into the PlayStation
Speaker 8: five itself, such as a screen reader, a large text
Speaker 8: captions model, audio but one thing we really want to
Speaker 8: demonstrate today is the access controller. So it was designed
Speaker 8: specifically with people with physical disabilities in mind. Totally customizable, flexible,
Speaker 8: works straight out of the box, so you can.
Speaker 1: Get into gaming as soon as you can.
Speaker 8: But yeah, we can play around with all these buttons,
Speaker 8: switch them out, reconfigure them. We can move the joystick
Speaker 8: in and out whichever way you want to go, you
Speaker 8: can orient whichever way you want to go. So PlayStation
Speaker 8: motto is play has no limits, and we.
Speaker 1: Really want to make sure that happens.
Speaker 8: The new Access controlled this launch December sixth, and it's
Speaker 8: relatively brand new, and yeah, the first of it's kind
Speaker 8: in the PlayStation family.
Speaker 1: What's been the feedback great?
Speaker 8: Even in user research we had people who did not
Speaker 8: want to bring it back after two weeks of playing.
Speaker 1: They had never been able to really play before.
Speaker 8: And with this device and connecting it to a second
Speaker 8: one or even a dual sense, all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: Many more games become available to them. Ninety dollars.
Speaker 2: Joseph Hodge with the American Printing House for the Blind
Speaker 2: was showing off what I could best describe as a
Speaker 2: kindle but with brail.
Speaker 1: So this is the monarch.
Speaker 9: It's a revolutionary braille slash tactographics device.
Speaker 5: So you can actually have for the.
Speaker 9: First time ten lines of refreshing braill that's thirty two
Speaker 9: characters wide each on each line, and that's.
Speaker 1: Not been done before correct.
Speaker 9: And the other thing I can do is show images
Speaker 9: like tactograph And.
Speaker 1: So what do you think the benefit of this is
Speaker 1: going to be for.
Speaker 9: School students like I grew up in the going through
Speaker 9: the public school system with just a braille display of
Speaker 9: one line forty characters. The one of the biggest benefits
Speaker 9: right off the bat is formatting. You know, being able
Speaker 9: to see things centered or see how a document that
Speaker 9: I wrote is actually laid out without having to emboss
Speaker 9: it and braille you know, on a printer is huge.
Speaker 1: The other real.
Speaker 9: Major thing is this is going to be a book
Speaker 9: reader as well, so the kids will have like their
Speaker 9: geography or chemistry book on here.
Speaker 5: And so.
Speaker 9: Time to fingertips right now is like six months from
Speaker 9: the embossing period. So the idea is that you know,
Speaker 9: we're gonna be able to actually cut those files so
Speaker 9: much quicker because we're not having to bind the book.
Speaker 9: We're not having to you know, put the book together,
Speaker 9: so students are going to get their books when the
Speaker 9: semester starts instead of six weeks into the semester sometimes.
Speaker 1: Finally, I spoke with Michael Jans and he develops an
Speaker 1: app called Oco. It makes any pedestrian traffic signal accessible
Speaker 1: using just a smartphone camera and AI so.
Speaker 10: I can quickly open up the app if you like to.
Speaker 10: It's just by puting the pointing at a phone towards
Speaker 10: a walk sign and I'll quickly because you see visual feedbick,
Speaker 10: but of course there's the audible feedbick, the rapid beep
Speaker 10: indicating walk sign is on. And the same is true
Speaker 10: for a vibration. If you hold the phone, there's vibration
Speaker 10: coming to them as well. And basically people hold the
Speaker 10: phone at chess level because you can rotate your full
Speaker 10: body to find potitionallds. So it's also orienting people towards
Speaker 10: the light and also helping people stay in line while
Speaker 10: crossing the street because veering off is also a sometimes
Speaker 10: a challenge for people.
Speaker 2: Once again, that is the o coapp. Oko. It's available
Speaker 2: for free for the iPhone.
Speaker 1: If you want a link, you can go to my
Speaker 1: website rich on tech Dot TV. Check the show notes.
Speaker 1: I gotta say the c SUN Assists of Tech conference
Speaker 1: was excellent. I love the products, but what really stuck
Speaker 1: with me were the people. So many passionate people in
Speaker 1: this field, all trying to help other people with these innovations.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up more of your calls at Triple
Speaker 1: eight Rich one O one.
Speaker 2: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 2: zero one. You are listening to Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Website rich on Tech dot TV. Yes,
Speaker 1: everything we just mentioned at the Assistive Tech conference is
Speaker 1: linked up on the website. Just go there and tap
Speaker 1: the first link that says radio show links. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Diana in Torrance, California. Diana, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 11: Hi Rich. Hello, Well, I've watched you on KKLA and
Speaker 11: I used to listen to Leo for a long time
Speaker 11: on the station. And thank you. Really enjoy your show
Speaker 11: and thank you for all you do.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for being a part of the family. What
Speaker 1: can I help you ask?
Speaker 11: Okay, so I work on Max and I frequently at
Speaker 11: home I do screen sharing from one Mac MacBook Pro
Speaker 11: to another, and I wanted to know if when I'm
Speaker 11: away from home and not on my home network, is
Speaker 11: there a way I can do that same screen sharing
Speaker 11: from my iPhone fifteen Pro Max. I'd like to be
Speaker 11: able to access my home home MacBook pros when I'm
Speaker 11: not on the home Wi Fi network and do the
Speaker 11: same kind of thing that I'm able to do as
Speaker 11: when I am home doing the screen sharing, but from
Speaker 11: my iPhone. And I'm hoping that it's possible to do that.
Speaker 1: Now, when you say screen sharing, do you mean you
Speaker 1: want to remotely access the computer like you just want
Speaker 1: to work on the computer from wherever you are, okay?
Speaker 11: And I want to be able to have all the
Speaker 11: same functionalities when I do the screen sharing, okay, including
Speaker 11: if I have multiple desktops at the top, I can
Speaker 11: go to move around to different desktop Okay.
Speaker 1: Well, so that that would more be remote access more
Speaker 1: than screen sharing, because screen sharing, to me, I would think,
Speaker 1: is like, you know, you just want to see your
Speaker 1: iPhone screen on your MacBook computer screen. So I was
Speaker 1: a little confused, but that was okay.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I.
Speaker 11: Wasn't sure what to call it. That Basically I wanted
Speaker 11: the same kind of functionality.
Speaker 1: I just want to be able to access your computer
Speaker 1: form and I.
Speaker 11: Can log in and I can do all the same
Speaker 11: kind of stuff, ye as if I were logging in locally.
Speaker 1: Got it? Okay? Well, there is a remote access remote
Speaker 1: login functionality on the Mac, so you can try using that,
Speaker 1: but I don't think that's going to be the best
Speaker 1: for what you want to do because I'm not sure
Speaker 1: really how that works from the iPhone. But I think
Speaker 1: I think the best app for you is Team Viewer.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of this?
Speaker 11: Yes, I have on your show.
Speaker 1: Have you tried it? Okay, So I think that's going
Speaker 1: to be the easiest because it's it's free for personal use,
Speaker 1: so it's going to be very easy, lightlifting for you
Speaker 1: to try it out and see if it works. But
Speaker 1: Team Viewer is probably going to be the best because
Speaker 1: you can set that up on your computer and set
Speaker 1: it up once with a password, and then you can
Speaker 1: remote log in from your other devices. So that's going
Speaker 1: to probably be the easiest and it's free. So I mean,
Speaker 1: there's not much more. Now since you heard me talk
Speaker 1: about this, I use this often with my mom across
Speaker 1: the country, and when she's having a problem, she just says, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to connect, and you know, we have it
Speaker 1: set up where she has the ability to give me
Speaker 1: a new password every time, just for privacy reasons and that.
Speaker 1: But you can set it up where you have full
Speaker 1: access of your computer anytime you want.
Speaker 11: So that and I can do that from my iPhone
Speaker 11: when I'm away from home.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I don't think that's going to be the
Speaker 1: best experience because the iPhone screen is tiny, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's really not going to be the best experience from
Speaker 1: the iPhone. Maybe an iPad would be a better solution.
Speaker 11: Okay, okay, but you know there's to do that from
Speaker 11: other Apple devices.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah. Now the other thing is there are a
Speaker 1: lot of programs that you can use. So have you
Speaker 1: heard of Go to my PC? Yes, so that's a
Speaker 1: paid version of this, and so you can check that out. So,
Speaker 1: I mean that's going to be another option, and that's
Speaker 1: a you know many It just depends what your needs are.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these things are built into the
Speaker 1: operating systems at a certain level. But if you want
Speaker 1: it to be super easy and just super. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to really think about much. I think
Speaker 1: Team Viewer is going to be the easiest.
Speaker 11: Oh okay, yeah, I was mainly looking for a free solution.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Oh then yeah, And I know that you had mentioned
Speaker 11: something like Apple Remote Desktop before on on the Max,
Speaker 11: but I'm not I don't really know what that does.
Speaker 11: And I saw that that's paid.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, Well, the Apple Remote Desktop I think
Speaker 1: is just a little bit trickier to set up. But
Speaker 1: if you can set that up on your Mac and
Speaker 1: get it, but I just I just don't know if
Speaker 1: it works through the iPhone. That's my issue.
Speaker 11: But you know that team Viewer will work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Team Viewer will work. It works from a variety
Speaker 1: of like it has apps for basically all the major platforms.
Speaker 11: So oh that's awesome, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: That's the one i'd go through first. Is it raining
Speaker 1: over there in Torrance?
Speaker 11: You know what they've been saying, it was going to
Speaker 11: rain on and off, scattered showers, But at the moment
Speaker 11: in Torrance, it's not raining, and there's like partial blue sky.
Speaker 1: Oh there you go, see looking looking right out there?
Speaker 1: All right, Diana, make sure you go to the website.
Speaker 1: Rich on tech dot TV. Let me know if the
Speaker 1: solution works, can help more folks when we share these
Speaker 1: kinds of things. Thanks for the call today, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Bruce in Los Angeles. Bruce, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich.
Speaker 12: Hey, Rich, thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. What can I help you with?
Speaker 12: Well, it's just a quick question. It's about USB powered
Speaker 12: portable storage devices.
Speaker 13: I've been using Seagate five.
Speaker 12: Terabyte hard drives and I'm looking for something a little
Speaker 12: bit higher capacity. Does anything exist that's more than five terabytes?
Speaker 14: Is really my basic question?
Speaker 1: And if so, what do you recommend, oh, for a
Speaker 1: hard drive or for a or for a USB like
Speaker 1: a stick.
Speaker 12: For a portable of USB hard drive that I don't
Speaker 12: need an.
Speaker 1: External power source for. Okay, Uh, well, let's see we
Speaker 1: I mean, I assumed you've looked on Amazon. The highest
Speaker 1: that I've gotten so far as five terabytes, so I
Speaker 1: haven't looked at something over that. Have you found? Is
Speaker 1: there anything on Amazon over five terabytes?
Speaker 14: Uh?
Speaker 15: Not that I can find.
Speaker 12: That's what I was That was my question. Or maybe
Speaker 12: you know something about the future of that technology is
Speaker 12: or they is something bigger capacity in the in the words.
Speaker 2: For the future.
Speaker 1: Well, I think these things get bigger every you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of years, and it's really the expense, I
Speaker 1: think is the main thing. The brands. You know, there
Speaker 1: are a couple of main brands that people like for
Speaker 1: sort of these these small USBC drives and obviously, uh
Speaker 1: I say Lacey it's maybe l C, L A C
Speaker 1: I E. But that is one that a lot of
Speaker 1: people like.
Speaker 5: For that.
Speaker 1: Uh G Drive is Let's see do they even have
Speaker 1: those anymore? Uh G drive is a is another brand
Speaker 1: that people like. Let's see that's from Western Digital and
Speaker 1: those are pro drives. But the problem is a lot
Speaker 1: of those Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. So just
Speaker 1: looking up, like just from what I've seen most of
Speaker 1: the time, I haven't really seen something bigger than the
Speaker 1: five terabytes you have to go into sort of the
Speaker 1: premium brand. So I'm looking at this Western Digital black
Speaker 1: capacity up to two terabytes, up to four terabytes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not really finding something over that. Yeah, even for
Speaker 1: these yeah, five terabytes seems to be the max right now.
Speaker 1: Off the top of my head, I think a good
Speaker 1: you know, this is obviously getting into the prosumer sort
Speaker 1: of market because most consumers are not carrying around a
Speaker 1: five terabyte drive, or if they are, that's the highest
Speaker 1: they're carrying around. So I have to do a little
Speaker 1: bit more research and see if there's something out there
Speaker 1: that's better than this. But I think the five terabyte
Speaker 1: is probably going to be widely available for most consumers.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that there's not something higher out
Speaker 1: there that's going to be more expensive, or something that
Speaker 1: is from more of a professional brand. So we've got
Speaker 1: an AB show coming up in Las Vegas, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure we will see some drives there that have a
Speaker 1: higher capacity that are not powered. But right now, everything
Speaker 1: that I'm seeing in just a quick quick scan here
Speaker 1: of some of these brands looks like that five terrorbyte
Speaker 1: drive is the limit. But that doesn't mean it's not
Speaker 1: out there. It could be the other brand. Check one
Speaker 1: more OWC. They usually have other world computing. They usually
Speaker 1: have a lot of SSD drives and things like that.
Speaker 1: So let me just see here portable drives. I'm just curious.
Speaker 1: Now you've got me curious. Let's see portable drive. They've
Speaker 1: got a bunch. Let's see Envoy. Nope, what's their max here?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: Eighty eight?
Speaker 1: Rich one on one. While I look at this eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Oh,
Speaker 1: it looks like they're four terabytes. You are listening to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro.
Speaker 1: Here we're listening to the new Ariana Grande song, and
Speaker 1: it sounds like she's talking about technology. See this is
Speaker 1: what our relationship is with technology. How appropriate, Ariana? Thank you.
Speaker 1: See she's talking about your phone and your computer. Bobo says,
Speaker 1: only I would would take that from this song lyrics, Yes,
Speaker 1: only me. Everything in my life goes back to technology.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. I'm telling you go back to
Speaker 1: the song and listen to what she just said. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's the same. It's literally technology. We can't be friends.
Speaker 1: Ariana Grande website rich on Tech. See okay, Bobo's listening again.
Speaker 1: Here we go. See she's talking about blue bubbles versus
Speaker 1: green bubbles. I knew it. She's smart. Website richon Tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter
Speaker 1: rich on Tech newsletter looked up on the website. In
Speaker 1: it this week, I talk about the eighty eight page
Speaker 1: anti trust lawsuit against Apple from the US government. I
Speaker 1: read the entire thing, Yes, I did, and I picked
Speaker 1: out the most interesting parts and I wrote about it
Speaker 1: in this week's newsletter. So if you're interested in what
Speaker 1: the government's case is against Apple, sign up for the newsletter.
Speaker 1: Read it for free enjoy. Let's go to Sarah in Ventura, California.
Speaker 1: Sorry you're on with Rich.
Speaker 16: Hi. I have an Android phone and I had antivirus
Speaker 16: on it my eset. It wouldn't allow me to update,
Speaker 16: and so I thought I would delete it and then
Speaker 16: reinstall it.
Speaker 17: But then my.
Speaker 16: Google Play it said it kept whirling, and it said
Speaker 16: try again later. And then after a few hours of
Speaker 16: trying this, I figured out the the Google Play is
Speaker 16: not going to work, and I don't know. On the tablet,
Speaker 16: the Google Play stopped working.
Speaker 1: Also on both your phone and your tablet. Yes, Well,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a network issue, because there's they're not
Speaker 1: they're not They're not connected in any way between the
Speaker 1: two devices. So are you on your home Wi Fi?
Speaker 16: Yes, But this happened on the the phone after the
Speaker 16: tablet that just the Google Play wouldn't work on that.
Speaker 1: Well, it won't update any of your apps at first.
Speaker 16: Yeah, and then now it won't do anything. It just
Speaker 16: says try again later.
Speaker 1: Try again. Well, here's the deal. Google Play is up
Speaker 1: and running. It is working, So this is definitely either
Speaker 1: an issue with your network at home, So I would
Speaker 1: check to see if you have any sort of VPN
Speaker 1: or anything running on your phone or your network your router,
Speaker 1: turn that off and try to update your apps again. Now,
Speaker 1: on Android, things can get a little wonky sometimes, and
Speaker 1: if you need to close out an app, there's a
Speaker 1: couple of ways of doing it. So if you're running
Speaker 1: a Samsung or a Pixel, just press and hold on
Speaker 1: the app and you should see a little eye for
Speaker 1: information right, So if you tap and press that, you
Speaker 1: will see a whole bunch of things you can do.
Speaker 1: And on Samsung, specifically, in the lower right hand corner,
Speaker 1: it says force stop. So if you ever have an
Speaker 1: app that is acting up, you can force stop it
Speaker 1: and that means it's gonna close out that app for real.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can also just kind of swipe up from
Speaker 1: the bottom of your screen and see all your apps
Speaker 1: and you can do close all. But this is sort
Speaker 1: of another way of doing that, so you force close it,
Speaker 1: it will shut down that app, and then the next
Speaker 1: time you open that app, it's sort of like restarted
Speaker 1: and refreshed. So I just did that online. That's one
Speaker 1: way of doing it. The other way you can do
Speaker 1: it is if you're really having trouble and this is
Speaker 1: kind of like a pro tip here. If you're ever
Speaker 1: having trouble with an app things are just not working,
Speaker 1: you can go in and clear out the storage that
Speaker 1: that app is using. It's the data and the cash,
Speaker 1: and that will also restart an app to its factory
Speaker 1: fresh format. So sometimes even if you reinstall an app
Speaker 1: from Google Play, it may just like pick up where
Speaker 1: it left off. So if you want to completely get
Speaker 1: rid of everything that app is storing on your phone,
Speaker 1: all the cookies, all the data, anything that it may
Speaker 1: remember about you, you can go in and clear the storage.
Speaker 1: So let me show you how you do that same
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Just take any old app on your phone,
Speaker 1: press and hold on it. You should see a little
Speaker 1: eye in the upper right hand corner of that app.
Speaker 1: You tap that, that will bring you into what's called
Speaker 1: the app info. This is kind of behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the app. It shows you your privacy information, how
Speaker 1: much mobile data it's used, how much battery it's used,
Speaker 1: how much storage it's using. But then go ahead and
Speaker 1: tap under where it says storage. You tap storage and
Speaker 1: now it tells you. So, for instance, my Facebook is
Speaker 1: using four hundred and sixty eight megabytes of app it's got.
Speaker 1: The app is four hundred and sixty eight megabytes, the
Speaker 1: data on my phone is three hundred and fifty nine megabytes,
Speaker 1: the cash is four hundred and fifteen megabytes, for a
Speaker 1: total of one point two four gigabytes. So if I
Speaker 1: press clear data and clear cash down to the bottom
Speaker 1: of my screen, that will reset the Facebook app to
Speaker 1: factory default, which means the next time I open that app,
Speaker 1: it's going to ask me to log in and I'm
Speaker 1: going to have to go through that whole flow again.
Speaker 1: So you can do that with Google Play, and I
Speaker 1: will do that right now and see what happens. So
Speaker 1: let's go through the storage and I'm just going to
Speaker 1: clear the data, clear the cash, and now let's see
Speaker 1: what happens. When I open up Google Play, it's looking
Speaker 1: for updates fresh and it's scanning the apps for any issues.
Speaker 1: And I just noticed that. Yeah, so now it's just
Speaker 1: found all my new downloads, so that's probably what you
Speaker 1: want to do. That's what I'd recommend doing, ERA and
Speaker 1: seeing if that helps. It sounds like you've got something
Speaker 1: just kind of stuck or hung on that phone. Uh.
Speaker 1: The other thing you could do before you do all
Speaker 1: that is just restart your devices and hopefully that helps out.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call today from Ventura, California. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Frank in Ontario, California. Frank, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 18: All Rich a question for you.
Speaker 19: I've tried multiple docing stations to try to connect a
Speaker 19: MacBook and multiple screens because i home I have two
Speaker 19: screens to monitors and it won't allow me. But I
Speaker 19: use a Dell or use an HP laptop and I'm
Speaker 19: able to do it except for the Mac.
Speaker 1: Well, see this is why Apple's under fire. No, I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding. So a couple of things on the Mac,
Speaker 1: so you gotta you gotta check what kind of Mac
Speaker 1: do you have?
Speaker 19: It's actually my daughter, so I'm not sure which was his.
Speaker 19: The lan't one?
Speaker 1: Okay, So here's the deal. There are many many ways
Speaker 1: you can connect the Mac to an external display, and
Speaker 1: so I'm going to link up a help page on
Speaker 1: the show notes. Because it depends what computer you have,
Speaker 1: you have to have a couple things that work together. Okay,
Speaker 1: Number one, you have to look at your Mac and
Speaker 1: see and I'm just gonna put you on a hold
Speaker 1: here because I hear a little bit of feedback. So
Speaker 1: first off, you have to look at your Mac and
Speaker 1: see what kind of ports it has for connecting screens.
Speaker 1: Some of them have just straight up USBC, some of
Speaker 1: them have Thunderbolt, some of them have HDMI, and some
Speaker 1: have displayporters. So you have to go and identify what
Speaker 1: kind of icon is on your computer and what kind
Speaker 1: of port that is, and that will help you understand
Speaker 1: what kind of monitor you can connect. Now you can
Speaker 1: also see how many screens your specific Mac can support.
Speaker 1: So some can only do one screen at a time,
Speaker 1: some can do multiple screens at the same time. Again,
Speaker 1: by identifying your Mac model, you will be able to
Speaker 1: see where you stand with that, and then you need
Speaker 1: to have the right cable to connect. If you don't
Speaker 1: have the right cable, you might need an adapter if
Speaker 1: your monitor, say, doesn't support DisplayPort or something like that.
Speaker 1: So once everything's figured out and you know what you're
Speaker 1: working with. Then you can decide what kind of dock
Speaker 1: you need, and what kind of cables you need, and
Speaker 1: of course what kind of monitor you need. Obviously, the
Speaker 1: easiest way is probably going to be a Thunderbolt with
Speaker 1: a DisplayPort or sorry, a Thunderbolt and HDMI is going
Speaker 1: to be the easiest because those are the most straightforward.
Speaker 1: But you can also look at some of these different docks.
Speaker 1: The brands that you want to look at are Kensington
Speaker 1: and also Belkan and also Anchor, and they are called
Speaker 1: a dock basically where you plug your computer into the
Speaker 1: dock and then you can plug the monitor into that
Speaker 1: dock as well. So that's probably gonna be the easiest,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking at Wirecutter. Some of these docks can
Speaker 1: be quite expensive. The cheapest one they recommend is a
Speaker 1: Monoprice Thunderbolt three dual DisplayPort docking station one hundred and
Speaker 1: fourteen dollars from Amazon. So it really depends. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: can connect your computer just directly, and sometimes you might
Speaker 1: need a special cable or you might need a special
Speaker 1: type of monitor that can connect to that computer. But
Speaker 1: I will link up this little help page on the
Speaker 1: website rich on tech dot TV going to the show
Speaker 1: notes and you will see how to identify your Mac
Speaker 1: and how to identify what you're working with. Again, HDMI
Speaker 1: probably the most straightforward because every monitor has HDMI, and
Speaker 1: if your computer has HDMI, it's very simple. It's like
Speaker 1: connecting a TV. All right, eighty to eight rich one
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Coming up this hour, we are going to
Speaker 1: talk to Jason Rhodes. He is a senior research scientist
Speaker 1: at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He's gonna tell us what
Speaker 1: we need to know about this total solar eclipse happening
Speaker 1: on April eighth. Are you excited. It's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a bummer for California, he'll explain, but in many
Speaker 1: parts of the US you will be able to see this.
Speaker 1: My name is rich Dmuro. You are listening to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight
Speaker 1: Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. YouTube is introducing new
Speaker 1: tools for disclosing AI generated content. So if you are
Speaker 1: on YouTube or you upload to YouTube, this affects you.
Speaker 1: AI is obviously having a huge impact on content creation.
Speaker 1: People are making a lot of photos with it, and
Speaker 1: videos is the next big thing, and so of course
Speaker 1: YouTube wants to have something in place to understand when
Speaker 1: you are watching something that is AI generated. So first off,
Speaker 1: now in creator studio, this is when folks upload stuff
Speaker 1: to YouTube, they will be asked to take a questionnaire
Speaker 1: and they will have to disclose when their videos contain
Speaker 1: realistic content that could be mistaken for real people, real places, scenes,
Speaker 1: or events. Now they don't have to disclose when it's
Speaker 1: clearly an unrealistic event like in animation special effects, or
Speaker 1: when they use AI to write their scripts any sort
Speaker 1: of like planning like scripts, captions, or whatever. Labels will
Speaker 1: appear in the expanded description for most videos, while more
Speaker 1: sensitive topics will have a prominent label on the video itself,
Speaker 1: so right when you fire up that video, it will say, hey,
Speaker 1: this has this contains AI. Now, if creators don't say
Speaker 1: that their stuff contains AI and YouTube scans it and
Speaker 1: finds out that it does, there may be labels that
Speaker 1: are applied to that automatically, or they may be demonetized,
Speaker 1: so they won't be able to make money on the
Speaker 1: views on these things if they don't disclose it. Now,
Speaker 1: this obviously is not very cut and dry. There is
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of AI generated content that
Speaker 1: is not identified that YouTube can identify, and that's going
Speaker 1: to be a very tricky area. But for creators who
Speaker 1: are trying to stay within the rules, this is the
Speaker 1: new rule that they must abide by if they want
Speaker 1: to stay in good standing with YouTube. But as we know,
Speaker 1: our world is going to become a very interesting place
Speaker 1: with AI already. I mean, you thought the green screen
Speaker 1: was tricky. I mean green screen is nothing. You know,
Speaker 1: you can replace the background. We thought that was cool
Speaker 1: when you zoomed and you're sitting at home and it
Speaker 1: looks like you're in a palace or whatever. No, green
Speaker 1: screen is nothing compared to what AI will be able
Speaker 1: to create in the next let's call it a year
Speaker 1: to two. Right now, it's just at the very beginning,
Speaker 1: but people are going to be creating entire cartoons, entire
Speaker 1: realistic looking short films, instagram reels, tiktoks, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: it's AI. They will type in something on a website
Speaker 1: and AI will do the rest. So we have to
Speaker 1: be very aware of this, and especially with the election,
Speaker 1: especially with news. I mean literally, remember when we saw
Speaker 1: that video of the Alaska Airlines the door that popped out.
Speaker 1: We didn't know if that was real or not. You're
Speaker 1: sitting there like, is this real? Am I being punked?
Speaker 1: Right now? Half the stuff you see on YouTube and TikTok,
Speaker 1: you wonder is this real? Is it fake? Is it
Speaker 1: somehow altered? And yes, people who are playing by the
Speaker 1: rules big you know, mister beasts of the world, they
Speaker 1: will play by the rules and they will label their videos.
Speaker 1: But for every one of them, there's one hundred other
Speaker 1: people who are just uploading trash that are not playing
Speaker 1: by the rules because they don't care. And guess who.
Speaker 1: It's up to us, the humans that watch this stuff,
Speaker 1: to sit there with a critical eye and say, hmm,
Speaker 1: is this real? Is this fake? And it takes a
Speaker 1: while for us to figure that out sometimes. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: what just happened with this whole Caate Middleton thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just wild that, you know, we're in there looking
Speaker 1: at pictures and analyzing them, and then she's walking down
Speaker 1: the street and we're analyzing that, and then of course
Speaker 1: the real story comes out. What was really happening and
Speaker 1: of course it's very heartbreaking. But again, anything we see,
Speaker 1: or do, or experience in this world, unless we are
Speaker 1: there for ourselves, it's going to get a whole lot trick. Here,
Speaker 1: let's go to David in Los Angeles. David, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 18: Hey Rich, how are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing fantastic. How are you very good?
Speaker 18: I love your show.
Speaker 1: By the way, thank you.
Speaker 18: I hope we can do it on Sundays as well. Anyway,
Speaker 18: quick question, I'll try and get two questions quickly. I
Speaker 18: use Apple Maps quite a lot and I like to
Speaker 18: find the directions before I go. So when I put
Speaker 18: it in the car on the map player in the car,
Speaker 18: you can't get directions. It says you have to be
Speaker 18: on the internet. Well, how can you be on the
Speaker 18: internet during the car?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it could use cellular.
Speaker 18: No, it doesn't work on you won't get that. You
Speaker 18: can get the directions on the phone, but not actually
Speaker 18: on the screen on the in the car. It won't
Speaker 18: come up.
Speaker 1: Hmm. I've never had that issue. Are you talking Apple
Speaker 1: Maps or Google Maps? Which one?
Speaker 18: Apple Maps? It doesn't work. And then it said if
Speaker 18: you Google it, it says, oh, only have to be
Speaker 18: on the internet. Have you tried it? You can get
Speaker 18: it on the phone, but usually my phone's stuck in
Speaker 18: the middle.
Speaker 1: Of the Oh right, yes, okay, well that is really yes,
Speaker 1: I agree that is annoying. Well, there is a new
Speaker 1: feature on Apple Maps which they just added. Have you
Speaker 1: downloaded the offline maps for your city? Okay? Well that
Speaker 1: should solve it then. So what you want to do
Speaker 1: is go into Apple Maps and search los Angeles. Are
Speaker 1: you in? Where are you los Angeles?
Speaker 18: Yes?
Speaker 1: Search Los Angeles and you will see a new button
Speaker 1: pop up that says download, and so that will download
Speaker 1: the offline maps for your area. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if you download all of Los Angeles, it's one gig
Speaker 1: one point two to one gigabytes. Now that will solve
Speaker 1: a lot of the problems because what happens is it
Speaker 1: will still be able to get those directions for you
Speaker 1: when it's in that no man's land of Are you
Speaker 1: in the Wi Fi? Are you in the you know
Speaker 1: the cellular? You know, when I'm in my driveway, That's
Speaker 1: what happens every day. It's like I can't do anything
Speaker 1: on my car until I drive down halfway down the street.
Speaker 1: But this will help you at least get your directions
Speaker 1: when Why did.
Speaker 18: It used to work but then he went off? Why
Speaker 18: would they take it off? You can't see on the
Speaker 18: scuing itself. It seems a bit ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Uh, you know, I'm not sure I'm nuss er on
Speaker 1: that one, but yes, things change. But hopefully this should
Speaker 1: help you out in that in between. And what happens
Speaker 1: is it will get the preliminary directions and then once
Speaker 1: it regains that signal and gets that Internet signal, it
Speaker 1: will update the directions with any sort of traffic routing
Speaker 1: or traffic updates or an ETA.
Speaker 18: So then he can give me directions, but he won't between.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's going to take a little bit of an update.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you're on Google Maps, you
Speaker 1: should and can do the same thing. Just type in
Speaker 1: okay maps and enter and that will bring up the
Speaker 1: secret download this map. And I do that for every
Speaker 1: city I travel to because you always want to have
Speaker 1: offline maps in case your cellular is sketchy. All right,
Speaker 1: coming up, we are going to talk to Jason Rhodes
Speaker 1: at NASA. This is rich On Tech.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 2: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 2: zero one. Well, coming up here in the US on
Speaker 2: April eighth, twenty twenty four, we have a total solar eclipse.
Speaker 2: And to learn more about this event, I talked to
Speaker 2: Jason Rhodes, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Speaker 2: Laboratory in Pasadena, California. So, first off, I asked him
Speaker 2: what makes this event so unique.
Speaker 20: Earth is one of a very few plants that we
Speaker 20: know of that has an interesting phenomenon. Our moon in
Speaker 20: the sky is about the same size as the Sun,
Speaker 20: and so when the Moon passes exactly in front of
Speaker 20: the Sun, it's just large enough to block out the Sun.
Speaker 20: And that's what we call a total solar eclipse. So
Speaker 20: the last total solar eclipse in the United States was
Speaker 20: in twenty seventeen, so only seven years ago. But the
Speaker 20: next total solar eclipse in the United States is about
Speaker 20: twenty years in the future, in twenty forty four.
Speaker 2: Now, I'll be completely honest here. When the total solar
Speaker 2: eclipse happened in twenty seventeen, I covered it, but I
Speaker 2: wasn't really enthusiastic about it. I'm not even sure I
Speaker 2: went outside to see it happen, but this time around,
Speaker 2: I'm very excited, even though in California, I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: have a view of the total solar eclipse. So I
Speaker 2: was just curious. From Jason's standpoint, what captivates the general
Speaker 2: public about total solar eclipses.
Speaker 20: Well as a scientist, one of the exciting things about
Speaker 20: a total solar eclipse is that with the Moon blocking
Speaker 20: the day of the Sun, we can see the atmosphere
Speaker 20: of the Sun, or what we call the corona of
Speaker 20: the sun. Corona is Latin for crown. This is the
Speaker 20: outer layer of the Sun that extends much further than
Speaker 20: the surface of the Sun. But it's not nearly as
Speaker 20: bright as the surface of the Sun, and so to
Speaker 20: study it and see it, we need to be able
Speaker 20: to block out the Sun, and so we can do
Speaker 20: that with a solar eclipse, or scientists have developed instruments
Speaker 20: called corona graphs that allow us to block the Sun
Speaker 20: and see that corona or atmosphere of the Sun. However,
Speaker 20: when we do that, it's not something that you can
Speaker 20: go outside and stand there with your special eclipse classes
Speaker 20: and see this happen. So that's what excites me as
Speaker 20: a scientist, but as a human, I've seen only one
Speaker 20: solar eclipse, but it was really an amazing, sort of
Speaker 20: life changing experience to watch the sun go dark and
Speaker 20: fuel night happen all of a sudden, listen to the
Speaker 20: animals go silent because they're a bit confused, and just
Speaker 20: see this sort of twilight sky. That's just an amazing
Speaker 20: and moving experience.
Speaker 1: So if you want to experience this total solar eclipse,
Speaker 1: you have to prepare. It's not visible everywhere in the nation.
Speaker 1: It stretches from Texas to Maine. And so I ask Jason,
Speaker 1: if you want to prepare for this, what do you
Speaker 1: have to do?
Speaker 20: So you need to go into the path of totality,
Speaker 20: that is where there will be a solar eclipse, and
Speaker 20: that's a path that stretches in the US from about
Speaker 20: Texas up into the northeast.
Speaker 13: You want to go.
Speaker 20: Where there's not going to be clouds and keep your
Speaker 20: fingers crossed that it's not cloudy. And the important thing
Speaker 20: is as the eclipse is coming, you want to wear
Speaker 20: special eclipse glasses that are going to protect your eyes
Speaker 20: once the eclipse happens. And the totality happens, you can
Speaker 20: take those glasses off.
Speaker 13: Because the sun is.
Speaker 20: Blocked to never look directly at the Sun, you can
Speaker 20: really damage your eyes. Even if you don't feel the pain,
Speaker 20: that light coming from the Sun damage your eyes. And
Speaker 20: this is especially true as the Sun is being eclipsed
Speaker 20: by the Moon, because it starts to get darker, but
Speaker 20: there's still enough light to damage your eyes. And it's
Speaker 20: only when the Moon is completely covering the Sun in
Speaker 20: that total eclipse, which just happens for a few minutes,
Speaker 20: that you can take those glasses off and just be
Speaker 20: in the moment and experience this eclipse.
Speaker 1: Now, this is where your Amazon Prime membership comes in.
Speaker 1: You have to get a pair of solar eclipse glasses.
Speaker 2: You can get them on Amazon.
Speaker 1: A ten pack runs about fifteen dollars. Now, if you
Speaker 1: don't do that, there is a DIY solution.
Speaker 20: So one of the things you could do is create
Speaker 20: what we call a pinhole camera. You take a piece
Speaker 20: of paper or a piece of cardboard and you make
Speaker 20: a hole in it and you use that hole as
Speaker 20: sort of put that between another piece of paper and
Speaker 20: the sun, and the light from the Sun will come
Speaker 20: through that hole. And make an image of the eclipse
Speaker 20: on the other piece of paper or on the ground.
Speaker 20: But I really strongly recommend that if you're going to
Speaker 20: be where you can see the eclipse, to get those glasses,
Speaker 20: because it'll allow you to experience the full grandeur and
Speaker 20: splendor of the eclipse.
Speaker 1: If you don't live in the path of totality and
Speaker 1: you're not going to travel somewhere to get in that path,
Speaker 1: I was curious if it's still worth it to even
Speaker 1: go outside.
Speaker 20: I think it's completely worth going outside and taking a
Speaker 20: look if you're not in the path of totality, because
Speaker 20: you can still see a partial eclipse where the disk
Speaker 20: of the moon will go across part of the Sun,
Speaker 20: and that's still a really interesting thing to see.
Speaker 13: That's a unique experience for most people.
Speaker 1: What I think is really neat about any sort of
Speaker 1: natural phenomenon is that it gets people interested in science
Speaker 1: and nature, especially kids and even adults.
Speaker 20: I think for a lot of humanity's history, people didn't
Speaker 20: understand when eclipses were gonna happen or what was happening,
Speaker 20: and it was scary to see the Sun move away.
Speaker 20: But in the last few hundred years, science has allowed
Speaker 20: us first to understand what the eclipse meant. It was
Speaker 20: just the Moon going in front of the Sun. Then
Speaker 20: to predict these eclipses, and then to use the eclipses
Speaker 20: to study the universe. And there are a few ways
Speaker 20: that we've done that. Of course, there was an eclipse.
Speaker 20: When there's an eclipse, we can look at the atmosphere
Speaker 20: of the Sun, and that's a really exciting thing that
Speaker 20: we're not able to do otherwise.
Speaker 13: And about one hundred years ago.
Speaker 20: There was an eclipse that people used to prove Einstein's
Speaker 20: theory of relativity, that is, our theory of gravity. Just
Speaker 20: a few years after Einstein posed this theory. They looked
Speaker 20: at the motions of stars that were distorted by the Sun,
Speaker 20: and they couldn't see those stars until there was an eclipse.
Speaker 13: So there was a race to go where the eclipse
Speaker 13: was going to be.
Speaker 20: Because Einstein's theory relativity had predicted that we would see
Speaker 20: something amazing during that eclipse, and sure enough we did.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 20: Eclipses are a huge victory for science in predicting and
Speaker 20: understanding eclipses and using them to understand a lot about nature.
Speaker 1: Speaking of science, wait until you hear about the project
Speaker 1: that Jason is working on.
Speaker 20: So one of the missions that I work on here
Speaker 20: at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the Nancy Grace Roman
Speaker 20: Space Telescope, and Roman will have an instrument called a coronagraph,
Speaker 20: And these coronagraphs were originally developed to block out the
Speaker 20: Sun so you could see the corona or the atmosphere
Speaker 20: of the Sun. But the coronagraph on the Roman Space Telescope,
Speaker 20: which is scheduled for launch in twenty twenty seven, will
Speaker 20: actually block out the discs of distant stars to allow
Speaker 20: us to see the planets around those stars. And we
Speaker 20: call those planets exoplanets. So it's going to be an
Speaker 20: instrument that creates an artificial eclipse to allow us to
Speaker 20: study planets outside of our Solar system.
Speaker 2: So we'll get someone at NASA interested in outer space.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 20: I grew up reading a lot of science, reading science fiction,
Speaker 20: and I've always had a strong desire to understand how
Speaker 20: the universe works. And I fulfilled my wish by working
Speaker 20: at the best place in the world, NASA, whose mission
Speaker 20: it is to understand how the universe works. So a
Speaker 20: lot of the technology that makes our lives better and
Speaker 20: makes our lives longer and healthier comes from understanding how
Speaker 20: the universe works. And there's a lot of knock on
Speaker 20: effects from the understanding of the universe that allow us
Speaker 20: to live better, fuller lives. And I'll give you one example.
Speaker 20: I talked earlier about Einstein's theory of relativity, and the
Speaker 20: first proof of that theory was using an eclipse. But
Speaker 20: Einstein's theory of relativity is what allows GPS to work.
Speaker 20: It allows us to use our smartphone to navigate. And
Speaker 20: so when Einstein was coming up with that theory, he
Speaker 20: of course had no vision for the future that it
Speaker 20: was going to use.
Speaker 13: People were going to use GPS so that they could navigate.
Speaker 20: But one of the things in understanding universe it allows
Speaker 20: us to create these technologies like GPS, which make our
Speaker 20: lives better and safer.
Speaker 1: When I asked Jason if you had one last piece
Speaker 1: of advice, I was surprised at his an.
Speaker 20: Sir, Yes, I do have one piece of advice, and
Speaker 20: that is, don't try to take a movie of the
Speaker 20: eclipse with your phone or a picture of the eclipse
Speaker 20: with your phone. Just be in the moment, experience the eclipse,
Speaker 20: look at it, and I guarantee you you will remember
Speaker 20: it for the rest of your life, whether you have a.
Speaker 13: Picture of it or not.
Speaker 20: So if you want to google NASA and U for instance,
Speaker 20: the Roman Space Telescope, that's a great way to find
Speaker 20: out things that I'm working on. Another great resource is
Speaker 20: the Planetary Society. That's a great resource for space in general.
Speaker 20: And if you want to find out more about the
Speaker 20: eclipse and where you can watch it and how you
Speaker 20: should watch it, I think the Planetary Society website is
Speaker 20: a really good resource.
Speaker 2: My thanks to Jason Rhodes, Senior research scientist at NASA's
Speaker 2: Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Speaker 1: All right, if you have a question about technology, give
Speaker 1: me a call Triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 2: That's eight eight eight seven four to.
Speaker 1: Two four one zero one, or rich on Tech coming
Speaker 1: your way right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking tech at
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. The website
Speaker 1: for the show rich on Tech dot tv. Just click
Speaker 1: the toplink that says radio show. I she'll tell you
Speaker 1: what it actually says. Probably would help right it says, well,
Speaker 1: has the phone number for the show, says radio show links,
Speaker 1: and then it's got the date for this weekend. So
Speaker 1: that's where you can find the links. And people often
Speaker 1: email me and they say, hey, did you post this
Speaker 1: on the links? Yes, everything is on the show links.
Speaker 1: You'll be very surprised just how good I am with
Speaker 1: the show notes. They are very, very thorough. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I wanted to circle back to Diana and Torrance.
Speaker 1: She wanted some remote desktop software to access her MacBook
Speaker 1: Pro remotely talked about Team Viewer, which is free, or
Speaker 1: of course go to my PC, which is paid. But
Speaker 1: I was consulting with my tech brother and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: is there a you know, a better thing than some
Speaker 1: of these things that we were talking about. And he
Speaker 1: also recommended an open source alternative is rust desk are
Speaker 1: U s T d E s K. And I love
Speaker 1: any open source alternative software that's just you know, free
Speaker 1: and let's see, well, hold on, let me see if
Speaker 1: this is free. This may not be free. Hold on, Yeah,
Speaker 1: self hosting is free, so you kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: you may need to know a little bit if you
Speaker 1: want to self host this. But it's nice to have
Speaker 1: options out there. And by the way, the other website
Speaker 1: that I like if you ever looking for something like
Speaker 1: let's say you know an app right and you want
Speaker 1: to find something that's similar to that app. The website
Speaker 1: I like for finding that software is called alternative two
Speaker 1: dot net alternative to dot net. So let's say you
Speaker 1: like Evernoe. You can type in evernote and then it
Speaker 1: will show you all the alternatives to that program. It's
Speaker 1: a really nice way of finding apps that are similar
Speaker 1: to what you already know. But maybe you're looking for
Speaker 1: something better or with different functionality, or that's free, or
Speaker 1: that's cross platform, and that's always a good way to
Speaker 1: do it. One of the things I did not mention
Speaker 1: when I was talking about the whole case against Apple,
Speaker 1: and you've heard me say this on this show many
Speaker 1: many times now. I love Apple. I think they have
Speaker 1: done incredible things. They have really really just kind of
Speaker 1: pushed the envelope in a lot of ways with what
Speaker 1: our phones can do and how we do things. But
Speaker 1: I also do take issue with some of the ways
Speaker 1: that they do things. And if you've listened to this show,
Speaker 1: you know that I have a major issue with the
Speaker 1: fact that they do not allow I Message on Android.
Speaker 1: Apple should have come out with the I Message for
Speaker 1: Android app years ago. It would have solved a lot
Speaker 1: of these problems, because that is the main point of
Speaker 1: contention among most people now downloading third party apps and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Sure you can argue that, you know,
Speaker 1: techy people like myself have a problem with that in
Speaker 1: some of the ways that the iPhone operating system works
Speaker 1: and some of the access you get to some of
Speaker 1: the features and the hardware. Yes, I understand all that,
Speaker 1: but I think for the average person, all they want
Speaker 1: to do is just send a video to an Android
Speaker 1: friend and have it work, or an Android friend send
Speaker 1: a video to an iPhone friend and have that work,
Speaker 1: or to see typing indicators. And again, these are things
Speaker 1: that have standards that almost every other company, I should
Speaker 1: say every company in the world abides by except for Apple.
Speaker 1: And yes, they will later this year supposedly give us
Speaker 1: some of those standards with RCS built into the iPhone,
Speaker 1: but we don't know how they're going to implement it,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure there still will be some level of
Speaker 1: distinction between I message and Android. You know, your friends
Speaker 1: will probably still show up as a green bubble, even
Speaker 1: though your picture will be high resolution, which will be great.
Speaker 1: But I mentioned anytime I talk about Apple apps. You
Speaker 1: know Apple, when you download the iPhone, they've got all
Speaker 1: the apps that they want on there. You know, they've
Speaker 1: got a music app, they've got a notepad app, they've
Speaker 1: got calendar, email, everything. Guess what, I don't use any
Speaker 1: of those apps. I don't use any of them because
Speaker 1: using any of those apps gets you deeper into the
Speaker 1: Apple ecosystem. Now, if you're only going to use Apple
Speaker 1: for the rest of your life, sure it works great,
Speaker 1: it's fine. But I want to have options, so I
Speaker 1: always look for what I call cross platform third party apps. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, my notes app, I use Evernoe because it
Speaker 1: works everywhere, and it works the same everywhere whereas if
Speaker 1: I use Apple Notes, it's a great app, it only
Speaker 1: works on Apple devices. Try using that anywhere else. I
Speaker 1: just can't recommend it because of that reason. So again,
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of these things we're seeing
Speaker 1: with Apple are things that maybe need to change. I
Speaker 1: know there's a lot of opinions on either side, but
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I think there's no
Speaker 1: denying that Apple has done incredible things. But it's just
Speaker 1: the method to their madness that some people take issue with.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Seraphene in Studio City. You are on
Speaker 1: with Rich. Welcome, Hi Rich.
Speaker 17: I'm the artist that calls you every once in a while.
Speaker 1: Oh how's the art going.
Speaker 11: Oh awesome?
Speaker 14: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good to hear.
Speaker 17: And I love the rain too, so that I can,
Speaker 17: you know, anyway, get to the point.
Speaker 1: No, I love the rain. I'm telling I love the rain.
Speaker 1: I first thing I did this morning was open up
Speaker 1: my back door to have the rain sound. I think
Speaker 1: the rain is great, although we've got a lot of
Speaker 1: it in California. Anyway, how can I help?
Speaker 17: Okay, I am hearing impaired. I don't hear high frequencies.
Speaker 17: My iPhone works fine, the volume is great. Called tech
Speaker 17: support last night with Apple and said, okay, I have
Speaker 17: a MacBook Pro, I have Sonoma, I have fourteen blah
Speaker 17: blah blah. I'm up to the latest update. But I
Speaker 17: can't turn the volume up as much as I want.
Speaker 17: I've tried the Beat headphones, I've tried the ear pods.
Speaker 17: I keep losing all the cords and all the little
Speaker 17: you know, chargers and all that kind of stuff, and
Speaker 17: I just wanted to bring my my my pro into
Speaker 17: tech support and saying, put some stronger speakers in, like
Speaker 17: you can put in you know, more memory or.
Speaker 5: Something like that.
Speaker 1: Oh, Saraphine, you know we can't do that with the computer.
Speaker 1: With the MacBook, you can't. You can't replace those speakers.
Speaker 1: I mean, in all seriousness, you can't do that with
Speaker 1: almost any laptop. There is one brand out there that
Speaker 1: I'm doing a story with. Oh gosh, it's I think
Speaker 1: it's called Framework, and they're actually shipping a laptop with
Speaker 1: modular parts. Which, look, I get it. These laptops. They
Speaker 1: are small, they're engineered. Everything with the Apple is sort
Speaker 1: of like, you know, closed up inside. So what did
Speaker 1: they tell you? You can't replace these speakers?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 17: I couldn't get past settings sound with the tech support person.
Speaker 17: He couldn't comprehend that what I was trying to get to.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I think your best bet is probably going
Speaker 1: to be an external speaker. Have you thought about that?
Speaker 17: I got so many things I know, and I just
Speaker 17: want to keep it simple. If I'm out in my
Speaker 17: studio working, I want to open up my computer. Fine,
Speaker 17: if I go out into my yard, I want to
Speaker 17: open up my computer. Fine, but I don't want to
Speaker 17: have to keep carrying, you know, a basket full of attachments.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, I understand that so well. I think that yes,
Speaker 1: I get that, and I think the easiest would be
Speaker 1: you know, there's two ways you can do it, and
Speaker 1: I'm looking on Amazon. You can get a pair of
Speaker 1: Amazon Basics USB speakers that will plug into your laptop
Speaker 1: and that's you know, that'll be a very easy way
Speaker 1: to get louder sound. Those are fifteen bucks. The only
Speaker 1: issue is depending on your laptop. They're not USBC, so
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what model you have. But I'm looking
Speaker 1: at this app called Have you looked at this boom too? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I think you should try this because it is a
Speaker 1: audio enhancement app, so it gives you control over It
Speaker 1: looks like some of the frequencies as well, so you
Speaker 1: might be able to boost the frequencies that you're having
Speaker 1: trouble hearing and that might help you. So I would
Speaker 1: definitely try this out. It looks like it's a free trial.
Speaker 1: Let's see how much this is, so.
Speaker 17: I'd go through the app store.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can go on the website. It's Globaldlight Dot
Speaker 1: com slash boom two and I will link it up
Speaker 1: boom and then the number two Globaldlight dot com slash
Speaker 1: boom two and it looks like it's about fourteen bucks
Speaker 1: for the year or thirty two dollars forever. But Saraphine,
Speaker 1: I think that's going to solve a lot of your issues.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's why I love the show. I learned
Speaker 1: stuff on a daily basis. I love it. Eight eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one eight eight seven four two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you how Google
Speaker 1: can help you identify a song by singing it. This
Speaker 1: is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Give me a
Speaker 1: call if you have a question about something. So I
Speaker 1: watched the Taylor Swift on Disney Plus last weekend and
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding. I think my wife fell in love
Speaker 1: with me all over again. I just saw her melt
Speaker 1: She's like you do, and I was like yeah, And
Speaker 1: then of course I played it up a little bit.
Speaker 1: Let's watch it again sometime, but it was, you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta give her credit. I mean the girl was
Speaker 1: on there for like three hours plus, singing her heart out.
Speaker 1: It was amazing anyway, So if you haven't watched that,
Speaker 1: it's on Disney Plus. I did wait until it was
Speaker 1: for free on Disney Plus. I didn't see in the movies.
Speaker 1: I didn't pay the twenty dollars as a no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm wait. I pay for all these streaming services. I
Speaker 1: am not paying an extra nickel. If you see my
Speaker 1: kids come up to me, they're like, Dad, can we
Speaker 1: watch that movie? I'm like, is it free? Because I
Speaker 1: pay for everything. In no way am I paying an
Speaker 1: extra nickel for any streaming service.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Speaking of streaming, thank you Bobo. So this is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I found this out through life hacker. Now you know
Speaker 1: Shazam can identify any song that's playing right use his
Speaker 1: little fingerprints on the songs. Well, I thought this was
Speaker 1: pretty cool. You can sing or hum a song and
Speaker 1: Google will figure out the song name. So try it
Speaker 1: out if you have a I think it works on
Speaker 1: iPhone as well, but you have to have the Google app,
Speaker 1: so Google App or on Android, it just has that
Speaker 1: little Google search bar. So just tap the microphone and
Speaker 1: you can literally see where it says down at the
Speaker 1: bottom and says search a song. So you tap that
Speaker 1: and now you can just play sing or hum a song.
Speaker 1: So you can literally just speak the words to a song.
Speaker 1: All right, So now we got bad blood, Baby got
Speaker 1: bad blood. Look what you there? It is Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine bad Blood eight percent. Match. That's how
Speaker 1: bad I am at singing eight percent. But pretty cool? Huh.
Speaker 1: I mean I did not realize that that was built
Speaker 1: into Google Search. So again, go just tap the microphone
Speaker 1: on the Android home screen or go into the Google app.
Speaker 1: Let's see if I go into the Google app on
Speaker 1: iPhone and I tap the same thing. So go into
Speaker 1: the Google app on the iPhone, tap the microphone, and
Speaker 1: then it says search a song, and you can play
Speaker 1: singer hum a song. That is so cool, Bobo, where's
Speaker 1: the applause? Okay? Crickets? Okay, all right, let's go to Uh.
Speaker 1: I think Andrew has heard enough. Andrew and Ventura, you're
Speaker 1: on with Rich.
Speaker 14: So Apple has screwed up yet another thing. Uh oh,
Speaker 14: let's all do.
Speaker 1: So we added to the government's list being a record.
Speaker 15: If we go into the app store, sure, I want
Speaker 15: to share something with a friend of mine, so I
Speaker 15: want to see find this app so I can just
Speaker 15: send them a link. So I go into the app
Speaker 15: store and at the top right you tap your initials
Speaker 15: and then there's purchase history. Sure, and I typed start
Speaker 15: to type the name of the app that I want
Speaker 15: purchase history, and it used to just pop right up, but.
Speaker 14: Now they're filtering it.
Speaker 15: The default is for paid apps, so I've got a
Speaker 15: tap tap tap all apps.
Speaker 14: And then I don't know what it was last year,
Speaker 14: the year before, and then it still can't find it.
Speaker 14: They've really that up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as soon as you're saying they did change this interesting,
Speaker 1: Yeah they did. Because that's my kid's secret weapon. They
Speaker 1: figure out they can down they they realize because we're
Speaker 1: on family sharing, they can download any app that I've
Speaker 1: downloaded in the past. They can just redownload it in
Speaker 1: puting a kid blocker. Yeah, oh they've gotten they've gotten
Speaker 1: past the kid blockers. My kid is like a fly
Speaker 1: to a light when it comes to YouTube. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: I've blocked YouTube on more devices in my house than
Speaker 1: you can imagine, and somehow he finds YouTube on these devices.
Speaker 1: I mean he got a flip phone the other day
Speaker 1: and found YouTube on it. I don't know how he
Speaker 1: does it, but he will figure it out.
Speaker 14: Great, I can blow half a day on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Oh well, look, it's great. But when you're a kid
Speaker 1: and you're flipping through YouTube shorts, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: nonsense that he doesn't need to be watching at nine
Speaker 1: years old, and soide.
Speaker 14: And climb a tree. Yeah, while I'm on my search rant. Sure,
Speaker 14: Apple Email lets you combine all your emails, and I've
Speaker 14: got like twelve email addresses for personal and business. Sure,
Speaker 14: and it searches all of those faster than any desktop computer.
Speaker 14: I'm nine, I've got So that's that's fabulous, Except I've
Speaker 14: got all these emails, and now I want to search
Speaker 14: for something really specific, like a part number one, two, three, four, five, six. Yeah,
Speaker 14: it'll show up, for just a second, all kinds of
Speaker 14: other random emails that don't have anywhere near that, or
Speaker 14: a specific word like antisocial established minitarianism I can't even pronounce,
Speaker 14: but it'll show up all kinds of stuff that doesn't
Speaker 14: have that, you know what.
Speaker 1: I don't use the Apple mail app, but I find
Speaker 1: a similar issue on Gmail. So if I am searching
Speaker 1: for something on Gmail. I have found that I get
Speaker 1: better results when I don't finish the search. Like on
Speaker 1: the search bar, I will start typing for something and
Speaker 1: the email will pop up right at the top. But
Speaker 1: if I press search, all of a sudden, it's like
Speaker 1: I can't find that same email. So it seems like
Speaker 1: there's a disconnect between sort of like the immediate response
Speaker 1: that it thinks, almost like the spotlight response that it
Speaker 1: thinks you want, versus the actual searching in the email.
Speaker 1: So I don't have an answer for that one. But
Speaker 1: I find that myself as well. So I usually end
Speaker 1: up just instead of pressing the search and pressing enter,
Speaker 1: I will just literally start typing and wait for the
Speaker 1: first search to come up, and then I'll just not
Speaker 1: complete that search and I'll just click that link. Now,
Speaker 1: a couple of things, Andrew, because I just want to
Speaker 1: help you know, if someone's listening and they're looking for
Speaker 1: a purchase history, and you're right, they did change that,
Speaker 1: which is kind of annoying, I will admit, because there's
Speaker 1: no all time. They've got date range of thirty days,
Speaker 1: ninety days this year or last year, which defeats the
Speaker 1: whole purpose of looking for an app that you downloaded,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of years ago. I don't know
Speaker 1: why they made that change, but they did give more
Speaker 1: options on searching for stuff, whether it's free or paid,
Speaker 1: the type, whether it's apps in app purchases, subscriptions, But
Speaker 1: I did like the old way. Just type in the
Speaker 1: name and it comes up no matter when you bought it.
Speaker 1: But if you want there's two little things I will
Speaker 1: I will mention. Number one, there's a great Apple website
Speaker 1: called report Aproblem dot app com. Report a problem dot
Speaker 1: Apple dot com. Did you know that you can get
Speaker 1: a refund for an app or a movie or a
Speaker 1: piece of music or anything that you purchase through the
Speaker 1: app Store if you're having an issue with it, you
Speaker 1: can request a refund and nine times out of ten
Speaker 1: you will get that refund. And it's definitely a good
Speaker 1: website to know, and it's pretty much it seems like
Speaker 1: it's an automated system, although they say that they look
Speaker 1: at these things manually. But go to report aproblem dot
Speaker 1: apple dot com and while you're in there, you can
Speaker 1: also search and see a list of everything that you've
Speaker 1: purchased over the years. And it doesn't seem like there
Speaker 1: is any any limit on you know, you can just
Speaker 1: continue that infinite scroll. That's the first thing. The second
Speaker 1: thing is the email address. So for me, you can
Speaker 1: find the email address that Apple sends you things from,
Speaker 1: and it's usually no underscore reply at email dot Apple
Speaker 1: dot com. So what I would do is, if you
Speaker 1: want to keep track of all the things you're buying
Speaker 1: on the Apple app Store, just find the latest thing
Speaker 1: that you bought on there, and then you can type
Speaker 1: that email address and make a search filter. And so
Speaker 1: you can make that search filter and then tag everything
Speaker 1: that you purchase from Apple with you know, a label
Speaker 1: that says like Apple purchases, or you can just save
Speaker 1: that search and you could easily get back to it.
Speaker 1: So those are some of the ways that I find
Speaker 1: to kind of organize the Apple situation, because I will
Speaker 1: be honest, when you get that charge on your card,
Speaker 1: every single one of them says Apple, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, two nine ninety nine, thirty seven ninety nine,
Speaker 1: what were these four? And I will tell you two
Speaker 1: of the biggest if you ever wanted to be a
Speaker 1: scam artist, honestly, and I'm I can't believe that this
Speaker 1: is even a thing. But Amazon and Apple, the two
Speaker 1: probably biggest billers in the world, they don't give you
Speaker 1: any indication on your card statement of what you're being
Speaker 1: billed for. It just says Apple, it just Amazon. So
Speaker 1: when I see my statement, I have no clue if
Speaker 1: that was a legitimate charge or not. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: saying to do that, but like, seriously, someone's gonna get
Speaker 1: hip to this and they're gonna start charging us random
Speaker 1: amounts under the term Apple or Amazon because half of
Speaker 1: my charge ledger is Apple or Amazon. And I have
Speaker 1: no idea what those charges are for. Because between myself,
Speaker 1: my wife, my kids, we're all charging stuff all the
Speaker 1: time on Apple and Amazon. And it's like, okay, so
Speaker 1: let me just look here. Do I have any charges
Speaker 1: from Amazon on here? Okay, let's see Amazon there it
Speaker 1: is seventy six dollars eighty four cents. No idea what
Speaker 1: that's for. Let's see Apple, Apple dot com slash bill
Speaker 1: twelve dollars ninety nine cents, No idea what that's for.
Speaker 1: Let's see is keep going Microsoft store thirty nine ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Now I do know what that's for. I bought my
Speaker 1: kid a game Apple dot com slash bill thirty seven
Speaker 1: ninety five. Okay, that's for my cloud storage. I get that,
Speaker 1: but my point is they don't really give you much
Speaker 1: indication of what Apple dot com slash bill four dollars
Speaker 1: ninety nine cents. Now, that's a lot of things build
Speaker 1: from Apple that I just don't really I can't match
Speaker 1: those up unless I get a Ledger every month and search.
Speaker 1: So anyway, am I done? We solve more time here. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go to break. I'll save you my riches rants.
Speaker 1: Coming up, Gary's asking the best way to uh, let's
Speaker 1: see what does he say? Best way to dispose of
Speaker 1: an old laptop computer? Eighty eight rich one O one
Speaker 1: eighty eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Speaker 1: I'll answer that and more of your questions coming up
Speaker 1: right after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. This is
Speaker 1: the show where I talk about the tech stuff I
Speaker 1: think you should know about. So we don't discuss everything.
Speaker 1: There'd be no be not enough time in the world
Speaker 1: to do that, but I do try to hit the
Speaker 1: things that I think you should know about. This week
Speaker 1: very popular on my TV program, I shared travel websites
Speaker 1: you know spring break is coming up and a lot
Speaker 1: of people you want to get out of town, want
Speaker 1: to find a hotel, airbnb, rental car, and so I
Speaker 1: shared a bunch of websites that are not your Expedias
Speaker 1: and Kayaks we all know them, but some other websites,
Speaker 1: including auto slash, which is for car rental deals. I
Speaker 1: thought that was pretty cool. Travel Arrow this is a
Speaker 1: web browser that actually reveals the secret hotel names for
Speaker 1: price lines express deals. That's kind of cool. I've not
Speaker 1: used that personally, so I can't vouch. But by the way,
Speaker 1: I was one of the earliest people to ever use
Speaker 1: priceline dot com. My wife and I flew to Vegas
Speaker 1: for twenty dollars and round trip, and we were actually
Speaker 1: featured in a price Line newspaper ad because of that.
Speaker 1: They had like it wasn't just us, there's like one
Speaker 1: hundred people that use Priceline in the first like week.
Speaker 1: And of course I was a nerd even back then,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my gosh, you can't believe
Speaker 1: you could pay twenty bucks and get it. You know,
Speaker 1: you name your own price for this hotel, you name
Speaker 1: your own price for a flight, and it's like, wait,
Speaker 1: what and I used it for many many years for
Speaker 1: the hotel rooms as well. I loved it, and I
Speaker 1: don't use it as much anymore, but it's still there.
Speaker 1: It's probably not as good as it used to be,
Speaker 1: but it's still there anyway. Flightsfrom dot Com This is
Speaker 1: a cool way to discover direct flights from any airport.
Speaker 1: So if you have a regional airport near you, or
Speaker 1: you just want to see where you can go from
Speaker 1: your airport direct, that's a good one. Hichi Hichee. This
Speaker 1: is pretty genius. It will take the link from your
Speaker 1: Airbnb listing, you pop it in there, and it will
Speaker 1: reverse search it on other sites, so it will see
Speaker 1: if it's maybe cheaper on verbo or directly booking with
Speaker 1: that website, so that's kind of cool. This is probably
Speaker 1: my favorite out of all of them. It's called Wiki Voyage.
Speaker 1: It's like Wikipedia, but it's a travel guide, so it
Speaker 1: gives you all the information you need about a destination.
Speaker 1: So if you're going to a place like Rome, Italy,
Speaker 1: you type in Rome and it will give you everything
Speaker 1: you need to know about Rome. It's almost like those
Speaker 1: travel books back in the day, but all on one page,
Speaker 1: and it's like Wikipedia, so it's updated by real people.
Speaker 1: This one is interesting, nap or nappr. This lets you
Speaker 1: rent hotel rooms by the hour, four to ten hours.
Speaker 1: So what could possibly go wrong nappr Now, the idea
Speaker 1: is that you can rest and recharge on the go.
Speaker 1: When I landed in Italy a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: you know, we landed at nine am and our hotel
Speaker 1: room was not ready until three or four pm. So
Speaker 1: if you're in one of those situations, maybe you want
Speaker 1: a hotel room just you know, take a nap in
Speaker 1: the morning or something. And then to go beyond Google Maps,
Speaker 1: I mentioned oh producer Kim chimed in hourly Hotels, I
Speaker 1: know what those are used for? Napping, right, and then
Speaker 1: Rome Rome to Rio, and then city Mapper. So if
Speaker 1: you want links to all of these off the beaten
Speaker 1: path travel sites, just go to Rich on tech dot TV,
Speaker 1: scroll all the way down and it says as seen
Speaker 1: on TV handy travel websites. Let's see Gary writes in Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: good show today, what is the best way to dispose
Speaker 1: of an old laptop computer? Gary, Gary, I'm glad that
Speaker 1: you're not just gonna throw this thing in the trash,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure some people do, because there are a
Speaker 1: lot of parts in there that should be properly recycled
Speaker 1: a couple of ways. Number One, you should look into
Speaker 1: donating it to an organization if you can. In the
Speaker 1: LA area, there's a place called the Laptop Elf Project.
Speaker 1: Even though this computer seems old and crusty, they may
Speaker 1: be able to turn it into a chromebook that will
Speaker 1: still work for someone in need. So definitely check out
Speaker 1: the Laptop Elf Project or another organization in your area.
Speaker 1: Just look up donate laptop nonprofit and you know or
Speaker 1: refurbished laptop. Second way is Staples or Best Buy both
Speaker 1: except electronics for recycling Staples, I've done this very very easy.
Speaker 1: It is free. You can recycle items there. They take
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff, almost everything. A couple of
Speaker 1: things they don't take, but they take a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: including a lot of batteries too, even alkaline batteries. Now
Speaker 1: that's new. So I did a story about recycling batteries,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'll be honest. I used to maybe
Speaker 1: toss them in the trash once in a while until
Speaker 1: I learned how bad that was, and I started saving
Speaker 1: my batteries and then recycling them, and it makes a
Speaker 1: big difference. You know, it's just one of these things.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit annoying to have this big, giant
Speaker 1: bag of batteries, but believe me, it's a smart thing
Speaker 1: to do for the environment. A couple of things you
Speaker 1: can't recycle at Staples air conditioners, appliances, light bulbs, large servers,
Speaker 1: medical devices, smoke detectors, televisions, vaporizers. What's that. I'm just
Speaker 1: I got this old vaporizer I don't need anymore, got
Speaker 1: a new one. Just bringing this back for you. Bobo's
Speaker 1: turning off the lights, he's closing the door. He's done.
Speaker 1: He's done with my jokes for the day. Best Buy
Speaker 1: also recycles electronics, and you go to the website before
Speaker 1: you do this just to make sure they take what
Speaker 1: you want. But usually it says you can three items
Speaker 1: per day, and if it's a monitor, it's usually a
Speaker 1: fee of thirty dollars. Not in California. You can look
Speaker 1: at up your individual state to see what their rules are.
Speaker 1: The other place. The other thing you can do this
Speaker 1: is kind of cool. Best Buy has these mail in
Speaker 1: recycling boxes, so if you just have like a bunch
Speaker 1: of cables, and you don't really live near a store,
Speaker 1: you can go on the best buy website order this box.
Speaker 1: They've got a medium box or a large box twenty
Speaker 1: three dollars or thirty dollars, and they send you this
Speaker 1: box and you just put all your old recycling stuff
Speaker 1: in their cables and things like that. You just dump
Speaker 1: it all in there and then ship it to them
Speaker 1: and they will recycle it. And then the other one
Speaker 1: is Gizmo Go. Gizmo Go, and I did a web
Speaker 1: a story with this place. But you can sell your
Speaker 1: device and so you can put in even an old laptop, tablet, smartwatch.
Speaker 1: You can see how much they will give you for
Speaker 1: that item. So, for instance, let's say you have an
Speaker 1: old let's just say you have an Apple Watch Series four.
Speaker 1: They'll give you forty bucks for that. That's not bad.
Speaker 1: And let's see if it's GPS and cellular. Let's see
Speaker 1: if it's good and good condition. Is the Apple ID
Speaker 1: signed out? Yes, give you fifteen bucks for that old watch.
Speaker 1: So even things you might not know gizmogo dot com
Speaker 1: all linked up on the website. Rich on tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, we're going to talk to Joshua Browder,
Speaker 1: CEO of Do Not Pay. You are listening to rich
Speaker 1: On Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you talking technology. Joining me now
Speaker 1: is Joshua Browder. He is the founder and CEO of
Speaker 1: a website called do Not Pay. So when he moved
Speaker 1: to the U, you moved to the US from the UK,
Speaker 1: he got a bunch of parking tickets and couldn't pay
Speaker 1: for them, and he wanted to figure out how to
Speaker 1: use technology to automate the appeal process, and that's what
Speaker 1: started this product, Do Not Pay. Joshua, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me so explain to me this
Speaker 1: parking ticket situation. You got a couple of tickets and
Speaker 1: you said, Okay, there's got to be a better way
Speaker 1: to automate this.
Speaker 21: Well, I'll use the excuse that the Americans drive on
Speaker 21: the other side of the road. But when I moved here,
Speaker 21: I was a terrible driver and got all these expensive tickets,
Speaker 21: and I learned something remarkable, which is if you know
Speaker 21: the right things to say, you can get out of
Speaker 21: your tickets. And I really just created it for my
Speaker 21: family and friends. But after about a week we went
Speaker 21: from ten cases to fifty thousand cases.
Speaker 5: And that's what made me realize.
Speaker 21: That the idea of fighting back with AI and technology
Speaker 21: is bigger than just tickets.
Speaker 5: And so I created do not Pay.
Speaker 1: And now you've got over one hundred different products that
Speaker 1: help you out, Like what are some of these things
Speaker 1: that do not pay? Does at this point? Like what
Speaker 1: are some of the most popular.
Speaker 21: One of the most popular things we've released recently is
Speaker 21: AI bill negotiation, So robot, a robot will log into
Speaker 21: your utility bill account and start chatting with a company
Speaker 21: like Comcast to lower your bill. And what's interesting is
Speaker 21: the big companies are using AI and we're using AI,
Speaker 21: and so sometimes the two AI robots are chatting with
Speaker 21: the childt to negotiate someone's bill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, way, that is wild. Okay? Is this secure? Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, obviously, if someone's listening and they're saying,
Speaker 1: wait a second, you know you're logging into my account?
Speaker 1: Is that secure?
Speaker 18: Yeah?
Speaker 21: I mean these issues aren't rocket science. I don't think
Speaker 21: someone's Internet account is the most secure thing in their life.
Speaker 21: We give apps access to everything, and a utility account
Speaker 21: is not up there among the most precious things. We
Speaker 21: have so it's secure and it's low resk.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you've got the lower my bills. So what
Speaker 1: does that work with? You said, a utility bill, a
Speaker 1: cable bill.
Speaker 21: Medical bills as well. So you can actually scan a
Speaker 21: medical bill and it will detect errors. They's an amazing
Speaker 21: federal law that it uses to negotiate medical bills down
Speaker 21: and this is much more important than a parking.
Speaker 5: Ticket and can create real value for people.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, and you know, I have a personal rule
Speaker 1: with the medical bill that I almost never pay it
Speaker 1: when it first comes because nine times out of ten
Speaker 1: something is not settled yet, whether it's the insurance, whether
Speaker 1: it's you know. And then a lot of times I
Speaker 1: will call the company or the doctor and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, is this the bill? And also is that
Speaker 1: the best you can do? And nine times out of
Speaker 1: ten they will say, oh no, here, just pay this amount.
Speaker 1: And it's like wait what So if you just are
Speaker 1: blindly paying your medical bills like without asking, it's that
Speaker 1: could be wasting a lot of money. How about this
Speaker 1: robo revenge feature?
Speaker 21: Yes, so not many people know this, but you can
Speaker 21: actually get one five hundred dollars every time you get
Speaker 21: a spam call. But the problem is that no one
Speaker 21: knows who these callers are. They hide behind fake names
Speaker 21: and fake numbers. So I do not pay.
Speaker 5: We've built a trap.
Speaker 21: And the way the trap works is it's a credit card,
Speaker 21: and when they try and sell you something that you
Speaker 21: can give them our credit card, not your credit card,
Speaker 21: and when they try and run the payment, it gets
Speaker 21: their business name, address, phone number, and then generates the
Speaker 21: demand letter to get that cash from them.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you are so sneaky. I love this.
Speaker 1: This is like, I literally feel like you are like
Speaker 1: a modern magician, but like getting people money and also
Speaker 1: like doing these little tricky things that are all within
Speaker 1: the law. Of course, the free trial card explain that.
Speaker 21: So this is a credit card that we've built so
Speaker 21: it's not linked to you, it's not tied to your
Speaker 21: credit or anything like that, and you can use it
Speaker 21: for free trials, so everyone forgets to cancel their subscription.
Speaker 21: Now you don't have to give your real payment information
Speaker 21: when you're signing up for free trials. And this is
Speaker 21: the whole mission of Do Not Pay. We just want
Speaker 21: to build all the coolest technology to help consumers rather
Speaker 21: than big companies and governments.
Speaker 1: What about this find hidden money.
Speaker 21: So one in seven Americans have money with the government
Speaker 21: that is unclaimed. So this can be if you've moved
Speaker 21: a dress and you'll owe a property tax refund, or
Speaker 21: big companies sometimes when they owe you money, they don't
Speaker 21: send it to you.
Speaker 5: They send it to the government.
Speaker 21: This such as all of the state databases to get
Speaker 21: you that money.
Speaker 1: All right, and this is a popular one. You said,
Speaker 1: everyone forgets to cancel their subscriptions, myself included. In fact,
Speaker 1: I just had I used one of those free trial
Speaker 1: card situations with a subscription that I completely forgot about,
Speaker 1: and I got an email that said, hey, we just
Speaker 1: tried to charge you thirty nine ninety nine for your
Speaker 1: renewal a year later, which of course I forgot that
Speaker 1: I signed up and it didn't get it because of that.
Speaker 1: So the cancer subscriptions with do not pay. How does
Speaker 1: that work?
Speaker 21: So I joke that you shouldn't need AI to cancel
Speaker 21: a subscription, but we live in such a broken country
Speaker 21: that that's the case. So do not pay, We'll go
Speaker 21: in and the bots will cancel your subscription. So that
Speaker 21: can be anything from generating a signed letter to get
Speaker 21: out of your gym membership. It's ridiculous that they make
Speaker 21: you sign and mail a letter in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 21: but this is here, we are.
Speaker 5: That's what the software does.
Speaker 21: And then in some situations, going back to the robots,
Speaker 21: it will actually log into your New York Times account
Speaker 21: and chat with the representative to cancel your subscription. And
Speaker 21: these representatives are very forceful. They'll say, don't cancel, we'll
Speaker 21: give you a discount, or try and store you and
Speaker 21: waste your time. But the AI is very firm and
Speaker 21: we'll make sure the subscription gets canceled.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, this all sounds so wild that you're
Speaker 1: using AI to do this. Does it work pretty automatically?
Speaker 1: Like how you know if you set this thing up
Speaker 1: for let's say the cancel subscription, Like, do you kind
Speaker 1: of do one real test and see how it works
Speaker 1: and then program the AI with all the different interactions
Speaker 1: that might occur, Like how does that work? Exactly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we go at.
Speaker 21: The top one hundred companies and we look for the process.
Speaker 21: And what's what's interesting is these things are just a
Speaker 21: tedious but not very complicated. No one has time to
Speaker 21: send as signed a legal letter to counsel a gym, membership,
Speaker 21: but it's very structured and tedious. So that's a great
Speaker 21: job for software and this is really I think one
Speaker 21: of the best use cases for AI is jumping through
Speaker 21: the hoops that the big companies make us jump through.
Speaker 1: How do you make money?
Speaker 18: How?
Speaker 1: How do people pay for these services? Is it a
Speaker 1: flat rate? Is it?
Speaker 14: You know?
Speaker 1: How does that work?
Speaker 21: It's a subscription, So we work for our customers. It's
Speaker 21: just like costco costco for consumer rights. So you pay
Speaker 21: a subscription. It's eighteen dollars and you get access to
Speaker 21: all of our services and you keep everything you save.
Speaker 21: There are no ads and we don't sell any data.
Speaker 1: What do you make of the you know, consumer right
Speaker 1: situation here in America? Do you think that we are
Speaker 1: at odds with major companies? Do you think we're protected?
Speaker 1: What do you think of What do you make of it?
Speaker 21: I think the government is asleep at the wheel and
Speaker 21: is letting big companies take advantage of people.
Speaker 5: It's ridiculous.
Speaker 21: It should be one click to counsel and only now
Speaker 21: is the FTC creating rules that might come into a
Speaker 21: fact years down the line. But this should have been
Speaker 21: in effect decades ago.
Speaker 1: And so what if I mean, I know that in
Speaker 1: the early days of do not Pay, and I think
Speaker 1: in continuing you've you've run up against a bunch of
Speaker 1: challenges with people trying to challenge what you're doing. Companies,
Speaker 1: obviously I'm assuming don't necessarily like this, right.
Speaker 21: Yeah, we created so many Netflix free trials with our
Speaker 21: free trial carb that Netflix, in our opinion, Netflix ended
Speaker 21: free trials for everyone because we were creating so many
Speaker 21: free trials. Also fighting against lawyers, our goal is to
Speaker 21: make legal services ninety nine percent cheaper, one day free,
Speaker 21: and that upsets lawyers. Fortunately, we have really good lawyers
Speaker 21: helping us. So the robots aren't going to replace all
Speaker 21: the lawyers, just the bad ones.
Speaker 1: Now, you were doing this stuff kind of before the
Speaker 1: blossoming of AI in a big way at the end
Speaker 1: of last year when or sorry the year before last
Speaker 1: when chat GBT was launched. So what do you make
Speaker 1: of AI? I mean, what's your kind of thought on
Speaker 1: how it's evolving and how quickly it's evolving For the
Speaker 1: average consumer.
Speaker 21: It feels like we're making years of progress and AI
Speaker 21: every few months. It's amazing how far the technology has developed,
Speaker 21: and this has really leveled up our product. When I
Speaker 21: started my company, it was just temphates, and you could
Speaker 21: go a long way with templates, but now you can
Speaker 21: do much more sophisticated things, and this allows us to
Speaker 21: do these AI build negotiations where the value of the
Speaker 21: bill is it could be a ten thousand dollar medical
Speaker 21: bill instead of one hundred dollars parking ticket.
Speaker 1: Now what if someone has a problem we do not pay,
Speaker 1: what do they use to dispute their bill?
Speaker 5: Well, we're actually very proud.
Speaker 21: We have one hundred percent refund right on all of
Speaker 21: our requests, so we're very consumer friendly and we do
Speaker 21: this because we love it. I've been working on the
Speaker 21: company for nine years now and I just feel like
Speaker 21: I have the best job in the world. So it's
Speaker 21: my passion to just build these cool products that people like.
Speaker 1: And it really is incredible. We just mentioned a handful
Speaker 1: of the things you can do, but if you go
Speaker 1: to the website Do Not Pay dot Com, they have
Speaker 1: so many different tools that will help you with this,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a growing list every day.
Speaker 5: It seems like, yeah, we've got our work cut out.
Speaker 1: For us, all right. Joshua Browder of Do Not Pay
Speaker 1: dot Com, thanks so much for joining me. Today.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: couple more stories of interest, including how hackers have figured
Speaker 1: out how to unlock millions of hotesoms, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: do some feedback to hear from you. You are listening
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology and
Speaker 1: closing out the show. Three hours just goes by very fast.
Speaker 1: Let's get it through some of the stories I think
Speaker 1: you should know about before we get to the feedback segment.
Speaker 1: First off, ethical hackers have figured out a vulnerability in
Speaker 1: those hotel room locks. They figured out a way to
Speaker 1: open millions of hotel room locks easily. They're made by
Speaker 1: a company named Dorma Kaba and they're used in many
Speaker 1: hotels around the world. They figured out how to make
Speaker 1: special key cards that can open any door. All they
Speaker 1: have to do is get one key card from the hotel,
Speaker 1: even an old one. They use the device to read
Speaker 1: that information off the card, and then they write it
Speaker 1: onto two new cards. When they tap those cards on
Speaker 1: the lock, the first one changes something in the locks data,
Speaker 1: the second one opens the door. And this entire process
Speaker 1: only takes a few seconds now. The researchers told the
Speaker 1: company they found the problem in twenty twenty two. They've
Speaker 1: been working on updating. But as you can imagine, these
Speaker 1: are used in millions of hotel rooms around the world.
Speaker 1: So in the meantime, and I learned this lesson the
Speaker 1: hard way. Always always always use the extra lock when
Speaker 1: you are in the room, whether that's the chain lock
Speaker 1: or the other lock on the door. Because I was
Speaker 1: sitting in my hotel room in Las Vegas once, and
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding, I used to not use that little
Speaker 1: lock chain because I was like, Ah, what's the point,
Speaker 1: come on, give me a break. And sure enough, someone
Speaker 1: walked right into my room and they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is our room. And I was like wait what,
Speaker 1: Like I literally I thought it was the housekeeping because
Speaker 1: it was like one of those things where they just
Speaker 1: kind of like I heard the door opening, but I
Speaker 1: was like, that's weird. Usually they knock right and sure enough,
Speaker 1: the door just opens right. You know, I'm sitting right there,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wait, what's happening here? And it
Speaker 1: was a couple and as a young couple, and I
Speaker 1: was just like, I think you're in my room. They said, Oh,
Speaker 1: they just give us this room and it was anyway.
Speaker 1: So just always use that lock no matter what. If
Speaker 1: your stuff is in the room, right, you want to
Speaker 1: use that safe because if someone gets into your room
Speaker 1: when you're not there, always always use the safe and
Speaker 1: use that TikTok hack. Put one of your shoes in
Speaker 1: the safe, so you don't forget your stuff in the
Speaker 1: safe when you leave the hotel room, because nine times
Speaker 1: out of ten, you're gonna lock your stuff up in
Speaker 1: the in the in the safe and then you're gonna
Speaker 1: walk out of that room and forget about it. Speaking
Speaker 1: of travel, trippet Pro has a new feature to tell
Speaker 1: you about disruptions. This is called risk Alerts. This is
Speaker 1: for paid trippet Pro users. It will now send you
Speaker 1: a notification if it's monitoring your airline number and there's
Speaker 1: a weather event, political unrest, labor actions, technology outages, or
Speaker 1: airport incidents. They're teaming up with a company called risk
Speaker 1: Line and so basically they will monitor your flight for
Speaker 1: any sort of disruption that is not just you know,
Speaker 1: a canceled flight or delayed flight. These are like other
Speaker 1: things that may impact your flight and retro tech making
Speaker 1: a comeback what are some of those most popular retro
Speaker 1: tech items. The Nikon Cool Picks point and shoot camera
Speaker 1: that is seeing a significant increase in demand. So we've
Speaker 1: seen this whole trend of people trying to disconnect from technology,
Speaker 1: maybe on Saturday or Sunday or when they're done with work.
Speaker 1: Because at first we thought it was so cool that
Speaker 1: the BlackBerry gave us the ability to have access to
Speaker 1: our work email twenty four to seven. How cool is this?
Speaker 1: I could work from anywhere? And now we're seeing it
Speaker 1: as wait a second, I can work from anywhere. That's
Speaker 1: kind of annoying. And when your kid is, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to play football with you in the front yard,
Speaker 1: and your watch is buzzing and your phone is ringing,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, someone at work just asking something nonsensical,
Speaker 1: and it's just like really, So retro tech is definitely
Speaker 1: seeing a comeback. Flip phones all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: but the Nikon cool Picks is number one, flip phones
Speaker 1: number two, Motorol Eraser and the Samsung flip phones seeing
Speaker 1: a surge in popularity across social media and e commerce platforms.
Speaker 1: MP three players including the iPod Nano and even the
Speaker 1: Sony Walkman. Can you imagine going back to a Sony
Speaker 1: Walkman at this point with like a tape? I don't
Speaker 1: know if I could do that. Nintendo DS handheld gaming
Speaker 1: console has also seen a rise in searches on TikTok
Speaker 1: and eBay. Pink is the most color popular color for
Speaker 1: retro tech devices. I'm guessing Barbie has something to do
Speaker 1: with that, followed by orange, blue, silver, and black depending
Speaker 1: on the device, and even typewriter keyboards for the iPad
Speaker 1: have seen a surge in searches. And you know, look,
Speaker 1: I get it. It's retro is always fun, right. This
Speaker 1: is from a website called Music Magpie. Music Magpie talking
Speaker 1: about the retro devices, and I think they're onto something
Speaker 1: because the retro stuff it is fun. It really is,
Speaker 1: all right, Let's get to some fee bag. Feedbag, of course,
Speaker 1: is a combination of feedback and the mail bag. Michelle
Speaker 1: says high tech chief Rich. I know you're not here,
Speaker 1: it goes. I live in Anaheim since twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Is a caregiver for my ninety four year old mom.
Speaker 1: I just heard you talk about the seasun Assisted Tech conference.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm near the Marriott. I could have visited.
Speaker 1: I'm so disappointed you didn't mention it earlier. Well, here's
Speaker 1: the deal. So I understand that this show airs locally
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, but it's also syndicated across a bunch
Speaker 1: of radio stations nationwide. So I really have to balance
Speaker 1: the local audience versus the national audience. So if I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there doing a calendar segment of everything you could
Speaker 1: do in the LA area, that's amazing for the LA folks,
Speaker 1: but not so good if you live in Minnesota or Milwaukee,
Speaker 1: or Michigan or what's another M state or m City, Mississippi.
Speaker 1: You get what I'm talking about. And we're in places
Speaker 1: that start with more than just them. But so I
Speaker 1: do think about that stuff, and I will. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, get it, and I understand there's always that
Speaker 1: balance there. Jim says. Wow. Now, in addition to the
Speaker 1: government telling me what kind of car I can drive,
Speaker 1: they're suing Apple in order to tell me what kind
Speaker 1: of cell phone I can purchase. What's next, what online
Speaker 1: shopping service I can use? Watch out Amazon. The only
Speaker 1: way that we'll get iPhone is from my cold dead hands. Jim. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll just move on. To Valerie. Valerie says, what happened
Speaker 1: to the search option on your website? Yeah, that has
Speaker 1: gone right for now, But there are ways of searching.
Speaker 1: If you search rich on tech and the topic, usually
Speaker 1: that'll bring you to the TV segment, and if you're
Speaker 1: on the show wiki, that will bring you to the
Speaker 1: different things that you can search on there. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to see if you can search on my substack if
Speaker 1: that has a search. My substack does have a search,
Speaker 1: you can search there as well, So that's another way
Speaker 1: of doing it. Thanks for the consideration, and let's see here.
Speaker 1: Neil from Ohio says, just a couple of comments on
Speaker 1: your TikTok guests. This is from last week. Seems to
Speaker 1: me a little bit of a crackpot. What he said
Speaker 1: seems true, But TikTok has put their data about Americans
Speaker 1: in the hands of Oracle on us soil. Does he
Speaker 1: have any references? You didn't give them much pushback pushback.
Speaker 1: I don't use TikTok, so I don't have anything to
Speaker 1: gain or lose. But this guy seemed a little off
Speaker 1: where he's privy to something we all need to be
Speaker 1: better informed on. Rather than giving Americans a deal on
Speaker 1: a popular app. Neil from Ohio. Ah, gosh, can we
Speaker 1: the TikTok stuff? I can talk about that forever, I know. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you can believe it, that's gonna do it for
Speaker 1: this episode of the show. If you want to submit
Speaker 1: your feedback, just go to the website rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. There you can find links to everything I mentioned,
Speaker 1: the show notes, the TV segments, my newsletter. Please sign
Speaker 1: up for the newsletter. It is the best way to
Speaker 1: keep in touch. And I am doing a much better
Speaker 1: job of putting that thing out every week and the
Speaker 1: feedback is pretty good on it. You can find me
Speaker 1: on social media. I am still on Instagram, I'm on
Speaker 1: x I'm on Facebook at rich on Tech. And next
Speaker 1: week we're gonna talk to friends of the show, Jefferson
Speaker 1: Graham of Photo Walks TV. He's gonna explain the best
Speaker 1: ways to capture the total solar eclipse with your smartphone.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. There are so many ways you
Speaker 1: can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it
Speaker 1: right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this
Speaker 1: show possible. My name is rich Dmiro. I will talk
Speaker 1: to you real soon.