Speaker 1: Reviews are in for another physical AI device and they're
Speaker 1: just okay. Well it looks more and more like TikTok
Speaker 1: will be banned. And why did Apple users suddenly get
Speaker 1: logged out? Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on?
Speaker 1: I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech. This
Speaker 1: is the show where I talk about the tech stuff
Speaker 1: I think you should know about. It's also the place
Speaker 1: where I answer your questions about technology. I believe the
Speaker 1: tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up
Speaker 1: those phone lines at triple A rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Give me a call. If you have a
Speaker 1: question about technology, email also open. Just go to Rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot tv and hit contact. We've got some
Speaker 1: great guests this week. Ryan Ozawa, a native Hawaiian tech
Speaker 1: journal and publisher of the Hawaii Bulletin, is going to
Speaker 1: join me to talk about the startup scene in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: Then later in the show, we've got JR. Rayfiel. He
Speaker 1: is tech writer and author of the Android Intelligence newsletter,
Speaker 1: so we'll get updated on Android and some tips and
Speaker 1: tricks as well. And great interview with Troy Hunt. He
Speaker 1: is the creator of haveibenponed dot com. This is a
Speaker 1: website that lets you see if your data has been
Speaker 1: involved in a breach, and he will discuss how to
Speaker 1: check the website and what to do if you see
Speaker 1: your information on there. He also talks about those services
Speaker 1: that purport to take your information off of the dark
Speaker 1: Web and other places. So a great conversation there. Well,
Speaker 1: this week I found myself in Hawaii once again. No,
Speaker 1: I did not plan that, but I was actually planning
Speaker 1: this since October. So you know, if you listened to
Speaker 1: the show, that I was in Hawaii for a personal
Speaker 1: vacation a couple of weeks ago, and then the opportunity
Speaker 1: came up to go back, and as crazy as it sounds,
Speaker 1: of course I said yes because I wanted to be
Speaker 1: among the first to test out high speed internet on
Speaker 1: Starlink on Hawaiian airlines, and this is something they announced
Speaker 1: last October. So I emailed the company. I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I really want to get on one of these planes
Speaker 1: and test this out. And they said, okay, well we
Speaker 1: just announced it. We haven't even installed this yet. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: well keep me in mind. So I just kept bugging
Speaker 1: them and bugging them and bugging them, and finally it
Speaker 1: worked out, and so I flew out of Long Beach, California, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, the number one comment I got on
Speaker 1: my Instagram when I was posting about the trip is
Speaker 1: rich Please don't tell people about Long Beach Airport too late,
Speaker 1: I just did. It is an incredible little airport if
Speaker 1: you can find a flight out of there. Obviously it's limited,
Speaker 1: but what a great airport. I love. We've gotten so
Speaker 1: used to like Lax and this huge, giant airport which
Speaker 1: is crowded and trafficky and all this stuff, and when
Speaker 1: you get to one of these smaller airports, either in
Speaker 1: a small town or one of the smaller airports in
Speaker 1: the LA area like Burbank or Long Beach. I've never
Speaker 1: flown out of Ontario, so I can't speak for that one,
Speaker 1: but it was a great experience, very very nice. So
Speaker 1: I get on the flight and let me tell you
Speaker 1: about Starlink on this flight. So if you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with starlink, this is from SpaceX and it's a network
Speaker 1: of low orbit satellites. They've been shooting up into outer
Speaker 1: space and they just kind of blanket the globe. So
Speaker 1: this gives you Internet from space pretty much anywhere. And yes,
Speaker 1: there's been satellite internet before, but this one is very,
Speaker 1: very fast, faster than we've ever seen before. So I
Speaker 1: got on the flight from Long Beach to Honolulu, about
Speaker 1: a five hour flight, and the internet starts immediately the
Speaker 1: second that you get to your seat. You can start
Speaker 1: using starlink. And what Hawaiian has done is they've made
Speaker 1: it really easy. There is basically no login. You just
Speaker 1: go to your internet, you connect to the it says
Speaker 1: starlink on Hawaiian air and you connect and that's it.
Speaker 1: It says, oh, by the way, a couple of rules here.
Speaker 1: No audio or video calls, no live streaming from your seat,
Speaker 1: and no looking at obscene content. So those are the
Speaker 1: ground rules. But after that you can pretty much do
Speaker 1: whatever you want. It's all free and you can connect
Speaker 1: as many devices as you want. And I did interview
Speaker 1: the CEO of Hawaiian Airlines and I said, hey, a
Speaker 1: couple things. Number one, is this going to remain free?
Speaker 1: And he said yes. The reason why it's free is
Speaker 1: because we were late to the Wi Fi game. A
Speaker 1: lot of other airlines have Wi Fi before us. It's
Speaker 1: been slow, it's been not very good, but we wanted
Speaker 1: to come out of the gate really strong with this
Speaker 1: awesome high speed internet, and we're going to give it
Speaker 1: to customers for free. And if you think that people
Speaker 1: don't care about this, they do. Because I was looking,
Speaker 1: as I always do at other people's phone screens, I
Speaker 1: kind of snoop whenever I can. I was watching people
Speaker 1: text their friends saying, oh my gosh, I have starlink
Speaker 1: on this flight. I have starlink on this flight, and
Speaker 1: I did a whole bunch of tests and it was incredible.
Speaker 1: There's no other way to describe it other than OMG,
Speaker 1: I can't believe we have this up in the air
Speaker 1: at this point. So I was getting speeds bursts. I
Speaker 1: would say two hundred and two fifty steady, about one
Speaker 1: hundred megabits per second. So that's pretty much home internet
Speaker 1: speed if you're lucky, if you have a good internet
Speaker 1: at home now. I was on a flight a couple
Speaker 1: weeks ago coming back from Honolulu. I won't name the airline,
Speaker 1: but my internet was eight bucks, which I paid for.
Speaker 1: I wanted to catch up on my four or five
Speaker 1: hundred emails that I got throughout the week, and guess
Speaker 1: what I could not even check email with that internet
Speaker 1: connection because it was so bad. And that reminds me
Speaker 1: that I do need to request a refund. If you
Speaker 1: ever have a bad internet experience. By the way, always
Speaker 1: always request a refund. If you cannot do what you
Speaker 1: were trying to do, just go to the website and
Speaker 1: of that airline and say request a refund. And most
Speaker 1: of the time it's very automated. It's like you'll get
Speaker 1: a response within twenty four hours and they'll say, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've refunded you your money. They don't want people to
Speaker 1: have a bad experience. This stuff is not well it
Speaker 1: is rocket science. But if it's not working properly, which
Speaker 1: sometimes it's not, especially with the old style satellite internet,
Speaker 1: it just ask for a refund and they will give
Speaker 1: it to you. So the in flight experience was amazing.
Speaker 1: What did I do? I tested downloading an entire movie
Speaker 1: before I even took off. I've never been able to
Speaker 1: do that, and all the years I've been flying, downloaded
Speaker 1: in an entire two hour movie or so while I
Speaker 1: was still at the gate. Then once I was in
Speaker 1: the air, I deleted that movie and redownloaded it and
Speaker 1: it was just fine. Took a couple of minutes, and
Speaker 1: I actually felt guilty at a certain point that I
Speaker 1: was using so much data. I also uploaded and downloaded
Speaker 1: like a one gigabyte file that worked just fine. I
Speaker 1: was able to check my email. I streamed Netflix, so
Speaker 1: there is no need to download anymore. This is a
Speaker 1: paradigm shift, and I think it's going to impact the
Speaker 1: inflight systems because the inflight entertainment systems, because why install
Speaker 1: all of these seatback monitors and these big hard drives
Speaker 1: that you have to fill with all these movies when
Speaker 1: people can just you know, binge on their networks and
Speaker 1: their streaming services that they already own and the shows
Speaker 1: are already watching. And I did ask the CEO about that,
Speaker 1: and he said, well, they're still going to have some
Speaker 1: planes that do have the built in entertainment systems. But again,
Speaker 1: I think this is something that we're going to see
Speaker 1: phased out over time because people have their smartphones and
Speaker 1: once they know they can stream, they're going to do that.
Speaker 1: I also tried Peloton just for fun. I didn't bring
Speaker 1: the bike in the air, but I just, you know,
Speaker 1: why not, so I was able to stream Peloton. What
Speaker 1: else did I try? Oh, roadblocks, my kids wanted me
Speaker 1: to try roeblocks. They said, Dad, you got to check
Speaker 1: the latency. I'm like, how do you know what latency is?
Speaker 1: But of course they do. They're kids. They know more
Speaker 1: than we do sometimes. So I checked the latency on
Speaker 1: Roadblocks and it was just fine. And it was funny
Speaker 1: because my kid was playing Roadblocks this morning and he
Speaker 1: showed me the latency we had at home. He's like, Dad,
Speaker 1: that number is not very good. And I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe a lot of people are on right now.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. But again, this all worked really really well,
Speaker 1: and I think we are seeing a big shift with
Speaker 1: internet on the planes because you are now fully connected
Speaker 1: wherever you are. We were over the Pacific, a tricky
Speaker 1: place for traditional internet, and it worked really really good.
Speaker 1: Other airlines that are planning to install starlink include Cutter
Speaker 1: is that how you say it, Qatar guitarsx JSX, which
Speaker 1: is a smaller airline, Air Baltic zip AAR, which I
Speaker 1: actually took to Japan. I think it was last year.
Speaker 1: They did not have the starlink. Last year when I
Speaker 1: took it, they did have Wi Fi. It was fine,
Speaker 1: and then Air New Zealand. So and by the way,
Speaker 1: Link is kind of early out of the gate with this,
Speaker 1: and they have a really good solution. But Boeing and
Speaker 1: Amazon are also working on a similar satellite internet solutions.
Speaker 1: So it seems like hopefully one of the major carriers
Speaker 1: in the US will launch this soon. But I don't
Speaker 1: know if it'll be free we'll say, but for Hawaiian
Speaker 1: Airlines it is and I did, by the way, not
Speaker 1: necessarily tech related, but Alaska is going to acquire Hawaiian
Speaker 1: air Lines, which, by the way, I think is very ironic.
Speaker 1: The two like most remote states in America, you know,
Speaker 1: the two airlines are like linking up, which I find
Speaker 1: very cute. But I did ask the CEO. I said,
Speaker 1: so is this all moot? Like, is Alaska going to
Speaker 1: take over Hawaiian and get rid of the airline? And
Speaker 1: he said, no, we are going to operate a same platform,
Speaker 1: which tells me you'll be able to book the flights
Speaker 1: seamlessly with the two airlines, but they will be two
Speaker 1: distinct levels of service. Now, by the way, I've heard
Speaker 1: that before with mergers and then when people forget in
Speaker 1: a couple of years, they kind of merge all the
Speaker 1: brands together. But I you know, Hawaiian was a very
Speaker 1: u unique experience. It feels almost like your vacation starts
Speaker 1: when you get on that plane. First time I took them,
Speaker 1: and so I think they would it would be kind
Speaker 1: of silly to get rid of that experience because it
Speaker 1: is so unique and so interesting. All right, eight eight
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Let's open up the floodgates.
Speaker 1: The lines are open the website rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: Give me a call or an email if you have
Speaker 1: a question about technology. You are listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology. The phone line for the
Speaker 1: show eight eight eight rich one O one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: You can also go to the website rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. While you're there, be sure to sign up
Speaker 1: for my newsletter. Just sent out a new issue this morning.
Speaker 1: It is packed with all kinds of great stuff, tips, tricks,
Speaker 1: just all kinds of just I feel like it's just
Speaker 1: useful stuff that I think you should know kind of
Speaker 1: like this show. By the way, in case you can't hear,
Speaker 1: I've got a big smile on my face. Kim, our
Speaker 1: call screener extraordinary, just texted me and said, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this is my jam computer love. And I said, how
Speaker 1: did you know? And she said, come on, I've been
Speaker 1: in radio for over Should I say how many years?
Speaker 1: I don't know? I should I date you? Kim twenty
Speaker 1: five years? Wow? We need a bell? So anyway, when
Speaker 1: you give Kim a call. That's so the theme today
Speaker 1: with the songs, in case you haven't noticed, is going
Speaker 1: to be a little bit of a kind of a
Speaker 1: tech theme. Kim says, please date me. No one else will.
Speaker 1: Ah ouch, I should have read that before I said
Speaker 1: that on air. Let's go to Perry in Glendale, California. Perry,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 2: Morning a long time, first time and if you need
Speaker 2: a bell, ding ding ding ding ning, there you go.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: And I remember Kim from the Leo days. You you
Speaker 2: fill some pretty big shoes, my friend, and you've you've
Speaker 2: done an excellent job. That's why I'm calling. I will
Speaker 2: try to get to the point. What I'm dealing with
Speaker 2: is Windows eleven professional. And then for work, I have
Speaker 2: a two thousand and seven office professional, and about a
Speaker 2: month and a half ago, my settings went wengo. I'm
Speaker 2: able to get incoming, but I can't do outgoing, and
Speaker 2: I've gone over the internet and it sounds like the
Speaker 2: nine nine to five incoming pop three number is good,
Speaker 2: but unfortunately I can't find that sweet spot to get
Speaker 2: the U the outgoing SMTP numbers. And I've gone through
Speaker 2: a myriad of numbers suggested by the internet.
Speaker 1: Oh, the Internet is suggesting all kinds of conflicting information.
Speaker 1: You don't say, who would have foun I.
Speaker 2: Mean, goodness, gracious, I mean I must have a half
Speaker 2: a dozen numbers that I.
Speaker 1: Plugged in so frustrating failed.
Speaker 2: And then I get and I get a I got
Speaker 2: a myriad of OX eight hundred alerts that I just stopped.
Speaker 2: So I called my ISP. They gave me their numbers.
Speaker 2: Those were only good if I wanted to go on
Speaker 2: their online email address on their side, but for me
Speaker 2: third party, they wouldn't touch it. And they said, well,
Speaker 2: you need to call you need to call Outlook, and.
Speaker 1: Oh, Outlook, Outlook doesn't have a phone number. Come on,
Speaker 1: they're just putting off Okay. So here's the here's the
Speaker 1: question I've got for you. What is your email service
Speaker 1: for both your work and the so you've got. Are
Speaker 1: you trying to set up just your work email on
Speaker 1: both of these outlooks? No?
Speaker 2: Sure, No, I have Gmail for work. That's working. Fine.
Speaker 2: I can get from my I can send from my
Speaker 2: work email which is on the same computer, and I
Speaker 2: can get incoming uh okay, but unfortunately the outgoing does
Speaker 2: not work. So that's that's my issue. It's my my
Speaker 2: Outlook account.
Speaker 1: Okay. So this is your Outlook account. So the email
Speaker 1: address is at Outlook dot com.
Speaker 2: Well, it's actually it's no, No, I'm my Outlook account
Speaker 2: my third party on my on my system on on
Speaker 2: my home computer. It's I don't want to name this,
Speaker 2: you know, the i s P. Okay, but if I
Speaker 2: did my email address, yeah, so it's an i SP
Speaker 2: email address basically like at roadrunner dot net or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Charter Okay, So Charter, Okay, that's that's an easy one.
Speaker 1: So you go to Charter Charter email setting. Okay, So
Speaker 1: the thing is number one most of the time if
Speaker 1: you look at the Outlook it will once you put
Speaker 1: in your email address, it will figure out the settings.
Speaker 1: It will ping the server and it will say, okay,
Speaker 1: here's the settings. We know what those are, and it'll
Speaker 1: put them in automatically. Now have you tried doing that?
Speaker 1: Have you tried deleting the account off of the Outlook
Speaker 1: altogether and then starting over.
Speaker 2: No? I have have not. I did reload the Outlook
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven professional, but that didn't help at all.
Speaker 1: Well, what I would do is I would actually delete
Speaker 1: the email off of the computer all together, and then
Speaker 1: I would set it up again. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the Spectrum setup. It's it's pretty standard for
Speaker 1: these email settings, and they even have the automatic configuration
Speaker 1: the manual configuration. I think that you just have to
Speaker 1: delete the account and start over. The thing is your
Speaker 1: your email is probably safe. I say probably, because I'm
Speaker 1: not sure you could be downloading it and taking it
Speaker 1: off their Spectrum server. But most of the time these
Speaker 1: are set up as an IMAP, which means what you're
Speaker 1: doing at home is just being reflected on their server
Speaker 1: and vice versa. So if you delete the account, it
Speaker 1: will just delete the settings for that account and then
Speaker 1: you can start over and add it. So what I
Speaker 1: would do as a test. If you have like a
Speaker 1: you know, an Android phone or an iPhone, I would
Speaker 1: try adding the email address there, checking to see if
Speaker 1: it works, make sure all your messages are there, and
Speaker 1: then I would just delete the account from the old
Speaker 1: Microsoft or from the old from the outlook and just
Speaker 1: read it and it should find it just fine. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at I'm looking at all of these settings. Nothing
Speaker 1: looks like it's very special, like it's it's all very
Speaker 1: very straightforward. And if if you look at this, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've been on the website. But Spectrum dot net,
Speaker 1: Slash support, Slash Internet, Slash Outlook set up very very straightforward.
Speaker 1: So if you want email me, I will email you
Speaker 1: a link to that. I'll also put it in the
Speaker 1: show notes. But my advice just go ahead, delete the account,
Speaker 1: set it back up, put in your email address and
Speaker 1: it should find those settings automatically. If not, here's the
Speaker 1: manual address. Eight to eight rich one on one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming on next, We're talking tech in Hawaii. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology. The website richon Tech dot tv can follow
Speaker 1: me on social media at rich On Tech. So this
Speaker 1: week I was in Hawaii and our next guest kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting way of meeting them. I was reading
Speaker 1: the newspaper when I was in Hawaii the last time
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago on vacation, and I came
Speaker 1: across Ryan Ozawa and he writes a column for the
Speaker 1: paper there, and I said, oh, this is cool. This
Speaker 1: guy seems to know what he's talking about. He's doing
Speaker 1: all these tech things. And so I emailed him and
Speaker 1: I said, Hey, when I come out there next time,
Speaker 1: can I interview you about the tech scene in Hawaii?
Speaker 1: And he said sure. So let's hear from Ryan Ozawa,
Speaker 1: native Hawaiian tech journalist, publisher of the Hawaii Bulletin. He's
Speaker 1: going to talk about the startup scene in Hawaii. First off,
Speaker 1: just tell me about the kind of state of tech
Speaker 1: in Hawaii.
Speaker 3: A lot of people would assume that we don't have
Speaker 3: a tech industry, but I think because of our isolation
Speaker 3: in the Middle Pacific, that kind of innovation is vital
Speaker 3: to survival.
Speaker 1: And over the.
Speaker 3: Last fifteen twenty years, we've been seeing a constant growth
Speaker 3: in the tech industry, especially now when you're looking at
Speaker 3: renewable energy and things about sustainability of something that we
Speaker 3: do very well.
Speaker 1: And you said you've covered tech here for twenty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell me about that.
Speaker 3: So when I first met up with a startup co
Speaker 3: founder here, he was like, we should do a meetup
Speaker 3: for everybody we know that's doing tech here. And four
Speaker 3: people showed up at a coffee shop in Manoa. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: in five years that got to two hundred people. Very impressive,
Speaker 3: but it has been slow and steady growth. I think
Speaker 3: the pandemic was a reset button for everybody, but it
Speaker 3: really helped here because people began to see the importance
Speaker 3: of being independent without relying on a single industry like tourism.
Speaker 1: And so what do you see when it comes to startups?
Speaker 1: What are kind of the commonalities with these startups here?
Speaker 3: A big part of it might be travel tech, but
Speaker 3: I do think that energy and sustainability is a big
Speaker 3: part of it. We are well on our way to
Speaker 3: being our goal, hitting our goal of being fully unsustainable
Speaker 3: solar wave energy like that, and startups in that space
Speaker 3: are doing well. We have a lot of East meets
Speaker 3: West happening here, so Asia their startups and their technology
Speaker 3: kind of intersecting with the continent and from Silicon Valley,
Speaker 3: for example. I think we're a good meeting point for
Speaker 3: that as well.
Speaker 1: And what is it challenging to have a startup in
Speaker 1: Hawaii And what are some of the challenges.
Speaker 3: So, certainly the cost of living is very high here.
Speaker 3: Taxes are an issue, business regulations. We're working very hard
Speaker 3: on making those a little more easier to work with.
Speaker 3: But I think that when you're dealing with technology, fortunately
Speaker 3: real estate is not something that you necessarily need like
Speaker 3: you might in a typical brick and mortar business. I
Speaker 3: think another challenge is you want all of the legs
Speaker 3: of a full tech ecosystem to exist. So a Tier
Speaker 3: one research university we have that, we have more and
Speaker 3: more venture capital firms with operations here doing local investments.
Speaker 3: We have local startup accelerators, So more and more of
Speaker 3: these pieces of the puzzle are coming. We're just having
Speaker 3: to build them all over time.
Speaker 1: So we talked about the challenges. What are some of
Speaker 1: the benefits of being a startup in Hawaii.
Speaker 3: Well, as we're finding post pandemic, a lot of people
Speaker 3: who work in startups and tech from other places in
Speaker 3: the world realize that if they can work or startup
Speaker 3: business anywhere in the world thanks to the Internet, why
Speaker 3: not do it in a beautiful place with perfect weather,
Speaker 3: moderate weather, and just the high quality of life versus
Speaker 3: cost of living. So we are benefiting in some respects
Speaker 3: from a lot of Silicon Valley or even from Asia
Speaker 3: tech innovative and investors making a home here and still
Speaker 3: having that itch to do something and finding local partners.
Speaker 1: Tell me about this place that we're in right now.
Speaker 3: So this is the entrepreneur's sandbox. It's one of many
Speaker 3: co working spaces here, but this one was built in
Speaker 3: a public private partnership partnership with a state economic development organization.
Speaker 3: So it's one of the tangible examples of a space
Speaker 3: where events can happen, where meetings can happen, and where
Speaker 3: startups have space. They can get a permanent office or
Speaker 3: just rent a desk. And what you want in a
Speaker 3: co working space is kind of that overlapping kismet of
Speaker 3: energy where you just look over at the next table
Speaker 3: and there's someone doing something that you might need. They're
Speaker 3: into marketing, you're into UX and UI design, So let's
Speaker 3: work together.
Speaker 1: And I think that's great. And what do you like
Speaker 1: to cover, like, what are some of the stories that
Speaker 1: you've seen or some of the stuff that you like
Speaker 1: to cover personally, I.
Speaker 3: Think my background really wants to focus on the education piece,
Speaker 3: or what you might call workforce development. You know, rather
Speaker 3: than training young people to be cogs in a wheel
Speaker 3: of a corporate machine, which is definitely the past, you
Speaker 3: want to train them to be entrepreneurs themselves, to be
Speaker 3: their own boss, come up with a business that is sustainable,
Speaker 3: but they can do something that they excel at and
Speaker 3: that they're great at. That could be being a creator
Speaker 3: and being a YouTube or TikTok personality. But more and
Speaker 3: more you're seeing, especially given Hawaii's unique historic culture, there
Speaker 3: is a demand for that. So there are more and
Speaker 3: more startups that kind of exemplify native Hawaiian culture or
Speaker 3: some of the things that only exist here. The same
Speaker 3: reason why people might travel here are same reasons why
Speaker 3: they might purchase products or services from here. I think
Speaker 3: we're doing better and better every year. The pandemic was
Speaker 3: a blessing in disguise, and I think that we're even
Speaker 3: now seeing at all levels, including in the government, the
Speaker 3: importance of fostering an innovation ecosystem. Across different sectors, education
Speaker 3: as well as business, as well as investment, and I
Speaker 3: think it's only up from here.
Speaker 1: Are people surprised when they find out that startups are
Speaker 1: based in Hawaii or there's even a tech culture in Hawaii.
Speaker 3: Even when we were a destination for corporate conferences, a
Speaker 3: lot of times it was a liability, like if your
Speaker 3: hometown said we're going to a conference in Hawaii, like,
Speaker 3: oh right, sure they're going to be working in Hawaii.
Speaker 3: But when you talk about technology startups, I think it
Speaker 3: adds a little bit of cachet. And because we can
Speaker 3: be anywhere, why wouldn't you be here? So I think
Speaker 3: it makes more and more sense.
Speaker 1: All right? Once again? That is Ryan Ozawa, a Hawaiian
Speaker 1: tech journalist and publisher of the Hawaii Bulletin. He covers
Speaker 1: all things technology in Hawaii. Very connected guy. If you
Speaker 1: want to link to his uh newsletter, just go to
Speaker 1: my website. Rich on tech dot TV eighty eight rich
Speaker 1: one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. Coming up, We'll take more of
Speaker 1: your questions and I'm gonna tell you why some Apple
Speaker 1: users were logged out of their phones and Apple IDs
Speaker 1: without any explanation. My name is rich and you are
Speaker 1: listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech,
Speaker 1: the show where we talk about the tech stuff I
Speaker 1: think you should know about. Phone line eight eight eight
Speaker 1: rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. So yesterday a bunch of
Speaker 1: people reported on social media that they were logged out
Speaker 1: of their Apple IDs without any explanation, just suddenly they
Speaker 1: were logged out of all their devices. I don't know
Speaker 1: how widespread this is, but it definitely seemed to happen
Speaker 1: to a couple people that I follow on social media.
Speaker 1: So people had to reset their passwords before they were
Speaker 1: able to log back in. First thing I did was
Speaker 1: check Apple's system status page. I didn't see anything that
Speaker 1: said there was any issue. But again, this did seem
Speaker 1: to happen to people over the weekend. So if this
Speaker 1: does happen to you, if this is some sort of
Speaker 1: ongo issue, it seems like a password reset does help. Now,
Speaker 1: if you have that stolen device protection turned on, which
Speaker 1: a lot of people do, if you try to reset
Speaker 1: your password when you're away from a trusted location, this
Speaker 1: is where you use your phone, you're the most Let
Speaker 1: me give an example, say this happens to you while
Speaker 1: you're out at a bar and you try to reset
Speaker 1: your password there, your phone is going to give you
Speaker 1: trouble because that's not a trusted location unless I guess
Speaker 1: you're at that bar a lot and then it says, okay,
Speaker 1: we know you're here a lot, so we'll let you reset.
Speaker 1: But most of the time that's either work or home.
Speaker 1: So just be aware if it happens to you. It
Speaker 1: does seem very odd. I thought people were getting hacked.
Speaker 1: There's always a concern of getting hacked, so you know,
Speaker 1: lockdown those accounts. Please. Let's go to Rosemary in Fontana, California. Rosemary,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich Hi.
Speaker 4: So we have to upgrade per spectrum to a new
Speaker 4: I don't know what they call.
Speaker 1: It a box, sure the router and.
Speaker 4: Not the router, just the channel box.
Speaker 1: So okay, yeah, I got it.
Speaker 4: Okay. So and we also have a firestick on the
Speaker 4: old channel box. We never had a problem with firestick
Speaker 4: never we upgrade. About the same week we upgraded, a
Speaker 4: couple of days later, we start getting a message on
Speaker 4: our TV screen saying unknown device detective. There's no okay,
Speaker 4: there's no cancel we just have to wait for that
Speaker 4: message to disappear. So it disappeared. Our fire stick keeps working.
Speaker 4: We're able to get onto what we have. We have
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of apps that we subscribe to because
Speaker 4: we don't have a smart TV, so we have a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of apps on fire stick.
Speaker 5: Last night, the.
Speaker 4: Firestick would open, go to the homepage, but our remote
Speaker 4: stopped working. It would not work. I looked online for
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of different tricks and did everything, three
Speaker 4: buttons at the same count, twenty on, plugged on, plug
Speaker 4: from the outlet.
Speaker 1: Everything.
Speaker 4: Today, we try it again, still nothing.
Speaker 6: It would not work.
Speaker 4: Okay, So is that our spectrum not compatible with our
Speaker 4: fire stick?
Speaker 1: You know what, The two things are not related. I
Speaker 1: think it's a coincidence that this happened after you got
Speaker 1: the spectrum, So I don't I don't think there's any
Speaker 1: there's no relationship between these two devices. And you know,
Speaker 1: plenty of people have a fire stick with their modem.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any issue. I think there's it's
Speaker 1: just a fluke. So I will tell you that my
Speaker 1: mom she called me with a similar issue with her firestick,
Speaker 1: and I'm not kidding. I must have troubleshooted the heck
Speaker 1: out of this thing, you know, over the phone, over
Speaker 1: you know, twenty five hundred miles and I finally gave
Speaker 1: up and I said, I don't know what's happening here,
Speaker 1: like I've never heard of this issue. And yes, we
Speaker 1: did all the reset and all this stuff. And my brother,
Speaker 1: you know, who's also kind of techie, I sent him
Speaker 1: over there and he's like, you know what, I actually
Speaker 1: think the fire stick just burned out. And it did it,
Speaker 1: just the fire stick went bad. So these things are
Speaker 1: not expensive. They do happen. I think with yours the
Speaker 1: troubleshooting that I would take number one. When you press
Speaker 1: a button on your firestick on the remote, is there
Speaker 1: any sort of indication that something is happening on Do
Speaker 1: you have a stick or a box? Okay, so it's
Speaker 1: on the back of the TV. Have you tried using
Speaker 1: your phone as a remote control to see if the
Speaker 1: fire TV stick is still functional?
Speaker 4: Did not know you could do that?
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's the first thing I would do is
Speaker 1: make sure that your fire TV stick is functional by
Speaker 1: downloading the fire TV app to your phone and it's
Speaker 1: the fire to let me get the exact name. Do
Speaker 1: you have iPhone or Android? Okay, So just download Amazon
Speaker 1: fireTV app okay, and that will connect to your will.
Speaker 1: That will turn into a remote control for your firestick.
Speaker 1: So just make sure that works. That's like the first base,
Speaker 1: just to make sure that everything's working on your firestick. Okay.
Speaker 1: The second thing I would do, and the reason I
Speaker 1: tell you this is because, look, you're having an issue,
Speaker 1: but there are many other people listening that may have
Speaker 1: similar issues in the future, and I want to give
Speaker 1: the proper troubleshooting kind of steps that we can all take.
Speaker 1: So this helps everyone with whatever issue you're having with
Speaker 1: the firestick, because these things do have issues from time
Speaker 1: to time. So first off, download the remote, make sure
Speaker 1: everything works. Then once you see that that's working properly,
Speaker 1: I would go into the settings on the fire TV
Speaker 1: stick and I would do any sort of software update.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, the fire TV stick is going
Speaker 1: to do its own software updates, but sometimes it takes
Speaker 1: longer than if you did it manually. So go into
Speaker 1: the settings and make sure your fire TV stick is
Speaker 1: up to date fully with the software that it should
Speaker 1: have on it. So that's number two, Okay, Okay, now
Speaker 1: you're on step number two. So everything your fire TV
Speaker 1: stick seems to be working. Your phone is working as
Speaker 1: the remote. Now we figure out if this is a
Speaker 1: remote control problem. So did you change the batteries in
Speaker 1: this remote control several times?
Speaker 4: We had several different new batteries. We've changed them.
Speaker 1: Okay, So fresh batteries you put in the remote. Okay,
Speaker 1: So once you get to that step that you have
Speaker 1: the fresh batteries in the remote, I would I would
Speaker 1: do the reset system that you did for the remote. Now,
Speaker 1: for some reason, Amazon makes it really tricky to unpair
Speaker 1: and repair these remotes. I don't understand why. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: to protect the consumer from random unpairings. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But there is an official help page on the Amazon
Speaker 1: website that you know, like you said, hold the left button,
Speaker 1: the menu button, and the back button at the same time,
Speaker 1: and they want you to do that when you've unplugged
Speaker 1: the fire TV stick. So basically, you unplug the stick,
Speaker 1: then you hold those buttons on the remote for twelve seconds.
Speaker 1: That will unpair the remote. Then you take the batteries out,
Speaker 1: then you plug the fire TV stick back in. It
Speaker 1: will say make sure you see that screen that says
Speaker 1: remote can be detected. Then you put the batteries back
Speaker 1: of the remote, then you press the home button, and
Speaker 1: if the leid indicator on your remote blinks blue, it
Speaker 1: is paired successfully. So those are all the steps. I know.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a lot Rosemary, but it's one of
Speaker 1: these things where you have to kind of start at
Speaker 1: the beginning and make sure that things are working properly
Speaker 1: before we can say, okay, there's a problem with the
Speaker 1: remote or there's a problem with the fire stick. But
Speaker 1: either way, sometimes these things just go bad and it
Speaker 1: could be that you have a bad remote you need
Speaker 1: to get a new one, or it could be that
Speaker 1: the fire stick went bad. Was what was the message
Speaker 1: on the TV screen? You told me you had.
Speaker 4: The message that popped up which we never got before
Speaker 4: we upgraded to that new spectrum Fox was unknown device detected?
Speaker 1: And that was that generated on the TV? Or is
Speaker 1: that generated from the actual on the TV?
Speaker 4: And we were not on fire sticks? O? Fine, okay,
Speaker 4: so that watching regular channels?
Speaker 1: What type of TV do you have? What brand?
Speaker 6: It's an LG.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's not.
Speaker 4: It's not a smart TV, which is why we bought
Speaker 4: the fire sticks. But it is an LG.
Speaker 1: Okay, so, uh, that's that's an odd message. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure why that came up. It is is your is
Speaker 1: your TV connected to Wi Fi or internet?
Speaker 4: Well, it's connected everything through spectrum, But is.
Speaker 1: The TV because you said it's not a smart TV,
Speaker 1: So do you have that connected to your networking anyway?
Speaker 4: No, everything is connected through the box through the Wi Fi.
Speaker 4: I mean we have Wi Fi spectrum. Everything we have
Speaker 4: to phone the internet.
Speaker 6: It's the channel box.
Speaker 4: Everything on that. The TV is just it's just a
Speaker 4: cable coming running through it. It changed out the cable
Speaker 4: and it's just plugged into the outlet.
Speaker 1: Got it? And do you have another TV as well
Speaker 1: in your house?
Speaker 4: We plugged that one for okay, other.
Speaker 1: Reasons because I was going to say, because you could
Speaker 1: test this fire TV stick on that TV as well
Speaker 1: and see how long have you had this fire to
Speaker 1: know what?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we can, we can, we can, We still can
Speaker 4: do that. We will do that and try that. But
Speaker 4: I will remember everything that you told me because I.
Speaker 6: Was taking notes.
Speaker 1: Okay, very good, and I will link up everything. I
Speaker 1: will link up the the instructions, the official Amazon instructions,
Speaker 1: because sometimes there are some other instructions out there that
Speaker 1: aren't proper, but I'll put the Amazon ones on the
Speaker 1: website on the show notes. To get to the show
Speaker 1: notes rich on tech dot TV, you hit the light
Speaker 1: bulb up at the top. This is show number sixty nine,
Speaker 1: and so just look for your question and I put
Speaker 1: the link right in there, and it's in real time,
Speaker 1: so you can go there right now and find that link. Rosemary,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for the call. Appreciate it. Oop Sorry, Okay,
Speaker 1: So man, those things that is so so tricky when
Speaker 1: that stuff happens eighty eight rich one on one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what the latest was on the
Speaker 1: on the TikTok stuff last week when I talked to you,
Speaker 1: but the president has signed a law that bans TikTok.
Speaker 1: This is the video you know, you know, TikTok. It's
Speaker 1: owned by the Chinese company Byte Dance. So at this
Speaker 1: point they now have nine months to sell TikTok to
Speaker 1: a US company. If a sale is in progress and
Speaker 1: there's progress being made, they can get an extra three
Speaker 1: months to complete the sale. If they don't do this,
Speaker 1: the app will be banned in the United States. We're
Speaker 1: talking almost a year from now, Okay, so we still
Speaker 1: have a whole year for the legal ramifications of this
Speaker 1: and the debate and all that good stuff. So that's
Speaker 1: where we stand right now. We don't know if this
Speaker 1: is going to be banned officially, but right now, as
Speaker 1: it stands in the US, TikTok has to be sold
Speaker 1: or banned. But we still have a year for this
Speaker 1: to all sort of figure itself out. 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. The
Speaker 1: phone number eight eight eight rich one oh one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Give
Speaker 1: me a call if you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: Website also an option. Just go to rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv, hit contact and you can find my email
Speaker 1: there or send me an email there. I should say, also,
Speaker 1: while you're on the website, you can follow me on
Speaker 1: social media. Rich on Tech is where you can find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter now called X. How long are we
Speaker 1: going to keep saying? Twitter or formerly known as Twitter
Speaker 1: or Twitter or X or X or Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube,
Speaker 1: LinkedIn so many places, and then I've got some other
Speaker 1: links there as well. Sign up for the newsletter for
Speaker 1: sure while you're there. It's a great, great easy read.
Speaker 1: I usually send it out on Saturday mornings. You could
Speaker 1: drink your coffee with it and you'll be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I need to bookmark that. Oh I need to book
Speaker 1: Oh I need Oh that's I need to download that.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good website. So you'll have a lot there.
Speaker 1: Got an email from one of the earlier callers, Parry
Speaker 1: in uh, I guess it was Parry, not Perry Parry
Speaker 1: and Glendale Hope all as well. Thanks for taking my
Speaker 1: call and your insight success. I deleted my email account
Speaker 1: and reloaded it and everything is fine. Now where's the
Speaker 1: clapping now here? It is? There, it is. We've got
Speaker 1: a live studio audience in here. They got to hold
Speaker 1: up that applause signed for them. Okay, let's see. Oh,
Speaker 1: Kim hold on. Kim is telling me it must be
Speaker 1: pronounced the same because he said Perry like Perry Mason. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: maybe Perry is Perry Parry Perry Tomato tomato. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Jose in Santa Clara, California. You're on with Wretch.
Speaker 2: How you doing.
Speaker 6: I'm a first time caller. And here's my situation. My
Speaker 6: local internet at home. It's Comcast and I have a
Speaker 6: two on one cable motormen router. So what was going
Speaker 6: on was I was renting this box for five years
Speaker 6: from Comcast. I decided the rent is too high to
Speaker 6: rent this box. I bought the same exact box at
Speaker 6: the local best by. I brought it home and I
Speaker 6: own it. And when I brought it home, I had
Speaker 6: Comcasts install it. When I installed it on the unit,
Speaker 6: it's called an airis two on one motive and router,
Speaker 6: and it was a basic sticker on the side with
Speaker 6: a generic password and user ID. Comcast hooked it up.
Speaker 6: In the last five years, I've never changed the user
Speaker 6: ID or password. And I have no idea how to
Speaker 6: update the software if I need to. I have no
Speaker 6: idea how to log into the RAS box itself. Do
Speaker 6: I have a FireWire? I have no idea. Am I
Speaker 6: expecting problems? Am I idiot? Tell me what should I do?
Speaker 1: Well, You're not an idiot, that's for sure, Especially the
Speaker 1: fact that you're thinking about this stuff. That tells me
Speaker 1: that you have a high level of intelligence. So good
Speaker 1: job there. So a couple couple of things Number one,
Speaker 1: how much were you paying for the rental and how
Speaker 1: much did this motive for five years? Oh wow?
Speaker 6: And I bought the modem at the local best buy
Speaker 6: for one plus act five years ago. Had a generic
Speaker 6: password and modem password on the side of the unit, right,
Speaker 6: I can't even say you what it is so basic?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm thinking that probably every fifth unit has the
Speaker 6: same password and the same user ID. I've never changed it.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so I mean, yes I would. I would
Speaker 1: probably change that. So a couple things just to break
Speaker 1: down your question. So it looks like your break even
Speaker 1: with this new modem was about seventeen months, and so
Speaker 1: what I typically recommend, you know, I think that if
Speaker 1: your company is charging you the modem rental fee, you know,
Speaker 1: it's tough because if you're staying there for a long
Speaker 1: time then and it's it might be better to buy your
Speaker 1: own modem. I think sometimes the companies take a little
Speaker 1: hands off approach where they kind of scare you and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: if you buy your own modem, we're not going to
Speaker 1: help you, and you know that's on you. And then
Speaker 1: of course that scares people away from doing what she did.
Speaker 1: But once you get it set up. These things are
Speaker 1: pretty much set it and forget it. The technology on
Speaker 1: modems does not drastically change over you know, the course
Speaker 1: of time like you know, so a modem lasts a
Speaker 1: really long time most of the time. So anyway, so
Speaker 1: to answer your question number one, I think that if
Speaker 1: you have a modem that is rented from the company,
Speaker 1: typically they are sending through software updates and things like that,
Speaker 1: so you since you purchased this modem now. Also, most
Speaker 1: of the modems these days, the wife are the username
Speaker 1: of the password are typically not generic. Now, the user
Speaker 1: ID might be admin, but typically from what I've seen,
Speaker 1: the passwords are are pretty complex. So if you do
Speaker 1: have a complex password but it's still admin, then you know,
Speaker 1: I think you're fine there. Now. If it's admin and
Speaker 1: then the word password for the login, then I would
Speaker 1: definitely change it. But I think most of the tech
Speaker 1: companies with these products have gotten a little bit better
Speaker 1: about not using admin password as the password. And again
Speaker 1: that's so the way to access this. If you want
Speaker 1: to go through and update that information and also update
Speaker 1: the firmware on this modem, what I would do is
Speaker 1: look on the bottom of the modem. It might even
Speaker 1: be on that same exact sticker that you're talking about
Speaker 1: that's on the modem, and typically it will have an
Speaker 1: IP address, so it might be something like one nine
Speaker 1: to two dot one six ' eight dot zero dot one.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the default. And so you go to
Speaker 1: your web browser on your computer. Make sure your computer
Speaker 1: is directly connected to this modem. Don't do it over
Speaker 1: Wi Fi because you may disconnect the Wi Fi and
Speaker 1: then you're going to have a problem. So make sure
Speaker 1: the computer is directly connected with a cable to the
Speaker 1: modem if you're trying to make any changes to this modem.
Speaker 1: Very very important there. So go to that address on
Speaker 1: your computer and it should bring up a login screen.
Speaker 1: That login screen will log you into that modem directly,
Speaker 1: and then you can go through and you can check
Speaker 1: for a software update or a firmware update, I should say,
Speaker 1: and you can also change the password. Now I'm telling
Speaker 1: you this as what you can do. I'm not necessarily
Speaker 1: saying you should do this. This is a little bit
Speaker 1: of a higher level of tinkering, and if you are
Speaker 1: not fully tech savvy, I don't typically recommend the average
Speaker 1: person should do this, because if you make any changes
Speaker 1: on that modem. You see a setting in there, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that looks cool. Let me flip that switch and see
Speaker 1: if the Internet is faster in my house. You may
Speaker 1: have some problems and then you may have to call
Speaker 1: your cable company to have them come out and fix it,
Speaker 1: and they're not going to be happy and they're going
Speaker 1: to charge you so and you're going to be without
Speaker 1: internet for a while. So I would not change these
Speaker 1: things unless you know what you're doing. Now with that said,
Speaker 1: if you want to see what your options are for
Speaker 1: this stuff, you can Google search the RIS ar R
Speaker 1: I S which is the brand of the modem that
Speaker 1: you just talked about, and the modem model number, and
Speaker 1: you should see some of the support pages for that.
Speaker 1: So if you go to the RIS website, they've got
Speaker 1: like at the bottom it says support and you can
Speaker 1: look up. They actually have a picture of every modem
Speaker 1: that they make and you can tap it and see
Speaker 1: your modem and see the information for it. But again,
Speaker 1: if you have a modem that you're renting from a
Speaker 1: company like Charter or Spectrum or Exfinity or whatever these
Speaker 1: companies are, typically they are sending through the required software updates,
Speaker 1: and when your modem resets, it will install those software
Speaker 1: updates or keep saying software, but it's really firmware updates,
Speaker 1: and they're pretty rare most most of the time. You know,
Speaker 1: there's not too many. Now, if you have something like
Speaker 1: one of the more modern router modem setups like an
Speaker 1: Ero or you know these what's the other brand that
Speaker 1: everyone has, any of these mesh networks, they are typically
Speaker 1: doing their own software updates all the time, so they're
Speaker 1: getting software updates a lot. And so again, if you
Speaker 1: have the app on your phone, it should tell you, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna update or we updated your software overnight. I
Speaker 1: typically get those email or those notifications from mine all
Speaker 1: the time. So that's my recommendation. But if you if
Speaker 1: you feel like you need to change that password because
Speaker 1: it's a really generic, simple one, then go ahead and
Speaker 1: change it. But you know, don't don't tinker too much
Speaker 1: unless you really know what you're doing, because some of
Speaker 1: this stuff, once you change it, it could be messed up.
Speaker 1: And believe me, I've done that. I've you know, I've
Speaker 1: done the thing where I connect and then it's like
Speaker 1: you know this and that, So just be careful anytime
Speaker 1: you're you're changing those settings. Let's see Samsung eight eight
Speaker 1: eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Samsung rumor mill says
Speaker 1: the next Galaxy Unpacked event date will be on July
Speaker 1: Uly tenth, twenty twenty four, in Paris, France. Why Paris, Well,
Speaker 1: they are Samsung is a sponsor of the Olympics, and
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. Now the date July tenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. I'm trying to think when Unpacked was
Speaker 1: in South Korea. That's the one I went to last year.
Speaker 1: It seems like it was around that time. Let's see
Speaker 1: when was it July twenty seventh? So is the end
Speaker 1: of July July twenty sixth? Yeah, in South Korea? I
Speaker 1: went to that one. I hope to go to this
Speaker 1: one wherever it is. And let's see here, what are
Speaker 1: we going to hear about at Samsung's next Galaxy Unpacked event.
Speaker 1: This is not the event for the S twenty five
Speaker 1: that we are still on. The S twenty four those
Speaker 1: are typically on a cycle that goes from February to February.
Speaker 1: This is for the foldable devices. Those are on a
Speaker 1: cycle from July to July. So there's a cadence with
Speaker 1: Samsung where they put out their S twenty, their S
Speaker 1: series in the early part of the year, and then
Speaker 1: the foldables in the summer. So we're talking the Galaxy
Speaker 1: Z Flip, the Galaxy Z Fold, but there's also going
Speaker 1: to be the Galaxy Ring. This is their first smart ring.
Speaker 1: So we've got the Galaxy z Fold six, the Galaxy
Speaker 1: z Flip six, the Galaxy Watch seven, new wireless earbuds.
Speaker 1: And again this is all rumor mill this is not
Speaker 1: this is not set in stone. Samsung has not announced this.
Speaker 1: But I'm just telling you for planning reasons. If you're
Speaker 1: thinking of maybe getting a new foldable, you know, either way,
Speaker 1: if you want the latest, greatest, obviously wait until after
Speaker 1: the event in July. Or if you want to discount
Speaker 1: on the current ones you've had your eye on them,
Speaker 1: wait until the event in July. So we're in that
Speaker 1: kind of in between phase right now. Now. It's only
Speaker 1: you know, the end of April, so you've got May, June, July.
Speaker 1: You still have three months to make a decision here.
Speaker 1: But anyway, just keeping you up to date. Eight to
Speaker 1: eight Rich one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. Find me online. Rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot TV Coming up. I'm gonna tell you why you
Speaker 1: should not solve a fifty dollars problem with one thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I'll explain. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with
Speaker 1: you at eight eight eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up this hour JR. Ray Fiel, tech writer and
Speaker 1: author of the Android Intelligence newsletter. He is going to
Speaker 1: talk all things Android, give us the update on the
Speaker 1: new features coming out on Android, and also a preview
Speaker 1: of what's happening at Google Io a couple of weeks here.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited to talk to JR. Eighty eight rich
Speaker 1: one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. So I get a call. I'm
Speaker 1: on a run this morning, as I typically run before
Speaker 1: the show, and I get a call from my dad.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've got a rule when my parents
Speaker 1: call or my family, I answer the phone, no matter
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. And so I answer the call, and hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I'm at the store. My iPhone won't charge. What do
Speaker 1: you mean? I won't charge, you know, cee iPhone. I
Speaker 1: gave them, by the way, so I typically give my
Speaker 1: old devices to a family member instead of selling them.
Speaker 1: And so you know, somehow the issue is still mine
Speaker 1: because it's a phone that I gave them. So I said,
Speaker 1: what do you mean it doesn't charge? Well, I plugged
Speaker 1: it in overnight and it just has a big red
Speaker 1: battery and it says still find a ble. I said, well,
Speaker 1: sounds like the battery is not charging. Well, I'm here
Speaker 1: at the Apple store and that's what they said. But
Speaker 1: they plugged it in and it charges just fine. It
Speaker 1: comes right on. I said, well, sounds like you're charger
Speaker 1: is not working. Okay, So you don't think I need
Speaker 1: a new phone. No, I don't think you need a
Speaker 1: new phone. You just need a new charger. And so
Speaker 1: my thesis here don't solve a fifty dollars problem with
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars. So depending on who you get at
Speaker 1: the store that you're at, right, And it seemed like
Speaker 1: he had someone that had the heart of a teacher.
Speaker 1: So I like that he was with someone that said,
Speaker 1: you know, here's your options. But you know, you could
Speaker 1: be in a situation where you have an issue with
Speaker 1: your tech and it's a very simple issue, and someone
Speaker 1: that's advising you is giving you a very expensive solution.
Speaker 1: So this could have been a very expensive solution where
Speaker 1: they said, Okay, your thing's not charging, let's get you
Speaker 1: a new phone. And in fact, this person did show
Speaker 1: them on the battery indicator, and so this might have
Speaker 1: been a little bit of a salesy kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But you can go on most phones, Android and iPhone
Speaker 1: at this point into your battery health and see what
Speaker 1: your battery health is. And so my battery health right now,
Speaker 1: I'm at ninety nine percent maximum capacity, and I forget
Speaker 1: on the Samsung we talked about this, I think you
Speaker 1: have to download a separate app to get the battery health.
Speaker 1: It's like, I think like a Samsung Members app or
Speaker 1: something like that. But that'll tell you the maximum capacity
Speaker 1: of your battery. So if you've been using your phone
Speaker 1: and charging it over and over, you know for a
Speaker 1: couple of years, your battery capacity is not going to
Speaker 1: be one hundred percent anymore because your battery degrades over time,
Speaker 1: and so your battery capacity maybe eighty five percent. So
Speaker 1: if your phone used to last six hours or let's say,
Speaker 1: you know on screen screen time, and now it's only
Speaker 1: lasting five It could be because your battery is just
Speaker 1: not charging the same way it used to charge. Doesn't
Speaker 1: mean your phone needs to be replaced. It just means
Speaker 1: your battery doesn't last as long. So anyway, he did
Speaker 1: say his battery was at seventy nine percent, you know,
Speaker 1: the battery capacity, And I said, well, yeah, your phone's
Speaker 1: a couple of years old, so it's going to be.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a hand me down phone that I
Speaker 1: used for a couple of years and now I gave
Speaker 1: it to you, so it's going to be at seventy
Speaker 1: nine percent. Does that mean it's no good? Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: I mean it's still fine until it doesn't work for
Speaker 1: you anymore. Now, if you were having to charge it
Speaker 1: every half an hour throughout the day, yeah, that'd be
Speaker 1: a problem. But anyway, so I said, here's my solution,
Speaker 1: Number one. Clean out the port on the phone, the
Speaker 1: charging port, because he said it wasn't charging in the car,
Speaker 1: wasn't charging at home. Because I said, try different chargers, No,
Speaker 1: none of them are working except the one here at
Speaker 1: the Apple store. Well, it sounds like it's the charger.
Speaker 1: The port so clean out the port. He said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what they're doing. I said, okay, we'll start with that.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, you can use
Speaker 1: wireless charging and try that. So go buy a wireless charger,
Speaker 1: spend the thirty forty bucks whatever it is for the
Speaker 1: cable and use that. And if you're if the bottom
Speaker 1: cable doesn't work ever again, which sounds like it was
Speaker 1: working anyway, so that was it, and he bought the cable.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard the update, but my point is, don't
Speaker 1: solve don't solve a cheap problem with an expensive solution.
Speaker 1: This happens all the time in the tech world. We
Speaker 1: throw stuff away, we buy something new. You know. It's
Speaker 1: one of these things where go through the steps of
Speaker 1: figuring out what is happening. Maybe you just need a
Speaker 1: software update. Like a good example, your phone is just
Speaker 1: being wonky, right, and it's just giving you all kinds
Speaker 1: of error messages and it's slow whatever. Well, before you
Speaker 1: buy a new phone and spend all that money on
Speaker 1: a new phone, why not just do a factory reset
Speaker 1: of your phone. Make sure it's backed up before you
Speaker 1: do that, but do that factory reset, and then you
Speaker 1: can get a clean start and once you reinstall your
Speaker 1: apps and whatever, and if you're still having problems, then
Speaker 1: you can get a new phone. But again, don't just
Speaker 1: like throw away stuff because it's not working properly. Talk
Speaker 1: to someone that knows what they're doing. Get them to
Speaker 1: help you out figure this stuff out. It's probably a
Speaker 1: cheaper solution than getting something new now some tech. Clearly
Speaker 1: it's you know, cheaper to get new tech, like in
Speaker 1: the case of the fire TV stick. The woman we
Speaker 1: talked to earlier. If if all those troubleshooting solutions don't work, yeah,
Speaker 1: just spend the thirty five bucks on a new Fire
Speaker 1: TV stick. But again, use your judgment. Eighty to eight
Speaker 1: rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Rich on Tech dot tv
Speaker 1: is the website for the show. Coming up, we are
Speaker 1: going to talk to the author of the Android Intelligence newsletter.
Speaker 1: We'll talk all things android. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: All right, welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you, talking technology. Let's welcome to
Speaker 1: the show Jr. Raphael tech writer and author of the
Speaker 1: Android Intelligence newsletter Jr. Thanks for joining me. Hey, Rich
Speaker 1: great to be here, Thanks for having me, Thanks for chatting.
Speaker 1: So it's actually it's funny. We we scheduled you to
Speaker 1: come on the show a long time ago. And of
Speaker 1: course this is kind of like the quiet time in
Speaker 1: the world of Android because we've got Google Io coming
Speaker 1: up in just a couple of weeks. So typically they
Speaker 1: put out all their stuff that they want to get
Speaker 1: out before the big announcements of io. Explain what Google
Speaker 1: io is for maybe someone who doesn't know, Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: So it's one of those things.
Speaker 7: You know, Apple has an equivalent, they call it WWDC.
Speaker 7: He's all started out as really geeky developer conferences, and
Speaker 7: they still are to some degree, but they've also become
Speaker 7: a little bit of a showcase for the companies to
Speaker 7: show off their latest and greatest stuff. You know, we'll
Speaker 7: always see or at least hear about a new Android version.
Speaker 7: We'll see some new hardware, some new pixel devices, and
Speaker 7: kind of get a big picture overview of what they're
Speaker 7: working on, where they're taking things in.
Speaker 1: The next year.
Speaker 7: And then there will be the super technical developer stuff
Speaker 7: as well. But as far as the keynote goes, that's
Speaker 7: really become at least half, if not more kind of
Speaker 7: aimed at average normal people as opposed to developlopers and
Speaker 7: kind of like sort of the state of the Union
Speaker 7: for Google and what's new, What's next, all.
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff, which I love because I love
Speaker 1: seeing what they're doing and working on. But I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what annoys me about it is that I see
Speaker 1: all this cool stuff and then they're like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: coming sometime, and it's like, you know, it takes it
Speaker 1: sometimes takes a year for that stuff to actually, like
Speaker 1: until almost like the next ioe for some of those
Speaker 1: features to be released. Yeah, Google and all the tech
Speaker 1: companies through that. To some degree.
Speaker 7: Google is particularly bad about it, to the point where
Speaker 7: among people who write about and even sort of the
Speaker 7: hardcore Android enthusiasts and fans and Google service fans, it's
Speaker 7: become an ongoing joke.
Speaker 1: It's sort of the catchphrase is that it'll.
Speaker 7: Reach you in the coming months, and they don't even
Speaker 7: give you you know, it's not like in two weeks
Speaker 7: or in three weeks. It's in the coming months, and
Speaker 7: as you said, that could be seven weeks, it could
Speaker 7: be a year. Every now and then there's something that
Speaker 7: this announced, it never even comes out, so you do
Speaker 7: have to take a certain grain assault that, uh, this
Speaker 7: is what they're working on, and then yeah, you can
Speaker 7: kind of gauge it a little a new and version,
Speaker 7: Yeah that's going to come out at a certain cadence.
Speaker 7: But when it comes to the loftier, really high tech, ambitious,
Speaker 7: cutting edge stuff, sometimes it's still a little more conceptual
Speaker 7: when they're showing it off in an event like this.
Speaker 1: I always say the worst phrase in the tech world
Speaker 1: is rolling out to users over thenext dot dot dot,
Speaker 1: And it's like, no, when I hear something, I want
Speaker 1: it immediately. I want that feature the second that it's available,
Speaker 1: which is right now, because you just told me about it.
Speaker 1: Which is one thing I kind of like about the
Speaker 1: Apple side of things is that when they come out
Speaker 1: with a software update, everyone gets it at the same time,
Speaker 1: and it's it's pretty you know, blanketed. Versus Google, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: depending on the phone you have, depending on the model,
Speaker 1: depending on this that. So anyway, I don't want to
Speaker 1: harp on all the negative. Let's talk about the positive.
Speaker 1: So what are you looking forward to at Google io
Speaker 1: this year?
Speaker 7: So you know, they're always surprises, and I think those
Speaker 7: are always the most interesting because the stuff we're expecting,
Speaker 7: the new Android version and Roid fifteen we've been hearing
Speaker 7: about it is in beta. You know, we're at the
Speaker 7: point where a new software version usually isn't earth shattering,
Speaker 7: it's nice.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of little niceties.
Speaker 7: I think what'll be most exciting is to see what
Speaker 7: we're not expecting yet. There's obviously a lot going on
Speaker 7: on the AI front with artificial intelligence, varying degrees of
Speaker 7: should you care?
Speaker 1: Is it really going to do anything?
Speaker 7: But but we know that'll be a common theme, a
Speaker 7: core thread of almost everything coming up at this year's event.
Speaker 7: More than anything, I'd like to see a cohesive vision
Speaker 7: for how this stuff is going to show up and
Speaker 7: why why we should be excited about it. Not just
Speaker 7: because we can or because everyone else is doing it
Speaker 7: and it's table stakes right now. But here's what it'll
Speaker 7: do for you, you know, in a practical, realistic sense,
Speaker 7: and how it will help you today, tomorrow, in the.
Speaker 1: Coming weeks, whatever the case is for me.
Speaker 7: Google's always at its best when it's forging its own path,
Speaker 7: when it's coming up with something new and unusual. That's
Speaker 7: always been true for Android when it's leading the way
Speaker 7: doing something different as opposed to just copying and catching up.
Speaker 7: And you know, all sides, Apple, Google, both they kind
Speaker 7: of go back and forth between here's a cool new
Speaker 7: thing and oh yeah, here's what the.
Speaker 1: Other guys did six months ago, and we're going to
Speaker 1: catch up. So it'd be nice to see more of that.
Speaker 7: Specifically, in terms of hardware, I'm pretty interested to see
Speaker 7: the next wave of Google made Pixel products.
Speaker 1: We're usually around this time.
Speaker 7: We don't see them all, but we'll see probably the
Speaker 7: Pixel eight A, which is kind of their mid range,
Speaker 7: more affordable phone. This will be the first year that
Speaker 7: more than likely nothing officially yet, but more than likely
Speaker 7: it'll come with a promise of seven years of software updates.
Speaker 7: So I think that's gonna be the big story with that,
Speaker 7: you know, for a phone the sills.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like probably my number one phone
Speaker 1: recommendation to the average person is the Pixel A series,
Speaker 1: because and I get it, iPhones are great, but like
Speaker 1: if you want something that's like inexpensive but really good
Speaker 1: and just lasts forever, those are great devices.
Speaker 7: Well they're great, and you know they were great for
Speaker 7: three years of software support, which was the previous standard.
Speaker 7: If they're coming with seven Now, you know we're talking
Speaker 7: this year's well, this past year's model, the seven A
Speaker 7: was five hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: It's eventually marked down. I think now you can get
Speaker 1: it for like.
Speaker 7: Maybe three fifth So even if this year's is the
Speaker 7: same a little more, I mean you divide that out
Speaker 7: by seven years a bit guaranteed to remain current. And
Speaker 7: because Google makes it unlike when you get into phones
Speaker 7: by Samsung, Motorola or as you said before, as kind
Speaker 7: of any man's land as to if and went up
Speaker 7: base will reach you a Google phone, you get him
Speaker 7: on the same day or within a few days when
Speaker 7: they come out. I mean you're talking about eighty five
Speaker 7: bucks give or take a year for the full period
Speaker 7: of advisable ownership.
Speaker 1: When it's up to date. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 7: And then on the other end, there's also the pixel
Speaker 7: fold to the second jan of Google's folding phone. We
Speaker 7: don't know for sure that it'll come out this year.
Speaker 7: It came out around this time last year, or was
Speaker 7: at least discussed around this time initially, so I'm.
Speaker 1: Really interested to see how they move that forward.
Speaker 7: The folding folding phone realm is just so new and
Speaker 7: unusual and a lot to be proven there.
Speaker 1: So I'm intrigued by that for sure. What is your
Speaker 1: preferred device the at this point?
Speaker 4: Are you?
Speaker 1: Have you gone foldable or you you know you Samsung?
Speaker 1: You Google? What are you doing?
Speaker 7: I always use and recommend Google's own Pixel phones for
Speaker 7: most people. A large part of it is just what
Speaker 7: we were talking about with the updates. Samsung does a
Speaker 7: lot of things well, but it's not consistent when it
Speaker 7: comes to providing those software updates, and you know, you
Speaker 7: can say, who cares. Some people don't worry about it,
Speaker 7: but there's a lot of important under the hood things
Speaker 7: going on in terms of security, privacy, all that. So
Speaker 7: for me, I carry the Pixel eight Pro, kind of
Speaker 7: a higher end model of last year's main flagship. I
Speaker 7: spent a lot of time with the Pixel fold. I
Speaker 7: really liked it and was super tempted. It was at
Speaker 7: the point where I could see myself going there, maybe
Speaker 7: with another generation or two. I wasn't quite one over yet,
Speaker 7: but it was really the first folding phone that I
Speaker 7: could see myself using between the form the software. Unlike
Speaker 7: the other foldables we've seen in the States so far,
Speaker 7: when it's folded up, it's not just like an awkwardly
Speaker 7: skinny candy bar, like a remote control. It was just
Speaker 7: kind of like a small phone and then when you
Speaker 7: want something bigger, you can unfold it. I really liked it,
Speaker 7: even though I didn't personally go for it yet, but
Speaker 7: I could have very happily used it for the last
Speaker 7: year and been you know, thrilled with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought I was going to use it, and
Speaker 1: I I really do like it. It's just that that
Speaker 1: small screen on the outside, even though it's a better
Speaker 1: form factor than a lot of them, it just still
Speaker 1: felt like I was cramped, and I just I hate
Speaker 1: feeling that way when I'm like, well, these we have
Speaker 1: so many great modern smartphones. And also I found myself
Speaker 1: not opening up the inside screen ever, like why would
Speaker 1: I need that, Like I just if I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: something like that, I'm gonna be on my computer or
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be on a tablet. And so I just
Speaker 1: didn't really see the point of having this thing that
Speaker 1: like I couldn't put a case on. You know, it's heavy,
Speaker 1: it's hot, and it's just you know, it wasn't the
Speaker 1: best camera on the pixel anyway. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I don't back to the Samsung stuff. I don't want to,
Speaker 1: you know, be the Samsung defender here, but I will
Speaker 1: say that Samsung has really stepped up their game in
Speaker 1: the past year or two when it comes to software updates.
Speaker 1: I think they are doing a much much better job
Speaker 1: than they ever have, especially with how many phones they
Speaker 1: have to do updates with. So I do think that
Speaker 1: that has gotten a lot better in that aspect. So, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I want to I gets to me because I
Speaker 1: know you write the Android Intelligence newsletter. I want people
Speaker 1: to get some cool apps and things. So do you
Speaker 1: have any like killer Android apps you should download or
Speaker 1: any tips that we should know? Yeah? Sure. So.
Speaker 7: One one of my favorites, and this is sort of
Speaker 7: one of those Android power user tools that you don't
Speaker 7: hear about and you know, average people aren't aware of,
Speaker 7: but you should know about, is something called buzzkill.
Speaker 1: It is the best way I can describe.
Speaker 7: It is kind of like Gmail filters, but for your
Speaker 7: phone's notifications. So you can set up it's super simple
Speaker 7: to do. You just set up these like if this,
Speaker 7: then that rule. So for instance, some things I use
Speaker 7: it for like if I get a notification from my
Speaker 7: Messages app that has my wife's name in it, meaning
Speaker 7: it came from her. I can tell my phone, hey,
Speaker 7: remind me about this every few minutes, every two minutes
Speaker 7: or ey four minutes, whatever until I acknowledge it, because
Speaker 7: you know somebody's hear you get a buzz in your pocket,
Speaker 7: you don't notice if it's something important, maybe you do
Speaker 7: your boss's name whatever.
Speaker 1: Can you also have set ignore forever just asking for
Speaker 1: a friend.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, And that's my second example. So with my brother,
Speaker 7: love him to death, but he's one of those people
Speaker 7: who will text like rapid fire, incessantly, lots of little messages,
Speaker 7: which you know, fine, whatever, but it reaches a point
Speaker 7: where you're in the middle of something and you feel
Speaker 7: the buzz, then another buzz, then another buzz, and you
Speaker 7: know it's like, I get it, you're messaging me. I
Speaker 7: don't need to have a notification for like every seven
Speaker 7: times you hit to the entry key. So with him,
Speaker 7: I haven't said to you when it has messages with
Speaker 7: his name, don't let it alert me more than once
Speaker 7: every five minutes.
Speaker 1: So you can do a lot of cool stuff. And
Speaker 1: it's just it's so easy.
Speaker 7: I mean, it's kind of programming, but it's literally just
Speaker 7: if this, then that you tap a thing and you
Speaker 7: fill in the blanks of if this happens, and you
Speaker 7: know it gives you the feels to put then do this.
Speaker 7: So that's really one of my favorite kind of next
Speaker 7: level power user tools. That's also one of the kind
Speaker 7: of cool things that's something unique to Android because of
Speaker 7: the way it's able to tap into the system and
Speaker 7: do certain things that Apple doesn't typically allow.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and Apple doesn't allow a lot of things.
Speaker 1: We know that. It's funny because like ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of my answers for people when they're like, why can't
Speaker 1: I do this on my phone? I'm like, well, Apple
Speaker 1: doesn't allow that. That's number one, and so let's start
Speaker 1: with that. But you can work around it by maybe
Speaker 1: doing this. So all right, tell us about how to
Speaker 1: get the newsletter.
Speaker 7: So if you just go to the Intelligence dot com,
Speaker 7: we've actually got a few.
Speaker 1: So I write one called Android Intelligence.
Speaker 7: Colleague of mine Chris Hoffman, who I think you spoke
Speaker 7: with a handful of weeks ago, actually yes, writ it's
Speaker 7: a great newsletter all about Windows called Windows Intelligence.
Speaker 1: And then we do one together called Cool Tools that comes.
Speaker 7: Out once a week and just introduces you to one
Speaker 7: interesting off the beaten path tools that will work on
Speaker 7: any any kind of device you want, phone, computer, you
Speaker 7: name it. So it's all there at the Intelligence dot
Speaker 7: Com and you can pick and choose whichever you want.
Speaker 1: All right, JR. Rayfield, thanks so much for joining me
Speaker 1: today on the show. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Good to chat. All right. I will put the the
Speaker 1: Buzzkill app on the website rich on Tech dot tv,
Speaker 1: which look for Jr's name, and you can also subscribe
Speaker 1: to the Android Intelligence newsletter.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: If you have a question about technology, you can be
Speaker 1: called eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four two four one zero one. Not to
Speaker 1: be remiss. Coming up, I will tell you about the
Speaker 1: next Apple event happening soon. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. The
Speaker 1: phone number eight eight eight rich one one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. So
Speaker 1: we talked about Google Io. Apple has a couple of
Speaker 1: things coming up as well. So coming up very soon
Speaker 1: is the company's Spring event. This is happening on May seventh,
Speaker 1: and this is a virtual event. As far as I know,
Speaker 1: I only got invited to a please watch on your
Speaker 1: computer screen. And so it's called the let loose event.
Speaker 1: And what are we expecting? So the image, you know,
Speaker 1: Apple always sends out these invitations to journalists and then
Speaker 1: there's like a logo. Usually it's the Apple logo, but
Speaker 1: it's done in a way that people read into it, like, oh,
Speaker 1: what's this going to mean for the event. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just a particular color they use that might be the
Speaker 1: new color of the phone. Sometimes it's the animation that
Speaker 1: they show on their social media and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe this is for VR. This one looked like an
Speaker 1: Apple pencil sketching something and so and typically this is
Speaker 1: the time when we see the new iPads. So that
Speaker 1: is what we are expecting new iPad pros. And according
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg's Mark German, he has been saying that this
Speaker 1: is going to be the most significant redesign of the
Speaker 1: iPad pros in years. I don't know what that means exactly,
Speaker 1: because they're already pretty forward facing. They've got USBC. The
Speaker 1: rumor says that they're going to change the front facing
Speaker 1: camera to a better location for video chatting. Right now,
Speaker 1: it's on if you hold it to the side horizontally.
Speaker 1: The cameras on the left side, which is not ideal
Speaker 1: for video chatting. So on a computer it's up at
Speaker 1: the top right, so that's theoretically where the camera is
Speaker 1: going to be moved. Let's see what else. New processors.
Speaker 1: Obviously that's always a thing they do. Better screen technology.
Speaker 1: That's something they typically upgrade new sizes. So the iPad
Speaker 1: air maybe an eleven inch and a twelve point nine inch,
Speaker 1: so they will make bigger screens there. Let's see the
Speaker 1: magic keyboard, which is the keyboard attachment that's always more
Speaker 1: expensive than you think. If you go into the Apple store,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, I'll take one of those keyboards. You're like, wait,
Speaker 1: how much what? They're very expensive. Apparently that's going to
Speaker 1: be updated for a more laptop like experience, and then
Speaker 1: the Apple pencil itself might get new tips. This is
Speaker 1: from the Verge. They say they might be getting interchangeable
Speaker 1: magnetic tips and a squeeze gesture. They already have a
Speaker 1: gesture on there, like a tap gesture, so maybe the
Speaker 1: squeeze is like the next evolution of that. iPads are
Speaker 1: one of those things that I don't think anyone is
Speaker 1: like waiting necessarily for a new iPad. But it's like
Speaker 1: one of those things that like when you go in
Speaker 1: and I feel like this is happening with a lot
Speaker 1: of the technology. Unless it's something that's like super cutting edge,
Speaker 1: most people are just when they go in for that
Speaker 1: next upgrade, they're just like, oh, that's cool, it has this,
Speaker 1: it has that, and now I need to decide between
Speaker 1: these different models. But it used to be remember when
Speaker 1: like a new phone would come out and they would
Speaker 1: have a feature where we're like, I need that, now
Speaker 1: I need to upgrade. Now with these new tech cycles
Speaker 1: where things are just getting refined, people are more just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's cool. I'll wait until my upgrade and then I'll
Speaker 1: have that feature. So there you go. Verizon a five
Speaker 1: dollars monthly price hike for the Apple Watch smartphone smart
Speaker 1: watch plans. So if you have a smart watch with Verizon,
Speaker 1: you probably got an email from them that says, hey,
Speaker 1: we're raising the price of your smart watch plan by
Speaker 1: five dollars a month. So it used to be ten
Speaker 1: dollars a month. Now it's fifteen dollars a month. To
Speaker 1: have cellular on a smart watch that is a lot
Speaker 1: especially can say K because I looked up how much
Speaker 1: data I used on my smart watch last month. Are
Speaker 1: you ready for this? Under two hundred megabytes? Then I
Speaker 1: looked up how much my kid, who only has an
Speaker 1: Apple Watch, used and it was like fifty megabytes. So
Speaker 1: not a very good update of this plan because I
Speaker 1: feel like this is very expensive. Verizon says the price
Speaker 1: increase will allow them to continue improving their network and services.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you Verizon for allowing us to fund your
Speaker 1: improvements of the network. Now I get it. It's a company.
Speaker 1: They need to make money, they need to update their network.
Speaker 1: I understand all of that, but on the backs of us,
Speaker 1: all we want is an Apple Watch with cellular? Why
Speaker 1: do I have to pay the extra five bucks? So
Speaker 1: I will be honest, all these price increases, so Verizon
Speaker 1: had a one to two punch. Last month they raised
Speaker 1: prices on their plans, their cellular plan, and then this
Speaker 1: month they raised the Apple Watch plan. And so I'll
Speaker 1: be honest, I switched my wife off of Verizon this morning.
Speaker 1: When I got this bill, I said, you know what,
Speaker 1: enough is enough? And so her her plan was about
Speaker 1: ninety dollars a month, and now she's paying about forty
Speaker 1: five a month, so it took me a little bit
Speaker 1: of time. It took me about twenty minutes to make
Speaker 1: the switch. But I switched her to a third party,
Speaker 1: one of these mv and o's all unlimited, all included.
Speaker 1: And it's scary, and I get it. This is why
Speaker 1: people don't switch their cellular plans. This is why people
Speaker 1: overpay so much. Do the math. If you're talking forty
Speaker 1: five dollars a month times twelve months, that's almost six
Speaker 1: hundred dollars for the year. It took me about twenty
Speaker 1: minutes to save that amount of money. Now is the
Speaker 1: service going to be exactly the same? I don't know.
Speaker 1: This is why I test things out. But it took
Speaker 1: about twenty minutes to switch over, including poorting the phone
Speaker 1: number over and that was the main thing my wife
Speaker 1: is concerned about. She said, is everything going to work
Speaker 1: the same? I said, yes, it should. Now there's always
Speaker 1: that asterisk because there could be a problem. Now, I
Speaker 1: will tell you, do these companies make it simple to
Speaker 1: pourt out your number? Not really? And I was sweating
Speaker 1: a little bit because there were some issues where it
Speaker 1: was like you need to set up a pin number
Speaker 1: and then you need to unlock the phone number, and
Speaker 1: those one two things, like I had to keep going
Speaker 1: back and like checking it, keep giving me errors, and
Speaker 1: you only get five tries before they lock you out
Speaker 1: of your account. So I was a little bit nervous,
Speaker 1: and my wife was like, if I don't have a
Speaker 1: phone line when you leave for your radio show, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be happy. And I am happy to
Speaker 1: report it did work out. But my point is, if
Speaker 1: you want to switch, if you want to take that dive,
Speaker 1: read all the instructions and make sure you have all
Speaker 1: the numbers in a row before you do anything, because
Speaker 1: if you run into an issue, you could be without
Speaker 1: your phone line for a bit. But if you get
Speaker 1: it right, you could save some big bucks. Rich on
Speaker 1: Tech dot tv is the website. More rich on tech
Speaker 1: after this, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you talking technology at eight eight
Speaker 1: rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. We got Bobo doing the robo
Speaker 1: bobo robo robo bobo.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech dot tv is the website. Let's see
Speaker 1: what else. You can follow me on social media at
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. I'm active on Instagram, Facebook, and x
Speaker 1: maybe threads. I've been checking out a little bit more
Speaker 1: like a little little peak here in there, mostly because
Speaker 1: Instagram really pushes it on you. Uh. Rick in San
Speaker 1: Diego says, Hey, Rich, I'm not very tech savvy and
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit paranoid when it comes to phone apps.
Speaker 1: I try to use websites instead of apps. However, there
Speaker 1: are times I have to use apps, and there are
Speaker 1: some apps I would like to get. When it comes
Speaker 1: to permissions, many state they can modify or delete the
Speaker 1: contents of your shared storage and also state that they
Speaker 1: can read the contents of your shared storage. What does
Speaker 1: that mean exactly? Does that mean anything on my phone,
Speaker 1: including emails, can be read and or deleted by the app?
Speaker 1: If so, that seems it would be crazy for anyone
Speaker 1: to use the app. I realize most apps are legitimate,
Speaker 1: but who knows. Plus the info they can get, I
Speaker 1: worry they can be hacked. I appreciate your thoughts. Thanks, Rick,
Speaker 1: good question. Rick, and I did sort of address this
Speaker 1: in a show a while back, and in my newsletter
Speaker 1: I said how your phone spies on you? And I
Speaker 1: went through all the different categories of what apps can
Speaker 1: access or request access to So let's be honest, most
Speaker 1: apps need certain access to things to actually function. So
Speaker 1: when it comes to modifying or deleting the contents of
Speaker 1: your shared storage, that means that they get a little
Speaker 1: section of the storage space on your phone so that
Speaker 1: they can read and write their own information. Most apps
Speaker 1: would not be able to work if they did not
Speaker 1: have that. Now the place where I would say, so
Speaker 1: a couple things. Number one, I'm both it sounds like
Speaker 1: you've an Android, because I don't think I've ever seen
Speaker 1: that on an iPhone. But if you have an iPhone
Speaker 1: or Android, you can go into on iPhone Privacy and
Speaker 1: Security and then you can take a look at all
Speaker 1: the different categories they have. So, for instance, let's just
Speaker 1: look at contacts. Okay, So I'm looking at contacts and
Speaker 1: I can see there are a whole bunch of apps
Speaker 1: listed here that have access to my contacts. Amazon, Alexa, Gmail,
Speaker 1: Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Photos, Instagram, Meta Signal substacks, Sunshine, Teams, Telegram,
Speaker 1: and a couple of others. If I want to revoke access,
Speaker 1: like why does my metaview need access to my contacts?
Speaker 1: I don't think it does. So I can turn that
Speaker 1: off in the settings. Same thing on Android, you can
Speaker 1: go through and look at your permissions. So go into
Speaker 1: your settings and let's see where it is on here.
Speaker 1: Let's see Permission Manager, Security and Privacy Permission Manager. So
Speaker 1: if we go into permissions, let's see permissions used in
Speaker 1: last twenty four hours. Okay, then I underneath therasays permission manager.
Speaker 1: So it's got body sensors, calendar, call logs, camera, contacts,
Speaker 1: files and media health, connect location, microphone. So now let's
Speaker 1: just say I'm curious about the microphone. So I can
Speaker 1: see all of the apps that have access to my
Speaker 1: microphone on my phone, and if you don't want one
Speaker 1: of those apps to have access to your microphone, you
Speaker 1: can turn it off. So, for instance, why does PayPal
Speaker 1: need access to my microphone? Thankfully I have that microphone
Speaker 1: access turned off because there's no reason why PayPal would
Speaker 1: need my microphone. Looking through the ones that do have access,
Speaker 1: and let's say Snapchat, you're like, well, why does that
Speaker 1: need access to my microphone? That would be if you're
Speaker 1: recording a video, it would want access to your microphone
Speaker 1: to record your voice. So again, these are called permissions,
Speaker 1: and I think you're onto something which is you need
Speaker 1: to be very careful about the permissions that you allow
Speaker 1: access to on these various apps. So if an app
Speaker 1: is asked, you know, an app's job or goal is
Speaker 1: to get access to as many things on your phone
Speaker 1: as possible. And I mean, I get it. They're you know,
Speaker 1: they're trying to make money, they're trying to gather as
Speaker 1: much data about you as possible. And there's even things like,
Speaker 1: let's say you allow access to all of your photos.
Speaker 1: There have been reports where apps can scan the photos
Speaker 1: in your library and get an understanding of the metadata
Speaker 1: inside those photos, so locations, places, people, and I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that happens with some of the popular apps, but
Speaker 1: it probably does. And so again we just need to
Speaker 1: be aware of these things and aware of the fact
Speaker 1: that the way I see it, is that your phone
Speaker 1: is sort of your own garden, right, and all of
Speaker 1: these things are trying to get into your garden to
Speaker 1: eat the stuff that you're growing, which is your data.
Speaker 1: And so you want to keep those things out as
Speaker 1: much as possible. Like you have like a broom and
Speaker 1: you're just like, you know, there's like a skunk come
Speaker 1: in your way, and it's like get out of here,
Speaker 1: Get out of here, skunk or you know what eats
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, rabbit is coming to eat
Speaker 1: the carrots. I don't know. It's a weird I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone's ever described the smartphone that way, but anyway, hey,
Speaker 1: why not. But the point is always be careful about
Speaker 1: the permissions that you allow on your smartphone. That's my
Speaker 1: bottom line. And now there is one thing that I
Speaker 1: think you need to be very careful about, and a
Speaker 1: lot of these apps they ask to use Google as
Speaker 1: a log in. Now, in general, I think that you
Speaker 1: should not do that. I know it's convenient, but I
Speaker 1: don't think you should do that. And the reason why
Speaker 1: is because these apps will sometimes ask for permissions that
Speaker 1: are kind of out of whack. And what I mean
Speaker 1: by that is that they may ask for permission to
Speaker 1: see your Gmail. They may ask for a permission to
Speaker 1: see your calendar, They may ask for permission to see
Speaker 1: your contents of your Google Drive. And so you need
Speaker 1: to be very careful about the apps that you allow
Speaker 1: access to your Google account because that usually has a
Speaker 1: lot of information in it and what you're looking for
Speaker 1: on that screen. If it does ask for like let's
Speaker 1: say access to your storage on your Google account. Make
Speaker 1: sure that it says its own data inside Google Drive,
Speaker 1: not just Google Drive blanketly. And if it's looking for
Speaker 1: your Gmail access, be very careful about that. Like if
Speaker 1: it says we want to be able to see delete
Speaker 1: and you know, rewrite the access of your Gmail, just
Speaker 1: be careful because why why shouldn'tn app need that? But
Speaker 1: good question, Rick, I think most of the time, if
Speaker 1: you're careful about that stuff, you should be okay, Diana
Speaker 1: writes in on the website rich on tech Dot tv
Speaker 1: uh in Covena, what password manager app do you use?
Speaker 1: Thank you you are the best? Well, thank you, Diana,
Speaker 1: You're the best. So my recommendation for password managers, let
Speaker 1: me go through is various fold Number one, yes, you
Speaker 1: should be using one. Number two. Here's my recommendations. If
Speaker 1: you are only using Apple products, if you use nothing
Speaker 1: else in the world except Apple products, go ahead and
Speaker 1: just use iCloud keychain. It's built in. It's simple, it's
Speaker 1: across all your Apple stuff. That includes Safari by the way,
Speaker 1: So if you're using Safari and you know, let's say
Speaker 1: you have a Mac computer, an iPad, and an iPhone,
Speaker 1: and you're using all Apple stuff, go ahead use iCloud keychain. Great,
Speaker 1: it's free, it's included, and it's simple. If you are
Speaker 1: using Chrome as your web browser and you want something
Speaker 1: that's simple and built into Google, then you can go
Speaker 1: ahead and use Chrome's password manager and you can actually
Speaker 1: see if you have passwords stored in here by going
Speaker 1: to passwords dot Google dot com and that will bring
Speaker 1: up your Google passwords if you have them. Some of
Speaker 1: you may already have them in there, but again that
Speaker 1: will work on Chrome. It will fill in your passwords
Speaker 1: when you're browsing the web. It also works on your
Speaker 1: iPhone or Android as well. On iPhone, you have to
Speaker 1: go into settings and look for autofill and if you
Speaker 1: have the Google app or the Chrome web browser, you
Speaker 1: can fill those passwords across your entire phone using Google Now.
Speaker 1: I do think personally that a third party password manager
Speaker 1: is always the best way to go, and so for
Speaker 1: a free solution, I like Bitwarden. And what I like
Speaker 1: about bitwarden is that it is very full featured and
Speaker 1: it's free, so you can pretty much use bitwarden across
Speaker 1: all of your devices for free, and it works on
Speaker 1: a variety of platforms. The main thing to know about
Speaker 1: these password managers is that they lock you in once
Speaker 1: you get a whole bunch of passwords into them, and
Speaker 1: you're paying every month or every year. It's tough to leave.
Speaker 1: I mean you can, but most people don't want to
Speaker 1: do that. So Bitwarden is free and you get unlimited devices.
Speaker 1: That is pretty nice, and it works across a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of devices. And the thing to look for in
Speaker 1: a good password manager is the amount of devices you
Speaker 1: can install it on, and also you know how much
Speaker 1: it costs. Now if you want to step up from there,
Speaker 1: if you want some extra features, then I like a
Speaker 1: password manager called dash Lane. And there's also one called
Speaker 1: one password, uh one the number one and then password
Speaker 1: and again these work across all of your different devices,
Speaker 1: and that's the thing you want to look for. Maybe
Speaker 1: use an Android phone with a Mac computer, Maybe use
Speaker 1: a Windows computer with an iPhone. You want something that
Speaker 1: works across all of these devices, that you can fill
Speaker 1: your passwords easily no matter what device you're on, and
Speaker 1: if you have to pay for it, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I think at this point, you know Bitwarden is a
Speaker 1: great free password manager, but if you have to pay.
Speaker 1: You know, this is they're not that expensive, So I
Speaker 1: would you know, if you want to support these companies
Speaker 1: that are you know, saving your passwords for you, go ahead,
Speaker 1: but is free, So that one's always nice, But that's
Speaker 1: what I recommend. So I don't think there's one size
Speaker 1: fits all for password managers because of the reasons I
Speaker 1: just explained. Thanks for the question, appreciate it. Rich on
Speaker 1: Tech dot tv is the website phone number eight eight
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. We've got a great guest
Speaker 1: coming up this hour, Troy Hunt. He's gonna talk about
Speaker 1: what to do when your personal information is exposed in
Speaker 1: a data breach, plus more of your questions coming up
Speaker 1: right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking
Speaker 1: technology at triple eight rich one O one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Email for the show rich on Tech dot tv. There's
Speaker 1: the website. You can email me there or you can
Speaker 1: let me let me tell you about what's on the
Speaker 1: website real quick while I'm here. So a couple things.
Speaker 1: It's it's a little bit different than it has been
Speaker 1: in the past, so if you haven't been in a while,
Speaker 1: check it out. Redesigned it and hopefully it's easy and
Speaker 1: self explanatory. But up at the top, I've got links
Speaker 1: for my podcast, my TV segments tell you about the
Speaker 1: radio show. Then there's a light bulb. The light bulb
Speaker 1: will give you real time links to whatever I mentioned
Speaker 1: on the show. So if you're listening live and you say, oh,
Speaker 1: what was that, and you just said, just click the
Speaker 1: light bulb. Then you've got contact, which is my email,
Speaker 1: and front and center on the website is my newsletter.
Speaker 1: So if you read the newsletter, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: good information in there. I send one out every week typically,
Speaker 1: And then you can scroll down and see my TV segments.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else the podcast and some interesting interviews.
Speaker 1: And then on the right you can see the social
Speaker 1: media links that I've got on there, and I added
Speaker 1: a new one referral links, so if there's different products
Speaker 1: or things that I like, I can throw them in
Speaker 1: there and then you get a couple bucks off if
Speaker 1: you try them out. And let's talk about YouTube. I
Speaker 1: thought this was interesting. So if you have an Apple TV,
Speaker 1: they have that default screen saver that is basically those
Speaker 1: beautiful videos that Apple has shot, you know, all kinds
Speaker 1: of cool landscapes and things which a lot of people
Speaker 1: have grown to love. But YouTube has gotten slick and
Speaker 1: now they show their own screen saver on Apple TV
Speaker 1: and this comes from nine to five MAC. People are,
Speaker 1: I guess, complaining, saying, wait a second, why is YouTube
Speaker 1: hijacking my Apple TV screensaver that I know and love.
Speaker 1: So when a video is paused, the YouTube screen saver
Speaker 1: shows a zooming slide show of YouTube thumbnail art. Now
Speaker 1: that's probably not very exciting when you're used to these
Speaker 1: beautiful like Grand Canyon kind of landscapes. If you don't
Speaker 1: have a video pause, the YouTube screen saver shows a
Speaker 1: screen show, a screen show of a slideshow of generic
Speaker 1: still images from videos. Either way, these both don't sound good.
Speaker 1: I have not seen this on my Apple TV. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I have seen a very big trend by
Speaker 1: all these streaming apps where when you pause the streaming app,
Speaker 1: they show an AD and I thought that was pretty
Speaker 1: interesting because it's actually quite genius because it gets your attention.
Speaker 1: You pause your movie, and all of a sudden it
Speaker 1: shows an AD. Now I have not seen this on Netflix,
Speaker 1: but I have seen it on Peacock and I think
Speaker 1: Direct TV had it and maybe HBO Max. But the
Speaker 1: workaround if you see if you're seeing the YouTube slide show,
Speaker 1: when you want to see your Apple TV slideshow, basically
Speaker 1: you go into the settings on your Apple TV, look
Speaker 1: for screensaver, and you want to start the screensaver now
Speaker 1: after two minutes, and that way it kind of it
Speaker 1: goes before the YouTube screensaver. So, yeah, I thought this
Speaker 1: was pretty funny. There is a keyboard me bobo. Did
Speaker 1: you see this on Twitter? I don't know if you
Speaker 1: saw this, but there's this meme where it's like, look
Speaker 1: between the two letters and it basically urges users mostly
Speaker 1: on what's that? Did you see it?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean come on, I thought it was pretty funny.
Speaker 1: It's hilarious and creative. Yeah, I'm wondering who was at
Speaker 1: boord to realize something like that. Did you so you
Speaker 1: you saw this and you kind of looked. So one
Speaker 1: of the examples was, uh, someone would say like, uh,
Speaker 1: will you go out with me? And the person would
Speaker 1: say like sure, look between the letters H and L
Speaker 1: on your keyboard and JK, yeah.
Speaker 5: Just kidding it's.
Speaker 1: Kind of funny. So people are doing all, you know.
Speaker 1: So obviously I was sitting there like searching the keyboard
Speaker 1: for something that I could do. So here's the one
Speaker 1: that I came up with. I said, uh oh, my
Speaker 1: kid came home with his report card today. I asked
Speaker 1: him how he did. He said, look between the D
Speaker 1: and the G and what is that? And F Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, goodwill, you'll say as they bring it home.
Speaker 1: No help on that report. No, I know they're not,
Speaker 1: but I just, I mean, I don't know. I thought
Speaker 1: this was pretty funny. It's one of those things where, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just the I don't know where these
Speaker 1: things come from. I mean, if I read more of
Speaker 1: this story that I'm telling you about, i'd probably find
Speaker 1: out where it was. Uh oh. It first emerged in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, I guess. Wow. Okay, so this has
Speaker 1: been around for a while, but it just popped up
Speaker 1: on Twitter. So if you see these things, you know
Speaker 1: now you know what they mean. I just, you know,
Speaker 1: I find this. I'm not a fan of all the
Speaker 1: internet culture, like the meme stuff that pops up. It's creative, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy, very creative. And I was really trying to
Speaker 1: find one. I did one that fell flat. I said,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, these keyboard memes have gotten out of control.
Speaker 1: I just heard Dave Matthews renamed his famous song. You
Speaker 1: know he's got a song called the Space Between. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I said, he renamed his song to look between the
Speaker 1: C and the B. And what does it point to?
Speaker 5: Okay, I'm telling them, I'm Michael Off.
Speaker 1: Now there's a V and at points to the space
Speaker 1: bar the space between. Anyway, that one was really tough.
Speaker 1: I think that actually got like there was physical crickets
Speaker 1: on my Twitter timeline because people were just like, no, Rich,
Speaker 1: I think that was your nerdiness coming out. Was I
Speaker 1: was just reaching. I was reaching this strong. That was
Speaker 1: a really strong reach. It just did not work. So
Speaker 1: I thought my my report card one was pretty good though.
Speaker 1: That one was good. I laughed at that one. I
Speaker 1: saw it all right. How many times have you gotten
Speaker 1: an alert? Oh, your information has shown up on the
Speaker 1: dark web, or your information has been exposed in a
Speaker 1: data breach? Coming up, Troy Hunt, creator of Have I
Speaker 1: Been Poned dot Com, is gonna explain what to do
Speaker 1: when your personal information is exposed. You're 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. Well you've probably heard
Speaker 1: me talk about the website Have I Been Poned? This
Speaker 1: is a data breach website that lets you see if
Speaker 1: your personal information has been compromised. Joining me now is
Speaker 1: the guy who created it, Troy Hunt, a web security consultant. Troy,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for on the show today.
Speaker 5: Hey, Rich, thanks for having me so explain to me
Speaker 5: the website.
Speaker 1: First off, the name I've you've probably heard it said
Speaker 1: wrong a million times?
Speaker 5: Did I say it right?
Speaker 1: And what does that mean?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I think you did a pretty good job of it.
Speaker 8: Look, it's a gaming culture reference, which is a mispronunciation
Speaker 8: of owned. So if you look at your keyboard, the
Speaker 8: owned the P key right next to each other, legend
Speaker 8: has it someone.
Speaker 5: Type poned instead of owned?
Speaker 8: And then the name stuck is in You know, Hey,
Speaker 8: I've just like shot you in the game, I've owned
Speaker 8: you puned you.
Speaker 5: So now having been honed.
Speaker 8: In information security context is more around having had some
Speaker 8: sort of compromise to you in your Digital Life got it?
Speaker 1: Okay, very good, Now we know. So the website, let's
Speaker 1: you see if your personal information has been compromised. Explain
Speaker 1: kind of the functionality of this website and what made
Speaker 1: you come up with that.
Speaker 5: Well, look, it's really pretty simple.
Speaker 8: When there's a data breach and the data's spread out
Speaker 8: there around the web to some extent or another, Have
Speaker 8: I Been poned? Aggregates it and that puts the email
Speaker 8: addresses in there, and then you go along and put
Speaker 8: your email address in it says well, your data has
Speaker 8: been in a data breach or poned as the term is,
Speaker 8: in these various locations. So for example, maybe you're in
Speaker 8: the drop box data breach or the LinkedIn data breach,
Speaker 8: and this is one central repository that can give you
Speaker 8: a pretty good overview of that.
Speaker 1: How do you find the data that's in these breaches?
Speaker 5: Yeah, look, it's fascinating.
Speaker 8: Have I Been Paying started just over ten years ago,
Speaker 8: and when I initially started it, I went out and
Speaker 8: found the data and it was primarily the Adobe data
Speaker 8: breach from twenty twenty thirteen or was twenty thirteen, which
Speaker 8: made me started, and over the course of time that
Speaker 8: very quickly people started to turn around and go, hey,
Speaker 8: look there's all these other things out here, you know,
Speaker 8: let us send you the data breach for the ones
Speaker 8: I mentioned, Dropbox, Adobe, all these other things. As of today,
Speaker 8: there's seven hundred and sixty seven data breaches in there,
Speaker 8: mostly from community contributions, people popping up saying hey, this
Speaker 8: data probably should be searchable and impacted parties should know
Speaker 8: about it.
Speaker 1: What kind of information can you search? You said, the
Speaker 1: email address. So you search your email address, it shows
Speaker 1: up in the breach, and then what how do you
Speaker 1: use that information?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Good question.
Speaker 8: So the data breach, depending on the nature of the breach,
Speaker 8: there's all sorts of different information compromised.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I keep mentioning LinkedIn and Dropbox because this is the
Speaker 8: names that most people will know. They had email addresses
Speaker 8: and they had passwords and that was about it. Many
Speaker 8: people would have heard of things like Ashley Madison back
Speaker 8: in twenty fifteen, where it's like, well, now this is
Speaker 8: a this is a hookup site. Imagine the sorts of
Speaker 8: personal information that you leave on a hookup site. Now
Speaker 8: none of that goes and they have I been paying?
Speaker 8: The only thing goes in there is email addresses and
Speaker 8: then it comes back and says, hey, look, you're in Dropbox,
Speaker 8: so your email address and your password are at risk. You're
Speaker 8: in National Madison, so your email address, your password, and
Speaker 8: your data, birth and your sexuality, and you find on
Speaker 8: ready all of these other things are in there as well.
Speaker 8: And then you need to decide what action you have
Speaker 8: to take to protect yourself.
Speaker 1: What are kind of your security recommendations for the average
Speaker 1: person to proactively protect their online privacy.
Speaker 8: Look, the number one thing by a massive margin is
Speaker 8: not reusing passwords. And the one piece of product place
Speaker 8: that I have on the website is for a password manager.
Speaker 8: Because the only way we can keep our passwords genuinely
Speaker 8: strong and unique is we need a.
Speaker 5: Tool to do it.
Speaker 8: And what we're saying with many of these data breaches,
Speaker 8: they begin by password reuse. So maybe it was an
Speaker 8: administrator somewhere reuse the same password in one location got compromised,
Speaker 8: and then that password use to access the.
Speaker 5: Database on another service. For example.
Speaker 8: We see many data breaches that are the result of
Speaker 8: things like credential stuffing. So this is where we get
Speaker 8: lots of data breaches. Email adresses and passwords leaked, packers
Speaker 8: get them, they join more together. Sometimes there's billions of
Speaker 8: email a dress password pairs, and then they go, let's
Speaker 8: just go and try them on all the other websites,
Speaker 8: and it's mass automated.
Speaker 5: It's done at really really high volumes.
Speaker 8: And suddenly, because you've reused your password across sites, someone's
Speaker 8: now into your social media, a council or whatever else
Speaker 8: it may be.
Speaker 5: Where you've you've readused those credentials.
Speaker 1: How often do you think someone should be checking your
Speaker 1: website when they hear the headlines? I mean, recently we
Speaker 1: had the AT and T breach, we had a Roku hack.
Speaker 1: So do you go to the website every time you
Speaker 1: hear about one of these things?
Speaker 8: Look at easy answer is no, because there's a free
Speaker 8: notification service. Put your email address in there and you'll
Speaker 8: get an email from me if there's a new data
Speaker 8: breach that impacts you. The AT and T data is
Speaker 8: already in there, Roku has not turned up. It sounds
Speaker 8: like Roku is actually an example of the credential stuff
Speaker 8: when we just spoke about where it's not that they
Speaker 8: have a vulnerability in code per se, but hey, people
Speaker 8: use the same password on LinkedIn is what they do
Speaker 8: in their streaming media box and you know people are
Speaker 8: in there, so anyway, if that turns up, that are
Speaker 8: going to have a Van Paine and people get an
Speaker 8: automatic email if you leave it on the website.
Speaker 1: What are the kinds of security questions you're getting and
Speaker 1: what are we facing moving forward? Obviously AI is probably
Speaker 1: going to play a pretty big role in security moving forward.
Speaker 8: You know, probably the most prevalent issues at the moment,
Speaker 8: and one of the most common questions is when we
Speaker 8: get rid of passwords?
Speaker 5: You know, like it is there a passwordless future?
Speaker 8: And the sort of joke about it a little bit
Speaker 8: because I remember so clearly ten years ago people saying,
Speaker 8: you know, it's the password dead yet when we're gonna
Speaker 8: get rid of passwords? And that the truth is we've
Speaker 8: got more now than what we ever have had. We
Speaker 8: are getting very.
Speaker 5: Good password alternatives.
Speaker 8: People might have seen past keys reference in the past,
Speaker 8: lots of services you can use past keys on. We
Speaker 8: have things like second factor authentication, universal two factor keys
Speaker 8: you can check in the USB drive to authenticate. So
Speaker 8: we're moving in a direction where there are alternatives that
Speaker 8: The challenge we have is the friction of change and
Speaker 8: the one thing the poor password doesn't get enough credit.
Speaker 8: One thing the password does really, really well is everybody
Speaker 8: knows how to use it.
Speaker 5: My little kids know how to use.
Speaker 8: It, my parents know how to use Everyone knows how
Speaker 8: to use a password. And we're trying to sort of
Speaker 8: drag people from something that's very familiar and easy to
Speaker 8: use through to something that's much more secure but requires change.
Speaker 1: Do you like pass keys? Do you think that the
Speaker 1: average person should jump into that now or is it
Speaker 1: sort of something we should weak to do.
Speaker 8: Look, they're a good thing. I certainly use them in
Speaker 8: multiple locations. They have upsides and downsides which then get
Speaker 8: very difficult to explain to the average lay person, And
Speaker 8: I think the average person is, O, hang on, isn't
Speaker 8: that just another password? So yeah, it kind of is.
Speaker 8: You just don't have to remember it. Your device remembers
Speaker 8: it all right? Well, which device on my PC?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 8: It could be your people. Well, then how do I
Speaker 8: sink it to my iPhone? Because I log into my
Speaker 8: social media from both services. So I think the consumer
Speaker 8: centric narrative around how these things work has just got
Speaker 8: a bit of a way to go.
Speaker 1: What have you learned in the ten years or so
Speaker 1: that you've had this website?
Speaker 5: So I think this is the lesson for me that
Speaker 5: data breaches are a bit of an inevitability and the
Speaker 5: way the organization handles it as the defining characteristic of
Speaker 5: how they'll be judged.
Speaker 1: What do you make of those services that purport to
Speaker 1: take down all of your information off the web?
Speaker 5: Well intentioned? We'll start with the positive. Well intentioned.
Speaker 8: So there are a lot of services out there that
Speaker 8: will usually for a fee, remove your data from data aggregators.
Speaker 8: So there are these things out there called data aggregators
Speaker 8: where you know how you like, You go to a website,
Speaker 8: you feel out of competition, and there's a little bit
Speaker 8: down the bottom and it says I agree to the
Speaker 8: terms and conditions, and I've read them, and you agree
Speaker 8: to it.
Speaker 5: You never read them, you agree to it.
Speaker 8: Somewhere in the terms and conditions that said we may
Speaker 8: use your data for a product enrichment or some rubbish
Speaker 8: like that, where they then sell that to other people.
Speaker 8: They're shady in my view, but they're legally operating. So
Speaker 8: the services that are out there offering to remove your
Speaker 8: data will remove it from services like that. Now, I
Speaker 8: don't want to get spam and marketing material, but what's
Speaker 8: much Worse than that is attacks and blackmail and extortion
Speaker 8: and identity theft. And that's what happens in the much
Speaker 8: shadier corner of the web, well beyond the reach of
Speaker 8: these services that remove your data. So when we see
Speaker 8: things like AT and C, you cannot be removed from
Speaker 8: the AT and T data reach because tens of thousands
Speaker 8: of people had it now because it's published on the
Speaker 8: Internet and it's easily downloaded by anyone. So my concern
Speaker 8: is that they're well intentioned. They do a good job
Speaker 8: of taking you out of the least dangerous places, but
Speaker 8: they can't take you out of the worst places.
Speaker 1: Troy Hunt tell us how to access the website.
Speaker 5: Have I been poned dot Com? That's like owned a
Speaker 5: bit with the p all.
Speaker 1: Right, Troy Hunt, web security consultant, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining me today.
Speaker 5: Appreciate it. Cheers rich the website.
Speaker 1: Once again, Have I been poned dot Com? Pwned? I'll
Speaker 1: put a link to it on my website.
Speaker 5: Rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: You are listening to you, Rich on Tech. This song
Speaker 1: goes out to Kim on the rich On Tech radio show.
Speaker 1: It's so good we played it twice. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Rich on tech rich on tech dot tv is the
Speaker 1: website for the show. Trying to get through a couple
Speaker 1: of items of note here before we get to the
Speaker 1: feedback segment, so I might go a little fast, but
Speaker 1: everything's linked up on the website. Rich on tech dot
Speaker 1: tv hit the light bulb for the show notes Rabbit
Speaker 1: R one. This is a AI device. It's got a touchscreen,
Speaker 1: a scrolling wheel, a push to talk button, and the
Speaker 1: review units went out this week, so a couple people
Speaker 1: you actually had to buy one of these to get one.
Speaker 1: I did not get one. I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of these AI products are very early stage and I
Speaker 1: just don't see the point compared to having your smartphone.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll change my mind when a good one comes out,
Speaker 1: but this one is two hundred dollars. Early reviews say
Speaker 1: it is sort of unfinit limited buggy at launch, but
Speaker 1: it is an interesting gadget for AI tech enthusiasts and
Speaker 1: early adopters to experiment with. But it's not a smartphone
Speaker 1: replacement just yet. You could do things like ask it
Speaker 1: questions using AI, can take pictures of things and identify it.
Speaker 1: It's got integration with like Uber, door, Dash and Spotify.
Speaker 1: But again, all these things are much easier just to
Speaker 1: do on your phone, So keep an eye out for
Speaker 1: the rabbit are one and other AI devices. They're not
Speaker 1: there just yet. Better Business Bureau warning about a new
Speaker 1: scam text messaging scam where they send you a text
Speaker 1: that says you got to pay your toll for some
Speaker 1: sort of road that you went on, and it is
Speaker 1: not legitimate. I could see why they try this one
Speaker 1: because I've been on those toll roads where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: just you know, you go on these roads and ride
Speaker 1: now pay later. You get a bill in the mail
Speaker 1: for like three hundred dollars, You're like what, So be
Speaker 1: careful if you get a text that says you have
Speaker 1: to pay a toll, be very very critical of that text.
Speaker 1: Ring is going to refund customers or sorry, the FTC
Speaker 1: is sending five point six million dollars in refunds to
Speaker 1: Ring customers as part of a settlement addressing privacy violations
Speaker 1: and security failures. I don't know if you remember this.
Speaker 1: This was a long time ago, but Ring had like
Speaker 1: employees that could see private videos without consent, and so
Speaker 1: they paid a fine to the FTC. Now the FTC
Speaker 1: is sending one hundred and seventeen forty four PayPal payments
Speaker 1: to eligible Ring customers who had certain devices during the
Speaker 1: timeframes when unauthorized access occurred. Now here's my concern here.
Speaker 1: You're going to get this, You're going to see scam
Speaker 1: artists trying to parlay this into a scam. So I
Speaker 1: gonna say, hey, we're the ftc We've got your Ring money.
Speaker 1: Just you know, fill out this information or log in
Speaker 1: with your PayPal, So be very critical of that as well.
Speaker 1: Even though this is legitimate, anything that's legitimate, the scam
Speaker 1: artists find a way to trick you. And then I
Speaker 1: thought this was pretty cool. This was in the Window
Speaker 1: Intelligence newsletter this week. An easy way to share files
Speaker 1: between any devices on your network. So you know, we've
Speaker 1: got quick Share, we've got nearby sharing, we've got air drop.
Speaker 1: This isn't a free open source tool, so if you're
Speaker 1: always sharing files between your devices and you want something
Speaker 1: that's quick and easy, it is called local send. The
Speaker 1: website is let me see local send dot org. There
Speaker 1: are apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. So
Speaker 1: you install this program and setup takes about fifteen seconds.
Speaker 1: Install the app, open it on your other device. Anything
Speaker 1: that's on the same network. You'll it'll show up on
Speaker 1: your phone or your you know, whatever the device is.
Speaker 1: They'll say, do you want to send this to this device? Sure,
Speaker 1: let's see now. Keep in mind, the cool thing about
Speaker 1: airdrop and quick share is that they are ad hoc,
Speaker 1: which means you don't need an Internet connection or a
Speaker 1: network for them to work. So this one, you will
Speaker 1: need to be on the same network for these things
Speaker 1: to work. I think that's the big difference. I've not
Speaker 1: tried this, but I love the sound of it. The
Speaker 1: other one is a web based alternative. It's called snap
Speaker 1: drop and snap drop I've used before. It works pretty well.
Speaker 1: It is snap drop dot net. So again, all these
Speaker 1: sort of like services for sending files between devices. Hopefully
Speaker 1: this will all be a lot simpler when Apple allows
Speaker 1: the rcs on their iPhone, you'll be able to send
Speaker 1: big files like a big video file or a big
Speaker 1: file or a big picture between iPhone and Android. That'll
Speaker 1: be happening later this year. That'll be a huge win
Speaker 1: for consumers. All right. Now, time for the feedbag segment.
Speaker 1: Feedback plus the mail bag equals feedbag. These are the emails,
Speaker 1: the comments, and the questions I've gotten from you. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to submit yours, go to Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot TV hit contact. Jim in Portland says, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I've been really thinking a lot about what you said
Speaker 1: regarding how we're automating so many jobs, and on one hand,
Speaker 1: I think it's cool. On the other, it's not inclusive
Speaker 1: and may not be welcome. I'll tell you why I'm blind.
Speaker 1: I've found that many restaurants now have touch screens when
Speaker 1: it comes to ordering food. Of course, they're not accessible,
Speaker 1: the ones that are few and far between. If I
Speaker 1: go with someone, I can have them help me use
Speaker 1: the tablet, But most of the time I'm by myself,
Speaker 1: and because of these inaccessible tablets, I'm no longer independent.
Speaker 1: And if I ask an employee for help, what's the
Speaker 1: difference between that and just ordering from a human. There
Speaker 1: was a McDonald's I went to that didn't have anyone
Speaker 1: working there except for the people making food. That was
Speaker 1: not cool. What about the folks like me who like
Speaker 1: ordering things a certain way. I know that certain tablets
Speaker 1: generally have things already on the menu. I wouldn't settle
Speaker 1: for that where a human can write down my order
Speaker 1: and hopefully get it right. I do agree you do
Speaker 1: agree with you about things like taxis and ubers. However,
Speaker 1: I'm a bit leery about leaving everything to automation because
Speaker 1: I like to ask questions and I want to know information.
Speaker 1: I know the world is going to all this cool technology,
Speaker 1: and I love toys as much as the next tech nerd.
Speaker 1: But people really don't think about including people who can't
Speaker 1: always access it. Excellent point, Jim, and I think the
Speaker 1: accessibility part of the equation is a huge one. I
Speaker 1: think in many ways it adds to the accessibility and
Speaker 1: in some ways it does take away. Laurel also commented
Speaker 1: on the automated cars. Don't like them. Among other things,
Speaker 1: they have blocked emergency vehicles going to calls and also
Speaker 1: crashed into emergency vehicles going to calls. Fire departments and
Speaker 1: police and ambulance companies want to get rid of self
Speaker 1: driving vehicles. Laurel Nol in scndido says, Hey, Rich love
Speaker 1: the podcast. Listen to one last week where you had
Speaker 1: the guy talking about radar apps you can use to
Speaker 1: track flights. You mentioned flight Radar twenty four. A cool
Speaker 1: feature is the ar feature in the corner you point
Speaker 1: it at an aircraft in flight overhead and it will
Speaker 1: tell you details on that airport, on that airline destination.
Speaker 1: Very cool. I also use radar box, flight Aware and
Speaker 1: globe Dot a DSB exchange dot. That's a tough one.
Speaker 1: And of course the app you mentioned Flighty and I
Speaker 1: looked up this ADBs exchange. It is so cool. It
Speaker 1: shows you an image of every plane in the sky.
Speaker 1: It is really cool. And he continues now on AI
Speaker 1: taking over jobs. I would rather eliminate the pilot who
Speaker 1: blabs on while we're trying to watch TV. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't want to know where we're flying over. That's
Speaker 1: so nineteen seventies. The pilot who keeps his interruptions to
Speaker 1: a minimum. They are safe in my book. And yes
Speaker 1: I am a pilot. All my best. Keep up the
Speaker 1: good work. Let's see San Gabriel Don says, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I love that you covered the what three words app.
Speaker 1: I wanted you to know that the app is much
Speaker 1: more than handy. I just retired from a forty year
Speaker 1: career at the LAFD. The app has literally been a
Speaker 1: life saving piece of technology. I love all that you do.
Speaker 1: I just wanted you to know how important this technology
Speaker 1: has become thank you, and Don says, I've listened to
Speaker 1: talk radio since I was young falling asleep. That has
Speaker 1: gotten too repetitive, so I turned to a few podcasts.
Speaker 1: Yours is number one on my list. Glad I help
Speaker 1: you fall asleep. It might be to take me a
Speaker 1: week to go through the entire show, but everything you
Speaker 1: discuss is interesting to this retired guy who likes to
Speaker 1: investigate how things work. Don. Thank you, Don Rich. I
Speaker 1: love your Saturday show and your KTLA segments. I also
Speaker 1: applaud your patience with callers. Peter, Thank you Peter. And finally,
Speaker 1: Bob and Sharon says, thank you Rich. We love your
Speaker 1: show both on TV and radio. Wow. I couldn't have
Speaker 1: said it better myself. Thank you for the feedback. If
Speaker 1: you want to submit, go to Rich on tech dot TV. Well,
Speaker 1: if you can believe it, that's going to do it
Speaker 1: for this episode of the show. You can find everything
Speaker 1: I mentioned on my website. Just go to Rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot TV. You can find me on social media.
Speaker 1: I am at rich on tech next week. Let me
Speaker 1: see what I got coming up next week. Oh, Airbnb's
Speaker 1: having a big event. We'll talk about that. Let's see
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about dumb phones, you know, the smartphones,
Speaker 1: the opposite of those. Thanks so much for listening. There
Speaker 1: are so many ways you can spend your time. I
Speaker 1: really do appreciate you spending it right here with me.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Bobo on
Speaker 1: the board, thank yourself. Thanks Bobo, there you go, Kim
Speaker 1: on the phones. We've got Bill, We've got Julie. Who
Speaker 1: else makes this show possible? So I don't know. My wife,
Speaker 1: she lets me come here and do it, so I
Speaker 1: mean that's probably pretty important. And my kids who give
Speaker 1: me great ideas, and you, of course, thanks to you.
Speaker 1: My name is Richdmiro. I will talk to you real soon.