Speaker 1: Google releases a new pixel, but it's not the one.
Speaker 1: How to store a digital vaccine card on your smartphone,
Speaker 1: Say goodbye to the magnetic strip on your credit or
Speaker 1: debit card. Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on?
Speaker 1: I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the
Speaker 1: podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think
Speaker 1: you should know about. It is also the place where
Speaker 1: I answer the questions you send me. I'm the tech
Speaker 1: reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for tuning me in. Welcome to the folks listening
Speaker 1: on Facebook Live with their rooms feature, which I love.
Speaker 2: It's weird.
Speaker 1: It doesn't always show up in my app. Sometimes when
Speaker 1: I open the app, it's there, other times it's not there.
Speaker 1: But it's a fun way to reach a lot of
Speaker 1: people that may not listen to the podcast per se,
Speaker 1: but then they get to see it on my Facebook
Speaker 1: page and they say, hey, what's that? Let me let
Speaker 1: me tune in and let me listen, and sure enough
Speaker 1: they stick around sometimes.
Speaker 2: So let's see what's been going on this week? Hm?
Speaker 1: Well, my mom was in town for so long that
Speaker 1: I felt like I was on vacation in my own city.
Speaker 2: We were you know, going out to eat.
Speaker 1: We were staying out late, we were looking at sites,
Speaker 1: we were going places. I'm sure you do this when
Speaker 1: people come to visit you, but it's really interesting how
Speaker 1: much there is to do that you just don't do
Speaker 1: or you take for granted. Like we went to the beach,
Speaker 1: we went to Malibu, we went to different restaurants. I
Speaker 1: got to shout out my friend Brian Tong for okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm not a lobster person.
Speaker 2: I've only had it like once in my.
Speaker 1: Life, and I thought it was okay, but I wouldn't
Speaker 1: consider myself like I don't really seek it out ever.
Speaker 2: I know people go wild over lobster.
Speaker 1: So my mom, which came out here, said the only
Speaker 1: two things I want are fish tacos and a lobster role.
Speaker 1: And I said, all right, well, we're in California. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure we can find those things.
Speaker 2: So fish tacos.
Speaker 1: We found this little place that was a little hole
Speaker 1: in the wall. Oh gosh, I can't remember the name,
Speaker 1: but it was really it was really good and it
Speaker 1: was just a little tiny hole in the wall. We
Speaker 1: went there off a yelp and it turned out to
Speaker 1: be fantastic. Giant portions.
Speaker 2: So that was cool.
Speaker 1: Then I'm browsing Instagram and I see my friend Brian Tong,
Speaker 1: you know who covers technology.
Speaker 2: He posted about this place.
Speaker 1: He went to in Malibu that was I think it
Speaker 1: was called.
Speaker 2: Broad Street Seafood.
Speaker 1: Or something like that, and it was a lobster roll
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, lobster roll in California, in Los Angeles, okay, So.
Speaker 2: I texted him. I said, Brian, is this place legit
Speaker 2: or what?
Speaker 1: He's like, absolutely, So my mom and I go and
Speaker 1: she gets the lobster roll. I get some fish tacos,
Speaker 1: and I will tell you I had one little bite
Speaker 1: of the lobster from her role, and oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I am a convert. Oh wow, it was so good.
Speaker 1: It was basically just like something anything doused in butter
Speaker 1: is really really good and that's it just tasted like
Speaker 1: a butter soaked piece of fish, not even I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't really a fishy, but anyway, it was so good.
Speaker 2: Now I feel like I have to go back for
Speaker 2: a lobsterole. So it was great. We had a lot
Speaker 2: of fun.
Speaker 1: I've also been testing out the Galaxy foldable phones all
Speaker 1: this week. Don't quite have my review just yet. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of these things where I love
Speaker 1: the fact that Samsung is trying new things and I
Speaker 1: want to love one of these phones and I want
Speaker 1: to use one of them like forever, but I just can't.
Speaker 1: There's there's too many downsides for me. Like with the
Speaker 1: bigger one, I just love that giant screen in the fold.
Speaker 1: When you open it up, it's like having a tablet.
Speaker 1: You can use it as a kindle, you can read books.
Speaker 1: And I just have this like this romanticized version of myself,
Speaker 1: like just pulling this phone out and like using it
Speaker 1: for all kinds of cool things. But the reality is
Speaker 1: it's big and it's bulky, and it's just it's cool.
Speaker 1: But I don't think it's ready for primetime just yet.
Speaker 1: And the little flip phone is really cool, but the
Speaker 1: cameras just aren't there and so and also you got
Speaker 1: to flip it open every time, which back in the
Speaker 1: day was really easy because you could do it with
Speaker 1: one hand and it was a motorol eraser and it
Speaker 1: was simple and it was lightweight. This is way more
Speaker 1: complicated to open, to flip open every time you need
Speaker 1: to use it. And yeah, they made the outer screen bigger,
Speaker 1: but it's still not where it needs to be to
Speaker 1: actually accomplish anything. So to do anything on this phone,
Speaker 1: you still want to open the phone. So it's just
Speaker 1: it's one of these things where I think, you know,
Speaker 1: my reviews will be good of these devices, I just
Speaker 1: can't really recommend the average person to get them just yet. Now,
Speaker 1: if you just want a cool flip phone and you're
Speaker 1: not like a power user, the Flip is kind of cool,
Speaker 1: but the price is still pretty high for you know,
Speaker 1: everyday person, like most of the people that text me
Speaker 1: or email me or looking for a phone closer to
Speaker 1: the five hundred range.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: I guess that goes right into my first story. Google
Speaker 1: released a new pixel. It's not the pixel that I'm
Speaker 1: waiting for, you know, I'm waiting for the Pixel six,
Speaker 1: And mark my words, I will switch to the Pixel
Speaker 1: six from the iPhone if it's any good. And by
Speaker 1: any good, I mean they get the processor right, they
Speaker 1: get the memory right, they get the storage right, they
Speaker 1: get the screen right, they get the cameras right, which
Speaker 1: they usually do, and they get kind of like the overall,
Speaker 1: the overall package right. Like the pixel is one of
Speaker 1: the best cameras out there, but it's just every year,
Speaker 1: like the package is like, ugh, it's.
Speaker 2: A little damaged. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like getting a box from Amazon that's just like
Speaker 1: dented in on one side and you're like, ah, I
Speaker 1: can't really like, I can't accept this package the.
Speaker 2: Way it is.
Speaker 1: So the new Pixel five A with five G say
Speaker 1: that five times fast. They call it the latest A
Speaker 1: series Pixel phone. So I was talking to my brother
Speaker 1: about this and he's like, what does the A mean?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I think it's just a.
Speaker 2: Delineation that it's not as high powered.
Speaker 1: But it's confusing because you're gonna have the Pixel six
Speaker 1: come out, so you've got the Pixel five A and
Speaker 1: then the six. So I guess that makes kind of sense,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. Anyway, the phone's gonna arrive in
Speaker 1: August twenty sixth. It's a IP sixty seven water resistant.
Speaker 2: Let me just go.
Speaker 1: I mean it's basically the Pixel four A five G
Speaker 1: with a couple of little upgrades. Okay, the forur A
Speaker 1: does not have water resistance. The for A, well, I
Speaker 1: guess they're getting rid of.
Speaker 2: The four A five G. This is so confusing, but
Speaker 2: it's got a good battery.
Speaker 1: It's got a forty six hundred eighty milliamp hour battery.
Speaker 2: That is huge. I mean that is really really large.
Speaker 1: Now, the memory is six gigabytes a RAM, which I
Speaker 1: just wish they would stop scrimping on the RAM on
Speaker 1: these Android phones and just put in you gotta do
Speaker 1: minimum eight twelve is way better. So it's got six.
Speaker 1: It's got one hundred and twenty eight gigs of storage,
Speaker 1: which is fine. It's got a dual SIM it's got
Speaker 1: a six point three inch full HD plus O lead
Speaker 1: does not have the high refresh rate screen. It's got
Speaker 1: all the camera features you need. It's got the rear cameras.
Speaker 1: It's got a dual a twelve megapixel camera and an
Speaker 1: ultra wide sixteen megapixel.
Speaker 2: Which is fine.
Speaker 1: It would be nice to have a telephoto lens in
Speaker 1: there as well.
Speaker 2: You don't get that.
Speaker 1: It's got that slower Qualcom Snapdragon processor, the.
Speaker 2: Seven sixty five g boring.
Speaker 1: But it does have a audio jack, which is really cool.
Speaker 1: So I would say, honestly, sight on scene, I guess
Speaker 1: I was not on the list of Google sent this
Speaker 1: phone to pretty much anyone with a with a pulse
Speaker 1: except me.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Why did I say something bad about the Pixel.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: They've sent me every Pixel since it ari, since it
Speaker 1: came out, and this year they decide now we're just
Speaker 1: not going to tell Rich about this. So every single influencer,
Speaker 1: every blogger, everyone.
Speaker 2: Was tweeting, oh got my free gift from Google.
Speaker 1: And someone like myself, who my audience is actually really
Speaker 1: interested in this phone, they did not contact me to
Speaker 1: get me this phone to reach. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the deal is. I mean, Google, I thought we had
Speaker 1: a good relationship. I guess not so anyway, sight on scene. Honestly,
Speaker 1: this is probably one of the phones I will recommend
Speaker 1: the most this year to the average person. And the
Speaker 1: reason I recommend this phone is because it is so simple.
Speaker 1: It has all the features you need. And if you're
Speaker 1: not a wild power user like you need the best,
Speaker 1: the best, the best, the highest specs, the best.
Speaker 2: Ram, the best screen.
Speaker 1: If you just want a phone that you can pull
Speaker 1: out of your pocket, make phone calls on surf the web,
Speaker 1: look at Instagram, take amazing pictures on have great battery life.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be the Pixel five A with five G
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the bottom line. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this phone is four hundred and forty nine dollars. That
Speaker 1: is a fantastic price. Under five hundred dollars. You buy it,
Speaker 1: you get it. It works, it's gonna last for minimum
Speaker 1: three years, and it's It's not the fastest phone in
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: It's not the sexiest phone in the world.
Speaker 1: But guess what it does what you need it to do.
Speaker 1: And for that reason, I really like this phone. It's
Speaker 1: not the Pixel six that someone like me, who is
Speaker 1: a phone sort of power hungry phone nerd needs. It's
Speaker 1: just a phone for the everyday person and it you know, yes,
Speaker 1: you might say, rich, why not recommend a Samsung? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the samsungs are fine, but they've they're so busy, They've
Speaker 1: got so much going on that unless you're a Samsung person,
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily need all the things that Samsung has
Speaker 1: going on. I think the Pixel five A is going
Speaker 1: to be just fine for a lot of people. So
Speaker 1: I hope that I end up getting my hands on
Speaker 1: one of these. But honestly, I'm buying the Pixel six
Speaker 1: no matter what, so I will I will get that, and.
Speaker 2: Of course I'll talk about that as well.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the first question of the show.
Speaker 1: Let's see, Ivory says rich, due to the price of
Speaker 1: Adobe Acrobat Pro twenty twenty, what product do you recommend
Speaker 1: that performs similar functions for a Windows ten machine. Now,
Speaker 1: Adobe Acrobat Pro.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty is wow.
Speaker 1: Is it really four hundred and fifty dollars? WHOA, that
Speaker 1: is a lot of money.
Speaker 2: Let's see. So what does it do?
Speaker 1: So it's basically the ability to create PDFs. Most of
Speaker 1: us are just either printing out a page that is
Speaker 1: a PDF, or we're filling in a PDF, or we're
Speaker 1: working with PDFs, or we're converting something to PDFs, all
Speaker 1: things that you can pretty much do for free. But
Speaker 1: if you want to create and like really modify PDFs,
Speaker 1: like if your business driven, you need something like Adobe
Speaker 1: Acrobat Pro. And so what this does is it lets you,
Speaker 1: you know, fill in forms, create and combined PDFs, send
Speaker 1: documents with your for signature, send track and confirmed delivery,
Speaker 1: add or edit text, reorder, delete or rotate pages. And
Speaker 1: you also what's new I don't know anyway, So this
Speaker 1: just this is like a This is like Microsoft Word
Speaker 1: but for PDFs. So if you need that, you're going
Speaker 1: to have to pay for that. Now from what I'm seeing,
Speaker 1: it looks like it's about four hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 1: which is a lot of money. So Ivory if you
Speaker 1: want an alternative, The only real product that I know
Speaker 1: is from fox It software Foxit, and they have a
Speaker 1: PDF editor that is not free. You know, you get
Speaker 1: a free trial, but if you want to actually purchase it,
Speaker 1: you do need to pay.
Speaker 2: And so if you want.
Speaker 1: The regular PDF editor, there's two versions. There's the PDF
Speaker 1: editor and then there's the pro. So the regular one
Speaker 1: is going to be one hundred and fifty nine dollars.
Speaker 1: The pro is one hundred and ninety nine dollars, and
Speaker 1: that's a one time fee.
Speaker 2: So if you want.
Speaker 1: Something that's less than half the price of Adobe, it's
Speaker 1: going to be.
Speaker 2: This is it, this is fox It.
Speaker 1: So I have not truly played with this software enough
Speaker 1: to give you a really good explanation of it versus
Speaker 1: the Adobe software. And I assume Adobe is the leader.
Speaker 1: They've got the brand name. There might also be a
Speaker 1: circumstance where you can subscribe to the Adobe software and
Speaker 1: get it for less every month, So that might be
Speaker 1: another thing to look into. If you don't want to
Speaker 1: do fox it and fox it. You know, it's probably
Speaker 1: gonna be fine. I don't know the exact features that
Speaker 1: you need.
Speaker 2: Did you. Let's see did Ivory. Let's see did Ivory
Speaker 2: write what features she needed? Let's see.
Speaker 1: Oh, here we go, password protection, combine several documents into
Speaker 1: one search, convert pdf into word, and vice versa. Okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I think that the fox at one is
Speaker 1: probably going to do those things. Those are pretty basic functionality.
Speaker 1: The convert PDF into word you can actually do with
Speaker 1: with Google Docs for free. So if you just upload
Speaker 1: a pdf into Google Docs, there's functionality that it will
Speaker 1: be used to. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can do that.
Speaker 1: I've done that before. It might not be pretty, the
Speaker 1: conversion might not be pretty, but it will definitely do
Speaker 1: something similar to that. All right, good question, good question,
Speaker 1: good question.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk.
Speaker 1: About the big story of the week, a cyber attack
Speaker 1: on T Mobile. So these cyber attacks are really getting
Speaker 1: gnarly because it's no longer because these companies have become
Speaker 1: such mega corporations with millions and millions and millions of
Speaker 1: customers and tons of data. Every time we hear about
Speaker 1: one of these major hacks. They just get bigger and bigger.
Speaker 1: And this T Mobile one is pretty scary because what
Speaker 1: happened is they got a lot of stuff seven point
Speaker 1: eight million current T mobile customers, includes first and last names, data, birth,
Speaker 1: social security number, social security numbers, I say, social number,
Speaker 1: driver's license. Those are all the things that you need
Speaker 1: to steal someone's identity.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: They also determined that phone numbers as well as your Imei,
Speaker 1: which is the number that oh my gosh, that identifies
Speaker 1: your smartphone, was also compromised. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: This is unbelievable. Oh.
Speaker 1: They also identified another five point three million customers that
Speaker 1: didn't have social security numbers or driver's licenses on their accounts,
Speaker 1: but they still were impacted. So this number just continues
Speaker 1: to grow. By the way, there was also forty million
Speaker 1: former or prospective T mobile customers who had their oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, this is just wild who had their information taken.
Speaker 1: So basically you're talking forty eight million plus another five
Speaker 1: so you're talking over fifty million people. This is a
Speaker 1: major buzzer alert for T Mobile.
Speaker 2: And and I mean, look, what are you gonna do.
Speaker 1: You're gonna are you gonna cancel T Mobile? Probably not
Speaker 1: are you gonna switch to AT and T or Verizon?
Speaker 1: It could have happened to them.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the deal is with T Mobile
Speaker 1: systems how this happened. Uh, But you know, it's just
Speaker 1: one of these things that leaves a really bad taste
Speaker 1: in your mouth because this is your highly personal information
Speaker 1: that is now floating around on the internet. And I'm
Speaker 1: talking floating around. I had a T Mobile account at
Speaker 1: one time, and I'm wondering if mine is part of this.
Speaker 1: So I mean five point eight forty million customers former customers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: basically this is my information as well. So I'm really
Speaker 1: angry here.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: T Mobile says none of the information included financial, credit card,
Speaker 1: debit or other payment. Well, who cares about that? I mean,
Speaker 1: don't use your bank account to pay bills, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: number one. At least put a debit or credit card
Speaker 1: between you now, you know, if you listen to my show.
Speaker 1: Not a huge fan of credit cards because the implications
Speaker 1: of them. Yes, I have one, I try to use
Speaker 1: it sparingly, but I do like the idea that a
Speaker 1: credit card does put a wall between you and your
Speaker 1: bank account. So if T Mobile shares my credit card
Speaker 1: number out there.
Speaker 2: I really don't care.
Speaker 1: Let them charge as much as they want on it,
Speaker 1: because guess what, I'm not paying that bill. If it's
Speaker 1: not me making that charge, I don't really care. Let
Speaker 1: let American Express or Capital One or you know these
Speaker 1: Bank of America figure that out. I don't need to
Speaker 1: worry about that debit card. You know, there are limitations
Speaker 1: on your debit card, Like I remember at some point
Speaker 1: it was like a on mine I had.
Speaker 2: I think it was like a five hundred dollars limit.
Speaker 1: You can call your bank and ask them what the
Speaker 1: limit is, and you can set like a spend limit
Speaker 1: per day. So if let's say someone got a hold
Speaker 1: of your debit card number, you can actually limit it
Speaker 1: to only authorize like a thousand dollars of purchases a day, which.
Speaker 2: I know that's a lot for me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I hope I don't spend that much in
Speaker 1: a day, but if you did, you know it would
Speaker 1: cut off. And that's smart because if a hacker did
Speaker 1: get access to your debit card, you know, they can
Speaker 1: only do so much damage before you know you figure
Speaker 1: it out. And yeah, and in the end, with a
Speaker 1: debit card, you'll still probably get your money back. It's
Speaker 1: just a little bit more of a headache because it's
Speaker 1: your money that's going out and now you have to
Speaker 1: get that money back.
Speaker 2: So banks, you know.
Speaker 1: The way that these cards work is that, you know,
Speaker 1: if I use my debit card at Target, let's say,
Speaker 1: and you know, something happens or it's fraudulent whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: Target doesn't get that money from my bank immediately. They
Speaker 1: get it on like a thirty day rolling basis. So
Speaker 1: if something goes wrong the bank, you know, let's say
Speaker 1: it's Bank of America, they just say, oh, Target, by
Speaker 1: the way, we're not giving you that thirty three dollars
Speaker 1: that rich spent there because that's being contested. And until
Speaker 1: that money actually clears the system and everyone agrees that
Speaker 1: the transaction was legit, then they'll get that money.
Speaker 2: So that's how that works.
Speaker 1: So it's not like, you know, they get the money immediately. Now,
Speaker 1: if it's cash, yeah, it's it's gone. It's out of
Speaker 1: your pocket and it's gone. If it's you know, any
Speaker 1: other way to pay.
Speaker 2: That, that's like immediate.
Speaker 1: But if it's a debit card or a credit card,
Speaker 1: they pretty much you know, have to wait for that
Speaker 1: money to clear from the bank. All right, what else
Speaker 1: do we need to know? So what is T Mobile
Speaker 1: doing about this? They're giving people two years of free
Speaker 1: identity services, identity protection from mcaffee or McAfee McAfee.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a big deal. I mean, sign up for
Speaker 2: that for sure.
Speaker 1: T Mobile customers should sign up for the free scam
Speaker 1: call blocking. Oh okay, let me block those scam calls.
Speaker 1: They also tell customers that they should reset their pin
Speaker 1: numbers on their account.
Speaker 2: Oh. Interesting, they change their little website. Huh, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: They said to.
Speaker 1: Activate account takeover protection, which I would definitely do. And
Speaker 1: it's just one of these things. It's kind of a nightmare.
Speaker 1: So I mean, it's out there, it's done. There's not
Speaker 1: much you can do about it. It's it's just really
Speaker 1: unfortunate that that happened. But my biggest advice is to
Speaker 1: not share. Just limit how much personal data you share.
Speaker 1: I think I mentioned this in the podcast last week,
Speaker 1: but limit how much data you share. That is the
Speaker 1: number one thing you can do is just try to
Speaker 1: keep it, you know, keep yourself from you know, just
Speaker 1: anytime someone asks you for something, think about, do I
Speaker 1: really really need to share this information?
Speaker 2: Because you know.
Speaker 1: They'll ask anyone's welcome to ask for anything, and unless
Speaker 1: they you know, they push you. Or there's that little
Speaker 1: asterisk next to it on a website that says, hey,
Speaker 1: if you're using this, you got to put in your
Speaker 1: email address, your date of birth or whatever.
Speaker 2: And sometimes I even fake it.
Speaker 1: I'll put in a fake data birth. It's a random website.
Speaker 1: Why do they need to know my actual data birth? Like,
Speaker 1: no way, I'll just put a fake one in there.
Speaker 1: And you know, as long as there's nothing, no harm,
Speaker 1: no foul, like, they don't need to really know anything
Speaker 1: about me, all right. Next question comes from Christopher. Christopher says,
Speaker 1: good morning. My boys are starting to walk to school.
Speaker 1: Now is there an inexpensive way to track them? I've
Speaker 1: been looking at AirTag and tyle, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: see what you thought. Thanks well, thank you Christopher for
Speaker 1: inspiring a segment on KTLA. Future segment, I will be
Speaker 1: talking about some of these things that I think parents
Speaker 1: should look at for tracking their kids. So you mentioned
Speaker 1: the AirTag, and the AirTag is probably the first solution
Speaker 1: that comes to mind for most people because it's, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a tracker. It's twenty nine bucks. It works with
Speaker 1: my iPhone, and yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2: It does work. It does what it says it does.
Speaker 1: But you have to remember this is not meant for
Speaker 1: people or pets. Now, that does not mean that people
Speaker 1: are not using it for people in pets, and you
Speaker 1: can there's no law against it. But if you use
Speaker 1: an air tag to track your kid, you need to
Speaker 1: know the limitations of the air tag. The air tag
Speaker 1: is just a battery with a Bluetooth beacon on it,
Speaker 1: and that's it. And so what it does is it
Speaker 1: actually uses nearby Apple products to get its Internet connection
Speaker 1: and then share that location, you know, or share its
Speaker 1: location with the network. And so the good news is
Speaker 1: there's a lot of iPhones around, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: Mac computers, there's a lot of iPads, and as long
Speaker 1: as one of those is nearby, it's gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: update this little device and you're gonna see the location
Speaker 1: on the find my app on your iPhone.
Speaker 2: And that's fine.
Speaker 1: Now you have to remember the updates may not be
Speaker 1: in real time, so you can see if your child is,
Speaker 1: you know, at school, you can see where they are
Speaker 1: at any given time as long as the air tag
Speaker 1: has gotten a fresh connection or a recent fresh connection
Speaker 1: to the internet using you know, a nearby device, and
Speaker 1: so that's that's the simplest, cheapest, easiest way. But again
Speaker 1: you need to know that it's not real time.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: If you want real time again, you've got T Mobile
Speaker 1: sync Up Tracker. This is a tracker that actually has
Speaker 1: a cellular connection and GPS built in. Now, it's not
Speaker 1: meant for kids again, but it can work for them
Speaker 1: because you can put it on their backpack and you
Speaker 1: can get real time tracking. You can check in at
Speaker 1: anytime and it will actually connect to the Internet itself.
Speaker 1: It connects to the T Mobile network and then you
Speaker 1: can also get boundary alerts, so you can set a
Speaker 1: boundary around your kids school and as soon as they
Speaker 1: enter that boundary, you will get an alert to your
Speaker 1: phone that they have entered, or you can do an
Speaker 1: exit boundary as well. The battery lasts an average of
Speaker 1: three to four DA's, so you're gonna have to charge
Speaker 1: this thing pretty frequently, as opposed to the air tag,
Speaker 1: which is like once a year. The T Mobile sync
Speaker 1: Up is also sixty dollars plus five dollars a month
Speaker 1: for service, so that costs money, but you're gonna get
Speaker 1: more accurate reporting. Now, if you want something that was
Speaker 1: made specifically for tracking kids, check out the geobit. This
Speaker 1: is a monitor. I met with the I think it
Speaker 1: was the founder of the company at CS a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, and he said, it's great for elderly folks,
Speaker 1: it's great for kids.
Speaker 2: You know. You has a.
Speaker 1: Built in again, built in GPS, built in cellular. But
Speaker 1: the magic here is that they optimized the software for
Speaker 1: tracking kids. So that's like the main difference is that
Speaker 1: a lot of the software was written specifically with tracking
Speaker 1: kids in mind, so you can see real time GPS
Speaker 1: location history, and like I mentioned earlier, the alerts when
Speaker 1: they arrive or leave trusted places. Now this is a
Speaker 1: little more expensive. It's one hundred and thirty dollars plus.
Speaker 1: The service starts at nine dollars a month. And by
Speaker 1: the way, when I say nine dollars a month, that's
Speaker 1: if you you know, do like a three year.
Speaker 2: Contract or a two year contract.
Speaker 1: If you're paying by the month, all of these things
Speaker 1: are a little bit more expensive, like fifteen a month.
Speaker 1: Next up is gab Watch. Gabb and I have not
Speaker 1: tested the gab watch, but I did meet with this
Speaker 1: try another product from gab and they're basically a company
Speaker 1: that's making like inexpensive unlocked wireless products that are just
Speaker 1: pretty easy to use. So this watch is one hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: but it's a smart watch, and yeah it's no Apple Watch,
Speaker 1: but it's gonna let your kids make phone calls. They
Speaker 1: can text, but just to the contacts that you allow.
Speaker 1: There's an emergency SOS feature, there's a fun little digital
Speaker 1: pet they can play with, and there's a step counter
Speaker 1: as well. This service starts at ten dollars a month.
Speaker 2: And finally, if you want like.
Speaker 1: Sort of the most thorough solution, the Apple Watch with
Speaker 1: cellular can can really be the best solution, especially if
Speaker 1: you're looking for a bridge for your kids to have
Speaker 1: one of these tracker solutions but not have a full
Speaker 1: fledged smartphone. So the Apple Watch, they introduce this feature
Speaker 1: called Family Setup, and so this means you can you know,
Speaker 1: typically an Apple Watch always required an iPhone to work,
Speaker 1: so you had to have an iPhone, you had to
Speaker 1: activate it on your account, they had to work in Unison.
Speaker 1: Now they have this thing called Family set Up, where
Speaker 1: as long as you have an iPhone or I think
Speaker 1: an iPad as well. You can just activate an Apple Watch,
Speaker 1: and once you do, it'll just live on its own.
Speaker 1: It just does its own thing. And there's two ways
Speaker 1: you can do it. It can live on its own
Speaker 1: which is Wi Fi, but if you want to use
Speaker 1: the family setup feature, you have to use a cellular connection,
Speaker 1: and so that means you have to get the price
Speaker 1: her Apple Watch with the cellular connection. The cheapest is
Speaker 1: the Apple Watch se with cellular that's gonna be about
Speaker 1: three hundred and thirty bucks.
Speaker 2: But this can do everything.
Speaker 1: You can make calls, it can track your kid, they
Speaker 1: can set them texts including I messages, you can they
Speaker 1: can fully track their activity. They can listen to music
Speaker 1: on this thing. There's all kinds of apps on it.
Speaker 1: So I mean it's an Apple Watch. It's gonna be,
Speaker 1: you know, the gold standard of smart watches. And they
Speaker 1: have this cool classroom watch face which is less distracting
Speaker 1: and I don't believe that the messages come through when
Speaker 1: they're in the classroom function, so you can have that
Speaker 1: turn on a certain time and turn off at a
Speaker 1: certain time during the day.
Speaker 2: So that's a really cool feature.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be, Like I said, you gotta go
Speaker 1: with the Apple Watch s with cellular, or you can
Speaker 1: go Apple Watch four with cellular and above, and I
Speaker 1: believe it's the four and it's three hundred and thirty bucks.
Speaker 1: Like I said, service runs about ten dollars a month.
Speaker 2: Apple Watch.
Speaker 1: Let me just see Apple Watch family set up. Let
Speaker 1: me just see what it requires, because I think it
Speaker 1: was the Apple Watch for yeah, Apple Watch series four
Speaker 1: or later with cellular or Apple Watch.
Speaker 2: Se with cellular.
Speaker 1: So if you have an old Apple Watch like you're,
Speaker 1: but you have to have cellular on it for this
Speaker 1: to really work. I mean, you can activate it without cellular,
Speaker 1: but it's just not gonna You're not gonna get the
Speaker 1: features that you need without cellular. So I wouldn't even
Speaker 1: bother if you didn't have cellular, because honestly, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be such a nightmare that sometimes you can get through
Speaker 1: to your kid. Sometimes you'd be able to see where
Speaker 1: their location is, and other times you wouldn't, based on
Speaker 1: whether this thing can find a Wi Fi signal and
Speaker 1: also be connected to that Wi Fi signal. So for
Speaker 1: that reason, I would definitely not go the Apple Watch
Speaker 1: route unless you're prepared to do the cellular plan and
Speaker 1: get the cellular model. Otherwise, I mean, unless they're just
Speaker 1: using it in the house or something, that's the best.
Speaker 2: Way to do it.
Speaker 1: All right, long answer, but good question, Chris, and thanks
Speaker 1: for the segment. Watch for it on KTLA soon. All right,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Okay, we've all been on Zoom for
Speaker 1: you know, a year and a half. I wonder what
Speaker 1: the numbers are like on Zoom at this point, Like
Speaker 1: they must be so much lower than last year, because
Speaker 1: so many kids are back in school and so many
Speaker 1: people are back at work. Even though you know, it's
Speaker 1: still this virus or whatever, COVID is still just wrecking
Speaker 1: havoc on our world. It's so wild that it just
Speaker 1: keeps going. But this this idea of a virtual reality
Speaker 1: meeting room, this is what face Book has introduced with
Speaker 1: their new Horizon Workrooms through their Oculus brand. So Oculus,
Speaker 1: you know, is their virtual reality headset and brand, and
Speaker 1: so they introduce this thing called Horizon Workrooms, which are
Speaker 1: free virtual meeting rooms. And I think this is so
Speaker 1: so cool, but I don't see it taking off in
Speaker 1: a huge way just yet. But I totally think it's amazing.
Speaker 1: And so what is it. It's a virtual meeting room.
Speaker 1: You put your headset on and you get into this
Speaker 1: room with your colleagues and now you can see each
Speaker 1: other as an avatar. You can pick the room that
Speaker 1: you want to meet in, so they've all got all
Speaker 1: kinds of fun rooms. The rooms get bigger and smaller
Speaker 1: depending on how many people are in there. This can
Speaker 1: support up to sixteen people in VR, up to fifty total,
Speaker 1: because not everyone has a VR headset in fact, like
Speaker 1: nobody does, so you know, you might have one person that's.
Speaker 2: Like, can we please do the meeting in a VR please.
Speaker 1: And everyone else like, uh okay, I mean no one
Speaker 1: else has VR, but sure you can do VR rich
Speaker 1: and then we'll just call in so you can do that.
Speaker 1: But they've got all kinds of neat features that you
Speaker 1: would need in a meeting, like you know, your desk
Speaker 1: and keyboard tracking so you can kind of do mixed
Speaker 1: reality where you can when you're typing on your keyboard,
Speaker 1: other people will see that. They've got hand tracking, so
Speaker 1: you can actually write on like a whiteboard. They've got
Speaker 1: your desktop or so you can actually show share your screen.
Speaker 1: They've got all spatial audio, which is really cool too,
Speaker 1: because spatial audio is allows you to hear people, and
Speaker 1: like let's say I'm sitting here at my desk and
Speaker 1: i hear someone that's talking on my left, the audio
Speaker 1: sounds like it's coming from the left.
Speaker 2: That's what spatial audio is.
Speaker 1: And we're seeing more and more of this, and I'll
Speaker 1: have another story about that in a moment.
Speaker 2: But it's just it's such.
Speaker 1: A cool feeling because it literally feels like the person
Speaker 1: is where they look like they are, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: So you've got spatial audio, you've got.
Speaker 1: The virtual whiteboards, you can actually draw in VR and
Speaker 1: you can and you know, keep that and save whatever
Speaker 1: you do. You've got all kinds of different virtual rooms.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just everything you need to actually have
Speaker 1: these meetings in the virtual world. But again, like I said,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be really really tricky to take off,
Speaker 1: because let's be honest. I mean, think about a meeting
Speaker 1: that you have at your office. When you had meetings,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's basically a bare bones conference room. You know,
Speaker 1: people are on their phones, they're distracted, they get in there,
Speaker 1: they're sitting on their laptops. Like it's not this like
Speaker 1: idealized vision of the future where everyone's like okay, let
Speaker 1: me strap on my headset.
Speaker 2: And let's get to this meeting.
Speaker 1: Like even with Zoom meetings, I'm always like a couple
Speaker 1: minutes late. I'm just plugging in my headphones, like I'm
Speaker 1: literally adjusting like which input and output for my speakers,
Speaker 1: or like my Bluetooth isn't working, Like it's a mess, right,
Speaker 1: Like we're lucky that we actually can, you know, do
Speaker 1: some of these meetings and make them, and then you
Speaker 1: know people are sick of them. They're you know, let
Speaker 1: me go, and they click off so fast that like
Speaker 1: you don't even say a bye practically. So to go
Speaker 1: from that to a virtual meeting room where everyone has
Speaker 1: an Oculus headset and and they're sitting there like using
Speaker 1: that Oculus headset and trying to refer to their notes
Speaker 1: on their computer, I mean, it's it's gonna be pretty wild.
Speaker 1: It's definitely a stretch. But I do see this kind
Speaker 1: of thing taking off in the future because it is cool,
Speaker 1: and I do think a large element of future work
Speaker 1: is going to take place with virtual meetings instead of
Speaker 1: face to face, just because people always want to meet
Speaker 1: face to face. But I think is as companies can
Speaker 1: save money on travel and people realize they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: need to travel. We will see more of an emphasis
Speaker 1: on this.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The other big thing about this is that you're talking companies, right,
Speaker 1: And what do you think when you think you're discussing
Speaker 1: stuff with your company, it's most of the time it's private.
Speaker 2: You don't want this.
Speaker 1: Thing aired anywhere. So you have to wonder, okay, well
Speaker 1: if this is you know, with Zoom, you know, it
Speaker 1: was a big deal when they first came out, like okay,
Speaker 1: what's where is this stuff traveling through? Is it traveling
Speaker 1: through servers in China? Is it here in America?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Where where is my stuff going? And you know, that
Speaker 1: was a big deal when Zoom first kind of came
Speaker 1: to fruition, when people started using it a lot, and
Speaker 1: so they got to the bottom of that and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, they gave some clear indications of how your
Speaker 1: stuff was being used, how private it was. You know,
Speaker 1: they introduced end to end encryption, which you know satisfied
Speaker 1: a lot of the privacy issues. And so now with Facebook,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to know this. They didn't mention
Speaker 1: anything about encryption, so they didn't mention that word at
Speaker 1: all in their blog posts. So that's probably not happening.
Speaker 1: But they did say it's designed to be safe, so
Speaker 1: let's see what they say about safety. So safety and privacy.
Speaker 1: So workrooms will not use your work conversations and material
Speaker 1: to inform ads on Facebook. Okay, sad that they have
Speaker 1: to say that, but yes, that's a consideration. The audio
Speaker 1: contents of your meetings are processed on Facebook servers, but
Speaker 1: they're not stored, but someone can record them and send
Speaker 1: us a clip as part of a report. In this case,
Speaker 1: we'll use the information to take appropriate action and then.
Speaker 2: Delete the recordings.
Speaker 1: So that is a very interesting aspect of this is that,
Speaker 1: you know, think about this idea that these meetings are
Speaker 1: likely to be recorded, and if someone is you know,
Speaker 1: being a little bad in that meeting, or says something
Speaker 1: that's not right, or someone doesn't agree with or whatever,
Speaker 1: it could be a recording that you know, could not
Speaker 1: only It's just there's a lot of implications of this,
Speaker 1: so we'll see what happens. I think it's really cool. Again,
Speaker 1: it's called Horizon Workrooms. It's from Oculus. I'd love to
Speaker 1: try it out.
Speaker 2: I don't have an.
Speaker 1: Oculus, but this would this wouldn't be my reason to
Speaker 1: get one, but it's definitely the VR stuff if it
Speaker 1: came along a little bit more. It's so compelling to me.
Speaker 1: I just love virtual reality. There's just not that one
Speaker 1: killer application just yet. All Right, Roy has kind of
Speaker 1: a wow loaded question here. I'm interested in making my
Speaker 1: home more automated with some smart devices. Might you recommend
Speaker 1: products that work with home Kit for sensors, wall light switches,
Speaker 1: light bulbs, Will light bulbs work by themselves? Or do
Speaker 1: they need a smart plug? Smart plugs, outdoor cameras. Thanks
Speaker 1: for all the time you put into your podcast, Roy, Well, Roy,
Speaker 1: this is quite the question, and I'm gonna try to
Speaker 1: break it down and explain. Now, home Kit is definitely the.
Speaker 2: What's the word?
Speaker 1: I love the word fledgling, but I don't think that's
Speaker 1: the right term here. Fledgling means, oh, it is a
Speaker 1: person or organization that is immature, inexperienced, or underdeveloped.
Speaker 2: So I'm right it is. Home Kit is the.
Speaker 1: Most fledgling of the three sort of standards when it
Speaker 1: comes to smart home. You've got Google, You've got alex A,
Speaker 1: you know Amazon stuff, and you've got home Kit. And
Speaker 1: so with Google you've got basically ninety nine point nine
Speaker 1: percent of smart home products work with both Google and
Speaker 1: Alexa A. Whoops, Okay, well alex A, so you know
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent of the stuff works with them. Then
Speaker 1: you've got home Kit, and you really got to look
Speaker 1: hard because not too many things work with HomeKit. Now,
Speaker 1: if you want to look at home Kit accessories, you
Speaker 1: can go to Apple's website and you can look at
Speaker 1: Apple dot com, slash iOS, slash Home and they've got
Speaker 1: all the different things, So you can look at all
Speaker 1: the different stuff that works with it.
Speaker 2: It's not that much.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're talking a video doorbell, You've got Logitech
Speaker 1: Circle light bulbs, You've got Nano Leaf, Logitech cameras, Wemo
Speaker 1: Smart miniplug. So to answer your question, I think that
Speaker 1: you have to look at some of these brands. So
Speaker 1: I think for your lights, I would go two routes.
Speaker 1: I would probably go Hugh Phillips. Hugh the most expense there,
Speaker 1: but they're also the most flexible. So let's say you
Speaker 1: start building this thing out and you say, this home
Speaker 1: Kit stuff is just not doing it for me, Well,
Speaker 1: you can switch to you know, the other two platforms,
Speaker 1: no problem, because Hugh works with all three. So that's
Speaker 1: number one. Number two, what else did you ask about?
Speaker 2: You said wall switches.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to sensors and wall switches, I
Speaker 1: think that you're.
Speaker 2: Gonna have to look at something like a u oh gosh.
Speaker 1: I think you know, like Weemo is gonna be for
Speaker 1: like smart plugs. The wall switches, you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: again go with Hugh. Sensors, You're gonna have to go
Speaker 1: with Hugh. Outdoor cameras are a little tricky because there's
Speaker 1: just not that much And if I look at cameras
Speaker 1: literally on on Apple's website there is the UFI Cameras
Speaker 1: one model, and then Logitech and and oh and eve Eve,
Speaker 1: so you just don't get So for my what I
Speaker 1: I've done is I think I really like the the
Speaker 1: ring stuff for when it comes to like all around
Speaker 1: the house with cameras and things like that. I like
Speaker 1: the hue when it comes to lights. And that's basically it.
Speaker 1: That's what I've built out, and I'm trying to stick
Speaker 1: to those two things because they do work together.
Speaker 2: They work pretty well.
Speaker 1: And the home kit stuff is nice, Like I think
Speaker 1: that Apple did a really nice job designing like the
Speaker 1: app and everything and it's built into the iPhone.
Speaker 2: And all that good stuff. It's just not there. It's
Speaker 2: just not like the stuff that you need.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what the reasoning is, like why
Speaker 1: these companies are so loath to like adopt it.
Speaker 2: I probably think that it's just easier to do the
Speaker 2: other two.
Speaker 1: Less licensing, less hoops to jump through, and I just
Speaker 1: think there's so many more products, And if you want
Speaker 1: to go super cheap, you can get like a light
Speaker 1: bulb for like five bucks at Walmart and it still
Speaker 1: works with Google and alex A. So I mean, there's
Speaker 1: just so many more options when it comes to these
Speaker 1: other platform I think the home Kit stuff is you're
Speaker 1: going down a very narrow path with that. And yes,
Speaker 1: it will get better, but I just think at this point,
Speaker 1: stick to Hugh, stick to Ring, and I think that
Speaker 1: those two products, those two product lines will really help
Speaker 1: you get you know, the most the most varied out
Speaker 1: of you know, like the the most accessories out of
Speaker 1: all the different things you can look for. But anyway, Roy,
Speaker 1: good luck with building it out and hopefully you know
Speaker 1: it all works out for you, all right. I talked
Speaker 1: about spatial audio a little bit ago, and Netflix confirmed
Speaker 1: to I guess users on Reddit and there's a report
Speaker 1: from I Generation. I'm getting this from nine to five Mac.
Speaker 1: But Netflix confirm it's rolling out spatial audio support for
Speaker 1: iPhone and iPad apps, which is huge. I remember watching
Speaker 1: a movie in with spatial audio and it's just fantastic.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really really cool. Yeah, to have air
Speaker 1: pods pro or max to use it, but again, it
Speaker 1: just means that the audio happens in the area where
Speaker 1: you'd expect it to happen.
Speaker 2: So small thing.
Speaker 1: But if you're on you know, i'd say on a plane,
Speaker 1: but I'm not even sure you'll be able to hear
Speaker 1: it on the plane, but I guess you would if
Speaker 1: you're with noise canceling.
Speaker 2: But you know, if you're watching a.
Speaker 1: Movie or a TV show that supports it, and you've
Speaker 1: got it on Netflix, and you've got the iPad or
Speaker 1: the iPhone and you've got the air pods and all
Speaker 1: these things are in line, and the stars are also
Speaker 1: aligned as well.
Speaker 2: No, that's not it.
Speaker 1: I thought I had like a no, okay, I thought
Speaker 1: I had the Princess sound effect, you know, like the
Speaker 1: Fantasy Land. But anyway, if all those things are all
Speaker 1: those things are satisfied, you will hear the spatial audio,
Speaker 1: and once you do it is it is actually very cool.
Speaker 1: All right, Since that was such a short story, I'll
Speaker 1: just move on to the next story. This is a
Speaker 1: sad day in history. Well, you still got a couple
Speaker 1: of years, but the magnetic stripe we'll start to disappear
Speaker 1: from cards in twenty twenty four. So Master Card is
Speaker 1: the first bank to say, you know what, we just
Speaker 1: don't need these things anymore now, the magnetic stripe. There's
Speaker 1: some history behind this. I don't know if you're old
Speaker 1: enough to remember this, but back in the day when
Speaker 1: I was a kid and i'd watch my parents use
Speaker 1: their credit card, it was a by the way, it
Speaker 1: was always American Express, and it was one of those cards,
Speaker 1: you know. You put it in this little machine and
Speaker 1: it was like a metal like I don't know how
Speaker 1: you describe it, but you would physically place the card
Speaker 1: down and then there was like this roller thing on top.
Speaker 1: They put this little piece of paper with some carbon
Speaker 1: in between it, and it would they would go chick
Speaker 1: and it would literally you would roll this this rolly
Speaker 1: thing over the card and make a physical imprint of
Speaker 1: the card onto this little slip, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times you would fill out this slip with like the
Speaker 1: amount of the transaction and then you would sign this slip. Now,
Speaker 1: that is just wild that we've gone from that to
Speaker 1: tap and pay in my lifetime. I mean, that is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. And so after the whole there was a
Speaker 1: magnetic stripe, and the problem with it is that there
Speaker 1: was no authorization. Now, I remember there were certain times
Speaker 1: when it was like a big amount the retailer. And
Speaker 1: I'm reaching way back into memory here and maybe this
Speaker 1: was just made up in my memory, but I remember
Speaker 1: like the retailer would actually have to call up like
Speaker 1: American Express and be like, hey, we've got Joe Schmoe
Speaker 1: here and he's got a a four and seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars bill.
Speaker 2: Can we authorize that?
Speaker 1: And they would give you like an authorization number that
Speaker 1: you can write down so that you knew the card
Speaker 1: was good for that amount.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, think about that.
Speaker 1: When the magnetic stripe came along, it allowed companies to
Speaker 1: in real time not only capture the data from the card,
Speaker 1: but also authorize the amount and the transaction. And so that,
Speaker 1: of course, I'm sure cut down on fraud. It cut
Speaker 1: down on all kinds of stuff. It was just more efficient.
Speaker 1: And then of course we've got the the the chip
Speaker 1: which they added to the card, and the chip brings
Speaker 1: another level of of security because now it's a unique
Speaker 1: number every time, So every time you dip your little
Speaker 1: card in the chip reader, it doesn't exchange the card
Speaker 1: number from your card. It actually exchanges a one time
Speaker 1: number that is then authorized and the transaction goes through.
Speaker 1: So that's even more secure because if that card number
Speaker 1: ever got out there, well it wouldn't work again, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 2: And so that was really cool.
Speaker 1: And then kind of at the same time that the
Speaker 1: man that the chip came out, we got tapped to pay.
Speaker 1: And I remember doing a story with Apple Pay. Oh,
Speaker 1: let me se how many years ago? This was Apple Pay.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you ever want to look up
Speaker 1: a story I did, all you have to do is
Speaker 1: type in the keyword Apple pay ktla DeMuro and that's
Speaker 1: it and that'll bring you. And so here November seventeen,
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, is when I did a story when Apple
Speaker 1: Pay first came out, and I walked out, walked down
Speaker 1: Third Street promenade with Apple's Eddie Q and we kind
Speaker 1: of went to Panera, went to Disney Store. Some of
Speaker 1: the early adopters of the tap and pay, which Apple
Speaker 1: never called it that, They always called it Apple Pay.
Speaker 1: They wanted you to think it was proprietary, special to them,
Speaker 1: when in reality, you know you've got Apple Pay, You've
Speaker 1: got it's basically just RFID, and in fact, a lot
Speaker 1: of credit cards have it built in right on the
Speaker 1: card itself these days. I don't really see the point
Speaker 1: of that because I always had my phone with me
Speaker 1: and I'd always rather just tap my phone.
Speaker 2: But I guess you know, it's good to have in.
Speaker 1: Case you haven't set up the the Apple Pay or
Speaker 1: Google Pay or Samsung Pay on your smartphone. But I
Speaker 1: just recommend doing that because it's more secure, it's easy,
Speaker 1: it's simple. And I actually read an article, I think
Speaker 1: it was life Hacker where someone said this was an
Speaker 1: added benefit that if you're traveling and you lose your
Speaker 1: physical card, they can update the digital card on your phone,
Speaker 1: so you actually would still have a way to pay,
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool. I think I mentioned that
Speaker 1: on the podcast as well.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so with all that said, here is the deal.
Speaker 1: Newly issued master Card credit and debit cards will not
Speaker 1: be required to have a stripe starting in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: In the US it's twenty twenty seven, because we're just
Speaker 1: slow here to adopt.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Europe is like so much faster in Europe and Asia
Speaker 1: for the chip based transactions and the tap and pay
Speaker 1: are just so much so ahead of the US. And
Speaker 1: then by twenty thirty three, no master card, credit or
Speaker 1: debit card will have magnetic stripes. So there's a big
Speaker 1: runway here. But I'm not sad to see it go,
Speaker 1: because I mean, it's called progress and we're all good.
Speaker 1: So to me, if I could tap and pay everywhere,
Speaker 1: that would be amazing. I can leave my card behind.
Speaker 1: But it's just not everywhere just yet. Restaurant being the
Speaker 1: major holdout, and in the US especially, restaurants do not
Speaker 1: come to your table to let you tap and pay
Speaker 1: or put the chip in. Although I was at a
Speaker 1: restaurant last week with my mom that did do this.
Speaker 2: It was called a Paradise Cove in Malibu. I know.
Speaker 1: We went to Malibu, lat and to my surprise, the
Speaker 1: place was like a tourist trap.
Speaker 2: It was great. It was on the ocean.
Speaker 1: You know it was beautiful, but we're talking like twenty
Speaker 1: five bucks for a drink because it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's nothing on the menu that's less than like twenty
Speaker 1: dollars because it's a you know, it's you're paying for
Speaker 1: the view, right But when they came to my table
Speaker 1: for the bill, you know you could they came right
Speaker 1: to your table with the little machine that they run
Speaker 1: the cart in right away, which I just love. You
Speaker 1: tap the card, it does it. Some restaurants i've been
Speaker 1: to take it a step further they give you like
Speaker 1: a portfolio and you can actually split the bill right
Speaker 1: on your check. That would be awesome. That would be
Speaker 1: my dream for every restaurant, especially when you go out
Speaker 1: with friends. A lot of times, not everyone at the
Speaker 1: table is, you know, in agreement that you just want
Speaker 1: to split it. Let's say you're with you know, three
Speaker 1: other couples. You know, some people want to split it
Speaker 1: three ways. Some people don't, and I'm fine with that.
Speaker 1: If they don't want to do it, it's fine. Usually
Speaker 1: there's an over under of about twenty dollars I've noticed,
Speaker 1: but some people are not comfortable. They want to just
Speaker 1: pay what they exactly had and that's fine, that's their progative.
Speaker 1: But the problem is it's a pain if the server's
Speaker 1: trying to do that. And we have the technology where
Speaker 1: give me a tablet, let me choose the five or
Speaker 1: six things that we had, and give me my total
Speaker 1: including the tip in the tax, and I'll pay it
Speaker 1: and then I'll move it to the next person. They
Speaker 1: choose their five things and they pay their little portion,
Speaker 1: and then the final person gets hosed because they're on
Speaker 1: the hook for anything that anyone else forgot. No, just kidding,
Speaker 1: it's just you know, it'll work out. But I don't
Speaker 1: understand why restaurants have not adopted that more often, because
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a tip thing, or you know,
Speaker 1: if waiters get cheaper tips because of that or what.
Speaker 1: But it just it's probably just the expense of it
Speaker 1: and the upkeep and the maintenance.
Speaker 2: But it's just to me. I love the idea that
Speaker 2: I can just say, Okay, I had.
Speaker 1: A iced tea, I had a salad, Okay, I had
Speaker 1: that appetizer, I had that dessert, I had that main entree,
Speaker 1: and oh there's my total boom.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: Uh, what was I talking about? I don't even know anyway,
Speaker 1: credit card going away?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: So we talked about in the last episode about extended warranties.
Speaker 1: I said that I never get them, and Tony wrote
Speaker 1: in and said, I myself usually don't buy extended warranties on.
Speaker 2: TVs, but I did with a TCL. I'll tell you why.
Speaker 1: The version I was looking to buy I was getting
Speaker 1: great reviews, but some people said they were getting ones
Speaker 1: with a dirty screen effect. So I bought the warranty
Speaker 1: just in case. It wasn't very much. If I remember,
Speaker 1: the TV costed about five hundred dollars. I bought it
Speaker 1: from Amazon. Sure enough, when I got the TV, there
Speaker 1: were some blotches on the screen whenever a screen was
Speaker 1: showing a completely white screen or a blue sky.
Speaker 2: Not a big deal.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to go through the trouble of sending
Speaker 1: it back and not having a TV. About a year
Speaker 1: or so later, I decided to go ahead and replace
Speaker 1: it under the extended warranty. A repair guy called and
Speaker 1: asked what the problem was. I told him about the
Speaker 1: dirty screen effect, and he told me to email him
Speaker 1: pictures of the screen. He called back and said no
Speaker 1: need for him to come by and repair. I would
Speaker 1: just get a full refund. A few days later, I
Speaker 1: got the full price credited to my Amazon account, so
Speaker 1: I basically got a free TV. And while I occasionally
Speaker 1: see those blotches, still it's not a big deal. I
Speaker 1: thought you'd like to know, Tony Well, sounds like, sounds
Speaker 1: like it worked out in your favorite Tony and.
Speaker 2: You know, honestly, I would. I get it. I get
Speaker 2: what you're saying.
Speaker 1: It's like you got your money backs, you can deal
Speaker 1: with those little splotches. I am assuming this is not
Speaker 1: your primary TV.
Speaker 2: Maybe it is, but I get it.
Speaker 1: Like there's Amazon does this thing now even when you
Speaker 1: try to return things, They've got some kind of algorithm
Speaker 1: that sometimes if it's more expensive for it to be
Speaker 1: returned or more trouble for their system, they just say
Speaker 1: keep it. And you know, they're experimenting with a lot
Speaker 1: of different things when it comes to returns. So you
Speaker 1: bought the extended warranty, so so the reality is it
Speaker 1: worked out, and yes, sometimes the extend of warranty will
Speaker 1: work out like like it.
Speaker 2: Did in this case.
Speaker 1: That's not always the case, but I'm glad that it did.
Speaker 1: I still don't really recommend them, because you know, there's
Speaker 1: you didn't.
Speaker 2: Know what was going to happen here.
Speaker 1: You know, you didn't know if this TV was gonna
Speaker 1: you know, if you had to slap it back to somewhere,
Speaker 1: you know, and bring it back into the store. But
Speaker 1: it you know, again, it's just one of these things
Speaker 1: where it worked out this time. But there's probably one
Speaker 1: hundred other people that bought a TV in that month
Speaker 1: that they never made a claim and Amazon just got
Speaker 1: free money and split it with a surion or whoever
Speaker 1: provides the warranties at Amazon at this point. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm glad it worked out and it sounds great. And
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, I'm not gonna fault you
Speaker 1: if you want to buy an extended warranty, and that
Speaker 1: makes you feel better when you buy electronics by all
Speaker 1: means do it. I'm just saying there's a reason why
Speaker 1: these companies offer it. Math works out in the insurance
Speaker 1: company's favor. It always does. That's why it's called an
Speaker 1: insurance company. But it's also called insurance for a reason.
Speaker 1: It gives you peace of mind. And I am as as.
Speaker 2: What am I with my money? I am not?
Speaker 1: I am frugal and as frugal as I am with
Speaker 1: my money. There is also something called convenience. There's something
Speaker 1: called peace of mind, and there is money that you
Speaker 1: have to spend in your lifetime that gives you those
Speaker 1: two things. It also gives you enjoyment. And so you know,
Speaker 1: if you stay at a nice hotel that costs one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars more than a bad hotel, I can't fault
Speaker 1: you for that. You've you've got, you know, luxury in
Speaker 1: your life. You've got a great feeling, You've got a
Speaker 1: great memory. So money does a lot of different things,
Speaker 1: and I don't like wasting money, and sometimes things fall
Speaker 1: under wasteful spending. But at the same time, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to fault you for directing your money to what
Speaker 1: gives you a return on that money in any way
Speaker 1: that you feel like that's a return. And if you
Speaker 1: feel tony that you got the return, that's great. That's
Speaker 1: all that matters here. And so I'm just saying in general,
Speaker 1: you know, there are circumstances where people feel like they
Speaker 1: got ripped off or they feel like it didn't work out,
Speaker 1: and so for those reasons, I typically don't recommend the warranties,
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to fault you if you go
Speaker 1: ahead and do it all right. Another big story this week,
Speaker 1: CS twenty twenty two says they will require proof of
Speaker 1: vaccination to attend CS twenty twenty two, which is happening
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas January fifth through eighth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Now, as you might.
Speaker 1: Recall, I did host the virtual show, the All Digital
Speaker 1: Show last year, or I guess it was the beginning
Speaker 1: of this year. I do not have any inside knowledge
Speaker 1: of CS. They have not contacted me to host this
Speaker 1: year's digital show. I don't know if that will happen
Speaker 1: again with myself. I hope it does, but I don't know,
Speaker 1: and I will be ready to do it if that
Speaker 1: call comes in and I'm allowed to do it. But
Speaker 1: with all that said, they are moving ahead with the
Speaker 1: physical in person version of the show as well. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be a hybrid. You're gonna have in person and
Speaker 1: you're gonna have digital. I'm assuming, and again I don't
Speaker 1: know this, but I'm assuming the in person is going.
Speaker 2: To be scaled back.
Speaker 1: Typically there's over one hundred thousand people from around the
Speaker 1: world that come to CS. I don't think that will
Speaker 1: be the case in January.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Things are very fluid with this coronavirus and with COVID,
Speaker 1: and so who knows, we could be in a really
Speaker 1: good place in January.
Speaker 2: We just don't know.
Speaker 1: So I think that they're hedging their bets on this
Speaker 1: year's show by requiring the proof of vaccination. And they're
Speaker 1: also looking into accepting a proof of a positive antibody
Speaker 1: test as an alternative requirement. That has not been solidified yet,
Speaker 1: but I guess that's for folks that have had COVID
Speaker 1: that may not have this shot, and they say, I
Speaker 1: don't need the shot anyway, because I already had it,
Speaker 1: and so I've got the antibodies.
Speaker 2: I'm good to go. You know.
Speaker 1: I think that this is, you know, just the way
Speaker 1: the world right now. This is what's happening. We're seeing
Speaker 1: a lot of places require the vaccine to admit I
Speaker 1: see both sides of that argument. And you know, do
Speaker 1: I have it?
Speaker 2: Yes? And you know, I.
Speaker 1: Got it because it's sort of the best I can
Speaker 1: do to protect myself at this point, and I'm just
Speaker 1: not going to keep myself from, you know, any downside
Speaker 1: of of not having it, right, I just want to
Speaker 1: do the best I can do. I know that some
Speaker 1: people have reservations about it still, but again, I'm doing
Speaker 1: what I did what's best for me in my life.
Speaker 1: I wanted to travel to Hawaii. I wanted to travel
Speaker 1: home to New Jersey. I want to go out and
Speaker 1: do my stories. I want to interface with people, and
Speaker 1: I just yes, I know that there's still always an
Speaker 1: inherent risk right now with this thing. But again, like
Speaker 1: I said, I did the best that I can do.
Speaker 1: So CS is doing the best that they can do
Speaker 1: by requiring this, and I'm sure that some people will
Speaker 1: have a problem with that, but I am sure the
Speaker 1: majority of people will be.
Speaker 2: Totally fine with that.
Speaker 1: Now, with all that said, since so many places are
Speaker 1: requiring a vaccination card or a digital copy or whatever,
Speaker 1: I have not run into this just yet, but it
Speaker 1: seems like more and more places are doing this, and
Speaker 1: so for that reason, I did a story on KTLA
Speaker 1: about storing your digital vaccine pass on your phone, and
Speaker 1: so there's not one official method. I think most people
Speaker 1: are when they go on Google, they look up like,
Speaker 1: you know, digital vaccination card, And honestly, I think that
Speaker 1: the government probably should have thought about this when they
Speaker 1: came out with this weird little cardboard card that someone
Speaker 1: writes on that's a record of your vaccine. Like, give
Speaker 1: me a break, I mean, come on, we're in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. Like they there should have been a digital
Speaker 1: component to this card from day one.
Speaker 2: But there's not.
Speaker 1: But different states have made their own, like here in California,
Speaker 1: where I am. I was very surprised that you can
Speaker 1: go on the California Department of Health website and apparently
Speaker 1: wherever you get your vaccine, they feed the data into
Speaker 1: this website. Because I put my information in and boom,
Speaker 1: within a couple seconds, I had a QR code texted
Speaker 1: to me. And then you take that QR code and
Speaker 1: you can import it into various apps. I think the
Speaker 1: easiest my okay, so bottom line solution that I came
Speaker 1: up with. And if you get a QR code, like
Speaker 1: one of these smart digital health cards that a lot
Speaker 1: of these companies are using, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Carbon Health California.
Speaker 1: If you get one of these smart health cards, you
Speaker 1: download an app called common Pass and it will import
Speaker 1: that card into the pass. It will make a nice
Speaker 1: digital card that you can then show wherever you need
Speaker 1: to show. It doesn't add to your Apple Wallet or
Speaker 1: your Google Pay. It will add to Samsung Pay over
Speaker 1: the next two weeks, so that's really cool.
Speaker 2: I would hope they would.
Speaker 1: Make it so that you can add it to your
Speaker 1: app will Pay. I don't know why they didn't do
Speaker 1: that off the bat, but they didn't. So anyway, that's
Speaker 1: the easiest thing that I can see to do. There
Speaker 1: are also a couple other ways.
Speaker 2: You can do it.
Speaker 1: You can obviously just use the Notes app to make
Speaker 1: a scan of your card. You can use the drive
Speaker 1: app on Android to make a scan. You can also
Speaker 1: use if you're in New York, the Excelsior pass. Check
Speaker 1: with your I would say, check with your state to
Speaker 1: see if they have a digital passport. Check with your
Speaker 1: the person who or the provider that gave you your
Speaker 1: shot if they have a digital passport. Some of them do,
Speaker 1: like Carbon Health, I call it digital passport. I mean
Speaker 1: a digital copy of your card the Clear app if
Speaker 1: you want to go, if you already have Clear, or
Speaker 1: if you just want to use their app, you can
Speaker 1: create a digital vaccination card on their app.
Speaker 2: It is free.
Speaker 1: It is different from their health pass If you download
Speaker 1: the app, look for it just says digital vaccine card.
Speaker 1: You click there or tap there, I should say, and
Speaker 1: you follow the steps and you can make a digital
Speaker 1: vaccination card. There is no subscription to Clear necessary, and
Speaker 1: I like Clear because their app is really nice. It's
Speaker 1: very well designed. But those are the basic ways Google
Speaker 1: and Apple are actually.
Speaker 2: They are gonna bring. Sorry for that.
Speaker 1: I think you heard my phone ringing through the through
Speaker 1: the podcast there. That's that's real high quality podcast there.
Speaker 1: When you hear my phone ringing through the podcast, that's
Speaker 1: because my phone is plugged in for the Facebook Live.
Speaker 1: Oh anyway, so what was I saying?
Speaker 2: I lost my train of thought.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so that's the way to do it, vaccination
Speaker 1: card on your smartphone. And yeah, I totally lost my
Speaker 1: train of thought. But anyway, that's it.
Speaker 2: Let's let's just get to a question. One of the
Speaker 2: highest quality podcasts you can listen to. All right, let's
Speaker 2: see here.
Speaker 1: I think I have time for one more question. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Justin via Instagram says, hello, mister Demiro. I've seen
Speaker 1: you on KTLA five. I have a question. Do you
Speaker 1: have any tips on how to clean up your Mac laptop?
Speaker 2: Yes? I do. I do this very often.
Speaker 1: Number one tip if you have not done this in
Speaker 1: a while, and you're comfortable and a lot of your
Speaker 1: stuff is in the cloud, just do a full factory
Speaker 1: reset of your computer.
Speaker 2: Now. On a Mac, unlike.
Speaker 1: Windows, you can't just say hey, Windows ten has a
Speaker 1: feature called like refresh and you just basically it's kind
Speaker 1: of like on a smartphone where you can just factory
Speaker 1: reset it. Mac doesn't have that just yet. Maybe they
Speaker 1: will in the future, but you do. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of not know how involved, but you
Speaker 1: can go through and if you look up online clean
Speaker 1: install of you know, let's say, what are we on
Speaker 1: big sur? So if you do clean install of big
Speaker 1: sur you can follow the directions. It does take a
Speaker 1: little bit, but that's what I like to do once
Speaker 1: a year, is do a clean install of the software,
Speaker 1: and that way it gets rid of all little fragments
Speaker 1: of garbage and junk and stuff and things slowing down
Speaker 1: your system. That's like the nuclear approach. So if you
Speaker 1: want a fresh, fresh computer, if you want to reset
Speaker 1: the clock on your computer, maybe it's a little bit
Speaker 1: of an older Mac laptop, you want to reset the clock,
Speaker 1: give you another year before you have to buy a
Speaker 1: new one. That's the best way to do it because
Speaker 1: you really clean your system off and you get things.
Speaker 1: You get to start from scratch once again. Now, if
Speaker 1: you don't know how to do that, or you don't
Speaker 1: want to do that, or you feel like that's too
Speaker 1: much work, the next thing I would do is go
Speaker 1: through your entire system and delete everything, all the apps
Speaker 1: that you don't need, you don't recognize, you don't want.
Speaker 1: I would do that, get rid of the big files
Speaker 1: and you know, empty your trash, do all the software updates,
Speaker 1: and restart your computer and that should bring things up
Speaker 1: to speed a little bit.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The easiest way to do all those things that I
Speaker 1: just mentioned is an app called.
Speaker 2: Clean my Mac.
Speaker 1: And so clean my Mac is like every other program nowadays.
Speaker 1: Usually there's either like a subscription component or a you know,
Speaker 1: a fee component.
Speaker 2: You can do a free trial.
Speaker 1: I don't think it does everything for the free trial,
Speaker 1: but that's the best thing I know of. I use
Speaker 1: it all the time on my computer. I've used it
Speaker 1: for ten years and it's just fantastic. So it's got
Speaker 1: every single thing you need in there. It's your cleanup,
Speaker 1: which cleans up your system, junk, your mail attachments, your trash, bins.
Speaker 1: It's got malware removal, it's got privacy kind of optimizations,
Speaker 1: it's got speed optimizations, maintenance, it's got an uninstaller that
Speaker 1: will uninstall all the little fragments of apps that.
Speaker 2: They may leave behind.
Speaker 1: And also my other favorite thing is it can look
Speaker 1: for large files taking up space or old files and
Speaker 1: it does all of this stuff in one scan. It
Speaker 1: sounds like an ad for Clean my Mac X, but
Speaker 1: it's not. It's just I'm a big fan of the
Speaker 1: program and it just works really well. So the other
Speaker 1: program that is kind of the competition, and for a
Speaker 1: while it was actually kind of a crapwear, but it is.
Speaker 1: It is cleaned up its act and it's actually become
Speaker 1: legitimate again. It's called mac Keeper, and so mac Keeper
Speaker 1: is now legitimate and it will do similar things for
Speaker 1: your computer. I have not tested mac Keeper as much
Speaker 1: as I have the Clean my Mac because that's what
Speaker 1: I have installed, is Clean my Mac. So I would
Speaker 1: look at those two programs, see which one you think
Speaker 1: works best for you. And that is my recommendation because
Speaker 1: I think one of those two will we'll do exactly
Speaker 1: what you need. Oh, look at that, you know what
Speaker 1: that sound means?
Speaker 2: It is the end of the show.
Speaker 1: That's gonna do it. For this episode of the rich
Speaker 1: on Tech podcast. If you would like to submit a
Speaker 1: question for me to answer, just go to my Facebook
Speaker 1: page Facebook dot com slash rich on tech, hit that
Speaker 1: big blue email button and send me your message. Alternatively,
Speaker 1: you can go to rich on Tech dot tv and
Speaker 1: right under my name, look in the role icons for
Speaker 1: the email icon. Hit that send your message, and I
Speaker 1: will do my best to answer it in a future podcast. Also,
Speaker 1: I would love it if you would rate and review
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Speaker 1: about this show that will help others understand why they
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Speaker 1: dot com slash rich on tech. If you'd like a
Speaker 1: little assistance with that. You can find me on social media.
Speaker 1: My username across all social media I is rich on Tech.
Speaker 2: You see the theme here. No matter where you live in.
Speaker 1: The US, you can download the free ktla plus app
Speaker 1: on Apple, TV, fireTV, and Roku. Scroll down to the
Speaker 1: tech section and you can watch all of my TV
Speaker 1: segments on demand. TV is where I do my best work.
Speaker 1: That's where I Make my Living is TV, so be
Speaker 1: sure to watch those segments.
Speaker 2: They are a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I try to pack a lot of information, useful information,
Speaker 1: into a short amount of time. My name is rich Demiro.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. I know there are so
Speaker 1: many ways you can spend an hour of your time.
Speaker 1: I do appreciate you spending it with me. As always,
Speaker 1: stay safe, I will talk to you real soon