Speaker 1: The tech world is going nuts over a new chat
Speaker 1: GPT feature that can edit images like never before. Facebook
Speaker 1: is bringing back the Friends Feed. A security expert falls
Speaker 1: for a scam and he's not the only one. Plus
Speaker 1: your tech questions answered? What's going on on rich dmiro
Speaker 1: And this is Rich on Tech. This is the show
Speaker 1: where I talk about the tech stuff I think you
Speaker 1: should know about. It's also the place where I answer
Speaker 1: your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting, useful,
Speaker 1: and fun. Let's open up those phone lines at triple
Speaker 1: eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Give me a
Speaker 1: call if you have a question about technology. Email is
Speaker 1: also open. Just go to richon tech dot tv and
Speaker 1: hit contact. We've got some great guests this week. Colin Walkee,
Speaker 1: a cybersecurity and data privacy expert, will join us to
Speaker 1: explain what twenty three in mes bankruptcy means for your
Speaker 1: genetic data, plus what you can do to protect your
Speaker 1: privacy and Later in the show, Mark Vina is a
Speaker 1: CEO and principal analyst at Smart Tech Research. He's going
Speaker 1: to share why he ditched the iPhone Yes to switch
Speaker 1: to the Galaxy S twenty five Ultra, and he's been
Speaker 1: using the iPhone for a very long time. Well, speaking
Speaker 1: of a very long time, I did something this week
Speaker 1: that I have not done in a really long time.
Speaker 1: I wrote a letter and sent it through the post office.
Speaker 1: Now I probably sent one hundred and fifty emails this week,
Speaker 1: but a letter that does not happen very often. I
Speaker 1: took pen to paper and I sat there at a
Speaker 1: desk and I actually used my horrific handwriting to write
Speaker 1: a letter to my dad. I was staying at a
Speaker 1: hotel and they had this inviting desk. It was an
Speaker 1: old school desk, and it had one of those nice
Speaker 1: writing mats, you know, the kind that you like the
Speaker 1: pen kind of sinks into it a little bit as
Speaker 1: you write, and they had the letter letterhead all laid
Speaker 1: out there with an envelope, and I said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I am going to write a letter. We were staying
Speaker 1: at a place called the fest Parker Inn, which my
Speaker 1: dad is a big fan of fest Parker. Now it's
Speaker 1: a little bit before my time, but as I understand,
Speaker 1: he was a very famous actor back in the day.
Speaker 1: And I know you're probably laughing at me saying rich.
Speaker 1: Come on, we know who fest Parker is. But you
Speaker 1: know that was a little bit before my time. And
Speaker 1: so I said, I got to write a letter to
Speaker 1: my dad on Fest Parker letterhead, tell him how the
Speaker 1: inn still had all the inklings of Fest Parker lingering
Speaker 1: in the hallways, and of course telling about our weekend
Speaker 1: we spent up in Wine Country for my wife's birthday.
Speaker 1: And then I went to the post office the tiny
Speaker 1: little town we were in called Losa Livos. I stood
Speaker 1: in line and I bought a stamp. And by the way,
Speaker 1: that stamp was seventy three cents. Now I know why
Speaker 1: people don't write letters as much, because that is expensive.
Speaker 1: But I got the stamp, I put it on the letter,
Speaker 1: I sent it out, and I still haven't heard from
Speaker 1: my dad if he got it, but I hope he did.
Speaker 1: I'm curious how long it takes to get a letter
Speaker 1: these days. Anyway, it was kind of fun. And you know,
Speaker 1: me as someone who loves tech, but I think I've
Speaker 1: realized something about myself. I also love low tech, and
Speaker 1: I also love how tech helps us unlock things in
Speaker 1: our world. So as much as I love technology, it's
Speaker 1: just kind of fun to go back to the times
Speaker 1: when we were not connected in a bazillion different ways. Now,
Speaker 1: the other lesson I have this week is that tech
Speaker 1: is only as secure as the people using it, namely us.
Speaker 1: So let me tell you about a guy who knows
Speaker 1: security like This guy has been on our show, Troy Hunt.
Speaker 1: He runs a website called Have I Been Poned? That's
Speaker 1: pwned dot com. You basically pop in your email address,
Speaker 1: it'll tell you all the places your information has gotten
Speaker 1: hacked and is out there in the world. He also
Speaker 1: teaches people how to avoid scams. That's what he talked
Speaker 1: about on our very show. And guess what he got
Speaker 1: phished this week. If you're not familiar with what phishing is,
Speaker 1: it's when you get one of those emails and it says, hey,
Speaker 1: click here, your account has been compromised. Click there, You
Speaker 1: type in your name your password, and you realize shortly after,
Speaker 1: oh no, what did I just do?
Speaker 2: I just handed over my information to the bad guys.
Speaker 1: So he got an email that looked like it was
Speaker 1: from Mailchimp, which is his newsletter provider. He said his
Speaker 1: account was suspended because of a spam complaint. He clicked
Speaker 1: the link, he entered his credentials and even the one
Speaker 1: time passcode. So we even had his account protected with
Speaker 1: that two factor authentication, and he realized instantly it was
Speaker 1: a fake site. The hackers immediately went to work. They
Speaker 1: took his entire email list sixteen thousand plus addresses, they
Speaker 1: exported it, and of course those are probably going to
Speaker 1: be used to spam those folks. He realized what he
Speaker 1: did was wrong immediately, but the damage was already done
Speaker 1: and the red flag he mentioned. He detailed all of
Speaker 1: this in his blog post about it. His password manager
Speaker 1: which he was using, so he had a good password,
Speaker 1: he had two factor authentication, but as a human, he
Speaker 1: bypassed all of those those privacy and protections. His password
Speaker 1: manager did not auto fill the website, but he ignored it.
Speaker 1: He just did it himself. He copied and pasted his
Speaker 1: password into there. Why he said, jet Lag, You know,
Speaker 1: all this stuff can't beat the human error that we
Speaker 1: bring to the table.
Speaker 2: And that's what happened with him.
Speaker 1: Just as I sat down to write my newsletter yesterday,
Speaker 1: I got an email from Microsoft saying, hey, we noticed
Speaker 1: some suspicious login activity on your account. Click here to
Speaker 1: confirm it. I said, suspicious log in activity what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? Microsoft? And they wanted me to click
Speaker 1: that link that took me to this area that would
Speaker 1: let me check to see the recent logins on my account.
Speaker 2: And I said, no, not so fast. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to that page.
Speaker 1: So I googled the Microsoft Account Suspicious login page, which
Speaker 1: is account dot live dot com slash activity. I went
Speaker 1: there directly, I logged in and I said, we want
Speaker 1: to confirm this is you, and I confirmed it was me,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, I look at that page and guess what.
Speaker 1: I see a laundry list of bogus logins from all
Speaker 1: over the world. And I pasted this into my newsletter
Speaker 1: this week. United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil, Columbia, Ukraine, France, Pakistan, Cutter, Venezuela. No,
Speaker 1: these are not stamps on my passport. These are the
Speaker 1: places that were trying to log into my Microsoft account
Speaker 1: all weekend long. They didn't get in because I had
Speaker 1: two factor authentication enabled on my account, so I did
Speaker 1: change my login. I guess somehow my password was compromised
Speaker 1: somewhere along the way. But again, I'm not the only one.
Speaker 1: So many people and Troy, by the way, now, I
Speaker 1: didn't fall for it, but Troy did, He's not the
Speaker 1: only one. According to the FTC twenty twenty four, so
Speaker 1: I record twelve point five billion dollars in scam losses.
Speaker 1: That's up two point five billion from the year before.
Speaker 1: One in three people who reported scams said they lost money.
Speaker 1: Remember the guy we had on last week, Colin said
Speaker 1: he fell victim to one of those tech scams. Scams
Speaker 1: that start online cost US three billion dollars, more than
Speaker 1: phone calls, more than texts, more than emails combined. The
Speaker 1: most money per person phone scams median loss fifteen hundred.
Speaker 1: Biggest overall losses bank transfers, followed by crypto Yes, people
Speaker 1: are transferring money or having money transferred out of their
Speaker 1: bank accounts. This is happening all the time. Investment scams
Speaker 1: are the worst. Seventy nine percent of people targeted loss
Speaker 1: money nine thousand dollars median loss there. Job scams. How
Speaker 1: many times have you gotten those job scams to your text?
Speaker 1: And you say who falls for these things? I get
Speaker 1: them every single day. Hey, we have a job opportunity
Speaker 1: for you. Losses there jump from ninety million to over
Speaker 1: five hundred million in the past four years. So you're
Speaker 1: talking people fall for these scams all the time, younger people.
Speaker 1: This is the thing, There is a disconnect. Younger people
Speaker 1: fall for scams more often, according to the FTC, but
Speaker 1: seniors lose the most money when they fall to the scams.
Speaker 1: Why is that seniors have the most to lose. They've
Speaker 1: saved up money their entire lives, or at least some
Speaker 1: of them have. Young people fall for these scams. People
Speaker 1: think young people don't fall for this stuff. Yes they do.
Speaker 1: It's the young people and the old people, the people
Speaker 1: in the middle. You know, they've kind of you know,
Speaker 1: they're the people that are a little bit more aware
Speaker 1: of this stuff. They don't fall for it as often. Now,
Speaker 1: imagine this. You've got a super secure app, a messaging app.
Speaker 1: It's end to end ENCRYPTID. You think you're doing the
Speaker 1: right thing. It's recommended by privacy privacy experts. Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about Signal. You think that's safe and secure, Well
Speaker 1: it is unless you add the wrong person to the
Speaker 1: group chat. How many times have you texted someone quickly
Speaker 1: responded to a text quickly and you realize, oh no,
Speaker 1: that's the wrong person. We've all done it. We're human again,
Speaker 1: we are all human, but not when the stakes are
Speaker 1: this high. You heard the story. I don't have to
Speaker 1: go over it. The government officials using Signal reportedly for
Speaker 1: war planning. They added a journalist accidentally to the group.
Speaker 1: Now I get it. We've all done this. We've added
Speaker 1: accidental people to a group text, we've applied to a
Speaker 1: group text, we've added people to a group email that
Speaker 1: maybe shouldn't be on there. So when you think about
Speaker 1: this Signal app, it is very secure. In fact, most
Speaker 1: security experts recommend that you use Signal if you want
Speaker 1: the most secure messaging. It's one of only two apps
Speaker 1: that I know that end to end encrypt messages by default.
Speaker 1: The other is WhatsApp. Now, WhatsApp brings a laundry list
Speaker 1: of issues with it because it's owned by Meta Right,
Speaker 1: and that has its whole issues with privacy and security.
Speaker 1: But Signal, this is an independent app, and there was
Speaker 1: no hacking here, There's no breach. Someone put in a
Speaker 1: bad contact. Now here's the thing. This is not supposed
Speaker 1: to be on government devices. They don't allow Signal. But again,
Speaker 1: think about you at your work. How many regulations and
Speaker 1: rules do you have at your work about what you
Speaker 1: can use and what you can't use Oh we want
Speaker 1: you to use teams, but you probably text folks at
Speaker 1: your work using I message, Oh we want you to
Speaker 1: use Google Drive. Well, maybe you uploaded something to Dropbox
Speaker 1: and shared a link. We are human and this is
Speaker 1: where the mistakes happen, human error. So be careful, whether
Speaker 1: it's phishing, whether it's scams, whether it's military level messaging.
Speaker 1: Technology can only go so far to protect us. The
Speaker 1: weakest link isn't always the software. Most of the time
Speaker 1: it is us, So stay skeptical, double check everything, use
Speaker 1: a password manager, and if something fills off even for
Speaker 1: a second, you have to slow down, take a breath,
Speaker 1: double check, don't click, make sure what you're doing is
Speaker 1: the right thing. That is how we get taken in
Speaker 1: this day and age. I get emails every day from
Speaker 1: folks saying I got hacked on Facebook. Ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of the time it is some sort of mistake they
Speaker 1: made on their account. They fell for something, they click something.
Speaker 1: Be careful, all right? Coming up Facebook brings back the
Speaker 1: friend feed and your calls At triple eight Rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. You are listening to Rich on Tech Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you talking technology at Triple A Rich one O one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to
Speaker 1: one zero one. The website is richon tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: You can go there for the show notes. This is
Speaker 1: episode one hundred and fifteen. You can get links to
Speaker 1: anything I talk about right there. And if you're not
Speaker 1: signed up for my newsletter, go ahead pop in your
Speaker 1: email address. It comes out every weekend filled with all
Speaker 1: kinds of tech tips and tricks and reviews and the
Speaker 1: stories I do on TV. Let's go to Susan in
Speaker 1: Santa Monica. Susan, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: I Rich, thank you, and you are wonderful. And the
Speaker 3: woman that answers the phone, she's absolutely wonderful too.
Speaker 2: Thank you. It's Kim and she is awesome, and so
Speaker 2: is Bobo. Wonderful. We've got a wonderful crew here.
Speaker 3: You certainly do.
Speaker 2: What can I help you with?
Speaker 3: Okay, So I have an elderly friend, quite elderly. He'd
Speaker 3: like to get the he wants the computer. I'd like
Speaker 3: to get it at costco. It has to have a
Speaker 3: good customer service on the phone, because nobody's available. He
Speaker 3: doesn't want anybody to help him. It's got to be
Speaker 3: really easy. He's never used a computer, he's got no email,
Speaker 3: doesn't want it, no financials on there. He just wants
Speaker 3: to be able to get on the internet like podcasts, research, whatever.
Speaker 3: Money's not an issue. But and he hates his iPhone.
Speaker 3: It's way too much for him. And he doesn't want
Speaker 3: the iPhone to be talking to the computer. Exfinity is
Speaker 3: his internet provider.
Speaker 1: Okay, well I was going to recommend I think the
Speaker 1: best customer service is Apple for sure.
Speaker 2: Does he not want a MacBook?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean he's not going to be talking to
Speaker 3: his phone.
Speaker 1: It does, okay, so you can make sure it doesn't.
Speaker 1: But yes it does. You know, there are some synergies there,
Speaker 1: but you can turn those off, so if you don't
Speaker 1: want that to happen, you don't need it to happen.
Speaker 1: But as he gets a little bit better with the computer,
Speaker 1: he may enjoy that. But I think that the beauty
Speaker 1: of Apple is that he can bring it in to
Speaker 1: the Apple store if he if he ever needs help,
Speaker 1: and they will walk him through whatever.
Speaker 3: Can them.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, you can call them too, So they've got
Speaker 1: great customer service.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 3: Customers call them for the iPhone, Oh won't they're not
Speaker 3: very good?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean they're the best, so I mean other
Speaker 1: than I mean, after that, it's going to fall off
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. I mean there are some other you know,
Speaker 1: manufacturers like Lenovo that are known for having good customer
Speaker 1: service as well, but they're definitely not going to be
Speaker 1: as good as Apple. So I would say, look, I
Speaker 1: think when you go to Costco, they only stock a
Speaker 1: few computers, so I would steer towards the MacBook Air.
Speaker 1: I think that's going to be the absolute cream of
Speaker 1: the crop for him. The thing about the MacBook Air
Speaker 1: is it's going to last for him ten years, so
Speaker 1: he's not gonna have to worry about a new computer
Speaker 1: for a long time.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: If he gets another computer, write down these specs. But
Speaker 1: I would recommend any computer there that you know, if
Speaker 1: you if you see the laptops there, does.
Speaker 2: He need a laptop?
Speaker 3: Yeah, a laptop all right?
Speaker 1: So if he needs a laptop, I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: they only stock a few of him. Stay away from
Speaker 1: the gaming laptops. He does not need that. But I
Speaker 1: would say an Intel Core I five or an AMD
Speaker 1: rise in five, So those are the Those are the
Speaker 1: processors that you want. Then you want sixteen gigs of memory,
Speaker 1: that's the RAM, and then you want for the hard
Speaker 1: drive at least a five twelve a one terabyte would
Speaker 1: be the best. And then graphics I wouldn't really worry about.
Speaker 1: If he's just doing you know, web searches and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, integrated graphics are going to be just fine.
Speaker 1: So and of course you want you know, the Windows.
Speaker 1: The latest Windows is Windows eleven. I think most of
Speaker 1: the computers come with that at this point. But that's
Speaker 1: I I'd stick towards the Apple MacBook Air for sure.
Speaker 1: I think that's gonna be his best choice. After that,
Speaker 1: I would just look at one of the computers there
Speaker 1: the you know that they sell, and I think they're
Speaker 1: all gonna be a great value. And usually at costco
Speaker 1: you get a little bit more for your money than
Speaker 1: you would anywhere else. But I think when it comes
Speaker 1: to calling tech support, you know, you got to stick
Speaker 1: with the big brands. So I think, you know, Dell
Speaker 1: has good tech support. I do like as US as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: those are the main companies in Lenovo, Like I mentioned,
Speaker 1: so anyone that's doing business PCs like a Dell or
Speaker 1: a Lenovo. You know you're gonna get pretty good customer
Speaker 1: support because that's part of their game. Thanks for the call, Susan.
Speaker 1: Hopefully he finds a nice computer he likes.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you about Facebook before we go to
Speaker 1: break here. Facebook is bringing back the friends only feed.
Speaker 1: This is how it all started, and now they're realizing
Speaker 1: people are sick of all the nonsense on Facebook that
Speaker 1: they're encountering on a daily basis, all the influencers, the brands,
Speaker 1: the AI driven slop. So now they're going to add
Speaker 1: this new friends to to the Facebook app, and this
Speaker 1: will be a dedicated feed with posts only from friends
Speaker 1: and family. That means you can see their photos, their videos,
Speaker 1: their birthdays, their friends requests. This is rolling out right now.
Speaker 1: This is going to replace the old tab that showed
Speaker 1: your friend requests. That'll still be there somewhere else, but
Speaker 1: it'll be a little bit more hidden than before. So
Speaker 1: I tried finding this on my Facebook app. It's not
Speaker 1: there just yet, but if you tap the little friends
Speaker 1: right now, it just shows your friend requests. Soon that
Speaker 1: will show a feed of just stuff from your friends.
Speaker 1: You know what it's all about. Engagement. People are kind
Speaker 1: of getting sick of all this nonsense that's populating their feeds.
Speaker 1: So if they can make social media feel social again,
Speaker 1: that I think will be a good thing because people
Speaker 1: want that. We want more of our friends in our lives,
Speaker 1: less of this nonsense from AI, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: I've been sharing a ton of because shat GBT is
Speaker 1: doing this great new thing with the photos. I will
Speaker 1: tell you about that when we come back. Eight eight
Speaker 1: to eight rich one oh one eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two, four to one zero one. More of your
Speaker 1: calls right here on rich on Tech right after this,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two,
Speaker 1: four one zero one. The website for the show Richontech
Speaker 1: dot TV. Get a lot of emails every week. Uh,
Speaker 1: deb from Agora Hills Rights in. My son is planning
Speaker 1: to get his twelve year old daughter a phone through Verizon,
Speaker 1: probably an iPhone. I remember you telling callers not to
Speaker 1: fall for the free phone deals and calling them a
Speaker 1: ripoff because of the thirty six month contracts. He's wondering
Speaker 1: what you recommend for a cheap iPhone if that even exists,
Speaker 1: and what's the best way to add her to his
Speaker 1: Verizon plan. She doesn't need the latest and greatest. He's
Speaker 1: also considering just buying a phone out right to avoid
Speaker 1: all the sales pitches and hassles preteens yikes, yikes, is
Speaker 1: right for twelve year old. Now here's my guidance on
Speaker 1: those deals, the free phone deals. Number One, they're not free.
Speaker 1: You're beholden to that carrier for the next thirty six
Speaker 1: months because you're basically, while you're not signing a contract,
Speaker 1: you're financing that phone, and by them giving you that
Speaker 1: phone for free, they're giving you the equivalent in a
Speaker 1: credit over the next thirty six months. So let's say
Speaker 1: that the phone is six hundred dollars. They'll take that
Speaker 1: divided by thirty six months. You'll get the phone for
Speaker 1: free up front, but basically you are getting the thirty
Speaker 1: six months divided by the six or the six hundred
Speaker 1: divided by the thirty six months, and so they'll charge
Speaker 1: you for that, and then they'll give you a credit
Speaker 1: for that. So yes, you are getting it for free.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, you're sticking with that carrier and
Speaker 1: I have nothing against Verizon or any other carrier, and
Speaker 1: my guidance on this always stays the same if you
Speaker 1: do not plan on leaving your carrier, If you're going
Speaker 1: to stick with Verizon for the next three years, anyway,
Speaker 1: it's not a bad deal. You're just paying a little
Speaker 1: bit more for your service. Because what I would recommend
Speaker 1: to your son is to buy the iPhone sixteen E
Speaker 1: outright for six hundred bucks and then go to something
Speaker 1: like Visible, which charges twenty five dollars a month to
Speaker 1: forty five for the phone and for unlimited service. So
Speaker 1: that would be, if you do the math, much cheaper
Speaker 1: than probably adding the twelve year old to the Verizon plan.
Speaker 1: But it's also what's easy. It's also what you already have.
Speaker 1: Most people don't want to deal with having two different
Speaker 1: cell phone services, two different bills, all that stuff. But
Speaker 1: if you want to save the most money, the easiest
Speaker 1: way is just buy the phone outright and get an
Speaker 1: mv and O. Whether it's Mint Mobile, whether it is Visible,
Speaker 1: those are two good mv and o's that will save you.
Speaker 1: Mv and o's Mobile Virtual Network Operator Visible runs on
Speaker 1: the Verizon network, and Mint Mobile is actually owned by
Speaker 1: T Mobile and it runs on the T Mobile network.
Speaker 1: So again, Dev, just you know, do what's best for
Speaker 1: your situation. I have nothing against those deals, They're just
Speaker 1: not a free phone. You can't walk away the next
Speaker 1: day and with that free phone. Eighty eight Rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: to one zero one.
Speaker 2: Emma in San Bernardino, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 5: I wish. I am going through a family emergency. I
Speaker 5: am trying to book a lass manpula to Wahaka, and
Speaker 5: I was wondering what search engines do you recommend. I mean,
Speaker 5: I've been looking for a day or so and then
Speaker 5: they go up to go down, obviously, but I looked
Speaker 5: at what was it called my Trip, and it seems
Speaker 5: too good.
Speaker 6: To be true.
Speaker 1: It probably is to be too good to be true.
Speaker 1: I've not heard of that website my Trip, Yes, I've
Speaker 1: not heard of that one. So the only place that
Speaker 1: I look for fares is Google Flights. So that is
Speaker 1: the absolute best way to look for flights. If you
Speaker 1: are right up against date of a flight, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be paying a lot no matter what. There is no
Speaker 1: such thing as a discounted fare when it comes to
Speaker 1: right up against the time of the flight. So the
Speaker 1: best way to do this a couple of things. If
Speaker 1: you have miles, that could be the best way to
Speaker 1: buy the flight. So a website like points yeah dot
Speaker 1: com if you maybe have a credit card with Points,
Speaker 1: or you can even see there's two websites I recommend
Speaker 1: points dot com and point dot me. And they may
Speaker 1: have some paid services. You might be able to get
Speaker 1: a flight a search for free. But the beauty of
Speaker 1: those is that they figure out ways of using your
Speaker 1: miles in ways that you might not think of. So
Speaker 1: I know you said you had to go to a
Speaker 1: certain destination. You may find that the miles on the
Speaker 1: main airline. Let's say that Jet blueflies there. You may
Speaker 1: find that on sorry, let's say Delta. You have your
Speaker 1: miles with Delta, but yet Blue also flies there. But
Speaker 1: maybe you can transfer your miles into Jet Blue using
Speaker 1: your credit card. So those websites will help you unearth
Speaker 1: those sorts of things that you may not think of yourself.
Speaker 2: So first off, I check that.
Speaker 1: The second thing I would check is if this is
Speaker 1: sort of a bereavement fair, you may be able to
Speaker 1: call the airline directly and ask them if they offer
Speaker 1: that may not be much cheaper, but you might get
Speaker 1: you know, like some airlines may offer up to ten
Speaker 1: percent off, so you might be able to figure that
Speaker 1: out by calling the airline directly. But what I would
Speaker 1: do is, I think your best bet right now is
Speaker 1: going to be finding the cheapest data fly and the
Speaker 1: cheapest combination of places to fly from. So on Google Flights,
Speaker 1: which is flights dot Google dot com. Instead of choosing
Speaker 1: a specific airport, like, for instance, you're in San Bernardino,
Speaker 1: I would type in is Ontario close to there? I
Speaker 1: would think so right, so I would put like Ontario,
Speaker 1: or or I would put Los Angeles right, and instead
Speaker 1: of choosing LAX, choose the city of Los Angeles, and
Speaker 1: that will choose all of the airports nearby. Actually it's
Speaker 1: not choosing Ontario, so I guess they don't consider that.
Speaker 1: So let's say let's just type in Ontario O nta
Speaker 1: Rio Ontario, California. Okay, So if you choose Ontario, California,
Speaker 1: that will choose Ontario airport and also LAX, which is
Speaker 1: going to give you a much wider swath. But I
Speaker 1: would even open it up further to Burbank as well.
Speaker 1: So now you've got three airports that you're looking for
Speaker 1: flights from. And then the city that you said, what
Speaker 1: was the city, Wahakah, So you put that in as
Speaker 1: your destination and see if there's any airports that are nearby.
Speaker 1: And then also the thing you want to do is
Speaker 1: just look one way at a time, So choose each
Speaker 1: flight one way at a time instead of that round trip,
Speaker 1: and that will help you sort of come up with
Speaker 1: the cheapest possible option. And I will tell you my experience,
Speaker 1: fares jump up seven days before you have to fly.
Speaker 1: And the reason for that is because business travelers have
Speaker 1: money to burn, and that's where the airlines really make
Speaker 1: their money. They don't make it on the leisure travelers
Speaker 1: that are booking, you know, sixty ninety one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty days in advance. They know those people are going
Speaker 1: to book because they're booking for their kids, they're booking
Speaker 1: for spring break, they're booking when they have vacation. Where
Speaker 1: airlines really make their money is on that last minute travel,
Speaker 1: and so they know seven days before. When you work
Speaker 1: for a big company, you don't care what that airfare
Speaker 1: is because you've got to get to that business meeting.
Speaker 1: You've got to get to that event. You've got to
Speaker 1: get to that conference, whatever it is. They know they've
Speaker 1: got you, and so that is what I recommend. I
Speaker 1: book airfares all day, every day, and believe me, at
Speaker 1: any given moment, I am searching for I've got my
Speaker 1: tracked fares on let's see right now, I've got one, two, three,
Speaker 1: four tracked fares and I watch those prices go up
Speaker 1: down around all over the place. Thanks for the call, Emma.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you can find a flight that fits your chat gbt.
Speaker 1: This week, you might have noticed people are tweeting and
Speaker 1: sharing on social media all kinds of images from chat GBT.
Speaker 1: Chat Ebt did a major upgrade to their image generation tool,
Speaker 1: which is now built right into chat ebt. You can
Speaker 1: access chat gibt by going to chat dot com. By
Speaker 1: the way, they opened it up for free and paid users,
Speaker 1: but people started using this so much it was melting
Speaker 1: the servers at chatbt and they had to limit it
Speaker 1: to just paid users. Now thankfully, I'm a paid user
Speaker 1: and I have been using the heck out of this.
Speaker 1: I absolutely love it. So they used to have this
Speaker 1: image generation tool called Dolly three, but now they are
Speaker 1: replacing that with just this default image generation inside chat gibt,
Speaker 1: so in the regular chat you can just say, generate
Speaker 1: me an image that looks like this or whatever you want.
Speaker 1: It's more lifelike, it has logos, you can make transparent backgrounds.
Speaker 1: The text, for the first time ever, is readable. So
Speaker 1: it used to be that AI had a real problem
Speaker 1: with generating text. This time it is perfect every single time.
Speaker 1: And the other thing you can do is upload an
Speaker 1: image and ask it to modify that image in any
Speaker 1: style you want. So a lot of people are doing
Speaker 1: this Jibli style. This is like a Japanese animation art house.
Speaker 1: So people were generating images like that and they're amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's quite incredible. And of course, yes, there's
Speaker 1: this whole debate over AI and copyrighted images and images
Speaker 1: in the style of things and how artists are going
Speaker 1: to fare because now chat gbt can make such great
Speaker 1: images and it's all very much a concern, And yes,
Speaker 1: people will be losing jobs. Entry level jobs in generation
Speaker 1: of images will be lost because of this, because you
Speaker 1: no longer need to know how to use Canva or
Speaker 1: even Photoshop to make an amazing image. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: this changes the dynamic of our world. But it's incredible.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, and I think you shall play with it
Speaker 1: because you can't hide from this stuff. It is happening,
Speaker 1: it is changing, and we have to adapt. And I
Speaker 1: do feel sorry for the artists that have made their
Speaker 1: living making images like this, because now you can literally,
Speaker 1: in plain text, generate something that is quite incredible. And
Speaker 1: I know because I was doing it all weekend. So
Speaker 1: take an image, upload it and say make this in
Speaker 1: the style of whatever you want a muppet. You can
Speaker 1: turn yourself into a muppet. Yes, that's what I did
Speaker 1: this weekend. You can turn well, I mean on chat
Speaker 1: ebt and become a muppet. I mean, you could really
Speaker 1: have fun. I said, make make a an old timey
Speaker 1: newspaper poster style advertising my newsletter. It did that and
Speaker 1: it gets everything really really good. You can turn any
Speaker 1: image into a Dolly Renaissance portrait. Whatever you can think of,
Speaker 1: any famous artist, it will make an image in that style.
Speaker 2: It is quite incredible.
Speaker 1: Anyway, if you're on the free chatchibt, you gotta wait
Speaker 1: a bit until the paid people have their turn, but
Speaker 1: eventually it'll make its way to you. Eight eight eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two,
Speaker 1: four to one zero one. My name is Rich d'miro.
Speaker 1: You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome to rich
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology at triple eight Rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. This is the show where I talk
Speaker 1: about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
Speaker 1: It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
Speaker 1: Phone lines are open, website also open Richontech dot TV.
Speaker 1: Hit contact if you'd like to email me. We'll get
Speaker 1: some of your emails and calls on as well. Let's
Speaker 1: go to Richard in Bell, California.
Speaker 7: Yes, I got all those apps installed on all my
Speaker 7: devices that let you know when the phone is charged
Speaker 7: up to night percent or drains down to twenty percent.
Speaker 7: The problem is those things go off at three in
Speaker 7: the morning and wipe me up, you know, because the
Speaker 7: device is drained down.
Speaker 1: Is it really sound like my house? My wife gives
Speaker 1: me issues every day. She's like, there's so many things
Speaker 1: going off in the middle of the night. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all the gadgets I'm testing. Can't can't silence them all?
Speaker 7: Is it necessary to you know, not charge up to
Speaker 7: one hundred percent. They say it damages the battery, and
Speaker 7: why can't they make the phones where we could just
Speaker 7: leave it plugged in all the time while we're at home.
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of people do. And so Richard, what
Speaker 1: do you have an iPhone or an Android?
Speaker 7: I got an Android and some tablets and some a
Speaker 7: lot of old phones I use.
Speaker 2: Well, here here's my guidance on this.
Speaker 1: So I mean, you know, look, if you're keeping your
Speaker 1: phone for seven years, yeah, you got to think about
Speaker 1: the battery, right, But I think most of the modern
Speaker 1: phones that we have, the batteries they're good, and yes,
Speaker 1: charging and decharging and you know, draining the battery definitely
Speaker 1: has an effect on the phone. But now both iPhone
Speaker 1: and Android natively. And I think you can ditch the
Speaker 1: apps that you have. By the way, Richard, I think
Speaker 1: you can uninstall those because that's a nuisance. You don't
Speaker 1: need to wake up, you don't need to disrupt your
Speaker 1: sleep in the middle of the night to unplug your phone. Now,
Speaker 1: I test every phone in the world. I leave them
Speaker 1: plugged in, I charge them up. Yes, it does have
Speaker 1: a bit of an impact on the battery life. So
Speaker 1: if you're worried and you're trying to keep your phone
Speaker 1: for a very long time, I would be concerned. But
Speaker 1: if you have an iPhone or a Samsung, they have
Speaker 1: battery optimization and health features built right into the phone.
Speaker 1: You probably never even noticed. But if you go into
Speaker 1: the iPhone, look for battery and then tap go into
Speaker 1: settings battery and then tap charging, and you'll see there's
Speaker 1: a charge limit, so you can do eighty eighty five,
Speaker 1: ninety ninety five or one hundred, and your iPhone software
Speaker 1: will actually recommend a charge limit for you. And so,
Speaker 1: for instance, mine is saying, based on your iPhone habits,
Speaker 1: a charge limit of ninety percent is recommended to help
Speaker 1: preserve your battery and so I can tap that and
Speaker 1: my phone will automatically optimize the battery charging on its own,
Speaker 1: So you can do that and just leave that there, okay,
Speaker 1: and if you need more, you can always just override
Speaker 1: that at any time. If you're on Samsung, if you
Speaker 1: go into your settings, Settings and then battery, you will
Speaker 1: notice they also have a section labeled battery protection. Now
Speaker 1: this is on the latest software, which may or may
Speaker 1: not be on your phone, but it is rolling out
Speaker 1: to some of the older devices. But if you tap
Speaker 1: that and tap battery protection, turn it on, you've got
Speaker 1: basic battery protection. When your battery is charged to one
Speaker 1: hundred percent, charging will stop until the battery drops down
Speaker 1: to ninety five percent and we'll start charging again. So
Speaker 1: that way your battery is not constantly being charged all
Speaker 1: day long at one hundred percent. It'll wait until it
Speaker 1: drops down, then it'll trigger again to charge. Then you've
Speaker 1: got adaptive stop charging at eighty percent while you're asleep,
Speaker 1: and switch to basic before you wake. Sleep time is
Speaker 1: estimated used on your phone is estimated based on your
Speaker 1: phone usage patterns, and then you've got the maximum protection,
Speaker 1: which is your battery will stop charging when it reaches
Speaker 1: eighty percent. So my advice in general is if you're
Speaker 1: a person that swaps your phone out every three years,
Speaker 1: you probably don't have to worry about the battery and
Speaker 1: how you're charging it. It's probably going to be fine
Speaker 1: for those three years. If you're keeping it for a
Speaker 1: very long time, then yes, I would go into some
Speaker 1: of these settings and be more aware of how you
Speaker 1: charge your phone and how you're charging it. If you
Speaker 1: don't have access to these battery optimization features in your software.
Speaker 1: Then I would say you probably want to charge your
Speaker 1: phone up, maybe up to one hundred percent, and then
Speaker 1: let it get down to about twenty five percent. Don't
Speaker 1: ride it all the way to zero before you charge
Speaker 1: it up again. Really, from what I understand, batteries when
Speaker 1: they get down to under twenty percent, that's when it
Speaker 1: really strains them. And so if you're going down, if
Speaker 1: you're going up to one hundred and down to zero
Speaker 1: every single time, that's putting a lot of strain on
Speaker 1: your battery. And so what I'd recommend is that eighty
Speaker 1: that twenty to eighty percent is the sweet spot for
Speaker 1: today's modern batteries. That's where you kind of want to
Speaker 1: keep your phone, and you can use that software built
Speaker 1: into your devices Richard to help make that happen.
Speaker 2: But good question.
Speaker 1: But if yeah, if you're exchanging your phone all the time,
Speaker 1: trading it in, not giving it to a family member,
Speaker 1: when you're done, sure, ride the heck out of the battery.
Speaker 2: You'll be just fine.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you have let me get this
Speaker 1: piece of news here. If you have Spectrum TV, which
Speaker 1: I know a lot of folks do, they are rebundling cable.
Speaker 1: This is so interesting. They just keep adding streaming services
Speaker 1: to the mix. So if you are a spec Trum
Speaker 1: TV Select subscriber, you now have access to Peacock at
Speaker 1: no extra charge. So you're getting Peacock Premium. Now, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's Peacock Premium, but it says it's the ADS supported.
Speaker 1: So let me see what that means. Peacock plans, because
Speaker 1: I have Peacock. Mine is not I thought it was
Speaker 1: premium was the one? Oh okay, well this is a
Speaker 1: this is a funny way to name something. Peacock Premium
Speaker 1: still has ADS, but Peacock Premium plus say that three times.
Speaker 2: Fast does not have ads.
Speaker 1: So Peacock Premium is eight bucks a month, but you're
Speaker 1: getting that for free now. If you have Spectrum TV,
Speaker 1: this is happening right now, available immediately, and this is
Speaker 1: an addition to all the other streaming services they're giving
Speaker 1: you Max Disney plus, ESPN plus, Paramount plus Vix and
Speaker 1: the Tennis channel. I know, Bobo, you're excited about the
Speaker 1: tennis channel. Oh no, Venus and Serena aren't planned anymore.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of you're over it. You're done, You're done. Watching.
Speaker 1: I know people were into tennis last week. They had
Speaker 1: that big tournament in Indian Wells. I know people were
Speaker 1: excited about that.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: And I used to play tennis as a kid, so
Speaker 1: I do. I do have a soft spot for tennis.
Speaker 1: I know there's a big war, you know between the
Speaker 1: pickleball lovers and the tennis lovers. Why because they're converting
Speaker 1: tennis courts into pickleball courts and the tennis people hate that. Oh,
Speaker 1: don't send me the angry emails. I'm not converting your
Speaker 1: courts anyway. Available right now, So if you have Spectrum
Speaker 1: TV Select, you now have Peacock Premium eight eight eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. More rich on Tech right
Speaker 1: after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight
Speaker 1: Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. I hope you're having a
Speaker 1: great day. The website for the show is Richontech dot tv.
Speaker 1: If you're just finding me for the first time, I
Speaker 1: know we're recently on WOAR in New York City. Thanks
Speaker 1: for finding us. I'm getting the emails from you folks,
Speaker 1: and I absolutely love the fact that you're finding us
Speaker 1: and enjoying the show. It makes my day when I
Speaker 1: get an email that says, hey, Rich, I like what
Speaker 1: you're doing because it's very validating. We all need to
Speaker 1: be validated in this world, right, and so my validation
Speaker 1: comes from your emails.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Let's go to Ace, Ace and pear Blossom.
Speaker 6: Rich.
Speaker 8: I like your show, dude, Thank you.
Speaker 6: And I'm a longtime listener back to Jeff Levy and
Speaker 6: Leo Laporte, and I think you're the best replacement so far.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, well thank you.
Speaker 6: You know, I got really a big problem. I'm an
Speaker 6: old senior seventy eight years old on low income Social Security,
Speaker 6: and I live alone, and I don't have good vision anymore.
Speaker 6: I've use the magnifier all the time, which really is
Speaker 6: a pain in the button. And today when I went
Speaker 6: to go on Amazon, I found up my cash was full,
Speaker 6: so I had to go empty the cash. That was
Speaker 6: a big pain. And then when I came back to Amazon,
Speaker 6: they went, oh, hey, you need to sign in again.
Speaker 6: And when I signed in again, well, you need to
Speaker 6: go and get this secret number from your Yahoo email.
Speaker 6: So when I go to my Yahoo email to get
Speaker 6: the secret number, I'm signed out of Yahoo too now
Speaker 6: and I'm signed out of my Gmail and Gmail, which
Speaker 6: I'm trying to do all morning. When they got rid
Speaker 6: of the HTML easy fast Gmail, they screwed everybody that
Speaker 6: our old people on dial up ISP. It takes me
Speaker 6: a fast way to get into the Gmail. Now. My
Speaker 6: Gmail account is two hours of reload, reload, sit and wait.
Speaker 6: It took me seven days one time.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, seven days. So you might as well
Speaker 2: send a letter.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, I mean it makes it. And all the time,
Speaker 6: I can't get onto Amazon to buy my food. I
Speaker 6: can't drive anywhere. I got to get most of my
Speaker 6: food from Amazon.
Speaker 2: What kind of dial up? Are you on?
Speaker 6: The cheapest one out there?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Man, I mean that's yeah, that's that's rough because it's slow.
Speaker 1: What are they charge for dial up these days?
Speaker 6: It's like around one hundred bucks a month.
Speaker 1: A hundred year, one hundred bucks a year something like that. Okay,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, a hundred bucks a month. You
Speaker 1: might as well switch. Do you not have access to
Speaker 1: faster internet in your area?
Speaker 2: For that?
Speaker 6: I kind of like having this line, Okay, you know,
Speaker 6: it's a lot clearer when you talk to people. And
Speaker 6: I used to call talk radio a lot and you
Speaker 6: need a landline to get through clearly.
Speaker 2: And you sound great.
Speaker 6: For years and I have grandsons, and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do sound good. So this is the landline. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't even know where Pear Blossom is, but it
Speaker 2: sounds like in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 6: It's on the way to Las Vegas. It's out by
Speaker 6: Little Rock.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I don't know where that is either. We're
Speaker 2: not talking Arkansas.
Speaker 6: Well, there's it's cool, there's no crime. We have a
Speaker 6: weather window here. There's hardly any hell lying around at night.
Speaker 2: Oh my, no helicopters. He's off the eight.
Speaker 9: I'm looking at going between Palm del Lancaster on the
Speaker 9: way to the fifteen.
Speaker 1: Between between Little Rock and Lano Lano with two l's
Speaker 1: and then Black Butte Airfield.
Speaker 6: I know it's not you have an airfield out there.
Speaker 6: It's like a little glider airport.
Speaker 1: I know you pronounced it Butte not but uh, we
Speaker 1: were just talking last night. My kids fall asleep, there's
Speaker 1: a helicopter over the house.
Speaker 2: We love, you know.
Speaker 1: We live in La Proper and my kids are like
Speaker 1: helicopters all night every night.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is I go.
Speaker 1: I I remember when I moved to La going to
Speaker 1: USC that's the first time I heard a helicopter. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was like, this is this is the reality of
Speaker 1: living in a big city. I said, do you want
Speaker 1: to live in the middle of nowhere where there's more
Speaker 1: you know, no one around you? I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: pick your poison anyway. To answer your question, Ace, You're right,
Speaker 1: So a Gmail got rid of what's called the basic
Speaker 1: HTML view right in January. So this was a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago. Uh, and so it does slow down
Speaker 1: things because what's happening on Gmail is they're loading a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of stuff. So I think what you can
Speaker 1: do to try to make that a little bit easier
Speaker 1: on your connection is I would recommend that you probably
Speaker 1: want to download if you can. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you can even download an app on dial up.
Speaker 1: But what what about using on your computer something like
Speaker 1: Outlook or thunder or you know, Apple Mail built into
Speaker 1: a to an Apple computer or Thunderbird from Mozilla just
Speaker 1: to get you know, just to get your email. It'll
Speaker 1: it'll die, It'll get the email quicker, it'll pull it
Speaker 1: from the server and put it, you know, at least
Speaker 1: put on your computer. So I think that's probably number
Speaker 1: one what you want to do. Number two, you might
Speaker 1: want to go into your settings on Gmail and just
Speaker 1: see what you can do to you know, kind of
Speaker 1: lessen the load on the internet, because it sounds like
Speaker 1: there's a lot going on. It's trying to load a
Speaker 1: lot of things, and I think maybe having you know,
Speaker 1: the view on Gmail optimized a bit more for a
Speaker 1: slower connection might help. So you might want to you know,
Speaker 1: there's maybe turn on compact view inside Gmail, and also
Speaker 1: maybe try a different browser. So maybe the problem is
Speaker 1: downloading any of this stuff on a slow connection is
Speaker 1: going to be tricky. So I think that's what you're
Speaker 1: up against. I mean, I think that the dial up
Speaker 1: service is really tricky because not a lot of things
Speaker 1: are optimized for dial up, and even people that live
Speaker 1: in rural areas now with the addition of Starlink and
Speaker 1: all these satellite connectivity services that are getting better, you know,
Speaker 1: the speeds are just getting faster everywhere. So it's a
Speaker 1: tough thing. But ace I think you can. I think
Speaker 1: you can figure it out. I really do. I think
Speaker 1: you got to try to switch to an email client
Speaker 1: and that way your emails are downloaded all day instead
Speaker 1: of just when you try to log on. Or I
Speaker 1: would just try to optimize the view inside Gmail and
Speaker 1: there might even be a Chrome extension that can kind
Speaker 1: of simplify Gmail or maybe bring back that HTML basic view.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Google removed that in January because they said
Speaker 1: that most people. I think they said back then that
Speaker 1: like not a lot of people were using it, like
Speaker 1: they had some sort of number they gave that said,
Speaker 1: you know, there's only a handful of people. I think
Speaker 1: they mentioned you by name, and they said there was
Speaker 1: only like one or two people using it. Great question, Ace,
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call today. I do appreciate out there
Speaker 1: in a pair, Blossom. Do we have time for another
Speaker 1: question before the break?
Speaker 2: One more question?
Speaker 1: Okay, let's see, let's go to Leslie and Coda Dekasa, California.
Speaker 2: Leslie, you're on with rich Leslie. Hey, what's up? Welcome?
Speaker 10: Oh?
Speaker 11: Thanks, Actually driving the USC right now, and yes, the
Speaker 11: helicopters are still overhead all right.
Speaker 1: Well, hey, I don't know what they're doing, but they're
Speaker 1: doing something. What can I help you?
Speaker 6: With.
Speaker 11: My question is related to cell phones and international travel.
Speaker 11: It's been a minute since I've been anywhere internationally, and
Speaker 11: we're taking the family to Europe this summer.
Speaker 1: Okay, congratulations, work Thanks, Okay, things work automatically.
Speaker 11: Do we need to plan, prepare all? Verizon, et cetera.
Speaker 1: You're reading my mind, Leslie. This is actually the story
Speaker 1: that I'm doing for KTLA this week. So I just
Speaker 1: did my story on this. We're shooting it this week
Speaker 1: and we're going to air it. But because so many
Speaker 1: people are asking me, I guess Europe is very popular.
Speaker 1: But here's the deal. So here are my uh, here's
Speaker 1: all of my steps for if you're going overseas. Number
Speaker 1: one easiest option, keep your current plan. So most of
Speaker 1: the service providers like AT and T, Verizon, T Mobile,
Speaker 1: they will charge you a daily rate so you can
Speaker 1: keep your same number and your data plan. AT and
Speaker 1: T twelve bucks a day, Verizon ten dollars a day.
Speaker 1: Many of the T Mobile plans actually include international roaming,
Speaker 1: but you can pay for faster speeds. I think it's
Speaker 1: like five bucks a day. So that's number one. Call
Speaker 1: your carrier and ask what's included on your plan. So
Speaker 1: sometimes if you have an expensive plan, Verizon might give
Speaker 1: you a travel past day every month, so if you
Speaker 1: haven't traveled in the last year, you may have twelve
Speaker 1: days banked up, so call them first. That's number one.
Speaker 1: So if you don't have free and your plan might
Speaker 1: include free international roaming, like if you're on T Mobile,
Speaker 1: so that's number one. Even if you're on a secondary
Speaker 1: carrier like a virtual carrier visible Mint Mobile, they also
Speaker 1: have international options. They used to, not a lot of
Speaker 1: them have added that. So the second thing to consider
Speaker 1: is what's called an eSIM. This is temporary wireless service
Speaker 1: that you buy from an app and you activate it
Speaker 1: right on your phone. And you said you had a
Speaker 1: combination of iPhones. iPhone has had the eSIM for many
Speaker 1: years now, so your phone should be compatible. Of course,
Speaker 1: you want to go on Apple's website, pop in your
Speaker 1: model number and eSIM and see if it has an eSIM.
Speaker 2: I believe it's iPhone eleven and.
Speaker 1: Up, but don't quote me on that, but that is
Speaker 1: an app like erlo ai r A l O. You
Speaker 1: go on the app, you buy the eSIM and you
Speaker 1: can activate it right from your phone. That's very cost
Speaker 1: effective because it's gonna be a lot cheaper than your carrier.
Speaker 1: There's even an eSIM from a company called Gigsky, which
Speaker 1: I tested. They give you a hundred megabytes for free.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna get more than a minute in another
Speaker 1: country using one hundred megabytes, But keep in mind eSIMs
Speaker 1: are usually data only, so when you leave the US,
Speaker 1: make sure you turn on Wi Fi calling and texting
Speaker 1: if you're using anything other than your main carrier. Turn
Speaker 1: off roaming, of course, to avoid those unexpected charges.
Speaker 2: Now, if you just.
Speaker 1: Want the cheapest option leslie, which just sounds like you don't,
Speaker 1: but I'm just gonna tell you because other people might
Speaker 1: be wondering, put your phone phone in airplane mode and
Speaker 1: then turn the Wi Fi only back on when you
Speaker 1: get to that country, and just hunt for hot spots.
Speaker 2: They are in a lot of places.
Speaker 1: They're not gonna be everywhere, but if you don't want
Speaker 1: to spend a nickel, just hunt for the hotspots. There's
Speaker 1: an app called Wi fimap dot Io which can help
Speaker 1: you find the networks.
Speaker 2: But no matter which route you go.
Speaker 1: Before you leave, turn off those automatic backups and uploads
Speaker 1: on apps like photo backups, Google Photos cloud storage. Make
Speaker 1: sure they're set to Wi Fi only, so you don't
Speaker 1: use up your entire plan.
Speaker 2: I actually have something else.
Speaker 9: Yes, when you do call your provider, Yes, make sure
Speaker 9: you ask them how to turn on that feature on
Speaker 9: your phone. Because when I went to Tokyo, I didn't know
Speaker 9: that I have to turn it on. So I was
Speaker 9: in Tokyo for like three days with no signal. Yes,
Speaker 9: because I didn't know that they're on my Samsung. You
Speaker 9: have to hit something to turn on international call, so yeah,
Speaker 9: ask you before you do that.
Speaker 1: You may have roaming and international turned off in your
Speaker 1: settings because of course that's the default. You don't want
Speaker 1: to international or Rome, so yes, and a lot of times,
Speaker 1: especially with Wi Fi calling and all that stuff, you
Speaker 1: want to set it up before you have to leave.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Japan is still one of the
Speaker 1: trickiest places for international calls out of all the different countries.
Speaker 1: They do have some different rules about their cellular networks,
Speaker 1: but in the for the most part, roaming is almost universal.
Speaker 1: Every you know, used to be five ten years ago,
Speaker 1: it was much tricker than it is now. But I've
Speaker 1: gone to most places now and it's quite easy to
Speaker 1: find hotspots and also do that international rooming. Great question, Leslie,
Speaker 1: thanks for the call eight eight eight rich one O one.
Speaker 2: Eight eight eight.
Speaker 1: Uh seven four to two, four to one zero And
Speaker 1: sorry I was taking notes. I'm taking notes about where
Speaker 1: Leslie is from so I can put it in the
Speaker 1: show notes, and I was blanking there. Coming up, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you how Nintendo is helping you lend your games
Speaker 1: to friends much easier. Now, this is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two, four
Speaker 1: to one zero one website for the show rich on
Speaker 1: Tech dot TV. Coming up this hour. We we've got
Speaker 1: Colin Walkee, a cybersecurity and data privacy expert, to talk
Speaker 1: about that whole twenty three and me thing. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've seen the news that they filed for bankruptcy and
Speaker 1: folks are trying to get their DNA data out of there,
Speaker 1: and so he will speak to that and whether you
Speaker 1: should do that delete your information. A lot of you
Speaker 1: probably already did you know? That's probably what the reality
Speaker 1: is here. I mean I posted on my Instagram. People
Speaker 1: are really eager to get their info out Dave from
Speaker 1: Joshua Tree Rights in Hey Rich, Greetings from the High Desert.
Speaker 1: I love the show and catch it both on my
Speaker 1: local radio station and the podcast through Spotify. Here's a
Speaker 1: question I think a lot of listeners might have. Is
Speaker 1: it safe to store documents with sensitive or PII personally
Speaker 1: identifiable information on Google Drive. Well, that is a great question,
Speaker 1: and I think we take for granted the fact that
Speaker 1: we store all kinds of data in the cloud, whether
Speaker 1: it's iCloud, whether it's Google Drive, whether it's one Drive.
Speaker 1: And I think the main thing to understand is if
Speaker 1: this information is encrypted. And so Google Drive does encrypt data,
Speaker 1: both in transit and at rest, so that means when
Speaker 1: you're uploading something to Google Drive, it is encrypted, and
Speaker 1: when it's sitting in Google Drive, it's encrypted. So if
Speaker 1: someone came across those files, they'd find it tough to
Speaker 1: figure out what's in them.
Speaker 2: So that's good.
Speaker 1: But this is linked to your Google account, and as
Speaker 1: we know, accounts get hacked all the time, so you
Speaker 1: have to be careful with phishing, weak passwords or any
Speaker 1: This is what I think is the most dangerous third
Speaker 1: party apps that request access to your Google Drive. So
Speaker 1: my main concern is, you know, someone getting access to
Speaker 1: your Google account and then of course getting into your
Speaker 1: Drive account. Now, I do think that Google takes a
Speaker 1: lot of precautions because they're one of the biggest out there.
Speaker 1: Even if you don't have two factor on, they've sort
Speaker 1: of turned it on anyway, because they will send a
Speaker 1: notification to a different device if they don't recognize a
Speaker 1: log in to get you to you know, authenticate that
Speaker 1: log in and make sure it's you. Does it happen?
Speaker 1: Do people get in of course every day, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: but that is the biggest thing is make sure that
Speaker 1: you're protecting your Google account. And this is why I
Speaker 1: really you know, in a pinch, I will use that
Speaker 1: sign in with Google thing, but try not to use
Speaker 1: that because even though it's easy, you know, it just
Speaker 1: links up all of these different places now, especially Google drives.
Speaker 1: So there's two ways that apps might ask for access
Speaker 1: to Google Drive. So for instance, I recommend an app
Speaker 1: called SMS Backup and Restore. So if you're on Android,
Speaker 1: you can download this app and it will back up
Speaker 1: your your text messages to us. You know, you can
Speaker 1: export them whatever you want to do, but it can
Speaker 1: also back them up to Google Drive. And the way
Speaker 1: that this app works, I really like it because it says, hey,
Speaker 1: we would like access to your Google Drive, but we
Speaker 1: would only like to be able to act says information
Speaker 1: that we create, So a folder inside Google Drive we
Speaker 1: will carve out and only that folder will we access.
Speaker 1: And that is the right way to do it. When
Speaker 1: you go to an app and it says, hey, can
Speaker 1: we access your Google Drive and it says, see read
Speaker 1: and delete all files in your Google Drive, you do
Speaker 1: not want to allow access to that unless you really
Speaker 1: really trust that particular service provider. Now, this also happens
Speaker 1: for Gmail, and again, anytime an app asks for full
Speaker 1: access to your account, you have to be careful. Now,
Speaker 1: there are some legitimate apps that do this, like I
Speaker 1: recommend a ward wallet, and for a ward wallet to
Speaker 1: really work, it kind of finds all my itineraries and
Speaker 1: dinner reservations and things. They want to scan your Gmail
Speaker 1: because they're looking for any sort of reservations you've made.
Speaker 1: Trip it. Same thing, if you give full access to
Speaker 1: trip it, they want to ask for access to your
Speaker 1: Gmail because they want to be able to scan for itinerary.
Speaker 1: So you better trust these companies that you are giving
Speaker 1: full access to your Gmail. The place I want you
Speaker 1: to look third party apps and services on Google. So
Speaker 1: go to my account dot Google dot com slash connections,
Speaker 1: and you will see all of the third party apps
Speaker 1: and services you have connected to your Google account, the
Speaker 1: ones you know, the signing with Google whatever linked account.
Speaker 1: But the ones you really want to take a strong
Speaker 1: look at is the ones that says access to And
Speaker 1: I've got sixteen you can see. Seven have access to
Speaker 1: my calendar, seven have access to my contacts, eight have
Speaker 1: access to my Google Drive, nine have access to my Gmail.
Speaker 1: And you want to go through there and make sure
Speaker 1: look at every one of those things that are connected,
Speaker 1: make sure they are legitimate. If you don't use that
Speaker 1: app or service anymore, get rid of it, disconnect that
Speaker 1: connection to your Google account. Eight eight eight rich one
Speaker 1: o one eight eight eight seven four two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. I'll link up that Gmail or that Google
Speaker 1: account connections on my website. Rich on tech dot TV
Speaker 1: coming up, we're talking twenty three and me. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one
Speaker 1: big news this week that twenty three and meters declaring bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: This is a company that went from like six billion
Speaker 1: dollars in market cap to uh think their stock was
Speaker 1: trading under a buck at one point, and uh the
Speaker 1: problem is, you know, you take one of these DNA tests,
Speaker 1: which are always a top seller during Amazon Prime days,
Speaker 1: and that's it.
Speaker 2: What more you going to do?
Speaker 1: I'm sure they tried to sell subscriptions and things like that,
Speaker 1: but probably wasn't much they can do with all this
Speaker 1: information unless they were selling it, which hopefully they were not.
Speaker 1: Uh here to talk about what you should do because
Speaker 1: of this information being on their website. Is Colin Walkee,
Speaker 1: a cyber security and data privacy expert.
Speaker 2: Colin, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Good After which, So what was your immediate thought when
Speaker 1: you heard that twenty three and mes was declaring bankruptcy
Speaker 1: Because a lot of people have their DNA in this
Speaker 1: data bank, My.
Speaker 12: First thought was this can't be good. I would be
Speaker 12: extremely concerned if my data were sitting there and about
Speaker 12: to be sold into bankruptcy proceeding to somebody I didn't
Speaker 12: agree to give my data to.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, so that's the thing I mean twenty three
Speaker 1: and me. If you go on there, you know, data
Speaker 1: protection kind of facts, it's like, oh, yeah, we protect
Speaker 1: your data. We you know, hold this in high regard.
Speaker 1: But the problem is the new company that comes in there,
Speaker 1: just by nature of wanting to buy this distressed company,
Speaker 1: is going to want to make money on it.
Speaker 2: And how do they do that.
Speaker 1: They monetize the stuff that this company has, which is
Speaker 1: DNA data.
Speaker 12: That's right, And you know the point that you just
Speaker 12: made their rich was if you look at their terms
Speaker 12: and service they do speak proudly about how well they
Speaker 12: try and protect your information, but they also say in
Speaker 12: there that our terms of service may change at any time.
Speaker 12: So even twenty three and me still Bill and has
Speaker 12: the power to do essentially whatever they want with your data,
Speaker 12: save and except for any potential state level laws that
Speaker 12: really are applicable. And so, yeah, it is a concerning
Speaker 12: situation because there's very limited options for individuals to have
Speaker 12: control over this data at this point.
Speaker 1: So what happens to sensitive health data when a company
Speaker 1: like this goes bankrupt?
Speaker 12: Well, it's a very good question. I mean, in this
Speaker 12: particular circumstance, that data is in fact an asset, right
Speaker 12: I mean it's worth money. For example, Facebook after the
Speaker 12: Apple Store went into their opt in methodology, claim that
Speaker 12: it cost them ten billion dollars a year in revenue.
Speaker 12: So your data is an asset. It's being bought and
Speaker 12: sold on an open market. And so in this particular case,
Speaker 12: a buyer can come in and buy the entity as
Speaker 12: a whole, or alternatively, if that doesn't happen, the assets
Speaker 12: themselves can be sold off. That obviously, that then does
Speaker 12: beg a question. So, for example, in Tol, their state
Speaker 12: privacy law says that if you have sensitive information, you
Speaker 12: have to get permission before you can collect and process
Speaker 12: that information. So if somebody else buys the company as
Speaker 12: a whole, I don't know that you have to regain
Speaker 12: their permission. If you buy just the assets, it may
Speaker 12: be the case, so that whoever that buyer is then
Speaker 12: has to get further permission. At least for Colorado residents,
Speaker 12: it's a further process their information. But somebody like me
Speaker 12: in Oklahoma, we don't have a data privacy law. They
Speaker 12: can do whatever the heck they want with my data.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it sounds like it's very mixed depending on
Speaker 1: where you live. And also how this bankruptcy proceeds, how
Speaker 1: this company buys this what they label it as.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, what's the recommendation? I mean, do you
Speaker 2: think so?
Speaker 1: I know a lot of attorney generals, at least in California.
Speaker 1: I know they issued a consumer alert saying, hey, you
Speaker 1: should get your stuff out of this database. And by
Speaker 1: the way, it's not just the genetic data, it's also
Speaker 1: the test sample as well.
Speaker 12: Right, that's right, that's right, it's both of those. And
Speaker 12: I mean, you know a couple of things. So, first
Speaker 12: of all, to your question about what should individuals do, Yes,
Speaker 12: absolutely they should try and call or submit forms through
Speaker 12: twenty three meters to get their data deleted as well
Speaker 12: as their samples deleted as quickly as possible. One of
Speaker 12: the questions that I have that I don't know if
Speaker 12: there's an answer to this, because this is a unique situation.
Speaker 12: Once a bankruptcy preceding occurs, there's what's called the automatic stay,
Speaker 12: which prevents anybody from going after any of the assets
Speaker 12: of the debtor. Well, if I call in the middle
Speaker 12: of a bankruptcy proceeding and I asked for them to
Speaker 12: delete my data, while I'm not a creditor, I do
Speaker 12: have the right to do that. I'm deleting assets from
Speaker 12: the bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: Estate, right because think about it, that's the thing that's
Speaker 1: valuable about twenty three meters is this DNA data? So
Speaker 1: are they And I know people flooded the website because
Speaker 1: it was slow to respond and all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: you know, people were asking to have their data deleted.
Speaker 1: We don't actually know if twenty three and me is
Speaker 1: honoring those deletion requests right now.
Speaker 12: That's right, and perhaps more concerning, an FTC report came
Speaker 12: out just last year that said many tech companies like Facebook, Google,
Speaker 12: maybe twenty three and Me, they weren't specifically identified, don't
Speaker 12: even know what all data they have on you or
Speaker 12: who they share it with. So to your point, yeah,
Speaker 12: they may or may not honor those requests, and we
Speaker 12: don't know because it's a black wall behind there now.
Speaker 1: I would imagine in today's age of AI, having the
Speaker 1: DNA of millions of people might be pretty valuable to
Speaker 1: an AI company.
Speaker 12: Oh, not just to an AI company, but to bad
Speaker 12: actors as well. I mean, certainly to AI companies, especially
Speaker 12: if they're good actors looking to do healthcare services, but
Speaker 12: even bad actors. I mean, for example, twenty three and
Speaker 12: me just settled a data breach hack from a few
Speaker 12: years ago in which six million of their twenty five
Speaker 12: million records were accessed. And the concerning part is is
Speaker 12: that those six million records were predominantly Oshkenazi, Jews or
Speaker 12: Chinese individuals, meaning this was a targeted hack. And so
Speaker 12: your genetic and data and information like that is sensitive
Speaker 12: and unlike your social Security number or your name, you
Speaker 12: can't change that. So for both good and bad actors,
Speaker 12: there's a ton of value in this type of information.
Speaker 1: It just sounds scary to have now your DNA info
Speaker 1: out there and your I mean, we know our social
Speaker 1: and all the personal information is out there because of
Speaker 1: all these data breaches. Link that up with the data
Speaker 1: with the DNA information. It's like, I mean, what more
Speaker 1: is there about us that we can secretly protect?
Speaker 12: That's right, and that's just it is. I don't think
Speaker 12: people truly appreciate and realize how much their privacy is
Speaker 12: being pilfered through all of the apps and everything that
Speaker 12: they're downloading. Because now not only do I know your location,
Speaker 12: your geolocation from your phone, not only do I know
Speaker 12: your credit card information, but now I know who your
Speaker 12: second and third cousins are, and so that helps exploit
Speaker 12: individuals and deep fake attacks and synthetic fraud.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I mean, yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, the more they can up this information, the
Speaker 1: more they have to to try to defraud us in
Speaker 1: various ways that, by the way, some of these ways
Speaker 1: we haven't thought of yet. And that's what these scammers
Speaker 1: spend their whole day try to figure out, is hey,
Speaker 1: hold on, now we know Rich's cousin, Let's use that
Speaker 1: name to target him in some sort of attack.
Speaker 12: That's right, and then tell the technology developed sufficiently you
Speaker 12: can't predict. So just like in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 12: when everybody was walking around playing Pokemon Go, Yeah, even
Speaker 12: then there were nefarious, you know, issues with that, such
Speaker 12: as geolocation data being sold, et cetera. But now fast
Speaker 12: forward ten years later, we're dealing with AI and robots
Speaker 12: who need to learn how to navigate the real world,
Speaker 12: and they're doing that through everybody's use of Pokemon Go
Speaker 12: because it helped map a three D world that individuals
Speaker 12: were going through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I've talked about that. The business behind some
Speaker 1: of these companies is the data collection, not like Pokemon
Speaker 1: Go is a fun game. But I mean, look at
Speaker 1: how much that company just sold for. So I mean
Speaker 1: it's or the company or the game. I guess the
Speaker 1: you know, scopely bought it, and they bought parts of that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they bought all the data. I
Speaker 1: guess they must have. But the point is, all of
Speaker 1: these services that we use for free, if we are
Speaker 1: not paying for them, we are the.
Speaker 12: Product, absolutely absolutely, And that's what's so just disturbing to
Speaker 12: me is that not only are we voluntarily allowing this
Speaker 12: to happen, but our legislators and those individuals who are
Speaker 12: supposed to be our leaders are permitting this to happen.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing. It's like this tech is moving
Speaker 1: very quickly. So what's your recommendation for the twenty three meter?
Speaker 1: Do you think people submit that form that says delete
Speaker 1: my information.
Speaker 12: Yes, I mean, as I've spoken to other individuals about this, listen,
Speaker 12: you absolutely should go ahead and try and do everything
Speaker 12: possible that you can to get that information deleted.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 12: The good news is is that they should honor those
Speaker 12: requests at this time, again, absent the bankruptcy law preventing
Speaker 12: them from doing that. But the problem is is that
Speaker 12: it doesn't necessarily eliminate the problem because I don't don't
Speaker 12: know how they handle their DNA. But you could imagine
Speaker 12: a scenario in which they then copy whatever data they
Speaker 12: have of yours and then de identify it so that
Speaker 12: your personal identifiers address, email name, or whatever are removed.
Speaker 12: And in theory, you're like, well, okay, then they can't
Speaker 12: identify me. But the problem is is you note, Rich,
Speaker 12: I just have to find one more data set sitting
Speaker 12: out there on the internet, and if I can find
Speaker 12: a few data points that link back up to the
Speaker 12: twenty three and meters data set, I can reidentify whoever
Speaker 12: I want to.
Speaker 1: Oh, mysh, Colin, I am so happy you said this,
Speaker 1: because people do not realize that just because your information
Speaker 1: is d sort of like decoupled from you in a
Speaker 1: personal way, it doesn't mean that these companies are not
Speaker 1: recoupling it up on the back end with other databases.
Speaker 1: And so when you give your email address or phone
Speaker 1: number at a grocery store right for the discount, that
Speaker 1: information is merged with other databases from a whole different
Speaker 1: variety of places, and they come up with this full
Speaker 1: picture of who you are, and it's very crystal clear.
Speaker 12: And I don't know if anybody's ever looked into companies
Speaker 12: like Axiom or others that do these types of data
Speaker 12: brokerage services. But they then label you into categories as
Speaker 12: though are you an influencer or an influenced individual? And
Speaker 12: that's how granularized they can get to who you are
Speaker 12: as an individual to determine how easily you can be manipulated.
Speaker 12: And it's very concerning because they know everything about you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's these companies love to say like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're not personally identifying you, but they conveniently leave out
Speaker 1: the fact that, oh, on the back end, we're mixing
Speaker 1: like six or seven databases with a lot of information
Speaker 1: about you, and yes, we know exactly where you are,
Speaker 1: we know what you're watching on TV, we know the
Speaker 1: commercials we saw, and that's we're also going to target
Speaker 1: and add to you on Facebook based on all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So I mean, this just goes on and on. Colin Walke,
Speaker 1: We're gonna leave it there. Do you have a website?
Speaker 12: Folks can visit, yes, and just search them a named
Speaker 12: Colin Walkee.
Speaker 1: All right, great, conversation. Hopefully you're going to have you
Speaker 1: on again to talk about some of this privacy stuff.
Speaker 2: Because it is wild absolutely.
Speaker 1: Rich thanks for joining me today eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. I'll link up the directions on
Speaker 1: how to delete your twenty three and meters genetic data
Speaker 1: on the website rich on tech dot tv. Back after this,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on tech. Rich DeMuro here talking
Speaker 1: technology with you. The website is rich on tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: If you want to sign up for my newsletter, please
Speaker 1: do that. It is uh informative. Every weekend I send
Speaker 1: it out. I've also got the show notes there as well.
Speaker 1: This is episode one fifteen, So if you want the
Speaker 1: link to uh anything I mentioned here on the show.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned earlier the permissions for your Google account
Speaker 1: if you want to review those, I've got the link there,
Speaker 1: the instructions on how to delete your genetic data, how
Speaker 1: to activate that Peacock premium if you're a Spectrum customer,
Speaker 1: A whole bunch of stuff, all the travel stuff, I
Speaker 1: recommend it. It's all on the website rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. Nintendo is working on virtual game cards for
Speaker 1: the switch to. This means it'll be much easier to
Speaker 1: lend your games to family members. I remember when my
Speaker 1: kids got switches a couple of years ago. I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, do I have to buy two copies
Speaker 1: of the same game so they can play them?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: You did, But now they're going to make digital downloads
Speaker 1: work more like physical cartridges, So you can basically send
Speaker 1: one game, buy it once, and send it to another
Speaker 1: Switch on your account, and basically you'll be able to
Speaker 1: lend that game for two weeks. It'll happen over local
Speaker 1: Wi Fi, and after two weeks, the game automatically returns
Speaker 1: the original owner. Of course, you can only lend it
Speaker 1: out to one person at a time, but from everything
Speaker 1: I can see about this, the response online has been incredible.
Speaker 1: People are like, wait a second, is this real a
Speaker 1: company doing something the way that they should have done it, Like,
Speaker 1: we actually liked this idea, and yeah, this is going
Speaker 1: to happen starting late April, So if you've been frustrated
Speaker 1: with lending out your games to family members on the
Speaker 1: Nintendo devices, it will get much easier. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Nintendo Switch to coming out this year, It's been many
Speaker 1: years since the Switch has come out, it's time for
Speaker 1: an update. Nintendo keeps hinting, and they showed us what
Speaker 1: it's going to look like, but they keep dropping little details.
Speaker 1: The next amount of details are going to come out
Speaker 1: on April second.
Speaker 2: Get it.
Speaker 1: Switch to April second, okay, and a day after April
Speaker 1: Fool's Day, which is smart because if they did on
Speaker 1: April Fool's Day, we would not believe them. But the
Speaker 1: Switch to of course, you know it's gonna be out
Speaker 1: in time for the holidays. That's going to be a
Speaker 1: banana seller and people are gonna buy those things like hotcakes.
Speaker 1: Because even if you had a Switch, you've probably had
Speaker 1: it for a couple of years. Now you're ready for
Speaker 1: an update. And you know, Nintendo devices are never as
Speaker 1: high powered, you know as the xboxes of the world
Speaker 1: or the PlayStations of the world. But they're just fun
Speaker 1: and they're great for the family. And the games, I
Speaker 1: mean the IP they have with all the Mario stuff
Speaker 1: and zell they just keep regurgitating kind of new games
Speaker 1: with their familiar IP that people just love. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Mary in Los Angeles. Mary, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 4: Mary.
Speaker 2: Are you there?
Speaker 1: Mary had a little call Mary you on. Nope, okay,
Speaker 1: no Mary. Let's see here. How do I drop a call?
Speaker 1: It's been so long since I dropped call. Do I
Speaker 1: just press this button?
Speaker 2: Did I do it?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: Bobo's like, no, you did not. All right, let's see here.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Eduardo in Tampa. Eduardo, you're on with Rich?
Speaker 2: Are you there?
Speaker 4: Thank you very much?
Speaker 10: Rich, Good afternoon.
Speaker 2: Hey.
Speaker 10: So this has to do with logging in, in particular
Speaker 10: my financial institution. Now I do the delead browsing history,
Speaker 10: the cachet, and you're supposed to get a hex cold
Speaker 10: which you put in there too, acts as your accounts.
Speaker 2: Sure, when you first log in, a couple of times.
Speaker 10: It's worked, but like today, I tried it and I
Speaker 10: called customer service, which this is a good institution because
Speaker 10: they're there every day, so if you get locked out,
Speaker 10: you can call them and they can unlock you.
Speaker 2: Well, what happened.
Speaker 10: I did what I was supposed to do. I deleted
Speaker 10: the browsing history, the cache is and all that. And
Speaker 10: I mean, the last couple of times it worked, and
Speaker 10: today it didn't work. So them and he had unlocked
Speaker 10: me and I was able to get in.
Speaker 1: Okay, So here's the deal. So a lot of times
Speaker 1: with these one time codes, especially with banks, when they
Speaker 1: sense that there's any sort of unusual activity, they are
Speaker 1: going to stop that code from going out. And so
Speaker 1: I've gotten some messages from folks about this Amazon, and
Speaker 1: sometimes what they'll do is on your account, they'll do
Speaker 1: like a lockout time period. So if you've tried, let's
Speaker 1: say you press that button like three times right to
Speaker 1: get that code, They're like, something's not right here. We're
Speaker 1: just going to pause that delivery of that code for
Speaker 1: a while. So I don't know what the secret sauce
Speaker 1: is and they don't really reveal it, and every company
Speaker 1: in bank is different, but it's these fraud systems that
Speaker 1: they're using to try to make sure that nobody's getting
Speaker 1: access to your account. So that's what I'm guessing happen.
Speaker 1: Did they give you any sort of explanation.
Speaker 10: No, I mean I did it a couple of times.
Speaker 10: I don't think I ever did it three times. I
Speaker 10: did it twice in night thought and I.
Speaker 1: Called them okay, So that I mean, who knows what
Speaker 1: triggered it? I mean, but the fact is it was
Speaker 1: triggered after you cleared out your browser, which means typically
Speaker 1: typically when you log into your bank or any sort
Speaker 1: of online account, they're keeping a little bit of data
Speaker 1: on your computer, like a cookie, and so that that
Speaker 1: cookie usually has information about your last log in, whether
Speaker 1: you've already been sort of pre authorized on that account.
Speaker 1: So that's why your username may be saved there. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you use your name on your password and you just
Speaker 1: have to log in and then it gives you that code.
Speaker 2: But there's a.
Speaker 1: Whole, you know, a variety of ways that companies will
Speaker 1: sort of authorize you. Someplaces, you know, like your Gmail,
Speaker 1: it'll just stay logged in forever until something changes, or
Speaker 1: you log out. With your bank, it'll log out automatically.
Speaker 1: But the level of security kind of varies based on
Speaker 1: the account. But if you are clearing your browser history,
Speaker 1: typically it is clearing out those cookies and that cash
Speaker 1: and that is what's making that new login trigger, and
Speaker 1: so if you don't want that to happen, sometimes there
Speaker 1: are ways to clear your just your browsing history, but
Speaker 1: not all the cookies, not all the other stuff, so
Speaker 1: that you can still stay logged in. But in general, Eduardo,
Speaker 1: I think it's a good thing that your bank locked
Speaker 1: you out because that means that they're on top of things,
Speaker 1: and hopefully that means your account safer.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well, I'm glad I have them for a call in,
Speaker 10: so thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you for the call today, and I'm glad
Speaker 1: that bank is there on a Saturday. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like you don't even want to call these companies anymore
Speaker 1: because you're just like, I don't even know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it used to be you could call any big company
Speaker 1: and they'd have someone there twenty four to seven. Now
Speaker 1: it's like, no, I've called certain companies that I do
Speaker 1: business with, and you cannot believe you call early. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: our representatives start at eight am or nine am. You're like, wait,
Speaker 1: what this used to be a twenty four to seven service.
Speaker 1: So I think we're paying more these days for things
Speaker 1: and we're getting less and these companies just continue to
Speaker 1: find efficiencies with technology that sometimes bug us eighty eight
Speaker 1: rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two,
Speaker 1: four to one zero one. More of your calls coming
Speaker 1: up right after this. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Speaker 1: triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight, seven,
Speaker 1: four to two, four one zero one. Coming up this hour,
Speaker 1: we've got Mark Vena. He is going to talk about
Speaker 1: the Samsung Galaxy S twenty five and how it lured
Speaker 1: him away from the iPhone. Yeah, after seventeen years of
Speaker 1: using it. And I got to say, the reason why
Speaker 1: I want it to have him on the show is
Speaker 1: because it's kind of doing the same thing to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I get the Samsung every year, I play
Speaker 1: with it and it's great, but there was always something
Speaker 1: that kept me from wanting to use it full time.
Speaker 1: And now it's the opposite. I have to force myself
Speaker 1: to use the iPhone because you know, if I start
Speaker 1: texting people with those green bubbles, they get all annoyed
Speaker 1: at me. Even though it's gotten a lot better with RCS,
Speaker 1: I was texting someone the other day and it's like
Speaker 1: the RCS stuff is just perfect. It really is, because
Speaker 1: you can see when they get the message, you can
Speaker 1: see when they've read it, you can see when they're typing.
Speaker 1: You can send big photos and videos and they don't
Speaker 1: look all pixelated anymore. So, I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: that issue is gone, Like, choose the phone that you want,
Speaker 1: don't just choose the one that forces you to stick
Speaker 1: to it because you know you can't get I message
Speaker 1: anywhere else.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, who's doing that? On my Instagram?
Speaker 1: At richon Tech, guys are having a field day with
Speaker 1: my post.
Speaker 2: It was my wife's birthday.
Speaker 1: We went to Los Alevos, California has some beautiful areas
Speaker 1: just north of la and Losa Levos Wine Country is
Speaker 1: one of them. So anyway, I posted our whole itinerary
Speaker 1: what we did and just how much fun we had,
Speaker 1: and we have literally not been We can't stop talking
Speaker 1: about it because we had such a nice time. Because
Speaker 1: we parked once and we never drove again the whole weekend.
Speaker 1: And to me, that's like when you can do that
Speaker 1: and just walk to all the places you want to
Speaker 1: go and have dinner and wine tasting and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's just so fun. So anyway, if we want to
Speaker 1: see that, it's at rich On Tech. Give me a follow.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Stanley in Bettsville, Ohio.
Speaker 2: Stanley, you're on.
Speaker 4: With rich Hello rich love your show. And I wanted
Speaker 4: to ask a question that's perplexed me for months. Okay,
Speaker 4: on our company's website, well, actually, any website that I
Speaker 4: go to if there's a YouTube video. When I click
Speaker 4: on it, that YouTube video mini window reappears with the
Speaker 4: message sign in to confirm you're not a bot. This
Speaker 4: helps us protect our community. I cannot figure out how
Speaker 4: to get that YouTube video to play, how to sign
Speaker 4: in to confirm with someone I don't even know who
Speaker 4: to confirm that I'm not a bot.
Speaker 1: So when you help, you said, this is on your
Speaker 1: company computer.
Speaker 4: Well, no, sir, any computer that I use, and on
Speaker 4: any website I access. But it frustates me because on
Speaker 4: our company website for our new startup, if people click
Speaker 4: on that, they won't well I don't know if they
Speaker 4: see the message to confirm they're not a bot or not.
Speaker 1: Okay, couple things. So typically when you see this message,
Speaker 1: now we see these messages all the time on our computers.
Speaker 1: You know, it says please confirm, and it makes you
Speaker 1: do all those silly puzzles right where you're sitting there.
Speaker 1: It's like only humans can solve this. You're like, wait
Speaker 1: a second, I can't even solve this thing. It's like
Speaker 1: drag the shape that most closely resembles a fish onto
Speaker 1: the other fish.
Speaker 2: You're like, what, what? Hold on?
Speaker 1: Let me read this thing, and then you've got all
Speaker 1: those things to say verify you're not a rope. So
Speaker 1: websites are using all kinds of ways to avoid bots
Speaker 1: on their sites, to you know, to keep the resources
Speaker 1: down from being overloaded, and also malicious content. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many reasons why websites want to verify who
Speaker 1: we are, that we are actually human and really going
Speaker 1: there for a reason, right, not just like scraping or
Speaker 1: using some sort of automated software to buy tickets. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of reasons why these companies and websites
Speaker 1: make you verify who you are and that you're an
Speaker 1: actual human. Typically, what you're describing is when you are
Speaker 1: using some sort of VPN or a proxy.
Speaker 2: So a lot of.
Speaker 1: Folks, especially on the iPhone, they've got this like proxy
Speaker 1: service built in, like this iCloud Private Browsing and so
Speaker 1: it's like some sort of like thing that shields your
Speaker 1: IP address, and a lot of times it's activated if
Speaker 1: you pay for iCloud Plus or something like that. And
Speaker 1: so if you go to a website on your iPhone,
Speaker 1: you might encounter this message that says we have detected
Speaker 1: suspicious activity on your account. You know, we got to
Speaker 1: wait a minute, or you got to refresh to proceed
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. And the reason they're saying that
Speaker 1: is because they're seeing a bunch of requests coming from
Speaker 1: the same IP address, which is Apple servers, right, because
Speaker 1: they're all everything is funneling through this server to try
Speaker 1: to like clear or you know, hide everyone's personal information
Speaker 1: from this website or their IP address, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: So typically Stanley, that is the reason. So if you're
Speaker 1: running a VPN, I would try turning that off. If
Speaker 1: you're running some sort of proxy, turn that off. And
Speaker 1: so there are some web browsers like Opera, we'll have
Speaker 1: like a proxy built in, and so you will, you know,
Speaker 1: if you can disable that, try reloading that website without
Speaker 1: that proxy turned on or without that VPN turned on.
Speaker 1: So and also I would do what we talked about
Speaker 1: earlier with Eduardo and Tampa is clear the the browser
Speaker 1: history and cash and see if that helps. So go
Speaker 1: into your settings on Chrome or whatever you're doing, and
Speaker 1: just clear out your delete browsing data. And once you
Speaker 1: delete that, that may help reset things and make it
Speaker 1: so that you don't see that notification every time you
Speaker 1: go to a YouTube video It's interesting that it's happening
Speaker 1: on no matter what computer or account you're on. That
Speaker 1: tells me that it's at a very network level. So
Speaker 1: that could be also a feature on your router that
Speaker 1: you have toggled on, some sort of proxy. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: it's some sort of proxy or VPN feature, so I
Speaker 1: would check that for sure. A good question. Thanks for
Speaker 1: the question. Let's look at the emails here. We got
Speaker 1: a question from Mark in San Diego. He says, Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I really enjoy your show. I live in San Diego
Speaker 1: and MeTV is no longer over the air and free.
Speaker 1: I tried your suggestion to use over the air apps
Speaker 1: on my rokup, but they don't offer me TV. They
Speaker 1: do offer a handful of local stations on a per
Speaker 1: city basis, but no MeTV. So in San Diego, the
Speaker 1: only way to get it is to subscribe to an
Speaker 1: expensive stream. So for just MeTV and that's all I want,
Speaker 1: this is not practical. Can you offer any suggestions to
Speaker 1: get me TV for free? I've heard of MeTV. I'm
Speaker 1: not fully familiar with it, but I'm looking at their
Speaker 1: website and it's basically looks like a website. It looks
Speaker 1: like a like sort of a station that shows older programming.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking at the Yeah, Alfred Hitchcock, Adam twelve,
Speaker 1: Andy Griffith. So it looks like these like dot two stations,
Speaker 1: Like if you have a station in your area, they
Speaker 1: subscribe to this MeTV to sort of air and broadcast
Speaker 1: using one of their secondary channels, so you know, like
Speaker 1: a four dot two four dot three, four dot four
Speaker 1: and it's just basically to use up the airwaves and
Speaker 1: have some sort of programming on there. I checked in
Speaker 1: San Diego, putting into the zip code, and it looks
Speaker 1: like it is not available over the air anymore in
Speaker 1: San Diego, so it looks like it's only on the
Speaker 1: cable services cox AT and tu Verse Direct TV. But
Speaker 1: they do have it on Friendly TV, So I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: If you checked. You said expensive streaming. Friendly TV is
Speaker 1: like the cheapest streaming service you can get out there.
Speaker 1: It starts at six dollars and ninety nine cents a month. Now,
Speaker 1: I know you didn't want to pay anything, but I'd
Speaker 1: say seven bucks a month. If you really enjoy this MeTV,
Speaker 1: that might be a decent way of getting it, and
Speaker 1: you can at least try seven days for free, so
Speaker 1: I would at least investigate that, But that's really your
Speaker 1: only way as far as I can tell. It must
Speaker 1: have been that whatever TV station had this MeTV dropped
Speaker 1: it and they switched to something else, or they just
Speaker 1: air their own programming, whatever it is, but you're not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to get it with an antenna as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell down in San Diego, so
Speaker 1: I would check out the Friendly TV. It's also where
Speaker 1: a lot of people go for Hallmark programming over the
Speaker 1: holidays because it's one of the cheapest ways to get
Speaker 1: the Hallmark channel. But I have a feeling MeTV doesn't
Speaker 1: do its own streaming app because its whole play is
Speaker 1: to sell its programming to these cable providers and also
Speaker 1: the channels that then broadcasted over the air. And so
Speaker 1: if they had their own service, like their own streaming
Speaker 1: app that they charged three four dollars a month for,
Speaker 1: they sort of be cutting into their own business, which
Speaker 1: is selling this channel to these broadcasters.
Speaker 2: So that's probably what's happening there.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the email, Rich on tech dot TV, Diane
Speaker 1: writes in good morning, good morning. I always want to
Speaker 1: say thank you for your help. Whenever I've emailed, You've
Speaker 1: always responded quickly. Your answers are very helpful. I have
Speaker 1: lots and lots of pictures on my Facebook account. Is
Speaker 1: there any way to back them up? Especially in case
Speaker 1: my account gets hacked?
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these major services have what's called
Speaker 1: the takeout and so Facebook has a tool where you
Speaker 1: can go and you can download a full copy of
Speaker 1: your entire account, which includes your photos, your videos, and
Speaker 1: your other content. So if you go to your settings,
Speaker 1: click your profile picture in the top right corner, click
Speaker 1: settings in privacy, then click settings again, then click account center,
Speaker 1: then click your Information and Permission, then click download your information,
Speaker 1: then click download or transfer your information, and that's all
Speaker 1: you have to do. That's it, Diane, Very easy.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's not a direct link, so I mean you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to Maybe there is, but I will link it
Speaker 1: up in my in my show notes. But basically you
Speaker 1: can go to is it see A lot of them
Speaker 1: would be like Facebook dot com. Facebook dot com slash
Speaker 1: takeout would be like the easiest way to do it.
Speaker 1: Let's see if that brings you to know it. Let's
Speaker 1: see Facebook dot com slash takeout. No, that does not
Speaker 1: bring you to it. Don't do not go to that.
Speaker 1: Don't go there. Oh yeah, do not go there. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, now I'm getting spammed. But yes, so you
Speaker 1: do have to go to your Facebook settings and you
Speaker 1: can download your information. But the good news is it
Speaker 1: is pretty simple, and I will link up the instructions
Speaker 1: in the website. But Facebook, for some reason doesn't like
Speaker 1: all of their like settings and things always involve so
Speaker 1: many steps, and I think they do that on purpose,
Speaker 1: just to make life a little bit tougher. The only
Speaker 1: easy Facebook url I know is Facebook dot com slash hacked,
Speaker 1: and that's because so many people get hacked on Facebook
Speaker 1: that they have to have an easy URL where you
Speaker 1: can go and try to regain.
Speaker 2: The security of your account.
Speaker 1: And by the way, when I say people get hacked
Speaker 1: on Facebook, a lot of times it's not necessarily hackers.
Speaker 1: It's really people get tricked into giving up their Facebook
Speaker 1: login information. And they do that through these notifications as say, hey,
Speaker 1: there's a copyright infringement on your account or some sort
Speaker 1: of problem, and you log in real quick and you've
Speaker 1: just given up your account. So Rich on tech dot
Speaker 1: tv for instructions on how to back up your Facebook
Speaker 1: photos eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Let's go to uh Mark,
Speaker 1: Mark and Tarzana Mark.
Speaker 2: You're on with Rich.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Hi, Rich, I've been listening a long time. It's
Speaker 8: my first time calling it. Great to have you after
Speaker 8: Leo Laporte.
Speaker 2: Oh well, thank you.
Speaker 8: I'm in the market for a new computer, looking for
Speaker 8: all in one or a desktop perfectly and all in
Speaker 8: one with at least a two terabyte hard drive. You
Speaker 8: have any suggestion.
Speaker 1: Do you have a preference Mac or PC? Windows Windows? Okay,
Speaker 1: So a couple of things. First off, I always recommend
Speaker 1: folks look at Costco because they typically stock one to
Speaker 1: two all in one computers and they are a very
Speaker 1: good deal every time, and the specs you get there
Speaker 1: are usually better than what you would get anywhere else. Now,
Speaker 1: the thing that you're asking about is a two terabyte
Speaker 1: hard drive. Most of the time when I go there,
Speaker 1: I most of the time I'm seeing a one terabyte
Speaker 1: hard drive. That could be different these days, but that's
Speaker 1: the main downside of getting it from a place like
Speaker 1: Costco is that they're probably not going to have that
Speaker 1: two terabyte hard drive unless they do. If they do,
Speaker 1: then great, That's where I start if you have a
Speaker 1: costco membership. Otherwise I would look at some highly rated
Speaker 1: systems like an HP Envy all in one. So I
Speaker 1: think that's a great system and you can get it
Speaker 1: with a two terabyte hard drive, or I would just
Speaker 1: go to I mean, if you want to build it yourself,
Speaker 1: you can go to somewhere like Dell dot com and
Speaker 1: get the two terabyte hard drive. The thing is most
Speaker 1: of the computers, a lot of.
Speaker 2: Them have where are you. You're in Tarzana.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say there's a great place called Microcenter
Speaker 1: down in Tustin, but that's too far from you to go.
Speaker 1: But I would recommend. I mean, I think the iMac
Speaker 1: all in one is a great computer. But you did
Speaker 1: want a Windows PC. But I'm looking at some of
Speaker 1: the recent reviews and the HP comes up pretty high.
Speaker 1: Let's see if you want something that's on Amazon, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hps score very high. Yeah, Acers, I'll a sus.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they make let me see if
Speaker 1: they make it. I like the asuses recently. I think
Speaker 1: they're doing great on laptops. Yeah, I don't see as
Speaker 1: many as the ace US and the all in one.
Speaker 1: They probably have them. But I think what it really
Speaker 1: comes down to, Mark is when you go to best
Speaker 1: Buy or wherever you go, you're looking for the specs
Speaker 1: that are going to make sure this computer lasts for
Speaker 1: a bit. So again, I think that's depending on what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Since you want that two terabyte drive, maybe
Speaker 1: you want a better processor, So I would say at
Speaker 1: least an Intel five seven is going to give you
Speaker 1: a much faster speed, and then same thing with the AMD.
Speaker 1: If you go five or seven, that's really what you want.
Speaker 1: You don't want anything below a five at this point.
Speaker 1: And then with the memory, I always say sixteen gigs
Speaker 1: a RAM minimum, But if you're really outfitting this thing
Speaker 1: like I went thirty two last time, it just gets
Speaker 1: very expensive. That's the unfortunate side of memory. When you're
Speaker 1: getting it the day that you buy the computer, and
Speaker 1: then the hard drive two terabytes, it's very reasonable. That's
Speaker 1: what I did on my last computer. So the higher
Speaker 1: you go with these specs, the more you're gonna spend.
Speaker 1: That's that's basically what's going on, because most people are
Speaker 1: getting that. You know that simple, simple, processor, hard drive
Speaker 1: at five twelve or maybe a terrorbyte, and the memory
Speaker 1: at sixteen gigs, so good luck. Feel free to email
Speaker 1: me if you you know. Some people will email me
Speaker 1: if they're trying to decide between two things. But that's
Speaker 1: what I would do, is start at Costco. That's usually
Speaker 1: the best place to start.
Speaker 2: Thanks for the call. Mark. Pixel nine A.
Speaker 1: We talked about this. Google's like mid range phone. I
Speaker 1: would call it their budget phone. It's under five hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: They announced it last week, but there was a delay
Speaker 1: because of some sort of issue with a component quality situation,
Speaker 1: and so now they have said, okay, I guess that's
Speaker 1: figured out. They got back to the drawing board, they
Speaker 1: figured out what was happening, and the release date is
Speaker 1: April tenth. So this is a phone that is pretty fantastic.
Speaker 1: Even though I haven't played with it just yet, I
Speaker 1: can just tell. Because it's a Pixel, it's gonna have
Speaker 1: great software. It's got a decent chip inside, It's got
Speaker 1: eight gigs a RAM up to two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: fifty six gigs of storage, got a nice big screen,
Speaker 1: brighter than before, great refresh rate, big battery, good IP rating,
Speaker 1: so IP sixty eight, which means gonna be water and
Speaker 1: dust resistant, and it's got that great Google software that's,
Speaker 1: by the way, updated for seven years. So if you're
Speaker 1: looking for a budget phone, you want a great Android
Speaker 1: you don't really necessarily care about the iPhone side of things,
Speaker 1: go with the Pixel nine A I mean five hundred
Speaker 1: bucks launching April tenth. This is their answer to the
Speaker 1: iPhone sixteen E that's five ninety nine, which is also
Speaker 1: great if you are on the iPhone side of things.
Speaker 1: And Disney Plus, by the way, getting a feature users
Speaker 1: have been asking for for a while, the ability to
Speaker 1: remove shows and movies from the continue watching row. I
Speaker 1: know it sounds silly, but you weren't able to do this,
Speaker 1: so if you started watching a movie or a show,
Speaker 1: it would just linger there forever. So this is helpful
Speaker 1: if you started something or didn't finish something and you
Speaker 1: just want to get it away from your screen.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So this is rolling out. It's starting on Apple TV,
Speaker 1: mobile and Web. So on Apple TV can press and
Speaker 1: hold the center button on a title, then select remove.
Speaker 1: On mobile or web, tap the three dots next to
Speaker 1: a title and choose remove. So more devices will get
Speaker 1: this feature soon I mean, can you believe they didn't
Speaker 1: have this for a while. I mean if you started
Speaker 1: watching like some silly movie on Disney Plus and you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: that movie's bad, it'll just linger there forever, and it's
Speaker 1: like it just haunts you. Now you can finally get
Speaker 1: rid of the ghosts on your Disney Plus screen. All right,
Speaker 1: I'll put links to all of these things on my
Speaker 1: website rich on Tech dot tv, also the Instagram at
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Coming up, we're gonna talk Samsung versus iPhone.
Speaker 1: Mark Vina is going to talk about why he has
Speaker 1: ditched his iPhone in favor of Samsung. Right here on
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The website
Speaker 1: for the show rich on Tech dot tv.
Speaker 2: That's real.
Speaker 1: Find links to everything I mentioned here on the show.
Speaker 1: I got an email about callers or I guess listeners
Speaker 1: looking for my Wine Country recommendations. That's on my instagram
Speaker 1: at rich on Tech. You got to go there. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I spent the weekend last weekend, b lined
Speaker 1: it after the show and went up to Wine Country
Speaker 1: at my wife.
Speaker 2: So I've got my recommendations there.
Speaker 1: Feel free to steal at itinerary if you're ever going
Speaker 1: to visit California or if you're in the area. All right,
Speaker 1: my next guest is Mark Vena. He is the CEO
Speaker 1: and principal analyst at smart Tech Research. He ditched his
Speaker 1: iPhone recently for the Samsung Galaxy S twenty five.
Speaker 2: He's going to talk about it. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 13: Mark Rich, How are you this afternoon?
Speaker 2: Good?
Speaker 1: I typically see you, you know, somewhere in the world,
Speaker 1: depending on where we are, but it's good to hear
Speaker 1: your voice. And you know you're always making the rounds
Speaker 1: because you're an analyst. To explain what an analyst does,
Speaker 1: by the way.
Speaker 13: Well, technology we really have great jobs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do.
Speaker 13: That's what you're doing.
Speaker 14: You're looking at the landscape, the technology landscape, and you
Speaker 14: try to make call balls and strikes and what companies
Speaker 14: are doing right, what are they operating in interesting markets?
Speaker 14: You know, what is the market looks like from a
Speaker 14: tailwind standpoint or a headwind standpoint.
Speaker 13: One of the great parts of the job.
Speaker 14: And you know, even though you're not an analyst, you
Speaker 14: know you're you are in the.
Speaker 13: Technology coverage area.
Speaker 14: We get lots of free stuff, you know, and you're
Speaker 14: you're constantly getting samples somethink my house looks like Best
Speaker 14: Buy sometimes, and but it gives you an opportunity to
Speaker 14: play with the technology and evaluated. And it's, you know,
Speaker 14: one of the most exciting things I've done in my career.
Speaker 1: Because if an analyst says, oh, this is great, this
Speaker 1: is the next best thing, it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: journalist giving a good review.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, this is something want So I hate
Speaker 2: to use.
Speaker 14: That word influencer, but I guess I am an influencer.
Speaker 14: I hate that, but because it's too it's just twenty
Speaker 14: twenty five ish. But you know, I am sure.
Speaker 13: You know, you get a lot.
Speaker 14: Of inquiries from from your listeners, from your TV appearances.
Speaker 13: I get every time I do something on.
Speaker 14: ABC News or a network news channel, or I'm sure
Speaker 14: I'll get, you know, emails appearing on your radio show.
Speaker 13: Mark, you know, do you really mean what you wrote about?
Speaker 8: Is it?
Speaker 13: Are you really giving up your Apple iPhone?
Speaker 14: And in this particular case, you know, the the publication
Speaker 14: I wrote on Tech Newsworld, it is a great, great publication.
Speaker 14: The editor there why we're very close relationship with he
Speaker 14: encourages me to write on things that are a bit controversial,
Speaker 14: and I try.
Speaker 13: To be fair, I try to be balanced.
Speaker 14: And this one was a hard one for me, rich
Speaker 14: because I've been in the Apple ecosystem for more than
Speaker 14: a decade, you know. I mean, I bought the first
Speaker 14: Apple iPhone that came out in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 14: and I you know, I drank the kool aid, so
Speaker 14: to speak, and I really fell in love with it.
Speaker 13: And it was hard.
Speaker 14: You know, you you excited some things earlier before I
Speaker 14: came on your show that you know, you know, I've
Speaker 14: been getting these Samsung phones regularly, and you know, what
Speaker 14: is it going to take for me to you know,
Speaker 14: to move off the schneid, so to speak. And you know,
Speaker 14: the the S twenty five Ultra and the S twenty
Speaker 14: five Standard one, but I'm the one I'm I compared.
Speaker 13: It to is the Ultra.
Speaker 14: It's a great phone, you know, and and it's it's
Speaker 14: i mean harder and harder to find reasons that well,
Speaker 14: why do why do I want to stay in the
Speaker 14: Apple ecosystem?
Speaker 13: And we'll we'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well that that's the thing, is like there's always
Speaker 1: some little thing that kind of kept me back. And
Speaker 1: this year is really the first year where I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm turning to the Samsung much more than the iPhone
Speaker 1: because it's just it's kind of fun. I mean, Samsung
Speaker 1: has always thrown a lot of features at the wall
Speaker 1: and and kind of some stick, some don't. But what
Speaker 1: was sort of the main thing for you? What was
Speaker 1: the thing that, like you started using the Samsung, You're like, no,
Speaker 1: I want to stick with this.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 14: Really, the main thing is is that the camera capability,
Speaker 14: both video and image photography is is stunning.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 14: Not to say that the Apple iPhone sixteen Pro isn't
Speaker 14: it isn't a very solid phone, Apple, I'm sorry. Samsung
Speaker 14: has always had a pretty good lever in that space
Speaker 14: because of their technology with sensors and uh, They've got
Speaker 14: this great relationship with Qualcomm. I think I saw you
Speaker 14: at the Qualcom event last time I saw you, and
Speaker 14: they are really the magic the technology ingreading behind the scenes.
Speaker 14: And and not to say that Apple Silicon isn't great.
Speaker 14: Qualcomm has done a fantastic job of really you know,
Speaker 14: rising to the occasion with its latest Snapdragon technology. They're
Speaker 14: playing a great role now as you know, in PCs
Speaker 14: kind of you know, reshaping that category.
Speaker 13: But for me, it was really the camera capability, uh,
Speaker 13: the RCS cable. It's funny that you reference that.
Speaker 14: Now, there is a downside of of going through the
Speaker 14: using a a Android phone when you're using a I'm sorry,
Speaker 14: a Apple iPhone when you're using it with a Windows
Speaker 14: PC and we'll talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing is. It's like, I mean, that's
Speaker 2: a bummer.
Speaker 13: Practically, that's a big bummer for me. It's a big bump.
Speaker 1: Well, here's look, at the end of the day, Apple
Speaker 1: doesn't really do anything to make their products easier to
Speaker 1: use with any other products, whereas in the tech world,
Speaker 1: and you know this, the whole beauty of tech is
Speaker 1: like interoperability, right, Like the whole thing is like things
Speaker 1: should work together. And that's the problem is like Apple
Speaker 1: is amazing if you have a MacBook or an iPad
Speaker 1: and an iPhone, it's an incredible cohesive ecosystem AirPods. But
Speaker 1: as soon as you try to like mix and match,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, that doesn't work.
Speaker 13: Oh that great is exactly the problem.
Speaker 14: And the problem is is for that joy of operating
Speaker 14: the Apple ecosystem, they extract the premium and when you
Speaker 14: go out and buy a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air,
Speaker 14: you know, let's face it. I mean I regularly get
Speaker 14: a MacBook Pro every time they rev v models because
Speaker 14: I use it for video editing and things like that.
Speaker 14: And you're paying for the five thousand dollars where you
Speaker 14: can get a comparable Windows PC gel and a p
Speaker 14: and a number of others make very very fine qualcom
Speaker 14: Snapdragon based PCs and others. I had mentioned Intel, but
Speaker 14: that's a different story.
Speaker 2: That's a whole other story.
Speaker 14: Yeah, but the fact of the matter is you can
Speaker 14: get into into the Windows.
Speaker 13: The Windows ecosystem is a lot more affordable.
Speaker 14: And that frustrates me because to your point, Apple, it
Speaker 14: doesn't have to be that way. But remember which everything
Speaker 14: that Apple does, and I suspect I'm an old marketing guy.
Speaker 14: If I was Greg Joswiak or one of the big
Speaker 14: scene of leaders at Apple, I probably would do everything
Speaker 14: I can to keep you in the ecosystem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's been on record.
Speaker 1: That's you know, that's why I Message is not available
Speaker 1: as an app on any other platform. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like people stick to Apple because they've got their eye
Speaker 1: messages in there. And again, yes, it's gotten easier with RCS,
Speaker 1: but it's still you know, it's a blue bubble thing,
Speaker 1: it's an ecosystem thing.
Speaker 13: But still that's the same thing.
Speaker 14: And truth be told because I'm sure there will be
Speaker 14: people that will email Mark there.
Speaker 13: There are solutions to.
Speaker 14: Allow you to use text message Apple text messaging on
Speaker 14: a Windows PC. The reality is they're all kluegy, They're
Speaker 14: all they all attached to Bluetooth.
Speaker 13: You got to sink it and everything.
Speaker 14: It's not as clean and seamless as the Apple experienced.
Speaker 1: But you said you miss eye mess in your article.
Speaker 1: You said you miss eye message, you missed air drop.
Speaker 13: Yes, that is true. That is true.
Speaker 14: And anybody who uses large video files like you and
Speaker 14: I do, that air drop features a very cool feature.
Speaker 14: You know, you could just be you could be a
Speaker 14: hotel room and as long as it recognizes that Apple
Speaker 14: device in your room, you can transfer that file very
Speaker 14: very quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what about this the low key perk you mentioned,
Speaker 1: the wireless power share.
Speaker 14: I think that's an I think that's an interesting benefit
Speaker 14: and I and it's interesting because you know, the challenge
Speaker 14: that Apples had with iPhones has been battery life now
Speaker 14: I've gotten Obviously, if you get the if you get
Speaker 14: the Pro Max, that has the larger battery, and you're
Speaker 14: going to get really really good battery life. But if
Speaker 14: you use these sixteen the non either the sixteen or
Speaker 14: the sixteen Pro, the smaller format, that's going to have
Speaker 14: a smaller battery, and you're probably not going to get
Speaker 14: the battery life that you'd like. Now, Samsung I think
Speaker 14: has done I mean, what's your point of view. I
Speaker 14: think Samsung has done a really good job in the
Speaker 14: battery life department.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I think that the the S twenty
Speaker 1: five I gave a glowing review this year. I mean
Speaker 1: I really said, like, the only thing keeping people from
Speaker 1: this phone is really if they are just an iPhone
Speaker 1: die hard. And let's be honest. You know, it used
Speaker 1: to be the whole thing was like should I go
Speaker 1: iPhone or Android? And now it's the market has matured
Speaker 1: so much that I don't see as many people wanting
Speaker 1: to switch because they're so heavily invested and in one
Speaker 1: ecosystem or the other. And so I think it's really
Speaker 1: tough for these companies to even get people to switch
Speaker 1: at this point. And I think both have their pros
Speaker 1: and cons.
Speaker 2: I mean, they really do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think you know, you said that the
Speaker 1: one UI was excellent. It's more customizable. But Apple, you know,
Speaker 1: they have all the apps, they have all the accessories
Speaker 1: that are just you know, everywhere.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I mean from that perspective,
Speaker 14: I mean, that was kind of the joyous thing when
Speaker 14: I made the transfer. When I made the transfer, you know,
Speaker 14: Samsung does a pretty good job of moving your data
Speaker 14: from an iPhone to the new Samsung.
Speaker 13: I was delighted with that.
Speaker 14: I couldn't find an app that I was using on
Speaker 14: the iPhone that was not available on the on the
Speaker 14: Samsung Android platform. Now, I will point out something that
Speaker 14: it's a little bit of an inside baseball thing.
Speaker 13: You know, I've got a significant other who lives in.
Speaker 14: Northern LA area, and she's got a couple of teenage daughters.
Speaker 14: You know, I don't think I could extract an iPhone
Speaker 14: from a private iPhone from her because she probably provides
Speaker 14: tech support for her kids, and she does, and she
Speaker 14: does not want to have to deal with well how
Speaker 14: do you do this? And an A on a Samsung
Speaker 14: phone or a non Samsung Samsung Android phone.
Speaker 13: So there is some.
Speaker 14: Benefit to that. There always has been. But I would
Speaker 14: say that if you do want to make the plunge,
Speaker 14: you know, and make that transfer and jump into the
Speaker 14: non Apple ecosystem that is Samsung, I would recommend people
Speaker 14: stay with all Samsung phones because even though Android phones
Speaker 14: in theory rich as you know, are supposed to have
Speaker 14: a somewhat common look and feel.
Speaker 13: You know, if you buy an Android phone from Huawei,
Speaker 13: you buy.
Speaker 14: A phone, a phone, a not a Samsung phone, but
Speaker 14: a non Samsung Android phone.
Speaker 13: All those phone OEMs.
Speaker 14: Are going to try to add their a little you know,
Speaker 14: secret sauce to make the interface a little bit different
Speaker 14: and a little bit you know, more compelling, and that
Speaker 14: creates confusion, you know, that's happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I agree, and I and I do tell
Speaker 1: people that. I say, look, if your friends and family
Speaker 1: have one, it's an easy way to ask for help,
Speaker 1: is you know, if they already know what they're doing
Speaker 1: on it. All right, Mark, We're gonna have to leave
Speaker 1: it there. The website for Mark is smart tech research
Speaker 1: dot net, smart tech research dot net. Real quick, I
Speaker 1: got thirty seconds. Has anyone giving you a little bit
Speaker 1: of issue at your green bubbles?
Speaker 13: Yes, I do that. But the reality is I think
Speaker 13: people do understand. I mean, but there is a thing
Speaker 13: out there. As you know, when.
Speaker 14: People see the bubbles you automatically, well, you know that
Speaker 14: you're not You're not an Apple US.
Speaker 13: There's kind of a how it feels in the McCoy's
Speaker 13: by default.
Speaker 1: Apple did that on purpose. That's that's the thing. Just
Speaker 1: send them the article. Just send them the link to
Speaker 1: the article.
Speaker 13: Mark, but it's a good world.
Speaker 1: Mark Vina smart techresearch dot net. Thanks for joining me
Speaker 1: today talk about iPhone versus Samsung.
Speaker 13: Hey, thank you.
Speaker 1: Rich All right, coming up, we are going to open
Speaker 1: up the feedbag. It is overflowing this week. We'll see
Speaker 1: how many of these messages from you we can get to.
Speaker 2: Right here, I'm rich on Tech.
Speaker 6: Than you.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Time for the feedbag segment.
Speaker 1: This is your feedback plus the mail bag, the emails,
Speaker 1: the comments, and the questions I get from you. If
Speaker 1: you want to submit yours, just go to rich on
Speaker 1: Tech dot tv hit contact and yes you do that
Speaker 1: many many times per week. I do read all of
Speaker 1: your emails. I may not be able to respawn to
Speaker 1: all of them or share all of them. Here, but
Speaker 1: believe me, it gets to me for better or for worse.
Speaker 1: Leo from the Laptop Elf Project writes in great show,
Speaker 1: I think it's helpful to separate voice typing, dictation, and transcription.
Speaker 1: They each serve different needs for most basic tasks like
Speaker 1: email or filling in text fields. The built in dictation
Speaker 1: tools in Windows, Mac and Chrome are simple and work great.
Speaker 1: On Windows, Press Win plus h to launch voice access.
Speaker 1: On Mac, go to System Settings Keyboard dictation to turn
Speaker 1: it on and set a shortcut. And on Chrome go
Speaker 1: to Settings Accessibility, Keyboard and text Input toggle on dictation.
Speaker 1: These don't have those fancy AI features you were talking about,
Speaker 1: but they get the job done without needing any extra software.
Speaker 1: Keep up the good work, thank you, Leo. Tony from
Speaker 1: Oshkosh writes in after listening on WTAQ, when you were
Speaker 1: mentioning Fax machines, you missed the mark a bit when
Speaker 1: they came into use. The US Army was using them
Speaker 1: regularly in the late nineteen seventies. Massive machines impractical for
Speaker 1: most civilians unless you had serious mind honey. Fun fact,
Speaker 1: Fax technology actually started in eighteen forty three, and by
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight you could fax the signature. This will
Speaker 1: be on the test, so make a note of it.
Speaker 1: Thanks Tony. I was saying all that tech when I
Speaker 1: did the nostalgia tech when I came across it, not
Speaker 1: when it started.
Speaker 2: But thank you.
Speaker 1: Scott from Battlecreek, Michigan. Listening on thirteen twenty Wils writes in,
Speaker 1: I was listening to your show and I heard your
Speaker 1: discussion about saving bank or credit union statements. I'm low tech.
Speaker 1: I still get my mailed to me. I once asked
Speaker 1: how far bank how far back I could access statements
Speaker 1: if needed. They told me only three years. I've had
Speaker 1: to check statements older than that, so I'm glad I
Speaker 1: kept the paper copies. Your listeners might want to ask
Speaker 1: their banks or credit unions how far back they can go.
Speaker 1: It might surprise them. And yes, Scott, great, Yes, great tip.
Speaker 1: Because my one of my bank accounts only goes back
Speaker 1: like one hundred and eighty days or something. It's very short. Again,
Speaker 1: I guess it's less for them to keep. Diane writes in,
Speaker 1: I'm listening to your pot cast for the second time.
Speaker 1: I don't want to miss a thing. I wanted to
Speaker 1: share how I back up my credit cards in case
Speaker 1: they're lost or stolen. I make a copy of the
Speaker 1: front and the back of each card, especially since the
Speaker 1: back has the important phone numbers to call. I keep
Speaker 1: that paper in a safe place just in case. Diane,
Speaker 1: that is a great tip I do that. I actually
Speaker 1: used to do this once a year. Photo copy everything
Speaker 1: in your wallet, so all of your cards front and back,
Speaker 1: and your driver's license and your passport, and that way,
Speaker 1: if anything ever gets lost or stolen, you have an
Speaker 1: easy way to recover it, or at least start on
Speaker 1: the path of recovery. But great, great thing to do,
Speaker 1: also very smart to do before you go on a
Speaker 1: big trip. Photocopy your wallet. Put a copy of that,
Speaker 1: maybe in your suitcase, obviously somewhere safe. Andrew from Oakland
Speaker 1: writes in I've been a tech listener on KFI, going
Speaker 1: all the way back to Jeff Levy, and I can't
Speaker 1: tell you how much I enjoy your show. You strike
Speaker 1: the right balance of tech info and nostalgia. How it
Speaker 1: all fits into our lives is what really makes your
Speaker 1: show stand out. During today's show, I guess this was
Speaker 1: last week your story about the evolution of how we
Speaker 1: consume media, from Walkman's to CDs really hit home. I
Speaker 1: live for music and work in entertainment, and it instantly
Speaker 1: brought back memories of my own tech milestones, my first
Speaker 1: portable CD player, the Rio, which I also had I
Speaker 1: forgot to mention that last week, and eventually the iPod.
Speaker 1: I even have a little museum of all those devices.
Speaker 1: And yes, I still have that very first CD player.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work, and I'm glad I kept it.
Speaker 2: Great show.
Speaker 1: Thank you from an avid listener. Well, thank you, Andrew.
Speaker 1: That means a lot. Stephen Marsha writ in my rich
Speaker 1: my wife and I watch you each morning on TV.
Speaker 1: We have learned so much. Thank you well, Steven Marsha,
Speaker 1: thank you for watching. It sounds like I'm doing what
Speaker 1: I set out to do. And Aaron writes in do
Speaker 1: you noticees get nicer as they go along?
Speaker 2: I order them that way.
Speaker 1: Bud about to say that, yeah, they get nicer as
Speaker 1: we go along. Aaron writes in, I've learned a lot
Speaker 1: from listening to your program and find you much more
Speaker 1: enjoyable to listen to, much more enjoyable than what I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe the competition everything from knowledge about the
Speaker 1: newest and greatest gadget to the nitty gritty of how
Speaker 1: to fix something. You walk people through a situation, giving
Speaker 1: them a confidence that they can do it, when on
Speaker 1: the other side, we're afraid to make a move for
Speaker 1: fear of messing things up. Even more, thank you again,
Speaker 1: Erin Erin. That is my goal is to give you
Speaker 1: that confidence. You're not going to break something, You're not
Speaker 1: gonna mess something up. So many people are afraid of
Speaker 1: just like using their technology, because something is gonna break
Speaker 1: or get broke, just whatever. So many things that people
Speaker 1: are scared of. And my whole job is to make
Speaker 1: this stuff seem fun and enjoyable. And so if you're
Speaker 1: not trying to break stuff, you're not using your gadgets enough.
Speaker 1: So definitely try to break things. Um, okay, we oh,
Speaker 1: we have one more. Let's see here. Victor from Ermont.
Speaker 1: I just discovered your show on wo and I'm hooked.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Victor, I love it. We just added an
Speaker 1: affiliate in New York City, as you know WR seven ten,
Speaker 1: and people have been finding us there on Sunday nights
Speaker 1: and we do appreciate it because that is where I'm from.
Speaker 1: I'm from New Jersey and so being on in New
Speaker 1: York City has been a lifelong dream of mine and
Speaker 1: I'm glad that we're resonating with the show there. We've
Speaker 1: got so much more on the website rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. If you're not subscribed to my newsletter, please
Speaker 1: find me there. Subscribe to the newsletter. We've got almost
Speaker 1: forty five thousand of you getting the newsletter every weekend
Speaker 1: and just enjoying that version. It's kind of a version
Speaker 1: of this show. You can find links everything I mentioned
Speaker 1: on my website. Just go to rich on tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: You can find me on social media. I am at
Speaker 1: you guessed it. Rich on tech Next week we're going
Speaker 1: to talk to Joel Santo Domingo of The Wirecutter. He's
Speaker 1: going to break down mesh networking, what it is, why
Speaker 1: it matters, and the best systems to buy. If you
Speaker 1: want better Wi Fi in your home.
Speaker 2: That's going to do it.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. I know there are so
Speaker 1: many ways you can spend your time. I really do
Speaker 1: appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to
Speaker 1: everyone who makes this show possible. We've got Bobo on
Speaker 1: the board, We've got Kim on the phones, We've got
Speaker 1: you listening, and me of course.
Speaker 2: My name is rich Demiro. I will talk to you
Speaker 2: real soon. We'll do it again next week, all right,