Speaker 1: Big tech versus big government. Why some of America's largest
Speaker 1: companies are fighting to keep you clicking through those subscription cancelations.
Speaker 1: Plus your Wi Fi dead zones could be history. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you how to finally get that same strong signal
Speaker 1: in your backyard that you have in your living room.
Speaker 1: And later, would you spend six hundred dollars to never
Speaker 1: scoop kitty litter? Ever? Again, my hands on review of
Speaker 1: the robot that's changing the game for cat owners. But
Speaker 1: is it worth the splurge? Find out? Plus your tech
Speaker 1: questions answered? What's going on rich damiro And this is
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech. 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: I believe that tech should be interesting, useful and fun.
Speaker 1: Let's fire up those phone lines at triple eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one. That's eight seven four two four to
Speaker 1: one zero one. Give me a call if you have
Speaker 1: a question about technology. Again, that's triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: to one zero one. Kim is back this week, So uh,
Speaker 1: that's who you will encounter. That's who you'll have to
Speaker 1: get through to get on the air here. Email is
Speaker 1: also open. Just go to rich on tech dot TV
Speaker 1: hit contact that will actually make its way directly to
Speaker 1: my inbox. We've got some great guests this week. We've
Speaker 1: got a full slate this week, clinical psychologist and attorney
Speaker 1: doctor Lisa Stroman. We'll talk about strategies for protecting youth
Speaker 1: in the digital age. We're going to discuss a story
Speaker 1: that is very sad and nonfortunate, discusses UH. Involves a
Speaker 1: fourteen year old that got obsessed with AI and just
Speaker 1: not a good ending to the story. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that UH. Later in the show. We've got olo clip
Speaker 1: creator and entrepreneur Patrick O'Neil. He's going to talk about
Speaker 1: his latest creation, three D printed USBC AirPods holders. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about that. He will be live in studio. That's
Speaker 1: very exciting. And Bitward and CEO Michael crandall. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about password management safety and you should be using a
Speaker 1: password manager. I know they're intimidating, but you got to
Speaker 1: use one. I'm telling you, just start using one. And
Speaker 1: I think that's the thesis of his conversation. All right,
Speaker 1: So this week, I asked you in my newsletter or
Speaker 1: last week. I guess I should say what kind of
Speaker 1: phone do you use? Now? I kind of imagined what
Speaker 1: the answer would be here, because you know, I wrote
Speaker 1: a book. I wrote three books on the iPhone, one
Speaker 1: hundred and one Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone, and
Speaker 1: over the course of three years, I updated it for
Speaker 1: the various iOS systems until it just got to be
Speaker 1: too much. But a lot of you came to me
Speaker 1: from that book, and actually, I'll just tell you quickly
Speaker 1: the reason why I wrote that book. I will never forget.
Speaker 1: You know, I do cover technology on television. Average people
Speaker 1: just watching TV kind of see me and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe tune in, maybe whatever. I get their attention, but
Speaker 1: I did, you know a lot of times I'd take
Speaker 1: for granted this stuff that I know about technology. Not
Speaker 1: anymore so much, but back in the day, I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: everyone knows how to do that. While I was showing
Speaker 1: someone how to use the magnifying feature on their iPhone
Speaker 1: to like illuminate and make a menu look bigger at
Speaker 1: a restaurant, and they're like, wait, what, And I was like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's hundreds of those tips out there, and like what
Speaker 1: do you mean, what are you talking about? And so
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, you don't know about that. So
Speaker 1: I ended up doing that on TV. I made that
Speaker 1: into a tip on television and it went crazy viral,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I have never seen anything like
Speaker 1: this in my life, just the simplest little iPhone tip.
Speaker 1: And so I did another one and I can't remember
Speaker 1: what the second one was, but I did another one
Speaker 1: and that also did really well, and I was like, hmm,
Speaker 1: I think we're onto something here. Let's do these tips
Speaker 1: on TV more often, and maybe I should write an
Speaker 1: entire book about that. So I did and it did,
Speaker 1: you know, reasonably well. I self published on Amazon and
Speaker 1: a lot of you bought it, so thank you for that,
Speaker 1: and it was a lot of fun. It was like
Speaker 1: the best experience. I still say writing that book was
Speaker 1: one of the best experiences of my life. Taught me
Speaker 1: a lot, kind of helped me become an entrepreneur. It
Speaker 1: was really really fun, and people bought it all over
Speaker 1: They still buy it all over the world, even though
Speaker 1: it's not up to date, but some of the tips
Speaker 1: still work, probably a majority of them actually anyway, So
Speaker 1: a lot of you came to my mailing list from
Speaker 1: that iPhone book, And so it's no surprise that when
Speaker 1: you answered this poll, sixty five percent of you use
Speaker 1: the iPhone. Next up is twenty five percent of you
Speaker 1: use Androids specifically Samsung, and then after that it is
Speaker 1: six percent of you use Android specifically the Pixel, and
Speaker 1: then three percent of you use Androids something else that
Speaker 1: might be the OnePlus and various other brands that you
Speaker 1: might get, And then one percent of you said other.
Speaker 1: So the other is probably like those flip phones that
Speaker 1: are having a moment right now, people that want a
Speaker 1: simpler lifestyle. But anyway, I personally have my primary SIM
Speaker 1: card in an iPhone and I'm going to keep it
Speaker 1: there for a little bit, just because the last time
Speaker 1: I tried to swap it, I was out a phone
Speaker 1: for like a couple hours, and it was really tricky
Speaker 1: to get my number back to my phone. So basically
Speaker 1: a quick story is I took my number from one
Speaker 1: phone and I put it into another phone. You know,
Speaker 1: I test phones all the time, so I'm moving my
Speaker 1: number around. Well, this time the number did not move
Speaker 1: to the new phone, But what happened was it immediately
Speaker 1: went away from the old phone, and so my wireless
Speaker 1: carrier had no way of verifying I was who I
Speaker 1: said I was because they couldn't text. They usually text
Speaker 1: a confirmation code, and I'm like, well, you can't text
Speaker 1: it because I have no phone line. And so it
Speaker 1: was a whole run around. It was like a whole thing.
Speaker 1: That's just I was going around in circles with them.
Speaker 1: I said, there's got to be a different way you
Speaker 1: could verify I am who I say I am. And
Speaker 1: I get it. They need to stay secure because your
Speaker 1: phone number unlocks lot of things. Anyway, I finally convinced
Speaker 1: them to activate the old phone. I said, look, the
Speaker 1: old phone is on my account. Just look up the
Speaker 1: number of it. It's the Imei. It's on there, and
Speaker 1: they did and it worked out anyway. But I love
Speaker 1: the different phones for different reasons. iPhone obviously is just
Speaker 1: overall really really nice. Samsung to me is the powerhouse.
Speaker 1: You can do anything you want on that device, and
Speaker 1: I love that it's sort of independent. It's not iOS,
Speaker 1: it's not specifically Google, it's just its own kind of
Speaker 1: blend of things. And then the pixel is amazing, it's incredible.
Speaker 1: It's got the great camera, and it's got that great
Speaker 1: Google software. So they all have their pros and cons,
Speaker 1: and I think everyone uses their phone for a different reason.
Speaker 1: So there's the results. Now this week I also asked you.
Speaker 1: This was a couple weeks back, but I just compiled
Speaker 1: the results. How do you keep track of your to
Speaker 1: do list? I asked you this question on my Facebook
Speaker 1: page Facebook dot com slash rich on Tech. And I
Speaker 1: am constantly looking for a better way of being efficient
Speaker 1: because I've got two jobs, I've got two kids, I've
Speaker 1: got lots of things going on, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: keep up with all of it. And so I'm constantly
Speaker 1: trying new apps and things, and so I'll share what
Speaker 1: I use in a moment. But the main breakdown of
Speaker 1: what you said in your comments. Phone apps obviously number
Speaker 1: one for the digital method the notes app, the reminders app,
Speaker 1: the Google Keep app, those are very popular. Then you've
Speaker 1: got the calendar apps. People just put their to do
Speaker 1: items in the calendar apps, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar. Then
Speaker 1: of course Microsoft to do is very popular, and Outlook
Speaker 1: is very popular. And voice assistants. People just tell their
Speaker 1: voice assistants, hey remind me this. Then of course you've
Speaker 1: got the analog methods paper and pens, sticky notes, post
Speaker 1: it notes, notebooks and notepads, and wall calendars. Some notable responses.
Speaker 1: Kayla said, I have five hundred and forty seven tabs
Speaker 1: open in my brain at all times, and my to
Speaker 1: do list is there. Kayla, I totally hear you, but
Speaker 1: this is the reason why I offload my to do list.
Speaker 1: It keeps me up at night if I don't put
Speaker 1: my to do list on a piece of paper. In fact,
Speaker 1: if I wake up in the morning and I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about all the stuff I have to get done for
Speaker 1: the day, I can go through and write down my
Speaker 1: stuff on a piece of paper, all the little things
Speaker 1: that are bobbling around in my head, and I will
Speaker 1: sleep better. Try it. Robert says, my wife reminds me
Speaker 1: of what I have to do every thirty minutes. That's funny.
Speaker 1: Lynn says, I'm seventy one. I have no to do
Speaker 1: list except wake up every morning. That's a good one.
Speaker 1: Ep says I have an app called my Wife nags Me.
Speaker 1: It's in the She Don't Play Store. My Wife. Yes,
Speaker 1: my wife is one hundred percent her to do list.
Speaker 1: She is so good with the to do list in
Speaker 1: her mind. I don't know how she does it. I
Speaker 1: just don't have a mind like that. I think that
Speaker 1: some people do. Some people don't. And Karen says in
Speaker 1: a notebook, like any respectable dinosaur. Okay, So I will
Speaker 1: tell you my methods, my current method and I've tried
Speaker 1: so many different methods for this, but I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what I'm using right now, and I put this all
Speaker 1: on the website rich on tech dot tv. It's in
Speaker 1: today's show notes. But first, I love this app called
Speaker 1: Whisper Memos. It's only available for the iPhone and the
Speaker 1: Apple Watch, but I've been begging the developer to make
Speaker 1: it on to Android as well because it is so incredible.
Speaker 1: You have it on your Apple Watch. You tap your
Speaker 1: screen on your Apple Watch, it will start recording and
Speaker 1: then it will transcribe what you say with perfect accuracy
Speaker 1: and email it to yourself. So when you get back
Speaker 1: to your inbox, your little to do list, or your memo,
Speaker 1: your note whatever is right there. Now. On my phones
Speaker 1: on iOS, I've got an app called email Me, So
Speaker 1: this is where it's on my home screen. I just tap,
Speaker 1: I type something quick that I need to remember, and
Speaker 1: it sends it right to my inbox. You can also
Speaker 1: share a link or anything you want and it will
Speaker 1: arrive in your inbox. And that's sort of where I
Speaker 1: trioge things. My inbox is sort of my triage where
Speaker 1: once I get back to my inbox on my email,
Speaker 1: I will be like, oh, yeah, okay, I need to
Speaker 1: put this here, file that there, do whatever. The equivalent
Speaker 1: app on Android is called Email Yourself, and I think
Speaker 1: it's a one time fee of a couple dollars or
Speaker 1: so has Email Me. But they're both fantastic. I use
Speaker 1: them every single day of my life. So where do
Speaker 1: my notes actually go? Right now? It's Notion. I've tried
Speaker 1: every single note taking app out there. I find that
Speaker 1: Notion sort of works the way I like. I've gotten
Speaker 1: quite used to its formatting. I don't use a lot
Speaker 1: of the high end options, all the templates and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, but it's a really nice, easy note taking app,
Speaker 1: and the search is really good. Now. As for my
Speaker 1: actual to do list, out of every single to do
Speaker 1: app I've ever tried in my life, I keep coming
Speaker 1: back to the same one. It is Microsoft to Do List.
Speaker 1: What do I love about it? Two things? Number One,
Speaker 1: it works across every platform known to Mankind. The other
Speaker 1: thing I like about it there's three Actually, you can
Speaker 1: set up a new day for every single day, So
Speaker 1: if you like you just want to have your to
Speaker 1: do list for that day, it will put that on
Speaker 1: one list, and then after that day it goes into
Speaker 1: the all list. So if you just want to start
Speaker 1: every day with a fresh list, which I find very helpful,
Speaker 1: Microsoft to do is really good at that. And the
Speaker 1: thing that it does that many other to do lists
Speaker 1: do not do. You can add an actual file to
Speaker 1: your to do list. So, for instance, let's say that
Speaker 1: you needed a PDF of something that would you know
Speaker 1: they're on your to do list involves a PDF. You
Speaker 1: can drag and drop that file into your to do
Speaker 1: item and now that pdf is there. Two other things
Speaker 1: I like for my to do list an app called
Speaker 1: voice Notoes dot com. So I'm an early adopter of this.
Speaker 1: I love this app. There's one thing. It's the same
Speaker 1: thing about the Whisper Memos, very similar, except it's sort
Speaker 1: of a it's its own note taking app. So not
Speaker 1: only can you take voice notes and it transcribes them
Speaker 1: for you, and you could do it on your wrist,
Speaker 1: you could do it on your phone it works across
Speaker 1: both platforms, which I love iPhone and Android. But I've
Speaker 1: been asking the developer to give me the ability to
Speaker 1: email myself my notes because the note sort of lives
Speaker 1: at voice notoes dot com, which is great, and you
Speaker 1: can search and use AI to summarize your notes and
Speaker 1: all this good stuff. But I'd really like if I
Speaker 1: was able to tap one thing on my phone or
Speaker 1: my watch and say, hey, email me a copy of
Speaker 1: what you just did. And then, finally, I still use
Speaker 1: that good old fashioned notepad at work next to my computer.
Speaker 1: I still find that I like to write things down
Speaker 1: that I need to accomplish that day. So there are
Speaker 1: my methods all linked up on the website rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot tv. Hopefully that helps you. And if you
Speaker 1: want to read through all of the comments I got
Speaker 1: on my Facebook page, I linked that up as well,
Speaker 1: because you guys are funny. Yeah, you're really You're really
Speaker 1: witty with your answers. I love it all right eighty
Speaker 1: eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you why big companies are fighting the FTC over its
Speaker 1: new click to cancel rule. Yeah, they want to continue
Speaker 1: to make it tough for you to cancel your subscriptions.
Speaker 1: Give me a call if you have a question about technology,
Speaker 1: we'll talk more tech. My name is Rich Demiro, and
Speaker 1: you are listening to Rich on tech. Let's go to
Speaker 1: uh Tony in the Inland Empire. Tony, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: Rich, thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would like to know.
Speaker 3: I'm interested in purchasing a dash cam, but I need
Speaker 3: something that's economical, easy to install and operate. I don't
Speaker 3: need a lot of bills of whistles. And I also
Speaker 3: want to know should I be looking for one with
Speaker 3: the front and rear camera.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so here's my thing about the front and
Speaker 1: rear camera. I mean, the problem is if the camera,
Speaker 1: the rear camera is not on your bumper, what's the point.
Speaker 1: So I mean I have one with a front and
Speaker 1: rear and it's like, okay, it records inside the cabin,
Speaker 1: which doesn't really do me much good. Right, So I
Speaker 1: think that the thing about the rear camera is unless
Speaker 1: it was on your license plate, which some of them
Speaker 1: do have that capability, but they're much more expensive. It's
Speaker 1: you know, you're not going to get Let's say you
Speaker 1: got rear ended. You're not going to capture that, right.
Speaker 1: So here here's my thoughts. So number one, this is
Speaker 1: a question. I get a lot, and I think that
Speaker 1: when it comes to these dash cams, the recommendations are
Speaker 1: all over the place. So personally I have tested, Uh,
Speaker 1: the brands that are Vava va va. Let's see, the
Speaker 1: other one I like is called what's that one? Well,
Speaker 1: the one that I'm currently using is the ring cam,
Speaker 1: which I really like, but I don't think it uh,
Speaker 1: I think I think they've discontinued it. Let me see
Speaker 1: if it's still available that camera.
Speaker 3: I think you did a story on it or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: first came.
Speaker 1: Out, Yeah they're not, they're not.
Speaker 3: It seems to be a very large.
Speaker 1: No, not really, I mean it's I I think that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one's actually great and actually saved us. The other day,
Speaker 1: my wife got She's probably gonna be mad for me
Speaker 1: saying this, but she got a ticket, uh for not
Speaker 1: paying parking, And I was like, oh, let's check the
Speaker 1: dash cam, and sure enough, you know, not only did
Speaker 1: she pay for the parking, but we had on the
Speaker 1: dash cam her putting the parking pass on her dashboard
Speaker 1: of the car. So I literally have like the video
Speaker 1: of her placing it there, you know. So that's that's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that these work for. I mean,
Speaker 1: and these are also really you know, I think that
Speaker 1: the idea of a dash cam, especially in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: is very very helpful. Is there a reason why you
Speaker 1: want one of these?
Speaker 3: Well, I've always been kind of interested in getting one,
Speaker 3: but just recently with some of the stories that are
Speaker 3: being shown in the news with people backing it into you,
Speaker 3: making it look like a rear in accident type thing,
Speaker 3: and that just makes me, you know, considering just getting one.
Speaker 1: Just because Yeah. Well okay, so I'll tell you this
Speaker 1: so that the brands that I like again are Vava, Vava,
Speaker 1: next Base, I like them, And then I'll tell you
Speaker 1: the brands that are popular online. Wirecutter likes one called
Speaker 1: the Meo five S one that's their best dash cam
Speaker 1: under one hundred dollars. She said, you wanted something cheap,
Speaker 1: but I would also check out van True. That one
Speaker 1: comes up a lot in reviews. People seem to like
Speaker 1: that one, and then the Garment obviously people like that again,
Speaker 1: but I would just personally go to like, if you
Speaker 1: have a membership to Costco, see what they have there.
Speaker 1: They usually have one or two dash cams that are
Speaker 1: a very good value if you go there. But the
Speaker 1: things that you want to look for, obviously are high
Speaker 1: quality video. Four K would be ideal. You want the GPS,
Speaker 1: you want the sensor, the parking sensor so if your
Speaker 1: car gets bumped or hit it will start recording automatically.
Speaker 1: And of course night vision. All that stuff is handy
Speaker 1: as well, and the widest angle you can find. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the call, Tony eight eight eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. We'll get back to the phone lines in
Speaker 1: just a moment. But a very sad and serious story
Speaker 1: this week about a kid in Florida fourteen years old
Speaker 1: apparently kind of had a relationship with an AI character
Speaker 1: and ended up committing suicide. Here to talk about this
Speaker 1: story and some of the takeaways here is doctor Lisa
Speaker 1: stroman clinical psychologist and attorney. Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 4: I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So what was your initial thought when you heard this story?
Speaker 5: You know, it was just gut wrenching. I've been talking
Speaker 5: about AI and deep bakes now for at least two
Speaker 5: years and I'm kind of the chicken little of the
Speaker 5: kind of the psychology of technology world, and when this
Speaker 5: came across, it was just heartbreaking for me to see
Speaker 5: and to know the pain that the family, the mother specifically,
Speaker 5: is going through.
Speaker 1: So The New York Times wrote about this story. Fourteen
Speaker 1: year old boy, I guess he came up with a
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones inspired AI character, the website character dot Ai.
Speaker 1: Now the family is suing because they say that, you know,
Speaker 1: this AI chatbot kind of lured him in, and you know,
Speaker 1: was there Could this happen to anyone? I mean they
Speaker 1: said that this is the ninth grade student mild aspergers,
Speaker 1: but had no serious behavioral or mental health issues before.
Speaker 1: Do you think that this caused it? Or do you
Speaker 1: think that these AI you know programs are going to
Speaker 1: cause more situations like this in the future.
Speaker 5: I think that there's probably a multitude of these situations
Speaker 5: that have already happened that we just haven't seen hit
Speaker 5: the news. I think that Sewell's mom hit is particularly
Speaker 5: adept because she's an attorney herself, to bring this story
Speaker 5: to the forefront. But I've had multiple cases in my
Speaker 5: private practice already. One example is a college student who
Speaker 5: had a full right scholarship straight a student and literally
Speaker 5: went into the world of AI role play just because
Speaker 5: she was feeling lonely and wanted some support and didn't
Speaker 5: leave her dorm room and ended up losing everything, including
Speaker 5: her college career, over it. So it's happening every day,
Speaker 5: and I don't know how to get it out there faster,
Speaker 5: but I do think that some of the kids might
Speaker 5: be more vulnerable and more impulsive. But you know, developmentally,
Speaker 5: this is going to hit them much harder because this
Speaker 5: is where they are, and particularly in the teenage years,
Speaker 5: where they're trying to identify and figure out who they are,
Speaker 5: and you've got an AI companion that is telling them
Speaker 5: that they love them and there's unconditional support and there's
Speaker 5: nothing they could do wrong, and they want to spend the.
Speaker 1: Rest of their lives together.
Speaker 5: It's really hard to compete with in the real world.
Speaker 5: So it's going to get worse before it gets better,
Speaker 5: and we need to put the biggest minds and get
Speaker 5: the training in the schools as quick as possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I tested one of these AI chatbot systems and
Speaker 1: it's pretty wild because number one, I mean, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about you know chatchipt. We're talking about apps that
Speaker 1: are specifically created where you can make a character that
Speaker 1: kind of gets to know you. It talks to you
Speaker 1: like a friend. And by the way, this is twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven, always on, and if you have notifications on,
Speaker 1: it's going to text you out of the blue and say, hey,
Speaker 1: come talk to me, come join me, come hang, and
Speaker 1: you can basically talk to about anything. And I think
Speaker 1: adults have relationships with these ai but again, like you said, kids'
Speaker 1: brains are not fully developed, so I think adults are
Speaker 1: going to have problems with these things too, but kids
Speaker 1: are particularly at risk because of their brains. Have you
Speaker 1: tried one of these things, and what's your take on them?
Speaker 1: Are they evil or is it just we need to
Speaker 1: learn how to deal with this in our world?
Speaker 5: You know, they weren't created for evil. I'll say that,
Speaker 5: you know. Nothing in the tech industry I think was
Speaker 5: created with this nefarious role, like trying to get us
Speaker 5: all like into these dark places. But I think that
Speaker 5: it's interesting how human interaction influences and trains them. So
Speaker 5: when I look at some of these things that I
Speaker 5: have tried, one of the you know, I speak nationally
Speaker 5: on this and I do keynotes all the time. One
Speaker 5: of the apps that I put up was pocket Girl,
Speaker 5: and most adults are parents or educators don't know about it,
Speaker 5: but it literally is an It's an AI derivative with
Speaker 5: a video of a girl and you can talk to her,
Speaker 5: and you can if you look up the app, it'll
Speaker 5: tell you like it's better than having a real girlfriend.
Speaker 5: You have a girlfriend in your pocket at any time,
Speaker 5: and you can tell her what to do, and you
Speaker 5: can imagine the things that this this this girl will
Speaker 5: do for you. So it's you know, of course, like
Speaker 5: I could go in and say like I just want
Speaker 5: to go on a walk, or I want you to
Speaker 5: be my best friend, and I could be like very
Speaker 5: late late or whatever. But you know, you take adolescents
Speaker 5: where they're pushing boundaries and they're curious and all of
Speaker 5: those things, and it gets dark and it gets very
Speaker 5: challenging in terms of like the psychological risks very quickly
Speaker 5: on them.
Speaker 1: So what a parents do, I mean, do you do
Speaker 1: you look on your kid's phone to see if they
Speaker 1: have these now? I mean, and I'm sure you're up
Speaker 1: on this. With this new hidden app drawer on the iPhone,
Speaker 1: with the latest update. I mean, it's gonna be for
Speaker 1: parents that don't really even know that's there to find
Speaker 1: these apps on their kids phone. I mean, how do
Speaker 1: you even where do you start as a parent.
Speaker 5: You know, it's to me as this is what I
Speaker 5: address in my program. I'm like, we've got to give
Speaker 5: power to the kids, because to your point, like they're
Speaker 5: going into Congress, they're testifying they're doing all of these things.
Speaker 5: They're like, hey, look at we're getting parents' controls. And
Speaker 5: at the same time they're releasing things I can nap
Speaker 5: drawers that can give kids like more power to be
Speaker 5: secretive and like do things without the parents knowing. And
Speaker 5: so it truly in my estimation and what I've seen
Speaker 5: work is to talk to the kids about it and
Speaker 5: give them power. When we educate the kids and say hey,
Speaker 5: this is what the industry is doing, this is how
Speaker 5: they're using you, this is how you have now become
Speaker 5: a commodity, and let me show you some of those ways,
Speaker 5: it infuriates them. And then I remind them they are
Speaker 5: the largest technological cohort in history and if we can
Speaker 5: stop allowing big tech to silo them, they can come
Speaker 5: together and make true difference is where they truly have
Speaker 5: better control and they're not getting manipulated by these industries.
Speaker 1: Is there a warning sign for parents to kind of
Speaker 1: I mean, I know kids are on their phones, on
Speaker 1: their devices. You know they're doing I was just taking
Speaker 1: a tour of a high school yesterday and I mean
Speaker 1: half the kids were on their phones in class. Half
Speaker 1: the kids had an AirPod in one ear, which to
Speaker 1: me is totally unacceptable. But you know, it's the reality
Speaker 1: of what you know. These I call them kids, but
Speaker 1: like teenagers are growing up at a completely different time
Speaker 1: where it's always on, you're always connected, and by the way,
Speaker 1: if you're not in on it, all your other friends
Speaker 1: are and you're left out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that it's fundamentally different for parents. It's tough, right,
Speaker 5: So parents need to approach kids with empathy, understanding, and
Speaker 5: curiosity because I think that if we come in and
Speaker 5: we say like, hey, this is how we did it,
Speaker 5: you know, kids are like, we don't really care. And
Speaker 5: I'm happy to provide you a link for your listeners.
Speaker 5: But I wrote a book that they can downlok for
Speaker 5: free called Digital Distress, and it really is about the
Speaker 5: first generation, which is Gen z that has come through
Speaker 5: that is fully digital, and it helps parents understand it
Speaker 5: is a different community, it is a different world, and
Speaker 5: it kind of puts that gap together. It's the best
Speaker 5: I could do to try to kind of scale what
Speaker 5: I know and the knowledge that I have. But parents
Speaker 5: need to understand that kids have more control than we think,
Speaker 5: and they want to do good if given the opportunity,
Speaker 5: and so we just have to have that as a
Speaker 5: synergistic approach and not just come down on them as parents.
Speaker 5: Obviously guidelines and parents have to be parents, but we
Speaker 5: really truly have to get their voice in this if
Speaker 5: we're going to get systemic change.
Speaker 1: And finally, these AI companionship apps versus sort of the
Speaker 1: traditional social media apps. I mean, the AI apps make
Speaker 1: social media seem like a cake walk at this point, right.
Speaker 5: Well, the difference is is right, social media is very interactive,
Speaker 5: like we have the ability to put something out there,
Speaker 5: we're getting something back. AI appears that way, but like
Speaker 5: you have to think, it doesn't know right from wrong.
Speaker 5: AI is completely generative and it robs authentic relationships and
Speaker 5: true boundaries that we have in real life. So you
Speaker 5: can really be totally awful to an AI character and
Speaker 5: they're going to come back and still love you. You can
Speaker 5: be truly inappropriate with an AI character and they're going
Speaker 5: to come back and meet you.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 5: So the addictive and the emotional manipulation that AI provides
Speaker 5: is very, very different than even with social media, which
Speaker 5: I already think is like awful for kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah so do I. I think it's awful for adults
Speaker 1: too half the time. But here we are, all right,
Speaker 1: Doctor Lisa Stroman, you have a website that you want
Speaker 1: folks to visit.
Speaker 5: Sure if they want to go to Digital Citisenacademy dot org.
Speaker 5: There's resources on there, and like I said, I will
Speaker 5: follow up and send you a note with the free
Speaker 5: books for your listeners.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks so much for joining me today. And
Speaker 1: obviously our thoughts are with the family in Orlando, Florida. Uh,
Speaker 1: with this child, it just just sad, sad story.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: Eighty to eight rich one O one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one the website
Speaker 1: for the show rich on tech dot TV. I'll link
Speaker 1: up Lisa's website there as well. Uh. Coming up, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you why big companies, Surprise Surprise, are fighting
Speaker 1: the FTC's new click to cancel rule. They don't want
Speaker 1: to make it easy for you to cancel your subscriptions.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Rich on tech. Let's see a couple
Speaker 1: of people emailed about the dash cams. Neil said, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a dash cams can go in your rear window.
Speaker 1: If it's on your bumper, it's gonna end up getting destroyed. Huh, okay,
Speaker 1: I guess you. And then uh, Steve also said, my
Speaker 1: rear camera is on the back window, So I guess
Speaker 1: that must be a camera that doesn't have the integrated camera.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's better than thing.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: If it sees through your back window, you could see
Speaker 1: the person that kind of came up on you. Okay,
Speaker 1: thanks for those emails. Let's see FTC a couple weeks ago,
Speaker 1: I told you about this click to cancel rule that
Speaker 1: they approved. So this rule says that if you sign
Speaker 1: up for something, the cancelation process has to be just
Speaker 1: as easy. So if you're able to sign up for
Speaker 1: let's say a newspaper subscription online, you should be able
Speaker 1: to go online and cancel that newspaper subscription without jumping
Speaker 1: through a lot of hoops, without having to chat with
Speaker 1: someone without having to interact with an agent, not having
Speaker 1: to go online or phone. I mean, there's just so
Speaker 1: many different ways that they make you kind of cancel
Speaker 1: your subscription versus signing up. Signing up super easy, it's
Speaker 1: super simple. It's a couple of clicks, boom, you're done
Speaker 1: when you go to cancel. Not very easy. And of course,
Speaker 1: if you ever had a gym membership, you know all
Speaker 1: about this. It is nearly impossible. The last time I
Speaker 1: had to cancel a gym membership, I actually used an app.
Speaker 1: It was called true Bill back then. Now it's called
Speaker 1: Rocket Money, but I used it to cancel two memberships.
Speaker 1: One was my gym membership and one was my kid's gym,
Speaker 1: you know, like that those little kid gym things. And
Speaker 1: they both made it really tricky, like you gotta send
Speaker 1: a letter on a Tuesday. It's got to be notarized.
Speaker 1: You got to you know, put your signature in blood
Speaker 1: and then send it with a a I don't know,
Speaker 1: a non forever stamp. You know, it's very very tricky.
Speaker 1: And so I was like, you know what, let me
Speaker 1: see if this app can do this, and sure enough
Speaker 1: it did. It got both of them canceled very easily.
Speaker 1: So FTC's new rule is supposed to go into effect
Speaker 1: in one hundred and eighty days, and it says, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you can, you got to cancel. Make it easy.
Speaker 1: That's that's the bottom line. And when you think there's
Speaker 1: there's companies that don't do this anymore, there are many
Speaker 1: many companies that still do this. I'm gonna I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna mention them by name, but let's just say cable companies.
Speaker 1: There are some audio companies, there are some alarm company
Speaker 1: don't make it easy. Jim's obviously notorious for this. So
Speaker 1: why am I telling this because three industry groups that
Speaker 1: represent a lot of these companies are suing the FTC
Speaker 1: to stop this rule. Those companies are the NCTA, the
Speaker 1: Internet and Television Association, the Electronic Security Association, and the
Speaker 1: Interactive Advertising Bureau. These companies represent a lot of major
Speaker 1: cable companies, a lot of major entertainment companies, a lot
Speaker 1: of major alarm companies, a lot of major just companies
Speaker 1: that don't want you to cancel. I think that's horrible.
Speaker 1: And here's what I think. Why not just make your
Speaker 1: pricing transparent? Why not make your pricing good, And why
Speaker 1: are you trying to get me to stay when I'm leaving?
Speaker 1: Why don't you just have a service that's so great
Speaker 1: that I want to stay? Have you ever tried to
Speaker 1: cancel Netflix? It's so easy that you do it, and
Speaker 1: you're like, wait a second, I shouldn't have done that.
Speaker 1: They don't try to you in with like a better deal. Literally,
Speaker 1: anytime you get an email from Netflix that says the
Speaker 1: price is going up, it says, yeah, your price is
Speaker 1: going up on this day. If you don't like it,
Speaker 1: here's how to cancel, and they give you the link
Speaker 1: to cancel. That's how that is how confident they are
Speaker 1: that you like their service. And yeah, do people cancel
Speaker 1: Netflix all the time all the time. It's easy to cancel,
Speaker 1: it's easy to bring back. Now with Paramount Plus, it's
Speaker 1: easy to cancel. But every time I go to cancel
Speaker 1: Paramount Plus, which is like every other time I subscribe,
Speaker 1: they say, oh, we'll give you three months free, we'll
Speaker 1: give you another month free. So anyway, my point is
Speaker 1: FTC click to cancel is a good thing for us,
Speaker 1: not so good for companies. But hopefully they just give
Speaker 1: better pricing and easier ways of signing up and getting
Speaker 1: rid of it eighty eight rich one oh one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: If you have Amazon Prime, there's a new fuel savings benefit.
Speaker 1: UH save ten cents per gallon at seven thousand BP
Speaker 1: D stations, Amaco and AMPM gas stations across the US.
Speaker 1: They expect you to save about seventy dollars a year
Speaker 1: for Prime members at drive a gas car. Electric vehicle
Speaker 1: charging savings is coming in twenty twenty five with something
Speaker 1: called BP Pulse. I look up online, though it does
Speaker 1: not seem like they have a lot on that BP
Speaker 1: Pulse network. Maybe that's changing because they still have another year.
Speaker 1: But if you want to sign up for this, go
Speaker 1: to Amazon dot com slash Fuel Savings. You have to
Speaker 1: download and create an account with this free Ernifi app,
Speaker 1: and then use the NiFi app to locate the stations
Speaker 1: and then you redeem this at the pump using your
Speaker 1: phone number or your linked payment. I also really really
Speaker 1: like an app called Upside, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's like as guaranteed you know, ten cents per gallon,
Speaker 1: but if you refer your friends, they do give you
Speaker 1: a decent amount off the gas. I think it's like
Speaker 1: fifteen cents, but you have to keep referring people. But
Speaker 1: upside dot com that's another one. I use that all
Speaker 1: the time, not obviously I have an electric car, but
Speaker 1: for my wife's gas, I use that and it's great.
Speaker 1: Saves us money every time. And then also for groceries.
Speaker 1: If you check out at the store with your linked
Speaker 1: credit card or debit card, they give you a certain
Speaker 1: amount of cash back, and it's pretty substantial. Actually, Charlene
Speaker 1: writes in from Hawaiian Gardens, that sounds nice. I have
Speaker 1: a Samsung Galaxy S twenty four phone. When I take photos,
Speaker 1: I move them into separate folders. If I take a
Speaker 1: screenshot or picture of a cat and I move it
Speaker 1: to a folder that same cat, it still puts the
Speaker 1: picture in that folder, but leaves it in the main folder.
Speaker 1: If you try to delete it from the recent folder,
Speaker 1: it delets from the cat folder. Why does it do that?
Speaker 1: And how can I fix the problem, Charlene, This is
Speaker 1: not a problem. This is how it is intended to be.
Speaker 1: So nobody really uses file folders anymore because we can
Speaker 1: search and slice and dice using keywords, and the keywords
Speaker 1: have gotten so good on these programs like Google Photos
Speaker 1: or Samsung's Gallery app or Apple Photos that they don't
Speaker 1: really move the photos into those folders anymore. They always
Speaker 1: remain in the main kind of let's say master folder,
Speaker 1: but it's just putting a link to that photo in
Speaker 1: the cat folder. So you're really just making an album
Speaker 1: that says, oh, these are all the cat pictures. But personally, Charlene,
Speaker 1: there's no real reason to do this unless you have
Speaker 1: a business use or a work use, or you're just
Speaker 1: making an album of like a vacation. Because you can
Speaker 1: always just search whatever you want at any time using keywords,
Speaker 1: So try it on your S twenty four Ultra or
Speaker 1: your S twenty four pol Plus. You can just search
Speaker 1: for a keyword, search mountain, search, cat search, rainbow search sunset,
Speaker 1: and search someone's name. You can name people in your photos.
Speaker 1: That is the best way to organize your photos, which
Speaker 1: to say is there is no reason to organize photos
Speaker 1: anymore unless you are making an album that you were
Speaker 1: sharing with someone, or you run a small business and
Speaker 1: you want to show everyone all the bathrooms that you've
Speaker 1: ever remodeled, something like that. But otherwise, next time you
Speaker 1: need a cat picture, just search cat eight of eight
Speaker 1: Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one, ED in Fullerton, California.
Speaker 4: Ed, you're on with rich him calling about my Samsung
Speaker 4: Galaxy Flip four phone. It's I can I can receive
Speaker 4: calls and hear them, but they cannot hear me. It's garbled.
Speaker 4: The transmission is garbled.
Speaker 1: Staticky, are you on it right now?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, I was gonna say, you sound great right now?
Speaker 1: So how long has this been going on?
Speaker 4: This is, uh, three or four days now?
Speaker 1: Oh, three or four days, okay, So it's not it's
Speaker 1: not been a long time. It's just been a couple
Speaker 1: of days.
Speaker 4: Phone is just finished paying for it. It's two years old.
Speaker 1: Oh well that's when they break down. Ed, Come on,
Speaker 1: everyone knows that.
Speaker 4: Of course, it's got a couple other issues, but this
Speaker 4: is the the current one that makes an inoperative.
Speaker 1: So every single person you call, it's garbled.
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, half a dozen times with different people.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, and you've restarted the phone? I take it. No, okay.
Speaker 1: So first thing, okay, Well that's okay, you turned it
Speaker 1: off and turn it back on.
Speaker 4: No, I didn't restart got it?
Speaker 1: Okay? So what I would do is restart the phone
Speaker 1: and see if that helps. That may just you know,
Speaker 1: Samsung phones sometimes as software can get a little uh
Speaker 1: you know, little laggy, a little clogged up, and a
Speaker 1: nice reset will help. There's also some uh some optimization
Speaker 1: tasks inside the settings which I would look through, and
Speaker 1: there's a there's actually a just an optimized now, a
Speaker 1: big optimized now button. So if you go into Settings
Speaker 1: Device Care and it'll say optimized now, I would click
Speaker 1: that and it will go through and kind of detect
Speaker 1: anything that messing with your phone. If it's a software problem.
Speaker 1: This could be a physical problem or a hardware problem,
Speaker 1: but I doubt it because it's two years old and
Speaker 1: you've been using it. The other thing I would do
Speaker 1: is make sure all of the software is up to date.
Speaker 1: So have you've done all the major software updates for
Speaker 1: this phonematically does that in the middle of the night, okay,
Speaker 1: so make sure. I would just go through and just
Speaker 1: you know, make sure on Google Play all those are updated.
Speaker 1: Go through on the Samsung software Update and you know
Speaker 1: they have a main software update, just double check that
Speaker 1: to make sure those are up to date. I love
Speaker 1: software updates, so I'm always looking for those, but I
Speaker 1: know the average person is.
Speaker 4: A care another symptom. That's when I used to open
Speaker 4: it up, it would populate the home screen immediately. Now
Speaker 4: it's three or four seconds before that screen shows up.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I mean it sounds like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: two years old, so you probably have a couple of
Speaker 1: apps on there and things like that over the years
Speaker 1: that have built up. So what I would also do,
Speaker 1: and I always recommend this, is go through your list
Speaker 1: of apps, uninstall any apps that you no longer need
Speaker 1: or want, because that will help the phone not to
Speaker 1: load so many things in the background when you're first
Speaker 1: loading the loading up this device. So I would do that.
Speaker 1: I've done that, okay, And then the other thing I
Speaker 1: would do is once you do all the other steps,
Speaker 1: So once you've done everything and you've gotten this phone,
Speaker 1: you know, you've done the software updates, you've done the
Speaker 1: you know, the the app cleaning, all that good stuff,
Speaker 1: you've done, the the maintenance and the device care, I
Speaker 1: would go through and there's a there's a feature where
Speaker 1: you can kind of reset your settings, and so if
Speaker 1: you type in if you go into your about phone
Speaker 1: at the bottom, it says reset, and there's actually a
Speaker 1: reset mobile network settings, and so you can reset your
Speaker 1: mobile network settings and it will be fine. It'll just
Speaker 1: kind of clear out your network and bring it back
Speaker 1: again once the phone restarts. But I would do that
Speaker 1: and maybe that will bring back the clear calls. The
Speaker 1: other thing, and this may be a small thing. You
Speaker 1: might just have some gunk, some lint that is stuck
Speaker 1: in the bottom of your phone. I would also maybe
Speaker 1: take a little bit of canned air and kind of
Speaker 1: gently just look in that area and maybe gently blow
Speaker 1: out that area as well. There's some microphones and things
Speaker 1: on the bottom of the phone, and sometimes even with
Speaker 1: Samsung phones, I've noticed the way you hold them, your
Speaker 1: finger could be on that microphone on the bottom, which
Speaker 1: really messes it up and people can't hear you if
Speaker 1: your finger happens to lay on that microphone on the
Speaker 1: bottom of the phone. Those are the things I would
Speaker 1: check out and ed hopefully that will fix your device,
Speaker 1: if not bring it into a maybe like a you
Speaker 1: break I Fix or even your carrier store if you
Speaker 1: have a main carrier, and you can hopefully get some
Speaker 1: help that way if it's maybe a hardware issue. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the call. Do appreciate it? Got an email from
Speaker 1: Whitney in Los Angeles. Whitney says, Hey, what do you
Speaker 1: think of the new promotion that Verizon is having a
Speaker 1: free iPhone sixteen in exchange for whatever phone you have? Now?
Speaker 1: Is there a catch? And if there isn't, why are
Speaker 1: they doing it? What are they gaining? You only have
Speaker 1: to pay the tax and one monthly bill. It doesn't
Speaker 1: increase either. Thank you love all the stuff you post
Speaker 1: and I listen to you on the radio, et cetera. Well,
Speaker 1: here is the catch, Whitney. The catch is yes, uh,
Speaker 1: you are on the hook for thirty six months for
Speaker 1: this free phone. So let's do a little bit of math. Okay.
Speaker 1: So number one, just looking at this the details of
Speaker 1: this promotion, you have to have the Ultimate Unlimited plan.
Speaker 1: Now this is for thirty six months. The Ultimate Unlimited
Speaker 1: plan is one hundred dollars a month times thirty six months,
Speaker 1: that's thirty six hundred dollars. Okay. Plus you're giving them
Speaker 1: your old phone. Let's just say your old phone is
Speaker 1: worth three hundred dollars, okay, So that's now thirty nine
Speaker 1: hundred dollars that this company has on your that you
Speaker 1: are giving them, and they're giving you a free phone,
Speaker 1: which costs Let's see, usually they're giving you like a
Speaker 1: eight hundred and twenty nine dollars, So nine eight hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty nine dollars. Okay, Now they're giving that over
Speaker 1: thirty six months, so you must stay a customer with
Speaker 1: them for thirty six months. If you leave, you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to pay the difference. Now, let's just say you
Speaker 1: are a customer of another company, and let's say you
Speaker 1: just got an unlimited plan very similar to the Verizon plan.
Speaker 1: Let's say you went to US Mobile. That's forty four
Speaker 1: dollars a month for their unlimited plan, which uses the
Speaker 1: Verizon network, and that's thirty six months. That's fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty four dollars over thirty six months. So if
Speaker 1: we subtract thirty six hundred, if we actually say thirty
Speaker 1: nine hundred, I know, keep with me with this math.
Speaker 1: So we said thirty nine hundred dollars to Verizon, you're
Speaker 1: paying fifteen hundred and eighty four dollars to US Mobile
Speaker 1: over that same time period. That would leave you with
Speaker 1: the balance of twenty three hundred and sixteen dollars on
Speaker 1: the table. Verizon's giving you a phone for eight hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty nine dollars. So what do they get out
Speaker 1: of the deal. They get you for a customer for
Speaker 1: three years, and they're making the difference between twenty three
Speaker 1: sixteen minus eight twenty nine, So they're also making an
Speaker 1: extra fifteen hundred dollars in the process for your free phone. So, yes,
Speaker 1: big companies do not do things out of the kindness
Speaker 1: of their heart for you. So my and here's my
Speaker 1: advice on this. If you're sticking with a Verizon or
Speaker 1: an AT and T or a T Mobile and you'll
Speaker 1: want to do the free phone plan, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to fault you for it. Just understand that they are
Speaker 1: not doing this out of the kindness of their heart.
Speaker 1: They're doing it because they make money on the deal
Speaker 1: and it's convenient for you. It's zero percent interest on
Speaker 1: the finance charges and all that stuff. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, they're actually making money on this
Speaker 1: deal fifteen hundred dollars to be exact, depending on the plan. Now,
Speaker 1: if you did a Mint Mobile plan, which is even
Speaker 1: cheaper thirty dollars a month for unlimited and by the way,
Speaker 1: there's other unlimited plans that are inexpensive as well. That's
Speaker 1: even more money that they are netting on this deal.
Speaker 1: So that's what's happening here with this deal. With these
Speaker 1: free deals, the carriers love them because it keeps you
Speaker 1: connected to them for three more years. And by the way,
Speaker 1: that plan isn't just a hundred dollars a month. There
Speaker 1: are also taxes. There are fees, you know, all the
Speaker 1: other add ons and things. You want to talk to
Speaker 1: a customer service representative, they may they may charge you
Speaker 1: for that. So again that is the catch. But if
Speaker 1: you're comfortable with understanding how these things work, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to fault you for doing that. It's it's just fine.
Speaker 1: Uh eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. The website
Speaker 1: for the show is rich on tech dot TV. A
Speaker 1: couple things you can do there. Number one, sign up
Speaker 1: for my newsletter. I've got a brand new newsletter on
Speaker 1: the front page right now, so click through there, put
Speaker 1: in your email address. The newsletter is free. You can
Speaker 1: join over thirty four how many people do we have
Speaker 1: on there? Over thirty four thousand people get that newsletter
Speaker 1: every week. So rest assured a lot of people are
Speaker 1: reading that and enjoying the tips and tricks that I
Speaker 1: share there. You can also hit the contact button up
Speaker 1: at the top if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with me, send an email to me, and if you
Speaker 1: hit the light bulb, that will give you you a
Speaker 1: link to the show notes. Everything I mentioned is in
Speaker 1: the show notes. All right, coming up, we've got a
Speaker 1: lot more. I'm gonna tell you about Amazon's new Wi
Speaker 1: Fi system for your backyard. Plus, we've got an in
Speaker 1: studio guest. The guy who invented the attachable lenses for
Speaker 1: the iPhone is here in person, and he's back with
Speaker 1: a new accessory to the AirPods. We will talk to
Speaker 1: Patrick O'Neil coming up right here on rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Patrick in Colorado Springs. Let's see here is that line three?
Speaker 1: There we go, Patrick, You're on with rich Hi.
Speaker 6: Rich, thanks for taking my call from Mile High City. Here.
Speaker 6: I have a question for you about an Apple Nano Before,
Speaker 6: I want to compliment you on a Q story you
Speaker 6: told about your mom about two or three weeks ago.
Speaker 6: It showed that in addition to being in a wizard electronically,
Speaker 6: you have a nice human side and sometime you should
Speaker 6: repeat that. I thought it was lovely my nano. Question
Speaker 6: is what would you recommend to replace my nano If
Speaker 6: I don't want to use a refurbished nano? Thank you.
Speaker 6: I tried to Sony and I'm not happy with it.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Okay, you still want an iPod nano. So the website
Speaker 1: I'm gonna recommend it is going to be refurbished. But
Speaker 1: they they there's a lot of heart behind the refurbishment.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, getting a new iPod nano is going
Speaker 1: to require a trip to eBay, and you know, you
Speaker 1: never know what you're gonna get, and who knows how
Speaker 1: much you're gonna pay there. But there is a website
Speaker 1: that I think you're gonna like, Patrick called retro spect
Speaker 1: r E t R O s P e k T
Speaker 1: dot com. And where are they out of? I think
Speaker 1: they're out of like Minnesota or something. Let's see where
Speaker 1: are they about us? I don't know where they are,
Speaker 1: but they're somewhere and they take gadgets and they they
Speaker 1: put a lot of TLC into them and they I mean,
Speaker 1: the video on their website is amazing. I've been trying
Speaker 1: to arrange a trip out there. To like actually meet
Speaker 1: with these people because you'll be very impressed with what
Speaker 1: they do. So their categories are music, polaroid, photography, VHS, gaming,
Speaker 1: all the old consoles, timekeeping books, typewriters, and all kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff. So you go to this website and iPods
Speaker 1: are on there. So if we go, they have record players, turntables,
Speaker 1: but it's all old school stuff that they've taken and
Speaker 1: made new again. And the way I found out about
Speaker 1: them was actually I think they had like a collaboration
Speaker 1: with Urban Outfitters where they had a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: these devices that they redid and they kind of refurbished
Speaker 1: and they sold them there and of course they sold
Speaker 1: out very quickly. But if you look on here, you'll
Speaker 1: see the iPods. They've got pretty much every iPod, and
Speaker 1: the conditions are vintage, refurbished, are pretty much the condition
Speaker 1: they've got the iPods shuffle, they've got the fourth generation
Speaker 1: like original iPods, and they go through and make sure
Speaker 1: these things are perfectly back to spec like almost to
Speaker 1: when they were new, so they'll replace the batteries, the screen,
Speaker 1: get the scratches off of them. It's quite impressive. Now,
Speaker 1: I will tell you the prices probably match the TLC
Speaker 1: that these things get, so something like an iPod shuffle
Speaker 1: seventy nine dollars, iPod Mini first generation one seventy nine.
Speaker 1: All these things are not cheap. But that's probably your
Speaker 1: best bet is going to that website and check it out.
Speaker 1: It's retrospect dot com r E t r O s
Speaker 1: p e kt dot com. Really cool place. And now
Speaker 1: that I see this website, they've been bugging me to
Speaker 1: come out there and do a story. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: when am I gonna go to Minnesota to do a story?
Speaker 1: But I think wherever they are, I gotta go and
Speaker 1: do this because now I'm just seeing it. It's just
Speaker 1: super super cool stuff. Thanks for the call there, Patrick
Speaker 1: in Colorado Springs. Not sure what the story was. I
Speaker 1: told about my mom, but I tell a lot of stories.
Speaker 1: You know, I am a human that's just interested in technology,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not a robot. If you want that, go
Speaker 1: to chat ebt. You could give you answers to all
Speaker 1: this stuff. In fact, you know, Apple's trying to put
Speaker 1: me out of business because their new iOS eighteen software
Speaker 1: eighteen point one. You can ask it how to do
Speaker 1: almost anything on the iPhone and it will tell you
Speaker 1: so if you need help with like they basically put
Speaker 1: the entire user guide for the iPhone built into Siri now,
Speaker 1: so coming next week when that new software update comes out,
Speaker 1: you can ask it anything and it will tell you
Speaker 1: the step by step directions on how to do that.
Speaker 1: So kind of cool there eighty eight rich one on
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. And I joke, there's always going to be
Speaker 1: a place for a human in every aspect of life.
Speaker 1: Believe me, I'm the number one early adopter of every
Speaker 1: technology you can imagine, and yet sometimes I find myself saying,
Speaker 1: I'd rather go to the human cashier versus the self
Speaker 1: checkout system because it's gonna be quicker and easier. And
Speaker 1: by the way, sometimes it's fun to talk to someone
Speaker 1: at the grocery store or whatever, but most of the
Speaker 1: time I am going self checkout if they have a
Speaker 1: good system. By the way, if you want fast internet
Speaker 1: in your backyard, Amazon, you know they own euro e Er.
Speaker 1: They've got their new outdoor Wi Fi system, so it's
Speaker 1: called the Outdoor seven by euro It's launching on November thirteenth.
Speaker 1: It's the company's first weather resistant Wi Fi Mesh system
Speaker 1: and it works with your existing euro system. It's not cheap,
Speaker 1: it's three hundred and fifty dollars, but this is going
Speaker 1: to extend your coverage up to fifteen thousand square feet outdoors.
Speaker 1: So not only is this going to be great for
Speaker 1: people that need Wi Fi outside at their home in
Speaker 1: their backyard. Let's say you've a nice pool setup or whatever,
Speaker 1: you have a shed in the back, or you want
Speaker 1: to just extend that network outside, but also business owners.
Speaker 1: So if you run a business, a small business, you
Speaker 1: have a cafe and you have a nice outdoor patio.
Speaker 1: People love their Wi Fi. They love that free Wi Fi,
Speaker 1: so this will do it. They tested it in all
Speaker 1: kinds of temperatures from negative forty to one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty degrees fahrenheit, so you're going to be fine there.
Speaker 1: It's got Wi Fi seven speeds so up to two
Speaker 1: point one gigabits per second, works as a smart home hub,
Speaker 1: and it's got mounting hardware so you can put it
Speaker 1: on the wall. You can install it via power over Ethernet,
Speaker 1: or you can get the optional outdoor adapter if you
Speaker 1: want to just plug it into a standard outlet and
Speaker 1: you can connect multiple units. So let's say you own
Speaker 1: a winery out in the middle of you know, the nowhere.
Speaker 1: You can put three of these on your network on
Speaker 1: your yard and have Wi Fi everywhere. But you don't
Speaker 1: need Wi Fi at a winery. You want to be
Speaker 1: out in the middle of Sandy Nez without Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: That's why I like going there, because there's no Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I'll put the link on the website. Rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot TV in the show notes that is
Speaker 1: Eero Outdoor seven. All right, coming up, we've got a
Speaker 1: special guest in studio. Very exciting. This is only like
Speaker 1: the third time we've actually had someone come here to
Speaker 1: the studio to chat. Always happy when people do this.
Speaker 1: You've got Patrick O'Neil. He invented the original I don't
Speaker 1: know if you remember these things used to clip like
Speaker 1: a lens onto your iPhone. Well he's back with a
Speaker 1: new invention and it involves the air pods. So we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about that coming up. Patrick, you're ready
Speaker 1: for that. I don't even know if your mike's on
Speaker 1: just yet. Okay, well his mike's on yet, but but
Speaker 1: he's ready. Our MIC's are not ready. Okay, we're going
Speaker 1: to break eight to eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: We'll get back to the phone lines after our interview.
Speaker 1: But Patrick O'Neill coming up next right here on rich
Speaker 1: On Tech joining me in studio. Patrick O'Neill, Patrick invented,
Speaker 1: lifelong entrepreneur, but you probably know him best for his
Speaker 1: olo clip invention. These were those lenses that you would
Speaker 1: snap onto your iPhone back in the day before the
Speaker 1: iPhone had multiple lenses built in that would give you
Speaker 1: a close up or a wide angle lens. And now
Speaker 1: he's back with a new three D printed accessory for
Speaker 1: the AirPods. Patrick, Welcome into the studio.
Speaker 7: Thank you. Rich great to be here.
Speaker 1: So give me kind of a little bit of the
Speaker 1: history of the olaclip before we get to the new stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're lifelong Apple fan, and what made you
Speaker 1: come up with the snap on lenses.
Speaker 7: Well, I've been an inventor my whole life. I've invented
Speaker 7: lots of different things. But when I had the original iPhone,
Speaker 7: and I've always been into photography. I've come from a
Speaker 7: family photographer, So when I got the iPhone iPhone four
Speaker 7: had a great camera, and I thought if we could
Speaker 7: only put interchangeable lenses on that, that would be amazing. And
Speaker 7: I came up with a really unique idea for how
Speaker 7: to mount it and have lenses on either side and
Speaker 7: be able to just flip it and go between. And
Speaker 7: we got loads of patents on that, and Apple was
Speaker 7: our first retail customer for that product, and Apple we
Speaker 7: were in every Apple store in the world for ten years.
Speaker 7: It was their fantastic company to work with.
Speaker 1: How did that feel to I mean, was that your
Speaker 1: first first item you invented or did you have other
Speaker 1: stuff before that?
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 7: I'd invented other items, but nothing at that scale, and
Speaker 7: nothing that was sold in any big retail stores.
Speaker 1: So stuff that had.
Speaker 7: Been sold online or things like that, but that, No,
Speaker 7: that was in the Apple store when I was inventing
Speaker 7: the product. Was you know, that was the ultimate That
Speaker 7: was mount everest for where this product could be sold.
Speaker 7: And the fact that they came to us and they
Speaker 7: were our first customer for retail was just I mean,
Speaker 7: it makes my you know, my hair stand up just
Speaker 7: thinking about it.
Speaker 1: How many times did you walk into the Apple store
Speaker 1: just to see your product on the shelf. I think
Speaker 1: every location.
Speaker 7: Every time I was in a different city, I would
Speaker 7: go to the Apple store and see it. I've been
Speaker 7: to so many Apple stores all over the world. I
Speaker 7: remember going to the Apple store in Hong Kong and
Speaker 7: I mentioned to one of the guys who worked there
Speaker 7: that or one of the guys who worked there told
Speaker 7: another guy, oh, this is Patrick, he invented the old clip.
Speaker 7: And the guy could not speak for like ten minutes,
Speaker 7: and I'm like, I'm like, I'm just a normal person.
Speaker 7: I just happened to invent things because.
Speaker 1: The guy probably sold so many of them over the years.
Speaker 1: By the way, I heard of a really cool app
Speaker 1: for the Apple Store. And if you know this app,
Speaker 1: it's called Facades. Have you heard of this? No kind
Speaker 1: of a It lists every single Apple store in the world,
Speaker 1: and then you can check into each one of them
Speaker 1: and keep a history of all your Apple store visits.
Speaker 1: So the app is Facades fac a d S. I
Speaker 1: will link it up on the website rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot TV because I've been I haven't been to as
Speaker 1: many as you have, I'm sure, but like I remember
Speaker 1: going into the one in Italy and it was just
Speaker 1: so each one is just so unique and different, and
Speaker 1: you know, only Apple can have over five hundred incredible
Speaker 1: stores with the architecture and things that they have, you
Speaker 1: know like that. So Okay, you did oloclip and that
Speaker 1: was very successful. Now you're onto something. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: we know what happened. Apple ended up building those lenses
Speaker 1: into the phone. Where you devastated or had you had
Speaker 1: that much success by that time where you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I can accept this at this point.
Speaker 7: No, I wasn't devastated at all. I mean, some people
Speaker 7: that create products and software for Apple, they get upset
Speaker 7: when Apple adds a feature that might be part of
Speaker 7: their product or their app called sherlocking. Yeah, and I
Speaker 7: don't see it that way at all. In fact, I
Speaker 7: don't even know. I don't even get that because our
Speaker 7: job is people that develop products, is to take what
Speaker 7: the manufacturer gives us and add something to it. And
Speaker 7: the manufacturer needs to push the base product along and
Speaker 7: keep making it better to make the users want to
Speaker 7: buy the product so that we can invent something new
Speaker 7: to add to it. And if if the manufacturer just
Speaker 7: sits still and goes well, I can't put any lenses
Speaker 7: on this camera because Patrick has a fish eye and
Speaker 7: a wide angle and a macro, so we can't do that.
Speaker 7: That's his Yeah, you know, I mean that's ridiculous to
Speaker 7: expect that, and it's it's not healthy for the ecosystem
Speaker 7: to look at it that way. And I think we've
Speaker 7: got responsibility, is people that develop and invent products, to
Speaker 7: just keep pushing. We can't sit back on our laurels.
Speaker 1: And I think I think Apple has given inventors an
Speaker 1: amazing place to start with all of the ways you
Speaker 1: can connect to the iPhone, you know, mag safe, and
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say the iPhone part of the
Speaker 1: appeal is how many accessories are available for it. You know,
Speaker 1: you look at like the Samsung and the Pixels of
Speaker 1: the world. It's like there's just not as many accessories.
Speaker 1: And it's just because those phones change so much and
Speaker 1: they have, you know, maybe the customer base isn't there
Speaker 1: as much anyway. So let's talk about the new product.
Speaker 1: What is the new product called and what are you
Speaker 1: doing unique this time?
Speaker 7: This is the Jura anchor for air pods, and it
Speaker 7: allows you to attach your air pods. It has a
Speaker 7: caribiner that plugs into the port, whether it be Lightning
Speaker 7: or USBC. Now, the USBC is brand new that we've
Speaker 7: just come out with, and it's a titanium carabiner that
Speaker 7: looks really amazing. It's a single piece design so that
Speaker 7: the properties of the titanium are flexible, so it lets
Speaker 7: us make the spring and the whole structure of the
Speaker 7: caribiner in one piece. And then the part on top
Speaker 7: the connects, the connector to the air pods is three
Speaker 7: D printed, so that the one you're holding is the
Speaker 7: black carbon fiber that looks really cool. That's the most
Speaker 7: popular one. And then we have orange and we also
Speaker 7: have lunar gray.
Speaker 1: So imagine you know, you throw your air pods in
Speaker 1: your bag, you can never find them when you eat them.
Speaker 1: This is a way where you can actually clip it
Speaker 1: to something and find them every time. What if people
Speaker 1: clip these two typically their backpack.
Speaker 7: Or backpack or their purse or I'd like, personally, I'd
Speaker 7: like to clip it to my belt loop on my
Speaker 7: pants so it's hanging just in front of my front
Speaker 7: pocket and then I can single handedly open it up
Speaker 7: with one hand, get an AirPod out, put it in
Speaker 7: and it's just right there and it's not taking room
Speaker 7: in my pocket, and I don't have to fish around
Speaker 7: at the bottom of my pocket to get it out
Speaker 7: when I need it, I can just quickly get it
Speaker 7: and it's it's just there. And so it just makes
Speaker 7: it so much easier to you know, have air pods
Speaker 7: to usually accessible.
Speaker 1: Because if they're in your bag or they're in your
Speaker 1: you know, purse or whatever you're gonna you know, the
Speaker 1: time it takes you to find them. You may not
Speaker 1: use them for that phone call, you may not use
Speaker 1: them for the music whatever you're going to do. But
Speaker 1: this will make you find them quicker. How tough was
Speaker 1: it to get this to be secure?
Speaker 7: It was very, very tough spent. I mean we spent
Speaker 7: so much engineering time and effort on perfecting this and
Speaker 7: it Yeah, I mean we had we had to create
Speaker 7: our own connectors. We have to create everything. I mean,
Speaker 7: there's so many things engineered in that and such to
Speaker 7: such a fine tolerance. I mean, the products that I
Speaker 7: typically invent look very simple, and that's a compliment.
Speaker 1: This looks like a very simple thing.
Speaker 7: There's a lot of technology, engineering and tolerance involved in
Speaker 7: that work. Yeah, we we deal in hundreds of a
Speaker 7: millimeter wow, in designing, producing, and also making sure that
Speaker 7: the product that goes out the door meets all those standards.
Speaker 7: The first thing a lot of people think when they
Speaker 7: see this product is they laugh and they go, nah,
Speaker 7: my AirPods are going to fall off. I'm gonna lose
Speaker 7: my air pods. They convince themselves of that. So, I mean,
Speaker 7: I've got a little demo here I brought. I brought a.
Speaker 1: Little uh wow, I've got a little uh. We're clipping
Speaker 1: the onto a pair of weights.
Speaker 7: It looks like, yeah, these are well, these are half pound.
Speaker 1: Each half pound weights, Okay, and we're clipping it and
Speaker 1: we're pulling it and so it's staying attached to the
Speaker 1: AirPods even when it's hanging with the weights. And I'll
Speaker 1: take a picture of this so you can see it
Speaker 1: and I'll post it on the notes. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's staying in there. That's impressive. How much do these
Speaker 1: things cost?
Speaker 7: These are twenty dollars for the zinc carabiner and they're
Speaker 7: twenty five for the titanium.
Speaker 1: Now, the unique thing you're doing is you're making them
Speaker 1: three D printed. Explain that aspect of it, well.
Speaker 7: I mean tooling for injection molding, which is what we
Speaker 7: did with the original one, which is the lightning connector
Speaker 7: is very expensive. In fact, we did that. We launched
Speaker 7: that product on Kickstarter just before the original AirPod Pro launched,
Speaker 7: and when the air Pod Pro launched, the Kickstarter was
Speaker 7: over when it launched. But when we got the product,
Speaker 7: we we figured out that it wouldn't attach to their
Speaker 7: pots pro securely, so we had to redesign the tooling.
Speaker 8: The case was slightly slightly was like even though it's
Speaker 8: less than a millimeter, even though it was the same,
Speaker 8: we redesigned the tooling right and it was that was
Speaker 8: over ten thousand dollars costs and that's and all you
Speaker 8: can make is that one thing.
Speaker 7: So with three D printing, we can change the product
Speaker 7: as we go. The product's a digital living product. Now
Speaker 7: we get version numbers to each each design, just like
Speaker 7: you do with software.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's amazing. And what's the name though, it's still
Speaker 1: the Jura anchor, but this is what's what does that
Speaker 1: name mean?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 1: Jura jurors A.
Speaker 7: It's an island off the coast of Scotland, the west
Speaker 7: coast of Scotland. And we went on a trip there
Speaker 7: in twenty eighteen with the whole family and we loved it.
Speaker 7: And my father in law would talk about the paps
Speaker 7: of Jura because he was in the Submarine Force in
Speaker 7: the Royal Navy. And then when you would come out
Speaker 7: of fast Lane Submarine Base in Scotland, you would go
Speaker 7: past the paps of Dura before you submerge, and he
Speaker 7: was the navigator, so he'd be up on the tower
Speaker 7: and see them.
Speaker 1: So and now you attached the Jura to your air
Speaker 1: pods and enjoy. So I'll post the image so you
Speaker 1: can see what they look like on my Instagram at
Speaker 1: rich On Tech check my stories. But I really really
Speaker 1: such a simple design, such a simple thing. Now we're again, okay,
Speaker 1: So Apple added this little lanyard item an he plans
Speaker 1: to take advantage of that.
Speaker 7: We did take advantage of that. Rich When the AirPods
Speaker 7: Probe too came out a year ago with USBC, I thought, well,
Speaker 7: lanyard attachments there will include the lanyard in every box
Speaker 7: and job done. Don't need to tool up for USBC.
Speaker 7: We're done. We got so many complaints from our customers.
Speaker 7: We got so many returns on Amazon. People were not happy.
Speaker 7: People love the attachment to the connector because it puts
Speaker 7: it in right orientation, and also it doesn't flop around
Speaker 7: as much when you're wearing it that way. Yeah, because
Speaker 7: it's more secure. It's more of stable platform than having
Speaker 7: that lanyard whip around, so it's a better experience. Incredible,
Speaker 7: we tried it. Did you ever get to meet Steve Jobs?
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 7: I'm very sad about that, but I've met a lot
Speaker 7: of other famous people like Tim Cook has one of these,
Speaker 7: and a lot of amazing people. I've met so many
Speaker 7: people at Apple, and they're an incredible company to work with.
Speaker 7: I've loved every minute of work.
Speaker 1: And you probably can't talk about ninety percent of what
Speaker 1: they know ninety nine percent. They're very secretive company.
Speaker 7: Well no, they've taught me.
Speaker 1: Well, all right, what is the website to go to?
Speaker 7: It's go Dura with a j dot com.
Speaker 1: Okay, and you've got a special deal we do.
Speaker 7: We've got a special deal for rich on Tech listeners
Speaker 7: which is fifteen percent off, and also we're going to
Speaker 7: also include anyone who uses the rich on Tech discount code.
Speaker 7: We're also going to include the Lightning connector in the
Speaker 7: box as well as the USBC, So this means it
Speaker 7: will work with every version of AirPods ever made by Apple.
Speaker 7: So if you're thinking about getting a gift for a
Speaker 7: friend or a grandkid or whoever, you can rest a
Speaker 7: shirt if you buy this, it will work with their
Speaker 7: AirPods no matter which version they have.
Speaker 1: Amazing Go Jura Juara dot com. Rich on Tech. Fifteen
Speaker 1: is the code to save fifteen percent. Patrick O'Neil, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining me here in studio.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you for having me Rich. It's been fun.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back rich on Tech dot TV. I'll
Speaker 1: put all the information and check the Instagram stories. I'll
Speaker 1: put it there too at rich on Tech. Brian in Westport, Washington,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Good afternoon, Rich, Hi, good afternoon.
Speaker 2: I've been corresponding with my state health plan, but somewhere
Speaker 2: along the way somehow scammers got wind of it and
Speaker 2: started trying to scam me out of personal information cool
Speaker 2: primarily by voice phoning. By facts is how I've been
Speaker 2: letting them know things.
Speaker 1: Facts you saw, Facts would.
Speaker 2: Know about the facts number and all that I don't know.
Speaker 2: So I'm wondering the tech guy would be able to
Speaker 2: tell me what they're probably doing and why, what they
Speaker 2: helped to get out of it. All there is personal
Speaker 2: information about myself and my family. I have no idea
Speaker 2: what they else they would get out of it. What
Speaker 2: do you think?
Speaker 1: Well, the fax machine's an easy one because there are
Speaker 1: no more fax machines. So if you have the one
Speaker 1: last number, they probably just looked that up online and
Speaker 1: found that. But all joking aside the uh here, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you how this typically happens. And typically they have
Speaker 1: hacked your email. Are you sure your email is secure?
Speaker 2: Oh? I go to a local faccinge place like a
Speaker 2: UPS store something like that in facts and numbers, So
Speaker 2: you think that that could be an UPS store might
Speaker 2: get hacked or something.
Speaker 1: It could be if you're using a public computer or
Speaker 1: a public facts I mean the information definitely, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: how much I mean we talked? So okay, So let
Speaker 1: me get this straight. Your corresponding with this company, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you've started to get emails and
Speaker 1: phone calls and faxes related to what you talk to
Speaker 1: this company about that was personal and private that no
Speaker 1: one else would have known. I guess that answers it all.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Look, I mean, so there is a known scam where
Speaker 1: actually when people are buying a house or doing things
Speaker 1: like these large transactions where this kind of man in
Speaker 1: the middle type scam where they will find this information,
Speaker 1: the email will be hacked and they will they will
Speaker 1: take that information and use it against you. So they'll
Speaker 1: know that you are selling a house, they know that
Speaker 1: you're doing a large transaction, and they will insert themselves
Speaker 1: in between you and the actual person and say, hey,
Speaker 1: here's where you need to transfer your money. We're all
Speaker 1: ready to go, and they'll give you fake account numbers.
Speaker 1: And this is pretty well documented and typically how it
Speaker 1: happens is one aspect of that, you know, email chain
Speaker 1: or phone chain is hacked in some way, could be
Speaker 1: your computer could be monitoring software. But that's generally how
Speaker 1: it happens. I think that in this case, with the
Speaker 1: public use of you know, with the use of sort
Speaker 1: of public machines, public facts, that's probably where this leak occurred.
Speaker 1: Maybe someone found something on the fax machine, maybe the
Speaker 1: person that used it after you, they were still print
Speaker 1: out or something like that. So i'd be always be
Speaker 1: very very careful when you're using public facilities when emailing
Speaker 1: or faxing or any of that sort of exchange of information.
Speaker 1: In fact, I talked about my newsletter last weekend. How
Speaker 1: when I interviewed the head of security for Google a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, she said the one thing to
Speaker 1: never ever do is to use a computer in a
Speaker 1: hotel lobby. She said, they're so riddled with spyware and
Speaker 1: scams and things like that people install malware on them
Speaker 1: that she would never touch them. Now. I do think
Speaker 1: that in a lot of these cases, if you go
Speaker 1: to like a reputable store like a FedEx, Kinko something
Speaker 1: like that, or like a main hotel chain, a lot
Speaker 1: of them have gotten hip to this aspect of things,
Speaker 1: and they now add software to their computer systems that
Speaker 1: automatically formats that computer like in between us, so that
Speaker 1: nothing can get taken in between the people logging in,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's on the web browser or whatever.
Speaker 1: But in general, if you're using like a third party
Speaker 1: system or you know, a random place, they may not
Speaker 1: have that software in place, and someone, let's say you
Speaker 1: log into your email account, you forget to log out.
Speaker 1: I've gone to public computers where literally people's email accounts
Speaker 1: are logged in, So you do have to be very
Speaker 1: careful whenever you're using a public system anywhere people go
Speaker 1: to the Apple Store and they just log into their
Speaker 1: email those on those computers, So you have to be
Speaker 1: very careful when you're doing that. Brian. I think it's
Speaker 1: unfortunate this happened, but I think at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you've got to practice that the safe sort
Speaker 1: of security cybersecurity practices for this not to happen to you.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to kind of figuring this stuff out,
Speaker 1: just be very careful. Know who you're talking to, know
Speaker 1: who you're dealing with, and since this already happened, I
Speaker 1: think you have to be on guard for any transaction
Speaker 1: that you're doing with this company to make sure that
Speaker 1: you're talking to the person you think you are and
Speaker 1: that you're actually doing business with the people that you
Speaker 1: think you are. Thanks for the question, Brian. Good food
Speaker 1: for thought there if you have. Verizon, by the way,
Speaker 1: this week, speaking of safety, they launched a free family
Speaker 1: safety app for their customers. It is free for all
Speaker 1: Verizon postpaid planned customers, available for iOS and Android. You
Speaker 1: can track where your family members are on a map.
Speaker 1: You can get location and arrival and departure alerts. Your
Speaker 1: kid can set up a safe walk so they can
Speaker 1: SOSU if they feel unsafe, and you can monitor your
Speaker 1: child's Verizon calls and texts, but I wouldn't really count
Speaker 1: on that too much because it just tells you that
Speaker 1: their calling and texting, doesn't really give you any information
Speaker 1: about those caller texts. But I'd probably recommend a third
Speaker 1: party app like Life three sixty. It does a lot
Speaker 1: of these features for free as well. Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv if you want a link to anything I
Speaker 1: mentioned more show right after this. We've talked about so much.
Speaker 1: This has been a varied show so far. We've we've
Speaker 1: covered a lot of ground and we still have more.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you about meta testing this video selfie
Speaker 1: to get back your hack to count. I've got my
Speaker 1: robot litterbox review. And this is probably the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 1: There is a company that will now activate an Apple Watch,
Speaker 1: the easiest and probably the cheapest activation ever, and you
Speaker 1: don't even have to have a plan on another network.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really really cool. It's like I almost
Speaker 1: don't want to tell you because it's like it's it's
Speaker 1: so great that I'm like, I just want to keep
Speaker 1: this to myself. But that's why I feel about a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff I share here. I just share all
Speaker 1: my secrets eight to eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Be sure to hop on the website at Richontech dot
Speaker 1: tv and sign up for my newsletter. And you can
Speaker 1: also follow me on Instagram. If you saw that I
Speaker 1: talked about the the AirPod stuff, I've got that on
Speaker 1: my Instagram stories. So go to Instagram at rich on Tech,
Speaker 1: follow me there and you can see all my journey
Speaker 1: and stories there. Let's go to Jackie and San dimas Jackie,
Speaker 1: what's on your mind?
Speaker 10: Hi, rich I have a very bizarre problem with my
Speaker 10: HP all in one computer. I cannot type the letter X. Oh,
Speaker 10: and I can give you some background on this. When
Speaker 10: I got the computer in May of this year, I
Speaker 10: used their keyboard and I found that when I first
Speaker 10: turned the computer on, the letter X does work. But
Speaker 10: as time goes on during the day, I can't type
Speaker 10: the letter X any longer. Also on the on screen keyboard,
Speaker 10: I pulled that up and I can't type the X
Speaker 10: on that as well. But a unique thing is is
Speaker 10: that if I purposely during these times when the X
Speaker 10: isn't typing, if I purposely misspell a word using the
Speaker 10: word X like the word excuse, The autocorrect will correct
Speaker 10: it and add the X in the Only way I
Speaker 10: can get out of the loop of this happening is
Speaker 10: by restarting the computer and then again in hours this
Speaker 10: problem starts up again.
Speaker 1: Well, that is quite certainly a unique problem. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. So couple things. Number one, have you tried
Speaker 1: plugging in another keyboard to see if the X works
Speaker 1: on that keyboard?
Speaker 10: I have, and it's the same problem. I've also contracted
Speaker 10: HP and they opened a case on it and they
Speaker 10: could not resolve this either. The only thing that they
Speaker 10: suggested was that I completely reboot the machine from go
Speaker 10: and try it that way. But they have no solution
Speaker 10: for this as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, have you tried Okay, I mean, so that is
Speaker 1: the That is the bottom line. If if something, if
Speaker 1: this is not curable by another keyboard, then there is
Speaker 1: a problem with the software and there is some sort
Speaker 1: of app that is taking over that X key on
Speaker 1: your computer. Sometimes apps assigned shortcut to keys. That sounds
Speaker 1: like what happened here mistakenly. Have you ever have you
Speaker 1: ever assigned a shortcut to a key like a keystroke
Speaker 1: for something like.
Speaker 10: For I have but not not the X key. And
Speaker 10: the fact that it will work on on restart is
Speaker 10: confusing because that, yeah.
Speaker 1: That is weird. But the app that is causing the
Speaker 1: problem or the conflict may not be kicking in until
Speaker 1: a little bit after you open your computer or after
Speaker 1: you do something on your computer. So I'm gonna side
Speaker 1: with HP on this one. I think you have to
Speaker 1: reformat this whole computer and start from fresh. The other
Speaker 1: thing you can do before you do that. Have you
Speaker 1: tried booting up into safe mode?
Speaker 2: No? I have not?
Speaker 1: Ah, Okay, so that's what we're going to do first.
Speaker 1: So is this a Windows computer? Because it's HP, right.
Speaker 10: It is.
Speaker 1: Okay, so go on to Google. Okay, so go into
Speaker 1: Google and google how to boot up into safe mode
Speaker 1: on Windows eleven, and it will give you the step
Speaker 1: by step instructions. It's uh, it's different forever. It's it's
Speaker 1: slightly different for some computers. But let's see I'm looking
Speaker 1: at this here. Yeah, it's a little bit different. So
Speaker 1: I would I would just google the instructions for HP
Speaker 1: boot into safe mode for Windows eleven. And so safe
Speaker 1: mode what that does? It will boot your computer into
Speaker 1: the very basics of what it needs to do things.
Speaker 1: And so what that means is it's not going to
Speaker 1: run all the different things that your computer has installed.
Speaker 1: It's just gonna it's gonna do the minimum basics. And
Speaker 1: so that way you can better isolate this issue and
Speaker 1: see if it's something that's running on your computer. Uh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like it's a physical hardware issue, because
Speaker 1: you're telling me that you've plugged in other keyboards and
Speaker 1: they work just fine. So boot it into safe mode.
Speaker 1: If when you boot it into safe mode and use
Speaker 1: this computer for an hour or so and the X
Speaker 1: works just fine, then we know that it's a it's
Speaker 1: an app on your computer. So if you don't want
Speaker 1: to reformat your whole computer, which I personally don't think
Speaker 1: is that big of a deal, I would. I would
Speaker 1: do that in a heartbee, But I know if you
Speaker 1: have all your settings and things the way you want them,
Speaker 1: I would go through and uninstall any app on your
Speaker 1: computer that you don't recognize or don't need, and restart
Speaker 1: your computer. I would make sure you have all the
Speaker 1: software updates for this computer installed, all the Windows updates.
Speaker 1: Sound like you're pretty much up to date. With Windows
Speaker 1: eleven here, but you know there might be something newer,
Speaker 1: So I would make sure you have all those and
Speaker 1: then restart your computer one more time and see if
Speaker 1: this X issue continues to happen. So that is the
Speaker 1: thing I would do, so safe mode, try it, see
Speaker 1: what happens, clean up all the old apps and get
Speaker 1: rid of those things. I would also whatever you're using
Speaker 1: to create those macros or those shortcuts that you're doing,
Speaker 1: I would go in there and just check and make
Speaker 1: sure that there's nothing wonky going on with that app,
Speaker 1: that it's not taking over that X key in some
Speaker 1: weird way. So those are the things I would do,
Speaker 1: And if worst comes to worse, you're going to have
Speaker 1: to just factory reset this. The good news is Windows
Speaker 1: eleven has that built in and it's pretty easy to do.
Speaker 1: You just have to make sure everything's backed up before
Speaker 1: you do that. The problem is it is Jackie. You
Speaker 1: don't want to bring your computer back from a backup
Speaker 1: if you're reinstalling everything, because the problem's probably just going
Speaker 1: to come back. So what i'd recommend is just reinstalling
Speaker 1: every program that you want on their step by step
Speaker 1: to get those programs back instead of reinstalling it from
Speaker 1: a drive that just has a backup. All right, good luck.
Speaker 1: That is an interesting, interesting predicament that you're in. I
Speaker 1: was thinking it was just as easy as a stuck key,
Speaker 1: but clearly there's something more going on there. X marks
Speaker 1: the spot X was xd out X. It's what's for
Speaker 1: X fiss I don't know. That didn't make sense. Meta
Speaker 1: is testing a video selfie for account verification. This is
Speaker 1: incredible because you have no idea how many emails I
Speaker 1: get from people about their Facebook account being hacked every day.
Speaker 1: People email me. You know why because I did one
Speaker 1: story on TV where I helped one person get their
Speaker 1: Facebook account back, and now that story apparently comes up
Speaker 1: whenever you search Facebook account hacked, and I am apparently
Speaker 1: the person to get in touch with. I cannot help
Speaker 1: you get your Facebook account back. It's impossible. It's really
Speaker 1: really tricky. But Facebook is testing. They know this is
Speaker 1: an issue. So this is a video selfie. So you
Speaker 1: go to Facebook dot com slash hacked or Instagram dot
Speaker 1: com slash hacked. Typically you have to upload like all
Speaker 1: kinds of verification, ID all this stuff, but they are
Speaker 1: testing a new video selfie, so you would take a
Speaker 1: video selfie, and it would compare that video selfie to
Speaker 1: the profile pictures on the account, the locked account, and
Speaker 1: it's just basically analyzing the image. Why is it have
Speaker 1: to be a video selfie? Because it may ask you
Speaker 1: to do different things. It may say smile, it may
Speaker 1: say close your eyes, it may say blink your eyes.
Speaker 1: That way it knows it's a real human doing this,
Speaker 1: and then it takes screen grabs from that and compares
Speaker 1: it to the profile pictures. It's the same way that
Speaker 1: they add verification. If you've ever set up face Idea
Speaker 1: on your iPhone or if you've ever added your ID
Speaker 1: to a mobile walle it's very, very similar to that.
Speaker 1: But the good news is this takes about a minute.
Speaker 1: It will get you back your account, and it's way
Speaker 1: tougher for hackers to abuse this because they're not you.
Speaker 1: Because what does a hacker do Immediately when they trick
Speaker 1: you into giving up your account. They immediately go in
Speaker 1: and change your email address, They change everything, and they
Speaker 1: take over, and you cannot get this stuff back because
Speaker 1: everything's different. You can't get the recovery code, you can't
Speaker 1: get the email password reset because everything's different. But if
Speaker 1: you can do the video selfie and say hey.
Speaker 6: This is me.
Speaker 1: It's me, Come on, look at me. It's not some
Speaker 1: other person that's trying to get in. That's a much
Speaker 1: better system, so hopefully more people have access to that.
Speaker 1: I think that meta is going to find that's a
Speaker 1: very successful system. If you want to see if it's available,
Speaker 1: you can go to meta Facebook dot com, slash hacked,
Speaker 1: Instagram dot com slash hacked. If you have gotten hacked,
Speaker 1: by the way, the best way to not get hacked
Speaker 1: is to is to set up two factor authentication. There's
Speaker 1: a story going viral right now about this woman in
Speaker 1: the Bay area of San Francisco who was tricked into
Speaker 1: giving a hacker access to her Facebook account. She actually
Speaker 1: went to Facebook headquarters, banged on the door and said, hey,
Speaker 1: give me access to my account back, and they said,
Speaker 1: we don't do that. They gave her like a print out.
Speaker 1: I guess she's not the first person to do this,
Speaker 1: so they literally gave her a print out with a
Speaker 1: QR code to go to Facebook dot com slash hacked.
Speaker 1: And she's like, no, this is not good enough, and
Speaker 1: so her trick. She actually paid for Meta verified. You
Speaker 1: can pay fifteen dollars to verify your account and then
Speaker 1: when you do that, it unlocks the customer service rep
Speaker 1: that can actually help you. So she did that and
Speaker 1: she got her entire account back so within hours. So
Speaker 1: if you ever have an issue, I can't recommend this,
Speaker 1: but hey, you know what, if you're really really hard
Speaker 1: up for getting your account back, You've got pictures and
Speaker 1: memories on there that you want to get back. Just
Speaker 1: sign up for Meta Verified for a month, get your
Speaker 1: account back, and you know when you're paying, they're ready
Speaker 1: to help you. When you're not paying, the could care less.
Speaker 1: I'll put the link to that story on the show
Speaker 1: notes so you can see that. By the way, thanks
Speaker 1: to Kim for sending me that. A couple of people
Speaker 1: sent that story, but Kim was the one who actually
Speaker 1: texted it to me and said, hey, you should do this.
Speaker 1: On the show eighty eight rich one on one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up, I've got my review of the Robot Kitty
Speaker 1: litter Box, and I'm gonna tell you the company that
Speaker 1: lets you activate an Apple Watch on a cellular plan.
Speaker 1: Great for seniors, great for kids, and it's a very
Speaker 1: very good value. This is rich on tech. I was
Speaker 1: just walking the hallways of the radio station here and
Speaker 1: I found I can't believe this a fax machine. I mean,
Speaker 1: we were just talking with the caller in Brian in
Speaker 1: Washington about the fax machine. I hadn't seen one. I
Speaker 1: must be a decade And sure enough I'm walking through
Speaker 1: the studios here and I see a fax machine. And
Speaker 1: good thing I didn't post the picture because the phone
Speaker 1: number for the fax is right on there. Actually, maybe
Speaker 1: we should just start taking fax requests, didn't They used
Speaker 1: to do that like back in the day at radio stations,
Speaker 1: be like facts in your request, your your song request.
Speaker 1: There it is. See I loved I'll never forget my
Speaker 1: dad bought a fax machine.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: My dad, you know, growing up, had a small business
Speaker 1: still does, owned a roofing company, and you know, so
Speaker 1: he's not the most tech person in the world, but
Speaker 1: I would push him towards tech. But one day he
Speaker 1: got a fax machine for his business, which was quite
Speaker 1: important because with a roofing company, you would send out
Speaker 1: proposals and people would fax them back signed. Well, I
Speaker 1: just basically hijacked the fax machine. I literally took it
Speaker 1: from his office and I put it in my bedroom
Speaker 1: and it just sat there and I didn't get faxes.
Speaker 1: What ten year old kid gets faxes? No one but
Speaker 1: I just I would make copies on it. And like,
Speaker 1: by the way back in the day, it wasn't like
Speaker 1: a laser one. It was like it was like a
Speaker 1: hold up, gosh, I don't even know how explain it.
Speaker 1: Like the way it printed was like a heat roller
Speaker 1: and there'd be like a roll of I don't know,
Speaker 1: ink paper kind of thing. I don't know. It's really weird.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's that's my story about hijacking his fax machine. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is really really useful to know. US Mobile. I
Speaker 1: was on the phone with the CEO yesterday and we
Speaker 1: had a nice long conversation because I was like, dude,
Speaker 1: you got to explain this all to me, because you're
Speaker 1: doing stuff here that nobody else is doing. So if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with US Mobile, they are sort of
Speaker 1: the the geeks kind of favorite mv and O. Mvn
Speaker 1: O is Mobile Virtual Network Operator. So what does that mean.
Speaker 1: It means that they lease space from there's you know,
Speaker 1: the three major wireless companies AT and T, Verizon and
Speaker 1: T Mobile, and then they resell it. So mint Mobile
Speaker 1: used to be an MV and O. Well now I
Speaker 1: mean they still are, but they're now owned by T Mobile,
Speaker 1: but US mobiles independent. And what they're doing is they've
Speaker 1: got all kinds of plans that you can customize. So
Speaker 1: if you want a plan that just has talk and text,
Speaker 1: you can do it. If you want a plan that
Speaker 1: just has you know that's on T Mobile, you can
Speaker 1: do it. And by the way, you can switch carriers.
Speaker 1: They call themselves a supercarrier because you can say, halfway
Speaker 1: through the month, you know what, I'd rather be on
Speaker 1: T Mobile, Let me switch to that network. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I'd rather be on AT and T. Let me switch
Speaker 1: to that network. I'd rather be on Verizon. Let me
Speaker 1: switch to that network without I mean, it just takes
Speaker 1: us a couple seconds through their app. It's really really interesting.
Speaker 1: They have a new Apple Watch plan, which most envy
Speaker 1: and o's if you go to them, they don't really
Speaker 1: let you have an Apple Watch because they're not equipped
Speaker 1: to handle that visible does I know that Mint Mobile
Speaker 1: apparently is going to add that functionality, But this is
Speaker 1: an independent one, and so you can go on there
Speaker 1: and just activate an Apple Watch on their plan. So
Speaker 1: if you're on one of their plans, you can add
Speaker 1: an Apple Watch, or you can just do a standalone plan,
Speaker 1: which is launching next week. So if you just want
Speaker 1: to pay, literally, let's see how much it is. It
Speaker 1: is seventy eight dollars for the whole year to have
Speaker 1: an Apple Watch standalone plans six dollars and fifty cents
Speaker 1: a month that gives you unlimited talk and text data,
Speaker 1: Wi Fi calling, instant activation through them. You don't even
Speaker 1: have to go through the Apple Watch app. This is great.
Speaker 1: So seventy eight dollars for the year. Most carriers are
Speaker 1: charging like fifteen a month for this at this point.
Speaker 1: So usmobile dot com check it out. The standalone plan
Speaker 1: is launching next week right now. They're launching the companion
Speaker 1: plan this week, but you have to have a plan
Speaker 1: through US Mobile. But anyway, check them out. I really
Speaker 1: am a big fan. I love what they're doing Because
Speaker 1: I sit there and I look at the things they're doing.
Speaker 1: I'm like, this must be a bunch of nerds behind
Speaker 1: this company, because they're doing stuff that nerds appreciate. The
Speaker 1: way that they do their pricing, the way they do
Speaker 1: their plans, the way they do everything is just very
Speaker 1: nerd oriented, so that means it's very customer centric, and
Speaker 1: so I really like that anyway, very cool. I will
Speaker 1: probably activate an Apple Watch on a standalone plan because
Speaker 1: I love the idea of just having the watch by
Speaker 1: itself without being connected to anything else. Do you know
Speaker 1: that one of the major carriers charged me I think
Speaker 1: it was fifteen or twenty dollars a month to pause
Speaker 1: my Apple Watch plan, And by the way, they charge
Speaker 1: about thirty dollars just to activate an Apple Watch. So anyway,
Speaker 1: that's it. Rich on Tech dot TV. Coming up, we
Speaker 1: are going to talk to the CEO of Bitwarden about
Speaker 1: why you should be using a password manager. Yesterday, this
Speaker 1: is rich on Tech. Recently I spoke with Bitwarden CEO
Speaker 1: Michael crandall. We talked about password managers and why you
Speaker 1: need to use one today.
Speaker 9: Here it is Bitwarden is a password and pass key manager,
Speaker 9: so it helps people manage the the sometimes hundreds of
Speaker 9: different credentials that we have to log in to various
Speaker 9: accounts on websites.
Speaker 1: Why is this so important to use a password manager
Speaker 1: in these days or any day?
Speaker 9: Sure, you know. Unfortunately, security breaches have become increasingly common
Speaker 9: as a part of our lives, both for companies in
Speaker 9: for individuals. Rich last year, eight hundred and eighty thousand
Speaker 9: people were victims of cybercrime to the tune of twelve
Speaker 9: and a half billion dollars. And why does that happen.
Speaker 9: It's because we're all human and what makes it easy
Speaker 9: for us to use technology also makes it easy for
Speaker 9: hackers to take advantage of this. For example, using simple,
Speaker 9: guessable passwords makes it easier for us easier to get hacked,
Speaker 9: reusing them across different websites and accounts, never checking if
Speaker 9: they've been compromised or if they show up on the
Speaker 9: dark web, pulling victim to phishing attacks. So the best
Speaker 9: way to stay safe is pretty simple. It's make sure
Speaker 9: you have strong, unique passwords for every website or account
Speaker 9: that you use. And that's where a password manager comes
Speaker 9: in handy. It makes it easy to create strong passwords
Speaker 9: for every account and remember them for you and even
Speaker 9: auto fill them when you go to use that account
Speaker 9: or website. And that's across all of your devices, whether
Speaker 9: it's your phone, your desktop, your tablet, whatever. Finally, it
Speaker 9: makes it easy to share those with your family or
Speaker 9: with colleagues.
Speaker 1: At work, So you've kind of touched upon this, But
Speaker 1: why shouldn't you use the same word, the same password
Speaker 1: over and over. Some people think I've got a good password,
Speaker 1: I'll just use it everywhere. Why is that a bad idea?
Speaker 9: It's a bad idea because since a password is like
Speaker 9: a key to accessing any account, if you use that
Speaker 9: same key everywhere and a bad actor gets a hold
Speaker 9: of it, they can get in everywhere Whereas if that
Speaker 9: key only gets you into one of your accounts, should
Speaker 9: it get compromised the other All the other accounts are safe.
Speaker 9: So it's compartmentalization of your attack surface or your your risk.
Speaker 1: And what do you think makes one password manager better
Speaker 1: than another? Or you know, what should people look for
Speaker 1: in a good password manager? Obviously you'd love it if everyone
Speaker 1: went to bitwarden, but there are many choices. So what
Speaker 1: do you think people should look for if they're comparing
Speaker 1: different password managers?
Speaker 9: Yes? Well, number one, and this is a special commitment
Speaker 9: from bitwarden, is we believe it's important to have a
Speaker 9: fully featured, free version that offers that's pretty much free
Speaker 9: to use for the full purpose, but meaning unlimited logins,
Speaker 9: unlimited credentials, across unlimited devices, and it's our commitment to
Speaker 9: have that free forever. We think that's important. It's part
Speaker 9: of our mission to help build a world where nobody
Speaker 9: gets hacked. Is removing the fact that there's there's some
Speaker 9: price for entry there. We also think it's important to
Speaker 9: have an engaged global community so everyone can help each other,
Speaker 9: so look for that in any product you're looking for.
Speaker 9: We believe open source architecture is critically important because it
Speaker 9: means they're more eyes on the way the software is built.
Speaker 9: After all, it's storing your precious secrets that are the
Speaker 9: keys to all of your accounts. So having an open
Speaker 9: source means that many people can work on it developing,
Speaker 9: but more importantly, they're more eyes on the product looking
Speaker 9: for vulnerabilities. All software can have vulnerabilities. The trick is
Speaker 9: to find them more quickly and get rid of them.
Speaker 1: And you know, the number one thing I hear about
Speaker 1: password managers is it seems like a lot of work.
Speaker 1: You know, does it take some getting used to to
Speaker 1: kind of get into the flow of using one of
Speaker 1: these things.
Speaker 3: It does.
Speaker 9: We find there's an aha moment that comes more quickly
Speaker 9: than most people imagine. Look anything that's new can take
Speaker 9: some time to learn a few minutes to learn. Most
Speaker 9: people find that once they learn the password manager, it
Speaker 9: radically simplifies their life and allows them not to worry
Speaker 9: about the good practice of having strong, unique passwords. It
Speaker 9: also makes logging in a lot faster. For the payoff
Speaker 9: for the few minutes that you spend learning it is
Speaker 9: not only that you're more secure, but it's more convenient,
Speaker 9: and of course it sinks your passwords across different devices,
Speaker 9: So a few minutes of learning really can lead to
Speaker 9: a lifetime of time savings and stronger security. And you know,
Speaker 9: I always like to share that the classic story we
Speaker 9: hear is from everybody. I don't care if it's the
Speaker 9: CISO at a big company. The conversation always turns to, yeah,
Speaker 9: I've been trying to get my mom and dad to
Speaker 9: start using bitwarden or to start using a password manager.
Speaker 9: And often the story we hear is it took a
Speaker 9: while to convince them to try try that new thing,
Speaker 9: but once they do, they would never go back, and
Speaker 9: they feel safer, and the kids feel safer that their
Speaker 9: parents are using it, et cetera.
Speaker 1: What's changed since the last time I talked to you
Speaker 1: what's changed in the security world. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: past keys obviously have come up a little bit still
Speaker 1: people trying to figure that out, but anything substantial. Is
Speaker 1: it just more you know, more data breaches and things
Speaker 1: like that or what.
Speaker 9: Well, you mentioned two big things that I would double
Speaker 9: click on there. One of them is the advent of
Speaker 9: pass keys. Of course, as I mentioned at the beginning,
Speaker 9: data breaches, they just seem to be getting more and
Speaker 9: more common. A lot of them are tied to ransomware.
Speaker 9: And the thing about that that's important to recognize is
Speaker 9: that has become a very lucrative business model for the
Speaker 9: bad guys, for threat actors. They have a direct way
Speaker 9: of catching cashing in when they do a credential breach
Speaker 9: and then get into a business's systems. I would also
Speaker 9: so re emphasize the pass key development. It's gaining a
Speaker 9: lot of momentum. I was just at a conference last
Speaker 9: week down in Carlsbad, California called Authenticate, and just to
Speaker 9: mention three companies that happen to stick out between Google, Amazon,
Speaker 9: and eBay, they now have a billion users who have
Speaker 9: signed up to use pass keys. So it's a major
Speaker 9: effort across the industry because it does keep people safer. That's,
Speaker 9: by the way. Another thing you should look for in
Speaker 9: a password manager is make sure that it also supports
Speaker 9: pass keys, because those are an advance in security that
Speaker 9: help people stay safer, and they're also even easier to use.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious about your take on the passwords manager
Speaker 1: in iOS eighteen.
Speaker 9: The position we take, remember, are one of our important
Speaker 9: missions at bit Warden is to help build a world
Speaker 9: where nobody gets hacked. So when I talk to folks,
Speaker 9: I say, look, if you're using any password manager, you're
Speaker 9: better off than not using something. So I never criticize
Speaker 9: the fact that there are multiple solutions out there, and
Speaker 9: we're believers in the notion that they're your credentials. You
Speaker 9: should be able to take them anywhere and use them
Speaker 9: with equal ease. Whether you're using Mac or Windows or Linux,
Speaker 9: whether you're on mobile or a desktop, or you're an
Speaker 9: iPad or a tablet of some sort, it's important to
Speaker 9: have that independence and flexibility. So that's our take on it.
Speaker 9: Some password manager is better than nothing. If you really
Speaker 9: want to go all the way, I would go with
Speaker 9: a third party solution that gives you that independence and
Speaker 9: kind of agnostic, non bias view to keep you safe everywhere.
Speaker 9: When we talked about the learning curve, don't let that
Speaker 9: scare you away. The learning curve is really very very short.
Speaker 9: It's a small investment for a very big payoff for
Speaker 9: those who aren't using password management yet. So really encourage
Speaker 9: people dive in. Make yourself and your loved ones safer.
Speaker 9: By the way, this is, as you know, Cybersecurity Awareness Month,
Speaker 9: so it's a great thing we're all focusing on that.
Speaker 9: We're coming into this holiday season where they'll be more
Speaker 9: online shopping, et cetera. Everybody's more vulnerable than ever at
Speaker 9: this period of the year, so it's a really good
Speaker 9: time to go try something out. If you're not using
Speaker 9: a password manager.
Speaker 1: Once again, that is Bitwarden's CEO, Michael Crandall, and yes,
Speaker 1: please use a password manager. I know it takes just
Speaker 1: a little bit to get up to speed and get
Speaker 1: everything going with that, but once you do, like he said,
Speaker 1: it makes life much easier and much safer. And I
Speaker 1: do love bitwarden because they do have a free level
Speaker 1: forever that is unlimited, unlike a lot of the other
Speaker 1: password apps. All right, coming up, we're going to open
Speaker 1: up the feedbag, and I've got a couple more stories
Speaker 1: to tell you, including my review of the high tech
Speaker 1: kitty litter box. Simply Safe has a new outdoor security
Speaker 1: system that is AI powered, and how to use your
Speaker 1: AirPods to hear better in noisy restaurants. This is rich
Speaker 1: on tech. We are going to get to the feedbag
Speaker 1: in just a moment, but first, just a couple more
Speaker 1: items of no Simply Safe has a new AI powered
Speaker 1: outdoor security system with an agent that's live that monitors,
Speaker 1: so these security agents can respond to potential threats within
Speaker 1: thirty seconds. They use AI for human detection to like
Speaker 1: see if there's a human on the camera, and then
Speaker 1: it uses face matching technology to recognize if that person
Speaker 1: is a family member or a trusted neighbor. If not,
Speaker 1: they may commence a live operators say hey, what are
Speaker 1: you doing there. It's got two way audio. They can
Speaker 1: activate siren and spotlights and this is fifty dollars a
Speaker 1: month if you want it just for overnight outdoor from
Speaker 1: eight pm to six am, eighty dollars if you want
Speaker 1: it for twenty four to seven. So it's basically like
Speaker 1: having a live security guard remote. Of course, monitoring your
Speaker 1: place one hundred and ninety nine dollars. The face matching
Speaker 1: feature is not available in Illinois, Texas or Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 1: I did a story with a company that had this
Speaker 1: technology years ago, called Deep Sentinel and very very similar.
Speaker 1: So now Simply Safe has that. Let's see Pete Wells
Speaker 1: writing for the New York Times. He is their food critic.
Speaker 1: He said, you know what, if you have a pair
Speaker 1: of AirPods, you can use them to hear better in
Speaker 1: a noisy restaurant. You've got two features that are helpful
Speaker 1: for noisy environments, Conversation Boost and Ambient Noise Reduction. Conversation
Speaker 1: Boost uses directional microphones to amplify the voice in front
Speaker 1: of you. Ambient Noise Reduction reduces background noise from other directions.
Speaker 1: So you can go into accessibility settings and turn on
Speaker 1: these features. And I will remind you that the AirPods
Speaker 1: Pro to Hearing Aid feature is coming out this week,
Speaker 1: which will turn the AirPods Pro two into basically hearing aids.
Speaker 1: AT and T has a new thirty day free trial
Speaker 1: of their network, So if you want to try out
Speaker 1: the AT and T network you're curious how it works
Speaker 1: where you live and work. You can activate this on
Speaker 1: your iPhone for free for thirty days, no credit card
Speaker 1: or commitment required. You could do this all from home.
Speaker 1: They'll give you unlimited talk and text, one hundred gigs
Speaker 1: of data, twenty five gigs of hotspot and let's see.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is download MYAT and T
Speaker 1: app or go to att dot com slash free trial.
Speaker 1: You don't have to change your phone number or anything
Speaker 1: like that. You do need an iPhone ten R or up.
Speaker 1: Android support coming in twenty twenty five. But if you
Speaker 1: want to test drive the AT and T network, you
Speaker 1: can now do that for free. And the robot litterbox.
Speaker 1: So I tested the Niakasa M one. This has an
Speaker 1: open air design, which cats like because they can look
Speaker 1: a while they're doing their business. The system automatically cleans
Speaker 1: the box after each use. It sort of rotates the
Speaker 1: waste into a collection drawer. The empty that drawer every
Speaker 1: two weeks. I know that sounds like a lot or
Speaker 1: a little, I should say, but I did not. There's
Speaker 1: no odor whatsoever. It's quite impressive and it's very easy.
Speaker 1: There's also an app. This thing is connected to Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you when to add more litter, tell you
Speaker 1: when to empty the bin, tell you how much your
Speaker 1: cat weighs, how much they use this thing, and for
Speaker 1: how long. I did talk to a vet about these.
Speaker 1: She said that the litter boxes are the number one
Speaker 1: reason cats are given back to shelters, and she did
Speaker 1: have some safety concerns with the automated boxes, although those
Speaker 1: are mostly with the cheaper models, so probably don't go
Speaker 1: with a knockoff model because cats have died in these things.
Speaker 1: The one I tested six hundred dollars, was on sale
Speaker 1: during Prime Day for cheaper than that went down to
Speaker 1: four hundred. The market leader, I think is the Whisker
Speaker 1: Litter Robot for that's seven hundred dollars. And yes, there's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of sensors built in to stop the
Speaker 1: operation if the cat is in there or whatever. But
Speaker 1: I'm very impressed. This thing, to me is life changing.
Speaker 1: I know it's expensive, but I'm telling you it is
Speaker 1: absolutely incredible. All right, let's open up the feedbag. This
Speaker 1: is the feedback plus the mail bag. These are the emails, comments,
Speaker 1: and questions I get from you. If you want to
Speaker 1: submit yours, go to Rich on tech dot tv and
Speaker 1: hit contact Steve from Beaumont, California, says, Hey, Rich, I'm
Speaker 1: impressed how your tech advice has improved over the months
Speaker 1: since you took over the show. Since I'm such a sucker,
Speaker 1: I ordered the new Kindle color, but having listened to
Speaker 1: your most recent episode, I realized I didn't need color
Speaker 1: and canceled. However, being such a sucker, I did order
Speaker 1: the new paper white, even though my current one works
Speaker 1: just fine. All the best, Steve, yep, I hear you
Speaker 1: new gadgets. You can't get enough of them sometimes. Sean
Speaker 1: from La Crescenta, who listens on KFI, says, Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I love your show, but today I have a bone
Speaker 1: to pick. I listened with interest your interview with the
Speaker 1: guy from Swan Bitcoin, but was incredibly disappointed that you
Speaker 1: didn't ask him about the outsized amount of electricity that
Speaker 1: mining bitcoin consumes. As the crypto industry expands, there will
Speaker 1: be further strain on the already fragile grid as energy
Speaker 1: prices get pushed up. I was very interested in hearing
Speaker 1: what his perspective on that issue was, but I guess
Speaker 1: it's okay as long as everyone's getting rich sad. Sean,
Speaker 1: that was a misfire on my part, I should have
Speaker 1: asked him about that. In fact, I should have asked
Speaker 1: him about the all the issues with with bitcoin, because
Speaker 1: there are several and that includes not just the energy
Speaker 1: aspect of it, but you know a lot of other things,
Speaker 1: like the volatility of it, the illicit use of it,
Speaker 1: all that stuff there is, there's there's good, and there's
Speaker 1: bad with everything in this world. Thanks for the email, Angel,
Speaker 1: says Hey Rich. As a non tech person who finally
Speaker 1: upgraded from an ancient Motorola phone to a gently used
Speaker 1: Pixel eight, I appreciated the timely newsletter. The articles helped
Speaker 1: me understand what else I can do since I finally
Speaker 1: upgraded to have a decent camera. But I can do
Speaker 1: a lot more. George writes in about TV dialogue. He's
Speaker 1: from Oak Hills. He says, what's wrong with dialogue video
Speaker 1: and newer TV shows and movies. It's a widespread complaint.
Speaker 1: The new season of NCIS and FBI just came out,
Speaker 1: and I may have to stop watching because I can't
Speaker 1: understand what's being said. It's not a problem with older
Speaker 1: shows or movies. Talk shows and news come through clearly.
Speaker 1: Even cops recorded in the field is usually easy to understand.
Speaker 1: My five point one speaker system works fine for some content.
Speaker 1: Wake up studios, your content is no good if we
Speaker 1: can't follow along. The explosions and other sounds come in fine,
Speaker 1: but often the background music overwhelms the dialogue. So sound guys,
Speaker 1: what's up George? This is an issue. We watch TV
Speaker 1: with captions most of the time, but that's mainly because
Speaker 1: of all the stuff that's going on in the background
Speaker 1: of our house with the kids running around. But I
Speaker 1: know a lot of people do that, and I know
Speaker 1: there's are a lot of the soundbars specifically talk about
Speaker 1: the dialogue, so I know it is an issue. Jim
Speaker 1: writes in Hey Rich, I've had problems with charging two
Speaker 1: different Samsung phones. Some USB cables worked fine at times,
Speaker 1: not at other times. Finally, I ground down the end
Speaker 1: of the connector that goes into the phone. This allows
Speaker 1: the internals of the cables connector to reach farther into
Speaker 1: the phone's connector and it works. I use care only
Speaker 1: to grind a small amount of the connector material. I
Speaker 1: will tell you warning, do not do this at home.
Speaker 1: Do not try this at home. Modifying cables can be
Speaker 1: dangerous and might damage your device. I'm glad it worked
Speaker 1: for Jim, but I cannot recommend doing that. Let's see here,
Speaker 1: Mark says from Carlsbad, California. Thanks man, love your show.
Speaker 1: By the way, I was home yesterday and asked alex
Speaker 1: A to play rich on Tech and it popped up
Speaker 1: right from Amazon Music. Nice and uh, let's see, I
Speaker 1: can't get to that one. Don't have time for that one.
Speaker 1: That is going to do it for this episode of
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks for calling, Thanks for emailing. You can
Speaker 1: find links to everything I mentioned here on my website.
Speaker 1: Just go to rich on Tech dot tv. Once again,
Speaker 1: all the show notes are there, and if you want
Speaker 1: to hit contact, you can get in on the feedback.
Speaker 1: You can find me on social media. I am at
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. You know I'm active on Instagram. You
Speaker 1: can always check my stories. I'm also on x dabbling
Speaker 1: in threads, and also on Facebook. Next week we are
Speaker 1: going to talk to cybersecurity Girl. She is very popular
Speaker 1: and she is on made a name for herself on
Speaker 1: social media helping people out, so we'll be interested to
Speaker 1: hear what she has to say. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: There are so many ways you can spend your time
Speaker 1: I do appreciate you spending it right here with me.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Adam in
Speaker 1: today for Bobo cam on calls. My name is rich Demiro.
Speaker 1: I will talk to you real soon