Speaker 1: TikTok gets grilled. Google launches bar a major acropolips that
Speaker 1: affects the screenshots you might have shared, plus your tech
Speaker 1: questions answered.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1: What's going on? I'm Rich Dmiro and this is Rich
Speaker 1: on Tech, the show where I talk about the tech
Speaker 1: stuff I think you should know about, and it's the
Speaker 1: place where I answer your questions about technology. I'm the
Speaker 1: tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Phone lines are open triple eight Rich
Speaker 1: one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two,
Speaker 1: four to one zero one. Kim is standing by to
Speaker 1: get you on the show today. Give me a call.
Speaker 1: If you have a question about technology. Email is also
Speaker 1: an option. Send it over to hello at richontech dot TV.
Speaker 1: I'll be checking email throughout the show. Well well, well,
Speaker 1: mister mister Shao Chow goes to Washington. That's what happened
Speaker 1: this week. TikTok CEO in front of the House Energy
Speaker 1: and Commerce Committee this week, all to talk about concerns
Speaker 1: the US has about TikTok spying on users. It turned
Speaker 1: into kind of a circus there five hours and I
Speaker 1: think it was like over five hours of I'd call
Speaker 1: it testimony, but realistically it was a lot of finger pointing,
Speaker 1: a lot of accusations. I mean, you're talking a guy
Speaker 1: who went to Harvard, his wife grew up in DC,
Speaker 1: and he's sitting there defending himself like I've never seen before. Actually,
Speaker 1: I have seen it before. I've seen it with Facebook,
Speaker 1: I've seen it with Instagram, I've seen it with Google,
Speaker 1: I've seen it with Twitter. Yes, the US government loves
Speaker 1: to press these tech companies, to press them hard, but
Speaker 1: guess what, at the end of the day, have we
Speaker 1: seen anything come from any of these style hearings. Not really.
Speaker 1: Facebook still works just the way it always has. Twitter well,
Speaker 1: Twitter has kind of changed, but you know that's for
Speaker 1: different reasons. Instagram all the same. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: argue the bigger problem in this whole situation is really
Speaker 1: the impact that these apps are having on our society
Speaker 1: versus the spying. Now, the spying is a big deal
Speaker 1: when it comes to different governments, but I would also
Speaker 1: say that this is a wake up call for all
Speaker 1: of us to think about the privacy implications of our lives.
Speaker 1: So TikTok, whether or not it is spying on US
Speaker 1: citizens remains to be seen, right, But this is just
Speaker 1: one app. There are many apps that people use on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, and I just mentioned a bunch of them. Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 1: app Chat, TikTok, Twitter. I mean, there's so many apps,
Speaker 1: and every single one of these apps has a mission
Speaker 1: and that mission is to either get you to stay
Speaker 1: on that app as long as humanly possible, get you
Speaker 1: to pay for something, or take your personal information and
Speaker 1: use it to sell you stuff. That is what these
Speaker 1: apps do. Now, yes, we get some services out of
Speaker 1: these apps, we get some value out of these apps,
Speaker 1: of course, that's why we use them. But the unspoken
Speaker 1: side of these apps is that they are getting stuff
Speaker 1: from us in a big way. So TikTok just made
Speaker 1: me kind of think. We're going to talk more about
Speaker 1: what happened there a little bit later with my guest
Speaker 1: lance You and Off. But for me, what I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is privacy in general. So are you
Speaker 1: really going to wait for the US government to help
Speaker 1: you protect your own privacy? No? US government is going
Speaker 1: to do what the US government does. They're going to
Speaker 1: do their thing. You need to take control of your
Speaker 1: own tech world. You need to get into control today.
Speaker 1: So Number one, you gotta stop speeding through all of
Speaker 1: those sign up screens. I know we want to get
Speaker 1: to these products and services as quick as humanly possible,
Speaker 1: and they know that. Why do you think we scroll
Speaker 1: through those terms and conditions in about one second? Nobody
Speaker 1: can read those terms and conditions as quick as we
Speaker 1: scroll through them. Then they know that, so they hide
Speaker 1: a lot of good stuff in there that I've probably
Speaker 1: never read and neither of you. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: you have to read that, but you have to understand
Speaker 1: that when you sit there and act surprised that a
Speaker 1: service is taking all of your personal information your location,
Speaker 1: your GPS and your IP address, and your likes and
Speaker 1: your needs and your wants. That's all in the terms
Speaker 1: and conditions. You're saying, sure do that, So stop speeding
Speaker 1: through those screens if you really want to see, Like,
Speaker 1: hold on, this is asking me for my location, This
Speaker 1: is asking me for access to my microphone. Slow down,
Speaker 1: Listen to what it's asking you, and think do I
Speaker 1: want to give that access? Stop using face Book and
Speaker 1: Google to log into things. I know it's fast again,
Speaker 1: there's a theme here. Don't be fast, be slow. You
Speaker 1: have to understand what they're asking you here. Facebook and
Speaker 1: Google super easy to log in. Yes, they do that
Speaker 1: for a reason. That's so that they can see where
Speaker 1: you're logging in and they can connect the dots between
Speaker 1: all these different products and services that you sign up for.
Speaker 1: So don't use Facebook, don't use Google to log in.
Speaker 1: Apple just a little bit better than those two. But
Speaker 1: the problem with Apple is that it keeps you in
Speaker 1: their ecosystem. In fact, with all three of these, it
Speaker 1: keeps you in their ecosystem. If you're logged into Facebook,
Speaker 1: if you use Facebook to log into a dozen different apps,
Speaker 1: yeah you're gonna stick with Facebook. If you use Google
Speaker 1: to log into a dozen different apps, you're going to
Speaker 1: stick with Google. If you use Apple to log into
Speaker 1: every app, yeah you're going to stick with Apple. It
Speaker 1: makes it tougher to get out of these products and services.
Speaker 1: My advice, create unique, separate passwords for every account. Tech
Speaker 1: companies are trying to grab as much data as they
Speaker 1: can off of you. And it's not just tech companies either.
Speaker 1: By the way, doctor's offices, you ever have to fill
Speaker 1: out those forms you go into the doctor's office, they
Speaker 1: ask you to fill out here, take the number one.
Speaker 1: Why do we still have to fill out forms on
Speaker 1: a clipboard at the doctor's office. It is the year
Speaker 1: twenty hold on twenty twenty three. I have to check
Speaker 1: because I sometimes say it's twenty twenty two. It's twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. Why are we filling out things on a
Speaker 1: clipboard here? This is what it sounds like when you
Speaker 1: go into the doctor's office. You see this. They give
Speaker 1: you this, this big clipboard with all this paperwork on it,
Speaker 1: and I always say, can I fill this out online?
Speaker 1: Or didn't I already fill it out? And say now
Speaker 1: you got to fill it out. One time, actually just
Speaker 1: flat out refused. I said, no, I filled this out
Speaker 1: last time I was here. I'm not filling it out again.
Speaker 1: They just were like, okay. But on that fill out form,
Speaker 1: they always ask for your social Security number? Right, Why
Speaker 1: does your doctor need your social Security number? Why does
Speaker 1: your dentist need your social Security number? I know why
Speaker 1: they want it so that if you don't pay your bill,
Speaker 1: they can come after you. That is not a valid
Speaker 1: reason for asking for that. And you can say no,
Speaker 1: by the way, so do that say no? I say
Speaker 1: no every single time. Honestly. Sometimes I just write down
Speaker 1: all zeros and just see what they say, just do it.
Speaker 1: Try it, don't give out your social what else? Banks?
Speaker 1: Oh this thing you get every year, you get that
Speaker 1: little piece of paper in the mail from banks. It's
Speaker 1: like this opt out notice, and what do we do?
Speaker 1: We get it, we open it up, you realize it's
Speaker 1: not a bill or anything you need to do, and
Speaker 1: you throw it right in the trash. That opt out notice.
Speaker 1: What that's doing is it's saying to you, hey, we're
Speaker 1: your bank, and we have all this personal information about you,
Speaker 1: and unless you opt out, we are free to share
Speaker 1: that personal information with any of our affiliates. What's an affiliate?
Speaker 1: Anyone that wants to pay them for that information. So again,
Speaker 1: fill out that form, Go to the website, go to
Speaker 1: Chase Bank, go to Bank of America, go to the
Speaker 1: opt out section of the website and just say ned
Speaker 1: rather you not share my stuff. It takes one second,
Speaker 1: and I'm guilty this. I I'll be honest. I haven't
Speaker 1: done it, but I got this advice a long time
Speaker 1: ago and someone said to do it, and I've thought
Speaker 1: about doing it, and I will. I will do it now, okay,
Speaker 1: because it's just less stuff that you'll get in the mail.
Speaker 1: From all these different companies and less sharing of your
Speaker 1: personal information. All right, when it comes to your web browser,
Speaker 1: you gotta turn off third party cookies. What's a third
Speaker 1: party cookie? That means when you visit one website, a
Speaker 1: third party cookie allows that website to share your visit
Speaker 1: with another website. That's called a third party cookie. Turn
Speaker 1: those off. You can turn it off in Chrome. They
Speaker 1: make it look scary. They make it look like you're
Speaker 1: doing something wrong. You're not. You can turn off third
Speaker 1: party cookies and it will be very safe to surf
Speaker 1: the web. Get an ad blocker. If you're sick of
Speaker 1: the ads that are following you around on the web,
Speaker 1: get an ad blocker that can help save you from
Speaker 1: some of that nightmare of all these different ads that
Speaker 1: follow you around the web. That's a handy way to
Speaker 1: do it. Your home network. Someone comes over to your house, Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: what's your five five password? What do I do? I
Speaker 1: send them straight to the guest network. Rich, Why are
Speaker 1: you giving me the guest network because you're a guest.
Speaker 1: You don't need access to my entire home network. Set
Speaker 1: up a guest network on your home Wi Fi and
Speaker 1: let your friends log into the guest network, not the
Speaker 1: network that you use that all of your devices are
Speaker 1: connected to. You can easily print out a QR code
Speaker 1: for your network. People can scan it with their phone
Speaker 1: and then they can log into your guest network. They
Speaker 1: don't even have to notice the guest network. Don't name
Speaker 1: it guest network, name it VIP network and let your
Speaker 1: friends log into that one. Now, your phone, this is
Speaker 1: the biggest issue that you have in your life. Think
Speaker 1: about it. Think about the sensors on your phone, GPS, bluetooth, accelerometer,
Speaker 1: temperature sensors, magnetic field sensors, gyroscope sensors, heart rate sensors,
Speaker 1: light sensors, proximity sensors, pressure sensors. You are a walking
Speaker 1: scientist with this phone in your pocket. I mean you're
Speaker 1: prepared to like go right to Jurassic Park with what
Speaker 1: you've got in your pocket at this point. So you
Speaker 1: need to realize that every app wants to tap into
Speaker 1: those those settings and those sensors. So think about when
Speaker 1: you give permissions to these apps that you download. Give
Speaker 1: bear basics the minimums. So if it's saying, hey, we
Speaker 1: want your location, do they need your precise location? Give
Speaker 1: them your approximate location. Maybe they just need location one time.
Speaker 1: Stop giving apps blanket permissions. Don't just say yes to everything.
Speaker 1: And if it's been a while, go into your settings
Speaker 1: for your apps and revoke some of those permissions. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, I looked up TikTok just out of curiosity
Speaker 1: to see what permissions does TikTok have on my phone.
Speaker 1: I just went to the settings on the iPhone. I
Speaker 1: tapped TikTok. It has access to my contacts, it has
Speaker 1: access to all my photos, it has access to my
Speaker 1: local network, my microphone, my camera, and cellular data. Okay,
Speaker 1: I just turned all those off. You can do that
Speaker 1: for any app you want. Facebook, Instagram, and Google. There's
Speaker 1: something called connected apps, third party apps. Turn off those connections.
Speaker 1: Go in there, take a look see the apps that
Speaker 1: you've given access to your Facebook, your Instagram, and your
Speaker 1: Google and turn those off. You don't necessarily need. It's
Speaker 1: a good idea to just kind of clean those out.
Speaker 1: Those are called permissions. So a lot of times with Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Google, you give permission to other apps to look
Speaker 1: inside those accounts. You can take those permissions back, and
Speaker 1: it's a good idea, you know, twice three times a
Speaker 1: year to just kind of see which apps you've given
Speaker 1: permission to. If you don't recognize one, you don't remember one,
Speaker 1: get rid of it, revoke its permissions. If it ever
Speaker 1: comes a time when you need that app to be
Speaker 1: accessible again, you'll see it'll say, hey, we lost this connection,
Speaker 1: and there are legitimate reasons for that. But you just
Speaker 1: have to realize why these apps want this access. They
Speaker 1: want to build this web, this network of like the
Speaker 1: most information possible about you, and by giving them permission,
Speaker 1: that's what you're doing. You need to take control of
Speaker 1: your privacy, security accounts and have backups because I get
Speaker 1: way too many emails about people who get hacked, lose
Speaker 1: their photos or files because they're not in the cloud.
Speaker 1: Do this stuff today, please, that's my word to you today.
Speaker 1: All right, Coming up on the show, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about neck gear. If you have an orbit, it
Speaker 1: is time to update your software. I'll explain what that
Speaker 1: acropo lips is. Plus we got lance yulanoff coming up.
Speaker 1: He's going to talk about TikTok and Google Bard plus Slater.
Speaker 1: In the show, we're going to visit Outer Edge LA
Speaker 1: all about NFTs. If you're curious about them, we'll tell
Speaker 1: you your calls up next at triple eight Rich one O one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich Demiro,
Speaker 1: tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. You
Speaker 1: can follow me on social media at rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Mike is in El Segundo, California. Mike,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich. What's happening?
Speaker 3: Hey, Rich are I've got an older iPad, maybe about
Speaker 3: from seven years old, and it won't brouse anymore. And
Speaker 3: it tells me that I need an iOS that's newer
Speaker 3: than twelve point seven I believe, and but but that
Speaker 3: I can't load that.
Speaker 1: On the machine.
Speaker 3: Do I have any options?
Speaker 1: Okay? So this is an older iPad. It sounds like,
Speaker 1: huh yeah, how how old are we talking?
Speaker 3: I'm thinking it's about seven or eight years old?
Speaker 1: Oh wow? Okay? And so when you go to the
Speaker 1: web browser, which browser are you using?
Speaker 3: Using Safari?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: But and uh then I get I get an error
Speaker 3: note on the machine. So you know you need to
Speaker 3: update your bios okay?
Speaker 1: And so and you can't update past twelve point seven,
Speaker 1: because that's it. There's no more support for this older version, right,
Speaker 1: And I've kind.
Speaker 3: Of googled around to find if I could find a
Speaker 3: browser that would accept something that's older, but I haven't
Speaker 3: been successful though.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, that's my question. So when when you can
Speaker 1: you download app from the app store? Still, because I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what state this computer this iPad is in.
Speaker 1: Does it still like the Wi Fi works on it?
Speaker 1: And can you still do anything on it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I can do that, but I went to because I
Speaker 3: thought it might be a browser I could use, but
Speaker 3: and it downloaded the app when I want to use
Speaker 3: it once again, it's still required to thirteen or New York.
Speaker 1: Okay. So the thing about the browsers on the iPad
Speaker 1: is that they use something they all share, something called WebKit.
Speaker 1: And this means that even though there are different browsers
Speaker 1: on the iPad and available, they all use the same
Speaker 1: back end software and so that software is provided by Apple.
Speaker 1: And it's what they're saying is it's basically, your iPad
Speaker 1: doesn't have the latest software. It's not secure enough to
Speaker 1: run that version of WebKit that it needs, no matter
Speaker 1: which browser you download. So that's I think what you're
Speaker 1: running into here, oh yeah, because it.
Speaker 3: Sounds like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I would say, yeah, I would say to
Speaker 1: download something like Chrome or Firefox or any of these
Speaker 1: other browsers. But they're all going to run on the
Speaker 1: back end using that WebKit software provided by Apple. So
Speaker 1: that's that's why I think you're running into this problem.
Speaker 1: The only I'm trying to think, uh yeah, so do
Speaker 1: you know how to recycle this thing? Do you know
Speaker 1: how to get some money for it?
Speaker 5: Not?
Speaker 4: Off hand?
Speaker 1: Okay, So I'll recommend a place that I like because
Speaker 1: I think this is a pretty old iPad, so you're
Speaker 1: probably not gonna get much. But there's a website I
Speaker 1: like called gizmo Go g I z m o g
Speaker 1: O gizmo goo dot com, and you can pop in
Speaker 1: your iPad and it will tell you how much you get.
Speaker 1: Do you know which model this is? Offhand or no?
Speaker 3: I think it's an Air.
Speaker 1: iPad Air okay, so I'm guessing it's an old, old
Speaker 1: maybe for okay, So if it's the first generation, you're
Speaker 1: ready for this. Don't don't spend this all one place.
Speaker 1: But it looks like they're going to give you eleven
Speaker 1: dollars and seventy two cents, Mike, all right, iPad iPad
Speaker 1: Air second generation five dollars twenty five cents. You might
Speaker 1: be better off just keeping this in your house and
Speaker 1: using it as a photo display, like turn it into
Speaker 1: some sort of like you know, photo frame or something.
Speaker 3: That's a good idea.
Speaker 1: It might be better. All right, Well, good luck and the
Speaker 1: new iPad, by the way, I would just recommend the
Speaker 1: standard one. I don't know if you need. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Air is nice, but it's much more expensive than
Speaker 1: it depends on what you're doing on this thing, but
Speaker 1: the standard one's pretty good, and I would before you
Speaker 1: buy one, just check for some sales. So I always
Speaker 1: type in iPad deal and then go to Google and
Speaker 1: then tap news. And because all the bloggers get affiliate
Speaker 1: money from these things, they will typically blog about when
Speaker 1: iPads are on sale. So that would be my recommendation, Mike.
Speaker 1: And if you want, you can go ahead and recycle
Speaker 1: it as well, So that's what I would recommend. All right. Thanks,
Speaker 1: first call, okay, if you want to get on the show.
Speaker 1: Phone lines are open. It's eight eight eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one Uh, let me just tell you
Speaker 1: about acropolips real quick. So, if you have a Pixel
Speaker 1: or a Windows computer, security researchers have determined that when
Speaker 1: you crop a photo using the default editing tools which
Speaker 1: is called markup and the snipping tool and Windows, it
Speaker 1: saves the information in the file that you tried to
Speaker 1: cut out of the picture. So if you share this
Speaker 1: picture with someone, whether that's online or you know, over email, whatever,
Speaker 1: they may be able to use a tool to recover
Speaker 1: the data that you tried to cut out of that picture.
Speaker 1: And there's actually a tool I'll link to on the
Speaker 1: website that you can try this out. But if you
Speaker 1: have a pixel, you got to update the software because
Speaker 1: Google did release a software update that will fix this.
Speaker 1: So this has been around since twenty eighteen. By the way,
Speaker 1: this issue, so update your pixel and for Windows they
Speaker 1: are now aware of it, but they don't have a
Speaker 1: fixed just yet. So when in doubt, do not share
Speaker 1: screenshots involving personal information right now, even if you crop
Speaker 1: that information out. All right, coming up, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: to my pal lance Yulanoff about TikTok on Capitol Hill
Speaker 1: plus Google Bard. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Rich on Tech. My name is rich Demiro
Speaker 1: and joining me now. My first guest is Lance Ulanoff.
Speaker 1: He is the editor in chief of tech Radar. He
Speaker 1: has spent many years in the tech industry, and also
Speaker 1: he is the tech guy on Live with Kelly and Ryan. Lance,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm just looking at your LinkedIn here and I
Speaker 1: noticed you have a cool feature on there. You have
Speaker 1: a pronouncer for your name. I've never seen that before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they introduced that a while ago because you know,
Speaker 4: I guess just for everyone, but people often mispronounce my
Speaker 4: last name, so it's helpful for me.
Speaker 1: Did I say it right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you get it right. You did well.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining me on the show. Appreciate it. Let's
Speaker 1: talk first, TikTok. So I assume you watched all five
Speaker 1: hours and forty eight minutes of the testimony.
Speaker 4: I watched almost the entire thing. There were a couple
Speaker 4: of little breaks I had to take, but yeah, I
Speaker 4: caught the majority of it. It was it was actually
Speaker 4: pretty frustrating to watch.
Speaker 1: I didn't get through the whole thing, but I did
Speaker 1: watch enough to see that Wow. I mean, these things
Speaker 1: always go the same, They're they're pretty one sided. Obviously,
Speaker 1: they kind of ask questions that are a little bit loaded,
Speaker 1: but they do get some information out there. Like the
Speaker 1: big the big thing I saw that was they asked
Speaker 1: the TikTok CEO if TikTok accessed devices on your home
Speaker 1: Wi Fi. And I was thinking about that. I'm like, hmm,
Speaker 1: actually it probably could do that, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think that's possible. I Mean, the thing is,
Speaker 4: you know, we don't know what when an application is
Speaker 4: installed on your computer or on your phone, and obviously
Speaker 4: most people at home are using their I find network,
Speaker 4: Like what does it interrogate and what does it learn
Speaker 4: about you? We don't know that. But you know, in
Speaker 4: all fairness, pretty much every application that you install is
Speaker 4: going to seek out as much useful information as possible.
Speaker 4: The X factor here being that TikTok is owned by
Speaker 4: by Dance. By Dance is a Chinese company, and we
Speaker 4: are not best of friends with China.
Speaker 1: Right now, right, So if they I mean, let's put
Speaker 1: it this way, even at the very least, if China
Speaker 1: wanted to get the whereabouts of where people are sort
Speaker 1: of moving in and about the US, and this is
Speaker 1: probably the reason why all of these government you know,
Speaker 1: like these local governments and of course the federal government
Speaker 1: is saying you can't have this on your phone because
Speaker 1: at the very least they can track people's movements. That's
Speaker 1: like very basic location services on a phone. Is that
Speaker 1: sound right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there's there's location, there's IP information, you know,
Speaker 4: whether you leave your location services on, which most people
Speaker 4: do because you use it for maps. I think, yes,
Speaker 4: there's a there's a there's a world of data that
Speaker 4: that any company can derive about it. And I do
Speaker 4: think that's a really strong point that and I think
Speaker 4: even the CEO of TikTok agreed with this, that government
Speaker 4: employees should not have social media on their devices. I mean,
Speaker 4: it just makes sense, and I don't think that anybody
Speaker 4: is arguing about that. What it comes down to is
Speaker 4: the question of whether or not it should be banned
Speaker 4: and no one should have access to it as opposed
Speaker 4: to the other option is stronger regulations, which we've all
Speaker 4: been asking for for tech companies and social media for
Speaker 4: a long time, and they all just keep talking about
Speaker 4: it but not actually doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean it kind of reminds me of
Speaker 1: like you know, the Motion Picture Association, You've got the
Speaker 1: people that make the movies rate the movies, right, And
Speaker 1: so with the tech companies. In an ideal world, they
Speaker 1: would make their own rules and say, hey, we play
Speaker 1: by these rules. We want to have our own rules.
Speaker 1: We're private, see centric, and we're you know whatever. But
Speaker 1: the reality is they don't have our best interests at heart.
Speaker 1: They're a tech company. They're trying to make money off
Speaker 1: of us. They're trying to get our personal information. Is
Speaker 1: that right?
Speaker 4: Well, there's certainly these are businesses. These are not philanthropies, right,
Speaker 4: there's no charities out there. They're businesses, and it's a
Speaker 4: question of how big is the business, How are they
Speaker 4: going to make money? You know, whether it's selling you
Speaker 4: something which Apple tends to do, right. They sell you
Speaker 4: hardware and you're subscribe to software, or they give you
Speaker 4: something for in quotes free, but they monetize it and
Speaker 4: they make money through advertising. So then they're selling your interests.
Speaker 4: They're selling your eyeballs. That is paying attention to whatever
Speaker 4: you look at. And that's what TikTok is, right. TikTok
Speaker 4: is in that area. TikTok monetizes through ad partnerships. I mean,
Speaker 4: if you are on TikTok, you notice there are more
Speaker 4: and more ads in there, and so that's how it's
Speaker 4: that's a trade off that exists across pretty much all
Speaker 4: of technology. But you said something is very interesting that
Speaker 4: they don't. There are no rules, right, So different companies
Speaker 4: go by different ethos. So, for example, Apple is tends
Speaker 4: to be more privacy focused than others, right, because they're
Speaker 4: not ad based. They don't care what we're doing all
Speaker 4: their devices. What they care about is buy more of
Speaker 4: our stuff, be in our ecosystem. Whereas Google, well they
Speaker 4: don't sell you a lot of hardware. They're starting to,
Speaker 4: but most of their money is made through advertising, so
Speaker 4: they really need to know what you're doing across their
Speaker 4: network of things. So they don't have the same kind
Speaker 4: of rules and ethos that Apple has. So there's no consistency,
Speaker 4: and there's no data US data bill of.
Speaker 1: Rights, right, different plate. I mean, obviously Europe has much
Speaker 1: stronger privacy regulations, California has much stronger privacy regulations. But yes,
Speaker 1: federally that's just not the case. And every company, like
Speaker 1: you said, kind of does their own thing. I guess
Speaker 1: my big question is what was your takeaway? Was there
Speaker 1: anything that surprised you from this this testimony?
Speaker 4: Well, I was, you know, I was very interested when
Speaker 4: I heard him say the CEO too, say that he
Speaker 4: reports directly to the CEO of Byte Dance. The Bite
Speaker 4: Dance is a Chinese company, and that CEO is in China,
Speaker 4: and he may or may not be a member of
Speaker 4: the Communist Party. And I think that was one moment
Speaker 4: I'm really kind of fixated on, like, Okay, there's because
Speaker 4: they weren't getting enough really solid information out of them
Speaker 4: because they spent too much time just talking about I
Speaker 4: don't know what. They just just speak they're making speeches.
Speaker 4: But I was like, give me details that we can
Speaker 4: because that's what they can dig into. The other thing
Speaker 4: was that he owns stock in Byte Dance, So again,
Speaker 4: these are things that talk to his interests, who controls
Speaker 4: what he does and who he answers to and how
Speaker 4: it's going to play out now. That was interesting to me.
Speaker 4: And of course Project Texas, which is what is the
Speaker 4: plan that by Dance slash TikTok now TikTok whatever they're
Speaker 4: building separately has to protect firewall off American data, which
Speaker 4: includes setting up almost like a separate company, which I
Speaker 4: think is called the United States Security Data Security USDs.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's right there.
Speaker 4: I know, I know it was very weird, but that's
Speaker 4: the name they came up with. There's going to be
Speaker 4: you know, any legacy data that was left on on
Speaker 4: service that were controlled by by Dance, it's going to
Speaker 4: be pulled off. Uh. There, So they're all all the
Speaker 4: data will be firewalls, all be with Oracle, and they'll
Speaker 4: have like a board that will populated with people with
Speaker 4: security backrounds all the US people. Uh, and they'll have oversight.
Speaker 4: They'll be like an over third party oversite to make
Speaker 4: sure they follow all the rules. So I actually thought,
Speaker 4: all right, that's a start, that's something. But it was
Speaker 4: interesting because what the officials the lawmakers did is they
Speaker 4: basically dismissed the entire plan. They really were like me, yeah,
Speaker 4: they really kind of pick it apart, which is what
Speaker 4: I wanted. I'm like, go deeper into that because that's
Speaker 4: what he has to answer for because that's their action plan.
Speaker 4: You want to know that that's a good action plan.
Speaker 1: But wouldn't it solve more problems just to get this
Speaker 1: controlled by a US company, or to sell make it
Speaker 1: its own company, like just you know, branch off and
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, maybe you can't do that,
Speaker 1: but like it seems odd that, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I get that there's a lot of money at stake
Speaker 1: here and Byteedance makes a lot of money off of
Speaker 1: this app or there's potential for tons of money to
Speaker 1: be made. But would it solve all the problems if
Speaker 1: they just said, hey, we're going to make this a
Speaker 1: US company. Now we're going to just start up. I mean,
Speaker 1: they say they made a big deal about saying how
Speaker 1: many offices they have in the US and how many employees.
Speaker 4: They have here seven seven thousand. I think, yeah, obviously, yes,
Speaker 4: you are totally right. It would make things so easy.
Speaker 4: My feeling is I believe that the reason China by
Speaker 4: Dance will not sell is out of pride. This is
Speaker 4: a global sensation. They really are excited and happy about it,
Speaker 4: and they would feel I think they would feel they
Speaker 4: would lose face to spell it. It would be an embarrassment.
Speaker 4: They would be, you know, basically kneeling to the US
Speaker 4: on this point. That's why they won't sell it. And
Speaker 4: I will say also that I don't think I don't
Speaker 4: think a band is actually on the table, partly because
Speaker 4: of the lobbying, but also because of the thing you
Speaker 4: mentioned that the deep sort of integration in US and
Speaker 4: including investment from US parties, So there would be a
Speaker 4: lot of pushback on doing that, making it like this
Speaker 4: illicit thing you could only get to it through VPN.
Speaker 4: So I don't think that's going to happen either. So
Speaker 4: we're kind of in this weird spot. But what's strange
Speaker 4: to me is that it is so rare to find
Speaker 4: agreement on both sides of the Aisle and the White
Speaker 4: House on any topic, and here we have one where
Speaker 4: everybody's there, we're all in agreement. They're like, yeah, bad,
Speaker 4: this is bad. We should do something, maybe ban it.
Speaker 4: So that is the X factor where if they're truly
Speaker 4: not satisfied, they may press this point and then it
Speaker 4: goes to someplace that maybe it is something like a
Speaker 4: band or I don't know, but I just don't think
Speaker 4: they'll get them to sell them sell it because of
Speaker 4: the reasons I stated, Well.
Speaker 1: It's certainly been a saga of the century for at
Speaker 1: least a couple I mean, I remember the first time
Speaker 1: I covered this probably three or four years ago and
Speaker 1: it's still I just can't believe it's still going on.
Speaker 1: And we even get into the whole idea of the
Speaker 1: misinformation that's on TikTok and the self harm and the
Speaker 1: challenges that are just taking over children's lives and ruining them.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot going on here, and that's not
Speaker 1: just TikTok's fault. That is, you know, a social media
Speaker 1: thing in general. But that's a whole other conversation. But
Speaker 1: Lance I'm gonna have to leave it there. How can
Speaker 1: folks keep in touch with you, follow you all that
Speaker 1: good stuff?
Speaker 4: Obviously tech grad dot com. I have a number of
Speaker 4: stories to go up there of the US that are
Speaker 4: in chief, and then of course on Twitter, assuming it
Speaker 4: doesn't go coput. I'm on Twitter, uh and yes you
Speaker 4: can find me there and no, yes on TikTok. Yes
Speaker 4: I am on.
Speaker 1: TikTok Okay, we'll check that out. Lancey lan Off, editor
Speaker 1: in chief of tech Radar and also the tech guy
Speaker 1: on Live with Kelly and Ryan. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining me today. I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: On your Saturday, it was a pleasure talk to you.
Speaker 1: All right, talk soon, all right, You're listening to Rich
Speaker 1: on tech. Coming up, we'll talk about Google Bard that's
Speaker 1: their answer to chat GPT plus more of your calls
Speaker 1: at Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. You are
Speaker 1: listening to Rich on tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Don't forget to
Speaker 1: sign up for my newsletter. Just go to rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot T hit the I believe it says sign
Speaker 1: up for my newsletter. Pretty simple. Now, I will tell
Speaker 1: you the newsletter is currently dormant, so you may not
Speaker 1: get an email from me tomorrow. But I am just
Speaker 1: it's a way to keep in touch. When I've got
Speaker 1: something important to say, I will put it on there.
Speaker 1: So that's the way to do it. Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. Jamie is in Riverside, California. Jamie, you are
Speaker 1: on with rich Hi.
Speaker 7: Rich thank you for taking the call. I wanted to
Speaker 7: ask you what the Microsoft upgrade to Wendy eleven. I'm
Speaker 7: having a difficult time locating like my test manager and
Speaker 7: task you know, like my files where before I used
Speaker 7: to go and start look down and it would give
Speaker 7: you all the information like Microsoft Office, and I can't
Speaker 7: seem to find that anymore.
Speaker 1: So if they've moved everything, yes, that's funny.
Speaker 7: If they're like a website, I can find I like
Speaker 7: the TT so they can kind of maneuver around, or
Speaker 7: you know, they're like.
Speaker 5: A search bar.
Speaker 1: What do you suggest, So they moved everything around Windows
Speaker 1: eleven is uh, they sort of moved everything to the
Speaker 1: center of the screen now, right, like the whole start
Speaker 1: button and all that start menu. Yes, And I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: I have not played with it that much. It's on
Speaker 1: my list of things to do to kind of check
Speaker 1: it out and see. So I can't specifically say where
Speaker 1: all these things are. But I mean, as for resources,
Speaker 1: I think the easiest thing to do. I mean, these
Speaker 1: things don't come with an instruction manual. But no, Microsoft
Speaker 1: does a pretty good job on their website of doing tutorials.
Speaker 1: Have you looked at those at all?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, that's where I was much.
Speaker 7: Are they for C tutorials or are they just like
Speaker 7: introducing the new Windows even Well.
Speaker 1: They've got a whole bunch of stuff, so I'm looking
Speaker 1: at it Now I just did support dot Microsoft dot
Speaker 1: com and they got this section called Meat Windows eleven,
Speaker 1: and so they've got a whole thing. It tells you
Speaker 1: about the look and feel, it tells you about how
Speaker 1: to personalize your experience, the apps and tools, entertainment, gaming, accessibility, creativity,
Speaker 1: and then it underneath each video it gives you all
Speaker 1: of kind of like the basics. So how to search obviously,
Speaker 1: you know how to do that. You press search or
Speaker 1: you can you know, tap Windows s, how to make
Speaker 1: desktop groups, your Microsoft account, keyboard shortcuts that you might
Speaker 1: find useful, like how about this? Did you know that
Speaker 1: for voice typing you can do Windows.
Speaker 7: H No, but I got to get.
Speaker 1: See there you go. How about how about opening the
Speaker 1: emoji panel? Jamie? Have you done that? It's Windows semicolon.
Speaker 1: Ok see all right, so this is support dot Microsoft
Speaker 1: dot com. And then look for the meat Windows eleven section.
Speaker 1: Now the other thing that's go ahead, well, the other
Speaker 1: thing that's really handy. Okay you first, no, you it's
Speaker 1: like at a stop you know, is that like those
Speaker 1: stop signs you know where you're like, no, no, you
Speaker 1: go first, No, you go first, No, you go first, Jamie,
Speaker 1: you go first, okay, thank you.
Speaker 7: I wanted to also ask you, I'm building a new workstation.
Speaker 7: Before you would be able to just put in a
Speaker 7: user name, but now it seems like they always wanted
Speaker 7: to use an email account, like you know, a live
Speaker 7: or outlook yes, to get connected to the network.
Speaker 5: Is there a work around now or is that just
Speaker 5: the way.
Speaker 7: You know the things work now.
Speaker 1: That's a good question because I was just setting up
Speaker 1: a computer and I noticed that same exact thing, and
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a second, do I really need
Speaker 1: to put into Microsoft account now? I'm assuming that there
Speaker 1: is a way to do a local account. Off the
Speaker 1: top of my head, I don't know, but I assume
Speaker 1: that when you're signing in, there's probably a tiny little
Speaker 1: link when when you're setting up the computer that says
Speaker 1: to do it offline. So when you're going through, just
Speaker 1: kind of really take a close look at things and
Speaker 1: see if there is a section on that sign up
Speaker 1: area where it says like go offline or do this locally.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a way to do it. I just
Speaker 1: went ahead and used my Microsoft account because I was
Speaker 1: just like, okay, let me just try this. But obviously
Speaker 1: they're trying to force everyone to do these things a
Speaker 1: certain way because they want everyone linked in to you know,
Speaker 1: their main Microsoft accounts because that helps them in the end.
Speaker 1: But again, I think that's all part of the tutorials.
Speaker 1: And also, I mean, I know this is a pretty
Speaker 1: a given, but you know, YouTube is a really good
Speaker 1: resource for this kind of stuff. I would find some
Speaker 1: good YouTubers that cover Windows eleven and just kind of
Speaker 1: watch some of their videos. I know it's, you know,
Speaker 1: could be kind of boring to sit through some of
Speaker 1: this stuff, but if you're really trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: learn the ins and outs of this new software, that's
Speaker 1: probably a good way to familiarize yourself at least, just
Speaker 1: to get some.
Speaker 7: Boring.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's b but you know, I think
Speaker 1: that it depends. It depends, like it's just you know,
Speaker 1: it depends on how interested you are and all these
Speaker 1: little nuances. But there's definitely a lot of new features,
Speaker 1: and I feel like Windows has really they just keep
Speaker 1: changing things a lot, and it's happening very fast right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, they just you know, especially with this AI stuff,
Speaker 1: it's all gonna change again, Jamie, that's for sure.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's for sure.
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, thank you the mind that I really do
Speaker 5: enjoy your show.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you very much for calling, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put links to everything that I mentioned. I'm
Speaker 1: taking very good notes. I'm like a student in a
Speaker 1: college class right now. I'm taking notes as I go
Speaker 1: along to everything that I mentioned, and I'm putting them
Speaker 1: all in the show notes. So after you listen to
Speaker 1: the show, once this is all posted as the podcast,
Speaker 1: you can go to my website rich on tech dot
Speaker 1: tv see the link, and I will have everything that
Speaker 1: I mentioned inside the link so that you can easily
Speaker 1: find it. All Right, So I've been talking about this
Speaker 1: netgear orb. If you have one of these routers, which
Speaker 1: you've probably heard people talk about, these mesh router systems,
Speaker 1: that you put a couple different access points around your
Speaker 1: house and they work together to create a Wi Fi
Speaker 1: signal that is everywhere throughout your house. Instead of the
Speaker 1: old way that is just one router modem in the
Speaker 1: middle of your house from your cable company or whatever,
Speaker 1: and that puts out the signal and it never reaches
Speaker 1: to the far corners. These new mesh networks, they have
Speaker 1: different access points you put in different rooms and they
Speaker 1: all work together to create one Wi Fi signal that
Speaker 1: works in every corner of your house. So these things
Speaker 1: are very popular. Ero sort of started the trend and
Speaker 1: now you've got a whole bunch of them. Neck Your
Speaker 1: Orby is a very highly rated mesh wireless system. It's
Speaker 1: very popular and if you have one, you probably want
Speaker 1: to check for updates because there is some There was
Speaker 1: an exploit. Basically, hackers were able to get into this thing,
Speaker 1: and so you want to make sure that you have
Speaker 1: this thing patched up. So the bottom line is you
Speaker 1: don't really need to know what they were able to
Speaker 1: do with this, because it's besides the point. But if
Speaker 1: you have a neck gear Orby, go into the app
Speaker 1: on your phone, go into the settings, check for an update,
Speaker 1: and update the software so that your network is secure.
Speaker 1: All right, I've got phone lines open at triple eight.
Speaker 1: Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two,
Speaker 1: four to one zero one. My name is Rich Dmiro.
Speaker 1: You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. My name is Rich Demiro, hanging out
Speaker 1: talking technology. This is a show where I talk about
Speaker 1: the tech. If I can talk, this is the show
Speaker 1: where I talk about the tech stuff I think you
Speaker 1: should know about. It's also the place where I answer
Speaker 1: your questions. You can find me online at rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: That's me on all social media. That's Instagram, that's Facebook,
Speaker 1: and as long as Twitter is still around. That's where
Speaker 1: all be this week. I know I try to make
Speaker 1: the entire show about AI, but that is the number
Speaker 1: one theme of the tech world right now. AI is everything.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like it reminds me of going to
Speaker 1: these tech shows when the internet and wireless connections kind
Speaker 1: of first started, and every product would get an Internet connection.
Speaker 1: It's like, you have a teacup up, it's got Internet. Oh,
Speaker 1: you have a frame, it's got Internet. You've got a speaker,
Speaker 1: it's got Internet everything. And now we're seeing that same
Speaker 1: trend with AI. This all started because of chat GPT.
Speaker 1: If you haven't used it, there is only one way
Speaker 1: to access it. It is through the website, which is OpenAI.
Speaker 1: That's the company that makes it. So it's chat dot
Speaker 1: OpenAI dot com. So do not get scammed into logging
Speaker 1: into chat GPT through an app or through pretty much
Speaker 1: anything else. At this point, there is nothing else. There
Speaker 1: are products that run on top of OpenAI and chat GPT.
Speaker 1: But at this point, there is only one legitimate Chat
Speaker 1: GPT and that is through OpenAI's website. And so if
Speaker 1: you're trying to like log in with your Facebook, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of scams out there that have to do
Speaker 1: with that. Do not fall for them. Do not download
Speaker 1: an app to the iPhone or from Google. There is
Speaker 1: no chat GPT app right now, so just don't even
Speaker 1: do it. If you want to use chat GPT on
Speaker 1: your phone, you can bookmark chat dot OpenAI dot com
Speaker 1: and that will work on your phone, it will work
Speaker 1: on your computer, and it's all free. Now it gets
Speaker 1: a little confusing because now there is a paid version
Speaker 1: of chat GPT called Chat GPT Plus and it's twenty
Speaker 1: bucks a month, which is a lot of money. So
Speaker 1: you have to really have a use case for chat
Speaker 1: GBT plus to pay twenty bucks a month for this
Speaker 1: right now, Like you're a developer, you just you know,
Speaker 1: you just really really need something more than what they
Speaker 1: give for free. And keep in mind, Chat GBT is
Speaker 1: sort of locked into twenty twenty one. It is not
Speaker 1: up to date, it is not current. It's a research
Speaker 1: tool right now, and so if you're looking for answers
Speaker 1: that are past twenty twenty one. It just doesn't have
Speaker 1: those right now. That will change. But that's the way
Speaker 1: chat GBT is. And it's an amazing, amazing application program,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. It's really impressive. But
Speaker 1: I've been playing with the Google version of this AI stuff.
Speaker 1: They're calling it barred b A R D. And Google's AI.
Speaker 1: I've told you about this before. They were kind of
Speaker 1: their hand was forced in all this stuff. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that Google has not been working on a
Speaker 1: for a very long time. They have. In fact, Google
Speaker 1: is using a lot of AI behind the scenes, and
Speaker 1: almost all of the products that they have, whether it's YouTube,
Speaker 1: whether it's Gmail, whether it's you know, any app that
Speaker 1: they have on Android, they use a lot of AI.
Speaker 1: But they never came out with their version of chat
Speaker 1: GBT until now because it flies in the face of
Speaker 1: their entire business model. And if you want, by the way,
Speaker 1: to sign up for this, it's barred dot Google dot
Speaker 1: com and there's a wait list and you will get access.
Speaker 1: It just takes a little bit of time. So for instance,
Speaker 1: I signed up the first second it was available. I
Speaker 1: got access probably an hour later. My son he signed
Speaker 1: up probably the end of the day that day, which
Speaker 1: was a couple days ago, and he just got access today,
Speaker 1: so it could take a few days to get access.
Speaker 1: They're rolling this out because it's test. They're trying to
Speaker 1: see how people use it, how it works, and just
Speaker 1: to you know, it's just a test. It's an experiment.
Speaker 1: They're calling it an early experiment. And generative AI means
Speaker 1: that this AI generates responses based on its knowledge. So
Speaker 1: nobody has sat there and programmed in these answers. It
Speaker 1: comes up with them on the fly. So it could
Speaker 1: be wrong, it could be right, it could be off,
Speaker 1: it could be amazing. So let me explain. Okay, Number
Speaker 1: one Bard. The reason why they're calling it Bard, according
Speaker 1: to Bard, is that it's an old storyteller. That's what
Speaker 1: they were called back in the day, like a Bard,
Speaker 1: and so that's where they got the inspiration for the name.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. That's just what Bard
Speaker 1: told me, so we have to take it at face value.
Speaker 1: But Google says you can use Bard to boost your productivity,
Speaker 1: accelerate your ideas, fuel your curiosity, fuel your curiosity. I've
Speaker 1: asked it so many questions in the past week, it's
Speaker 1: quite impressive. I've said, Hey, I love this book, recommend
Speaker 1: me five books just like it. I also asked, give
Speaker 1: me I like this song, Give me a list of
Speaker 1: one hundred songs just like that song. It did it.
Speaker 1: I've asked for recipes. Hey, I have this, this, and this.
Speaker 1: Can you make me a recipe using those ingredients? Oh?
Speaker 1: Can you make it healthy? Can you make it vegan?
Speaker 1: I asked it last night, Can you tell me the
Speaker 1: best things on the menu at this restaurant I was
Speaker 1: going to? And it just spit out the answers. Now
Speaker 1: here's the thing. It doesn't do as many citations as
Speaker 1: Bing does with their AI, so Bing will have at
Speaker 1: the end of their AI answers where it got those answers.
Speaker 1: Google is not as forthcoming all the time.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 1: I've noticed sometimes at the end of the answer it
Speaker 1: will give you a link to where it got that information.
Speaker 1: Other times it will not, So you don't really necessarily
Speaker 1: know where this information is coming from. But what's amazing
Speaker 1: about bard is that it feels like you have literally
Speaker 1: the smartest person in the world at your desci You
Speaker 1: can ask anything to this person. It's not always going
Speaker 1: to answer it. Sometimes it'll say sorry, I'm AI, I'm
Speaker 1: not trained on that, or it just gets a little
Speaker 1: cagey and it says, ah, sorry, Like if you try
Speaker 1: to like really push the limits of this stuff, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of guardrails built in right now because they
Speaker 1: don't know what these AI systems are gonna say. They've
Speaker 1: programmed them to work, but they didn't program what they're
Speaker 1: going to generate, and so it's really anyone's guess as
Speaker 1: to how people flex the muscles of these different AI
Speaker 1: programs to make them do things that even the programmers
Speaker 1: didn't know they could do. For instance, just in the
Speaker 1: past week, I've asked it to compose a song. I've
Speaker 1: asked it to write biographies of people. And it's interesting.
Speaker 1: If you ask it to write a biography, Hey who
Speaker 1: is rich Tomuro it will say sorry, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But if you put in their social media account, say
Speaker 1: hey who is at rich on Tech? Then it comes
Speaker 1: back with all the information. So again, it's just the
Speaker 1: way it's been programmed to do this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I've asked it to. It literally coded me simple websites.
Speaker 1: I said, hey, can you grab an RSS feed and
Speaker 1: create a feed of that RSS on this website and
Speaker 1: play the latest episode of my podcast, and sure enough
Speaker 1: it did that. I said, hey, can you code a
Speaker 1: simple timer on a website and have this screen flash
Speaker 1: when there's one minute left on the timer? And it
Speaker 1: did that. I mean, this is really really advanced stuff
Speaker 1: and it's all free right now. And the reason why
Speaker 1: I said it flies in the face of Google's business
Speaker 1: is because there's no ads on it, and as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, I'm not sure how they're going
Speaker 1: to implement ads unless it's a banner ad on this screen.
Speaker 1: The other thing that's really unique about it is you
Speaker 1: can say thumbs up thumbs down if you like the answer.
Speaker 1: Because it's still learning. It also gives you different drafts
Speaker 1: of answer, so when you look at an answer, it
Speaker 1: will say, okay, well, our computer also came up with this,
Speaker 1: and it will you can look at different versions of
Speaker 1: the same answer, and you can also hit a Google
Speaker 1: button at the bottom of the answer to kind of
Speaker 1: see where where it lies with the Google search results,
Speaker 1: how does it compare with those? And so that's unique
Speaker 1: to Google that I didn't really see on BING. These
Speaker 1: are all called large language models LLM, and what that
Speaker 1: means is They feed a whole bunch of information into
Speaker 1: this large language model, and it goes to town just
Speaker 1: figuring out what all that information means. And when you
Speaker 1: ask a question, it reaches into its information database and
Speaker 1: pulls out the answers that it thinks are right. It's
Speaker 1: really really wild. If you haven't tried this yet, it's
Speaker 1: just and I know there's been so much talk about
Speaker 1: this stuff in the world, but it is going to
Speaker 1: change everything. It really really is. And when you sit
Speaker 1: here and use it, you realize that after a week,
Speaker 1: I am using Barred as my entire search engine. I
Speaker 1: don't use Google anymore because I don't need it. I'm
Speaker 1: asking for answers. If I need a link to a website, sure,
Speaker 1: but if I want an answer to something, I'm going
Speaker 1: to Bard. Now keep in mind this is from Google,
Speaker 1: it says. Because there are so much information that this
Speaker 1: is programmed with, this will reflect real world biases, stereotypes,
Speaker 1: and sometimes this will show up in the answers. The
Speaker 1: answers can also be inaccurate, they can be misleading, and
Speaker 1: they can have false information all while being presented confidently,
Speaker 1: which means Bard may present an answer to you that
Speaker 1: seems right and you may run with it and it's
Speaker 1: just flat out wrong. And the reason you don't know
Speaker 1: that is because it presents it in such a way
Speaker 1: where it feels authoritative. And that's the trickiest part to
Speaker 1: all of this AI and I think what's almost the
Speaker 1: Achilles heel to it is that because it can be
Speaker 1: so wrong on stuff and sound so right, we literally
Speaker 1: as humans almost have to fact check, fact check every
Speaker 1: single aspect of these answers. And at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, if you're fact checking all of these answers,
Speaker 1: are they really answers. I mean, it's almost more work
Speaker 1: than in the beginning of when we went to the web.
Speaker 1: You would type in a search term, you'd go to
Speaker 1: that website. If the website was trusted, you would trust
Speaker 1: that information, and you could tell if a website is
Speaker 1: trusted most of the time if it's from a big name.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you couldn't. And that's where misinformation on the web
Speaker 1: comes into play again. So many things you can do
Speaker 1: with this. I just I really really find this fascinating.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to see if there's anything else that Google
Speaker 1: says that's interesting about this. I think the main thing
Speaker 1: to know is barred dot Google dot com if you
Speaker 1: want to sign up and try it out. I've just
Speaker 1: been having a ton of fun. Can you can ask
Speaker 1: follow up questions? So if you're writing one thing, you
Speaker 1: can write a follow up question and say, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd like to know more about that. You can modify
Speaker 1: kind of the answer that it gives you by asking
Speaker 1: it follow up questions. It's really just phenomenal tools and
Speaker 1: it's free. This is free, and it's changing. Its going
Speaker 1: to change everything, especially as they figure out how this
Speaker 1: is going to be integrated into everyday life, how Google's
Speaker 1: going to use this, and most importantly, how are they
Speaker 1: going to get stuff right? Because that's the thing that
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for is when when can we trust this
Speaker 1: to really be solid and to give us answers that
Speaker 1: we can go with. All Right, I see a bunch
Speaker 1: of you waiting online to uh to talk to me,
Speaker 1: So I will get to more of your calls coming
Speaker 1: up next at triple eight Rich one O one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Email also
Speaker 1: open hello at rich on tech dot TV. I'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Welcome back to rich on tech Rich DeMuro
Speaker 1: here we were just talking about AI and Google barred
Speaker 1: and swell seven on Twitter rights. If I as barred
Speaker 1: to write a song with me, who owns the copyright?
Speaker 1: Good question. This is what it's being figured out right
Speaker 1: now as we speak. I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of people using AI now for everything from
Speaker 1: first drafts of things to artwork, and it's all being
Speaker 1: debated in the communities that are most at stake here
Speaker 1: or have the most steak here. I just did a
Speaker 1: story with some artists that, you know. They're arguing that
Speaker 1: all these generative AI art platforms are being trained using
Speaker 1: artwork that other people made, and so how does that
Speaker 1: factor into it? And it's really some interesting questions. I
Speaker 1: think Hollywood's also trying to figure it out with script writing,
Speaker 1: but as of right now, seems like the WGA is
Speaker 1: saying that if AI is used to start the script,
Speaker 1: the person who actually sort of polishes things up or
Speaker 1: writes it after that is the person who is the
Speaker 1: writer of it, and you don't even have to give
Speaker 1: credit to AI. So there's a lot of things that
Speaker 1: are going to be figured out here. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's going to happen overnight, because anytime you have technology,
Speaker 1: it's always sort of ahead of the rules and regulations
Speaker 1: and laws and so. But when there's money at sake, yes,
Speaker 1: people will figure it out. Turtis is in Fountain Valley, California. Turtis,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 9: I Rich, thank you for taking my call.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's on your mind?
Speaker 9: So what happened is I have some fluorescent lights in
Speaker 9: my kitchen and they grew up in the ceiling and
Speaker 9: I replaced them as Elie okay, And since I replaced him,
Speaker 9: and that was only about two weeks ago, it's interfering
Speaker 9: with some of the some of the channels that we get,
Speaker 9: not all of them, but just some of them. Now,
Speaker 9: I didn't know it was an nine filter that I
Speaker 9: could put in.
Speaker 4: To stop that, or or what might be.
Speaker 1: What kind of lights are they? And what type of
Speaker 1: TV reception are we talking about? Were talking over the
Speaker 1: air antenna?
Speaker 9: Yeah, we have a haven't having an old type antenna
Speaker 9: up in the attic that was up there when I
Speaker 9: bought the house site thirty five years ago.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, so we're just using that.
Speaker 9: Uh, you know, we did HDTV of course, and usually
Speaker 9: we get decent signals. But once I put those LEDs in. Uh,
Speaker 9: it's been interfering with the signals?
Speaker 1: How how does it happen? So you turn on so
Speaker 1: you've got the TV tunto a channel, You turn on
Speaker 1: the LED lights and what happens? Everything just starts going haywire,
Speaker 1: it goes.
Speaker 9: It just goes to a like a background of a picture,
Speaker 9: and then it just says, no signals.
Speaker 4: Wow. You turn the lights off.
Speaker 9: And you know in a few sections it will come
Speaker 9: back onto the to the channel.
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, I mean LEDs uh could emit some electromagnetic
Speaker 1: radiation according to some of the research I'm seeing. So,
Speaker 1: but I would think that modern bulbs would be shielded
Speaker 1: enough to not make that happen in such a pronounced way.
Speaker 1: So what I would think is what types of lights
Speaker 1: are these?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 9: They're they're LED, but they're not the two types that
Speaker 9: were there linear or three feet long okay, all of
Speaker 9: them in the ceiling in the kitchen, in a reverse
Speaker 9: soft type thing like about eight or ten inches of Okay.
Speaker 1: So these are these are pretty sizable light bulbs and
Speaker 1: this is a sizable array. And it also sounds like
Speaker 1: are they underneath the antenna as well as the antenna.
Speaker 4: On top of them right now.
Speaker 9: Unfortunately, the antenna wires. You know, we have like three
Speaker 9: different connections in our house, and so antenna comes out
Speaker 9: and there's a split or and then it goes to
Speaker 9: the other ones in the house and unfortunately right on
Speaker 9: top of ord.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, okay, so's a couple of things maybe you
Speaker 1: can try. I don't think you want to replace all
Speaker 1: the lights because that's that's gonna be a problem. But
Speaker 1: maybe can use like a higher gauge wire that's maybe
Speaker 1: more shielded. Like, is there like a better cable you
Speaker 1: can use that that you can run up there or
Speaker 1: is that not an option?
Speaker 9: You mean as far as the TV cable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, like the cable that's yeah, that might be
Speaker 1: your best bet to start.
Speaker 4: There, a shielded, shielded TV cable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would try that first, and and try that
Speaker 1: and maybe maybe even if you can get up in
Speaker 1: the ceiling and uh just re route where that cable goes,
Speaker 1: maybe keep it, you know, more towards the edge of
Speaker 1: the house or more towards the sides. But I would
Speaker 1: try to get like maybe a thicker cable that is
Speaker 1: more shielded to to sort of shield off some of
Speaker 1: the radiation that's coming out of these light bulbs. But
Speaker 1: also I'd be a little concerned standing under these light
Speaker 1: bulbs if they're causing this much interference with your TV set,
Speaker 1: because that could be a problem as well. But turnus
Speaker 1: good question, really really something I haven't thought of. But
Speaker 1: I mean, the only thing I could kind of relate
Speaker 1: is with the Wi Fi connections using the microwave. People
Speaker 1: don't realize how much the microwave could impact your Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: So if you're having trouble with your WiFi, could be
Speaker 1: your microwave. Coming up next, we are visiting Outer Edge LA.
Speaker 1: This is an nftxpo. Rich on Tech Coming up next,
Speaker 1: rich DeMuro here, rich on Tech, Welcome back to the show. Recently,
Speaker 1: I went to Outer EDGELA, a festival that celebrates the
Speaker 1: future of the Internet. We're talking Web three stuff like crypto, NFTs,
Speaker 1: and the blockchain. First I talked to Outer Edge LA
Speaker 1: co founder Josh Kreeger.
Speaker 10: We wanted to create an innovation vessel this celebrate all
Speaker 10: the incredible converging technologies that are kind of coming together
Speaker 10: in this special moment in time, and we just think
Speaker 10: LA is the app center of so much creativity from
Speaker 10: high technology to art, entertainment, music, fashion, comedy.
Speaker 11: It all happens here, and so we want to bring
Speaker 11: all of.
Speaker 10: Those communities together and talk about where this is all
Speaker 10: is going.
Speaker 1: And so, explain to me what's an NFT.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So the.
Speaker 10: Technical sort of definition, it's a non fungible token. But
Speaker 10: I like to ask a couple of questions when someone
Speaker 10: asked me that question, It's like, is there anything in
Speaker 10: the world physically that you collect?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 10: Is there any group that you're a member of? Usually
Speaker 10: the answer for ninety percent of the world is yes. Essentially,
Speaker 10: what we're doing is we're offering a digital sort of
Speaker 10: sort of value right of some sort of IP or
Speaker 10: some sort of ownership, digital ownership that's verifiable using blockchain
Speaker 10: technology and smart contracts.
Speaker 1: How far have you come with this technology over the
Speaker 1: past couple of years since we started hearing about it?
Speaker 10: Oh man, you know, there's a lot of analogies, like
Speaker 10: one day in web three it might be like seven weeks,
Speaker 10: or one month is like seven years.
Speaker 11: It's been an.
Speaker 10: Incredible rapid explosion of innovation, and it's come a long way,
Speaker 10: but it's still the first inning.
Speaker 11: A lot of people are like well, where's all this going?
Speaker 11: Was this a bubble? We don't really see it that way.
Speaker 10: We see it as sort of an experimentation phase over
Speaker 10: the last year and a half and now it's about
Speaker 10: real utility.
Speaker 11: The reason we're doing this event and calling it out.
Speaker 10: Of edge LA is to sort of talk about the
Speaker 10: real use cases for brands, for membership groups, and for
Speaker 10: society as a whole.
Speaker 11: And we just see that as the beginning.
Speaker 1: Where do you see the interest lie with when Crypto's up,
Speaker 1: cryptos down with NFTs.
Speaker 10: Well, what I would say is that there's just been
Speaker 10: volatility in the markets globally, right, and so obviously smaller
Speaker 10: markets have more volatility, and crypto is a smaller market
Speaker 10: relatively speaking to the macroeconomy. At the same same time,
Speaker 10: I see the interest has been more focused on sort
Speaker 10: of the everyday use cases which we're talking about here.
Speaker 10: So yes, like we've kind of gotten rid of a
Speaker 10: layer of speculation in the market and that has made
Speaker 10: the market relative, you know, I would say a little
Speaker 10: bit smaller than it was, say a year ago, but
Speaker 10: now it's growing again with people that are looking at
Speaker 10: true utility.
Speaker 1: Next, I met up with Nihar Nilakante who runs Ecosapiens.
Speaker 12: Ecosapiens is the world's first carbon backed NFT and it's
Speaker 12: a digital piece. It's a piece of digital art that
Speaker 12: offsets your entire years worth of carbon footprint and just
Speaker 12: one click.
Speaker 1: How do you do that?
Speaker 12: We work with a carbon project developer in Kenya, so
Speaker 12: we're actually working with a Kenyan soil carbon project. We
Speaker 12: bring those credits on chain, right onto the blockchain ethereum,
Speaker 12: and we disguise it as a piece of digital art
Speaker 12: called Ecosapian.
Speaker 1: And how much does something like this cost me for
Speaker 1: the year? About one thousand dollars And what's the impact?
Speaker 12: It's sixteen tons of carbon and more so, it's an
Speaker 12: entire year's worth of carbon fort right all your flights,
Speaker 12: you know, miles, et cetera. And it ends up planning
Speaker 12: over eight hundred trees and just let first go. You know,
Speaker 12: I come from a climate background, actually an in venture capital,
Speaker 12: and when I was thinking about how climate changed to
Speaker 12: be better addressed in society, a lot of it came
Speaker 12: down to sort of tokenization of carbon credits and just
Speaker 12: you know, using NFTs as a way to get people
Speaker 12: to make an impact. And that was really the opportunity
Speaker 12: for me is like maybe you could get people, Maybe
Speaker 12: you could create a way for people to make an
Speaker 12: impact on the planet if you disguise impact as you know.
Speaker 6: Art.
Speaker 1: Sanjay Ragavon is with a startup called Roofstock. They're building
Speaker 1: a system that lets you buy rental properties one online
Speaker 1: via NFTs.
Speaker 13: About eighteen months back, we started a web three division
Speaker 13: to make it faster, easier and more transparent to buy
Speaker 13: and sell dental properties. And so our web three division
Speaker 13: allows you to actually buy a real rental property in
Speaker 13: the US using NFT technologies, and you can also get
Speaker 13: alone on the blockchain, so and the whole process can
Speaker 13: be done in a few minutes as opposed to the
Speaker 13: several weeks it takes to buy a house in the US,
Speaker 13: whereas here on the blockchain, you can instantaneously become a
Speaker 13: property owner. And we've actually sold three of these so far.
Speaker 13: This is on open Sea. We sold one last week.
Speaker 13: This property is located in Georgia suburb of Atlanta, and
Speaker 13: it's sold for two hundred and eighteen thousand dollars. But
Speaker 13: it literally took minutes to close this property. And it's
Speaker 13: a physical property, it's a real property. Yeah, what do
Speaker 13: you think this means for the future of real estate? So,
Speaker 13: you know, I kind of compare it to the world
Speaker 13: where we used to hail a yellow cap to go
Speaker 13: to the airport before and then lift an uber came
Speaker 13: along and that changed everything. Ultimately, I think the convenience
Speaker 13: of getting something faster, cheaper, and just a much more
Speaker 13: pleasant experience for the buyer is going to make a
Speaker 13: lot of difference. The fact that we've now done this
Speaker 13: as a pilot, we've sold a few homes proofs that
Speaker 13: it can be done in a legally compliant manner, and
Speaker 13: we hope that this kind of technology catches on and
Speaker 13: more and more people see the benefits are doing this
Speaker 13: way in the future.
Speaker 1: Digital art is still a big use case for NFTs.
Speaker 1: Nadia Tiger is with Snark dot r. They're selling NFT
Speaker 1: art that changes over time.
Speaker 2: With dynamic and FTS, it's a co creation process. You
Speaker 2: as a collector, become a part of the final artwork.
Speaker 1: So why would someone want to own something like this?
Speaker 2: Why people want to own art? It's the same like
Speaker 2: for what they did for thousands of years, people collected sculptures, paintings,
Speaker 2: and now there is a digital era that we are
Speaker 2: entering with such an interesting angle with blockchain technology. That's
Speaker 2: still a niche, but we are still on the surface.
Speaker 2: I believe of this what actually blockchain technology could provide
Speaker 2: for art.
Speaker 1: Finally, I talked to jack O Hollering of Scale Labs
Speaker 1: about the ups and downs of all things digital. How's
Speaker 1: the NFT market changed in the past year or so,
Speaker 1: you know, I.
Speaker 11: Think it's really maturing.
Speaker 14: From the outside optically, it may look like it's shrunk
Speaker 14: and that it's gotten smaller, but it's actually the real
Speaker 14: growth is really coming forward. So the people here today
Speaker 14: are real builders. They're building with real use cases for NFTs.
Speaker 14: I think a year ago was more like what can
Speaker 14: we turn into an NFT? And now it's what can
Speaker 14: an NFT do? And so the utility and the core
Speaker 14: functional value is the center focus at this event.
Speaker 1: And so what should the average person, what should they
Speaker 1: know about this market?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 14: I think I think the same rules apply. Look for value,
Speaker 14: look for real use cases. And I think there are
Speaker 14: a lot of NFTs that were quick money grabs, and
Speaker 14: I say steer clear of those. But there are other
Speaker 14: amazing NFT projects launching that don't even say that the
Speaker 14: product is an NFT and they use the core values
Speaker 14: of the tech. So my advice is look for those
Speaker 14: types of applications, those types of use case. If you're
Speaker 14: interested in NFTs, want to own NFTs or leverage them or.
Speaker 1: Use them, And what is the core value of this technology?
Speaker 14: One is immutable ownership.
Speaker 11: So if you have an NFT, it's yours.
Speaker 14: The other from a user perspective, and you can get
Speaker 14: gated entry, special access, special access in games or in
Speaker 14: different online communities or in the real world at ticketing
Speaker 14: and events, et cetera. But from a build or a
Speaker 14: creator side, you can actually open up to a global
Speaker 14: marketplace and capture royalties in an automated fashion. And so
Speaker 14: I may create an NFT, you buy it, and you
Speaker 14: sell it to someone else in an automated way. I'm
Speaker 14: able to capture royalties without you needing to be at
Speaker 14: my storefront. So it opens up economies and it smooths
Speaker 14: out the economic principles in trading and essentially creating a
Speaker 14: more effective and efficient market.
Speaker 1: So compared it to like a baseball card.
Speaker 14: Yeah, well, baseball cards are great. There's a huge secondary
Speaker 14: market for baseball cards. There are NFTs that are like
Speaker 14: baseball cards. But imagine if that same baseball card let
Speaker 14: you buy season tickets before people who didn't have that card,
Speaker 14: They can give you discounts when you came to the game,
Speaker 14: you had discounts on merchandise for your favorite team if
Speaker 14: you held that card. These are and if I wanted
Speaker 14: to sell it, I didn't have to go talk to
Speaker 14: the team, I could just sell it to you. And
Speaker 14: the team is actually going to capture revenue during that
Speaker 14: transfer and not try to mitigate me my ability to.
Speaker 1: Sell it or my ability to own it. So is
Speaker 1: this exciting for the future of things?
Speaker 14: But my prediction is that we're going to see NFTs
Speaker 14: living across all of the products we use, but we're
Speaker 14: not going to call them NFTs.
Speaker 11: There are going to be new names for them.
Speaker 14: The value will come from the intrinsic value and the
Speaker 14: utility value of the products, as opposed to the speculative
Speaker 14: hype which we saw in this last wave for.
Speaker 1: The market cycle. To see my TV segment on Outer
Speaker 1: Edge LA, go to rich on Tech dot TV more
Speaker 1: rich On Tech after this, Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich to Mirror so here a tech reporter at KTLA
Speaker 1: Channel five in Los Angeles hanging out with you talking technology.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you want to watch my TV segments,
Speaker 1: which I cover a variety of tech topics, you can
Speaker 1: just go to Rich on tech dot tv. I've got
Speaker 1: a cool YouTube playlist of all of the stories that
Speaker 1: I do. It's all it runs the gamut, all kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff. I mean that NFT expo you just heard
Speaker 1: me at. I did a video piece there so you
Speaker 1: can see, you know, bring that to life. What else
Speaker 1: I've got all kinds of We interview a lot of people,
Speaker 1: a lot of like a wide range from apps. Let's see.
Speaker 1: I went to the Student Television Network conference, which is
Speaker 1: just kind of fun for me. We talked about last
Speaker 1: week the self heating baby bottle, home pod speaker review.
Speaker 1: Got my lucid EV review, not really a review, it's
Speaker 1: just more of like a look see on that one.
Speaker 1: All kinds of good information anyway, All at richon tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. Chris is in Miami, Chris, You're on.
Speaker 4: With Rich Hey Rich, good afternoon, stir.
Speaker 15: Thank you for having me on. We appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. I love your radio show.
Speaker 1: By the way, well, thank you. That means a lot.
Speaker 1: But what's it like in Miami right now because it
Speaker 1: just finally stopped raining in uh Los Angeles.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I've been paying attention to the well KFI am
Speaker 15: down there in LA as they were talking about the
Speaker 15: snow recently and lots of rain and flooding and building
Speaker 15: an arch and so you know, usually all the fun
Speaker 15: stuff that you get up.
Speaker 1: On the radio down the well, it doesn't that's usually
Speaker 1: not what happens here. When it rains here, everyone goes
Speaker 1: nuts because it never rains and so we're just not prepared.
Speaker 1: Like people don't even have like roofs out here in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles because it's just all sunny. You don't need them.
Speaker 1: So now I'm just kidding, but you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: It's like we just don't even think about this stuff
Speaker 1: until it rains. You're like, oh no, I got to
Speaker 1: bring in the furniture outside like people live like anyway,
Speaker 1: there's just it's indoor outdoor living here. Like people literally
Speaker 1: have their backyards set up as like you know inside
Speaker 1: like there's carpets and stuff because it doesn't rain that much. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I digress. What's on your mind?
Speaker 4: Chris? Now?
Speaker 15: You know what I wanted to just drop into your
Speaker 15: world for a few minutes, and getting on air was
Speaker 15: very easy.
Speaker 4: It was a pleasant and really pleasant experience for me.
Speaker 15: But I just wanted to find out I certainly have
Speaker 15: a WiFi right so I have the first generation Wi
Speaker 15: Fi router, and I have.
Speaker 4: All new cats, you know, iphons, iPad, Apple.
Speaker 15: Watches, Imax, etc. But looking at the Google Wi Fi routers,
Speaker 15: they have the new one with the Wi Fi sixteen,
Speaker 15: and then they had the one before that, which has
Speaker 15: the potential for being good, but it's it's hiring cont
Speaker 15: actually than their newer ones. But a lot of routers
Speaker 15: on the market. Wanted to throw it at you, see
Speaker 15: if you could toss me something back the ideas on
Speaker 15: do I need to be using sixty right now? I'm
Speaker 15: thinking planning for the future.
Speaker 4: That sounds like a good idea.
Speaker 7: In the interim, I.
Speaker 15: Don't know, So I figured i'd see what you have
Speaker 15: to say about it and then don't have to.
Speaker 4: Keep me very long on the car. Just wanted to
Speaker 4: ask a couple of questions.
Speaker 1: But all right, good, good question. This is definitely a
Speaker 1: topic that a lot of people are curious about because
Speaker 1: and I sort of talked about these mesh routers earlier
Speaker 1: but they are very popular because it used to be
Speaker 1: had one router in the center of your house. Your
Speaker 1: cable company probably gave it to you, and it would
Speaker 1: put the signal out and it basically never ever reached
Speaker 1: all corners of your home, so there'd always be spots
Speaker 1: in your home, dead spots where the Internet just didn't work.
Speaker 1: And this company euro came along and came up with
Speaker 1: a mesh Wi Fi router, which uses different access points
Speaker 1: that you put in your home, so instead of one router,
Speaker 1: you kind of have like three or four sometimes it's two,
Speaker 1: maybe three if you have a bigger house, and then
Speaker 1: those will work throughout the house and they all connect
Speaker 1: together to make one solid, good signal. So you are
Speaker 1: asking specifically about the Google routers, which now I think
Speaker 1: it's like the Google Nest. It's let's see what do
Speaker 1: they go by. Yeah, Google nets is what they call them.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 1: I feel bad saying this because you know, I like Google.
Speaker 1: I really love Google Next WiFi Pro that's what they
Speaker 1: call them. I love Google, but when it comes to
Speaker 1: their products. The problem with Google, Chris, is that Google
Speaker 1: is all over the place, and I feel like they
Speaker 1: do not put a lot of focus or attention into
Speaker 1: things for very long. Not everything, but certain things. And
Speaker 1: so my fear with going with this Nest Wi Fi
Speaker 1: Pro is that you purchase it and then Google says, eh,
Speaker 1: we're kind of over that, We're not going to support
Speaker 1: that anymore. I feel like there's companies out there that
Speaker 1: are a little bit more dedicated to this lineup than Google.
Speaker 1: Google has a lot of stuff out there, and the
Speaker 1: Wi Fi routers are just one, so I think you'll
Speaker 1: be fine with them, and I've tested them. They work well,
Speaker 1: they're nice, they look pretty good. I haven't speci tested
Speaker 1: this latest version that you're talking about, the Wi Fi
Speaker 1: Pro with six to E, but I personally use EUO
Speaker 1: E ER. They sort of invented the genre, and they
Speaker 1: are now owned by Amazon, which that's not my favorite.
Speaker 1: But the good news is I don't think that Euro's
Speaker 1: going away anytime soon, or that Amazon's going to lose
Speaker 1: interest in them anytime soon, because it's it's a pretty
Speaker 1: big business at this point, and it's a pretty viable
Speaker 1: business and it's a pretty well known name. So I
Speaker 1: personally would probably look at Euro first and foremost if
Speaker 1: you have a problem with Amazon owning it. I mean
Speaker 1: if you're going with Google, then I don't think you would.
Speaker 1: But the cool thing about Eero too is that they
Speaker 1: just have a lot of products and a lot of
Speaker 1: these things work together. They work pretty well. The downside
Speaker 1: is that they can be expensive, and these things are
Speaker 1: not cheap. So if you look at the different euro
Speaker 1: they do have a Wi Fi a six E, which
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily think you need right now. But if
Speaker 1: you're buying this system and wanting it to last for
Speaker 1: the next couple of years, which generally we don't switch
Speaker 1: out Wi Fi very often, so the sixty might be
Speaker 1: a good way to go, but you're going to pay
Speaker 1: a lot for that. I mean you're looking at a
Speaker 1: three pack is four hundred and eleven dollars, a two
Speaker 1: pack is three hundred. So the thing about these different
Speaker 1: systems too, the higher you get, the more internet they
Speaker 1: can handle. So if you're getting say a four hundred
Speaker 1: megabit connection from your internet company, you probably don't need
Speaker 1: these pro models. But if you're getting a gig and above,
Speaker 1: that's when you want to get into these pro models
Speaker 1: because they can they can handle that higher bandwidth. So
Speaker 1: that's really the delineation there. Now, if you want something
Speaker 1: that's that's much cheaper and a company that I like,
Speaker 1: and I think they're doing a really good job. It's
Speaker 1: called Villo Vlo and these are some folks that deflected
Speaker 1: from other companies that used to build this stuff. And
Speaker 1: you can look at their biography and their their company
Speaker 1: history to see what I mean by that. But they've
Speaker 1: got some smart people working at this company that I
Speaker 1: think is doing a really good job, and it's a
Speaker 1: lot less expensive. And I think the main thing that
Speaker 1: may not be as slick with the Villo routers that
Speaker 1: you would get with something like Ero or Google is
Speaker 1: the software. And I think the software leaves a little
Speaker 1: bit to be desired. But the functionality of the system
Speaker 1: is actually really good, especially for how inexpensive it is.
Speaker 1: So if you look at their Wi Fi six system,
Speaker 1: it's one hundred and fifty five bucks for a two
Speaker 1: pack and that's probably going to be pretty good. And
Speaker 1: I've tested this one personally. It's very good. The speeds
Speaker 1: are very good, it works really well, and so if
Speaker 1: you want something that's a little bit cheaper, that might
Speaker 1: be the way to go. If you want it really inexpensive,
Speaker 1: you can just go with their original that's ninety nine
Speaker 1: dollars for a three pack. So a three pack Villo
Speaker 1: Mesh Wi Fi system ninety nine bucks and you're not
Speaker 1: gonna have any dead zones in your house because I've
Speaker 1: tested this personally and it works really well. It's fast,
Speaker 1: it's efficient, and it does what you need. So Chris,
Speaker 1: you're asking my opinion, that's how I would rank it.
Speaker 1: I personally would go with Ero, then Villo, then Google.
Speaker 1: And it's not that I don't love Google. I do
Speaker 1: like what they do. I just feel like with their
Speaker 1: software and hardware, or with their hardware specifically, you just
Speaker 1: never know. You wake up one morning and Google says, oh,
Speaker 1: we've discontinued our routers and that's it. Now, where's your support,
Speaker 1: where's your service? All that stuff? So good question. That's
Speaker 1: what I would do. All right, let's real quick talk
Speaker 1: about Twitter. I know this is everyone's favorite topic. I
Speaker 1: know two people right now that are actively victims of
Speaker 1: being hacked on Twitter. So I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: going around right now or if you know Twitter has gone.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a rock tumbler right now, like Twitter
Speaker 1: is just all over the place. But the thing you
Speaker 1: need to know about Twitter is that two things. Number one,
Speaker 1: you can't verify your account with a text message anymore.
Speaker 1: You need to turn on two factor authentication if you
Speaker 1: want to keep using Twitter. The only way you can
Speaker 1: do it right now is by using an authentication app.
Speaker 1: The apps I recommend our Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, or
Speaker 1: an app called auth the au thy. You sign up
Speaker 1: with those programs and instead of getting a text message,
Speaker 1: these programs will generate a code every thirty seconds or
Speaker 1: something like that that you can enter into this app
Speaker 1: to authorize that it's you trying to log in. If
Speaker 1: you don't enter that code, the app will not let
Speaker 1: you log in. You need to turn this on your
Speaker 1: Twitter account two factor authentication right now before you get hacked, because,
Speaker 1: believe me, these people are looking after these Twitter accounts
Speaker 1: because they know there's a change right now, and they
Speaker 1: know there's an opportunity to get in there. So please
Speaker 1: turn it on. All right, pull line's open eighty to eight.
Speaker 1: Rich one oh one, coming back after this. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Rich on Tech. My name is Rich Demiro, talking
Speaker 1: technology with you. Uh, let's go to Susan in Lancaster, Susan.
Speaker 1: You're on with Rich.
Speaker 8: Hi, Rich, I have a sister who is she's not
Speaker 8: computer phobic, but she's basically a ludite and her computer
Speaker 8: is dying. I wanted to find out if a Lenovo
Speaker 8: what is it called the Lenovo? Uh, it's a chrome Book.
Speaker 9: Hang on, I'll get my thing right here.
Speaker 8: I'm driving, so of course nothing's working.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's the.
Speaker 3: Five to one like.
Speaker 1: Sorry, and so it's a it's a Lenovo Chromebook. Basically,
Speaker 1: I don't want you to distract.
Speaker 8: From driving there by the idea flex five.
Speaker 1: One Okay, Uh, so and so, and you're getting this
Speaker 1: as a gift for someone, Well.
Speaker 8: No, I'm I'm I'm helping her to get a new computer,
Speaker 8: and I want to get her something that's really really
Speaker 8: easy intuitive, and the speed and the capabilities aren't that important.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 8: You know she goes online and she does email and
Speaker 8: stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, and this is you said this a Chromebook, right?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, I think that's the way to
Speaker 1: go for someone who is not necessarily can computer savvy. Now,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, Chromebooks are great. I mean there's
Speaker 1: you can do pretty much ninety nine percent of what
Speaker 1: we do on the computers these days is through a
Speaker 1: web browser, and a chromebook is basically a glorified web browser.
Speaker 1: And what's nice about it is that there's no viruses
Speaker 1: to worry about. The software is super simple. It's it's
Speaker 1: pretty much always up to date. Like there's no lengthy
Speaker 1: software update installation kind of situations, you know, if there's
Speaker 1: ever an update, it just pretty much puts a little
Speaker 1: notification in the corner saying, hey, start your computer to
Speaker 1: bring it up to date. And you say, okay, which
Speaker 1: I think your friend can handle. The only thing I question,
Speaker 1: do they need a computer or they be okay with
Speaker 1: a lap a tablet like a like just like an iPad?
Speaker 1: Or is that too complication?
Speaker 8: She has an iPad but manipulating stuff. I mean she
Speaker 8: does sometimes write stuff. And I don't think the keyboards
Speaker 8: on the tabs are all that great.
Speaker 1: No, I would agree with that. If you're if you're
Speaker 1: if you want a keyboard and you want to type,
Speaker 1: I think that the computer, like the laptop form factor
Speaker 1: is still the best for that. Yeah, so I would
Speaker 1: agree with that. I would agree with that. Now, how
Speaker 1: did you land upon this specific Lenovo?
Speaker 8: Well, I was I was just and around looking at
Speaker 8: different options, and I saw that you can get this
Speaker 8: kind of thing for you know, under three around three
Speaker 8: hundred dollars, Yeah, which is amazing. So rather than get
Speaker 8: a whole computer, I thought, well, maybe that's the way.
Speaker 4: To go for that for that price.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again the chromebooks are are quite inexpensive. There
Speaker 1: are some that are even cheaper than that. But I
Speaker 1: would say to get a decent spect out system, you
Speaker 1: probably want something that's you know, at least three hundred
Speaker 1: maybe four hundred depends. But you said, it doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter with the capabilities. As long as they can get
Speaker 1: online and do their email and all that good stuff,
Speaker 1: it's going to handle that. It's really when you try
Speaker 1: to do things like you know, when it comes to
Speaker 1: zoom and the video conferencing, that could be a little
Speaker 1: bit slower. Okay, she's not no way, okay, so no,
Speaker 1: no zoom. She's not doing you know, sixteen call, sixteen
Speaker 1: person calls.
Speaker 8: No, she's not editing videos or anything like.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, then I think this will be just fine.
Speaker 1: I think that, uh, you know, if you want to
Speaker 1: see some recommended chromebooks. You know, I've been playing with
Speaker 1: the Acer five fourteen. I really like that one. It
Speaker 1: might be a little it's probably a little more expensive,
Speaker 1: so maybe not. But acer is A is a well
Speaker 1: known chromebook manufacturer. Lenovo definitely known for chromebooks as well.
Speaker 1: Those are probably the two biggest brands that I would
Speaker 1: recommend for those things.
Speaker 8: So great, Yeah, great, okay, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: That was exactly what I needed to know.
Speaker 1: All right, Susan, enjoy and uh, you know, give your
Speaker 1: friends some lessons on uh, you know, get them on,
Speaker 1: like you know, some of these different things that you do.
Speaker 1: You sound like you're a little bit more savvy.
Speaker 4: So well, I've been on.
Speaker 8: I've been working with computers since the early eighties, so okay,
Speaker 8: I could tell I had I had the first.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's that's going back. That's the that's like
Speaker 1: the Mac that was named after like Steve Steve, right,
Speaker 1: isn't that like the old Mac computer?
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was the first. It's pre uh you know,
Speaker 8: pre the uh the little one where you needed the disc.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh wow. Yeah, I mean I'm not going
Speaker 1: back that old, but I remember like the floppy drive,
Speaker 1: and I remember having like megabytes of information on a
Speaker 1: floppy like I mean now, the fact that I just
Speaker 1: downloaded yesterday an app to my phone. It was like
Speaker 1: ninety megabytes on my phone and I'm like, this is
Speaker 1: wild to think that this came to my phone in
Speaker 1: about three seconds versus back in the day you'd run
Speaker 1: your whole computer on a hard drive that was like
Speaker 1: twenty megabytes and this little tiny flash drive that carried
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of megabytes of data. So we've
Speaker 1: come a long way in our in our lifetimes.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we sure had well. Back on with a baby Mac,
Speaker 8: it literally had to take a disc in and out.
Speaker 8: To run a program, you'd have to take take.
Speaker 4: The main disc out.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, it's a new disc in and run it
Speaker 8: from there.
Speaker 4: Was but it was so cute that you did.
Speaker 1: Well, we have certainly come a long way. It's it's
Speaker 1: for the better or for the worse. Have you gotten
Speaker 1: on TikTok or.
Speaker 9: Anything like that, because that's say, no, I'm not, I
Speaker 9: stay off social media.
Speaker 8: Well I don't nothing.
Speaker 1: You'd probably you'd probably get a kick out of Like
Speaker 1: even if you went on YouTube and just kind of
Speaker 1: search for that Lisa computer.
Speaker 4: It might.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say that might bring back some memories.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, all right, Susan, were you headed? You said
Speaker 1: you're in the car. Where are you going?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm going down to Brentwood to an organizing client.
Speaker 9: I go and help her organize.
Speaker 1: Nice. I used to live in that area. Very nice. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: enjoy Enjoy the beauty of Brentwood, California.
Speaker 8: From Brentwood Golf Course.
Speaker 1: I used to run around that all the time. Enjoy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, many many times.
Speaker 16: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, Susan, thanks so much for calling. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And thanks for helping out your friend. That's uh, that's
Speaker 1: a good friend. When you help them pick out a computer,
Speaker 1: that's always always good. All Right, We've got more of
Speaker 1: the show coming up. Phone lines are open triple eight
Speaker 1: Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four two
Speaker 1: for one zero one. I don't do a lot of
Speaker 1: different activities, but I do run. That's my main thing.
Speaker 1: So you will see me running pretty much all over
Speaker 1: in any city I go to.
Speaker 6: It.
Speaker 1: It's the only thing you can do in any city
Speaker 1: that you go to. You can just go out your hotel,
Speaker 1: take a run, and you know you don't need to
Speaker 1: have any equipment. It's awesome. All right. My name is
Speaker 1: Rich Debiro more rich on tech coming up after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Rich on tech rich on tech dot
Speaker 1: TV is my website eight eight eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Man, we got a lot of calls. Should
Speaker 1: I take some calls? Or should I do a story?
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to do this. Let's see,
Speaker 1: let's do the story. Uh. Verizon free trial. This is
Speaker 1: brand new. If you want to try Verizon, if you've
Speaker 1: been wondering is Verizon right for me? You can try
Speaker 1: thirty days of service for free, and you can sign
Speaker 1: up right from your phone. I would say it's simple,
Speaker 1: but I tried to do it for my phone and
Speaker 1: my phone got stuck, so I wasn't able to actually
Speaker 1: get this to work. But I'm telling you because it
Speaker 1: will probably work on your phone. I got to try
Speaker 1: this again. But if you have an unlocked mobile phone
Speaker 1: that means that you've paid off your phone, or you
Speaker 1: have an unlocked phone to begin with, you can sign
Speaker 1: up by downloading the my Verizon app. And once you
Speaker 1: download the app, right on the home screen, it will say, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to try a free trial if it recognizes
Speaker 1: that your phone is capable. And this uses what's called
Speaker 1: an eSIM, and eSIM is the whole new thing that
Speaker 1: everyone's using now. It's a simcard that is virtual, it's
Speaker 1: in your phone. You don't need one of those little
Speaker 1: kind of cards anymore on your phone that you plug
Speaker 1: in or pop in. I guess I should say everyone's
Speaker 1: going into these eSIMs. So you can literally activate your
Speaker 1: phone right from the app. It will give you thirty
Speaker 1: days of Verizon five G service, unlimited talking text, up
Speaker 1: to one hundred gigs of four G or five G data,
Speaker 1: and either four EIGHTYP streaming on four G or four
Speaker 1: K streaming if you have five GUW, which not every
Speaker 1: phone supports, but if it does, it'll pick that up
Speaker 1: and you'll get four K video at any time during
Speaker 1: your thirty day free trial. You can easily transfer your
Speaker 1: existing number to Verizon and pick from one of their plans.
Speaker 1: But this this is new. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: like a new trend we're seeing with all of these
Speaker 1: wireless networks because they're all using e sims. It's very
Speaker 1: easy for them to offer a free trial, and so
Speaker 1: you can sign up either online or right from your phone.
Speaker 1: And I think I know that T Mobile does it.
Speaker 1: I know that Verizon does it. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: AT and T does it, but a lot of the
Speaker 1: MV and o's do it as well. So you can
Speaker 1: get a free trial test run right from your phone.
Speaker 1: And I've done this on a couple of them. One
Speaker 1: of them is US Mobile. I signed up for that
Speaker 1: one and as signed up, it took me like minute
Speaker 1: and I you know, your phone is activated instantly. So
Speaker 1: again I put links to everything I mentioned. I'm doing
Speaker 1: a really good job now of doing the links to
Speaker 1: everything I mentioned on the website rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: Once the podcast is published of the show, it'll have
Speaker 1: everything you need in the show notes, so look for that.
Speaker 1: All right, Let's go to Gloria in the Sand Fernando Valley,
Speaker 1: where it's always Sonny except for the past couple weeks.
Speaker 1: How you doing, Gloria?
Speaker 5: Okay, thanks for calling in.
Speaker 1: What's what's on your mind?
Speaker 5: I need a new phone. This one keeps fading in
Speaker 5: and out when I talk to people. And not only that,
Speaker 5: it takes terrible pictures. It's a Moto G It really
Speaker 5: is terrible. And there's another question.
Speaker 1: The two questions, what is this the two for one show?
Speaker 1: That's what's the other question? I have an answer for
Speaker 1: the first one, so that's pretty easy. But go ahead.
Speaker 1: What's your second question?
Speaker 5: Then I go on site and I'm putting in like
Speaker 5: frankstance just now when you suggested that aufie, I tried
Speaker 5: to do that and I gave it my g le
Speaker 5: me see Yahoo account and it said no, it didn't
Speaker 5: accept it. And I thought, I'm new to you. How
Speaker 5: do you know I have another account? And so they
Speaker 5: seem to always know I have a Gmail account and
Speaker 5: they pretty much want the Gmail account instead of the
Speaker 5: Yahoo account.
Speaker 4: Number.
Speaker 1: Well, that makes sense because Gmail's superior to Yahoo. Male,
Speaker 1: so I get that. Uh, maybe they're just trying to
Speaker 1: say this is more secure. But let's get your first
Speaker 1: question first. The phone. So you've got a Moto G.
Speaker 1: I think you would be better served with a Pixel
Speaker 1: six A. Have you heard of this phone? The Pixel?
Speaker 4: The pixel?
Speaker 5: Okay, I had a Pixel a while back and it
Speaker 5: did take.
Speaker 4: Really good Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure, it takes fantastic pictures. This is the phone that
Speaker 1: I trust with my own mom, So if it's good
Speaker 1: enough for her, I think that I can recommend this
Speaker 1: to pretty much anyone. The Pixel six A is uh
Speaker 1: is three hundred dollars. Here's the thing, though, they are
Speaker 1: actually coming out with a new version of this, the
Speaker 1: Pixel seven A, which we believe is going to be
Speaker 1: announced in May. So if you can wait a couple months,
Speaker 1: you can get the latest, greatest version. But if you
Speaker 1: don't want to wait, I still think the six A
Speaker 1: is a fantastic phone. So the only downside i'd say
Speaker 1: is probably the fingerprint sensor could be a little bit better,
Speaker 1: and so maybe they fixed that with the new one.
Speaker 1: But I think you'd be fine with this six A.
Speaker 1: That's the only complaint my mom has is the uh
Speaker 1: is the fingerprint sensor, okay?
Speaker 5: Because I also the audio when I'm listening to things
Speaker 5: the on news terrible on this motto, I see it
Speaker 5: I'm going death.
Speaker 1: And my doctor said, well, that's good that doc says
Speaker 1: you're not. Because you know, sometimes we wonder like is
Speaker 1: it me or is it this phone?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: Sometimes with the phones, with the way they're the little
Speaker 1: ear pieces, it could be it's not lining up properly
Speaker 1: with our ear sometimes and it does sound like it's
Speaker 1: you know, if you're not right on your ear in
Speaker 1: the perfect place, that can happen. But I would say overall,
Speaker 1: the Moto G is probably not the best phone out there.
Speaker 1: So even at three hundred dollars for this Pixel six A,
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna have a much much better experience, Gloria,
Speaker 1: because not only are gonna get the better pictures, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get better software. You're gonna get I think the
Speaker 1: audio on this phone will be fine, and I think
Speaker 1: that you're just gonna like the experience so much better.
Speaker 1: And it's.
Speaker 5: Like you've talked about, I can wait.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, if you can wait for the seven A.
Speaker 1: The problem is the seven A is going to be
Speaker 1: more expensive because it's brand new. So this, you know,
Speaker 1: six A, I think is a pretty good deal. At
Speaker 1: two ninety nine, I think that's pretty much the best
Speaker 1: price I've seen on that phone.
Speaker 4: That's a good price.
Speaker 1: You're right, Yeah, how long have you had this Moto
Speaker 1: G A little.
Speaker 5: Over a year? Too long? I kept taking it back
Speaker 5: and they kept saying that it's okay, everything is fine.
Speaker 1: No, this thing's a limit, and what what's your carrier?
Speaker 5: And it didn't matter the carrier because it's changed a
Speaker 5: couple of times. I went in the Horizon uh to
Speaker 5: and I when I changed phones, the Verizon refused to
Speaker 5: let me keep my phone numbers, so I wound up
Speaker 5: going to what was it tea Mobile and Team Mobile
Speaker 5: was able to get my phone number keep it and
Speaker 5: so I stayed with them for a while.
Speaker 1: And all right, Gloria, I got to run. They're they're
Speaker 1: playing playing me off right now. So check out the
Speaker 1: Pixel six A. It'll work with whatever carrier you have
Speaker 1: because it is unlocked. Coming up, we are going to
Speaker 1: talk to Adobe about shopping insights how you are shopping
Speaker 1: online and in store with Adobe analytics. Coming up right
Speaker 1: here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here. My guest is Vivic Pandea. He is
Speaker 1: the insights analyst at Adobe. Vivic, thanks for joining.
Speaker 16: Me, great, thanks for having me Rich.
Speaker 1: So, I love the findings that Adobe always comes up
Speaker 1: with with their insights. A lot of it is dealing with,
Speaker 1: you know, Black Friday and the shopping seasons, but throughout
Speaker 1: the year you come out with stuff, and recently you
Speaker 1: have now looked into sort of buy now, pay later usage.
Speaker 1: Tell me what's going on with that because this is
Speaker 1: something you see on almost every website now.
Speaker 16: Cour So, given the inflation effects that are sort of
Speaker 16: permeating through the markets and the landscape, the consumers are
Speaker 16: dealing with. We're seeing them continue to drive growth in
Speaker 16: Buy Now, Pay Later, so its order share is up
Speaker 16: fourteen percent year over year, and we're seeing how that
Speaker 16: looks across some of the major categories that run across
Speaker 16: e commerce, so grocery, apparel, electronics, home furniture. I would
Speaker 16: say grocery has been a category that's seen a lot
Speaker 16: of inflation, and as a result, we're seeing buy now,
Speaker 16: Pay later utilization up forty percent for order share for
Speaker 16: those types of buy now, pay later orders, So that's
Speaker 16: pretty significant, and it's speaking to consumers trying to stretch
Speaker 16: their budget, drive the sort of purchases and behaviors that
Speaker 16: got entrenched during those pandemic years, those early pandemic years,
Speaker 16: and now they're trying to see how online can help
Speaker 16: them save money, help them make payments easier.
Speaker 1: Interesting and it looks like two of the biggest growth
Speaker 1: areas are home furnishings and also grocery, which is interesting
Speaker 1: because traditionally you would not think about buying home furnishings online,
Speaker 1: you know, that's something you'd go into a store for.
Speaker 1: And then of course groceries throughout the pandemic that really
Speaker 1: increased so we saw over ten percent increase year over
Speaker 1: year in both those categories, which is ironic given that
Speaker 1: I shop online for groceries and I was looking at
Speaker 1: couches the other day as well. Are you saying that
Speaker 1: people are using this buy now, pay later to shop
Speaker 1: in those categories or just in general.
Speaker 16: Both we're seeing, you know, the shift given inflation from
Speaker 16: non essentials to essential categories and necessities that consumers need,
Speaker 16: and home furniture kind of sits on the cusp of that.
Speaker 16: There are some items that are nice to have for
Speaker 16: the home, others that feel more like necessities, and in
Speaker 16: order to make your home comfortable, you really need those goods.
Speaker 16: And home furniture, like grocery, saw the seal broken through
Speaker 16: the pandemic where consumers found, oh wow, that's actually not
Speaker 16: too bad buying these goods online, buying a seven hundred
Speaker 16: dollars couch, you know, maybe a couple of thousand dollars
Speaker 16: across different types of items, and the ease of getting
Speaker 16: those goods directly to your home has improved. We're seeing
Speaker 16: consumers understand that the sort of mail delivery systems that
Speaker 16: got very stressed during those months of the pandemic, those
Speaker 16: intense months of the pandemic has eased the supply chains
Speaker 16: of ease, so that's helping consumers think more in terms
Speaker 16: of ease and efficiency to get these goods across these
Speaker 16: major categories.
Speaker 1: Now, another insight is that mobile shopping is expected to
Speaker 1: overtake desktop shopping in twenty twenty three. That is a
Speaker 1: huge shift.
Speaker 16: Absolutely, It's it's not news that people are using smartphones
Speaker 16: to buy goods, but what we have found to be
Speaker 16: a really important threshold is when the smartphone would become
Speaker 16: the dominant shopping and they would see the bulk of
Speaker 16: their dollars being spent through that phone. And what we're
Speaker 16: finding is retailers are understanding that they have to really
Speaker 16: prioritize the mobile experiences that they're serving consumers, making sure
Speaker 16: that the websites and the apps that they're selling products
Speaker 16: on are providing the best output for consumers. Given that's
Speaker 16: how they're growing markets into these different audiences and where
Speaker 16: there's momentum in terms of consumers finding them.
Speaker 1: It's been such a shift, even for me personally, because
Speaker 1: it used to be if you really wanted to do
Speaker 1: serious shopping, you would go to your desktop, and now
Speaker 1: I feel like with some of these websites, it's easier
Speaker 1: to shop on the phone and even through the apps.
Speaker 1: For instance, buying a plane ticket. I've noticed that sometimes
Speaker 1: it's easier to buy from your phone because you can
Speaker 1: use your Apple Pay from your phone on the mobile
Speaker 1: app versus on the desktop where you're typing everything.
Speaker 16: In the use case you're describing there is exactly what
Speaker 16: retailers and travel facilitators have been hoping for, which is
Speaker 16: given that we have more and more mobile first thinking
Speaker 16: amongst consumers that they're spending a lot of time on
Speaker 16: social media across these apps, that the idea that they
Speaker 16: can bring the large swaths of audiences from those sources
Speaker 16: to their e commerce properties. It has been a real
Speaker 16: focus and making it easier can really drive growth for them.
Speaker 16: Given where consumers are right now, where they expect a
Speaker 16: lot of ease and efficiency in buying these goods and
Speaker 16: having it available for them.
Speaker 1: It's all about having that stored payment method that really
Speaker 1: makes a huge difference on a lot of mobile shopping.
Speaker 1: If you have to start typing stuff in, you're just
Speaker 1: like I never mind. Okay. One of the places that
Speaker 1: is actually a challenge though, is mobile for smaller retailers,
Speaker 1: and I can understand this for something like a local
Speaker 1: business that may not have a strong presence on mobile,
Speaker 1: and you're saying that that is actually hurting them.
Speaker 16: It's really paramount that their mobile experience and mobile site
Speaker 16: it's properties be ready for this traffic and be ready
Speaker 16: to convert effectively that consumers don't get frustrated on these
Speaker 16: sites and then say Okay, well I'm going to go
Speaker 16: shop somewhere else where. This is much easier. So really,
Speaker 16: we saw a lot of larger retailers invest in this
Speaker 16: over the years. We're hoping to see smaller retailers try
Speaker 16: to pick up the momentum in terms of being able
Speaker 16: to compete on these types of devices, because it's more important.
Speaker 1: Now than ever now. During the pandemic, it was all
Speaker 1: about picking up at the store and really getting things
Speaker 1: shipped to your home. But if you couldn't do that,
Speaker 1: you'd go and you'd do that curb side pickup. I've
Speaker 1: seen Target has invested very heavily and sort of the
Speaker 1: curb side pickup situation. But I'm looking at your stature.
Speaker 1: It says in twenty twenty one, twenty three percent of
Speaker 1: online orders use the curb side, then nineteen percent in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, and now in the first two months
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty three it's down to seventeen percent. So
Speaker 1: what's happening with curb side pickup?
Speaker 16: So it's really a great question that we get to
Speaker 16: answer through what we're seeing in the categories. When we
Speaker 16: think about something like grocery, that's still a category that's
Speaker 16: seeing click, click and collect by online pickup and store
Speaker 16: momentum because consumers need these goods, they want to get
Speaker 16: them efficiently avoid shipping costs, so we're still seeing growth there. However,
Speaker 16: things like electronics, apparel, these categories are seeing growth come
Speaker 16: down for them overall, and consumers are more aware that
Speaker 16: the delivery systems are, you know, moving at a decent
Speaker 16: pace now, so the urgency around getting some of these
Speaker 16: goods has sort of slowed down and they're opting in
Speaker 16: for a sort of efficient habit straight to my door
Speaker 16: mode of fulfillment for some of these goods as well.
Speaker 1: Finally, just explain to me how does Adobe get this information.
Speaker 1: I'm always curious how Adobe Analytics gets these insights.
Speaker 16: Great question, So when we think about our data set
Speaker 16: that we analyze through Adobe Analytics, it's what we call
Speaker 16: our aggregated opt in data set. It's anonymized, and retailers
Speaker 16: opt in to allow us to analyze this data set
Speaker 16: at this sort of ten thousand foot level because we're
Speaker 16: able to provide them a lot of value in terms
Speaker 16: of what we're seeing in terms of broader trends, and
Speaker 16: we provide them sort of reporting on how they're performing
Speaker 16: relative to their industry.
Speaker 1: Vivic, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 16: Thanks very much for having me.
Speaker 1: Rich all right, Vivic PANDEA insights analyst at Adobe. You
Speaker 1: can learn more at Adobe dot com. My name is
Speaker 1: Rich Dumiro. Will have more rich on Tech right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich on Tech dot
Speaker 1: tv is where you can find me online. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Arthur in Orange County. Arthur, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 6: Hey, how you doing, man, I'm doing listen to you
Speaker 6: on the mornings and Saturday when I'm ubering shown.
Speaker 1: Does it make your Does it make your ubering go
Speaker 1: any faster?
Speaker 6: Actually?
Speaker 4: It done?
Speaker 6: Man makes an iggle back. It's a little bit quicker.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 6: I got a problem, bro Oh yeah, my laptop is
Speaker 6: needing a bit locker needs a key of code. I
Speaker 6: I don't know what to do other than just shut
Speaker 6: the thing down.
Speaker 9: Maybe I should take it in.
Speaker 1: I mean, what what what kind of laptop? So it
Speaker 1: needs a okay, so BitLocker this is It sounds like
Speaker 1: this is some sort of security program for your computer,
Speaker 1: encryption program? Did you enable this at some point?
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't remember, right, that's the thing. This is like
Speaker 1: something that that you probably don't remember doing, right, That's
Speaker 1: what it sounds like. Right. What kind of computer is this?
Speaker 4: HP?
Speaker 1: Okay? And so you turn it on and it says.
Speaker 6: What It just tells me where to go the start menu,
Speaker 6: and you know, it just gives me directions on what
Speaker 6: to do. But when I tried to control all the
Speaker 6: lead or something like that, it won't take me out.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it's basically locked. The computer is locked up
Speaker 1: unless you put this code in there, yes, okay, And
Speaker 1: I don't know what the code is. I don't know, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I think what what's happening here is that when
Speaker 1: this computer was set up? How long have you had
Speaker 1: this computer?
Speaker 6: Six months?
Speaker 4: Oh? That's it? Yes?
Speaker 1: Oh? No, hmm okay. Interesting. I mean, I'm I'm familiar
Speaker 1: with the idea of it. So I think that typically
Speaker 1: these are you know, this is a security program that's
Speaker 1: on computers, and it's an encryption mechanism. So typically and
Speaker 1: if it's asking for a key, that key is the
Speaker 1: is the key that unlocks the encryption. So you can't
Speaker 1: do anything without it. So if you don't have that key,
Speaker 1: you kind of have a problem. But I think what
Speaker 1: you can do now, do you have a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff you need to save on here?
Speaker 6: I have some writings and stuff and I was sending
Speaker 6: out your reader's digests and I was online said that's
Speaker 6: some of this stuff just isn't going to be saved.
Speaker 1: Okay, Rich, I didn't back it up. Okay, Well here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Number one. Obviously, I always recommend backing up everything,
Speaker 1: putting you know, if it went in doubt. Try to
Speaker 1: use the cloud for different things. I'm looking online here
Speaker 1: and it looks do you have a Microsoft account?
Speaker 4: You have to do?
Speaker 1: Okay, So it looks like you may be able to
Speaker 1: get this recovery key by signing into your Microsoft account.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So if you have a different device, maybe
Speaker 1: even your your phone, if you can sign into your
Speaker 1: Microsoft account and go on there and look for your
Speaker 1: recovery key. It might be located inside your account settings.
Speaker 1: So I can't go into my account right now because
Speaker 1: I can't really you know, navigate to all those places.
Speaker 1: But I think that that is the first place to look.
Speaker 1: Now if you can't do that, like if you if
Speaker 1: you don't find it there, you know, you may have
Speaker 1: to just refresh this whole computer, which means start from scratch,
Speaker 1: and you may need if you don't know how to
Speaker 1: do that yourself, you may have to enlist the help
Speaker 1: of someone to format this thing and to start over,
Speaker 1: which I know is not the answer you want. But
Speaker 1: I think you know what I think, Chris Arthur. I
Speaker 1: think you're gonna find this in your Microsoft account. I've
Speaker 1: hoped that it's there because the fact that you have
Speaker 1: a Microsoft account, the fact that you this computer is
Speaker 1: six months old, I feel like you're gonna find it
Speaker 1: in there. And I'm trying to look in mind to
Speaker 1: see if I have I don't have this enabled on
Speaker 1: any of my computers that I know of, so I
Speaker 1: don't think i'd have a bit key in mind, But
Speaker 1: I think that that's that's where you should look. So
Speaker 1: let's see security trying to see if there's any sort
Speaker 1: of digital security options in here, but that's where I go.
Speaker 1: So just go to like account dot Microsoft dot com,
Speaker 1: sign in, and then look under your account settings and
Speaker 1: just see, like under security if it's in there, and
Speaker 1: let's let's hope that it is, and that way you
Speaker 1: can put that key in there. It's a forty eight
Speaker 1: digit code. It looks like so not something you'd remember
Speaker 1: off the top of your head.
Speaker 6: You give up to a good start man, Thank you,
Speaker 6: and again I enjoyed the program.
Speaker 1: All right, well, thanks and thanks for driving us around.
Speaker 1: You want to tell us a fun Uber story or no,
Speaker 1: do you have one? That's uh lucky, I don't have one.
Speaker 6: I like that poor gentleman yesterday.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm a guy who just doesn't have stories.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's good, that's good. I was the
Speaker 1: guy who, by the way, said that the option have
Speaker 1: an option for talking or not talking, because sometimes I
Speaker 1: get into the uber and I want to talk and
Speaker 1: I'm chit chatty right, And other times I'm just tired,
Speaker 1: I'm dead from the day and I'm just like, please
Speaker 1: don't talk. So now the Uber app has that option.
Speaker 1: So do you ever see that? Do people ever say,
Speaker 1: don't talk to me.
Speaker 8: No, not at all.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Well maybe it just asks me and it never
Speaker 1: tells you.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm sure you know, when you're you get in
Speaker 6: the car, people recognize you.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny, you'd be surprised. There's always that
Speaker 1: thing where they look in the roofy mirror and they're like,
Speaker 1: are you that guy? It's it happens, believe me. And
Speaker 1: I'm just like always kind of waiting for it. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's always fine. I mean, look, it's
Speaker 1: you know, I'm on TV. It's it's something that comes
Speaker 1: to the territory. All right, Arthur, thanks for keeping folks
Speaker 1: safe out there on the roads of southern California. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. And good luck with this computer. I
Speaker 1: hope you figure this out because I'd rather have you
Speaker 1: recover this than not. Okay, we're going to get to
Speaker 1: the feedback section in just a second before we close
Speaker 1: out the show. But first I want to tell you
Speaker 1: about this because we've talked about AI so much, Producer Aaron,
Speaker 1: I think you'd actually like this. This is a new
Speaker 1: tool that lets you that helps you write your wedding
Speaker 1: vows with AI. So this is a website with joy
Speaker 1: dot com slash writer's block, and you go to this
Speaker 1: website and it says help me with my wedding toast speech,
Speaker 1: my love story for my wedding website, registry, gift suggestions,
Speaker 1: wedding vows, a thank you note, or a polite decline
Speaker 1: to an invitation, and you type in some of the
Speaker 1: things that says you can given by whoever you are sibling,
Speaker 1: best man, mother, father, whatever, highlighting a story and you
Speaker 1: can type in a couple of stories that you have
Speaker 1: with this person. And then you can say in the
Speaker 1: style of a friend, haiku, a romantic Shakespeare, a therapist,
Speaker 1: a pirate, a pessimistic x, a TikToker, or an astrologist,
Speaker 1: and you click inspire me, and it will literally write
Speaker 1: your entire wedding speech. Now you're gonna have to go
Speaker 1: through this and you know, fact check because it does
Speaker 1: take some liberties with the story. But it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I tried this yesterday. It's your first draft. So if
Speaker 1: you need to write a toast for someone, check it
Speaker 1: out with joy dot com slash writer's block. Just one
Speaker 1: of the examples of how AI is changing our world.
Speaker 1: I remember my brother's speech for me, he might have
Speaker 1: had a couple of You know, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people get that liquid courage when they do these toasts,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it turns out good, sometimes not so much.
Speaker 1: Aaron says he's done three, So yeah, it's an art form.
Speaker 1: All right. Let's get to the feedback segment. Before we
Speaker 1: got to go here, let's see Richard says, HP Instant
Speaker 1: Ink scam. Hey, good morning. I went to cancel HP
Speaker 1: Instant Inc. And I saw a message that HP would
Speaker 1: render my already purchased and installed ink cartridge inoperable if
Speaker 1: I canceled the subscription, then I need to go buy
Speaker 1: one at a store to use my printer. The one
Speaker 1: in the printer is still full. Is this real? It
Speaker 1: makes me so angry. Yes, it is real. I had
Speaker 1: the same exact thing happen. I went to go cancel
Speaker 1: my HP Instant Inc. Because I was printing out so
Speaker 1: much stuff, and I realized, oh, I got to pay
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars to buy new cartridges. I guess I'll
Speaker 1: just stick with the HP Instant Inc. So I up
Speaker 1: my subscription and now I'm paying thirteen dollars a month
Speaker 1: to print. Now I do a lot of printing for
Speaker 1: this show, so it makes sense for me. But I
Speaker 1: was surprised just as much as you were, Richard. But yes,
Speaker 1: it's legit. The ink cartridges in your printer are rendered
Speaker 1: obsolete when that happens. Can you believe that? So weird?
Speaker 1: So I literally just had to look at the pricing
Speaker 1: and I was like, eh, once I added up all
Speaker 1: the different colors and all the blacking cartridge, Nah, it
Speaker 1: added up to way too much. All right, that's gonna
Speaker 1: do it. For this episode of the show coming up
Speaker 1: next week, I'm taking a test drive in the Hyundai
Speaker 1: Ionic six EV, so i'll tell you about that. It's
Speaker 1: been such a ride, in the words of Arthur, what
Speaker 1: a fun, fun ride. Today. You can find me on
Speaker 1: social media at rich on tech. The website is richon
Speaker 1: tech dot TV. Don't forget to check out my TV segments.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways
Speaker 1: you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending
Speaker 1: it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes
Speaker 1: this show possible. I'll talk to you real soon.