Speaker 1: Samsungs. That's a date on veil, It's newest smartphones. The
Speaker 1: new scam with a yucky name. Yet another streaming service
Speaker 1: is raising prices. Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on?
Speaker 1: I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the
Speaker 1: show where I talked about the tech stuff I think
Speaker 1: you should know about. It's also the place where I
Speaker 1: answer your questions. Phone lines are open at triple A
Speaker 1: Rich one oh one. That's one eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one. And once again, my name is Rich Dmiro,
Speaker 1: tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles and
Speaker 1: now coming to you live on radio station's Coast to Coast. Now,
Speaker 1: as many of you know, Leo Deporte has retired from
Speaker 1: radio and this is the new show, so welcome, very exciting.
Speaker 1: This is episode number two. Now, many of you wrote
Speaker 1: to me, tweeted me, DMed me. You let me know
Speaker 1: that you listened last week, and I am very grateful
Speaker 1: about that. Thank you. But I did not realize that
Speaker 1: I had so many esteemed radio critics in my audience.
Speaker 1: It was kind of fun to hear from so many
Speaker 1: of you. Alex said, good job, but yeah, you sounded
Speaker 1: a little nervous because of that, it seemed like you
Speaker 1: were rushing deep breath and you'll be fine. Okay, here
Speaker 1: we go, deep breath. I know you know. When I
Speaker 1: was growing up, I learned you didn't want any dead
Speaker 1: airtime on the radio. So I felt like you had
Speaker 1: to fill every second with something, with some word, with
Speaker 1: some phrase, with something pithy, something interesting. Mario said, avoid
Speaker 1: speaking with what could be described as vocal fillers, such
Speaker 1: as certain uses of the word whatever. Did I really
Speaker 1: say whatever?
Speaker 2: A lot?
Speaker 1: Whatever? Randy said, great start, good guests, and excellent content.
Speaker 1: Looking forward to your positive and uplifting attitude during the show. Okay,
Speaker 1: I like that. I think things are getting better. Let's see.
Speaker 1: Carooda said, good luck on your new radio slash streaming show.
Speaker 1: I am listening to streaming on my PC at home
Speaker 1: in Honolulu, Hawaii. Okay, that's cool. Maybe we should do
Speaker 1: a remote show from Honolulu, Coroda. Would you be good
Speaker 1: with that? I think so. Mike said, super duper great
Speaker 1: show was very tech diverse, focused, and very appreciatively moved quickly.
Speaker 1: Meliki and those were his words. Thanks Mike, and thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. This show will continue to evolve just
Speaker 1: like the tech I talk about in it. This is
Speaker 1: episode number two. I'm still getting the hang of this. Yes,
Speaker 1: I do TV during my weekdays, and so radio is
Speaker 1: new to me. And it's really fun because I get
Speaker 1: to talk about this stuff for just a little bit
Speaker 1: longer than I get to talk about this stuff I
Speaker 1: do on TV. But it's all the same stuff, and
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of it. So if I find something
Speaker 1: interesting during the week, and I've got a pile of
Speaker 1: stuff here to talk about, that's the whole point of
Speaker 1: this show is it's really too you know, you're busy,
Speaker 1: you're doing your work, you're doing your job, You've got
Speaker 1: your kids, you've got your family, you've got travel, whatever
Speaker 1: you're doing, you know, you're taking care of you and
Speaker 1: I'm taking care of the tech side of things. And
Speaker 1: so the whole point of this is to, you know,
Speaker 1: have me talk about the tech stuff that I think
Speaker 1: you should know about. And that's what we're gonna do
Speaker 1: here this week. Speaking of kids, I actually went to
Speaker 1: a movie with the kids, and this is kind of
Speaker 1: a big deal. I know a movie does not seem
Speaker 1: like a big deal, but it is because most of
Speaker 1: the time, what are we doing we're streaming stuff at home,
Speaker 1: and this was a movie we actually saw Puss and Boots,
Speaker 1: which was funny. By the way, all the Shrek movies
Speaker 1: are pretty funny. And you know, I'm not a big
Speaker 1: like kids movie, especially animated movie person, but when they
Speaker 1: get it right, like when they get the jokes to
Speaker 1: work for the kids and the adults, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a win in my book. And this was this was
Speaker 1: like on point, so highly recommend seeing it. But going
Speaker 1: to the movies was kind of a big deal because
Speaker 1: a it's expensive and the movie is streaming at home,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it was a little more expensive. Like this
Speaker 1: movie is one of those like they're you know, they're
Speaker 1: like experimenting with where it's like thirty bucks to watch
Speaker 1: at home, which if you think about how much I've
Speaker 1: paid for three tickets, it was about the same. So
Speaker 1: of course at home you only get to watch it once.
Speaker 1: I guess that's the same in the movies. But it
Speaker 1: was much more comfortable to be at home. You've got
Speaker 1: your couch, you've got no overpriced popcorn. You know, I
Speaker 1: can make my own popcorn. I've got my own soda
Speaker 1: and drinks, and you know, candy could pause the movie
Speaker 1: if you want to get up to do something. But
Speaker 1: I think that's the problem, right, So when we got
Speaker 1: to this movie theater, the seats are comfy. They had
Speaker 1: heated seats. I've never seen that before in a movie theater.
Speaker 1: So here I am turning on the heat on a seat.
Speaker 1: It was like a you know, it's felt like one
Speaker 1: of those blankets, you know, those like heated blankets for
Speaker 1: your back, like if you're having like a you know,
Speaker 1: and I just happen to have like a little stretch
Speaker 1: in my back that kind of hurt. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, this is cool. I'm getting like a back
Speaker 1: therapy session and a movie all in one. So that
Speaker 1: was cool. You know, the kids are not really bopping
Speaker 1: around as much as they would at home because it's
Speaker 1: a movie theater. And when you're in a movie theater
Speaker 1: something comes over you. It's like a hypnosis that you
Speaker 1: just sit there and watch the screen. It's so big,
Speaker 1: it's larger than life. And so that was kind of
Speaker 1: the whole point of this. That was my thesis of
Speaker 1: this whole movie is that you know, we've replaced so
Speaker 1: many things in our lives with new, better, digital on
Speaker 1: demand and sometimes doing things the old way just feels right,
Speaker 1: and a movie is one of those examples. Now, I
Speaker 1: know the movie business has been impacted greatly by all
Speaker 1: of this streaming and people with their big TVs and
Speaker 1: this and that, But when you actually go to a movie,
Speaker 1: I don't think you have a bad experience. I mean,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, yeah, the ground was sticky
Speaker 1: and you threw your trash on the ground, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: now people take their trash and they put it in
Speaker 1: the trash can at the end of the movie theater
Speaker 1: when you walk out. I mean, that's an improvement. But
Speaker 1: this whole experience because I had such a good time.
Speaker 1: You know, every time I go to a movie in
Speaker 1: the theater, which is not very often, I always like
Speaker 1: plan my reach to the theater. I'm like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to a movie next week. I can't wait. I'm taking
Speaker 1: Tuesday off of work and I'm just gonna sit in
Speaker 1: that theater and watch a matinee. And you know, it
Speaker 1: never really happens until like another six months. I'm like,
Speaker 1: ah see, I should have come earlier. I should have
Speaker 1: come to the movies again. But it got me thinking
Speaker 1: of all the different ways that we sort of do
Speaker 1: things digitally versus the old analog way. And one of
Speaker 1: these questions I proposed as I'm trying to get organized
Speaker 1: in the new year, I said to folks on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I said, hey, do you use paper or digital for
Speaker 1: your daily planner, for your to do list? For your notes?
Speaker 1: And I got so many people chiming in, you know,
Speaker 1: paper is better, digital is better. Here's the app I use.
Speaker 1: And so I went down this sort of rabbit hole
Speaker 1: of trying out all these different apps for my to
Speaker 1: do list and my daily notes. And I've used, you know,
Speaker 1: all the suggestions people were telling me, and I did
Speaker 1: come to a conclusion of one app that I really like.
Speaker 1: The problem is it's twelve dollars a month, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if I want to be that organized, Like
Speaker 1: it's my organization worth twelve dollars. I'm not sure, but
Speaker 1: so far I really like it. It's called noe Plan, and
Speaker 1: I like it is because it's a very simple thing
Speaker 1: that not many apps offer. Many apps offer you the
Speaker 1: ability to do a to do list, which is fine,
Speaker 1: and then some have a calendar. This one puts it
Speaker 1: all together, so every single day you get a fresh
Speaker 1: page for your calendar. That you can just take notes on.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a notebook for your calendar, and
Speaker 1: that's the way I operate. Like every day, I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a cool website. Let me where do I put that?
Speaker 1: Do I put it in my notes? Do I put
Speaker 1: it in my to do list?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: I got to call someone? Do I put that in
Speaker 1: my to do list, my notes, my calendar as a reminder?
Speaker 1: Do I put it as an event in my calendar?
Speaker 1: This sort of brings everything together.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I think it's a little bit over the top for
Speaker 1: many people's uses. It's got a lot of different little
Speaker 1: features in it and the ways you can link notes
Speaker 1: and templates and all this stuff. So I don't know
Speaker 1: if I need all of that stuff, but it's a start.
Speaker 1: And I've been using it now since let's see yesterday,
Speaker 1: the day before, the day before that, so about three
Speaker 1: days now, and I think that it has made me
Speaker 1: a better person. I think I'm much more organized. I
Speaker 1: can see my notes from every single day this week,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't get lost because you can refer to
Speaker 1: the day before the next morning, so things that were
Speaker 1: still on your list or your notes that you kind
Speaker 1: of didn't get to you say, oh, yeah, that was
Speaker 1: something I wanted to do. But this, of course got
Speaker 1: me thinking about all these different things that we've just
Speaker 1: done digitally, Like remember all the things we used to
Speaker 1: have on paper receipts, movie tickets, concert tickets, newspapers, records.
Speaker 1: I saw a record player at CS that connects with
Speaker 1: sons and I've never had a I mean I had
Speaker 1: a record player as a kid in my house, but
Speaker 1: I was like, I need this record player. And it's
Speaker 1: an expensive record player, but it connects with Sonos, which
Speaker 1: I have in my house, and I just thought it'd
Speaker 1: be cool to put a record on. And then I
Speaker 1: told my wife about it, and she was like, a,
Speaker 1: do we really need a record player with all the
Speaker 1: streaming music we have? I said, I don't know. It
Speaker 1: sounds kind of fun. I mean you got to change
Speaker 1: the record every forty minutes, but I mean that's a
Speaker 1: small price to pay, right. Sometimes it give me a
Speaker 1: challenge to sort of adopt these new digits things, but
Speaker 1: then we get used to it. Like my mom, she
Speaker 1: flew home the other day and I gave her her
Speaker 1: boarding pass for the first time on her smartphone. I said, Mom,
Speaker 1: I'm not printing this out for you. You're going to use
Speaker 1: your phone as your boarding pass. And she was very hesitant,
Speaker 1: but I said, you're going to do this, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna And she was so proud of herself when she
Speaker 1: got home with just her phone. Remember if you lost
Speaker 1: your plane ticket was gone forever. I mean that that
Speaker 1: was the way things worked back in the day. Money
Speaker 1: is digital. I mean we were asking around the office
Speaker 1: the other day who uses, you know, cash, who has
Speaker 1: cash on them? And only a handful of people actually
Speaker 1: raise their hand. But if you ever try this, try
Speaker 1: this for me, Take a twenty dollars bill and try
Speaker 1: to spend it like using the cold, hard cash in
Speaker 1: your hand. For some reason, it takes longer to come
Speaker 1: out of your hand than tapping your phone. I don't
Speaker 1: know why. It's just like this thing like I can
Speaker 1: tap my phone no problem, but if I have to
Speaker 1: hand over cash, man, it's just a whole nother world. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of stuff I think about on
Speaker 1: a weekly basis, And this is the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: I'm putting in my new app that I like, called
Speaker 1: note Plan. So I decided it it's a combination of
Speaker 1: No Plan and Microsoft to do for me, and that's
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna stick with for the new year. All Right,
Speaker 1: I've got a great show planned for you today coming up.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is up, Tesla is down. I've got the Google
Speaker 1: Drive shortcut you need to know about. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: TVs later. We're gonna talk to a psychology professor about
Speaker 1: whether big social media companies are really ruining teenagers' lives. Plus,
Speaker 1: the phone lines are open at triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's triple eight rich one O one. You
Speaker 1: are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. This is the show where I talk about
Speaker 1: the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
Speaker 1: also the place where I answer your questions. Phone lines
Speaker 1: are open. It is triple eight rich one oh one,
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one O one. Andy is in Pine River. Andy,
Speaker 1: You're on with rich.
Speaker 2: Oh good afternoon. Thanks about for taking my call. I
Speaker 2: was just wondering if you're gonna get into well, I'm
Speaker 2: kind of a lot ied. I'm bed buying my first
Speaker 2: one phone or Android phone, and just you know, is
Speaker 2: there a model or a place you can start if
Speaker 2: you don't need a whole It doesn't need to be
Speaker 2: that sophisticated. I don't need that much, you know, just
Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of a way to wait in.
Speaker 2: Is there something you know? How do you get started?
Speaker 1: You have no smartphone, You've never.
Speaker 2: Had a start? Nope, I've never had a smartphone. I've
Speaker 2: had a flip phone that I stepped on. I can't
Speaker 2: even send tex to at the moment. I'm looking for something.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty low tech, looking for something I don't need
Speaker 2: a lot of.
Speaker 1: I mean, what do your friends think of this? I'm
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated right now because you're you're one of a
Speaker 1: few that don't have a phone unless someone's trying not
Speaker 1: to have a phone, right, Like some people don't want
Speaker 1: to have a smartphone. I know people like that, but
Speaker 1: you've just not kind of gone into this world just
Speaker 1: because what.
Speaker 2: Well, because I like, give an example, like when I
Speaker 2: was in a band, I didn't buy a CD player
Speaker 2: till my band released CD. In other words, I wasn't
Speaker 2: going to buy a CD to listen to somebody else's
Speaker 2: music on a CD. So I recorded a CD. I
Speaker 2: didn't need a CD player. So I've always been just
Speaker 2: kind of a luddite and I never I never bought
Speaker 2: a computery, like that whole computer craze. It's like a
Speaker 2: computer was kind of like a fancy file cabinet back
Speaker 2: in the day, and then now all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, that's all I was. It was
Speaker 2: an accounting packet. It was a file cabin with accounting packete.
Speaker 2: So I never jumped into the hole let's buy a computer,
Speaker 2: and I never did it, and it kind of left
Speaker 2: me in the dust down the line because I never
Speaker 2: wanted a smartphone. I just so here I am. You know,
Speaker 2: it's twenty twenty two or twenty twenty three now, and
Speaker 2: I don't have a smartphone. I'm off the grid as
Speaker 2: far as you can get. I don't have a landline,
Speaker 2: I don't have an I got nothing.
Speaker 1: Don't even calling me. I mean, what are you? Are
Speaker 1: you on a pigeon messenger pigeon right now?
Speaker 2: Am I a what?
Speaker 1: How are you calling me?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: I'm just calling on a flip phone. Oh don that.
Speaker 2: I can't even text?
Speaker 1: Got it? Okay? So what do you want to do
Speaker 1: on this new phone?
Speaker 2: Well, all I'd want to do on my phone, it's
Speaker 2: just to be able to get on the internet, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe get song lyrics and you know, get on Google.
Speaker 2: You're not. It wouldn't need to be just almost minimal.
Speaker 2: I don't need to Facebook or nothing.
Speaker 1: And you're not sitting there like with Apple Envy saying
Speaker 1: oh I've got to have an iPhone. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know you're open to Android as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, Android is what I was told. That's the simplest one.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think that's debatable, but I think
Speaker 1: for I mean, you know, for someone just getting into this,
Speaker 1: I would actually recommend a Google Pixel. I think that
Speaker 1: that's going to be a phone that takes a great
Speaker 1: pictures if you want to get into that eventually. But
Speaker 1: also I think what you'll like about it is the voice.
Speaker 1: It really has great voice commands, so you can.
Speaker 2: Wrote I wrote that down, I wrote down Google Pixel.
Speaker 2: But what I was asking, what is the Well, I
Speaker 2: guess what I would ask, what's the price range for
Speaker 2: one of those?
Speaker 1: So you can get the XEL six A, which is
Speaker 1: the phone i'd recommend for you. That's sort of their
Speaker 1: basic starter phone. It's gone on sale for as cheap
Speaker 1: as about three hundred dollars, and I think it retails
Speaker 1: for like four fifty. But I wouldn't pay that. I
Speaker 1: would get you know, just check for sales and it
Speaker 1: goes on pretty regularly.
Speaker 2: But what I like, the other question is is I
Speaker 2: would like to avoid I don't want five G. I
Speaker 2: heard that's very unhealthy, so I'd like to keep it
Speaker 2: in the like four gears. Last, Is that an option too.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's ways that you might be able to
Speaker 1: change that on your phone where you can kind of
Speaker 1: limit it to LTE like a four G connection. But
Speaker 1: I think that the whole five G issue is probably
Speaker 1: a little bit overblown. I don't think you need to
Speaker 1: worry about that, especially as a person who's just getting
Speaker 1: their phone for the first time. I mean, I do
Speaker 1: think about the fact that I wear an Apple Watch
Speaker 1: and I've got this connection that is just sort of
Speaker 1: on my wrist at all times, like you know, during
Speaker 1: the day, So you know, I think there's a there's
Speaker 1: a reason to sort of wonder about that stuff, but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure there's anything that's concrete, especially with the
Speaker 1: five G signals. I mean, that's pretty standard on most
Speaker 1: phones at this point. But I think the Pixel six
Speaker 1: A is really going to be your best bet. I
Speaker 1: think that you'll love the ability to use your voice
Speaker 1: to search on that phone. It's got great voice search,
Speaker 1: it's got a great camera. I think the software is
Speaker 1: very simple, and also the software updates quite frequently, so
Speaker 1: you'll get new features on that phone for a few years.
Speaker 1: So if you're looking to invest, like I said, three
Speaker 1: fifty four hundred bucks on a phone, I think it'll
Speaker 1: last a long time. I know everyone has the iPhone,
Speaker 1: and the iPhone is great, it's a fantastic device, but
Speaker 1: you know there are other phones out there, and especially
Speaker 1: for someone like yourself that's just getting into it, I
Speaker 1: think that the Pixel six A is going to be
Speaker 1: great for you. The only downside, and I'll tell you
Speaker 1: this about getting the Pixel, is that your friends probably
Speaker 1: don't have that, so when you have trouble with your phone,
Speaker 1: you can't really ask a friend, Hey, how do I
Speaker 1: put this into airplane mode? Or how do I put
Speaker 1: this into you know, how do I change the Wi Fi?
Speaker 1: Because most of your friends are probably gonna have iPhones,
Speaker 1: so that would be the argument to maybe get a
Speaker 1: basic iPhone if you don't want the Pixel. But great question, Andy.
Speaker 1: I wish I had more time to hear about your
Speaker 1: your rock star past, because I feel like there's a
Speaker 1: lot there, and I think that you've probably got some
Speaker 1: some cool stories there. But thanks for calling the show.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. All right. Phone lines are open triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one oh one. That's one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. All right.
Speaker 1: Speaking of smartphones, if you're in the market for a
Speaker 1: new Samsung, I would hold off because Samsung is going
Speaker 1: to hold their next event they call them Unpacked events
Speaker 1: in February February first, to be exact, this is their
Speaker 1: first in person event in three years, and this is
Speaker 1: for the Galaxy S series, so this is their top
Speaker 1: of the line phones. The S twenty three is what
Speaker 1: we're expecting to see here. Samsung says it will be
Speaker 1: the epitome of how we define the ultimate premium experience.
Speaker 1: In fact, this was the last event that I went
Speaker 1: to before COVID stopped all of the events, so I
Speaker 1: was up in San Francisco. It was at this really
Speaker 1: cool location. I can't remember what it was called, but
Speaker 1: it was so neat and it was packed, and I
Speaker 1: remember there were little signs that had to take our
Speaker 1: temperature because it was February something and it was just
Speaker 1: at the beginning of COVID and they were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well we're still having this, but you know, everyone take
Speaker 1: your temperature and you'll be fine. And I'm not even
Speaker 1: sure masks were a thing at that point, but this
Speaker 1: was the last event I went to before the entire
Speaker 1: world came crashing down. So again, February first, we're going
Speaker 1: to hear all about the new Samsungs. All right, coming up,
Speaker 1: My guest is a psychology professor. She's going to talk
Speaker 1: about Seattle public schools in the lawsuit against the big
Speaker 1: tech social media companies, and whether TikTok is really ruining
Speaker 1: our teenagers' lives. I'm also going to talk about Bitcoin
Speaker 1: being up, Tesla being down, and the Google drive shortcut
Speaker 1: you need to know about. My name is Richdimiro. You
Speaker 1: are listening to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here, rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. You are listening to rich on Tech on
Speaker 1: the radio. This is the show where we talk about
Speaker 1: tech stuff and answer your questions. Phone lines are open
Speaker 1: at triple eight Rich one oh one. So I should
Speaker 1: probably mention that I am on social media. It's a
Speaker 1: big part of my day actually Instagram at rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking through some of the things I've posted lately.
Speaker 1: I you would be surprised at how much time I
Speaker 1: spend sort of crafting Instagram posts. And I don't know why,
Speaker 1: because you know, it's just fun and I love I
Speaker 1: think the combination, like when they came up with Reels,
Speaker 1: which I know is a direct copy of TikTok, But
Speaker 1: for me, Instagram is sort of where my followers are,
Speaker 1: so I kind of stuck with it and it's just fun.
Speaker 1: Like I got this video editing program that I use
Speaker 1: on my phone called Splice, which a friend recommended. So
Speaker 1: I was, okay, I guess I'll tell you the whole story.
Speaker 1: But I was editing reels on my phone and using
Speaker 1: the built in editor on Instagram, and it was just
Speaker 1: it was horrific, like I couldn't do anything, like it
Speaker 1: just took me hours on end to try to like
Speaker 1: do one thing, and so I ended up. I saw
Speaker 1: my friend who was posting, and I said, hey, how
Speaker 1: are you getting these things so good? Like what how
Speaker 1: are your posts always so amazing? He goes, dude, don't
Speaker 1: use the built in editor. He's like, you got to
Speaker 1: use this program called Splice, and so I downloaded it.
Speaker 1: Of course it's like a little free trial, and then
Speaker 1: it costs me money, but it has changed my life
Speaker 1: because it's so great and it just works so well.
Speaker 1: And so now I'm editing things on Splice all the time,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's almost like a hobby, and you know,
Speaker 1: I don't have to do it, but it's just great
Speaker 1: and it's fun. And so anyway, some of the things
Speaker 1: I posted recently, some of the more fun ones. This
Speaker 1: Lenovo notebook that is just wild. It's got like two
Speaker 1: giant screens. It's a yoga notebook, so it just folds
Speaker 1: in a million different ways. I've got the Ring carcam
Speaker 1: on there, which is the new ring you know them
Speaker 1: for their video doorbell. They've got a new camera for
Speaker 1: your car. And then I've got this cookie shot robot
Speaker 1: that is inside Caesar's Palace. I've got this glow in
Speaker 1: the dark basketball that I got my kid or well,
Speaker 1: we got sorry, my cut my nephew. We got him
Speaker 1: one of these things. Then we've got this Britta water
Speaker 1: filter for your countertop. We've got the Ring Flying Drone camera.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just Oh. I've got this thing that
Speaker 1: it's like a pet I don't know what you call it,
Speaker 1: a flowbe for pets. It's just cool. It's just fun.
Speaker 1: So anyway, check it out at richon Tech on Instagram
Speaker 1: if you want to see some of my reels on there.
Speaker 1: And yes, I answer people's questions on there too, Like
Speaker 1: people are always surprised when I write them back and say,
Speaker 1: you know, like they'll comment on stuff, and I don't
Speaker 1: really expect to return message when I text someone through Instagram,
Speaker 1: and I'm always surprised that I never get them. But
Speaker 1: when I right back to people, they're surprised they do
Speaker 1: get them. And I do spend a fair amount of
Speaker 1: time doing that again Instagram at rich on Tech if
Speaker 1: you want to join in the fun there. So bitcoin
Speaker 1: a little surprise. Woke up this morning and I saw
Speaker 1: an email that bitcoin was over twenty k. Now, this
Speaker 1: is not the show where I'm gonna sit here and
Speaker 1: talk about the nuances of the bitcoin price, but I
Speaker 1: feel like this is a pretty big change in bitcoin
Speaker 1: because it is above twenty thousand for the first time
Speaker 1: since early November. And that's when ftx collapsed, you know,
Speaker 1: that platform that was doing things a little, I don't know,
Speaker 1: not so right, and everything came crashing down. And so
Speaker 1: the whole thing about bitcoin is everyone was really into
Speaker 1: this during the pandemic, and people were investing money and
Speaker 1: they were excited. And yes, you still have a lot
Speaker 1: of people that are excited, but then you have a
Speaker 1: lot of people that have invested a lot of money
Speaker 1: and now have to be excited because they wanted to
Speaker 1: go back up so that they recoup some of their
Speaker 1: losses that they've sustained over the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's where we're at is there's
Speaker 1: an excitement again because I looked at the numbers and
Speaker 1: you know, by the time you listen to this, if
Speaker 1: you listen, you know later if you're not listening live,
Speaker 1: you know, the numbers could be down again. But if
Speaker 1: you look at the past month of bitcoin, it's up
Speaker 1: like sixteen percent. Like where did that come from? And
Speaker 1: I kind of I just stopped looking. I stopped looking
Speaker 1: at the app that I used for this because I
Speaker 1: just got bored and I was like, all right, you
Speaker 1: know what, this money is gone. It's never coming back.
Speaker 1: I don't have a ton of money in it, but
Speaker 1: I've got some and I just you know, it's gone.
Speaker 1: I just figured it was written off forever. But who knows,
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not so. Bitcoin definitely going up, but if
Speaker 1: you remember the high, it was over sixty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars at one point, and this is the price per coin.
Speaker 1: I'm not a bitcoin expert, but you know it goes
Speaker 1: by coin. And I remember my friend who is a
Speaker 1: big sort of crypto person, he was emailing me back
Speaker 1: when bitcoin was starting, and he's like, hey, you got
Speaker 1: to cover bitcoin for your you know, tech report or
Speaker 1: it's this thing is like over I think the coin
Speaker 1: was over one hundred dollars and I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm getting into all this digital currency stuff,
Speaker 1: but sure enough, he was right, and I probably should
Speaker 1: have invested back then, but that didn't really work out anyway.
Speaker 1: So if you have bitcoin and you want to take
Speaker 1: a look at it once again and not feel so depressed,
Speaker 1: now's the time to do it. But I wouldn't sell
Speaker 1: just yet. I mean, actually, you know what, I'm not
Speaker 1: giving investment advice. You can do whatever you want. But
Speaker 1: I think it's one of these things where it's just
Speaker 1: kind of at this point, you just kind of kind
Speaker 1: of wait and watch. Speaking of Bitcoin being up, Tesla
Speaker 1: is down. This week. Tesla cut prices across the board
Speaker 1: on a lot of its cars. And you know, people
Speaker 1: have been kind of mixed about Elon Musk lately. I
Speaker 1: say that nicely because most people have been like, not
Speaker 1: very nice about Elon Musk. But he's been making a
Speaker 1: lot of changes both at Twitter and Tesla, and so
Speaker 1: Tesla some massive price drops. The Model Why is now
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand dollars less than it was just a few
Speaker 1: days ago. That's almost twenty percent cheaper than it was.
Speaker 1: So let's look at some of these prices. The Model
Speaker 1: three old price about forty seven thousand, now the new
Speaker 1: price forty four thousand. Model Why was sixty six thousand,
Speaker 1: and the new price is fifty three thousand. That's thirteen
Speaker 1: thousand dollars less. The Model Why Performance was seventy thousand,
Speaker 1: now it's fifty seven thousand. These are still very expensive cars.
Speaker 1: And you know the thing about the Tesla is there's
Speaker 1: a lot of competition that's grow. It's just the competition
Speaker 1: continues to pile up against these cars. Now, I still
Speaker 1: think that Tesla still has the best charging infrastructure, and
Speaker 1: I think that makes the biggest difference for this company
Speaker 1: than any other car you get. And I've heard horror
Speaker 1: stories people that have other evs. You know, it can
Speaker 1: be tricky. Now, with that said, if you are commuting
Speaker 1: with this car, you know, any any EV you are
Speaker 1: just fine. If you're charging at home or you're charging
Speaker 1: at work. Most people are commuting, you know, maybe thirty
Speaker 1: miles each way to work. That I think that's the
Speaker 1: average in America. Most of these cars can do sixty
Speaker 1: miles in a day, no problem, you know, many of them.
Speaker 1: The new ones can do two, three hundred miles in
Speaker 1: a day. You know. Then you've got the lucids that
Speaker 1: can do like five hundred miles in a day. But
Speaker 1: we don't really need that. I mean, I've done road trips.
Speaker 1: I'm not driving five hundred miles before I stop to
Speaker 1: get a drink or go to the bathroom or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, two hundred miles is just fine.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's more of peace of mind
Speaker 1: because we've gotten so used to the gas cars having
Speaker 1: a five you know, four to five hundred mile range perhaps,
Speaker 1: But with electric cars, if you're just getting one to commute,
Speaker 1: you'll be fine. If you install a charger in your
Speaker 1: garage or if you have charging at work, you'll be
Speaker 1: just fine. With any of these electric cars, I think
Speaker 1: the Tesla the advantage is it's got that that charging
Speaker 1: infrastructure that allows you to take road trips and be
Speaker 1: just fine because you can pretty much find a Tesla
Speaker 1: charger supercharger anywhere. Now there are many electric chargers around,
Speaker 1: they're just not that fast many times. And what people
Speaker 1: realize the first time they take their non Tesla EV
Speaker 1: on a road trip is, oh, wow, I pulled up
Speaker 1: to this charger and it's a slow charger. So I
Speaker 1: gotta stay here for an hour to get this thing charged,
Speaker 1: or I gotta stay for forty five minutes to get
Speaker 1: any kind of range on this thing, whereas a Tesla
Speaker 1: it could be, you know, fifteen twenty five minutes to
Speaker 1: get a charge, and if you want a full charge,
Speaker 1: you know, you just got to stay there for half
Speaker 1: an hour or something with some of these really fast chargers.
Speaker 1: So the other thing about these Tesla is that I
Speaker 1: think is happening here is that they are now once
Speaker 1: again eligible for this seventy five hundred dollars US tax credit.
Speaker 1: And that's a change at the beginning of the year.
Speaker 1: So it's there's been a lot of changes with all
Speaker 1: of this stuff. And the Tesla prices have just been
Speaker 1: all over the place in general over the past couple
Speaker 1: of years, but this, this price cut is pretty big.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to see if there's something that I'm quoting
Speaker 1: Electric by the way, that's a good blog that covers
Speaker 1: all this stuff. Trying to see if Elon Musk said anything.
Speaker 1: I guess he cited inflation and just kind of the
Speaker 1: changing nature of this whole thing. But that's a pretty
Speaker 1: big deal if you had your eye on a Tesla.
Speaker 1: Now with that said, I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: other cars out there that if you just can wait
Speaker 1: a year for a new EV I think that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of cars out there to consider, and things
Speaker 1: just continue to get better with evs. I mean here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles we're on based. I mean EV's have
Speaker 1: been a thing for a while. I think in other cities,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a good option if you just want
Speaker 1: to be on the cutting edge, or if you like
Speaker 1: different things, or like I said, if you're just commuting
Speaker 1: with a car, that's kind of the way to do
Speaker 1: it all. Right, coming up, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: another streaming service that is hiking prices. This just is
Speaker 1: happening with all of them. Plus we're going to talk
Speaker 1: TVs later on in the show. I've got some great
Speaker 1: recommendations for Super Bowl TVs. And of course phone lines
Speaker 1: are open at Triple eight. Rich one on one. You
Speaker 1: are listening to me Rich DeMuro here on rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show, Rich DeMuro here. This is
Speaker 1: rich on Tech, the show where we talk tech stuff
Speaker 1: and answer your questions. Ron is in Downey, California. Ron,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 4: Hey, richat great to talk to you. Hey, I've got
Speaker 4: I've got a Chromebook and I've got a work laptop
Speaker 4: and they connect to the Internet through Wi Fi no problem.
Speaker 4: But my HP PC Windows ten I turned it on
Speaker 4: this week and it won't connect. And I get an
Speaker 4: error that says Wi Fi doesn't have a valid IP configuration.
Speaker 4: Reset Wi Fi adapter completed, Investigate router or broadband modem
Speaker 4: issues failed, and I don't know what to do. I've
Speaker 4: searched on the internet for some command line codes to
Speaker 4: reset things, and I'm kind of at a loss.
Speaker 1: Now have you ever connected to the internet on this But.
Speaker 4: It's worked, it's worked, it's hummed along, worked just fine until.
Speaker 1: What what changed? Was it a software update.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I just turned it on. I turned
Speaker 4: it on this week and I've wanted to download something,
Speaker 4: but I could never connect. It would never it would
Speaker 4: never connect to the internet.
Speaker 1: What about a different Wi Fi network? Have you tried that, a.
Speaker 4: Different Wi Fi network? Just from what five? Two four?
Speaker 1: Well? Yeah, I mean that's well that. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's the problem, because you've said you've connected before. But
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like, have you tried just connecting to a
Speaker 1: different like you're trying to connect to the Wi Fi
Speaker 1: network in your home. I'm guessing, what about like a
Speaker 1: hotspot on your phone? Like will it connect to that?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 4: Is it just haven't? Yeah, I haven't tried that, Okay.
Speaker 1: So I would start there and see if it would
Speaker 1: connect to a different network. Have you deleted the old
Speaker 1: network off the computer completely?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 4: Probably not, okay.
Speaker 1: So I would go into your Wi Fi settings and
Speaker 1: look at your saved networks and then I would delete.
Speaker 4: The Oh yeah I've done that. Oh yeah, I did that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I did that.
Speaker 1: Okay. And so when you do that and you does
Speaker 1: it find the new does it find the network again?
Speaker 1: And say connect? And you type in your password and
Speaker 1: then what it just says, can't do it.
Speaker 4: It can't do it.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Okay, Well, and you've tried restarting this obviously, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't work. What about how old is this computer?
Speaker 4: It's probably seven or eight years old.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so it's it's definitely an older computer. Okay. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Uh And you've done all the software updates on.
Speaker 4: It, yeah, as far as I know, but you know,
Speaker 4: so it hasn't been turned on in a while, and
Speaker 4: and now I just like, so I just want to
Speaker 4: turn it on and download my tax software and I can't.
Speaker 4: I can't get I can't get connected.
Speaker 1: Interesting okay, Uh, well, it sounds like either the Wi
Speaker 1: Fi connection has you know, it's kind of fried up.
Speaker 1: But I without knowing if you're able to connect to
Speaker 1: a different network. I think that's the tricky part. Do
Speaker 1: you have a hotspot on your phone? Like, do you
Speaker 1: have that ability to turn on your cell phone and
Speaker 1: turn it into a hot spot or now?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure I do. That's something I
Speaker 4: don't think I've ever done. But I'm if that's a suggestion,
Speaker 4: I can try and figure out how to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's what Okay, So what I would do,
Speaker 1: and this is you know how Rich would troubleshoot this personally,
Speaker 1: is I would Number one, I'd update all the software
Speaker 1: on this computer, so I would make sure that everything
Speaker 1: is up to date. Make sure that you know I'm
Speaker 1: running the latest software. It's all good. I would get
Speaker 1: rid of any programs that I don't need. I mean,
Speaker 1: there could be some malware that that's interfering here, that
Speaker 1: might be interfering with your connection. So I would get
Speaker 1: rid of any programs on this computer I don't need
Speaker 1: anymore or don't recognize. I would delete those, and then
Speaker 1: of course restart the computer one more time. I'd go
Speaker 1: into my Wi Fi settings. I would delete any networks
Speaker 1: that I'm no longer using, including the old network, and
Speaker 1: then again I would restart, and then I would try
Speaker 1: connecting this to my mobile phone. So turn on the
Speaker 1: hot spot setting on your mobile phone. You can go
Speaker 1: into settings, turn that on. It'll it'll generate a little
Speaker 1: mobile hotspot just like your regular WiFi in your home,
Speaker 1: and try connecting to that. If it doesn't connect to
Speaker 1: that network, then you know you have a bigger problem here.
Speaker 1: And it's not just the fact that your WiFi has
Speaker 1: decided to stop talking to this computer. If you are
Speaker 1: able to connect to the hot spot, you can use that,
Speaker 1: of course. But then once you've got that connection uh completed,
Speaker 1: now you can go back to the other Wi Fi
Speaker 1: and see if that one works. And if it works,
Speaker 1: you're good. If not, then you're gonna have to investigate
Speaker 1: a little further. And it could you know, if it
Speaker 1: connected to the one on your phone, it's probably not
Speaker 1: a big problem because the hardware seems like it's intact,
Speaker 1: So then it could be something with how your router
Speaker 1: is configured. And that's getting a little bit more technical then,
Speaker 1: you know, than most people want to deal with. But
Speaker 1: that's kind of the uh the steps I would take
Speaker 1: ron those are you know, those are the steps that
Speaker 1: I would take to troubleshoot that and hopefully you can
Speaker 1: get on there. I would just be careful if you're
Speaker 1: doing taxes or anything, you know, very secure on a
Speaker 1: computer that's that old. I would make sure that your
Speaker 1: software is up to date and there's no no issues
Speaker 1: with that computer because you know, that's that's some private
Speaker 1: stuff there, so you want to make sure that computer
Speaker 1: is secure. Thanks for the call, Uh, We've got is
Speaker 1: it Gay in Woodland Hills.
Speaker 5: Yes, by thank you.
Speaker 7: I want to find out two things, if I may please.
Speaker 1: Sure, Well, let's start with the first thing. That's the
Speaker 1: first thing.
Speaker 7: First one is how do I play a DVD on
Speaker 7: my Chromebook? And the second is the transfer from last
Speaker 7: test to Bidwarmen. I was told if you do that,
Speaker 7: there's a point where your transferred file will lose encryption
Speaker 7: and it has to be deleted right away. That's what
Speaker 7: Leo said. So if you can give me a step
Speaker 7: by step process how to do that transfer from last
Speaker 7: past to bid warm Those are two questions.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well let's start with the Let's start with the
Speaker 1: DVDs on the Chromebook. So it's possible it's going to
Speaker 1: require an external DVD drive. So if you've got you know,
Speaker 1: you probably have to invest in one of these things,
Speaker 1: and it's going to need a specific DVD drive because
Speaker 1: not all of them are going to work. For instance,
Speaker 1: I've got the I've got a MacBook and they stop
Speaker 1: doing DVD drive so a while ago on these things,
Speaker 1: and so at home, I've got just a DVD drive
Speaker 1: that I plug in from time to time, and you
Speaker 1: plug it in, the computer recognizes it and it works. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly how far you can go with
Speaker 1: this DVD device, Like you probably don't want to get
Speaker 1: like a DVD burner or anything like that, because it's
Speaker 1: probably not going to be able to burn DVDs or
Speaker 1: do anything very elaborate, but you should be able to
Speaker 1: play them. And from everything I'm seeing, it looks like
Speaker 1: you're going to need some software to do that as well,
Speaker 1: which VLC should should take care of that. VLC is
Speaker 1: a great sort of it's almost like a Swiss Army
Speaker 1: knife of apps. It will play almost anything, and so
Speaker 1: you can you know, you can use that to play
Speaker 1: the DVD. It'll play almost any file. It's a great
Speaker 1: program that a lot of people rely on. When you
Speaker 1: find a file that just doesn't work, try VLC. And
Speaker 1: it's an open source program that should work. So that's that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're gonna have to invest a little bit.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how much those drives cost anymore, maybe
Speaker 1: thirty to fifty dollars for one of those drives. When
Speaker 1: it comes to switching over from last Pass to Bitwarden,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's a logical thing to do because
Speaker 1: last Pass has had so many issues The issue is
Speaker 1: you probably have to have a file that is going
Speaker 1: to be readable by Bitwarden, and I'm guessing that's a
Speaker 1: you know, Comma separated value. Anyway, last pass is going
Speaker 1: to export your file. Bitwarden's going to take that file.
Speaker 1: But for it to read it, you know, you've got
Speaker 1: to have no encryption on there because the file, you know,
Speaker 1: it has to be able to see all your passwords
Speaker 1: and your user names. So once it's in Bitwarden, it's
Speaker 1: going to be encrypted again. But yes, I think what
Speaker 1: you're referring to is you probably want to get rid
Speaker 1: of that file almost immediately because it is going to
Speaker 1: be pretty insecure. And that's the concern is you don't
Speaker 1: want to keep that password file on your computer because
Speaker 1: someone could just crack open that file and see everything
Speaker 1: that's in there because of the way you need to
Speaker 1: export it. But I love Bitwarden. I think it's a
Speaker 1: great program. I think that's a smart thing to do.
Speaker 1: So thanks for calling from Woodland Hills this morning. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Rich on Tech. Coming up later in the show,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the Google Drive shortcut you
Speaker 1: need to know about, plus the streaming service that's hiking
Speaker 1: prices similar story these days. My name is Rich Damiro.
Speaker 1: Give me a call Triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: Welcome to rich on Tech. This is the show where
Speaker 1: we talk about tech stuff and answer your questions. My
Speaker 1: name is Rich Jamiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. During the week, I am covering technology
Speaker 1: for ATLA, keeping track of all the trends and things
Speaker 1: that you need to know about, and on the weekends
Speaker 1: right here talking with you about the stuff that happens
Speaker 1: during the week. And there's a lot of it. A
Speaker 1: lot of things are little, some things are big. Depends
Speaker 1: on the week, depends on you know, sort of the
Speaker 1: new cycle of things. But there's always something. There's always
Speaker 1: something changing in the tech world. If you want to
Speaker 1: keep up with me, I am on social media at
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. My website is rich on tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: That's also where you can watch my TV segments. So
Speaker 1: it's where I sort of take a deep dive into
Speaker 1: different things, new gadgets, kind of cool. Last night we
Speaker 1: were watching Shark Tank. One of the stories I did
Speaker 1: last week, I met with a startup that was going
Speaker 1: to be on Shark Tank and they were on last night,
Speaker 1: and I guess spoiler alert since it's already aired. They
Speaker 1: got a deal, which is kind of fun. So it
Speaker 1: was kind of neat to watch them because I just
Speaker 1: had interviewed them at their place in Hollywood and then
Speaker 1: seeing them on TV that night. But of course Shark
Speaker 1: Tank was taped like months ago, but they couldn't tell
Speaker 1: me what the outcome was, so I got to watch
Speaker 1: it live. Kind of cool, kind of fun. They did
Speaker 1: a well, I guess it's It was called Cabinet, and
Speaker 1: it's basically a new way for your medicine cabinet like
Speaker 1: reusable pill bottles, cool idea. Hbo Max announces its first
Speaker 1: price hike, effective immediately. I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've seen the trend, but pretty much every single streaming
Speaker 1: service that I have has gone up in the past
Speaker 1: I don't know, six months to a year. I mean,
Speaker 1: every single one of them, just like clockwork. So I'm
Speaker 1: paying more for my YouTube TV paying sorry, not YouTube TV,
Speaker 1: what's the other one? Just YouTube? I guess YouTube premium
Speaker 1: went up from like I think it was seventeen ninety
Speaker 1: nine to twenty two ninety nine, and then my Apple
Speaker 1: storage went up. Netflix went up. Actually, I think the
Speaker 1: Netflix was the one that didn't go up because I
Speaker 1: was subscribed to the highest. I can't you know, I
Speaker 1: can't even keep them straight anymore because so many of
Speaker 1: these things came in And the thing is they've got
Speaker 1: you on that automatic payment. So realistically, what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do. You're gonna stop subscribing to Netflix because of
Speaker 1: a dollar price increase? I don't know. I mean some
Speaker 1: people consider it, I guess, but in my house, you know,
Speaker 1: people if I mention anything about switching up services, it's like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. I may watch that one day, okay.
Speaker 1: But Warner Brothers, which owns HBO Max Warner Brothers Discovery,
Speaker 1: raising the price for the first time since it launched
Speaker 1: two years ago. So effective Thursday, January twelfth, the price
Speaker 1: went up from fourteen ninety nine to fifteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: a month, So that's about a seven percent increase. According
Speaker 1: to Variety, existing subscribers who are already paying fourteen ninety
Speaker 1: nine a month will see their rate increase to fifteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine a month effective next billing cycle. So Saturday,
Speaker 1: February eleventh, I guess if you if basically, if your
Speaker 1: subscription is passed that day, Like if you get billed
Speaker 1: on the twelfth, the thirteenth, whatever, you're going to see
Speaker 1: it on the next cycle, not this one, because it
Speaker 1: didn't have time to catch this cycle. And then they
Speaker 1: said they told Variety that the price increase of one
Speaker 1: dollar will allow us to continue to invest in providing
Speaker 1: even more culture defining programming and improving our customer experience
Speaker 1: for all users, the company said in a statement. So
Speaker 1: one dollar makes a big difference. I guess when you
Speaker 1: have seventy million subscribers, then you know it's seventy million
Speaker 1: dollars a month. You just printed at a thin air,
Speaker 1: and maybe a couple of people will drop it. But
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think that once you're on
Speaker 1: these this cycle, remember Hbo when you had it as
Speaker 1: part of your cable company. It was really tough to
Speaker 1: get rid of because you had to call someone and
Speaker 1: you had to say, you know, you know, Sopranos just ended.
Speaker 1: I'm not really watching anything on there. I don't really
Speaker 1: I can't justify the twenty dollars a month, And they'd say,
Speaker 1: no problem, sir, we can give you Hbo for the
Speaker 1: next six months. For five dollars a month and he said, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I'll keep it. Now. You can't really do that. I mean,
Speaker 1: some of these will do that. Like I had Paramount
Speaker 1: Plus and I went to cancel it and it said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, keep it for another three months for you know,
Speaker 1: ninety nine cents or whatever it was. So some of
Speaker 1: them do have some of these like systems programmed to
Speaker 1: try to keep you even when you get rid of it,
Speaker 1: But I don't know if they're savvy. Most of them,
Speaker 1: like Netflix is literally just like you. You you say cancel,
Speaker 1: and it's like canceled before you even breathe, like before
Speaker 1: you even click. It's like, oh, shoot, did I really
Speaker 1: just do that? Uh oh h Now I got to
Speaker 1: go back because some of them are just merciless. They'll
Speaker 1: just cancel immediately. Like you don't even get that like
Speaker 1: confirmation screen that says please stay so HBO Max, don't
Speaker 1: be surprised when your price goes up. Joe is in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles? Did I get that right?
Speaker 2: Joe?
Speaker 1: Are you in LA or Louisiana? Y? No, Okay, what's
Speaker 1: going on?
Speaker 2: Joe?
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 6: Oh and welcome.
Speaker 8: I've seen a lot of times I'm glad that John
Speaker 8: dis So of course, and there's the other show. But sure,
Speaker 8: we're gonna listen to you from now. I don't know,
Speaker 8: get about catch on a while to listen Lilio every
Speaker 8: now and then as well.
Speaker 1: Well excellent, thank you the best of both worlds.
Speaker 8: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: So I'm here.
Speaker 8: I'm just doing some household chores on a rainy day
Speaker 8: and one of the things that bigger. Hey, maybe not
Speaker 8: to get to the rich. You got a question about
Speaker 8: the flat TV. It's an older one, obviously, you got
Speaker 8: some new smart TVs here. I got a Roco box.
Speaker 7: Hooped up to it.
Speaker 8: I got the dish hooked up to it, DVR.
Speaker 2: Hooked up it.
Speaker 8: But one of the things it's not and I discovered
Speaker 8: it's not blue tooth capable. I've tried searching like a
Speaker 8: Hitten menu at all. So no, there's something external I
Speaker 8: could plug into, maybe to a USB port, perhaps get
Speaker 8: it blue tooth capable, because then I have I was
Speaker 8: a Bluetooth speaker, you know, soundbody. They would work with
Speaker 8: it if I'm able to do that.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know if they have one that would
Speaker 1: plug in via USB, because I don't think that that
Speaker 1: TV would output the audio signal through USB. But does
Speaker 1: it have some other external connections like an RCA or
Speaker 1: like even like a headphone jack on the back? Do
Speaker 1: you do you see those? Does it have any of
Speaker 1: those things?
Speaker 8: The RCA is is there the audiof but I got
Speaker 8: a tuble check. I'm not in the same room or
Speaker 8: the TV.
Speaker 3: Is that right now?
Speaker 8: But I'm thinking those RCA audio is already being utilized,
Speaker 8: and I forget where it might have been the dish
Speaker 8: or it might be the vocal box. Is there splitters
Speaker 8: a little ball or do I have to decide between
Speaker 8: one or the other?
Speaker 9: They?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there may be a splitter. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously you can find anything on Amazon, but I don't
Speaker 1: know if that would be the best quality audio. But
Speaker 1: there are devices you can plug in, like a Bluetooth
Speaker 1: transmitter that you can plug into the back of this TV.
Speaker 1: You know, they're not that expensive. I'm looking on Amazon
Speaker 1: right now. I see one for about forty bucks. I
Speaker 1: think the problem is going to be the sync, like
Speaker 1: whether it actually syncs up to what you're seeing on
Speaker 1: TV may or may not work. I think that's the
Speaker 1: biggest consideration. Do you want to be able to listen
Speaker 1: to all of the audio through this TV on headphones
Speaker 1: or is it just certain things like you're maybe just
Speaker 1: your streaming. No.
Speaker 8: Absolutely. What I wanted to do is, uh, there's a
Speaker 8: USB stone bar we have, and I like it to
Speaker 8: be able to listen to the programs through the USB
Speaker 8: songdbar rehab. I tell us a Bluetooth sombar.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's a Bluetooth soundbar, So you want to
Speaker 1: connect the Bluetooth soundbar. Okay, Yeah, So I think you're
Speaker 1: gonna need one of these transmitters and you're just gonna
Speaker 1: have to kind of try and see if it works.
Speaker 1: So you know, it connects in different ways. If you've
Speaker 1: got an optical out on the back of this TV,
Speaker 1: some of the older TVs do have that, that may work.
Speaker 1: That's probably your best bet. Actually, that's the way I
Speaker 1: connect connected many things over the years, was the optical out.
Speaker 1: But I think that might work, and that will take
Speaker 1: the optical audio output and it will send that to
Speaker 1: the Bluetooth transmitter and then your Bluetooth sound bar will
Speaker 1: pick up that signal, and of course you can hear
Speaker 1: things through there, and that should work with all the
Speaker 1: audio that runs through the TV. So whether it's the dish,
Speaker 1: whether it's the Roku box. The other solution you could
Speaker 1: use or try is you know Roku boxes, the rokup remote.
Speaker 1: A lot of them have like a little headphone jack
Speaker 1: on the side. Does yours have that or no?
Speaker 8: Yeah, and actually it does work. We've done that already
Speaker 8: when that's when we're watching, say we're streaming a movie,
Speaker 8: and I'll do exactly what you just said, I'll plug
Speaker 8: the ro cool uh jack and then then when we're
Speaker 8: hearing the sound bar and we're watching the movie through that.
Speaker 8: But that's only when we're utilizing the rocup box. If
Speaker 8: I'm watching you know, something on dish or whatever, then
Speaker 8: again that doesn't work. It's not utilizing a roll cup.
Speaker 8: So absolutely, you know that does work. But then our
Speaker 8: thing is that maybe perhaps making uh you know, utilizing
Speaker 8: the Bluetooth or gaming a game a capable. That's that's
Speaker 8: what I was asking. But that what you just said,
Speaker 8: it actually does work.
Speaker 1: Well, Okay, so that that's one option. But I think
Speaker 1: the Bluetooth transmitter, if you want everything from this TV
Speaker 1: to go through the sound bar, I think that's probably
Speaker 1: gonna be your best bet. And it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: hit or miss. Like this may work amazing, it may
Speaker 1: not work very well at all. I have not personally
Speaker 1: tried this, but that is kind of the solution.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 1: If you have a you know, if you have a
Speaker 1: headphone jack on there, like a you know, standard headphone
Speaker 1: jack on the back, that would be your best bet.
Speaker 1: There's also another company that I like called Airfly and
Speaker 1: or sorry, a device called Airfly from a company called
Speaker 1: twelve South, and they make a little device that you
Speaker 1: can plug in. It's very simple and easy that that
Speaker 1: may work as a way to just sort of connect
Speaker 1: these two things. I mean, I think the bluetooth transmitter.
Speaker 1: Just search Bluetooth transmitter for TV on Amazon and pick
Speaker 1: one that you think is you know, either highly rated,
Speaker 1: lots of reviews and people say it works and try
Speaker 1: it and if it doesn't, you can always return it.
Speaker 1: But that's that's what I do. So thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Is it's still raining outside in Los Angeles because.
Speaker 8: It yeah, but you know what, it's raining, but kind
Speaker 8: of like regular. Last week's storm was a little bit
Speaker 8: more hefty.
Speaker 2: This one.
Speaker 8: We'll see how it goes. It looks like it's just
Speaker 8: regular nice going on.
Speaker 1: Oh, man. Yeah, it's been it's been wild here in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. I'm more rain in the past six months
Speaker 1: than I've seen in a long long time here. But
Speaker 1: it's cozy in here in the studio. You are listening
Speaker 1: to Rich on Tech. My name is rich DeMuro. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Seattle Public schools. They are
Speaker 1: suing these big tech companies over the youth of our nation,
Speaker 1: and I will talk about that. Coming up, Phone number
Speaker 1: triple eight, Rich one oh one. You are listening to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. This
Speaker 1: is the show where we talk about technology and answer
Speaker 1: your questions. My name is Richdmuro. I am at Rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. On social media, oh gosh. Speaking of social media,
Speaker 1: Seattle Public Schools filed a ninety one page lawsuit against
Speaker 1: the companies behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube. They
Speaker 1: say that these apps are ruining kids' lives. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: a parent and my kids are not on social media,
Speaker 1: but they are on devices, and I've seen the impact
Speaker 1: of that, and I think that there's a lot to
Speaker 1: unpack here. Joining me is professor of psychology Gene Twangy.
Speaker 1: She is author of Eye Jen why today's super connected
Speaker 1: kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy,
Speaker 1: and completely unprepared for adulthood. Gene, thanks for joining me.
Speaker 9: Thank you.
Speaker 1: What do you make of this? What do you make
Speaker 1: of this lawsuit? Like when you heard about it, what
Speaker 1: did you think? What was your reaction?
Speaker 10: Well, it is actually really just yet another case where
Speaker 10: people are trying to hold the social media companies to account.
Speaker 10: So at this point, doesn't the families have social media
Speaker 10: companies for harm to their children? And a group of
Speaker 10: attorneys general are doing the same on the behalf of state.
Speaker 1: Governments, And so far it's been like teflon, you know,
Speaker 1: it's nothing's really stuck. And they all say, oh, we're
Speaker 1: doing what we can. We've got these you know, safety
Speaker 1: things in place. We do this with the advertising. They
Speaker 1: make a small change. But the school system is accusing
Speaker 1: these social media platforms of increasing students' anxiety and depression.
Speaker 1: Is that possible through social media?
Speaker 10: Absolutely? And we have lots and lots of studies showing
Speaker 10: that that's the case. The more time a team spends
Speaker 10: on social media, the more likely it is that she's depressed,
Speaker 10: that she's harming herself. The experimental data showing causation as well. Plus,
Speaker 10: the adolescent mental health crisis that we're grappling with right
Speaker 10: now didn't begin during the pandemic. It began more than
Speaker 10: ten years ago, right at the time that social media,
Speaker 10: because became very popular among kids.
Speaker 1: What is it about social media that is feeding this?
Speaker 1: Like what makes you know, what ruins these teams life
Speaker 1: lives because of it?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 1: What is it doing to them?
Speaker 10: There's a lot of factors. There's a lot of factors.
Speaker 10: So for some young people, especially girls, they experience major
Speaker 10: issues with body image and eating disorcer disorders. And Facebook's
Speaker 10: own research delved into that, so they you know, the
Speaker 10: company's aware that these things are happening, you know, based
Speaker 10: on the Facebook papers that were leaked in fall twenty
Speaker 10: twenty one by Francis Howgen. So that's one of the issues. There's,
Speaker 10: of course, cyber bullying. There's, of course the constant comparison
Speaker 10: to other people. There's seeing all the things you're missing
Speaker 10: out on. There's the amount of time that teams are
Speaker 10: spending on social media, which is not a coincidence because
Speaker 10: the algorithms on these apps are designed to keep people
Speaker 10: on the apps for as long as possible and keep
Speaker 10: them coming back as many times as possile.
Speaker 1: Now, can't some of this be said for adults? I mean,
Speaker 1: I see the same thing happening with adults. You know,
Speaker 1: you see someone on vacation and next thing you know,
Speaker 1: you want to go to that vacation place as an adult.
Speaker 1: Is it different because our brains are you know, different?
Speaker 1: Or is it the same problem?
Speaker 10: The problem is similar, It's just that for adults, you know,
Speaker 10: right or wrong. We consider adults as making their own choices,
Speaker 10: and we as a society tend to protect children and
Speaker 10: teens from many of these harms. So, for example, alcohol,
Speaker 10: Alcohol can be harmful no matter what age you are
Speaker 10: when you're using it, But we have made the drinking
Speaker 10: age twenty one with the idea that children and teens
Speaker 10: are less able to control those impulses and make good
Speaker 10: decisions when it comes to alcohol. You could argue the
Speaker 10: same should possibly be true for social media. Yet there's
Speaker 10: lots of kids on these platforms and minim they are
Speaker 10: supposed to be thirteen. It's not enforced, and these platforms
Speaker 10: were not designed for children, they were designed for adults.
Speaker 1: I see it every day in my home. I mean
Speaker 1: I see my kids flipping through not TikTok, but you know,
Speaker 1: YouTube shorts, maybe to a lesser extent Instagram, but it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely it takes a hold of them. I mean,
Speaker 1: they can't stop. And also we haven't even talked about
Speaker 1: the information that they're getting from there. That could be wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, as an adult, you know, you have a
Speaker 1: sense of what's real, what's fake, what's not, you know
Speaker 1: what's good, what's bad. As kids, you may not have that,
Speaker 1: and I think that's another issue that we see here.
Speaker 1: What's your recommendation to parents about all this? What do
Speaker 1: you think parents can do to either understand this more
Speaker 1: or you know, act with their teams? I mean do
Speaker 1: they The problem is the teenagers are all on it,
Speaker 1: so you can't stop them from being on there.
Speaker 10: Of course you can, of course. Why why Well, I
Speaker 10: mean it is true that the companies are basically conspiring
Speaker 10: again parents to allow us to do that. They don't
Speaker 10: require Frital perussion because they don't force their eight limits. However,
Speaker 10: to take it as as a parent, so one has
Speaker 10: no device in the bedrooms overnight. That's not just good
Speaker 10: for kids and teens, it's good for adults too, because
Speaker 10: that will at the very least prevent them being on
Speaker 10: it in the middle of the night. But then, you know,
Speaker 10: don't allow your kids to have social media until they're
Speaker 10: at least thirteen. That's actually the way it's supposed to
Speaker 10: be under the law. And consider having that age be
Speaker 10: sixteen or even eighteen.
Speaker 1: What do you do all their friends are on it?
Speaker 1: How do you deal with that?
Speaker 9: You say no.
Speaker 10: If all their friends were drinking alcohol or jumping off cliffs,
Speaker 10: you could also say no.
Speaker 1: It's not easy as a parent to do that.
Speaker 10: And I'm not going to suggest it's easy. I don't
Speaker 10: mean to be overly good. I have three kids myself, sixteen, thirteen,
Speaker 10: and ten. So there are other ways to communicate.
Speaker 5: Is the thing.
Speaker 10: You can text, you can face time. There is so
Speaker 10: many other ways that kids can connect online. It doesn't
Speaker 10: have to be social media.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I'm gonna have to leave it there
Speaker 1: for time. Thank you, doctor Gene Twangy for talking to me,
Speaker 1: author of I jen Why today's super connected kids are
Speaker 1: growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy, and completely
Speaker 1: unprepared for adulthood. It's a problem even in my house.
Speaker 1: My kid wants, you know, he wants to sign up
Speaker 1: for a discord. He wants he wants me to change
Speaker 1: his Google account to be thirteen and up so that
Speaker 1: he can access certain things that he can't get with
Speaker 1: his account that he's with his real age. So I
Speaker 1: don't know what to say as a parent. It's really
Speaker 1: really tricky. And I understand if you're listening and you're saying, Rich,
Speaker 1: these are really really tough things to stand firm on,
Speaker 1: But I get it. My name is Rich Dmiro. You're
Speaker 1: listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: My name is Rich Damiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel
Speaker 1: five in Los Angeles. Taking your calls at triple eight
Speaker 1: Rich one one. That's one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two, four to one zero one. You can find
Speaker 1: me on social media at rich on Tech. You can
Speaker 1: even email me rich on Tech. Dot tv is the website.
Speaker 1: Got a dm on Instagram and this is Alejandra says.
Speaker 1: Do you know how do you know if some apps
Speaker 1: are listening to your conversations? How do you disconnect them?
Speaker 1: It's a good question. Now, I know this gets into
Speaker 1: some sort of conspiracy theory kind of things, but it's
Speaker 1: a valid argument. It's a valid question of you know, well,
Speaker 1: number one, what qualifies as an app spying on you?
Speaker 1: Are you just thinking about audio and video or are
Speaker 1: you thinking about location as well? So I would consider
Speaker 1: all three of these things. Also, your camera, could it
Speaker 1: be monitoring that? Your microphone could it be monitoring that.
Speaker 1: Now this all comes to sort of the forefront when
Speaker 1: remember how a lot of people and I guess people
Speaker 1: still say this, but they say that Facebook is listening
Speaker 1: to them because the ads on there. You see an
Speaker 1: ad on Instagram, and it's uncanny. It's like something that
Speaker 1: you just talked about with your friend and you said,
Speaker 1: they must be listening to me because I'm seeing an
Speaker 1: ad for the dog food that my friend was telling
Speaker 1: me about, or the mattress or the sneakers or anything.
Speaker 1: And everyone's had it happen to them, myself included. And
Speaker 1: I come from the background of there's just no way
Speaker 1: that Facebook is listening to our microphones, to millions and
Speaker 1: millions of people, billions of people and scanning for keywords
Speaker 1: and then matching up those keywords. But it is uncanny,
Speaker 1: and it is quite remarkable how many times this happens,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking even if you go to a friend's
Speaker 1: house for dinner or something and something that you mentioned
Speaker 1: in your conversation with them shows up on your Instagram feed,
Speaker 1: and it just happens. It's happened to everyone now. The
Speaker 1: way Facebook and Instagram explain it is that their systems
Speaker 1: are so smart and so high tech that they understand
Speaker 1: that if someone recently bought something on one website and
Speaker 1: now your phone is in the vicinity of that person,
Speaker 1: they figure, well, they might have talked about it, and
Speaker 1: they serve up that. I don't know, it sounds like
Speaker 1: that would be pretty complicated in its own right, but
Speaker 1: that's sort of their explanation. Don't forget they're tracking you
Speaker 1: on pretty much every website you go to, whether it's
Speaker 1: on your phone, whether it's on the web. And here's
Speaker 1: what I would say. I would recommend checking your permissions.
Speaker 1: So I don't think that these apps are spying on
Speaker 1: you in the way that you may think traditional spying happens,
Speaker 1: but they are collecting a fair amount of information. So
Speaker 1: if you go on the iPhone into your settings and
Speaker 1: this is just something you want to look at, let's
Speaker 1: just choose an app so you can go to your
Speaker 1: settings and just on your main page, scroll all the
Speaker 1: way down and you can look at something like Instagram.
Speaker 1: So let's just do this right now, here is Instagram
Speaker 1: on my phone. Okay, I got to get my abcdefgh am.
Speaker 1: I the only person that has to spell out the
Speaker 1: alphabet every time I want to see where a letter falls. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now I tap Instagram and it says allow Instagram
Speaker 1: to access. You've got location, you've got contacts, you've got photos,
Speaker 1: you've got microphone, you've got camera, Syrian search, background, cellular data,
Speaker 1: and notifications. So location is a big one, and there
Speaker 1: is a reason why it wants access to all of
Speaker 1: this information. Location is so that if you want to
Speaker 1: tag the restaurant you're at, when you go to tag it,
Speaker 1: it shows the closest things to you, the closest restaurants,
Speaker 1: the closest points of interest, and you can easily select
Speaker 1: one and tag your photo with that. So there's a
Speaker 1: reason why they want that. Now, there are some settings
Speaker 1: here where if you dive into that, you can allow
Speaker 1: location access. Never ask me next time while using the
Speaker 1: app or precise Location. Now, I would turn off precise
Speaker 1: Location because I don't think Instagram needs to know your
Speaker 1: precise location. Now they can understand your general location. If
Speaker 1: you want to tag stuff, that's fine. Next up contacts.
Speaker 1: Contacts helps you helps them figure out who they should
Speaker 1: suggest to you. So if they look at your contacts
Speaker 1: and they sync them up on the back end, they
Speaker 1: can suggest someone in your feed that you're friends with
Speaker 1: that's in your address book, or someone you work with,
Speaker 1: or someone that you've exchanged contact info with. And next
Speaker 1: thing know now their network grows photos. Pretty self explanatory.
Speaker 1: They want to scan your photos to help you upload stuff.
Speaker 1: Microphone and camera. Now, if you're not taking pictures inside Instagram,
Speaker 1: you may not need access to camera. And if you're
Speaker 1: not doing Instagram stories with audio and video, you may
Speaker 1: not need the microphone. And so you can turn those
Speaker 1: off safely until you need them again. Now, when you
Speaker 1: swipe over for stories, it may ask you, hey, we
Speaker 1: need access to this, and you can't do anything until
Speaker 1: you give that access again. So the other thing is
Speaker 1: that when you're on the iPhone or on Android, in
Speaker 1: the upper right hand corner of the iPhone, it will
Speaker 1: have a little light when when something's accessing your camera. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's actually moved to the center Now, when something's accessing
Speaker 1: your camera, you'll see a little dot towards the center
Speaker 1: middle top part of your phone. And so that little
Speaker 1: microphone or that little light means that a camera is
Speaker 1: accessing or some app is accessing your camera. If you see,
Speaker 1: I believe it's an orange light. That is when something's
Speaker 1: accessing your microphone and similar on the Android devices they
Speaker 1: do that as well. So if you open up your
Speaker 1: camera in the upper right hand corner there it is
Speaker 1: in the upper right hand corner, it'll have a little
Speaker 1: green dot that means that an app is actively using
Speaker 1: your camera. And you can just test this out, just
Speaker 1: open up your camera app. So the concern and the
Speaker 1: reason why they did this, I think is because people
Speaker 1: were saying, you know, Instagram's accessing my camera and my
Speaker 1: microphone without me knowing. Well, theoretically, if they were, you
Speaker 1: would see that light light up. So if you ever
Speaker 1: see that light light up when you're not using the app,
Speaker 1: that you think, then you have a problem. But that's
Speaker 1: kind of my general you know, quick lesson in are
Speaker 1: your apps spying on you? I don't think they are,
Speaker 1: but they are collecting a lot of data and they
Speaker 1: do know a lot and they mix it, by the way,
Speaker 1: with other forms of data. So just keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: The less permission is the better. That's my advice. Billy
Speaker 1: is in fuller tin. Billy, you're on with rich what's happening?
Speaker 6: Why?
Speaker 1: Hi?
Speaker 6: I have a Lenovo laptop and I just got a
Speaker 6: T Mobile five G Internet while I was Internet for home.
Speaker 1: Oh great, how's that working?
Speaker 6: Well? My phone and my wife's Lenovo laptop is connecting
Speaker 6: to it. But my personal laptop, Lenovo also is not connecting.
Speaker 6: It's not even on the list of the Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 6: And I worked with a T Mobile technician. We did everything.
Speaker 6: He changed the frequency to a lower frequency and all that.
Speaker 6: My computer is up to date. But there's a seven
Speaker 6: year old Lenovo with Windows and ten.
Speaker 1: Okay. So you worked this out with a T Mobile
Speaker 1: tech and you think I'm able to figure it out.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It seems like no.
Speaker 6: He suggested I call Lenoby Oh okay.
Speaker 1: So okay, So you're calling Rich on tech. So your
Speaker 1: wife's laptop is newer. I'm guessing.
Speaker 6: Yes, it is newer. She got it from work late
Speaker 6: after I got mine from you know, Costco. Mine is
Speaker 6: seven years old.
Speaker 1: HER's is seven years old. So I think this is
Speaker 1: a problem of the spectrum that it's using. That whether
Speaker 1: it's two, there's a term there's either five gigahertz wi
Speaker 1: Fi or two point four gigaherts, and I think what's
Speaker 1: happening is that this hot spot is putting out the
Speaker 1: five gigaherts, not to be confused with five g. Five
Speaker 1: G is how it's getting its cellular signal. But it's
Speaker 1: putting out this five gigaherts signal by default, where you
Speaker 1: ab to change the signal from the router to be
Speaker 1: also two point four because that's usually in the setting.
Speaker 6: Yeah, tam Obile Tech did that. He changes to two
Speaker 6: point four. We assigned a new name, and it still
Speaker 6: doesn't appear on the list on my laptop. So I'm
Speaker 6: guessing it's gonna be my old laptop time to get one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so, because here's the thing. There's another
Speaker 1: there's another part of this two point four which is
Speaker 1: the band that it works on, and it's usually like
Speaker 1: B or G or something like that. And so I
Speaker 1: think that this new hotspot is just not putting out
Speaker 1: the signal that would be compatible with your laptop anymore.
Speaker 1: And that's you know, if you try to switch it
Speaker 1: to the two point four and it's just not working,
Speaker 1: it's not picking it up, it's it's probably not gonna work.
Speaker 1: You could get an adapter. Have you thought about it.
Speaker 6: It thing is, I've been using a Spectrum wireless router
Speaker 6: and I have two options. I have five G and
Speaker 6: two point four and either one works on my laptop.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, that's interesting.
Speaker 6: Really interesting. I've been using that. That's what I'm using
Speaker 6: right now. For some reason, it doesn't like T Mobiles.
Speaker 1: Well, that's definitely frustrating. And I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people are getting these new five G kind of home
Speaker 1: wireless internet connections from either Verizon or T Mobile. Typically
Speaker 1: it works, but it is a mystery though, the fact
Speaker 1: that it's not working on your laptop. It just sounds
Speaker 1: like I mean, I would think that the five gigahertz,
Speaker 1: if it's working from Spectrum, your laptop has that capability.
Speaker 1: It seems like that would work. But since it's not,
Speaker 1: that is a mystery. I don't know. It could be
Speaker 1: time for an upgrade for the laptop. I hate to
Speaker 1: recommend an upgrade, but you know, if you figured it
Speaker 1: out with the tech from T Mobile, and you also
Speaker 1: you know, called me, but I would, I would try
Speaker 1: to figure it out. Maybe just give the Lenovo folks
Speaker 1: a call with tech support, see what they say. They
Speaker 1: may know something that I don't, but that is definitely frustrating.
Speaker 1: And of course if you have this as your home Internet,
Speaker 1: you want it to work, that's for sure. So good question.
Speaker 1: We're getting a lot of Wi Fi questions. Apparently a
Speaker 1: lot of people have trouble with their WiFi. It's one
Speaker 1: of those things where I was testing a gadget one time,
Speaker 1: like this plug, and it just I could not get
Speaker 1: it to connect to my Wi Fi. For anything I did,
Speaker 1: it just would not work. And I tried so many
Speaker 1: different things, but sometimes it just happens, all right. Coming
Speaker 1: up in the show, I'm going to talk about the
Speaker 1: Google Drive shortcut you need to know about. I learned
Speaker 1: about this this week. It's fantastic. I'll tell you why
Speaker 1: people are mad about Twitter all over again. And plus
Speaker 1: we'll talk TVs later in the show, specific recommendations on
Speaker 1: what to get. You're listening to Rich on Tech, give
Speaker 1: me a call at Triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is rich DeMuro,
Speaker 1: taking your calls, answering your questions and also talking about
Speaker 1: the tech stuff that happened throughout the week, things that
Speaker 1: are interesting, things of notes and stuff you can use
Speaker 1: like this. So I basically use Google Drive every day
Speaker 1: of my life. It's just a necessity. And it's one
Speaker 1: of these things where when I want to do a
Speaker 1: new document, it takes me a bit to figure it out.
Speaker 1: You know, you got to go to the bookmark of
Speaker 1: Google Drive. You gotta say, I mean, it's like a
Speaker 1: ten step process, right. You gotta click new, and you
Speaker 1: gotta click Google Docs and you gotta decide do you
Speaker 1: want a document, do you want to template? It just
Speaker 1: takes a couple of seconds. So I knew about this,
Speaker 1: but I had forgotten about it because this is nothing new.
Speaker 1: But once you commit it to memory, it'll be a
Speaker 1: whole lot easier. So if you go to a web
Speaker 1: browser and use Google Docs, if you just type doc
Speaker 1: dot new, it will give you a brand new Google Doc.
Speaker 1: It is like magic. And so when I figured this
Speaker 1: out the other day, I was in the newsroom, I
Speaker 1: went around and screamed to everyone, do you use Google Drive,
Speaker 1: Do use Google Docs? You need to know about this.
Speaker 1: Do you know about it, and I heard the oohs
Speaker 1: and ohs coming from the various folks in my newsroom
Speaker 1: because it's just one of those things that saves you
Speaker 1: time and time. You know, saving time is fun. Other
Speaker 1: things you can do. By the way, you have to
Speaker 1: be signed into your Google Drive for this to work.
Speaker 1: If you're not, it will attempt to open up the
Speaker 1: new file, but it will have to ask you to
Speaker 1: sign in first. So if you get the sign in
Speaker 1: page that means that you're not signed into Google. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you'd be signed out. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think I ever signed out unless I have to.
Speaker 1: But you can also create a new Google slides presentation
Speaker 1: if you type slide dot new, slide dot new. You
Speaker 1: can do a new spreadsheet if you type sheet dot new,
Speaker 1: S H E E T dot new, a new Google
Speaker 1: form if you type form dot new, f O, R
Speaker 1: M dot new, a new Google site site dot new.
Speaker 1: And one of the other ones I might use is
Speaker 1: a new calendar event cal dot new, and so if
Speaker 1: you type that in you can get a new calendar event.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that one's that handy, because if
Speaker 1: you're in Google Calendar, you can tap create. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's only two cli to get an event, so it's
Speaker 1: not that big deal, a big of a deal, or
Speaker 1: you can just tap somewhere in your calendar and start
Speaker 1: a new event. But to me, the doc dot new
Speaker 1: is pretty big. There's a whole list of shortcuts. Google
Speaker 1: actually bought I guess that new dot new domain, and
Speaker 1: that's how they're doing this. So let's go to Google
Speaker 1: slash shortcuts and there's a whole list of shortcuts that
Speaker 1: they've got. But you know, those are the those are
Speaker 1: the important ones. I think that the doc dot new
Speaker 1: is just so handy. Write that down because you never
Speaker 1: know when you need it, and thank me for it. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess, don't thank me. I didn't do it. People
Speaker 1: are up in arms about Twitter once again, all over again.
Speaker 1: So when Elon Musk bought Twitter, people went nuts over it,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's a lot of discussions about people
Speaker 1: whether they're going to stay on Twitter, whether they ditch Twitter.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's a couple of changes, things settled down,
Speaker 1: and now people are back up in arms because they
Speaker 1: have changed the feed on Twitter. So when you open
Speaker 1: up the Twitter app now it defaults to what's called
Speaker 1: a for you feed. Twitter did not invent the for
Speaker 1: you feed. They are just doing what every other social
Speaker 1: media company at this point is doing, which is the
Speaker 1: for you. Let me explain. TikTok sort of started this.
Speaker 1: You know, you had Okay, you had Facebook back in
Speaker 1: the day. Then you had Instagram and Twitter, and all
Speaker 1: of these websites operated pretty much the same way. You
Speaker 1: followed people, and if someone posted something, you would see
Speaker 1: what they post in your timeline in the order that
Speaker 1: people posted it, mostly your friends. Well, then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, they weren't getting the engagement they wanted, because
Speaker 1: who's to say that when someone posts something it's interesting.
Speaker 1: So now they started to reorder your feed and prioritize
Speaker 1: things based on what they think you might like to
Speaker 1: see first. So if it's one of your friends, you
Speaker 1: know that just had a new kid, you would see
Speaker 1: that at the top of your feed because that's probably
Speaker 1: the most important thing in your feed. This is called
Speaker 1: an algorithmically you know, an algorithmically ordered feed. And they
Speaker 1: started doing that, but it was still your friends. Then
Speaker 1: you had TikTok come along, and TikTok said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we don't really care who you're following, We're just gonna
Speaker 1: show you a whole bunch of stuff that you might like.
Speaker 1: And they called it your for you page, and it
Speaker 1: worked really well. It still works really well. You watch
Speaker 1: one video on TikTok about a certain topic, and next
Speaker 1: thing you know, you're gonna see a whole lot of
Speaker 1: videos about that topic. It's just how their algorithm works.
Speaker 1: And they're gonna start it sprinkling in other things and
Speaker 1: see what you react to, what you like, what you
Speaker 1: linger on, what you click, what you interact with, who
Speaker 1: you follow and so TikTok and why people can go
Speaker 1: viral on TikTok and why people find it so addicting
Speaker 1: is that TikTok doesn't care who you follow. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: use that as one signal, but TikTok really just wants
Speaker 1: to show you stuff that it thinks you will interact with.
Speaker 1: And now the other websites have seen this Instagram, Facebook
Speaker 1: and they're saying, Okay, we're going to kind of do
Speaker 1: the same thing because it seems to be working for TikTok,
Speaker 1: and people engage with this stuff because if you like
Speaker 1: pictures of you know, cats, and you know, cute cats
Speaker 1: in funny poses, you know, like you know, like those
Speaker 1: what of those Angetti's like pictures, you know, like the
Speaker 1: kids that were like in like different you know, flowers
Speaker 1: and stuff. Remember those? You know, maybe you like cats
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't know, just in silly kind
Speaker 1: of situations. And so next thing, you know, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to show you this cat picture that's really
Speaker 1: silly because so many people across the world have loved it,
Speaker 1: So if you like this, you're gonna love it too.
Speaker 1: And then they get that interaction and things go viral
Speaker 1: and the creators like it and everyone is happy except
Speaker 1: for the folks on Twitter right now, because Twitter has
Speaker 1: always been this world of you follow people for a
Speaker 1: reason and you want to see what they post. Well,
Speaker 1: now you see a whole bunch of stuff in your
Speaker 1: for you feed and that's the default. And so some
Speaker 1: people may argue that it's better in a way because
Speaker 1: now you're exposed to different thoughts, ideas, people, things, accounts
Speaker 1: you may want to follow. You can always go back
Speaker 1: to the regular following by swiping. But the problem is
Speaker 1: it always goes back to the for you when you
Speaker 1: reopen the app, so it doesn't stick to the following
Speaker 1: and there's no way to set a default where hey,
Speaker 1: I only want to see stuff from people that I follow,
Speaker 1: And so sure you can manually swipe every time you
Speaker 1: get into Twitter, but who wants to do that. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of work. So that's why people are up
Speaker 1: in arms. People are saying, once again, I'm leaving Twitter.
Speaker 1: I noticed that all the people that say they're going
Speaker 1: to leave Twitter, they're back. I mean, I haven't really
Speaker 1: noticed a substantial change in my feed, Like I haven't
Speaker 1: noticed oh yeah, that person I used to love is gone.
Speaker 1: I've noticed that the followers seem to be up, and
Speaker 1: the interaction seems to be up, and I seem to
Speaker 1: be having more fun on Twitter. I don't know. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if all the changes have been as
Speaker 1: horrible as people have made them out to be, but
Speaker 1: it seems to be an evolving place. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: if you use Twitter or any of these services, that's
Speaker 1: what's going on all right. Coming up in the show,
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of things to talk about this
Speaker 1: new social engineering trend. It's a scam. It's got kind
Speaker 1: of a yucky name, but you definitely need to know
Speaker 1: about that. You need to know why you should not
Speaker 1: be paying to use chat GPT, at least not right now.
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk TVs later in the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Rich Dmiro. You are listening to Rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. We'll be back after this. Welcome to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. My name is Rich DeMuro. This is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about technology and answer your questions.
Speaker 1: A lot of stuff this week about scams. I'm always
Speaker 1: interested in the latest scams and I'm always posting about
Speaker 1: them on my social media at rich on Tech if
Speaker 1: you want to follow me. By the way, I'm the
Speaker 1: tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. And
Speaker 1: this is a new show. This is a tech show
Speaker 1: that has been reinvented, reborn, kind of changed up. A
Speaker 1: lot of things have stayed the same, but you know,
Speaker 1: we're switching things up a little bit. So if you
Speaker 1: feel like it's a little different, that's for a reason.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's a new show. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to try to pack it with information and news you
Speaker 1: can use. Obviously, i'll take your calls, but the main
Speaker 1: thing here is to just when you're listening, you feel
Speaker 1: like you are smart about technology. That's the takeaway that's
Speaker 1: what I want the goal to be. Every single week,
Speaker 1: I want you to feel like I've listened to Rich
Speaker 1: And yeah, Rich doesn't have all the answers. I don't
Speaker 1: know everything there is to know about technology, but I'm learning,
Speaker 1: You're learning, and hopefully we all learned so that we can,
Speaker 1: you know, we can be in charge of our gadgets.
Speaker 1: We can you know, not get scammed. We can you know,
Speaker 1: spend our money in places that make sense. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of the goal of the show, and I will
Speaker 1: continue to evolve the show to make that happen. It's
Speaker 1: a work in progress and it's it's new. This is
Speaker 1: only episode number two, so it will get it will
Speaker 1: change and evolve and breathe and live just like you
Speaker 1: know it should. This is an interesting new social engineering scam.
Speaker 1: It's got this weird name. It's called pig butchering. I mean,
Speaker 1: that does not sound fun. Definitely don't want that to
Speaker 1: happen to you. But the analogy is apparently with fattening
Speaker 1: up a pig than butchering it for all it's worth.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's not very appealing, I guess. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing, and you know, anyone can be scammed. This
Speaker 1: is not you know, scamming is not like an old
Speaker 1: person thing. It's not like a dumb person thing. It
Speaker 1: can happen to anyone. And because we have so many
Speaker 1: tools in our world now that make it easier than
Speaker 1: ever to hand over your heart acquired hash and it
Speaker 1: can go to anyone, anywhere quickly. That makes scams even
Speaker 1: more interesting to scam artists because it's not just like oh,
Speaker 1: stealing twenty bucks from someone that you see in person,
Speaker 1: or getting a check from someone or their credit card.
Speaker 1: Now it is like Venmo, gift cards, PayPal. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many ways that people can scam people, and
Speaker 1: it's a worldwide thing, not just local. And so that's
Speaker 1: why you hear so much about scams because it just
Speaker 1: you know, if you get one percent or even a
Speaker 1: half a percent of people to fall form, it could
Speaker 1: be a lot on a big level. So here's how
Speaker 1: this new pig butchering works. It begins with sort of
Speaker 1: a cold call or a text. Right, So you may
Speaker 1: get a text that just says, hey, it was good
Speaker 1: to catch up last week, and you say, what what
Speaker 1: do you mean good to get I don't know this person,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? And so in an act
Speaker 1: of common courtesy, you tell either the caller or the
Speaker 1: texter that you know, sorry, I think you got the
Speaker 1: wrong number, and next thing you know, they strike up
Speaker 1: a conversation with you and it sounds, you know, oh
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Oh gosh, I you know, I must have
Speaker 1: the wrong number, and they start talking with you. And
Speaker 1: what they're really doing is they're trying to establish a
Speaker 1: relationship with you. And the closer and deeper they can
Speaker 1: get this relationship, the more they might be able to
Speaker 1: scam you. Now you may be thinking, oh, come on, rich,
Speaker 1: who's going to fall for this? People do, and not
Speaker 1: everyone is as savvy as you may think. And a
Speaker 1: lot of people, especially people that come from kind of
Speaker 1: an older school mentality of courtesy, and you know, let
Speaker 1: me write this person back to say, you know, sorry,
Speaker 1: of the wrong number whatever, They could be targeted by this.
Speaker 1: And so once the scammer gets the person in a
Speaker 1: place where they think they are fattened up, you know,
Speaker 1: that relationship is established, that's what they go in for
Speaker 1: the kill. And that's when they try to get, you know,
Speaker 1: them to sign up for some sort of app, maybe
Speaker 1: some sort of financial platform that may try to scam
Speaker 1: this person out of their money. And so once they
Speaker 1: get this going on, next thing, you know it's over.
Speaker 1: You know, they get this person hook line and sinker,
Speaker 1: they get them to fall for this, and you know
Speaker 1: they trusted this person because they built this relationship with them. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it'd be tough for me
Speaker 1: to fall for something like this, but I will tell
Speaker 1: you that I have texted folks and said, hey, it's
Speaker 1: rich with KTLA, everything good, blah blah blah, and I
Speaker 1: sit there and I think about it. Oh wait a second.
Speaker 1: I just gave this person my name. I just gave
Speaker 1: them where I work. And if I had the wrong number,
Speaker 1: if I was off by a digit, if this person,
Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form, wanted to take advantage
Speaker 1: of me, they probably could because they can say, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're up for lunch next week, where do you want
Speaker 1: to meet? And you know it's not even the right
Speaker 1: person because they now know your name and who you are.
Speaker 1: So you just have to think about this stuff. Just
Speaker 1: be very careful because there are people out there that
Speaker 1: are actively looking to take advantage. I got an email
Speaker 1: from Chase this week, and they sent a whole email
Speaker 1: about learn how to spot a scam, and a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff might be commonplace, but they went through.
Speaker 1: I thought it was actually a pretty good email coming
Speaker 1: from a big bank saying, you know, look, scammers pretend
Speaker 1: to be someone they're not. They trick you into providing
Speaker 1: information again, access to your account. Here are some of
Speaker 1: the scams that are going around, and you want to
Speaker 1: keep your account safe from these. So number one online shopping.
Speaker 1: They set up a fake online store and they ask
Speaker 1: you to pay in ways other than a debitter credit card.
Speaker 1: So obviously the whole point of that is, you know
Speaker 1: they don't want you to pay with debitter credit because
Speaker 1: you get some some you know you're safe from some
Speaker 1: of the scams out there. If you use a debit
Speaker 1: or credit card, it puts a little buffer between you
Speaker 1: and this bad person. But if you pay by a
Speaker 1: check or cashier's check or transfer the money instantly, then
Speaker 1: you know they've got that and you're not getting it
Speaker 1: back or Venmo or any of these other ways. Pay yourself.
Speaker 1: A person pretending to be an employee ask you to
Speaker 1: transfer money to yourself to resolve a fraudulent activity. I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, don't fall for that. One grandparent someone impersonating
Speaker 1: a loved one and a crisis, claims their car broke
Speaker 1: down or they lost their wallet. They need money right away.
Speaker 1: Tech support. Oh my gosh, I've seen this one so
Speaker 1: many times. I can't believe it. But yeah, people get
Speaker 1: these messages on their computer screen. It says, hey, it's
Speaker 1: a tech support here. We noticed there's a problem with
Speaker 1: your computer. Call this number and we'll fix it. And
Speaker 1: people fall for this every single day. I've talked to
Speaker 1: very smart people, I've interviewed them, and they fall for it,
Speaker 1: because again, it's social engineering, appealing to, you know, our
Speaker 1: good side. It's appealing to our good nature. It's appealing
Speaker 1: to just like, oh, I got to solve this problem.
Speaker 1: I got all my stuff on my computer. I can't
Speaker 1: stand to lose it. Here. Let me call this number
Speaker 1: to Windows Support and figure it out. Utility shut off
Speaker 1: A person may pose as a utility employee saying your
Speaker 1: service is going to be stopped unless you pay them immediately.
Speaker 1: You might think who's going to fall for this? But
Speaker 1: I was at dinner a couple of weeks ago and
Speaker 1: my friend told me that his family members fell for this,
Speaker 1: and uh, in fact, it involved some of his money
Speaker 1: as well. So this happens and not everyone you know,
Speaker 1: for me, you know, in sitting around this table, we
Speaker 1: were all talking about how we would figure this out,
Speaker 1: be like, well, wouldn't you log into your account, wouldn't
Speaker 1: you see if you owe any money? Wouldn't you get
Speaker 1: a big red letter in the mail like five or
Speaker 1: ten times saying like you owe this money before you
Speaker 1: resolve this. But the way these scam artists got this
Speaker 1: person is that they they really preyed upon the immediacy
Speaker 1: of this and this person had something going on they
Speaker 1: didn't want to you know, story in the holidays, they
Speaker 1: had people over, they didn't want their power to go out,
Speaker 1: and so they paid, and of course it was a
Speaker 1: big scam. Following tips, Oh, romance, that's another one. Scammer
Speaker 1: creates a fake profile. I mean, I'm sure I'm not
Speaker 1: on the dating apps, but I'm sure this is must
Speaker 1: be a huge concern on these dating apps when you
Speaker 1: try to text people back and forth, and of course
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of scammers on there. You got
Speaker 1: to be careful there because you know, once you get
Speaker 1: love involved, that's a whole other level of scamminess. All right,
Speaker 1: How to protect yourself, guard your personal information. Don't give
Speaker 1: it out. I don't give information out to anyone. You
Speaker 1: gotta be very careful about who you give your information out.
Speaker 1: Don't act immediately. These scammers often they're preying upon our
Speaker 1: time and sort of the immediacy of the solution. Don't
Speaker 1: act immediately. Use a lot of caution when you're sending money.
Speaker 1: I talked about this earlier in the show. But you
Speaker 1: can send money so fast using things like zell, Venmo
Speaker 1: or PayPal. Just be very very careful and make sure
Speaker 1: you know who the recipient is. Once that money goes,
Speaker 1: it's not coming back, I'll be honest. It's just it's
Speaker 1: a one way street with these apps. You're never getting
Speaker 1: your money back if you paid out to someone that
Speaker 1: you shouldn't, and also if you have to credit or
Speaker 1: debit cards. They do give you a little bit of
Speaker 1: protection in these circumstances, and I guess that's why Chase
Speaker 1: is sending it out. Similarly, Chat GPT, you've probably heard
Speaker 1: about this. Everyone's talking about this amazing new website. Do
Speaker 1: not pay to use Chat GPT right now. There is
Speaker 1: no paid chat GPT as of right now. There's a
Speaker 1: bunch of apps. If you search in the app store.
Speaker 1: Chat GPT. This is this new search engine that's supposed
Speaker 1: to take on Google. It's amazing artificial intelligence. It's free.
Speaker 1: If you want to use it, just go to the
Speaker 1: website chat dot OpenAI dot com and that is the
Speaker 1: way you can use it for free. Again chat dot
Speaker 1: OpenAI dot com. Yes, in the future they may have
Speaker 1: a paid service, they may have a paid app, but
Speaker 1: that's not happening right now. So if you're looking for
Speaker 1: an app on the App Store or Google Play for
Speaker 1: chat GPT, do not pay for them, do not download them.
Speaker 1: Just go to the website on your web browser chat
Speaker 1: dot OpenAI dot com. And by the way, if you
Speaker 1: have not used chat GPT, you got to try it out.
Speaker 1: It is quite phenomenal. It's in beta, it's a test,
Speaker 1: but this is going to give Google a run for
Speaker 1: its money. In fact, Google's entire business in every business.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really quite phenomenal. What you can ask
Speaker 1: this thing. One app was charging eight bucks a week
Speaker 1: to use it. And by the way, these apps are
Speaker 1: totally free. You don't need to use you don't need
Speaker 1: to pay for an app. There's not even an official app.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess there is right now, but again
Speaker 1: it's it's free to use. So chat GPT is free.
Speaker 1: How many times I have to say that? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Coming up, we're gonna talk TV. I'm very excited for
Speaker 1: my guests. He is the senior editor at Digital Trends.
Speaker 1: He's going to talk about the best team for Super
Speaker 1: Bowl Sunday, which is coming up. We're also going to
Speaker 1: talk about the tracker that I've been using in my wallet.
Speaker 1: It's really really cool. You can give me a call
Speaker 1: triple eight Rich one oh one one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two, four to one zero one. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech,
Speaker 1: the show where I talk about the tech stuff I
Speaker 1: think you should know about and answer your questions. My
Speaker 1: name is Rich DeMuro. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA
Speaker 1: Channel five in Los Angeles, hanging out with you today,
Speaker 1: taking your calls, and just talking about the stuff that
Speaker 1: has happened throughout the week. This show is all about,
Speaker 1: you know, useful tech information, and that's really my goal
Speaker 1: is to make this super super useful, So not just
Speaker 1: the stuff I talk about, but also the calls that
Speaker 1: we take.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I want you to learn. I want you to have
Speaker 1: a takeaway from each and every one of these. Will
Speaker 1: is in New York, New York. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Will Hey, thank you for taking the call, and I'm
Speaker 5: enjoying the show today. So, but I want to ask
Speaker 5: I have I've had a Gmail account for almost twenty
Speaker 5: years now, and this past year, maybe six months ago,
Speaker 5: they told me I was at my like my limit
Speaker 5: of the amount of volume I'd used. I don't even
Speaker 5: know the my gigabytes. I guess yeah, and but both
Speaker 5: with the Gmail and also I guess Google Photos. So
Speaker 5: it wants me to start paying two dollars a month
Speaker 5: or twenty dollars and two dollars a month. And I've had,
Speaker 5: you know, my my credit debit card on file with them,
Speaker 5: and then my my card number change, so interrupted it
Speaker 5: just the convenience of this doesn't feel great. And also
Speaker 5: I'm wondering if that's the best value for me to do,
Speaker 5: and also if I want to stay married to Google,
Speaker 5: you know, going forward. I mean, it's really handy and
Speaker 5: I don't want to lose this Gmail account, But I
Speaker 5: guess I'm putting it all out there for advice. You
Speaker 5: know what, what do you think is the best way
Speaker 5: to go both there's a fight, you pay or to
Speaker 5: another service? What do you think?
Speaker 1: Okay, so I I number one. When when Gmail first
Speaker 1: came out, they had this little kind of number one.
Speaker 1: It gave you, like I think it was a gigabyte
Speaker 1: of storage, and it was just like, whoa what a gigabyte?
Speaker 1: Because back in the day, hotmail was like ten megabytes
Speaker 1: or one. It was a tiny amount, right, And so
Speaker 1: Gmail came along and blew everyone out of the water.
Speaker 1: Everyone signed up. It was amazing, It worked really well,
Speaker 1: and it was also supposed to increase as it went along,
Speaker 1: like they had this little ticker on the homepage that
Speaker 1: showed that your storage was always increasing, like every second
Speaker 1: of every day. And then, of course Google became a
Speaker 1: wildly successful company. So many people signed up and they realized,
Speaker 1: oh wait, we actually have to pay for the storage
Speaker 1: that we're giving to people for free. And so now
Speaker 1: things have changed a lot. Google Photos, like you said,
Speaker 1: is also linked and it's the same thing. Google Photos
Speaker 1: started out completely free, and then they started to kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, turn the ratchet a little bit on people
Speaker 1: and say, uh, you know, you got to pay so
Speaker 1: I'm in the same boat I am. I've got Gmail,
Speaker 1: I've got Google Photos. I'm up to paying I think,
Speaker 1: like I think it's twenty five bucks a month because
Speaker 1: I've got such a lot of storage in there and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to pair down. So here's what I recommend.
Speaker 1: Number one. I think I think you stick with it.
Speaker 1: You can continue to pay the two dollars a month.
Speaker 1: I would obviously, I would probably pay the twenty dollars
Speaker 1: a year just to save the you know, the twenty
Speaker 1: percent or whatever they give you discount. But what I
Speaker 1: think you should do is see if you can get under.
Speaker 1: What they do is they give you a fifteen gigabyte
Speaker 1: limit for free, so you can see if maybe you
Speaker 1: can get over that, get under that fifteen gigabyte limit.
Speaker 1: And there's a couple ways of doing that. Number one
Speaker 1: go to a website called one dot Google dot com.
Speaker 1: And inside this website they have an area called clean
Speaker 1: up Storage. And so not only is that website let
Speaker 1: you see what's taking up your storage, but you can
Speaker 1: also use it to sort of clean up your storage.
Speaker 1: And so if you look at that website, it will
Speaker 1: show you the items that you have in trash or spam,
Speaker 1: and so I'm looking, I've got two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: nine megabytes of emails and trash. I've got forty megabytes
Speaker 1: and spam. I've got nine hundred megabytes almost a gigabyte
Speaker 1: of files and trash in my Google Drive. Then it
Speaker 1: shows me my large items, so it says I can
Speaker 1: gain up to two hundred and eighty gigabytes by freeing
Speaker 1: up all this stuff. So I've got emails with large attachments,
Speaker 1: I've got large files, large videos and files or sorry,
Speaker 1: large photos and videos, and I can review those. And
Speaker 1: then you also have this thing called unsupported items, So
Speaker 1: inside your Google Photos you may have unsupported items that
Speaker 1: you can review and clean up. So that's the place
Speaker 1: to start. Have you looked at any of that stuff?
Speaker 7: I haven't.
Speaker 5: I haven't been. It seemed to daunting because I just
Speaker 5: feel like I don't want to have to going to
Speaker 5: all these documents and decide, and I'd rather My thought
Speaker 5: was always just it would be there if I needed it,
Speaker 5: right right, you and.
Speaker 1: I agree with that, But here's the thing. There are
Speaker 1: some like I went through the other day on my
Speaker 1: just on a Saturday morning, and this is just the
Speaker 1: fun for me is I'll just sit there on my
Speaker 1: couch and I'll go through. And I looked at the
Speaker 1: files that were over one gigabyte in my Google Drive,
Speaker 1: and I just went through and I was like, do
Speaker 1: I need this? Okay, I can get rid of that.
Speaker 1: And so just by going you know, if you if
Speaker 1: you clean up, you know, five of those, that's five gigabytes.
Speaker 1: And for me, I'm taking a lot of video, so
Speaker 1: there's going to be a lot of those kind of
Speaker 1: files in there. The other thing you can do is
Speaker 1: that if you go to Google Photos on your phone,
Speaker 1: and Google is, by the way, added all of these
Speaker 1: tools in the last like year, because or year or two,
Speaker 1: because you know, people are getting much more savvy about this,
Speaker 1: because they're when when you're forced into paying or when
Speaker 1: you have to start paying, you're a little bit more critical.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh wait a second, let me see do
Speaker 1: I really have all this stuff in there? Do I
Speaker 1: need it? So if you go into your Google Photos
Speaker 1: and then you tap your profile picture in the upper
Speaker 1: right hand corner, then you tap managed storage, it'll give
Speaker 1: you a whole bunch of tools you can use where
Speaker 1: you can review and delete large photos and videos, videos
Speaker 1: from other apps, screenshots, which right now I've got two
Speaker 1: gigabytes of those, and then blurry photos. And the other
Speaker 1: thing that I do is I'm pretty brutal about going
Speaker 1: in my Gmail and I will search using the search
Speaker 1: bar in Gmail for anything that has a large attachment.
Speaker 1: And so you can just tap in there, say has attachment,
Speaker 1: and then put a size limit on there of like
Speaker 1: you know, over ten megabytes and go through and see
Speaker 1: or just over twenty five megabytes and see what you
Speaker 1: can get rid of that way. So there are many
Speaker 1: options for clearing this stuff out. But I agree we're
Speaker 1: all in this area of you know, once you're on
Speaker 1: that payment train, it's tough to get off, all right.
Speaker 1: Coming up next, we're going to talk TVs with a
Speaker 1: special guest, the best TVs for Super Bowl coming up.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Rich on Tech, the show where we
Speaker 1: talk about tech stuff and answer your questions and have
Speaker 1: on fantastic guests like this guy. Caleb Dennison is the
Speaker 1: editor at large for Digital Trends and he is a
Speaker 1: TV expert, and we're going to talk about TVs for
Speaker 1: Super Bowl because it's coming up. Caleb, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Great to be here.
Speaker 1: Hey, good to see us ces. Did you have a
Speaker 1: good time there?
Speaker 3: I did have a good time. It was much busier
Speaker 3: than the year prior, so a lot more activity. Good
Speaker 3: to see some folks that I haven't seen a long time.
Speaker 3: But the TV exhibitions were especially good this year.
Speaker 1: I felt okay. Super Bowls coming up February twelveth, this
Speaker 1: is kind of the time when people I don't know
Speaker 1: they do people still upgrade for the Super Bowl. I
Speaker 1: think they do because I get a lot of questions
Speaker 1: around this time.
Speaker 3: I get a lot of questions around this time as well.
Speaker 3: I think the Super Bowl is an occasion to get
Speaker 3: geared up and a lot of folks want to get
Speaker 3: a fancy new TV so they can see this huge
Speaker 3: game in the best possible way.
Speaker 1: Which is still not broadcast in four K? Is it?
Speaker 2: It is not?
Speaker 3: Unfortunately four K broadcasts are getting a little bit more common,
Speaker 3: but the getting the Super Bowl broadcast in four K
Speaker 3: is a pretty monumental challenge and they're still working up
Speaker 3: to that.
Speaker 1: Okay. I mean, it's it's kind of odd how long
Speaker 1: it's taken. You think that that would be kind of
Speaker 1: a event that they'd want to get on four K
Speaker 1: like immediately. But anyway, Okay, so I'm scrolling through on
Speaker 1: you know, best buy dot com and I'm looking at
Speaker 1: all these different terminologies. Okay, l ED, Mini l A,
Speaker 1: D O LEAD, Q LEAD or q l ED. What
Speaker 1: do you make of these? Like? What what do we
Speaker 1: need to know about these terms?
Speaker 3: Sure? Well, there's really only two prominent display technology types
Speaker 3: out there. You've got the OLED, which we call in
Speaker 3: emissive display. This is an organic compound that makes its
Speaker 3: own light at the pixel level. And then you've got
Speaker 3: basically LED LCD TV. You know, we've seen changes to
Speaker 3: how the back light works, but at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, you still have an LCD panel with lights
Speaker 3: shining behind it, and that's how you get the picture
Speaker 3: from that. The thing is the evolution of that back light.
Speaker 3: The stuff that makes the light has gotten better and
Speaker 3: better over the years. So when we start hearing terms
Speaker 3: like mini LED, they're just using much tinier little LED
Speaker 3: light and more of them, which gives you a brighter
Speaker 3: picture and a little bit more control over which part
Speaker 3: of the picture is bright and which part is dart
Speaker 3: so you get better contrast out of the mini LED
Speaker 3: TV with the o ED TVs. Again, each pixel is
Speaker 3: making its own light, so when you turn it off,
Speaker 3: it's completely off, which means you get perfect black levels.
Speaker 3: Very good colors come out of that as well.
Speaker 1: Now, what about the reflection, because that was a consideration
Speaker 1: in the past, like if you got a certain TV
Speaker 1: and you had a bright room. Do all TVs look
Speaker 1: okay in different rooms nowadays? Or we still have that
Speaker 1: issue with the reflection.
Speaker 3: Well, the O LED TVs that we were talking about
Speaker 3: tend to prefer having glossy screens, right, because they look
Speaker 3: best when they have a glossy screen, and so sometimes
Speaker 3: you get more reflection off of those. If you've got
Speaker 3: a lot of bright lights in the room, or if
Speaker 3: you've got sun coming in the windows, you're going to
Speaker 3: see a little bit more reflection when there are darker
Speaker 3: moments on the screen. Then you would a higher end
Speaker 3: LED TV because they tend to put anti reflective or
Speaker 3: anti glare coatings on those TVs so you get a
Speaker 3: little bit less of that glare. That tends to be
Speaker 3: a problem mostly when you got a lot of lights
Speaker 3: in the room and you're trying to watch something dark.
Speaker 3: When you're watching something like the super Bowl, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of bright colors and brightness happening on the screen,
Speaker 3: and you're less likely to run into a reflection problem
Speaker 3: with something like that. It's mostly when you're watching movies
Speaker 3: and there's lots of dark scenes, and that I think
Speaker 3: brings us to an important point. When people buy TVs
Speaker 3: for the Super Bowl, they're thinking about the Super Bowl, right,
Speaker 3: and how good it's going to look for the sports,
Speaker 3: But think about the other things you use your TV for.
Speaker 3: You like to watch a lot of movies. You know,
Speaker 3: in the time when the super Bowl is not on,
Speaker 3: you might want to get a TV that's going to
Speaker 3: look great for movies as well, and anti glared coating
Speaker 3: can really help when you're watching during the day.
Speaker 1: We're talking to Caleb Dennison. He is the editor at
Speaker 1: large for Digital Trends on social media at Caleb Underscore. Dennison, so,
Speaker 1: what about this idea of four K versus eight K?
Speaker 1: Do we need to get the eight K TV just yet?
Speaker 3: I am telling most folks know you do not. Eight
Speaker 3: K is something that seemed like a nat full progression
Speaker 3: from four K, and now that there's a lot of
Speaker 3: four K content that we can watch, we can kind
Speaker 3: of get rid of this conversation about how, oh, there's
Speaker 3: no content to watch in four K, why would I
Speaker 3: want a four K TV? Well, these days almost all
Speaker 3: TVs are are four K, and everything's.
Speaker 1: In four K. I mean Netflix is in four K.
Speaker 1: I mean all the movies, everything that's streaming is pretty
Speaker 1: much in four K at this point if you're paying
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 3: By the way, yeah, exactly. If you play pay for
Speaker 3: the premium tier of many different streaming services and even
Speaker 3: cable channels, some of them are available in four K
Speaker 3: from time to time. So there's lots of four K content.
Speaker 2: If you're getting.
Speaker 3: Anything over, say at thirty seven inch TV, it's probably
Speaker 3: going to be four K anyway, you don't really need
Speaker 3: to think about it. But if you're looking at a
Speaker 3: very premium TV, a lot of those TVs are our
Speaker 3: eight K resolution. For a while there, manufacturers put their
Speaker 3: best stuff into eight K TVs, and so it's less
Speaker 3: of a question about whether you really needed that eight
Speaker 3: K resolution in that AK panel and more a question
Speaker 3: of did you want to get the best you could
Speaker 3: possibly buy. We're seeing manufacturers back down from that now.
Speaker 3: There were not that many aktvs at the big Cees
Speaker 3: Electronics show that you and I were just at and
Speaker 3: I think that is that's basically saying the brands have
Speaker 3: got it. They're like message receives you guys aren't interested
Speaker 3: in AK, so we're going to quit trying to shove
Speaker 3: it down your throat so much. I would not worry
Speaker 3: about getting an AKTV right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's that's fair, So let's talk about I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the most popular is going to be your
Speaker 1: budget pick. What's your budget TV pick?
Speaker 3: There's a couple. They're both made by TCL. TCL has
Speaker 3: really done an outstanding job providing really great picture quality
Speaker 3: for a very attainable price. So whether you're looking at
Speaker 3: the TCL five series or you want to spend a
Speaker 3: little bit more and get the TCL six series, both
Speaker 3: of those are outstanding options that are very affordable no
Speaker 3: matter which screen size you get.
Speaker 1: And what if you wanted a little step up, like
Speaker 1: what do you have like a middle ground pick? Like
Speaker 1: if I don't necessarily want budget but I don't want
Speaker 1: to spend the most, you have something in the middle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd like the Samsung Q seventy. The Q seventy
Speaker 3: is kind of this sweet spot for Samsung where it's
Speaker 3: not outrageously expensive, but boy does it pack a punch.
Speaker 3: It's got great HDR performance and good color. That's a
Speaker 3: really solid pick. And you know, I mentioned the TCL
Speaker 3: six series earlier, that one kind of treads into the
Speaker 3: mid tier territory. So if you're buying a larger screen size,
Speaker 3: it's definitely in the mid tier. But it has a
Speaker 3: really great performance as well. So those are both good
Speaker 3: good options to look at.
Speaker 1: What about a premium set, Like, I want the best
Speaker 1: of the best, What am I getting if I want
Speaker 1: the absolute top of the line.
Speaker 3: I mean, for me, the best TV of two was
Speaker 3: the Sony A ninety five K. That's a quantum dot
Speaker 3: o lip so they took Olt technology, they threw quantum
Speaker 3: dots on it for even brighter, more well saturated colors,
Speaker 3: and that TV is just spectacular. The only bummer about
Speaker 3: the Sony A ninety five K is that only goes
Speaker 3: up to sixty five inches right now. So if you
Speaker 3: want the best sixty five inch TV, you can get
Speaker 3: the Sony A ninety five K is the one. If
Speaker 3: you want a larger screen size but equally premium performance,
Speaker 3: I'd be looking at the lg C two that guy
Speaker 3: goes all the way up to eighty three inches. I
Speaker 3: believe it is, and that is just an outstanding television
Speaker 3: all the way around.
Speaker 1: And do you get the smarts built in? I mean
Speaker 1: most of these TVs have their own sort of operating
Speaker 1: system built in. I like to attach, you know, an
Speaker 1: external like Apple TV or whatever, but it seems like
Speaker 1: people just want something built in. Huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: These days, just about every TV has some kind of
Speaker 3: smarts built in, whether that's Roku or Google TV. LG
Speaker 3: has its own brand, and Samsung's got it so a
Speaker 3: brand as well. But like all the apps that you
Speaker 3: need to watch any number of different streaming services, it's
Speaker 3: all built in right now. So you don't have to
Speaker 3: get something like an Apple TV. But if you just
Speaker 3: love that Apple TV experience, absolutely go ahead and get it.
Speaker 3: Throw it in one of the HDMI ports and you're
Speaker 3: good to go.
Speaker 1: All right, Caleb, thanks so much for joining me today
Speaker 1: on the show. I appreciate it. Episode number two My pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Rich, I've been an.
Speaker 1: Honor Caleb Dennison. Go follow him at Digital Trends. You
Speaker 1: can follow him online. He is the TV expert. So
Speaker 1: if you're looking for a new TV. Just look at
Speaker 1: some of his reviews. He just gave us some great,
Speaker 1: great options for Super Bowl. I know I'm looking to
Speaker 1: upgrade myself. Maybe I was just being a little selfish
Speaker 1: in that interview because I'm just curious for myself. You're
Speaker 1: listening to rich on Tech. Coming up, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: about the new wall tracker I've been using and it
Speaker 1: works pretty well. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Bruce is in the San
Speaker 1: Gabriel Valley. Bruce, you're on with rich what's up?
Speaker 9: First off, I wanted to congratulate you on your new show,
Speaker 9: Rich Well, thank you. I'm a longtime listener of your podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh thanks.
Speaker 9: Between you and Dave Ramsey, I walked off about fifty
Speaker 9: two pounds over the last year.
Speaker 1: I love it. Very nice. One of my favorites too.
Speaker 9: Give you my situation here. I'm a senior citizen and
Speaker 9: I'm in a retiredment club for my former company. I
Speaker 9: have been for the last couple of years the Zoom
Speaker 9: administrator for our monthly meetings. Now that we're able to
Speaker 9: go back in person, I've been tasked with setting up
Speaker 9: and equipping hybrid meetings. So I need to know where
Speaker 9: to learn basically production technology and what you recommend for
Speaker 9: either equipment or where to check out equipment. I'm local
Speaker 9: southern California, same as you.
Speaker 1: And are you trying to set up like sort of
Speaker 1: a little studio where people can pop in and do
Speaker 1: zooms or what.
Speaker 9: No, it's going to be a large meeting hall. We've
Speaker 9: got the hall already with no equipment available. It's seating
Speaker 9: for about two hundred and then plus our online zoom
Speaker 9: people who want to come back in who are either
Speaker 9: too far away or not able to come on any
Speaker 9: particular day.
Speaker 1: Oh got it. So you need like almost like you're
Speaker 1: live streaming and event kind of thing.
Speaker 9: Exactly. The closest thing that I've I've been looking a
Speaker 9: lot online. The closest I can see is a church meeting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 9: Both, yeah, live stream and in person.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So you need like microphones for the speakers
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Huh.
Speaker 9: Absolutely, I need to be fifty years younger and go
Speaker 9: back and take broadcast technology.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, look, you're gonna there's there's a couple
Speaker 1: of ways you can do this. I mean there's there's
Speaker 1: like full software where you can just use only software
Speaker 1: to accomplish this, and there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: you know, sort of off the shelf software that will
Speaker 1: help you accomplish this with web cameras and you know,
Speaker 1: wireless microphones. But I think the best way to do
Speaker 1: this is realistically with a couple of cameras and I
Speaker 1: think a mixer as well, because you're going to want
Speaker 1: to feed all of this audio and video into one
Speaker 1: place that you can then send out to Zoom. So
Speaker 1: there's a couple of ways to accomplish this if you
Speaker 1: want to do it with maybe just you know, software
Speaker 1: based experience. There's something from Logitech that I really like
Speaker 1: called Mevo M e v O and M e v
Speaker 1: o dot com. That's Mevo M e v o dot com.
Speaker 1: And this started out as one camera. Now they have
Speaker 1: multiple cameras that you can kind of link up together
Speaker 1: and you know, you can place some in different areas
Speaker 1: of the room, so you got like three different cameras,
Speaker 1: maybe one wide, one close up, one side whatever. And
Speaker 1: then the beauty is the app they have, So the
Speaker 1: app kind of brings it all together and you can
Speaker 1: live stream to different things, so you can live stream
Speaker 1: to like you know, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter. But the
Speaker 1: other thing you want to do is you can use
Speaker 1: this as a webcam, and Zoom is one of these
Speaker 1: supported platforms. So that is sort of a more of
Speaker 1: a software based solution that you can use, which I
Speaker 1: think would work really well. But if you want to
Speaker 1: get into more of a hardware solution, which I think
Speaker 1: might be better in this situation, you know, you might
Speaker 1: have to look at just some cameras and a computer
Speaker 1: and then also a mixer with microphones, because if you're
Speaker 1: talking about a big room for two hundred people that
Speaker 1: are sitting there, you probably want some microphones because these
Speaker 1: cameras are not going to be super close up to
Speaker 1: the person. They're not going to be right in front
Speaker 1: of them like it would on a computer. So in
Speaker 1: that case, I would just get a mixer. I mean,
Speaker 1: Road makes some of the best mixer out there, especially
Speaker 1: for these, you know, these kind of solutions. So you
Speaker 1: get that, you get a couple of microphones, maybe lav
Speaker 1: mics that people can put on. You connect those to
Speaker 1: the mixture, and then you put that out and they
Speaker 1: have a USB out on that mixture to your computer
Speaker 1: that you're going to be bringing all this stuff in
Speaker 1: on so you've got the cameras coming in and you've
Speaker 1: got the mixed audio coming in as well, and then
Speaker 1: it goes on to Zoom. So it's it's going to
Speaker 1: take some work, it's going to take some set up,
Speaker 1: it's going to take some you know, trial and error.
Speaker 1: But you know, and also you'll evolve this as you
Speaker 1: go along. So the stuff that you use day one,
Speaker 1: you know, you may not use that day thirty. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's some there's some more dedicated hardware solutions
Speaker 1: out there too, Like if you go to Zoom's website
Speaker 1: or just type in Zoom hardware. You know, Zoom has
Speaker 1: like a whole area of recommended cameras and so they've
Speaker 1: got different appliances for zooming. And this is really expand
Speaker 1: did over the last couple of years because of the
Speaker 1: whole work from home kind of stuff. But if you
Speaker 1: go to Zoom, their website is actually zoom dot us,
Speaker 1: Zoom dot us slash hardware, you've got all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: So I think that's probably your best place to start
Speaker 1: is just look there for some of the different things
Speaker 1: that they recommend, and they even have it for room
Speaker 1: types they've got a huddle room which is two to
Speaker 1: seven people, a conference room which is seven to nineteen people,
Speaker 1: and a hybrid classroom which is fifteen to twenty five.
Speaker 1: So because you're even larger than that fifteen to twenty five,
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to look into into a more kind
Speaker 1: of studio solution where you're kind of rolling your own solution,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned, with a combination of software and hardware.
Speaker 1: But the good news is you're in Los Angeles. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of production people here, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stores you can go into, like physical stores like
Speaker 1: Sammy's Camera. You know that's a local place that has
Speaker 1: a lot of kind of this stuff there and just
Speaker 1: talk to people and see what they recommend, what of
Speaker 1: a people used, what have other people done, and you
Speaker 1: know that would be my start. So great question Zoom.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I had to do a zoom yesterday and
Speaker 1: I used to have a good zoom setup in my
Speaker 1: home when I was doing remotes for TV during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and it was nicely set up. It was never perfectly
Speaker 1: set up, Like the lighting was never as good as
Speaker 1: I wanted, camera was never as good as I wanted.
Speaker 1: But it worked, And yesterday I had to do a
Speaker 1: zoom with someone and it's just my camera looked horrible.
Speaker 1: My lighting was bad. I mean, unless you have a
Speaker 1: good setup, sometimes these zoom calls you just it's like
Speaker 1: I'd rather just be in person sometimes because they're just
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta have a good setup. You gotta
Speaker 1: have one of those ring lights and all that good stuff. So, uh,
Speaker 1: great question. Thanks for that. All right, let me quickly
Speaker 1: tell you about this card finder. I've been using Chipolo
Speaker 1: card Spot. This is an air tag, but for your wallet.
Speaker 1: It's made by a company called Chipolo c h I
Speaker 1: p O l O. It's called the card Spot and
Speaker 1: it looks like a credit card, but it uses the
Speaker 1: Apple find My network to locate your wallet. So this
Speaker 1: slips into your wallet like a credit card. It costs
Speaker 1: about thirty five dollars and you can use the find
Speaker 1: My app on your iPhone to find where this is.
Speaker 1: So it's using all the other Apple devices in the
Speaker 1: world to locate your wallet, just like an air tag.
Speaker 1: But an air tag is too thick to put in
Speaker 1: your wallet. Now, how did they get this to fit
Speaker 1: in your wallet? Well, the battery is not user replaceable,
Speaker 1: so you pay thirty five dollars for this. It lasts
Speaker 1: about two years. It will help you see where your
Speaker 1: wallet is on a map. You can play a sound
Speaker 1: so you can hear where your wallet is. You can
Speaker 1: see the last known location. I'll send you alert if
Speaker 1: you leave your wallet behind. But when the two years
Speaker 1: is up, you can then just send this back in.
Speaker 1: They will recycle it, replace the battery, and they'll send
Speaker 1: you a new one for seventeen bucks. So Topolo card
Speaker 1: Spot highly recommend checking it out. If you want the
Speaker 1: power of an air tag in your wallet, that's going
Speaker 1: to do it for this episode of the show. If
Speaker 1: you want to submit a question for me to answer,
Speaker 1: you can go to my website Richontech dot tv and
Speaker 1: hit the email icon. You can find me on social media.
Speaker 1: I am at rich on Tech. If you want to
Speaker 1: see my TV segments, you can find me on YouTube
Speaker 1: KTLA channel or you can download the ktla plus app.
Speaker 1: Next week, I'm going to share my favorite apps for journaling. Yes,
Speaker 1: my goal is to journal in the new year. I
Speaker 1: think there's so many benefits to journaling, so I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what I found there. Once again, my name is
Speaker 1: rich Dmiro. Thanks so much for listening, especially to episode
Speaker 1: number two. We're building this thing up. There are so
Speaker 1: many ways you can spend your time. I really do
Speaker 1: appreciate you spending it right here with me. I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you real soon