Speaker 1: The best charging cables for your iPhone or Android. Apple
Speaker 1: has speedy new processors, laptops and in iMac. The Beatles
Speaker 1: have a new song thanks to AI plus. Your tech
Speaker 1: questions answered. What's going on on rich Demiro and this
Speaker 1: is Rich on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast
Speaker 1: to coast. 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 about technology.
Speaker 1: I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun.
Speaker 1: Phone lines are now open at triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one eight eight eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: Email is also open. Just go to richon tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: Once you get to the website, hit the link that
Speaker 1: says contact, put your message in there and it will
Speaker 1: make its way right to my screen. Got some great
Speaker 1: guests this week. We're going to talk to Larissa May,
Speaker 1: digital wellness activist and founder of Half the Story. This
Speaker 1: is a nonprofit focused on educating, advocating, and mitigating the
Speaker 1: harms associated with social media and tech new use, especially
Speaker 1: in teens. So I'm very excited to talk to Larissa.
Speaker 1: Plus we've got a guest that is going to tell
Speaker 1: their story about how they got scammed trying to sell
Speaker 1: something online. This happens a lot, and I think the
Speaker 1: more we know about how these scam artists operate, the
Speaker 1: better we can protect ourselves. Let's see what else. Ah,
Speaker 1: it is November? Can you believe it? I can't November?
Speaker 1: I mean, where did this year go? Now? Depending on
Speaker 1: your standpoint, maybe it went fast, maybe it went slow.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're clinging on to it. Maybe you can't wait
Speaker 1: for the holidays. I don't know. But for me, we
Speaker 1: celebrated Halloween and I was looking at the you know,
Speaker 1: I look at my I've got all my photos in
Speaker 1: Google Photos, and so I get these little memories up
Speaker 1: at the top, and I'm not sure if they're actually
Speaker 1: healthy for me or actually detrimental, because sometimes I get
Speaker 1: really sad. I've got two kids, and they have grown
Speaker 1: up very fast, according to Google Photos. Like I look
Speaker 1: at these pictures that they show me, like the other
Speaker 1: day for Halloween, and it's of my kids first Halloween
Speaker 1: twelve years ago. Where did that time go? And then
Speaker 1: it clicks through and it keeps showing you the pictures.
Speaker 1: And I think in the future we're gonna have better
Speaker 1: ways of displaying our digital pictures. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you have a good way of doing it. I've got
Speaker 1: a couple of like digital frames and different things, but
Speaker 1: ideally I think that i'd have multiple frames around the house,
Speaker 1: all showing my Google Photos collection the best shots. But
Speaker 1: the problem is all these tech companies love to silo
Speaker 1: their products these days, and so because I've got Fire
Speaker 1: TV on my main TV, my Google Photos don't play
Speaker 1: nice there. I've got Apple TV in the playroom and
Speaker 1: Google Photos doesn't play nice there. I've got an Aura
Speaker 1: frame in the front room. Google Photos doesn't play nice there.
Speaker 1: But I do have a Google Nest and Google Photos
Speaker 1: does play nice there. Where's my bell? Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so I do think over the years, hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll figure out a way of sorting through all these pictures.
Speaker 1: Google's doing a decent kind of a decent job of it,
Speaker 1: but it's not the best anyway. I tell you this
Speaker 1: because I noticed as I was flipping through my photos
Speaker 1: up at the top the memories on Google Photos, that
Speaker 1: I can't believe how much better pictures have gotten over
Speaker 1: the years, especially Halloween pictures, because typically we take these
Speaker 1: at night, and night photos are very challenging for cameras,
Speaker 1: especially smartphones with those tiny lenses, tiny sensors. But over
Speaker 1: the years I've noticed they just keep getting better. Like
Speaker 1: the first pictures of my kid on Halloween twelve years ago,
Speaker 1: we're pretty blurry unless your kid is sitting exactly still.
Speaker 1: It's really tough to get that picture of a child
Speaker 1: or anyone in the dark. And now, as I was
Speaker 1: flipping through, I noticed, Wow, they're getting better and better.
Speaker 1: And then this year I was looking at our latest
Speaker 1: picture we took kind of like a group shot with
Speaker 1: all of our friends, and it looked really good. But
Speaker 1: I did do a little trick. I brought this little
Speaker 1: light with me. It's not a flashlight. It's almost like
Speaker 1: one of those like, ah, gosh, it looks like a
Speaker 1: pen light, but the entire side of it is a
Speaker 1: big bright light, almost as if it's a one of
Speaker 1: those light bulbs you would hang up like in the garage,
Speaker 1: like a long light bulb, like a tubular light, but
Speaker 1: on a little stick. I don't know where I got it,
Speaker 1: picked it up at like a trade show, and so
Speaker 1: I put the camera towards us and then I held
Speaker 1: this light as well, and I'm not kidding. The pictures
Speaker 1: came out really good. So my point is, yes, you
Speaker 1: can use a flash for your pictures, but it never
Speaker 1: looks very good. It looks like a flash on the picture.
Speaker 1: This looked really good. It was like our little trick.
Speaker 1: We were all joking about how good it looked. Okay,
Speaker 1: what else flights? I know that everyone's trying to book
Speaker 1: travel for the holidays, or you might be trying to
Speaker 1: go somewhere. Everyone's always asking me, Rich how do you
Speaker 1: book your travel? I will tell you. I use one
Speaker 1: website to book my travel, and I'm on there like
Speaker 1: eight hours a day. I don't even know how I
Speaker 1: get work done because I'm literally always on Google Flights.
Speaker 1: So the website that I use is flights dot Google
Speaker 1: dot com, and I always start my searches there. And
Speaker 1: what I do is I put in where I'm going,
Speaker 1: I put in my dates, and then I press done
Speaker 1: and I press explore and or search, you know, depending
Speaker 1: on your dates. So if I'm putting in you know,
Speaker 1: where I'm going, let's say back to New York City,
Speaker 1: I would put that in and then you press search
Speaker 1: and then once you do this, Now, there are two
Speaker 1: types of people out there when it comes to travel.
Speaker 1: The first is they just want the absolute cheapest flights
Speaker 1: for the place that they're going to on the dates
Speaker 1: they're going, and that's fine. Google Flights is really good
Speaker 1: at finding that. Then there's a second person like me,
Speaker 1: who is very particular. I want a certain amount of stops,
Speaker 1: which is usually none. I want the one carry on bag.
Speaker 1: I don't want to pay the basic economy, and I
Speaker 1: also want specific times. And so what I do is
Speaker 1: I go through and I put all of those filters on,
Speaker 1: and then again I take a fresh look at these prices,
Speaker 1: and then once I get the flights I want, I
Speaker 1: select them and I track the prices and then I
Speaker 1: wait for Google to tell me about a price drop.
Speaker 1: So at any given time, I've got three or four
Speaker 1: flights that I'm tracking to different places I want to go,
Speaker 1: and I'm waiting for that price drop. And as soon
Speaker 1: as I get that notification on my phone, hey, this
Speaker 1: this flight went down twenty nine percent, I will then
Speaker 1: book the other website that I really like, and it
Speaker 1: might cost you a little bit, but it's really really good.
Speaker 1: It's called point dot me, po nt dot me, point me,
Speaker 1: and I think they might give you a little bit
Speaker 1: of something for free. But if you put in my code,
Speaker 1: which still seems to work, it's called rich on tech.
Speaker 1: If you type that in there, you get like a
Speaker 1: month for a buck, and it's well well worth it
Speaker 1: because this searches for all of your points, so you
Speaker 1: can link if you have any credit card points or
Speaker 1: airline points, miles whatever. It will find you the best
Speaker 1: flights using your points. And they do a really good
Speaker 1: job because they search everything all at once. There's no
Speaker 1: way you could do this on your own. And I
Speaker 1: found a great flight for my mom a couple months
Speaker 1: ago on Jet Blue. Might have been a year ago
Speaker 1: at this point, but it was so impressive because I
Speaker 1: was like, wait, what, that's a really good price. And
Speaker 1: sure enough, sometimes there's just really good point deals out there,
Speaker 1: and so point dot me is a really good place
Speaker 1: to find those.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: What else? We talked about the Rivian on TV yesterday,
Speaker 1: and I will tell you this is an all electric suv.
Speaker 1: I drove it for about a week. I promised you
Speaker 1: I was gonna tell you all about it. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you this I love this car. It is a
Speaker 1: great suv. It's a three to row suv. It's got
Speaker 1: a great design. It stands out from all the Tesla
Speaker 1: Why's that are on the road. It's got lots of
Speaker 1: great features. It chirps like a bird when you lock
Speaker 1: it or unlock it, which is pretty fun. And maybe
Speaker 1: it's just when you lock it one of the other.
Speaker 1: It's got a Bluetooth speaker in the center console that
Speaker 1: you can pull out, so it's always charged. It's got
Speaker 1: a flashlight in the door, which is cool. You can
Speaker 1: pull that out. That's always charged. The maps are great,
Speaker 1: the screens are great, no lag on the software whatsoever.
Speaker 1: The driving is really nice, smooth, solid, not too stiff.
Speaker 1: It's got tons of space inside, lots of cargo space.
Speaker 1: It's got a air compressor in the back as well
Speaker 1: as a standard electrical outlet. But here, oh and it's
Speaker 1: by the way, ninety seven thousand dollars, so it is
Speaker 1: a lot of money for this car. But here is
Speaker 1: the problem that I found with it. I loved, loved,
Speaker 1: loved driving this Rivian RNs, this suv. The problem was
Speaker 1: when it came to charging. Now, I will tell you
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the problem was, but I could
Speaker 1: not get this thing fully charged. It was either taking
Speaker 1: too long or the charging was too slow. I tried
Speaker 1: various chargers and it just I was not having it.
Speaker 1: It was really like it gave me range anxiety. This
Speaker 1: thing gets about three hundred miles to the charge. They
Speaker 1: have a one that gets about four hundred as well.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you this my takeaway from my
Speaker 1: experience with the Rivian. I love all of these third
Speaker 1: party evs that are not Tesla, right. The problem is
Speaker 1: the charging infrastructure. I live in California, where we have
Speaker 1: the best charging in the nation, and it's still not
Speaker 1: good enough for all of these random evs. And that
Speaker 1: is why all of these companies are adopting the Tesla
Speaker 1: superchargers next year. In the next year, BMW four GM, Nissan, Volvo, Toyota, Rivian,
Speaker 1: they're all switching to Tesla superchargers. What does that mean? Well,
Speaker 1: charging is gonna get a whole lot better. But will
Speaker 1: the Tesla superchargers keep up with all of the extra demand.
Speaker 1: That is the big question we don't know. And for starters,
Speaker 1: all these companies are gonna put out some sort of
Speaker 1: adapter early next year. Or throughout next year, and then
Speaker 1: eventually with the twenty twenty five model years, it's just
Speaker 1: gonna be Tesla. Tesla's connector is going to be built
Speaker 1: into these cars, so it's gonna be a great But
Speaker 1: I will tell you the charging is the issue. If
Speaker 1: you have a charger at home, charger at work, and
Speaker 1: you're just commuting with any of these electric cars, no problem.
Speaker 1: It is the road trip that's a problem, specifically with
Speaker 1: this Rivian. This is an suv that is meant to
Speaker 1: be an adventurous suv. What do you want to do?
Speaker 1: You want to take it on the road, you want
Speaker 1: to take it to national parks, you want to drive
Speaker 1: it off roading, whatever you do in this thing, that
Speaker 1: was the problem. I had no problem finding chargers. They
Speaker 1: just didn't perform as fast as I wanted. And that
Speaker 1: is the biggest downside I see to any car that
Speaker 1: you're getting that is an EV that is not a
Speaker 1: Tesla right now, you will have to deal with charging.
Speaker 1: If you're charging on the road, If you're just driving
Speaker 1: a work no problem anyway. Lots of comments on my
Speaker 1: Instagram at rich on Tech about the Rivian. You can
Speaker 1: peruse those at your leisure coming up. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: your calls at triple eight Rich one oh one. Plus,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you about the best charging cables for
Speaker 1: your iPhone and Android eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology. Phone lines are open at
Speaker 1: triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four to one zero one. Consumer
Speaker 1: Reports tested cables. You know everyone's buying these new USB
Speaker 1: C cables. So Consumer Reports tested seven charging cables ranging
Speaker 1: from four dollars and eighty eight cents to twenty nine
Speaker 1: dollars to see which ones lasted the longest. They tested
Speaker 1: USB C for Android and also for iPhones in two
Speaker 1: durability tests twisting and a ninety degree bending until the
Speaker 1: cable broke. So they actually did test lightning cables too.
Speaker 1: I guess people are still buying those. So the twenty
Speaker 1: nine dollars Apple Lightning cable and the six dollars and
Speaker 1: fifty five cent Amazon Basics USBC cable survived eleven thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred without breaking. They say that's equivalent to over
Speaker 1: six years of use. They tried other brands from Walmart
Speaker 1: and five below. Those bent US eight hundred times less
Speaker 1: than six months of use. So I guess cheap cables
Speaker 1: really you get your money's worth. You know, you get
Speaker 1: what you pay for. Let's see the let's see price, brand, name,
Speaker 1: and thickness were not reliable indicators of durability. The cheap
Speaker 1: Amazon Basics USBC cable dramatically outlasted price yer branded cables.
Speaker 1: So what do they recommend? The Apple Lightning cable, the
Speaker 1: official one for the iPhones, and the Amazon Basics USBC
Speaker 1: cable because of their outstanding durability. So there you have it.
Speaker 1: Look at that. You can get the six dollars and
Speaker 1: fifty five cent Amazon Basics USBC cable that'll work for
Speaker 1: the iPhone and Android now, and then if you want Apple,
Speaker 1: you probably still want to go with the standard Apple
Speaker 1: Lightning cable twenty nine bucks. By the way, you see
Speaker 1: why Apple didn't want to switch to USBC because the
Speaker 1: cables now six dollars and fifty five cents versus the
Speaker 1: twenty nine dollars they were getting for a quote unquote
Speaker 1: you know, premium cable. Let's go to John in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: John you're on with Rich.
Speaker 2: Hi, Rich, I have a problem with my email. I
Speaker 2: bought a dot com domain about twenty plus years ago,
Speaker 2: and somewhere along the line I set it up so
Speaker 2: that email going to that domain, any name, would get
Speaker 2: forwarded to my Gmail account. And then a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks ago it stopped working, and I couldn't really remember
Speaker 2: where I set that up. I checked the records. It
Speaker 2: said something with outlooks. I don't remember setting anything up
Speaker 2: with Outlook. So I did a search for a company
Speaker 2: that would, for a price, would catch all my email
Speaker 2: to that domain and forward it to my youmail. But
Speaker 2: all I find is email companies. I want to sell
Speaker 2: me whole email packages.
Speaker 1: Yep. So you just want to forward, You just want
Speaker 1: to forward from from that that domain, right, and it's
Speaker 1: just is it one email address or several?
Speaker 2: Well, I set it up as a catch all, okay,
Speaker 2: catch all the email because sometimes people would mispell my
Speaker 2: name and that would get bounced back.
Speaker 3: So that's why I.
Speaker 1: Set that up. Okay, Well, I'll tell you what I use,
Speaker 1: and there may be more out there, but I this
Speaker 1: one is the one that I've used for years and
Speaker 1: it works really well, and it's I think five bucks
Speaker 1: a year. Now, remember this does not include any sort
Speaker 1: of email storage or email box nothing. This is just
Speaker 1: like you said, straight up forwarding. And you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to check to see if they can do a catch
Speaker 1: all email box where you can just anything you write
Speaker 1: to that domain, it will forward it to your Gmail.
Speaker 1: But the one that I use is Hover dot com
Speaker 1: h o v e er and I pay I think
Speaker 1: it's five dollars a year and all they do is
Speaker 1: forward and so my hello at richontech dot tv, it's
Speaker 1: just a forwarded email. It goes right to my Gmail
Speaker 1: when someone emails that. So Hover Hoveer is the one
Speaker 1: that I use. And you will need to you know,
Speaker 1: obviously you have to know your domain information to get
Speaker 1: that forwarded over. So you'll go to Hover, you'll sign
Speaker 1: up for an account and then you'll put all your
Speaker 1: information in for your domain. You will have to verify
Speaker 1: that you own that domain, and once you do, you
Speaker 1: can set up just what's called an email forwarding. Now
Speaker 1: you can also set up an email inbox as well.
Speaker 1: That's more like twenty dollars a year, but you can
Speaker 1: just get email forwarding for five dollars a year and
Speaker 1: The question is, let's see mail sent to distinct role
Speaker 1: based addresses. Help at can forward to one central mailbox,
Speaker 1: so doesn't let you send emails from your domain, so
Speaker 1: you you know this is only for receiving. But I
Speaker 1: think that's the main thing is that you just have
Speaker 1: to check. It's been a while since I set this
Speaker 1: thing up, so I'm not sure if they do a
Speaker 1: catch all email, but if they do, that would be
Speaker 1: pretty easy. But that's what you want to look for.
Speaker 1: You just want to look for what's called email forwarding
Speaker 1: and not email hosting. So good question, John. Let me
Speaker 1: know if that works out. Richontech dot tv is my website.
Speaker 1: You can use the email form there to let me know.
Speaker 1: Coming up more of your questions at triple eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. I mentioned earlier that I
Speaker 1: am on social media on Instagram. You can find me
Speaker 1: at rich on tech on most of the major platforms.
Speaker 1: That's Instagram, that's Facebook, that's x also threads. I will
Speaker 1: tell you I've been using a little bit more of
Speaker 1: threads this week, So if you find me on there,
Speaker 1: I'm like I just said, I'm at rich on Tech,
Speaker 1: and I've been having kind of fun.
Speaker 2: You know what.
Speaker 1: The thing about Threads is right now, I haven't turned
Speaker 1: off my notification, so all my other social media I
Speaker 1: pretty much have notifications off Threads since it's so new,
Speaker 1: I still have them on. So when someone like ats
Speaker 1: me or writes something that's in interesting that Threads thinks
Speaker 1: should be a notification, I still get them. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of fun. Coming up, I'll tell you about the
Speaker 1: new Beatles song that's releasing. Well, it's already out thanks
Speaker 1: to AI. You are listening to rich on Tech. It's true,
Speaker 1: it's all because of you.
Speaker 4: And make get through song.
Speaker 1: Because welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Burou here
Speaker 1: hanging out talking technology with you at Triple eight Rich
Speaker 1: one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. The song you are listening to is
Speaker 1: a new song from the Beatles. Can you believe it?
Speaker 1: A new song from the Beatles in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: and it's all thanks to AI. How did that happen? Well,
Speaker 1: new technology? So this song is called Now and Then,
Speaker 1: and it features the voices of John Lennon, Paul McCartney,
Speaker 1: George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. And it all comes from
Speaker 1: an unfinished demo originally recorded by John Lennon in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, but they never had the technology to extract
Speaker 1: his voice from this really poor recording and create the
Speaker 1: song from it. They tried in the nineties and it
Speaker 1: didn't really work, like the technology was just not there.
Speaker 1: So they took another chance, I guess a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, two years ago, and they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: a year ago, and they said, let's try this again,
Speaker 1: and the AI was now good enough to clean up
Speaker 1: the vocals from John Lennon in the original demo, and
Speaker 1: then they created the rest of the song around it.
Speaker 1: So they recorded new chorus with the you know, it's
Speaker 1: just wild. The whole thing is just It gave me
Speaker 1: chills the first time I listened to this song, and
Speaker 1: it's there's also a little mini documentary online about it,
Speaker 1: you know, behind the scenes, how they made it, because
Speaker 1: it's just truly incredible that we were able to use
Speaker 1: AI to do this in the year twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. Now, what I think is really interesting
Speaker 1: too is that this same technology are very similar technologies
Speaker 1: built into the pixel phone. So I told you about
Speaker 1: the Pixel eight Pro has this new feature called Audio
Speaker 1: Magic Eraser, and that is essentially the technology that they
Speaker 1: used to clean up this demo, because the AI picks
Speaker 1: out the audio from the track from the demo and
Speaker 1: separates it from all the other stuff that's on there,
Speaker 1: all the hissing, all the popping, all the other background noise,
Speaker 1: and it does that same thing on the Pixel. So
Speaker 1: if you take a video of your kid saying their
Speaker 1: first words and the dog's barking in the background, or
Speaker 1: is a trash truck going by and you hear that,
Speaker 1: you can use Audio Magic Eraser to just hone in
Speaker 1: on what your kid is saying and get all rid
Speaker 1: of all the rest of the background stuff. So it's
Speaker 1: a pretty wild song. I highly recommend you listen to
Speaker 1: it. It might give you a chills like it did for me,
Speaker 1: because it's just so wild to think that this originally
Speaker 1: was recorded so many years ago and now, thanks to technology,
Speaker 1: it is an entire song. So again, the song is
Speaker 1: called Now and then I'll put a link to it
Speaker 1: in the show notes at richontech dot tv and you
Speaker 1: can listen to the whole thing. But wow, just incredible.
Speaker 1: Following up on the question, we got earlier about forwarding email.
Speaker 1: Michael says cloud flare will forward emails for free, so
Speaker 1: I would have to check that out. But cloud flare
Speaker 1: is a popular website that kind of does a lot
Speaker 1: of different functionality for different domains and stuff. But Michaels
Speaker 1: saying that it will forward your email for free, so
Speaker 1: that's interesting, that's new to me. Let's go to Chuck
Speaker 1: in Laguna, Nigel, Chuck, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 5: Hi.
Speaker 6: Do I need to turn my radio off if.
Speaker 1: We can hear you in the background? Yes, I would, Oh,
Speaker 1: but I don't really hear you, so I think it's fine.
Speaker 1: Well now I do we need some AI to clean
Speaker 1: up the background audio?
Speaker 6: And that's great. I've got a free as I've been
Speaker 6: for ten years. I got two hundred and fifty thousand miles.
Speaker 6: I love it, but getting old. So I wanted to
Speaker 6: get a hybrid plug in. What do you recommend for
Speaker 6: a hybrid plug in? It's not outrageously crazy expensive?
Speaker 1: Ooh, good question. You know, I haven't done a lot
Speaker 1: on the plug ins, but I think that they're a
Speaker 1: good stop gap between the full electric and the full
Speaker 1: you know, gas car. I mean a plug in basically
Speaker 1: works by having a battery and a small engine, and
Speaker 1: so you can plug it in get maybe fifty miles,
Speaker 1: you know, anywhere from like twenty to fifty miles on
Speaker 1: the battery, and then you can use the gas engine
Speaker 1: when that goes, and the gas engine I believe, recharges
Speaker 1: the battery just a little bit as well. There's a
Speaker 1: bunch of these things. I mean, if you've got the
Speaker 1: plug in hybrid, that's kind of like the original. I
Speaker 1: feel like that's like the original plug in hybrid vehicle.
Speaker 1: But I know a lot of people were talking about
Speaker 1: the Kias and the Hyundai's that have these. But I
Speaker 1: really think it comes down to personal preference. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you like? What do you want?
Speaker 1: Do you want a small car again? I mean, Prius
Speaker 1: has been around forever, That's going to be always a
Speaker 1: great choice. But just looking at some of these on
Speaker 1: a car and driver, there are a lot of these
Speaker 1: cars out there. I think personally, I think the Prius Prime, like,
Speaker 1: the Prius is looking really really good, like the new design.
Speaker 1: I never thought I would say that. I never thought
Speaker 1: i'd say a Prius looks really good. But but to me,
Speaker 1: the Prius looks really really good. And also the Rav
Speaker 1: four that they have a plug in hybrid as well,
Speaker 1: So I think those are gonna be something that, you know,
Speaker 1: you stick to, those you're gonna get you know, you
Speaker 1: stick to maybe the Hyundai, the Kia, and the Toyota,
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna get the most bang for your buck
Speaker 1: out of those brands. There are also some from Ford.
Speaker 1: I mean, but you can go high end BMW, but
Speaker 1: I think the Toyota or the the Kia and the
Speaker 1: Hundai are probably going to be your best bang for
Speaker 1: your buck. The range, let's see what the range is
Speaker 1: on the Prius. So the Prius, let's see if we
Speaker 1: can get back down there. Let's see, Prius Prime gets
Speaker 1: forty miles. So what I would say is if you
Speaker 1: have a place to charge you and you get to work,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. You know, most people's commutes are about
Speaker 1: thirty miles max. So I mean, I think the average
Speaker 1: commute in America, let's see, and I know there's some
Speaker 1: people that are, you know, more than that, but the
Speaker 1: average commute in the US, yeah, twenty six point six miles,
Speaker 1: so it's under thirty miles. Now that's a one way commute,
Speaker 1: so that means when you get to work, you'd have
Speaker 1: to charge up. And if you have a charger at work,
Speaker 1: that'd be great. That means your commute is entirely free.
Speaker 1: And that's the beauty of these cars is that, Like
Speaker 1: I was saying, if you're just charging at home and work,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be fine. But it's when you go on
Speaker 1: those road trips, and so if you have a plug
Speaker 1: in hybrid, it's gonna give you a little bit more
Speaker 1: peace of mind. When you're on that road trip, You're
Speaker 1: gonna be okay. No matter where you go, you can
Speaker 1: still get there because you've got the backing of that
Speaker 1: gas engine. But I don't know, I really like the Prius.
Speaker 1: I think the Prius Prime is a really good looking car.
Speaker 1: But again, it comes down to how much you want
Speaker 1: to spend. I mean, maybe you want something like, you know,
Speaker 1: a nicer BMW. I don't know, but it really comes
Speaker 1: down to what you want to spend. But I think
Speaker 1: for me personally, the plug in hybrid is kind of
Speaker 1: like a stopgap right now between a pure gas car
Speaker 1: and an electric car, which seems like the market is
Speaker 1: moving to. So good question, Chuck. I'm glad you were
Speaker 1: on the the cutting edge there many years ago. By
Speaker 1: getting that early. Well, if you have HBO Max and
Speaker 1: you've had it for a while, well they're taking some
Speaker 1: features away from you. And if you got the email,
Speaker 1: you already have the heads up. But if you're on
Speaker 1: this fifteen dollars and ninety nine cent a month HBO
Speaker 1: Legacy plan, HBO is removing some features from your plan.
Speaker 1: The feature they're removing four K video. So before if
Speaker 1: you got to watch a movie in four K, you
Speaker 1: will no longer be able to do that. You can
Speaker 1: now only watch them in HD. This starts on November
Speaker 1: or December fifth. So if you want to still watch
Speaker 1: in four K, guess what, you got to pay up
Speaker 1: four dollars more a month. So now you got to
Speaker 1: get onto their nineteen dollars and ninety nine cent a
Speaker 1: month plan four dollars more. So. When Warner Brothers bought this,
Speaker 1: you know this stay it's this whole big thing. I
Speaker 1: think HBO Max was started by AT and T when
Speaker 1: they bought it, or they owned HBO. Now it's owned
Speaker 1: by Warner Brothers Discovery. They switched it over to HBO
Speaker 1: Max about six months ago and they said nothing's gonna
Speaker 1: change for at least six months, and guess what. As
Speaker 1: soon as six months is up, they're like, okay, everything's changing.
Speaker 1: The other thing you're getting now is one less stream
Speaker 1: at the same time. So used to be able to
Speaker 1: watch on three streams at once. Now you can only
Speaker 1: watch on two, and you can download a certain amount
Speaker 1: of I think it's thirty items unless you upgrade and
Speaker 1: you get one hundred. So it's really confusing. But basically,
Speaker 1: if you are on the Hbo Legacy Plan, you'll still
Speaker 1: be able to watch all the stuff that you've been watching.
Speaker 1: You're still going to pay the same price. You just
Speaker 1: don't get the same quality. You don't get as many downloads,
Speaker 1: and you don't get as many simultaneous streams. The simultaneous
Speaker 1: streams thing is not that big of a deal unless
Speaker 1: you're sharing your plan with a bunch of people and
Speaker 1: they all happen to be streaming on a Friday night
Speaker 1: at the same time. You may notice the impact there.
Speaker 1: Four K is kind of annoying because we've gotten so
Speaker 1: used to these four K TVs and now I can't
Speaker 1: tell the difference. I'll be quite honest, it's tough to
Speaker 1: tell the difference between HD and four k But at
Speaker 1: the same time, if you do have a four K
Speaker 1: HDR set, you will no longer get that four K HDR, which,
Speaker 1: of course, you want to watch things in the best
Speaker 1: possible format, right, I mean, why would you want to
Speaker 1: watch something that's not in the best possible format. So anyway,
Speaker 1: just be on the lookout for that email from HBO Max.
Speaker 1: And the best part was the way they positioned it.
Speaker 1: They said, let me, let me get up, let me
Speaker 1: get the email here I put I put out my
Speaker 1: Instagram at rich on text. So if you want to
Speaker 1: read what has said current features new features. So they
Speaker 1: had the audacity to show you this as new features,
Speaker 1: and they were worse than the current features. I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, that is like just really really not nice.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four to one zero one. Coming up, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you how you can get a Thanksgiving dinner for
Speaker 1: free just by downloading an app. Plus, we've got our
Speaker 1: guests coming up a little bit later on to tell
Speaker 1: us about how teenagers can avoid some of the harms
Speaker 1: of social media. You are listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking
Speaker 1: technology at triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one producer Bobo.
Speaker 1: I know you wanted to play your favorite song, so
Speaker 1: I let you thank you for playing that. I know
Speaker 1: you were asking. You keep asking, You're always asking. Can
Speaker 1: I play the Barbie song? Can I play the Barbie song?
Speaker 1: Can I play the Barbie song? Yes, you can play
Speaker 1: the Barbie song. Let's go to Terry in Temecula. Terry,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich?
Speaker 3: Okay, Rich. I'm new at using chat GPT, and I've
Speaker 3: used it ten or twelve times and been successful. I
Speaker 3: did not use it for like, I don't know, four
Speaker 3: or five days. I tried to use it like two
Speaker 3: or three days ago, and I get this message on
Speaker 3: it that says we've detected unusual activity on your system.
Speaker 3: Try later. Tried later, same message, Try the next day,
Speaker 3: same message, And I can't find anywhere that I can
Speaker 3: get a hold of somebody at chat GPT to find
Speaker 3: out why did I get this message? How do I
Speaker 3: correct it? And what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Good question? So are you logging in on the official
Speaker 1: website at chat dot OpenAI dot com. Yes, Because there
Speaker 1: are many third party sites that try to like sort
Speaker 1: of latch on to what they've done, and that could
Speaker 1: be the first thing. So I think it's And you're
Speaker 1: not paying for a subscription, are you okay? So it
Speaker 1: is free to use chat GBT and the official website,
Speaker 1: like I said, is chat dot OpenAI dot com. There
Speaker 1: are many imitate imitation sites, and some of them use
Speaker 1: the underlying technology. But what I think is happening here
Speaker 1: is it sounds like a clean the cookies and cash
Speaker 1: on your web browser, and I think that will help.
Speaker 1: So if you are using Chrome, you will look to
Speaker 1: the go to the website chat dot OpenAI dot com
Speaker 1: and there is a there's actually it's a new icon
Speaker 1: if you've updated Chrome lately, but it's it looks like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, some like a little settings icon. It's
Speaker 1: a circle and you click that and it's if it's
Speaker 1: next it's next to the home button, so it's like home,
Speaker 1: and then this little it says viewsite information if you
Speaker 1: hover over it. If you if you hover over that,
Speaker 1: it will open up information about this website, and one
Speaker 1: of them is site settings, So if you click that,
Speaker 1: it will tell you all of the information about that website.
Speaker 1: What I would do is I would delete your data
Speaker 1: and you can reset your permissions as well. And then
Speaker 1: when you go back to chat GBT, you should be
Speaker 1: taken to the login page because now it has cleared
Speaker 1: all of that information out and once you log in again,
Speaker 1: it should work. Because now here's the deal. There is
Speaker 1: some This is a free service and it is an
Speaker 1: experimental service, so it doesn't always work every single time.
Speaker 1: So there may be times when you try to use
Speaker 1: chat gbt where it returns an error or it doesn't
Speaker 1: do what you expected to do. That is rare, and
Speaker 1: it does happen though it happens to me. It happens
Speaker 1: on the other website that I like called Claude dot ai.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Terry, if you have a chance,
Speaker 1: check out my other favorite ai which is Claude clad
Speaker 1: dot Ai Claude dot ai that's made by a company
Speaker 1: named Anthropic, And this is kind of like the biggest
Speaker 1: competitor to chat GPT. I personally, I know these are
Speaker 1: fighting words. I personally think it's better, but it's different.
Speaker 1: It's it's more data analysis. It's more it can get
Speaker 1: through a lot of you know, you can throw like
Speaker 1: a Comma separated value file at it. You can throw
Speaker 1: an Excel Excel spreadsheet, you can throw a PDF at it,
Speaker 1: you can paste in a ton of text and it
Speaker 1: can really go through that and figure things out. Keep
Speaker 1: in mind, none of these are up to date with
Speaker 1: current information. They may have a you know, some information
Speaker 1: that's that's current, but it's not up to date. If
Speaker 1: you want something that's fully up to date and Terry,
Speaker 1: you can check out this one as well. It is
Speaker 1: barred dot Google dot com and Barred is Google's AI.
Speaker 1: And so again we've got chat GPT, you've got Claude,
Speaker 1: and you've got Bard. Those are of the top three
Speaker 1: ais right now and the ones that i'd recommend trying.
Speaker 1: But again I think it's a matter of your web browser.
Speaker 1: Something got a little messed up in there, and that's
Speaker 1: what's causing that error message. And yeah, you're not going
Speaker 1: to find someone that you can just email or talk
Speaker 1: to at CHATGBT. It's just not that kind of service.
Speaker 1: And if we notice with all of these online services,
Speaker 1: there's pretty much no or limited customer service. There's not
Speaker 1: a traditional phone line you can call with a lot
Speaker 1: of these online services, so you do need to try
Speaker 1: to figure out how to do these things. On your own,
Speaker 1: but Terry, that's what I would recommend doing again. You
Speaker 1: just clear the data on this website, so you can
Speaker 1: go in and click that little setting's icon next to
Speaker 1: the URL and under site settings delete your data. And
Speaker 1: if you want to do this for your entire Chrome
Speaker 1: browser or whatever browser you're using, you can just use
Speaker 1: the option that says clear browsing data and that will
Speaker 1: get rid of it. Usually gives you an option if
Speaker 1: you want to cookies and site data, that's the stuff
Speaker 1: that you want, and all the cookies in site data
Speaker 1: is probably what's messing you up there. So good question.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call today. Appreciate that. Speaking of Chrome,
Speaker 1: Chrome on iOS got a small but notable feature that
Speaker 1: I actually really am enjoying. You can now move the
Speaker 1: address bar in Chrome on iOS to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the screen. This matches what Safari did. I believe they
Speaker 1: changed it in iOS. It might have been iOS sixteen,
Speaker 1: definitely iOS seventeen. But if you noticed when you go
Speaker 1: to Safari on the iPhone now the URL bar is
Speaker 1: now at the bottom of the screen. You can move
Speaker 1: it back to the top if you are a creature
Speaker 1: of habit or you like it better up there. But
Speaker 1: I've moved the Chrome address bar down to the bottom
Speaker 1: and I like it. It's actually easier to reach depending
Speaker 1: on how big your phone is. It's just a little
Speaker 1: bit simpler, and it matches what Safari does. So if
Speaker 1: you have, you know, on the iPhone, even if you
Speaker 1: set a default browser, sometimes things open in Safari anyway,
Speaker 1: just the way Apple works their magic. You know how
Speaker 1: that is. But you know, so now there's not you
Speaker 1: won't be able to tell as much between the two.
Speaker 1: So if your fingers like the muscle memory. But so
Speaker 1: here's how you do it. Open up Chrome on your
Speaker 1: iPhone and all you have to do is look at
Speaker 1: the URL bar and press and hold on it and
Speaker 1: you'll get this option that says move address bar to bottom.
Speaker 1: Or if you move it to the bottom and you
Speaker 1: want it back at the top, you can just press
Speaker 1: and hold again and it says move move address bar
Speaker 1: to the top. So that is the main thing. Apparently
Speaker 1: Google says people were asking for this. I think that
Speaker 1: Google did this because it makes it tougher to tell
Speaker 1: Chrome apart from Safari. So if you're using Safari and
Speaker 1: then you switch to Chrome, you may be annoyed that
Speaker 1: the address bar is up at the top, so I
Speaker 1: think that's the reason why they did that.
Speaker 7: I like it.
Speaker 1: I've been using it for a week since it's been available,
Speaker 1: and it's just a small feature, but it is a
Speaker 1: little bit easier. I'll tell you about that. Let's see
Speaker 1: what else? What do I have a minute here?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 1: Oh, no time? Okay, never mind, Well, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: about the free Thanksgiving dinner when we come back. All
Speaker 1: you have to do is download an app you can
Speaker 1: get a Thanksgiving dinner completely free. I'll tell you how
Speaker 1: to do that, plus your calls. Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. This is rich on Tech. What's going
Speaker 1: on on rich to Burrow And this is rich on Tech,
Speaker 1: the show where I talk about the tech stuff I
Speaker 1: think you should know about. It's also the place where
Speaker 1: I answer your questions about technology. Phone lines are open.
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Give me
Speaker 1: a call if you have a question about technology. You
Speaker 1: can also email me. Go to rich on Tech dot
Speaker 1: TV hit contact. So lots of people are doing right now.
Speaker 1: I like the way you did that. Uh, coming up
Speaker 1: on the show. I'm gonna tell you how I can
Speaker 1: get that free Thanksgiving dinner just by downloading an app. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'll get to that very soon. We've got some great
Speaker 1: guests coming up today as well. We've got a guest
Speaker 1: named Stephanie who says they got scammed by trying to
Speaker 1: sell something online. They're going to share their story so
Speaker 1: that we can learn from it and not have the
Speaker 1: same thing happen to us. And we've got Larissa May,
Speaker 1: a digital wellness activist. Larisa is going to talk to
Speaker 1: us about social media and teen use and how, you know,
Speaker 1: the stuff that parents need to know. Parents, grandparents make
Speaker 1: sure that these kids are not ruined by social media.
Speaker 1: And I say ruined. I don't say that lightly because yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not going to ruin their lives, but it can
Speaker 1: and it has and it does on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: So we'll hear what Larisa has to say. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Mickey in camerio. Mickey, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 5: Hi, Good morning, Rich.
Speaker 7: I just had a question.
Speaker 5: We are nearing the holidays. I've given o'll gift cards
Speaker 5: for Walmart, Target, you know, so they can use to
Speaker 5: purchase things, you know, or you know, whatever they need
Speaker 5: groceries and whatnot. But I want to know, are all cards,
Speaker 5: whether it's Amazon, Target, Walmart, the grocery stores, can those
Speaker 5: be used online instead of us using our bank and
Speaker 5: our own credit card, you know, because of you know,
Speaker 5: for personal reasons and for you know, privacy protection purposes.
Speaker 1: So can they all be used online? Like, if you
Speaker 1: buy one at Target in the store, can you use
Speaker 1: it on their website?
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 1: It depends. Yeah, the short the short answer is it depends.
Speaker 1: There are certain types of gift cards that are online only,
Speaker 1: there are some that are in store only, and there
Speaker 1: are some that work in both places. So when you
Speaker 1: buy a gift card, you sort of have to look
Speaker 1: at it and see what it says on the back. Now,
Speaker 1: this is getting rare and rare that these have a
Speaker 1: delineation like this, especially with the big retailers like a
Speaker 1: Home Depot or a Target, or to Amazon, I mean Amazon,
Speaker 1: you know, if they even have any more online in
Speaker 1: person stores. Like, that's a good question. Could you use
Speaker 1: an Amazon gift card that you purchase at like an
Speaker 1: Amazon Fresh grocery store. The answer is you have to
Speaker 1: look at the back of the card to see what
Speaker 1: it says, and you have to look at the card
Speaker 1: online if you buy it online, to see if it
Speaker 1: says you can use it on in store. The reason
Speaker 1: why I tell you this is because I use an
Speaker 1: app called Raise r Aise, and this is an app
Speaker 1: that lets you buy and sell gift cards. So let's
Speaker 1: say you're going to Old Navy and you know you're
Speaker 1: going there and you want to purchase, you know, fifty
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars worth of stuff there. You could go
Speaker 1: to this website, raise dot com or the app and
Speaker 1: buy a gift card for Old Navy and it's discounted
Speaker 1: because how are they getting that gift card. They're getting
Speaker 1: it from someone that got this gift card from Grandma
Speaker 1: that doesn't want it, and they want to unload it
Speaker 1: because it doesn't cost them anything to get rid of
Speaker 1: it at a at a lesser price than the face value.
Speaker 1: So let an example, Let's say that I have a
Speaker 1: birthday party. Someone gives me a one hundred dollars gift
Speaker 1: card to what's that store with all the candles that
Speaker 1: bed bathroom not bed bathroom, be odd bathroom body works,
Speaker 1: the one that sells all the like fancy selling smelling
Speaker 1: candles So let's say I get that and I'm I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not getting any pumpkin spice candles
Speaker 1: this year. I'm just gonna get rid of I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna get I'm gonna get rid of this gift card.
Speaker 1: I can go on Raise and sell that gift card.
Speaker 1: They will give me cash for that, and then I
Speaker 1: hand over that gift card to them. Now they're gonna
Speaker 1: give me let's say seventy five dollars, But to me,
Speaker 1: that's found money because I'm you know, this gift card
Speaker 1: was given to me for free. Then Raise will go
Speaker 1: and they will sell that gift card to other people
Speaker 1: for let's say ninety five dollars, And now you're getting
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars gift card for ninety five. Raise makes
Speaker 1: that spread of seventy five to ninety five dollars that
Speaker 1: they sold it to you for, they make twenty bucks.
Speaker 1: You get a discounted gift card. Everyone's happy in this process,
Speaker 1: but you have to be careful because I found out
Speaker 1: the hard way one time when I bought a gift
Speaker 1: card off of this website that it was it was
Speaker 1: digital only, it was only to be used online and
Speaker 1: not at the physical retailer. So when you buy these
Speaker 1: gift cards, you do need to check to see. So
Speaker 1: next time you get a gift card, just read the
Speaker 1: fine print and make sure that you can use it
Speaker 1: online and in store. A lot of them, like I said,
Speaker 1: are dual purpose. They will work in both places. And
Speaker 1: I'm looking, for instance, I'm looking up an Amazon gift card.
Speaker 1: So you can buy a one hundred dollars Amazon gift
Speaker 1: card on the Rai's website for ninety seven dollars and
Speaker 1: eighty three cents, and it says digital delivery, valid online
Speaker 1: and in store. But there are some gift cards that
Speaker 1: you go to and it will say only valid you know,
Speaker 1: in store. So Walmart, let's see what they say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: valid online and in store. So I think with the
Speaker 1: big ones, you're going to be fine, Larissa, sorry, Mickey,
Speaker 1: And I think that you know, it depends on some
Speaker 1: of the smaller retailer, some of the more obscure retailers,
Speaker 1: you may not be able to use them in both places,
Speaker 1: whether it's online or in store. So, for instance, let's
Speaker 1: look at Macy's. I think the one that I was
Speaker 1: that that got me was home Depot. So if you
Speaker 1: look at the home depot now valid online and in store,
Speaker 1: So anyway, I think a lot of them are probably
Speaker 1: gonna be fine. But anyway, just check to see what
Speaker 1: the redemption details are because every gift card is a
Speaker 1: little bit different and the way that you get these
Speaker 1: gift cards, you know, depending on where you buy them from,
Speaker 1: could be a little different. So great question. I know
Speaker 1: the holidays are coming up. Gift cards are the easy thing.
Speaker 1: So in my house, my mom she is now she's
Speaker 1: come around because now she'll give us gift cards. But
Speaker 1: she went a long time without giving gift cards because
Speaker 1: she thought that was the easy way out. She thought
Speaker 1: a gift card was just too simple. It you didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of thought put into the gift. It
Speaker 1: was not something that was personalized. And I kind of
Speaker 1: fought that for many years because I said, you know what,
Speaker 1: but you're still picking the place that you're giving them
Speaker 1: that gift card to. And also it's very convenient, and
Speaker 1: gift cards are kind of this. It's almost like a
Speaker 1: double edged sword. I think some gift cards, like the
Speaker 1: Visa gift cards and the Amex gift cards, while they
Speaker 1: seem really good because you can use them anywhere, I'm
Speaker 1: the least fan of those because let's say you get
Speaker 1: a visa gift card for one hundred bucks and you
Speaker 1: use you have a balance of eight dollars and seventy
Speaker 1: two cents. Well, sometimes it could be tough to use
Speaker 1: that gift card balance because it's not like a regular
Speaker 1: gift card where let's say you have a balance on
Speaker 1: the home Depot card. You just swipe that card and
Speaker 1: they say, okay, there are seven dollars and it uses
Speaker 1: it with a visa one. Sometimes that could be a
Speaker 1: little trickier to use that remaining balance. Now I will
Speaker 1: tell you I do have a little hack. You can
Speaker 1: take that Visa gift card and redeem it to an
Speaker 1: Amazon account. So if you go to Amazon and buy
Speaker 1: an e gift card, you can add that Visa gift
Speaker 1: card as a payment method on your account, and then
Speaker 1: whatever the balance is, check the balance on that card.
Speaker 1: You can put in seven eighty two cents and buy
Speaker 1: that as an Amazon gift card. I've done this many
Speaker 1: many times. In fact, whenever I get an Amazon A
Speaker 1: Visa gift card, I literally just go straight to Amazon
Speaker 1: and convert it to Amazon because it's so much easier
Speaker 1: to use now. The other tip I have for using
Speaker 1: a visa gift card is use the entire amount at once.
Speaker 1: So if you go to a place like Gap or
Speaker 1: Home Depot or whatever and you have a visa gift card,
Speaker 1: use the entire amount at one time. So if you
Speaker 1: don't have a purchase that's big enough to cover the
Speaker 1: entire amount of that Visa gift card, save it for
Speaker 1: the next time. I'm telling you, it will save you
Speaker 1: a headache. But in general, I prefer gift cards that
Speaker 1: are for a brand, specifically because I do think they
Speaker 1: are easier to use. The other tip I have is
Speaker 1: that if you get a Target gift card, you can
Speaker 1: add it to the Target app, so if your kids
Speaker 1: like and the other thing I do is my kids
Speaker 1: will get a Target gift card and I will transfer
Speaker 1: it to their Apple Watch their Apple Cash. So I
Speaker 1: will take the gift card for twenty dollars and I
Speaker 1: will give them to twenty dollars in their Apple Cash,
Speaker 1: which they can then use anywhere. So there's lots of
Speaker 1: ways to slice and dice these gift cards, but at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, people love getting them. We
Speaker 1: have a whole stack of them at home right now.
Speaker 1: And I say we need to go to the mall
Speaker 1: and just have a gift card day where you use
Speaker 1: every single gift card because sometimes these things can linger
Speaker 1: for a very long time. Okay, I told you about
Speaker 1: the Thanksgiving dinner for free. Let me tell you how
Speaker 1: to redeem this. And by the way, if you want
Speaker 1: to use that raise website, I'm going to put a
Speaker 1: link on my show notes at rich on tech dot
Speaker 1: tv where if you use it for the first time,
Speaker 1: you can get five dollars off your first gift card purchase.
Speaker 1: It's like a referral link I've got, So if you
Speaker 1: want to do that, that's pretty good. Okay. The app
Speaker 1: is called Ibota Ibotta. They are doing their free Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: promotion for the fourth year in a row. This will
Speaker 1: give you one hundred percent cash back on a Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: meal from November first through twenty second. So what you
Speaker 1: do is you download the app. You have to be
Speaker 1: a first time user, I believe to get this free meal,
Speaker 1: and you can get cash back on a turkey on
Speaker 1: mashed potatoes, on corn muffin mix, and a couple other
Speaker 1: things like the basics cranberry sauce and the way this
Speaker 1: app works it's one of those cash back apps. So
Speaker 1: when you go shopping at the grocery store, you know,
Speaker 1: you may buy a product that you know, a different
Speaker 1: brand that they want you to buy, and you can
Speaker 1: submit your receipt and get cash back on that. So
Speaker 1: that's how I bought a works And during Thanksgiving they
Speaker 1: do this promotion for the free Thanksgiving dinner and so
Speaker 1: if you go to Ibota and by the way, I've
Speaker 1: got a link to download the app on my website,
Speaker 1: rich on tech dot tv. Here it is free mashed potatoes,
Speaker 1: free gravy mix, free corn muffin mix, the Jiffy corn, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, was the first thing I ever learned
Speaker 1: how to cook when I was a kid. It's like
Speaker 1: two ingredients, free cranberry sauce and a free turkey. The
Speaker 1: turkey is the most fourteen dollars thirty five cents And
Speaker 1: you can buy these at any retailer. You don't have
Speaker 1: to do it at a specific place. You can do
Speaker 1: it at Target, Walmart, wherever. You know these various retailers.
Speaker 1: They've got all the different brands near you. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of a fun little thing to do. I think
Speaker 1: the entire benefit might be about twenty dollars max. But
Speaker 1: it's still kind of fun just to get it. So again.
Speaker 1: The website is I Bought a Ibotta Free Thanksgiving Dinner.
Speaker 1: This runs from November first through November twenty second. You
Speaker 1: can go to my website rich on tech dot tv
Speaker 1: for a link to the app, and you can also
Speaker 1: refer your friends. If you refer your friends to this app,
Speaker 1: you'll get some entries in this program. They're doing free
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving for life, and so they'll give you, I don't know,
Speaker 1: free Thanksgiving dinner, I guess for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: So they started this during the pandemic. They've done ten million.
Speaker 1: Ten million Americans have gotten free Thanksgiving meals from them,
Speaker 1: and they're saying it's part of their mission to make
Speaker 1: every purchase rewarding and help you save. And they hope
Speaker 1: that once you redeem this Thanksgiving dinner, you use this
Speaker 1: app to buy stuff, to buy little products, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty five cents back here, fifty cents back there, dollar
Speaker 1: back here. Rich on tech dot tv is the website
Speaker 1: triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Give me a
Speaker 1: call if you have a question about technology Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology. Coming up, we're gonna talk to Stephanie. Stephanie
Speaker 1: says she was scammed by someone on U I believe
Speaker 1: it was Facebook Marketplace, and she's going to share her
Speaker 1: story so that we can all avoid the same fate.
Speaker 1: Triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Stephen is in
Speaker 1: San Diego. Steven, you're on with Rich all right, Rich, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 9: I have found out that into It Mint and the
Speaker 9: Morning Tracking or management all website is shutting down as
Speaker 9: of the first of January, and I was wondering if
Speaker 9: you had some ideas on alternatives that I could use me.
Speaker 9: I mean understand, I got about two decades where the
Speaker 9: transactions I got a handle her.
Speaker 1: Oh I know, it's such a mess, and I so,
Speaker 1: first off, I don't know how you predicted the future,
Speaker 1: but I've got the Mint story right here. I literally
Speaker 1: was going to get to it soon. And this is
Speaker 1: a big deal because Mint. I actually remember the day
Speaker 1: that Mint started. I was working as a reporter at
Speaker 1: k CAL nine here in Los Angeles, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is the coolest thing ever. You take all of
Speaker 1: your services, all of your bank accounts, all of your
Speaker 1: credit cards, all of everything you have investments, and I
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot, but it was just so cool
Speaker 1: to see it all on one page. And I thought
Speaker 1: that was just such a genius idea. And so Mint
Speaker 1: became very very popular, very fast, and then into it
Speaker 1: bought it quickly after it opened. I think it only
Speaker 1: like a year or two later. And of course they
Speaker 1: ran it pretty much as it was when it opened,
Speaker 1: but of course they added more like sales to it,
Speaker 1: Like I remember towards the end it was really like salesy,
Speaker 1: like selling me credit cards, selling me, you know, loans, whatever,
Speaker 1: but it still had that core functionality the two things
Speaker 1: I loved, well, the main thing I loved about it
Speaker 1: was kind of like the one page for all of
Speaker 1: your accounts. Now, if you're a Mint user on the regular,
Speaker 1: you know that there was always like connection errors with
Speaker 1: your accounts, Like you just log on and be like, sorry,
Speaker 1: we're having trouble connecting to this service, and you'd be
Speaker 1: like ah, and you'd have to like refresh or wait
Speaker 1: till the next day whatever. So that never went away.
Speaker 1: But now Into it says they are shutting down this
Speaker 1: popular budgeting app on January first, twenty twenty four. They
Speaker 1: say you can download your transactions if you want, so
Speaker 1: you need to do that now before January first, so
Speaker 1: you have until the shutdown date, which doesn't give you
Speaker 1: much time. But you can export all of your transactions.
Speaker 1: And if you've noticed a lot of these financial services now,
Speaker 1: they don't allow you to download all of your back transactions.
Speaker 1: Sometimes only go back sixty or one hundred and twenty days.
Speaker 1: So if, like Steven said, if you've got to five
Speaker 1: ten years worth of stuff on there, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to get that back very easily. So if
Speaker 1: you're using Mint, I would highly recommend that you download
Speaker 1: your transaction data if you want to keep that for
Speaker 1: the future. Now, the other thing about this is that
Speaker 1: they will be switching people over to Credit Karma, which
Speaker 1: is also owned by into It. Into It is also
Speaker 1: the folks behind They have a bunch of things like
Speaker 1: I think QuickBooks and all that, so they own a
Speaker 1: bunch of companies. If you go to into It you
Speaker 1: can see all yeah, QuickBooks, TurboTax, But they want everyone
Speaker 1: to use credit Karma now. To me, Credit Karma has
Speaker 1: always been a website that's more about selling me credit
Speaker 1: products like a credit card or a loan, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of like what I said Mint did towards the end.
Speaker 1: So they say that some of Mint's services will be
Speaker 1: transferred over to Credit Karma, but we're not sure if
Speaker 1: the monthly budgeting service is going to be transferred over.
Speaker 1: They do say they are going to do that feature
Speaker 1: where it shows you everything on one page. Now, I
Speaker 1: logged onto Credit Karma very quickly just to see kind
Speaker 1: of what they offer. But once you switch over, I
Speaker 1: don't think you can go back to Mint, so you
Speaker 1: may want to just hold off before you do anything
Speaker 1: that transfers your account number over. So to answer your question, Steven,
Speaker 1: I am still on a quest to figure out what
Speaker 1: the best replacement app is, but it depends what you
Speaker 1: want to do. If you want to see everything on
Speaker 1: one page, there's an app called Monarch, which I did
Speaker 1: not test just yet. But the problem is all these
Speaker 1: new apps want to charge you money. So there's two
Speaker 1: that are really good. One is called Copilot. It's available
Speaker 1: for iOS only, and that's the one that I initially
Speaker 1: downloaded because a lot of people are downloading that app,
Speaker 1: and it's good, but it's expensive. You got to pay
Speaker 1: every year to use app. But it does seem to
Speaker 1: do the kind of everything on one page and the budgeting.
Speaker 1: The other one is from the Dave Ramsey team called
Speaker 1: every Dollar, and again you do have to pay if
Speaker 1: you want the premium features of that app. There's another
Speaker 1: one called pocket Guard. I have not tested that one.
Speaker 1: You need a budget y nab. A lot of people
Speaker 1: use that. I've tried it in the past. It is
Speaker 1: way too complicated for me. The other one, if you
Speaker 1: want something that I have used in the past that
Speaker 1: I think is really good, used to be called Personal Capital,
Speaker 1: it's now called Empower. Empower that will show you all
Speaker 1: of your accounts in one place. So it really depends
Speaker 1: do you want to use this to budget or do
Speaker 1: you want to use it to see everything in one place.
Speaker 1: I don't use these apps to budget. To budget, I
Speaker 1: use an Excel spreadsheet. I've used that for the last
Speaker 1: twenty years of my life. Every single Friday, I go
Speaker 1: on I put all my accounts on there, all the
Speaker 1: different transactions, and I create what's called a zero based budget.
Speaker 1: I will still continue to use Excel to do that,
Speaker 1: but again a lot of people checking out these different apps.
Speaker 1: I think it really comes down to what works best
Speaker 1: for you. Which one do you take a liking to.
Speaker 1: Coming up next, how not to get scammed selling stuff online.
Speaker 1: You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you
Speaker 1: at Triple eight. Rich one oh one. I'm busy taking notes,
Speaker 1: so I take notes throughout the entire show, and I
Speaker 1: put them in the show notes. So if you download
Speaker 1: the show as a podcast, you can see the show
Speaker 1: notes there. You can also go to rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv to see the show notes in real Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of they do happen in real time. But
Speaker 1: to get the link, I guess you'd have to go
Speaker 1: to x for now because they don't post until the podcast.
Speaker 1: But if you go to the uh, if you go
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech on Twitter, I guess now it's
Speaker 1: called XU, you can see the show notes and I
Speaker 1: will put those out in real time. So all these
Speaker 1: budgeting apps that we just talked about, that's where they are.
Speaker 1: I just listed a whole bunch of them. Let's see here.
Speaker 1: I was just putting the links in co pilot monarch
Speaker 1: pocket guard. You need a budget, every dollar in power.
Speaker 1: So I will be doing a story about this on
Speaker 1: TV as well, because you can use credit karma. It'll
Speaker 1: be fine. But you know, it's like it leaves a
Speaker 1: bad taste in your mouth, the fact that Mint is,
Speaker 1: you know, into it is doing this to Mint, Like,
Speaker 1: why why are you switching us when everyone likes this program?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Not a good not a good look.
Speaker 1: All right, let's let's bring up Stephanie. Stephanie was scammed
Speaker 1: through Facebook Marketplace and Stephanie, thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you sharing your story because I do think
Speaker 1: it's going to help people.
Speaker 8: Of course, I'm happy to definitely help and share what
Speaker 8: I learned in my experience on Facebook Marketplace.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what let's what were you selling? And tell
Speaker 1: me how you posted it and all that good stuff,
Speaker 1: Like what you're selling?
Speaker 8: What? So selling a furniture set from my in laws?
Speaker 1: Okay, pretty standard?
Speaker 8: Correct, but it was a high dollar value. So I
Speaker 8: put five thousand dollars for a twelve piece dining room set. Wow,
Speaker 8: that attracted certain people.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this was a this was like like I've
Speaker 1: got a futon on there right now, and it's like
Speaker 1: fifty bucks, So this is this is high end stuff,
Speaker 1: so you think interesting. So you think that's what attracted
Speaker 1: these scammers because they're like, oh, this person might have
Speaker 1: some money because they're selling a very expensive furniture set.
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, because I lifted it and within five minutes,
Speaker 4: maybe ten, all of a sudden, I had probably at
Speaker 4: least five.
Speaker 8: To ten inquiries if it was still available and wanted
Speaker 8: to buy it.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, interesting, okay, So what happened? What do they
Speaker 1: say in these inquiries?
Speaker 8: So they're asking if it's available, and I would respond yes,
Speaker 8: but I was trying to be fair, so I would
Speaker 8: go in order of who initiated the conversation first, and
Speaker 8: then they would ask they wanted to give more, So
Speaker 8: of course I got happy they.
Speaker 1: Wanted to give you more money than you're asking for
Speaker 1: this thing, correct, okay, which.
Speaker 8: Again I was like, this is weird, but kind of
Speaker 8: exciting that maybe I did do it too low, but
Speaker 8: I was going to just kind of be weary of
Speaker 8: it at first, and a lot of the information coming
Speaker 8: through was i'll give you fifty two hundred, I'll give
Speaker 8: you fifty five hundred. The next one was, I'll give
Speaker 8: you six thousand, and I did get into a bidding
Speaker 8: war with one gentleman who was a scammer and another customer,
Speaker 8: and they kept trying to outbid one another for it.
Speaker 8: So I got up to sixty seven hundred dollars. Wow,
Speaker 8: and again, being excited, I told the one I said,
Speaker 8: unfortunately eministic with the first person who bid sixty seven
Speaker 8: and end is bitting war back and forth. I appreciate
Speaker 8: your time and I'll keep you posting.
Speaker 1: And this is all through what phone or text or
Speaker 1: how is this through?
Speaker 8: Messenger? Facebook?
Speaker 1: Okay? Facebook?
Speaker 8: Messager me?
Speaker 1: Okay, did you look at their profile at all? Like
Speaker 1: did you check them out, like to see what their
Speaker 1: deal was? Not?
Speaker 10: At first?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 8: And what I started noticing was a lot of users
Speaker 8: created were joined Facebook in twenty twenty three, so this year,
Speaker 8: so they were new, correct, which was weird because that
Speaker 8: didn't seem correct. So I was like, okay, well, I'm
Speaker 8: going to put you to the side. But this gentleman
Speaker 8: wasn't a twenty twenty three user. I believe he was
Speaker 8: a twenty sixteen user.
Speaker 1: So I was like, okay, okay, yeah, because we look
Speaker 1: for little hints to see if these people are legitimate,
Speaker 1: because Okay, they have a lot of reviews, they have
Speaker 1: a lot you know, they've been around for a while,
Speaker 1: so we feel like they might be more legitimate.
Speaker 8: That's what you kind of did, yes, yes, So when
Speaker 8: I looked at his page, I was like, Okay, he's
Speaker 8: been around, he's not a twenty twenty three user. He
Speaker 8: started continue the messaging of can I zel you? So
Speaker 8: I thought, sure, that doesn't seem to be weird. Sure,
Speaker 8: I'll give you my email and you can. You can
Speaker 8: send me money Viazel. And that's where it started to
Speaker 8: become the scam. Was he they spoofed a Zell email
Speaker 8: and made it look like I couldn't have the funds
Speaker 8: because I didn't have a Zell business account.
Speaker 1: Ooh and interesting, so they sent you an email that
Speaker 1: said like this was kicked back or something.
Speaker 8: Yes, so it says I can't receive the funds because
Speaker 8: I don't have the correct account setup like through Zell,
Speaker 8: and that I needed to resolve the issue. And it
Speaker 8: was in order to resolve the issue, I had to
Speaker 8: send three hundred dollars to the user and then it
Speaker 8: would clear the situation, it would resolve it okay.
Speaker 1: And at this point did you send that money?
Speaker 8: No? I was like, that seems weird. Okay, why am like?
Speaker 8: Because they overpaid? So so we had agreed on sixty
Speaker 8: seven hundred and he sent seven thousand and said will
Speaker 8: you send the three hundred back? And I said, well, yes,
Speaker 8: I'm not going to take seven thousand. That's not what
Speaker 8: we agreed upon. And then the email came through from
Speaker 8: Zell saying I had to send it back, and I
Speaker 8: was like, well, this is weird. So then I checked
Speaker 8: the account first of all, and I didn't get seven
Speaker 8: thousand dollars. I didn't get sixty seven hundred dollars. So
Speaker 8: after speaking with my husband, I said, this seems weird.
Speaker 8: I'm going to call Zell. And sure enough, I actually
Speaker 8: walked into another like a situation with calling a quote
Speaker 8: unquote Zell customer service account which was not Dell.
Speaker 1: Oh so that's how they got you. Where did you
Speaker 1: get that phone number from?
Speaker 8: I googled it and of course I have the number,
Speaker 8: but I don't have the website, so I don't have
Speaker 8: that which I can send you.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you so you google the phone number for Zell.
Speaker 1: Something came up on Google you dial the number that
Speaker 1: you saw on your screen, and it connected you to
Speaker 1: a scam artist, which was unrelated to the original scammer. Yes,
Speaker 1: scammers be scamming. Oh my gosh, it's like no matter
Speaker 1: where you go.
Speaker 8: I avoided a scam because I didn't seem that didn't
Speaker 8: seem right. So I was like, Okay, we're gonna call
Speaker 8: and I walked into another scam.
Speaker 1: Wow, so you actually thought you were protecting yourself and
Speaker 1: you walked right into another spider web of scam artists.
Speaker 1: That is incredible. That is really it's like a one
Speaker 1: two punch right there.
Speaker 8: Yes, like they're getting really smart.
Speaker 1: Okay, really really smart. So you call the Zel person
Speaker 1: and to this unbeknownst to you, it's not actual Zel.
Speaker 1: And then what happened?
Speaker 8: Correct, So where he's walking me through un quote unquote
Speaker 8: how to set up a Zell business account, and I said, well,
Speaker 8: I don't want a Zell business account. I just kind
Speaker 8: of want to resolve this and deal with the furniture
Speaker 8: sale and move on. I'm not trying to create a
Speaker 8: business and that's not what my end game is. And
Speaker 8: he said, no, I understand, man. We're going to get
Speaker 8: you set up to get the money resolved. So again
Speaker 8: he's unrelated to their initial stammer. And as I'm talking
Speaker 8: to him, I had a bad feeling and I said,
Speaker 8: how do I know you're not going to take my money?
Speaker 8: And he goes, ma'am you called me? Oh wow, oh
Speaker 8: you And I said, that's a really valid point.
Speaker 9: You're right.
Speaker 8: I sought you out. You didn't seek me out.
Speaker 1: So as we're going.
Speaker 8: Through quote unquote setting up a Zell account, he has
Speaker 8: me logging into any desk, which, oh wow, do and
Speaker 8: he sees my information, which, again, knowing I had a
Speaker 8: bad feeling, I said, this doesn't track. But I've used
Speaker 8: any desk for work related issues, so I thought that's
Speaker 8: not odd in that respect. And I'm starting to move
Speaker 8: money around and send it out to people I don't know,
Speaker 8: but he said I'll get it back, and I said,
Speaker 8: I'm going to get this money back. He says, yes,
Speaker 8: we're just moving money around. You're going to transfer the
Speaker 8: money out and it's going to come back to you.
Speaker 8: I said, okay, Again, this doesn't seem right, and my
Speaker 8: gut is yelling at me to like end the call.
Speaker 8: And after moving money around and sending it out to
Speaker 8: two people I didn't know, but of course the scammer knew.
Speaker 8: I finally said, I need to finish this call later
Speaker 8: when my husband gets home, and he said, sure, no problem,
Speaker 8: we'll call you back whenever you want. But at that
Speaker 8: point I already had exeled money.
Speaker 11: Out to two people.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how much did you sell?
Speaker 8: Fifteen hundred total?
Speaker 1: Fifteen total, so seven fifty to each person?
Speaker 8: It was like, no, nine fifty four, ninety nine or
Speaker 8: five hundred, so that he did it, you know, in
Speaker 8: different monetary values.
Speaker 1: And so you just have and you realize as soon
Speaker 1: as you hung up that this was a problem. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and how did you feel?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 8: Terrible, I said. I literally tried to avoid getting scammed
Speaker 8: and walked into another scam.
Speaker 11: Wow.
Speaker 8: As I'm talking to the second scammer, the first scammer
Speaker 8: is blowing up the messenger, asking you know why I
Speaker 8: haven't transferred the money? What's going on? Did I read
Speaker 8: the letter?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 8: I need to follow the email that they'd sent, and
Speaker 8: I need to do what the email says and everything
Speaker 8: will be fine. And I would respond with I'm on
Speaker 8: a call, I apologize, I'll be right with you shortly
Speaker 8: and Finally, when he got he seemed the oversea be
Speaker 8: getting aggressively angry. Nothing was said, but just you know,
Speaker 8: pushing like why I hadn't done what the email said.
Speaker 8: I finally told him, Unfortunately, I can't send you the
Speaker 8: money back because my account was hacked due to fraudulent
Speaker 8: activity and I cannot access any money to send you.
Speaker 8: And that's kind of where he was like, well, that's
Speaker 8: because you didn't follow the email. I s's no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 8: that's you know, understanding me. I cannot access the money,
Speaker 8: there's nothing to access, nothing to send you, So I'm
Speaker 8: not going to do that. And he was getting mad,
Speaker 8: and then I finally just blocked him after having to
Speaker 8: deal with the fraud department at my bank.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, so I've got to go. But did you
Speaker 1: get any of this money back? Were you able to
Speaker 1: reclaim it?
Speaker 8: I was, And if you ever have an issue with Zelle,
Speaker 8: just call your bank.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 8: I learned that too.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: I think you're lucky because people have had many, many
Speaker 1: issues with Zell, and it's it's sort of notorious for
Speaker 1: once the money goes out, it doesn't necessarily come back.
Speaker 1: So I'm very impressed that you were able to get
Speaker 1: Did you get all of it back?
Speaker 9: I did.
Speaker 8: I was fortunate to get all of it.
Speaker 1: Did it take a long time on the phone?
Speaker 8: Not too long, definitely, several conversations but probably fifteen minutes
Speaker 8: each to resolve it. And they did what they could
Speaker 8: in five days and I was able to get the
Speaker 8: money back.
Speaker 1: Bottom line, what's your advice to people? In twenty seconds?
Speaker 8: If it's too good to be true, it probably is,
Speaker 8: and listen to your guys.
Speaker 1: Stephanie, thanks so much for calling me today. I appreciate
Speaker 1: you sharing your story. I know that's a tough story
Speaker 1: to tell, but I do believe that if you listen
Speaker 1: to these stories and hear more of them, you the
Speaker 1: warning signs.
Speaker 9: Of course.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Rich on Tech More show right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking
Speaker 1: technology at eighty to eight Rich one oh one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Elsa in Plia, del Rey, California. Elsa,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich. Hi.
Speaker 8: Rich.
Speaker 9: How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing great? So a quick question for you, Elsa. Yes,
Speaker 1: isn't that the name from that Disney movie. What was
Speaker 1: it frozen?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 1: Did that just like wreck Havoc on your life?
Speaker 3: It did?
Speaker 12: And I had no idea when it came out, and
Speaker 12: I got all these requests from people, and I'm like,
Speaker 12: I have no idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: It's a great name. So it's it's nice, it's unique,
Speaker 1: it's lovely, and so uh, I'm glad they used it
Speaker 1: in a movie. What can I help you with? Thank you?
Speaker 12: Two things? I called you a few weeks ago regarding
Speaker 12: wanting to get an email that didn't have anything attached
Speaker 12: to it and blah blah blah. And as it turns out,
Speaker 12: that was part of the conversation today. And I ended
Speaker 12: up after that because I used the dog Go with
Speaker 12: my browser. They came out with an email that you
Speaker 12: can use for them and they filter it and then
Speaker 12: just gowet it to any email you have. So that
Speaker 12: was perfect for me because I didn't have to open
Speaker 12: an account, I didn't have to do anything. I could
Speaker 12: just change the email address and then it's dot Doug
Speaker 12: dot com. I'm sorry, so I used my name at
Speaker 12: Dug dot com. Yes, it just filters and suentative to
Speaker 12: my email and it's perfect I have that not for
Speaker 12: about a month.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and I think it's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got that. I used that for certain uh
Speaker 1: you know, like if it's like a junkie kind of
Speaker 1: like I'm just signing up like a free coupon or something.
Speaker 1: And what they do is they they strip all of
Speaker 1: the trackers out of that email and they make it
Speaker 1: they make it really easy to get rid of that
Speaker 1: email address as well. So if you want to, like
Speaker 1: you know, block that email from that person, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get it. It's free. It's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: your name or whatever you want at duck dot com.
Speaker 1: I'll put the link on the on the show notes
Speaker 1: as well. So good, good call about that.
Speaker 12: Well, what I really called you about was it I
Speaker 12: got a net Gear You had a person a representative
Speaker 12: about a month ago as well, and I got a
Speaker 12: router from net Gear and they have a feature where
Speaker 12: you can get bit defender for a year.
Speaker 8: Is that good?
Speaker 12: Is that too much? Or I just wanted to get
Speaker 12: your opinion on that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So bit Defender is sort of like there, you know,
Speaker 1: beefed up firewall and cybersecurity threat kind of like subscription.
Speaker 1: How much are they charging for it?
Speaker 12: Well, they give it to you free for a year, okay.
Speaker 1: And this is neck year armor. Yes, okay, so uh
Speaker 1: so I would probably take the free year, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if you need it after that. So what
Speaker 1: routers like a firewall built in? So I'm looking at
Speaker 1: let's see, it says automatically protect devices connected to your
Speaker 1: Wi Fi, shield devices. Other solutions miss keep your sensitive
Speaker 1: data secure, get on the go protection for your devices.
Speaker 1: So it protects uh let's see. Okay, you get VPN first,
Speaker 1: So if you need a VPN, I guess that's included here.
Speaker 1: Automatic threat detection, instant notifications and yeah. So I mean, look,
Speaker 1: it's one of these things where it's kind of like
Speaker 1: antivirus software. It's kind of like malware stuff. It's like
Speaker 1: you feel good having it because you feel like you're protected.
Speaker 1: But I would say, you know, all routers have a
Speaker 1: level of protection built into them. They all have a
Speaker 1: firewall that's built in. And if you're just setting it
Speaker 1: up and keeping it, you know, the standard way that
Speaker 1: the it comes from the factory and it you know,
Speaker 1: obviously you're using a strong password with that router. I
Speaker 1: think you should be okay, but I would probably take
Speaker 1: the free year, and typically with free year subscriptions, you're
Speaker 1: usually able to cancel the recurring subscription right away. So
Speaker 1: if you're ever doing a free trial, typically you can
Speaker 1: go in on that account. You don't have to wait
Speaker 1: until next year, because what they want you to do
Speaker 1: is forget about it, and next thing, you know, you
Speaker 1: get charged on your card and you say, ah, it's
Speaker 1: too much effort to go back and you know, figure
Speaker 1: this out and get my refund, and so you keep
Speaker 1: it for the next year. And so now you've just
Speaker 1: gotten two years of this, you know, for the price one,
Speaker 1: but still you're paying for it. So what I do is,
Speaker 1: whenever I sign up for a free trial, I always
Speaker 1: go into my account and I see if I can
Speaker 1: cancel right away. And usually it'll give you either a
Speaker 1: warning sign that says, hey, you're about to cancel this,
Speaker 1: but you'll still have access through next you know, whatever
Speaker 1: the end date is of next year, and I say, okay,
Speaker 1: that sounds great, and I press cancel and I still
Speaker 1: have access to that for the year. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: automatically renew. Now, if it says you'll lose access immediately,
Speaker 1: I decide, Okay, do I really need this and in
Speaker 1: the case I want to keep it for that free year,
Speaker 1: I would just snooze my email for a year, maybe
Speaker 1: you know, two weeks before that renewal date, and that'll
Speaker 1: pop up in my inbox and then I will take
Speaker 1: action at that point. If I don't have an email
Speaker 1: provider that has a snooze functionality, then I will just
Speaker 1: set a reminder in my reminders and have that pop up.
Speaker 1: But I use this news functionality. That's like the easiest.
Speaker 1: And if you have one of these smart speakers at home,
Speaker 1: like a Google or Alexa, you can just say like, hey,
Speaker 1: remind me and say the date to check out this
Speaker 1: service or to check up on my Netgear Armor subscription.
Speaker 1: But ELSA, that's probably what I would do is just
Speaker 1: take the free year. Why not see how it works
Speaker 1: and just either cancel immediately or just set a reminder
Speaker 1: to cancel. But you know, free year, why not see
Speaker 1: what works what doesn't work. I think the biggest downsides,
Speaker 1: according to some of the reviews that I'm looking at online,
Speaker 1: is that it could impact your internet performance because it
Speaker 1: is a security program, so you may have times when
Speaker 1: you try to go to a website it won't load.
Speaker 1: You may try to, you know, download something it won't download.
Speaker 1: So those are kind of like the downsides of any
Speaker 1: type security program. And you know, people that use ad
Speaker 1: blockers know this. People that use any sort of VPN
Speaker 1: or network you know, monitoring or filtering, there's always some
Speaker 1: issues that occur because of that. So if you're okay
Speaker 1: with that stuff and you're wondering, like, why is this
Speaker 1: going wrong, you know that's that might be the reason.
Speaker 1: So good question. Thanks for listening to the show, Thanks
Speaker 1: for having a cool name, and thanks for calling today.
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one uh. Still coming
Speaker 1: up in the next hour of the show, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk to Larissa. Larissa May is a digital wellness
Speaker 1: activist founder of Half the Story. So if you want
Speaker 1: some tips about your kids and social media and your
Speaker 1: teens on their phones all the time, Larissa is going
Speaker 1: to offer some of the things that they talk about
Speaker 1: when it comes to that. Plus, we still got to
Speaker 1: talk about all this Apple stuff. New M three chips,
Speaker 1: a new iMac, new laptops, and their discontinuing one of
Speaker 1: their Apple music plans. You are listening to Rich on tech.
Speaker 1: We got plenty more show coming up. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out talking technology.
Speaker 1: We talked about Mint shutting down as of January. First,
Speaker 1: a lot of people use Mint for budgeting and also
Speaker 1: aggregation of all the different you know, financial accounts in
Speaker 1: one place. Got an email from Chuck. He said, Dave
Speaker 1: Ramsey's offering his every dollar for Mint users for two
Speaker 1: months for free. Go to everydollar dot com slash Mint.
Speaker 1: So every dollar, I think is free, but to get
Speaker 1: the real you know, to get the real use out
Speaker 1: of it, you do have to pay. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how much it is, but you can get two months
Speaker 1: for free of premium access if you go to that website.
Speaker 1: The one that I'm probably most interested in, quite honestly,
Speaker 1: is called Monarch. And the reason for that is because
Speaker 1: the I who was one of the first guys who
Speaker 1: started Mint is running Monarch now. And he says CEO
Speaker 1: says that Mint was free, but it made money by
Speaker 1: giving users financial offers which cause problems, and they don't,
Speaker 1: you know, into it doesn't need credit Mint anymore because
Speaker 1: they have credit karma. And they said that a free
Speaker 1: personal finance app doesn't work like the business model does
Speaker 1: not work. So that's why I'm noticing that all these
Speaker 1: apps that are replacing it are paid subscription apps. And
Speaker 1: so Monarch, which can import Mint data, says it's fifteen
Speaker 1: bucks a month. Wow, that's a lot. But it does
Speaker 1: have financial planning and other things. But yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: like you're gonna have to get a subscription if you
Speaker 1: want something that's really good. That's the way it's going. Remember,
Speaker 1: I consider this under that that umbrella of the free
Speaker 1: ride is over right. We used to have all these
Speaker 1: things for free in the online world, and now it's
Speaker 1: like not companies to make money. Let's go to Henry
Speaker 1: in I don't know if you're Louisiana or La Henry.
Speaker 1: You're on with Rich.
Speaker 9: Oh hi, Rich, Hang on a second.
Speaker 11: My name is Henry. I am from Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 11: I wanted to say hello.
Speaker 10: I had a question for you.
Speaker 11: I'm an older person, over sixty, and I had a
Speaker 11: small business in Los Angeles. I like a lot of people,
Speaker 11: I got crushed by COVID, and I went back to
Speaker 11: school a couple of years ago, and now I've graduated
Speaker 11: and I'm a computer technician. But I'm a little unsure
Speaker 11: which direction to go in, whether I should maybe look
Speaker 11: at big companies, smaller companies, or even starting a company
Speaker 11: in my own. So I wondered what your outlook was
Speaker 11: on the tech careers for newer people, but who are
Speaker 11: skilled in the next maybe twenty four months, Well, what kind.
Speaker 1: Of a computer technician? What kind of computer technician?
Speaker 11: A plus and network plus certified by COMPKIA.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, I mean, I think it really comes down
Speaker 1: to you already did the company thing, so do you
Speaker 1: want to do that again?
Speaker 8: Not necessarily.
Speaker 11: I'm retired as a chef with large contract theaters and
Speaker 11: I was kind of hoping to avoid the large company
Speaker 11: environment again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, you're starting something new, you're embarking
Speaker 1: on this new journey, and you've already done your own company.
Speaker 1: So you probably don't want to do that, because if
Speaker 1: you did, you probably wouldn't be calling me. I feel
Speaker 1: like you're you're you're in your heart of hearts, You're
Speaker 1: kind of I feel like, just given everything you've told me,
Speaker 1: you're leaning towards a smaller company. And I think what
Speaker 1: you're going to like about that is that it's going
Speaker 1: to be more hands on. It's going to be more
Speaker 1: human interface. You know, there's going to be more much
Speaker 1: more human interaction versus a large company where you may
Speaker 1: just be doing, you know, jobs for nameless, faceless both
Speaker 1: company and employees. You know, you may be just doing
Speaker 1: stuff for people who don't really know. And it sounds
Speaker 1: like you, based on what I'm hearing, since you went
Speaker 1: back to school, you took that initiative. It just sounds
Speaker 1: like you want to be a people person and you
Speaker 1: want to be interacting with maybe a smaller company that
Speaker 1: you get more hands on time with everything and more
Speaker 1: face to face time with everyone. So I think you're
Speaker 1: in a good place. I think that computer technology jobs
Speaker 1: are always very good. I think that the tech world
Speaker 1: we've definitely seen a little bit of a downturn recently,
Speaker 1: but a lot of that had to do with COVID
Speaker 1: and the fact that companies had a lot of extra
Speaker 1: people on the payrolls and they saw some efficiencies with
Speaker 1: AI and some of the new technologies that have come out,
Speaker 1: and you know, so we saw a little bit of
Speaker 1: a cleanup there. But you know, I think at the
Speaker 1: same time, moving forward, there's always going to be a
Speaker 1: need for people like you, and especially someone that I
Speaker 1: just just talking to you, it feels like you have
Speaker 1: that extra little bit of push, that extra little bit
Speaker 1: of you know, just that extra that that people want,
Speaker 1: that that really attracts people to you. And so I'm
Speaker 1: feeling you and I think that, uh, no matter what
Speaker 1: you're gonna do, you're gonna be successful in this second journey.
Speaker 1: But I say start with a smaller company. Start small,
Speaker 1: and if you don't like it, if you feel like
Speaker 1: you're too much, you know, boxed in, you can always
Speaker 1: go bigger. And you know the big the big companies
Speaker 1: have their pros too, but the small companies, I think
Speaker 1: in this, in this stage in life, I feel like
Speaker 1: you'll enjoy that a little bit more, especially as someone
Speaker 1: who's just starting out in this, uh, in this journey,
Speaker 1: in this role. But that's my advice. And I think
Speaker 1: that you know, when it comes to jobs and it
Speaker 1: comes to all this this job and career stuff, we
Speaker 1: have definitely seen through COVID. It's just talking about this
Speaker 1: with some friends. Everything changed, right, Like it used to
Speaker 1: be your work for company, You put in your time
Speaker 1: and you just kind of shut up about things, whether
Speaker 1: you liked it or not and you whether it was
Speaker 1: good for your personal uh you know, self value worth
Speaker 1: and feeling. You just kind of did what you did.
Speaker 1: And now that has all been kind of spun around.
Speaker 1: You know, when COVID hit people are working from home,
Speaker 1: they were reevaluating, they had the time to think about
Speaker 1: what they were doing on a daily basis, and they
Speaker 1: just realized, like, you know what, I want to be
Speaker 1: happy and work. And that was a major paradigm shift
Speaker 1: in our economy here. And I'm not saying everyone's able
Speaker 1: to just quit their job and you know, move on
Speaker 1: like that's not something that can be taken very lightly.
Speaker 1: People have you know, they have demands on them, they
Speaker 1: have responsibilities, they have families, they have loyalty. But you know,
Speaker 1: what we learned is that we want to feel better
Speaker 1: about what we're doing on a daily basis. And I
Speaker 1: think that you figured that out and you're going to
Speaker 1: move on into something that is, you know, a better
Speaker 1: fit for you now. And there's many people that are
Speaker 1: trying to do that. So I guess my advice is
Speaker 1: be happy. You should be happy. You should be happy
Speaker 1: doing what you do. I work six days a week,
Speaker 1: I am happy probably three of those six days nose
Speaker 1: you kidding, I've just seen if Bobo's listening. No, you
Speaker 1: should be happy. And there are days. Look, you're always
Speaker 1: gonna have a bad day everyone, we're all human. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have a bad day here and there. You're gonna
Speaker 1: be mad at your boss, You're gonna be frustrated. You're
Speaker 1: gonna come into work and say, I don't feel like
Speaker 1: doing this. That is human. That's why we're here. We
Speaker 1: interact with each other, we talk to each other. We're
Speaker 1: here to support each other. We're here to figure out
Speaker 1: the best role. But if you are just pushing papers
Speaker 1: and you are super unhappy at what you're doing, there's
Speaker 1: something better out there for you, guaranteed. Believe me, there
Speaker 1: are people at work really really hard in this world
Speaker 1: and they enjoy their time here and you just have
Speaker 1: to figure that out, thank you. And it's just a
Speaker 1: matter of figuring out. It's a process of you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it takes a little bit. And believe me, I
Speaker 1: had my sister, for instance, she was one of these
Speaker 1: executive types. She was, oh my gosh, she was doing
Speaker 1: great at the company she worked at, and she worked
Speaker 1: there for many, many years, I think over ten years
Speaker 1: and one day she woke up and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is not for me anymore. Like I love having
Speaker 1: my four oh one k I love having you know,
Speaker 1: the energy of opening up new stores and managing people
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, and it's great, and I love
Speaker 1: this company for ten years, but you know what I'm done,
Speaker 1: and now I'm going to do something that is more
Speaker 1: interesting to me as a human. And she dropped everything
Speaker 1: in the corporate world and went to personal training and
Speaker 1: health and as she found her own health journey, you
Speaker 1: know where she was drinking tons of coffee and eating
Speaker 1: donuts and all this stuff, and then just realize, you
Speaker 1: know what, I want to be healthier as a human.
Speaker 1: I want to help other people be healthier. And now
Speaker 1: she does personal training and she does nutrition coaching and
Speaker 1: all that stuff, and she loves it. And you know,
Speaker 1: the bad days are few and far between, because when
Speaker 1: you're doing something you love, it's really fun and you're smiling,
Speaker 1: and by the way, you bring other people into that energy.
Speaker 1: And so people always tell me when I'm doing this
Speaker 1: show and I'm on TV, like rich, I really like
Speaker 1: what you do. It's because I love it. I love
Speaker 1: helping you. Getting Stephanie to tell her story, getting you know,
Speaker 1: people to call in and explain what they're doing, and
Speaker 1: doing interviews, and it's all to help you. That is
Speaker 1: what I find the most interesting in this world is
Speaker 1: being that conduit to which you learn and to you
Speaker 1: feeling more confident about technology. I don't just sit here
Speaker 1: and tell you this stuff because I feel like it's
Speaker 1: interesting to me. No, I hope it's interesting to you,
Speaker 1: so that when you're out and you're out in the
Speaker 1: world and you're hanging out with your friends, and you're
Speaker 1: at your job and you're doing stuff or you might
Speaker 1: be getting scammed, you sit there and you say, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a second, I heard something about that. Why you know,
Speaker 1: I heard something about that plan changing, or I heard
Speaker 1: something about that app or I heard this can be easier.
Speaker 1: I heard this website that can make life better. So
Speaker 1: that's why I do this, And I hope that you
Speaker 1: find what you do in your world the same reasoning.
Speaker 1: Why do you do what you do? Sometimes we don't
Speaker 1: want to think about it because it gets scary because
Speaker 1: you think like, oh wow, I really don't like what
Speaker 1: I do and it's going to cause a big change
Speaker 1: in my life. And we get comfortable We're creatures of habit,
Speaker 1: we're humans. We like routine. I love routine. I love routine.
Speaker 1: I'm like a lot of people. If you put take
Speaker 1: me out of my routine when I travel, when I'm
Speaker 1: on the road, I'm out of my routine and I
Speaker 1: get thrown all out of sorts. But I still enjoy it.
Speaker 1: But yes, we all like our routines. We like getting up,
Speaker 1: we like having our coffee or whatever we do in
Speaker 1: the morning. We like, you know, watching TV at night,
Speaker 1: sitting on the couch. Like people like routine. It is
Speaker 1: tough for us to get out of that and to
Speaker 1: get out of our comfort zone is not easy. But again,
Speaker 1: sometimes you do have to take stock of what you're
Speaker 1: doing in this world and figure out is it for me?
Speaker 1: And you know, sometimes when you shake things up, it's
Speaker 1: the best thing you've ever done in your life. Believe me. Uh,
Speaker 1: the thing that you didn't think of sometimes is like
Speaker 1: the best solution of stuff anyway. Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: on one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. We'll take a few more calls. We've
Speaker 1: got some more guests, and I got to tell you
Speaker 1: what Apple announced this week, including new iMac new laptops
Speaker 1: in a new color. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology and some life advice. Apparently,
Speaker 1: Oh how that turned into such profound life advice eighty
Speaker 1: eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Email is still coming
Speaker 1: in about Mint in the replacement page, says, I like
Speaker 1: Simplify for my budgeting money manager. It's by Quickening and
Speaker 1: it is subscription, but it does not seem too outrageous.
Speaker 1: It gets good reviews from Wirecutter and PC mag And
Speaker 1: I thought Quicken was owned by into It, but guess what,
Speaker 1: they sold it in twenty sixteen. So that's interesting. So
Speaker 1: if you're looking, you know this is gonna be one
Speaker 1: of those things where you just have to kind of
Speaker 1: you have to try them out and see, like, look
Speaker 1: at the features before you sign up. Okay, it's two
Speaker 1: thirty nine a month. That's not too bad. And I
Speaker 1: like the fact that it right off the bat they
Speaker 1: tell you that it's gonna cost money because some look,
Speaker 1: if you're not paying for something, there is something that
Speaker 1: you are using. If you're not paying a fee for
Speaker 1: a service. You are the fee. Your data is the fee.
Speaker 1: So the fact that you're paying for this quick and
Speaker 1: simplify and you're paying right up front two dollars thirty
Speaker 1: nine cents a month, you know, it goes to show
Speaker 1: me that it's a quality product, because they're not just
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just a data play. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Lewis in Riverside, California. Lewis, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 10: Hey, thank you.
Speaker 9: Rich. Get a question.
Speaker 10: Phone switched from a Verizon under another carrier, and this
Speaker 10: is for like a kiddies. I'm basically like his uncle,
Speaker 10: his leather at diet and I got the phone all
Speaker 10: on and it has an activation lock. I haven't pressed
Speaker 10: any numbers because I know a lot of times it
Speaker 10: just gives you a limited number who tries to get
Speaker 10: the phone. The phone would be turned on if I
Speaker 10: could get past this activation lock.
Speaker 1: Any help, Rich, good question. So sorry to hear about
Speaker 1: the mom. That is unfortunate. I'm glad that you are
Speaker 1: stepping in here. Activation lock is a feature on the
Speaker 1: iPhone that basically prevents anyone else from using the iPhone
Speaker 1: or even iPad if it's lost or stolen.
Speaker 10: Yeah, here's what it says on the phone. It says
Speaker 10: activation lock prevents anyone who is not the owner from
Speaker 10: using this iPhone. Yep, yeah, unlock this iPhone. Enter the
Speaker 10: Apple ID and passwords that were used during setup.
Speaker 9: Yep.
Speaker 10: And I know sometimes have a phone, they'll have a
Speaker 10: factory set up. And the phone when I got it,
Speaker 10: it was dead.
Speaker 9: I charged it.
Speaker 10: Hey we get the kid, you know, get him back
Speaker 10: on where you can communicate, and uh, the phone was open.
Speaker 10: But then when I switched it over, now it has
Speaker 10: this And.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, now, where did you source this phone?
Speaker 1: This is the mom's phone. Yes, okay, so the login
Speaker 1: will be her login. So if you have access to
Speaker 1: her login, that's the only way to get this activation
Speaker 1: lock removed.
Speaker 10: Okay, do you have We don't. And if we don't
Speaker 10: have that log in or can't find it, I mean
Speaker 10: one of the things, uh, you know, I thought maybe
Speaker 10: she would want to keep her her her her son
Speaker 10: from you know, you know, getting into the phone, and
Speaker 10: I you know, I don't know if you know, we
Speaker 10: have that information anywhere or not, or if we would
Speaker 10: be able to access it anyway, because you know, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, she's no longer with us. Well that that is,
Speaker 1: that is what you have to do. So the way
Speaker 1: the activation lock works is that when you when you
Speaker 1: sign up for an iPhone, when you log in for
Speaker 1: the first time, it links that iPhone's basically it's serial number,
Speaker 1: it's IEMI like everything that that makes that iPhone unique.
Speaker 1: It links that to that iCloud account. And so the
Speaker 1: reason they do that is and this is why I
Speaker 1: always say you should never steal an iPhone because you'll
Speaker 1: never be able to use it. It's literally locked to
Speaker 1: buy Apple. And if you activate an iPhone, you'll see
Speaker 1: it says activating and so what that means is it's
Speaker 1: linking that account to that phone. So if someone else
Speaker 1: tries to use it or tries to steal it, they
Speaker 1: just won't be able to use it. And that's what's
Speaker 1: happening here. She've got to figure out either look in
Speaker 1: the records, if she left any records, and you can
Speaker 1: see if the password is in there. Maybe the son
Speaker 1: knew the mom's password. And you know, by the way,
Speaker 1: if it's a delicate time right now, you know, if
Speaker 1: this just happened, maybe wait a little bit, but you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's really what you need to do is figure
Speaker 1: out her log in information for iCloud, and that's the
Speaker 1: only way that you're going to be able to get
Speaker 1: this phone up and running for another person. Now, the
Speaker 1: other thing you may be able to do, you may
Speaker 1: be able to contact Apple and explain the situation. They
Speaker 1: do have. They do have provisions for people that pass away,
Speaker 1: and there are I believe that you may be able
Speaker 1: to contact them and show them, you know, a death
Speaker 1: certificate or something like that. That may help. But I
Speaker 1: don't know if that would work in this case, but
Speaker 1: it may. But that's something that you, you know, you
Speaker 1: can look on Apple Support, Apple dot com. You can
Speaker 1: check to see if they have anything about that. But
Speaker 1: that's really the best way to do it. There's no
Speaker 1: way to just clear this phone off. There's no way
Speaker 1: this phone is going to work without having that that
Speaker 1: log in, because that was that's the only way to
Speaker 1: decouple it from her account and sign it up fresh
Speaker 1: under a new account. Thanks for the question, Lewis, appreciate
Speaker 1: the call today. By the way, speaking of Apple quietly
Speaker 1: discontinued their five dollars a month Apple Voice Apple Music
Speaker 1: Voice plan. This was a plan that they introduced a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, twenty twenty one, this was a
Speaker 1: plan that you can access Apple Music exclusively through Siri.
Speaker 1: So they said, you know what, we'll charge you less
Speaker 1: five bucks a month, but you can only ask for
Speaker 1: music via Siri and you could not manually open the
Speaker 1: Apple Music app. You couldn't add songs to your library
Speaker 1: or do anything with this voice plan. It was very limited.
Speaker 1: But now they're getting rid of it. So I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen if you have that Apple
Speaker 1: Voice music plan. I guess they're going to try to
Speaker 1: charge you ten ninety nine a month.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 1: Maybe they'll grandfather you in for a little bit, but
Speaker 1: no more Apple Music Voice. I guess people didn't like
Speaker 1: accessing Apple Music with their voice. Coming up, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about teens and online safety and social media,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff you're listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking
Speaker 1: technology with you, and my guest is Larissa May, a
Speaker 1: digital wellness activist and founder of Half the Story, a
Speaker 1: nonprofit dedicated to empowering the next generation's healthy relationship with
Speaker 1: social media. They definitely need that. Larissa, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today.
Speaker 13: Thank you for hosting me.
Speaker 1: So give me a little background on yourself. Why did
Speaker 1: you start this, and uh, what's the goal?
Speaker 7: I started half the story eight years ago as the
Speaker 7: first you thought organization tackling the intersection of mental health
Speaker 7: and tech because of my own negative experience with social
Speaker 7: media when I was in college, I almost lost my
Speaker 7: life due to my very toxic relationship with technology mixed
Speaker 7: with my depression. I saw that after going through treatment
Speaker 7: that they asked me about physical wellness, sexual wellness, but
Speaker 7: they never asked me about the drug in my pocket.
Speaker 7: So I started to ask the hard questions about technology
Speaker 7: and mental health and wanted to build an organization that
Speaker 7: would give the next generations the tools that they needed
Speaker 7: to emotionally thrive in the digital age.
Speaker 1: So what do you think now, having gone through all
Speaker 1: of that, what do you think is the problem? Like?
Speaker 1: What do you do You feel like there is a
Speaker 1: huge issue with this in our society?
Speaker 13: Yeah, well, I think there's really two major problems.
Speaker 7: One is that there's then virtually no regulation or systems
Speaker 7: in place to ensure that technology is safe for young minds.
Speaker 7: And on the flip side, kids that are getting on
Speaker 7: technology are not cognitively ready to really engage with the
Speaker 7: amount of content that's coming at them, and the algorithms
Speaker 7: are really manipulating and taking advantage of our most vulnerable minds,
Speaker 7: and so it's really a bifurcated issue. And I believe
Speaker 7: that if there is change in the actual infrastructure and
Speaker 7: design of the tech, while the next generation also gets
Speaker 7: to tips and tools that they need to have agency empowerment,
Speaker 7: we can perhaps build a better world.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like companies care, the tech companies about this.
Speaker 7: I think that they have to care because there's actually
Speaker 7: a business case for caring when you think about the
Speaker 7: next generation of consumers and where they're going to be
Speaker 7: placing their trust in their time, that transparency and care,
Speaker 7: especially for mental health is so critical, especially amongst gen ZZ.
Speaker 7: I think that right now with the amount of lawsuits
Speaker 7: that are happening. I'm sure you just saw the amount
Speaker 7: of state surgeon generals that sued META.
Speaker 13: There is a lot of money on the line when it.
Speaker 7: Comes to all of these lawsuits, and it's going to
Speaker 7: be an everyone's best interest to start making compromises and
Speaker 7: just building better tech from the start.
Speaker 1: So first off, I guess what for parents, you know,
Speaker 1: because they see their kids on this stuff that kids
Speaker 1: are begging them to have it, you know, or they
Speaker 1: just sign up for it and the parents just give
Speaker 1: it to them. Whatever. So I guess what is kind
Speaker 1: of like the first step to all this? Do the
Speaker 1: parents need to know more about this? They to be
Speaker 1: concerned about social media?
Speaker 7: Yeah, First and foremost, I would say for any parent
Speaker 7: that's listening, the longer you can wait for your child
Speaker 7: to get a screen, the better. Their brains are just
Speaker 7: literally not wired to deal with what technology is creating,
Speaker 7: and it's taking advantage of the Olympic system and the
Speaker 7: very emotional part of their brains. So the more that
Speaker 7: you can keep them away from it, the better, I
Speaker 7: would say. The second thing is that the reality is
Speaker 7: if your kid already has a device, the abstinence idea
Speaker 7: doesn't really work, and you need to be able to
Speaker 7: engage your kid and really get curious about what is
Speaker 7: supporting them, what they like on technology versus what's hurting them,
Speaker 7: and set radical boundaries within your household and actually lead
Speaker 7: by example. So many parents come to us wanting to
Speaker 7: figure out how to fix their kids, but they're the
Speaker 7: ones that are on the phone at the dinner table,
Speaker 7: are going to bed with their partner with their screens.
Speaker 7: So you really have to set that example from the start.
Speaker 7: And the last thing I would say is really teach
Speaker 7: your kids how to unhaf their tech. I mean, tech
Speaker 7: was built to hack their minds, but there are things
Speaker 7: that you can do to build speed bumps, their stopping
Speaker 7: cues into your phone to help your kid at least
Speaker 7: deal with the amount of cognitive load that they're experiencing.
Speaker 1: And what are some of those things, like what tell me? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I feel, you know, you keep saying young people,
Speaker 1: but by the way, I feel like this is I mean,
Speaker 1: I understand that it specifically targets young people and their
Speaker 1: brains are a little bit different than you know, older people,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I see this problem across
Speaker 1: all ages. I mean, I think young people are really affected,
Speaker 1: but there are many adults that are negatively affected by
Speaker 1: the things that they see on social media, whether it is,
Speaker 1: you know, they're jealous of what their friends are doing,
Speaker 1: or they feel left out if they see something. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of that.
Speaker 13: I think you're spot on, and this is something that's
Speaker 13: impacting all of us.
Speaker 7: Ultimately, human brains were not built for technology, but in
Speaker 7: the last twenty years we've really been forced to evolve
Speaker 7: with it, and it's a real consideration. I think for
Speaker 7: us as an organization, the reason why we focus on
Speaker 7: young minds is because we feel like we're able to
Speaker 7: make the most amount of impact pre deviced or right
Speaker 7: as a child is getting a device for the first time.
Speaker 7: But it's certainly something that's impacting all of humanity, especially
Speaker 7: as now we're entering into the era of regenerative generative AI,
Speaker 7: which is completely changing the landscape and is almost like
Speaker 7: our next Internet revolution.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you mentioned the roadblocks and you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: parents kind of like leading by example, can you give
Speaker 1: some specifics on like do we use like this the
Speaker 1: app settings to like you know, set timers, is it
Speaker 1: screen time? Like what can we do?
Speaker 7: Yeah, So, first and foremost, for any parent that has
Speaker 7: a kid on social media, I would advise that you
Speaker 7: actually subscribe to Google, r It's and all of the
Speaker 7: blogs of the social platform that your kid is on.
Speaker 7: There are a lot of safety actually a lot of
Speaker 7: safety tools that the platforms have been created, but they
Speaker 7: don't really do a great job at marketing them, so
Speaker 7: parents don't use them. We are actually at a research
Speaker 7: conference this week and one of the major platforms reported
Speaker 7: that less than ten percent of parents that have kids
Speaker 7: on the platforms are actually taking advantage of the safety
Speaker 7: features or teaching their kids how to use them. So first,
Speaker 7: make sure you're up to date on what the platforms
Speaker 7: have in place to make it at least a little
Speaker 7: bit better of an experience. The second thing that you
Speaker 7: can do as a parent is to give your kids
Speaker 7: tools to help them with navigating this. And so there's
Speaker 7: two really great apps that I use. One is called
Speaker 7: the one SEC app. The other is called the Opal app,
Speaker 7: and the one SEC app actually gets really slows down,
Speaker 7: so if your kid opens an app, it doesn't just
Speaker 7: open the app. It actually creates a bit of a
Speaker 7: delay and gets your kid to really think about why
Speaker 7: they're opening that app and to answer that question, to
Speaker 7: build that speed bump or to slow that down before
Speaker 7: they're just mindlessly opening the platform. The Opal app is
Speaker 7: a great tool for both mobile and desktop that allows
Speaker 7: you to block certain apps at certain time of the
Speaker 7: day and make that routine so that you can wake
Speaker 7: up and count on the fact that all your social
Speaker 7: platforms will be blocked.
Speaker 13: So those are two tools that I really like to use.
Speaker 7: But lastly, you know, some of the simple things that
Speaker 7: you can do are hiding your social media apps far
Speaker 7: back in your phone if you have an iPhone, you know,
Speaker 7: putting as many of them as possible into one of
Speaker 7: those little square pods and putting that a couple uh
Speaker 7: slides back, so that you really have to think and
Speaker 7: you really have to ask.
Speaker 13: Yourself about why you're getting on your attack before you
Speaker 13: do it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So again, the apps are one sec oh any
Speaker 1: sack sec and then opal O p A L. And
Speaker 1: I'm looking at these and you know, I've covered tech
Speaker 1: for a while and I these are great. I mean
Speaker 1: they look like I love the idea, and I do
Speaker 1: one hundred percent agree. It's all about like, if you
Speaker 1: put these apps front and center on your phone, you
Speaker 1: know you're going to be on them a lot. You're
Speaker 1: going to be consuming them a lot because it's just
Speaker 1: when you're you know, you have a free minute, you're
Speaker 1: going to open them up. And that's just human nature. Okay.
Speaker 1: So you also have see the government intervention. So what
Speaker 1: specific kind of like changes would you like to see
Speaker 1: implemented for all this? Do you think it's a government thing.
Speaker 7: I mean, right now, we're basically giving kids keys to
Speaker 7: a car that haven't been tested or don't have a
Speaker 7: seat belt. So I think that if the average American
Speaker 7: team is going to be spending eight hours of their
Speaker 7: day behind the screen, there has to be some level
Speaker 7: of accountability in systems because right now there is no
Speaker 7: incentive for these companies to really build tech safer other
Speaker 7: than that maybe you know, they want to have brand
Speaker 7: trust with the next generation.
Speaker 13: But there needs to be some tracks and balances.
Speaker 7: And so, for example, one of the things that we
Speaker 7: worked on in California that just passed a couple of
Speaker 7: weeks ago, actually make social media platforms remove any sexual
Speaker 7: abuse content that's on the platform of minors. Fifty five
Speaker 7: percent of sex trafficking cases of adolescence in California happened
Speaker 7: through the Internet, and up until a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 7: you know, that content was roaming freely. If any of
Speaker 7: that content was reported to the social platforms, they weren't
Speaker 7: required to do anything. But now they have to respond
Speaker 7: within thirty six hours. So that's just like one example.
Speaker 7: You would be I hope anyone hearing this horrified that
Speaker 7: it took twenty years to pass something like that. But
Speaker 7: that's really the state that we're in as we think
Speaker 7: about the future. What I believe we need to start
Speaker 7: doing is actually adding more agency into the algorithmic processes,
Speaker 7: especially for young people. So for example, if a young
Speaker 7: person is struggling with their mental health and they don't
Speaker 7: have and their entire feed is bad mental health and
Speaker 7: things that are triggering them, but you're never asked to
Speaker 7: refresh your interests once you've actually logged onto a social platform.
Speaker 7: So I would like the government to be able to
Speaker 7: empower these social platforms to allow more agency amongst consumers
Speaker 7: when it comes to the algorithm, And to be honest,
Speaker 7: I think it's a happy middle ground between completely restricting
Speaker 7: the design and also giving the users more agency on
Speaker 7: their experience. And then you know, just on the third side,
Speaker 7: I think we need to be investing in more research
Speaker 7: and the government does outside of the social media platforms.
Speaker 7: There's more money inside the platforms with neuroscientists that are
Speaker 7: hooking kids than there is money flowing into the researchers
Speaker 7: outside of the platforms. Really understanding the implications of what
Speaker 7: technology is doing to young people and all minds.
Speaker 8: For that matter.
Speaker 1: That's because the one side that they're investing in is
Speaker 1: the one that provides the returns with the cash that
Speaker 1: they make. And so, and by the way, I love
Speaker 1: the idea of sort of a reset button on the
Speaker 1: social media networks, like for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, anything like
Speaker 1: TikTok YouTube like hey reset, reset my interests, let's start
Speaker 1: over here. Even the music services like that would be
Speaker 1: useful too. We only have a couple seconds here. Just
Speaker 1: how can parents spot this potential social media addiction or
Speaker 1: obsessive behavior?
Speaker 7: Yeah, so, problematic social media use typically is when your
Speaker 7: child is spending a lot of time alone, putting themselves
Speaker 7: in their room, replacing the basic human needs with screen time,
Speaker 7: showing signs withdrawals, almost like many mental illness symptoms. And
Speaker 7: so if your child is also visibly showing signs of
Speaker 7: distress when you remove their device, that's a sign that
Speaker 7: they probably have a problem.
Speaker 1: That's every kid, Larisa, We're gonna leave it there. And
Speaker 1: I don't say that lightly. I do think this is
Speaker 1: a major, major issue. And I'm not even sure as
Speaker 1: parents were equipped to necessarily handle all this. So thank
Speaker 1: you for your work with half the story the website.
Speaker 1: Half thestory Project dot Com. Thanks so much for joining
Speaker 1: me today. Thank you, Larisa May Coming up next, it's
Speaker 1: the feedback segment. Well, talk about everything that you sent
Speaker 1: me this week, the good, the bad, all the fun.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Rich on tech, Rich on tech, Rich
Speaker 1: Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology, closing out
Speaker 1: the show here, what a great show. I love the
Speaker 1: back and forth with you. That's the best part, not
Speaker 1: only the calls, but the emails, the tweets, the texts.
Speaker 1: Let's get through some news before we get to the
Speaker 1: feedback segment. Apple this week had a scary fast event.
Speaker 1: They announced the new generation M three chips, the three,
Speaker 1: the M three Pro, and the M three Max. These
Speaker 1: are all built using a three nanometer process. What does
Speaker 1: that mean, Well, they're faster and they're more efficient. So
Speaker 1: these things ever since Apple started making their own chips,
Speaker 1: they are just incredible. And this time around they include
Speaker 1: better support for like streaming video. So that means if
Speaker 1: you're watching a lot of YouTube or just any streaming,
Speaker 1: but I mean the websites that it supports, it will
Speaker 1: the battery will last even longer and it will be
Speaker 1: even more efficient. With that battery life is better too,
Speaker 1: up to twenty two hours now on the MacBook Pro,
Speaker 1: so that is quite incredible. So a couple of new
Speaker 1: computer they came out with these new chips. Let's start
Speaker 1: with the laptops MacBook Pro. They announced new fourteen and
Speaker 1: sixteen inch MacBook Pro models with the M three, M
Speaker 1: three Pro, and M three Max chips. They all have
Speaker 1: better performance over the previous chips. Of course, the M
Speaker 1: three fourteen inch starts at sixteen hundred, the M three
Speaker 1: Pro starts at nineteen ninety nine. M three Max starts
Speaker 1: at twenty five hundred dollars. They ship on November seventh,
Speaker 1: and they've got this new color, Space black, that is
Speaker 1: for the M three Pro Max models. So if you
Speaker 1: want a laptop that is space black, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: It's different, and I believe the last time they had
Speaker 1: a black laptop was like ten years ago or something
Speaker 1: like that. So they say the M three Max has
Speaker 1: eleven times faster performance than the Intel sixteen inch MacBook Pro.
Speaker 1: That's my old laptop which my son is still using,
Speaker 1: by the way, eleven times faster than that, that is
Speaker 1: just wild. Then they've got the new twenty four inch
Speaker 1: iMac with an M three Chip says it's two times
Speaker 1: faster than the M one iMac. So if you're looking
Speaker 1: at upgrade twice as fast, not too bad. Let's see
Speaker 1: two times faster, two and a half times faster than
Speaker 1: the twenty seven inch Intel Imax, which they didn't come
Speaker 1: out with the new twenty seven inch, which I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people are sad about. They want that
Speaker 1: bigger screen. This comes in seven colors, and let's see
Speaker 1: it now has Wi Fi six E, better Bluetooth, and
Speaker 1: up to four USBC Thunderbolt ports. It starts at twelve
Speaker 1: ninety nine. I'll just give you a word to the whys.
Speaker 1: Don't buy the base model of the iMac. It's usually
Speaker 1: better to get the one step up on that. A
Speaker 1: couple other things this week Zoomo Play, Xumo Play Play
Speaker 1: dot Zoomo dot com. I did not know about this service.
Speaker 1: I'm doing a story with Spectrum about their new Zoomo
Speaker 1: box and I stumbled upon this website. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like Pluto TV and all those free ad supported websites.
Speaker 1: You can watch two hundred and ninety channels and it
Speaker 1: does not require an account. Works on mobile devices, smart TVs, Roku, Fire, TV,
Speaker 1: whole bunch of stuff you can watch for free. Zuomo
Speaker 1: Play search it. It's pretty cool. I gotta say, it's
Speaker 1: like two B or Pluto, and it's just one more
Speaker 1: option for free stuff with all these streaming services costing
Speaker 1: more lately, Samsung, if you're thinking of getting the new phone,
Speaker 1: you might want to wait. S twenty four might come
Speaker 1: out even earlier this year. A new report from South
Speaker 1: Korea says Samsung's going to launch the Galaxy S twenty
Speaker 1: four on January seventeenth. Last year, it was February first.
Speaker 1: They just keep making this earlier and earlier every year,
Speaker 1: So January seventeenth the rumored launch event for the next
Speaker 1: S twenty four. This is their flagship phone, and supposedly
Speaker 1: it's going to have a titanium frame just like the
Speaker 1: iPhone fifteen Pro, and it's going to have a lot
Speaker 1: of AI features, so we'll see. And then finally, Apple Arcade.
Speaker 1: Eight new games coming to Apple Arcade this holiday season,
Speaker 1: including Disney Dreamlight, Valley Arcade, Football Manager twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: Touch Sonic Dream Puzzles, and Dragons. There's gonna be updates
Speaker 1: and the app that I downloaded already, which is available
Speaker 1: if you pay for Apple Arcade is called Let's see
Speaker 1: what is this called? It's called oh not word knot,
Speaker 1: so I was already playing that. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: a little crossword puzzle game. So that's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: All right, Let's get to some feedback before the show ends.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 1: Nonny says, hey, Rich, I just listened to your podcast,
Speaker 1: and if Seinfeld had a tech podcast, it would be you.
Speaker 1: I say that since you brought up how at the
Speaker 1: concert you went to, we all suspend the price of
Speaker 1: twenty two dollars beers and nine dollars pretzels. I really
Speaker 1: enjoy your rants and raves on my monologue. You're a
Speaker 1: great replacement. Thanks and keep up the good shows. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Nanny via Instagram. Appreciate that Demiro Seinfeld. I never thought
Speaker 1: of myself as Seinfeld, but I'll take it. I totally will.
Speaker 1: I totally have that sense of humor. Cassandra says, I
Speaker 1: truly enjoy listening to your show on set Saturdays on
Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty. It is such an informative and
Speaker 1: entertaining way to learn more about tech and the best
Speaker 1: ways to navigate through everyday issues. Cassandra, thank you. Cassandra
Speaker 1: and let's see. Oh and we'll end with a Karen
Speaker 1: or no, her name is Karen. Love your show, but
Speaker 1: heard your response to the person who wanted to use
Speaker 1: the bark stopping gadget on our neighbor's dogs. Sadly, speaking
Speaker 1: with your neighbor first can often backfire with them getting
Speaker 1: totally aggressive and combat combative. Both of my kids have
Speaker 1: neighbors with horrible barking dogs. They tried one of these
Speaker 1: gadgets and they totally worked brilliantly. I would just say,
Speaker 1: you know, talk to someone that knows something about animals,
Speaker 1: because I don't know how safe these things are. All right,
Speaker 1: if you can believe it, that's going to do it.
Speaker 1: For this episode of the show. You can find links
Speaker 1: to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to
Speaker 1: rich on tech dot tv. You can find me on
Speaker 1: social media at rich on tech. Next week we'll talk Apple,
Speaker 1: we'll talk Amazon and some new cars. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for listening. There are so many ways you can spend
Speaker 1: your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here
Speaker 1: with me. My name is rich Tdimiro. I will talk
Speaker 1: to you real soon.