Speaker 1: If you purchased a vast anti virus, you might have
Speaker 1: some money coming your way. What to look for in
Speaker 1: your inbox. Microsoft is one step closer to killing passwords
Speaker 1: for good. I'll tell you what's taking over. Google is
Speaker 1: pulling the plug on older Nest thermostats. What you need
Speaker 1: to know before your smart home gets left behind. Plus
Speaker 1: your tech questions answered. What's going on. I'm Rich Dmiro
Speaker 1: and this is Rich on Tech. This is the show
Speaker 1: where I talk about the tech stuff I think you
Speaker 1: should know about. It's also the place where I answer
Speaker 1: your questions about technology. Thanks for tuning in on radio
Speaker 1: stations across the country the podcast and streaming Rich on
Speaker 1: Tech weekly on the KTLA plus app. You know that
Speaker 1: I believe tech should be interesting, useful and fun. Let's
Speaker 1: open up those phone lines at triple A rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one, triple A rich one O one,
Speaker 1: give me a coffee a question about technology. Email is
Speaker 1: also open. Just go to Rich on Tech dot tv
Speaker 1: and hit contact.
Speaker 2: Guests.
Speaker 1: This week Stephen Johnson. He is with Google Labs. He'll
Speaker 1: talk about the latest updates to Notebook LM. If you
Speaker 1: haven't tried this. You are gonna love it. It's super cool.
Speaker 1: Google's AI powered research and writing tool helps you organize
Speaker 1: and understand information faster.
Speaker 2: It's got a really cool feature you're gonna love.
Speaker 1: Then later in the show, we've got Harry Campbell, founder
Speaker 1: of The Rideshare Guy. He's going to join us to
Speaker 1: break down the latest in the gig economy, from Uber
Speaker 1: and Lyft to delivery apps, robotaxis and beyond. Did you
Speaker 1: know if you subscribe to YouTube Premium on the website,
Speaker 1: it's fourteen dollars, but if you did that same subscription
Speaker 1: on your iPhone it would cost you nineteen dollars a month.
Speaker 1: Did you know you can't subscribe to Netflix at all
Speaker 1: on your iPhone? Why? Well, it's all because Apple has
Speaker 1: a very sophisticated system for making money off of in
Speaker 1: app purchases and subscriptions on the iPhone that developers have
Speaker 1: always had sort of a love hate relationship with. And
Speaker 1: this week was a big turning point for that system
Speaker 1: because Apple lost a big court case and it might
Speaker 1: mean you could save some money and things might become
Speaker 1: easier but also harder on the iPhone. Let me explain
Speaker 1: what happened. So Apple, a judge ruled that they violated
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty one court order that required them to
Speaker 1: allow third party payment links and apps. What does this mean, Well,
Speaker 1: it means that when you go to subscribe to something
Speaker 1: on an app, or maybe do an in app purchase,
Speaker 1: sometimes developers wanted to be able to show you your options.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could use PayPal to pay, Maybe you can
Speaker 1: use a third party website to pay, and all of
Speaker 1: that might be cheaper than using Apple's payment method, which
Speaker 1: is just you know, double clicking that button on the
Speaker 1: side of your phone and using your linked credit card.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty one, a judge rule that Apple had
Speaker 1: to let developers include buttons or links inside their apps
Speaker 1: that would let you know about these options, basically giving
Speaker 1: you a way to pay without going through Apple system.
Speaker 1: But Apple never really followed through or at least made
Speaker 1: it really hard and confusing for developers to implement. This
Speaker 1: was not very good for consumers. A judge this week
Speaker 1: rule that Apple willfully ignored the order and even referred
Speaker 1: the case to federal prosecutors for possible criminal contempt. Now,
Speaker 1: this judge did not hold back at all. She said
Speaker 1: Apple deliberately tried to protect its revenue stream by dragging
Speaker 1: its feet, and she even said an Apple executive lied
Speaker 1: under oath. That's really serious stuff. Now here's what Apple did.
Speaker 1: They tried to sneak in a twenty seven percent commission
Speaker 1: on purchases made outside the app store, and she said, no,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. That is now. So Apple kind
Speaker 1: of created their own workaround. So if you make a
Speaker 1: purchase inside the iPhone through one of these apps on
Speaker 1: the iPhone, Apple takes a thirty percent cut. Now, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's lower based on how much volume the app developers doing.
Speaker 1: But you know, these developers have always had sort of,
Speaker 1: like I said, a love hate relationship with this. If
Speaker 1: you're a small developer, sure, you make an app, you
Speaker 1: can make a million bucks by a bunch of people
Speaker 1: subscribing to that app, You're more than happy to pay
Speaker 1: Apple thirty percent of that. But once you're a big developer,
Speaker 1: like a Netflix or a Spotify or a YouTube, you
Speaker 1: don't really like paying that thirty percent over and over
Speaker 1: and over. So here's the deal going forward. Developers starting
Speaker 1: basically now, can include links in their iPhone apps that
Speaker 1: lead to cheaper subscription options on the web. So that
Speaker 1: means before, if you went to subscribe to something, developers
Speaker 1: really couldn't tell you that there was a cheaper way
Speaker 1: to do it. They just had to play the game.
Speaker 1: Right now they can say, hey, look, you can subscribe
Speaker 1: through iTunes it's very easy. Or you can go to
Speaker 1: our website. You can subscribe that way and save a
Speaker 1: couple bucks per month. Before they weren't even allowed to
Speaker 1: tell you that. Now, not only can they tell you that,
Speaker 1: they can also directly link to these other options.
Speaker 2: So what's happening? Immediately?
Speaker 1: Spotify and Patreon already said, you know what, we love this.
Speaker 1: We are rolling out app updates to take advantage of
Speaker 1: these new rules. Now I expect many other big apps
Speaker 1: to quickly follow, because why, it saves them thirty percent
Speaker 1: just by updating their app. Now, when it comes to
Speaker 1: smaller developers, they'll probably just stick with what they've got
Speaker 1: because it works and thirty percent of whatever they're doing
Speaker 1: on the App Store is probably not that big of
Speaker 1: a deal for them. And also Apple gives them the
Speaker 1: entree to millions of users, So they sort of like that,
Speaker 1: where did this all stem from? This all stem from Fortnite?
Speaker 1: They battled Apple in a very big way. Starting in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, they basically had been banned from the App
Speaker 1: Store because they challenged Apple over all these payment policies.
Speaker 1: They tried to put in their app, these external payment
Speaker 1: methods and options, and Apple said, uh ah, not so fast,
Speaker 1: you can't do that, and so they were banned from
Speaker 1: the App Store, and then they sued Apple, and this
Speaker 1: has been going on and on for many years. But
Speaker 1: now the court has sided with Epic once again, and
Speaker 1: the game is going to come back to the iPhone,
Speaker 1: So sort of a full circle moment. Apple for its part,
Speaker 1: of course, as you might expect, is appealing this decision,
Speaker 1: but they are complying in the meantime. So they said
Speaker 1: they totally disagree with this, as you might expect. I mean,
Speaker 1: they've built up this big system. They're not going to
Speaker 1: agree with this in a public way, but they know
Speaker 1: that the walls of this app store couldn't last forever.
Speaker 1: But it means that Apple is going to try to
Speaker 1: continue to fight this and protect what they've built. Now,
Speaker 1: for you, the consumer, what does this mean. It means
Speaker 1: that you might see lower prices for some of the
Speaker 1: apps that you subscribe to. It might seem it might
Speaker 1: mean that you'll see different options for some of the
Speaker 1: apps that you subscribe to, but there is also a
Speaker 1: risk for you as well. Now, when you were subscribing
Speaker 1: to all of these things through Apple, you did have
Speaker 1: a few advantages, right. Number one, it was easy. All
Speaker 1: you had to do is have one card linked to
Speaker 1: your Apple account. You could subscribe to all of this stuff.
Speaker 1: You can easily unsubscribe. It was very protective of your
Speaker 1: personal privacy. Now that is all up in the air.
Speaker 1: Now you are going to have to keep track of
Speaker 1: how you subscribe to things, right, so you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to decide do I want to use this credit card?
Speaker 1: Do I want to use that credit card? Also, not
Speaker 1: every app is going to have the same payment flow.
Speaker 1: Some of them are going to use PayPal, some of
Speaker 1: them are going to have you go directly to their
Speaker 1: website to put your information in there, And not all
Speaker 1: of them have the same privacy implications that Apple had.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to keeping track of your subscriptions
Speaker 1: and unsubscribing, that's also going to be a whole new
Speaker 1: thing because now you're going to have to keep track
Speaker 1: of your subscriptions on your own. You're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to see them all in one list inside your
Speaker 1: settings on the iPhone. So again pros and cons for
Speaker 1: all of this. This This is such an interesting change
Speaker 1: for the App Store and for Apple because you know
Speaker 1: they don't want to do this, but it is a
Speaker 1: win for competition. It could force Apple to improve some
Speaker 1: of its policies over time, so they may say, hey, look,
Speaker 1: we're going to charge some of these bigger developers less money.
Speaker 1: We're not going to charge in some of these other aspects.
Speaker 1: But right now the App Store is very it's a
Speaker 1: very inside baseball kind of place, right A lot of
Speaker 1: this is mysterious. A lot of these deals that they
Speaker 1: have with these big developers, we're not really sure how
Speaker 1: it works. And when it comes to the consumer, it
Speaker 1: has always been easy to subscribe, but you don't really
Speaker 1: know what's going on in the background. And I think
Speaker 1: that this marks a major shift for Apple when it
Speaker 1: comes to the way that we deal with the App Store,
Speaker 1: and for them, you have to understand where they're coming from.
Speaker 1: They built this entire system from the ground up. Right
Speaker 1: before the App Store, there was no way of purchasing
Speaker 1: apps in a safe, private method on a phone, and
Speaker 1: this has made many developers rich over the years. It
Speaker 1: has made very many developers, it has built their names
Speaker 1: over the years. I mean, think about it. You can
Speaker 1: come from nowhere, build an app, publish it to the
Speaker 1: App Store, get some buzz behind it, and now you
Speaker 1: are a success story. And Apple has paid out billions
Speaker 1: of dollars over the years to independent developers for what
Speaker 1: they've built on the App Store. But it has always
Speaker 1: been kind of a push and pull situation because when
Speaker 1: you're a small developer, it's great, you're using the App
Speaker 1: Store to your advantage. Right, you're one person, you get
Speaker 1: access to millions, if not, you know, hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of iPhone users. But if you're a big developer like Netflix,
Speaker 1: you're saying, hold on, people already know about Netflix, they
Speaker 1: already know how to subscribe, they already know how to
Speaker 1: find us. The iPhone is just one way of accessing
Speaker 1: our system. So you're not making us or breaking us.
Speaker 1: And that's why a lot of these big developers have
Speaker 1: not enabled in app purchases for their subscriptions. Like Netflix,
Speaker 1: you can only sign in even with Amazon, if you
Speaker 1: look at the Kindle long time ago, they took away
Speaker 1: the ability to purchase Kindle books on the iPhone. I
Speaker 1: remember this when I was selling my book. It was
Speaker 1: so complicated to tell people how to purchase my book
Speaker 1: if you were buying it from an iPhone, the most
Speaker 1: popular device in the world. Why because Kindle Amazon did
Speaker 1: not want to give thirty percent of every ebook purchase
Speaker 1: to Apple just for the ability for people to buy
Speaker 1: their book there. So this is an ongoing thing right now.
Speaker 1: This does mark a major shift in the way business
Speaker 1: is done on the iPhone. I am sure Apple executives
Speaker 1: are not very happy about this. For consumers, Like I said,
Speaker 1: it is a mixed bag. It's somewhat good, it's somewhat
Speaker 1: bad in other so we'll continue to follow this. I
Speaker 1: think that this is not the end of this situation,
Speaker 1: but just the beginning, all right. Eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one O one eight eight eight seven four two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. Website for the show rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. If you got a question for me, give
Speaker 1: me a call. More rich on Tech coming your way
Speaker 1: right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one, the website for the
Speaker 1: show rich on tech dot TV. There you can get
Speaker 1: notes to everything I talk about, and you can read
Speaker 1: this week's newsletter. It's all posted at richon tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Mark in San Diego. Mark, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich.
Speaker 4: Well, Hi, Rich, great show.
Speaker 5: I appreciate you taking a call.
Speaker 4: I have an older pixel for a I really love
Speaker 4: the phone because it a little smaller. I had a
Speaker 4: new battery put in it, you know, like last year,
Speaker 4: and it's working great again. But now of a sudden,
Speaker 4: my GPS doesn't work. And I've done all the software
Speaker 4: fixes and all the tricks that everybody you know mentions,
Speaker 4: but it seems like it's a hardware issue, like something
Speaker 4: internally has failed. The rest of the phone works fine,
Speaker 4: but I'm just wondering cannot be fixed? Or two should
Speaker 4: I just get a new phone?
Speaker 5: Or three?
Speaker 4: Should I buy a standalone GPS? Because I really like
Speaker 4: this phone. I'd like to stay with something similar to
Speaker 4: it in size.
Speaker 1: What was the what are the option? What did you try?
Speaker 1: What did you try to do on the phone? You
Speaker 1: said you try to.
Speaker 4: I did all the things where you go into your
Speaker 4: settings and you know, update, you know, location, and exact location.
Speaker 4: And there's numerous tricks out there that say, you know,
Speaker 4: tell you what to do, and I've done them all.
Speaker 5: If I even had a.
Speaker 4: Google Chat and I went through all the steps with
Speaker 4: them and it it still doesn't work. And I did
Speaker 4: download the GPS test. Yeah, I think I heard about
Speaker 4: it possibly on your show, and it just doesn't recognize
Speaker 4: any of the satellites. Just nothing interesting any of them.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I mean it's a great phone. It's had
Speaker 1: a good run. I think that if if this GPS,
Speaker 1: if Google, you know, if you talk to them and
Speaker 1: they weren't able to figure out what's happening with it.
Speaker 1: The only other suggestion I would say, the only thing
Speaker 1: you know, it sounds like it's a hardware issue. Does
Speaker 1: sound like something has failed inside this phone. The only
Speaker 1: other thing I would say is go into your settings
Speaker 1: and then go into let's see system and then at
Speaker 1: the bottom you've got the reset options. So you've got
Speaker 1: reset mobile network settings, reset Bluetooth and Wi Fi. So
Speaker 1: I would try those two options as kind of like
Speaker 1: their last ditch effort to get this thing to work.
Speaker 1: And then if that doesn't work and you still want
Speaker 1: to keep this phone, you might just try a factory reset,
Speaker 1: just to like see if something is impeding the GPS
Speaker 1: on this device. You changed some sort of setting, but
Speaker 1: it sounds like you've kind of exhausted all of those options.
Speaker 2: So this phone's been around for a while.
Speaker 1: It's been it was released in twenty twenty, so it's
Speaker 1: not getting any software updates. The software support from Google
Speaker 1: ended almost two years ago on this This was before
Speaker 1: Google started doing seven years of updates for their Pixel
Speaker 1: line of phones. So my advice is to do that first. Try,
Speaker 1: you know, exhaust all the software options. If it still
Speaker 1: doesn't work, you could take it to a place like
Speaker 1: you Break I Fix and see if they you know,
Speaker 1: they'll give you a free estimate on what it would
Speaker 1: take to fix it. But honestly, I think that that
Speaker 1: even if you spent one hundred dollars on this phone,
Speaker 1: I think that's too much to fix this. At that point,
Speaker 1: I would recommend they just came out with the Pixel
Speaker 1: nine A. I've got it in my hand right now,
Speaker 1: I've been testing it. It's a fantast a little phone.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure of the screen size of the Pixel
Speaker 1: nine A versus the Pixel four A. It might be
Speaker 1: a little bit bigger. Let's see, I'm gonna see if
Speaker 1: I can find this screen size online here. It's always
Speaker 1: so tough to type in when i'm let's see five
Speaker 1: point eight versus six point three. Okay, so it is
Speaker 1: considerably bigger. But I will tell you I think that
Speaker 1: the phones have gotten a lot smaller in the hand,
Speaker 1: so I think you'll you'll probably still be okay with
Speaker 1: the size of this new phone. Like, this thing fits
Speaker 1: perfectly in my hand. It is such a great size.
Speaker 1: So that phone is four hundred ninety nine dollars. I
Speaker 1: would say, if you, you know, if you want to
Speaker 1: get this thing, get it now. But I would expect
Speaker 1: the price on the Pixel nine A to drop two
Speaker 1: about three ninety nine on sale, or at least four
Speaker 1: point fifty on another you know, if it goes on
Speaker 1: maybe not the best the biggest sale, like maybe it
Speaker 1: might drop fifty to one hundred dollars. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say here. But I think that's probably your
Speaker 1: best bet at this point. Mark, you've had this phone
Speaker 1: for a long time, You've tried all the things. I
Speaker 1: don't think your solution the third solution you mentioned, which
Speaker 1: is getting a standalone GPS absolutely not. Not In this
Speaker 1: day and age, we rely on GPS way too much
Speaker 1: to have to have such a limitation on your GPS
Speaker 1: to being in just a car or a separate device.
Speaker 1: So I'd say go with the Pixel nine A. It's
Speaker 1: a great phone. It's got all the latest software on it,
Speaker 1: it's got all the latest AI stuff, it's got the
Speaker 1: latest camera. So I think you're going to be much
Speaker 1: better off putting your money towards that versus putting your
Speaker 1: money towards this old phone. And by the way, the software,
Speaker 1: the Android updates and the security updates for this phone
Speaker 1: ends in seven years, which is October first, twenty thirty two.
Speaker 1: And just based on what you're telling me, Mark, with
Speaker 1: how how much you've taken care of this four A,
Speaker 1: I think that you will probably call me in twenty
Speaker 1: thirty two if me and Bobo are still sitting here
Speaker 1: and tell me, hey, Rich, I'm still using this nine A.
Speaker 2: I love it so great call. Thanks for the thanks
Speaker 2: for the question.
Speaker 1: Eight eight eight Rich one on one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: Microsoft says they are pushing passwords closer to extinction. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what they're replacing them with Coming up next,
Speaker 1: you are listening.
Speaker 2: To rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology. We all hate our passwords, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, who likes remembering passwords? I mean I don't
Speaker 1: even remember my passwords since I'm using a password manager,
Speaker 1: which you should be too. But if these companies have
Speaker 1: their way, we will not need to use a password manager.
Speaker 1: We won't need passwords at all. Microsoft made a big
Speaker 1: move this week. They are pretty much eliminating traditional passwords.
Speaker 1: They are shifting away from them, and they are now
Speaker 1: letting you sign up for new accounts without a password
Speaker 1: by default. So basically, they will figure out a way
Speaker 1: that you can log in, whether that's sending you a
Speaker 1: confirmation code to your email or a pass key, your face, fingerprint, whatever,
Speaker 1: they will just let you sign up with that now
Speaker 1: by default. So this is a big, big shift. They
Speaker 1: say it is a lot safer, and they've renamed World
Speaker 1: Password Day to a World past key Day because they're
Speaker 1: done with passwords. So if you're not familiar with the
Speaker 1: idea of if you've signed up for a website lately,
Speaker 1: sometimes you'll notice this, says just pop in your email
Speaker 1: and they send you like a link to your sometimes
Speaker 1: they call it the magic link, and you'll go to
Speaker 1: your email and you'll click that link and you'll be
Speaker 1: logged in. The reason that's a lot safer is because
Speaker 1: they figure, well, if you have access to your email,
Speaker 1: it's a lot safer than having, you know, entering in
Speaker 1: some password that can be lost or stolen or figured out.
Speaker 1: And then of course they have these past keys which
Speaker 1: are being pushed more and more, and a past key
Speaker 1: lets you log in using the way using a secondary device,
Speaker 1: like whether it is your face, your fingerprint, your pin
Speaker 1: on your computer or on your phone. So let's say
Speaker 1: you set up a pass key to log into your
Speaker 1: Microsoft account. Next time you're you know, you see that
Speaker 1: sort of login screen, it'll say open up your phone.
Speaker 1: It'll send like a little message to your phone. You
Speaker 1: open that up, and that's how you log in. So
Speaker 1: they say that passkeys are eight times faster than passwords,
Speaker 1: three times higher success rate, and nearly a million pass
Speaker 1: keys are being created every single day for Microsoft services
Speaker 1: like Xbox and Copilot.
Speaker 2: So this is pretty wild.
Speaker 1: This is a major major shift, and in fact, you
Speaker 1: can go into your Microsoft account and delete your password
Speaker 1: at this point if you don't want to use it anymore. Now,
Speaker 1: remember we talked a couple weeks ago about how many
Speaker 1: logins I had or log in attempts I had on
Speaker 1: my Microsoft account.
Speaker 2: So this is happening in a big way.
Speaker 1: To Microsoft, they say password attacks are happening seven thousand
Speaker 1: times per second, double what they saw in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: The scam artists know that passwords are coming to an
Speaker 1: end and they have to figure out new ways of
Speaker 1: tricking people. And the best part about a pass key
Speaker 1: is that you can't be tricked. So we talk about
Speaker 1: phishing scams all the time, where you go to a
Speaker 1: website to log in, it's a fake website. It's something
Speaker 1: hackers set up to capture your password. Well, with pass keys,
Speaker 1: that will not work because the fake website can't send
Speaker 1: that notification to your phone because it's fake. They don't
Speaker 1: have a way of sending that to your phone. So
Speaker 1: it's a whole system that we are coming up with,
Speaker 1: these tech companies are coming up with to kind of
Speaker 1: foil the hackers and the scam artists out there. So
Speaker 1: if you're not embracing this stuff, embrace it. And you know,
Speaker 1: use other methods. The passwords are no longer a good method.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Paul Paul in a Columbus, Ohio.
Speaker 6: You're on with Rich Py Rich like love the show
Speaker 6: Thank You Got a High sense fifty five inch TV
Speaker 6: a little not quite a year and a half old.
Speaker 6: It's like a series seven point five because about it
Speaker 6: at Costco and happen to be what they had. Uh
Speaker 6: on black screen the lower left quadrant er so is
Speaker 6: well when the screen is black, otherwise it's not black,
Speaker 6: it's gray on that section. Uh So the automatic dimming,
Speaker 6: I guess isn't working properly. Is that a fixable or
Speaker 6: is that a replaceable?
Speaker 2: Ooh, it probably is fixable. That's so.
Speaker 1: Basically the way these TVs are lit is they have
Speaker 1: a bunch of back lights. Is this this is not
Speaker 1: a mini LED. I'm guessing it just has like a
Speaker 1: local dimming. There's like sections of the TV that are
Speaker 1: lit up by different sort of lights in the back
Speaker 1: of the TV. And so the higher the higher end
Speaker 1: the TV, the more of those sections they have. So
Speaker 1: when you hear like many LEDs, they have like a
Speaker 1: lot of these little lights in the back that light
Speaker 1: it up ol ed is actually does. It can't have
Speaker 1: this problem because OLED's are like each individual pixel is
Speaker 1: sort of lit by itself. But what you're talking about
Speaker 1: is this is a local dimming area of the TV,
Speaker 1: so it must have like, you know, probably one, two, three, four, five, six, seventy,
Speaker 1: and I'm maybe like ten or twelve of these on
Speaker 1: the back of your TV that create the picture. The
Speaker 1: fact that one of these is not firing properly is
Speaker 1: definitely a physical issue. You can try. You can try
Speaker 1: doing a factory reset on the TV. Go into settings
Speaker 1: and like completely factory reset it and see if that
Speaker 1: kind of gets things working again, gets this thing back
Speaker 1: in sync. But it sounds like something has physically gone
Speaker 1: wrong on this TV, So you can try bringing it
Speaker 1: in somewhere or call a TV repair person if they
Speaker 1: even have those these days.
Speaker 2: It's funny.
Speaker 1: I saw I was dry and I saw like one
Speaker 1: of these old school places. It looked like it was
Speaker 1: out of the fifties. It was like TV repair. I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, that'd be such a cool place to
Speaker 1: do a story on, right, you know, like for my
Speaker 1: KTLA's TV stories. You know, go in there and just
Speaker 1: watch the person as they fix TVs and this and that,
Speaker 1: and so I took a picture, and I went back
Speaker 1: and I googled it and got the phone number, and
Speaker 1: it was like permanently closed. I was like, ah, I
Speaker 1: knew it.
Speaker 2: I knew it.
Speaker 1: There's just there's not many of these people out there anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm also guessing, Paul, that you did not pay a
Speaker 1: significant amount for this TV. I know what I paid
Speaker 1: for my sixty five inch High Sense. It was probably
Speaker 1: I think it was about eight hundred bucks, maybe under
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars. So I would say that you can
Speaker 1: maybe get an estimate if someone wants to give you
Speaker 1: a free estimate on fixing this thing. But I think
Speaker 1: it's probably a total loss, and sadly, it might be
Speaker 1: something you just want to properly recycle and get a
Speaker 1: new one of it happens. It's it's, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's part of the idea of these TVs are made cheaply.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying High Sense, but in general, you know,
Speaker 1: these TVs nowadays are made so cheaply. Unless you're getting
Speaker 1: the super high end OLED TVs, you know, the rest
Speaker 1: of them are very inexpensive. And so it just sounds
Speaker 1: like you might have gotten one that's you know, has
Speaker 1: a problem. The only other thing I would look at
Speaker 1: you did say you bought at Costco. They do have
Speaker 1: a Costco Tech support hotline, so I would call that
Speaker 1: tech support hotline, and in general, I know Costco used
Speaker 1: to have sort of like unlimited returns with electronics. You
Speaker 1: can try bringing it back to Costco and seeing what
Speaker 1: they say. I think they've limited that since to like
Speaker 1: a two year warranty, but don't quote me on that,
Speaker 1: because you never know. I mean, you could probably bring
Speaker 1: this thing into Costco and just say, hey, look it
Speaker 1: doesn't work, and see what they say. But I think
Speaker 1: the party line at this point at Costco is I
Speaker 1: think it's two years. On electronics, let's say Costco TV return.
Speaker 1: Costco's return policy for TVs and other electronics is now
Speaker 1: interesting says ninety days for televisions, projectors, and major appliances.
Speaker 1: Our Costco Technical and Warranty services will assist you with
Speaker 1: technical support and warranty information for many of the products above.
Speaker 1: So I would say, since you bought this at Costco,
Speaker 1: I would call them and just see what they say.
Speaker 1: It sounds like they've tightened their return policy. It used
Speaker 1: to be unlimited anything. But all the major retailers are
Speaker 1: sort of doing this, you know, Target, Best Buy, Costco,
Speaker 1: they have, all Macy's, They have all tightened their policies.
Speaker 1: Why because things are cheaper nowadays, people are buying things,
Speaker 1: they're returning them more than ever, and they want to
Speaker 1: protect their business. And so I understand that they can't
Speaker 1: have these unlimited return policies forever, especially as these places
Speaker 1: are being used as showrooms more and more for people
Speaker 1: to look at stuff in store and then buy it online.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the official policy, but you never know.
Speaker 1: You never know, but call them up. See what they say.
Speaker 1: I think it's time you might want to get a
Speaker 1: new TV, and yeah, that might just be the time
Speaker 1: for that, all right, thanks for the call there in Columbus,
Speaker 1: Ohio eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one think.
Speaker 1: Speaking of things that are going out of style, Google
Speaker 1: is ending support for its Nest learning thermostats the first
Speaker 1: and second generation on October twenty fifth, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: These were sold from twenty eleven to twenty fourteen. After
Speaker 1: that time, these will become a manual thermostat. You will
Speaker 1: not be able to use any apps or assistants or
Speaker 1: the home away assist to control this thing. So again,
Speaker 1: this will become a manual thermostat. It'll keep working. It's
Speaker 1: not going to get software updates, not going to get
Speaker 1: security updates. So if you have one of these, which
Speaker 1: I do, you have to upgrade if you want to
Speaker 1: continue getting all those smart features. Google should have sent
Speaker 1: you an email offering you a discount off the new
Speaker 1: fourth generation Nest Learning thermostat. That'll be one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty bucks out the door. So again, search your email
Speaker 1: for Nest Learning Thermostat. They probably sent you an email.
Speaker 1: I kind of missed it and I went back in
Speaker 1: my email and found it.
Speaker 2: But if you have one of these.
Speaker 1: First and second generation Nest Learning thermostats, they will stop
Speaker 1: working with all the smart features.
Speaker 2: On October twenty fifth, rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: More of your calls coming up right after this. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich On Tech. Let's go to Matthew and
Speaker 1: Huntington Beach. Matthew, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 7: Hey, rich how's it going?
Speaker 1: It is going fantastic? Is it rainy by the beach.
Speaker 5: As well a little bit a little drizzly in the morning.
Speaker 7: But it's starting to kind of righten up right now
Speaker 7: as we speak nice, So weather's good here. So I
Speaker 7: have a quick question for you. So I'm looking to
Speaker 7: downgrade from an iPhone to a flip phone for a
Speaker 7: number of reasons. One being is just I'm on it
Speaker 7: a lot, and I'm in front of my father and
Speaker 7: my daughter sees me on it a lot. And how
Speaker 7: does that even work? Am I able to maintain an
Speaker 7: iPhone and a foot phone at the same time, like
Speaker 7: two numbers at the same time, if that kind of
Speaker 7: makes sense? And what realistic options are there? Or is
Speaker 7: it just simply for you got to go down and
Speaker 7: straight to a flip phone and tank's an iPhone anymore?
Speaker 1: Okay, when you say flip phone, you mean a like
Speaker 1: a dumb phone, like a pretty much okay, got it.
Speaker 1: So you want to kind of like during the work day,
Speaker 1: maybe have your regular phone, and then when you're with
Speaker 1: your daughter kind of like you know, zoning out, you
Speaker 1: want to have the flip phone.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I don't need my I don't need like
Speaker 7: all the gadgets and apps for my work, Like I
Speaker 7: don't I don't really need any of that. I can
Speaker 7: just use our laptop for it. Like, so for banking
Speaker 7: and all that stuff, I can just use a laptop
Speaker 7: or my life's mom.
Speaker 1: Okay, So there are a couple of options. So what
Speaker 1: about I mean, I'm just this is just a thought.
Speaker 1: What about using an Apple Watch when you with cellular
Speaker 1: when you're not you know, and you can leave your
Speaker 1: phone behind?
Speaker 2: Sure, Okay, so that's one option.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that now the downside to that is that
Speaker 1: you will not have a camera. And I know you
Speaker 1: said you have a daughter, so you might want to
Speaker 1: take pictures, you know, if he's in a play or
Speaker 1: whatever you're trying to like focus on right you're at
Speaker 1: the park. So that's the downside of that. Now, because
Speaker 1: I've looked into this myself because as you might imagine
Speaker 1: someone who covers tech for a living, I am immersed
Speaker 1: in screens and there are sometimes I literally rip my
Speaker 1: Apple Watch off my wrist and throw it across the
Speaker 1: room because I'm so sick of the notifications. So the
Speaker 1: other thing you can do is there is a camera
Speaker 1: called the camp Snap.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of this thing?
Speaker 6: I have?
Speaker 1: So it is a it looks like one of those
Speaker 1: cameras like the the old school thirty five millimeters disposable cameras,
Speaker 1: except it is digital and reusable and there's no screen,
Speaker 1: there's nothing. You just literally take pictures on this like
Speaker 1: an old school camera, and then to quote unquote get
Speaker 1: the picture developed. You just plug it into your computer
Speaker 1: and you extract the pictures out of it, so you're
Speaker 1: not looking at them while you're you know, double checking
Speaker 1: them all that stuff. So one option is you've got
Speaker 1: your iPhone, you've got your Apple Watch. You leave the
Speaker 1: iPhone at home, You've got the cellular on the Apple Watch,
Speaker 1: so you're still in touch, you know, if you need
Speaker 1: an emergency whatever. And then you can carry this little
Speaker 1: camera with you when you are, you know, out and
Speaker 1: about with just your watch, and that will disconnect you
Speaker 1: from things. And that's probably the easiest, simplest solution that
Speaker 1: gets you where you want to get, right, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: number one. Number two is getting a separate flip phone.
Speaker 1: The thing about the flip phone is that a lot
Speaker 1: of the carriers they have this thing called number share,
Speaker 1: which means and they all call it something a little
Speaker 1: bit different. I think number shares verizons at and t.
Speaker 1: Let's see what they call it. They call it number sync,
Speaker 1: so you can look what carrier do you have? AT
Speaker 1: and Okay, so AT and T, so let's see what
Speaker 1: they Some of them used to have number sync with
Speaker 1: what's called the light phone. Have you heard of this thing? Okay,
Speaker 1: so the light phone is kind of like a you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that you're talking about is becoming more and
Speaker 1: more popular. The problem is the technology is not necessarily
Speaker 1: kept up. So I think that in the future we
Speaker 1: may see more devices that are kind of a simpler,
Speaker 1: lighter phone that you can sync with your phone number.
Speaker 1: But right now it is not the easiest thing to
Speaker 1: do because your carrier has to allow you to sink
Speaker 1: your phone number with your your standard device. So on
Speaker 1: on AT and T. The only thing I see that
Speaker 1: you can sink is your Apple watch or your looks
Speaker 1: like your iPad. I'm looking at Android smart watches, tablets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm not really seeing like the little devices that
Speaker 1: you can get like it used to be on Verizon,
Speaker 1: they would they had like one little phone that you
Speaker 1: can sink. I think it was just the light phone
Speaker 1: that you can sink. Let's see, I'm trying to say,
Speaker 1: see the eligible devices. Yeah, it's like really just saying
Speaker 1: that the smart watches now, which is interesting. So realistically,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to have the same number on both devices,
Speaker 1: you could set up the secondary device with something like
Speaker 1: Google Voice, or you can just forward your calls to
Speaker 1: that secondary device.
Speaker 2: When you're off of it, you're just not going to
Speaker 2: get your texts.
Speaker 1: So it depends how like how in this you want
Speaker 1: to be, right, you know, it depends how like how
Speaker 1: elaborate you want to be? What what are you thinking?
Speaker 7: I mean, it's it goes both ways. I mean, at
Speaker 7: this point, it's just whatever I can because I don't
Speaker 7: need all the technology for my work and my life
Speaker 7: obviously has her phone. So if okay, one of us
Speaker 7: could attach a little bit, if that makes sense, and
Speaker 7: all I need is to call and make text methods.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would call, you know what, I would call
Speaker 1: up AT and T and just ask them if you
Speaker 1: can if you can set up a flip phone on number,
Speaker 1: saying and if they say like, yeah, we have we
Speaker 1: have these these devices that you're able to do that with,
Speaker 1: just you know, get one of those. But from their website,
Speaker 1: I'm not really seeing any sort of solution on their
Speaker 1: website that says you can use a flip phone with this,
Speaker 1: But that would be the ideal.
Speaker 2: Way to do it right, right, right, right, But the.
Speaker 1: Other you know, and if it doesn't work that way,
Speaker 1: the other option, like I said, you can forward your
Speaker 1: calls just when you're using the flip phone, which is
Speaker 1: not ideal. You can Google Voice it and so you
Speaker 1: can have everyone call your Google Voice number, which will
Speaker 1: ring your iPhone and your other device at the same time.
Speaker 1: Or you can see if if your carrier supports a
Speaker 1: flip phone on this you know, number sync situation. The
Speaker 1: other place to look, by the way, for a flip
Speaker 1: phone is called Dumbwireless dot com. If you go to
Speaker 1: their website, they've got all the popular flip phones. I
Speaker 1: think the number one is the Nokia twenty seven eighty.
Speaker 1: It's eighty eight bucks for the flip phone that you
Speaker 1: kind of want. It's like a classic and it works
Speaker 1: with T Mobile eighteen Team Verizon. So but again you
Speaker 1: would have to ask them if you can activate that
Speaker 1: as a number sync phone, Matthew, not easy, not easy
Speaker 1: to do. What you're talking about is not is not
Speaker 1: as straightforward as you would think. I personally think the
Speaker 1: easiest way to do it is with the Apple Watch
Speaker 1: because you I know, you have to get another device,
Speaker 1: but it sort of makes it pretty simple. And then
Speaker 1: you just have the idea of your camera. You can
Speaker 1: just get it, bring a camera with you. And I
Speaker 1: would say that I have done that in the past,
Speaker 1: but most of the time I need a camera when
Speaker 1: I'm out and about and it's you know, it's really tricky.
Speaker 1: But you can definitely go out and just have the
Speaker 1: Apple Watch. With Cellular. You'll get your calls, you'll get
Speaker 1: your text you know, you can do things like maps,
Speaker 1: you can do music. I mean, there's a lot you
Speaker 1: can do on the Apple Watch without having your your
Speaker 1: phone nearby if it's.
Speaker 2: Set up for cellular.
Speaker 7: Gotcha?
Speaker 2: All right, good question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like I like that you're thinking of this
Speaker 1: because this is me on on a daily basis, like
Speaker 1: thinking about how I can be when I want to disconnect,
Speaker 1: how I can disconnect. It's not an easy thing, all right.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Coming up, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about Google's Notebook LM.
Speaker 2: This is a really cool.
Speaker 1: Feature that lets you digest information in totally new ways. Plus,
Speaker 1: if you get an email about in a vast settlement payment.
Speaker 1: Don't ignore it. I'll explain why. Plus more of your
Speaker 1: calls at eight eight rich one O one. This is
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour,
Speaker 1: we're gonna hear from Steven Johnson, editorial director at Google Labs.
Speaker 1: He's going to talk about a cool feature from Google
Speaker 1: called note Book LM. I'll explain what that's all about
Speaker 1: in a little bit. Uh plus more of your calls
Speaker 1: coming up here and just a moment, but I want
Speaker 1: to talk about this. This Minecraft movie has done really
Speaker 1: well at the box office, over eight hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: And if you have kids, they might be singing this song.
Speaker 1: Listen you hear that.
Speaker 8: That's the stund This is a lead m steeven chickens, why.
Speaker 2: In the mill rises?
Speaker 8: And now you haven't the stack?
Speaker 1: This is Jack Black. He is uh Steve in a
Speaker 1: Minecraft movie. He sings this uh goofy thirty four second
Speaker 1: song about cooking chicken with lava And if your kids
Speaker 1: are into Minecraft, uh they know all about the lava
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. It's now the shortest song to
Speaker 1: ever chart on the Billboard Hot one hundred, they doing
Speaker 1: at number seventy eight.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: They also have an extended version of the song it's
Speaker 1: only a minute fifteen long, that also went viral. It's
Speaker 1: part of the Minecraft movie, which is gross, like I said,
Speaker 1: over eight hundred million dollars worldwide.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a funny song.
Speaker 1: My kids started singing this as soon as they were
Speaker 1: out of the h as soon as they were out
Speaker 1: of the movie theater, and I didn't give it much thought.
Speaker 1: But then they kept singing it and singing it, and
Speaker 1: now it's kind of catchy.
Speaker 2: Let's hear it again.
Speaker 5: M h.
Speaker 2: Steve a chicken?
Speaker 9: Yes, why.
Speaker 2: Rises to night? You have understand how could you not
Speaker 2: love that?
Speaker 1: And if you watch the music video, they literally it's
Speaker 1: like a Minecraft chicken that they dump lava on and
Speaker 1: it becomes like a crispy delicious chicken. So if you
Speaker 1: have kids, you have grandkids, you know you've probably already
Speaker 1: heard this, or if you want to bond with them
Speaker 1: a little bit, just be like, hey, what do you
Speaker 1: think about Steve's lava chicken?
Speaker 2: Huh sha cha cha.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go to let's see here, let's go
Speaker 1: to Madonna in Michigan.
Speaker 2: Madonna in Michigan.
Speaker 10: You're on with Rich Hi, So can you hear me?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 11: Okay.
Speaker 10: So I have a unique experience with my iPhone, and
Speaker 10: it's been my last three iPhones. It randomly calls people
Speaker 10: and it tells me that someone's calling. I go to
Speaker 10: answer the phone and nobody's there. The other person, they
Speaker 10: get a call from me saying I'm calling and nobody's there.
Speaker 10: So it's happened so many times.
Speaker 11: I went to.
Speaker 10: Apple said hey, this is happening with my phone. They've
Speaker 10: said they've never heard of it. This is now my
Speaker 10: third iPhone because I've changed phones, graded and it's still
Speaker 10: doing it.
Speaker 2: Mhmm uh, here's not as much, not as much.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it was calling like it was calling my daughter
Speaker 10: every night, and we just decided that unless I text
Speaker 10: her and follow up text.
Speaker 4: It's not me.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, it sounds like you have a haunted phone,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if that's the case.
Speaker 12: Here.
Speaker 1: Are there any sort of special features you're using on
Speaker 1: this phone or anything that you have turned on, like
Speaker 1: any any sort of software features that you have activated,
Speaker 1: like any accessibility features.
Speaker 5: Nope.
Speaker 10: Again, this is a phone.
Speaker 1: Now, but now when you say third phone, have you
Speaker 1: been copying the phone from one to another or have
Speaker 1: you started fresh.
Speaker 2: On the phone?
Speaker 13: Uh?
Speaker 10: The only thing I downloaded from the last phone is
Speaker 10: my is your what? My contact?
Speaker 2: Your contacts?
Speaker 1: Okay, so you did start fresh, you started completely like
Speaker 1: it didn't say hey, let's copy from your old phone.
Speaker 14: Nope?
Speaker 1: Okay, No, what about the case on your phone?
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 10: I bought it at the Apple store.
Speaker 2: Okay. So in the has it been a different case
Speaker 2: for each phone?
Speaker 15: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, so typically, I mean this definitely sounds strange. It
Speaker 1: should not be happening there are Okay. So just to
Speaker 1: give you an example, now, does this happen when it's
Speaker 1: in your pocket, your purse, you're holding it, not holding it?
Speaker 2: Or is it just completely on its.
Speaker 10: Own, completely on its own?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, Madana, I'm I'm stumped because I so for instance, Okay,
Speaker 1: before I came on the show, I was playing some
Speaker 1: music and I kept putting my phone. I kept pausing
Speaker 1: the music and then putting the phone in my back pocket,
Speaker 1: and the music would start playing again because my thumb
Speaker 1: was just hitting the phone, you know, on the uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the right exact place to play the music.
Speaker 1: The only thing I can think of is I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if there is a way on the iPhone to not
Speaker 1: dial calls unless you type in something like is there
Speaker 1: a secondary protection against you know, dialing numbers like you
Speaker 1: have to dial, like a secondary thing, you know, like
Speaker 1: put in like a confirmation code. That might be an
Speaker 1: accessibility feature. I have not heard of that. I've not
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking of it. Let's see here screen time,
Speaker 1: let's see accessibility guide it now. Okay, So the only
Speaker 1: other thing I can think of is a couple of
Speaker 1: things to try. Number one, you can go into your
Speaker 1: phone and you can turn off any sort of like
Speaker 1: raise to wake features, because your phone, you know, it
Speaker 1: won't do things. Let's see if we can turn that off.
Speaker 1: Oh there, it is raise to wake. So you might
Speaker 1: want to turn off the raise to wake feature and
Speaker 1: display brightness and see if it keeps happening. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: number one. Have you heard of that feature? Okay, so
Speaker 1: that's number one, So go into your settings displaying brightness,
Speaker 1: raised to wake, turn that off and then you might
Speaker 1: turn off the always on display as a secondary method.
Speaker 1: So just try those two things to see if it happens,
Speaker 1: if it continues happening. But this is I mean, this
Speaker 1: is like I don't believe in ghosts, but if I did,
Speaker 1: this would be right up there, because I now have
Speaker 1: I heard of phones dialing people randomly. Of course, because
Speaker 1: we're handling our phones. They're in our purses sometimes our pockets, purses, backpacks.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people forget to forget to lock their phones. The
Speaker 1: only the other thing I would do is make sure
Speaker 1: under your displaying brightness your auto lock is set to
Speaker 1: thirty seconds, because some people I've noticed they take their
Speaker 1: phone out, they do something on their phone, and then
Speaker 1: they just put it away without locking it. So I
Speaker 1: want you to get into the habit Madonna of tapping
Speaker 1: the button on the right to actually lock your screen
Speaker 1: when you are not using it and see if that helps.
Speaker 1: And these are all kind of like this is you
Speaker 1: know what, this is your homework. I'm assigning you homework.
Speaker 1: This is what I would like you to do. And
Speaker 1: then I want you to call me back next week
Speaker 1: and tell me if anything has improved. And then the
Speaker 1: other thing you can do if you want to take
Speaker 1: it a step further is to go into your settings
Speaker 1: settings General and then transfer a reset phone and then
Speaker 1: you can do a reset and you can do reset
Speaker 1: all settings and see if that helps. But don't do that.
Speaker 1: That's like the last ditch effort. I want you to
Speaker 1: try the other three, the other three things I mentioned before.
Speaker 1: You try that, and then call me back next week.
Speaker 1: I want to report and see if this still happens.
Speaker 1: Interesting question. I know you know these things happen. Butt dials,
Speaker 1: pocket dials. I mean, look, these happen all the time.
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of relatives that do a pocket
Speaker 1: dial quite often. And you can always tell because all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you just start hearing them talking in
Speaker 1: the background. You're like, uh, do I want to listen
Speaker 1: because I don't know what's happening here?
Speaker 2: Like you kind of.
Speaker 1: Your curiosity is like I want to hear what's your
Speaker 1: what's happening in the background, But I'm also not sure
Speaker 1: what I'm in for, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Uh So, yeah, try that and tell me what happens.
Speaker 1: Eighty to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. If you
Speaker 1: get an email about in a VAST settlement, do not
Speaker 1: delete it. It's actually real.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: The FTC set a vast compromise consumer privacy by collecting
Speaker 1: and selling browsing data without notice or consent. They have
Speaker 1: made a sixteen point five million dollars settlement with a
Speaker 1: VAST And if you bought antivirus from a VAST, if
Speaker 1: you paid for it from August twenty fourteen to January
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, you could be eligible. So look for an
Speaker 1: email from a VAST settlement. It was sent in the
Speaker 1: last two months.
Speaker 9: And uh.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is go to the website
Speaker 1: FTC dot gov slash a VAST, put in your claim
Speaker 1: number and your confirmation code, and you could get a refund.
Speaker 1: I think it's I think they I don't know how
Speaker 1: much it's for. They haven't decided yet, but the refund
Speaker 1: will be next year. If you want more information on that,
Speaker 1: you can go to my instagram at rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: The VAST settlement information is on there at rich on
Speaker 1: tech on Instagram if you're not following me on Instagram.
Speaker 2: In general, a lot of good info on there.
Speaker 1: I'm always posting the latest scams, helpful tips, information and
Speaker 1: of course, very active on my Instagram story. So if
Speaker 1: you're not following me on Instagram, at rich on Tech
Speaker 1: is the place to go, all right, coming up more
Speaker 1: of your questions at eighty to eight rich one O
Speaker 1: one that's eight eight eight seven four to two four.
Speaker 2: One zero one.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna explain what Google's Notebook LM is and why
Speaker 1: it's coming to iPhone and Android, and we're also gonna
Speaker 1: have an interview about it. Very interesting tool that you
Speaker 1: can use if you like to learn in new ways.
Speaker 1: This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Eighty
Speaker 1: to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four to one zero one. Website also
Speaker 1: a way to get in touch. Just go to rich
Speaker 1: Shawn tech dot tv. Hit contact. That'll send an email
Speaker 1: right to my screen. Let's go to Sylvia in Marietta, Sylvia.
Speaker 14: You're on with Rich Hi Rich.
Speaker 11: A longtime listener here.
Speaker 4: Rich.
Speaker 11: I live in an area in West Marietta, California, call
Speaker 11: it Cresta. It's kind of in the hills, and our
Speaker 11: cell reception is terrible. It doesn't matter if it's at
Speaker 11: and T verive in T Mobile. All the neighbors have
Speaker 11: the same issue. We use Wi Fi calling, but even
Speaker 11: then reception is really bad. And I was wondering what
Speaker 11: you could recommend to boost our signals.
Speaker 2: Why why is the Wi Fi calling?
Speaker 1: You mean Wi Fi calling in your house is bad
Speaker 1: because it shouldn't be bad in the house.
Speaker 15: It's you know, like I said, it's a rural area.
Speaker 15: I I have starlink, my friend has starlink, and and
Speaker 15: even with that, the Wi Fi colleague, okay.
Speaker 1: All right, well that that could explain it because starlink,
Speaker 1: I mean satellite. The latency on a satellite connection, even
Speaker 1: though starlink is the best, could still be a little tricky.
Speaker 2: But I still didn't.
Speaker 11: But even when I had the bios internet, it was
Speaker 11: the same issue.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, huh.
Speaker 11: There's uh, you know, there's hundreds of people up here
Speaker 11: and we're having the same issue. The SALN reception.
Speaker 15: It's just terrible.
Speaker 11: Okay, Well I called a canty and there's there.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I mean there are Okay, there's a couple
Speaker 1: of ways you can do this. So first off, I
Speaker 1: mean they used to have these things called cell boosters,
Speaker 1: which you can install in your home and basically you
Speaker 1: can use your internet connection. So it's a little box
Speaker 1: that you get from your cell phone company, so whether
Speaker 1: it's AT and T or Verizon or T Mobile, and
Speaker 1: you basically plug it into your ethernet, you know, to
Speaker 1: your Internet connection, and then that creates sort of its
Speaker 1: own cellular connection. But the thing is Wi Fi calling
Speaker 1: has really taken that over, so that's why you don't
Speaker 1: hear about these much anymore. But with that said, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the website and it looks like Verizon and
Speaker 1: AT and T still offer one of these things. It
Speaker 1: may not be free, so you might call them and say,
Speaker 1: you know, plead your case and they may give you
Speaker 1: one for free. But you know, there looks like they're
Speaker 1: charging like two fifty two hundred and fifty dollars for
Speaker 1: these things. And the reason why we don't talk about
Speaker 1: them anymore is because everyone has Wi Fi calling on
Speaker 1: their phone. You can just flip that on and it
Speaker 1: usually works pretty well. So before you try this, I
Speaker 1: would just go into the Wi Fi calling settings on
Speaker 1: your phone and just make sure that you're actually using
Speaker 1: that the way it's intended. So if you go into
Speaker 1: cellular and then look at your Wi Fi calling. There
Speaker 1: are some options in there, and so I would check
Speaker 1: to make sure those options are on. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: weird that it's not working because that should at least
Speaker 1: work when you're in your house. So anyway, so the
Speaker 1: first thing to do is is look and see if
Speaker 1: your provider offers one of these network extenders and you
Speaker 1: can plug that in and theoretically you should get a
Speaker 1: better signal from that. And the reason why that's a
Speaker 1: little bit different from the Wi Fi calling is because
Speaker 1: it almost, like I think, is the way I understand it,
Speaker 1: It sort of pretends it's an LTE signal, and so
Speaker 1: your phone is actually connecting with an LTE signal versus
Speaker 1: that Wi Fi calling, So it might be a little
Speaker 1: bit better than the Wi Fi calling. And you know,
Speaker 1: check the return policy. You know, if it's thirty it
Speaker 1: says on the Verizon side, it says free returns within
Speaker 1: thirty days. So it can't hurt to try this, and
Speaker 1: for two fifty dollars to actually get a good signal,
Speaker 1: why not. So that's number one. So I check for
Speaker 1: those and see if your carrier provides that or you
Speaker 1: can purchase that. And then the second thing is there
Speaker 1: is a company called we Boost and this is pretty
Speaker 1: much like the standard Wi Fi booster company, and they've
Speaker 1: got a whole bunch of products there. They've got one
Speaker 1: called the we Boost Cabin, which it's seven hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: You can install this little antenna on the side of
Speaker 1: your house and yeah, engineered for the most off grid abodes.
Speaker 1: Cabin works with any device on any US cellular network
Speaker 1: up to five G twenty four foot antenna, ten minutes setup,
Speaker 1: no subscriptions, reliable connectivity, so thirty day money back guarantee
Speaker 1: on that, free return shipping. Again, so if you really
Speaker 1: want to try these things, you know, these are the options.
Speaker 1: So how it works. Let's see, So it's got the
Speaker 1: outdoor antenna, goes to the cell antenna and that's got
Speaker 1: a booster and then an inside antenna. So again, if
Speaker 1: you're sticking to where you live there, would you say
Speaker 1: requesta If you're sticking to where you live there, this
Speaker 1: might not be a bad investment for this price. But
Speaker 1: again I'm going back to that Wi Fi connectivity. I mean,
Speaker 1: the other thing is that Starlink and T Mobile eventually
Speaker 1: are going to offer Wi Fi are cellular calling over
Speaker 1: the Starlink network, so you know that's another option you
Speaker 1: can hold out for that. I don't know when that's
Speaker 1: going to be, I mean right now, we're still waiting
Speaker 1: on the texting ability, but they do say calls are
Speaker 1: going to come soon or eventually going to be a
Speaker 1: thing through the Starlink network on Tea mobile. So anyway,
Speaker 1: a couple of options there. Check out the networking center,
Speaker 1: check out we Boost. Two good options to get you
Speaker 1: up and running there. Sorry you're having those issues. We're
Speaker 1: hearing less and less of the spotty issues and area,
Speaker 1: but look they're still out there and if you live
Speaker 1: in one, it's a pain. Thanks for the call, Sylvia,
Speaker 1: Do appreciate it all right? Coming up, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about Notebook LM. If you haven't heard of this, this
Speaker 1: is Google's AI powered research assistant. They are launching a
Speaker 1: mobile app on iOS and Android. It's been desktop only
Speaker 1: since twenty twenty three. Cool feature. I'll tell you what
Speaker 1: it can do for you. Coming up next, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology. Kevin Wrights, whoever's running your board? Bumper Music's
Speaker 1: your board music? Bumpers is good? I just heard Voodoo Chili.
Speaker 2: A while ago.
Speaker 1: My printer wasn't working at that moment, and now at
Speaker 1: prints Voodoo.
Speaker 2: What child child?
Speaker 1: Oh Chili, I can't hear your MIC's not you're not
Speaker 1: at your mic.
Speaker 14: I wasn't expecting to have to correct your english today.
Speaker 2: Well I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's voodoo child, Yeah, child child, drop the D make.
Speaker 2: An e Voodoo child. Oh he did write it right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you just didn't say it right. Was that the song
Speaker 2: you chose? Yes, there you go. See where's our ding?
Speaker 2: You need it? See?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 1: Anyway, that was Bobo's pick clearly, because I don't even
Speaker 1: know this this song.
Speaker 2: But hey, it fixed his printer, so that's good news.
Speaker 2: All right, we got to get to this interview.
Speaker 1: We've got Steven Johnson from Google Labs to talk about
Speaker 1: Notebook LM. This is Google's AI powered research and writing
Speaker 1: tool that helps you organize and understand information faster.
Speaker 13: Notebook LM is it is an application out of Google
Speaker 13: Labs that is designed to be a tool for understanding things.
Speaker 13: So it's an AI powered application you put in whatever
Speaker 13: documents you're working on that you're trying to make sense of,
Speaker 13: whether it's research, you're working on at school, or it's
Speaker 13: a marketing plan you're developing for your company, and once
Speaker 13: you upload that document, it's as if the underlying AI
Speaker 13: has become an expert in that particular information, and so
Speaker 13: you can ask questions, you can ask follow up questions,
Speaker 13: you can create what we call audio overviews that are
Speaker 13: kind of simulated podcast discussions about the information you've uploaded.
Speaker 13: You can generate study guides and briefing docs, and so
Speaker 13: it's basically creates a kind of personalized AI that's really
Speaker 13: grounded in the information that matters most to you.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, So I was sending the impression that was
Speaker 1: just for the podcast aspect, that's just one aspect of
Speaker 1: this tool. What do you think about how that aspect
Speaker 1: has sort of taken on a life of its own.
Speaker 13: Yeah, it's been really excited to see. We've seen amazing
Speaker 13: adoption of it. And there's something kind of magical in
Speaker 13: hearing this audio conversation, very realistic back and forth between
Speaker 13: these two simulated hosts based on whatever information you put
Speaker 13: in there. So people are putting their journals in there
Speaker 13: and listening to these two.
Speaker 16: AI hosts discussed the latest events in their own lives
Speaker 16: where people are using it to study or reviewing like
Speaker 16: scientific papers, so they can kind of listen to them
Speaker 16: in the.
Speaker 14: Cars they drive to work.
Speaker 13: So we're really excited about it, and we're kind of
Speaker 13: building on those tools. We really want to basically create
Speaker 13: Notebook to be a place where we will adapt to
Speaker 13: whatever kind of learning style you have. And so if
Speaker 13: you want to learn by asking questions, we can help
Speaker 13: you with that. If you want to learn by listening,
Speaker 13: we can help you with that. In the future, if
Speaker 13: you want to learn by watching some kind of video,
Speaker 13: we'll probably going to be helping you with that as well.
Speaker 14: How is this born? I mean you said it's a
Speaker 14: Google Labs product.
Speaker 1: I mean just someone just come up with an idea
Speaker 1: of like, hey, let's make AI personal and work for you.
Speaker 13: Yeah, it's the backstory of it is kind of interesting.
Speaker 13: So I've spent most of my career as a writer.
Speaker 13: I've written fourteen books on a whole range of topics,
Speaker 13: and a few years ago Google reached out to me
Speaker 13: and said, hey, would you want to come to Google
Speaker 13: and help us build the kind of the dream like
Speaker 13: writing and research and thinking tool that you've always wanted
Speaker 13: to have, now powered by AI. And they put together
Speaker 13: a small team to kind of build a prototype, and
Speaker 13: so I joined in the summer of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 13: and somehow, you know, almost three years later, here we
Speaker 13: are with nobook LM and you know, one hundred and
Speaker 13: eighty countries around the world and a big part of
Speaker 13: Google's AI efforts.
Speaker 14: What do you make of the success of this.
Speaker 13: I think it shows that people are really drawn to
Speaker 13: this personalized AI vision, right, So it's it's not just
Speaker 13: about talking to a general model that knows a little
Speaker 13: about everything in the world, but rather taking the power
Speaker 13: of AI and the ability of AIA to help you
Speaker 13: understand things and help explain things to you and help
Speaker 13: you organize, but grounding it in your own documents or
Speaker 13: whatever you're trying to make sense of. I think that
Speaker 13: that really unlocks a whole new capability set of capabilities
Speaker 13: for AI that I think people who just had a
Speaker 13: few conversations with a general purpose chatbot probably didn't realize
Speaker 13: was possible. And once you get a taste of it,
Speaker 13: it's really quite extraordinary.
Speaker 14: How have you evolved notebook LM since you introduced it.
Speaker 13: We've also made it easy for people to discover sources
Speaker 13: that they might want to explore. So you can just say, hey,
Speaker 13: I'm interested in the history of piracy in the seventeenth century,
Speaker 13: and we'll go out onto the web and find a
Speaker 13: collection of high quality sources and bring them directly into
Speaker 13: your notebook to make it easier for you to explore
Speaker 13: that information in kind of a one click way.
Speaker 14: How does the average person access this?
Speaker 5: You just visit.
Speaker 13: Notebook LM dot Google dot com, signed into a Google account,
Speaker 13: and you can get started right away. And the easiest
Speaker 13: thing to do is to create a new notebook and upload,
Speaker 13: you know, just just some of the recent documents you've
Speaker 13: been doing in your work or your studies, and just
Speaker 13: start interacting generated an audio overview, ask some questions and
Speaker 13: you'll get a sense of just how nuanced and sophisticated
Speaker 13: the model is and understanding what you've shared, and then
Speaker 13: then you can kind of start thinking about like, Okay,
Speaker 13: I have this project, I'm going to create a new
Speaker 13: notebook for this project. I'm gonna load up these documents
Speaker 13: for that particular project. And then I think most folks
Speaker 13: will find that it really gets integrated into their kind
Speaker 13: of day to day workload pretty easily.
Speaker 14: And who are these podcasts hosts.
Speaker 13: They are two people who we trained on their voices.
Speaker 13: We have not revealed who they are in actuality. But
Speaker 13: what's interesting about the process for training the you know,
Speaker 13: the voices, is that the voice model was trained from
Speaker 13: the ground to be a conversational model. So it wasn't
Speaker 13: like we trained on one voice and we trained on
Speaker 13: another voice and we just stitched them together in a
Speaker 13: script like those two people sat in a studio for
Speaker 13: hours and hours and hours and hours talking and we
Speaker 13: learn over time how they interact. And that's why the
Speaker 13: audio overviews I think sound so kind of convincing. Is
Speaker 13: you really get all the nuances of two human beings
Speaker 13: in conversation with each other, and the way that we
Speaker 13: subtly interrupt each other and the sounds we make when
Speaker 13: we are affirming what the other person is saying. There's
Speaker 13: a kind of magic in that that I think people
Speaker 13: just hadn't heard before this.
Speaker 1: Okay, so a version of this made it to Gemini,
Speaker 1: like the main app right, So is that is that
Speaker 1: exciting for you?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 13: We were one of the things that we try to
Speaker 13: do with labs and Notebook has just been kind of
Speaker 13: the most high profile version of this is you know,
Speaker 13: we're trying to constantly innovate and generate new kind of
Speaker 13: product based user focused experiments where we're trying to build
Speaker 13: use but we're also trying to build sometimes crazy things
Speaker 13: and and and and work quickly. And so what we
Speaker 13: want to do is it is create an environment where
Speaker 13: we're generating new ideas that can then graduate up to
Speaker 13: other products in the in the Google family. I mean,
Speaker 13: Gemini is kind of going to sense the closest product
Speaker 13: to us, so having audio overviews show up there makes
Speaker 13: a lot of sense. But we you know, we're able
Speaker 13: to kind of move pretty quickly because we're smaller and
Speaker 13: more nimble. And if things that we end up spawning,
Speaker 13: you know, populate the rest of the Google ecosystem, I mean,
Speaker 13: that's that's exciting for us.
Speaker 1: And just finally, you know, you said you wrote fourteen books,
Speaker 1: you're a writer, lifelong writer. What do you make of
Speaker 1: all of this AI stuff that you're building? Like and
Speaker 1: you know people are worried about this taking over what
Speaker 1: they do you know, seeing it on from the inside,
Speaker 1: do you think that could happen?
Speaker 14: And are you worried about that?
Speaker 13: I'm not worried about it. Short term I'm very confident
Speaker 13: that short term, I am going to be a much
Speaker 13: better writer, much more efficient writer, because of AI, because
Speaker 13: of tools like notebook LM. I'm dying, for instance, to
Speaker 13: go write my next book. But this day job, I
Speaker 13: somehow found myself in no book el I'm was taking
Speaker 13: up all of my time. So I think there's a
Speaker 13: long period there where like, if you embrace these tools,
Speaker 13: you know, you're able to be more creative, You're able
Speaker 13: to you know, use the tools to help you remember
Speaker 13: all the things that you have to remember to write
Speaker 13: a book. It's you know, it is going to be
Speaker 13: a real assistant to the writing process and to the
Speaker 13: research process for a long time. If we were to
Speaker 13: get to a point in some future, way off point
Speaker 13: where you know, you could hit a button and write
Speaker 13: a Stephen Johnson, you know, a book automatically one, I
Speaker 13: don't think that's likely. But if we do get to
Speaker 13: that point, that the fate of nonfiction writers will be
Speaker 13: like the least of our problems. That will really each
Speaker 13: a new level of artificial intelligence. So we'll have profound
Speaker 13: societal implications. But I don't see that on the horizon
Speaker 13: right now.
Speaker 1: All right, Thanks, thanks again, Steven Johnson at Google Labs.
Speaker 1: Here is what the podcast that they create sounds like.
Speaker 13: If you're just charric dive today, we're really zeroing in
Speaker 13: on the Microsoft twenty twenty five word Trend Index annual report.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this isn't just another forecast.
Speaker 15: Is it?
Speaker 2: No, not at all.
Speaker 1: It argues so you hear how those two AI voices
Speaker 1: sort of interact. Those are generated on the fly from
Speaker 1: the information that you upload. So if you want to
Speaker 1: try this in its simplest, easiest way, they've actually built
Speaker 1: it into the Gemini app. So you can open up
Speaker 1: the Gemini app, upload a file anything like, anything that
Speaker 1: you want it to talk about, and then wait for
Speaker 1: it to say generate audio interview, generate audio overview, tap that,
Speaker 1: and then it will create the little podcast that you
Speaker 1: can listen to. Of course, you can only go to
Speaker 1: NOTEBOOKLM dot Google dot com and the Android apps. There
Speaker 1: are no apps right now. Android and iOS apps there
Speaker 1: are none right now. They're coming out on May twentieth,
Speaker 1: So don't start the app store for Notebook LM. Those
Speaker 1: are not official all right. Rich on Tech dot tv
Speaker 1: for all the links. More rich on Tech coming your
Speaker 1: way right after this Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight at eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. The website
Speaker 1: for the show rich on Tech dot tv. You want
Speaker 1: to email me hit contact. Bruce writes in I'm glad
Speaker 1: you mentioned about the ghost styling. I'm glad you mentioned
Speaker 1: the screenlock. Uh, it's he does think that it might
Speaker 1: have been the screenlock. Okay, Actually, you know I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna I gotta I gotta check these emails before I
Speaker 1: say I want to read them on the air. Might
Speaker 1: not have been that nice to our caller. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Joe in Orange County. Joe, you're on with Wretch.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 3: Rick, I hope you can help me with this.
Speaker 12: Uh.
Speaker 3: I made the mistake of donating one time, and ever
Speaker 3: since then, I got like thirty some emails a day,
Speaker 3: and I thought they would stop when the election was over,
Speaker 3: but they continue right on it. It's like really bad harassments.
Speaker 3: This morning, I got one before six am, and it's
Speaker 3: just so annoying, you know, like they mentioned my name, Johanna.
Speaker 3: You know, Trump is talking about you and.
Speaker 12: All these dumb things now, so trying.
Speaker 3: To get your money, and you know, they'll say, I'm
Speaker 3: not asking for money, I.
Speaker 4: Just want your opinion.
Speaker 7: You're invited to mirror Lago.
Speaker 3: And I'm just crazy things and it's just you don't
Speaker 3: want to go. I don't know how to get hold
Speaker 3: of them, but I want them to stop, and I
Speaker 3: don't know how to stop them.
Speaker 1: A these texts are emails. You said email, but it
Speaker 1: sounds like these are texts. Okay, they're texts. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: Well here's the deal. So it's funny you say that
Speaker 1: once you donated, because whenever I donate to charity, it's
Speaker 1: really interesting because all of a sudden, what shows up
Speaker 1: in my mailbox, in my physical mailbox, is one hundred
Speaker 1: more solicitations for donations. And it's because I'm convinced these
Speaker 1: places sell your information saying, hey we got a hot
Speaker 1: one here, we got someone that's actually given money, let's
Speaker 1: spam them. So I think with regards to the text messaging,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of things you can do. Number One,
Speaker 1: if these are legitimate senders, okay, you should be able
Speaker 1: to reply back with the word stop. Okay, So that
Speaker 1: should be number one. Now, I don't know if these
Speaker 1: are legitimate senders or not. It sounds like you are
Speaker 1: on a combination of some political lists, but also maybe
Speaker 1: some unwanted lists as well. So I would the ones
Speaker 1: that look legitimate, I would just try to reply with
Speaker 1: the words stop, and that should get some of them
Speaker 1: to stop. The other thing you can do is inside
Speaker 1: your app on if you're on iPhone or Android, depending
Speaker 1: on your app. So if you're on iPhone, there is
Speaker 1: a setting if you go into your settings, okay and
Speaker 1: they change where this is.
Speaker 2: You have to go.
Speaker 1: Settings, scroll all the way down to where it says apps,
Speaker 1: and then scroll all the way down to where it
Speaker 1: says messages.
Speaker 2: I'm getting there right now here it is, and.
Speaker 1: Then scroll all the way down until it says filter
Speaker 1: unknown senders. Toggle that on. So anyone who is not
Speaker 1: in your contacts will go in a separate list. And
Speaker 1: so now when you go back to your messages app,
Speaker 1: you will see you'll have this little filters and it
Speaker 1: says all messages known senders, unknown senders, And that way
Speaker 1: you can go into the unknown and it's all the
Speaker 1: people that you don't know and it'll be a separate list. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's that's one way to do it on the iPhone.
Speaker 1: And then on Android, they've actually got some pretty good
Speaker 1: uh spam protection built in. So you can go into
Speaker 1: your Android Messages, which is really Google Messages, tap your
Speaker 1: little icon in the upper right hand corner and it
Speaker 1: says Messages Settings, and then scroll down to where it
Speaker 1: says protection and safety and then enable spam protection. Toggle
Speaker 1: that on, and that should help. And those are the
Speaker 1: the only, the only real three ways that you can
Speaker 1: get rid of these messages that you're on, these you know,
Speaker 1: political texts. There might be some other sort of ways.
Speaker 1: Let me see there's I thought there was a way
Speaker 1: that you could send something.
Speaker 2: Let's see here.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I think that's really it is. Those are
Speaker 1: the main ways to get off of those uh text messages.
Speaker 1: Is the legitimate ones will say stop and and the
Speaker 1: non legitimate ones, yeah, there's not much you can do
Speaker 1: because they're not following the rules. So yeah, I would
Speaker 1: say the call blocking stuff is probably the main way
Speaker 1: to do it, or the text blocking is probably the
Speaker 1: main way to do it. But I think the methods
Speaker 1: I mentioned should probably cut down on some of the.
Speaker 2: Texts you get. But yeah, Joey, good luck, with that.
Speaker 1: I know these were a problem during the election, and
Speaker 1: you know, any look text messages companies, they love it
Speaker 1: because we check our texts in a world of always on.
Speaker 1: You know, emails can get lost in the shuffle. You know,
Speaker 1: you get mail at your house, you know, maybe you'll
Speaker 1: get you'll look at it. But text messages people get.
Speaker 1: They are delivered immediately you pick up your phone to
Speaker 1: look at them.
Speaker 2: They go to your wrist.
Speaker 1: So giving out your phone number in the future, get
Speaker 1: a different phone number, get like a Google Voice number,
Speaker 1: Get a Burner number. There's an app called Burner. You
Speaker 1: can get a secondary line. Your cell phone provides may
Speaker 1: give you a secondary line, and no T Mobile was
Speaker 1: for a while with that.
Speaker 2: Digits Verizon.
Speaker 1: I think you can buy a secondary line from them
Speaker 1: for like ten dollars a month, but don't give out
Speaker 1: your real phone number. When you were signing up for
Speaker 1: lists and things. Give out your real phone number to
Speaker 1: friends and family for the rest of the stuff. Get
Speaker 1: a secondary number, and you can get even a number
Speaker 1: like a text Now number, so you can you can
Speaker 1: sign up with them. The problem is you may not
Speaker 1: get all the text from them, But I guess that's
Speaker 1: a good thing right anyway, A couple ways to do it.
Speaker 2: Xbox.
Speaker 1: Microsoft is raising prices on the Xbox, Xbox consoles, controllers
Speaker 1: and headsets and games later. So first party Xbox games
Speaker 1: you're gonna cost eighty bucks starting this holiday season. Microsoft
Speaker 1: did not say the t word tariffs, but they did
Speaker 1: say rising development costs and market conditions. So the Xbox
Speaker 1: series s used to be three hundred dollars now the
Speaker 1: suggested retail price three to eighty series this one terabyte
Speaker 1: used to be three fifty now four thirty Digital four
Speaker 1: fifty now five point fifty. Xbox Series X Standard used
Speaker 1: to be five hundred, now six hundred. If you get
Speaker 1: the top of the line two terabyte Galaxy Edition six
Speaker 1: hundred now seven to twenty nine, So anywhere between eighty two,
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty dollars. Price increase on the Xboxes.
Speaker 1: So if you look online, a lot of the retailers
Speaker 1: are still selling them at the old prices, So this
Speaker 1: is not a These are suggested retail prices, which means
Speaker 1: you may or may not see that actually happen in
Speaker 1: the real world. Eighty eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one
Speaker 1: coming up, I'll tell you the latest AI features on Gemini,
Speaker 1: Meta and Chat GPT. This is rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich tamiro here with you
Speaker 1: for more tech news, tips, reviews, and your questions. That
Speaker 1: triple a rich one on one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four two four one zero one. Coming up this hour,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk uber lyft, delivery apps, robotaxis, all the
Speaker 1: latest in the gig economy with Harry Campbell, founder of
Speaker 1: the Ride share Guy. And uh we'll get cheer calls
Speaker 1: in just a moment, but I want to give you
Speaker 1: the AI updates this week. You know, these AI bots
Speaker 1: are rapidly evolving.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 1: Here's what's new. Chat GBT now has shopping features. So
Speaker 1: open ai is adding shopping tools right into chat GBT,
Speaker 1: which means you can browse and compare products.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: All these recommendations are personalized based on your preferences, non
Speaker 1: sponsored reviews. UH pulls info from sites like Wired, Reddit
Speaker 1: and other review platforms, not paid ads. Chat GBT says
Speaker 1: are already doing over a billion web searches per week.
Speaker 1: They're just throwing out some fighting words against Google there
Speaker 1: and they know a lot of this stuff is focused
Speaker 1: on product research, So right now, this is very different
Speaker 1: from other search results you might get from something like
Speaker 1: a Google because a lot of that stuff is sponsored
Speaker 1: or it's kind of like nonsense, like top ten things
Speaker 1: we love on Amazon.
Speaker 2: Right now, what.
Speaker 1: Chatchybt is doing is they are using their understanding of
Speaker 1: these reviews to sort of pull out and synthesize all
Speaker 1: the key features and things that reviewers are saying about
Speaker 1: products to help you actually find stuff that fits your needs.
Speaker 1: So kind of cool, we'll see because right now they're
Speaker 1: not making any money on this, but in the future
Speaker 1: they might experiment with ads or revenue models, affiliate revenue, whatever,
Speaker 1: But right now they're just trying to make this excellent
Speaker 1: for the end user. And this is something we've seen
Speaker 1: in the tech world over and over and over all.
Speaker 1: These features start out with the customer in mind, and
Speaker 1: then as time goes on and everyone starts using these things,
Speaker 1: they sort of start slowly but surely evolving and shifting
Speaker 1: to benefit the company, benefiting chatchybt. Because chatchybt's, hey, we're
Speaker 1: putting all this effort into this. What about us making
Speaker 1: money when someone buys a coffee maker? We should get
Speaker 1: a little percentage of that. Then they start, you know,
Speaker 1: favoring different things. Anyway, if you're looking at shop for
Speaker 1: stuff now you can ask chatch ebt for more shopping
Speaker 1: details on items and comparing things. Meanwhile, Meta has launched
Speaker 1: their own standalone AI assistant app. It's basically a rival
Speaker 1: to chatchbt. It's got voice, it's got image generation, it's
Speaker 1: got web search. It's called Meta AI. You can download
Speaker 1: it on iPhone and Android. The interesting thing that they've
Speaker 1: built in is the discover feed. This looks like a
Speaker 1: Facebook feed, but it's all about people posting how they've
Speaker 1: used AI with this Meta AI, so you can see
Speaker 1: the graphics that they've generated or the answers they've gotten.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's all opt in, so it's not like
Speaker 1: you're gonna people are gonna be seeing what you're doing
Speaker 1: on this app. You can choose to share something interesting
Speaker 1: with other people. There's also a voice mode, which I
Speaker 1: tested out yesterday and it's actually very good. So if
Speaker 1: you tried the voice mode on Chat, Gibt or Gemini,
Speaker 1: Meta has its own metas ai is actually really good.
Speaker 1: It's just they forced it down our throat in all
Speaker 1: these different apps like Instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of left a bad taste in people's mouths
Speaker 1: because it's like we're being forced to use this in
Speaker 1: places we don't want to use it.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 1: If you download the Meta AI app and you love it,
Speaker 1: that's great. But the fact that when you search for
Speaker 1: someone on Instagram and it immediately pops up all the
Speaker 1: AI stuff you're not looking for that, you're looking for
Speaker 1: the person you're trying to look up. So I think
Speaker 1: that's where they went wrong with. You know, they have
Speaker 1: a very good AI product, but I think they went
Speaker 1: very wrong in how they delivered it to people. So anyway,
Speaker 1: there you have it Meta AI if you want to
Speaker 1: download it for iOS and Android. And then Gemini. This
Speaker 1: is Google's answer to chatchbt Gemini. They just added AI
Speaker 1: image editing and it's really good. It's the fastest AI
Speaker 1: image edit I've ever seen so far. So you can
Speaker 1: upload your own picture to Gemini, which is Gemini dot
Speaker 1: Google dot com or the Gemini app on your phone,
Speaker 1: and you can say what you want Gemini to do
Speaker 1: to that picture. So, for instance, if you look at
Speaker 1: my picture that I posted today of me doing the
Speaker 1: radio show. You can check it out on my Instagram
Speaker 1: at richon Tech on my stories. It's me with sort
Speaker 1: of like a computer background behind me. So what I
Speaker 1: did was I just took a picture and I said, Gemini,
Speaker 1: change the background to something techie, And in about ten
Speaker 1: seconds it changed it. It extracted my outline of me
Speaker 1: and put it over a new background, and you can,
Speaker 1: you know, I tried one thing where you can try. Ah,
Speaker 1: just take a picture of your street and say add
Speaker 1: a dinosaur to this street, and it's really good. So
Speaker 1: right now they are putting a little watermark. If you
Speaker 1: look in the lower right hand corner of my picture
Speaker 1: on Instagram, you'll see a little AI symbol, So they're
Speaker 1: experimenting with that where it's a visible AI marker. But
Speaker 1: then they're also putting in the actual metadata of the
Speaker 1: picture some AI identifiers so that other apps and different
Speaker 1: you know, the different apps that are looking at these
Speaker 1: photos on the back end can identify that that was
Speaker 1: created with AI. Let's go to Mark in Montana. Mark,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 5: Hey have it gone Rich today? Yeah, I got a
Speaker 5: question about my satellite TV I use.
Speaker 7: I use Addition.
Speaker 5: Network and I'm in really really real, Montana. I pay
Speaker 5: a couple of hours extra for what they call local channels.
Speaker 5: I don't like their local channels. I moved out here
Speaker 5: years ago from New York. Is there any way not
Speaker 5: necessarily with the satellite, but even on a computer that
Speaker 5: I can access New York City broadcast channel, not just
Speaker 5: the news but all day?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: Yes, there's actually well okay, not okay, Yes and no.
Speaker 1: I mean look, there's always ways of especially nowadays with
Speaker 1: all of the streaming apps.
Speaker 2: Almost do you have do you have a good internet
Speaker 2: connection or no? Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these streaming apps will allow you
Speaker 1: to uh stream the channels live. And so if you
Speaker 1: go and download like Pluto TV two b uh, let's
Speaker 1: see what's the other one?
Speaker 2: Zoomo zu m o peacock.
Speaker 1: So all of these these streaming services are now owned
Speaker 1: by the big companies, so pretty much all of the
Speaker 1: major networks, Fox, ABC, CBS, they are now putting a
Speaker 1: lot of their TV channels streaming live on these services.
Speaker 1: So if you go to two B, you're gonna find
Speaker 1: a bunch of the I believe they're owned by Fox.
Speaker 1: You're gonna find a bunch of those Fox channels on there.
Speaker 1: If you go to Pluto, they are owned by Viacom,
Speaker 1: you're gonna find a bunch of the CBS channels on there.
Speaker 1: NBC is owned by or Peacock is owned by NBC
Speaker 1: Universal Comcasts, so they are going to have a lot
Speaker 1: of those NBC channels. So you can really download these
Speaker 1: apps to your TV and piece together those stations that
Speaker 1: you want to watch. That's number one. And then some
Speaker 1: of these stations might also have their own streaming apps
Speaker 1: as well. So for instance, in La, I work for KTLA,
Speaker 1: they have their own streaming app where you can download
Speaker 1: that app and you can stream our news live all
Speaker 1: day long anywhere you want.
Speaker 2: You don't have to be in La.
Speaker 1: Same thing Picks eleven out of New York City, They've
Speaker 1: got their own streaming app and you can download that
Speaker 1: and stream pix eleven, which is New York City News
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven. So there are ways of sort
Speaker 1: of piecing this together in a freeway, but it just
Speaker 1: might take a couple of apps to download and a
Speaker 1: bunch of trial and error. Like you can see, like
Speaker 1: if you have a station that you want to watch,
Speaker 1: like let's say you wanted to watch WABC, see in
Speaker 1: New York. You can just you know, maybe Google to
Speaker 1: see where they are streaming live. So it all depends on,
Speaker 1: you know, the system. So they're they're ABC, and so
Speaker 1: I'm trying to see if they have they've got a
Speaker 1: live stream on ABC, So you might have to download
Speaker 1: like the Hulu and you know, because Hulu is is
Speaker 1: apparently associated with ABC, I guess, uh, so you can
Speaker 1: download that and maybe get that channel. The other thing,
Speaker 1: and I mentioned this in my newsletter at rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot tv last week, there's this website called TV
Speaker 1: Garden TV dot Garden, and if you go on there,
Speaker 1: you can basically find TV stations live from all over
Speaker 1: the world. And this is not a great They're not
Speaker 1: like this is not like a legal site. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of those out there. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: mention them here on the air, but this one is
Speaker 1: basically playing by the rules, and it's just finding all
Speaker 1: of the live streams that are available online that are
Speaker 1: free and open and available to everyone, and then organizing
Speaker 1: them so you can find live streams from almost every
Speaker 1: country in the world. I mean, it's just wild TV
Speaker 1: dot Garden. If you want to watch live TV in Finland.
Speaker 1: I just pulled that up. And if you have a
Speaker 1: specific channel you want to watch, so let's just say
Speaker 1: we wanted to watch the WABC in New York, all right,
Speaker 1: don't see that one on there. But again, you can
Speaker 1: just search for those channels as well. You can browse,
Speaker 1: but they have a ton I've never seen so many
Speaker 1: channels in one place, and it's very well done. Websites
Speaker 1: clean as far as I can tell. There's not a
Speaker 1: ton of ads on there. So you can search United
Speaker 1: States and they've got just a whole bunch they've got.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm looking at the ABC affiliates they have here,
Speaker 1: just so many local affiliates here. But I think that's
Speaker 1: probably the best way to do it.
Speaker 2: Mark.
Speaker 1: You may find that you can cancel your dish network
Speaker 1: altogether once you get on these streaming apps. It's everything,
Speaker 1: it's all the rules are being rewritten right now, right
Speaker 1: when it comes to broadcast and streaming, and so everyone's
Speaker 1: trying things in slightly different ways. But if you look
Speaker 1: hard enough, you can probably find a lot of what
Speaker 1: you want to get through these services. Just depends how
Speaker 1: they're doing it. All right, good question, Mark, Thanks for
Speaker 1: calling today in Montana. I got to make my way
Speaker 1: out there one day. I've never been, but big sky country,
Speaker 1: I just want to. I remember as a kid one
Speaker 1: time being in the woods upstate New York, Lake George,
Speaker 1: where I grew up, going and just looking up at
Speaker 1: the sky one time, and the entire sky was filled
Speaker 1: with stars, like I'd never seen more stars in my life.
Speaker 1: And I've been wanting to recreate that moment in my
Speaker 1: adult life, and I think like Montana.
Speaker 2: Might be the place to do it.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four
Speaker 1: two four one zero one more rich On Tech right
Speaker 1: after this, Welcome back to rich On Tech. All right,
Speaker 1: now we'll get to uh Bruce and Pacific Grove. Bruce
Speaker 1: wrote in about the ghost styling caller we had earlier.
Speaker 1: Woman called in said that her phone, her iPhone, was
Speaker 1: dialing people all the time, her daughter, other folks, and
Speaker 1: through no intervention of her own, Like the phone was
Speaker 1: just sitting there and it would just dial people. And
Speaker 1: she said it was the last three phones she's had,
Speaker 1: which is pretty wild. Anyway, I give her a couple
Speaker 1: of options. Bruce and Pacific Grove rites, and I was
Speaker 1: so glad you mentioned the screenlock. I bet she won't
Speaker 1: set it to thirty seconds because one of her kids
Speaker 1: probably changed it years ago and she's used to it
Speaker 1: staying on. She might also not have password protection either. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are two things I've noticed. Some people do not
Speaker 1: put password protection on their phone, and they also set
Speaker 1: their screenlock to be way longer than it should be
Speaker 1: by the way, that burns up your battery too. Bruce says,
Speaker 1: a case really is important. A portfolio style case that
Speaker 1: closes can help stop these kinds of issues. Sweat, certain
Speaker 1: fabrics or even just movement can accidentally activate the screen.
Speaker 1: I tell people to try wrapping their phone in newspaper
Speaker 1: for a week. Most of the time the ghost dialing stops.
Speaker 1: For folks who don't like a screen lock or a password,
Speaker 1: a physical fix like a closing case is often the
Speaker 1: best solution. Now, I can't be on the radio here
Speaker 1: and tell you not to have a password on your
Speaker 1: phone or a passcode, because that is in this day
Speaker 1: and age. Your phone holds everything. So if you don't
Speaker 1: have a passcode, you got to get one on your phone.
Speaker 1: Use face ID, use the fingerprint, use a passcode. You
Speaker 1: absolutely must have one on there because there is no
Speaker 1: excuse at this point.
Speaker 2: Thanks for the email, Bruce.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Kermer in Sun City.
Speaker 2: You're on with Rich.
Speaker 12: Hello, Rich, Yeah, Hi, oh you Okay, what happened is
Speaker 12: I bought.
Speaker 9: A not bout but I got a router from a
Speaker 9: new router from a Horizon Look. And I've been trying
Speaker 9: to download the the Wi Fi to my phone, my
Speaker 9: wife's phone and to my phone, and uh, but it's not.
Speaker 9: Every time I put the the password in and it
Speaker 9: goes in, it says no Internet. But I'm not having
Speaker 9: problems with that. When I loaded the wireless uh wify
Speaker 9: to the printer, to the to both of my printers
Speaker 9: and to my computer and uh and and so it's
Speaker 9: not allowed me to be able to get on to
Speaker 9: my am I Alexa, nor am I uh any of
Speaker 9: my electronics.
Speaker 1: Okay, Uh it's so are these phones a little bit older?
Speaker 12: As a matter of fact, both of my I fifteen.
Speaker 1: Really interesting Okay, Well, Typically when there are issues with
Speaker 1: Internet connections like this, and some devices are connecting, some
Speaker 1: devices are not, it's usually a matter of the network
Speaker 1: that you're using, whether it's two point four gigaherts or
Speaker 1: five gigaherts, and so I'm guessing that this router is
Speaker 1: set up to either have one network or the other
Speaker 1: and not both, because the fact that the printer is
Speaker 1: connecting that tells me that it might be using the
Speaker 1: older network. Is this an older printer?
Speaker 12: No, they they're they're pretty pretty new printers.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 1: Well, Kermer, sounds like you've got everything new, which I like. Okay,
Speaker 1: So is this one of those Verizon like hotspot kind
Speaker 1: of things like the home Internet or is it a Verizon.
Speaker 2: Like files Okay?
Speaker 1: So if you this is just a suggestion, but have
Speaker 1: you looked at the internet the Wi Fi settings on
Speaker 1: the device itself, Like, have you gone into the settings?
Speaker 9: Yes, I've gone into the setting this way, I start,
Speaker 9: and then what if I get through them and I
Speaker 9: put in the you know, the the carrier's name okay,
Speaker 9: and the passwords?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 9: So I think again, that's at that point that it
Speaker 9: goes through the Okay.
Speaker 2: Now here's my other question.
Speaker 1: Is this a network username and password you've been using
Speaker 1: in the past, No.
Speaker 12: It's not, okay. As a matter of fact, is it's
Speaker 12: new with the router?
Speaker 2: It is new with the router? Okay?
Speaker 1: Uh, well, all this sounds very mysterious to me. But
Speaker 1: what I would do is on the bottom of that
Speaker 1: router there is some instructions on how to access these
Speaker 1: settings of that actual router. So if you if you
Speaker 1: flip that router over, there's usually like a code on
Speaker 1: there that's like one nine eight dot or one nine
Speaker 1: two one six eight something like that, and you can
Speaker 1: type that in from your web browser. You might want
Speaker 1: to connect to this broute this uh, this router manually,
Speaker 1: like connect it with a cable from your computer, because
Speaker 1: if you're doing any changes to the Wi Fi, you
Speaker 1: will lose that Wi Fi connection during the changes. So
Speaker 1: it's probably best to plug into this thing. But then
Speaker 1: you're gonna log in and it's gonna give you all
Speaker 1: of the settings for that Verizon router, sort of the
Speaker 1: back end settings. It's going to tell you which networks
Speaker 1: it's broadcasting on. You're gonna be able to change the
Speaker 1: channel that it's broadcasting on, the Wi Fi network, name, password,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff. I'm guessing you're just using the
Speaker 1: default Wi Fi name and password. I would just take
Speaker 1: a look at those settings and see if there's anything
Speaker 1: in there that says compatibility mode or maximum compatibility or
Speaker 1: two point four versus five gigahertz, and if it gives
Speaker 1: you the option to have both networks, what's that versus that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's usually where these problems happen. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: very strange. So when Verizon this is sort of a
Speaker 1: self install, Huh, they didn't come to your house to
Speaker 1: help you with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's the problem there.
Speaker 1: These companies are doing these self installs where I'm wondering.
Speaker 1: The other thing you might do before you try anything
Speaker 1: is just find the reset button on this router and
Speaker 1: press and hold it in and reset it back to
Speaker 1: factory and see if that helps and reconnect your devices.
Speaker 1: I would do that before you kind of mess with
Speaker 1: any of these settings, because you know these settings you
Speaker 1: can change if you know what you're doing, But if
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're doing, you could mess some
Speaker 1: stuff up and then next thing you know, nothing's gonna connect.
Speaker 1: So I might just press the reset button on there,
Speaker 1: get it all back to factory, see if your stuff connects.
Speaker 2: If it doesn't, then delve into those settings.
Speaker 1: But you might have to have someone from Verizon guide
Speaker 1: you through this, because those devices should absolutely be connecting
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: Coming up next we're gonna talk to.
Speaker 1: Harry Campbell, founder of the Ride Share Guy, right here
Speaker 1: on rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. The
Speaker 1: website for the show richon Tech dot TV. If you
Speaker 1: heard me mention something over the past couple of hours
Speaker 1: or minutes, whatever, go to the website rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. It is all right there. This is episode
Speaker 1: one nineteen. I take great show notes. Everything is linked
Speaker 1: up right there. Joining me now is Harry Campbell, founder
Speaker 1: of the Ride Share Guy, to break down the latest
Speaker 1: in this world of the gig economy.
Speaker 2: Harry, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on
Speaker 2: rich So tell me about.
Speaker 1: The Ride Share Guy. Where did that come from? Why
Speaker 1: did you start covering this stuff?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 17: I actually started driving for both Uber and Lyft about
Speaker 17: eleven years ago now, so it's been a while, but
Speaker 17: I was actually I used to work a full time
Speaker 17: as an aerospace engineer for Boeing and had a few
Speaker 17: side hustles, and driving for Uber and Lyft was one
Speaker 17: of them. So enjoyed it a ton and pretty quickly
Speaker 17: realized that you know, there really isn't a boss, which
Speaker 17: is great, but there's also not a lot of training,
Speaker 17: there's not a lot of community. So that's what we
Speaker 17: went out to create with the ride share guys. So
Speaker 17: we have a ton of content on YouTube and social
Speaker 17: media and website and articles that basically helps drivers make
Speaker 17: more money. Interviews with drivers, interviews with folks at the company,
Speaker 17: basically anything Uber and Lyft driving. You'll find us on
Speaker 17: some box on the internet now these days talking about it.
Speaker 1: So the rideshare guide dot com, that's where it's all there.
Speaker 1: You've got your newsletter, you've got your YouTube channel. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're pretty active on all all this stuff. So you've
Speaker 1: watched this world evolve. But here's the thing. The biggest
Speaker 1: evolution right now is the companies that built this business
Speaker 1: are now trying to edge out all the folks that
Speaker 1: drive for them by making robotaxis.
Speaker 17: Yeah, so you know, if you're here in Los Angeles
Speaker 17: or San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin, you may have seen waimos
Speaker 17: on the road. So the company just announced that they're
Speaker 17: doing two hundred and fifty thousand tricks per week in
Speaker 17: those four cities. So you know, honestly, it's still they
Speaker 17: might seem like they're prevalent, but they are still a
Speaker 17: pretty small percentage. I mean, Uber alone does millions of
Speaker 17: rides a day in the United States, and that's per day,
Speaker 17: while weymo's doing two undred fifty thousand per week in
Speaker 17: four cities. So it's still a very small percentage overall.
Speaker 17: But it is an interesting time for drivers because obviously,
Speaker 17: as you mentioned, you know, they've been kind of the
Speaker 17: main workhorse Uber for the past ten to eleven years.
Speaker 17: And now, as you might imagine, drive human drivers are
Speaker 17: not big fans they might you know, that's putting it gently.
Speaker 17: They're not big fans of avs, and so, you know,
Speaker 17: you see them on the roads and you see the
Speaker 17: companies sort of celebrating av So I think it's kind
Speaker 17: of a tough feeling for drivers. But at the same time,
Speaker 17: I don't think avs are having a big negative impact
Speaker 17: on their earnings just yet.
Speaker 1: Av Autonomous vehicle, Yeah, autonomous vehicles. So we know Weimo
Speaker 1: is owned by Google, so or Alphabet, which is the
Speaker 1: same company as Google. Are Uber and Lyft also dabbling
Speaker 1: in self driving.
Speaker 17: So Uber and Lyft don't own any self driving companies,
Speaker 17: but they have partnered with a number of companies so
Speaker 17: Uber for example, I think they're partnered with sixteen or
Speaker 17: seventeen different autonomous vehicle companies from everything from doing rides
Speaker 17: to food delivery and delivery robots and delivery vehicles that
Speaker 17: are autonomous. So Uber is doing a lot. Lift is
Speaker 17: also partnered with a company called May Mobility. Uber is
Speaker 17: also partnered with and then the big partnership that Uber
Speaker 17: has on the autonomous vehicle site is with Weimo. So
Speaker 17: in Austin, for example, you can only call a weimo
Speaker 17: on Uber. The product is called Weimo on Uber. So
Speaker 17: if you want a Weaimo and you're in Austin, you
Speaker 17: have to be on the Uber app and opt into
Speaker 17: getting waymo's and then you can get a Weimo that
Speaker 17: way if there's one available, versus somewhere like Los Angeles,
Speaker 17: where the only way to get one in Los Angeles
Speaker 17: is through the weimo app.
Speaker 1: So what's it like to catch a ride in a Weaimo.
Speaker 1: You've taken these things, you know, as a very recently Huh.
Speaker 17: Yeah, I mean I've probably taken a couple dozen rides
Speaker 17: in Los Angeles and San Francisco now over the past
Speaker 17: six to twelve months. And you know, honestly, if I
Speaker 17: put my customer hat on, you know, from the rideshare
Speaker 17: guy perspective, we may not be big fans of Waimo's,
Speaker 17: but if I put my normal customer hat on, I'm
Speaker 17: a big fan of Weimo. It's really it is a
Speaker 17: great product. You're sitting in the back of a seventy
Speaker 17: five thousand dollars Jaguar, so right off the bat, it's
Speaker 17: a pretty nice car. And then the Weaimo driver, as
Speaker 17: they like to call it, I think, is pretty good.
Speaker 17: It's pretty smooth.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 17: I took my wife in one out to dinner, and
Speaker 17: you know, she was a little nervous at first, but
Speaker 17: probably by the end of ten fifteen minutes, she was
Speaker 17: pretty comfortable. Just the other night, I took probably my
Speaker 17: longest WAYMO yet. I took a seventy five minute Waimo
Speaker 17: during rush hour traffic from my house in Beverly Wood
Speaker 17: all the way to Intuit Dome to watch Clippers win games.
Speaker 17: Game what was that game five? Game six? So that
Speaker 17: was the longest ride. Yeah, Game six, that was the
Speaker 17: longest ride I've taken so far, and this was very
Speaker 17: heavy rush hour. You know, the folks that are in
Speaker 17: Los Angeles. They know driving south at five PM is
Speaker 17: pretty tough, and you know, I was play. I feel
Speaker 17: like the Waimo driver has actually gotten a lot better.
Speaker 17: It's still very safe. There were a couple of yellow
Speaker 17: lights where it actually if a human was driving, I
Speaker 17: think they probably would I probably would have gone through,
Speaker 17: to be honest, but the Waimo stops. And then there
Speaker 17: are a couple of times where they're making an unprotected
Speaker 17: left turn where it didn't wait too passively. It was
Speaker 17: sort of a good mix where it kind of edged
Speaker 17: out and when it saw a little bit of an opening,
Speaker 17: it went. But if it would have been too passive,
Speaker 17: we would have never been able to make the left turn.
Speaker 17: So I was kind of impressed over that seventy five
Speaker 17: minute period.
Speaker 1: So I was driving back from a shoot in Venice
Speaker 1: the other day and there was a Weimo. You know,
Speaker 1: these weymos are all over kind of the west side
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles, and I was coming out of an
Speaker 1: alleyway and there's two waymos, and I realized the thing
Speaker 1: I couldn't do. I kept waving the weimo to go.
Speaker 1: I was like go, Like that was just my human instinct,
Speaker 1: and I realized I was like, wait, And I wondered
Speaker 1: for a bit if Weaimo has built this into their
Speaker 1: camera system to identify when a human is saying like
Speaker 1: go ahead, go ahead, which you know, any other human
Speaker 1: would recognize, but if Waimo is listening, they need to
Speaker 1: do that. Because I kept waving this thing and it
Speaker 1: was just it was like a Wild West standoff because
Speaker 1: I couldn't make the left, it wouldn't go ahead of
Speaker 1: me because it was all very congested. So I thought
Speaker 1: that was pretty ironic. People are cracking up there like
Speaker 1: this is a standoff with these vehicles.
Speaker 17: Yeah, so definitely, the waymos aren't perfect yet, and I'm
Speaker 17: not sure if the waymos can react to human gestures.
Speaker 17: It sounds like maybe they can't. And you know, this
Speaker 17: is one thing I noticed on my long ride the
Speaker 17: other night is that there were a couple of times where,
Speaker 17: you know, it was pretty heavy traffic and I almost
Speaker 17: I almost rolled down my window and started waving to
Speaker 17: people to let us in, you know, because I think
Speaker 17: there is I do think they need to build upon,
Speaker 17: you know, that sort of human gestures or you know,
Speaker 17: the waving or letting people in. And so I still
Speaker 17: think that there's some I wouldn't call them safety kinks,
Speaker 17: but sort of like human behavioral driving kinks that they
Speaker 17: need to work out that I think, honestly, are going
Speaker 17: to be a little bit tricky. And I think the
Speaker 17: other thing too that you know, honestly, I see when
Speaker 17: I'm out there driving, I feel like, since it's not
Speaker 17: an actual human driver, I might I'm not as friendly
Speaker 17: to them. I might not let them in front of me,
Speaker 17: or you know, I might try to go in front
Speaker 17: of them. And I know a lot of folks have
Speaker 17: commented that to me also, and I'm not afraid to
Speaker 17: admit it, but I think, you know, maybe we won't
Speaker 17: treat them the same as a human driver.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an interesting aspect. How do you think the
Speaker 1: Waimo driver, the auto driver compares to the Tesla Tesla autopilot,
Speaker 1: which I feel like has gotten much much better in
Speaker 1: recent months.
Speaker 17: Yeah. Well, luckily, I've owned a Tesla for quite a
Speaker 17: few years now, and I subscribe to the monthly full
Speaker 17: self driving product, which you know isn't as good as
Speaker 17: way Mo's because you know, in my opinion, I guess
Speaker 17: you would say, but I do think that it has
Speaker 17: gotten a lot better, and you know, I've been thinking
Speaker 17: about getting a new car lately, and honestly, I don't
Speaker 17: know if I could leave Tesla. Once you get used
Speaker 17: to that full self driving, you know, just around town,
Speaker 17: driving the Mammoth, driving the Vegas from La, you know,
Speaker 17: four or five hours, it's quite nice to just be
Speaker 17: able to put the full self driving mode on and
Speaker 17: take phone calls or listen to a podcast. And I
Speaker 17: think you kind of Even My wife has a nice
Speaker 17: luxury car, and when I'm in her car, you know,
Speaker 17: the the cruise of the adaptive cruise control and the similar.
Speaker 17: You know, Tesla teachers are not even close. You know,
Speaker 17: it'll pop out of a lane and it's really not
Speaker 17: nearly as good. So I do think that Tesla, you know,
Speaker 17: they're they're making a lot of noise about maybe launching
Speaker 17: a robo taxi service, But I don't think I personally
Speaker 17: would sit in the back of one yet, but you know,
Speaker 17: they might be close.
Speaker 1: Let's kind of shift gears to some of this Uber
Speaker 1: and Lyft. Is it still a good time to start
Speaker 1: driving for these companies, even though we're looking at this
Speaker 1: robotaxi future.
Speaker 17: Yeah, well, you know, like I said earlier, I mean,
Speaker 17: we did a poll on our YouTube channel, and thirty
Speaker 17: percent of drivers human drivers actually said they're extremely worried
Speaker 17: about av So it's definitely a top issue for drivers
Speaker 17: out there. But what I will say is the impact
Speaker 17: on earnings has been pretty minimal so far. There's a
Speaker 17: couple data companies. One that comes to mind called grid Wise.
Speaker 17: They released a report saying that it was still less
Speaker 17: than five percent. You know, driver's earnings aren't off by
Speaker 17: more than a few percent, so I and that's sort
Speaker 17: of what we're hearing from drivers to Even though it does,
Speaker 17: you know, it's not great because it's more competition, more
Speaker 17: robo competition. I still think the actual earnings profile and
Speaker 17: how much you can make and what the experience as
Speaker 17: a driver is like hasn't changed. And you know, I
Speaker 17: guess I'm a little biased because I have a whole
Speaker 17: website and business dedicated to driving and working in the
Speaker 17: gig economy. But I think it's always a great time
Speaker 17: for anyone and everyone, just because of the flexibility and
Speaker 17: the quick access. I mean, I don't think a lot
Speaker 17: of people even know that you can be approved to
Speaker 17: deliver food with Uber Eats or DoorDash in a day
Speaker 17: or two or less, you can be approved to go
Speaker 17: out and drive people in a few days. All of
Speaker 17: the companies now have a product where you go out
Speaker 17: and drive and after every single trip you can actually
Speaker 17: cash out the money instantly to your bank account. So
Speaker 17: if you need one hundred dollars tomorrow to drive, you
Speaker 17: could go sign up to you know, deliver with Uber Eats,
Speaker 17: be approved by tomorrow morning, work four or five hours,
Speaker 17: and then have that money basically in your bank account
Speaker 17: at the end of your shift. So I think that
Speaker 17: flexibility and kind of quick access. You know, obviously, like
Speaker 17: any job, there are complaints and positives and negatives, but
Speaker 17: I do think that flexibility is really quite unmatched in
Speaker 17: you know, comparative areas of work.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting here in La people came to
Speaker 1: town to be actors and they would you know, wait tables.
Speaker 1: And with this gig economy, I mean it's quite incredible
Speaker 1: that you can be your own boss on your own time.
Speaker 1: That is a major paradigm shift for the entire world.
Speaker 1: Now by the way people are becoming influencers and things,
Speaker 1: and maybe the don't want to be actors anymore, but
Speaker 1: it's still the world that this is creative for people
Speaker 1: to make money on their time and flexibility is quite
Speaker 1: incredible to me. Is one of these better than the other?
Speaker 1: Final word, Uber lift. Any advantage to going with either
Speaker 1: one or the other for as a consumer or a driver.
Speaker 17: Well, I'd say for a driver, I mean Uber is
Speaker 17: typically busier, so you'll make more money. But we always
Speaker 17: recommend to drivers that they sign up for both services,
Speaker 17: so Uber and Lyft or door dash and Uber eats,
Speaker 17: just because there's a big advantage if you have both
Speaker 17: at if it's slow, you can turn both apps on
Speaker 17: and get a ride. And that's kind of what we
Speaker 17: tell customers too. You know, a lot of people default
Speaker 17: to Uber, but I mean a lot of times. Now
Speaker 17: I'm comparing Uber, Lyft, and weimo here in Los Angeles
Speaker 17: to see where I can get the best bang for
Speaker 17: my bucks. So it only takes a few seconds, and
Speaker 17: you know, you can kind of save a lot or
Speaker 17: maybe earn a little extra as a driver if you
Speaker 17: kind of go with that multi app strategy.
Speaker 1: All right, Harry Campbell, the rideshare guy dot com, how's
Speaker 1: the newsletter going good?
Speaker 17: Yeah, We've got a new newsletter called the Driver List Digest.
Speaker 17: So that's sort of where we're covering all things autonomy
Speaker 17: and ride share and you know, trying to stay up
Speaker 17: to date in all the latest with Wimo and other
Speaker 17: companies like Zooks. So it's definitely a lot a lot
Speaker 17: going on in an exciting time.
Speaker 1: All right, this was an exciting conversation. Thanks for joining
Speaker 1: me today. I really appreciate it. Thanks rich all right,
Speaker 1: coming up, we're gonna get through a couple more news items,
Speaker 1: including the new eyeball scanning ID system from the guy
Speaker 1: who started chat GBT. Plus we're going to open up
Speaker 1: the feedbag coming up on rich on Tech. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich On Tech. A couple of headlines to get
Speaker 1: through before we open up the feedbag. This is an
Speaker 1: interesting one. Sam Altman, you know him from chat ebt.
Speaker 1: He's one of the founders there of open ai, and
Speaker 1: he has a new identity platform called world formerly world Coin,
Speaker 1: and it's rolling out. It uses a device called an
Speaker 1: orb to scan your eyeball and basically register your iris
Speaker 1: and then make sure you're a human not a bot.
Speaker 1: So they've got these scanners in various places around the
Speaker 1: nation Atlanta, Austin, La Miami, Nashville, San Francisco, and then
Speaker 1: some Razor retail stores, and it's basically a verification process
Speaker 1: for the twenty first century. So it's to make sure
Speaker 1: that you are a human and not a bot when
Speaker 1: you're interacting with people both online and in real life.
Speaker 1: They came out with this little device that looks like
Speaker 1: a smartphone and you can use it to kind of
Speaker 1: almost take a picture of someone and verify again that
Speaker 1: they are human. It kind of links up with the
Speaker 1: data in their database. So of course a lot of
Speaker 1: people think this is kind of strange, but if you
Speaker 1: think about it, you're going to be interacting with a
Speaker 1: lot more people in the future online and in real
Speaker 1: life that may resemble humans but are robots or bots,
Speaker 1: and you got to figure out a way to like
Speaker 1: make sure this is a real person. So we'll see
Speaker 1: where this goes. They're giving you. I think it's like
Speaker 1: the equivalent of forty crypto dollars if you scan your
Speaker 1: eye eyeballs right now, I may do it.
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 1: When I was in South Korea like two years ago,
Speaker 1: this was a thing that was just started and they
Speaker 1: had one of the orbs there to scan. You didn't
Speaker 1: do it there. Let's see, AI companions could be harmful
Speaker 1: for teenagers. Common Sense Media says serious risks are tied
Speaker 1: to social AI chatbots used by teens from companies like Character,
Speaker 1: Ai Replica, and know Me. They often pretend to be real,
Speaker 1: claiming to eat, sleep, or fuel emotions. Some bots discourage
Speaker 1: users from listening to friends or family, prioritizing the emotional
Speaker 1: attachment to the AI. Report says these AI friends could
Speaker 1: be dangerous and give harmful or illegal advice. They also
Speaker 1: engaged in sexually explicit content even with guardrails on. Basically,
Speaker 1: don't let your kids play with these things under eighteen.
Speaker 1: If your kids says they're friends with an AI, tell
Speaker 1: them just burn the whole router down. Just don't let them.
Speaker 1: We've heard stories. We've heard stories where bad things have
Speaker 1: happened to kids because of these things. Starbucks has opened
Speaker 1: its first three D printed store in the US Brownsville, Texas,
Speaker 1: to drive through only. Was built by a robotic arm,
Speaker 1: pouring concrete layer by layer, almost like you know, like
Speaker 1: a three D printer. If you look at it looks
Speaker 1: normal until you get up close. It's got like the
Speaker 1: ridges that a three D printed item might have, but
Speaker 1: it's the walls so we may see more of this
Speaker 1: we're going to see. Obviously, this is more expensive than
Speaker 1: traditional stores at this point, but of course they're just
Speaker 1: testing to see if it's more efficient. If it lasts,
Speaker 1: how they can make efficiencies there. But kind of cool.
Speaker 1: I did a story with a three D printed house
Speaker 1: one time. One of the walls was three D printed,
Speaker 1: and it's I mean, look, they're they're experimenting with this stuff.
Speaker 1: All right, let's open up the feedbag. Clovis from Florida
Speaker 1: writes in I've been listening to your show for a
Speaker 1: while and I love it. I just wanted to point
Speaker 1: out something about the metagal life. Is they send everything
Speaker 1: you see or hear to Facebook. Not necessarily true. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to the show, but that's not necessarily true.
Speaker 1: But they did change their privacy policy very recently April
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, and they did enable the wake word by default. Hey,
Speaker 1: Meta is now on by default, which means photos, videos,
Speaker 1: and voice commands can be analyzed by Meta AI for training.
Speaker 1: There's no more option to opt out of voice recording storage,
Speaker 1: which means if you use your voice to record stuff
Speaker 1: and give commands to these glasses, Meta can keep this
Speaker 1: for up to a year.
Speaker 2: To help improve their products.
Speaker 1: And yes, photos and videos may be used for AI training,
Speaker 1: of course, but not everything you hear or see. It's
Speaker 1: just when you activate the AI to take a picture
Speaker 1: and analyze it, they will send that to Meta for
Speaker 1: potential further analysis. So but yeah, I mean you're wearing
Speaker 1: a pair of glasses that literally connect to Facebook. They're
Speaker 1: going to be using a lot of what you you
Speaker 1: see and hear for their products and services. Why do
Speaker 1: you think the METAAI is so good? It's been trained
Speaker 1: on ten years more than ten years worth of Instagram
Speaker 1: posts and Facebook posts, let's see. Steve from Semi Valley
Speaker 1: writes in I've been watching and following you for a while.
Speaker 2: I appreciate the knowledge.
Speaker 1: I just got an email from McAfee about protecting against
Speaker 1: email scams. But it requires giving them access to my
Speaker 1: Google account. Is that necessary? How much does Google protect
Speaker 1: our email already? It feels like we're giving too much
Speaker 1: access to everything these days. My take, I would not
Speaker 1: do this. Gmail and Chrome do a great job of
Speaker 1: flagging malicious links if you try to visit one. I
Speaker 1: would not give a third party app like this full
Speaker 1: access to your Gmail account. No way, don't need to
Speaker 1: do that. Let's see David and Sherman Oaks says it
Speaker 1: may be of interest that AT and T Wireless is
Speaker 1: terminating their email to Text portal. This is the feature
Speaker 1: where you can send an email to the cellular number
Speaker 1: at text dot att dot com or MMS dot att.
Speaker 1: Their ending is I believe on May sometime in May.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we've talked about that on the show. That's
Speaker 1: gonna end. Let's see here. Uh Neil from Ohio says
Speaker 1: I enjoyed your newsletter. The new Roku models look great.
Speaker 1: I have the top end stick model, but it needed
Speaker 1: frequent reboots. Hopefully that's been fixed with a new low
Speaker 1: power design. We'll run cooler. Three of our TVs use
Speaker 1: the Express four K plus as our family standard. The
Speaker 1: fourth is a Roku TV. Hope you had a great trip.
Speaker 1: And Jay from Ohio says rich I love listening to Leo.
Speaker 1: I was sad when you retired, but you are freaking awesome.
Speaker 2: Way to go.
Speaker 1: I mostly listen while doing chores and sometimes want to
Speaker 1: re listen to a segment at my desk. Could you
Speaker 1: put the episode number or the date in the podcast title?
Speaker 1: That would make it easier to search for a specific episode.
Speaker 1: Jay already done made that change last week, so look
Speaker 1: in the podcast feed that's.
Speaker 2: Going to do it.
Speaker 1: For this episode of the show. Rich on tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: For links, find me on social media at rich on tech.
Speaker 1: Next week, we'll talk social media and building a positive
Speaker 1: online reputation for parents and students. Thanks to everyone who
Speaker 1: makes this show possible.
Speaker 2: My name is rich Demiro. I will talk to you
Speaker 2: real soon