Speaker 1: Roku's got new streaming sticks and new security cameras to
Speaker 1: watch your home while you stream. Metas Ray Band smart
Speaker 1: glasses just got an amazing upgrade including real time translation
Speaker 1: right in your ears, plus the open source spelling and
Speaker 1: grammar checker that can really help you become a better writer.
Speaker 1: Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on in rich
Speaker 1: dmiro And this is Rich on Tech. This is the
Speaker 1: show where I talk about the tech stuff I think
Speaker 1: you should know about. It's also the place where I
Speaker 1: answer your questions about technology. I believe the tech should
Speaker 1: be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up those phone
Speaker 1: lines at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Give me a call. If you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: Email is also an option. Just go to the website
Speaker 1: rich on Tech dot TV. All right, we've got some
Speaker 1: great guests this week. Three very interesting guests. Tim Macalino,
Speaker 1: co founder and CEO of Bandana. He's going to talk
Speaker 1: about his startup for helping workers land better hourly and
Speaker 1: entry level jobs for free. Really interesting there. And then
Speaker 1: Justin Hendrix a little bit later on, CEO and founder
Speaker 1: of Tech Policy Press is going to talk about all
Speaker 1: of the antitrust trials going on right now, Google, Meta Uber.
Speaker 1: There's a lot happening. We'll tell you what it means
Speaker 1: for you. And then later in the show, Tim O'Hearn,
Speaker 1: software engineer and author of Framed a villain's perspective on
Speaker 1: social media, he's going to have a new take on
Speaker 1: how social platforms really work. Well, I hope you're having
Speaker 1: a great day. I was in New York City this
Speaker 1: week to attend a Roku event, and it was kind
Speaker 1: of interesting because I wasn't really aware that Roku held events,
Speaker 1: and so when they invited me out there, I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, Yeah, I'm going to go because I
Speaker 1: want to hear what Roku's all about. People that have
Speaker 1: Roku's love these things, right. They're simple, one of the
Speaker 1: the earliest streaming boxes ever and it is progressed ever since,
Speaker 1: but still at its core. I think Roku keeps things
Speaker 1: simple and really focuses on the end game, which is
Speaker 1: just to get you to watch stuff on your TV
Speaker 1: as much as you can, right, because that's what streaming
Speaker 1: is all about. So a couple of things at this event.
Speaker 1: Number one I said to them and said, Hey, did
Speaker 1: you guys, do you do events? They said, no, this
Speaker 1: is probably our biggest yet, and so they did have
Speaker 1: the CEO and founder, Anthony Wood up on stage. He
Speaker 1: came up and spoke and talked about how he started Roku.
Speaker 1: I think it was back in two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: was the original synthesis of the company, and then two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight was their first streaming box. Now as
Speaker 1: I remember it, I am pretty sure their first streaming
Speaker 1: box was a Netflix co brand box. Like that was it.
Speaker 1: It was just a way to watch Netflix. And then
Speaker 1: later on they sort of branched out and created their
Speaker 1: own operating system and their own software and their own brand.
Speaker 1: That's the way I remember it. I have to fact
Speaker 1: check that. But now they came out with two new
Speaker 1: streaming sticks. They've got the uh, the Regular and the Plus.
Speaker 1: And these things are pretty inexpensive, thirty dollars and forty dollars.
Speaker 1: The forty dollars level gives you four k hdr. I'd
Speaker 1: go with that one, obviously, because in this day and age,
Speaker 1: go with the four khdr. But these are the smallest
Speaker 1: sticks they've ever come out with. They are thirty five
Speaker 1: percent smaller than before and They're also designed not to
Speaker 1: block the other HDMI port. So in the past, you
Speaker 1: know these things that you stick in the back of
Speaker 1: your TV, they might block the other ports, take up
Speaker 1: two spaces. That's not very good. So this makes it
Speaker 1: a lot easier. It kind of looks like just one
Speaker 1: little stick you put in there, and then it's got
Speaker 1: a little power cable that you can actually now plug
Speaker 1: into your TV's USB port. So that's the other thing.
Speaker 1: You don't need an extra power brick. So they told
Speaker 1: me they worked really hard to make these things super
Speaker 1: power efficient, which means they are fully self contained on
Speaker 1: the TV that you're plugging it into. So i'd say
Speaker 1: ninety nine point nine percent of TVs have a USB
Speaker 1: port in the back that can be used for your power. Now,
Speaker 1: in the past, if you tried to plug it into there,
Speaker 1: you may not have gotten enough power to power these sticks.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The other thing they did was they added some features
Speaker 1: to the remote control. People love the Roku remote. It's
Speaker 1: very simple again, but it does everything you need. But
Speaker 1: now these remotes have voice control, even on the entry
Speaker 1: level sticks, and they can control your TV's power and volume,
Speaker 1: So that is a good thing. These are available may sixth.
Speaker 1: I may or may not be able to tell you that, yes,
Speaker 1: I have played with these. I can't give you my
Speaker 1: review just yet, but I will say that I think
Speaker 1: that Roku did a really nice job in kind of
Speaker 1: just continuing the progress they've made over the years with
Speaker 1: these things. The other thing, they announced two new smart
Speaker 1: home cameras, so Roku. They used to have a partnership
Speaker 1: with Whys where they would make all their cameras and
Speaker 1: it was kind of Roku branded, But now they're making
Speaker 1: their own two battery powered outdoor cameras, the Regular and
Speaker 1: the Plus. You see the trend they have here. The
Speaker 1: Regular is just fifty bucks. The Battle Camera Plus is
Speaker 1: sixty dollars. The standard camera's gonna last up to six
Speaker 1: months on the battery. The Plus model is gonna last
Speaker 1: up to two years on a charge. So that means
Speaker 1: you can just put this thing up, set it, and
Speaker 1: forget it. Obviously, it's going to depend on how many
Speaker 1: times this thing is triggered and recording and how much
Speaker 1: you live stream from it. But up to two years
Speaker 1: not bad. They say they have a twenty thousand million
Speaker 1: hour battery on this thing. Now. Both cameras have HD
Speaker 1: video they've got spotlights on them, they're weather resistant, they've
Speaker 1: got two way audio, and you can plug in a
Speaker 1: solar panel, so if you want to keep this thing
Speaker 1: powered up forever, you can do that. I've got a
Speaker 1: ring camera that I plugged a solar panel into and
Speaker 1: I've never had to think about it ever. Again, it
Speaker 1: gets the sun during the day, charges up the battery inside,
Speaker 1: and that thing pretty much runs twenty four to seven. Now,
Speaker 1: the thing to know about these cameras, you get free
Speaker 1: live view, so you can live stream these without a subscription.
Speaker 1: If you want them to record clips to the cloud,
Speaker 1: you will have to get a subscription, which is optional
Speaker 1: starts at four bucks a month. But again that's pretty
Speaker 1: much what we're seeing with all of these smart cameras
Speaker 1: out there, So just one more option. And of course,
Speaker 1: if you have the Roku camera with a Roku device
Speaker 1: in your house, you get some integrations like picture and Picture.
Speaker 1: You can monitor your camera while you're watching your show.
Speaker 1: So if you have a baby at home, you know
Speaker 1: you want to watch their crib or whatever, you can
Speaker 1: do that. You have a dog, whatever, you want to
Speaker 1: monitor the front door, wait for your pizza to arrive
Speaker 1: while you're watching your show. You can do all that.
Speaker 1: Some other notes from the Roku event. They're in ninety
Speaker 1: million homes globally and they're the number one selling TV
Speaker 1: operating system in the US, Canada, and Mexico. So they
Speaker 1: had that big partnership with TCL. I guess they still do.
Speaker 1: And they also have their own TVs and Roku is
Speaker 1: a very popular TV maker. In fact, a lot of
Speaker 1: people just call it the Roku TV. Even if they
Speaker 1: have a TCL TV, they just say, it's my Roku TV.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else. Oh yeah, they're gonna do smart projectors.
Speaker 1: So you know, you've this big trend of all these
Speaker 1: backyard projectors. So the thing out those projectors is that
Speaker 1: a lot of them run either third party operating system
Speaker 1: softwares or a Google software. But now Roku is working
Speaker 1: with projector manufacturers to put their operating system into these projectors.
Speaker 1: So they're expecting their first product this summer. They haven't
Speaker 1: announced who that partner is going to be. But basically,
Speaker 1: the nice thing about this is that it will have
Speaker 1: that built in Roku experience. So the operating system you
Speaker 1: know you love at home on your TV will be
Speaker 1: the same thing that powers your outdoor projector, and they're
Speaker 1: saying they're going to have projectors that support up to
Speaker 1: one hundred inch screens. So I got a little preview
Speaker 1: of that, saw the reference design that they had, and
Speaker 1: I mean, it's what you know and love. Except outside
Speaker 1: the other thing with the software, they've got the daily
Speaker 1: trivia now, so on Roku they've got weekly trivia. I
Speaker 1: guess people really like to play that. It's all about
Speaker 1: pop culture and stuff. Now they're doing that daily, so
Speaker 1: you can access that on the home screen and if
Speaker 1: you want, you can access the vault as well, so
Speaker 1: if you like to do a little daily trivia, you
Speaker 1: can do that. I mentioned last week that I've gotten
Speaker 1: into crossword puzzles and now I'm doing those like on
Speaker 1: a daily basis. So I understand the idea of when
Speaker 1: you get into something you kind of just go all in.
Speaker 1: You want to like do that every day, and so
Speaker 1: if you're doing that weekly trivia, now you can do
Speaker 1: it daily on there. And then the other thing, the
Speaker 1: Roku City screensaver, which apparently people love. I was looking
Speaker 1: at this thing on my setup at home, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's got little things going on there. There's like all
Speaker 1: these little Easter eggs, So I guess people like to
Speaker 1: kind of just sit back and watch that. But it's
Speaker 1: getting its own tile on the home screen, so you
Speaker 1: can toggle it on whenever you want to check out
Speaker 1: what's going on there. But I will say, just without
Speaker 1: giving my thoughts on the new product, just kind of
Speaker 1: refreshing myself with the Roku software. It really does what
Speaker 1: you need, which is it kind of lets you customize
Speaker 1: your home screen the way you want it. It's got
Speaker 1: all the apps that you need pretty much. I wasn't able.
Speaker 1: I didn't see any missing apps that I wanted to
Speaker 1: get on the Roku system. And it's just very simple
Speaker 1: and it kind of works, and I like the remote,
Speaker 1: so again I understand why people like this, right. So
Speaker 1: there you have it. The Roku announcements from the event
Speaker 1: in New York City, they also had the Iron Chef Morimoto.
Speaker 1: He was there carving up one hundred and sixty one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy pound tuna and he was making some sushi.
Speaker 1: I guess he has a show on Roku. They're doing
Speaker 1: originals now, so he has a show, So he was
Speaker 1: there and they did have samples of the sushi he made.
Speaker 1: I did not partake, mostly because I was so busy.
Speaker 1: They also had some puppies on hand, so they had
Speaker 1: puppies there. I don't know why. I guess they had
Speaker 1: a puppy cam with their cameras. That was the catch there,
Speaker 1: or the connection I should say. But yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a fun event overall, very nice event. And again, lots
Speaker 1: going on with Roku. Those those products, at least the
Speaker 1: streaming sticks are in stores on May sixth, so available
Speaker 1: then if you need an upgrade, there you have it,
Speaker 1: all right. Eighty to eight rich one oh one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: The website for the sho show rich on Tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: If you have not checked out this week's newsletter, go
Speaker 1: to the website. It's linked up there. Talk more about
Speaker 1: the Roku stuff in my trip to New York City.
Speaker 1: Always love a good trip there, so much fun there.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, we'll take some more of your
Speaker 1: calls right here on rich On Tech Steve and Tarzana Steve.
Speaker 1: You're on with rich Oh good.
Speaker 3: Hey, I just got to preface my question by saying,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, the two best products I've gotten in
Speaker 3: the last twenty years were Uma and Roku when.
Speaker 4: You use it. Also with Pluto TV, it's just an
Speaker 4: amazing change in the way I pull things down now.
Speaker 1: Oh you mean because Pluto TV it's just like it's
Speaker 1: like free and you don't have to think about it.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. Roku though, it's just absolute godsend. I love that,
Speaker 4: And Uma it's just two of the best recommendations I've
Speaker 4: heard you give us for a while. I'll thank My
Speaker 4: question basically here is I have literally over a million
Speaker 4: files on my laptop and my external hard drives, and
Speaker 4: I'm just I'm getting to the point now where I'm
Speaker 4: having a hard time finding things that i want to
Speaker 4: pull back out. Do you have any suggestions for software
Speaker 4: that might help me organize my folders and files and
Speaker 4: eventually just drop them into something that looks a little
Speaker 4: bit more organized. And I've been able to do so far.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, here's the thing, I have sort of
Speaker 1: given up, and I've kind of talked about this on
Speaker 1: the show. I feel like I've given up on organization
Speaker 1: because of you know, the AI search tools that we
Speaker 1: have now built into the various operating systems and also
Speaker 1: the cloud drives. So for me personally, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not even I don't really think there's a big emphasis
Speaker 1: on needing to do this now. I know you have
Speaker 1: a million folders or files and different things, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like you want to get those organized, which is fine.
Speaker 1: But by the time you get those organized, I mean,
Speaker 1: the time and f or you're going to spend on
Speaker 1: organizing those is just too much. And so I think
Speaker 1: a better way to go about it is just to
Speaker 1: find a tool that lets you search through those things
Speaker 1: and maybe search even inside of those. So I think
Speaker 1: that you know, if there's not something that's available right now,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be here very soon, especially with the advent
Speaker 1: of AI search. And even if you look in the
Speaker 1: general search on your computer, you're gonna find that it's
Speaker 1: gotten a lot better over the years. With that said,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a couple of There's one tool that
Speaker 1: Dropbox has called Dropbox Dash, and this is a AI
Speaker 1: powered system that lets you find pretty much anything across
Speaker 1: your computer, across Dropbox, across any you know, all of
Speaker 1: your content. You can even connect like Outlook and Gmail
Speaker 1: and Google Drive. So I would look into that first.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I know I have access to it,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that's because I signed up for
Speaker 1: the beta or if I'm a subscriber of Dropbox, but
Speaker 1: that is the first thing i'd look at, and if
Speaker 1: they don't have access for that, that is the type
Speaker 1: of tool that I would look for. Dropbox Dash is
Speaker 1: what I mentioned there. So otherwise, you know, my main
Speaker 1: system that I use is basically I used to do
Speaker 1: everything like I used to literally go through my drive
Speaker 1: and make folders for everything. But then I realized why
Speaker 1: I'm looking ninety nine percent of the time looking for
Speaker 1: a keyword anyway. And so what I've done is I've
Speaker 1: kind of defaulted to my cloud drive searches instead of
Speaker 1: my computer search. So when I need something in my
Speaker 1: Google Drive, I'll actually go to the Google Drive search
Speaker 1: and type in a keyword. And now the Gemini is
Speaker 1: built in that's gotten really good at finding things that
Speaker 1: are in the files. And then with my Google Photos
Speaker 1: that I use, you know, the AI there has just
Speaker 1: gotten so good that I mean literally, I was looking
Speaker 1: for a picture for my newsletter yesterday and I wanted
Speaker 1: the original Apple Watch. I wanted a picture of me
Speaker 1: with the original Apple Watch, and so I just typed in,
Speaker 1: I said Apple Watch April twenty I think it was
Speaker 1: the twenty fourth, twenty fifteen, and it just showed all
Speaker 1: the pictures of me with the Apple Watch on that day.
Speaker 1: So again, I think the better way of thinking about
Speaker 1: this is moving forward, maybe organize your stuff into maybe
Speaker 1: just years. Like That's what I've done now is I'll
Speaker 1: just have in my Google Drive twenty twenty five and
Speaker 1: everything for twenty twenty five. I'll just toss in there,
Speaker 1: and eventually if I want to make kind of subfolders
Speaker 1: in there, I'll do that. So I think moving forward,
Speaker 1: that might help. But in the past, all those files
Speaker 1: and things that you have, you're just going to spend
Speaker 1: so much time going through those. Now with that said,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of tools that you know might
Speaker 1: be worth looking into. There's one called directory opis on Windows.
Speaker 1: So directory Opus. If you think about opis, you know
Speaker 1: it's kind of a commander tool. So this is going
Speaker 1: to let you do all kinds of things with your folders, sort, group,
Speaker 1: filter them, find your files, locate, locate duplicates, synchronize backups
Speaker 1: at tags and descriptions, convert images. So again, and that's
Speaker 1: going to let you do a lot of the things
Speaker 1: that you want to do all at once, but it's
Speaker 1: going to cost you eighty nine to eighty nine bucks.
Speaker 1: It looks like for a light free personal laptop license
Speaker 1: install on one computer one year of free updates than
Speaker 1: twenty five dollars after that, so that's one. Looks like
Speaker 1: there's some freeware out there called Total Commander. This was
Speaker 1: last updated February nineteenth, twenty twenty five, So that's out there.
Speaker 1: Enhanced search, compare files, multi renamed tool compare Editor. So
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of tools inside Total Commander that
Speaker 1: might help as well. And then of course I would
Speaker 1: be on the lookout for some of these AI tools
Speaker 1: that let you search your entire computer. I just downloaded
Speaker 1: one for Mac called Raycast, and that's kind of like
Speaker 1: the idea similar similar idea where it does a lot
Speaker 1: of shortcuts and things, so if you want to find
Speaker 1: images or whatever, it's all sort of in there. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of what I would stick to, is looking
Speaker 1: for these new AI tools. I'm gonna keep an eye
Speaker 1: out on them for you, Steve, and I'll mention them
Speaker 1: in my newsletter if I find one. But that's that's
Speaker 1: what I've resorted to. I think AI is just making
Speaker 1: this stuff so much easier. There's just not a big
Speaker 1: reason to organize files anymore as far as I know.
Speaker 1: All Right, thanks for the call. Eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. As we expected, Nintendo switch To
Speaker 1: pre orders sold out almost instantly. Pre orders opened on
Speaker 1: April twenty fourth. They sold out fast, and now many
Speaker 1: retailers like Walmart, Target, Game Stop, and Best Buy are
Speaker 1: all out of stock. The switch To starts at four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars. Go with the five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: Mario Kart bundle if you are going to buy that game,
Speaker 1: because it's eighty bucks by itself. So you can still
Speaker 1: register interest on these websites or Nintendo's website. This switch
Speaker 1: To release date is June fifth, but I can tell
Speaker 1: you right now this is probably gonna be one of
Speaker 1: those things that's still really tough to get right up
Speaker 1: and through the holidays, because this is gonna be the
Speaker 1: hot seller this year. Switch to Amazon has not started
Speaker 1: selling the console just yet. All right, Coming up, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about a job website that can help
Speaker 1: you find local gigs near you. Hourly gigs they're doing
Speaker 1: it a different way that's coming up right here on
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. So if you're not following me on Instagram,
Speaker 1: I am at rich on Tech. You can find more
Speaker 1: information there, posting the latest scams and some personal stuff
Speaker 1: as well. Speaking of personal joining me now. Tim Mcalino
Speaker 1: is a co founder and CEO of Bandana. He is
Speaker 1: from my home state of New Jersey. Welcome to the show, Tim, Hey,
Speaker 1: Rich great to be on. So tell me about Bandana.
Speaker 1: You're trying to fix a broken job search system. You've
Speaker 1: got this startup that helps workers land hourly and entry
Speaker 1: level jobs. What did you identify in the job search
Speaker 1: that made you want to start this company?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Rich, So, Bandana dot Com is what we call
Speaker 5: the most worker friendly job.
Speaker 6: Platform that has ever existed.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of the job platforms today they
Speaker 5: talk a lot about experience, job descriptions and things kind
Speaker 5: of like the businesses want, and we created Bandana so
Speaker 5: that we can build something that is for the worker.
Speaker 6: So right away, the first thing.
Speaker 5: That you'll see is when you go on Bandana dot com,
Speaker 5: it's a map. And the reason why it's a map
Speaker 5: is because locations matter. Where you work matters, Commute matters.
Speaker 5: Whether you're driving down the four h five in California
Speaker 5: or you're taking a subway commute in New York. You
Speaker 5: want to see exactly where locations are on a job platform,
Speaker 5: and that's what Bandana provides. Every single one of our
Speaker 5: jobs has a location, and then we go the extra
Speaker 5: mile and go, Okay, when you look at a job,
Speaker 5: you want to see how much it pays. You want
Speaker 5: to see the salary ranges broken down, whether it's hourly, weekly, monthly, yearly,
Speaker 5: and then we go above and beyond that, and we
Speaker 5: even show things like what your income tax is, so
Speaker 5: you can actually know what your take home pay is
Speaker 5: every time you look at it job.
Speaker 6: And we try to think about.
Speaker 5: Things from a worker's perspective, where we already know on
Speaker 5: the job description, you'll see what the company wants, you'll
Speaker 5: see which company it is, what the requirements are, but
Speaker 5: we also want to see, as a worker, what you want.
Speaker 6: And that's how we.
Speaker 5: Build this platform, Bandana dot Com and how we've been
Speaker 5: growing distribution here and all across where we're currently available.
Speaker 1: Give me an idea of the types of jobs people
Speaker 1: can look for on this website.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we really prioritize hourly and entry level jobs.
Speaker 5: So in terms of the hourly jobs, everything from blue
Speaker 5: collar healthcare, nursing, skilled trades are all available on bandana
Speaker 5: dot com, and then of course the retail service jobs
Speaker 5: that you'll see everywhere else as well. We also really
Speaker 5: prioritize that first job out of college or first job
Speaker 5: out of high school kind of career path that we
Speaker 5: love to have on our platform. So you'll see a
Speaker 5: lot of those entry level office jobs from Fortune five
Speaker 5: hundred companies that are hiring all across California and New York,
Speaker 5: New Jersey, and those are really our bread and butter
Speaker 5: right now, is these hourly jobs and then these entry
Speaker 5: level jobs in general, for both salaried and hourly roles.
Speaker 1: Now, there's nothing more frustrating when you're looking for a job.
Speaker 1: You find either a great listing or you know you're
Speaker 1: on the path to something and you realize it's either fake,
Speaker 1: or it's been posted for years or months, or or
Speaker 1: it's just not real. So how do you ensure that
Speaker 1: these jobs are actually real jobs that are available.
Speaker 5: So that's the thing when we built Bendana dot com,
Speaker 5: we went the extra mile to connect all of the
Speaker 5: jobs that we have on our platform directly from company sites.
Speaker 5: So we've built connectors to over sixty thousand company job boards,
Speaker 5: not indeed not LinkedIn, but the actual company job boards
Speaker 5: where these jobs come from, and we look through that
Speaker 5: every day. So every time you click apply on any
Speaker 5: link on bandana dot Com, it brings you directly to
Speaker 5: the company site, so you have that sense of Okay,
Speaker 5: it's this company that's hiring for this job. This is
Speaker 5: the listing that they put up exactly from that company
Speaker 5: that posted it.
Speaker 6: And this is when they did it.
Speaker 5: And that gives you this sense of idea of like, okay,
Speaker 5: if this company just put this up less than twenty
Speaker 5: four hours ago and it's directly on their company site,
Speaker 5: you have this feeling that, Okay, this looks like a
Speaker 5: real job.
Speaker 6: And for us, trust really matters. We know a lot.
Speaker 6: We know the job search is really frustrating.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of times where people feel like I'm
Speaker 5: spending hours applying to things and I don't even know
Speaker 5: if my application is actually going to that company. And
Speaker 5: we try to solve that for you by making sure
Speaker 5: that all of these pieces come together in a seamless way.
Speaker 6: On Bandana.
Speaker 5: We also try to go the extra mile, by the way,
Speaker 5: where our entire service is free for the worker, it
Speaker 5: will always be free, and that's something that we really
Speaker 5: pride ourselves on. We have tools like resume resume tools
Speaker 5: that can make resume the latest and greatest, help you
Speaker 5: clean up grammar, use AI and make it so that
Speaker 5: that resume looks great for every job that you apply to.
Speaker 6: We have job trackers.
Speaker 5: That help you figure out exactly what you've applied to,
Speaker 5: what you've searched on. And even this last tax cycle,
Speaker 5: we offered free taxes federally and state to all Bandana
Speaker 5: users for free when they filed through US.
Speaker 1: So what's been the response. What's you know, are people
Speaker 1: getting jobs off of this website or what?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So we've helped probably close to fifty thousand people
Speaker 5: find the job now on Bandana. We just launched in
Speaker 5: New York fourteen months ago and in California earlier this year, and.
Speaker 6: Throughout that time period, we now have.
Speaker 5: Close to half a million workers coming onto Bandana every
Speaker 5: month and it's been an incredible response. We really pride
Speaker 5: ourselves in being a grassroots movement, so we host a
Speaker 5: lot of local job fares, and in those job fairs,
Speaker 5: will have free headshots, free resume reviews, free job clinics.
Speaker 5: And what we see is this response is every time
Speaker 5: we host something, even if the even if we're hosting
Speaker 5: up to a thousand people, that will get filled up
Speaker 5: in less than twenty four hours because of how many
Speaker 5: people come up to us and they're like, Hey, not
Speaker 5: only did you help me find a job, but you
Speaker 5: help me prepare for that job.
Speaker 6: You help me think through how to find jobs in
Speaker 6: the future.
Speaker 5: And our whole goal is to make sure that American
Speaker 5: workers have all of the resources they need in order
Speaker 5: to find that better job for them and their families.
Speaker 1: All right, we've got about a minute left. Where did
Speaker 1: you get the name? And where is this available? Yeah?
Speaker 5: So Bandana comes from a few things. I think one,
Speaker 5: we tried to think of something that ties to a
Speaker 5: little bit of urban culture. But also thinking back to
Speaker 5: Rosie the Riveter in the nineteen forties where people were
Speaker 5: tying bandanas and farm and rural culture and just like
Speaker 5: understanding what is the betrock of America and Bendana really
Speaker 5: resonated with us and the having Bendana dot Com has
Speaker 5: been really critical for us. And then I think and
Speaker 5: where we're available is we're available in New York, New Jersey, California, Chicago, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC,
Speaker 5: and by the end of the year will be out nationwide.
Speaker 1: And it just takes a little bit longer to build
Speaker 1: this because you're not scraping these job searches. You're actually
Speaker 1: kind of connecting with the job posts themselves from these companies,
Speaker 1: right exactly.
Speaker 5: And then we're also going the extra mile to tie
Speaker 5: an address to it. And that's how we get that
Speaker 5: map based approach that looks exactly like Zillo or Airbnb.
Speaker 6: No one usually.
Speaker 5: Has the address of the exact location, but like for example,
Speaker 5: in New York, right, we don't want someone to stay
Speaker 5: in New York, New York on a job and then
Speaker 5: it actually ends up being in like Staten Island when
Speaker 5: they expected it to be in the Bronx. And that's
Speaker 5: why that exact address and going that extra mile to
Speaker 5: enrich that data takes a little bit longer for us
Speaker 5: to build up and build that foundation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and especially with long commutes, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: can find something in your neighborhood that's like, that's I mean,
Speaker 1: people don't realize the peace of mind and the less
Speaker 1: stress that comes with working close to home. Right, you
Speaker 1: don't have to sit in a car, commute, subway whatever
Speaker 1: for an hour. Tim Mcalino, we are going to leave
Speaker 1: it there, co founder and CEO of Bandana dot com.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for an entry level job, retail job,
Speaker 1: food service, I mean, all these industries they've got listed here,
Speaker 1: check it out. Is a really well done website, Bandana
Speaker 1: dot com. Tim, thanks for joining me.
Speaker 6: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Rich.
Speaker 1: All right, I'll put on the website a link Rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot tv. And if you want to get
Speaker 1: on the phone, give me a call. You have a
Speaker 1: tech question, you can dial it up eight eight eight Rich,
Speaker 1: one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one coming up. We'll take more
Speaker 1: of your calls and I'll tell you the feature the
Speaker 1: ray band smart glass has just got to make them
Speaker 1: smarter than ever. Rose is in Temecula, California. Rose you
Speaker 1: around with.
Speaker 7: Rich Hirich And I have a question. How do you
Speaker 7: know if your phone has been compromised? And lately I've
Speaker 7: been giving those the capture uh warning things even if
Speaker 7: you know. I was on a phone call yesterday and
Speaker 7: so when I finished, I went to Google. I was
Speaker 7: gonna search for something, and even even before I searched
Speaker 7: for that, it's the first thing I saw was the
Speaker 7: cap chare things. And it says that the reason, uh,
Speaker 7: let me see, it's this, Uh. Our systems have to
Speaker 7: take the unusual traffic from your computer network. Uh. This
Speaker 7: fake checks to see if it's really you sending the
Speaker 7: request and not a robot. And you know, I wasn't
Speaker 7: even searching for anything and brought this message. And I've
Speaker 7: been giving it off and on. And also when I
Speaker 7: call them friends or family in Mexico, they always tell
Speaker 7: me that my phone sounds weird, that they hear man
Speaker 7: voices on the background every time. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Well, that's interesting. Okay, So there's a couple of things
Speaker 1: going on. Number one, do you have an iPhone or
Speaker 1: Android iPhone? Okay, so the chances of your iPhone being
Speaker 1: hacked in any way, shape or form is about zero
Speaker 1: to none. So unless you are a are you a
Speaker 1: head of state?
Speaker 7: Am I wife like?
Speaker 1: Ahead of state?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 1: Are you like a government official? Like a no journalist, no,
Speaker 1: no ambassador for a different country.
Speaker 7: No, I'm all right.
Speaker 1: Well, those are the people that are typically targeted in
Speaker 1: attacks on you know, if they want spyware on your iPhone,
Speaker 1: those are the people that they're typically targeting because it's very,
Speaker 1: very tough to install that on an iPhone. So I
Speaker 1: think you can rest easy knowing that your phone is
Speaker 1: not hacked. Now, to answer your first question, are you
Speaker 1: talking about a capsha Is that what you're seeing when
Speaker 1: you try to go to a website?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, So if you have, are you paying for iCloud
Speaker 1: by any chance?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Okay, So iPhone has this thing called iCloud Private Relay,
Speaker 1: and that is something that protects your Internet traffic coming
Speaker 1: from your iPhone. Now, sometimes when that because they're doing
Speaker 1: that on so many phones for some reason, websites think
Speaker 1: that they're getting spammed and so they they say, hey,
Speaker 1: we just want to make sure you're a human just
Speaker 1: checking and so that would explain that first thing that
Speaker 1: you got, that first message. Okay, And you can turn
Speaker 1: that off in your settings if you'd like. You don't
Speaker 1: need to have that on, but it kind of just
Speaker 1: encrypts your traffic, makes it a little bit more private,
Speaker 1: so you're actually getting some privacy benefits there. So if
Speaker 1: you don't want that, just search for iCloud private relay,
Speaker 1: and you can turn that off if you don't like it.
Speaker 1: So that's number one. Number two, the voice in the background,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that you know. It used to be
Speaker 1: when when cell phone signals were analog, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of static, a lot of distortion, a lot of
Speaker 1: overlap with the signals. But now that they're digital, we
Speaker 1: rarely get that.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's it's much rarer.
Speaker 1: So the only thing I can say with that is
Speaker 1: it could be you just have a bad connection sometimes,
Speaker 1: and that could be you said you were calling Mexico.
Speaker 1: It could be on their end like whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: the final line that they're calling on could have issues.
Speaker 1: But I do I do hear issues every once in
Speaker 1: a while. I'll call someone and I'll hear like an
Speaker 1: echo or something, and it's as simple as hanging up
Speaker 1: the phone, redialing and you get a clearer connection. So
Speaker 1: that probably explains the second part of it. Rose. So
Speaker 1: I think you're fine. I think your your your phone
Speaker 1: is not hacked. If you wanted to search to see
Speaker 1: if there was some spyware on your phone, which again
Speaker 1: I don't think you need to do this. Uh, there
Speaker 1: are a couple of a couple of big spyware programs
Speaker 1: out there that these you know, foreign entities will typically
Speaker 1: use to target folks, but not regular people most of
Speaker 1: the time. But there is a a spyware analyzer built
Speaker 1: into an app called I Amazing, and it's gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna cost money to download that and to do that.
Speaker 1: I don't think you really need it, but that's number one.
Speaker 1: The other one is a startup that they came out
Speaker 1: with an app called am i Secure. This launched last
Speaker 1: year and it's basically a way to scan your iPhone
Speaker 1: to see if there are any indicators of these apps,
Speaker 1: these spyware apps on your phone. That's again that's called
Speaker 1: am I Secure. You know, again, not too many downloads
Speaker 1: on that one, because you know, people don't typically need
Speaker 1: this stuff on the iPhone.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: On Android, yes, it's a little bit probably a little
Speaker 1: bit easier to install some malicious software on there, just
Speaker 1: just because of the open nature of Android. But the
Speaker 1: manufacturers themselves have locked down the phone so much that
Speaker 1: for this to happen, you would really need to be
Speaker 1: a power user to unlock some of those default settings
Speaker 1: on your phone, and the main one is to allow
Speaker 1: either Chrome or unknown software packages to be installed on
Speaker 1: your device. Now I do that regularly, like an APK
Speaker 1: they're called. That's like basically software that you can install
Speaker 1: on your phone outside of the Google Play Store. On
Speaker 1: iPhone you can't. Basically, it's not easy to install software
Speaker 1: outside of the App store here in the US at least,
Speaker 1: so I think you're probably safe, I think on Android.
Speaker 1: If you're on Android, i'd run something like a malware
Speaker 1: byte just to check and see if you have But
Speaker 1: in general, my guidance for this is go through your
Speaker 1: phone regularly and you know, do some maintenance on it, right,
Speaker 1: clear your browser cash, clear your history out, and also
Speaker 1: go through your list of apps and uninstall any apps
Speaker 1: that you don't need anymore, you don't recognize, and then
Speaker 1: go through and do software updates on both your apps
Speaker 1: and on your phone itself. So make sure that your
Speaker 1: phone is updated, and then restart your phone every once
Speaker 1: in a while. And the other thing on Android is
Speaker 1: you can do an update on Google Play Services, which
Speaker 1: will kind of update your phone to the latest security
Speaker 1: and features that Android offers outside of the operating system updates,
Speaker 1: and you can find that typically if you go on
Speaker 1: the Samsung phone, it's usually listed in your settings under
Speaker 1: secure security. You can check for that. All right, good question, Rose.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're looking out for your phone making sure
Speaker 1: that you are not hacked. It is a valid question.
Speaker 1: Is a valid concern, especially on computers these days, we're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of issues there. Phones definitely a little
Speaker 1: bit trickier for that stuff to be installed. So thanks
Speaker 1: for the call today. Eight eight rich one oh one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: If you want to stay ahead of this stuff, if
Speaker 1: you follow me on Instagram at rich on Tech. That's
Speaker 1: where I post a lot of these things that are
Speaker 1: are messing with people. I post. You know, people they
Speaker 1: have now gotten into the habit of sending me all
Speaker 1: of the latest scams that they're running into on the email,
Speaker 1: and so people will just send them to me. I'll
Speaker 1: kind of analyze them, take a look, and if I
Speaker 1: think it's something that I haven't seen before a lot
Speaker 1: of people haven't seen, I will share that. But this
Speaker 1: stuff happens. Like my mom yesterday, she texts me, she says, hey,
Speaker 1: rich she calls me Richard. She said, I can't get
Speaker 1: my Netflix to work. And I got an email from
Speaker 1: Netflix that says my pain method needs to be updated,
Speaker 1: and she forwarded me the email. I said, well, number one,
Speaker 1: I pay for your Netflix, so no, your payment method
Speaker 1: does not need to be updated. Number two. That is
Speaker 1: a scam that's been going around. So again they target
Speaker 1: people and they hope to catch them in their weakness,
Speaker 1: which is, oh, I pay for Netflix, my payment method
Speaker 1: is up. Oh I gotta put that number in right now,
Speaker 1: and that's when they steal your information, all right. Eighty
Speaker 1: to eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. The website rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot tv coming up. These ray band Meta
Speaker 1: smart glasses got a new update. They added some really
Speaker 1: cool features, including live translation. I'll tell you about that,
Speaker 1: plus Gmail new feature lets you unsubscribe from some of
Speaker 1: these newsletters you have in bulk. You're listening to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
Speaker 1: here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Give me a call
Speaker 1: if you have a question about technology website rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot tv. Hit contact if you want to send
Speaker 1: me an email. Coming up this hour, we've got Justin
Speaker 1: Hendrix of Tech Policy Press to share insights on the
Speaker 1: Google and Meta antitrust trials and what it means for you.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you about these ray Band Meta smart glasses.
Speaker 1: They just got smarter. I got to say, this is
Speaker 1: the product of the year. I think that if you
Speaker 1: have not tried these things, you will be amazed at
Speaker 1: just how good they are. And we've talked about them
Speaker 1: at length on this show. They're basically smart sunglasses cooperation
Speaker 1: between Meta and ray Band. They have cameras, they have
Speaker 1: microphones built in speakers, you can listen to music, you
Speaker 1: can ask AI, hey, what am I looking at. But
Speaker 1: the new feature is well, a couple of new features.
Speaker 1: They just rolled out a couple of new software updates.
Speaker 1: Number one, live translation is available everywhere now. So I
Speaker 1: tried this out yesterday. I downloaded a Spanish language pack.
Speaker 1: I fired up a YouTube video of someone speaking in Spanish,
Speaker 1: and while they're speaking in Spanish, in my ears, I
Speaker 1: can hear them speaking in English. It is incredible. It
Speaker 1: is the future. It works. Supported languages include English, French, Spanish,
Speaker 1: and Italian. And so that's number one. I would like
Speaker 1: to see how this would work on the streets, right, like,
Speaker 1: if you're in Italy someone speaking to you in Italian, Like,
Speaker 1: I'd be curious how good the mics are at picking
Speaker 1: up what they're trying to say to you. But I
Speaker 1: guess it's kind of like your ears. You listen to them,
Speaker 1: you tuoe not everything else. So I got to try that.
Speaker 1: But it's there and it's pretty pretty incredible. That's one
Speaker 1: of the big questions I get on this show is like,
Speaker 1: how do I live translate stuff in real time? And
Speaker 1: that's it. Beyond that, they gave support now for you
Speaker 1: can send messages and make calls through Instagram, which is
Speaker 1: part of you know, they already have WhatsApp and Messenger.
Speaker 1: Those are all Facebook products, so there you go. And
Speaker 1: then they also have support for Spotify Music, Apple Music,
Speaker 1: and Amazon Music, so that's really cool. And then the
Speaker 1: other thing that they're doing that's coming soon is a
Speaker 1: hands free AI that sees what you see and can
Speaker 1: respond in real time. That's kind of like the new
Speaker 1: thing that everyone's doing, whether it's Gemini or chat GYBT.
Speaker 1: It's this idea of having the AI look through your
Speaker 1: camera and give commentary on what it is looking at.
Speaker 1: It is quite impressive. Gemini just added that feature on
Speaker 1: the Samsung phones and the Pixel phones. It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: Chat Gybt has it. I think it's just for Plus
Speaker 1: subscribers like me, but it's really interesting to just have
Speaker 1: AI looking at what you're looking at and just commenting.
Speaker 1: Really going to be the wave of the future there,
Speaker 1: especially with these smart glasses. Google is working on a
Speaker 1: pair that does that, so that is going to be
Speaker 1: a big part of the future. Agnes writes in from
Speaker 1: Huntington Beach, listening on KFI. I have a Pixel eight phone.
Speaker 1: I'm devastated. I was texting with my son and I
Speaker 1: tried to delete a message that wasn't turning out right.
Speaker 1: I use the delete feature, thinking it would erase just
Speaker 1: that one text, but its deleted urn entire conversation. I've
Speaker 1: researched online and everything says there's no way to get
Speaker 1: deleted text back. Is there anything you can suggest to
Speaker 1: help this? Sad Mama, Agnes, I am sorry that happened
Speaker 1: to you. For some reason, Google Messages does not have
Speaker 1: a recycle bin, so I don't know why they don't
Speaker 1: have an area that puts all your deleted messages and
Speaker 1: keeps them for thirty days. Because sometimes you delete stuff
Speaker 1: and you say, oh no, I need that back. iPhone,
Speaker 1: for what it's worth, does have that. So if you
Speaker 1: delete a message you want to get it back, you
Speaker 1: can tap edit and it says show recently deleted Google messages.
Speaker 1: You need to get that feature in the meantime, Agnes,
Speaker 1: most of your research is correct. There's really not an
Speaker 1: easy way to get this back. There is one place
Speaker 1: I'd like you to look, and that is your Google
Speaker 1: device backups. So you said this a pixel, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: that it's getting backed up to Google. So go on
Speaker 1: to one dot Google dot com and then tap storage
Speaker 1: on the left hand side and scroll down and it
Speaker 1: should say your device backups and I can see mine.
Speaker 1: I have got my Galaxy S twenty five Ultra Pixel
Speaker 1: ninefold Pixel nine pro. Yeah, I've got a lot of
Speaker 1: devices that I test. And just tap that device your
Speaker 1: pixel eight and then see details. And if it says
Speaker 1: SMS and MMS messages and there's a number next to it,
Speaker 1: your backup is somewhere in the cloud. Now here's the thing.
Speaker 1: If it backed up right after you deleted, then those
Speaker 1: messages might still be gone, but at least you can
Speaker 1: go in and check. So if it's there, what I
Speaker 1: want you to do is go into Google Takeout and
Speaker 1: you can download them takeout dot Google dot com. Scroll
Speaker 1: down to where it says messages, messages and conversation history
Speaker 1: from your backup, and you select just that and you
Speaker 1: hit download and it will give you all of those messages.
Speaker 1: Now they're not going to be in a very easy format,
Speaker 1: but at least you will have them. And this is
Speaker 1: a lesson for the future. Number one, do things slow.
Speaker 1: I know people we always like to do things fast,
Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes you don't know what the outcome
Speaker 1: is going to be. The other thing you do. There
Speaker 1: is an app called SMS Backup and Restore, So if
Speaker 1: you want an ongoing backup of your text messages on Android,
Speaker 1: you can install that app and do a backup every
Speaker 1: so often. You can do it every hour, every day,
Speaker 1: every month, every week, whatever you want, but it will
Speaker 1: it will back up all of your messages, put them
Speaker 1: in Google Drive, drop box, wherever you want to store them,
Speaker 1: even on your phone if you want. But at least
Speaker 1: if something like this happens again, you would be able
Speaker 1: to go back to that last backup and get those messages.
Speaker 1: So those are the solutions, but agnes I will tell
Speaker 1: you sadly, it's not easy to get those things back,
Speaker 1: and it's really unfortunate, unfortunate that Google Messages does not
Speaker 1: have a recently deleted area because they have sort of
Speaker 1: forced everyone on Android to use Google Messages. Yes, you're
Speaker 1: still open to using any messaging app on Android, but
Speaker 1: Samsung Messages is going away and they're directing people. Verizon
Speaker 1: Messages went away and they're all directing people towards Google Messages.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of the main messaging app on Android,
Speaker 1: and the fact that it does not have a recently
Speaker 1: deleted is really bad. So we need to get that Google.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the email. Let's go to Brian in north Ridge. Brian,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 4: Yes, sometimes when I deal with tech support online and whatnot,
Speaker 4: they they asked me to clear my cookies like I
Speaker 4: did recently on SoCal Gas and my cash files to
Speaker 4: fix a problem. But the problem here is that once
Speaker 4: that happens, I lose all of the Every time I
Speaker 4: go to another website, I have to I have to
Speaker 4: put everything back in again. It's a major disruption. Is
Speaker 4: there a way of just ferreting out the ones that
Speaker 4: they're asking me because they just say, oh, just clear
Speaker 4: all your cookies, clear your cash fials. Well, you know
Speaker 4: that just totally disrupts everything. Is there a solution there?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 1: It obliterates your entire system. It clears every log in
Speaker 1: that you've saved and anything that's remembered on a website.
Speaker 1: So I totally get that. And it's easy for them
Speaker 1: to say because it's a it's a one size fits all.
Speaker 1: It kind of erases everything starts fresh. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming you had some sort of login problem on
Speaker 1: their website. Yes, sir, Yeah, okay, so there is a
Speaker 1: way to do this. Are using Google Chrome or something else.
Speaker 4: I'm kind of a browser freak. I mostly used my
Speaker 4: very customizable Firefox. I don't like Chrome. I don't like
Speaker 4: being pushed into it by financial groups and major companies,
Speaker 4: you know, airlines and the like. I do love Opera,
Speaker 4: and then I also have Brave that I use for
Speaker 4: some use.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, the good news is I can give you
Speaker 1: the There is an option to do this, and I
Speaker 1: think it's on pretty much every browser. The way of
Speaker 1: accessing it might be a little bit different. Okay, but
Speaker 1: Chrome obviously is the most popular. I'm gonna give that first.
Speaker 1: But there's two ways. Number One, on the left hand
Speaker 1: side of a URL, there's like a little option button
Speaker 1: and it says viewsite information. Now. You can tap that
Speaker 1: and it will give you all the information for that
Speaker 1: one website. Right It says, right now, I'm on Google
Speaker 1: dot com. It says connection is secure. I've got location
Speaker 1: turned on, microphone turned on, third party signed in turned off,
Speaker 1: and then I've got cookies and site data. So the
Speaker 1: main thing when you're clearing out the information for a
Speaker 1: website is that cookies and site data. So for those
Speaker 1: that may not know, when you log into a website,
Speaker 1: that website leaves what's called a cookie on your browser,
Speaker 1: and that cookie says, we've already authenticated Brian. We know
Speaker 1: that he's logged in here before. We're gonna save either
Speaker 1: his username or his username and his password, so next
Speaker 1: time he comes here, we're just gonna log in for him.
Speaker 1: And so that's what enables you to stay logged in
Speaker 1: on a website. And some websites keep these pretty much
Speaker 1: indefinitely like your email. Some clear them out pretty much
Speaker 1: within a certain amount of time, like your bank account
Speaker 1: is going to log you out no matter what. So
Speaker 1: if you want to find that information, it'll say inside
Speaker 1: that little site data it says cookies and site data.
Speaker 1: Click there and it says manage on device site data
Speaker 1: and you can go in there and just delete the
Speaker 1: individual cookies for that website. And so all of these
Speaker 1: cookies for Google, if I deleted them right now, I
Speaker 1: would be logged out of my Google account. So I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that now. The other way is
Speaker 1: to go into settings. And if you go into you know,
Speaker 1: you press the little settings it's the three dots up
Speaker 1: a right hand corner, or you can go into your
Speaker 1: menu on your browser, whatever one you have, go into
Speaker 1: settings and you'll see under Privacy and Security it should
Speaker 1: say third party cookies, and then if you scroll down,
Speaker 1: you should see a list of all of the sites
Speaker 1: that are allowed to have these third party cookies. So
Speaker 1: I've got a whole bunch of them online, and you
Speaker 1: can go in there and where it says see all
Speaker 1: site data and permissions. Now I've got a list of
Speaker 1: every single website I've ever visited and the cookie that
Speaker 1: they saved, And so you can go by most visited,
Speaker 1: or you can search. So let's see if I've got
Speaker 1: SOCl gas online. Sure enough, I do, so I can
Speaker 1: go in there my account soacal gas, and I can
Speaker 1: delete just those cookies. But again, if you want that
Speaker 1: information for something like a Firefox you said you use,
Speaker 1: or an opera very similar, it's the same thing. Just
Speaker 1: click the padlock to the left of the website address
Speaker 1: in the address bar, clear cookies and site data. That
Speaker 1: will get it cleared for just that website. But again,
Speaker 1: you're looking for the cookies and site data for just
Speaker 1: the individual sites, not all of your websites that you're on.
Speaker 1: So they all let you do this, And Brian, it's
Speaker 1: a good question because it's very frustrating when these tech
Speaker 1: support folks tell you, oh yeah, just clear your browser history,
Speaker 1: and you realize you got to sit there and log
Speaker 1: into every website afterwards. Half the people don't even know
Speaker 1: they're a lot lugins for their websites. Use a password manager,
Speaker 1: by the way, make that process a lot easier. I'll
Speaker 1: put links to some of this information on the website.
Speaker 1: Rich on tech dot TV, all right, coming up, I
Speaker 1: promised the Gmail feature that lets you unsubscribe from newsletters
Speaker 1: in bulk. I'll tell you how to access that coming
Speaker 1: up right here on rich on Tech. Let's go to
Speaker 1: Kelly in Los Angeles. Kelly, you're on with rich Hello.
Speaker 9: Yes, having a problem with my light cell phone. I've
Speaker 9: been trying to charge it. I noticed that it kind
Speaker 9: of goes very hot to the touch, but for some
Speaker 9: reason it is not charging and I get it to
Speaker 9: come on. I can't tell if the batteries bet or
Speaker 9: if it's just totally drain of sales energy and just
Speaker 9: taking extra long time to charge up. Want to see
Speaker 9: if you can help me to guide me.
Speaker 1: Well, it's an Android phone. How long have you had it?
Speaker 1: And what brand?
Speaker 9: It's an off brand? Are you a brand? I've had
Speaker 9: it for about maybe five months?
Speaker 1: Oh five months. I've not heard of that brand. What's it?
Speaker 1: What's it called?
Speaker 9: Artie is very off brand, one of the cheap beasts.
Speaker 1: Where did you get to it?
Speaker 2: I don't remember?
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, my first inkling is that this so it's
Speaker 1: not turning on at all.
Speaker 9: It's not turning on at all. At first I had
Speaker 9: two percent, and then I tried to charge it for
Speaker 9: a period of time, probably more than three or four hours.
Speaker 9: I never came back on. It did get hot with
Speaker 9: the touch. I changed different chargers, chargers with not the
Speaker 9: charging unit itself. I don't know the problem with the
Speaker 9: charging port and what, but for some reason it's not charging.
Speaker 9: It's completely black.
Speaker 4: It won't turn on, okay.
Speaker 1: And I was going to say, I'm assuming since this
Speaker 1: is a cheapie it does not support wireless charging. Is
Speaker 1: that true.
Speaker 9: I'm not sure about that, okay.
Speaker 1: Because I was going to say, because you know a
Speaker 1: lot of times when when these phones, if they won't charge,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes the port gets wet or something like that,
Speaker 1: you can use the wireless charging on the back, and
Speaker 1: that way you can get around that. It sounds to
Speaker 1: me for your situation now, typically when a phone goes dead,
Speaker 1: when it gets down to two percent and then zero,
Speaker 1: it does take a little bit longer for it to
Speaker 1: come back to life because your phone is gonna you know,
Speaker 1: it's gonna take a little bit for that battery to
Speaker 1: get to a place where the phone is going to
Speaker 1: want to turn on. But you're telling me the phone's
Speaker 1: getting hot. When that's happening and it's not coming back on,
Speaker 1: and you've left it on the charger for three to
Speaker 1: four hours. So it sounds to me, do you have
Speaker 1: a different cable to try.
Speaker 9: I do, try a different title, But I do have
Speaker 9: one of those plug in little deals where you can
Speaker 9: take the battery out and stick it in the plug
Speaker 9: in device. I forgot about that, so I don't have
Speaker 9: to charge this from the phone. I could put it
Speaker 9: in nets that would device and try to keep that charge.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's what I would do. Is so if you
Speaker 1: can pop this battery off the back of the phone,
Speaker 1: put it on that device, let it charge up for
Speaker 1: a little bit. But if the battery is getting hot,
Speaker 1: or if it's swelling or anything like that, you do
Speaker 1: want to be careful because it could be a bad battery,
Speaker 1: could have a bad selling there. So I would either
Speaker 1: try to take this back to where you got it
Speaker 1: and see what's going on, or you can take it
Speaker 1: to a place like you break I fixed, they can
Speaker 1: do a quick assessment for free to see what's going on.
Speaker 1: But if this thing is, you know, a very inexpensive phone,
Speaker 1: it just may be that it's just not very good.
Speaker 1: So good question, Kelly. It sounds like you went through
Speaker 1: all the proper steps of trying a different power adapter,
Speaker 1: trying a different cable, letting it cool down. The only
Speaker 1: other thing I can say is maybe a little blast
Speaker 1: of canned air inside the power port, just to see
Speaker 1: if there's anything that's blocking it or anything that's caught
Speaker 1: up in there. Sometimes you got your phone in your
Speaker 1: purse or your phone in your pocket. It has a
Speaker 1: tendency to collect some items in that power port, maybe
Speaker 1: lint or dust, kind of like a belly button. You know,
Speaker 1: you might have a little little lint in there thanks
Speaker 1: to the call Kelly eighty eight rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: I have not heard of that brand of phone. Are
Speaker 1: you cell phone? Let's see? Yeah, that's a okay, wow,
Speaker 1: here we go. Yeah, this this is I do see
Speaker 1: the brand. Okay, the Arida you can get on Amazon
Speaker 1: for thirty bucks or sorry, eBay for thirty dollars. So
Speaker 1: it is a brand. I just never heard of it.
Speaker 1: Gmail is rolling out a new feature now, I say
Speaker 1: rolling out. Go to your phone, check to see if
Speaker 1: you have it. If you don't, don't send me the
Speaker 1: angry emails. It is rolling out, and Google has a
Speaker 1: tendency of taking their time when they roll out these
Speaker 1: features on my phone. I've got it on both my
Speaker 1: iPhone and Android, so it is out there. But it's
Speaker 1: called Manage Subscriptions, and so this is a way that
Speaker 1: you can clean up your inbox. It'll show you all
Speaker 1: of your subscriptions and promotional newsletters and senders in one place.
Speaker 1: So to find this see if you have it, open
Speaker 1: up your Gmail app, tap the menu icon on the
Speaker 1: left hand side, scroll down right under your trash. You
Speaker 1: will see a new option that says manage subscriptions. You
Speaker 1: tap that, it will give you a list of all
Speaker 1: of your subscriptions, listed in order of how many times
Speaker 1: are emailing you per month or week or whatever. The
Speaker 1: top one is at the top. And then you can
Speaker 1: just tap the little icon of the envelope to the
Speaker 1: right and it says unsubscribed. You want to stop getting
Speaker 1: messages from this mailing list. You tap it and it
Speaker 1: will help you unsubscribe to that. So a nice easy
Speaker 1: way to do it rolling out on Android, iOS and
Speaker 1: the web. So again, Gmail, Manage Subscriptions. Look for it
Speaker 1: in the left hand menu where you would find your inbox,
Speaker 1: your stard your important emails. It'll say right under trash,
Speaker 1: manage subscriptions. If you don't have it, check again later.
Speaker 1: This is rolling out on Gmail, but a nice helpful
Speaker 1: way to help you get rid of some of that
Speaker 1: clutter inside your email inbox. All right, eighty to eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Coming up, we are going
Speaker 1: to talk about Google, Meta Uber, all these anti trust
Speaker 1: trials and what they mean for you. Coming up right
Speaker 1: here on rich on tech. If you're following the news,
Speaker 1: a lot of big company, a lot of big tech
Speaker 1: companies on trial with the government, anti trust, all kinds
Speaker 1: of allegations and things happening, So here to talk about that.
Speaker 1: Justin Hendricks, CEO and founder of Tech Policy Press, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Justin, Thank you for having me. So
Speaker 1: you follow this stuff quite closely. Based on the name
Speaker 1: of your website, Tech Policy Press. A lot of people
Speaker 1: thought that this new administration would be a little easier
Speaker 1: on some of these big tech companies, but that's definitely
Speaker 1: not something we're seeing right now. Huh.
Speaker 10: We certainly haven't seen it with regard to competition and
Speaker 10: antitrust quite yet. And you know, whether some of the
Speaker 10: kind of support that some of the big tech CEOs
Speaker 10: have shown for the Trump administration will ultimately, you know,
Speaker 10: pay off as some people had expected it might. We'll see,
Speaker 10: you know, there's still time for intervention. But yeah, you're right,
Speaker 10: there seem to be cases moving ahead and new cases brewing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean cases moving ahead because a lot of
Speaker 1: these are already like this Google case. So I think
Speaker 1: it was last year where the anti trust trial they
Speaker 1: basically recommended that Google had like a search monopoly and
Speaker 1: they want, you know, and they still want they're still
Speaker 1: pushing them to get rid of Chrome or there. That
Speaker 1: may be one of the things kind of catch us
Speaker 1: up on what's happening with Google, like are they are
Speaker 1: they worried you think at this.
Speaker 10: Point, Yeah, well, you you know, you started by asking
Speaker 10: about the Trump administration. It's important to point out that
Speaker 10: this particular case against Google did start in twenty twenty
Speaker 10: under the Trump administration. Of Justice Department in State sued
Speaker 10: Google over its dominance and online search, and you know
Speaker 10: that ruling came back last August. As you point out,
Speaker 10: Judge Meta famously wrote Google is a monopolist and it
Speaker 10: has acted as one to maintain its monopoly, essentially in
Speaker 10: violation of the Sherman Act, you know, the law that
Speaker 10: is kind of the grandaddy law of all an aditrest
Speaker 10: law in the United States. And now we're in the
Speaker 10: remedies phase. It's a new trial that's all about sort
Speaker 10: of thinking through what exactly has to be done to
Speaker 10: remedy the fact that Google's monopolists.
Speaker 1: Do you think that something will happen? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting with all these tech cases. It's like tech
Speaker 1: changes so much in the time, Like you just said
Speaker 1: that this started in like twenty twenty, way before chat,
Speaker 1: GBT came on the scene and things like that. But
Speaker 1: Google still holds a lot of power over the things
Speaker 1: that we do online. Do you think there will be
Speaker 1: some sort of remedy like having to split off Google
Speaker 1: Chrome or something like that.
Speaker 10: Well, it's too hard to say exactly what's going to happen.
Speaker 10: And Google still can you know, essentially appeal the ruling
Speaker 10: and then you know, ultimately that would take things back
Speaker 10: to the square one. We'd have to kind of think
Speaker 10: through the remedies process again. But is on the line
Speaker 10: potentially that you know, Google would be kind of broken
Speaker 10: up in.
Speaker 1: Some interesting ways.
Speaker 10: As you say, you know, Google has an enormous amount
Speaker 10: of power over the consumer experience of the Internet, over
Speaker 10: the ways that publishers, you know, access the market, the
Speaker 10: way that people even build their own websites in order
Speaker 10: to structure information primarily so that Google will turn that
Speaker 10: information up in search results. So when you start to
Speaker 10: tinkle with Google, the tinker with Google, you really potentially
Speaker 10: are doing some fairly fundamental things that people will see
Speaker 10: have an effect in the way that they interact with technology.
Speaker 10: That could be through search, it could be through their
Speaker 10: mobile operating system, it could be through just simply the
Speaker 10: choice to use an alternative product.
Speaker 1: I was reading this morning on the Verge about this
Speaker 1: whole Motorola came out with some new phones and I
Speaker 1: guess they wanted to use Perplex as the uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the AI of choice, and basically they were scared to
Speaker 1: do so because Google is like kind of what they
Speaker 1: were painting the picture a little bit of a bully,
Speaker 1: you know. They say, look, you can change the assistant
Speaker 1: on the phone, but we'd like you to keep it
Speaker 1: as Gemini or else. And so it's all this kind
Speaker 1: of behind the scenes stuff that happens that you know,
Speaker 1: when you log you know, you just you fire up
Speaker 1: a fresh Android phone and Gemini's on there. You're like,
Speaker 1: oh cool, But then we we heard in this trial
Speaker 1: that they pay Samsung a lot of money to be
Speaker 1: the default on the Samsung phone. So do you think
Speaker 1: consumers understand all this stuff that's happening in the background
Speaker 1: that these tech companies do to stay dominant.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably the most serious
Speaker 10: situation or contention here in this particular case is the
Speaker 10: amount of money that's being spent. You know, the DJ
Speaker 10: says Google spent twenty six billion dollars in twenty twenty
Speaker 10: one across all of its default contracts. Mentioned Samsung, you know,
Speaker 10: receive somewhere between one one and a half billion for
Speaker 10: preloading Chrome Google Play on its handsets. And and yeah,
Speaker 10: it's been very interesting, you know, so far in this
Speaker 10: trial to see some of the folks that have come
Speaker 10: forth to testify who would like to, you know, get
Speaker 10: a crack at that search market. And you mentioned Perplexity.
Speaker 10: You know, another one that was represented this week was
Speaker 10: was open Ai.
Speaker 1: That's interesting.
Speaker 10: You know, both both those companies would very much like
Speaker 10: to become default search engines for consumers. You had Chatchipt's
Speaker 10: head of products essentially there to say, hey, you know,
Speaker 10: if Chrome's for sale, we buy it. Perplexity said the
Speaker 10: same thing so very much, you know, trying to challenge
Speaker 10: the status quw And if something does happen and Chrome
Speaker 10: is kind of forced to be divested, there would certainly
Speaker 10: be buyers lined.
Speaker 1: Up and a big shift. I mean that's you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I use Chrome, I really like it, but
Speaker 1: it's you know, they had the head of Chrome testify about,
Speaker 1: you know, how integrated Chrome is with Google Services, and
Speaker 1: of course, I mean, look, it's all of these companies
Speaker 1: want you to use everything. It's like these silos are
Speaker 1: becoming harder and harder to break free from as a consumer.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to Meta. What happened with them? Because
Speaker 1: they had this big trial where the government was saying
Speaker 1: that they bought Instagram basically just to keep it I guess,
Speaker 1: not to make it grow as much or something. What
Speaker 1: happened with them?
Speaker 10: Yeah, So again another suit that started in the final
Speaker 10: days of the Trump administration, the FTC suit Facebook and
Speaker 10: December of twenty twenty, basically alleging that the company had
Speaker 10: maintained a monopoly over the personal social networking market and
Speaker 10: that definition that market definition is actually something that's sort
Speaker 10: of you know, important in this trial and is under discussion.
Speaker 10: But this idea essentially that meta Mark Zuckerberg, they bought
Speaker 10: Instagram in order to prevent it from competing with their
Speaker 10: monopoly over that market. And that's the contention here. Whether
Speaker 10: that's the case will be what's determined in this trial.
Speaker 1: Interesting. What do you find interesting about all this stuff
Speaker 1: covering it at Tech Policy Press?
Speaker 10: Well, you know, I'll just say one more word on
Speaker 10: this one. You know, it's also interesting to see, you know,
Speaker 10: who's taking the stand, you know, Mark Zuckerberg himself, you
Speaker 10: know who prefers not to take the stand.
Speaker 11: In Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: He's a regular there. He is a regular, you know,
Speaker 1: and on the stand in at parties now.
Speaker 10: Apparently, and I understand also is possibly building a home
Speaker 10: there or buying a home there maybe given.
Speaker 1: How much time he is spending in Washington.
Speaker 10: But I think one of the most interesting things that
Speaker 10: happened this week was when Kevin Sistrom, who's one of
Speaker 10: the co founders of Instagram, testified on Tuesday. Yeah, he
Speaker 10: let loose, He let loose, and I suspect people were
Speaker 10: not happy. And then low Park, you know, He said
Speaker 10: that essentially, Mark I was not investing in Instagram because
Speaker 10: he believed it was a threat to Meta's growth at
Speaker 10: at that time Facebook. Of course, he testified for over
Speaker 10: six hours, and I suspect that, you know, any eventual
Speaker 10: decision there will be some reference to the points he raised.
Speaker 1: And that was the first time he really kind of
Speaker 1: spoke out. We knew there was some behind the scenes
Speaker 1: stuff going on when those two founders of Instagram left
Speaker 1: Facebook after they were acquired, but they never really gave
Speaker 1: their reasoning. And that was a great interview or if
Speaker 1: you're following that trial, some really interesting information about coming
Speaker 1: out from there. All right, justin we're going to leave
Speaker 1: it there. Founder of Tech Policy Press. The website is
Speaker 1: tech policy dot Press. Thanks for joining me today, Rich
Speaker 1: you all right, coming up. We'll take some more of
Speaker 1: your questions at triple eight Rich one on one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: And I've got some interesting downloads for you this week. Uh,
Speaker 1: new products and services. It'll make your life a little
Speaker 1: bit easier. You're listening to Rich on tech Walter. You're
Speaker 1: on with Rich.
Speaker 12: Hey Rich, great show. Subscribe to your news letter.
Speaker 1: Thank you appreciate that.
Speaker 12: Okay, I have a question. I have what do you
Speaker 12: recommend as an alternative? I have an Apple iPad, but
Speaker 12: obviously the pens are more expensive the Apple pants. You
Speaker 12: do you recommend an alternative, that's a that's a good
Speaker 12: stylust PM for it. I've tried the ones on Amazon
Speaker 12: that you charge them up, but you know sometimes they
Speaker 12: lag and not very good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's that is basically the reality you're looking at. Now,
Speaker 1: are you you're looking for an alternative? So we got
Speaker 1: to start with the pricing of the Apple pencil or
Speaker 1: the pro Are you going for the regular or the
Speaker 1: pro model?
Speaker 12: Well, actually I didn't know there was a pro model.
Speaker 12: What's the difference?
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so the pro so the standard is is
Speaker 1: eighty dollars, the pro model is one thirty. And the
Speaker 1: difference is the iPads that they work on, you know,
Speaker 1: one there's a whole list of the different iPads that
Speaker 1: they work on, and then the feature. So the main
Speaker 1: advantages of the pro is that you get more pressure sensitivity,
Speaker 1: so you know, it responds more to pressure, and then
Speaker 1: you get a whole bunch of other things like double
Speaker 1: tap to change tools. The squeeze. You can squeeze the pencil,
Speaker 1: so it gives you, you know, options when you do
Speaker 1: that haptic feedback, so it actually vibrates to let you
Speaker 1: know when you've done something Find My which is you know,
Speaker 1: you can find the Apple pencil and the find My
Speaker 1: app when something goes wrong. Now, like you said, this
Speaker 1: is expensive. Both of these Apple pencils, you know, the
Speaker 1: standard one's eighty dollars, the upper one, the pro is
Speaker 1: one thirty. So my question is when researching these alternatives,
Speaker 1: you know they have to be significantly deeper than those
Speaker 1: prices because you are going to lose out on all
Speaker 1: of that Apple functionality. Like you said, you've tried some
Speaker 1: of these cheapis on Amazon, and yeah, they might work
Speaker 1: as a stylust, but there's gonna be a lot of lag.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna have that deep integration with the Apple ecosystem,
Speaker 1: which is what you know Apple is so famous for. Now,
Speaker 1: with that said, there is only one stylus that Apple
Speaker 1: themselves sort of promotes and has had featured over the years,
Speaker 1: and that is the Logitech Crayon. Now, as the name implies,
Speaker 1: this might be more like you know, a kid sort
Speaker 1: of device. It doesn't have to be used for kids,
Speaker 1: but it's just kind of a bigger, thicker stylus for
Speaker 1: the iPad. But the thing is that is seventy dollars
Speaker 1: now unless and it's also lightning so they have not
Speaker 1: updated that in a long time. So that's number one.
Speaker 1: Then if you look at something like zag, Zag has
Speaker 1: what's called the pro Stylust two and this is compatible
Speaker 1: with all iPads from twenty eighteen to present.
Speaker 12: Now.
Speaker 1: I like zag products a lot. They're usually very high quality,
Speaker 1: same company as Mophi, and they make you know, the
Speaker 1: screen protectors and cases and things like that. But this
Speaker 1: stylus is eighty dollars. So again, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: save money, if you're going with that standard Apple pencil
Speaker 1: at eighty dollars, it's gonna be the same price. So
Speaker 1: you'd have to be going with that Apple Pencil Pro
Speaker 1: which is one thirty to save you fifty dollars. But again,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get all those features. So this
Speaker 1: is going to do a bunch of the things that
Speaker 1: you need, but it's not going to be as sort
Speaker 1: of integrated with the iPad os as these other uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Apple made pencils. Will be then you have Finally,
Speaker 1: the third option is the ad donnit A D O
Speaker 1: N I T S E two. So the AD donnit. Sorry,
Speaker 1: there's one more option after this, but the add donnit.
Speaker 1: I've not tested it, but just checking some of the
Speaker 1: reviews on Amazon, they don't get the best reviews and
Speaker 1: it's got that flag of frequently returned product. Amazon has
Speaker 1: been adding this banner to certain pages on on products
Speaker 1: that are returned a lot, and so that's kind of
Speaker 1: like an you know, hey, you might not want to
Speaker 1: get this because a lot of these things get returned,
Speaker 1: and so that's just a little way of letting you know,
Speaker 1: like if you don't want to deal with a headache
Speaker 1: this thing. Most people have found that it doesn't work
Speaker 1: the way they think it does. With all that said,
Speaker 1: there is one that actually gets good reviews, and I'd
Speaker 1: probably recommend trying it out, even though I have not tested.
Speaker 1: It comes from ESR, which is a pretty good budget
Speaker 1: maker of accessories and gadgets, and they have the Digital
Speaker 1: Pencil which works from twenty eighteen models to twenty five
Speaker 1: models of the twenty twenty five models of the Apple iPad,
Speaker 1: and it is just thirty dollars, it's got a decent
Speaker 1: number of reviews, it's got four and a half stars,
Speaker 1: does not have that flag of you know, frequently returned product,
Speaker 1: and so that's probably the one that I would check
Speaker 1: out first. You can order it from Amazon, easily return
Speaker 1: it if it doesn't work. But that's probably the top
Speaker 1: all alternative that I would go with versus the standard
Speaker 1: Apple pencil or Apple Pencil Pro. So you're talking thirty
Speaker 1: dollars versus eighty or one hundred and thirty, So it's
Speaker 1: significant savings if it works for you. If you just
Speaker 1: need something that's going to circle documents, highlight things, stuff
Speaker 1: like that, it's probably going to be your best bet.
Speaker 1: No wireless charging on that one. It does have a
Speaker 1: plug in, so just be aware of that. The other
Speaker 1: thing is if you're doing art on the iPad, I'd
Speaker 1: probably recommend the Apple pencil the models made by Apple,
Speaker 1: because those are going to give you the best options
Speaker 1: and the most compatibility with the iPad. Walter, great question
Speaker 1: over there in Temecula. I know this happens a lot.
Speaker 1: People like to buy things that are cheaper on Amazon,
Speaker 1: and you realize that, you know, especially with Apple stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of their stuff unless it's sold
Speaker 1: in the Apple Store. It might work, it's just not
Speaker 1: going to be as good, and so you're not going
Speaker 1: to get that great experience and then you're going to
Speaker 1: be complaining about doesn't work. So but try the ESR one.
Speaker 1: I think that one looks the best out of all
Speaker 1: of those cheap alternatives or budget alternatives to the standard
Speaker 1: Apple pencil. Great question, Walter, Thanks for listening, and thanks
Speaker 1: for subscribing to the newsletter. If you want to get
Speaker 1: in on that, just go to the website rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot TV, pop in your email address, and I
Speaker 1: send it out once a week typically, and it's pretty
Speaker 1: much my brain to your inbox. It's kind of all
Speaker 1: the stuff that I find throughout the week or things
Speaker 1: I want to comment on in the tech world, just
Speaker 1: like this show, except I guess the print version of that.
Speaker 1: All right, couple items of note. Meta has launched a
Speaker 1: new video editing app. It's called edits, So if you
Speaker 1: want an alternative to TikTok's cap cut, you can download
Speaker 1: edits for iOS and Android and it's basically free. You
Speaker 1: do have to sign in with Instagram, but you can
Speaker 1: do all the things that you need to do to
Speaker 1: make your Instagram videos and stories look good. That includes caption.
Speaker 1: So again, it's called edits. You can search it up.
Speaker 1: It's available for free for iPhone and Android. Let you
Speaker 1: edit your video for free. TV TV dot Garden this
Speaker 1: is a website that lets you stream live TV from
Speaker 1: around the world. You can tap random channel to discover
Speaker 1: something new, or you can just search a country. They've
Speaker 1: got a bunch of channels on there, including a lot
Speaker 1: of like news channels, sports channels, no sign up required
Speaker 1: channels have there's news, there's sports, there's cooking, there's movies,
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff from over one hundred countries. And
Speaker 1: if you're saying, like rich, why are recommending this sketchy website, No,
Speaker 1: it is legit. Like they're they're just collecting all of
Speaker 1: these free streams that they find around the world and
Speaker 1: putting it into one directory. So again, TV dot Garden.
Speaker 1: It's a nice clean interface. It's not cluttered. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna find like, you know, the latest sports game, like
Speaker 1: the big NFL games that people find online, you know,
Speaker 1: on these bootleg sites, but you're gonna find like the
Speaker 1: legitimate stuff that is streaming. And finally found this this week.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for an alternative to Grammarly, there's a chrome.
Speaker 1: There's a plug in for all the brows called language Tool,
Speaker 1: and uh, Grammarly for me, it was just getting a
Speaker 1: little bit overbearing. It was like giving me too many suggestions,
Speaker 1: trying to change too many things. All I want is
Speaker 1: basic spell check when I'm writing, and so, uh, letter
Speaker 1: tool is free, it's open source, and it's available for Windows,
Speaker 1: Mac everything pretty much. And yes there is a paid version,
Speaker 1: but the free version is working for me just fine.
Speaker 1: So I'll keep you up to date on whether I
Speaker 1: like that or not. But so far, so good. Language
Speaker 1: Tool is uh. Language tool. Dot org is where you
Speaker 1: want to go eighty eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: All that linked up on the website rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. Back 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 on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Phone lines are open.
Speaker 1: Website rich on Tech dot tv on social media. You
Speaker 1: guessed it at rich on Tech. Like I said, I
Speaker 1: was in New York this week, went to dinner and
Speaker 1: the restaurant we went to. I've got this little system
Speaker 1: for picking restaurants, by the way, so I look for
Speaker 1: my hotel is any anytime going out, I just go
Speaker 1: to you gotta go. You gotta do this on a desktop.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work on your phone for some reason. But
Speaker 1: if you go to Google Maps and then you search
Speaker 1: for where you're staying, right so no matter where you are,
Speaker 1: let's just say you're at a hotel, I'll just pick
Speaker 1: one down downtown and then you'll see once you search
Speaker 1: for that place, you'll see at the top of Google
Speaker 1: Maps it says nearby hotels, restaurants, things to do, bars, coffee.
Speaker 1: Now they've got some of these options on the phone,
Speaker 1: but they just don't work the same. So what I
Speaker 1: do is tap restaurants, and I typically want a place
Speaker 1: I can walk to, and so I will look. As
Speaker 1: soon as you tap restaurants, then you've got this thirty
Speaker 1: minutes down at the bottom, you've got walking or driving.
Speaker 1: So I will choose fifteen minutes as my maximum walking time.
Speaker 1: And then you go to your filters. And so if
Speaker 1: you really want something that's like highly rated four point five,
Speaker 1: that's not like those are the ratings like a generalized
Speaker 1: rating that people give it, not like there's no traditional
Speaker 1: like zagit or whatever. This is just like an aggregated score.
Speaker 1: So four point five is pretty good, Like not many
Speaker 1: restaurants get that. So if you want to find the
Speaker 1: places that people go to, you can tap that and
Speaker 1: then you can go to all filters and you can say,
Speaker 1: you know how many dollars signs you want the cuisine
Speaker 1: you want. But typically once you have that list of restaurants,
Speaker 1: now you've got restaurants that are within fifteen minutes walking distance,
Speaker 1: and then you can look at the number of ratings
Speaker 1: they have, So anything that's got like in the thousands,
Speaker 1: people are going to that place a lot, and then
Speaker 1: you can just kind of narrow down from there. It's
Speaker 1: it's just a very easy way to sort of narrow
Speaker 1: down some of the popular places near you instead of
Speaker 1: trying to search through all these different things find the
Speaker 1: place or look through reviews and that. But this is
Speaker 1: just my easy go to way and it usually works
Speaker 1: every single time. It works. The other way to do
Speaker 1: it is on Yelp. If you just want somewhere that's
Speaker 1: really popular, you could just open up the Yelp app
Speaker 1: and then just sort. You can tap restaurants and then
Speaker 1: sort by most reviewed, and that basically gives you, like
Speaker 1: the They may not be the best restaurants. You'll still
Speaker 1: have to use your your judgment to figure out which
Speaker 1: one you want to go to. But those are like
Speaker 1: the places that are most visited, most reviewed, most talked about.
Speaker 1: And that's just you know, again, if you're in town,
Speaker 1: if you've got friends and all that stuff, like, sure,
Speaker 1: ask them for a recommendation. But if you're just in
Speaker 1: town for one night, you want to find a decent place.
Speaker 1: Those two systems that I use pretty much work every time. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that led us to our restaurant that we went to.
Speaker 1: It was called a Piccora Bianca and nice place. It
Speaker 1: was packed the whole time. But they had this thing
Speaker 1: on the table that I loved. And yes there's a
Speaker 1: tech angle to this. They had a QR code on
Speaker 1: the table that you could scan at the end of
Speaker 1: dinner and pay your bill from your phone. And I've
Speaker 1: seen this before at restaurants, but this was the best
Speaker 1: implementation I've seen. Because you scan it, it was clear,
Speaker 1: it was easy. It says do you want to pay
Speaker 1: the full bill or do you want to pay for
Speaker 1: just your items or do you want to split the bill.
Speaker 1: And so if you're in one of those groups where
Speaker 1: everyone's like, you know, saying, oh I got the I
Speaker 1: had one less French fry, so I paid five dollars less.
Speaker 1: Like you can say, okay, fine, everyone go to your app,
Speaker 1: choose the things you ordered, pay for it. Now. For
Speaker 1: our group, we had split a bunch of appetizers, and
Speaker 1: so it was tricky to do the whole like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll pay for just what I had. So then we
Speaker 1: just said okay, well I'll just split the bill. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's five of us, and it said how
Speaker 1: many people do you want to pay for? I said too,
Speaker 1: I was paying for me and my mom, and so
Speaker 1: divided the whole thing up. I paid for us and
Speaker 1: I used Apple Pay and you could use Google Pay
Speaker 1: whatever you want, and the bill was done. So I
Speaker 1: looked up, of course, this company, it's called Sunday s
Speaker 1: u n Day Sunday app dot com. So if you
Speaker 1: have a restaurant, I guess my thesis here is, please
Speaker 1: adopt this technology. It is so easy. It's so much
Speaker 1: better than asking the waiter, hey, can you split the
Speaker 1: bill or this or that, because it gives people options
Speaker 1: on how they want to pay. Now, the only thing
Speaker 1: that's a little bit weird about this, I took a
Speaker 1: picture of the QR code on the table to like
Speaker 1: put in my newsletter, And you can scan that QR
Speaker 1: code at any time and kind of spy on what
Speaker 1: people are ordering at that table because that QR code
Speaker 1: is specific for that table and it's linked to their
Speaker 1: POS system, their point of sale system, their hospitality system.
Speaker 1: And so last night I scanned it as just a test,
Speaker 1: and I could see all the things that people were
Speaker 1: ordering at that table. So I guess they're not too concerned,
Speaker 1: because who's going to sit there after they left a
Speaker 1: restaurant scan this QR code again and then pay for
Speaker 1: someone else's dinner. It's probably not going to happen. There's
Speaker 1: nothing like nefarious you can do with that QR code.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I thought that was really cool. I love
Speaker 1: when restaurants make life easy, and I'm all about that.
Speaker 1: Like these restaurants they go in there and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't split the bill, or you can't do this,
Speaker 1: or you can't do that. It's or I'm adding all this.
Speaker 1: You know, the new thing is all these fees they
Speaker 1: add to the bill. This was just a nice breath
Speaker 1: of fresh air. It was just like the way you
Speaker 1: want to check out simple easy. I liked it all right,
Speaker 1: let's go to let's see here Michael in Capistrano Beach.
Speaker 1: You're on with Rich.
Speaker 4: Can you hear me?
Speaker 1: Yes? I can hear you. Can you hear me, Rich,
Speaker 1: I can hear you. Can you hear me?
Speaker 13: Yes?
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, and thank you for covering the
Speaker 2: cases over there that you were talking about online. My
Speaker 2: question was for you when you hear about the w
Speaker 2: EF members, how he gets up and he talks about
Speaker 2: how the humans are going to be hackable animals? What
Speaker 2: do you think about that?
Speaker 1: Who said this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, ury yea the World's Economic Forum. They say that
Speaker 2: humans are hackable animals.
Speaker 1: Oh, is this the guy that wrote the Sapiens book?
Speaker 1: I think it might be because he's, uh, it looks
Speaker 1: like that might be the hymn. I've read a lot
Speaker 1: of that book, and so I did not hear this.
Speaker 1: I did not hear about what he said. But you
Speaker 1: know there already are you know, body hackers out there,
Speaker 1: people that are trying to hack their own body in
Speaker 1: different ways from a biological standpoint. But then there's the
Speaker 1: idea of all these things like Neurolink and these companies
Speaker 1: that are working on sort of add ons to our brain.
Speaker 1: So what do I think I think it's going to happen.
Speaker 1: I think that we are just at the beginning of
Speaker 1: this now. I think there's gonna be a lot of
Speaker 1: pros for people like quadriplegics, people that have some sort
Speaker 1: of brain damage, and people that you know, of different
Speaker 1: abilities that you know might be confined to a wheelchair,
Speaker 1: like there may be breakthroughs that will allow these people
Speaker 1: to get around like regular, you know, like average human beings.
Speaker 1: And so I think that there is good in this stuff.
Speaker 1: And I was reading a whole article, I think it
Speaker 1: was on the plane about the original guy who got
Speaker 1: the brain implant from Neurlink, and you know, he was
Speaker 1: just talking about how it changed his life. Like he
Speaker 1: the guy was just this, you know, he had a
Speaker 1: regular body and all of a sudden he got into
Speaker 1: I think it was a was it a car accident?
Speaker 1: And next thing you know, you know, he's confined to
Speaker 1: a wheelchair and barely can move at all. And he said,
Speaker 1: when they put this thing in his brain. They approached him.
Speaker 1: He said it was amazing. He can move a cursor
Speaker 1: on a computer. Like he said, everything that he had
Speaker 1: to do with the assistance of a person, he can
Speaker 1: now do a lot of this stuff by himself. Maybe
Speaker 1: not moving around per se, but like just being online.
Speaker 1: Like imagine that you can't move, you can't can a
Speaker 1: mouse computer things that you were accustomed to doing, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you can't do that anymore. How
Speaker 1: frustrating it is. And so he said, things that would
Speaker 1: take him, you know, an hour to kind of move
Speaker 1: or do something on the computer screen, he can now
Speaker 1: do in seconds just by looking at it, just by
Speaker 1: thinking about moving the cursor to the left or the right,
Speaker 1: or selecting something, it happens on screen. So I think,
Speaker 1: you know, but on the flip side, once we start
Speaker 1: embedding people with this technology, of course that technology is hackable,
Speaker 1: it is programmable. There will be, you know, people that
Speaker 1: try to abuse this stuff. So I think that no
Speaker 1: matter what, we are in for it. And I was
Speaker 1: reading something too about cars, you know how you know,
Speaker 1: we think about all these cars that can do things,
Speaker 1: they can drive themselves, you know, security cameras on cars,
Speaker 1: like all this technology that's built into cars. You know,
Speaker 1: there are people working twenty four to seven to try
Speaker 1: to figure out how to hack that stuff and use
Speaker 1: it to their advantage in various ways. Now, stealing a
Speaker 1: car is one thing, but you know, can you imagine
Speaker 1: if all the self driving cars slam themselves into walls?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know there's someone out there working on
Speaker 1: trying to make that happen. Because they're evil. I hope
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen. But again, people do have to look
Speaker 1: into this stuff to try to patch the exploits that
Speaker 1: other people may find. And so there's always someone that's
Speaker 1: looking for the holes in this software, in the programming,
Speaker 1: in the hardware, no matter what, whether they're going to
Speaker 1: use it for good or for bad. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: we are just at the beginning of all this stuff.
Speaker 1: And I talk about this a lot too, the idea
Speaker 1: that AI right now, we've got it. It's been you
Speaker 1: know what two years that we've had it, and we've
Speaker 1: been playing with this stuff, and everyone loves, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the things that CHATCHYBT and Gemini and Perplexity
Speaker 1: can do. But right now it is so basic. Just
Speaker 1: imagine when they start building this AI technology into robots,
Speaker 1: like I'm talking humanoid robots that many many companies are
Speaker 1: working on, like these these robots that can walk around
Speaker 1: and sort of think for themselves, do for themselves, act
Speaker 1: for themselves. So this stuff is happening. It's going to happen,
Speaker 1: and we need to be ready for all aspects of
Speaker 1: this no matter what a good movie to watch. It's
Speaker 1: a little little silly, and I hope I'm not giving
Speaker 1: too much away, but it's been out for a while,
Speaker 1: but Companion, we sat down to watch kind of a
Speaker 1: horror movie. I don't want to give away the premise,
Speaker 1: but just it's interesting. So again, that's kind of along
Speaker 1: the lines of what we're looking forward to in the future.
Speaker 1: Good question. Thanks for the call, Michael, appreciate it. Eighty
Speaker 1: to eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to a software engineer who wrote
Speaker 1: a book about how social platforms really work. You are
Speaker 1: listening to Rich on tech. Let's go to George in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles.
Speaker 14: You're on with Rich Hi Riche Okay, I got a
Speaker 14: question here. I'm having a lot of trouble, a lot
Speaker 14: of headed I'm trying to connect the wireless microphone to
Speaker 14: my phone. It's a Galaxy A fifteen, and.
Speaker 13: Somehow it's not working. I cannot connect the external microphone
Speaker 13: to my phone. When I try to record a video
Speaker 13: with my camera, my phone camera, it doesn't give me
Speaker 13: the audio. And I try with another old phone that
Speaker 13: I have is a Galaxy S twenty, Samsung Galaxy X twenty,
Speaker 13: and it works. But I don't know why with the
Speaker 13: Samsung Galaxy A fifteen doesn't work. And I try with
Speaker 13: out of different phones and a tablet and somehow the
Speaker 13: microphone don't work. The audio doesn't you know, doesn't connect.
Speaker 13: I mean the external microphone doesn't connect with the tablet.
Speaker 13: I don't know if I need a nap or I
Speaker 13: did a comparable wireless microphone. I tried with two different
Speaker 13: microphones and it's not working.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, a couple of things going on here. Number one,
Speaker 1: have you confirmed that this what what brand is? The
Speaker 1: wireless microphone.
Speaker 13: Is a lab label ler K thirty nine.
Speaker 1: Okay, so is it wired or wireless?
Speaker 4: It's why?
Speaker 13: Well, it's I got the wire from Risk for the receiver.
Speaker 13: I connected to the phone with a wire uh and
Speaker 13: then I had the microphone, there.
Speaker 1: Are wireless okay, well number one, not every smartphone supports
Speaker 1: a external microphone. Now the Samsungs for sure do the
Speaker 1: the Pro models, the S models they do. Now the
Speaker 1: A models that's sort of their budget line, they may
Speaker 1: not support. And I'm trying to confirm if they actually
Speaker 1: have support for an external mic, and I can't confirm
Speaker 1: right here, like over the air. Let's see, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't can firm like if that speck is available. So
Speaker 1: that could be the first problem. Do you know that
Speaker 1: this phone is compatible with an external mic?
Speaker 13: I have no idea, okay.
Speaker 1: So typically on a Samsung phone, when you plug in
Speaker 1: an external MIC, it will recognize it and say right
Speaker 1: on the screen on your camera viewfinder, external mic connected.
Speaker 1: So if it is not giving you that message as
Speaker 1: soon as you connect that external mic, this phone may
Speaker 1: not be compatible. So over the years, since I do
Speaker 1: a lot of content creation for my TV job, I
Speaker 1: you know, and I test a lot of smartphones over
Speaker 1: the years, I've found it's very hit or miss whether
Speaker 1: these phones support the external MIC. I know the Pixel does, obviously,
Speaker 1: the iPhone does, the Samsung, the high end models do.
Speaker 1: The One Plus can still be hit or miss, but
Speaker 1: nowadays usually it typically does. But this is an A
Speaker 1: fifteen model, which you know, if you're looking at a
Speaker 1: phone that's a more of a budget minded device, they
Speaker 1: may not build in all of those things. So what
Speaker 1: I would do is go online, find the specs for this.
Speaker 1: Make sure you can find maybe a YouTube video or
Speaker 1: someone that actually says, hey, this does support an external microphone.
Speaker 1: That's number one. That's going to save you a lot
Speaker 1: of headaches. The second thing to do, George, is to
Speaker 1: make sure that this is compatible with or this microphone
Speaker 1: that you have. This setup is going to work. So
Speaker 1: a lot of these microphones that you find on Amazon
Speaker 1: sometimes are very hit or miss. I use the Dji,
Speaker 1: which is the kind of the gold standard for wireless microphones.
Speaker 1: It's expensive, but it works. It does exactly what you need,
Speaker 1: and it's really good. There are other brands out there
Speaker 1: that are cheaper that will also do it, but just
Speaker 1: make sure they have a lot of reviews and people
Speaker 1: saying that they actually work. If you want to get
Speaker 1: one of those cheaper brands on Amazon, like if you
Speaker 1: search Dji, Mike or road Wireless Mic for iPhone and
Speaker 1: those come up, just make sure that a lot of
Speaker 1: people have verified yes they do actually work. But the
Speaker 1: other one is the road mics. People like those. But
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of these microphones on Amazon that
Speaker 1: you can get. Some of them are as small as
Speaker 1: a button.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: They're just they've changed the game when it comes to
Speaker 1: creating content on the go, because it used to be
Speaker 1: you had to have either something wired or not something
Speaker 1: very good. And now the fact that you can use
Speaker 1: these wireless mics is just so great. But it's all
Speaker 1: dependent on whether your phone actually supports it. The other
Speaker 1: thing you could do if your phone doesn't support it,
Speaker 1: you don't want to invest in a new mic. You
Speaker 1: don't want to invest in a new phone. A lot
Speaker 1: of these microphones will record into themselves, so they will
Speaker 1: actually have built in memory on the microphone. You can
Speaker 1: press record. You can record the audio separate from the
Speaker 1: video and then use an app like Final Cut to
Speaker 1: sync those up. So that's what we'll do. If we
Speaker 1: have a problem with the audio or it's not embedded
Speaker 1: on the video, we'll just sync it up later. So
Speaker 1: that's another option where you can just record the audio
Speaker 1: separate from the video, bring it into an editing program.
Speaker 1: Like final cut or premiere, and then synchronize the audio
Speaker 1: to the video. I mean, that's what they used to
Speaker 1: do in Hollywood with that clapboard. You know, they always
Speaker 1: recorded audio separate, so they use that clapboard to sync
Speaker 1: it up. All right, good question, George. Something to look
Speaker 1: out for on your smartphones if you are going to
Speaker 1: be creating content because those wireless mics, I call it
Speaker 1: the best invention of the last decade for me. They're
Speaker 1: just so handy. Coming up, we are going to talk
Speaker 1: to Tim O'Hearn. He is a author of Framed. He's
Speaker 1: got a new take on how social platforms really work.
Speaker 1: That's up next. Welcome back to rich on tech rich
Speaker 1: Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology the website
Speaker 1: for the show richon tech dot TV. Joining me now
Speaker 1: is Tim O'Hearn, a software engineer and author of Framed,
Speaker 1: A villain's perspective on social Media. Thanks for joining me, Tim.
Speaker 11: Thanks Rich, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: So what's your background and what made you write this book.
Speaker 8: I'm a software engineer and I spent most of my twenties,
Speaker 8: so the last ten years I spent working in quantitative trading.
Speaker 8: During my first year second year on the job, I
Speaker 8: was approached by some people involved in the New York
Speaker 8: City nightlife industry who told me that they had a
Speaker 8: business that they were using to make money by getting
Speaker 8: people more followers on Instagram. They needed someone to help
Speaker 8: build up the business and help scale it up. And
Speaker 8: that's when my involvement began in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: And so you got involved with basically selling what bots
Speaker 1: and things like trying to get like people on Instagram
Speaker 1: and social media. They want a lot of followers because
Speaker 1: it looks like they have a lot of influence, so
Speaker 1: a lot of times she will buy those.
Speaker 11: Yeah. So really our service was in the second wave.
Speaker 8: I call this the organic growth phase, So it was
Speaker 8: one step removed from people just paying twenty dollars for
Speaker 8: five thousand followers. The bots I created would actually log
Speaker 8: into a customer's account and then act as if they
Speaker 8: were the customer. So this allowed things to grow more
Speaker 8: organically and for it to see less like a bot
Speaker 8: and more like a human actually taking the actions.
Speaker 1: Ah, so they would sort of like maybe like things,
Speaker 1: comment on things, reply to stuff exactly. And so what
Speaker 1: did you learn in this in this experience and why
Speaker 1: are you telling the story.
Speaker 8: Now, during this time, there was a lot of i
Speaker 8: would say, unspoken facts and unspoken truths about the dark
Speaker 8: side of social media. So some things that have come
Speaker 8: to light is regarding how social networks actually enforce their
Speaker 8: policies and what it means to commit terms of service
Speaker 8: violation on a social media site. So in the early days,
Speaker 8: which I would say twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, we found
Speaker 8: that we were learning so much about the underside, about
Speaker 8: all the rule breakers and this spectrum of enforcement, realizing
Speaker 8: that of course these social media platforms don't want people
Speaker 8: spamming and don't want people being disrupted, but we actually
Speaker 8: found that we were less of a priority compared to
Speaker 8: the people actually doing really bad, really illegal stuff.
Speaker 11: So for a while we.
Speaker 8: Had this reprieve where we just weren't the biggest priority,
Speaker 8: and during that time we proliferated.
Speaker 1: Why because these social media platforms want.
Speaker 8: To grow, definitely, they want to grow, and they're just
Speaker 8: worried about ultimately reactive you know, reactive moves here. They're
Speaker 8: worried about having to speak in front of Congress, you know,
Speaker 8: they're worried about these bombshell articles coming from the New
Speaker 8: York Times, and until twenty late twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen,
Speaker 8: nobody was talking about followers in that same way, you know,
Speaker 8: they were talking about other types of illicit activities going
Speaker 8: on on social media.
Speaker 1: So what do you think the average consumer needs to
Speaker 1: know about all this stuff at this point?
Speaker 8: At this point, I think what the book communicates is
Speaker 8: that there's a very awkward relationship between users platforms and
Speaker 8: then platform stakeholders. People don't realize that, you know, using
Speaker 8: a platform for free, you are the product. So you
Speaker 8: are the person who is you know, helping out this
Speaker 8: advertising vehicle, or you are the person who investors are
Speaker 8: looking to en mass to actually increase the value of
Speaker 8: a platform. So there are all these awkward, like weird
Speaker 8: symbiotic relationships between each one of these groups that aren't
Speaker 8: obvious to someone who's being beckoned to sign up for
Speaker 8: a social media service to begin with.
Speaker 1: So what a consumers do I mean? What I mean,
Speaker 1: does it change the way that we use these services
Speaker 1: or should we be on guard when we use them
Speaker 1: or what?
Speaker 8: As more things have developed on social media, I think
Speaker 8: that there are concerns not just in our own usage habits,
Speaker 8: but the effects that the platforms are having on our
Speaker 8: emotional state and how we receive and process information. When
Speaker 8: I started using my Space in two thousand and six
Speaker 8: or two thousand and seven, as as ridiculous as the
Speaker 8: experience was, it was actually quite pure.
Speaker 11: And pure is probably the last.
Speaker 8: Word we would use to describe Reddit or Facebook or
Speaker 8: x or any of these platforms today. So one of
Speaker 8: the solutions might simply be to spend less time on
Speaker 8: it and be more aware of the consequences of heavy usage.
Speaker 1: Why do you think these algorithms are engineered to addict us?
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 8: And one interesting thing for me was after I worked
Speaker 8: at Shark Social, which was the Instagram growth company, I
Speaker 8: later worked at a small social media startup where I
Speaker 8: built these persuasive technology systems. So I built systems that
Speaker 8: tried to get users to click on certain push notifications,
Speaker 8: or tried to get users to spend more time looking
Speaker 8: at the news feed of this app. My entire job
Speaker 8: as the special projects lead was essentially to enforce and
Speaker 8: encourage addictive behaviors. So you think at scale, there are
Speaker 8: entire teams within big tech who are just trying to
Speaker 8: ratchet up those metrics a little bit more and that
Speaker 8: means getting people to spend more time online.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, we already know when you open up Instagram,
Speaker 1: it's the equivalent of a slot machine, even down to
Speaker 1: the way the little note of caations appear in the
Speaker 1: upper right hand corner with the numbers, you know, where
Speaker 1: it says the likes, the comments, the hearts. It appears
Speaker 1: exactly like a Las Vegas slot machine. So what do
Speaker 1: we need to know for parents and kids? Because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm an adult, I sort of understand this stuff. I
Speaker 1: get what I'm up against, right, Like Instagram's goal is
Speaker 1: to get me to never close Instagram in my entire life.
Speaker 1: Like that's their goal. And you can do that. The swipe,
Speaker 1: the reels, the stuff, it's never ending. But kids, you know,
Speaker 1: they're not as evolved because they're still they're still growing.
Speaker 1: So what do you think parents need to know about
Speaker 1: all this?
Speaker 8: I support the general guidelines which are coming out from
Speaker 8: countries such as Australia, which is that a child under
Speaker 8: thirteen years of age has no place on social media
Speaker 8: or any type of scrolling type of content feed because
Speaker 8: the belief is that it is harmful for the developing
Speaker 8: mind and it may be harmful in ways that we
Speaker 8: don't fully understand yet. Example I give in my book is, hey,
Speaker 8: you wouldn't give a baby a cigarette, like that's a
Speaker 8: comedy skit, But we do give babies iPads. And I
Speaker 8: see it all over New York City here where tons
Speaker 8: of kids are mindlessly looking at these things because it
Speaker 8: keeps the kid entertained. But what you don't realize is
Speaker 8: that when they're looking at apps that are designed like
Speaker 8: slot machines and stuff, when it comes time to function
Speaker 8: in society or learn in the classroom sometimes, you know,
Speaker 8: schoolroom learning is not as exciting or enthralling as these experiences,
Speaker 8: so it can have some absolutely terrible consequences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's much much more boring compared to TikTok, which
Speaker 1: is like even the format. I mean, I come from
Speaker 1: a classic news background where you know, we do news
Speaker 1: segments and I get it the news is not perfect,
Speaker 1: but you know my segments are, and so I you know,
Speaker 1: I do things that are It's informational, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be fast paced, but I mean if you
Speaker 1: look at something like TikTok, it's like there's a cut
Speaker 1: every second because people's you know, they're going to look away,
Speaker 1: And I've talked to TikTokers that say that they have
Speaker 1: to follow that format or else people scroll away if
Speaker 1: it's not changing fast enough. So some of this stuff
Speaker 1: seems to be changing the fabric of sort of our
Speaker 1: brains in the way that we perceive information as well.
Speaker 8: Sure, short form video is very addictive, and I think
Speaker 8: it is harmful in the way that it kind of
Speaker 8: melds and changes our expectations for what is entertaining and
Speaker 8: how things like plot lines develop. Like how many people
Speaker 8: can really sit through a movie now without thinking about, Okay,
Speaker 8: I need to go check my phone right, Like the
Speaker 8: attention span. The effect on the attention span is crazy.
Speaker 8: And this is something we saw in the early twenty tens,
Speaker 8: where like it started to come out on YouTube where
Speaker 8: you had quick cuts, quick cuts quick cuts. The first
Speaker 8: time I really saw it, I thought this is ridiculous.
Speaker 8: But now, as you said, it's standard almost everywhere.
Speaker 1: It really is all right. The book is framed a
Speaker 1: villain's perspective on social media. The author is Ohearn. It's
Speaker 1: available now on Amazon. Did you have fun writing a book?
Speaker 1: Because I wrote a book a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: It was one of the best things I've ever done.
Speaker 11: It was a very fulfilling experience for me, and seeing
Speaker 11: the reaction to it, both from people in the press,
Speaker 11: from users, from experienced engineers, and especially from academics and researchers,
Speaker 11: it's been very meaningful for me.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, thanks for joining me today on the
Speaker 1: show Tim O'Hearn once again. The book Framed a Villain's
Speaker 1: Perspective on Social Media, available on Amazon. I'll put a
Speaker 1: link on the website. Rich On Tech dot TV. All right,
Speaker 1: coming up, we got a couple of items of note.
Speaker 1: I've got a new way to chat with AI using
Speaker 1: text messaging. If you have a Pixel seven you got
Speaker 1: a problem with your battery, I will explain what you
Speaker 1: can do with that. And Netflix has a new option
Speaker 1: for subtitles. Plus the feedback. We are going to open
Speaker 1: up the feedbag coming up next on rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech, Rich de miro here.
Speaker 1: Apple Watch celebrates ten years this week. Ten years. I
Speaker 1: know I've worn worn one on my wrist almost that
Speaker 1: entire time, and I think it's game changing. I tell
Speaker 1: people a lot of times that I like the Apple
Speaker 1: Watch better than the iPhone, just because it's always there.
Speaker 1: It's simple. It does what I need, tracks my workouts,
Speaker 1: you know. Of course you've got the rings, all these things.
Speaker 1: April twenty fourth, twenty fifteen, that's when the first Apple
Speaker 1: watches came out. I was there at the launch day.
Speaker 1: They sold them at high end stores. In addition, well
Speaker 1: I don't trying to remember. Why was at like such
Speaker 1: a high end store for it. It was like a
Speaker 1: little boutique. Now, of course, the Apple Watch very popular now.
Speaker 1: The original Apple Watch was more about like fashion. It
Speaker 1: did not start out as this like really health and
Speaker 1: fitness focused device. But now, of course it's health, it's fitness.
Speaker 1: It tracks you know, all kinds of stuff except blood
Speaker 1: ocken because they took that away. Yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: features I thought was interesting back in the day. I
Speaker 1: wrote about this in my newsletter today, digital touch. Did
Speaker 1: you know? I thought they took it away, But you
Speaker 1: can still do it. If you go to a text message,
Speaker 1: press the plus sign next to the message field and
Speaker 1: select digital touch, and then you tap two fingers on
Speaker 1: your screen, it'll send your heartbeat to the other person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called digital touch. It's really weird. I thought that
Speaker 1: they got rid of that. And last night when I
Speaker 1: was doing some testing, I was like, wait, that's still there.
Speaker 1: What news service called text ai lets you text ai.
Speaker 1: Text dot Ai is the website. But basically you just
Speaker 1: go to the phone number and you text it and
Speaker 1: it works with your traditional SMS. So just text it
Speaker 1: and ask a question. It will text you back. No
Speaker 1: download required. It can help with plans, recommendations, answers, anything else.
Speaker 1: Built by former Tesla and Walmart Labs employees. Again, the
Speaker 1: website text dot Ai. It's free to use. They do
Speaker 1: not sell your phone number as far as they say
Speaker 1: text dot ai. If you have a Google Pixel seven A,
Speaker 1: you got some problems to do battery maybe it's swelling
Speaker 1: or popping. You can get a free battery replacement. So
Speaker 1: you got that bulging back cover your phone looks thick man?
Speaker 1: What am I talking about here? Rapid battery drain? You
Speaker 1: got to check eligibility online. But yes, this is the
Speaker 1: Pixel seven A. If you have some battery swelling, check out.
Speaker 1: It's called the Pixel seven A Extended Repair Program. I'll
Speaker 1: put the link on the website. AT and T is
Speaker 1: adding cruise ship coverage to its International day Pass, so
Speaker 1: the International day Pass now works on cruise ships twenty
Speaker 1: dollars per day, so it's pricey, but you know, if
Speaker 1: you're on a cruise, you know it's like one free drink.
Speaker 1: I guess twenty bucks you saved paid for this five
Speaker 1: hundred megabytes of data plus unlimited talk and text, and
Speaker 1: it worked on land and sea, surf and turf, so
Speaker 1: no extra charge when you step off. The ship covers
Speaker 1: more than four hundred cruise ships. Obviously they have to
Speaker 1: be in this AT and T coverage zone to work,
Speaker 1: and there's no data overages. So if you hit that
Speaker 1: five hundred megabytes, which by the way, is not very
Speaker 1: tough to hit, your speeds will slow down, but you
Speaker 1: will stay connected. But most of the time when you
Speaker 1: hit those data speed bumps, you're just gonna be able
Speaker 1: to like check your email. Let's see what else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so AT and T International Day Pass it's called Man,
Speaker 1: we're just going through a lot of notes here. MAX.
Speaker 1: The free ride is over seven dollars and ninety nine cents.
Speaker 1: If you have someone clinging onto your account, the extra
Speaker 1: member add on is now available, So if you have
Speaker 1: someone that's using your MAX log in. Yeah, remember this
Speaker 1: is to be called HBO Max and Max and they
Speaker 1: change the color of the logo. They're all over the place,
Speaker 1: But you know what I'm talking about. It's the service
Speaker 1: that lets you watch HBO shows and other stuff. So
Speaker 1: the primary account holder can now invite one friend or
Speaker 1: family member outside their household for eight bucks a month.
Speaker 1: If you want to pay for them, extra members get
Speaker 1: their own login. They can stream on one device at
Speaker 1: a time and access everything, or if you don't want
Speaker 1: to pay for them, they can transfer their profile to
Speaker 1: move all of their history, recommendations, and settings. This is
Speaker 1: only available if you subscribe to Max directly, not if
Speaker 1: you're a bundle user. But basically, the bottom line is
Speaker 1: the free ride is over. If you've got people sharing
Speaker 1: your password, they're going to get that screen that says, hey,
Speaker 1: you should sign up for your own account. As far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, you don't have to just yet,
Speaker 1: but they're going to continue to ratchet this up until
Speaker 1: they get all the memberships they want out of the freeloaders.
Speaker 1: And Netflix, they have a new subtitle option. I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but in my house we watch a
Speaker 1: lot of shows with the subtitles on, even though we
Speaker 1: don't need to. But with all the commotion in the background,
Speaker 1: the kids playing, Yeah, they got their iPads, all those
Speaker 1: things going on, talking to their friends. This is just
Speaker 1: an easy way, you know, instead of saying what they
Speaker 1: just say, you just got the subtitles on. But Netflix
Speaker 1: knows this, so now they've introduced a new type of
Speaker 1: subtitle that just includes the words themselves and not the
Speaker 1: audio cues. So your typical you know, subtitles have things
Speaker 1: like music swells or phone buzzes. They don't have that anymore.
Speaker 1: Now it's just the words that people are saying. So
Speaker 1: you can see two choices, now English for dialogue only,
Speaker 1: and then English CC if you want the full closed captions.
Speaker 1: And this will be on every so will beyond more
Speaker 1: shows moving forward, but right now, it's starting with the
Speaker 1: season five of the show You, which I have not watched,
Speaker 1: but I guess that's a popular show. Netflix says half
Speaker 1: of viewing hours in the US already happen with subtitles on.
Speaker 1: And don't forget you can customize the subtitles by size
Speaker 1: and font. Some people forget that. Feedback now, Michelle writes
Speaker 1: in after hearing us talk about the recent settlement payout
Speaker 1: for Facebook and Zell, I thought the email I got
Speaker 1: was spam. It said I had a forty dollars payment pending,
Speaker 1: and it gave me a deadline to click a link.
Speaker 1: I looked up the case and even called both the
Speaker 1: settlement administrator and Zel. Turns out it was legit. I'd
Speaker 1: signed up for it years ago and totally forgot. After
Speaker 1: some hesitation, I followed through. I'm now forty dollars and
Speaker 1: sixty seven cents richer. So if you see that Facebook
Speaker 1: settlement through Zell, yeah, I guess you can claim it.
Speaker 1: Just be careful because, like we know, the scam artists
Speaker 1: will play prey upon something that's real and turn it
Speaker 1: into something that's fake. Gail from Oakland says, is there
Speaker 1: an easy way to turn a handwritten page of my
Speaker 1: well formed cursive into text using my iPad pro? Yes?
Speaker 1: Chat gbt. Take a picture of whatever you're writing and
Speaker 1: upload it to chat GBT. It will read it and
Speaker 1: convert it into text. It's fast and that's accurate, and
Speaker 1: if you're saying you have good cursive, it'll be easy
Speaker 1: to do that. Good question. Christopher from Justice Illinois writes
Speaker 1: in is there a way to see what devices are
Speaker 1: connected to my WiFi? Yes? There's an app called fing
Speaker 1: fing iOS and android give you a list of all
Speaker 1: the connected devices. Good if you think someone's freeloading on
Speaker 1: your network. Fing dot com slash app. Liz writes in
Speaker 1: we're all big fans of you here at work. You
Speaker 1: make the tech talks interesting and we all learn so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Liz. I appreciate the kind words. Really do.
Speaker 1: That's going to do it for this episode of the show.
Speaker 1: You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.
Speaker 1: Just go to rich on tech dot tv. If you
Speaker 1: want to get in on the feedbag, click contact and
Speaker 1: send me a message. You can find me on social media.
Speaker 1: I am at rich on tech. A lot of the
Speaker 1: things that I mentioned here on the show I will
Speaker 1: post there try to make them shareable for you. Went
Speaker 1: to Disney this week and found a actually Bobo gave
Speaker 1: me a hidden trick photospot in Disney California Adventure. So
Speaker 1: if you're headed the California Adventure, check that out. Pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Next week, Harry Campbell, the rideshare guy, is going to
Speaker 1: share the latest in the gig economy, robotaxis and more.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. There are so many
Speaker 1: ways you can spend your time. I really do appreciate
Speaker 1: you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone
Speaker 1: who makes this show possible. Adam in today for Bobo,
Speaker 1: appreciate your hard work back there, Kim on phones, and
Speaker 1: you of course for listening. Thank you. My name is
Speaker 1: rich Demiro. I will talk to you real soon