Speaker 1: Amazon has its first Kindle with a color screen, a
Speaker 1: new iPad many from Apple, but they didn't improve one
Speaker 1: key feature, and how to enable Android's new theft detection feature.
Speaker 1: Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on. I'm Rich
Speaker 1: Demiro 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 A Rich one oh one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: All right, we got some great guests this week. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk to swan dot COM's CEO, Corey Clipston. He's
Speaker 1: gonna talk about bitcoin and the current state of the
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency market. I went to the Bitcoin Day this week,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's quite interesting to see all the bitcoin
Speaker 1: getting together. They are really into this stuff and it's
Speaker 1: kind of exciting.
Speaker 2: So we'll talk to Corey.
Speaker 1: Then later in the show, we've got Consumer Reports Suki
Speaker 1: Golatti to talk permission Slip. This is their tool to
Speaker 1: help you reduce your digital footprint and protect your online privacy.
Speaker 1: Suki will join us a little bit later in the show. Well,
Speaker 1: it is fall, it is spooky time, it's pumpkin patch time.
Speaker 1: Went to the pumpkin patch with the kids last night,
Speaker 1: had a nice time. It was a little emptier than
Speaker 1: previous years. But it's one of those traditions that I
Speaker 1: grew up on the East Coast, always going to the
Speaker 1: pumpkin patch and taken. We did a lot of haunted
Speaker 1: hay rides there. But my kids California, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit different because sometimes you go to the pumpkin patch
Speaker 1: and it's like eighty degrees. Thankfully, last night it was not.
Speaker 1: That was fun always, you know, it's just tradition. Gotta
Speaker 1: do the tradition. On Instagram, by the way, I was
Speaker 1: just posting something and I don't know if you noticed this,
Speaker 1: but when you go into your stories, when you look
Speaker 1: at the top, there's like little bats that fly around
Speaker 1: on the lettering.
Speaker 2: So I was like, what is that? What is that?
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 1: And so if you look at that, it's actually Halloween writing.
Speaker 1: So if you go to my Instagram at rich On
Speaker 1: Tech you can see I used it.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: It's a classic kind of like Halloween writing, and you
Speaker 1: have to scroll all the way to the left. Let's
Speaker 1: see what it's called. Let's see here, so go here create,
Speaker 1: let's see. Oh you got to post a picture first. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad I'm doing this on live radio. Very very exciting.
Speaker 1: All right, tap that. Oh it's just called Halloween writing.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: It's funny too whenever I go to these events, I've
Speaker 1: been testing phones for so long. To me, it's all
Speaker 1: about when I look back in my pictures and my
Speaker 1: Google Photos, It's all about the progression of the cameras.
Speaker 1: Like I've been taking pictures of my kids at the
Speaker 1: same pumpkin patch for ten years, and it's like back
Speaker 1: in the day, the pictures were just so bad.
Speaker 2: They didn't look bad back then.
Speaker 1: Now they look bad, and so I see that progression
Speaker 1: of Like last night, I was using the new iPhone
Speaker 1: sixteen pro and it's like, oh, wow, these look pretty good.
Speaker 1: A little tip by the way, I was organizing. I'm
Speaker 1: always organizing my Google Photos collection.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Google Photos is my preferred way to store my photos.
Speaker 1: Always looking for ways to kind of like delete stuff
Speaker 1: out of there that I don't need anymore.
Speaker 2: And I found a pretty good search.
Speaker 1: Just search for the word blurry, and it'll bring up
Speaker 1: all the pictures that hurt, like nonsense, blurry pictures that
Speaker 1: you've taken over the years, and you could just go
Speaker 1: through and delete a bunch of those. It also brings
Speaker 1: up blurry videos, and that's a good way to just
Speaker 1: kind of prune. I love pruning. That's like in some
Speaker 1: people might prune their plants outside. No, I'm just pruning
Speaker 1: like my Google photos collection all day every day. I
Speaker 1: thought this was interesting. Today I was filling up my
Speaker 1: water bottle from the fridge and I noticed that the filter,
Speaker 1: which seems to go very fast, needed a replacement. And
Speaker 1: you know, I've got these Amazon Echoes around the house.
Speaker 1: I've been telling you about how I replaced a bunch
Speaker 1: of my Sono speakers, which I'm still enjoying, by the way.
Speaker 1: I love the voice control on those things. But every
Speaker 1: once in a while, the Amazon Echo will have like
Speaker 1: a green light on it and I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: you got me, like, Alexa, what do you thinking?
Speaker 2: And that's what I say to it.
Speaker 1: And it's like, I've got a notification you seem to
Speaker 1: be running out of your whatever that you ordered six
Speaker 1: months ago, and it's been pretty spot on with some
Speaker 1: of the things. And I said, you know what, actually
Speaker 1: you can help me right now. Can you reorder my
Speaker 1: water filter for the fridge? And sure enough, she brought
Speaker 1: up the old one that I've ordered over the past
Speaker 1: couple of years and said, here it is. It's forty dollars.
Speaker 1: Would you like me to place the order for you?
Speaker 1: And I said sure. Well, first she said I'll put
Speaker 1: it in the car, and I said, well, actually, you
Speaker 1: can go ahead and order that, and so she just
Speaker 1: went ahead and said, okay, I have placed the order,
Speaker 1: which I thought was incredible. I mean, I get it.
Speaker 1: They put all these Alexas, these echo speakers in people's homes,
Speaker 1: hoping that they would one day order items from them.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how many.
Speaker 1: People actually do that, but I did. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of fun, kind of easy because it knows what you've
Speaker 1: ordered in the past, so it just defaults to that.
Speaker 1: And so I thought of a cruel prank, which do
Speaker 1: not do this. But what if you were at someone's
Speaker 1: house and you just ordered stuff off their echo. I mean,
Speaker 1: are these things like linked to their actual voice. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure they are. Do not do this, Please, do
Speaker 1: not say, rich On Tech told you to do this,
Speaker 1: but I'm just you know, my mind goes to, like
Speaker 1: all the different ways that this could be used nefariously,
Speaker 1: and that's one of them. I mean, it's like, these
Speaker 1: things are everywhere anyway, don't do that. You can always
Speaker 1: cancel the order, but I mean, it's just kind of
Speaker 1: a weird prank to play on your friends. Something else
Speaker 1: I tried this week, I flew back to New Jersey.
Speaker 2: Last week's show was from New Jersey.
Speaker 1: You know, I do these shows live, so I love
Speaker 1: being live no matter where I am. But I'm back
Speaker 1: here in Los Angeles today. But I did try something new.
Speaker 1: I'm always trying something. Whatever is available, I will try
Speaker 1: it because I love technology. I'm just going to see
Speaker 1: how this stuff works. So TSA pre check they have
Speaker 1: this thing called touchless ID. While you're checking in, it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to go touchless? I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: let me try it. I've tried the digital ID, I've
Speaker 1: tried just about everything they offer, but I was like,
Speaker 1: let me try touchless. So basically, you use your face
Speaker 1: for recognition at the TSA pre check line instead of
Speaker 1: your ID. And so I said, all right, let's try it.
Speaker 1: So I get to the pre check and there's two
Speaker 1: separate lines. One is the touchless ID which uses your
Speaker 1: face and your boarding pass has like a green outline
Speaker 1: around it to like signify that you've opted into this.
Speaker 1: Because you can't do it at the airport, you have
Speaker 1: to do it at check in. So the line was
Speaker 1: like significantly shorter than the regular pre check line, which
Speaker 1: is significantly shorter than the regular security line. And so
Speaker 1: I get up to the front and of course I'm
Speaker 1: like waiting for the person to be like, we don't
Speaker 1: do that, but they said, okay, stand there, take your picture.
Speaker 2: You take a picture.
Speaker 1: You't have to take anything out, you don't have to
Speaker 1: show anything, and somehow it scans your face. Next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, you can go checks against your boarding pass,
Speaker 1: which is pretty impressive. So I was wondering how this worked, right,
Speaker 1: because where do they get my picture from. I didn't
Speaker 1: submit a picture to anyone. I'll tell you about that
Speaker 1: in a second. But then when on the way back,
Speaker 1: I saw that you can do a self bag tag
Speaker 1: with just your face, and so I was like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: let me take this to the next level.
Speaker 2: Let me check in my bags without showing anything.
Speaker 1: You know, usually when you check in your bag, unless
Speaker 1: you're going like first class, you know you have a person.
Speaker 1: But usually if you're just going the regular class like
Speaker 1: everyone else like I am, typically you just go up
Speaker 1: to a little machine. You type in your number or
Speaker 1: you scan your barcode, and it spits out the bag
Speaker 1: tag and bag. Some places I've seen were actually tag
Speaker 1: it yourself, Like when I was coming back from Hawaii,
Speaker 1: I actually literally put the bag tag on my bag,
Speaker 1: like I am an airline employee now, like I'm trained
Speaker 1: to do this stuff, and you know, my bag made it.
Speaker 1: But you know, sometimes with the airline, usually the airline
Speaker 1: I fly typically has someone that does it for you. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I stand in front of this little machine, takes a
Speaker 1: picture of my face and it says okay, and it
Speaker 1: spits out the bagtag. Someone comes from behind the scenes
Speaker 1: and they put the thing on my bag and that's it.
Speaker 1: Didn't have to show my ID to verify it's me
Speaker 1: because they already did.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: I asked the person, I said, hey, where are you
Speaker 1: getting my picture from for all this technology? And they said, oh,
Speaker 1: it's from your passport, so yeah, sure enough. I looked
Speaker 1: up a little bit more information. TSA pre check touchless
Speaker 1: identity solution is being test. It's totally optional, it's opt
Speaker 1: in if you want to do it. It compares your
Speaker 1: live facial images to pre existing government photo IDs, So
Speaker 1: guessing that's your passport most of the time, unless you've
Speaker 1: submitted something else, maybe during pre check. I guess you
Speaker 1: did have to submit a picture. It's currently being tested
Speaker 1: at some airports with Delta and United. You can opt
Speaker 1: in during your mobile check in and they collect data
Speaker 1: including your live photo, your passport number, and your known
Speaker 1: traveler numbers. They say the information is anonymized, encrypted and
Speaker 1: deleted within one hundred and eighty days. And of course
Speaker 1: this is all aiming to enhance security and streamline the
Speaker 1: verification process. So I don't know, I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: these little things that are happening in our world that
Speaker 1: are just progressing.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of pros and cons with all this
Speaker 1: facial technology, facial recognition, but the reality is they've got it.
Speaker 1: If you've been uploading your photos to Facebook, to Instagram,
Speaker 1: maybe even Twitter, all this stuff is being scanned for
Speaker 1: AI and it's being sliced and diced in a million
Speaker 1: different ways. Remember Facebook was tagging people in photos years ago.
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking probably a decade ago. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden you'd get a thing that said, hey, you
Speaker 1: showed up in someone's picture, and they'd be like, I
Speaker 1: didn't tag you in that. It was just automatically applying
Speaker 1: the tag. So the information's out there. I think moving forward,
Speaker 1: what's really important is how is this information used. Are
Speaker 1: the organizations thinking about the privacy of this information? And
Speaker 1: of course, when you share any information, always be thinking
Speaker 1: about how private it is, what the implications are of
Speaker 1: sharing that information, and what could go wrong if that
Speaker 1: information gets out If my photo that I took at
Speaker 1: the TSA pre check, you know, gets out there in
Speaker 1: the world. Not the end of the world. I mean,
Speaker 1: people already know what I look like. It's really just
Speaker 1: a general awareness I think you should have about how
Speaker 1: you're sharing your information and where I would actually argue
Speaker 1: that sharing your information for one of those like sweepstakes,
Speaker 1: when you go to like a football game or something.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like when this new car and you
Speaker 1: fill out this whole form with like all of your
Speaker 1: information and all of your identifying information and your your
Speaker 1: just everything you know how many kids live in your house,
Speaker 1: your household information. I feel like that is actually going
Speaker 1: into a bigger database that will be used against you
Speaker 1: than my photo at the TSA pre check.
Speaker 2: But again, think about this stuff and be aware of
Speaker 2: this stuff. All right.
Speaker 1: Coming up on the show, we're going to talk a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. We've got many many things coming up.
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the new color Kindle. We've
Speaker 1: got that. Apple also came out with a new iPad Mini,
Speaker 1: so we've got that. You've got the website that's rich
Speaker 1: on Tech dot TV. So if you want to go
Speaker 1: there get in touch with me, you can do that
Speaker 1: by hitting contact. You can get show notes there by
Speaker 1: hitting the light bulb, and you can give me a call.
Speaker 1: Eight to eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. My
Speaker 1: name is rich Darmiro. You are listening to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich.
Speaker 2: One oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 2: two four one zero one. The email.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with me that way,
Speaker 1: go to the website rich on Tech dot TV hit
Speaker 1: contact and we got an email from Steve about the
Speaker 1: Alexa ordering. He said, I've never used it to order,
Speaker 1: but I do believe there's an optional pin that probably
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. In fact, if you do
Speaker 1: not live alone, I would probably enable that. Probably smarter
Speaker 1: to do that, although I have enabled the pin on
Speaker 1: the Amazon Prime Video because of my kids, and it's
Speaker 1: such a nightmare, Like every time I want to watch something,
Speaker 1: which is not very often, but this is probably why
Speaker 1: I don't watch a lot on Prime Video, I have
Speaker 1: to put in this pin that's like, you know, six
Speaker 1: digits on my remote control, and it just keeps me
Speaker 1: basically from watching anything on Amazon Prime. Speaking of Amazon,
Speaker 1: let's see here. Amazon updated their entire Kindle family, including
Speaker 1: the first ever color Kindle. Now I know the Kindle
Speaker 1: is known for having a page that looks just like
Speaker 1: the printed page. This still uses e ink, so I
Speaker 1: do like that. You've got four new Kindle models hitting
Speaker 1: the market, including that first ever color Kindle. They also
Speaker 1: reimagine the Kindle Scribe with some AI features. They've got
Speaker 1: the fastest Kindle paper white yet, and then they've got
Speaker 1: the new entry level Kindle in a fun Macha color
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know about this trend started
Speaker 1: on TikTok, where people they basically decorate their kindles. It's
Speaker 1: like a whole thing. I mean, books are popular now
Speaker 1: because of TikTok. They call it book talk. So these
Speaker 1: these people they recommend books that they're reading other people
Speaker 1: read them. Oh my gosh, what a concept, people reading
Speaker 1: books again.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: So the Kindle Colorsoft, I think is the most notable
Speaker 1: model here. This is the first kindle with a color display.
Speaker 1: So it's color pages, it's got color pictures. It's also
Speaker 1: got color on the screen. So if you want to
Speaker 1: look at the cover of your book in full color,
Speaker 1: you can do that, and then if you want to
Speaker 1: highlight in color, you can do that.
Speaker 2: Now. Do I think this is necessary on the Kindle?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: But is it nice to have. Sure, Like if you
Speaker 2: read graphic.
Speaker 1: Novels, kids are reading books on there, that's kind of
Speaker 1: cool to have color for that. If you read comic
Speaker 1: books on there, I think this was inevitable to have
Speaker 1: the color Kindle.
Speaker 2: Do you need it tomorrow? Probably not.
Speaker 1: I can't think of a reason why I want the
Speaker 1: Color Kindle except for the fact that it's brand new
Speaker 1: and available, and I'm really fighting that urge to get one,
Speaker 1: because why do I need this thing. I've been reading
Speaker 1: books in black and white forever, and I like the
Speaker 1: fact that the kindle is closer to the printed page.
Speaker 1: It does not look like an iPad, It does not
Speaker 1: look like a smartphone screen, it does not look like
Speaker 1: a computer screen. So even when I'm reading my Kindle,
Speaker 1: I do not feel like I am engaging with technology.
Speaker 1: And that's the whole beauty of the Kindle is that,
Speaker 1: even though it is very high tech, the technology blends
Speaker 1: into the background and you actually just focus on reading.
Speaker 1: And I do love my Kindle. I really do prefer
Speaker 1: it over physical books a majority of the time. Let's see, okay,
Speaker 1: colorsoft is waterproof, which is nice. Bring it in the bath,
Speaker 1: you can bring it to the beach. It also has
Speaker 1: wireless charging, so they did that for a reason make
Speaker 1: it easier to charge, obviously, But this only gets eight
Speaker 1: weeks of battery life. And I know that sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot, but if you're like me, you don't charge
Speaker 1: your kindle very much. I don't, so eight weeks is
Speaker 1: noticeably shorter than say, the months that a standard kindle
Speaker 1: would last. Okay, Next up the Kindles Scribe, and I'll
Speaker 1: tell you the prices afterwards.
Speaker 2: Kindlescribe.
Speaker 1: Remember this is the Kindle that is like a little
Speaker 1: bit bigger of a screen. You can write on it.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a notebook. So this has new borders,
Speaker 1: smaller borders in book writing experience. You can actually write
Speaker 1: inside the pages that you're reading and the text will
Speaker 1: wrap a it, which I thought was pretty cool. It's
Speaker 1: got an AI powered notebook for summarizing your own handwritten notes.
Speaker 1: This is for pre order. It will ship on December fourth.
Speaker 1: Then you've got the Kindle paper White. This is the
Speaker 1: Kindle I think that a majority of people should buy.
Speaker 1: This is the one that has a faster page turns.
Speaker 1: They're twenty five percent faster. It's got the highest contrast
Speaker 1: ratio of any Kindle. It's got a larger seven inch
Speaker 1: displace just a little bit larger there. But it's also
Speaker 1: the thinnest paper white ever, and that gets you up
Speaker 1: to three months of battery life. So for my money,
Speaker 1: I think the Kindle Paper White is probably the best
Speaker 1: bang for your buck for everyone because you're getting kind
Speaker 1: of like the best looking screen, the thinnest. Also, it's bigger,
Speaker 1: and so I think that that's going to be probably
Speaker 1: the best for most people. And then you've got the
Speaker 1: entry level kindle, which I get it's probably the most
Speaker 1: tempting because it goes on sale the most. It's obviously
Speaker 1: the cheapest, but I think if you spend just a
Speaker 1: little bit more, you're going to get that kindle. Paper
Speaker 1: white is just a better, better value for your money.
Speaker 1: But this is the smallest kindle, it's the most affordable.
Speaker 1: Obviously comes in that new Machta color. How do you
Speaker 1: say that Macha macha color? Not machta macha. It's like
Speaker 1: macha tea, Macha green tea. It's like a green, yeah, green,
Speaker 1: it's green. But you know, we gotta say macha because
Speaker 1: that's what the TikTokers are. You know, everything on Instagram is,
Speaker 1: you know, it's all about esthetics. It's aesthetics everything, Like
Speaker 1: there are literally people on Instagram where everything is just
Speaker 1: like a certain color or a certain vibe or a
Speaker 1: certain theme.
Speaker 2: It's all about aesthetics.
Speaker 1: And they make a lot of money promoting just stuff
Speaker 1: that's aesthetically pleasing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a big thing.
Speaker 1: This has twenty five percent brighter front light, so that's
Speaker 1: the entry level kindle.
Speaker 2: How much are these things?
Speaker 1: Entry level Kindle starts at one hundred and ten dollars,
Speaker 1: Kindle paper white starts at one hundred and sixty, the
Speaker 1: color soft with that color screen two hundred and eighty dollars,
Speaker 1: and then the Kindlescribe starts at four hundred dollars. Keep
Speaker 1: in mind you're gonna want a case for any of
Speaker 1: these things. That adds another fifty dollars to it, whatever,
Speaker 1: maybe twenty if you get the knockoff cases. But again,
Speaker 1: do not buy these things full price. Do not buy
Speaker 1: the kindles full price. They always go on sale, and
Speaker 1: you can trade in your old Kindle to get twenty
Speaker 1: percent off the nuance, So stack that with a sale.
Speaker 1: Put this thing in your Amazon cart, save it for later, watch.
Speaker 2: When it goes on sale.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight Rich one on one Rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: Submit your question there. We'll get to your questions right
Speaker 1: after this. Let's get to us Stephanie in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Stephanie are on with Rich.
Speaker 5: Hi, Hi, Rich, I need some help in regard to telephones.
Speaker 5: All I have now is a landline. I'm a senior citizen,
Speaker 5: as you might guess, I have m acular degeneration, which
Speaker 5: means I need oversized numbers, letters, markings on it. My
Speaker 5: landline went out during the week and I was stuck
Speaker 5: here with no community vacation whatever, which made me realize
Speaker 5: it's a long overdue that I get a cell phone,
Speaker 5: a mobile phone, an iPhone what I referred to as
Speaker 5: magic machine for emergencies, and I'm hoping that you can
Speaker 5: make some suggestion emergencies and businesses. I don't need any colors, music, lights, whistles,
Speaker 5: anything like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you just want a simple phone that you
Speaker 1: can use to call in the event that your landline
Speaker 1: goes out.
Speaker 6: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, the website that I would check out is, well,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of things.
Speaker 2: So there's there's actually I have.
Speaker 6: No website, no computer, no TV, no you know, I
Speaker 6: barely have a doorbell I have I have I don't
Speaker 6: have any technology except for the landline, and I have
Speaker 6: indoor plumbing.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, well so then it sounds like you need to go.
Speaker 2: Can you go? Can you make it into a store.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I have a caregiver.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, Well, I mean I would say for you,
Speaker 1: you probably want to get a phone that has large
Speaker 1: numbers on it, and that's basically it. Now, there is
Speaker 1: a phone that's made specifically for folks with a sort
Speaker 1: of a vision impairment or you know, so I'm trying
Speaker 1: to find it.
Speaker 2: I did a story with it.
Speaker 1: Saw that the Great Sea Sun Assistive Tech conference, and
Speaker 1: they had all kinds of great stuff and this was
Speaker 1: one of them on display. Now, the problem is it's
Speaker 1: a little expensive, so I don't know how much you
Speaker 1: want to spend. But this phone, it's called Blind Shell
Speaker 1: B L I N D S H E l L.
Speaker 1: And what I like about this is that they specifically
Speaker 1: created the phone to work for users like yourself, and
Speaker 1: so all of the features on it are are really good.
Speaker 1: Not only are the buttons really big, but the you know,
Speaker 1: it's very simple. The letters on the screen are nice
Speaker 1: and big. But it also can call out everything that
Speaker 1: you do. So if you dial a number and you
Speaker 1: dial three, it will say the number three as you
Speaker 1: press it, which I really like as well. So that
Speaker 1: the problem with that is that it's a little pricey,
Speaker 1: and I wish they would come out with a simpler one.
Speaker 1: But that's that that would be the first thing I
Speaker 1: would tell your caregiver about.
Speaker 6: Is blind Where do I find it?
Speaker 2: That You're gonna have to get online?
Speaker 1: Typically, so you got to tell the caregiver to to
Speaker 1: check out blind shell dot com. Okay, got that, so
Speaker 1: blindshell dot com the other website. Now, you can also
Speaker 1: walk into like a you know, a consumer cellular kind
Speaker 1: of place if you want to get a phone from them,
Speaker 1: or just go into like a Verizon store and see
Speaker 1: what's your You don't have a carrier at all.
Speaker 7: Huh, I don't have a carrier, okay.
Speaker 1: So what I would do is look for, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe one of the carriers, whoever your your caregiver's carrier is,
Speaker 1: maybe walk into their store and they typically sell a
Speaker 1: couple of flip phones. You can even go into a
Speaker 1: Walmart and and just see, like what flip phones they
Speaker 1: have with big numbers. That's all I think you need
Speaker 1: at this point is just a flip phone with big numbers,
Speaker 1: and that's it. Okay, So and that's it, and then
Speaker 1: just get it activated, get it on a plan. It
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like you need a lot of minutes, so
Speaker 1: you can get it on a plan that's maybe prepaid
Speaker 1: for the whole year at once or monthly whatever you need,
Speaker 1: but you don't need like a big unlimited plan from
Speaker 1: something like a AT and T or Verizon, because it's
Speaker 1: just going to be wasteful. So get something maybe that's
Speaker 1: you know, even pre paid, but that you know, those
Speaker 1: those those will work for you. And I think the
Speaker 1: other website that I like if you want to look
Speaker 1: for phones that are just simple is Dumbwireless dot Com
Speaker 1: did a story with them. It's a couple in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles that's trying to, you know, help spread the word
Speaker 1: about these simple phones. And they've got a bunch on
Speaker 1: their website that at least can give you some ideas
Speaker 1: for the simple phones and you might end up purchasing one.
Speaker 1: So again, Dumb Wireless Consumer Cellular, check them out, blind
Speaker 1: Shell check them out, and maybe just go into a
Speaker 1: Walmart pick up a flip phone and just prepay it
Speaker 1: for the year and that'll be perfect if you ever
Speaker 1: need it in the event of emergency or if your
Speaker 1: phone goes out. Thanks for the call, Stephanie, do appreciate it,
Speaker 1: Mike writes in Let's see, I bought a Wi Fi
Speaker 1: extender antenna and now it's installed, but I don't know
Speaker 1: how to set it up.
Speaker 2: With all the ring and r low equipment that I have.
Speaker 1: My question is how to find someone to help me out,
Speaker 1: But I'm not even sure what to search home Wi Fi.
Speaker 2: Home security CCTV.
Speaker 1: I live near Santa Clarita and Palmdale on a large property,
Speaker 1: so extended Wi Fi is important to set up my
Speaker 1: security cameras.
Speaker 2: Any help is appreciated. Thank you.
Speaker 1: So, Mike, I would just search on Yelp for home
Speaker 1: network installation. So Yelp will have a great amount of
Speaker 1: people that do this stuff. Home network installation. You can
Speaker 1: search home automation. You can search TV mounting, a lot
Speaker 1: of those folks will do it as well, and security systems,
Speaker 1: so any of those searches will yield someone in your area.
Speaker 1: When it comes to selecting someone, what I like to
Speaker 1: do is not only look for nice reviews, but also
Speaker 1: call maybe the top two people that you decide on
Speaker 1: and just get a feel for them. So if they
Speaker 1: are nice to you on the phone, if they have
Speaker 1: time for you on the phone, if they answer your
Speaker 1: questions in a nice manner, then they will probably be
Speaker 1: nice when you actually need them to install this, and
Speaker 1: also afterwards if you have any problems with them, if.
Speaker 2: They're short with you. If they tell you, hey, can
Speaker 2: you send me a text?
Speaker 1: Whatever? Make this quick? You probably don't want to do
Speaker 1: business with them. So again, just search for those things.
Speaker 1: You might even just search for exactly what you're trying
Speaker 1: to do, ring cameras or r low cameras and put
Speaker 1: that into Yelp and see what happens there. But those
Speaker 1: are the way to do it, and that should be
Speaker 1: what you need.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: Lori writes in from Canal Fulton, Ohio. What's the next
Speaker 1: best Apple phone? After the twelve Mini? I prefer smaller phones,
Speaker 1: probably because I started with a BlackBerry. Any recommendations, Well, Laurie,
Speaker 1: what about the iPhone thirteen Mini? So if you go
Speaker 1: to Apple's website, they do not continue to sell the
Speaker 1: previous phones after the original the new phones are out.
Speaker 1: They only have a selection of them. So if you
Speaker 1: go to Apple dot com and you look at the
Speaker 1: phones that they sell after they release the new iPhone,
Speaker 1: they typically discontinue certain old phones. So right now they're
Speaker 1: selling the iPhone sixteen Pro, the iPhone sixteen, the iPhone fifteen,
Speaker 1: the iPhone fourteen, and the iPhone se. So my advice
Speaker 1: is go to a third party website get the iPhone
Speaker 1: thirteen Mini. So this phone was released about three years ago,
Speaker 1: which means is not gonna be the newest, not gonna
Speaker 1: be the best, but it's gonna be an upgrade over
Speaker 1: the twelve Mini, and I would say it probably has
Speaker 1: about three years of software updates left, so you can
Speaker 1: get this right now, and then what I would do is,
Speaker 1: you know, just use that for the next couple of
Speaker 1: years until it's discontinued. Now, there's a difference between a
Speaker 1: phone being discontinued software wise and hardware wise, So theoretically
Speaker 1: the iPhone or I guess currently the iPhone thirteen Mini
Speaker 1: is discontinued. Apple's no longer actively making new phones, they're
Speaker 1: not manufacturing those anymore, but they're still supporting it with
Speaker 1: software updates. So that means that you could get this
Speaker 1: phone today and you'll still be security wise and software
Speaker 1: wise fine for the next couple of years. Apple doesn't
Speaker 1: publish the amount of years they support the iPhones, but
Speaker 1: they will tell you when the iPhones are supported through
Speaker 1: the new updates of iOS. So if we look at
Speaker 1: the iOS eighteen right now, they are supporting phones all
Speaker 1: the way back to the iPhone ten R, the eleven,
Speaker 1: the twelve, the thirteen. So if we extrapolate, the thirteen
Speaker 1: is still one two three models ahead of the oldest phone,
Speaker 1: which means they usually drop off one one year every time.
Speaker 1: We're talking three more years of software updates, I would say.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: I looked up on Amazon. It's about three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars refurbished. So iPhone thirteen many perfect. It'll be
Speaker 1: a great solution for your iPhone twelve Mini. Nice replacement
Speaker 1: for that. And then what you can do is you
Speaker 1: can buy the iPhone S when the three or two
Speaker 1: years is up. Whenever you're done with this iPhone thirteen Mini,
Speaker 1: then you can go with the iPhone se which is.
Speaker 2: Expected to come out.
Speaker 1: Let's see if you go to MacRumors Buyer's Guide Buyer's
Speaker 1: Guide dot MacRumors dot com, this is an excellent website.
Speaker 1: This will tell you the cycle of the phone. So
Speaker 1: right now, just to give you some perspective, iPhone sixteen
Speaker 1: pro says buy now in large green, and it's only
Speaker 1: been out for thirty six days.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I only had this for thirty six
Speaker 1: days and I actually got it two weeks early, so
Speaker 1: I've had this for a little bit longer. So iPhone S,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, has been out ready nine hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty six days. The average is seven hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five days. This is what I love about the Internet.
Speaker 1: There's someone that sits there and tracks this stuff, so
Speaker 1: you don't have to and I don't have to. So again,
Speaker 1: buyer's guidet, MacRumors dot com. It's uh, they are rumoring
Speaker 1: that the iPhone S will be updated pretty much any
Speaker 1: day now, so we can expect this. Uh it's supposedly
Speaker 1: in the spring, but we can expect this just any
Speaker 1: moment now. iPhone se So again, that's the that's the
Speaker 1: one i'd wait for. Is for your replacement for this
Speaker 1: other one?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. The website for
Speaker 1: the show rich on tech dot tv. If you want
Speaker 1: show notes, just hit the light bulb icon. If you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with me, just hit the
Speaker 1: contact button. Coming up, I'm gonna tell you about the
Speaker 1: new iPad Mini. Speaking of which, iPad Mini, let's see
Speaker 1: how long that went?
Speaker 2: Can I find that real quick? Oh, it's only been us.
Speaker 1: Twenty seven days since they had a new one, but
Speaker 1: now it's available very soon. I will tell you what
Speaker 1: the iPad Mini has and what it doesn't have, coming.
Speaker 2: Up right here on rich On Tech. Let's see here.
Speaker 1: Let's go to uh Morgan, who wrote in from Thousand Oaks. Hey,
Speaker 1: rich I'm moving to a twenty three hundred square foot
Speaker 1: house and a five acre ranch surrounded by avocado trees,
Speaker 1: which means lots of coyotes. I want to get tracking
Speaker 1: callers from my two indoor kiddies in case they get out.
Speaker 1: There are so many options, I'm having difficulty deciding. Any
Speaker 1: advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm a huge fan and
Speaker 1: trust your advice for keeping my kiddy safe.
Speaker 2: Okay, so Morgan, Okay, good.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I'm glad these are not outdoor
Speaker 1: cats because with coyotes not good, not a good mix.
Speaker 1: So and even if they get out, you got to
Speaker 1: keep them inside. You don't want these cats outside. So
Speaker 1: couple ways you can do this. So, just to give
Speaker 1: you a basis of understanding, there are a couple things
Speaker 1: going on here. There are callers for pets that have
Speaker 1: GPS built in.
Speaker 2: Now that is going to give you the absolute best.
Speaker 1: Precision location every second that this cat is moving anywhere
Speaker 1: they go, because that is actually going to have a
Speaker 1: cellular connection on it along with GP. Yes, that is
Speaker 1: going to be the most precise. It's also going to
Speaker 1: be the most expensive because they typically come with a
Speaker 1: monthly monitoring fee and the battery life is going to
Speaker 1: be the absolute worst out of all of the solutions.
Speaker 1: So I would say, at the very least, probably don't
Speaker 1: do that because it's probably not the best case scenario.
Speaker 1: So you're going to be charging this thing all the time,
Speaker 1: You're gonna be paying a monthly fee. And again you
Speaker 1: mentioned that these are indoor cats, so this is only
Speaker 1: if they get out you want an idea, but on
Speaker 1: the flip side, you get the best location tracking. So
Speaker 1: the two brands that are probably the tops for this
Speaker 1: are one called Tractive tr ac Tive and then Whistle Whistle.
Speaker 1: I've actually done a story with Whistle and their stuff
Speaker 1: is great. They mostly market it towards dogs, so if
Speaker 1: you'd probably want their smallest one, I would check to
Speaker 1: see what the weight limits are or what the suggested
Speaker 1: weight is, but there typically we did this story with
Speaker 1: a small dog and that was one of the issues
Speaker 1: is that the tracker is a little bit big, so
Speaker 1: but again that's gonna be the most precise. The thing is,
Speaker 1: the battery life is gonna be really bad. So I mean,
Speaker 1: once these things are on full GPS, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: about two days of battery life before this goes dead,
Speaker 1: which means if your cat got out and you didn't
Speaker 1: find them within two days, that's it.
Speaker 2: That collers one hundred percent useless.
Speaker 1: So you can extend that time by creating sort of
Speaker 1: like a geofence around your house, which means the caller,
Speaker 1: if it's in the area that you set for that geofence,
Speaker 1: will not use GPS, which means it's not going to
Speaker 1: use the battery up. It's gonna use Wi Fi around
Speaker 1: the house, which uses much less power. Now, the two
Speaker 1: other ways you can do this is with a tracking
Speaker 1: device like a tile or an air tag or a
Speaker 1: Google tracker or a Samsung tracker. Let me go through
Speaker 1: those real quick. So an air tag obviously is probably
Speaker 1: the most popular way people do this. You get an
Speaker 1: air tag collar on Amazon. You put the air tag
Speaker 1: on your cat cat gets outside. Anyone who has an
Speaker 1: iPhone nearby which Remember, you are in this big area,
Speaker 1: five acre ranch. There's not gonna be a lot of
Speaker 1: iPhones on that five acre ranch, so the chances of
Speaker 1: getting an update on where your cat is located in
Speaker 1: that area is going to be tricky. But the neat
Speaker 1: thing that the air tags have with the new iPhones
Speaker 1: is precision location. So if you are getting close, if
Speaker 1: you walk around your yard, your iPhone will tell you
Speaker 1: how close you are to your cat. So yesterday I
Speaker 1: left my phone somewhere around my house. I did not
Speaker 1: know where it was. I went on my Apple Watch
Speaker 1: I used to find my feature and it directed me
Speaker 1: to my phone which was sitting on the car seat
Speaker 1: outside in my car, and it said, Okay, your phone
Speaker 1: is thirty nine feet away, it's forty feet away, it's
Speaker 1: forty it's twenty feet away, it's ten feet away, it's
Speaker 1: five feet away. Okay, you're right there, and then you
Speaker 1: can ring it. Same thing with an air tag, you
Speaker 1: can use that to kind of get to the general location,
Speaker 1: and then you can ring it to see where your
Speaker 1: cat is. When it comes to tile, they don't have
Speaker 1: the precision finding, but they do have a very wide
Speaker 1: long rain for the tile tracker which is anywhere anywhere
Speaker 1: from three hundred and fifty to five I think it's
Speaker 1: up to five hundred feet, and so you can get
Speaker 1: a tile tracker hanging on your cat. Again, it's going
Speaker 1: to use all the other TILE users in the area
Speaker 1: to find it, but there's probably not going to be many,
Speaker 1: so you're going to be relying on your phone to
Speaker 1: help you find it. But the good news is you
Speaker 1: can ring it from far away and still find it
Speaker 1: because it's got that long tracking. Now, if I was
Speaker 1: going to do something, if you have a Samsung phone,
Speaker 1: I'd probably go with a Samsung specific tracker. They call
Speaker 1: them smart tags, I think, and are smart things, and
Speaker 1: those are going to be great because they also have
Speaker 1: the precision finding. So again my recommendation, if you've got
Speaker 1: an iPhone, probably go with an air tag. If you've
Speaker 1: got Samsung, go with their specific Samsung tag. And if
Speaker 1: you don't have one of those phones, you got a
Speaker 1: random Android phone, maybe go.
Speaker 2: With the tile.
Speaker 1: But I think this specific GPS tracking callers are going
Speaker 1: to be the most expensive solution and they're also going
Speaker 1: to be the best if your cat ever went missing.
Speaker 1: But it's also the most headaches because you're paying every month,
Speaker 1: and you're charging this thing all the time, which may
Speaker 1: not sound like a big deal right now, but I
Speaker 1: guarantee this eighty to eight. Rich one on one, thanks
Speaker 1: for the call or the email from Thousand Oaks. If
Speaker 1: you want to get your email in, go to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech dot tv, hit the website, hit contact there,
Speaker 1: and that's where you can find it. I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you about the iPad Mini coming up. iPad Mini has
Speaker 1: a brand new chip, it's got some new features, it's
Speaker 1: got the same price tag. But there's one thing in
Speaker 1: particular I don't like about what Apple did not improve.
Speaker 1: I'll explain coming up right here on rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology on a beautiful fall weekend.
Speaker 1: Hopefully it's nice where you are. The weather is uh.
Speaker 1: This is like the perfect time of the year. It
Speaker 1: just really is. I Spring and fall are just two
Speaker 1: of my favorites. Rich on Tech dot tv is the
Speaker 1: website to go to. Let's see. You can hit the
Speaker 1: light bulb if you want links to anything I mentioned.
Speaker 1: I keep great show notes. This is show number ninety four,
Speaker 1: so you can go in there and check out anything
Speaker 1: that I mentioned. You can hit contact if you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with me, which many of you do.
Speaker 1: And that's what I love about this show. You know,
Speaker 1: I talk about the tech stuff I think you should
Speaker 1: know about. You know, I cover this stuff, and there's
Speaker 1: so much more to it.
Speaker 2: It's not just me.
Speaker 1: This is really like a community because I've got you listening,
Speaker 1: and you're also writing back to me saying, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: let's mention this mention that. So I got a lot
Speaker 1: of emails about the question about the senior citizen who
Speaker 1: wanted just a simple phone for emergency. Stand Ward says, hey, Rich.
Speaker 1: Target sells consumer cellular prepaid plans. I've been with them
Speaker 1: four years. That's a record for me. Walmart has straight talk.
Speaker 1: I didn't care for them, only lasted two weeks for me.
Speaker 1: Let's see here. Thank you, stan Ward. Then we've got
Speaker 1: Randy said app Rich. Apple sells refurbished phones on their site.
Speaker 1: You can also get them from gazelle dot com. I
Speaker 1: buy mine and get a significant discount. The phones come
Speaker 1: packaged in a white box like new. You might see
Speaker 1: a spot or two, like a mild scratch, but the
Speaker 1: phone is brand new and worth the huge discount. They
Speaker 1: have Samsung and Google as well. I personally never buy
Speaker 1: new and I own the phone, so you can sell
Speaker 1: your old phone back to them. Randy, computer technical surgeon
Speaker 1: and computer angels. Wow, Randy sounds like he knows what
Speaker 1: he's doing. And yes, I one hundred percent agree, Randy,
Speaker 1: buy your stuff refurbished because you will save money. The
Speaker 1: problem is, we as Americans, are so in love with
Speaker 1: the finance plans and the installment plans that when you
Speaker 1: tell someone, hey, you could buy this phone out right
Speaker 1: for six hundred bucks on Gazelle, or you can walk
Speaker 1: into your AT and T store and pay thirty dollars
Speaker 1: a month for the next three years, nine times out
Speaker 1: of ten people want to pay thirty dollars a month
Speaker 1: for the next three years. Don't ask me why. That's
Speaker 1: not the way I am. That's not what I like
Speaker 1: to do. But I think buying the phone is great,
Speaker 1: and you made a great point. At the end, you
Speaker 1: own the phone, and you can sell your old phone
Speaker 1: back to them with a lot of these products, you know,
Speaker 1: installment upgrade plan things. You got to give the phone
Speaker 1: back to get your new phone. And so it's eighteen
Speaker 1: and T and Verizon they get to capture that. You know,
Speaker 1: it might be one hundred or two or two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars spread, but times millions of customers. They are really
Speaker 1: making out on all these installment plans that pretend to
Speaker 1: be zero percent or whatever, zero for thirty six months,
Speaker 1: but really at the end of the day, you're paying
Speaker 1: more for your plan, and you're also paying more when
Speaker 1: you give up that phone and give up that one
Speaker 1: hundred to two hundred dollars that you may get the
Speaker 1: spread between what they're going to resell it for and
Speaker 1: what you could have sold it for on your own.
Speaker 1: So highly recommended, Randy, I love your system. Gazell dot
Speaker 1: Com is great. Swapa is also a good one. That's
Speaker 1: a very popular site for buying things like phones and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So just be sure that you're getting
Speaker 1: it from a respectable site, because you know, some of
Speaker 1: these phones, you want to make sure that they're they're
Speaker 1: on the up and up, and by going to a
Speaker 1: Gazell dot com or a Swapa they typically are, and
Speaker 1: of course of Apple's webs as well. Let's see Nika
Speaker 1: in Torren says Rich I've used track phone for twenty years.
Speaker 1: It's perfect. Verizon owns it, so no reception problems. Home
Speaker 1: Shopping Network in QBC sell with an entire year of service.
Speaker 1: I have a nice latest model Samsung, but for the
Speaker 1: woman who called a flip phone, will cost less than
Speaker 1: forty dollars with a year service plan after this nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine every three months ideal for an emergency phone.
Speaker 1: Love your show, great suggest in Nica. That is a
Speaker 1: good way to do it. I love having it the
Speaker 1: whole year in advance, right, very very simple. And Ralph
Speaker 1: in Van Buren Township, Michigan writes in to say there
Speaker 1: is a flip phone with features for the elderly. It's
Speaker 1: called the Jitterbug. It's a flip cell phone and camera
Speaker 1: with large number buttons.
Speaker 2: The Jitterbug.
Speaker 1: Yeah, isn't the Jitterbug? Is that its own brand? Okay,
Speaker 1: that's through Lively, Oh, best Buy. I bought this company, Yes,
Speaker 1: Jitterbug from best Buy. Great great suggestions. As you can see,
Speaker 1: there are many many options out there. The other thing
Speaker 1: you can do if you have like a regular Samsung phone,
Speaker 1: and you've got a person that you helped take care
Speaker 1: of or that has a phone and just thinks they're
Speaker 1: way too complicated. Samsung has what's called easy Mode, and
Speaker 1: if you are helping an elderly person with their phone
Speaker 1: or someone who's not so tech savvy, turn on easy Mode.
Speaker 1: It makes the Samsung any Samsung phone so much easier, It.
Speaker 2: Makes all of the.
Speaker 1: Display screen size much bigger, it simplifies everything.
Speaker 2: It's just so much easier.
Speaker 1: So easy Mode on the Samsung devices is like a
Speaker 1: hidden kind of gem. If you're using any Samsung device
Speaker 1: with a person that needs help, Let's go to let's
Speaker 1: see Oscar in Winchester, California.
Speaker 2: Oscar. You're on with rich Y.
Speaker 3: Rich Hi. I got a simple question. Last week. You
Speaker 3: were talking about the switching from Verizon to Google Messages
Speaker 3: and you mentioned that it's best if we do an
Speaker 3: SMS backup before doing it. So I was looking on
Speaker 3: Google Play for an SMS backup and I found SMS
Speaker 3: backup restore, but I was looking for one that didn't
Speaker 3: have Some of them just said it had a lot
Speaker 3: of options, but some of them said with ads and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. I was looking for a name that
Speaker 3: was just looked like it was generic, just do a
Speaker 3: backup and restore, and I downloaded one that that SMS
Speaker 3: backup and restore but in setting it up, it asked
Speaker 3: for some stuff which was normal, I think, like excuse
Speaker 3: me that access access to messages, uh, calls storage. But
Speaker 3: when I got stubbed when danced me for ability to
Speaker 3: make calls and that I you know, I got out
Speaker 3: to the program then just set up.
Speaker 2: Okay, well the so great question.
Speaker 1: And this is something that is very simple on the
Speaker 1: Android side of things, which is what you're using, and
Speaker 1: it's this is the only backup SMS backup that I
Speaker 1: recommend on the Android side of things, because this is
Speaker 1: the one that I've been using pretty much forever.
Speaker 2: It's gone through it's changed hands over the years.
Speaker 1: But the specific name of the program, like you noticed,
Speaker 1: is SMS Backup and Restore and the company that makes
Speaker 1: it is sync Tech pty Ltd sink Tech.
Speaker 2: That's the one that I like, and that's the one
Speaker 2: that I use. Now, you are right.
Speaker 1: It does ask for a couple of permissions, but it's
Speaker 1: mostly for the things that it needs to do, and
Speaker 1: typically it asks if you want to back up your
Speaker 1: messages and your phone calls, and then it asks where
Speaker 1: do you want to store your calls and messages? So
Speaker 1: you can configure this thing to run on Google Drive
Speaker 1: or drop Box, or you can just keep it on
Speaker 1: your phone and then you can schedule a recurring backup
Speaker 1: as well. And so what I think what you got
Speaker 1: tripped up on was why did it ask for access
Speaker 1: to the phone. The reason for that is to access
Speaker 1: the phone logs. Now, I don't think you need to
Speaker 1: back up your phone logs unless you had, you know,
Speaker 1: business or something where you needed that information, so you
Speaker 1: can safely turn that off.
Speaker 2: And this is a trusted app.
Speaker 1: It's been around for a very long time and I
Speaker 1: do trust it, So even if you had access to
Speaker 1: your call logs, I mean, look, here's here's the thing
Speaker 1: that we have to think about in general, is this
Speaker 1: app has accessed to your text messages. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of information, personal information in text messages. So when you're
Speaker 1: choosing a backup app, you do want something that is
Speaker 1: trusted because it does have full access to a lot
Speaker 1: of data. So what I like about this is that
Speaker 1: it's putting it into your own places. So it's putting
Speaker 1: it into Google Drive, it's putting into Dropbox, One Drive,
Speaker 1: or your phone. It's not putting it to its own cloud.
Speaker 1: So I think that that's going to be Okay, I
Speaker 1: think that this is a way to go. I think
Speaker 1: that you should do this for sure if you have
Speaker 1: an Android phone, and it's it's very simple to do.
Speaker 1: So a great question, Oscar, go with that app and
Speaker 1: I think you'll be fine. Get those messages backed up.
Speaker 1: I did get some emails from folks that we're going
Speaker 1: through that changeover Verizon, you know, as you know.
Speaker 2: Is getting rid of their messages.
Speaker 1: Plus in just a couple of weeks, November seventh, I believe,
Speaker 1: is the date where that app will stop working, and
Speaker 1: so everyone's switching over, and everyone was asking, you know,
Speaker 1: what should I switch to? Google Messages is the app
Speaker 1: that I recommend because it does have support for rcs,
Speaker 1: which means your messages to Android other Android phones and
Speaker 1: more importantly iPhones are going to be much much improved,
Speaker 1: especially photos and videos.
Speaker 2: But some people did have issues and they didn't.
Speaker 1: Make a backup and they lost all of their text
Speaker 1: messages in the switchover.
Speaker 2: I don't know how, but you know, it's software. It
Speaker 2: can happen.
Speaker 1: There could be a hiccup, So please back up your
Speaker 1: messages if they're important for me.
Speaker 2: I don't care. I don't need my messages backed up
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Text messages are fleeting, and I don't really need them
Speaker 1: backed up because it's mostly like, hey, i'm outside, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll come down and get you, or Hey, your pizzas here,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. I'm not like sitting there having, you know,
Speaker 1: things that I want to remember forever on my text
Speaker 1: message conversations. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but that's the
Speaker 1: way I feel right now. On the Android side of things, again,
Speaker 1: just do a backup SMS, backup and restore.
Speaker 2: I'll put the link in the show note.
Speaker 1: On the iPhone side of things, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: trickier because Apple backs up your text messages, but they
Speaker 1: don't give you really a way to access those. But
Speaker 1: if you want a way to access them, I like
Speaker 1: an app called imazing I the letter I mazing mzing.
Speaker 1: The website is the letter imzing dot com. You will
Speaker 1: have to pay for that. It is not free software.
Speaker 1: Eight and eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four two four one zero one. I see the
Speaker 1: calls on the board. We will get to those. Plus
Speaker 1: more of your emails at richon tech dot tv. Hit
Speaker 1: contact to send me an email. Plus Netflix just had
Speaker 1: their earnings report and uh, not only are they adding
Speaker 1: more subscribers, there's some interesting takeaways.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you what they're doing next coming up right
Speaker 2: here on rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech, rich DeMuro here. Okay,
Speaker 1: I did promise two stories, so let's probably get through
Speaker 1: these Apple new iPad Mini so iPad Mini you know
Speaker 1: and love same thing, basically, just a couple of upgrades,
Speaker 1: new chips, so it's going to be faster. It's got
Speaker 1: the A seventeen pro. Obviously, it's built for Apple Intelligence,
Speaker 1: which is their new AI that's coming soon, coming very soon. Actually,
Speaker 1: let's see the rumor mill has it by the end
Speaker 1: of the month, because well, actually it's not a rumor
Speaker 1: anymore because this Apple iPad announcement said the first phase
Speaker 1: of AI will be coming by the end of the month.
Speaker 1: So end of October now comes with double the storage,
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty eight gigs instead of the old
Speaker 1: sixty four for the same price. So apparently it's faster,
Speaker 1: better graphics, it's got the AI features like the writing tools,
Speaker 1: improved SERI more down the line, it's got faster Wi
Speaker 1: Fi so Wi Fi six e, which probably your router
Speaker 1: does not handle. So that's not really that exciting unless
Speaker 1: you have a router that's Wi Fi sixty enabled. It's
Speaker 1: got five G support on the cellular if you buy
Speaker 1: the cellular version. No more physical simcard, it's e SIM only.
Speaker 1: Cameras are improved. Now supports the Apple Pencil Pro. It's
Speaker 1: got a couple of new colors, including blue and purple.
Speaker 1: Comes in the standard. I think it's starlight, and let's
Speaker 1: the other one space gray. It's got an eight point
Speaker 1: three inch screen. The USB C port is faster. It's
Speaker 1: got well I think I had lightning on the old one.
Speaker 1: Now it's USBC. It's got ten gigabits data transfer, so
Speaker 1: faster than before if you're transferring big files off this thing.
Speaker 1: But the screen, Let's talk about the screen real quick.
Speaker 1: That's the thing I'm disappointed at. It's got an eight
Speaker 1: point three inch screen that doesn't seem to be improved
Speaker 1: from before. And I will tell you an experience. I
Speaker 1: bought the iPad Mini because I wanted to use it
Speaker 1: as my in flight kind of entertainment, and I could
Speaker 1: not deal with the screen because it just wasn't very clear,
Speaker 1: and I'm very used to the clear screen. The retina
Speaker 1: display on the iPhone, and I don't think this iPad
Speaker 1: Mini has it, so I'm gonna have to see. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to go into the store and check it
Speaker 1: out when it launches. But that's my feeling right now
Speaker 1: is that if you want the clearest iPad screen, and
Speaker 1: this is not cheap by the way, this is five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. So if you want kind of like a
Speaker 1: better screen, you gotta go with a better iPad. Let's
Speaker 1: go to let's see here, Let's go to Sarah in
Speaker 1: a studio city. Sorry, you're on with Rich?
Speaker 4: Hi Rich. I'm so glad I held on because I
Speaker 4: love your advice and I have some two questions I
Speaker 4: really need help with. Okay, So the California fast tech scam,
Speaker 4: I don't know if you've heard about it.
Speaker 8: A lot of people were talking.
Speaker 4: About it on the neighborhood app. I got that text
Speaker 4: and unfortunately I clicked it, but nothing opened up. I
Speaker 4: didn't let it go so long that it opened up.
Speaker 3: I caught it.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh no, that's that might be wrong,
Speaker 4: and I closed it and you know, it went away,
Speaker 4: and then I blocked and reported the text. But yes,
Speaker 4: my phone has been not really acting funny. But I
Speaker 4: got kicked out of my Instagram and had to log
Speaker 4: back in and had a problem doing that, And that's
Speaker 4: really the only thing that's happened weird. But I'm a
Speaker 4: little nervous. Is there anything I should do? Or really
Speaker 4: I want to know what can they do if they
Speaker 4: did get in my phone?
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so number one, you got to follow me
Speaker 1: on Instagram, Sarah, because I did post about this yesterday
Speaker 1: and it was so when I get a bunch of
Speaker 1: emails from people about things. And by the way, this scam,
Speaker 1: this toll scam has been going on for a while.
Speaker 1: Better Business Bureau wrote about this thing. Let's see, they
Speaker 1: wrote about this thing back in August, so they were talking.
Speaker 1: They sent out the warning and Better Business Bureau. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like me, where a bunch of people
Speaker 1: email me and tell me about something, then I'll write
Speaker 1: about it. Better Business Bureau has this thing called Scam Tracker,
Speaker 1: so all people around the US are like writing in
Speaker 1: and saying how they got scammed or the scams that
Speaker 1: they've encountered, and then it kind of bubbles to the top,
Speaker 1: and Better Business Bureau will right about the ones that
Speaker 1: they see over and over.
Speaker 2: This was clearly one of them.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so I got that email from people, a
Speaker 1: bunch of emails from people saying, rich, I'm getting these
Speaker 1: scam told scam things, and basically it says, California Fast Tracked,
Speaker 1: you have an outstanding toll balance to steer clear of
Speaker 1: a late fee. Kindly settle your balance, and then it
Speaker 1: gives you a website. You clicked that website that and
Speaker 1: then did you put in any personal information?
Speaker 4: I didn't even let it go so far is to
Speaker 4: open a website, so I wasn't sure where it was
Speaker 4: even going.
Speaker 3: I dropped it and closed the.
Speaker 2: The page.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I click the websites. Do not do this
Speaker 1: at home, but I actually click the websites and I
Speaker 1: test them out to see exactly what the scam is.
Speaker 1: And in this one, of course, like most of them,
Speaker 1: they are trying to capture as much personal information as possible,
Speaker 1: your payment method and anything else they can get from you.
Speaker 2: So it's good that you close it out.
Speaker 1: I don't think that the getting logged out of Instagram
Speaker 1: is related to this, So I think you're okay because
Speaker 1: you do not let this website go through. But just
Speaker 1: to be safe, what I would do on your iPhone
Speaker 1: is clear your browser, all the data on your browser,
Speaker 1: so clear the cash, clear the any of the browsing history.
Speaker 1: So you can go on Safari to do that, go
Speaker 1: into your settings and just clear out everything. And I
Speaker 1: tell you how to do that real quick, but I
Speaker 1: got to look it up and see. But you can
Speaker 1: go on just just Google search Safari clear cash and cookies,
Speaker 1: and that that should tell you how to do it.
Speaker 1: Clear history, cash and cookies from Safari. I'll put the
Speaker 1: link in the show notes as well. But once you
Speaker 1: do that, restart your phone. Obviously you should be okay
Speaker 1: with that. But again, these kind of scams. There's another
Speaker 1: one going around right now with Amazon Prime. That's also
Speaker 1: on my Instagram at richon Tech, So check that one out.
Speaker 1: And so I kind of explain the anatomy of this scam,
Speaker 1: which you know, it doesn't use your real name. It
Speaker 1: tells you have to update your payment method to continue
Speaker 1: using Prime. It's got a link, and so of course
Speaker 1: I did click the link, which I do not recommend
Speaker 1: you doing, but I did it to figure out how
Speaker 1: these things work. The email address on the email is
Speaker 1: not from Amazon, It's from some random email address. The
Speaker 1: sign in page on this Amazon Prime scam looks very realistic,
Speaker 1: and so once you go through there, it'll capture your
Speaker 1: login information. Then it brings you to a payment page.
Speaker 1: It'll capture your payment information, and then the icing on
Speaker 1: the cake is that it will say enter the one
Speaker 1: time password. We just sent you the one time code
Speaker 1: the two factor authentication. So because you just they just
Speaker 1: tried to log in with your Amazon account, you got
Speaker 1: that code text at your phone.
Speaker 2: Now they ask you for that. It's a scam.
Speaker 1: And the California toll or any other toll authority does
Speaker 1: not ask for payment via text.
Speaker 2: This is rich on Tech. Coming up, we're talking bitcoin.
Speaker 2: Let's talk Bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Went to the LA Bitcoin Day this week and kind
Speaker 1: of interesting to be in the same room with a
Speaker 1: lot of hardcore bitcoiners. Bitcoin, let's see, hovering over sixty
Speaker 1: eight thousand dollars right now per coin, up eight percent
Speaker 1: this week. And you know, this was a gathering of
Speaker 1: folks discussing all the aspects of bitcoin, which they believe
Speaker 1: is the future of money. So I spoke with Swan
Speaker 1: CEO Corey Clipston about the bitcoin market.
Speaker 2: What is the state of bitcoin in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's been an incredible year for bitcoin.
Speaker 10: A lot of legitimacy came in with black Rock and
Speaker 10: Fidelity and some of the other large Wall Street firms
Speaker 10: launching Bitcoin spot ETFs back in January, and then obviously
Speaker 10: it's been a big topic in the presidential election cycle
Speaker 10: and a lot more favorable attitudes of regulators and Congress,
Speaker 10: which has been really cool.
Speaker 9: It's been a nice tailwind.
Speaker 10: So we've seen the price go up from the thirties
Speaker 10: about this time last year and we're about sixty eight
Speaker 10: thousand dollars per bitcoin today, now very important. You can
Speaker 10: buy a piece of a bitcoin, you don't have to
Speaker 10: buy a whole thing. Just making sure people know that.
Speaker 1: That is important to know because people see that large
Speaker 1: number and think that's it. Explain in layman's terms what
Speaker 1: bitcoin is. If someone's watching or listening and they just
Speaker 1: don't even really understand what bitcoin is, how do you
Speaker 1: explain that to them?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think one of the easiest ways to think
Speaker 10: about it is it's a new technology that has created
Speaker 10: a better form of money. And so all that you're
Speaker 10: seeing essentially with all of this hype cycles of you know,
Speaker 10: price goes really far up and then it crashes back down,
Speaker 10: and then it goes up even more, and then it
Speaker 10: crashes back down.
Speaker 9: And this has been going on for the last fifteen years.
Speaker 10: Is just more and more people around the world understanding
Speaker 10: what it is, and they're making a bet that they
Speaker 10: think it's going to be adopted by more people. But
Speaker 10: essentially it's just better monetary technology, better than gold and
Speaker 10: better than paper dollars like fiat cash, like the US
Speaker 10: dollar or the euro.
Speaker 9: And so that's really what it is. It's an adoption story.
Speaker 1: So what makes it a better type of currency? Is
Speaker 1: it the digital underpinnings of it.
Speaker 10: So I think what it is is if it's outside
Speaker 10: of any one person's control. That's the secret of bitcoin.
Speaker 10: It's actually decentralized. It means that you can't print more
Speaker 10: of it, so there can never be more than twenty
Speaker 10: one million bitcoins. They are subdivisible, so you have plenty
Speaker 10: of bitcoin and kind of infinite subdivisibility, but you can't
Speaker 10: print more of it, unlike what we see with the dollar,
Speaker 10: the euro and all these other fiat currencies. Fiat just
Speaker 10: means government controlled. They just print more of it. And essentially,
Speaker 10: when you print more dollars, that's a tax on everybody else.
Speaker 10: So this is what we've kind of seen for the
Speaker 10: last one hundred years or so, is instead of having
Speaker 10: to pass attack to be able to spend more on government,
Speaker 10: they just inflate the currency by printing more of it
Speaker 10: and that's what they spend.
Speaker 1: So you have some people that are sort of speculating
Speaker 1: on this and buying it for that reason. Some people
Speaker 1: want to make it the currency of the world. Do
Speaker 1: those two ideas work together, Yeah, they do.
Speaker 10: I mean, I think you need price discovery no matter what.
Speaker 10: So we welcome lots of traders in bitcoin. We focus
Speaker 10: on long term savings, investing for the future, kind of
Speaker 10: you know, seventh generation type stuff. So it's very much
Speaker 10: about accumulating and not a lot of active trading. But
Speaker 10: you can't have price discovery if you don't have a
Speaker 10: liquid market, and bitcoin has a very deep global twenty
Speaker 10: four to seven liquid market, more than any other asset.
Speaker 10: One of the interesting things we've seen over the last
Speaker 10: five years or so is it's actually that bell weather
Speaker 10: that tells you before the market opens or over the weekend,
Speaker 10: what's going to happen with the markets that trade, you know,
Speaker 10: nine to five or nine thirty to four or whatever,
Speaker 10: because bitcoin is something that they can actually sell or
Speaker 10: where they can actually express their view that we're heading
Speaker 10: into a bullish stretch.
Speaker 9: Or something like that. Bitcoin actually moves.
Speaker 2: First, do you think the average person should get into bitcoin?
Speaker 2: And why?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 10: So, look, I think that buying bitcoin goes hand in
Speaker 10: hand with learning about bitcoin.
Speaker 9: So we always say the more you know, the more
Speaker 9: you buy.
Speaker 10: So I always say start with education now if it
Speaker 10: helps you to pay more attention and have selective attention
Speaker 10: for bitcoin podcasts, bitcoin when they're talking about it on
Speaker 10: CNBC or whatever. To own a little bit, just go
Speaker 10: buy one hundred dollars worth, go buy a thousand dollars worth,
Speaker 10: have it on an app, and just start following the price.
Speaker 10: Then you'll start to follow the news. Then maybe you
Speaker 10: buy a book. Then maybe you talk to a friend
Speaker 10: who's into it, and you kind of go down the
Speaker 10: rabbit hole, as we say, and you basically, like any
Speaker 10: good investment, you should only buy what you know and
Speaker 10: what you understand. Otherwise, by definition, we humans are just
Speaker 10: very sort of prone to buy the shiny object and
Speaker 10: then sell when it gets scary. So unless you actually
Speaker 10: know what you're holding, and what you've bought and understand it.
Speaker 10: You'll basically buy high and sell low, which is not good.
Speaker 1: Have we seen a breakthrough moment for bitcoin or do
Speaker 1: you think that's still on the horizon or will that
Speaker 1: day ever come?
Speaker 2: And what do you think that looks like?
Speaker 9: Look, I think we've seen.
Speaker 10: It's so funny if you kind of zoom out and
Speaker 10: you look at the last fifteen years since bitcoin launched
Speaker 10: in January of two thousand and nine, it didn't have
Speaker 10: a price, and then it was trading for tens of
Speaker 10: thousands of coins per dollar, and now it's sixty eight
Speaker 10: thousand dollars per bitcoin.
Speaker 9: So it is actually happening very rapidly.
Speaker 10: And when we look back on this, you know, one
Speaker 10: hundred years, two hundred years from now, I think we'll say, wow,
Speaker 10: that was actually incredibly fast when you think about being
Speaker 10: able to add a new monetary asset for eight billion
Speaker 10: humans around the world. Like I think sometimes people are
Speaker 10: very impatient and they want it to happen all at once.
Speaker 10: But by definition it is hard to understand, and there's
Speaker 10: a lot of science and a lot of technology underpinning it,
Speaker 10: and it takes a pretty good knowledge of seven or
Speaker 10: eight different disciplines to be able to understand bitcoin pretty well.
Speaker 10: You know, monetary theory, monetary history, cryptography, economics, finance, like
Speaker 10: so many different things you need to understand to in
Speaker 10: the rabbit hole goes ever deeper.
Speaker 1: When I hear that no one, no one person controls it,
Speaker 1: you know, and no government controls it. That tells me
Speaker 1: that governments may not like the idea of this is
Speaker 1: that proven to be the case.
Speaker 10: So it depends on the government, and it depends on
Speaker 10: who it is in the government. So what we always
Speaker 10: like to say is governments are actually just made up
Speaker 10: of people. And there are a lot of huge fans
Speaker 10: of bitcoin in the US government and in other governments
Speaker 10: around the world. And then also if you think about
Speaker 10: governments and totality, some governments are more in control than others, right,
Speaker 10: so we have dollar hegemony. Dollars, the U is the
Speaker 10: reserve currency of the world. There are a lot of
Speaker 10: countries around the world where that's not the case, and
Speaker 10: they may actually prefer some other currency, and more.
Speaker 9: And more they're choosing to look at bitcoin.
Speaker 10: They're mining bitcoin for themselves, you know, with their own
Speaker 10: energy resources, or they're opting it as legal tender and
Speaker 10: it's just an alternative.
Speaker 1: Why is there so much lore around bitcoin and discussion
Speaker 1: and just in the news and everything.
Speaker 10: Why it's just the most fascinating thing that I think
Speaker 10: has happened for a lot of people. It just touches
Speaker 10: a lot of interesting buttons for them and kind of
Speaker 10: helps them see things in a different way.
Speaker 9: I didn't set out on this path. I was like
Speaker 9: a startup guy.
Speaker 10: I used to work for big tech companies and was
Speaker 10: a consultant in all this. But it just, you know,
Speaker 10: it ticks something in my brain when I started to
Speaker 10: learn about it back in twenty seventeen, and we often
Speaker 10: refer to it as a mind virus, like it gets
Speaker 10: in there and it's really hard to think about anything
Speaker 10: else that has as much potential for positive impact in
Speaker 10: the world as bitcoin. I think it's the I think
Speaker 10: it's the one thing going on in the world that
Speaker 10: has the largest potential for positive change for humans.
Speaker 9: And that's why I focus on it.
Speaker 1: What is this week all about? What is the LA
Speaker 1: Bitcoin Week all about? What are the people doing here?
Speaker 2: What do they hope to learn?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 10: Absolutely, so it's definitely about learning. It's also about connecting.
Speaker 10: It's about just you know, people can Some people live
Speaker 10: in a city with a high concentration of bitcoiners, a
Speaker 10: lot of people don't, and so giving them an opportunity
Speaker 10: to come somewhere and connect with other people in real
Speaker 10: life instead of just seeing bitcoin people tweet on x
Speaker 10: It's just something that I think a lot of people
Speaker 10: really enjoy.
Speaker 9: So we have people in from all over the world
Speaker 9: for this.
Speaker 10: As we all know, there's a lot of noise in
Speaker 10: the space and around the space, whether it's all the
Speaker 10: crypto stuff.
Speaker 9: You know, kind of the non bitcoin thing's going on,
Speaker 9: and you know.
Speaker 10: It's just really hard to figure out what's real and
Speaker 10: what's not, and so we try to be that voice
Speaker 10: that provides pure signal and people can trust us because
Speaker 10: we've done the homework and figured out what's true and
Speaker 10: what's not.
Speaker 2: We're ever going to find out who Satoshi is, we can.
Speaker 9: Talk about that.
Speaker 10: So, yeah, there was just a yet another attempt to
Speaker 10: see who Satoshi was. HBO did not get it right,
Speaker 10: but it was very good for marketing and promotion. I
Speaker 10: don't think we're ever going to know who the pseudonymous
Speaker 10: founder of bitcoin was. He went by Satoshi Nakamoto. I
Speaker 10: think that is lost to history, and I think it's
Speaker 10: better that way. It's a great foundational myth, as you
Speaker 10: were saying, like one of those things that intrigues people
Speaker 10: and gets them interested. Now, that is something that was
Speaker 10: a genius marketing stroke by the creator of bitcoin once again.
Speaker 1: That was Swan CEO Corey Clipston. And they help you
Speaker 1: invest into bitcoin. So if you want to check out
Speaker 1: their website, it is Swan bitcoin dot com. And the
Speaker 1: documentary he was referring to at the end there is
Speaker 1: called Money Electric, The Bitcoin Mystery.
Speaker 2: I did watch it. It is on Max so if
Speaker 2: you want to watch it.
Speaker 1: It's a new documentary about bitcoin, and the first half
Speaker 1: of the documentary really delves into what bitcoin is. The
Speaker 1: second half really tries to like nail down who created it.
Speaker 1: It's obviously anonymous, and they try I don't know if
Speaker 1: they got it right. He didn't think they got it right.
Speaker 1: I don't think they did there either, But still entertaining.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one the website for
Speaker 1: the show Rich on tech dot Tv coming up, Netflix
Speaker 1: adding continuing to add more subscribers. Tell you some of
Speaker 1: the details from their recent earnings report and what they're doing,
Speaker 1: what they're focusing on now, and how they're differentiating from YouTube.
Speaker 1: Let's talk Netflix. Netflix is uh man. They are just
Speaker 1: continuing to kill it. Added five million subscribers in the
Speaker 1: last quarter, bring their total to two hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: two million paid subscribers globally. Members watch about two hours
Speaker 1: of Netflix per day on average. Live programming is where
Speaker 1: they are expanding. They see this as high value content.
Speaker 1: They've got that I don't know if it already happened.
Speaker 1: The Mike Tyson, what's the other guy's name, Paul? What's
Speaker 1: Jake Paul?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Boxing match out? Did that already happen? I don't remember.
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Okay, then they have NFL football on Christmas Day. Ads
Speaker 1: supported tier is very popular. This is a trend we're
Speaker 1: seeing across all streaming. Apparently fifty percent of new sign
Speaker 1: ups are for the ads supported tier, which is so
Speaker 1: interesting because when Netflix first started to remember it was
Speaker 1: the anti ad company, you know, it was no ads,
Speaker 1: And now people are signing up. They're saying, I'd rather
Speaker 1: pay a little bit less and I'll deal with the ads.
Speaker 1: They're facing out their basic plan almost everywhere. The basic
Speaker 1: plan was their cheaper plan that had no ADS, but
Speaker 1: they're focusing on, of course, the ads supported plan is
Speaker 1: the low cost option games. They keep making these games.
Speaker 1: I don't know who's playing them, but I guess people are.
Speaker 1: But they make games based on Netflix shows. Squid Game
Speaker 1: and Virgin River are popular or those are upcoming rather,
Speaker 1: but they do have a couple of popular ones. How
Speaker 1: are they differentiating from competitors like YouTube premium high budget
Speaker 1: content and of course taken on the financial risk for creators.
Speaker 1: So YouTube, anyone can do it. Anyone can make it,
Speaker 1: takes a little bit of investment. You need a camera
Speaker 1: and I need to set up. But Netflix is focusing
Speaker 1: on premium, high budget stuff, which sometimes when you watch
Speaker 1: it you wonder they're not okay, They're not going to
Speaker 1: bundle with other streaming services, not interested in that. That
Speaker 1: makes sense because Netflix is kind of an outlier. Everyone
Speaker 1: else is like Peacock. It's like all these other ones.
Speaker 1: You're like, ah, do I really need that? But so
Speaker 1: you might bundle it. Disney of course obviously has a
Speaker 1: lot of interest in bundling with their three brands that
Speaker 1: they have, but Netflix does not have any interest in
Speaker 1: that and they still see a lot of room for
Speaker 1: growth less than ten percent of TV time. That they
Speaker 1: still account for less than ten percent of TV time
Speaker 1: even in their biggest markets. So just when you think
Speaker 1: netflixes everything to them, they still have got ninety percent
Speaker 1: of the market to capture.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 2: Let's go to uh Diego in San Diego Diego. You're
Speaker 2: on the rich.
Speaker 11: Hello, Hi, I have an iMac mom and Penham from
Speaker 11: my daughter to my wife, and she's complaining about any
Speaker 11: window that can't open. It tends to refresh itself when
Speaker 11: she's typing looking for something, and we refresh itself every
Speaker 11: nine to ten seconds. Only when you have a window open,
Speaker 11: even a web browser or anything like that, we don't.
Speaker 9: Know what it is.
Speaker 2: So explain to me what's happening again.
Speaker 11: Any windows you have open refresh itself. So as you're
Speaker 11: looking for something in the search, a window up on
Speaker 11: top and refresh itself. You have to reclick again to
Speaker 11: that window so you can keep typing, and you got
Speaker 11: to kind of beat the clock, which is nine or
Speaker 11: ten seconds.
Speaker 2: Are you Is this happening in a web browser.
Speaker 11: In any window you open, even like text edit or
Speaker 11: she's looking for a picture or a document usually uses
Speaker 11: it for email and document writing.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: And it just so the window refreshes. Yeah, and is
Speaker 1: it is it a screen thing or is it a
Speaker 1: computer thing? Like it's does it look like the screen
Speaker 1: is refreshing itself or does it look like the window
Speaker 1: itself is doing something like software wise?
Speaker 11: No, because I can close every window and just look
Speaker 11: at the desktop of all this stuff on top of there,
Speaker 11: and it's just okay.
Speaker 2: So it stays okay.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: Well, I would say it sounds like you've got something
Speaker 1: running on this computer that is not agreeing with it,
Speaker 1: and that's that's probably what's going on here. I would
Speaker 1: say it's a graphics thing. But if it's if the
Speaker 1: computer desktop just sits there and doesn't do anything while
Speaker 1: you're just letting it sit idle, then it's probably not
Speaker 1: a graphics thing. And so okay, So let's I'm still
Speaker 1: trying to figure this out. You you open up let's
Speaker 1: say a web browser, and you're sitting there using it,
Speaker 1: and the screen just like the actual window just refreshes.
Speaker 11: Yes, we'll be watching We watched something some Christmas but
Speaker 11: I can watch it movie miracle or something, and it
Speaker 11: kept annoyingly kept doing it every nine to ten seconds,
Speaker 11: so we think the window out made a smaller and
Speaker 11: it still did it, and it was funny. Just gave up.
Speaker 11: We'll just repress itself. It doesn't have to be in
Speaker 11: the window. It has to be next to browsers. It
Speaker 11: doesn't on which he does a pretext, so your text
Speaker 11: edit rewrite something there, it still transfer onto a war document.
Speaker 11: And even that those two windows, the word document or
Speaker 11: the text edit will refresh itself.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I think what I would do personally is
Speaker 1: check to see what's going on in this computer, Like, uh,
Speaker 1: there's so many things you got to do to see
Speaker 1: what's going on here. So first off, is this computer
Speaker 1: still supported software wise?
Speaker 11: Well, it's an always him point six point eight. It's
Speaker 11: pretty old.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's pretty So it's not getting active software updates? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So so if it's not, that's ten point six point eight.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, it's like snow Leopard. That's yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: while ago. So if it's not getting any new updates,
Speaker 1: what I would do is I personally just go you know,
Speaker 1: number one, I'd probably start figuring out what the system,
Speaker 1: what the situation is for a new machine at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, budget whatever you need to do to get that.
Speaker 1: But to get this thing to work again, I would
Speaker 1: probably what I would do is just reinstall the operating
Speaker 1: system the whole thing. Because this is an old computer anyway,
Speaker 1: It's got a lot of little fragments and things on it,
Speaker 1: so you can reinstall the entire operating system. That's probably
Speaker 1: what I would do first. If you can't do that,
Speaker 1: or you don't want to do that, I would probably
Speaker 1: look through and get rid of any programs on this
Speaker 1: computer that I don't recognize, don't need, don't know, restart it.
Speaker 1: I would go into the login on the system settings
Speaker 1: and see if there's anything in the login items that
Speaker 1: are launching at startup. And that's probably the first thing
Speaker 1: I would do, is look in that login items and
Speaker 1: see if there's anything that's launching with the startup of
Speaker 1: this computer. And that could be some sort of program
Speaker 1: that's just not agreeing with it, and you can unclick
Speaker 1: those and then of course restart your computer there.
Speaker 2: And then you know, obviously you can't do the updates.
Speaker 2: You can't do that, but if.
Speaker 1: You're really a little bit more tech savvy, you can
Speaker 1: start this thing up in like safe mode and see
Speaker 1: if there's anything in there that you can delete or
Speaker 1: get rid of. But I would personally just try to
Speaker 1: get rid of anything on this computer that you don't need,
Speaker 1: don't use, don't want, and then restart it and keep
Speaker 1: doing those actions until this cleans itself up. And if
Speaker 1: it doesn't, then you might have to take it to
Speaker 1: some sort of like Mac place for them to take
Speaker 1: a look at this a little bit more closely. But
Speaker 1: good question, Diego. That is a frustrating issue to have.
Speaker 1: But I think if you get rid of stuff on
Speaker 1: that computer, hopefully that should work. There's another I like
Speaker 1: called clean my Mac that might be a good thing
Speaker 1: which you can run on there as well get rid
Speaker 1: of some of the gunk that's uh clogging up that
Speaker 1: old old computer. Eighty eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you how Google flights is going cheap coming up,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech eighty eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. I got a note from Don in
Speaker 1: a provo Utah that he wants to share a great
Speaker 1: site with me. Don.
Speaker 2: What's the site?
Speaker 3: Rich I love you so much.
Speaker 7: I listened to you every week. It's a I look
Speaker 7: forward to every week.
Speaker 2: Thank you much, thank you.
Speaker 7: I actually listened to maybe two or three times. But
Speaker 7: I am actually met Madonna's twins twin rang, so I'm
Speaker 7: living up to that. And then Delta dot com is
Speaker 7: z e l d t a dot com is the
Speaker 7: best website in the mo versus. There's a couple of
Speaker 7: pages every single day. It's a safe place for young
Speaker 7: people and everybody else to go, for everybody else to
Speaker 7: go for a few minutes. It's like in one hundred
Speaker 7: languages you can just translate instantly.
Speaker 2: And what is this Delta dot com that takes me
Speaker 2: towe an airline?
Speaker 7: No, no, no, Zelta z zebra e l d t A.
Speaker 7: It's actually just z LT Creations and Communications.
Speaker 3: But that's the website.
Speaker 7: Is z e l d t A dot com?
Speaker 2: Zelta Okay, got it? Okay?
Speaker 1: Interesting? Oh I see it's got It's got like a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of stuff. Okay, well we'll see you. We'll
Speaker 1: see if people like that. So uh yeah, I hope
Speaker 1: so thanks.
Speaker 7: I don't really have any money. I get your in
Speaker 7: an assistance. I'm hoping I don't have bitcoin yet. I'm
Speaker 7: hoping to get that soon. But I have like a
Speaker 7: on that website, have a few places where you can
Speaker 7: donate on Venmo or something.
Speaker 3: But well, you're trying to get.
Speaker 7: Money to activating my life body. I'm activating everybody's lightbody
Speaker 7: around the world right now. Oh, travel throughout the multiverse
Speaker 7: instantaneously everywhere, instant he and everything.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? Exactly? What does that mean? Exactly?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: What like around the multiverse? You know the healing? What
Speaker 2: does that mean?
Speaker 7: Well? I invented uh anyway, I have the technology virtual
Speaker 7: reality that's gonna actually help people travel throughout the multiverse.
Speaker 7: And they can't have weapons if they can't go, do
Speaker 7: they trust me?
Speaker 3: I don't have weapons.
Speaker 7: And also, like everybody can step on every sun and
Speaker 7: every moon, every star, every planet in the multiverse and
Speaker 7: from wherever they're at.
Speaker 2: And is this in in like reality or in a
Speaker 2: in a virtual reality?
Speaker 7: Well it's gonna it's gonna be in virtual reality with
Speaker 7: the goggles. That's the ultimate use of it.
Speaker 2: So wow, Okay, everybody's like twin rays.
Speaker 7: I'm connecting all twin rays together. They're gonna have like
Speaker 7: everybody who can have their own planet. Every male female connections,
Speaker 7: perfect connections.
Speaker 2: Okay, well I like the idea of this. So what
Speaker 2: just this is?
Speaker 1: It's very peaceful. It sounds like in your multi diverse
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah, Well.
Speaker 7: You can read a couple of pages every day. It
Speaker 7: goes back in twenty fourteen, been writing. My brother Paul
Speaker 7: actually invented a bunch of companies. He started like a
Speaker 7: citizen portal, dot Ai, Wow and Ancestry and like six
Speaker 7: lard companies.
Speaker 1: But and you're blogging every day. It looks like I'm
Speaker 1: looking at twenty twenty four every day. What happened in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two? You only had nine posts? What happened there?
Speaker 4: I know?
Speaker 7: Well it's been since like then. Uh, my brother Paul
Speaker 7: actually he actually helped me edit the first three hundred pages,
Speaker 7: and then he quit and my sister helped me. She
Speaker 7: started like the Mormons mothers, like a couple of name mothers,
Speaker 7: and then stopped with that. But they started not talking
Speaker 7: about Mormons.
Speaker 1: Well, all I know about the Mormons right now is
Speaker 1: the Uh there's isn't there a show that everyone's watching,
Speaker 1: like this reality that people are watching?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Okay, TV. Oh so I'm sister wives.
Speaker 7: You helped me edit by myself the last couple of years.
Speaker 7: Every single day, oh wow, every day. I ride every day.
Speaker 7: I can't see them, right, so I can't really drive
Speaker 7: ride a bicycle, but I can. I can ride every
Speaker 7: day in my home and that's what I do.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, don thanks for the suggestion. I'll take
Speaker 2: a look.
Speaker 1: You're prolific writer on that site, and I like your
Speaker 1: idea of the multiverse piece piece for everyone.
Speaker 2: That's a that's a great idea.
Speaker 1: So thanks for the call today, and do appreciate you
Speaker 1: listening to me, even if I don't understand everything you
Speaker 1: were saying.
Speaker 2: I you know, I I got, I got, I get
Speaker 2: the gist.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 1: Speaking of back to real life, Google flights now has
Speaker 1: a cheapest option.
Speaker 2: This is like, this is what I needed in college.
Speaker 1: Although flights were a lot cheaper back then than they
Speaker 1: are now, but so cheaper option. So Google, if you
Speaker 1: go to Google flights, you know that's my absolute favorite
Speaker 1: flight searching website. You go to flights dot Google dot com.
Speaker 1: You type in where you want to go, departure dates
Speaker 1: if you want, if you want to get that specific
Speaker 1: or just look at the calendar and see the dates
Speaker 1: in green, and it will tell you those are the
Speaker 1: best cheapest days. But if you need to go on
Speaker 1: certain days but you want to get there cheaper, there's
Speaker 1: now a cheapest tab. This will show you the lowest
Speaker 1: airfare options, even if they're less convenient. So personally, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm of a certain age and I want to get
Speaker 1: there on a direct flight and I don't want a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, fuss, and so that is what
Speaker 1: I prefer. But if you just want and that's not
Speaker 1: always the cheapest, If you want the cheapest fair and
Speaker 1: maybe you have some extra time, maybe you don't care
Speaker 1: if you need a layover, Maybe you don't care if
Speaker 1: you fly to one airport and drive out of another.
Speaker 1: Maybe you don't care about the third party booking site.
Speaker 1: These are all the expanded options that the cheapest tab
Speaker 1: takes into effect. Because most people you know, with with
Speaker 1: with these search engines, they want the best fare and
Speaker 1: the you know, the the easiest kind of a combination
Speaker 1: of convenience and fair. But this is like, no, you
Speaker 1: want cheapest, we will find you the absolute cheapest. So
Speaker 1: this might include a longer layover, this could include multiple airlines,
Speaker 1: It couldn't could include something. It's called a self transfer.
Speaker 1: I've never even heard of this until I read about
Speaker 1: this with Google. A self transfer works like this. You
Speaker 1: fly one airline to a city. As you're connecting city,
Speaker 1: you collect your luggage, and then you check in at
Speaker 1: another airline to connect continue your flight. I mean, and
Speaker 1: those are not you know, they're not sort of like
Speaker 1: connected on your ticket. It's just like you booked them all.
Speaker 1: That's that's a wild way to go, but that's another
Speaker 1: way to do it anyway. So if you're looking for this,
Speaker 1: if you want cheap, just look on Google Flights and
Speaker 1: check out the new cheapest tab. It is rolling out,
Speaker 1: so it may not be on there right away. It
Speaker 1: was not on there the last couple of times I
Speaker 1: tried searching on there, which is pretty much every day.
Speaker 1: But if you're looking for the cheapest, absolute cheapest way
Speaker 1: to go. Oh and by the way, Google did throw
Speaker 1: in that right now is the cheapest time to book
Speaker 1: or the best time to book holiday flights, so that
Speaker 1: is right now in October. All right, there you go, cheapest.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else do we have here. We got
Speaker 1: so many emails from people. Let's see rich from New Jersey. Wait,
Speaker 1: is this me writing in What's What's happening?
Speaker 2: Here? Am I in? Am I in the Don's multiverse?
Speaker 2: Right now? I am coming from the future?
Speaker 4: Rich?
Speaker 2: No, I'm just kidding. This is not me, Rich, Rich
Speaker 2: here we go?
Speaker 1: Rich from New Jersey commented that he loves the show,
Speaker 1: writes in Hey, Rich, I have the great LG seventy
Speaker 1: seven inch TV with the Sonos Arc, the large subwoofer,
Speaker 1: and two so nos one rear speakers. When I bought
Speaker 1: all this, the salesperson never told me I wouldn't get
Speaker 1: at most with the ones. I found out I'd need
Speaker 1: the Sons fives for true at most. This really upsets
Speaker 1: me because I spent a lot of money. So my
Speaker 1: question is do I spend another thousand dollars to get
Speaker 1: the fives or is it not worth it?
Speaker 2: What? I not that big of a difference. I'm considering
Speaker 2: just staying with the surround sound.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts? Thanks and love your show. Well, Rich,
Speaker 1: here's the deal. You've got the ones. How much are
Speaker 1: those Sonos ones are?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 3: Two?
Speaker 1: Okay? Two pack is six hundred bucks. So two pack
Speaker 1: is six hundred bucks and you need the fives? For
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars, So maybe you sell the ones and
Speaker 1: just upgrade for the extra, you know, five hundred bucks,
Speaker 1: whatever it's gonna be. If you want the Dolbie Atmost,
Speaker 1: you've already gotten this far.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you need the Dolby Atmost, but
Speaker 1: it is definitely People who have it love It is
Speaker 1: a very popular sound format. And if you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with what Atmost is, if you're familiar with regular surround sound,
Speaker 1: it's just stuff that's sort of like left and right right.
Speaker 1: At Most adds that sort of overhead and three D
Speaker 1: world around you. It's almost like basically spatial audio. So
Speaker 1: let's say there's like a helicopter to you might hear
Speaker 1: it left or right, you know, in the movie theater,
Speaker 1: this would be hear the helicopter coming from like the
Speaker 1: back left to the front, back right to the front left,
Speaker 1: so it flies over you and Dobey Utmost would give
Speaker 1: you that, and so it's more realistic. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like it envelopes you in the sound. And I think
Speaker 1: that because you've already got rich sounds like you like
Speaker 1: nice stuff. You've got that nice LGTV that's big you've
Speaker 1: got the son nos ark, you've got the subwoofer, and
Speaker 1: you've got the sons rear.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I'm thinking you want to upgrade, but I
Speaker 1: know you said maybe not, just stick with the sround,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I have just regular surround sound
Speaker 1: seems to be fine. But if you want to get that,
Speaker 1: then you know I would go for it. Go for it, Richard,
Speaker 1: you deserve it if you work hard.
Speaker 2: Go for it.
Speaker 1: Eric from a Bismarck, North Carolina, North Dakota, listens on
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts. He writes in hey, rich do you have
Speaker 1: a recommendation for the best USB cable to use car
Speaker 1: play with my iPhone pro Mac sixteen. I have a
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen niece on Rogue with USBA. I'm looking for
Speaker 1: a USBA to USBC. Many cables I've tried caused my
Speaker 1: vehicle to lose connection randomly or produce static. I prefer
Speaker 1: a straight cable if possible, but I'm open to using
Speaker 1: an adapter. I enjoy your show. I listen to the
Speaker 1: podcast almost every week. Thank you, Eric, Do not use
Speaker 1: an adapter that will probably cause more problems. I noticed
Speaker 1: this with my wife's car when we got the new
Speaker 1: iPhone for her, she had an issue with the USBC
Speaker 1: with her CarPlay. I think that a lot of times
Speaker 1: these systems were not really they were engineered for one thing,
Speaker 1: and now we're kind of back ending in backing in
Speaker 1: some other things. So I did take about three tries
Speaker 1: with cables before I found when that worked with hers perfectly.
Speaker 1: So obviously the if Apple has an official cable on
Speaker 1: their website, that's probably a good way. That's going to
Speaker 1: be the most expensive. But I would just go on
Speaker 1: Amazon and search for an anchor cable and get that
Speaker 1: USB USBA to USB C and also check to make
Speaker 1: sure that you're the USB A connection on the car
Speaker 1: is not loose, like if that thing is coming out
Speaker 1: like it moves left right up down, because it's like
Speaker 1: an older car, maybe you've plugged in so many times,
Speaker 1: so if that's loose, I would bring it in to
Speaker 1: get that kind of tightened up. That could be causing
Speaker 1: it as well. But I think any any high quality cable,
Speaker 1: that's the main thing. It's got to be a high
Speaker 1: quality cable. So if you're buying one for a dollar
Speaker 1: at the checkout at the convenience store, probably won't work
Speaker 1: as well. I mean it may, but it just may
Speaker 1: not with the newer cars. Sure, it's all, it's all
Speaker 1: pretty simple, but the older cars. For some reason, when
Speaker 1: this new iPhone came out with USBC from USBA, it
Speaker 1: got a little bit, you know, that connection just seems
Speaker 1: a little bit more finicky than the standard USBC to
Speaker 1: USBC or USBA to lightning.
Speaker 2: Good question.
Speaker 1: Thanks for emailing in, Eric from Bismarck, North Dakota, appreciate.
Speaker 1: Listen to the podcast out there. Rich on tech dot
Speaker 1: tv is the website. If you want to send me
Speaker 1: an email. The phone number is eighty to eight rich
Speaker 1: one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one.
Speaker 2: Coming up.
Speaker 1: Uh the FCC making it easier to cancel subscriptions.
Speaker 2: I'll explain coming up.
Speaker 1: Shanna's in Long Beach, California. Shanna, you're on with Rich
Speaker 1: Oh Hi hi, hi, So at work.
Speaker 8: I have a work iPhone and I was wondering, I
Speaker 8: know they tracked me and stuff. Not that I care.
Speaker 7: I'm not doing anything.
Speaker 8: Wrong, but I'm just curious if what what's the tracking
Speaker 8: app that they use for? Like, and they're there, they
Speaker 8: can get into my phone, calls and text messages and
Speaker 8: emails and stuff like that. But like, is there like
Speaker 8: an app on my phone that I can see that
Speaker 8: they use to track me?
Speaker 2: Well, how do you know they can get into all
Speaker 2: this stuff that they.
Speaker 7: Told you this, No, it's just kind of obvious.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, I don't think it's that obvious because typically,
Speaker 1: especially on the iPhone, they are they are very much
Speaker 1: locked down to vice. Now, if it is a company
Speaker 1: issued device, they of course reserve the right to basically
Speaker 1: track anything that you do on that phone, but with
Speaker 1: respect to getting access to your messages and things like that,
Speaker 1: they don't typically have that. Now your emails, of course,
Speaker 1: but let me I mean, so, the main way that
Speaker 1: companies can track you on your iPhone specifically, this is
Speaker 1: iPhone specific. Android obviously much easier because it's a different
Speaker 1: operating system and there's things that they can do on
Speaker 1: there that they can't do on the iPhone. But there's
Speaker 1: typically what's called a VPN or an MDM profile. So
Speaker 1: this is this is a little app that they can
Speaker 1: have or a profile on your phone that basically gives
Speaker 1: them more access than typically allowed. So if you want
Speaker 1: to look for that on your phone, you can go
Speaker 1: into settings are you on iOS eighteen or before that?
Speaker 7: Oh it's an old phone. It's an iPhone five.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that's a that's a security risk in itself.
Speaker 1: That is I iPhone five. Wait a second, what kind
Speaker 1: of what?
Speaker 11: What?
Speaker 8: And it still works, it's still fast and takes the updates.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 1: I don't see how there's no updates for the iPhone
Speaker 1: five anymore. Oh hold on, let me let me see
Speaker 1: what's going on. Hold on, let me see end of
Speaker 1: iPhone five. Hold on, let me see. I'm looking up
Speaker 1: the end of life date on this. Okay, iPhone five,
Speaker 1: it's not even on my list. Oh there it is, Okay,
Speaker 1: iPhone five. This is a twelve year old phone September
Speaker 1: twenty first, twenty twelve, and it is eleven years ago.
Speaker 1: They stopped making it and then the software updates ended
Speaker 1: five years ago.
Speaker 2: What kind of company is this? Why are they giving
Speaker 2: you such an old phone?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 8: No, it's it's a home health agency. I'm a registered nurse.
Speaker 8: I do home health, and I mean, if it works,
Speaker 8: I don't you know, there's no reason for them to buy,
Speaker 8: you know, new phone for all the nurses.
Speaker 1: Okay, interesting, all right, Well, so the main place to
Speaker 1: look is general, is settings General, and then there's something
Speaker 1: that says VPN and device management. So if you go
Speaker 1: into there and there is a profile for your company,
Speaker 1: that's where they're tracking you. And so that's the little piece,
Speaker 1: the key piece of information that gives them the ability
Speaker 1: to track you in general. Like I always tell people,
Speaker 1: if you're using a company device, yes, they are probably
Speaker 1: tracking you in some sort of way. If you're on
Speaker 1: your company Wi Fi at work, yes, they're tracking you
Speaker 1: in some sort of way. If you're driving a company car, yes,
Speaker 1: they're tracking you in some sort of way. If you're
Speaker 1: using company email, yes, they are tracking you in some
Speaker 1: sort of way. Now AI makes this stuff a whole
Speaker 1: lot easier because they're not necessarily looking at your phone
Speaker 1: or looking at your email, but they're using management software
Speaker 1: on the back end that will maybe alert them to
Speaker 1: Let's say you're a home health nurse and you know
Speaker 1: you go to the same five houses every day every week.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, you start spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time in a different location. There is software that may
Speaker 1: tell hold on, you may want to look into this,
Speaker 1: and we're noticing that there's a variation in the pattern
Speaker 1: and so that's really what these things are looking for.
Speaker 2: When it comes to email and things like that.
Speaker 1: They're looking for maybe keywords that you're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: company secrets, whatever. But this, this is what these these
Speaker 1: software programs are doing. They're looking for things in a
Speaker 1: smart way. They're not just looking at every single thing
Speaker 1: you do. I mean they are, but it's a computer
Speaker 1: most of the time, and if it needs to kind
Speaker 1: of kick that up to the bosses, then it will say, hey,
Speaker 1: you may want to review these five things or this
Speaker 1: website that this person keeps visiting or something like that.
Speaker 1: But in general, I would always just you know, be
Speaker 1: aware of that, especially if you're using a work VPN,
Speaker 1: especially if you're using a work issued computer. There are
Speaker 1: programs specifically on computers that they can pretty much watch
Speaker 1: your entire screen.
Speaker 2: Ask your kids they use them at school. Most of
Speaker 2: the schools have.
Speaker 1: This screen monitoring software built in where literally they can
Speaker 1: replay anything that happens on that screen any time, so
Speaker 1: that they you know, if a kid is sending a
Speaker 1: text or something through there, or an email they write it,
Speaker 1: they can just call up that screen later on and
Speaker 1: see exactly what they did and what they said. So
Speaker 1: this stuff happens, it's there, it's real, and you just
Speaker 1: have to be aware your your privacy is not your
Speaker 1: privacy when you're using a work device.
Speaker 2: Good question, Shanna. Thanks for the call today from Long Beach.
Speaker 1: Coming up, we are going to talk about an app
Speaker 1: speaking of privacy called Permission Slip.
Speaker 2: It's from Consumer.
Speaker 1: Reports and we're going to talk all about that coming
Speaker 1: up right here on Rich on Tech. All right. Joining
Speaker 1: me now is Suki Galotti, Gilbert product manager for Permission Slip.
Speaker 1: This is an app from Consumer Reports that helps you
Speaker 1: reclaim your privacy.
Speaker 2: Suki, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Hi, Rich, Thanks for.
Speaker 1: Having me, so thanks for being here. Tell me, first off,
Speaker 1: what permission Slip is all about.
Speaker 12: Permission Slip is all about making it easy to exercise
Speaker 12: your right to digital privacy by submitting data rights requests
Speaker 12: to companies on your behalf. So what that means is
Speaker 12: we tell companies to stop selling your personal information or
Speaker 12: to delete it.
Speaker 1: And so this, i imagine is something that's like very
Speaker 1: deep inside their terms and conditions or something like that.
Speaker 1: When you hand over your phone number or email and say,
Speaker 1: by the way, you can tell us not to sell this,
Speaker 1: but nobody ever does.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 12: So this is, you know, so important because every search, click,
Speaker 12: and tap you make online it's tracked by these companies,
Speaker 12: and submitting these requests is one of the very few
Speaker 12: things consumers have the power to do in the face
Speaker 12: of that. But as you mentioned, when we did research,
Speaker 12: we found that the links to exercise these rights are
Speaker 12: hidden deep in the privacy policies and they can be
Speaker 12: quite time consuming to find.
Speaker 1: And so, what kind of like what kind of companies
Speaker 1: do you work with with this app? I mean, I
Speaker 1: know you don't well, I don't know do you work
Speaker 1: with them or do you like just you've figured out
Speaker 1: like how to delete the data from all these companies,
Speaker 1: and like, explain to me how it works, Like I
Speaker 1: sign up on the app.
Speaker 12: And then what yes, So the way it works is
Speaker 12: we send what's called data rights request to these companies.
Speaker 12: Privacy law in the United States it's a big patchwork
Speaker 12: of it, and some states guarantee you the right to
Speaker 12: ask that companies stop selling or delete your data. But
Speaker 12: as you mentioned, exercising this right is difficult, and even
Speaker 12: a step before exercising that right, there's this question you asked, Right,
Speaker 12: who do I tell this to? So Permission Slip has
Speaker 12: two sets of companies on the app, consumer facing companies
Speaker 12: and the data brokers. I'm going to talk about data
Speaker 12: brokers a little bit because these are companies who you
Speaker 12: don't know, but they know you. They know your address,
Speaker 12: they know your family, they know your voting registration records,
Speaker 12: and they sell all of that data for profit. So
Speaker 12: what Consumer Reports does is we talk to experts and
Speaker 12: we survey state data broker registries to get a list
Speaker 12: of the worst offenders and to understand which data brokers
Speaker 12: own other data brokers and put together Right now we
Speaker 12: have a list of over one hundred. We're constantly revisiting
Speaker 12: it and working to expand it. And we tell these
Speaker 12: companies that you want them to stop selling your data
Speaker 12: and to ask that they delete your data.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, so and so now I know you
Speaker 1: have a new like a plus version like that. So
Speaker 1: permission Slip at its core is free. You can do
Speaker 1: all this, like a lot of these things for free.
Speaker 1: But now I know you have this new plus version,
Speaker 1: So explain what do I get with the plus? Is
Speaker 1: that the data broker stuff.
Speaker 12: Absolutely, So the short answer is that Permission Slip saves
Speaker 12: you time and permission Slip Plus saves you even more time,
Speaker 12: so the process to send a data rights request.
Speaker 9: Can can be involved.
Speaker 12: And so what permission Slip as its core free tier
Speaker 12: does is we've gone to all these websites for you,
Speaker 12: both consumer facing companies like home depot or ticketmaster as
Speaker 12: well as data brokers whose names you might not know,
Speaker 12: and we've gone to the website and we've extracted the
Speaker 12: link so that you can send those requests by yourself
Speaker 12: in one tap, and in many cases, even on the
Speaker 12: free tier, we actually will send them for you. So
Speaker 12: if you download the apps, some of these companies have
Speaker 12: a lightning bolt by them and those are ones that
Speaker 12: will you know, we will will put we have our
Speaker 12: team of data data concierges sending these sending these requests
Speaker 12: on your behalf, even on the free tier, but on
Speaker 12: the Plus tier, we will give you a much more
Speaker 12: powerful automation and more human support to send out requests
Speaker 12: to over one hundred data brokers within minutes. So it
Speaker 12: can save you really hours of effort. Because even with
Speaker 12: all the work permission slip has done to get it
Speaker 12: to be just one tap to send these requests, it's
Speaker 12: still it's still a lot of time to send them
Speaker 12: out one by one, and so we have collected a
Speaker 12: list of over one hundred data brokers, and once you
Speaker 12: subscribe for Plus, we'll we'll send those requests out. Our
Speaker 12: data con search team will monitor them, monitor for them,
Speaker 12: monitor them for you, and work behind the scenes to
Speaker 12: get as many of those fulfilled as possible.
Speaker 1: But just to be clear, if I you know, I
Speaker 1: don't need to sign up for Plus to get some
Speaker 1: benefits out of this app, because this app has been
Speaker 1: around for a long time before you introduce the Plus feature.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so.
Speaker 12: Permission slip is something that Consumer Reports built because we
Speaker 12: believe privacy is a fundamental right. And so when you downloaded,
Speaker 12: you can immediately put us to work to be sending
Speaker 12: privacy requests for you on the free tier as well.
Speaker 9: You'll just save more time if you send it for Plus.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, what kind of information are we talking about?
Speaker 1: What kind of personal information? Like do I have to
Speaker 1: put in like my social or anything like that to
Speaker 1: ask for them to take it down?
Speaker 8: You do not have to put in.
Speaker 12: Your social So we send we ask for your phone number,
Speaker 12: your address, and your email address. The reason that we
Speaker 12: ask for this information is because that is sort of
Speaker 12: the minimal set of information. A lot of these companies
Speaker 12: need to identify you within their records so that they
Speaker 12: can delete you. And we're always we practice the principle
Speaker 12: of data minimization, so we collect as little data from
Speaker 12: you as we can to ensure that these requests get
Speaker 12: fulfilled as effectively as possible. But in terms of what
Speaker 12: data these companies have about you, they absolutely could have
Speaker 12: you know your social Security number, your address, your purchase history,
Speaker 12: so that the data that they have can get can
Speaker 12: get quite invasive and intimate. But the data that we
Speaker 12: ask from you is for the purpose of them identifying
Speaker 12: you so they can they can delete it.
Speaker 2: Got it?
Speaker 1: And then what's the benefit? How successful are you in
Speaker 1: these requests? And then what's the benefit of having less
Speaker 1: information about me out there? Great questions like why would
Speaker 1: I want not want ticket Master to be sharing my
Speaker 1: data or whatever?
Speaker 2: You know, explain that aspect absolutely so.
Speaker 12: There are so many reasons that it is beneficial to
Speaker 12: have less of your data out there. The first, of course,
Speaker 12: is just you know, if you're someone who believes in
Speaker 12: privacy as a principle, there's principled reasons too, But a
Speaker 12: lot of those it's election season. A lot of those
Speaker 12: texts that you're getting from campaigns are because a data
Speaker 12: broker sold your phone number to a research group. That
Speaker 12: data breaches, which become more frequent, can have your financial
Speaker 12: data much more likely if it has been sold by
Speaker 12: one company to another. Of course, all kinds of marketing
Speaker 12: that you don't want can can hit your doorstep by.
Speaker 9: Your address being sold.
Speaker 12: So really concretely, you know a lot of these spam
Speaker 12: techs and emails that flood your phone and inbox are
Speaker 12: because your data has been sold or exchanged. And there's
Speaker 12: also much more insidious and kind of inscrutable ways that
Speaker 12: your your data is propagated that can result in all
Speaker 12: kinds of you know, little marketing efforts or invasions of
Speaker 12: privacy that you might not even be fully aware of
Speaker 12: on the day to day.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because the thing I get to kick
Speaker 1: back sometimes or the pushback people will be like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, like I'm not doing anything wrong. I don't
Speaker 1: really care if my information's out there. At the very least,
Speaker 1: you may spend less money because you're being marketed to
Speaker 1: less and like that's at like the very least, right,
Speaker 1: And if all the other bad stuff is not a problem,
Speaker 1: Like you might just spend less money because they're not
Speaker 1: as good at getting you, you know, sold on on
Speaker 1: products and services.
Speaker 9: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 12: It's you know, it's not necessarily that you're doing something
Speaker 12: you don't want people to know about. But I think
Speaker 12: it's about the presumption by which you're kind of going
Speaker 12: through the world. Is the presumption that you're an open
Speaker 12: book for people to take what they know about you
Speaker 12: and use it to advance their own interests or do
Speaker 12: you want to be in control of what you're sharing
Speaker 12: with who, when and why?
Speaker 1: So do you think companies like literally you said they
Speaker 1: have a list of like purchase history, Like do you
Speaker 1: think that that stuff is sold around too? Like I
Speaker 1: always wonder that with like my credit card or debit card,
Speaker 1: Like is my bank like telling people like what I'm
Speaker 1: buying online?
Speaker 12: Yeah, I can't, you know, I don't. I can't speak
Speaker 12: so specifically whether your bank is, but I but I
Speaker 12: can tell you that this purchase history and basically everything
Speaker 12: you do is being tracked or sold on some level.
Speaker 12: You know, so rewards programs for you examples, many of
Speaker 12: those can be bought and sold as information about your
Speaker 12: purchase history.
Speaker 2: That's why everyone has a rewards program. It's not to
Speaker 2: save me money.
Speaker 1: It's because I'm basically agreeing to Hey, you can have
Speaker 1: my entire everything I purchase at Target, everything I purchased
Speaker 1: at you know, the grocery store. It's all on this
Speaker 1: list that I've somehow said, oh, yeah, you can take
Speaker 1: this information and market it as you please.
Speaker 2: Yes, a lot of you.
Speaker 12: Know, third parties that are offering to operationalize that reward
Speaker 12: service for a company. The company might who's running the
Speaker 12: reward service might not even know, but that that party
Speaker 12: who is running it for them is tracking your purchase
Speaker 12: history and selling it.
Speaker 9: We also see a lot.
Speaker 12: Of you know, different companies that are selling your for example,
Speaker 12: your health data to insurance companies, which can result in
Speaker 12: changes in your rates. There's been a lot of recent
Speaker 12: news around, for example, right twenty three and meters and
Speaker 12: the different ways in which your genetic data can be
Speaker 12: sold to places that you might not want to see
Speaker 12: it sold.
Speaker 2: So scary scary stuff. We're gonna leave it there.
Speaker 1: Suki Galotti, Gilbert, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 1: From Consumer Reports. The website is permission slipcr dot com.
Speaker 1: Permission slipcr dot com. Download it, reclaim your data and
Speaker 1: reclaim your privacy. Thanks a lot for joining me today,
Speaker 1: Thanks for taking time. All right, coming up, we are
Speaker 1: gonna open up. I could barely drag it in here.
Speaker 1: The feedbag it's so big this week, it doesn't even
Speaker 1: fit in this room.
Speaker 2: What am I gonna do? Thanks for emailing. We'll have
Speaker 2: that in just a moment.
Speaker 11: Here.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech, rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology. Want to get through maybe
Speaker 1: a couple more stories before I get into the feedbag,
Speaker 1: which is overflowing this week. But I want to tell
Speaker 1: you about Android's new theft detection theft protection feature. If
Speaker 1: you have an Android phone, you have a new security
Speaker 1: feature called theft detection lock. If someone grabs your phone
Speaker 1: out of your hand and tries to run away with it,
Speaker 1: or walk away with mostly run or like bike, or
Speaker 1: you know, just get away from you quickly, your phone
Speaker 1: is now going to use it it's accelerometer to understand
Speaker 1: that and say, oh, I think something bad is happening here.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna lock down this device. But it is not
Speaker 2: turned on by default, so you have to turn this on.
Speaker 2: So what I want you to do.
Speaker 1: If you have an Android phone running I believe it's
Speaker 1: Android ten and up, which is most modern phones, go
Speaker 1: into Settings, then search, look for Google, and then tap
Speaker 1: all Services and then you'll see theft protection and then
Speaker 1: toggle on theft detection lock. So again, got settings, Google
Speaker 1: All Services. It's you'll see theft protection and toggle on
Speaker 1: theft detection in luck, I've got those instructions on my
Speaker 1: newsletter this week.
Speaker 2: So go to the website Rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 2: Hit the newsletter.
Speaker 1: It's the one that says theft protection on it, and
Speaker 1: turn that on for sure if someone ever grabs your phone.
Speaker 1: I thought about this, you know the other We talked
Speaker 1: about this a while ago. Anyway, iPhone users also have
Speaker 1: a feature called Stolen Device Protection. So it's not the same,
Speaker 1: but it's similar, and so you can use that to
Speaker 1: protect your device as well. So if you're an iPhone user,
Speaker 1: you probably want to enable that too. All right, let's
Speaker 1: open up the feedback. We've got a lot. First email
Speaker 1: from Gary in Orange, Connecticut says Rich, thanks for all
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 2: I love the show. I look forward to the newsletters.
Speaker 1: I've got my why security cameras set to send an
Speaker 1: alert to my phone when they detect motion, but the
Speaker 1: notification is just a normal one time tone. Is there
Speaker 1: a way to set up a notification that will continue
Speaker 1: to ring until I disarm it, similar to a regular alarm?
Speaker 2: Gary?
Speaker 1: I assumed Gary was using an Android, but you know,
Speaker 1: I emailed him back and said, hey, are using Android
Speaker 1: or iPhone? But I just told them the solutions. But
Speaker 1: for Android, you can do a lot with your notifications
Speaker 1: pretty much anything you want. iPhone not so much. But
Speaker 1: for Android, I've recommended two apps. First is called Buzzkill
Speaker 1: b u zz ki ll that will give you a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of you know, you could do
Speaker 1: a lot with your notifications basically anything you want with them.
Speaker 1: And then the other one I like is called Glimpse Notifications,
Speaker 1: and that's the one I used on my Samsung device
Speaker 1: when I wanted d screen to light up when I
Speaker 1: got a notification, And so that's there. On iPhone, i'd
Speaker 1: probably recommend just making like a really uploading your own
Speaker 1: ring tone that's really long and that will just keep
Speaker 1: going for like, I don't know, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the maximum ringtone sound is on an iPhone, but that's
Speaker 1: what I would do if you're on iPhone and Gary
Speaker 1: did follow up and say, let you know I installed
Speaker 1: buzzkill you recommended, did exactly what I needed to do.
Speaker 1: It was extremely easy to set up. Thanks for your
Speaker 1: personal response. It's great to have a resource. Thank you Gary.
Speaker 2: All right, do rites in.
Speaker 1: I continue to be amazed that the amount, variety and
Speaker 1: detail of information you provide. This week was particularly interesting
Speaker 1: had the massive AT and T Direct TV dish announcement
Speaker 1: massive outage involving AT and T oh this must have
Speaker 1: been from a couple weeks ago. My personal laptop malfunction,
Speaker 1: which was like catching fog to fix a plant power
Speaker 1: outage that affected my home tech setup. The Bank of
Speaker 1: America glitch affected our church accounts. It's like trying to
Speaker 1: drive at sixty five when everyone else is at ninety
Speaker 1: and weaving between lanes. There's no way to totally exist
Speaker 1: disconnected from this glitching world. Keep doing what you're doing. Rich,
Speaker 1: we all need you. Thanks Jim from Hollywood Hills Rights
Speaker 1: in Hey, Rich, I just remembered Henry Radio on Olympic
Speaker 1: Boulevard in West Los Angeles. Mostly hamgear, but a good
Speaker 1: source for large air insulated variable capacitors intended for high
Speaker 1: power transmitter final tuning. Also good for Tesla coils. There's
Speaker 1: also Federated Electronics sort of like a Best Buy, but
Speaker 1: mostly TVs and high five gear. I still have my
Speaker 1: loud speaker system in my home and I don't need
Speaker 1: a sub. It has two huge oiled walnut enclosures with
Speaker 1: twelve inch passive radiator instead of adducted port. You're no
Speaker 1: Leola Port, no better or worse, just different. I listen
Speaker 1: to your show whenever I have the free time. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: computers are just a tool for me, not a toy.
Speaker 1: So enjoy hearing the sorts of problems other have the solutions.
Speaker 1: Saves me a lot of time having to search on
Speaker 1: the internet. Thanks Jim from Hollywood Hills. I lived near
Speaker 1: the Henry Radio on Olympic Boulevard and I passed it
Speaker 1: ten thousand times in my life. I never knew that
Speaker 1: that was an actual radio store. Interesting, Rudy, let's see here, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go. Mike oh also wrote in Mike from Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: He says, I remember going to ad raise for Electronics
Speaker 1: and Van Eyes. I loved it and Rogers Sound in
Speaker 1: Canoga Park. Bill from Cleveland says, Hey, great show.
Speaker 2: Rich.
Speaker 1: You mentioned quite often the latest data stealing scams, apps
Speaker 1: and sites, but at the same time you tend to
Speaker 1: recommend products such as any Google product as a solution.
Speaker 1: Recently you spoke about alternatives to Verise and Plus and
Speaker 1: recommended Google Voice. Google products are aimed squarely at sucking
Speaker 1: up as much data as possible. We live in a
Speaker 1: world where we have almost no privacy, so the little
Speaker 1: we do have we should probably protect. Love the show,
Speaker 1: and it'd be great to recommend more privacy centered solutions
Speaker 1: in the future.
Speaker 2: Bill, Thanks for that.
Speaker 1: I actually recommended Google Messages, not Google Voice, but I
Speaker 1: also like Google Voice.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Look, I do think I talk about privacy a lot
Speaker 1: and recommend that. But you gotta you know, if you're
Speaker 1: not paying for something, you are the product, and so
Speaker 1: you just have to understand that with some of these
Speaker 1: Google things. But I do I think I put a
Speaker 1: fair amount of work into the privacy stuff. Uh Don
Speaker 1: writes in thanks for the overview on budgeting apps. I
Speaker 1: paid for a year of Monarch money, but it can't
Speaker 1: connect to my regional bank, so it lost its ability
Speaker 1: to connect to two investment accounts, which pretty much makes
Speaker 1: the service useless to me, so I won't be renewing.
Speaker 2: Empower's been pretty good, and.
Speaker 1: As a Fidelity customer, I'm using the full View program now,
Speaker 1: which I didn't know existed until you mentioned it. I
Speaker 1: think the edge goes to Empower because it links to
Speaker 1: more accounts and can pull in a zilo estimate automatic
Speaker 1: rather than having to enter it manually in full View.
Speaker 2: Keep up the great work.
Speaker 1: James from Inverness, who listens on WXJB, says thanks so much.
Speaker 1: I listen to your program every week and enjoy it.
Speaker 1: When I can't listen live, I definitely listen to your
Speaker 1: podcast and oh we got more. Andrew from San Diego
Speaker 1: listens on the radio AM six forty on Saturday and
Speaker 1: six hundred on Sunday in San Diego. Love your radio show.
Speaker 1: You're so informative, friendly, easygoing and trustworthy for a novice
Speaker 1: novice novice like me loved your show about all the
Speaker 1: brick and mortar electronics stores that used to exist. And
Speaker 1: Stephanie finally writes in hey, Rich, I was able to
Speaker 1: shock someone recently with a tip you shared some time ago.
Speaker 1: I showed a friend coworker how to exchange phone numbers
Speaker 1: with our iPhones. Just by touching the two iPhones together.
Speaker 1: He was freaking out. Thanks for all the tips to
Speaker 1: keep my back pocket for times like this. And we
Speaker 1: did get more emails about the electronics stores and things
Speaker 1: like that, but I'm gonna have to hold those until
Speaker 1: a later date. But apparently you like to talk about
Speaker 1: the old days, so do I. That's gonna do it
Speaker 1: for this episode of the show. You can find links
Speaker 1: to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to
Speaker 1: richon tech dot TV hop on the newsletter. If you're
Speaker 1: not there, you can find me on social media. I
Speaker 1: am at rich on Tech. Coming up next week, got
Speaker 1: a cool interview. Patrick O'Neill is going to join us.
Speaker 1: He is an entrepreneur. Remember those oloclips, those little lenses
Speaker 1: you would attach to your iPhone before they had the
Speaker 1: ultra wide lens and all those telephoto lenses built into
Speaker 1: the iPhone.
Speaker 2: He invented those. He's going to be here to talk
Speaker 2: about his latest creation.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways
Speaker 1: you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending
Speaker 1: it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who.
Speaker 2: Makes this show possible, including Adam filling in. I'm rich
Speaker 2: Timiro talk to you soon.