Speaker 1: International authorities shut down a major botnet. How to check
Speaker 1: if your machine has the affected malware. Your Android devices
Speaker 1: are going to be part of a massive new finding network.
Speaker 1: What you need to know about that a new smart
Speaker 1: watch for kids might be exactly what the parents ordered.
Speaker 1: Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on on richdmiro
Speaker 1: And this is Rich on Tech. This is the show
Speaker 1: where I talk about the tech stuff I think you
Speaker 1: should know about. It's also the place where I answer
Speaker 1: your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting,
Speaker 1: useful and fun. Phone lines are open at triple eight
Speaker 1: Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: be on the show, give me a call. If you
Speaker 1: have a question about technology, email is also open. Just
Speaker 1: go to Rich on tech dot tv. That's Rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot tv and hit the contact link. You can
Speaker 1: send me an email. I may read it on the
Speaker 1: show or answer your question.
Speaker 2: Guests.
Speaker 1: This week, we've got JP Schmetz, CEO of Ghoste. He
Speaker 1: is a digital privacy expert, and he's going to discuss tools, browsers,
Speaker 1: AI privacy and legislation like the American Privacy Rights Act
Speaker 1: and Later in the show, we've got a Neil Subberwall
Speaker 1: of Google Fitbit. He's going to discuss the company's new
Speaker 1: connected smartwatch for kids, the Fitbit.
Speaker 2: Ace LT Well, I'm.
Speaker 1: So glad that you joined me today for real news
Speaker 1: about technology. Here's the thing that happens to me all
Speaker 1: week long. I feel like I'm putting out tech fires.
Speaker 1: There are so many news sources. There are so many reels,
Speaker 1: There are so many tiktoks, there are so many headlines,
Speaker 1: there are so many instagrams stories, There is so much
Speaker 1: information floating around out there. What do most people do
Speaker 1: They read the headlines? What do most headlines do? They
Speaker 1: entice you with some sort of information that makes you
Speaker 1: want to click. Now, that is the logical web that
Speaker 1: we live in these days. You have to get people
Speaker 1: to click. There are many ways you can get your information.
Speaker 1: But I feel like half of my job is literally
Speaker 1: telling people the real story behind things. So people will
Speaker 1: come up to me and they'll say, hey, Rich, did
Speaker 1: you see how while that situation was with the w
Speaker 1: blop blup? And I say, well, let me explain what's
Speaker 1: really happening there. There are so many reels that people
Speaker 1: send me on a daily basis through Instagram, and it's
Speaker 1: always some kind of secret hidden feature on the iPhone
Speaker 1: or something that can make your Gmail work better or
Speaker 1: something who knows. It's also nonsensical. So what I try
Speaker 1: to do with my report sorts is try to help
Speaker 1: you understand the tech news that you need to know
Speaker 1: and also give you the actual information. It is so
Speaker 1: easy to say that Facebook is evil, or that Google
Speaker 1: is horrible, or that TikTok is bad, but let's get
Speaker 1: the real story behind things. And one of those real
Speaker 1: stories this week is with Google. So last week Google
Speaker 1: introduced something called AI overviews. This is kind of like
Speaker 1: an AI search overview of what you're looking for. So
Speaker 1: this is something that I was testing for many, many months.
Speaker 1: It's very helpful when you search for something on Google,
Speaker 1: at the top of your results will be sort of
Speaker 1: an AI generated summary that can really help you understand
Speaker 1: the answer that you're looking for. Google also has something
Speaker 1: called featured snippets, and these are kind of like little
Speaker 1: snippets of websites, the text of a website that might
Speaker 1: give you the answer you're looking for. So if you
Speaker 1: say something like what temperature do I need to cook
Speaker 1: a steak? To it might show you a featured snippet
Speaker 1: from a website about grilling steak and saying steak should
Speaker 1: be cooked to this temperature, and you say, oh, I
Speaker 1: got the answer.
Speaker 2: It's done. It's easy.
Speaker 1: I see that it's from the Weber website. I trust them. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's move on with life. AI overviews are very similar,
Speaker 1: except it takes a bunch of information and sort of
Speaker 1: synthesizes that into a little answer, kind of like CHATGBT,
Speaker 1: but for your search result. So what happened was a
Speaker 1: lot of people started asking Google when this thing went
Speaker 1: wide to everyone. They rolled it out to many millions
Speaker 1: of people over the past week. Well, people started getting
Speaker 1: really interesting answers, But did they That's the thing that
Speaker 1: Google now disputes. So Google has come out with an
Speaker 1: entire blog post about this. So people are posting all
Speaker 1: kinds of screenshots of odd and infactual overviews that Google
Speaker 1: had purportedly returned. Turns out a lot of those were
Speaker 1: faked screenshots. And here's the other thing about surfing the
Speaker 1: web these days and being on social media, it's really
Speaker 1: getting tough to figure out what's real and what's fake.
Speaker 1: Even reputable news organizations these days, will post a click
Speaker 1: baity headline and there might be some truth to it,
Speaker 1: but you have to dig really hard to find out
Speaker 1: what the true answer is. So, for instance, in my
Speaker 1: newsletter this week, I talked about malware that is masquerading
Speaker 1: as VPN software on computers, and in my newsletter, I
Speaker 1: actually give you the names of the VPN software that
Speaker 1: you should be searching for and the actual instructions on
Speaker 1: how to search it. It's very simple, it's very straightforward,
Speaker 1: and I feel like that's the best information that the
Speaker 1: average person should have instead of scaring them and saying
Speaker 1: they need to bring their computer in or stop using
Speaker 1: your computer. Here's how you figure it out. And if
Speaker 1: you can't figure it out using the instructions I give you,
Speaker 1: well take it to someone who can ask someone that's younger,
Speaker 1: like a teenager. They figure out this stuff very quickly.
Speaker 1: But anyway, back to the Google stuff, So Google said
Speaker 1: they explained kind of like how this is working. Their
Speaker 1: AI overviews kind of work differently than a chatbot like
Speaker 1: open AI because they're not just generating outputs based on
Speaker 1: training data.
Speaker 2: What they're done.
Speaker 1: What they're doing is they're actually using kind of the
Speaker 1: core Google search algorithm to come up with trusted websites
Speaker 1: that generate these AI overviews using high quality links from
Speaker 1: their index. Well, that means that these AI overviews don't
Speaker 1: necessarily hallucinate like open AI and chat GBT and all
Speaker 1: of these AI systems. Do these chatbots hallucinate They make
Speaker 1: up stuff because what they're really doing is they are
Speaker 1: just figuring out the next word in a sentence based
Speaker 1: on millions of sentences that they've seen. So when you say,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the most popular flavors for ice cream,
Speaker 1: they look through all of the databases that they have
Speaker 1: and they've seen that a lot of people have written
Speaker 1: that the most popular flavors for ice cream are vanilla
Speaker 1: and chocolate and strawberry, and they will write that up
Speaker 1: and summarize that. Now, when AI overviews get it wrong,
Speaker 1: according to Google, it's usually for other reasons. They misinterpret queries,
Speaker 1: they misinterpret the nuance of language on the web, or
Speaker 1: they don't have a lot of great information available. Remember
Speaker 1: that last one, because that's the one that really got
Speaker 1: this thing into trouble. So Google says that they did
Speaker 1: test this feature extensively before launch, but when millions of
Speaker 1: people starting start to use it, well, guess what, you're
Speaker 1: gonna find some things out about this that you didn't
Speaker 1: find before. Some of the things that people implied they
Speaker 1: returned were dangerous results for topics like leaving dogs in cars,
Speaker 1: smoking while pregnant, and depression. Those AI overviews, Google says,
Speaker 1: never appeared. So we encourage anyone encountering any sort of
Speaker 1: screenshots like that to do a search for yourself, which
Speaker 1: probably a lot of people don't do. They just share
Speaker 1: it on social media with out actually searching. One example
Speaker 1: that I saw and a lot of people saw, was
Speaker 1: how many rocks should I eat now? Prior to these
Speaker 1: screenshots going viral, Google said, nobody ever asked that question
Speaker 1: of Google. And so they call this a data void
Speaker 1: or an information gap. That means there's a limited amount
Speaker 1: of high quality content about a topic. So what happens.
Speaker 1: AI overview goes to the one website that it found
Speaker 1: information about that, and that's what it used to craft
Speaker 1: its answer. In this case, it might have been a
Speaker 1: form and there's a lot of good information in there,
Speaker 1: but sometimes there's less than helpful advice and also sarcastic
Speaker 1: and trolley content.
Speaker 2: So what to do?
Speaker 1: It cited that content and this is where it got
Speaker 1: into trouble, Like using glue to get cheese to stick
Speaker 1: to pizza. Nobody ever asked how do you get cheese
Speaker 1: to stick to pizza? And nobody ever answered you should
Speaker 1: use glue except someone in a form and that's what
Speaker 1: Google sited. So where does this all go. Google can't
Speaker 1: just go through and fix everything that it thinks people
Speaker 1: are going to ask, So they have to come up
Speaker 1: with a framework for this system, and that's what they've done.
Speaker 1: So they've improved their framework for getting better answers in
Speaker 1: these AI overviews. So they've built better detection mechanisms for
Speaker 1: nonsensical queries. So if I say, how many bites does
Speaker 1: it take to eat a MacBook laptop? Google AI search
Speaker 1: results is not going to attempt to answer that anymore
Speaker 1: because it knows that that's just nonsensical. Nobody asks now
Speaker 1: if you ask how many licks does it take to
Speaker 1: get to the center of a TUTSI pop? Sure people
Speaker 1: might ask that, and they might end up answering that.
Speaker 1: And by the way, do we ever figure out the
Speaker 1: answer for that? Because that was a commercial that was
Speaker 1: a part of my childhood for many years, and I
Speaker 1: think at the end of the commercial. It always ended
Speaker 1: in a chump, right, Oh, it's four four licks and
Speaker 1: three licks.
Speaker 2: And then a chump. So that's what happened.
Speaker 1: They've updated their system to limit the use of a
Speaker 1: of user generated content and response that could offer misleading advice,
Speaker 1: and they added triggering restrictions for questions where AI overviews
Speaker 1: were not proving to be helpful, and for topics like
Speaker 1: news and health they already have strong guardrails in place.
Speaker 1: For instance, they probably will not show AI overviews for
Speaker 1: hard news topics because freshness is a big part of
Speaker 1: questions like that. So when you ask a question about
Speaker 1: the news something that just happened, yes, Google might have
Speaker 1: it in its index in Google News, but it might
Speaker 1: not have made it to the broader index of Google Search,
Speaker 1: and so the AI overview will not be a good
Speaker 1: way to answer that. So this is the real story,
Speaker 1: and that's really what happened. And everyone gave up on
Speaker 1: Google last week or this week because of these AI overviews.
Speaker 1: But as we understand, a lot of them were faked,
Speaker 1: a lot of them were just nonsensical. And yes, you
Speaker 1: can ask anything in this world a nonsensical question and
Speaker 1: get a nonsensical answer, so we will see how Google
Speaker 1: continues to develop. They're AI overviews, but that is the
Speaker 1: real story, all right. Coming up on today's show, I
Speaker 1: will tell you how to remove that VPN malware if
Speaker 1: it is on your computer.
Speaker 2: But first let's take some of your calls.
Speaker 1: Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: My name is Rich Dmiro. This is 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 one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. The website for the show richontech
Speaker 1: dot tv. You can send me an email there by
Speaker 1: hitting the contact link or uh. You can also sign
Speaker 1: up for my newsletter while you're there, So if you
Speaker 1: sign up for the newsletter, there's a brand new issue today,
Speaker 1: just pop in your email address and that is packed
Speaker 1: with tips, tricks and tech news to know. Of of course,
Speaker 1: my TV segments as well, so if you want to
Speaker 1: watch those, you can see them in the newsletter. It's
Speaker 1: all at richon tech dot tv. If you want links
Speaker 1: for the show, then in real time, like if you're
Speaker 1: listening live on the radio, you can go for links
Speaker 1: at Rich on tech dot tv and just hit the
Speaker 1: light bulb.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go to.
Speaker 1: Mark in Lomita, California. Mark, You're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: Hey Rich, good morning morning. What do you what brand
Speaker 3: do you recommend for a car dash cam for like,
Speaker 3: let's say two hundred dollars in under.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a couple that I've tested that I really like.
Speaker 1: I think it really comes down to kind of what
Speaker 1: you want and how much you want to pay. So
Speaker 1: I think that the number one thing to figure out
Speaker 1: is do you want this to be connected? Like do
Speaker 1: you want a cellular connection on this? Because if someone
Speaker 1: were to take the dash cam, they would have all
Speaker 1: the footage, So the cellular helps you get alerts and
Speaker 1: also helps you have that footage go to the cloud.
Speaker 1: Is that something that interests you because those are a
Speaker 1: little bit more expensive?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like probably not, because I have seen some for
Speaker 3: like four and five hundred dollars. Yeah, and I just
Speaker 3: can't pay for that. It has to be like two
Speaker 3: hundred or under.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So there is a brand new brand. This just came out,
Speaker 1: And this is a brand that I've tested in the
Speaker 1: past that I really like. It's called Nexsar.
Speaker 2: Have you seen those?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: I have not.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what I think a good dash cam comes
Speaker 1: down to. Now, By the way, you can go on
Speaker 1: Amazon search dash cams and you can find one for
Speaker 1: forty bucks. Right, So there are many many dash cams
Speaker 1: out there. I think what really sets apart If you
Speaker 1: just want to point and shoot kind of camera that's
Speaker 1: going to be in your car and roll every time
Speaker 1: you're in there, any of those are gonna work. The
Speaker 1: real difference, I think comes down to the software. How
Speaker 1: tough is it to set this thing up? How tough
Speaker 1: is it to get video off of it when you
Speaker 1: actually need that video? And I think that's what's going
Speaker 1: to make some of them a little bit more expensive
Speaker 1: than the cheap knockoffs. So the big brand a couple
Speaker 1: of the brands that I like that I've tested, Nextsar,
Speaker 1: n e x Ar. They just came out with a
Speaker 1: brand new one called the Beam two dash cam. And
Speaker 1: what I like about this one is that not only
Speaker 1: is the software from Nextsar really really good, they have
Speaker 1: a bunch of different versions of this, so they have
Speaker 1: you know, that's the other question you need to ask yourself, Mark,
Speaker 1: do you want the road and the cabin or do
Speaker 1: you just want the road, because some of these are,
Speaker 1: you know, dual cameras where it records front and back,
Speaker 1: so that's another thing to take into consideration. But this
Speaker 1: one has a sixty four gigabyte model for two hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: and then you've got a it goes up to three
Speaker 1: hundred dollars for the for the dual mode one. And
Speaker 1: then there's also this one does include for two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars the cellular connection. So there is a monthly fee
Speaker 1: of ten dollars a month or eight dollars a month
Speaker 1: if you pay yearly. So that's just one option. They
Speaker 1: also have other cameras that are not connected, that are
Speaker 1: just standalone, and I really just like the brand and
Speaker 1: I like the way that their software works. So Nexstar
Speaker 1: is one of them.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: The other one that I've tested that I really like
Speaker 1: is from Vava va Va and so this one i've tested.
Speaker 1: The software is decent, the camera's good, it's got a
Speaker 1: nice design, it works really well, and so you can
Speaker 1: find those for under two hundred dollars. A lot of
Speaker 1: them are sold out on their website, so I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what's going on there, but I would check into those.
Speaker 1: And then the one that gets the brand that keeps
Speaker 1: coming up over and over and all these sort of
Speaker 1: like review sites is called Van True v A N
Speaker 1: T r U E. Now I have not tested that
Speaker 1: brand personally, but it does come up in a lot
Speaker 1: of these review sites that people seem to like it.
Speaker 1: And the other thing to keep in mind is that
Speaker 1: when you run these dash cams, there is a cable
Speaker 1: typically and that could get kind of annoying. So just
Speaker 1: kind of keep a look at how this thing connects.
Speaker 1: Some of them connect to the oh gosh, what's that
Speaker 1: port called like the OBD port or whatever it's called.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: So that's like, you know, that's the left.
Speaker 1: Of your of your steering wheel down below by the
Speaker 1: you know, the gears and all that stuff, or the
Speaker 1: you know, the gas pedal.
Speaker 2: So that's one way.
Speaker 1: Other way another way they connect is just going into
Speaker 1: like what used to be called the cigarette lighter. I
Speaker 1: guess they call it what the the power port, right, right,
Speaker 1: whatever that thing's called these days, right, the uh you know,
Speaker 1: so you just have to remember, like, you know, the
Speaker 1: running the cable could also be an issue. But you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of them come with tools in the box
Speaker 1: to help you run it along your dash, down the
Speaker 1: side of the door and then over.
Speaker 2: So those are a couple of brands.
Speaker 1: The other websites I would check out that I like
Speaker 1: is Wirecutter if you've heard of them. They they were
Speaker 1: a great independent site. They were bought by the New
Speaker 1: York Times, but they still do some pretty good reviews.
Speaker 2: I would check them.
Speaker 1: And then the other one is best Reviews dot com,
Speaker 1: which is owned by the parent company of the TV
Speaker 1: station I work for. But those are some good places
Speaker 1: to start. It will all be linked up on the
Speaker 1: website rich on Tech dot tv. Thanks for the call.
Speaker 1: Mark eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you talking technology at triple eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to.
Speaker 2: Two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: I hope you're having a fantastic day. So this week,
Speaker 1: the US, along with some international partners and authorities, took
Speaker 1: down a major major botnet. This is the nine to
Speaker 1: eleven S five botnet. This was active from May twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen to July twenty twenty two, and then it came
Speaker 1: back again in October twenty twenty three. So this thing
Speaker 1: has been around for a very long time. It compromised
Speaker 1: over nineteen million computers globally.
Speaker 2: What does that mean.
Speaker 1: It means that all of these people downloaded software to
Speaker 1: their computer that they thought would do one thing, but
Speaker 1: it was actually turning their computer into a secret zombie.
Speaker 1: That this, you know, these bad actors could use to
Speaker 1: carry out crimes, and they used it to carry out
Speaker 1: cyber crimes and fraud and harassment and all kinds of
Speaker 1: things because it looked like, you know, these computers at
Speaker 1: big companies, right, they can detect when they're seeing fraud
Speaker 1: because it comes from registered IP addresses that they sort
Speaker 1: of know. It's like a block of IPS that they say, Okay,
Speaker 1: this looks odd, but when it comes from your computer
Speaker 1: in your house, it does not look odd. And we're
Speaker 1: seeing this kind of attack happening more and more, and
Speaker 1: so the FBI took this down and they put instructions
Speaker 1: on the web to help people figure out if they
Speaker 1: were running this VPN software. That's what it was, if
Speaker 1: they're running this VPN malware on their computer. So the
Speaker 1: names of this VPN malware mask, VPN, Do VPN, DW
Speaker 1: Paladin VPN, Proxy, gate Shield VPN, and Shine VPN. So
Speaker 1: all of these people downloaded this software thinking, oh, I
Speaker 1: can use a free VPN online that I found and
Speaker 1: next thing, you know, you would never realize that your
Speaker 1: computer is doing nefarious things in the background. So how
Speaker 1: do you find if this is on your computer? Well,
Speaker 1: you search for it. You can go into your task
Speaker 1: manager by pressing control alt delete and looking for the
Speaker 1: processes named mask, do or you know the other ones
Speaker 1: I mentioned. You can use the start menu to search
Speaker 1: for any of the VPN names listed above that I
Speaker 1: just mentioned, and you can go to your ad or
Speaker 1: remove programs and search for the malicious software names there.
Speaker 1: There's also a more geeky way of looking and file explorer,
Speaker 1: but that's if you're really advanced. The bottom line, I
Speaker 1: did get a good question on my Facebook page. Someone asked, hey,
Speaker 1: is my malware bytes going to detect this? And malware
Speaker 1: bytes actually did a blog post about it, but they
Speaker 1: don't make it really clear if it detects this software
Speaker 1: in the background. But they said you should look for
Speaker 1: this manually and then do a manual scan of your computer.
Speaker 1: So That's what I would do. Even if you're running
Speaker 1: something like a malware bytes or any of these other programs,
Speaker 1: I would just take a look and make sure that
Speaker 1: none of these VPN applications are listed on your machine,
Speaker 1: and if they are, get them off of there because
Speaker 1: you don't want them on there. Mask VPN, Do VPN,
Speaker 1: Paladin VPN, proxygate Shield VPN, and Shine VPN.
Speaker 2: All of those.
Speaker 1: Instructions are on the website. Go to Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. You can tap the latest newsletter that is
Speaker 1: information is in there, or you can tap the light
Speaker 1: bulb and that will bring you to the link for
Speaker 1: that FBI information. Let's go to John in studio, John
Speaker 1: in Fallbrook, California.
Speaker 2: John, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 4: Thanks Rich, enjoy your show. Thank you for taking my question.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I have I have an R low Pro five camera, okay,
Speaker 6: and I can't seem to hook it up to my
Speaker 6: WiFi and I'm using LTE at home with Verizon. I
Speaker 6: had one of these cameras before, the.
Speaker 4: Same model, and I had hooked it up and it
Speaker 4: was connected to the WiFi and then the battery went dead,
Speaker 4: so I brought it in and charged it and I
Speaker 4: never was able to communicate again, so I called Arlow.
Speaker 4: They sent me a new one and I can't get
Speaker 4: connected now an ideas.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you have you have the rlow camera, and
Speaker 1: you have you have the Verizon Home Internet box.
Speaker 4: Yeah, LTE at home right.
Speaker 2: Okay, So and that puts out a Wi Fi signal.
Speaker 4: That's correct, it's a router, a cell, a cell signal
Speaker 4: that goes into a router into a WiFi got it?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, just their standard. So have you.
Speaker 1: So I'm guessing that this camera is on the two
Speaker 1: point four gigahertz network, and your Verizon box is putting
Speaker 1: out a five g signal, a five gigahertz signal as
Speaker 1: it's as its base signal, and this camera is not
Speaker 1: finding the other one.
Speaker 7: So do you know it puts out a five and
Speaker 7: a two point four okay, And I'm almost sure that
Speaker 7: it's on the two point four.
Speaker 4: It's on the same network that the other one was on,
Speaker 4: and it's the same network that my phone uses. But
Speaker 4: one of my TVs uses the five.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, if it's newer. The five is the newer,
Speaker 1: kind of more robust network. So what I would do
Speaker 1: here is I would factory reset this camera to get
Speaker 1: it back.
Speaker 2: Have you done that.
Speaker 4: There? I have used the SINC button. I don't know
Speaker 4: if any factory reset.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I would just a quick search online for
Speaker 1: r LOW and then factory reset. So I would start
Speaker 1: fresh with this camera and I would try to connect
Speaker 1: it to your router that way and see going through
Speaker 1: the setup process.
Speaker 2: That's number one.
Speaker 1: If that does not work, then I would flip that
Speaker 1: little Verizon Home Internet box over. There is instructions on
Speaker 1: the bottom on how to connect to the actual box
Speaker 1: to modify the network.
Speaker 2: Have you been into those settings at all?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 1: I haven't, Okay, so proceed with caution because you don't
Speaker 1: want to change a lot of stuff and mess things up.
Speaker 1: But what you're looking for is a way to temporarily
Speaker 1: turn off that five gigahertz spectrum, that five gigahertz band
Speaker 1: on that Verizon box, just to connect this camera. And
Speaker 1: then once the camera gets connected to that, because that
Speaker 1: will be the only network that it sees, hopefully it'll
Speaker 1: just go on there and then you can turn on
Speaker 1: that five gigahertz network again. It seems like you're not
Speaker 1: the only one having this problem. If you look up online,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen that. There are some there are
Speaker 1: some other folks having the same issue, but everyone that
Speaker 1: I'm seeing it sounds like the reset will definitely make
Speaker 1: this work again. I think what's happening is your camera
Speaker 1: is looking for that other network that it used to remember,
Speaker 1: and it's not finding that for some reason. And so
Speaker 1: I think you just need to reset this camera back
Speaker 1: to factory and then hopefully it will find that two
Speaker 1: point four spectrum.
Speaker 2: Good question, John.
Speaker 1: We often get that question a lot of people having
Speaker 1: trouble with some devices, with these routers. It's just it's
Speaker 1: doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen. Teresa
Speaker 1: in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania writes in Hey, Rich, I have a
Speaker 1: question regarding paying my bills using a password manager. I
Speaker 1: understand how to set it up, but the password manager
Speaker 1: acts as a safe for all my accounts and their passwords.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: When I open up the password manager using the master
Speaker 1: password and gain access to my best Buy account using
Speaker 1: my best Buy username and password to pay my bill,
Speaker 1: this is where I'm confused. Thanks for your time, Teresa,
Speaker 1: So you're correct. The password manager does act as a
Speaker 1: vault for all of your accounts and their passwords, and
Speaker 1: most of them will actually log you in. So when
Speaker 1: you go to the best Buy website, if you have
Speaker 1: that information saved in your password manager, it will automatically
Speaker 1: fill that information in without you doing much and it
Speaker 1: will actually even log you in. Now, if it doesn't
Speaker 1: do that, or you're not comfortable with that, you can
Speaker 1: just open up your password manager when you need to
Speaker 1: log into best Buy again, and you would just go
Speaker 1: and search best Buy inside your vault and you would
Speaker 1: just copy the password from the manager and then paste
Speaker 1: it into the best Buy website. Usually your username is
Speaker 1: your email address. You don't need to copy and paste that.
Speaker 1: But those are the two ways you do it. It
Speaker 1: is very straightforward, it is very simple. But ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of the time these password managers are actually going
Speaker 1: to just fill in the information on their own. There's
Speaker 1: not much you have to do. Sometimes, if the website's
Speaker 1: a little different or a little off, which you need
Speaker 1: to be careful about, it will say, hey, are you
Speaker 1: sure this is the website? Are you sure you want
Speaker 1: us to paste this in? I've noticed that they've gotten
Speaker 1: pretty smart about pasting stuff in. But otherwise, you can
Speaker 1: always go into your password manager and just manually copy
Speaker 1: and paste that password. You just have to remember that
Speaker 1: strong master password for your vault and keep that in
Speaker 1: a safe place somewhere in your head. And also set
Speaker 1: up two factor authentication. Great question if you have one.
Speaker 1: Go to the website rich on Tech dot TV. Hit contact.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, I'm gonna tell you about this
Speaker 1: new fit Bit ace lte, the new smart watch for kids.
Speaker 1: Find out how it keeps them active and keeps parents connected.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four two four one zero one. Hope you don't mind
Speaker 1: the trip down memory lane. We're playing some ninety songs
Speaker 1: this weekend.
Speaker 2: I just looked it up.
Speaker 1: That song kissed Me by sixpence none the Richer came
Speaker 1: out twenty.
Speaker 2: Seven years ago.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe that
Speaker 1: I was. You know, if you listen to like a
Speaker 1: classy a classic station, like a classic rock, sometimes they
Speaker 1: play songs from like like We're getting up there in
Speaker 1: those anyway. It's just like when I when I was
Speaker 1: growing up, classic songs were like.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't whatever. Anyway, it's not a
Speaker 2: music show. Uh, let's go to Fran. Let's go to
Speaker 2: Fran and Studio City.
Speaker 3: Fran.
Speaker 2: You're on with Rich.
Speaker 9: Hi Rich, longtime fan.
Speaker 10: So I'm in the market for a new TV.
Speaker 11: And currently we want to keep our spectrum.
Speaker 10: Because we have a DVR, and we use a Roku,
Speaker 10: and we have an LG an older LG TV that
Speaker 10: won't let me update any more apps or anything like that.
Speaker 10: So what's annoying is that every time we need to
Speaker 10: go to, say spectrum, we have to change the input.
Speaker 9: And so I'm looking at the TVs and someone told
Speaker 9: me that a Samsung has Spectrum built in in, so
Speaker 9: we wouldn't have that issue. But I'm an big Apple user.
Speaker 10: I have Apple all over the house.
Speaker 9: Apple airport extenders, and I'm wondering if that's if I
Speaker 9: go to Samsung, if it's going to uh interfere with
Speaker 9: my Apple setup, you just give.
Speaker 2: Me more headache. Do you have an Apple TV?
Speaker 1: Nokay not, so what's your Apple set up?
Speaker 2: With the with the TV situation, It's just right now.
Speaker 9: It's a USB into an airport, an airport extender.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're not using you're not using any aspect
Speaker 1: of your Apple stuff with the TVs.
Speaker 10: The only thing I have is an older Apple TV,
Speaker 10: you know, one of those little squares, and and I
Speaker 10: do use that occasionally to make it easy to access
Speaker 10: Apple screen sharing.
Speaker 2: Okay, is that connected to your main TV?
Speaker 10: Pardon me?
Speaker 2: Is that connected to your main TV?
Speaker 10: I can connect it because I have four HDMI ports.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well here here's what I would say. So a
Speaker 1: couple of things here. Number one, you've got the DVR
Speaker 1: from Spectrum. You don't want to give that up because
Speaker 1: you you like your DVR, you like your programs, you
Speaker 1: like switching channels.
Speaker 2: Is that what I'm understanding?
Speaker 10: Yeah, mainly mainly to the ballgame.
Speaker 12: But yeah, no, I get it way, I get it too.
Speaker 1: So there there is a Spectrum TV app, and I
Speaker 1: think that's what your friend is referring to. And Samsung,
Speaker 1: according to the Spectrum website, Samsung Smart TVs do have
Speaker 1: that app. So theoretically you could ditch the box on
Speaker 1: this TV, use the Samsung Smart TV interface onload the
Speaker 1: apps for like Netflix and things like that and then
Speaker 1: you can also just open up the Spectrum app.
Speaker 2: Now that would be without a box.
Speaker 13: So, uh, I don't want to eliminate the buvenant, Okay, No.
Speaker 10: We want to be able to use the DVR, fast forward,
Speaker 10: go back, record stuff, all of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and some of that you can do on the
Speaker 1: on this Spectrum app. I personally I use the Spectrum app. I.
Speaker 1: It's not as easy as the actual box, of course,
Speaker 1: not because it's an app and you know the channels
Speaker 1: and things.
Speaker 2: Everything's just kind of a little bit.
Speaker 10: Right, and my husband is app resistant.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's fine.
Speaker 1: So if you want to get a TV and you
Speaker 1: want a smart TV, there's a couple of ways you
Speaker 1: can do this. Number one, you can get what's called
Speaker 1: the Fire TV Cube. And what's neat about the Fire
Speaker 1: TV Cube is that you can have all the smart
Speaker 1: stuff on your screen, but your your DVR from Spectrum
Speaker 1: actually plugs into the back of that and then that
Speaker 1: plugs into your TV.
Speaker 2: So what that.
Speaker 1: Means is that you when you so you see your
Speaker 1: DVR all day like your TV is just the way
Speaker 1: it is right, just the way it is today with
Speaker 1: your with your Spectrum DVR. But when you want to
Speaker 1: watch Netflix, all you have to do is press a
Speaker 1: button on the Fire TV remote and without changing an input,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna overlay Netflix on top of your screen already.
Speaker 1: So it's one input for your entire setup. Now, that
Speaker 1: box is a little expensive because it's a it's over
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars. Plus you have the TV, plus you
Speaker 1: have your DVR. But that's the cleanest setup that I
Speaker 1: can think of. If you want to continue using that
Speaker 1: DVR box and go with a smart TV. Now, if
Speaker 1: you just go with a Samsung Smart TV, you can
Speaker 1: still use the smart TV, but yes, you are gonna
Speaker 1: have to change inputs every time you want to use
Speaker 1: that DVR with Spectrum and then switch to something like
Speaker 1: a Netflix, it will have to switch to that that
Speaker 1: Netflix input.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's on the smart TV kind of side of things.
Speaker 11: Currently, we're currently using ro coup because on our other
Speaker 11: TVs in the house, we use the Spectrum.
Speaker 14: App on the ro coup.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, so you already understand what that set up is, Like,
Speaker 1: what are you asking me? What are you trying to
Speaker 1: figure out?
Speaker 8: That's why I, uh, well, I've been you know, we've
Speaker 8: been a big fan of the l G TVs. They've
Speaker 8: been great, So I guess when I when I was
Speaker 8: investigating them, somebody said that the Sanson TV is a
Speaker 8: better option for people that.
Speaker 13: Want to eliminate one of the uh, you know, eliminate
Speaker 13: changing the import or.
Speaker 10: Eliminate one of the remote.
Speaker 14: So I don't know, but I guess what I want
Speaker 14: to know is what does Samsung TV If it.
Speaker 13: Does eliminate one of the remote will it interfere with
Speaker 13: my Apple setup?
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to interfere with your Apple setup,
Speaker 1: but a couple of things. I would look for a
Speaker 1: TV that has airplay built in. A lot of these
Speaker 1: smart TVs do, which means you'll be able to share
Speaker 1: stuff from your iPhone screen to that TV. Various brands
Speaker 1: now have that built in, so I would look for
Speaker 1: airplay on that TV.
Speaker 10: Okay.
Speaker 1: And then when it comes to whether you go with
Speaker 1: Samsung or LG, if you like LG, stick with LG.
Speaker 1: I am not sure if it will eliminate any sort
Speaker 1: of remote control or anything, because if you want to
Speaker 1: use that Spectrum DVR, that's going to be on one
Speaker 1: input and then the other input is going to have
Speaker 1: all of the smart stuff all of the smarts from
Speaker 1: the TV. That's generally how they work. So unless the
Speaker 1: lgtvs are overlaying the smarts on top of the spectrum box,
Speaker 1: go with the TV you want. Just make sure it
Speaker 1: has airplace you can use all your Apple stuff and
Speaker 1: make sure the smart TV supports the apps that you.
Speaker 2: Want to use.
Speaker 1: Eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. This is
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple
Speaker 1: A rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four two four one zero one.
Speaker 4: Coming up.
Speaker 1: There we go, gotta get the hook, like Bobo says.
Speaker 1: Coming up this hour, we're gonna talk to JP Schmtz,
Speaker 1: CEO of ghoste. He is a digital privacy expert and advocate. Plus,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about Amazon Prime members get a tasty
Speaker 1: new perk, and how Google is auto enrolling Android devices
Speaker 1: in the Find my network.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you what you need to know.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: My name is rich Demiro.
Speaker 1: This is the show where we talk about the tech
Speaker 1: stuff I think you should know about. Just got a
Speaker 1: message from my wife. My child has won the championships
Speaker 1: for his little league baseball team.
Speaker 2: That is very exciting.
Speaker 1: So congrats to my uh my child Tanner, who has
Speaker 1: been playing baseball for a while.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: Speaking of kids, Tanner is actually helping me test out
Speaker 1: a new gadget. It's called the Fitbit ace LTE. This
Speaker 1: is a fitbit, but it's really a smart watch for
Speaker 1: kids and their parents.
Speaker 2: Oh we are the champions. Here we go.
Speaker 1: We got a little celebration song. Oh here we go
Speaker 1: sounds so good. Sadly, no one on the podcast will
Speaker 1: be able to enjoy this. Did you play baseball?
Speaker 9: Bo?
Speaker 14: Bo?
Speaker 15: No?
Speaker 2: I played football? Football? Okay, there we go. Our kids
Speaker 2: listening to this song at this point, There we go.
Speaker 2: It's actually amazing. As a mark of modern technology, I'm
Speaker 2: able to keep an eye on my kids game right here.
Speaker 2: I've got a little They stream the games.
Speaker 1: I mean if you would have told me that ten
Speaker 1: years ago, I would never would have believed it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they they have cameras at these fields and you can
Speaker 1: just watch online.
Speaker 2: Anyway. Congratulations to them.
Speaker 1: Yes, as I was talking about, he is helping me
Speaker 1: test this new Fitbit ace LTE. This is a smart
Speaker 1: watch design for kids ages seven and uh and what
Speaker 1: it's meant to do is help them combine exercise with
Speaker 1: play to encourage an active lifestyle. But it also helps
Speaker 1: mom and dad and guardians and grandparents keep in touch
Speaker 1: with your child. So it combines the tracking element, the
Speaker 1: physical activity tracking element, with actual location tracking, calls and texts.
Speaker 2: So let me tell you about this device.
Speaker 1: It's got interactive games built in that reward physical activity.
Speaker 1: So yesterday when Tanner started setting this thing up, he goes, Dad,
Speaker 1: I can't play any of the games. I said, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got to get out there and move before it
Speaker 1: unlocks the games. So that's kind of interesting. It's got
Speaker 1: activity tracking, so there's this noodle activity ring. It's got
Speaker 1: an EG. I hope I'm saying that right. These are
Speaker 1: little customizable creatures that get healthier and happier as kids
Speaker 1: meet their activity goals. So Tanner was of course customizing
Speaker 1: his EG to look like him, which was kind of fun.
Speaker 1: And then when it comes to privacy and safety, parents
Speaker 1: can view their child's location and their activity data. This
Speaker 1: is protected and deleted after a set period of time,
Speaker 1: so twenty four hours for location data thirty five days
Speaker 1: for activity. Parents can always call, send, and receive messages,
Speaker 1: and manage contacts through the fitbit ace app. I will
Speaker 1: talk about more of that in a moment, because that's
Speaker 1: the interesting part of this whole thing. There is a
Speaker 1: school time mode. There is water resistance up to fifty meters,
Speaker 1: sixteen hours of battery life between charges. Comes with strong
Speaker 1: glass for scratch resistance, a bumper that's included to keep
Speaker 1: this thing from hitting the wall. My kids have Apple Watches,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times they'll hit the wall with
Speaker 1: the Apple Watch and it scratches it or it cracks
Speaker 1: the screen. It's happened with both of them. So if
Speaker 1: you have an Apple Watch, get one of those little
Speaker 1: plastic screen protectors or glass screen protectors to save you
Speaker 1: a headache of getting a three hundred dollars screen repair.
Speaker 1: There's also six different bands. The bands are unique because
Speaker 1: each one of them looks unique. But when you you
Speaker 1: snap it onto the watch, it changes the watch face
Speaker 1: and it kind of changes the whole theme of the watch.
Speaker 2: That's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: So this is two hundred and thirty dollars, which I
Speaker 1: know is very expensive, but a lot of parents are
Speaker 1: looking for something like this, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: current solutions out there are pretty bad. If it's not
Speaker 1: the Apple Watch, it goes downhill very very fast. Data
Speaker 1: is ten dollars a month, or one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: dollars for the year if you buy one. Now they're
Speaker 1: slashing that in half, so she'll get your first year
Speaker 1: of data for sixty dollars. So all in for the
Speaker 1: first year, you're looking at about two hundred and ninety dollars.
Speaker 1: That includes the watch and the service. It's available June
Speaker 1: fifth through the Google Store and Amazon. Now Here is
Speaker 1: what I've noticed the catches. And by the way, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have a Neil's subber wall of Google Fitbit to
Speaker 1: discuss this in more detail in the third hour of
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 2: But I figure I tell you all about this watch.
Speaker 1: And my observation because here's what I noticed setting up
Speaker 1: this watch. This is not a classic cellular connected watch
Speaker 1: as you might expect. There is no phone number for
Speaker 1: this device as far as I can tell, so it
Speaker 1: is LTE connected, but all of the calling and all
Speaker 1: of the texting and messaging actually goes through the app.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: It means that to set people up to be able
Speaker 1: to communicate with this watch. It's a little trickier than
Speaker 1: just giving out a phone number. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the biggest thing that parents should know if you are
Speaker 1: thinking about buying this compared to something like an Apple Watch. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, with the Apple Watch, both of my kids
Speaker 1: have an assigned phone number. I can give you that
Speaker 1: phone number, just like I can any other device.
Speaker 2: In the world.
Speaker 1: Anyone can text or call that phone number. Now that's
Speaker 1: good and that's bad. It makes it easy to get
Speaker 1: in touch with it, but it makes it bad for
Speaker 1: you know, a random person can text them. My kids
Speaker 1: get they actually get invites, like club events, like the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that Bobo's promoting on his social media.
Speaker 1: Like it'll be like, hey, come up to the eighteen
Speaker 1: plus club on Friday night. It's like free, free entry
Speaker 1: for guys before midnight. And my kids, You're like, what
Speaker 1: is this And so I'm like, now that's a spam text,
Speaker 1: I mean, or it's just misdirected.
Speaker 2: I'm promoting because it's my birthday party. It is your
Speaker 2: birthday is this week. It's Wednesday, the fifth, the national holiday.
Speaker 1: That's it. It's the Bobo Holiday. Yes, it is Bobo's birthday.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about turning what you're turning. I'm
Speaker 1: proud to turn to forty one. It's a milestone.
Speaker 2: Well I think forty is a milestone. Well, forty one
Speaker 2: is the milestone. There you go. I just feel older. Yeah,
Speaker 2: woke up this morning and my knee was already hurt.
Speaker 1: The power of suggestion. I'm getting older. But you do
Speaker 1: notice as you get older that you know you're getting older.
Speaker 1: When you move, you make sounds.
Speaker 2: As you move like.
Speaker 1: Ow yeah, and you will have that moment when when
Speaker 1: you move just a certain way and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it's just you crick something and it's it's that's it.
Speaker 1: It's gonna feel that way for a week. Well, happy birthday, Bobo.
Speaker 1: So that is the main thing to know about this
Speaker 1: device is that adding contacts like I want to add
Speaker 1: my kid as one of the contacts like his brother
Speaker 1: and said, okay, you need a Gmail account. So it
Speaker 1: seems like the person that has that wants to contact
Speaker 1: this device has to go through the fitbit Ace app,
Speaker 1: which is a little weird. It's a little wonky. It's
Speaker 1: not as like straightforward. Now with that said, I think
Speaker 1: for a kid ages seven to twelve. It's probably not
Speaker 1: a bad idea. You're if you're a parent, you're gonna
Speaker 1: download this app. It's gonna be very simple to text
Speaker 1: back and forth with your kids to see where they
Speaker 1: are on a map. It's all very good. It's just
Speaker 1: I think you just need to know that one little
Speaker 1: key aspect of it is that it's not a phone
Speaker 1: number assigned to this watch. So as long as you're
Speaker 1: cool with that, I think this is a really, really
Speaker 1: good solution. The software is excellent, the device is excellent
Speaker 1: so far.
Speaker 2: I'm still testing it.
Speaker 1: I'll have my full review soon, but I think that
Speaker 1: that is what you need to know about the fitbit
Speaker 1: ace LTE.
Speaker 2: I will have a.
Speaker 1: Full interview a little bit later on in the show.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll get to some more questions in a
Speaker 1: moment at eight eight eight rich one one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one before
Speaker 1: we go to break. Amazon has a new Prime perk.
Speaker 1: You now get grub Hub Plus membership if you are
Speaker 1: a Prime member for free and ongoing. This is supposedly
Speaker 1: worth one hundred and twenty dollars annually.
Speaker 2: But give me a break.
Speaker 1: You are paying so much extra if you are ever
Speaker 1: ordering anything online to be delivered to your house. And yes,
Speaker 1: they can say, oh, you're getting zero delivery fees on
Speaker 1: eligible orders over twelve dollars, but you're still paying a
Speaker 1: service fee, and those service fees more than makeup for whatever.
Speaker 1: So yes, you're paying less than a person that's just
Speaker 1: coming to the Grubhub app that doesn't have them membership,
Speaker 1: but you're still paying a premium to get someone to
Speaker 1: go to a restaurant, pick up your food and bring
Speaker 1: it to your house. That's how these things work. And
Speaker 1: we did it last night. Nothing against it. We did
Speaker 1: DoorDash last night and it's great. It is convenience. It
Speaker 1: was seven dollars more to have someone bring it to
Speaker 1: my house then for me to go pick it up.
Speaker 1: But on a Friday night, do I feel like going out? No,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to go home and have someone bring
Speaker 1: my food to me, so I paid that premium.
Speaker 2: Do I do it every night? Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: It is way too expensive to order food through these apps.
Speaker 1: They do have a promotional offer so now through June.
Speaker 1: Now through is it June second, it's only a couple
Speaker 1: more days. Prime members can save five dollars on a
Speaker 1: Grubhub order over twenty five dollars using the code prime five.
Speaker 1: The other news here is that you can order Grubhub
Speaker 1: through the Amazon App, so one less app on your phone.
Speaker 1: You do have to activate it, but if you go
Speaker 1: to the Amazon app and you search grubhub, you can
Speaker 1: activate the Grubhub within the Amazon app, and you can
Speaker 1: also activate that free prime five code. Let me just
Speaker 1: confirm that it that it actually expires when it does,
Speaker 1: because you've got to act on that fast if you
Speaker 1: want it. Let's see zero dollar. Yeah, it's only through
Speaker 1: June second, so if you want to, yeah, basically this weekend.
Speaker 2: So that's it.
Speaker 1: Five dollars off your twenty five dollars order. But you
Speaker 1: now get Grubhub plus for the entire year. It used
Speaker 1: to be once you signed up for it renew at
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty dollars.
Speaker 2: They're only doing it as like a promo. Now it's
Speaker 2: going to be indefinitely.
Speaker 1: Eighty to eight Rich one O one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: This is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: More rich on Tech coming your way right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking
Speaker 1: technology at eighty to eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one
Speaker 1: the website for the show rich on Tech dot TV,
Speaker 1: and you can find me on social media. I am
Speaker 1: at you guessed it, rich on Tech.
Speaker 15: Let's go to.
Speaker 1: Don in Rancho, Palos Verdes, California. Don Dan, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich.
Speaker 16: Yeah, Hi, Rich. I got a question about passwords. I
Speaker 16: had these password compromises, and that says I should change
Speaker 16: the password. And then I go and look on it.
Speaker 16: There's one hundred and fifty five passwords I have to
Speaker 16: take care.
Speaker 2: Of that were compromised, or that you have total?
Speaker 16: Well I have total, but there there's that many compromised
Speaker 16: and I should change the password immediately.
Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, okay, that does seem overwhelming. Yeah, what's
Speaker 1: telling you that these passwords are compromised?
Speaker 16: I just says that there was a data leak, and
Speaker 16: I heard something on Ticketmaster was compromised. I noticed Ticketmaster
Speaker 16: is one of the account.
Speaker 2: But which which app is telling you that these are compromised?
Speaker 2: Is it Google? Chrome? Is it the I FID.
Speaker 16: Would to ge let me see it would be where
Speaker 16: you just check on password. So have I been on
Speaker 16: the computer?
Speaker 2: Have I? Oh, oh, so on your computer on your
Speaker 2: Chrome web browser.
Speaker 16: Uh, Chrome, I'm not sure. I don't see Chrome. I
Speaker 16: think it's a Google.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So if you go to passwords dot Google dot com,
Speaker 1: is that okay? If you go there and you're looking
Speaker 1: at password check up, is that what.
Speaker 16: You're I'm on passwords it says detect compromise password security
Speaker 16: recommendation okay, and what not? Sure what it's under?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like what's telling you to do that? Because that's
Speaker 2: that's my question.
Speaker 1: I don't now are you using the same password across
Speaker 1: all one hundred and fifty five websites?
Speaker 16: No, of course not. Okay, so they're different.
Speaker 2: I doubt that all of your past Are you using
Speaker 2: a password manager?
Speaker 16: No, I'm not. That's what I was wondering. Okay, should
Speaker 16: I go to that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I would.
Speaker 1: So what I would do is if you're gonna, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna embark on this password change. Now, first off,
Speaker 1: I'm a little concerned as to what is serving up
Speaker 1: this message to you because it sounds a little bit fishy,
Speaker 1: and so I'm a little concerned that you know, something
Speaker 1: is maliciously trying to serve you up a message. But
Speaker 1: I you know, without knowing what's telling you to change
Speaker 1: these passwords. Here's what I would do. My main thing
Speaker 1: is that I think you should try to get a
Speaker 1: password manager in use, and if you're using I have
Speaker 1: a couple of recommendations for that.
Speaker 2: So if you're using to use an iPhone or Android iPhone, okay, so,
Speaker 2: and you're using a Chrome web browser on your computer.
Speaker 16: I believe it's Google.
Speaker 2: It's it's Google, okay, so Google Chrome.
Speaker 1: So I would you could use the Google Chrome built
Speaker 1: in password manager. So if you go on Google Chrome
Speaker 1: upper right hand corner, there's three little dots and that's
Speaker 1: the menu button. If you go to passwords and autofill,
Speaker 1: there is an option called Google Password Manager, and you
Speaker 1: can start using that to save your passwords and to
Speaker 1: also generate your passwords. And then on your iPhone, you
Speaker 1: want to go in and actually set the Google Password
Speaker 1: Manager as your preferred autofill and then anytime you encounter
Speaker 1: a website that you need to log into, Google will
Speaker 1: spring into action and say, oh, I know the password,
Speaker 1: and it will fill it in for you.
Speaker 2: So that's the main thing.
Speaker 1: If you're going to embark on this journey to change
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty five passwords. That's what I would do,
Speaker 1: so that you get them all in a safe place
Speaker 1: and they are generated, unique and strong and one time only.
Speaker 2: Now, the way I.
Speaker 1: Would tackle the one hundred and fifty five passwords change
Speaker 1: is I would start with your main apps, So the
Speaker 1: main most secure app, so that's your banking, that is
Speaker 1: your email, and I think those are pretty much your
Speaker 1: financial and your email is kind of in your social
Speaker 1: media if you have them.
Speaker 2: Those are the main ones.
Speaker 1: You want to change first, and then of course you
Speaker 1: can change the lesser ones a little bit later as
Speaker 1: you get down this path.
Speaker 2: But that's what I would do. Okay, does that sound good?
Speaker 2: Sound doable?
Speaker 16: I will try it?
Speaker 5: Thanks for yeah.
Speaker 1: And the website I would go to first is just
Speaker 1: go to passwords dot Google dot com to see if
Speaker 1: you're already using that password manager, and if you aren't,
Speaker 1: there's a little that's an easy way to turn it on.
Speaker 1: You can just hit the gear icon on that page
Speaker 1: and it says offer to save passwords, and there's also
Speaker 1: auto sign in, So that's probably the easiest way to
Speaker 1: do it. And you know that'll work across your iPhone
Speaker 1: and your Chrome web browser, and it's a it's a nice, free,
Speaker 1: easy way to start with a password manager.
Speaker 16: Got it, Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: All right, Dan, looks like you've got some homework there.
Speaker 1: I will be I will be checking it and grading
Speaker 1: it when you come into class on Monday morning.
Speaker 2: So please complete it in Uh.
Speaker 1: You don't have to complete all one hundred and fifty five,
Speaker 1: but do as much as you can, all right. Eighty
Speaker 1: eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. So Google is going to
Speaker 1: start in auto enrolling Android devices in their find my network.
Speaker 1: So this is their equivalent of Google of Apple's AirTag
Speaker 1: find my Network.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell you all about that.
Speaker 1: But coming up, we're gonna talk privacy. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: with the CEO of Ghostry, and he's gonna tell us
Speaker 1: about tools, browsers and how to protect ourselves online. That's
Speaker 1: coming up right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology. We'll get back to the phone lines in
Speaker 1: just a moment. That's eighty eight rich one on one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: But first let's talk to JP Schmatt's CEO, of Ghosty.
Speaker 1: This is an ad blocker and a privacy browser and
Speaker 1: JP is a digital privacy expert and advocate.
Speaker 2: JP. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Thanks thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: So explain what ghosty is all about.
Speaker 5: First off, well, ghostri is an extension to your existing browsers.
Speaker 5: So you're surfing with Chromo, Safario Edge or whatever you use,
Speaker 5: and you put us on, and what we do is
Speaker 5: we basically make sure that all of the stuff you
Speaker 5: don't see. So all of the trackers that are behind
Speaker 5: the pages that you visit are basically not showing up
Speaker 5: in your browser and therefore not able to know where
Speaker 5: you were.
Speaker 2: So yeah, keep going.
Speaker 5: Yeah, every time you load the page, there's a you know,
Speaker 5: fifty to sixty seventy trackers behind it from Google, Facebook,
Speaker 5: tech Talk, et cetera. Basically look looking at what you
Speaker 5: are doing. And that's why you have sometimes the impressions
Speaker 5: that ads are following you around or your phone is
Speaker 5: listening to you. In fact, it's very often just these
Speaker 5: trackers looking at what you're doing online.
Speaker 1: Oh that's like a number one question I get is
Speaker 1: people think that their phone is listening to their conversations.
Speaker 1: But you're saying that these trackers are so ubiquitous that
Speaker 1: that's actually what's making those things show up on our
Speaker 1: Instagram feeds.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's much more likely. So you're doing a searching Google,
Speaker 5: you're visiting pages, you're surfing along the web, and all
Speaker 5: of these tracks are being recorded, and then somehow you
Speaker 5: have the feeling that people have been listening to you,
Speaker 5: but in fact they've just been watching you. And ghost
Speaker 5: three is removing this even before it happens.
Speaker 2: So what's the benefit of removing this information?
Speaker 5: Well, first and foremost, your pages will load faster because
Speaker 5: you can't believe how many megabytes are being you know,
Speaker 5: at than going over your bandwidth, so you'll the net
Speaker 5: will go faster, you will use less over your bandwidth
Speaker 5: if you're limited in that way, and the big tech
Speaker 5: and the trackers will not have the information about what
Speaker 5: you did and therefore will not bid on the ads
Speaker 5: that you know that would be retargeting you.
Speaker 1: And so do you recommend that people install these sorts
Speaker 1: of things? I wonder you know, as we Yeah.
Speaker 5: Go ahead, absolutely absolutely. We just did a survey that
Speaker 5: shows that people who work in advertising or people who
Speaker 5: work in tech are you know, infinitely more likely to
Speaker 5: have an ad blocker and anti tracker install on their
Speaker 5: brother so people will know what's going on. Basically install that.
Speaker 1: And so my question is if everyone installs these ad blockers,
Speaker 1: what about all these companies that you know, depend on
Speaker 1: that advertising revenue. Is there another way for them to
Speaker 1: make money.
Speaker 5: Well, it doesn't block all ads. It tends to block
Speaker 5: ads that are coming through so called programmatic networks, so
Speaker 5: basically as that are coming from other places than the
Speaker 5: site that you are visiting. So it's true that some
Speaker 5: websites tend to rely on these network you know, exclusively,
Speaker 5: and they will obviously make less money from a ghost
Speaker 5: rey user than a normal user, but a lot of
Speaker 5: website i have moved to a different type of advertising
Speaker 5: that doesn't rely on having private information about you.
Speaker 1: Why do you think we're seeing such an interest in
Speaker 1: kind of this privacy conversation.
Speaker 2: These days?
Speaker 5: Well because it keeps getting worse. Right, ghost Rey was
Speaker 5: founded in two thousand and eight and we thought, oh
Speaker 5: that was pretty bad at that time, but it's nothing
Speaker 5: compared to what it is today. It's just there are
Speaker 5: more and more of these trackers, and the attic industry
Speaker 5: is getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, and people get educated
Speaker 5: or they hear it from someone they know and trust
Speaker 5: that they should use something like this. They do, and
Speaker 5: then obviously the work becomes faster and a lot cleaner.
Speaker 5: So it's hard to go back when you try.
Speaker 1: It now because a lot of the web is supported
Speaker 1: by advertising. I mean, where do we move forward? Like,
Speaker 1: you know, how do we move past this? Kind of
Speaker 1: like if you're not paying for a product, you are
Speaker 1: the product, right, isn't that with the ideas?
Speaker 5: Well, that's what the idea is when you're not using
Speaker 5: an ad blocker. I think when you're using an ad blocker,
Speaker 5: what tends to happen? I think that a good example
Speaker 5: is maybe YouTube. So we do block the ads on YouTube,
Speaker 5: but most of the creators on YouTube have ads that
Speaker 5: are embedded in their podcast right, because they've learned as
Speaker 5: well that Google is not necessarily their friends when it
Speaker 5: comes to monetization. So you go back to a more
Speaker 5: traditional form of advertising, which doesn't rely on on what
Speaker 5: you were doing two days ago, but rely on the
Speaker 5: context in which you are at the moment.
Speaker 2: That's interesting too, because I know YouTube it's been kind
Speaker 2: of a cat and mouse game between the ad blockers
Speaker 2: and youtub too, because they've been pushing back and that
Speaker 2: is that something you guys have to like figure out
Speaker 2: every other day, like, oh they've switched something again.
Speaker 5: It's not every other day. But they did a major
Speaker 5: pustion in a fourth quarter of last year and what
Speaker 5: happened was really interesting. We saw a massive increase in users.
Speaker 5: So even though it was kind of not working most days,
Speaker 5: but people wanted it to work, so they kept trying
Speaker 5: to switch browser install us on a different broider. We
Speaker 5: saw massive movements of people between Chrome and Edge and
Speaker 5: they would take us with them, right because we can
Speaker 5: install install grocery on every browser from Safari on iOS
Speaker 5: to Edge on Windows and whatever you have. And we
Speaker 5: saw a massive increase in users during that time.
Speaker 1: What about AI, because now a lot of people have
Speaker 1: switched to these AI tools and they're feeding a lot
Speaker 1: of personal information into them. Is there any privacy implications there?
Speaker 5: They could be, but at the moment it's still what
Speaker 5: we call first party, which means that you know, when
Speaker 5: you're talking to open AI or charg GPT, you know
Speaker 5: that you're talking to chuldg GBT, you are willing fully
Speaker 5: putting your information there, and you know maybe they will
Speaker 5: use it, maybe not one day, but you are fully
Speaker 5: conscious of that. What we do is more the stuff
Speaker 5: you don't see. Right, So if you go to my
Speaker 5: favorite example, you know you have maybe your mother or
Speaker 5: father goes to arp website, why are there sixty companies
Speaker 5: lurking in the background that they don't see on the website? Right?
Speaker 5: Why why are all these trackers in the back? That's
Speaker 5: what we take care to remove. So I think when
Speaker 5: people are in a one to one relationship with the
Speaker 5: website that they want to visit, they are perfectly conscious
Speaker 5: of what's going on. There is no big risk there.
Speaker 5: The problem is is you go to a website and
Speaker 5: you just don't see what people collect and then what
Speaker 5: they do with it later.
Speaker 1: What's this American Privacy Rights Act And how's that going
Speaker 1: to impact the average consumers online privacy?
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm not a lawyer nor an American by
Speaker 5: the way, but I know what regulation tends to do.
Speaker 5: They tend to say, well, before you do this, you
Speaker 5: have to ask for consents. And the problem with that
Speaker 5: is that the big companies are always getting the consent.
Speaker 5: So you've clicked at one point to a Google button
Speaker 5: in Google that says Google can collect whatever they want
Speaker 5: from me, or you go to a website as a
Speaker 5: pop up and you click on it really rapidly because
Speaker 5: you want to do what you want to do on
Speaker 5: it that side, and then they get the right to
Speaker 5: collect the data forever and ever and ever. So I
Speaker 5: think it's very important that you protect yourself with one
Speaker 5: of these tools. On top in Ghost three, we have
Speaker 5: something called never consent, which means that automatically we answer
Speaker 5: no to the question of whether they can collect your data.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're going to ask about that, so you mean
Speaker 1: for all those like because I mean you said you're
Speaker 1: not an American, so that I think Europe is where
Speaker 1: we have to thank for the all those pop ups,
Speaker 1: for the cookies exactly, so you know, so everyone always
Speaker 1: has to struggle with those things on the website. Do
Speaker 1: you guys automatically kind of say no to those yes.
Speaker 5: So we have a system that not only blocks the
Speaker 5: pop up so you don't see it, but also remove
Speaker 5: consents because the problem in many legislation, I think, including
Speaker 5: most of the states in America, is that if you
Speaker 5: don't answer, it means you can, right, and so it's
Speaker 5: quite important to say no, and we do this on
Speaker 5: your behalf without having you to go through seven layers
Speaker 5: of multiple choice questions before you can say no.
Speaker 1: All right, well that's worth it right there. And so
Speaker 1: how do you guys, how do you guys make money?
Speaker 1: How does ghost three? Is there a paid or is
Speaker 1: it all free or what?
Speaker 5: We are very very small teams, so first of all,
Speaker 5: we don't lose too much money by not having too
Speaker 5: many people and being a small, dedicated team. And we
Speaker 5: live on quite substantial donations in the meantime, So people
Speaker 5: can subscribe to because contributors, and they help us discover
Speaker 5: new trackers, and they help us by giving us a
Speaker 5: few dollars per month if they want to. But you
Speaker 5: don't get more protection by being a contributor.
Speaker 1: And do you feel like these privacy conversations are overblown
Speaker 1: or do you feel like people should actually think about
Speaker 1: this stuff and take some action.
Speaker 5: I think it's not overblown at all, because when you
Speaker 5: look at what's going on, it is quite enormous. And
Speaker 5: I think that the old contract that somehow implicitly was
Speaker 5: between advertiser, publisher and reader of viewer has been broken
Speaker 5: by this invisible thing, right because before it was quite clear,
Speaker 5: like you had a radio show and you had a
Speaker 5: lot of attention, and then an advertiser would want to
Speaker 5: sort of piggyback on that attention and would give you, you know, money,
Speaker 5: and the middleman between you and the advertiser would maybe
Speaker 5: collect fifteen percent. This is not true today. The middleman
Speaker 5: tends to collect up to eighty five percent. Oh wow.
Speaker 5: And spy and spies on you. You know, you never
Speaker 5: spied on your on your listeners before. Right, You just
Speaker 5: had a that that you think they would like and
Speaker 5: then you got paid for it.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: You didn't know need to know what I was doing
Speaker 5: five minutes before in the supermarket. Uh. And I think
Speaker 5: that this we need to go back to that more
Speaker 5: than this ultra targeted advertising.
Speaker 2: All right, We're gonna leave it there. Very interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm always interested in the privacy aspect of everything, and
Speaker 1: it's just continuing to be such a huge aspect of
Speaker 1: our online lives. JP Schmittz of CEO of Ghostory. You
Speaker 1: can check out the website. It is ghostory dot com.
Speaker 1: If you want to check out their tool, I'll link
Speaker 1: it up on my website. Rich on tech dot TV,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 5: Thanks you Rich?
Speaker 2: All right eight Rich one on.
Speaker 1: One eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Speaking of privacy, Google Auto and rolling your Android devices
Speaker 1: in their new find My network.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you what you need to know about that
Speaker 2: coming up next. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 17: Right, let's go to.
Speaker 2: Martin in Palm.
Speaker 17: D California and the Golden Belly.
Speaker 2: Martin, you're on, You're on live.
Speaker 17: I'm just going to get your supercharged for a few minutes.
Speaker 1: And okay, well get that thing supercharge. You're on with
Speaker 1: rich On Tech.
Speaker 2: Are you there? Okay? I think we're gonna go. We're
Speaker 2: gonna Martin.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're gonna give Let's go to uh.
Speaker 2: Pick, Let's go TV.
Speaker 18: Let's and I can and I can just emailing.
Speaker 1: Let's go to is this Granny Rich? What is happening here?
Speaker 1: I don't know what's happening here.
Speaker 18: I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know what is going on their phone lines.
Speaker 1: Granny Rich, you're on with rich Are you there?
Speaker 19: Yeah?
Speaker 18: I was just wanting to know what your number one
Speaker 18: anti virus disc for a desktop computer. It's Windows ten.
Speaker 2: Are okay? Good question.
Speaker 1: So in Windows ten, they actually have anti virus built
Speaker 1: in so you can do that, which is fine, but
Speaker 1: if you want to step it up a notch, I
Speaker 1: would recommend checking out a website called a vtest dot org,
Speaker 1: and that is the website that will tell you they
Speaker 1: do tests on a monthly basis. And right now their
Speaker 1: number one is A vast a.
Speaker 18: V A S A B is in Banana.
Speaker 4: A v.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm forgetting my my own av Victor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: A Victor. That's it, yeah, Apple Victor.
Speaker 10: And what's the rest of it?
Speaker 1: A vast av A S T and that is a
Speaker 1: free anti virus. Obviously it's a freemium, so they're going
Speaker 1: to try to sell you on the you know, the
Speaker 1: more premium version. But this gets great ratings. It's a
Speaker 1: top product. It generally is highly rated among a lot
Speaker 1: of the tech folks out there. So you can take
Speaker 1: a look at that website, though, you know.
Speaker 18: Can I can I repeat this again? A vs in Victor,
Speaker 18: A S is and sam tasn't tom correct A vast Okay, yeah,
Speaker 18: because my computer came with a microsf what is it
Speaker 18: McAfee and my computer guy came in yesterday and told me,
Speaker 18: he said, well, you need you need to get a
Speaker 18: disc granny. He said, because this your speed. He said,
Speaker 18: your speeds aren't what did he say, kicking in and
Speaker 18: he said one is like one O two and one
Speaker 18: is seventy nine. And I said, well, I have McAfee
Speaker 18: and I pay it once a year. And he said, well,
Speaker 18: you need to get another one. So thanks for telling
Speaker 18: me about this one. I'm going to try it because
Speaker 18: my computer is HP, like I said, and it's about
Speaker 18: five years old, and this is about my fifth one.
Speaker 18: I went to HEWITTT Packers because I liked Compact. But
Speaker 18: that's it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well check out that website. Yeah you're welcome. Good
Speaker 2: luck with that.
Speaker 1: But check out the website av dash test dot org
Speaker 1: if you're looking for anti virus for any of your devices.
Speaker 1: This is an independent institute that does a lot of
Speaker 1: tests on so here it is. It says during March
Speaker 1: in April twenty twenty four, we continuously evaluated seventeen home
Speaker 1: user security products using their default settings.
Speaker 2: And this is what they came up with.
Speaker 1: So a vast number one AVEG, which I believe is
Speaker 1: the same company, number two of YOURA number three bitdefender
Speaker 1: for Enigma Soft five E set number six f secure
Speaker 1: And then it's interesting the big brand names that you
Speaker 1: see advertised the most are actually the lowest on the list,
Speaker 1: which I find very very interesting. All right, let's see
Speaker 1: if let's see if Martin. Let's let's peak in on
Speaker 1: Martin again.
Speaker 5: Martin?
Speaker 2: Are you there?
Speaker 17: Yes? I am here.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, what's up Martin? Welcome to rich On Tech.
Speaker 2: What can I help you with?
Speaker 5: Thank you for taking my call?
Speaker 17: Let me a little background. We developed a self You've.
Speaker 2: Got to be very quick because we only have a
Speaker 2: couple of minutes here.
Speaker 17: Oh okay, I know. There's a way you can run
Speaker 17: a browser application and compallably MOLDE for Internet Explorer, Microsoft Age. However,
Speaker 17: after a month expires all the time, so always get
Speaker 17: calls from my users, try to walk them through and
Speaker 17: set up the compellable mode. Again, is there any way
Speaker 17: we can sit down I stay longer than one month?
Speaker 1: Well, I wouldn't recommend that support for Internet Explorer ended
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, so anyone that's using something that
Speaker 1: works through that compatibility mode is at risk.
Speaker 5: I know, I know.
Speaker 2: So why are you not updating the program?
Speaker 17: Well, we have a new version of the program, by
Speaker 17: some old timers still try to use it. The old
Speaker 17: version of the software because it still has some old
Speaker 17: data and they didn't need to retrieve. So that's why
Speaker 17: we haven't transferred any data from the old system to
Speaker 17: the new one. Some of the data still in the
Speaker 17: old system.
Speaker 1: Well, the only thing I can think of, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing they're doing like the flags inside Edge to
Speaker 1: turn on the compatibility mode.
Speaker 2: Is that how you're doing it?
Speaker 17: Yeah, you come to the setting and default.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I mean, if that's resetting, obviously that's a
Speaker 1: Microsoft security concern. They're toggling that off by default every
Speaker 1: thirty days. The only thing I can think of, and
Speaker 1: I can't recommend this widely because obviously you know there
Speaker 1: are inherent risks with you with using this in a
Speaker 1: mode that is not supported anymore. But I would say
Speaker 1: the only thing you might be able to do is
Speaker 1: find an extension that might continue to keep that enabled,
Speaker 1: or an extension that runs that mode permanently.
Speaker 2: That's my thought.
Speaker 1: But again, I think it's best to try to urge
Speaker 1: these people to update, because you just don't want to
Speaker 1: be running something that has not been supported in two years,
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of security implications of that.
Speaker 2: So I understand the reasoning.
Speaker 1: But I also see why Microsoft is forcing those changes.
Speaker 1: But again, there might be some extension that would would
Speaker 1: do that. I don't know of one off the top
Speaker 1: of my head, but that might be a good way
Speaker 1: to kind of search for something that keeps that that
Speaker 1: flag in place even after those thirty days. All right,
Speaker 1: the website rich on Tech dot TV eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 2: Man, do we just go through a whole another hour
Speaker 2: of this show? Well, we got another hour coming up.
Speaker 2: That's the good news. And coming up we'll take more
Speaker 2: of your questions. I'll tell you about this whole uh
Speaker 2: Android find my network, and I'll tell you how to
Speaker 2: find some hidden games on YouTube.
Speaker 1: That's kind of fun. It's all coming up right here
Speaker 1: on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: This is how we do it for tech news. Eight
Speaker 1: eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four two four one zero one. Welcome to another hour
Speaker 1: of the show.
Speaker 2: Coming up.
Speaker 1: This hour, we're gonna talk to a Neil Subberwall of
Speaker 1: Google Fitbit. He's gonna discuss details on that new Fitbit
Speaker 1: ace LTE. This is the connected smart watch for kids.
Speaker 1: He's gonna explain what it does, what it's useful for,
Speaker 1: and they're thinking behind creating it. Speaking of Android, you
Speaker 1: might get a notification on your Android device that says
Speaker 1: do you want to join the Find my Device network?
Speaker 1: So you're gonna get a notification because Google is turning
Speaker 1: this on for over a billion devices. This is the
Speaker 1: equivalent of Apple's Find My network that launched with the
Speaker 1: air tag. Apple has had their network up and running
Speaker 1: for a couple of years now. Google is just getting
Speaker 1: theirs up and running. So you're gonna see a whole
Speaker 1: push for gadgets that tap into this find my Device network,
Speaker 1: So things like air tags, except on the Google side,
Speaker 1: So a bunch of different products, Chappolo, Tile, They're all
Speaker 1: going to have these devices that tap into this network.
Speaker 1: And these are for Android phones along with your Android devices.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna see earbuds, you're gonna see headphones, You're
Speaker 1: gonna see a lot of different things be able to
Speaker 1: be found with this new network. But how this network
Speaker 1: works is through all of your devices. So let me
Speaker 1: give you an example. Your phone. You have an Android phone,
Speaker 1: it's sitting on your desk at work. Someone loses their
Speaker 1: keys with one of these little find my trackers attached
Speaker 1: to their key. Well, that little tracker has Bluetooth in it.
Speaker 1: Your phone is scanning around your workplace looking for all
Speaker 1: these different devices all the time, and it finds that
Speaker 1: little tracker. It reports that location back to Google, and
Speaker 1: that person that lost their keys goes onto their phone
Speaker 1: and says, now, where did I drop my keys? And
Speaker 1: the phone says, oh, we saw it in at your
Speaker 1: work underneath this desk or whatever. So that's how it works.
Speaker 1: And so this relies on millions upon millions of devices
Speaker 1: scanning using Bluetooth and helping locate these other devices. Now,
Speaker 1: this is all done privately. It's all done encrypted. Nobody's
Speaker 1: seeing where your phone is. Your phone is not seeing
Speaker 1: where these other devices are. It's all done encrypted and privately,
Speaker 1: so only the person that owns that device can actually
Speaker 1: see where that lost item is. This find my Device
Speaker 1: network collects current location, battery level, Wi Fi network, and
Speaker 1: signal strength to help locate these online devices. For offline devices, yes,
Speaker 1: your phone could be offline and it still might be
Speaker 1: able to be found with this new network. Now some
Speaker 1: of the newer devices have that functionality. I know the
Speaker 1: pixels do, but not every device is going to have
Speaker 1: that offline identifying information. So why I'm telling you this
Speaker 1: is because you might get an email that says, hey,
Speaker 1: we're going to opt you into this network if you
Speaker 1: don't say anything within the next three days. So if
Speaker 1: you don't mind helping out and being a part of
Speaker 1: this network, just let it go. It will opt you
Speaker 1: in automatically. If you don't want to be a part
Speaker 1: of this network, if you don't want to help find
Speaker 1: devices using your devices, you can opt out. And the
Speaker 1: way you opt out is following that link in the
Speaker 1: notification you get or the email you get, or you
Speaker 1: can go to this website Google dot com, slash Android,
Speaker 1: slash find, slash settings, slash FM d end find my
Speaker 1: Device Network. I know that's a long website. Google dot com,
Speaker 1: slash Android, slash find, slash settings, slash fmd N. I
Speaker 1: will put that link on my website. Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv in the show notes, this is show number
Speaker 1: sixty seventy four. Tap the light bulb at the top
Speaker 1: of the screen to get into those show note links.
Speaker 2: That is the deal.
Speaker 1: You can also opt out at any time, So even
Speaker 1: if you let this auto opt in, and you decide
Speaker 1: later on, you know what, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: a part of this network. You can still opt out now.
Speaker 1: Even if you don't opt into helping find other devices,
Speaker 1: you can still use find my Device to locate your
Speaker 1: devices when they're online. So it's not necessarily a two
Speaker 1: way street, like you don't have to participate to actually
Speaker 1: help find your devices, but it would be nice if
Speaker 1: you help participate.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I think there's enough Android devices in the world where
Speaker 1: even if you say no, there's still going to be
Speaker 1: enough people that make this pretty accurate and pretty good.
Speaker 1: But this is a huge, huge new undertaking by Android
Speaker 1: to help you find your device anywhere it is in
Speaker 1: the world when it is lost. And it's going to
Speaker 1: implement this functionality for so many devices. You're going to
Speaker 1: see wallets with this find my network, You're going to
Speaker 1: see tracker tags, you're going to see headphones, all kinds
Speaker 1: of Android devices moving forward are probably going to have
Speaker 1: this built in as an appealing feature to help you
Speaker 1: find these devices if they are ever lost. Let's go
Speaker 1: to ed in Los Angeles or ed in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: ED you're on with rich Las Vegas.
Speaker 12: That's right, Thank you, Rich. I appreciate you taking my call.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 12: So my situation is that I have had for years
Speaker 12: Amazon Music that is now being charged I believe nine
Speaker 12: ninety ten dollars a month, and I was told that
Speaker 12: Prime Music comes free with your Prime membership, which we
Speaker 12: are also paying for. Are they the same thing? I
Speaker 12: know that on the Amazon Music I can play any artist,
Speaker 12: any soundtrack from any movie, any Broadway, play any artist
Speaker 12: with any song they ever recorded. Is it the same
Speaker 12: music provided by Prime Music that I could stop paying,
Speaker 12: you know, the one hundred and twenty dollars a year
Speaker 12: and get it for free and along with my Prime.
Speaker 2: Members It is not the same.
Speaker 1: So it is there is a little bit extra that
Speaker 1: you get with the paid Prime, you know, the unlimited.
Speaker 1: And this is where it gets very confusing for Amazon
Speaker 1: to do this because they've given a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: for free. I mean, they really are giving you a
Speaker 1: lot for free. If you have a Prime membership, you
Speaker 1: can get what's called all Access playlists. So these are
Speaker 1: playlists that let you pick any song and played on
Speaker 1: demand and no skip limits, no you know, or you
Speaker 1: can even listen to them offline by downloading them. So,
Speaker 1: but that is a select group of songs. So I
Speaker 1: would say my main difference between what you're paying for
Speaker 1: and what you get for free is the choice of
Speaker 1: what you get to listen to.
Speaker 2: On demand.
Speaker 12: That is the more do playlist or downloads because I'm blind.
Speaker 2: So okay, but you know I can just saysk.
Speaker 12: Thee abot to play anything from Rihanna to Elvis. I
Speaker 12: can play Duing Eddies nineteen fifty nine, forty Miles the
Speaker 12: Bad Road, and it'll play it. Yeah, any song anything
Speaker 12: I want. But you're saying the Prime Music doesn't give me.
Speaker 1: That, well, so what's going to happen on the Prime Music?
Speaker 1: There is a selection of songs, so I believe they've
Speaker 1: thrown out like a number, right, so there is like
Speaker 1: a certain amount. So with Amazon Music Prime members get
Speaker 1: access to one hundred million songs AD free. Right with
Speaker 1: Amazon Music Unlimited you get a hundred million songs in
Speaker 1: HD and million millions of songs in ultra HD. So
Speaker 1: if you have like a super high quality setup, you
Speaker 1: would get a better audio quality. But the main difference is,
Speaker 1: let's say if you stop paying for this, right ed,
Speaker 1: if you stop if you stop paying for your unlimited
Speaker 1: and you say I want to play Rihanna and I
Speaker 1: want to play a certain song by Rihanna, right, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't have that song the Free membership. The Prime
Speaker 1: membership will just play a song similar to that song,
Speaker 1: and you may be none the wiser. You may say, oh,
Speaker 1: I asked it to play Rihanna's Shut Up and Drive
Speaker 1: or whatever, and it plays something related to that. And
Speaker 1: so not everything is going to be you know, it's
Speaker 1: not going to have the entire catalog like Amazon Music
Speaker 1: Unlimited does because you are paying, and also you get
Speaker 1: to listen offline. You get Unlimited skips. So if you
Speaker 1: don't like a song that it plays on the Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime and use press skip, yes, it'll skip to the
Speaker 1: next song, but you're only gonna have a certain amount
Speaker 1: of skips per hour before it says nope, you've got
Speaker 1: to listen to this song.
Speaker 2: And the reason they're doing that, whereas.
Speaker 12: On the Unlimited, I can you say next and it'll
Speaker 12: go the next song on the artist I'm listening.
Speaker 1: To exactly, So there is a difference between the two.
Speaker 1: What I'd say, ed is try it. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could always cancel the Unlimited and I know you said
Speaker 1: you paid for a year in advance, so you can
Speaker 1: cancel that now, continue to use it for the year,
Speaker 1: and then when it when it lapses, you can just
Speaker 1: default to the Prime Music. If you have an Amazon
Speaker 1: you have an Amazon Prime membership, Yes we do, so
Speaker 1: if you have Amazon Prime, you can let it default
Speaker 1: to that and you can try it out. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: that are just using Amazon Music Prime for free that
Speaker 1: it just works. And you know how many times are
Speaker 1: you skipping a song in an hour? You don't notice?
Speaker 1: So if it saves you one hundred and twenty bucks
Speaker 1: a year and everything's fine, that's great.
Speaker 2: But you did you did quite.
Speaker 12: Say we pay by the year.
Speaker 4: I'm sure you got that.
Speaker 2: Poh, well, then I mean, maybe just cancel it.
Speaker 12: And I think I said we pay one hundred and
Speaker 12: twenty bucks a year, but I was just giving a
Speaker 12: figure and I got it. We don't pay by the year.
Speaker 12: I'm builled once a month, nine ninety nine.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, now here's the other thing. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's grandfathered in, because I do know that
Speaker 1: they have raised prices on the Amazon Music Unlimited, so
Speaker 1: I would check to see, let me see exactly what
Speaker 1: that price is now because I.
Speaker 12: Really appreciate your time. You're doing a great job than
Speaker 12: could you.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it says starts at nine ninety nine, a
Speaker 1: month after the thirty day trial, so it sounds like
Speaker 1: it's still the same price. But here's the thing, Ed,
Speaker 1: when you called out those songs, you sound like you're
Speaker 1: kind of a music guy, and so yes, I feel
Speaker 1: like you like your music and you like to be
Speaker 1: able to say the song that you want to hear,
Speaker 1: and you kind of know a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
Speaker 1: You may not be happy with the you know, the
Speaker 1: the kind of randomness of the free version.
Speaker 12: But right, I get what I want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's worth try.
Speaker 12: In other words, right, you're.
Speaker 1: Not really losing anything by trying it out for a month,
Speaker 1: so I might try.
Speaker 2: That's what happens.
Speaker 12: How can I try it out at the same time
Speaker 12: I'm paying for the unlimited and now am I going
Speaker 12: to know which one I'm pulling from?
Speaker 1: No, I don't think you can do that because it's
Speaker 1: the same thing unless you set up a different Amazon account.
Speaker 1: But that's you know, you're under your prime account. That's
Speaker 1: going to be kind of tricky to do. So all right,
Speaker 1: I say.
Speaker 12: Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Rich.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I appreciate the show very.
Speaker 1: Much, appreciate the kind words, ed, thanks for calling today.
Speaker 1: Eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: Coming up, I'll tell you where to find some games
Speaker 2: to play on YouTube.
Speaker 1: What Yeah, they're there, I'll tell you where to find them.
Speaker 1: Coming up right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology. The
Speaker 1: website for the show rich on Tech dot tv. You
Speaker 1: can find me on social media. I am at rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. If you want links to anything I mentioned
Speaker 1: on the show, you go to the website. There is
Speaker 1: a light bulb at the top. You tap that light
Speaker 1: bulb and it will take you to the wiki for
Speaker 1: the show, which has every show we've ever done, plus
Speaker 1: the links to every show, so you can get links
Speaker 1: in real time. And if you're listening later, you can
Speaker 1: just look at the podcast section. It will have the
Speaker 1: show and it will have all of the links there
Speaker 1: as well as the audio of the show. You can
Speaker 1: also subscribe by searching rich on Tech and your favorite
Speaker 1: audio player. Let's go to Carol in Los Angeles. Carol,
Speaker 1: you're on with rich.
Speaker 20: Hi, thank you so much for taking your call. I
Speaker 20: love the song you played long times understand it that
Speaker 20: was very appropriate. Thank you. Briefly, I was hacked on
Speaker 20: a crypto exchange of Gemini, which is you know, very
Speaker 20: big like point based crack in US base, and I
Speaker 20: was hacked and had a lot of money stolen in
Speaker 20: ten minutes. There were two hundred transactions converted the bitcoint
Speaker 20: and then too something called Orchid, which I understand it
Speaker 20: is a little more secretive and hard to track, so
Speaker 20: trying to figure out what happened. You know, I'm a
Speaker 20: very simple user. I'm not on my computer very much
Speaker 20: and just make my investments. They've identified from three years
Speaker 20: ago that there was an API that was generated and
Speaker 20: this was used to bypass two factor authentication which I
Speaker 20: had on the account and somehow get in and hack it.
Speaker 20: It wasn't password or email, it was this API. And
Speaker 20: indeed three years ago I was using something called token tax,
Speaker 20: which you're supposed to use to pay your taxes, you know,
Speaker 20: with a software interface that helps you do the right
Speaker 20: thing and and sort of pull in from a few
Speaker 20: exchanges you may be on and then calculate your taxes.
Speaker 20: Gem and I would not think though with token tax
Speaker 20: it never sinks, unlike a couple of the other exchanges
Speaker 20: like binance us or crack, and it never thinks. And
Speaker 20: that's it. I mean, I didn't do anything else. And
Speaker 20: now three years later they identified twenty twenty one, maybe
Speaker 20: there was this one API.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so here's what happened. So some so this there.
Speaker 1: So what you're talking about is basically a token. And
Speaker 1: so it's an API key that you would generate and
Speaker 1: a lot of different not every not a lot, but
Speaker 1: there are accounts out there that can interface with another
Speaker 1: account by generating one of these. It's basically a trusted token.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like it's saying like, hey, you can
Speaker 1: access this account anytime you want, because I'm giving you
Speaker 1: this token to my account, even if you change the password,
Speaker 1: even if you change your settings, they will have that
Speaker 1: token until you revoke that token. So what happened was
Speaker 1: it sounds like you somehow generated a token back in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. You might have given it to another website.
Speaker 1: That website at the time was fine, but someone might
Speaker 1: have gotten into that website since and they hacked into
Speaker 1: that site and they got through to your account based
Speaker 1: on that linkage between those two accounts.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense? Is that how you understand it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 20: But on what side? Like so if Gemini, for example,
Speaker 20: doesn't have this interface because they couldn't sync up or
Speaker 20: at least this token tax cunt interface with Gemini, did Gemini?
Speaker 20: Why would Gemini make this this API number one? Wouldn't
Speaker 20: it be short lived? They're not supposed to last very long?
Speaker 20: And then similarly, on the other side, token text, if
Speaker 20: they received it and it wasn't sinking on it, then
Speaker 20: not stay there and be live to be hacked like what?
Speaker 5: Well, I don't think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is confusing.
Speaker 1: I don't know the details of how this this token
Speaker 1: got out. I mean, once it's generated, it does typically
Speaker 1: stay indefinitely as far as I know. And a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you know, developers use these tokens. They use
Speaker 1: these keys to Let's say I'm developing an app for
Speaker 1: open Ai, Right, So what happens is I use the
Speaker 1: the like I pay open ai for a certain amount
Speaker 1: of access, right, and then they give me this token
Speaker 1: that lets me use that inside my programming application. And
Speaker 1: that way, that token says, oh, this is Rich's account,
Speaker 1: we know that he pays us he can access all
Speaker 1: this stuff and so that there's there are valid reasons
Speaker 1: why this exists. I think for you, first off, I
Speaker 1: feel so bad that this happened to you, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like there's no recourse.
Speaker 20: Huh, we don't know. I in my opinion, three years
Speaker 20: down the road and it's nowhere on my stuff, it's
Speaker 20: on their stuff, and it just lived. I since have
Speaker 20: been able to have something just living and then someone
Speaker 20: gets it.
Speaker 1: Right, So, yeah, did they tell you how much money
Speaker 1: are we talking here?
Speaker 20: We're talking a lot of money, enough money that it matters.
Speaker 20: So no, I think that they have responsibility. They sind
Speaker 20: have generated if they couldn't think, and then if they
Speaker 20: could think, then then it should go away. That's why
Speaker 20: I'm asking how long should these things last? It seemed
Speaker 20: like it was very temporary and then it couldn't work
Speaker 20: and then it should have just dissolved and gone away.
Speaker 20: It doesn't fit somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, they typically are. They are pretty pretty everlasting.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I would really get on Gemini and really really push
Speaker 1: them and for them to explain how this happened exactly
Speaker 1: and why you're responsible for this, what turns out to
Speaker 1: be fraud eighty eight rich one on one eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one more rich
Speaker 1: on Tech coming up right after this. Yes, welcome back
Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology. There's
Speaker 1: a new connected smart watch for kids. It's called the
Speaker 1: Google Fitbit ace Lte, and it's a new device that
Speaker 1: I think parents are going to like. It's kind of
Speaker 1: up against the Apple Watch, but there are some key differences.
Speaker 1: This was designed with kids in mind. It's coming out
Speaker 1: on June fifth, and uh to talk about it. I
Speaker 1: recently chatted with a Neil Summerwall of Google Fitbit. He's
Speaker 1: gonna explain what it's all about.
Speaker 2: So what inspired the development of the Fitbit ace Lte.
Speaker 19: Well, the fiffit acelt actually is a very personal story.
Speaker 19: It comes from my own experience with my daughters who
Speaker 19: were eight and ten a few years ago and my
Speaker 19: wife and I weren't ready to take the plunge and
Speaker 19: buy phone for many reasons I'm sure that you're aware of,
Speaker 19: and so we went out looking for an alternative and
Speaker 19: we found kids smart watches and we said this was great.
Speaker 15: So we bought our daughters to these kids.
Speaker 19: Smart watches, thinking that they would allow us to call
Speaker 19: message and know.
Speaker 15: Where they were.
Speaker 19: Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly in hindsight, our kids would
Speaker 19: accidentally forget to charge them, or they would leave them
Speaker 19: at home by mistake, And what we realized really quickly
Speaker 19: was that they saw them more as tracking devices rather
Speaker 19: than devices that helped them feel more independent. And so
Speaker 19: the inspiration for this device was for parents who were
Speaker 19: looking for an alternative. Could we provide a device that
Speaker 19: kids loved that was built for kids, not an adult
Speaker 19: device that was scaled back for kids, or a device
Speaker 19: that condescends to kids. But could we build a device
Speaker 19: that kids loved.
Speaker 15: And parents loved.
Speaker 2: So tell me about some of the features on this
Speaker 2: fibit ace LTE because it is a fibit, but it's
Speaker 2: also a smart watch, it's also a gaming device, so
Speaker 2: kind of give me the basic features.
Speaker 15: What can you do?
Speaker 2: I like the fact that it has LTE in the name,
Speaker 2: that tells me that it's cellular connected.
Speaker 15: Exactly right. Richie touched on the three main principles of
Speaker 15: the products.
Speaker 19: So the first is that it's all about inspiring healthy
Speaker 19: and active movement in kids through play. But then number two,
Speaker 19: as you touched on how could we do it in
Speaker 19: a new and inspirational way, and that's where we use
Speaker 19: gaming as the mechanism to do it. So we have
Speaker 19: these really compelling, interactive three D games that we've built.
Speaker 15: That are immersive. They're fun.
Speaker 19: You are fishing, you're dancing, you're a chicken and a
Speaker 19: bathtub racing through space. The only currency is movement and
Speaker 19: so that's principal number two. And then the third one,
Speaker 19: which you talked about, is the LTE connectivity. And that's
Speaker 19: so important because what we want to have is a
Speaker 19: mechanism for kids to feel like they're growing independence. So
Speaker 19: we have calling, messaging and location sharing. We're using Google's technology,
Speaker 19: so we have Google Maps, so it's not just GPS,
Speaker 19: which is often very accurate.
Speaker 15: It's using Google Maps as technology.
Speaker 19: That's using Wi Fi and other mechanisms so that you
Speaker 19: can get pinpoint accuracy even inside buildings.
Speaker 15: So, because it.
Speaker 1: Does have the cellular built in, can you touch upon
Speaker 1: how that's going to work? Are people going to add
Speaker 1: this as a device on their current plan?
Speaker 2: Is it a standalone plan? And how do you activate
Speaker 2: it and all that stuff.
Speaker 19: The device comes with the fitbit ace app. You download
Speaker 19: that on iOS or on androids, So as a parent,
Speaker 19: you simply download that app and then we have everything
Speaker 19: all included in that app. We wanted to make setup
Speaker 19: as simple and easy as possible. You sign in with
Speaker 19: your Google account and we offer you the ace Pass
Speaker 19: Data Plan, so we provide everything with the LTE connectivity.
Speaker 19: The data plan is offered at nine to ninety nine
Speaker 19: a month or one hundred and twenty dollars for the
Speaker 19: annual subscription. With that, not only do you get all
Speaker 19: of the lt connectivity, but you get all of the games,
Speaker 19: all of the experiences for Kise.
Speaker 15: We have a whole host of parental controls.
Speaker 19: That we offer that allows you, as a parent, for example,
Speaker 19: to add trusted contacts so that they can also call
Speaker 19: and message the child if you have an uncle and
Speaker 19: and a grandparent. That's all part of the subscription service
Speaker 19: as well. And the annual subscription also includes a collectible band,
Speaker 19: and we'll talk about the bands in a minute. And
Speaker 19: the band itself is valued at thirty five dollars, so
Speaker 19: you get that is the annual subscription, and for the
Speaker 19: next three months until August thirty first, we're running a
Speaker 19: promotion where that annual subscription is actual only sixty dollars,
Speaker 19: So you can get the device, get up and running
Speaker 19: with the fifbit ace pass and for sixty dollars you
Speaker 19: get one year of LT connectivity, all of those updates
Speaker 19: over the course of the year, all of those parental controls,
Speaker 19: and a free thirty five dollars band.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a great deal. Let's talk about the durability
Speaker 2: of this device. Because it's kids. You know this thing
Speaker 2: is going to get wet, it's going to get dirty,
Speaker 2: it's going to be bumped around. So tell me about
Speaker 2: the aspect of durability.
Speaker 19: Every part of this device has been built from the
Speaker 19: ground up. It's a device that I'm incredibly proud of
Speaker 19: because we took a clean sheet of paper and we
Speaker 19: started from how do we build a device for kids?
Speaker 19: And exactly as you said, when you're thinking about hardware design,
Speaker 19: you have to think about how kids use it. So
Speaker 19: a simple example, one of the first tests we insisted
Speaker 19: on is it has to pass the washing machine test.
Speaker 19: So if a kid forgets it in their clothes and
Speaker 19: it ends up in the laundry, can the device survive?
Speaker 19: And the answer in our case is absolutely yes. Because
Speaker 19: that was a really cool part of curability. We also
Speaker 19: include a free bumper in the box for added protection,
Speaker 19: so it just clips on. But the band itself is
Speaker 19: what you feel on your skin most of the time,
Speaker 19: and so we have done a textile band which is really.
Speaker 15: Comfort uses recycled yarn.
Speaker 19: It has a single loop that attaches with a velcro strap.
Speaker 15: Really easy for kids and really comfortable.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the tech aspect of the band. What
Speaker 2: does it do when it connects to the actual watch.
Speaker 19: So the device has NFC, which it uses for things
Speaker 19: like Have to Pay, which be launching in a couple
Speaker 19: of months, but the band itself does not have NFC.
Speaker 19: It has another patented technology that we put in it
Speaker 19: that allows us that when you connect the band to
Speaker 19: the device, the device will recognize which band you've attached.
Speaker 19: So we have six collectible bands that we're launching and
Speaker 19: depending on which band that you plug in, the device
Speaker 19: will recognize that. It'll wake up your eg which is
Speaker 19: this virtual companion.
Speaker 15: You have almost a tamagatchi that you take care of
Speaker 15: on the device.
Speaker 19: So we really want it to feel like a gaming
Speaker 19: cartridge that you can trade and you can collect.
Speaker 2: What ages do you think this watch is geared towards
Speaker 2: and also I'd like you to touch upon privacy because
Speaker 2: this is going to be collecting a lot of data
Speaker 2: about minors, so how is Google handling that data.
Speaker 19: We believe that this device is about motivating activity and
Speaker 19: play and movement through gaming, and the sweet spot for
Speaker 19: this device is typically between the ages of around seven
Speaker 19: to eleven. That's really what we've thought of when we
Speaker 19: designed the device, because not only have we built the
Speaker 19: games and the activity and the movements inspired around that,
Speaker 19: that's also typically where kids are reaching a level of
Speaker 19: independence where they're starting to maybe spend more time on
Speaker 19: their own, go to sleepovers, go to camp, go pick
Speaker 19: the public transport to school, perhaps be.
Speaker 15: It home alone.
Speaker 19: But parents are looking for an alternative to that phone,
Speaker 19: and parents are waiting typically till twelve thirteen years of
Speaker 19: age before they buy that first phone. So as an
Speaker 19: alternative to the phone, this is an ideal product in
Speaker 19: that age rain that sweet spot of seven to eleven.
Speaker 19: Seven to twelve to your second question about privacy, and
Speaker 19: I'm really glad you asked that question because that has
Speaker 19: been a driving principle of this product from day one.
Speaker 19: So a couple of examples you can access location on
Speaker 19: this device. That location is only shared with the parent,
Speaker 19: and it is deleted from all of our systems within
Speaker 19: twenty four hours.
Speaker 15: We never hold on to that data.
Speaker 19: Similarly, the activity data, and so we delete it from
Speaker 19: all of our systems and all of our servers within
Speaker 19: thirty five days. There are no first party apps on
Speaker 19: the device. There's no app store to download other apps.
Speaker 19: There are no ads on the device whatsoever. There never
Speaker 19: will be. None of the data is being used by
Speaker 19: Google four Ads or any other reason. It really, truly
Speaker 19: is a device that's been built with privacy and data
Speaker 19: minimization right at the forefront. We feel that this device
Speaker 19: is yeah, unlike anything out there, and certainly for parents
Speaker 19: who've got kids in that seven to eleven and looking
Speaker 19: for an alternative before they take the plunge in the
Speaker 19: first phone, we think this is an ideal device.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: There you have it, a Neil summerwall of Google Fitbit.
Speaker 1: The one thing to know about the Fitbit ace LTE,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned earlier, is that it does not get
Speaker 1: assigned a traditional phone number. So if you're thinking that
Speaker 1: your kid will have what equates to sort of a
Speaker 1: smartphone on their wrist with a phone number.
Speaker 2: That is not the way this works.
Speaker 1: It is a app connected device, so when you make
Speaker 1: a call to the child or a message, it all
Speaker 1: goes through that fitbit app on your phone. And yeah,
Speaker 1: you can have up to twenty different contacts. They're all
Speaker 1: gonna have to download that fitbit app app and be
Speaker 1: linked in and able to access and talk to this device.
Speaker 1: So that's just one thing to know. The fitbit ace
Speaker 1: LT is gonna be two hundred and thirty dollars. It's
Speaker 1: on sale on June fifth through Amazon also the Google Store,
Speaker 1: and then the service is ten bucks a month one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty dollars for the year, but right now
Speaker 1: for the launch, they're doing a deal where it's sixty
Speaker 1: dollars for the first year. Once again, my kid is
Speaker 1: testing this out right now. So far, so good, as
Speaker 1: long as you're aware of the limitation of not an
Speaker 1: assigned phone number. All right, Coming up next, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you where to find some games on YouTube, and
Speaker 1: if you want to watch TV for free, Filo has
Speaker 1: a new subscription free service plus your favorite segment, the
Speaker 1: Feedback coming up next right here.
Speaker 2: On rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. That song must mean
Speaker 1: it is time to close out the show. Two more
Speaker 1: stories before we get to the feedback segment. First off,
Speaker 1: you can now play games on YouTube. Yes, there are
Speaker 1: more than seventy five games now directly accessible through the
Speaker 1: YouTube app, no additional downloads necessary. There are popular games
Speaker 1: like Angry Birds, Showdown, Cut the Rope, Tomb of the Mask,
Speaker 1: Trivia Crack in My Favorite Words of Wonders. You can
Speaker 1: track your all time best scores, share your progress. You
Speaker 1: can even bookmark your favorite games. These are being gradually
Speaker 1: rolled out to users over the coming months, but if
Speaker 1: you want to check to see if you have them,
Speaker 1: open up the YouTube app on your phone. So go
Speaker 1: to YouTube, open it up, and then you might need
Speaker 1: to pull down on the screen a little bit. But
Speaker 1: up in the upper left hand corner, there's something that
Speaker 1: looks like it's like a circle, looks like a navigation circle.
Speaker 1: You tap that and that will bring you to the menu.
Speaker 1: Scroll down all the way to the bottom of the menu.
Speaker 1: Were almost to the bottom, and it'll say playables. You
Speaker 1: tap that and you can see all the different games
Speaker 1: that are available for play. Kind of fun to have
Speaker 1: these games built right into your phone. So there you go.
Speaker 1: Seventy five games on YouTube to Play and Filo. This
Speaker 1: is a streaming service that has been available for a
Speaker 1: couple of years. Now they have a new level of
Speaker 1: service that is completely free, so you can watch over
Speaker 1: seventy free ad supported TV channels. They call this fast
Speaker 1: free ad supported Television. Yeah, like regular TV. Non subscribers
Speaker 1: can watch this for free and even record these channels
Speaker 1: without needing to subscribe to the Core package or even
Speaker 1: provide a credit card. The TV channels include reality TV, music, news,
Speaker 1: and classic television shows. It depends what you want to watch, right,
Speaker 1: so check out the channel lineup see if it appeals
Speaker 1: to you and you can get free access. You do
Speaker 1: not need a subscription or a credit card, so they
Speaker 1: say this is a great way for people who are
Speaker 1: not ready to subscribe or maybe they're taking a break
Speaker 1: from paying for the Core package.
Speaker 15: Now.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna find this on their homepage. They don't
Speaker 1: advertise this. This is you got to go to a
Speaker 1: certain website Filo dot com slash go slash free channels
Speaker 1: And if you go to the Filo dot com website,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna see this on the homepage. But if
Speaker 1: you go all the way down to the bottom. There's
Speaker 1: a little link that says free channels. You tap that
Speaker 1: and that is your secret way of getting in where
Speaker 1: you can sign up for free. Of course, I'll link
Speaker 1: that up on the website. Rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: All right, now on to the feedback segment. We got
Speaker 1: a lot of comments about last week's show. One of
Speaker 1: the callers said that he had a record player in
Speaker 1: his car, and we were curious if that was actually true,
Speaker 1: and it turns out, yes, there were record players in cars.
Speaker 1: I still can't believe this. I still need to see this,
Speaker 1: but I got a lot of emails about it. And
Speaker 1: Len in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania said, Hey, Rich, remember it's likely
Speaker 1: that the engineers who put a record player in cars
Speaker 1: envisioned you playing records at a picnic or another outdoor
Speaker 1: family event, not while you were actually driving down the road.
Speaker 1: And many people sent me links to pictures and websites
Speaker 1: about these record players. So, yes, thank you for all
Speaker 1: of the comments about the record players. I got them.
Speaker 1: No more necessary. Ivan in Vermont says, hey, Rich, this
Speaker 1: is feedback about our EV interview. EV's are governed by physics,
Speaker 1: plain and simple. An eight hundred mile EV trip from
Speaker 1: Vermont to Michigan adds hours to the trip. EV's escaping
Speaker 1: a hurricane along I seventy five in Florida, stuck in
Speaker 1: miles long traffic jams. Can't just plug in and go
Speaker 1: in minutes, buy one at your own peril. Meanwhile, having
Speaker 1: a choice is a must, and the FEDS need to
Speaker 1: keep their paws off the transportation industry. Thanks Ivan. It
Speaker 1: was a debate last weekend we drove to Palm Desert.
Speaker 1: Of course, my wife does not like to drive the
Speaker 1: EV anywhere on a road trip because it adds time
Speaker 1: and it adds annoyance, and yes, it was annoying. We
Speaker 1: got to our friend's house. I was on empty and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to plug in at their house because
Speaker 1: I think that that is you know, you don't know
Speaker 1: what their electricity is like there or how expensive it's
Speaker 1: going to be.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it took me an hour.
Speaker 1: When everyone else was having drinks by the pool, I said, oh,
Speaker 1: I got to go drive the car to the charger,
Speaker 1: and it took an hour to go charge it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely a consideration.
Speaker 1: Pete from San Luis Obispo, California says, Hey, Rich, I
Speaker 1: invite you to watch AI perversion on Prime.
Speaker 2: Is that something I can mention on the radio.
Speaker 1: It's truly fascinating how an AI powered virtual assistant can
Speaker 1: make and execute decisions based on one's personality. It is
Speaker 1: a French Subtitlepete. When I'm feeling like I want some
Speaker 1: AI perversion, I will watch that. Germo in Los Angeles says, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I have the T Mobile Unlimited Freedom Plan with taxes
Speaker 1: and fees included, which was carried over from Sprint. I
Speaker 1: have two phones and other devices. I have not received
Speaker 1: any notification of a rate increase just yet. Also, you
Speaker 1: can get the fifty five plus Magenta plan, but it's
Speaker 1: not really advertised and it's not on the website. You
Speaker 1: have to call in as it's buried on the phone
Speaker 1: plan options. Yeah, a lot of people emailed me about
Speaker 1: the T Mobile price increase and they are not happy,
Speaker 1: and they are looking at other options, and I say,
Speaker 1: look at those other options. There are many many alternatives
Speaker 1: to the big three out there, mv and O's Visible
Speaker 1: Mobile AX. We mentioned Tello, You've got Cricket, You've got Visible.
Speaker 1: You've got so many that you can subscribe to that
Speaker 1: have much cheaper plans with less data and no fee.
Speaker 1: Kenny and Rhode Island writes in Hey Rich, a while back,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that Google would be making its editing tools
Speaker 1: Google Magic Editor, specifically available for free. I would believe
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be available for iOS on May fifteenth. However,
Speaker 1: I don't see it on my Apple fourteen Pro. I
Speaker 1: contacted Google. They had me delete the app, reboot my phone,
Speaker 1: reinstall it, but still no Magic Editor.
Speaker 2: Any ideas on why love the show? Thanks?
Speaker 1: Yes, The reason is it's rolling out the two most
Speaker 1: hated words in the tech world. Rolling out means not
Speaker 1: everyone gets it at the same time, and it means
Speaker 1: if you're waiting for it, you're not gonna get it
Speaker 1: for a long time because they know you're waiting for it. No,
Speaker 1: they don't actually know that, but I'm just saying it.
Speaker 1: So I just got this on a non pixel device,
Speaker 1: so it is rolling out. It is happening. It showed
Speaker 1: up on my Samsung S twenty four Ultra, so it
Speaker 1: is a matter of time before it shows up in
Speaker 1: your iOS iPhone device. It is not shown up on
Speaker 1: my iPhone device. So I'm right there with you, Kenny,
Speaker 1: and yes, I understand why you want it because it's
Speaker 1: really cool. Jackie writes, I was scammed on social media
Speaker 1: Facebook over a vacuum mop that was supposedly through QVC.
Speaker 1: It looks so real, even with people demonstrating it, but
Speaker 1: when I called QVC about my order, I found out
Speaker 1: it was a scam. We live in a crazy world.
Speaker 1: It's very scary these days, especially since everything is done
Speaker 1: on computers and phones. I'm in my mid sixties and
Speaker 1: all this technology is new and sometimes frustrating.
Speaker 2: Indeed, it can be. Ah, that's gonna do it.
Speaker 1: For the feedback, thanks so much for listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of the show. You can find everything I mentioned
Speaker 1: on my website. Just go to Richontech dot tv. You
Speaker 1: can find me on social media. I am at rich
Speaker 1: on Tech, and don't miss out on the newsletter packed
Speaker 1: with valuable information, just like this show. You can sign
Speaker 1: up with your email at the website.
Speaker 2: Next week.
Speaker 1: I know I promised him for this week, but he's
Speaker 1: gonna be next week. Drew Binski has gone to every
Speaker 1: country in the world. I'm gonna have my interview with him.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. There are so many
Speaker 1: ways you can spend your time. I really do appreciate
Speaker 1: you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone
Speaker 1: who makes this show possible. Bobo Happy Birthday celebrating his
Speaker 1: birthday this week, Kim Bill, Julie, and most importantly you.
Speaker 1: You're not pushing any buttons, you're not choosing the music.
Speaker 1: But guess what you tuned in. You listen to what
Speaker 1: I have to say, and that means a lot to me.
Speaker 1: My name is rich Demiro.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening. I'm going to talk to
Speaker 2: you real soon.