Speaker 1: A personal update on the wildfires in Los Angeles. Meta
Speaker 1: makes a one eighty when it comes to moderating posts.
Speaker 1: Coverage from CS twenty twenty five in Las Vegas, plus
Speaker 1: your tech questions.
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 1: My name is Rich Damiro and this is Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: This is the show where I talk about the tech
Speaker 1: stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
Speaker 1: place where I answer your questions about technology. Now. I
Speaker 1: believe that tech should be interesting, useful and fun. This week,
Speaker 1: of course, in Los Angeles, tech took on an entirely
Speaker 1: new meeting with the wildfires.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 1: Not only did it help people stay connected and it
Speaker 1: continues to do so, but there were vital apps and
Speaker 1: services people relied on to not only keep tabs on
Speaker 1: the fires, but also their homes and their lives. We're
Speaker 1: going to open up the phone lines at triple eight
Speaker 1: Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one because this is such a
Speaker 1: special show today. I will pretty much take or entertain
Speaker 1: any call. So if you want to give me an
Speaker 1: update on your situation in Los Angeles, you have a
Speaker 1: tech question, Kim will take your calls and we'll get
Speaker 1: you on the air here, give me a call eight
Speaker 1: eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Email also open.
Speaker 1: Just go to Rich on tech dot tv hit contact
Speaker 1: you can contact me that way. Very excited for one
Speaker 1: of my guests coming up this hour, Nick Russell. He
Speaker 1: is the VP of operations at watch Duty. This is
Speaker 1: the app that has been helping people stay informed during
Speaker 1: the fires here in the LA area. This app has
Speaker 1: seen a surge in downloads and so many people. This
Speaker 1: is probably I think it became like the top app
Speaker 1: in the app store because of this, and it just
Speaker 1: it really has some incredibly helpful information. We'll have Nick
Speaker 1: Russell join us here and talk about that app. Later
Speaker 1: on in the show, a couple of folks from CS
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Matt Swider of the shortcut dot com.
Speaker 1: Will join me to talk about some of the stuff
Speaker 1: he saw there, and lance Yulanoff, editor at large for
Speaker 1: tech Radar, He will talk CS twenty twenty five as well. Now,
Speaker 1: as you know, I am based in Los Angeles. This
Speaker 1: was a really interesting week for me because I'm here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles now, but I had to come back
Speaker 1: early from Las Vegas. So CS twenty twenty five happened
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas this week. It's pretty much the largest
Speaker 1: tech event of the year, with the exception of the
Speaker 1: iPhone launch in September. This is where over one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people descend upon Las Vegas to see the latest
Speaker 1: and greatest from all the tech companies. Well, let me
Speaker 1: give you a timeline of exactly what happened, because, as
Speaker 1: you know, I'm also a reporter at KTLA Television here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, which has been wall to wall with
Speaker 1: these fires that broke out here since basically two Tuesday,
Speaker 1: I believe. So let me explain the timeline. So I'm
Speaker 1: in CS in Las Vegas. You get out there early,
Speaker 1: so last Sunday I was on my way there and
Speaker 1: Monday morning, so Sunday already the CS stuff starts. Monday,
Speaker 1: it all goes on, and around eleven am on Monday,
Speaker 1: I'm just scrolling through first thing in the morning on my.
Speaker 2: X and what do I see.
Speaker 1: I see a post from the National Weather Service Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and this post is like I'm rubbing my eyes
Speaker 1: because I'm like, wait, what life threatening and destructive windstorm
Speaker 1: coming to the LA area. And I said, there's no way,
Speaker 1: this must be a mistake, you know, And when you're
Speaker 1: scrolling through X sometimes things are parody accounts or fake
Speaker 1: or you know, nonsense, and so I'm just double checking.
Speaker 1: I'm like, where what I mean? This is National Weather Service?
Speaker 1: Like this can't be fake. And I texted to my wife.
Speaker 1: She's like, I haven't heard anything about this. I look
Speaker 1: around online, no mention whatsoever. So I repost it on
Speaker 1: my Instagram and just say, hey, you know, be aware
Speaker 1: of this, but I'm in CS and we continue our coverage. Well,
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, the fire start the next
Speaker 1: day around ten thirty am, and we're already about by
Speaker 1: this time, this is Tuesday, We're already three days into
Speaker 1: our CS coverage. So we had one story that aired
Speaker 1: on KTLA, we had a lot of coverage already going
Speaker 1: on that we've edited, and next thing you know, it's like, no,
Speaker 1: we're going.
Speaker 2: Wall to wall.
Speaker 1: So my photographer and I, who you know, we both
Speaker 1: live in Los Angeles, made the decision to stay in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: It was safer there at that point.
Speaker 1: Checked on our families, they were both okay, not in
Speaker 1: harm's way, and we just continue to do our work
Speaker 1: while we kind of monitor the situation, and I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: Words spread through CS very quickly about what was happening
Speaker 1: because all the TVs and things were tuned to what
Speaker 1: was happening in LA. And every single person that came
Speaker 1: up to me if they saw KTLA am my badge,
Speaker 1: or saw Los Angeles rich, how you doing, how's your
Speaker 1: family doing?
Speaker 2: How is you know?
Speaker 1: How's everyone in Los Angeles? And the answer was I
Speaker 1: don't really know. So my wife happens to be from
Speaker 1: the West side of Los Angeles, went to school in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Palisades, and so many people. I mean our wedding,
Speaker 1: one of our wedding showers, was held at a home
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Palisades. I mean this is an area
Speaker 1: that from before this happened, nobody even heard of the Palisades.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've heard of Beverly Hills. That is a
Speaker 1: really upscale neighborhood that the entire world has heard of. Well,
Speaker 1: Pacific Palisades is very similar, except nobody's heard of it
Speaker 1: until now, and of course for the wrong reasons. But
Speaker 1: this is an enclave, a very wealthy area of Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: you know, on the side of a mountain, and it
Speaker 1: is you know, ocean views from many of the homes.
Speaker 1: There a lot of generational wealth, a lot of people
Speaker 1: that have made been very successful in their lives, and
Speaker 1: this is where they chose to live.
Speaker 2: And it was an amazing place.
Speaker 1: And to see the stories and to hear the stories
Speaker 1: of destruction there was just heartbreaking. And it still is
Speaker 1: and we're still learning now. Some friends we have, their
Speaker 1: homes are fine. Some people we know their homes are
Speaker 1: completely lost. And imagine, by the way, a lot of
Speaker 1: these people had almost no no time to get out
Speaker 1: of there, like we're talking. They just left with the
Speaker 1: clothes on their back, and that's it. Imagine being in
Speaker 1: that situation.
Speaker 2: What do you do?
Speaker 1: What do you take out of your house in that time?
Speaker 1: You're not even thinking clearly, You're literally going to pick
Speaker 1: up your kids at school and getting out of dodge
Speaker 1: and you come back a week later, three days later,
Speaker 1: to even if you can see your home, if you're
Speaker 1: able to get back to.
Speaker 2: It just gone.
Speaker 1: Or your neighborhood completely gone, or every house around you
Speaker 1: is gone and your house is standing. Now, how do
Speaker 1: you feel with that? So these are the stories that
Speaker 1: I'm getting now. My wife also works at a school
Speaker 1: where a lot of the students live in the Palisades,
Speaker 1: and so she just all day. She was crying for
Speaker 1: three days straight, getting the emails from her students about
Speaker 1: their homes and their situation. And you know, think about this.
Speaker 1: These are people who go from the absolute upper echelon
Speaker 1: of life, right they have everything they need, they have
Speaker 1: everything they want, They've got a beautiful family and home
Speaker 1: and place to live, to absolutely the worst possible situation.
Speaker 2: You can imagine. Imagine that just for a second.
Speaker 1: Now for me, I continue to cover CS and we
Speaker 1: went on and this this goes to the dichotomy of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles as well. So in La, you know, the
Speaker 1: tech started coming in for me, you know, like, hey,
Speaker 1: rich are you okay? Is your family okay? How are
Speaker 1: things going? And La is a big place and at
Speaker 1: the beginning we were fine. You know, our home was
Speaker 1: not in any danger. Where we live was very safe.
Speaker 1: That did change yesterday. But you know, we're getting texts
Speaker 1: and emails from friends everywhere, you know, just asking. And
Speaker 1: here's the interesting thing about La. La is a very
Speaker 1: big place. And I was I was worried about, you know,
Speaker 1: driving back to LA from Las Vegas because I wasn't sure,
Speaker 1: you know, Or the freeway is going to be shut down?
Speaker 1: Are the roads going to be impacted? Am I gonna
Speaker 1: be stuck in my electric car for hours on end
Speaker 1: on a freeway that I can't move on and my
Speaker 1: battery goes dead? I mean, these are considerations. We got
Speaker 1: a lot of electric cars here in La too, or California,
Speaker 1: and so this is the the idea of Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: There's so many places, right, so you may live in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and not be affected by this at all.
Speaker 1: I mean emotionally, of course, physically with smoke. Visually, I
Speaker 1: mean you could see the smoke from these fires from
Speaker 1: our home and from many homes across Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: That's how big they are.
Speaker 1: But you know, you may still go to work, you
Speaker 1: may still My wife, you know, when she finally left
Speaker 1: the house, she drove past the CPK, So I can't
Speaker 1: believe I was just seen all these people eating dinner
Speaker 1: in there. You know, life is normal. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's weird to think about that, but life goes on
Speaker 1: in different places, in different pockets. My mom watching at home,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty four to seven, said she watched the
Speaker 1: news from five pm to one am couldn't take her
Speaker 1: eyes off the TV screen.
Speaker 2: I understand it.
Speaker 1: These are images that we you see in movies, and
Speaker 1: here they are happening in real life to real people
Speaker 1: and really affecting their lives in a way that nobody
Speaker 1: ever wants to experience. Driving into the studio today, you know,
Speaker 1: last night we were uncertain if we were even going
Speaker 1: to be able to do this show from the studio.
Speaker 1: Originally I planned on doing the show from Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: and you know that was of course derailed and came
Speaker 1: back here, and then all of a sudden it was
Speaker 1: a question of are we doing the show from here
Speaker 1: because can we get into the studio. And then my producer,
Speaker 1: you know, Bobo, you know, he was not able to
Speaker 1: get here in an easy way. He had to go
Speaker 1: around in circles because he couldn't get through all the roadblocks.
Speaker 1: And driving to work, I mean it looked like one
Speaker 1: of those apocalyptic movies with the National Guard and the
Speaker 1: police blocking almost every road to the mountain. I mean big,
Speaker 1: big equipment. We're talking army equipment, military equipment. This is
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that you know, people with large guns.
Speaker 1: You're just sitting there going, wait, what world. Is this
Speaker 1: what is happening right now? And by the way, in
Speaker 1: these moments, you realize how much control the government has
Speaker 1: over you because here's your home in your neighborhood and
Speaker 1: you are not allowed to go there. Think about that
Speaker 1: for a second. There's your home, you have no idea
Speaker 1: if it's standing or not, and you are not allowed
Speaker 1: to go in. And I understand it's for the safety
Speaker 1: of everyone, it's for the looters that we've seen, it's
Speaker 1: for a million and one reasons. But think about that,
Speaker 1: your home you cannot check on. Imagine what that feels
Speaker 1: like for a second. So it's been interesting in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: let's put it that way. On this show, we're obviously
Speaker 1: going to do a mix of things, right so this
Speaker 1: is a show about technology. I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: as many tech updates as I can. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the wildfires because that is what people are
Speaker 1: talking about right now. This is what people This is
Speaker 1: top of mind and there's a lot to go through.
Speaker 1: We were packing our go bags last night. Where do
Speaker 1: you start? Is everything scanned? Where's our wedding album? Where's
Speaker 1: our driver's license, where's our passport? What do we need
Speaker 1: to bring if we can never come back here eight
Speaker 1: eight eight rich one oh one eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. My name is rich Dumuro.
Speaker 1: This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here talking technology of course, uh talking wildfires
Speaker 1: as well. City of Los Angeles in an interesting place
Speaker 1: right now. But what I will tell you is people
Speaker 1: come together in situations like this, and it really gives
Speaker 1: me a lot of hope for humanity because not only
Speaker 1: do the big companies you know, try to do what
Speaker 1: they can, but I think just individual people.
Speaker 2: I mean my.
Speaker 1: Wife, you know, her school started, you know, donation center,
Speaker 1: and I saw this over and over on Instagram. Various
Speaker 1: places started donation drives, and just the amount of things
Speaker 1: that people brought to donate is just incredible. People want
Speaker 1: to help. My friend Jefferson Graham he mentioned today in
Speaker 1: his newsletter. You know, he talks about all the stuff
Speaker 1: with taking pictures and backing up your photos. You talked
Speaker 1: about all that, but at the end of his newsletter
Speaker 1: he mentioned, you know, a quick note about the supposed
Speaker 1: death of traditional TV right because everyone's streaming. But think
Speaker 1: about this, what did you tune into to learn about
Speaker 1: the fires. Did you go to Netflix, did you go
Speaker 1: to Amazon Prime? No, you probably went to KTLA, or
Speaker 1: you probably went to your local radio station, or you
Speaker 1: probably went to one of the other broadcast stations. So
Speaker 1: I've been working in TV now for twenty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a long time, and I'm not kidding.
Speaker 2: I remember.
Speaker 1: I remember this like it was yesterday, my first day
Speaker 1: up in Yakima, Washington, and TVO was just sort of
Speaker 1: coming on the horizon and everyone said, that's it. TV
Speaker 1: is over, TVO done, And they said, now you know what,
Speaker 1: local news probably be okay because people like to watch
Speaker 1: it live.
Speaker 2: And that's true.
Speaker 1: How many times have you recorded the news to watch
Speaker 1: it later? Probably not very much. Let's go to Raoul
Speaker 1: in Arcadia. Raoul, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 4: Hi, Rich, thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, what's happening.
Speaker 4: We're in the middle of it there in Arcadia, and
Speaker 4: a lot of our workmates all live in the fire
Speaker 4: area and have no power. What I noticed as an
Speaker 4: amateur prepper, I carry lots of portable power banks, solar
Speaker 4: powered nonsolar powered. I have some in my car and
Speaker 4: many at home. But I noticed surgeons that couldn't go
Speaker 4: to their homes sitting at the hospital because they're on
Speaker 4: ten percent power and they have to charge before they
Speaker 4: go home because they have nowhere no way of charging
Speaker 4: their phones at home, and they're woefully unprepared for having
Speaker 4: no power at home. Nobody seems to have poor power banks.
Speaker 4: So now everybody's scrambling asking me for information or advice
Speaker 4: what to get and all that. And I was wondering,
Speaker 4: if you have any suggestions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great, great question.
Speaker 1: This was something that in our house we were I
Speaker 1: was like told my wife isid, Hey, you got to
Speaker 1: charge up the uh the portable backup you know device
Speaker 1: to weve got like one of those big ones. So
Speaker 1: just being at CS this, you gotta be prepared. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding. When I go out to a trade
Speaker 1: show or a football game, I make sure that my
Speaker 1: phone is at one hundred percent no matter what, and
Speaker 1: I put it on low power immediately. So if you're
Speaker 1: in a situation like this, like anything that could happen,
Speaker 1: you need to be prepared. You have to have a
Speaker 1: backup battery. Now there are many of them, there's mint,
Speaker 1: there's whole house backups. Now at this point, the company
Speaker 1: that really made these popular Jackerie. They were all over
Speaker 1: cs and these things are giant, giant battery So imagine
Speaker 1: the batter the portable battery pack you have for your smartphone,
Speaker 1: but just a lot bigger. It's got every plug imaginable.
Speaker 1: And the new ones come with solar panels, so you
Speaker 1: can set up those solar panels and have this thing recharged.
Speaker 1: And I will tell you solar does not charge things
Speaker 1: very quickly, so this is not something that you're gonna
Speaker 1: just like say, oh, it's gonna be at zero percent,
Speaker 1: let me put those panels out. No, you want to
Speaker 1: have this thing charged up first off. So Jackerie, they
Speaker 1: were telling me, you know, one of their best sellers,
Speaker 1: they've got portable power stations and those start at let's
Speaker 1: see what price. I think they were telling me that
Speaker 1: some of their most populars are like five, six, seven,
Speaker 1: eight hundred dollars. So yeah, I mean they go up
Speaker 1: to thirty five hundred dollars for the giant rolling ones.
Speaker 1: They've got the portable ones that are two thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Then they've got smaller just keeps going down. The cheapest
Speaker 1: one they've got is one hundred and twenty nine dollars,
Speaker 1: so again, get one of these things and talk to
Speaker 1: your power company. Look on their website. They may have
Speaker 1: a rebate that lets you purchase these for free, depending
Speaker 1: on where you live. So Jackerie is a big goal
Speaker 1: zero goalzero dot com. They make a lot of the
Speaker 1: portable power stations with solar. They were an early early
Speaker 1: adopter of solar power and solar generators and power banks.
Speaker 1: A lot of people that can't know about this company,
Speaker 1: but Goal zero is another big one. Eco Flow. I
Speaker 1: actually have this hat right here. Let me grab this hat.
Speaker 1: So I've got this hat right here from Ecoflow and
Speaker 1: this hat I picked up at CES. It's a solar
Speaker 1: powered hat. So I'm putting it on and you see
Speaker 1: this thing. Bobo's laughing, but it's it's I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not kidding you.
Speaker 2: Put this thing on.
Speaker 1: It looks like a you know, kind of a big
Speaker 1: floppy hat. It's got solar panels all around it. You
Speaker 1: plug your phone in, you walk around, two hours, will
Speaker 1: charge up your phone.
Speaker 2: I look like a witch, like a witch. That is
Speaker 2: a witch hat.
Speaker 1: But hey, you should post that on social media. So
Speaker 1: I will post it on social media. So look at
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. I'll post it I'll take a picture
Speaker 1: during the break. But I'm not kidding. You have this
Speaker 1: thing and you don't have to worry about charging your phone.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a solar powered hat. This thing is
Speaker 1: about one hundred bucks. That's from Ecoflow. So check out
Speaker 1: those brands and please anchors another one. Just get a
Speaker 1: portable battery for your smartphone. Make sure it has USBC
Speaker 1: charge them up. Make sure they are fully charged. These
Speaker 1: things lose about five percent a year in charge, so
Speaker 1: charge it up.
Speaker 2: It should stay charged up. Coming up, we're going to talk.
Speaker 1: To uh the watch duty app, which has been a
Speaker 1: lifeline in this situation. Welcome back to rich on tech
Speaker 1: rich Demiro here talking technology. Eight e' eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four.
Speaker 2: One zero one.
Speaker 1: I know the lines are jammed today. I can see
Speaker 1: that a lot of folks calling in. So if you
Speaker 1: want to send an email, just go to the website
Speaker 1: rich on tech dot TV. Hit contact. You can send
Speaker 1: an email there. I will read it, and you can
Speaker 1: also go to the website for show notes. So I
Speaker 1: just meant a bunch of the portable battery and chargers.
Speaker 2: You can go there.
Speaker 1: Rich on tech dot TV hit the light bulb icon
Speaker 1: to get more information about that.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 1: My next guest is someone I'm really excited to bring on.
Speaker 1: Nick Russell is VP of operations at watch Duty. This
Speaker 1: is an app that has just been just invaluable for
Speaker 1: people keeping up with the fires and learning about them.
Speaker 1: And this app really really has just had so many
Speaker 1: downloads in the past week or so. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: want to toot my own horn, but I did go
Speaker 1: back in my notes and I looked at the first
Speaker 1: time I mentioned this app to my followers, and that
Speaker 1: was on December twentieth, So thankfully you had the heads up,
Speaker 1: but I know a lot of people are just discovering it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Let's bring on Nick Russell, VP of Operations at watch Duty. Nick,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks for having me rich and appreciate your ongoing
Speaker 5: support as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's just incredible what this app has done. First,
Speaker 1: just explain what watch Duty is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, watch Duty is a free emergency learning service
Speaker 5: that's available through the app Store for free, as well
Speaker 5: as online at app dot watch duty dot org, and
Speaker 5: our primary goal is to give you actionable information on
Speaker 5: disasters occurring around you when seconds count, and right now
Speaker 5: that's specifically wildfire, but in the future we want to
Speaker 5: expand that.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the last week. What's been going
Speaker 1: on with the Los Angeles downloads. I mean, obviously, you
Speaker 1: know you probably saw hundreds of thousands of new downloads.
Speaker 2: What have you been holding up?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: No, I mean it's like where do I start. This
Speaker 5: week has been just monumental, but it's so hard to
Speaker 5: focus on how well Watch Duty has been doing and
Speaker 5: serving when I think about the devastation in southern California.
Speaker 5: But since the beginning of the Palisades fire, we have
Speaker 5: had just short of two million new downloads of the app,
Speaker 5: bringing our total downloads to five million, and our active
Speaker 5: user as well over ten million.
Speaker 7: And so this.
Speaker 5: Week we're probably say that we've successfully sent out two
Speaker 5: hundred and twenty million push notifications to the southern California area.
Speaker 5: Just trying to keep everybody informed as this is a
Speaker 5: very dynamic and fluid.
Speaker 1: Situation that is wild Oh my gosh. Okay, So, and
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the app store right now on the iPhone.
Speaker 1: At least you guys are featured right on the homepage.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if I can see the top
Speaker 1: downloads at this point, but I'm assuming you are probably
Speaker 1: up there in the top downloads.
Speaker 5: Yeah, actually it's it's unimaginable. But we spent most of
Speaker 5: the week ahead of CHATVPT as the number one free
Speaker 5: app in the app store, which is just mind boggling
Speaker 5: to think of being ahead of chat GPT.
Speaker 2: That is wild. That is really well.
Speaker 1: It goes to show that when people need, you know, trusted,
Speaker 1: actionable information, you know, this is where they turn. Okay,
Speaker 1: so explain how the app is updated, because this is
Speaker 1: like a volunteer effort, or explain that whole situation, like
Speaker 1: how is this app getting its information?
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is a bit long winded, but it's certainly
Speaker 5: worth it. So the way that we operate is we
Speaker 5: have a team of active retired firefighters, dispatchers, first responders,
Speaker 5: and radio enthusiasts that are operating twenty four to seven
Speaker 5: behind the scenes in Slack. That's our internal communications system,
Speaker 5: and so within Slack, we have signals coming from a
Speaker 5: plethora of sources of potential new wildfire ignitions. Once we
Speaker 5: identify that there is in fact a wildfire that has begun,
Speaker 5: either through radio traffic or our other partnerships that we have.
Speaker 5: We begin posting that in the Watch Duty app and
Speaker 5: we start telling a story from the start of ignition
Speaker 5: until the threat passes or the last engine leaves. And
Speaker 5: we do this much like sports reporting, so that people
Speaker 5: get those granular details like the fires five eight, and
Speaker 5: it has a rapid rate of spread. Structures are immediately
Speaker 5: threatened on Corona Drive, for instance, and so then people
Speaker 5: can take that information and start acting on their own emergency.
Speaker 5: And then we continue that story as the fire evolves
Speaker 5: and escalates, and usually de escalation comes sooner rather than later.
Speaker 5: But fortunately with these wind events, that's not something that
Speaker 5: we've seen happen a lot.
Speaker 6: Yet.
Speaker 2: How many states are you operating in currently?
Speaker 5: We operate in twenty two states.
Speaker 1: And so that's just and that's all just people that
Speaker 1: are kind of what you just said, monitoring things and
Speaker 1: updating this stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the way the process generally happens is folks
Speaker 5: right into us, maybe they're retiring from the fire service,
Speaker 5: or they have some time in their off days. Same
Speaker 5: rings true with dispatchers as well as a radio enthusiast.
Speaker 5: And then what we do is we do a panel interview,
Speaker 5: a full background check, and then we bring them onto
Speaker 5: the team. And these are all a bunch of like
Speaker 5: minded people, people helping people. They just want to get
Speaker 5: this information out. Many of us, including myself, live in
Speaker 5: the wildland, so we know what it's like to be evacuated,
Speaker 5: and we know the information we're looking for and we've
Speaker 5: identified those challenges and so that's the stuff that we're
Speaker 5: looking to get to communities is just basic information that's
Speaker 5: clear and easy to understand, accurate and timely.
Speaker 1: Now, speaking of that, what do you guys qualify as
Speaker 1: sort of the critical alert?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: How on the iPhone there's like a feature where alerts
Speaker 1: can break through if they are deemed like from a
Speaker 1: critical nature?
Speaker 2: Are you is?
Speaker 1: Are your notifications classified as that? Like if I went
Speaker 1: to sleep? You know, here, here's the big question we
Speaker 1: had last night. You know, we were in the area
Speaker 1: where you might have to evacuate, and so we're like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a second, how do you go to sleep? Like,
Speaker 1: what do you when do you wake up? What do
Speaker 1: you how do you know when it's time to go?
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, that's a great question and it's certainly a challenge.
Speaker 5: And so we are approved to deliver critical alerts that
Speaker 5: being said that it's not something that we have yet done,
Speaker 5: not because we don't want to. We just want to
Speaker 5: find an explainable balance of when we send a critical
Speaker 5: alert versus when we don't. So that's something I anticipate
Speaker 5: coming out this I want to say this upcoming fire season,
Speaker 5: but this one hasn't ended yet, but we anticipate this
Speaker 5: into Q two of twenty twenty five, hopefully at the
Speaker 5: start of the next fire season.
Speaker 2: What inspired the creation of this app?
Speaker 5: So, our co founder and CEO, John Clark Mills, had
Speaker 5: a rich history in tech. He's developed many software companies
Speaker 5: and sold those and so he moved to a rural
Speaker 5: area in northern Sonoma County here in the North Bay,
Speaker 5: and about six months after he moved in, he experienced
Speaker 5: several events where helicopters are flying over dropping water, he's
Speaker 5: seeing smoke, and he's going all over the place trying
Speaker 5: to find information, and at times he finds bits and pieces,
Speaker 5: but it's really difficult. And then finally, really the genesis
Speaker 5: of WATCHD came when he was evacuated to the Wallbridge
Speaker 5: fire and when he left, he started looking back trying
Speaker 5: to find out where the fire had started, where it
Speaker 5: was going evacuation resources, and after the fourth website and
Speaker 5: social media platform that he visited and finally got a
Speaker 5: piece of the story together, he said to himself, man,
Speaker 5: there's kind of be a better way to do this,
Speaker 5: And so he learned more about wild land suppression and
Speaker 5: response and then set out to build Watch Duty, and
Speaker 5: just one year later it was born with the original
Speaker 5: three counties. And so this has really become a labor
Speaker 5: of love for all of us. We all started as
Speaker 5: volunteers in the wildland, experiencing these things and then taking
Speaker 5: our experiences and building.
Speaker 2: Off of them to help other people.
Speaker 5: And you know that's obviously grown tremendously since August and
Speaker 5: twenty one to today, but it's always been a passion
Speaker 5: of all of ours to help folks.
Speaker 1: Are you seeing a lot of donations or new memberships
Speaker 1: because you know this is all free for the most part.
Speaker 1: Are people stepping up to sort of support your mission here?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I know people have stepped up fantastically. The memberships are
Speaker 5: always the baseline, easiest way to support ensuring the app
Speaker 5: stays free forever and it will never have ads in
Speaker 5: it regardless, but those membership levels help with that.
Speaker 2: And then you know, if folks can visit.
Speaker 5: Watch duty dot org forward slash donate, those donations are tremendous.
Speaker 5: You know, we're one hundred percent nonprofit and we rely
Speaker 5: on that stuff to remain in operation. We're certainly not
Speaker 5: going anywhere anytime soon, but donations are certainly welcome to
Speaker 5: the suburb.
Speaker 1: Any advice you want to give to users that are
Speaker 1: using this app during these emergency situations.
Speaker 5: I want to take it a little bit broader. Watch
Speaker 5: Studio is a great resource and I highly encourage everyone
Speaker 5: to utilize it, download it, live by it, share it
Speaker 5: with your friends. We will we will be here twenty
Speaker 5: four to seven to help you. But this fire is
Speaker 5: a wake up call because stopping devastating wind driven wildfires
Speaker 5: is no easy task and it's not something that we're
Speaker 5: going to overnight. And so having a plan and making
Speaker 5: preparations and advance of these events well in advanced seasons
Speaker 5: and advance is extremely important. And developing plans with your
Speaker 5: family for how you will act when these fires begin,
Speaker 5: whether it's in the middle of the day, the middle
Speaker 5: of the night, having a meeting location so that you're
Speaker 5: not searching for loved ones. I think that's super important
Speaker 5: and everybody taking this as a learning point and taking
Speaker 5: those steps I think is a really good idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great advice.
Speaker 1: As last night we were scrambling to find you know,
Speaker 1: the locks to our safes and kind of like the
Speaker 1: passports and where everything was and where our wedding album was.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't want to be doing that at
Speaker 1: the last minute. So I know, growing up in my family,
Speaker 1: my dad is a roofer. He always had a plan
Speaker 1: for us to escape the house if there's ever a fire,
Speaker 1: and so we had this like ladder that would like
Speaker 1: roll down the side of the house. And of course
Speaker 1: we were scared, very scared. When he rolled that thing
Speaker 1: out and said this is how you get out of
Speaker 1: the house, We're like, yeah, for you to say, mister ruffer,
Speaker 1: but for us, you know, we're not walking down this
Speaker 1: ladder that was gonna you know, all right. The website
Speaker 1: is once again, tell me the website watchduty dot org.
Speaker 5: Yep, Watchdudy dot org.
Speaker 1: It's available on iOS and Android. Uh. It's also available
Speaker 1: through the web browser, so download the app, turn on
Speaker 1: those updates. Nick Russell, VP of operations at Watch Judy,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for.
Speaker 2: Joining me today.
Speaker 5: Thank you Rich take care.
Speaker 1: Thanks for everything you guys have done eight eight eight
Speaker 1: rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. More of your calls rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot TV. Welcome back to rich on Tech
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here talking technology at eighty eight rich one
Speaker 1: O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. The website for the show rich on
Speaker 1: Tech dot TV. We've been talking a lot about the wildfires,
Speaker 1: a lot about technology and its role in all of this.
Speaker 1: Nothing will replace your home, nothing will replace the memories lost.
Speaker 1: And I am thinking of everyone that has been impacted
Speaker 1: by this. I mean really really just everyone knows someone
Speaker 1: right that is impacted by this. And so no matter what,
Speaker 1: even if your home is still safe and sound, you're
Speaker 1: thinking about how you can donate, how you can support
Speaker 1: your friends, their families, anyone. And I do love that
Speaker 1: aspect of our world that people do come together during
Speaker 1: these times. Now, don't get me wrong, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of finger pointing, there's a lot of complaining, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of blaming, and that's always going to be there.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, what I see
Speaker 1: is the good in all of this, and people really
Speaker 1: do want to help each other. Let's go to Susan
Speaker 1: in Santa Monica. Susan, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 9: Hey, Rich, thank you so much for a great show,
Speaker 9: and thank you for the question the gentleman posed about
Speaker 9: backup power and your great answer.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 9: So I'm in Santa Monica. I've never felt the need
Speaker 9: until now to get a smartphone. It was not a
Speaker 9: good feeling the other night when I thought I may
Speaker 9: have to get out of here, and knowing I do
Speaker 9: not have connection to the internet. What is the simplest, easiest,
Speaker 9: basic phone that I might get. It could be a
Speaker 9: flip could I don't what do you think the basic, simplest,
Speaker 9: easiest phone. So if I had to go, and it'll
Speaker 9: be for emergencies only, I do not need to use it.
Speaker 3: All the time.
Speaker 2: Do you want a smartphone or a flip phone? I don't.
Speaker 9: You know what, just as long as I can get
Speaker 9: to the Internet when I leave, okay.
Speaker 1: Then you want a smartphone. Flip phone is going to
Speaker 1: be really tricky with the internet. So I would say
Speaker 1: a smartphone, okay, and I'd go with the simple smartphone.
Speaker 1: And what I do is I would go something like
Speaker 1: I mean, you could go you can go with an iPhone.
Speaker 1: Obviously that's going to be, you know, the gold standard
Speaker 1: of phones. But those are also going to be expensive.
Speaker 1: So if you're talking you're only going to use this
Speaker 1: thing once in a while, you may not need to
Speaker 1: do that. But if I was going to recommend an iPhone,
Speaker 1: I'd probably say just get a refurbished iPhone, something that's inexpensive.
Speaker 1: You can go on Amazon renewed and look up the
Speaker 1: iPhones that they sell there. They sell refurbished iPhones and
Speaker 1: they're a little bit older, so they're a little bit
Speaker 1: less expensive. And so that's that's one aspect. Let me
Speaker 1: just see what they're apple, what their iPhones are going for.
Speaker 1: So you can get an iPhone twelve for two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty bucks, you get an iPhone eleven. I may
Speaker 1: not go iPhone eleven. That might be a little bit
Speaker 1: too old. I go, you know, they've got an iPhone
Speaker 1: fourteen for four hundred dollars. So they've got an se
Speaker 1: second generation for one hundred and thirty eight dollars, So
Speaker 1: you can get a cheap iPhone. Contrary to popular belief,
Speaker 1: Yes you can buy a cheap iPhone. We're talking under
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars under three hundred, under two hundred.
Speaker 2: So that's if you want an iPhone.
Speaker 1: The reason I'd say iPhone is just because it's you
Speaker 1: got the accessories, it's gonna work, it's going to be simple.
Speaker 1: People know how to use it if you need to
Speaker 1: ask for help. So that's number one. And then what
Speaker 1: I would do is just buy a prepaid plan, so
Speaker 1: I would just pay for the year in advance, So
Speaker 1: something like a Mint Mobile, you want to pay for
Speaker 1: the entire year all at once, and that way you
Speaker 1: don't have to think about paying for the plan, you know,
Speaker 1: month to month, just pay for the whole year at once.
Speaker 1: And they've got plans that start at let's see, five
Speaker 1: gigabytes fifteen dollars a month. So if you buy twelve
Speaker 1: months twelve times fifteen, one hundred and eighty dollars up front,
Speaker 1: so you can do that. Wow, Okay, you can get
Speaker 1: unlimited right now if you pay for the Wow. That's
Speaker 1: an incredible deal. Unlimited right now on Mint mobiles fifteen
Speaker 1: dollars a month for twelve months. If you pay for
Speaker 1: that one hundred and eighty dollars, you have unlimited data
Speaker 1: for twelve months. That's a great deal. That's just a
Speaker 1: limited time offer. Right now, I'm just looking at their website.
Speaker 1: That's news to me, so I would do that. You
Speaker 1: can also, if you want, you can go to a
Speaker 1: retailer like a Walmart and buy like a SIM there.
Speaker 1: But the thing is most of these phones have eSIMs
Speaker 1: and you can just activate them right there. The other
Speaker 1: one that might work is Mobile X because they have
Speaker 1: a plan that's really cheap. They've got a plan that
Speaker 1: starts at like four dollars a month, and so you
Speaker 1: can get that plan and you only pay for the
Speaker 1: data that you use, and so that may be a
Speaker 1: cheap way to sort of just have this phone running
Speaker 1: without paying a lot. But I personally like the idea
Speaker 1: of just paying in advance for the whole year. So
Speaker 1: that's what I would do. And again, if you want
Speaker 1: to look at an Android side of things, I would
Speaker 1: say the Pixel. So I know I talk about Pixel
Speaker 1: all the time, but I just think it's a very
Speaker 1: simple phone. It works, and they've got a couple different models.
Speaker 1: And actually Google just started selling Pixel renewed so refurbished,
Speaker 1: so let me look at what their prices are. So
Speaker 1: they just opened up a certified refurbished Pixel store on
Speaker 1: the Google Store. So you've got the Pixel seven Pro,
Speaker 1: which is pretty new. That's that's starting at six twenty nine.
Speaker 1: So that's too expensive for what you're talking about. But
Speaker 1: you can go with the refurbished Pixel six A for
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty dollars and that's again that is outright.
Speaker 2: You don't have to pay monthly.
Speaker 1: You don't have to think about, you know, how much
Speaker 1: you're paying for this phone every month, because the idea
Speaker 1: for you, Susan, is that you want to have this
Speaker 1: phone and service ready to go. So all you have
Speaker 1: to do is charge this thing up, keep it charged up,
Speaker 1: and that's that's what you need. And you mentioned the battery.
Speaker 1: Get a portable battery pack. Make sure that you have
Speaker 1: that charged up as well, so that way you always
Speaker 1: have this phone at the ready. And I will say
Speaker 1: throughout this time, the service providers have been doing a
Speaker 1: pretty good job of the connectivity in the areas. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: if you're in the real burn areas, that area has
Speaker 1: been trickier than others. But you know, surrounding La, the
Speaker 1: networks have withstood a lot and they've these companies are
Speaker 1: brought in a lot of additional kind of what do
Speaker 1: they call them, cows sells on wheels, and now that
Speaker 1: you even have satellite connectivity as well, that is one
Speaker 1: aspect I will talk about after the break, is the
Speaker 1: satellite connectivity that we are now getting into and it's
Speaker 1: making staying connected a whole lot easier in situations like this.
Speaker 1: T Mobile has it, Apple has it, Pixel has it,
Speaker 1: Amazon starting it. I'll tell you all about that coming
Speaker 1: up right here on rich On Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich On Tech. Richdmuro here hanging out with you, talking technology,
Speaker 1: obviously giving you lots of updates on tech's role in
Speaker 1: helping folks out with these wildfires, getting them information, getting
Speaker 1: them updates, getting them to safety, keeping them connected. There's
Speaker 1: just a whole lot to talk about here today on
Speaker 1: the show. But I was at and I am going
Speaker 1: to get to the satellite connectivity and how Ate and
Speaker 1: T Verizon Mobile, Uber Lift, all these different companies have
Speaker 1: responded in the wake of these wildfires here in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: But I do want to talk about CS for a
Speaker 1: bit because that's where I was this week and everyone
Speaker 1: there very very well aware of what was happening in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: But there was a lot to see.
Speaker 1: You know, this is the one of the largest tech
Speaker 1: events of the year, certainly one of the largest tech
Speaker 1: trade shows. I think the only one that may be
Speaker 1: bigger by people is IFA in Berlin. But that show
Speaker 1: you're allowed to bring friends and family. This show in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas is not open to the public. So they
Speaker 1: get over one hundred and thirty thousand people to Las
Speaker 1: Vegas that are all in the industry. They're all tech
Speaker 1: folks either working as media in you know, salespeople, marketing people, startups,
Speaker 1: just everyone that's buyers.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many.
Speaker 1: And every single person that came up to me was
Speaker 1: asking about how Los Angeles was faring, how I personally
Speaker 1: was faring, and so, like I said, my post La
Speaker 1: has always been ready for its close up. We just
Speaker 1: really never expected it to look like this. I mean,
Speaker 1: what a way to put a city on the map, right.
Speaker 1: But here are some of the things I saw at
Speaker 1: CS twenty twenty five that I thought were interesting. First up,
Speaker 1: AI powered robots. So Samsung they have this thing called Bali.
Speaker 1: It looks like a ball, It's a robot. It rolls
Speaker 1: around your house. Set for release in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: it can interact with your smart home devices, it can
Speaker 1: perform household tasks. It can even project video and images
Speaker 1: onto surfaces. So it's all controlled via voice. And we
Speaker 1: didn't know if this was actually gonna come out or not,
Speaker 1: but it is now. This was really interesting. If you
Speaker 1: have a robot vacuum in your house, you know how
Speaker 1: it gets stuck on like a sock or something that's
Speaker 1: just like standing in front of it or sitting on
Speaker 1: the ground. So this robo Rock vacuum, the Z seventy,
Speaker 1: has a robot arm. So this arm pops out of
Speaker 1: the top of the vacuum and picks up the item
Speaker 1: and deposits it somewhere else. I mean, it looks like
Speaker 1: something out of a sci fi movie. But this apparently
Speaker 1: is coming out and robo Rock is a popular brand
Speaker 1: of vacuums other than Rumba, and so I saw this
Speaker 1: thing in action and it was wild. They just kept
Speaker 1: going up and down and up and down, and.
Speaker 2: It turns around.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really has a whole articulating little robot arm.
Speaker 1: There AI companion robots. I think these are kind of silly,
Speaker 1: at least at the offset, because they it's just like, okay,
Speaker 1: it's like a Teddy Rockspin but with AI. So this
Speaker 1: one Maroumi. This one was a there's no point to
Speaker 1: this robot except to spark conversation. So it looks like
Speaker 1: a little sloth that grips onto your purse and it
Speaker 1: just sits there and it's not really it doesn't do
Speaker 1: anything except just move its head left and right, up
Speaker 1: and down. It looks very like lifelike, like it's very emotional,
Speaker 1: but it's just there to spark conversation. So they say that,
Speaker 1: you know, people are in their own world nowadays, and
Speaker 1: someone sees this on your purse, what is that? And
Speaker 1: then you might talk with that person. Then another one
Speaker 1: is called roe Pet, and this one had led eyes,
Speaker 1: like little screens for eyes led displays, and you know,
Speaker 1: this has CHATCHYBT built in so you can pet it
Speaker 1: and it'll make little noises and react to your warmth
Speaker 1: and just kind of be a companion robot for you.
Speaker 1: Cold Snap is an instant ice cream machine, so think
Speaker 1: ca cup machine, but for frozen desserts. So you can
Speaker 1: make smoothies, you can make ice cream, you can make
Speaker 1: frozen yogurt, protein shakes, whatever you want.
Speaker 2: You put the pod in takes two minutes.
Speaker 1: It cools it down, instantly, freezes it spits out the
Speaker 1: tree under two minutes. Now, this is a very expensive
Speaker 1: system three thousand dollars, but they are working on a
Speaker 1: system for the home right now. To imagine this would
Speaker 1: be for like a car dealership. And I tried the
Speaker 1: vanilla ice cream. It was delicious, and the inventor told
Speaker 1: me he got the idea from a six year old
Speaker 1: when she or his daughter. I afrigat how she was,
Speaker 1: but she's like, how come we can't do this for
Speaker 1: ice cream? I'm watching him make the cake cup. He said,
Speaker 1: let me try it a mini hologram box. So you
Speaker 1: stand in front of a screen and next thing you know,
Speaker 1: you're in this little box in three D as a hologram.
Speaker 1: This is from Hollow Connects and it's a mini hologram box.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 1: I think it was about three thousand dollars. But the
Speaker 1: idea is that you would go somewhere and this would
Speaker 1: either be a conversation spark, you know, or a customer
Speaker 1: service person could be in there, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: just one more way to kind of communicate versus the
Speaker 1: flat FaceTime view. This is now three D so you
Speaker 1: don't need special glasses or anything. A sus showed off
Speaker 1: the zen Book A fourteen. This was a super lightweight laptop,
Speaker 1: less than two and a half pounds. I picked this
Speaker 1: thing up. I thought it was one of those fake
Speaker 1: laptops you would see at like an open house, like
Speaker 1: that they have on the desk, and it's like one
Speaker 1: of those props. That's how light it fell, and that
Speaker 1: has all the new AI features. So that's really cool.
Speaker 1: This I absolutely want. It's called the Plantiform. It's a
Speaker 1: high tech planter. So this thing looks like an alien
Speaker 1: space capsule crashed down into your home and is growing plants.
Speaker 1: So it uses fog ponics, not water. It uses a
Speaker 1: mist of fog to grow the plants. And it just
Speaker 1: looks really cool. So you put again everyone's running with
Speaker 1: this idea of the cakeup pod. So you put a
Speaker 1: little pod in the machine that has plants and soil
Speaker 1: and nutrients, or maybe not soil because I think it's
Speaker 1: all hydroponics. But you put it in there and it
Speaker 1: grows the plant, and it's supposed to be easier than
Speaker 1: any of the other hydroponic plant growers out there.
Speaker 2: And I want this thing.
Speaker 1: I think it was a little expensive though, maybe six
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, but definitely a conversation starter because you see
Speaker 1: all this fog coming out of it and it just
Speaker 1: looks cool. If you love your pet, you got to
Speaker 1: get them the pet Cube UV filtration water fountain. So
Speaker 1: they've had water fountains for pets for a long time.
Speaker 1: This one has a UV filter, so it actually cleans
Speaker 1: the water, kills all the bacteria inside, letting your cat
Speaker 1: or dog drink super pure water. I mean, when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I used to drink out of the hose,
Speaker 1: but you know, we can't do that anymore, even with
Speaker 1: our pets pawport. This is a smart pet door. So
Speaker 1: I didn't realize, but if you live in somewhere like
Speaker 1: Arizona or something, you might have little unwanted critters that
Speaker 1: come into your house through the pet door.
Speaker 2: So this is a smart pet door.
Speaker 1: You put a little bluetooth beacon on your pets collar
Speaker 1: and only they can come in or out, and you
Speaker 1: can also set curfews. You can say you can only
Speaker 1: go in or out during these times, and only that
Speaker 1: animal can open up the pet door. And it's all
Speaker 1: high tech and smart and you get the reports and things.
Speaker 1: That's the Pawport smart pet door, and it fits over
Speaker 1: your standard pet door, so it's like a retrofit kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Now, these were really cool. The x Real
Speaker 1: augmented reality glasses. I've heard about these for years. I've
Speaker 1: never really tried them. They have a new version, but
Speaker 1: think it's like the easiest augmented reality glasses I've ever tried.
Speaker 1: You put the glasses on, They've got little screens inside.
Speaker 1: You plug them into your smartphone or your computer using
Speaker 1: a standard USBC connection, and next thing you know, your
Speaker 1: phone screen is projected in front of you. It's hovering
Speaker 1: in a giant screen. I want these, I want these.
Speaker 1: I want these. These I will use on the plane,
Speaker 1: I will use these on the couch. I will just
Speaker 1: sit there. It's like having your phone with all of
Speaker 1: your apps and everything you already know, just on a
Speaker 1: bigger screen, so you can actually control your phone and
Speaker 1: see what's happening on this big giant screen projected. Really
Speaker 1: really cool. I think they start around maybe three to
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars, but just the technology, the price is
Speaker 1: just going to continue to come down. But really really cool.
Speaker 1: X Reel Let's see Samsung was showing off their latest
Speaker 1: Frame TV, so is Amazon. They were showing off both
Speaker 1: of these smart TVs double as artwork when they're not
Speaker 1: in use. So that's kind of like the new thing
Speaker 1: about TVs. You never have to turn them off. They
Speaker 1: will just show like a screen saver when you're not
Speaker 1: using them. I'll be honest, Samsung has this technology down.
Speaker 1: When you look at this screen, it looks like a
Speaker 1: printed piece of art. The new ones are the pros.
Speaker 1: They look even better. I mean, this is really really
Speaker 1: neat stuff. The Amazon Fire TV will do the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's a lot cheaper. It just doesn't look as good.
Speaker 1: Screens are a little bit more reflective the art. You
Speaker 1: can tell it's a screen. But with the Samsung Frame TV,
Speaker 1: it's really really convincing.
Speaker 2: Looks like a piece of art.
Speaker 1: The other thing Amazon showed off was their Project Kuyper.
Speaker 1: This is their answer to SpaceX's Starlink and so this
Speaker 1: is a constellation of satellites that Amazon is going to
Speaker 1: launch into outer space to provide broadband around the world.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: According to the rep I was talking to, it's going
Speaker 1: to be cheaper and it's going to be faster than
Speaker 1: what Starlink is doing. Competition is a good thing. So
Speaker 1: now we have two viable satellite broadband operators operating by
Speaker 1: the end of this year. And what is that going
Speaker 1: to do is going to drive down prices, hopefully for
Speaker 1: all internet because now you've got options. When you live
Speaker 1: in your home, you may not want to get the
Speaker 1: traditional providers. You may want to just go satellite because
Speaker 1: it's so feasible and the prices they didn't talk price,
Speaker 1: but they said it'll be cheaper than starlink and the
Speaker 1: speeds will be faster. So the basic one was four
Speaker 1: hundred up and down. It's four hundred megabits per second
Speaker 1: up and down. They've got a smaller one for like
Speaker 1: camping that's one hundred up and down. And they've got
Speaker 1: a bigger antenna that's for companies and enterprise that's a
Speaker 1: thousand up and down. So Amazon's gonna start launching its
Speaker 1: satellites this year. They've got eighty three launches planned. Keep
Speaker 1: an eye on that one. Scout ev this is a
Speaker 1: rugged electric vehicle. It kind of looks like a Rivian.
Speaker 1: Can't wait for this one, and they were very hip
Speaker 1: on This is a brand that's old, that they're bringing back.
Speaker 1: It's got a hybrid system too, so they've got a
Speaker 1: gas engine. You can add on to this thing like
Speaker 1: a small gas engine, so you can have rain, no
Speaker 1: range anxiety. So that's really cool. This was a little controversial.
Speaker 1: The pink Cam paintball security camera. So imagine a security
Speaker 1: camera that recognizes an intruder on your property and spits
Speaker 1: out a paintball at them.
Speaker 2: And that paintball can have like a.
Speaker 1: Special I don't know, a substance in it that you know,
Speaker 1: they can only see under a black light or something,
Speaker 1: so you kind of mark the person. It also works
Speaker 1: with unwanted animals as well. This was interesting. The Rome
Speaker 1: Rome functionality. This is a portable device that combines a
Speaker 1: soda stream and a hydroflask. So imagine you put your
Speaker 1: water into this, you know, just a water bottle. You
Speaker 1: put the cap on and you press the button and
Speaker 1: it turns it into sparkling water. Fifty bucks. It's called Rome.
Speaker 1: And then finally, optic Wash. My kids saw this one
Speaker 1: on my photo album on my phone. He said, I
Speaker 1: want that, and I said, well, it's three thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: This is a mini car wash for your glasses. You
Speaker 1: might have seen these things in the airport. The optic
Speaker 1: washing machines. They're big. Now they made a small version
Speaker 1: for your home and it just uses water. Sprays of water.
Speaker 1: You put the glasses in, it sprays them, cleans them
Speaker 1: UV Santa's sanitizing, and then it blows them off with
Speaker 1: a little bit of air and your glasses come out
Speaker 1: really clean, as opposed to sort of rubbing them with
Speaker 1: a cloth. That's the optic wash. When I ask the price,
Speaker 1: take a deep breath. Three thousand bucks. I said, who
Speaker 1: can afford a three thousand dollars glasses cleaning machine? And
Speaker 1: the representative said, well, I should have a yacht. It
Speaker 1: worked pretty nicely there. I said, yeah, that sounds about right.
Speaker 1: All these linked up on the website rich On Tech
Speaker 1: dot TV eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one eight eight eight rich one oh one
Speaker 1: Back after this, I'll tell you how the big tech
Speaker 1: companies are responding to the wildfire relief. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich On Tech. Let's go right to Jerry in thousand Oaks.
Speaker 1: I know he's been holding for a while.
Speaker 2: Jerry, you're on.
Speaker 3: With rich Okay, thank you. I'm glad you're get in
Speaker 3: touch with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I watched your question.
Speaker 3: Install a landline that doesn't use uh not Wi Fi,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't use the Internet but uses the modem instead.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so you want it.
Speaker 1: Well, what do you mean by modem because uh, you
Speaker 1: know most of the land lines now.
Speaker 3: It is uh it's a move box you plug into
Speaker 3: your wall outlet. Yes, then you plug your phone directly
Speaker 3: into that. Yes, in the one company I did find,
Speaker 3: what's forty dollars per month?
Speaker 2: Okay, well the company, I'll tell you the ones that
Speaker 2: I recommend. Uma.
Speaker 1: Oom ah, that's the one I recommend because you can
Speaker 1: get started very inexpensively. And this is now this will
Speaker 1: accommodate a classic landline phone, but it's not actually a landline.
Speaker 1: So what you're talking about the landline traditional traditionally refers
Speaker 1: to pots pots, which is plane old television or plane
Speaker 1: old television plane old telephone service. Now almost no company
Speaker 1: is really doing that unless they have to in an
Speaker 1: area where they offer what's you know, a copper phone line. Right,
Speaker 1: So most of the companies have switched to offering what's
Speaker 1: called vope service voiceover IP that is your voice going
Speaker 1: over the internet. But you can get these little boxes
Speaker 1: that pretty much function as a conduit for your traditional phone.
Speaker 1: So if you want to buy a cordless phone, a
Speaker 1: corded phone, you know the old school phones that used
Speaker 1: to have you plug them into this box, and this
Speaker 1: box plugs into your Internet.
Speaker 2: So the one I like is Uma.
Speaker 1: You can get the UMA box for looks like one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars on the website.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 1: Walmart also has an UMA deal as well, so you
Speaker 1: can go there and check it out. But UMA service
Speaker 1: is zero dollars a month, so all you have to
Speaker 1: do is pay for the taxes and fees each month.
Speaker 1: And so I'm looking up my zip code here for
Speaker 1: my zip code, that's about eight dollars a month. So
Speaker 1: that's what I would do. There are some other companies
Speaker 1: that offer similar service. There's Vontage. I don't know if
Speaker 1: Vantage is doing. I don't know if they're doing the
Speaker 1: residential Oh they still are, Okay, So residential Vantage is
Speaker 1: ten dollars a month, and I think you have to
Speaker 1: get yeah, okay, So Vantage is another one, and then
Speaker 1: the other one is magic Jack. Now I covered magic
Speaker 1: Jack back in the day. It was actually just so
Speaker 1: mysterious to people that you could get a phone jack.
Speaker 2: It looked like your regular.
Speaker 1: Phone jack, but it's transferred to your calls over the internet,
Speaker 1: and that is uh let's see how much that is.
Speaker 1: That is fifty dollars. It plugs into your computer, So
Speaker 1: that one. I think that one's a little bit different
Speaker 1: because you do need a computer for that one. So
Speaker 1: I would I would recommend going with the UMA because
Speaker 1: you don't need anything special and it just kind of works.
Speaker 1: It just sits there and works forever. So Jerry, that's
Speaker 1: what I would recommend, and I think that's gonna be
Speaker 1: probably your best bet.
Speaker 2: Thanks for the call.
Speaker 1: Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. So speaking
Speaker 1: of these phone companies, let me just go through what
Speaker 1: the various phone providers are doing to, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: help relieve folks in California with their either service or
Speaker 1: Wi Fi charging their phone. So AT and T let's
Speaker 1: start with them. So they're waiving overage charges to provide
Speaker 1: unlimited talk, text and data for customers through February fifteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. Now that may change depending on, you know,
Speaker 1: the extent of the loss. They also contribute one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to Red Cross. They set their system. Their
Speaker 1: network in southern California is holding strong. They're restoring service
Speaker 1: and areas experienced disruptions. And they have two public charging stations,
Speaker 1: Westwood Recreation Center and the Pasadena Convention Center, and then
Speaker 1: they've got public Wi Fi access at Arcadia Community Center.
Speaker 1: They also operate First Net, so this is kind of
Speaker 1: like a separate band on their spectrum that is for
Speaker 1: public safety people, and so a lot of people subscribe
Speaker 1: to that as well. If you're on a post paid
Speaker 1: or prepaid you are also getting unlimited talk, texts, and
Speaker 1: data through February fifteenth. And if you have an iPhone
Speaker 1: with the satellite communications, so that's iPhone fourteen or newer,
Speaker 1: this doesn't matter. You know, any of the service providers
Speaker 1: that you have. You've got satellite connectivity. And I got
Speaker 1: my first satellite message today from someone with the fires
Speaker 1: and it was pretty cool. It said this message was
Speaker 1: sent over satellite. Google Pixel nine also has that. Let's
Speaker 1: see Verizon. Let's see Verizon's waving domestic call text data
Speaker 1: usage through January nineteenth through January eighteenth in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: Orange Riverside, San Bernard. You know San Diego and Ventura
Speaker 1: also for the same. They're doing the same for Straight Talk,
Speaker 1: Track Phone, Total Wireless, Simple Mobile, Walmart, Family Mobile, Net,
Speaker 1: ten Go Smart, and Page Plus.
Speaker 2: So you realize how.
Speaker 1: Many companies these major companies own or operate. Let's see
Speaker 1: what is T Mobile doing unlimited talk, text and data
Speaker 1: to T Mobile, Metro by T Mobile and Assurance wireless
Speaker 1: customers in impacted areas. They've also increased data for Mint
Speaker 1: and Ultramobile. They also activated starlink so you get direct
Speaker 1: to Cellular. If you don't have an iPhone and you
Speaker 1: have a T Mobile phone, you can dial nine one
Speaker 1: one if you see the starlink icon in your phone.
Speaker 1: So they've activated that. It's not been approved fully, but
Speaker 1: they got conditional approval. Eighty eight Rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology. Eighty eight Rich one O
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one. Uh. Phone lines are open pretty much kind
Speaker 1: of taking a lot of different calls today. So if
Speaker 1: you have something about the fires, you want to share
Speaker 1: your story, I'm opening to that. Or tech questions, whatever
Speaker 1: you want, maybe just want to say HI, maybe just
Speaker 1: need someone to talk to throughout this whole thing. I'm
Speaker 1: here for you. Eight A eight rich one O one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Before the break, I was talking about how all the
Speaker 1: different tech companies are sort of providing and helping with relief.
Speaker 1: During this time, I thought this was interesting that t
Speaker 1: mobiles network uses is AI. So it's something called cognitive
Speaker 1: self organizing network. And so I guess the new antennas
Speaker 1: on their cell towers they move and I've seen this
Speaker 1: technology before with Wi Fi, but I didn't realize they
Speaker 1: were doing it with cell phone towers. But the antennas
Speaker 1: automatically tilt to give the best signal strength where it's needed,
Speaker 1: so they kind of move around a little bit. That
Speaker 1: helps them expand coverage and prevent congestion. So I was
Speaker 1: not aware of that, but that is a very smart
Speaker 1: idea and it makes a lot of sense. So again
Speaker 1: AI even helping keep us connected. And then Spectrum, this
Speaker 1: is a large provider in the Los Angeles area. They
Speaker 1: have over two hundred and fifty thousand Spectrum Wi Fi
Speaker 1: access points nationwide, but they've opened up thirty five thousand
Speaker 1: of them in the LA area to everyone. And I
Speaker 1: tested this out yesterday. It works flawlessly. Just open up
Speaker 1: your phone and look for the Spectrum free trial Wi
Speaker 1: Fi access point and just connect to it and it's
Speaker 1: just one click. You don't have to give him your
Speaker 1: phone number, you don't have to have an account. It's
Speaker 1: all free and I got great speeds, So this is
Speaker 1: a really nice help. If you need to, you can
Speaker 1: locate one of these. Usually you can go to like
Speaker 1: a local park or some it's outside. It's not in
Speaker 1: your house. You're not accessing your neighbors internet, it is.
Speaker 1: These are hotspots that they've set up around the city
Speaker 1: on like telephone poles, so be sure to look for that.
Speaker 1: And then Uber and lyft. Lyft is doing discounted rides.
Speaker 1: CalFire Relief twenty five will get you two free rides
Speaker 1: if you're going to a shelter getting a resource, and
Speaker 1: then you can also round up and donate, and then
Speaker 1: Uber has a forty dollars ride credit if you use
Speaker 1: Wildfire twenty five to take a trip to an evacuation shelter.
Speaker 1: All right, with all that said, one of my favorites,
Speaker 1: Lance Ulanov one of the hardest working guys in technology.
Speaker 2: I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: You can't catch this guy at CES because he's doing
Speaker 1: so much. He's the editor at large for tech Radar.
Speaker 1: He is back home the Lance did you did you
Speaker 1: catch the CS bug?
Speaker 10: Yeah?
Speaker 11: I may if.
Speaker 10: I apologize for the sound of my voice, but yep,
Speaker 10: every year.
Speaker 1: Like clockwork, Yeah, it happens. I take these pills. I
Speaker 1: call them horse pills because that's how big they are.
Speaker 1: They are literally like good luck trying to swallow these things,
Speaker 1: and they taste horrible. It tastes like garlic and all
Speaker 1: kinds of nastiness.
Speaker 11: That boy, that really sounds great.
Speaker 1: Love Hey, but it kept me healthy. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: I swear by these things. I mean it's so gross,
Speaker 1: but I took one in the morning, one at night,
Speaker 1: and I you know, a lot of hydration. But CS
Speaker 1: is not easy to stay healthy at because it's so
Speaker 1: dry there. There's so many people, everyone's coughing, everyone's touching
Speaker 1: gadgets and anyway. So hopefully feel better. But Lance, first off,
Speaker 1: as someone who is not in California, what is your
Speaker 1: sort of perspective on these wildfires? Like, are people following
Speaker 1: them where you are, or people glued to their teas.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, I think we're all following it. We're
Speaker 10: all seeing on our social media feeds. The really weird
Speaker 10: thing about this tragedy is, I guess because of where
Speaker 10: it's located, there.
Speaker 11: Are people I know, you know, people from the.
Speaker 10: Industry whose houses have been affected, their childhood homes. Like
Speaker 10: it's weird the number of people I actually know that
Speaker 10: have been impacted, which is, you know a lot of
Speaker 10: times when things happen in the country or in the world,
Speaker 10: you're involved and engaged, but you're not touched directly. So
Speaker 10: I'm a little bit surprised about that. I've been somewhat
Speaker 10: obsessively going through it, and I think a lot of
Speaker 10: people have so many questions about it. It's so scary,
Speaker 10: and you know, clearly obviously my heart goes out to
Speaker 10: everyone there, you know, and I know that there's been
Speaker 10: all sorts of stuff shared about how people can help,
Speaker 10: and hopefully everyone's looking at that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that the reason for the connection
Speaker 1: is that, like I said earlier in the show, this
Speaker 1: is a part of la that you never hear about.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful place that very successful people live, but
Speaker 1: it's not in the news because there's nothing that happens
Speaker 1: there except people just raise families and they're you know,
Speaker 1: it's people that have made it most of the time,
Speaker 1: and to have this happen to them is just such uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just it's really like the worst possible
Speaker 1: nightmare for someone who thinks they live in a community
Speaker 1: that's just so beautiful and amazing and overlooks the ocean.
Speaker 11: And it honestly just reminds you of our common humanity. Right.
Speaker 10: You may look at somebody and say they're extremely successful,
Speaker 10: their celebrity, they're wealthy, they're hot, high level at their
Speaker 10: their industry, and you see this and you see the
Speaker 10: loss of you know, their everything they've ever had, you know,
Speaker 10: every memory, all of their important stuff, and you and
Speaker 10: you can it's incredibly relatable to anyone. And so that's
Speaker 10: you know, obviously, that's just what's been going through my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, thanks for that. Okay, So let's talk ces
Speaker 1: you're there, What what stands out this year? What do
Speaker 1: you think about the first off, the attendance. I know
Speaker 1: it was impacted by people with la like some people
Speaker 1: had to go back early.
Speaker 2: Some people didn't come at all. What do you think
Speaker 2: about the attendants?
Speaker 10: I generally so, at least the first couple of days,
Speaker 10: I was like, this is more crowded, there's more people here.
Speaker 10: By day day three it seemed to calm down a bit,
Speaker 10: but I still think the tend's pretty high. Here's the thing,
Speaker 10: It's a little hard to tell because if you're you know,
Speaker 10: if you haven't gone there, and you haven't been going
Speaker 10: for years, you won't know that.
Speaker 11: This year they were going through a big change with construction.
Speaker 10: Servery's funneled in different ways, which actually changed the flow
Speaker 10: and changed the perspective on how many people were there.
Speaker 10: But you know, I went to what's called Eureka Park
Speaker 10: or all the startups are. I was in Central Halls
Speaker 10: and North Hollows and West Hall, and sometimes I was
Speaker 10: pushing through crowds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and talk about the you know, like I
Speaker 1: really kind of it was so clear to me why
Speaker 1: we go to these things, And it really is partly
Speaker 1: to see people as well, Like you really do, see
Speaker 1: all the people that you email with throughout the year,
Speaker 1: all the people you know, like you and I we
Speaker 1: live on separate coasts. We didn't actually get to say
Speaker 1: hi this time around, which is and we saw each other,
Speaker 1: but you know so quick, you're you're always working. But
Speaker 1: you know that's another aspect of this, that in person
Speaker 1: sort of connection.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And you know, so there was a company called
Speaker 10: ro Kid that had been trying to reach me apparently
Speaker 10: since November, and I finally kind of the last day
Speaker 10: that I was there, I wandered over and the woman
Speaker 10: to see me face to face. She got much more
Speaker 10: excited than she should have because she's like, I've been
Speaker 10: emailing you for demons here.
Speaker 11: Yeah, And so it's that, you know, that personal connection.
Speaker 10: And then of course, you know, touching and experiencing the
Speaker 10: products because you know, I'll get a ton of press releases,
Speaker 10: I'll sit on zoom calls, people show me something. But
Speaker 10: being there and I experienced a lot of technology. I
Speaker 10: tried so many different things. I met so many different robots,
Speaker 10: you know, I wore so many different pairs of glasses.
Speaker 10: You know, I touched laptops and you know, all the
Speaker 10: stuff that's right there. Making a tangible like that makes it,
Speaker 10: you know, much more reliable into it's a direct connection
Speaker 10: to people and how these technologies might impact their.
Speaker 1: Lives anything that stands out to you, anything that you
Speaker 1: really were wowed by.
Speaker 10: You know, I felt like the show got off to
Speaker 10: a really good start for me because one of the
Speaker 10: first things I saw was that Lenovo desktop, a laptop,
Speaker 10: I should say, I think it's the Think Gen six,
Speaker 10: and it's a laptop that literally starts as a fourteen
Speaker 10: inch clamshell style, you know, you open it up, the
Speaker 10: screen extends vertically, it rolls. It's an old screen that
Speaker 10: rolls out of a very you know, small hinge, you know,
Speaker 10: the regular sized hinge, and just goes up to sixteen
Speaker 10: point seven inches. I've seen rollable screen technology before, but
Speaker 10: I was impressed because this is a real product.
Speaker 11: Business people in particular, I think are really going to
Speaker 11: like it.
Speaker 10: So, you know, I thought that was great and I
Speaker 10: liked it, and obviously we gave it an award. There's
Speaker 10: a lot of television technology, but I think the thing
Speaker 10: that stood out for me is what High Sense is
Speaker 10: doing with their just where they're taking Mini LED RGB technology.
Speaker 10: So typically in a Mini LED you get just one
Speaker 10: the blue light, but now they're giving the three colors.
Speaker 10: And if you give the three colors, you transform the image,
Speaker 10: you make it that much better, and you make the
Speaker 10: colors better, but you also make the blacks better because
Speaker 10: you can you don't have to just turn on the light.
Speaker 10: You can dim it down for when you're trying to
Speaker 10: make a specific color.
Speaker 11: So that to me was impressive.
Speaker 10: And what's funny is that that came in one hundred
Speaker 10: and sixteen inch size. But everybody's talking about, oh my gosh,
Speaker 10: High Sense made one hundred and thirty six inch. I
Speaker 10: think it was not mini LED but the other kind
Speaker 10: of LED. But basically, oh I got a really big TV.
Speaker 10: But it was not new technology. So for me, I'm
Speaker 10: always focused on what is the innovation? What have they
Speaker 10: done that's brand new?
Speaker 2: I think High Sense is killing it.
Speaker 1: I really do like I think that there it's interesting
Speaker 1: to watch the rise of some booths. Someone needs to
Speaker 1: do a visualization of CS, like some booths get really
Speaker 1: big while others get smaller.
Speaker 2: Some people aren't there.
Speaker 1: Yeah or disappear. I mean, what who do we like?
Speaker 1: Google this year had no major presence that I saw Microsoft.
Speaker 10: Microsoft Intel used to own this corner Central Hall. Microsoft
Speaker 10: used to own a similar space. Google has Google used
Speaker 10: to be really big in the parking lot.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds silly, but the parking lot is
Speaker 1: a viable area.
Speaker 10: It's like a it's called I'm sorry, it's called the
Speaker 10: silver lot, and just you know, it's a very important space.
Speaker 10: BMW did the big rollout of their i think it's called.
Speaker 11: The Panoramic Eye Drive, which.
Speaker 10: Is really their introduction of AI to the dashboard, and
Speaker 10: they did not spare expense here. They brought in, you know,
Speaker 10: a couple of Ken Young and I'm forgetting the other.
Speaker 11: Couple of celebrities.
Speaker 10: Basically they brought in to announce it and it was
Speaker 10: very splashy, and they made gigantic dashboards and the steering
Speaker 10: wheel and it was just it was it was wild
Speaker 10: and for me, you know, it was a youth. It
Speaker 10: was a really big theme of the entire show that
Speaker 10: AI was everywhere. Oh yeah, and more so than just
Speaker 10: you know, last year, AI was kind of like the
Speaker 10: coming out party. Everybody's got a everybody's product had it,
Speaker 10: but we didn't really understand how we were going to
Speaker 10: use it. This year, people were showing us how it's
Speaker 10: going to impact our lives, like and they weren't saying
Speaker 10: in the distant future. They were saying this year, you know,
Speaker 10: it's coming this year. Delta their one hundredth anniversary at
Speaker 10: the Sphere, which was another big keynote, and you know
Speaker 10: they're doing they're doing your concierge AI that's going to
Speaker 10: be introduced throughout the year. They're updating all of the
Speaker 10: in flight entertainment. They're working with Tom Brady who was there.
Speaker 10: But you know, again, you felt like, these are real
Speaker 10: things that we're going to be doing with AI in
Speaker 10: the very short term.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It used to be at CS you would talk to
Speaker 1: someone for like twenty minutes about a product and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden they'd be like and you know, we'll
Speaker 1: think about doing something with this, and you're like, no,
Speaker 1: like what. This year, I did feel like there was
Speaker 1: much more of like, no, this is come. Like even
Speaker 1: with the BMW with the panoramic eye drive stuff, I
Speaker 1: was like, when's this happening? They said new models like
Speaker 1: at the end of twenty twenty five or whatever, like what.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that was a big surprise, and it was exciting
Speaker 10: because it looked really cool and fun.
Speaker 11: I mean, obviously it'll be normal sized, not giant size.
Speaker 11: If you see the pictures, she'll be like, oh, oh, come.
Speaker 2: On, everyone's gonna hate it.
Speaker 1: You know, no, no car maker can make any meaningful
Speaker 1: change without people hating on it, right, Like, no matter what,
Speaker 1: there will be haters. I thought it looked pretty clean
Speaker 1: and slick inside. I thought it was pretty cool.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, I think so. You know, it's not just
Speaker 10: one giant screen. It's a series of screens, and it's
Speaker 10: integrated into steering wheel and I'm i'm one of my
Speaker 10: favorite things on these newer cars are the three D
Speaker 10: heads up displays because for a driver, they don't really
Speaker 10: want to be glancing at screens left and right. What
Speaker 10: they want to be doing is seeing the information right
Speaker 10: in their field of view, but not in a way
Speaker 10: that obscures it. And that's what these heads up displays do.
Speaker 10: And so that's part of the whole experience here. So
Speaker 10: I thought, you know, I remember when BMW first introduced
Speaker 10: the eye drive, and it was primarily.
Speaker 2: A knob yeah that people like that.
Speaker 10: That you would move and hold into, and that was
Speaker 10: really it, and we thought that was exciting. This is
Speaker 10: so many generations. This is the full sort of the
Speaker 10: full realization of the concept.
Speaker 1: All right, Lance we're speaking with lance Yulanoff and he's
Speaker 1: with Tech Radar.
Speaker 2: Where can we go for your coverage?
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, tech radar dot com.
Speaker 10: And also please do check out our TikTok with we've
Speaker 10: shot I think well, I shot over forty videos, but
Speaker 10: in total we must.
Speaker 11: Have shot about sixty sixty five and we're touching.
Speaker 10: If you want to see what it's like to play
Speaker 10: with and touch any of these devices and these new technologies,
Speaker 10: check it out.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology. The phone line if you
Speaker 1: want to get on in is eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. The website rich on Tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: Do me a favorite sign up for my newsletter. Like
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, if you were on my newsletter, I
Speaker 1: mentioned the watch Duty app back in the December twentieth edition.
Speaker 1: December twentieth. People are just hearing about this app for
Speaker 1: the first time this week. I've been using it for months,
Speaker 1: and so that is the kind of insight that you
Speaker 1: get when you sign up. You are ahead of the curve.
Speaker 1: That is really what it comes down to. And people
Speaker 1: email me every single day, every single day. I get emails,
Speaker 1: I get text messages, I get dms, I get tweets,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it is questions that I've answered
Speaker 1: on this radio show or in my newsletter. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that you should hear and listen to every
Speaker 1: single thing I do. But I'm just saying the newsletter
Speaker 1: is a really good way of sort of these are
Speaker 1: the things. And I say this on this radio show
Speaker 1: every single time. This is the tech stuff I think
Speaker 1: you should know about. It's not everything, it's not every
Speaker 1: single item in the news. It is this stuff that
Speaker 1: I think you, as the modern tech consumer, should know
Speaker 1: about and be informed of. It's the cool stuff. It's
Speaker 1: the stuff that helps you. It's the stuff that gives
Speaker 1: you an edge. It's the stuff that keeps you ahead.
Speaker 1: That's really what it's all about. So go to Rich
Speaker 1: on tech dot tv. Sign up for the newsletter. It
Speaker 1: is completely free and just you know, you'll be one
Speaker 1: step ahead of the curve. Let's go to Jerry in Hatfield, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: Jerry, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 6: Hi Rich. For about four or five months now, I've
Speaker 6: been having problems with my audio. I receive programming over
Speaker 6: my dish, and I also have an antenna so I
Speaker 6: can get direct at local stations and what happens. It
Speaker 6: seems like when I listen to the cable news people
Speaker 6: when they have a pal of people talking and they talk,
Speaker 6: and the women's voices they shot up for being clipped
Speaker 6: and very hard. Not a problem with the men, only
Speaker 6: the women. And I don't have a problem with the
Speaker 6: YouTube on the computer or anything on myself. On this
Speaker 6: only through the the satellite and the news programs. And
Speaker 6: I was wondering, have you heard anything about this?
Speaker 2: No? But what so it's only happening when you watch.
Speaker 6: TV that that's that's correct. Yeah. And on the TV
Speaker 6: I have the druggy equalizers and I just as all
Speaker 6: I can. That's it still come through.
Speaker 2: That's that's what I was going to say.
Speaker 1: It has something to do I'm assuming with your equalizer
Speaker 1: settings changed them and you've changed okay, And so so
Speaker 1: I'm guessing now you said you watch YouTube and it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: Is this YouTube on the same sound system?
Speaker 6: No, I don't watch YouTube on a laptop. I listened
Speaker 6: to KFI on my cell phone. Yeah, so I got
Speaker 6: several TVs, so that happens. All So it's gonna be
Speaker 6: either the Dish network or the cable programming or or
Speaker 6: somehow they're clipping the audio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely sounds like it's something related to either
Speaker 1: the box, a setting on the box, or the programming itself.
Speaker 1: I mean this, I don't I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: a widespread issue. Now that we brought it up on
Speaker 1: this show, perhaps other people will, you know, email me
Speaker 1: and say, hey, Rich, I have the same problem. But
Speaker 1: having worked in TV news for many years, it's not
Speaker 1: something that we're doing. It's not something that we're actively modifying.
Speaker 1: But with that said, there's a lot of audio settings,
Speaker 1: and I think if you're playing with the equalizer that
Speaker 1: could be part of the issue. So the you know,
Speaker 1: if it's a high pitched voice thing, maybe it's the
Speaker 1: high frequency that's you know, messing with that. So maybe
Speaker 1: just adjust the settings to balance the high frequency. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's weird that it's happening on all three
Speaker 1: of your TVs. I would also try to see if
Speaker 1: you have some sort of like dialogue enhancer. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of these systems now have a clear audio
Speaker 1: kind of enhancement product, and so that might be something
Speaker 1: to look into. That's a tricky one, Jerry, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: All I know is that we watch with the subtitles
Speaker 1: on in our house because it's much easier to follow along,
Speaker 1: even though it live news.
Speaker 2: Sometimes those could be challenging as well, because they're not
Speaker 2: always one hundred percent right.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. This is rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro
Speaker 1: here talking technology with you at eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one o one eight eight eight seven four to two,
Speaker 1: four to one zero one. How did you find the
Speaker 1: saddest Taylor Swift song? I mean, some of them are
Speaker 1: really sad. This one don't know. She well, she's kind
Speaker 1: of angry in the latest stuff getting back at folks.
Speaker 12: It is it bad that I haven't listened to her
Speaker 12: latest album?
Speaker 2: No, I mean I don't. I'm not a big of
Speaker 2: a swifty as I know. You call me a swifty.
Speaker 1: Every single time will play a song I like Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1: You know why, I'll tell you why. I've told you
Speaker 1: this before. It's a connection to my wife. I get
Speaker 1: it because she likes Taylor Swift and I never really cared,
Speaker 1: you know, too much about her. And then the fact
Speaker 1: that she likes her so much. It's just I don't
Speaker 1: know it brings me joy. Yeah, it's weird, that's.
Speaker 12: Not I get it. I just always figured like she'd
Speaker 12: get into relationship break up and have a number one album.
Speaker 2: Yeah and rinse and repeat.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 1: All right, before we get to Howard and Palm Desert,
Speaker 1: We're gonna get to you in a second. Biff writes
Speaker 1: in with a bone to pick. He says, Rich vonage
Speaker 1: for home is not ten dollars, it's eleven ninety nine
Speaker 1: plus twelve dollars in taxes twenty two to eighteen total.
Speaker 1: Come on, dude, you are way off well.
Speaker 2: Biff, double check my sources.
Speaker 1: And so I went to the Vantage website. I put
Speaker 1: in my entire shipping address and information because they do
Speaker 1: hide the taxes and fees a little bit. And indeed, uh,
Speaker 1: let's see, yeah, indeed, nine ninety nine a month.
Speaker 2: It is nine ninety nine a month.
Speaker 1: Taxes and fees add up to let's see two dollars
Speaker 1: federal tax, two dollars emergency, two dollars state tax, and
Speaker 1: like under two dollars county tax. Total seventeen oh six
Speaker 1: do today recurring charges sixteen dollars thirty seven cents, so
Speaker 1: bif I'm not way off, I wasn't even off, said
Speaker 1: ten dollars a month. That's how much it is. So
Speaker 1: unless I'm proven otherwise, that seems to be right anyway,
Speaker 1: Thanks for the email. Eighty eight rich one oh one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four.
Speaker 2: One zero one. Howard impalmdsert what's up.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm finding a trip to trance in the very
Speaker 4: near future and I want more information about the translation
Speaker 4: real time earphones.
Speaker 6: What your take is on.
Speaker 1: So I had a lot of conversations about these at ces.
Speaker 1: There's a startup named Time Kettle t I M E
Speaker 1: K E T T l E dot co. They are
Speaker 1: sort of the leader in these earbuds that translate in
Speaker 1: real time, and they have them for as cheap as
Speaker 1: it looks like one hundred and fifty dollars. So the
Speaker 1: main thing about the earbuds this is the difference with
Speaker 1: the pricing. So the more expensive they are, the more
Speaker 1: they can do at the same time. So if you
Speaker 1: think about the cheap version or the I guess the
Speaker 1: inexpensive entry level, it's more like a walkie talkie. Someone
Speaker 1: speaks in their language, it waits it processes and then
Speaker 1: it comes through in their language in your ears. Now
Speaker 1: with the more expensive translate earbuds, this is more of
Speaker 1: a real time experience, so they can be interrupted. It's
Speaker 1: back and forth. But pretty much everyone I talked to,
Speaker 1: Time Kettle is the best of the interpreter earbuds. But Howard,
Speaker 1: having been to Paris this year, I would say it
Speaker 1: depends if I would rethink if you actually need these,
Speaker 1: it may be unnecessarily complicated. You can download on your
Speaker 1: iPhone the Google Translate app. You can download the or
Speaker 1: it's already built into the iPhone the Apple Translate app.
Speaker 1: Both are pretty good, and I think that that might
Speaker 1: be all you need to get through a trip, as
Speaker 1: long as it's just a you know, tourist trip to
Speaker 1: the uh, you know, to that area. So that's what
Speaker 1: I would recommend. I mean, I think that there's so
Speaker 1: many ways to keep in touch nowadays with headphones, h
Speaker 1: or with just in general these translating Sorry, my phone's
Speaker 1: responding to me now because I said Google. But if
Speaker 1: you want to look at the time Kettle, do that.
Speaker 1: I think that this is also getting built into a
Speaker 1: lot of other products. So the Meta ray band, Smart
Speaker 1: glasses have this technology built in where they can translate
Speaker 1: the audio in a couple different languages right now. I
Speaker 1: think French is one of them. I have not tested
Speaker 1: that on my headphones. I do need to try that out.
Speaker 1: But that's what I would say is try to get
Speaker 1: around without spending more money on these earbuds. But a
Speaker 1: lot of them are doing this, I mean, especially with CHATCHYBT.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just gotten so much easier to get
Speaker 1: around these cities without knowing the language. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm it's interesting. You know they've got this the big
Speaker 1: the big program that does the translation is Babel b
Speaker 1: A B B E L and that Well, okay, so
Speaker 1: you say Babel, you say Babel. I say Babel because
Speaker 1: they do, all right? Why do they have ads on
Speaker 1: the yeah, okay, all right.
Speaker 2: Well I'm wondering if it's related.
Speaker 1: I'm reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and they have
Speaker 1: what's a translating fish called the Babelfish, and I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if Babbel got their inspiration from babel fish in this book.
Speaker 1: So many things that we have in our society, like
Speaker 1: these names and things like you don't realize they're all
Speaker 1: inspired by something. Now you're reading the book or you
Speaker 1: have it on a tablet, I'm actually listening.
Speaker 2: So you're not reading. Well, I don't know. Is that
Speaker 2: not reading?
Speaker 1: Yes, it still takes your brain power. So I typically,
Speaker 1: I typically don't challenge me on this. I typically listen
Speaker 1: to nonfiction and I read fiction. And I'll be quite honest,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why, because nonfiction books are harder.
Speaker 2: They are.
Speaker 1: There's like, you know, a book like Hitchhiker's Guide to
Speaker 1: the Galaxy. There's so many terms in there that are
Speaker 1: not like typical English, right, like these weird names and
Speaker 1: things like that.
Speaker 12: It was it a movie? Yeah, it was a movie
Speaker 12: a while ago. Most define was in it.
Speaker 2: Oh there you go. Are we talking about the same thing?
Speaker 2: To the Galaxy? What happened in it?
Speaker 12: It's been so long since I've seen it.
Speaker 1: Uh, well, anyway, good good movie.
Speaker 2: You should read the movie, read the script and maybe
Speaker 2: I'll remember it. I'll read the script. I'll listen to
Speaker 2: the script anyway. It's so, it's so many things.
Speaker 1: When you read books and you like learn or you
Speaker 1: listen to them, whatever your preferences, you really you realize
Speaker 1: just how much is inspired by these classic things. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I do want to get to some news that happened
Speaker 1: this week, and of course now you know now I've
Speaker 1: got the no more time here on the segment. But Meta, big, big,
Speaker 1: big one to eighty out of Meta this week revamping
Speaker 1: all of their content policies for quote free expression, so
Speaker 1: major changes to basically their content moderation. Ending its third
Speaker 1: party fact checking program in the US. They're going to
Speaker 1: re place it with a community note system, which is
Speaker 1: inspired by X So basically, instead of having fact checkers
Speaker 1: look at posts, they're just gonna have random people or
Speaker 1: I guess people that are I don't know signed up
Speaker 1: to do this that can say, hey, this is not
Speaker 1: true or this is true. So they're going to have
Speaker 1: various contributors. They're going to scale back their automated content
Speaker 1: moderation systems. Some people will like this because I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people have been flagged for things that
Speaker 1: are kind of weird.
Speaker 2: But it's going to.
Speaker 1: Cause a lot of problems in the beginning.
Speaker 2: Of course, while people get used to these new lesser restrictions.
Speaker 1: I guess they're going to use those automated content moderation
Speaker 1: systems for high severity violations like terrorism and fraud less
Speaker 1: severe policy violations will need someone to report it before
Speaker 1: it's enforced. So basically, if you post something on Facebook,
Speaker 1: nobody sees it, but it's horrible.
Speaker 2: It'll stay there.
Speaker 1: Now if someone reports it, then maybe someone will take
Speaker 1: a look at it. So they're basically trying to open
Speaker 1: up the pathway for more expression and saying, look, if
Speaker 1: nobody's seeing this or nobody cares, then fine, leave it
Speaker 1: on there.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I agree with any of this. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying what is happening. There's two sides to all this.
Speaker 1: Political content will be back into feeds and if you
Speaker 1: engage with it, you're going to see more of it.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people love their political content on Facebook,
Speaker 1: and they've noticed that it changed when they said, ah,
Speaker 1: we're getting out of politics. In fact, they were starting
Speaker 1: to demote news in general on Facebook. And so that's
Speaker 1: all coming back. Account recovery process and appeals is going
Speaker 1: to be simpler. They're going to use more AI and
Speaker 1: more reviewers to make sure that you can get your
Speaker 1: account back if you are flagged or something like that.
Speaker 1: Restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity will be eased.
Speaker 1: A lot of people talking about that because you know,
Speaker 1: these are hot topic, you know, powder keg topics on
Speaker 1: social media.
Speaker 2: People just love to say what they want and next thing, you.
Speaker 1: Know, it starts a whole sparks of conversation, not always
Speaker 1: the best conversation. And so they're gonna say, we'll see
Speaker 1: what happens with all this. And the trust and safety
Speaker 1: teams are relocating from California to Texas and that's where
Speaker 1: they're going. So again, Meta, it's going to be a
Speaker 1: free for all for a while at least and until
Speaker 1: these programs sort of they figure out what's working and
Speaker 1: what's not. But you know, some people are very excited
Speaker 1: about this. Gonna be more like X, you know X
Speaker 1: free speech, free speech, free speech. You know, some people
Speaker 1: are gonna leave Meta because of this. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, this is a major major shift.
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg, you know the video he put out, My
Speaker 1: jaw just dropped. It's a total complete departure from what
Speaker 1: he has been saying for the past couple of years.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is the company, the social media
Speaker 1: platform that banned President Trump back in the day, and
Speaker 1: now not only are they welcoming him back, but they're
Speaker 1: embracing sort of what he stands for on these platforms
Speaker 1: with respect to free speech and what Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: saying over at X Complete Complete Change. Not everyone likes this,
Speaker 1: some people on one side, some people on the other.
Speaker 1: As always eighty eight rich one on one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up, I'll tell you what Apple is saying about
Speaker 1: Siri and privacy. They came out with a post on
Speaker 1: that and the new AI app for iPhone.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Speaker 1: eight eight eight rich one O one eighty eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two, four to one zero one. We've been
Speaker 1: talking a lot about the fires in Los Angeles. Uh wow,
Speaker 1: I just got an alert from Google about the fires,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. I know they said they were going
Speaker 1: to send out information, but you know, technology has really
Speaker 1: been instrumental in helping people keep up with all of this,
Speaker 1: and it's quite been quite incredible. We had the rep
Speaker 1: from the app watch duty on, I mean the text messages.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you heard about this little issue
Speaker 1: they had in Los Angeles, but they were sending out
Speaker 1: these alert texts, and I guess I don't know if
Speaker 1: the machine went haywire or what, but all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: people were getting these evacuation texts and they were not
Speaker 1: in the area of evacuation. And I knew something was
Speaker 1: a little suspicious because I'm on the phone my wife
Speaker 1: and she said, we just got an evacuation and I said,
Speaker 1: no way, they were not in the evacuation area. And
Speaker 1: I said, send me the text. And I look at
Speaker 1: the text, and sure enough, it's just a generic text
Speaker 1: that just says evacuate now. And it came out a
Speaker 1: couple minutes later that it was a mistake. Now they
Speaker 1: didn't say it was a human mistake, or they didn't.
Speaker 2: I can't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't really understand what the mistake was, like how
Speaker 1: that happened. But then it happened a couple more times.
Speaker 1: So it does make you wonder, like you have to
Speaker 1: double check all of this stuff, you know, no matter what.
Speaker 1: But you know, for people already on on Edge, that
Speaker 1: was not a good not a good thing that happened
Speaker 1: here in la website. Rich on tech dot TV, if
Speaker 1: you want to email me, you can go there. Remember
Speaker 1: last week I talked about Apple. We heard this whole
Speaker 1: settlement with Siri, how it was spying on people, eavesdropping,
Speaker 1: selling your your what you talk about with Siri to advertisers. Well,
Speaker 1: Apple came out with a post saying none of that's true.
Speaker 1: We do not spy with Siri. And so here's what
Speaker 1: they kind of outlined in their post. Because you know,
Speaker 1: when these class action suits get settled, the company doesn't
Speaker 1: really have a say at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: They just can tell you what they want because there's
Speaker 1: nothing in court that's sort of sworn to. So it
Speaker 1: just becomes like, hey, let's just give our side of
Speaker 1: the story. So Apple said number one, Siri processes as
Speaker 1: much data as possible directly on serve on devices, reducing
Speaker 1: you know, server cloud servers, So that protects your privacy
Speaker 1: because the device is doing it. Requests that you make
Speaker 1: to Siri are not tied to your Apple account. Instead,
Speaker 1: you get a random identifier that ensures your anonymous nature.
Speaker 1: Audio recordings are not stored unless you opt in to
Speaker 1: improve Siri. You can opt out at any time. That
Speaker 1: used to be the opposite. I think they change that.
Speaker 1: The first time. There was a little issue with Siri,
Speaker 1: and then they have this idea of the private cloud compute.
Speaker 1: So this is what they're doing to tackle AI because
Speaker 1: AI questions are so personal in nature, and so what
Speaker 1: they're doing is they have these servers they've set up
Speaker 1: that when your iPhone is not powerful enough to handle
Speaker 1: the AI processing, they send it to these private cloud
Speaker 1: compute servers that they've set up that are literally I
Speaker 1: mean I went through a whole seminar with Apple on this.
Speaker 1: I mean, the way they set these things up, it's
Speaker 1: like so anonymous and so like it deletes the information
Speaker 1: immediately asked. If it comes up with the answer, it
Speaker 1: wipes all the data clear off of the system. So
Speaker 1: it's almost like a memory where it's it's not remembering
Speaker 1: that stuff, it's just processing it and then deleting it.
Speaker 1: So and Apple, by the way, said in this post
Speaker 1: as well, they do not use Siri data for advertising, marketing,
Speaker 1: or sales.
Speaker 2: To third parties. So all those.
Speaker 1: Sexy headlines you saw that said, oh Apple Siris spying
Speaker 1: on you. It's eavesdropping, it's listening to your conversation so
Speaker 1: it can sell you nikes. No I knew it wasn't
Speaker 1: doing that. Uh Grock this is the X has this feature.
Speaker 1: It's called grock AI. So this is elon Musk's AI. Basically,
Speaker 1: you've got chat GBT, you've got Claude, you've got Mistral,
Speaker 1: you've got bing AI, I guess they use I guess
Speaker 1: copilot without uses Chat GBT. A lot of different flavors
Speaker 1: of AI out there, but this one is from X
Speaker 1: and it's called XAI. So it is now a standalone
Speaker 1: app for the iPhone and iPad. So if you want
Speaker 1: to try something a little different, grock is a little
Speaker 1: bit how do we say, unhinged unhinged AI, A little
Speaker 1: less rules apply. It's got conversational and humorous tones to
Speaker 1: differentiate itself from CHATCHBT and Claude. It can make images,
Speaker 1: it can summarize texts, it's got real time data from
Speaker 1: X in the web. Now, I will tell you just going,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of not getting into the politics of
Speaker 1: all this stuff. They've actually built a pretty good AI
Speaker 1: tool that does have a lot of information And if
Speaker 1: you are still on X you can try it out
Speaker 1: on any post. There is a little XAI icon in
Speaker 1: the upper right hand corner. So if you're looking at
Speaker 1: a post on Twitter and I thought This was actually
Speaker 1: pretty smart. You can tap that XAI in the upper
Speaker 1: right hand corner and it will analyze the post and
Speaker 1: it will search all the information in that post and
Speaker 1: then give you perspective on that post an AI answer
Speaker 1: about that post. So, for instance, I tweeted the other day,
Speaker 1: day four and eighty seven of CES, and I tapped
Speaker 1: a little XAI to see if you can understand what
Speaker 1: I meant, like if it was understanding my humor, And
Speaker 1: sure enough it got it. It understood it said Rich
Speaker 1: as being humorous about CES because it's so long, and
Speaker 1: some people joke that it takes so long and it's
Speaker 1: a long week. And so anyway, you can download that
Speaker 1: right now. It's grock gr ok for the iPhone. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk more CS. Welcome back to Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology, talking
Speaker 1: about the wildfires, very fluid situation here in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: where we broadcast the show. The images and videos coming
Speaker 1: out of this city over the past week have been
Speaker 1: really horrific and just impactful. I mean, so many people
Speaker 1: affected by what's going on in these natural disasters. And
Speaker 1: it's not over. That's it's still happening. It's still very
Speaker 1: very active. So thinking about everyone that is affected by this,
Speaker 1: and that ranges from people who have experienced the worst
Speaker 1: a loss of home, people have lost their lives and
Speaker 1: their livelihoods, and also all the people that just know
Speaker 1: people associated in that area. It is a wide swath
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles that is with breaking hearts right now.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four to one zero one the website
Speaker 1: for the show rich on tech dot tv U. Matt
Speaker 1: Swider is uh, he's with the shortcut dot com. He
Speaker 1: was at CS twenty twenty five with me. He's joining
Speaker 1: me now, Matt, I know you used to live in
Speaker 1: the LA area. What are your thoughts on this whole
Speaker 1: wild wildfire situation.
Speaker 8: It's certainly devastating, you know, It's it's like watching a
Speaker 8: horror movie. And you know, we all know people who
Speaker 8: live there and are you know, on the front lines
Speaker 8: of this. And so as we were at CEES, we
Speaker 8: kind of felt very helpless, uh, you know, playing with
Speaker 8: all the tech, but you know, watching our friends and
Speaker 8: loved ones kind of go through the worst.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that that was tough. I mean I
Speaker 1: wrote about this in my newsletter today. It's like we
Speaker 1: were there, and it's it's it's a really tough position
Speaker 1: to be in because here it is you're at one
Speaker 1: of the biggest tech events of the world. Your family
Speaker 1: is safe, in my case, my photographer's family is safe,
Speaker 1: and it's like, what do you do? And by the way,
Speaker 1: coming back at some point, like you know, I was
Speaker 1: on my on the phone my wife every the whole day.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, is it safer to come back right now?
Speaker 1: I mean, we were really moving towards her and the
Speaker 1: kids coming out to Vegas for the week just to
Speaker 1: get out of the way. And so it was a
Speaker 1: really really interesting position to be in. I guess as
Speaker 1: a reporter you have some thoughts on on helping out
Speaker 1: with the wildfire release relief.
Speaker 7: Absolutely absolutely so.
Speaker 8: Uh, my friend Tommy and his wife lost their home
Speaker 8: and I have a techie angle for you, as I
Speaker 8: always do, in making a donation to them, I found
Speaker 8: out how to maximize that donation mostly through you know,
Speaker 8: go fund me, very popular payment platform. And if you
Speaker 8: have you know, if you want to donate to Tommy
Speaker 8: or a loved one on the shortcut dot com, I
Speaker 8: have a post out there for it. There's a way
Speaker 8: to do it that will maximize your donation. You can
Speaker 8: pay with a credit card, so don't pay with a
Speaker 8: debit card where you don't get any points back. But
Speaker 8: I found out Apple Pay. By paying with an Apple card.
Speaker 8: Through Apple Pay, you'll get two percent cash back or
Speaker 8: two percent back, right, and then you can donate or
Speaker 8: put that into a savings account or just deposit it
Speaker 8: into your.
Speaker 7: You know bank account eventually.
Speaker 8: So by I donated five thousand dollars my friend and
Speaker 8: I got one hundred dollars back. Normally, with a regular
Speaker 8: credit card, I would have gotten you know, you know,
Speaker 8: fifty bucks back, or with a you know, bank transaction,
Speaker 8: got zero dollars back. So I can reuse that money
Speaker 8: to go visit them, and you know, why not get double?
Speaker 7: Is my thinking.
Speaker 8: The other thing is, and this is something you could
Speaker 8: fall for and I I kind of almost f fell
Speaker 8: for it. Go fund me will send a set you
Speaker 8: up with a fourteen percent tip for themselves.
Speaker 1: Okay, I've wondered about this. I've wondered about this. I
Speaker 1: feel guilty when I see this, you know, I'm like,
Speaker 1: do I support them?
Speaker 2: Do I not?
Speaker 1: So tell me what your thoughts are so Basically, when
Speaker 1: you do a transaction on the GoFundMe platform and a
Speaker 1: lot of these platforms that take donations, they ask for
Speaker 1: a small cut to sort of quote help them run
Speaker 1: the platform.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, and you know what, don't feel bad.
Speaker 8: They're already profitable enough on their own through you know,
Speaker 8: transaction fees and so forth, so you know on the
Speaker 8: back end they'll they'll take a little bit of a
Speaker 8: cut already, but so they don't need this like self
Speaker 8: appointed fourteen percent tip that was seven hundred dollars. In
Speaker 8: my case, I put it down to one cent, which
Speaker 8: I did feel bad about.
Speaker 7: You can actually put it down to zero.
Speaker 8: I fell for the fact that even at when you
Speaker 8: put in exactly zero dollars, they will have a nagging
Speaker 8: message up there looking like it doesn't work. It can
Speaker 8: be zero dollars. You can proceed to just give the
Speaker 8: whole amount that you want to your friends, which is
Speaker 8: something I did. So I have that post on the
Speaker 8: shortcut dot com if you want to go over those directions.
Speaker 8: But those two tips get money back based on points.
Speaker 8: You know, double with Apple, pay with an Apple card,
Speaker 8: and don't leave that tip to a plant pin platform
Speaker 8: that's already you know, fully funded.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is interesting because I actually this clarifies
Speaker 1: a lot and a lot of people are going to
Speaker 1: be using gofund me in the next couple weeks. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's very popular in general. But okay, So if let's
Speaker 1: say I set up a GoFundMe and I get I've
Speaker 1: raised one hundred dollars, I actually don't see one hundred dollars, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see less than that.
Speaker 8: I've been looking into that, and it's it's two point
Speaker 8: nine percent plus thirty cents per donation from what I've read.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, So they're making money no matter what it's not,
Speaker 1: So you shouldn't feel bad. You're saying, when they ask
Speaker 1: for this extra tip, you're just giving them more money,
Speaker 1: which I get it. If you have the money and
Speaker 1: you feel like it and you want to just be generous,
Speaker 1: go ahead. But you're saying, don't feel guilty about not
Speaker 1: doing it because they're still out of that one hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: I'm only going to see ninety seven. As the person
Speaker 1: who's getting those donations. Let's say I was the recipient.
Speaker 8: Correct everything I've read, they're getting money regardless, So they
Speaker 8: don't need and an egregious amount of fourteen percent. That's
Speaker 8: that's a lot to take from the donator who could
Speaker 8: just donate even more money or you know, spend that
Speaker 8: money elsewhere, So no need to do that. The tiny
Speaker 8: text of enter custom tip is so easy to mess
Speaker 8: I know a lot of your listeners will probably not
Speaker 8: even say that. I didn't even see it at first
Speaker 8: until I saw seven hundred dollars extra on there in
Speaker 8: the final bill, and as I wait a minute, so
Speaker 8: I went back clicked on that tiny text and then
Speaker 8: changed that too. You can change it to the zero dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're not We're not dunking on GoFundMe. I
Speaker 1: think that this has been an incredible way for anyone
Speaker 1: to raise money for any cause, but it is not
Speaker 1: a nonprofit. They have a nonprofit arm. And I will say,
Speaker 1: having used GoFundMe in the past for both my sister
Speaker 1: and my father, who both went through cancer, I got
Speaker 1: a donation. I don't know, maybe for my dad or
Speaker 1: my sister or both, but they actually donated to my cause,
Speaker 1: like I think at one point, I think they gave
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty dollars. They said, hey, we just
Speaker 1: want to be generous in your in your cause.
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Is that because I'm rich to Miro and I tweeted
Speaker 1: about it. Maybe I don't know if they do that
Speaker 1: for everyone, you know, but I think they do that
Speaker 1: for people. But I think obviously since they could see anyway.
Speaker 1: My point is it's a nice company. They're doing good things.
Speaker 1: Just you know, you don't have to tip if you
Speaker 1: don't want to. All right, let's talk about ce s
Speaker 1: Matt what what what are your What's your main takeaway
Speaker 1: this year?
Speaker 8: Main takeaway is there's a lot of conceptual gadgets out
Speaker 8: there that are finally becoming products and look really cool.
Speaker 8: I don't know if you saw what we gave on
Speaker 8: the shortcut, the Best in Show award winner, but it's
Speaker 8: the robo rock with It's a vacuum that has an arm.
Speaker 8: It looks like it's from a like a movie, horror movie.
Speaker 8: It has an arm that comes out of the robot
Speaker 8: vacuum and picks up socks, trash, and other items underwear
Speaker 8: that kind of get in the way.
Speaker 1: You know, if you've got a lot of underwear on
Speaker 1: your floor, I don't know what's happening in that apartment.
Speaker 8: It's you get some lazy sometimes and like you know,
Speaker 8: clothes and laundry is strewn about.
Speaker 7: So I get it. I've been there.
Speaker 8: So this is kind of a they say it's coming out.
Speaker 8: It feels a little more conceptual, but anything under three
Speaker 8: hundred grams it'll be able to pick up with a
Speaker 8: robot arm. But it looks like a regular robot vacuum
Speaker 8: other than this really cool feature. So we gave that
Speaker 8: the Best and Show at CES award because it just
Speaker 8: really felt like almost the segue to a Jetson style robot.
Speaker 7: Remember Rosie the robot. We're getting there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what else did you give awards to?
Speaker 8: We gave an award to the best Laptop issues zen
Speaker 8: Book A fourteen was really cool. The LGG four was
Speaker 8: our top TV. You know, the Samsung Frame Pro TV
Speaker 8: came really close. That was really cool. And we gave
Speaker 8: an award to two shares two gaming chairs. You know,
Speaker 8: that's very rare for us to choose too, but one
Speaker 8: was conceptual. They were both from a company, a gaming
Speaker 8: company called Razor. Razor makes excellent gaming chairs. I'm actually
Speaker 8: sitting in one of those right now. But they came
Speaker 8: out with a new one and The reason I like
Speaker 8: that is it's the Razor Iscor V two X, and
Speaker 8: it's more than half the price of the one I'm
Speaker 8: sitting in, and it has a lot of the core features.
Speaker 8: It's three hundred dollars, it has, you know, a lot
Speaker 8: of the erogronomics, and it's it backs off some of
Speaker 8: the over the top lumbar support that you know, not
Speaker 8: everybody needs, but it opens it up to a lot
Speaker 8: more gamers. The one piece of advice I give people
Speaker 8: when they buy gaming chairs, don't buy that one for
Speaker 8: ninety nine dollars. If you can help it. That's on Amazon.
Speaker 8: Those tend to, you know, fall apart very quickly and
Speaker 8: not be perfect. The Iscor Razor line of chairs is
Speaker 8: pretty amazing, So you get what you pay for. If
Speaker 8: you're you're springing, you know, and spending three hundred dollars
Speaker 8: for a gaming chair, that one.
Speaker 7: That the one I'm sitting is over six hundred dollars.
Speaker 8: I realized that when I read it for last year,
Speaker 8: it's not for everybody. This one, the price point is
Speaker 8: right the other gaming chair. This one's conceptual as well.
Speaker 8: I talked about c Yes being conceptual. It is a uh,
Speaker 8: it's it's a project r lysle right, and it is
Speaker 8: a hot and cold gaming chair. You can you know,
Speaker 8: it has this blateless fan system that either makes it
Speaker 8: cool or heats the chair up.
Speaker 2: W Yeah, why would you want to be heated up?
Speaker 1: I feel like you're you're getting sweaty playing games anyway,
Speaker 1: But I get the cool.
Speaker 8: New York City is a little bit frigid right now. Okay,
Speaker 8: I feel like a lot of times I spring for
Speaker 8: the you know, the heating system and I have to
Speaker 8: like pause my gaming session and get up and turn
Speaker 8: it on. If I had that in the chair, it's
Speaker 8: kind of like heated seats. Why is that limited to
Speaker 8: a luxury car? So I'm surprised no other tech company
Speaker 8: has done this before. But yeah, it seems like something
Speaker 8: they're actually gonna make. I'm I'm totally uh in love
Speaker 8: with this idea. It turns orange for hot, blue for cool,
Speaker 8: and also green because that's Razors color.
Speaker 7: So definitely one to look forward to if they come
Speaker 7: out with that.
Speaker 1: I've been playing with the Razor mechanical keyboard like they're
Speaker 1: a really nice one and it's you know, the people
Speaker 1: love Razor stuff.
Speaker 2: It's really slick.
Speaker 1: It's got all the lights, the RGB and you know,
Speaker 1: it's just got all the features you need.
Speaker 2: It's a little price.
Speaker 1: You know, this stuff could be expensive, but I think,
Speaker 1: like anything else, if you you know, and this is
Speaker 1: what always happens, you recommend something. I recommend something. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a little bit more than people want to spend.
Speaker 1: They go to Amazon, they type it in and of
Speaker 1: course you know these other companies they hijack the search
Speaker 1: by putting in like something that's half the price. You're like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll just go with that, and you do
Speaker 1: get what you pay for. And you have to remember
Speaker 1: big companies like a Razor, they have R and D,
Speaker 1: and they have quality control, and they use parts and
Speaker 1: they do things in a way that is like, you know,
Speaker 1: not gonna explode or not gonna like catch on fire
Speaker 1: or something. So you have to keep this in mind
Speaker 1: when you go with that really cheap thing on Amazon.
Speaker 2: Just remember that absolutely.
Speaker 8: I've done that with lights before they were on sale
Speaker 8: for Amazon, and I didn't know what the company was.
Speaker 8: I got them, and then I spent probably two months
Speaker 8: trying to track down a cricket in my kitchen, and
Speaker 8: every time I went into the kitchen. I couldn't find
Speaker 8: the cricket because it would just you know, they would
Speaker 8: go silent. I realized it was the very cheap lights
Speaker 8: I got and they were just humming.
Speaker 7: So I realized that was it. So you get what
Speaker 7: you pay.
Speaker 1: For, all right, Matt Swider of the shortcut dot Com,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 7: Thanks Rich.
Speaker 1: All right, coming up, we are going to open up
Speaker 1: the feedbag. We're gonna see what you've been emailing me
Speaker 1: all week, and uh we'll do that right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology. A couple of headlines to
Speaker 1: get through before we get to the feedbag. Tvo make
Speaker 1: it a comeback. They're going to debut a new TVO
Speaker 1: Sharp TV in February, taking on Roku and fire TV.
Speaker 2: We'll see.
Speaker 1: I love Tvo, I loved it in the past. We'll
Speaker 1: see if it can still hang with the big boys.
Speaker 1: Disney and Fubo are merging their live TV services. Disney
Speaker 1: is partnering with Fubo to combine Hulu Plus Live Tv,
Speaker 1: with Fubo creating a joint venture. They're gonna have six
Speaker 1: million subscribers. Let's see do they say the name of
Speaker 1: the new service. I don't know the name. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: it's gonna be Fubo. Maybe it's because of a lawsuit.
Speaker 2: And then Dell.
Speaker 1: They are copying the iPhone naming convention, So no more
Speaker 1: xps and INSPI on now. It's going to be the Dell,
Speaker 1: Dell Pro and Dell Promax, which I actually think is
Speaker 1: a smart idea, very very smart idea. I know people
Speaker 1: are giving them a lot of grief for that, but
Speaker 1: I think it's very smart because you know that the
Speaker 1: Pro Max is better than the Dell, and you know
Speaker 1: the Dell Pro is better than the Dell, and you
Speaker 1: know that the Pro Max is better than the del Pro.
Speaker 1: And the Sony Honda Aphila one electric car now has
Speaker 1: reservations open for eighty reservations opening California. With a two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars deposit, you can get this new car, which
Speaker 1: is sort of like a PlayStation on wheels. It's been
Speaker 1: on display at CS for the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: Sony and Honda joint developed it. I don't know why
Speaker 1: you'd pay ninety thousand dollars for it, but hey.
Speaker 2: You can have it. It's available. Let's get to the feedbag.
Speaker 1: Chuck writs in I use the Burner app as a
Speaker 1: second phone number for my customer contact in my job. Recently,
Speaker 1: they deactivated my account without warning, making my social media
Speaker 1: and marketing materials with that number useless. They won't explain why,
Speaker 1: only saying they have the right to do this. It
Speaker 1: was a great app for years, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: warn others if their work is tied to the app,
Speaker 1: it could vanish instantly. Be careful, yes, Chuck, that is
Speaker 1: always a consideration when you use one of those phone numbers,
Speaker 1: one of those apps. They can always just get rid
Speaker 1: of it at any time, and you may not have recourse.
Speaker 1: Laurel rights in I'm eighty three, I'm so glad. I
Speaker 1: grew up in the nineteen forties and fifties. We didn't
Speaker 1: have TVs, the internet, or smartphones for entertainment. We played outside,
Speaker 1: rode bikes, climb trees, jump rope, read books.
Speaker 2: My mom read me a story every night.
Speaker 1: I avoid social media and find those platforms for meeting
Speaker 1: people online dangerous. A friend of mine worries about his
Speaker 1: granddaughter meeting the wrong people online. But how can parents
Speaker 1: keep their kids away from devices when it seems like
Speaker 1: everyone has one. It's sad that parents don't spend Many
Speaker 1: parents don't spend quality time with their kids because they're
Speaker 1: glued to their own screens.
Speaker 2: Very true.
Speaker 1: Mark from Santa Barbara wrights in I listened to your
Speaker 1: program about surge suppressors. He recommended at least two thousand
Speaker 1: jewels and mentioned they don't last forever. I recently upgraded
Speaker 1: two older power strips near my TV, including my rebuilt
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three duel turntable, and replaced three in my
Speaker 1: home office. I even added USB charging porch from my
Speaker 1: iPhone and iPad. Thanks for the tip. Appreciate the guidance.
Speaker 1: Gale from San Diego. Rights in Rich. Thanks for your
Speaker 1: advice on photo scanning. Last March, my sister and I
Speaker 1: started organizing over a thousand of our parents photos. Instead
Speaker 1: of paying for scanning, we found a youth scanner at
Speaker 1: an estate sale for twelve dollars and did it ourselves.
Speaker 1: Every Sunday we spent hours organizing and scanning old black
Speaker 1: and white photos, keepsakes, and letters from my dad's World
Speaker 1: War II service. It felt like a family reunion.
Speaker 2: Every week.
Speaker 1: We saved everything to flash drives and gifted them to
Speaker 1: family members for Christmas. It was one of the best
Speaker 1: experiences of our lives. All of this was inspired by
Speaker 1: your program. Thank you for what you do and Happy
Speaker 1: New Year, Gail. You get the silver star or the
Speaker 1: gold star for making my day. Randy from Florida writes
Speaker 1: in Rich. I was listening as you guided someone through
Speaker 1: finding a specific setting on their phone. May I suggest
Speaker 1: using the search function in the settings menu instead of scrolling.
Speaker 1: It's a faster way to locate the exact option and
Speaker 1: make the adjustment.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I do like to give people the basis of where
Speaker 1: things are, but I agree that could be a.
Speaker 2: Good way to do it as well. Let's see what else.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, so many emails.
Speaker 1: I was listening to your show on tape delay and
Speaker 1: discussion of the NordVPN guest about two factor authentication. It's
Speaker 1: a great security feature, but I've noticed a problem with
Speaker 1: how Amazon handles it. If you do it too many times,
Speaker 1: Amazon's inform me I can't get a link until later.
Speaker 1: Even when I waited until the next day. The delay
Speaker 1: was frustrated. Frustrating. I wanted to share this in case
Speaker 1: others have experienced similar issues, or you weren't aware. Thanks
Speaker 1: for discussing these important tech topics. Yes, they could lock
Speaker 1: you out if you try to access too many times,
Speaker 1: so be aware of that and remember those recovery codes.
Speaker 1: All right, that's going to do it for this episode
Speaker 1: of the show. Links to everything I mentioned on the
Speaker 1: website rich on tech dot tv. I'm on social media
Speaker 1: at rich on tech. Next week i'll give you my
Speaker 1: thoughts on the one plus thirteen plus we'll talk to
Speaker 1: the guy who's efforting the real life Jurassic Park. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's going to be an interesting one. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening. I know there are so many ways
Speaker 1: you can spend your time I really do appreciate you
Speaker 1: spending it right here with me. My thoughts to everyone
Speaker 1: impacted by the wildfires in Los Angeles. The world is
Speaker 1: with you right now. Thanks to everyone who makes this
Speaker 1: show possible, including Bobo, who had to break through barriers
Speaker 1: to get here. My name is not really My name
Speaker 1: is rich Dumuro. He didn't break any rules. I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you real soon.