Speaker 1: Nintendo sets a date and price for the switch to.
Speaker 1: TikTok gets another deadline extension. Zell is shutting down its app,
Speaker 1: but if you're using it through your bank, you're probably fine.
Speaker 1: And how to remove yourself from the Internet for free?
Speaker 1: Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on? I'm Rich
Speaker 1: to Buro and this is Rich on Tech. This is
Speaker 1: the show where I talk about the tech stuff I
Speaker 1: think you should know about. It's also the place where
Speaker 1: I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech
Speaker 1: should be interesting, useful and fun. Let's open up those
Speaker 1: phone lines at triple eight rich one oh one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one,
Speaker 1: triple eight rich one O one. Give me a call.
Speaker 1: If you have a question about technology. Email is also open.
Speaker 1: Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit
Speaker 1: contact richontech dot tv hit contact. All Right, we got
Speaker 1: a full, full lineup of guests this week. Matt Swider
Speaker 1: from the shortcut dot com is going to join to
Speaker 1: talk about his hands on time with the Nintendo switch to.
Speaker 1: Then we've got Cloaked co founder and CEO Arjun Botnauger.
Speaker 1: He's going to join me to share tips and insights.
Speaker 1: I'm protecting your personal information and online privacy. And later
Speaker 1: Joel Santo Domingo of The Wirecutter is going to break
Speaker 1: down mesh networking, what it is, why you need it,
Speaker 1: and the best systems to buy well. It is a
Speaker 1: spring break and also summer travel coming up, so I've
Speaker 1: been getting a lot of questions about how to travel
Speaker 1: with your current phone plan or your current phone but
Speaker 1: avoid all of those roaming charges, especially internationally. Now this
Speaker 1: has gotten a lot easier over the years. I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I ever went to Japan, I was
Speaker 1: without a phone for basically the moment I got off
Speaker 1: the plane to the moment I got to my hotel
Speaker 1: room a couple hours later. It was a long, long
Speaker 1: train ride, and it was so frustrating. I thought I
Speaker 1: had done the right things. I thought I had the
Speaker 1: plan figured out. I did not, and it was tough.
Speaker 1: Now I ended up getting over it, but in the
Speaker 1: meantime I said that would never happen again. And so
Speaker 1: here are my tips for making sure that you can
Speaker 1: stay connected without coming back home to a giant bill.
Speaker 1: So number one, I think the easiest thing to do
Speaker 1: is to stick to your current plan. So if you
Speaker 1: have a major carrier, that's AT and T, Verizon, T Mobile.
Speaker 1: They all offer these international day passes. So if you
Speaker 1: just want your phone to work the way that it
Speaker 1: works in the States, just use that. That's going to
Speaker 1: be twelve dollars a day for AT and T and Verizon.
Speaker 1: That lets you keep your phone your same phone number.
Speaker 1: Let's you use your data. You don't get a ton
Speaker 1: of data in most instances, but you'll get enough to
Speaker 1: get you through what you need for the most part.
Speaker 1: But that's going to be very pricey. So T Mobile
Speaker 1: a lot of their plans actually include free international data,
Speaker 1: but the speeds might not be as fast as you're
Speaker 1: used to at home. You can pay them to have
Speaker 1: faster speeds. Now, if you're on one of those fifty
Speaker 1: five plus plans, a lot of those I checked do
Speaker 1: not include international data. They might include international texting when
Speaker 1: you're overseas, but the data might not be included. So
Speaker 1: number one, be sure to check what your plan offers
Speaker 1: and what you have. Now here's a little trick. If
Speaker 1: you're on one of those very expensive unlimited plans. We're
Speaker 1: talking like the ninety dollars a month plan, A lot
Speaker 1: of the carriers give you what's called a free roaming day,
Speaker 1: and they sort of bank. So even some of the
Speaker 1: smaller carriers do this, but if you're on a pricey plan,
Speaker 1: you may be banking international days. So if you check
Speaker 1: your little account, go on the app, go on the website,
Speaker 1: it may say, hey, you have five free days of roaming.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're going on a five day trip,
Speaker 1: six day trip, that might be just enough and that
Speaker 1: won't cost you a thing. So that's my number one
Speaker 1: tip is to either look online, call your carrier, check
Speaker 1: your plans, see what's already included, and see how much
Speaker 1: it costs to just use what you have. If you're
Speaker 1: just going on a short trip, three day trip overseas,
Speaker 1: maybe that twelve dollars a day isn't so bad, right,
Speaker 1: thirty six dollars still very expensive, but it's going to
Speaker 1: be very easy to do that. So that's number one. Now,
Speaker 1: if you have one of these mv and o's right
Speaker 1: mobile virtual network operator. They go by the names like
Speaker 1: Mint Mobile, Consumer, Cellular, Visible, Google Fi. A lot of
Speaker 1: those carriers, some of them may not include the international roaming,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them are adding it as an
Speaker 1: add on, So It used to be the big delineation
Speaker 1: for those mv and o's was you didn't pay very much,
Speaker 1: but you didn't get a lot of the extra perks.
Speaker 1: But nowadays they're starting to add some of these perks
Speaker 1: to the plan, and it's getting tougher and tougher to
Speaker 1: differentiate between the big, pricey plans and these smaller carriers
Speaker 1: with these great unlimited plans. So if you have one
Speaker 1: of these mv and o's, really double check to see
Speaker 1: what's included and if you're able to add international roaming
Speaker 1: to that plan, because sometimes you can, sometimes you can't,
Speaker 1: Like I know, Mint Mobile just added it. So that's
Speaker 1: another way. Google Fi, by the way, a lot of
Speaker 1: their plans at a lot of people like Google Fi
Speaker 1: because you can pretty much go all over the world
Speaker 1: and it's included in your roaming fees. Okay, or I
Speaker 1: guess your roaming is included without additional fees, I should say.
Speaker 1: Now here's the second thing. You've probably heard of these,
Speaker 1: but they're called eSIMs, and electronic sims are a great
Speaker 1: money saving option because eSIMs basically let you install a
Speaker 1: temporary wireless plan on the phone that you already have
Speaker 1: no physical sim card necessary. It used to be when
Speaker 1: you landed in a country, you would buy the physical
Speaker 1: SIM card, pop yours out, pop this one in and
Speaker 1: you can be on your way. Now you can do
Speaker 1: this right from your phone. You download an app. I've
Speaker 1: tried a Relo, AI R A l O. I like
Speaker 1: them a lot. I've used them in various countries. I've
Speaker 1: tried gig Sky gig Sky and they offer a free
Speaker 1: one hundred megabyte plan, and then you've got one that's
Speaker 1: called Saley and they also are sort of up and coming.
Speaker 1: So those are three good places to start. But there
Speaker 1: are many many eSIM providers out there, so just do
Speaker 1: your research, make sure that it's reputable. But what you're
Speaker 1: going to do is download that app here, buy your eSIM,
Speaker 1: and then you will activate it. Basically right when you
Speaker 1: hit the ground, you'll activate that. Now, keep in mind
Speaker 1: most eSIMs are data only, so before you travel, make
Speaker 1: sure you enable Wi Fi calling and texting in your
Speaker 1: phone settings. That way, even if you're on data only,
Speaker 1: you should be able to get your phone calls through
Speaker 1: Wi Fi and your texts through Wi Fi calling and texting.
Speaker 1: You're wondering does my phone support eSIMs? These have been
Speaker 1: around for a while now, even though you might not
Speaker 1: have used it or might not be familiar with it.
Speaker 1: iPhone ten, R, ten S or newer, they all have
Speaker 1: eSIMs enabled. Samsung Galaxy AS twenty and later all have eSIMs.
Speaker 1: And the neat thing about an eSIM is usually your
Speaker 1: phone can support several of them at once. So even
Speaker 1: if your primary carrier is on an eSIM, which you know,
Speaker 1: Apple's been doing this for a long time in their stores,
Speaker 1: They've been activating eSIMs on the iPhone, you can still
Speaker 1: add a second SIM, maybe up to like eight eSIMs
Speaker 1: on your phone. It just depends on your phone model. Now,
Speaker 1: the main thing you have to check is to make
Speaker 1: sure your phone is not locked to your carrier. So
Speaker 1: a lot of times these cell phone plans, the big plans,
Speaker 1: they don't want you using an eSIM because guess what,
Speaker 1: they're a lot more affordable and they want you to
Speaker 1: pay more, so they lock your phone to them only
Speaker 1: their network. So if you have rise in AT and T,
Speaker 1: sometimes you're not able to install an eSIM. So if
Speaker 1: you're on an iPhone, you can go in your Settings
Speaker 1: General about and look under carrier lock and see if
Speaker 1: it says no SIM restrictions, and if you see that,
Speaker 1: you're good to go. If it says lock to your carrier,
Speaker 1: you're not good to go. On Android, you can go
Speaker 1: to a website called imeicheck dot com and you can
Speaker 1: type in the secret code from your phone, the Imei code,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the universal code for your your
Speaker 1: Android phone, and it will tell you if that's locked
Speaker 1: to your carrier. I tested it this morning. It does work.
Speaker 1: I tried it with a couple different phones. It'll tell
Speaker 1: you if it's locked or not. Now, if you're using
Speaker 1: an a SIM, you might want to turn off roaming
Speaker 1: to avoid any surprise charges. Because even if you leave
Speaker 1: your other eSIM on your standard carrier, that may still
Speaker 1: activate when you fly to another country. So be very
Speaker 1: careful and turn off roaming if you want to avoid
Speaker 1: any sort of surprise charges when you come back home. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking rich, this all sounds very complicated. I
Speaker 1: feel like I don't know, I don't really understand this.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm gonna be hit with all these charges.
Speaker 1: The cheapest option is to go old school, and that
Speaker 1: is to use airplane mode and turn off your cellular
Speaker 1: So turn basically you can turn on your airplane mode.
Speaker 1: But then when you have your airplane mode on, which
Speaker 1: is going to disable your cellular you could just turn
Speaker 1: your Wi Fi on and then just hop around to
Speaker 1: hotspots around the city. Now hotspots have gotten a lot easier,
Speaker 1: a lot more prevalent in various countries and cities, so
Speaker 1: you should be able to find something where you're going.
Speaker 1: You may not have coverage the whole time, but at
Speaker 1: least you can go to like a cafe or your
Speaker 1: hotel and still have coverage, check your messages, and get
Speaker 1: to the next place safely. There is an app, a
Speaker 1: Wi Fi map app that you can download and you
Speaker 1: can help locate free networks on there, so wi fimap
Speaker 1: dot io that will also give you the passwords for
Speaker 1: a lot of places. I was actually since I installed
Speaker 1: this app to test it out, I was at a
Speaker 1: place that had free Wi Fi and I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to submit the Wi Fi password for
Speaker 1: us to share with other folks? And I said, sure,
Speaker 1: why not? I mean it's printed on the you know,
Speaker 1: the page in the in the little waiting room I
Speaker 1: was in, so not, so you can submit your information
Speaker 1: to that app and sort of crowdsource that data and
Speaker 1: help other folks as well. Now the trick is someone
Speaker 1: emailed me and they said, hey, Rich, well wait a second,
Speaker 1: what if I don't have data, how do I get
Speaker 1: the information on that Wi Fi app? And I said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's they've thought of that. So you can pay the
Speaker 1: Wi Fi app to download all the Wi Fi information
Speaker 1: for an area. So if you're going to a city
Speaker 1: like Rome or something, you can download all that information.
Speaker 1: And then of course once you're there, you can use
Speaker 1: WhatsApp or other messaging apps like Telegram if you want
Speaker 1: to make calls, chats video, just make sure your friends
Speaker 1: have that installed as well. And my other tip turn
Speaker 1: off your automatic backups on things like your photos and
Speaker 1: your cloud, your cloud apps, anything that's going to automatically
Speaker 1: back up data in the background or use a lot
Speaker 1: of data in the background, your music, your YouTube, your Netflix.
Speaker 1: Make sure those are set to Wi Fi only. That
Speaker 1: way they don't gobble up all your data. And finally,
Speaker 1: one other good tip download offline maps before you go.
Speaker 1: Google Maps and Apple Maps support this, so if you're
Speaker 1: going to a city, be sure to download the offline
Speaker 1: maps in Google Maps or Apple Maps. It's very easy
Speaker 1: to do. You can find all of these instructions on
Speaker 1: my website. Rich on Tech dot TV. All right, eight
Speaker 1: eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four two four one zero one. We'll take some of
Speaker 1: your calls right here on rich on Tech. Coming up next.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one
Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. Phone lines are open. Website is
Speaker 1: open rich on Tech dot TV. There you can get
Speaker 1: notes to anything I talk about. Mentioned international travel. We
Speaker 1: know that real ID deadline is coming up. I think
Speaker 1: it's May seventh. You gotta get your drivers license upgraded.
Speaker 1: But I'm in this weird world where both my driver's
Speaker 1: license and my passport expire this summer. So there could
Speaker 1: be a scenario where if I don't get these things renewed,
Speaker 1: I'm not able to travel even domestically, because you can
Speaker 1: use your passport to travel domestically even if you don't
Speaker 1: have the real ID. So that's my current plan right now.
Speaker 1: So I went online. I don't know if you know
Speaker 1: you can do this, but you can renew your passport
Speaker 1: now completely online. And so I did that, and the
Speaker 1: process was very easy as long as your passport sort
Speaker 1: of meets the requirements. And it was like one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty dollars I think to renew my passport. But
Speaker 1: I did it all online, took maybe fifteen minutes. The
Speaker 1: trickiest part is taking the picture, because you take your
Speaker 1: own passport picture, so you have to enlist a friend
Speaker 1: because you can't take a selfie. This is not like
Speaker 1: you know, the social media world, but you can take
Speaker 1: your own picture. You got to stand in front of
Speaker 1: some sort of like you know, I think it's like
Speaker 1: a white background, neutral background, can't smile. But they give
Speaker 1: you a whole bunch of example online of what the
Speaker 1: picture looks like for your passport and so you basically
Speaker 1: can take it with your smartphone. So, uh, Bobo looks
Speaker 1: like he has a question about this? Are you you're
Speaker 1: you're wondering about this? You have the Samsung Ultra. Yes,
Speaker 1: you could have just took it yourself with the pin.
Speaker 1: No you can't anymore, Are you serious? No? They took
Speaker 1: that feature away. Yeah, that the new So it's so
Speaker 1: funny you say it because that was my initial thing. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, you could set a timer, and I did.
Speaker 1: I tried it on the tripod and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work. You gotta have a friend take it
Speaker 1: because you want it to be eye level. But yes,
Speaker 1: the new phone, the S twenty five Ultra, they took
Speaker 1: the bluetooth out of the pen and so you can't
Speaker 1: use it as a little remote control anymore. Why would
Speaker 1: they do That's as far as I know. Now you're
Speaker 1: now you have me second guessing this. Let me test
Speaker 1: this since I have it right here. Yeah, no, you cannot.
Speaker 1: You cannot press it anymore.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: It used to be the pen and you can still
Speaker 1: do it. On the older models, the stylists would act
Speaker 1: as a little bluetooth remote control. And yeah, they took
Speaker 1: that away on the latest one. Let's go to Lynn
Speaker 1: in Marietta, California. Lynn, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: I'm getting messages that say text messages on my phone
Speaker 3: that say Hi, it's AT and T. On June seventeenth,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, will stop supporting email to text messages.
Speaker 3: That means you won't be able to send a text
Speaker 3: message to an AT and T customer from an email address.
Speaker 3: And I get this when I send, for example, a
Speaker 3: photo I've taken on my phone to my laptop because
Speaker 3: I want to do something with that photo on my laptop.
Speaker 3: What is this about and what's the workaround?
Speaker 1: So back in the day when when texting first started,
Speaker 1: there was like a little hack where you could literally
Speaker 1: email to text. So and all a lot of the carriers,
Speaker 1: I think they all supported it. But it looks like
Speaker 1: AT and T as of June seventeenth, is discontinuing the
Speaker 1: ability to send through email. So it used to be
Speaker 1: you could put your phone number, let's to say, three
Speaker 1: one oh five FI five one two one two at
Speaker 1: text txt dot att dot net or at MMS dot
Speaker 1: att dot net. So you could literally turn your phone
Speaker 1: number into an email address and you would receive that
Speaker 1: as a text message. They are taking that ability away.
Speaker 1: Now ninety nine point nine percent of people don't do
Speaker 1: this anymore, so they don't really need that feature. So
Speaker 1: for you, you're saying that sometimes you do what you
Speaker 1: send a photo to your phone through your computer through email,
Speaker 1: the reverse.
Speaker 3: I send a photo I've taken on my phone to
Speaker 3: my computer. But I think they're just based on what
Speaker 3: you just said, maybe they're just broadcasting this to anyone
Speaker 3: and everyone, because that's not the scenario of me sending
Speaker 3: a photo from my phone to my email address.
Speaker 1: No exactly. So this is this is like if I
Speaker 1: wanted to send you a text message from my computer
Speaker 1: email system, I would address it to your phone number,
Speaker 1: and you have AT and T and it would it
Speaker 1: would come through you to your text message.
Speaker 3: But again, email to text means that literally not the
Speaker 3: converse of text to.
Speaker 1: Email exactly, So you should be fine. Yeah, and by
Speaker 1: the way, if you ever want to send something simply
Speaker 1: on your own network, there's a great app called local
Speaker 1: Send localsend dot org. So if you're trying to do
Speaker 1: like cross platform devices like an iPhone to a Windows
Speaker 1: computer or you know, Android to a Mac computer, local
Speaker 1: send is great. The other one that's really great is
Speaker 1: file dot Pizza. File dot pizza lets you transfer stuff
Speaker 1: right from your web browser. That's a good one. And
Speaker 1: then there's one called pair Drop pair drop dot net.
Speaker 1: You just go to that website on both devices and
Speaker 1: you can drag and drop files. So three easy ways
Speaker 1: to drag and drop files. I get it. Apple users
Speaker 1: have air drop. They all love air drop, but air
Speaker 1: drop is not so good if you are trying to
Speaker 1: send from an iPhone to a Windows computer or from
Speaker 1: an Android to a Mac computer. So we need some
Speaker 1: of these other ways to do it. And thankfully you
Speaker 1: know you can email yourself. You can text yourself if
Speaker 1: you've got I message. There's so many ways to exchange
Speaker 1: things nowadays, but local send, file, pizza, and pair drop
Speaker 1: are all three easy ways to exchange files. All right,
Speaker 1: Coming up, we are going to talk about the Nintendo
Speaker 1: switch To. We've got details on pricing and availability with
Speaker 1: our pal Matt Swider. Coming up next, Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: We'll get back to the phone lines in just a moment.
Speaker 1: Website for the show Richontech dot TV if you want
Speaker 1: links to anything I mentioned. We're going to talk Nintendo
Speaker 1: switch To. Joining me now is Matt Swider. He is
Speaker 1: editor in chief of the shortcut dot com, great website
Speaker 1: newsletter all filled with like consumer tips and reviews and
Speaker 1: all kinds of great stuff. So check it out. Matt.
Speaker 1: You went hands on with the switch too, huh?
Speaker 4: I did the brand new Nintendo console. It's coming out
Speaker 4: June fifth, and it is a significant upgrade if you
Speaker 4: were still, you know, carrying around that original Nintendo, that
Speaker 4: Nintendo switch that's eight years old at this point, so
Speaker 4: it's due for an upgrade. And I got early access,
Speaker 4: hands on time with it, and the thing I love
Speaker 4: about it is the screen.
Speaker 1: It's a lot bigger.
Speaker 4: It's seven point nine inches and you think back the
Speaker 4: original switch with six point two inches, so it feels
Speaker 4: you feel every single extra pixel that's on there. Ten
Speaker 4: ADP instead of seven to twenty P. It can be
Speaker 4: four K if you plug it into a doc that
Speaker 4: you know it does four K on a TV, so
Speaker 4: that is great. It's LCD technology, so it's not like
Speaker 4: the switch O Lead, which seems like a downgrade. But
Speaker 4: that extra extra resolution HDR one hundred twenty frames per second,
Speaker 4: that makes a difference. And it's very bright, so that's
Speaker 4: really important. It's not like the technology from eight years ago.
Speaker 4: So significant upgrade on the screen, all right.
Speaker 1: But that just tells me they're going to have an
Speaker 1: O LED version down the line, of course, because they
Speaker 1: refreshed the original switch throughout the years with like little
Speaker 1: improvements here and there, but this is like the real
Speaker 1: big improvement the switch too, So June fifth, four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars. Were you surprised at that price tag?
Speaker 2: You know what I was?
Speaker 4: It was fifty dollars more than anybody expected, and now
Speaker 4: that the US tariffs are are in place, people are
Speaker 4: unsure if it's even going to be that much, it
Speaker 4: could increase, so they delayed the pre order.
Speaker 5: That's like the big news.
Speaker 4: So it's a you know, the pre orders are supposed
Speaker 4: to go live on April ninth, and everybody's waiting for
Speaker 4: that moment because it could sell out for delivery on
Speaker 4: day one. But now it's delayed indefinitely. The release date's
Speaker 4: still delayed. Just to be clear, the release date is
Speaker 4: still June fifth.
Speaker 1: But why do you think they're delaying the prutors because
Speaker 1: they don't know the price tag yet that they're going
Speaker 1: to settle on.
Speaker 4: I think that's why they didn't make the price tag announcement.
Speaker 4: Even during the presentation that had a video presentation that
Speaker 4: was online, they didn't even mentioned price. They just said,
Speaker 4: you know, go to the website and eventually we saw
Speaker 4: four fifty. And now I think it's you know, they
Speaker 4: they're giving themselves a wiggle room just in case tariffs
Speaker 4: do affect the console price. That on their end, so
Speaker 4: they they want that wiggle room. I also think they're
Speaker 4: hoping that that's, you know, part of a negotiation tactic
Speaker 4: maybe something like that. But the games are going to
Speaker 4: be as much as eighty dollars for some of the games,
Speaker 4: Mario Kart World.
Speaker 5: Digitally will be eighty dollars. It'll be ninety if you
Speaker 5: buy it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that is wilds it used to be.
Speaker 1: I mean these games were like, what fifty, and then
Speaker 1: they became sixty. Now we're up to ninety dollars. So
Speaker 1: if you actually buy the bundle, which is five hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: let's say these prices stick, you know, four to fifty
Speaker 1: or five hundred. So four to fifty is without the game,
Speaker 1: five hundred includes Mario Kart World, so you're actually saving
Speaker 1: thirty dollars there on the bundle.
Speaker 4: Yes, And I forty highly highly recommend buying that bundle
Speaker 4: if you have any interest in Mario Kart World, because
Speaker 4: you're you're gonna save a bunch of money. And I
Speaker 4: think that's that's the one that the pre orders will
Speaker 4: sell out right away because everybody wants to play that
Speaker 4: game and it's a thirty dollars at least thirty dollars savings.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what about the joy cons they now detach
Speaker 1: and attach and detach magnetically. Did you get to try
Speaker 1: that out? Was that aggressive? I did?
Speaker 4: Nintendo had a really cool experience in New York City.
Speaker 4: It's coming to LA and then Dallas after that. Got
Speaker 4: to play tested early and being able to play those
Speaker 4: different modes where you're playing in handheld mode, you're playing
Speaker 4: in TV mode, and you're playing it with the joy
Speaker 4: cons detached.
Speaker 5: I was able to detach them and attach them very quickly.
Speaker 4: It's a lot a lot more simpler than what it
Speaker 4: was before, where you had to kind of do the
Speaker 4: sliding mechanism that works sometimes sometimes it didn't work. This
Speaker 4: has really strong magnets and it's going to be a
Speaker 4: sinch just to detach them and attach them. And hopefully
Speaker 4: there's no breakable parts because like it's magnetized. It's really strong.
Speaker 4: But you know, we'll see when people do tear downs
Speaker 4: stuff like that.
Speaker 1: What did it feel like these things to like, you know,
Speaker 1: like the magnets they go on like left and right,
Speaker 1: But like, did it feel like you can just kind
Speaker 1: of break them off, like with is there any part
Speaker 1: that in your connect innerconnects between these devices?
Speaker 4: I think there is. Well, how they come apart is
Speaker 4: that there's little mechanism where you push a button and
Speaker 4: it actually has another part that kind of pushes off
Speaker 4: of Nintendo switch. So it's it's a very simple mechanism.
Speaker 4: It turns out. We thought it would be a lot
Speaker 4: more complicated than it actually was, but I don't think
Speaker 4: it's I think it's very durable, and I had confidence
Speaker 4: that it wouldn't just fall off.
Speaker 5: The magnets are pretty strong, so they built it really well.
Speaker 4: But I'm sure some people are going to put some
Speaker 4: torture tests online on some video so those will be
Speaker 4: fun to watch.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if it's new feature game chat, so I
Speaker 1: guess at the minimum, because there's a new button on here,
Speaker 1: a Sea button, you can chat with your friends like
Speaker 1: audio chat. But then if you buy the they have
Speaker 1: a new USBC camera you can video chat. And this
Speaker 1: is kind of like reminds me of Discord or all
Speaker 1: these other ways that gamers are already kind of like
Speaker 1: video and audio chatting online. So what do you think
Speaker 1: of that feature?
Speaker 4: Yeah, everybody at the Shortcut, all my entire team. They
Speaker 4: want to buy a Nintendo Switch for this feature. Because
Speaker 4: Mario Kart World, you can appear against your screen background
Speaker 4: so you can like watch what other people are doing
Speaker 4: in a you know, there's it supports up to twenty
Speaker 4: four people, but the four of us want to play
Speaker 4: and kind of taunt each other on camera and have
Speaker 4: a lot of fun. There's a new mode called Knockout Mode,
Speaker 4: and this seems like a very interactive, almost twitch like experience.
Speaker 4: You mentioned discord, a lot of these game chats have
Speaker 4: video capabilities. Now Nintendo finally has.
Speaker 1: That, okay, and then they're also bringing game cube games
Speaker 1: to this as well. Now this will this come to
Speaker 1: the old switch as well? I mean, because it's just
Speaker 1: going to be part of a Nintendo Switch Online if
Speaker 1: you have a subscription.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you would think.
Speaker 4: I think it's a new Switch to exclusive because they
Speaker 4: have a new controller that is coming and you can
Speaker 4: buy that separately. So it's a GameCube controller with new
Speaker 4: extra buttons on there, and that is definitely something that
Speaker 4: you want to experience it. You know, you pay yearly
Speaker 4: for the subscription, but this is going to be exclusive
Speaker 4: to the new console.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's interesting. Okay, so let's talk about pre orders.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't. All you can do is put
Speaker 1: your email address in right now, right. And then there's
Speaker 1: also a report I've read that they were basically requiring
Speaker 1: fifty hours of gameplay if you wanted to order it
Speaker 1: direct from Nintendo, to like help fend off scalpers.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, so, I think that's a really good thing because
Speaker 4: we saw during the PS five restock chaos of a
Speaker 4: couple of years ago that people were buying, you know, ten,
Speaker 4: twenty thirty of the consoles at a time and reselling
Speaker 4: them for double their price. That could easily happen. But
Speaker 4: with these measures that Nintendo is putting in place, you're
Speaker 4: able to you know, say like it goes to it
Speaker 4: rewards the players that are actually playing games. So you
Speaker 4: need fifty hours of gameplay time, and you need to
Speaker 4: have a switch account, you know, or a Nintendo Online
Speaker 4: account for over a year, so it's so that the
Speaker 4: gamers actually get it. My suggestion, though, is to pre
Speaker 4: order it from one of the retail store when the
Speaker 4: pre orders go live, because Nintendo's website, it's online website
Speaker 4: called my Nintendo Store doesn't go live with their pre
Speaker 4: orders until May eighth, and that's really late, so if
Speaker 4: they run out of pre orders, you can't really go
Speaker 4: back in time and pre order it from Best Buy,
Speaker 4: which was April.
Speaker 5: Ninth, but now maybe another date.
Speaker 4: So try all the major retail stores, just a secure
Speaker 4: of reservation and maybe get two reservations because they don't
Speaker 4: usually charge their card until they ship. But at least
Speaker 4: you'll have two stores in case one gets delayed or
Speaker 4: canceled for some reason.
Speaker 1: So what do we think? Is this a must have?
Speaker 1: Do you upgrade if you already have the Nintendo Switch?
Speaker 1: And is it going to be tough to get for
Speaker 1: the holidays. I think it will be tough to get.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of parents are going to want it.
Speaker 4: I think it is a must have if you're playing
Speaker 4: the Switch on a even a weekly basis, If if
Speaker 4: that's your go to console, if you love Mario games,
Speaker 4: Mario Kart World is going to be a blast to play.
Speaker 4: They have Donkey Kong Bonanza, a little pun that's gonna
Speaker 4: be a lot of fun for both kids and adults.
Speaker 4: So I think it's the right console for a lot
Speaker 4: of people. It's a little bit pricey, but My word
Speaker 4: of warning is don't wait for the price to go down,
Speaker 4: because that usually doesn't happen with the Nintendo console. So
Speaker 4: if you're putting it off hoping for a sale, you're
Speaker 4: probably gonna be waiting a really long time.
Speaker 5: With the pre orders, I would get it the moment
Speaker 5: they open.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna have if you follow at Matt Sweider or
Speaker 4: the shortcut dot com and subscribe, I'm gonna have the
Speaker 4: moment the preorders go live links to those retailers, because
Speaker 4: I do expect them to sell out pretty quickly and
Speaker 4: we might get less inventory because of the tariffs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't expect any discounts on this. Typically
Speaker 1: the way that Nintendo operates is no discounts. Maybe a
Speaker 1: bundle is good or some added extra you might get,
Speaker 1: but just seeing a slash of one hundred dollars or
Speaker 1: something really doesn't happen there. All right, Matt Swider, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining me. The shortcut dot com is
Speaker 1: his website. You were the first place that I learned,
Speaker 1: since I follow you on X that the date was
Speaker 1: changed or you know, Nintendo put out that statement that said, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna, you know, change the launch date or the
Speaker 1: pre order date. I guess we're holding off.
Speaker 4: It makes turning on notifications that's that much more important,
Speaker 4: So stand by for that news. Hopefully I get to
Speaker 4: inform you and everybody else when the pre orders go live.
Speaker 1: Tap that bell, all right, Matt, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining me. Let's eighty eight rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up, I'll tell you why TikTok gets yet another
Speaker 1: lifelined right here on rich On Tech. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Just one thing we forgot to mention about the switch
Speaker 1: from Nintendo in the last segment is will the games
Speaker 1: be backwards compatible? So Switch one games will work on
Speaker 1: switch to Switch two games will not work on Switch one,
Speaker 1: and some games will be switched to enhanced of older games.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so bottom line, your mileage may vary, but
Speaker 1: it sounds like in general, the old games will work
Speaker 1: on the new console, the new games will not work
Speaker 1: on the old console. Let's go to Katie in Garden Grove.
Speaker 6: Katie, you're on with Rich, Hi, Rich, I've seen advertised these.
Speaker 6: They're like ear pods and they translate. So you've just
Speaker 6: put this thing on your ear and you can go
Speaker 6: to several different countries and it'll translate for you. Have
Speaker 6: you heard anything about that?
Speaker 7: I have.
Speaker 1: I'm concerned that you saw them advertised. Where'd you see
Speaker 1: them advertised? Social media? Yes? Yeah, so I would be.
Speaker 6: I saw them on Amazon as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, what's the brand, because there is a brand
Speaker 1: I do recommend.
Speaker 6: Oh, okay, that's what I'm asking about.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they're pretty the Time Kettle, Time Kettle M three.
Speaker 1: Those are the most inexpensive, or that I should say,
Speaker 1: the least expensive translating earbuds. Now, I have not personally
Speaker 1: tested these, but I've talked to many friends who have
Speaker 1: and they are known to work pretty well. So those
Speaker 1: are probably what i'd recommend. What's the brand that Kettle?
Speaker 6: Time Kettle like T I M E K E T.
Speaker 1: T L correct Time Kettle M three. Now, they have
Speaker 1: more expensive ones. They have a whole bunch of different versions.
Speaker 1: This is just the most affordable. So if you want
Speaker 1: to spend more, they've got ones that I think are
Speaker 1: four fifty you know, a little bit more expensive, but
Speaker 1: these are these are which of course bring added features
Speaker 1: to them, but these are the kind of the the
Speaker 1: budget version of these that kind of work, and people
Speaker 1: seem to like them, so they get good reviews. They
Speaker 1: they kind of do what you need. I will say,
Speaker 1: I think that in general you have to keep your
Speaker 1: expectations quite low with technology. You like this because I
Speaker 1: in my experience, anytime you're talking about translation, it can
Speaker 1: be tricky. Now I think AI has made things a
Speaker 1: lot better, but for me personally, when I go abroad,
Speaker 1: I use my phone and you just kind of like
Speaker 1: use your translate app. Google Translate app will translate. That
Speaker 1: will work pretty well for most circumstances. But these are
Speaker 1: much more of a you know, if you want like
Speaker 1: that idea of someone talking to you, this thing listens
Speaker 1: and then in your ears, instead of hearing what they're saying,
Speaker 1: you're hearing it in your language. That's kind of what
Speaker 1: the earbuds are for. The other earbuds that work to
Speaker 1: do this are the Google Pixel buds. And I originally
Speaker 1: thought you had to have them on a pixel phone,
Speaker 1: but you don't. You just have to have these pixel
Speaker 1: buds with an Android phone. Now there are some requirements
Speaker 1: for the Android phone, but Google Pixel buds might be
Speaker 1: another way to do it because Google Pixel our Google
Speaker 1: Translate is really good. The Google Pixel buds are nice.
Speaker 1: They are one hundred and seventy nine dollars and so
Speaker 1: that is another way. Right now, they're fifty dollars off
Speaker 1: typically they're two twenty nine, so that could be another
Speaker 1: way to do it. They have an A series, so
Speaker 1: they're like cheaper, they're eighty dollars. But I'm not sure
Speaker 1: they have the translation feature built in, so I would
Speaker 1: check to see if that's a if that's in there,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at their website right now, I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: see the translate. Oh you know what it does look
Speaker 1: like hold on real time translation, So they may they
Speaker 1: may not have the full feature translation on the A buds,
Speaker 1: but anyway, pixel buds are another way. But I think
Speaker 1: time Kettle is kind of like the main brand out
Speaker 1: there that's that's doing really well, that gets good reviews.
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of these things advertised, but
Speaker 1: I'd be very cautious. And the reason is what a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff comes down to is the software
Speaker 1: and the technology. So if the translation technology is not
Speaker 1: very good or the software is not very good, it's
Speaker 1: not going to be a good experience, and that means
Speaker 1: you're going to use them for about two minutes on
Speaker 1: your initial you know, you step off the plane or
Speaker 1: off the cruise ship, whatever however you're getting there and
Speaker 1: you try it and you're like, oh, this is not
Speaker 1: this doesn't work, and you're going to be frustrated and
Speaker 1: then hopefully there's a good return policy. And on an
Speaker 1: item that's advertised on social media, sometimes there is not
Speaker 1: a good return policy. So no matter what, I get
Speaker 1: so many emails every week from folks that send me
Speaker 1: a screen shot or a link they see to something.
Speaker 1: These advertisements you see on social media, the products that
Speaker 1: we see seem too good to be true, and a
Speaker 1: lot of times they are. So just be careful. And
Speaker 1: if you're going to these websites that you've never heard
Speaker 1: of and buying a product. Number one, if the website
Speaker 1: is like, hey, you've got one minute to shop or
Speaker 1: time count down, this discount is ending in thirty you know,
Speaker 1: thirty minutes, or you know you got to buy this now,
Speaker 1: like beware because a lot of you know, those high
Speaker 1: pressure sales tactics often mean that they're just trying to
Speaker 1: get that sale before you kind of investigate or look
Speaker 1: for reviews or what I always do. Check the return policy,
Speaker 1: check the contact info. If you can't really find a
Speaker 1: good amount of info, there probably not a place that
Speaker 1: you want to shop, So just be careful with that stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's see here I said that TikTok is getting one
Speaker 1: more I don't know. I guess it's another deadline extension.
Speaker 1: So TikTok Us divestiture deadline has been pushed now another
Speaker 1: seventy five days. This is like the saga that keeps
Speaker 1: on going. Now it's mid June. So they had faced
Speaker 1: a deadline of April fifth under this whole national security presumption,
Speaker 1: but now it is extended one more time. So you
Speaker 1: might remember that TikTok was briefly removed from the app
Speaker 1: stores both Google Play and also the Apple App Store,
Speaker 1: but they returned after an executive order. And now a
Speaker 1: bunch of companies are coming forward saying, yeah, we want
Speaker 1: to buy this, but nobody's really doing it, so we
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on here. Just China not want
Speaker 1: to sell it. Do these companies really not want to
Speaker 1: buy it is this all just kind of like stirring
Speaker 1: the pot. We don't know, but Oracle, Amazon, app, Lovin,
Speaker 1: and some investor groups have all shown interest. But of
Speaker 1: course China's government must still approve any deal before it
Speaker 1: can go through. And we don't even know if they
Speaker 1: really want to sell it. I mean, I know they
Speaker 1: don't want to, and we're not even sure if they're
Speaker 1: willing to, So this is wild. The possibility of banning
Speaker 1: TikTok was first publicly mentioned back in July twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: I remember rushing out to do a story with a
Speaker 1: TikToker to be like, what are you gonna do? And
Speaker 1: this goes away, and five years later, here I am
Speaker 1: still talking about it, still wasting my breath talking about
Speaker 1: TikTok being banned. Eighty to eight rich one oh one
Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Tomuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one
Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
Speaker 1: one zero one. You can follow me on social media.
Speaker 1: I am at rich on Tech. You can sign up
Speaker 1: for my free newsletter on the website rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv just hit sign up. It is free. Get
Speaker 1: it every week. It's kind of like this show. Like
Speaker 1: I said this week of my newsletter, the newsletter is
Speaker 1: the show is kind of like the newsletter. The newsletter
Speaker 1: is kind of like the show. So if you like
Speaker 1: the show, you'll probably like the newsletter. If you like
Speaker 1: the newsletter, you'll probably like this show. I talked this
Speaker 1: week in my newsletter about removing some of your personal
Speaker 1: information from the Internet. So if you've ever searched for yourself,
Speaker 1: you probably have seen your name, your address, your phone number,
Speaker 1: and all kinds of stuff online. This could be used,
Speaker 1: you know, for nefarious reasons, everything from stalkers to identity theft.
Speaker 1: So the more info out there probably the worse it is.
Speaker 1: You know, it depends on your level of eh. I mean,
Speaker 1: back in the day, we had the white Pages, remember
Speaker 1: that where you can look up anyone. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it was a turning point and back to the future.
Speaker 1: It's like that whole movie wouldn't happen if he didn't
Speaker 1: have the White Pages there to look up where Doc
Speaker 1: Brown was. Anyway, I digress. These days, you know, we
Speaker 1: probably don't want this stuff online. So if your info
Speaker 1: shows up in Google Search. There is a way to
Speaker 1: get rid of that. You can tap the three dots
Speaker 1: next to a search result that includes your info and
Speaker 1: you'll see an option that says remove result. You can
Speaker 1: fill out the form and they usually remove that within
Speaker 1: a couple of days, sometimes quicker and then. Google has
Speaker 1: this free tool called Results about You, which you can
Speaker 1: sign up for. It is free. It will monitor any
Speaker 1: new search results that include your personal contact info and
Speaker 1: they will email you every time you get every time
Speaker 1: they find something on the Internet that involves you, and
Speaker 1: you can say, yeah, I want to remove that. They're
Speaker 1: not going to prove it all the time, but at
Speaker 1: least it's a way to kind of automate that process. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, removing a link from Google Search does
Speaker 1: not delete the source, so that just takes it out
Speaker 1: of Google Search, which is where ninety nine point nine
Speaker 1: percent of people are going to find it. If you
Speaker 1: want to remove the website, you have to contact them
Speaker 1: to remove that page completely. You can do an opt out. Now,
Speaker 1: there are paid services like Incogni and Privacy b lots
Speaker 1: of them out there. They all promise to automate the removals,
Speaker 1: but these can be pricey. They can cost twenty dollars
Speaker 1: a month or more, and consumer reports found that not
Speaker 1: a lot of these services did a very good job.
Speaker 1: Two that did well were easy opt Outs and Optry,
Speaker 1: and they charge not very much twenty to forty dollars
Speaker 1: per year. But keep in mind you probably want to
Speaker 1: do this like over and over.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 1: I think doing yourself is probably the most cost effective.
Speaker 1: So easy way to do this just start with the
Speaker 1: Google results for yourself, Like just start with the top results, right,
Speaker 1: and you can just submit opt out requests for each
Speaker 1: of those websites. And if you want to know how
Speaker 1: to do that, you can literally most of the time,
Speaker 1: you can just google the name of the website, like
Speaker 1: if it's white Pages, just say like white Pages opt out,
Speaker 1: and they kind of put you through this little process
Speaker 1: get everything out of there. But it does work most
Speaker 1: of the time. But if you want a directory, the
Speaker 1: website delete me dot com has a DIY guide for
Speaker 1: like almost every website you can think of, So you
Speaker 1: go there, you tap there and it'll tell you the
Speaker 1: step by step instructions on how to get rid of
Speaker 1: your data. So that's delete me dot com. And then
Speaker 1: in the future you might want to consider giving out
Speaker 1: your information less right. You know, all these websites I
Speaker 1: call it the data grab. They're going to ask for
Speaker 1: as much as humanly possible. Like the other day, I
Speaker 1: was signing up for something. I was like, really you
Speaker 1: need this?
Speaker 9: You need that? Do you really need this?
Speaker 1: And so sometimes if there's not an asterisk next to
Speaker 1: the field that you're filling out, don't fill it out.
Speaker 1: Don't give them the extra information. If I'm giving out
Speaker 1: my data birth, a lot of times I'll just make
Speaker 1: something up. If it's a random website that doesn't need
Speaker 1: my data birth, why give them that information. The reason
Speaker 1: why they're asking for that is because then they go
Speaker 1: into other databases and kind of form this complete data
Speaker 1: profile of you by collecting information from a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of places. So secondary email, secondary phone number, cloaked email
Speaker 1: might work to avoid getting more of this information. I've
Speaker 1: got this all on the website rich on tech dot TV,
Speaker 1: and coming up later this hour, we're actually going to
Speaker 1: talk to the co founder of the website cloaked that
Speaker 1: helps you come up with like new identities basically to
Speaker 1: use online to protect your privacy. Let's go to uh
Speaker 1: Loudy in Long Beach Ludy you're on with.
Speaker 10: Rich Yeah LBC.
Speaker 11: Long time listening to the show, first time listening to you.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 10: I want to give my shout out to Leo La
Speaker 10: pol It give me informed.
Speaker 11: But now you're in man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's only been two and a half years,
Speaker 1: but you know, I know it's all good. What's up,
Speaker 1: Loudy you have?
Speaker 12: But finally I have a question. Yes, hey, so listen man,
Speaker 12: I have iPhones, right, and I have a fat mini
Speaker 12: plan of a two terabyte and it says that it's full.
Speaker 10: So I'm looking at it and for myself. Right, it
Speaker 10: says that I am using my drive.
Speaker 11: I think it's called it.
Speaker 8: Drive iCloud drive.
Speaker 1: Yep, okay, it isn't.
Speaker 8: I'm using two hundred and fifty three gigabytes.
Speaker 11: However, I don't have anything in it. When I go
Speaker 11: and review files, there's four files that are like one megabyte.
Speaker 1: Hmm, okay, So I don't know.
Speaker 10: Is it is iCloud drive the same as the iCloud.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily so iCloud drive is part of iCloud. So
Speaker 1: you're saying how much data do you have? How much
Speaker 1: storage do you have on iCloud? You said two terabytes.
Speaker 10: Two terabytes and shared with families.
Speaker 1: Ah okay, so there that that's probably what's happening here.
Speaker 1: So my kids are little our little storage goblins, and
Speaker 1: so what they like to do is have these giant
Speaker 1: files that take up a ton of storage. So what
Speaker 1: you have to do is you have to look. Now,
Speaker 1: are you looking on your phone or your computer for
Speaker 1: this information?
Speaker 9: I'm looking on my phone right now.
Speaker 10: I'm actually on my iplone okay. And then when I
Speaker 10: look at dry for myself, not the family, it says
Speaker 10: that I am using two hundred and fifty three gigabytes. Okay,
Speaker 10: but I don't know where that's coming from because I
Speaker 10: review the files and four.
Speaker 1: Files well, when you look at okay, so when you
Speaker 1: tap there is a section. Now they just redesign this. Actually,
Speaker 1: Apple made this a little bit easier because, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like iCloud has you know, the storage has
Speaker 1: always been sort of a black hole right where you
Speaker 1: have no idea what's what's in there, what's taking up
Speaker 1: the storage? They have work to make this just a
Speaker 1: little bit easier. But there's two things. Number One, Ludie,
Speaker 1: I would I would look at your backups that could
Speaker 1: be taking up a lot of the storage. A lot
Speaker 1: of times people forget to get rid of their old
Speaker 1: backups of their phone. So that's number one, and so
Speaker 1: I would look into those. And you can look under
Speaker 1: your iCloud backups. Like for me, I've got one, two, three, four,
Speaker 1: five devices that I have backed up, and two of
Speaker 1: them are it looks like a duplicate my iPad. I
Speaker 1: have the old one and the new one. So that's
Speaker 1: number one. Look at your backups. Now, if you're just
Speaker 1: looking at drive iCloud drive, it says manage storage and
Speaker 1: you tap that and that should tell you where it's
Speaker 1: using up the storage, and it says documents and data
Speaker 1: iPhone storage, So those are the places that you need
Speaker 1: to look to see what is taking up. Mine says
Speaker 1: you have seven hundred and fifty seven gigabytes of files
Speaker 1: stored in iCloud, which I don't even know how I
Speaker 1: have that much, but the thing, like.
Speaker 11: I know, I go to manage storage on the iCloud drive. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 11: it's telling me that I have two hundred gig a
Speaker 11: bye files securely story nightcloud.
Speaker 1: Oh good, I'm glad they're secure. We can't even find them,
Speaker 1: they're so secure.
Speaker 12: Yeah, but I don't know what file of those are.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm Okay. Now, do you get a section
Speaker 1: underneath where it says show large files, because mine sets
Speaker 1: review large files and if I tap that, it'll show
Speaker 1: me my largest files in here, so it.
Speaker 11: Tells me review files.
Speaker 9: Do you have that?
Speaker 10: Yeah, review file?
Speaker 1: Okay, Now when you tap that, is there is there
Speaker 1: some big files shown there?
Speaker 10: No, there's there's there's four of them.
Speaker 11: Man, they're all the thing is one is.
Speaker 10: Three megabytes?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Well that's a problem. Uh interesting, Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: there's probably some phantom thing taking up your iCloud. I
Speaker 1: wonder if there's like a trash you can empty or
Speaker 1: something like that. Do you have a Mac computer or no?
Speaker 11: Yeah, I got a Mac computer.
Speaker 1: So I would go on your Mac computer and see
Speaker 1: if you can go into your iCloud drive from there
Speaker 1: and see what's taken up the storage there if it
Speaker 1: shows you something different, So that's what I would do.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a mystery to me. That's because
Speaker 1: I feel like you should be able to see between
Speaker 1: your phone and your and your actual iCloud drive what's
Speaker 1: taking it up, because that would make the most sense.
Speaker 1: The only other thing I can think of, is there
Speaker 1: are some of these directories that files make, like I
Speaker 1: can see I've got one from pages, I've gotten from numbers, keynote, shortcuts,
Speaker 1: text edit. There might be something in there that's taking
Speaker 1: up a lot of space. But this sounds like sort
Speaker 1: of a mystery, because if you're running up against your
Speaker 1: two terabytes because of this, you know that's a problem.
Speaker 1: You need to be able to clear this stuff out.
Speaker 1: So if you can't figure this out, I would take
Speaker 1: it to the Apple Store and see what they say
Speaker 1: and just say, hey, look, you know this is telling
Speaker 1: me I'm up against my cloud storage. I don't understand
Speaker 1: what's taking up all the storage When I'm going into
Speaker 1: my iCloud drive and there's nothing in there, I mean mine,
Speaker 1: I see seven hundred and fifty eight gigs, but I
Speaker 1: can see what's taking up that info or taking up
Speaker 1: that storage. And then there's also app syncing to iCloud drive,
Speaker 1: which I have three of them, Books, Obsidian, and WhatsApp,
Speaker 1: So those could be a problem. But the couple places
Speaker 1: you know iCloud storage is is really tricky, I think,
Speaker 1: and it still is. It's not as straightforward as it
Speaker 1: should be. But I would check check those iCloud backups
Speaker 1: for sure, Ludi and uh and if you can't figure
Speaker 1: out what's going on in this drive, then you kind
Speaker 1: you kind of have to bring into the Apple store
Speaker 1: and see what they say. Eighty eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: I made the joke the other day on TV that
Speaker 1: when I retire, I'm going to finally take the time
Speaker 1: to organize my photos, my cloud drive, and you know
Speaker 1: everything else that's taking up storage in the cloud because
Speaker 1: it's like a full time job. It's like nobody has
Speaker 1: the time to figure this stuff out. You still won't
Speaker 1: do it. I still won't do it, And then I
Speaker 1: said it, then I'll travel probably be too late by then.
Speaker 1: Eight to eight rich one on one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero. I guess I'm saying,
Speaker 1: don't feel so bad if your cloud storage is a mess,
Speaker 1: because everyone's is. Welcome back to rich on Tech eighty
Speaker 1: eight rich one o one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. The website rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot TV. Kyle writes in and says, hey, rich,
Speaker 1: is there a way for an iPhone to automatically respond
Speaker 1: to all incoming text messages with a custom message twenty
Speaker 1: four hours a day. I've looked around and only found
Speaker 1: options for things like driving mode or customer applies to
Speaker 1: certain contacts, but nothing universal. Kyle, Kyle, You're right. There
Speaker 1: is no way to auto reply to all texts at
Speaker 1: all times, as far as I know. The closest hack
Speaker 1: I've found is to turn on the driving mode. And
Speaker 1: when you have that on, let's see what's it actually called.
Speaker 1: Hold on? It's called yeah, driving, So driving can auto respond,
Speaker 1: but only I think to your contacts, your favorites, or
Speaker 1: a combination of folks. It's not everyone. So this is
Speaker 1: a sort of an Apple thing. It's part of their
Speaker 1: operating system. I'm not sure why they don't allow that,
Speaker 1: but they did add text message scheduling recently, so that's
Speaker 1: a good good sign. But yeah, it would be nice
Speaker 1: because sometimes when I'm using like a different phone, like
Speaker 1: a test phone, I want to like text everyone, say hey,
Speaker 1: if this is important, you know, call me here or whatever.
Speaker 1: And the only way I can do it is with contacts,
Speaker 1: which I guess is fine. You know, maybe maybe it's
Speaker 1: the security things they don't want you like texting. You know,
Speaker 1: if some spammer gets a hold of your number and
Speaker 1: then they get a spam you know, they get a
Speaker 1: reply that says, hey, I'm currently on the beach in Miami,
Speaker 1: like call me here, I'm staying at this place whatever,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So sorry, Kyle, doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: work right now. You might have seen the headlines that
Speaker 1: things are changing over at Zel. They are shutting down
Speaker 1: their standalone app. Oh my gosh, nobody uses the standalone
Speaker 1: Zel app. Okay, let's be honest. So all those headlines
Speaker 1: were there to get you to click and read and go,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's already the way I'm using it. So
Speaker 1: starting now, I guess Zell will no longer support sending
Speaker 1: or receiving money through the app if you were using
Speaker 1: the app, if you are using your bank, your bank
Speaker 1: account app, it's all good. You're all fine, So no
Speaker 1: action necessary. Over twenty two hundred banks and credit unions
Speaker 1: support Zell directly. I guess they thought they were going
Speaker 1: to have an app that was a competitor to like
Speaker 1: the paypals of the world and the cash apps and
Speaker 1: the venmos. But then they realized that people were just
Speaker 1: using this through their bank and that was the easiest way,
Speaker 1: So just two percent of transactions were happening through the
Speaker 1: standalone app. So you can view your old payment history
Speaker 1: in the app until August eleventh, so if you need
Speaker 1: anything in there, be sure to download it. But going forward,
Speaker 1: the app will still be there. It's just going to
Speaker 1: focus on fraud education and how to get it through
Speaker 1: your bank. So once again, if you're using Zel through
Speaker 1: your bank, you don't need to change a thing. And
Speaker 1: people like Zel because it's immediate, and it's free and
Speaker 1: it's through your bank. And this is really an example
Speaker 1: of the big banks coming together to kind of band
Speaker 1: against Venmo and all these other payment services. Now, I
Speaker 1: think Zell is great when it works. It is a
Speaker 1: little scarier than these other apps because there's really no recourse,
Speaker 1: like the money's hopping from your account directly to someone
Speaker 1: else's account. So I've noticed there's a lot of security
Speaker 1: precautions when you're sending money through Zell. But when it
Speaker 1: works and you've got a trusted person on the other end,
Speaker 1: it's it's great because it's free. So just just beware
Speaker 1: the you know, the the implications of sending money like
Speaker 1: it's it's like a freeway from your bank account to theirs,
Speaker 1: so be just be aware of that. All right, let's
Speaker 1: go to let's see here, let's go to Rob in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. Rob, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 8: Hi.
Speaker 13: How are you doing.
Speaker 1: I'm doing fantastic.
Speaker 12: My question is.
Speaker 8: I have Outlook hot Mail, and I'm people on getting
Speaker 8: locked out because there's too many attempts. So it's you know,
Speaker 8: my Microsoft account is linked through it, and I know
Speaker 8: that I look on my y up for my account
Speaker 8: and it shows like one hundred attempts a day for
Speaker 8: my Microsoft account.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a common This is clearly a common
Speaker 1: thing that's happening, because it happened to me. I mentioned
Speaker 1: it my newsletter. I got a bunch of emails about it.
Speaker 1: Clearly there's a bunch of people trying to log into
Speaker 1: Microsoft accounts all day long. So are they actually getting
Speaker 1: into your account?
Speaker 8: Well I'm not sure, but I think so.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Okay, well you know.
Speaker 8: About the twenty four hours lockout.
Speaker 1: Okay, here here's what I recommend, rob.
Speaker 13: Getting more and.
Speaker 8: More recent as far as like, because I guess I'm
Speaker 8: getting more attempts, so it's getting kind of aggregating that
Speaker 8: I gotta wait, like twenty four hours because the idiots
Speaker 8: are trying to log into my account and it's not.
Speaker 1: Me, right, So I hear you, Okay, Well here here's
Speaker 1: what I recommend to fix this. Okay, So number one,
Speaker 1: I has three things to do. Number one, you've got
Speaker 1: to change your password. So that's number one. Change your password.
Speaker 1: Make sure it's something that is strong, unique at least
Speaker 1: fourteen characters. Use a password generator. You got to turn
Speaker 1: on two factor authentication. Turn on two factor authentication. Use
Speaker 1: an app if you can. The email thing is with
Speaker 1: the code is okay. With the app is much better.
Speaker 1: And then I want you to sign out everywhere so
Speaker 1: you can go to Microsoft. I will put the link
Speaker 1: on the website rich on tech dot tv. But basically,
Speaker 1: once you sign into your micro Soft account, you got
Speaker 1: to sign into your Advanced Security options on your Microsoft
Speaker 1: Account Security dashboard and then you scroll down and it
Speaker 1: says sign out everywhere. Once you sign out everywhere, sign
Speaker 1: in on just the one place where you want to
Speaker 1: access this account with your new password, and hopefully that
Speaker 1: should help this. But you know, all those loggin attempts,
Speaker 1: this same exact thing happened to my account, and it
Speaker 1: was really annoying. When I found that, and I did
Speaker 1: go in and change my password, so you can check
Speaker 1: for that as well. Let's say I'm trying to find
Speaker 1: the link I gave out. It's on my newsletter from
Speaker 1: last week eight and eight rich one on one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Coming up, we'll talk about protecting your personal information online.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on tech rich DeMuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one
Speaker 1: O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. Thanks for joining me on the show.
Speaker 1: Appreciate you being here. We've got a lot of good
Speaker 1: information coming your way. Rich on tech dot tv is
Speaker 1: the website if you want links to anything I talk about. Uh,
Speaker 1: this should be an eye opening conversation. Cloak to co
Speaker 1: founder and CEO Arjun Botnager is here to join me.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being here, of course, thanks for having me Rich.
Speaker 1: So I called this number, what is it? Tell me
Speaker 1: what the number is? Eight five five?
Speaker 9: Yeah, eight five five seven five two five six two.
Speaker 1: Five Okay, So I call that and that's like it
Speaker 1: translates into seven seven five cloak or something.
Speaker 9: Yeah, say eight five five seven five cloak.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, as soon as you call that number, you'll
Speaker 1: be surprised because agreed to by name, and then it
Speaker 1: proceeds to tell you your social Security number, your address,
Speaker 1: and all kinds of personal information. You go, wait a second,
Speaker 1: what is happening here? And it's all kind of an
Speaker 1: example of just how much information is floating around on
Speaker 1: the internet about you.
Speaker 9: Right, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 14: There's so much information that we willingly give out and
Speaker 14: what companies and corporations and even governments use to tie.
Speaker 9: Back to you on around everything.
Speaker 1: So I always tell people like, okay, let's say you
Speaker 1: go to the grocery store. You give them your phone number.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, no, big deal, that's just my phone number.
Speaker 1: They go in and use that phone number to find
Speaker 1: every other piece of data about you.
Speaker 7: Is that right?
Speaker 9: So exactly right.
Speaker 14: The grocery store might be doing that. But really it's
Speaker 14: not always everyone's the bad guy. We always find that
Speaker 14: it might be benign or good that a company's using
Speaker 14: your information, it might be malicious. The problem is that
Speaker 14: even if someone's good, if they're hacked, compromised, or.
Speaker 9: Breached, the problem ends up being the same. So it's
Speaker 9: exactly right.
Speaker 14: The phone number, or any piece of data, whether it's
Speaker 14: for good or bad, gets aggregated, collected, and eventually it
Speaker 14: is either to target you, compromise.
Speaker 1: You, or watch you. So you run a website called Cloaked.
Speaker 1: Explain what that does. What's your idea to fight all this?
Speaker 14: Yeah, so, for the longest time, we've always believed, from
Speaker 14: the government to corporations to what we're trained is that
Speaker 14: let companies keep your information safe. And we all know
Speaker 14: that's a funny concept because there's a breach every single
Speaker 14: day that impact millions, if not a billion, people worldwide
Speaker 14: when their data is exposed. So what we really indexed
Speaker 14: on is how can we as individuals be in control
Speaker 14: of our own data.
Speaker 9: So that's what we do at cloat.
Speaker 14: We give you the power to actually think about how
Speaker 14: is my identity being out there?
Speaker 9: What's exposed? And we help you by cleaning up your
Speaker 9: past and protecting your future.
Speaker 14: And that's through cleaning your data footprint, actually deleting data,
Speaker 14: removing it and then masking your email, phone number, passwords,
Speaker 14: soon even credit card and address with new information that
Speaker 14: doesn't tie back to you.
Speaker 1: So this is the concept of data poisoning. Explain that.
Speaker 14: Yeah, so data poisoning is a fairly new concept. People
Speaker 14: have talked about it for a while. But your single
Speaker 14: data point, for example, why when you call that phone
Speaker 14: number it works is because you give up that piece
Speaker 14: of data to both the irs and dominos. And because
Speaker 14: that one data point never really changes your whole life.
Speaker 14: You might have one to two phone numbers, maybe two
Speaker 14: to three email addresses, it's very easy to target you.
Speaker 14: So data poisoning is this idea that what if one
Speaker 14: data point is confusing, it doesn't.
Speaker 9: People can't figure out who is it or what is it?
Speaker 9: How do you tie back to it?
Speaker 14: So what with Cloak we try to introduce is that
Speaker 14: the phone numbers you generate, the emails, the passwords, credit cards,
Speaker 14: that information is distinct, unique per website or even per person.
Speaker 14: But we also think about, well, what if Rich and
Speaker 14: I each generate a Cloak phone number and it's actually
Speaker 14: the same number. You might use it for best Buy,
Speaker 14: I might use it for Target. But when it's stolen, compromised,
Speaker 14: or even packaged and sold, it's impossible to tell whether
Speaker 14: that's our general Rich, and that's the technology you've developed
Speaker 14: to make it very hard to figure out who's who.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's interesting and what about I mean, we know
Speaker 1: AI is coming on board and people are saying, look,
Speaker 1: AI is going to make it so much easier for
Speaker 1: people to target you and to put this information together.
Speaker 1: Is that happening.
Speaker 14: Yeah, So this is where AI enabled threats have grown
Speaker 14: over three hundred percent in the last year alone, and
Speaker 14: so it's getting worse and worse.
Speaker 9: And you might see this if you.
Speaker 14: Look at a phishing text that says, and this is
Speaker 14: a growing one, Hey, we know you shop at this
Speaker 14: local Starbucks, we know where you live, or I know
Speaker 14: some stuff about where you walk every day. Now those
Speaker 14: aren't actually necessarily humans typing all these messages out. We
Speaker 14: leverage technology or even AI to combine a lot of
Speaker 14: this data, use AI to kind of figure out the
Speaker 14: pattern where your location is, and craft messages and these
Speaker 14: are all what scammers or fishers or hackers try to do.
Speaker 14: Craft messages automatically using AI that make it feel very
Speaker 14: per And that's the biggest risk vector going forward is
Speaker 14: that people's systems they're getting more secure, But the biggest
Speaker 14: vulnerability are people. And it's whether it's employees and businesses
Speaker 14: or us as customers. The way we act and enabled
Speaker 14: and leverage technology.
Speaker 1: I always say that the scammers sort of take something
Speaker 1: that we know, like we've all gotten that text from
Speaker 1: our bank that says, hey, did you just make a
Speaker 1: purchase here? And you know press one or a reply
Speaker 1: one if you did, or why or and and you know,
Speaker 1: they take that and they kind of spin it and
Speaker 1: they send us that and you're like, wait, is this
Speaker 1: for my bank or not? And the next thing you know,
Speaker 1: you're getting scammed.
Speaker 9: That's exactly right.
Speaker 14: And that's where the threats and the vectors are trying
Speaker 14: to make it so that you believe it's true, and
Speaker 14: the moment you believe it's true, it's all over. I
Speaker 14: think I've actually given this an example. I think you've
Speaker 14: already talked about it. There's this website Have I Been Boned?
Speaker 14: And the author that just recently got compromised because of
Speaker 14: a very specific trusting look a message.
Speaker 9: That they ended up clicking and following through and logging in.
Speaker 15: Now.
Speaker 1: I love Troy, he was on this show, but I mean, ah,
Speaker 1: and I get it, this can happen to anyone, but
Speaker 1: like I really I'm surprised that that happened to him.
Speaker 1: I mean, I always said he was tired from you know,
Speaker 1: jet Lag and all this stuff. But like, I can't
Speaker 1: believe that he his password manager didn't fill in the
Speaker 1: site and then he proceeded to fill it in manually
Speaker 1: and then put the one time code in. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh my.
Speaker 14: Gosh, it's I can't understand how it happens and happens
Speaker 14: to the best of us. But this is the point
Speaker 14: that Troy kind of revealed, was that things there were
Speaker 14: flags along the way. The pass manager didn't flag. The
Speaker 14: link is a little suspicious, but when you're tired, it happens.
Speaker 14: I think this is where kind of the hygiene and
Speaker 14: how we operate for me e, in our own staff,
Speaker 14: we just don't click links in emails et cetera. Like
Speaker 14: there's a little bit of homework, et cetera, and the
Speaker 14: way we operate before we click anything. Even if the
Speaker 14: link says, hey, there's something wrong, well, we open a
Speaker 14: new tab and go to it ourselves. Yeah, there's no
Speaker 14: reason to click the link in the email. You can
Speaker 14: always go to the website directly and figure out the alert.
Speaker 1: So what is your advice for consumers? I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: you'd love if everyone's signed up for your website and
Speaker 1: use your services beyond that? What do you think?
Speaker 8: I mean?
Speaker 1: You know, what's your advice for consumers? How do we
Speaker 1: deal with this?
Speaker 9: So I say it's a couple of different problems.
Speaker 14: Actually, on hand, I think there's the idea of our
Speaker 14: own personal safety scams, fishing, and also like being annoyed
Speaker 14: and frustrated with people turning bombarda. So I look at
Speaker 14: as a problem of safety, a problem of your own
Speaker 14: spam being annoyed.
Speaker 9: And a problem of personal privacy.
Speaker 14: And the way I look at is the first simplest
Speaker 14: thing I tell people start saying no. And what that
Speaker 14: means is that between apps that ask for all these
Speaker 14: permissions like I never give my contact permissions, don't give
Speaker 14: up every contact you own, don't give up location permissions
Speaker 14: because you don't have to. And this is where that
Speaker 14: mindset of we're trained to keep saying yes start hitting
Speaker 14: to and you'd be surprised. Similarly, at restaurants and Sapphora whichever,
Speaker 14: they hey, can you give me a phone number? You
Speaker 14: give me your email? I say no, I don't have
Speaker 14: to give the information, and they say, oh, no, big deal,
Speaker 14: no worries. But and you'll realize you don't have to
Speaker 14: give up. The culture of sharing is that first part,
Speaker 14: and then.
Speaker 1: Almost before you proceed to the next part. I was
Speaker 1: at a new place. This place just opened nearby. I went,
Speaker 1: I visited. It was a new store, and they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: let's get your email address for like, you know, promotions
Speaker 1: and this and that. And I actually felt bad like
Speaker 1: being like, no, I don't want to give that. And
Speaker 1: so I did give my email even though I didn't
Speaker 1: want to, and they proceeded to email me every single
Speaker 1: day after that. I was like ah, but because it
Speaker 1: was a human that was like standing there, it's like
Speaker 1: just this routine thing like okay, now give me your emails.
Speaker 1: You can get those great offer codes, and you know,
Speaker 1: I need to come up with a fake email or
Speaker 1: a you know, spam email for future things like that.
Speaker 9: Well that's kind of leading to so I didn't want
Speaker 9: to get gives a part. This is what Cloak does.
Speaker 14: Like we one of the big things that a lot
Speaker 14: of companies in our sector do is they say stop
Speaker 14: doing this or don't give any email address. I think
Speaker 14: the culture of saying no is the first step. But
Speaker 14: the part too is we want you to keep you
Speaker 14: want to get promotions and this is where for Cloak,
Speaker 14: what we thought about is we'll make a unique email
Speaker 14: for that local coffee shop. I personally bought something for
Speaker 14: my partner recently, and I get six emails a day,
Speaker 14: but all goes to a specific Cloak email you for
Speaker 14: that website, So I never look at it doesn't matter.
Speaker 14: But when I need to check on order confirmation CE,
Speaker 14: I can go right to that single email address and
Speaker 14: check it. And that's where we start to change the behavior.
Speaker 14: Where it's step one is stopping, but step two is
Speaker 14: changing the way you.
Speaker 1: Share Okay, interesting stuff. I mean I I yeah, I
Speaker 1: totally agree with the idea of coming up, Like I
Speaker 1: have a Google Voice number two, which I use sometimes,
Speaker 1: But then I feel bad when I give people that
Speaker 1: number because I'm like, well, they're you know I'm giving
Speaker 1: It's just it's this weird It's almost like this human
Speaker 1: thing where you feel almost like you're being deceitful by
Speaker 1: giving out something that protects you. And do you find
Speaker 1: that and do people react like that? Like I that's
Speaker 1: the way I feel, I think even.
Speaker 9: For me, since people know I do Cloak, et cetera.
Speaker 14: When I give out a phone number I haven't given
Speaker 14: my personal phone number since twenty twenty one when I
Speaker 14: started the company, and it's been it's been.
Speaker 9: A kind of interesting experience.
Speaker 14: People say, oh, how you giving me a Cloak number,
Speaker 14: and I think, but I think the idea is that
Speaker 14: at least what we're trying to enable is that it's
Speaker 14: not a throwaway or burner. When I give a Cloak
Speaker 14: number out, I can lock it to just you, so
Speaker 14: that number is just between us. So when I get
Speaker 14: the textra call, I know it's just you. It's not spoofed, spam,
Speaker 14: et cetera. So I try to position is like, this
Speaker 14: is meant to be more personal. When I'm giving a
Speaker 14: number out to the shake shack or a restaurant, I
Speaker 14: was like, well, I'm only hearing from that one entity.
Speaker 9: And yes, it takes a little bit of a cultural
Speaker 9: shift and change, but I.
Speaker 14: What I've realized is yes, when people might react and say,
Speaker 14: oh are you hiding, But the moment you do it
Speaker 14: once or twice, it doesn't feel so bad. And I
Speaker 14: think that's where we start to really push. You've become
Speaker 14: a bit more organized your emails, text calls, if you're
Speaker 14: buying a home, which is what we noticed a lot
Speaker 14: of users do or apartment hunting. There's a lot of
Speaker 14: noise happening, but once it's all over, you turn it
Speaker 14: off or delete it. Now it's gone, and I think
Speaker 14: the benefits out weigh kind of that initial feeling.
Speaker 1: Don't ever give your email address when you're shopping for
Speaker 1: a car. That is the worst. You will get those forever.
Speaker 1: And you know two years in, hey, you're still looking
Speaker 1: at that Honda. You're like, I bought a car two
Speaker 1: years ago. What's happening here? They're just going through those lists?
Speaker 1: All right. Cloaked dot com is the website. CEO our
Speaker 1: gunbot Naggert, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 14: Absolutely, and the last second say is do give that
Speaker 14: phone number a call? That eight five five seven five
Speaker 14: two five six two five. It's a big eye opener.
Speaker 1: Yes it is. I made my wife diala and we
Speaker 1: were like, my kids are like, what's happening right now?
Speaker 1: All right? Eighty eight our phone number or eight eight
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four to one zero one. I'll put the
Speaker 1: phone number for Cloaked on the website rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot TV. It is eye opening. You dial that number,
Speaker 1: Believe me, you will be like, wait, what, I didn't
Speaker 1: even know they had that, especially the social Security number.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Welcome back to rich on tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Speaker 1: triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Let's go to
Speaker 1: uh Francis in Irvinest, Florida. You're on with Richo.
Speaker 7: Hello, rich how are you?
Speaker 1: I am doing fantastic. How are you today?
Speaker 7: I'm not too bad other than my computer. I did
Speaker 7: tell me, Hey, I don't I didn't start correctly.
Speaker 1: Oh no, that sounds like me on a cold day.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's hard to put your feet on the floor
Speaker 7: when you're sleeping.
Speaker 8: There you go.
Speaker 1: So what's the problem.
Speaker 7: Well, I got this blue screen of death and it
Speaker 7: says automatically pair your PC did not start correctly. Press
Speaker 7: restart to research your PT which can sometimes fix the problem.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that's the operative word. Uh oh did this? Sometimes not?
Speaker 7: You can also press advanced options. I'll tell you something
Speaker 7: which nothing worked.
Speaker 1: Nothing's working?
Speaker 7: Yes, I'm just going The blue screen just stayed there?
Speaker 11: And so.
Speaker 1: Does does your computer make any sound?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 1: Okay? And have you did you change anything on your
Speaker 1: computer before this happened.
Speaker 7: No, well I did turned it off and then the
Speaker 7: next day I turned it on continue and that's what
Speaker 7: it came up.
Speaker 1: Oh man, are you is your computer backed up?
Speaker 7: Backed up? In which way?
Speaker 1: Like do you have a you know, your important files somewhere?
Speaker 7: Well, it wasn't really necessary. It's not I don't have
Speaker 7: much in my computer.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it's more it's more just getting the computer
Speaker 1: working again. Got it?
Speaker 16: Well?
Speaker 1: The I mean, there are a bunch of things you
Speaker 1: can try to do. It sounds like you tried to
Speaker 1: do them with the the advanced startup options and all
Speaker 1: the repair stuff. But I think have you tried to
Speaker 1: restart this into safe mode.
Speaker 7: State?
Speaker 1: Okay? So that's what I would try as the last
Speaker 1: resort is see if you can do safe mode on
Speaker 1: this computer? Is this what? What version of Windows?
Speaker 10: Is this?
Speaker 7: Windows?
Speaker 1: Okay? So Windows ten? H you gotta I gotta look
Speaker 1: up the way to do that. But there's there's basically
Speaker 1: a key that you can let's see Windows ten. Let's
Speaker 1: see boot into safe mode. So that's what you want
Speaker 1: to look into. And so if you can boot into
Speaker 1: safe mode, that will start your computer up without a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of things running. So maybe there's something that's
Speaker 1: like messing with your computer when it when it turns on,
Speaker 1: and that's what's causing this screen of death. Now, I
Speaker 1: think the problem it may be more than that, because
Speaker 1: if you're getting if you're not getting anything to happen
Speaker 1: on this computer, I don't know if it's like starting
Speaker 1: up and then giving you this screen, or if it's
Speaker 1: not starting up at all, which one do you think
Speaker 1: it is?
Speaker 7: Well, it starts up and then gives me the screen.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it seems like your computer's like going through
Speaker 1: some motions and then it's like now we can't yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So then safe mode may help because it may be
Speaker 1: something you know. It could be that one of your
Speaker 1: apps or one of your drivers or something got an
Speaker 1: update that just does not agree with this system. So
Speaker 1: that is that's kind of like the main thing that
Speaker 1: you know could be causing this, I hope. But it
Speaker 1: looks like you can press the F four key to
Speaker 1: start in safe mode when your computer starting up. I
Speaker 1: would check that on just look in your just look
Speaker 1: in and like Google to see for your specific system.
Speaker 1: I think that's it. But once you start in safe mode,
Speaker 1: that basically only starts up the most basic parts of Windows.
Speaker 1: So it's not going to run every driver, it's not
Speaker 1: going to run everything, all the apps, all the things
Speaker 1: that automatically turn on it log in, like, all those
Speaker 1: things are not going to start. So it's just the
Speaker 1: base of the operating system. So that if that works,
Speaker 1: if the operating system comes up, that may fix it
Speaker 1: in itself, Like it may start up and like repair
Speaker 1: whatever it needs to do, and then you can restart
Speaker 1: into regular mode. But if it doesn't, you know, if
Speaker 1: it doesn't even come up even with the safe mode,
Speaker 1: then you have a bigger problem. And then if that's
Speaker 1: if that's the problem, then I would probably look into
Speaker 1: just kind of if you said, your your files and
Speaker 1: things are good, you don't have a you know, you
Speaker 1: don't need to back up whatever. You can just kind
Speaker 1: of start this computer. I hate to say this, but
Speaker 1: just kind of start it fresh, like reset the PC
Speaker 1: and that'll reinstall Windows completely and then it'll start up
Speaker 1: because obviously then it's a fresh computer at that point.
Speaker 1: But that is a frustrating thing to happen. It's tough
Speaker 1: to tell exactly what's going on without seeing it. So
Speaker 1: if you want to spend money and bring it to
Speaker 1: a professional. That may help as a last resort if
Speaker 1: you don't want to do this yourself. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't care, if you're you know, if you
Speaker 1: can just get this thing and you know, reinstall Windows yourself,
Speaker 1: that will be the cheapest option. And then you start fresh.
Speaker 1: And the nice thing about that is, you know all
Speaker 1: the stuff that you had on there, all the things
Speaker 1: you collected, you know, a little fragments of programs and stuff.
Speaker 1: You will notice that your computer will feel new again.
Speaker 1: So I guess that's the looking on the bright side
Speaker 1: of your computer completely crashing and not working anymore. But again,
Speaker 1: try the safe mode and then if that doesn't work,
Speaker 1: you may want to bring it to professional see if
Speaker 1: they can figure out what's going on, and if they can't,
Speaker 1: or if you just want to reset your computer completely,
Speaker 1: that will be the cheapest option. But the you will
Speaker 1: have to reinstall everything again, all your programs, all your apps,
Speaker 1: your browser, just everything will have to be put back
Speaker 1: on that computer because it will be like new. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the call, appreciate it. Francis eight eight eight rich
Speaker 1: one o one eight eight eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one I'll tell you about a smart watch.
Speaker 1: I like, that's just eighty dollars coming up. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology. Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Phone
Speaker 1: lines are loaded, So I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: Can people not? You just got a busy signal? Oh
Speaker 1: well you can try calling if someone drops off. I
Speaker 1: see on the lines, I hear you. I feel for you.
Speaker 1: I know some of you have been waiting for a while,
Speaker 1: but we will get to as many of you as
Speaker 1: we can. But you know, this show is a balance
Speaker 1: of things, right, Like I try to get through some
Speaker 1: of the information that I need. You know, I always
Speaker 1: say this is the tech news I think you should
Speaker 1: know about, So I always try to get that plus
Speaker 1: your questions, your emails, your tweets. I mean, there's so
Speaker 1: much going on, Jas writes in on Twitter. Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: I've got one terabyte on one drive. In March, I
Speaker 1: spent about an hour each day cleaning it up. I
Speaker 1: got from six hundred gigs down to four hundred. Every
Speaker 1: three months, I transfer my camera uploads from dropbox to
Speaker 1: one drive. Now I will delete pictures I don't want
Speaker 1: before transferring. Talking about cleaning up cloud storage, Yeah, no
Speaker 1: easy feat. These companies love just keeping us on there.
Speaker 1: Chat GBT plus is now free for students. If you're
Speaker 1: a college student, you can get access to Chat GPT
Speaker 1: plus just in time to write those final papers. I
Speaker 1: mean interesting timing on this one. Chat GBT. Chat GBT
Speaker 1: plus free for all college students in the US and
Speaker 1: Canada through the end of May. That includes their latest
Speaker 1: model for writing and image generation Voice Mode Deep Research,
Speaker 1: which can help with those papers and much much more.
Speaker 8: So.
Speaker 1: It's all on the website usually about twenty dollars a month,
Speaker 1: so basically forty dollars value here. And you know it'll
Speaker 1: probably make you more efficient during the finals season. So
Speaker 1: I'll put the link rich on tech dot tv to
Speaker 1: access that. And then this little smart watch I've been
Speaker 1: testing from a company called a maze Fit. It's called
Speaker 1: the BIP six and it's just eighty dollars and I
Speaker 1: got to say, very very impressed. So this kind of
Speaker 1: looks like an Apple watch and it does all the
Speaker 1: things you need. It's got a nice display, it's really bright.
Speaker 1: You can read it in almost any lighting. Except I
Speaker 1: noticed with my polarized sunglasses on, which kind of bugs
Speaker 1: me because that's what I wear all the time. Tracks
Speaker 1: your heart rate, your sleep, blood oxygen, stress, heart rate variability,
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty workout modes. Let's see. It even
Speaker 1: tracks twenty five workouts automatically, you know, like if you
Speaker 1: start a run or something. It's got maps on it.
Speaker 1: Two week battery life. Battery life on this thing is
Speaker 1: a champ good water resistance. It's got AI built in
Speaker 1: so you can ask it questions and things like that.
Speaker 1: No subscription, and I even love the food tracking on
Speaker 1: the app. It's called ZEP. You can take a picture
Speaker 1: of your food and it basically gives you all the
Speaker 1: macros and whatever you're trying to track. Or you can
Speaker 1: just type in what you ate and'll it'll parse it
Speaker 1: all out. It's really really cool. So anyway, very impressive.
Speaker 1: This is not an iPhone, This is not an Apple watch,
Speaker 1: it's not an Android watch. It doesn't run like any
Speaker 1: of the standard operating system. This is their own operating system,
Speaker 1: so you don't have access to third party apps, but
Speaker 1: pretty much everything you need is built in. So if
Speaker 1: you are just looking for a basic smart watch that
Speaker 1: does all the little things you need at a really
Speaker 1: good price eighty dollars. I would check this out a
Speaker 1: maze fit bipsix. The only thing is, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: listen to music on this, there's no cellular you would
Speaker 1: have to transfer MP three's manually through the app, which
Speaker 1: you can do. But there again, there's no third party apps.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna find like Spotify, iHeartRadio, know, all those
Speaker 1: things you're not gonna be on here. You gotta you know,
Speaker 1: bring your own music. I guess. Anyway, it's available now Amazon.
Speaker 1: I'll have my video review on KTLA channel five and
Speaker 1: my website rich on Tech on Monday. Uh, let's go
Speaker 1: to let's see here. We've got my special guest here,
Speaker 1: Parker Parker saw the Minecraft movie. This is my son,
Speaker 1: Parker Parker. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 13: Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Dad, Hey tell me about you're a big Minecraft fan.
Speaker 1: So what did you think of the movie?
Speaker 13: I thought the movie was pretty good. I actually liked it.
Speaker 13: I thought the you know, the actors were very well
Speaker 13: picked played, the scenes were well made. It was actually uh,
Speaker 13: you know, there were some it was like kind of
Speaker 13: like funny. That's what I really liked about it.
Speaker 1: So it's a comedy. So you got Jason Momoa.
Speaker 13: It was a comedy for sure.
Speaker 1: Jack Black, Emma Myers, Jennifer Coolidge, who you probably remember
Speaker 1: as the character in American Pie from back in the day.
Speaker 1: This is getting a forty eight percent of Rotten Tomatoes,
Speaker 1: So some people are liking it, some people are not
Speaker 1: liking it.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I don't agree with the forty eight percent ron tomatoes.
Speaker 13: I think a lot of the people that like, you know,
Speaker 13: the people that rate that, I don't think they probably
Speaker 13: played Minecraft.
Speaker 1: They have, but old reviewers, they don't know, they don't
Speaker 1: know the real the games the kids are playing.
Speaker 13: Yeah, but I mean, I do agree that the plot
Speaker 13: isn't that well made. I think the plot had a
Speaker 13: lot more potential, for sure. You know, I was talking
Speaker 13: about that my friends. I was talking about that. I
Speaker 13: was looking online and everything, and I don't And I
Speaker 13: also agree, I don't think the plot is the best.
Speaker 13: But I'm hoping if they do make a sequel, the
Speaker 13: plot would be much better, which I think they have
Speaker 13: a huge opportunity for. But yeah, like I said, the
Speaker 13: actors were I think the actors were actually well picked
Speaker 13: and a lot of people were upset that it was
Speaker 13: live action, which you know, I was. I was upset
Speaker 13: at first, but then an action was like, Oh, actually
Speaker 13: I think it would It's cool to have live action.
Speaker 13: I don't think animated would have been the best.
Speaker 1: Were there creepers in this Yeah?
Speaker 7: There were?
Speaker 1: Yeah, hostile mobs yep.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 13: And if you if you don't know what Minecraft is,
Speaker 13: it's basically a game where you survive, you can build
Speaker 13: whatever you want. Uh, And they just made a movie and.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, any griefers in the game in the movie
Speaker 1: creepers griefers? Oh no, a player who intentionally damages other players, builds,
Speaker 1: or causes problems. I feel like you and your brother,
Speaker 1: you guys do that to each other.
Speaker 2: I feel like you're literally just looking up Minecraft terms
Speaker 2: right now on a computer and you're asking your son
Speaker 2: about these random Minecraft.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what we're doing. I know there's probably a
Speaker 1: pick act in the in the movie.
Speaker 9: Really do so? Yeah?
Speaker 8: I really?
Speaker 13: I think they incorporated a lot of stuff from Minecraft,
Speaker 13: which I really liked. And you know, if you're thinking, oh,
Speaker 13: do I need to play Minecraft to watch the movie,
Speaker 13: you absolutely do not.
Speaker 1: Oh you don't.
Speaker 13: Minecraft will make it better. I think you'll understand it
Speaker 13: a little more. But I like my mom when she
Speaker 13: watched it, she didn't really play Minecraft that much, and
Speaker 13: she still understood it. But you know, okay, if you
Speaker 13: do play Minecraft, you'll enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Do you wait for streaming or do you see it
Speaker 1: in the movie theater?
Speaker 13: That's a big question I was wondering. So I said,
Speaker 13: if you know, you're a huge Minecraft and you're playing
Speaker 13: for a while but don't know if it's really worth it,
Speaker 13: I could go to the theaters. You know, it'll be
Speaker 13: a fun experience. You know, the audience will probably you know,
Speaker 13: people that are going or you want to go, and
Speaker 13: you'll have good laugh. If you don't, you know, you
Speaker 13: play Minecraft, you don't really you know, like it's like
Speaker 13: I saw the Minecraft movie just Waittil Comes Home. Yeah,
Speaker 13: it really it depends you know the price and everything.
Speaker 13: But I think if you really like Minecraft, go to
Speaker 13: the movies. I think it was actually a great experience.
Speaker 1: All right. And if look and if you don't like it,
Speaker 1: Mom and Dad just spent like eighty bucks, no big
Speaker 1: deal for like two tickets at least in LA. All Right, Parker,
Speaker 1: thanks for calling in. Appreciate it.
Speaker 13: Okay, yeah, I love you.
Speaker 1: Love you too.
Speaker 8: Uh y.
Speaker 1: That's my son Parker with his review of Minecraft, Minecraft
Speaker 1: the movie. You know, my kids gave up roadblocks in
Speaker 1: the house and it's been kind of a better place,
Speaker 1: but now my kid wants to go back to it,
Speaker 1: So I don't know. It's you know, it's tough every
Speaker 1: every kid handles these video games differently, right, and even adults.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just in general anything, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like it's like, got to use moderation with all this stuff.
Speaker 1: All right, do we have time for a question before
Speaker 1: we go to break? Quick one? Okay, quick one? Jacqueline
Speaker 1: and Michigan. What's your question?
Speaker 11: Hi?
Speaker 17: Dare can you hear me?
Speaker 6: All right?
Speaker 11: Yes?
Speaker 17: Either, Thank you so much for all you do I have.
Speaker 17: I had an iPhone thirteen and I.
Speaker 18: Switched services, so I went from T Mobile to Exfinity,
Speaker 18: and when they transferred all the data from the iPhone
Speaker 18: to the Android, none of my photos transferred over, no videos,
Speaker 18: no photos, nothing.
Speaker 17: So I went back to the Exfinity store and said, hey,
Speaker 17: can you help me? And they said, no, we've done
Speaker 17: everything we can.
Speaker 11: You're on your own, right.
Speaker 9: Oh boo wow?
Speaker 1: That usually okay. So you want to transfer, you want
Speaker 1: to transfer your stuff? Okay, So I would say phone thirteen, okay.
Speaker 1: So I would say, let's see okay, pixel has on
Speaker 1: its own app, so you want okay. I think the
Speaker 1: easiest way to do this would maybe be to download
Speaker 1: Google Photos and let it upload all of the pictures.
Speaker 1: Do you have more than like fifteen gigs of pictures?
Speaker 15: Oh?
Speaker 17: I don't know how much I have. I could look
Speaker 17: it up, but you said no more than fifteen gigs?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Are they all an eye cloud or are they actually
Speaker 1: on the phone on the phone. Okay, that's that's actually easier.
Speaker 1: So I mean there's look, there are so many ways
Speaker 1: you can do this. There are many many ways. And
Speaker 1: what may you transfer from iPhone to Android?
Speaker 17: Well, we it was a better price right for the service.
Speaker 17: And I really got to like my iPhone because I'd
Speaker 17: always been an Android user. And then I got someone
Speaker 17: gave me this, My dad gave me this iPhone thirteen,
Speaker 17: and I really came to like it. But then the
Speaker 17: T Mobile just it was not a good price. So
Speaker 17: then when we switched, they, of course the mobile or
Speaker 17: Efinity tells you, oh yeah, everything is super easy. And
Speaker 17: here we'll give you this free Android and they didn't
Speaker 17: have any deals on the iPhone, so I said, okay,
Speaker 17: well I'll switch. And then it's been this and I'm
Speaker 17: sad because you know, people ask, oh, what about this
Speaker 17: or whatever? I want to look at a photo and
Speaker 17: I can't, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I think the easiest way is going to
Speaker 1: be to just basically install Google Photos on your old phone.
Speaker 1: Let it upload all of your pictures and then they
Speaker 1: will all be on Google Photos on your new phone.
Speaker 1: I think that's the best way to do it. Jacqueline, Okay,
Speaker 1: and at least you can have them there. I got
Speaker 1: to think more about the way you do this. Tipic
Speaker 1: is during the setup of the phone, you would typically
Speaker 1: have it bring over all those photos. But unless you
Speaker 1: want to, unless you want to set up that Android
Speaker 1: phone all again and go through that process, which I
Speaker 1: probably don't recommend. But but that's really they they really
Speaker 1: missed the missed it when they did that. They should have.
Speaker 17: Yeah, they made me said, they did not help it.
Speaker 17: They just want to stay all right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, after that, that's not a very not a very
Speaker 1: good salesperson. Sadly, no, no, And I went back again,
Speaker 1: and they did, oh yeah, no. Once you're out of
Speaker 1: the store, they're like, we're done. We're done with you, Jacqueline.
Speaker 17: So install Google Photos on my iPhone.
Speaker 1: Yes, and then and then install it. Log in with
Speaker 1: your account, with your Google account, and then the same
Speaker 1: one that's on your Android phone. Let it upload everything.
Speaker 1: You may have to turn your phone the display settings
Speaker 1: to never so it doesn't it doesn't lock. Let everything upload.
Speaker 1: Keep the Google Photos app open. It will upload all
Speaker 1: those pictures that are on your iPhone and then when
Speaker 1: you open up Google Photos on your Android phone, they
Speaker 1: will all be in there in the cloud. And that's
Speaker 1: probably the easiest way to do it right now. I'll
Speaker 1: noodle this over during break and think if I think
Speaker 1: of a better way. But that's probably the best way
Speaker 1: right now. Thanks for the call, Jaqueline, You appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
Speaker 1: four two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you talking technology. The website rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv. There you can get show notes, you can
Speaker 1: watch the segments I do for television. You can listen
Speaker 1: to past episodes of this show as a podcast. Check
Speaker 1: out the newsletter. There's a whole lot there. Rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot TV. This show is always such a journey.
Speaker 1: I mean, just think about how much we've done already.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've had great guests on, We've had my son,
Speaker 1: we've had callers, we've had emailers, we've had tweeters, all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. Let's go to Oh and we still
Speaker 1: have got coming up this hour. We've got Joel Santo
Speaker 1: Domingo of the Wirecutter, who's gonna break down mesh networking.
Speaker 1: So this is that I'd say it's new, but it's
Speaker 1: been around for a while now. But you know all
Speaker 1: these little better Wi Fi in your house basically how
Speaker 1: to get that or outside whatever you need. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Sergio in Azusa. Sergio, you're on with Rich.
Speaker 7: Hi.
Speaker 9: Rich, you got me right in the middle of a
Speaker 9: bike rest.
Speaker 16: Well, they come and ask how's your food?
Speaker 17: Thank you?
Speaker 16: Hey, Rich, I'm vision impaired. I have one eye that
Speaker 16: I can see somewhat, the other one I can't. And
Speaker 16: shout out to your vision impaired nation out during and
Speaker 16: I know you have a lot of callers. I hear
Speaker 16: a lot of good tips. I'm calling about the glasses
Speaker 16: that allow you to have AI and which are the
Speaker 16: better ones out there that you recommend. I'm also trying
Speaker 16: to see if your callers can send out any tips
Speaker 16: for you know, vision impaired accessibility places.
Speaker 10: And I appreciate everything you do.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you. Is this something new that that's happened
Speaker 1: or has this been ongoing?
Speaker 16: It's been about five years.
Speaker 11: OK.
Speaker 16: I wasn't really a tech head, but I used it
Speaker 16: and everything. I would get frustrated because things would renew
Speaker 16: before I had a chance to figure out how the
Speaker 16: old one worked, you know. And so I'm looking for
Speaker 16: some glasses that I've heard. Facebook has one.
Speaker 9: I heard there's another one.
Speaker 10: I think called in the Vision, and you know that
Speaker 10: I can, Like.
Speaker 16: I have children, I can read their papers or go
Speaker 16: through the mail. I just want to, like a lot
Speaker 16: of vision impaired people, you want to be You want
Speaker 16: to not have people depend on you. You want to
Speaker 16: do your independent stuff. And there's a lot of us
Speaker 16: out there and we appreciate everything you do for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to be able to do what you
Speaker 1: want to do and not have to always have someone
Speaker 1: helping you do that. That's what I'm understanding. I mean,
Speaker 1: so from what I've seen, and you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: i'll get some messages from the community on this. I'm
Speaker 1: not an expert in this field, but from what I've
Speaker 1: seen at the I go to the Sea Sun Accessibility
Speaker 1: Tech Expo every year, and the glasses that I see there,
Speaker 1: you know, the specialized glasses are usually quite expensive. So
Speaker 1: you mentioned you mentioned the Envision glasses. Those look like
Speaker 1: Google glass. Those are twenty five hundred dollars, so that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's going to be a very expensive solution
Speaker 1: to things. There's another glasses called orecam My I three
Speaker 1: pro and I'm looking at those to see if I
Speaker 1: can find a price. Doesn't really it looks like you
Speaker 1: have to contact them. Let's see. Oh hold on, oh
Speaker 1: there we go. Yeah, those are forty two d and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars, so that's you know, those are very very
Speaker 1: expensive as well. And then there's another one I'm looking
Speaker 1: at Iris Vision. Look like they're using more kind of
Speaker 1: like a almost like a VR type headset for that.
Speaker 1: So I've seen a bunch of these. I did a
Speaker 1: story if you if you I'll link these up. But
Speaker 1: if you just type in ceasun Ktla DeMuro on Google
Speaker 1: you'll see my assistive tech coverage from last year and
Speaker 1: this year, where last year I did a lot more
Speaker 1: of the glasses in there. But you know, the thing,
Speaker 1: my takeaway is that these are very expensive, and I
Speaker 1: think that's why so many people are turning to the
Speaker 1: ray band metas just for everyday help. And you've got
Speaker 1: the AI built in, you've got the picture functionality. They're
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty dollars, so at the very least, Sergio,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're worth a try. I'm not sure, you know,
Speaker 1: depending on what you want to do with them. You
Speaker 1: know what the functionality is. You know, it may it
Speaker 1: may vary. It may you may say, well it works
Speaker 1: for this, but it doesn't work for that. But the
Speaker 1: things that we kind of had a show maybe last
Speaker 1: year talking about these things when I tested them, and
Speaker 1: people just kept calling and saying all the ways they
Speaker 1: found to use these anything from taking a picture of
Speaker 1: the back of a product to say and say asking
Speaker 1: it how do I microwave this? Or what's the instructions?
Speaker 1: Say here it'll do. I mean, it can do some
Speaker 1: pretty incredible things, all right. So some of the things
Speaker 1: last year that I saw at the at the show
Speaker 1: a company called Site so E Site I wear. That's
Speaker 1: another specialized Oh this actually saw twice. I saw this
Speaker 1: at CES as well. So E Site they have glasses
Speaker 1: as well, but again, you know, very expensive and so
Speaker 1: if you want to invest that kind of money just
Speaker 1: to try something, it could be you know, it could
Speaker 1: be a letdown if they don't do the things you need.
Speaker 1: Envision we did see those as well. The other one
Speaker 1: is ocapp Oko. This helps you navigate streets using your iPhone.
Speaker 1: But Sergio, I try the ray bands for starters. Good
Speaker 1: question and some of those emails with your suggestions. Next up,
Speaker 1: why find networking? Right here, I'm rich on Tech. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
Speaker 1: with you talking technology. Joining me now Joel Santo Domingo
Speaker 1: of The Wirecutter to talk about mesh networking. Joel, thanks
Speaker 1: for joining me, Thanks for having me. So mesh networking
Speaker 1: been around for a while now, you know, at least
Speaker 1: ten years I think since Ero came on the scene.
Speaker 1: What does that mean exactly? Like, what improvement did that bring?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 15: Mesh networking is basically with the traditional Wi Fi setup,
Speaker 15: you've got your router and a cable modem or a
Speaker 15: combination of the two, which is usually called the gateway,
Speaker 15: and that provides your Wi Fi in your house. Mesh
Speaker 15: network will Mesh networking will multiply that. You'll get several
Speaker 15: routers either two, three, four routers in a box. You
Speaker 15: set it up, and what that does is it will
Speaker 15: eliminate dead ze zones in your house. So if you
Speaker 15: got a room, say your garage, and you want to
Speaker 15: put a you know, a smart speaker in there and
Speaker 15: it doesn't quite work, if you have mesh networking, it'll
Speaker 15: extend the signal, the Wi Fi signal to other parts
Speaker 15: of your house.
Speaker 1: Now, there's been extenders in the past, right, like a
Speaker 1: range extender, and those just took like a bad signal
Speaker 1: and pushed it further into the corners of your home.
Speaker 1: Is this the same thing or is this actually take
Speaker 1: the same signal and put it in all the corners.
Speaker 15: It takes a signal, it amplifies the signal, and it
Speaker 15: routes the signal basically, so if you have an extender,
Speaker 15: it just repeats the signal and that'll work for one
Speaker 15: room in your house. But if you have you know,
Speaker 15: a wing of your house, or if you have a
Speaker 15: house that large, or if you have several rooms in
Speaker 15: your house that are pretty much unserved by your router,
Speaker 15: a mesh network can help.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's how you know, Like basically, if your
Speaker 1: cable company or whoever, your internet provider, whatever they gave you,
Speaker 1: if it's not really working in every corner of your home,
Speaker 1: that's when it's time to upgrade to the mesh pretty much. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what about all these different terms we've got right now,
Speaker 1: You've got Wi Fi six, you've got six E, you've
Speaker 1: got seven. Do we need to jump on board with
Speaker 1: all of those?
Speaker 15: Those are the different generations. Ninety nine percent of the
Speaker 15: stuff that you have in your house is either be
Speaker 15: Wi Fi five or six, which have both been around
Speaker 15: for a while, but they're solidly work. Six E extends
Speaker 15: it a little bit, extends it too, slightly faster if
Speaker 15: you're in the same room as a router, and Wi
Speaker 15: Fi seven will help if you have a lot of devices,
Speaker 15: or if you have neighbors who have a lot of devices.
Speaker 1: For example, it sounds like I need to upgrade to
Speaker 1: Wi Fi seven. I've got a lot of devices.
Speaker 15: It's not a must do right now, but probably in
Speaker 15: the next two years. You probably want to be on
Speaker 15: Wi Fi seven.
Speaker 1: But doesn't my device have to support Wi Fi seven
Speaker 1: for it to take advantage of that network?
Speaker 15: Yeah, that's the rub. You really have to have your
Speaker 15: laptop on Wi Fi seven and your phone on Wi
Speaker 15: Fi seven to make it makes sense for you to
Speaker 15: put it in.
Speaker 1: And so you test these things out. What are you
Speaker 1: looking for in your tests? You test these things for
Speaker 1: the wirecutter, what are you what are you looking for
Speaker 1: when you test these mesh networks out?
Speaker 15: You know, first of all, I'm looking for them to work.
Speaker 15: Some of them work really well, some of them don't.
Speaker 15: I rent a house to actually check it out. It's
Speaker 15: larger than the house I currently live in, lots of walls,
Speaker 15: lots of rooms. Basically, if you're your signal from your router,
Speaker 15: if it goes through more than two or three walls
Speaker 15: and ceilings count as walls or Flora's count as walls.
Speaker 15: If it goes through two or three walls, you probably
Speaker 15: want to have a mesh network to help repeat that
Speaker 15: signal around your house.
Speaker 1: And what about let's say you don't want to upgrade,
Speaker 1: I mean, what about just like some tips for where
Speaker 1: to place your you know, your system that puts out
Speaker 1: the wife, like your router. I guess so most of
Speaker 1: the routers are like kind of also, they spit out
Speaker 1: the Wi Fi signal, Right, is that kind of the case?
Speaker 15: Yeah, pretty much all the routers spit out the Wi
Speaker 15: Fi signal. It's either gonna be a round box or
Speaker 15: a square box or a box. Then ten is on it.
Speaker 15: The most important thing is to not hide it in
Speaker 15: a closet or a cabinet or something like that. You
Speaker 15: really want it up high and you want it out
Speaker 15: in the open because Wi Fi signals don't like to
Speaker 15: be blocked by things like wood or metal. Another thing
Speaker 15: is you want to put it in the center of
Speaker 15: your house or close to the center of your house
Speaker 15: as possible. I know that's not always case. That's not
Speaker 15: always possible. Like my router is on the end of
Speaker 15: my house because that's where the where the internet comes in,
Speaker 15: the cable comes in. But up high, centrally located, that's
Speaker 15: really where you want your router.
Speaker 1: So you're telling me that, like when people walk into
Speaker 1: my home, the centerpiece of my home should be my
Speaker 1: WiFi router. Like, hey, this is welcome to my home.
Speaker 1: Here's my WiFi.
Speaker 15: Well that's if you want a good signal everywhere, you
Speaker 15: do want it up up high. You can buy routers
Speaker 15: like the Euro that you mentioned earlier. It's a small router,
Speaker 15: so it's small white box. It shouldn't be too obtrusive.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's talk about some of these brands. What
Speaker 1: are some of the best brands that you're seeing right now?
Speaker 1: Like I mean, I always mentioned, I always recommend Euro.
Speaker 1: It's been pretty solid for me over the years. What
Speaker 1: else you know? You've got Euro? How are they doing?
Speaker 1: And what are some of the other brands that you like?
Speaker 1: I agree with you.
Speaker 15: Our top pick is the Euro six right now, and
Speaker 15: I've just gone through a round of testing with the
Speaker 15: Euro seven and that's going to be my new pick
Speaker 15: very soon. I think it's got some improvements. It's a
Speaker 15: little more expensive, but it's pretty good. It's pretty solid,
Speaker 15: it's easy to set up. It only took me about
Speaker 15: five to ten minutes to set up. I do it
Speaker 15: for a living, but I can see someone who is
Speaker 15: a novice taking maybe twenty minutes set this up.
Speaker 1: Now, here's I always give out this tip where because
Speaker 1: I made this mistake once I changed my Wi Fi
Speaker 1: router and I used a different password and all my
Speaker 1: stuff I had to reset up. So I've been saying
Speaker 1: since then, like, hey, if you're getting a new router,
Speaker 1: like just use your old Wi Fi username and password.
Speaker 1: Is that a problem or is that kind of worll? Absolutely?
Speaker 15: That's that's my top tip for setting up a new
Speaker 15: Wi Fi router or mesh system. If you have you know,
Speaker 15: a dozen things or two dozen things, set up speakers,
Speaker 15: a streaming box, your phones, just use the old password
Speaker 15: and the old network name and everything will hook right
Speaker 15: up to it right away.
Speaker 1: Okay. Any other brands besides euro that you like that
Speaker 1: are doing good stuff.
Speaker 15: TP Link, tp Link Deco, Mesh systems are pretty good.
Speaker 15: Our upgrade pick is the tp link Deco BE sixty three.
Speaker 15: It's for people who need a little more, a little
Speaker 15: more performance, more connections. There are two there are two
Speaker 15: boxes or two routers in the kIPS. If you put
Speaker 15: the other box in your office, for example, you can
Speaker 15: plug your laptop right into the box and you have
Speaker 15: a virtually wired wired signal, which is usually more stable.
Speaker 1: Okay, but well, how much longer do we have on
Speaker 1: this format? Okay, I'm gonna we never do this, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna. I'm gonna put you on the spot. We
Speaker 1: got a caller, Chris and Florida who wants to know
Speaker 1: what to get. Chris, can you explain your situation quickly
Speaker 1: for Joel?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hi Joel, Chris, Miami, thanks for us. Yeah, fifteen
Speaker 2: living in Miami, living a condo fifteen hundred square feet
Speaker 2: and it's like very quiet. It's not like that new
Speaker 2: prefab condo, so it's super quiet. So the walls are
Speaker 2: kind of thick, and we have the regular original Wi
Speaker 2: Fi by Google and slow.
Speaker 11: We have to have two.
Speaker 2: If I have one, doesn't go very far. I guess
Speaker 2: now I'm looking at Maybe Euro seven would be nice,
Speaker 2: a little pricey, but future proof. Maybe eero maybe six
Speaker 2: plus with I don't want to just say just one room,
Speaker 2: but maybe extend out over the entire square footage kitchen, bathrooms,
Speaker 2: dining room, living room area. What would you suggest? Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for taking my question.
Speaker 15: Sure, are you going to be worrying about a backyard
Speaker 15: or a garage or anything like that.
Speaker 2: No, No, I'm on the sixt floor corner pocket.
Speaker 15: Yeah, sure, I would probably suggest an euro seven a
Speaker 15: two pack or maybe a three pack, but probably two
Speaker 15: pack that I just recently tested one and it covered
Speaker 15: a thirty two hundred square flashed house, multiple rooms in it.
Speaker 1: Now, the other side of this is the price. So
Speaker 1: the Euro seven right now is actually on sale, and
Speaker 1: this is it's four hundred and seventy nine dollars. That
Speaker 1: sound about right.
Speaker 15: The Euro seven I see on Amazon right this second
Speaker 15: is the two pack that I recommend. It is two
Speaker 15: seventy nine ninety nine. Oh okay, and three pack is
Speaker 15: three forty nine ninety nine, so.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there must be okay, So there's a different level.
Speaker 1: I see, there's different levels of the of the seven. Okay.
Speaker 1: And what do you think about these outdoor you know
Speaker 1: the Eero has like that outdoor extender. What do you
Speaker 1: think about that?
Speaker 15: It's very interesting, it's it's weather proofd Apparently I'm going
Speaker 15: to be testing it out sometime this year alongside a
Speaker 15: tp link competitor. It looks really cool. You can just
Speaker 15: plug it in and it'll cook right up to your
Speaker 15: eurosystem or your tp link system and extend it out
Speaker 15: to a backy order patio.
Speaker 1: See got it? Okay? Okay? So I see there's Eero
Speaker 1: seven and then Eero seven, euro Pro seven, So there
Speaker 1: you go. There's a little bit of a delineation there.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, when you look, I see how confusing
Speaker 1: this is for the average consumer. When you go on Amazon,
Speaker 1: you've got Eero Eero six, Eero six Plus, Ero six,
Speaker 1: Eero Pro six, ee Eero Mac seven, Outdoor seven, Eero seven,
Speaker 1: Eero Pro seven. Oh my gosh. Just go to Wirecutter.
Speaker 1: Check out what Joel has to say. He's got it
Speaker 1: all linked up there. Joel Santo Domingo, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today.
Speaker 15: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. Good information. Gotta have good WiFi, bottom line,
Speaker 1: gotta have good WiFi. If you don't have good WiFi,
Speaker 1: what do we have in this world. I don't know.
Speaker 1: In my house, if the Wi Fi is down, you
Speaker 1: can't do anything. It is all run by Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: All right, Coming up, I almost gave the number out.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do the feedbag. We've got lots of emails
Speaker 1: that you sent me throughout the week. We'll get to
Speaker 1: those coming up next. Perfect song for spring Break. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show. We got a lot to get through,
Speaker 1: so let me just get right into it a couple
Speaker 1: of news tidbits before we get to the feedbag. If
Speaker 1: you live in La, the my La three one one
Speaker 1: app got a major makeover. This is an excellent app
Speaker 1: that helps you put in requests to the city like
Speaker 1: graffiti removal, bulky item pickup, pothole repairs, and much more.
Speaker 15: So.
Speaker 1: They basically got image recognition now, which is really nice.
Speaker 1: They just revamped the whole thing. So my La three
Speaker 1: to one one available in Apple App Store, Google Play.
Speaker 1: If you don't live in La. No matter where you live,
Speaker 1: if your city offers an app like this a city
Speaker 1: services app, definitely download it. It is so quick. I
Speaker 1: literally report when people just put their bulky stuff out
Speaker 1: on the curb on my street. I'm like, the city's
Speaker 1: not just going to come and pick that up. I
Speaker 1: report it. Boom, It's out of there like the next day.
Speaker 1: It's really really fantastic, so saves you a phone call.
Speaker 1: Roadblocks just launched three new parntal controls, so if your
Speaker 1: kids play Roadblocks, parents can now block specific games from
Speaker 1: their kids account. They can block individual users from the
Speaker 1: contacting their kids, including the friends I mean obviously if
Speaker 1: they don't want to talk to them. You can also
Speaker 1: see which games your kid plays the most. So this
Speaker 1: is in the Roadblock Safety Center. You do have to
Speaker 1: have an account for roadblocks and you link that to
Speaker 1: your kid's account. But three helpful things. There been talking
Speaker 1: about this little gadget. Really like it. It's called the
Speaker 1: twelve South airfly Pro two. We've been talking a lot
Speaker 1: about travel. They just launched the new version of this
Speaker 1: little dongle that basically lets you use your own wireless
Speaker 1: headphones on planes. So you take this Bluetooth dongle, you
Speaker 1: plug it into any headphone jack. Most of the time
Speaker 1: people are using this on planes with the seatback entertainment,
Speaker 1: but you can use it in an older car gym equipment,
Speaker 1: game consoles, and it basically allows you to use your
Speaker 1: high quality bluetooth headphones with the seatback entertainment. It's sixty bucks.
Speaker 1: It's brand new, upgraded, it's got USBC now, longer battery life.
Speaker 1: You can connect two headsets, two people can listen at once. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you are a traveler, this is something to have
Speaker 1: in your travel bag. Sixty dollars well worth it for
Speaker 1: the higher quality. I call this in between technology because yes,
Speaker 1: airplanes are upgrading to Bluetooth to connect your headphones directly,
Speaker 1: but not all of them have that. And then Verizon
Speaker 1: right now is advertising this three year price lock, which
Speaker 1: is nice no price increases on the core monthly price
Speaker 1: plan for the next three years. Obviously doesn't include the
Speaker 1: taxes or the fees that they add on, but they're
Speaker 1: also offering a free phone with trade in, even to
Speaker 1: existing customers. So let me just do the math for you.
Speaker 1: If you're on the unlimited Welcome Plan sixty five dollars
Speaker 1: a month with AutoPlay auto pay, you can get an
Speaker 1: iPhone sixteen E, a Galaxy S twenty four FE, or
Speaker 1: a Pixel nine A, basically an average of a six
Speaker 1: hundred dollars phone. But do the math. So if you
Speaker 1: signed up for Mint Mobile, which is only thirty dollars
Speaker 1: a month, you would save sixty five thirty five dollars
Speaker 1: a month times thirty six months. That's twelve hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty dollars saving versus Verizon, and minus the six hundred
Speaker 1: dollars phone that you're getting quote unquote free. That's still
Speaker 1: saving six hundred and sixty dollars over three years. Now,
Speaker 1: I get it. Math is hard, people, don't want to
Speaker 1: do math, But folks do the math please. You'll find that.
Speaker 1: I get it. It's called inertia. You want to just
Speaker 1: stick with what you have, you get it, but you're
Speaker 1: on the hook for thirty six months of paying more
Speaker 1: for something. So just just investigate all of your options
Speaker 1: if you're going to take advantage of this. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to fault you for doing the free phone through Verizon.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying it's not necessarily free. You are paying
Speaker 1: for it in the form of higher monthly costs with
Speaker 1: your plan, where you can get a plan that's much
Speaker 1: cheaper elsewhere. All right, we got so many emails this week,
Speaker 1: I don't even know where to start. James from Tustin
Speaker 1: writes in I was accidentally scammed twice by phony sweet
Speaker 1: sweepsteak scams online, once for one hundred twenty seven dollars,
Speaker 1: another for one hundred and forty one. I used a
Speaker 1: card issued by my bank. When I realized what I
Speaker 1: had done, I immediately reported them as unauthorized charges. They
Speaker 1: said they had to wait for the pending charge to finish.
Speaker 1: They did investigations on both and denied my refund saying
Speaker 1: they are authorized charges. Ugh, get a new credit card
Speaker 1: if your card, saying that get a new one because
Speaker 1: no way. Another scam. Steven and Santa Monica says, hey, rich,
Speaker 1: I got scammed after taking a survey that looked like
Speaker 1: it came from Triple A. I just renewed my membership,
Speaker 1: so I let my guard down. It seemed like a
Speaker 1: legit reward offer. The site showed two of my saved
Speaker 1: cards minus the CVV, and I added a third to
Speaker 1: complete the order. After submitting, I got a strange red
Speaker 1: error message and no confirmation. Soon after, my credit card
Speaker 1: company flagged one of the charges, two were legit, one
Speaker 1: was blocked. It all came from a weird email address,
Speaker 1: not the one the survey used. I ended up canceling
Speaker 1: the card. I also spotted similar email scams pretending to
Speaker 1: be from CVS and State Farm offering an emergency car
Speaker 1: kit with high end gear. Clearly too good to be true.
Speaker 1: Steven and Santa Monica listening on KFI, be careful out there,
Speaker 1: Linda and Huntington Beach says, I'm looking for a good
Speaker 1: iPhone camera adapter, something with zoom for my iPhone twelve
Speaker 1: to capture a full moon. I'd love to capture it
Speaker 1: with my phone. Any suggestions, Uh, probably not going to
Speaker 1: work very well. There are a couple of things you
Speaker 1: can get on Amazon that will do this. But if
Speaker 1: you're really serious about moon photography, there's a thing called
Speaker 1: Hestia that is very pricey. But if you just go
Speaker 1: on Amazon and look up basically capture Moon pictures iPhone,
Speaker 1: you're just like little cheap adapters you can buy that
Speaker 1: will magnify let's see here. Oh my gosh, so many emails.
Speaker 1: We had a bunch of people that called in saying
Speaker 1: how great Costco is to buy a chromebook. Tim writes in,
Speaker 1: for the caller who had minimal tech needs and never
Speaker 1: owned a computer, I'd strongly recommend a chromebook from Costco.
Speaker 1: I recently contacted Costco support and it was beyond excellent.
Speaker 1: A chromebook should cover everything he needs, mostly web browsing,
Speaker 1: and it's forgiving something goes wrong. You can easily reset
Speaker 1: the operating system. A macro PC might be too much,
Speaker 1: especially if an iPhone feels overwhelming. Great advice. Tim Janine
Speaker 1: in North Upland says Costco Concierge is wonderful for anything
Speaker 1: you buy there. Their tech support has always been able
Speaker 1: to help me. Janie Tony from New Jersey, my home state,
Speaker 1: writes in, I was hoping the segment with Mark Vino
Speaker 1: would have been longer. There are lots of people like
Speaker 1: me frustrated with Apple's iOS. It feels like every update
Speaker 1: fixes one thing but breaks several others. I've dealt with
Speaker 1: vertical lines, keyboard glitches, Wi Fi problems, you name it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: they keep focusing on gimmicks like Image Playground instead of reliability.
Speaker 1: And don't get me started on the Apple Intelligence rollout,
Speaker 1: promising features that aren't even coming until next year after
Speaker 1: hyping them for iPhone sixteen. We'll get Mark back on
Speaker 1: the show. Let's see what else. Oh my gosh, so
Speaker 1: many emails here. I was trying to find one to
Speaker 1: end the show, Bobo on a nice note, because you
Speaker 1: always said I end with the nicest ones. Here we go.
Speaker 1: Steve writes in, thanks to your podcast, I easily deleted
Speaker 1: my data and account from twenty three and may I
Speaker 1: know I had one more nice one? All right? That's
Speaker 1: going to do it for this show. Links to everything
Speaker 1: I mentioned on the website. Rich on tech dot tv.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Thanks to you,
Speaker 1: for listening. My name is rich Demiro. Talk to you
Speaker 1: real soon.