Apple's Antitrust Woes & How DoNotPay Uses AI to Help Consumers Fight Back

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The United States says Apple is an illegal monopoly. Hackers
figure out a way to unlock millions of hotel rooms,
the retro tech that's making a comeback, Plus your tech
questions answered. What's going on on rich Demiro and This
is rich on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast
to coast. This is the show where I talk about

(00:23):
the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun.
Let's open up those phone lines at triple eight rich
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Give me a call if
you have a question about technology. Email is also open.

(00:47):
Just go to richon Tech dot tv and hit the
email icon. This week, I'll take you to the CSUN
Assistive Technology Conference to learn about the latest assistive technologies
for the disability community. Plus, I'll talk to Jason Rhodes,
a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He's

(01:07):
going to tell you everything you need to know about
the total solar eclipse happening on April eighth, and later
Joshua Browder, CEO of Do Not Pay, will join us.
He'll tell us about the products they build to save
people time and money. This was a very interesting week
in the tech world. Apple is being sued by the

(01:31):
US Department of Justice Anti Trust Division along with attorney's
general from several states. If so is all filed in
my home state of New Jersey. They're accusing Apple of
monopolizing the US markets for smartphones in violation of Section
two of the Sherman Act. They say that Apple has
used its control over its iOS app distribution and also

(01:54):
APIs that it runs on its iPhone to suppress technologies
that threatn the iPhone monopoly. They focus on five key
areas super apps, cloud gaming, cross messaging platforms, cross platform messaging,
smart watches, and digital wallets. They say by impeding these innovations,
Apple allegedly makes its own products worse and even sacrifice

(02:18):
profits to maintain its monopoly and its ability to extract
fees from developers. They say this has reduced consumer choice,
it's raised prices, decreased quality, and stifled innovation in the
smartphone industry here in the United States. When I started
covering smartphones, there were many many brands now we are
down to just about three Apple, Samsung, and Google. So

(02:44):
let's break some of this down because there's a lot here.
I read through all eighty eight pages of the complaint
and let me just bring out some of the most
interesting nuggets. So in twenty ten, then CEO Seeve Jobs
was really concerned about how easy it was to switch
from iPhone to android, and he said they would force

(03:05):
developers to use its payment system to lock them in,
both users and developers. Then they had Apple executives discuss
discussing strategies to further lock customers into our ecosystem and
make Apple's ecosystem even more sticky. No one can argue
against that, it is very sticky. They say Apple deliberately
made cross platform messaging a worse experience with a lack

(03:28):
of encryption between iPhones and androids. This also locked in users.
Even in an interview, CEO Tim Cook said, I remember
this When Wall Street Journals Joanna Stern asked about this.
He said, by your mom and iPhone, that was his answer.
But they say Apple also compromises its best interests when
it benefits financially, such as allowing Google to be the

(03:50):
default search engine because they pay Apple so much, and
survey show eighty eight percent of US teenagers expect to
buy an iPhone next, which really goes to show just
how powerful Apple is with this key demographic of the
next generation of buyers, many of whom would never give
up their iPhone. It's really interesting to see how this

(04:13):
lawsuit paints Apple as a company is conniving and calculated
in its rules surrounding the iPhone. Now, let's go through
some of those five different places where they have contended
that Apple is being really, really not so nice. Number one,
the app store. All apps must be vetted and play

(04:33):
by Apple's rules, which always seem to favor the company.
Super apps is where they take issue with. Super apps
are very popular over in Asia. It's one app that
does a lot of things. So you might make a
phone call through that app, you might chat with someone
through that app, you might use it as a payment app,
you might play games on that app. Some of the
examples are we Chat and Line. The US really doesn't

(04:56):
have anything like that because it's been held back in
many ways by the app store. Now the second area
cloud streaming games. This has long been a source of
contention on the iPhone and the iPad. Apple doesn't like
the idea of this because in app developers, once they
have a app that a lot of people are using,
a gaming app, they could just do whatever they want
inside that app. Now here's the thing. Apple has changed

(05:20):
its rules on this. On January twenty fifth of this year,
they release new guidelines that will allow some level of this.
So that may not be a big part of this case.
I think one of the biggest sources of contention in
this case is really going to be messaging. We have
talked about the whole green bubble versus blue bubble situation
many many times. Apple does not allow any messaging apps

(05:42):
besides its own access to your text messages on the iPhone,
which means even if a better app came along, which
there are many that could, you can't use it. Sure
you can use WhatsApp, and you could use Telegram, but
they're very limited in what they can do because they
can't actually replace your text messaging app. You have to
use I Message, and by the way, I Message works

(06:03):
really well with iPhone to iPhone. But guess what happens
when you try to message someone that's on an Android.
Everything falls apart. Now on Android there is something called RCS,
and this is a standard that supports big videos, big pictures,
full resolution. Apple has so far refused to put those
standards on the iPhone. Later this year, they will do that,

(06:27):
but we don't know how they're going to do that.
And I think that a large part of this issue
is the fact that Apple could have made an Android
app for I Message a long time ago and made
this whole thing kind of not so apparent. But now
they're going to be forced to defend themselves in why
they have refused to make cross messaging easy across two

(06:48):
huge types of phones out here, Android and iPhone. Now
smart watches. I thought this was interesting because you don't
really think of the smart watch as a sticky part
of Apple's web, but it really is. iPhone users are
really loyal to their Apple Watch, and when it comes
to third party smart watches, they just don't have the
same functionality. I don't ever recommend a third party smart

(07:10):
watch for the iPhone because it just doesn't work the
same way. You can't get your eye messages on there,
and Apple doesn't allow things like easy persistent Bluetooth communications
to that third party watch. What does that mean? It
means that if you turn off Bluetooth on your iPhone,
your Apple Watch or your your third party watch is
going to stop working. And that's not very nice. And
people don't realize that that's a thing, and of course

(07:32):
what do they do. They default to the Apple Watch.
So that's going to be an interesting one. Now. It
used to be that Google's app smart watches would work
with the iPhone. It's been a long time since that's
been the case. The other final area here is digital wallets.
So we love Tap to pay. It's been amazing, it's
been incredible. But did you know that Apple makes zero

(07:53):
point one five percent of any every credit card transaction
you tap to pay using Apple Wallet. That's fifty cents
on a one hundred dollars purchase, which might not seem
like a lot, but according to the lawsuit, two hundred
billion dollars flowed through Apple's Tap to Pay on the
iPhone in just twenty twenty two, and that's growing in
a big way. And by the way, Samsung and Google

(08:13):
do not charge for this functionality. And guess what, no
other payment app is allowed to utilize the NFC chip
on the iPhone for Tap to pay purchases to work.
So let's say something came along where you could switch
to a tap to pay app that said, hey, we're
going to give you one percent cash back on all
of your tap to pay purchases. You couldn't even switch
to that. You couldn't even use it. And yes, you

(08:35):
could use different credit cards and different debit cards, but
that's not the same as Apple, at this very high
level taking a cut of every single transaction just for
the beauty of guarding that NFC chip on the phone.
So there's no doubt that Apple has built something really
magical in the iPhone, something that's truly changed so many
of the ways that we do things from music to

(08:56):
content creation, fitness to photos. But could this all be
cheaper and easier and more innovative for the end consumer?
What if everything was built on widely accepted standards. Could
switching to the next best thing be easier? No, A
lot of people stick with the iPhone because it works,
it's simple, and everything they have is sort of intertwined
with this. By the way, before we had to break,

(09:17):
Apple told mac Rumors it will vigorously defend itself. They
set at Apple, we innovate every day to make technology
people love designing products that work seamlessly together, protect people's
privacy and security, and create a magical experience for our users.
The lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that
set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets. If successful,

(09:39):
it would hinder our ability to create the kind of
technology people expect from Apple where hardware, software, and services intersect.
It would also set a dangerous precedent empowering government to
take a heavy hand in designing people's technology. Now we
all know what's been happening over in the EU where
they have taken a very heavy hand in Apple. Just

(10:00):
earlier this month, Apple has had to change the entire
operating system to accommodate several new rules over in the EU,
including when you first turn on that iPhone, it's going
to ask you which browser do you want to use
as your default? And also people can sideload apps or
that means they can put an app on their iPhone
that doesn't come from Apple's own app store, and they

(10:21):
can pay for things using different in app purchase methods,
not just the one that Apple runs. And by the way,
that new USB sport that's on the bottom of the iPhone,
we have the EU to thank for that too, because
if they didn't require that change over in the EU
for all devices to have a standardized USB sport, we
would still be dealing with lightning, the one odd cable

(10:44):
in all of this. Now, I do believe Apple has
built a protected, a protected system that is protected average
consumers from viruses, malware, confusing payment structures, and many general headaches.
Think a Windows computer back in the day, with all
kinds of viruses and malware and pop ups and things
that people didn't really understand. That's what the iPhone would

(11:05):
be like. Now. Android is very much open and we
don't see a lot of those problems, even though there
more are some more issues on the Android than there
are on the iPhone. But are we paying an unknown
price for all of this carefully guarded innovation from Apple.
We don't know, But I guess we will see what
happens with this lawsuit, and it will be very interesting

(11:26):
to see what, if anything, Apple is forced to change.
I know that I'd be very happy if we had
cross messaging that worked extremely well across both iPhone and Android,
and I'm sure a lot of other people would like
that too. More choice for consumers. I think anyone would
appreciate that. All right, coming up, we are going to
have some more of your questions. Triple eight rich one

(11:48):
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two,
four to one zero one. Give me Paul. Welcome back
to rich on tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
talking technology at triple eight Rich one O one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
If you go to the website rich on tech dot tv,

(12:10):
you might notice it looks a little bit different. I
was working on it over the past week or so,
trying to make it simpler, trying to make it easier
for you to find the things that you want to
find when you go to the website. So right at
the top, while I'm doing the radio show, you'll find
links to everything I mentioned. So just click the top
link and it should say radio show links and the date,

(12:31):
and so that'll be right at the top. When I'm
live rich on tech dot TV. You've got the newsletter.
You can watch my latest TV segments. Yes, I'm a
reporter at KTLA in Los Angeles. You can watch what
I do there. Then you've got the back catalog of
all the radio show episodes and links. If you want
to find something there, then you've got the back catalog
of my recent TV segments, a way to subscribe to

(12:53):
the podcast More about Me, and then products that I
like a link to my Amazon store, So check it out,
Rich on Tech. Also, don't forget to sign up for
my newsletter. I share a lot of helpful tips and
different things in there, so it's the best way to
keep track of everything that I do. All right, Tammy
wrote in this morning, Hey, rich while chatting with my

(13:15):
dog sitter on Facebook Messenger, I got a window blocking
me from replying. It says the way you access your
chat history is changing. It gives me three options, create
a six digit pin number, store this on my device,
or use Google. After searching, I found an announcement from Meta.
But of course I still need guidance. Can you explain?
I chose Google, but then it continued with a window

(13:37):
stating that Facebook wants access to my Google account. And
I had all these options, It's just got more confusing
and scary. As I continued, I would appreciate any guidance.
A loyal listener, Sincerely, Tammy. So, Tammy, I've been getting
a lot of emails and a lot of questions about this.
So this is Facebook rolling out end to end encryption
on Messenger by default. What does that mean. This means

(13:59):
that your chats are super super private on Facebook Messenger
and it used to be an optional thing, but now
they're rolling it out as the default. And so what
happens is once they roll out this end to end encryption,
once you turn it on, nobody can access your messages,
not even Facebook. So they are end to end encrypted.
And the reason you have to pick that pin is

(14:22):
because the only way you can unlock those messages if
you move to a different device or if you sort
of restarted or formatted your phone is they would need
that pin number to unlock the encryption key so that
you have access to your own messages. So, as you noticed,
you've got a couple of different options. Create a six
digit pin only store on this device or use Google.

(14:43):
So that six digit pin I think is going to
be the best way to do it. And so you
just have to remember that pin number. So if you're
using a password manager, write that six digit pin number
in your password manager and don't use something like your
data birth because that's way too easily guessable. By someone.
But the six digit pin is going to do is
that's going to unlock your messages if you move to

(15:05):
a different device, and so if you get a new
iPhone or if you switch to Android at some point,
you can get your same message history list. The reason
why they can't just store it on the cloud and
restore it to your phone is because everything is encrypted,
so it will be stored somewhere, but you need that
pin to unlock that storage. Now, the store on this
device only means that if you ever lose your iPhone

(15:25):
or format it or erase it, everything is gone. They
no one can restore your history. And then the Google
option is going to use your Google account. Now, the
reason you got all those scary messages about the Google
access is because it's just using your Google account. I'm
not sure if it's going to store everything in Google Cloud.

(15:46):
It probably is inside Google Drive, so that's why it
wants the access to your Google So it's not that scary,
but I think the six digit pin is probably the
best way to go about it. Meta has talked about
the rolling out and for some time now, but this
is going to let you do a couple things. You're
going to be able to edit your messages fro up

(16:06):
to fifteen minutes after you send them. You're going to
get higher quality media when you send them, and you're
also going to have disappearing messages. You can also control
your read receipts, so you can decide if you want
others to see when you've read their messages, and photos
and videos are going to be easier to access. There's
all kinds of stuff, but you have to set up
that recovery method. When your chat is upgraded, it is

(16:28):
rolling out. So if you see this option, I think
the best option is to choose a six digit number
and that way you can unlock your pins when you
need or unlock your messages when you need them. So
eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Thanks for the email.
Appreciate it. By the way, Amazon, I don't even need

(16:51):
to really talk about this, but I'll just mention it.
Amazon is having a big Spring sale right now. I
think that these Amazon sales are a little bit overrated
at this point. I think was great when it first started,
but now it's kind of fizzled out. But does that
mean that you can't get deals? No, so this is
deals on seasonal items, spring fashion, outdoor furniture, law and
garden essentials, cleaning and organizing products, and also Amazon devices.

(17:14):
Of course, Prime members get the best deals. The reason
I tell you this is because I always keep a
list of all this stuff in my cart that I
sort of have my eye on with Amazon that I
want to buy. So my point is look at your
cart and see if anything that you have in there
that you actually want that you've saved, is going to
be on sale right now. It's going through March twenty five.
All right, Coming up, we're going to go to the

(17:34):
seasun Assistive Technology Conference. You are listening to rich on Tech.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. This week
I visited the thirty ninth annual seasun Assistive Technology Conference.
It was being held in Anaheim, California, and I spoke
with Julia Santiago, who's been leading it for twelve years now.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
We've been around for almost four decades with the conference.
It pretty much provides a forum for practitioners, users, companies,
pretty much the entire disability community globally to come together
and share and learn from each other, connect and really

(18:30):
grow the industry and trying to find better solutions for
individuals with disabilities to live as barrier free as possible
in the world. We'll see many from the blind, low
vision community, deaf and harded, hearing learning disabilities. I mean,
it really is a broad range and we don't focus

(18:52):
in any one area.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
Has life gotten better? Has it gotten easier because of
these technologies over the years.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Well, certainly a lot of these technology geez are doing
what we want, you know, to reduce any barriers that exists,
But certainly the work isn't done. There's a lot of
work ahead. And that's why thirty nine years later, you know,
people we look around, people are still coming excited to

(19:18):
take us to that next place.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
First up, I spoke with Christina Duarte, Senior director of
Regulatory Affairs at Inno Caption.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
Our app is for individuals with hearing loss to get
captioning of their mobile phone calls. We provide captions to
the individual with hearing loss by either a car provider
who's a live stenographer shorthand reporter or AI. It's the
consumer that's in charge of what accessibility they use, and
they can switch as there needs change.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
And what's the benefit of this.

Speaker 4 (19:46):
Sure, So the benefit of this is for individuals who
can't hear on the phone, they're able to get captions
in real time. We've had an individuals who haven't had
to disclose their hearing loss because of the way the
app and technology works. The benefit of using car Provider
sonographer is that they can provide non verbal cues, so
stuff like in parentheticals laughing, dog barking poor connection.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
And AI is very fast.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
However, with AI, with it being so fast and a computer,
it doesn't have that human element of nonverbal cues. Also,
not all speech patterns are going to process.

Speaker 5 (20:22):
Well with it.

Speaker 4 (20:23):
That's why we give consumers full choice to work within
their accessibility needs to switch between even in the middle
of a call.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Next, I spoke with James Kaufman at Caption Call. They
make physical phones that have loud volume and a touch screen.
Plus you can connect them in various ways, whether that's
a landline, voiceover IP or Bluetooth.

Speaker 6 (20:43):
This is the caption call phone. So it is a
phone that it's for hard of hearing people. Even people
wear hearing aids and they can see what the person
is saying when they call them. So it's a captioning service.

(21:03):
It's a no cost, federally funded service, and it helps
change people's lives.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Basically, it's just a really.

Speaker 6 (21:14):
Great reaction we get from people, and it's you know,
you don't really know this is available until you kind
of see it in person. No cost, that's the really
great thing about it. It's federally funded. So what caption
car will do will actually come out to your home,

(21:35):
install this exact phone, hook it up, teach you how
to use it, and you'll never see a bill. It's
completely federally funded through the FCC.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
Next, I spoke with Yolanda Castillo of Bellman and Symphon.
They make a device called Video.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
It's a Bluetooth bedshaker. It kind of looks like a puck,
but it vibrates.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
You can put it underneath your pillow or just lay
it on your side. It connects to your mobile phones.
You can feel when you have an alarm, or an
incoming phone call or a notification.

Speaker 7 (22:10):
Video is our latest product and is not only an
alarm clock but because it's Bluetooth enable, you're also able
to receive notifications when you get a text message or
a phone call. You're able to set up different types
of alarms, up to twelve different alarms depending on which
one you have the ability of also snooze in your alarms,

(22:35):
and if it rings and you want to snooze it,
you pull the court once and it goes on the
snooze time that you have set up. You want to
turn it off, you pull the tap twice and it
shuts down. It lasts up to ten days with only
an hour and a half charge. The vibration patterns are

(22:56):
very very strong, and not only will the flashing light
will come out, and it will also indicate with a
lead light color whether you're getting a phone call, whether
you're getting in a text, whether the door bill is ringing,
or your alarm is about to go.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Brian Parsons from Sony Interactive Entertainment, the folks behind PlayStation
was showing off PlayStation's accessibility initiatives. So we've got a
few different things.

Speaker 8 (23:23):
We've got a system technology that's built into the PlayStation
five itself, such as a screen reader, a large text
captions model, audio but one thing we really want to
demonstrate today is the access controller. So it was designed
specifically with people with physical disabilities in mind. Totally customizable, flexible,
works straight out of the box, so you can.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Get into gaming as soon as you can.

Speaker 8 (23:46):
But yeah, we can play around with all these buttons,
switch them out, reconfigure them. We can move the joystick
in and out whichever way you want to go, you
can orient whichever way you want to go. So PlayStation
motto is play has no limits, and we.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
Really want to make sure that happens.

Speaker 8 (24:04):
The new Access controlled this launch December sixth, and it's
relatively brand new, and yeah, the first of it's kind
in the PlayStation family.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
What's been the feedback great?

Speaker 8 (24:16):
Even in user research we had people who did not
want to bring it back after two weeks of playing.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
They had never been able to really play before.

Speaker 8 (24:23):
And with this device and connecting it to a second
one or even a dual sense, all of a sudden.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Many more games become available to them. Ninety dollars.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Joseph Hodge with the American Printing House for the Blind
was showing off what I could best describe as a
kindle but with brail.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
So this is the monarch.

Speaker 9 (24:42):
It's a revolutionary braille slash tactographics device.

Speaker 5 (24:46):
So you can actually have for the.

Speaker 9 (24:48):
First time ten lines of refreshing braill that's thirty two
characters wide each on each line, and that's.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Not been done before correct.

Speaker 9 (24:57):
And the other thing I can do is show images
like tactograph And.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
So what do you think the benefit of this is
going to be for.

Speaker 9 (25:04):
School students like I grew up in the going through
the public school system with just a braille display of
one line forty characters. The one of the biggest benefits
right off the bat is formatting. You know, being able
to see things centered or see how a document that
I wrote is actually laid out without having to emboss
it and braille you know, on a printer is huge.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
The other real.

Speaker 9 (25:27):
Major thing is this is going to be a book
reader as well, so the kids will have like their
geography or chemistry book on here.

Speaker 5 (25:36):
And so.

Speaker 9 (25:38):
Time to fingertips right now is like six months from
the embossing period. So the idea is that you know,
we're gonna be able to actually cut those files so
much quicker because we're not having to bind the book.
We're not having to you know, put the book together,
so students are going to get their books when the
semester starts instead of six weeks into the semester sometimes.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Finally, I spoke with Michael Jans and he develops an
app called Oco. It makes any pedestrian traffic signal accessible
using just a smartphone camera and AI so.

Speaker 10 (26:08):
I can quickly open up the app if you like to.
It's just by puting the pointing at a phone towards
a walk sign and I'll quickly because you see visual feedbick,
but of course there's the audible feedbick, the rapid beep
indicating walk sign is on. And the same is true
for a vibration. If you hold the phone, there's vibration
coming to them as well. And basically people hold the

(26:31):
phone at chess level because you can rotate your full
body to find potitionallds. So it's also orienting people towards
the light and also helping people stay in line while
crossing the street because veering off is also a sometimes
a challenge for people.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Once again, that is the o coapp. Oko. It's available
for free for the iPhone.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
If you want a link, you can go to my
website rich on tech Dot TV. Check the show notes.
I gotta say the c SUN Assists of Tech conference
was excellent. I love the products, but what really stuck
with me were the people. So many passionate people in
this field, all trying to help other people with these innovations.

(27:12):
All right, coming up more of your calls at Triple
eight Rich one O one.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. You are listening to Rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. Website rich on Tech dot TV. Yes,
everything we just mentioned at the Assistive Tech conference is
linked up on the website. Just go there and tap

(27:48):
the first link that says radio show links. Let's go
to Diana in Torrance, California. Diana, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 11 (27:57):
Hi Rich. Hello, Well, I've watched you on KKLA and
I used to listen to Leo for a long time
on the station. And thank you. Really enjoy your show
and thank you for all you do.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Well, thanks for being a part of the family. What
can I help you ask?

Speaker 11 (28:16):
Okay, so I work on Max and I frequently at
home I do screen sharing from one Mac MacBook Pro
to another, and I wanted to know if when I'm
away from home and not on my home network, is

(28:38):
there a way I can do that same screen sharing
from my iPhone fifteen Pro Max. I'd like to be
able to access my home home MacBook pros when I'm
not on the home Wi Fi network and do the

(28:59):
same kind of thing that I'm able to do as
when I am home doing the screen sharing, but from
my iPhone. And I'm hoping that it's possible to do that.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Now, when you say screen sharing, do you mean you
want to remotely access the computer like you just want
to work on the computer from wherever you are, okay?

Speaker 11 (29:18):
And I want to be able to have all the
same functionalities when I do the screen sharing, okay, including
if I have multiple desktops at the top, I can
go to move around to different desktop Okay.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
Well, so that that would more be remote access more
than screen sharing, because screen sharing, to me, I would think,
is like, you know, you just want to see your
iPhone screen on your MacBook computer screen. So I was
a little confused, but that was okay.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Well, yeah, I.

Speaker 11 (29:42):
Wasn't sure what to call it. That Basically I wanted
the same kind of functionality.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
I just want to be able to access your computer
form and I.

Speaker 11 (29:50):
Can log in and I can do all the same
kind of stuff, ye as if I were logging in locally.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
Got it? Okay? Well, there is a remote access remote
login functionality on the Mac, so you can try using that,
but I don't think that's going to be the best
for what you want to do because I'm not sure
really how that works from the iPhone. But I think
I think the best app for you is Team Viewer.

(30:19):
Have you heard of this?

Speaker 11 (30:20):
Yes, I have on your show.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
Have you tried it? Okay, So I think that's going
to be the easiest because it's it's free for personal use,
so it's going to be very easy, lightlifting for you
to try it out and see if it works. But
Team Viewer is probably going to be the best because
you can set that up on your computer and set
it up once with a password, and then you can
remote log in from your other devices. So that's going

(30:46):
to probably be the easiest and it's free. So I mean,
there's not much more. Now since you heard me talk
about this, I use this often with my mom across
the country, and when she's having a problem, she just says, okay,
I'm ready to connect, and you know, we have it
set up where she has the ability to give me
a new password every time, just for privacy reasons and that.
But you can set it up where you have full

(31:07):
access of your computer anytime you want.

Speaker 11 (31:09):
So that and I can do that from my iPhone
when I'm away from home.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yeah. Now, I don't think that's going to be the
best experience because the iPhone screen is tiny, so you know,
it's really not going to be the best experience from
the iPhone. Maybe an iPad would be a better solution.

Speaker 11 (31:25):
Okay, okay, but you know there's to do that from
other Apple devices.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yes, yeah. Now the other thing is there are a
lot of programs that you can use. So have you
heard of Go to my PC? Yes, so that's a
paid version of this, and so you can check that out. So,
I mean that's going to be another option, and that's
a you know many It just depends what your needs are.

(31:50):
So a lot of these things are built into the
operating systems at a certain level. But if you want
it to be super easy and just super. You know,
you don't have to really think about much. I think
Team Viewer is going to be the easiest.

Speaker 11 (32:00):
Oh okay, yeah, I was mainly looking for a free solution.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (32:05):
Oh then yeah, And I know that you had mentioned
something like Apple Remote Desktop before on on the Max,
but I'm not I don't really know what that does.
And I saw that that's paid.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
I think, yeah, Well, the Apple Remote Desktop I think
is just a little bit trickier to set up. But
if you can set that up on your Mac and
get it, but I just I just don't know if
it works through the iPhone. That's my issue.

Speaker 11 (32:26):
But you know that team Viewer will work.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, Team Viewer will work. It works from a variety
of like it has apps for basically all the major platforms.

Speaker 11 (32:33):
So oh that's awesome, Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
That's the one i'd go through first. Is it raining
over there in Torrance?

Speaker 11 (32:40):
You know what they've been saying, it was going to
rain on and off, scattered showers, But at the moment
in Torrance, it's not raining, and there's like partial blue sky.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Oh there you go, see looking looking right out there?
All right, Diana, make sure you go to the website.
Rich on tech dot TV. Let me know if the
solution works, can help more folks when we share these
kinds of things. Thanks for the call today, appreciate it.
Let's go to Bruce in Los Angeles. Bruce, you're on
with Rich.

Speaker 12 (33:10):
Hey, Rich, thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
Absolutely. What can I help you with?

Speaker 12 (33:15):
Well, it's just a quick question. It's about USB powered
portable storage devices.

Speaker 13 (33:22):
I've been using Seagate five.

Speaker 12 (33:24):
Terabyte hard drives and I'm looking for something a little
bit higher capacity. Does anything exist that's more than five terabytes?

Speaker 14 (33:34):
Is really my basic question?

Speaker 1 (33:35):
And if so, what do you recommend, oh, for a
hard drive or for a or for a USB like
a stick.

Speaker 12 (33:43):
For a portable of USB hard drive that I don't
need an.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
External power source for. Okay, Uh, well, let's see we
I mean, I assumed you've looked on Amazon. The highest
that I've gotten so far as five terabytes, so I
haven't looked at something over that. Have you found? Is
there anything on Amazon over five terabytes?

Speaker 14 (34:06):
Uh?

Speaker 15 (34:06):
Not that I can find.

Speaker 12 (34:08):
That's what I was That was my question. Or maybe
you know something about the future of that technology is
or they is something bigger capacity in the in the words.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
For the future.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Well, I think these things get bigger every you know,
a couple of years, and it's really the expense, I
think is the main thing. The brands. You know, there
are a couple of main brands that people like for
sort of these these small USBC drives and obviously, uh
I say Lacey it's maybe l C, L A C
I E. But that is one that a lot of

(34:44):
people like.

Speaker 5 (34:44):
For that.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Uh G Drive is Let's see do they even have
those anymore? Uh G drive is a is another brand
that people like. Let's see that's from Western Digital and
those are pro drives. But the problem is a lot
of those Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. So just
looking up, like just from what I've seen most of

(35:06):
the time, I haven't really seen something bigger than the
five terabytes you have to go into sort of the
premium brand. So I'm looking at this Western Digital black
capacity up to two terabytes, up to four terabytes. Yeah,
I'm not really finding something over that. Yeah, even for
these yeah, five terabytes seems to be the max right now.

(35:28):
Off the top of my head, I think a good
you know, this is obviously getting into the prosumer sort
of market because most consumers are not carrying around a
five terabyte drive, or if they are, that's the highest
they're carrying around. So I have to do a little
bit more research and see if there's something out there
that's better than this. But I think the five terabyte
is probably going to be widely available for most consumers.

(35:50):
But that doesn't mean that there's not something higher out
there that's going to be more expensive, or something that
is from more of a professional brand. So we've got
an AB show coming up in Las Vegas, and I'm
sure we will see some drives there that have a
higher capacity that are not powered. But right now, everything
that I'm seeing in just a quick quick scan here

(36:11):
of some of these brands looks like that five terrorbyte
drive is the limit. But that doesn't mean it's not
out there. It could be the other brand. Check one
more OWC. They usually have other world computing. They usually
have a lot of SSD drives and things like that.
So let me just see here portable drives. I'm just curious.
Now you've got me curious. Let's see portable drive. They've

(36:34):
got a bunch. Let's see Envoy. Nope, what's their max here?
All right?

Speaker 2 (36:39):
Eighty eight?

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Rich one on one. While I look at this eight
eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Oh,
it looks like they're four terabytes. You are listening to
rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro.
Here we're listening to the new Ariana Grande song, and
it sounds like she's talking about technology. See this is

(37:05):
what our relationship is with technology. How appropriate, Ariana? Thank you.
See she's talking about your phone and your computer. Bobo says,
only I would would take that from this song lyrics, Yes,
only me. Everything in my life goes back to technology.

(37:26):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Eight eight eight rich
one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. I'm telling you go back to
the song and listen to what she just said. It's uh,
it's the same. It's literally technology. We can't be friends.
Ariana Grande website rich on Tech. See okay, Bobo's listening again.

(37:48):
Here we go. See she's talking about blue bubbles versus
green bubbles. I knew it. She's smart. Website richon Tech
dot TV. Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter
rich on Tech newsletter looked up on the website. In
it this week, I talk about the eighty eight page

(38:09):
anti trust lawsuit against Apple from the US government. I
read the entire thing, Yes, I did, and I picked
out the most interesting parts and I wrote about it
in this week's newsletter. So if you're interested in what
the government's case is against Apple, sign up for the newsletter.
Read it for free enjoy. Let's go to Sarah in Ventura, California.

(38:32):
Sorry you're on with Rich.

Speaker 16 (38:34):
Hi. I have an Android phone and I had antivirus
on it my eset. It wouldn't allow me to update,
and so I thought I would delete it and then
reinstall it.

Speaker 17 (38:50):
But then my.

Speaker 16 (38:52):
Google Play it said it kept whirling, and it said
try again later. And then after a few hours of
trying this, I figured out the the Google Play is
not going to work, and I don't know. On the tablet,
the Google Play stopped working.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
Also on both your phone and your tablet. Yes, Well,
that sounds like a network issue, because there's they're not
they're not They're not connected in any way between the
two devices. So are you on your home Wi Fi?

Speaker 16 (39:27):
Yes, But this happened on the the phone after the
tablet that just the Google Play wouldn't work on that.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Well, it won't update any of your apps at first.

Speaker 16 (39:41):
Yeah, and then now it won't do anything. It just
says try again later.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Try again. Well, here's the deal. Google Play is up
and running. It is working, So this is definitely either
an issue with your network at home, So I would
check to see if you have any sort of VPN
or anything running on your phone or your network your router,
turn that off and try to update your apps again. Now,
on Android, things can get a little wonky sometimes, and

(40:07):
if you need to close out an app, there's a
couple of ways of doing it. So if you're running
a Samsung or a Pixel, just press and hold on
the app and you should see a little eye for
information right, So if you tap and press that, you
will see a whole bunch of things you can do.
And on Samsung, specifically, in the lower right hand corner,
it says force stop. So if you ever have an

(40:29):
app that is acting up, you can force stop it
and that means it's gonna close out that app for real.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Now.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Sometimes you can also just kind of swipe up from
the bottom of your screen and see all your apps
and you can do close all. But this is sort
of another way of doing that, so you force close it,
it will shut down that app, and then the next
time you open that app, it's sort of like restarted
and refreshed. So I just did that online. That's one
way of doing it. The other way you can do
it is if you're really having trouble and this is

(40:57):
kind of like a pro tip here. If you're ever
having trouble with an app things are just not working,
you can go in and clear out the storage that
that app is using. It's the data and the cash,
and that will also restart an app to its factory
fresh format. So sometimes even if you reinstall an app

(41:17):
from Google Play, it may just like pick up where
it left off. So if you want to completely get
rid of everything that app is storing on your phone,
all the cookies, all the data, anything that it may
remember about you, you can go in and clear the storage.
So let me show you how you do that same
kind of thing. Just take any old app on your phone,
press and hold on it. You should see a little
eye in the upper right hand corner of that app.

(41:39):
You tap that, that will bring you into what's called
the app info. This is kind of behind the scenes
of the app. It shows you your privacy information, how
much mobile data it's used, how much battery it's used,
how much storage it's using. But then go ahead and
tap under where it says storage. You tap storage and
now it tells you. So, for instance, my Facebook is

(42:01):
using four hundred and sixty eight megabytes of app it's got.
The app is four hundred and sixty eight megabytes, the
data on my phone is three hundred and fifty nine megabytes,
the cash is four hundred and fifteen megabytes, for a
total of one point two four gigabytes. So if I
press clear data and clear cash down to the bottom
of my screen, that will reset the Facebook app to

(42:24):
factory default, which means the next time I open that app,
it's going to ask me to log in and I'm
going to have to go through that whole flow again.
So you can do that with Google Play, and I
will do that right now and see what happens. So
let's go through the storage and I'm just going to
clear the data, clear the cash, and now let's see
what happens. When I open up Google Play, it's looking

(42:46):
for updates fresh and it's scanning the apps for any issues.
And I just noticed that. Yeah, so now it's just
found all my new downloads, so that's probably what you
want to do. That's what I'd recommend doing, ERA and
seeing if that helps. It sounds like you've got something
just kind of stuck or hung on that phone. Uh.
The other thing you could do before you do all

(43:07):
that is just restart your devices and hopefully that helps out.
Thanks for the call today from Ventura, California. Let's go
to Frank in Ontario, California. Frank, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 18 (43:18):
All Rich a question for you.

Speaker 19 (43:20):
I've tried multiple docing stations to try to connect a
MacBook and multiple screens because i home I have two
screens to monitors and it won't allow me. But I
use a Dell or use an HP laptop and I'm
able to do it except for the Mac.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Well, see this is why Apple's under fire. No, I'm
just kidding. So a couple of things on the Mac,
so you gotta you gotta check what kind of Mac
do you have?

Speaker 19 (43:52):
It's actually my daughter, so I'm not sure which was his.
The lan't one?

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Okay, So here's the deal. There are many many ways
you can connect the Mac to an external display, and
so I'm going to link up a help page on
the show notes. Because it depends what computer you have,
you have to have a couple things that work together. Okay,
Number one, you have to look at your Mac and
see and I'm just gonna put you on a hold
here because I hear a little bit of feedback. So

(44:17):
first off, you have to look at your Mac and
see what kind of ports it has for connecting screens.
Some of them have just straight up USBC, some of
them have Thunderbolt, some of them have HDMI, and some
have displayporters. So you have to go and identify what
kind of icon is on your computer and what kind
of port that is, and that will help you understand

(44:40):
what kind of monitor you can connect. Now you can
also see how many screens your specific Mac can support.
So some can only do one screen at a time,
some can do multiple screens at the same time. Again,
by identifying your Mac model, you will be able to
see where you stand with that, and then you need
to have the right cable to connect. If you don't

(45:01):
have the right cable, you might need an adapter if
your monitor, say, doesn't support DisplayPort or something like that.
So once everything's figured out and you know what you're
working with. Then you can decide what kind of dock
you need, and what kind of cables you need, and
of course what kind of monitor you need. Obviously, the
easiest way is probably going to be a Thunderbolt with

(45:21):
a DisplayPort or sorry, a Thunderbolt and HDMI is going
to be the easiest because those are the most straightforward.
But you can also look at some of these different docks.
The brands that you want to look at are Kensington
and also Belkan and also Anchor, and they are called
a dock basically where you plug your computer into the

(45:44):
dock and then you can plug the monitor into that
dock as well. So that's probably gonna be the easiest,
and I'm looking at Wirecutter. Some of these docks can
be quite expensive. The cheapest one they recommend is a
Monoprice Thunderbolt three dual DisplayPort docking station one hundred and
fourteen dollars from Amazon. So it really depends. Sometimes you

(46:04):
can connect your computer just directly, and sometimes you might
need a special cable or you might need a special
type of monitor that can connect to that computer. But
I will link up this little help page on the
website rich on tech dot TV going to the show
notes and you will see how to identify your Mac
and how to identify what you're working with. Again, HDMI

(46:28):
probably the most straightforward because every monitor has HDMI, and
if your computer has HDMI, it's very simple. It's like
connecting a TV. All right, eighty to eight rich one
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Coming up this hour, we are going to
talk to Jason Rhodes. He is a senior research scientist
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He's gonna tell us what

(46:51):
we need to know about this total solar eclipse happening
on April eighth. Are you excited. It's a little bit
of a bummer for California, he'll explain, but in many
parts of the US you will be able to see this.
My name is rich Dmuro. You are listening to rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro

(47:11):
here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight
Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. YouTube is introducing new
tools for disclosing AI generated content. So if you are
on YouTube or you upload to YouTube, this affects you.

(47:35):
AI is obviously having a huge impact on content creation.
People are making a lot of photos with it, and
videos is the next big thing, and so of course
YouTube wants to have something in place to understand when
you are watching something that is AI generated. So first off,
now in creator studio, this is when folks upload stuff

(47:59):
to YouTube, they will be asked to take a questionnaire
and they will have to disclose when their videos contain
realistic content that could be mistaken for real people, real places, scenes,
or events. Now they don't have to disclose when it's
clearly an unrealistic event like in animation special effects, or

(48:19):
when they use AI to write their scripts any sort
of like planning like scripts, captions, or whatever. Labels will
appear in the expanded description for most videos, while more
sensitive topics will have a prominent label on the video itself,
so right when you fire up that video, it will say, hey,
this has this contains AI. Now, if creators don't say

(48:41):
that their stuff contains AI and YouTube scans it and
finds out that it does, there may be labels that
are applied to that automatically, or they may be demonetized,
so they won't be able to make money on the
views on these things if they don't disclose it. Now,
this obviously is not very cut and dry. There is
going to be a lot of AI generated content that

(49:02):
is not identified that YouTube can identify, and that's going
to be a very tricky area. But for creators who
are trying to stay within the rules, this is the
new rule that they must abide by if they want
to stay in good standing with YouTube. But as we know,
our world is going to become a very interesting place

(49:22):
with AI already. I mean, you thought the green screen
was tricky. I mean green screen is nothing. You know,
you can replace the background. We thought that was cool
when you zoomed and you're sitting at home and it
looks like you're in a palace or whatever. No, green
screen is nothing compared to what AI will be able
to create in the next let's call it a year

(49:43):
to two. Right now, it's just at the very beginning,
but people are going to be creating entire cartoons, entire
realistic looking short films, instagram reels, tiktoks, whatever it is,
it's AI. They will type in something on a website
and AI will do the rest. So we have to

(50:04):
be very aware of this, and especially with the election,
especially with news. I mean literally, remember when we saw
that video of the Alaska Airlines the door that popped out.
We didn't know if that was real or not. You're
sitting there like, is this real? Am I being punked?
Right now? Half the stuff you see on YouTube and TikTok,

(50:25):
you wonder is this real? Is it fake? Is it
somehow altered? And yes, people who are playing by the
rules big you know, mister beasts of the world, they
will play by the rules and they will label their videos.
But for every one of them, there's one hundred other
people who are just uploading trash that are not playing
by the rules because they don't care. And guess who.
It's up to us, the humans that watch this stuff,

(50:47):
to sit there with a critical eye and say, hmm,
is this real? Is this fake? And it takes a
while for us to figure that out sometimes. I mean, look,
what just happened with this whole Caate Middleton thing. I mean,
it's just wild that, you know, we're in there looking
at pictures and analyzing them, and then she's walking down
the street and we're analyzing that, and then of course
the real story comes out. What was really happening and

(51:09):
of course it's very heartbreaking. But again, anything we see,
or do, or experience in this world, unless we are
there for ourselves, it's going to get a whole lot trick. Here,
let's go to David in Los Angeles. David, welcome to
the show.

Speaker 18 (51:24):
Hey Rich, how are you?

Speaker 1 (51:26):
I'm doing fantastic. How are you very good?

Speaker 18 (51:29):
I love your show.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
By the way, thank you.

Speaker 18 (51:31):
I hope we can do it on Sundays as well. Anyway,
quick question, I'll try and get two questions quickly. I
use Apple Maps quite a lot and I like to
find the directions before I go. So when I put
it in the car on the map player in the car,
you can't get directions. It says you have to be
on the internet. Well, how can you be on the
internet during the car?

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Well, I mean it could use cellular.

Speaker 18 (51:58):
No, it doesn't work on you won't get that. You
can get the directions on the phone, but not actually
on the screen on the in the car. It won't
come up.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Hmm. I've never had that issue. Are you talking Apple
Maps or Google Maps? Which one?

Speaker 18 (52:13):
Apple Maps? It doesn't work. And then it said if
you Google it, it says, oh, only have to be
on the internet. Have you tried it? You can get
it on the phone, but usually my phone's stuck in
the middle.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Of the Oh right, yes, okay, well that is really yes,
I agree that is annoying. Well, there is a new
feature on Apple Maps which they just added. Have you
downloaded the offline maps for your city? Okay? Well that
should solve it then. So what you want to do
is go into Apple Maps and search los Angeles. Are
you in? Where are you los Angeles?

Speaker 18 (52:44):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Search Los Angeles and you will see a new button
pop up that says download, and so that will download
the offline maps for your area. And by the way,
if you download all of Los Angeles, it's one gig
one point two to one gigabytes. Now that will solve
a lot of the problems because what happens is it
will still be able to get those directions for you

(53:05):
when it's in that no man's land of Are you
in the Wi Fi? Are you in the you know
the cellular? You know, when I'm in my driveway, That's
what happens every day. It's like I can't do anything
on my car until I drive down halfway down the street.
But this will help you at least get your directions
when Why did.

Speaker 18 (53:22):
It used to work but then he went off? Why
would they take it off? You can't see on the
scuing itself. It seems a bit ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Uh, you know, I'm not sure I'm nuss er on
that one, but yes, things change. But hopefully this should
help you out in that in between. And what happens
is it will get the preliminary directions and then once
it regains that signal and gets that Internet signal, it
will update the directions with any sort of traffic routing
or traffic updates or an ETA.

Speaker 18 (53:52):
So then he can give me directions, but he won't between.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Yeah, it's going to take a little bit of an update.
And by the way, if you're on Google Maps, you
should and can do the same thing. Just type in
okay maps and enter and that will bring up the
secret download this map. And I do that for every
city I travel to because you always want to have
offline maps in case your cellular is sketchy. All right,
coming up, we are going to talk to Jason Rhodes

(54:17):
at NASA. This is rich On Tech.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Welcome back to rich On Tech.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
triple eight rich one oh one.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Well, coming up here in the US on
April eighth, twenty twenty four, we have a total solar eclipse.
And to learn more about this event, I talked to
Jason Rhodes, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California. So, first off, I asked him

(54:51):
what makes this event so unique.

Speaker 20 (54:53):
Earth is one of a very few plants that we
know of that has an interesting phenomenon. Our moon in
the sky is about the same size as the Sun,
and so when the Moon passes exactly in front of
the Sun, it's just large enough to block out the Sun.
And that's what we call a total solar eclipse. So

(55:14):
the last total solar eclipse in the United States was
in twenty seventeen, so only seven years ago. But the
next total solar eclipse in the United States is about
twenty years in the future, in twenty forty four.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Now, I'll be completely honest here. When the total solar
eclipse happened in twenty seventeen, I covered it, but I
wasn't really enthusiastic about it. I'm not even sure I
went outside to see it happen, but this time around,
I'm very excited, even though in California, I'm not gonna
have a view of the total solar eclipse. So I
was just curious. From Jason's standpoint, what captivates the general

(55:48):
public about total solar eclipses.

Speaker 20 (55:52):
Well as a scientist, one of the exciting things about
a total solar eclipse is that with the Moon blocking
the day of the Sun, we can see the atmosphere
of the Sun, or what we call the corona of
the sun. Corona is Latin for crown. This is the
outer layer of the Sun that extends much further than
the surface of the Sun. But it's not nearly as

(56:13):
bright as the surface of the Sun, and so to
study it and see it, we need to be able
to block out the Sun, and so we can do
that with a solar eclipse, or scientists have developed instruments
called corona graphs that allow us to block the Sun
and see that corona or atmosphere of the Sun. However,

(56:33):
when we do that, it's not something that you can
go outside and stand there with your special eclipse classes
and see this happen. So that's what excites me as
a scientist, but as a human, I've seen only one
solar eclipse, but it was really an amazing, sort of
life changing experience to watch the sun go dark and
fuel night happen all of a sudden, listen to the

(56:56):
animals go silent because they're a bit confused, and just
see this sort of twilight sky. That's just an amazing
and moving experience.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
So if you want to experience this total solar eclipse,
you have to prepare. It's not visible everywhere in the nation.
It stretches from Texas to Maine. And so I ask Jason,
if you want to prepare for this, what do you
have to do?

Speaker 20 (57:21):
So you need to go into the path of totality,
that is where there will be a solar eclipse, and
that's a path that stretches in the US from about
Texas up into the northeast.

Speaker 13 (57:33):
You want to go.

Speaker 20 (57:33):
Where there's not going to be clouds and keep your
fingers crossed that it's not cloudy. And the important thing
is as the eclipse is coming, you want to wear
special eclipse glasses that are going to protect your eyes
once the eclipse happens. And the totality happens, you can
take those glasses off.

Speaker 13 (57:51):
Because the sun is.

Speaker 20 (57:51):
Blocked to never look directly at the Sun, you can
really damage your eyes. Even if you don't feel the pain,
that light coming from the Sun damage your eyes. And
this is especially true as the Sun is being eclipsed
by the Moon, because it starts to get darker, but
there's still enough light to damage your eyes. And it's
only when the Moon is completely covering the Sun in

(58:13):
that total eclipse, which just happens for a few minutes,
that you can take those glasses off and just be
in the moment and experience this eclipse.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Now, this is where your Amazon Prime membership comes in.
You have to get a pair of solar eclipse glasses.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
You can get them on Amazon.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
A ten pack runs about fifteen dollars. Now, if you
don't do that, there is a DIY solution.

Speaker 20 (58:35):
So one of the things you could do is create
what we call a pinhole camera. You take a piece
of paper or a piece of cardboard and you make
a hole in it and you use that hole as
sort of put that between another piece of paper and
the sun, and the light from the Sun will come
through that hole. And make an image of the eclipse
on the other piece of paper or on the ground.

(58:57):
But I really strongly recommend that if you're going to
be where you can see the eclipse, to get those glasses,
because it'll allow you to experience the full grandeur and
splendor of the eclipse.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
If you don't live in the path of totality and
you're not going to travel somewhere to get in that path,
I was curious if it's still worth it to even
go outside.

Speaker 20 (59:17):
I think it's completely worth going outside and taking a
look if you're not in the path of totality, because
you can still see a partial eclipse where the disk
of the moon will go across part of the Sun,
and that's still a really interesting thing to see.

Speaker 13 (59:32):
That's a unique experience for most people.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
What I think is really neat about any sort of
natural phenomenon is that it gets people interested in science
and nature, especially kids and even adults.

Speaker 20 (59:43):
I think for a lot of humanity's history, people didn't
understand when eclipses were gonna happen or what was happening,
and it was scary to see the Sun move away.
But in the last few hundred years, science has allowed
us first to understand what the eclipse meant. It was
just the Moon going in front of the Sun. Then
to predict these eclipses, and then to use the eclipses

(01:00:06):
to study the universe. And there are a few ways
that we've done that. Of course, there was an eclipse.
When there's an eclipse, we can look at the atmosphere
of the Sun, and that's a really exciting thing that
we're not able to do otherwise.

Speaker 13 (01:00:19):
And about one hundred years ago.

Speaker 20 (01:00:21):
There was an eclipse that people used to prove Einstein's
theory of relativity, that is, our theory of gravity. Just
a few years after Einstein posed this theory. They looked
at the motions of stars that were distorted by the Sun,
and they couldn't see those stars until there was an eclipse.

Speaker 13 (01:00:39):
So there was a race to go where the eclipse
was going to be.

Speaker 20 (01:00:43):
Because Einstein's theory relativity had predicted that we would see
something amazing during that eclipse, and sure enough we did.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
So.

Speaker 20 (01:00:51):
Eclipses are a huge victory for science in predicting and
understanding eclipses and using them to understand a lot about nature.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
Speaking of science, wait until you hear about the project
that Jason is working on.

Speaker 20 (01:01:06):
So one of the missions that I work on here
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the Nancy Grace Roman
Space Telescope, and Roman will have an instrument called a coronagraph,
And these coronagraphs were originally developed to block out the
Sun so you could see the corona or the atmosphere
of the Sun. But the coronagraph on the Roman Space Telescope,

(01:01:26):
which is scheduled for launch in twenty twenty seven, will
actually block out the discs of distant stars to allow
us to see the planets around those stars. And we
call those planets exoplanets. So it's going to be an
instrument that creates an artificial eclipse to allow us to
study planets outside of our Solar system.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
So we'll get someone at NASA interested in outer space.

Speaker 5 (01:01:49):
Oh.

Speaker 20 (01:01:50):
I grew up reading a lot of science, reading science fiction,
and I've always had a strong desire to understand how
the universe works. And I fulfilled my wish by working
at the best place in the world, NASA, whose mission
it is to understand how the universe works. So a
lot of the technology that makes our lives better and
makes our lives longer and healthier comes from understanding how

(01:02:13):
the universe works. And there's a lot of knock on
effects from the understanding of the universe that allow us
to live better, fuller lives. And I'll give you one example.
I talked earlier about Einstein's theory of relativity, and the
first proof of that theory was using an eclipse. But
Einstein's theory of relativity is what allows GPS to work.

(01:02:35):
It allows us to use our smartphone to navigate. And
so when Einstein was coming up with that theory, he
of course had no vision for the future that it
was going to use.

Speaker 13 (01:02:44):
People were going to use GPS so that they could navigate.

Speaker 20 (01:02:47):
But one of the things in understanding universe it allows
us to create these technologies like GPS, which make our
lives better and safer.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
When I asked Jason if you had one last piece
of advice, I was surprised at his an.

Speaker 20 (01:03:00):
Sir, Yes, I do have one piece of advice, and
that is, don't try to take a movie of the
eclipse with your phone or a picture of the eclipse
with your phone. Just be in the moment, experience the eclipse,
look at it, and I guarantee you you will remember
it for the rest of your life, whether you have a.

Speaker 13 (01:03:16):
Picture of it or not.

Speaker 20 (01:03:17):
So if you want to google NASA and U for instance,
the Roman Space Telescope, that's a great way to find
out things that I'm working on. Another great resource is
the Planetary Society. That's a great resource for space in general.
And if you want to find out more about the
eclipse and where you can watch it and how you
should watch it, I think the Planetary Society website is

(01:03:40):
a really good resource.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
My thanks to Jason Rhodes, Senior research scientist at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
All right, if you have a question about technology, give
me a call Triple eight rich one oh one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
That's eight eight eight seven four to.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Two four one zero one, or rich on Tech coming
your way right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking tech at
Triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. The website

(01:04:18):
for the show rich on Tech dot tv. Just click
the toplink that says radio show. I she'll tell you
what it actually says. Probably would help right it says, well,
has the phone number for the show, says radio show links,
and then it's got the date for this weekend. So
that's where you can find the links. And people often

(01:04:39):
email me and they say, hey, did you post this
on the links? Yes, everything is on the show links.
You'll be very surprised just how good I am with
the show notes. They are very, very thorough. And by
the way, I wanted to circle back to Diana and Torrance.
She wanted some remote desktop software to access her MacBook
Pro remotely talked about Team Viewer, which is free, or

(01:05:01):
of course go to my PC, which is paid. But
I was consulting with my tech brother and I said, hey,
is there a you know, a better thing than some
of these things that we were talking about. And he
also recommended an open source alternative is rust desk are
U s T d E s K. And I love

(01:05:23):
any open source alternative software that's just you know, free
and let's see, well, hold on, let me see if
this is free. This may not be free. Hold on, Yeah,
self hosting is free, so you kind of, you know,
you may need to know a little bit if you
want to self host this. But it's nice to have
options out there. And by the way, the other website

(01:05:44):
that I like if you ever looking for something like
let's say you know an app right and you want
to find something that's similar to that app. The website
I like for finding that software is called alternative two
dot net alternative to dot net. So let's say you
like Evernoe. You can type in evernote and then it
will show you all the alternatives to that program. It's

(01:06:06):
a really nice way of finding apps that are similar
to what you already know. But maybe you're looking for
something better or with different functionality, or that's free, or
that's cross platform, and that's always a good way to
do it. One of the things I did not mention
when I was talking about the whole case against Apple,
and you've heard me say this on this show many
many times now. I love Apple. I think they have

(01:06:28):
done incredible things. They have really really just kind of
pushed the envelope in a lot of ways with what
our phones can do and how we do things. But
I also do take issue with some of the ways
that they do things. And if you've listened to this show,
you know that I have a major issue with the
fact that they do not allow I Message on Android.
Apple should have come out with the I Message for

(01:06:50):
Android app years ago. It would have solved a lot
of these problems, because that is the main point of
contention among most people now downloading third party apps and
all that stuff. Sure you can argue that, you know,
techy people like myself have a problem with that in
some of the ways that the iPhone operating system works
and some of the access you get to some of
the features and the hardware. Yes, I understand all that,

(01:07:12):
but I think for the average person, all they want
to do is just send a video to an Android
friend and have it work, or an Android friend send
a video to an iPhone friend and have that work,
or to see typing indicators. And again, these are things
that have standards that almost every other company, I should
say every company in the world abides by except for Apple.
And yes, they will later this year supposedly give us

(01:07:35):
some of those standards with RCS built into the iPhone,
but we don't know how they're going to implement it,
and I'm sure there still will be some level of
distinction between I message and Android. You know, your friends
will probably still show up as a green bubble, even
though your picture will be high resolution, which will be great.
But I mentioned anytime I talk about Apple apps. You
know Apple, when you download the iPhone, they've got all

(01:07:57):
the apps that they want on there. You know, they've
got a music app, they've got a notepad app, they've
got calendar, email, everything. Guess what, I don't use any
of those apps. I don't use any of them because
using any of those apps gets you deeper into the
Apple ecosystem. Now, if you're only going to use Apple
for the rest of your life, sure it works great,

(01:08:18):
it's fine. But I want to have options, so I
always look for what I call cross platform third party apps. So,
for instance, my notes app, I use Evernoe because it
works everywhere, and it works the same everywhere whereas if
I use Apple Notes, it's a great app, it only
works on Apple devices. Try using that anywhere else. I

(01:08:39):
just can't recommend it because of that reason. So again,
I think that a lot of these things we're seeing
with Apple are things that maybe need to change. I
know there's a lot of opinions on either side, but
at the end of the day, I think there's no
denying that Apple has done incredible things. But it's just
the method to their madness that some people take issue with.

(01:09:00):
Let's go to Seraphene in Studio City. You are on
with Rich. Welcome, Hi Rich.

Speaker 17 (01:09:05):
I'm the artist that calls you every once in a while.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
Oh how's the art going.

Speaker 11 (01:09:11):
Oh awesome?

Speaker 14 (01:09:12):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
Yeah, that's good to hear.

Speaker 17 (01:09:14):
And I love the rain too, so that I can,
you know, anyway, get to the point.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
No, I love the rain. I'm telling I love the rain.
I first thing I did this morning was open up
my back door to have the rain sound. I think
the rain is great, although we've got a lot of
it in California. Anyway, how can I help?

Speaker 17 (01:09:30):
Okay, I am hearing impaired. I don't hear high frequencies.
My iPhone works fine, the volume is great. Called tech
support last night with Apple and said, okay, I have
a MacBook Pro, I have Sonoma, I have fourteen blah
blah blah. I'm up to the latest update. But I

(01:09:50):
can't turn the volume up as much as I want.
I've tried the Beat headphones, I've tried the ear pods.
I keep losing all the cords and all the little
you know, chargers and all that kind of stuff, and
I just wanted to bring my my my pro into
tech support and saying, put some stronger speakers in, like

(01:10:15):
you can put in you know, more memory or.

Speaker 5 (01:10:18):
Something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Oh, Saraphine, you know we can't do that with the computer.
With the MacBook, you can't. You can't replace those speakers.
I mean, in all seriousness, you can't do that with
almost any laptop. There is one brand out there that
I'm doing a story with. Oh gosh, it's I think
it's called Framework, and they're actually shipping a laptop with

(01:10:39):
modular parts. Which, look, I get it. These laptops. They
are small, they're engineered. Everything with the Apple is sort
of like, you know, closed up inside. So what did
they tell you? You can't replace these speakers?

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
Right?

Speaker 17 (01:10:51):
I couldn't get past settings sound with the tech support person.
He couldn't comprehend that what I was trying to get to.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
Okay, So I think your best bet is probably going
to be an external speaker. Have you thought about that?

Speaker 17 (01:11:12):
I got so many things I know, and I just
want to keep it simple. If I'm out in my
studio working, I want to open up my computer. Fine,
if I go out into my yard, I want to
open up my computer. Fine, but I don't want to
have to keep carrying, you know, a basket full of attachments.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
Right, Okay, I understand that so well. I think that yes,
I get that, and I think the easiest would be
you know, there's two ways you can do it, and
I'm looking on Amazon. You can get a pair of
Amazon Basics USB speakers that will plug into your laptop
and that's you know, that'll be a very easy way
to get louder sound. Those are fifteen bucks. The only
issue is depending on your laptop. They're not USBC, so

(01:11:52):
I'm not sure what model you have. But I'm looking
at this app called Have you looked at this boom too? Okay, well,
I think you should try this because it is a
audio enhancement app, so it gives you control over It
looks like some of the frequencies as well, so you
might be able to boost the frequencies that you're having

(01:12:14):
trouble hearing and that might help you. So I would
definitely try this out. It looks like it's a free trial.
Let's see how much this is, so.

Speaker 17 (01:12:24):
I'd go through the app store.

Speaker 1 (01:12:26):
Yeah, you can go on the website. It's Globaldlight Dot
com slash boom two and I will link it up
boom and then the number two Globaldlight dot com slash
boom two and it looks like it's about fourteen bucks
for the year or thirty two dollars forever. But Saraphine,

(01:12:47):
I think that's going to solve a lot of your issues.
And yeah, that's why I love the show. I learned
stuff on a daily basis. I love it. Eight eight
rich one O one eight eight seven four two four
one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you how Google
can help you identify a song by singing it. This
is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.

(01:13:09):
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Give me a
call if you have a question about something. So I
watched the Taylor Swift on Disney Plus last weekend and
I'm not kidding. I think my wife fell in love

(01:13:31):
with me all over again. I just saw her melt
She's like you do, and I was like yeah, And
then of course I played it up a little bit.
Let's watch it again sometime, but it was, you know,
I gotta give her credit. I mean the girl was
on there for like three hours plus, singing her heart out.
It was amazing anyway, So if you haven't watched that,

(01:13:54):
it's on Disney Plus. I did wait until it was
for free on Disney Plus. I didn't see in the movies.
I didn't pay the twenty dollars as a no, no, no,
I'm wait. I pay for all these streaming services. I
am not paying an extra nickel. If you see my
kids come up to me, they're like, Dad, can we
watch that movie? I'm like, is it free? Because I
pay for everything. In no way am I paying an
extra nickel for any streaming service.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
Speaking of streaming, thank you Bobo. So this is pretty cool.
I found this out through life hacker. Now you know
Shazam can identify any song that's playing right use his
little fingerprints on the songs. Well, I thought this was
pretty cool. You can sing or hum a song and
Google will figure out the song name. So try it

(01:14:37):
out if you have a I think it works on
iPhone as well, but you have to have the Google app,
so Google App or on Android, it just has that
little Google search bar. So just tap the microphone and
you can literally see where it says down at the
bottom and says search a song. So you tap that
and now you can just play sing or hum a song.

(01:14:57):
So you can literally just speak the words to a song.
All right, So now we got bad blood, Baby got
bad blood. Look what you there? It is Taylor Swift
nineteen eighty nine bad Blood eight percent. Match. That's how
bad I am at singing eight percent. But pretty cool? Huh.
I mean I did not realize that that was built
into Google Search. So again, go just tap the microphone

(01:15:22):
on the Android home screen or go into the Google app.
Let's see if I go into the Google app on
iPhone and I tap the same thing. So go into
the Google app on the iPhone, tap the microphone, and
then it says search a song, and you can play
singer hum a song. That is so cool, Bobo, where's
the applause? Okay? Crickets? Okay, all right, let's go to Uh.

(01:15:47):
I think Andrew has heard enough. Andrew and Ventura, you're
on with Rich.

Speaker 14 (01:15:53):
So Apple has screwed up yet another thing. Uh oh,
let's all do.

Speaker 1 (01:15:56):
So we added to the government's list being a record.

Speaker 15 (01:16:01):
If we go into the app store, sure, I want
to share something with a friend of mine, so I
want to see find this app so I can just
send them a link. So I go into the app
store and at the top right you tap your initials
and then there's purchase history. Sure, and I typed start
to type the name of the app that I want
purchase history, and it used to just pop right up, but.

Speaker 14 (01:16:23):
Now they're filtering it.

Speaker 15 (01:16:24):
The default is for paid apps, so I've got a
tap tap tap all apps.

Speaker 14 (01:16:31):
And then I don't know what it was last year,
the year before, and then it still can't find it.
They've really that up.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
Yeah, as soon as you're saying they did change this interesting,
Yeah they did. Because that's my kid's secret weapon. They
figure out they can down they they realize because we're
on family sharing, they can download any app that I've
downloaded in the past. They can just redownload it in
puting a kid blocker. Yeah, oh they've gotten they've gotten

(01:17:04):
past the kid blockers. My kid is like a fly
to a light when it comes to YouTube. I'm not kidding.
I've blocked YouTube on more devices in my house than
you can imagine, and somehow he finds YouTube on these devices.
I mean he got a flip phone the other day
and found YouTube on it. I don't know how he
does it, but he will figure it out.

Speaker 14 (01:17:23):
Great, I can blow half a day on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
Oh well, look, it's great. But when you're a kid
and you're flipping through YouTube shorts, it's a lot of
nonsense that he doesn't need to be watching at nine
years old, and soide.

Speaker 14 (01:17:33):
And climb a tree. Yeah, while I'm on my search rant. Sure,
Apple Email lets you combine all your emails, and I've
got like twelve email addresses for personal and business. Sure,
and it searches all of those faster than any desktop computer.
I'm nine, I've got So that's that's fabulous, Except I've
got all these emails, and now I want to search

(01:17:55):
for something really specific, like a part number one, two, three, four, five, six. Yeah,
it'll show up, for just a second, all kinds of
other random emails that don't have anywhere near that, or
a specific word like antisocial established minitarianism I can't even pronounce,

(01:18:15):
but it'll show up all kinds of stuff that doesn't
have that, you know what.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
I don't use the Apple mail app, but I find
a similar issue on Gmail. So if I am searching
for something on Gmail. I have found that I get
better results when I don't finish the search. Like on
the search bar, I will start typing for something and
the email will pop up right at the top. But

(01:18:40):
if I press search, all of a sudden, it's like
I can't find that same email. So it seems like
there's a disconnect between sort of like the immediate response
that it thinks, almost like the spotlight response that it
thinks you want, versus the actual searching in the email.
So I don't have an answer for that one. But
I find that myself as well. So I usually end
up just instead of pressing the search and pressing enter,

(01:19:03):
I will just literally start typing and wait for the
first search to come up, and then I'll just not
complete that search and I'll just click that link. Now,
a couple of things, Andrew, because I just want to
help you know, if someone's listening and they're looking for
a purchase history, and you're right, they did change that,
which is kind of annoying, I will admit, because there's

(01:19:24):
no all time. They've got date range of thirty days,
ninety days this year or last year, which defeats the
whole purpose of looking for an app that you downloaded,
you know, a couple of years ago. I don't know
why they made that change, but they did give more
options on searching for stuff, whether it's free or paid,
the type, whether it's apps in app purchases, subscriptions, But

(01:19:44):
I did like the old way. Just type in the
name and it comes up no matter when you bought it.
But if you want there's two little things I will
I will mention. Number one, there's a great Apple website
called report Aproblem dot app com. Report a problem dot
Apple dot com. Did you know that you can get
a refund for an app or a movie or a

(01:20:08):
piece of music or anything that you purchase through the
app Store if you're having an issue with it, you
can request a refund and nine times out of ten
you will get that refund. And it's definitely a good
website to know, and it's pretty much it seems like
it's an automated system, although they say that they look
at these things manually. But go to report aproblem dot

(01:20:28):
apple dot com and while you're in there, you can
also search and see a list of everything that you've
purchased over the years. And it doesn't seem like there
is any any limit on you know, you can just
continue that infinite scroll. That's the first thing. The second
thing is the email address. So for me, you can

(01:20:48):
find the email address that Apple sends you things from,
and it's usually no underscore reply at email dot Apple
dot com. So what I would do is, if you
want to keep track of all the things you're buying
on the Apple app Store, just find the latest thing
that you bought on there, and then you can type
that email address and make a search filter. And so

(01:21:10):
you can make that search filter and then tag everything
that you purchase from Apple with you know, a label
that says like Apple purchases, or you can just save
that search and you could easily get back to it.
So those are some of the ways that I find
to kind of organize the Apple situation, because I will
be honest, when you get that charge on your card,

(01:21:32):
every single one of them says Apple, and I'm like,
wait a second, two nine ninety nine, thirty seven ninety nine,
what were these four? And I will tell you two
of the biggest if you ever wanted to be a
scam artist, honestly, and I'm I can't believe that this
is even a thing. But Amazon and Apple, the two
probably biggest billers in the world, they don't give you

(01:21:55):
any indication on your card statement of what you're being
billed for. It just says Apple, it just Amazon. So
when I see my statement, I have no clue if
that was a legitimate charge or not. Now I'm not
saying to do that, but like, seriously, someone's gonna get
hip to this and they're gonna start charging us random
amounts under the term Apple or Amazon because half of

(01:22:15):
my charge ledger is Apple or Amazon. And I have
no idea what those charges are for. Because between myself,
my wife, my kids, we're all charging stuff all the
time on Apple and Amazon. And it's like, okay, so
let me just look here. Do I have any charges
from Amazon on here? Okay, let's see Amazon there it
is seventy six dollars eighty four cents. No idea what

(01:22:37):
that's for. Let's see Apple, Apple dot com slash bill
twelve dollars ninety nine cents, No idea what that's for.
Let's see is keep going Microsoft store thirty nine ninety nine.
Now I do know what that's for. I bought my
kid a game Apple dot com slash bill thirty seven
ninety five. Okay, that's for my cloud storage. I get that,
but my point is they don't really give you much

(01:22:59):
indication of what Apple dot com slash bill four dollars
ninety nine cents. Now, that's a lot of things build
from Apple that I just don't really I can't match
those up unless I get a Ledger every month and search.
So anyway, am I done? We solve more time here. Okay,
let's go to break. I'll save you my riches rants.

(01:23:20):
Coming up, Gary's asking the best way to uh, let's
see what does he say? Best way to dispose of
an old laptop computer? Eighty eight rich one O one
eighty eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
I'll answer that and more of your questions coming up
right after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich
DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. This is

(01:23:43):
the show where I talk about the tech stuff I
think you should know about. So we don't discuss everything.
There'd be no be not enough time in the world
to do that, but I do try to hit the
things that I think you should know about. This week
very popular on my TV program, I shared travel websites
you know spring break is coming up and a lot
of people you want to get out of town, want

(01:24:05):
to find a hotel, airbnb, rental car, and so I
shared a bunch of websites that are not your Expedias
and Kayaks we all know them, but some other websites,
including auto slash, which is for car rental deals. I
thought that was pretty cool. Travel Arrow this is a
web browser that actually reveals the secret hotel names for

(01:24:25):
price lines express deals. That's kind of cool. I've not
used that personally, so I can't vouch. But by the way,
I was one of the earliest people to ever use
priceline dot com. My wife and I flew to Vegas
for twenty dollars and round trip, and we were actually
featured in a price Line newspaper ad because of that.
They had like it wasn't just us, there's like one

(01:24:46):
hundred people that use Priceline in the first like week.
And of course I was a nerd even back then,
and I was like, oh my gosh, you can't believe
you could pay twenty bucks and get it. You know,
you name your own price for this hotel, you name
your own price for a flight, and it's like, wait,
what and I used it for many many years for
the hotel rooms as well. I loved it, and I

(01:25:07):
don't use it as much anymore, but it's still there.
It's probably not as good as it used to be,
but it's still there anyway. Flightsfrom dot Com This is
a cool way to discover direct flights from any airport.
So if you have a regional airport near you, or
you just want to see where you can go from
your airport direct, that's a good one. Hichi Hichee. This
is pretty genius. It will take the link from your

(01:25:30):
Airbnb listing, you pop it in there, and it will
reverse search it on other sites, so it will see
if it's maybe cheaper on verbo or directly booking with
that website, so that's kind of cool. This is probably
my favorite out of all of them. It's called Wiki Voyage.
It's like Wikipedia, but it's a travel guide, so it
gives you all the information you need about a destination.

(01:25:52):
So if you're going to a place like Rome, Italy,
you type in Rome and it will give you everything
you need to know about Rome. It's almost like those
travel books back in the day, but all on one page,
and it's like Wikipedia, so it's updated by real people.
This one is interesting, nap or nappr. This lets you

(01:26:13):
rent hotel rooms by the hour, four to ten hours.
So what could possibly go wrong nappr Now, the idea
is that you can rest and recharge on the go.
When I landed in Italy a couple of years ago,
you know, we landed at nine am and our hotel
room was not ready until three or four pm. So

(01:26:35):
if you're in one of those situations, maybe you want
a hotel room just you know, take a nap in
the morning or something. And then to go beyond Google Maps,
I mentioned oh producer Kim chimed in hourly Hotels, I
know what those are used for? Napping, right, and then

(01:26:57):
Rome Rome to Rio, and then city Mapper. So if
you want links to all of these off the beaten
path travel sites, just go to Rich on tech dot TV,
scroll all the way down and it says as seen
on TV handy travel websites. Let's see Gary writes in Hey, Rich,

(01:27:20):
good show today, what is the best way to dispose
of an old laptop computer? Gary, Gary, I'm glad that
you're not just gonna throw this thing in the trash,
which I'm sure some people do, because there are a
lot of parts in there that should be properly recycled
a couple of ways. Number One, you should look into
donating it to an organization if you can. In the
LA area, there's a place called the Laptop Elf Project.

(01:27:41):
Even though this computer seems old and crusty, they may
be able to turn it into a chromebook that will
still work for someone in need. So definitely check out
the Laptop Elf Project or another organization in your area.
Just look up donate laptop nonprofit and you know or
refurbished laptop. Second way is Staples or Best Buy both

(01:28:04):
except electronics for recycling Staples, I've done this very very easy.
It is free. You can recycle items there. They take
a whole bunch of stuff, almost everything. A couple of
things they don't take, but they take a lot of stuff,
including a lot of batteries too, even alkaline batteries. Now
that's new. So I did a story about recycling batteries,

(01:28:25):
and you know, I'll be honest. I used to maybe
toss them in the trash once in a while until
I learned how bad that was, and I started saving
my batteries and then recycling them, and it makes a
big difference. You know, it's just one of these things.
It's a little bit annoying to have this big, giant
bag of batteries, but believe me, it's a smart thing
to do for the environment. A couple of things you

(01:28:46):
can't recycle at Staples air conditioners, appliances, light bulbs, large servers,
medical devices, smoke detectors, televisions, vaporizers. What's that. I'm just
I got this old vaporizer I don't need anymore, got

(01:29:06):
a new one. Just bringing this back for you. Bobo's
turning off the lights, he's closing the door. He's done.
He's done with my jokes for the day. Best Buy
also recycles electronics, and you go to the website before
you do this just to make sure they take what
you want. But usually it says you can three items

(01:29:26):
per day, and if it's a monitor, it's usually a
fee of thirty dollars. Not in California. You can look
at up your individual state to see what their rules are.
The other place. The other thing you can do this
is kind of cool. Best Buy has these mail in
recycling boxes, so if you just have like a bunch
of cables, and you don't really live near a store,
you can go on the best buy website order this box.

(01:29:49):
They've got a medium box or a large box twenty
three dollars or thirty dollars, and they send you this
box and you just put all your old recycling stuff
in their cables and things like that. You just dump
it all in there and then ship it to them
and they will recycle it. And then the other one
is Gizmo Go. Gizmo Go, and I did a web
a story with this place. But you can sell your

(01:30:10):
device and so you can put in even an old laptop, tablet, smartwatch.
You can see how much they will give you for
that item. So, for instance, let's say you have an
old let's just say you have an Apple Watch Series four.
They'll give you forty bucks for that. That's not bad.
And let's see if it's GPS and cellular. Let's see

(01:30:31):
if it's good and good condition. Is the Apple ID
signed out? Yes, give you fifteen bucks for that old watch.
So even things you might not know gizmogo dot com
all linked up on the website. Rich on tech dot tv.
All right, coming up, we're going to talk to Joshua Browder,
CEO of Do Not Pay. You are listening to rich

(01:30:52):
On Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro
here hanging out with you talking technology. Joining me now
is Joshua Browder. He is the founder and CEO of
a website called do Not Pay. So when he moved
to the U, you moved to the US from the UK,

(01:31:14):
he got a bunch of parking tickets and couldn't pay
for them, and he wanted to figure out how to
use technology to automate the appeal process, and that's what
started this product, Do Not Pay. Joshua, Welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me so explain to me this
parking ticket situation. You got a couple of tickets and
you said, Okay, there's got to be a better way
to automate this.

Speaker 21 (01:31:34):
Well, I'll use the excuse that the Americans drive on
the other side of the road. But when I moved here,
I was a terrible driver and got all these expensive tickets,
and I learned something remarkable, which is if you know
the right things to say, you can get out of
your tickets. And I really just created it for my
family and friends. But after about a week we went
from ten cases to fifty thousand cases.

Speaker 5 (01:31:54):
And that's what made me realize.

Speaker 21 (01:31:56):
That the idea of fighting back with AI and technology
is bigger than just tickets.

Speaker 5 (01:32:00):
And so I created do not Pay.

Speaker 1 (01:32:02):
And now you've got over one hundred different products that
help you out, Like what are some of these things
that do not pay? Does at this point? Like what
are some of the most popular.

Speaker 21 (01:32:11):
One of the most popular things we've released recently is
AI bill negotiation, So robot, a robot will log into
your utility bill account and start chatting with a company
like Comcast to lower your bill. And what's interesting is
the big companies are using AI and we're using AI,
and so sometimes the two AI robots are chatting with
the childt to negotiate someone's bill.

Speaker 1 (01:32:32):
Yeah, no, way, that is wild. Okay? Is this secure? Like,
I mean, you know, obviously, if someone's listening and they're saying,
wait a second, you know you're logging into my account?
Is that secure?

Speaker 18 (01:32:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 21 (01:32:44):
I mean these issues aren't rocket science. I don't think
someone's Internet account is the most secure thing in their life.
We give apps access to everything, and a utility account
is not up there among the most precious things. We
have so it's secure and it's low resk.

Speaker 1 (01:33:02):
Okay, so you've got the lower my bills. So what
does that work with? You said, a utility bill, a
cable bill.

Speaker 21 (01:33:09):
Medical bills as well. So you can actually scan a
medical bill and it will detect errors. They's an amazing
federal law that it uses to negotiate medical bills down
and this is much more important than a parking.

Speaker 5 (01:33:21):
Ticket and can create real value for people.

Speaker 1 (01:33:23):
Oh wow, and you know, I have a personal rule
with the medical bill that I almost never pay it
when it first comes because nine times out of ten
something is not settled yet, whether it's the insurance, whether
it's you know. And then a lot of times I
will call the company or the doctor and say, hey,
you know, is this the bill? And also is that
the best you can do? And nine times out of
ten they will say, oh no, here, just pay this amount.

(01:33:46):
And it's like wait what So if you just are
blindly paying your medical bills like without asking, it's that
could be wasting a lot of money. How about this
robo revenge feature?

Speaker 21 (01:33:57):
Yes, so not many people know this, but you can
actually get one five hundred dollars every time you get
a spam call. But the problem is that no one
knows who these callers are. They hide behind fake names
and fake numbers. So I do not pay.

Speaker 5 (01:34:13):
We've built a trap.

Speaker 21 (01:34:14):
And the way the trap works is it's a credit card,
and when they try and sell you something that you
can give them our credit card, not your credit card,
and when they try and run the payment, it gets
their business name, address, phone number, and then generates the
demand letter to get that cash from them.

Speaker 1 (01:34:31):
Oh my god, you are so sneaky. I love this.
This is like, I literally feel like you are like
a modern magician, but like getting people money and also
like doing these little tricky things that are all within
the law. Of course, the free trial card explain that.

Speaker 21 (01:34:48):
So this is a credit card that we've built so
it's not linked to you, it's not tied to your
credit or anything like that, and you can use it
for free trials, so everyone forgets to cancel their subscription.
Now you don't have to give your real payment information
when you're signing up for free trials. And this is
the whole mission of Do Not Pay. We just want
to build all the coolest technology to help consumers rather

(01:35:10):
than big companies and governments.

Speaker 1 (01:35:13):
What about this find hidden money.

Speaker 21 (01:35:16):
So one in seven Americans have money with the government
that is unclaimed. So this can be if you've moved
a dress and you'll owe a property tax refund, or
big companies sometimes when they owe you money, they don't
send it to you.

Speaker 5 (01:35:31):
They send it to the government.

Speaker 21 (01:35:32):
This such as all of the state databases to get
you that money.

Speaker 1 (01:35:36):
All right, and this is a popular one. You said,
everyone forgets to cancel their subscriptions, myself included. In fact,
I just had I used one of those free trial
card situations with a subscription that I completely forgot about,
and I got an email that said, hey, we just
tried to charge you thirty nine ninety nine for your
renewal a year later, which of course I forgot that
I signed up and it didn't get it because of that.

(01:35:58):
So the cancer subscriptions with do not pay. How does
that work?

Speaker 21 (01:36:03):
So I joke that you shouldn't need AI to cancel
a subscription, but we live in such a broken country
that that's the case. So do not pay, We'll go
in and the bots will cancel your subscription. So that
can be anything from generating a signed letter to get
out of your gym membership. It's ridiculous that they make
you sign and mail a letter in twenty twenty four,

(01:36:24):
but this is here, we are.

Speaker 5 (01:36:25):
That's what the software does.

Speaker 21 (01:36:27):
And then in some situations, going back to the robots,
it will actually log into your New York Times account
and chat with the representative to cancel your subscription. And
these representatives are very forceful. They'll say, don't cancel, we'll
give you a discount, or try and store you and
waste your time. But the AI is very firm and
we'll make sure the subscription gets canceled.

Speaker 1 (01:36:47):
So, I mean, this all sounds so wild that you're
using AI to do this. Does it work pretty automatically?
Like how you know if you set this thing up
for let's say the cancel subscription, Like, do you kind
of do one real test and see how it works
and then program the AI with all the different interactions
that might occur, Like how does that work? Exactly? Yeah,

(01:37:08):
So we go at.

Speaker 21 (01:37:09):
The top one hundred companies and we look for the process.
And what's what's interesting is these things are just a
tedious but not very complicated. No one has time to
send as signed a legal letter to counsel a gym, membership,
but it's very structured and tedious. So that's a great
job for software and this is really I think one

(01:37:31):
of the best use cases for AI is jumping through
the hoops that the big companies make us jump through.

Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
How do you make money?

Speaker 18 (01:37:37):
How?

Speaker 1 (01:37:38):
How do people pay for these services? Is it a
flat rate? Is it?

Speaker 14 (01:37:41):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:37:41):
How does that work?

Speaker 21 (01:37:43):
It's a subscription, So we work for our customers. It's
just like costco costco for consumer rights. So you pay
a subscription. It's eighteen dollars and you get access to
all of our services and you keep everything you save.
There are no ads and we don't sell any data.

Speaker 1 (01:37:59):
What do you make of the you know, consumer right
situation here in America? Do you think that we are
at odds with major companies? Do you think we're protected?
What do you think of What do you make of it?

Speaker 21 (01:38:13):
I think the government is asleep at the wheel and
is letting big companies take advantage of people.

Speaker 5 (01:38:19):
It's ridiculous.

Speaker 21 (01:38:20):
It should be one click to counsel and only now
is the FTC creating rules that might come into a
fact years down the line. But this should have been
in effect decades ago.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
And so what if I mean, I know that in
the early days of do not Pay, and I think
in continuing you've you've run up against a bunch of
challenges with people trying to challenge what you're doing. Companies,
obviously I'm assuming don't necessarily like this, right.

Speaker 21 (01:38:47):
Yeah, we created so many Netflix free trials with our
free trial carb that Netflix, in our opinion, Netflix ended
free trials for everyone because we were creating so many
free trials. Also fighting against lawyers, our goal is to
make legal services ninety nine percent cheaper, one day free,

(01:39:08):
and that upsets lawyers. Fortunately, we have really good lawyers
helping us. So the robots aren't going to replace all
the lawyers, just the bad ones.

Speaker 1 (01:39:16):
Now, you were doing this stuff kind of before the
blossoming of AI in a big way at the end
of last year when or sorry the year before last
when chat GBT was launched. So what do you make
of AI? I mean, what's your kind of thought on
how it's evolving and how quickly it's evolving For the
average consumer.

Speaker 21 (01:39:37):
It feels like we're making years of progress and AI
every few months. It's amazing how far the technology has developed,
and this has really leveled up our product. When I
started my company, it was just temphates, and you could
go a long way with templates, but now you can
do much more sophisticated things, and this allows us to
do these AI build negotiations where the value of the

(01:39:59):
bill is it could be a ten thousand dollar medical
bill instead of one hundred dollars parking ticket.

Speaker 1 (01:40:03):
Now what if someone has a problem we do not pay,
what do they use to dispute their bill?

Speaker 5 (01:40:09):
Well, we're actually very proud.

Speaker 21 (01:40:11):
We have one hundred percent refund right on all of
our requests, so we're very consumer friendly and we do
this because we love it. I've been working on the
company for nine years now and I just feel like
I have the best job in the world. So it's
my passion to just build these cool products that people like.

Speaker 1 (01:40:27):
And it really is incredible. We just mentioned a handful
of the things you can do, but if you go
to the website Do Not Pay dot Com, they have
so many different tools that will help you with this,
and it's it's a growing list every day.

Speaker 5 (01:40:41):
It seems like, yeah, we've got our work cut out.

Speaker 1 (01:40:44):
For us, all right. Joshua Browder of Do Not Pay
dot Com, thanks so much for joining me. Today.

Speaker 5 (01:40:51):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
All right, coming up, we're going to talk about a
couple more stories of interest, including how hackers have figured
out how to unlock millions of hotesoms, and we're gonna
do some feedback to hear from you. You are listening
to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology and

(01:41:16):
closing out the show. Three hours just goes by very fast.
Let's get it through some of the stories I think
you should know about before we get to the feedback segment.
First off, ethical hackers have figured out a vulnerability in
those hotel room locks. They figured out a way to
open millions of hotel room locks easily. They're made by

(01:41:39):
a company named Dorma Kaba and they're used in many
hotels around the world. They figured out how to make
special key cards that can open any door. All they
have to do is get one key card from the hotel,
even an old one. They use the device to read
that information off the card, and then they write it
onto two new cards. When they tap those cards on
the lock, the first one changes something in the locks data,

(01:41:59):
the second one opens the door. And this entire process
only takes a few seconds now. The researchers told the
company they found the problem in twenty twenty two. They've
been working on updating. But as you can imagine, these
are used in millions of hotel rooms around the world.
So in the meantime, and I learned this lesson the
hard way. Always always always use the extra lock when

(01:42:21):
you are in the room, whether that's the chain lock
or the other lock on the door. Because I was
sitting in my hotel room in Las Vegas once, and
I'm not kidding, I used to not use that little
lock chain because I was like, Ah, what's the point,
come on, give me a break. And sure enough, someone
walked right into my room and they were like, oh,
this is our room. And I was like wait what,
Like I literally I thought it was the housekeeping because

(01:42:42):
it was like one of those things where they just
kind of like I heard the door opening, but I
was like, that's weird. Usually they knock right and sure enough,
the door just opens right. You know, I'm sitting right there,
and I was like, wait, what's happening here? And it
was a couple and as a young couple, and I
was just like, I think you're in my room. They said, Oh,
they just give us this room and it was anyway.
So just always use that lock no matter what. If

(01:43:04):
your stuff is in the room, right, you want to
use that safe because if someone gets into your room
when you're not there, always always use the safe and
use that TikTok hack. Put one of your shoes in
the safe, so you don't forget your stuff in the
safe when you leave the hotel room, because nine times
out of ten, you're gonna lock your stuff up in
the in the in the safe and then you're gonna
walk out of that room and forget about it. Speaking

(01:43:26):
of travel, trippet Pro has a new feature to tell
you about disruptions. This is called risk Alerts. This is
for paid trippet Pro users. It will now send you
a notification if it's monitoring your airline number and there's
a weather event, political unrest, labor actions, technology outages, or

(01:43:49):
airport incidents. They're teaming up with a company called risk
Line and so basically they will monitor your flight for
any sort of disruption that is not just you know,
a canceled flight or delayed flight. These are like other
things that may impact your flight and retro tech making
a comeback what are some of those most popular retro

(01:44:10):
tech items. The Nikon Cool Picks point and shoot camera
that is seeing a significant increase in demand. So we've
seen this whole trend of people trying to disconnect from technology,
maybe on Saturday or Sunday or when they're done with work.
Because at first we thought it was so cool that
the BlackBerry gave us the ability to have access to

(01:44:30):
our work email twenty four to seven. How cool is this?
I could work from anywhere? And now we're seeing it
as wait a second, I can work from anywhere. That's
kind of annoying. And when your kid is, you know,
trying to play football with you in the front yard,
and your watch is buzzing and your phone is ringing,
and it's you know, someone at work just asking something nonsensical,
and it's just like really, So retro tech is definitely

(01:44:53):
seeing a comeback. Flip phones all that kind of stuff,
but the Nikon cool Picks is number one, flip phones
number two, Motorol Eraser and the Samsung flip phones seeing
a surge in popularity across social media and e commerce platforms.
MP three players including the iPod Nano and even the
Sony Walkman. Can you imagine going back to a Sony

(01:45:14):
Walkman at this point with like a tape? I don't
know if I could do that. Nintendo DS handheld gaming
console has also seen a rise in searches on TikTok
and eBay. Pink is the most color popular color for
retro tech devices. I'm guessing Barbie has something to do
with that, followed by orange, blue, silver, and black depending

(01:45:34):
on the device, and even typewriter keyboards for the iPad
have seen a surge in searches. And you know, look,
I get it. It's retro is always fun, right. This
is from a website called Music Magpie. Music Magpie talking
about the retro devices, and I think they're onto something
because the retro stuff it is fun. It really is,

(01:45:57):
all right, Let's get to some fee bag. Feedbag, of course,
is a combination of feedback and the mail bag. Michelle
says high tech chief Rich. I know you're not here,
it goes. I live in Anaheim since twenty twenty two.
Is a caregiver for my ninety four year old mom.
I just heard you talk about the seasun Assisted Tech conference.

(01:46:18):
Oh my gosh, I'm near the Marriott. I could have visited.
I'm so disappointed you didn't mention it earlier. Well, here's
the deal. So I understand that this show airs locally
in Los Angeles, but it's also syndicated across a bunch
of radio stations nationwide. So I really have to balance
the local audience versus the national audience. So if I'm
sitting there doing a calendar segment of everything you could

(01:46:39):
do in the LA area, that's amazing for the LA folks,
but not so good if you live in Minnesota or Milwaukee,
or Michigan or what's another M state or m City, Mississippi.
You get what I'm talking about. And we're in places
that start with more than just them. But so I
do think about that stuff, and I will. But yeah,
you're right, get it, and I understand there's always that

(01:47:02):
balance there. Jim says. Wow. Now, in addition to the
government telling me what kind of car I can drive,
they're suing Apple in order to tell me what kind
of cell phone I can purchase. What's next, what online
shopping service I can use? Watch out Amazon. The only
way that we'll get iPhone is from my cold dead hands. Jim. Okay,

(01:47:26):
we'll just move on. To Valerie. Valerie says, what happened
to the search option on your website? Yeah, that has
gone right for now, But there are ways of searching.
If you search rich on tech and the topic, usually
that'll bring you to the TV segment, and if you're
on the show wiki, that will bring you to the

(01:47:46):
different things that you can search on there. I'm trying
to see if you can search on my substack if
that has a search. My substack does have a search,
you can search there as well, So that's another way
of doing it. Thanks for the consideration, and let's see here.
Neil from Ohio says, just a couple of comments on
your TikTok guests. This is from last week. Seems to

(01:48:08):
me a little bit of a crackpot. What he said
seems true, But TikTok has put their data about Americans
in the hands of Oracle on us soil. Does he
have any references? You didn't give them much pushback pushback.
I don't use TikTok, so I don't have anything to
gain or lose. But this guy seemed a little off
where he's privy to something we all need to be
better informed on. Rather than giving Americans a deal on
a popular app. Neil from Ohio. Ah, gosh, can we

(01:48:32):
the TikTok stuff? I can talk about that forever, I know. Uh,
if you can believe it, that's gonna do it for
this episode of the show. If you want to submit
your feedback, just go to the website rich on Tech
dot tv. There you can find links to everything I mentioned,
the show notes, the TV segments, my newsletter. Please sign
up for the newsletter. It is the best way to
keep in touch. And I am doing a much better

(01:48:52):
job of putting that thing out every week and the
feedback is pretty good on it. You can find me
on social media. I am still on Instagram, I'm on
x I'm on Facebook at rich on Tech. And next
week we're gonna talk to friends of the show, Jefferson
Graham of Photo Walks TV. He's gonna explain the best
ways to capture the total solar eclipse with your smartphone.

(01:49:15):
Thank you for listening. There are so many ways you
can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it
right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this
show possible. My name is rich Dmiro. I will talk
to you real soon.

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Rich DeMuro

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