Feedbag extravaganza, AI tips & Disney Imagineering magic (131, July 26, 2025)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's going on on rich dmiro And this is Rich
on Tech. This is the show where I talk about
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 a rich

(00:20):
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.
Just go to rich on tech dot tv and hit contact.
This show is all about you. I'm gonna be answering
a lot of your questions. I've got a backlog of emails.

(00:43):
I've got them ready to go.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
You have.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
You get in touch with me pretty much every day
of the week, and so I figured I'd take this
show to sort of just get through a bunch of
these questions that I get that I think apply to
a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
So we can help some folks out.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
So email open, go to the website rich on tech
dot tv, or if you want to call eight eight
eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
We do have some guests this week.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Three great guests in fact, tech journalists and podcaster Tom Merritt,
host of the Daily Tech News Show, is going to
talk about some of his favorite tech things recently, including
the new x real glasses, and later, we've got technology
journalists Sabrina Ortiz, senior editor at ZD Net. She's going

(01:35):
to join to talk all things AI and UH. Later
later in the show, we've got Josh Goren. He is
with Walt Disney Imagineering. I told you I recently had
the opportunity to take a tour meet up with those
folks and got some cool inside looks at what you know,
Disney does with cutting edge technology to bring all these

(01:58):
experiences to life.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
So we're going to talk to Josh about that this week.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
I just got back from Kawai, Hawaii. Always fun to
go to Hawaii. It's man. We celebrated My wife and
I celebrated our twenty year wedding anniversary, which is just
wild because I remember going to Hawaii for our anniversary.
Thank you, Bobo, And it was great, really really nice.

(02:30):
It's one of these things where you got to take
the time to do these things and just celebrate. And
you know, we felt bad leaving the kids. We felt
bad leaving work. We had to change everything around the
last minute because my wife is starting a new job,
and so we had everything planned and we had actually
a different place planned, and we had to just swap everything.
And it's these little things in life that you kind

(02:51):
of come up against and you just power through it
and you do it. And we changed all the flights,
we changed the hotel, and we did it all and
it was great. We had such a nice and if
you haven't been to Kawhi, it is it's quite the experience.
I'm a big Jurassic Park fan, and so Kawai obviously
is where they filmed a lot of that movie, and

(03:11):
it is it is desolate. There's not a lot there
and that's what we wanted, and so we were hiking
to breakfast, which was really cool, just stayed at the
hotel most of the time, went to places locally around there,
but there's not a lot. There's not like chain restaurants.
There's not a lot of places to go and eat.
And I'm not really selling this place, but that's what
we wanted. And it rained every day we were there,

(03:33):
which was really cool. At night, went on a bunch
of hikes which were just amazing. I cannot speak highly
enough of all trails. If you are not if that,
if that app is not on your phone, and you
like to like hike at all, or even run or
anything that's outdoors, that just opens up the world. Like
I will tell you when my wife and I went

(03:54):
to Kawai ten years ago, I think, or fifteen years ago,
it was we went on this hike that we had
no idea what we were in for. I'm talking this
hike was about seven hours up and down mountains, muddy, slippery,
going crossing rivers, and we were in crocs, we were
in flip flops, and we had no idea what to

(04:17):
expect out of this hike. And that was before technology
gave you the ability to know what to expect in
this world. And now you go on the hikes, you've
got people leaving reviews from the day before saying, Hey,
this is what you need to know, this is what
you're up against. This area was muddy, here's the trail,
you can follow it, you can download it on your phone.

(04:38):
I mean, it really is quite incredible. It's the same
way kind of like with Google Maps. I was talking
to a couple on our vacation that was from you know,
they lived in New York City, and I said, when
I lived in New York City, it was so tough
to get around before Google Maps. You literally had to
print out your entire route on this website called hop stop.
You would say where you're starting, where you're going, and

(05:00):
it would print out directions to take the subway, and
then you would exit the subway, you'd go the wrong way.
You'd start walking down the street and invariably going the
wrong way. So, I mean, our world has just gotten
so much easier because of the smartphone and the apps,
and it's it's just quite incredible now. The thing that
I do struggle with, I will tell you when I'm
on vacation is my email. So on this vacation specifically,

(05:25):
I did not want to check my email. And I
understand that my emails on my phone, so of course
I was looking at that. But you know, I want
it to be on vacation. I want to be disconnected.
But the problem is I end up getting more stressed
out watching all the.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Emails pile up.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
And by the way, people are saying rich like I
got someone that of your very nice thank you. They
said they're a listener of the show, and they said,
this is my second request, this is my third request.
I'm like, excuse me, Like, okay, I get it, you're
emailing me and you're not hearing back, but like, you
have to understand that I am a human that is
like going through life, and I have jobs and things

(06:00):
and family, and like writing back to emails is not
something I'm always able to do instantly. And so I'm
on my trip and I'm like, I'm telling my wife.
I'm like Lynn, I'm like, I really just need to
bring my laptop and every day I just need to
do my email for an hour in the morning and
I'll be less stressed. I know I'm on vacation, but
I have to do that just to sort of triage things.
And she said, yeah, that's what my dad always did

(06:21):
on vacation. They would sit there, my mom and dad
would have a coffee in the morning and they would
sit there with their email. And I didn't want to
do that, but now I realize you kind of have to.
So it's something that I've always struggled with because I
don't leave. Some people do that thing where it says
out of office. I don't do that because no one's
really out of the office ever anymore. Right, Like there's
a really truly important email it needed of responding to.

(06:44):
Of course I'd reply to it. The other thing that
I did is I tried watching movies on my phone.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
I watched Happy Gilmore Too, which it was funny.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
I know.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Someone literally texted me I posted on my Instagram that
I watched this movie. Someone was like, way to bow
to the lowest common denominator in life. I'm like, you know,
I can enjoy a silly movie, like these are the
things you bobo's just walking out of the room. These
are the things that you open yourself up to when
you are a public person and posting on your social media. Right,

(07:16):
I posted my anniversary, posted that I watched Happy Gilmore.
I post all the time on my Instagram at richon
Tech if you want to check it out. But yes,
you open yourself up to people saying, oh, that movie
was silly too.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
I thought it was funny. I enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
And also the people shaming you for watching a silly
movie that, by the way, every single person in the
United States watched Happy Gilmore on Friday night.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Give me a break.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
When I looked at the top Google searches. Every single
search was related to Happy Gilmore. And by the way,
just how wild that, like thirty years later after the
first movie, how much has changed in our world, Like
just the age of people in that movie, the people
that died, you know that were in the first original
movie that are no longer with us. But I did

(07:59):
try watching movie on my phone because I want to
bring a tablet, And that was another mistake I made,
because I'm sitting there on the plane and I'm watching
this like tiny The first movie I watched and now
I can't even remember what it was, but I'm watching it.
It was like one of oh it was Sinners, which,
by the way, was Sinners was interesting, That was an
interesting movie. But I'm watching it and it's like letterboxed

(08:21):
inside the screen. So not only are you watching it
on a tiny screen, but there's also like two inches
of border around the movie that you can't expand. And
so my wife is sitting there, She's like, what is
going on on your screen there? Like you're watching on
a postage stamp. I said, yes, I know, Uh so
I do need to bring a tablet. A one tip

(08:42):
I will give you that I did. I did pick
up while I was at the Hawaii went to this
like random grocery store, and of course you come to
the checkout and you know, you have to put in
your club card number. And I'm telling you, and I've
mentioned this before, but I'm going to tell you again
because they're like, okay, club card, and it's always embarrassing
to do this, but I'm telling you, you put in
eight six, seven, five, three oh nine.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
It works every time. It works every single time.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
The only thing I had to know was the area
code for Hawaii, and I guessed it really quickly. I
think it was was it eight oh eight? I think
it was eight oh eight Hawaii area code. Let me say,
uh yeah, eight o waight, So I did eight OA.
And you know, the person that to check out is
like waiting for me, and I'm typing it in and
I'm like, I'm just waiting for like some sort of
alarm to go off, you know, like or the song
to start like playing on the speakers in the in

(09:27):
the grocery store. It didn't, but the guy's like, Okay,
that worked, thank you. And I'm telling you, I've used
that so many times when I travel. If it's not
like one of the chain stores that you're you're you
used to shopping in where your card may work.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
Try it. A six, seven, five, three oh nine works
every time?

Speaker 4 (09:42):
Not sure?

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Why why is that number so prominent.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
The other thing I will tell you about the trip
is hotels need to figure out tipping in a cashless society. Now,
I will tell you this because the problem is housekeeping.
You want to leave a tip. So first couple of
days I had some cash on me and I'm like, okay,
I'm leaving, you know, cash, And the problem is, if

(10:10):
you don't get change, you can't really leave. You know,
if you only have twenties, you only have one hundred,
whatever you have on you, you may not be able
to you know, you might not want to leave that
for every single time you want to tip someone. Right,
So I went around I'm not kidding. The last day,
I really I wanted to leave a tip for the housekeeper.
I went around to no less than like ten people
around the like, I walked all around, all the bars,

(10:32):
all the you know, the people around the pool. Nobody
had cash. Sorry, can't make change. Sorry, can't make change. Sorry,
can't make change. And so finally when I was I
was getting the car from the valet guy. I was like, hey,
do you have any change because I only have a twenty.
He's like, no, not really, so I had to tip
him even more than I would like. This guy that

(10:52):
literally just brought me my car got like the biggest
tip of the day just because I wasn't gonna not
tip him.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
So I was like, Okay, well here here's it. You know,
whatever you got.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
You know, It's just my point is we need I've
been in hotels where they have QR codes in the room.
I think every person that works at a hotel needs
like a QR code to like be like, hey, yes,
you can tip me, because the problem is you're just
not getting as many tips as you used to get
because people just don't have cash on them or they
don't have an easy way to tip. People want to tip.

(11:20):
They want to give you that money for helping them
out and providing some sort of service, especially if it's
a good service.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
So hotels really need to figure that out.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
My favorite thing on this trip watching people struggle to
take selfies. That is always that's a pastime of mine.
I will never it's so funny, especially in front of
the sunset. No camera can do that all right.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Eighty eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four
to two, four to one zero one. You coming up next.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one
oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. I was reading capping my trip to
Hawaii and the valet person who had no change for me,
Ki Kim wrote me and said, uh, I got played.

(12:10):
He's a valet guy. Of course he has plenty of change,
and I will give him this. It was early in
the morning. I was like one of the first people
to get my car, and so I think that was it.
And so because I did ask the valet person the
first day I got there to break you know, break
a hundred, and this guy pulled out a wad like
I'm talking just tons of money, like he was embarrassed

(12:32):
to show it.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
It was so much money, you know, so much cash there.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
And I remember when I was a waiter, I would
always start my day with the right amount of change,
right like that would be part of my preparation because
you always wanted to be able to make change for
folks that were paying their bill, and so you were prepared,
so be prepared. But yeah, nowadays, I'm telling you everything
has gotten so digital, and so you know, people just
they're not prepared. And I think that some people think

(12:57):
it might help them, which I guess in the case
of the valet guy did.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
But some people just.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
If it's if it's not going to get changed, they're
just like, okay, never mind, but yeah, let's go to uh,
let's go to Tarin in Tennessee. Tarn You're on with rich.

Speaker 5 (13:11):
By a little on about three to four acres. I'm
currently inside my home using the Aero product okay for
my WiFi extenders and router and using Spectrum. I recently
had an Ethernet cable installed outside, so now I'm looking

(13:34):
for some sort of hardwired Wi Fi extender weather proof
to attached to the house to extend the Wi Fi projecting.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Out super easy. You already have euro Euro has it.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
They've got what's called the Outdoor seven and this is
specifically meant for an outdoor setup, exactly what you're talking about.
And the good news is it sounds like you are
and ready to just install this because you've already got
the Ethernet, which means you're going to get a nice, clean,
fast connection to this outdoor extender. This thing works. Let's see,

(14:10):
it's Outdoor seven, that's what it's called. Operates negative forty
degrees to one hundred and thirty one degrees, so hopefully
you're within that range. If you're getting hotter than one
hundred and thirty one degrees in Tennessee, then that that
could be a problem. It also provides up to fifteen
thousand square feet of outdoor coveraging can connect up to
one hundred devices. I've not personally tested this, but I

(14:32):
was actually just talking to someone that that has and
it's it's getting great reviews. So it's expensive. It's three
hundred and ninety nine dollars for one of these. But
it sounds like you've got a pretty good setup there.
Sounds like you've got a lot of outdoor space. If
you want those gadgets to connect properly, this is the
way to do it. And it doesn't sound like you're
gonna need a lot of installation like it sounds like

(14:54):
this is something you can do yourself since you already
have the Ethernet jack. The only thing is you may
have to the only thing is you may have to get.
I'm looking to see if there's a plug that's required.
That might be the only thing you have to do
is get a plug for this. So but yeah, three
hundred nine and nine bucks called the Eero Outdoor seven.

(15:14):
I think that'll solve all of your problems. Taran Terran.
By the way, my sister's name is Arran. You spell
it t r e n. My sister spells t r
y n. So unique name. Thanks for the call today,
appreciate it. Uh, let's go to uh, let's see here
Super Super and Berkeley.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
You're on with her rye Hie.

Speaker 6 (15:37):
Show.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Thank you love to hear that. What's going on?

Speaker 7 (15:40):
Well, so I'm visually in treed to I my friends
let me use the raven of metaglasses. Okay, And so
I find out via my Instagram account and on Facebook.
And I was just thinking enough a college friend that
I haven't talked to you in a while, and the
only way I could get a hold of them is
via Facebook. So I went on to Facebook. They sent

(16:04):
me a code to type it in. But then it
looked like I created a new account and an account
I don't see my old e fent from college. I'm confused.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Okay, so it sounds like it sounds like you either
have a different account or two accounts. The way the
meta quest works, is it or sorry, the meta glasses
is they use your Facebook account to log in typically
as far as I know. So it sounds to me like,
have you downloaded the app to your phone? I'm sure
you have, because you needed to sign up for these things.

Speaker 7 (16:35):
Right, Yeah, I have the meta AI, but it's a
meta through the glasses are through my Instagram now.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Okay, right, talking about Facebook, right, okay, so it sounds
like you need to switch the account that you're using
on these glasses.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
So if you open up that meta.

Speaker 7 (16:51):
Oh, they're not related. They're not related at all. What
happened was that I haven't been on Facebook in a while,
and but them getting the meta glasses inspired me to
look up some college friends. So when I when they
sent me on my phone, they sent me a code.
I typed it in and it looked like I created

(17:12):
a new account instead of my old account with all
my college friends that I was trying to look for.
I'm not related, Okay, it just inspired me to get
onto Facebook.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
I got it, got it, got it, Okay, But you're sorry.
That you're enjoying the glasses.

Speaker 8 (17:26):
I am.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, those things are incredible. And you said you're you
said your vision impaired.

Speaker 7 (17:32):
Yeah, I'm totally blind. So I was been reading menus
and reading stuff off the store, and I even went
to a small convenience serve out my house and pretty
much ninety five percent it at myself. Just grabbed a
couple of baggageips and I drink and I had the
glasses read it.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
I love to hear it. Super I've got to run,
but I love to hear it. I'm glad you're having
a great experience with them. Back after this with tom
Merritt's Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro 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 the website rich on Tech dot TV.

(18:15):
Sarah writes in rude and I thought she was talking
to me, but she said, I just heard you say
some people repeat their email questions to you two or
three times. You're on vacation, your advice is free. What's
wrong with people? Always grateful for any help I can get,
either from you directly or your amazing.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Tip filled show best Sarah. Thank you, Sarah.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
I know I feel bad even sharing that, but you
know it's it's comical sometimes, like I am not like
sitting here as an operator like waiting for your emails
to like write back, but yes I do right back
to a lot of them.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
So thanks for that. Now I'm not going to get
any emails anymore. Bobo. That's it.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
We're done with the emails now. Good news is I
have a backlog of like ten years of them. Let's join.
Let's bring Tom Merritt on the show. Tom Merrit is
host of the Daily Tech News Show and a former
colleague of mine at SNET way way back.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Tom, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
Thanks Rich, good to be here. Man, good talk to
you again.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
So how is the show going. You've been doing that
for how long now? How long has Daily Tech News
Show been going on?

Speaker 3 (19:13):
Eleven years now? Oh my gosh, yeah, we've been keeping
it consistent. My co host Sarah Lane, my producer Roger
Chang still with us. So yeah, it's been going great.
We'd love it.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Now, would you call this Do you ever feel like
there's ever a slow newsweek?

Speaker 3 (19:30):
That is a point of contention with me and everyone else.
I always look at the news every day and I'm like,
there's more things I want to talk about than I
have time for. But there are definitely times where it
gets closer to manageable versus like overwhelming. But that's just
because I'm a news junkie and I love all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah, I feel the same way with this show.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Like I come in with like one hundred things printed
out and like ready to go, and I might get
to like just a fraction of them.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
I want to mention that. I want to mention that.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Oh I wanted to mention that, And it's like you
just can't get to it all, even though time is
unlimited on podcasting, and I guess, I mean not really
on the radio, but I mean if you wanted like
a seventeen hour podcast, I guess you could get through
it all.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
Right, Yeah, I mean you could do it. I don't
know if anyone will listen to it, but you you
can make one for sure.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
So you've got a newsletter this weekend. You did your
newsletter on some of your favorite apps, So tell me, well,
first off, tell me your setup, because I see you
on Instagram. You're often taking pictures on like a pixel fold, right,
don't you use like a dual phone set up or what?

Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yeah? I have an iPhone sixteen Promax that I use,
and I have a pixel fold original. I haven't upgraded
it to the new one. Although everyone says the new
one's a little more powerful. I like it, and I
just I really like using the pixel fold when I
travel because then I can do a little video without
having to pull out a tablet or a laptop, just

(20:52):
by unfolding it and increase I don't even see anymore.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
What do you think of the foldable kind of You know,
we had the new fold hooles come out from Samsung,
and you know there really trying to make that happen.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
It's been six years, I think, yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
And then of course Apple is going to come out
with the next year and everyone's gonna go, oh my gosh,
what's a fold of ball?

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, right, as always happens when Apple finally jumps on
the train. I think they're too expensive, that's my main
complaint with them. But I find the book style foldable
like I have to be really useful in replacing the
small tablet. I don't know if you remember the Next
to seven way back in the day, Wow, I loved

(21:29):
reading books on that and stuff, and this kind of
fills that spot that I haven't had a gadget to
fill in a long time. And I think even the flips,
like the Razor the Samsung Galaxy Flip are popular. My
wife has the Samsung Galaxy Flip and just loves it
because it's compact but then folds out into a regular
phone size not taking up as much room.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
And the Flip. And I'm doing my reviews of those
phones soon, but I've realized the Fold for me is
like it's great and it's amazing, and I think Samsung
did a great It's just not for me personally, Like
I just don't need that. Yeah, But the Flip, I've noticed,
actually does have utility for content creation, and that is

(22:11):
the fact that it kind of stands on its own.
It can take pictures with the best cameras at all times.
Like I did a quick little video where I just
you know, set the phone up and was able to
see myself and record it. And that is actually a
physical like difference between that and like every other phone
I've ever tested.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
Yeah, the fact that you can do like selfies and
selfie videos and everything, and it's built in stand is
is pretty useful. Sometimes.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
I didn't really want to use the word selfie because
I know Bobo will laugh at me for saying that,
but yes, it is good for all of that stuff.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
It really. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
By the way, that the tablet that I've been testing
that I kind of like for travel is called this
TCL Tab ten and it's basically a smaller sized tablet
that's Android and so it's perfect for like just watching
movies and like it actually has this I don't know
if you've heard of this next paper from TC from TCL. Yeah,
we're like almost mimics like a Kindle screen on it.

(23:06):
So that's interesting too, is you can almost use it
as a Kindle not as good as like the standard
Kindle display like the e ink, but it and it's
not bad.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
So yeah, if I remember right, because I think I
saw it at CES. I haven't been able to use
it myself. It looks kind of like e ink, but
it has the refresh rate of a regular screen where
e ink is so slow, so you kind of get
the best of both worlds.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yes, yes, and you can flip it into the different
modes like you can have it like where it's just
black and white or gray scale, and then you can
have it like as a full color tablet, but the
screen is not completely the same as like a standard
I would guess it's probably closer to like what they're
doing with the color soft Now, so tell me any
apps in the newsletter that you should clue us into

(23:48):
that are pretty handy.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Yeah, I'm not sure how many of these will be surprises,
especially to you. But the one that I swear by,
and I was looking at my stats, you know, and
like below the messages up and the Safari app on
the iPhone, the one I use the most is called Feedley.
Are you familiar?

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Is that like an RSS reader? Yeah?

Speaker 9 (24:09):
It is.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
It's an RSS reader. But they've done a great job
over the years because they launched when Google Reader went
away years and years ago, and they've done a great
job over the years of expanding what it can do. So, yes,
you can still plug in your own RSS feeds and
find RSS feeds, but they also can pull from blue
Sky or x or something and put a feed in

(24:30):
that way. And they've got a few other sources. So
even if an outlet's say Reuter's, doesn't offer its RSS
feeds anymore. You can get their stories in other ways.
And it's great because for me, I just select all
the stuff that I want to read and it becomes
my news reader. I use it for preparing daily tech
news show, of course, because I have a technology section,
but also have a sports section and a music section

(24:51):
and a personal blog section that I can pop in on.
And it solves that problem of being overwhelmed by too
many sources for me. Well, yeah, that that sure eats
my system, which is I have a folder here with
seventy one blogs I open all the same time. So
I just opened seventy one tabs and go through them
because I get a lot. So much better to have
seventy one blogs in one folder in an RSS reader.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
To be overwhelmed, yes, no matter what, we will be overwhelmed.
And then my favorite part is when I when I
want to read something later because I may not it
may not be good for the show or whatever, but
I'm like, oh, I want to read this article. It's
a long read, and I put it in my you know,
I used to I'm flipping through so many different like
insta paper pocket went away. Now I'm using one called folio.
But the problem is Once I put an article in there,

(25:35):
I'm guaranteed to never look at it again.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
It just goes down the memory hole. I know, I
know what you're meaning.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Okay, so fee way, that's cool.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
When Pocket went away, I was like, should I try
to recover? No, I'm just gonna there. I forgot what's
in there. I'll just leave it at that. Open Vibe
is another app and get this or Android and iOS
that can cross post to blue Sky, Threads, Mastodon and Noster,
which is a lesser known platform. It doesn't work on

(26:05):
X because X has closed its API, but I use
a lot to just cross post across all of those
blogs or all those microblogs when I have a thought that,
I'm like, yeah, it's appropriate for all those outlets.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Well, that's interesting, and that is that sort of like
open source. It's like free, you don't have to pay
for that.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
Yeah, it's an open source project. App is free and
when I first got it worked ninety five percent of
the time. Every once in a while install out. But
I have to say in the last month or so,
they really tightened things up and it posts pretty fast
and reliably all the time. Okay, cool, do you want
to do another one, or you want to talk about
these x ral We've got a couple minutes left here. Yeah,
let's talk about the x Raal glasses. I was using

(26:42):
these this morning for something that is of questionable use,
which is watching an episode of Bob's Burger's while in
the backyard playing with my dog. But I really just
kind of wanted to see if I could do it.
The x Raal glasses kind of look like sunglasses when
you're wearing them, but they allow you to plug into
anything with the USB C port and see what is

(27:05):
on that device, so laptop, phone, whatever. I have been
using them to watch video though, because I can get
a big two hundred inch screen floating in space, I
can have it sit in one spot, or I can
have it follow me around like I did when I
was playing with the dog, and then I get a
really good video screen without having to find a big
video screen or sit down in one particular place. So

(27:28):
it's really allows for flexibility and the video is pretty good.
It's not the highest resolution you could possibly get, of course,
but it's decent for just watching TV.

Speaker 10 (27:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
I was gonna say so, I mean cause I have
the VR headsets and it's like The ideal would be
to watch like a movie in like an Apple Vision
Pro or something like that, but I never have gotten
to that level of feeling comfortable enough or like, what's
the advantage these I did get a chance to put
them on at ces. They're instant, they're quick. They mirror
what's on your phone, which I think is really nice

(27:59):
because I already know how to use that and it's
already set up and logged in. So have you watched
like anything substantially long on there or is it more
just for like just kind of zone out with some
videos on YouTube or something. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
I watched like three or four episodes in a row
of Squid Game right when the latest season had come out,
and I did get a little tired towards like the
third hour. So I think they're good for a movie,
but if you're going to go for more, at least
for me, it started to get tire sim and I
used them for work. I put him on and plugged

(28:32):
him into my laptop and made it a second screen
instead of mirroring, so I could just pull things up
and it worked great for that because you can see down.
They're not an entire headset. That's covering right. They're just glasses,
so you can see down at your keyboard, you can
see down at your desktop, but then you've got this
huge monitor hanging in front of you. And it actually

(28:52):
helped my posture a little because I wasn't having to
figure out how to position the monitor. I could just
have it where I'm looking.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
So it's almost like a solution for someone that wants
VR to watch video but like or do like a
little bit of light work with your computer instead of
the entire VR setup that like is much more complicated
to kind of get going with.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
Yeah, because these you just plug in the USBC cable,
put them on your face, and you're you're done. You
don't have to put a whole headset around you. You
look a little weird because they are a bit thick,
but you're gonna get fewer looks than you would with, like,
you know, a quest on your head or something. The
next thing for me is to try them on the airplane.
I have some friends who've said they're great for, like,

(29:32):
you know, watching movies on the airplane. They have their
own built in audio which works really well around the house.
I imagine on an airplane, I'm gonna have to use headphones,
but you can do it that way.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Too interesting, all right, I'm just looking up the prices
on these things.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
What is it? What do they range from?

Speaker 3 (29:46):
Do you know? I think the ones I have these
are the the x real Pro start at six ninety
nine right now?

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Wow, okay, I'm trying to see what's the cheapest, do
we know? Let's see here, six two ninety nine looks
like the cheapest on their website.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
So yeah, that's the preview model. I think it's just
a little lower resolution, little smaller field of view, but
mostly the same tech.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
All right, Tom Merat, it's been fun.

Speaker 10 (30:06):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Where where can folks find you? Follow you all that
good stuff?

Speaker 8 (30:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (30:10):
If you if you want to catch us on the
Daily Technews Show, where at Dailytechnews Show dot com or
just put it in a search in your podcast catcher, YouTube, Twitch,
anywhere like that, and you can find me at free Tomnewsletter,
Free toomnewsletter dot com smart url.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
I like that one.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Thanks Tom Merrett, thanks so much for joining me. Eighty
eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four to
two four one zero one more of your calls and
emails after this. Welcome back to rich On tech Rich
DeMuro 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. All the show notes

(30:49):
on the website just go to rich on tech dot tv.
This is episode one thirty one. So if you hear
something mentioned on the show and you're like, wait, I
want to link to that, just go right to the
website rich on tech dot tv. Everything is linked up there.
Got an email from Rick, he says, talking about the
valet with a change. He said, I had a twenty

(31:12):
dollars bill. I asked valet if he had fifteen dollars
to give back to me. He said no, thinking he'd
get my twenty. When it appeared he was getting nothing,
he suddenly quote found a forgotten lot of bills in
his left pocket.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
That's so funny.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
It's like, okay, I could you could either give me
change or nothing. It's like, oh hold on, let me
dig a little deeper into my pocket and find that change.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
If you are, you know, in this in this sort
of a service industry, have that change or have a
way Like I'm not kidding the amount of people that
grumble about accepting Venmo. I'm like, dude, like take it.
It's so much easier, Like you will get paid more
if you accept Venmo, and it's just amazing. Or any

(31:55):
of these systems that let you take the money. When
I was selling my book, I use Square and it
was like, yeah, it costs a little bit of money.
That's the other thing. All these companies, Like I noticed
a trend in Hawaii. These companies are like, oh, I
got to charge you, you know, four percent, three percent
extra because we take a credit card.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
I'm like, hold on, that's called the cost of doing business.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Just raise your prices by thirty cents and don't charge me,
Like just it doesn't matter, Like we're already paying, Like
we get it. It costs money to do this stuff,
but it's always better.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Where was I.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
They wanted cash and it's like, no, just pay with
with my card. It's much easier tap to pay. Linda
and Burbank, what's up?

Speaker 8 (32:34):
I heard something worse than what you were talking about
earlier when you couldn't get fund and you can get.

Speaker 6 (32:42):
Get cash from people.

Speaker 10 (32:43):
Yeah, sometime it's.

Speaker 9 (32:45):
In a laws.

Speaker 8 (32:46):
On the other hand, Lenn Dix said, it's going through
the tocause Congress passed it. The digital dollar.

Speaker 10 (32:55):
Oh well, and the digital dollar, you know, the government
will track on everything we buy it and it will
limit what we can buy.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yeah, there's a lot of people that don't want the
digital dollar.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Now.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
Now here's the thing I'm I probably actually would not
advocate for that because when you have a digital dollar,
the government is really in control of everything you do
and all of this spending. And I'm not sure that's
something we want, right like number one cash, Yeah, well
that's the thing, like that would be well, here you

(33:30):
understand why they want to do a way of cash, right.

Speaker 10 (33:33):
To track down everything we buy.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Exactly, and not just that, but also taxes because you know,
there's there's a there's an element of cash is not
necessarily trackable in a big way.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
I gues.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
I get if you win ten thousand dollars at the casino,
they make you fill out a form. But you know,
cash in general, small amounts has just kind of moved
around freely, and with a digital dollar, that would not
happen anymore. And I'm not sure we want to live
in a world where the government knows where every single
dollar you have to your name, where it goes, and

(34:04):
you know where that was transferred to. There are governments
that are trying this. I believe China has a pilot
program with a digital currency, and I guess that makes
sense for them. So for me personally, I'm all good
with the Venmo tap to pay. I just want the options, right.
There are times when cash is king and it's amazing

(34:25):
to use, and it's great, and of course, you know
you want to leave a tip for somewhere you want
to pay in cash, great, but there's also times when
it's just easier to tap to pay or use Venmo
or whatever. But yeah, Linda, I don't think in the
US right now, I don't think we're even experimenting with
the digital dollar just yet. So hopefully it stays that
way for a while. John Let's see. Johnny writes in

(34:47):
from New York, New York. Hey, Rich, I'm trying to
email a video file that's currently on my iPad. It's
about one hundred and eighty megabytes. I downloaded the Compressed
Video and re Size app and managed to compress the
video to six megabyte. When I try to attach it
to the Yahoo mail app, it thinks the attachment is
over twenty five and will not attach. Do you have
any suggestions on getting the video attached to email? I

(35:09):
enjoyed one of your shows where you mentioned Gateway two thousand.
They were great computers. Yes, what I would do, Johnny,
is go to this website wormhole dot App. I know
it sounds silly, wormhole dot app, but what you can
do is upload the file there. They will give you
a URL and you can just put that URL into

(35:31):
the email. And what I like about this wormhole is
that you don't have to sign up, you don't have to.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Do anything special.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
It's super fast, it's super easy, and it's private, it's
end to end encrypted, and you can send up to
ten gigabytes of a file, So literally could not be easier.
Just go to wormhole dot app, upload the file there,
get the link and send it. You can even make
it where the link expires after one or two downloads.
Great question, rich On Tech dot TV. If you want

(35:59):
to submit your questions, we'll have more of them coming
up right after this. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, Talking Technology Triple
eight Rich one one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one Guests on the show today
include technology journalist Sabrina Ortiz, senior editor at ZD Net.

(36:23):
She's going to talk about all things AI. And then
later we've got Josh Goren. He is with Walt Disney Imagineering.
He's going to talk about how Disney uses technology to
bring all their experiences to life. What a cool place
to visit, the Walt Disney Imagineering, Very very fun.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
You can find that stuff. By the way.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
You can see some of the videos I shot there
on my Instagram at rich on Tech.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Just check it out.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
I've got like the little robots that I saw there,
also tried a lightsaber which was really cool.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
And then there's a floor.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
I don't think I posted the floor yet, but there's
like a floor that lets you kind of walk infinitely
in any direction, which is pretty cool. They haven't figured
out how they're going to use that yet, but when
they do, that'll be neat website for the show rich
on Tech dot TV. There you can sign up for
my free newsletter. You can also email me and that

(37:16):
is what many of you do. You can also watch
my TV segments. I've got them all there as well.
So lots to do there. Let's take an email from
Lucia writes in from South Carolina, listening on fifteen to ten.
My ninety three year old mother who's in assisted living,
has an older Google phone with incoming and outgoing calls.

(37:37):
After they connect, she tries to press speaker, but frequently
hits a different button and inadvertently hangs up. Is there
an app that would automatically turn the volume all the
way up and put the phone on speaker with each call?
There is some assistance features built into smartphones, and I
think on the pixel this would be under the accessibility settings.

(38:01):
This is a feature called call routing, so basically, whenever
you get a call, it would route it to the speaker.
I think you can choose Bluetooth speaker or just standard
so this in this case, you'd want to choose speaker,
So go accessibility settings, accessibility touch, and then call audio routing.

(38:22):
If that doesn't work, just search for audio routing and
you should find speaker phone and that's probably the best
way to do it. The other thing is the volume.
I think you're just gonna have to leave that turned
up one time, and there is a way to On
most phones, there's a way to decouple the volume key
from changing the volume for everything all at once, So

(38:45):
look into the settings on that and just look at
volume and see if there's an option to sort of
say I don't want everything to be, you know, turned
up or down by the volume key. I know they
do it on the iPhone, and it's drives some people
nuts because that's not the way it used to be,
but that's the way it is now I think by default.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Yeah, on iPhone, the feature is also audio routing, so
just look under calling audio Routing speaker, and there's also
an auto answer it looks like on the iPhone as well,
so you can have it where the phone just automatically
answers as well.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
So yeah, good.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Question, Thanks for that, Let's see. Larry writes in from
listening on KFI. Hey, Rich, I'll be starting a new
job with a claims company that requires lots of photos
of damaged property and contents. I currently have an Android,
but we'll be purchasing a new phone for business use.
What's your recommendation for best quality picks? Android or iPhone?

(39:41):
Do you have a model preference? Thanks and continue, Thanks
for continuing to enlighten us non tech listeners. Larry, I mean, look,
I think any modern smartphone is going to work for this.
I think if you want the absolute best camera out there,
probably the iPhone. I mean, if you want the absolute
best of the best, probably have to go to the
iPhone sixteen pro. But I think that the iPhone sixteen's

(40:05):
probably gonna be okay with this unless you need a
bunch of zoom. So those are probably my two choices.
I think the pixel would be fine. The thing is,
the reason I would go with an iPhone in this
case is because you're gonna want accessories and a case,
and I think that when it comes to these phones,
you're going to find that the iPhone has a lot
of options out there, and just when you're using a

(40:28):
job a phone for a job like this, it might
just be the best. And you might also be texting
or air dropping these photos to your computer. So I
think it's just gonna be easier. I don't want to,
you know, pooh pooh Android. I think it's great, But
I think if you're trying to do something that's simple, streamlined,
and a lot of your colleagues are probably gonna have
the same or similar phone, the iPhone sixteen might be

(40:49):
the best. So go iPhone sixteen if you don't need Zoom,
if you just need like a standard camera, but if
you need anything with Zoom, you probably got to go
iPhone sixteen Pro. So yeah, that's that's what i'd recommend.
Let's see, we just going through all these emails. Rosita
writes in from upland, Hey, Rich, I'm seeking your expertise.

(41:11):
I've an iPhone fifteen Pro that I need to free
up some storage. I don't want to purchase a monthly subscription.
I was looking for a device that I can transfer to.
There are so many options. I'd like your advice on
which one to purchase. So this email actually sparked an
entire segment and Instagram video and a blog post because

(41:31):
you would be surprised how many people email me about
wanting to bypass the cloud or not using the cloud
or freeing up storage.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
And I will say, number one, please use the cloud.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
It is easy, it is simple, it is safe, it
is a good way to do this. And I understand
that it gets annoying to have to pay the monthly,
but I get so many emails from people on a
daily basis that say, Rich, I lost my phone, I
dropped my phone, I something happened. Everything got erased, and

(42:05):
I don't have a backup. What can I do? There's
nothing you can do. If you don't have your phone
backed up, you are not recovering those pictures. It's just
not happening. People's phones fall in the bottom of a lake.
It's a summer, people are out, they're about, and you
never think this is going to happen, right Like, you
don't think this is going to happen to you, But

(42:26):
it does and it can so at the very least,
if you are truly against cloud storage, you can do
what I'm about to tell you, But I think the
cloud is the easiest way to do it. And there
are many, many options, right, I mean, even if you're
using Google, they have a feature on their Google Photos

(42:46):
that's called Storage Saver. So if you are, let's see,
there is a I'm gonna open up Google Photos. Here,
go into my settings and okay photos settings, backing up, okay,
so backup quality. You can do Storage Saver. And what
it does is it compresses your photos to sixteen megabits

(43:09):
megapixels sorry, and then your videos are high definition. So
if you take a giant four K video, that's gonna
gobble up a gig or two of your storage. When
it goes into Google Photos to be backed up, it's
just gonna.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
Compress it to be HD. Same thing with your photos.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
You take a giant two hundred megapixel photo, it's gonna
compress it to sixteen megapixels and it's gonna save much
more in the same space. So if you are looking
to free up storage, like if you're using if you're
using Google Photos, and you're just like you know, you
don't want to pay for more storage, look into that
storage saver setting. A lot of people say they can't

(43:48):
even tell the difference. So the other option obviously is
iCloud if you're on iPhone. But Amazon Photos offers a
completely freeway to back up your photos unlimited if you
are an Amazon Prime member, So yes, you do have
to be a paying Amazon Prime member, but you can

(44:08):
store unlimited photos there. Now for video, you only get
five gigabytes. But the nice thing is that Amazon does
give you an option to not even back.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Up your videos.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
So if you don't want to deal with like the
storage being full in about two seconds with your videos,
you can just say, back up my photos and at
the very.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
Least if something goes wrong. At least you have your photos.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
You won't have your videos if you drop your phone
in the ocean, but you'll have your photos. The other
thing is, I mean you still have flicker. Flicker is
still there, and I think they're unlimited for like, let's
see Flicker pro. Gosh, they even give you the come
on Flicker, where's the price?

Speaker 2 (44:49):
I hate.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
I hate when websites don't give you the pricing, like
right away, like it should always have Okay, here we go.
Flicker Pro unlimited, full resolution photos, sharing and backup on
all your devices. You can pay monthly ten dollars a month,
annual six dollars a month two years, prepaid five dollars
and fifty four cents a month, five dollars and fifty

(45:13):
four cents a month for two years. So that would
be six dollars times twenty four, one hundred and forty
five dollars for two years of not worrying about your
photos getting lost forever. Anyway, if you want to back
them up to a flash drive, you can do that.
I recommend the PNY Duo link. They've got a brand

(45:33):
new one V three and it's super fast. You plug
it into the bottom of your iPhone or your Android
and you can copy the pictures over. There's actually an
easy way to do this and I've linked it up
on my Instagram at rich on Tech you can see
how to do it, or you can just go to
the website rich on tech dot tv. Look under popular
and it says how to transfer photos from iPhone to
flash drive And I put that on there, and let's

(45:56):
see I put the Android one yet, No, but I'll
put the Android one there as well. But basically, if
you have a recent model phone with USBC, this is
super simple. It's a little bit easier on Android than
it is on iPhone. And the reason is Samsung gives
you a select doll, so it shows you images and
videos and it says select all, and you can select
every image on your phone in one tap. iPhone doesn't

(46:18):
give you that option. You got to select them manually.
But there are some easier ways of doing that. If
you have an older iPhone, you'll need what's called the
sand disc I expand, which uses a lightning connector. But
you can plug the flash drive into your phone, copy
the photos over, and now you have them on a
flash drive before you delete them from your phone. I
do recommend that you have them backed up in the
cloud or somewhere else. All right, I'll put that all

(46:40):
on the website. Rich on Tech dot TV. Good question.
All right, Well, plenty more of your questions coming up
right here on this all feedback edition of Rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you, talking technology triple eight Rich one oh
one eight eight eight seven four two for one zero one.

(47:02):
Also taking your emails at richon Tech dot TV. Hit contact.
Let's go to Kathy and Los Angeles. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 8 (47:10):
Hey, Hi, Rich Hi, all right. I bought and returned
a water leaf detection system.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Called go v G o v e E okay, and.

Speaker 8 (47:23):
I set it up and it just wasn't connecting to
the Wi Fi. And then I did a little bit
more homework. I have a five G network and the
GOVI only works on two point four.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
Ah.

Speaker 8 (47:35):
Yes, I did talk to Jane Sharp last week weekend
and he said this no system that works on five G.
So I'm thinking if can I get another like router
or modem that can can go between two point four
and five point zero?

Speaker 1 (47:57):
Well, okay, A couple things let's break this down. Number one,
I feel like I'm being punked right now because I
didn't mention this because I don't want to be a
Debbie Downer. But we came back from our vacation to
a giant water leak in our home. So and I'm
laughing because I'm crying inside because you know the expense

(48:18):
of cleaning up that disaster, because we actually had this
happen once before in a different area of our home,
and I actually got a water detector for that area,
but not for the new area. So anyway, yes, I'm
glad you're getting the water detectors because they this would
have prevented you know, someone was actually coming to look
at our house to check on it, and of course

(48:39):
we would have known that this was going on. But
so you're doing the right thing. But here's the deal.
How do you know that your router does not support
two point four at all? Like who's your provider for
your router? Like what type of router?

Speaker 6 (48:57):
Do you?

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Okay? And have you called Spectrum and ask them about this?

Speaker 8 (49:02):
No?

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Okay, because typically on the router, if you go into
the settings, there is a way to toggle on a
two point four gigahertz network, even if it's just temporarily.
So the smarter kind of routers nowadays, we'll figure out
if something will only connect to two point four and
it will connect. But the some of the you know,

(49:24):
non smarter, you know, the ones they provide you from
the cable company are not typically the best out there.
And so you know, there may be a setting that
you can toggle on this router. So if you're feeling no,
it's typically it's typically a log in like if you
look at them, yeah, and that's what I'm saying. So
this is, you know, it's something that you may not

(49:44):
want to tackle on your own, which is why if
you call Spectrums customer service, they may be able to
walk you through it. But typically on the bottom of
your router there is a special address that lets you
tap into the settings of that router, and inside those settings,
it'll say two point four network, five gigahertz network, like
do you want to activate those? And so that could

(50:05):
be a possibility. The other thing is, yes, you're absolutely right.
A lot of these smart home IoT devices, a lot
of them only support that two point four because they're
just they don't have the expensive antennas in them to
support everything. So where are you at now with these censors?
Do you have them anymore?

Speaker 2 (50:24):
You are no, I returned them.

Speaker 8 (50:26):
But here's the thing. I was on vacation also, and
I have a house built in nineteen twenty nine, so
I have a basement.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (50:36):
I happened to go down the basement on Mother's Day
to look for a base and I saw water. I
had to replace the two water heaters, and so when
the water heater guys came, they gave me these water
detection sing them a jig okay, and it's very low tech.

(50:59):
Place them on the floor, water hits it and this
alarm goes off. Yeah, which is great. Yeah, if you're
if you're I'm not home, Yeah, I'm screwed. Right, So
right now I have nothing?

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Okay, Well there is Okay. So the one that I'm
I use at my house is from zircon z I
R co O N and it is uh, it is
wi Fi. But I'm looking at it. I'm looking at
the details. And this one's super easy because, like you said,
it does sound an alarm, but it also will text
you if there's a problem and if there's no monthly

(51:32):
fear or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
But here's the deal.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
I'm looking at it, and the specs say that it's
only supporting two point four gigahertz as well, So I
think you're probably going to find a lot of these
water leak detectors do the same thing. And I don't
have a good recommendation for another one, like another brand
outside of it.

Speaker 8 (51:50):
Do you have a five gig or you have two
points four in your house?

Speaker 1 (51:54):
I've got both my I use euro E E R
O which supports both. So and I've only had one
gadget that has not been able to connect to the
to the dual network, which was an outdoor plug.

Speaker 8 (52:06):
But anyway, but yeah, where did you get zero?

Speaker 2 (52:11):
You can? You can get on Amazon. I wouldn't. You
might not want to go that far. I would.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
What I would do is I would call Spectrum and
just ask them just I know it's a pain to
call them and wait on hold and all that stuff,
but like I would just call them and say, hey, look,
does my router support a two point four gigahertz network
in anyway? Can I toggle that on through the settings
and see if they will walk you through that, Because
if you can just get these things to link up
once that's all you need and then they will stay

(52:37):
on that network, you know, forever.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
So that's probably the easiest way.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
And in the meantime, I'll see if I can get
another recommendation for a Wi Fi sensor that says it
supports the five gigaherts network. The problem is that maybe
more expensive, so but let me let me look into that.
Thank you, Kathy, and sorry that you had the same
thing happen. It is a pain, it is. It is
not fun to come home to any sort of water
damage because you know that they're gonna have to tear

(53:02):
so much up and replace things, and yeah, it's it's
not fun.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Coming up technology journalist Sabrina Ortiz from zd net. We'll
talk to her next about all things AI. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
talking technology triple eight rich one oh one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Before
the break, we had Kathy asking about connecting a smart

(53:31):
device to her network and it was only on the
two point four gigahertz frequency and she said her network
didn't support that. Well, she has spectrum and I was
able to in the break look up the support for
Spectrum and yes, their routers do support two point four
and five gigahertz frequencies. And so what you want to
do is you can actually sign in to your Spectrum

(53:53):
account on your services page, select Internet, navigate to the
setup smart device two point four gigaherts, select switch to
two point four gigaherts, and there you go.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
You can set it up.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
So they've thought of this before and they figured it out,
so it's a lot easier. You can also log into
your router and do it manually, but it looks like
they've kind of taken care of this in a nice
way for their customers. So again, if you have Spectrum,
you're trying to connect one of those smart home devices
and it's only got that one network, you can go
into your settings and change it. It looks like right from

(54:26):
your Spectrum account, which is kind of cool. So that's
a good thing. Okay, we've got our guests. We're trying
to work through some audio situation with that, but we've
got Sabrina on hold. As soon as we get the
audio up, we will bring her on. But we'll just
give me the word when we've got that. In the meantime,
let's go to jammy Hey rich a huge fan. Notice

(54:50):
when I try to search for old emails in my Gmail,
they are no longer there or they're not showing up.
It will show emails from a few years ago, but
not the one in the last six months. My husband
is noticed this as well in his Gmail account. Any
insight on this issue. Yes, this actually drove me nuts
because I was looking for an email I sent to

(55:12):
someone and it was literally not showing up, and I said,
I know I sent an email to this person, and
sure enough I realized what happened. Gmail recently made a
change to how Gmail search works, so now it's using
much more AI to prioritize emails that are the most

(55:32):
relevant in your search results, not necessarily the results that
are ordered by time. So if you are searching for
an email that you know is in there, like I
will search for this email and up at the top
there's a toggle and it says most recent or most relevant.
So it looks like they changed the default to most relevant,

(55:55):
and that means it's going to show emails out of
chronological order. So if you're like me and your brain
sort of works like, Okay, I know I sent this
person in an email. I want to see them in the
order I sent them. You might want to change that
toggle instead of most relevant to most recent. Now this
is it's interesting because Gmail has always had sort of

(56:16):
smart search. When you're up at the top and you're searching.
While you're searching, you'll notice you'll get a list of
the most relevant emails, and so that's always been the case.
But now, but when you pressed actual search, it would
then reorder those in the order that you were sent
or received. Now it's actually putting that most relevant up

(56:37):
at the top instead of putting them in the order
of the receive. So Jammy, definitely you found something. You
stumbled upon something that is a little tricky, and it
is a major change on the way Gmail does stuff.
So good, good question, because that is something that's really
important for people to know. Let's go to Ron in
Los Angeles. He says, Hey, Rich, I love your show.

(56:59):
I listened on K and later on your podcast during
my daily walks. I don't want to miss anything. I
saw an ad for a smart watch called the ze
Fit two. It looks full featured and it only costs
about one hundred dollars. It claims to include an always
on display and even blood pressure monitoring. And let's see here,

(57:20):
what do you think of it? Well, here's the deal.
Number one, I don't think that. I well, Number one,
I've never heard of this brand, ze Fit. I've never
heard of.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
Number two.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
I have not heard of blood pressure monitoring on a
watch just yet. I know they're trying to do that,
and I know there's some solutions for that that involve
a cuff, but I personally would just recommend what's called
the amaze Fit. They don't have the blood pressure monitoring,
but a maze Fit I would say makes the best
inexpensive smart watches. And there is a band that's coming

(57:52):
out soon next year that's already for sale in Europe
that will become the first wearable that lets you monitor
blood pressure without a cuff. I think you use the
cuff the first time and then later on and that's
called high Low h I l O High Low band.
All right, it looks like we have worked through some
of our issues with audio and now welcome to the show.

(58:13):
Show Sabrina, hold on, I gotta mute myself. Sabrina Ortiz
from zd net. Thanks for joining me, Hi, I'm.

Speaker 6 (58:20):
So excited to be here. Let's talk all things AI.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
Yes, So first off, just tell me what you do
at zd net Totally.

Speaker 9 (58:27):
I leader AI coverage, which means I write about AI
every day, I test the tools every day.

Speaker 6 (58:32):
I read about it, research it all the things.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Okay, So I mean AI is a buzzword everywhere, and
so I know there's a bunch of different brands of
AI out there, from chat Gibt to Gemini Copilot Claude,
you want to start with chat Gibt. What tell me
about Chatchibt.

Speaker 9 (58:50):
Yeah, As you know, Chatchabt has almost become synonymous with
generative AI, with AI chatbots, because it's really the first
one that popular rise of technology, right e Luanda, November
twenty twenty two. And since then, the term AI has exploded.
And it's because of chatchipt's incredible capabilities, right, Like, it
could do.

Speaker 6 (59:11):
Anything from answering how.

Speaker 9 (59:14):
A simple question, the way you would use Google with
a conversational prompt, which is really what makes it unique
and what drew I guess people to AI chatbox to
composing an entire song, essay, research peoper, you name it.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
Yeah, that's what's so wild is that it's become like
everyone knows chatchibt. Here's the thing I've noticed though, when
people download chatchibt to their phone or computer, they're not
always getting like the actual, you know, official app. So
people need to be aware that if you're not getting
like go to chat Gibt's website and make sure you
get the right app, because people pay money sometimes without

(59:49):
even realizing like some third party for this.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
You can start for free.

Speaker 6 (59:53):
Rich.

Speaker 9 (59:54):
That's such incredible advice because there's so many different knockoffs
on the App Store or the Google Play Store of
people trying to impersonate chatch GPT.

Speaker 6 (01:00:04):
And again, the apps are free to download.

Speaker 9 (01:00:06):
So if first of all, first food flag if you
see price to download, not open AI tax GPT. And
then also, like you mentioned, there's different tiers, but you
could always get started for free.

Speaker 6 (01:00:18):
The minute that there's a money.

Speaker 9 (01:00:19):
Pop up and that's like a block or two using it,
then you're probably using the wrong thing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
Yeah, let's talk Gemini. So this is Google's what do
you think Gemini strength is?

Speaker 9 (01:00:29):
You know, Google's positioned so well in the AI space
right now because they have a product that we have
multiple products, but the product Google Search up people use
every single day, So people are already familiar with Google,
and now you can access Gemini without even having to
visit the individual chatbot. Right, Like, if you've ever Googled
something and you see an AI summary on top or

(01:00:51):
those like AI overviews, those are Gemini generated. I think
that's a strength because you don't even have to go
out of your way to access AI. Like we were
just talking about downloading the chattypt app or going to
the actual website in your browser.

Speaker 6 (01:01:05):
With Google, you're already using it and now it just
pops up.

Speaker 9 (01:01:08):
But yeah, it's similar to chat ept in functionality, conversational responses,
conversational prompts that you could enter, and yeah, it also
uses Google Search, which is a really good advantage for
people who trust, you know, search results and want their
answer stuff link to.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
Google and also the stuff that you have in Google.
It's a pretty powerful way to slice and dice that.
Like I noticed I was I opened a PDF and
like Google Drive and it literally like Gemini showed up
on the side and it like summarized all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
I was like, wait a second, I don't even asked
for that.

Speaker 6 (01:01:39):
Yeah, did you like that?

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
Though?

Speaker 9 (01:01:40):
Because I feel like that's also a two edged sword, right,
Like I happen to also be a fan that in
all of these workspace apps that I use every day
for work, it's already there. But I also I think
some people are kind of turned off, like, stop pushing
throwing this on me. I didn't ask for this. I
just wanted to use my Google doc in peace.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Yeah. No, I totally understand that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
And I you know, I think it's cool, But I
think I could see the side of someone saying, hey,
I didn't ask to use this, but you know, here
it is popping up in front of me. But at
the same time, if you get used to it and
see the power of it, I think that's what they're
trying to do is show you, like, hey, this is
the benefit of AI in like a way that you're
already using it could be beneficial. Now Copilot, now talk

(01:02:18):
about you know, putting it everywhere. I mean, Microsoft is
really pushing Copilot in everything from Windows to you know,
Outlook to all of their services.

Speaker 6 (01:02:28):
Yeah, Copie it's a unique one.

Speaker 9 (01:02:30):
When it first came on the scene, there was a
point in time where I would actually preach to the
everybody that would listen that co Pilot was a stronger
chatbot than chat GBT because it was actually using open
ayes most advanced AI models for free in Copilot, where
Chat Gypt you would have to pay for them, So
at one point it was really really competitive.

Speaker 6 (01:02:53):
I think it's lost its edge a little bit.

Speaker 9 (01:02:55):
Like you mentioned, the strongest I guess appeal of it
now is that if you are ready in an office
Microsoft Office three sixty five user, where you know Excel,
Microsoft Word PowerPoint, now it's embedded in there really seamlessly.
So again for ease of access, it's great. But if
you're going to access the standalone chatbot experience, I don't

(01:03:17):
really know if there's many reasons to use it over
Gemini or chat ept unless you're a diehard bing user,
because then in that case you get to experience it
the same way you would in Google.

Speaker 6 (01:03:29):
But I don't know how many people how many.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
Are AST's say, I don't think I've ever heard the
term diehard bing user because I've never met someone. Most
of the time, it's just kind of like, oh, I
landed on being somehow now here. It's funny you said
that about Copilot because I used to sing the praises
of Claude. Like when chatch Ebt first came out, I
was using Claude for everything, and I still think that

(01:03:51):
it excels in like writing. But tell me what Claude's
strengths are, you know, I.

Speaker 9 (01:03:57):
Still think that Claude is positioned really really well in
this space.

Speaker 6 (01:04:01):
And I'll tell you a couple of its advantages.

Speaker 9 (01:04:03):
If you talk to anyone, I mean, like, not even
people who are like hardcore devs, I mean anybody who
has any interest in coding, even if just like for fun,
if you want a vibe code, you know, use kind
of natural language prompts to build your own app for stuff.
Claud's a really powerful tool for coding. And I've heard
this from again all the way, inspect from beginners to

(01:04:25):
like people who live, eat, and breathe programming developers all that.

Speaker 6 (01:04:31):
So that's one unique aspect of it.

Speaker 9 (01:04:33):
And the second thing that I think really draws users
is that security in privacy. They've never from the beginning,
they've taken pride and never training on your input data.
So for that, just you know, most of these models
generated iMOS, they get smarter by using what you give it,
and that's your personal information.

Speaker 6 (01:04:52):
A lot of time, and a lot of people don't
want that.

Speaker 9 (01:04:54):
So there's been a lot of you know, you hear
it all the time, people like I don't really want
to feel comfortable using these fool I don't want to
give my data From the beginning, Anthropic took that position.
It still holds true to it, and I think that's
really really it's draw and I think it's great that
they're doing that. We we need somebody who seeking a
slightly different approach.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
Yeah, that's a that's a good differentiator. And I wasn't
aware of that as someone who has fed like pretty
much all of my information into chat GBT because I'm like, ah, whatever,
what are they gonna do with it?

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
This time?

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
I even't had someone needed like my like information for
like flights to like book flights. I just said, hey,
chat ebt, do you have all my information? Like can
you just write down like my you know tsa pre
check it. It didn't have it, but it didn't, like say,
it remembered it.

Speaker 9 (01:05:36):
But anyway, that's a call out too because you could
always turn off the settings in chat GBT to train
it off so it doesn't train on your data like
I have that off because I love chat to BT.

Speaker 6 (01:05:48):
I love its interface. It's probably what I go to
the most.

Speaker 9 (01:05:50):
But if you still want privacy, you do have that option,
you can turn it off.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
Okay, that's a great, a great tip.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
I'm gonna so go to your settings and let's see
it says personalization, Let's see connectors, schedule security. All right,
we got to I'll find that. I'll find that setting
so I can tell people how to do that, because
that's a really interesting one that I think I turned
off at some point and it's probably a good pricy
all right. Sabrina Ortiz from zd net. How can folks

(01:06:16):
follow your work online?

Speaker 6 (01:06:18):
Yeah? First again, all my coverage over at zd net.

Speaker 9 (01:06:22):
Every single day you will get a new story from
me and even newsletters now too. But also on my
personal please follow me on Instagram. I'm constantly sharing all
my stories on there, Sabrina with an extra AFPN dot
orts on Instagram and then also on Twitter or x
so Sabrina actually at the end, underscore Ortiz there.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
Thanks a lot more rich on Tech right after this.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you talking technology, triple eight Rich one oh
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. The website for the show Rich on tech

(01:07:02):
dot TV. If you want to email me there, you
can do that, just hit contact. If you want to
sign up for the free newsletter, you can do that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
Also.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
You can look at the episode notes. This is episode
one thirty one, So everything that I mentioned here is
linked up there so you can easily go back and
reference it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Later.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
We got a note from Kim said, a plumber called
in and said about the water leaks, you can get
a mowing flow.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
It works on spectrum and it should work.

Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
And yeah, this is actually you know, it's funny because
covering technology for so long, pretty much every startup, every company,
they come to me and they say, hey, can we do this?
Can we install this at your house? Can we give
you this to test out? Can you try this? And
I can't do it all? And I remember these this
flow type technology. I think the other one was finn

(01:07:55):
pH y N And it's these systems that actually attach
to your main water.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
Whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
You're you're you're in right your water pipe, and they
basically monitor the water use on your system and if
they notice something going wrong, it can actually turn off
the water at the source.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
And so.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
Yeah, Finn p h y N is one of them,
he said, the Mowen flow flo And so this is
a smart device that monitors for leaks and immediately takes
action to help prevent them. So it'll actually it'll go
between your main you know, sort of water pipe and
it will and it will turn off. It monitors interesting,

(01:08:41):
it monitors a flow. So it uses like an algorithm
to notice like, hey, number one, are using a ton
of water this month more so than other months, and
it will tell you that. And number two it will
figure out if there's a leak and it will turn
off the water. And this has this does have a
monthly fee thirty dollars a month. Wow, that's that's a lot.

(01:09:03):
Ultimate protection. The standard protection, I guess enhanced is twenty
dollars a month. So it's not cheap. But when you're talking,
when you're talking any sort of water damage at your home,
it is not cheap. And even if you have insurance,
you're still gonna be paying your deductible. And by the way,
it's just it's a nightmare in general. Like we had

(01:09:24):
this happen when our kid was born. We were at
the hospital, so we didn't notice the leak until we
came home and my wife stepped on the floor and
it was soggy, and that that is a feeling you
don't want. Jim from Orange County rights in or no Orange, California.
First off, I enjoy enjoy your reports on KTLA, even
when the tech doesn't apply to me. I still love

(01:09:44):
hearing about what's new. I've been having a terrible time
with Nitro pro pdf. I think my subscription expired but
never got to notice. Support's impossible to reach. I was
even shown a charge to a card that isn't mine.
I've spent hours trying to sort it out, no luck.
I'm thinking of just starting over as a new user.
Any advice, Jim, That does not sound good. But if

(01:10:05):
you need to edit PDFs, it depends like what your
level of need is. But if you're just casually trying
to edit and do things with PDFs, check out a
website called I lovepdf dot com. All the tools you
need and they're free to do whatever you need. Merge PDFs,
split PDFs, compress PDFs, convert PDFs, rotate, unlock, watermark, or

(01:10:28):
even edit so you've got everything you need if you
want a PDF to word, pdf to PowerPoint, create a pdf,
watermark a PDF, and then edit pdf. Of course, if
you want to add text, shapes, comments, and highlights, that'll
do it. So those are the That's probably the website
I'd recommend Nitro pdf. I'm not too familiar with, but

(01:10:51):
it looks like it's just standard, you know, competition for Adobe.
If you can get in touch with them, you like
what they're doing, then yeah, go ahead. But if you
don't like what they're doing, then just check out that website.
I love pdfu dot com and you should be able
to do a lot of stuff there.

Speaker 6 (01:11:08):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Adobe also has a level of free tools that you
can use with their with PDFs there.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:15):
Don't forget a lot of these companies are going to
try to make you pay at some point. So dependsing
on depending on what you want to do. Like if
you want to edit the actual PDF, you may have
to pay for that functionality. Eighty eight rich one oh
one eighty eight seven four to two four to one
zero one more rich on Tech after this, Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,

(01:11:37):
talking technology. Triple eight rich one o one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. So
far we've had quite the show, packed with a lot
of your calls and emails, lots of great interviews. We
have one more coming up this hour. Josh Goren from
Walt Disney Imagineering is going to talk about the tech

(01:11:59):
that Disney used to bring all their experiences to life.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
Also, we talked to.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
Sabrina over at zd net and she mentioned there was
a setting inside chat gbt that you can turn off
if you don't want chat gbt to train on your data.
So if you don't want that to happen, which I
did look and I did have that actually turned off already.
But the setting is under data controls. So if you

(01:12:27):
go to chatgbt dot com, tap your name in the
lower left hand corner, tap settings, and go to data Controls.
It says improve the model for everyone, and you can
toggle that off, and if you don't, it says allow
your content to be used to train our models, which
makes chat gbt better for you and everyone who uses it.

(01:12:50):
We take steps to protect your privacy. Learn more and
if you tap here, it talks all about how it
can use your data to basically improve their model, So
it's learning from what you're doing. And so if you
don't want to help open ai, and there are billions

(01:13:11):
and billions of dollars of whatever they're doing, I mean, look,
I love what open ai is doing. But I understand
if if you're you know enough, people probably have this
turned on where they're not going to hurt if I
tell you that it's okay to turn this off. So
if you turn off improve the model for everyone, they
basically will not use your data to improve the model.

(01:13:33):
And you know, you may not care, but some people might.
And by the way, there's a whole bunch of options
in here that you can look at, and you may
not be familiar with a lot of these.

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
There's so many.

Speaker 1 (01:13:44):
You can change themes, the language, the voice notifications, how
it's personalized. You can even look at the memories that
it has of you. So I can look, I'm scrolling
through all the things that I've told chat GBT over
the years, and it's or over the years. Yeah, I
guess this is so random. Yeah, it's got a bunch

(01:14:05):
of stuff in here. You can delete those. You've got connectors,
so if you want to connect things like Gmail, Google Calendar, outlook.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
You can do that in there.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
You may have to be paid for some of those
schedules data controls, so you can delete all the chats
you've had with chat GBT security two fracture authentication. I
would definitely, definitely, definitely turn that on. Just like any
other website. If you log in and it doesn't recognize
the log in, it will say, hey, let's text you

(01:14:35):
a code or email you a code. You can also
log out of all of your devices. So if you're
like me, you log in from a bunch of different places,
you can log out of all those from the website.
You can also look at your account. Oh little hack,
because I've got fifty percent off for the next three
months if you go to cancel. If you're a paid
subscriber of chat ebt, if you go to cancel your subscription,

(01:14:58):
it may offer you fifty percent. Just it did it
to me, So I've got fifty percent off until October third,
So that's kind of cool.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
Now, someone emailed me.

Speaker 1 (01:15:07):
I think I mentioned that on my Instagram and someone said, hey,
just cancel my account.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
Immediately said whoops.

Speaker 1 (01:15:13):
So your mileage may vary, but typically it will tell
you what it's doing before it actually just cancels everything out.
But yeah, there is a lot of stuff in here
that you can check out with chat ebt.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
Yeah so much.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
I mean I do everything in there, So that's that's
that's a popular service at this point, Janine writes in says,
I received an email with a PDF attachment supposedly an
invoice with a thank you for ordering. I use AOL
email and Norton three sixty with LifeLock neither flagged it
as spam. But I'm afraid to open the email or

(01:15:49):
the attachment. How can I tell if it's legit or
if someone's trying to scam me. The sender's address is
just a Gmail account, Janine, I'm very proud of you
for being on top of this, because this is a
major problem. The invoice scam is a big one, and
it doesn't come for just it comes from all kinds

(01:16:09):
of things. I've seen it for geek Squad, from best Buy,
confirmation that you've purchased an iPhone, confirmation of a some
sort of anti virus order, and they send you an
attachment that's basically looks like a receipt or an invoice,
and it's saying thank you for your order. It's got
your information on there, and sometimes it has all of

(01:16:30):
your information like your address, your email, your phone number,
depending on how much data they've scraped from data hacks
out there, data breaches, and then what it wants you
to do. And what the trick here is that you
see this invoice and you go, I didn't order an
anti virus. Wait, what do you mean three hundred and
sixty seven dollars? You're charging my card? And it has

(01:16:50):
a phone number says if there's any problem, call this number.
And what people do is they call that phone number
to say, hey, I didn't order this, Can you cancel this?
What's happening? And that's when the scam starts. And that's
when they say, Okay, no problem, ma'am. Let me just
get some information from you. Give me your name, give
me your email. Which credit card did you use? Is

(01:17:11):
it the one ending in three two seven nine?

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
Yes? Oh okay, can you confirm the rest of that? Yes?
And by the time you go through.

Speaker 1 (01:17:18):
This whole rigamarole, you have now just given all of
your information to these people, these scam artists, and they
are now taking that information and running with it. So
that is the scam So how do you tell if
this is a scam? Number one, use your Spidey sense.
You seem to do that with the Gmail account. So
check the sender. That's the number one way. When you
see one of these emails that you get, check the

(01:17:41):
sender and see who sent it to you. Now, sometimes
they will spoof the sender, but a lot of times
you can tell pretty quickly that it is a spamy sender.
So let's see if I can find one on here.
I'm looking at my spam emails. Let's see here to do. No,
that one's not it. So many, there's just so many,

(01:18:03):
like there's just too many to go through. But anyway,
what I would do is check the center number one.
Number two, you can actually forward the email to a
website called snitcher dot space. I think I mentioned this
on the last show. Uh Snitcher dot space. You can
email the Yeah, just forward the email to scan at

(01:18:24):
snitcher dot space and they will analyze the email and
reply to you with if they think it's fake or not. Now,
there's also some other ones you can do out there.
I think Norton actually has their own Norton Yeah, Norton
Ai Genie and so Norton ai Genie is another one

(01:18:45):
where you can just basically put the email in there
and it will You can just copy and paste the
entire email and it will take a look at that
and tell you if it is bogus or not. And
that's another way to do it. The other way you
can do it is literally just copy and paste into
chatchubt or Gemini and it will tell you say, hey,
I got this email. I'm a little suspicious of it,

(01:19:07):
and it will look at all the different kind of
indicators on that email of whether they think it's fake
or not, and it will tell you, now, ninety nine
point nine percent of the time this stuff is fake.
But I know because people forward me this stuff all
the time. Sometimes it is legitimate. And that's what these
scam artists do is they try to make it look
like something we would receive and they imitate that, and

(01:19:30):
then they get it to a place where you don't
really know, and so you click a link not thinking, actually,
I can tell you I got an email from someone
a DM over the weekend or sorry, over the week
when I was in Hawaii and they said, hey, let's
see if I can find this. Okay, they said, rich,

(01:19:52):
is this legitimate keeper. I guess Keeper is one of
the brands of you know, the I'm trying to find
this as Oh here it is. Okay, they said, hey,
rich is keep her password manager a valid site. I
got a message from them saying my Amazon account saying
I need to log in to verify my account. Now,

(01:20:12):
anytime you get an email like that, be very careful
because what they want you to do is they're tricking
you into logging into your Amazon account and then they're
capturing your username and password. Which is why I always
recommend that you have two factor turned on, because in
that way, even if you logged in you would get
the two factor code. They would not have that right

(01:20:32):
because when you log into Amazon with two factor turned on,
they send you a code to your email or your text.
So the scam artists, if they captured your password, they
would not get that two factor code, but they've gotten
tricky about getting that from you as well. Anyway, she
tapped the link that this keeper sent. It says, Hey,
we've temporarily placed your Amazon account on hold and canceled

(01:20:54):
any pending orders. We took this action because we detected
unusual activity. Please log into your Amazon account to verify
the requested information, and so she logged in and that's
when Amazon said, hey, this is a scam, and so
you have to be very careful with this stuff. And
so I told her when she sent me the second screenshot,

(01:21:16):
I can look at it, and it's actually pretty good.
Her Google web browser, Google Chrome, actually jumped in and said, hey,
you just entered your password on a deceptive website. So
that was pretty good. So if you're using Chrome, they
do scan for this stuff, but the problem is it's
not always immediate and you may not get caught in time. So,

(01:21:39):
by the way, when I saw the URL that she
was trying to log into completely fake. I mean you
could tell from this url it is not the official
Amazon website. But again they try to trick you, so
be careful with this stuff. Definitely ask a friend, family member,
or use one of these websites I just mentioned, Norton, Genie, Snitcher,
dot Space, or you can just copy the entire email

(01:22:01):
into something like chat, gubt or Gemini and see what
they say. Don't take what they say as you know,
that is gospel. It may not be right every time,
but it can help you understand. And there's a great
website called scamspotter dot org scam scamspotter dot org, and

(01:22:21):
that will help you understand these tactics that I just mentioned.
And this has brought to you by Fight Cybercrime dot
org and Google. They created this website to help you
understand the scams that target users. So familiarize yourself with
that and also send that to anyone in your family
or friends that may not understand this stuff so they

(01:22:41):
can understand these scams. Eighty eight rich one O one
eighty eight seven four two four one zero one rich on.

Speaker 2 (01:22:48):
Tech dot TV back after this.

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
Welcome back to rich on tech rich Demiro here hanging
out with you, talking technology. The website for the show
is rich on tech dot TV. The email address, well,
you know, I just go to the website rich on
tech dot do you This is what happens when I
get distracted. I'm trying to tell you something, I'm looking

(01:23:14):
at my phone to try to look something up, and
then I realize I'm like, wait a second, why am
I giving this out again? But the website is rich
on tech dot TV. Can go there and you can
hit contact that will send your message directly to me.
That's exactly what Tim did. He said, I was just
listening to the show, and I have the flow smart
shut off valve and I also have the optional flow

(01:23:35):
leak detectors. There is an option for no monthly fee.
The difference is they don't pay your deductible if there
is a flood and the warranties only a year. The
leak detectors are amazing. They are hooked up to your
house Wi Fi. You place some new your water sources
and if they get wet, they instantly shut the water
off to your house. I have tested them. It takes
about three seconds. Amazing show, my friend. Thanks for everything

(01:23:57):
you do.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
Tim.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
Well, that's you know, but I think I'm going to
install that today. I think you've sold me, Tim, because
I you know, two water leaks is enough. I And
it's funny because you know some of you listening maybe
saying rich when you had the first leak, why didn't
you install the stuff I did. I put a leak
detector near the water heater. This time it wasn't the

(01:24:19):
water heater, it was the washing machine. So I should
have done the leak detector near the washing machine as well.
But again it's you know, you live in your learn
you know, these things are things that you hear about,
you see on TV. You know, you got to protect
this and that. And even if you have insurance, like
I said, it's still expensive. They still want their deductible
and in many cases that's going to be pretty expensive. So,

(01:24:42):
no matter what, you're looking at a mess. And it's
not just the money, it's also the time and energy
and effort and everything that you have to go through
to recover. And I call this kind of thing getting
back to where you started. So it's like when you
place the tires on your car, right, your car doesn't
drive any better. I mean, yeah, maybe if you know

(01:25:02):
you know, but like you know, I replaced the tires
on my car a couple months ago, and it's like,
you're spending all this money just to get back to
where you started. I call that, you know, the repair
that just literally it's like, Okay, let's say your alternator
goes on your car. Your car is not driving any
better with a new alternator, but you just spent fifteen hundred,
two thousand bucks. I call it getting back to where
you started, but just spent a whole bunch of money

(01:25:24):
to do it. Also, by the way, if you want
to follow me on Instagram at rich On Tech. John
is in Newport Beach. What's up, John?

Speaker 4 (01:25:34):
Hi? I want to transfer an MP four file from
a hard drive to a flash drive. Easy enough. Now,
the MP four file is on my flash drive and
I want to copy protected so that it cannot be
duplicated from the flash drive. I'm using Windows eleven Home.

Speaker 1 (01:25:53):
Ah, okay, can you can you just make it read only?

Speaker 4 (01:25:58):
Perhaps you can make it read only on your on
the security tab under properties if it's on your hard drive, right,
But then you can't transfer to your flask drive. Once
you transfer to your flask drive and you go to properties,
there is no security tab to give it those attributes.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:26:17):
See, I'm thinking this is this is almost like a
copy protection thing. Like it's almost like, uh, you know,
like these companies go through like really you know, they
have their own DRM basically you know, if you're if
you're a you know, Amazon or an MP three file
whatever it is that they have where they make it
where you can't really copy your transfer. But that's those

(01:26:39):
are like really big systems. Have you found I don't
know of an app off the top of my head
that'll do this easily? I mean, I'm just doing a
search and it. You know, there's there's one called Cockasoft.

Speaker 2 (01:26:53):
Did I see that?

Speaker 1 (01:26:55):
I try.

Speaker 4 (01:26:55):
I tried a free trial on that and I just
didn't get anywhere with that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
Interesting because this says USB copy protection for PDFs, office
audio image files, EXSE.

Speaker 2 (01:27:09):
That comes up. It's that's how much was let's see.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
Yeah, I mean this one gives you like full access
to everything per habit printing.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
This didn't work.

Speaker 4 (01:27:17):
Huh, Well, I think I was having trouble trying to
use it. It might have been my fault. So maybe
I'll just try that one again. But it appears not
to be just a simple no setting or security setting
that you can make. You've got to use some outside software.

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
Yeah, it's definitely not. It's not a simple setting.

Speaker 1 (01:27:36):
And now there are ways to you know, there are
there are many ways like encrypt the drive make it
so that it's like tough to access if someone just
found it. But for actual copying of that file, if
you don't have access to that functionality, it's really like
I don't know off the top of my head how
to do that. So that program seems to be I'm
trying to see if there's like a free freeware version

(01:27:58):
of that, and there may be. And that's the beauty
of this show is that hopefully someone that's listening knows
how to do this, and we'll say like, hey, you
got to use this app, but I don't know off
the top of my head, John. I will experiment a
little bit with this and see if I can come
up with something. But I'm not seeing something quick and
easy that's sort of built into Windows. That's that's the

(01:28:19):
main thing that, Yeah, that I'm coming up against. USB
copy Yeah, Like even if I go I typically go
into this website alternative to dot net to see if
there's like a USB tool that we can use to
do this, and I'm not finding something there. How about
copy protect? Yeah, nothing interesting. None of this stuff's coming up.

(01:28:39):
So this is definitely a tricky problem. But I will
write this down in my notes. Now I've got homework
to do, so I will figure out how we can
make this video where you can't transfer it. Coming up next,
we are going to talk to Josh Goren at Walt
Disney Imagineering.

Speaker 2 (01:28:57):
This is rich On Tech.

Speaker 1 (01:29:01):
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you, talking technology. Well, if you've been around
this world for a while, you've probably heard the term imagineering.
It sounds magical, mysterious, and of course very Disney. But
what does it mean and who are the people behind
the magic? Well, recently I had the chance to visit

(01:29:21):
Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale, California to see some of
the cool stuff they're working on, and there I talked
to Josh Goren, an executive R and D imagineer at
Walt Disney Imagineering. He's one of these creative minds blending art,
technology and engineering to bring Disney stories to life across
all their properties, not just theme parks. Here's some of

(01:29:43):
our conversation herm imagineering over the years. Imagineer sounds like
this very magical, mysterious thing.

Speaker 2 (01:29:50):
What does that mean exactly?

Speaker 11 (01:29:52):
So, Imagineers are the people who conceive, design, and build
Disney physical experiences all around the world. The rides, the lands,
the theme parks, the hotels, the cruise ship those are
made by imagineers, and imagineers are all over the world.
We come from over one hundred different disciplines. So it's artists, designers, engineers, fabricators,
all coming together to create these impossible worlds that you

(01:30:13):
know from Disney Parks.

Speaker 1 (01:30:14):
A lot of this does involve technology and in different ways,
but I also read that you can come up with
any concepts, Like the way you come up with these
rides and things is, hey, if we can do anything,
this is how we do it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:27):
And then it goes into the process of how do
we make this? Can you explain that a little bit?

Speaker 11 (01:30:32):
At Imagineering, everything starts with story. We are storytellers. Walt
created Imagineering by pulling his favorite talent from the studios, artists, engineers,
fabricators to create these imagined worlds and to bring them
to life. At Imagineering we continue that today. So we
don't start with how do we make this type of
ride or use this type of robot? You start with

(01:30:52):
what's the story? How do we want guests to feel?
And even when you're adapting a Disney film for the parks,
it's not just copy paste. Where would you want to
be in this world? Who would you want to meet,
who would you want to be, and what would you
want to do? And so it starts there, what's the
story we want to tell and how do we want
to tell it and then the technology serves the story

(01:31:13):
and hopefully, when we do our jobs correctly, the guests
I'm going in saying wow, what amazing technology. Hopefully that
technology stating to the background and they're just experiencing a story,
a character, a world, interacting with their family, having a
great time. That's what we ultimately create is emotions. Emotions
are our product. Technology is just one more tool in

(01:31:34):
our toolkit to make that happen.

Speaker 1 (01:31:36):
So interesting note on the technology side of things. During
my tour here, we saw the Spider Man that is
a robot that kind of does a flip at one
of the theme Parks's California Adventure and I've seen that
several times, never realizing that that was not a human
or some sort I don't even know what I thought
that was. But now that I know that's a robot

(01:31:57):
that has been engineered in a way to do that
flip every time perfectly, that's pretty wild. So that goes
to show that the technology did blend into the background.

Speaker 11 (01:32:06):
For me, Yes, Centronics is such a great project because
that was the goal to make you believe that Spider
Man was doing these larger than life flips and the
reality is a human performer could not physically withstand the
g forces that that character goes through, much less twelve
times a day. That was a story that could only
be told through a stunt tronic, through an advanced character robot.

(01:32:28):
But I'm so glad that it got you because that
was the goal, was for anyone coming into Avengers campus
to feel like they were part of a real world
and getting to see Spider Man as they knew him
from the films, even if that wouldn't have been physically
possible with a human.

Speaker 1 (01:32:41):
How has technology aided what you do and how has
that changed over the years.

Speaker 11 (01:32:46):
What's funny about technology in Disney is it's not new,
it's super core to our history. Walt Disney was kind
of obsessed with how to use the latest and greatest
in technology to bring his stories to life in new ways.

Speaker 2 (01:32:59):
Even before the theme parks.

Speaker 11 (01:33:00):
You look at Snow White as the first feature length
animated film, the multiplane camera that gave different levels of
depth stereophonic sound in Fantasia. Walt had this very early
fascination with using the latest tech of his day to
bring these stories and characters to life. And we're just
extending that legacy now, so we love technologies that make

(01:33:22):
people believe anything as possible. One of my favorite quotes
is from the science fiction author Arthur C. Clark, and
he said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
And here at Imaginary Research and Development, that's kind of
our job to harness technology to make people believe magic
is real.

Speaker 2 (01:33:41):
And so whether that's.

Speaker 11 (01:33:42):
Creating the next great advanced character robot or an illusion,
an effect, or an interactive experience, that's what the people
here do is try to make emotion through technology and
to creatively apply them in new ways to bring those
Disney stories characters in worlds to life.

Speaker 2 (01:33:59):
Something like the BDX robots.

Speaker 1 (01:34:00):
I mean, that's quite the undertaking because they feel so realistic.

Speaker 2 (01:34:04):
Give me a little insight into.

Speaker 11 (01:34:05):
Those We love the BDX droids, so they are part
of our Advanced Character Robotics program, which is how do
we bring expressive, emotive characters to life using the latest
and greatest in technology. What's really cool about the bd
X droids is they've appeared in Disney parks all around
the world, including our ships, and people just fall in
love with them. They're so cute and they're based on

(01:34:27):
some really cutting edge technology using reinforcement learning. So the
way they learn to move is that we make a
three D model of them and put them in a
computer and train them how to walk in balance. But
we don't just train them how to stay upright. We've
put in the input of a Disney animator to give
them that expressiveness, that personality, and so they learn how
to walk and perform through that animator's guidance into what

(01:34:50):
you see today. So again, at the end of the day,
we don't want guests focusing on the technology, even though
they're technically robots. We want them to focus on the
characters and their person reality and to make an emotional connection.
You know, the Disney Company started with this idea of animation,
and animation is the illusion of life through movement, and
so whether that sells on a page or images on

(01:35:11):
a screen, or a robotic droid right in front of you,
that's what we do. Create the illusion of life through movement,
and the BDX terroids are one very cute example of
that brought to life.

Speaker 1 (01:35:21):
Now, how do you keep what the traditionalive of certain
things at Disney versus what you want to push forward
with technology and newness?

Speaker 11 (01:35:30):
You know, We've always had one foot in the past
and one foot looking to the future. Our legacy doesn't
hold us back. It inspires us. We have this strong
history of technologically enabled guest experiences, going back to opening
day at Disneyland. The idea of Disneyland itself, the idea
of a theme park, a place where you went in
and experience the stories in immersive way that was at
the time a new idea. So our legacy pushes us

(01:35:54):
to keep trying harder, to keep exceeding expectations, to keep
surprising and delighting.

Speaker 3 (01:36:00):
Things that don't change.

Speaker 11 (01:36:01):
Our commitment to story, our commitment to surprising and innovating,
our commitment to quality and detail. That stays the same.
The stories we tell as new films come out and
new characters get popular, The technologies we use as we
see new things happening in industry. The techniques those will
change and evolve. But the core values that drive what
we do as imagineers and the way we do it

(01:36:22):
that stays constant.

Speaker 1 (01:36:24):
Well, can we look forward to seeing from your team
and in your future at Disney Properties.

Speaker 11 (01:36:29):
I can't talk specifically about some of the things we're
working on. We've got some real top secret stuff behind
these walls. But what I can tell you is this
is an incredibly exciting time to be an imagineer, an
incredibly exciting time to be a Disney Parks fan. We
have global expansion happening all over the world and on
our ships, and new parks being announced like the one
in Abu Dhabi that provide these amazing canvases to bring

(01:36:51):
stories to life in new ways to surprise people.

Speaker 2 (01:36:54):
So while I.

Speaker 11 (01:36:55):
Can't get into the specifics top secret projects beyond these doors,
I can tell you we are are so excited and
can't wait for our guests to experience them themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:37:03):
If someone is interested in joining the team here, explain
what that process is like and how is that even possible.

Speaker 11 (01:37:12):
Yeah, you know, every imagineer has a story of how
they got here, and each one's unique. But imagineering is
something that is possible. It's something that real people come
and do. Usually it starts with finding what you're great
at and getting really passionately involved in it, whether that's
the robotics side or the creative side, the music choreography. Again,

(01:37:32):
we have over one hundred disciplines here, so there's a
high chance that something you do is represented at Imagineering.
So for young people, what I always say is start
making now. There are so many amazing tools and information
resources available now for kids and aspiring imagineers to just
start creating. We have, for example, Imagineering in a Box,

(01:37:52):
which is a free educational program we developed with the
CON Academy, which is hours and hours of programming about
how we do what we do, with interactive lessons and guides,
all available for free online. There's a ton of amazing
books about imagineering, many written by imagineers that talk about
our design process. We have the Imagination's College Program, which
allows for college students to develop projects and potentially get

(01:38:15):
a chance to be flown out to Imagineering and present
to Imagineering leadership, potentially leading to an internship. So there
are many roads to imagineering no matter what people study
or what they do. As long as you're passionate and
you work hard, and you're talented, you may be able
to find your place here.

Speaker 2 (01:38:33):
There you have it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
Josh Goorn from Walt Disney Imagineering once again he mentioned
Imagineering in a Box that's a free online resource for
future creators. You can find it on the CON academy website.
I will put the link on mine rich on Tech
dot tv, and if you want to see some of
the videos that I took at Imagineering, just go to

(01:38:54):
my instagram at rich on Tech.

Speaker 2 (01:38:55):
Coming up, we're.

Speaker 1 (01:38:56):
Opening up the feedback once again.

Speaker 2 (01:38:59):
For more of your comments.

Speaker 1 (01:39:00):
To close out the show, Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, Talking technology. Got
an email from Vincent talking about the callers question regarding
copy protection. He says the potential solution could be with

(01:39:21):
sand discs secure access software. So I looked up secure
access from sand disc. Looks like they changed it now
to private access, which it encrypts and password protects files
on sand Disc USB flash drives. Doesn't necessarily say that
you can't copy stuff on them, but that may be
a feature. But you do need to use a sand

(01:39:43):
Disc USB or I expand flash drive to use this
private access software. But that's one more option. So again,
private access if you don't want people to be able
to copy the stuff. But I'll have to investigate that
see if it works properly. Thanks for the email there.
Open up the feedback now. We've got lots here. Tiffany
writes in from Huntington Beach, Hey, Rich, just wants to

(01:40:04):
alert you of a scary text that looks like a
scam targeting moms. I received a text yesterday from a
Boston phone number saying, Hi, Mom, my phone is broken.
Text me now on this number right here, and it
gives a phone number. My oldest is living in Baltimore
and always refers to me as MA, so I knew
it wasn't him.

Speaker 2 (01:40:24):
That's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:40:25):
The scariest part is I almost fell for it, and
I could easily see a mom worried about our kid
and getting scammed. It feels like a personal assault on
moms everywhere. Wow, Tiffany, thanks for that. Is that's scary because, yeah,
think about it. Your kid might be living somewhere and
they say, hey, my phone's broken, text me here. You
may not think twice call them from there.

Speaker 2 (01:40:45):
Wow. Good warning there.

Speaker 1 (01:40:47):
Mark from Laguna Noguel, California writes in, Hey, Rich, thanks
for warning listeners about simlocking.

Speaker 2 (01:40:52):
I wish I had known sooner.

Speaker 1 (01:40:54):
Back in February, someone ported my number without my approval
and it's kicked off three months of stress and account takeovers.
The attacker access my bank email, Amazon Google, PayPal, and more.
Resetting passwords using my phone number. Even when I changed passwords,
they just do a reset again. Mint said it would
take forty eight hours to get my number back, but

(01:41:16):
it took a full week, and once I had it,
call still wouldn't come through. Eventually, I gave up and
got a new number. Mark's advice lock your SIM with
a carrier, use an authentication app instead of text based
two factor authentication, keep emergency contact info for key accounts,
and report things.

Speaker 2 (01:41:33):
To the FBI's IC three.

Speaker 1 (01:41:35):
Oh my gosh, Nicole writes in Hey Rich, I've been
using a device called the PCI Tracker. It lets you
control your PC completely with just your eyes, no hand
movement needed. A friend gifted it to me, and I'm
in love with it. I thought it might be something
you want to check out or even feature, especially since
it could be helpful to others. That's good to know,

(01:41:56):
PCI Tracker. There's also I tracking built in to Apple
with Settings Accessibility eye tracking, so no extra hardware necessary,
so check that out Settings Accessibility, I Tracking. Mike from
Denver new listener here, love your show. I listened to
the podcast weekly and I'm learning so much. I followed

(01:42:18):
your instructions to turn on simswap protection for Verizon, and
while I was in my account, I noticed a bunch
of other security and privacy settings I'd never looked at.
Thanks to your heads up, I was able to enable
number lock, set an account pen, and turn off a
bunch of privacy default privacy settings like CPN, I sharing
and custom Experience.

Speaker 2 (01:42:38):
Plus.

Speaker 1 (01:42:39):
Just wanted to say thank you and maybe remind listeners
to log in and check those other privacy settings too.
I'm glad I did. Great tip, Mike, thanks for being
a new listener. And yes, just have some fun. Instead
of going out on a Saturday night hanging out with friends,
going out to the bar, restaurant, dinner with your family,
just check the I, acy and data settings on all

(01:43:02):
of your accounts. You know, just spend a Saturday night
doing that and enjoy. Just see what you find. I'm kidding,
but that's what I do. That's how nerdy I am.
I go through my phones and I just go step
by step every every single setting you can imagine. I
just like to see what's available and just you know,
see and I'm like, oh that's interesting, let's see.

Speaker 3 (01:43:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:43:26):
Nerd for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:43:27):
Mark another interesting another mark about SIM swapping. Thanks rich
for warning people to lock their SIM I didn't and
I paid the price. My phone number was ported without
my approval. In the next three months were a nightmare.
Wait is that the same thing? I think that's the
same email sounded like it. Richard from Ocean Side writes

(01:43:49):
in I added the watch Duty app to my phone
last week.

Speaker 2 (01:43:52):
Super easy.

Speaker 1 (01:43:53):
I got two alerts for a fire near La Mesa
on July fourth, and two more on July fifth for
a fire near the Ocean Side Airport. I haven't seen
anything on the news or heard anything from my San
Diego County emergency app. Thanks for having that guest on
your show. Great recommendation. Yeah, watch Duty is essential if
you live in an area that might have fires, and

(01:44:13):
I think they're expanding to floods next, he said, Bruce,
Oh my gosh. Another hacking story. Back in May, my
Facebook account was hacked. The hacker changed the log in credentials,
locking me out. I tried all the usual recovery routes
and nothing worked. Everyone I talked to you said the
only way back in was knowing someone on the inside

(01:44:34):
at META. Eventually I tracked down a few email addresses
for a few Meta attorneys and executives and explained my situation.
A few days later, a real person for Meta support
reached out and helped me recover the account. It wasn't
smooth selling, but I finally got access back and added
two factor authentication right away. Okay, yeah, tracked down those

(01:44:55):
email addresses. Steve from Cincinnati writes in on your last show,
you mentioned that Amazon now has price history. Well, camel
Cammell Cambell has been doing it better for a while.
Their browser extension, the Camelizer, gives you at least six months,
sometimes a year, of price history. Thanks for the great show.

Speaker 2 (01:45:11):
Rich.

Speaker 1 (01:45:11):
By the way, my last name sounds like the word cool.
I don't have his last name in here, but you
are cool, Steve.

Speaker 2 (01:45:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:45:19):
I like the Amazon price history because it's simple and
it's right there. But yes, there are many options out there.
Ray writes in magic Jack is still around. It now
connects directly to your router, not your computer using an
Ethernet cable. You just need internet service. It's about fifty
dollars a year with no monthly fee. I've used it
for over fifty years with both corded and cordless phones,
even an answering machine.

Speaker 2 (01:45:40):
I'll not say something.

Speaker 1 (01:45:41):
Yes, look at the monitor right to your left. H
that's from tmz Dare you see this? This is okay?
So this says your Google customer, Congratulations, you're one of
one hundred users we have selected for free stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:45:54):
And it looks just like Google. It does.

Speaker 1 (01:45:56):
Man, if you look at the website, that's not a
Google website, get mega love. Yeah, no, that is not.
That is not You have to be careful, and this happens.
This is really called malvertising. So advertisers inject stuff like
this into legitimate advertising. But they do it so quickly
that before the Google systems or any of the advertising
systems have a chance to figure this out, they've already

(01:46:18):
netted a couple people. That happens all the time, literally
tmz dot com and opened it a few minutes later.

Speaker 2 (01:46:24):
It just popped up.

Speaker 1 (01:46:25):
It can happen on any website, even legitimate ones. Just
be careful with that stuff. But if you get that
thousand dollars gift card, you gotta split it with me.
Leo from the South Bay says, great show. We've had
uma for many years.

Speaker 2 (01:46:36):
It works great.

Speaker 1 (01:46:37):
Also, you overestimated the cost. We're only paying about seven
to seventy five a month for free nationwide calls. Okay,
good clarification, Leo, I mentioned ten to twelve dollars a
month in taxes and fees.

Speaker 2 (01:46:48):
It could be lower depending on your location. Let's see.
Do we have one more to get to before the
break here? Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:46:57):
Danny writes in from Charlotte, North Carolina, and Rich, you
can get good moon pictures with an iPhone, but it
takes practice.

Speaker 2 (01:47:04):
A tripod works best.

Speaker 1 (01:47:05):
Adjust the exposure by tapping the screen to set the focus,
then drag the exposure slider to manually just brightness. Eh,
just get a Samsung S twenty five Ultra, gona take
it all right.

Speaker 2 (01:47:16):
That's gonna do it for this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:47:18):
Next week, how AI is taking over the fast food
drive through, and how it's helping you plan for long
term care. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible.
Find me at rich on Tech. My name is Rich Dmiro.

Speaker 2 (01:47:28):
Talk to you real soon.

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