Google's Monopoly, Travel Tech, and Solar Cars

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Google is ruled a monopoly, so what does that mean
for your search? The app that can tell you about
flight delays even before the airlines themselves. Another streaming service
is raising prices and at rhymes with kidney plus. Your
tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and
this is Rich on Tech. This is the show where

(00:22):
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 one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Again the

(00:42):
phone line for the show eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Give me a call.
If you have a question about technology, you're confused about something,
you need an app for something, you need a website,
you need some help deciding between a couple of products,
whatever it is, I am here for you. Email is
also open. Just go to the website Richontech dot TV

(01:05):
and hit contact. This week on the show, We've got
Bart Welch of Points. Yeah, this is a website that
can help you plan your travel with your points. You're
racked up those points. You need to figure out how
to use them. It seems impossible to do that in
a efficient way. Points yet can help. We'll talk to

(01:26):
him a little bit later on. And then what about
the idea of a solar electric car. There is one
company that is working on one. Steve Fambreau of Aptera
Motors is going to join me to talk all about
the solar electric car. Well, this was a big week
for Google, and not in a good way. A federal

(01:49):
judge ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in online search. Now,
usually when you hear about monopoly, you're thinking about the game.
This is no game, this is real. Now, Google, we
all know they have a lot of products. Google is
our Search is their largest product. It is a product

(02:09):
that makes them a majority of their income, even though
they have their hands in many other things. But this
was a big ruling against them. This is the first
major antitrust ruling against a tech, big tech company in
the modern Internet era. The last time this happened was
Microsoft with Internet Explorer. Remember they installed Internet Explorer on

(02:34):
all of their Windows machines and people got up in
arms because Netscape was the big browser at the time,
and Microsoft said, hey, wait a second, we want a
little piece of that. And so they just went ahead
and installed Internet Explorer by default on all their Windows
machines and next thing you know, people were like, wait

(02:54):
a second, how can you do that?

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Now?

Speaker 1 (02:57):
That was a major turning point for Microsoft, to major
turning point for the Web, major turning point in so
many ways. But this is an interesting one with Google,
and here is where the judge had a big problem.
Google pays billions of dollars to be the default search
engine on devices like when you get a device from Apple,

(03:20):
you get a device from Samsung, a tablet, a phone,
and many other devices. Google has paid those companies many
times billions of dollars to be the default search engine,
and in particular, Apple is the one that is mentioned
many many times because I think they pay them some
upwards of twenty billion dollars a year or something like that.

(03:43):
I mean, it's just an incredible amount of money. And
so if they're paying them billions of dollars, imagine how
much Google is making in return. Because you don't just
pay something out and not make a return on that investment.
You make many, many times a return on that investment.
So the fact is Google being the default search engine
on these devices makes them a lot of money because

(04:04):
when you fire up your web browser and you search
for something, what happens You get those little links up
at the top that you click by mistake or maybe
you just click them because they're relevant, and Google makes
a lot of money off of those links. So this
case focused on Google's dominance in search, so nothing else
about the company, but really the dominance in search. And
I thought what was interesting is not only does Google

(04:28):
control not only does Google control like ninety percent of
the Internet search market, they're really good at it. So
the judge had no problem with the fact that Google
has a really good search engine. And in fact, there
was another story that came out surrounding this about Apple
and Microsoft. So I guess Microsoft came to Apple and said, hey,

(04:51):
can Bing be the default on the iPhone? And Apple
said to Microsoft, there is no money in the world
you can pay us to make Bing the default on
the iPhone because what would happen if you turned on
your iPhone and you had Bing as your default. You'd
not be happy because those results are just not the same.

(05:12):
They're just not as good as what Google delivers. So
the interesting part about this is that Google did this
and people didn't mind because they like Google and they
like the search results. But the problem is if you
are an advertiser, and this is where the anti trust
came in. Because Google was so dominant on all of

(05:32):
these devices, they could charge as much as they want
for those little links at the top of search. And
that is where the judge found the problem. He said,
because Google controls so much of the industry, and because
Google has such a stronghold on all these devices, when
a company goes to advertise on Google, Google can charge

(05:52):
whatever they want. They are left unchecked because where else
are you gonna go If you want to get in
front of all of those eyeballs, There is no other
place you can go.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
You have to go to Google.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
And Google knows that, and so they charge as much
as they want because there's really no alternative. And that
is the issue that they took with Google. Now I
would agree with this. I think that it is true.
We love Google. But yeah, if you've ever done a search,
you know, if you've ever bought search ads, and I've
helped small businesses do this, including my father's business. It

(06:27):
is basically just a spigot of money for Google. You
have no idea what's going on. You kind of set
a budget and next thing you know, Google just runs
through that budget and they say, Okay, you want to
do more. You want to do more, you want to
do more, and you don't know if it's working or not.
I mean, sometimes you can tell, but for a lot
of these businesses, they're just spending money and Google's just

(06:48):
collecting the money. And you don't know if you could
have better results somewhere else. Maybe you could go to Yelp,
maybe you can go I mean, where else would you go?
It's really just Google if you want to reach these
foot folks. Sorry, my phone, my phone keeps activating because
it keeps hearing me say Google, and so it is responding.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
That's how powerful Google is.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
It's even responding to what I'm saying right now here
on the radio. But that is what the judge found.
And so what's going to happen here? What's going to
happen we don't know. Is this judge going to try
to break up Google? Are they going to try to
separate Google's advertising business from Chrome? I mean, really, when
you look at Google, they have a couple of major
businesses that make them money, and I would say that's

(07:34):
probably YouTube and advertising. Those are the two main things
that make Google money.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Gmail.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
I mean, that's just kind of that's just a way
to get people to use Google and some of the
other things they've worked on, you know, maybe some of
the web stuff and the cloud storage that's that's not
returned in a huge way like some other companies like Apple.
Oh my gosh, they my. Google just keeps telling me
stuff right here. I thought you had to say, hey, Google,

(08:03):
are okay?

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Google?

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Apparently I can just say, oh my oh, I'm activating
Bobos too.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Oh my gosh. Okay.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
So here is the question. There's two things I see here.
Number One, if you're talking about Google right now, I
think there are so many headwinds against them. Right So,
you've got Google, You've got Ai, which is coming along here.
And I would say Google is probably in the worst
position they have been in in a long time, because

(08:30):
if you think about it, who are you going to
go to for Ai? You're probably not going to Gemini
unless you see that little thing and it pops up,
You're probably going to chatch Ebt. So I think that
AI has the potential to upend twenty five years of
progress with Google.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
We will see.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
I mean, Google's putting a good fight in here. The
other question is if you had a choice, Let's say,
when you fired up your iPhone or when you fired
up your Samsung for the first time, it gave you
a choice screen and it said, Hey, which search engine
do you want as your default? Would you choose different one? Now,
for what it's worth, you can go in on the
iPhone and choose a different search engine. You can go

(09:06):
into Settings, you can go into Safari and then search engine.
Now that your choices there are Google, Yahoo, Bing, Duck,
Duck Go, and Ekoshia.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
I think that's how you say it.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
For every search I think they plant like a tree,
or every ten searches whatever, they plant a tree. So
it's like an Earth friendly search engine. Would you choose
one of those over Google? I would personally not. I'm
sticking with Google. Un Android, you can open Chrome. You
can tap the three dots in the upper right hand
corner and then tap settings search Engine, and they give
you a choice of Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yan Dex.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
What's yandex? Is that like the Russian one? I gotta
see what that is? Yand dex. Yeah, I think that's
the Russian search engine. Wow, I'm surprised that's a choice.
And Duck duck go again. I'm not switching to any
of those. I'm sticking to Google. That's why I like Chrome,
That's why I use Google. Now where it gets interesting is,
of course I'm using Google for search. But what am

(10:02):
I using for AI? I'm not using Google majority of
the time. What am I using I'm not even using
chat GBT. I'm using something called Claude from Anthropic. I
find it to be far superior to anything out there,
especially when it comes to text.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Anyway, big news for Google this week. We will see
what happens, any kind of punishment. It might take six
months to a year to find out. And Google, of
course disagrees with all of this, and they are appealing
that ruling. All right, Coming up on today's show, another
story about Google. They are killing Chrome casts after eleven years.
It's not as crazy as it sounds, I'll explain. But

(10:37):
first your turn, your calls coming up at eight eight
eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. My name is
Rich Dmuro and you are listening to Rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you, talking technology at Triple eight. Rich one
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four four one

(11:01):
zero one. Thanks for joining me today. I guess they're
the ending the show early with this song.

Speaker 4 (11:08):
Now.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
I'm just kidding, uh that the the intro was so
bad that they're like, no more, no more, Rich, Uh No,
I'm just kidding, but uh, it just goes to show
that uh G O O G L E is always listening,
so is s I R I and A L E
X A. Who would have thought that you would need
a degree in spelling to listen to a tech show,

(11:31):
but these uh, you know, it's funny my uh my
little uh what's it called a Google Home? That thing
now when you look at it, it listens to you.
And so every time you even go your eyes even
go near the thing, it just starts like in listening mode.
And my kid always walks by and he always says
to to it. He says, why are you listening to me?
Why are you listening?

Speaker 2 (11:52):
But it's just what these things want to do.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Uh eighty eight Rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four two four one zero one the website for
the show richon tech dot TV. Let's go to Adam
in Orlando, Florida. Adam, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (12:09):
Hi, Rich, thank you for taking my call. I have
a question about an older Samsung TV that I have.
It's I think it was made in twenty seventeen or
twenty eighteen. It's a smart TV. I can use Netflix
and I'm and all the regular apps, but it has
a problem with the paramount Plus app. And so I

(12:35):
tried it on a newer TV that I have in
another room, and the Paramount Plus app works fine. So
I suspect it's my older TV that's having a problem
with it, even though the other apps work fine. And
I guess my question is I don't want to replace
the TV because it only is not working with the
Paramount Plus. But I'm wondering if there's a maybe a

(12:59):
less expensive way of figuring out this problem, maybe a firestick.
I don't want to use rokup. I don't have rokup,
but I don't want to use it because I don't
want to give them. I believe you have to use
a credit card number to use the Roku and I
don't want to do that, So I'm wondering what options
you may be aware of.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Okay, Well, first off, yeah, I mean number one. I'm
looking at the paramount plus support site and it does
say paramount plus works on twenty seventeen Samsung TVs and
newer running ties in so that sounds like your set
would fit that bill. So I would try to troubleshoot
this and get this thing working. I will tell you this,
in my experience, paramount Plus has the worst app of

(13:41):
any streaming service out there. I have the most issues
with it. It does not work half the time, I
can't get it to download to my devices, and it's
just overall really really poorly done. It stutters, it's just
not good. So with that said, once you get it
up and running, it's still not that greade of an experience.
But I think your model number is on the CUSP

(14:05):
pure so it may just be that it's fallen off support.
But it does say twenty seventeen models a newer it
does not give a specific model number for that Samsung TV.
So with that said, what I would do before you
go trying something else, I would uninstall this app and
then I would as much as you can update any

(14:26):
sort of operating system on that Samsung TV. I would
restart the TV, do like a nice restart where you
go into settings and restart it, not just you know,
turning it off and on, and then I would install
this app again and log in again and see if
it works. Then now, if none of that gets it
to work, then I would look into an alternative, and

(14:49):
I think the alternative is number one. Typically these TVs
have casting built in, so I would just download the
Paramount Plus app on your phone and past the picture
to the TV. And usually all you have to do
is download the app, make sure your phone is on
the same Wi Fi network as the TV, and even

(15:09):
if you have an iPhone, it should work. To cast
this into the Samsung TV as well. You may have
to put the Samsung TV. You may have to turn
on that feature just to get that to work, but
that's probably the simplest and easiest way. The only downside
of that is that you're going to be controlling everything
from your phone and not from the TV screen itself.
But that's an easy way to continue using your TV

(15:31):
the way you typically do. Just when you want to
watch something on Paramount you've got to stream it. And
keep in mind, even if it's coming from your phone,
it's not actually streaming the show from your phone. Your
phone is just acting as a remote control for the TV,
and on the back end, your TV is just calling
up that live stream or whatever that stream is and

(15:52):
streaming it from its own data and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
So that's number one.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
The other way is if you already have the Roku
and you want to use that. Yes, I do believe
that Roku requires some sort of level of payment information
if you want to set up an account. These days,
it's been a while since I did that. I think
some people are grandfathered in, but they may require that.
You could use an account like privacy dot com, so
that could shield your credit card number. You could just

(16:18):
use like a one time credit card or a virtual
card number. Your bank might offer that, and that way
they can't actually charge you for anything. So you can
sign up for the account. They might authorize it for
a dollar just to make sure that card works, and
then you could just get rid of that card or
pause it, and that way you never get charged. So
that's another way. But I think the easiest way if
you want to is just upgrade this old TV with

(16:39):
a with a stick. The fire TV stick, like you mentioned,
I think is probably going to be the cheapest and
the easiest, and it does support all of these different apps,
all of the main apps these days. Adam and Orlando,
thanks so much for the call. Eight eight eight rich
one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you why
Google is killing Chrome Cast. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(17:04):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at
Triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. The website
for the show rich on Tech dot TV. All of
the songs today you really liked last week when my

(17:26):
mom chose all the songs. My mom is still in
town and I said, Mom, you gotta do it again.
People liked your eclectics taste in songs, and so she did.
She came up with this list of songs and hand
wrote it once again. And I think they're pretty good.
So that was gosh, that was from a while ago. Aerosmith.

(17:50):
Don't want to miss a thing. So speaking to my
mom whenever she comes into town, we are pretty much
we're like tourists in our own town, which I always
it's fun when people come to town because you end
up doing things you wouldn't typically do, and so it's
always nice. And by the way, she watches my kids
without any sort of asking. She'll just be like, go out, go,
go go, and so we get to do that as well,

(18:12):
which is kind of nice. But my kid has been
begging me to play this song that he wrote about
my mom, and he made it on his iPad. You know,
my kids, I've got two kids ten and just turned thirteen.
And when I tell you, they are so ahead of
where we were when we were kids, it is incredible

(18:35):
and it gives me a lot of faith for the
future because these kids are so advanced that when I
was a kid, you know, I was playing with dirt
and worms and you know, just hanging out in the backyard.
These kids, I mean, my kids are literally like hacking
on computers, like just kidding, but they want to. I mean,
they're literally they're so curious. Anyway, So my kid made

(18:57):
this song called Grandma d on an an app called
band Lab on his iPad. So take a listen question.

(19:19):
Then you found a little home, sit a little hope here.
I think he's just yelling.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
I missed that last.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Line anyway, So you got Grandma d this is my
my ten year old I haven't listened to this, okay anyway,
So Tanner, there you go. There's your song that you
want me to play on the radio. Eighty day eight

(20:00):
rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Uh, clearly use a little
bit of auto tune there. But again, Uh, it's just
incredible what you can do with apps on your iPad.
The stuff that I see my kids do and create,
I mean, being a creator now compared to when I
was coming up through the world, it is just incredible.
I mean, I paid today to buy capcut, which uh

(20:23):
is TikTok's editing program, And I mean, it's just incredible
what you can do on your phone with a mobile
editing program. I grew up editing on tape to tape,
three quarter inch tape to three quarter inch tape. Then
eventually we got to VHS, and then eventually we got

(20:43):
to digital. And now you are shooting on your phone
using a microphone that is connected to your phone wirelessly,
and you can make an entire video and then you
can by the way put the captions on you can
it's just quite quite incredible. So I am very impressed
with what we are able to do nowadays. Speaking of apps,

(21:04):
one of my favorite apps got a big update this week.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
It's called Flighty.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
You've probably heard me talk about it before if you've
ever listened to me for more than a minute. But
this is one of my all time favorite apps. But
just to give you an example of how tough it is,
even when I tell people how great things are, they
still don't necessarily do it. So, for instance, I always
tell people you got to use a password manager, you
got to turn on two factor authentication, And nine times
out of ten, when someone emails me and says they

(21:31):
were hacked, I said, well did you have the No,
I didn't do that.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
Okay, Well I get it. It's tough.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
I know it's a little bit more work, but please
do these things that I mention my sister she was
flying and I said, oh, you gotta download Flighty, and
she goes, what does it do that my airline app
doesn't do?

Speaker 2 (21:46):
And I'm like, okay, fair enough.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yes you can track using your airline app, but this
is just so much more beautiful and it's not airline specific,
and it's just really cool. So the main thing that
they did this week they updated it to tell you
about flight delays before your airline tells you. So they're
now using machine learning AI to forecast delays up to

(22:08):
six hours in advance, so before you even leave your house,
it might be able to tell you that, hey, your
flight's going to be delayed. Now what you do with
that information is up to you. Are you going to
stay home?

Speaker 2 (22:18):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
It depends on how seasoned of a traveler you are,
But I think where this really comes in handy is
when you might need to rebook a flight or change
your flight preemptively because you know you're going to miss
your connection or whatever because it's going to be late.
So they claim up to ninety five percent accuracy. How
are they doing this? They are looking at whether they're

(22:39):
looking at airport issues, special events, happening, live performance, airport
performance trends, FAA and euro controlled data for air traffic controls.
I mean they're looking at a whole bunch of stuff,
feeding that all into their AI and then coming up
with this information. Now, if you're not familiar with FLIGHTY
in general, it is just a fantastic way to track

(23:00):
your flights. You pop your flight number in there, it
lives on your device. It finds all the information. What
I particularly like is it tells you how old the
airplane is, which is kind of fun because you're like, oh,
and it not only tells you how old the plane is,
it now tells you the name of the airplane. So
Jet Blue and these other smaller airlines they like to
have fun names for the aircraft, so they'll show you that.

(23:24):
It also tells you if you've ever been on that
route before before, how many times you've been on that route,
and if you've ever been on that specific aircraft. I mean,
it's really quite incredible. It gives you a list of
all the different flights that you've been on in the past.
You can share your flight information with a friend, you
can share it to your social media, and it's just

(23:44):
it's so beautifully done that I keep telling the developer,
I said, can you please make this for Android as well?
So Android folks can enjoy this beautiful flight tracking app.
And they're just doing so well on iPhone that they
just they don't even have they're just not considering it
Android right now. But last he said maybe a couple
of years, but that is part of their paid they

(24:05):
do have like a pro which is four dollars a
week or forty eight dollars a year. Right now, this
works on iPhone only if you are Android and you
want something. The closest I've found is an app called
App in the Air and that's but again not as beautiful,
not as well designed. The notifications don't come in as fast,

(24:26):
but it is it is a nice app to have.
So again, if you're flying a lot, you know, these
apps really do help, so check it out, Flighty.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
I'll put a link on the website. Rich on tech
dot tv.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
Also this week, you might have gotten an email from
Cash App saying you're eligible for a settlement. This is
related to a data breach in twenty twenty two and
twenty twenty three. Is a fifteen million dollars settlement. Eligible
class members are current and former Cash app customers that
were affected between August twenty third, twenty eighteen, and August twentieth,

(24:58):
twenty twenty four. So you use the Cash app in
those years, you may get up to twenty five hundred
dollars for documented losses related to the data breach. So
this is not one of those things where you just
get money because you're using the app. I've been using
cash App since day one. I did not get an
email about this, so I'm curious what makes you qualify
For the email from them, maybe they know that your

(25:21):
information was out there and you had some sort of loss.
But the compensation will cover credit costs, bank fees, travel expenses,
and up to three hours of lost time at twenty
five dollars an hour, so that you could probably claim
without sort of any receipts or anything. Say, yeah, this
cost me a couple hours surfing the web seventy five bucks.
I mean, if you're eligible, you might as well claim.

(25:41):
For filing is November eighteenth, twenty twenty four. You do
have to have documentation of losses, so again this is
not one of those like automatic things. But if you
get an email, and again be careful because what happens
is this is real. But scammers will capitalize on this,
and so they will email you saying, hey, use the
cash app here claim your money. So don't just like

(26:03):
start typing in your information when you get something like that.
Go to the official website Cashappsecuritysettlement dot com Cashappsecurity Settlement
dot com. That is the official website and you can
see more information about this. But again, fifteen million dollars
settlement for cash App for data breaches in twenty twenty
two and twenty twenty three. All right, eight eight eight

(26:26):
rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Coming up on the show,
I'm going to tell you about Samsung. They're announcing a recall.
If you have a stove from them, you might want
to hear this because they're recalling over a million stoves.
And the website for the show rich on Tech dot tv.
Can find me online on social media at rich on Tech.

(26:49):
And coming up later, I'm gonna have a guest that's
going to tell you how you can plan your travel
with your points. You are listening to Rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Miro here hanging
out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Let's go to Paul in Columbus, Ohio. Paul,

(27:16):
you're on with rich.

Speaker 5 (27:18):
Very great, Rich. Thanks, how you're doing today?

Speaker 2 (27:20):
I am doing fantastic. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 5 (27:23):
Good thank you.

Speaker 6 (27:25):
Okay, I've got an older iMac the Night twenty fifteen
model as a twenty seven inch great screen, and all
won't be able to use it anymore. But bottom line,
it's kind of pooping out. Wanted to consider another Mac,

(27:45):
but concerned about.

Speaker 5 (27:48):
The ability to run Windows. I know right now the
only way you can do it is with Parallels, which
isn't the most economical way. But is there anything coming
down the line where we'd be able to with the
newer M chips be able to run Windows?

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Great question? Yeah, so I know I was. Let's see.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
So boot Camp is what Apple offers for free to
install Windows on Mac computers, but like you said, that
only works on the old Intel based computers. I don't
see anything on their website about the you know, the
new Apple Silicon, so like the M chips. Basically, let's

(28:35):
see if they say anything about that. Yeah, I don't
see anything about that, so it doesn't seem like they're
bringing that back anytime soon. So, yes, you would need
an older computer to do it that way. And you
also mentioned Parallels, which of course is a very popular
way to run Windows on a Mac computer virtually, But

(28:55):
have you heard of VMware Fusion Pro. So I actually
mentioned this on the show. I think, gosh, it might
have been a couple of months ago, but they made
this free. So this is a program that's typically two
hundred dollars, and if you're using it for personal use,
you can download this for free and emulate Windows on

(29:15):
your Mac computer. So that would probably work for you.
And it does work on the the M class chips,
so I think that's probably your best bet, Paul, is
to download this program if you get a new computer.
Ironically or incidentally, I literally just got a new MacBook
today using it for the first time. I had the

(29:36):
old not old, it was only a year old or
two years old, but it was the MacBook Pro and
I bought the thirteen inch and it was just I
could not deal with the screen size.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
It was so small.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
And I put up with it, I think, for two years,
and I finally said, Okay, I've got to get a
fifteen inch MacBook Air. And because I wanted a lighter computer,
you know, that's why I went, not with the sixteen
inch Pro. But anyway, I got it today. I I
could not be happier with it. It is incredible and
I don't run Windows on it. But maybe I'll try
it with this you know this Fusion Pro thirteen, but

(30:09):
again VMware Fusion Pro thirteen it's free for personal use.
Used to be one hundred and ninety nine bucks, and
that would let you run the Windows on your new
Mac computer even if it has the newer chip. And
I highly recommend if you're going to get a Mac
at this point, going with the newer chips because Apple
has really outdone themselves with this. They have done just

(30:30):
such a great job in optimizing those chips.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
So there you have it.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
Thanks for the call today from Columbus, Ohio. Appreciate it,
and let's go to AJ in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 7 (30:45):
Hey Jay Rich, good morning, how are you.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
I am doing well, Good morning.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
Hi.

Speaker 8 (30:49):
Question.

Speaker 7 (30:50):
I heard your little blurb about the app that allows
you great editing on TikTok. I'm a former cio Cto
Technology all my lives decades. Love it, love it, love it.
But I'm wondering about your take on the security issues
around the use of TikTok just in general. Have heard

(31:11):
lots of you know, pro cons about it, but wondering
what the latest and greatest is from your perspective.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
All right, hold on, let me pour a drink here,
let me turn on the fireplace. I gotta gotta get
comfortable here in my lazy boy before I talk about this.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
I totally yeah, you know, it's funny.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
I knew when I mentioned that that there would be
some people like raising an eyebrow, be like interesting.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
So I'll start with this.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Number one. I do not have TikTok on my phone.
I think TikTok is pretty horrible. And it's not because
of the data. It's actually because of what you see
on there. And you know, for me, as a journalist,
I deal in facts and I deal in stuff that
when I put something on social media, I have fact

(31:54):
check it. I fact checked it, I have vetted it.
I have made sure that what I'm telling people is
right and is truthful. And I feel like all of
that is thrown away on TikTok. And not just that
when you start watching something on TikTok, what does it do?
It puts you down a rabbit hole of that exact

(32:15):
content over and over in a thousand different ways. Not
to mention that I just can't stand poor, poor quality
of videos where people you know they do these things
where they hold the microphone in front of their mouth.
For some reason, I don't understand that they put the
screen screen where it's like not fully green screened out.
I don't understand that. Maybe I'm just old and curmudgeonly

(32:36):
and I, you know, don't really know what the kids
are doing on there. But my concerns with it is
more that now, when it comes to data, I think
that there is a lot of people out there concerned
with how TikTok is using their data. And of course
what I was talking about, which is cap cut, the
most popular editing app on mobile, and it also has

(32:58):
a desktop version as well. And I would be lying
if when I installed a cap cut on my old computer,
I did not think about the rampifications of China perhaps
having some sort of access to data on my computer.
And I'll be honest, I did not install it on
my new desktop when I got it, because I said,
you know what, I feel comfortable with it on my phone.

(33:19):
And I'll tell you why I feel comfortable with TikTok
and even cap cut on my phone. It's because Apple
is the one that is allowing that app on the phone,
and Apple does not fool around with privacy and safety
and security. So the information that TikTok can gather from
your smartphone, and I'm talking iPhone only at this point

(33:41):
is limited to what Apple allows every other app in
the world to collect. So can they get the information
and the maximum information they want out of there, Absolutely,
but it's limited by what Apple does. And Apple has
done a great thing with iOS where they put everything
in these little compartments, and apps are not necessarily allowed
to snoop those different compartments. So I do think that

(34:02):
a lot of the privacy claims are they're way over sold.
When it comes to TikTok Now and Android, I think
there's a little bit more concern because the Android operating
system does have a little bit more freedom with the
apps to kind of snoop around in things that's getting
closed up as well.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
I think Google is doing a much better job.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
But what I think is everything comes down to what
you're comfortable with and the information you're giving out. So
I think that you need to be careful with any
app and anytime you're sharing personal information. Does TikTok have
the location of every person that's using the app? Probably
are they collecting data on their web surfing habits and
things like that. Yeah, if you give them access to that,

(34:43):
But I don't think it goes above and beyond what
other apps are collecting. But I think, no matter what,
you have to remain critical about any time you are
installing an app, and anytime you're giving your information anywhere,
whether it's on your phone, the web, and no matter
what you're doing. Thanks for the call, Aja, Do you
appreciate you listening? This is rich on Tech. Welcome back

(35:07):
to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV.
There you can get my newsletter. There's a new issue
today packed with all kinds of good information. Uh, just

(35:30):
looking at some of the feedback so far on the show.
We got an email from Gary in Burbank. He said
the Flighty app is now also available on Android.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Check it out.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
He searched the playstore and sure enough, if you do
search the Playstore for flight Y, there is an app.
It says Flighty app flight tracker with five thousand downloads.
Do not download that. Well, I mean unless you want
that app. But that is not the app I'm talking about.
And in fact, it looks like a third grader made
this app and just they're playing on the name. So

(36:03):
they're playing on the fact that you are searching for
Flighty and it's not in it and it comes up
as this that's not the same app. So let's see
do they have any other apps? Now they have a
couple apps, but yeah, so it's only got five thousand downloads.
Flighty is not available for Android. I'm looking on the
website right now, the official website flightyapp dot com. Be careful,

(36:25):
you got it. This is one of the biggest issues
with app names is that there are so many companies
that prey upon people just searching and using you know,
the name and or a variation of the name, or
they use a sponsored ad with the name, and it's
just you got to be very very careful. That's why
I always try to give like official links for things.

(36:46):
Over on Twitter, David said, I just got a new
Roku device two weeks ago, no credit card needed, so
do a little searching online and it seems like it's
kind of a debate of whether you can set up
a Roku account with a credit card or not. One
of the posts I saw said that you can skip
it at the bottom of the screen. It's got like
a tiny little thing where you can bypass the credit card.

(37:11):
Back in twenty twenty, someone posted a link to a
forum for Roku where if you go into myrocud my
dot Roku dot com slash sign up slash no CC,
it will apparently not ask you for the credit card.
So I don't know if that's true or not, but
there you go. So kind of divided on that. But

(37:34):
all these companies, you know, nowadays, all these companies want
a credit card because they want you. They want to
be able to make the purchase process as seamless as possible.
They want you to say, oh, I want to rent
a movie, and next thing you know, oh, I already
have my credit card in there. Cool, I'll just rent
it other than trying to find your card and input
it at that time, And that gives you time to
think and then you say never mind. Jay wrote in said,

(37:54):
my Samsung phone fell in water. Is now done? Can
I recycle it best Buy? Since I cannot reset it
to factory setting. Is it possible for someone to access
the data or is there any other option? Thanks, you
could recycle it best buy. Best Buy says, and you
can go to best Buy or Staples and recycle this.
They both say that they dispose of these things properly,

(38:18):
so you know, that means that they're not supposed to
have their employees kind of looking at these things. And
you know, and everyone I've talked to that recycles electronics,
like the companies, if they're reputable, they go through and
they make sure that these things are wiped before they
actually recycle them, so you can feel comfortable. I mean,
it's really how comfortable you feel with putting this phone.

(38:40):
If it does indeed have all of your data, then
you know there is a risk. But the reality is
your phone is probably protected with a passcode, so I
think that even if someone got access to this phone,
they would likely not get access to your information. So
what they're going to do is when they get this phone,
they're going to test it. They're going to see if

(39:00):
it turns on. If it doesn't, then they're just gonna
scrap it for parts. If it does, they're gonna put
it on a machine that's gonna wipe it clean and
then sort of get it set up again for recycling
or for resale or whatever they do with these things.
Sometimes they sell them, sometimes they scrap them, sometimes they
get the little parts out of them. But I think
you should be comfortable bringing it to Best Buy because

(39:23):
they do pledge that they recycle these things in a
safe manner.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
So there you have it.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Let's see Solomon says, I've searched for all of your
links trying to find the website for cash App. Where
do you post the links to your show notes? Yes, sorry,
I didn't mention I typically mentioned where you can find
the links for the show notes. It is rich on
tech dot TV. You hit the light bulb up at
the top of the page and that will bring you

(39:50):
to the show wiki. And the show wiki is basically
just a list of all of the previous shows by date.
This is show number eighty four. Click that and that
will give you a list to all the links in
real time. So you specifically were looking for that cash
app settlement link, it is. It is on there because
I keep very good notes, So thank you for that.

(40:11):
Eighty eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Let's go to
Michael in Huntington Beach.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Michael, you're on with.

Speaker 8 (40:20):
Rich Hey, Rich Hey, I got a couple of problems
with my almost new Samsung TV. It's the eight thousand series,
is left twelve, three years old, and half of the
screen is darker than the other half. And it started
kind of noticeable, but it's like right smack down the

(40:44):
middle on the left side where it's darker than the
other half.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
And how can I help? What are you trying to
figure out? What you can do? Huh?

Speaker 8 (40:55):
Yeah? I mean, is it fix the ball? Is it?
Why is that happening after we had the worst luck
with these TVs with I mean, it's only three years
old and it's I think it's getting worse.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
Yeah, well, it sounds like it's one of the panels
is going bad, like one of the one of the
back light panels. That's what it sounds like to me.
And that could just be that, you know, you got
a bad set. It could be something loose in there
that you know your TV is obviously out of warranty
at this point of course, right, Yeah, So I mean

(41:30):
your options are, what do you want to do? Do
you want to get a new TV? Do you want
to try to fix this TV. You know, did they
even have people that come to houses anymore to look
at TVs like this?

Speaker 8 (41:41):
Because but I did find a guy like an hour
away that said he could probably fix it for a
couple of hundred dollars, but there's no guarantee.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Is that worth it? Though a couple hundred bucks? I
mean a new TV? You know, my last TV I
bought was like under a thousand bucks, So I don't
know if a couple of hundred.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
How much did you spend on this TV?

Speaker 8 (41:59):
It was four fifty and they're still for fifty, so.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
It's four hundred and fifty bucks. Yeah. I would not
fix it for a couple hundred that's for sure. I would.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
What I would do personally is I would email Samsung.
Have you done that yet?

Speaker 8 (42:14):
No?

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Okay, So what I would do is fire up chat EBT.
Write out your story, like everything that's happening with this thing.
Say you know, I've got the panel. It looks like
the back light panel is going dead. I've had this
for three years. I don't know if you're a good
customer of Samsung or not. You can throw that in
if you are, help it craft an email like explain
what you want, I would like someone to come repair this.

(42:36):
I think Samsung does have their own repair so they
may just send someone there. I don't know if that's
just for their mobile stuff, but I have seen vans
around town. I mean it says, let's see benefits. I mean,
yeah they do. Yeah, they do have TV repair technicians,
so they've got a Samsung has a large network of
TV repair So if you go to Samsung dot Com,

(42:58):
slash US, Slash Support, slash Service, you can request to repair.
That way, I would at least try to get a
free repair and see what happens.

Speaker 8 (43:08):
Why not?

Speaker 1 (43:08):
Yeah, exactly why not. But at the end of the day,
you know you may have to get a new TV,
but you know you might as well go through the
motions of trying to get what you can from Samsung.
They're a big company. This does not cost them a lot,
and it's a learning lesson, like why is this TV
only lasting three years? That should not be the case.
I've had TVs last a decade or more so for them,

(43:29):
you know, by them giving you another model and taking
back this one, they can analyze it and see what
went wrong with that TV.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
So I think it's beneficial to them.

Speaker 8 (43:38):
Speaking of TVs having a long time, I had a
Sony plasma that lasted me fifteen years. Oh yeah, the
most beautiful picture you've ever seen in your life. I
wish there were still plasmas you could buy.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
Oh you know, Yeah, I have a Sony plasma and
it is it is like the single. It's the thing
must weigh ten thousand pounds, the problem. But it is
absolutely the most beautiful picture. And it's not just beautiful,
it's like got a filmic quality to it, like it
just it looks like if I was like a filmmaker,
this would be the TV that I would watch a
movie on because it's so good. I don't use yes, yes,

(44:17):
I mean that's plasma, you know, versus h you know,
LED and all these new you know, I mean, unless
you have an old lead. Obviously those are very expensive,
but they you know, I've got the black contrast and
that that's much better than the LEDs. But the LEDs
have come a long way. When I first switched to mine,
I got a new TV. Recently, I bought a High
Sense and it at first, yeah, and at first I

(44:40):
was I was a little bit skeptical. I got it in,
I got it installed, and I was like, ugh, I
don't know if I like this as much. And within
a couple of weeks we now I love it. I
think it's fantastic for the price. I think it was,
like I said, I think it was about maybe twelve
hundred with tacks and all that good stuff.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
But wow, it was. It was pretty good.

Speaker 8 (44:57):
I asked you one more quick sung question.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
I've got thirty seconds, so make it quick.

Speaker 8 (45:01):
Okay. I've got this thing that happens. It's not a jutter.
It's like a jitter on the screen. It's like it's
missing one thin pixel line and it'll jump. And it
happens on download, or it happens on screaming screaming, and
it also happens on UH antenna.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Is this on?

Speaker 5 (45:25):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (45:25):
This is on your TV?

Speaker 8 (45:26):
It's on the Samsung, same Samsung TV. I've got two
hundred up download, great wireless connection, and I can't figure
this thing out. I've made every adjustment.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Yeah, I think I think it sounds like you got
a lemon there, Michael. I think you gotta press them
hard and tell them, look, you know this is not
you know you got to you gotta do something here,
at least come out and look at it and tell
me what's going on, because two things wrong. That's telling
me that this thing could be a lemon eighty eight
rich one on one eight eight eight seven four two
four one zero one. Remember you have the ability to

(46:00):
get in touch with these big companies. It does not
cost them a lot to help you out. It costs
you a lot because it's your money. Does not cost
them a lot. Press them, press them, press them. You're
listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at
triple eight rich one oh one, that is eight eight

(46:21):
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give
me a call if you have a question about technology.
Website also an option. Just go to rich on Tech
dot tv hit contact. You can send an email. That's
what Steve did in reference to the Samsung TV. He said,
what about an extended warranty from a credit card that's
usually included? And uh, I did think of that, but

(46:43):
three years old, most of the cards I would say
match like a year now. I should have said if
if Michael bought it from Costco, because I believe you
can return things pretty much, not forever, but I think
some in some case as you can. I think for
some of the electronics, I know you got to check
it out, but Costco has a very lenient return.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Policy, let's put it that way.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
And these credit cards, I just looked up on the
points guy dot com. So USAA matches up to a
year Visa infinite, one year visa signature, up to a
year chase, up to a year, American Express one year,
City two years. Wow, that's impressive. So and it's up

(47:28):
to ten thousand dollars per claim for most of these. Now,
in my experience, I don't think I've don't think I've
ever maybe I tried to do this once and like
it's just a nightmare.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
These these these credit cards.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
You know, they post all of these benefits, but when
you go to actually use them, it could be a
real pain.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
So I don't know, maybe that's just me.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
If you've used one of these like warranty extension things,
let me know, But I kind of just imagine that
they just they advertise them well, but then when people
go to use them, it's like you got to jump.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
Through hoops to use them. But good suggestion there, Steve.
Thanks for that.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
Let's go to David in Fontana. David, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 9 (48:08):
Hey, mister Rich, how you doing.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
I am doing excellent. Thanks for asking. What can I
help with?

Speaker 4 (48:15):
Well?

Speaker 9 (48:16):
You see, I bought a new iPhone fifteen titanium, okay,
And I am a truck driver and I've been using
iPhone for several years now, and I use a headset,
a blue parrot headset to talk on the phone. Okay,

(48:41):
And ever since I bought this new iPhone titanium, everything
is just went paywire.

Speaker 7 (48:51):
It doesn't work the.

Speaker 9 (48:54):
I pull into it. It works fine. When I'm driving
down the freeway, everything works fine. But as you like,
pull into a business, it seems like their Wi Fi
or something just blocks everything out.

Speaker 4 (49:08):
And I have a lot of network issues, connection issues
with the new iPhone fifteen.

Speaker 9 (49:16):
So I don't know if it's go ahead.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Let me ask you this, David.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
When you set this phone up, did you set it
up fresh or did you copy everything over from your
old device?

Speaker 9 (49:26):
I copied everything over from my old device.

Speaker 5 (49:29):
It is.

Speaker 9 (49:31):
I don't know how Team mobile. I brought it from
T Mobile.

Speaker 8 (49:34):
I don't know.

Speaker 9 (49:34):
I did say everything like you said, yes.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
Okay, so they oh, they did it for you. They
copied it over. Yeah, oh gosh, Okay, that's that's probably
what's happening here. So I think what's happening here is
that it just was not the cleanest copy. I mean,
they're trying to get you out of there as soon
as humanly possible, and so maybe they just did, you know,
the simplest, quickest, easiest way. So I, personally, when I
set up a new device, you just spent a whole

(50:00):
bunch of money on a brand new, awesome iPhone fifteen titanium,
and so I want to set that up the way
I want to set it up, and I want it
to be nice and fresh. I don't know what phone
you came from, but you know there are some settings
and things that were copied over that just might not
really work very well on this new device. So what
I would do, personally, what I would do if you're

(50:21):
having all these problems, I would one hundred percent just
format this phone and start fresh. So that means erase
all content in settings and literally start over fresh. That's
what I would do personally if I was having these issues.
If you don't want to go that far, you can
kind of reset things without going that far. So if
you go into settings and then general, scroll all the

(50:42):
way down and it will say transfer or reset iPhone.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
You tap there.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
I know it sounds scary, but you still have a
lot of options before you actually do anything. And then
it says reset. You tap reset, and then you get
a whole bunch of options. It says reset all settings,
reset network settings, delete all sims, reset keyboard, reset homescreen,
reset location. What I personally might do is start with

(51:08):
reset network settings. And what that's gonna do is clear
out all of your Bluetooth and Wi Fi and cellular
settings on this phone, and it will get them back
to factory. And what that means is you're gonna have
to reconnect Wi Fi, You're gonna have to reconnect Bluetooth,
You're gonna have to restart your phone to get the
cellular going again. But it's all gonna work. And I

(51:29):
think that you're you know, you're gonna have to reconnect
your Bluetooth headset. But I think what's happening here is
that some of these old Wi Fi networks that you've
connected to. You said you're a truck driver, maybe at
some of these like truck stops, your phone is trying
to reach out to them and connect to them. And
the Wi Fi signal is not very strong in your
cab or wherever you are, and it's kind of like
teetering between cellular and that, and so it's kind of

(51:52):
having trouble keeping that connection. There's also another connection, another
cellular set that you can go to inside there used
to be inside the cellular. Let me see if it's
still there. Yeah, inside cellular. If you go to setting cellular,
says Wi Fi Assist, it will automatically use cellular data.
When Wi Fi connectivity is poor, you can turn that

(52:15):
on and it will automatically use cellular if it's trying
to get a Wi Fi signal. That can anyway, David,
hopefully get that phone back up and running. Thanks for
the call.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
Today. Coming up, I'm.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Gonna tell you how to use your points to plan
your travel. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
talking technology. The phone lines open at eight eight eight
rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. We'll get back to

(52:45):
them in just a moment. But very excited for my
next guest, do you do it for the points. Well,
if you do, you probably have a lot of them
saved up, and you wonder how can you use them effectively?
There's a lot of blogs out there talking about this stuff,
but sometimes you just want to figure out, like, how
can I use all these points from all these different
programs And there is a website that can help. Bart

(53:08):
Welch is CEO and co founder of a website called
points Yeah dot com This helps you use your points
to plan travel. Bart, thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 10 (53:18):
Hey, thanks for having us on. Really excited to talk
about Pointsdid dot com and nerd out a bit in
this space because it's a space that a lot of
people have their fingers in but don't really know how
to utilize.

Speaker 8 (53:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (53:31):
I mean, look, you can rack up points pretty easily nowadays.
I know many people are driven by that, but the
most important part is using them and using them effectively.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
So what made you start this website?

Speaker 10 (53:44):
Yes, if I take a look back at the past
decade or even a little bit longer than that, the
points business used to be a lot simpler in a way.
It wasn't as lucrative, but it was simpler. You knew
that you had to save up twenty five thousand miles
to you know, use a get a round trip metic
economy ticket. These days, most the airlines have moved to

(54:06):
dynamic pricing. Most credit card companies have their own points
programs as well. There are proprietary portals, and you can
also transfer your credit card points into airlines, and so
it's just become a really complicated, complicated place. And so
my co founder and I, we've been in this this
party industry for quite some time. More on the earning
point side, we said, hey, let's just make something that's

(54:29):
simpler so that people just have to use one website
to see you know, let's say you've got miles in
two or three different airline programs or two or three
different credit card programs, rather than having to have multiple
tabs open and you know, opening up all these other
online travel websites, just one website, and so that's points
dot com. So you can basically search twenty different airline

(54:49):
loyalty program six bank programs, and five online travel agencies
all in one click. So it makes your life a
heck of a lot easier.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
Instead of helping, so I see American Expresses on here,
Built Rewards Capital One, Chase City Bank, Wells Fargo and
the airline programs. I mean it looks like all of
the major airlines, plus some of the international airlines, Jet Blue.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
I mean, it's a lot.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
So you put in your information, you know where you
want to go, and then it searches in real time.
What do you get for free versus pakes? I know
there's a paid aspect, so explain what people get for free?

Speaker 10 (55:27):
Yeah, So basically the majority of the website is free,
and I'd encourage people just to go to Points dot
com check it out.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Register.

Speaker 10 (55:33):
If you register for free, you can do searches for flights,
for hotels, for all kinds of other things. We do
have a paid model, which is just shied ninety dollars
a year. It's still one of the cheapest out there
in the markets. That opens up additional alerts, you know,
additional being able to search more dates at one time.

(55:55):
But the core features are totally free and that's been
a huge part of our success. And you know, I'm
really proud to say in the last month we've actually
become the number one Points planning website on the globe.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
Oh wow, congratulations.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
I Mean, the real magic of this is, like you said,
it used to be very simple. You got a certain
amount of points, you had a free flight. Now what
it really comes down to is how can I get
a free flight for the cheapest use or the most
effective use of my points?

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Is that kind of right?

Speaker 8 (56:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 10 (56:25):
I mean you can play that quite a few different ways,
because let's say you've only got miles and points with
one in one program or one airline. Even within that program,
on any given day or given week, you might see
the same exact flight for five thousand miles or one
hundred thousand miles, because it's tied much more to the
price of the actual picket now than it used to be.
So that's kind of point number one. Point number two

(56:48):
is that you know, if you happen to have miles
across multiple programs, you know these programs are competing with
each other now on pricing when it comes to miles
and points. Miles and points effectively have become a cash currency.
In fact, my mom called me up recently. I was like, Hey,
I know, you've got a bunch of miles and points,
and I was like, Mom, you're basically asking me for money,

(57:08):
because you know, loyalty currency is money at this at
this stage, of the game, and I always recommend to
people it's generally depreciating asset, so you should get on
points dot com and use those miles and points.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Oh so you're saying that you shouldn't just like keep
them forever.

Speaker 10 (57:24):
Yeah, I think that's that's the worst strategy ever. Actually,
over time, the value of mile end point has gone down,
and these days, with interest rates being pretty decent and
inflation being high, you should be using those miles and
points because otherwise it's really a depreciating asset.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
So I got an alert that my Highatt points were expiring,
which I was like, oh wow, I didn't even know that,
and so I felt so proud of myself. I had
booked a hotel for an upcoming stay paid and then
I was like, oh, I wonder if there's a Hyatt
in there. And I was able to transfer a couple
just like a tiny amount of points into my Higatt
program and now I got a completely free hotel room

(58:02):
on points that we're going to expire. And I didn't
even realize I had them, and they weren't that many points.
I guess Hyatt points are worth like kind of a lot,
even if you have a little so it was like
one room was like fifteen thousand points or something.

Speaker 10 (58:14):
Yeah, Hyatt's a great program. I think most you know,
most of the hotel chains have great programs, and a
lot of these loyalty programs these is they technically don't
expire if you've got some kind of activity. That activity
could literally be like earn one mile on a credit
card or you know, do a redemption for a hotel
or a flight. And one thing that we love is

(58:34):
that on points dot com you can actually check hotel
awards as well. Most websites just focus on flights, but
on us, let's say you want to go to New
York or Las Vegas or whoever you type in the city.
You can even put in your preferred program and then
we'll show you, you know, how many points that hotel
had cost if you're using miles or points. But then

(58:57):
also let's say you don't have enough miles or points.
You want to actually pay cash or book on one
of the airline reward portals, so we show you all
those different options. Really, the purpose offpointsid dot com is
to consolidate all these bits and pieces of information that
are all over the Internet into one spot, so you
don't have to have twenty five tabs open, don't have

(59:18):
to have a Google sheet open when you're supposed to
be really enjoying the fact that you've earned these rewards.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
Now, I always get the indication that these airlines and
hotels they don't want you to use these points. They
make it really tough, like you said, to compare and
contrast and also figure out your transfer partners. And so
how do you get the information behind this? Like do
the airlines like let you tap into their systems? Like
how do you know when American Airlines has a flight

(59:45):
for these twenty five thousand points or whatever you know.

Speaker 10 (59:49):
About I think it was just shive a decade ago.
There is some change in legislation in the US where
miles and points used to be considered a liability on
balance sheets, and now that's considered deferred revenue. And so actually,
most these loyalty programs now do have an incentive to
get the points off the books because they get to
recognize the revenue, and so they have you know, even

(01:00:10):
on their own websites. Made it more transparent and easier.
But at the end of the day, these are the
companies that are you know, trying to sell flights, trying
to sell hotel rooms for you know, the primary focus
of their business. So the quality of those tools aren't
always the best, and so companies like ours have been
able to build tools that effectively create that transparency and

(01:00:34):
create that ease of ease of information. Like one example,
on our website, we have this feature called Daydream Explorer,
and it's honest to god, I've been in this industry
for a long time. It's the coolest thing ever. Where
I can put in I'm based in Chicago. I can
put in Chicago and I want to go to Asia

(01:00:54):
over these two months. This is the These are the
airline programs I'm part of. These are the credit card
cards that I have, and it will literally show me
all of the options in one go, Whereas that used
to take me probably an entire weekend of sitting on
my couch trying to figure out, you know, how can
I use these miles and points?

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
Yeah, when I I just went to this page, and
I can tell you guys are true nerds by looking
at this page, because it is it is literally every
option that you would want, as like a real traveler
like I can see you can choose your cabin, the program,
the number of seats, how many stops, how many points
you want to use, you know, whether you want to
go to the beach, family fishing golf. I mean it's

(01:01:35):
really very very thorough, and so you're thinking like in
advance of how people would think when they search for
this kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
It is very very handy.

Speaker 4 (01:01:43):
Now.

Speaker 10 (01:01:44):
What to be rich honestly is we're trying to appeal
to like the nerd qualities that myself and my co
founder have because we've been in this space for a
long time, but then also democratize it for people who
don't necessarily understand what a cabin is or cabin frequency is.
You know, my mom being the great EXAs, she's got
Capital one Point, she's got Southwest Points, she's got American

(01:02:04):
Airlines miles, and she's always reaching out to me saying, hey, Bart,
how can I use my miles and points? I said, hey,
just go on go on points dot com. You don't
need to ask me anymore. It's gonna save me phone
calls from mom.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
I've heard that before actually from a lot of great
ideas come from saving phone calls from parents. And you
can focus on actually just chatting with them instead of
providing tech support or the Points travel stuff. Bart Welch,
CEO and co founder of points Yeah dot com. We're
gonna leave it there. Thanks so much for joining me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
Thanks rich for.

Speaker 10 (01:02:35):
Having me, and please check out the website if you
haven't yet. It's pretty much free.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
Yeah, very very cool. I'll put the link on my website.
Go to rich on tech dot tv. If you want
to plan travel using and maximizing your Points, just go
to rich on tech dot tv. Hit that light bulb
icon up at the top.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
This is show number eighty four. You can get a
link to Points. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
Coming up, I'll tell you why Google is killing the
Chrome cast in my Roku is getting into sports. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
with you talking technology at triple A Rich one on one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. I just want to bring up Jonathan from

(01:03:19):
a Fountain Valley. You had a comment about the TV warranty.

Speaker 7 (01:03:23):
Yeah, I've used the Costco one before. Yeah, the Costco
one is very cheap and inexpensive and it works.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
You're talking to the extended warranty.

Speaker 7 (01:03:35):
The extended warranty and their credit card one too. And
I had I had an issue with with the I
think it's all state that handles it, and they want
to give me a lower grade television because it had
to be replaced.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Yeah, and what.

Speaker 7 (01:03:51):
Ended up happening is talking with the management of Costco.
They got on the phone with with with All eight
and they got it resolved and they got me They
they couldn't replace the exact TV, but what they did
is they gave me the amount of money I paid
for the TV, which at that point in time was
nine hundred and ninety nine dollars and the Coppable TV

(01:04:14):
was like eight hundred dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Now, oh well, going.

Speaker 7 (01:04:16):
Through Costco, it was just absolutely perfect.

Speaker 8 (01:04:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:04:20):
Well, they just really take take good care of you.
So and they're and they're extended warranty, so you can
get five years a warranty for like one hundred and
fifty to two hundred dollars total.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
Well, I'm looking at their website, so you're right. It's
all state protection plans that they do. And then Costco
says it extends the manufacturer's warranty on the following items
from up to two years from the date of warehouse purchase,
so televisions, projectors, computers, and major appliances. So if you're
saying they extend the man if they're saying they extend

(01:04:51):
the manufacturers warrant you, Let's say you get a year
from the manufacturer, so they'll extend that for another for
another year, or for up.

Speaker 7 (01:04:58):
To another year, another year, the year, or it could
be two If I think if you use their credit card,
I think it's two years. If you're doing it paying
cash forward, then I think it's only one year. But
I think if you're using their credit card, it's it's
two years. Yeah, but you can get total up to
like five years, five years of warranty on the television.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
Well, it sounds like you made out in your in
your experience there with getting more than you actually paid
for the TV or what you paid for the TV.
Then you could buy the new TV for cheaper. Of course,
you paid for the extended warranty, so that might have
been taken out of that there. But thanks for the call, Jonathan,
appreciate it. I'm typically not an extended warranty person, and

(01:05:38):
I'll be honest, I've I've I've talked about this before,
but even with my MacBooks. I know, I know Apple,
like a lot of their business is apple Care, right,
and I get it. They have all these stores everywhere.
It's very easy, but I think you have to kind of,
you know, do the math on things and see if
it's if it's worth it for you. It does give
you peace of mind, and I think for a lot

(01:05:58):
of people that peace of mind. You know, you got
to put a price on that, you know, it's part
of what makes you feel like, Okay, this is great.
I remember one time I was in an Apple store.
I was buying an iPhone and they said, you want
apple Care on this phone. This was many years ago,
and I think the Apple Care was like, I don't know,
maybe ninety nine bucks whatever it was, And I said, oh,

(01:06:18):
absolutely no, I don't do extended warranties. And then five
seconds later I put a case on the table to
buy with my phone, and that was fifty dollars. I
was like, okay, so I could just get an extended warranty,
not by the case, but anyway, I thought that was funny,
you know. It's one of those things. By the way,
I didn't realize I was kicking a bee's nest last weekend,
I went to Costco after the show and I posted

(01:06:39):
on X that I had never seen this before, but
Costco is now asking folks to scan their membership card
at the door, and I'd never seen that before, and
so I took a picture. I posted it to X
and next thing, you know, that was like a top
story this week because I guess they rolled that out
to a bunch of stores all at once, and it's

(01:07:01):
to crack down on you know, membership bandits, so folks
that are either using expired cards or folks that are
freeloading and using a friend's card. So now they're checking
your picture against the picture on the account, making sure
that it's you. And it does work with the app,
So if you're using the Costco app, which I highly
recommend by the way, if you have a Costco card,

(01:07:23):
stop using the actual physical card. Just add the card
to the Costco app, so much easier. The only thing
I've noticed is that it's a little bit different. Now
this is probably not a big issue for most people.
It is for me since I switch phones so often,
But if you are using the Costco app on your phone,
you can only have it linked to like one phone

(01:07:43):
at a time, So just be aware of that limitation
because they don't want you installing it on ten different
phones because it is an issue anyway. Eighty to eight
rich one O one eight eight eight rich one O
one is the phone number for the show. So chrome
Cast ending production after eleven years. This is one of

(01:08:05):
Google's most successful devices and they are getting rid of it.
After eleven years, they sold over one hundred million devices.
Now I know this sounds wild. You're like, wait a second,
I have a chrome Cast. No, you're gonna be fine.
Number one. They're going to continue to provide software and
security updates for existing chrome Cast devices for at least
a while, and if you have one, you're going to

(01:08:27):
be okay.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
What's really happening here is that Google is understanding that
chrome Cast had a great place in time in history.
When it first came out in twenty thirteen. This was
a small kind of stick that plugged into the back
of a TV. And what it did was it allowed
you to cast content from your phone, your tablet, or
your computer. And this was at a time before TVs

(01:08:51):
were truly smart, and so it was a cheap, simple
way to get things from your phone to your TV.
And nowadays, of course, this technology is built into a
whole bunch of other devices, so smart TVs, you know,
you have a streaming stick that you can use. So
it's just kind of a sign of the times that

(01:09:13):
we may no longer need to have this Chrome dongle.
You can still do it, because it's going to be
now now it's all about casting from your device to
a TV, you know, using kind of an app or
something that's built into the TV. So the good news
is that the Chrome cast is going away, but I
think the Chrome cast technology is going to stay. And

(01:09:35):
now they kind of call it Google Cast. It's built
into many TVs. It's kind of the equivalent of airplay
on you know, the Apple devices. And by the way,
this week also Google came out with a new Google
TV streamer and this is a set top box, So
again changing times. They're going from sort of that dongle
that lets you add content to your TV in a cheap, fast,

(01:09:58):
simple way to now saying, you know what, I think
the streaming box is the wave of the future. Remember
Chrome cast when it was a dongle, your phone was
the remote control. And now of course we've all moved
to kind of either a smart TV or a streaming box.
But if you have one of these things plugged into
your phone, you'll still be okay. Plugged into your TV,
you'll still be okay. Eighty eight Rich one O one

(01:10:20):
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. Coming
up in the next hour. I got so much feedback
about last week's story about the guy who said his
Apple Watch saved his life. I'm gonna read so many
stories or a bunch of the stories that I got
about this, and uh, explain more about it. Eighty eight

(01:10:43):
rich one O one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
with you, talking technology. The website for the show rich
on Tech dot TV. If you want links to think
I mentioned, hit the light bulb. If you want to
get in touch, just hit contact and yeah, Roku's got

(01:11:07):
a new twenty four to seven free sports channel. I'm
telling you, these free channels are all the rage right now.
Every single service is doing free channels. It's funny because
it was all about streaming, you know, these premium like
Netflix and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
But now everyone's doing free.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Netflix has yet to jump into that, but I have
a feeling that they may because people want choice and
they want stuff for free. And so Roku now has
a Roku Sports channel launching on August twelfth, that's this
week and be available for free on the Roku channel
in the US. Programming will have live Major League Baseball games,

(01:11:48):
the Rich Eisen Show, Formula eraces, sports themed Roku originals,
classic boxing matches, combat sports, high stakes poker, and then
eventually they're gonna have the NBA G League games, which
I had to look up. I didn't know what that was,
but it's I guess it's like kind of a bobo.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
You know what that is? NBA G League Have you
heard of it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
It's like the the developmental league for the NBA teams.
So I was looking that up and it's kind of cool.
So that'll be on there as well.

Speaker 11 (01:12:17):
So pretty much like every team has their own development team,
So like the Lakers have the South Bay Lakers, Clippers
have another team and it's like the team that they
developed to try to hopefully bring to the majors.

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):
So are these like high school kids or college kids
or just.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
Anya anyone anyone. Yeah, interesting, very cool. So this will
be available through the Roku channels, Live TV guide, and
again these free channels. I was on Google TV and
they've got like eight hundred free channels and it's just wild.
You can watch all kinds of stuff. Some people just
like to have the TV running in the background, you know,

(01:12:53):
Like that's how I grew up, just having you know,
it's streaming, you have to like decide what you want
to watch. But with stream you know, with these fast channels,
you can just put them on and they just stay
on forever. I mean, Pluto TV's got them and it's
really quite interesting to watch this progression. By the way,
speaking of streaming, I talked about the Chrome cast going away.
Google TV Streamer is what's replacing it. This is a

(01:13:15):
four K box. It's one hundred bucks. It'll be available
on September twenty fourth. It's got Ai powered content suggestions,
four K HDR, double Vision, Dolby ATMOS. It'll be a
matter hub, which means it'll control your smart home devices.
It'll have a remote control with a finder button, which
means if you lose it in the couch, you can
find it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
This is coming out very soon.

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):
And my excitement for this is that I can finally
set Google Photos for my screensaver because I use Apple
TV and as much as I love it, it's clean,
it's nice, it's just you know, the asking it for
stuff like the audio, like the series is just not
very good. Last night I asked for John Candy movies

(01:13:58):
and it was like, sorry, don't know what that means.
It's like, how do you not know that? And Google
their AI for asking it? Like Google as system is
really really good, and I imagine it's even better on
this new box. So I'm looking forward to trying this
out just for my Google Photos, but of course for
everything else. Let's see here, Let's go to David in

(01:14:20):
Trabuco Canyon, California.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
David, you're on with.

Speaker 7 (01:14:23):
Rich Ye hopefully I've got a quick question for you.
A friend of mine wants to use chat GPT. Okay,
she's using Android, Linux and Windows systems. Obviously, the Android
and the Linux, it's pretty straightforward app download. Windows can't

(01:14:43):
find one. So is there a way around that? Or
is there an alternative.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
System for chat GPT on the desktop?

Speaker 8 (01:14:52):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
I would just use the website chat GBT and go
from there. And you know, if you're I'm looking at
the website right now, it doesn't look like you can
install it as like a progressive web app. But I
would just bookmarkt and just have it on your on
your browser at all times. There is there is a
chat GPT desktop app. Let's see if they have it.

(01:15:15):
I know they have it for Mac. I don't know
if they have it for Windows. Let's see, okay, chat
g Yes.

Speaker 4 (01:15:21):
According to my I people, they said that it would
be available for Windows in November of this year.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
Interesting, I wonder where they're getting that. Maybe it's on there.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
Yeah, no, they Okay, at the at the very bottom
of the screen, it does say coming to Windows later
this year, so to me that you know, it doesn't
say a specific day, but you know later this year.
Since we're already in August, I'm guessing you know, probably
November December. But yeah, they do have it for Mac
os uh and yeah, the Windows one is coming soon.

(01:15:52):
But I would just personally, I just use it. The
only thing is it would be nice if you could
install it as, like I said, a progressive web app.
It looks like mine on claud you can maybe because
I'm not logged into chat ebt. It's not letting me
have that option. But yeah, that's the probably the best
way to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
Just keep it with.

Speaker 7 (01:16:11):
Nice if you can load it on all the systems.
That way, you break off one, you can pick it
right up on the other one. So that's the only
downside I can see.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
Well you can do that, I mean it'll it'll still
continue with your chats. So I'm looking at my side
you know, I've got my sidebar with all my chats here,
and they're they're they pick up across systems, So as
long as you're logged in your your chats should be
picked up across all the systems. So it sounds like
it's just a temporary issue with the Windows situation. I
personally just prefer using it as the web app. I

(01:16:43):
don't really know what the advantage is to the desktop app,
except you have a shortcut. You can set a shortcut
key to trigger it, which is kind of nice. But
I did have it install to my Mac for a
while and I kind of forgot about it, and I
just I just ended up going to the website when
I need it. But personally, I use Claude. I'm not
using chat ebt as much as Claude, but I know
chat GBT is sort of the proprietary eponym. Right now

(01:17:05):
for all this stuff, Let's go to Louis in Let's
see as I think.

Speaker 2 (01:17:10):
Kim might be on with him. It looks like Louis.

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
Okay, I think yeah, I think we're still getting info
from Louis. All right, well that's happening. I mentioned that
Samsung has a recall Samsung voluntary recall for certain slide
in electric model ranges. So these are stoves basically that
can apparently catch fire because of the knobs might be

(01:17:33):
activated without you realizing it, so voluntary recall. These are
models sold in the US between twenty thirteen and twenty
twenty four, so a wide swath of Samsung stoves potential
activation of range knobs posing a fire hazard. So Samsung
is offering free knoblocks or covers to fix the affected models.

(01:17:55):
Thirty specific model numbers are affected by this recall. I'm
not going to read all the numbers, but I'll link
them up.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
On the website.

Speaker 1 (01:18:02):
You can continue to use your range while waiting for
the free knoblocks or covers. You do need to provide
your fifteen digit serial number to get the free fix. Here,
Samsung recommends general safety precautions such as not storing items
on the range top and keeping children and pets away
from the knobs. The knoblocks or covers should arrive within

(01:18:24):
five business days of completing this request. So the recall
remedies provided free of charge, regardless of warranty status. So
again you can go to there's a website Samsung dot com.
But it's kind of complicated, but I will put the
link on my website. Rich on tech dot tv, just
hit the light bulb. This is show number eighty four.

(01:18:46):
Look for the Samsung recall information and you can check
your model number, see if it's affected, and go from there.
Eighty eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. I mentioned the fit
Ace LT. This is the smart watch that Google came
up with for kids. I think it is excellent. My
kid has been wearing it and testing it, and I

(01:19:08):
think it's fantastic. I would only say my only downside
with this smart watch is I don't think it has
the strongest antenna for a signal. But I feel like
that's a problem with a lot of smart watches, especially
the Apple Watch.

Speaker 2 (01:19:23):
And this one.

Speaker 1 (01:19:24):
I just maybe they just can't build the same type
of antenna that they can on your phone in these
smart watches, so I feel like it doesn't pick up
a signal as much as some other devices would like
a smartphone. But with that said, it does work. It
is really nice. It is as advertised, but they have
added a couple new features in time for the school year.
They did introduce a tap to fay tap to pay feature.

(01:19:47):
But here's the weird thing. It's only compatible with green
Light and Go Henry debit cards. Now, I know those
are two popular debit cards for kids, but I'm not
sure why they didn't just make it compatible with every
debit card. But at start it's compatible with those to
It also has two new games they added, plus the
school time feature, which kind of disables the watch, not

(01:20:08):
disables it, but it makes it so that it's not
going to be distracting during the school day. They added
a lunch break option, so if your kid has lunch
from like, let's say, eleven thirty to twelve thirty in
the morning. By the way, I don't know why kids'
school lunches are so early, Like my kids are like, oh.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
Yeah, lunch.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
Our lunch is at like ten to fifteen AM. Like what,
Maybe it's because you've been at school for so early.

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):
But they added a lunch break option so that you
can have your your phone or your watch available during
lunch break. Right now, it's got a thirty dollars discount
from August eleventh through twenty fifth on the Google Store.
You can also buy it at best Buy and Target
online in addition to Amazon. When it came out, it
was only sold on Amazon and Google. And they're still

(01:20:51):
doing their fifty percent discount on the annual ACE Data
pass if you purchase it before August thirty first, So
it's a one hundred twenty bucks for the year for the
data for this device. If you buy it right now,
you'll get fifty percent off, which is sixty dollars. So
the neat thing about this fitbit acelte is it has
cellular built in so that you can get in touch

(01:21:12):
with your kid anywhere anytime.

Speaker 2 (01:21:14):
You can call and message them.

Speaker 1 (01:21:16):
Once again, the biggest downside is that this device is
not assigned a traditional phone number, so you cannot just
give someone a phone number to call your kid. Let's
say Grandma's picking them up from school. Say okay, you
can get in touch with Johnny by calling them at
their watch. No, you can't do that. They would have
to download the fipbit Ace app. You have to add
them as a contact, and then they can message and

(01:21:38):
call through the app. It's all done voiceover IP, so
it is not a traditional phone number like you would
get assigned with the Apple Watch. That is a big
delineation between these two devices. Some people may find that
that's a good thing because there's no there's no spam
because of that. Some people may see that as a
downside because it's just a little more hoops to jump
through to get in touch with these watches. All right,

(01:22:00):
coming up, a lot of you emailed me about the
Apple Watch and the life saving story I shared last week.
Coming up, I'm gonna read some of your emails about that.
You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you
talking Technology website for the show Richontech dot TV. Disney

(01:22:27):
is raising prices once again. They just really must need
the money because they have continued to announce price increases
for Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus like clockwork, just
like the good old days of cable that everyone was
trying to escape. Remember when Disney Plus first launched, it
was six ninety nine a month. It was a no brainer,

(01:22:50):
and that included no ads, And that same service now
is fifteen ninety nine a month. So prices price increases
range from a dollar to six extra dollars a month,
depending on what you have. New prices take effect on
October seventeenth, and basically Disney Plus with ads is going

(01:23:12):
up two dollars a month. So it used to be eight,
now it's ten. Disney Plus without ads is going to
increase from fourteen to sixteen dollars a month. Let's see,
and just everything just go down the line. If you
want to see the full list of price increases, you
can go to the show notes. But yeah, I mean,
it's just getting to the point where you know, it
used to be a no brainer to have these services.

(01:23:34):
Now it's like, Okay, which ones do I want to have?
Because I don't know about you, but the last thing
I watched on Disney Plus last night was Indiana Jones,
the original one from like nineteen eighty something. So they've
more than made their money on that and here I
am watching it. Oh, I did watch Deadpool and that
was pretty good. Bobo likes that. He was that surprised me.

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):
It was a it took me.

Speaker 1 (01:24:00):
What when did Deadpool come out? Deadpool the first one
came out in twenty sixteen, so it took me eight
years to watch that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:10):
That's not bad. You haven't seen dead Pool overring.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
No, That's what made me want to see it because
I'm seeing all the publicity and people love this movie.
So I'm like, all right, let me see the original.
It's an amazing movie. See what the hype is all about. Hey,
you gotta watch part two. I gotta watch part two
and I gotta watch So that's probably talk to me
in the next like four or five years, and I'll
tell you what I think of these things. I don't
like you, all right, coming up here, we're going to

(01:24:34):
talk about this. So last week I mentioned we told
the story of Peter Moore. This is a guy from Montecito, California,
former tech executive. Kind of a big deal actually in
the tech world. He was He ran Xbox for a
while and a couple other things, but he said that
the Apple Watch saved his life. He got this low
heart rate notification. Plus he was feeling a little woozy,

(01:24:57):
and he said, you know what, I might want to
listen to this thing. His wife brought him to the hospital,
got a pacemaker. Within four hours, he had an electrical
blockage from his heart, or complete blockage. Anyway, the emails
poured in. So I'm going to read some of these
emails because so many of you wrote to me. Bev
wrote in hey, Rich, I never had one of these devices,
but back in March, I took a fall in my garage.
I was fortunate that I was able to get myself

(01:25:18):
back in the house. Anyway, after seeing your piece about
thirty seconds ago, can you recommend which Apple Watch to get?

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:25:25):
If you want just the basics for fall detection and
the heart rate notifications, the Apple Watch se will be
just fine. Otherwise you have the Apple Watch Series eight
or nine, which add a little bit more like ECG.
And then of course you can get the cellular. Only
get the cellular if you are not taking your phone
with you. So my recommendation with the Apple Watch or

(01:25:46):
any smart watch, you only need the cellular if you
do something that does not require your phone.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
A lot.

Speaker 1 (01:25:52):
So, for instance, if you run a lot without your
phone and he took a fall while you're on a run,
you'd still want your watch to be able to call
nine one one, so get the cellular in that case.
I think it's unag Here in Los Angeles says I
saw your piece about the gentleman who's smart watch saved
his life leading to a pacemaker implant. I wanted to

(01:26:12):
let you know that a young teen girl experienced something similar.
Her parents rushed her to UCLA, where she had a
life saving procedure. Interestingly, her father is on the police
force and understood the importance of the alert on her phone,
making sure she received prompt care. This can make a
compelling story, especially highlighting that heart issues aren't just for
the aging population. I'm a retired nurse liver transplant coordinator

(01:26:37):
from UCLA and yeah, just amazing a reminder, yes, that
these issues don't just happen with the older population. Thanks
for that email. Dave from North rich wrote in my
Apple watch discovered my a FIBs situation about two and
a half years ago. I went to the er immediately
spent two days there. My watch showed back to normal
at the same time the hospital's monitoring confirmed all was okay.

(01:26:58):
I've been on heart med since I want. I sent
a thank you email to Tim Cook and his wonderful
reply is hanging on my office wall. Carolyn wrote in
this segment with Peter Moore discussing his lightheadedness and life
saving smart watch was so compelling, one of those rare
radio moments nowadays that stops listeners in their tracks and
reminds us why radio, especially AM radio, is to be valued.

Speaker 2 (01:27:22):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
Carolyn Ken writes in I saw your show. Apple Watch
heart rate data alerted my cardiologist enough to send me
to an electro physiologist for a pacemaker. I'm asymptomatic, which
caused me not to be concerned. My heart rate rests
in the low thirties. I'll have the pacemaker put in shortly.
I am a true believer in this device. John from

(01:27:44):
Ladera Ranch writes in I have an Apple Watch an iPhone.
I want to get an Apple Watch, especially after hearing
the life saving story today. I'm not interested in having
cell service with my watch, but I want to use
it for blood pressure, steps, heart rate, etc. If I
buy an Apple Watch without cell service, we'll it provide
those feature.

Speaker 2 (01:28:00):
Thanks so much.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
I love your radio show. Absolutely it will provide those features.
You do not need the cell service again. Only get
the cell service if you want your watch to be
able to call for help when your phone is not nearby.
All right, coming up, we're going to talk to Aptera
Motors about their solar electric car. This is rich On Tech.

(01:28:24):
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you talking technology. Are you concerned about your
data privacy? New survey from US News I thought was interesting.
Eighty two percent of Americans concerned about their personal data
security online. H Forty two percent use multi factor authentication.

(01:28:45):
That's impressive. I maybe because we're forced to do that
so often, but that seems higher than I would think.
It's only seventeen percent use a password manager. I think
that's going to change in a big way with Apple
because they are coming out with a new password app,
and I think that that's going to be a big

(01:29:05):
change for that. Eighty nine percent feel confident in creating
secure passwords, but only twenty two percent change them regularly.
I think if you're creating a secure password, you don't
really need to change it. Like at work, I always
have to change my password. Why if it's not getting hacked,
if it's unique, if it's secure, why do I have
to change it? I think that's kind of an old
method that we no longer need to do anymore. Fifty

(01:29:28):
five percent reuse credentials across social media platforms. I'm telling
you if you do take three takeaways from this show today.
Number one, use a strong, unique password for every website.
Number two, turn on two factor authentication. And number three,
go to a website called Google Results about you and

(01:29:48):
turn that on and you can actually take down some
of this personal information for free that's on Google, so
that people can't find as much personal data about you.
Thanks US News and World Report. All right, joining me
now from Apterra. This is a company that is creating
a solar car. Solar electric car. Steve, let me turn

(01:30:13):
off my Mike care Steve Fambreau. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 12 (01:30:17):
Hey Rich, nice to be on. I a big fan
of your show and also KFI for many years.

Speaker 2 (01:30:22):
Oh thank you. Now you're in San Diego, I believe.

Speaker 12 (01:30:25):
Right, Yeah, Carlsbad just a few miles north.

Speaker 2 (01:30:27):
Okay, so explain what Aptera is.

Speaker 12 (01:30:29):
First off, Well, Aptera has a very simple mission. We
want to make every journey power by the sun. Right now,
we're doing that with our vehicle, the aptera namesake of
the company, and it operates like a regular electric vehicle,
except it charges itself about forty miles a day just
from the sun. So most people with their typical daily

(01:30:50):
commute aren't just gonna they're just not gonna have to
plug in the vehicle at all. But you can go
up to about four hundred miles on a single charge
with the launch version.

Speaker 1 (01:30:59):
Oh wow, And so where are you at with this car?
How far along are you with this?

Speaker 12 (01:31:05):
We've raised about one hundred and thirty million dollars, We've
taken about fifty thousand pre orders, and we've built a
bunch of pre production prototypes and we're starting our validation
builds right now of production intent vehicles. That's happening now
through the end of the year, and then starting early

(01:31:26):
next year, we'll be building the first production vehicles in
very very low volume, about fifty vehicles before the first
half of the year. But some of those will actually
be sold to a customer.

Speaker 2 (01:31:37):
And what is the price going to be for a
car like this?

Speaker 12 (01:31:40):
These vehicles are configured with options and full solar, they're
running about forty plus thousand dollars. But for that you're
getting forty miles of free charging a day, plus about
four hundred miles range, a brilliant performance, a very good
power to weight ratio, and of course the carbon composite
structure that's never going to rust will offer decades of

(01:32:02):
long service.

Speaker 2 (01:32:03):
Now, were these two seater four seater?

Speaker 12 (01:32:06):
Yes, two seaters side by side with about one thousand
liters of cargo sping. So if you take like my
other ev as a Chevy bolt, So if you fold
down the back seats in the bolt, it's like the
same size as the Aptera. You know, it's two people
can get a bunch of luggage like check luggage and
carry on and everything else in the back of it.

Speaker 1 (01:32:24):
It's interesting because when I talk about electric cars, and
obviously there's a lot of chatter about these things in California.
They're very popular. People like them. I drive one. I've
had no problems in three years with it. Obviously, you know,
there are some trade offs, you know, you have to
think about when you take road trips and things like that,
Like there is a little bit more planning and you know,

(01:32:47):
but overall it's really really an exciting experience. But people
always say, like what about solar? What about solar? So
can you capture that much sun from the roof of
the car, And what do you have to do to
lead event like in the sun. What about people that
don't live in a sunny area.

Speaker 12 (01:33:05):
These are all great points, especially about electric vehicles in general.
You know, even with just to follow on that point,
even with gasoline cars, you know that there's no one
vehicle that anybody wants. You know, my dad will never
give up his diesel pickup truck because he pulls a
horse trailer. And so even though he thinks it's cool
that the son started a car company and he wants one.
But in terms of solar, just putting solar cells on

(01:33:27):
a regular electric vehicles not going to help that much
because those most evs are pretty inefficient by app Terra standards.
They're heavy and they have high aerodynamic resistance. Because app
Terra is so efficient, it's so lightweight, such low drag.
The solar that we do put on the vehicle can
have a meaningful impact because our rate of consumption is

(01:33:49):
about one hundred hours per mile, which is very low.
It's lower than anything on the road, but that we
collect about four kilo hours over the day, a peak
of about seven hundred watts, you know, let's say around noontime,
So over the whole day about four kilod hours. And
part of our intellectual property is, of course, how do

(01:34:09):
you bend and make solar panels that are curved and
form the exterior, you know, aero panels to the body,
but also the high voltage electronics that have to operate
very efficiently to put that energy back into the high
voltage battery. So over the period of a day, you'll
collect about four kiloded hours, which is about forty miles.
Now for those people that don't park in the sun,

(01:34:32):
or they have to park in a garage or something
like that, all that means is that they're at Terra
is still going to charge faster than a regular EV.
You won't have to install a level two charger at home.
You can just plug it in the wall and a
regular one to ten socket and you'll get about one
hundred and thirty miles overnight. Because a battery pack is
so small by comparison, So if you can't park in

(01:34:54):
the sun, yeah, that's unfortunate because we want your journey
to be powered by the sun. If you live in
a cloud place, you're going to get fewer miles per year.
But the solar cell technology is improving every year. The
light weightness is getting better in the vehicle, so we think,
you know, we're going to go from forty miles to
fifty miles to seventy. You know, our goal is to
make the whole journey powered by the sun one day.

Speaker 1 (01:35:16):
And how you know, is anyone else doing this? Like
are you know, we see all these big companies are
getting into electric, but it seems like solar is kind
of like a very far off kind of idea. But
you guys say you're doing it, Like it's this car powerful?

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
Like is it? You know?

Speaker 1 (01:35:33):
Obviously your dad's not going to pull the crate behind
it or the horse carriage. But you know what, what's
the deal with this car when it comes to like power? Like,
am I going to give up anything with this?

Speaker 12 (01:35:45):
Well, you could give up your license if you get
caught because it goes that fast. You know, it's got
one hundred and fifty kilowatt's peak power about two innre
horse power, weighs less than two thousand pounds. So it
drives like what you would consider a sports car. It's
very very spirited, very fun to drive. Many electric vehicles
are like that today though, Yeah, so this would be

(01:36:07):
on par with that experience. Sorry, what was your well.

Speaker 2 (01:36:12):
I'm curious.

Speaker 1 (01:36:12):
Okay, So you know we've seen like even with like
Rivan some of these other car companies. You know, people
are hesitant to get these startup cars because repair and like,
you know, if you need something done, like how you know,
you've got to build out this huge nationwide infrastructure of
you know, repair places, and how do you know what
happens if something goes wrong?

Speaker 2 (01:36:33):
Like can you address some of that? I'm curious.

Speaker 12 (01:36:36):
Yeah, it's a really great point, and I think it's
one of the key differentiators that all electric vehicle companies
are are starting to realize. The dealership model in modern
automotive sales is the revenue model is on service, and
electric vehicles just don't have service. You know, the service
is extremely deminimous compared to a gasoline car. So really,

(01:36:56):
if if you think about it at a high level,
there's no revenue model for any dealership in an electric
vehicle ecosystem. So then what do you do. Well, Luckily,
there are already partner folks out there who have deployed
mobile service quite well, quite successfully for all kinds of vehicles,
and we're talking with several of them right now, and

(01:37:18):
we believe our plan is going to involve one of
these existing partners who will, with our materials and with
our training and with our parts, be able to go
and do that kind of service on an app terra okay,
without us having to build out that network.

Speaker 2 (01:37:32):
Got it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:32):
And I will say for my car, like the except
when someone hit it, which was expensive, that was not
my fault, there's been almost zero service charges whatsoever. I
do have to replace the tires, but that's basically it.
I mean, I've only replaced the cabin filter twice over
three years.

Speaker 2 (01:37:48):
And that's it. This car is going to be. You're
going to have one of.

Speaker 1 (01:37:52):
Your prototypes showcased at the Pebble Beach.

Speaker 2 (01:37:56):
Tell me about that.

Speaker 12 (01:37:57):
Yeah, so that's gamma. That is are it's it's so
we have alpha, beta, Gamma, and then production. And we're
not really showing the alphas anymore because they're they're long
in the tooth, they're smaller, they're not representative. Of what
we're making. Gamma is actually a near production interior but
on a beta body, so it's a little bit bigger.

(01:38:18):
It's one of our most it's our newest sort of
prototype or press vehicle, if you will. Although it's over
a year and a half or so old. It's been
all over the world. I just got back from the
Yaz track in Abu Dhabi. It's it was in Switzerland
last year driving around in the snow. That vehicle is
going to be at Pebble Beach and it's it's highly

(01:38:41):
representative of the size and interior of the production vehicle.

Speaker 1 (01:38:45):
All right, And that's happening during the weekend of August
seventeenth and eighteenth. If you want to check it out.
What's the website for APTERAF Steve.

Speaker 8 (01:38:54):
Attera dot us.

Speaker 12 (01:38:56):
You can read everything about us. You can get in
the waiting list, so people ahead of you, but you
can find everything you want to know there.

Speaker 2 (01:39:04):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:39:04):
Steve Fambrou from Aptera building a solar car there in Carlsbad.
Thanks so much for joining me today. Appreciate it.

Speaker 12 (01:39:10):
Oh my pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:39:11):
Rich, Thank you. All right.

Speaker 1 (01:39:13):
This is probably something I would have imagined as a kid,
you know, we went from gas to electric solar maybe
flying as next.

Speaker 2 (01:39:21):
Very very exciting. Good luck there.

Speaker 1 (01:39:23):
Coming up, we are going to open up the feedbag
and get some more of your emails to the show
you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology the website for the show rich on Tech
dot TV. Jim Rode in interesting that the ap Terra

(01:39:48):
interview never corrected you to say that Aptera is not
a car, it's a three wheeled motorcycle. I'm sure he
did that intentionally. People will not be quite as interested
in this vehicle and they know it's not a car.
He always carefully called it a vehicle and never referred
to it as a car to keep things legal, I'm sure. Anyway,
great show as always, Jim, Ah, good, good point, Jim.

(01:40:09):
That is uh, yes, that will limit the appeal of
this for sure, solar electric vehicle. But then again, you know,
I've done a lot of stories with these kind of
funky alternative cars and things vehicles. I guess you can
call them, and you know, people there was one what
was it called the solo that one tried to anyway,

(01:40:29):
people people love the idea of all these things, it takes.

Speaker 2 (01:40:32):
A while for them to actually happen. Sometimes.

Speaker 1 (01:40:35):
Let's get to the feedback. Rich on tech dot TV
hit Contact. John from Newport Beach wrote in about the
AI discussion on last week's show, We're already seeing massive
job losses and positions being replaced by AI and fields
like marketing, sales, content creation, computer programming, and recruiting. AI
is consolidating workforces, so instead of having ten people in
each of these positions, a company might only need three.

(01:40:59):
Of course, the best workers will master AI, but will
need fewer of them. Overall, this is already happening. We
haven't even seen the beginning of it. Just wait until
AI gets really good. It's still in its early stages.
Think about that. Thanks John from Newport Beach. That is
very true. We are just in the beginning stages. We
had a lot of emails about the MV and O

(01:41:20):
discussion last week. Randolph writes in Rich, great show. Never
miss it. When you've covered travel roaming issues. To avoid charges,
you always say, turn on airplane mode and turn off roaming.
But how do you always add? But you always add
make sure your apps do not download upload How do
you do that. Do you have to go into each
app individually and do something?

Speaker 2 (01:41:38):
Thanks? Yeah, that is basically what you have to do
at this point.

Speaker 1 (01:41:42):
There may be some programs that you can use to
restrict maybe on Android, like the upload and download. But
if you just go into your main offenders, like the
major apps like Netflix, anything that's streaming video, anything that's
streaming music, anything that's uploading or backing up, turn that
off on cellular. Make sure it's not using cellular to
do that, and you should be okay. But yes, it's

(01:42:03):
a manual process. Sean writes in I'm sure you figure
it out, but red Pocket actually lets you choose from
AT and T, Verizon or T Mobile. You stated it
only works on Verizon. Okay, good to know there. Warren
writes in, Hey, Rich, I enjoy your show, appreciate your
tech assistance. One MV and O I did not hear you.
Mention which I've used for many years is ting they

(01:42:24):
can use both Verizon and T Mobile networks. I recommend
TING to my friends, but most still go with the
main carriers. That's what my mom said last week after
she listened to the show, and she said, you know,
I tell all my friends about Mint Mobile, and they
still want to stick to, you know, their main carriers.
They said, you know what, they're lost. They're they're losing
the money. Andrea from New Orleans rights in. US Mobile

(01:42:45):
very recently started giving customers the ability to switch between
their GSM, T Mobile, Verizon and AT and T networks
on the fly as often as you like. It's free
for some plans, with a two dollars charge for others, though,
I think everyone gets too free switched US Mobile. Don't
discount them. They're a great MV and O. I've tested
them before, and yes, they give you a choice of networks.

(01:43:07):
I didn't know you can switch on the fly. That's interesting.
Joe from Scranton writes in Rich, I heard you give
advice to a caller from law enforcement who wanted a
point and shoot camera for vacation. I'm wondering why you
didn't simply suggest using a spare phone, either iPhone or Galaxy.
Doesn't have to be the primary nor does it even
need to have service. All they need to do is
keep the camera app open and would essentially be point

(01:43:30):
and shoot. Wouldn't that be a good solution? Yeah, you
know what, not a bad idea. I actually did not
even think about that because he said he wanted a camera,
not a phone, and so typically I use that as
the queue for my answer. But you're right, just use
an old phone, don't hook it up to service, and
there you go. Stuart from Poughkeepsie rights in, when you

(01:43:50):
mentioned Firefox, I wanted to share that I use Mozilla
Firefox on my Windows XP pro ps. I'm enjoying your
three hour program. Well, thank you, Stutu from Poughkeepsie, appreciate that.
Jonathan writes in I heard you recommend a Jackerie power
station to a listener last week and wanted to point
out that the Jackery power stations use lithium ion batteries,

(01:44:13):
which is considered by many to be quote old tech.
I would suggest people go with power stations that use
life PO four batteries, such as those made by Ecoflow. Jonathan,
do you work for Eco Flow? Just making sure. Jonathan
Joseph writes in he heard me struggle with torque and
he's explaining it. The torque measurement is a two dimensional

(01:44:34):
assessment of engine performance. It's measured in feet for length
and pounds for weight to gauge the engine's ability to
turn or crank the pistons. The measurement is commonly referred
to as torque in foot pounds.

Speaker 8 (01:44:46):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:44:47):
Joseph am Rik am Emeric from Porter Ranch writes in Hey, Rich,
I always try to catch you with Bill handle and
on the weekends. Love your show and cool talking points.
Thanks for making tech fun and educational. This last weekend,
you mentioned how Ford is offering over the air performance
upgrades for the Machi. While that's cool, you didn't mention

(01:45:08):
that Tesla's been doing this for several years. Yes, I know, Tesla, Tesla, Tesla.
I appreciate that. You know, sometimes people don't want to
hear all the time Tesla this, Tesla that. But yes,
they have done over the air upgrades as well. And
Carolyn Rode in love the variety of your bumper music
last week. Your mom is the best. Never would have
expected to hear the intro to Thank You by led Zeppelin,

(01:45:30):
but to put a huge smile on my face. So
please thank your mom for including that in the great playlist. Yes,
and thanks to Mom again this week for the playlist.
Appreciate it. That's going to do it for this episode
of the show. You can find links to everything I
mentioned on my website. Just go to richon Tech dot
TV can find me on social media. Be sure to
follow me on Instagram X and Facebook at rich on Tech.

(01:45:54):
Next week I am headed to the Google Pixel Event.
I will have all of the updates from Google's latest
event with all of their new phones. Very much looking
forward to that. Thanks so much for listening. There are
so many ways you can spend your time. I do
appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to
everyone who makes this show possible. Bobo, Kim, Bill, Julie,

(01:46:19):
who else my mom this week, Tanner for the song,
and you, of course you you make this all possible.

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
My name is rich Dmiro. I will talk to you
real soon

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Rich DeMuro

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