iPhone's New AI Tricks, Wireless Charging Roads & Deepfake Defense

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
YouTube TV hikes prices again, but there might be a workaround.
Apple's latest AI features bring even more smarts to the iPhone.
And Santa is on chat GPT talk to the big
guy himself this holiday season. Santa, is that you?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Oh yes, indeed, my dear, it is I Santa Claus.
What a joy to hear from you. What can I
do for you today?

Speaker 1 (00:32):
We'll talk to Santa in just a little bit. Plus
your tech questions answered. Oh there.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
You wish to chat? Okay, jolly day, my friend.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
What's going on in Rich Demiro And this is Rich
on Tech. This is the show where I talk about
the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
I believe the tech should be interesting, useful and fun.
Let's open up those phone lines at triple eight Rich
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to

(01:06):
two four one zero one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Give me call. If
you have a question about technology. Email is also open.
Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit
contact guests. This week on the show, we've got Jared Schnader,

(01:28):
Senior bus director at cal Start he's going to talk
about California's first electric road charging system. Then later we've
got cyber security expert Perry Carpenter. He's going to share
insights from his new book about protecting ourselves against AI
generated deep fakes and deceptions. And uh, even later, Miami

(01:50):
parents Natalia Daniel and oded pelld are going to talk
about first Ease. This is their new app that I
wish I had when my kids were young. This helps
you capture or organize and share your kid's milestone moments.
We had one of those books, you know, where you
write in it as your kid grows up, and I
think we did the first entry, you know, and that

(02:11):
was it. First smile, that was it. I hope you're
having a great week. This week, I drove up to
the San Francisco Bay area, where apparently Kim tells me
right now, where she's answering calls, there's a tornado warning.
What the heck? What is happening in California? So be

(02:31):
careful up there. She's going to answer your calls best
she can from her storm shelter. I think she's taking shelter.
But I experienced something driving up there that I'd never
experienced in my life the thickest fog I have ever
driven through.

Speaker 4 (02:47):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
I remember living in Louisiana and driving through a storm
that was like you couldn't see in front of your car.
This was like that, except there was no storm. It
was just fog that was so thick that I was like,
am I in a joke here? Like what is happening like?
And I had to go so slow, following the car
in front of me, which I couldn't even see. So
I was like, okay, I don't want to. The worst

(03:08):
thing in that situation is like if there's a car
that you come up on that's like stopped on the freeway,
and of course you're gonna ram right into it, so
you got to be very very careful. I considered pulling
off the road, but I couldn't even see the place
to pull off. I was like, well that's dangerous too,
So I just went really slow and I posted about
my Instagram at rich on Tech, and I got so
many messages from folks and apparently this has a name.

(03:31):
It's called tule fog, and so this is what it's.
That's what it is, and I guess it's like really
thick fog that collects a certain I don't know whatever.
The weather is kind of weird anyway, that was a
new one. I can't tell you what I went up
to San Francisco for just yet, but in the new year,
it's very very cool. All right, let's talk about Apple.

(03:54):
You got some new features on the iPhone this week,
iOS eighteen point two, So keep in mind you can
update to iOS eighteen point two on a lot of iPhones,
but only the latest iPhones, the iPhone fifteen Pro and
the iPhone fifteen Pro Max, plus all the iPhone sixteen
models get these Apple Intelligence features. This is a second

(04:14):
round of Apple Intelligence features, and I think this is
the better of the two so far. So you know
you've got the new update when you see that new
image playground app icon on your home screen. This is
kind of like a little mini Pixar studio on your phone.
You're gonna have a lot of fun with this because
it lets you generate AI images. And of course Apple
puts their own spin on just about every aspect of

(04:37):
what they do, and this is no different. So most
of the AI image generators, it's just a textbox and
you say, okay, let me think about what I want
to generate. But of course Apple gives you a couple prompts,
so it has different themes, costumes, all kinds of things
that you can add to your image without you having
to think of them. So you can say, Okay, I

(04:57):
want this person to be a birthday, a disco, a party,
winter holidays. I want a costume like an artist, an astronaut,
a chef, a scientist. I want an accessory like a
beanie or a party hat or a hard hat. Or
you can add the place like a city does, desert,
stadium or space. So it's got a whole bunch of
things to kind of get you started, and you can
mix and match these. And the other neat thing is

(05:19):
that you can start with a picture of a person.
A lot of these AI generation tools don't want to
use people, but Apple just went there and they're like,
you know what, we know how to program this thing.
We were going to make it safe. So you can
just take a picture of yourself and literally just make
yourself into like a Pixar character. That's what it looks like.
So that's really fun. My brother texted me, I put
my picture that I made of my newsletter this morning.

(05:41):
First thing. I woke up to my brother said, oh,
I'm glad I had to see this first thing this morning.
I was like, what, you didn't like it? I thought
it was pretty cool. Jen Moji this is another feature.
So this is the ability to make any emoji. So
you know how you're texting with someone and you think
to yourself, Ah, it'd be great if I had an
emoji of a a jet squirrel riding a jet ski. Well,

(06:04):
you probably never thought about that, but now you can.
And so you can generate any emoji you want. They
call them gen moojis. So to get to this, just
go to your keyboard on the iPhone after you have
the update and tap the emoji icon in the lower
left hand corner and you'll see a new search field
at the top that says describe an emoji, and you

(06:24):
can just type in anything. And you know, obviously there's
some guardrails on this, so go ahead test it out,
see what the limits are. But it will generate an
emoji for you on the fly, and if you swipe,
it'll just keep generating new versions of it. So I
did a cactus lollipop or a lollipop cactus, whatever you
want to call it and you know it kind of

(06:45):
like didn't really get it, but it kind of did,
so I just kept swiping through. So that's fun. You're
gonna see a lot more emojis in your conversations that
are kind of random. Then the writing tools on the
iPhone now integrate chat GBT. So the big difference here
is that the writing tools used to be sort of canned.
You can highlight some text on the iPhone. You could

(07:05):
bring up writing tools and a little kind of like
swiper selector up there when you select text. And now
there's a new option when you select writing tools, it
says describe your change. It used to be you could
just like bullet point it, summarize it whatever you want
like that. Like these canned responses, Now you can say,
elaborate this in Shakespearean and it will change your text

(07:25):
to do that. And that's also going to draw upon
chat gibt if it needs to. And so the other
side of this is that Siri now has chat GBT,
So if Siri doesn't know the answer to your question,
it will ask chat gibt for that answer. Now, of
course you're in charge of this. It will say the
first time you try it and say, hey, can I
ask chat GBT for that answer? You can say yes

(07:47):
or no, and then you can actually go into your
settings and turn off the asking. So if you just
always want it to go to chat GBT when it
needs to, you can turn that feature off. That's something
Apple didn't announce in the original keynote, but it's nice
to see that that's there because so many of us
are used to chat GBT at this point, and if
you have a subscription to chat gbt, you could actually

(08:08):
put that in on your settings so that you don't
go over any sort of limits and you get some
more advanced features as well. So check that out. Under Siri,
it's called Apple Intelligence. You can add your account. And
the other neat thing is that it's not just chat GBT.
You can see they've set this up to accommodate almost
any AI that wants to work with Apple in the future,
so it's like you can see it says AI extensions

(08:32):
in the settings under Siri, so you can understand a
world where Gemini will be an option, Claude will be
an option, Mistroll will be an option, Perplexity will be
an option. But I think they have to craft their
app to work with iPhone in a certain safe manner
that it will work in that selection. So that's kind
of cool as well. Let's see Visual Intelligence now. This

(08:55):
is basically Apple's version of Google Lens, and this is
exclude to the iPhone sixteen models that have that new
camera control button on the side. If you press and
hold that, you can take a picture of an object
or a building or whatever, and it will give you
information about that and it will use chat GBT to search,
or it will use Google to search the image. So

(09:16):
it's now pretty much Google Lens built into the iPhone.
The other new feature is called image wand, and this
is inside notes, so if you craft a new note,
you can use your handwriting. This would be handy on
the iPad. You can write down your notes and then
you select this image wand tool down at the bottom,
and the pallette of tools you circle what you want

(09:36):
to change, and if it's a drawing, it will make
your drawing into whatever you think it is. Like if
you draw a house and say, oh, that's a house,
it will literally make it into like the best looking
house ever. Or it will change your handwriting into text.
So those are the new features. The other thing is that.
And Kim talked about this. She said, Hey, are you
gonna mention the photos app? Yeah, Apple really messed up

(09:58):
the photos app and the first version of iol Us
eighteen Apparently they've cleaned it up a little bit. In
iOS eighteen point two, it was really tough to find things.
But my advice is open up the photos app, scroll
all the way to the bottom. You'll see an option
that says customize and reorder and get rid of almost
everything except the things that you want to see, which
for me is basically nothing except my recents, my favorites,

(10:20):
and you know the pictures that I have. All Right
there you have it. iOS eighteen point two available for
the iPhone, fifteen Pro models and up, plus some iPads
with the M chip and other Apple devices. Eight to
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
two four one zero one. My name is rich Damuro

(10:41):
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 O one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
This week's music done by my friend Diana in the
music industry works in the music industry for many, many years,

(11:03):
and I'm learning her taste, learning her tastes in music.
Mellow but classic, but also aclectic. Okay, So I mentioned
a lot of stuff in the beginning of the show
website for the show rich on tech dot TV. If
you want links to anything I mentioned, it's always there
on the website rich on tech dot tv show notes

(11:25):
by hitting the light bulb icon, or you can just
go to the website. This is episode number one oh
one right on the homepage there. So I mentioned that
you can now chat with Santa in chat GPT. This
is a limited time only. This is really cool, probably
one of the best Santa chats I've ever experienced because

(11:46):
it's smart and it sounds like Santa. So this is
one of Santa's helpers. Obviously for the kids, you know,
but if you want to access this, I think it'll
be really fun to do with the kids. Go to
chat EBT on the home screen and in the upper
right hand corner you'll see a new chat. You tap that,
and then once you get into that, you want to

(12:06):
press the voice button, and so that's in the lower
right hand corner, I know, kind of crazy. And then
once you're there, you have to select the Santa voice,
so it looks like the settings up in the upper
right hand corner again, and you just swipe, you know,
where you select your voice for chat GBT, you'll see
a new one called Santa. So once you're there, you

(12:27):
can chat with Santa. So let's bring them up. Hey, Santa,
how are you doing today?

Speaker 2 (12:35):
I'm feeling merry and bright as always. How about you,
my friend?

Speaker 1 (12:40):
I'm doing I'm doing great, just doing the rich on
Tech radio show. Do you like that show?

Speaker 2 (12:48):
That sounds wonderful. It's always nice to tune into something
that brings joy and information. I hope your show goes splendidly.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
Can you tune it in at the North Pole or what?

Speaker 2 (13:04):
The North Pole is quite magical, you know, we have
our own ways of keeping up with all the wonderful
things happening around the world. So in a way, yes, all.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Right, I think I think he's dodging some of my
questions there, But anyway, you get the idea. Now, if
you're on the iPhone, you can actually save a chat
that you have with Santa and share it, so you
can there's a little share icon in the upper right
hand corner and if you had a fun conversation with Santa,
or you want to record something for your kids, you
can do that on the iPhone on iOS. So kind

(13:38):
of cool. Anyway, Neat Neat feature available seasonally and Chatchy BT.
I you know, I've said in the past I used Claude,
but I've sort of switched now to CHATCHYBT because they've
added so many new features that it's gotten really really good.
And in fact, they just added a new feature this
morning that I've wanted for a while, and it's it's

(13:58):
like these you can keep conversations onmost like pinned and
so that's a really handy one. All right, eighty eight
Rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Let's go to Denis in Pasadena. Dennis,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 5 (14:11):
Hey, Rich, thank you. Here's my deal. I have an
epsom Eco tank printer and I have an AT and
T Internet Air Modem Wi Fi modem. When I want
to print something, I turn them on my printer. I
see the little Wi Fi icon come up. That's good.

(14:33):
I go into my iPad, I fix something I want
to print. It says searching for air printer. Half the
time it finds it, half the time it doesn't. And
I don't see any pattern in that, so it's kind
of a crapshew. I never know if it's going to
find a printer or not.

Speaker 6 (14:49):
Any thoughts on that.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Huh. Okay, So it does work, you know, it does work.

Speaker 5 (14:53):
Yes, it does work. Seems to be half maybe sixty
seventy percent of the time.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Hmm, okay, well that's true, not always. So I would
say two things here. It's either your Wi Fi signal
is not you know, one of them. One of them,
the Wi Fi signal is not reaching. So that's that's
what I think is the issue, because if it's happening to.

Speaker 5 (15:16):
The print I'm really close to the Wi Fi router,
if that makes.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Any difference the printer is or your iPad both they're.

Speaker 5 (15:23):
Both in the same room and they're like two feet away.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
And there's nothing that you notice that's uh, that's changed
when you're when you're trying to print, like sometimes there's
just no rhyme or reason to this.

Speaker 7 (15:35):
That's how I can see.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yeah, I don't know, okay, so I would my I
guess what I would do is probably update the software
for everything, and make sure the software is updated on
the printer, make sure the software is updated on this router.
I'm surprised you're one of the very few people that
has AT and T Internet Air because it's a it's
tough to get because they're only putting it in places

(15:58):
where they don't have a strong fiber presence or DSL presence.
I don't even know if they do DSL anymore, but
fiber at least. So I think that I would update
the software on those things, then the iPad, and then
I would what I would do is disconnect both the
iPad from your WiFi and the printer from your WiFi
and reconnect both of those things. Have you tried doing that?

Speaker 5 (16:20):
Just just safe forget?

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, exactly, safe forget and and and do those things.
That is that is probably your best your best bet
with that situation because it's it's frustrating, but it's like
there's not a way to reproduce it. You know. I
would say, if you had like your microwave going or
something and it was like, you know, messing with the
signal in your house, sure, but if there's no rhyme
or reason, that's pretty frustrating. The only other thing is

(16:44):
your your printer might be in sort of a deep
sleep mode. I've noticed at times with my printer when
I go to print sometimes it's not necessarily showing up,
and I'm like, and I'll go there and I'll tap
the screen on the printer and it will come to
life and then it will be there. So that's the
only other thing I can think of. But those those
are the things that I would do and reconnect everything
and then see if it still happens. Eighty eight rich

(17:06):
one one eight eight eight seven four to two, four
to one zero one. Coming up, we're gonna talk about
wireless roads that can charge vehicles. This is rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you, talking technology. Eight eight eight rich one
o one eighty eight seven four to two four one

(17:29):
zero one. H Jim writes in from Let's see Central
of California Central Valley, says grew up in Fresno regularly
experienced the fog it's pronounced two leaf fog. I remember
driving on roads with no lines with the windows rolled down,
looking at the side of the road for guidance. Looking
forward through the windshield was absolutely worthless. Yeah, you don't

(17:52):
realize how thick fog can be until you feel this.
LG is no longer making Blu ray players. LG will
stop making Blu ray players, leaving Panasonic as the last
manufacturers making Blu ray players. So Samsung has gotten out
of the physical Blu ray player, Sony has gotten out

(18:14):
of it, and that's it. Everyone wants you to go digital.
You know why, because you don't own the digital stuff.
You are renting it basically physical media like Blu ray
and DVDs. You can't even find him anymore. Last year,
I went into best Buy and I was like, wait,
what's different about this store? Oh yeah, the whole middle
of the store had no Blu rays or CDs in there.
So I know a lot of people sad about this,

(18:37):
but not really because come on, let's be honest. You
know you're streaming your stuff, or most of us are.
But it was fun at one point in life to
kind of have that collection of physical media. I gave
up on it a long time ago, but I understand
it's like that feels like it's yours versus you know
all these other services you're just paying four monthly and
you don't really own any of it. Times are changing,

(19:00):
all right, Let's bring up Jared Schnader. He is a
senior bus director at cal Start. Jared, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 8 (19:08):
Thanks Rich, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
So saw the story about this, I guess over in Westwood.
Here in Los Angeles, they are going to make a
small stretch of the street electrified and then the buses
are going to charge as they drive along this. So
can you explain? This is California's first electric road charging system.

Speaker 8 (19:26):
Yeah, that's correct.

Speaker 9 (19:27):
So the way it works is that it's known as
dynamic inductive charging. So if you think of your cell
phone that you may just set down on an inductive
charging pad where you just set on top and it's
able to charge. It's regular static inductive charging is where
a vehicle comes over a pad and it just charges.

Speaker 8 (19:48):
It sits there and charges.

Speaker 9 (19:50):
Dynamic is where you're actually in motion and the vehicle
is charging while it's driving over this system.

Speaker 8 (19:56):
So, yeah, first one in California.

Speaker 9 (19:57):
It's actually it's a really exciting project that we're going
to be working on here.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
So how long is this street? Number one? Have you
done this in other places yet?

Speaker 8 (20:06):
So this has been done across the world.

Speaker 9 (20:08):
Specifically in Europe, there are a number of roads that
are electrified. The technology is still in kind of a
nascent stage because you are having to pull up a
road or pull up parts of a road install coils
in it.

Speaker 8 (20:21):
For the dynamic part of it.

Speaker 9 (20:23):
Inductive charging has been done for years in terms of
just the static sitting over top of a pad and
vehicles charging. This has been done for a very long time,
so nothing's really new about that. I think what we're
actually seeing now and what makes this really exciting, is
that we're changing the way that we're thinking about charging currently.
You would have anyone that's seen an electric vehicle will

(20:47):
know the pull up to a charger, you plug it in.
I think the national average right now is about twenty
five percent of those are down at any given time,
whether that's for hardware malfunctions or software malfunctions. We're getting
better at that year after year. These are improving. However,
when you think about the number of vehicles that are
out there and putting one charger, you know, kind of

(21:09):
a one to one in the charger space, it doesn't
really make much sense. When you're looking at something like
long roadways, it's an opportunity for vehicles to be able
to charge wilid motion instead of having to stop and
charge back up. And again, when you think about this
kind of linear progression of if your battery is one

(21:29):
hundred percent full and you just start driving it, you know,
as as you're driving along, it reduces the amount of
energy within that battery, but it's not going back up.

Speaker 8 (21:39):
Really, when you start adding.

Speaker 9 (21:41):
In something like a dynamic inductive charging system, while you
are still reducing the amount of power within the battery,
it's also charging back up, so it's not a run
down to twenty percent then go back up to eighty percent.
I have to explain this to people all the time
because they say, well, if you're driving, how long does
it take to get from twenty percent of your battery

(22:03):
life or your battery up to eighty percent. We have
to think about the way that we do charging differently
instead of thinking about, you know, twenty percent up to
eighty percent. Look at from the flip side, if your
battery is eighty percent charged and goes down to seventy percent,
then it comes up to seventy two percent, then goes
down to sixty five percent and up to call it

(22:23):
sixty eight percent.

Speaker 8 (22:24):
Whatever it is.

Speaker 9 (22:25):
As it's driving along, it's extending the amount of range
that you have. But also when you do come back
to either your if you're at a fleet, like coming
back to your lot or coming back to your home
to charge up, you're not having to charge from you know,
essentially a dead battery all the way up. The amount
of energy that you're requiring is so much smaller because

(22:45):
you've been able to charge throughout the day in these
small increments.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Okay, got it interesting? So and I know you know
with my phone, obviously plug in chargings the fastest wireless
chargings a little bit slower, but I imagine dynamic wireless
charging has got to be a bit slower than sort
of steady or static charging, is correct?

Speaker 9 (23:05):
Yeah, no, absolutely, it's not. This it solves everything kind
of technology. What does is it helps enable the deployment
on larger scale of vehicles because the way that the
dynamic inductive charging is set up, it can be utilized
in multiple vehicle classes. So when you're looking at kind

(23:26):
of a heavy duty vehicle, or think about your iPhone.
Let's just if you have an iPhone or an Android,
you're charging plugs may be different when you're looking at
charging for your car versus a bus. Those are different chargers,
those are different connectors, different powers. However, with something like
the inductive charging systems, we're talking about things that can
now be utilized across all vehicle classes, so you can

(23:48):
actually share the infrastructure. So instead of having to say,
I've got one charger for this one bus, it can
be a roadway that can be utilized for everyone driving
up and down it if they have the rest receivers
that are installed on the vehicle to be able to
utilize the inductive charging.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
And do we know how long like this road is?
Is it like a couple of miles or is it
like a portion of a mile like what.

Speaker 9 (24:12):
This first one I believe is going to be just
over a quarter of a mile I believe, But again
we're talking about pilots here. We also have another one
up in Detroit that we're working on, in another one
in upstate New York that we're doing to show the
technology and what it can do.

Speaker 8 (24:27):
The one at UCLA.

Speaker 9 (24:29):
One of the really exciting parts about this is not
just the fact that it'll be utilized for the Olympics,
for the Olympic Village but also that where it's located,
there are seven other transit agencies that are coming in
and laying over there. And the goal is that once
this is proven out with the UCLA, these other seven
agencies are going to be utilizing that same area. We

(24:51):
would love to get them to kind of join in
and say, yeah, we'd love to put some receivers on
here to charge our vehicles while we're driving up and down.

Speaker 8 (24:58):
It's a way to expand the technology you into other
transit agencies.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
Now, what about the safety of this, Like can I
walk on this road?

Speaker 10 (25:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Across? Am I going to be like blowing green? After
I get across the road?

Speaker 8 (25:09):
If you're glowing green, it's not from the inductive charging?

Speaker 6 (25:12):
Okay?

Speaker 8 (25:13):
But no, no, it is safe. This is like I said, this.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Is metal shoes, Like what if there's metal in that?
I mean, is there any way you could What if
I put my phone on the ground and it's you know,
an iPhone that has like the wireless charging, is it
going to charge that?

Speaker 8 (25:24):
Great question?

Speaker 9 (25:25):
No, these are all because it's all bluetooth Like. There
has to be an actual way to communicate between the
the receiver and the charger itself to activate it can
people have so uh, any look, let's be very honest.

Speaker 8 (25:38):
Anything could be hacked.

Speaker 9 (25:39):
But this the way that is set up is that
it's it is like secure from a like the security
envelope is much stronger than you would have from a
traditional charger that you would have, but like you know,
anything can be hacked.

Speaker 8 (25:52):
So I don't want to sit.

Speaker 9 (25:53):
Here and say it's one hundred percent like no one
can ever do anything because any of your's asking for
people to try something.

Speaker 8 (25:58):
But no, I mean, this is a very safe system.

Speaker 9 (26:01):
And it is like I said, it's a secure system
for the infrastructure because they have to.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Be wow, and so this is going to be when
are they going to start this project? And what about that?
Isn't there one already in Detroit? So did you work
on that one or yes?

Speaker 9 (26:14):
Yeah we're yeah, so cal Start we are doing the
data collection for the Detroit project, but the bus the
bus system has not started yet, so we haven't been
able to start collecting data on that one. The one
for UCLA, which we'll be doing data collection on that
as well. We're just to back up real quick. Cal
Start is a nonprofit. We are the ones that kind

(26:36):
of step in in a lot of these technologies to
validate them, because you need a neutral third party to
say whether or not something works, because our whole goal
is to drive down emissions and decarbonized transportation across the country,
and so we need technologies that work. So we are
an honest broker when it comes to the information because
the whatever we say, if it works or doesn't work,

(26:56):
we're going to let people know about it. That said,
with UCLA, one of the I guess one of our
big challenges that we're going to be facing is not
so much the technology but the construction because you do
have to pull up parts of a road to install this.
This is not a very a very heavily built out system.
It's just coils within the road. Can be done in

(27:18):
any kind of normal maintenance that may be done on
the road anyway, because you know, we're always repairing asphalt,
and so when we're pulling up certain parts, the coils
can be installed and then asphalt go back over top
of them. So this has a lot of potential and
it's a really exciting thing to see, especially the fact
that we're going to be utilizing this. I said, with

(27:39):
seven agencies, all kind of circling around this. It has
the ability to really transform the way that charging is
done in southern California.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
Very cool. Well, good luck with it. Jared Schnader of
Calstart the website calstart dot org. I'll be looking forward
to seeing how this develops over the next couple of years.

Speaker 8 (27:59):
Thanks sounds great, Thanks so much.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Eighty eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Coming up YouTube TV.
It's kind of sounding a lot like cable. They've hiked
prices again, but there is a little hack that might
work for you to save some money. I'll tell you
about that coming up right here on rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging

(28:24):
out with you, Talking Technology eight eight eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. Email is also an option, as is
social media. Got a message on Instagram, let's see from Tatiana.
She said, are you on Spotify? Yes? You can download

(28:44):
the podcast on any of your favorite audio apps. Just
search rich on Tech to get the podcast version of
the show. It's on all of them. iHeart Spotify, Apple Podcasts.
I even founded on the serious XM app. I was
surprised they just added that to test I saw searching
around and sure enough we're on there as well. So
lots of ways to listen. Let's go to Jamie in Tampa. Jamie,

(29:08):
you're on with rich.

Speaker 11 (29:11):
On today.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Man, I'm doing great, how about you?

Speaker 11 (29:13):
Better than I deserve?

Speaker 12 (29:14):
Man?

Speaker 11 (29:15):
And during this hot.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Florid of weather, Oh wow, hot there, it's actually cold
in LA, which is ironic.

Speaker 11 (29:22):
Right, So so we've all heard of inflation, right, sure,
christ Tree inflation. That's what I'm battling, right it, because yeah,
TV went up, went up, went up again, and uh
and and just the thought of having dependent the boat
makes me just want to pull my hair out. But
since I don't really have much hair right now because
it gets cut every month, I usually just screen, I

(29:45):
hear you, So, so yeah, it keeps going up. And
then the Disney Plus and because I'm tired of all
the password crackdown and every it's like every week it's
going up. Whatever service today, whether it's on demand or
live TV, there's got to be something I can do,
and I need some help because if I get I'm

(30:08):
because I have a friend that sad, he's so much
is going back to cables. But have been what he's
doing now with big YouTube TV and Hulu and all
this other stuff because he can't take it anymore. It
neither can I.

Speaker 5 (30:18):
On Besty Kid, No, I hear you.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
I A yeah. So here's what's happening. So you've got
a couple of things going on. So you've got uh,
you've got YouTube TV raised prices this week, which you know,
sent a lot of people into the tailspin of saying,
you know what, I'm done with this. Because when YouTube
TV started, I was there at the launch event. It
was thirty five dollars a month. This was in twenty seventeen. Now,

(30:41):
given back then, they did not have a lot of channels,
they did not have a lot of sports. But you know,
I'm not sure they had the I think they had
unlimited VR back then. But you know, they they've been
slowly but surely adding all the features and all the
channels that you want. And now they have a lot
of channels, they have a lot of sports, they have DVRs,
they have four K, but they have offline where you

(31:02):
can download stuff, so they give you a lot, but
the price just keeps going up. So thirty five dollars
in twenty seventeen last week it was seventy three dollars.
Now it is eighty three dollars, effective immediately for new
subscribers existing customers starting January thirteenth. So what do you
do if you're a subscriber like myself. First off, Jamie,

(31:23):
you got to try the subscription cancelation hack. So if
you go to my Instagram at richon Tech, basically if
you go to cancel your account, they might give you
sixty dollars off the next six months, So ten dollars
off each month for the next six months, which doesn't
save you any money. It actually just fends off this

(31:45):
price increase for the next six months. That gives you
some time to breathe, some time to think about it,
and some time to say, Okay, nothing's changed, but let
me just see what I can do, what my options
are now. Meanwhile, let me grab this. You've got other
companies like Spec smells the Blood in the water, right,
So Spectrum, of course perfectly timed press release says we

(32:05):
are now including Max and Max. If you are following
the streaming stuff. That's like basically it used to be
called HBO Max. Now it's just Max. It's all the
stuff from HBO, Warner Brothers, DC, all the different You know,
they've got a whole bunch of stuff mixed in from
Warner Brothers IP into this service. So now, if you're
a Spectrum TV Select customer, you can get Max with

(32:27):
ads for free, and that's usually ten dollars a month. Now,
they include a whole bunch of streaming services with your
Spectrum TV Select. So they include Disney Plus, ESPN Plus,
Paramount Plus, and a couple others including Max, all included
in your monthly fee. Now, I don't know how much
Spectrum TV Select monthly is, but you know, it's probably

(32:50):
about the same price as the YouTube TV, maybe a
little bit more or less. I'm not sure, because you know,
you got to go on their website and pray it
all out. Now, here's the difference. The reason why we
have switched to services like YouTube TV and Hulu Live
tv is because, guess what. Signing up for Spectrum TV

(33:11):
is very easy. It's when you want to change your cancel,
it's not going to be so easy. They're probably going
to make you talk to a representative. It's probably not
self service. It's probably gonna be a little trickier because
they have those retention tactics. And so that's the reason
why we like these streaming services in the first place,
because they put the customer in charge. When Netflix sends
a price increase to you, what do they do. They

(33:34):
don't say, please call our customer service hotline and we'll
help you out and we'll maybe give you a better deal.
They say, here's the cancelation link, go ahead, cancel. What
do we care. We've got, you know, two hundred and
fifty million people subscribe to us. And by the way,
we know that you're going to stick with us because
it's twenty three dollars a month or fifteen or seven
whatever you're paying, and it's probably a pretty good value.
It's less than the price of one movie ticket. So

(33:56):
what do you do, Jamie? You can go to this
website called the Streamable, the streamable dot com slash matchmaker,
And what live TV really comes down to is what
channels do you want to watch and what sports teams
do you want to watch. That's what really drives what
people subscribe to. If you just want to watch the

(34:16):
Hallmark channel, it's not going to cost that much because
you can subscribe to Filo for twenty eight dollars a month.
It's when you want to watch the Yankees or the
Jets or the Rams or whatever team is in your area,
or whatever team you follow, that's when it gets a
little bit more expensive. And that's when you need one
of these premium services. So if you go to the

(34:36):
streamabol dot com slash matchmaker, I really like it because
you type in the channels and the teams that you
want to watch, and it will tell you the services
that actually have those channels and those teams. And I'm
telling you, if you're talking sports, not going to be cheap.
The other thing to do is go back to an antenna.
You can easily. A lot of people emailed me said, hey, Rich,
I'm going back to antenna. I'm putting that on my roof,

(34:58):
or I'm putting it inside, or I'm putting in your window.
Antennasdirect dot com you can check them out. They can
tell you which antenna might be working for your house.
But I've got an antenna on my roof. I might
go back to that. But the problem is getting the
DVR service. You can use something like Tableau t a
b l O that will record live TV. But you

(35:20):
know TVO used to do it. That might still be around.
I'm not even sure, but an Amazon used to have
a device that would record live TV, but they've just
continued that. So those are your options. You've got to
pay up or get rid of some of these services.
This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at

(35:41):
triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four two four one zero one. This is the show
where I talk about the tech stuff I think you
should know about. It's also the place where I answer
your question, so give me a call. You can also
go to the website rich on Tech dot tv hit
contact if you want to get in touch that way,
send me a message, or you can let's see what

(36:04):
else can you do? You can just go there and
sign up for the newsletter Why Not. You get more
information about the things I talk about here and the
notes on everything I mentioned, so let's see. I am
fascinated with this story about the drones in New Jersey,
not just because I'm from New Jersey, but because I
just find it really hard to believe that these drones

(36:24):
are flying in the skies above New Jersey and nobody
knows what they are. Now, I've got all my family
that lives there, and so I asked him on our
group chat, I said, hey, have you seen these things?
And they've all said yes. So how in the world
are there just thousands of drone sightings and nobody knows
what they are? The government doesn't know, the police don't know,

(36:47):
the firefighters don't know. My sister said, she took dozens
of pictures and nobody knows who they are. Saw not
a passenger plane, saw a jet flying super low and slow.
Well what is that? I mean, come on, wouldn't we
be freaking out if we saw this? I mean, I

(37:09):
will tell you when I go outside, and here's what
I think could be happening. Like there's a heat map
online of all the different sightings in New Jersey. What
happens is that when one person sees something, suddenly a
lot of people see stuff.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
Right.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
And I don't know about you, but nine times out
of ten, when I see a plane in the sky,
I'm like, Oh, that's a UFO, And then I'm like, wait,
no it is, Oh that's Southwest. Sometimes they look like
they're just slow and like hovering. But I'm all for it.
I mean, I love stuff like this, Like it just
reminds you of a movie. Right, Like we're like we
are literally you know, we're not under attack, but we're

(37:44):
just like under surveillance, and they're just like kind of
testing the waters, coming in, seeing what's happening, seeing how
we react, seeing how far they can go, how close
they can get, and then you know, who knows what's
gonna happen. But anyway, I am absolutely fascinated with this story.
Now here's the funny thing. I've asked my family to
send me the pictures they've taken of these things. Not one.

(38:04):
No one sent me a picture or video, even though
they've seen them so many times. So I don't know,
draw your own conclusions there. Let's see, Mike and uh
San Fernando. Mike, you're on with rich Hey, drones there
in the y. I'm sorry, have you seen any UFOs
or drones in the valley.

Speaker 10 (38:25):
Waiting for a night fall? Then I'll probably get a
whole bunch of them there.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
Okay.

Speaker 10 (38:30):
I wish I called earlier when you had the gentleman
on there discussing just dynamic charging, charging the vehicles while
you're driving down a road via induction. Yeah, I have
the pacemaker, and I'm supposed to stay away from anything
magnetic electronic. I wear a harness that keeps myself on
the right because all pocketed T shirts have it the
pocket right over the heart. Yeah, would you happen to

(38:52):
know anything, like if I'm coming up on one of
these roads, pull off to the side, take a detour
or whatever. Is it safe for the like me who
have pacemakers.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
That's a great question. I would imagine that the folks
who are creating these roads are thinking about that stuff.
But I would also imagine that the magnets are probably
pretty prevalent in these roads, because that's how this all works.
I do know with the Apple stuff, you know, when
they came out with the mag safe on the back
of the iPhone, there was a lot of talk about
pacemakers and the impact, and so I think there is

(39:25):
a concern. I think that's some you know, I'm not
an expert on this, but I think there is a
level of like how strong the magnet is. I do
know that myself and my photographer, we you know, shoot
TV stories and we use these little wireless mics that
have a really strong magnet on the back because they
can just click it to your shirt. And I always
uh ask people like, hey, do you have any medical

(39:46):
like things we need to know about before we clip
this thing too? Is it okay to put a magnet
on your chest? Whatever? So it's something that I think
that is prevalent in this kind of thought process. I
don't have the answer for you, Mike, but I will
ask the the guy we had on last Jared. I'll
send him an email and see what he says about that.

Speaker 10 (40:03):
Now, that would be fantastic because I don't hear a
but even at the airport, I don't recall seeing anything
if you have a pacemaker or something like that, because
I don't even think if you got wanded and you
just have to do the old, good old fashioned at down,
which is fine by me. Obviously you don't want to
mess with a pacemaker with electronics or magnetics. And as
you said, driving on a road to recharge a car,

(40:25):
you probably have magnetics go lore and well they better
set up detours before I hit that road, you know,
or anyone like me?

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Absolutely, I mean, well, what is what does your doctor
say have they you know, when they put this thing in,
do they say like, hey, be careful around this or that,
or do they exactly.

Speaker 10 (40:42):
It was maybe a five minute conversation right after I
came to from the surgery and all of that. No
more magnetics, no more this. You can't, No, MRI, you
cannot get wanded at the airport.

Speaker 7 (40:54):
You can't.

Speaker 10 (40:55):
Then I got it, and uh, well, where I work,
it helps to have a pocketed T shirt. That's where
I keep the cell phone, and it's like a thousand
percent full pocket, and T shirts have the pocket over
the heart. In fact, even some companies make a pacemaker
friendly T shirt. All they do is shift the pocket
to the other side. To me, that's still a little

(41:16):
too close to the device. So I just wear a
harness and keep the thing up to the side, and
that's the best I can do.

Speaker 6 (41:22):
Wow.

Speaker 10 (41:24):
But the thing, the trend getting everything getting electronic and
chargeable and chargeable on the go. I think that's fantastic,
But you know, I got to see if it's safe
for me.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah. Well, good question and good thing for them to
think about as they keep things in mind. I've also heard,
you know, the electric cars. I'm curious, like you know,
that could be an issue too, so but I'm sure
plenty of people have pacemakers that drive those as well.
But always consideration with any of this kind of stuff,
and a lot of it falls on you, I guess.
I mean a lot of it just falls on the

(41:55):
person that has whatever medical condition or whatever medical you know,
procedure or instrument in their body. I guess it comes
to them to like kind of be aware of this stuff.
And like you said, with the wanding and things like that.
But great question, Mike, and I will pass it along
to Jarrett to see what he says about that. This

(42:16):
is you know, we hear about AI so much Google
This week. Google had a bunch of news this week.
They had this really super fast computer chip and now
they've got this new Gemini AI. So Gemini is Google's
version of AI. And I've said this before, but Google
is pretty much they are feeling the heat right now.

(42:37):
Because I was thinking about this the other day because
I've been using chatchibt now ever since they added the
web search. It's really really good. Now it's not perfect,
but it's still pretty good that you can now search
the web with chatch ebt. But now, you know, so
Google is definitely feeling the heat. So they have been
I don't know if you've noticed, but Google's kind of
been ramping things up, especially in the AI department. They've

(43:00):
been working on AI for a very long time, but
now they seem to have new products all the time
with their AI. So this new one this week is
called deep Research, and this is basically an AI powered
tool that will perform web based research for you and
create a report. And I watched this thing work. The
idea is that the AI can control your Internet and

(43:25):
just go and browse the Internet for you and create
a report. So, for instance, I asked it to make
me a report on a topic and let's see if
I can find it. I made like a So you
have to go You have to be paying for this,
by the way, so you have to go into it's
called Deep Research. You go into Gemini Advance with Deep Research,

(43:47):
and you can say, draft me a report on the
prevalence of UFOs over the past decade in the US,
and it will literally go on to the internet search
all these different sites and it will show you what
it's doing. So I have to press start research. So

(44:08):
it's going to say, okay, find reports from reputable news
organizations and scientific journals, find data and statistics, and it
literally when I press start research, it shows me the
internet as it's searching the internet. So it's going off
on the web. And now this is AI searching the
web and compiling all this information and then generating a report.

(44:31):
And here it is. It's now it's going to YouTube.
It went to History dot Com, went to some government websites, CIA,
went to the BBC, went to the Pentagon's showing me
all the websites that it is visiting right now, Reddit
map of UFO sightings around the world. And then once
it does all this, so it says researching thirty one websites.

(44:51):
It's going to collect all that information and then draft
a report that I can put into Google Docs. I mean,
this is what we did in school. And by the way,
all the sites, you know, they put that little you know,
you have to cite all your stuff at the bottom
of the report, like where do you get this info?
It will put all that in there as well, so
now AI can do your research for you. Now, my

(45:11):
kids struggle with this stuff because you know, they're in
school and they've got to do all kinds of stuff,
and they're like, Dad, do you think it's okay if
I use AI for this, Dad, Do you think it's okay?
If I proofread with AI, I say go for it.
Because AI is now rst lne. You ever watch Wheel
of Fortune? What are the first letters people choose? Rst Lene.
It's the table stakes and everything, every puzzle that they

(45:33):
solve Wheel of Fortune gives that to you now, and
so now it's like that's a given, you're gonna get
those letters. Everyone in the world has access to AI now,
so you have to move beyond that, and you have
to use that to your advantage. So if you're scared
of AI, you're intimidated by it, you're not using it.
You think you're better than it, you think that you

(45:53):
shouldn't be using it because it's cheating all. Throw all
that out the window. Everyone is using it, Everyone is
using it, Everyone has it as a tool. So if
you're not using it, you're actually put at a disadvantage.
If you're sitting here trying to come up with this
UFO report on your own, Sure you can do that,
and I understand at the base level you should know

(46:14):
how to do that. But then once you know how,
you can let these tools do it, and you have
to build upon that eyda to eight rich one O
one eight eight eight seven four to two four to
one zero one. The website rich on Tech dot tv.
If you're right back, welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at

(46:35):
triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four two four one zero one. You can find
me on social media. I am at rich on Tech.
I'm active on Instagram, I'm active on Facebook and X
Trying to get into the blue sky thing. It's proving
to be a little tough because it's kind of boring
right now. I'll be honest, There's there's not a lot

(46:56):
going on in there, but you know it's growing, so
we'll see. Let's go to Jimmy in Los Angeles. Jimmy,
you're on with rich.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
Jimmy.

Speaker 8 (47:07):
Hey, Hey, how you doing.

Speaker 12 (47:09):
Hey? My name is Jimmy Day. And sometimes when I'm
talking on a cell phone like i'm talking now, I
run into a few the podcasts or videos on woodworking
and metallurgy metal working, and what I want to know
is how can I transfer those to my desktop video,
I mean desktop computer.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
So the podcasts or the videos.

Speaker 12 (47:33):
That I'm looking at on my cell phone. How can
I transfer that to my desktop computer?

Speaker 7 (47:38):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (47:38):
The videos okay, so like on YouTube or what?

Speaker 13 (47:41):
Uh?

Speaker 12 (47:41):
Most of them are on YouTube somewhere on.

Speaker 10 (47:45):
Google.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
Okay, well typically, so I mean you probably want to
access them. There are various third party tools that can
download videos. Many of them operate in sort of a
gray area. But there is a website called Cobalt Tools
c O B A L T dot Tools, and that
will let you pretty much download a video from almost

(48:08):
any website including Blue Sky, daily Motion, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, YouTube,
I mean pretty much everything, Twitter, TikTok x, whatever it is, Vimeo.
So if you paste the link into that website, it
will generate a download. And so it's called Cobalt Tools

(48:29):
co O B A L T dot Tools. Now, the
tool is not illegal in any way. I mean you could,
you know, you can use this to download your own
videos or whatever. It's it's depends on sort of the
copyright of the video and the gray area that it's
operating in when it comes to what you're downloading. So
you have to you know, go by that with what

(48:49):
you're you know, if you're just using it for your
own personal stuff, you know, you got to figure out
what the rules and regulations are around that. But that's
the best way to do it. Cobalt Tools, uh, and
it's Cobalt dot Tools. And this is a really really
handy website. You can do video, you can do audio,
and like I said, it works with almost every major
video and audio website out there. So pretty simple, pretty easy.

(49:12):
That's what I would recommend. Jimmy, Thanks for the call,
appreciate it. Eighty eight Rich one oh one eight eight
eight seven four two four one zero one. Talking earlier
about the price increases on YouTube TV, Danny writes in
from Charlotte, North Carolina. I said, Hey, Rich, I have
I used TVO and have for over twenty three years.

(49:33):
Still works for me. I have a four tuner model
and yes, sometimes record over the air four channels at
the same time. There you go, Danny, and Charlotte says
that TVO still works. Michael in Sherman Oaks says Ota
DVR lives. Hey Rich alone with Tableau, whose fourth generation

(49:54):
products are a great way to DVR over the air.
TVO still does have their Bolt models or even better,
Zapperbox has an over the air DVR that not only
records regular TV, but also the new ATSC three point
zero next gen broadcasts. That's uh yeah, that's like a
whole new thing. Hasn't taken off as much as I'm
sure the broadcasters have wanted, but I also haven't really

(50:16):
seen it promoted as much. But yes, the next gen broadcast,
A lot of the channels are broadcasting in this new
format that uh, I guess has more data with the show.
So it's it allows you to do some different things,
you know, like almost like interactive TV, where they can
see if you're watching, they know if you've seen an AD.

(50:37):
It's kind of like a two way thing versus just
you know, broadcast, which is just one way. So the
broadcasters like that. But and then I saw some of
these boxes at CES that take in the signal, and yes,
a lot of them have DVRs built in. But also
I think that the broadcasters can control that as well,
like they can decide if they want you to be
able to DVR or not. Don't quote me on that,

(51:00):
but I think that's what they were saying. But if
you want to learn about ats C three point oh,
I think let's see what's what's the website at s
C three point h uh. I thought it was like
next gen TV dot com or something, but it's at
sc dot org. That's the Broadcast Standards Association, so you
can check that out. Let's see here. Let's go to

(51:23):
Jerry Jerry and Palace Verdes. Jerry, you're on with Rich Hi.

Speaker 7 (51:28):
Uh I thowt the tenth generation ipada, you know, on
Black Friday, and for some reason, the I download the
countour which is the Cox cable ad, and the iPad
doesn't allow me to use that for some reason. You

(51:49):
any news for that?

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Does? It lets you down it lets you download it,
but it doesn't let.

Speaker 14 (51:55):
You use it.

Speaker 7 (51:55):
I downloaded, but it doesn't work well.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
I it real life.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Yeah, I'm looking.

Speaker 7 (52:03):
At I called it.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (52:04):
I called a cable company. They wanted ten dollars per month,
and I say, you Daniel alternative. They told me you
have to talk to a hebh. That's strange.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
Okay. So they want ten dollars a month to to
to add this feature to your to your service. Okay, yeah,
because it looks like it works on oh you know what,
it doesn't say anything about Oh it does say iPhone okay,
so it says iPhone and iPad iOS fourteen or higher.
But it looks like I'd have to look at this,

(52:38):
but I have to see if you if you need
to pay extra to use this, I'll look at this
and then talk about it on the way back from
the break. Coming up, we're going to talk about deep
fakes right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology. Phone lines are open eighty eight rich one
one eight eight eight seven four four one zero one.

(53:02):
My friend Diana did the music for this week's show,
keeping things mellow, like real mellow like I usually am doing,
like you know, I'm usually choosing like the you know,
mood booster stuff, but this is mellow. Before the break,
we had Jerry and Palas Verdes ask about Contour, this
app for cocks. It looks like the app is free,

(53:23):
but depending on what you can do, you know, depending
on your your subscription through COS that determines what you
can do on this app. So you might be able
to download it to your iPad, but depending on what
you have on your subscription, that determines if you can
watch live TV or stream or manage your DVR. So
it all depends and that's sort of like, you know

(53:45):
what I was talking about earlier with the whole cable thing.
You know, it's like it gets confusing because it's all
about the package that you subscribe to. So that's probably
why you're having issues with that on your iPad. All right,
Joining me now, Perry Carpenter, cybersecurity expert, has a new
book called Fake, A Practical Guide to Living in a
World of Deep Fakes, different disinformation, and AI generated deceptions. Perry,

(54:09):
thanks for joining me, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 6 (54:12):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
So what was the reason for writing the book? What
trend did you see happening that you figured people needed
to know more about.

Speaker 6 (54:20):
Well, I think the trend is fairly obvious. Over the
past two plus years, there's been a huge surge and
AI generated stuff out there because of this whole field
of generative AI, which is what chat, GPT and all
the image generation technologies and video generation technologies that we're

(54:41):
seeing falls under and that was creating a lot of questions, confusion,
and then also excitement about what the future is. And
the book was all around really giving people the right
terminology to be able to talk about it, helping them
understand what the opportunities are, what the dangers are, how

(55:04):
it's going to be taken advantage of and is being
taken advantage of by cyber criminals and disinformation artists, and
then how to fortify our minds to deal with the
new reality that we're all stepping into.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
So give me an example of what these people are
doing with AI to trick us.

Speaker 6 (55:21):
Yeah, I mean the examples are many. So when you
think about deep fakes that gets in this area that
we call synthetic media, which is just computer generated media
and by media that could be text. So if you've
used chat, GPT, that's an example. Images things like Dolly
and mid Journey and Stable Diffusion or programs that people

(55:44):
are fairly aware of there, and then video and voice
and of course in election cycles what we've been like
what we have been in there was a lot of
that for political purposes, and then in just well generally
having fun and being on the Internet. There's lots of
examples of that. But if we flash back to something

(56:06):
that's a little bit old news right now. During the
primary season for this presidential election, in the New Hampshire primary,
somebody created a deep fake audio of Joe Biden's voice
and put that on a robocall circuit to call people
around and say, you don't need to go out and
vote in the primary today, And.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
We talked about that story. I totally remember that, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (56:32):
Yeah, and the voice was pretty good. It's not the
best version of that that I have heard. But the
thing that makes this an interesting example is that every
deep fake, when it's intended for something other than fun,
every deep fake, every bit of disinformation, every scam is
after either two things or both money or mimes. And

(56:57):
in this what they were after really is making people
who would have voted for Joe Biden in the primary
sit out. And we would immediately think, well, that that
means that's a Republican challenger that was doing that. That
was you know, somebody on the other side was doing that.
Turns out it was actually another Democrat, but it was

(57:18):
somebody that was on that party that was trying to
challenge Joe Biden in the primary because they wanted their
name on the ticket. So the thing that makes that
really interesting to me is that there's, you know, that
multifaceted aspect and trying to understand the motivations of the
people that create these these bits of disinformation, propaganda, or
just scam material.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
So I guess it depends on so the the products themselves,
Like a deep fake is not necessarily illegal, but I
guess it's how it's done or what it's used for,
because I know we've seen stories about you know, teenagers
in high schools are making deep fakes, usually sexually explicit
deep fakes of fellow students, and that's obviously a used

(57:59):
to is not good.

Speaker 6 (58:02):
Yeah, there's uh, I mean every people think of yeah,
they should because at that point, you're you're defaming people,
you're also creating a fraud, You're I mean, there's so
many things that are wrapped into that. But it's like
any technology, any technology can be used for good or bad.

(58:25):
And what I say over and over and over in
the book is that every tool wields, every tool will
mold to the hand and intention of the person who's
picking it up. And deep fake technology, uh is like that.
When when you look at what this country and the
world is trying to deal with right now, it is

(58:46):
the fact that there is that dual nature and we
can create really interesting, good, productive, creative uses for AI
technology that will their humanity and help people thrive. At
the same time, it can become a cudgel, it can
become a weapon, it can become a tool of disinformation

(59:10):
or a tool that scam artists go to. And so
when you look at the ability to curtail that darker
use of it, that's what people are really struggling with.
And in California, of course, there were a couple of
bills that were passed prior to the to the election,
and what those bills were really trying to struggle with

(59:33):
is that dual use. They were trying to protect things
like you know, good use and parity and even you know,
the cynical, sarcastic use of these for political commentary, while
at the same time recognizing the fact that people would
weaponize deep fake technology to try to trick people and

(59:55):
what they came to, which I think is a good start,
but it's not all the way. There is that for
social media platforms that are over a certain revenue threshold
and have a certain user account, if they are alerted
to or discover a use of the technology. You know,
a piece of deep fake technology like a video or

(01:00:16):
audio clip or an image, if it is if its
purpose is intended to deceive. They have seventy two hours
to take it down, So I call that.

Speaker 8 (01:00:25):
A good start.

Speaker 6 (01:00:26):
Their their hearts are are in the right place, but
seventy two hours is an entire news cycle, and people
will make actions and build belief systems based on that
way before the chance to take it down ever rolls around.
So it's a good start. But more than anything, it
points into the direction of the fact that this is
something we're going to wrestle with well.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
And as a journalist, you know, I've been a journalist
for many, many years, and it used to be that
people would turn to folks like myself for like, you know,
vetted information, and I would post something on my Facebook
and people would know, like, oh, that's rich and you know,
he works for a major news outlet and obviously he's
posting stuff that's real. But then I saw in the
past couple of years people questioning even stuff that I'm posting,

(01:01:10):
you know, is this real? Is this are you for
real here? Which is just wild because that's now everything,
you know, Like when I'm scrolling on social media, the
first thing that comes to mind with every single video
or image I see is is this real? And so
how are we going, and I know they've got like
water marks and all this a but there's always going
to be ways around these things. So what is kind

(01:01:31):
of the bottom line here is that are we kind
of like we have to understand what to look out for.

Speaker 6 (01:01:39):
I think you're onto it, So I'm really glad you
said that even though there's watermarks and other technologies, there's
always ways around it, because there are, and those will
be effective a percentage of the time, but we can't
count on those. And so what I really advocate for
is just this idea of cognitive security, And that's the

(01:02:01):
mental piece of this, because technology, as good as it is,
is never going to protect us from these things. They
will slip into our social media feed they will get
into our inbox, they will get into our text messages
and so on. Because the people that are out there
using these creating weaponized information with them, they're persistent and

(01:02:24):
so it will get to us and they're not playing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
By the rules.

Speaker 6 (01:02:28):
No, not exactly. So even when open AI or anybody
else develops really good robust water marking, somebody will just
use a different tool set that doesn't have that, or
they'll find the way around, and then they'll weaponize that information,
so we cannot rely on that, and I think we
do a disservice to the population when we say, oh,

(01:02:50):
you'll always be able to tell that something's a deep
fake because of X, Y and Z. Instead, like you,
I am directionally pushed people towards asking critical questions like
why did this piece of media land in front of me?
What story is it trying to tell? What emotion is
it trying to invoke? And then ultimately what does it

(01:03:13):
want me to do or believe? And when I ask
those critical questions, for me, it doesn't matter if the
thing that landed in front of me is real or fake.
It starts to unpack the broader implications of it, because
we were moving into a world where a lot of
what we see will be fake for some of that

(01:03:34):
for legitimate reasons, just because the tools exist, and so
being able to tell whether it's synthetically created or not
is going to be marginally important, but not really the
be all, end all tell that we need to be
looking out for. We need to understand the narrative and
the intention.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
And I imagine, Perry, We're going to leave it there,
but I imagine that there will be degrees in this
stuff and how to tell you know, be an expert
in deep fakes and how to tell this stuff is
really or not?

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
The book is called fake f a Ik. The website
this book is fake faik dot com. Perry Carpenter, thanks
so much for joining me.

Speaker 6 (01:04:12):
Thank you eight eight eight.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Rich one O one. We'll get to those phone lines
coming up right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Eight
eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four two four one zero one hop on. If you
want to get on the air here and ask a question,

(01:04:35):
you can also go to the website rich on tech
dot tv. Hit contact and uh you can get in
touch that way. And if I mentioned something on the
air that you want to get more information about, just
go to the website rich on tech dot tv. Hit
the show notes. That is the icon up at the top.
It looks like a light bulb. Or you can just
look for a show one O one and you'll see

(01:04:57):
a nice list of everything that I mentioned here.

Speaker 7 (01:05:00):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Diana and Torrance has some feedback on the coxsapp. Diana,
what's up?

Speaker 10 (01:05:05):
Hi, Rich?

Speaker 14 (01:05:07):
I was just calling in to give you my two
cents based on my experience with that cocks app that
your caller that you just from Palisferti contour, Yes, I
I use, I downloaded and I used that app all

(01:05:27):
the time on iPhones and an iPad airs. The iPad
air I used is like a couple of years old.
I know he mentioned he has a tenth generation iPad
that he got from Black Friday. But so what I
would say is my parents have the Cox table. They
live in Palisberti's and I think he just needs to
make sure that whatever his table subscription includes, the you know,

(01:05:53):
allowed him to do the streaming.

Speaker 6 (01:05:54):
From that app.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
I think that's the main thing, is that because I
was looking at you know, the environments is really iOS
fourteen it says, which is like three, you know, four
years old. So his iPad definitely runs that the tenth
generation does. But I think what it comes down to is,
like you said, what can you do with the subscription
you have? You know you can't just like you can't
just download this and expect it to work if you're

(01:06:18):
I don't know if on a basic subscription or don't
even subscribe to Cox, but how much are you pay
in a month? For them, and what do you have
to pay extra for this contour apples?

Speaker 15 (01:06:26):
Oh you know what?

Speaker 14 (01:06:27):
That I don't know for sure because it's my parents
subscription and I don't have the breakdown, but I go
there frequently and I kind of administer their stuff. So
I'll have to take a look and see if that's
like a I thought it was just included.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
Yeah, I mean you're yeah, I.

Speaker 14 (01:06:43):
Don't know if it's a separate item that you have
to subscribe to.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
It's tough to get the information on their website. I'm
looking at the Uh. The website doesn't really say like
if you have to pay extra for it or if
it's included. It doesn't say like it. Now here's the thing. Okay,
So on the facts, it's says can I watch live
TV out of home depending on your subscription. So it
must be based on your subscription what you can do,

(01:07:09):
because I've.

Speaker 14 (01:07:09):
Done that too, and I do watch the live TV
when I'm at their house on their home network.

Speaker 7 (01:07:15):
Right.

Speaker 14 (01:07:15):
I also stream at when I'm on the go and
not on their home network.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
Yeah, so and there's probably different rules for that too,
So it all just depends.

Speaker 6 (01:07:23):
But okay, but check into it.

Speaker 14 (01:07:25):
And if I find out anything, I'll send you an
email or something.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
All right, Dan, I appreciate it. My recorder on the
ground there and tourans appreciate it today. Okay, thank you
have a great one eighty eight rich one on one
eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
Let's see here we've got David in Whittier. David, you're
on with Rich Hi, Rich, I am doing great. What

(01:07:50):
can I help with?

Speaker 13 (01:07:51):
Well, I had a little problem here. I had a
I bought a satellite link from Startlingk's. The minimum is
like fifty gigs per month, and which should be fine,
But what I'm trying to do is get or create
a security system. I had it with the telephone when

(01:08:15):
I had access to a telephone out there five hundred
miles away. But I don't have that anymore. So I
bought the satellite service, and I didn't think far enough
ahead to figure out how I can get it to
What I really needed to do is just send me
a notification and then connect the camera or cameras so

(01:08:39):
I can see what's going on without having the cameras
online all the time. And because I'm limited to fifty
gigs a month, which is a lot, but I guess
you're going if the camera got turned on and was
going twenty four to seven, that might overrun that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
Well, it depends on the camera. So most of these
security cameras, they're not streaming twenty four to seven. They
might be monitoring twenty four to seven, but they're not
necessarily sending everything to the cloud. And so it depends
on the camera that you have. And so you can
get some cameras that will just send. So there's a
brand out there called Kangaroo Ka and Ga Roo and

(01:09:22):
so these cameras, you know, they can send you a
snapshot of what they're seeing and then if you need to,
you can stream in. And so that's like just one example,
but there's the other one is called Blink. Have you
looked at those cameras from Amazon?

Speaker 13 (01:09:36):
Was that blink?

Speaker 8 (01:09:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
Blink?

Speaker 7 (01:09:39):
No?

Speaker 13 (01:09:40):
I haven't.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
Yeah, So those cameras their whole thing, and Amazon I
think paid like I don't know how much for this company,
probably a billion dollars. But they their whole thing is
that they invented a system where these phones are these
these cameras last like a year on like two double
A batteries, so they are certainly not streaming twenty four
to seven, but they're monitoring twenty four to seven. If

(01:10:03):
you have them connected to this star link, they will
send you a snapshot of what they're seeing.

Speaker 7 (01:10:08):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
I think that's where the term blink came from, right,
and so they'll send you a snapshot and then if
you need to, you can get more and stream from
that camera. So that's what I would look for, And
you know, there's a bunch of cameras that can do this.
I would say even the ring cameras, like my ring cameras,
are not streaming up to the cloud twenty four to seven.
Only two of them are because they're certain like they're

(01:10:29):
connected hardwired. But the rest of them, they mostly they'll
see the movement and then they trigger recording. So you know,
unless you're getting one of these big systems like a
Swan system or something like that, most of them are
not twenty four to seven recording. The nest cams are.
You can have them set up that way, but it
all depends on the camera. So David, what are you

(01:10:50):
trying to monitor?

Speaker 13 (01:10:52):
Just just the premises, just a vacation home.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
Okay, Yeah, I mean I think I would check into
the Blink cameras first. I would also check into the
Wise cameras wy Ze, and you know, both of those
cameras will do exactly what you're saying. And the Wise
cameras have an SD card so they can record the
whole time to that card if you put up a
solar panel. But you'll get those notifications when they see motion.

(01:11:18):
Eighty eight Rich one O one Rich on tech dot TV.
Back after this Rich on tech Rich Tamiro here hanging
out with you. We should have played this song after
In our interview the deep fakes man Elvis was talking
about deep fakes back in nineteen sixty eight when he
wrote this, that's wild edge of reality. I mean, that's

(01:11:43):
where we are in our world right with all this
deep fake stuff. Welcome to the show. Welcome back. My
name is Rich Jamiro. This is the show where we
talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
I also answer your questions. Eighty eight Rich one O
one is the phone number for the show. Eight eight
eight seven four to four one zero one. If you
want to get in touch on the website, it's Rich

(01:12:05):
on tech dot TV. A couple of feedback items to
get through before we get to our caller. Let's see.
Charlie in Tahunga says, watching YouTube videos on my phone
creates a history in my YouTube account, which enables me
to find them easily on my Apple TV or desktop computer,
much easier than downloading them as was recommended to the caller. Yes,

(01:12:28):
but Charlie, I didn't you know he wanted a recommendation
to download them, like I didn't you know. There's many
ways to do this, to watch a video that you
see on your phone on your computer or TV. But
he specifically was asking for the download. But yes, you're right.
I have often do that myself. I will just watch
a video for a second on my phone just to
get it in that YouTube history, and then go to
my TV and I can watch it there easily. Steve

(01:12:51):
writes in from Fairfax, you are the bomb. I just
saved sixty dollars from your tip about starting to cancel
YouTube TV to get a six month EXCEP. Thank you. Well,
I'm happy to help, Steve. That's what I'm here for.
I appreciate that I did it myself so I know
it works. Darryl writes in, you can get a cheap
converter box that also acts as a DVR. They're between

(01:13:12):
twenty and forty dollars plus the cost of a thumb drive.
They're available from Walmart and Amazon. The brands are Ematic
and Medsnic. They record on they record HD on HD channels.
I have two of them. Darryl Okay. Yeah, that must
be like a converter box. Remember they were giving us
out for free for a while because they wanted everyone
to switch. Remember the big switch from analog to digital.

(01:13:34):
Oh my gosh, but I think we made it through that.
Let's go to Sandy in Huntington Beach. Sandy, you are
on with rich Oh.

Speaker 15 (01:13:45):
I hope you can help me. I've got I just
had to get a new phone. My other one pretty
much died and I got an A thirty five. I
just need the basics. I don't do anything financial. My
other one was an A twenty one. It worked great.
Never had a with that little guy. But this one,
it's like, it took me forever to get into you.
And then I was on hold and it disconnected, and

(01:14:08):
it does it just goes blank. It goes blank, and
then it disconnects. It hasn't done it on Bluetooth in
my car but it does it in my house and
out and about.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
Okay.

Speaker 15 (01:14:17):
So it's a new phone. I have to decide this week.
Am I going to keep it and get my rebate
or do I give it back? Is it an internal antenna?

Speaker 12 (01:14:26):
I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (01:14:27):
Well, okay, and I'm not.

Speaker 15 (01:14:28):
A checking person, but you're the wizard.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
I guess. I guess. The question is when it When
this is happening, is the phone restarting or is it
just dropping the call?

Speaker 15 (01:14:40):
It just robs the call, Okay, So I couldn't once.
It did it when I was on with you, and
it went away when I tried. When I called again,
it said your phone is not connected to a network.

Speaker 6 (01:14:51):
Yeah, so I couldn't.

Speaker 15 (01:14:52):
I couldn't call.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
Okay. It sounds like the antenna in this phone. What
what service are you on?

Speaker 15 (01:14:59):
Uh Mobile?

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
Okay, So it sounds like the service or the signal
or the antenna on this phone is not as strong
as the old one. That's what I'm thinking is happening
here because you're using it in the same place, which
is your house, but it's dropping the calls. So I
think that it's the antenna and you might need to,
you know, maybe think about getting rid of this phone.

(01:15:22):
So here's the deal. I will tell you this because
I know from Okay. So in my house over the
over the well, this is the weekend. But over the
week I had some work being done on my internet,
and when that internet was being worked, one I didn't
have Wi Fi for a while. And I'm not kidding.
I tried to make a phone call from the place
I make a phone call all the time, and my
phone wouldn't work. It kept just saying, you know, disconnected

(01:15:43):
signal note call failed whatever. I was like, that's so weird.
I never realized that I have no signal in this
room because I've been on Wi Fi calling the whole time.
So a couple of things you can do. First off,
you can try to reset your network settings. But who
set up this phone for you? Is it T Mobile
at the store?

Speaker 15 (01:16:02):
Costco, Kiosk Mobile ko Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
So, I mean I'm sure they set it up properly.
You could. The problem is if you reset your network settings,
which you can do yourself in the settings, it's going
to reset everything like you know, Bluetooth, Wi Fi, your
cellular that, yeah, and then you have to set it
all up again. You got to connect it your WiFi,
it might be worth it just to see if that helps.
The other thing is that you could use Wi Fi

(01:16:28):
calling when you're in your house. So have you set
up that feature on your phone?

Speaker 16 (01:16:34):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
Okay? And does that does that call drop when you
have that on?

Speaker 15 (01:16:38):
My husband's here?

Speaker 7 (01:16:39):
So the Wi Fi the Wi Fi in the house
is Spectrum okay, but the service for the phones is
T Mobile.

Speaker 1 (01:16:48):
Right okay. So if you set up Wi Fi calling
on your phone, and I don't think this is this
is just a stop gap. I mean, you may have
this problem forever. Does your husband have a Tea mobile
in the house as well, and does his phone work?
What phone does he have?

Speaker 15 (01:17:02):
He has an LG an old LG oh wow.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
Old LG okay, LG velvet Oh LG oh wow. The
dulcet tones of the LG velvet look. I think it
could be the antenna on this phone is just not
pulling in the same signal that your old phone was.
So I think it's.

Speaker 15 (01:17:19):
This model of phone for this particular phone.

Speaker 1 (01:17:22):
Well, it could be both. So what I would do
first is I would just take it back to the Kiosk.
I think it's since it's cost go they're going to
be pretty accepting of it. Tell them what's happening. Say, look,
you know, I used to have an old Samsung in
a twenty one and this thing used to work in
my house, no problem. Now I get the thirty five
and it's worse, and I'm dropping calls left and right.
And they may say, oh, you're the third person that's

(01:17:42):
come back and told us this, or they may say okay,
and you say, look, I want to swap out my
phone for a new model, just to make sure it's
not a hardware defect. Get the new model, see if
it works. I know it's a pain because all your
stuff is on this phone and everything, but you know,
like you said, this is only a week old. You
don't want to sit here and deal with this issue
for the next couple of years. As you have this phone.

(01:18:03):
Sounds like you keep your phone for a bit, So
I would do that first. If you want to try
the network settings reset, you can try that. And you
can go into your settings and just search for network
settings or just search for reset and you can look
for that. That will not you know, you don't want
to factory reset your phone because that will delete everything.
But I would do that first. If it was me personally,

(01:18:25):
I would do a network settings reset and then I
would see if my phone works. If it doesn't, if
it keeps dropping the calls, then I would take it
back to the Kiosk, say hey, can we swap this
out for a new hardware, And if that keeps dropping calls,
then I would look into a different phone. But I
will tell you you know, Sandy, I test every phone
in the world, and they definitely, one hundred percent pull

(01:18:46):
in different signals. Some phones have a greater signal than others,
and it's just the way the phone is set up.
It's just the way that the phone is created. So
this phone may just pull in less of the T
Mobile signal than your old phone. And that's just the
reality of this device.

Speaker 6 (01:19:03):
Lovely.

Speaker 15 (01:19:04):
Another thing it does, and you were talking about AI earlier.
When I with my other phone for texting, I could
just talk, everything would come out perfect. This one it
doesn't do that. It puts in its own punctuation, puts
in its own words. It doesn't even come out what
I've said. That is there a setting that can change that?

Speaker 1 (01:19:24):
There is. There's a couple settings. So it depends on
the voice to text that you're using. Typically with Samsung,
the default is Samsung's I like to change it to Google.
So you can go ahead and download what's called g
board g bo ar D. That's Google's keyboard, and that
will use Google's own audio voice to text. You can

(01:19:45):
also go into your settings on the Samsung and there
are If you go to the keyboard settings, it says
text to speech, says something like I don't have my
Samsung in front of me, but it says something like
text to speech driver or system and typically, well always,
the default is Samsung.

Speaker 10 (01:20:05):
Turn off Google's AI.

Speaker 1 (01:20:08):
Well that's a little different. Turning off. Well, that's a
whole other thing. Google is building the AI into all
these devices that Google's AI s Okay, well that.

Speaker 15 (01:20:18):
Is right here when I'm talking to you, right above it.
It has this little lift and it has it within
a circle. It says text call. What does that have
anything to.

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
Do with it? I'm not really sure because I'm not
sure what that what what that's saying on their screen
right now for a text call. But but the bottom
line is, look, I think that the Google Voice to
text is going to be just fine if you switch
that keyboard out. I think it's going to be much
better to what you want. The Samsung one is fine,
but I think Google's is better. The AI stuff, you know,

(01:20:51):
you got to go into your settings and try to
you know, turn some of that stuff off if you
don't want that to toggle. But uh, you know, you
might get used to some of that stuff as well.
And and Android and Google well in general is you know,
they're they're still figuring all this stuff out, so it's
not you know, look, you've got a totally different phone.
You've got a phone that's a little bit newer than
your old phone, so there are going to be some changes.

(01:21:12):
The other thing that I would do, Sandy, is make
sure that your software is up to date on this
device and see if that helps as well. But you
can you can try toggling on the Wi Fi calling.
If you're having issues with getting a signal in your home,
or you're in a place where your signal is not
that great, you could use Wi Fi calling to kind
of paste that signal. What Wi Fi calling does is
it routes the call. All calls these days, no matter

(01:21:35):
what if you're making it over cellular or Wi Fi,
they're all routed over the Internet. Your voice is changed
into you know, a voice over IP, so it's not
it's no longer analog. It's not taking that recording of
your voice and sending it over the signal. It's actually
just transforming it into little ones and o's and recompiling
it at the other end, so you can go to

(01:21:56):
Wi Fi calling. What Wi Fi calling does is it
will transfer your call over your spectrum Internet, which is
stronger than your T mobile signal. When you're out of
your house, it'll still go T Mobile. When you're in
your house, it'll go over the spectrum or your whatever
your WiFi is. Eight eight eight rich one on one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(01:22:16):
We'll be right back. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one, the website rich
on Tech dot TV. While you're there, sign up for
my free newsletter. Thank you for enjoying that. I do

(01:22:38):
enjoy the feedback I get from sending that out. Usually
I send it out every Saturday morning, so thirty seven
thousand of you getting it currently, that's been pretty pretty wild. Uh,
if you want to submit your question, comments and more
to the feedback, We're gonna get to that in just
a little bit. Just go to Rich on tech dot
TV hit contact and in this hour next segment, actually

(01:23:01):
we're going to talk to Miami parents. They created an
app called Firsties. This helps you capture, organize, and share
your kids milestone moments. But first let's go to Mark
in Woodland Hills. Mark, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 16 (01:23:14):
Yeah, good afternoon, Rich. This all came about because something
a scam that was basically pulled on an in law.
I guess she got into one of these dating sites
or whatever. But it got me to thinking, there's sometimes
I buy things online. I've never heard of the company before.
I don't know if they're a scam artists, I don't know.
I don't want my real credit card attached to anything

(01:23:39):
that they may take advantage of like they did my
in law.

Speaker 7 (01:23:41):
YEP.

Speaker 16 (01:23:42):
Is it possible to get like virtual cards that you
can load up with money so that at least if
that is attacked, it doesn't lead back to any of
your financial institutions or whatever. I guess she got caught
in one of these dating sites or something, and some
fellow wanted her to send money to apply him to London,
and I got a hold of her before she did it,

(01:24:03):
and I thank god, I did you know?

Speaker 1 (01:24:05):
Oh yeah, this is it's so it's so wild because
we talk about this stuff all the time on this
show and I hear these stories and I'm just like,
who falls for this? But people do good people like
everyday people, and it's happening all the time. So what
you're talking about, Mark, is a virtual card number. So yes,
and I think it's very smart. So a couple of
things my wife and I, so I typically use a

(01:24:28):
debit card. You know, I do have a credit card,
but I most of the time use that when my
card leaves my hand, right So if I am putting
my card in on the internet, that's leaving my hand
because it's out of my hands. So I will use
a credit card for that. And then of course at
restaurants and places where they take your card off site.
But if I'm typically just using you know, tap to
pay somewhere, Tap to pay protects your card number, I

(01:24:51):
will use my debit card. But what you're talking about
virtual card number, there's actually a great service which would
really help in any situation. But it's called privacy dot com.
And so privacy dot com, you sign up with this
and you have to link your debit card or a
bank account, I believe. But once you do that, you

(01:25:11):
can generate cards one time use cards, or they can
be reused, but you can control everything about them. So
you can say, okay, let's say you're signed up for
a free trial of something right and you know you're
going to forget to cancel this free trial. You can
go through and say, okay, here's my card for this
free trial, and don't let it charge more than a

(01:25:32):
dollar to this card. So they can do that authorization
charge of one dollar. But then when they try to
charge you ninety nine dollars, when you forget about that
subscription in seven days, they will not be able to
do that. That card number will not go through. So
that's called privacy dot com. Now that's a whole other
level of control. So you can say I only want
this card to work for ten dollars a month, So

(01:25:53):
if your subscription ever goes above ten dollars a month,
it won't work. It'll the charge won't go through. So
that is a service. Most of it is free. I
think you get a certain amount. I've never paid for it,
so I think that you get a certain amount of
free usage per month, a certain amount of cards that
you can generate. I'm sure that that's changed since I

(01:26:15):
signed up. It's probably, you know, lesser than what I
had when I signed up. It was you know, they
probably gave much more back then, and I think it's
like five whatever. I don't know what the point is,
what the what the pricing is at this point, but
that's how that works, and so you can really just
control every aspect of your cards that you that you
create on this website. I'm trying to see if they

(01:26:37):
here we go pricing in plans. So for free, you
can create up to twelve cards per month. For five dollars,
you can create up to five dollars a month. Is
up to twenty four cards a month, ten dollars a month,
up to thirty six cards a month, and then twenty
five dollars a month, up to sixty cards a month.
I don't know what you're doing for sixty virtual cards
a month, but okay, so that's privacy dot Com. Now

(01:27:02):
there's another way you can do this mark And there's
also what's called a virtual card number from your credit
card company, and so Capital One I believe has the
City Bank has them, Discover has them. I think the
Apple card lets you do a virtual card number. Now
that's a little different because I don't think it gives
you the same level of control, Like I don't think
you can say, Discover, let me make this card number,

(01:27:25):
and it only works once you may be able to
I don't have experience doing those, but that's another way
to do it, where you can call your credit card
company or just google the name of your credit card
and say one time card number and see what it
comes up with or virtual card number. And some of
the banks, the big banks, you know, the City, these
big banks don't really necessarily like this idea because they

(01:27:47):
just want, you know, they just want it simple, and
they want it to be able to people, to be
able to charge you whenever they want. And so I
think that they haven't really embraced this in a big
way that I would have liked to see. Like you
would think every credit card company would say, oh, yeah,
we know people shop online. Let's give them these virtual
card numbers to make it easier for them. And they
don't forget about things and they don't get charged for stuff,
and they can feel safe giving their card number out

(01:28:08):
to people. But I haven't really seen the adoption in
a big way, but I think privacy dot com is
probably the best one. The only downside to it, I think,
is that you have to use your debit or credit
debit card or your bank account to actually sign up.
I don't believe you can use a credit card to
fund the virtual card that you're creating, so that's kind

(01:28:29):
of the only caveat there. But I do have a
couple of them set up there. They work really well
and it's definitely saved me a couple of times from
getting hit with charges when I forgot about stuff. Great
question Mark and Woodland Hills, Oh my gosh, that already segment.
All right, coming up, We've got parents, a group of

(01:28:50):
parents who created an app called first Ease. We're going
to talk to them right after this. 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. There you can see the show notes by
hitting the light bulb, or you can watch my TV
segments that I do for KTLA TV in Los Angeles.

(01:29:12):
That's all there on the website. Rich on tech dot TV.
I was playing around this morning with an app, you know,
Mint Money went away, so I was trying to find
a replacement app for that, and I think I found it.
The problem is it costs money, but it's called Monarch Money.
And if you're looking to like kind of do all
of your net worth, you know, put all your accounts
into one place, which I know is a little scary

(01:29:34):
to aggregate them all, but you know you want to
see all your net worth on one page. This one
is really good at that. It also does your you know,
your car, your house, whatever you've got, plus your investments,
your bank accounts, puts it all on one page, so
you can see a net worth exactly what Mint used
to do really well. The problem is they want to
charge I think it's about one hundred bucks a year.
So anyway, it might be worth just taking a look

(01:29:56):
at it, because I have been testing out Rocket Money
as well, which I like, but you know they don't
do as good of a job with the net worth stuff.
So if you're looking for a replacement for Mint Mobile,
then Monarch Money might be the way to do it. Also,
I was at Target yesterday and I was purchasing a
gift card Bobo Hide Your Ears, and I noticed they

(01:30:19):
have a whole new system to keep the thieves from
draining gift cards. So now when you buy a gift
card at least at Target, a Target gift card, they
don't put the redemption barcode on the back until after
you buy it. So it's actually so you know, the
these thieves will go into stores, they'll scrape off or
somehow tamper with the gift cards. They'll record the numbers

(01:30:41):
off the back of the gift cards, and then when
you buy it at the register, somehow they're alerted that
it's been activated, and they will instantly go in and
drain that account before you even get to use it.
This happened to us last year. It's a very common occurrence,
so I guess Target has found a way around that.
So kudos to them for figuring out a more secure system.
All right, Joining me on the show, Miami Parents, Natalia

(01:31:02):
Daniel and Odd Pellet Pellett. They have a new app
that they created. It's called first Ease. And this is
an app that I wish I had when I originally,
you know, had my kids. Back in the day, I
think we wrote one thing down in a book and
then we never wrote another thing, like first steps, first smile,
and that was it. But this is an app that
helps you capture, organize, and share your kids milestone moments.

(01:31:25):
Welcome to the.

Speaker 5 (01:31:26):
Show, Hello, rich how about.

Speaker 1 (01:31:30):
I am doing fantastic. So tell me what gave you
the inspiration for this this first d'z app.

Speaker 4 (01:31:36):
Well, I think it's so as parents, we all had
the same moments. We all just wrote a few pictures,
you know, first steps and first smile, and that's about it,
and we stopped. And so actually I realized that when
I was trying to put together a book for our kids,
and I realized there was a lot of moments that
I didn't capture. You know, there was the basic ones,

(01:31:57):
but there's so many other milestones and moments that go
not record it. And when I found the picture, I
also found that they were scattered on multiple devices and
it was really time consuming to bring them all in
one place. So I turned to my husband, who works
in tech, and I'm like, we have to come up
with something a little bit easier for parents and really

(01:32:18):
help them in capturing those moments that you know, go
away really quickly if you don't capture them and help
them retrieve them in a very easy way.

Speaker 1 (01:32:26):
So this is firsties and I love that it's not
just like you know, it actually gives you prompts. So
it says like, hey, you know, capture their first haircut,
Capture their first going to a restaurant, Capture their first umbrella,
you know, using an umbrella. So it's like all these
little things that we take for granted as adults, but
as kids, it's all brand new to them. Like almost
everything they do is like they're going to do it

(01:32:48):
for the first time.

Speaker 8 (01:32:50):
Yes, for sure, we definitely take it all for granted.

Speaker 4 (01:32:53):
So we have five hundred plus milestone prompts to inspire
parents in capturing all those moments.

Speaker 17 (01:33:00):
And like you said, there are so many sweet moments
that we regret for not capturing, especially with our first son.
And you know when you ask parents, for example, do
you have a video when of your kid first time
seeing the reflection reflection in the mirror, you know, it's
such a sweet moment. And most of your parents we
talked to like, oh, no, I wish I captured it.

(01:33:21):
And you know, what's your excuse? You had the phone,
you had the camera, but a lot of time with life,
we just don't think, right, life goes by and suddenly
your kid is like ten years old, and you were like, oh,
I wish I captured this, and I wish I captured that.
So that was really kind of like the thing that
Natalia came to me with. And you know my background,
I've been in consumer tech in mobile gaming for almost

(01:33:42):
fifteen years, and I was like, that actually can be
a really fun idea to also gamify, right, And there's
a lot of apps and I always talk about due Lingo,
the language learning app that did a fantastic job putting
on top of it like a layer of gamification and
rewarding the users for not skipping a day and for

(01:34:03):
like having a continuous experience and engagement with the app.

Speaker 3 (01:34:08):
So we thought the same thing.

Speaker 17 (01:34:09):
We said, first, let's create and gather those hundreds of
milestone suggestions, and we did it, you know, working and
collaborating with a group of moms and parents and pediatricians.
Right so right now it's actually almost seven hundred super
cute suggestions prompts in different categories.

Speaker 18 (01:34:27):
And then on top of that, we said, okay, let's
reward that the parents for capturing those moments, right, and you're.

Speaker 3 (01:34:35):
Probably familiar and all the audience is probably familiar. A
lot of mobile games or games in general, give.

Speaker 17 (01:34:40):
You achievements for achieving certain things inside the game. In
this case, it's an app. But for example, as soon
as you capture or upload five Thirsties, you get gems.
You get rewards inside the app that they can later
on use, for example for making and we'll talk about
it more. Hopefully you can make you know, beautiful musical

(01:35:00):
videos of the child, or you can order a real
photo books.

Speaker 3 (01:35:05):
So that that's.

Speaker 17 (01:35:06):
Really the the what we've been developing now for almost
three years.

Speaker 3 (01:35:11):
Super excited about it.

Speaker 17 (01:35:12):
You know, our team is almost eighteen people working hard
on creating this is this appened. And the other thing
is as we were building and developing, all started with,
you know, in Natalia's idea about like not missing capturing
these moments. The other thing that we realize very quickly
is that we as parents, we share those moments that

(01:35:36):
we did capture across multiple channels.

Speaker 3 (01:35:39):
Right.

Speaker 17 (01:35:40):
Some I share, you know, with my family via what'sapp.
Some friend does not have what's PP, so I use
SMS and here is on by email, and sometimes we
live a digital footprint on on social media and suddenly
you're like all this stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:35:54):
Like where is it? You know?

Speaker 17 (01:35:56):
And we wanted to create something that is like one
centralized place, super secure, private.

Speaker 3 (01:36:03):
We can talk about that.

Speaker 18 (01:36:04):
There's a lot of technology that went into securing our app.

Speaker 1 (01:36:08):
Yeah, talk about to talk about the privacy aspect, because
you know, people are sharing their you know, their memories
in this app. You know, how have you made you know,
what is the privacy? Are their ads? Do you collect
data on people?

Speaker 3 (01:36:19):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:36:20):
What can you feel confident knowing that you know what
you're putting in here is going to remain private.

Speaker 3 (01:36:26):
One hundred percent.

Speaker 17 (01:36:27):
And again that's the thing that we wanted to differentiate
and build Here no ads. The platform was built not
like traditional social media that was really built for broadcasting
to the world.

Speaker 3 (01:36:39):
This is by invite only.

Speaker 17 (01:36:41):
When you send an invite to a close family member,
a close friend, they have three days to accept the invites.
Everything is encrypted. A lot of a lot of work
went through encryption. I know you spoke about it, I
believe last week in your podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:36:56):
What is Encryption? So a lot of effort went into that,
and yeah, no, no ads, We don't collect data.

Speaker 17 (01:37:04):
It's really a private inner circle platform for sharing your
most precious moments with the family.

Speaker 1 (01:37:12):
And what I know you've got So you can start
for free. You've got a completely free version, and then
you've got the premium version, So explain kind of the difference.
What do you get with each?

Speaker 17 (01:37:23):
So we wanted to give enough for the users to
really appreciate and enjoy the app.

Speaker 18 (01:37:29):
The app is, most of the features are free. It
comes with a complimentary storage. You can upload almost one
hundred photos and videos for free. You can upload one
proof file or kid.

Speaker 17 (01:37:43):
We actually just added also inside a pet version, so
if you have you know, we all have our pets,
so you.

Speaker 3 (01:37:49):
Can add a child that part of the family.

Speaker 17 (01:37:53):
There's a lottery of stickers and filters and a lot
of cute animations that you can add on.

Speaker 3 (01:38:01):
Their photos and videos. That's free as well.

Speaker 17 (01:38:04):
But obviously, if someone wants to use the app, and
you know, and we we ourselves have been using it
now for like a year and a half, and you know,
the fos in the videos keep gathering, you know, you
need more storage, and especially.

Speaker 3 (01:38:18):
If you want to have more of the advanced.

Speaker 17 (01:38:20):
Features, we're using a lot of the I of the
apps for making the videos, for creating the photobook for you.
That requires the premium subscription. The subscription both the subscription
has a seven day free trial and it's nine ninety
nine a month or sixty year, which comes to like

(01:38:41):
five dollars and eighty three cents a month.

Speaker 1 (01:38:44):
And again, this is the This is the first das app.
It is for kind of cataloging your child's milestones. It's
available for iOS and Android Natalia. Are you happy with
the way the app turned out? You had the idea?
Are you happy the way it was executed?

Speaker 4 (01:39:01):
It's way better than I thought. And I wish I
had it when our kids were younger because I would
have captured so many moments. Not only it's super useful,
but it looks really good and it's really well designed
and very practical.

Speaker 5 (01:39:15):
So I'm more.

Speaker 4 (01:39:16):
I'm so happy with and I really hope people enjoy
you as well.

Speaker 1 (01:39:20):
Okay, the website first D's dot com again catalog all
the first moments with your child, all the milestones, and
you can also share those privately with friends and family.
Makes me want to have another kid. I don't know.
Minor passed the first step though we're almost in high
school now. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

(01:39:40):
Natalia Daniel oded pelled first D's app creators. Coming up,
We're going to open up the feedback see what you
have to say about last week's show. This is rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech, rich Demiro.
Here a couple items of note before we open up
the feedbag. iHeartRadio app got a major redesign, so if

(01:40:03):
you update your iHeartRadio app, you'll notice a whole bunch
of new features. Number one, custom presets. You can now
save up to fifteen of your favorite stations, playlists, or
podcasts for quick access. I would recommend that you save
rich on Tech my podcast kfive. You're in the LA
area or whatever station you're listening on, you can save

(01:40:25):
that as a preset, and of course KTLA if you
want to listen to the morning news that I work
on as well. They have a scan button now so
you can scan different radio stations, kind of like back
in the day in the radio car dial. Same thing.
Then they have a live radio dial so you can
see the live radio stations that are near you, organized
by genre and location, lyrics and also what's trending. So

(01:40:48):
the app rollout. The brand new app is rolling out
to iOS and Android users, will be available to everyone
by the end of December. It's a big one. I
already got it on one of my phones and it's
a nice upgrade. And Moxie. This is a robot that
was for kids and it's gonna shut down so Embodied,

(01:41:08):
the company behind it, says they don't have enough money,
so they got to shut down their operations. This is
an eight hundred dollars robot that was marketed as an
emotional support and educational companion for kids, a lot of
kids on the autism spectrum. It was also marketed as
good for them. And the robot is going to stop
functioning entirely. Shutdown could occur within days, so no refunds.

(01:41:34):
Maybe someone who purchased within the last thirty days might
get a refund, but if you're you know. And the
other thing is that apparently people are still paying this
thing off, So you're gonna be paying off a robot
that you can no longer use. So what is the
moral of the story. Why do I tell you this?
It's because all these products nowadays, they all need sort
of a cloud connection, not just Internet, but a proprietary

(01:41:56):
cloud connection from the company that runs the product to
operate properly. And so if that company shuts down or
runs out of money, you're out of luck. And I
think about this with the electric car companies. You know,
I'm not going to mention them by name, but there's
a lot of electric car companies, these startups that are
kind of on the bubble, and you're like, what happens
if they go out of business? What happens to my
car is they's still going to run. As happens with

(01:42:18):
electric bikes. Same thing, all these devices that require a
cloud connection, not just an Internet connection, but a cloud
connection to this company that runs it. Yeah, all right,
let's open up the feedback. These are the emails, the questions,
the comments, all the stuff that you wrote to me
in the past couple of weeks. Stand Ward writes in
Hey Rich, great one hundredth show. Wanted to share my

(01:42:40):
experience after listening to your segment on Coinbase and crypto scams,
a girl I was writing to tried convincing me to
open a Coinbase account and act as a middleman for
moving crypto red flag red Flag. She claims she needed
money to get back to the US from Spain. Turn
out to be total bs. Thanks to your advice, I
gave her a big no, and I hope I avoided

(01:43:01):
getting scammed. Wishing you and your family a great Christmas. Stanward,
I'm glad you avoided that. Stacey from Westlake Village rights in.
I've been watching you on KTLA for years. I love
your newsletter. As the quote computer tutor, I teach seniors
how to use their tech devices. Stacy we Shavy on
the show, I use a MacBook and iPad, but prefer
Google Pixel phones. I've had one since the Pixel three.

(01:43:22):
Thanks to your tips, I got the ten dollars discount
on YouTube TV for six months. You're so informative and
fun to follow. Merry Christmas to you and your family. Well, Stacy,
thank you, and Merry Christmas to you as well. Jeff
from Frisco, Texas writes in on your recent show, the
guy had the old Samsung phone. You wanted to move
his pictures, You might consider an SD card reader like
this the Anchor mag Go USB adapter USBC adapter. Yes,

(01:43:47):
that is a great way to move pictures. I probably
should have mentioned that I can't remember exactly what his
problem was, but yeah, that would work as well. You
can always Yes, you can plug an SD card reader
right into the bottom of most modern smartphones, whether it's
iPhone or Android, and answer files that way. Jeff says,
By the way, as a retired school technology director of
thirty years, I really appreciate how you never judge your

(01:44:08):
callers and always do your best to solve their problems.
Keep up the great work, love the show. Thank you,
Jeff from Frisco. Pete from Avila Beach writes in hey, Rich,
I saw that starlink now offers a mini portable device
for backpackers, starting at just fifty bucks a month for
fifty gigs of service. It weighs about three pounds with
the battery, perfect for anyone needing fast internet at the beach.

(01:44:28):
I download and listen to your Saturday podcast every week.
You're always so interesting. Keep up the great work, Pete. Yeah,
Pee is referring to the caller that said he was
doing metal detecting on the beach and needed like mobile
internet access, And I said, I don't think starlink does
it that portable, but I guess it does. So there
you go. You can get Internet anywhere. Annie from Central

(01:44:50):
Florida writes in Hey Rich, regarding the lady with the
ray band OH with the I issue who needed the
ray band metaglasses, she should first file an appeal. If
that doesn't work, can file a complaint with her state's
insurance commissioner, mentioning that other insurance companies are covering the cost.
If she's low income on a Medicare advantage plan with Medicaid,
she might have access to one thousand dollars in funds

(01:45:11):
for items not covered by medical insurance. If she's legally
blind and disabled, she might also qualify for SSDI and
Medicare after two years of disability. It's a bit confusing,
so it's best to contact her insurance agent for guidance.
Thank you, Annie, that sounds like you got some good
options there. Audrey from Chatsworth writes in Hey Rich, I
just wanted to say thanks for all the helpful advice

(01:45:32):
in your newsletters and podcasts. I showed my dad how
to use his AirPods for the enhanced hearing, and it's
been life changing. He hears me clearly now and his
communication is so much better. His only complaint, there's an
occasional echo, but otherwise it's been a game changer. Wishing
you and your family a happy holiday season. OG podcast
listener number seventy seven Audrey and I commented that I

(01:45:55):
like that she gave herself a listener number, and I
guess there's a show Mark and Brian on Klos back
in the day that they used to sign their I
don't know. It's like something that they used to do with,
like listener numbers. I don't know the phone Yeah, me too,
I have to look it up. I was like, wait,
what so anyway, I guess not. Yeah, let's see here.

(01:46:16):
Let's see Neil from Ohio. Not sure if you're doing
an end of your recap, but here are the best
things from your show. I'm thankful for the Aura frame.
They do it right local send. I use it every month,
replacing one drive. I amazing. Even though I didn't pay,
it's still quite good, although the licensing model put me off.
Wishing you and your impressive family a happy holiday season.
Thank you, Neil. Uh okay, I think we're gonna get

(01:46:39):
to uh that's it. That's gonna do it for this
episode of the show. You can find links to everything
I mentioned on the website just go to rich on
Tech dot TV. If you want to get your feedback
in just go there and hit contact. You can find
me on social media. I am at rich on Tech.
Next week, our guests include Marcia Collier. She is author
of Android smart Phone Owns for Seniors for Dummies. She's

(01:47:03):
going to share tips from her new book. And we
also have Jonathan Garner Mind over Tech. He's going to
talk about how to develop a healthier relationship for technology,
which we can all use going into the new year.
Thank you 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, My name is rich Dmiro.

(01:47:24):
I will talk to you real soon.

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