Life-saving smartphone tips, Windows 10 extension & privacy-first phone made in USA (127, June 28, 2025)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Want to keep Window using Windows ten after the deadline.
Now there's a way at and T to pay one
hundred and seventy seven million dollars for data breaches. How
to claim your cut. A major car rental company is
now using AI to spot damage and they'll bill you
for it. Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on

(00:22):
rich dmiro And this is Rich on Tech. This is
the show where I talk about the tech stuff I
think you should know about. It's also the place where
I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech
should be interesting, useful and fun. Phone lines are open
at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one eight

(00:45):
eight eight seven four to two four to one zero
one Chemist stand and buy give me a call. If
you have a question about technology email it's also open.
Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit
contact guests This week mark you. He is the executive
features editor at PC mag. We're gonna have some fun.
He's going to share with Americans really think about tech etiquette,

(01:09):
from snooping on someone else's device to using chat GBT
to make your texts and emails and then later In
the show, we've got Todd Weaver, founder and CEO of Purism.
He's going to explain how his company is building privacy
first tech products and also they're making a phone in
the USA. We'll ask them how that's going. Well. I

(01:33):
hope you're having a great day. This week. I attended
a nine to one to one conference and picked up
a pretty helpful tip. Whenever I learned something, I'm always like, Okay,
I need to share this with other folks. This was
the NINA nine one one Association. This is like a
group of basically all the people that work in the

(01:53):
emergency response field when it comes to nine to one one, right,
the operators, their managers, just all those folks. They gather
once a year and learn and see what new technology
is available in their world. But one of the folks
I was interviewing mentioned something just in passing and I
was like, wait, what was that. It's called smart nine
one one dot com. Smart nine one one dot com.

(02:18):
So if you go to this website, you can create
a safety profile that is linked to your phone number,
and you can add information like medical info, allergies, any
household details that might be smart for a dispatcher. To
see when you call if you ever need to call
nine one one. Now keep in mind you have to

(02:39):
when you're calling. The dispatch center has to support this technology.
And there are six thousand, it's nine one one centers
in the US, and they all have varying levels of technology.
Some are super old school, some are really high tech.
Obviously depends on the city and the funding and all
that good stuff. But you can actually go on smart

(02:59):
none I'm on one's website and check to see if
your area is one of those supported. So you can
pop in your zip code and it will tell you.
And i'd give you that website, but that one's a
little bit longer, so you'll have to go to my
website rich on tech dot tv for the link. But
once you fill this out, they will see that information

(03:20):
on your screen in addition to the standard information they
might see. So I think this is worth setting up
if you have some sort of medical condition or someone
in your house does some sort of special circumstances. And
then this got me to thinking in general, it's probably
a good time to update your phone's emergency settings because
all of these smartphones have emergency settings that can you

(03:42):
know you've got to fill out your information. People can
see this if they ever have you know, if they
ever find you and you've got your phone on you,
or when you call for help. Your phone can also
send more information and again depending on the call center,
they can see that information. So number one on the iPhone,
go to settings and there's an entire section called Emergency SOS.

(04:04):
Look in there, review your emergency contacts. Make sure you
have that set up. Then you can open up the
health app on the iPhone, tap your profile and select
medical ID and you can fill out all of your
information for your medical ID, any allergies, you might have
your weight, height, whatever you want people to know if
they were to find you with your smartphone. And this

(04:25):
is something that can access from your lock screen even
if your phone is locked, but you have to toggle
on show when locked. And then there's also an option
to share during emergency call. So again it's kind of
like that smart nine on one system I was talking about,
but this comes directly from your phone. That information is
pushed to the nine one one operator if their system

(04:45):
supports it. On Samsung, go into your Settings, there's a
section called Safety and Emergency. Again, you can fill out
your medical info and your emergency contacts, and they have
a very similar setting called show on lockscreen and then
share during emergency calls and texts? Did you know you
could text nine one one in a lot of places?

(05:06):
So I was asking, I was talking to a lot
of people about texting nine one one. So of course,
always call, right, you always want to call. Ideally that's
the best way to get in touch with nine one one.
But if you are in a situation where texting is better,
and let's say there's someone unannounced in your home, you're
in some sort of domestic dispute, you are you know,

(05:28):
in a closet somewhere hiding, you don't want to make
a phone call. That's when you would text nine one one. Now,
a lot of these nine one one centers can accept
that text, but if they can't, it will immediately bounce
back your text and say, hey, we can't accept this text.
You got to call. So but it's worth it if
you're in one of those situations where you cannot call,
So remember that. Now, if you have a Pixel phone

(05:50):
from Google, they also have a lot of emergency settings
on there. So if you go to settings safety in emergency,
they've got this personal safety app and it is filled
with all kinds of stuff. Go into your info, fill
out all your medical info. You can toggle on the
visibility options like I mentioned earlier. But again, just kind

(06:11):
of taking care of this stuff now could make a
huge difference in a real emergency. So be prepared. Hopefully
you never need to know any of this stuff or
use any of this stuff. But you know, I've had
to call nine one one once. I remember one time,
specifically during an emergency situation with one of my kids,
and your brain goes to jelly. It actually reminded me.

(06:32):
I know this is silly to make this reference, but
I was on the prices right many years ago, and
it was the same exact way my brain felt. My
entire brain was just gobbledy gook up there like it
just like imagine a jello just like floating around like jiggling.
That's what my brain felt like when I called nine
one one. You are out of body, you are not

(06:52):
thinking clearly. They're asking you questions you don't even know
the answers to them. And so being prepared now and
have that information pushed to nine one one, the more
information the better, and it's it was really interesting to me.
We've been trained so long now on TV and movies
that when you call nine one one, they immediately get

(07:13):
that lock right on your location. Like it's just like
this little system like bing bing bing. There they are.
That's not always the case. A lot of times, depending
on the technology they're using, it may be triangulated from
the cell phone companies, you know, depending on how exact
they their systems are. Now the systems have gotten a
lot better, and our smartphone send a lot of data

(07:33):
to the call center, so that's a great thing. So
the point is, all of this stuff is really helping
save a lot of lives, So it's a good thing.
I'll put all that stuff on my website. Rich on
tech dot TV. Another story, my kid getting ready for
the show today. My kid comes running into my bedroom. Dad,
did you know that Windows is getting rid of the

(07:54):
blue screen of death? I'm like, Tanner, what, what what
makes you care about that? He's like, I don't know.
That thing's iconic. It's been there forever, and he's right,
it's been. I mean, I can't believe it's been nearly
forty years. But yeah, apparently Microsoft is changing the blue
screen of death to black in Windows eleven, and the

(08:16):
new black screen of death will remove the frowning face
and the QR code. This is being widely reported it'll
still show some information at the bottom of the screen
for it professionals, but I guess for us everyday folks.
They're just trying to make Windows easier to troubleshoot simpler.
And this is gonna arrive later this summer with some

(08:36):
sort of new quick machine recovery feature. But you know,
if you've been using Windows for a long time, you
might be shocked the first time you see this, because
the blue screen of death has been a staple since
the eighties. And I personally, I'm one of these people
that loves seeing any sort of fail screen around town.
So if I am, like, you know, at the fast

(08:58):
food place or at the airport, and you know, they're
all running some sort of operating system in the background
on these digital screens. So I have a whole collection
of my Google photos of all of these. I call
them fail screens where it's just like some sort of
update window Windows isn't responding. You don't see it too
much with the Apple stuff, but you know, you do
see Android screens. But I love that stuff. I don't

(09:21):
know why. It just gives you a little, a little
behind the scenes into the world of like just nerds
get a kick out of this stuff, right, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
I do.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
And also this is a big story. This week Windows
ten users, Microsoft announced a way that you can get
a free year of security updates. So if you are
dreading that end of life support for Windows ten coming
up in October, you actually can get a free year
of security updates. And it's very easy to do. I

(09:49):
will explain what you need to do. You have three
options that will get you an additional lifeline of one
year on your Windows so you can plan for a
new computer in a full year. I'll explain that when
we come back after this eighty eight rich one O
one eight eight eight seven four to two four to
one zero one. I see folks that are already on
the phone lines. We'll get to some of those up

(10:10):
next and I'll tell you about that Windows ten extension
right here on rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich
On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking
technology at eight eight eight rich one O one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Let's go to Rick in Thousand Oaks. Rick, You're on
with Rich Hi.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
I'm interested in transferring from paper files for household bills
to digital and but when I look online, everything is
just so complicated that it has scaling capabilities and trends,
and it's clearly designed for business. And I just want
to strip down homeowner one. And all I want to

(10:54):
do is either in part the paperless thing or scan
in a paper one and then put I wanted an
ability to edit. I create a box on the document
that I put down the check number of the date.
You know how I paid it, when I paid it,
and how much I paid. So I have a trail
if there's an issue a year down the road or something.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, well lost you there. That's pretty easy. I mean,
this is actually funny because I was at the doctor
yesterday and I was trying to bring up I scan
all of my stuff, and I have for a decade now,
every single paper everything that comes into my house gets
scanned and put into a digital folder and so and

(11:34):
it's really most of the time very easy to search
through that and find the information you need, especially now
with AI. But yesterday at the doctor and I wanted
to find some results of a test I had a
couple of years ago, and for the life of me,
I could not find anything related to this. And I'm
sitting there and I was embarrassed, and I'm like, I

(11:54):
can't believe that this is happening, because I've done all
my due diligence of scanning these things in and hooding
them in. And I will tell you, it gets a
little tricky with the with the keywords. Because let's say
you use city Bank, right, and you put your city bank,
every one of your credit card statements or your banking
statements into this folder, and then you search City Bank

(12:15):
at the end of the year. That's going to be
tricky to find, you know, the exact statement that you want,
because there's a million things that are that say City
Bank in there. I will tell you, I think the
thing that works the best with this is searching for
the dollar amount in any sort of receipt or something. So,
for instance, I've got a flex spending account or a
health saving account, whatever you call it. But basically, if

(12:37):
you go to the doctor, the bill is eighty two
dollars and seventeen cents you paid on this debit card
that your work gives you and then you might have
to submit a receipt later on. Well, I've found that
it's really easy once you scan that receipt to search
for that amount eighty seven thirteen whatever it is, and
it will come right up. So that works perfectly. To
answer your question, Rick, I think what you need to

(12:59):
do is just come up with some sort of cloud
storage that you like and trust. So you can use
Google Drive, you can use one Drive, you can use Dropbox,
you can use iCloud. And once you do that, you
establish I do a year system, so I'll do twenty
twenty five and then I'll just dump everything into twenty

(13:19):
twenty five and I'm feeling really good about it. I
will put things in folders inside twenty twenty five, so
like City Bank, Bank of America, American Airlines, you know,
and I'll put every statement inside their individual folders, and
then each person for my home. And if you want
some ideas of the folders to come up with, just
ask CHATCHBT say hey, what are some basic folders for

(13:42):
household organization in my cloud drive, and it will give
you a list of like the suggested folders, and then
you can work off of that. You can also use
an app like Evernoe, but that could get kind of
expensive because they do have some great search features and
they do have some great functionality of getting this stuff
scanned in there. Of course you can annotate it, but
it gets kind of expensive to actually store that long time,

(14:07):
long term, whereas with something like a one drive iCloud
your dropbox, you know you're getting some free storage and
also you may be paying for that storage already. When
it comes to annotating the PDFs or whatever you're doing,
there are some websites that can help you do that.
You can use something like I Love pdf. You have

(14:28):
to remember, if you're using sensitive files, you probably want
to do this locally on your computer. So if you're
running on a Mac, you can just use the built
in preview PDF viewer on your Mac and just use
the annotation tools on there. You know, create a textbox
and just type in, you know, paid paid this bill
and the date that you paid it. Sometimes I'll just

(14:50):
write on the bill itself and then scan it after that.
And yesterday I was doing all of this stuff. So
I have three three files systems in my home. One says,
you know, take action, basically an inbox. The next one
is to scan, I've already taken action, and the other
the third is to shred. So basically, anything that comes
into my home in the mail first goes into that

(15:12):
top file folder, which which means I need to take action.
That means I need to pay the bill, or I
need to do something with that. If it doesn't need
any action, I'll put it in that middle folder, which
is just to scan, or if I'm done with the file,
I'll put it in there, and then the third one
is to shred it. So that's sort of my system.
It works pretty well, except for yesterday when I actually
needed to find something, but otherwise I find that it

(15:35):
works really really well. And the good news is you
can use your phone to scan in these files. If
you open up on the iPhone the files app. It's
actually really really easy. Open up the files app, go
into a folder. Tap in the upper right hand corner.
It says scan documents, and if you just hold your
phone over paper, or if you just have it on
a little tripod, you don't even need to do anything.

(15:57):
It'll automatically scan that paper and then you can just
move the next one in scan it, Move the next
one in scan it, move the next one in it.
You don't even have to like press any buttons or
do anything. And on the iPhone, on a Samsung they
also have and on Pixel I would just recommend using
the built in Google Drive app. They've got a very
similar system. If you open up the Google Drive app,

(16:18):
there's a little camera icon in the lower right hand corner.
You tap that and you can easily scan your documents
using that and it works pretty well. I don't think
the quality is as good as a dedicated scanner, which
you know, the one that I have. Oh gosh, what
is it the scanner I have, it's the IX Fidjitsu,

(16:41):
it's the i X. Let's see which one is this.
It's a little tiny one. It's like a FIDGETSU is
a main brand that does it. I've got to find
the exact scanner that I have there. But it's a
it's a very simple scanner and it's handheld and it's
like super easy. But there's a million scanners you can
use your you know, you can use inkjet printer whatever
you want, but just get these things scanned in and

(17:03):
uh yeah, the search will help you out. Great question, Rick,
Thanks for the call. Eight to eight. Rich One O
one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking
technology with you at Triple eight Rich one O one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 4 (17:21):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Earlier I was talking about all that information about security
and nine to one one, So I put that all
on the website rich on tech dot TV. All the
links for what I mentioned is right there rich on
tech dot TV.

Speaker 5 (17:36):
UH.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Windows ten users, Microsoft announced this week you can get
a free year of security updates. So a lot of
questions on this show about what's called end of life
support for Windows ten, which is ending on October fourteenth,
twenty twenty five. No more security or feature updates after
that date. It's been ten years for Windows ten if

(17:57):
you can believe it, I can't. It's had a good run.
But Microsoft is now offering a free year of extended
security updates. If here's how you can get them. You
have three ways. Number one, this is the new way
you can use Windows Backup to sync your settings and
files to the cloud. Now I checked this Windows Backup program. Basically,

(18:18):
it's kind of like it'll just sink the folders, the
desktop folder documents and pictures, your apps, so to remember
the installed apps you have, the ones that you've pinned
to like things like the taskbar. It'll remember your settings
like Wi Fi passwords and things like that. So that
is very simple, and you don't have to put a
bunch of files in the desktop, the documents or the pictures.

(18:40):
You can move them out if you don't want to
take up all of your storage. You get I think
it says five gigs for free, and so let's see here, Yeah,
five gigabytes for free. I'm using one point nine on
my computer. Now that's a test device, so it's not
something I'm using day to day. But that's the first
way and the easiest way to do it. Just all
you have to do is toggle on Windows backup. Next

(19:00):
thing you can do if you don't want to do that,
is you can redeem one thousand Microsoft Rewards points. And
you're like, wait, what are rewards points? Well, you might
have them if you've ever searched, bing, or done a
bunch of stuff with Microsoft, like, for instance, go to
rewards dot bing dot com. I somehow have two nine
hundred and five points available, so I can do the

(19:23):
one thousand Rewards points to get the extra year, or
if you don't want to do that, you can pay
thirty dollars to enroll manually for that extra year of
security updates. Now you can't do this just yet. You
have to wait a little bit. Microsoft just announced this.
They're going to send a notification to computers sometime in
July or mid August for most people, so you've got

(19:44):
some time. But now that you know you can do this,
you can rest a little bit easy. You can know
that you can use Windows ten for another year. Just
by doing these two things, you'll get coverage through October
twenty twenty six. Again, this is just security updates, no
more features. If your computer can handle Windows eleven, I
would suggest just updating to that. But if you've got

(20:06):
some sort of special program you run, or you just
have a reason why you don't want to go to
Windows eleven or your computer can't support it, you can
stick with Windows ten for another year. So again, easy
ways to get this Three easy ways. Use the Windows backup,
redeem a thousand Microsoft Rewards points, or just pay thirty dollars.
This is for consumers only. Just remember that businesses have

(20:27):
a whole separate program. But this is a really nice
lifeline for folks that don't want to deal with getting
a new computer or don't want to deal with the update.
But I will tell you this. You have one year
now from October. Start planning for a new computer. Right,
don't wait until October of next year to buy the
new computer. Start planning for that new computer. Let's go

(20:48):
to Paul a Newport Beach. Paul bought the Kindle color
Soft and he's got a review. Paul, welcome to the show.

Speaker 6 (20:56):
Why, thank you? Rich?

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Hey, So you love your Kindle? Which one did you
have before this? The Oasis?

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Right?

Speaker 6 (21:02):
I've had Kindles since twenty twelve.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (21:05):
I started with the Kindle e Reader, then the paper White,
and when the Oasis came out, I liked the bigger screen,
so I went to the bigger screen and the page
turning buttons, which I really liked. And my Oasis was
getting a little long in the tooth. I was having
to charge it every other day.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Oh that's like mine right now. My battery is kind
of shot on it. It's like every time I want
to use it, it's like dead.

Speaker 6 (21:28):
Yeah. Yeah. And the of course it has the micro
plug for the USB and that's old fashioned too.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
The last of its kind in my house. That's the
only thing.

Speaker 6 (21:40):
When the color Soft came out, I immediately ordered it.
It was two hundred and eighty dollars. That's more than
the Kindle Paper White, which runs from one hundred and
sixty to two hundred dollars if you want the signature edition. Basically,
what I've discovered is that the Colorsoft is essentially a
paper white signature edition, paper white with a color screen.

(22:05):
So what does that mean. It means that you can
get your the cover of your book if you have
the cover preview, and the books that you've read on
the home screen and books that are suggested for you
on the home screen in color.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
So it looks a little more modern overall.

Speaker 6 (22:23):
I would say, right, yeah, it looks modern, But I
only read regular books. I don't read, you know, Japanese
cartoon books or anything like that, so I don't really
get a chance to take advantage of the color screen
because all the prints in black and white, like.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
The graphic novels and all that, I don't read those. Okay,
so if you've.

Speaker 6 (22:44):
Read I'm mostly into just print text. But what I
do like is the battery life is incredible. I mean
I can go an entire week without having to charge
a thing, and I probably could go longer than that.
And I use it two hours a day.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Oh wow.

Speaker 6 (22:58):
The other thing I love about it is that it's
it has a wireless charger, and mine came with the
wireless charger. Is that included in the price?

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Okay?

Speaker 6 (23:10):
And I wasn't really sure I was going to use
a wireless charger, but boy is it nice. The paper
white signature edition does not come with a wireless charger,
but it only runs about twenty eight bucks. And I
would suggest that I also got mine with a leather
cover because I found that the leather actually lasts longer
than the other covers for it. Okay, So overall, I

(23:34):
love the thing, particularly the battery life. It's got a
little smaller footprint than the Oasis because although it's got
a seven inch screen, it doesn't have the page turning
buttons on the side.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah, but no Kindle does anymore.

Speaker 6 (23:49):
Yeah, no Kindle. Basically, like I said, this is a
signature edition, paper white with a color screen.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Okay, but here's my question. Here's my question about it
because I've seen it in person, but I haven't spent
a long amount of time with it. The text on
the screen. Is it just as readable as the non
color kindles.

Speaker 6 (24:10):
That's a tough question because I haven't put them side
by side. I think it certainly works for me. Okay,
the background of the page isn't exactly white. It's kind
of a semi cream color, so I don't care for
that quite as much, but I find it very readable.

(24:32):
I guess the big question is would you rather just
have a paper white signature edition or spend an extra
eighty to one hundred dollars for having a couple of
color features right and having.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
That color book on the front the cover. I mean,
it's nice. It's not necessary per se, but certainly not
and if you read anything like a comic book or
a graphic novel, this would definitely be a good choice.
But it sounds like you're pretty happy with it, reading
two hours a day.

Speaker 6 (25:01):
I'm very happy with it. I like every time a
new kindle comes out, except for this scribe. It didn't
buy that too big a screen, and I wasn't planning
on writing anything on it. But I buy the latest
thing that comes out, and then I give my old kindle,
usually to my wife, but she's got a paper white,
and she's perfectly happy with it.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, okay, and I'm looking at the pricing, so right now,
it's at two hundred and seventy nine dollars according to
Camel Camel Camel. The cheapest it's been is two hundred
and twenty five dollars. So my advice don't buy this
right now because Prime Day is coming up on July eighth.
Put it in your car and I can guarantee well,

(25:42):
I can't guarantee you, but I can imagine that this
will probably go on sale. The target price we're looking
at is two hundred and twenty five dollars or less,
which would be pretty good.

Speaker 6 (25:52):
That's a very good suggestion.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yeah, but you know the kindle paper white will also
be on sale as well. I'm guessing that's that's at
one fifty nine right now. And let's see how much
it's gone down to according to this Camel Camel Camel, Well.

Speaker 6 (26:06):
The one fifty nine ninety nine is the basic model. Oh,
the one nine ninety nine is a signat tradition, and
what that has is that has wireless charging.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
Okay, and that's also with ads. So if you want
no locksdown, you don't want the ad another twenty bucks,
but that has gone down to as low as one thirty.
So again, Oh, these things do go on sale. Of course,
it's Amazon. It's Prime Day. They're going to put their
own products on sale. Typically they put the older products

(26:35):
on sale, like maybe the last generation of these things.
But we'll see. I mean they sell a lot of kindles,
all right, Paul. What kind of books do you like
to read?

Speaker 6 (26:43):
I have a wide variety, everything from nonfiction to fiction,
mostly fiction I got. I got started in twenty thirteen
when I spent a good deal of time in the
hospital after a dog bite, and I asked some of
my younger friends what should I do. I can't stand
daytime television, so they said, get yourself a paper white

(27:06):
and read The Hunger Games. I've been hooked ever since.
I've read hundreds of books on it.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Oh my god, that's amazing.

Speaker 6 (27:12):
I like young adult fiction. I like science fiction. My
favorite book of all time is probably Where the Crawdads Sing?

Speaker 5 (27:22):
Oh Wow?

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Did you watch the Netflix movie?

Speaker 6 (27:24):
I did not. I don't watch the movies after I
read the books.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
Okay, Well, the book is always better, as they say,
it always is, all right, Paul, Thanks so much for
the Kindle Oasis review. I do appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (27:37):
You're welcome.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Rich All right, get back to reading. I love to
read on my kindle as well, I really do. My
only issue is when I go to read at night
and my kindle is dead, and then, of course what
do I do. I just doom scroll on my iPhone
and it's just like ugh or my phone. It just
just depends on the phone. I'm using eighty eight rich
one on one, eighty eight seven four to two, four

(27:59):
to one zero one, rich on tech dot TV. Coming up,
I'll tell you about the anchor, a new recall on
anchor products. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Let's go
to uh, let's go to Jim Jim in Prescott Valley, Arizona. Jim.
Is this the Jim?

Speaker 5 (28:18):
Yeah, this is the Jim. Is this the rich?

Speaker 1 (28:20):
This is the Rich? Oh my gosh, Jim Jim has
been Oh my gosh. We actually we shot a story
with Jim a couple of years ago, back when you
lived in LA and anyway, friend of the show. Welcome, Jim.
This is your first time calling.

Speaker 5 (28:36):
Yeah, first time caller, longtime listener. Welcome. You were talking
about Microsoft reward points. I use those and I can
vert them the Amazon gift cards. Yeah, Mike, you don't
need it.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 5 (28:49):
Anyways, my question was, I'll be driving around in.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
The car.

Speaker 5 (28:55):
I want to remember, or I'll be listening to a
cast or something, and I don't want to pick up
the phone to send myself a reminder and sworn if
you knew of an Apple Car Play app, or if
I could text myself. If there's some way that without
picking up my phone to send myself a.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Message, Yes, there is, And I do this all the
time the way that I do it. Now, do you
wear an Apple Watch or no?

Speaker 5 (29:18):
I do?

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Now? Oh you do? Okay, well, okay, I'll tell you
the absolute best way. It is called Whisper memos. And
I've got this downloaded to my phone and then it's
got a little tiny they call them a complication on
your Apple Watch. And when I'm in the car, you
know I do not I advocate against using your phone
in the car. This is just one tap on your

(29:41):
wrist when you're safe, and you tap it and it
starts recording and it uses AI to figure out what
you're saying and so on the way over here, I
always think of things that I want to say on
the show, and so I will tap it, and I'm
not kidding. It is so good, so good that so

(30:03):
you just.

Speaker 5 (30:03):
Tapped a little thing on the side, or you tap
the face.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Of it, or you tap you add what's called the complication,
so it'll be it looks like a little almost like
a little wave form on your watch, and so you
tap that, it will it will bring up the app
and immediately start recording. That's the trick of this whole
thing is that it's one tap. You're not sitting there fumbling,
you're not trying to do voice commands. And then what
happens is, this is the best part. Whatever you say

(30:27):
gets transcribed and then email to you. So half the time,
but by the time I'm done driving home or whatever
I'm doing, I've forgotten that I even took a note.
And then I get home, I go, oh, there's my note.
And then the other thing, Jim, if you're listening to
the radio or a podcast or an audiobook, you can
use it to remember little tidbits from those things. And

(30:49):
so I've got a whole bunch of things, Like I'm
listening to a book right now, This person says something interesting,
I'll just rewind for a second and then record on
my watch and again it's all it's all very safe
because it's it's just one tap on your watch and
you're not really distracted in that in that movement obviously you.

Speaker 5 (31:06):
So it'll just listen to whatever audio is going on
in the car, be it me or the podcast or whatever.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yeah, and it's it's really good, like it is. It
is probably like, honestly, I don't even want to share
it with you because it's that good. It's my secret weapon.
Like I'm not kidding. It's it's like my wife's grandma
used to have. I don't know if you remember this,
but they used to have like a notepad that would
like suction cup to the windshield and you can like
write down notes while you're driving, because that's the kind

(31:33):
of people they were. It's the digital version of that.
And it's so good that I just feel like I'm
like living in the future because I'm like, this is
so like I didn't have this a couple of years ago,
and now I do. Now.

Speaker 5 (31:47):
That sounds perfect because that's what I end up pulling
over sometimes or I'll try to remember and I'll email
myself or whatever.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Yeah, so if it does it that magically, Yeah, there
is a you know, you can also do the thing
with Siri. You can say, you know, take a note
or create a note, or you can say a reminder.
But the problem is twofold number one. That's going to
go into your reminders, into your notes. You're going to
forget about it immediately. That's number one. Number two, Siri
is not very good at transcribing things, especially when it's complicated.

(32:15):
So you're just not going to get the quality experience
that you're going to get with this app. So again,
it's called whispermeemos dot com. There will be I think
there's a free level of service, but you'll probably have
to pay. I think I pay thirty dollars a year
for this. But when I tell you this is completely
worth it is one hundred percent worth it.

Speaker 5 (32:33):
The other service, I've tried the notes thing and like,
you get third in there and I forget about it.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yes, it's lost. The other thing I'll tell you since
we're talking about this, is the other one I like
is called email me, and it does have a it
does have an Apple Watch complication as well. But the
difference with that is I mean, I guess you could
use it in the same way. I just feel like
it's a little bit more complicated to use on the go.

(32:59):
So on your phone, I do have it on my
home screen, but on my watch, I prefer the Whisper
Memos just because it's so good that I just try it.
Just download it and try it.

Speaker 5 (33:09):
No, I will.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (33:10):
I switched from the Fitted to the Apple Watch a
couple of months ago, so I'm still learning it. And
I don't know anything about the complications, so that's something
else I should beget to it.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Yeah, So if you just go into your watch app
on your phone, you can you know, you can find
those complications. All right, Jim, thanks so much for coming on.

Speaker 5 (33:25):
Perfect Thanks good to hear from you, and you bye bye.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
All right. I mentioned I was at the doctor. You know,
I'm obsessed with my heart for some reason. That's just
the way I am. I've done one of those calcium
scans yesterday. I'm at the doctor. I'm like, hey, can
you run a clusterol test? Why not? It's just I
feel like the heart is this thing that is very
important in our lives, right, I mean, that's the way
I feel. But if you ever feel tightness in your chest,

(33:49):
maybe a skipped beat, shortness of breath, it could be nothing,
could be something more serious. But let's face it, we're
not going to run to the doctor every time, and
that's where tech comes in. So let me tell you
about the Cardia Mobile six CEL. That's Cardia Mobile six L.
This is the most advanced personal EKG you can get.
It is FDA cleared to detect aphib one of the

(34:09):
leading causes of stroke, and this thing is legit. It
gives you six views of your heart compared to just
one from most of the smart watches out there. That's
six times the data and in just thirty seconds, right
on your phone. Now, as someone who tests a lot
of health tech, I can tell you this beats anything
I've seen that's built into a wearable because it's compact,

(34:30):
it's accurate. It gives you peace of mind at home,
while you're traveling or between doctor visits. Here's the best part.
It's just a fraction of the cost of a smart watch.
All you have to do is put your two fingers
on the sides and you can take your reading. If
you want the more precise reading, you put one of
the one of the corners on your ankle. It is
very easy. You don't feel anything, doesn't you know, it

(34:52):
doesn't feel weird or anything like that. It's very very easy.
For a limited time, my listeners get ten percent off.
Just go to Cardia dot com. That it's ka r
DA dot com. Or you can search Amazon and use
code ten six L Rich. That's the number ten six
L Rich Cardia. Great little gadget. All right, Uh, coming up,

(35:16):
I've got to tell you about this anchor recall. You
might be saying, Rich, you just told me about that
anchor recall last week. No, there's a new one. If
you can believe it. Anchor is recalling five more power
banks over battery safety. I will tell you how to
identify those and what to look for and what you
get if you have one eighty eight rich one O
one eighty eight seven four to two four to one

(35:38):
zero one back after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at
eight eight eight Rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. We'll get
to the phone lines in just a second, but I
want to get you up to date on this new
Anchor recall, and the first one annoyed me, and this

(36:00):
one is now disappointing me because many many tech folks,
including myself have recommended Anchor products over the years, and
now they're recalling an additional five power banks in addition
to the one I told you about last week. So
if you have one of these, do not use it.
They say it's a small risk of fire or overheating,

(36:20):
but it's still a risk, and this is a global
voluntary recall. Five models the Anchor power Bank Model A one, two,
five seven, the Anchor Power Bank with built in USBC
cable Model A sixteen forty seven, Anchor Mago Power Bank,

(36:40):
Model A sixteen fifty two, Anchor Zolo Power Bank Model
A sixteen eighty one, Anchor Zolo Power Bank with built
in USBC cable Model A sixteen eighty nine. If you
have one of these, you got to check the model
number on the back or the side of your device.
Then you can verify the serial number online. Anchor is

(37:03):
offering a replacement or a gift card if your unit
is affected. You can go to the website rich on
Tech dot tv for the link. It is Anchor dot
com slash r C two five o six. Anchor dot
Com slash r C two five o six. Make sure
that you check the serial number if you have an
anchor power bank they want you to bring. You can't

(37:28):
just throw this in the trash. By the way, I
keep adding a tea to that Household Hazardous Waste Center.
And I know that's a lot of information, a lot
of recalls. I will put that on the website. Rich
on tech dot TV. Uh, let's see Naomi is at

(37:51):
our wits end with Yahoo. What's happened in Naomi?

Speaker 7 (37:54):
Oh my god?

Speaker 8 (37:55):
A few months ago, I guess Yahoo did did a update?

Speaker 3 (38:00):
Yes, And all.

Speaker 8 (38:03):
Of a sudden, the email is all mixed up. We're
not getting things in email, I mean, and then sometimes
things people will say, oh, but you know, I sent
that like three days ago, and then sometimes it will
eventually show up, but mostly it doesn't. I'm looking at
the at the email now, so we've got June twenty seventh,

(38:29):
but I know that things have been sent today, not received.
There's nothing there. And it goes back from from yesterday
to June fourteenth. Then all of a sudden, it goes
back to September of twenty four then.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Hang on, hang on twenty three. What are you using
to access this email?

Speaker 7 (38:51):
Me?

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yahoo like mail dot Yahoo dot com. Yeah, okay, And
so you're saying, are you out of storage by any
chance on this email?

Speaker 8 (39:05):
I don't think so, because it's not just a matter
of not getting anything but the things then some things
have ended up in the trash that were never put
in the trash, things that were sent, you know, like
somebody sends something. Instead of it going into the inbox,
it goes into the trash.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
Okay, Well, okay, well that's it's just.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
It's a mess.

Speaker 8 (39:30):
It's all mixed up.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Okay.

Speaker 8 (39:32):
And it says if you scroll down to the end,
it says, looking for older messages, try checking the old tab. Yeah,
I've done that. It makes no difference. Well there, we're
not getting nothing's coming through.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
So if I send you an email, you're not receiving it. Correct, Okay,
all right. It sounds to me that it sounds like
you have reached your storage limit. Perhaps on your email
it looks like okay, So what I would do is
in Yahoo Mail click settings more settings, and then it'll
show you how much storage you're using on the bottom
left side of the settings page. That is what I

(40:10):
would check Number one first. Now, the file of the
emails not being sent or received. That's a problem because obviously,
if you're using the web version of Yahoo Mail, there
shouldn't be any reason why that would be happening except
for the fact that you're over your storage and it's
just stopped working. That's the only thing I can think
of on that aspect of things. When it comes to

(40:30):
things going into different folders or the trash or spam,
I mean, that's pretty common. I would check to see
if you have any filters set up on your Yahoo
Mail that would be routing that email into the trash.
It could be coming from someone that you blocked at
some point. It could be you set up a filter
and it's now just finding that email and it's going

(40:52):
into that area. So I would check the filters as well.
I would also go through and just look for big
attachments on your emails, and you can delete a couple
of those and hopefully free up some storage space. But
I have not heard of a widespread Yahoo Email issue
with it not working. I mean, millions upon millions of
people use Yahoo Mail. I know it's not perfect. Believe me,

(41:14):
I'm not sitting there. I'm not sitting here, you know,
defending them. And they did do a giant redesign of
their mail, and they're also doing AI now in their email,
and so all of these things could be coming together
for a perfect storm, Naomi, and that's what's causing some
of these little issues. But it sounds like the things
that you're describing, a lot of it may have to
do with the storage, a lot of it may have

(41:37):
to do with filters, a lot of it may have
to do with the spam filtering. And so I think
at the end of the day, the main thing that
you want to work on your email is that when
you send me an email, it goes through, and when
I send you an email, it goes through. So you
need to figure out why that aspect of your Yahoo
mail is not working. And that is the number one
priority right now. So I check the storage, see if

(41:58):
you're over your limit that number one, and then you
can begin to figure out all these other little pieces.
But I feel your frustration. I get it. I understand
sometimes these things seem really tricky and tough, but then
it's something that's very simple that is happening. And believe me,
I've found. I go into my spam now on a

(42:18):
regular basis, I'm on Gmail and I go in my
spam all the time. And I'm right here actually looking
at my spam and someone that just heard us talking
about something on the show sent me an email and
it just went right to my spam. And by the way,
it came from a Yahoo email address. So I don't know.
Maybe there's some conspiracy theory, but that's the way. That's

(42:41):
the way it happens sometimes. Good question. Hopefully you get
that figured out, Naomi, keep me posted, send me an
email if you can, and tell me if it works.
We may not have Bobo for the rest of the show.
I think he just just lost it. I'm being serious,

(43:02):
you know. If she can send me an email here
hello at richontech dot TV. If it doesn't come through, Naomi,
I will check on you in a couple of days.
Was dirty one am I favor? Hey, rich I'm having
a problem with my email. I can't send my email. Well,
send me an email. Let me know how it's going.
What's she gonna do? Send me a smoke signal? I mean,

(43:22):
come on, she's got to send an email. Go to
the website. Rich On tech dot TV. You can submit.
That's why I give people options on the website. They
can send a direct email or maybe if your email
is not working, you can use the form. Samsung getting
ready to show off their foldables July ninth, that's when
we are going to see the new foldables that they

(43:42):
have in store. I cannot believe it's been a year
since I went to Paris last year and saw the
last foldables. Now we've got the fold seven, expected to
be thinner than last year, external screen wider, thankfully, that's
the main thing. This needed camera could get an upgrade
to two hundred megapixels, a first for a foldable. Then

(44:03):
you've got the z Flip seven, larger three point six
inch cover display outside wrapped around the camera lens. And
you know, the big thing about these is that Samsung
keeps keeps teasing the idea of this ultra foldable. So
they came out with that Galaxy Edge, which had the
ultra kind of camera, right that two hundred megapixel camera.

(44:23):
Now they're hinting at an ultra foldable. They're really getting
a lot of mileage out of this two hundred megapixel
camera lens, that's for sure. But the idea is that, look,
you don't have to make sacrifices. You choose the form
factor that you want, and you can still have a
really good experience on this phone. So again, foldables have

(44:44):
not gotten a ton of traction. Here in the US,
it's growing, but it's a very small percentage of what
Samsung does. And in the rest of the world they're
pretty popular because you've got so many options from all
these different brands. But here in the US, you've got
either Google or Samsung. That's it. And the Samsung ones
have been good, but they haven't been great as an alternative.

(45:04):
Like if you're someone like me who wants a lot
out of their phone, the foldable is great, but only
in a couple of aspects, not all aspects. And so
we'll see what happens July ninth. This is happening in Brooklyn,
New York. And you know these are gonna be expensive.
Foldables are still very, very pricey. That's the main drawback

(45:24):
to them is that they are not cheap. We're going
to break. I got a okay, we're gonna we're gonna Okay,
before we go to break, let me tell you about
this real quick spectrum raising prices on TV and internet,
according to Cordcuttersnews dot com, two dollars a month price
hike for Legacy Internet plans, five dollars a month increase

(45:47):
on Spectrum select TV plans. Spectrum says rising costs and
infrastructure and network maintenance is what they need to pay for.
That's why. Let's see they had a three dollar apparently
monthly price increase earlier this year. I don't know about
that one. I can't remember that one.

Speaker 5 (46:05):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
But they also added a new perk Hulu, so I'll
tell you about that when we come up after break,
but price changes take effect after July twenty twenty five.
Don't be surprised if you see that two dollars five
dollars on your bill. Eighty eight rich one O one
eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
More rich on Tech coming your way right after this.

(46:28):
Welcome back to rich on Tech, rich DeMuro here hang
out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one
on one eighty eight seven four to two, four to
one zero one. If you're not following me on social
media at rich on Tech on Instagram, I'm about to
post a new scam email that Steve listener Steve sent

(46:50):
me these things are wild. I am seeing more and
more now of these scam emails that you click a
link and it doesn't just bring you to a malicious website,
It actually downloads a malicious file to your computer directly.
I mean, that is wild. That is something that I've
only seen once before. But this is really really scary stuff.

(47:11):
So I'll post that to my Instagram at rich on Tech.
I'm hitting post right about now. There it is. Let's
go to Bonnie in Charleston, South Carolina. Bonnie, what's up?

Speaker 6 (47:27):
Rich I need to.

Speaker 9 (47:28):
Know if you can help me or I need to
call an exorcist.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Oh my gosh, I love it already. What's happening?

Speaker 7 (47:36):
Okay?

Speaker 9 (47:37):
So I am in an Alexa freak. I listened to
all my radio you, especially on my Alexak the other day.
All of a sudden, she starts talking to me in
a very low voice. I had to put my ear
close to the echo to hear her. It was some

(48:01):
woman who was doing some writing. She was talking about
what she was going to write and how she was
going to punctuate it, and I tried to listen. Of course,
I called my husband over. He thought it might have
been the lady that might have died in the house
before we bought it off. And I'm wondering, had you

(48:24):
ever heard of these alexas maybe picking up some bluetooths
stuff from someone else's home, or information of somebody else talking.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
I have not looking up hold on, I got to
search how to exorcist an alexa? You know this is
a new one to me. Now here's the thing. I
have heard stories about these echo speakers going a little
nutty and people hearing things from them. How certain are

(48:59):
you that you heard or something coming out of the
speaker and not somewhere else around the house or another source.

Speaker 9 (49:07):
You know, this is very weird, Rich, because now I'm
losing you. So now I'm really scared.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Oh my gosh, how long have you had this echo?

Speaker 6 (49:17):
Oh?

Speaker 9 (49:18):
This is an old one. I've had this one probably
for maybe eight or nine years. I've got all the
new ones too, but this is the old tower one,
the very first one that I got, and and so
it's been it's been a while.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
So you would you would consider it an old soul?

Speaker 7 (49:40):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (49:41):
Oh, do we lose her? Do we lose Bonnie? Well,
here's the deal. Bonnie I'm concerned. I am if your
if your device is kind of acting a little odd.
I mean, I guess my solution would be to do
a factory reset. But personally, I mean, I mean, unless

(50:01):
you're not scared of this thing, I would I would
see if it happens again. And you know, I will
tell you these speakers that listen all the time, they
do kind of have some interesting and odd reactions to
things that happen in your home. So the sort of
sane solution, or I guess explanation would be that it

(50:23):
heard it thought it heard a keyword, you know, like alexa,
and it activated and it played something that was some
sort of audio that you heard, whether it was a podcast,
whether it was a radio show, whether it was some
piece of audio or information. That is my guess. Maybe
you were talking about ghost stories in your home. Maybe
you're talking about something related, and it fired up a

(50:44):
podcast about that, and people on that podcast were talking
very quietly about that. That's sort of the logical explanation.
The other side of me says, get this thing out
of your house with a long stick and and literally
bury it. That's that's that's the other side of me

(51:05):
telling you I mean like make sure, like pull the
power plug. I would pull out the insides. Whatever you
can do to make sure this thing does not come
back to life. You've had it for nine years. I
think that's a pretty long run. But yeah, I mean
the other thing you do is just see if it
happens again. You know, you don't have to do you
have to go that extreme. You just see if it
happens again. Oh my gosh, what's happening here? What is

(51:31):
what is? Oh my gosh? Okay eight to eight rich
one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Yeah, these things, I'm telling you
these speakers last night house. Actually, I was trying to
use my Google you know, I was like, hey Google,
and it kept I had my phone right in front

(51:53):
of me, and it kept firing the speaker that was
like ten twenty feet away, and so I kept getting
closer closer to my phone. I'm like, hey Google, and
it just kept doing the speaker for the response. I'm like,
this is insane, like what is happening here? But I
did something kind of wild. I pulled out an old
Pixel eight pro which has been sitting collecting dust for

(52:16):
you know, probably a year and a half. Now, let's
see when did that? When did Pixel Pixel eight pro
launch date? Release dates? Let's see when that came out
October twelfth, twenty twenty three. Fired it up, turned it on,
did the software update? The thing still works perfectly. Don't
get rid of your old phone unless you have a
reason to upgrade. These things last for effort. All right,

(52:39):
coming up, we're going to talk about some of the
most annoying things people do online and with technology. Right here,
I'm rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Just
taking a look at the emails we're getting today. Not
one from Naomi yet, but I think she's still working

(52:59):
on that. We've we've heard of exorcists. I mean apparently
exorcists is like there's stuff taking over email, stuff taking
over the Alexas. I don't know what's happening here today,
but we have a fun topic right now. We've got
Mark yarn from executive features editor for PC mag Mark,

(53:19):
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 (53:21):
Thanks Rich thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
Appreciate it. So you recently wrote an article about tech etiquette,
and this is one of my biggest pet peeves. I've
been covering technology for a long time. I'm sure some
people think that I'm rude sometimes I'm looking at my
phone whatever, But I've got a lot of thoughts on
what other people do. And what was your biggest finding
about Number one, device snooping, Well.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
Device snooping was interestingly, we surveyed two thousand adults in
the US, and ninety two percent of them said it
was unacceptable to snoop on a friend or a family
member's device. But that goes down to eighty four percent
when you're talking about a partner's device. So there's there's
obviously slightly different sets of rules for some people when

(54:08):
it when it comes to a lover as opposed to
a loved one, I suppose, and then even more granular,
one in four millennials think it's acceptable to snoop through
a partner's device. So that's like, you know, twenty five
percent of millennials think it's okay, oh wow.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
So that yeah, they so basically all if you're what
is a millennial, I don't even know, is that like
what what ages?

Speaker 2 (54:30):
Let's say slightly yeah, they're probably in their thirty slightly
older than I'm Gen X, But they're slightly older than
when gen Z, so they're the generation up.

Speaker 4 (54:41):
So oh thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
Yes, so right in that things that would be acceptable,
right like okay, answer my phone, do this whatever, airing
like your pin code with your you know, your spouse
or whatever. I think I think you are giving up
a level of privacy because you know that they can
access your phone. But I think the assumption for some

(55:07):
people would be that you're only going to use that
for the things that would be acceptable, right like okay,
answer my phone, do this whatever, not just like full
on look through my phone.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
I mean I would I would guess that would be
the hopeful arrangement between two people to two adults.

Speaker 4 (55:24):
But you never know, you never know.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
I mean, I think some of it speaks to I mean,
you know, I talked to a couple of etiquette experts
for this article that was based on the survey we
did and which you can be at a PC mag
dot com and what people are you know. What the
etiquette experts seem to say was that you know, I mean,
obviously you probably your family and friends, you've known them

(55:48):
for a lot longer, perhaps than you're your current person
you're dating, so they're a little more sacrosanct as far
as looking through their device. You know, we've all heard
the horror dating horror stories and people having you know,
cheating and having multiple partners you know which is which
is fine, but not in a non consenting way. So

(56:10):
you know, I think there's a level and a plus.

Speaker 4 (56:12):
This is somebody you don't know.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
What about kids though, I mean, if you have a kid,
don't you think it's tell.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
Them, Oh, you're not gonna tell.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
No when I'm home alone. Oh my gosh, when I'm
home alone all day long. My kids iPads. My kids,
as long as they're under my roof, is his old
man to Hero. Now you're under my roof, you're under
my rules.

Speaker 4 (56:36):
Okay, Well, as long as there's that understanding, I tell them, Oh,
you're not gonna tell.

Speaker 1 (56:42):
No when I'm home alone. Oh my gosh, when I'm
home alone all day long. My kids iPads are going
off with all these texts they're in. You know, these
kids are in group chats with their entire class at school.
I mean, it's it's a whole different world than when
I was growing up, right Like for me, I was
just wondering what all the cool kids were doing. Now

(57:03):
they're all texting in a group chat.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
For half, about fifty of US adults say that sending
and receiving a text or email written by chat gypt
or another generative AI is unacceptable. So that's about you know,
a little over half. But millennials and Gen z are
far more accepting that. They're a little more than half

(57:27):
of them think that it is okay. We're using chat
ept and you know text.

Speaker 5 (57:37):
By chat.

Speaker 10 (57:38):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (57:38):
They've they've latched.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Onto it, especially since their school age, and probably can
get away with, you know, or maybe not get away
with writing their papers.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Let's let's don't write your papers with that. So I
I've started doing this, So I use chatch ebt as
my co pilot for a lot of things, and I
get a lot of emails from people. But what I
found is I can say, I use like voice to text,
and I will say what I want to as my
high and then chat chip just polishes it up and

(58:08):
it like makes it sound a lot nicer than me
saying yeah, toggle that switch off on your computer. Like
I can just say that, and chat chibt will say,
like thanks for writing, and then it'll say what I
said and just put it into a nicer format. So
to me, it's just polishing. It's just like a better
version of me, right, Like, I'm sure quick.

Speaker 4 (58:27):
You're outsourcing your plate.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
In this basically yeah, pretty much. When it gets too flowery,
When it gets too flowery, I'm like, no, chat chi
t Like, let's make that I'm not that nice bobo nos, Okay, then.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
What about I'm sorry, I just wanted to add. But
the thing with this is obviously we've only you know,
had generative AI really in the popular conscioustes for a
couple of years. Now in within you know, five years,
ten years, you know this this could be skewed, Like
you know, eighty percent people think it's okay. I mean
if if you're like on the run and something and

(59:04):
I get it, well, I would object. I'm a writer,
so I object to anyone using chat GPT to pump
up your prose.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
But Mark, I ran your article through through our CHATCHYBT
checker and it was like nine percent CHATTYBT. No, I'm
just kidding. Oh my god, but you heard that story
of that writer who you know, so many writers are
using this that they're not fact checking, and it's like
it's a problem. I mean, CHATBT says things that are
true and not true in the same exact way, and you,

(59:35):
if you don't know any better, take it as truth.
And that's the problem with all these things. So you
got to be very careful. All right, phone, you story
in a conversation? What about that? Like you know, I
see this all the time, someone's telling a story and
the person just looking at their phone.

Speaker 4 (59:50):
Right, are you looking at your phone?

Speaker 2 (59:51):
I can't see you, Okay, looking at you consideration.

Speaker 4 (59:55):
I appreciate that. Well, oh there you are.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
So seventy five percent of US adults say this is unacceptable,
but as you would expect, gen Z find it is okay.
And that's because they're like digital natives. This is like
digital first, like you know, obviously, and I don't like
to paint gen Z with a broadbrush or anything, but

(01:00:20):
you know, they're generation infamous for not like wanting to
actually pick up the phone and talk to anyone. So
texting is like a more immediate way of that.

Speaker 4 (01:00:28):
Yeah, but I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Talking to someone. This is when they're talking to someone.
So if you're at dinner, yeah, you're.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
At dinner and you're texting, that's ridiculous. Like I I've
probably been guilty of that one. I'm not gen z,
but I've been guilty of that one myself, with much
to the chagran in my wife.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
But yeah, okay, here's here's here's another side of this.
This is my biggest pet peeve. When I'm talking to
someone and I understand we have smart watches, but it's
like you're literally getting a message on your smart watch
and you're looking at it the whole time, like every
ten seconds while I'm talking you. I'm sorry, but if
I'm talking to you, I want your attention. That's the bottom.

Speaker 4 (01:01:04):
N No, I don't blame you. I don't blame you.
The watch thing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Yeah, that's like you can do it like more immediately,
and mean I wouldn't say surreptitiously because it's pretty obvious
what you're doing. But there's less, there's less I have
to at least pick up the phone from the table,
and you know, with the wrist, I just I can
just flick it and then there it is.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
So what I do is I just say to the oh, yeah,
I'll just say I'll wait, That's what I say. I
just look at them right in the eyes, I go,
oh wait, and it's you know, it's just I mean,
obviously depends who it is. I probably wouldn't do that
with my boss, but like you know what I mean,
like it, it depends who the person is if you
have a good relationship with them. And here's the thing.
We are human. We are supposed to connect as humans,

(01:01:46):
and I really believe that, especially in this world of
like oversaturation with social media and flipping through TikTok and
all this nonsense that people do on a daily basis,
when you are with another human, give that human the
respect of being there with them, because that is probably
the most magical part of life we have left. Like
everything else is just like you know, AI generated stuff

(01:02:06):
everywhere you go. So when you're with a human, give
the respect to that human. All right. Finally, speakerphone usage.
This is another one. You see people talking on their
phone or listening to music just out and about.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
Yeah, I mean, eighty two percent of people find that
playing music out loud without headphones such should be the
point we make here, which is just rude, you know,
is unacceptable. I mean I live in New York City.
I take the subway. There are people doing this all
the time, you know, just keeping that. I mean, the

(01:02:40):
subway is probably not the harst or you've heard on
the on the local news, but it's it can definitely
be irritating with somebody who's listening or speaking on speakerphone
and about like you know, three quarters of people find
this unacceptable for like doing FaceTime or a phone call
on speakerphone and like the in the growth three store
or something. I find it highly annoying, but you know

(01:03:03):
a quarter of the people don't see them to have
a problem. I mean, obviously the rules are always changing
when you're the one doing the action usually, so like
if you do it, you might be annoyed by other
people doing it, but when you know you're the one,
you know, it's just a minor inconvenience.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
But for else around me, I've I've seen, like when
I'm out on a run, like some people will be
driving by on their bike or riding by in their bike.
They'll have like a boom box like on their bike,
or they're on a hike and they just listen to
their music out loud, and I'm kind of like, you know,
if you're just passing me, it's fine, but if we're
like together the whole time, that's definitely not ideal. Mark.
We're gonna leave it there. Mark y Arm at PCMag

(01:03:43):
dot com. The article is gen z and boomers agree
this is the rudest thing you can do with your smartphone.
Check it out on a screen near you. Thanks for
joining me today, Mark, Thanks so much.

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
Rich stay off your phone.

Speaker 5 (01:03:54):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
Coming up, we're going to talk about a major car
rental company using AI to bill you for even the
tiniest scratches. That's coming up right here are rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Eight eight eight rich
one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. If you have a question about technology,

(01:04:16):
give me a call. Lines are open. Let's go to
Susie in Temecula. Susie, what's up? You're on with Rich Goody?

Speaker 11 (01:04:26):
So, Wendy are going to be traveling around in our
fifth will My boyfriend still works, but we need some
sort of a mobile internet that can go with us,
that has more power than your regular phone hot spot.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
Okay, whoa, oh, what's happening there? So you want you
basically want a way to keep in touch in the
fifth wheel.

Speaker 11 (01:04:52):
With the computer.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Okay, but you don't you don't want to use your
phone's hot spot because I mean, it just it's not
going to.

Speaker 7 (01:04:58):
Be enough power.

Speaker 11 (01:05:00):
Okay, I don't know what the wording is, but we
need something a little stronger.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
Okay, Now what are you going to be doing with this?
What are you going to be doing with the internet.

Speaker 11 (01:05:12):
He's going to be working online on his work program.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Okay, all right, well, look there's I mean, your hot spot.
Ninety nine percent of the time. If you're looking for
the cheapest way to do this, hot spot is going
to be the cheapest, easiest way to do it. If
you don't want to use that, and I would say,
you know, I would say try the hot spot because
you'd be surprised how well they work nowadays, especially with

(01:05:37):
you know that the networks are really good, the signals
are really good, the speeds are really good. So I
would say, if you upgraded your plan on Verizon or
T Mobile AT and T to give you the most
hot spot, like one hundred gigs, usually it's pretty good.
It works really well. Now, if you don't want to
do that, what I'd recommend as an alternative is one
of these five g home systems. So the two that

(01:06:01):
I would look AT is from Verizon and also T Mobile.
So Verizon is called five G Home Internet. T Mobile
is Let's see, let's see what there's is called home
Internet five G very simple similar. So what you do
is you buy this little box. It's basically a more
powerful hot spot, so it grabs the cellular signal in

(01:06:23):
from the air and then it broadcasts it out as
a Wi Fi signal. So Verizon is you know, they're
advertising pretty good prices on these things, and so you
can get a really good price based on where you
are and what you're doing, and there's no contracts or
anything like that. So I would check to see Verizon.

(01:06:43):
You have to check it at your home address see
if they offer it, and then you also have to
check to see if you can use it in a
mobile setting. Back in the day, they weren't really allowing
people to do that. I think it's that's been lifted
a little bit. But just call them to make sure
that if you using this around town and in different places,
they're not going to cut you off. But you've got

(01:07:05):
basically very similar services. AT and T offers one. But
I would not recommend even looking into that because theirs
is in very very limited areas. T Mobile and Verizon
T Mobiles in the most. I would say Verizon's in
the second most, and then AT and T is like
just barely there. So that for some reason they're only
offering it really where they don't have fiber Internet or

(01:07:27):
in places where they just I don't know why they're
not just offering it everywhere, but I would look at
those two, So you can go to T Mobile five
G Home Internet, Verizon five G Home Internet. And then
the third way obviously is Starlink, and that is satellite Internet.
So Starlink is going to give you a connection no
matter where you are in the US, as long as

(01:07:48):
you have a clear view of the sky. It's probably
going to be your most expensive option out of all
of these. But they do have a new one called Rome,
which is you know, you can connect anywhere while traveling.
And so let's let's see how much that is. So
if I go on their website, Yeah, so the the
just to get the equipment is going to be four

(01:08:09):
hundred dollars plus taxes, and then you're gonna pay Let's see,
looks like it's about fifty dollars a month for fifty gigabytes.
If you want unlimited, it's one hundred and sixty five
a month, so you're talking four hundred dollars for the
actual starlink Starlink Minikit fifty dollars a month for the service,
So that's the most expensive option, but it's gonna be

(01:08:30):
the most thorough, and it's gonna get you signal everywhere,
and it's probably gonna be the fastest. So again, just options, many,
many options here. Those are the three that i'd recommend hotspot.
Try that first. You'd be surprised. You'd be surprised if
the hotspot works. The downside of all these things is
let's see here, can I think of a downside? Not really.

(01:08:52):
As long as they allow you to go on the
on the road with these things, you'll be fine and
you can get that connection. The other thing is Amazon
On is set to start their satellite internet later this year.
So at some point they said it's going to be
by the end of the year. Now what does that
mean exactly, We don't know. It could be one one
plan by December, but I wouldn't look into that. But

(01:09:14):
that's going to be called Project Kuiper, and that's going
to be launching later this year, so there's gonna be
a little little competition for Starlink towards the end of
the year. Susie and Temecula, thanks so much for the
call today. I appreciate it. I hope you have fun.
They're out on the road Hurts now using AI to
scan your car for scratches. They've got AI damage scanners

(01:09:35):
at over one hundred major airports this year. They're rolling
them out starting with Atlanta. This is from the blog
view from the wing. Cars get scanned at return using
high tech UVI portals kind of like an MRI, but
for vehicles. Detects tiny issues, uneven tire wear, windshield hairline cracks,
small scuffs, so I think this is probably for the

(01:09:56):
benefit of the car maintenance, but also they can bill
you if there's an issue. One customer got a four
hundred and forty dollars bill for a one inch scuff,
two hundred and fifty dollars for repairs, one hundred ninety
dollars in fees. Uh wow. Hertz is offering a small
discount if you pay first, but if you dispute the charge,
the clock keeps tipping ticking. That's amazing. Customers are being

(01:10:19):
caught off guard. Best advice take photos or video of
your rental when you pick it up and you drop
it off. That is great advice. Eighty eight rich one
O one eighty eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Get those calls in. Welcome back to rich
on Tech Rich DeMuro here hang out with you talking
technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight

(01:10:42):
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Coming up this hour, we've got Todd Weaver, founder and
CEO of Purism. They are a mobile phone company that's
making privacy first phones and they also make a phone
completely in the US, so it'd be an interesting conversation

(01:11:05):
with Todd. Notice there was a Wall Street Journal article
about him as well, So making the rounds right now.
This was really interesting. I'll get to the phone lines
in just a second here, but this was really interesting
and I think it's a reason why you got to
be very careful about your phone. The spark Kitty is

(01:11:25):
malware that quietly steals photos from iPhones and Android devices.
It was delivered via malicious apps in Google Play, Apple
App Store, and trojanized versions of TikTok. Now here's the
thing on Android, it used hidden code in apps on
iOS because you might be thinking, rich doesn't iOS have

(01:11:45):
a closed, you know, app store that you know you
can't just install anything on there. They went around that.
So if your company you can get there's these little
there's a way that you can install apps on your employees'
iPhones enterprise pro system, and they snuck that in through there.
So I mean the point is these hackers will figure

(01:12:07):
out ways of getting around all of the rules. And
so the reason I tell you this because I don't
think you have this on your phone, but this software,
once it got on people's phones, it seeked out screenshots
basically of anything that might be important sensitive information, financial information,

(01:12:28):
especially crypto wallet seed phrases. These are basically the backup
phrase that you use to get into your crypto wallet
and you have to save that in a safe place.
What do most people do They take a screenshot of it. Well,
who would have thought that this app would come through
and look through all your pictures to try to find
any of this information. So number one, only download apps

(01:12:51):
from trust to developers. Now, if you know what you're
doing on Android, you know that you can sideload apps
on there. You can sideload what's called an ape. I
do it. I know other people do it, but it's
something that you have to be very careful about if
you don't know what you're doing. On iPhone, it's very
tough to install an app that's outside the app store.
But we've seen examples of apps in the app store

(01:13:12):
that are not so good. So be careful and then
review permissions carefully. And this is why your phone says this.
If you've noticed on both iPhone and Android, when you
install an app that wants access to your photo library,
it now says access to all photos or access to
limited photos. Now I get it. If you say limited photos,

(01:13:32):
it's a pain. Every time you want to feed a
photo into that app, you have to press the photo
and select it. Versus some apps. You know, if you're
using a cloud backup back app, of course you want
to have access to all your photos. But the point
is if you're using a random app. Let's say you
download an app like an AI app that turns your
photo like it takes a picture of you and turns

(01:13:52):
it into like a clown or whatever you want. Right
for that app, would I would use the option that
says allow limited app access to my photo library. You
don't want it to have access to every picture in
your photo library. That's what these things can do. They
can scan all of them. And we've heard about apps
scanning photo libraries for things like metadata and using that information.

(01:14:13):
So you have to be very, very careful about the
permissions you give on your phone. It used to be
when an app was downloaded, it just had carte blanche.
It could do whatever it wanted. Now, if you notice,
the operating systems are locking down apps more and more
to just be able to do certain things. Get your location, oh,
precise location, approximate location, location all the time, just sometimes photos,

(01:14:36):
all photos, some photos, so all contacts, some contacts. There's
a reason behind the madness for all of this stuff.
Let's go to Mary in Winchester. Marry your on with rich.

Speaker 10 (01:14:50):
On Highrich thanks for taking my call. I hope that
you don't have to done this down too much for me.
I'm not super tech savvy, but I'm having an issue.
I just from an iPhone eight to the iPhone sixteen
and ever since then, I can't seem to connect the
car play.

Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
Okay, Apple car Play in my car? What are you
using the same cable that you used to use.

Speaker 10 (01:15:16):
Yes, okay, well I no, I take that back. I'm
using the cable that now I don't have the lightning anymore.
I used the one that goes to the sixteen.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
Okay. So you're the USB c correct? And where did
you get the cable from Apple? Okay? So the one
that came in the box.

Speaker 10 (01:15:33):
That iPhone, I mean, yeah, it's a phone, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
So and your car supports USBC. So you have a
USBC on like the tiny one on one end, the
tiny one on the other end.

Speaker 10 (01:15:44):
No, it's a us USB on one end, and then
the tiny USBC.

Speaker 7 (01:15:49):
On the Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
Now that didn't come with the phone though, Oh.

Speaker 10 (01:15:53):
Okay, well it's one. It's one that I had on
my back. Okay, so my iPad and staff.

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
That's what I wanted to know, Mary. So that is
the problem. So in my experience, it is it's really
what year's your car? Just out of curiosity, that's twenty one, okay.
So here's what's happening. And I noticed this with my
wife's car and a couple other folks, a couple actually
a bunch of people, a bunch of my friends and
family members all came to me, said Rich, I can't

(01:16:18):
get car play to work. And I said, hold on,
let me let me swap out the cable. And the
reason is the cars were created years ago before USBC,
so they're using USBA and then the phones are using USBC. Now,
typically you would think that that would work, no problem,
but for some reason, only certain cables work with these

(01:16:40):
with this connection. So a couple of recommendations. If you
don't mind spending let's see how much is it nineteen dollars,
you can buy the official Beat USBA to USBC cable
and that will almost ninety nine point nine percent work
in this situation. Okay, that's okay. From Apple, it's the

(01:17:01):
Beats USBC USBA to USBC woven short cable eight inches.
It's basically meant for CarPlay.

Speaker 10 (01:17:09):
Okay, okay, So that's apparently that's not what I've been using.
Is that certain brand.

Speaker 1 (01:17:16):
Right, you've just been using? The problem is, what I've
noticed is the cable matters. When you're going USBA to
USBC for CarPlay, the cable makes a difference. I don't
know what the deal is, but I can take five
cables into your car and out of all those five cables.
Even though they all do the same thing, only two
will actually power CarPlay.

Speaker 10 (01:17:37):
And so that is so going to the Apple store
and getting that cable will help me.

Speaker 1 (01:17:42):
I think that'll solve your problems. I already know from
a listener that called in and had the same problem,
or actually someone emailed me. We did a couple of troubleshooting.
They had the same issue. And if you don't want
to go into the store, I've got a cable on
Amazon that will do the same thing. It's sixteen ninety
nine and it's USBC to USBA and it's a coiled cable,

(01:18:04):
but you get two in that in that price. So
I would say personally, if you have an Apple store nearby,
you could just easily go in and get this one.
It's it's gonna work. If it doesn't work, you can
return it, no big deal. You've got fourteen days. But
that is that's the problem, Mary, and I think it's
going to solve all your problems. Well not all, I
mean just the car Play problems. Does that work for you? Okay?

(01:18:29):
Well I think we I think well, I think my
job is done. What are the chances that we have
two people from Winchester California. Right now, we have another
caller from Winchester. Anyway, this is the thing. So with this,
with this whole USBA to USBC transition. If you got
a car, car play has been working just fine. You

(01:18:50):
get the new iPhone. You try the same cable, it
doesn't work. You're sitting there pulling your hair out. It's
a different cable. Go to your house, look at all
the cables you have that are USBA to USB c
and try them. If none of them work, you might
have to buy a new cable. But that is really
it's just this weird thing that some of the older
cars just don't like to play friendly with these new phones.

(01:19:12):
Let's see here, we got an email from Paul says, Hey, Rich,
I really enjoyed the podcast. Can you please tell me
what model High Sense TV you have? Thanks Paul, Paul,
I have I have to check in my email here.
I have the High Sense you eight and I will
tell you how much I paid for it if I
can find that email. High Sense U E. I'm not kidding.

(01:19:35):
I ordered this thing off Best Buy in an afternoon
and it was in my house set up within two hours.
I mean, I could not believe how fast. This was
since se and you know how tough it is to
type and talk on the radio at the same time.
It is impossible. Let me just see if I can

(01:19:56):
find it High Sense Okay, trying to find my order
from Best Buy. Okay, here it is. I ordered it. Oh,
I ordered it for Super Bowl Sunday. How stereotypical of me. Yeah,
I got it in time for Super Bowl Sunday. High
Sense UA looks like I paid what I paid, eight
hundred and ninety nine bucks for this thing, So it's
still on sale. It's right now ninety nine. That may

(01:20:17):
be cheaper over Prime Day. You can get it in
a whole bunch of sizes. I went with sixty five,
you can go seventy five. But apparently they have a
newer version of this TV, so Paul, if you're looking
to buy this, you might want to look into the
new version, which is the High Sense UA N What
does END stand for New, New and improved? But the

(01:20:38):
one I have is just perfect. In fact, last night
when we sat down to watch TV, it runs Google TV,
which I really like, and it said, oh, you got
a software update all these new features. So even a phone,
a TV that's a year old still getting new features,
which is pretty cool. And the Google software it's good
enough for IM not running a separate streaming device with

(01:21:01):
this TV, so it's pretty good. And they just added
a whole bunch of new stuff which makes it even
better anyway. High Sense you eight is the one that
I have. Eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight
seven four to two four one zero one coming up.
Let's tell you how you can listen to the radio
on smart glasses. Right here, I'm rich on Tech. Welcome
back to rich on Tech, rich DeMuro here hanging out

(01:21:24):
with you, talking technology. iHeartRadio now streaming on ray Ban
Meta glasses, So if you want to hear me through
your glasses, just update them. You can listen to live
local stations, playlists, podcasts, all hands free, all on the go.

(01:21:44):
Works on iOS and Android. You just have to make
sure that you update your glasses and do a quick setup.
You have to go into the options and make sure
iHeart is your default app for music and radio voice searches.
So kind of cool. I have not tested this just yet.
I've got my ray bandmetas to test it out. But
it's the only audio app. There's a bunch of audio

(01:22:05):
apps available on the ray bandmetas like you can use
Spotify or Amazon Music or whatever, but this is the
only one that gives you live radio stations. So kind
of cool, kind of awesome. These glasses are, I would say,
the sleeper hit of twenty twenty four or wait, what
year is it? No, twenty twenty five, twenty twenty five?
Where am I? And they just did Oakley So now

(01:22:27):
they have the Oakley's and the Metas. But I was
in Mexico and at that electronics show I was talking
to this guy who makes another brand of these glasses.
Oh gosh, I gotta remember the name of them, but
they I think they were called It's a funny name.
I get D dot com. I get D dot com

(01:22:49):
and they're get D glasses. But they basically have a
lot of these features in them, a lot of the
CHATCHYBT and stuff like that built in. They don't have
a camera. But he's telling me he's selling four four
hundred pairs of them a day in the Mexico market,
four hundred a day, So people, these smart glasses are
really really They're hot. All right. Now, let's go to

(01:23:09):
Oscar and Winchester. Oscar you've got a bone to pick
with me.

Speaker 7 (01:23:11):
Huh, well sort of.

Speaker 9 (01:23:16):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (01:23:17):
First thing, do you have a phone number for Microsoft
like support? Oh gosh, that I can get help with
without Look.

Speaker 1 (01:23:29):
I mean there are there are. Let's see if they
have a I mean it says contact, but it looks
like I don't have it. I don't think they put
a phone number on their website per se that I
can find really quickly. Yeah, I'm looking, but I don't.
I don't see that it's like one of these.

Speaker 7 (01:23:46):
If I contact them through those contacts, it would probably
they would probably send me an email response.

Speaker 5 (01:23:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:54):
I don't really see a phone number. And you got
to be very careful because all those Tech support phone numbers,
like if you just go will that you would get
a whole bunch of phone numbers. You do not want
to call those numbers.

Speaker 7 (01:24:03):
So get to the wrong play.

Speaker 1 (01:24:05):
I know that they will scam you.

Speaker 7 (01:24:07):
Let me update you on on the revo On install
that you gave me last week to remove the Outlook
from my Windows ten system. Yes, uh, it didn't. It
didn't find.

Speaker 1 (01:24:21):
It didn't find.

Speaker 7 (01:24:22):
It didn't find the outlook. It found even in the
Windows part of revo On installer. It pulled up all
those Windows files, but no Outlook. Interesting okay, but all
the all the apps that are there, it pulled all
that stuff up.

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
No Outlook now.

Speaker 7 (01:24:42):
I even I even used it on install co pilot,
which was one of the things I saw in my
my Outlook, and I figured I don't need co pilot
on install. That still didn't help. But what is happening?
The fonts on my Outlook are really large? And a

(01:25:10):
Microsoft page has come up, a notification page saying your
privacy matters, and it's you know, something to do that
You've got to respond or click something on it. The
whole page is not show, it's but half the page.
It might screen, yeah, and so it covers all the information.

(01:25:32):
If I refresh the screen, it goes away, but within
three four seconds it comes right back up before you
could do anything on the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:25:46):
Okay, so a couple of things we actually I actually
got an email about your problem from James in north Chesterfield.
He said, for the listener having issues with large fonts
and Outlook before uninstalling anything, I would suggest closing Outlook
launch it in safe mode by typing Outlook dot ex

(01:26:07):
slash safe into the start box, and then if the
issue is resolved, reset reset outlook to default within the program,
And if you're inside the program, you can go into
UH view and it says reset view and if you're
using the newer outlook, it says advanced options and then

(01:26:28):
reset under Windows setting. So that's number one. So I
would try that to see if that works. If you
want to uninstall this and reinstall it, I actually have
a new suggestion for you.

Speaker 10 (01:26:38):
UH.

Speaker 1 (01:26:39):
The app is called b c Uninstaller. And now, because
the first the revo didn't find it, I can't guarantee
that this is going to find this app because it
sounds like it's it's part of something bigger on your
system or I'm just not sure. But this BC uninstaller
dot com is a way to remove all kinds of

(01:26:59):
unwanted applications quickly. So and this says it can uninstall
basically everything, normally registered programs, hidden protected, all kinds of stuff.
And by the way, this all comes from an article
that I highly recommend you go to the website to
get the link for. It's from tech Spot. It's called
essential Apps to Install on Windows and mac Os. They've

(01:27:21):
got everything from web browsers password Manager, Productivity Alfred on
Mac to everything for Windows, screenshot apps, how to back
up well, they recommend back Blaze image editing if you
want to see what's eating up your disk space, whiz
Tree on Windows, Daisy Mac on Mac, Daisy Disc on Mac,

(01:27:43):
Remote Desktop, Russ desk. Is it a good alternative to
team viewer? And then to keep systems clean? Windows users
can try bc uninstaller or portable CC Cleaner. Mac users
can install app Cleaner. I'll put that link on my
website rich on tech dot tv. Coming up, we're going
to talk to Todd Weaver, founder and CEO of Purism,

(01:28:05):
making a privacy centric phone. Welcome back to rich on
Tech rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
The website for the show is rich on tech dot tv.
There you can get links to everything I have talked
about on today's show, including the Windows and Microso sorry,

(01:28:25):
the Windows and Mac apps that I mentioned in that
great tech spot list. I've got that on the website
rich on tech dot tv. This is episode one seven,
so if you just want to type in that keyword,
it'll be bring up the show notes for everything I mentioned.
Joining me now is Todd Weaver, founder and CEO of Purism.

(01:28:45):
They are a company making phones and other devices that
are privacy centric, and they also have a phone that's
made in the USA, which I know is a hot
topic right now. Todd, thanks for joining me.

Speaker 4 (01:28:58):
Hey, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:29:00):
So what's your background? What made you start this company? Oh?

Speaker 12 (01:29:03):
Man, A lot of things, but technology is a big thing.
But then also you know, I really looked at digital
rights and sort of where the trend lines were going
with big tech, and so I actually built my entire
company to avoid everything from the big tech companies. And
you can imagine in today's world that that's a significant challenge.
So from laptops, tablets, mini PCs to phones, and then

(01:29:25):
I even you know, doing our electronic manufacturing here in
the US for our Liberty phone, also including the operating
system that's not Android. So these are a lot of
challenges and so it's just you know, a passion and
then also a care for your individual digital rights.

Speaker 1 (01:29:42):
So before we get into all these things that you're doing,
what do you think is the problem with the big
tech companies and what you know? You've got iPhone. I
mean I feel like Apple is probably better than Android,
but I'm not sure, but you tell me your thoughts
and all that stuff, like, are we really just being
tracked with everything?

Speaker 4 (01:29:59):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:29:59):
For sure?

Speaker 12 (01:30:00):
I mean I think that the majority of people can
appreciate that their digital footprint is something that is being
tracked by big tech and monetized. Right, So this isn't
something is fringe. The majority of people recognize this to
be the case. It's just that there isn't a convenient
alternative that doesn't do those yet. And that's the thing
that we're building. But when you're looking at Apple or Google,

(01:30:21):
Apple just happens to have a better marketing, but they
don't actually really solve the systemic problem of your data
should be yours and you should be in complete control
of it, and so all big tech companies are incentivized
to track everything from your phone. Here's as a simple analogy.
If you have an iPhone or any Android phone, and

(01:30:41):
then you put our phone next to it, those first
two in every major carrier and every major phone manufacturer,
they leak about three to four gig of data in
twenty four hours. It's all your personal information, your GPS, camera, role, microphone, calls, contacts,
and our phone. It's exactly zero bits. So you're in
co leak control of the entire device, which is why

(01:31:02):
we had to start with manufacturing the hardware and authoring
an entire operating system that's not attached to andle it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:09):
That's wild. And so your operating system is called pure OS.
What does that run on?

Speaker 4 (01:31:15):
So it is a Linux kernel.

Speaker 12 (01:31:16):
And then this is sort of built on a you know,
decades of the entire industry. We've just invested tens of
millions of dollars into that to create the entire mobile environment.
And so it's the same operating system that runs on
our laptop, our tablet or MINIPC. And then we ported
all of that to the phone so that we can
actually provide a phone in that using the same operating system.

Speaker 1 (01:31:39):
Oh wow, Okay, so you've got a bunch of different devices,
but specifically you have one phone, the Liberty phone, that
is made in the USA. I know this has been
a hot topic. It's been a lot of talk about
whether they can manufacture an iPhone here in the US.
You're doing it. Has it been a challenge?

Speaker 4 (01:31:56):
Oh, it's an unbelievable challenge.

Speaker 5 (01:31:58):
Right.

Speaker 12 (01:31:58):
Also, the other thing is that we actually of a
qualified claim, So the FTC has very strict guidelines on
what made in USA can be and what assembled in
the US they can be. And so you think of
this as these three tiers. So for us, we actually
do made in USA electronics. That means that the entire
inside electronics, the main board, all the components that go
into it are of US supply, and then we manufacture

(01:32:21):
that at our facility. But actually for us, the journey
was kind of it was multi years, six years from
start to finish. And for us, what we actually had
to do was we did the our designs. These are
we called the ODM Original Design Manufacturer whereas Purism designs.
Then we actually went to we did our dev kit
first at our same facility just north of San Diego.

(01:32:45):
Then we actually flew to China to do the initial
contract manufacturing of a phone because that's where all phones
are made, and that's called our Librung five and we
put that out about twenty nineteen. Then we brought all
that back to the US and then we did on
our own SMT line that we can produce the actual
electronics and then we do all the assembly. We do

(01:33:08):
that at our facility and then we ship those out
to you know, any customers who's buying direct.

Speaker 4 (01:33:14):
So that's a completely made in.

Speaker 12 (01:33:15):
The USA electronics because we still have to source some
components outside of the US, but those are in small quantities.
If you're looking at like a thousand total parts that
go into a phone, you know, maybe ten percent are
outside the US, with the super majority our components that
are done in the US and we do all the
manufacturing ourselves.

Speaker 1 (01:33:34):
So with this phone, this Liberty phone, it's got you know,
your operating system on it. So can I download Android
apps or what? You know? How am I limited in
the apps that I can use? I see a bunch
of them on the screen that looks like, you know,
the stuff you're used to, like a phone dial er
and a messaging app, Like can I use this like
a regular phone?

Speaker 12 (01:33:52):
Yeah, So there's a what we call the app gap.
So that's something that we're still continuously closing. But when
you're looking at basic functionality calling, text, browser, calculator, music player,
those types of things, they all work because we've invested
the time and energy to make them happen. But when
you're looking at the branded third party applications Snapchat, you know, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger.

(01:34:15):
Those are produced by these big tech companies in and
their applications clearly run on Android or iOS and they
don't run in puros. But there's ways for us to
close that app gap, and one of the primary ways
is that if you can run it in the browser
like Uber or LinkedIn or IMDb, those run just fine.
But when you're getting to these third party name brands

(01:34:37):
where they have a lot of functionality built natively in them,
then we need to emulate those Android applications. And actually
the way we do it is by running them in isolation,
so they actually don't penetrate into all the things that
you don't want them to, right, We sort of cut
off the creepiness and then we are able to run
those applications, but we don't have them all yet. That's
what we call closing the app gap. And so it's

(01:34:59):
a process for us. You know, number of apps is
just momentum and time. We have plenty of momentum, so
it's just a matter of time before we get those
applications you need. And that kind of relates to use case. Right,
there's a hand there's a bunch of people, millions of
people that would like a basic phone that doesn't spy
on them, and we already use case yeah, and so

(01:35:21):
then and then you have a bunch of people that
are like, no, I need Snapchat, and I need three
cameras and I need a GPU for processing my video.
But you know that's not the audience we're able to
satisfy today with the hardware or software.

Speaker 1 (01:35:32):
Yet the price it's a it's starting a ninety nine dollars.
You know, it's expensive. Do you feel like you can
get that price down over time?

Speaker 12 (01:35:43):
Yes, we can. So there's a couple of ways that
we did this. The first is we actually have a
lead Rum five that we did our contract manufacturing out
of China. That's a seven hundred ninety nine dollars phone.
Our cost of goods is only about six hundred dollars
for that, so we don't have a lot of margin
on that, but that's sort of the lower cost version
of our entire design. And then we brought that to
the US. We only it's about a ten percent lift

(01:36:05):
on our cost of goods, so it's about six hundred
and fifty dollars to produce the US version. So you
can see that the price point can come down even
if we have with even retaining healthy margins. The reason
that we sell it for nineteen ninety nine is because
we sell half of it to the U to consumer
and half to the US government, where we have additional
layers of benefit, secure supply chain, making sure that all

(01:36:28):
those components are able to be verified. We publish our
bill of materials so that those can be verified. We
publish all of our source code so that that can
be verified. You can see with all of those things,
that adds some overhead that's needed. So we sell at
that higher price point. Once we get to volume, then
we're able to lower that price point down. But that's
the reason that we chose the higher margin play for that.

(01:36:50):
And then I guess the last bit is we're the
only phone where we where the Manu electronics are manufactured
in the US, right, so that allows us to say, hey,
we have market exclusivity. Let's put this a reasonable price
to be able to fund all these other things that
we're doing.

Speaker 5 (01:37:03):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:37:04):
Okay, so a couple things in the news. Obviously the
iPhone being made in the US. Do you think that
could happen? And then Trump came out with Trump Mobile
saying that they were going to have a phone made
in the US. I think they've backtracked a little bit
about that. But do you think those two things are possible?

Speaker 12 (01:37:21):
So the first one, when you're talking about Apple, I
do think that, But let's also be clear, when you
stay made in USA that has a very distinct all
or virtually all has to be US of US origin now.
And the other thing is Apple has to move a
gigantic ball forward. Right, So when we did it, we're
looking at tens of thousands of devices. When they're looking
at it, they would be looking at a million per month.

(01:37:42):
So to move that forward, they would really have to
be incentivized significantly and over enough time to actually bring
that to the US, such as I've even proposed, like
if the tariffs can be very powerful, and if that's
used as an incentive, it would have to be something
like twenty five percent increase every year for ten year years,
and then they could see, wow, that's something they could

(01:38:02):
plan around. So then you can start seeing some of
that reshorting. But getting to the point of a fully
made in USA, it's going to take an awful lot
more effort than just one company looking to move it
here because the supply chain itself. Of all those components
have to be done. Here, I'll highlight one point. Every
phone except ours uses Qualcom or Media Tech chipsets.

Speaker 4 (01:38:23):
Those are not made in the US.

Speaker 12 (01:38:25):
The NXP CPU that we put in our phone is
fabbed in Texas, So that's an example of having to
choose a different chip set to actually put into a
phone to make it happen. The last question you brought
up is the Trump Mobile, which I've spoken quite a
bit about. That phone in the current specs are Chinese made,
and by calling them out a number of times on

(01:38:45):
this issue, they've backtracked that to they've removed those claims, right,
and that's wise of them. It would have been wiser
for them to actually source a US made phone such
as ours to be able to provide it, as opposed to,
you know, putting just something up that was clearly going
to be of Chinese origin.

Speaker 5 (01:39:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:39:05):
I mean, I could say I'm not a deal maker,
but I mean I'm saying, like, why not just partner
with you? All Right, we've got less than a minute.
How's business fantastic?

Speaker 12 (01:39:15):
We've actually been growing overall, been ten years in business,
last two years have been profitable, so we've invested tens
of millions of dollars thirty million total in revs, and
you know have healthy margins, so continue to grow.

Speaker 1 (01:39:27):
All right, Todd Weaver fin very fascinating conversation, Thanks so
much for coming on the show. Founder and CEO of Purism.
They are doing privacy centric phones and phones made in
the USA website p U r I dot SM. I'll
put the link on my website. Rich on Tech dot
TV feedback coming up next. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(01:39:52):
We're going to get right into it because we got
a lot in the feedback. A couple of stories before
we get to that. First, off At is going to
pay one hundred and seventy seven million dollars in a
data breach settlement. Two major data breaches that exposed customer information.
The first was in March twenty twenty four, leaked names,
birth dates, phone numbers, and socials of over seventy million people.

(01:40:16):
Second breach involved call metadata. So there's two funds and
basically you can file for both of them. Up to
five thousand dollars for documented losses from identity theft for
the first breach, twenty five hundred dollars for losses from
the second breach. If you didn't document your losses, you'll
just get a flat rate cash payment and the highest

(01:40:38):
payouts for those folks who have their socials exposed. But yeah,
there's no reason. Claims have to be submitted by October seventeenth,
twenty twenty five, and the payout depends on how many
valid claims. And they still have to finalize it, I
believe in December, but oh yeah, here it is December sixteenth.
So if you if you're part of this, notices will

(01:40:59):
be sent out this summer. So be on the lookout
if you get a notice about an AT and T
settlement from Kroll Settlement Administration. That is legit. Spectrum TV customers,
if you have Spectrum TV Select, you now get Hulu
at no extra cost. Hulu with ads is now included
in Spectrum TV Select. Let's see here, that and that.

(01:41:20):
Now they've got so many streaming services included with Spectrum
TV now Disney Plus, Hulu, Paramount, Max, Peacock, amc Vix.
So it's all based on that Spectrum TV Select and
it's all the stuff with ads. But you know, you
can always upgrade if you don't want the ads. And
then Ring is adding AI powered video descriptions to its alerts,

(01:41:44):
so instead of just saying motion detected, AI is going
to actually kind of look at the video and give
you a much better description of what's happening in that alert,
so you can kind of distinguish urgent things from just
everyday activity. That's rolling out in beta for paying subscri
and it works with all current ring cameras and doorbells,
so no need to upgrade your hardware for that. So

(01:42:06):
instead of just saying motion alert, it's going to say
something like two people are peering into a car in
the driveway, so very very specific. All right, Time for
the feedbag. That's your feedback plus the mail bag. These
are the emails, the comments, questions I get from you.
If you want to submit, go to Rich on tech
dot tv hit contact. Let's see Steve from Mission Viajo says,

(01:42:26):
I have a Galaxy S twenty two plus and I'm
thinking about getting a newer model or maybe switching to Apple.
My wife has an iPhone and iPad. She always says
I need to get a quote real phone. Help. Well, Steve,
first off, you have a real phone. It's a Galaxy.
That's an excellent phone. I don't think you need to
change anything as long as you're getting software updates, and
this is still getting security updates. Tell your wife, hey,

(01:42:49):
I love you, but my phone is just fine. But
with that said, if you want to switch to an iPhone,
it's not a bad idea because she's got one. You
want to be in the ecosystem and she can help
you with it. I would check out the iPhone sixteen E.
It's simple, it's a solid phone, and it's about six
hundred dollars. But don't feel like you have to give
into that peer pressure. Candace says, I enjoy your show.

(01:43:13):
I received a podcast link by email and I want
to add it to my Apple Music playlist to listen
on a plane. What's the best way to do this?
Not Apple Music. You have to open up the Apple
Podcasts app on your phone, tap search. You can find
the show or the episode whatever they sent you. You
can just search for that and then tap follow and

(01:43:33):
then use the three dot menu in the upper right
hand corner to download the episode. And then once you
download it, just to be sure before you hop on
that plane, switch your phone into airplane mode and test
to make sure that it plays. Because there's so many
times that I've gotten on an airplane. I think I
downloaded stuff on Netflix or whatever and there's some sort
of error and you only figure it out once you
get up in the sky. So flip your phone into

(01:43:55):
airplane mode if you're downloading stuff for the plane, be
at your house and see if the stuff. That's my tip,
Eva says. I took my Pixel seven A to the
Verizon store. They told me it doesn't support eSIMs, even
though everything I've read says it does. I'm planning to
go to another store, hoping I just got some bad info. Also,
I love Google Lens. I used it in Japan and
Europe and preferred over Google Translate. I love Google Lens too,

(01:44:19):
but you have to have a connection for that one
to work. So Google Translate can work offline because you
can download the language pack and so that's what I
like about that. As for the SIM, as far as
I know, the Pixel seven A does support them. So
perhaps Verizon was saying that your phone doesn't because it's locked,
So that could be the problem. You have to have

(01:44:40):
an unlocked phone. But if it works, you can install
it through the aerlow app Ai r Alo. That's the
one I use a lot. Pine says, band calls about
printer issues on your show that was rough to listen
to last week. Lol, Yes they are. That's why I
say no printer issues guaranteed I can't solve them. Games

(01:45:00):
from San Diego says I'm using Chrome on Mac and
I'm getting a dollar back on each Amazon purchase from
both simply codes and shop back. That's two dollars per order.
Thanks for mentioning both. Well, thank you for using both.
I didn't know you could do both. Double dip in there,
John and Oklahoma City says I recently found your show
on KTOK yes home of the OKC Thunder NBA Champs. First,

(01:45:21):
let me assure you this message was not written by
chat GBT. You can tell because it doesn't start with
I hope this message finds you well now the complaint.
It is very inconsiderate of you to only do this
show once a week. I'm disappointed. I've had to figure
out how to use a podcast app just to listen
to the older shows. Solution air it every day. But
if you're really too busy with your KTLA TV stuff,

(01:45:43):
I'd be willing to settle for three times a week
in all seriousness. I love the show. I look forward
to it. I really appreciate you what you do and
wanted to share well. Thank you, John. Your email is
the email of the week that's going to do it
for this episode. You can find links to everything I
mentioned on my website. Just let's go to richontech dot tv.
Find me on social media. I am at rich on tech.

(01:46:06):
Instagram is where I mostly hang out. Next week, July
fourth weekend, I'm gonna be reading a lot of your emails.
Of course, I'll take your calls as well, but if
you want to get those emails in with those questions,
go to rich on tech dot tv, hit contact, or
just send them to feedback at richontech dot tv. Thanks
for listening. I appreciate you spending your time with me.

(01:46:26):
One reminder, don't text and drive. Whatever it is, it
can wait. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible.
Kim Bobo, my guests, my name is rich Dmiro. I
will talk to you real soon.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Life-saving smartphone tips, Windows 10 extension & privacy-first phone made in USA (127, June 28, 2025)