Nothing Phone is actually something

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Nothing to say here but a new phone brand. Hollywood
goes on strike over AI, among other things, Should you
install iOS seventeen Beta plus? Your tech questions answered?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
What's going on?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
I'm Rich de Murou and this is Rich on Tech.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
The show where I talk about the tech stuff I
think you should know about and answer your questions about technology.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
I believe that tech should be easy, helpful, inspiring and fun.
Phone lines are now open. Yes, that's right. Phone lines
are now open at triple A Rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to
one zero one. And no, AI did not take over
the show just yet. What you just heard is my

(00:48):
personal voice. This is a new feature on iOS seventeen
that lets you recreate your own voice using AI. Now
it sounds silly, there's a reason for it, but here's
what you have to do. It took me about twenty
four hours to create that. I had to sit in

(01:08):
a room and read one hundred and fifty different phrases.
And once I read those one hundred and fifty different phrases,
it could then synthesize my voice and it took overnight.
It took me about a half an hour to read
the phrases, but it took the phone about twenty four
hours to actually analyze and recreate my voice. Now, why

(01:28):
would you do this? Why would you want your own voice, which,
by the way, I don't really think sounds like me
in a big way. I think it has intonations of me,
but it's not really rich on tech. But here's the deal.
This is a feature that is actually an accessibility feature.
So it was created with people in mind that may

(01:48):
have some sort of degenerative disease or illness that would
cause them to lose their voice over time. And so
in this way, instead of using a robot voice to
beak to do text to speech later on in life,
they can actually use their own voice. And so while
I was recording this, I was actually getting kind of
sad because it made me realize that when we're gone,

(02:12):
our voice is gone too, and we're gone. I mean,
it's just a it's kind of weird. So I don't
want to bring you down. But that's just one of
the new features in iOS seventeen. The beta was released
this week, and so a lot of folks are wondering
if they should install it. My advice is only if
you are super tech savvy or if you have a

(02:34):
secondary device, because there could be problems. This is a
beta software and so that means it's not fully finished.
People are saying it's good. I'm not running it on
my primary device, so I can't tell you if it's perfect,
but it could be some issues there by the way,
maybe this got lost in this whole thing. But phone
lines are open at triple A rich one oh one

(02:58):
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Give me a call. If you have a question about technology,
you can also email me. Just go to or email
hello at rich on tech dot tv. Also new this
week is the website rich on tech dot tv is

(03:20):
completely redesigned, reformed. It's all brand new. I finally got
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because you said, rich your website's insecure. I said, yeah,
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Rest assured the site is secure. So if you want

(03:42):
to look up show notes, if you want to see
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on tech dot TV. If you look at the top
of the page, there is a banner for the show notes.
So if you hear something I mentioned on the show,
it will appear on those show notes in near real time.
So that's just one of the ways I'm working for

(04:02):
you to make life a little bit better. Ah this week,
let's see what happened. So we went to the movies.
I'm not gonna tell you all about that, but one
little pro tip. Okay, my wife had her Apple Watch
on and we're at the movies and in the middle
of a silent portion of the movie, all of a sudden,
we hear a walkie talkie. It's like, hey, mom, are

(04:22):
you gonna pick me up? Because there's that walkie talkie
feature on the Apple Watch and we didn't think to
turn that off. And so my wife is like fumbling
with her watch, and my kid is like, hey mom,
what are you there? What's happening? And everyone in the audience, which,
by the way, it's a matine, there was not that
many people, but we were laughing because she couldn't run

(04:42):
out of the movie theater quick enough. So let me
just give you the pro tip of the week. Before
you go to the movies. On your Apple Watch, you
swipe up and there are two little masks it's an
icon in the quick settings that is your theater mode.
Tap that on your watch, turn on theater mode before
you get into the movies. That will disable the walkie

(05:04):
talkie and it will also disable the sounds and the screen.
So once you're done doing that, just hold your hands,
you take your palm, and you just tap your Apple
Watch screen with your entire palm and it will turn
off your screen and it will not turn back on
until you press a button. And then when you're done
with the movie, you go back in. You swipe up
from the bottom of your Apple Watch screen and you

(05:26):
tap those two little faces and you'll turn that off. Now,
I did that before I got into the movie theater,
but what I forgot to do was turn it off,
and so I didn't get messages for the next twenty
four hours. On my Apple Watch. People were texting me
left and right, and I didn't see any of them
because I still had this theater mode. They were trying
to get a hold of me in the newsroom and

(05:46):
they couldn't text me, and I just I looked at
my watch. I said, I don't know, I didn't see. Oh,
there it is. Oh. I left that on last night
there you go. So just remember to turn that off
if you do turn it back on. Ah what else
this week? Oh, I switched to a new note taking system.
I am really and I've talked about this on the show.
I'm really trying to do better about my notes. So

(06:08):
I've been trying all these different note taking situations and
ever Note if you've been following that, that was my
previous note taking preferred application. And they laid off a
whole bunch of people in San Francisco. They moved operations
to Italy. They actually got purchased by a company that
I really like. They make another app that I love
called Splice. It's a video editing app. But now everyone's

(06:31):
worried about the future of ever Note. So everyone's kind
of like fleeing from it, myself included, because it's expensive
and you know, it kind of like has not grown
over the years. It's done a lot of stuff, but
it's kind of clunky. And Notion is this new kind
of it's like the bell of the what do they
call it, the bell of the ball. You know, it's

(06:52):
like the one that everyone wants right now. And so
Notion is what I switched to. But it is like
it does way too much. So now I'm like somehow
like the executive CEO of note taking that I just
don't need. Like all I needed was like a notepad,
and I got like a Ferrari on. You know, it's
just so much. So but now I'm in it because

(07:13):
I spent the whole day switching to it. So now
I can't go back because my wife will make fun
of me. So now I got to stick with it
because it is I'm in it to win it now.
So I did switch to Notion. And of course with
all these apps, the minute you get sort of into them,
you know, I switched everything over, and all of a sudden,
I run into a roadblock and it's like, oh, by
the way, that's like, you know, it's a couple bucks

(07:34):
a month for that feature. I'm like, oh, it's called freemium.
So that's that's how all these apps work. Let's see
what else? So many things this week? Oh, Nothing Phone,
this is what I've been using. This is a new
phone that the name is Nothing and it's the Nothing
Phone too. That's actually the second version. It launches in

(07:55):
a couple of days. I've been using it for the
past couple of weeks, and I got to tell you,
it's been a long time since I've actually fallen in
love with the device. But I fell in love with
this device. Why because it is the most it's the
most iPhone Android I've used. Now, before you say, okay, Rich,
sure you like it because it's an iPhone, no no, no,
I mean like it's simple, the design is timeless and beautiful,

(08:20):
and it's unique. Like it just works really well. The
camera is good, the form factor is good. It's not
too big, it's not too small. If this was a
bowl of porridge, it would be perfect. This is the
one that Goldilocks would would eat. I don't know if
do you want to eat a phone? Probably not. But
the interesting thing about this phone is the back of

(08:43):
the device. So on the back of this device, there's
a whole bunch it's actually translucent, and there's a whole
bunch of LED lights and I'm gonna light them up
right now, just so Bobo can see this. See that.
So it's these elied You can't see this, but Bobo can.
And it's these LED lights on the back. They call
it the glyph interface, And what that does is they

(09:05):
want you to put your phone down, use it less.
They want you to put it face down so you
don't see your notifications. And when you put this phone
face down, what happens. It goes into this mode of
do not disturb, and only your most important notifications will
actually light up the back of the phone. So I
had one set for my wife, a couple friends, work people,
and so if they text me or call me, it

(09:27):
will light up on the back of that phone. Otherwise,
all those other nonsense notifications that are trying to get
you into Instagram and Facebook and threads and all that
other stuff, they won't light up your phone because this
phone wants you to use it less. We're going to
talk more about this phone a little bit later. I've
fallen in love with it, but I've got someone else
to talk to, Ben Sin of XDA Developers. He is

(09:51):
going to give me his review of the phone. So
maybe there's something I'm missing, but I think this phone
is near perfect. But we'll talk about that a little
bit later on in the show. We've got a lot
of great stuff coming up on the show today, Lots
and lots of calls from you at Triple eight rich
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two,
four to one zero one, We've got Cissy Shao of

(10:13):
Google Bard. Sissy's gonna talk about some of the new
features that you can take advantage of on Google Bard.
Then this concert that I went to in virtual reality
is just incredible, and so we're gonna have a Maze
VR come on the show and talk about their new
VR concert app. I'm not kidding. I was standing within
inches of Zara Larsen for a personal concert. Yes, it

(10:37):
was all virtual reality in a headset, but it was
quite incredible. And then, like I said, Benson will be
along to review the Nothing Phone two. But first it
is your turn. Your calls coming up next. Give me
a call Triple eight Rich one on one email hello
at richontech dot TV. Give me a call if you
have a question about technology. My name is rich Demiro

(10:59):
and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with
you talking at technology at Triple eight Rich one O one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Let's go to Rod in Los Angeles. Rod,

(11:22):
you're kicking off the show. Welcome, Hey, how you doing.
I'm doing fantastic. How about you staying cool?

Speaker 4 (11:29):
I live out in the Zanfernano Badley, so it's hot
out here.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Well it's cold in here, so we'll see. Let's hope
the uh, the power grade stays up, although it's been
pretty good lately. I don't want to jinx it. So
what can I help you with?

Speaker 4 (11:44):
Well, so I have an issue just popped up recently
with my mouth acting kind of odd, like many times
when I click it, it acts like I double clicked it.
So for example, I can excel I go to click
on a cell and if you double click it it
opens up a like an edit function and within the cell.

(12:07):
And so sometimes I'll just go to click on the
one cell and it'll do that. Or on Chrome, I'll
click the plus button to open up another window and
it'll open two and stuff like that. And I'm trying
to figure out how do I I don't know, like
readjust it?

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Did this just start?

Speaker 4 (12:25):
Huh?

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Did this just.

Speaker 4 (12:26):
Start just within the last like four to six weeks?

Speaker 1 (12:30):
And what kind of mouse? Is it? A wireless? Is
it wired? Is it Mac? Is it PC?

Speaker 4 (12:34):
It's wired?

Speaker 5 (12:35):
PC?

Speaker 4 (12:36):
Windows?

Speaker 6 (12:36):
Ten?

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Okay? And have you tried a different mouse?

Speaker 4 (12:39):
Not yet.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Okay, so that would be the first thing you want
to do. So you gotta secure a different mouse to
see if it's actually the mouse. I assume you probably
don't have a secondary mouse around the house. I just
want you to rhyme that.

Speaker 4 (12:51):
But I can probably find one.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Uh yeah, I mean maybe if you have a friend
or family member that has one. That would be the
easiest way to troubleshoot this, because that will tell you
if it's the actual mause or if it's your software
and you made some sort of change. Right, So, if
it's not the mouse, or if you don't feel like
doing that or you can't do that, does the mouse
feel any different when you click it? Like, does it
feel like it's gummed up or something?

Speaker 4 (13:14):
No? Not really?

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Okay, so in that case it Now have you tried
like restarting your computer? I know that sounds basic, but
that's always a good start. Okay, you've done that, okay,
And what about looking in your settings in the Windows?
Did you check those settings to make sure that you
didn't change anything?

Speaker 7 (13:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (13:31):
I did, and I adjusted there's a double click speed, yes,
and I adjusted that and it seemed to help a
little bit. But it's still doing the same thing.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
And otherwise this was working just fine previously, like you've
used this for a long time.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
Oh yeah, it's pretty old computer. I mean, that's that
was one of my concerns. Is maybe just the computers
getting old.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Well I don't think. I don't think the mouse would
double click just because the computer's getting old. Okay, So
what I would do? I would I think it sounds
like it's the actual physical mouse. If you're not, you know,
if you're not seeing this happen in other is it
only in certain program.

Speaker 4 (14:08):
Oh no, it happens in a variety of different programs.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Okay, and you checked, you sure, you went into your
Windows settings and checked and made sure that you've got
all those settings proper. So what about disabling double clicking?
There's some like accessibility features. Have you tried doing that?

Speaker 4 (14:27):
Uh no, okay, that could.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Be that could be a way to do it too,
to see if that will that will help.

Speaker 4 (14:33):
I'm not sure. I'm not sure there's I'm seeing anything
that says disabled double click.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
I'm going into the settings here and let's see. So
if we go into the mouse, primary, mouse button, mouse pointer,
additional mouse settings. So let's see clicklock that might that
might be something. Let's see, and then you've got your pointer. Yeah,

(15:00):
there's a whole bunch of like little options in here.
I would go into there and see if you can,
if you can switch some of those things and see
what happens with that. But I would try I would try,
Rod to get a secondary mouse in troubleshoot that way.
If it works, then you know that, you know you've
solved your problem without going through a thousand different settings
and trying to figure out you know, drive yourself nuts

(15:21):
over this situation, Okay, because that's that's frustrating. Yeah, I
know that. For me, when I'm on a Windows computer,
for sure, I disable the uh, the right click situation
because I feel like I'm always especially with the track pad,
I'm always like right clicking when I mean to just
click once. So I'll disable some of the features on there.
That's one of the first things I always do is

(15:43):
go in there and do that. So, uh, hopefully you
get it figured out. Rod. Thanks for the call today.
I appreciate it, and once again, if you have a question,
the phone line is triple eight rich one on one
eight eight eight seven four to two four to one
zero one. Earlier, I mentioned that Hollywood, almost all of
Hollywood is on strike at this point. So you've got
the SAG Aftra's Union and you've got the Writer's Guild,

(16:07):
so a lot of this town is no longer working.
So if your shows start to look really bad on TV,
you know why, because no one's writing them. They're not
making anything new, and yeah, we're still here. If you
notice that the actors are not on TV promoting stuff,
they're not on the late shows anything, it's because they can't.

(16:27):
So here is one of the interesting points. And of
course it all comes down to money and AI. But
one of these things is that the studios apparently want
to be able to scan a background actor and then
use their likeness for any project without consent or compensation.
SAG says no, no, no, no, no, we're not letting
them do this, and the union says that they don't

(16:50):
like this, and then the studio say, no, no, no,
we meant we only want to scan them once to
use that in that one movie, and any other use
we would have to pay them. So the point of
all of this is that AI is not only a
huge factor in the writer's strike, with you know writers
not wanting studios using AI to write scripts and drafts

(17:11):
and rewrites and all that good stuff. But also with
the actors union, they don't want to make actors digitally
or recreate them digitally. I'm telling you this AI stuff
is really throwing a wrench in things. All right, coming up,
we're gonna talk AI new features on Google Bard. What
a transition you are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome

(17:36):
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
with you, talking technology and joining me now is Cissy Shao,
vice president and general manager of Assistant and Bard at Google. Cissy,
thanks so much for joining me.

Speaker 6 (17:50):
Thanks for having me Rich.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
So let's talk about Google Bard. This has been around
for a couple of months. Now, how is that going?
This is there your AI chatbot assistant?

Speaker 6 (18:02):
Well yeah, Well, first of all, let's just talk about
what is Bard. And Bard is Google's experiment that lets
people collaborate with generative AI, and what that means is
you can use Bard to boost your productivity and really
help you solve everyday problems. So, for example, we find
users asking Bard to give them ideas for tailored workout plans,

(18:24):
helping them write their resumes and prep for interviews, or
even like for me, I use Bard to help write
a short story for my son who loves video games.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
And so are people finding different uses for this or
there are instructions for how to use Bard. How do
you know what you can do with this?

Speaker 6 (18:41):
Well, when you start with bar, Bard will give you
some ideas of what you can do with Bard. But
really we find people find use in three different areas.
One is productivity, and that can be like planning a
trip that you have coming up, or planning your kids
summer camp plans, or coming up with great ideas for
like a meal plan. Then there's creativity, which is the

(19:03):
second piece, which is like I said, you know, writing
stories or even fiction, or coming up with great brainstorming
ideas for something that you're wanting to write. And the
third is really companionship, which is just it's kind of
fun to just talk to an AI sometimes about you know,
anything on the top of your mind.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
So we've heard a lot about these assistants. You are
adding some new features to Bard. Let's talk about the
first new feature, which is the power of lens. So
now you can actually upload a photo to Bard and
it will do what with that picture.

Speaker 6 (19:37):
Well, first of all, people absolutely love lens, so when
lens meets barred, it's really exciting. So I'll give you
a story of how I use lens and Bard. I
bought a new pair of sneakers and I had no
idea what.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
To wear with those sneakers.

Speaker 6 (19:52):
So I take my phone out and I use lens
and take a picture, and then I ask Bart, what
can I wear with these shoes? And Bart I correctly
identify that they were a pair of Converse and actually
gave me some ideas, like maybe you can wear like
a smart casual pair of jeans with this pair of shoes.
So that's just one way that people can use lens.

(20:14):
But really the sky's the limit in terms of how
people want to use pictures and interact with Bard with
their pictures.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
So the next thing it can do is talk to us,
so you can have Bard read its responses to you
explain what that's all about.

Speaker 6 (20:30):
Well, we're really excited because this is Bard's biggest expansion,
both globally and also in forty languages. And so when
Bard speaks to you, now Bart can actually read its
response in not only in English, but in all those languages.
So an example of how I use this is I
have an eight year old son who really loves video games,

(20:51):
and I thought it'd be fun to write a little
story about his.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Favorite characters with Bard.

Speaker 6 (20:56):
So I asked Bard to write a story, and then
I asked Bart to read the story out loud to
my son, who really thought that was really really fun.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
That's amazing. What is the challenge of getting an AI
assistant to be able to speak so many different languages.

Speaker 6 (21:12):
Well, we have to get things like inflections right in
different languages, and we also need to make sure that
we're being culturally aware of all these different languages. So
I find it fascinating that, for example, if you ask
Bard for a recipe for eggs, you'll get a different
type of recipe depending on what language you ask.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
Barred forty six different languages in total, including Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi,
and Spanish. That's incredible.

Speaker 6 (21:41):
Yeah, we're really excited with what people can do with
both language expansion and global expansion. There's another feature that
I want to share, which is something we call pinning
and sharing. So let's say you know you're using Bard
to create a meal plan for the week for yourself.
We find users do a lot of this kind of
planning and work with Bard, and you then go to work,

(22:04):
and then you go to the grocery store and you
need to now buy the recipe ingredients for that meal
plan that you use.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Bard to create.

Speaker 6 (22:11):
Now you can go back to Bard's pin threads and
actually just get that meal plan right up on your
phone when you're at the grocery store. And you can
also then share that same meal plan. Let's say you
want to share on social media, like this is the
new meal plan that I'm following. You can also use
our new sharing feature to share that same conversation that

(22:33):
you had with Bard directly on social media.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
So by remembering some of these things you've asked, it's
no longer this ephemeral sort of conversation. You can revisit it.
Do you think that makes for a more personalized experience
for the user?

Speaker 6 (22:46):
Oh, definitely. People are asking us for pinning and saving
and also to be able to bring back personal things
that they're doing with Bard. You know, I talked about
meal plans, but people use Bard to prep for job
interviews and write their resumes. People come up with business
ideas like there's a user who's thinking about how to
rename their new online water bottle store that they're starting

(23:10):
on the internet. I have a friend who's using a
bar to come up with basketball drills for a little
third grade basketball team that he coaches, And so there's
all these different things that people are doing with BARD.
And being able to both remember those conversations and also
share those conversations is something we're really excited about.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Since you're an engineer and a computer scientist, what excites
you the most about the possibilities of AI like Bard?

Speaker 6 (23:39):
I mean, this is going to change the world, right,
This is going to make people way more productive and
help them explore their imaginations and creativity in really unique ways.
I'm excited because I hear from users that they're able
to save time and effort and in working using Bard
to accomplish their goals. So that really excites me. How

(24:00):
this is going to change how people do things.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
Should we feel guilty because sometimes it seems almost too
easy to use these tools? Should we feel guilty about
relying on them at all?

Speaker 6 (24:11):
I think that, you know, humans have always created technology
and tools to make our lives more fun and interesting
and also easier, and to save time. I mean, think
about the Internet or search or the phone. Right, these
are all innovations that have made life more easy, and
I think of BART and AI as just another generation

(24:32):
of that. Right, Why do in you know, an hour
what you can do in five to ten minutes. But
it's important to remember that BART is a collaborator for you,
like it's an AI to help you get done what
you want to get done. And so really the human
is in control and really is the one that's directing
the AI.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Now. Of course, we want these AI assistants to be useful,
but also we want them to be honest, and ethics
is a big part of that. So how is your
team working to make Barred ethical?

Speaker 6 (25:04):
Well, first of all, we want to take a bold
and responsible approach to AI, and that's why we've been
really measured and careful about how we launch BART. So,
for example, we first launched BART in English because we
hadn't done the responsibility work yet in all those other languages,
measuring you know if Bart is going to say things

(25:25):
that are inappropriate, for example, culturally or in those languages.
And so what we do is really work to train
bar to be responsible and abide by our AI ethics
that we've published.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
To the world, and I would like to know your
advice for young people out there that want to pursue
careers along the lines of AI.

Speaker 6 (25:45):
Well, first of all, AI is exploding, and even us
at the sort of the edge of that are still
learning what AI can do. And so I would just say,
get really curious about the tools. Go try the tools
for yourself. Ask it questions that you may not expect
it to be able to do. Like so, for example,

(26:05):
for Lens, I took a picture of my bookshelf and
I said, this is my book collection, Like what other books.

Speaker 5 (26:12):
Might I like?

Speaker 6 (26:14):
And not only did Bard understand that I had a
bunch of business and personal development books on my bookshelf,
it actually gave me some advice on new books that
I might try in the same genre. So just there's
just some incredible like capabilities, and so I would just
say my advice is go try things out, play with it,

(26:34):
learn with it as we're all learning together how AI works.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Cissi Shao, vice president and general manager of Assistant and
Bard at Google, Thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 6 (26:44):
Thanks for having me Rich so excited.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
All right, more Rich on tech coming your way. Give
me a call if you have a question about technology.
The phone number is triple eight Rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Welcome back to a Rich on tech. Rich

(27:12):
DeMuro here hanging out talking technology with you. Let's go
to Marcie in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Marcie, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 8 (27:21):
Hello. I went to say, I really enjoyed the precitation
on Bard just now what you can do and suggestions,
and also it's ethnic concerns and how they develop it
in different language to adapt to that culture. But I
have a concern. I am part of a large number
of people in California that had their data breached. My name,

(27:44):
my birth date, my social Security number, and my ZIP code.
So I called up my people that have my four
oh one K account and talk to that about him.
So they asked me if I you know I had
I wanted a duo often take authentication, and so they

(28:05):
asked me if I wanted voice recognition, and I said no,
So we settled on a password and then I don't know,
maybe that day or the next day, I had another question.
So I called back and I went through my name.
You know, you still have to give your social Security number,
your name and all that stuff. And the person hesitated,

(28:28):
and I said, is anything wrong? And she said, we
don't recognize your voice? Oh wow, So I didn't okay
that number one, number two, it didn't recognize my voice.
And I said, good, I have a password.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
Good. Yeah, I said no to that when I got
that option. Hey, do you want us to make a
fingerprint of your voice?

Speaker 9 (28:50):
No?

Speaker 8 (28:52):
Yeah, So I guess my concern is I just want
to say, you know, I have a concern about security issues.
So you know, that's something that's going to have to
you know, just like the actors not letting their image
taken later on and done something with you know, I think.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yeah, I get it to be through. Yeah, And look,
and all these companies are going to try to do
what they can because it makes their lives easier, you know,
if they if they can run this authentication. Supposedly it's
in our favor, but let's be honest, is it really
At the end of the day, they're protecting their assets,
you know, their their accounts and all this stuff. And
I have no doubt that the voice recognition stuff is

(29:31):
probably pretty good. But I'm just not sure I'm ready
for that just yet. You know, it's one of these
things where it's it's pretty new, and I'm seeing it
in more and more companies. When you call up they say, hey,
do you mind if we use your voice to authenticate you?
I say no, And I'm not saying you have to
say no, but I do see the concerns with that.
Do they share that information? Who stores that now? Earlier

(29:54):
in the show, you know, I played my AI voice on.

Speaker 8 (29:57):
The iPhone's That's why I called right.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
Away, because it's really fascinating that now anyone will be
able to create one of these. And by the way,
the iPhone is just one of a thousand tools that
you can easily find online that will do something similar.
There are many many AI startups that will help you
create an AI voice of yourself. So the iPhone is
just putting it in a lot of people's hands. And
by the way, I didn't really think it sounded like me.

Speaker 8 (30:21):
But either, however, I mean, technology is going to develop.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
Yeah, it's day one, right, it's not even day one
because this isn't even public it's a public beta, So
iOS seventeen doesn't even happen until the fall. So the
bottom line, Marcy, I think is is here's what we're learning.
Number one, you had this data breach. So your information
is out there and it's probably your social Security number,
your name, your phone number, your email, user names, passwords,

(30:47):
all that stuff could be potentially in this breach. Right,
So how do you protect yourself? What remedies did they
give you for this breach? Do you know?

Speaker 8 (30:56):
I actually the lines are so busy. This is well
the California State.

Speaker 10 (31:00):
Teachers, that's a lot of it.

Speaker 8 (31:03):
You can imagine how many people.

Speaker 5 (31:05):
I don't know.

Speaker 8 (31:05):
If somebody my friend call it took her two and
a half hours on hold and they didn't have a
callback number. So I've done some things I don't know.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
Okay, So I'm looking.

Speaker 8 (31:15):
At I'm not sure I want to say this on right.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Well, they're saying that they want you to put a
fraud alert on your credit reports. So I'm trying to
see if they've listed the information. Okay, okay, the files
contained contained the name and social security numbers, date of birth,
and zip codes of certain calisters. Is that it is that?

(31:40):
What it's called Calsters members and beneficiaries?

Speaker 11 (31:43):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (31:43):
Okay, So it's not even just you, it's also the
people that you are trying to give your money to
as a beneficiary. Now their number in their soci security number.

Speaker 8 (31:51):
So also CalPERS, which is a California public employees.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
Okay, so here here's my recommendation with this. I actually
use Google if you pay Google for something called Google One.
So if you have like any sort of storage with Google,
they actually offer a service where they will they will
they will scan the dark web for your information. So Google,
of course is always crawling the web every day to

(32:17):
see what's new. They can have a service where they
will alert you if your information comes up in their search,
and they will look for your name, your address, your
phone number, your email, your social security number, you username
and password. Wow, I can't speak today, and so I
have signed up for this service. The only thing, and
this is similar to something like a LifeLock or any

(32:38):
of these nor insecurity services, right. Uh, the only thing
is you have to give them your information so that
they can look for it exactly. And so that's where
I have the problem with all you know, whatever, this
free year of credit monitoring they gave you, you probably
have to hand over all your personal information to this
company and so that's where I say no.

Speaker 8 (32:57):
And so of the it's one of the three, you know,
it's one of the three credit bureaus that they will
give us a your free and so when my teacher
friends is up, I'm not doing that, yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
Because then you have to give Now the credit bureaus
have your info. But I think the monitoring service is
probably a separate entity from the standard you know, reporting service.
So where does that leave us, Marcia? I think what
you have to do and I think it's just a
matter of good privacy hygiene. The less you give out
your information, the more protected you potentially are. So what

(33:29):
does that mean when someone asks for your social just
think do I need to give this to that business,
that person, that company, whatever it is. Same thing with
email address. We're seeing now this idea of your email
address is becoming part of your identity as well your
phone number. It's all part of your identity. So the
more that you can get this stuff off of these

(33:50):
databases and off of the web in general, the better
you're going to be. Now, we can't help it when
a company has a data breach, there's nothing we can do.
That information is out there. It will continue to just
percolate throughout the web. People buy lists, They use this
information to text us and to scam us and to
fish us, and so you really have to be vigilant

(34:11):
about making sure that you keep your information out of there.
I'm going to put the link to this Google. If
you do pay for any storage on Google, you can
use this Google one service to scan the dark web.
Now for me personally, let me tell you, oh, actually
it's not even even for non members. You can do this.
So Google one members will get let's see one email address,

(34:35):
so they will scan for your email address and you
can review the results. But if you're a Google one member,
you can do your soci security number, your name, your
data birth, your address, up to ten emails and up
to ten phone numbers. So if you go to one
dot Google dot com and under dark Web report, you
can click try now and then run scan and it
will show you your information. Of course, I'll put all

(34:56):
this on the website linked up at richon tech dot tv.
But that's just one of these services. There are many
of these services that can help you with this. Try
to get your information off of these public databases. You
can do it yourself. You can subscribe to a service
that will do it. But again, the less you give out,
the better you're going to be. And I would definitely
look into using hidden email addresses. So this is another

(35:21):
thing that people are rapidly sort of understanding, is instead
of giving out your real email address when you sign
up for a website, you use what's called a hidden
or a cloaked email address. And what that means is
that it's almost like a password. It's a one time
email address that will only work for that website. So Marci,
thanks for the call. And it's just one of these

(35:43):
things where we really have to be on guard. So ah, man,
this stuff is so concerning with the information. It's just
everywhere I mean you go, I get these these little
alerts and it's just like, oh, your email address came
up here, your password came up here. Can reuse the
same password twice? I will say that again, do not

(36:05):
reuse the same password twice. I feel like a broken
record when I say that, because people want to make
things easy, and you shouldn't make it easy because the
easier you make it for yourself, the easier you make
it for hackers. The other thing to know, turn on
two factor authentication, do it yesterday. Turn it on. I'm
telling you all right. More on the website rich on

(36:26):
Tech dot TV. More of your calls at triple eight
Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two,
four to one zero one. You're doing something smart today.
You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Let's go to Let's go to Ted
in Fountain Valley, California. Ted, You're on with rich Welcome

(36:48):
to the show.

Speaker 10 (36:50):
Hi, rich Ria. I've been using an old Windows seven
laptop for the last thirteen years. I'm now replacing it
with a new Windows eleven laptop. But over the last
thirteen years, I've accumulated a lot of software on my
old laptop. I'm trying to figure out if I'm able

(37:13):
to just transfer that software to the new laptop, or
do I need to go out and buy the very
same programs a second time for the new Windows eleven laptop.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Well, it all depends on the software. So some software
will let you transfer it over, some will not, and
it all sort of depends on how they run their
program So, as you might expect, I switch devices a lot,
I move things around a lot, and I run into

(37:46):
some software that allows you to activate on multiple devices.
Other software that only allows you to activate on one
device at a time. Some software that maybe wants you
to rebuy, or it's a subscription based or it's you know,
whatever it is. So it's really going to depend on
the programs themselves. So what I would do is make

(38:06):
a list of your programs and sort of investigate each
program and what their deal is. So let's say it's
I'm just trying to see on my computer here, what
do I have like something like you know, if it's free.
Now you said you got this over thirteen years, so
some of this software may be outdated for the new computer.

(38:27):
Depends on do they have an updated model, do they
have an updated system for this? So it really depends
on the software. And so what I would do is
I would just go through each software program, make a
list of all the programs that you have, and just
go through and go on Google and go to the
software website and see what it says. So say, you know,

(38:52):
transfer to a new device, or what your account is.
Some of these will have an activation code that you'll
need to use. Other may not. But it really is
going to depend on the software that you're installing. On
the new computer. So a lot of the new software
nowadays is all subscription based, and so they want to
make you pay to use that software, and they sort

(39:15):
of decide can you install that on multiple devices? Can
you install it on just one device? And sometimes it's
even slick enough where when you install it on one device,
it stops working on the previous device. So it's really
going to depend on the software and how they have
it set up. The other thing is that because you've
been accumulating the software for so long, there may be

(39:38):
some products that are available as a website or as
a web based software that you may be able to
switch to kind of easily to do that as well.
So I've seen it all. It just really depends how
they have things set up. But that's quite The upgrade
Windows seven to Windows eleven is a big one, and

(40:00):
so that is going to be a big change for you.
But that's thirteen years on your last laptop is a
pretty good run, so I think you've done pretty well.
But yeah, definitely make a list of the software that
you have before you move to the new laptop. It
sounds like you'll probably have this old laptop with you.

(40:20):
For myself, what I usually do is I'll take screenshots
of my system before I switched to the new computer,
so that way I can see how I had everything
set up. I can see all the different programs that
I had installed, and then I can easily go through
and reinstall those programs on the new computer. And these
days it's gotten pretty good a lot of times. If

(40:42):
you had some sort of activation code with a program,
you can go to the website, type in your email address,
and they'll send you a new activation code. So it
again just sort of depends on the program that you're
using how they decide to do that. So good question, Ted.
Thanks for calling in today from Fountain Valley. If you
have a question, give me a call. The phone lines

(41:04):
are open. It's triple eight rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Let's talk Amazon Prime Day. Did you just shop on
Amazon Prime Day? The data is in July eleventh and twelfth.
Amazon Prime Day twenty twenty three, July eleventh, the first

(41:29):
day has now set a new single sales record for Amazon.
They've never had a bigger sales day in history. Over
two days, Prime members bought over three hundred and seventy
five million items. Now this is the funny part. Amazon
doesn't say how much was sold. They only say how
much was saved. Members saved over two point five billion dollars.

(41:54):
Top selling categories included home, fashion, beauty, popular deal, We're
on AirPods, some sort of like deep cleaner from Bissel,
and lip gloss. Pretty random there. The most popular thing
that people bought was a Fire TV stick. That is

(42:14):
huge because that means that a lot of people are
using these streaming sticks, which we know, but Fire TV stick,
because it's so prevalent and because it's so cheap, it
is becoming the platform to be with streaming. And Amazon
knows this. They are really secretly building a huge TV platform.

(42:38):
And what does that mean later on advertising? They can
control the advertising that people see on that Fire TV stick,
and that means they've got a lot of bargaining power
with these streaming websites and apps. Let's see, now that's
Amazon's information. Then we have Adobe and as they get

(43:02):
receipts from a lot of different people through different methods,
and so they tallied up the data. They don't specifically
cite Prime Day. They don't have necessarily like here's what
people ordered on Amazon, but they know what people ordered
in general. And total Prime Day spending this year twelve

(43:22):
point seven billion dollars, up six percent over last year.
So on July twelfth, Day two spending hit six point
three billion dollars in one day. People were just pouring
money into Amazon on July twelfth and the eleventh. Let's
see discounts electronics, apparel, and toys. Of course, twenty percent

(43:48):
of orders use curb side pickup, which was something that
sort of started during the pandemic. And have you tried this,
this curb side pickup. You basically order the stuff in
the app and then you drive up to target. You
order anywhere. I mean so many stores have this now,
where you drive up and someone runs out to your car.
We did this the other day for Fast Food. Place

(44:09):
the order on the phone and you drive up and
you just wait in that spot and they bring your
food out. And by the way, if you're not downloading
the app for the retailer that you're shopping at, I
highly recommend you do it. You know why, because they're
trying to get people to use their apps, and what
does that mean? They are putting discounts inside the app
I'm telling you, any story you go to, whether it's Target,

(44:32):
whether it is Best Buy, whether it is a fast
food place, download the app. All these quick service restaurants,
all of the coupons and discounts are inside the apps.
So you take five extra minutes to download the app
and place your order that way, I'm telling you it
will save you money. We went to a sub shop

(44:53):
the other day and you go into the subshop, there's
no discounts, there's no nothing, and you go inside the app.
It's by one get on free. So just take the
extra time to download the app and do this, and
when you sign up again, sign up with unique email address,
unique password, and save that information in your phone so
you can use it later. Forty four point eight percent

(45:15):
of sales came from smartphones, so now we're talking almost
fifty percent of people are shopping from their phones. And
that's through not just Amazon Prime, but all shopping, So
that's pretty wild. Amazon Prime started out as a celebration
of Amazon's birthday, and now it's become the largest shopping

(45:36):
event of the summer and one of the largest shopping
events of the year. So Amazon literally created a shopping
event out of nothing. It used to be of Best Reviews.
Jacob Palmer of Best Reviews last week mentioned that it
calls it the Turkey Five, the five days between Thanksgiving

(45:57):
and the you know, the Monday, those five shopping days.
It used to be just Black Friday. Now it's that
entire Like as soon as people are done at the
Turkey dinner, they're like out the door shopping. I don't
think I've ever shopped on Thanksgiving, but it's happening. Okay,
coming up, we got lots more to talk about. We

(46:19):
got a maze VR. Lance Drake and Cook Kim are
going to join us to talk about a new VR
concert app. If you have one of these VR headsets,
you gotta download this app. It is called a maze
VR and they have their first concert inside there. It
is a Zara Larson. I experienced it. It was incredible.
I mean it was a private VR concert just for me,

(46:40):
but anyone that can experience it, it's really really cool.
Later on in the show, we've got Ben Sam. I'm
very excited to have Ben on the show. This guy
travels more than anyone I know. He's always testing out
new smartphones and he does a really good job, very
very fair and he's very worldly as well, so he's
going to join me to talk about a nothing phone too.
But of course we have more of your calls at

(47:02):
triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Give me
a call if you have a question about technology. You
are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology.

(47:27):
You can follow me on social media. I am at
rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, I'm
on Twitter, and yes, I'm still on threads. Last week
it was yes I'm still on Twitter. Now this week
it's yes, I'm still on threads. I'll be honest. Threads
is uh. I don't know is it happening? Are people
still using it? I'm getting a lot of spam on threads,

(47:50):
a lot of spam, not too much interaction. So I
think my theory is that Threads is sort of the
Instagram crowd, and the Instagram crowd is not necessarily the
Twitter crowd, and so I don't know where does that
leave us. It leaves me where. I deleted Threads from
my home screen and replaced it with Twitter again because

(48:12):
Twitter feels like it's a Twitter crowd. They're people that
want information, they are people that want updates. People that
are on threads are Instagram people. Instagram people want Instagram stories,
they want Instagram photos and reels. And so it's gotten
very confusing because I think a lot of people signed
up because it was easy, but then there are they

(48:33):
still staying there and I'm not the only one. According
to some estimates of different reports, let's see, time spent
on threads has dropped over fifty percent from twenty minutes
to eight minutes, according to some numbers from sensor Tower
and similar web. And let's see. A Meta spokesperson told

(48:54):
Gizmoto in an email, while it's early days, we're excited
about the initial success, which they were. They were touting
one hundred million sign ups. But out of those hundred
million people, who is still actually using it on a
daily basis? I don't know. And then Elon Musk tweeted out,
let's see, do I have his tweet somewhere here? Probably

(49:16):
I thought I did, but I guess I don't. But
he tweeted out that the usage on Twitter was up,
like they were reaching new records. So I don't know.
It's a battle. It's tough. I think at the end
of the day, it's tough for you, the consumer, because
nobody wants to sit there and check one hundred different
apps every day. We want to check a couple And

(49:38):
it's already tough enough that we've got Facebook and Instagram
and Twitter and YouTube shorts and TikTok and email and
sms and dms, and it just goes on and on.
So we'll see. I'm not gonna say Threads is dead's
but you know, we'll see what happens with it. We're
gonna have to follow that one. Let's take a question here,

(50:01):
Let's go to Let's go to Kathy. Kathy in Duarte.
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 5 (50:10):
Hi Hi, Rich.

Speaker 12 (50:12):
So my question is, actually it's a statement. First, I
use a Mac and I use the email. I use
yahus on my Mac because I prefer it, and at
least I did it until last night when I went
in to compose a new document rather than the old format.
It puts me inside the little box that says new message.

(50:34):
And I'm trying to and I didn't click anything to
make this happen, and I try to go into help
to figure out how to go back into the old format,
and I'm just not able to figure it out.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
So they redesigned.

Speaker 12 (50:47):
Design. Yeah, when I click on an email, it comes
out it looks exactly like it used to. But when
I click on compose, I get the little box that
I never liked, a little box. So that's why I
didn't use the mail function that came on my map.
I went, I switched right to Yahoo, and now it's
reminding me of the one I switched away from.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Oh no, okay. And so when you when you compose
a message, it's composing it in a little window versus
a larger window, right.

Speaker 12 (51:16):
As opposed to going into that email where you can
click reply, right, it's this new message too, and then
subjects and you can attach documents and whatever on the bottom.
But I prefer to have the old email in case
I'm addressing it to something. And this is like it's
a brand of email, no matter what.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
And so does it look like the entire website has
changed because I'm looking I'm looking inside, you know, on
anything about Yahoo mail redesigned, and I don't see anything
for like a year.

Speaker 12 (51:46):
That's so interesting because it just happened yesterday. And everything
still looks the same to me. You know, I'm wondering,
maybe I should just, rather than restart, just close down everything.
And then is there a way to go out of
y'allhoo email and then go back into it and maybe
the old Parmatt will come back.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Yeah, Well, there's a couple of things you can do.
Would I would see, look in your settings and see
if there's a way to revert to classic view. There
might be Sometimes when these whenever there's a big change
with any sort of online service, they typically know that
people do not like change, right. We are creatures of habit.
We like things to look the way they look, and

(52:27):
it takes a while for us to adapt to the
new newness of things. So what I would do is
look at.

Speaker 12 (52:33):
One of the things I did try was I did
click on the three little dots inside of an email. Actually,
when I did it last night, it would say revert
to classics. Yeah, I was supposed to look to look
for where it said revert to classic but it does
not give me that option.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Oh so it doesn't even give you that option. Well maybe,
so I'm wondering if what happened was maybe you didn't
have maybe you were on the long runway of the
new you know, when I said I looked this up,
it said it was a year ago that they kind
of read, you know, changed things. So maybe you were
on that grace period and that grace period has ended,
and so now that option to go back to the

(53:13):
old way is just not there. So the only thing
I could recommend is perhaps using a different app or
something to access your email on your computer. I know
you said you didn't like the included email app on
your Mac, but there are some other ones. The one
that I think a lot of people like is Edison Mail,

(53:35):
So that's one that people like. There's so many, I mean,
there's Spark. There's a lot of different email providers for
the for the Mac computer. So maybe check out some
of the just options there and maybe you'll like something
that's a little bit different. You know, you can go
with Thunderbird. There's Outlook if you want. Actually, you know what,

(53:56):
I might recommend this to you since it's free, I
would just maybe try micro Soft Outlook and connect your
account to that. So just search for Microsoft Outlook on
the Mac. You can download that app and it just
came out with it it's brand new and it's like
a very classic email app and you can log in
with your Yahoo account that way and check it there.

(54:16):
And so hopefully Kathy you'll like that better. But I agree,
we don't like change. It's when these things change, people
don't like it. No one likes change, but it happens
to the best of us. All right. Coming up next,
we're going to talk to a maze VR about how
you can experience concerts in virtual reality. And if you

(54:37):
have a call or if you have a question, give
me a call at Triple eight rich one on one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to
one zero one. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich
Demiro here with you on the Sony backlot in Culver City, California.
This is where they record a lot of music and
also you may have heard of a couple of shows
that they do here called Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.

(54:59):
I'm sitting here with Lance Drake is the creative director
at Amazed VR.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
Lance, thanks so much for joining me.

Speaker 13 (55:04):
Thanks thanks for being here.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Yeah, so let's talk about this concert that I just
experienced in virtual reality. I was in a Metaquest headset
and Zara Larson was literally inches away from my face,
singing and dancing. Explain to me what I just experienced.

Speaker 14 (55:23):
Yeah, so you just got a preview of our Zara
Larson VR concert experience and this is the launch and
a preview of our home app, and we represent the
future of VR concerts.

Speaker 13 (55:35):
We offer the highest.

Speaker 14 (55:36):
Quality and stereo fidelity and immersiveness and it's it's, in
my opinion, a completely new medium for musicians to explore
and get closer than ever to their fans.

Speaker 13 (55:48):
So we've heard about VR before.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
There's been a lot of starts and stops with VR,
but now that Apple is coming out with a headset,
it seems to have legitimatized this technology. Where are we
with view?

Speaker 14 (56:02):
You know, I think we're at the beginning of VR,
and that's what's most exciting is that the possibilities are
endless and it's kind of a new level of experimentation
and communication. And I think that's why Apple's entering now,
is because this represents raising the ceiling for the way

(56:24):
people communicate and use digital tools. And what's really exciting
about the Apple launch is that they always bring the
human touch to it, and I think that's what is.

Speaker 13 (56:36):
Going to be the breaking point is that.

Speaker 14 (56:39):
You know, in the past couple of years, we've been
given the promise of the metaverse and what is the metaverse?

Speaker 13 (56:44):
And it's not really defined.

Speaker 14 (56:46):
And honestly, that humanity and that human spirit, which we're
also exploring in our application, I think represents the future
of VR.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
So the concert that I experienced was not like your
typical concert. It was almost like a solo performance just
for the person that's watching. And I'm sitting there and
Zara Larsen is in some sort of virtual reality set.
Explain to me how this is different than a typical
concert you would go to or just see in VR. Yeah.

Speaker 14 (57:17):
So we shoot on the highest quality stereo cameras and
we place the artists in the most immercible and dynamic
CG environments. So unlike other metaverse or other digital experiences
that typically either are an avatar representation of a person

(57:39):
or of a musician, this is the artist singing to
you and performing to you. It's better than a front
row seat at a concert. But it's also different. It's
a completely new media. I'm really excited for what we're
hoping every artist across the world to just roll up
their sleeves and create this whole new genre of communication

(58:01):
and creation.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
You call it a whole new genre, and it really is,
because it felt like the most intimate experience you could
have with an artist. They're performing just for you. That
is different than anything we've seen before. If you're at
a concert, they're very far from you. If you are
watching a music video, it's kind of a music video.
This is almost an entirely new way of experiencing your

(58:24):
favorite artist. Do you think people will take a liking
to that. Yeah?

Speaker 13 (58:28):
Absolutely.

Speaker 14 (58:29):
You know, it's all about super fans now and fandom
and every fan of their favorite artist, and any fan
they're detail obsessed. They want to know the wardrobe, they
want to know the designer. They want to know the
nails and the makeup artists and the shoes, and they
want to be immersed in the world and the lore
and the story of music. And you know, our company

(58:52):
is detail obsessed. And it's almost like a dream state.
You're somewhere in between reality and in this highly customized
bespoke show that's for the fan, and it's also giving
fans permission to look because you're making direct eye contact

(59:13):
with your favorite artists.

Speaker 13 (59:14):
And how much is a meet and greet.

Speaker 14 (59:17):
These days to get a handshake backstage for a moment.

Speaker 13 (59:21):
This is for fans to return to forever.

Speaker 14 (59:26):
I think as a kid, if I had the chance
to see Michael Jackson Moonwalk, if I had a chance
at the Motown twenty five, or I had the chance
to see Madonna where the bride like a virgin dress.
Our company represents a chance for artists to be forever.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
How do you get the app? And how much does
an experience like this cost?

Speaker 14 (59:45):
So Our May's VR app has launched and it's available
on Meta headsets and Steam and will soon be coming
to Peico and all major VR headsets. We're already dev
toolkitting to on board to the Apple headset when it's
ready to launch, and we're just really excited to give
fans access to their favorite artists in ways that were

(01:00:07):
unimaginable before.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
Tell me about the world that I was experiencing, because
you've got this real life person, but it seemed to
be in a virtual world she was in.

Speaker 13 (01:00:17):
That's part of the dream like state of our shows.

Speaker 14 (01:00:19):
And I think the differential between what we've created anything
that's been done before is that artists are performing live
in a CG environment, and I say it's a dream
state because it's completely controlled. You're not seeing the rigging
of the lighting, you're not seeing the scuffs in the floor.
You're seeing perfection, and it's timed to the music, and

(01:00:42):
it's almost this perfect moment. And it's all about that
moment of connection and complete immersion in this world. And
you know, we collaborate with artists and we help to
help them to design these worlds, and we do it
all in house at the moment, and I think eventually
the dream is for artists to go off shoot their
own shows, ingest it into our platform and soon maybe

(01:01:06):
one day everyone will be able to create their own
VR concert and their own worlds to bring to the masses.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
That's interesting. So you're saying someone even at home might
potentially be able to do this and release something like this.

Speaker 13 (01:01:18):
But like I mean, we're looking really far ahead.

Speaker 14 (01:01:21):
But if you look at the trajectory of two D content,
the revolution and YouTube was someone like Justin Bieber performing
in his living room or in his bedroom and knowing
how to connect to the camera in a way that
was very distinct and special. You have to imagine once
vrs to the masses and people know that tool set
and how to communicate, they'll be able to use what

(01:01:43):
we've created to build their own worlds and light their
own stages.

Speaker 13 (01:01:49):
And that's the dream.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Okay, that's really something I didn't think about. This is
an entirely new medium that people can create for in
their homes. Because if you think about it, you may
not even need a green screen in the future. Your
AI will be able to just take my form and
put it somewhere.

Speaker 14 (01:02:06):
A lot of the secret sauce of our company is
actually our AI tool set, and it's a lot of
auto keying, it's a lot of upresing, it's future proofing
the technology, and it's also eventually going to allow us
to shoot in a variety of spaces. And we'll also
be working on design tools, opening up maybe eventually to

(01:02:27):
the public to where someone in their home and then
create their own Amazed VR concert.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
Let's bring in Cook Kim, head of production at Amazed VR.
Thanks for joining me as well. Nice to meet you too, Cook.
What do you want people to know when they watch
this because it looks very fluid, it's very seamless, and
it looks like you guys have been doing this forever
but this is still pretty new.

Speaker 15 (01:02:47):
Yeah, I think always the challenge is with like VR. Obviously,
I think there's not much people who worked a long
time and for your format, the video format is selfish
is very different, and I think the most challenging part
is the sterele So having the perfect aligned left and

(01:03:08):
right footage will give that vividness and immersiveness and the
feeling that the actual, real human size person is right
front of me.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
Are you excited to get this into the eyes of
people out there?

Speaker 15 (01:03:22):
Previously, I think VR was mostly only used for entertainments
and like gaming, especially gaming heavy. With like Apple announcement,
I was really excited because now this technology is going
beyond just gaming. It's just trying to coming closer to
like regular people's life, using for work and other like

(01:03:45):
everything in our lives. So yeah, I'm pretty excited. I'm
just curious how people will react to our app and
also I think it'll be a great way for artists
and fans and I just want their action fast.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
Cook Kim and Lance Drake of Amazed VR, thanks so
much for joining me. You gotta check this app out.
It is very impressive. If you can get your hands
on a VR headset or you have one. It's called
a maze VR. You gotta see what I saw. Go
to the website to download it. I'll put the link
at Richontech dot TV. More rich on Tech coming up
right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich

(01:04:25):
Demiro here talking technology with you at Triple A Rich
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. If you have a question
about technology, give me a call. Phone lines are open.
Let's go to Kerrie in uh Is it Sanni Yanez, California?

Speaker 4 (01:04:48):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
Perfect, I love that area. Beautiful.

Speaker 5 (01:04:51):
It is beautiful. We're very lucky to live here. And
thank you for being there. That's helpful.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
Well, thank you, thanks for holding. I know you're on
for a while. What can I help?

Speaker 5 (01:05:00):
I was listening to your show and I thought, maybe
this man can help me with my problem. I have
a friend who's ninety three, and she's wonderful and she
loves watching the chor to France and decided she needed
a TV in her kitchen so she could do that.
So we got a new TV. We hooked it up,
Comcast came and got it all wired. Everything's great, except

(01:05:22):
when we changed the volume to make it a little louder,
and she's not hard of hearing. She hears better than
I do. The little lady in the TV tells us
it is not a smart TV, it's just a regular
new or TV. It tells us that, yes, your volume
is up or whatever, and shows the little bar It
works both with the Comcast remote and the regular one

(01:05:43):
that came with the TV. But the volume doesn't hold there.
As she watches, it eventually reverts to the level that
was on before. So we're not sure where the problem
is and how to fix it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Huh. So as she's listening to the the TV, the
volume's just gradually slowly going down.

Speaker 5 (01:06:04):
Correct?

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
Huh? And so does this happen on every channel or
just the Tour de France.

Speaker 5 (01:06:10):
Good question, because she's only watched so far as far
as I know, because she lives alone. She's amazing. I'll
ask her if she has the same problem on other channels.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
Well, I certainly have heard of volume issues on TVs
where the volume goes up and down based on commercials
or programming, or some people can't hear the dialogue. I mean,
those are all very common. But the fact that the
volume is going down as she's listening, does it get
to a spot where she can no longer hear it?

Speaker 5 (01:06:40):
No, doesn't go that far. It just sort of reverts
to a level that's not terrible. I mean, she says,
it's I'm living with it, but it's kind of weird.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
Yeah, if you set the volume at a certain level,
of the volume should stay at that level.

Speaker 5 (01:06:55):
That's what we thought.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
Now here's my other question. When she's having this issue happen.
Is there anything on the TV that shows that the
volume's going down?

Speaker 5 (01:07:04):
No? No, the bar does not come back. The bar disappears,
you know, after you first ask it to do whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
Okay, Now here's my other question. Is the volume through
the box or through the TV?

Speaker 5 (01:07:17):
So through the TV?

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
Okay, because sometimes these cable boxes will use their own
sort of volume and then the TV is secondary. So
here's here's my quick sort of solution that you can try.
Is I understand that you're using the remote that the
cable box came with to adjust the volume? Correct?

Speaker 5 (01:07:39):
Well, we tried both. Oh, you have tried both and
they do both work.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Okay. Yeah, I was gonna say, because I think what's
happening is the cable box sends a signal out to
the TV with and so what cable companies have done
over the years, because people have sort of issues in
general with audio and connecting and making sure that the
cable box controls the TV as a universal remote, what
they've done to get around that is the cable box

(01:08:03):
itself will adjust the volume up and down the signal
that it's sending to the TV, so that even though
it seems like you're adjusting it, you're actually just adjusting
the cable box volume. So the volume on the TV
is sort of separate. So I would try I know
you said you did this, but I would try setting
the volume on the TV. Does it bring up the
same exact menu?

Speaker 5 (01:08:24):
Uh? Not quite sure how to answer that. You get
a bar?

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
Yeah, because I feel like I'm curious if you get
the same bar with both because if you're.

Speaker 5 (01:08:35):
Good question, I'm not there now, so I can't tell you.

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
Because if you get the bar with the cable box
or one or the other, then they may be independent
volumes from each other. Oh wow, you know what I mean,
Like the TV may have Now. I don't think the
TV is anything to do with this. I think that
the TV is innocent. I think that the TV. The
TV is not the culprit here. I do believe it's
the cable box and it either has some sort of

(01:08:58):
leveling function that's happening or something is adjusting it. She
wouldn't happen to have a cat that's stepping on this remote,
would she, because that happens in my house. We have
we've foster kittens and they step on the remote and
they change things, and it's really unfortunate. Okay, So what
I would do to try to figure this out is
I would go into the settings on the cable box

(01:09:22):
and look for anything to do with audio, and in
specifically anything to do with audio leveling or audio limiting
or dialogue, and I would change those settings and see
because I think that this cable box is somehow switching
the settings. That's that's my theory.

Speaker 5 (01:09:40):
That sounds like a good idea. We tried the settings
on the TV. I cannot find how to get to
the settings on the cable box.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
Well, on the cable remote, there should be either a
menu There should be there should be a menu button
on there. You may not, you may not have looked
for that, but that's what I would look for and see.
I think the cable box is the culprit here. That's
my theory.

Speaker 5 (01:10:01):
Okay, I will try it and she will be very appreciative.

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
Yeah, and call me back and let me know, because
I really I'm this is like, this is stumping, Like
I want to drive there, like I might have to
do a wine tasting trip and just stop.

Speaker 5 (01:10:13):
We could manage that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
I may have to like figure it because now you've
really got me thinking about this. So the good news
is about this show, there's other people listening that may
be like, rich this is how we fix this. And
so hopefully in the next week in the feedback segment,
someone's listening that says, I know how to fix this. Andy,
They say, this is what I did. But in the meantime,
I think, look in those menu settings for anything with

(01:10:35):
audio on the cable box and see what the deal
is with that. But Carrie, hopefully we can figure this out.

Speaker 5 (01:10:42):
Thank you very much, and thank you for your help.
Ver love yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
Thank you so much. Good luck with that one, all right?
Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four to two four to one zero one. Man, that
one really really stumped me. Man, I want to know
what's causing that TV to go up and down in
the volume. Leslie is in Laguna Beach. Leslie, you're on
with Rich.

Speaker 11 (01:11:06):
Hey Rich, thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Yeah, help you.

Speaker 11 (01:11:10):
I use the app meant to track my expenses because
it coordinates with the bank and everything, and so I
can have everything in one spot. And the last few
months my connection with Chase banks. They say that you
have to reconnect, which has happened before with other banks

(01:11:31):
or other accounts. But the difference this time is that
when it reconnected, it deleted all of my data three
months before. That's annoying and I looked at up online
and people are having a problem, but there's no response
from ment on what's happening or how you can get
that back.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
No, and this has been going on forever. Well, I
mean you may or may not be able to get
it back because Chase only offers a certain amount of
data transactions through the service, and so they may they
may only and I don't know if it's ninety days
or thirty days. But the beauty of Mint is that
they keep those transactions for the year, and if you
delete them, you go to do your taxes at the

(01:12:11):
end of the year, and it's all gone. So I've
used Mint forever. I think that it's been It was
better when it was independent. Now it's owned by Into It.
It's kind of like, you know, it's they're trying to
get you to pay, trying to get you to pay
for stuff. So you can't reconnect your Chase because sometimes
you just reconnect and the stuff is back in there.

Speaker 11 (01:12:32):
Now it happens three times now, And what are.

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
You using for this? What are you doing on Mint?

Speaker 8 (01:12:38):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
Are you just trying to see your value or you
just are you like your your financials or are you
trying to actually budget through this?

Speaker 11 (01:12:44):
No, I'm not budgeting, but I use at the track
line expenses of the categories. Okay, So at the end
of each month, I look at the category total and
I transfer it to an Excel spreadsheet so I can
compare months to months and year to year.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):
Okay. The only thing I can do is offer you
some some alternatives to Mint. But I would I would
try to delete this log in and maybe change your
password on Chase and then relink it because it should work.
Mint is pretty big and so is Chase, and I
think they work pretty well together. If it was a
different bank, I might say other some other things. You

(01:13:19):
can look at every dollar and there's one called personal capital,
which I think they call them power. Now check those out.
You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
Phone lines are open at triple eight rich one O one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to

(01:13:41):
one zero one. Hello at Richontech dot tv. Is the
email address. I've got all of your feedback for the
feedback segment coming up. We're going to talk about some
of the things that you email me, and you can
follow me on social media. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
and threats at rich on Tech and the website. Don't

(01:14:03):
forget rich on Tech dot tv. Totally new fresh. Just
go in there. It's got that like you know, fresh
minty smell because it's so new and clean, so fresh
and so clean. We got Ben send this hour to
talk about the Nothing Phone two. It's been a while
since I've seen such a unique smartphone hit the market,
and this is one of them. We'll see what Ben

(01:14:25):
thinks about this phone. He is a reviewer for XDA
and also his own YouTube channel and speaking of watching stuff,
on TV. Roku Channel now on Google TV, so if
you have a Google TV device, you can download the
Roku channel. If you're not familiar with the Roku channel,

(01:14:46):
it's one of these channels that gives you a lot
of stuff to watch for free, more than eighty thousand
free movies and programs, including original programming. They've got the
Al Weird Al Story, They've got a movie about that,
They've got the Great American Baking Show, and three hundred
and fifty free TV channels offering news, sports, entertainment. So

(01:15:12):
this was available for some other platforms. It was exclusive
to Roku at the beginning, but now it's available on
Google TV. So if you're looking for something where you
can watch stuff for free, and that's what really people
want nowadays. People are sick of paying for their streaming services.
Now they want these free services like Pluto TV and
all these other ones. Free V from Amazon and Roku

(01:15:35):
Channel available now on Google TV. So if you have
one of those, you can download Roku Channel and watch
some new stuff. All right, let's go to Let's go
to Linda in San Clementy. Linda, you're on with Rich Hi.

Speaker 9 (01:15:50):
Can you hear me?

Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
I hear you great, what's up?

Speaker 9 (01:15:52):
Well, I'm sitting here charging my chestla, so I'm not
at my computer.

Speaker 1 (01:15:56):
Oh nice, you have a basic.

Speaker 5 (01:15:58):
Question for you.

Speaker 9 (01:16:01):
I'm sure your screeno may have told you, but so
I don't want to go on and on. But it's
about my track pad. It's an Apple track pad, or
I guess you'd call it mouse, okay, And I have
a desktop computer Apple, and it has always done, for instance, email,
I click on it and I move it over to
some fork into I drag it to my folders. But

(01:16:24):
all of a sudden it stopped being able to drag,
and I have to click on it and then pull
it down to move too. It Also, if I go
to take an email and forward it, and i'd like
to take some of the email away, I used to
be able to blue it out by holding it down
and delete it, and now I have to take the
cursor to one side, and each line out.

Speaker 5 (01:16:47):
I went up.

Speaker 16 (01:16:48):
I googled.

Speaker 9 (01:16:49):
I found out you know, what to do about the
track pad is all fine in the settings as far
as I'm sure, and I hard closed the computer a
few times, however that remains okay.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
So it's just it's it's acting kind of funky like
the not the way it used to act.

Speaker 9 (01:17:08):
Yeah, I just doesn't do the two things I generally
is it for, which is moving you know, an email
or something I purchased, But I'd like to put it
over on the side of online quorterers, and now I
have to do it. It's kind of like manually.

Speaker 1 (01:17:20):
I guess. Yeah, it's just it's just not working the
way it used to work. So a couple of things. Uh,
you start, You restarted your computer? Yes?

Speaker 13 (01:17:27):
What?

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
Okay, so that's done. You did that. What about this?
I'm assuming it's like an Apple track pad, right, it's
like an Apple branded one. Yes, okay. Have you tried
resetting the actual track pad?

Speaker 14 (01:17:42):
Well?

Speaker 9 (01:17:42):
I went up the settings and I looked at how
it is set, but I don't know how to reset it.
Is it in that I go to settings? Will it
say reset your trackpad?

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
There should be a physical button on the track pad.
I don't have mine with me here, but there should
be a physical button.

Speaker 9 (01:17:59):
Have you on that button that turns it on and
off light?

Speaker 1 (01:18:03):
No?

Speaker 9 (01:18:03):
I have not done that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:04):
Okay, so what I would do is do that next.
So press that for five seconds until it turns off,
and then press it for five more seconds while you
turn it on instead of just pressing it quick to
turn it on, hold it, press it for five seconds
to turn it on until the light starts flashing, and
that will kind of like that'll kind of reset it.

(01:18:24):
So you may have to reconnect it to your computer
after that situation and that that hopefully should bring it
back to the factory settings and everything will be back
to the way you remember it. If that doesn't work,
I would also maybe go into the Bluetooth settings on
your computer and delete the track pad and reconnect it

(01:18:46):
and see if that helps. But those are those are
the things that I would do to kind of like
see if it can come back to life the way
that you wanted it. And you said you checked in
your settings, because I would go in there and just
make sure that nothing got changed because there are a
considerable amount of settings when it comes to these track pads.
I know, it just seems like a simple point click,

(01:19:06):
drag whatever, but there are a lot of things that
these little track pads can do, and so you know,
that's that's something that you might want to look into
as well, especially the point and click, and you know,
sometimes there's there's different little settings in there that may
the gestures are you know, just that could have changed.
I'm not saying they did, but I think that this

(01:19:27):
just is a little bit needs a reconnection. Let's put
it that way.

Speaker 11 (01:19:31):
Thank you.

Speaker 9 (01:19:32):
I will definitely try that. I love your program. I
learn a lot because I'm not techy, but after listening
to you, I feel like, I, you know, recharge my
my techi brain.

Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
I love it. Well, you're you're recharging your tesla and
your brain. How do you? How do you like the Tesla?

Speaker 7 (01:19:46):
I love my titts.

Speaker 5 (01:19:47):
I've had.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
This is my third your third test, so you were
early on you? Why not? Wow? Okay, Well I love mine.
I I think it's great. So except someone someone hit mine.
If you listen to the show, you know I talked
about someone hit and run and I had I didn't
have my cameras turned on, so I didn't have the
recording of that hit.

Speaker 9 (01:20:08):
Well, my first one was the ass and my son,
being young, he ordered it for me with ludicrous. I
never used that portion of the car.

Speaker 1 (01:20:17):
Oh you should have. You gotta try that.

Speaker 5 (01:20:21):
I tried it once.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
Yeah, that was the best. Tesla lent me a car
one time, and I did the all I did was
literally take every friend and family member I knew down
a street and we just all, like, you know, shot
back into the seat. Right.

Speaker 9 (01:20:35):
Oh yeah, I felt like I was a mission impossible
movie for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:20:38):
Exactly. All Right, Linda, thanks so much and keep me
posting on if you get this working again.

Speaker 9 (01:20:43):
Okay, thank you, thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):
Thanks for calling. Appreciate it. All right. Uh man, there's
a lot of a lot of issues this weekend. I
think the heat is bringing out the issues in people.
Let me, let me hold on, let me grab this.
I mean, I want to talk about this. But since
Linda was talking about her Tesla, you know, EV's in

(01:21:07):
the sun, in the heat, and we're going through a
heat wave, not only here in Los Angeles, but in
a lot of different cities right now. You're ev it'll
be okay in the heat, but the heat definitely taxes
the battery a little bit more. So, here's what you
need to know. If you've got an electric car, you
know this heat could affect your battery's health, especially over time.

(01:21:31):
It could decrease the range. The reason is the chemicals
in the battery. I don't want to get into the
technical details. Of that, but basically they speed up and
it can it can cause issues with the long term
range of the battery. So if your car is in
a hot garage for a long time, that can affect it.

(01:21:53):
Cold water or cold weather not so much, doesn't really
it changes the range just temporarily but not permit. And
of course many evs are in places like California, Texas
and Florida where the temperatures are the highest. So battery
tips according to La Times park in this shade. Don't

(01:22:14):
fast charge unnecessarily, So if you don't need to fast charge,
don't like charge overnight. Slowly keep your car plugged in
when you're not using it, Like if you have it
in the garage, you can plug it in. That will
let your car naturally keep the battery cool because it
has systems in place to do that. And you can
limit charging to eighty percent. So I know you get

(01:22:37):
this car and you want it to go the full range,
but I do believe I've been plugging mine in and
charging it up to one hundred percent for a couple
of years now, and I do think that has definitely
taking the range down for sure. So eighty percent that's
where you want to be on a daily basis. Sure
you can charge full if you're going on a road
trip or something like that, but on a day to

(01:22:57):
day basis commuting and all that is the magic number. Yeah,
the heat definitely will have an issue, will have an
effect on it. So just know that if you have
an EV it'll be fine, but just know that it
could potentially have some long term issues with your car.
All right, let's uh, let's take a break. Triple eight

(01:23:20):
rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to
two four to one zero one is the phone number
to call. You can also email It's hello at richon
tech dot tv. And if you haven't checked out the website,
rich on tech dot tv brand new, cleaned up, ready
to go. And I'll put the show notes for everything
I mentioned here. So do I have time? I have

(01:23:42):
time for one more? I have time for one more
quick thing? I'm getting the look from Bobo that I
got I got like quick quickick. I'll just tell you
two quick things that are happening inside Google Google Calendar.
In Google Calendar, they have added a feature that lets
you send a link to someone and you can find
a mutual time to meet. So it's kind of like

(01:24:04):
this app called calendar Calendly. How do you say that
calendly c A L E N D L y calendly
calendly dot com. A lot of people use this to
find a time that works for both people. Now they've
built that directly into Gmail, so you can find that
when you're composing an email, look for a new calendar

(01:24:27):
icon and it will show you the times that you're free,
or you can share a link to someone and both
find a time that you can meet. So that's kind
of cool. And then this is really neat. If you
have a business that relies on paid appointments, you can
actually take paid appointment bookings right through Google Calendar. Now
all you have to do is connect your Stripe, set

(01:24:47):
a price, and create a booking page, and then customers
can go to your little page and pay for the booking.
So if you have some sort of consulting business or
whatever you do where people pay for your time, you
can now do that directly in Google Calendar. And Google
Calendar says that they connect to Stripe, they don't process
the payments themselves. You have to deal with all that

(01:25:09):
through Stripe. But you can enable this paid booking feature
inside Google calendar. So if you want to get charged
for your time or charge for your time, there you go.
I'll put all this on the website rich on tech dot.
You all right, now we're going to break. Welcome back
to rich on Tech where we're talking technology. Let's go

(01:25:34):
to Jerry in Rancho San Rancho Santa Margarita. Is that right?

Speaker 9 (01:25:40):
Yep?

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
But I've got Rancho San Margarita on my notes here,
so I was like, I don't know if it's San
Margarita or Santa, but welcome to the show.

Speaker 7 (01:25:49):
Well, it is Rancho Santa like clause Margarita.

Speaker 1 (01:25:53):
Oh wow, so you got You got Santa Claus and
Margarita all in the same name. That's a that's a
fun place. What can I help you out?

Speaker 7 (01:26:00):
Well, it is Rancho Santa like clause Margarita.

Speaker 1 (01:26:04):
Oh wow, so you got You got Santa Claus and
Margarita all in the same name. That's a that's a
fun place. What can I help you with?

Speaker 7 (01:26:12):
Well, I'm a longtime follower. You and I have traded
emails over the past years. My question, I've been a
mac Apple user since.

Speaker 1 (01:26:23):
Day one and day one of what.

Speaker 7 (01:26:27):
Well nineteen ninety.

Speaker 1 (01:26:29):
Oh wow, okay, so day one, I.

Speaker 7 (01:26:31):
Don't want to show my I don't want to show
my age. But I've since been on Mac computers and
and of course they're iOS forever.

Speaker 1 (01:26:41):
Okay, Well, the question is Rich.

Speaker 7 (01:26:45):
I don't know if you've run across this, but I've
got a external eight terabyte card drive that I use
for time Machine and for backups on my MacBook and
my desk stop and some reason I got this NTFS

(01:27:05):
that popped up, and now the external drive says read only,
and there are like a bunch of sites that want
to charge for like I guess to fix it, to
fix it, but then I sent the email to them,

(01:27:27):
I said, what happens if I canceled the subscription? And
they said, well then it won't work. So I don't
know if I'm going to have to just get a
new external drive, move everything over to that one, and
then reform at this one that says read only.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
Okay, well, what hold on? So what have you used
this drive on your computer?

Speaker 12 (01:27:52):
Oh?

Speaker 7 (01:27:52):
Yeah, I mean it was my main backup for and
I can't do it. Won't let me do time Machine,
it says, they back up sales because it's read only.

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):
Now, okay, did you plug this into a different computer.

Speaker 7 (01:28:06):
No, it just I think this NTFS pop up came
on and I thought maybe it was my error that
I tried to get rid of it, and I think
it installed this Microsoft NTFS that you know obviously is

(01:28:26):
not compatible with the Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:29):
Yeah, NTFS is is a format for the drive that
the Mac does not like, and so that it's interesting
that that it switched, though I'm trying to figure out
what made it switch.

Speaker 7 (01:28:43):
I might have, you know, when I think back, and
it's been I've been trying for like a couple of
months to you know, go on different sites and do
different searches to see how to fix it. And some
people have suggested, well, the best thing to do is
get another drive and you're going to have to reform

(01:29:03):
at it and then it'll be fine. But this is
a great Sea Day eight terabyte that I've had for
a couple of years.

Speaker 1 (01:29:10):
Well okay, okay, Well so here's my so Number one,
you could a couple of things you could do with this.
First off, you could try to repair the permissions. So
have you tried to do that in finder? Have you
done that at all? Well?

Speaker 7 (01:29:24):
I think with the you know, and I thought about
taking it to and I knew about fixing permissions. Yeah,
but for some reason they won't.

Speaker 1 (01:29:35):
Yeah, probably won't do it because it's NTFS. Uh.

Speaker 7 (01:29:38):
Well, but I think when I talked to someone at Apple,
when I went to a Genius bar the latest I
guess iOS is on desktops or such that Mac os,
they said they won't let you do like years ago
used to be able to go in and click permissions.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
Well, you could still do it, it's on. It's in. If
you do a command eye, you can see the permissions
and just switch it, you know, to read and write.
But if it's in NTFS is probably not going to
let you do that. So a couple of things you
can do here. If this is a drive that you
want to keep but the information on it is you
can get rid of it. You can just go into

(01:30:18):
disc utility and format it and just make sure you
format it as a drive for the mac which you
probably want to use the Mac os extended. You know.

Speaker 7 (01:30:28):
Yeah, I've got so many files, like three or four
terabytes of stuff that I need that you need.

Speaker 1 (01:30:33):
Okay, all right, So in that case, I.

Speaker 7 (01:30:35):
Guess I have to get a new drive.

Speaker 1 (01:30:37):
I guess, well, I don't. I think you could try
to repair this with you can try a program. The
one that I use that I think you could may
be able to do on here is is clean my Mac.
That may do it. The other thing. The other thing
is you might be able to go into disc utility
and click first aid and see if that yeah, I

(01:31:01):
won't do it.

Speaker 7 (01:31:01):
Okay, go the disutilities and I haven't you clean my map, but.

Speaker 1 (01:31:07):
I would you can see if that can do it.
But if it's not, this is a tricky one because
it is format in a different way. I would say, maybe, uh,
you got to transfer this data if you can't get
the Mac to read this without losing everything. All right,
coming up next, we're gonna talk. We're gonna talk nothing
phone on rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.

(01:31:28):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology man.
So many great questions today, Thanks for calling in at
Triple eight. Rich one o one joining me now is
a guest that I'm very excited to have because he
is someone that I look forward to watching his reviews
on YouTube and not just that, but all of his travels.

(01:31:49):
Benson is a tech reviewer UH based in Los Angeles,
but lives in Hong Kong, so or well, Ben, you
can explain. Ben, You're now You're in Thailand, so you
are you are all over my friends, but you do
Ben's gadget reviews on YouTube and you also write for
the tech website XDA Developers. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (01:32:10):
Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:32:12):
So where do you actually live these days? Because I
know you've been in LA for a while and then
you're you know you're in Hong Kong, So where do
you actually live nowadays?

Speaker 2 (01:32:20):
I'm actually living in La.

Speaker 16 (01:32:22):
I was in Hong Kong for the past eight nine years,
and I moved back to LA about like six months ago.

Speaker 1 (01:32:28):
Okay, and now.

Speaker 16 (01:32:29):
Right now fine, just because I'm happen to be between
work trips. I have to go to go to Beijing
for work and there's going to be another work trip
in Seoul, which I know you know about. Yeah, waiting
for that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:41):
Okay, I'm actually going to be there so I will
see you. I'm going cool, nice, I'm excited. It's a
Samsung event, so I'm I'm looking. I've never been so
to Korea. Okay, let's talk about the nothing phone. This
is the nothing phone too. I talked about it a
little bit earlier in the show. Without was a while ago,
So let me see if I have any notes on

(01:33:02):
this phone. But I this is a startup that it's
formerly a couple of people from one plus went over
London based startup it's called Nothing. This is their second
phone and it's the first time it's available in the US,
and it's an Android device six point seven inch screen.
What is your impression of this phone?

Speaker 16 (01:33:26):
I like it quite a lot because I like it
it has a lot of personality, which you can't always
say about about phones that aren't like instead a flagship level,
like this is like a little bit below the flagship level.
It's what I would call like an upper midrange phone,
and I think that has a lot of personality considering

(01:33:47):
it's in that segment.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
Yeah, that's what's interesting about it, is like it's it's
a basic Android device, but to me, it's one of
these devices that, like I've had a hard time putting
it down because I really think that I called it
the you know, almost like the iPhone of Android. Like
it's just it's simple, the software is clean, the phone
does what you need it to do. The battery last forever.

(01:34:11):
The camera's pretty decent. I mean, I think they came
up with a pretty good device here.

Speaker 16 (01:34:17):
Yeah, I think that's exactly what our call paid the
CEO of Nothing. That's what he's aiming for to make
a kind of stylish and minimalistic device that you know,
kind of takes on a little bit. That's like Apple's
m right, like stylish, minimal.

Speaker 1 (01:34:34):
What about the back of this phone? It's got this
glyph interface. Do you think some people are saying it's
basically these lights that you can program to, you know,
so you put your phone face down, and if you
get an important text or an important voicemail, it will
light up just those glyphs instead of you know, ringing
your whole phone or making you look at the notifications

(01:34:54):
all the time. Do you think this is a gimmick
or do you actually find some use out of this.

Speaker 16 (01:35:00):
I lean slightly towards the gimmick part, although I in
my review I didn't call it that, But I'm slightly
leaning in that direction, mostly because I feel like a
lot of people would just they're completely okay looking at
the front of the phone, because the whole point of
the Cliff interface is you're still looking at your phone,
you're just looking at the back instead of the front.

(01:35:21):
And call pay gave this whole speech about how like
he wants to keep people's screen time down to help
them more focus in the moment. And I guess some
people that could be very useful for them, But for me,
I find that all of them the likes looking very cool.

Speaker 2 (01:35:38):
I most of the times I just rather look at
the front of the phone.

Speaker 1 (01:35:40):
I kind of agree with that, Like, I felt like
it was odd to place my phone face down. As
much as I understand the reasoning for that, I feel
like we've all kind of gotten to this point where, yeah,
some people are like super you know, they can't stop
looking at their notifications, but there's also a helpfulness there,
so you know, I think that's a maybe just a

(01:36:04):
personal preference for how you want to use it. What
did you think about the software and the cameras, especially
because I you know, when I first took a couple
of pictures, I was like, Wow, this camera is actually
like I just I just I'm so programmed to be
disappointed by things and so I but when I started
taking pictures, like this is actually pretty good.

Speaker 16 (01:36:24):
Yeah, considering it's a relatively, you know, you know, it's
price range. There's actually some debate on whether or not
this phone is it's priced properly on the internet right now,
particularly coming from other regions like not the US. But
for me, this this phone isn't expensive, and I think
at this price range of camera is quite good. But

(01:36:46):
I'm also not that surprised because it uses the same
image sensor. The main camera is a lot of one
plus phones, and I believe nothing like the software team
right now, it's like sixty five percent of it. It's
former one plus engineer, so Calpa has poshed a lot
as former colleagues to jump over and one plus make
pretty good phone. So I think that the camera is

(01:37:08):
about what I was expecting, and that's what software.

Speaker 2 (01:37:13):
I like it a lot.

Speaker 16 (01:37:14):
It's very clean, as fast as minimal. So one of
the cool things about the software, or maybe gimmicky things.
It's all monochrome, at least when you first boot up
the phone. You can change it back to color later,
but it's monochrome and the app icons don't have titles
on it, so at first I was a little bit
thrown off. I had a hard time identifying which apps

(01:37:34):
I want to tap on. But after a day, I
actually have grown to like it, and I kind of
like how I really like the home screen, how it looks.

Speaker 2 (01:37:42):
Sometimes I just found myself looking at it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:45):
Yeah, So it's a little odd because their whole mo
is to get you to use the phone less. So
they have the monochromatic mode, they have the icons that
are sort of black and white and no labels, and
so it makes you kind of much more thoughtful in
how you use your phone. I don't know, I can't
get used to that. I tried it. I just couldn't
get used to it, and it just was one of

(01:38:06):
those things where I had to switch back. But the okay,
let's talk about some of the downsides of this phone.
So number one, there's no optical zoom to speak of,
so it's you know, it's more like an iPhone I guess,
you know, fourteen, it's not like a pro device. There's
no e sim. I thought that the screen was kind
of tough to see in bright light, and maybe that's

(01:38:28):
just you know, I was at the beach kind of thing,
like it was really tough to see, like in direct sunlight.
And then of course the water resistance is pretty low
for a phone in twenty twenty three. Are those kind
of the downsides that you saw?

Speaker 2 (01:38:44):
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 16 (01:38:45):
And the lack of a zoom lens in particular, it's
disappointing to me because I really like using a zoom
lens on all my smartphones, and I found the ULTRAI
camera to be quite underwhelming in lowla conditions. During the
day is fine, but at night, the Ultra camera photos
are very very soft.

Speaker 1 (01:39:05):
M hmm. Interesting. Uh, I you know, I it's funny
because I thought that the the odd thing was that
even in like pretty brightly lit situations, I was still
getting like a police hold still for like a couple
of seconds to take a picture, which I thought was
kind of odd because like this, you know, shouldn't shouldn't
really be happening, Like it's it's pretty bright. But overall,

(01:39:26):
I mean, would you recommend this device to people?

Speaker 2 (01:39:31):
I would.

Speaker 16 (01:39:34):
Certain type of users, I think. The lack of I
think nothing in the US. The only selling directly to themselves, right,
it's not through a carrier. Yeah, so that might that
might be a tough sell in the US because a
lot of American consumers just to get the phones through
a carrier. So they can get subsidies and discounts and
all that. So even though I like the phone, and

(01:39:56):
I think if you're like an enjoy entusiast, because if
you're an enjoy dou sy as like a phone geek,
I definitely would recommend a phone. But like the average person,
like if like my cousin or my mom passed me,
they would still be it would still be the safer
bed to get an iPhone or get a Samsung Galaxy
because you can get it to a carrier, so you

(01:40:17):
can get it at a cheaper price, and those phones
probably still have a little bit more proven track record
of getting software updates down the line.

Speaker 1 (01:40:25):
And this is a It starts at five hundred and
ninety nine dollars for a one hundred and twenty eight
gigabyte model. It's available starting July seventeenth directly from the company,
and it works on AT and T and T Mobile
here in the US. Now there are Verizon antennas inside,
but Verizon is really picky about letting certain devices on
its network that are not verified whatever that means, and

(01:40:49):
so you may be able to activate this on Verizon,
but after a couple of days they will shut you down,
so I wouldn't even bother. But I will say Ben
that I really overall think that they did a really
nice job with this device. I think that there's like
a couple of little things where I'm like, ah, it's
just maybe not the best device in the world, and
maybe if the price is cheaper, I would feel a

(01:41:09):
little bit differently, But I still think it's a pretty
nice little second going from nothing. What since I have
you and you test all these phones, what are sort
of your top three devices that you recommend to people
these days looking for Android or iOS? I guess so
this question.

Speaker 16 (01:41:26):
Is always tricky for me to answer because I basically
have to look at it from two different scenes. There's
like the American phone scene, which is relatively limited compared
to what Asia and Europe gets because there are a
lot of Chinese brands that don't sell in the US
at all, but they are major players in Asia and
Europe and they make very good phones. So I was

(01:41:47):
looking at the US scene, my top three phones would
have to be I still like the Google Pixel seven
prol the best. I think the camera is still my
favorite of the bunch of all the phones in the US. Anyway,
the second would be the glass z Phone four because
I am fully on board the foldable phone BANDWRAG and
I like having a larger screen that fits into my pocket.

(01:42:09):
And then number three would probably be the iPhone fourteen
Pro Max.

Speaker 2 (01:42:15):
In the US.

Speaker 16 (01:42:15):
And then if you care to know about my non US,
there's like two you know, brands that Americans have never
heard of, so maybe they're not relevant.

Speaker 1 (01:42:22):
Give me give me your top non US because I
know this is why you travel a lot, so I mean,
you see these things in other countries that we don't
have access to here.

Speaker 16 (01:42:31):
So my overall number one phone would probably be the
shaw Me thirteen Ultra. Shaw Mei is one of the
biggest tech companies in China, and the thirteen Ultra phone
has in my opinion, the best overall cameras were now
even better than the Pixel seven pros. This main camera
has a one inch image sensor from Sony. It's the
same sensor used in like point and shoot Sony camera,

(01:42:54):
so it's it's like almost like a real camera.

Speaker 1 (01:42:57):
Wow. And are you excited? Do you think that the
Samsung folds that are coming out in a couple of
weeks do you think they're gonna be something to rival
what we have right now.

Speaker 16 (01:43:08):
I think they're going to from the leagues i've seen,
they are going to be improvements, but maybe not as
big as a lot of people have hoped for. The
Full five in particular look almost identical to the Full four,
but the Flip five gets a big upgrade because outside
screens are gonna be much bigger.

Speaker 2 (01:43:24):
So that will be fun.

Speaker 1 (01:43:25):
That's the trend that we're seeing with those flippables. You
got the flippable and the foldable, Ben Sin, We're gonna
leave it there. Thanks so much for joining me today.
I know it's early in Thailand. Thank you. I will
see you in a couple of weeks in Korea, and
I've got all the information on the website. If you
want to follow Ben on Twitter, it's Ben c Sin
s I N and check out his review on XDA

(01:43:48):
developers of the Nothing Phone two. Ben, thanks for joining
me today. Thanks for having me on all right, appreciate
it all right. Coming up next it is the feedback segment.
We're going to close out the show with everything you
had to say this week. You're listening to rich on Tech.

(01:44:09):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you closing out the show with the feedbag segment. Yeah,
I said feedbag. It's your feedback, but I called it
the feedbag one time, and I guess that stuck. Got
an email from Daniel. He said, hey, Rich, you had

(01:44:32):
a caller on that said they couldn't get an NTFS
drive to work on their Mac. I only use NTFS
drives because I can share between my MAX and PCs.
All you have to do is buy a program called
NTFS for Mac from Paragon Software. It's not expensive and
I think you get a thirty day free trial. There

(01:44:53):
you go. I've used it for yours. Thank you, Daniel
and Barry. Now you have it. Check it out. Paragon
Software NTFS for Mac and says it's fully compatible with
Apple Silicon M one and M two. So this is

(01:45:14):
why I love this show. Listeners contribute to the show.
It's amazing, all right. Message from Data, Hey Rich, I
have an Apple iMac that's from twenty thirteen. It's no
longer getting security updates. I just purchased a new Mac Mini.
How can I transfer my data from my old Mac
to the new one. I've not done a backup. I

(01:45:35):
really don't have many files on it. Can I just
put my files on a flask drive and upload to
the new computer, or is there a way to transfer
some other way? Thanks? Yeah, you know what I would say.
If you don't have a lot of files, just put
them on a flask drive and move them over. You
can do a time machine backup and restore it that way.
It'll ask you during setup if you have an old
Mac that you want to move from personally, because this

(01:45:57):
computer's so old. I would just take what you need,
put it on the flask drive, set up the computer fresh,
the new Macmini, and then just drag over the files
that you have in the flash drive. I think that's
going to be the easiest way to do it. Data.
That way, you get a nice, clean new computer with
your files on there. Alexander says, thoughts on your opening

(01:46:18):
monologue accessibility features. Forgive my cynicism, but you really think
that's the only reason. I mean, there's probably some other benefits,
but that will come in later. To play right. Alexander
is referring to the voice situation on the new iOS
seventeen where you can have it say anything you want.

(01:46:41):
And this is my it's called personal voice. This is
what it sounds like, what's going on?

Speaker 3 (01:46:47):
I'm Rich Demurou and this is riched on Tech, the
show where I talk about the text off I think
you should know about and answer your question.

Speaker 1 (01:46:53):
So that's what it sounds like. Does it sound just
like me? I don't know. I mean I could have
to say anything I want, but I don't think Apple's
being nefarious. They said. The reason for this is specifically
they called out als. So if you have that condition
and you lose your voice over time because of that,

(01:47:17):
this is a way to have your computer speak in
your voice when you're talking to people versus a computerized voice.
But yes, they're will As long as there's AI, computers
and technology, there will always be nefarious reasons for people
using everything. Right, let's see James says, Hey, Rich, any
suggestions what can I do with this lost air tag

(01:47:40):
I left behind when I visited Sedona in February. I'm
able to activate lost mode, but no one contacted me,
and now somehow it's moved to Flagstaff. Yeah, James, that's
a lost cause. Just delete it from your system and
that's I hope it wasn't attached. And did you just
lose the air or did you lose what was attached

(01:48:01):
to it, because usually the AirTags are connected to something,
but it says you just lost an AirTag. So number
one thing to do when you lose an AirTag enable
the lost mode and if you find an air tag,
use your phone, make sure the NFC is on and
tap the top of the AirTag to the top of
your phone and it should give you the information. I'll

(01:48:21):
bring up a website with a person's information. Let's see here.
Laura says, Hey, Rich, I purchased the ring dash cam
in January after you did a segment on it. It was
supposed to be delivered by today. Now the delivery date
pushed to March twentieth, twenty twenty four. Why is there
such a delay? Don't know. Maybe either they're recalling this

(01:48:44):
cam or there's just I think Amazon delivery days change
a lot, so hopefully March twenty twenty four. Wow, I
think that's a fluke. Hopefully maybe a lot of people
ordered them during Prime Day and they just pushed it,
but hopefully you'll get it earlier. Keep me posted hosted. Uh,
let's see, Leo says Leo. Leo says, I don't know
if you're boomerang Email yourself is still working, but mine's not.

(01:49:08):
It appears to be gone from both the Apple and
Android store. Even if you can install it, it does
not work. This leaves me with email myself. Yes, I
switched to email myself as well, Leo, and I don't
like it as much because I don't like the icon,
but it does the trick. And finally, David says, is
there a way to convert American airlines miles into gift cards? Google?

(01:49:30):
Bard says to create an account at points dot com,
but I can't find a way. If you have an idea,
I don't think you can do it. David. I think
points dot com is now doing sort of white label stuff.
They're not doing their own. They used to exchange points
in their own way, but apparently they don't do that anymore.
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the show.
Check out the notes at richontech dot tv. Next week,

(01:49:53):
I'm going to tell you about new AI enforcement technology
cities are using to help buses write tickets to cars
blocking their lanes. My name is rich DeMuro. Thanks so
much for listening. There are so many ways to spend
your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here
with me. I'll talk to you real soon.

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