Samsung Galaxy update to do, cutting your cable bill & why AI passwords are a bad idea (162, February 21, 2026)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you have a Samsung Galaxy phone, there is something
you should do right now, why you should never let
AI generate your passwords, and the reason a tiny Kodak
camera is going viral. Plus your tech questions answered. What's
going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech.
This is the show where I talk about the tech

(00:21):
stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe
the tech should be interesting, useful and fun. All Right,
here we go, let's do it. Let's open up those
phone lines at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(00:42):
Kim is standing by to get your call on the air.
Give me a call. If you have a question about technology,
email is also open. Just go to rich on Tech
dot tv and hit contact. All right, We've got a
couple of great guests this week. We're gonna talk about
some really interesting stuff. Number one, how satellite powered Bluetooth

(01:03):
could transform search and rescue by detecting everyday devices from space.
That's an interesting one. Alex Harrow from the Hubble Network
will be here to talk about that. Then we got
Jeremy walk in from Number barn. He's going to talk
about how you can look beyond the three big wireless
carriers and save some money. And later in the show,

(01:23):
we've got cybersecurity expert JP Castelanos. He's going to explain
the biggest tech threats hitting consumers right now and what
you can do to stay protected. Well, I hope you're
having a fantastic day. It feels really good to be
back in the studio here. Last two weekends, I was
on the road in New Jersey and the bitter cold,

(01:45):
and then in Las Vegas for my brother's bachelor party.
And I am back here, home, sweet home, in the studio.
It feels so nice. I'm also wearing if you're watching
on the KTLA plus stream, we don't live stream the show,
but we show the first ten minutes of the show
on KTLA plus. That's the free streaming app for Fire TV.

(02:06):
Let's see Roku and also Apple TV and some Samsung TV.
She can watch some of the behind the scenes here.
But I'm wearing a Caterpillar sweatshirt. This was a surprise
because I was at CS a couple months ago at
the Caterpillar booth and they said, do you want a sweatshirt,
and I said sure, they said we'll send you one.
Forgot all about it and it finally arrived and it's

(02:27):
very very comfortable, I have to say. So, let's see.
This week, Gemini got a new trick. I know we
talk about AI a lot. There's so many pros and
cons of AI, but if you're using it in your
job or in your personal life, you know it could
be kind of fun. Right Well, it has a new
trick up its sleeve. Gemini can now make music. They

(02:48):
added this thing called Leria three. This is their AI
music model. All you have to do is type in
a description, upload a photo or a video, and Gemini
will generate a thirty second original track with music, lyrics,
and style. I mean, it's really quite impressive what it
can do. So I generated a song and it's it's

(03:10):
I just put in a photo of myself doing this
radio show, and I guess I'll just let you hear
what it sounds like. All right, righty, I'm gonna play this.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Here we go.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
I got to bring it to the beginning here, can
you hear that?

Speaker 3 (03:24):
Bringing you tech news beyond Compare with helpful tips and
gadget reviews. And updates to keep you ahead of the news.
Get actionable advice.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
You can truck us Rich Shanteg taking a slow walk
out of the studio. At this point, I'm ai, this
is a jingle. It might have taken someone many, many
hours to make something like that, and then they probably
get fired. But that's what you can get with a

(03:59):
I and Look, this is not meant to replace the
professionals out there. This is not meant to replace composers
and people that write music for a living. Google says,
this is just for fun. It's to be creative. Let's
say you're making a birthday card, a digital birthday card
for someone. You want a little soundtrack and you want
their name in it. You want it to be personalized.
That's what this is all about. Maybe you want to

(04:20):
do something like a little video for Instagram or TikTok.
You want to make your own soundtrack. This is what
that's all about. So it's rolling out right now. If
you have access to Gemini on the web, which everyone does,
you should be able to see it. Just go to
Gemini dot Google dot com tap tools and it says
create music. And by the way, their tools have gotten

(04:40):
quite elaborate. Over the past couple of years. Now you
can create images, you can do deep research, you can
create videos, music. I mean, there's a lot, and these
AI tools just continue to evolve on a weekly basis.
Something else I've been playing with this week this tiny camera.
This is called the Kodak CHARMERA. You can't see it,

(05:03):
but it is. I mean, if you're watching on the
KTLA Plus you can, but this is a tiny camera.
It fits in the palm of your hand. And people
are going nuts over these things. And so I mentioned
this on the news. One of the distributors sent me
one to test it out. It's a blind box, if
you know what that means. Basically, you buy this sight
on scene. It's about thirty dollars. You don't know which

(05:24):
one you're gonna get. There's about seven of them, but
they're all tiny. They all have the Kodak branding on them.
It's a tiny digital camera with just a couple of switches,
a little viewfinder, a tiny little screen on the back
so you can see the picture that you're taking. On
the bottom. It's got USBC, it's got a micro SD
card slot, and you basically just take pictures with this thing.

(05:44):
And they are not high quality under two megabytes. They
also have a whole bunch of filters. It's really tough
to take a selfie because the lens is not that wide,
and the photos when you look at them on your
phone they look kind of fun. When you look at
them blown up on a big screen, they are not
high quality at all. But I will tell you this
is fun. It's nostalgic. We are so obsessed with smartphone

(06:08):
picture quality. This completely throws that out the window. So
I've been taking pictures with this thing of my kids
and you know, of myself and all this stuff, and
it's just kind of fun. I see the appeal, right,
I see why people want this thing on their keychain.
It's all about the vibe, right, It's not about the quality.
It's all about just having a little fun. I could

(06:29):
see these things if you go to a wedding. I
could see people putting these on the table like we
used to do with disposable cameras. But here's the thing.
I have not taken a bunch of pictures in low light,
but I'm guessing in low light you are not going
to get a very good picture. But if you just
want something fun, you just want something a little retro.
It's undeniably different, and you can put it in your pocket,

(06:51):
put it on your keychain, makes a little sound, there's
even a little flash. So again it's called the Codec
CHARMERA good luck getting one. They sell out as soon
as they get in stock, they sell out. Let's see
if it's even on Amazon. Okay, it's on Amazon. Oh well,
I take it back. You can easily buy on Amazon
thirty five dollars, free delivery in three days. Okay, So

(07:13):
that tells me that they are not you know, there's
not a whole bunch, and there's a whole set you
can buy for Oh wow, you can buy a whole
box of these things for about two hundred dollars. But
again you find them. A lot of local people are
selling them. I could see if you have like a
little business, like you know, a little candy store or something,
you have these on the on the checkout stand. It's
kind of an impulse buy, but really fun. Seven different designs,

(07:35):
and I got the one that is the red Kodak one.
And if you want to see the pictures that I took,
just go to my website or go to my Instagram.
Actually at rich on Tech. Oh, if you have a
Samsung Galaxy phone, there is something you should do that
you have not been able to do for a very
long time. Samsung Galaxy phones are once again receiving Google

(07:58):
Play system updates. I don't know what the deal was,
but you couldn't get one of these for so long. Now.
These are not your big system updates from Samsung. These
are kind of like incremental updates with new features from
Google that improve the core parts of Android. They also
patch little holes and things like that. So if you
have a Samsung Galaxy phone, you were on older Google

(08:19):
Play versions for months. I don't know why, but now
you can finally get it. I did check it with
my Samsung phone and yes it did get an update.
In fact, it has another update. So here's what you do.
You go to Settings. You go to where is it
Security and Privacy Settings, Security and Privacy Updates. You tap

(08:40):
that you'll see security update and Google Play System Update.
Tap Google Play System Update and I guarantee you it
should show you that there is an update available. You
may have to tap like check for update or whatever.
Mine already has one another one point five megabytes of updates.
These are just small updates, but you will need to
restart your phone to get it to work. But that
is something. I'm just an update nerd. I love when

(09:04):
phones and computers and things get software updates. I know
some people don't like them. I do because it means
that something's been improved, something's been fixed, something that's bugging
me has gotten a little update. And so if you
have a Samsung phone, do that update for sure. I'll
put the instructions on my website, rich on tech dot TV.
All right, I got a lot of plan for the show,

(09:25):
A lot of things planned for the show, including your calls.
I already see the phone lines lighting up eight eight
eight rich one oh one. The website is rich on
Tech dot TV. We're gonna do that. We're gonna have
the guests and we'll just talk about a lot of
great stuff here on the show. You can find me
on social media. I am at rich on Tech. We'll
kick things off with your calls coming up right after this.

(09:58):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro hanging out
with you talking technology at triple eight rich one O
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Let's go to the phone lines and uh
Mike is in in Sino, California. Mike, you're on with rich.

Speaker 4 (10:16):
Hi, Richard I on speakerphone. Is it okay?

Speaker 1 (10:18):
I hear you?

Speaker 4 (10:20):
Okay. I have a lady that helps he's blind, and
she has a dell inspron PC. And what's happened to
her this time is when she tries to log into
the PC, it keeps going back into his incorrect password.
So I assume that what's happening is somehow she inadvertently
changed her password. And I went on Google and I

(10:41):
tried like three things, and I haven't been able to
make any progress. I just wonder how you would approach it.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Uh, Well, it depends how the computer is set up.
So at number one, is this a new PC? Is
it an older PC?

Speaker 4 (10:58):
She's had it running for at least a couple of years.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Like is it Windows ten or is it Windows eleven?

Speaker 4 (11:03):
Then it's an upgraded to Windows eleven.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Okay, all right, so it's running a modern So there's
a couple of Uh, there's a couple of things. So
if she's using a Microsoft account, that's one way of
doing it, so she should be able to reset it
from the there's a whole there's a whole page. I
don't know if you found it online, but it tells
you how to you know, the different ways you can
reset your password for Windows, if you sign in with
a Microsoft password Microsoft account password, you can see on

(11:28):
the sign in screen there's a little thing that says,
I forgot my password, and then you're gonna have to
go to the web and you'll follow the prompts, or
on any browser you can just go to account dot
live dot com slash reset password and it's a weird
kind of extension at the end, it's a dot ASPX
and so that brings me right to my recover your account.

(11:49):
So that would be one way. If she's using a
Microsoft account, she probably is because Microsoft has been pushing that.
If she's been using a pin, there is a let's
see here if you forgot your account pastor oh no, okay,
so number one I would see if she knows her pin,
If she remembers her pin, you might be able to
switch to the PIN on the computer and get in

(12:10):
that way, and then you can change the password on
the computer. And if she's on a local account, you
can do that from the Windows sign in screen. Again,
it's going to say reset password and you'll see the
security questions that you might have set up when you
created that password. Those are the three official ways, and
if you can't do any of those, there is a

(12:32):
little sign in helper tool on this website that you
can maybe click from another computer and see if that'll
get her in. If not, you're gonna have to wipe
this computer, I think, and reset or reset it and
start it over. So hopefully that helps. Mike, thanks for
helping that person out with their computer situation. You got

(12:52):
to remember your passwords, and this happens. It does happen
from time to time where it feels like your computer
mysteriously just like forgets your password. I've had it happen
to me. The couple of times it's happened to me.
It typically the computer is failing, like something like I've
had this happen on my Mac computers where the hard
drive is actually failing, and so when the hard drive fails,

(13:13):
all of a sudden, I can't sign in and it's like, wait,
what just happened there? And so that's really the only
time I've seen that happen. A lot of people will
say I didn't do anything, I didn't change anything, nothing,
I did Oh, I just I just woke up and
tried to log into my computer and it just doesn't work.
Doesn't really happen that way. Sometimes there is something that
you do. But I know that when we know, when

(13:35):
we help people with their computers, it's never the fault
of the person who's operating that computer. It's never their fault.
It just happened. The thing just changed, the sign in change,
the log in screen, whatever it was. The button went away,
the icons got deleted, things got thrown in the trash.
I don't know, this is how I woke up to
my computer. It just did this. But we know that

(13:59):
the culprit is typically the person sitting in that seat.
But it's okay, we won't judge. I know, I'm thinking
of the people that I help with their computers and
they go, I don't know. I just I just got
up and you know, sat up my computer, and this
is what happened, and everything's changed. It's like, okay, sure,
the little uh, little zombies inside the computer, a little
little gremlins changed it.

Speaker 4 (14:19):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Let's go to James and Orange County.

Speaker 5 (14:23):
You're on with Rich Hi, Yeah, you doing this is James,
I'm doing I had a quick question.

Speaker 6 (14:29):
I had a quick question with AI, and I'm working
on my computer and I want to use it. Can
I just say, hey, AI, what is my password? And
would it go and open a door and start now
tracking passwords? Or is that not a good question to
do or is it something that can it figure out

(14:52):
a password?

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Now, when you say figure out, you mean like guess
your password or remember your passwords.

Speaker 6 (14:59):
But because you know, AI is such a new thing,
if I say, yeah, let's I want to open up something?

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, yeah, it remembers things, for sure, It remembers memories. Now,
I'll tell you the the the official answer is absolutely not.
Don't do this, you know, because AI is it's not perfect.
It's not a it's not a place to remember your passwords,
although you probably could get it to remember them now.
I just tried on chat ebt. I said, remember that

(15:30):
my password is crazy Boy one two three, which I
just got off of the post it note on Bobo's desk.
But it but it said I can't store or remember
passwords or any sensitive login information for you. For your safety,
you should never share passwords and chats, emails, or messages.
Best to use a password manager. So number one I'm

(15:53):
gonna recommend James that you use a password manager. I
know that it's tempting, and I understand that if if
I pushed chat Ebt or Gemini or Claude or co
Pilot or any of these ais, if I pushed them,
there's always a way around their safeguards, right If I
was like, oh no, no, I'm just teaching my kids something,
and I'd love for you to remember this. So when
I say tell me my password for whatever website you

(16:17):
tell me that, it says, oh okay, I'll play along.
So there's always ways of getting the AI to play along.
But my official recommendation is do not use AI to
remember your passwords. It's not a good system for it.
It's just not smart. Also, there's a report out this
week that you should not use AI to generate your

(16:37):
passwords because even if you ask it to generate you
a password, it may look like it's a good password.
But this security firm, a Regular, found that the passwords
were not random. They followed patterns. So out of fifty
passwords generated by Claude, twenty were duplicates. That means that
if it's generating a password for you, it's probably generating

(16:59):
a similar password for other people. And although these passwords
look random, they're not, and so you have to be
really careful with this stuff. Use a password manager. Bitwarden
is free. There's many others that are out there. It's
built into the iPhone, built into Android. Use a password manager, James,
that is a fantastic question. AI is amazing, but not

(17:20):
for your passwords. Eight to eight rich one O one
eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one
zero one more rich on Tech right after this. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one O
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Fascinating topic. Right now, we'll get back to

(17:42):
the phone lines in just a moment. Alex Harrow is
a CEO of Hubble Network. He also co founded Life
three sixty and he's got a new technology that is
just amazing to me. It's satellite powered. I'm gonna let
you explain this, but it's basically an array of satellites
that can detect things on Earth with Bluetooth. Alex, you

(18:02):
gotta explain what this is all about.

Speaker 7 (18:05):
Yeah, absolutely so, Hubble Network. What we're building is a
series of satellites that orbit the Earth in low earth
orbit that are able to detect signals out of just
traditional devices that have off the shelf.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
Bluetooth chips in them.

Speaker 7 (18:21):
So pretty much any off the shelf Bluetooth chip with Hubble,
once they're Hubble enabled, we're able to pick them up
with our satellites, and eventually, when we build out the
full constellation of sixty satellites, we'll be able to hear
every part of the world in sort of real time.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
So that's incredible. But okay, you've got let's say we've
already got something that has Bluetooth in it, right, you
said Hubble enabled. Do you have like a repeater on
Earth that you have to use to detect where that
is and then send it up or these satellites actually
able to see this thing from millions of miles away
or I don't know how many miles of satellite is up.
Maybe it's tens of thousands.

Speaker 7 (18:58):
Yeah, so a few hundred miles, about five hundred and
fifty kilometers. But to answer your question, we require a
bit of software on the device, So it does it
require a repeater, there's no gateways necessary. It's just from
you know, say your traditional air tag tile like device
with our software running on it, and that software changes

(19:21):
the Bluetooth signal just to make it a little bit easier.

Speaker 8 (19:24):
To detect three hundred miles away.

Speaker 7 (19:26):
And then on the satellite side, we have thousands of
antennas that are all doing very advanced digital be informing
and signal processing to be able to hear these very
low power signals out of the Bluetooth chips.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Okay, this is wild, and there's so many implications here.
I mean, we obviously have this big case happening right now,
the Nancy Guthrie disappearance case, to kidnapping, whatever you want
to call it. This could be instrumental in something like this,
or keeping tabs on loved ones or kids or you know,
someone with dementia. I mean, would this be applicable in

(20:02):
all those situations?

Speaker 8 (20:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (20:05):
Absolutely. The reason I started Hubble actually goes back to
my days of Life three sixty. At Life three sixty,
we saw all this opportunity to help families keep safe
and connected through hardware devices. You know, nowadays there's about
ninety million monthly active users of Life three sixty and
they're using it to keep in touch with their family
members that have smartphones. But whether it's your pets, or

(20:28):
your kids, or your elderly parents, there was a lot
of use cases where we could help keep families even
safer with hardware. But the existing cellular and satellite networks
were way too expensive, way too power hungry, lacked coverage
in these kinds of situations, and so I eventually ended
up starting Hubble with my co founder Ben and Ben's

(20:50):
the inventor of the Amazon Sidewalk wireless network, and so
we saw this huge opportunity to fill a gap in
the space where existing cellular and satellite networks just fall short.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
And just in case you're listening and you're wondering about
what the Amazon Sidewalk network is, it's using all of
the Amazon devices, like the echoes out there and the
Ring devices to create its own secondary network. And at
CES this year they actually said they're covering like ninety
five percent of the US or something like that, which
is pretty wild. Now do most people know that's turned

(21:23):
on in their devices? I'm not sure, but you know
it's there, and I think it's very helpful for finding
things in a pinch. So you've got some competition Alex.
You've got Starlink, which is obviously they're also throwing up satellites.
You've got Leo from Amazon. They're throwing satellites into into space,
and a whole bunch of other satellite companies. Are you

(21:44):
guys the only ones that are doing this Bluetooth aspect?
And how tough is it going to be to convince
the tiles of the world and the air tags of
the world to add your Hubble software to the Bluetooth chip.

Speaker 4 (21:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (21:58):
Absolutely, so, you know they're there are a lot of
excitement and competition and what I'll call like the direct
to cell device networks today, that's what you mentioned Leo
and Starlink. You know, Traditionally they've required pretty big dishes,
and so in these kind of like you know, emergency
and IoT Internet of Things kind of use cases, you

(22:19):
can't take a big dish and attach it to every
single device that you care about.

Speaker 8 (22:24):
It's just too expensive and too i practical.

Speaker 7 (22:26):
Now they've started to focus on how to connect cell
phones as well, and that's very interesting. But because they're
using kind of the standard cellular protocols, they're still very
power consuming and they require a cellular modem, which is
much more expensive of the technology than bluetooth, and so
it really only works with cell phones, but it is

(22:49):
able to connect cell phones through satellites and that's amazing technology.
But it's a bit different than the you know tech
that we're trying to offer, which is how do we
connect very small bluetooth device is like air tags and
tiles to satellites. And so I think of us as
going after different markets. Guys like Starlink are very focused
on cellular devices that have very big batteries, are already

(23:11):
very expensive devices, and we're going for how do you
enable millions or hundreds of millions in one day, billions
of very low cost devices to you know, solve problems
like cattle tracking, natural disaster, emergency preparedness, you know, oil,
gas and mining, agriculture, all these important problems where you
need to be able to track millions and one day

(23:33):
billions of devices all around the world.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
So if I had like a cattle of what do
you call it? A fleet of cattle? I don't what
do you call cattle?

Speaker 9 (23:40):
Uh?

Speaker 4 (23:41):
Heard?

Speaker 1 (23:41):
I heard? Okay, I heard, I should have known that.
So if I had heard of cattle, theoretically in the future,
with your system. I could have each one of them
tagged with one of these little bluetooth chips, and I
can keep track of wherever they go at any time.
I mean, that's just wild to think about.

Speaker 7 (23:55):
Yeah, exactly. And you know, you probably don't want to
spend hundreds of per head of cattle to be able
to track it. But you know, with Hubble, you're talking
about a few dollars per head of cattle, and all
of a sudden, it's very easy to make it economical
to do your entire herd.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
So how accurate is the location data that you're getting
off of these trackers.

Speaker 7 (24:17):
Yeah, our current generation of satellite we get down to
about one hundred meters, so it's close enough to get
you within sort of bluetooth range of where that tracker is.
Future generations of our satellites, when we have multiple overhead,
we'll get close to the performance of GPS all without
needing a GPS chip at all. So that's one of

(24:38):
the other fun interesting advantages of Hubble, as we remove
the reliance.

Speaker 8 (24:42):
On GPS and having to have a GPS in the device.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
I mean, this sounds like what you're working on could
be transformative for our world. Are you excited about this.
Do you feel like we're getting close to this technology
for the average person and how far out are we?

Speaker 8 (25:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (25:01):
I mean I was very fortunate to have successfully scaled
life through sixty all the way through an IPO in
a public listing. So hubbles the next thing that I
want to build into a hopefully very big, public independent company.
And we see the huge opportunity here to you know,
not only solve very important problems like in the consumer

(25:23):
space like we're talking about, but also all of this
sort of very interesting industrial and enterprise applications as well.
And I truly believe when we're successful, billions of devices
will be connected to this network and solve some of
the world's biggest, most important problems that aren't being solved today.
To answer your question, our main goal is to continue
to scale the constellation. We have our seven satellites that

(25:46):
are live today. Those are global already, so they already
cover every part of the Earth, but they only cover
it roughly every twelve hours or so, so twice per day.
Once we get to sixty satellites, then we'll essentially live
up to the vision of a continuous coverage network.

Speaker 8 (26:04):
And our goal is to do that over the.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Next three years.

Speaker 7 (26:07):
So just continuing to build and launch satellites is what
I focus my day on.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
And I've got about ten seconds. But is there a
chance that these satellites will ever get too close to
each other? With so many companies launching satellites in space
at this point.

Speaker 8 (26:22):
Yeah, it's a real concern.

Speaker 7 (26:23):
But luckily space is big and you have a lot
of places to fly, and so as long as every
company is thoughtful about collision avoidance, it shouldn't be that
big of a problem. And there's a lot of lot
more room.

Speaker 8 (26:36):
In space than there is here on Earth to avoid
each other.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Well, I'm glad they're smart people like yourself figuring this
stuff out, because it's too much for my brain to
handle the fact that you can see a Bluetooth tracker
from space and you know, get texts from outer space
and all this stuff is just pretty wild. Alex Harrow
from Hubble, thanks so much for joining me today. I
really appreciate it.

Speaker 8 (26:56):
Yeah, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Tell me the website Hubble network. How do we find it?

Speaker 10 (27:00):
Uh?

Speaker 8 (27:00):
It's Hubble h U B B l E dot com.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Okay, awesome, all right? Eighty eight rich one O one
eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Back after this with your questions. Welcome back to rich
on Tech rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking
technology triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. I love

(27:25):
seeing all the lines lit up. That means, uh, we're
doing something right right, Bobo agreed. Website rich on Tech
dot TV. You can find links to everything I mentioned
right there. Uh, this is episode one sixty two. I've
sat here one hundred and sixty two times. That's incredible. Uh,

(27:45):
Kim is on the phone. She's getting all of our
calls lined up. Let's go to Uh. Sounds like Linda
has a comment on something, So let's just go to
Linda in Burbank. First. Linda, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 9 (27:55):
Oh Hi, I'm hearing how you sit. You're saying how
people can't remember their pass or.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, it's a problem, Linda.

Speaker 9 (28:02):
Here's a good way for people to remember their passwords.
It's very easy. I just remember old just used old
address numbers.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
It's so easy, old address numbers.

Speaker 9 (28:14):
Yeah, like like I am okay, I am seventy years.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Don't give away you remember, don't give away your pass word.

Speaker 9 (28:21):
My address was from the time I was three and
a half to seven and a half.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Okay, so you're saying use that as your password. Yeah, okay.
I mean here's the deal. And I think that's you're
with complexity. You've got you know, you've got numbers, combination
of numbers, letters, uppercase, lowercase, and it could be long
like your your address could be like I can tell
you my address from my childhood home right now. I'm
not going to, but I can tell you, uh, because

(28:46):
I remember it, like off the top of my head.
And you're right, I remember a lot of the places
I've lived over the year. So it's an interesting thought.
The only reason why I would say that you have
to be a little careful with that system is because
there's so many data breaches now, and there's so many
of these people find theer websites that they reveal a
lot of this information. Now, is that going to be

(29:07):
enough for someone to guess that you're using your home
address as your password. I don't know, but I think
I think you're onto something. It is it is a
simple way to remember a complex term. In fact, if
you look at passwords that are easy to remember, like
three word passwords. That's an easy Another hack is that

(29:28):
you can use three words as your password with dashes
or something like that in the middle, and that's it's
almost like a pass phrase, and that's an easy way
to remember things. But the bottom line is, you really,
really really want to use a password manager in today's
day and age, because the problem is the tools that
the bad actors have at their disposal can test a

(29:49):
lot of passwords very quickly. So it's not a human
that's sitting there trying all these passwords like we do.
We sit there, we type, and we mistype, and we
try again, and it takes us. It takes me like
three minutes to log into my work computer every single
morning because I have such a complex password that I
always get one little thing wrong every single time. And no,
I don't have a password manager there because it's my

(30:10):
work computer. Now, my regular computer much easier. I've got
touch ID, I've got ways of doing things. I think.
Past keys are also a very easy way to log
into websites at this point. If you're if you're trying
to avoid them, just just give into it. Pass Keys
are a good way to do that as well. But
the bottom line is you really want a complex, unique

(30:31):
password for every website, and the reason for that is
you don't want to give people any clues as to
what your passwords are. And if you're using old addresses,
it's great, but it's still something that could be guessed.
And I, you know, I just have to caution against
that in a big way. But I love that you're
thinking about this, Linda, and I love the fact that
if it's working for you and it's secure, you know,

(30:52):
I don't want to say like, because I'm going to
get so many emails from security folks saying, Rich, I
can't believe you agreed with that, Like, I'm not agreeing
with it, but I'm saying like, I can't tell you
what to do. I'm just telling you what the best
way of doing things is. And you know, if you
use a variation on that, fine, but use a password manager,
password manager, password manager, or past key two factor authentication.

(31:13):
I'm telling you. I get emails from you every single day,
and so I'm like a doctor. I hear when you
go into the doctor with a weird rash on a
place of your body that you don't really want to
show another human, Like, I get it. It's embarrassing. The
doctor has seen it all. They're not worried about it.
It's not embarrassing to them. Now, if it is, they
have a problem because they shouldn't be. You can imagine

(31:35):
if you showed your doctor something they laughed, Bobo, is
that our happy?

Speaker 10 (31:39):
What?

Speaker 8 (31:40):
No?

Speaker 1 (31:42):
That would be weird. That would be weird. That would
be weird. But the reality is doctors see it all,
so they shouldn't have any They should not flinch when
you show them something, right, Yeah, exactly if they Oh,
I've seen a lot of bumps on butts, but not
like that. Hey it looks like a present. Hey Jane,
come on in here, Jane, you gotta see this.

Speaker 6 (32:04):
Come in.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
I know you just checked it. You just write checks
to people, but come on in, you file the insurance,
Come on in. You gotta see this anyway. So that's
like I'm saying, I hear all this stuff from you
on a weekly basis. I don't share everything that people
tell me on the show because there's just so much.
But I see the the roadblocks and the things that
trip people up. A lot of it's fishing, a lot

(32:25):
of its passwords, remembering passwords. So anyway, use a password managure.
That's the best way to do it. All right, Let's
go too. Thank you for the call, and I do
appreciate that. Let's go to line too. We've got Carter
in Monterey, California. Beautiful place.

Speaker 4 (32:41):
Thank you Rick for receiving me. Monterey is a beautiful place.
I've lived here most of my life. I'm in my
eighties and I can't I can't tell you a better
place to live in.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
Any If I can afford the plug.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
I will be there. I passed through it on my
way to Santa Barbara, and I'm always like bride, Oh
I think lives here.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
Well, here's a question I have that that might be
puzzling to a lot of people. I live with my
wife and when I in my home most of the
time and I misplaced my phone, I have it underneath something.
It drops off of walls, under the bed. There's various
reasons why it gets lost, but I can't find it.

(33:24):
But I'm forced to ask my wife to call my
phone so I can then hear it ring wherever it is.

Speaker 6 (33:30):
Now.

Speaker 4 (33:31):
The problem is is when she's not here, what is
it that I can do to recover my phone or
find it?

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Great question. How long have you been married?

Speaker 4 (33:40):
A little over twenty years. Now we're in bliss.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Wow, congratulations going down the Bliss roads. I love it.
I love it well. I mean, you're in a beautiful place.
You got a beautiful wife, beautiful marriage. So everything's good
except for this problem with your phone. You lose it,
she's out of the house. How do you find it? Okay?
So the good news is there are some ways to
do this. You mentioned I seen in the notes you said,
yeah to Samsung, So there are there are a couple

(34:04):
ways of doing this. Calling it is fine. Obviously, that's
not gonna work if the phone is on silent or vibrate.
So there's a couple of things that you can do.
Number one, Samsung has this thing called smart Things Find
built into their devices. It's pretty much built into all
of their devices, their phones, their tablets, their watches, their earbuds.

(34:25):
It's basically the equivalent of Apple's Find My, but it's
built into Samsung. So that's number one. You can go
to a website smart things find dot Samsung dot com.
You sign in with your Samsung user name and password,
and that will allow you to ring your phone to
locate it and so it will make a sound even

(34:45):
if it's offline. It can help you find it, and
I think it's using some things like other nearby devices
to help you with that. So that's number one. So
smart things find dot Samsung dot com go there. You
can find your phone there. The other thing is is Google.
Because you're on Android, they have their own version of
this built into every single Google phone. So if you

(35:06):
go to Google dot com, I believe, let me just
see if I can. I'm trying to see if I
can use the shortcut. No you can't, Okay, So if
you go to Google dot com, slash Android slash find,
and I think you can go to Android dot com
slash find. That's a quicker way of doing it. Android
dot com slash find, and if you go there, you
can tap on one of your devices and you can

(35:26):
play a sound and it will play a sound on
that device. And so I'm gonna try that with my
there it is, I just tap playsound. My Samsung Galaxy
S twenty five Ultra is playing a sound. I didn't
have to call it, and it will play that sound
even if your phone is on silence. So that's number two.
If you have a Google device, in your home. You
can just say h Google find my phone or h

(35:48):
Google ring my phone and it will find that as well.
So lots of options for you. If you're on the
Apple side of things, it's iCloud, dot com, slash find
great question, Car, Thanks for the call today. More rich
on Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with

(36:11):
you talking technology Triple eight Rich one on one. You
got a question about technology. You need a recommendation. You're
looking to do something, whatever it is eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. That is
the phone line to get into the show. You can
also send me an email. Rich on Tech dot tv

(36:32):
is the website. Go there, hit contact, send your email there.
That's what Laura did. She said, can you recommend an
anti virus for iPhone? H No, Laura, all the ones
that you see on the app store are bogus. You
do not need antivirus on an iPhone. Apple has an
entire operating system that is locked down so that apps

(36:54):
can't scan each other or the whole phone like they
can on a PC. So it's just not even like
if someone were to create a virus for the iPhone,
which has not been done yet. It couldn't even get
out of its own app because everything on the iPhone,
it gets a little complicated. But everything, the way that
apps interact with each other on the iPhone is all

(37:15):
through systems that Apple like, little like little pathways that
Apple makes for the apps, and so they have to
follow very strict protocols to do those things. And you've
seen it, you know, like an app can access your
photos and things like that. So I think the bigger
issue is to be aware of your data. What's accessing
your data When you download an app from the app store,

(37:38):
you know, don't just give it full access to everything
on your phone. You know, your your photo collection, your contacts.
Think about this stuff. I think the bigger risk for
people in general, no matter what you're doing these days,
is phishing. I'm talking fake texts, emails, those links that
you get. That's what you need to be aware of.

(38:00):
That's what you should focus on because that's where you're
gonna give your information up. So keep your iPhone updated.
Only download apps from the app store. I mean it's
really almost impossible to download apps outside of the App Store.
And then I think if you're browsing, you probably want
to turn on Chrome's Enhanced Safe browsing. Also, if you want,

(38:21):
you can use a VPN with a threat protection. A
lot of them have a system where they will kind
of scan the stuff that you're clicking on your phone
and make sure that you don't go to malicious websites.
But as I posted today on my Instagram at Richontech,
all those protections mean nothing when a link first gets shared.
And so this morning I got a link that said

(38:42):
I needed to pay my hosting account. I clicked the link.
You know, I was testing. I knew it was bogus,
but it led me right to the site. All the
protections I have in my computer, none of them caught it.
Because it was so new. It needs a little bit
of time to like learn that this is a bad website. Now,
if I went to that same website right now, it
probably would flag it. You know, it's been a couple
of hours, but just be very careful. Check it out

(39:03):
on my Instagram atverage on tech. If you want to
see what I'm talking about, Let's go to Fern in
Santa Anna. Fern you're on with rich.

Speaker 11 (39:12):
Yes, I'm old and have trouble with technology. I've had
an old Ranova for many years. It's very slow, only
an eight, and the bank and various people keep telling
me you got to have a ten even to transfer
my money anymore.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (39:29):
So I went to this computer man that sold me
the lap Lenovo six years ago. He tells you his protust.
I actually went for I heard you saying, like for
old people, like a chrome book, it's probably adequate. I
don't do anything fancy. I don't want anything except basic.
And he didn't have a chrome book. So he said

(39:51):
he had this Dell and inspir On and it's thirteen.
And she said, oh, it's wonderful, and it's an eleven.
And I said, well, how old is that? He said,
only a couple of years old. A couple he said, yeah,
even less I get home. I gave him three hundred

(40:12):
dollars and then my daughter's bowling me out and I'm crazy.
But I get home, it says manufactured in two thy seventeen.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Oh my gosh, that's that's ancient.

Speaker 11 (40:24):
So what does that mean? He just played. I trust
this man. I've been going up to him and I
take him all my fruit and presimmons and warms from
my yard and I trust him. Wow, and he said, no,
this is good. You'll love it.

Speaker 9 (40:40):
Well.

Speaker 11 (40:40):
I get it home, and of course it's so confusing
for me. And then the neighbor says, oh, elevens are
too confused. You don't need that. I heard you say
what long ago? I probably a chrome Book is enough
just to transfer my money a couple of times and
google somethings and email my friends.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
All right, do yeah, that's that's a Chromebook. And here's
the thing. So this computer you got, you know, is
it running Windows eleven? Okay, so what's wrong with this device?
Can you use it with Windows eleven? Are you comfortable
with it? I mean you had Windows eight before.

Speaker 11 (41:20):
I'm not comfortable. I've only had it two days and
it's got a funny button on the side to turn
it on. I hold it and hold it, and it
seems anyway, it seems I'd have to get used to it.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
And do you it?

Speaker 11 (41:36):
I guess for three hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Yeah, it's it's it's pretty basic. But here's the thing.
I mean a couple there's a couple of ways you
can do this. Number one, do you have a trusted
friend that could teach you how to use this operating system.

Speaker 11 (41:49):
No, I only have my granddaughter. That's we talk on
the phone and we can do team viewers. She's helped
me with my Lenovo before.

Speaker 1 (41:58):
But okay, you're not transferring all your money to her,
are you?

Speaker 6 (42:01):
No?

Speaker 11 (42:02):
No, no, no, my money to charity. But I gotta
you know, I get my social security at one bank.
I got it right.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
You got to move things around, I get it. So
you want to secure computer? Do that? I mean, look,
if you can install what browser are you using on
this computer?

Speaker 11 (42:18):
Do you know it's just a regular what do you
call it?

Speaker 6 (42:23):
Edge?

Speaker 2 (42:24):
Edge?

Speaker 10 (42:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (42:27):
Okay, so it's the same with whatever comes on well Google.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
Yeah, okay, okay. So as long as as long as
you are doing as long as you can get on
a web browser on this computer, I think that's the
only thing you really need to do on it. So
if you can open up Chrome, get on there, make
sure Chrome is up to date. That's going to protect
you from anything that you know is not very good
on the internet. You know, as long as you can
do that, this computer should be fine. I think that

(42:55):
there are other things you can do. Obviously, I was
asking if you had a trusted friend that might be
able to do something like installed. There's actually a free
version where you can turn the software called Chrome os
flex that you can turn this computer into a chromebook basically.
And so if you had a friend that could do that,

(43:15):
that would be a very easy way to make all
of your issues go away, because well not all of them,
but you know, the computer issues. You would be able
to turn this into sort of a chromebook, and that's
completely free, and it would breathe a whole new life
into this computer. So if you come across maybe this
computer guy that you're talking about, if you really you know,

(43:36):
if you're giving him those per Simmons and things like that,
maybe you trust him, Say hey, whatever his name is, Jim,
can you you think you can help me install Chrome
os flex on this old computer that you sold me.
You know, let's let's make this thing a chromebook so
that I don't have to deal with Windows eleven. And
that's one way of doing it. But the other thing
is just if as long as you can open up
that web browser on that computer, you should be able

(43:57):
to do the things that you do that you use
to do on your old computer.

Speaker 11 (44:01):
I guess what I need.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, and that's all you need.

Speaker 10 (44:03):
That.

Speaker 11 (44:03):
I think he just lied to me that it's old.
And I think he installed the Windows eleven himself. Yees research. Okay,
well just to sell it.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
Okay, Well if he did that, then he knows how
to put on Chrome os Flex. So say, hey, I
called up Rich on the radio. He mentioned this Chrome
os flex. Do you think you can install that on
my computer? And that will turn this computer into a
full proof chrome book And even on this older model
that's you know, twenty seventeen. And by the way, computers
can last a decent amount of time. But that'll make

(44:36):
this computer a lot simpler, It'll make it more secure.
There's no viruses you have to worry about. The updates
are automatic. So I think that that would be a
really nice way of making this three hundred dollars computer
work the way you want it. But otherwise, I think, Fern,
you really have to if you're stuck with this thing
and you're using it, I would say, just figure out
how to close everything else out on the computer. Ignore

(44:58):
all the pop ups that tell you you know AI
this AI that this, you know whatever, and just try
to use the web browser. I would try to use Chrome.
If I were you, I think that's probably a good
one that's nice and secure for you. And it runs
Google Bookmark this stuff that you're trying to go to
every day, all your websites and things like that. And
then just keep this thing kind of plugged in and

(45:19):
charged up and it should it should still work. And
if he installed Windows eleven on there, like I said,
he might be able to install that Chromos Flex on there.
So thanks for the call today, FIRN. Really appreciate it.
I hope that helps. I'll put a link to it
on my website. Rich on Tech dot TV. All right,
coming up, let's see what do we go off here? Oh?
Google launched a new phone this week, the Pixel ten A.

(45:41):
I'll tell you about that. What else do we have? Oh,
I just talked about Chromos Flex. I'll tell you what
I did over the past week. I installed another operating
system that's super simple on a computer. I'll tell you
what I did. Plus, we'll take more of your calls.
At eighty to eight rich one oh one eighty eight
seven four to two four one zero. You are listening
to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(46:07):
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at
triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
There's an interesting new app right now. I have not
tested it, but I'm very very curious to see how
it works. It's called Merge Merge dot Watch, and I
don't know how quick this is gonna be shut down
by Apple, but U Merge connects Android smart watches to
iPhones and Apple Watches to Android phones, so you can
choose the device you truly love and you can choose

(46:40):
Android Watch with iPhone or Apple Watch with Android. That's
pretty interesting.

Speaker 4 (46:44):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
So you download the app to your phone and your
uh and your watch, and then you link them up
and then apparently you can use them with each other. Now,
I don't know this is brand new. I downloaded it,
but I couldn't get it linked up because I had
to type in my Apple password, which was like ten
thousand digits long on my Apple Watch and I couldn't

(47:05):
do it. So I can't tell you how good this is,
but it's very interesting. One to watch Merge dot watch
if you want to, you know, have one thing, but
if you want Android but with an iPhone or Android
Apple Watch with an Android check it out. I'm gonna
try to test it out to give you some more
information on it as well. But I love seeing people

(47:25):
try things that Apple does not like for sure. Let's
go to Carl in summer. LN Carl, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 5 (47:36):
Hey, how are you today?

Speaker 1 (47:37):
I'm doing fantastic. What's going on?

Speaker 5 (47:40):
I have a question. I have a visual disability, and
up until about six months ago, I had been using
an app on Android called Pocket.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Oh I love that app.

Speaker 5 (47:52):
You know, I'm going well, up until about six months ago,
I've been using it and I would use to read
articles back to well I've been using insta paper and
it's just so hard to use it. It's not very intuitive,
and I was wondering if you could recommend something that
would be a little bit easier for me.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Yeah, so there so number one. Yes, So Pocket was great.
I loved it. It was owned by Firefox and basically you
could save articles in there and read them later, or
like you said, you can listen to them. I don't
think I had it didn't have the best voice, right, Like,
it wasn't like the best like a little mechanical, right.

Speaker 5 (48:30):
It was very mechanical, but it got the job. Okay,
so that and I will say that with insta Paper,
you know, it has a great voice and it gets
the job done, but it's just it's just taking you
around the block the long way.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
Yeah. I I've tried to use insta Paper a bunch.
I like it. I just don't use it. And I
and my other problem is Carl that any article that
I bookmarked to read later, I never read. And that's
that's a that's a me issue. I don't know. That's
something that I got to work through.

Speaker 5 (49:02):
But anyway, okay, so I have a visual impairmid So
this is two to me.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, Okay, So if you want to try another,
there's another app that people like that's a similar app.
It's called read Wise read wise dot io and that
I assume I have not used it for the reading aspects,
but I believe that it will do that for you.

(49:29):
The problem is I believe that that one charges.

Speaker 4 (49:33):
I think you have to pay charges as well.

Speaker 5 (49:36):
So I don't have a problem.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
Okay, so you don't have a you don't have a problem.

Speaker 5 (49:39):
Yeah, problem, subscription, just as long as I can get
it to kind of do what I need to do
looking for Yeah, well, with Pocket I was able to say,
you know, take twenty five thirty articles and you could
just play prets play and it would just play all
the articles one after another, whereas on insta paper, you know,

(50:03):
to play the articles, one you have to have a
pre in subscription, but two, you can't select all of
the articles that wants to play. I know, you have
to manually select each one of them, play the article,
and then after you play it, you have to go
back select it again to delete the articles.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Yeah. That's that's annoying. It's a lot of work. Yeah,
it's a lot of work. Okay, Well, I'll give you
a couple of solutions you can you can investigate these, Carl,
and you can see which one's going to work the
best for you. But I'll tell you the ones that
I know of. Okay, So number one you already mentioned
insta Paper. Obviously, that's the one that's not working out
for you. Read Wise is kind of an up and
coming reader and so it's I don't know how expensive

(50:47):
it is. I think right now it's free in the beta,
but it eventually will cost money. That's another way to
do it. But I think something like uh, okay, if
you want a completely free way to do this. You
said you have the Android phone. There's a feature called
Reading Mode on from Google. And this is a feature
that basically any article that you want to read, it

(51:09):
will read out loud to you for free. And it
does a really good job. And so you can download
that and it's built right into Android pretty much once
you download the app, it kind of like merges into Android.
It's really slick. And so that's called Reading Mode by Google. Now,
if you want what I think is probably the best
reading screen, it's not really a screen reading app, but

(51:31):
it's a reader app. Is called speech a PI. And
if you have not tried this, it will. It's amazing.
It really is great. I don't know if it will
do the playlist feature that you're talking about, because I
typically think that you have to play them one by one.
But I will tell you speech AFI has the best voices.

(51:53):
It has so many voices, and it does a really
good job at converting those voices to text. So if
you want like the most the nicest listening experience, that's
going to be a great way to do it. Now,
if you want now that I believe you have to
pay a little bit for like the best voices. There's
another way to do this completely free. So eleven Labs

(52:15):
okay e L E V E N l A b
s eleven Labs. They have a free app for iPhone
and Android where it will read to you. And this is, uh,
let's see, how do you I'm trying to figure out
where they I got to find the link to the app,
but it's it's fantastic and it's completely free. And so

(52:37):
you can download that app and it's a text to
speech app. Uh yeah, and it's just it's great. I
used to listen to this a lot at the gym
when I was Yeah, eleven Labs mobile app and so
that's a really great app as well. I'll put a
link on the website rich on tech dot tv, But
eleven Labs and Speechify pretty much do the same thing.

(52:57):
They will read you out these articles. You may have
to press play on each one. It may not do
the playlist thing, but those are like an incredible experience
and the eleven Labs, as far as I know, is free. Now,
there is another way you can do this. There is
a website called listen later dot net and if you
feed the articles into that, they will create a personalized

(53:18):
podcast feed of those articles read to you. And so
that's another way. That's called Listen later dot net and
you can try it for free, but if you want
to do more, you might have to pay. But I'll
link all of these things up on the website. Carl
Richon tech dot tv, thanks for calling today. Welcome back

(53:38):
to rich On Tech rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
talking technology Triple eight rich one on one eight eight
A seven four to two four one zero one. We'll
get back to the calls in just a moment. Uh,
let me tell you about the Pixel ten A. Google
has a new phone this week. Pixel ten A is
their mid range phone. You get a lot for the

(53:58):
money though. It's five hundred dollars, which is a big
selling point. It goes on sale on March fifth. It's
on pre order. Now I've not tested this, but I've
got one being sent to me so i can see
what the deal is. But most people are saying it's
a modest upgrade from last year. So the camera bar
now sits flush with the back of the device. It's
got a six point three inch screen that gets a

(54:19):
little bit brighter outside. It's powered by last year's chip,
so they didn't put a new chip in this thing
from last year's model. The battery is great, battery life
is good. Charging is a little bit faster, not the
fastest wireless charging. Let's see what else. Camera is very similar,
but you do get two camera lenses, the main and
the ultra wide. And they did add satellite SOS, so

(54:43):
that means you can do emergency messaging if you're off
the grid, something the nine to A did not have.
It also runs the latest Android and you get seven
years of updates. So I recommend these phones a lot,
the ten A because if you just need a phone
and you don't care about all the fancy features. This
is about five hundred dollars, and effectively a lot of

(55:04):
the discounts I've seen are taking about one hundred dollars
off the price. So you're talking, let's see here, let's
see the app. The actual price here for one hundred
and twenty eight gig is four ninety nine, but I'm
seeing a lot of one hundred dollars off. So anyway,
that's something to keep an eye out on if you
want a very simple phone. Speaking of smartphones, we've got

(55:25):
Jeremy Watkin on the line. He's with Number Barn. We've
talked about them on the show before. This is a
website that basically does all kinds of stuff with phone numbers,
like if you want to pour it out or park
your park your phone number, forward your phone number, all
kinds of things they do. Jeremy, thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
Yeah, it's great to be here, Rich, So.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
Tell me what is number Barn? First off, I know
the main thing that we've talked about on this show
is if you want to like park your phone number
for a while, like you don't plan on using it,
but you want to keep that number. That's something you
guys do, right.

Speaker 12 (55:59):
Absolutely, that's a great use for Number Barn. We are,
you know, first and foremost, we are the world's largest
vanity telephone number marketplace. We have millions and millions of
phone numbers available on our website that we sourced from
lots of different places.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
And so if you're in the if.

Speaker 12 (56:20):
You're looking for a phone number, you know, if you
if you went into the wireless store and they gave
you three options, come to number barn and get millions
of options. But yeah, what you mentioned about parking is
spot on. We have tons of customers use as for
low cost parking, call forwarding, and even some some business
services as well.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
That's cool. So you can get a vanity phone number,
like if I wanted, like, you know, okay, I got
it like three and oh rich on Tech or I
don't whatever that dials to. I don't know, sorry whoever
that is. But that's okay, that's kind of cool. That's interest.
I didn't know that you guys did that. Okay, So
now if you want to get something that's special, you
can do that. So what are the ps, Like, what

(57:00):
other tricks do you have?

Speaker 6 (57:02):
Oh?

Speaker 12 (57:03):
I mean yeah, the parking is a huge huge feature
for us, especially you know, we're about to talk about
wireless plans and whatnot. We have so many people that
like to park their telephone numbers with us or use
call forwarding when they're you know, they've moved and they've
switched out their phone number. Maybe they want to hang

(57:23):
on to maybe Grandma passed away and they want to
hang on to to that.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
You know, that landline that they've had forever.

Speaker 12 (57:31):
That maybe they're maybe they're traveling to Europe for five
months and going to live overseas and they want to
hang on to their cell phone number, but not pay
for a cell phone plan. We see a lot of
really fun use cases that way and get to you know,
talk to customers about the cool trips they're going on
and things like that.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
I just I'm a little distracted because now I'm finding
all the phone numbers that I can have with.

Speaker 12 (57:57):
You know, three one oho is that that's that's one
of our most popular area codes for sure.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
Oh interesting because I've been holding on to my three
one oh number for many years because it's I feel
like you can't get those numbers anymore. Like if you
go to the phone company, they give you like some
random overlay or something. Okay, so you've got the phone
numbers things like that. So you guys also have a
lot of data for people switching and stuff like that.
You say that March is one of the biggest months
for switching carriers. Why is that?

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Yeah, it's funny.

Speaker 12 (58:25):
You know when I when I saw the results of
our of that study we published, you know, I would
have thought December or November or January, and I think
December and January came in a close second, and third,
you know, being the holidays and Cyber Monday. We certainly
see a lot of people buying devices, and and you

(58:47):
know I did that for my kids. I bought one
of my kids a phone for Christmas this year, and
I got him a phone number that spelled his name.
But yeah, that you know, we had we had to
think a little bit on on why March ended up
being the the number one month for people to switch
their plan.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
I have a few reasons here, you know.

Speaker 12 (59:06):
When you think about Obviously, I think there's some residual
from the holidays, people people got devices, and maybe they're
just getting around to switching their plan. I think, you know,
with tax refunds, they have a little bit of extra
money in their pocket to go buy a new phone,
and maybe that and on the flip side, maybe they're

(59:26):
thinking about their budget a little bit and realizing, oh,
maybe I could save some money on my wireless plan.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
You know, it's a good time to review your bill.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
So that's really I assume that's the biggest reason people
switch is really either I would say coverage or the
price that they're paying. Now, a lot of people are
discovering these things called envy and os. So can you explain,
in like the simplest term, what an envy and O is.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Well, I'll you know I love a good acronym. I'm
sure you do too.

Speaker 12 (59:53):
Mobile Virtual Network Operator mvon os. They basically piggyback off
of the major wireless networks, you know, T Mobile, Verizon,
AT and T and they're not responsible for managing those
cell phone towers. So they what they do that with
all that overhead they're saving, they passed the savings on

(01:00:15):
to customers. You know, we've seen you can save thirty
to fifty percent on your bill by going through an
mb and O.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
And you know, I think some people might not realize that.

Speaker 12 (01:00:26):
You know, they see companies like Mint, Metro By, T Mobile,
Google Fi, Exfinity, Cricket Wireless, all those those are mbn
os based essentially reselling the service of the major wireless carriers.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
And it gets a little tricky now because a lot
of these used to be independent from the carriers. Now
the carriers themselves are getting in on the game. Like
T Mobile owns Mint AT and T owns Cricket, Verizon
owns Visible. So it's like really weird. It's like, hold on,
why is like Verizon have a one hundred dollars plan
a month but also a twenty five dollars plan a month.

(01:01:03):
And so it's because I think the competition of these
other mv and o's that these people are leaving for.
It's like Verizon needs something in their pocket to say, hey,
you can come over here and do this. My mom's
had one of these mv and os for years, Like
I switched her years ago, and she tells all of
her friends, I pay thirty dollars a month, it's unlimited
whatever it is. And they none of them want to

(01:01:25):
believe her. They're like, oh, well, you probably don't get this.
She's like, no, I get that. Oh you probably don't
have that. No, your phone doesn't work, Yes it does.
Everything works the same. And so I think that these
things are kind of a untapped resource for a lot
of people that want to save money.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:01:39):
Absolutely, I do think there can be a little drawback
sometimes if you're heavy a heavy data user, potentially your
data usage gets deep prioritized under the you know, the
the major the customers of the major wireless cares get priority,
and then you get whatever's left over. But you know,

(01:02:00):
what we're saying is that it's not a huge factor,
but certainly something to think about.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
I mean, yeah, for someone like myself, like I would.
I love MV and o's, but I personally like I'm
sometimes uploading like seventeen twenty gigabytes of data after like
a TV shoot, Like I'll literally stand Like let's say
I go to New York City for a shoot, I
will literally stand on a corner till I find like
a good signal and just stand there and upload all
my files to Dropbox form my editor. Like off the

(01:02:26):
wireless network. I used to go to the hotel room.
Now it's it's faster on the wireless network. But my
point is that's like seventeen gigs at once, Like you're
if you're doing that on an MV and O I I,
you'd be slowed down pretty quickly. So but if you're
not using a lot of data all right, So bottom line,
what do you think? What do you think people need
to know if they're looking to switch their their phone

(01:02:48):
number or their bill.

Speaker 12 (01:02:49):
Well, I do think definitely take a look at your
at your bill and what you're being charged. You know,
there are lots of promo prices that you'll see and
definitely ask about what that what that price is gonna
be once the promotion drops also consider just tax and
regulatory fees. We've found that that can be you know,

(01:03:10):
that can be five to fifteen dollars per line per month.
And then obviously you know, are you bringing in your
own device or are you gonna are you gonna pay
a monthly payment on that that that new device that
you're getting through the through the carrier. So definitely consider
that when you're switching. You know, I have lots to
say about number porting. Sometimes number barn can help with that,

(01:03:35):
you know, if.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
You oh yeah, talk about that, like because people if there,
you can't a lot of them. You can't port from
a landline to a cell phone right like you have
to like go to an intermediary or something.

Speaker 4 (01:03:45):
You know.

Speaker 12 (01:03:45):
The only ones that are tricky going from landline to
cell phone are a Cricket wireless and uh.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
And Google Voice. Yeah yeah, the voice is fun. Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:03:56):
You have to get like a prepaid wireless to convert
the number over wireless and then you can port it
with no problem.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Nva os can be.

Speaker 12 (01:04:05):
A little bit more of an adventure when it comes
to porting to them. Sometimes they save on customer service
a little bit, whereas like, you know, I'll pick on
T Mobile they're they're, they're really. They have a dedicated
line for number porting, and we see number porting be
pretty fast for wireline too, to wireless.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
Who has the slowest? And then we got to go.

Speaker 12 (01:04:27):
You know, the major carriers are okay, the Verizon NBA
knows can sometimes be pretty tricky.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
Yeah, that's that's my experience. I switched my wife to
visible and try explaining to her why her phone doesn't
work for like six hours while I'm trying to port
the number over because it got lost and never never land. Yeah,
that's a fun one. I was sleeping on the cops
that night. Jeremy walkin from numberbarn dot com. Thanks so
much for joining me today.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
Yeah, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Rich All right, coming up more of your calls at
eighty to eight rich one on one. I still have
to tell you how I told turn my old PC
into a lean, mean web browsing machine. I'll tell you
what I did coming up next. Right here, I'm rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro

(01:05:14):
here talking technology with you at eighty eight rich one
oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one
zero one. We had a caller earlier. Carl was asking
about these apps that can read aloud to you. The
one I was trying to find is called eleven Reader,
and I'm not kidding. This is a fantastic free app

(01:05:35):
as well. Last time I used it was free, but
it's really really good. You can listen to books, articles, PDFs,
and more, all for free. And eleven Labs is a
sort of a leader in the the AI voices. So
this is a great app. Check it out. Elevenreader dot
io that's the one I was trying to remember. Elevenreader

(01:05:56):
dot io. That's one of those apps that you download
and you're like, oh, that's cool, let's go to let's
see here, let's go to Judy And it's a Judy
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 13 (01:06:09):
Welcome, Thank you, thank you for taking my call.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
What's up?

Speaker 13 (01:06:15):
Well, I'm not sure what names I can mention or not,
but I'm oh, you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
Can say whatever you want as long as you're not swearing.
Oh okay, and even if you do that, we'll just
Bobbo's over there with his finger on the dump button.

Speaker 13 (01:06:28):
Okay, I'm a Spectrum customer.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Oh you can't say spectrum. Oh sorry, I should have
been clear. No, I'm just kidding. I'll just get you
can say whatever you want, go ahead.

Speaker 13 (01:06:41):
Well, anyway, there the price for my package or my
service through them has really taken has escalated, and I
no longer I would like to get rid of them.
And I was wondering what could I do for inter
and TV?

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
Oh for TV? Okay? Well okay, so right now, how
much you paying.

Speaker 13 (01:07:09):
Two eleven fifty eight?

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
Oh wow, that's a lot. I see why you want
to cut down on that. Okay. So here's the thing.
If you want traditional television, right, like, if you want
the local channels, and what channels do you watch.

Speaker 13 (01:07:26):
Mostly the cable like HGTV, Animal Planet okay, Food Network
like that?

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
Okay, so it sounds like more the entertainment stuff, not
the sports, right.

Speaker 13 (01:07:38):
Well, my husband does watch some sports.

Speaker 4 (01:07:40):
Okay, like that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Yeah, Well when you say sports, that's where streaming TV
gets really tricky because basically, if you would have said, oh,
I only care about you know, HGTV, Food Network, Bravo,
they have a lot of these plans that are called
skinny bundles where you can get just like a bunch
of these inner tainment channels for a lot cheaper per month.

(01:08:03):
But when you get into sports and believe me. I'm
a sports household. My kid loves sports. You got to
pay somehow, and it's not cheap. So a couple things
for you. Number one, so you're looking at if you
were to pay like the main fee on like YouTube TV,
that's about eighty three dollars a month. So even if
we take that two eleven and we subtract that eighty three,

(01:08:26):
you're still paying one hundred and twenty eight dollars a
month for internet. And I think you can do better
than that, now, are you? Are you also getting a
phone line with that bundle?

Speaker 9 (01:08:35):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
Okay, So we've got, basically, the way I see it,
you've got one hundred and twenty eight dollars to play
with because the two hundred and eleven you got to
subtract eighty three. At the worst case scenario, if your
husband wants to watch all the sports, you need to
get a big plan from YouTube TV or direct TV
stream or Fubo or Hulu Live whatever that you kind

(01:08:57):
of have to you can't avoid that if you want
to watch sports. So that's number one. But this one
hundred and twenty eight dollars, you can still get a
pretty good plan, now, have you called Spectrum and told
them that you want to cancel or quit and have
they given you any options?

Speaker 13 (01:09:11):
Well, yes and no. I called to question some of this,
and you know, the best they would do is give
me a promotional discount on the internet of ten dollars
for a year.

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):
Okay, which is better than nothing, but it's not that good. Yeah.
But here's the thing. You have to be ready to quit,
and so you need a plan in place. And so
there's a couple of things that I'm going to give you.
A couple websites. Number one, to figure out the stuff
that you can stream. There's a website called the streamable
dot Com slash Matchmaker. The streamable dot Com slash Matchmaker,

(01:09:49):
you type in the shows that you want to watch.
So I put an HGTV, I put in Food Network,
and then let's just say in Ithaca's what's the sports
team your husband likes? Wow, pop question Yankees? Okay. Now
that's where it gets a little complicated because you've got
the Yankees on their soap. If we're looking at these teams,

(01:10:11):
it will tell you exactly what you can get for
those It'll tell you exactly which services will give you
all of those things. That you want right there, And
the Yankees are gonna be the tough one because I
think I think Yankees has their own streaming service which
you can get on their own anyway. So that's number one.
Number two the Internet, there are many ways, and I
think the easiest way to get around the Internet situation

(01:10:33):
is probably with a wireless internet. But you also have
to figure out what's available at your address. So there's
two websites. The first is FCC's National Broadband Map, so
broadbandmap dot FCC dot gov. You type in your address. Okay,
so I'm gonna put in an address here. Let's see here,

(01:10:53):
just so I can get some options here. So I'm
putting in my dad's address here, and so I can
see all of the broadband providers to his home. And
then I can see all of the mobile broadband providers.
So that's the new one. And so a lot of
these mobile broadband providers, like the T Mobile Home five G,

(01:11:15):
Mint Mobile five G AT and t Air Verizon five
G they take a signal from the air, your cellular
signal and turn it into your Wi Fi for your
whole home. And so they're very competitive. Right now, we're
talking thirty forty dollars a month because they're trying to
get customers, and so that's the way I would go
on these websites, see what the service providers are in

(01:11:38):
your area and see what you would go to and
how much that would cost. And then you can call
Spectrum say hey, look I can go to AT and
T five R for fifty dollars a month. What can
you do? So I can stick with you? And if
it doesn't work to switch. It's quite easy to switch
these days. Okay, all right, Judy very much. Yep, thank you,
thanks for the call. Link up everything, and I mentioned

(01:12:00):
on the website rich on tech dot tv coming up
more of your calls plus more tech news right after this.
Welcome back to rich on tech rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you talking technology eight eight eight rich one
on one eight eight eight seven four to two four

(01:12:20):
one zero one. If you want to get on the show,
give me a call. You can email as well. Just
go to the website rich on tech dot TV. We
had Judy asking about all the different ways to save
money on her cable and internet bill. I link all
that up on the website as well. Rich on tech
dot TV. This episode one six two, So if you
want the show notes, it's all there. I take very

(01:12:43):
good notes happening in a couple of weeks here. Well, okay,
so we've got a bunch of tech events happening. First off,
next week, we've got Samsung, So if you are in
the market for a new Samsung phone, you probably want
to hold off at this point. They are gonna unveil
their new Galaxy series, the S twenty six lineup, plus

(01:13:04):
maybe some new headphones, some other gadgets whatever.

Speaker 7 (01:13:07):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
They may have some surprises too, But that event is
happening on Wednesday, February twenty fifth up in San Francisco.
So looking forward to that and of course seeing what
they do with the S twenty six Ultra. I mean
that's you know, I'm partial to that phone because that's
their top of the line model, so that's where they
put all their best new features. So we're going to

(01:13:28):
see that. They've got this thing called Privacy Screen, which
they've been teasing. But it's kind of like one of
those privacy screen protectors, but built into the screen itself.
So they're saying that if you're looking at this screen,
notification comes in. If someone's looking over your shoulder. They
can't read that notification. It looks black to them. So
that's going to be really interesting to see how they
do that. So we got that coming up next week,

(01:13:51):
and then the week after got a kind of pingpong
around the US. Here we've got Apple with their special
experience ants March fourth. I believe that's also is that
a Wednesday as well? Or is that a Tuesday? That
is a Wednesday as well. Wednesday must be the sweet
spot for announcing new products. So Apple is going to

(01:14:13):
have special experiences in New York, London, and Shanghai. So
this is not their big to do from Cooper Tino,
this is a smaller event, so we're not expecting like
a big new product announcement. But I will tell you
what we are rumored to see, And the best rumor
would be this low cost MacBook in playful color options.

(01:14:35):
That would be really cool. So if you're talking a
sub six hundred dollars MacBook computer, that would just be
unbelievable for people and they would sell a lot of those.
The other thing the rumors are talking about is this
iPhone seventeen E that's kind of their budget friendly iPhone
that's usually about six hundred dollars as well, and then

(01:14:57):
new iPads. So if you're looking to get any of
those products, you probably want to hold off and the uh.
There's a good website that can tell you this information.
If you're looking to buy an Apple product, any Apple product,
there's a website called Buyer's Guide dot MacRumors dot com.

(01:15:17):
You go there, you select the product that you want. So,
for instance, if I look at iPhone sixteen E right now,
it says in big red text, don't buy. Guess why
because the iPhone seventeen E is expected to come out.
It doesn't mean you can't get that phone. It just
means the price may drop on it next week or

(01:15:38):
the next week when we see the new phone. Or
you may just want the newest, latest, greatest. Why buy
the old one that's already the iPhone sixteen he's going
on three hundred and sixty five days old. Let's see
what else they have, iPad, iPad air, don't buy. It's
been three hundred and fifty four days since they came
out with the new one. Let's see iPad mini. Caution,

(01:15:58):
it's been four hundred and ninety five four days. I'm
not making these numbers up. This is what this website shows.
So it's a it's a wealth of information on if
you're going to buy an Apple product, and then also
it gives you all the rumors and the pricing guide
as well, so you can find good prices on these things.
So that's what's happening in the next couple of weeks.
I'm looking forward to it very exciting for my line
of work because lots of new stuff to talk about.

(01:16:21):
Let's go to line two. Marianne is in Laguna Noguel,
Mariann what can I help you with?

Speaker 14 (01:16:28):
Hey, Rich love your show. I've learned tons of things
from you. You're just terrific.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
Oh thanks, so viy hold on, let me record that, Bobo.
I got to play that back for my wife. What'd
you say? I'm terrific.

Speaker 14 (01:16:39):
Okay, you're terrific.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
Thank you. I will make sure Lindsay hears that. What
can I help I'm just kidding Lindsay. She's she tells
me that all the time.

Speaker 14 (01:16:49):
Well, this is a real conundrum for me, and I
have a feeling it's probably inherent in the way I've
been using my iPhone. So I have Haven iPhone thirteen
and I use the mail app the iPhone to manage
two Gmail accounts and my Aol account. Okay, and one
of my Gmail accounts was related to my work and

(01:17:10):
it worked fine. I would just go open it up
through the mail app because it's so convenient and read
my emails, delete whatever. Well, I retired.

Speaker 1 (01:17:19):
Last month, and congratulations.

Speaker 14 (01:17:21):
Thank you, thank you. Yeah, thirty four years in a
great career.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
Wow. The same company or same company, Wow, that's a
rarity nowadays. But that's that's incredible.

Speaker 14 (01:17:31):
Task my life there because I'm sixty eight, so that
my life.

Speaker 1 (01:17:34):
Was there, that's amazing.

Speaker 14 (01:17:36):
Of course, they had to turn off access to it
because it was a workplace account, and so in the
mail app, I decided to delete the account because I
was no longer able to use it. So I deleted it,
and within about maybe I don't know, I think I
noticed it. Within about half a day, a whole bunch
of my contacts disappeared in my contact phone list. And

(01:18:01):
I realized it because I was looking at my text
messaging and every single text that I was working with
with people I text all the time, it only showed
their phone numbers.

Speaker 1 (01:18:11):
They're all gone. The names were gone, Yep.

Speaker 4 (01:18:14):
All gone.

Speaker 14 (01:18:15):
I mean I have loged. I don't even know how
many I've lost, but I've had to put back at
least forty and they were not related to my work. Rich,
I don't Well.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
Here's what happened. I can tell you what happened. And
the short answer is can you get these back? It
could be kind of tough because they were probably saved,
was it. It's a Gmail or a Google account?

Speaker 13 (01:18:36):
It was a Gmail, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
So they were linked to that account. Now you can't
log into this account anymore, even from a computer. It's
all been deactivated. Right, Okay, So in that case, these
contacts are probably gone. That's the sad part. But I
will tell you how to make sure this never happens again.
And for anyone else listening, this happens all the time.
It happens when basically you you link up various accounts

(01:19:02):
on your iPhone, but you don't tell the iPhone, hey,
here's where I want to save all of my contacts.
And if you just let the iPhone do it on
its own, it will just save it wherever it wants,
and it sometimes could be an account that you don't
want those linked up with. And so for instance, on
my account. I've got iCloud and Gmail on my iPhone.
I don't want to save the contacts to my iCloud.

(01:19:24):
I want to save them to Gmail because that's more
portable and I can use it across a bunch of
different devices. So what I think happened is that when
you created these new accounts or these new contacts, they
were saved on your employer's Gmail account, and when you
deleted it, that's why they went away. So to keep
this from happening again, you have to go and this

(01:19:45):
is for everyone that has an iPhone, you should check
this setting immediately. Go into your settings, okay. Then you
go into that new setting all the way at the
bottom called apps. You tap there, okay, and then once
you're there, you go to contact and so scroll down
find your contacts. That's the app on the iPhone, and
then it's got scroll all the way down to where

(01:20:07):
it says default account, and you want to choose the
account where you want to save your contacts. And if
there's two gmails or something like that, you're gonna need
to go into your accounts on your iPhone and rename
the one that's your work account. But that's the way
to do it so that you make sure that it's
saved with the right account. The only other way, Marian,
that I can tell you is that if you may, yeah,

(01:20:30):
I'm trying to think of a way to recover these.
The only other thing you can do is go to
contacts dot Google dot com and you can see if
some of your contacts are maybe save there. Let's see.
You can also go to your contacts on your iPhone
and if you tap the arrow on the left hand
side in the upper left hand corner, there's a thing
that's called lists, and you can see all the different

(01:20:51):
lists of your contacts. And that's another way of seeing
where they are. But as for these friends that you
had in there, you're unless someone calls in with a
way that they can think of to recover them. I
can't think of away because they're probably just with that
account somewhere with your employer. So you got to do
that old thing where you got to text these people
Maryanne and say, uh, sorry, new phone. Who this? Who

(01:21:13):
this new phone? That's the way to do it. Thanks
for the call, appreciate it. Eighty to eight rich one
on one eighty eight seven four to two four one
zero one I told you I was in Vegas for
the group trip for my brother's bachelor party. The app
that we used that was so good. I never used
this app before, I know people mentioned it on this show.

(01:21:34):
It's called split Wise. This is an app that helps
you kind of split expenses among a group, and it's
really easy. I didn't we didn't have to pay at
all as far as I know. But you basically make
a group, you add people, and then every time someone
does something like pays for a dinner and uber snacks whatever,
you just you log it in split Wise, kind of

(01:21:54):
like an account like an accountant would do, and then
it keeps track of like how much every person owes
and the neat thing is At first I was like,
I don't want everyone. You know, people are all obsessed
with their points, they want to use their credit card whatever.
I was like, well, I want to pay for something.
So I paid for something I paid for, like a
big dinner, and that when you pay for that and
put it in there, it takes that amount and divides

(01:22:16):
it up and figures out how much people owe you
based on that. So it keeps track of all this
complex math and at the end of the day, no joke.
After a whole weekend of all of us kind of
doing expenses, someone owed me maybe like twenty dollars and
I owed someone like sixteen, because you don't realize that
if you're all paying for stuff, it kind of evens
out in the end. And the way you can settle

(01:22:36):
up is through the app, but you have to use
a bank account. You can't use a credit card to
settle up, but you can, of course just do it
outside the app with like a PayPal or Venmo. And
I thought this was fantastic. So if you're going on
a group trip with people or you're splitting things, it's
called split wise. It's available for iOS and Android. They
do have a paid tier. I'm sure there's some things

(01:22:57):
that you can't access unless you pay, but we had
no issue. It was it was really really cool. So
and I know I'm gonna get a million emails from
people saying, rich I've been using that on my cruise
or my family vacations forever. How do you just finding
out about this? I've just never used it before until
now eighty eight Rich one on one eighty eight seven
four to two four one zero one coming up. Oh,

(01:23:17):
I got to tell you about Zuckerberg. He was on
the stand this week in Los Angeles. I'll tell you why.
Coming up right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with
you man. This show flies by just doing the show

(01:23:39):
notes on the website rich on Tech dot TV, Episode
one sixty two. If you want anything that I mentioned,
I mentioned so much in this show so far. We
talked about that tiny codeac camera. We talked about the
let's see all the ways to find your smartphone. We
talked about Chrome os. If you want to change your
laptop into a lean mean browsing machine, number barn. We

(01:24:03):
can get vanity phone numbers, all those things for finding
cheaper internet options and also cheaper streaming options. I've got
that all linked up thanks to Judy's question from Ithaca,
and I'm linked up split wise as well. So it's
all on the website rich on Tech dot TV. And
by the way, if you are not subscribed to my newsletter,

(01:24:23):
when you're at the website, just go ahead and sign
up for that. It's free. You put in your email address,
and basically every weekend you will wake up to, not
every day of the weekend, just during the weekend, you'll
get my newsletter and it's all the stuff that I
mentioned that I think is interesting. It's kind of like
I think of you as my pen pal. That's really
what it is.

Speaker 7 (01:24:43):
Like.

Speaker 1 (01:24:43):
I am writing you a letter and it's really all
the stuff that I think is interesting, important, and whatever
I think you need to know that happened throughout the
week in tech and of course the stories that I
do on TV. So it's all there on the website.
Rich on tech dot TV. Right, let's go to Wayne
in your Belinda. Wayne, you're on.

Speaker 10 (01:25:04):
With rich Alright, Rich, thank you so much. I got
your email last time.

Speaker 1 (01:25:09):
Oh you did? Okay, So tell folks, do you like
the email or do you just do you just hit
spam on it?

Speaker 5 (01:25:14):
Or what?

Speaker 4 (01:25:15):
Oh?

Speaker 10 (01:25:15):
Perfect?

Speaker 5 (01:25:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 10 (01:25:17):
My question now is I have three AirTags attached to
three different Kitchainsky.

Speaker 5 (01:25:25):
But I'm not working.

Speaker 10 (01:25:28):
Just like right now, my daughter go out and I
cannot see her location. I attach it to the keychain. Oh,
so back to you see what's going on?

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
So can you see these? Okay, So it sounds like
the battery is dead.

Speaker 10 (01:25:47):
No one one I reloaded Actually okay, they didn't. So
battery though at all.

Speaker 4 (01:25:55):
Okay, brown iPhone, I have, uh find mine?

Speaker 10 (01:26:02):
I can see they always me instead of go out.

Speaker 1 (01:26:06):
Okay, Now here's the question your daughters that they're there.
Do they have an iPhone?

Speaker 5 (01:26:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
Okay, ex okay, interesting are they are they putting? Is
there perse like a Faraday cage or what?

Speaker 5 (01:26:22):
No?

Speaker 10 (01:26:22):
Nothing at all?

Speaker 1 (01:26:24):
The regular keychain, regular keychain. Okay, so now when you okay,
so a couple of things to troubleshoot this number one.
You know you can. You can rotate the back of
it to open it up. So when you rotate it
and put that battery back in, like close it up,
it should make a chirp to let you know that
that battery is working. And then once you look at
your phone, you should be able to see where these

(01:26:45):
air tags are on your phone. So you're saying you
see them at home, but as soon as they leave
the house, they're not updating their location at all, which
is is really strange when you were in your house.
Can you use the feature on your iPhone to find
it nearby and play the sound? Does all work?

Speaker 4 (01:27:02):
Oh?

Speaker 10 (01:27:03):
I know if they when I checked find mine, they
also with me.

Speaker 1 (01:27:09):
Okay, So what I would do when in this instance
is you got a troubleshoot here, So a couple things
to help you troubleshoot here. Number one, you got to
make sure the batteries are charged on these devices, and
you also have to make sure that they are properly
linked up to your phone. So at the very least,
if these things are working, when you are in your home,

(01:27:29):
you should be able to tap the name of one
of these air tags and underneath it should say with you,
and it should say now last updated. Okay, And then
you should be able to play a sound. And when
you press that button to play a sound, it should
immediately or soon after there play a sound on the
air tag. If that's not working, then there's something wrong
with the pairing of this air tag or there's something

(01:27:52):
wrong with the battery. Okay. The next step is that's
all working, then I would do the find nearby, So
I would tap fine nearby and it will show where
that air tag is. And you should be able to
turn your phone left or right, depending on the model
of your phone. You should be able to turn that
left or right to find out where that air tag is.
If that's not working, what I would do is scroll

(01:28:12):
all the way down on the air tag to where
it says remove, and that will factory reset this air tag,
and I would set it up again on your phone
fresh and then see if it works. The way the
air tags work, they don't have a cellular connection inside,
they don't have GPS on them. They are reliant on

(01:28:32):
a crowdsourced network of other iPhones and Apple devices nearby.
So that's why I asked if your daughter had an iPhone,
because if this thing is not getting a ping off
of an iPhone or an Apple Watch, or maybe not
Apple Watch per se, but a various Apple devices like
a MacBook computer or an iPad, if it's not able
to ping off of those devices and those devices kind

(01:28:55):
of figure out the location based on that, you're not
going to get an updated location. I've had air tags
since day one. I've never seen that happen because there
are so many Apple devices in the world. Basically, no
matter where you go, unless you drop this device this
air tag in the middle of a field from an
airplane and no other Apple device ever goes nearby, these
things are pretty much going to have a location. So

(01:29:18):
the fact that they're not updating is a little concerning.
So the other thing I would do is very simple,
restart your phone. See if that helps. And if you
want to restart your phone, you can swipe down from
the upper right hand corner. That will reveal a little
power button in the upper right hand corner. You tap that,
tap and press and there will be an option to
slide your phone to power it off. Otherwise you can

(01:29:40):
just ask Siri to restart your phone.

Speaker 4 (01:29:43):
So you got to.

Speaker 1 (01:29:45):
Troubleshoot these and make sure that they are actually working
first before they go out into the world and send
their location back. And of course I'm assuming your daughters
know that they have these on them, so they are
being tracked with their permission as well, just as that's
like table stakes. All right, coming up, we are going
to talk to cybersecurity expert JP Castellanos. He is going

(01:30:08):
to talk about the biggest tech threats affecting you right now.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you talking technology website for the show rich
on Tech dot TV. Must have said something that you
guys wanted to find on the website because there's a
lot of you checking it out. All the links are

(01:30:28):
on there. Episode one sixty two everything I mentioned, all
the helpful stuff is right there. We've got JP Custianos.
I've already messed up your name. JP is a cybersecurity
expert and welcome to the show. You there, Oh oh,
he can't hear me. What happened? Let's see. Maybe maybe

(01:30:51):
it was the way I said his name Costillanos. There
he is, Yes, there you are. Okay, I didn't hear you. Okay, good,
So you didn't hear me butcher your name the first time.
So that's a good thing. So we started on a
positive note here. Cybersecurity expert JP, welcome to the show.
Tell me what you do. First off, you're telling me
off air a little bit about what you focus on.

Speaker 8 (01:31:13):
Yeah, rich, hey, thanks for having me.

Speaker 5 (01:31:14):
Man.

Speaker 8 (01:31:15):
So I've been working in the cybersecurity field for about twenty
years now now. My discipline is what's called cyber thread intelligence.
So what our role is is as a cyber thread
intelligence analyst, we focus on understanding the adversary, the hackers,
the financial criminals, all those guys, right, So we re
research hacker groups and then we in a way kind
of like financial analysts look at researching markets and identifying patterns.

(01:31:37):
So we track that behavior. We spot signals before disruption happens.
So think of it like we're looking for we're profiling
digital criminals in advance, and then we're trying to answer
the questions to our clients and to anyone right who's attacking,
why now? And what's their next move? So when it
comes to my field, it's more about understanding human behavior,
global dynamics, and emerging technology all at once.

Speaker 1 (01:31:58):
And you're yeah, and you're with Binary Defense, right.

Speaker 8 (01:32:02):
Yes, we're We're a manager. We're an MDR company. We
provide services to our clients in different different forms. We
provide for example, my field or my team, we provide
threat intelligence, but we also have people that monitor like
digital risks. So it's like we have folks that will
monitor you know, your personal uh, your digital profile on
the internet. We have thread hunters, we have sock monitoring.

(01:32:24):
So we provide a wide range of services to clients,
very tailored. You know, some clients may want threat intelligence,
some clients may not, but that's kind of what I do.
My roles as the director is to work with those teams,
work with those or work with those clients, providing them
that threat intelligence information.

Speaker 1 (01:32:40):
All right, So let's start with everyone's favorite topic, AI.
So how do you think that AI is now making
it easier for some of these threat actors.

Speaker 8 (01:32:52):
Yeah, I would say that AI hasn't replaced hackers, but
it's scaled them, right, So you can see that AI,
what I would say, is called a force multiple fire
like it makes like it makes anyone that knows at
least how to operate a computer basically almost a hacker, right.
It allows AI is allowing these individuals to create very
very specific uh spearfishing emails that look indistinguishable from like

(01:33:15):
a legitimate business uh communication.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
Explain spearfishing, What does that mean exactly? We've heard.

Speaker 8 (01:33:22):
Yeah, so spearfishing is is fish, it's they're fishing, right.
Spearfishing is more directed towards like executives or people that
can actually give you the money. So that's why it's
the spears. It's very targeted. So that's why AI is
assisting and creating those kind of like emails that are
indistinguishable from business communication or from an executive as well.

(01:33:43):
Another thing that we're seeing AI is doing is it's
accelerating the development of exploits. And what I mean by
exploits is a vulnerable software vulnerability that might affect like
your iOS device, or might affect your router or your
TV or something like that, where AI is allowing these
actors to accelerate the exploitation of those vulnerabilities, where they
can create a tool within you know, hours instead of

(01:34:05):
something that may take days. And then AI of course
you know deep fake, right, That's kind of one of
the big things that people see AI is like fake
deep fakes. You're gonna see a lot of that, especially
with fraud targeting like executives or financial people. For example,
me personally, whenever I get a phone call from somebody
I don't know or unknown number, I will literally like

(01:34:26):
answer the phone call, either in Spanish or make funny
noises or something. So when the person, if there is
a person on the other line, they will say like hello,
is this JP. I'm like yeah, speaking. But most of
the time I do it and it hangs up because
what happens is a lot of these a lot of
these criminals and miss and miscreants. What they'll do is
they'll record your voice and then they'll send it to

(01:34:48):
friends and family and it's like oh, I need help,
I'm I'm I need a thousand dollars or something like that,
you know, and they will use that AI generated fake
voice for that as well.

Speaker 1 (01:34:57):
Okay, So on that note, because we've heard of these
voice clone things like you're in this world? Are these
is that actually happening like that people are actually being
attacked that way?

Speaker 8 (01:35:07):
Yes, I have. I've had already a few people close
to me that I know that have like reached out
to me saying like, hey, someone took my took an
image of me having you know, doing something lude or
lascibeous with someone else that you know, targeting my wife
or targeting my significant other or targeting my family that
have like forced me to have to pay you know.

Speaker 2 (01:35:26):
So yes, it is.

Speaker 8 (01:35:27):
It does happen, and it happens. I would say, the
more I guess, the more well known you are publicly,
that's something that's happened. That's why my company has a
team that looks for that kind of stuff as well.

Speaker 1 (01:35:38):
Wow, JP or you know makes me feel very good
right now because I'm on TV and radio. Let's talk
about ransomware. So we've heard of this idea of ransomware attacks.
You know, Crypto has been down, so maybe it's not
as valuable as it was. But is ransomware with you know,
crypto extortion still a thing.

Speaker 8 (01:35:59):
Yes, yes, it's it's still a thing because there's still
money to be made. I mean, you know, yeah, the markets,
the crypto markets have been a little bit suppressed over
the last few weeks. But and we do see a trend,
and you're absolutely correct, we do see a trend of
less ransomware attacks when cryptocurrency is down, but that doesn't
stop them. It's still money to be made, right, And
then you have what are called ransomware as a service,

(01:36:21):
where I could basically pay another ransomware team that will
create a full kit for me. Right, I have all
the programs, all the bells and whistles. All I gotta
do is just click and go right. And if I
compromise that victim and I get a cut, and I
get the ransom, they get a cut of the ransom
as well. Sometimes it could be like ten to fifteen percent,
or sometimes it's based on a large number, like if

(01:36:41):
you know, if you get ransom for a million, they'll
get like fifty thousand or something like that. So yeah,
it's still it's still pretty popular, and unfortunately, the most
targeted victims of ransomware are still like hospitals, schools, you know,
government you know, government facilities. Yeah, those are still like
the targets for those for those organizations.

Speaker 1 (01:37:00):
We've seen in the news, they pay up, I mean
because they you know, they just have no other choice
if they don't have their proper backup or their they're caught,
you know, in some way. I mean, that's really what
it comes down to, is like, you know, how prepared
are you for this stuff? You know, and I'm sure
that's what you do with your business. What what's your
advice for the average person or a small business that's listening, uh,

(01:37:20):
when it comes to protecting themselves from these latest threats
in this day and age, What do you tell them?

Speaker 8 (01:37:25):
I mean, I would say for them, it's just be cognisant,
you know, stay you know, stay, stay cognisant, stay monitoring yourself.
I would say. Also personally speaking, it would it wouldn't
be bad to get like any kind of credit monitoring
services and whatnot, because I see a lot of leaked
information on the dark web of people's personal information, even

(01:37:46):
some even at times social security numbers, which that's already
really really bad. So I would just say just vigilant,
stay monitored, stay educated as well. You know, you know,
your show, for example, is a great resource for people
to listen to someone like me and kind of like
help them, say, you know, help them guide them in
the right direction.

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
Uh, you mentioned the dark web. People Whenever we mentioned
the dark web, people are like, hey, how do I
access that? How do I tap into that? That's not
something where like people can just go on to like
darkweb dot com or something that, well, don't I don't
even know what that website.

Speaker 8 (01:38:14):
Yeah, No, you can't exactly go to dark web dot
com for that. There's no I mean, I'm sure there
is a dark web dot com domain out there, but
it's not it's not taking you to the dark Web.
You would have to download a specialized tool called TOR
or the Onion router, and that's basically the gateway. Think
of it like the Google Browser, but for the dark Web.
That's what it is. So you can't people can't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:35):
But once your stuff is on there, it's not really
coming back, Like you're if your social is out there,
your you know, whatever, private information, your passwords and things,
you're not It's not just like you can go there
and be like, oh, let me, can you please delete
that off the dark web for me?

Speaker 2 (01:38:49):
No?

Speaker 8 (01:38:49):
No, no, no no. Once it's there, once it's there's
not coming back.

Speaker 7 (01:38:52):
I mean.

Speaker 8 (01:38:53):
One thing you can try to do to protect yourself
against like your information being leaked in the dark web
is number one. You could basically pay for some credit,
like I said, credit monitoring service. Also services such as
and I'm not a spokesperson for either of these two
organizations or companies, but you can download Aura or Incogniti.
Those are two that will monitor your activity in the
dark web and alert you whenever your password has been

(01:39:15):
leaked out there. But when it comes to social media,
you'll have to just private everything. And that all depends
because if you're a business or if you're into content
creation or things like that, you're going to put some
of that information public. So it's a matter of just
being very vigilant when you're knowing that your information is
out there, and just making sure that you are well
aware of those threats.

Speaker 1 (01:39:34):
All right, JP Casto's from Binary Defense. How do people
keep up with you? You post anywhere?

Speaker 8 (01:39:42):
I really don't. I mean, if you want to follow me,
I'm on Twitter at a dragon kin thirty seven. I'm
just normally reposting things and that's basically where That's where
I'm at right now.

Speaker 1 (01:39:52):
All right, some good information. It is a brave new
world out there with all this AI stuff. So again,
just keep those spidy senses, keep them, keep them on guard,
that's for sure. Thanks so much for joining me today.
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 8 (01:40:07):
Thanks for having me, Rich.

Speaker 1 (01:40:08):
Have a good one, all right, you too. Coming up?
Is that is that time we are going to open
up the feedback. I've got a lot to read. I'm
going to try to get through as much of it
as possible. That's coming up next right here on rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro

(01:40:30):
here talking technology with you. It is that time of
the show when we read the feedback. These are the emails,
the comments, the questions you send me most of the
comments at the end of the show, and yes I
get a lot of them. I do read them, almost
all of them, actually probably all of them. Try to
respond to a lot and then I read them here

(01:40:50):
as well. But two quick notes before we get into this.
Number one, I mentioned that Mark Zuckerberg was on trial
or appeared on on the stand this week at the
trial happening in Los Angeles, that case about that twenty
year old who said she was using Instagram and YouTube
as a kid and she got depressed, suicidal thoughts, And

(01:41:12):
basically they're arguing that those platforms are designed to be addictive,
and so Zuckerberg was there, he said, that's not what
they're doing. He pushed back, saying that it's all about
usefulness and connection, not addiction. So the big thing about
this case is will these lawyers prove that Instagram knew

(01:41:34):
they were trying to make their product addictive? And if
they do, they and these lawyers win for this woman.
It's gonna mean a lot because there are about sixteen
hundred other cases pending around the nation with similar trials.
So basically, if they win this one, it opens up
the floodgates for a whole bunch of other people and
potentially class action surrounding this idea that these social media

(01:41:58):
apps are addictive. And by the way, YouTube and Instagram
are named in this one. TikTok and snapchat were originally named,
but they settled out of court before this all started.
So you got that happening. And then I mentioned that
I turned an old PC into a web browsing machine
with a Linux Mint. I did install Linux Mint on
an old computer. It was very easy. I could not

(01:42:21):
believe how easy the process was. I'm not going to
tell you the whole process here. Just go to the
newsletter to read it. Rich on tech dot TV. It's
in the show notes or in today's newsletter. All right,
onto the feedbag. Charlie in Las Vegas says, I took
your advice and I saw The Wizard of Oz at
the Sphere after hearing your review. Pretty amazing, total sensory overload.
It reminded me of the first time I saw an

(01:42:41):
IMAX movie. The led tech is incredible. Can you imagine
watching the Super Bowl there? But I have a debate
going with my wife. When we sat down, there was
what looked like a curtain over a small screen, huge
speakers hanging down, and fabric draped across the ceiling. I
told her those were fake, just images. She said they
were real. Who's right. I will settle this right now.
It's actually fake. It is an image from the Radio

(01:43:03):
City Music Hall in New York, which is owned by
the same company as the Sphere. So I did ask
that when I first saw that. I asked the folks there, like, hey,
is that reel or fake? And that's what they told me.
Pete said, I can't believe you didn't download a Google
map before your hike, and what a bummer. All trails
failed you. By the way, I love the podcast, always
a great listen talking about how I was hiking last

(01:43:23):
week in Las Vegas and all my maps failed me.
I did not have Next time, I will download offline
Google maps. I guess I was too far out of
Las Vegas to get that and all trails. I don't
know why it didn't work, but it didn't. Steve says,
if you're out heading out hiking, download Google Maps of
the area before you leave, even without cell service, your
phone's GPS will show your location on the map. I

(01:43:46):
do this when volunteering with Red Cross and Remote Areas.
It works great. Yeah, I did download the offline maps
for Las Vegas. Like I said, I think I was
just too far out. That Red Rock Canyon is amazing,
but it was like, I don't know, thirty forty minutes
outside Vegas, so maybe just didn't catch it. Randy said,
I heard you talk about the new local option on
TikTok on your show and in your newsletter, so I

(01:44:06):
went looking for it in my app. I made sure
the app was updated and even changed the location permissions,
but it still didn't show up. Turns out, all I
had to do was restart my phone. After that, the
local tab finally appeared. Thanks for the tip. I'm looking
forward to exploring what's nearby. Yes, TikTok local feed is incredible.
I love it. It's like I didn't even want to
be on TikTok and now I'm kind of like, ugh,

(01:44:26):
I gotta watch this stuff. It's all a feed of
all things happening in your area. David said, I used
rich on tech dot TV for episode one sixty one
and found it really helpful. The articles were listed in
the same order as a show. There were four I
wanted to focus on. Since I knew the order, I
could fast forward right to the section. What would make
it even easier if you added time markers in the

(01:44:47):
left column. That way I could jump straight to the
exact article instead of hunting around. But overall, now I
know how to listen to the show using rich on
tech dot TV. Well, thank you, David, I do take
great notes. I thought about the timecode, and I think
AI makes that easy, so maybe I'll try to add
that for future shows. Jim Rights in Friend of the Show, Rich,
I hope you had a safe drive back from Las Vegas.
I'm jealous you hit a buffet even though I knocked him.

(01:45:10):
I just got back from a cruise. I'm still trying
to get used to cooking for myself again after all
that food. I love buffets because I can try things
I normally wouldn't order. Okay. I also heard you mention
that you might switch to a carrier with Starlink, speaking
of oh maybe T Mobile. Yeah, I have not switched yet.
I'm thinking of it. I really I just I hated

(01:45:30):
being without any cell connect or any satellite connectivity or
cell service. Carl in Highlands, Ranch, Colorado. Hey, Rich, I
had a three terabyte external driver couldn't access. After hearing
you suggest disk drill on the show, I gave it
a try. I ran it for more than fifteen hours
and recovered the data. I moved everything to another drive,

(01:45:51):
but still couldn't access the original, so I ran a
repair option under properties that took another seventeen hours. It
ended up fixing the disc and recovering the data. I'm
not sure if I got everything back, but it recovered
a lot. I listened to your show on the weekends
while riding my bike. I'm especially impressed that you answer
questions in real time about real issues. Well, thank you, Carl,
and hope you're on that bike right now listening. Thanks

(01:46:14):
appreciate that, Chuck. Hey, Rich, warn your listeners about all
the beautiful products advertised on Instagram that don't exist. They
take your money and send you to a site which
looks phony a tracking website and has a low trust
pilot score. They claim the product is shipping from Spain's
You'll be patient, but nothing ever shows up. I bought
a selfie stick and a button you wear that displays
jpeg photos. The videos looked amazing, but the products don't

(01:46:37):
seem to exist. Yeah, this is a huge problem. They
use AI. We did it with Wuffy the Dog. Check
it out on the website. Rich on tech dot TV.
My Wuffy the Dog story is just wild. This guy
ordered what he thought was an AI robotic dog. He
got literally one of those little dogs you see at
the mall that just goes.

Speaker 13 (01:46:53):
Ye, pepe p p pep.

Speaker 1 (01:46:54):
That's it. Let's see here oh Arlene says, hey, rich,
I saw your segment about the interactive puppy. I had
something similar happen to me in twenty twenty three. I
saw ads on Facebook showing this adorable puppy walking beyond kids,
blinking and making cute sounds. I bought two for Christmas gifts.
When they arrived, they were just cheap, unattractive, stuffed puppies

(01:47:15):
with no movement at all, no blinking, no walking, nothing.
There was no invoice and no way to return them.
They look like something from a dollar store. I felt
so embarrassed I threw them in the trash instead of
giving them as gifts. I've also ordered other items from
Facebook ads that never showed up, like an ice cream maker,
a bra, and even a treadmill. I've finally learned my lesson.
Now I search for the same item on Amazon so

(01:47:35):
I know it will actually arrive and I can return
it if needed. Speaking of Amazon, I was returning a
bunch of stuff to the Amazon Store and the woman
told me that they are doing over ten thousand returns
a week at that low, just at that location, just
at that location. So whenever you feel bad about returning

(01:47:57):
something to Amazon, because I felt so bad that I
was returning like three little things. Don't feel bad. Ten
thousand returns at one location. That is massive, unbelievable. Let's
see here. Oh my gosh, so many, so many emails.
We had one more before we wrap up here. Glenn
in Austin, Texas, says say Rich. I love the show.

(01:48:18):
I'm listening out here in Austin. I just want to
say I appreciate what you do.

Speaker 7 (01:48:21):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:48:22):
Thank you Glenn out there in Austin, Texas. If you
can believe it, that's gonna do it. For this episode
of the show. You can find links to everything I
mentioned on the website. Just go to rich on tech
dot tv. Follow me on social media. I am at
rich on tech on Instagram, find me there. Next week
we're gonna have a wrap up from Samsung Unpacked. We're
gonna talk about the global day of unplugging. Yes, you

(01:48:42):
can put down your phone and you will lift to
tell about it. Thanks so much for listening. There are
so many ways you can spend your time. I do
appreciate you spending it right here with me. One reminder
before I go, please do not drive distracted. Those texts
can wait. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible,
Bobo Kim, special guests in the studio Today, Bill and
his wife. My name is rich d'muro. I will talk

(01:49:03):
to you real soon

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Rich DeMuro

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Crime Junkie

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Samsung Galaxy update to do, cutting your cable bill & why AI passwords are a bad idea (162, February 21, 2026)