Siri Settlement, Social Media Reality Check & AI in the Workplace (120, May 10, 2025)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Netflix on veils it's first home screen, redesigned in twelve years.
Google Maps can now scan your screenshots and help you
save places for your next trip. If Siri ever listened
in when you didn't ask, you might be owed money
in a ninety five million dollars settlement plus your tech
questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this

(00:23):
is rich on Tech. This is the show where I
talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
I believe the tech should be interesting, useful, and fun.
Phone lines are open at triple eight Rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one

(00:44):
zero one. 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 to submit
your question. Guests this week a Perna Chenna Pragata, chief
product officer at Microsoft and founder of Google Lens, is

(01:04):
going to explain why workers feel burned out and how
AI might be able to help, And later in the show,
Josh Ax is going to explain how parents and students
can use social media and AI tools to build a
positive online reputation. Well, welcome to you. Thanks for listening
on our stations across the nation and also tuning in

(01:25):
on KTLA Plus streaming the show. There, I got a
very serious topic to open up the show. This topic
is something that we all think about, we don't want
to believe, but it's happening, and it's true, and it
is about social media. It is changing the fabric of
our society, and not necessarily in a good way. Now,

(01:47):
don't get me wrong, there are plenty of benefits to
social media. You can keep up with friends and family
no matter where they are. You can raise money or
awareness for a cause. You can learn, you can network,
you can connect with others around the world world. Then
there's the dark side, endless scrolling through misinformation and fake news, addiction,
that waste of time, the mental health impact like FOMO

(02:10):
and anxiety, echo chambers, scams, and the list goes on. Now,
think about the way you feel when you're scrolling through
social media versus real life. On a walk through the park. Now,
on social media, you might think the world is out
to get you. You might think everything is wrong and
nothing is right. On your walk, you kind of notice
the sun shining. How it feels great to be outside

(02:30):
and your goals for the future. Look back at your
phone and the sky is falling once again. Now, this
is the thing. We are not equipped for this level
of information as adults, and certainly not as kids. And
I have two of them. I know. Remember back to
your days in high school or college, how you felt
when you found out your friends went to a party
without you. Now, imagine that feeling times one thousand. Every day,

(02:54):
all the time you scroll, and there's always going to
be people going to better places, eating it better restaurants,
and hanging out with cooler people. This has been happening
since the beginning of mankind, it just wasn't in our
face every minute of every day. This takes a toll
on adults. Now imagine kids and teens with their underdeveloped brains. Now.

(03:14):
I always say that social media is sort of a
highlight reel for people's lives. Right, They post the highlights,
They post the best things that they want other people
to see. My kid broke his toe the other day,
and guess what I posted on social media because I
wanted people to realize that life has its ups and downs.
It's not all the best stuff. So That's why I
put it on there. Now, think about the perfect Friday

(03:36):
night for kids around the US. It's probably hanging out
on their iPad playing roadblocks, playing Minecraft, playing Fortnite, and
chatting with their friends. Parents like it because the kids
are entertained and out of the way. What did I
do as a kid, Well, I wandered around my neighborhood aimlessly.
I walked to a friend's house, I biked around for hours.

(03:56):
I waited for a movie to come out in theaters
or play on cable TV. We literally could watch Wizard
of Oz once a year. I looked under rocks to
find worms, and I was bored out of my mind.
That's a good thing. This sense of wonder and curiosity
about the real world around us has been replaced with

(04:16):
YouTube and TikTok shorts featuring fast talking know it alls
that use even faster cuts, so we don't tune them
out as our instinct previously told us to do. Remember
when you went to your family parties as a kid
and Grandpa would talk real slow to us. As kids,
we kind of thought he was off his rocker, But

(04:37):
guess what he was actually thinking about what he had
to say. There's an idea, and he also had the
real world knowledge to back it up. Now I'm not
just singling out Grandpa. Could have been Grandma, could have
been anyone in your family. All those people that you
sort of wrote off, You realize they did have something
to say, They did have world knowledge, life skills, life knowledge.

(04:57):
These days, everyone with the smartphone has a hot on
just about anything you can think of. Case in point,
this week, we had the real ID deadline and the
air traffic control situation at Newark Airport both came to
a head. And guess what I had to fly? And
I was flying in and out of Newark for a
work trip, something I've done many many times. You know,

(05:18):
I'm from New Jersey. I have flown into Newark dozens
upon dozens of times throughout my lifetime. This time it
was a little bit different because, according to social media,
I'd be met with planes falling out of the sky,
delays and cancelations galore, and passenger chaos all over the airport,
with almost everyone being denied at the TSA checkpoint for
having a driver's license without that new real ID star

(05:40):
on it. Now I had my passport, I was prepared,
but when I got there. I don't have a real
id when I got there. Guess what. Everything was calm,
everything was cool, everything was collected.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Now.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yes, the pilots on both of my flights addressed the
situation and explain that we might be delayed due to
air traffic control shortage. But the entire trip there and
back turned out to be smooth sailing. In fact, we
landed early last night, which I can't believe now. On
my plane ride, I watched as my fellow passengers endlessly
scrolled through social media, seeing the same wild takes on politics, health, celebrities, money,

(06:18):
and recipes. None of us recipes will bookmark, but none
of us will actually ever make Yes, that's what we
do on social media. Back when I was a kid,
when I wanted to learn something, I'd open up the
World Book Encyclopedia, and if I was feeling super adventurous,
I'd sneak a section about the human anatomy. Now, I'm

(06:38):
not saying our world is not better because we have
instant access to twenty four to seven information about just
about anything. But now there's so much information we don't
know where to turn for trusted information online. Everyone has
a slant. Everyone has an angle, and we're not always
sure to aligns with our own and if it doesn't,
we might just say eh, never mind. Did I do

(07:00):
on the plane? I disconnected. I was done with all
my work, I had written my newsletter. I didn't have
anything to do, so I did not buy the Internet, which,
by the way, is so slow it's barely worthless anyway,
So I couldn't surf as some of my friends on
the plane were doing. So what did I do? I
alternated between reading a book, yes, a hardcover book, old school,

(07:23):
and watching a show on Netflix. Now, given the show
on Netflix was about how social media is impacting our kids,
so maybe that was on my mind this morning, And
even though the topic was heavy, my world felt light here.
I was in control of my little fiefdom, on a
comfortable plane ride high above the chaos of the information
super Highway, which, as it turns out, might be traveling

(07:45):
a bit too fast for our brains. It felt good
yesterday to just tune out the world. So my advice,
if you're feeling out of touch, out of control, and
like the world is falling apart around you, just tune
it out. Tune into yourself, tune into those around you,
and I believe it is a fail proof way to

(08:05):
feel better. And you might even smile and think everything
is okay. That's it. That's the rant, that's the thought.
It's very simple. Life feels very complicated when you're online
and scrolling through all this stuff. But guess what, disconnect
it and it all sort of fades away. Right now,
I have no phone number. I literally I tried to

(08:28):
switch my phone, my phone number to a different phone
than I'm testing, and it didn't take. And this happens
a couple times a year where my phone line just
goes into never never land. Now it's a little bit
dangerous because I've got two kids and they may need
to get in touch with me and I, you know,
of course my wife as well. But I tell them, look,
if you need to get in touch with me, text

(08:49):
me on this number, you know, my telegram. I don't
have a phone line right now. And guess what. Every
time this happens, it's kind of funny how all the
texts I get and all the messages that I miss
don't really mean anything when I come back to my phone.
But I can sit there with my kids at home
and just be connected to them, and it all seems

(09:10):
to be good. So I guess my thesis here is
when you're feeling like everything is just crumbling, that's not
necessarily reality. Reality is what's happening to you. Reality is
what's happening to your friends, your family, your world, and
what is physically and mentally happening to you. So just

(09:30):
keep that in mind. I know it's tough, and believe me,
I love social media. I'm on social media, but this
year I did another thing. I unfollowed anyone I don't
know on social media personally, and guess what, not seeing
all the nonsense of the people trying to sell me something,
trying to tell me how to do things better in
my life has actually led me to be a little
calmer in my life.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Now.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, I still have, you know, people that are doing
cool things on there that are cooler than me, but
I'm okay with that because we know that's happening in
the real world. So just understand these things. And I
guess my bigger point about the kids is that they don't.
They're not equipped as we are as adults to sort
of have this perspective on things. And that's why I

(10:11):
feel like it's super important that we give them that perspective.
I was out of high school the other day and
I couldn't believe the kids coming out of the classrooms.
The second they came out of those classrooms, what they
do They pulled their phone out of their back pocket. Now,
use an adult might do the same thing. I'm fine
with that. You're an adult. You can do what you
want in your life. But kids, they think that what's
on their phone is more important than what's happening in

(10:33):
real life in those hallways of school, and it's not.
And we need to figure out a way to help
them understand that that is not more important than what's
happening right in front of them. All right, that's it.
Eight to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Thanks for
coming to my ted talk. If you have a question,
give me a call. Eight to eight rich one oh

(10:54):
one More rich on Tech coming your way 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. You got a question or a comment,
go to the website rich on Tech dot TV. Hit contact,

(11:16):
send it right to my screen. Let's go to Susan
in Santa Monica. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (11:22):
Hey, Rich, Kim is a doll. And by the way,
you are the coolest because you do not need to
be cool.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Thank you. I'm not cool. That's the best part. That's
so cool, ask Bobo. He knows. I wear my crocs every.

Speaker 4 (11:37):
Week and I'm not online ninety five percent of the time.
And it's beautiful, calm and joyful.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yes see, you know what I'm talking about. And I'm
online one hundred and ten percent of the time, so.

Speaker 4 (11:46):
I'm not You'll need to do that.

Speaker 5 (11:48):
It would help.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Everybody'll want Yeah, I agree. What can I help you with?

Speaker 4 (11:50):
All right? My eighty seven year old best friend, he uh,
he's got Exfinity for his phone sell service and his
Wi Fi. I suppose it's called anyway, he's got Exfinity.
He's got an iPhone thirteen Max Pro. It stopped. He
couldn't make phone calls out or in. He went over

(12:11):
it said what it was displaying was SOS SIM. He
went over to Infinity. They pulled the SIM code out.
It started to work. He went home. It stopped working
again when he turned it off. He went back and
they said, don't turn it off again. They got it
to work, but they said, don't turn it off again.

(12:32):
Go to Apple. Don't shut off your phone. And if
you before I hang up or you hang up by
the way, I just want to know what you think
of Sonic Sonic for phone service. What do you think
is going on? Does you just need to go to Apple?
I mean, he's eighty seven. He doesn't want to go
to Apple.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Uh okay, so a couple things, it sounds. So what
they did was they swapped out his physical sim with
what's called an e sim, and that is a very
stand way of getting serviced. At this point, I actually
think it's well, it depends kind of where you're on.
You know, if you're switching your phone a lot, then
a physical sim is better. But if you're not switching

(13:10):
out your phone, which I doubt your eighty seven year
old friend is doing, I think an e sim is better.
It's secure, it stays there, you can't pop it out,
can't misplace it. Why it's not working on Exfinity They
should figure that out. Unless it is a physical problem
with the iPhone, then you know this is this is
Exfinity's problem, not Apple's problem. So what I would recommend

(13:33):
is there is a feature on the iPhone called a
Network Settings Reset, and you can Google to find where
that is in the settings or just search and settings
for Network settings reset, and that will reset all of
the settings on the iPhone when it comes to your network,
and so that should If that does not bring this

(13:56):
sim back to life, there's a larger problem. It may
not be provisions properly, there could be some sort of
issue with the way that they set it up. But
typically if a SIM is on your phone, there's really
no problem with that sim. Like, once it's on there,
it doesn't really unless it gets you know, unless it's
a physical SIM that gets bumped out of place or something,
the SIM is just going to continue to work. So

(14:17):
by the way settings general transfer transfer or reset phone
and then tap reset and then it says reset network settings.
So once you tap that, it's not going to erase
the SIM card or anything like that. It's just going
to kind of reset the network settings. It's going to
look for that Exfinity network once again, and hopefully it
should latch onto that. The other thing to check is

(14:38):
to make sure that the SIM is actually turned on.
So go into your settings Cellular and you'll see your
list of eSIMs. Make sure that your eSIM is toggled
on under Exfinity and that that should be pretty straightforward.
As for Sonic the phone service, I have never heard
of that. So I let's say Sonic, Oh, Sonic Residential. Okay,

(15:03):
it looks like this is an UMA type service. Okay,
this get Sonic voice service. So Sonic Fusion, you can
plug any phone into a jack. We'll work with Sonic's
phone service. Just plug your phone into the analog telephone
adapter which we deliver. Okay. So Sonic looks to be
an internet company. Maybe not in my area, maybe it's

(15:26):
in the Santa Monica area where you live, but yeah,
I think that's fine. It's basically just they're using what's
called voiceover IP, and so what they do is they
give you a little adapter. You plug that into your
Internet connection via Ethernet or even Wi Fi nowadays, and
then your phone. You can plug any phone, a standard
phone into that adapter and it becomes sort of a landline.

(15:48):
But what it's doing is instead of using copper cables,
it's running routing all your calls through the internet. You
can do this yourself. I'm not sure how much Sonic
charges for this because they don't put the price ing
clear on their website as far as I can tell,
But and you have to looks like you have to
live in their area. But the alternative to this is

(16:09):
Umaoma and they work with any internet provider and you
can buy the box. Usually it's either free two one
hundred dollars. You plug it into your Internet and you
usually pay about ten dollars a month for the service.
So that's an alternative to this Sonic situation, this Sonic
home phone with Fusion Internet. But the thing about Sonic

(16:33):
is that it's probably a bit cheaper if you're bundling
it with your home internet. So I guess my bottom
line is if you already have home internet from Sonic,
you can add the home phone and it's probably just
an add on like any other cable company. If you
don't have internet from Sonic and you have internet from
a third party provider, I would just check out Uma.
Looks like they're on sale right now. It's eighty dollars

(16:54):
for the device and then phone service is zero dollars
a month. You just pay the taxes and fees, which
is about usually it runs about ten dollars a month.
Good question, Susan. Hopefully your friend gets that stuff figured out.
I remember you from a previous show. You had another
friend that had an issue with their phone. I like that.
You're the neighborhood caller to the rich On Tech Show.
Thanks for that. Eighty eight rich one O one eighty

(17:16):
eight seven four to two four one zero one. I'll
tell you how you can get a piece of Apple's
ninety five million dollar Siri privacy settlement coming up. Welcome
back to rich On Tech. Eighty eight rich one oh
one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Apple has agreed to pay ninety five million dollars over

(17:37):
this Siri privacy lawsuit. We've talked about this before, but
now the claims period is open. So, uh, if you
have ever had Siri activate accidentally, even though you didn't
say her name, you maybe owed some money. So this
was a couple that said Siri activated and captured their
private conversation, which was then shared with a whole bunch

(17:59):
of people, and then the recordings were used for ads. Now,
I don't really believe that any of that was true,
but I mean, I know Siri did activate, but I
don't think Apple sold it or anything like that. But
Apple has settled this case without admitting any wrongdoing. Of course.
So if you had a SyRI enabled device, and a
lot of you do between September twenty fourteen and December

(18:20):
twenty twenty four ten years, you can file a claim.
Devices include the iPhone, the iPad, Apple Watch, the Mac,
the HomePod, Apple TV. You can claim up to five
devices per person. Payouts are up to twenty dollars per device,
so that's one hundred dollars. Total. Claims are due by
July second, So you might get an email. A couple

(18:40):
of people already emailed me and said, Rich, I got
an email about this, And if you don't have an email,
you can still claim. It's Lopez Voice Assistant Settlement dot com.
I'll put the link on my website. Rich on tech
dot tv Lopez Voice Assistant Settlement dot Com. Say that
ten times fast. But yeah, this is it, this is happening.

(19:02):
I'm sure I'm part of this. I mean, how many
times have you been talking and Siri just chimes in?
It's like wait what and she'll just say something you know,
she's like, you know, and it's like she'll just add
to the conversation. You're like, hold on now, I do
believe that Siri was is probably the most private assistant
out there. But yes, at a point, Apple was I guess,

(19:22):
reviewing some of the transcripts and recordings that people had
with Siri because they wanted to make the service better.
They have since now given you the option of whether
you want your stuff to go into that pile or not,
and you can turn that off in your settings. I
think it's off by default now. But yes, So ninety
five million dollars not a lot to Apple, but uh,

(19:43):
you know, hundred bucks, why not if you had this
happen to you. Uh eighty eight Rich one on one
eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Don is in Troy, Ohio. You're on with rich Donnie there,
Don going once, going twice? Don Okay, Hello, oh there

(20:05):
you are?

Speaker 6 (20:06):
Hello? All right.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
I was trying to sorry, I was trying to switch
to my earbud and it was a freaking organ so
oh well, so sorry. So I am totally blind, and
I use a screen reader voiceover, and I do have
it connected to my brother's by my eye said to
night bad, I'm just gonna kind of purpose this, so

(20:30):
I'll usually groom. I've started using groom really, But a
problem I'm having basically, do I have to allow people
full keyboard access for this thing to work? Because I
don't like like it's causing issues. My on screen keyboard
disappears a lot of times, and I have a bunch

(20:51):
of issues with that, and it's driving me up the wall.
And I'm just, you know, with language told be better.
Could I turn off full keyboard access and still get
the free step at gramary or just I don't. I
don't know, and I'm you know, and I have some
of the questions related to language Tool, but I just
I'm frustrated.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Okay, I understand, I totally understand. Now I've recently switched
from Grammarly to you mentioned language Tool, so I recently
switched to that. It's free, it's open source. You do
not have to grant grammarly full keyboard access. So if
you deny this, you're not going to get the full functionality.
But let's think about what grammarly does. It looks through

(21:35):
what you're typing, and it underlines the things that it
thinks could be corrected. So it does not require full
access to do that. It just would like full access
because guess what. It can now analyze the way that
you type, It can analyze the things that you're typing,
and it can do it in much more real time.
You're basically just giving more data to that company because

(21:57):
they're going to monetize on that data. They're going to
train their system them and make it better. So I think,
have you tried turning off the full keyboard access.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
I don't try that yet, but I'm about to the
problem is that I'm you know, I'm a ditilliaris advocate,
So I'm doing a lot of writing and stuff related
to you know, blog entries for a website that me
and a friend run called Ohio Ohio Advocacy Heartbeat, and
I'm mostly doing me you know, there's some personal things

(22:26):
and then you know, emails and that kind of stuff.
And I also, you know, you know, I'm doing minutes
for as extra position I have. So it's just like
I do a lot of onto you of the personal stuff.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, you want this, you want this to look and
sound right, and so that's I understand.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
You can't you and I need organization too, Like, I
don't want everything to be in like twenty different twenty
thousand different places. I want some working, you know, some
you know, some structure. So okay, my minutes, minutes you
go into one folder, you know, blog posts you go
into that folder, and everything else you go into whatever

(23:03):
other folders. I tell you, I tell you, I tell
you you're going in.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
I hear you, and I'm yeah. I try to stay
organized on my computer, but it's not always easy. My
question is have you tried Have you tried using chat
GBT at all to clean up your your documents or
make minutes or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
I haven't tried it because I know I have the
three point five model, and I know it's kind of
limited and things like that, So I don't really and
I don't really think I have the signage of resources
to swing a chat GTP Chat GPT plus membership for
twenty bucks a month, well a year.

Speaker 7 (23:43):
I could swing it.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
But here's the thing I don't. I don't think you
need to pay for chat GBT, especially for now. The
advanced model is going to have much more advanced features
and it's also going to give you more access. So
if you're using it a ton. If you're using the
free version, you're going to run out of some of
the usage, Like it's going to say after a while, like, hey,
you're using this too much, and you get some advanced features.

(24:06):
But honestly, they've given they've unlocked a lot of the features,
and they're now sort of just limiting it by rate,
you know, like how much you're using it. And I
think for basic things like you're talking about, which it
comes to grammar and spelling and language and organization, those
are all things that I think you're going to be
pretty well suited to just use the basic CHATCHYBT. So

(24:27):
I guess my big point is I was paying for Grammarly.
I no longer pay for Grammarly. I let my subscription laps.
I've switched a language Tool, which I find to be
very straightforward by the way. It's let me just get
the website for that language. Let's see whereas it Language
tool dot org. And it's very similar to Grammarly and

(24:48):
AI based grammar Checker, but I and they do have
a premium version. But I find and I do a
lot of writing that between language Tool and chat gybt,
I am getting a lot of my work double checked.
So language tool, as I'm writing, it will put those
little squiggles under the things and it will just check
the spelling straightforward. Grammarly was going a little bit too

(25:11):
far in my opinion, of changing like the structure of
my sentences, and it wanted to change too much, and
so I just decided, you know what, I just all
I want is my spelling checked. And then if I
want to kind of polish up some of the things
I write, I paste them into chat GBT and then
I will polish them up that way, keeping my voice
as close as possible. But it has a nice knack

(25:33):
for kind of making things a little bit more organized
than I can and making them sound a little bit
better or you know, gets my thoughts a little bit right.
It's kind of like me, but like times one hundred.
So that's what I like about it. But the other thing,
and by the way, the pro tip when you're putting
stuff into chat GBT and you're trying to have it
polish your text, okay, number one less is more so

(25:56):
if you're writing a whole thing, or a whole paper
or a whole page, whatever it is, is paste it
in paragraph by paragraph right. Don't try to do the
whole thing at once, because if there's any sort of issue,
it's going to try rewriting the whole thing over and
over and it just takes so much longer you're never
going to get it right. So try doing things paragraph
by paragraph. Now, if you're just writing a simple email
or something, obviously you can toss it all in there

(26:17):
and it's much easier. But I will tell you that
almost a majority of the communication I get at this
point in my life is generated by chat GBT, and
it is I mean, and I'll admit that I use
it to write back to some of the emails that
I get. And what I'll do is I will dictate
my response and chat gibt will just format it in

(26:38):
a nice, pretty way so that I can respond to
you without saying a couple of words. I always remember
the Steve Jobs emails that he would send back to
people would be like one to two to three words.
And I understand why he was a busy guy, but
he wanted to reply to people. And that's kind of
like me. I get all these emails all week long
from you, and I want to reply, and I've realized
that sometimes my replies, you're like one to two words,

(27:00):
that's right, Yes, that would be perfect. Go with this,
And of course you're sitting there thinking, oh, okay, Rich
doesn't really have much time for me. He's writing these
one or two words. But now with chat GBT, I
can just dictate what I'm saying and it will kind
of elaborate on that and kind of fill out the blanks,
like thanks for writing, Susan, here's what I think about this.
And by the way, Dawn, the other thing that I love,

(27:22):
and I've talked about this before on my show, and
I know you use the dictation is whisper flow. I'm
not kidding. I am not kidding. This is the best
voice dictation I have ever seen in my life, and
I honestly cannot imagine my life without it. And I'm
actually worried at this point because I feel like Google

(27:42):
or Apple is going to buy this company and or
a third party some other company, and they're going to
ruin it for me because I love that I can
use it on my Mac, it works on Windows now,
it works on the iPhone. I'm waiting for it to
come to Android. But if you think voice dictation is good,
you have never seen anything like this, never ever in

(28:03):
your life. It uses AI to not just get what
you're saying, but to put in the paragraphs, the periods,
the explanation points, expla exclamation points. See it's better than
what I could do. And I'm just talking. I'm not
even writing all right. Eighty to eight Rich one on one.
Thanks for the call, Dawn, appreciate it. Show notes everything
I mentioned all on the website rich on Tech dot TV.

(28:27):
Coming up, I'll tell you about Netflix's first big redesign
in twelve years. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Eighty eight
Rich one O one eighty eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Jeff right into the feedback, saying, Rich,

(28:48):
excellent opening message today, a classic. You should keep a
permanent link to this message on the social media status
quo on your show's website. Well said sir Jeff in Clearwater, Florida.
Thank you, Jeff. Yeah, you know, look, I know people
don't want to believe it, but it's true and I
stick by my words. Thanks for the feedbag. If you

(29:08):
want to get yours in at rich on Tech, just
go to rich on Tech dot TV hit contact. I
changed it up a little bit. I actually put the
email address. Now it's feedbag at richon tech dot TV,
which I may have to change because I feel like
when people see that that aren't like a fan of
the show or haven't listened, they're gonna think that I

(29:29):
misspelled feedback, they're gonna be like, oh, no, it's feedback
at richon tech dot TV. But no, it's actually feedbag.
And the reason I call it feedbag is because it's
a combination of feedback and mail bag. Get it feedback,
And I think I said it once on the show
by accident. It just kind of slipped that way, and
I've preferred it ever since. And so now you can

(29:51):
just directly email feedback at richontech dot TV. That'll give
me your message. If you prefer a form, there is
also a place to submit your message via a form,
and just be sure to include your name, your city,
how you listen, and understand that we may use your
message here. I originally wanted the form because I wanted
to make it as simple as possible for people to

(30:12):
submit their message, and so I still have that option,
but I think a lot of people just like to
have an email address in general, so I put that
there as well. All right, there you have it, Rich
on tech dot TV. Let's go to Nash in Downy Nash.
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 5 (30:30):
How are you doing, sir?

Speaker 1 (30:31):
I am doing well. How are you doing?

Speaker 5 (30:33):
Pretty good?

Speaker 8 (30:34):
I got a complex question then to get a single question.
So number one, where or what type of model do
you recommend for holographic sticker printing. I have a little
big and I want to say stickers. I've gone to
a couple models and none of them really seemed to
drive the ink from the machines onto a holographic paper. Well,

(30:57):
and I know there's got to be a better way.

Speaker 5 (31:00):
What's your take?

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Ooh, so you're printing your what kind of printer are
you using to print to this hall? Is it? So
you're buying like a holographic sticker and then you're printing
stuff onto their like like custom stickers.

Speaker 8 (31:13):
Yeah, so it's like my mobol and kind of like
those stickers you see like at the dances or maybe
if your kid won an award at school. But the
stickers I prints, they're more high quality. They're a holographic paper.
It's considered a premium brand. The model of pary I'm using.
It's this really really old Lex mark from I think

(31:35):
the eighteen hundreds, very loud.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
Very annoying, the eighteen hundred.

Speaker 8 (31:41):
Yeah, the eighteen hundred stone age.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (31:43):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Is it a laser printer or is it a special
specialty printer.

Speaker 8 (31:48):
It's one of these specialty produce. I believe the model
number is t X one eight eight.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Okay. Uh so this is a a Lex TX one
a eight.

Speaker 5 (32:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (32:01):
That's that's that's the only information that's luck on the
little badge by the plug on the back. But I
don't know if that's a serial number or the model number.
I know it serviceable for the ink, but I need
something better, I need something more quality.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
So what type of printer is this? Is it?

Speaker 4 (32:21):
Like?

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Is it printing like? Is it etching onto this paper?
Or is it actually just printing like laser jet ink?

Speaker 4 (32:27):
Like?

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Is it?

Speaker 5 (32:29):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (32:29):
So it's just a laser jet printer that you're you're
putting this, uh this paper, you're feeding this holographic sticker
paper into correct Okay, So you just you just basically
need a nice printer that can print to this, yes, sir, Okay, Well,
I mean if you're talking about the best. I mean,
if you're you're just basically looking for the best, like

(32:50):
laser jet printer, I'm taking it.

Speaker 8 (32:53):
Yeah, something that can handle holographic paper.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Okay, Well that is very specific and I can't say
I have an experience with that whatsoever, but I would
say I would just look for a really good laser
printer that is highly rated. Now, does it need to
have a certain functionality for that paper to take? Like
does it need like a manual feed or anything. Is
that paper like super thick that you you need to

(33:17):
have like a specialty you know, feeder for it or no?

Speaker 8 (33:22):
Yes, some paper is it's it's it's loaded by weight. Okay,
So obviously because it's a thicker paper, you can't put
so much into the feed tray, right, maybe you can
go five or ten max. Because the sticker is so
thick and the holographic nature of it is, it's not
like printing out a paper.

Speaker 5 (33:40):
Of an essay.

Speaker 8 (33:40):
It's it takes a long time, a very long time
to apply the laser inc from the actual jet to
the paper. And I just I just I don't know
why this is like rocket science, but a lot of
people I've seen do it. They have like these really
eight thousand dollars nine thousand dollars printers. They shoot them
out one hundred out of time like a dollar bill press.

(34:01):
And I said, there's got to be a better way
to do this at home without spending a fortune. But
I'll go ahead and do my own homework on that.
And then the last question I want to ask you is,
I have a problem with Jim headphones. I can't find
a pair of beads of Sony over ear models that
have a very powerful base. What do you recommend?

Speaker 1 (34:25):
Mm? Okay, Well, back to the printer real quick. You know,
I would say to just get like I mean, brother
Brother laser printers are very highly rated for their combination
of sort of price and features, So I would look
into them and just make sure it has a manual
feed tray on there. And of course you can go
color laser or black and white if you need that.

(34:45):
When it comes to headphones, so you want Sony headphones
with a lot of bass.

Speaker 8 (34:50):
Any any over to ear headphones that you model that
have a lot of beets?

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Okay?

Speaker 8 (34:54):
Models you recommend Beats or Apple. I had some beets
the Solo Breeze. I don't know where the base was.
I had some Sony they were like d dollars a target.
There was like no base to them. And I had
some all of those Apple Apod maxis, and there's just
I don't know what's my phone When I switched from
settings to the model of acoustic or card speakers or

(35:18):
over your monitors or whatever, there's just there's no base
in any of these models. And I'm thinking exact the way.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
They come now, well, it could be the way they come,
but also it could be the EQ settings on your
on your phone. So I would look into your phone
and check out the EQ settings. Most of the audio
files that I know, and I'm not one of them
that are testing headphones all the time, they are saying
that you have to change those EQ settings on your
device or else. These things are not going to sound

(35:45):
that good. I would say for the gym. I mean,
if you're looking for like over the over the ear headphones,
you know, I would say something from Beats is probably
going to be your best bet, just because you know,
that's what I see the most of and I think
that's what most people go to. I do have the
Aarpods max. I think they're good, but I to me,

(36:05):
earbuds are better for the gym. I just let me,
let me look into this. We'll be right back. Welcome
back to rich on tech rich DeMuro here hanging out
with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one on one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. The website for the show rich on tech

(36:26):
dot TV. This is episode one twenty, So if you
want links to anything I mentioned, you can find it
on the website rich on tech dot TV search one
twenty or search episode one twenty. Links are all there.
Before the break, we had a Nash in Downie asking
about some UH headphones that had better base for the gym,

(36:48):
and so UH did a little research in the break
and it turns out there's two that seemed to come
up over and over for having a lot of base
for the price. The Beats fit Pro Eats fit Pro.
Those are earbuds, and I think Nash said that he
wanted headphones. I personally like earbuds better at the gym.

(37:08):
Just that's me. But I see a lot of people
with headphones. But that's if you want earbuds. Beats fit
Pro those are two hundred dollars got a nice amount
of bass on them. And then these are the the
Sony Olt Power Sound ult Alt, where these are two
hundred dollars and they actually have a special button on them,

(37:30):
an old button to boost your base and feel the
incredible power of sound. So those are two hundred dollars.
So two pair of headphones right there, or two pairs
of possibilities with that extra base. I guess you know, Look,
if you're lifting lifting a lot of weight, maybe that's
my problem. I don't you know, I'm sitting there running
like to like cardio, like Sabrina Carpenter. I just like

(37:54):
to make Bobo walk out every once in a while.
I guess you're listening to like real good heavy metal
stuff and you want to get that, you know, pumping music.
I guess the base probably, Maybe that's what I'm missing
in my life. Maybe this is why I am the
way I am. I don't have enough base in my life.

Speaker 9 (38:12):
You got enough weights?

Speaker 5 (38:13):
Lift weights?

Speaker 1 (38:13):
I gotta lift weights. I did lift weights the other day.
It was like, I think it was like thirty or
forty pounds.

Speaker 9 (38:19):
What did you do with it?

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Like a little curl?

Speaker 5 (38:21):
All right?

Speaker 1 (38:21):
Like one or two?

Speaker 3 (38:25):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (38:26):
All right? Eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight
seven four to two four one zero And let's go
to Sam in Huntington Beach. I gotta be very careful
if I if I press five, it goes to Kim
for Sam.

Speaker 10 (38:39):
All do that?

Speaker 1 (38:40):
There you are? What's up? Sam? Hey?

Speaker 10 (38:43):
Reach? Sorry man, I'm question and my home neck work
I had in somehow inappropriate name shows up and I
don't know where it's coming from. What do I do?
I can see their neighbor WiFi but those are lost secured.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Yeah, I don't know what do I do? So when
you when you when you scan your Wi Fi networks,
you see this inappropriate wi Fi network name?

Speaker 10 (39:13):
Yeah, and it's open. And sometime you know, when I
go from work to home and my phone is searching
for it because I have a Tesla a Solar panels too,
so it's got its own WiFi do and it just
I don't want it to connect it. I don't want
I don't know.

Speaker 8 (39:30):
I'm lost.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
What do Okay? So your phone is connecting to it? Okay,
so you can? I mean so number one, I mean,
it's unfortunate that this is happening, but people can make
their wife. It's kind of interesting that I don't see
this more now that you say this, because I think
some of the Wi Fi network names I've seen are funny,
and I always get a kick out of like interesting

(39:51):
or you know, just silly ironic Wi Fi names, But
I have not thought of the inappropriate Wi Fi network name. Now,
Wi Fi network is the name of that network. The
SSID is broadcast out by the device, and so anyone
in that area that's scanning for Wi Fi is going
to see that Wi Fi network. Now, there's not a

(40:14):
simple easy way to tell your device do not show
me all the Wi Fi networks in my area. That's
not really a possibility as far as I've seen. But
you can control which Wi Fi networks your device connects to.
So there's two settings on your phone. The first is
connect to open networks, turn that off. The second is

(40:34):
it sounds like you might have already connected to this
network at one point, maybe you were curious about it.
It was an open network, you tapped it, and your
phone connected. So now every time your phone goes past
that network, it is reconnecting to that network. And whether
it's your phone or your car or your computer, whatever
it is, just go into your Wi Fi, find that network,

(40:55):
tap the there's usually either an I next to it
or something, and just say either forget this network, or
if it's already connected, say do not join. Do not
join this network automatically. So there's like a toggle that
will say, you know, do not join this network. And
so that's the way you do it. Like, for instance,
when I go to work, I've got a network there

(41:17):
that I only want to connect to once in a while,
So I just toggled off the ability for my phone
to connect to that network automatically. When it finds it,
I have to manually enable that connection. Now, when it
comes to this open network, there's not much you can
do about it. I mean, this person, whoever they are
that has this silly network name, has decided that they
think it's funny to do this, and I mean, there's

(41:40):
not that much harm. I guess it's silly, but you know, yeah,
kids could be scanning on their devices and see this
inappropriate name, and that's pretty much, you know, the worst
that can happen there. So I think it's interesting that
it's open. So if you were like a bit of
a tinker hacker type, you know, you might have some
fun with that you know you because they left it open.

(42:02):
It's like, hey, what are you doing there? But when
it comes to actually telling your device not to show
you that name, ever, there's not really a way that
I know. And maybe because you said this, I mean
maybe in the future that you know, maybe phones and
computers when they scan for network names, if they see
a bad word in the name, they'll exit out or something.
I don't know that would be interesting. Thanks for the call,

(42:26):
appreciate it. FBI is warning speaking of routers and Wi Fi.
FBI is warning about old routers powering cyber crimes. So
cyber criminals are targeting routers from twenty ten or earlier.
So if you have not switched your router in fifteen years,
and I know there are some of you out there

(42:46):
that probably haven't, these are being turned into like zombie routers.
So these devices don't get security updates, which makes them
easy to hack. And once they're infected, the hackers install
malware called the Moon to your router into a proxy,
and this lets them do all kinds of things. Basically,
they're running their crimes through this router, and because this

(43:09):
router seems trusted because it's on your network, the systems
that sort of filter through all these different malware and
stuff like that are none the wiser. So here are
the warning signs. Number one, your router is fifteen years old.
That's the number one warning sign. Number two, slow Internet,
your router's overheating, unfamiliar router settings. The biggest risk is

(43:33):
if your router has remote administration turned on, which it may,
especially if it's old. You know, they didn't think a
lot of this stuff. They didn't think about a lot
of this stuff back in the day. So the FBI
recommends you disabled remote access, update the firmware, change your password.
But if your router's end of life, which you know,
you can google the name of your router and just
see if it's getting updates anymore. If it's not, it's

(43:53):
probably time to get a new one. Routers are not
that expensive. I think that this is something that when
you look at the massiveness of America and how many
routers are out there. Yes, there are probably some that
are just sitting there, they've been there for a while,
they're in place, they're just doing their job, and that's
what happens. But I think for a lot of people,
you know, if they're getting their Internet installed by their

(44:13):
cable provider, or they're kind of keeping up on things this.
I don't know how widespread this is, but clearly it's
widespread enough that the FBI is putting a warning out
about it. So if your routers before twenty ten, get
a new one. And then Netflix getting its first home
screen redesign on TV in over twelve years. It's the
first time they're redesigning this screen since twenty thirteen. I

(44:37):
know no one's ready for change, but it's coming at
you fast. I mean it's only been you know, twelve years,
but still it's fast. Back then, when they redesign their
home screen, they had thirty million subscribers. Now they have
over three hundred million. This new update is called Eclipse.
I guess that's the code name for it. And finally, finally, finally,
there is a top navigation bar. So about you. But

(45:00):
if you ever scroll on Netflix from left to right,
like you go, Let's say you go down like a
movie list to the right. You keep going, and then
you want to search for something, you gotta scroll all
the way back through that list to the left just
to get back to that search. No more. Now you
can just go back up to the top and you
can search. Finally, Netflix, Thank you. This is for TV
screens only, where Netflix says seventy percent of viewing is happening.

(45:24):
There's gonna be fewer titles on the screen, but there's
gonna be more video like things are gonna auto play more,
more animations. Also, there's gonna be more of an emphasis
on live stuff, Like Netflix is getting into more live stuff,
so you might see like if they have like a
live wrestling or something happening, that's gonna be sort of
like playing in a little picture like on the screen.

(45:44):
So again, this is all to get you to click more.
The other thing I thought was interesting is that they're
gonna be doing recommendations in faster time. So if you
search for like horror movie and then you kind of
are just like bumping around the screen and trying to
look for some thing, they'll sort of populate the home
screen with a bunch of more horror recommendations because it

(46:05):
knows you're sort of looking for that. And so it
said the old algorithm could take a day to catch up.
So let's say you search for horror movies on Friday
night and on Saturday night you come back to Netflix,
then it would show you all the horror movies. No,
now it's going to show you that night. So that's
pretty cool. Let's see, it's just kind of like a
more responsive I guess. Let's see. Hover over a title,

(46:28):
you'll see a larger image, a short description, and they're
also doing the tags like top ten or Oscar nominee,
which is interesting because that's what Roku did when they
announced their redesign. Not a redesign, but just new features.
People love when movies get awards, right, so if a
movie has an award or it's a Top ten, you know,
people like the comfort of these signals knowing that other

(46:50):
people like this movie. And that's one of my issues
with Netflix is like because they they don't want to
put an emphasis on like you know, this movie has
a Rotten Tomatoes score or this movie is top rated.
It's like, because they want you to watch this catalog
of stuff that they have, they don't want to say like, oh,
this is in IMDb's top two hundred movies. But now,

(47:12):
I guess Oscar Nominee's kind of a safe one. They're
gonna toy with more of those little things, like you know,
some sort of award or some sort of top ten list.
But again it's like on Netflix information like Netflix data.
But this is a big shift. We'll see and of course,
you know, we know the other streaming services love to
follow what Netflix does. We may see more redesigns if

(47:32):
this one seems to work. Eight to eight rich one
on one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one rich on tech dot tv. Is the
website coming up? I'll talk you about the new phone
that's launching this week. Why why it's slim to win.
Welcome back to rich on tech. Rich Demiro here talking

(47:53):
technology with you. Let's go to Orlando, Florida, where Chris
is calling. Chris. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
Good afternoon, Thank you, Rich. I always appreciate you taking
the call.

Speaker 5 (48:04):
I won't keep you very long.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Today, Thank you.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
I have an iPad M four. Purchased it last September
and very much recently. It has been some awkward, you know,
issues with the software since we got it, but I've
had rest all the software. Well, I mean when I
got it, I believe it was that iPad OS seventeen
point six.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
Don't quote me on that.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
I think that's what that was. When we got it.

Speaker 8 (48:30):
A short time after.

Speaker 5 (48:31):
We couldn't.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
We vooted it down. We couldn't get it to boot up.
Went to Apple. They reinstalled the software. Everything seemed to
be good, and then several months later we powered it down.
I went out, I had some meetings. I was going
to be back late, so I powered it down, give
it a break, and then I couldn't power it on.
I was without the iPad for twenty four hours.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Oh the humanity. How did you survive, Chris?

Speaker 5 (48:58):
I did? I really didn't.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
I had I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
Really.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
I called Apple and you know, made a cup of coffee,
got back to work, did several things, and got into
the back into the Apple store. I mean, no technology
for twenty four hours or rich. It's like, you know,
the end of the end of the world.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
You know, I'm without a phone number right now. Nobody
can call me or text me. How do you think
I feel? It's horrible? I feel great. Just oh wife,
I didn't get the call, but I don't know. I
just have no way to get in touch with me
right now anyway. So what can we what can we
do to help you? What's what's the problem right now?

Speaker 2 (49:34):
Well, right now, yeah, because we could expound on that
quite quickly.

Speaker 5 (49:38):
Is that okay?

Speaker 2 (49:39):
So then we went in. They reinstalled the software a
second time. Now recently Apple updated to Apple Intelligence and
Siri Apple Intelligence does not work very well at all,
so we basically we keep that off. And now the
problem is I cannot get just basic theory to work

(50:00):
on the device at all, no matter what I do.
I've called Apple Support several times. We can't get it
to work, won't turn on, went back in and now
also allow Siri when lot is stuck in a hibernation
mode in the sense that I don't know if that's
the right terminology, but it's not highlighted. So no matter
what I do, I can't get just basic s theory

(50:22):
to work. And I can't yet allow sey win Lot
to actually high like that features, so I can turn
it off and Apple doesn't know what to do with me.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Okay, well know what to do. So I think, Chris,
I think what would solve all of your issues is
tossing this iPad in the trash and buying a new one. No,
I'm just kidding. That seems like it's too Yeah, we
won't do that. I think that this sounds like you've
played with the settings too much and now everything's kind

(50:51):
of all over the place, and I think it sounds
like you have to just reset the settings and start over.
So a couple things you mentioned that you already installed
the software and reinstalled it on this divice I once,
so you could either do a full factory reset of
this device and start it up fresh and Cereal will
come back to life. That's number one. You don't have
to be that drastic, you know, I would go into

(51:12):
before I do anything else. Just go into settings. Let's
see it's settings. Where is it Settings General? Scroll all
the way down to where it says transfer or reset
phone reset, and then where it says reset all settings.
You can reset that and that will reset all of
your settings back to factory, including Siri. And then once

(51:36):
you do that, you can actually press the side button
and that should bring up Siri or it should actually
give you the option of how do you want to
set up Siri? Now. The other thing you mentioned is
that you turned off Apple Intelligence, and so when you
turn off Apple Intelligence, that is sort of linked to Siri,

(51:56):
and so you may want to turn that off and
turn it back on and see if that helps. But
those two things are like sort of like tied together now,
and I'm trying to see what it's doing. Okay, so
talk and type to Siri. Yeah. So the other thing
you can do is, I don't know if you noticed this,
but they added this new thing and if you have

(52:17):
Apple Intelligence on your device anyone, whether it's your iPhone
or your iPad, that line at the bottom of your
device you can tap and well, actually I don't know
if that works on the iPad, but I know it
works on the iPhone. You can tap that little line
at the bottom to bring up you can tap it,
double tap and it'll bring up Siri. It's called type
to Siri. I don't know if that's on the iPad.
I gotta look at that. But I think the main

(52:39):
thing that's happening here is somehow you switched all these
settings around where now some settings are off, some settings
are on, and they're all kind of interfering. So I
think doing that that settings reset is going to bring
this back to life. And then if you want, once
you've got that up and running, then you can go
in and toggle off Apple Intelligence and your serious it

(53:00):
would still work. Siri will stop using okay, yeah, so
that's just your Apple intelligence and then the Siri win locked.
The reason why that could be off is that you know,
once you toggle that off, let's see, I'll turn off
allow Siri win locked, you should be oh you gotta yeah,
that's a passcode things. You might have to turn that
back on and toggle your passcode again. So you got

(53:22):
to put your passcode in to let that feature turn on.
But the bottom line, I think you do the settings reset.
It's going to change a bunch of things back to
the factory, but I think that's going to bring back Siri,
brings Siri back to life. The M four iPad is
a relatively new model, so it should be pretty good there.
All right, Coming up, we're going to talk about AI
in the workplace. Why if you're feeling burned out, maybe

(53:45):
it's AI to the rescue right here on rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. Not sure if you figure out the
figured out the theme to this week's songs, but sort

(54:05):
of road trippy traveling driving Bobo got it. When he
looked through the list, He's like, I got it. What
about this song? You left this one out? But they're that,
you know, just to get you going. All right, this
is really interesting. So you know, we're all like sort
of overworked and people are asking more of us, Employers
are asking more. So how do we do more with less? Well?

(54:28):
AI might be the answer. Let's hear from a Parna
Chenna Pergata, chief product officer at Microsoft and the founder
of Google Lens. By the way, she talks about why
workers feel burned out and how AI can help.

Speaker 11 (54:43):
There's one statistic that just jumps out at us this year,
which is fifty three percent of leaders want everybody to
be more productive, they want.

Speaker 6 (54:53):
More work, and yet eighty percent of US leaders and
employees we're maxed out. We don't have the energy or
the capacity. So for us, it was like, oh, there
is a big.

Speaker 11 (55:04):
Capacity gap here, and guess what the capacity gap can
be filled with AI at work?

Speaker 1 (55:11):
And so what are some of the solutions for AI
at work that we are sort of seeing today.

Speaker 11 (55:18):
When you think about where we are in this whole
AI journey, we have, you know, rich, we have intelligence
on tap right now, like and you turn on the
tap and you have a world class research scientist, a
world class data scientist and analysts writing your pocket. So
imagine you know you're a salesperson, you have that most
important meeting end of the quarter, you're trying.

Speaker 6 (55:40):
To close the deal.

Speaker 11 (55:41):
AI can help you look through all the information that
you need, look at what's the current news, what's on
top of mind for the customer, and help you close
that deal. Or you go on vacation hopefully sure, and
then you know that's great, right, but when you come
back from the vacation, you have countless emails, meetings, womans
messages all waiting for you. And again, AI can help

(56:04):
you scour through all of this stuff and say, just
like a perfect assistant would do, and say, here are
the three things that you should be focused on. Especially
don't forget to respond to the email from the boss
by the end of today.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
These are things that AI can do.

Speaker 11 (56:18):
Right now, you're actively working on all of these tools,
and that's I think the most important thing here. We've
got to have everybody start to use these tools.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
So that is where the idea of AI kind of
comes in. For the average employee. We're getting mixed signals
from companies. Don't you know whether we can use these tools?
How can we use them? And sometimes we even feel
guilty using them because we feel like they're replacing what
we're doing.

Speaker 11 (56:43):
Yeah, I mean which I have three tips, which is
number one, using AI it's a contact sport, it's a
you got to build a muscle group, right and you
have to use the tools of course that are compliant
and safe and secure like Microsoft. And you need to
get in the game and actually start to see what
the tools are useful for where the gaps, et cetera.
Number one, build a muscle group.

Speaker 6 (57:05):
Number two.

Speaker 11 (57:06):
What we find is that really people who the frontier
firms and the employees get most out of it when
they start to put this to work where they work.

Speaker 6 (57:14):
Right.

Speaker 11 (57:14):
So in Microsoft there sixty five, you're in teams, you
miss the meeting, help it summarize the meeting, or you're
trying to draft an important email, have the assistant look
over you have copilot help you with that, right.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
Or So we shouldn't feel guilty having Copilot help us
write our emails.

Speaker 11 (57:31):
We should help you guide. I think that just like
a perfect assistant would do. Right, it's the think of
this as the perfect AI assistant that comes to work
for you and beside you to make.

Speaker 6 (57:41):
You the best version of yourself.

Speaker 11 (57:43):
If we can get AI to help us take the
drudgery out of it, then it frees us up to
do more of the meaningful parts of our work. And
then finally, there are places that we are seeing our
customers our employees use AI where it gives you superpowers,
Like I couldn't possibly understand everything that's going on in
the world around a particular topic, even though I'm.

Speaker 6 (58:04):
Like thicking that including AI.

Speaker 11 (58:06):
So again, like, what are ways that you can get
save time, increased capacity and get some superpowers?

Speaker 1 (58:14):
How much should we be asking our companies about what
we can do? And also, when it comes to sort
of private information or proprietary information at your workplace, how
do we make sure that that's safe.

Speaker 11 (58:24):
This is one of the most important things that the
companies need to get right, and that is at the
heart of what we're doing at Microsoft, which is how
do you do innovation and trust?

Speaker 6 (58:33):
It's an end right, and how do you.

Speaker 11 (58:35):
Make sure that the data, the security, the compliance, privacy,
all of these guardrails and kind of the right structures
are in place. So that then within those guardrails, you
can really put AI to work.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
And this goes back to that guilt factor. A lot
of workers worry about AI replacing them, So how can
you sort of understand that this has a role in
the workplace moving forward? And do you feel like it's
going to replace people?

Speaker 6 (59:03):
For me?

Speaker 11 (59:04):
AI, I mean we talked about AI is there to
help us and not free places.

Speaker 6 (59:09):
All of us have.

Speaker 11 (59:11):
More work than we can do, So to me, it
is about getting a good assistant, a good copilot that
helps you just like be that better version, be that
more productive version of yourself without leading to burnout.

Speaker 6 (59:24):
And that's important. That's the way I look at AI tools.
That's the other thing.

Speaker 11 (59:28):
A lot of people today are using AI products as
a chatbot right as a way to say, oh yeah,
let me put some prompt in.

Speaker 6 (59:36):
And let me get some answer.

Speaker 11 (59:37):
That's an underuse what we think of with all these
products with teams, outlook ets saying can you use AI?
Can we use copilot as a thought partner and a collaborator,
not just a chatbot where you occasionally put some stuff in.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
Well, what I'm hearing is use it, lean on it,
try it, and use it. To your advantage and you'll
prevent burnout absolutely.

Speaker 11 (59:59):
And I think the shift that's around the corner as
I see where AI is headed and the horizon, is
that you know, we're all used to doing things at work, right,
we are the doers. But I think with agents and
with AI.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
You're going to be a boss.

Speaker 11 (01:00:14):
Right, You're not just going to be an employee. Every
person a boss of agents. We call it the agent
boss in the in the research report. And you're going
to have to learn not just to do things, but
to direct and delegate things. And that's again a new
mindset shift. It's less of a technology and access issue.
It's really shifting your mindset and that's the key advantage.
If you're listening, this is actually one of the ways

(01:00:36):
that you can get ahead, start to adopt the mindset
shift of Okay, how do I manage?

Speaker 6 (01:00:40):
How do I direct? How do I delegate AI? To
get more work out of it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
I've heard a lot about this idea of like the
AI agent. Can you explain what that means exactly?

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Am I telling it to do something and it goes
out and does it?

Speaker 11 (01:00:52):
I think, look, there's a lot of like different interpretations
and ideas around agents, but the higher the big idea
is this, right, which is how can you rely on
a agent? Is a software that you can direct and
delegate and say, hey, assigned tasks to it, not just
answer questions back and forth like a chat bard and
say I want you to go do this thing for me.

Speaker 6 (01:01:14):
Of course, you're in control.

Speaker 11 (01:01:15):
We believe again like this is a co pilot, you're
in control and you can always oversee the work, but
you know, have the agent take on more of the task,
not just the how, but the what, give it a goal,
come back and then say okay, have you done this.
A good example is, hey, I have this customer meeting
coming up. Bring me build me a research report on
this customer so that I can have this amazing meeting.

(01:01:38):
That's a good example of an agent that we just launched.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
Now in the public we're hearing AI AI AI. How
do you explain its simple as terms? What that is?

Speaker 11 (01:01:47):
I think one way to think about what AI is
is a digital brain. Right, It's a digital brain that
can do some of these tasks that previously we said, okay,
we have to actually think about these things, like every
one of us could use an additional digital brain. The
additional the best part of this is that it is

(01:02:08):
learned and trained on the best of the human knowledge,
which means that again like you have an Einstein as
your intern.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
Okay, and a little bit of background for you. You
invented Google lens.

Speaker 6 (01:02:21):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
How did that come about?

Speaker 11 (01:02:24):
It was back when the phones were starting to take off.
And you know, one of the things I noticed is
that we weren't taking pictures just off sunsets and selfies.
We were taking pictures of the bag I want to buy,
or this sign in a foreign language that I don't understand,
or the book I saw at your place, or the
funky lamp that I saw in a friend's place. And

(01:02:46):
so I said, there is so much of information that
we need to connect and the visual the camera is
the new keyboard, and how do we actually use the camera,
use photos and this visual intelligence to.

Speaker 6 (01:02:58):
Search the world around us.

Speaker 11 (01:02:59):
So that's how it began, very humble beginnings, with a
handful of us building this in a skunk walks way,
and then it grew to be one of the biggest products.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
Parna. There you have it, a Purna Chenna Pergrada at Microsoft.
Once again, that is a Chenna Pergrada at Microsoft, founder
of Google Lens, sort of threw that in there. I
had to ask her about it and how AI can
help you as an employee try it use it. The
main thing and she did touch upon this is that

(01:03:35):
you have to be sure that your employer is okay
with all of this usage, right, So check to see
you know what your employer has when it comes to
rules or sort of regulations around using AI at work.
But if they offer it and they have it and
they like it and they embrace it, you should too.
And you're not going to break anything. So definitely try

(01:03:56):
it out because everyone else is. Believe me, everyone is
the website Microsoft dot com slash work Lab. If you
want to read their work trend Index annual report that
has some great insights in it, it'll be linked up
on my website rich on Tech dot TV. All right,
coming up, we'll take some more of your calls at
eight eight eight rich one on one eight eight eight

(01:04:18):
seven four to two four one zero one, and I'll
tell you about Samsung's new thin to win smartphone going
to be announced this week. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Tomuro here hanging out with you, talking Technology, the
website rich On tech dot TV, the phone number uh

(01:04:39):
eight eight eight rich one on one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. There's a
new feature on Google Maps that's kind of cool. But
if you're you know, into your privacy, maybe you won't
like it. But it's a smart idea. So how many
times have you taken a screenshot of something online, you know,

(01:05:00):
an Instagram story or something you see in an article.
Place you want to go hike, you want to do,
restaurant you want to eat at, and you know just
lives in your screenshots and you kind of forget about it. Well,
Google Maps has a great idea where now they're using
Gemini their AI to scan your screenshots and identify the
places in those screenshots. So this is good for travel planning,

(01:05:24):
it's good for anything that you're trying to remember. So
if you want to turn it on, open up Google Maps.
There's a you tab at the bottom and then tap
that and then you'll see a screenshots section that's new
up the top. Tap that says try it out and
it will help you sort of set this up. Now,
the main thing is you have to give Google Maps

(01:05:46):
access to your screenshots. For this to work. Now, you
can do a manual upload option, but I think by
that point it's going to take so much work that
you might as well just add these to your list yourself.
But the cool thing is now, when you're on Instagram
or an article, whatever it is, you can just screenshot
it and then when you go back into Google Maps,
back into that screenshots section, it will have scanned all

(01:06:09):
those screenshots and it will say, Okay, we see that
this is for a restaurant. Do you want to save?
That restaurant gives you the name of it. If it
gets it wrong, you can just skip it or edit.
But in my experience I tested this with a whole
bunch of stuff. It gets it right if the place
name is clear and it finds it. But if it's
just like let's say you're on Instagram and someone tags

(01:06:29):
a restaurant, like, let's say they put a piece like
I did this today. Actually I posted the pizza I
had in New York City and I just tagged the
restaurant that I ate at, and it's called Let's see
what was it called LTD? I think it was called
Let's see LTD Pizza. Well, actually, you know what it
probably will figure that out because the name of the
place is LTD Pizza, so when you screenshot that, but

(01:06:52):
if it's like something that is not necessarily the name
of the place, it may not get it perfectly. So again,
kind of cool feature. I think it's smart, you know,
because I'm always screenshotting stuff that I want to go
to later. So if you want to try this out again,
open up Maps, tap you at the bottom, and then
tap screenshots. Set it all up, get it going, and

(01:07:14):
now you can keep track of all the places that
you want to check out. Again. The privacy implication of
this is that Google now has access to your screenshots,
so if you're not comfortable with that, don't do this.
Samsung is unveiling a new phone this week. It's called
the Galaxy S twenty five Edge. This is Samsung's slimmest
phone yet, so they're just teasing it, but they say

(01:07:37):
it's got a good camera two hundred megapixel main camera,
of course, all the AI features. They call it an
engineering marvel thin, lightweight, high performance, and no full specs
just yet, but they're saying that this is gonna be
a great phone. Obviously, they're saying that it's going to
launch online May thirteenth at nine am Korea time, which

(01:07:57):
is May twelfth at five pm Pacific eight pm Eastern.
Kind of an interesting launch time, but that's again on Monday.
So for us here in the US, I'm excited for
this phone. It'll be you know, we've got this big
kind of slim phone war happening this year. We've got
the S twenty five Edge from Samsung. And then the

(01:08:18):
rumor is that Apple is coming out with the Apple
iPhone Air whatever they're calling. I don't know what the
name is going to be, but that's sort of, you know,
the idea of it. It's as super thin phone. Why
are they doing this well, because we all know phones
of the standard size are great and everyone has one.
So how do you differentiate and how do you sell

(01:08:38):
more phones for something that's a little bit different than
the standard upgrade because people are not upgrading their phones
as often because there's no reason to. The camera is great,
the features are great, the software is good, and most
people don't want all these new features to have to learn,
so they like the fact that their phone works the
way it works, and once you get everything logged in
and set up, you don't want to go in and

(01:08:59):
log in again. You don't want to set everything up again,
so you keep your phone longer, and since it's working
just fine, why not and it saves you money. So again,
these thin phones are sort of a differentiator for someone
to go ooh, I want that. I want a slim phone.
So we'll see how those are. By the way, if
you want the if you have any interest in the

(01:09:19):
Galaxy Edge at all, which sounds like a Disney ride,
you can put in your email address on the Samsung
website and they'll give you fifty dollars off the reservation.
You don't have to commit to it, you don't have
to buy it, they'll just give you that extra fifty
dollars off. And as we all know, the best time
to buy a phone is during the pre order time
between the time the phone is on pre order and

(01:09:41):
when it actually comes out. That's when all the phone
carriers do their best deals, and then after that it's okay. Now,
speaking of new features, if you got the Samsung one
UI seven, which is our latest software, it's been rolling
out to all kinds of phones, including all the way
back to Samsung Galaxy S twenty TI two, S twenty one,

(01:10:01):
the fold, four, and much more. If you got this
over the past week or so, people are hating one
two features in particular. Number one, when you swipe down,
it splits your your swipe down into quick settings and notifications.
So if you swipe from the right, it's your quick settings,
if you swipe from the left, it's your notifications. That's

(01:10:22):
driving people nuts. So if you want this to just
be the old way, where if you just swipe down
it's just your notifications, you can swipe down, tap that
pencil icon, tap panel settings, and then set two together
instead of separate. So I personally like this split because
I like the way that the quick settings are on

(01:10:44):
one side and the notifications are on the other. But
I get it. If you like that the old way,
just change it back now. Second, lock screen notifications are
hidden by default. You only see these tiny little icons
on the home screen instead of your actual notifications. You
want to fix that, you can go into Settings Notifications
lockscreen notifications and switch from icons to cards to see

(01:11:07):
the full message previews again like you used to have.
And this is from Android Authority. I'll put the link
to their article on my show notes that you can
see those instructions one more time, and finally Samsung adding
a very cool feature. You know how when someone has
to pay you back and you go through this whole
game of vote. Do you have a Venmo? Yeah? I
don't want to use that. What about Zell? I don't

(01:11:30):
like Zell? Do you have any cash on you?

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
Well, can you pay me back somehow? Well, now Samsung
is giving no excuses. They're rolling out a new tap
to transfer feature, So you literally can just tap your
two phones together to send your money to each other,
no extra apps needed. But here's the best part. If
the person doesn't have a wallet app, they can just

(01:11:54):
tap their debit card to your phone. Literally, they can
tap their debit card to your phone to transfer the money.
Doesn't get much easier than that. There is no excuses
for your friend not paying you back at this point.
It's called tap to transfer. Rolling on on Samsung eighty
eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to
two four one zero one more after this, Yeah, welcome

(01:12:18):
back to rich On Tech. 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. The website for the show rich on tech
dot TV. While you're there, we should have signed up
for my free newsletter U. If you want to email me,
you can also do it right from there. Just go

(01:12:39):
to rich on tech dot TV hit contact. That's what
Denise did. Uh, She says, My husband and I both
have iPhone fourteen plus models and are thinking about upgrading
to the iPhone sixteen Pro. I prefer the smaller version,
he wants a larger one. Do you think it's advisable
to wait until September when the new iPhones come out?
We enjoy watching you and reading newsletter, Denise. I don't

(01:13:02):
think you need to wait because there are deals of
plenty on the iPhone sixteen pros, and there's not gonna
be deals on the new iPhone seventeen or whatever they're
gonna call it. I mean, I'm assuming, based on history,
it's gonna be the seventeen. And why wait until September
when you have a perfectly good phone that does all
the things you need right now? I think the iPhone
sixteen Pro is probably the best phone that Apple's made

(01:13:25):
in years because of the combination of cameras, the speed,
the size, the camera control button, everything is there that
you need. And so if anything, the iPhone seventeen is
just going to be a slight iteration of this, probably
gonna have a newer process or something like that. But
you've got everything you need right now, so I would

(01:13:46):
say go for it. And if you want the iPhone
sixteen pro versus the Promax, just look for some deals.
If you're sticking with your carrier, some of them have
deals where they'll just give you the phone for free
if you trade in your old one. Otherwise, if you're
looking to switch carriers, you can do that too. But
the catch is if you are sticking with your carrier,

(01:14:08):
they want you to stay with them even longer, so
you're not really getting a free phone per se, but
they will just basically lock you into a contract where
they give you that iPhone sixteen pro for free, quote unquote,
but you have to stick with them for another two
to three years, depending on the carrier. But I'd say
go for it, don't wait. And if you don't need
the pro version. By the way, the iPhone sixteen E

(01:14:29):
is an excellent phone for just six hundred bucks. Let's
see here. Debra writes in I was in Jamala job Jamala,
I don't know, for the weekend somewhere in California and
had to take a work meeting. Sure enough, not a
strong enough signal. I go there every six months and
I usually camp tell me more about satellite internet. Couldn't

(01:14:51):
replace the T mobile I used for both home and
cellular chat. GBT says Starlink is best, and even though
I'm not an Elon fan, I'll look past that to
get reception everywhere. Well, I don't think Elon himself is
delivering the Internet to your device, so I think you
can be okay with that. He might have he might
have come up with the idea for the company, but
I think that it's run by a lot of smart people.

(01:15:13):
And yeah, Starlink is transformative and the way it's brought
Internet to the far reaches of the planet in places
that never had it. And by the way, it's really fast.
I mean, when you think about Internet on planes, it's
pretty much unusable unless they've got the new Starlink. So
it's done a lot of great things and I'm a
big fan of it. It is very good. It is

(01:15:33):
very reliable, especially for portable satellite internet. So let's see,
couldn't replace the T mobile I use for both home
and cellular. No, T Mobile is the connection on your phone.
Starlink is more of a think about it as like
a hotspot. So if you went to this location that's
remote and you don't have a strong enough signal, what

(01:15:54):
you would do is you would set up this starlink.
They have a kit that's sort of mobile, would set
that up and that would give you broadband Internet, so
sort of like a Wi Fi signal for all your devices,
including your phone. Now, could you use that for your
traditional calls and text? Probably if you set up Wi
Fi calling, I know people have used starlink for that.

(01:16:16):
You can use it for anything that you would use
Wi Fi for, So that would work, but you would
still use the T mobile for your standard Internet.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
T mobile's good, it works in a lot of places.
If it doesn't happen to work in this one place,
that doesn't mean it's unusable. It just means you would
get this starlink to supplement it. Now, Starlink's not cheap.
It's kind of expensive for the hardware and then you
got to pay monthly. But if you're going to this
place every six months and usually camp and you need
to take work calls. I think it's probably worth the investment,

(01:16:47):
and I think Starlink just came out with the new
plan where you can just kind of use it on demand,
but I'd have to check that they're constantly changing their
offerings because it's brand new, and so if you if
you need it, I'd say go for it. It's going
to work really, really well. Thanks for emailing in. Rich
on tech dot tv is the place to go. Mark

(01:17:08):
from upland rights in. Is there really any way to
block junk or bulk emails? I try to block them,
but they keep showing up on my desktop PC AOL
told me the only real solution is to change my
email address, which is not going to work for me.
I enjoy your segments on TV. I listen to you
on the radio and I'm in the car. Thanks for
your time. So a couple of things. Here's my tried

(01:17:33):
and true method for handling spam. Number one, unsubscribe to
legitimate emails. So if you're getting an email from a
company that I consider legitimate okay, like a home depot,
a Mac's, or anyone that's using a mailing list service
like a Mailchimp or Constant Contact or whatever, they are

(01:17:53):
going to honor the unsubscribed link that is inside that email,
so I'm not kidding. One of my favorite pastimes I
mentioned this earlier in the show, is to watch people
on their phones. So, if you're around me and your
phone is unlocked and you don't have one of those
privacy screens, I'm watching what you're doing on your phone. Yes,
go ahead judge me for it, but I'm kind of curious.
It's like a little focus group. And what I normally

(01:18:16):
see is people scrolling through through their email and their
inbox is filled with nonsense. All these emails from every
company you've ever done business with. And I get it.
You're getting deals, you're getting offers. You don't need it
unsubscribed to anything, be crazy about it. Yes, you made

(01:18:37):
a purchase at home Depot. You don't need to know
about every Home Depot deal or sale or offer going
on for the rest of your life. Get rid of it.
When you need to shop at Home Depot again, you'll
find them Macy same thing. Yeah, they send twenty percent
coupons every week. Get rid of it. So that's number
one for the suspicious emails. You know anything that looks

(01:18:57):
like hmm, did I ever sign up for this, don't
open them, delete them immediately, or you can mark them
as spam. This will help train sort of your email
filter over time. It'll send the signals to Gmail and
AOL that these emails are bogus. So that's what I
would do there. And then the other These are the
two pro tips. Number one, turn off remote image loading,

(01:19:19):
so on my email, no images load by default. I
have to toggle on the images for every single email
that comes to my box. Now that may seem like
a pain, and yes it is, but guess what my
email address is everywhere? And I can tell you the
amount of spam in my inbox is maybe maybe one two,

(01:19:39):
three times a week, very very limited spam. Why because
when people send me an email, these spammers that if
you have your images loading, they're using an image tracking
service to know when you've opened up the email. And
so when you open up that email, it sends a
signal back to the spammers. It says, hey, we got
a live one. They're opening their email. This one works

(01:20:01):
and that tells them to send more emails. So by
turning off this remote image loading, they can't get those
signals and it gets you less emails. Or less less
spam emails. Uh. The other thing you can do, and
I this is my real pro tip, is create a filter. Okay,
all the email services allow you to create a filter.
So when you create that filter, put the put the

(01:20:25):
filter in that says has the words and type in
unsubscribe and create a filter, and then tag that email.
Any email that comes in with the word unsubscribe in
the body, tag it with a with the term unsubscribe eligible.
So when emails come into my inbox, every single one
that has the word unsubscribe is tagged with a little

(01:20:47):
label that says unsubscribe eligible. And that sends me a
reminder every single day that oh, I can unsubscribe to
this email. And believe me, I do it a lot.
I am unsubscribing to emails multiple times per day. If
it's got that link and I don't need it and
I don't want it again, I'm unsubscribing. And so that's

(01:21:07):
my pro tip is really use that to your advantage.
And once you start getting in the habit, it's kind
of like I call it good email and inbox hygiene.
Get into that habit and your inbox will be tamed
and you won't be in this world of like I mean,
I'm not kidding. I have good friends. Their entire inbox

(01:21:27):
is just filled one hundred flowers. All these things every
company they've ever done business with is in their face
on a daily business not on a daily basis. Not
only does that make you spend more money, but it's
like you got to sift through all the stuff to
just get to the emails that are important. So do it.
Sherry writes in from Riverside, California. With Mother's Day and

(01:21:51):
Father's Day coming up, I'm looking to upgrade my parents'
old box TV to something better. They don't have internet
or smart devices. They just need a basic, non smart
plugin TV, ideally forty inches ten ADP. I'm looking for suggestions. Well,
it is really tough to find a non smart TV
these days. Every TV is smart, but you can. There's

(01:22:12):
two brands to look into. Septor s C E, P
t R E. They sell TVs that are not smart,
and Insignia they may sell TVs that are not smart
as well. Those are very basic. You can find them
in various sizes. Sceptor s C E, P t R E,
Sceptor dot com. You can find them there. They sell

(01:22:37):
them at various stores. Let's see here, they've got a
four k u h d t V five hundred bucks.
Let's see where they sell it. Looks like Amazon and
Walmart are your etailers that sell this. So again, I mean,
I don't think you need to go to these lengths
to go non smart, but if you want them. If
you want a non smart TV, make sure it has

(01:22:59):
the one fee that you need. I'm guessing is a tuner.
If your parents are connecting like an antenna or their
cable box, will need an HDMI input, which of course
these will have. So just make sure that they have
those two key features if you're connecting things that you want.
But it's tough. It is really tough to find a
non smart TV these days. Not so tough to find

(01:23:19):
a non smart person like me. Rich on Tech. Dot
tv is a website eighty to eight rich one on
one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Coming up. Oh, I gotta tell you about this one.
The browser tool that helps you clean up YouTube. This
is a good one. I'll tell you about that coming
up next. Right here, I'm rich on Tech. Welcome back

(01:23:43):
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you.
Let's go to Nicki in La Nicki. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 10 (01:23:54):
Hi'm Rich.

Speaker 7 (01:23:55):
I'm going on a cruise and I had a question
if you had experience with a gigs guy or internet
service made by sailor at sea?

Speaker 2 (01:24:04):
Is it?

Speaker 10 (01:24:04):
What's forth it?

Speaker 1 (01:24:06):
I do have experience with gigsky. I don't have experience
with cruises because I've never been on one. Can you
believe that?

Speaker 7 (01:24:14):
That's crazy?

Speaker 9 (01:24:15):
Wait a minute, You've never been on a cruise.

Speaker 1 (01:24:17):
Never I've been on a cruise ship. We're going on
a cruise. We're going on a vacation. I'm never going
on a cruise. Yes you are, that's the problem. Yes,
you are. Never.

Speaker 9 (01:24:28):
No, I'm talking to the wife. We're going on a cruise.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
She's never going on one. No, she actually has been
on one, and she loves them exactly.

Speaker 9 (01:24:34):
So we're going to go.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
It's it's been a we have a very happy marriage,
but it's been a I'm gonna let you.

Speaker 9 (01:24:41):
Finish talking to This is a shocker to me. Sorry, Nikki.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
Okay, So here's the deal. I do have. I do
have experience with gigsky. I have tested they are a
very good e SIM provider in fact, if you have
a visa card or you just want to test them out,
they will give you a free SIM for like one
hundred megabytes, which is not a ton. But if you're
traveling to an international destination you want to just try
and ease him, you can try them out. When it

(01:25:07):
comes to the idea of the cruise on gigs guy,
what are they offering you? Are they saying it's going
to work on the cruise ship.

Speaker 7 (01:25:18):
I haven't talked to gigs guys, but I just have
a hard time getting off of five hundred dollars for
the sky link that in the past hasn't worked at all. Yes,
here from friends that it's sometimey and they are very
just very really unhappy and because of their refund.

Speaker 1 (01:25:38):
Yeah, well you're talking about Wi Fi on the ship. Yeah,
terrific until they switch to to starlink on these ships there,
the Wi Fi is not even worth it. Do you
need to stay connected for any particular reason.

Speaker 7 (01:25:54):
I'm exchanging emails from work and doing a videos, uh
trainings for work, different certifications and licenses they have to
keep up, okay, and yeah, or that I have to uptate.
So I thought it would be a good time to
do it because I've had downtime.

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
Okay, so what and who's your who is your carrier
through your primary carrier?

Speaker 4 (01:26:20):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
It is okay. So I was gonna say, because AT
and T just added some plans for for their cruise ships.
You know, they have like built in I'm looking at Verizon.
So long story short, when it comes to gigs, guy,
if you are traveling in an area where they have
an offshore plan, you'll have some coverage. So their offshore

(01:26:40):
plans are mainly in the North Sea and the Gulf
of Mexico. Are you going to those two places?

Speaker 7 (01:26:47):
I'll be in the Atlantic, on the west coast of Africa.
I'll be doing ten ports okay, from South Africa up
to Morocco and Barcelona City.

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
Okay, Uh is that in the North Sea? Maybe my
geography is not very good. Okay, then okay, So it
doesn't sound like it doesn't sound like they are going
to have the coverage you need out there in the sea,
so I would not go that way. The other way
is Verizon does have the cruise daily Pass, which is

(01:27:20):
twenty dollars per day, and so that may give you coverage,
but it has to be on the thing about it
is your the cruise ship has to have the connection
to your you know, your service, or it has to
have you know, or you have to be close to
land where it's going to just latch on to the service.
That's sort of you know on land as general, you're

(01:27:41):
not going to be pulling a signal from the sky
for verizons. That makes sense because there's no like cell
tower out there. So that's the main thing is you
have to see if the if the cruise has any
sort of connection to Verizon or if that will work.
So I would first go to Verizon and see what
they have and if it's going to however, your cruise,
I don't know if that's the case. It doesn't seem

(01:28:03):
like it just looks like.

Speaker 7 (01:28:04):
Three horizons about three times and it seems like they
don't have Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:28:09):
So uh the short answer, Nikki is that you're probably
if you need to stay connected, you're probably gonna have
to go with what's on your cruise or the alternative.
Are you going to any ports while you're there? Are
you going to land at all? Are you doing that?

Speaker 11 (01:28:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (01:28:23):
Okay, yeah, we're hopping all over up and down the coach.

Speaker 1 (01:28:26):
Okay, so the then the other option is to just
get a an e SIM for the area that you're visiting.
You said Africa, so you can get a nis SIM
for Africa and then use your phone when you get
to those destinations and do all your connection and all
your training. So it sounds to me like you're gonna
be on this cruise ship enjoying, partying. Then when you
get to Africa instead of sight seeing, you're gonna be

(01:28:48):
doing these harassment trainings for your work or whatever.

Speaker 7 (01:28:52):
No, I'm flying to Africa and then we're gonna do
the cruise or twenty days, twenty one day, So it
looks like I'm just gonna be a joy the vacation.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
Yeah, that's that's what I would say. Tell your work. Look,
I'm on vacation. I'm seeing things I've never seen before.
Give me a break here. But at the end of
the day, the cruise they do offer, it's very confusing
because it's got the cruise plus the world plan. It
all depends on is there going to be coverage out
at sea. But I would definitely go with the e

(01:29:24):
SIM for sure. At least you have it when you
get to land and you can do all of your
trainings and things like that, but keep it limited. You know,
don't don't spend your whole vacation working. The whole point
of the vacation is to be away from work and
to reset your mind, So enjoy that time. Eight of
eight rich one oh one rich on tech dot TV.

(01:29:45):
Coming up, we're gonna talk to Josh Aux about how
students can stay bright online. Welcome back to rich on
tech rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
The website for the show with all the notes rich
on tech dot TV. Now, I told you I was
watching that show on Netflix, Adolescent. If you haven't watched it,

(01:30:11):
ado lessince okay, at a less, since it's like a
four part series on Netflix. My wife watched it. You know,
she's big into like this. You know, she's like a
school therapist, so she's big into that world and just said,
you have to watch this. And I haven't gotten to
the end, so I don't know what happens, but it's
you know, it's definitely an interesting show the way they
do it, and our next guest is kind of in
the thick of it when it comes to all these

(01:30:33):
issues affecting teens and their parents and social media and
now of course AI. Josh Oux runs a website called
smartsocial dot com. It's got a couple of books out
about how parents and students can use social media and
now AI tools to build a positive online reputation. Josh
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 5 (01:30:53):
Hey, Rich, it's great to have you. Great to be
here with you. It's so so fun.

Speaker 1 (01:30:56):
Yeah, and we've we've known each other for a long time.
You've been doing this for a very long time. What
do you think has changed? I mean, I know what
the answer is. It is probably AI. But I mean,
what's changed the most since you've started helping teens become
their best? You know online?

Speaker 5 (01:31:12):
You know you just hit on it earlier. It's not AI.
AI is huge. We talk about it a lot, and
I do think all the parents listening right now you
need to be on AI as much as you possibly can.
It is like the Microsoft word of twenty years ago.
It won't replace you, but somebody that knows how to
use it might.

Speaker 3 (01:31:27):
Rich.

Speaker 5 (01:31:28):
The real problem right now is the addictive nature of
all of the apps that shall go unnamed, and.

Speaker 1 (01:31:33):
We'll name them. I don't care, we'll name them.

Speaker 5 (01:31:35):
We're on the radio. Meta owns Instagram and Facebook, and
they have psychologists working there that use the color red
and they let you basically get inundated with the dopamine
that's in there. TikTok is the world's best at it,
I would argue, and you might agree. And there's X
and so diving in and getting addicted to these apps
is probably the biggest thing that's happened over the last

(01:31:57):
few years since you first interviewed me in twenty twelve.
Back then, it wasn't as addictive. It was just online.
And now it's gotten to where Kids the Adolescent's the
TV show and a lot of other screen time books
right now that are coming out are saying that kids
just can't disconnect.

Speaker 1 (01:32:14):
Yeah, and I read the Jonathan hey Or's Jonathan Heighte
Jonathan Ate book the I mean that book was really
eye opening for the idea that kids are just you know,
there's just the anxious generation. I mean, that's what it's
all about. Like, you know, it's the idea that you're
never disconnected. You're exposed to more at an earlier age
than ever, and you're processing all this stuff that you

(01:32:36):
never really had to process at nine years old or
ten years old. Or eleven years old. So what do
you kind of what's your I guess how do you
approach this with parents and teachers? I know you speak
at a lot of schools, So how do you approach this?

Speaker 5 (01:32:49):
Yeah, I used to speak at schools all over the country, Rich,
Right right when I first met you, I got a
lot of calls. I started talking to people about shining
online and my book called Light, Bright and Polite. School
high schools, middle schools across the country would say, can
you fly here? We got a problem with Instagram. These
kids are not never getting hired because of the mistakes
they're making. They're they're posting bomb threats thinking it's funny,

(01:33:10):
and so all these problems started happening, and I became
very popular, very quickly, and it would fly all over
the country. And I want to talk to everybody who's
listening today just about a couple of little, tiny ideas.
One of the biggest questions you had for me, Rich
was what does it mean to shine online? And I
want to equate it for everybody, all of our listeners today.
It's kind of like driving a car. You wouldn't at

(01:33:33):
the very last moment in California, you can get like
a learners permit at fifteen and a half or fifteen,
and then at sixteen most of the country you can
start driving. You wouldn't give your kids that ease at
sixteen and say here you go, have fun and I'm
going to teach you on that day everything you need
to know. You teach them at the age of ten
to twelve, all way up to fourteen and a half.

(01:33:53):
This is what distracted driving. This is why it's bad.
This is what good driving is. Mom and Dad teach
them and we will. If you're at smart social dot
com that teaching them social media safety and being positive
online is exactly the same. It starts early and it models.
You have to model that soon early and Rich. What
you're saying about too much screen time and anxious generation

(01:34:15):
is a lot of parents don't know that they have
the right to You know what, let's not have any
devices during dinner and there's all these tools that we
can get into in a sec But in addition, what
I want to talk to you today is about shining online,
teaching kids that you can put all of your accomplishments
online so that when a college, a future employer in
internship sees you they get this warm, fuzzy feeling that

(01:34:36):
this is a great candidate that would be a good
fit for my college, maybe our company, our internship. They'd
be a part of our culture and we'd be proud
for clients to see them.

Speaker 1 (01:34:46):
Now, most most kids, let's be honest, are using expiring
media like Snapchat or Instagram Stories, and so they feel
like whatever's on there, nobody's gonna see. And so that's
why they are as open and and silly and scandalous
as they are on these platforms that, by the way,
parents are not really too hip on because they're not

(01:35:07):
monitoring that. How can they see it? So is that
a problem that they're doing this stuff on these platforms
where it disappears.

Speaker 5 (01:35:14):
Yeah, let's talk about Snapchat first. That's the original expiring media.
They had to promise that, oh, it'll disappear in an
hour or twenty four hours, depending on what your little
setting was. Parent's the best thing that we suggest to
people enrich the thing that and you're a dad of
a couple boys, the best thing that we recommend to
kids these days is sit down and google things with

(01:35:35):
your kids. And that might mean googling your kids' names,
be specific in my case, it's Josh Oakes. And if
you're probably thinking, oh, my kid isn't online, there's a
lot of listeners thinking right now, my kid isn't online,
so I don't have to worry about that until the
day that they are. You'd be shocked parents that the
middle school, the elementary school actually will build a presy,
which is a little tiny kind of an online animated

(01:35:58):
version of PowerPoint, and the kids will start creating things
at school not to put things online without their parents
knowing that. They don't know that everything leaks online. Back
to your question, Josh, is Snapchat safe for my kids?
Typically not below the age of thirteen, and we suggest
more like the age of sixteen. Your kids will hate
me for saying that. But nothing really disappears, parents, And

(01:36:19):
when you go to Google, you'll start to see that
a one screenshot of that Snapchat story or disappearing message
on any other app can get posted and put online
anywhere else, and it can then a friend can share
it and it's online for your students or your kids
Google results forever.

Speaker 1 (01:36:38):
I mean, kids will hate us for saying anything. I mean,
you know, no matter what it's And this has been
going on forever, whether it's social media or something else
that parents sort of know about that kids don't. You
know where parents know better? But what are some of
the apps? I know that you mentioned snapchat, but I mean,
is there anything new and up and coming that parents
should be aware of. I know there's always something like

(01:36:59):
bubbling up.

Speaker 5 (01:37:00):
Yeah, the hottest biggest apps right now are going to
be X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat. Your kids probably aren't
on Facebook, but it's part of the meta platform. Parents
here are on Facebook. They're trying to make threads a thing.
LinkedIn is one that I want parents to look at
a lot more. But really it's going to be Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok,
a little bit of X, and then there's some other

(01:37:21):
ones like Reddit where kids will go in. Though Discord
if your kid is a gamer, and then there's the
whole gaming platform thing.

Speaker 1 (01:37:27):
What's the danger of Discord because my kid keeps asking
me for that one. Is there anything dangerous about that?

Speaker 5 (01:37:33):
The problem is Discord has originally invented rich so that
people who are playing Fortnite and other games could live
chat with other people in the room and either do
audio or text chat and stuff like that there's a
lot of people Rich who yeah, and I think you
got two boys. You and I are friends on Instagram
and I think that, or we believe based on all
of our research at smartsocial dot com, there's a lot

(01:37:54):
of people who And in fact, here's what the predators
would love, Rich, give your kids discord because I want
full access. A predator would say that I'd love full
access to your kids and you won't know, and then
we can jump between different things. So that's the proble.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
Side of the like if you're on roadblocks, like a
common thing is on roadblocks, they control the chat to
a certain extent. Obviously, like anything else, kids get around it.
But the idea is that the chat is sort of
filtered and controlled, and so these people say, let's go
outside of this, that we can be much more open
in our chats. We can have a full fledged chat
versus what they allow and the parameters of this game. Now,

(01:38:32):
that may be fine if the only other people on
there were other, you know, ten thirteen year olds, but
like you're saying, there are people that are clued into that,
and they go into these games specifically targeting these kids
with this sort of outside conversation exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:38:48):
So parents, just to recap the answer here, Rich and
I are not negative people. We want you to know
that there is a lot of safety and this is
our mottoismart Social Keep your kids safe so they can
be successful while they're in your wall and living in
your house and at school, so they can someday shine
online and get that dream job. They're really the answer
to a lot of the safety parents. It's not I
know there's a lot of parents right now listening, Josh.

(01:39:11):
I have parental controls my kids safe, right and Rich,
what I want to tell the listeners today is parental control.
Kids are the world's best entrepreneurs. They're so clever, they
get around everything. It's just a challenge. And they don't
have to pay for their new phone, so if they
break it, they just push all the buttons and they
don't care. So the best safety app, the only safety

(01:39:31):
app in the world, parents that is going to protect
your kids, is going to be a rich ongoing dialogue
with your kids. I used Rich, I used your name,
but it's going to be that ongoing dialogue.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
Like, wait, do you have to talk to all the
kids in the world. Oh my gosh, that's gonna I'm
gonna be like Santa Claus.

Speaker 5 (01:39:47):
That's a great idea. We're gonna get you one of
those someday. Okay, But it's having that ongoing dialogue parents,
and it's open ended questions. Then typically kids aren't gonna
want to come to you and talk like that. So
it's in the car ride home. Boys do not want
to tal face to face. They want to be shoulder
to shoulder. A lot of parents will tell you, and
it could be around the dinner table when you don't
have a device. That ongoing dialogue is really the only

(01:40:08):
thing that's going to protect you these days. Sorry, it's
not Microsoft, it's not Google, it's not oh but I
have this one app that probably not going to be
able to reach into all the other apps. See who's
what Predators are trying to chat with your kids?

Speaker 1 (01:40:20):
I tell them. I sit down to dinner and I
just tell my kids, like, hey, ask me anything, what
do you want to know about? I'm like, there's nothing
off topic, Like just just ask me, you know, because
when I was a kid, I mean, I think that
parents have gotten more open with their kids this day
and age, but like when I grew up, I don't
think parents were like that. Like I didn't really ask
my parents a lot of like, you know, the questions
that my kids come up with, that's for sure. They're

(01:40:41):
much more comfortable asking me all kinds of stuff than
I was. So we what is your advice? I mean,
where do parents start if they're feeling overwhelmed? Where do
they start? Is it the conversation?

Speaker 2 (01:40:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:40:53):
So, first of all, parents, it's a great question, rich parents,
don't be so hard on yourself. As I've spoken to
a quarter of a million kids in twenty nine states.
As I used to be a traveling speaker and now
we do everything online, a lot of parents would tell me, Josh,
I'm just not tech savvy. I just can't catch up
to this. And I want everybody to slightly tweak those
words so we're a little nicer to ourselves. Rather than
I'm not good at snapchat. Let's say the words I'm

(01:41:16):
learning snapchat, so that every time you're approaching this your
kids moving fast, explain stuff you're learning. You're being open minded.
The second thing I want everybody to do today is
make your kids the expert. You know. Rich, you said,
let's sit around the dinner table and let your kids
ask you questions. I also I would argue that it's
good to go the other way, Hey can you teach

(01:41:36):
me this? Never before in the history of the world
has a child under the age of fifteen been an
expert at something that their parents had. I mean, back
in farming, you had to learn over thirty years how
to be a great farmer. Nowadays you learn over three
minutes how to press buttons. And you're better at your
parents than your parents are at that tool. So parents,
don't be afraid. And watch the look on your kids'
face when you go, hey, can you teach me this game?

(01:41:57):
You're interested in that Fortnite or whatever it is Minecraft.
Watch how interesting it is for your kids. Now, if
they're hiding something, they'll say, no, I don't want you playing. Okay,
now you've opened a dialog why is that? But all
of a sudden might go, wow, my mom is interested
in this game, And if they see something inappropriate, they're
more inclined to go to their mom go to their
dad because they don't know who to go to talk to.

(01:42:18):
But mom and dad were trying to learn about it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:21):
I love that advice, and my kids were very excited
when I set up a roadblocks account, which I still
haven't used to this day, but hey maybe one day.
All right, Josh Oakes, we're gonna leave it there. Smartsocial
dot com is the website. Thanks so much for joining
me today. Thanks Rich You're awesome smartsocial dot com. We'll
link it up on my website. Rich on Tech dot tv.
Coming up. I'll tell you about that YouTube tool that

(01:42:42):
can help you customize the site. And we're gonna open
up the feedback right here on rich on Tech. Oh wow,
I haven't seen Bobo dance all show until we play
some tailor. You got jokes?

Speaker 9 (01:43:00):
Who's we going on? Let's talk about it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:01):
We'll go on the Taylor Swift Cruise. You can dance
the whole time. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. We're gonna
get to the feedbag. I gotta tell you about this
new browser extension via life Hacker discovered this and it's great.
So YouTube is great, and it's got all kinds of

(01:43:23):
features and things like this, but it's got too much
going on, right, So this browser extension lets you take
back control. It works with all the major web browsers,
So it's not gonna work on your phone. It's gonna
work on your desktop, So the mobile experience is still
going to be the same kind of cluttered mess. But
on your desktop you can hide distractions like all those

(01:43:44):
shorts if you don't want to watch those related videos,
end screen suggestions comments. You can also make it so
it always shows video chapters, It auto expands, the description,
launches in theater mode. I mean, there's just so many
things you can high the comments, it's really really cool.
It's called on trap untrap dot app, untrap dot app,

(01:44:10):
and so you install it and once you once you
go to YouTube, it looks exactly how you want it.
So when I go to YouTube, when I play a video,
I mean, it's so number one. I expanded the description.
I hid the comments because I don't know, if you know,
if you've ever read the comments on YouTube, has there

(01:44:31):
ever been a constructive comment on YouTube? I'm not sure
one of those exists. Has there ever been a smart
comment on YouTube? I'm not sure that exists. Why do
we need comments on YouTube? They just don't add anything.
So I've blocked those. But I'm talking on this on Trap.
You've got two hundred and eighty three settings you can change.

(01:44:54):
When I tell you anything you want to modify, you
can do it. And I don't think YouTube can stop
this because I think they're just doing like JavaScript modification
on your browser locally. So YouTube is none the wiser.
But this is really really fantastic game. It's called Untrapped,
very very handy. If you like YouTube, I'll put a

(01:45:14):
link to it on the website. Rich on tech dot
tv Gym rights in OMG, Rich, you just said Golf
of Mexico on the call about the cruise. I hope
the FCC isn't waiting for you in the parking lot. Oh,
Golf of America. My formal correction, Golf of America got
to update your website. Gigs Guy Mark writes in I

(01:45:37):
missed the beginning of the call, but I heard you
mentioned starlink on cruise ships. I guess the caller set
are shipped and have it. Luckily most do now, although
speeds are heavily throttled, usually around four down, four up. Ooh.
It's usable, but not ideal for things like a WORKVPN.
I don't get why airplanes starlink seems unthrottled. Maybe it's
the number of people on board a ship. You mentioned
you never went cruising. My wife made me do it.

(01:45:59):
My biggest issue the unlimited food. I gained ten pounds
every time just got back from a Japan cruise. Also,
being a celebrity, I imagine you'd get approached a lot
on board. I don't think people would be you'd be
surprised they would. I mean, look, here, here's the thing
about me. You either know who I am or you don't.

(01:46:19):
There is no in between. So you either come right
up to me and say hey, Rich, I like you
on TV or on the radio or not. So I
can travel many places without people saying anything. But yes,
there are a lot of people that do come up
and say something, and I'm fine with it. If they didn't,
something's wrong because that means that nobody cares about what
I'm doing. So if you see me, yes, you can

(01:46:41):
say hi to me. Hi, Rich Chuck writes in I
was just listening to your podcast. You had a caller
whose phone GPS stopped working after a battery replacement. I
suggest they go back to the repair shop and ask
them to check to see if a wire was left unplugged.
Sounds like something simple that could have been missed. Oh
that's a good suggestion there. Niella in Westchester, Pennsylvania writes

(01:47:04):
in I'm a longtime Android user with the Galaxy S
twenty five Ultra. I've worked in IT tech support for
twenty five years. I'm also a huge cro swear and
of course I've followed you for years. You know where
this is going. I got a CrOx case from my
phone and I love it. Thanks for telling folks about it.
I did post that on my Instagram about that. Ben
writes in pretty upset that Microsoft is going to force

(01:47:25):
me to buy four new computers to replace my four
perfectly good ones by ending support for older Windows versions
this October. Microsoft should be required to recycle all these
computers and reimburse people for the cost of the upgrade. Ben,
check out the end of service life extension. You can
do that for another year, I believe. Charlie from New

(01:47:45):
Jersey rights in complement time. I never thought i'd get
over losing the tech guy, but honestly, you've exceeded all
expectations by several fold. Thanks for keeping me company during
my Sunday jogs from Summer's Point to Ocean City. Johnny
Jett will be on next week. Thanks for emailing. My
name is rich Dmiro. I will talk to you real
soon

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Rich DeMuro

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