Top Prime Day gadgets, Windows recall privacy & scam exposing duo (143, Oct 11, 2025)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you're downloading the number one app right now, watch
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they worth it? And Chevy is bringing back an old favorite.
You'll soon be able to go courtside to watch a
major NBA team in virtual reality. Plus your tech questions answered.

(00:20):
What's going on? I'm Richdmiro and this is Rich on Tech.
This is the show where I talk about the tech
stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe
that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open
up those phone lines a ready, here we go Triple
eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven

(00:43):
four to two four one zero one. Give me a
call if you have a question about technology Triple eight
rich one oh one. Email is also open. Just go
to rich on Tech dot TV and hit contact guests.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
This week, we've.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Got the founders of Trilogy Media, Ashton Bingham and Art Kulick.
They are going to tell us how to spot fraud,
fight back and protect yourselves protect yourself from today's biggest scams.
They've got a new TV show, and later in the show,
we've got Steve Arnset of Team Liquid. He's the co
CEO there. He's going to talk about esports, how it's evolving,

(01:22):
and why gaming is creating real career paths beyond just
the screen. Well, I hope you're having a great week.
This is the Prime Day hangover. Yes, did you make
it through Prime Day? Did you order everything that you wanted?
Hopefully everything on your list was on sale. A lot
of things that I wanted were on sale, so I

(01:44):
thought it was a pretty good Prime Day, although it's
a little interesting. Typically after Prime Day, Amazon comes out
with a press release and they say how great Prime
Day was, and they say about, you know, how many
items were ordered per second? It's some crazy number. And
then they talk about you know what people ordered. It's
usually some nonsense thing like they'll be like the life

(02:05):
straw was the top most ordered thing. It's like, wait,
what okay, a lot of people are drinking water out
of a river. I don't even understand that. Back in
the day, it was the DNA test. They used to
sell a ton of those until we all we all
know what happened with twenty three and me. I did
order a bunch of stuff, and my wife ordered a
bunch of stuff. We basically ordered everything on our list.

(02:25):
And here is the irony. My Prime Day order. Out
of every single box that got delivered to my house,
mine was not delivered. I got a text from Amazon
that said, sorry, your order was undeliverable. There was no
safe place to leave it. What Okay, they said they
came to my house at a certain time and they
said it was not safe. Now, okay, inside the house

(02:49):
all the chaos with the kids and you know us, maybe,
but outside, come on, you can leave a package on
the porch. Now we have ring cameras. No one came
to the house at the time they said we were
also home. No one came to the house. So I
don't know what was going on here with Amazon. I
have seen in the past sometimes delivery drivers, I think

(03:10):
if they're really slammed and they need like you know,
there's these hard deadlines like Amazon now tells you like
the window your stuff's getting delivered. If they know they
can't make that window, sometimes they will just mark a
package as like, oh sorry, I can't deliver this right now,
and they'll just come back the next morning and leave
it on your doorstep. No problem there. This was like
a whole nother thing that I've never seen before. I
don't know if someone stole the package and then said, oh,

(03:32):
it was on deliverable, or if the driver just literally
quit his job and was like, never mind, I'm out
too many Prime Day deliveries. But no matter what happened,
it was kind of annoying because guess what, all the
stuff that I had ordered that was on Prime Day
by the time I got this text, and it was
too late to order again, and they never tried to
redeliver it. So I ended up having to cancel the
order and I had to reorder just a couple of

(03:53):
things I needed. The other stuff, you know, all the
prices went up, so I didn't get again. So I
just tell you that story because I just thought, is
the one time that I put this giant order into
Amazon getting all the stuff that had been in my
saved list for so long didn't work? And I don't
even understand what the end game was here because now
my package is in like never never Land. So I

(04:16):
did send on an email. I usually typically send my
newsletter once a week, and I'm very hesitant to send
any more emails in next I want to spam people,
but I did send a special newsletter with the the
items that I would purchase on Prime DA. I said,
you know what, people probably want to know, what would
I buy out of all this stuff that's on sale.
And so I got the results of what people clicked

(04:38):
on the most in my newsletter and you're ready, here
here's what you wanted now, mind you. I find it
very interesting. Nothing on this list is over was over
thirty dollars, So that goes to show you people like
to buy things that are affordable, you know. Because I
did have a bunch of things on there. The iPad
was an outlier. It did a lot of people clicked

(04:58):
on the iPad five, a JBL portable bluetooth speaker, that
was the number five item that people really liked because
it's so inexpensive. I mean it really not really is
not an expensive thing. I'm trying to get my blog
post up here, so it's not an expensive thing. I
think it was on sale, and all these things have
gone up in price, by the way, so if you
did get one of these, it was great. But yeah,

(05:20):
the speaker is forty bucks. I think it was Prime
Day like twenty seven, so that was a great deal.
This little JBL speaker. It's awesome. Number four micro fiber
cleaning cloths. This is like the simplest thing ever. It's
like an eight pack for ten bucks. I just keep
them everywhere. I've got them in my car, I've got
them in my bag, I've got them near my computer.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
My kids have them. I mean, they're just great.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
It's just a simple thing that you can use to
clean your gadgets, and those are on sale.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Number three.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
I love this gadget, the cord brick weighted cord holder.
I mean, how many times have you had a cord
that's on your desk? You pull your phone out or
whatever it's plugged into for charging, and the cord just
immediately slides behind the you know, like someone pulled it
from behind the desk. This little device is like ten bucks,
and it just holds the cables in place, and it

(06:08):
holds a bunch of them. I love this thing. I've
got it on all my desks. That I think was
twelve dollars now it's fifteen, but it was. I think
the regular price is like twenty. Number two. Let's see here.
The Balkan Portable Battery Pack is a ten thousand million
amp charger USBC. It's got the cable built in. You
have to have one of these if you don't have

(06:30):
a portable power bank somehow on your person. When you travel,
there's going to be a time when you are really
looking for a place to plug in your phone, and
you're probably not going to find it. So this little
portable charger I keep. I always have one of these
on me. This one is now up to forty dollars.
It was twenty seven when I talked about it, and
then finally the number one You're ready number one thing

(06:52):
people clicked on in my email. This magnetic smartphone ring
another thing that I always have with me because it
is I don't like having anything on the back of
my phone, and other people like the pop sockets and things.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
I don't like that permanently there.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
But when I'm traveling or I want to prop up
my phone just to watch videos, either on a plane
or anywhere, this is great. It's just a magnetic ring
and so you attach it to the back of your
phone with that magnetic circle that's already on the back
of your phone mag say f on Android, or you
have it built into your case and it just makes
a nice little tripod for your phone so you can kickstand. Really,

(07:28):
I mean, that thing is great, and I think it
was on sale for like ten bucks.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Now it's up to.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Seventeen, so I would say the prime sale was great.
I think people really did save money if you planned
a little bit. And I think that if you still
want to see that list, I'll link it up on
the show notes Rich on tech dot TV. But you know,
the prices have gone up, so if you didn't act
on it, you probably missed out. But you know, watch

(07:52):
these things throughout the year. All right, So we're talking
about Amazon and there is a prime settlement and I've
mentioned this prime settlement two point five billion dollars from
the FTC.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
They said that Amazon made it really tough to.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Cancel Prime, which I don't know if I ever thought that,
but I never really tried to cancel Prime, So maybe
it was they had some dark patterns on the website
that would trick you and it'd be really tough to cancel.
But one point five billion of that money, I think
a billion was a fine, and then one point five
billion is a refund to consumers. So here's what you
need to know. Number One, you have to be to qualify,
you have to meet all three conditions US based Amazon

(08:28):
Prime customer. If you're listening to this right now, you
probably are. You signed up or tried to cancel between
June twenty nineteen and June twenty twenty five. So I
guess that disqualifies me because I've had Prime since day one,
literally day one. I will never forget signing up for Prime.
And I'm trying to remember. I think it was eighty
nine dollars when it first started, and I told my wife,

(08:50):
I said, you're not going to believe this. Amazon is
going to deliver us packages in two days unlimited for free,
for an entire year for ninety bucks. And she's like,
I don't believe it. You know, back in the day,
you remember you paid shipping. Things cost to ship, and
somehow Amazon figured out, like, hey, we can ship you
this stuff for this one fee. And they did a

(09:13):
great job. And by the way where I live, it
is now by the hour, Like they're literally saying, okay,
you're ordering this this morning at nine am, and they
give you a window we'll have it to you between
four and eight pm. I'm like, how do you do this?
What are the logistics of this? Company, except for that
one time I needed it. It didn't work. Okay, so
you tried to cancel unsuccessfully between June twenty nineteen and
twenty twenty five, and then you used fewer than three benefits,

(09:36):
so you didn't watch any Prime videos, you didn't listen
to Amazon Music, you didn't ship anything to your house like,
you didn't really get anything out of your membership. So automatically,
you are going to get up to fifty one dollars
back automatically by Christmas Day, which is great. I love
that they picked Christmas Day, so you don't have to
do a thing. You're just gonna get that money back.
It's going to be automatic. You don't have to fill

(09:57):
out any forms. Now here's why I'm telling you about this. Scammers.
They are going to exploit this, which means you're probably
going to get an email in the next couple of
weeks that says, hey, we're your friendly Amazon customer service
and we'd love to give you this refund.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Please fill out this information or click this link.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Now.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
If you click that link or you fill out that information,
that's when the scam starts and they're going to try
to get either your Amazon login from you and someone's
going to buy a bunch of gift cards on your account,
or they're going to try to capture your personal information.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Do not fall for that.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
If you want more information, you can go to FTC,
dot gov, slash Amazon. I tell you this because I
tell you this about every single thing we talk about.
Scammers take what we know and they twist it just
a little bit so it's believable. It's something we're familiar with,
but then they use it against us. So for instance,
how many times have you been at a checkout at

(10:50):
the store and you swipe your card or you tap
to pay and it says sorry, that didn't work, And
you immediately get a text on your phone that says, hey,
was that you at Target that just tried to buy
the thirty seven dollars and forty nine cents worth of stuff?
And you go, you know, press y or N and
so if you've seen that, you know that that happens
from your bank. But the scam artist send you that

(11:11):
same text. But of course it's like, hey, click this
link to approver deny and that's you know what they do.
They twist things to make it seem like it's something
you're familiar with, but really it's evil, nefarious, it's not good,
So don't fall for that stuff. All right, coming up
on the show, We've got a lot to talk about.
We've got your emails. Uh, We've got some calls here

(11:31):
going on. I've got tons in the feedback. We've got
great guests. Eight eight eight rich one oh one. If
you want to join in eight eight eight seven four
to two four to one zero one, your call's coming
up right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at

(11:53):
Triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one one. You can
follow me on social media. I am at rich on
Tech on Instagram, always posting little stuff there just for fun.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Let's see here.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Let us let's go to the phone lines, I said, lettuce,
let us lettuce, tomato, pickle onion. Let us go to
the phone lines. Let's go to nas in Los Angeles,
nash around with Rich.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
Good morning Ridge, Rich.

Speaker 5 (12:28):
I just recently transferred my wireless service from Spectrum to
T Mobile Home, and once I connected everything to it,
for some reason, my Netflix and my Amazon Prime path
stole work. Everything else works YouTube works. Hulu doesn't work either.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Well that's not good. What define defined doesn't work?

Speaker 6 (12:55):
Netflix doesn't load up at all?

Speaker 5 (12:57):
Okay, you know a little circle keeps going and then
it says error. I googled that error code. It tells
me to go and clear out some stuff on my
settings on my Sony TV.

Speaker 3 (13:09):
Okay, I did.

Speaker 6 (13:10):
That doesn't work.

Speaker 5 (13:11):
Amazon Prime actually loads up the content. For example, I
was trying to watch the game, and once you you know,
you choose the game to watch, it just keeps going
in circles, buffering, buffering, and then nothing.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Have you done a speed test on this T mobile
five G home Internet? I'm assuming it's the wireless internet.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Right, Yes, have you done a speed test? Okay?

Speaker 1 (13:34):
It sounds to me that this speed you're getting in
your home is not very good.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
How do you have this set up? And why? Why
did you decide to switch the price.

Speaker 5 (13:44):
No, it's just outages, constant outages in my area.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
Okay, all right, well so now do you Okay, So
here's what you need to do. You got it number
one to troubleshoot this. You got to figure out if
it is the speed you're getting. So if it's what
I would do is just hook up your phone. Is
there an Ethernet port on the back of this little
router they gave you, Yes, okay, so if you can,
I would connect my computer to that router with an

(14:10):
Ethernet cable and I would do a speed test. You
can go to fast dot com and uh that's that
will give you the speed test. And once you do that,
let it do the speed test. And then there's like
an extra speed test you can do. So once it
finishes the primary it says show more info. You tap
that and that will give you the details about your connection,
which is your latency and also your upload speed. So

(14:34):
if your latency is bad or your upload, your upload's
probably not gonna be that good anyway. But basically you
want your latency to be good, so a low number there,
and you also want your speed to be good. Now,
all these services do not need a lot of speed,
like the whole point of streaming. Like the thing that
the magic that these companies invented really these content delivery

(14:54):
services and Netflix in particular and YouTube is how to
make streaming really good even on low speeds. That's the magic.
Back in the day, if you wanted to download one movie.
It would take you forever. Now we just stream it
because they figured out how to get those little tiny
packets separated and sent over the internet and then they
reconfigure them somehow on the back end here on your device.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
So that's number one. You got to do a speed test.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
If you're not getting the speed that you need, you
may have to consider moving this device to a window
or closer to somewhere in your house where you get
a better signal.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Do you have T Mobile phone? Yes, okay, so you.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
Can shortcut some of this stuff. The signal that the
box pulls in is going to be better than your
phone because it has a stronger antenna. So but you
can just go with your phone and kind of go
around the exterior areas of your house, like sorry, the
interior near the windows, and see where you get the
strongest T Mobile connection. So, for instance, for me, in
the center of my home is a complete dead spot

(15:56):
for every provider. If I go towards the backyard, some
of the are stronger. If I go towards the front yard,
some of the other providers. And I test these things
all the time at and T T Mobile Verizon. So
go to the kind of the areas of your home,
see which which area has the strongest signal, and that's
probably where you want to place this little router that
they gave you. And then once you place that there,

(16:18):
do the speed test again. If you're getting anything over
like ten megabits per second, you should be fine because
these services do not need a lot of speed. Once again,
but it could be just that the signal is not
good at all, and it's not it's not powerful enough
for these apps to load up and stream.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
That's number one.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
If your speed is good enough, you might consider plugging
the cable directly from your TV into the router. I
know that may be tough if your TV is mounted
on the wall. Hopefully they ran an Ethernet cable behind
the wall that you could use to do that. If
none of that stuff is working and everything is fast
and it seems like it should be working, I would
see what's going on with the TV. Sounds like these

(16:58):
apps are built into the T so I would delete
the app, reinstall it, see if that helps. That'll clear
the cast, That'll clear all the data, and then I'll
kind of start you fresh on there. I'd also make
sure that your software is up to date on your TV,
the operating system and the firmware on that Sony TV.
Uh great question as thanks for the call today, appreciate it.
Eight eight eight rich one on one eight eight eight

(17:19):
seven four two four one zero one. If you're downloading
the number one app, I've got a warning for you
coming up next. Welcome back to rich on tech rich
Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. Phone lines
open eight eight eight rich one on one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. If

(17:43):
you're more of an email kind of person, which I am,
I love everything in email rich on tech dot TV.
Hit contact that'll send the email right to my screen.
I like everything in email. I hate texting. I know
people love texting. I hate texting. I'll tell you why.
And I hate to use the word hey. But I
dislike texting a lot. And I'll tell you why. It's

(18:04):
because I just don't look at it. I never think
to look at my texts ever. What are you laughing at, Bobo?

Speaker 2 (18:11):
What? What's so funny?

Speaker 3 (18:12):
I hate to use the word hate. I do.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
I really try in my life never to use the
word hate because I don't like hate to use the
I hate to use the word hate. I know, I
see what I did there. I know, but I just
don't like it. I don't care what you're talking about.
Hate is a very strong word, and I tell my
kids that too, so Paul Atte writes in, I'm listening
to the show.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
Quick question.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
If you don't have to do anything to get your
prime settlement, how do they know where to send the money?
I believe they would just use the email address that
you signed up for Prime with. That's probably what they'll do,
so that's probably where it will go. Andy writes in
from Los Angeles. Because I set up the new Nest sermonsats,
I'm assuming you replaced your older models as I did,
because the old app is going to no longer work.

(18:55):
That's exactly what I did. I went from the standard
Nest that I had. I think it was a first
or gen. I think it was like the first. Yeah,
had to be the first twenty eleven. That's when I
installed it and went to the new one. Because I'll
explain the second. But I have a question about Google Home,
which still shows four thermostats two as offline and I
can't delete them. It's irritating because the off offline ones

(19:18):
appear first, so I always have to scroll down to
see the active ones.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Do you know how to get rid of them? Yes?
I actually had to reach.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Out to Google to figure this out because I was
having the same issue. I kept going into the Google
Home app and I could not delete the thermostat. There
was no option for it. So I'd see this like thermostat,
I said offline, and I'd see the new one. Here
is the answer. If you're trying to do this, you
have to go into the Nest app. So download the
next app, log in you can remove the old thermostat there.

(19:48):
Google Home does not have the ability to remove it.
I still think that it seems like Google Home. You know,
they're still integrating all the Nest stuff. So just go
to the next app, delete the thermostat from there and
they will disappear from Google Home.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
It works perfectly.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
And by the way, if you have one of these
original Nest Learning thermostats, the first generation or the second generation,
it's no longer going to connect in the Nest app
or the Google Home app. It will still work. And
this ends on October twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, so
your time is running out. The thermostat will still function
on the wall, it will not be remote controllable, and

(20:24):
it's no longer going to be smart. So just remember
that if you've got one of these old Nest thermostats,
you installed it the first generation or the second generation
twenty eleven, twenty twelve they came out, so it's been
a long time. If you have one of these, you
have to you should replace it probably, And by the way,
you should have an email from Google saying that you
have a discount on the new Nest thermostat. I believe

(20:46):
it comes from Oh God, I put it in last
week's newsletter. I think it's Google home at Google dot
com or.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Something like that.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
But just look, just search Nest Learning Thermostat fourth gen
and it typically sells for about two hundred and forty dollars.
But if you have one of the old ones, I
think you got a deal to like upgrade, like for
like one fifty. Vicky is in San Diego. Vicky, are
you there? You're on with Rich Hi? Rich Hi.

Speaker 7 (21:11):
I'm having problems setting up audio connecting my Samsung TV
to my Kenwood A MS SUM receiver.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Okay, what's the problem.

Speaker 7 (21:24):
Well, I'm getting I'm not getting any sound I've got
I'm using a converter, an analog to digital converter, okay,
and I've got that all hooked up correctly with the cables.
I don't know if it's a setting that I'm not
setting right. I've spent hours on the phone with Samsung.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
I've been back and wait, you've spent hours on the
phone with Samsung. You expect me to know the answer
to this. If they couldn't figure it out, what makes
you think I can? Okay, So let me get this straight.
You've got the TV and you've got this receiver. Where
does that con come in? What are you converting with?

Speaker 7 (22:02):
It's an old, old ken Wood AMFM receiver okay, And
I'm using the RCA red and.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
White jack okay, out out from the receiver, the red
and white jacks to what.

Speaker 7 (22:16):
My son to the optical. That's what I need the
analog converter for. And then I have the optical cable
from the converter into the TV.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
Okay, so the optical so the little converter converts it
into an optical signal. Yeah, and it's an out. Your
shirt's an out yeah, okay? And do you have any
other options on the back of that thing.

Speaker 7 (22:37):
No, just HDMI. But I can't use HDMI because the
receiver's so old, and that's what my speakers are hooked
up to.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Okay, so you've got the speakers hooked up, so you
want to do Okay, Well, here's the thing. So if
your speakers are hooked up to HG, you can't have both.
You can't have optical and HDMI at the same time.
That's the problem with your TV, oh have You can
only have one input at a time, or one output
rather well sorry, one input. So you're doing You're you're

(23:07):
going optical out of this little converter into the TV.

Speaker 7 (23:12):
I'm going from the optical cable on the back of
the TV to the optical box, right, and then the
optical box has the red and white cables that go
from the optical box into the receiver.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Okay, so if you are going optical into the TV,
that would be the input. See that's interesting. Are you
sure this the TV? The optical is the input for
the TV. You've got that set up?

Speaker 7 (23:39):
Yes, because I can see it. I've got two choices.
I can use the TV speaker, it can use optical,
So I keep changing the seting.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Okay, optical.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
Optical typically means out because that's usually you're connecting that
to a sound bar. Are you sure it says optical in?

Speaker 7 (23:57):
Well, I mean on the convert itself. There's two choices.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
I can use co X so optical or right they
can Okay, So here's what I think is happening. I
think that your TV is the optical is an out,
and that's where you would connect it to a third
party like receiver or soundbar using like my TV, I
haven't connected to my soundbar using the optical out. So
you would have to ensure that this TV has an

(24:23):
optical in, which means you're using that to connect to
your TV with that optical in sound input. I don't
know if that's the case, if your TV can handle that.
Your TV doesn't have on the back, doesn't have any
other way to connect. So you're trying to get the
sound from this receiver to the TV. Is that what's happening?

Speaker 7 (24:44):
You're trying to get that I'm trying to get my
TV to play on my speakers.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Oh okay, okay, so I'm confused.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
So the receiver, you're going from the TV to this
little box then to the receiver.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yes, yeah, okay, so it is. Okay, so it's the out.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
I thought you were trying to get your your radio,
your AMFM tuner into the TV and then out. Okay,
So your speakers are connected to the HDMI on your TV.

Speaker 7 (25:12):
No, no, no, my speakers are connected to the receiver.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
Okay, got it?

Speaker 7 (25:16):
Three old old think all like thirty years ago.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
Okay, all right, So here here's what I think you
need to do. I think that you you got to
go from the TV to this little box and that
that little that that signal is coming out through the
optical into that box, and that box should take that
optical and then send it into your receiver. The thing
you need to make sure is that your TV says

(25:41):
optical out in the sound settings. You cannot use two
different settings for the for the audio out on this TV.

Speaker 8 (25:49):
Yeah it does.

Speaker 7 (25:50):
It says optical out okay. And I can even see
the bars, like the sound bars moving on the optical setting.
But there's just no found.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Okay, So the sound is not making it. So the
sound is going out through the optical cable and it's
making it that little converter box.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Are you sure this converter box works?

Speaker 8 (26:06):
I just bought it.

Speaker 7 (26:07):
This is my second one.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Okay, that's the thing I think might be the problem.
And then you're sure. You're going from the converter box
and it's sending a signal out through those cables into
the receiver.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Is that right the light screen?

Speaker 7 (26:19):
So I mean, there's not much to the converter box.
But yeah, I would say pretty sure.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Okay, yeah, cool, Yeah, I'm looking at these little converter boxes.
It's got yeah av okay, so HDMI it's got okay,
a lot of different things, and you're.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Powered the Insignia it's the Insignia one.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Okay, it's I'm it's really tough to figure this out
without seeing what's happening here, without seeing the actual cables.
But I think the as long as you're going out
from the TV, like the audio output is set as
that optical and you're going into that box and that
box is sending the signal to your receiver, it should
work as long as that receiver can tune into those

(26:58):
RCAA you know, inputs that you're putting it on and
then it's going out to the speaker, so it should work.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
In theory.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
What I would recommend is trying a different connection. Maybe
ordering a box that does HDMI out to h like
HDMI to RCA, if you can do that, and then
you can use the HDMI connector on your TV. They
have something called Arc Hdmi RC and that would probably

(27:25):
be a more an easier way to one of the
look on your back of your TV.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
If one of the HDMI.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
Ports is labeled ARC, that means you can connect a
converter to that HDMI and do the sound of output
that way, and I think that that would probably work better. Okay,
so I know it's a little bit of a pain,
but you know, you're trying to troubleshoot here, and it's
really tricky without seeing it and without me testing it.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
But you can just order.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
You know, one of these things is fifteen bucks. It's
worth ordering it, trying that and seeing if it works.
And you got to make sure that you're this little
box you got the conversion is the right way, Like
make sure it's going from optical to the av port.
And I'm looking at this one that I'm seeing right here,
and it looks like it's going from RCA. It looks

(28:14):
like it's converting the other way. The input is the RCA,
the output is the optical So I would just make
sure that your system is set up properly and that
this little box is actually is converting things the right way.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Did it ever work? Did this set up ever work?

Speaker 9 (28:29):
Yes?

Speaker 7 (28:29):
It See I moved. I moved, and I had it
set up before, and ever since I've moved, I can't
get it set up right.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Okay, Well, if you had it set up before, then
everything I'm saying about this not being the right box
is move because it's just a matter of the connections.
So what I would do is restart your TV, make
sure the optical out is selected, make sure everything is
connected to the proper inputs and outputs. Check to labels
again it should work, and make sure that your system
is running on that right, that right input when you

(28:58):
go to the RCA cables complicated question, Vicky, I'm sorry
that's happening to you. I have faith in you, though
I don't have faith in myself because if Samsung couldn't
figure it.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Out, I mean yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Eight eight eight rich one o one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one coming up.
I'll tell you about Sora if you're thinking of downloading it.
There is a warning today about Sora that's coming up
right here.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
I'm rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you, talking technology triple eight Rich one oh
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. The website rich on Tech dot tv. There
you can find the show notes. I take very good notes, uh.
And there you can also subscribe to my free newsletter
packed with helpful tips, tricks, and the latest tech I

(29:51):
think you should know about. Just go to rich on
tech dot tv. It's all right there. All right, let's
get to the gadget of the week. I love this thing.
It's super cool, the HP film scan five touch screen
film scanner. Now, if you listen to the show very closely,
you'll notice one of my guests last week mention this

(30:12):
and I happen to have it in my place, you know,
in my lab for testing, and so I pulled it out,
and I was like, all right, now's the time to
test because she said she likes it. Let me try
this thing out. And sure enough, I couldn't believe it.
But I did find some negatives around my house. I
was gonna ask like my in laws to see if
they had some but I couldn't believe the first place
I looked, the first box I checked, I found negatives.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Old school, Remember, you.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Used to get your pictures back in an envelope and
it came with the pictures in the back and the
negatives in the front. And my mom always was like,
don't touch the negatives, you'll ruin them. And think about this,
When you took pictures back in the day, you had
to wait to see what was on that role at
the end. How wild is that now to think about
that now, I'm not kidding.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
I was at dinner the other night.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
I watched these teenagers take about seven hundred and fifty
selfies before they picked the right one they were gonna post. Now,
it's so different than it was back in the day.
You'd take a bunch of pictures, half of that role
what was it, twenty four pictures on a roll, maybe
some more. Half of them would just be garbage. They
were literally just throwaways, and you'd be like, oh, I
thought that was a better picture anyway. So this thing

(31:21):
is great because all you have to do is take
the slide. You don't even need a computer, and it
has a nice five inch screen on it. You put
the slide into a little tray and it takes slides
or negatives. You put it into the side, it shows
up on the screen and then you just press the
capture button. It works with thirty five millimeter film one
ten and one twenty six. You can view it, you

(31:42):
can crop it, you can fine tune things. But you
can do all that in your computer anyway later. But
the coolest thing about this is that it's a touchscreen,
so it's really easy to use compared to all the
other ones on Amazon that are much more you know,
button based, and you're sitting there tapping all these buttons.
So you pop a memory card into the back, you
press that capture button. It puts the file right onto

(32:03):
that memory card. Then you can put that memory card
on your computer, or you can put it on your phone.
If you have an Android or iPhone, you can just
plug that right into the bottom of your phone using
a memory card reader.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
I did this.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
You can see my video where I test this out
on Instagram at rich On Tech and it's just super cool.
And I found an old picture of me and my
wife in Cabo. Can you believe that we were at
the world's smallest bar anyway, So you put this stuff in,
you archive it and it's just a great way to
digitize your pictures. It's two hundred and thirty dollars on Amazon.

(32:35):
I will admit it was a little cheaper during Prime Day,
so if you got it during Prime Day, you did well.
But watch for this over the holidays. It's not something
you need to buy right now, but just watch for
a good price drop over the holidays because we know
it went cheaper, so you know it's going to drop
at some point again. Anyway, it's called the HP film
Scan five inch touchscreen at film Scanner. That is this

(32:55):
week's Gadget of the Week. This segment sponsored by Shopback.
So I told you about my Amazon Prime Day shopping. Yes,
I did shop on Amazon Prime Day. Okay, so maybe
I didn't get everything that I needed, but I did
do that and a lot of the stuff did arrive.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
And what did I use shop back?

Speaker 1 (33:14):
You know why because you get cash back on the
stuff you're already buying. So before you shop, all you
have to do is activate shop Back. You'll either pop
up on your web browser or you can use the
mobile app if you have that. It's got a browser
extension which makes life a lot easier. After check out,
you'll get an email showing you how much you spent
and how much cash back you're going to earn, so
it figures things out pretty quickly. The money that you

(33:36):
collect on shotback goes right into your PayPal account, so
you don't have to get points, you don't have to
get gift cards, just actual cash that you can withdraw.
And I've transferred this money into my bank account. It's
pretty easy. The other thing about Shotback that I like
is it stacks with coupons and retailer deals, so you
can save up to three times more than other cash

(33:57):
back apps.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
Which is really neat retailers.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
If you go up going to the website right now,
the retailers like a Who's Who's list of all kinds
of stuff, Macy, Sketchers, Old Navy, Amazon's on there, and
right now it's their Shopbacks Lightning Deal days running through
October twelfth, so you can get up to fifteen percent
cash back at popular stores and on Amazon of course,
you can get up to five dollars cash back on

(34:23):
your order, so that's really cool, capped at one per customer.
And by the way, pro tip, if you sign up
for this go to the quests page. That's where you
can earn bonus cash back just for completing certain purchases.
So join shopback for free today at shopback dot com.
That's shop back dot com, shopback dot com. Download the

(34:43):
app or the browser extension. Amazon rates are available for
a limited time only. All right, If you are downloading Sora,
you've heard of Sora, right. This is the app that
lets you make videos AI generated videos. It is invite only.
Be care There are dozens of fake Sora and Sora
two apps on the app store, and I know that

(35:05):
people are downloading these because people have been emailing me
asking me for my invite code. I give it to
them and they say, oh, Rich, that didn't work. Nope,
you're probably using it in a bogus app. So be
careful when you download this app. Make sure you get
the actual app that is called Sora two. And you
should know that it's Sora, the actual app. Let me

(35:26):
get I'm going to the actual app store right now.
It should say underneath it Sora by open Ai, a
new video app by open Ai.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Open Ai.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
It's the number one video right now in photo and video.
It might be the number one video on the app
Store at this point because it's it's been trending. They
had over a million downloads in just five days, which
is more than Chatchy BT got when it came out.
So just be careful. Do not just download any Sora app.
Make sure the developer name is open AI eight to

(35:58):
a rich one oh one eight to eight seven four
two four one zero one. We'll take your calls. Coming
up right after the break. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demurou here hanging out with you, talking technology Triple
eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Got a lot going

(36:20):
on this hour. We've got some great guests. We're gonna
have Ashton Bingham and Art Koulik, founders of Trilogy Media,
and they have a new show called Scam to Getting Even.
They're gonna talk about how to spot fraud, fight back,
and protect yourself from these scams that are happening every day.
You would not believe how many. Well actually you probably

(36:41):
would believe it because you see them every day. It's
just unbelievable, and people fall for him, they really do.
If you go there's the Better Business Bureau actually has
a great website. Called Scam Tracker. So if you just
want to browse through scams that are happening, you can.
You can just literally go there and just look up,
look up a scam, and you'll see all these scams

(37:02):
that these people online purchase bulk Jersey Supply website. I
ordered a shirt from this company, and after repeated attempts
to reach them, they after a month, they said it
would take longer and longer. Then they sent an email
to all customers with their personal information saying we know
you're waiting, YadA YadA, YadA, and anyway, they lost fifty

(37:25):
eight dollars.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
You can just go and they go on and on
and on.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
We got lots of replies about Vicky's question with the
receiver and the TV Ron in California says if Vicki's
system was working before, she should double check every button
and setting on her receiver, especially the tape monitor switch.
If that's pressed in, she won't hear any sound. Randy
writes in make sure all the cables are correct from

(37:49):
the TV to the converter box and from the converter
to the receiver. Then confirm the receiver is set to
the right input source to hear the TV audio and
then JP says, ask Vicky what she plugged the RCA
JAX into on her receiver. On some older models, the
monitor function has to be turned on or the audio
signal won't reach the amplifier. So there you go a

(38:12):
couple of suggestions there. Let's go to Lisa eighty eight
rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Lisa is in Los Angeles. You're
on with Rich Hi Rich hiight.

Speaker 9 (38:25):
Good to talk to you. Fabulous show.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Thank you.

Speaker 9 (38:29):
I also get the newsletter.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
Oh I love that double bonus. Where's my bell? Double
double double bonus?

Speaker 9 (38:36):
Okay. So I have an HP laptop that's like five
years old. Okay, it's Windows ten okay, and it would
not allow me to upgrade to Windows eleven. Okay, So
much to my Chagarin. I go out and I decide
I'm going to buy a Mac laptop.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Okay, good choice.

Speaker 9 (38:55):
Two or three days later, Microsoft comes out and says, oh,
we're gonna support ten for the next year. You just
have to do ABCD, go down the list and do
all that stuff. So I thought, well, okay, I'm going
to do it. I did it. They said you're now supported.
Do you know how secure that is?

Speaker 1 (39:14):
It's as secure as it can be. You got one
more year. But now here's the thing. Are you in
your return period for the laptop?

Speaker 9 (39:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Okay, then just return it, return it and just stay
with this for a year, if you know.

Speaker 9 (39:26):
But the next year, yeah, I'm gonna want it. I mean,
I got to decide.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
You got to decide. I mean, did you buy it
from the Apple Store or somewhere else? Okay, you only
have fourteen days and they do not charge a restocking
fee as far as I know on the laptops, So
I mean you're in a good place if are you
good with the Mac?

Speaker 8 (39:44):
Like?

Speaker 1 (39:44):
I mean, look, don't get it. Don't get me wrong,
I love the Mac too. Like I'm I'm just saying,
I guess it really comes down to the money. Do
you care about spending the money on the laptop?

Speaker 9 (39:53):
Und I had put the money aside for the Mac
because I knew this was coming.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Oh look at you, I love you. What what a
great planner.

Speaker 8 (40:02):
I try.

Speaker 9 (40:03):
I try till Microsoft pops up and says, oh, you'll
have one more year.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
You just spend one thousand bucks and now you don't have.

Speaker 9 (40:09):
To thank you, So I just kept to figure it out.
But I'm I'm loving the Mac and.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Demaca is great. What'd you get the small one?

Speaker 9 (40:19):
The thirteenth I got the fifteen in fifteen inch MacBook
air Yees, yeah, I mean, great laptop.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
And you know it's going to serve you for a
good probably eight to ten years, I think on that side.

Speaker 9 (40:31):
Oh that's good to hear they tell me.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
But well, I mean they they the software might be
supported for a certain amount of time, but Apple, you
know the thing will work for much longer. But you know,
here's the deal. So what you're talking about with the
with the Windows end of life, that's going to end
on the fourteenth of October. So after that, if you're
not updated with this extended security updates, your computer could
be vulnerable. Now, once you do those updates, like you said,

(40:56):
you opted in, your computer will get security updates for
the next year until October twenty twenty six. So what
I've advised people to do is definitely hop on either
upgrade your computer Windows eleven if it lets you do
the extended security software updates. If you can't do that,
and then you have a year to plan for a
new computer. Now, in your case, you already went out

(41:18):
and bought the new computer. You've already got it. You
just have to decide do you want to wait until
next year to rebuy this computer or do you just
want to cut your losses now and just you know, recycle.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
The Windows machine.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
So, but you have an option.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
You You've got your time to decide this, and there
is no right decision here. Obviously the Mac is going
to be nice and fast and smooth and up to date.

Speaker 9 (41:37):
In mind, No I noticed the difference.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
So maybe that's the answer you.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
If you're already liking what you're using and you've already
spent the money, you know, maybe just stick with it.

Speaker 9 (41:47):
My husband might get the HP for the next year.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
There you go, now you're talking give him the old one? Ouch?

Speaker 9 (41:55):
All right, Rich, thank you so much. I appreciate it,
all right.

Speaker 1 (41:58):
Lisa, enjoy no matter what, no matter what. You can't
make a wrong decision there. I mean, if you're using
a brand new Mac, you're gonna love it. And if
you're using the HP for the next year, it's familiar.
It's gonna run a lot slower, but at least you're
protected from yea, all that stuff. So yeah, if you're
looking to uh, if you've got a Windows ten computer,
the way you know you have Windows ten. Okay, go

(42:19):
to your little computer. Go to your Windows computer. Press
the Windows key on your keyboard. If you press that
key and your menu pops up in the middle of
your computer, you're good. You're on Windows eleven. No need
to think about anything. If it shows up on the
left hand side, left corner of your screen, that menu
pops up there when you press the Windows key, that
means you're running Windows ten. Now, before you email me

(42:40):
and you say Rich, you can change where the menu
pops up on Windows eleven.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
It can go to the left. I know.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
But most people that I'm talking about right now that
are trying to figure out they're running Windows ten or eleven,
they don't. They don't know how to do that, so
they're not moving the menu to the left. That's why
I can say that with confidence that if it pops
up on the left, you're probably running Windows ten. Pops
up in the middle, you're running Windows eleven. You don't
have to think about it. So what you need to

(43:07):
do if you're running Windows ten, you've only got a
couple of days here, You've got to enroll in these
extended security updates that'll give you one more year of
updates security only on your computer before you know you
have to buy a new computer next year.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
Great call eighty to eight rich one on one eighty
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Natalie
writes in listening to the podcast, I've never cracked a
phone screen before, but now it's happened to my Motorola
Edge twenty twenty four. The damage isn't terrible, just some
hairline cracks and a couple deeper ones on the side,
but the repair quotes shocked me. Diy kits run about

(43:44):
one hundred dollars and repair shops one hundred and fifty
or more. Since the phone still works fine, I'm torn
between just fixing it or fixing it and just living
with it until I upgrade. Any advice on whether that
cost is worth it, Natalie, I think it's worth it
because number one, hairline cracks and deeper cracks turn into

(44:05):
larger cracks, and the reason is because the integrity of
that screen is now forever ruined. And this is what happens.
People drop their phone, they say, oh, my phone's fine,
Oh Whoo, I escape that one. You drop it again, Oh,
I escape that one. The third time you drop it, boom,
the whole thing shatters. The reason is because there were
tiny little cracks and the integrity of that screen was

(44:27):
probably implicat impacted by the other falls. So you can
drop your phone one hundred times and nothing happens. It
only takes one time where you drop it on a
certain angle, or you drop it and it just hits
things just right, and those stress fractures ruin it, so
it could turn into more. I personally don't like using
a crack screen at all. I think it's really annoying.

(44:49):
I actually don't think one hundred and fifty dollars is
that bad. The problem is, I think if you're getting
one hundred and fifty quote, i'd want to get it
done at a place that warranties the repair. So if
you have a place like a U break I fixed,
they will give you a free quote. I don't think
one hundred and fifty dollars sounds that bad if you
can really get it fixed for that much, but make
sure it's not like sort of a fly by night
place that you're never going to see again. If it's

(45:11):
a place in the mall, make sure that they're there.
They've been there for a long time. If it's a
local place, make sure they've been there. But ask about
the warranty, like, hey, if this thing cracks again, what
are my well, you know, can you replace it again
for free? See what they say. I'm not sure what
the answer to that is. But also put a screen
protector on this thing too, if you can. I know
it's a Motoral Edge. Is that I think that's uh,

(45:34):
let's see what that looks like. Okay, so this is
just yeah, I would get a screen protector for this
phone as well, once you get the screen replaced, I
would do that now this Uh okay, now I see
why you're Okay, you can buy a brand new Motorol
Edge twenty twenty four for two hundred and ninety nine bucks.
In that case, I don't really think one hundred and

(45:55):
fifty dollars repair is worth it. I might just get
a new phone or deal with this until you need
to get a new phone, because that's that's fifty percent
of the price of the phone. Now I know why
you were So you were wondering about that. Okay, that
makes much more sense. Let's see here what we got
less than a minute debian, California. Here's an easy one.

(46:18):
I love your show on KFI and your segments on KTLA.
I still have an iPhone seven and want to upgrade.
I'm not sure which model makes sense. I don't use
my phone for business or heavy camera work, mostly every
day things like web browsing and photos. What would you recommend?
iPhone sixteen E? For sure, iPhone sixteen E is the
standard basic iPhone. It's still great. It actually is really

(46:41):
really good for the price. One camera, basic specs, but
you're gonna get everything you need, so it's still gonna
have a nice screen. Doesn't have that always on display
as far as I know, does it No, So you're
not getting that. But I think you're gonna be just
fine with the sixteen E. And the price is pretty good.
The retail price is about six hundred bucks, but you

(47:02):
could probably get it for about one hundred dollars cheaper
at Carrier stores or maybe even on Amazon. So iPhone
sixteen E DEBI is probably the phone that you want.
It's got all the modern features, but not that expensive.
Eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. If you want
to email, just go to the website. Rich on tech
dot TV. Got a burning question, just hit contact right there. Uh,

(47:25):
and you should get that right to your screen. Anything
else is burning. Uh, that's not something I can answer.
That's not my department, rich on tech dot TV.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
Welcome back to rich on tech. Let's go to Kevin
in San Clementy. Kevin, you're on with rich.

Speaker 6 (47:47):
Good afternoon, rich. Let me get you off a speaker
phone here. Anyway, I've got an issue. I came back
after a trip for my computer and went to open up.
I've got two Gmail accounts and both of them did
the same thing. I go to log in and Gmail
comes up and says, you know, uh, just please be

(48:08):
advised that we collect this, this, this, and this. It
was a bunch of personal things that they said they
collect and I had to either accept or decline. I
had hit decline and I could not get into my
email account. So what I hit accept, went back and
hit accept. They didn't let me into my email account.
But the things that they wanted to collect, I don't

(48:29):
agree with. What are my options?

Speaker 1 (48:32):
What are they ask?

Speaker 2 (48:33):
What are they saying what do they want to collect.

Speaker 6 (48:35):
They want to collect telephone numbers, get into my address book,
account information. I mean it was a laundry I'm not
in front of it right now, but it was a
laundry list of personal things that I don't want out there.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Okay, well, okay, it depends is it was it a
scam or was it legitimate from Google?

Speaker 6 (48:56):
It was legitimate from Google. Okay.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
So here's the deal.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
If if you're using a free product, they they do
ask for things in exchange. So could it be that
you set up this Google account a long time ago? Yes, okay,
so probably when you set up this Google account, they
did not require as many things to identify you as
they do now. And without seeing what they're asking for,

(49:21):
you know, you're saying account info. I don't know what
that means, Like that's you know, like what accounting for?
Are they asking for? The things that they would typically
ask for would be things like your name, maybe your address,
your phone number, your email. You know, those are the
identifiers that they would typically want.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
I believe was even okay.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
Date of birth.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
That is that's legitimate because you know, here's the thing
that's happened in the past couple of years since all
these account creations happened. Is that back in the day,
they they were in a growth phase, right, and so
they wanted as many people to sign up as fast
as humanly possible so that they can go back to
their investors and say, hey, we've got one hundred million
people using Gmail. We've got two hundred billion people, you know,

(50:01):
blah blah blah. Now number one, people have gotten very
savvy with privacy, and you know, there's also things that
have happened. You know, we saw that Cambridge Analytica thing
with Facebook, where you know, there's a lot of information
out there, and these companies are now asking for more
because they're also protecting themselves because of all these new

(50:22):
privacy laws that are coming into effect, especially over in Europe.
We don't really have too many in the US, but
because these companies operate globally, they are now doing everything
on a national scale, so are a worldwide scale. So
I think that it's probably trying to fill in some
of the information that it did not have on you
so that it could then sell more things to you

(50:43):
or monetize your account more.

Speaker 6 (50:45):
So, could I excu me, can I go into the
personal settings, then on Google and decline individual things within
the account.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Once I'm in, I'm looking right now to see what
I have so basic info. It's got my name, my birthday,
my gender, contact info, phone number, addresses, IDs, profiles, and
then password. So I think it really you can see
what they'll let you get rid of. I'm not sure

(51:17):
that you know they'll let you get rid of. I
have twelve phone numbers in here. Oh my gosh, it's
a lot of phone numbers verified. And Italian phone number
is verified in my account. Okay, I don't That was
probably when I went to Italy and they Yeah, so
Google is trying, you know, they're trying to get as
much information as they can. You can go in there
and see what you can delete about you, but you
know it does want personal information. It does want certain

(51:39):
information data. Birth is going to be tricky because you
know they want that for protection reasons. Like they had
this whole thing where they're basically using AI to figure
out teens birthdays because either parents sign up for their
kids or the kids sign up themselves. They put a
fake birthday in so that they can be eighteen and
not have to deal with all these different parameters. And

(52:00):
security and privacy settings and protections, and then Google says, well,
hold on, you know, we need to make things that
work for teams, we need to make things that work
for adults, and so we do need to know your birthday.
So I would say it is a trade off. If
you want to pay for your own email account, right,
then you can go on and buy a service that
may require less information, that's more private, that doesn't sell

(52:21):
your data.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
But you are using.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Google, and if you're using Google, if you're using Facebook,
if you're using Instagram, if you using TikTok, these are
all free services that you know, they monetize you as
a person, like your data is what they make money
off of. So if you're not comfortable with giving them
that data and you know, then you might have to
switch to a different service to get that same level

(52:45):
of whatever you're getting. Now, with all that said, whenever
you're signing up things for things, always give the least
amount of personal data, and that is always what I'd recommend. So,
and you can even sign up those websites like cloaked
dot com, which you can create entirely new not identities almost,
but kind of where you can make up a phone number,

(53:06):
you can put in a new phone number, new email address.
It's all one time use. So if you really want
to get private about this stuff, you can you can
do that. There's also another great website called privacy dot com,
and this thing is great because it basically connects. It
does connect to your bank account or maybe your debit
card one or the other, but you have to you
can't use a credit card with it. But basically it

(53:27):
generates one time debit cards that you can use to
sign up for products. So if you sign up for
a free trial, chances are you're going to forget to
cancel if you use this privacy card. It's like a
one time use. It'll just not work when they go
to charge you. Privacy dot com really really cool. Thanks
for the question, Kevin, do appreciate it. Coming up, we're
going to talk about how to protect yourself from some

(53:48):
of the biggest scams out there. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology.
Triple A rich one O one eight eight A seven
four to two four one zero one links to everything
I mentioned in today's show. Go to rich on Tech
dot tv. Hit episodes at the top. This is episode

(54:11):
number one four two oh one four three Episode one
four three.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
All right, joining me.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
Now, we've got some guests to talk about scams. I love, Uh,
I like talk. Okay, let's see what's happening here. I
am I hearing myself. Oh that's why. Okay, I'm there.
We go, Thank you, Bobo. Uh yeah, this is my
first day doing this. Why not make mistakes? Ashton Bingham
and Art Koulik, founders of Trilogy Media, stars of Fox

(54:41):
Nations Scammed getting even Welcome to the show, guys, Thank.

Speaker 10 (54:46):
You for having Thank you so much for having us.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
Uh so, tell me, well, first off, how did you
guys meet up? And how did you start this Trilogy Media?
And what is that? Exactly?

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Go ahead?

Speaker 11 (54:58):
Art, I mean I was literally like kinpointing on Ashton. Well,
trulygy media. We opened Trilogy Media as production company.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
Me and Ashton.

Speaker 11 (55:07):
We came to Los Angeles, California to do specifically creating content,
being in filmmaking business, and then you know, everything was amazing.
We created company twenty sixteen and my brother Ashton, we
used to be a roommates. He he answered robo call
and that scam robo call change the curse of the

(55:31):
direction of what we've been doing in the past ten years.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
What was the robo call?

Speaker 10 (55:36):
It was one of those you know, and they call
you and say that your taxes are overdue and you're
going to be arrested. And I mean, I knew it
was a scam, but you know, we opened this company,
we had no intention of going into scam dating. We
kind of fell into it because that video that I
posted of that call when insanely viral, and we just, like,
you know what, we have the drive in the in

(55:57):
the dreams, we just didn't have the vehicle, and scambating
was the perfect vehicle of being able to do something
where we could be who we are on our terms
with our personalities, but also do something that like really
was important and raise awareness and use a platform to
actually like help people and you know, make these scams
more in the public eye about how deep and dark

(56:18):
they are and how much more complicated than most people realize.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
So what okay, So first off, defines scam bating, What
does that mean exactly?

Speaker 10 (56:28):
Well, scam bating is basically the art of I don't
know why my picture is delaying here, Sorry, maybe'll turn
the camera the art of wasting a scammer's time in
the sense that they will think they have what will
be a profitable victim for them. But what we're really
doing is social engineering them to stay on the phone,

(56:51):
waste their time so they can't scam other people, and
most importantly, learn what it is they're trying to get
out of people, so that we can expose those methods
and warn people on what to look out for, and
hopefully at the end gather you know, identifying information about
the perpetrators. And in classic trilogy style, we love to
actually get outside, get boots on the ground, and actually
go find these people and confront them and hold them accountable.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
So are these people in the US most of the
time or where are you going to find these people?

Speaker 10 (57:18):
It's funny a lot of people kind of assume that
scams are only in like, you know, one corner of
the earth, or you know, you get a call with
someone with an Indian accent and the whole scam is
in India. There are yes, certain pockets of the world
where certain types of scams are more prolific just based
on their skill sets and everything, but there are scammers everywhere,

(57:40):
and especially one thing that we didn't even realize until
we really got into doing this, is that these scams,
although yes, there might be a call center in India,
they're using people all over the planet to facilitate this.
They have deals with Chinese mafia to launder the money.
They have cash mules here in the United States that
will go and collect the money from elderly victims. They

(58:02):
have people planted in the bank systems and in the
in the you know whatever. It might be working for
different companies that you know, can can give them an
inside look or an inside you know whatever into databases
of people's information or whatever.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
That's interesting you said that because I remember when this
there was like a hack, a SIM card hack or
SIM swapping attack, like you know, I think it was
a T mobile or one of these, But it came
out that like there was people on the inside, like you,
you're not really safe from this when there's people at
the company working there that are going to do the
scam or help the scammers.

Speaker 10 (58:34):
And you know a lot of people think that, you know, oh,
I'm too smart to get scammed or I would never
fall forward.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
It's so stupid.

Speaker 11 (58:40):
Well it's not.

Speaker 10 (58:40):
You look at it.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
On one sentence on a piece of paper.

Speaker 10 (58:42):
Yeah, maybe it sounds stupid, but when you really dive
in and you're actually spending your time talking to these
scammers and then more painfully talking to these victims, you're
learning about the real long term emotional manipulation that they
go through, and how complicated it is, and how many
degrees of separation there are between the victim and the scammer,
that it's really done by design that way, and you

(59:03):
really start to learn why these things are so successful. Unfortunately,
so we have to you know, we have to expose it.
We have to keep our you know, we have to
keep our elderly especially aware because that's the big target.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Is Yeah, is it fun art?

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Is it fun to to you know, catch these people,
expose them and you know, kind of shed some light
on this stuff.

Speaker 11 (59:22):
Well, it's well, the majority of the time, yes, it
is fun. But also, you know, when we're doing this
kind of line of work, I don't even call this work.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
We love what we do for a living.

Speaker 11 (59:33):
It's it's literally dream. When we just got back from Nigeria,
we had treaped to India as well. When you go
to somebody else house and you go to the country
and you know, if it's a tech support, it's going
to be out of India. We've went to India when
somebody been scamming people and then been doing these successfully

(59:54):
for twenty five thirty years, and you come to their
house and you stop this procedure, right, they want to
kill you. So to answer your question, it's fun until
it's become danger Until it's becoming dangerous, you know. So yeah,
you have to just like you have to balance it out.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Ah, that's scary.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
I mean, yeah, I get it because I'm sure some
of this involves organized crime and things like that. So
what are the things that people need to watch out
for these days? Like what are you seeing kind of
bubbling up? And are these little things that we see like,
you know, we get these text messages, we get these
posts on Instagram, we get these emails. Is that really
where the scams are? Is it really the phone calls
that people get? Like, just give me some high level

(01:00:35):
of like what we need to watch out for right now?

Speaker 10 (01:00:38):
Literally everything you can't trust anyone or anything. Yeah, whether
it's text messages, DMS, email, email, phone calls, it's it's
literally they're going to keep getting you from every way
that they can. And with the with AI growing the
way that it is, it's only going to get harder
to spot. But yeah, you know, a general rule, just
don't anyone that's unsolicited reaching out to you for anything.

(01:01:01):
You need to be skeptical. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Definitely,
don't click any links that you're sinn, especially if it's
a number you don't recognize, if it's a phone call,
like I don't even I mean, I answer my phone
for spam calls because that's what we do, but in general,
in my day to day life, I don't even answer
numbers I don't recognize.

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
They can leave me a message.

Speaker 10 (01:01:19):
I'll call them back if it's important, you know, they'll
they'll have my number. So, you know, you just got
to be very careful about what people want, what they're
asking you to do, and don't just take their word
for it. If they say they're with the DMV, if
they say they're with the I R S, you can't
just take at face value. You know, it's you can
never be afraid to ask questions and never be afraid
to take your time and ask a loved one like

(01:01:41):
don't ever especially elderly people remind them. Do not ever
let anyone pressure you into anything. Scammers will play on
your fears or your dreams, and a really good scam
will do both. So being pressured, being rushed, being threatened
always massive red flags and links. Be careful with links,
don't ever click them.

Speaker 11 (01:01:58):
If you receive an email in duties and number to
call again, don't call the number. And no matter who
is calling, exactly like Ashan said, if.

Speaker 5 (01:02:05):
It's j M V.

Speaker 11 (01:02:06):
Sheriff who is coming to arrest you because you didn't
pay taxes, no matter what's happening, We're living in a
life that if you booking tickets, you're putting booking cruises,
you shopping on Amazon, no matter what's happening to you.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
Do your own research.

Speaker 11 (01:02:21):
If you got a message about from Amazon or from Netflix,
on from anything, don't don't take the word for it.
Don't trust anybody. Do your research. Go and put Netflix
dot com or whatever the website is, and call yourself.
Don't let Bank of America, chase bank whoever is claiming
to be or government officials. Find independent number online and

(01:02:45):
call that number. And this is it. And that's how
you know. If you're calling people and you're asking for help.
It means everything, okay, but if somebody is calling you
and urging you to do things, don't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
Yeah, it's gotten to the point where like if I
you know, any one that calls, like if it's you know,
one of these companies that you do business with, whether
it's your bank or credit card or an insurance company,
and they say, you know, we'd like to confirm some information,
I'm always like, hold on, wait a second, Like I
make sure that they're the ones. Well, most of the time,
I just kind of try to ignore the call, like
I'll just call back or something. But if they're if

(01:03:19):
they're trying to confirm information, like let's say a simple
scam could be like I call, you'd be like, okay,
let me just confirm some information, right, let me your
date of birth is what?

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
And then you tell me that and your social is what?
And then you tell me that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
Now I've got pretty much everything I need in like
less than five minutes, and before you even realize like,
oh wait, hold on, who is this person I'm talking
to again?

Speaker 10 (01:03:38):
Well, that's the thing is when they're calling you is
when you need to be really careful. Even even if
your caller ID says that it is your bank, Like
if you recognize the number, that doesn't mean it's your bank.
Call spoofing is very easy to do, and you can
make your call, like if I got your mom's phone number,
I could spoof her number and call you right now
and make your phone would say your mom's calling you.
So the best thing to fight against that is hang

(01:03:59):
up and call them back, because when they're call spoofing,
they can only outbound the call, they can't receive it.
So you call the number on the back of your
credit card and you ask them do I have a
problem or was that fake?

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
And they will obviously let you know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
This is this AI voice stuff. We've only got a minute,
so I want to hear about the show real quick.
But is the AI voice stuff something to be worried
about too?

Speaker 6 (01:04:19):
Yep?

Speaker 10 (01:04:19):
People calling impersonating your I mean it used to be
where someone would call your grandma and say, you know, hey,
we have your son here. He's been arrested. They tried
this on my Gramdma that he's been arrested for DUI
he needs money. Of course that wasn't true. But now
it's to the point where they can listen to your voice,
especially someone like me who's online. You can find hours
and hours of my voice. They can clone it, they
can create it to say literally anything that they want to,

(01:04:40):
and you'll never know.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
You'll never know who the hell you're talking to.

Speaker 10 (01:04:42):
That's why it's important between families to have like a
pass code that only your family knows. You know, if
you're ever unsure who's calling or who's talking, if there's
an emergency, make sure you guys verify that between yourselves.

Speaker 3 (01:04:51):
All Right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
The show is called Scammed Getting Even As on Fox Nation.
How do folks watch this?

Speaker 10 (01:04:56):
Foxnation dot Com? At premiere is October twenty second. We
are so so freaking excited to be able to bring
scam bating and scam awareness to a mainstream level. It's
a six part, six episode season one, one episode every
Wednesday starting on the twenty second, and it's every episode
is very different, very exciting.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Exilit right, they're playing us off, Ashton Bingham and Art Koolik.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Thanks so much for joining me today. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
Thank you so much, you guys, guys.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
All Right, more rich on Tech coming up right after this.
out with you Talking Technology, triple A, rich one oh one.

Speaker 9 (01:05:31):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Chat gibt got a big new feature this week. They've
got apps now built into chat gebt, so Booking, dot Com, Canva, Corsera, Expedia, Figma, Spotify, Zilo.
These are all things that you can now access inside
of chatchept, so it's kind of like a mini app
store that you can talk to in natural language. That

(01:05:54):
I think is the biggest takeaway from this is that
Spotify make me a workout playlist, which you can already
do on Spotify anyway, but I think the Zillo example
is the best one. So Zillo show me homes in
a city under a certain price with this many bedrooms
and walking distance to whatever a school, you know, a university.

(01:06:17):
So again it's natural language. And I think this is
what we have been waiting for when it comes to
interacting with our computers. And I think this is part
of the reason why chat gbt has become so popular
and so incredibly useful for so many people very quickly.
It's because you don't need to read an instruction manual
to learn how to use it. You just talk to

(01:06:38):
it and you can do a lot of stuff just
by talking. You could do a lot of stuff just
by pasting in some data and it figures out what
you're trying to do. Peloton, Target, Uber, and open Table
are also coming later this year.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
So what does this mean.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
This means that you can now use all of these
apps without actually opening the app. So we're getting to
a point where you're gonna be able to do say
to chat GBT, hey can you reserve me a table
at Peter Steakhouse Thursday night at eight pm? And it
will go out and it will do that for you.
Can you find me this product at Target and order

(01:07:14):
it for me? And because your account is linked up,
it'll be able to do all that stuff. I mean,
this is really really powerful. I just I find this
to be really really incredible. So anyway, check it out
Chat GBT. If you're using it, all you have to
do to activate this. It's not on my app just yet,
so if you have the desktop app, it's not I
don't see it there just yet. But if you go

(01:07:35):
to chat chat GBT dot com and you just do
the at symbol, you'll see Booking dot Com comes up,
Canva comes up, Corsera, Expedia, Figma, Spotify, Zilo, and a
couple other things, so you can just interact with those
things by talking. I think this is really the next level,
and it really puts chat GBT in a very powerful

(01:07:57):
position of Imagine when we get to the point where
we're using these little devices to interact with AI, like
a little tiny like you know, iPod shuffle type looking device,
you'll be able to do all this stuff. Hey, can
you check my target to see if that video game
I want is in stock? It'll go, it'll look at it,
it'll pull it, it'll figure it out, and it will
come back to you with the answer, Hey, can you
order this for me from door Dash? It'll just do it.

(01:08:19):
I mean, really really wild stuff. So check it out
if you haven't. The Canva one I'm looking forward to
trying out. The ones that are interesting to me is
zillow booking dot Com because you can ask for hotels. Hey,
find me a lodge style hotel in the middle of
Wyoming that's got a nine rating for customer reviews and

(01:08:40):
a four star rating for stars. I mean, that's stuff
that you can do already, but to be able to
just ask in natural language is pretty cool. Now we'll
see if it actually works as well as I want
it to. But I think that this is great also
for accessibility, you know, like that anyone can use this
if they can speak or they can type that you know,
you get lots of options for this stuff. Now, pretty

(01:09:00):
pretty cool? All right, let's see here. Tony is an
Orange County just has a quick comment. It sounds about
the scam stuff. Tony, what's up?

Speaker 4 (01:09:11):
Hey, good only rich? How are you?

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
I'm doing well? What you got? Almost got scammed?

Speaker 4 (01:09:15):
I did, And it has to do with what the
gentlemen said. Although all the advice was great, when you're
looking up. In my case, it was a brokerage account.
I couldn't find a call in phone number. Yes, kind
of a complex question, m hm. So I looked up
the website and I found one that appeared to be

(01:09:36):
who I was looking for. I called the number and
at first the accent kind of gave me a bit
of a hesitation, But then the questions came, you know,
what's the uh, what's your name? What's the email associated
to this account? And it started going down and they

(01:09:57):
put me on hold, and I'm thinking, wait a minute,
after what I've already given them, they shouldn't really know
who I am, just from my phone number, because my
phone numbers associated with my account and so I disconnected.
So I just want everybody to be careful, even if
you do look up a secondary source to reach somebody,

(01:10:19):
to really make sure. Because what happened after I hung up,
they called me back and were texting me, called me back, and.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
That was That's that's the giveaway.

Speaker 4 (01:10:30):
It was not who I was, because as soon as
they heard the amount of money I was trying to
figure out how to move. He probably would have got
promoted that day.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
Yeah, it was. He perked up.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
He's like, hold on, we got a good I always
think of it as like they're in like a boiler
room kind of situation where there's a bunch of people
in like a room with all these computers, like we
got we got a good one. We got a good one.
But Tony, I'm glad you didn't fall for that. But
your spidey sense was was right. This happens a lot
when people look up they will dial or they'll go

(01:11:02):
on Google and they will just type in the name
of a company like Delta phone number, right Spectrum phone number,
or AT and T phone number, and these people actually
buy sponsored results up at the top that display a
phone number, and I'm looking right now to see if
there's any you know, they maybe Google has gotten a
little hip to this. But you really have to be

(01:11:22):
careful because so many people got dinged on this over
the past couple of years because their Spidey sense did
not go up. And if you think about it, Tony,
like you said, immediately, they're asking you for information to
confirm your account, stuff that they should have. But again,
our accounts are real accounts. Do this like when you
call your bank Sometimes I'm like, you have this information?
Why are you asking me for all this stuff? But

(01:11:44):
it's like because they're trying to make sure you know
you are who you say you are. But now I'm
giving you my account number, I'm giving you my data birth,
I'm giving you the last four of my social and
all that information. If you just start spouting that out
to some scam artists, they're going to run with that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
So good advice, do not Google.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
You can Google for phone numbers, but do not take
the number off the Google search results. Go into the
actual website of the company you're trying it. So for Spectrum, Okay,
so I typed in Spectrum. Go to Spectrum's website and
then make sure you're at the official website.

Speaker 9 (01:12:17):
Go down.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Usually it's at the bottom of the page and it'll
say customer support call that number eight eight eight rich
one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Coming up, we'll talk Google Pixel
Fold reviews.

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
Coming up right here in rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
out with you talking technology at Triple eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. The website for the show richon Tech
dot TV can go there, get the show notes, uh
and follow me on social media. I am on Instagram

(01:12:54):
at rich on Tech. You can find me there. You
will find me posting, not two you often I do post,
but only when it's something that's uh, you know, interesting
or useful or helpful. So yeah, it's all there. Let's
see who has been holding the longest. Let's go to

(01:13:14):
Let's go to Don in provo.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
Let's see what line is that that's.

Speaker 12 (01:13:21):
Don You're on with rich that you're amazing, You're handsome.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
Well, thank you, I mean I'm on the radio. You
can tell.

Speaker 12 (01:13:31):
I called you a long time ago about Zelta dot com,
d E L d t A dot com and you,
and then the last couple weeks ago you said you
like original ideas, right.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
I love original ideas.

Speaker 12 (01:13:43):
That sparked me. I have like four thousand pages of text,
you know, okay, prolific, prolific in problem and yeah, every
day there's a new something, new original idea pretty much
every single day, maybe even more.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
What's what can I help you with?

Speaker 12 (01:14:04):
Oh, I'm just gonna ask a question. I'm trying to
find the best free AI for my one and a
half hours of video musical that I was in Once
Fun of Mattress, to clean up the scenery, to set
the costumes, the music, the scene etcenta from the musical
Once Fund of Mattress nineteen eighty five. With an old
has an old video camera videotape file is the file

(01:14:26):
is vo b.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
Oh vo b. That's a. That's a. That's a tricky one.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
Well, so you're trying, okay, you want to you want
to run this through and get this cleaned up. So
here's the deal. I am sure there are ways of
doing this. At this point, I don't think there is
a popular way to do it, nor do. I think
there's a consumer version of this. So we are just
at the point right now where where AI is doing

(01:14:52):
a lot of stuff with photos. Obviously Google's Nano Banana
and Gemini is like probably the best at that. So
I think we're getting there. But I think when it
comes to just taking this VOB file, which by the way,
are very tricky. Those are typically from DVDs, so you'd
have to convert that into a file that's you know,
a regular you know, and like an MP four or something.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
You could do that with.

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
What's that program, handbreak, So you can take handbreak. That's
an easy conversion program, open source, put it in there,
get it into a better format. But I don't think
at this point, as far as I know, there's not
a website I can just recommend and say, oh yeah,
take this video and throw it in there and it
will clean up everything on that video. Like, there's just
not a place that I know that will do that.

(01:15:38):
Photos no problem. We can restore photos very easily on Gemini.
If you take an old picture and you pop it
into Gemini and say restore this photo, it will do it.
It's just incredible the results. So I think we're getting
there don with the other stuff, but I don't think
we're there just yet. Yes, it is someone listening and

(01:15:59):
they're saying, Rich, there's a will do this, like there
probably is. I don't think there's a consumer version right
now that's that's very good at doing an entire video
and ai ing it. I mean, if you look at
Wizard of Oz, they did that at the sphere. It
cost him one hundred million bucks to do that. So
it's not like you can just take that video and
just throw it into some program some website that you're

(01:16:19):
gonna find and it's gonna do it for free and
clean up every frame.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
It's just not possible right now.

Speaker 1 (01:16:23):
So I would I would think in the next I
would say a couple of years, and I'd say a
couple of years probably gonna be quicker than that. But
I think we're going to see some of these apps
that can probably do that. Thanks for the call, don
appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Let's go to Richard in Costa Mesa.

Speaker 8 (01:16:40):
You're on with rich Back in the day, I upgraded
my Windows seven laptop to Windows ten. Have been putting
all the updates all the way up till today. My
question is is there an advantage to downloading and installing
a current Windows ten file to my laptop. Verse over

(01:17:06):
you know what I have right now, which is an
old Window ten file.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
Yeah, I'll tell you what's happening.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
So basically, if you use the one that's already on
your computer, it's probably like are you talking, it's like
stored on your computer like a partition or something. Yeah,
Like it's just already there versus downloading it. So basically,
the version that's on your computer is as old as
that computer. So it's it's you're talking, it's, uh, you
know how old is this computer?

Speaker 8 (01:17:31):
But I heard that it's eight years ago that Windows
ten was available to upgrade from Windows seven.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
Okay, so it's you're talking eight years old.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
The bottom line is that, yes, you can install it
from there, you're going to be spending the next you know,
a couple hours doing the updates on that program. So
either way, we'll get you to the same ending place,
which is you know, you'll have you'll finally be updated
after a while.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
If you no advantage, I don't think there's an advantage.

Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
I think it's easier because you don't have to you
don't have to worry about downloading it, and how are
you downloading it and installing it?

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
Like you know how to do that?

Speaker 8 (01:18:05):
Well, yeah, you go to the Microsoft website, download the
i ISO file to your laptop, and then install it
from there.

Speaker 5 (01:18:12):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
Usually it's not that easy.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
Usually you need to put that uh that file onto
like a flash drive and then make it bootable.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
There's a player. Yeah, yeah, Okay, it sounds like you
know what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:18:22):
So I would just do that personally, because that way
you're getting a fresh, nice, clean install and you're getting
something that is uh, you know, up to date, so
you're gonna have you still have to probably do some
updates on it, but I think it's going to be
less than you'd have to do if you were to
install this from your uh whatever's residing on your laptop.
But Richard, it sounds like you know your way around.
If you if you're talking rufus and i ISO files,

(01:18:43):
you know what you're doing. I would say do it
that way, and I think that's a much cleaner method
than using the old program, which is fine, but it's
it's going to be you know, dated, and you have
to update it immediately. It's gonna take a while to
do that. So thanks for the call. Appreciate it. Eighty
to eight Rich one on one. The reviews are in
for Google's Pixel ten Pro fold. I did not test

(01:19:04):
this phone. I saw, I went hands on with it,
but I did not test it. So I will rely
on the folks that did from all these other websites
that I rounded up some of their reviews. But you know,
I'll be honest, I didn't really want to review it
because it's not something that people are really demanding. They're
just not like a lot of people are not asking
me about foldables. This thing is eighteen hundred dollars. And

(01:19:26):
also I think that the you know, and I'll tell
you what the end result is of all this, but
let me just go through the reviews here. So here's
the improvements. You've got a new hinge, you've got new
dust and water resistance. You've got G two built in
on it, which is nice, the magnetic charging. It's got
a bigger battery, so there are some improvements. The reviewers

(01:19:47):
say that it is the most durable foldable yet from Google,
so that's nice. The Verge buried it in sand and
it did survive. Google did not make this thing any slimmer,
it's still heavy, bulky, And when you compare it to
something like Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold seven, which is just
a marvel of engineering, it's like, hold on, there's two,

(01:20:07):
Like what's at Google? You just took two phones and
you literally slapped them together, whereas Samsung went back to
the drawing board and engineered that Fold seven to be
such an amazing device and super thin you won't even
believe it. The cameras are not necessarily pro level.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
They're good.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):
It's a pixel camera, so it's going to be good.
But the reviewers say it's the same sensors as the
base Pixel ten, not the higher end Pixel ten Pro series.
Gizmoto even called them regressed compared to last year. Battery
life and build quality was good, but some of the
AI features I disagree with that. Some of the AI

(01:20:44):
folks as folks said that the AI features like magic
q are gimmicky.

Speaker 2 (01:20:47):
I don't think that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
Magic Q is this thing where let's say someone texts
you and says, he, what's that restaurant reading out on
Friday night? Google using AI will look through all of
your emails and your texts and your whatever stored on
your phone and it will figure out that information and
present it to you, and then in one click, you
can just send it to your friend. So I think
that's great. I've liked that on the Pixel ten series.

(01:21:10):
But the ad me feature, which is the ability to
take a picture and then add yourself to that picture,
is very gimmicky.

Speaker 2 (01:21:17):
And it's actually very tough to use.

Speaker 1 (01:21:20):
I don't even understand why that's still on these phones,
because it's just I don't think anyone's using that.

Speaker 2 (01:21:25):
Zd net says.

Speaker 1 (01:21:26):
The Pixel is better for dusty environments, but Samsung wins
on basically every other thing performance than this multitasking.

Speaker 2 (01:21:34):
So the verdict across the board.

Speaker 1 (01:21:35):
It's great for durability and battery life, but the z
Fold seven is still the foldable to beat. And I
could have told you that without reviewing this phone, because
I played with it a bit at the Google event,
and while it's nice, it's not really an upgrade in
a big way from the last Fold from Google. And
this is the third generation. They didn't really change too much.

(01:21:56):
I mean, yes, they made the dust resistance, they've added
the Chi charging, the wireless charging, and the battery, but
in the hinge is better, but it's really the z
fold seven. They just improved every aspect of that device.
But my biggest downside is that it does not have
the magnetic ring on the back, which is really annoying
in this day and age because you're paying so much
for that phone. To not get that feature as kind

(01:22:19):
of a bummer. So anyway, Pixel foll ten, you know,
probably want to skip. I think unless you love the
pixel lineup and you love a foldable, it's probably not
the best foldable out there. But I do love the
Pixel ten. I will tell you that I do love
that phone. I think there's still some issues with it.
There's still it's not as the performance is not as
great as the iPhone, and the software is incredible. It's

(01:22:41):
really a smartphone, but it's still just like not as polished.
Like it's crazy to me that like this phone is
still just not as polished as the iPhone, even though
I think the software on the Pixel is better. But
you can do more on the on the iPhone because
so many more developers have tapped into what Apple is built.
And that's really to me, the defining the differentiating factor

(01:23:01):
between these two devices is that on the Google Phone,
it does a lot of things. It's super smart, it's
got all the googlely stuff, but that's sort of where
it ends, Whereas on the iPhone it's like, okay, so
Apple doesn't have everything you need necessarily built in, but
there's anything you can think of that you want to do,
a developer has thought of it and has worked it
into Apple's ecosystem.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
So still both great phones.

Speaker 1 (01:23:24):
This year, no matter what you go with, whether it's
the standard Pixel ten series or the iPhone seventeen series,
really really the best phones there. Eighty eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. Coming up this hour, we are going
to talk.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
E sports and let's see what else do I have?

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
Oh, I promise we'll talk about the Tesla cheaper model.
Tesla's coming up as well. This is rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
out with you, talking technology. Eighty to eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two one
zero one. Let's go to Steven, Orange County.

Speaker 2 (01:24:04):
Steve, you're on.

Speaker 3 (01:24:04):
With Rich.

Speaker 13 (01:24:07):
Oh hright, Rich, thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 2 (01:24:10):
Absolutely, what's up?

Speaker 13 (01:24:12):
I have a two part question here, my I have
a Windows uh laptop and it automatically installed co Pilot
onto it. You don't want that, yeah, And my understanding
is that it's uh stream shots periodically like quite often.

(01:24:41):
Whatever you're yes, that's that's a feature called recall. Recall. Yeah, no,
you don't want so I was running first of all,
why they just put it on there without my knowledge?
And then second law, how I get rid of it? Okay,

(01:25:05):
so with relling on everything, I am yeah, yeah, exactly,
an email and everything, and I like.

Speaker 2 (01:25:15):
Well, so recall.

Speaker 1 (01:25:17):
When it first came out was it was promoted heavily
by by Microsoft, and they thought it was going to
be great because what it does is it takes a
screenshot of your system every couple of seconds to remember
everything that you've done on your computer. Now, doesn't take
a genius to figure out why that may not be

(01:25:37):
the best idea in the world for a lot of reasons, right,
even if you're not necessarily doing anything bad on your computer. Right,
Let's just say you're checking your email. Well, think about
the emails you check, Hey Rich confirming this is your
social Hey Rich, here's your bank account number, Hey Rich,
here's this. Now that's all fine. What if now all
that data stored on my computer, all those screenshots with
all that private information. What happens if a hacker gets

(01:26:00):
access to that repository of all that stuff, you know,
now they can go through it and see everything.

Speaker 2 (01:26:09):
That's just one scenario.

Speaker 1 (01:26:11):
Other scenarios what if someone gets access to your computer
and they search They just go and search through your
recall and find all kinds of stuff that you were
looking at and find the you know, either private information,
embarrassing information, whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
So that's number two.

Speaker 1 (01:26:24):
So as soon as Microsoft launched this, there was no fanfare.
It was like it was like a screech of a record.
It was like, this is not a good thing, and
so they went back to the drawing board. They ended
up delaying the installation of Recall. They went back to
the drawing board, figured out some more privacy situations, figured

(01:26:44):
out some more privacy protections, and now it's back, and
now it is I just checked it is. You're right
it is pre installed because I just found it on
my machine and I'm assuming when you first set it up,
they ask you if you want it or not. But
you can turn this feature off. So if you go
into your settings on Windows Privacy and Security it's under

(01:27:09):
recall and snapshots, and the main feature you want to
look for is take snapshots that has turned on. I
honestly did not even realize this was turned on on
my computer. So I'm actually now I'm not going to
turn it off because I want to go through some
of these screenshots. I just want to see what's in here.
That's pretty wild. So okay, I've got one hundred and
fifty gigs dedicated to my screen shots and ninety days

(01:27:31):
worth of stuff that is this is wild to me.
So you can go through and you can turn off
safe snapshots, and you can delete snapshots. You can delete
all the snapshots, so you can delete all, or you
can delete from They give you some nice options past hour,
past twenty four hours, past seven days, past thirty days,

(01:27:51):
so if you just need to delete some. And then
they've got filter sensitive information snapshots were potentially sensitive infos,
detected words, credit cards and more will not be saved.
You can filter apps, you can filter websites, and so
they have thought about a lot of these things, but
the reality is for the average person, I you know,

(01:28:12):
the idea is that you were surfing a website, you
were looking at genes, or whatever, and you can't remember
what that website was, and so you type in genes,
or you type in a color, or you type in
whatever description and it would be able to find that
it's cool in theory, and I actually think it's kind
of fun, but I get it. There's a lot of
privacy aspects of this. So that's how you turn it
off again. Go into your settings Privacy and Security and

(01:28:34):
it's under save snapshots. You can turn that off. Why
did they install it on your computer? You know, a
tech company just like to do that. There is another
app if you are this is for my advanced listeners.
If you are advanced advanced advanced okay, there's an app
called win Arrow Tweaker WI n A E r O.

(01:28:56):
And this is an app that if you really want
to decide how your computer works, you can do this
with this app. So it is let's see, is it freeware?
Looks like it's yeah, free app. So you can just
tweak all the hidden secret settings that Microsoft doesn't necessarily
let you adjust easily. So if you want to disable things,

(01:29:17):
you want to disable copilot completely, you want to you know,
whatever you want to do, this will let you do it.
It really has like, I mean, every feature you can imagine.
It's kind of like you're in control of your system again.
So but again you have to be an advanced user
for this. But I mean you could do so many things.

Speaker 2 (01:29:36):
Look at this.

Speaker 1 (01:29:37):
I mean it's just if you look at the list
of things that this lets you do, it's just a
laundry list. I'll link this up on my website rich
on Tech dot tv. Again the name of the app
is win Arrow Tweaker, and also put the instructions on
how to disable recall if you so choose. A great question, Steve.
Coming up next, we're going to talk e sports right
here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(01:30:03):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. So
many things to talk about. I never get to everything
I want to talk about in the show, ever, it
never happens. I literally have a laundry list of things
I want to get to and I just can't get
to the mall. So maybe I need to plan less
for the show, Like I just maybe I need to
come in unprepared one day. But I don't think the

(01:30:24):
show would be as good if I did that. But
that's all debatable. So let's bring on Steve Arnssett. He
is the co CEO of Team Liquid, this and esports organization,
and we met at this UCLA. They opened up this
gaming lounge at UCLA. That's where we met, and I
just was fascinated by this world of like e sports

(01:30:45):
and e athletes and they call them e athletes.

Speaker 2 (01:30:48):
Maybe Steve, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:30:53):
It's great to be here, Rich.

Speaker 2 (01:30:54):
So what is Team Liquid? Explain what that's all about.

Speaker 14 (01:30:58):
So, Team Liquid we're an eesport team, just like any
other kind of sports team, think forty nine Ers or
Golden State Warriors, but instead of throwing around a football
or dribbling a basketball, we're playing video games. So we
have a bunch of gamers that compete underneath the team
Team Liquid, and they play in games like League of Legends, Valorant, StarCraft,

(01:31:21):
and then tons of people watch them compete and play
against other gamers.

Speaker 3 (01:31:25):
And that's esports. Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:31:27):
Interesting, And how many like your Team Liquid? How many
other organizations are there out there in the world? And
are they part of like a league like are you
part of like one conference like versus another?

Speaker 14 (01:31:39):
Yeah, so there's probably about three hundred esports teams globally
around the world, and each team competes in a number
of different titles or games. So instead of us just
playing football or just playing soccer, we're actually competing in
a lot of different types of games, and we're each
of those games has their own respective league, like the

(01:32:02):
NFL or NBA, and then our business is run by
our commercialization within each of those respective leagues, and that's
why we have one hundred and sixty or so players
that compete underneath Team Liquid all around the world.

Speaker 1 (01:32:18):
Now you compare yourself to sort of like these big
teams out there, you've got athletes. What makes e sports
similar or different from like, you know, the NFL or
the NBA, yep.

Speaker 14 (01:32:30):
I mean, one thing that is similar is that we
are all about the fans.

Speaker 3 (01:32:36):
We have a global fan base.

Speaker 14 (01:32:39):
This is something that is a little bit different than
other traditional sports is that there are a lot of
gamers out there and they're all around the world, and
so that is pretty much the same.

Speaker 3 (01:32:48):
Some things that are different is.

Speaker 14 (01:32:50):
That we are more digitally native, which means that our
demographics skew younger. Someone once told me, for every baseball
fan that die is basically two esports fans are born.
So there's a lot of gamers and there's only more
gamers going into the future. As you know, computers and
tablets and stuff are more ubiquitous with day to day

(01:33:14):
kind of activities.

Speaker 1 (01:33:16):
Yeah, and I want to talk about that in a moment,
But first, I mean this whole esports industry, Like I remember,
you know, I would get pitched on it pretty hard
to like cover these stories and these tournaments and all
this stuff, and it was like it was big, and
I still think it's big, but it's definitely gone through
some changes. So was there a bubble that burst or
something like? What happened?

Speaker 3 (01:33:36):
Like?

Speaker 6 (01:33:36):
What?

Speaker 1 (01:33:36):
Why do people some people have the perception that esports
isn't as big as it might have been five years
ago or something.

Speaker 3 (01:33:42):
Yep.

Speaker 14 (01:33:44):
So esports, just to put it in context, is the
third most watched sport in the world after cricket and soccer,
so a lot of people watch it.

Speaker 3 (01:33:55):
So what happened in two Yeah, it's just wild, it's
mind blowing.

Speaker 14 (01:33:58):
But in two thousand and four team there was pretty
much like this gold rush into esports, and that was
when a lot of professional sports team owners and investors
all came in and put money into teams and agencies
and players and developers and the whole ecosystem, just like
what would happen in like the crypto bubble or what

(01:34:19):
may happen in the AI bubble, Right, a lot of
capital gets deployed, and those expectations were set pretty high,
and if you're familiar with the Gartner hype cycle, inflated
expectations not able to deliver in the timeframe that was
needed by a lot of these investors, and the bubble burst,
And so that happened about two years ago, and I

(01:34:40):
think that caused a little bit of this kind of.

Speaker 3 (01:34:44):
What's happening in esports? Is it real?

Speaker 14 (01:34:47):
But the thing is is that there's still more people
watching esports events every year prior.

Speaker 3 (01:34:53):
So we just beat last year's records.

Speaker 14 (01:34:55):
And that just shows that the demographics are still on
our side. That you know, they're just the aging of
the population, more people on the internet, more people gaming.
And so what has happened over the last two years
is it just a lot of consolidation. There's been a
number of teams that have went bankrupt or ceased to exist,
you know, either their investors didn't have the right horizon

(01:35:17):
on the investment or poor management. But then there's the
haves and the have nots, And so a lot of
the organizations that are the top of the field, are
in pole position, have used this time to consolidate and
buy other esports.

Speaker 3 (01:35:30):
Teams and basically become bigger.

Speaker 14 (01:35:32):
And so you saw that three hundred number that I'm
talking I spoke about that's been consolidated down to probably
one hundred.

Speaker 3 (01:35:39):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (01:35:40):
Okay, So we're talking about all these esports and like,
it's great if these these athletes are you know, they're
they're good at these games. What games are they playing?
By the like, what's the most popular esports games?

Speaker 14 (01:35:50):
Yeah, the two most played esports games. Number one, League
of Legends. It's made by Riot Games. They actually have
their headquarters in Santa Monica in Los Angeles, California. And
the second, which surprises a lot of people, is Mobile
Legends Bang Bang, which is a mobile game that's predominantly
played out of the Philippines and Indonesia.

Speaker 3 (01:36:11):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:36:12):
Okay, So now parents listening, parents sitting there going hold on,
you know, you're talking about all these things that these
kids can do, and I assume these you know, these
esports personalities make a decent living doing this as well,
because at the top of their game. But like, parents
are already struggling with screen time, right, They're sitting there,
they're trying to get their kids off Roadblocks or off

(01:36:32):
Fortnite or off Minecraft, and so it's like they're like,
hold on, if every parent got their kid off these screens,
no would ever make it to this level. So what
how do you kind of ride that line? Like, how
do you know when like your kid is healthy doing
stuff on you know, esports or not.

Speaker 3 (01:36:49):
Yeah, well, here's my take.

Speaker 14 (01:36:50):
You know, I think gaming is one of the best
vessels for education and retaining information. Like, for example, you know,
my geography is actually really good, and I in part
say because I played a lot of where in the
world is Carmen.

Speaker 3 (01:37:08):
San Diego by US history?

Speaker 2 (01:37:10):
You know that's putting it way back Steve, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:37:13):
Put the way back right. And the same thing with
like Orgo Trail.

Speaker 14 (01:37:16):
There's a lot of parents that probably played that in
their computer labs at school, right, And that's how you
learn a lot about US history. There's something about gaming
that just makes it where you can retain the information
and learn the information really well. Here's the other side
is that it's highly addictive. And there's a lot of
different types of games out there, and most of them
are not good and they aren't providing the kind of

(01:37:39):
development and skill that is possible. So, for example, in
a lot of these games that are like strategy games,
you're thinking about critical placement. In team based games, you're
communicating with other gamers, usually with a headphone, so you're
learning communication, resolving, conflict, leadership ability, and team based games.
And in a lot of these games, you're also piecing

(01:38:02):
things together and they're very complex. And so it's just
about finding the right kinds of games, which is really hard,
and it's making sure that you do it in moderation.
And I think those two kind of key factors come
into play.

Speaker 3 (01:38:17):
And the last thing that.

Speaker 14 (01:38:18):
I'd say is that like, if you've got a kid,
Let's say your kid was really interested in you know,
football or baseball, you probably go in the backyard, grab
a glove, throw the ball around. Right, Why aren't you
doing that with your kid If they're playing Fortnite, like
grab a controller, sit down with them and be interested
and curious like how do I play this?

Speaker 3 (01:38:39):
And I know you're thinking, oh my god, I won't
know what I'm doing and I'm gonna mess it up.
That's okay.

Speaker 14 (01:38:43):
That's actually better because your kid is going to teach
you this game and there's a whole learning and bonding
process that happens with that.

Speaker 3 (01:38:49):
So I always encourage parents to just sit down and play.

Speaker 1 (01:38:54):
What is it realistic for your kid to become an esports?

Speaker 2 (01:38:58):
Do you call them? You said athletes?

Speaker 9 (01:38:59):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:39:00):
Call?

Speaker 2 (01:39:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:39:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:39:01):
So do you Is it realistic for a kid to
become that? Is that becoming like a pro athlete, you
know in the NBA or whatever, like is it that
or is it more realistic? And also there are other
kind of like opportunities in this world. If your kid
is into video games, right.

Speaker 14 (01:39:15):
I mean, I think the probability of an average kid
making it to a pro team is miniscule.

Speaker 3 (01:39:23):
It's very very small. There's just a lot of gamers
out there and think it's it's the same thing in
like football or baseball. Right, You do these.

Speaker 14 (01:39:31):
Things because you're learning what it's like to be in
a team sport, you are being coached, you are taking
those skills, but you don't really have the goal of
going pro. Now, maybe if your kid is playing a
particular game and reaches like the top twenty of the
respective in game leader board of that respective game.

Speaker 3 (01:39:51):
Your kid may actually.

Speaker 14 (01:39:53):
Be a pro gamer, but for most they're not going
to make it that far, which means that you just
use this like any other kind of tramural sport that
you can learn life skills and collaborating with other players.
And so what we're finding more and more, just like
you mentioned at the UCLA campus, is at universities, colleges,

(01:40:15):
high schools, even elementary schools are now investing into like
building out these labs, these gaming centers where kids can
learn play the right games, develop those skills. And I
mean I compare that to when I was a kid,
Like we didn't have access to those things. So I
think it's just so cool.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
Yeah, it's really, I mean it's it's a different world
for sure. I Mean, I you know, I played video games.
I think a lot of people, you know my age
have played video games. But this this is like next
level stuff. Like when I've seen some of these pro gamers,
especially like the way that they're doing things, I'm just like,
how how are you doing that so fast? So what's
next for you guys? What's next for Team liquod We
got about a minute left.

Speaker 14 (01:40:54):
Yeah, you know, Team Liquid. We are the largest esports
team in the world. Old We've won more prize money
than another team. We have the most championships of any team.
We feel the most teams and players. I want Team
Liquid to be a household name around the world and
it's our ball to drop or our misclick to happen.

(01:41:15):
So I want to continue expanding our brand into important
regions of the world where we don't have a base
yet and continue to just field the best players and
teams across the globe.

Speaker 3 (01:41:32):
That's the goal for TL.

Speaker 1 (01:41:33):
All right, Team Liquid, It's Team liquid dot com. Steve Arensett,
thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 3 (01:41:40):
Thanks for having me rich, I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:41):
All right, Coming up, we are going to open up
the feedbag. It is overflowing this week. We're gonna hear
what you had to say in my email this week.
Coming up right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich On Tech. A couple of stories to get
through before we get to the feedbag. First off, Apple

(01:42:02):
Vision Pro users are getting something special this basketball season,
Lakers games in Apple Immersive. I guess Apple's working with
Spectrum to stream these live games to Spectrum Sportsnet customers,
but so cool. Maybe I'm assuming you can get them
otherwise even if you're not a Spectrum customer. But anyway,

(01:42:25):
the cool thing is this is something that Apple promoted
back in the day when they came out the Vision Pro.
They showed us like a little clip reel and it
was like, you're gonna be sitting courtside at your favorite games,
and now that's going to be a reality.

Speaker 2 (01:42:37):
It's really cool.

Speaker 1 (01:42:38):
The problem is nobody has one of these Apple Vision
pros to be able to use this to try it out.
I mean, I'll be able to try it out, but
I mean it never became like a big time thing.
So maybe this is the killer application. I mean, if
you can sit at home and watch a game like courtside,
that's pretty cool, so watch for that. This season, Tesla

(01:42:59):
launched Cheaper Model Y and cheap Cheaper Model threes, but
they kind of cut out a lot of stuff. So
the pricing is under forty thousand for both of these,
and they've got pretty solid range, but a lot less
of the features, so like no autopilot, no AMFM radio,
no leather seats. I don't think they had leather seats

(01:43:20):
to begin with, no rear screen, no panoramic roof. It's
just a lot of like they cut, like a lot
of the things that make a Tesla nice. You're not
getting those. But if you just want an electric car,
then these new cheaper models might fit the bill. And
speaking of EV's Chevy Bolt is back. They're bringing back
this EV next year, reviving the Chevy Bolt because I

(01:43:43):
guess customers wanted it.

Speaker 2 (01:43:45):
They canceled it back in twenty twenty three.

Speaker 1 (01:43:47):
Now it's going to be under thirty two hundred and
fifty five miles of charge, and it's got an NACS
charging port, which will be nice because then you can
use Tesla superchargers. It's got Google built in, but no CarPlay.
That's a bummer. I will tell you as I drive
a car. I have my rental car Head CarPlay, my
regular card does not. I could not believe how much

(01:44:08):
I loved CarPlay. I loved having that and Android Auto
they're just so great. And then the CrOx I'm wearing
what a croc? I'm wearing crocs right now. They are
Windows XP themed crocs. You got to go to my
Instagram stories if you want to see the picture. At
rich On Tech, they're celebrating their fiftieth anniversary with these
Windows XP themed crocs. They've got the Bliss Green and

(01:44:30):
Blue Sky, the wallpaper from Windows XP, and they've got
six Microsoft gibbets, Charms, Clippy, the MSN Butterfly, Internet Explorer,
and the Recycle Bin. And you can now buy these.
They were originally just going to be a giveaway that
but so many people wanted them. Now they're selling them
for eighty bucks a pop. So if you want crocs
and you want Microsoft, go ahead. All right, Now for

(01:44:53):
the feedback. Karen from California. My husband and I enjoy
watching your TV segments listening to you on the radio.

Speaker 6 (01:44:58):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:44:58):
Your podcast keeps me company on my commute. Sorry to
hear about your accident. Hope your recovery is doing well.
In a recent episode, you said you preferred Google Docs.
I yelled at my car radio. Microsoft Office even the
free version has features Google doesn't just go to Office
dot com to sign in. This includes immersive reader for
read aloud and translation and dictation that even autopunctuates. All right, Karen,

(01:45:22):
I'll give it another try, but I'm kind of in on
the Google stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:45:24):
But I like it.

Speaker 1 (01:45:25):
It's good to have options. Office dot Com sign in
for the free web version. Sean writes in TVO comment,
I've got two tvOS with lifetime service. I'll have to
pry them for my cold dead hands. I still use
one every day to record over the AIRTV Sean, I
stayed home from work. I could probably tell the story
now because it's been many, many years.

Speaker 2 (01:45:44):
Twenty years. Probably.

Speaker 1 (01:45:45):
I stayed home from work to wait for my first
TVO to be delivered.

Speaker 2 (01:45:49):
I set it up.

Speaker 1 (01:45:50):
It took forever because it was over phone lines back then,
and I'll never forget invited all my friends over for
my work, had a little party, and then the middle
of Survivor, I just paused the TV, paused live television.
Everyone went nut's like wait what? And I thought it
was the coolest thing ever. I was a fan of
TVO for so many years. Kim writes in from Tennessee

(01:46:11):
she recently ran into a messaging mystery with her Samsung
S twenty five vulture. Using Google Messages, one of her
friends wasn't getting photos. She switched to MMS SMS and
then couldn't get RCS back for that contact. Well, it
turns out the issue was not her phone. After some
detective work, she discovered her friends was using Samsung messages,
which does not support RCS.

Speaker 2 (01:46:30):
Ah good to figure that out.

Speaker 1 (01:46:33):
So, yeah, if your friend's not getting your RCS, you're
doing that stuff. Check to see if they're using Google messages.
Let's see, John, I should have listened to you, Rich.
I bought an iPad eleven for three nineteen. Just days
later it dropped a two seventy nine. I called Amazon.
They said the only way to get the lower price
was to return it and reorder. After hours sitting up
and charging it, and decided it was not worth the hassle.

(01:46:55):
Still cheaper than the Apple Store. But next time I'll
follow your advice and wait for those Prime Day deals
to kick in. Joey says, you made my week with
the shortcut to auto reply to texts. I've needed this
for two years. Thanks Rich. Credit goes to Steven Roblez.
He was my guest Beer dot FM. I set up
a whole bunch of shortcuts after last week's show because

(01:47:16):
I was so excited about him. Let's see here, we've
got Victor in California. Hey, Rich, your newsletter has golden info.
I was looking through it for Windows ten fixed options,
and behold found the answer. I went to admin settings
check for updates A few minutes laters, a few minutes
later it appeared. Now I've got another year to save
up for a new computer. I'm a happy listener and subscriber,

(01:47:39):
Neil and Anaheim, Rich I love all your tech shows.
You're an amazing guy helping us navigate the challenging world
of home technology. I could say more, but that's really
seriously just grateful you're out there helping the masses, or
maybe the messes of people. Thanks rich Day in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (01:47:53):
Love your work.

Speaker 1 (01:47:54):
Thank you rich And Janine writes in thank you for
all your great info and another terrific show. I just
don't know how you keep up the energy. Well, thank you, Janine,
I really appreciate that. All right, if you can believe it,
that's going to do it. For this episode of the show.
You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.
Go to richontech dot tv. Find me on social media.
I am at rich on Tech. Next week we've got

(01:48:15):
a former FBI operative. He's going to tell you how
to stay safe from the biggest online threats. Thank you
so much for listening. There are so many ways you
can spend your time. I really do appreciate you spending
it right here with me. One reminder before I go,
do not drive distracted. If you're texting driving, all that
stuff it can wait. Please for the safety of everyone,
including you. Thanks everyone who makes this show possible. Bobo

(01:48:37):
on the boards this week, Kim on the phones, me
on the mic.

Speaker 2 (01:48:40):
My name is rich Demiro. I will talk to you
real soon.

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