009 Rich on Tech Radio Show - March 4, 2023 - Rich On Tech

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The free ride is over for some ring users. Should
you click unsubscribe to that email? How to protect your
iPhone from the latest low tech hack plus your tech
questions answered? What is going on on Richdimiro? And This
is Rich on Tech, the show where I talk about
the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's

(00:22):
also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles.
Welcome to the show. For some reason, I am over
excited for today's show. I don't know what it is.
Maybe it's just the excitement of it being a weekend.

(00:43):
Maybe I just have a lot to talk about today.
In fact, I should stop talking right now because there's
so much to talk about in this week's show. I'm
not even sure I can get through it all. The
phone lines are open at triple eight Rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to
one zero one. Give me a call if you have
a question about technology now. It was so fitting that

(01:04):
today I took a lift to the studios because what
I planned on talking about this morning is the gig
economy and the impact that it has had on my world,
your world, and the world at large. I went to
this event called Curbivore yesterday. Is happened in downtown Los

(01:25):
Angeles and it's where the uh, let's see, the commerce
moves to the curb. This was all about how things
are now delivered, you know, the ride share economy, the
door dash economy, all of these things that have sort
of changed our world. That yes, there's always been buses,
there's always been taxis, there's always been pizza delivery. But

(01:47):
the fact that you can get anything you want delivered
to your home or a ride in any city anywhere
in the world is really profoundly changing. It all happens
from our smartphones. So this Curbivore event is really just
kind of eye opening the fact that there's entire industries
built now around this gig economy. And I talked to

(02:09):
this DoorDash driver, and not just DoorDash, but he kind
of has a YouTube channel, Pedro Santiago, and the guy
came in, I think he said from Saint Louis. He
was there for the conference, such a cool guy, and
something he said just really stuck with me. And I said, hey,
you know, what do you like about this? What do
you find fun about the gig economy and you know,

(02:32):
looked him up on Instagram. He's got a wife and
a kid, and he loves doing this stuff. He loves
delivering for DoorDash, loves driving. And he said, you know what,
it's just the freedom and flexibility of it. And that
really stuck with me because many people might think of
the gig economy as something that people do in between things. Right,

(02:53):
you're out of work, or you're looking for a job,
or you're trying to get started in your career. But
so many people see it on the flip side that hey,
hold on, why should I work for a big company
have to answer to a whole bunch of people. I've
got a car, or Hey, I'm going to get a
car and I'm going to start my own thing. And

(03:14):
this is going to be maybe not a means to
an end, but an end's to a mean, like I
will do what I want to do in my life.
And what he said, and I kind of joked to him,
I said, Hey, who did you have to get approval
to come out here to la for he goes, no one.
I didn't have to submit PTO, I didn't have to
ask for the time off. I didn't have to do anything.
He goes, I just decided I wanted to come and

(03:35):
I did so. He said he worked more hours last week.
He worked fifty nine hours in a week. And he
made a bunch of money off of these various apps
that he works for. I think he said, DoorDash was
his big one. And this week he spends the week
in Los Angeles. And I said, that is amazing, just
so incredible that now we have the opportunity to do
this stuff. When I was younger, and I was, you know,

(03:58):
in high school, and you know, working my way up
in the world, you know, you'd have to get a
part time job somewhere. And for me, I worked at
you know, office depot, which was fitting.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
I loved it. It was great.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
I worked at CPK, which was great. I was a
waiter and I delivered newspapers. But the reality was I
was beholden to these people. They they made my schedule.
They said when you worked, when you didn't work, how
much I worked, how much I made. I remember negotiating
a fifty cent raise, and I thought that was a
big deal. But with these gig jobs, you turn on

(04:32):
your phone, you.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Fire it up.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Next thing you know, you're working, So some of the
things I saw at this Curb of War were pretty cool.
Motional this is a company that is doing semi autonomous
food deliveries and so they've got these Motional cars that
are driving around in Santa Monica and they're also partnering
with Lyft in Vegas to do, you know, semi autonomous

(04:55):
taxi rides. But I was asking the guy about the
food deliveries in Santa Monica. I said, do people like it?
He goes, well, it's kind of mixed. Some people get
their car and they're used to someone driving up to
their you know, or walking up to their front door
with their food, and all of a sudden, this car
pulls up to their house and it says, hey, can
you come out here and open up the back door
and pull your food out? And that's how it works

(05:16):
because the car is self driving. Now there is a
driver behind the wheel just for kind of monitoring of things.
So that's what's happening there. Stellar Pizza this is a
pizza company started by a guy from SpaceX, former SpaceX engineer,
and he's doing robotic pizza. So he drives this van
around and parks it somewhere like eventually it might drive

(05:38):
around and make pizzas while it's driving, but really they
park it outside a college campus or an event, and
inside the back of this truck is robots making pizzas,
and so they had it working yesterday, just spits out
of pizza every you know, a couple of minutes. They
cut up the pizza and put it in a box
and sell it right outside the back of the truck.
Or you can order it from your phone and just

(06:01):
have a fresh, hot pizza. And the pizza is always
hot because it's being made on site. And he said,
you know, college kids really like to eat pizza anytime
of the day. And he's selling these things for about
seven eight bucks, which is significantly cheaper than some of
the fresh made pizzas that you'd get other places, especially
delivered Sprinkles. Sprinkles Cupcakes was on hand. Candice Nelson was there.

(06:25):
She is the woman that started Sprinkles, and she was
signing her book and she was talking about and I
asked her, I said, hey, can I interview you for
KTLA and talk about Sprinkles and how technology has had
an impact. She's had Technology has been everything she goes.
My whole business. She goes when the pandemic started and
we started delivering cupcakes, or what about the cupcake ATM

(06:47):
that lets you get a cupcake that's fresh in cities
across the world.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
So all of.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
These things, I mean, she turned the idea of a
cupcake into a multi million dollar business. How many people
have baked cupcakes in their house and never thought, Wow,
this could be a multi million dollar business, unless you're
Betty Crocker. But no, she said, she saw what the
potential was for this baked good that people have just
been making for years, and she said, I think we
could do better, and she made an entire business. Mopeads

(07:14):
were big the automat Now I am a little bit
too young to remember the original automats in New York City,
and I guess around the world, but there's a lot
of a lot of talk about these things. These are
the automated kind of windows that they would put food
in and you would put like a nickel in and
you'd see like a chicken pop pie in the window,
and you would just open up the door and pull

(07:37):
out your food. And I guess these were popular in
like the thirties, a little bit before my time. But
now They've got this company called Automato, and this is
a temperature controlled vending machine on wheels. So the idea
is that you have a whole bunch of stuff in
these automated vending machine windows and you can go out
there and pull up to the beach or pull up
to an event parking lot whatever. People could see this

(08:00):
if they want, open up the window and pull out
what they want. And the other thing is this whole
kind of truck is powered by the sun, so it's
all electric, which is really neat. You don't have gas,
you don't have you know, fumes come out of this truck.
So Automato was partnering yesterday with Liquid Death. I don't
know if you've seen this brand of water, but it

(08:22):
looks really cool and it's just it looks like it'd
be an alcoholic beverage, but it's not. And so they
had a whole bunch of Liquid Death flavors, which by
the way, is very good. Inside these windows. You order
one from your phone, you scan the QR code and
then next thing you know, one of these little windows
opens up and you can purchase the Liquid Death. Now,
yesterday they were given out for free, which is kind
of cool. Another one conjure. This was called robomart in

(08:46):
the past, and this is a van that delivers snacks
and it pulls up. You order the van to your house,
kind of like an ice cream truck on demand, and
the truck pulls up to your house. There's you know,
a driver in the truck, but you know they stay
in the seat, and the window and the door kind
of opens up to a whole little seven to eleven
selection of snacks. You pull out what you want. The

(09:08):
van uses automation to figure out what you pulled out,
and it charges your credit card. So what they did
and they announced is that they partnered with Mars and
so now this is an ice cream truck that's on demand,
so they drive around, you order it. You're gonna be
able to order this in Hollywood. The ice cream truck
comes to your neighborhood, comes to your house, your address
on demand. The door opens up, you pull out the

(09:30):
ice cream that you want, and it drives away and
it charges your card. And the best part is it's
not like a door dash delivery where this ice cream
may be semi melted. It's in the freezer in the
truck you're pulling it out of the freezer yourself, And
I said, what if someone pulls a whole bunch of
stuff out of there? He goes, well, that's how we
It's all automated. We just charged their card for however
much they pull out. So again, the gig economy really

(09:54):
just changing the way that we think about the world
and technology of course, this layer that makes it all possible.
The idea of the smartphone, the idea of GPS, the
idea of all these things coming together because of technology
is just incredible to me. All Right, I've got a
great show for you today. Matt Swider of The Shortcut
is going to check in from Barcelona, Spain. That's where

(10:16):
Mobile World Congress happened this week, so he's going to
tell us all about the cool stuff he saw there.
Tatanya Jordan of Bark is going to join me to
talk about TikTok's new sixty minute time limit for teenagers,
and later, Wirecutter security expert is going to join me
to talk about the latest in the Last Past debacle.
I don't know if you've been following this story, but

(10:37):
if you're using last Past, you might be thinking about
maybe switching to a different password.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Manager.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
We're going to talk to them about what programs our
best to switch to. Plus your calls at triple eight
Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. My name is Rich Dmiro.
You are listening to Rich on Tech. We'll talk tech
and take some of your calls coming up. Welcome, come
back to rich on Tech. Phone lines are open at

(11:03):
triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two, four to one zero one. You
can find me on Instagram at rich on Tech. Let's
go to Joyce. Joyce, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Hi Rich, thank you for taking my call. My question
involves AT and T. Been customer for years and years
have internet radio, I mean TV and phone service through them,
and the past several months I've received letters, one in
January saying you have so many days otherwise your service

(11:37):
could be disconnected. I have a current one now that
says we're retiring the network equipment that provides Internet, U vers,
TV and phone and to your location and need to
move your services to our new fiber optic technology. Now
it says, you know we're going to give you better service,

(11:58):
faster Internet, et cetera. Now, my husband's eighty five, doesn't
use anything but TV in phone. I'm his caregiver and
I watch TV mostly. But what I'm wondering they said
that to do the fiber they might have to drill
through our old stucco house. And I'm just wondering. I've

(12:21):
tried to do some research on this, and it appears
that if you don't go with the new fiber, then
you're on your own if you have any issues.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, everything goes through that same line at this point.
So like what you have, U Verse, which AT and
T kind of stop selling a couple of years ago,
and so they've been servicing people that have it, but
they obviously are not using that anymore. That's no longer
the branding. That's no longer the technology now they've moved
and they, like they said, in your neighborhood, it's all
fiber now.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
So what do you need? You said, you just need TV.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
And fire, TV and phone Internet. I just play with.
I don't know how to do emails and things like that. Okay,
so it's just a fun thing, you might say.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
And what are you worried about with them coming to
change it over?

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Well that they said they're going to string wire over
the driveway and then attach it to the house and
then drill through the stucco into the room where my
husband has the router. I guess, right, right, And so
I guess that's what I'm concerned about.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
You know what.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
I've had this done at my house because I actually
got this installed at my place, and I was all
for it. When the guy said, in fact, as a
tech person, the fact that they're running a fresh, new
line to your house, I am, that's exciting to me
because I know that that's going to be really good service.
It's going to be great internet. It's new, it's fresh,

(13:57):
the line that they're stringing. It may sound scary, and
drilling through the house may sound scary, but the people
that are coming out to do this, they do this
every single day and they've seen it all. They have
the equipment to do it. Yeah, they may leave some
dust where they had the hole in the wall, and that,
you know, I probably that's going to be something you're
probably going to vacuum.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Up when it's done.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
Well, it's not a problem. I was concerned if it's
really necessary to do that, you know, to increase to
higher speed. I appreciate your response. It's given me such
relief because I've been on the fence about this and
I think, are they just trying to cram this into
you know, you have to have a higher rate and
higher do this?

Speaker 4 (14:37):
No?

Speaker 1 (14:38):
No, no, Well okay, So with that said, what is the
rate that you're paying right now?

Speaker 3 (14:42):
Total is two hundred and fifty six dollars and ninety
one cents, okay, and.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
That includes your your TV and your phone.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Line right and your Internet is one hundred and sixty
seven dollars and fifty two cent Internet. There's like a
little promotion for thirty five and then phone is fifty
four to thirty nine.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
But that's yeah, that's a lot. Wow.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
That's a phone that we thought was a landline and
they switched it to digital and they brought in all
the other yep.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
That's pretty standard.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
So I don't know if the price is I hope
it goes down with this new service they AT and
T has actually said they they're no longer playing like
sort of pricing games with their with their accounts. They
may give you a promotion because you're a new technically
you're an old customer, but you're signing up fresh with
this new fiber service, so they may give you a

(15:35):
promotion that lasts a year on that, but after that
they're pretty much standardizing their rates for their service. But
I hope and I would think that it'd be cheaper
than two fifty six a month. I know you can
do better if you switch to a streaming TV service,
and if you are switching your internet, you could just
go with an internet service and something.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Like a YouTube TV. But I don't.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
It doesn't sound like you guys are ready for that
big shift in your life. So what I would do
personally is let AT and T come to my house,
let them install everything, make sure everything's set up properly.
I would just let them get everything the way you
have it now, except with the new fiber, and see
what they say, and also get a quote from them

(16:16):
of how much that's going to cost you. So all
the installation and stuff should be free. But I would
be curious about that monthly price and really push them
on that to do something that's a little bit better
than that two fifty six a month. But personally I'm
doing it. I think that sounds scary with the line
being strong and all this stuff, but believe me. These
people know what they're doing. They're going to do a
great job. And you know, it's going to be a

(16:37):
little bit of a switchover for a week or two
while you get this thing installed and you get used
to it and all that stuff. But the reality is
it's going to be just fine and you're going to
kind of forget that it's all new. So good question, Joyce.
Thanks so much for calling and being the first caller today.
Do appreciate that, enjoy the new service?

Speaker 2 (16:56):
All right?

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Coming up on the show, we are going to talk
about this iPhone story. So Wall Street Journal did this
big story about your pastcode and the iPhone and it
just went wild. People, are you know realizing that if
someone sees you enter the passcode on your iPhone, it
could be a major problem. They could really take over

(17:16):
your entire life. I wasn't even aware of this. I
took for granted the fact that, you know, the past
coode is like this low tech way to break into
your phone, and clearly thieves have their eye on it.
So I'm gonna talk to you about that. Speaking of that,
you know, I should just tell you this right now, Verizon,
I'm just gonna tell you because we're talking about telephone companies.
Verizon's adding a new two dollars fee to some of

(17:39):
its older unlimited plans. C NEET confirmed. It's called a
rate plan adjustment. So if you're on one of these
old Verizon plans, and it's not even that old of
a plan, A Beyond Unlimited, a Go Unlimited, or an
older Verizon Unlimited plan, you're gonna be paying two dollars
extra month. You know why, no reason. Verizon just wants
to charge you that that's stake do this. They say,

(18:02):
it's to account for the added cost of maintaining these
legacy plans. You're going to see an email or a
letter to your house telling you about this new two
dollars fee, which starts in April. Yeah, so start getting
angry right now. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Phone
lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one
eighty eight seven four to two, four to one zero
one more of your calls after this. Welcome back to

(18:22):
Rich on Tech. My name is rich Deburo, hanging out
here with you talking technology, and now we are going
to go to Barcelona, Spain, where Mobile World Congress happened
this week. Matt Swider is founder and editor chief of
The Shortcut, which is a newsletter that covers consumer tech

(18:43):
news and deals. He's known for helping people track down
all kinds of gadgets, including the PS five, and he
used to work for tech Radar as well.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Matt, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 5 (18:54):
Thanks for having me on, Rich it's really great to
you know, tune in and actually be a part of
the show.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
How so was Mobile World Congress. We'll explain what it
is first off.

Speaker 5 (19:05):
Yeah, it does confuse people because it sounds political, but
it is anything. But it is a tech show where
a lot of smartphone manufacturers gather and announce new smartphones
that you'll see over the course of a couple months.
There's phones, there's mobile devices, there's tablets, and there's the
coolest thing I saw, which is rollable phone. So it's

(19:29):
a step above vuldable phones. And yeah, I was really
enamorateed with rollable devices from Lenovo and Motorola specifically, which
I'm sure you saw.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Well, what's interesting about this whole like rollable, foldable stuff
is that we're seeing so many manufacturers experiment with these
different form factors. And I have no doubt that I
would like one of these in the future. But you know,
the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room is Apple,
and everyone's wondering is this is this foldable or rollable
going to happen if Apple never adopts it, or do

(20:04):
you think they will?

Speaker 5 (20:07):
I think they are always linked to the game purposely
because they wait until the technology can be perfected. And
they don't have a foldable phone yet, but you know,
everybody thinks that they're working on something and they're just
waiting for the glass to get stronger, the hinge to
get smaller, and for them to come out with some

(20:29):
new technology that kind of pushes things forward. And what
I like about Mobile Congress it is very much an
Android show and almost you know, it's a lot of
Chinese manufacturers, But you know, I think iPhone users should
care about what's announced because that's where you know Samsung
and Apple will be if other competitors are pushing the

(20:51):
envelope both on price and new technology. So to explain
what the rollable phone does, it actually extends the screen.
It has a little motor in it. It pushes the
screen up so it expands at the top and just
you know, it expands before your eyes. And what's clever is
when it you know retracts, it actually rolls into the back,

(21:12):
it bends into the back. And Lenovo and Motorol are
usualizing that screen for you know, taking selfies on the
back so you can actually see from the rear face
and camera yourself or what was really is for little
kids that has a little smiley animated smiley face on
there to kind of get them to briefly smile for

(21:33):
a picture. And I thought that was really cool. Do
I think it's you know, going to come out and
you know everybody's going to adopt it in the next year.
I think we're a couple of years from this becoming mainstream,
but it's definitely fun to see it in action and
kind of this is going to be the precursor to

(21:54):
what mark phones are going to become.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
And I love how small it is. I'm just looking
at some pictures online. I love how small it is
when it's not rolled out, and it's just it's because
this is a thing like I you know, I've been testing.
I'm sure like you have the S twenty three Ultra
from Samsung, and I love, love, love the big screen size,
but I just can't stand the fact that the thing
does not fit in my pocket, especially with a case

(22:17):
on it. So I think in the future we're going
to have these phones that are a lot smaller, but
once they figure out these screens, they'll effectively be a
larger screen.

Speaker 4 (22:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (22:29):
Absolutely, And you know, everybody wants the best best of
both worlds. They want, you know, a phone that they
can hold, especially walking down the street. When I'm walking
in New York City and you know, something that you
can grasp, it's so one bumps into. But at the
same time, when you sit down the subway, when you're
on an airplane, you want to carry around that tablet
but not have to carry around necessarily a bag with

(22:52):
you every time. You want to slip that into your pocket.
So I think, you know, foldal phones going completely mainstream
is a little ways off, but I think it's inevitable
because we want the best of both worlds.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
All right, let's talk about this, uh, this one plus
concept phone. So one plus I mean they really try,
you know, I mean they've they've really really tried to
make inroads here in the US. It's it's been tough,
but you know, they do have some partners. They've worked
with T Mobile in the past. Tell me about what
they've showed off this concept phone.

Speaker 5 (23:24):
Yeah, so what's interesting about this is, you know, with
all the foldso phones, but there's in traditional candybar style phones,
there's almost a renewed focus on design and the back
of the phone. So what once Us did is they
introduced something called the one plus eleven concept and it
took a lot of what we like about the one

(23:44):
plus eleven and they gave it lights on the back
with these halou halo lighting and it almost looks like
a gaming PC case and they have liquid cooling on
the back, again like a gaming PC. And you know,
so gaming pieces are over the top. They have led
lights everywhere. Their high performance and that's what they're trying

(24:05):
to mimic, and they're usually you know, that's a one
plus of a company known for coming in at a
low price but still having top of the line spec.
So I think that is what their main asset is
and it's this design, whether or not it comes out,
is very over the top, like almost like you see
at car shows where there's a concept car that you

(24:27):
may or may not be able to buy one day,
but it's the company pushing the envelope. Phone companies are
doing the same thing, and that's what Mobile Congress is
all about.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
It's all about capturing that attention as well. We're speaking
with Matt Swider. He is editor of the Shortcut dot com.
Go ahead and subscribe to his newsletter. Matt is actually
living the American dream. You were an editor at a
big publication and you kind of found a cool little
niche of of helping people with their technology and specifically

(24:57):
finding hard to find products like the PS five. You
gained many, many, many followers enough so that you could
go out on your own and start your own newsletter,
and so pretty cool that you've been able to do that.
And Matt is in Barcelona, Spain for Mobile World Congress.
And tell me about the two hundred and forty watch charging.
So I never think my phone charge is fast enough.

(25:19):
Tell me about this, right.

Speaker 5 (25:22):
So if you have ten minutes, you could have a
full battery with the real me phone. It has two
hundred forty watt charging, which I think it's part of
a greater segment at MOELL Congress where it's almost like
part of the emergency tech line. That's how we kind
of phrase it and kind of gave it an award

(25:43):
for that with the Shortcut Awards, Because if you're in
a pinch, and we've all been there where you just
need a couple extra minutes of battery life, where a
text or you're trying to call an uber, you're just
trying to get home. This can get you to a
full battery in under ten minutes, which is astounding, and

(26:05):
just getting a couple seconds of you know, a charge
will go a long way. So I think, once again,
you may or may not buy this real needs phone,
but you know it pushes all their manufacturers. That's right,
all right, Well we need more than twenty five watch
charging and by watch charging.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
So this is what I think it's all about. It's
it's I mean, I hate to keep you know, harping
on the Apple effect of all this stuff, and I
get it. When you're outside the US, like in Spain,
I bet you see more people using Android than they
do iPhone, you know, except for the Americans that are
there for this conference, And so when you travel around
the world you realize that, like, yes, iPhone is very

(26:44):
very popular in the US, and it's popular worldwide, but
Android definitely has more of an impact in a greater
way around the world. And I think that a lot
of these changes and a lot of these advancements just
kind of force Apple's hand. They do things, like you said,
a little bit slower, a little bit later, but they've
got to get their charging faster. I mean, it's like
the iPhone charges the slowest out of any phone I test.

Speaker 5 (27:08):
Yeah, and we really want to see USBC from the
next iPhone, the iPhone fifteen, which you know everybody thinks
is going to come in September, just like the usual
cadence and USB C would be really much a benefit
of carrier on one less type of table when I travel,
And that's gonna be nice. And like you said, it's

(27:30):
all about the company's pushing the Apples and the Samsungs
into adopting technology faster at a better price. There was
a company called Techno that has a phone, a foldable
tablet size foldable phone called the Techno Phantom V and
it's targeting India. But it's the equivalent price for launch

(27:50):
is nine hundred and seventy nine dollars. Now Samsung is
charging you know, eighteen hundred for their foldable phone, and
you know Samsung is over the has the best spec
compared to the film. But you know the fact that
someone is coming out with like a foldable film that
looks like a flagship phone for under one thousand dollars,

(28:12):
that's just going to push the competition to do better.
And I really kind of almost appreciate that, even though
you know, we may not see those phones on the
streets of the US.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
All right, Matt, was it fun this year?

Speaker 1 (28:24):
I've got about a minute here to say goodbye, But
did you have fun this year? And it was it
different to be on your own this year than working
for sort of like an editor in years past.

Speaker 5 (28:33):
Yeah, it was a bunch of fun because it felt like,
you know, the whole conferences we go to are back
like CES was this year in January. We have you know,
Mobile Congress in late February. It was nice to kind
of get back to that routine. And also, you know,
I'm handling all the awards stuff. We gave out a

(28:54):
bunch of awards, so I'm handling the design of the award,
getting it in, shipping it, bring it with me in
my suitcase. So that is a lot of fun to
kind of be have a bunch of hats and be
the death of world trade and hire a bunch of
friends to make that happen.

Speaker 6 (29:09):
So that's kind of cool.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
And I will say in your latest newsletter at the
shortcut dot com, I was very impressed that you were
able to get a picture with all of the award
winners that you gave out, which is no easy feat
because sometimes these companies can be tough to track down.
So congrats and thanks and have fun. I assume you're
going to spend the rest of the weekend in Barcelona.

Speaker 5 (29:29):
Absolutely, I'm in like a little highland off of Spain.
But Rich, I always appreciate the support that you've given
me over the year, so thank you for having me
on and the continued support.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
All Right, Matt Swider, thanks so much for joining me.
Check it out.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
The shortcut dot Com is the newsletter. More of your
phone calls at triple eight rich one O one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one
plus we'll talk about the iPhone how to protect your
passcode from a low tech hack. You're listening to rich
on tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name

(30:04):
is rich Demiro. We are talking technology and taking your
phone calls. You can find me on the web at
richon tech dot TV. Mike is in Denver. Mike, you
are on with Rich. What's up?

Speaker 3 (30:20):
Hi?

Speaker 5 (30:20):
Rich?

Speaker 7 (30:20):
It's so good to talk to you. This is my
first time calling into your show. I used to call
into Leo's show. But I just want to tell you
thank you for the job you've been doing. You bring
a lot to the show. You're very articulate, you're very thoughtful,
you talk about things analytically, and it's just a pleasure
to listen to you. So thank you.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Wow, keep going. I love it well.

Speaker 7 (30:42):
I was actually going to ask you. I know you
started out in TV. Was radio ever something you were
interested in?

Speaker 5 (30:48):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Always? I loved Ray.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
I grew up out outside New York City with the
flagship Z one hundred station, which you know, I know
that that's not necessarily talk radio, but they had Morning Zoo,
and I just loved, you know, these big booming voices
and these people with these amazing names, right like mister
Leonard and Professor Jonathan B.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
Bell.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
I mean, it just really had an impact. Elvis Duran,
I mean, oh my gosh, just so amazing, and so
I you know, I just loved it. And radio reaches
people in a way that. You know, TV is very unique,
but radio is also very very unique, and so I've
had a love for both. It's always been a dream
to do radio, and I took me many, many years

(31:30):
to figure out how to do both. But here I am,
and so I've got the best of both worlds.

Speaker 7 (31:34):
Mike, Yeah, absolutely. Well, before I get to my question,
I got to tell you, you know, I'm twenty six
years old and for some reason, I always connected more
to talk radio growing up. You know, most kids it
was television or video games. Was for some reason with me,
it was always talk radio. So I had the great
pleasure to call in with Leo Laporte several times in

(31:57):
George Nori over the years. And I love red you.
But so my question for you, I've been thinking about
trying to learn a new language. I've been looking at,
you know, like a number of different apps. Dual Lingo
is one of the apps specifically I've been looking at.
And I actually spoke with Kim, your producer call Screener,

(32:17):
and she said it was a really good app. And
I was wondering if you had any recommendations on apps
to help teach new languages.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Great question, what language are you trying to.

Speaker 7 (32:27):
Learn I'm trying to learn Spanish.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Okay, well that's that's an I mean I would say
that's an. I mean it's an easy one because they
all probably offer this, but I'm not I've tried learning
Spanish many, many years and just for some reason, and
I'm convinced some people's brains are just wired differently where
and mine is one of them where I just can't
figure it out. Like I took Spanish for so many

(32:50):
years and I can't say anything in Spanish so sadly.
In fact, dual Lingo is one of the apps that
I tried to use to learn Spanish, and and I'm
not kidding, dual Lingo started getting angry with me the
notifications that this app started sending to me. I was like,
is there a person behind this app? Because they were
just mean. It was like, Okay, we see that you

(33:11):
really don't care about this. We're just gonna stop sending these.
I was like, wow, okay. With that said, if you
are trying to learn Spanish, many many apps can do this.
I really have the most experience with dual Lingo, but
I think there's many apps out there that can also
teach you a language, and I think what it really
comes down to is kind of comparing some of these

(33:31):
apps and seeing which one works best for you. So
there is an app that's called Memorize m Rise, and
I'm looking to see if they offer Spanish, and sure
enough they do. They offer Spanish, Mexico and Spain, so
I guess you get the two different dialects. And this

(33:51):
one is, you know, it's very similar to the way
that dual Lingo works, but this one looks like it's
much more video example based, so it uses video examples
of language used in real life. And so each one
of these little lessons incorporates videos, and it's like a like,
I'm looking at the demo here and it says do

(34:13):
you have Wi Fi? And the person will say it,
and then it kind of breaks down how to say that.
That's a very important thing to know as you travel.
So that's Memorized Memorize dot com. Then there's an app
called Lingo deer l I n g O d E
E R. And it's just so interesting how all these
apps come up with these funny different names. This was
a Google Play Editor's Choice of twenty nineteen. An available

(34:37):
both on iOS and Android and Lingo Deer is not
sure if they are going to offer the language you need,
though this looks like it's Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin, and
so let's see do oh they do have Spanish on here. Okay,
you can learn Spanish, and this one will go through
the basics alphabet, food and drink, questions, plural numbers, greetings,

(35:00):
and it looks like it's kind of gamified, and so
this will lead you along learning Spanish sort of through
a game. And that one is again called Lingo Dear.
Then we've got an app called Hello Talk, and Hello
Talk is different. I think I actually did a segment
on this with Ktla. This is an app that links
you up with a native speaker. And so this is

(35:21):
kind of cool because you are actually chatting with someone
that speaks that language somewhere in the world and they've
got one hundred and fifty languages thirty million people to
chat with. And again, I think this one is probably
going to cost some money because you are almost with
a you know, a native speaker that is, you know,
taking time out of their day to actually chat with

(35:41):
you and help you understand this. But that's kind of
a cool way of doing it. It's again called hellotalk
dot com, a little bit of a different approach than
something like duolingo.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
And then the two other.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Ones that you've probably heard of, which are very similar
in scope to dual Lingo Rosetta Stone. I mean, I
remember Rosetta being in the kiosk at the mall growing up.
I mean, so this has been around forever. In fact,
here's what it says, for nearly thirty years, learners have
turned to Rosetta Stone to build their fluency. And so

(36:13):
Rosetta Stone is more about audio. And so I've never
taken these courses, but these are I believe, audio courses
that can really help you learn the language. And again
that's going to be a paid thing. They may have
a free version, but I think that it's mostly paid
at this point. And they do support at a lot
of languages. And finally, I think probably the one that's

(36:34):
going to be the most closest to duo Lingo is
babbel be a bb el dot com and they do
have Spanish. And again this is going to be more
of a subscription based but it's got app based lessons
and it's ten minutes a day. That's what they say
and you know what, Mike, I think you've inspired me

(36:55):
to really try to learn a different language. The problem
is I sign up for these, I get them on
my phone, and then what do I do? I surf Instagram,
I surf YouTube shorts, I go on my Twitter, I
go on my Facebook and anything besides learning the language.
I need to put my time into myself sometimes. So

(37:16):
I'm gonna learn a new language along with you. Hopefully
those apps helped. Good question enjoy Spanish? All right, coming up,
we're gonna talk about the low tech iPhone hack for
your past coode and more of your calls. At Triple
eight rich one on one. You are listening to rich
DeMuro here on rich On tech Man. Where is the

(37:37):
time going? First hour of the show already in the
can Now we're into hour number two. I feel like
someone has just taken my time and just like spun
it fast. Like it's just like like someone advanced it.
I don't know what's happening anyway, Thanks for listening to
the show. If you want to give me a call,
it's triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight

(37:57):
eight seven four to two four to one zero zero one.
A couple things. First off, got a lot of feedback
from last week's show, So people listen to the show.
Maybe on the podcast you can search Rich on tech
to find that to listen later. But people listen to that,
and then they email me and they say, Hey, Rich,
I have an answer, like an additional answer for a
question that you got. And so I got a whole

(38:19):
bunch of those from last week, So I'll talk about that.
What else, Oh, I just got a whole bunch of
people saying, Rich, which CPK did you work at? So
I didn't realize that out of all my gig economy talk,
the CBK people just want to know I worked at
the one in Santa Monica. And in fact, the reason
why I tried to get a job at CBK is

(38:39):
because I and this probably goes to show my character,
I was like, it's the easiest job you can do.
I mean, you're you're literally serving pizzas. What could be easier?

Speaker 5 (38:47):
Right?

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Well, little did I know the training process at CBK
was so intense. It went from like three hundred people
to one hundred people to like the opening crew of
like fifty of us or whatever it was, And it
was like eight weeks of training, and you had to
know that menu inside and out. You had to try
every single food, every single pizza, which I loved and

(39:11):
I learned so much in that, not just about customer service,
but opening up a restaurant. We open up a brand
new location and it was I mean, I think even
the founders were there. I mean, it was just such
a great experience and something that really has stuck with
me for not just that part of my life, but
in almost so many aspects of what I expect when
I go to restaurants and how I deal with waiters

(39:33):
and service industry folks, and so anyway, it was a
really really great experience. So maybe in your history you
had Rich on tech Serview at CBK and Santa Monica.
Let's go to Joe in Indianapolis, Indiana. Joe, you're on
with Rich. Hey Rich, I am doing great, Joe, what's
up good?

Speaker 8 (39:53):
I had a question. I know you have two kids
at home, and I think I've live them two or
three radio shows ago. You said talking about your youngest
eight year old hacking in your YouTube. Oh yeah, and
I think you had some sort of internet filter, as

(40:13):
I remember you saying.

Speaker 9 (40:15):
So what one do use?

Speaker 8 (40:16):
That's basically my question, what internet filters do you recommend
for kids?

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Good question, Joe. I have a question for you, though,
how old are you?

Speaker 8 (40:27):
I'm actually ten. You're show I love technology.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
Okay, Now do your parents allow you to have free
reign on the web or what are you going to
put these filters in on your and yourself or what
are you trying to stay a step ahead of your parents?

Speaker 10 (40:45):
I'm pretty ahead of my parents.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
To be honest. Yeah, I think I think most kids are,
including mine, in some ways. And I'll tell you, Joe,
a couple things. So number one, I'm a little bit
older than you, and so I know that a lot
of these filters and things are there for your own good,
because some kids can't control themselves when it comes to
the amount of time they spend online. And I have

(41:08):
two different kids. One kid is very much you know,
he's fine. He goes online, he does his thing, He
kind of stays within the guardrails, and everything's good. When
you tell him, hey, it's time to stop playing or
stop doing this, it's fine. I've got another kid who
is just a little bit different in that aspect, and

(41:29):
he likes to push me to the limits and so
he likes to push the limits also about what he
can do on there. So today, for instance, he found
YouTube back on our main TV because my wife and
I were watching some travel videos. We're researching trips, and
you know, we had to put YouTube back on there.
And of course he finds it in about two seconds,
even though I put it all the way down at
the bottom of the list of apps on our Apple DV.

(41:53):
He scrolls down and finds it and he starts watching.
And then he was watching YouTube last night and he said,
he said, hey, I noticed that YouTube now has a
kids version on the app on smart TVs, and so
I said, that's great because now you can log in
with your account and watch YouTube. He said, well, Dad,
I don't want to because they don't do shorts on
YouTube kids. And I said, yes, there's a reason why

(42:14):
they don't do YouTube shorts on kids because YouTube shorts
shouldn't be watched by kids. There's so much stuff on
there that's just not very appropriate, and so I think
it's tougher for them to kind of filter through those
things on YouTube shorts for kids, which is why the
YouTube Kids app doesn't offer that. Anyway, Joe, I tell
you all this stuff because first off, I want you
to stay tuned, which I know you will. We've got

(42:35):
a guest coming up at around half of the hour
and she's going to talk about Internet filtering with a
system called Bark, and that's one of them I've been
testing out, but I think there's three main ones that
I like. Bark is one of them, and this is
a service that can filter not only smartphones, but also
set time limits and filters on your home Internet. There's

(42:56):
also one called Circle cr CLEE and Circle was actually
started with Disney, and it was Circle with Disney and
then they kind of branched off did their own thing.
And so Circle is a physical kind of device you
can connect to your router and it will filter everything
on the network as well. And also there's just screen

(43:18):
time limits and also Android has their parntal controls. I
think it's called Family Time and or Family Link, and
so you can do that as well. Now I use
a combination of these things because I test a lot
of stuff out in my home. So I've tried out Bark,
I have tried out Circle, I use screen Time, and
I also use the Family Link and also Microsoft has

(43:40):
their own if you use Microsoft devices, they have their
own prontal controls as well. And as you might imagine, Joe,
my kids do not like me testing all of these
things because they don't like any of them. And I
get it, and I think that sometimes this stuff is
so complicated to set up and keep running that parents
just give up and they let their kids have free rein.

(44:03):
And you know, if your kid is like my older kid,
and they're okay with hey, it's time to be done
with the iPad and you know, watch a movie or
whatever or read a book, that's fine. But when you
have kids like my other kid, who is a little
bit more kind of like I want to be on
this all day every day, it's tougher. And so sometimes
we have to, you know, do things to protect these
kids from themselves. And I think, Titanya, we'll talk about

(44:25):
that coming up a little bit later in the show.
But Joe, I think you sound like a pretty good kid.
So I think that you're gonna help your parents set
these internet filters for yourself or just provide your own guardrails.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
Is that true?

Speaker 3 (44:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (44:38):
I probably actually will help them set it up.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Probably will show your parents if you can figure out
screen time, help your parents with that one, because that's
that's the one I think if you have iOS devices,
is probably a good starter, right, all right, thanks for
listening in Indianapolis, Joe, I appreciate.

Speaker 7 (44:53):
It, sure, all right, thanks, all.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Right, take care. Joe is going to be a successful kid.
I can tell because if he's thinking about screen time
and internet filtering at his age, that's a smart thing.
He's probably just trying to evade his parents, which is
probably what I would have done as a kid.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
So that's all good, all right.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Speaking of the iPhone, So Wall Street Journal had this
big kind of expose on the fact that thieves are
actually looking to watch how you type in your passcode
on your phone, and then they steal your phone, type
in your passcode and they can immediately do a password
reset on your Apple account and steal all your information.

(45:35):
They send money from like Venmo to themselves and all
this stuff. So check out the article Wall Street Journal.
Just google how to protect your iPhone from thieves. But
I posted about this on my Instagram because I was
really floored about this too. I didn't realize that they
could do so much damage with a passcode. So Instagram
at rich on Tech made this little infographic and okay,
so once they unlock your phone, they immediately try to

(45:57):
transfer money from apps like Venmo or cash app or
your bank to their themselves, or they can go into
your account settings and reset your Apple password and lock
you out of all your devices, which I was not
aware of. All you need to have is an unlocked iPhone.
So if you really want it to be cruel to
your friends, you could just grab their unlocked iPhone and
literally ruin their lives. Don't do that, Please use your

(46:19):
knowledge for good. First thing you gotta do, put a
strong passcode on your phone, preferably six digits. If you
really want to be wild, go for an alpha numeric code,
which I don't know if I'm ready to do that
just yet, because sometimes you do have to type in
that code, and we all know how much we hate passwords.
If you have to sit there and type in alpha
numerica on your phone every time you want to unlock

(46:40):
when face id's not working, o autolock set it to
thirty seconds. I've seen so many people that I know,
they use their phone and then they just put it
back in their purse or their pocket or their backpack
with it unlocked.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
Do not do that.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Lock your phone, press that side button to lock it up,
or set that autolock to thirty seconds. Don't set it
for never or fifteen minutes or ten minutes. It is
way too long. Someone can pick up your phone and
they can start using it. Definitely set an additional unlock
passcode on any financial app that will support it, whether
that's Venmo, cash app, PayPal, your bank account. I never

(47:15):
did this in the past because I didn't really understand
why they would have that. I was like, why does
my bank need an extra passcode? Now I know why
someone gets a hold of your phone it's unlocked. At
least these apps ask for a secondary password. And finally,
consider a password manager that doesn't rely on face ID
and uses a separate passcode unlocked. So if you're using
the built in password manager on iOS, the keychain iCloud keychain,

(47:38):
once they unlock your phone, they can go right into
that and unlock it with your passcode, so that means
all of your passwords are now at risk. Now, if
you really want to lock down your phone, you can
set up screen time on your own account, not just
your kids. Use a different pin and then go to
the settings in screen Time, and there's a section called
account changes if you choose don't allow, so if someone

(48:00):
gets into your phone, if they get there, they will
not be able to change your Apple ID password. So
if you really want to protect yourself, set upscreen time
and then do not allow changes under your account. Again,
I've got the step by step instructions on my Instagram.
Find me at rich on Tech. And by the way,
if you want to know a little bit about into

(48:21):
my world, I discovered Canva again recently, and so if
you look at my Instagram, you can definitely tell that
I've been having a blast on Canva because all of
my posts lately are created on Canva. And it's not
like I didn't know about Canva. Canva is sort of
like print Shop from when I was a kid, but
now it's this super easy to use design studio that

(48:43):
lets you make anything from Instagram posts to YouTube thumbnails,
to business cards to videos. But it's so easy and
it's so much fun. I've been spending all of my
free time making these little tutorials on my Instagram. So
rich on Tech is my Instagram Canva. Check it out
if you do anything with design, and I think they
even give out free accounts to like teachers and stuff.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
You can.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
I mean, anyone can use it for free, but the
premium is what I've been paying for because I just
find it so fascinating. But you know, if you're a
teacher and educator, I think they give that to you
for free, so definitely take advantage of it because I
am just loving, loving Canva. All right, you got to
call you got a phone question for me? Give me
a call triple eight rich one oh one eight eight

(49:27):
eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Later in the show, we're going to talk to someone
from Bark Parental Controls about these new TikTok screen time limits.
They're going to set a sixty minute time limit for
any user under eighteen. We'll see what that's all about. Plus, uh,
Microsoft is letting you link your iPhone to Windows. That's interesting,

(49:49):
but I'll tell you about some of the limitations to that.
You are listening to me Rich Demiro here KTLA Channel
five Tech reporter on rich on Tech. More of your
calls after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My
name is Rich DeMuro, talking technology, hanging out with you,
taking your emails to a lot of you emailing me today.

(50:11):
Morris says they tried or thank you for the story
on Sudshare, the laundry service app I signed up for
the first time. They picked up as requested, brought back today.
It was all neat and tidy. The sudster was delightful
and friendly and the price was reasonable. As a senior,
it is wonderful to have this service. Thank you, sincerely, Moira.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
So cool. I love this.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
We talked about this sudster service last week where basically
someone will come to your house, pick up your laundry,
wash it at their house, fold it and return it
to you. And yeah, a little controversial, right, A lot
of people were saying, I'm not trusting people to you know,
wash my what's a nice word for your you know

(50:55):
the delegates, you know what I mean? Yeah, the the
under rus let's so, I mean, I get it. But
at the same time, again talking about the gig economy,
there is something for everyone and whether you want to
make money doing someone else's laundry all you need is
laundry room or like Moira that you know, no big deal,

(51:16):
got the laundry done.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
So anyway, very cool, happy to help.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
Let's talk about Microsoft Big big update to Windows eleven,
a lot of new features. I'll just go over a
couple of them. Bing Ai integrated into Windows taskbars. You
might notice a new bing logo on your Windows taskbar.
That's because the new bing Ai is built in, so
that's kind of cool. I don't know if everyone has

(51:40):
that immediately, but it will be coming to your PC.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
Windows.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Microsoft is really trying to make good on their investment
in chat open Ai, which is the company behind chat GPT.
They are building this into everything that they make. Phone
Link this is an app that has been around for
Android users for a long time which allows you to
kind of sync up your Android phone with your Windows computer,

(52:05):
make phone calls, receive phone calls, send and receive texts. Well,
now they're taking it a step further and now they've
got phone Link for iOS. So now you can link
up your iPhone to a Windows eleven PC and you
can get your phone calls, you can make calls, and
you also get some of your texts. Now I say
some of your texts, because yes, you can send and

(52:25):
receive texts, but it's a little bit limited, so you
cannot do your group texts, you can't send photos and
there's no history, so only the texts that you have
sent and received through the new phone Link app will
show up there. It's not going to be all of
your texts from forever. But another thing that's kind of
cool is Windows now finally has a proper screen recording

(52:50):
tool built in. There's been many screen recorders you could
have gotten third party, but now the Snipping tool, you
know the one that lets you take screenshots, that will
let you record video of your screen. So this is
going to be a big deal for teachers and anyone
else that uses screen recordings as a way to kind
of teach people or show people what they're doing on
their screen. There's even a new keyboard shortcut, Windows key

(53:13):
plus shift key plus s will trigger a screen recording
in the Snipping tool. Now, this is not going to
happen automatically. You do need to get the Windows eleven update,
So if you want that right now, you can go
to Windows Update and you can check for updates.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
But otherwise, most folks will.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
Get this rolled out to their computer sometime this month,
in March twenty twenty three. All right, let's go to
Paul in Columbus, Ohio, one of my favorite Cities. Paul,
you're on with Rich what's up?

Speaker 11 (53:42):
Hey guy. Good to hear you, and a good show
so far. I've been listening to for you for the
look weeks.

Speaker 12 (53:50):
The other day I was.

Speaker 11 (53:51):
With the on a group call with some their friends
and somebody brought up this thing called pro theory and
I tried to look it up. They were drilled with it.
I looked it up and found videos on YouTube about it.
Just came out in January apparently, and it really kind
of it's connected with the chat GVT.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
I guess it is.

Speaker 11 (54:14):
And it likes if you you set up a trigger
phrase for Siri instead of just saying hey Siri, you
say what's up or whatever you want to say, and
then it goes to that Siri, And like if you say,
give me a recipe for a spaghetti sauce instead of

(54:35):
like they do now will they give you like three
choices of web pages, this one will actually just give
you a recipe. A couple other ones too, more sophisticated,
but that's gone the basic idea. Much more sophisticated than
a regular SERI search. My question was, have you heard
about it and would be just want to make sure

(54:56):
it's safe.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
Okay, good question. Good, good question, because this chat has
taken the world by storm. Now this is really using
a series shortcut. It is legitimate. You can do it,
but quite honestly, what I'd recommend doing, and what I
have on my phone is BING the mobile app. Just
go to bing dot com slash new and I feel

(55:17):
like it's going to be a very useful thing. I
am on it all day long now because I've got
They just added Bing is using chat GPT technology into
their own search engine. It's a little more polished than
what you're talking about. If you want to set up
the series shortcut to use chat GPT, go ahead, But
I would not pay for it. And if you're listening
and you're trying to think about downloading a chat GPT

(55:40):
app to your phone, do not do it.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
They are all bogus.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
Do not pay for that right now, All right, coming up,
we are going to talk to t Tanya Jordan from
Bark Technologies about privacy and filtering for your teenagers online.
You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to you,
rich on Tech. My name is rich Demiro, hanging out
talking technology with you. By the way, you can find

(56:07):
me online if this is the first time you're hearing
me rich on tech dot tv. There you can find
my website. I put the links to everything that I
do in this world, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, the podcast, the
stuff I recommend on Amazon, my email, my email newsletter,

(56:27):
all the stories I do for KTLA. I mean, it's
a lot. It's a lot of stuff on there. Rich
On tech dot tv is the website. So if you
want to check out some of the things I'm up to,
go ahead.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
That's where it is, all right.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Titanya Jordan is the uh Bark Technology's Chief parenting Officer.
Bark is an online safety company. I've been testing out
some of their filtering technology recently. They have a new
partnership with the router Villo, and so this is a
company I recommend a lot if parents want to filter

(57:01):
stuff on the Internet for their kids.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
Tatanya, welcome to the show.

Speaker 10 (57:05):
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
So just quickly give me an idea of what Bark
is capable of doing.

Speaker 10 (57:14):
Sure, so, what Bark does is help protect over six
and a half million children across the globe using a
variety of tech. Most notably, we're using artificial intelligence to
connect to children's devices, accounts, social media, text email, then
analyze it, and then alert parents and caregivers to dangers

(57:37):
that lie hidden deep within their digital signal. We also
offer screen time and filtering solutions like a lot of
other options that are out there. And then finally, we
recently launched a smartphone because everybody was giving their kids
smartphones that were not safe for kids. So that's what
we do.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
Well, okay, so let's talk about that because the you know,
let's be honest, a lot of kids want iPhones. There
are some limitations on what you're able to do even
as a tech company, Like you can't physically go through
everything in real time on a phone as many parents
might want. Right, So can you just explain that real quick? Sure?

Speaker 10 (58:17):
Yeah, you know, yes, iPhones are what everybody wants in
the US. It's interesting outside of the US, androids are preferred,
but here we are.

Speaker 6 (58:26):
Yeah, I digress.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
So blue bubble, it's all about the blue bubble. I know,
I know, believe me, We've talked about it.

Speaker 10 (58:33):
But you know, Apple does not make it easy for
parents to keep their kids safer on their devices. Yes,
they have family sharing opportunities, but kids circumvent them with
every new iOS software update comes new capabilities that are

(58:54):
great for adults, but come new loopholes that children circumvent
to get more screen time, to bypass filters, to talk
to strangers, to send nudes, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
Yeah, and so it's again, so if parents think that
they can, like, in real time, if their kids says
a certain word and they get an alert on their email,
is that possible with Android?

Speaker 10 (59:17):
It's I'm not going to say it's real time, just
just to cover my rear. Yeah, but it's pretty darn close, Okay.
I would say it's as technologically possible as close to
being real time.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Yes, okay, very cool.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
All right, So let's talk about the big news this
week is that TikTok, every Parent's dream app, is setting
a sixty minute automatic daily screen time limit for users
under eighteen. Now this sounds like, wow, what an amazing company.
They are so kind to our world for doing this.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
Is that right?

Speaker 3 (59:52):
Yeh?

Speaker 10 (59:54):
I'm sorry that I'm not sorry that I'm laughing because
it's truly a joke.

Speaker 7 (01:00:00):
You know.

Speaker 10 (01:00:00):
First of all, TikTok launched their version of printal Controls,
which are truly just laughable because they give children that
have these printal controls implemented within their TikTok interface, the
ability to unlink from the parent account. Why do you
give parents the illusion that they can keep their kids

(01:00:22):
safer on your platform when you're giving the kid the
ability to just disconnect it so and promblem one.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
And let's be honest, how many parents are actually setting
up this link in the first place. It's probably not many.

Speaker 10 (01:00:33):
It's certainly buried. I mean, I'm a mom, I'm on TikTok.
They have never shared the fact that they have these
printal controls with me, and they could do that easily
through the notification, right exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Okay, so this new sixty minute time limit applies to
users under eighteen. Once that limit is reached, the teens
will have to enter in a passcode in order to
continue watching, and the way TikTok describes it, requiring them
to make an active decision to extend that time. Now,
do you really think there's gonna be a large percentage

(01:01:05):
of teenagers who say, ooh, I've been on this for
an hour, I should really stop. Let me not put
in this passcode right now.

Speaker 10 (01:01:12):
Yeah, that's like giving the three year old a spoon
and a tumble of vibe, scream and saying just have
one bite and then leaving the room.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
That applies to me too.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
I mean, I polished off some Halo top last night,
but thankfully that whole thing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Is like not that bad for you.

Speaker 7 (01:01:27):
Go you with a keto.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
And then for kids under thirteen, the daily screen time
limit will also be set to sixty minutes, but a
parent or guardian will have to enter an existing passcode
to enable an additional thirty minutes of watch time.

Speaker 10 (01:01:42):
So yeah, bigfootnote there. That's if TikTok knows your child's
real age, if your child has given it their real age,
which they usually don't, they usually lie and say they're
eighteen twenty one.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
Yeah, my kids begged me to like lie for them.
They say, Dad, can you please set me up with
the account? And you know, being a tech person and
the responsible person I try to be. I'm like kids,
I can't, but I will be honest. I did set
up one of my kids, the more responsible one with
a slightly older age, on one of the accounts because
it was just easier. And you know, I think parents

(01:02:17):
are really put in a tough position here because they
want to make things easy for their children, but also
they want those protections. But those two things do not align,
that's for sure, they really don't.

Speaker 10 (01:02:29):
And you know, inherently tech should arrive as safe as possible,
and then if you are an adult, you should be
able to you know, dial back some layers of safety
because you're able to handle it. Instead, the majority of
tech is just given to children with full access to
all the things, and then parents and caregivers are left

(01:02:51):
having to play that game of whack a mole. And
it's unprecedented.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
Now, TikTok.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
I mean, we're kind of ragging on TikTok here, but
just kind of give me the bigger picture of things,
like parents want to believe that their kids are just
okay online. You deal with this on a daily basis.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
Is it safe out there?

Speaker 10 (01:03:10):
It's really not. And I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer.
I'm not trying to be a fear mongerer. But every
year we release an annual report based on the data.
You know, I mentioned earlier we helped protect over six
and a half mill children across the globe and so
we've seen some things. Last year, we analyzed more than
four and a half billion messages across text, email, YouTube apps,

(01:03:33):
et cetera. And we found that the rate at which
children are experiencing things from self harm and suicidal ideation
to extreme sexual content and predators to disordered eating content
and anxiety and bullying and depression and drugs and alcohol
and violence are incredibly high in the sixty seventy eighty
percentile range. It's very problematic.

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
I mean, I feel like as an adult, it's tough
to process sort of everything that you're exposed to online
on a daily basis, not just the bad stuff, but
also dealing with the time that we spend on our devices.
Like I'm on my phone a lot. I'm getting messages
from people all over the world that are talking to
me and telling me stuff. And sometimes people are nice,

(01:04:18):
sometimes they're mean. And that's for an adult to process,
which you know, my brain is somewhat fully formed. Maybe
some of it's gone, you know, but you know it's there,
and you know, so for kids that are still, you know,
at these critical stages of life, I feel like it's
this is something we've never really had to go through before,
as you know, humans, we haven't.

Speaker 10 (01:04:38):
We are in the words of my favorite documentary Childhood
two dot Zho that's free on YouTube. I highly encourage
anybody to watch it. There's a doctor in there that
says we're essentially living in an experiment right now. What happens,
we'll find out.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
And I'm like, cool, that is so true.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
All right, So I've got about a minute. Can you
give me some takeaway? What can parents do today?

Speaker 4 (01:05:03):
Okay?

Speaker 10 (01:05:04):
Quick takeaways? First of all, you're listening to us, so
good job, thank you. You are now more aware. Second
thing you can do is talk to your kids. Please
have ongoing, frequent, candid conversations with them about the toughest
topics that humanity encounters. At a much younger agent. You
might think, is it easy?

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
No?

Speaker 10 (01:05:23):
Is it imperative yes. If they know that you are
a safe place and you can talk about anything and
they're not going to be punished or blamed or lose
their access to the games and the phones, they'll be
more likely to talk to you about these things when
they come up. Finally, if your children do have access
to tech, whether it's a gaming console, a smart television,

(01:05:44):
a smartphone and iPad, etc. Please take the time to
google the parental controls that come free and built in
with whatever you've given them, because they are there and
they are helpful. And then finally, if you're interested in
what BARK does, look us up try a free trial.
Happy to help protect your family.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
Titania Jordan, thank you so much, Chief Parent Officer at BARK.
I know you're a parent, and I'm sure you have
your own issues with what you know you have to
go through. I know I do with two kids, and
you know it's it's not easy, and we're we're techy's
and so I imagine for parents that aren't dealing with
us on a daily basis, with you know, knowing this stuff,
it's even tougher. So thanks so much for coming on

(01:06:24):
the show today. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 10 (01:06:26):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
All Right, I'll put a link to Titanya on my
website at richon tech dot tv. Go ahead and follow
her on Twitter or Instagram. You're listening to rich on Tech.
So much more for you. In the show, we're going
to talk about RING adding some new fees. Oh, the
free ride is over for you RING users. Plus we'll

(01:06:48):
have more of your calls at triple eight rich one
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four two four
one zero one. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome
back to the show. My name is Rich demiro So,
tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. I
am taking very good notes of today's show because I

(01:07:09):
do put the show out as a podcast every week
after it's all said and done, and I'm trying to
up my game with some of the notes I put
in the podcast. So if you've been listening to that
and you're saying, Rich, you got to up your game
with these notes, because sometimes it's just like, Okay, Rich
talked about this. Now I'm keeping much better notes. Anyway,
if you want to listen to the podcast later on,

(01:07:30):
just search Rich on Tech in your favorite audio app.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
All right, let's.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
See John is in more Park, California. John, you're on
with Rich.

Speaker 6 (01:07:41):
Hi.

Speaker 12 (01:07:41):
Rich, thank you for taking my call. I have a
volunteer job at the local senior center, and I've had
a PC since about August in nineteen eighty seven, the
same one August of eighty seven, I've had a PC.

(01:08:04):
I've had a Mac for ten years and right now
I'm using a Microsoft Surface Book. Anyway, one of the
customers at the senior center who came in the computer room,
asked me. He says, everybody told me I should get
a computer? What should I buy? What should I get?
And you know, I've been doing this for god god,

(01:08:26):
almost thirty or forty years, and I just you know,
I'm Betwicks in between. What what do you advise people
like that? I asked him, and he says he only
has the landline and knows nothing about computers.

Speaker 7 (01:08:42):
Well, what do you do?

Speaker 12 (01:08:42):
Would people ask you questions like that?

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
I send him somewhere else. No, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Just yeah, I mean that's why you're calling me. I mean, look,
you know, so you're saying that they don't have Wi
Fi at their home?

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
Is that part of it?

Speaker 12 (01:08:56):
They probably do not?

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
So that I mean, I mean, here's the thing. If
you're and how old.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Is this person?

Speaker 12 (01:09:01):
Ah, he's crazy?

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
So I mean, look, they probably want something that's simple.
They probably want something that's easy. And I would say,
I mean, the ideal situation would be that this computer
would probably have five G built into it or you know,
a cellular connection. But I don't think they're going to
want to do that. I mean, are they going to
want to pay twenty thirty bucks a month for a
cellular connection on this computer.

Speaker 12 (01:09:25):
Of course not. And then I was thinking, well, maybe
they would be happy with a kindle or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
I mean, I like, yeah, I don't know, that's not
going to really you can't really go online.

Speaker 12 (01:09:35):
Oh, I don't know what to say.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
Well, I mean, look, the thing that I would recommend,
I mean, there's a couple of things, but I would
recommend a Chromebook obviously, because that's just super simple. It's
very easy, it's full proof. It's basically a glorified Chrome
web browser. So they're not going to be able to
make any mistakes on this thing. They're not gonna have
to worry about viruses. I think the biggest trick is
really the Internet. So what i'd recommend is probably a

(01:10:01):
nice Chromebook and then maybe a hot spot. So do
they have a cell phone?

Speaker 12 (01:10:07):
I know he has just a landline.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Okay, just a landline.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
Well, so what I would do is maybe recommend if
they you know, and again they're gonna have to pay
a little bit to get this internet. They could do
two things. Number one, they can get this chromebook and
they can use it at a place like a Starbucks
or McDonald's. Or a library wherever they have free internet access,
so they can do that, find out a local place
that has a free Wi Fi signal, maybe the Senior
center has it, and they can just use their computer

(01:10:34):
when they do that. Since you're telling me this person
has not really used a computer in their most adult life,
I don't think they're going to go from zero to
one hundred where they need to use it every single
second of the day. So maybe they just get a
computer that they bring to the senior center once, you know,
an hour a day and they do their stuff on there.
They check their email, they surf the web, watch YouTube,

(01:10:54):
and you know, and then they can bring it home
and that's it.

Speaker 12 (01:10:56):
But if they hadn't thought of the chromebook, is particular
model of chrome book that you would recommend off the
top of your head.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
Or there is no there is?

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
Because I was just well, there's a couple of plays,
I mean you could take, you know, I've been testing
one that I really like that I thought was pretty inexpensive.
It's like under five hundred dollars. It's uh gosh, I
think it's the ACER five fourteen. I repeat that, the
ACER five fourteen. Let me just make sure because I'm
looking up. We just did this on KTLA. Yeah, it's

(01:11:27):
the Acer five fourteen, So that's.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
A good one. Now, I have you heard of the
website wirecutter.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
I have, so I like what they recommend I've I've
interviewed kimber Streams over there and we've talked about the
recommendations that they have and they really like let's see
the Lenovo Flex five I, which is anywhere from three
to five hundred dollars. So I would take a look
at those two. But that's going to be a good start. Now,

(01:11:56):
Samsung has some laptops, but I think they're too expensive
for what but you're looking at. But they do have
some cellular capabilities built in, sort of the Microsoft surface laptops.
We're seeing more and more of these laptops get cellular
built in. But the problem is, you know, it's expensive,
it really SAPs the battery, and I think that it
just makes things a little bit complicated for someone that's

(01:12:17):
just getting out.

Speaker 12 (01:12:19):
I'm sure the guy is gonna freak out when I
recommend something in the area of five hundred dollars, but
that's about where I would go myself.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Yeah, I mean, look, you can get a Chromebook for
much cheaper. You can get a chromebook for two three
hundred bucks.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
But you know the old adage, you get what you
pay for.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
And if they're just getting on this thing and it's
slow and it's just not nice and it's just like
a slog to get through it, they're just not gonna
have a good experience. But you know you can get them.
And believe me, they do have. I mean this Chromebook
that they're recommending, this Lenovo Flex five I. Let's see
how much it is on Amazon. It is it's two

(01:12:56):
ninety nine, So you know what go with that one?
That's a Lenovo Idea Pad Flex five I. Two hundred
and ninetynine bucks. That's a pretty good price for a
computer to get started with. All right, all right, John,
thanks so much for calling today. I appreciate it. Good
luck with that. That's definitely h You know, it's one
of those things where I recommend tech products all the time,
and yes, people want stuff that is inexpensive, and I

(01:13:19):
understand that, but you do get what.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
You pay for.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
And if I was recommending a laptop to like a
college student or something like that, you know, the MacBooks
they're a little bit more expensive, but they last a
very very long time. And believe me, I have a
whole system where I passed down my old computer to
like family members, and I still have my dad. I
was just home and he's still using a twenty thirteen
computer and you're talking ten years old. And I, you know,

(01:13:43):
he said, I need a new computer, this one soul,
I said, Dad, I'm looking at it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
It's great.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
Like this thing is still running really well. Now some
of the software updates, yeah, they're not really coming through anymore.
But you know, again, it's just all about the longevity
with this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
Let me tell you about ring real quick. If if
you have a ring alarm system, starting March twenty ninth,
you're gonna have to pay for some new features, including
arming and disarming the system from the app. So if
you want to continue arming and disarming your ring alarm
system using the app, you're gonna have to start paying

(01:14:19):
three dollars and ninety nine cents a month. Not a
whole bunch of money, it's forty bucks a year, but
that's what you're gonna have to do after March twenty ninth.
So you can still arm and disarm manually using the
keypad in your home. But this is very similar similar
to what simply Safe does. If you want their basic
subscription that you know you're just using sort of the

(01:14:40):
keyfob or the the the actual system to arm and disarm,
you pay one price. But if you want the app
to do it, which of course is more convenient, you're
gonna pay a secondary price. So starting March twenty ninth,
free ride is over for ring folks. So again, this
is just a trend we're seeing with all these companies.
The re ride with all these tech companies is definitely over.

(01:15:02):
You're paying pay and paying rich on Tech. Here you
are listening to Rich Demiro talking tech. More of your
calls at Triple eight Rich one oh one eighty eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. My name is Rich Dmiro, tech
reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Hope you

(01:15:24):
are having a fantastic day. I know I am, and
man I said, this show is going by fast. We
are in our number three. When they said Rich, could
you do a three hour show? I said, hmm, I'm
usually talking on TV for about two to three minutes,
so three hours sounded kind of long, but uh, you
know what, now that I'm doing it, I could talk

(01:15:46):
even longer. Should we start a longer rich on Tech? No,
I'm just kidding. I think I think three hours is
good for now. All right, you can find me online
at rich on Tech. Let's go to Brian in Ventura, California. Brian,
you're on with rich calling from a very beautiful place.
We were just up in Ventura and people when I

(01:16:06):
post it to my Instagram, they said, stop posting about
our place.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
We don't want people to come here.

Speaker 6 (01:16:12):
It's tough to live here.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
What can I help you with?

Speaker 4 (01:16:16):
It's good to be me, Rich.

Speaker 6 (01:16:18):
I'm I'm looking to upgrade my my smart TV. As
I'm getting older, though, I'm having some hearing loss and
I'm finding it very difficult to listen, particularly to like
the series TV shows. I can hear fine if i'm
listening to the news, but when it comes to TV shows,

(01:16:41):
I just I just I had no idea what they're saying.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
It's not just you, by the way, that's uh, you know,
that's that's like a thing like it's some of these
shows are really tough. Like a lot of people watch
with the with the captioning on like I know, I do,
my wife does, because it could be really tough to
hear sometimes and it's and all of a sudden you
get like a commercial and it's like, you know, blowing
your ear drums out.

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
So anyway, I understand.

Speaker 6 (01:17:03):
That's the problem my current my current TV. Sometimes I
can get the captioning, sometimes I can't.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
Okay, So you're looking to upgrade. What can I help
you with?

Speaker 6 (01:17:12):
My question is do the do the current TVs? Do
they have the ability for me to listen via a
Bluetooth headphone and my wife still listen on either our soundbar.

Speaker 4 (01:17:27):
Or the TV speakers?

Speaker 6 (01:17:29):
And what about something called a dual output?

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
Yes, yeah, and that's what I was going to mention.

Speaker 1 (01:17:34):
So it depends on the TV obviously and the specific
model that you get, but some of the TVs, some
of the smart TVs can do this. And it also
depends you know what you're are you going to use
the built in software on the TV?

Speaker 6 (01:17:51):
Well, we typically right now we use Roku.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
Oh you do use Roku Okay, so that could be
different because you know, depending on how the Roku's set
up that now to use the Roku software on the TV,
or is it a separate box.

Speaker 6 (01:18:04):
It's a separate plug in because the current TV doesn't
have apps or anything.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
Okay, interesting, but you're trying to upgrade to a whole
new TV. You're saying, yes, okay, so okay, well just
just I mean, so Samsung, I know, does the dual
output and so you can connect you know, the speaker.
You can connect a Bluetooth audio device and have the
speaker as well, so you get the best of both worlds.

Speaker 11 (01:18:33):
There.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
Uh, that's the one I know of I'm not sure.
I think you know some of the other TVs. I'm
sure a lot of the TVs do that, especially the
smart TVs give you that option, but it is something
you have to turn on in the option, so I know, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:48):
Like you mentioned, the dual audio is the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
It's something It's interesting because you know, some of the
smartphones I test have this feature as well, and obviously
Apple has it with their with their own headphones. But
it's one of these things like you know, you got
two different people, they want to listen two different ways,
you know, like let's give these people these options. And
I think with software nowadays, a lot of that is capable.
It just depends on whether the manufacturer builds it in,

(01:19:11):
whether they allow it, or whether they you know, take
the time to program it.

Speaker 4 (01:19:15):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:19:15):
But if you're you, I can hook my I can
hook it up to my current TV via Bluetooth, but
it shuts off the TV speakers in the sandbar.

Speaker 4 (01:19:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:19:23):
Is this an older TV?

Speaker 6 (01:19:25):
Yeah, like first generation?

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
Yeah, that's probably why. I mean TVs have definitely gotten
Oh yeah, yeah, But I would, I would, I would
check to see if it has this capability.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
Like whatever model you've fund with, what's that?

Speaker 6 (01:19:39):
I can't find it anywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:19:41):
On the TV specs?

Speaker 6 (01:19:44):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:19:45):
Interesting?

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
Well, I know Samsung, I mean just looking up if
I let's see, if I look up Samsung dual Audio,
you know, it's definitely a thing. So it's yea, it's
a thing. So I would, you know, I would definitely
check into that and see, you know, maybe if you're
I would, you know, maybe find one of these like
really in depth reviews on something and like if you're

(01:20:06):
if you're narrowing down on the TV, I would, you know,
make sure that it has that functionality. And that may
take like a kind of a deeper Google search to
see if someone has mentioned it. But it looks like
from what I'm seeing a lot of the Samsung TVs,
if you go into the accessibility feature, I think that's
really you know, where it's gonna where it's going to live.

Speaker 6 (01:20:26):
Okay, Okay. The second question is, uh, you know, I'm
looking at a Costco TV and evidently the ones that
I'm looking at are a two year old model. Does
that really make a difference.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
I don't think so. I don't think so at all.
I mean, I don't really know what you're going to
get from two years ago. I mean, I'll be honest.
I have a TV that's, you know, many years old,
and it still works just fine. So I think the
newer TVs, you know, they might be brighter, they may
have more backlit areas in them, they may have you know,
new types of lighting. You know, they've got these micro

(01:20:58):
LEDs and things like that. But this is what I
tell people. If you're going from a TV that you
just said is you know, ten years old, to a
TV that's two years old, I think you're gonna be
just fine. And I think that if you're getting a
good deal on this thing and it does what you need,
I don't see why you wouldn't get it.

Speaker 6 (01:21:16):
Okay, all right, well that's terrific. I appreciate your time
and keep up the good work.

Speaker 1 (01:21:23):
All right, Brian, appreciate it. Enjoy life in sunny Ventura, California. Ah,
let's tell you about a couple of things happening in
the tech world this week. If you've got a Google
pixel Watch, and I'm tempted to make a joke here
and so to say, like all three of you, I
know tech humor, but look, you know, the pixel Watch,

(01:21:44):
it just I think it failed to impress a lot
of people because it just was very simple. The Apple
Watch is just so strong of a contender that I
think the pixel Watch is good and I like it
as an option for Android, but I just feel like
it was like it's just okay, and you know, the
screen is small. But anyway, if you got a pixel Watch,

(01:22:05):
and I think it's great because I think it's nice
to have a nice watch option on the Android side
of things. But they did finally roll out their fall
detection to the pixel Watch, So if you were watching
the launch of this thing, they said we're gonna have
fall detection. Within a couple of months, the pixel Watch
launched and I think it was October and now they

(01:22:26):
are rolling out the fall detection, So if you got
this thing and you were curious about this, you should
probably activate it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:33):
I think it's a very very helpful feature. And fall
detection will basically if you ever fall with your watch on,
it will call nine one one or it will dial
folks in your emergency contact. So if you want to
activate it, you can check for it on the device
or in the Personal Safety app on Android. And it's

(01:22:54):
been tested and obviously Google is very familiar with algorithms,
so they've tried to make sure that they can justinguish
between doing something that's you know, physical or something that
would actually mean you fell. And I had with the
Apple Watch a couple of times where I'm sort of
wrestling with the kids, you hit the ground pretty hard
and it would say.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
Oh, did you just take a fall?

Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
And you know, so it happens, but usually with this one,
so for instance, they're going to have a thirty second timeout,
so it's gonna, you know, once it detects a hard fall,
it's gonna wait thirty seconds for any sort of movement
before it will vibrate and set off an audible alarm.
That sounds like kind of a lot to me, Like
I wouldn't want to be sitting there for thirty seconds,

(01:23:35):
but I guess it's better than nothing. And then once
this happens, notification prompt will pop up on the watch
and ask if you need help, and if you don't,
you can say you're okay. Otherwise you can say I
fell and need help, or it will just proceed to
call emergency services. It will share a location with them,
or you can speak to the U nine one one

(01:23:57):
operator through the watch. So I think this is one
of the reasons why I really enjoy having cellular on
my watch, because you just never know, you know, you're
out there running, and it's just something I'd never really
thought about before because I've run outside by myself for
so long. But can you imagine just like being stuck
there and like not being able to like get help.

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):
I mean, it's just.

Speaker 1 (01:24:18):
Don't even want to think about that. Should you click
unsubscribe on an email?

Speaker 2 (01:24:24):
Hmm?

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
This is a question that I get off and often so.
The bottom line is, and this is from Roger Grimes.
He is from No Before security expert. He has been
on the show before, but he sent out this little
primer this week.

Speaker 2 (01:24:38):
Should you click on unsubscribed?

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
The short answer is yes if it's from a legitimate
company sending you the email. No if it looks like
it's from a spam marketer. If you click an email
that says you know, if it's from a spammer, and
you click on subscribe, it just basically tells them that
this email address is great and they should send you
more spam. So do not click on unsubscribe in these

(01:25:02):
emails that you know. I'm not going to say what
they say with all these emails that you get that
you know they're spam, they're not legitimate. But if you
get one from Macy's Best Buy home depot, sure you
can click on subscribe and they will honor that. The
one loophole he said is that they can still email
you even if you said unsubscribe if it is related
to a transactional or relationship, meaning you've done business with

(01:25:25):
this company before and it continues the relationship with that company.
So they could kind of get around this like spam
situation by saying, well, we think that we still need
to email Rich just to make sure about this thing,
this sale that we're having. So again, should you click
on unsubscribed, don't. When in doubt, just delete the email
without clicking any of the links. If it's spam, report

(01:25:47):
it as spam using your email provider, or if it's
a legitimate email, definitely unsubscribe. In fact, I love unsubscribing.
It's one of my favorite things to do if it's
from a legitimate company. Up, you've heard of this whole
Last Past debacle. We're going to talk to Wirecutter security
expert Thorin Klowsowski. He is going to talk to us

(01:26:09):
about some of the alternatives to last pass if you're
thinking of making a switch, plus some of the third
party password managers that they recommend. You are listening to
rich on Tech. My name is rich Demiro, coming up
more of your calls. The phone lines are open Triple
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two, four to one zero one. Welcome back to

(01:26:33):
rich on Tech. My name is Rich DeMuro, chattin technology
at Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight
seven four to two, four to one zero one.

Speaker 2 (01:26:46):
Elijah's in Westwood, Elijah, what's up?

Speaker 4 (01:26:50):
Hey, Rich? Great fans of the show, we listened to
it every week here at the shop and yeah, really
appreciate the work you do. So I'd like to talk
to you first about the gentleman at the senior center
that was looking at options for connectivity for the seniors.
I have a shop that's a tech shop that's devoted
technology education, digital literacy for seniors and adult learners here

(01:27:13):
in Westwood, and very often you can make a connection,
whether it's an ADHC and adult day healthcare center or
senior living and many of the same options that are
provided to the on housed population that has connectivity, you know,
inside of the shelters can be given. Often you'll see

(01:27:33):
a booth you know, with people handing our phones, they
can be contacted and they have a program where they
hand out alt hotel and different tablets. Yes, have connectivity,
and they're often given for up to a year of connectivity.
Now the tablet's is a decent option to warm somebody up.
It has that three, four or five G connectivity, you
know what.

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):
You know what, I didn't even think about a tablet
because he said computer, and you're right, like an I
had with cellular even I mean, now again this is
all very it gets very expensive very quickly. But yeah,
something like the Affordable Connectivity Program in this case might work.

Speaker 6 (01:28:11):
I think it does.

Speaker 4 (01:28:12):
You know, they often give classes with it as well,
or we give classes with them, and those options are
out there sometimes. Rich, I think there were some laws where,
you know, in the state of California where different providers,
whether the Frontier or Sprint or T Mobile, so on
and so forth. I'm just suggesting I need to share
certain amounts of bandwidth for you know, certain of our
populations in need. And that could not be an insolubly

(01:28:34):
financial need. It could be an accessibility need for a
senior or you know, a person that has some physical challenges,
and we work with those companies in those options. So
those are definitely options that an admin could explore, and
I believe they're out there because you know, we help books.

Speaker 2 (01:28:50):
Good call doing those things.

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):
What's the scam I see here? I got to know
if you have a scam scam going around, what's the scam?
There's so many scams. I got my way in on here.
I got a phone call from the power company saying
my electricity is going to be turned off in a
half an hour. It was like a half an hour
unless I paid my bill immediately. So I even get
to like the payment part before I hung up. But

(01:29:13):
what's h But people fall for this stuff? What's the scam?

Speaker 4 (01:29:16):
So there are oftenly many going around now. The most
popular ones I see right now are two either on
the email scam coming from something with a brand name
like PayPal or a package delivery ups so on and
so forth. Those need to be very successful because you're
at the shop we often deal with the aftermath. And

(01:29:37):
my suggestion is, of course, to get it in your
mind that the worst thing that can happen is if
you avoid an email, is you get a late fee,
and then you can deal with that in the future.
But it's really integral that when folks use their emails,
if somebody can help someone update an older quote unquote Pacbell,
dot net, caa dot roadrunner, older hotmails, you know certain

(01:30:02):
males that you can get any longer their legacy. Yeah,
and move that person to And I'm not promoting any
company but Google or so on and so forth. You'll
be a lot more protective. I feel as though, and
those older emails from justices all just info that comes
into the shop from folks that those older emails are
legacies and they're just not giving the attention that are

(01:30:23):
current emails.

Speaker 1 (01:30:24):
Oh yeah, they're on autopilot, like the companies are pilot.
They're not putting any any effort into any spam filtering
or anything like that.

Speaker 4 (01:30:31):
So yeah, they're waiting today, you know, and they've sold
their five hundred times at different companies down the line,
and who knows where they are. And you know, and
I suggest to our folks here that that computer or
that phone or that tablet looks like a thirty minute
episode of I Love Lucy, where there's a beginning, a middle,
and an end. It doesn't have to be that way.
When you're on there. You can stop in the middle

(01:30:53):
and reach out to somebody close to you, parent, friend, child,
anybody around you and view that with that person. That
patience is the greatest antidote to those scam rooms because
they're good rich. Oh I know, you can get a
Windows eight point one computer with spotty connectivity to get
a team viewer on there and convince that soul to

(01:31:14):
go to a store and get gift cards.

Speaker 2 (01:31:17):
Oh I know.

Speaker 4 (01:31:18):
And I can't get my mom to you know, say
good morning sometimes, but they could get her to do
all that. Per se.

Speaker 2 (01:31:23):
It's all, it's all fear based and time based.

Speaker 1 (01:31:25):
Elijah, I got to run, but thank you so much,
and tell Kim your info so we can give you
a call back.

Speaker 4 (01:31:31):
Okay, yes we have medicaea. I want you to know
it's a great job.

Speaker 1 (01:31:36):
Keep it up, all right, thanks Elijah, I appreciate it.
Good information there. Wow, I mean there's just so much.
It's just it's sad to me that our seniors and
so much of our so many people. It doesn't even
not just seniors, it's people fall for this stuff all
the time. And it's because scam artists are literally working
twenty four to seven to figure out ways of appealing

(01:31:58):
to our better you know, our senses, you know, like
just just our kindness. Really, that's what it comes down to,
our human nature.

Speaker 2 (01:32:06):
All right. Coming up, we're going to talk about Last Pass.

Speaker 1 (01:32:10):
I know that they've been having some issues and you
might be thinking should I stick with them? Should I
stay with them? Should I ditch them? So we're going
to talk to the experts at the Wirecutter about you know,
what you should do the latest with the whole Last
Past issue. How they were hacked. You know, the security

(01:32:30):
company was hacked themselves and whether you should switch to
sort of a new provider or just stick it out
with them. So we'll talk about that coming up. Plus
I might have some more time for some questions. I'm
also going to talk about the most response I've ever
gotten to one of the segments we've done here, So
I'm going to start a new little system here, a
new little segment here called feedback, because you're listening and

(01:32:51):
you're also telling me some of the things that maybe
I don't know. So we'll get to that before the
end of the show. You're listening to rich on Tech.
Coming up, we'll talk last pass and more of your
calls at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one
if you got some extra time. It just sounds like
I do. Find me on Instagram. I am at rich

(01:33:11):
on Tech. That's where I post all the stuff that
I'm thinking about on a daily basis. Of course I'm
also on Twitter and Facebook as well. It is all
rich on Tech. See the theme we got going here.
You're listening. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back
to 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. My

(01:33:33):
name is rich Demiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five
in Los Angeles. I don't know if you heard about
this whole Last Past debacle, but last Pass is a
very popular password manager and they were hacked. So now
folks that use it are probably wondering like do I
stick with it?

Speaker 2 (01:33:52):
Do I not?

Speaker 1 (01:33:53):
So let's bring in security expert thorin Klosowski.

Speaker 2 (01:33:58):
Let's see where are we here channel?

Speaker 1 (01:34:01):
There we go, Thorn. I'm still learning the phone lines
here and your last name?

Speaker 2 (01:34:04):
Did I? Did? I totally butcher that?

Speaker 3 (01:34:07):
I no?

Speaker 9 (01:34:07):
I think it was right.

Speaker 2 (01:34:07):
Yeah? Oh good.

Speaker 1 (01:34:09):
Thorn is the security expert at Wirecutter and thanks for.

Speaker 2 (01:34:13):
Joining me today.

Speaker 9 (01:34:15):
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:34:16):
So can you give me an update on this last
past situation? What is the latest? How did they get hacked?

Speaker 9 (01:34:22):
So the latest is we actually kind of know how
they did get hacked, which was a like a targeted
attack on one of their engineers through their home computer
network and through software called Plex, which is like a
media server. They were kind of able to get into
this person's network entirely and access to their passwords, which

(01:34:43):
included their last past passwords for their enterprise accounts, so.

Speaker 1 (01:34:47):
They had an open port I'm guessing for this like
lot for this plex sharing or something, and then that's
how they got in.

Speaker 9 (01:34:53):
Yeah, I'm not totally sure what the specifics are. It
was an actual vulnerability, though we do know much because
it was patched. So they had also not managed to
update their plans uh that entire time.

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):
Oh that's embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (01:35:06):
You think you had a bad day and then you
hear this person's story and you're like, oh, like, you're
responsible for this company, Like you know, basically it's not
been good for last past and they are. They were
a company that I've recommended in the past, and recently
I've recommend other companies. But I'm curious, do you think
people stick with them or is it time to move on.

Speaker 9 (01:35:26):
I think it's time to move on. They've kind of
had enough issues over the years that it kind of
was already eching that way anyway, and the way that
they've disclosed how all this happened has been so bad
that it kind of makes me lose confidence. You can
kind of give a company the benefit of the doubt
a lot of the time because of this stuff happens,

(01:35:47):
but the way that they have handled it has been
very poor.

Speaker 1 (01:35:51):
Now, you cover privacy and security for Wirecutter. Tell me
about your thoughts on having a password manager in general.
People always joke to me like, is it a s
to just, you know, keep this stuff on a piece
of paper? And in some ways that is actually safe,
but there's no way you can keep you know, a
hundred passwords written down and unique and all this stuff.
So what are your thoughts on actually implementing this tech?

Speaker 9 (01:36:14):
Yeah, I think that most people who are online should
have a password manager. I do think that there's a
certain set of people who would be fine with a
piece of paper if they only have, you know, an
email account and you know, maybe a couple of newspaper
logins or whatever their bank. But if you have more
than fifteen passwords or so, that becomes pretty untenable, and

(01:36:35):
a password manager can help ease that. And it's more
likely that one of the companies you have an account
at is going to have a data breach than a
password manager in most cases.

Speaker 1 (01:36:46):
And once you start reusing those passwords, they will find
where you've used them in other places.

Speaker 2 (01:36:52):
And exploit that.

Speaker 9 (01:36:54):
Yep, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:36:55):
Okay, So the password manager situation, I mean, first off,
you've got these built in password managers, like I know
iOS has one, the iCloud keychain, and then Google really
pushes THEIRS, which they recently updated so that it works
pretty well cross platform on iOS and Android and Chrome,
which is like a majority of what people do. So

(01:37:16):
do you recommend those.

Speaker 2 (01:37:17):
At all or no?

Speaker 9 (01:37:20):
Yes and no. I think that if you are not
super tech savvy and you stick within the ecosystem of
the products that you buy. So if you're ever you
have an Android phone and you kind of everything you
do is in Chrome on your desktop, you're an Apple
user and you have an iPhone and iPad and you
use Safari on your Mac, then the built in ones

(01:37:42):
are probably actually going to be fine for you. If
you use a lot of different browsers, or if you
tend to bounce between operating systems, maybe you have a
Windows computer and an iPhone, it starts to there's a
lot of friction there that makes it untenable to use
on a day to day basis, I would say.

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
And I mean the other fear is like I mean,
I'm sure you've heard of this whole like iPhone, you
know pin like you know, pin hijacking, passcode hijacking, whatever
you want to call it. I mean, looking over your shoulder,
it's not even a hijack. They're just watching you put
in your code. And I was surprised because I went
through and I kind of tested that stuff, and I
looked at the password manager, which I don't use on

(01:38:22):
on iOS, the keychain thing, and yeah, it authorizes via
your face ID, but if that fails, then it goes
to your passcode. So basically, if someone has a passcode
to your phone, now they have the code to all
of your passwords. If you're using that device, that's kind
of scary.

Speaker 9 (01:38:37):
Yeah, and I agree, And I think it's it's all
about just kind of figuring out what you need in
that moment. I personally don't like to put all of
my eggs in one basket in that way. But also
I feel like it's so important that people use unique
passwords that what they will use is what they should use.

Speaker 1 (01:38:57):
Yeah, Like if your iPhone's suggesting like, hey, can we
create password and save it for you, like unless you
have a reason that you want to use something else,
like that's just go for it. Yep, Okay, So with
that said, with these third party password managers, what do
you recommend and why.

Speaker 9 (01:39:13):
We recommend too? One Password and Bitwarden. One Password is
a paid subscription, which I know a lot of people
don't like, but in the case of security software, I mean,
you can kind of see where the money is going.
They update their Apple lot. It works extremely well across
operating systems and devices. It's pretty to look at as

(01:39:34):
far as software can get anyway, and it just is
kind of a seamless process no matter where you're at.
And it's probably has the best onboarding of any password
manager I've ever used, where if you have never used
a password manager before, it kind of guides you toward
what you're doing and helps you set it up securely.

Speaker 4 (01:39:55):
The way it.

Speaker 9 (01:39:56):
Works is that they use a special secret key that
you actually literally have to print out whenever you first
set it up, which helps prevent issues like the last
pass issues. Doesn't make it impenetrable, but it does make
it would make it much harder for anyone to ever
get into your account without that long code that they
have you print out. And if you don't like paying

(01:40:17):
for things, I also like bit Warden, which is a
little bit clunkier, but gets the job done and it's
free or ten dollars for the year I think is
their subscription.

Speaker 4 (01:40:26):
It's very very cheap.

Speaker 1 (01:40:28):
It's not as like polished like it's it's great and
it's nice that they still offer a free option, which
a lot of these other ones don't, but it's not
as maybe not as slick like I actually got my
try to get my dad to use bitwarden, and when
I was setting it up for him, I was like,
it's good, and it's great for like a you know,
if you have a couple, like a couple devices like

(01:40:48):
he you know, he's not got too much stuff, but
it just it became a little bit like clunky. I
was like, eh, this is so I actually switched to
the Google situation because I was like, this is just easier,
you know.

Speaker 9 (01:40:58):
That's kind of what I've usually recommend with like friends
and family who aren't super tech savvy. I'll usually start
them with the built in options or with one password,
kind of depending on where they're at in that spectrum.
More advanced folks can use bitworden very easily, or if
you just start with one password, gets super comfortable with it,
don't want to pay for it anymore, you can export

(01:41:19):
everything over to bitwarden and a.

Speaker 12 (01:41:20):
Couple of clicks.

Speaker 1 (01:41:21):
Okay, so that was my next question. So in fact,
I just went to one passwords website, which by the way,
is one. It's the number one password dot com. And
so I went there and it's like time for a
new password manager will credit you for any remaining time
on your current bill. But how easy is it to
switch password manager providers?

Speaker 9 (01:41:41):
It's I would say, very easy. It's kind of just
export a big spreadsheet file and then you import it
into the new one. As long as you've used you know,
Excel once in your life, you'll you'll understand what you
need to do pretty pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:41:57):
Now here's my question.

Speaker 1 (01:41:58):
When you're exporting these things, isn't it just like a
comma separated value, Like there's no like lock on that file.
So do you recommend like deleting that immediately, like getting
like shredding that file on your computer when you're done?

Speaker 9 (01:42:10):
Yeah, I would, yeah, I would definitely make sure that
make sure everything imported properly and then and then delete
everything right and then delete the file.

Speaker 1 (01:42:19):
Okay, So and then what about people are also looking
into like these physical keys. Is that even has that
been a thing or passwordless? You know, we hear this
whole idea of like the future being passwordless any of
that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:42:31):
In reality, I.

Speaker 9 (01:42:33):
Think that passwordless will be a reality and we'll start
seeing it more over the next couple of years. Chrome
on Android and on iPhones pass keys are kind of
like slowly trickling out. And what those are basically a
passwordless login that ties your device that you're logging in

(01:42:53):
from to the account, so there's no password. It authenticates
through like your phone, So if you aren't to log
in from a computer, you'd actually have to tap a
thing on your phone, which is great for security. It
you know, there might be privacy implications with that in
the future, but again it's kind of like the less
the fewer people who are using reused passwords everywhere, the better.

Speaker 2 (01:43:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:43:17):
So, and I've noticed that Google and you know with this,
uh even I don't know how they do it, but
it's like the they're asking you to like tap something
on a different device that you own sometimes when you
log into your account, which is kind of like getting
around those you know, they used to send one time
passcodes to your phone and now it's like they're they're
figuring out like, Okay, this might be a more secure
way of doing Basically, these tech companies are learning how

(01:43:39):
to protect our They're learning to protect us from ourselves
because we don't even know what these what we're up against.

Speaker 9 (01:43:46):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the Google prompts are sometimes baffling, but
I do think that they are they're good at the
long run. Even if you're like, you want me to
tap on YouTube ware on.

Speaker 4 (01:43:54):
What what are you talking about?

Speaker 1 (01:43:56):
Well, I'm sure you have a bunch of devices like
I do. It's always the one device that I either
don't have near me or I haven't used in a while.
I'm like, why are you asking about that device? Like,
why not the iPad that's like sitting right here next
to me?

Speaker 2 (01:44:07):
All right?

Speaker 1 (01:44:08):
Thorn Clozowski from Wirecutter Security Expert tell folks how they
can find you and the stuff that you write about.

Speaker 9 (01:44:17):
Yeah, you can find everything on wirecutter dot com. If
you click around on any of the electronic stuff, you'll
inevitably come across one of the variety of privacy and
security guides that we have for helping you secure your
whole life.

Speaker 1 (01:44:29):
All right, Thanks, So much for helping us demystify the
world of password managers.

Speaker 2 (01:44:33):
Again.

Speaker 1 (01:44:34):
The recommendations are one password if you want a paid option,
and bitwarden if you want something that's free. Or of
course you can just use the built in stuff if
you want to do that and just take the easier
way out of things. All right, coming up, got a
couple of things before we close out the show. I'm
going to tell you about di iPhone Clean Energy Charging.
We're going to tell you why people are up in

(01:44:55):
arms about that. I'm gonna give you the feedback on
last week's show. Some of the emails like plus a
website that uses chat GPT to come up with travel itineraries.
It's pretty cool. It's all coming up right here on
rich on Tech. You are listening to me, Rich DeMuro.
We'll be back in a bit. Welcome back to rich

(01:45:15):
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here. So, if you're on social
media at all, over the next couple of days, you
might see some folks complaining about an iPhone feature called
iPhone Clean Energy Charging. People are complaining that their iPhones
are charging slower, and it's all due to this new

(01:45:37):
feature that Apple snuck onto the iPhone.

Speaker 2 (01:45:40):
Well, they didn't sneak it in.

Speaker 1 (01:45:41):
It's a feature they talked about and it's in iOS
sixteen point one and it came out in October. But
people are just noticing it. But the reality is, yes,
it may charge your phone a little bit differently.

Speaker 2 (01:45:53):
Is it slower? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:45:56):
So let me tell you what's going on here. There's
a setting inside the battery settings on the iPhone that's
on by default called clean Energy Charging. And what this
does is it kind of recognizes the patterns of how
you charge your phone, and it looks for efficiencies, and
most notably, it tries to charge your phone more when

(01:46:19):
clean energy sources are available.

Speaker 2 (01:46:22):
What does that mean.

Speaker 1 (01:46:23):
It means that it looks where you're charging your phone,
and if it notices that clean energy you plug your
phone in at eight pm and clean energy starts at nine,
it will try to focus more on charging starting at nine.
Now that's a very simplified way of explaining it. But
the reality is a couple things. Number One, your phone
is always going to charge, and this should be invisible

(01:46:47):
to the end user, so you should never really notice
that this is happening. Apple is only doing this when
you are at your home area, like an area where
you charge your phone a loss. So let me give
you an example. If you plug in your phone every
night at six pm and you wake up, well, let's
make it later nine pm, and you wake up every

(01:47:07):
day at five am. Apple knows that you charge your
phone because they look at I think they tell you
how many days they look at your charging activity. It
learns your activities over a certain period of time. And
this is all spelled out by the way on the
Apple website.

Speaker 2 (01:47:24):
Oh yeah, it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:24):
Needs fourteen days to learn your charging habits, and it
also needs to experience nine charges of at least five
hours or more in a given location for this to engage.
So it's not something that just happens the first time
you plug in your phone. It's something that over time,
your phone will notice your patterns and say, oh, we
can save some energy or save some you know, save

(01:47:47):
the environment by doing this in a little bit of
a different way. Now, a lot of these articles are
suggesting that you turn this feature off. I don't think
you should turn this off. Apple has millions upon millions
of iPhones getting charged charged every single day in the US.
If they can maybe change and affect the environment in
just one percent.

Speaker 2 (01:48:06):
With these phones.

Speaker 1 (01:48:07):
That's a good thing to reduce the environmental impact. So
you can opt out if you want, But I think
that the bottom line is you shouldn't even notice that
this is happening on your phone, and Apple even spells
out if you do notice that they're you. You plug
in your phone and you get a notification on your
lock screen that says energy clean energy charging is in

(01:48:28):
effect and your charging is suspended. All you have to
do is press a hold on that notification and click
or tap charge now, and your phone will start charging immediately.
But the reality is, if you're traveling, if you're in
a hotel room, if you're anywhere else, it's not going
to activate. It's only when you're at your home and
you plug in basically before bed. So anyway, there's a
lot of to do about that for nothing, I think,

(01:48:51):
all right, let's see John and Appleton Wisconsin says your
information is topical and relevant. This the feedback section, by
the way, for the tech newbie, and I enjoy your
choice of guests. When you mentioned an app or a website,
would you mind including the spelling. So many app developers
take a common word and put their own unique spin
on it. It would make searching less frustrating and keep

(01:49:13):
up the good work. Absolutely, that's a great idea.

Speaker 2 (01:49:17):
Oh, I forgot to mention.

Speaker 1 (01:49:18):
I want to mention this website which I will spell
Roam around dot Io. This is a website that uses
chat gpt to come up with itineraries for travel, and
so I just typed in Portland going on March twelfth
and staying for two nights, and it came up with
a whole itinerary. Start your day off at the Portland

(01:49:39):
Japanese Garden, then go to Powell City of Books, then
go to the Saturday Market, then go to the Museum
of Science and Industry, then have dinner at Lee Pete
looks like Pigeon. I'm guessing is Les Pijon. Okay, that's
a place. Day two, go to the go to the Mansion,
then Voodoo donat, than the Art Museum, than Washington Park

(01:50:02):
and then I guess get out of there anyway. So
cool Roam around dot Io is the website chat gpt
has just single handedly changed everything about how we do
stuff online. And we are just beginning to see this stuff.
Folks from Roam around dot Io told me that in launch.

(01:50:22):
They've seen fifty to one hundred and fifty thousand visits
per day, generating two hundred thousand itineraries in one day.
And they're gonna come up with some updates that let
you do some fun stuff too, if you want maybe
Doctor Seuss to write your itinerary, or you know, get
an email itinerary. But anyway, a roam around that dot io.
If you're looking to plan your summer.

Speaker 2 (01:50:43):
Travel, check it out. Kind of cool.

Speaker 1 (01:50:46):
All right, Now back to the feedback segment Chris Hoover.
Chris says, in regards to the radio show question involving
multiple computers with one keyboard and mouse, the Logitech MK
eight fifty combo can control three computers, one with a
dongle too with the keyboard keyboard layout is also set
up for Mac and Windows computers. Chris says, thanks for
all the info each week. And finally, I got so

(01:51:09):
much feedback on the question about a camera in a
remote area. I'm not gonna read through all these, but basically,
a trailcam is what the caller needs. A trailcam has
sensor activated recording and is solar powered as well. So
this is a remote camera that does not need an
internet connection to record, battery powered, waterproof, all that good stuff.

(01:51:32):
Thanks for all the feedback on that. If you can
believe it, that is going to do it for this
episode of the show. Thanks so much for listening. Next week,
I'm gonna take a ride in a Lucid electric car.
You can find me on social media at rich on tech,
the website rich on tech dot TV. My name is
rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so
many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate

(01:51:53):
you spending it right here with me. Definitely check out
my website to see my TV segments. If you want
to see what I do KTLA Channel five, it's all
right there rich on tech dot TV, and of course
find me on social media. Check out my Canva designs.
I'm not a design artist by any means, believe me,
but I've been having so much fun doing that. All right,

(01:52:13):
this was a blast. I will see you next week.
Thanks for being here with me. I'll talk to you
real soon.

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009 Rich on Tech Radio Show - March 4, 2023

Episode Transcript

Host

Rich DeMuro

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