Be on alert for potential cyber-security attacks

Today on the High Tech Texan Show:

• Be on alert for potential cyber-security attacks. What to know and what to do NOW
• Listen to this AI generated voice. You won't believe how simple it is to recreate celebrity voices with this free app
• Reviewing the 5 new DQ Blizzard summer flavors

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Is Michael Garfi.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Michael Garfield, Michael Garfields joining.

Speaker 3 (00:09):
In the high Tech Texan.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Michael Garfield is here with a high Tech Texans.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
It has to make life.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Easier, new technology, and Michael Garfield has something you might like.

Speaker 4 (00:25):
Michael Garfield is your high Tech Texans. Three decades helping
you make magic with your gadgets. Heard worldwide on the
iHeartRadio add now You're high Tech Texan Michael Garfield.

Speaker 5 (00:48):
Last week into June of twenty twenty five, which means
we're almost halfway to halfy hour for the year of
twenty twenty five. Not sponsored by the way, but whatever
you're doing, however you're listening and wherever you're listening to
this coming up two hours of just great bs and
just really informative things I do. Thank you for tuning in.

(01:09):
Michael is the name Michael Garfield. Feel free to follow
along with the Bouncing ball at social media, high Tech
text and Hi g h T E c h T
e x A N. Also the phone number here the
last week checked. Even though it's a podcast for some
of you may listen to it. We are operating where
we do take your phone calls to answer your questions,

(01:30):
give you suggestions. Very interactive by the way, three four
six twenty nine texts and that is three four six
two nine eight three nine two six Calamrie Calum here
is on the other side of the glass. He's pushing
the buttons to make my voice come out to wherever
you are. And we do thank you. If you're celebrating
anything special this week this weekend, Uh, good for you.

(01:53):
My youngest turns a quarter century old. I guarantee you
he is not listening to it. He's two. Is he
influencing everybody on his TikTok at Instagram. But a happy
twenty five years on this earth to the young Adam Garfield,
the Little Tech Texan. Version three. We continue with what

(02:15):
we were doing for twenty three years, and we've got
a number of things on the docket for you, starting
with guess what's coming up in about a week a
week and a half or so, depending on when you're
listening to this. That is right, friends, It is another
Amazon Prime Day twenty twenty five summer version. Every year
they do it, and it's coming.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
It is.

Speaker 5 (02:35):
They've expanded it. It actually used to be a day.
It used to be a Prime Day sometimes in July
you know, halfway up the holiday shopping season. Then it
went to two days. Recently they got cocky with man, Well,
let's just continue to extract more money out of all
of our followers and members that we're gonna go three days.

(02:56):
You know what, We're gonna get to a week someday,
but we're gonna go to four days, folks. It is
July eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleven, still a way away.
But I've already found some pretty decent sales and deals
right now. I will give you a heads up to
go ahead and get into the hunt before those days.
Those days can be a little hairy, the you know,

(03:19):
the websites, web traffic could slow down, and I know
they promised to get you there with what free two
day delivery if you are an Amazon Prime member, which,
if you break it down, really the purpose of Prime
Day is well, I have two theories. If you're a
longtime listen, I've said this number one. It's a garage

(03:40):
sale because Amazon wants to empty out a lot of
its warehousing spaces for some items that just haven't sold
over the past six months since the holiday season. They
just said, let's put it on sale. Let's get out
of here. We need some new inventory space for the
holidays of coming year. That's one. So you do need

(04:02):
to be wary that a lot of the stuff that's
on sale it maybe it may just not be a
good product. It they just weren't. They're putting a price
tag and they're slashing that's right, crazy Eddy, They're slashing deals.
So that's one. Number two. Really, the real, honestly reason
that Amazon started this they want to They wanted to
sell memberships because in many cases, obviously you do have

(04:26):
to become a member to shop on Amazon Prime. You
got to create an account, and you do if you
want something within two days of shipping, you definitely have
to be a Prime member. And so a lot of
people are Prime members. And you know, I asked this
question because I I am an Amazon member, and I
only hopped on Amazon maybe three years ago, and some

(04:49):
relatively new It's because I didn't think I needed it,
and I and as a consumer, I'm going to give
you this for food for thought. You may already be
a member of Costco, which costs you probably fifty to
sixty bones a year, and you may be a Sam's Club,
which again another fifty to sixty year more. If you're
a business member, you know you can buy and immediately

(05:12):
walk into a warehouse location and bring back a number
of different items. Absolutely not as vast as Amazon. But
you're paying memberships and you're paying subscriptions, and I continually
to remind you that how many subscriptions do you have
right now on top of your your streaming services or

(05:32):
you know, maybe you read some online magazines, online newspapers
and everything. Do you really want something else? And I'm
not talking to you out of getting an Amazon deal.
Maybe I say listen, keep Amazon. And oh, by the way,
if you don't use Costco or Sam's or Walmart or whatever,
these you don't need that. But just think about it,
because some of these deals there could be good. And
I'm going to go for some decent ones that I found.

(05:54):
But over the next week, week and a half, I
know I'm going to hear from a lot of you,
certainly on email, social media you have going, heygarth Man,
does this does this look right? I'm trying to get
a new camera, a new action camera, maybe a new
new TV or or something. That's what I can I
could talk you down off the off the Cliff Ford
so I will go over some of those things. I

(06:15):
want to start out with this, and I'm going to
tease it right now because we as a it's not
just a country, we as a world, uh, which is
just not the easiest place to live right now if
you were living under a rock, which at some point
we may have to get under a rock or in
a bunker. Uh. There's there's there's a potential war, uh, firing,

(06:38):
cease firing. What's going on, and it's it's unsettling, just
to say the least. I try to avoid politics, but
over the past year or two, it's just the the
the intersection between politics and in technology and what I
talk about, they do intersect. So I still try to
weigh in with my opinion for more of the text

(07:00):
is the political side. But and I'm going to try
to tempt that right now. You've got you obviously you
understood and you heard what happened last weekend with the
attacks that America did, the air strikes on three Iranian
nuclear facilities, and the Iran officials, Iran officials, they've warned
of retaliation after the air strikes. Something did happen on

(07:23):
Monday with what was going on in Qatar or Cutter.
But there's something that I am continuing to have my
head on a swivel and keep you updated with, and
that is the possibility of a cyber attack. And I
know I'm going to talk here for about sixty seconds
where before we take a break, and I want you
to hang on because federal officials and cybersecurity experts they

(07:45):
have sent out a warning of increased risk here my words,
increased risk for cyber attacks amid the growing attention to
what's going on between US and Iran. Right now, there
are no specific credible threats against the homeland, but the
Department of Homeland Security they warned up low level cyber

(08:07):
attacks amid a quote heightened threat environment. So we've got
public infrastructure, the private sector could be potential targets. Large
scale cyber attacks probably unlikely based on what Iran is
attempted before and based on their technology which is in
my opinion not nearly as advanced to some other countries
out there which would could which could cyber attack. As

(08:29):
we take a break, I want you to hang on,
give me three or four minutes, listen to some of
our wonderful partners and sponsors, go shopping at their stores,
because this is why we keep our radio show fr
Ee Garf staff free. But when we come back, I'm
going to tell you what a retaliation from Iran could
look like when it comes to cyber attacks, and more importantly,
how can you the consumer protect yourself from cyber attack?

(08:49):
Back coming up? Tech, You hanging there like I told

(09:11):
you to, thank you patronizing those beautiful sponsors and commercials
you just heard. We do that because this iHeart Radio
show is fr Ee. We're not charging you any subscriptions.
You don't need to be a prime member or anything
not as free. And now we do thank you for listening.
Trust really all across well several cities across the great
state of Texas, Houston, What's Up, KPRC nine fifty am,

(09:34):
Dallas Talk Radio eleven ninety in San Antonio, we love you,
News Radio twelve hundred WAI. If you're listening on a
podcast which we then put it up on our pod
at iHeartRadio, thank you for listening to it on the app.
It is absolutely free most countries around the world, and
as I know from visiting China earlier this year, if
you do have a VPN to get you out of China. Yes,

(09:56):
you can actually hear US in that country. I do
not know if Iran right now is letting the iHeartRadio
app entered their internet space. And I say this because
I'm continuing what I what I started in the first
segment about a potential cyber attack that we as consumers

(10:20):
and we as businesses, we always need to concern ourselves with,
and especially in light of what happened last week when
you know the US, you know, it took out allegedly
three different nuclear sites within Iran. Iran to some degree,
they you know, sent more missiles over to a US

(10:41):
air base in Qatar. But there are other ways other
than physical shooting in bombing, and that's the cyber attack.
A cyber attack is it's hackers, it's them shutting down
the Internet. It's the slowing down our internet space, a
denial of service attack for lack of a better term,
but that's what it's called in the in the tech world.

(11:02):
There is a possibility, and there is a warning and oh,
by the way, be you know, watch out for something
that US official cyber attask. We are at a risk now.
And I've long said this. If you I've done this
show twenty three years, and I've listened. I'm always giving
tips of how to protect your passwords and how to

(11:23):
use a VPN and in things like that. And I've
seen companies beef up and secure their IT department, just
billions and billions of dollars of IT employees and anti
phishing software and spyware and making sure that corporations use VPN.
But guess what last week we had one of, if

(11:45):
not the world's largest, you know, cyber password hacks that
stole sixteen wet billion different user names and passwords. We
are always going to be at risk from having our
information and connecting online, connecting to our computers, connecting to

(12:06):
our mobile phones, and so yeah, there at some point
there is going to be more to come. And getting
back to my point over here, I have long said
on this radio show wherever I go, if you really
want to bring people, consumers and businesses to some extent
to its knees to a standstill, yes, hardcore military physical

(12:30):
action with bombs and whatever, we'll do it. But don't
sleep in the fact that shutting down our communication grid,
the way that we communicate to get money out of
our banks and our ATM and our traffic green light
red light systems on and on and on. They shut
that down. If that shuts down through a cyber attack,

(12:50):
I'll tell you what. We're in a standstill we are.
Can you imagine back in the COVID day when there
was a worldwide demand that we don't leave our houses,
we don't do anything. Imagine we're stuck in our houses.
Imagine we had no TV. Imagine we had no Internet,
we had no connectivity. Yes, we would be driven crazy mentally,

(13:15):
but we wouldn't get any information. We wouldn't know the
all clear sign. We wouldn't be able to you know,
you know, check on our relatives and our friends to
see how they're doing. That could be a possibility now.
To be sure, Iran, they do have the capabilities of
doing something with cyber attack. I think there was an
assessment back at twenty twenty four of the Office of

(13:36):
the Director of National Intelligence the country had launched cyber
attacks against Israel and a cybersecurity firm here in the NAIs.
They found that seven hundred percent spike in cyber attacks
after Israel launched a missile strike targeting Iran's nuclear program
earlier this month. It would not be the first time
the US has faced such a threat, and specifically from Iran,

(13:59):
it was back twenty sixteen they was ties to Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Core and everything that. There have been potential
holes and cyber attacks. I'm gonna get to the chase here,
cut to the chase. How big of a threat is
this to US Americans? But the threat of disruptive cyber
attacks has increased. It is important to recognize that Iran

(14:20):
has had the term is mixed results with disruptive cyber attacks.
All right, maybe they have done that. And again I'm
gonna quote here Google Threat Intelligent Group. Their chief analyst's
name is John Holtquist. He gave a quote. It's Iran
has frequently fabricated and exaggerated their effects in an effort
to boost their psychological impact. However, we should be careful

(14:43):
not to overestimate these instants and inadvertently assist the actors. Again,
that's from a quote. Okay, smarter people than I. Could
they do something that has significant effects? Yes, absolutely they could.
What do you do? How can you my lists and
the consumers out there? How do you protect yourself from
a cyber attack? Well, number one, you need to listen
to people well speaking, you know, talking mouths like me.

(15:06):
Listen to what the government says. US government works closely
with all sectors to keep them informed because cyber criminals
often go after end users consumers. So you're gonna go
just go on with your lives. But your device on
its own, they could be exploited and they could be leveraged.
Lots of worries out there. So a few things to

(15:26):
protect yourself. Here we go. Number one, be careful of
fake emails or text You're not gonna get an email
from an Iranian threat person saying hey, click on this link.
It may look like it's gonna come from the US
Social Security Department. It may look like it comes from
the IRS. It may look like it's coming from the
toll road. It might look like it's coming from your
bank or credit card. They want you to click on

(15:47):
a link. It could affect your computer with malware. Still
use your names and passwords. I get these things on
a semi regular basis. Right there before clicking on a
text on an email or a text, who is it from?
Do you know the person is from? Generally other than
you know two factor authentication. Banks don't send you text
pick up the old fashioned phone, get in your car,

(16:08):
go to a bank, talk to them before clicking on
that link. Also, be careful of telephone calls that appear
to be from an authority figure. There's often the cyber
criminals are going to try to tell you that you've
done something wrong. You're gonna be arrested. Make sure the
real number for your bank or make whatever your financestitution.
It's in your phone. And if you've see any suspicious

(16:30):
activity or unsolicited email or text or calls. Just because
I get a call that says White House on my phone,
I'm guessing it's probably not the White House. They can
actually do that too. Don't pick up a lot of
these phone calls less you one hundred percent know it's
from Watch your social media accounts too. Hackers may try
to take over your social media accounts. They're going to
get you to click on malicious links. Okay, don't take

(16:50):
the Oh, let's take a quiz on ten steps of
how do we can get a better tan this summer.
You can go living your life without doing those things.
This word manager programs. I get asked about this all
the time. Use a password manager program. Don't use the
same password for multiple accounts. Change it. I don't care
if you change one letter of everyone. Change it. You
can use a password manager. It helps you keep track

(17:12):
of your password safely. Just Google password managers. There's a
lot of reputable ones out there. And also, like I
just said, the term two factor authentication. I use it
for most everything. Yes, it's a pain, slows me down,
and maybe I got it. I've got it today. Where
between five to eight seconds right now it asks for
a second type of approval. Often it's going to send
you a text message with a four five six digit code.

(17:32):
Maybe it's an authenticator app. Microsoft has one. I use
that to get into my iHeartMedia email account. They do
offer more protection than clicking two factor authentication. Even Google
Gmail offers it. Other than that, I will keep you
updated here on my X account. High Tech Text and
high T e C h T E X A N

(17:53):
about cyber and potential cyber attacks. Just be vigilant, download
as much stuff as you can, keep it on your
hard drive, and cross our fingers if anybody has been
you know, manipulated, or if you've actually fallen for some
of the stuff, tell you what we're gonna take a break.
I'd love to hear from you. If you want to
call three four six two nine eight three nine two six,
that's how you get to meet Michael Garfield right here

(18:14):
on the High Tech Textan show. When we come up,
I am going to play something for you that is
generated by AI artificial intelligence. You don't think AI right
now is scary. You are not gonna believe this. I

(18:46):
do a radio show.

Speaker 6 (18:47):
That's right.

Speaker 5 (18:47):
It is a radio show which then recorded to a podcast. Uh,
it's lunchtime here on the weekend, last weekend of June
of twenty twenty five. I am a little hungry alas
I do have to finish work, and so does everybody
here I'm looking at in the radio studio. When I
am done, I will swing by Cabo Bob's. I do
thank them for the potnaship. We love Cabo Bobs in

(19:08):
the Euston area four locations. Check it out cabobobs dot com.
And you make your own hacos. You make your own, well,
they make it for you. Tell them you want on
your burrito. It's not like anything you ever had because
the meat alone, they are smoked on what's called the
Kamata joe. It's big green eggish if you will. It's
like a ceramic cooker. That's why the meats are great.
You have your choice of one, two, three, four, five

(19:29):
different freshly made tortillas right in front of you. Oh
my goodness, I love it. Like the smoky chili, and
they got the ancho, and they got the corn, they
got the buttermilk flour, and the chips. I say this
again every time someone tas comes over. I always have chips,
squawking kesa that I bring in at least twice a
week from Cobo Bob's. That's right, I do because I'm
a host that I'm an entertainer. They're like, where did

(19:51):
you get these chips? The double thick crunch phenomenal zero
locations in Dallas for of you up there, but Austin
location eight or no, I know them. I thinking Austin,
San Antonio. You got one two lunchtime, dinner time. They
are closed on Sunday. Suck it up, people, you're gonna
go hungry that day. But Cabo Bob's love those folks.
That's good. Now I'm hungry. Now I gotta keep on rolling. AI.

(20:15):
To the best of my knowledge, AI does not come
into big play at Cabo Bob's, or they still have
actually real great employees, which they do take care of employees.
They're back there, they're they're pressing and top, they're pressing
the tortillas, and they're rolling the big old Mama burritos,
and they're making the chips and everything. But AI has
infiltrated many, many other things. And sometimes I've given warnings.

(20:37):
Sometimes I say it's inevitable. It is just like that
Texas rainstorm. Baby, it is just inevitable. It is gonna come.
I don't use a ton of AI a lot. It
doesn't infiltrate my life. But there's been a lot of
talk when it comes to entertainment in Hollywood. That's why
there was the actors strike a few years ago. The
what the Screen Actors Guild. They couldn't come to an
agreement with, you know, the AI use or the repeat

(21:00):
use of actors and their voices and their faces before they,
you know, finally came to an agreement at some point.
You know, we hear even on the radios in the
radio side, you know your favorite this Jockies, how you
doing coming up? We're gonna play the forty songs. You know,
there are ways to actually recreate their voices. You know,
we at some point I'm facing it people. Luckily, I

(21:21):
guess I'm on the backside of my career. They can
be replaced. Nice talk about this, because there was this
app that I was playing with that I just downloaded
and it what it is? It replic It has a
it generates a standalone it's let me put it this way,
it's a standaloade voice generation app. It's a voice AI

(21:43):
company called eleven Labs, and I'll give you the u
RL if you really want it. You have to spell
out the word eleven Labs. And it's a free downloadable
app too. They released a mobile app. It's yes, it's
for Android, Yes, it's for iOS, and it generates voice
clips from anything including things that you sit there and
type and text listen. Until now, if you had to
generate samples using you know, AI poors, AI powered voice libraries,

(22:07):
you kind of had to rely on the web everything. Oh,
now there is a mobile app that generates clips on
the go. You may have used something like this. That
may be freaky deeky, but I tried it and I
wanted to see how it work. And this it turned
my head. It really really did. So what I did
is let me let me pull this thing up. It's
called let's see eleven. And you know they want you

(22:29):
to subscribe. Blah blah blah blah blah. They don't we Anyway,
I want to sit here and I want to use
this voice. And what they already do, you can actually
tell it to. You can have a male voice who's
a teenager and authoritative, you know, voiceover you know female.
You can have you know, kids, people sounding like kids
or whatever. But then there's a few celebrities and I

(22:53):
found one I wanted to try. If anybody in this
is a generational actor who's no longer with this, but
Bert Reynolds, anybody, you have to be of age.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
You know.

Speaker 5 (23:04):
Burt Reynolds. He was just a great iconic actor. He
was like in the seventies and eighties music movies with
Smoking the Bandit and Boogie Knights and everything. He was phenomenal.
It's a deep, authoritative voice. It's great for narration and whatever.
So anyway, I wanted to try this, so I wrote
a promo for my high tech textion show. I typed
it three sentences into this app and I said, hey,

(23:26):
I want Burt Reynolds, which, by the way, it is
trademarked and he and his estate and his family gets
paid for this, so this one's legit. All right, I'm
going to play this and if you know Bert Reynolds's voice,
I want you to close your eyes and listen. If
you don't know, Burt renlds, this is this is this
is about as Burt Reynolds, as Burt Nolts. This could
get take a Listen to a promo as voiced by

(23:49):
Burt Reynolds.

Speaker 7 (23:52):
Welcome to the High Tech Texan Show with Michael Garfield,
the only place you need to turn to for expert reviews, commendations,
and bs to get you through life. Also, he may
be the only dude with more body hair than me.

Speaker 5 (24:08):
Did I not tell you? Is that freaky deaky? That
is how far one instance in one use of AI
has come. That's crazy, man, I mean it's listen. I
know you can have GPS with the voice of Darth
Vader and you can have your fame it. There's Comedia,

(24:28):
is there's Kevin Hart. I mean, it goes on and on,
but now you could tell it and type anything. I mean,
if I really wanted to, like I want you to
think about this. If I had a sore throat, I
could type in my entire radio show like I'm doing
right now, and I can have Burt Reynolds host my

(24:50):
radio show, which at the end of the day, it's
much sexier than listening to me. But this do you
and I'm gonna throw this out to you. Do you
find this scary? Do you find this neat? Do you
find it cool? Do you not even know how to
categorize it? Or is it a little of both? This

(25:13):
is a consumer facing app that is that is no cost.
This is how quickly we have become and how machine
learning is out there. And I this is when people
pass on. I mean the most famous listen I want.
I think about this the reason my idol, the reason

(25:36):
I got into radio, and this entire thing. I grew
up listening to a very very famous disc jockey, Casey Caseum.
Casey Caseum based out of Los Angeles. He was a
disc jockey who every week did a syndicated show called
American Top forty. All right. I listened to that American
Top forty every single weekend through middle school and high school.

(25:56):
I wrote down the Top forty. I got his speech
pattern I used to imitate him. I actually utilize his
voice in some parodies for commercial ads. Technically people say
I actually look like him, which is neither here, nowhere there.
But he's gone. He passed away ten eleven years ago,
but his voice still lives on in cartoons. He was
the voice of Shaggy and Scooby doo Zucks like Scoopy,

(26:20):
what is Scooby? The thing is, though I at some point,
I'm sure there's a Casey Caseen voice impersonator AI app
right now. If not, I need to create one. I
would love to actually do. My entire show is the
voice of Casey case even though it kind of sounds
like Casey. But he's gone. And so the longevity of people,

(26:43):
and the funny thing is, this is what machine learning
can do. You don't need You could have been dead
for generations, but still your work on movies and voice.
I mean, think of James Cagney or Jemmy Jemmy start
you know, Jimmy Stuart died what I don't know, twenty
twenty five years ago, potentially. I mean, all you need

(27:04):
to do is just run all of his movies and
you know it's the Christmas movie and everything, and you
could generate his voice. And I think the question is
in these cases of celebrities, they need to get these
companies need to go to the proper channels and compensate
their estates and their families. But for fun purposes like this,

(27:25):
I mean, luckily this Burt Reynolds, this app that I
use specifically from eleven Labs, hopefully Burt Reynolds family. It's
not gonna be pissed at me because this they're probably
getting paid I don't know two tenths of one cent
or something for me using that, but I wanted to
illustrate it. As more of this comes along, I will
do it too. There's video things that actually can take
pictures of me and probably morph me into these even
my TV segments. I mean, it could be a fake

(27:46):
Michael Garfield. I hope they get the hair right. That's all.
That's all I care about. But a little AI trick
em or trickery for you. By the way I'll put this,
if you want to play an experiment with this thing,
because there probably could be some really good uses, Like
for some reason, you do get out a laryngitis and
your voice sharts. They just pump something out. This particular
one is from a company called eleven Labs e L

(28:06):
e V e N Labs eleven Labs. You can download
it right now for absolutely free and you can go
check it out yourself, which, by the way, I probably
should do. Callo. We should actually create a contest here
who can create a promo for the High Tech Texan Show,
kind of like what I just did. You're listening to
the High Tech Texan Show. That's right, counting down the

(28:27):
top forty hits, the number one number technology expert that
you need to listen to. We need to have people
come up who can create the best promo, you know
at a ten second rejoiner or something, and then I
should give away out an maybe a Cowbo Bob gift card.
So feel free to come up with something like that.
All right, When we come back, Michael Garfield, I'll go
through a few of the early Prime day Amazon Prime

(28:50):
Day deals that I saw, and also some information on
that massive, massive password hack. We're sixteen what billion passwords
were stole? Does this affect you jumping up? I'll tell
you the information. In the meantime, you see you go
out and keep reaching Fay.

Speaker 6 (29:08):
Stars No Burt Reynolds.

Speaker 5 (29:26):
This segment just lill o me. Michael Gartfield is the name.
I host this long running two decades plus. It's called
the High Tech textan show. I promised not to really
go all tech and not use megabytes and gigabytes. If
you're a long time listening you know that I'm going
to talk about food, drink, travel, fashion, cars, a lot
of car reviews to and other interesting features like an

(29:49):
AI voice generator that you could type something into an
app and have Burt Reynold's voice push it out. If
you dis missed that, go back and listen to the
show on podcast. That is the scary stuff that AI does.
Phote number here if you have a question or you
want to tell me how freaky that was. Three four
six two nine eight three nine two six, I just

(30:12):
say yo, callum man. Let's see if you could put
you on Michael's show. If you just get a voicemail,
just record something, and we do have the right to
play your real voice, not AI generated, on this radio show,
so feel free to do that. Amazon Prime Day talked
about that a few segments ago. Countdownazon people, why don't

(30:33):
they change the name to Amazon Prime Days? Actually, I
know what because at some point soon it's going to
be Amazon Prime Week, and then it will be Amazon
Prime Month pretty much the month of July. It is
now four days long. It's not a Prime Day. It's
four days July eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh. I've already

(30:54):
been looking for some interesting things that I saw. You
are generally going to get relatively good deals on Amazon
branded products. Shocking right. The Amazon Echoes, the Echo Dots,
the Amazon Firestick, the Fire TV stick, the Amazon Fire

(31:14):
TVs themselves, those are going to be the easy, low
hanging fruits that Amazon to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we
want to push our own branded stuff on there. It
makes sense I do the same thing too. Speaking of
fire sticks, I did see this already. If you want
to sale Amazon's fire tv stick. Fire tv stick four

(31:35):
K four K is very nice. It is already on
sale for twenty four to ninety nine, which is half
off normally the Amazon Fire tv Stick four K fifty dollars.
Now it's twenty five bones far as I could tell,
it's the lowest price of the year. If you don't

(31:56):
know what a firestick is, it is a very good
and smart device streaming TV shows and movies from Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu,
a HBO Max, Paramount plus, blah blah blah, the whole thing.
And it actually can do more than just stream audio
and video. It's it's integrated with the Alexa and the
Amazon and other service. And this one it comes with

(32:18):
a remote control. Some of them don't come with remote control.
You probably want to buy a stick that does have
a remote control. But this one has the Alexa Voice
remote control. It triggers the voice Assist assistant. What you
do is you plug this into your TV in the
back of your HDMI and what it is, it receives
a Wi Fi signal and then you know, you just
kind of turn your TV into the source HDMI one

(32:41):
or whatever it is, and then now you can use
it to use the remote to go and download all
these other apps. Obviously, the Amazon Prime Prime is probably
gonna Prime Video, which is probably already gonna be downloaded,
but you can, you know, download the HBO Max of
the Hulu, the Netflix and all these other things too.
So if you have a lower, if you have a
TV that is not connected to the internet or Wi Fi,

(33:06):
or it's old enough it doesn't even have a Wi
Fi connection, maybe you have one that's outside, and you
know that's the easiest thing to do. That's one of
the reasons you should get some sort of a streaming
stick that listen. There's other manufacturers. Roku makes a very
nice one r Okau, but I happen to see one.
It's about a year and a half old. This is

(33:26):
the twenty twenty three version of the Amazon Fire TV
Stick four K, but still for twenty five bucks. It's
actually not a bad delio whatsoever. I saw one more
thing a lot of people. It may be time. I'm
always I don't remind people enough that if your Wi
Fi in your house over the years, it starts slowing down.
Number one. Obviously it's there's many reasons, but it may

(33:49):
be an older system because there are newer versions of
Wi Fi. There's Wi Fi six, there's Wi Fi seven,
There's all these other you know, categories and definitions. But
if you have a Wi Fi system that is I
mean listen, Wi Fi as I know it, I think
it was kind of invented in two thousand and two
thousand and one, that was when I first started the
High Tech Texts and TV program. In the segments, I

(34:10):
remember explaining what Wi Fi was explaining with it now
it's ubiquitous everywhere. But if you don't have a mesh
router system for your Wi Fi, you may need to upgrade.
You may want to upgrade need in one or two things.
You may want to upgrade to a Wi Fi mesh
router system. And this is a system that will can
replace your current Wi Fi system with. If your Wi

(34:33):
Fi system only has one router, so you connect your
cable if you will your cable box, your cable box
itself actually could have if you have Xfinity, it could
come with a Wi Fi router. But if you have
your own and you want a larger, a stronger signal
that goes out farther to more areas of your home,

(34:54):
even on the outside backyard, you may want to upgrade
to what's called a Wi Fi mesh system. This comes
with sometimes three different little repeater stations. You connect one
where your old WiFi router was right off the where
your internet cable comes in. Then throughout your home you
place these others small in there. Sometimes you can't even

(35:17):
notice the little repeater systems across your home and what
it does it creates just kind of close your eyes
and imagine this kind of mesh network system that hits
every corner, every inch of your home inside and out,
and throws that signal to make it just as strong
as it was when it comes right out of the
pipeline of the Internet. A lot of these are user friendly,

(35:39):
they work well with this, and there's a number of them.
I even forget I haven't upgradeed my mesh system and
gosh a good seven years or so, I've forgot the
name of my manufacturer. Point is, there's a lot of
these that I'm seeing right now. Pop it up on
Prime Day. There's one right now. There's a company called
TP Link, tp dash Link, l i Ink. They they're
really good when it makes a lot of routers. They

(36:01):
have got one now two hundred. It's a three pack
which comes with three repeaters two hundred and fifty dollars,
which is one hundred bucks off right now. This is
the Tepee Link Deco Dco Wi Fi Mesh router system.
That's just one of them. But again, if you're looking
for something to get, because there's deals you just can't
pass up. Man crazy any deals, you may want to

(36:22):
upgrade your Wi Fi system, especially if you're finding that
you know you have more access points. Don't forget. Your
WiFi now is in use more than ever because your
doorbell is connected to Wi Fi many cases, all of
the wireless cameras inside and out they're on Wi Fi.
All of your little smart speakers are connected to Wi Fi.
Your kids are on Wi Fi, your neighbors are on
Wi Fi. I have probably over fifty some odd devices

(36:47):
that are using my Wi Fi that I didn't even
know about. You can go look into your router and
actually see that. So again, just some ideas for you
to think of, particularly five five you want something specific brand,
I'm here for you our first what hour break? We're
halfway through the show. I am at three four six
two nine eight three nine two six. If the voicemail

(37:08):
try to get through Michael Barker was the names the
high Tech section show, would we come back? I'm gonna
tell you about that massive password hack that went down
last week. Sixteen billions passwords were hacked. I can actually
tell you specifically if your information has been stolen, how
really pack a new safe browser for you to use?
Because browser's now we're under it back? And also how

(37:29):
about this? Are you ready to go see the f
one movie. Are you an iPhone user? Well, if you
saw something pop up for an ad on your iPhone
that you had no clue how it got there, I
will tell you how to get rid of it. All
that and so much more.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
High Tech Texan Show.

Speaker 5 (37:57):
Is Michael Garfield.

Speaker 4 (37:58):
Michael Garfield.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Michael Garfield's joining us the high Tech Texan.

Speaker 4 (38:01):
Michael Garfield is here with a high Tech Texans.

Speaker 3 (38:06):
To make life easier.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
Technology and Michael Garfield has something you might want.

Speaker 4 (38:16):
Michael Garfield is your high Tech Texans. Three decades helping
you make magic with your gadgets. Heard worldwide on the
iHeartRadio Act. Now you're high Tech Texan. Michael Garfield.

Speaker 8 (38:38):
Halfway through the show and almost we're just shy halfway
through the year of twenty twenty five, which means it
is halfway to happy hour in.

Speaker 5 (38:49):
More ways than one. Michael Garfield is the name, as
you heard that big booming voice the long running High
Tech Texan Show. Bear with me, it is not all
about tech. We're gonna have a lot of fun. I
don't know, may have a cocktail recipe for you. I'm
really into gin for some reason. Gin is very tough
to make. If you're trying to make a cocktail. I
think I found a few secrets since again, just let

(39:11):
you know some of the things that we do talk about.
Very interactive show, which means you can call, you can
give me your opinion, your thoughts, you're anything that you
want to lap about. Hey, Prime days coming up, all
four days of it. As we've been talking about the
first hour, Michael, I need to get this. What's your
opinion on this Wi Fi route? Or what's your opinion
on this fire stick? What's your opinion on whatever? TVs clothing?

(39:35):
I am your guy. Three four six two nine textan
three four six two nine eight three nine six That's
how you get me. You can find me online, high tech,
text in on most most all the socials h I
G H T E C H T E X A N.
That's how you do it. How about this massive password

(39:56):
reach last week? Did you did you hear about this thing?
I spent a few hours last week with some of
my radio and TV affiliates. Hey, Michael, what's your opinion?
You know, sixteen billion passwords were exposed and what was
the biggest data breach? Ever? Well, what actually matters is
this There is a debate over what information was given

(40:21):
out and whether it's new information is it recycled data.
Hackers reportedly allegedly they got a lot of it by
installing malware on user computers that logs in what you type. Listen.
I don't care if it's false. I don't care if
it's new. I don't care if it's old. It doesn't matter.
You just need to keep your information safe. I went

(40:44):
over at last hour for another reason that there could
be there is a threat, a very low level threat
of a cyber attack from Iran or maybe another country,
after the retaliation of what the US did to you know,
blowing up their you know nuclear you know, fortificated data,
you know, plutonium plants, there could be some sort of

(41:07):
retaliation with cyber attacks. And as I said, last last hour,
and I'll do it again to protect Number one. Never
reuse your passwords. I understand why you reuse your password,
so you remember it every time. Don't use a week password.
Don't use the word password as a password. Don't use
password one, two, three, four, five, six, or any combination.

(41:28):
Now never use it across the same site. If one
gets compromised, guess what that actor is using it to
get into your bank account, your school records, everything that's there.
Here's what I do. If you don't use a password manager,
which I'll tell you about a SAC, at least utilize
some sort of a code system that only you know.

(41:51):
And and this is this is I'm not going to
say I do it. This is this is something easy.
If you I'm gonna forget my password, I want you
to use one base string of letters in text, just
something you're always gonna remember. Use a combination maybe of
your first name, your last name. Change a letter instead
of the using you know there's a letter E. Use

(42:12):
a three because it looks the same instead of using
an L. Use the number one whatever. Used maybe the
first eight or nine or ten characters, it's the same thing.
Then change the last few characters into whatever website you're
trying to log into. If you're trying to log into
a Wells Fargo bank account, use your same ten digit

(42:34):
let's just say master beginning of your security code, and
then use the letter's WF Wells Fargo. And then if
you're trying to log into your University of Houston school records,
use those same ten letters again, and just change those
last two letters to uh, University of Houston. At least

(42:54):
it's a different password for everything. At least you're never
going to forget that solid first portion of your code.
Then whatever website you're on, you're going to like, oh yeah,
I'm on Wells Fargo, so it's got to be WF.
That's one way to do it. You can also use
a password manager, and these are apps, and these generate
in store very long passwords, very unique passwords. I'm talking

(43:17):
sixteen plus characters for every single account. Yes, you need
to protect your password manager with a strong master password.
And there's a number of them out there too. And
what I do is now I'm using more and where
I'm using two factor authentication two. And you may see
it written as the letter too, the letter F the

(43:39):
letter a two factor authentication. But going back to Google Gmail,
if you use that, it uses it. If I wanted
to log on to the VPN for my email here
at iHeartMedia, they make us use an authenticator app or
two factor authentication. What happens is you log online first,
maybe to your bank account, and you put in your
tend did you you put in your password? It ain't

(44:02):
gonna let you in the website yet, they are going
to text you, so have your phone nearby. Sometimes it's
an email of this one time used password, pass code, patents,
a set of numbers. It's only gonna be around for
five minutes, ten minutes, or whatever. You're gonna have to
use that and then enter it. That's your second level.
That's called two factor authentication. Just listen it is it

(44:26):
a pain in the butt, yeah, Midge, But I got
it down somewhere between six seven eight seconds. I have
my phone with me. I know what texts coming through.
What are those sick digits? Put put a minute, worre
set to go. You don't need to panic, You don't
need a freak. You don't need to change all your
passwords for everything from Apple to Google to Facebook, dif anything.
But make sure your social media accounts certainly do they

(44:49):
have strong, unique passwords. Maybe two factor authentication able. I
get stories all the time. You hear hacker, this, hacker this,
It's a lot of them were tricked into entering their
log in information on a fake site to steal them.
Now that summer is here, you got some extra time

(45:10):
in the hands. Maybe this is a good time to
change to be your passwords, just to kind of maybe
download a password manager. Browsers too. I saw something that
there's a lot of browsers now that are being taken
over or encrypted or having malicious links or software. And
I mean I use I have long used. I don't
use Microsoft Edge, I don't use anything I actually I
don't use Chrome. Well that's my secondary one. I use

(45:33):
a password. I use a browser called Brave Rave free
to download because I'm thinking because it, you know, allegedly
blocks a lot of you know, third party cookies and everything.
I was read somewhere that even Brave failed some sort
of a test scam blockers and anything. So I'm reading
where did I read this? Well, it doesn't even matter

(45:54):
where I read it. Some news site online. If you're
worried about malicious links and anythings. Safari you use that
a lot. When it comes to Apple, it's decent, but
it was able to download in some bad thing. I'm
not saying these are bad. I'm not saying a roun
but these are just instances that there was this test

(46:15):
done for the scam blocker. Already. Chrome is actually good
and Duck Duck go, Duck Duck go. I see commercials
that I've never done it, but it's a browser. But
those two browsers apparently are flagged sites as dangerous or
they have blocked access to things that we're trying to
fish sin malware or common scams. Again, I talked about this.

(46:39):
These are the time of years that maybe some of
you have a little bit more time in your hands
just how to protect yourself because now with what's going on,
with the positibility of a low level cyber attack, you
need to make sure that everything is tight, tight, tight, tight,
all right? Coming back, who wants to see the F
one movie. If you have an Apple wallet, odds are
you may have gotten an ad where you could save

(46:59):
some money and you're thinking, why in the world did
I just get an advertisement in a coupon on my
Apple iPhone? Well, I'll tell you why. Coming back. I'm
a high tech textan show. Almost halfway through summer, we'll

(47:43):
well past the halfway point of the high Tech textan show.
Michael Garfield is my name. It is me. You can
call me Garth G A R F. If we are tight,
you know the phone number. It's in an directive radio
show three four six nine eight three nine two six
Find Everything High Tech text and Spell the whole thing
out Hi Tech textan dot com. See some of my
TV segments that I've done. Did a Father's Day gift

(48:04):
guide few weeks ago, did a graduate gift guide a
few weeks ago. I'm probably gonna do a little with
some Amazon Prime Day tips here in the next day
or two. If you're in Austin, Austin Fox seven TV
show on Monday mornings that I'm on, also Great Day
Houston Channel eleven CBS, I pop on there some my often.
And if you have a radio, if you have a
TV station that you want me to contribute to, feel

(48:25):
free to call me. We're then happy to work out
a deal with you. Who's traveling this summer? Actually have
I even done trial? I don't think I've done a
segment on travel technology, gears and apps. Actually I probably
should do that. There's a lot of neat stuff out there.
I went to about a month ago where always I
went to California to see one of the kids. I'm

(48:45):
doing a little traveling. I'll be hopping on an airplane
here soon. TSA always gets bogged down, and I do
have TSA. I pay extra to get through the TSA,
which those lines slowly but surely seem to be getting
just as long as the non TSA. But they solve
this that more and more people are getting stopped at
TSA for some of their food and snacks that they're

(49:09):
bringing on planes. I mean, listen, you need your photo ID,
you need your boarding pass, and you kind of need
some airplane snacks. Am I wrong? People? Am I not?
I mean, do I speak to truth people and travelers?
You could bring a lot of food on the plane.
I mean I sit next to people and then they listen.
They mostly buy it at the airport. Back when Papasitos

(49:31):
was at Hobby Airport in Houston, man, I would sit
next to somebody with some breakfast tacos and some enchiladas.
I'm like, really, some people bring containers of Chinese foods.
Some people bring I've see people like bring harboiled eggs.
I mean whatever, I mean, if you want to share
with your seat mate or your rowmate, man, let's roll
went away. You know there's a liquid limit, right, It's
like what three point four ounces or one hundred middle

(49:52):
liters that you can't you know, bring with liquid or
jail gel or aerosol or cream or something. Foods that
are also liquid or jail or aerosol have to comply.
So it was a USA. Today. I was reading something
that there are snacks that are subject to TSA Liquid rules.
You what ever, this creamy cheeses, hummus, peanut butter, yogurt,

(50:18):
jam and jelly, and creamy dips and spreads, those actually
count as TSA Liquid rules. And this sucks because I'm
gonna tell you why I travel with peanut butter. Now.
I don't bring a jar of peanut butter. I don't,
and I think I'm under the three point four ounces,
but I travel with the little kind of prepackaged What
is it like, justin is that the name of the brand,

(50:39):
like almond butter, peanut butter? Sometimes I have little jiff
little cups that you can kind of like open the
top and spread. I live peanut butter, the greatest food
known to man. Love love love. It's tough for me
to go in without peanut butter. I don't know do
I need the TSA now, like pulling my carry on
out and giving me like just reming me going, I'm sorry, Garfield.

(51:00):
You you know you actually brought the You and Laura Scudder,
she is not your companion on Southwest Airlines. Man, come on,
I love Laura Scudder baby. You know you stirred up
and it's a fresh Nope. Has anybody been called out
by the TSA for food? I want to hear from you.
Three four six, two nine eight three died in two six.

(51:22):
I promise not to last. Actually, I sympathy. I have
sympathy for you on the same thing. Did you see
the story that was going around? I certainly I hit
it in Houston last week. Somebody at TSA was trying
to and I gonna call it smuggle. They were carrying
something like one hundred packs of fresh h EB tortillas.

(51:46):
And I had to laugh at this story. And I'm
gonna tell you why, because pretty much all my listening
audience in Texas you know what HGB is, right, it's
it's it's the I didn't. It's the greatest grocery store ever.
It's phenomenal. If you've never had freshly made HB tortilla,
you were missing out on a very good portion of
your life. They are fresh. I like I like the

(52:08):
uh the butter ones. Oh unbelievable. They make them fresh.
They sell them for whatever. Two and a half three
four bucks. You get ten of them, maybe twenty of them.
They're warm, and you take them home and you just
shove them in your pile. There's a buddy of mine, Brian,
who used to live in Houston. He now lives in Atlanta.
When he comes here to visit his parents in Houston,

(52:30):
I kid you not, he goes to AGB and he
buys things that he that AGB is not in Atlanta.
He buys things, including tortillas. When I visit him, I
bring him hib tortillas. So I've smuggled in. I use
the word smuggling. It's funny. I've brought him on the
plane two or three packages of tortillas. Somebody had a suitcase,
a carry on suitcase, I believe of one hundred packs

(52:53):
of tortillas. I want to know where this person is,
and I want to sit with them next time because
I'm gonna whip out my peanut butter, because you've never
tried anything if you haven't had peanut butter on a
fresh door. Tia, phenomenal, Love that story, Love that story.
Good for you, Hib. I don't know if that was Agy.
They may have. Hib. Better find that person, reach out
and give them a gift card. Phenomenal publicity. HB should
give me a gift card because I'm talking about it

(53:15):
right now. Who's planning to see this F one movie?
Callum Calum, read over here? Will you guys got to
see this F one movie with Brad Pitt at the
end of the day at some point, I probably will
see it because I'd like cars. I like fast cars.
I like the suspense. I know what it is. It's
Brad Pitt exploring the world of Formula one. I can

(53:40):
even write the script right now. Let me guess he's
a washed up, tired, old ornery race car driver. Some
rich owner is gonna have to give him a second
chance and teach some young buck of how to drive.
So they hired him, and it's just gonna escalate and
blah blah blah. I mean, there's probably a love interest.
There's fast moving cameras and fast sound and fast songs. Folks.

(54:04):
I probably just say, get ten, fifteen, twenty bucks on
a movie ticket. That's what it is right now. Directed
by the same guy who did Top Gun Maverick. I
think it's written by one of the guys who did
Top Gun Mavericks. Pretty much what it is. It is
Brad Pitt in a car substituting for Tom Top Gun Maverick,
Tom Cruise and you know F sixteens fatans. Nope, that's

(54:24):
what it is. It's produced for the very first time
by Apple. Apple is taking it shot at producing a
movie that is released in theaters, not just on Apple Plus.
And from what I heard, this is a two and
a half hour, two hours, fifteen minute Apple commercial. Apple airbuds,

(54:47):
Macintosh computers, iPhones, they're just product placement everywhere you go.
They don't have an Apple. You know that. I'm an
Android guy, but apparently and I need verification on this.
If you have an Apple and this happened to you,
I want you to text me and text me if yea,
if you have my text deal, free to text me,
but email Michael at high Tech textan dot com call

(55:08):
in three four six twenty nine, text and use your
iPhone if you want to Apple. Hey, you have an
Apple wallet, you guys, use that there's so much cross
promotion here that Apple Wallet in the app. People have
been reporting of getting a push notification that they're complaining

(55:31):
that Fandango, which I guess is a movie ticking app,
is offering a ten dollars discount for anyone buying two
or more tickets to the film. They're pushing this onto
your Apple wallet. Listen, we are barraged every ten seconds
of the day somewhere with ads. Okay, in about a
minute a half, you're gonna hear some ads on this

(55:52):
radio show. You're driving around a guarantee, you're looking at
a billboard right now, you're watching TV, you're on IT,
you're somewhere online, and Google is listening to You're gonna
get served up an act. I really don't want an
ad popping up in my wallet, my Apple wallet, or
wherever it pops up, because I know that's my credit
cards in there? Are they just going to say this

(56:14):
is kind of the same. It's not nearly as bad
as a feedback. Remember when YouTube famously launched one of
their albums years ago to every single single iPhone user
as it download, and they didn't ask for it. Actually,
it was it was it was it a song, It
was a it was twenty fourteen. It was their album

(56:38):
called Songs of Innocence. If you had an Itune account
and you had an iPhone, it was an audimatic download
and it was met with big backlash. Users didn't want it,
infringement on the privacy. I'm not saying this is the
same thing, but that's a tie in right now, So
I thought that was it. For some reason, you're getting it.

(57:00):
Let me know. There is a way to stop that
if you don't want these, If you don't want these
advertisements here, you do have to go. Let me see
if I can find it for you, because you do
have to go into your settings, all right. This is
if you have iOS twenty six beta, which is a
new option to you go to offers, you go Apple Wallet,

(57:21):
there's a tab or something called Offers and Promotions. This
is for their only their new operating system iOS twenty
six Offers and Promotions, and you turn it off, you
disable it, so I see what they're doing. This is
only in the iOS twenty six. Someone tells me that
Apple is planning to do this on a regular basis,
which is why on their brand new operating system they

(57:42):
offer a way to disable it. But that's the way
to do it. Anybody mad about that or not? Now,
if they gave a free and absolute free ticket to
F one, maybe I wouldn't be so ticked, all right,
there you go, coming up Austin. I'm looking at you.
Did you have you seen the super secret new Tesla
ROBOTAXI rolling around? It's Invader right now. I'll tell you

(58:04):
when it's going to your task going the back field
high Tech.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
Tex Just two more segments to go, about thirty.

Speaker 5 (58:33):
Minutes of your time before we are out of here
this weekend for the High Tech Texan Show. Thank you
for hanging in there, having some fun with me through
out by the pool, having a cocktail. Send one to me.
Michael's the name, Michael Garfield. We're having some fun. We
talk about consumer lifestyle products. Amazon Prime's coming up July
eighth to eleventh. I told you about that, gave you
some sales that are already going on. When it comes

(58:54):
to a few things, I talked about the New f
one movie, whether you want to see it or whether
a Apple is pushing a coupon to your phone, still
waiting for people to tell him about that. So we
just kind of run the gamut and let you know
about some things. Big shout out. It's funny because I
you know, it's summer. We want the bathing suit, the swimsuit,
the bikini, the speedo, I do not wear speedo the swimsuits.

(59:19):
You know, you want to get that the good summer bought.
It's not helping that I'm getting invited to a lot
of these new restaurant openings and tastings. It was it
was it a smart thing for me to invite Dairy
Queen into our radio studio earlier this week so I
could test out one of their five new Summer Blizzard favors.

(59:40):
The time, I thought it was smart while I was
eating it. Probably the greatest dessert in the history of
the world, in my opinion, the Dairy Queen Blizzard. It
was a great idea. Okay, now I don't know, I'm
running a next two or three extra miles on top
of the already miles that I'm running in this hot
weather and then hopping on my peloton even Moore. Probably
not the smartest thing. And not only that. Tried pizza

(01:00:04):
high Tap an about here for putt that Dallas. You
know this pie tap there's like what six seven eight locations.
Houston got its first pie Tap location not too far
from Central Market Sam Felipe near Wesleyan. That is some
good food that these these It's called pie tap because
it's pizza pies and also a lot of beer on tap.

(01:00:24):
They have probably one of the most killer appetizers I
have tried, and I kind of keep account of it,
like best apps out there. It's this garlic bread dough
with this special garlic butter that just melts on contact.
It is stupid awesome, all right, mushroom pizza yaukey? They

(01:00:46):
got burgers go check out PI tap by the way,
so they brought more food into the station earlier this week.
This is not good. And if that wasn't enough, My
good friends over at Gringos, tex mex Hello, Jonathan Kim, Russell, Lebarro,
Heather McCann and everybody else been associated with these folks
for twenty years. I got to do a little friends
and family, which means I can order any dang thing
I wanted while they tested out and checked out how

(01:01:09):
the food service and help with their servers or anything.
This is past week. Was up in Tomball, Texas. Shout
out Tomball Way Way on the north side of Houston,
corner of Rand Parkway ninety nine and Highway two forty nine.
It's up there. It's a hike, but I get you know,
I did it for the sake of feedback, and several
Margharita's and you know Poyo Marisco and everything. I talk

(01:01:33):
about this because there is a little technology bent over here.
Joey Farina, he's the head of their IT department's been
with them forever. Sub Joey, I know he listens to
the show. He was telling me. You walk into the state,
it's gorgeous. And I have been to probably ten friends
and family openings of Gringos in the past twenty years.
It's great. I'm on there last. I'm very excited to
be able to get to know these people. They're wonderful people,

(01:01:56):
great food, great family restaurant, free ice cream. If I've
been to ten of them, every new restaurant is gorgeous.
It's bigger, it's prettier than the other one. This one
is no exception. You walk in, there's this massive bar,
a lot of TVs. They got watch six eight TVs
there in the bar loans you can watch your sports.
And I was talking to Joey, who's the IT He's
very proud of the server room and pulling all the

(01:02:17):
cable and all the cameras. They have more security cameras,
literally than four docs. I am not kidding you. If
I wanted to steal a tistato chip from whoever I'm
eating with, I guarantee this camera has me I can
get busted. And it was just not a good relationship thing.
They got cameras everywhere. But anyway, Joy was telling me
at Gringos for the first time, instead of using typical

(01:02:40):
fiber or internet company or cable, they installed Starlink. They're
using starlink and that's Elon Musk's service, relatively new that
you're gonna be finding on airplanes to make Internet go faster.
He loves it. They installed it in the roof, he said,
I don't know. It's maybe about one foot by one foot.
Dish automatically finds the point in the sky in the

(01:03:02):
southern atmosphere. You know whatever. Starlink, he says, is fasted
I needed. I haven't tried starlink. I'm waiting for United
Airlines to to put Starlink on their flight so I
can test it and everything. But I thought it was cool.
It's available now, and one of the reasons I think
you use it is because they are built this restaurant
Tomball is so remote and it's such a new area

(01:03:24):
that they're building in right at the corner of these
two highway intersections. I don't think even fiber could have
been run out there is he's not run out to
the Yes, they said, screw it, let's try this starlink
and he said it's working well. And I saw how
it works. So congratulations to the new Gringos, tex mex
Tomball restaurant. When you go in, asked, I don't know,
try I don't know if they have Wi Fi, but

(01:03:44):
ask them to change a TV channel or something like text.
It's very fast, very internet. I thought that was pretty good.
What else do we got? Few things? I wanted to mention, Yes,
I've been through the tortilla TSA. We've been to the
tortilla type of thing. Uh uh subscribe. I mentioned this too,
that I am also here to help you out with
canceling your subscriptions. Time of the year right now it

(01:04:06):
is summer, sneaky subscriptions continue to ruin your budget. This
is the time of year to maybe go over everything
that you have subscribed to. Like I said, Amazon Prime's
coming up. The reason Amazon Prime Day was coming up, specifically,
Amazon wanted to sell memberships subscription which is one hundred
and twenty five hundred and fifty bucks a year. That's

(01:04:29):
what a subscription is. Oh wait a minute, you have
a Sam's Club. Oh wait a minute, you have a Costco.
Oh wait a minute, you and then you've got all
your streamers. How many subscriptions do you need? Americans spend
more than one thousand dollars a year on subscription services.
I think people, here's a stat throwing away, well over
two hundred dollars a year that you're not using that

(01:04:53):
time statbot. Four to five US adults have paid for
one or more subscriptions in the past year. Average total
amounts spent the past year for prescriptions ninety hours a month.
That's o're a thousand bucks a year. Sixty one percent
of subscribers are rethinking they're paid subscriptions because of the economy.

(01:05:13):
You about it, streaming video, music services, retailers, gaming subscriptions,
news and media services, health and fitness services, meal kit
food delivery services, security apps kind of need that, software management,
financial apps, a lot of things that you're spending on saying.
I'm giving you ideas right now. You're like, hey, Dan,

(01:05:34):
I wonder if my wife canceled the of the Hulu
like I told you to or whatever. This is a
good time to go check out to see how do
you do it? How do you find and how do
you cancel subscriptions you don't want anymore. There's actually a
budgeting app, believe it or not, that helps you where

(01:05:54):
your money is going, so you could scale down spending
in all these categories. Actually just some budgeting apps. They
can help you identify all your subscriptions and they can
cancel them for you. I know this because I saw commercial.
What's the commercial I see on the NBA? Is it
for Rocket Money? Is that what it is? Right? Something
like that? I'm not sure. It helps people flag all
your accounts and I guess I don't know. I haven't

(01:06:15):
use it, but one click it gets rid of your
own new subscriptions. There's one way to do it, I know.
I mean, I think hopefully is Rocket Money free? I
don't even know that. Maybe another subscription. Also, here's another
way auto your bank account. Look at your credit card bill.
Odds are you're going to pay via your credit card?
Go through your credit card and if you see something recurring,

(01:06:37):
like I see an Amazon bill every single month or whatever,
is it I don't know, ten dollars twelve fifteen bucks
a month, like yeah, I know, I know, like that,
but that's really the only streamer service that I subscribe to.
I continue to steal my other's friends pass words. Just kidding,
not really, But go through your credit card statements and
if you see something come up over and over again,
you're thinking, man, when's the last time I actually went
into costco or if you when was the last time

(01:06:59):
I actually watched it? Subscription service? Cancel the dang thing, man, cancel.
So this is the time to do it. Look for
some of these apps if you want to, you know,
get better deals. Look for bundle subscriptions. For example, I
think Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN Plus. You can all three

(01:07:20):
get those in one three bundle, something like seventeen bucks
a month. If you use something like Apple Music, they
offer you know, maybe you know, maybe Apple Music, you
get free with some unlimited calling plan. I think Total Wireless,
like Total Wireless. I think at the high end plan,
they gave me a full year of Disney Plus. I
use Total Wireless. That's great, by the way, use it

(01:07:44):
that way. But again, downtime, middle of the summer, it's hot,
as you know what, cancel some of your subscriptions. Don't
cancel this show. One more segment to now hang in.
You could do it people. It is the High Tech
Dection Show with me Michael Garfield.

Speaker 7 (01:08:21):
We made it.

Speaker 5 (01:08:23):
Final few minutes of the High Tech Textan Show, the
last show of the weekend of the last weekend in June,
which means we are, I guess coming up in a
few days. We are halfway through Happy Hour of twenty
twenty five. Where did a year go? It flew by
so fat? No I didn't. This time is moving slower

(01:08:45):
and slower. The world is just so jacked up, and
I am the only voice of reason. Michael Garfield. That
is my voice. Thank you for listening. Thank you also
to Callum and Will for keeping the show on the air.
Brian Erickson, iHeartRadio program chief across the state of Texas.
Thank you for Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Terrest. Really listening
to this show. If you're in Austin, I do have

(01:09:07):
an Austin presence. If you watch every Monday morning on
Fox seven, that is me. That's what I look like.
I do it technology segments. I need to what are
you doing this coming? We Oh, that's right. This coming Monday,
if you're in Austin. I taped a piece of a
robot lawnmower. It'll run this Monday, I think seven forty

(01:09:29):
five am on Fox seven in Austin. I will then
put it on my high tech texting dot com and
YouTube channels. But I tested out a lawnmower where you
don't have to do a dang thing except download the
app and charge it up and it goes. I'll say
it again, where was this when I was a kid? Man?
I had to grow up. When I grew up, ma'am,

(01:09:51):
my parents maybe mow the lawn bag then didn't know, No,
don't need to do that all. Is it worth the
twenty five one hundred dollars the version I tested, I
will will tell you that. So that's my Austin tip.
I got to Austin at least once a month to
actually tape these things, and I missed it this month.
But when I go in a few weeks, I apparently
am going to see another driverless ride sharing service because Tesla.

(01:10:17):
Welcome to the gang. Tesla launched a robo taxi service
just a few days ago in Austin. There's anybody seen
those yet they I've seen some videos of them. They
look pretty cool. Not a Tesla fan for safe they
look they're testing with a very small number of cars,

(01:10:39):
and they're testing them with a human person actually sitting
in there in the passenger seat. They're not doing anything
other than monitor but maybe they've got a chicken break
or something that'll help it. I understand the company's caution
seems for the best because I think one robo taxi
from Tesla attempted to drive on the wrong side of
the road already. Has anybody done this? My cousins from

(01:11:04):
Atlanta were in town this past week. They got two
cute little kids, and they had said they were in
San Francisco not long ago, and they took way Moo,
the driverless Waymo, everywhere they thought. The kids thought they
were in Disneyland. They loved it. It is a crazy
experience when you sit and let a nobody, a robot,

(01:11:24):
a ghost drive you around. But it's also freaky. It's like,
excuse me, driver, can I get out?

Speaker 3 (01:11:32):
No?

Speaker 5 (01:11:32):
Uh, ain't no one there to talk to. So you're
gonna see more and more of these things. Waymo also
operates in Austin. I was in Austin. I did see
there's any one called Zeusk. I think it is is
that the Amazon went Austin. It's it's it's it's it's
a betting ground for the state of I mean, they've
been in California for a while, but Austin. Maybe it's
so progressive that it's like, you know, all these new

(01:11:55):
tech That's why I have a technology segment Austin. There's
so many tech oriented things. It works well. But also
Texas is relatively simple the state of text with it
is simple to get a license for robotaxis. You just
need to make sure that the cars actually passed inspection
and then you're ready to go. You don't have to
jump through hoops. That's why Tesla, which is Elon Musk,

(01:12:16):
which is based in Houston, which is based in Austin area. Anyway,
they decided let's just roll it out in Austin. But
I thought that was needed. So if anybody is I'm
not going to give out the phone number anymore. But
that's another one that was out there. Speaking of which,
what's Michael driving? I do get the test drive cars.
This past week I was in two cars, one of

(01:12:38):
which was the Buick Invista. I'll say it again. I
tried it last year. Buick Invista was my favorite car
of the entire year. Every year I get to test
drive cars. I get him for one week. This is
not sponsored, They're not through a dealership. I get them
directly for the manufacturer. I am very lucky. I've done
this for fifteen years. I've tested you Haven over one
thousand cars. I don't even have my own car because
I get a new one every week to drive. Buick

(01:12:59):
and Vista relatively inexpensive. It's in the thirty thousands. It's
a kind of a sedan four door, comfy, good tech drives. Well,
didn't have the biggest sized engine, but it does get
you from A to B where you want to go.
I just loved it. This was the Avanir Buick Avanir
that's kind of the higher end luxurious that has, you know,

(01:13:19):
a little bit more things built in with the seats
and everything. Buick Investor. Man, I know times are tight,
budgets whatever. If you're thinking of a car, if you're
thinking of one that you want a comfy ride and
you don't want to spend an armored leg because you know,
cars are not cheap nowadays. Take a look at you.
I think Buick has done over the past three four, five,
six years with the brand. It's great invest to E

(01:13:41):
n V I s TA definitely like that, absolutely like that.
Also was in a Toyota land Cruiser. I haven't been
historically a big Toyota guy. A lot of the Toyota
in my mind when you sit in it's very plastically
the land Cruiser. It's big. It's that their biggest vehicle

(01:14:01):
yet it is a Mama suv. It holds a ton
of stuff, especially when you put that third road down.
It is actually the second second road down. It is big.
Ah handles well still, you know, I'm knocking on the plastic.
You know, there's not a lot of wood grain. They
keep it down. But it's not the most it's not
the cheapest thing ever. But if you're a Toyota fan,
Toyota does hold its value. Toyota is a Texas base

(01:14:24):
now in the United States company and you may want
to look at that too. So those are the two
I had from an suv into the more for a
typical four door Sudan thing. So that's one of the
things I roll. Finally, last email of the week, here
we go. What do I got? Hey, Garth heard you're
talking about your blizzard. You said there's five new blizzards.
What are the treats? Because I love me some blizzards. Well,
all right, that is from Janet. Janet, I love me

(01:14:46):
some blizzards too.

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):
Here we go.

Speaker 5 (01:14:48):
They came into the studio last week. They brought at
the twenty twenty five summer Blizzard treats. There's five of them,
one of which some'mores marshmallow chocolate bars, gram crackers. Good.
I'm gonna give it on a one to five. I'm
gonna give that a three. Not a big marshamallow fan.

(01:15:08):
I do like the the grahm crackery type of thing.
Not enough chocolate, you have to have chocolate to get
a five out of five. Number two, they brought in
a confetti cake blizzard. Woo, little cake pieces, confetti frosting,
little birthday action over there. Good vanilla ish didn't have
enough chocolate. We give that three and a half. Dipped

(01:15:31):
strawberry cheesecake blizzard. Cheese cake pieces in there, chunks of
chocolate strawberry topping. Give that one a four. Different mixes
in a little sweetness, a little fruit. So I got
my fruit. Finally. Now there's two more cotton candy. Cotton
candy blizzard, cotton candy sprinkles pretty much with their white

(01:15:54):
ice cream two, two and a half. Do you like
cotton candy? Get it? Not a big cotton handy guy.
Last one here it comes five out of five. The
mixing bowl mashup Blizzard. What do you say is in
the mixing bowl mashup blizzard? Oh it's only a blend

(01:16:15):
of brownie batter and chocolate chip cookie dough for the win.
I rate my Blizzards people best dessert in history, ma'am. Sorry,
that's the way he goes. Would have got a six
on a scale of five and dead peanut butter man
deal mixing bowl mash up. There you go. Just it's
public service, not paid don a commercial, but able to
tice tho DQ people to actually bring it into the

(01:16:37):
studio with that show, is ober? I need to go
run another didn't least six to eight miles after everything
I've eaten this week? Whatever you do, have a good
upcoming July for holiday.

Speaker 3 (01:16:47):
We will have a.

Speaker 5 (01:16:48):
Show next week in too, like we always do. It
will be halfway through at the end of the year.
I do want to thank my good friends Calum and
Will keeping us on the air making the sound sex eight.
This is my real voice. This is not a Burt
Reynolds AI and this that reference. Go back and listen
to the podcast. People can make theres some scary things
out there. People pray for our world. Pray in the
second half. There's a lot better than the first half.

(01:17:09):
My name is Garth. I go great first weekend and
week of July. Fucking next weekend because right now my
show is oh Lie