Once and for all: Is your phone listening to you?

Today on the High Tech Texan Show:

• Once and for all: Is your phone listening to you?
• How to hide your number when calling someone and how to reverse number lookup
• Amazon is ending a big benefit for prime numbers at the end of September.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Is Michael garfil of Michael Garfield.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Michael Garfield's joining.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
In the high Tech Texan. Michael Garfield is here with
a high Tech Texans.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
It has to make life easier new technology, and Michael
Garfield has something you might like.

Speaker 1 (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 your high Tech Texan, Michael Garfield.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Labor day has come and gone. School has started. Football
has been scanned on every level. Imaginable, folks, it is September. Body,
yadi yadi yah. Michael Garfield does that big voice. Is
this is the long running, twenty three years high tech Texan.

(01:10):
Yes you feel yeah, hear my voice. It's football season,
our long long hot summer. Well it's officially still summer,
at least in Texas. If you just go outside, it's
over because football season has started. And that's really what
I live for, and that's what we live for. We
also live for some real good information when it comes
to consumer lifestyle, technology and cars and news and products,

(01:34):
and that's the purpose of this show. But I'm also
purposely here to kill two hours of time. With you,
hence the phone number. It is a call in show.
The last time I've checked. Love to hear from you
with your thoughts. Say yes it could be football, Yes
it could be snacks and with the watch during football, cocktails,
to mix, restaurants, to go to, places to travel. I'm
just your buddy. I'm just your friend who just is

(01:56):
just devoid of politics and try to have a lot
of fun. Three four six two nine eight three nine
two six at three four six twenty nine, Texan. Welcome
to everybody across the airwaves. Airwaves in Houston KPRC nine fifty,
San Antonio News Radio twelve hundred WOAI, and Dallas hometown.

(02:18):
What is up? My parents probably are listening, maybe not
Talk Radio eleven ninety. If you're not in any of
those markets, you are listening to me on the I
Heart Radio app, and I do thank you for downloading that.
You can take me and my podcast and then this
radio show, which we will put on the podcast when
it's done wherever you go. Things we are talking about today, Yes,

(02:38):
we're going to get into a little football season where
you should right now listen. If it's Saturday morning, you're
listening to this, be watching the University of Texas Longhorns
football game. You should be at Patterson Park in Houston,
I ten, near Shepherd just north of IT ten. It
is the official semi It's my official UT Longhorn watch party.
Last week man wall to wall, NonStop, burn orange. The

(03:03):
outcome not what we wanted, and I'm fine with that.
I was not actually upset with the the loss last
week to Ohio State. And I'm not blaming any specif
I won't even you know, get into which quarterback who
it is, I actually may blame the play calling a
little conservative on the Longhorn side, doesn't matter. It's the

(03:23):
Longhorn versus San Jose State, and you know, you just
that's that's a rivalry literally written like any other eleven
o'clock kickoff, and so potentially, now if you're listening to
the show twenty two to five Patterson Street, go check
that out. We are going to talk about a few things,
including I got a number of emails for some reason
this week about phones, about dialing. People want to know,

(03:47):
you know, hey, Michael, does do Star sixty seven still
work on cell phones? If I want to call somebody
and hide my phone number and somebody else's email me.
They want to know how to are the There are
other ways to reverse look up a phone number other
than Google. I don't know why. I mean, we're going
back to like telephone one oh one or something over here. Yes,

(04:09):
I will answer those questions. I've got that little news
from Amazon that you may not be happy about how
they are ending some of their shipping benefits quite soon.
That's not good or as we say in the business,
ah ship and that's as hip friends, and so do
not please do not call the the FCC. I may

(04:31):
also why you shouldn't take your phone in the bathroom.
I saw a very interesting article on this, and I've
got my thoughts on this, and I could debate about
this plus your phone calls. What's Michael driving this week?
Every week I do get to test drive a car
from a manufacturer, and I will tell you what that
was this past week. May have a gift card or

(04:53):
two to give away thanks to my good friends at
Cabo Bob's. And a little chat on AI. AI Artificial
intelligence is something that I don't talk about or cover
on a regular basis. It is moving at lightning speed.
There are so many different AI chat bots. You may
feel threatened. You may be scared of them. I am

(05:17):
using it more and more to do some interesting things.
But I'm gonna tell you a real world task, kind
of a fun little thing that I did with AI
on my phone earlier this week that kind of blew
me away, kind of blew me away. If you've ever
had done something or used AI that is like, Man,
this is pretty stupid, this is pretty cool, this is

(05:39):
pretty scary. I love you to join the show again.
Three four six twenty nine. Textan is the phone number,
And if you're too shy to talk, gosh, Michael, I
don't want you yelling of me. That's the wrong Michael.
I don't yell at you at all. I'm the nice guy.
You can also email me Michael at High Tech Texan.
You could bop me a note on x Facebook or

(06:01):
if you're my friend, or if I haven't blocked you
on Instagram. H I G H T E C H
T E x A.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
N uh.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Where do we even start? Where do we gonna start? Yeah?
The phone number thing is for perplexing. When when I
was a kid, when we had wired phones with no
area codes, needed that with a little pigtail between the
receiver and the actual phone handset. This is when I
was in high school and in college. Uh, that's antiquated, folks,

(06:31):
and I'm dating myself with that. You could do a
number of things like block your phone number. So if
you do have you know, phone callor ID on some
of the new fangled you know, wireless phones, you know
your phone number will show up. And there was a
little code called Star sixty seven. If you pick up

(06:53):
your phone, there's a star at the bottom what is
I don't even know is it at the bottom ride
at bottom there's there's the pound sign, which is now
hashtag sign, but the star sign it's actually the bottom
left the bottom left hand side, there's a star, there's
a zero, and then there's the pound hashtag sign. So
if you hit Star six seven to make a call,
So you hit Star six to seven, dial the phone

(07:15):
number whoever you want to call. Your phone number is
blocked so no one can see you calling. That was
back in the day, and then cell phones came along
and somebody just email me, hey man, this Star six
seven still works. Yes, it does. It does. If you
dial Star six to seven, you go ahead try it.
You can go ahead and try to call my phone
number here at the radio station hit Star sixty seven

(07:38):
three four six two nine eight three nine two six.
I don't care because I'm not actually looking who's calling.
So that's just it proves worthless over there. But if
you want to hide your number there, there still is
a way actually to do it, along with a few
other things too. Number one, go to your settings, scroll
down to your phone, tap show my coller and you

(08:01):
can actually turn it off. You don't even need to
deal Star sixty seven. You could turn your caller ID
off and you could do that. That's how to do
it with an iPhone. You can also do it with
your Android phone phone settings, calling accounts, tap on your
simcard advance settings and then color I d pretty much
look for color ID and it hides your number. I

(08:21):
don't know why you want to hide your netway, actually
I probably would, you know, calling it an next girl friend,
next boyfriend, or something like maybe maybe. So that's one
way to turn it off. You still can classically dial
Star sixty seven. It works. You could also get a
number of different burner apps that you can use to
contact people without providing your actual number. Google Voice, for example.

(08:43):
That's a free one one of the most annoying parts
of the monitor of smartphone is all the spam calls
and texts. Cell phone company, smartphone manufacturers, they're aware of
this and they're working to make it easy. You actually
can help with that. You can silence unknown callers. I
personally do not pick up a phone unless I know
who is calling. Let it roll to voicemail, then I'll

(09:05):
call him back. If you have an iPhone, go to
your phone settings, hit calls, and there's something called silence
unknown callers. Silence turn it on, simple as that. Android
devices phone more options, look for the color ID and
spam and hit filter spam calls. Is it gonna stop everything?
Possibly not, but let's leave it to the big carriers

(09:27):
over to try to stop these things. And so yeah,
new school, I bet you didn't even know about this.
I bet you forgot about it. But yes, you can
actually turn off your caller ID. Just be nice and
don't hang up on people. Just if you do get somebody.
If you do get a call and you don't know
who's from, or it says the calls blocked me, I
don't answer. It's as simple as that. We will callum.

(09:47):
You're gonna answer. You dial three four six two nine
eight three nine right now, Callum's gonna answer. But if
he doesn't and it rolls over to voicemail because he's
so busy, leave a message and we have the right
to play it, answer seem or just say hi. Michael
is the name Michael Barfield's Die but Deck, the show
coming right back first weekend Exceptember Body, Michael Garfield's high

(10:30):
tech texting show for longtime listeners that I've been doing
the show for twenty three years right now, mostly in
Houston on k PRC nine to fifty, and I've got
my regular listeners and it's radio has changed, just like
most all mediums over the years. And if you're a
longtime listener, you knew all of my bump music. I love.

(10:56):
Bump music is the music where you come back in
from a commercial and it's you know, it's just instead
of just coming in cold high it's Michael Garfield. You know,
you play a little music. Well back in the day
when when iHeartRadio or even Clear Channel Radio didn't care
and had license for everything over the air, I would
pick my own bump music and it was always eighties music.

(11:18):
I'm an eighties guy. And I I really and I want.
I don't want to brag, but I'm bragg I am
the king of eighties music. I know most every single
song that was released in the eighties. It was a
sweet spot of my teenage years and early college years.
I listened to Casey Kasem's Top forty every single week.
That's the reason I got into radio. I knew the
big peak position of most every single song that charted,

(11:41):
I knew the backstory of it is just whatever. So
if I'm talking about a subject, I would actually really
use a fun segue, a play on words or something.
So if I was talking about, you know, privacy, how
to keep your security, you know, with your computer, I
would I would, you know, tell my producer, hey play
private eyes Hall and Oates, you know, just it's something

(12:02):
like that. Fast forward to right now where iHeart has
no freaking production money whatsoever. Look at me, I'm like
David Letterman, I'm ragging on my bosses. And with the
advent of podcasts, where we now can't use commercial songs
that we all know as bump music because we then

(12:23):
immediately take the show and we put it on podcasts.
But we are too cheap to actually play for the
podcasting rights, and I think that's the business behind what's
going on. So I can't play songs. What I'm getting
at it's September. Every single show I did in September
opened up and bumped three out of the eight times

(12:44):
of my show with Earth, Wind and Fire September. One
of my longtime listeners, he may be listening right now,
Dump truck Dan, love you, my man. I haven't talked
to you in a while. He actually emails me once
every few weeks because he's listening to the show, Dump
Truck Dan. Could I stand that he would call in
every time I played it with his sexy, gravelly voice,

(13:05):
Mark all right, dance on, man, I can't wait to
September ends, And then of course I would play green Day,
Wake me up? You know when September in any when
you hear that I can't sing September, I don't know,
calm Can I sing it? Would we get danged by
the FCC or iHeart body dancing in September. I may
get fired people, because I actually I may turn Actually

(13:28):
I probably just lost half my listeners with my singing
Happy September. What that was? That was a three minute
story that killed time. Yes, I am a professional people,
that's what we do. I tell stories. I make you laugh,
I make you think. And yes, I wish I really
could play the bup music be as it did add
a lot. One of the things that I'm talking slowly

(13:49):
more and more about nowadays is AI artificial intelligence chat GPT.
There's just in Those are just the AI bots that
you can use on your computer and use on your
phone and apps. AI is everywhere. Yes, you may think
it's scary. Yes, you may think it's taking jobs away.
You're not sure about it. It changes all the time.
I don't use it all that much. You know. Maybe

(14:11):
I've played around with it with some opening headlines of
scripts that I writing, a rerote or whatever. I think.
One time I did something live in the year about
two years ago. I had it write a Mother's Day
gift card from my mom, and I put in some
things and it spit something out immediately. It was pretty cute.
So someone ordered a pizza on chat GPT. This is

(14:33):
not an endorsement whatsoever. It's just I guess it was CHATCHPT.
It may have been another one. Somebody put it typed it.
Apparently there's a pizza place in New York that works
now with an AI where you can order a pizza
via AI. This is one of those cases like why
I'm reading the I'm reading the article here. It took
like six minutes to order. Bro listen, I'm all about tech.

(14:58):
But you could pick up a phone order and the
thing would be in the oven within the first six minutes. Okay,
So I don't know why they did. I think I
know they're just testing the whole thing out. And then
I got the question, is you know, do you really
want to give your credit card and you know type
that into the AI. I mean, there's a lot of
things that I don't know why, you know, just because
you can. I don't know why you want to do it,
But anyway, someone did that. I tried something real world

(15:19):
the other day. So I have an Android, all right,
So I actually have a Samsung. I gonna tell you
which one doesn't matter. So anyway, Samsung has its own
on board app called Gemini. All right, Samsung Gemini, And
if you have a Samsung phone, right, you don't even
need a just Samsung phone. You get downloaded. It's free
and it's AI cool stuff and the newest version like

(15:40):
two point five. I think it's called Banana or Nana
or something like that. I was reading how it could
play with use your camera and answer questions, and actually
I think I saw a TV commercial on it, so
in no way I wanted to try it. So I
guess it was last week. I went into my closet
and I'm a close guy. I love clothes. I wouldn't

(16:02):
I dress up sometimes I'm always on stage. I always
wear a nice custom sport coat. I'd have different colors.
I have nice, you know, pants, ath leisure pants, cool
shoes and everything shirts. So I was trying to like,
there was this three day event I was in seeing
and I wanted to get some outfits. So I opened
up my Gemini AI and I'm in my closet. So

(16:25):
I held up a shirt and it was kind of
was it a pink shirt shirt shrews or something like that.
And I held up the camera and it was live.
I didn't even take a picture, and then I hit
a button that says talk, and I said, I didn't
even have to say Gemini anything. I said, find me
a sport coat that matches this shirt, and then I

(16:50):
point the Then I put the shirt down and I
pointed this camera still at all my sport coats lining
up left to right, and I got another lot of
them within seconds. This voice comes over this lady, because
that's who the voice it was, I could change the voice.
It says that shirt goes best with the fifth, the

(17:11):
sport coat, the fifth from the left on your clothing rack.
I mean I was blown away. I mean the AI
using the camera. It looked at the color of it.
It looked at the shading of the colors to see
what come matches. It knew it was the fifth one
hanging from the left. And at that point I started

(17:34):
having some fun. I'm like, no way, so in a way,
I'm now playing in my closet, like I took a
pair of shoes and there were older pair of Nike
shoes that somebody commented their burnt orange because I bought
them years ago. Somebody said, asked me if those were
Kobe Bryant shoes stuff, and I'm like, no, I don't

(17:54):
think so. I think I got these at the discount
shelf of Ross about it ten years ago, so do I.
I point the camera in my closet at these burnt
orange Nike shoes that are ten years old, and I said,
what am I looking at? And within seconds you're looking
at and they weren't Kobe Bryant. You're looking at a
pair of Nike shoes from whatever line it was, and

(18:17):
it wasn't anything famous. We wasn't Kobe or anything like that.
And roughly when they were made, which was about ten
years ago, and now I'm freaking out right now. And
then I'm like, what color are they? And they gave
me the specific state of orange. It wedn't burn orange,
but it was like some PMS color or something like that.
It is crazy, but if you want to try it,
I mean, listen, there may be other AI bots like this.

(18:39):
And again I wouldness this. I really wish Samsung was
paying me because I don't talk about them anymore because
I'm not too happy with Samsung lately right now. But anyway,
it's the Samsung Jim and I chat live view. Make
sure you're using the least one and just pointed at something.
What am I looking at? I mean you could point
it at an engine under a hood and say can
you fix this? Or what's up it is? It's pretty amazing,

(19:01):
pretty amazing, craziest things that you have done. With AI.
Keep it clean. People, I'd love to hear from you.
Use that same cell phone and call me three four
six two nine eight three nine two six, pop me
an email or find me online on social at high
Tech Decks and Hi g h TC. Mister Garth, Michael Garfield.
We're gonna come right back bottom of hour number one.

(19:47):
We have two hours here people, not even I guess
what we're We're about a quarter away through happy hour?
Is that how we look at it? Happy Hour? Right
now Patterson Park in Houston for the University of Texas
Longhorn Watch Party Texas versus San Jose State. Hopefully they're
going to do outcomes a little bit better than last week.

(20:07):
You're listening or driving around pop over. Maybe I'll buy
you a beer Baby Dot but a lot of burn Orange.
Twenty two oh five Patterson Street, Patterson at Ien which
is right next to Sheppard at it on the north side.
It is mister Garfield, call me Garth g r F.
First four letters of my last name, which is Garfields.

(20:28):
You know I've been told I'm not a big Amazon guy.
I have Amazon. I use it for prime video certainly
now football season, there's some Thursday night games on Amazon.
I don't buy a ton of stuff. I will say this.
Over the past month, month into two, I have I
think bought like two or three things, which is a
lot for me on Amazon. I'm still og guy. I

(20:51):
still like going to stores trying things on. But also
I wanted immediately. I mean, yes, I know. I mean again,
if I have ADHD, it's tough for me to even wait.
Two is much less one day for the shipping thing.
So I've been using more and more and it's yes,
I understand the convenience. Yes, I know I can click
a button, I could track it where it is. My
doorbell rings the next day. Yes, you could do it

(21:13):
sometimes that in a few hours the next day or two,
delivered it in. It's set to go. It works pretty
well in terms of shipping. Breaking news people, if you
really do like you're shipping, and sometimes you happen to
maybe just potentially share your Amazon accounts with people outside
of your house with a different address so they can

(21:34):
order things. To countdown as on it is on for
October first, we are less than a month away. Amazon
is axing the program. Axing axing. It's ova they're acting
the fact that they can let Prime members share their
free shipping perk with people outside of their household. They're

(21:55):
cutting off the Prime benefit sharing on October first, prompting
invitees who don't live with the account holder to guess what,
sign up for their own damn subscription at the low
litgo discounted fourteen dollars ninety nine rate for one year.

(22:16):
Now that's interesting. Fifteen bucks for a year first year,
then it's fifteen bucks a month after that to share
an account to have your own address interesting. It's called
Amazon Family, so it lets account holders share Prime benefits,

(22:37):
but only with people that they live with. Generally, this
program says everyone in a family must live at the
same primary residential address. It's similar to what we've seen
with streaming services that have cracked down on passwords sharing.
Amazon is likely ending the program. Obviously has a way

(22:59):
to show up new subscribers. They work for Netflix. Netflix.
It's very tough to actually use someone else's user name
and password outside of your home account, because they want
you to subscribe for yourself instead of barring your friends
or your families. And guess what I think. Within the
first month or two or three, they signed up millions.

(23:20):
I believe of new subscribers bottom line and work for
them for their bottom line. I think it was reported,
it was a Router's reporter that Amazon didn't meet Prime
sign up goals in the United States during its extended
Prime Day event in July. And that's really one of
the primary reasons for having a Prime Day. They want
to actually have people sign up for Amazon Prime. It's

(23:42):
just going to change the way of shop. I mean, hell,
I mean what do I pay? I pay sixteen bucks
a month. I think and again that it's me. It's
my Prime account. Nobody else is on it. It comes
to my address, and I often wonder is it worth
What am I paying sixteen dollars for? That's what one
hundred and fifty nine hundred and sixty nine bucks a

(24:03):
year or whatever it is. No, actually it's more than that.
But I don't really use it that much to shop.
I do watch Amazon Prime. Over the summer, I didn't
watch a number of things. By it is football season
now that comes Thursday night games and some special games
you know here and there too. Talking you out of

(24:24):
Amazon and I'm not in it or any of these
subscription services. But I also belonged to Costco, and I
also belonged to Sam's at the end of the day.
To some extent, Amazon is the same thing. There are clubs,
there are shopping clubs. They're membership clubs. And as much
as I tell you, hey, I know you probably have

(24:45):
more streaming services than you know of, and you need
you need on a regular basis to assess count and
maybe start deleting or unsubscribe me to some of these
streaming services. Oh wait a minute, I forgot I had
Disney Plus. Wait a minute, I still have Hulu and
Amazon On and Netflix and Apple Plus. I mean, it
goes on and on and on. You may not use

(25:05):
them all because at some at some point, you are
paying more than an entire cable subscription service. But then
there's the other ones. Don't forget. You may have Costco,
and you may have Sam's Club. You may have Walmart Plus,
and you may have Amazon just to shop. Wait a minute,
that makes four of them now I just named alone.

(25:27):
Do you use them all? I am the ultimate consumer.
I love I was telling somebody that today I love
grocery stores. I love walking through grocery stores. I used
to do all the shopping for my family back when
the kids were young, and you know, get all the
lunch applies and get everything. It keeps me in the

(25:47):
know of what's happening in the consumer world. I'm also
again because of my little short attention spam. I look
at the colors, I kind of smell some of the smells.
I look at some of the off brands. I look
at prices. That's why I I mean again, I grew
up on the price is right. I could win all
the prices right because I knew exactly how much a

(26:09):
can tomato sauce was. They still do, and I know
the Hill Country Fair brand a hell a lot cheaper
than the Hindes brand. But because of what I do,
I am the I'm your consumer lifestyle guy. Yes, I
tell you, I know all this stuff about technology and
the phones and the TVs and everything, plus us of

(26:30):
the cars, but also where to shop, how to shop
the food, the shoes and all the other stuff. And
I get that because I'm always out there shopping and
looking at things. And you know, you know, somebody at
friend of mine she tells me she has anxiety of
walking into an HB just because it's so big and
there's a lot of choices, but she's okay with Sam's,
and I'm like, wait a minute. Sam's is bigger than

(26:54):
AGB and much taller ceilings, so you're not claustrophobic. And
I don't know, she just thinks that. She just thinks
there's more ionems than an HGB in terms of the
physical brands and the shelves everything. I even pound for pound,
you know, maybe so, But I don't know where I
was going with this thing. But I love getting out there.
I love shopping. And that's why I'd like to say, well,

(27:16):
take what I say with the grain of salt, but
trust me, Costco, Sam's, Amazon, Walmart plus all this stuff.
Do you need them all? And now that Amazon is
changing or ending free shipping outside your home, is that
a big plus for you? Is that a minus for you?
Just trying to save you money people, because at the
end of the day, it's going to be the holiday season.

(27:36):
You're gonna send me a gift with all the money
you've saved, with all my advice, Still holding my breath
for twenty three years for that stuff. That's what's happening.
When we come back, do we talk cars? Oh my,
who's the I keep giving you a countdown the EV,
the Electric Vehicle tax credit. The deadline looms more people

(27:57):
are rushing, well maybe they're walking and you know, driving
and using their gas to go. Potentially look at it
EV to get one before the seventy five one hundred
dollars tax credit expires and vanishes just weeks away. I'll
tell you how you can kind of potentially circumvent that
deadline to give you a little bit more time. That,
my friends, is called the teas and radio. That's why

(28:18):
I'm still here two decades later, at least I like
to think so. Michael Garfield, the high Tech text and
shit acknowledge you travel the spirits industry. That means liquor,

(28:54):
bourbon or whatever, food, clothing bars. I am your guy.
It's the high Tech Texan show. Michael has my name,
been doing it for well over two decades. I get
to test drive things, I get to play with gadgets.
I get to give you my truly truly inner feelings
and thoughts. Because none of this, really, none of it.

(29:15):
No company actually pays me to tell you if it's
a good laptop, bad laptop, good car, bad car, So
you can you can honestly trust me, and I do.
Thank you for that trust for twenty three years or so.
Phone number here if you have questions. Back to Seeah,
back to school. We're pretty much in swing of things,
other things like that, I am your guy. I love
hearing from you, so it stops me from talking to
myself in the wall. Three four six two nine eight

(29:39):
three nine two three four six twenty nine textan is
how you can get it. Thanks for listening rustly in Houston, Dallas,
and San Antonio and then online on the iHeartRadio app
wherever you go. I do test drive cars, and every
week I get to test drive something for one week,
not from a dealership, but directly from the manufacturer. Tons

(29:59):
of different manufacturers. You name a manufacturer. Over fifteen years
and a thousand different vehicles, I have probably driven most
all of it. What was Garth driving in this past week.
I was in a brand new twenty twenty five Kia
Sorrento Hybrid SX Prestige. That's a mouthful pretty much. I

(30:21):
was in a Kia Sorrento and it was a hybrid one.
I'm a big hybrid fan. I would choose a hot
me myself at the Lifestyle in the minute the moment
where I am in my life, I would choose a
hybrid over an EV and over a gas powered car.
Hybrids get a very good, strong miles per gallon fuel economy,

(30:43):
maybe not as good as the miles per gallon equivalency
of an electric vehicle. But I'm just not a in
the mode of my life right now to be an
electric vehicle where all of a sudden, I just want
to hop in the car, drive to Dallas, drive to Austin.
I don't want to stop somewhere and wait an hour
and a half, two hours, three hours maybe to see
if it charges up. I just that's just not me.
Hybrids are big, so I love the fact they're hybrid vehicles,

(31:05):
and I love really giving them the once over. I'm
a Kia fan. Also, I was in South Korea a
few years ago. Man Key is every key is in
Samsung everywhere in South Korea. He is a good brand.
I have three boys, well, my oldest son, he's had
two Kias since he's had a driver's license, not for
about fifteen years. They're good or good warranties. The Sorrento

(31:26):
is an suv. It is a three row suv. It's
not the largest three row suv. In fact, that third
row is not as not as big as you want,
so you're not gonna get a full sized person, like
a six foot tall me back there. But I like
driving it around. I love the features. It has a
one point six liter turbocharged power train. It's gonna give

(31:47):
you about two hundred and twenty seven horse power. It's
not gonna break land speed records, but it's a kiya.
It is solid. It's gonna get you where you want
to go, and it's going to give you. According to
the Monroney thirty four miles per gallon, all right, thirty
four in the city, thirty four in the highway. Pretty much.
I'm not a mathematician, but the average is thirty four
miles per gallon. That is not bad. It is not bad.

(32:09):
Get inside. It was comfortable, very roomy. In the front,
has a twelve inch panorana display with the navigation, had
everything from the dual zone automatic and climate controlled anti
you know, auto defoggery type of thing. Second row captain chairs,
and somebody made a comment about that, generally you're gonna
get a second row, it's gonna be a bench seat.

(32:29):
I like the captain's chairs. It just seemed more roomy.
There is an option also to you know, to get
that captain row, but one touch slides and folds that
second row so you can get back into the third row.
The wheels are really cool. I love they did it.
Key doesn't really neat jobs with wheels, nineteen inch alloy wheels.
It was really nice. It's not an electric, but it's

(32:51):
it was good. I would get this because it's hybrid
and I think keys are solid. I'm not going to again,
this is not a paid endorsement. This is my thoughts
I am. I'm not going to tell you a dealership
to go to. I don't even know a Kiler dealership.
There's a few knocks and dings I could have on
this thing too, but that's my quick review. Maybe the
ding is a little pricey. Forty nine thousand dollars okay

(33:13):
for the way I drove this one. This was the
surrent of the hybrid. This is also the SX Prestige
all wheel drive version, which you know, kind of upset
about three thousand dollars or so with some other cool things.
Now it's not an EV talk about EV's. A lot
of people want EV's. There's a lot of talk, and
there's a lot of chatter of people going to their
dealerships right now in September to hurry up and buy

(33:37):
it electric vehicle because the federal tax credit is going
to vanish at the end of this month September thirtieth,
seventy five one hundred dollars EV tax credit is gonzo,
So if you're thinking about buying an EV, you better
make up your mind. In a few weeks could save
you thousands of dollars. That was part of the big

(33:58):
beautiful bill that was signed on July fourth. It was
previously scheduled to expire in twenty third thirty two. Now
it's this September. Tax credit provides up to seventy five
hundred dollars back on purchases of new evs four thousand
dollars for used evs. But politics whatever gone, but the

(34:20):
EV credits expiration sets up a weird end for this
year for the auto industry. A lot of challenges that's
coming on from the tariff policy that is happening right now.
But there was a recent rule decision by the IRS
that makes this deadline a little easier to meet. Instead
of having to receive delivery of the electric vehicle by

(34:44):
September thirtieth in order to claim the EV tax credit.
The irsays that you only need to complete the purchase
before the end of the month. Then you can take
delivery that could potentially give you a little breathing r
right now. The FED provides a credit of up to
seventy five hundred dollars for a new EV plug in

(35:08):
hybrid or a fuel sell electric vehicle. Now, the credit
split into two parts. There's a thirty seven to fifty
credit each if the vehicle meets requirements for the sourcing
of the materials for the battery components and whatever. Some
vehicles have to qualify some of them market to qualify
all of the seventy five hundred dollars. Do your research.

(35:29):
Bottom line, should you buy an EV now before the
credit ends. Do not rush into a big purchase just
because a tax credit is ending. Okay, the fact that
evs are coming down in price, it's often similar when
you consider the total cost of ownership to the price
of a gas powered car. Also consider the not every

(35:51):
EV qualifies for this credit. Anyway, the one you're looking
at may not change in pricing. That's where research comes in.
Don't let this moment overwhelm you. Har buying could be
a good thing. I'll leave you with this as we
get here to the top of the hour. If you're
looking at an EV and you're thinking one, I have
driven a ton of.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
From the Cadillac Lyric to the Cadillac Optique that quite
specific a pheb on GMC, Sierra EV, the just the
Kia EV six, which I'm a big fan of.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
There's a lot of them out there, and a lot
of them you applied to the ones I just listen.
It does have a credit of about seventy five hundred dollars.
Holp me an email Michael at high tech textan dot
com spelled the whole thing out. Maybe I can guide
you with my thoughts, just kind of tell me what
specifically you're looking for and what you want to be
full And that's right, That's what I do. Howur number
one officially OVA coming up. Sixty more minutes are fun,

(36:44):
including ware for this is your phone listening to you.
I know you think it is. I know how you
talk about something and you see an ad on social media.
I saw an article that absolutely dispels that. Mmer and
I'm a skeptic. We'll debate that are took you listening
to me? Michael Garfi.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
Is Michael Garfer, Michael Garfield, Michael Garfields joining.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
In the high Tech Textan.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Michael Garfield is here with a high Tech Texans to make.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Life easier system technology and Michael garfil has something you
might want.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
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 2 (37:57):
Wherever you are, however you may be listening over the air,
online on the podcast. It just doesn't matter. You are here.
Michael Garfield is the name of course high Tech Textan show.
We are just starting our number two of the second hour,
which means, by my account, we are halfway through the
end of the show, halfway to Happy Hour brought to
you by nobody. And it's funny because I just spent

(38:19):
three days last week with about one hundred and fifty
liquor and spirits brands. I we can't we can't get
someone to sponsor halfway to Happy Hour. Come on, guys,
let's get on top of this thing. Nevertheless, I am
here for you. I give you the phone number. It
is a radio program three four six twenty nine, Texan.

(38:39):
That's three four six. That's the area code two nine
eight three nine two six. For some reason, we don't
pick up the phone number one. We may be inundated
with calls. I believe a voicemail picks up, Is that right? Callum?
Voicemail picks up, and then you can leave a voicemail
and you can ask questions like, Garf, what's the cocktail
of the day? Garf? What happened to your longwards and
cowboys over the past six I'm not afraid to dance

(39:02):
of those. We do have the right to play your
voice on this radio show heard terrestrially Houston, Dallas, San
Antonio and all around the world the world on iHeartRadio.
And actually some countries because of their rules and apparently
they don't like Western culture or something, they may not
let our iHeart apps and a lot of apps work

(39:26):
that is called a VPN to get around that firewall
and things. And I learned that firsthand earlier this year.
I was in China. What is up China? Got to
go to China And the first thing that I did
well one of the first things I did is made
sure I had a VPN. What did I get? I
think there's a lot of VPNs virtual private networks, which

(39:47):
in many cases you probably should be using that here
in the United States just to actually kind of keep
things safe. I know a lot of corporations want you
to use those things. Certainly if you're banking, if you're
out on a public wife, it's download a VPN on
your phone or your laptop, your tablet or whatever. There
are free ones. I still would suck it up and

(40:10):
purchase a VPN. Some of the free ones I don't
know how how secure they are, and maybe they're not
be you maybe get some advertisements or something. What did
I buy it? I think mine was Express VPN Express VPN,
and that actually I was able to download that on
like three or four or five different devices I got,

(40:32):
you know, my home desktop, my laptop, my phone. So
a little tip between me and you. I'm getting on
a lot of I'm getting a lot. I'm getting several
emails about about phones up my use of phones, and
tricks on phones. Like last hour, somebody wrote in Hey, Garth,
remember back in the day that I wanted to hide
my phone number from my old girlfriend girlfriend and I

(40:53):
dialed Star six seven. Does that things still working? Is
this work on cell phones? Star six seven and I
bit on this If you can go back and podcast
this year soon you can listen to I think it's
segment two or three. Yes, you still can use Star
sixty seven. You hit Star six h's stars on the
bottom left hand digit on your phone Star six seven ven.

(41:14):
You dollar the area code, then the dial seven digit number.
And what it does? It hide your number so it
doesn't show Michael Garfield or whoever you know is calling you.
It'll say number blocked or something. That's one way to
do it, and I gave you a few other tips,
some tricks of how to do it. You can get
a burner phone. You can get a burner phone number two.
Somebody wrote in about reverse number look up Michael. I

(41:39):
know I can google this thing, but sometimes I just
can't find numbers. Sometimes I get a call from a
number I want to know who it is. How can
you reverse look up a phone number? There are several
ways to do this too, because in an age of
constant communication, receiving phone calls or messages from unknown numbers,
it's it's so common right now. You know, you get
a miscall with an un familiar number, a potential scam,

(42:03):
and what you do You you copy and paste that number,
the ten digit number or eleven digit number, you know,
if it's a toll free or something, and you could perform.
You could put into Google or white Pages. Sometimes it
doesn't show up. They're actually paid services. I don't have
one of these things, but I know they're out there.
One's called spoke O s p O k e O.

(42:26):
I think another one's called bin verified b e ian
ben I have been verified, been verified gives you more detail.
Freebies though, Yeah, use Google search, put in the phone number,
put in the quotation marks to search for the exact number.
So for some reason, if you want to put in
like our contest line here at the the radio station,

(42:47):
use seven one three two one two five nine five. Oh. Actually,
let me see if that I'm gonna see what pops
up seven one three two one two five nine five.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
I put it in quotes. I go to Google Search. Uh, look,
my goodness, look at that. If you are listening to
the actually my name pops up. Kenny Webster pops up.
Obviously he's another co host here at KPRC in Houston.
So anyway that works, let me try one. I'm gonna
try my parents number real quick. It's a two to
one four area code. I don't know that they've had that.

(43:18):
They've had it's their landline. They have had that number
for fifty plus years, two and four. Let's see, it
did not pop up? Say it? So sometimes even that
this number has been around for fifty years and their
name does not pop up. So again that doesn't work.

(43:38):
So there's a number of you know, other ways. There's
online directories. There's something called white pages, There's something called
true Caller. There's also you can search on social media.
Social media platforms that could be a good resource for
tracking down information about a phone number. You can search
numbers on Facebook or LinkedIn on Instagram, and that may,

(44:00):
and I say, may lead you to a profile if
someone associated it. I try my best to keep my
phone number off my social media. I don't want to
share it with I don't even think because you know,
once every month or two, facebookill pop up, Hey would
you like to put your phone number in here?

Speaker 1 (44:14):
No?

Speaker 2 (44:15):
I would not better ones with a bigger database. There's
subscription base, Reverse phone number lookup services. Let me see
if I can give you some prices over. I told
you about spoko s p O k EO. It offers
reverse phone lookup services. It searches social networks and public

(44:36):
records and other databases. You entered the phone number and
it pulls up records. A subscription is required fifteen bucks
a month. I don't know how many calls you're getting
that you really do need to research, like who was that?
I don't know if it's worth fifteen dollars a month.
That's like two streaming services for me. That's that's not
going to help. Here's another one called Intellius. I N

(44:59):
T E l I. That's a service that does look
up numbers. Two. That is okay, now we got two
bucks per lookup. Okay, that's something there. If I really
need to know just one number, I don't need to subscribe.
It's two dollars per lookup. That's called Intellius. And I'll

(45:19):
try to put these on my X account high Tech Texan.
This is I N T E l I U S Intellius.
All right. I already talked about beIN verified B E
N verified B. That's a popular one. Background check services
you put the phone number, it's going to give you
a report subscription for full excess twenty four dollars a month.

(45:40):
Who is making money off of this twenty four bucks
a month? But pretty much choose the service into the
phone number, review the results. But things to keep in
mind when using reverse phone number lookup. Not all numbers
are listed because the reverse phone lookup tools they search
public databases, which is a collection of phone number records

(46:03):
that are legally available for any one to access landline
or mobile. Also, sometimes you're not going to get a
lot of mobile phone lines, and there's accurate accuracy issues.
The data provided by free services can it's sometimes incomplete
or accurate. I literally I just told you. I googled
my parents' number, which has been around on a landline
for fifty plus years. They didn't show up right now.
There's also privacy concerns. Some reverse phone look up services

(46:25):
ask for your own details like your name and your
email address and even payment information before they show you results.
So if you're trying to see a college you remember
that you're also sharing information about yourself, all right, So
just be careful about that. But I will give you
this before I get out of here. If you do
want to call me, you don't need to look up
my reverse number. We've got a special one just for you.

(46:46):
If you want to say hi, give me a comment.
It is three four six two nine eight three nine
two six, three four six twenty nine texts. And that's
how you do it when we come back. A few
of the things of wants to know gar If I
know you're an Android guy and you're pretty much anti Apple,
what is so special about Android? Is there a special

(47:08):
feature or two that you use that is not on
an iPhone that you love so much? Great question. I'm
gonna break it down about my use of Android and
not using an iPhone. And there are some tricks that
iPhones do not have. I would lay about that soon.

(47:41):
I'll be happy for a weekend of Septemba of five.
I thought my cousin Daniel is listening, but happy birthday
to him approaching the big five. Oh whoo, what's up,
big d I hope you're having a good day. I
guarantee he's not listening, so I don't know why I
wasted ten seconds of time. However, if it's your birthday,
you want to shout out, why don't you either post

(48:02):
something on my x account. Maybe you can give me
a call. Here, I'll give you the phone number. Michael
Garfield is my name. It's called the High Tech Texan Show.
We are Terrestrilly heard in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio all
over the world on iHeartRadio. You can still get to
me three four six, twenty nine. Texan. You probably should
have a phone plan with all you can use, all
you can dial on the weekends. Remember we used to

(48:24):
do that. I like reminiscing. You know. It used to
be during the weekdays you would buy a calling plan
based on your usage. This is the early days of
cell phone and on weekends it was like free calling.
It was so excited. So I had my first cell phone,
like in nineteen ninety one, I think it was. It
was a bag phone and I wouldn't call anybody, Like

(48:45):
on Monday through Friday. It was like seventy five cents
a minute Monday through Friday. But dang man, I was
the king of cell phones. I mean I was mister
cellly Sally. On the weekends, I was calling long distance
and everywhere. So I think now free calling is abundant
no matter what you do. I saw a funny story
of her. I've been sitting on this story like almost

(49:06):
all summer. When did this come? This came out in July.
It's a tease I want to talk about, which is fun.
There was a woman flying for the first time in
fifteen years and this is from Vice. This is a
website called Vice. So women flying for the first time
fifteen years. She passed through one of those TSA scannery

(49:27):
type of things and she was flagged. She was flagged.
She had no piercings, didn't have any medical devices, her
pockets were empty. What was the issue? And she posted
this on Reddit. Believe it or not. They flagged her
groin area. They're grind and there's nothing bad about this

(49:52):
that kids should be able to. They flagged her groin area.
I don't know if the kids. You may want to
looseh your ears about this. She had what was called,
and I've never heard this, swamp crotch. This is not
just for girls. Guys have this thing too. If you
live in a swampy, nasty, humid area, nice to meet you, Eustonians.

(50:13):
If you're listening to Florida, you know exactly what I'm
talking about. TSA caught this. The TSA's millimeter wave technology
doesn't just a tech metal by the way, response to
anything that disrupts the signal, including moisture. That's how they
can tell if you have three ounces or more of
liquids or something like that. But if you sweat, sometimes
sweat can bunch up right. Maybe it's your T shirt

(50:33):
or something. Maybe it's in your undies or something. Sweat.
She was busted for having too much it was it
was a humid day. I guess this is a woman
sharing her story. So she was wearing bike shorts or
something and regular undies. I guess this is. I haven't

(50:54):
been busted particularly for something like this in TSA, I
like to say, because I find private, but that's not
fully the story. But I totally can see this happen.
Is how embarrassed would you be if you get stopped
for having a sweaty crotch area? And is this not
a perfect potential sponsorship opportunity for I don't know, dude

(51:20):
wipes or some sort of sweatable unsweatable fabric or something.
There was I swear in Texas, maybe outside of Houston.
If anybody knows this, give me a call over here.
I swear. There was a company who made underwear men
and women. Maybe it was just men. I don't know that.
I'm gonna say it prevented sweating, but it was breathable

(51:43):
or something. So folks, if your thighs are sticking together
by the time you reach security, you may want to
pack some powder, maybe some moisture waking underwear, because apparently
sweat alone it's enough to raise alarms. I thought that
was interesting. If anybody flying coming up, let's just hope
for let's just hope for cooler weather. Maybe that's why
I've been sitting on the story for well over two

(52:03):
months and I haven't talked about it. I can actually
now delete it off my bump list, and we continue
to keep bumping here on the I'm embarrassed to say my name. Yes,
it's Michael Garfield show. It's the high Tech text Oh
my goodness, I am monitoring my x account high tech
texts at high t e H T e x A.

(52:24):
I am an Android guy, proud to say it. I
like Android. Android is made by Google. Android is the
unequivocal night of This is not her purple, It's a
fact Android operating system. I think it's at least three
to one in use around the World's the most popular
mobile operating system, much more so than Apple iPhone iOS.

(52:45):
And that's by sheer numbers because there is one manufacturer
who uses iOS for their mobile operating system, and that's
the company called Apple and iPhone. There's one one manufacturer.
If you look at Android, we got everything from Samsung
to Google, Pixel to to Motorola OnePlus. I mean, it
just goes on and on and on. That's why it
is more popular that way. So I could list a

(53:07):
number of different reasons why I use Android. I just
know the more people who use it, that's my There's
more listeners, there's more viewers who want to know tips
and tricks, and so I want to talk to I'm one,
I'm one with my audience, and so I want to
open up my content to more people. That's one of
the reasons. I just it's it's easy to use. I
like it as much as the crap that I get

(53:28):
for being am I Am I a blue dotter or
a green dot you see, I don't even we don't
get dots on androids. So I know I'm the opposite
where people give me crap and so, but whatever, one
of the features that I use on a very regular
basis I know is not directly on the iPhone, and
what it is. Listen I say this, I'm not trying

(53:50):
to switch you from being an Apple iPhone fanboy or
a fangirl. My job really is not to switch you
for anything. I'm going to give you my pinion of
what I use and what I like, what I don't like.
But I will tell you this. One of the things
that I do like that is on Android, not really
directly on iPhone is something called Circle to Search. It's

(54:12):
been around for almost two years right now. I think
it debuted in January of twenty twenty four, so we
got about a year, just over a year and a half,
and it started on the Samsung Galaxy I. Now it's
on the Pixel eight lineup right now. It's some of
the new Pixel devices. It's a really neat, easy to use, easy,

(54:32):
very simple to quickly access way to search things on
the internet. What you do is you hold your phone,
take you hold it up at something a picture. You
don't know what this you don't know what this thing is. Right,
you long press the home button. Right, there's a home
button on the front part of you of your screen,

(54:55):
long press it. It freezes the photo. You take your
finger and you circle whatever you're trying to do. Say
you see a car, there's a car park. It's like,
oh man, what is that? Is that in nineteen sixty
four Corvette or you know whatever? Look at those pair
of pants? What kind of shoes are those? You circle
it all right, and then boom. It immediately goes directly

(55:17):
to Google, which you will pull up a list of
relevant search results. You can even, you know, use it
to point at something. And it's just simple. It's not
only that. There's another little feature if you hold your
own butt. You know, what's a SoundHound and Shazam where
you're listening to a song and you have to pull

(55:39):
up the app and you have to you know, it
listens to what's playing for five, ten, fifteen, twenty seconds
or so. There's a process circle the search. It's immediately
on that home button. So I pushed the home button
and there's a little music note and its It saves
me easily ten seconds, which is sometimes makes the difference
because if I hear the end of a song, it'll

(56:00):
do it. Circle to search. It's good. I know they
just came out with a new capability. It came out
a few days ago. What it does it continuously translates
text as you scroll through social media, post or maybe
switch between apps. It does a lot of stuff. Apple
doesn't have this directly. They do have, from what I understand,

(56:20):
something called Apple's Visual Intelligent Feature. It's got some similarities
to Circle to Search. It does use Apple Intelligence to
identify what's around you and maybe whatever you snap a
picture of it. But it's not nearly as easy to
do these tasks that, from what I understand, were Circle
to Search. And I think it's it's pretty cool. Is

(56:42):
it coming on iPhones? I don't know. Later this week
there is another iPhone event, the iPhone seventeen event. It's coming.
They're gonna announce some some new iOS stuff. Maybe it's
out there, maybe it's coming. But when people ask, man,
what's the deal man, why are you so anti iPhone?
It's not like I'm anti iPhone, it's just I will

(57:03):
say this too. When companies send me product to test
and review, and sometimes they send it to me, I
signed a non disclosure. It's a thirty day thing. I
try it, I mail it back to them. For a
lot of this stuff. Some of them let me keep them.
Some companies they don't care. They want they want me
to use them. You know, the more I use something,
the more familiar I get either either way, Apple, I'm

(57:23):
not on Apple's list. I Apple does not send me anything.
I don't get invited to the little debuts or things,
and so I am not familiar on a regular day
to day basis with any of the Apple products. It's
it's really boils down to this simple versus. I used
to be on Samsung, so li. Samsung used to bite
me some stuff, which is why I've had Samsung, the
Galaxy three all the way up to Galaxy twenty five,

(57:45):
even though it looks like it's stopping right now. You know,
there's Google and LG and one plus, and I've become
a fan of one plus. It is it's a Gina company.
They make a really good phone. I like the camera
you do. It's it's not as easy to get. You
don't you're not going to find it at all of
these cellular stores. But if you get a one plus
O N E p l us. I think they got
the one plus thirteen one plus thirteen R right now.

(58:07):
They've got a hassleblod licensed camera. I mean, that's really nice.
They've got a foldable and a flip one. They got
some new point is there's a lot of them out there.
But I talk about and use what I have on
me in almost at any given time. One of the
reasons why I don't really talk about that fruit named company,
and I talk about Android, which I'm kind of a
fan of. They Google and it was smart. They give

(58:31):
they license that for free to all the manufacturers, and
we live in a Google world for the most part.
Bottom of the hour coming up. But when we come back,
speaking of phones, the age old question is your phone
listening to you? Is it listening to you? How in
the world does your phone no what advertisement to pop up? Oh?

(58:51):
By the way, because you were just talking about it,
I wouldn't answer that question. Coming back less than thirty

(59:15):
minutes to go in the Michael Garfield I Tech Texans show.
So if you want to get in, say hi, I
ask questions back to well, I went back to school products.
I've already talked about that. Holiday products kind of in
the lull. Right now, you need some football watching products
with beer to drink? Oh my goodness, I headphones to wear,
so maybe you or your significant other don't have to

(59:35):
listen to the game that you don't want to watch.
Those are the things that I can recommend. Three four
six twenty nine Textan three four six twenty nine Texan
having some fun there? What else well we got? Oh?
Is anybody a Lego fan? I Legos have been around
for a long time. I mean I remember how had
Legos when I was a kid. I mean I love

(59:57):
them really, I mean they were okay, and then my
three by I have three boys, when they were young
they kind of I think one of them, maybe two
of them got into Legos. Luckily, it's that we really
did it and get into them. You know, you step
on them and you hurt your foot. The whole thing
Legos now are are like a They're not cheap, and

(01:00:17):
they're like almost an adult thing to get. It's the
new puzzles, you know, and everybody loves puzzles and whatever,
and you know, let's see, it's it's uh, you know,
calming and soothing and gets my mind off of something.
It's a hobby. And I bring it up because I
just saw the most expensive Lego set ever that was released.

(01:00:40):
Lego is releasing the Star Wars Death Star, and I'm
looking at this thing, and this thing it may be
the actual size of the freaking Death Star, Okay, I
kid about that. It is two feet wide by a
foot deep, and you know the Death Star, the big

(01:01:01):
circular thing, and I'm looking at it, and it's it's
pretty amazing. It's intricate. I mean, it's it's massive. It
is on sale for one thousand dollars. One thousand dollars.
I've never I don't follow the industry, but I've never
seen a said Lego said, nearly this expensive. There have

(01:01:25):
been I think the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars was
about eight hundred and fifty bucks that I think there
was a Titanic for six hundred and eighty dollars a
thousand dollars. Who would buy this? I'm not trying to
talk you out of it, and I know there's an answer.
There were people who buy this. There are nine thousand,
twenty three pieces. It's meant for eighteen and this is

(01:01:46):
not a commercial. I swear, because I'm going to talk
you out of this thing. I want to know the
over under. How long would it take somebody to put
this thing together. I mean there's little characters. There's with
Han Solo, and there's Darth, and there's storm Troopers. And
I mean I'm not a Star Wars guy of all

(01:02:08):
the Star Wars. I mean of the original ones back
in the seventies and early ladies. I saw one of them.
I saw the original. I didn't see Empire Strikes Back
or Jedi. I haven't seen that. It just I'm not
a Lego guy, but a thousand bucks I mean, people

(01:02:29):
are gonna buy this thing. And by the way, if
you Lego, if you're listening to me, if you want
to send one to me, I can have some fun
with it. I actually could host a Lego building party
because as an eighty eight a guy who lives with
EIGHTYHD under control, by the way, I would need help
with this. And if I did it alone, yeah, I

(01:02:52):
don't know. Six months seven months before me to put
together one thousand dollars this is. That's one heck of
a hobby. What else can I tell you over I'm
gonna let me pay this off because I teased it
on your phone. A lot of phone talk today. I
already talked about how to look up reverse numbers other
than just Google. I've already talked about why you should

(01:03:14):
know how to hide your number one, calling someone Star
sixty seven, a few other things. The question I think
people on people's mind In my mind too, are is
someone listening to your phone? Is your phone listening to you?
How in the world when you talk about something, isn't

(01:03:36):
it just a coinky dink? How an ad pops up
on Facebook, Instagram or something. There's no definitive answer. I'm
not a conspiracy theorist. I have questions myself, but I
have done research specifically on this topic because I get
asked about it a lot. So a recent article was

(01:03:58):
it on set that there's a research director at a
Berkeley affiliated computer science institute. All right, He says that
the conspiracy theory has been going on for decades, but unequivocally,
according to this dude, your phone is not listening. There's

(01:04:22):
no and I'm quoting this, there is no credible evidence
that your phone runs a secret always on microphone to
target ads. And actually they are clear technical and policy
reasons why. And I continuing to read this thing and
it baffles me, and I'm reading it in I'm like,
they better make a convincing case to tell me and
everybody else that my phone is not listening. Independent research

(01:04:45):
have gone looking for covert listening and they found none.
No hot mics know anything. But then there's laws too.
As I continue to read and understand this more, the
Federal wire Tap Act. It bans intercepting conversations without consent,

(01:05:06):
and many states require all parties to consent. So when
always Listening for ads feature would constantly record non consenting bystanders,
and that invites a massive legal exposure. So they go
on and on, but they try to explain why you
get ads that feel like your phone is listening to you,

(01:05:31):
And they break it down into four categories, and real
quickly they are four players. One is the platform Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok.
That's the home turf. The platform watches what you do
inside the app. There's no doubt what you follow, what
you say, what you search, what you tap on. It
knows a lot about you, your rough location, what device

(01:05:53):
you're on, what time of day it is. If it
thinks you're very likely to act on something or buy something,
and ad can pop up. Number two there's the advertisers.
The advertisers bring They have a goal man They have purchases,
they have clicks, they have budgets, they have images and

(01:06:14):
videos and text matching your user what you do based
on databases. These advertisers know what you want. If I'm
looking for shoes, I well I'm looking for shirts, they
know I'm probably in the mark for that stuff. And
then there's something the identity providers. These are matchmakers. These
are actually companies that help link records that belong together.

(01:06:37):
Maybe your email's over here, maybe your phone numbers over here,
your connected TV's over here, and what's on through Wi Fi.
They keep the identities I don't know, kind of separate,
but then they bring them together so then they can
have a better match of well, okay, this is exactly
what you're shopping for. And then finally there's these data brokers.
They're collectors and their wholesalers their firms that they buy

(01:06:58):
and scrape and package information about you. Then they sell
them to marketers and advertisers. There's a ton of them
out there. If you stitch the pieces together in real time,
that's why some of these ads can pop up. This
is what I'm reading, but I'm telling you right now,
he just I'm not one hundred percent buying in on

(01:07:19):
this Are you I don't know you talked to me
over here three four six twenty nine texts and three
four six two nine eight three nine two six some
of the things that I've talked about on this show.
Maybe your phone is listening. If for some reason something
I talked about in this show pops up in an
ad on your Facebook, that's it's almost too coinkydinky. At

(01:07:41):
some point, pop me an email Michael at high Tech
text In dot com or something on exit high Tech Texting,
because I'd like to figure these things out so unequivocally.
The experts, the legal people say no, it's not listening
me not so fast. Final segment coming up with a
high tech textan show. We made it my friends. Final

(01:08:16):
segments of this weekend's High Tech Textan Show. Michael is
the name Michael Garfield. If for some reason you have
an inclination to check out a lot of the other
stuff that I do during the other six days of
the week I'm not on the radio, you can go
to the website high Tech Textan dot Com. H I
G H T E C H T E X A N.
You can hit me on X. You can hit me

(01:08:39):
on Instagram if you're not blocked, if you're a Facebook friend,
I think I've got one of those. I have a
personal account, so the max is five thousand friends, and
I'm right there. I guess I could. I could open
my Facebook to to a public account, but I'm just
I'm lazy. I know it's like a click, but didn't. Listen,
Old school guy, tough to change the way. It's very

(01:09:01):
easy ways to reach me, to see what I've been doing,
to see how I've been mourning the losses of two
of my football teams. We got the Longhorns last week
and the Cowboys. Both of them kept both my teams
kept it relatively close. They both covered. But I hope

(01:09:22):
this football season that turns a little better. Whoever you
root for, you root for. I'd like to thank Listen
as we wind up the show here in a few minutes.
You can't do this without sponsors, without a doubt. US
Coins and Jewelry love those folks. Holiday seasons coming up there,
US Coins and Jewelry. Kenny Duncan, Matt Duncan. They've been
around for two generations. Their dad started at Dad's still there, actually, Houston,

(01:09:44):
I ten Katie Freeway right at vas So just outside
of Loop six to ten, not far from the big
ike up. They are getting ready to open another showroom.
This will make their second big showroom almost next door
to each other. And I know they're going to have
a lot of opening day events specials, probably later this month,
early October, and I hope to be involved with that.

(01:10:04):
But if you want a selection of just beautiful watches,
rolexes by buy one, they buy it back, I get
another one they've got. I was in there earlier this week.
Women jewelry they have got a number of. And then
obviously it's coins, US Coins and jewelry. If you are
a new mismatist, that means you are someone who collects

(01:10:26):
coins and know it's a lot about coins. Very tough
to find a more solid, informational and a company that
knows more about coins. Where you can buy classic coins,
old coins, you can sell your coins, you can sell
your jewelry, you can sell your gold, you can sell
your silver. Right there. Check it out US Coins and
Jewelry dot com. You do not even need to be

(01:10:47):
in Houston or visit this store. They do a lot
of this stuff online and I know I trust them.
For many many years and you can too, so thanks
to them. And also big shout out to astounds as
t O U n d z st downs. They are
webs they create managed websites. They do mine but phenomenal
when it comes to SEO search engine optimization. Once a

(01:11:09):
month or so, I have the president founder, Steve Winter.
He comes on the show, gives you, gives us some
tips on how to keep ahead, making sure that your
website is relevant, to not only optimize for search engine,
but also to keep it updated for your mobile because
you know your website looks different on mobile phones as
it does on laptops and desktops. So if you need
a refresh or an upgrade for your websites, certainly want

(01:11:33):
to get into the search engine optimization you know business,
let them do it for you. Just check it out
at astounds with a Z dot com. Tell me you
heard it on the old Garfield Show and they should
take care of you. I talk also, you know, I listen.
I covered you know the TV, the tech world, consumer
lifestyle world. I talk a lot about streamers too, streaming services.

(01:11:55):
I tell you make sure that if you're paying for
a streaming service, make sure you use the stream because
you probably pay for streaming services that you don't use.
It's like, oh my gosh, I'm spending too much mone
I'm spending more money than I am on cable. I
also look for deals too. I saw this thing pop up.
It is U Paramount Plus. I don't have Paramount Plus
and interesting, I don't think I know someone anyone who

(01:12:19):
has Paramount plus. Paramount that's that's the CBS version of
paramount They have a again, not an AD. I'm just
reading this. It's not an AD because I don't have
Paramount Plus. Potentially thinking you of get it because I
think land Man with Billy Bob Thornton is on Paramount Plus.

(01:12:39):
The first season of land Man has been out how
many months right now, by hook or by crook. I
have seen I think the first four episodes. One time
it was the first episode was free. I think was
on Prime video. The second time I may have been
on an airplane that also streamed it or something, and

(01:13:02):
I got to the first four episodes. It is a
great This is the first time I've ever seen anything
from Taylor Sheridan. I'm not a fan of Yellowstone or anything,
but anyway, Laman is good. It's unbelievable. I haven't seen
the rest of it because I don't have Paramount Plus
and I can't even use or borrow a user name
pass word from my friends who have Paramount Plus. Point
is there's a deal right now through September eighteenth. I

(01:13:25):
just saw this, so I got about another two weeks
fifty percent off an annual subscription to Paramount Plus Essential
or Paramount Plus Premium. What is this deal? The deal
knocks the price normally sixty bucks a year down to
thirty bucks a year. And if he went to hire one,
it's one hundred and twenty bucks a year. Now it's
sixty dollars a year, and then after that it renews

(01:13:47):
at full price. It's a year subscription. I don't know, man,
what else do they have on here? Star Trek, Strange,
New Worlds. I'm not going to watch that. Yellow Jacket's
no clue what that is? Top Gun madreck seeing that
about eighteen times, I don't know, forty thousand episodes of
TV movies built to watch NFL game, Yeah, I mean

(01:14:11):
I did. It's I watched over the year CBS games.
I don't. I probably wouldn't get it if anybody does
want to share their paramount plus user name subscriptions so
I can watch the final four episodes of The Landman.
Just you know how to contact me. But anyway, those
the deals's NFL full swing. I saw a stat that

(01:14:31):
if you wanted to watch every single NFL game this season,
which are on like seven different platforms over the air, Amazon, Netflix,
YouTube TV, you're going to be paying something close to
seven hundred dollars. And the sad part is it's freaking
worth it because there's no content like the NFL other
than this radio show, and that's what you're going to get.

(01:14:52):
So those are some of the things out there. If
you have topics, if you have suggestions, I am your guys.
We wind up the show. I want to thank Callum Reid.
I want to thank Will I want to thank Brian Rickson.
Everybody at iHeartRadio keeps me on the air of these
Texas Bay stations and iHeartRadio. I have a very nice
hot early finish the first weekend of September. It's going

(01:15:13):
to be hot for a while. Have you ever been
to Texas? Suck it up, people, this is how we
do it. But we don't have any staked income taxes
and the best part is wherever you travel you could
take me by downloading the iHeartRadio app. I the Wonderful
Weekend Football is here. Have a cocktail, drive safe and
we will talk to you next week on a high
tech texting show. My name is Michael Garfielding. Right now
the game, my show is over.