Last show of 2023: Listener Questions & Feedback

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's going on. I'm Rich Damiro and this is rich
on Tech, the show where I talk about the tech
stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
place where I answer your questions about technology. You can
find me online at richon tech dot tv. There you
can also submit your question for me to answer. Just
go to rich on tech dot tv and hit the

(00:23):
link that says contact. I get a lot of emails
every single week, so I do my best to answer
some of those personally, but many times I will just
address them on the show. I hope you had a
great holiday. We are now coming up right against the
new year, if you can believe it. So I figured
I would take this opportunity to clear out the mail

(00:44):
bag and get through a bunch of the questions that
you have asked me. Let's start with John. John writes
in and says, is there such a thing as an
Internet phone that plugs into the USB port on my
PC and is able to make phone calls? Keep in
mind that I don't want a monthly subscription. I just
want to purchase it and use it as a backup

(01:06):
phone in case my smartphone is not working. That way,
I'll be able to make a call to the customer service. John.
That's a good question. But here's the thing. Most of
the time calls are going to go through the internet
these days, so most of the phone services are what's
called VoIP voice over IP. A couple of ways you
can do this. There is a device called magic Jack.

(01:29):
This was a thing when this first came out. It
was revolutionary because this came out when you would still
pay whatever it was for landline service. And this came
out and you would plug it into your Internet and
then you would plug your old school telephone jack into this,
and they call it the magic Jack, and you would

(01:50):
buy it once there was no subscription and you could
make unlimited calls, I think even long long distance calls.
And so the Magic Jack at this point is forty
five dollars. You plug it into the USB connection on
your computer and then you can plug a phone into that.
It's forty five dollars for twelve months of service. Another
piece of hardware is called uma Ooma, and this came

(02:13):
out kind of after Magic Jack, and this was also
seemingly too good to be true because you would plug
it into your Internet, you'd pay a fee and you
would get service for a lot cheaper than you would
get from your typical phone company. And so this device
at this point is one hundred dollars and phone service
is free. And I believe when this came out it

(02:35):
was unlimited like forever. So people are just like, wait
a second, how is that possible? But this again is
called uma Ooma and they do have this. But this
plugs into your internet service, and so you would plug
that into your router and then you can plug a
phone into that. So that's another option if you want
a you know, sort of a landline experience. The other

(02:58):
thing you can do is you Google Voice. Just sign
up for a free Google Voice phone number. And I've
had a Google Voice number forever. I'm trying to remember
what Google Voice was called before. Oh, it was called
Grand Central. I just remembered that. I must have signed
up for Google Voice the first minute it was available,
and it was called Grand Central. And why it was

(03:19):
called that is because it would link up all of
your different phones. So back in the day, you had
a landline number, you had a business phone number, and
you had a cell phone number. Potentially you know, multiple numbers,
and so this would this would bring them all into
one place. So people would call this one number and
it would call out to all your different phones and
ring them at the same time so that you could answer.

(03:40):
And it was pretty magical. Google bought the company like
within days, it felt like, after this launch, but it
was really really cool. Now it's called Google Voice, and
Google Voice is completely online. So you can sign up
for a free phone number and make calls right through
your computer. And you can just plug in a standard
you know, headset, So if you have of like the
plug in headset or a USB headset, you can use that,

(04:03):
or you can go on Amazon and order an actual
sort of headset that like an operator would use. There
you go, John, some good options for getting your phone
calls through your computer.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
All right.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Next up, Sherry writes in we are AT and T customers.
My husband lost his phone, but we still owe the contract.
Do you know where we could order a good used
iPhone to add to our plan? Great question. This is
what happens when you sign up for one of these
free phones from the cellular carriers. If you lose your

(04:36):
phone or break it or something like that, you are
still on the hook for the thirty six months or
whatever they ask you to sign when you get that
free phone, So just keep that in mind. If you're
getting a free phone from your carrier, it is definitely
not free. They take the price of that phone, they
divide it up by twenty four to thirty six months,
and they give you that as a credit every month

(04:57):
until you fulfill those twenty four to thirty six months.
So if something happens to your phone, you will still
have to pay for the service. And so that's what's
happening here. Two places i'd recommend. First off, you can
go to Apple themselves. They have on their website a
refurbished area. It's called Apple Certified Refurbished, and it's odd
because there's really not that much available on their website.

(05:20):
So right now as I check it out, they have
an iPhone twelve Mini. They have an iPhone twelve, iPhone
twelve Pro, and iPhone twelve Pro Max. But the cheapest
here is an iPhone twelve Mini for four hundred and
twenty nine dollars. You said you didn't say which phone
you have, so I'm not sure what you're trying to replace,
but the iPhone twelve is four hundred and forty nine dollars.

(05:42):
That's still pretty expensive. You said you wanted something cheap.
So the second place that I would look is Amazon.
Amazon has a refurbished section of their website, and so
if you search on Amazon for Amazon Renewed, you can
go there and check out the smart phone section and
then narrowed down by Apple. And so if we look

(06:04):
at if we sort by cheapest, there is an an
iPhone S, but that's the first generation. You probably don't
want that one. That one's pretty old. But they have
an iPhone se second generation renewed for at and T
one hundred and fifty five dollars, so that's pretty inexpensive.
You can get an iPhone eight for one hundred and
fifty nine dollars, an iPhone ten for one hundred and

(06:25):
seventy three dollars, iPhone ten S for one hundred and
eighty four dollars. Now, the one thing that I would
caution you on is I would make sure that this
phone that you get runs the latest Apple software, which
is iOS seventeen. So if you're going to get one
of these refurbished phones, you want to get one that
is compatible with iOS seventeen. And at this point that

(06:47):
is the iPhone S second generation, and then the iPhone
ten R and up, so that would be the iPhone ten,
ten S, tens max, the iPhone eleven, all the way
up to the iPhone fifteen. So make sure you get
a phone that is still compatible with the current software
because you want to make sure that you can still

(07:08):
get those software updates. Next up, subject line, Someone's listening
to my phone and the name is Corona. Name is
false because I'm scared. Okay, I have changed my phone
number and my simcard many times, yet it still seems
that someone or someone's is listening to me on my

(07:29):
phone and when I'm home. What can I do to
stop this? I have proof that one of the person
is the cell phone employee where I pay my cell
phone bill in person. Please help if you can. Okay, Well,
you know what. I am open to many questions on
this show, but I don't think that someone is listening
to your phone unless you are a secret agent or

(07:52):
a head of state or some sort of diplomat. Most
of the time, regular people, no one's really interested in
your converse. So I think that maybe this is a
case of you know, you're just maybe a little paranoid.
So I think that you don't need to do anything.
If I were you, you can go ahead and factory

(08:13):
reset your phone. That should take care of things if
you really think that someone is listening to your phone.
The only software that is known in a big way
to exploit the iPhone I'm assuming this an iPhone is
the Pegasus software. That spyware is typically aimed at very
specific individuals with a lot to lose. So if that's

(08:38):
not you, then I think you're probably okay. I would
just do a factory reset on your phone. You said
you change your phone number and your simcard many times,
so maybe do a factory reset on your phone and
that should clean things up and take care of any
any oddities that you're experiencing. You are listening to rich
on Tech. If you want to submit your message or
the show, go to rich on Tech dot tv. Hit

(09:01):
the link that says contact. My name is rich DeMuro.
More rich on Tech coming your way right after this.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you, talking technology. Phone lines are open at
triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two four to one zero one. Consumer

(09:23):
Reports tested cables. You know everyone's buying these new USB
c cables. So Consumer Reports tested seven charging cables ranging
from four dollars and eighty eight cents to twenty nine
dollars to see which ones lasted the longest. They tested
USB c for Android and also for iPhones in two

(09:43):
durability tests twisting and a ninety degree bending until the
cable broke. So they actually did test lightning cables too.
I guess people are still buying those. So the twenty
nine dollars Apple Lightning cable and the six dollars and
fifty five cent Amazon Basis USBC cable survived eleven five
hundred bands without breaking. They say that's equivalent to over

(10:06):
six years of use. They tried other brands from Walmart
and five below. Those bent us eight hundred times less
than six months of use. So I guess cheap cables
really you get your money's worth. You know, you get
what you pay for. Let's see the let's see price, brand,

(10:27):
name and thickness were not reliable indicators of durability. The
cheap Amazon Basics USBC cable dramatically outlasted price yer branded cables.
So what do they recommend? The Apple Lightning cable the
official one for the iPhones and the Amazon Basics USB
C cable because of their outstanding durability. So there you

(10:47):
have it. Look at that. You can get the six
dollars and fifty five cent Amazon Basics USB C cable
that'll work for the iPhone and Android now, and then
if you want Apple, you probably still want to go
with the standard Apple line cable twenty nine bucks. By
the way, you see why Apple didn't want to switch
to USPC because the cables now six dollars and fifty

(11:08):
five cents versus the twenty nine dollars they were getting
for a quote unquote you know premium cable. Let's go
to John in Los Angeles. John, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Rich, I have a problem with my email. I bought
a dot com domain about twenty plus years ago, and
somewhere along the line I set it up so that
email going to that domain, any name, would get forwarded
to my Gmail account. And then a couple of weeks

(11:41):
ago it stopped working, and I couldn't really remember where
I set that up. I checked the records. It said
something with Outlook. I don't remember setting anything up with Outlook.
So I did a search for a company that would
for a price would catch all my email to that

(12:02):
domain and forward it to my Gmail. But all I
find is email companies I want to sell me whole
email packages. Yep.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
So you just want to forward. You just want to
forward from from that that domain, right, and it's just
is it one email address or several?

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Well, I set it up as a catch all, okay,
catch all the email because sometimes people would misspell my
name and that would get bounced back. So that's why
I set that up.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Okay, Well, I'll tell you what I use, and there
may be more out there, but this one is the
one that I've used for years and it works really well,
and it's I think five bucks a year. Now. Remember
this does not include any sort of email storage or
email box nothing. This is just like you said, straight
up forwarding. And you're gonna have to check to see
if they can do a catch all email box where

(12:50):
you can just anything you write to that domain, it
will forward it to your Gmail. But the one that
I use is Hover dot com h O V E
er and I pay I think it's five dollars a
year and all they do is forward, and so my
hello at richontech dot TV. It's just a forwarded email.
It goes right to my Gmail when someone emails at.

(13:10):
So Hover ho Veer is the one that I use,
and you will need to you know, obviously, you have
to know your domain information to get that forwarded over.
So you'll go to Hover, you'll sign up for an
account and then you'll put all your information in for
your domain. You will have to verify that you own
that domain, and once you do, you can set up

(13:31):
just what's called an email forwarding. Now you can also
set up an email inbox as well. That's more like
twenty dollars a year, but you can just get email
forwarding for five dollars a year. And the question is,
let's see mail sent to distinct role based addresses. Help
at can forward to one central mailbox, so doesn't let

(13:54):
you send emails from your domain, so you you know
this is only for receiving. But I think that's the
main thing is that you just have to check. It's
been a while since I set this thing up, so
I'm not sure if they do a catch all email,
but if they do, that would be pretty easy. But
that's what you want to look for. You just want
to look for what's called email forwarding and not email hosting,

(14:14):
So good question, John, let me know if that works out.
Richon tech dot tv is my website. You can use
the UH the email form there to let me know.
Let's go to UH Mickey in camerio. Mickey, you're on
with Rich.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
Hi, Good morning, Rich. I just had a questioning that
we are nearing the holidays. I've given out gift cards
for Walmart, Target, you know, so they can use to
purchase things, you know, or you know, whatever they need,
groceries and whatnot. But I want to know, are all cards,
whether it's Amazon, Target, Walmart, the grocery stores, can those

(14:50):
be used online instead of us using our bank and
our own credit cards, you know, because of you know,
for personal reasons and for you know, privacy protection for so, can.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
They all be used online? Like if you buy one
at Target in the store, can you use it on
their website? Yes, it depends. Yeah. The short answer is
it depends. There are certain types of gift cards that
are online only, there are some that are in store only,
and there are some that work in both places. The

(15:21):
answer is you have to look at the back of
the card to see what it says, and you have
to look at the card online if you buy it
online to see if it says you can use it
in store. The reason why I tell you this is
because I use an app called Raise r Aise, and
this is an app that lets you buy and sell
gift cards. So let's say you're going to Old Navy

(15:42):
and you know you're going there and you want to purchase,
you know, fifty one hundred dollars worth of stuff there.
You could go to this website, raise dot com or
the app and buy a gift card for Old Navy,
and it's discounted because how are they getting that gift card.
They're getting it from someone that got this gift card
from gram that doesn't want it, and they want to
unload it because it doesn't cost them anything to get

(16:04):
rid of it at a at a lesser price than
the face value. So let me give you an example.
Let's say that I have a birthday party. Someone gives
me a one hundred dollars gift card to what's that
store with all the candles that bed bathroom, not bed bathroom,
bed Bathom body Works, the one that sells all the
like fancy selling smelling candles. So let's say I get

(16:27):
that and I'm I said, you know what, I'm not
getting any pumpkin spice candles this year. I'm just gonna
get rid of I'm not gonna get I'm gonna get
rid of this gift card. I can go on Raise
and sell that gift card. They will give me cash
for that, and then I hand over that gift card
to them. Now they're going to give me let's say
seventy five dollars, But to me, that's found money because
I'm you know, this gift card was given to me

(16:48):
for free. Then Raise will go and they will sell
that gift card to other people for let's say ninety
five dollars. And now you're getting one hundred dollars gift
card for ninety five. Raise makes that spread of seventy
five to ninety five dollars that they sold it to
you for, they make twenty bucks. You get a discounted
gift card. Everyone's happy in this process. Next time you
get a gift card, just read the fine print and

(17:09):
make sure that you can use it online and in store.
A lot of them, like I said, are dual purpose.
They will work in both places. And I'm looking, for instance,
I'm looking up an Amazon gift card. So you can
buy a one hundred dollars Amazon gift card on the
Raised website for ninety seven dollars and eighty three cents
and it says digital delivery, valid online and in store.

(17:33):
But there are some gift cards that you go to
and it will say only valid, you know, in store.
So Walmart, let's see what they say. Yeah, valid online
and in store. So I think with the big ones,
you're going to be fine. And I think that you know,
it depends on some of the smaller retailers, some of
the more obscure retailers, you may not be able to
use them in both places, whether it's online or in store,

(17:54):
because every gift card is a little bit different, and
the way that you get these gift cards, you know,
depending on where you buy them from, could be a
little different. So great question eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. This is rich On
Tech rich Demiro here, rich On Tech, Welcome back to

(18:14):
the show. I'm here in Westlake Village, California, with Clay Alexander,
CEO of Ember. You may know this company for its
temperature controlled mugs, but now they are branching out into
all kinds of temperature control systems. The latest product is
a self warming baby bottle system. Clay, welcome to the show.

Speaker 5 (18:35):
Thank you for having me Rich, I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
So a lot of folks may know Ember for the mugs.
This is the first product that I tried from Ember,
and it's a temperature controlled mug. Tell me the idea
behind that.

Speaker 5 (18:49):
So actually it started with with scrambled eggs. Okay, So
in two thousand and nine, I had just sold my
light bulb to GE. It was the world's large brightest
led light bulb and GE had bought the rights to it.
And I was sitting there, you know, thinking, Okay, what

(19:09):
am I gonna do next with my life?

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Right?

Speaker 5 (19:12):
And I was eating scrambled eggs with my wife in
the kitchen. I get about halfway through my eggs and
my eggs get cold on my plate. This happens every
time I eat scrambled eggs.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
So I thought.

Speaker 5 (19:24):
I remember looking down and thinking, okay, this is the
twenty first century. At a bare minimum, my dinner plate
should be able to keep my food at a decent
eating temperature. So I've been inventor since Berth and I thought, okay,
let me make I started strapping RC car batteries and
temperature control circuitry to the bottom of the dinner plates

(19:45):
in my kitchen.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
I'm sure, I'm sure your wife loved you.

Speaker 5 (19:48):
No, I was making a big, giant mass in the
kitchen with electronics and wires and benchtop power supplies and
all that good stuff. So I created the world's first
self warming innerplate and I started eating my meal off
of it, steaks, salmon, et cetera. You get halfway through
the meal, thirty minutes later, you're taking your time. You
cut into the salmon, steam still comes out. It's the

(20:11):
perfect temperature, perfect bite. So I had invented this, and
I remember thinking to myself looking around the kitchen, going gosh,
coffee mugs, soup bowls, shafing dishes, baby bottles, all the
things that can benefit from temperature control. And the real
question was, well, where do we start right And at

(20:34):
that time, this is back in twenty fourteen fifteen, when
I was making this decision, coffee, high end coffee was
on the rise big time. So we created the world's
first self warming coffee cup, and we made prototypes and
I remember drinking out of it, carrying it around town
and it looked like a crazy invention.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
I had batteries strapped to the side and wires and.

Speaker 5 (20:58):
Circuitry, but the user experience was phenomenal because you got
thermosignetti and all these others, and those are dual wall
vacum insulation. The temperature that you pour in is what
it holds it at. If you pour hot coffee, brood
coffee comes out at one hundred and eighty degrees, burns
your mouth, or you wait for a very long period

(21:18):
of time for tacool, you get distracted, you go back,
and now it's too cool cold. So I thought, gosh,
what if I could What if we could create technology
that actually locks your drinking temperature in whatever your preferred
specific drinking temperature is. You set it in a number mug.
One thirty five, for instance, is mine. And every time

(21:40):
I pour a cup of coffee, no matter where I am,
and I poured a number mug, it goes to one
hundred and thirty five degrees on the nose, and every sip,
every sip, no matter where I go, it's battery powered,
carried around the meetings, et cetera, is at one hundred
and thirty.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Five degrees Okay, so let's talk about the self warming
baby bottle system. This is brand new from Ember over
ten years in the making. Where did the idea for
this come from?

Speaker 5 (22:03):
Okay, this is a great story. So my beautiful daughter,
Charlotte was born eleven years ago and my wife did
most of the feedings. Every once in a while it
was dad's turn. And I remember Charlotte waking up in
the middle of the night crying, you know, starving. It's
like I'm carrying her downstairs, going into the kitchen, getting

(22:23):
a bowl of water, running the water in the sink,
warming up the water, putting the baby bottle in the water.
It's bobbing around because you know, my wife didn't want
me to use the microwave. And then you're like squirting
milk on your wrists and you're going, I'm a new parent.
I have all these other anxieties about parenthood, and I
don't know if this temperature is right.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
I'm just trying to sense it on my wrist.

Speaker 5 (22:43):
So it was a very honestly, the anxiety level was
very high at that time for me as a parent,
and I thought there's got to be a better way.
And I thought, gosh, what if the baby bottle could
warm the milk itself right up to the perfect body
temperature and you know when it's ready. And that was
kind of the origin idea.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
And so now we've got the baby bottle. It comes
with this sort of warming puck on the bottom. Can
you explain how it works.

Speaker 5 (23:10):
There's a puck that you can throw in your back
pocket or anywhere, and you can basically throw the bottle
on the puck and it warms milk or formula up
to body temperature within less than five minutes. And part
of the beauty of it is if you want to
keep the milk cold for on the go, we also
have that comes in the kit that we just launched,

(23:30):
a what we call a thermal dome. So the cold
milk comes out of the fridge with the bottle and
you throw it on the puck. You throw the thermal
dome over it. It's all magnetic, it just sucks together.
The thermal dome will keep the milk in the bottle
cold for up to four hours on the go. So
you have this little like we call it like an
infant feeding kit, throw in your diaper bag, throw it

(23:53):
in your backpack on the go, and when you know
your baby is hungry. You just open up your iPhone
or Android Divide and you go to the umber Baby app.
You click warm Milk. It actually warms the milk while
the baby bottle is in your bag, and then it
just notifies you when you're ready on either your connected
watch or on your phone.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
And if you don't want to necessarily use the app,
which you probably want to, because if you have something
like this, you're into apps and phones and stuff. But
there's also a physical button on the bottom of the
puck that you can just press five lights. When they
all light up, it lets you know that the milk
is at the right temperature. The baby bottle is super lightweight,
lighter than you would think. It is all dishwasher safe.

(24:34):
All of the parts that touch the milk the puck
obviously is the electronics, and you also kept the bulk
of the electronics in the bottom, like the Bluetooth is
not near the baby bottle itself.

Speaker 5 (24:45):
That's right, soar in the early days, in our first
version of the umber Baby bottle, we put the battery
technology and the Bluetooth radio and such in the bottom
of the bottle is part of the bottle, just like
an Ember mug right, And in a lot of early
focus groups, parents said, you know, I don't really want
a bluetooth radio near my baby's face. I don't really

(25:06):
want a batteries. So we we pivoted and we re
engineered the product so that we put the bluetooth radio on,
the batteries and all that stuff into a little kind
of hockey puck that you throw in your back pocket
that's magnetic to the bottle.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
That way the bottle.

Speaker 5 (25:20):
The bottle has you know, a microprocessor, heaters and temperature
control sensors all kind of embedded in there safely, but
there's no you know, batteries or bluetooth radio or any
of that kind of stuff. So it's it's all solid
state electronics in there.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
And safety for this this is something that you know,
babies are going to be holding.

Speaker 5 (25:39):
Yeah, So safety has been a number one priority for
us from the very very beginning. And one of the
things that we really wanted to make.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Sure we got right is the heating.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Right.

Speaker 5 (25:50):
We never wanted to be over body temperature, so you know,
ninety eight point five degrees in this case. And so
we actually designed the Ember baby bottle with three independent
circuits that run inside the bottle. If the first circuit fails, right,
if the milk goes up, you know, ninety eight point

(26:10):
six boom. The second circuit kicks in senses that it
went a point of a degree up and then opens
the circuit, essentially killing heating. If the second circuit fails,
there is a third circuit that can then catch it.
So it is absolutely bomb proof, never go. It will
never go above that body temperature. And so that took

(26:33):
us actually probably almost two years to engineer just what
I was saying right there, this triple redundancy.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
The self forming baby bottle system from ember Cells for
four hundred dollars. Some people may balk at.

Speaker 5 (26:43):
That price, so in the future we'll launch less expensive
versions that just have maybe one bottle and one put
but at launch, we want to have an entire system
that really takes care of you, and it's an infant
feeding system.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Speaker 5 (26:59):
I would say, honestly, grit to go from an idea
in your mind to building a global brand. It's definitely
the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
X ten.

Speaker 5 (27:13):
And I would just say, you like the reason that
I like can't sleep at night, work seven days a week,
et cetera. Is because of my passion of what I'm
doing right, Like, I'm so excited about every product that
we create and launch. And if you don't have that passion,
you're not gonna have the grit and the determination to

(27:35):
actually pull it off. And especially when you go through
tough times, you just got to keep pushing that big
giant boulder up the hill.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
Clay Alexander, CEO of EMBER and founder, thanks so much
for joining me today.

Speaker 5 (27:48):
Thank you, Rich. It was great to have you all right.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
If you want to learn more about what Ember's doing,
check out the website. Just go to rich on Tech
dot TV. I'm richidibureau more of rich on Tech after this,
welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking
technology with you, and my guest is Larissa May, a

(28:12):
digital wellness activist and founder of Half the Story, a
nonprofit dedicated to empowering the next generation's healthy relationship with
social media. They definitely need that. Larissa, thanks so much
for joining me today.

Speaker 6 (28:26):
Thank you for hosting me.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
So give me a little background on yourself. Why did
you start this and what's the goal I.

Speaker 6 (28:36):
Started Half the story eight years ago as the first
you thought organization tackling the intersection of mental health and
tech because of my own negative experience of social media
when I was in college, I almost lost my life
due to my very toxic relationship with technology mixed with
my depression. I saw that after going through treatment that
they asked me about physical wellness, sexual wellness, but they

(28:58):
never asked me about the drug of my POTT. So
I started to ask the hard questions about technology and
mental health and wanted to build an organization that would
give the next generations the tools that they needed to
emotionally thrive in the digital age.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
So what do you think now, having gone through all
of that, what do you think is the problem?

Speaker 6 (29:17):
Well, I think there's really two major problems. One is
that there's then virtually no regulation or systems in place
to ensure that technology is safe for young minds. And
on the flip side, kids that are getting on technology
are not cognitively ready to really engage with the amount
of content that's coming at them, and the algorithms are

(29:38):
really manipulating and taking advantage of our most vulnerable minds.
And so it's really a bifurcated issue. And I believe
that if there is change in the actual infrastructure and
design of the tech, while the next generation also gets
the tips and tools that they need to have agency
and empowerment, we can perhaps build a better world.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
Do you feel like care the tech companies about this?

Speaker 6 (30:02):
I think that they have to care because there's actually
a business case for caring when you think about the
next generation of consumers and where they're going to be
placing their trust in their time, that transparency and care,
especially for mental health is so critical, especially amongst gen Z.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
The what is kind of like the first step to
all this? Do the parents need to know more about this?
Do they need to be concerned about social media? Yeah?

Speaker 6 (30:26):
First and foremost, I would say for any parent that's listening,
the longer you can wait for your child to get
a screen, the better. Their brains are just literally not
wired to deal with what technology is creating, and it's
taking advantage of the Olympic system and the very emotional
part of their brains. So the more that you can
keep them away from it, the better, I would say.

(30:48):
The second thing is that the reality is if your
kid already has a device, the abstinence idea doesn't really work,
and you need to be able to engage your kid
and really get curious about what is supporting them, what
they like on technology versus what's hurting them, and set
radical boundaries within your household and actually lead by example.
So many parents come to us wanting to figure out

(31:09):
how to fix their kids, but they're the ones that
are on the phone at the dinner table or going
to bed with their partner with their screens. So you
really have to set that example from the start. And
the last thing I would say is really teach your
kids how to unhack their tech. I mean, tech was
built to hack their minds, but there are things that
you can do to build speed bumps their stopping cues

(31:30):
into your phone to help your kid at least deal
with the amount of cognitive load that they're experiencing.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Okay, so you mentioned the roadblocks and you mentioned, you know,
parents kind of like leading by example. Can you give
some specifics on like do we use like this the
app settings to like you know, set timers? Is it
screen time? Like what can we do? Yeah?

Speaker 6 (31:50):
So, first and foremost, for any parent that has a
kid on social media, I would advise that you actually
subscribe to Google RT's and all of the blogs, the
social platform that your kid is on. There are a
lot of safety actually a lot of safety tools that
the platforms have been created, but they don't really do
a great job at marketing them, so parents don't use them.

(32:11):
We are actually at a research conference this week and
one of the major platforms reported that less than ten
percent of parents that have kids on the platforms are
actually taking advantage of the safety features or teaching their kids.

Speaker 7 (32:22):
How to use them.

Speaker 6 (32:23):
So first, make sure you're up to date on what
the platforms have in place to make it at least
a little bit better of an experience. The second thing
that you can do as a parent is to give
your kids tools to help them with navigating this. And
so there's two really great apps that I use. One
is called the one SEC app. The other is called
the Opal app, and the one SEC app actually gets

(32:43):
really slows down, so if your kid opens an app,
it doesn't just open the app, it actually creates a
bit of a delay and gets your kid to really
think about why they're opening that app and to answer
that question, to build that speed bump or to slow
that down before they're just mindlessly opening the platform. The
opal app is a great tool for both mobile and
desktop that allows you to block certain apps at certain

(33:07):
time of the day and make that routine so that
you can wake up and count on the fact that
all your social platforms will be blocked. So those are
two tools that I really like to use. But lastly,
you know, some of the simple things that you can
do are hiding your social media apps far back in
your phone if you have an iPhone, you know, putting
as many of them as possible into one of those

(33:28):
little square pods and putting that a couple slides backs
that you really have to think and you really have
to ask yourself about why you're getting on your attack before.

Speaker 8 (33:36):
You do it.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
Okay, So again, the apps are one sec, oh any
one sack sec and then opal, O p A L.
And I'm looking at these and you know, I've covered
tech for a while and I these are great. I
mean they look like I love the idea, and I
do one hundred percent agree. It's all about like, if
you put these apps front and center on your phone,
you know you're going to be on them a lot,

(33:58):
You're going to be consuming them a lot because it's
just when you're you know, you have a free minute,
you're going to open them up, and that's just human nature. Okay,
So you also have let's see the government intervention. So
what specific kind of like changes would you like to
see implemented for all this? Do you think it's a
government thing?

Speaker 7 (34:18):
I mean, right now.

Speaker 6 (34:19):
We're basically giving kids keys to a car that haven't
been tested or don't have a seat belt. So I
think that if the average American team is going to
be spending eight hours of their day behind the screen,
there has to be some level of accountability in systems
because right now there is no incentive for these companies
to really build tax safer other than that maybe you know,

(34:41):
they want to have brand trust with the next generation.
But there needs to be some tracks and balances. And so,
for example, one of the things that we worked on
in California that just passed a couple of weeks ago
actually make social media platforms remove any sexual abuse content
that's on the platform of minors. Twenty five percent of
sex trafficking cases of adolescence in California happened through the Internet,

(35:04):
and up until a couple of weeks ago, that content
was roaming freely. If any of that content was reported
to the social platforms, they weren't required to do anything,
but now they have to respond within thirty six hours.
So that's just like one example. You would be I
hope anyone hearing this horrified that it took twenty years
to pass something like that, But that's really the state

(35:25):
that we're in as we think about the future. What
I believe we need to start doing is actually adding
more agency into the algorithmic processes, especially for young people.
So for example, if a young person is struggling with
their mental health and they don't have and their entire
feed is bad mental health and things that are triggering them,

(35:45):
but you're never asked to refresh your interests once you've
actually logged onto a social platform. So I would like
the government to be able to empower these social platforms
to allow more agency amongst consumers when it comes to
the algorithm. And to be honest, I think it's a
happy middle ground between you know, completely restricting the design
and also giving the users more agency on their experience,

(36:09):
and then you know, just on the third side, I
think we need to be investing in more research and
the government does outside of the social media platforms, there's
more money inside the platforms with neuroscientists that are hooking
kids than there is money flowing into the researchers outside
of the platforms really understanding the implications of what technology
is doing to young people and all minds.

Speaker 9 (36:31):
For that matter.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
That's because the one side that they're investing in is
the one that provides the returns with the cash that
they make. And so and by the way, I love
the idea of sort of a reset button on the
social media networks, like for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, anything like TikTok, YouTube,
like hey reset, reset my interests. Let's let's start over here.

(36:52):
Even the music services like that would be useful too.
We only have a couple seconds here. Just how can
parents spot this potential social media addiction or obsessive behavior?

Speaker 6 (37:03):
Problematic social media use typically is when your child is
spending a lot of time alone, putting themselves in their room,
replacing the basic human needs with screen times, showing signs
withdrawals almost like many mental illness symptoms. And so if
your child is also visibly showing signs of distress when
you remove their device, that's a sign that they probably

(37:26):
have a problem.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Uh, Larisa, We're going to leave it there. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
It's the end of the year. I am cleaning out
the mail bag. I get so many emails from you.

(37:47):
I figured it would be a good time to answer
a bunch of those. So if you want to submit
your question, you can go to the website rich on
Tech dot tv. There is a link that says contact
and if you want to follow me on social media,
you can find me on x You can find me
on Facebook and of course Instagram, where I am hanging

(38:10):
out most of my day. I am at rich on
Tech on all of those and I post a lot
of good tech tips and things throughout the week. So
definitely follow me on Instagram at rich on Tech. All right,
without further Ado, let's get to the first question. Dana says,
moving to France and still want texts. Dana says, I'm

(38:31):
moving to France and would like advice on the best
and or most economical way to still receive identity verification
texts with the US number. Mercy Well, Dana have fun
in France, very exciting for you to be moving there,
and I love the fact that you are using two
factor authentication on your accounts. And so I understand that

(38:53):
these accounts are set up, some of them are from
the US, and you want to continue with the US number.
There's a couple of ways you could do this. My
initial thought is Google Voice. That's probably the easiest way,
and so you can set up a Google Voice number
for free, and then you can go into your accounts
and change the phone number to Google Voice and get
that confirmation text that way, and that will work no

(39:16):
matter where you are because it's all through the Internet,
and of course you can have those texts forwarded to
a phone number of your choice over in France. The
only issue I see there is that not every single
two factor authentication text works with Google Voice. Most of
them do, and I think for the most part it
will be fine, but you may run across a service

(39:39):
or two that does not work it's not compatible with that.
So in that case, the other thing I would do
is if you can't use the Google Voice number, is
use a two factor authentication app. And so there are
several apps out there that you can use for your
two factor authentication codes. And the way that these work

(39:59):
is that instead of the company texting you a code
that you then enter on the website to continue to
log in and let it proceed, you would just open
up this app on your phone, and every twenty or
thirty seconds or so, this app is generating a new code,
and that code is just like the one that you
would get texted to you, but it is coming from

(40:22):
your own device, and so in a lot of ways
it's actually more secure because the two factor authentication codes
through a phone number could be unencrypted, whereas these are
safe and secure on your phone. So a couple of
apps I can recommend to do that. Google Authenticator is one,
Microsoft Authenticator is another, and then there is another app

(40:43):
called auth the autchy, So any of those will work.
What you do is you sign into the website that
you want to set up two factor authentication on and
it says how do you want to set this up?
With an authentication app or a phone number? Using your phone,
you will scale and a QR code on your computer
screen and that will link the two together. The main

(41:05):
thing you want to think about here is that you
don't want to lose that authentication app. You want to
use one that is cloud based so that you can
move to a different device or move that to a
different account. But those are the ways that I would
recommend getting those identity verification texts as you call them
with a US number. Let's go to Miriam. Miriam says, hey, Rich,

(41:26):
I hope you are well. Thanks for being there. On
Saturday night, my car play stopped working. Up until then,
I was able to listen to my music, use GPS,
and make and receive hands free calls. I have a
twenty twenty three Volkswagen Jetta and an iPhone thirteen. Now
the wheels just spin and spin on the car and
the phone. They're looking for each other. I've talked to
Apple support, Volkswagen, and I'm talking to Verizon as well.

(41:49):
I can't do what they recommend because the wheels won't
stop spinning. Any suggestions. I appreciate you sharing all of
your knowledge with us. Miriam. Well, Miriam, uh, I would
say that this is just a temporary issue, and I
hope it is. You've got a very late model car,
You've got a very new iPhone, so I think that
this is just a temporary problem. So it depends I'm

(42:12):
not sure how you're connecting here, whether it is plugin,
whether it is wireless car play. Since it is a
newer car, it may have that feature. But what I
would do to troubleshoot this is to a couple things.
First off, I would delete the phone from your saved
phones on your car, So go into the settings on
your Volkswagen, delete the phone out of the settings, and

(42:35):
so that means it is no longer paired with your car.
Then I would go into your iPhone and delete the
car from my Bluetooth settings. So I would go into
settings Bluetooth and find that Volkswagen and hit that little
eye and say forget this device. Then I would restart
both of these things. So i'd turn your car off
and on, restart your iPhone. And then before you go

(42:58):
ahead and pair these things back up, I might do
a quick I might do a quick software update, and
so I would do make sure my software is up
to date on my iPhone. And if you can, I'm
not sure if this Volkswagen has any sort of Internet connection,
but if you can go into the settings and see
if there is a software update for the Volkswagen, I

(43:18):
would do that as well. So I would do those things,
and then once you're all linked up, you can go
into your settings, and then if you want to look
at your car play, it's under Settings General and then
car Play, and you can see the different cars that
are linked up. You can hit forget this car before
you try to link them up one more time. So
a lot of times those things get stuck in there,

(43:38):
some kind of change happens on either the phone or
the car, and it's just I don't know. It just
takes a little bit for those things to link up again.
But there's no reason why a modern Volkswagen and a
modern iPhone should not be able to link up. So
if you still have a problem, I would bring it
to the dealer and see what they can do. This
thing is probably still under warranty and they should be

(43:59):
able to help you out. Next up, Brian says Rich,
I enjoy your show, I miss Leo, but you've filled
empty space. Just find your misadventures are a great source
of amusement for my wife. Have you ever encountered my
problem here? It is earlier this year, we spent three
weeks in Taiwan. We both took our phones. She switched
out to a local simcard while I just used Wi Fi.
I did nothing to my settings, but I did install

(44:21):
a VPN. Since our return, my phone insists that it's
still in Taiwan. I get Taiwanese ads on YouTube sites
like eBay, give me Taiwan dollar prices and Taiwan's shipping options,
and all sites I go go by local time in Taiwan.
My phone shows Los Angeles local time, of course, but
not on the internet. I've been all through Safari trying

(44:41):
to reset it to California. So what gives appreciate your input? Okay,
So I definitely have this issue every time I go overseas,
and the last time I had this happened to me.
I was in Berlin and I'm searching. You know what
happens is when you go to a foreign country, the
IP address of your phone. When these services see it,

(45:04):
they reset to that IP address, so they say, oh,
this person is visiting us from Taiwan. Let's make sure
we serve up the local version of this website. So
in your case, I'm guessing that you went to YouTube
while you were there. I'm guessing that you went to
eBay while you were there, and I'm guessing that you
went to Google while you were there. So first thing

(45:24):
I would do is delete your history and website data
on Safari. So you can go into settings on your
iPhone and then tap Safari and scroll all the way
down and it says clear history and website data, and
so you press the big red button there and that
will clear it out. I would say clear out all history.
Just keep in mind that will probably log you out
of many of the websites you're logged into.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Now.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
I did write this down the last time I went
to Berlin because it took me a while to figure
this out. But on Google, if you're still getting the
foreign search results, go to Google dot Com, tap settings
in the lower right hand corner. Then you go to
search settings and then other settings. So again we've gone
like one, two, three deep at least. And then you

(46:06):
want to choose English, English and United States for the
results region instead of current region. So basically, when you
go into Google the search settings, you want it to
say English results instead of the current region. If you
leave it to current region, no matter where you travel
when you search, you're going to get local results in

(46:26):
that language and that are local to that area. But
if you set this to English once. No matter where
you go, you're always going to get those English results.
Thanks for the question, Brian. That is one that stumps
a lot of people when they travel internationally. They come
back home and everything sort of sticks to the foreign
country that they were in. My name is rich Dumuro

(46:47):
and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with
you at Triple eight. Rich one oh one. All right,
let's bring up Stephanie. Stephanie was scammed through Facebook Marketplace

(47:09):
and Stephanie, thanks so much for joining me. I appreciate
you sharing your story because I do think it's going
to help people.

Speaker 3 (47:16):
Of course, I'm happy to definitely help and share what
I learned in my experience on Facebook Marketplace.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Okay, so what let's what were you selling and tell
me how you posted it and all that good stuff,
Like what you're selling?

Speaker 3 (47:31):
What? So selling a furniture set for my in laws?

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Okay, pretty standard, correct, but it was a.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
High dollar value. So I put five thousand dollars for
twelve piece dining room set. Wow, that attracted certain people.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
Okay, so this was a this was like like I've
got a futon on there right now, and it's like
fifty bucks, So this is this is high end stuff,
so you think interesting. So you think that's what attracted
these scammers because they're like, oh, this person might have
some money because they're selling a very expensive furniture set.

Speaker 10 (48:13):
Yes, okay, because I lifted it and within five minutes,
maybe ten, all of a sudden, I had probably at
least five.

Speaker 3 (48:24):
To ten inquiries if it was still available and wanted
to buy it.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
Oh wow, interesting, okay, So what happened? What do they
say in these inquiries?

Speaker 3 (48:34):
So they're asking if it's still available, and I would
respond yes, but I was trying to be fair, so
I would go in order of who initiated the conversation first,
and then they would ask they wanted to give more,
So of course I got happy.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
They wanted to give you more money than you're asking
for this thing, correct, okay.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
Which again I was like, this is weird, but kind
of exciting that maybe I did do it too low,
but I was gonna just kind of be weary of
it at first, and a lot of the information coming
through was i'll give you fifty two hundred, I'll give
you fifty five hundred. The next one was, I'll give
you six thousand, and I did get into a bidding
war with one gentleman who was a scammer and another customer,

(49:19):
and they kept trying to outbid one another for it,
so I got up to sixty seven hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
Again, being excited, I told the one I said, unfortunately,
i'ministic with the first person who bid sixty seven and
just end up bidding war back and forth. I appreciate
your time and I'll keep you posted.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
And this is all through what phone or text or
how is this through messenger?

Speaker 3 (49:45):
Facebook?

Speaker 1 (49:45):
Facebook messaged me, Okay, did you look at their profile
at all? Like did you check them out? Like to
see what their deal was?

Speaker 3 (49:52):
Not at first?

Speaker 11 (49:53):
Okay, And what I started noticing was a lot of
users created were joined Facebook in twenty twenty three, so
this year, so they were new, correct, which was weird
because that didn't seem correct.

Speaker 3 (50:06):
So I was like, okay, well, I'm going to put
you to the side. But this gentleman wasn't a twenty
twenty three user. I believe he was a twenty sixteen user.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
So I was like, okay, okay, yeah, because we look
for little hints to see if these people are legitimate,
because okay, they have a lot of reviews, they have
a lot you know, they've been around for a while,
so we feel like they might be more legitimate. That's
what you kind of did.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
He started continuing the messaging of can I Zell you?
So I thought, sure, that doesn't seem to be weird. Sure,
I'll give you my email and you can. You can
send me money via Zell. And that's where it started
to become the scam was he they spoofed a Zell
email and made it look like I couldn't have the

(50:49):
funds because I didn't have a Zell business account, and
that I needed to resolve the issue. And it was
in order to resolve the issue, I had to send
three hundred dollars to the user and then it would
clear the situation. It would resolve it.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Okay. And at this point, did you send that money?

Speaker 3 (51:09):
No? I was like, that seems weird.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Okay, why am like?

Speaker 3 (51:13):
Because they overpaid? So we had agreed on sixty seven
hundred and he sent seven thousand and said will you
send the three hundred back? And I said, well, yes,
I'm not going to take seven thousand. That's not what
we agreed upon, and then the email came through from
Zell saying I had to send it back, and I
was like, well, this is weird. So then I checked

(51:33):
the account first of all, and I didn't get seven
thousand dollars. I didn't get sixty seven hundred dollars. So
after speaking with my husband, I said, this seems weird.
I'm going to call Zell. And sure enough, I actually
walked into another like a you know, situation with calling
a quote unquote Zell customer service account which was not Dell.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Oh so that's how they got you. Where did you
get that phone number from?

Speaker 3 (51:59):
I googled it and of course I have the number,
but I don't have the website.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
So you google the phone number for Zell came something
came up on Google. You dialed the number that you
saw on your screen, and it connected you to a
scam artist, which was unrelated to the original scammer. Yes,
scammers be scamming.

Speaker 3 (52:19):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
Oh my gosh, it's like no matter where you go, I.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Avoided a scam because I didn't see that didn't seem right.
So I was like, okay, we're gonna call and I
walked into another scam.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Wow, so you actually thought you were protecting yourself and
you walked right into another spider web of scam artists
that is really it's like a one two punch right there.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Yes, like they're getting really smart, okay, really really smart.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
So you call the Zel person and to this unbeknownst
to you, it's not actual Zel. And then what happened where.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
He's walking me through un quote unquote how to set
up Azell business account and I said, well, I don't
want a Zell business account. I just kind of want
to resolve this and deal with the furniture sale and
move on. And I'm not trying to create a business.
That's not what my end game is. And he said, no,
I understand, man. We're going to get you set up
to get the money resolved. As I'm talking to him,
I had a bad feeling and I said, how do

(53:10):
I know you're not going to take my money? And
he goes, ma'am you called me, oh wow, oh you?
And I said that's a really valid point.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
You're right.

Speaker 9 (53:19):
I sought you out.

Speaker 3 (53:21):
You didn't seek me out. As we're going through quote
unquote setting up a Zell account, he has me logging
into any desk, which, oh, wow, do and he sees
my information, which, again, knowing I had a bad feeling,
I said, this doesn't track. But I've used any desk
for work related issues, so I thought that's not odd

(53:42):
in that respect. And I'm starting to move money around
and send it out to people I don't know. But
he said I'll get it back, and I said, I'm
going to get this money back. He says, yes, we're
just moving money around. You're going to transfer the money
out and it's going to come back to you. I said, okay. Again,
this doesn't seem all right, and my gut is yelling
at me to like end the call. I finally said,

(54:06):
I need to finish this call later when my husband
gets home, and he said, sure, no problem, we'll call
you back whenever you want. But at that point, I
already excelled money out to two people. I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
How much did you sell?

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Fifteen hundred total?

Speaker 1 (54:20):
You realize as soon as you hung up that this
was a problem, yes, yes, And how did you feel?

Speaker 2 (54:25):
Oh? Terrible?

Speaker 3 (54:26):
I said. I literally tried to avoid getting scammed and
walked into another scamp. As I'm talking to the second scammer,
the first scammer is blowing up the messenger, asking you
know why I haven't transferred the money? What's going on?
Did I read the letter?

Speaker 2 (54:43):
You know?

Speaker 3 (54:43):
I need to follow the email that they'd sent and
I need to do what the email says and everything
will be fine. And finally when he got he seemed
to obviously be getting aggressively angry. I finally told him, unfortunately,
I can't send you the money back because my account
was hacked due to fraudulent activity and I cannot access
any money, so thank you. And that's kind of where

(55:05):
he was like, well, that's because you didn't follow the email.
If it's no, no, no, no no, that's you know, not
understanding me. I cannot access the money, there's nothing to access,
nothing to send you, so I'm not going to do that.
And he was getting mad, and then I finally just
blocked him. After having to deal with the fraud department
at my bank.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Wow, okay, so I've got to go. But did you
get any of this money back where you're able to
reclaim it?

Speaker 3 (55:31):
I was, And if you ever have an issue with well.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
It's all your bank bottom line. What's what's your advice
to people.

Speaker 3 (55:36):
If it's too good to be sure it probably is,
and listen to your guys.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Stephanie, thanks so much for calling me today. I appreciate
you sharing your story. I know that's a tough story
to tell, but I do believe that if you listen
to these stories and hear more of them, you realize
the warning signs.

Speaker 3 (55:52):
Of course, absolutely, thank you for listening.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here on
location in New York City where Google has just announced
their latest Pixel eight smartphones. You've got the Pixel eight
and the Pixel eight Pro. Joining me now to talk
about them is Stephanie Scott with Google, and you are
the product manager for Pixel Yes, I.

Speaker 7 (56:15):
Lead the Pixel eight and the Pixel eight Pro lines.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
So pixel phones to me have always been all about
the camera, all about AI. Are you really sort of
doubling down on those two areas this year?

Speaker 8 (56:27):
I would say we have amazing advancements in both of
those areas this year. For the camera, we've upgraded all
of the hardware on the Pixel eight Pro, so you're
going to see huge leaps and improvements there, as well
as bringing amazing new post capture and editing tools, things
like Audio Magic Eraser that let you take out unwanted
noise in your videos. We have things like best Take

(56:49):
that will let you help select images of faces where
people really look their best, and brand new features like
Magic Editor that let you reimagine a shot maybe a
little bit more like how you remembered it. And then
for helpful AI, we have a number of new features
there as well. New features like Summarize they can help
sort of read a webpage and synthesize it for you,

(57:11):
or even things like direct my Call where you actually
have more ambient or helpful, helpful tips and tricks for
answering a phone call.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
So I will say, every time I use the Pixel devices,
I truly feel like it is a smartphone, like it
puts the smart in phone because it almost thinks for you.
And with these AI editions, you almost feel like you
have super control over a lot of your photos and
videos and things like that. Let's break down some of
these features. Okay, so first off, you mentioned a new

(57:40):
one which is the audio eraser. Explain that.

Speaker 7 (57:43):
Yeah, So Audio.

Speaker 8 (57:44):
Magic Eraser is an amazing new feature that we've added
for videos. And when you take videos, a lot of
times you're trying to capture the sound from a subject.
So maybe it's a musician or a child doing a performance,
but there could be unwanted background noise. So if you're
recording in New York City, there could be you know,
sirens or an ice cream trucks that goes by, or
a bird chirping, and the feature intelligently separates those sounds

(58:08):
out into layers and then lets you have the ability
to turn those those unwanted noises down so you can
really listen to the intended subject.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
Yeah. I was playing with this feature and it really
separated out like the voice versus the background noise, and
you can adjust each of them like its own level,
like almost as if you recorded them independently. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (58:27):
No, it's really great, and it's it's great because it
makes it so easy. It really gives gives you those
three options in the UI and lets you have complete
control over all of them.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
Now, this next feature, I think is going to be
the most controversial when it hits the you know, the
open marketplace, The best Take, because it's so unique and
it's it's stuff that you could do before if you
are a photo editor, but now anyone can do this
in the palm of their hand. This best take feature.
You take a group picture or you take even a selfie,

(58:57):
and it will let you like, you know, changed the
way the face looks. It can give a smile. Well
you explain it.

Speaker 7 (59:03):
Yeah, yeah, so I can explain. So this feature is
really built for those group.

Speaker 8 (59:07):
Shots where you're taking a picture, you know, with a
group of friends or maybe family. And I don't know
about you and your friends, but with me, a lot
of times someone's blinking, someone's looking away from the camera,
and so you end up with a shot where most
people look good, but someone's not looking at the camera.
So it's taking from that series of photos that you
took at that time and helping you actually choose from

(59:30):
the faces in that series or group of photos, another
face where someone maybe looks a little bit better, or
is looking at the camera or has their eyes open,
to create one amazing shot where everyone looks their best.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
Yeah. So you take six or seven photos and you
go through them, you swipe, and every single one you analyze,
you zoom in on the person's face. There's always something
a little bit off, and so now it's taking the
best of all those photos merging them into one great picture.

Speaker 8 (59:56):
Yeah, And it gives you again, a lot of controls.
You can go in and che the smile maybe you like,
because not everyone wants that big goofy smile, you know,
maybe someone wants a little more muted expression. So I
can't wait personally to use this for my holiday card
this year. We take it with my cat. It's always
a little chaotic, and so it's just nice to be
able to have have a little bit more editing control.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
There.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
Will it work on animal faces?

Speaker 8 (01:00:18):
No, it does not work on animal faces. But I
can choose a picture where my cat is looking good
and then correct my face.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
Ah, okay, got it. Well, maybe next year. The upgrade
for the for the dogs. People love the dog and
cat features on these like photo apps. All right, so
let's talk about the operating system updates because Google announced
that they will do seven years of updates for the pixel.
Explain what that means.

Speaker 8 (01:00:42):
Yeah, so for Pixel, we've you know, we've offered you know,
multiple years of feature updates in the past. We also
have featured drops, which brings newer features to people that
may have a pixel that's several years old. But this
year we have a new offering that's really meaningful with
which is seven years of OS security and feature drops,

(01:01:04):
so offering users and sort of for Pixel eight and
eight pro a guarantee that we will be supporting these devices.

Speaker 7 (01:01:11):
For that time.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
I mean that's a really long time, so this phone
will pretty much be good to go for that long.

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:01:19):
We're excited to have this exciting announcement for users and
being able to support them as if they're planning on
using the device even longer.

Speaker 7 (01:01:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
They also announced on stage that if you're kind of
the tinkering person, you can fix your own phone. Tell
me about that.

Speaker 8 (01:01:34):
Yeah, So we have a partnership with I fix It,
and so we make parts and repair manuals available. So
looking to again help support users that are looking for
longevity in their devices.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
I may have to try to just replace a screen,
because the last time I did that was many many
years ago with an iPod. I replaced the battery and
I was so proud of myself, But that was like
many many years ago.

Speaker 8 (01:01:56):
Yeah, I would say it's definitely an area that's progressing
and we're worth trying again.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
What about people that have the current Pixel phones? Are
there any features you announced that they can see on
their phones?

Speaker 6 (01:02:07):
Now?

Speaker 8 (01:02:08):
I think the only one we announced today was the
new Fold feature that provides translation using taking a capability
of the two screens, so being able to do an
interpreter mode and how use the dual screens on the
Fold display to be able to more easily do a
translation between two people having a conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
What's been the response on the Fold I.

Speaker 8 (01:02:31):
Honestly, I think it's a really innovative product. It's a
sort of a cutting edge and we're really bringing and
taking advantage of the larger screen to do even more
in terms of you know, photo editing or camera features,
so a really amazing space to innovate.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
AI is a huge part of the Pixel devices. I
feel like it's always been a big part with Google
Assistant and all the photo features, but now you've got
these call screening features. You say that people with Pixel
phones get like fit two percent less spam calls. Tell
me about some of those features that you announced today.

Speaker 8 (01:03:04):
Yeah, I absolutely love our calling features. So we have
a number of different features, everything from you know, direct
my Call, which helps you when you're calling a business
for example, to be able to navigate phone trees, to
things like crystal Clear calling that remove background noise using AI,
to things like hold for me.

Speaker 7 (01:03:21):
That literally save you hours of your day by not
having to wait on hold.

Speaker 8 (01:03:26):
The new one we announced today is an advancement to
direct My Call and call screen where you actually have
more intelligent response suggestions, so you don't even have to
pick up a call to respond to a call. So
if you imagine, for example, a UPS driver is calling
and asks where should I leave the package?

Speaker 7 (01:03:44):
Or can I leave the package?

Speaker 8 (01:03:45):
You'll actually get suggested responses and you can say things
like leave it by the door, you know, and not
even have to pick up the phone to give them
that instruction, which is great.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
So you work with this phone on a daily basis,
I imagine you're pretty much invested in the pixel lineup
and you feel like it's probably one of the best
phones out there. If someone is thinking about switching to
this phone, that is a really tough thing for the
average smartphone user to do because they've got a big
life in their previous phone. What's your advice for them?

Speaker 8 (01:04:15):
My advice is to give it a go. I think
there's a lot of new features here, amazing cameras to try,
all the new helpful calling features and smarts features on board.

Speaker 7 (01:04:26):
So it's a really great time to try a pixel all.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
Right, So you've got Pixel eight starting at six hundred
ninety nine dollars. You've got Pixel eight Pro starting at
nine hundred ninety nine dollars. Also, there's a deal I
saw if you pre order you might get a free watch.

Speaker 8 (01:04:41):
I think we have some amazing pre order promotions going
on right now, so definitely worth giving those a try.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
And when are these available?

Speaker 7 (01:04:48):
These are available October twelfth.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
Okay, October twelfth.

Speaker 12 (01:04:52):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Stephanie Scott with Google. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 7 (01:04:56):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 8 (01:04:57):
Rich.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Okay, I'll have more about the Pixel eight and Pixel
eight Pro my website. Just go to richon Tech dot TV.
We'll take more of your calls after this. Give me
a call triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Tomuro here hanging out with you,

(01:05:20):
talking technology on location. We've done interviews in the plane.
This is the first time I've done an interview on
a boat. We are in Long Beach and joining me
now is Mitchley of ARC Boats. Thanks for joining me.

Speaker 13 (01:05:35):
It's great to be here and we are excited to
have you out on our one of our boats.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
So this is an all electric boat. Describe what we
are on right now.

Speaker 13 (01:05:43):
This boat that we're on now is called the ARC one.
It is the first model boat that we brought to market.
It's a twenty four foot fully electric power boat, capable
of five hundred horsepower and software limited to forty.

Speaker 12 (01:05:56):
Miles an hour.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
And I've already been on it spoiler alert, and it's
quite incredible. It's quiet, it's smooth, it's powerful. Tell me
about the company. Let's start with ARC You're based in
Los Angeles, and what are you trying to do?

Speaker 13 (01:06:10):
This company didn't even exist three years ago, and at
this point we have already manufactured and delivered the ARC
one to our initial customers. The entire company is now
focused on the next model we're bringing to market, which
is a mass market wakesport boat.

Speaker 12 (01:06:27):
If you zoom back out.

Speaker 13 (01:06:28):
As a company, our goal is to electrify everything on
the water. Electric boats make a ton more sense than
gas boats across pretty much every aspect of boating. The
ownership experience is much nicer, they're quiet. We can hold
an interview on a boat, you're not smelling fumes. They're
far more reliable, they're less expensive to operate, and the

(01:06:52):
experience of operating one itself is so much better thanks
to software and the technology on this boat. The hard
part is actually putting enough energy on the boat to
move through water at high speeds and with a lot
of power. That is what we specialize in. We build
our holes, our battery packs, and a lot of the
systems that go into this boat in house in our

(01:07:14):
manufacturing facility in Los Angeles.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
So, Mitch, what made you wake up and say I
would like to electrify a boat.

Speaker 13 (01:07:22):
I'm a lifelong boating enthusiast. My parents were boating enthusiasts,
and particularly water ski enthusiasts.

Speaker 12 (01:07:29):
They love to slalom ski. So I grew up out
getting dragged behind a.

Speaker 13 (01:07:34):
Boat with wakeboarding and knee boarding and water skiing and weightsurfing.

Speaker 12 (01:07:40):
This is what I love to do with my time.

Speaker 13 (01:07:42):
I also have a degree in mechanical engineering and spent
a while portion of my career as a software developer,
and this is kind of the marriage of all of
those things, my passion and my actual career.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
When I tell people I'm going out on an electric boat,
they say, oh, a duffy because people think of a
low powered or slower kind of boat. That's not what
you set out to build.

Speaker 13 (01:08:08):
No, we absolutely want to change the perception of electric
boats in the same way that most people associate electric
cars with performance, with really fast zero to sixty times.
We are here to change the perception of electric boats
on the water, and hopefully your experience today made that point.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
So we're on the arc one. This is the boat
that you initially sold. You made a couple dozen of them,
and now you're onto Well, tell me some of the
features of this unit that we're on.

Speaker 13 (01:08:40):
So this was a limited edition boat that was our
first entrance into the market, into the marine space. It
consists of two battery packs. Each one of those battery
packs is larger than pretty much anything you'd find in
an electric car. In total, it's two hundred and twenty
kilos of battery capacity, which, as a point of references,

(01:09:04):
roughly three times the size of a Model Y battery pack.
The boat is laid out in an open seating arrangement.

Speaker 12 (01:09:13):
Given that everything is.

Speaker 13 (01:09:15):
Packaged below the floor, that affords a lot of space,
a lot of space for storage and a lot of
space for seating on the boat of this size.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
It's a big boat. It's got a lot of space.
It's got a lot of space for people. Again, it's fast,
it's quiet. There is absolutely no scent to the boat.
There's no fumes, there's none of that boating scent that
you kind of associate with being out on the open water.
It's a very simple setup. So you've got just the
steering wheel, the throttle. You've got this nice big screen

(01:09:43):
which is kind of very Tesla esque in the center,
which is showing maps, music. There's even a backup camera.
I guess if you can call it a back it's
a back camera. I should say. You see your current speed,
your current battery, You've got a compass, the water temperature,
and also the water depth. Do you think that this
appeals to someone who has grown up with an iPhone

(01:10:06):
or someone who is driving a Tesla.

Speaker 12 (01:10:09):
Absolutely.

Speaker 13 (01:10:10):
We want to make better boats and we hope that
those boats and expect that those boats will appeal both
to people that have grown up boating and people that
are brand new to it. By making boats far easier
to own and far less expensive to actually operate, it
opens up the market These are simply better boats. They

(01:10:30):
solve the main pain points with gas boats today.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
What about the charging situation? How long does it take
to charge? How much time do you get out in
the water on a charge?

Speaker 12 (01:10:42):
We think in terms of usage time.

Speaker 13 (01:10:44):
We want people to be able to use their boat
exactly how they want to use it for a full day,
plug in at the end of the day, and wake
up the next morning with a boat that is ready
to hit the water again. In practice, that tends to
mean three to five hours of active usage time. That
is a much better experience than what you gas boat
owners deal with today, lugging gas cans down to a

(01:11:08):
dock and filling it up manually, having to go twenty
minutes away to the nearest marina to pay ten dollars
a gallon, or any of the other creative solutions people
come up with.

Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
Are the chargers readily accessible?

Speaker 12 (01:11:20):
Absolutely.

Speaker 13 (01:11:22):
This boat uses what's known as a CCS one charger.
It is the same style of charger that you use
for any electric car on the road today. And another
awesome part about electric boats is that they tend to
have easier access to power. When you look across a
marina today, most of those marinas actually already are equipped

(01:11:43):
with what is known as shore power, because even gas
boats use electricity to power refrigerators or bilge pumps or
other accessories on the boat. You can just plug straight
into that, plug it into your boat, and again wake
up the next morning with the charge. Boat docks tend
to be the same way.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
You've got the ARC One already. People are using this
out in the world. You're learning a lot of data
from that, and you're now building your mass market electric boat.
What can we expect from that.

Speaker 13 (01:12:13):
The next boat we're bringing to market is a mass
market wakesport boat. We'll have more to share about that soon.
But as with a lot of new technology, the goal
is to, over the course of our development time, make
the technology more accessible to more people. Our goal is
eventually for every boat on the water to be electric.

(01:12:35):
It makes sense from a customer perspective, from a product perspective,
and from environment perspective. We want to make it happen,
and we want to make it happen quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
How much are we talking for this boat for the
buyers that already have it, and also the upcoming model.

Speaker 13 (01:12:49):
This boat was the ARC One was three hundred thousand dollars.
That's a all in price that includes trailer delivery and
best in class service. That might say like a lot,
but gas boats today of this size routinely sell for
that amount of money. Boats just tend to be more
expensive than automotive. Having said that, our goal is to

(01:13:12):
drop the price of these boats over time.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Performance wise, we were doing some what do you call
them s turns, S curves, and it was pretty wild.
This boat goes very fast, it has a lot of maneuverability.
It feels like you have a lot of control in
this boat. Are those advantages of the electric system.

Speaker 13 (01:13:29):
Yeah, So one of the things that we have designed
into this boat is the ability to go quickly from
zero up to top speed. You also get a lot
of torque at low speeds, which makes it easy to
pull a wake quarter or water skier out of the water,
and it also makes the acceleration quite fun. So we

(01:13:50):
were out there doing what are known as hole shots,
which is when you pin the throttle down and let
the boats software take over and accelerate that boat up
to tops and then turn that into s turns where
you're cranking the wheel left and right and going back
and forth and really experiencing how sporty this boat is.
We are not taking away from any part of your experience.

(01:14:11):
This is absolutely better than what you're experiencing today on
gas boats.

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
All right, Mitch Lee, one of the founders of ARC.
Tell folks how they can learn more about the company.

Speaker 12 (01:14:23):
Go to arcboats dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
Thanks so much for joining me today out on the
open water. If you want a link to that, I'll
put on my website. Rich on Tech dot tv. More
rich on Tech coming your way. If you have a
question about technology, give me a call. The number is
Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. My name is
Rich d'miro and you are listening to rich on Tech.

(01:14:46):
out with you talking technology at Triple eight rich one
oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. The website is rich Tech dot tv.
Once you go there, you can see all of the
previous segments that I've done, not only for TV, but

(01:15:07):
also for this radio show. Subscribe to the podcast and
you can follow me on social media. I am at
rich on Tech. This is the show where I talk
about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
But I also get a lot of emails from you
with questions, so today I figured i'd take some time
to answer those. Let's go to the mailbag. Patrick says, Hey, Rich,

(01:15:29):
hope you're well, buddy. So my Android works like a
charm on the home Wi Fi, but my girlfriend's iPhone
is always having issues. She calls it a dead zone
when she's here. Any suggestions, Patrick, I have noticed that
there is a pretty big difference in the way the
iPhone works with Wi Fi versus certain Android phones. I

(01:15:51):
find that the reception on Android can often be better.
I'm not sure why that is. I mean, it could
be the case on your girlfriend's phone, it could be
the way she's holding it. Just kidding. That was the
joke from a long time ago when there was an
antenna issue with the iPhone and Steve Jobs famously said

(01:16:11):
that people were holding their phones wrong. That is not
the case. These modern phones should be able to pick
up a pretty good signal. But with that said, there
are some things you can try to do. So number one,
you can have her try taking off the case from
her phone to see if that makes a difference. Obviously,
restart the phone. See if that makes a difference. Disconnect

(01:16:33):
from the Wi Fi and then reconnect, and by that
I mean go into the Wi Fi settings and actually
press that little eye forget the network, restart the phone,
and then bring the phone back onto the network. See
if that helps. The other thing she can try to
do is a network settings reset. So if you go
into your settings and then General and then reset, there

(01:16:56):
is an option for network settings reset. Now, this will
clear out all of her connections, not just Wi Fi
but also cellular and Bluetooth, so she will have to
reconnect any device that she is connected to her phone.
The cellular connection will find itself again. But that is
a way that you can try to troubleshoot this situation

(01:17:17):
and see if she can get a better signal on
her phone. Let me show you exactly how to do that.
You go into Settings and then you go into General
and you scroll all the way down. It says transfer
or reset phone. You tap that, and then you tap reset.
I know it sounds scary, but you get a whole
bunch of options reset all settings, reset network settings, and
then you can even tap that one more time. You

(01:17:38):
have to put in your passcode and then that will
reset all of the network settings. She will have to
reconnect her car Bluetooth, She will have to reconnect any
earbuds or AirPods or any Bluetooth headphones, and also the
Wi Fi connections at her work and your place. Thanks
for the question, Patrick, Marlene says, what is the best
antivirus protection for three iPhone, four teens and two iPads? Also?

(01:18:02):
Is there a good password protection software to keep passwords secure? Well, Marlene,
I'm gonna make your day and tell you that you
don't need virus protection on iOS devices. You just don't
need it. The way that the iPhone is configured, it
is really really tough to get a virus. It might
be impossible, I'm not sure, but there is a spyware

(01:18:23):
for the iPhone. It is very rare. I don't think
your phone is going to get it. There have been
limited cases where there's been evidence of spyware and malware
on iPhones, but for the average person, it is very
very rare, and there is And in fact, even though
if you search in the app store for anti virus
on the iPhone, you will find a million apps that

(01:18:46):
sort of suggest they will give you virus protection on
the iPhone. They don't. They cannot, and the reason they
cannot is because of the architecture of iOS. iOS is
set up as a sandbox. Pretty much every every single
app that you install on iOS is living in its
own little silo and it can't really interact with other

(01:19:08):
apps unless it's done in the way that Apple has allowed,
and they have made very strict precautions on how apps
can interact with each other. Now, this is not the
same for Android. Android, yes you can get you could
potentially get a virus or malware on Android. It might
be a little bit easier, but there's various reasons for that. Now,
the other thing about the iPhone is most, if not all,

(01:19:30):
of the software, unless you jail break, it has to
come from the app store, and that software is scanned
for viruses, and it is also scanned for malware, and
it is just generally checked to make sure that it
is secure. So if you are installing your apps from
the iPhone app store, there is no need for antivirus protection.
The one thing you do have to be careful about, Marlene,

(01:19:52):
is what you click on, because yes, you can. Still
there are things called zero day attacks, there are things
where there are exploits for the I. It does happen
from time to time. The way that it happens typically
is through a text message. So the main thing you
need to be careful about on the iPhone is what
you click and what you download, and also what you

(01:20:14):
enter your personal information too. So if you are getting
some sort of text that says, hey, we've got a
package for you from USPS and there's a problem. We
need you to log in here with all of your information,
that's really where you're going to have a problem now
when it comes to passwords. So if you are just
using the iPhone, I'd recommend iCloud keychain. If you're just

(01:20:34):
using iOS devices, that'll work nicely and it's safe, it's secure,
it keeps your passwords across all of the different Apple devices.
If you want something a little bit more full featured
that you're going to use on a couple different devices,
Bitwarden is free and it works across various devices, So
that's a good one. And Google actually has some pretty

(01:20:54):
decent free software as well, built into the Chrome web
browser and it does work pretty nicely on the iPhone.
And if you want something that's paid, I like the
software from dash Lane. I also like proton pass. Again, Marlene,
I did cross check this with a with a tech expert,
a cybersecurity expert, who agreed with me, you pretty much

(01:21:15):
for the average person don't need virus protection on iOS devices. Finally,
Carrie says, do you have anyone complaining about the Apple
Watch not charging to one hundred percent after updating to
iOS ten. Mine does not last all day now. The
battery dies at the end of the day. It is
so frustrating. Good question. I'm glad that you noticed this

(01:21:35):
major change when Watch OS ten came out. That's when
I noticed it. I noticed it was only charging up
to eighty percent. And the reason why Apple made this
change is for battery health. They want the batteries on
these things to last longer, and the amount of time
that your battery lasts on the Apple Watch is directly
related to the age of your watch and also what

(01:21:58):
you're doing on that watch. If you are not doing
any sort of GPS tracking or athletic tracking or fitness tracking,
your battery is going to last a lot longer than
someone who is going on a hike with GPS or
recording a workout with their heart rate for a long time.
So the first way is while your watch is charging.
If you want it to charge fully, make sure that

(01:22:19):
your watch is charging, tap your watch to show the
charging screen, then tap the circle with the green or
yellow charging icon, and then you'll tap charge to full now,
and that will charge your battery to one hundred percent.
If you want your Apple Watch to charge to one
hundred percent every single time, you're going to have to
go into your settings and change a setting to make

(01:22:40):
that happen. There's a setting that seems to be on
by default at this time, which is called optimized battery charging.
If you want to change that and turn it off
and have your Apple Watch charge to one hundred percent
every single time, tap the digital crown on your Apple Watch,
scroll down to your settings. So let's find that I'm
doing this as we speak here, and then you want
to scroll down to battery and you have to do

(01:23:02):
this on the Apple Watch itself. You can't do this
through the settings on your phone, which is kind of odd.
And now, right now, mine is saying last charge to
optimized limit, and so if you want to change that,
you have to tap battery health and then you'll see
the option for optimized charge limit. Right now, Mine, is on.
If you want your battery to charge to one hundred percent,

(01:23:24):
every time you can toggle that off, will it ruin
your battery? I mean over a period of long time. Yes,
the battery does degrade on any device like this. So
it's up to you. If you keep your Apple Watch
forever and you want your battery to last a really
long time, maybe consider leaving the optimized charge limit on.
But if you want the maximum battery, you probably have

(01:23:45):
to turn it off. Thanks for the question. Carry If
you have a question for me, go to my website
richon Tech dot TV. Hit the link that says contact
and you can submit your question right there. My name
is rich Damiro and you are listening to rich on Tech.

(01:24:06):
out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Let me tell you about this
feature called reading Mode. Now I can't take credit for
finding this. I got to give a shout out to
Jimmy is Promo on YouTube. He covers all Samsung stuff

(01:24:29):
and he had a great video about this reading mode
that I was not aware of. And it is really
really cool. So it basically makes any article on your
Android phone easy to read, makes it big, and it
takes out all the distractions, but it also reads it
to you. And there have been ways of doing this
before on Android, but this is very very simple, and

(01:24:51):
it involves a Google app called reading Mode. So if
you go to the Google Play Store, you search reading Mode,
you select that reading Mode app, you install it, you
open it up. There are a couple little things to
set it up, and basically what you need to do
is just set up what you want the shortcut key
to be to activate this feature. And on my phone,

(01:25:12):
I set it up where the volume up and the
power button. Now we're talking Android here, this is not iPhone.
So on the Android you would set because power down
and our volume down in power is the screenshot key,
So I set it as volume up and power. You
press those two things together and instantly it will make

(01:25:33):
whatever article you're reading super easy to look at with
big fonts, whatever colors you want, if you want more contrast, whatever,
and it can also read that article to you aloud.
It cuts out colors, tones and marks down the white
to lower contrast. To make this all easier on the ice.
It is fantastic, not just as an accessibility feature, but

(01:25:54):
for anyone who just wants to listen to articles or
just read articles in a much easier, eager, less distracted mode.
So again it's called reading Mode. Search for it in
the Google Play Store. It is a Google app. So
if there's other apps named reading Mode, look for the
one from Google. Again, I'll put it all on the
show notes go to Rich on tech dot TV for those.

(01:26:16):
All right, if you have a question, give me a
call Triple eight Rich one oh one. Karen is in
Thousand Oaks. Karen, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 9 (01:26:23):
Hi there, thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 1 (01:26:24):
Hey, thanks for calling.

Speaker 9 (01:26:26):
Sure. I have an iPhone. I've had one since two
thousand and seven and I have it backed up with iCloud.
And my daughter got married and I decided that it
would be a great idea to back up the photos
somewhere else. So absolutely, yeah, it's easy to do it
on Google Photos. So I started the process downloading it

(01:26:49):
on my phone, and it ran out a memory really
fast because it was backing up all my photos from
my phone and I have a lot yep, and so
I stopped the I stopped it, and I so I
started playing around a little bit and I deleted a
photo and it said, okay, we're going to delete the

(01:27:10):
photo from iPhoto. So I stopped. I didn't delete anymore.
But then it it took all like on Google Photo,
it was completely full, and it wanted more money so
to back up everything another ten bucks a months. So
now I feel like I'm being held hostage by them,

(01:27:33):
and so I stopped all the access to photos from
my iPhone to Google. Sure, which is fine, but now
it says that I can't get my email for Google.

Speaker 1 (01:27:48):
Because our account is maxed out and they're connected exactly. Yeah, okay,
so with Google you get fifteen gigs of storage I believe,
like included.

Speaker 9 (01:27:58):
Right right, but I already pay, but you pay for iCloud.
I do can dogs because I have twenty thousand photos.

Speaker 1 (01:28:07):
Yeah okay, So here's the dilemma. So you've got these
basically you're kind of okay. So two things I guess.
Two part question here are you're not going to use
Google anymore for this?

Speaker 2 (01:28:17):
Correct?

Speaker 1 (01:28:18):
Okay, so we can get those photos out of there.
The other thing is do you are you an Amazon
Prime member?

Speaker 9 (01:28:25):
I am?

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
Okay, So have you heard of Amazon? Photos. Yes, have
you used it?

Speaker 3 (01:28:30):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
Okay, So I would recommend since you're an Amazon Prime
member and you're using this as your secondary backup, so
your photos are basically in They're almost in two places.
Some of them are on your phone. I'm not sure
if your phone carries all twenty thousand physically on your device.
I don't know if you have that much storage on
your phone. It may or may not. But they are
backed up in iCloud, So that's one place they're backed up,

(01:28:53):
and of course you want them backed up in a
second place, which would be one of these cloud apps.
So since since you're already paying for Amazon, I would
say install the Amazon Photos app and let your photos
back up there, and that way you have a secondary copy.
Because I don't think it Icloud's going away anytime soon.
I don't think you're gonna have an issue with that,
but just in case, you will have a pretty sizable

(01:29:16):
backup of your photos, especially as you take new ones
on your Amazon account as well. Now that will take
care of moving forward. So to get rid of these
photos out of Google, I would just go ahead delete
the Google Photos app off of your iPhone. You don't
need to do anything first, Before you do that, just
go ahead and delete it.

Speaker 9 (01:29:36):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:29:36):
Then I would go to photos dot Google dot com
on your computer and you can go ahead and select
photos in there and delete them. And I believe once
you go in there, let me try this real quick.
If you select like one photo, you should be able
to select a bunch at a time and just go

(01:29:56):
ahead and delete those. And when you delete them from
the web interface, not going to delete off your iPhone
at the same time because it can't talk to your
your iCloud anymore. Does that make sense?

Speaker 9 (01:30:07):
I think?

Speaker 13 (01:30:08):
So.

Speaker 9 (01:30:08):
Let me just one other thing I have in iMac
and I don't have iCloud on my Mac because I
didn't want them if I took if I deleted them
off on my phone, I didn't want them to delete
them off my computer.

Speaker 1 (01:30:22):
Okay. Well, so the way that iCloud works is it's
a it's a everything syncs to iCloud. So if you're
looking at your photo collection on your Mac, it's going
to be the same exact collection that's on your phone.
That's if you go to iCloud dot com, it's all
the same. And it's very confusing for people because they
think because it's on an app on their phone, it's

(01:30:42):
different than what's in the cloud or what's on you know,
their computer if they're sinking it. So that is a
little confusing. But my my main point here is that
if you're if you're not wanting to use the Google
Photos aspect of anything, just go to the Google Photos
website and that anything you do there will not connect
through to iCloud. So if you go through and delete

(01:31:04):
all these pictures on Google Photos, they will only delete
on the Google Photos cloud and it's not going to
redelete them off of your iCloud photo collection. Okay, So
and you can go through and you know, try to
bulk delete. I think you can select one thousand at
once or something like that. But you can just go
through and kind of delete as many as possible. And

(01:31:25):
I believe you can just kind of click in the
corner of the photo and then drag over to kind
of select multiple photos at once and that then then
just go ahead and delete them. Then you can empty
the trash and you should see your storage kind of
clean up there. So good question, Karen. I know it's confusing.
This photo cloud collection stuff is really not easy, especially
when you start using multiple different providers. So good question there,

(01:31:48):
and get that stuff cleaned up so your Gmail works
again because it is connected. All right, more of your
calls coming up. Eight eight eight rich one oh one.
I hope you're having a fantastic day. Did you know
that you can listen to this show as podcast. Just
search rich on tech and your favorite audio app and
be sure to subscribe. Then you can go to rich
on tech dot tv to find the show notes. I

(01:32:11):
take very good notes about what we talk about here.
So if you're looking for a link to something I mentioned,
chances are it's in there. And by the way, if
you're not downloading the app for the retailer that you're
shopping at, I highly recommend you do it. You know why,
because they're trying to get people to use their apps,
and what does that mean. They are putting discounts inside

(01:32:31):
the app. I'm telling you any story you go to,
whether it's Target, whether it is Best Buy, whether it
is a fast food place, download the app. All these
quick service restaurants, all of the coupons and discounts are
inside the apps. See you take five extra minutes to
download the app and place your order. That way, I'm

(01:32:52):
telling you it will save you money. My name is
rich Demiro, and you are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to richon Tech on location here at Crypto
dot Com Arena formerly Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Joining me now is Luke Saunders. He is the founder
and CEO of Farmers Fridge, and we're here because they've

(01:33:14):
got three Farmers Fridge locations here. Thanks for joining me, Yeah,
thank you so much for having me. All Right, so
let's talk about Farmer's Fridge. I first saw this at
LAX Los Angeles Airport and it's a vending machine filled
with healthy foods like fresh salads. And I was a
little skeptical, I'll be honest, but I ended up getting
one on my way out, and then I got one
on my way home, so it worked and the salads

(01:33:36):
are fresh. You've got locations all across the nation. Can
you tell me how you describe what Farmer's Fridge is.

Speaker 14 (01:33:42):
Yeah, So, Farmers Fridge is a fresh food company. We
make fresh food every single day in a centralized kitchen,
and then we distribute that through a network of automated
smart fridges and in retail locreations across the country. And
really the idea is very simple, how do you make
fresh food as accessible as a candy bar?

Speaker 1 (01:34:02):
How did you come up with the idea for this company?

Speaker 14 (01:34:04):
Yeah, so I came up with it because I was
a traveling salesman. I was driving one thousand miles a week.
I was flying all the time, and one of the
biggest problems I had was trying to figure out what
I was going to have for lunch every day, and
how to have something that wasn't just fast food or
some kind of snack from a gas station. And I
realized you could make fresh food at scale and get

(01:34:24):
it to more people. You just had to get it
to the faster. And really the idea was if I
built the entire business model around the concept of making
real fresh food getting into people quickly, I could solve
the problem. And then I backed into the idea for
the vending machine, because something like one hundred million people
a day in the United States actually visit a vending
machine to buy something, so clearly it's a very convenient

(01:34:47):
way to get food and get it to more places.
There's about eight million vending machines in the US, so
that helped to just make it more convenient, more accessible,
and lower the cost to serve fresh food.

Speaker 1 (01:34:59):
And so where was first location and how many locations
do you have now? And in what types of places
are these smart fridges in?

Speaker 14 (01:35:07):
Yeah, So when I got started, I thought the best
part of the idea was we were only going to
take up, you know, twelve square feet and I could
go pretty much anywhere and in a lot of places
restaurants couldn't go. But it turns out that a lot
of people were very skeptical about the idea of installing
of anding machine full of fresh food in their office
building or the lobby of the hospital or something like that.

(01:35:27):
So we ended up in a food court in downtown Chicago.
It was objectively the worst food court in Chicago, but
it was the only place that would take us, and
we had one location, and it was really just to
get people to try the food, get some feedback on
the concept, and from there we've grown it now to
over a thousand locations across the country. We're in major

(01:35:48):
retail stores across the country, and also have about six
hundred and fifty fridges that we operate in hospitals, universities, airports,
even places like this arenas.

Speaker 1 (01:36:00):
So tell me about making this food. It's got to
be fresh. You make it in Chicago, but somehow it
makes its way to Los Angeles and it still tastes fresh.
So how do you do that?

Speaker 2 (01:36:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 14 (01:36:09):
So when I started, at the very beginning, I was
making the food, I was delivering the food. I was
building the fridges, and we still do things pretty much
the same way. So I would actually drive down to
the produce terminal in the morning, get the freshest product
I could get it in, chop it up, put it
in the jar, and get it to that fridge. So
we have just continued to do that business model, but

(01:36:30):
now we just do it tens of thousands of times
a day. So we get whole ingredients in, we make
dressings from scratch. We're literally cutting up whole heads of
lettuce and mixing avocados to make our fresh in house squacamole,
and so the whole business is designed to facilitate having
that be our process and then get it to people quickly.

(01:36:51):
A huge component that's made it scalable is we built
a lot of technology in terms of where to send
all of the food that we're making, but also like
how to get feedback from customers if things aren't fresh
and improve that, or we can lock a fridge if
it goes out of temperature remotely. So all of that
has made it so that it's scalable. But the idea

(01:37:11):
is exactly the same as it was at the beginning.
You'd get a whole ingredient in make a dressing from scratch.
It's gonna taste good. You just have to get it
to people quickly so they have enough time to buy
it before it goes bad.

Speaker 1 (01:37:21):
Let's talk about some of the food that's in this fridge.
So these solids are served in sort of plastic jars.
Is that what you call them?

Speaker 14 (01:37:29):
Yeah, it's a plastic jar. So the idea at the beginning,
I was actually trying to figure out what kind of
packaging to use that would help reinforce freshness. And my
brother in law actually recommended these mason jar salads he
had seen on Pinterest, and so I initially thought it
was a crazy idea, but once I started testing with them,
it just looks so beautiful. It actually helps keep the

(01:37:50):
food fresh because you can layer ingredients, so we put
like wet and acidic ingredients on the bottom, things like
lettuce on the top. So that allows you to have
a higher quality meal that lasts longer, and it really
just shows really well in the machine because what we
found I tried so many different ways to tell customers

(01:38:10):
our food was fresh at the beginning, and over and
over again. What we heard when we'd actually talked to
the potential customers or people that were intimidated by the
vending machine is I'm looking at your food and I
want to see that that food looks fresh, and you
can tell, like the greens are not wilted, they're not brown.
Things are clearly handmade. And we were getting that kind
of feedback constantly, so that's a big part of why

(01:38:31):
we package it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
And so in the machine, I see all types of
different salads. You've got wraps, you've got hard boiled eggs
in there. Like you said, chips and guac. What's some
of your top sellers.

Speaker 14 (01:38:43):
So actually the chips and guac is a top seller,
which makes a lot of sense for us because we
actually are making that guacamolean house. We're adding peg go
to the top. There's no preservatives, nothing, and then it's
only I have a few days shelf life, so you
cannot buy a product like that anywhere else, and I
think the average price is four fifty. The caesar salad
is one of my personal favorites. It's just a very

(01:39:06):
high quality caesar salad with chicken. But the idea is
to have twenty five skews and have every single one
of those be something that you're like, Wow, that was great,
I'll buy it again.

Speaker 1 (01:39:15):
And what type of price point are we talking?

Speaker 14 (01:39:17):
So the product's range in price from three dollars all
the way up to about ten dollars on the high end,
our average item is about six fifty. You can also
get a discount if you're using our app. There's a
loyalty program, but then we also offer twenty five percent
off at the airport. So on average, our average ticket
is actually lower than McDonald's.

Speaker 1 (01:39:36):
So tell me about the tech that helps you get
these solids in these machines.

Speaker 14 (01:39:40):
Yeah, So the core technology for Farmer's Fridge is really
about inventory management, so we can see in real time
what's in every single fridge across the country, and then
every day we're making tens of thousands of meals, and
so the idea is we don't actually know where they're
going until the end of the day because that gives
us as much time the day to get the sales

(01:40:01):
data from the fridges, and then a cost function algorithm runs.
So essentially, it's looking at what's the inventory in the network,
how many products that you produce, and things like the
weather or tsa checkpoint traffic to say this is where
we think you should send everything to maximize the profitability
and reduce the amount of unsold inventory the next day.
So imagine like we kind of get that report and

(01:40:22):
everybody snaps into action. We're picking and packing the food,
putting it onto trucks and getting it out.

Speaker 1 (01:40:26):
To the fridges.

Speaker 14 (01:40:28):
And over the last year we've even invested in pushing
that prediction downstream. So what that means is we make
it once at our initial production facility, but then we'll
make it multiple points along the way. So when a
driver gets to the airport, let's say a flight got
in late and a bunch of people were hungry. He
bought ten salads. His drivers app he actually carries an

(01:40:48):
iPad with him, will tell him here's where you should
actually take this item from this fridge on your route
and put it into this fridge on your route, and
it's giving them all that feedback in real time start
to finish. The whole technology process is about how do
you make fresh food scalable? And really that's about inventory management.

Speaker 1 (01:41:06):
The one question I had was when I bought my
salad and I took it on my flight, how long
do I have to eat this? How long can I
keep this salad out of the fridge and still consume
it safely? Yeah?

Speaker 14 (01:41:16):
So, I mean, obviously I recommend eating the salad when
you get out of the fridge for just taste and quality,
because it's cold and it's crisp. But generally speaking, the
guidelines for fresh food or you want to keep it
under forty degrees. If it's over forty degrees after four hours,
you definitely want to throw it away. US For example,
the fridge actually if it goes above forty degrees for

(01:41:37):
more than an hour will shut down.

Speaker 1 (01:41:39):
You cannot buy anything.

Speaker 14 (01:41:41):
So but in general, if you're a consumer, you're on
your flight, you have before our flight, you bought that salad,
you should still eat it. Is my recommendation.

Speaker 1 (01:41:49):
What's the goal of all this, what's the goal of
Farmer's Fridge. The goal is really simple.

Speaker 14 (01:41:54):
Farmer's Fridge wants to make fresh, healthy food as accessible
as a candy bar. And what that means is you
should anytime you see a candy bar, have the option
to also get a salad, not because you shouldn't have
a candy bar, but just because we're going to give
people the option.

Speaker 1 (01:42:06):
We don't even want you to think.

Speaker 14 (01:42:07):
About this as healthy food. It's just something that's convenient
and affordable and tastes good, and so you want to
buy more of it. And so until we're kind of
everywhere and that's true, we're gonna keep going.

Speaker 1 (01:42:18):
Luke Saunders from farmers Fridge dot com, thanks so much
for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me,
appreciating on coming up more of your phone calls at
Triple eight rich one oh one, you are listening to
rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Website for

(01:42:40):
the show is richon Tech dot TV. Now it's time
for the feedback segment. These are the emails and the
comments I get from you, and for the last show
of the year, I figured I would do something special.
Now I post a lot on social media, but I
can't always respond to each and every comment. But I
do read a lot of them, so I figured for

(01:43:03):
this show I would read your comments about the show.
It was a big change for me to start something
new after Leo had been doing this for so long.
But fifty two shows later, if you count this one,
I am so glad you stuck with me, and hopefully
I found some new listeners as well. And by the way,
we're gonna do this again next year. I can't wait

(01:43:24):
to bring you more tech news, more interviews, more tips,
more tricks, more gadgets to make your life easier and
help you feel more informed. Without further ado, let's go
to the feedbag. Art says, very impressed with how you
inform the masses about cyber and social media. Yes, that's
a big part of the show. Cyber security is a

(01:43:46):
huge deal in this world, and just staying ahead of
these scam artists is a big part of avoiding falling
victim to a lot of this stuff. Jim says, you
are the best. Rich listening as always from Phoenix, Arizona.
Thank you Jim for listening from Phoenix, Arizona. Caroline says
I loved you on TV then on Tech Tuesdays with Handel.

(01:44:10):
Thank you, Rich, You are so kind giving advice to
the seniors and others that are not tech savvy, not
in big letters, and yes, the advice to seniors and
others that are not tech savvy. That is the whole
point of this show. Is that I want the average
person to be informed about this stuff. That is the thing.
Techi's can listen and enjoy the information, but if you're

(01:44:33):
not techie, you can still listen and enjoy learning in
a very easy to understand way. Ronnie says, love your show,
kept it sweet and simple. Sue says, always learn something
new on your informative show. Thank you, Sue, I'm glad
that you do that. Greg says Merry Christmas twenty twenty three.
Much happiness and blessings to you and your lovely family.

(01:44:53):
Happy Holidays, Happy Holidays, and Merry Christmas to you as well. Greg.
Jeffrey says, I am a local truck in southern California
and listen to Rich every Saturday morning. I believe I
was even one of his first listeners ever asking questions
on the radio. When he started it was about my
Apple TV. Let me see, Jeffrey, do I remember that one?
I think I do. Actually, I think your Apple TV

(01:45:16):
was I don't know, it's been a while. I can't
believe from day one to now we have gone an
entire year. That is wild. Mike says, Rich, thank you,
my friend for taking my call in question. It is
always great to talk with you, buddy. Your radio show
is amazing. Keep up the good work. Merry Christmas to
you and your family. Merry Christmas to you, Mike. Mike
was a listener of this show when I did it

(01:45:39):
as a podcast. There were many iterations of this show,
so it started out as a Facebook live which became
a podcast, and I would basically just sit in front
of my computer and I rigged up a way to
have people call in the show from their cell phone
and I answered it on my cell phone. It was
not pretty, believe me. We have a much better system
now with Kim and our call screener and our phone system.

(01:46:01):
But it was fun and some of the same people
called over and over. Mike was one of them. Thanks Mike,
Guy says, as always great stuff in caps. Thank you guy,
Lily says, listening to you while I do my Saturday
house chores, I enjoy your show from La Joya. Thank you, Lily,
listening from La Joya. That is a beautiful place. Bruce says,

(01:46:23):
you are considerate, you care, and we appreciate your efforts.
Thank you rich Well. Thank you Bruce for noticing that,
because I do try to be considerate, I do care,
and I'm glad you appreciate my effort because it is
a lot of effort. I work five days at the
TV station that I come in here to do the
radio show, and so believe me, I do this because
I really love it and I really do want to

(01:46:44):
reach as many people as possible and help them with
their technology. Susan says, never miss you listening now, You're
the best. We listen every Saturday on KFI. Thank you
Susan for listening on KFI, our big station in Los Angeles.
Michelle says, I really like your radio show. I listened
on the iHeart app while working at home. I've been
working on shortcuts. I built one to detect when I'm

(01:47:06):
at the office to turn down my ringer volume. Good stuff,
Thanks Michelle. We talked about shortcuts on the show. We
had Matthew Cassanelli on the show, and he talked about
those little sort of programming hacks you can do on
your iPhone that automate certain tasks, So I'm glad that
you figure that out. Maria says, thank you for all
the good information you give us. Rich Mike says, was

(01:47:28):
just listening to Rich on tech in the car. Keep
bringing us to good tech. It always amazes me when
people come up to me and they say, Rich, I
can listen to you in my car. It's still even
though I know how radio works and I know this show,
but it's still just wild to me that you can
tune in. And I think this really occurred to me
when I was on vacation and I just found a
local station that was playing the show and I could

(01:47:50):
hear myself. It was a tape show, and it was
just I only do that a couple times a year,
but it was just so wild to hear myself on
a random radio station in a town. It was really
really cool. Pat says, great show on KFI. Jim says,
absolutely nobody does it better than Rich with two thumbs up.
Elvira says, I learned so much from your show. I

(01:48:11):
am not very techy, but with your show, I have
learned a few things. Thank you, Elvira. That is the
hope here Karen says, sometimes I listen to live and podcast.
Oh wow, double dipping. Thank you Karen for listening to both. Hey,
you know if you miss something live, you get the podcast.
Why not. Casey says, great show, but it was a
rookie move to say Alexa as many times as you did.

(01:48:32):
A couple of weeks ago, my echoes lost their robot minds.
This is a real problem because I'm always talking about
these smart assistants, you know, whether it is Google, whether
it's alex A, whether it's Siri, and they activate and
you're usually listening on the device perhaps that these things
are they're in the room, and yeah, it's a problem.

(01:48:53):
So I'm trying. Drew says I've listened to you every
week through your podcast. I love your show and the format.
Thank you. I appreciate it. Eileen says, we really enjoy
the show. Betty says, love your show.

Speaker 3 (01:49:06):
Rick.

Speaker 1 (01:49:06):
I love when people call me Rick because I don't
ever call myself Rick, but people do. Oh wow, we
got a bunch more. Let's see here. Leo says, great show.
Always educational and I'm so happy to listen to something
on the radio that is about someone who sincerely wants
to help another. Thank you well, thank you, Leo. I
don't think that's the Leo, but it is a Leo.
Jones says every weekend I listen, and Frank says, I

(01:49:28):
would love to listen to your show. However, I acquired
a BMWIFO full electric and it has no AM radio. Frank, yes,
you and all the tesla's out there. In Los Angeles,
you can actually listen on Coast HD two. They simulcast
the show or the KFI signal, I should say, But
in other cities it all depends. I think in some

(01:49:48):
cities the AM stations are on an HD two. You
just have to look for that information. But you can
always use an app as well to listen live. Richard says, Hey, Rick,
I really enjoy your show. Up the good work. Erica says,
all the time I listen, I learned something new each week.
Thank you, Daniel, and Alabama says, great show and great

(01:50:09):
moving into the slot. Although I've always been a podcast listener,
Leo or rich versus the radio do mostly to my location. Thankfully,
that means I was listening to you for quite some
time before the transition. Rick says, I've listened to Leo
for years. I was disappointed in his retirement, but you
have stepped up to the plate. Very well. Good job, Oscar,
says long time listener. Enjoy your one of a kind

(01:50:31):
show providing a gambit of information, tips and help. Oscar,
thank you so much, and I appreciate all of the
kind words. Believe me, it does not go unnoticed. I
love when I hear from you, and I love the
feedback on the show, good or bad. Believe me, I
do take the constructive criticism as well. But it sounds

(01:50:53):
like you like the show. So I'm gonna keep doing
what I do and thank you so much for listening.
You can always find me on social media. I'm mostly
on Instagram, but I'm also on Facebook and x. I
am at rich on Tech on all of those places. Now,
if you don't subscribe to this show as a podcast,
just search rich on Tech in your favorite audio app
and you'll never miss a thing. And if you like

(01:51:13):
what you hear right here, be sure to watch my
TV segments. I cover a wide variety of tech topics.
Just go to Richontech dot tv to watch them. If
you can believe it, that's going to do it. For
one year of this show. Next week we'll get a
preview of CS in Las Vegas, one of the biggest
tech shows in the world. That's where I'm headed next.

(01:51:35):
Thank you so much for listening. There are so many
ways you can spend your time. I really do appreciate
you spending it right.

Speaker 12 (01:51:41):
Here with me.

Speaker 1 (01:51:42):
Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible, Bobo, Kim, Bill,
Adam Robin, Julie, the engineers, and of course you. My
name is rich Demiro. Have a happy New Year. I'll
talk to you real soon.

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