Apple Vision Pro Goes on Sale & Protecting Your Online Privacy

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Applevision Pro is now on sale. Another streaming service cracks
down on password sharing. The hot new video game lots
of people are suddenly playing. Plus your tech questions answered.
What's going on? I'm richdmiro and this is Rich on
Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast to coast. This

(00:24):
is the show where I talk about the tech stuff
I think you should know about. It's also the place
where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that
tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. With that said,
let's open up the phone lines triple A rich one
O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two

(00:44):
four one zero one eight eight eight rich one on
one give me a call. If you have a question
about technology. Email is also open. Just go to rich
on tech dot tv and hit contact guests. This week,
Scott Stein of cnet will join me to talk about
his experience with Apple Vision Pro. Then we've got Lisa Plagamaier,

(01:10):
executive director at the National Cybersecurity Alliance. She's going to
join to talk about the simple ways you can protect
your privacy and data online. Later, Robin Gelbert, president of
fair Health, will join to explain their new online tool
that helps you figure out the cost of a medical
procedure just by pointing to it on a map of

(01:32):
the body. And special guest Matt Swider of The Shortcut
is going to join. He took a flight with the
Apple Vision Pro already, so he's going to explain what
it's like to wear this headset on the plane, so
as you might imagine. The big story of the week,
Apple launched its thirty five hundred dollars Vision Pro virtual

(01:56):
reality headset in the US, and uh, it's off to
a running start. Lots of you know, the marketing machine
of Apple is in full swing here and it's for
good reason. Apple CEO Tim Cook was at the New
York City Flagship store, which is so wild. I was
at that store back in two thousand and seven for

(02:16):
the launch of the iPhone. It's so wild to think
that in twenty twenty four that store is still there.
Apple's still going strong. This is a company that has
had so many breakthrough products, so many transformative products.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
His thing.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
When he was asked about it on ABC Good Morning America,
the host asked why it's so expensive thirty five hundred
dollars Can a lot of people afford that? He said,
it is tomorrow's technology today, and yes it is tomorrow's
technology today. This thing is not fully figured out. We
do not know how this will work in our world,

(02:53):
in our lives, but I do believe that this is
now going to be a thing. At launch, over six
hundred apps available. And remember when the iPhone came out,
there were only the apps that were built in, and
they were very basic, but it did a lot of
cool things and it did it all in one device.

(03:15):
And this vision pro is just the beginning. It is
very expensive. In fact, I will tell you that I
did not purchase one. Do I want one, absolutely? Do
I want to spend time in this thing, absolutely, But
the way I see it is that you are spending
thirty five hundred dollars, which really, when you add in

(03:36):
tax and accessories, you're talking northwards of four thousand bucks here.
And this is a product that I say will last
a year, because yes, it'll work past a year, but
you're gonna want the new one in a year because
it's going to be so much better. Now. I've struggled
with this because, of course I want to get this

(03:57):
as a tech person. Of course I want to have
this in my home, But do I want something that
is a solo experience. You can get a TV for
a quarter of the price and everyone in your house
can enjoy it. This is something that is very personal,
very solo. It is not a shared experience, which is fine,
and I have no problems if you purchase this thing.

(04:19):
You just have to understand that this is money that
you have to burn. And yes, if you look on
social media, there are so many people that have said
they have purchased this thing, which is great. A lot
of them are going to make money off of purchasing it,
whether they're developing an app, whether they're making videos, whether
they're going to figure out a new business use case scenario.
That is all fine. Those are all great reasons. Or

(04:39):
if you just want to have it to have it,
that's all fine. I have no problem with this. I'm
not going to say that this thing is going to fail.
I'm not going to say that this thing is stupid.
I'm not going to say that this thing is not
worth it. It is worth it if you can afford it.
I have been inside this headset. It is absolutely incredible.
Now I cover technology for a general audience and I

(05:02):
will tell you can I recommend that if you're going
to finance this thing over a year to get this
Absolutely not. Can I recommend that you take out a
loan to get this thing? Absolutely not. It's just it's
not worth that to the average person.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Now.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
I asked my followers on Instagram and Facebook and here's
some of the responses I got. Number One, they were
most concerned about the high price point. Many people feel
it's too expensive, not affordable or justifiable to them personally.
They say it's overpriced, too expensive, etc. I would agree

(05:38):
with all of that for the average person. Number Two,
many people are unsure of the purpose or usefulness of
this headset. They question what it's going to be used for.
Is it a toy or do you actually work inside
of it? And I'm not even sure Apple knows. At
this point, they have been calling this a spatial computer.
I will tell you I am not ready to give
up my laptop to do work in virtual reality. I'm

(06:01):
just too comfortable with doing my work on a computer
without having a giant head piece on to do work
inside there. And when it comes to entertainment, it is
incredible watching a movie on this thing. Incredible Again, are
you going to watch a movie on a Friday night
by yourself in a headset for two plus hours. Last

(06:22):
movie I watched was three hours and thirty minutes. I
can't imagine sitting in this thing for three hours and
thirty minutes. Maybe an hour, maybe twenty minutes, maybe thirty minutes. Again,
with the comments, many people indicated they've tried VR headsets,
but they lose interest over time, and that's true. I've
had the metaquest in my house for a couple of
years now, and what do I do. I charge it

(06:45):
up every once in a while when I hear something
new about it, I put it on. It is amazing,
it's incredible. I take it off, and I forget about it.
There hasn't been that one single experience just yet that
has convinced me that this is something I need in
my life every single day. I'm not saying that's not
going to happen. It will, or perhaps it will for
many people, but a lot of people are very uncertain

(07:06):
about spending all this money and whether they're going to
use it on a regular basis. Number Three, people are
concerned about the design and comfort. So yes, it looks
like a pair of ski goggles, and it's big, and
it's bulky, and it's going to get smaller over time.
People are worried about motion sickness, vertigo, eyestrain, that those

(07:27):
are all very valid things to be concerned about. I'm
concerned about having a screen that close to my eyeballs.
Remember what mom said growing up, don't sit too close
to the TV screen. Now we're just putting the TV
screen on our eyes. Like, how much closer can it get?
Some are waiting for a more refined, lighter, and less
intrusive design. That is a very good thing. Now, this

(07:50):
is a product that has to happen. This is a
product that you can't jump to the final product of this,
which is going to happen in you know, two or
three years, where this thing is refined and perfect. This
has to happen. You have to get this out there
because people have to start figuring out what the use
case is and how they're gonna make apps for this,
and what people are gonna enjoy doing inside of this thing.

(08:14):
Number four In the comments lack of mass market appeal,
Many express that only appeals to certain users. Many say
they are simply not interested in this type of device.
Now I would say the not interested, Yes, I understand
people are like, look, I've got my phone, I've got
my computer, I've got my TV, I've got my tablet.

(08:35):
How many more screens am I gonna look at on
a daily basis? I understand that. I totally understand that,
But I also think that you should, as a service
to yourself, go to an Apple store and try this
thing out. You can do it, You can book an appointment,
maybe you can just walk in and check it out,
but I highly recommend you do that because the experience

(08:58):
that they have created inside of this thing is incredible.
It is the it is tomorrow's technology today. I will
agree with Tim Cook there, He's right, It's just are
we ready for this right now? Is the mainstream person?
Is the average person ready for this right now? Many
people do see the positive in the future iterations, and
one hundred percent I would agree with that. At launch,

(09:21):
like I said, six hundred new apps that are designed
for the three D interface. Some of the main apps NBA,
Major League Baseball, IMAX, HBO, Microsoft apps like Outlook. You
can check your email on this Zoom. NBA apps like games,
super Fruit, Ninja, Ja Crue has a shopping app, Low's

(09:43):
has a home design app, Zillow has an app that
lets you look at homes. I think there are going
to be so many amazing uses of this that we
just can't imagine. Right now. People that already got this thing,
they're experiencing it, they're figuring it out there saying, wow,
this is incredible. But imagine when you want to look
for a house or an apartment, you will do ninety

(10:06):
percent of your research from home on your couch. You
will walk through the apartment or the home, and you
will say, nine out of ten times, all right, I
don't need to go there in real life. Imagine shortcutting
that process. Imagine you want to go travel to Italy.
You put on the headset, you walk down the streets
of Rome. Okay, yeah, I want to go there. Or

(10:26):
a place that you can never really visit in your
lifetime due to money or other restrictions that may be
in your life. Imagine looking at a resort that you're
trying to decide should you stay at this resort or
that resort. You walk into the resort from the main
lobby and you walk out and you just see what
the grounds look like. You walk upstairs to a room

(10:47):
you're trying to decide do I want this room or
that room. These are all things that are going to
happen inside this headset. It is going to be a
wild ride. I'm glad Apple launched this. I'm glad it
is out there in the world, and I'm excited to
see what the future of this display will be. We're
gonna have some guests to talk about it a little
bit later on in the show, but first it is

(11:08):
your turn. Give me a call Triple eight rich one
O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. My name is rich d'amiro, and
you are listening to rich on tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you
talking technology at Triple eight rich one on one. That's

(11:28):
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Website for the show is rich on tech dot TV.
If I mentioned something, you can get the link immediately.
There's a big red banner at the top of the website.
It says heard it mentioned on the radio links here.
You click that and that is updated in real time

(11:50):
as we do the show. And uh I got an email?
Email is also open. You can go to rich on
tech dot tv. UH hit the contact link. That's what Fred.
He said, Rich, you did a segment on smart TVs
a while ago. I'm in need of a sixty five
inch smart TV and I was wondering if you can
direct me to the radio podcast. Thanks. Yes, I will

(12:10):
put that link on the website. And that's exactly what
I'm doing. I actually it says expert reveals best TVs
for the Big Game on the website. So if you're
looking to upgrade your TV, and I was not, this
is funny, this is I call this the halo effect.
So I was thinking of purchasing the Vision Pro, but
I'm like, Okay, four thousand dollars is an insane amount
of money for something that I know I'll use casually.

(12:33):
I've been wanting a new TV for a long time.
Should I put a fraction of that price towards a
new big screen? And so this morning in my house,
we were taping off the wall and we were seeing
what a sixty five inch versus a seventy seven inch
TV would look like on the wall. And every single
person I've talked to says, go bigger or go home.

(12:54):
And so I guess we'll be the proud owners of
a seventy seven inch Samsung Old ad TV. Very soon.
Let's go to UH Spencer in North Carolina. Spencer, you're
on with Rich. Welcome.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Hey, Rich, do you think people need to start planning
for the upcoming total solar eclipse because it's going to
be eclipsed all over the United States as a partial
and somewhere between Texas and Maine you will have one
hundred and fifteen mile wide path where it will become total.

(13:34):
And it's very, very critical that you have the correct
solar viewing apparatus so that you can see the partials.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah, I'm excited, this is this is I remember my
in laws actually went to the They actually flew to
Montana to see this the last time it happened a
couple of years ago, and they they said it was
just incredible.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
A little more than six days away, So people need
to be planning for this. And the observing solar filters
will always have the ISO number ISO one two three
one two DASH two and those will be safe for
viewing this partial eclipse. And like I said, it will

(14:21):
be partial everywhere, including in the path of totality. It
will be partial up until the three or four minutes
when the moon completely covers the Sun. And when that happens,
if you know that the moon completely covers the Sun,
you can take them off and observe the alle that

(14:41):
is part of a total solar eclipse.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
And you're talking this is on Monday, March April eighth.
Is that the one you're talking about?

Speaker 2 (14:50):
April eighth? Now, depending upon where you are in that path,
it will be like twelve ish two three ish somewhere
in there.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Yeah, I'm looking at the NASA has a great website.
I'll link it up on the h on the show
notes that you can check it out. But you sound
like a quasi expert in this stuff. Huh. I've seen five,
You've seen five.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Total solar eclipses, and I've seen two annular eclipses and
angular is a little bit different.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
So my question for you is the solar eclipse glasses
and the filters that you can get for your phone,
the photo filter. Are those safe that you see on Amazon.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
As long as they have the ISO one two three
one two DASH two designation on them. Uh, they are
probably good. But the best thing to do is to
look at suppliers that are in this business, and some
of those suppliers are American Paper.

Speaker 4 (15:54):
Optics, Yep, Star Filter, Yeah, I meant.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
Rainbow Symphony, Thousand Oaks Opticle, and Seymore Solar.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Okay, say those one more time. Thousand Oaks Opticle.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Rainbow Symphony, okay, day Star, American Paper Optics Okay, Flipping Shades,
and Seymore Solar.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Now there's the website. You can go to the hash
all this stuff on it. It's called Eclipse dot aas
dot org and that is the American Association. Well, my
tongue is all tangled up American Astronomical Society, and they
run sky and Telescope, they run all of these other things,

(16:44):
and they are well versed in what you can and
cannot do for solar eclipses.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
I love it. This is a great website, Spencer, thanks
so much for the call. This stuff is exciting. You've
got some time to plan. It's February March April, so
you've got two months. But I will link all of
this stuff that we just talked about on the website
rich on tech dot TV.

Speaker 5 (17:06):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Some great information and I'm sure people will be taking
some cool pictures. Just be safe, that's the main thing.
This is, Uh, this is real all right, Scott Scott
Stott Scott Stein of CNET Coming up next. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one eight

(17:28):
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Website rich on Tech dot tv links to everything I
mentioned is at the top of that page. Joining me
now is Scott Stein of c NEET. He is one
of the early reviewers of Apple Vision Pro. He's been
all over the place with this thing. Scott, Welcome to

(17:51):
the show.

Speaker 4 (17:53):
To talk to you, Rich.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
So you've had this thing for a little bit now,
and you are the king of VR. You've been covering
VR and headsets for as long as I can remember
now at CNET, so you're pretty well versed. Like, give
give me a little background on your VR experience.

Speaker 6 (18:09):
Yeah, So, I mean I saw Oculus back from the
first demo, you know, and I reviewed Google Glass for CNET,
and I went to Microsoft for Hollins to Magic Leap
headquarters when that started metas Reality Labs research. I've been
all over and so it was really interesting to compare
this against pretty much most of the things that I've seen.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
And so what is sort of your thesis is I mean,
because as someone who's been using VR for a long
time and ar this is like, this is a new
take on it, but it's not necessarily new to you.
So kind of give us, like your thoughts on this.

Speaker 6 (18:45):
Yeah, when I came out of the first demo, a
lot of those feelings still hold true. I was just
talking to a friend who came out of his demo
at the Apple Store. But it was a bit like
Jurassic Park in the sense of not like the dinosaurs
are alive, but you did it, you know, like you
did it, you crazy guys, you did it. And what
I mean is that I've seen all these pieces individually

(19:07):
coming from a lot of directions, so I wasn't surprised
by the blending of reality or even the fidelity, which
I've seen on one other headset and these things. But
it's that they synthesized it and then it runs iOS,
which is a familiar os. So it's all the futurism
of a VRAR headset. But then when you're inside, it's
trying to be like, oh, this is an iPad, you know.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
This, Yeah, so explain what it is like to be
inside this thing, because many people have not tried VR yet,
so and this is probably the best or one of
the best like implementations of it. So explain what sort
of AR is and VR and what this headset is.

Speaker 4 (19:46):
Absolutely so VR, it's been around for a while.

Speaker 6 (19:48):
You're you're in a virtual world in three D and
it's immersive and you're not seeing the real world AR.
You're seeing the real world and virtual things are being
put into it and mixed reality the way Apple's doing
it some other com beanies. It's not technically see through.
It's using cameras to bring in the real world into
the headset in a way that it looks like you're
blending the virtual and real. And so what you see

(20:11):
is a really good camera feed in three D of
the world around you, and it's not the same as
your everyday vision, but it's good enough to watch TV
if you needed to, or look at your phone.

Speaker 4 (20:21):
You know, almost like your RoboCop.

Speaker 6 (20:23):
And then you see these floating displays which are incredibly
high resolution that is like the retina moment that they
look as good as any monitor I've seen, and videos
look better than my home TV, which I don't I
don't have a seventy inch o lead, but you know,
it beats the four K TV that's in my home,
and they can move all over. You're floating and dragging

(20:44):
these windows all over and you can occasionally open up
one that feels like VR, but you're multitasking and Siri
is there, and then there's a control center and so
things you're like, it's like my iPad exploded, you know,
all over the place.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
And you can with the screens anywhere, and you can
have multiple screens. You can watch movies inside of this thing.
What are some of the apps and experiences that you're
sort of coming away with thinking, okay, these are really
good inside this headset.

Speaker 6 (21:12):
Well, you can see a little taste of it. Cinema,
which Apple is touting on this thing is amazing. The
I mean, thirty five hundred dollars for that is a
lot for anyone to consider. But if you do happen
to get an experience doing it, it feels like sitting
in a movie theater. It feels like looking sitting in
an amazing movie theater with the audio visual experience, which

(21:34):
I don't have a good home theater setup at home,
so it's like a little magical dream to play with
that the spatial video stuff Jopple's talking about that plays
at a scale and a sort of immediacy that like
cognitively makes you feel like you're there. And it's amazing
to see reactions from colleagues like Bridge of Carriot seen
it and others where I think, am I just kind

(21:54):
of you know, am I fooling myself here? But they
get stunned by it. And if you see a video
of it, it doesn't sure the feeling of being in it.
It's like a window into that world almost, and then
you get a little taste elsewhere. You know, I played
with Jagspace like dropping, which is an app that drops
realistic three D models and they look like an F
one race car looks really enough.

Speaker 4 (22:15):
To feel like it could be there.

Speaker 6 (22:17):
And you know, Apple's Keynote app allows you to rehearse
in Steve Jobs Theater and look around the audience or
look around the the not the empty stage. There's a
lot of ways that can transport you. Even the environments
look incredibly real. But you know, I want to see
what else can happen. I want to I want to
see who makes dreams up new ideas.

Speaker 4 (22:39):
For this headset?

Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, I think that is what is super interesting to
me is that this is now unleashed into the world
and there are many bright thinkers out there that will
come up with things that maybe even Apple didn't think of.
It's kind of like the iPhone and the iPad. It's like,
you know, Apple puts these tools out there, they kind
of give you a little push, and then people just
go to town and come up with all kinds of things.

(23:01):
So that is going to be really interesting to me.
What about the whole idea of the weight of this thing,
the sort of idea of having a you know, strap
to your head, the battery, all of the kind of
the negativity that people have been placing around this thing.
I mean that will be refined over time obviously.

Speaker 7 (23:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (23:20):
This feels like a lot of people have compared this
to like, you know, you're building the best thing you
can to show you the vision of what's going to happen,
and I think that's exactly it. This feels like, you know,
maybe the very first Mac or even the Lisa. You know,
this is like something where you go, I can see
the future through all of these pieces, But the battery
is big and you have to dangle it with a

(23:42):
battery cord. The headset is like the same size as
any VR headset that's out there, but the weight of it,
depending on the strap, can be frustrating. They didn't do
any better, you know, like they didn't They didn't make
it feel any more like a pair of glasses. It's
still much more size wise VR headset, and I think
that that will limit people. Plus it doesn't work with

(24:03):
my glasses, so you have to get prescription inserts. There's
a lot of things that are going to make that
feel clunky, but then when you're in it for a while,
you go, oh, wow, this is really cool.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
So in your review at cnet dot com you mentioned
the person detection, you know how that's interesting and kind
of tell me about that aspect, like when someone walks
up to you or you kind of you know they
you know you're in this headset. And I never really
thought about this idea that you're like in this thing,
you don't know if someone's like creeping up on you,
but I guess you do with this one.

Speaker 6 (24:36):
Yeah, there were a million things of this where I
thought there's so many new parts that it was like
a really tough thing to review because even covering this landscape,
there was a lot to attend to. And then it's
true they do a lot of things.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
You know.

Speaker 4 (24:46):
The usually the way a.

Speaker 6 (24:47):
VR headset works is you have to set it up
for room detection, to set up your boundaries so that
you can tell it where the safety zone is.

Speaker 4 (24:55):
This headset doesn't do any of that.

Speaker 6 (24:56):
It just starts and if you get too close to
Fern will tell you you still.

Speaker 4 (25:02):
Could bump into something.

Speaker 6 (25:03):
But when people come close, any face it recognizes and
then it passes through that face into your environment like
a ghost, and you can turn that off, but it's
it's kind of like a the way Apple's cameras already
kind of recognize people.

Speaker 4 (25:18):
They must have applied that here.

Speaker 6 (25:21):
There's also a way that they can see you because
the outside of the headset has these this kind of
three D like display that shows an animated version of
a virtual version of your eyes, and it's dim, but
it shows up like almost like it's under the glass,
and then they can see if you're blinking or looking
at them, so it's you can make contact.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Wow. So what's your sort of advice to people that
may want this? But you know the price is very expensive,
and I and I talked earlier in the show. I said,
you know, this thing is effectively good for a year,
because Apple notoriously comes out with a better version of
their products, like on a really cycle pretty much. But
what's your advice, what's your guidance.

Speaker 4 (26:05):
I kind of feel like this one may even you
never know, you're right.

Speaker 6 (26:07):
It could be next year, or maybe it's even two years.
It'll be interesting to see. My guidance is this is
a totally different model of product reveal for them. It
seems very aspirational. I think they're leaning very much on
the demos, and it reminds me of like a concept car,
you know. I think you go like Epcot, and you
go and get a demo of it and check it out.

(26:29):
And I think that's also Apple's intent, is to kind
of start easing people into understanding the idea over time
that the early adopters may get this now people who
have the money at this time somehow to spend on
this luxury device, but that you understand it so the
next time they roll around, you'll have unders understood all
these various parts. So I wouldn't recommend anyone I know

(26:51):
get it unless they felt compelled. But definitely try it,
because at least they're making that easy. They're they're giving
a lot of time for people to demo this, which
is also very unusual for them.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Now you said you wouldn't recommend anyone get it, See,
I feel like I would one hundred percent say, like,
absolutely get this if if you have four thousand dollars
to burn, like, if this is not a big deal
to you, one hundred percent jump on the future today.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
That's right, that's a good point.

Speaker 6 (27:20):
And actually I've had some friends like that, and I said,
you know, I still say to them, listening, no money
means something to everybody, And I'll go, you know, you
can wait on this. But because I prefer to be
a little take the under on amazing them, because usually
people will try this thing and then be even.

Speaker 4 (27:35):
More amazed than how I described it.

Speaker 6 (27:36):
And I'll say, if I mean, if you just get
it for the cinema part and you have the money,
it's incredible for that, and then all the other things
become increasingly good benefits. The computer part is unbelievably fascinating,
but I think there are still parts that need to
be kind of finessed with it, and apps that need
to be folded in. But when that is finessed, possibly

(28:00):
this year, that becomes a whole other dimension of this,
using it as your floating monitor interface and doing all
sorts of stuff with that.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
All right, Scott Stein of cnet, We're gonna leave it there,
thanks so much for joining me. Check out Scott's review.
It is Apple Vision Pro, a mind blowing look at
an unfinished future at cnet dot com. Eighty to eight
rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech.

(28:30):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. Is the website. You've got the email
on the website as well if you want to contact
this show that way and uh oh, Kevin rode In

(28:51):
or Ken rode In on the website rich on Tech
dot tv contact. He said, I would caution all perspective
Samsung TV buyers that Samsung does not support Dolby Vision.
That's a deal breaker for me. That is a great point.
They do support HDR, but not Dolby Vision as far
as I know, so that is something to look out
for you know, I guess it depends on your setup, right, So,

(29:14):
but that is a great point, Ken, thanks for bringing
that up. Let's go to Sean in Palmdale, California. Sean,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
Hi, Rich, thank you for taking my call.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Absolutely, what's up?

Speaker 3 (29:27):
So I made a little bit of a mistake. I
was super excited to put smart lights in my house.
So I did the whole house in the smart lights,
and I bought myself a new Wi Fi mesh router also,
and I saw that they're both compatible for WPA two.
But then I learned there's one that is ae S
and send out. They're not compatent. I'm I'm not sure

(29:49):
what to do at this point. I'm thinking maybe I
could do a switch with a second router.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Okay, so what's the Okay, so what's the problem. The
lights don't connect to the router.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
That's correct. So the lights are the new whiz app
lights on the side of the boxes. It does WP
A two and I couldn't give the connect. I tried
and tried, and then I found out that the router.
I have a Arrow Pro six E and it says
it does WP A PSK A s E. Okay, I

(30:24):
think the a SE, the Advanced Encrypted Standard, is what's
killing me because it can't the lights can't do the encryption.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, I was gonna say, because the lights are I mean,
that's like an older protocol, isn't it, the wp A two.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
You're correct. And the funny thing is these are brand new.
They just came out, well here, the latest.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
And greatest, and so they won't they won't connect to
the router at all. No, And is this a known
issue or is this just something that it just seems
to be happening, Like if you go online, does it
say like these lights don't work with Euros specifically?

Speaker 3 (31:00):
I have not found anyone who said that. Okay, and
everything I can read on it, all the helps and everything.
I even went on the arrow and they said I
know how to manually take it down to two p Yeah.

Speaker 4 (31:11):
I was gonna hurt.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yeah, I was gonna recommend that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
And then they also have something called legacy, so if
you have older devices, yeah, switch over legacy. I did
that and they still connect. And then that's when I
found out. I never knew there was such thing as
AES and those are two completely different things. And I
didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Well, it's interesting. I'm looking at the euro website and okay,
says euros well, it says Euro supports WPA two PSK
and AES. Oh it does say that.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, yeah, and as or only AES.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Well, it says Euro only supports wp A two PSK,
AES network security. It does not support w EP, WPA
or wps as. These are known to be insecure. So
I think that these will work with your Euro because
I and here's the thing I will tell you, I've

(32:07):
an Euro as well. I've had it since day one.
I've had a bunch of different models of it. There's
only been one device that I could not connect to it.
It was a an outdoor plug. And I'm not kidding.
I went nuts trying to get this thing connected. And
I did the whole like two point four gigahertz. I
mean I was sitting out there. At some point I
just like looked at myself as like, rich, this is
not this is a twenty dollars plug like this, we're

(32:30):
not doing this, you know what I mean? But this
the fact that you did all these lights in your house,
I mean, that's a little.

Speaker 4 (32:37):
Bit of how many sixty five oh.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
My gosh, sixty five. Okay, So I guess at the
end of the day, I think that you need to
do a little bit more research on whether this will
actually work. I would try, have you contacted Eero to
like talk to them.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
Yeah, I didn't get very far. They kept giving me
their automated stuff. I couldn't get to a real person.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Okay, So I would try to figure out how to
get someone there. I would also I just I feel
like these lights are going to work with this given
what I'm seeing on the frequently asked questions here. So
I would try to continue to get a set of
these to work with your Eero if you find out
that they don't. I mean, yes, the secondary network is

(33:19):
an option, and you could even try. By the way,
with Eero, they have a guest network. You can try
to set that up and see if you can set
it up with a different SSID or you know, Wi
Fi network and see if you can connect them to that.
Maybe because it's a guest network, you can tweak some
of the settings to bring it down a little bit.
That might be an option. But the other thing you
could do at the end of the day is maybe

(33:41):
just get another router that you plug in and these
lights just connect to this router. I mean that's you know,
you can get a router for you know, fifty sixty
bucks and just use that one. But I have a
feeling that these do work. I would explore a little
bit more on the euro website and also the lighting
website and see, like talk to someone from the companies,

(34:02):
maybe from Halo themselves, and see what happens there, because
I have a feeling this is going to work. Sean,
keep me posted, okay, Rich on tech dot TV, hit
that contact button and let me know so we can
do a follow up. Thanks for the call today. Eight
a to eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. News this
week that Amazon and I Robot terminated their one point

(34:23):
seven billion dollar acquisition deal. They agreed to do this
because they couldn't get approval from the EU. And at
this point, we have seen so many big deals fall
through and almost all of it is driven by the
European Union and their standards and what they allow and
what they don't allow is quite different from the US.

(34:45):
They are much stricter than we are here in the US,
and they really do seem to have kind of like consumers'
best interest in mind. Now, I don't know if that's
the best thing for this I robot, because these robotic
vacuums have become almost a commodity over the years. Amazon
says this deal is going to be a loss for consumers,

(35:05):
competition and innovation in robotics. They also have to pay
I robot a breakup fee of ninety four million dollars,
and already I Robo on the heels of this said
that they're gonna have to lay off workers and it's
just not going to be as good. And of course
they probably say that just to say it, because you know,
they want everyone to feel bad for them. But at
the same time, you know, have we really seen a

(35:25):
lot of innovation and I think Amazon is probably the
biggest customer for or the biggest seller of I robot devices.
So that happened this week. A breakup fee, Yeah, when
you do these big deals, if they don't go through,
you got to pay because there's a cost of that
not happening. Yeah, Bobo wants some eighty eight rich one

(35:50):
on one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. This is rich On Tech Welcome to
rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you
t talking technology at Triple eight rich one on one
eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
This is the show where I talk about the tech
stuff I think you should know about. It's also the

(36:11):
place where I answer your questions website richon tech dot TV.
Joining me in just a minute here will be Matt
Swider of the Shortcut. He was probably one of the
first people to use the applevision pro on an airplane,
so we're gonna get his thoughts on that. But first,
I just want to tell you about this social media
executives back on Capitol Hill being grilled by senators. Meta TikTok,

(36:36):
snapchat x, and discord uh heads were there to talk
about child safety on their platforms. Lawmakers press them on
sexual exploitation, predators, and harms to mental health, and also
the self image children face online. Even Mark Zuckerberg was
kind of not forced, but it was an interesting moment

(36:58):
where he turned around in a apologize to some parents
who lost a child to suicide that was possibly linked
to social media use. That was a really interesting moment
senators from both parties, and that's what's interesting about this.
A lot of people on both sides agree that stronger
protections for kids are needed, but so far, we don't

(37:20):
know what those protections should look like. We don't know
how they would be implemented. And these tech companies, of course,
they want to do it on their own accord. They
don't want to be legislated to do this. Except for Snap,
they actually said they would back a bill to create
a legal liability if they recommended harmful content to minors.
But most of these companies say, look, we're spending a

(37:42):
lot of money on safety tools, so we're doing all
we can. But are they I don't know. Having two kids,
I can tell you as a parent that knows technology,
it is extremely tough to filter or to limit or
to monitor what your kids do online. And that's with

(38:03):
kids with a parent that knows about technology. So imagine
the ninety nine percent of people out there who are
just giving their kids, you know, a pack of cigarettes basically,
which is a smartphone and letting them go to town.
And nobody really knows how bad this is. But we
are seeing the repercussions, which is, you know, you go

(38:23):
to any sort of school and all this stuff really
rules the social media, the texting, the cyber bullying, the
images they're seeing, the talk of suicide. It is bad.
It's really bad, and I don't know what to do
because we can't stop this stuff from happening. It happens
in real life too. This is just amplified. But are

(38:45):
you recommending this stuff to kids? If they look at
one thing, do you show them more? Do you make
them obsessed? These are the issues we have to figure
out with these apps that these kids love to use.
All right, let's bring on Matt Swider of the shortcut
dot Com. Matt writes about tech tips and all kinds
of stuff. Matt, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 8 (39:07):
Good to be here, Rich and greetings from Montreal.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
Oh Montreal. Is that where you took your flight with
the Vision Pro?

Speaker 8 (39:15):
I did? I wanted to take an international flight and
that was the shortest way to get across the border
and test out the Apple Vision Pro on a flight
and in another country.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
Why did you want to why the international aspect?

Speaker 8 (39:30):
Well, I'm kind of curious to see if you know
you could log in as easily and download some stuff
from the app store that you couldn't normally do if
you were, say logged into a foreign account.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
Ah, got it. Okay. The first time I went to Japan,
it was such a nightmare. Now things have gotten a
lot better, But like the first time I went there
the app store, my entire phone changed. It was like
it was such a night where like I couldn't download music,
I couldn't like update apps. It was like my whole
phone just kind of like stopped. Now that was like
ten years ago, but it was just so like wait,

(40:03):
I was like wait what Okay, So you got the
Vision Pro. You waited outside at the Apple Store in
New York City and you put this thing on, You
got on a flight. What was it like to wear
it on the flight? Were people looking at you?

Speaker 3 (40:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (40:16):
So I actually wore it in the Delta lounge and
it was kind of an interesting thing because there was
another one other person there who happened to have one,
and we were both wearing it, and we got so
many looks and a lot of video being recorded. So
we had a little bit of a fan club of
people wanting to experience it. And I gave it to
the bartender and he tried it on.

Speaker 9 (40:38):
So that was before the flight.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
You gave someone your your headset just like some random
person put on your headset.

Speaker 8 (40:44):
The bartender made a good drink, so I was busy
sipping on a cocktail and he was, you know, experiencing
the AR technology for the first time, and that was
it was a delight for me to see.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
Yeah, I imagine what was his reaction.

Speaker 8 (41:00):
He loved it, you know it it was very intuitive.
So that was really nice because I didn't have to
explain much. And you know, it's just like dealing with
your phone, but with windows floating up in the air.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
So what was it like to wear it on the plane?
Did you get sick? Is it great? Is it amazing?
What was that like?

Speaker 8 (41:17):
I didn't get sick, which was good news, and I
loved wearing it on the plane because I didn't have
to take out my laptop. And surprise, a Delta flight
in going to an international country did not have a
TV in the seatback, so I thought I was stuck,
you know, being bored. But I'm like, oh, I have
this headset, so I got to watch episodes of Ted

(41:41):
Lasso in you know, when everybody else was bored around me,
I was like, all right, I can take care of
that situation. And that was really nice. I also, you know,
fixed or remedied the situation of battery life. So if
I had to give people some tips on traveling it
in an Apple travel case. They have a travel case

(42:03):
that they sell or some other case that protects protect
your investment.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
So that's really Wait does it not come with a case?

Speaker 8 (42:10):
So it it does not come with the case then,
and that is you know it comes with a you
have to buy that separately.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
Oh wow, okay, so you gotta you need a travel
case for the vision pro Yeah. I mean if you're
gonna take this thing on a plane, you do not.
Because I've already seen pictures I don't know if they're
fake or not of the front glass cracked.

Speaker 8 (42:30):
Yes, yes, I think those were dropped tests.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Okay, so they were real. Wow, because this is the
front is glass. So the travel case two hundred dollars.
This is an expensive investment.

Speaker 10 (42:41):
Now.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
I know for you, obviously you cover this stuff and
you're gonna be making a lot of content from it,
so it's well worth it. But do you think that
if you travel a lot and you're doing a lot
of international trips, is this just game changing?

Speaker 3 (42:53):
It is?

Speaker 8 (42:54):
And like it's like you were talking about with Scott
before it's gonna you're gonna have to have version two,
three four, get a lot cheaper, and that's when it
becomes game changing. But this reminds me of the iPhone one.
You know, it was too expensive. That iPhone one costs
six hundred dollars when it first came out, and there
was no app store, there was no front facing camera.

(43:16):
This is the iPhone one of augmented reality. The other
thing I did fix was when I was at the
Apple store, I got a Mophy charger, the power Station Pro,
and I got a Gan charger from that, the Mope brand,
and I was able to put the you know, last

(43:39):
more than two hours. That's like one of the biggest
problems with something like this is like the battery life
goes so quickly, so if you're on a flight across
the country, you're not going to be able to use
it for even half of the flight. So, uh, definitely
I recommend to people getting an external battery, get a
good one. Mine was twenty thousand millions, so definitely something

(43:59):
you need for t Now.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
You can also plug this in though, to do continuous power, right.

Speaker 8 (44:05):
Yeah, So that's why I kind of upgraded the charge
of the charge that it comes with the Apple Vision
Pro is thirty lots. And while that's all well and
good to you know, power that up, I feel like
I don't want to carry a thirty charge around, so
I wanted to consolidate and have one that will charge
my MacBook, my iPad, whatever I throw at it.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Okay, And so again, do you think that this is
a nice addition to watching a movie on the plane
or is it kind of like just too much effort?
Or is it I mean I tried one time to
bring a VR headset on a plane and I was
like so embarrassed to wear it. Do you think that
that happens here or not? Do you think people are
familiar enough with this that that's not going to happen.

Speaker 8 (44:48):
I think you're definitely going to be embarrassed by wearing
it if you're self conscious about it, because it will
draw looks, especially in this first year. But like anything,
as soon as it's adopted and everybody else can afford
and get one, as those that drops in price, it'll
become a commonplace. I do think that the movie watching
experience is really nice because, say you lean back in

(45:09):
your seat, you don't have to crank your neck to
watch the TV if you do have one in your seatback,
because it'll be you can move the floating window around
and it kind of goes with you, you know, no
matter where you are, So that is kind of one
of the killer apps for me is having multiple windows
to work or watch a movie.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
I've got about thirty seconds. What about the flight attendant
when they came up to you to you know, ask
for a drink or whatever. Did did the pass through
sort of work or what it does work?

Speaker 8 (45:40):
And people, you know don't really they still communicate with you.
So that's kind of nice because you can kind of
see your eyes through it.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
So they talk to you. Wait, hold on your eyes
like your eyes were on the outside screen. The flight
attendant came up to you and you literally talked to
them through this headset, right.

Speaker 8 (45:56):
And that is and no one batter than I it was.
I was expecting people to, you know, question it more,
but no one just like it was normal.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
What a world we live in. Oh my gosh, I
this is so wild. I'm sure flight attendants around the
world are going to be telling stories about this stuff,
like in the next couple of weeks of just how wild.
This is going to be Matt Swider of the shortcut
dot com. He's got a great write up about his
Apple Vision pro airplane flight and all the accessories you

(46:24):
just mentioned. I will link that up on my website.
Rich on tech dot tv. Matt, thanks so much for
joining me today. Thanks Rich all right, thanks for being on.
Before we go to break, let me just tell you
about Disney UH and ESPN and Hulu. Okay, so Disney Plus,
remember they were talking about getting this password sharing crackdown

(46:46):
started while Hulu is doing this. So Hulu announced, they
emailed subscribers and they said the game, the free ride
is over. If you want to share your password, we're
not gonna allow it anymore. So this starts on March four, fourteenth,
and basically they said they're going to use technology to
figure out if your account is sharing your password with
people outside of your household. Now what does that mean? Yeah,

(47:10):
it's a little bit blurry, But at the same time,
I think a lot of it has to do with
the IP address of the systems, if it's a TV,
if it's a laptop, if you travel and have a
Hulu account, yes, you'll be able to watch this wherever.
You travel to. But if you have a Hulu account
and you live in California and your you know, family
member or friend logs in from Georgia, probably not going

(47:32):
to be allowed. So again, this starts on March fourteenth,
and this is you know Netflix did this first, because
here's the deal. These these streaming services. For a long time,
the growth was just unlimited. People just kept signing up,
they just kept paying and it didn't really matter if
people were sharing their accounts. Now they're to a point
where these streaming services are spending a lot of money

(47:54):
on original content. Not as many people are signing up.
Some people are canceling, and so there's saying no, we're
not gonna let you share these things anymore. And we
know if you're sharing, they have the systems in place
to figure it out, they just weren't enforcing it. So
if you have Hulu, if you have Disney Plus, you
got ESPN again, free ride is over. You gotta stop
sharing your account eighty eight rich one on one eight

(48:17):
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Wow,
I feel like I'm at the uh middle school dance
That slow dance. You know, you're like nervous to ask
someone to dance with you. Remember how nervous you were
back in the day, those little dances. It's all part

(48:38):
of growing up. You'd stand, you know, hands apart, didn't
really want to touch. Oh, bobos got in close. Okay.
Welcome back to Rich on tech eighty to eight Rich
one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one.

Speaker 11 (48:56):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
Let's go to John in Fallbrook, California. John, you're on
with Rich.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
Thanks Rich, Thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
I get two questions, but the most important.

Speaker 7 (49:08):
One is.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
My phone calls, my mis calls, and.

Speaker 7 (49:15):
My phone messages show up on my wife's phone.

Speaker 10 (49:20):
She's got Ice thirteen and I have an S.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Are you sharing? Are you sharing the same Apple ID? Yeah,
that's what's happening. That's it.

Speaker 7 (49:33):
Can I use the same iCloud with the do IDs?

Speaker 3 (49:40):
No?

Speaker 1 (49:40):
So well, So Apple has something called family sharing, and
that's what you got to do. So you can share,
like if you have iCloud storage, whatever, you have apps
that you download, anything that you do, you can share
across those devices. But if you have the same Apple
ID on both devices, it will share the calls and

(50:01):
the voicemail. It's interesting. This is a change that is
not really wasn't really announced in iOS seventeen, but I've
got enough calls about it where I guess it happened
and they made this change and it's not like a
documented thing. But the reality is I see this all
the time. So many the parents I know their kids
are logged in with their Apple ID, and so their

(50:24):
kidds on their iPad and they're seeing all their text
messages the whole time, and it's like, you got to
get this kid their own Apple ID. So everyone in
the family should have their own Apple ID, you and
your wife, not just for privacy reasons, but also even
if you have nothing to hide, it's not a big deal.
It's just it's just better for the security of that
device and the security of the account, and also the

(50:45):
way that Apple has set things up, it's best not
to share an Apple ID with two different users, because,
like you just noticed, you're going to run into issues
like this. So set up a secondary Apple ID. It's free,
and then you link them up under what called Apple
Family Sharing. And once you have that set up, you
can then your wife can download any of the apps

(51:06):
that you've paid for. You can share the iCloud account.
If you have Apple Music family, you can share that.
But you get up to I think it's six people
to share on the account. But set up that John
and that should take care of it. The voicemail situation,
I think that's that's interesting that that would show up to.
But I think maybe that's the way Apple changed the

(51:27):
voicemail to kind of they're now intercepting the voicemails. It's
a little complicated. I don't want to get into it,
but that's probably what's going on there. But yes, separate
those Apple IDs you should be just fine. Let's go
to Paul in Columbus, Ohio. Paul, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 7 (51:41):
Thank you and your congratulations on your year plus.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Thank you, Paul, appreciate that. What can I help you with?

Speaker 7 (51:48):
Okay, I was looking at a TV that was a
high sense and they've had some pretty good sales and
I know for a lower end cost either pretty good.
So I was looking at the fifty five inch U
seven K Okay, that's the primary numbers in the model yep.

(52:09):
And then there was one the same one at Costco
except it was a seven to five K and I
remember hearing about this before that some large companies purchases
big Knox stores or whatever will get ones that aren't
exactly the same number, and I'm just curious what would
be different about those too when I would get without

(52:30):
the seventy five the seven.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
So yeah, the High Sense, by the way, Great TV
so highly recommended the U seven series. The U eight
series was recommended by the expert we had on a
couple of weeks ago. So the reason why Costco has
different model numbers I was just talking about this with
another person the other day, is that basically it's it's
mostly for price comparison, like they don't want to make

(52:53):
it easy to do that, but also Costco sometimes adds
a little something extra to what they do versus the
spies of the world or the targets, so they want
to have their own unique model number to make things
a little bit trickier for you. I think at the
end of the day, though, I think that if you
are getting the TV from Costco, check the specs. There

(53:14):
might be something that's slightly different, But in many cases
I think it's probably better than what you'd get out
there on the open market. Since Costco operates under our membership,
But that's really what it is. I know it's frustrating
when you're typing it into Costco to try our Google
to try to do that search, but I think you'll
be just fine with what they're offering there at Costco.
Thanks for the call, Paul. Coming up, we'll talk online
data privacy. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back

(53:38):
to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with
you at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. The
website is rich on Tech dot tv. If you want
to link to something that I mentioned here on the show,
just go right to the top it says mentioned on

(53:59):
the radio. Just click there and you can get links
in real time. Cybersecurity is such a huge deal in
our lives privacy. If you're online, you know, chances are
your information is out there and it is yours to protect.
So let's bring on Lisa Plagomaire, executive director at the

(54:20):
National Cybersecurity Alliance, to talk about some of the ways
we can protect our privacy. Lisa, thanks for joining.

Speaker 12 (54:26):
Me, happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
Thanks you so explain to me what the National Cybersecurity
Alliance is So.

Speaker 13 (54:34):
We're a nonprofit organization. We're actually the founders of Cybersecurity
Awareness Month every October, and our mission is around empowering
a more secure, interconnected world. So what that means is
empowering consumers and everyday people with the information they need
to stay secured, to keep your information private when they
choose to, and so it's StaySafe online dot org. We

(54:54):
have a lot of very plainspoken advice. You won't find
a lot of techt speaker legalleese on our website. We
have all kinds of advice for the average average citizen
easy to understand.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
So let's first talk about kind of like where we're
at with cybersecurity, like how much are we at risk
on a daily basis, Like we always hear about hacking
and you know these data breaches and all that stuff,
Like how much is the average consumer kind of what
are they up against?

Speaker 13 (55:22):
They're up against highly highly sophisticated organized crime in nation
states like the Big Four, so Russia, China, Iran in
North Korea, and you might have seen Director Ray testifying
this week about the Chinese infiltrating our critical national infrastructure
things like the power grids and water treatment plants things

(55:45):
like that. They used everyday citizens, normal Americans hardware to
do that. So they used routers in people's homes and
in small businesses to create essentially a bot that they
could use to infiltrate our own infrastructure, So using our
own hardware against.

Speaker 12 (56:04):
Us, if you will.

Speaker 13 (56:06):
So this has gone way beyond, unfortunately, way beyond sort
of data breaches and things like that. We still have
to be concerned about those, but it's also escalated to
the level of being a national security issue.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
So it used to be back in the day if
you didn't change the password on your router, that was
kind of like a you know, well, big deal, What's
what's someone going to do get into my house?

Speaker 3 (56:27):
You know?

Speaker 1 (56:28):
But nowadays, obviously a lot of these companies have taken
steps to do that and make sure that you're not
using like a basic, you know, factory password. But what
about the average consumer, Like, what what are kind of
like the first steps we can take to protect our
privacy online?

Speaker 12 (56:44):
So there are a couple of things that are really
really basic.

Speaker 13 (56:46):
There's there's four main things that everybody can do, and
if we all did them, they would make a massive
debt in the problem.

Speaker 12 (56:53):
So The first one is passwords.

Speaker 13 (56:55):
We have some really bad habits about using the same
password on multiple websites or a similar one. Those are
really easy to hack. They're using software to hack them,
password cracking tools. So don't use the same password on everything.
You probably need a password manager to help you to
keep it all straight. Then multi factor authentication. That's that
thing where you know, when you go to sign onto

(57:16):
your bank account, you have to have a text or
a push notification from authenticator app before you can get
into your bank account. So turn that on on every
single account that offers it. Keeping things up to date,
so when you get that remind.

Speaker 12 (57:31):
Me later option, do not take that.

Speaker 13 (57:33):
Make sure you run whatever update is trying to run,
whether it's hardware, software.

Speaker 12 (57:39):
The firmware and your router operating.

Speaker 13 (57:41):
System on your phone or any device. Keep everything up
to date, especially your anti virus. And then watching out
for phishing and social engineering, so not every you know,
instant message you get is going to be from a
legitimate person.

Speaker 12 (57:54):
That you really know.

Speaker 13 (57:56):
We've all gotten, you know, phishing emails that are really obvious.

Speaker 12 (57:59):
They're not so obvious anymore. With the help of AI.

Speaker 13 (58:02):
The bad guys are getting a lot better at creating
phishing emails, texts, phone calls that make it harder and
harder for us to tell that somebody's trying to trick us.
And I'll add one more, and that's checking your privacy
and security settings on your devices and all.

Speaker 12 (58:19):
The apps that you use.

Speaker 13 (58:20):
Those are not usually set to, you know, to have
a default to be maybe the most private option. So
you might not be comfortable when you start being amp
to those settings. You might be sharing stuff that you
don't feel comfortable sharing, and so maybe dial those things
to a level that you feel more comfortable with, for example,

(58:42):
making your friends less private on Facebook.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
Now, when you say that these aren't made private, you
know they're not in the best interest of the consumer
generally when they're at their de faults. That's probably because
these companies want to collect as much information on us
as they can, right, so that they can monetize it.

Speaker 13 (59:00):
Yeah, because at their core, most social media companies are
essentially advertising vehicles, and so the more information they have
on us, the more targeted those ads can be, the
more they can charge for that advertising.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Now, the big, the big kind of flip side to
all of this I get from many, many people When
I say you got to use good passwords, you got
to use multi factor, you got to update your software,
you got to do all this stuff, they say, look rich,
I got nothing to hide, They got nothing to worry about.
It's not a big deal, Like who wants to come
into my you know? Uh so I was. I got
one of my accounts I used to make like a

(59:33):
Christmas card one year, and that like that account was hacked, right,
And so the password that I used there, and my
address and my phone number and my everything is just
out there on the web because they were hacked. And
so that's kind of like the thing that I don't
think people realize is that when you share this information
with one company, it can be out there in a
multitude of ways if that company is hacked.

Speaker 12 (59:57):
Right, And a.

Speaker 13 (59:58):
Lot of these criminal organizations recreated massive databases that where
they're they're trading in your data, just like you know
the data companies and the legitimate ones in the business world.
They're building these massive data warehouses with a lot of information.
So if your password has already been compromised, you might think, well,
I don't have anything in that specific account that have

(01:00:19):
the breach.

Speaker 12 (01:00:19):
I don't have anything in their value. Like you said,
who cares.

Speaker 13 (01:00:22):
The problem is they're going to take that password and
versions of it, you know, little click it a little bit.
Using software. They can do this at scale really quickly,
and they're going to try that on every other account
out there, and they can do it in minutes using
technology to do it. Because these are these are businesses
and time is money for them, so they're going to
use technology to their advantage. And that's why it's so

(01:00:43):
important not to use the same password or similar password
on multiple accounts and to use MFA the other thing.

Speaker 12 (01:00:51):
That can happen.

Speaker 13 (01:00:51):
You might think, oh, this, this doesn't matter to me,
I don't have anything of value there. When when they
take over one of your accounts, if they have access
to one of your accounts, we can use that account
to try and to harm.

Speaker 12 (01:01:01):
To somebody else.

Speaker 13 (01:01:03):
Right, So we've all seen the Facebook instant message that
looks like it's from ariunt Betty, but it's not harriunt
Betty or aunt Betty had her Facebook account. It's taken
over because she's probably using a weak password and no MFBT.
So you don't want to be the launch pad for
somebody to go try and defraud other people. You also
don't want the Chinese coming into your house using your

(01:01:24):
router to lob an attack on your local power company.

Speaker 12 (01:01:27):
I mean, I think that.

Speaker 13 (01:01:29):
That's really rhythmic, couragious, and most of us can agree
we wouldn't want our homes exploited in that way by
a foreign country.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
And can you explain the concept of the dark web?

Speaker 13 (01:01:44):
So basically, the current Internet was not designed to be
secure or private. It was designed for the free and
open flow of information. And if they could build it
all again today, they would not build its own the
way it's developed, you need a special browser to get there.
What's on the dark web is essentially marketplaces. Mainly the

(01:02:05):
deal in data, credit card information, social security numbers that
are for sale, bank account credentials to somebody, and including
your bank balance so that somebody knows whether or not
you're worth trying is deal from. And also things like drugs,
guns and humans, human trafficking, Every bad, possible criminal thing
that you could think of to buy and sell is

(01:02:27):
available on the dark web.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
Unfortunately, Wow, it sounds like we're up against a lot
of stuff here, Lisa, But I like the couple of
tenants that you mentioned about you know, keeping our stuff private.
At the end of the day, I mean, this is
stuff that we need to stay up on, right, and
we need to stay aware of this stuff because I know,

(01:02:50):
I just I keep hearing in my mind over and
over people say, come on, they're not what do they
need to do with me? But when you build this
profile of someone, there's a lot you can do with that,
and the time and energy it takes to dig out
of that if something happens to you is really just
not worth it.

Speaker 12 (01:03:09):
We need to think about our loved ones too.

Speaker 13 (01:03:11):
So older folks, aging Americans, they don't get defrauded as often,
but when they do, the dollar amounts are high.

Speaker 12 (01:03:18):
The bad guys are going to go where.

Speaker 13 (01:03:19):
The money is, Right, why do I steal the bank
because that's around the bank is, that's where the money is.

Speaker 12 (01:03:23):
And our aging loved.

Speaker 13 (01:03:26):
Ones have accumulated their life savings and so when they
get defrauded, and it happens way too often, it's.

Speaker 12 (01:03:31):
For large dollar amounts.

Speaker 13 (01:03:32):
So I spend a lot of time with trying to
keep my mom safe online for example.

Speaker 12 (01:03:36):
And then younger people.

Speaker 13 (01:03:38):
Gen X, gen Y, they click a lot, they move
really fast through the technology and so they're actually more
likely to click on something malicious, but when they suffer
a loss of their data or money.

Speaker 12 (01:03:51):
Those losses are much smaller.

Speaker 13 (01:03:53):
But they're moving pretty fast and sometimes not quite paying
enough attention.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Lisa Plagamaire, executive director at the National Cybersecurity Alliance, the
website staysafeonline dot org. Uh, really really good information. Thank
you so much for joining me today.

Speaker 12 (01:04:11):
My pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
All right, that just this stuff. And I'm telling you
since since I'm here and I get all the emails,
I know for a fact that this stuff happens on
a daily basis. People are getting hacked, they're getting scammed,
they're falling for tricks. Please tell your loved ones, please
get educated on this stuff. It really will make a difference.

(01:04:34):
Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology at triple
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. On the website rich

(01:04:56):
on Tech dot tv links to everything I mentioned there,
and you can follow me on social media. I am
at rich on Tech on Instagram, on x on Facebook.
You see the trend here it's pretty much rich on
Tech everywhere. Trending this weekend on Instagram is the free

(01:05:18):
TV I told you about a couple of weeks ago. Telly.
They're giving away free TVs with advertising. So if you
want to check out that, go to my Instagram at
rich on Tech. They're in thousands of homes right now.
They hope to be in millions of homes. I know
a lot of you are on the list, but they
are working through it. It is not a guaranteed thing.

(01:05:39):
You have to be accepted. You basically apply for the
free TV. They accept you at some point and then
they'll send you the TV. But you know, check the terms, conditions,
all that good stuff. Let's see Robert writes in let's
see help. I used to have access to a router
slash modem to plug hardwired devices into, but now our

(01:05:59):
household has switched to wireless internet. I cannot plug my voipe,
magic jack device plus other Ethernet devices in order to
access internet. Is there a hub I can plug these
into and then wirelessly connect to t mobiles wireless Internet.
Thanks for your show and your help, Robert, So Robert, Yes,
very easy. You need what's called a network switch. So

(01:06:24):
if you look on the back of that T Mobile device,
they call it a gateway. So the way this wireless
home Internet works, it's the same thing that you have
from your cable company or the phone company, except the
signal is delivered via a cellular signal. So you get
this little device it's called a gateway. You put it
by your window that pulls in a strong cellular signal

(01:06:47):
from outside. It takes that cellular signal and it converts
it into a Wi Fi signal that then beams throughout
your house. So instead of that coax cable or a
DSL cable or any other sort of five cable coming
into your home like a physical cable, the Internet is
delivered through a cellular signal. And because we have five

(01:07:07):
G ultra wideband and these really robust five G networks,
these cellular companies like AT and T, T Mobile and
Verizon are really pushing this idea of your Internet coming
in through cellular and so yes, you have that little
gateway box. It's kind of a router that used to
have from your cable company. But on the back there

(01:07:28):
should be a couple of ports that you can plug
a switch into, so you can get something like a
net gear switch. I'm looking at best Buy's website thirty
five bucks for a five port switch. You plug that
into the back of the gateway and then this will
give you five Ethernet jacks to plug your stuff into,
so you can plug your magic jack into there. You

(01:07:50):
can plug whatever else you need to plug in that's
wired your other Ethernet devices. So yes, you can do it.
And I'm looking at the T mobile website. It says
third party equipment patibility network switches that connect to the
gateways Ethernet port are compatible with T Mobile gateways. So
grab a network switch, Robert, and you will be all
set up. Sarah in Ventura, California, Sarah, you're on with

(01:08:13):
rich Bye.

Speaker 14 (01:08:16):
I was trying to log into a zoom meeting for
the first time. I downloaded the app and then I
tried typing the the event what linked letter thing into it,
and then it only accepted the letters like hdtts, and

(01:08:42):
then it went't accept the coal and blash slash, just
the letters, So then I tried to copy and paste
it into it, and then only the punctuation showed up.
I just gave up. Do you have any ideas what
caused that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
So when you're joining a Zoom meeting, there's basically a
meeting ID. So if you get that meeting ID from someone,
So everyone that uses Zoom has a personal meeting ID.
That's a number that does not change. So if you
want to connect with that person over and over, you
can just ask them for their personal meeting ID. It

(01:09:21):
is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine
ten letters, almost like a phone number. So if you
get that from someone, like if they send you an
invitation to a Zoom meeting, that ID is in there.
So if you look at the link that you're getting, uh,
the it says you know zoom dot us slash j

(01:09:42):
and then there's a there's a number after that that
is the meeting ID. And usually it depends how they
copy and paste that link to you. But no matter what,
if you look at a link that someone sends you
for a Zoom meeting, if you see ten characters in there,
that is the meeting ID. You can open up the
Zoom app, you can type tap the join icon, and

(01:10:04):
you can type that meeting ID into there. Now, some
meetings are most meetings have some sort of password on them,
and so there will also be a password that you
will probably have to type in as well, and that
passcode is also inside the meeting ID. If you're using
a link, typically the link does not have the password in.

(01:10:26):
The password is a code, so it will not be
the same passcode that you can type in. So if
someone's giving you a link to a Zoom meeting, you
should just be able to paste that link into a
browser and it will open up in the Zoom app.
If you don't want to open up the Zoom app,
there's usually an option that says, just open up in
my browser, But they kind of trick you because they

(01:10:48):
don't want you to do that. They want you to
open up in the app, so they kind of make
you wait a little bit. But if you type in
that link, and you know on Chrome it might say
open Zoom, you can say cancel and then and it
says launch meeting in the browser and you can launch
that inside your browser if you don't want to download
any other software. But again, every single Zoom meeting has

(01:11:11):
a unique ID or some sort of ID and password
to join that. Your browser should be able to just
pass that information into the app and make that happen
pretty easily. So if you don't have that information. Talk
to the person that's sending the link. They should be
able to do that for you. Thanks for the call.
In Ventura. Amazon launching a new AI shopping assistant called rufus.

(01:11:37):
This is on the mobile app. This is generative AI
trained on Amazon's product catalog and other data. You can
ask it customer service questions. It can make recommendations, it
can help refine your search. You can type or speak questions.
It's basically a chat GPT, but just for Amazon. It's
called rufus. You're going to see it in the next

(01:11:57):
couple of weeks and it's going to give you all
kinds of recommendations. More ways to spend your money my advice,
use third party review websites. I mean, Amazon's great, but
get your buying advice from outside of Amazon. Go to
Amazon to actually buy the stuff. Triple eight Rich one
O one eighty to eight seven four to two, four
to one zero one. Welcome to another hour of Rich

(01:12:20):
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking
technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Website
for the show Richontech dot TV. If you want links
to anything I mentioned. Big red banner at the top
of the website. It says mentioned or heard it mentioned

(01:12:43):
on the radio links here. There's also a big YouTube
video you can watch my latest stories that I file
for KTLA TV in Los Angeles. So if you want
to see the TV segments that I do, they are
all there as well. Let's see what else and emails
also an option just hit contact at the top of
the page if you want to send your email. That
is exactly what Michelle did. This is a random, non

(01:13:08):
tech question. It's about Bobo, great nickname. A big thank
you to him for whatever he does for your show.
Speaking of that, what does he do for your show? Well,
Bobo is the board operator here and he basically gets
the show on the air. He runs the music, he
runs the calls. She does it all. If you're hearing
my voice, it's because of him. You say his name often,

(01:13:32):
but we don't know what he does for your rock
and radio show. Well, now you know, so can he
say hi to us?

Speaker 4 (01:13:38):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
Does your mic work? We have a mic for Bobo,
but he's very shy. He doesn't necessarily like to No,
I'm just kidding, Bobo actually does his own radio stuff too,
So anyway, he'll set up the mic and say Hi,
But great question. You hear me talk about him often.
But yes, Bobo is the glue for this show. Phoneer

(01:14:00):
triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Let's go to
uh Walt in Oxnard, California. Walt, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 15 (01:14:11):
Hey, Hi, Rich, I have a question. I have a
question about Peacock TV.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
Okay, what's your question?

Speaker 15 (01:14:20):
How do you talk to an actual person?

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
Oh, that's a great question. You know the answer to that?
You can't that way. I don't think so. I don't
think there's a person that you can talk to at Peacock.
I don't think so. What are you trying to do?

Speaker 15 (01:14:38):
Just get re signed back up? Because I had to
change my credit card account and I had an automatic payment,
and of course I have to give them my new
credit card number, and I can't get through to anybody.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
To do that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:55):
Well, I'm looking at their website. Peacock TV. This is
the streaming serve that's owned by Comcast, NBC Universal, whatever
that all is. But let's see contact us for customer service.
We are here to help. You can use our help
center to search through many articles to answer your questions. Additionally,

(01:15:17):
our Peacock Helper bop can be accessed through the icon
in the bottom right, so that's something you can do.
You can also sign in and use our get in
Touch page to send us an email message or chat
with a live agent from nine am until one am Eastern.
So my recommendation is that if you can sign into

(01:15:38):
your account sign in, you should be able to change
the email or the credit card through there directly. If not,
you can chat with someone. But here's the big warning
I have walt because this happens a lot people like
yourself and many others. They will Google for a phone number,
so they'll say like Peacock phone number and on Google.
And what happens is scam artists will actually buy advertising

(01:16:02):
or even set up a website with a phone number
that you could purportedly call to get in touch with
Peacock or whatever customer service you know you're looking for,
and that will be a direct line to a scam
artist that is that is going to take you for
all you.

Speaker 15 (01:16:15):
Got, yeah, and they want you to pay a dollar
for it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
Yeah, So be careful with that That's the main thing
that I've seen happen over and over with people. You know,
they need help with their cable or their TV or
one of these services that notoriously do not have live
customer service agents over phone, and they will immediately ask
for your credit card like you said, Oh, we just
need a dollar to get this started. What they're really
trying to do is get your numbers so that they

(01:16:40):
can really scam you. But I would you do you
know your log in for your website for this Peacock
stuff or no, it's.

Speaker 15 (01:16:47):
Just the only way I've ever done it in the
past is my email address.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
Okay, so yeah, so go in there sign in. If
you forget your password, just do a forgot password. But
you should be able to just go in and update
your your information yourself. If you can't Google, well, make
sure you're on the peacocktv dot com website, but look
for help. There should be a link at the bottom
of the website that says help. If you click that,

(01:17:13):
you can find the customer service bot or I would
sign into your account and chat with them. But you
should be able to go in there and update your
credit card number yourself. I signed up for Peacock when
they did the the streaming game. I forget which one
it was, but I paid like a couple bucks for
the year. I think it was twenty dollars. No, no, sorry,

(01:17:33):
it was not for the game. It was during Black
Friday and I got the Cyber Monday deal. It was
like twenty or something dollars for the whole year. It
was incredible. Thanks for the call, Well appreciate it. Bobo
has his headphones on, So is this the one and
only Boboah see, we can't hear you. We got this
is the problem with Bobo has a mic, but it

(01:17:54):
like doesn't No, I can't. No a little bit, I can.
It's just very faint. Yeah, it's very faint. But Bobo
is uh, he's got a great voice. You just can't
hear it right now. So uh, let's go to in
the meantime, Frank in Denver, Colorado. Frank, you're on with Rich?

Speaker 9 (01:18:11):
Okay, Hi, Rich, do you hear me? Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
I can hear you? Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:18:15):
We just had six inches of snow this morning, and
I think that kind of affects the internet, and.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
I think it can. I think we're we're in Los Angeles,
We're getting about six inches of rain in the next
couple of days. So no matter where you live, you
know you're getting something. What's up?

Speaker 10 (01:18:31):
I should stay it up. Oh, my granddaughter called last night.
Did that my wife's cell phones an iPhone?

Speaker 9 (01:18:38):
Can I think it is? She said, she thinks it's
been had, And then well, how do you know whether
they he dancers, you know her h whatever for for
Facebook and other people. And then she set my wife's
pictures changed because it's an over picture. So how do
I circle in general? And they have to do in

(01:19:00):
order to get around me? Is going to hack it?

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
So the picture on your daughter's phone changed when your
wife called?

Speaker 9 (01:19:10):
No what she called my wife? She said, the picture
from Facebook change?

Speaker 1 (01:19:14):
Okay, well, I mean look there and these are two iPhones, right, yeah,
Well I don't. I don't think that the iPhone is
hacked because it is really tough to hack an iPhone
unless you know. Yeah, I don't. I don't think that
her iPhone is hacked. So iPhone has a feature that
is new in iOS seventeen. Gosh, I can't remember what

(01:19:37):
it's called, Oh, gosh, contact posters, and so this is
a new feature that basically lets you set up what
you look like to someone else's phone when you call them. Now,
your your wife may or may not have set that up.
But there are a variety of places that the iPhone
will pull a contact picture from. That could be a

(01:20:00):
Google account, it could be another online account that you're
linked up with your contact. It could be your iCloud account,
It could be your iPhone when you update your profile picture.
But I think what's happening is is the contact poster
in iOS seventeen was set up somehow, like your wife
maybe said share photos. Sometimes when you text someone it

(01:20:21):
says share share information, and so I think that's what happened.
But I don't think that the phone is hacked. I
don't think that your wife was hacked unless it is,
you know, if it's Facebook. The way that that happens
is once you're hacked on Facebook, they immediately reach out
to all of your contacts on like Facebook Messenger and
they try to like say something to them. So if

(01:20:43):
that's happening, then yes, you might have been hacked. But
the way to safeguard from all of this stuff is
two ways. Number One, strong password. Make sure that that
is strong and unique on every account that you have
number two, make sure that you have two factor authentication
ton on for all of your important accounts. So those

(01:21:03):
two things in combination should really protect you from ninety
nine percent of the hacks out there. There will always
be something else, but that's it. And if you want
to update your contact poster, you can go into your
contacts and you can look at your own contact and
that's up at the top it says my card. You
can go in there and you can edit your contact

(01:21:24):
photo and poster. And that's what you look like to
other people when you call their iPhone. It only works
from iPhone to iPhone like a lot of the Apple
features do. Thanks so much for the call, Frank, stay
stay snow free. I guess out there in Denver. I
want to tell you about the new game everyone's playing.
It's called Pale World. It's kind of a twisted version

(01:21:46):
of Pokemon. Yes, many people playing this. It is Nineteen
million copies were sold in the first two weeks. Xbox
says it is the largest third party game ever on
their Xbox Game Pass. It's also bailable on Steam, sold
five million copies there. It kind of looks like Pokemon.
Some are criticizing it because It's like a twisted version

(01:22:08):
of Pokemon. It's a game where you catch these cute
little creatures called pals, and you not only battle them,
but you also force them to work and you monitor
their well being, their mental well being. It is a
weird game, and a lot of people are spending their
time playing this game. Why because it's so weird and
it's so different than Pokemon. You get away with stuff
in this game that you'd never get away with in Pokemon.

(01:22:31):
But people are saying, what's Pokemon going to do? Because
it looks like it's a ripoff. There's been apparently a
lot of talk about that if Pokemon's going to try
to shut this down. I don't think it's going to happen.
It's a video game. Yeah, there's a resemblance to the
little creatures, but apparently it's pretty wild. I have not
played it personally, but I know a lot of people
that are, and it's one of those things that happens

(01:22:53):
and people really like. Again, it's called Powe World, rated
tea for teens, so if your kids are playing it,
kind of get to know what they're doing in there.
Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four to one zero one. Coming up
this hour, we're going to talk to Robin Gilbert, president
of fair Health. They've got a new tool that can

(01:23:15):
tell you what a medical procedure would should cost by
pointing to a map of the body part. You are
listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at

(01:23:36):
Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four to one zero one. Give me
a call if you have a question about technology. Coming
up this hour, we've got Robin Gilbert, president of fair Health.
She's going to join to explain their new online tool
that can help you figure out how much a medical
procedure should cost just by pointing to the body part.

(01:23:59):
It's pretty interesting. So if you're looking to get some
sort of medical procedure and you're wondering, like what should
this cost or what what what's the range of the cost,
you can literally just like point to the foot and
like it'll tell you all the different things that you
know you may do to that. So that's really interesting.
We'll have her in just a little bit. I see
Bobo with the headphones on. Does this mean you've gotten
access to the ah there he is, So Bobo, explain

(01:24:23):
what you do.

Speaker 4 (01:24:24):
I am your tech producer, so pretty much.

Speaker 16 (01:24:26):
I am in charge of making sure that your mic works,
but apparently not my mic, and I play the music,
make sure the commercials are in, and just make sure
you sound crisp and the show's flowing properly.

Speaker 1 (01:24:37):
And how do you think the show is flowing today?
It is amazing.

Speaker 16 (01:24:40):
I've never had a bad time coming here. I love
coming to work on Saturday mornings.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
To be honest with you, this is why I love
Bobo because he always has a smile on his face
and he has a positive attitude and it's just and
he always gets things right, like, you know, except for
your own mic. For some reason, I know, it's like
a cruel joke that your mic doesn't work when you're
in charge of all this stuff, Like there's so much
equipment that you're sitting in front of that I am

(01:25:05):
the tech person and I can't even I would never
be able to figure out how to get on the
air here. I guess that's for good reason.

Speaker 16 (01:25:11):
I think it's just so the board ops us tech
people won't talk too much like yeah, so like the
show is Rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
It's not Rich and Bobo. Bobo is a nickname. My
real name is Aaron.

Speaker 16 (01:25:22):
It was a family nickname that I've had since I
was like one, and when I got in radio twenty
years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
It just kind of stuck. Yeah, I was gonna say
the nickname. You have to explain it, so now you know. Okay,
So if you're listening, you hear me talk about Bobo.
He is the guy that gets everything on the air.
Thanks for explaining that. We've got a call in a second.

Speaker 10 (01:25:42):
Here.

Speaker 1 (01:25:43):
Let me just tell you about this. If you bought
one of these snap drones, it's called the Pixie, they
are recalling it. I don't think you bought one, only
seventy one thousand people did. But if you happen to
have one of these things, you can get your money back.
This was a flying camera drone. It was actually pretty cool.
Its well reviewed, but the batteries on it can overheat

(01:26:04):
and bulge, causing fires. They had one fire and one
minor injury reported. These Pixie drones were sold by Snap
It's that Snapchat and also Amazon dot Com. If you
have one, stop using it immediately, take the battery out.
Don't recharge it. If you want a refund, which you
should probably get, you have to return the drone body

(01:26:24):
to Snap, not the battery. They have instructions on the
website support dot Pixie dot com, Pixy dot com. You're
gonna get your full purchase price back. Whether you refused
a card, they'll put it back on that card, or
if you don't have that anymore, they'll send you a check.
But this is a recall again of the Snap Pixie
flying drone could catch on fire. If you bought one,

(01:26:48):
seventy one thousand of you did get your money back.
Maybe it's been sitting in a closet for the last
couple of years. Go ahead, get that money back. Let's
go to Mickey in Camarillo, the home of Try, the
first place I ever tried. Try Tip Mickey your own rich.

Speaker 11 (01:27:05):
Yes, I just wanted to know about that duck go
that they I've heard of now is that you cannot
if you use it, that you can't be I guess
it doesn't follow you or you know, I mean compared
to Google. I mean, you've got our setting step, but
I'm just wondering what that is that legit it is?

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
Yes, Duck Duck Goo is both a search engine and
it's also a web browser as well, so you can
get well, there's actually three levels, so you've got the
search engine if you just go to duck duckgo dot com.
You can use that in place of Google. Or you
can download an extension, which means you can use it

(01:27:44):
inside of your web browser and it will try to
make your web browsing more private. Or you can get
the entire browser from Duck duck Go and that will
really make things much more private. So they're kind of pledge.
This was founded in two thousand and eight. Their whole
mission is to protect your privacy. They run this search

(01:28:05):
engine that doesn't track your search history, so as far
as I know, you don't sign in to this. They've
got downloads for all the different browsers and let's see
what else do you need to know? Uh, it's just
it's one of these things where you've seen the ads
on the billboard, and I guess my thing is that, yes,

(01:28:27):
this is if you want to if your only mission
is to protect your your browsing privacy, like you want
to get on the web and not be tracked and
not you know, you don't want anyone to know what
you're doing on there. Now, I say that with a
caveat there's always like your internet service provider, your work,
your school, they will probably know what you're doing on

(01:28:48):
your computer at all times. So just be aware of that.
Nothing is truly private when you're online. I mean, there's
ways to make it that way, but it's very, very
tricky for the average person. It's not something where you
can just you know, you know, log on and make
it easy. So, but this browser does have over a
dozen different privacy protections built in. They have a whole

(01:29:11):
website dedicated to how they protect you. Third party tracker
loading protection, Global privacy control, link tracking protection, CE name
cloaking protection, Google AMP protection. They basically try to make
sure that when you are surfing the web, all the
ways that these companies try to latch on to the

(01:29:32):
data and the trackers and to see what you're doing,
they try to stop that from happening. And so, yes,
they do that, and they do a pretty good job
of it. But the search results that you get may
not be as good as Google. That's the main thing
you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to

(01:29:54):
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you
talking technology at Triple A rich one on one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one,
the website, rich on tech dot TV. If you want
to contact me, just hit the contact link and we'll
get to the feedback segment in just a bit. There's

(01:30:18):
an app called Together. I've talked about this app for
a little bit here on the show. We did an
interview with the doctor that doctor Rene Dua, that invented it.
She's also the doctor behind Heel, which was still is
doctor on demand service kind of came up big during
the pandemic. But she has an app called Together, and

(01:30:39):
this is an app that uses AI to scan pill
bottles and also help you keep all of your health
information in one place. And it's really helpful if you
are assisting someone like a family member or a loved
one with their medications and their appointments and you're trying
to keep track of all this. It's like a shared experience,
so of course with their mission, but this app, you know,

(01:31:02):
it not only keeps track of all the medications, but
it provides all these health related insights. So you can
take a selfie with this app, and this might ring
a bell. It can help figure out your blood pressure,
your heart rate, your oxygen levels. And now they've added
a new feature where you can speak into the app
and it will detect signs of anxiety and depression. So

(01:31:23):
you speak for about thirty seconds, you say whatever you want,
and it will tell you if there's any sign of
anxiety or depression. I tried it out and I'm happy
to report that I did not show any signs, thankfully,
But it's serious if you do, and you know, and
we need to be more honest about this stuff. And
I think that we need to be more accepting of
this stuff. And so by having an app like this

(01:31:45):
where you can just speak into it and see this,
it's it's pretty interesting. So it is available on iOS
right now. It's called Together by Renee, and they told
me that the Android version is launching on February fifth,
So I know many people have been waiting for the
Android version. It will be available on February fifth. It's
been a little delay in that, but it is now

(01:32:06):
going to be there, so iOS android Together by Renee.
It is a free app that can really help you
take charge of your medical situation. Speaking of medical joining
me now is Robin Gelbert, president of fair Health. They
have a new tool that can help you figure out
how much a medical procedure is going to cost by

(01:32:29):
using a map of the body. Robin, thanks for joining
me today.

Speaker 5 (01:32:33):
Well, thank you so much for having us.

Speaker 1 (01:32:35):
So tell me what fair Health is.

Speaker 4 (01:32:37):
First off, So fair Health.

Speaker 5 (01:32:39):
Is independent, not for profit organization and we really have
elevating health insurance literacy around the country as well as
pulling back the window and the curtains, if you will,
on healthcare costs. That has been so mystifying to many
and to help people plan and just become more informed

(01:32:59):
than confident as they navigate this very complex healthcare system and.

Speaker 1 (01:33:04):
Where you're breaking up just a little bit, so if
you have a place where you can move, that might
get a better signal. Try to do that in the meantime.
But I will tell you how in my experience medical
medical billing works. You go to the doctor, they do whatever,
You come home. Six weeks later, you get a bill
and you have no idea how much that's going to be.
Is that pretty much how most people deal with it.

Speaker 5 (01:33:27):
I would say that's exactly right. People get their bills
or they get their explanation of benefits, and they have
no idea how to evaluate it, whether to ask questions,
whether to negotiate on behalf of themselves, and to really
just be a better advocate as they really try to
deal with these very costly procedures and understand what their

(01:33:48):
journey has been. So, as you mentioned, we did try
to add a body procedure locator that adds yet another
avenue to get to the information you need, another way
of really experiencing that journey, in addition to looking at
other kinds of tools on our website.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
So explain to me this body procedure locator. So it's
basically a map of the body and you kind of
point to the well. First you go through a couple
of questions are you in network? Are you out of network?
And then it gets finally to the body part like tool,
It asks your location, I'm gonna I'm just doing this

(01:34:27):
in live time real quick to kind of see okay,
and then it pops up and so you've got head,
spine and spinal cords, skin, chest, abdomen extremities and joints.
So you basically go through and you just look at
the picture and if you're getting a procedure with your shoulder.
You tap shoulder and it tells you casts imaging, injections,

(01:34:48):
orthotic surgery, and then it will tell you how much
these things may cost. And it also gives you what
it was called a CPT code. So explain what the
purpose of all this is.

Speaker 5 (01:35:01):
All of this is to basically virtually hold you by
the hand and walk you through this healthcare journey. As
you mentioned, we have high level categories like spine, skin, chests,
and so forth, Extremities and joints for example, you click
on that and then it takes you slightly deeper into
those extremities and joints, just as an example, to arm, hip, ankle,

(01:35:22):
shoulder for example. Then you click on that where you
may be interested in learning more about your medical procedure
than it takes you deeper into those procedures. As you mentioned,
it's codes, which are the official codes that all doctors
are required to build you at that level. And so
we try to provide a consumer friendly description of those

(01:35:43):
procedure codes and then take you to the cost information.
And what's really unique about fear help consumer dot org
it's not just the one way to learn costs because
there are many different venues of care where you can go.
You can tell health to examine or to explore your procedure.
You could be going to a retail clinic and urgent

(01:36:06):
care center or a doctor's office. Costs differ depending on
where you present yourself. So really it's just a welcome
that and as it as sort of a virtual handholding
experience to really take very complex information and to really
eliminate all of the anxiety people have when they help,
you know, really when they enter the healthcare insurance and

(01:36:28):
the healthcare world.

Speaker 1 (01:36:29):
The website is fairhealth consumer dot org. So once you
get to the final page, it'll give you the cost
out of network. In network, it'll give you all the
different like related things like if you need anesthesia or
radiology or anything like that, so you can see the
price of all that stuff. It gives you some local
price comparisons, so if you put in your zip code,

(01:36:51):
it'll tell you kind of like if you have the
procedure done like right where you live or maybe a
different section of town, it might be a different price.
I'll tell you about it, and then it says questions
to ask as well, So it's a really comprehensive kind
of like all the stuff that you may not even
think of when you're getting a procedure done. Do you
think that there is room in the healthcare industry for

(01:37:14):
more kind of transparency?

Speaker 5 (01:37:19):
And it's really more than transparency what we try to
strive for and hopefully others will as well as clarity.
Just transparently making information available is not enough. You have
to connect it to context to really people the opportunity
to understand what they're digesting and looking at. And yes,
we're finding more and more people are becoming much more

(01:37:39):
animated in their conversations and health plans and really trying
to assert themselves in their vote, better understand and negotiate
for themselves. So absolutely transparency is critical, but as I said,
it really has to rise to the level of clarity.

Speaker 1 (01:37:58):
Sorry, I'm still getting a little bit of breakup in
your saying such interesting stuff that I don't want. I
don't want to miss anything that you're saying, but I'm curious.
So my my thing with my uh, you know, any
sort of medical bill that I get, I always call
before I pay it and just make sure that it's
the right amount, make sure that there's no changes. Is

(01:38:19):
that the right thing to do? Should we be doing
that or is that just more work for the doctor's office.

Speaker 5 (01:38:24):
No, you should be doing that that extra homework and
asking them the important questions there as I said, because
more information is being disseminated. So yes, people should feel
empowered to do that and ask questions of their provider or.

Speaker 1 (01:38:44):
All right, Robin Gilbert of fair Health, definitely check out
the tool, check out the website a lot of information
on their fairhealth consumer dot org. Thanks so much for
joining me today.

Speaker 5 (01:38:57):
You're welcome. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:38:59):
This is a really like I said, and here's my
biggest issue with the payment websites of every almost every
doctor number one, there's not an easy way to pay.
And I'll give you a little hint. There's an app
called Papaya pap a Ya Papaya Payments, and this app
is incredible because you basically scan any medical bill that

(01:39:21):
you have with this app and it will help you
pay that bill. It's really really good and it's I
use it all the time. It is incredible. I've done
a story with them and it's legit and it works.
So Papaya, just like the fruit Papaya pay dot com
I find is incredible. But here's my advice. Don't pay
medical bills before you call, because sometimes there is a

(01:39:46):
change in the time that they printed that bill and
the time that you get it. Your insurance might have
paid an additional amount, they might have written off some
of the amount that you might have to pay. So
always call your doctor and make sure that the amount
is right. I know it's a pain because sometimes it's
tough to get through or sometimes it's tough to find

(01:40:06):
the time to do that, but it really does help.
The other thing is that when you go to the
website for like ninety nine percent of medical bills, they
don't tell you how much you owe. They will let
you go to the website and pay the bill, but
it's on you to type in the amount that you
want to pay. And I find that to be really
odd because almost any other bill that you pay in America,

(01:40:27):
they show you the total, like they show you how
much you owe, But for some reason, with medical billing,
they say, okay, now, type in the amount you want
to pay now. Maybe that's because people do partial payments
all the time. They do what they can afford, so
maybe that's part of it. But it would be nice
if there was some sort of standard where they had
to show you what the current amount of that bill was.

(01:40:48):
Doesn't seem to happen, but at the end of the day,
when you are ready to pay, I do like this
app Papaya Pay. It is very handy. I'll put the
link on the website rich on Tech dot tv again,
the website for the the Body Part Indicator, Fairhealthconsumer dot Org. Ah.
This is why I love this show. I love just
getting this great information out there to help you and

(01:41:08):
then to empower you as a consumer when it comes
to all of this tech stuff. Coming up next, we'll
do some more news and the feedback segment coming up
right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, giving

(01:41:30):
you the tech news and information you need to know
to feel smart and really empowered with all this stuff,
because it is it is not easy to navigate this
world we live in, and I'm telling you, with the
scam artist around every corner, it's just getting trickier and trickier.
So I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're learning. Let's
get through a few news topics before I get to

(01:41:52):
the feedback segment. Yelp has a new feature, AI powered
Business Summaries. This is gonna show you the insights you
need to know about a business. So it's gonna show
you things like the atmosphere, the service, the amenities, the
value or a popular dish. It's AI powered Business Summaries
are available on iOS now. They're gonna roll out to

(01:42:13):
Android and desktop later this year. That is brilliant because
if you go look up a place on Yelp and
it says, oh, this place is known for their you know,
certain fish dish or whatever, their dessert, their cinmon role,
It's like, oh, that's what I wanted to know. Brilliant
feature there. We're seeing AI everywhere. TikTok is removing Universal

(01:42:34):
Music after their licensing deal expired. TikTok has removed all
music from Universal Music Group. The deal expired January thirty first.
This affects artists like Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish,
Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber. Universal says TikTok is not properly
compensating artists. TikTok says Universal is greedy. Yeah, two big

(01:42:55):
companies with a lot of money fighting. There's something new.
So if you had one of these songs on your
TikTok it's muted. At this point, Fossil is getting out
of the smart watch business. The last watch they launched
was in twenty twenty one. It was the Gen six.
If you have a Fossil smart watch, they will continue
to provide software updates for existing users for quote the

(01:43:17):
next few years. Ford is giving away free Tesla chargers
for their EV buyers. They're going to give free adapters
to its EV buyers so they can use Tesla's charging network.
This was announced by the Ford CEO model you're twenty
twenty one to twenty twenty four Mustang Mock E and

(01:43:37):
F one fifty lightning vehicles are going to get the
free adapter. This is huge. If you own a Ford
and you can now charge on Tesla's network, it is
a game changer. This is so amazing. They didn't say
when this is going to happen, but very soon. So
we're going to start seeing a lot more people at
the Tesla chargers, that's for sure. But pretty much every

(01:44:00):
major automaker has pledged support for this Tesla charging standard,
which they invented. They now call it the North American
Charging Standard because it pretty much is so Tesla dominates.
But the fact that if you bought a ford in
the past three four years, Ford ev you're gonna get
one of these adapters. That is incredible. Speaking of Tesla

(01:44:21):
recalling two million vehicles, Oh my gosh, that sounds scary.
That was the headline in the Wall Street Journal, among
many others. But guess what the fix is a software
update that probably already reached most Teslas. Yeah, this is
getting out of control. Every time Tesla has a software update, Recall,
it's a big headline on all the news places and

(01:44:43):
then if you read it, it says, oh, it's a software update.
So tech Crunch as well as myself, believes that we
need to come up with a new word instead of safety.
Recall that was when it was a car that had
a gas engine. They need to replace something on that car,
fix something, tweak something. When it's a software update, it
sounds really scary and people get very concerned. But if

(01:45:05):
you're talking a software update. For this one, it was
a font size. They had to change the font on
some of the visuals, the warning indicators. So we need
a new word for this new new world we live
in of software updates for evs because recall sounds very
scary and it gets people necessarily up in arm unnecessarily

(01:45:25):
up in arms. Bard can now generate AI images. If
you go to Bard dot Google dot com, you can
type in what you want it to make an image
of and it will make two images. If you want more,
it'll do that too. This is completely free, so use
your imagination. You can use this to make all kinds
of cool images and they're very realistic. So Bard dot

(01:45:48):
Google dot com you can now ask it to make images.
Google is really soup and up it's AI. And Filo
now available on Visio smart TVs. Filo is a very
inexpensive streaming service. They focus on sort of entertainment options.
They sort of stay away from the sports because that's expensive.
So I think their plans start at twenty five bucks

(01:46:09):
a month for seventy channels plus a DVR. If you
have a visiotv you can just find the Filo app
on there. It is now available on the Visio smart TVs.
And finally, did I already say finally, there's a new
app for the iPhone called arc Search by the browser company.
I told you about Perplexity AI. A couple of weeks ago.

(01:46:30):
This is similar. Basically, they do a thing where they
will use AI to search for you. So if you
type in a topic, you say search for me, or
come up with a whole page with a summary of
that whole topic. It's called arc search arc search by
the browser company. It's a really cool way of searching
the Internet. That's different. They still do the standard Google searches,

(01:46:51):
but this is a new way to search. I also
love Perplexity. Perplexity AI is the app that I've been
using a lot more so instead of going to Google
for something, I would just go to Perplexity and type
in a name or something or a place, and it
will give me like a whole almost like a book
report you would do back in the day, but it's

(01:47:12):
coming up with everything on the fly. Feedback time. Gilbert says,
love your podcast. Rich on Tech is a great follow
up to Leo. I feel sorry for the guy in
last week's show who fell asleep and accidentally bought courtside
Laker seats. You should play Steve Goodman's vegimatic song for him.
Keep up the good work. I'm not familiar with that song,
but thank you, Gilbert. Let's see let's see what else here? Oh.

(01:47:36):
Neil says, Hey Rich, I loved yesterday's show. Your guests
have been very good at making the topics understandable yet
covering what we need to know. Your brother's radio persona
was excellent. I bet your parents are pretty cool. Thanks
for your great service. Neil from Ohio. Neil, I know
is a listener that I like. Hey Rich, Kevin says,
I enjoy your show whenever I get a chance to listen,

(01:47:56):
and mainly for the help you give to older ones.
One thing people can do on Windows is to create
a restore point before an update, just in case the
update goes heywire. That way it can be easily reversed.
Good job on the show. Thank you, Kevin. That's gonna
do it for this episode. You can find links to
everything I mentioned on the website. Just go to richontech
dot tv. You can find me on social media. I

(01:48:17):
am at rich on Tech. Next week I'm headed to
the Chicago Auto Show, so I'll tell you all about
the cool stuff I see there. Thank you so much
for listening. There are so many ways you can spend
your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here
with me. My name is rich Demiro. I will talk
to you real soon

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