Checking for Personal Data on the Dark Web & Managing iCloud Storage

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Open AI changes the world once again, this time with
AI generated video, the first major malware for the iPhone.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
What you need to know.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Samsung promises a big update for its latest S twenty
four phones. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on
rich dmiro and this is Rich on Tech broadcasting live
from Los Angeles, coast to coast. This is the show
where I talk about the tech stuff I think you
should know about. It's also the place where I answer

(00:34):
your questions about technology. I believe that technology should be interesting, useful,
and fun. Let's open up those phone lines triple eight
rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one, triple eight, rich one
oh one.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Give me a call.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
If you have a question about technology. Email is also open.
Just go to Richontech dot cog TV hit contact. Keep
in mind I can't respond to everyone personally, but I
will do my best. Guests this week, we've got Bob O'Donnell, president,
founder and chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research. He's going to

(01:15):
explain what aipcs are all about. And I'm very excited
to talk to Bob because he actually used to host
pretty much a version of this show back in the day.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
So I'm gonna talk to him about that.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Advisorator columnist Jared Newman is going to talk to talk
about what to do if you're out of iCloud storage,
you see that dreaded message and you don't know what
to do.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Today, I figured i'd tell you a story about technology,
but really it's a story about perseverance because this all
started at my work. You know, I work as a
TV reporter at a tech tech reporter at a TV station,
and uh, you know, people come up to me all
the time and say, hey, Rich do you have a

(02:02):
second for a question? All the time, and of course
I say, yes, what do you need? And it inevitably
is some very complicated situation on their phone or computer
or iPad or at home that is not easily answered
in a minute or two.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
But it's fine. I don't mind.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
I love talking to people about this stuff, as I
do here on the show. So they come up they say, hey,
my computer. I've got this old computer. I want to
like kind of freshen it up, clean it out, and
make it new it again. I said, oh, that's easy.
We kind of computer macro pc. Oh it's a mac
oh super easy. We could just reformat it'll be back
up and running a couple of minutes. He's like, oh great,
I have it right here. Oh okay, let me have it.

(02:43):
So he brings it to my desk and I start
looking at this computer. It's kind of old, it's aging,
it's it's kind of slow, it's got old software on it,
and it's very clear that this thing just needs a
total reinstallation of the operating system. So I said, all right,
leave it here, can you can you leave it at
my desk for a couple minutes and I'll I'm doing
other stuff, but let me try to work on it.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well. To connect this thing to the.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Internet at my work was very complicated because we have
a kind of secured Wi Fi and it's not very
easy to do that when you're trying to form out
a machine and get it up and running. It's easier
to have either Wi Fi at home or some sort
of Ethernet connection. Plus it's fat, you know, it's much faster.
So I start trying to do this at my work
with the work connection. It keeps failing, and so I'm like,
all right, let me try a hotspot. So I hook

(03:27):
it up to my cell phone and I hotspot it
connection is a little bit better, but everything I'm trying
to do is still failing. And it's trying to connect
to some server. But the computer's really old and the
software is really old. So I feel like Apple's shut
down whatever server it's trying to connect to. So I
said to the guy, look, do you mind if I
just bring this thing home and I will figure it
out at home and I will work on it.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Absolutely, It's got a whole bag, puts all the stuff
in it, all the you know, cables and things, and
bring it.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Bring this thing home.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
So I get it home, and you know, it's one
of these days where I got home kind of early
from work. I would gonna work on it that afternoon,
so I want to go to the gym, kind of
do some.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Other stuff whatever.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
I start working on this thing, and you know, I
just go down a rabbit hole of trying to figure
this thing out. Nothing is working. So I get the
good internet connection. I find a way to connect. First
thing I had to do. This thing doesn't have USBC,
so I had to like find a way to connect
my ethernet to this even though all I had was USBC.
So I had to find like an adapter, which I

(04:25):
ended up finding in my old you know, gadget closet whatever.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
So I figured that out.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
But I'm sitting here and now now time is starting
to go by, right like I'm kind of getting a
little bit annoyed at the fact that I'm spending so
much time and nothing I'm doing is working. And next
thing you know, I'm trying to get into like terminal
on this computer. I'm trying to like format things. I'm
trying to make a USB boot drive, all this stuff
that I've done a million times in the past, but

(04:52):
nothing seems to work. And I keep going and going
and going, and I'm sitting there thinking to myself, this
should be so easy. But at this point, I'm so invested.
I can't go back to this guy at my work
as the tech guy. I'd be like, oh, sorry, I
wasn't able to figure this out, Like could you imagine,
Like I can't have that word spreading around KTLA or
anywhere else.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
And so I am determined. So I finally, I'm not kidding.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
I spent three hours in the afternoon and I thought
at one point I got it up and running. I
text the guy I'm like, hey, look at this splash screen.
It was showing like the installation working. I was like, see,
all I needed was better Internet. And sure enough, right
at the end of that installation, it's like error failed.
Right at the end, ninety nine percent, that last one
percent failed. I'm like, You've got to be kidding me

(05:38):
right now. So I am just trying to figure out
any way to get this thing to work. And you know,
as you spend more time on something, you're getting a
little bit more like quick and hasty and like things
aren't working. And I've downloaded like all the software to
my computer. Nothing's working. I shelve it. I'm like, you
know what, I got to take a break. I gotta
take a breath. I sholve the computer. I put it
in my room. I, you know, just leave it there.

(06:00):
Like a week or two goes by. I see this
guy at work, He's like, hey, Ranch, any update. I'm like,
it's going, it's going, it's going, But really nothing was happening.
So finally I have a breakthrough. I'm at home and
I realized what I needed. So with the way mac
os works, you can't download a current version of the
software or an old version of the software on a

(06:21):
new machine, you have to use an old machine that
used to be able to run that software. And all
of a sudden, I'm going through like my drawers and
I find a laptop, a Mac laptop that I forgot
I had, because I forgot I had it because the
battery is is shot so it doesn't hold a charge.
And so usually I hand my computers down to a
family member, but this one I just threw in a
drawer because I'm like, oh, I don't really know what

(06:41):
to do with this thing, because nobody else could use it. Well,
I plug it in, it gets up and running. I
look at the version of the software. I'm like, you've
got to be kidding me. I think this is gonna work.
And so I download this program called disk Drill, and
it's like a really easy program to help you make
these bootable drives. I download it and I'm starting to
download the software and everything is working. I'm like, You've

(07:03):
got to be kidding me, Like this is actually working.
Like I'm sitting there smiling to myself. I am working
on a ten year old computer with another ten year
old computer next to me, with my current computer there,
so I have like a whole like factory of MacBooks
sitting in front of me, and it's working. It is working.
So I get this little drive made. And by the way,
since these computers are so old, everything that should take

(07:25):
five or ten minutes really takes like twenty to thirty minutes.
But finally I am getting some progress. This drive that
I need, it's like a USB drive is it's what's
called a bootable drive. So when you plug it into
the new computer, it looks at that it says, ooh,
I can use this to boot up, and I can
use this to actually install this operating system and run.
And so I get this little drive made. And by

(07:47):
the way, I had to have a USB drive that
was USBC on one side and USB on the other side,
and so I had that because I test stuff and
I happen to have that lane around the house. So
that was like, that was just incredible to have I
get the software on this thing.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
I plug it into the computer.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Immediately the computer went from having a question mark on
the screen to an Apple logo and it was starting
to install. And I didn't even have to do anything.
It just started like it knew. It was like magical.
As soon as I plugged this piece, and it was
like out of a movie. And I'm sitting there like
high fiving myself, laughing that this is like actually a thing.
And I'm more just sitting there thinking that this is

(08:24):
my reputation on the line more than anything. I'm like, oh, yeah,
I'm gonna figure this out. I get the software. It installs,
the computer opens up, it turns on. It is a fresh,
clean installation of mac os High Sierra, which by the way,
came out I don't know how many years ago. But
it's on there and it's working. And I'm like, okay,

(08:47):
and I finally get this thing to work. I plug
it all in, I turn it on. I set up
his littleccount and it is perfect. It is pristine. His
old computer that I couldn't figure out for two weeks
finally worked. I looked back in the email that I
originally sent him, saying, oh, I think I got it.
It was sixteen days ago. This guy waited sixteen days
thinking oh, this is not going to work. Why do

(09:10):
I tell you this story, Well, I said it was
a story of perseverance. So you can apply this to
anything in your life, whether it is tech, whether it
is your job, whether it's sports, maybe your marriage, I
don't know. Whatever you need, just keep going. And I'm
so proud that I figured this out, something that I've
done many, many times. But more so than that, it
is exciting to have this up and running for this

(09:32):
person again and deliver them this computer. And man, I
feel good. I feel good. But here is the bottom line.
I say this story because people come up to me,
as you know, the person who knows about technology, thinking
I have all the answers, and you call me on
this show and you think I have all the answers.
Tech people don't have all the answers immediately. But the

(09:54):
difference between me and other people out there and other
tech people is that we know how to find the answers.
Like any person that is a sort of an expert
in their field, they may not have all the answers
off the top of their head, but they know where
to find that answer. If a doctor comes up against something,
and I'm not comparing myself to a doctor, believe me,

(10:15):
but if a doctor comes up against something that is
challenging them, they will figure out. They will consult with
their colleagues and figure out a solution that they think
is best someone fixes cars, they come up against the
problem that they can't figure out. They'll consult with other people.
You probably consult with other people at your work, asking hey,
how do I solve this problem?

Speaker 2 (10:32):
That is what it's all about. That is it. That
is the story. I feel good.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
I'm excited I can deliver this guy's computer back and
I learned a lesson. Not only is disc drill an
excellent program to have around, but I'm also gonna keep
a bootable USB drive for every version of Mac os
at the ready from now on.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
That's what I'm gonna do, all right.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Coming up on the show, I hope you enjoyed that
because I really got kick. My My wife and family
were like every day when they come home, they get
a little update about this computer, Like Dad, that computer
is still sitting there in the office. I'm like, I know,
I'll figure it out, all right. Coming up, more of
your call or your calls eight A eight Rich one
on one eight eight eight seven four to two four

(11:18):
to one zero one. Give me a call if you
have a question about technology.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
I'm feeling good.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
I'm feeling like I accomplished stuff. Let's accomplish some more.
My name is Rich d'miro and you are listening to
Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich
DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple
A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Website for the

(11:44):
show richon Tech dot TV. If you want a link
to something I mentioned, you can find it right at
the top there.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
It is highlighted in red.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
Let's go to cam in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Cam you're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
Hi, Rich, I love you on KTLA and just wanted
to say thank you for your information all the time.
And my question is I'm looking for some resources actually
hopefully this is a quick question for someone to perform
an investigation on the dark web to find maybe some
uh information pertaining to somebody maybe putting information out there

(12:25):
that's false. And I've been doing a lot of research
on my own and I'm kind of limited in my
understanding of, you know, the complete realm of technology, and
was wondering if you had a resource of some investigative
either law firm or investigative company that can it would recommend,

(12:46):
that would be able to perform that type of investigation.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Well, I have one person that comes to mind that
I've interviewed actually several times for KTLA and thanks for
the kind words on that. And so I can recommend
a website that you can contact. Her name is Haley Kaplan.
What is privacy dot com? And there's dashes between, so
what dash is dash? Privacy dot com? And Hailey works

(13:11):
with a lot of high profile individuals for reputation management.
And you know basically what you're saying, She's not a lawyer,
and I can't really recommend a legal route to go,
but that's that's a route to go that can at least,
you know, get you in.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
The right direction.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Now, when it comes to the dark Web, this is
an area of the Internet that is not necessarily traversed
by the average person, nor is it easily searchable by
the average person. But there is information on pretty much
every single one of us out there on the dark web.
And so if you are just looking to see what
is out there on you, there's a couple of resources

(13:49):
I can mention that you can use to scan kind
of some of these things. And believe me, when you're
talking about your personal information on the Internet, it is
a game of whack a mole. You can get this
removed and it shows up instantly a couple of days later.
I use a service called Google Results About You, which
I highly recommend. I just signed up my wife this morning,

(14:11):
but I highly recommend you go in here and set
this up. It is free, and it doesn't remove the
data about you from the Internet, but it removes kind
of the links on Google. So if someone's searching for
information about you, you know, your name, address, phone number,
SoC security number, whatever, that information may still be out
there on the websites, but most people are just gonna,

(14:32):
you know, casually search Google for that and those links
will not show up. So that again is called Google
Results about You. If you want to sign up for it,
open up the Google app on your phone has to
be the Google app. Tap in the upper right hand corner.
You'll see a little icon and then you'll see something
that says Results about You. And so to sign up,

(14:52):
you basically have to give Google your information, your name,
your address, your phone number, your email and then they
go out on the web and they scan the web
for that information and as they find it, they will
send you a notification that says, hey, do you want
us to take this off of our Google Search results?
And they're not going to take everything down, but they
will take down a lot. I mean I had three
taken down just yesterday, So that's one way to do it.

(15:15):
Another website that's really handy is called have I Been Pooned?
And it's not spelled the way you think it's h
a ve I beIN pwned and it looks like pawned,
but it's pned dot com. Have I Beenpooned?

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Dot com?

Speaker 1 (15:31):
And I'll link this up on my website rich on
tech dot tv, and you can put your email address
in there and it will tell you if your email
address is in one of these breaches, and if it is,
that means that the password associated with that email address
is out there on the web as well. So don't
reuse your passwords please. When it comes to scanning your
information on the dark web, a lot of these services

(15:52):
are paid. Experience has a dark Web scanning option you
can pay for that. It says you can start for free.
I have not use that one personally, so I can't
vouch for it. Norton also has some dark web monitoring Mozilla.
I don't think they monitor the dark web, but they
do monitor for data breaches. It's called Mozilla Monitor and

(16:13):
you can get a first scan for free. I think
we talked about it on the show last week. And
then there is another option through Google One if you
have Google One, So if you pay for any subscription
service on Google, you have a membership to Google One
and they will scan your information on the dark Web.
So it's kind of it's similar to that results about

(16:33):
you that I talked about that's available to everyone, but
this takes it a little deeper into the dark web
and you will get those alerts and you'll be surprised
that your social your data, birth, your address, all that
stuff is really out there on the dark web where
people are selling, buying, trading this stuff on a daily basis.
It's pretty wild when you start going down these roads.

(16:54):
It's not easy to get this stuff off the Internet,
and it's probably never going to be completely off. But
that is what I recommend for some of the free
resources and paid resources out there. Good question, just something
you got to keep on top of all. Right, coming
up on the show, people are already returning their Apple
Vision pro why we'll find out plus more.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
Of your calls at triple eight rich one oh one.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Welcome back to rich 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 rich on Tech dot tv.

(17:45):
If you need a link to something I mentioned, I
just mentioned a whole bunch of dark web monitoring services.
You can get the links for those there, and you
can follow me on social media. I am at rich
on Tech. Well, the fourteen day return window for early
adopt of Apple's Vision Pro headset is up, and a
lot of people took to social media saying they are

(18:05):
returning the product.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Why.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
They say it feels too isolating when you're wearing it,
it's too heavy and uncomfortable, and they haven't found a
daily use case for it. A lot of people say
maybe they'll buy the next version when it's a little
bit more refined, it's lighter, it's cheaper. This is a
thirty five hundred dollars device. Add it up with tax
and accessories. You're talking four grand for something that you

(18:29):
can only use by yourself. And there's not really a
ton of use case scenarios for this just yet. Now,
a lot of people probably just bought this to check
it out, you know, make some content with it, knowing
they'd return it. But it's kind of wild because I've
not seen this sort of reaction with an Apple product
in a very long time. In fact, I don't know

(18:50):
if I could ever remember an Apple product that people
were excited about. And in my lifetime, I've seen you know,
the iPhone, the Apple Watch, the iPad, you know, very computers.
This is kind of like, we don't know if this
is going to be a hit or a miss just yet.
But supposedly they sold under two hundred thousand of these things.

(19:10):
But the good news is once Apple gets these things
back in the in the back stock room, they'll refurbish
them and you'll be able to buy it at a discount.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Now I'm curious to see.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
I don't think Apple will do this, but it'd be
interesting to see if they discount this thing and make
it a lesser price that even I was trying to think,
like how much would it take for me to buy
this thing? Even at fifteen hundred bucks, I don't know,
it still feels too expensive. You've got the Mediquest three,
which is five hundred bucks, and Mark Zuckerberg in a
very rare It's rare that you see a tech CEO

(19:45):
do a review of a competitor's product, but that's exactly
what Mark Zuckerberg did this week. He tried out the
Vision Pro. He said it was underwhelming compared to his product,
the Mediquest three. Now that makes sense, of course he's
going to say that, but he says it has The
Mediquest three has a wider field of view, it's lighter,
it's more comfortable, it supports Xbox games, which the Vision
Pro does not, and he thinks that overall, the Quest

(20:08):
three is a better device. I think he said something
like period it is the best. He likes the Vision
pros eye tracking, he gave it that, but he said
they also had that in their Quest Pro and they're
going to bring it back. He also said the Quest
three has a better immersive content library currently, and he
said the Quest three is seven times less. So it's

(20:29):
hard to argue with Mark Zuckerberg. But you also have
to remember keep in mind for perspective that Apple is
the company that probably took about twenty billion dollars away
from the bottom line of Facebook when they changed the
way that the iPhone works with the advertising. Facebook was
no longer able to track people across the iPhone's apps
and services and web browser, and so that took a

(20:52):
lot of money away from Facebook. And so you have
to remember, these are not These guys are frenemies, right
Mark Zuckerberg. Most of the time, if you look at
the phone he's using in a reflection in a mirror
or window, it is not an iPhone because he you know,
he knows a lot of people are using iPhones that
he is his customers. I guess you can call them,
you know, Facebook, Instagram users, but he also knows that

(21:14):
he'd probably rather have them using a Android. Let's go
to Stephen in Bakersfield. Steven, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
Hey, Hey Dan, Rich, thanks for making the call.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Doing great. What's up?

Speaker 4 (21:25):
My wife and I are going to be doing a
pilgrimage walk the Camino Ignaciano in Spain coming up in May.
It's about three hundred miles of a hike. Oh wow,
and man Resa, Yeah, it's there are some other the Saniago,
some other stuff.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Okay, that sounds that sounds like a lot.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
It is.

Speaker 4 (21:44):
It's going to be a hoot. I'm a bit of
an oldish guy. I'm going to be sixty. I have
lived in the Apple world, and for the hike itself,
I don't know that I want to hump my iPhone
all over the place. I don't have an Apple Watch,
I don't have comp you know, communication, that kind of thing.

Speaker 5 (22:00):
I'm interested in.

Speaker 4 (22:01):
Your thoughts on what would maybe be a better product
than the iPhone, Maybe an Apple Watch for text and
things like that for communication, and also maybe some software.
I know that a bunch of years ago there was
What's app and some other stuff, But just wanted to
pick your brain on both hardware and software for when
we do this walk.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
So what's your main goal is to stay connected without
a lot of like looking at screens or what's your
goal when you're walking?

Speaker 4 (22:26):
My goal is to stay connected with family back here
in the States, and without having to have even that
iPhone in my hand all the time, to kind of
be a little bit more hands free, and to yeah,
not have a huge screen. We will have opportunity in
the eve means to dial it down and have access
to that, but during most of the day, I'd like
to have communication, you know, maybe text.

Speaker 6 (22:47):
Things like that.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
Well, I think I think an Apple Watch is probably
the easiest solution, since you can glance at it and
you'll get some metrics that are kind of nice. I
don't think that you can leave this thing on GPS
all day, because it will it will run out of
battery if you do that pretty quickly. But I think
that that's probably the easiest way to kind of monitor
things in as people are texting you, you could see those

(23:08):
come in.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Is this an area that has cellular connectivity or no?

Speaker 4 (23:12):
I'm assuming it does the east or the west slope
of the Pyrenees Mountains in a Basque region from up
in the north around Loyola down almost to Barcelona. Okay,
all right, I think it's that pretty good reception.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
And I'm trying to see if the emergency SOS feature,
which which iPhone do you have?

Speaker 4 (23:34):
I have a fourteen pro right now?

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Oh okay, so fourteen Pro does have the emergency SOS.
Do you anticipate needing that service at all? Like? Are
you off the grid that much? Is this like a
you're with a group of people, right, We're going to.

Speaker 4 (23:49):
Be doing it with a couple of people, and so
we're not completely off the grid. And I think we're
going to be going through the places where I short
answer is, I think we're gonna be on the grid.
I don't think that's a problem.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
Well, the good news is if there was any sort
of time when you need it to you know, if
they're not a cellular connection, emergency SOS is available in Spain,
so that's really nice. So make sure that you have
your phone updated to the latest operating system and the
iPhone fourteen Pro and the iPhone fifteen models they both
have the emergency SOS via satellite.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Are you familiar with that feature? That's a little about Okay,
So I.

Speaker 4 (24:27):
Have kids that continue that help for me.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
Basically, if your phone does not have a cellular or
Wi Fi signal, you will see a little satellite signal
in the upper right hand corner, and that means as
long as you have a clear view of the sky,
you will be able to send for emergency help. You'll
be able to text effectively text an emergency response person
and say you know, hey, we need this or we
need that, or send your location or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
So that'll be nice.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
But wou I would recommend I know this is kind
of expensive, but I think you know, maybe treat yourself
of as a as a reward for doing this with
the Apple Watch Ultra, because the battery is going to
last a really long time. The screen is nice and big,
it's got a nice extra button on there which you
can program to do a whole bunch of things. And
you know, there's there's a whole bunch of tracking features.

(25:16):
It's got better GPS than the standard Apple Watches, and
so I think that's gonna be nice to keep in
touch with friends and family back home. And then you
kind of have to decide if you want to get
a do you have roamings?

Speaker 2 (25:29):
What's your cellular plan?

Speaker 6 (25:32):
Right now?

Speaker 4 (25:33):
I'm kind of at the top end with stuff, and
so I have roaming and everything else is connected to
a business, so I have I have all the cellular
data and unlimited everything you can think of.

Speaker 6 (25:43):
At least in the States.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Oh, I was gonna say, okay.

Speaker 4 (25:46):
Yeah, yeah, as far as connectivity someplace, FILF. I don't
know if your suggestion would be some kind of an
international plan at least temporarily, or like I said, I
think a thousand years ago when we went to Italy
once we did what's app and communication. So I don't
know what the best ways to go on.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
So I mean, I think, you know, these days, you
don't even really need WhatsApp anymore. If you're you know,
if you're texting you what I would recommend is turning
on what's called Wi Fi calling and texting, And so
before you leave the States, turn that on your phone.
If you're going to number one, I call your carrier
ask if you have any sort of roaming included with
your plan. So for instance, the plan that I'm on,

(26:23):
I get a day of roaming free. I think I
get like four months. So when I log into my account,
it tells me you have fourteen days of roaming for free.
And so when I go on a trip international trip
for you know, three four days, most of the time
I'm covered. So I would call your company and or
your carrier and ask them what you've got. The other
thing I would recommend is a company named Aralo Ai

(26:44):
r Alo and this is a this is a company
where you can buy an e SIM for your phone,
and that is basically a temporary cell phone plan that
works internationally, and it's very inexpensive. And that's something you
can install on your phone. If you don't have roaming,
you install it on your phone, and then when you
get to the you know, before you take off, you

(27:05):
will turn off your your connection with whatever company you have,
whether it's AT and TV, Verizon, T Mobile, whatever, and
then when you get to the country, you turn on
this other connection to this secondary ara lo sim It
sounds a little complicated, but I'll be honest. My mom
went to Germany. We did this all over the phone.
She figured it out and she had great connection the
whole time, and all of her friends that she was

(27:26):
with were like, how do you have a connection and
I don't. She's like, well, my son's the tech guy,
so I mean, of course I figured it out with him,
and everyone was like cracking up. But I think you'll
be able to text I personally if you you know.
When I go overseas, I use something called Telegram, And
what I like about Telegram is that it works no
matter what connection I have, whether I have Internet, whether
I have Wi Fi, whether I have cellular, whether the

(27:48):
person on the other end is on an iPhone or
an Android. So I really like that program. WhatsApp is
also very good. It just depends. It's like a matter
of preference. So if you have if you want to
log in with that. You can also use Facebook Messa
if you have that installed, but it really comes down
to what the people on the other end have. So
those are the things that I'd recommend, uh, Steven, But

(28:08):
it sounds like an epic trick.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
I think you're gonna have a great time.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
It's very much easier to stay connected internationally than it
ever has been. Eight A eight rich one O one.
Thanks for the call. Eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. I'll tell you what open
eye open ai is doing now, and it's AI video.
It is incredible. More show right after this. Welcome back

(28:36):
to rich 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.
Everyone in the tech world this week is talking about
what open ai is doing now, and what they're doing
now is AI video.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
It is called Sora s o r A.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
This is a new AI system that generates really realistic
looking video from text.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Videos can be up.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
To a minute long and they really have impressive detail, lighting, texture,
shot composition. It looks like something Pixar made. It looks
like something a film a director would make. I mean,
it's really quite impressive. They showed a bunch of different videos.
I highly recommend you to take a look at these things.

(29:27):
Snow one of them was a couple walking through a
snowy Tokyo landscape. That was awesome. Let's see what else
did they have. They had a little monster next to
a candle. Looked like something Pixar would make. And let's
see what was the other one? A virtual zoo tour.
I saw a like a car driving through a city,

(29:50):
but they had they changed it into like twenty five
different ways. It's really quite impressive. So what is the
deal with this? Can you get your hands on it? No,
this is right now. Just research that they are showing
off and it is very very impressive. So if you
have a chance, I'll put it. I'll put the link
on the website rich on tech dot tv in the
show notes. But it's OpenAI dot com slash sora s

(30:13):
O r A. And when you see the video that
this is generating, you will realize that everything is going
to change once again. Just like chat GBT changed AI
for the average person, this is now going to change
video forever. You've heard of deep fakes, you've heard of
AI generated text and images. This is video and it

(30:34):
looks incredibly realistic. Now, the one thing that they're not
saying is how long it takes to generate these videos.
They're up to a minute long. And I saw one
person describe it as it takes maybe the time it
would take to get a burrito, not you know.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
I forgot what the other thing was. But anyway, it's
it's long, but it's not that long. And of course
this will only get better. But the fact that you
can now type in something like this person says a
young man in his twenties sitting on a piece of
cloud in the sky reading a book, And yeah, that's
what it looks like.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
This was an.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Animated scene featuring a close up of a short, fluffy
monster kneeling beside a melting red candle. The art style
is three D and realistic, with a focus on lighting
and texture. Now, one of the videos I saw was
a it was a person in bed. It's not always right.
They do show some examples of where it gets things

(31:33):
really wrong. And you know you've seen those AI photos
where like the hand is off or the teeth are off.
They show some videos where things are off and it's creepy.
It's like we are I'm not kidding. We are heading
into a really weird time. Open Ai, Sora sr. Let's
go to Mark in San Diego. Mark, you're on with Rich?

Speaker 6 (31:53):
Yeah, hey Rich, uh, great show.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Thanks.

Speaker 6 (31:57):
I am having trouble getting to my email after I
after I did an update on my Windows seven. It's
an old Windows seven operating system on a on a PC,
a desktop, okay, And so I go to open it
and all I get is just a you know, the
outlook little letter. It just keeps cycling, looks like it's

(32:18):
going to open, open, open, open, It just never does.
Now I can get to my emails on my phone,
but I can't get to it on my my desktop.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Okay, So I think what you need to do is
reset your Outlook. It sounds like something got a little
a little messed up in there, So can you I'm
trying to think of the way the best way to
do this. Can you get into a like your settings
on that computer? Like do you get any sort of
menu at all on Outlook or does it just kind

(32:47):
of just spinny kind of thing the whole time?

Speaker 6 (32:50):
Well it comes up, I can probably get to the
three dots in the upper right course.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Okay, okay, so if you can get to the three
dots in the upper right hand corner, I would look
for an option to reset outlook. It might be under
something like Advanced Options. But that's kind of like what
you need to do. It sounds like this thing got
stalled or something got corrupted during the What did you
upgrade to?

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Is it like it was just.

Speaker 6 (33:10):
The latest before the end of the support from Windows seven?
It was it was like at the very end of December, okay,
before the first of January twenty twenty four, they had
one apparently one last update that I did, and it
was it was legit. I always check to make sure
that it's directly from Microsoft, and it just it updated.

(33:31):
And then it seems like right after that I had
the problem and again I can get to it on
my phone.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah. Yeah, So your email is fine.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
It just sounds like you've got It's just it sounds
like something got a little bit a little bit messed
up in transit there. So in your email, what type
of email do you use? Like, is it a Gmail
or it's.

Speaker 6 (33:49):
A hot mail it's an old hotmail account.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Okay, So it's probably hopefully if you can see them
on your phone, then your emails are safe. I don't think,
because there could be you know, if you reset this
app and something, you know, the emails get deleted or
everything gets deleted.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
There could be a world where those emails are gone.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
But it sounds like this is if you're if you're
accessing these on the web, then it's probably not downloading
the emails to your computer. They're just it's just looking
at it through IMAP.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
So I yeah, quick question, just quick question.

Speaker 6 (34:19):
Now if I have too many emails on that, because
I've got quite a few, I don't know, like a lot,
But would would that be a problem.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
I don't think. I mean, well, it depends or your emails.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Sending and receiving they are on my phone, okay, then
then there's no problem with like your storage. I would
check your storage limit on UH on hotmail in general?
Do you go to outlook dot com.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
To check that?

Speaker 6 (34:41):
I did not, because I just don't know how to
do it, but I can probably figure it out.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Well, how do you check your email? Do you check
it by going to hotmail dot com or Outlook dot com?

Speaker 6 (34:49):
Outlook on my on my cell phone.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Okay, Yeah, So I would go on oh, the Outlook app. Yeah, okay,
so I would. I would go from a What I
would is go on your desktop computer, go to go
to outlook dot com sign in check to make sure
your storage is okay. I don't think that's what's happening
here because your phone is working. But I would go
and reset the Outlook app on Windows. So go into

(35:15):
the menu, look for something that says to reset. Might
be under like Advanced Options or something like that, but
it sounds like there's something that's a little corrupt there.
But that's what I would do, And once you get
that done, you should be able to I'd say, to
uninstall the whole app and reinstall it.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
That might be your best case scenario.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
But I'm not sure that you can do that on
a Windows PC because Outlook is part of the system.
But if you can do that, if all us fails,
you can try to uninstall it and reinstall it there.
So thanks for the call, mark and hopefully you get
that figured out. Coming up coming up on the show
in the next hour, we're gonna have Bob O'Donnell, president
and founder at Technolysis Research. He's going to tell you

(35:55):
what you need to know about AIPCS. Plus I'm gonna
tell you about a new feature in Google Photos that
I am just loving. Plus more of your questions at
triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
triple eight rich one oh one.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
That's eight eight.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
Eight seven four to two four one zero one website
for the show rich on Tech dot TV. If you
need a link to something I mentioned, you'll see a
big red banner at the top of the website. Tap
there and you will get the links in real time to.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
What I talk about.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
And you can find me on Instagram. I am at
rich on Tech. Typically I tell you what I posted
this week. Let's see what I posted to Instagram. Oh, actually,
some fun stuff. If you live in the LA area
or maybe any state that had these, do you remember something
called Thomas Guides. These were like maps that you would
this was before Google Maps, and you would flip through

(37:01):
these pages to find things on these maps. And so
I posted I was going through my phone and I
forgot that I recorded this video and it was basically
someone was showing me these Google maps, sorry, these Thomas
Guide maps that I remember, but I forgot about and
so I guess a lot of people forgot about them
or remembered them. So that's kind of, you know, going
a little bit viral, which is surprising because it's just

(37:23):
so silly. Then I was down in Baldwin Park, California,
site of the first In and Out Burger. If you
don't live in California, you know In and Out Burger
is a huge part of California and probably maybe like
the West Coast, but especially LA. It's a quality food
at a great price, and the people are always friendly,
and it's clean and it's nice. And so I was

(37:45):
in Baldwin Park for a story and they have like
a little museum of the original In and Out Burger
and it was so cool. So I stopped and I
recorded some video and I posted that to my Instagram.
And then oh, I did a story on this VO
flight training. So they're now using virtual reality to train
helicopter pilots and so instead of this giant expensive flight simulator,

(38:08):
they use VR, which is more realistic, it's cheaper. And
I got into this thing and I was actually I
will be honest. I was actually a little bit apprehensive.
I said to the guy before we started it, I said,
look if this gets too realistic, because they started me
out on a helicopter on top of a building in
downtown LA, and I was gonna fly off the building.
And I was like, if this gets too realistic, can
I just like rip this headset off. He's like, yeah,

(38:28):
you'll be fine. It really was realistic. And then last night,
I guess there's a lot of burgers this week, we
went to something called Burger King whopper World. This was
like a pop up. I don't know these companies do
this stuff, but it's just you know, it's like a promotion.
I guess Burger King's doing some sort of promotion where
you build your own whopper and then someone's gonna win

(38:48):
like a million dollars. And so last night they had
like a little party. We went to it with the kids.
It was a lot of fun. We ate a whopper
and it was great. You could put some random toppings
on it. But they had one thing that was cool.
They had this like tablet where you can type in
the toppings for your whopper, which could be anything you wanted,
and they were using AI to generate an image of
the Whopper with those toppings. So if you put like

(39:10):
gummy bears or sprinkles or chocolate chip cookies, it would
make an image of the Whopper with that. And then
they printed it out on a T shirt. And so
I almost wore my my Burger King T shirt today,
but I'm gonna This is in Santa Monica at the Pier,
so it's happening this weekend in Los Angeles. Anyway, Google

(39:30):
Maps or sorry, Google Photos, is getting a new feature.
It showed up on my phone last night, which means
it may show up on your phone any day now.
Google Photos, of course, is my favorite photo app, and
they now have a feature called stacks. This is something
I have been waiting for forever because I take a
bunch of pictures. So if someone says, hey, take you know,

(39:51):
a picture or whatever, I'm taking pictures of the kids.
I just snapped that picture like a thousand times, because
you know, the storage is cheap and you want to
make sure you get the shot. But the problem is
when you go through your your photos, there's like so
many in a row, and it becomes very stressful because
you don't want to pick out the best one, because
you've got to zoom into everyone's face, make sure it
looks all. You know, which one they're smiling, which one

(40:12):
their eyes are open. And so now photo stacks will
group similar photos taken together and it will put the
best one at the top and it will pick It'll
say the best pick or something like that. And so
you can, of course see all the other photos. But
if you're scrolling through your pictures, instead of seeing seventy
photos or fifteen photos, you'll see one photo. It'll have

(40:32):
a little icon that looks like a photo stack, and
it'll pick the best one, put that on the top,
and then you can tap in and see all.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
The other photos if you want to choose a different one.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Anyway, it's rolling out now iOS and Android, Google Photos
photo stacks, So now when you see it on your phone,
you will be.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Prepped for it.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Let's let's go to Victor in Santa Barbara, one of
the most beautiful places in California.

Speaker 7 (40:56):
Victory, you're on with right, Rich, Thanks for taking my call?
Yeah quickly, so look we're our email comes through earthlink
dot net.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Yeah, I just met the guy who started Earthlink sky Dayton.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
He was in.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
I literally I said to him, I said, dude, the
guy looked like he was young. I said, how old
are you a kid when you started this? He's like yeah,
he's like twenty something. So I mean, anyway, the guy,
he's he's a pilot. He did the VR. He's one
of the investors in that VR stuff. Anyway, I remember
Earthlink when he started it. But go ahead, I'm glad.

Speaker 7 (41:25):
So anyways, Windows ten Mail, we configured it so we're
getting Earthlink emails through Windows ten Mail. Everything's working out great,
and we're happy. Microsoft is starting to most what's the
right word they're rattling sabers. Yeah, got to shut down
Windows ten mail. A couple of questions that we have

(41:48):
never downloaded Outlook. We've never really needed it. So now
we're going to have to Outlook to get Windows in
email Earthlink dot Net on Outlook. Is that going to work?

Speaker 5 (42:03):
You know?

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Yeah, it will work.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
So what you're talking about is, you know, so Microsoft
used to have what's called the mail app inside Windows
and now they're transitioning everyone over to Outlook. And that's
you know, it's more of a branded program. It's it's
kind of streamlined things, makes it easier because all they
have to do is make one program instead of two,
so you don't have to switch just yet. It's going

(42:26):
to happen sometime in twenty twenty four towards the end,
so there will probably be an option for people to
upgrade early to Outlook if you want to, you know,
do it early. You can download it and install it
and get it all going. But they're not going to
force people to do it until towards the end of
the year, so you still have time. But yes, Outlook,
I know. It's the thing that's confusing about Outlook is

(42:48):
that it's a program, but it's also kind of an
email in itself. People have Outlook for work, they have
Microsoft Email, and they think that it's only for Microsoft email,
But the Outlook program will check email from a variety
of email providers, whether that's Google, Gmail, whether that's Yahoo,
whether it is Earthlink, whether it is your work email,

(43:10):
whatever it is. Outlook is just an email program that
can handle different email addresses, and so no matter what
email address you have, you will be able to use
it on Outlook within reason. Obviously, there may be some
that are not supported, but if you're on Outlook, you
could just go into your file and it will say
account information and it will say add account, and so

(43:33):
you will just add your account by email address. If
it recognizes that Earthlink settings, it will automatically do it
all for you. You just put in your username and your
password and it will figure everything else out. If it
can't figure those out, then just google Earthlink email settings,
server settings and it will give you the options of

(43:54):
how to type that in and format it. I would
use imap over pop three and in general it should
automatically figure this stuff out. And this goes by the
way for a lot of email apps, whether using Gmail,
you can check other email services on these apps. They
are an all in one app. It's really confusing because

(44:16):
people know Outlook as email and a program, but it
does check other email addresses as well, so no problems there.
Victor and Santa Barbara, thanks for the call today. Do
appreciate it. Phone number is eighty to eight rich one
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one.

Speaker 4 (44:36):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Speaking of the iPhone, there is a new malware going
around for the iPhone called gold PICKACS, and apparently this
steals your photos, your text messages. It even tries to
get your banking info. The good news is this is
not completely widespread right now. This is mostly happening to
folks in Vietnam and Thailand, but of course because this

(44:58):
is now out in the wild, that could change. We
could see it here in the States. The main thing
is that this is not going to happen to you
if you are using your phone as the average person.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
So the way that they install.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
This is through an MDM profile, and you may get
this for work. It's a MDM stands for Mobile Device Management.
This is kind of like a if your work wants
to monitor your phone or have certain restrictions on it,
they would download this profile to your phone. But that's
for very specific use cases, you know, so if your

(45:34):
company requires that, talk to your IT folks. But if
you're doing this on your own or you're downloading an
app outside the app store, your phone is jailbroken. That's
when you are at risk. So if you're just using
your iPhone the way that you typically use it, which
is turning it on, taking pictures, downloading apps from the
app store, you're going to be okay. But we still

(45:55):
need to understand that this is possible on the iPhone
at this point, it's possible on the Android. Does it
happened very often?

Speaker 3 (46:01):
No.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
This is why Apple has fought really hard to keep
the app store and this closed ecosystem because they want
to keep this safe. And yes, we've heard of tools
that can crack into the iPhone, we've heard of exploits
that can take advantage of text messages, but most of
the time, average people are pretty safe when using an iPhone,

(46:23):
even on Android, very very safe, and in fact, Android
added a feature called Android Safe Browsing that you can
actually turn this on. They added something called Live Threat
Detection and it's an upgrade. I didn't even know this
was available, so I looked at my phone into the
settings and sure enough, it's there. So this is what

(46:43):
Google is doing to try to keep you safe from
some of those links you get and text messages, the
phishing links, and all of these different ways people are
trying to attack us at this point, malware and phishing links.
So if you want to check this out, go into
your settings on your iPhone, Settings and Privacy, more Security,
and then look under androids Safe Browsing and there's something

(47:05):
called Live Threat Protection. You can turn that on for
an extra layer of security on your Android. Of course,
I'll link it up on the website. Richon Tech dot
tv eight to eight rich one O one. 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 oh one. That's eight eight eight

(47:28):
seven four to two four one zero one. You can
find me on social media at rich on Tech. Thanks
for following me there be ready for anything. Rich on
Tech dot tv is the website for the show. We'll
get to your calls in just a second.

Speaker 8 (47:45):
Here.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
Coming up on the show, we've got Bob O'Donnell, president
and founder at TECHnalysis Research. He's going to talk about
aipcs and explain what they are all about. New Windows
computers even have an AI key on them. But first
Samsung has said yes, we are going to fix some
of the issues on the S twenty four series. Now

(48:08):
my review, I said that the S twenty four Samsung
Galaxy S twenty four Ultra is nearly perfect. This thing
is incredible, but I did notice some issues with the camera,
especially in low light and moving shots, and you know
a little bit of lag here and there. And this
is odd for Samsung to come out and say, yes,
we're doing a software update, but I think there was

(48:29):
enough feedback that they feel it is necessary to do that.
So two things they talked about this week that they're
going to address. Number one is a vividness setting. Some
people were saying that the screen on the S twenty
four Ultra is not as vivid as the S twenty
three or previous models. I disagree with that. I think
the screen is absolutely incredible. I don't know why people
are saying that. Maybe they I don't know, but they

(48:52):
are going to have a new adjustment for vividness. And
then the camera, they said they're going to upgrade the zoom,
the portrait mode, low light photography, and video. That's pretty
much the whole camera. So I said that this thing
needed a camera update. I think that this is an
incredible device and it's one that I was using for weeks.

(49:12):
I did end up switching back to wait for this
software update, but it is. It is still one of
my favorite devices of twenty twenty four. So anyway, if
you bought an S twenty four Ultra and you're thinking, huh,
I thought my camera was better going to be better
than this? It will get better software update is a
schedule to start rolling out on February twenty second, but
with Samsung those things take a.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
Bit, so you may not get it on that day.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
So I would just look for it, you know, end
of February March something like that.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
Let's go to Mark in Woodland Hills. Mark your own
with Rich.

Speaker 5 (49:45):
Hi.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
Rich.

Speaker 5 (49:46):
I'm you know, I like to I'm retired, guys. I
get to read a lot I love compared to religion, history,
political science stuff by a bit of an autodi deck.
So often I'll pick a lot of different things. I'll
pull the icon down to my desktop so that I
can view it later, you know.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
You know I had to look up autodidact by the way.

Speaker 5 (50:07):
Wow, I'm just I'm just into research and just information
for its own sake.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
I'm going to define it for in case, you know,
some people don't know. But it's a self taught person.
Did you know that, Bobo? Yeah, see Bobo shaking and
said I didn't know that. Okay, keep going.

Speaker 5 (50:22):
That's what you get for going to college. You never
want to stop. But what I do is I've been
pulling these icons off of a website, you know, pulling
it down near the the address bar, that little symbol,
and then I'll click it later and I'll go through
whatever information they have for me and and then move on. Unfortunately,
for months now, almost a year, I've tried to delete

(50:45):
two of these icons and they just won't leave. And
I don't want, you know, I have so many nuanced
information and whatnot on my computer. The last thing I
want to do is a factory reset. Right, yeah, so
these to Twitter. I'm not even a I'm not a twitiot,
but I but I do occasionally find myself going to
something there that's preferred. So these two Twitter icons will

(51:07):
not delete. I've tried everything. It just won't come off,
you know, sort of doing a reset, which I really
would loath they have to do. I was hoping you
could give me a suggestion on that.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
Okay, So just to understand, so you've dragged these these
URL links to your taskbar. Is this on Windows?

Speaker 5 (51:25):
No, it's to the desktop itself. I keep almost everything
on the desktop, okay, yeah, I'm doing folders and files
and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
And so you drag these to the desktop and you
can't just right click and say delete.

Speaker 5 (51:37):
No, sir, they will not leave.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Oh wow, Okay, Yeah, it's just the.

Speaker 5 (51:41):
Most bizarre thing I've ever seen. You know, I've got
to go through thousands of these every year.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
I mean literally, what if you drag them to the
to the trash.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
That doesn't work?

Speaker 5 (51:48):
They know, sir, it won't. It won't either, you know,
the rubbish span I call it. It basically will not.
You can drag it, but it won't do a bloody thing,
or just sit there and it reac no way whatsoever.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Well, I am sure there is some way to get
rid of these. Those are the two methods that I know.
The only other thing I can think of are these
with your web browser? Like these are from your web
browser that you're.

Speaker 5 (52:12):
Using, Yes, Firefox, almost exasively. I have a whole bunch
of browsers actually down below the Brave you know, Tusk
and stuff like that. But I just an opera for instance.
But most of the time I'm using Firefox.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
Okay, so there's probably I'm looking at a I'm looking
at a website that says there is some sort of
folder that we'll have this in there, Like are using
Windows eleven.

Speaker 5 (52:41):
I believe I am.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
You know, well, so this is saying and this is
just a quick you know shortcut, kind of shortcut keeps reappearing,
and it says that they're in a folder on your desktop.
It says, see user's public desktop or this pc C
user's public public desktop. I'm just gonna take me too
long to try to navigate there on my computer. But

(53:05):
I would try to look there. And if it said, Okay,
I'm looking at my users, and I'm looking at my
public and.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
Let's see desktop.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
I don't see my desktop, so I don't see it
in there, users desktop, public desktop. I don't see a
public desktop online. Interesting, But I would look in there. Oh,
here we go, desktop? Is it in here? So I
would look on there and see if you can find
it in there and delete them from that folder.

Speaker 5 (53:31):
Okay, I guess you'll be placing that online.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
Yeah, I'll put that link online so you can see.
But the other thing I would do is have you
tried clearing like your history on Firefox, like clearing everything? Yeah,
and that doesn't work either. I think this may work.
It looks like it looks like this. This may work
for you, So I would look for this. I'll put
this link on the website. Rich on tech dot tv
in the show notes. But I want to hear if

(53:54):
this works, because this is a this is a tricky one.

Speaker 5 (53:58):
I'll just I'll blame put Okay.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
We could just we can just blame people for everything.
But I think that's uh, that's that's a new one. Wow,
how did Okay? This reminds me of the story I
told at the beginning of the show. It's like, you
gotta you gotta figure out you gotta just keep trying
to figure out how to get this thing gone from
the computer. All right, thanks for the call, appreciate the call. Today,
let's see how long do we have? Thirty oh, thirty seconds? Okay, well,

(54:22):
I can't do that. I will tease our next guest then,
Bob O'Donnell, president, founder and chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research.
He's gonna explain what aipcs are all about. And Bob
used to host a version of this show, or a
very similar one, so I'm curious to talk to him
about that. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome

(54:43):
back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out
with you talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Joining me now is Bob O'Donnell a person
that I often see out and about at the various
tech events that I attend, whether it's Apple or Samsung

(55:04):
or something in between. He's the president, founder, and chief
analyst at TECHnalysis Research.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Bob, thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 9 (55:12):
Hey Rich, Thanks happy to be there.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
So let's start with a little bit of your history.
So you actually hosted a show It may even be
like a version of this show back in the day.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Explain did I did.

Speaker 9 (55:25):
I'm an og tech talk show host. So yeah, from
ninety seven to two thousand and seven, I ran a
show called O'Donnell on Computers, and then it became O'Donnell
on Technology because of course the world expanded, and I
actually took over from Leo Laporte, who was one of
the original OGOG radio hosts. Leo does, of course, This

(55:46):
Week in Tech and Gina Smith also had a radio
show and I would fill in for them occasionally that
I took over for Leo's show. He was on for
about a year and a half and I ran it
for over ten in an ABC affiliate up in San Francisco.
It was a lot of fun, so it's so much
fun to come back on the radio.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Yeah, and so what were people asking from ninety seven
to two thousand and seven, because I, you know, I
just got a question about you know, URL's shortcuts not
being able to delete on the desktop on Windows? Will
Earthlink work with my email? What kind of questions? Were
people just asking the same stuff they were?

Speaker 9 (56:21):
I'm telling you, it's it's crazy that, you know, a
lot of the issues are very similar still. I mean,
thank god the technology has gotten a little bit easier
to use, but it's also gotten more complex. It can
do more, so there's more things to kind of tear apart.
But you know, a lot of it would be those
kinds of things. And you know how many times have
you told people, well you might want to reboot?

Speaker 1 (56:42):
Yeah, I told you that. I had to say, you know,
like restart out look. You know, like it's just little
things that And it's funny because a lot of times
it is very simple. And I get a lot of
emails from people that you know, are asking for help,
and sometimes if it's something that's very simple, I might
wait a date respond and then I'll respond and say
is this still happening? And nine times out of ten

(57:04):
it's not right?

Speaker 9 (57:05):
Yeah, No, exactly, but you know what, people need to
be kind of walked through it. And one of the
challenges I think that we have with tech these days
is there's not enough contextual explanations. Even if people are
the type that read owner's mantles and one have you,
you just don't get enough of sort of the context

(57:26):
around it and the principles involved. And one of the
one of the things I always used to like to
try and do, and I'm sure you do as well,
is you kind of explain the principles involved, like teaching
them how to fish, not just to get one fish,
but what are the principal boles involved with doing something,
And that's how you work through some of these problems.
And as people start to learn those principles, they can

(57:47):
start doing some more of that troubleshooting on their own.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Yeah, that that is typically what I'll try to do,
is say, here's here's the steps that I would take
to because I'm not there with their computer or their
phone exactly, here's the steps I would take to try
to figure out what's going on. Like first off, you know, restart, delete, whatever. Okay,
So it's good to know that even in what was
that twenty years ago, thirty years ago. It's all it's

(58:10):
all the same stuff. It's just newer technology and different technology. Indeed,
so you're you're talking about aipcs today is what's an AIPC?

Speaker 2 (58:20):
What does that mean?

Speaker 9 (58:21):
Well, it's a great question, Britch. And you know, here's
the thing. You're going to hear a lot about aipcs
over the next year to two years, in particular from
all the big PC vendors, from the big chip companies
like Intel and am D and Nvidio and Pulcom and
what have you. I mean, look, at the end of
the day, you know, AIPC very simply is a PC

(58:44):
that has some special sauce in it that allows it
to run certain AI applications a little faster. And so
most people are focused on this notion of adding a
new type of a chip called an NPU or neural
processing unit, and an NPU is a different type of
accelerator than a GPU, being you know, GPU's graphics processing unit.

(59:10):
So NPU kind of marks the beginning of the AIPC era,
and AMD actually was first to market. They had a
chip last year, the seventy forty, the rise in seventy
forty that had it now they have an updated version
of the eighty forty. Intel just came out with their
media link that's the Ultra Core Ultra CPU. And then

(59:34):
Qualcomm has already announced that they will have a chip
it'll be coming out toward the middle of the year
that will have an NPU as well. And of course,
by the way, smartphones all have NPUs, they're just smaller
and not quite as powerful as the ones we're going
to start to see in PCs. So then what we're
going to see basically is just as we saw. GPUs

(59:57):
Initially were a element that you you know, had to
be done separately. Eventually, then GPUs were built into every
single uh CPU and main chip inside a PC, and
if you wanted to, you could add a dedicated one,
like if you're a gamer, of course, you buy a
fancy GPU. So what's going to happen early on with

(01:00:18):
NPUs is initially only a few systems will have them,
and then over time every system will have it, and
eventually I think we'll see dedicated npush to to accelerate things.
And so basically, long win answer to a short question, sorry,
but it's it's that addition of the NPU that sort
of turns it into an AIPC. Then it becomes a

(01:00:39):
question of degree, and we can get into that in
a second.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
Well I'm curious, So you know, if people are already saying, well,
I'm already using Chat, GPT or Microsoft Copilot or you know,
Claude or any of these other AI tools out there,
I don't. I don't think I have an MPU on
my computer or you know this AI chip? Do I
need this?

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Like? Why do I need this?

Speaker 10 (01:01:00):
Oh?

Speaker 9 (01:01:00):
It's a great question, and initially it is very confusing
because most of the AI stuff that we are doing
now Chat, GPT, if you started to use the Office
Copilot with Microsoft and all these other capabilities, Dolly and
all of these AI based things, they're all being done
in the cloud. The idea with an AIPC is that

(01:01:23):
some of that processing can happen locally on the device.
The benefits down the road, in particular being things like privacy,
things like security because you're doing it all within your
own device, and also speed because you don't have to
do round trips back and forth to the cloud every
single time that you're doing it. So that's what we're

(01:01:45):
going to start to see happen in the meantime, what
we're also going to see is what I call hybrid AI,
and that means some of it happens on the PC
and some of it happens in the cloud, and again
that will speed up the performance. In theory, it will
allow you to do run certain things on just your data.
So imagine an example like this. So let's say you're

(01:02:08):
somebody who you know like me, I've written probably a
thousand articles over the years. I have this cash of
content that I've created, and I would love sort of
the chat GPT type tool that actually only derived its
new content based on what I did. Now you could
do that with your own photos, et cetera. That's the

(01:02:29):
perfect application for something like an AIPC because you're going
to want to have it run locally and you know,
and use your own data. Now, to be fair, that
doesn't exist quite yet, but we're getting very close and
we're going to start to see some of those sorts
of applications go out there. So you know, do I

(01:02:51):
need to have an AIPC now to your back to
your original question, No, but am I going to start
to see some of these benefits? Yes, eventually you will,
and over time there's gonna be more and more of
these things.

Speaker 4 (01:03:02):
You know.

Speaker 9 (01:03:03):
It's it's a truism in the PC business that hardware
comes before the software, right, So you're gonna get the hardware,
and then the software eventually is gonna come along.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
So, you know, I actually saw your you're mentioning that
with like your you know, you build your own chat
GBT kind of thing, like your own chat I guess
we should call it a chat bot or chat ai.
But in Nvidia did like a demo you can download
you know, this app to your computer. And I actually
did this with my radio show with chat GBT. So
I was taking my transcripts, putting them into a custom

(01:03:34):
chat g ebte and then I could type in and
say what did Rich say about this?

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
And it would actually answer like what I said on
the show.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
And this is cool, and this is going to be
very handy for let's say, right now, let's say you
have Google Drive, right, You've got or all these documents
on your computer. You know, you've searched for a keyword
in those documents, but maybe in the future you might
search for like, hey, what's the deal summarize my trip
to you know, Amsterdam next week? And it'll give you
all the information across like all those different things there.

(01:04:02):
So the bottom line, I've got two minutes here, Bob.
You know we see this aikey on the keyboard on
the Windows computer.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Is there gonna be a lot of marketing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
We're going to see surrounding these aipcs and do we
need one right away?

Speaker 9 (01:04:16):
There's gonna be a ton of marketing, and it's very
confusing because you know, like the Nvidia example we talked
about actually uses a GPU and not an NPU, so
that is also going to get thrown into it because
some of these AI applications, like some of the things
Adobe's working on, are also going to use a more
powerful GPU. So short answer is you don't need one now,

(01:04:38):
but if you are a future looking person and you
want to be prepared, it's good to get one. The
thing to be aware of, don't forget that, as with
any other technology, the first version is going to be
decent and then later versions, of course, are going to
be much better. So you also have to decide do
I want to dive in first or do I want
to kind of wait a little bit and see what happens.

(01:04:59):
And that's completely up to the individual in terms of
they want to be on the cutting edge or they
want to kind of wait a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
And just finally, AI in general, how impressed are you
with all this stuff we're seeing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
It's it's coming fast and curious.

Speaker 9 (01:05:12):
It's amazing. You know, I've I've been in the tech industry.
You know, obviously I age myself with how old my
radio show is, but you know, I've been tracking this
stuff for a long time and I have never seen
anything like the pace of development in AI. It's absolutely incredible,
and you know, some of the stuff that's starting to
do is great. I mean, it doesn't do everything everybody thinks,
and there is some you know, level of disappointment some

(01:05:33):
people have after a little bit, but the stuff that's
being worked on and some of the things are starting
to happen. The new video tool that open AI just
introduced is amazing. I mean just you know, it's explosive
and it's really going to change everything. And that's why
aipcs become a really interesting topic.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
All right, Bob, what's the best way folks can follow you?

Speaker 9 (01:05:56):
They can I'm on Twitter at babo d tech bo
bod E T E C h on LinkedIn It just
Babo Donald and the tech analysis Research dot Com. It's
kind of hard too.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
And that's all right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
We'll find you on Twitter. Thanks so much for joining
me today. Really appreciate it, bab o'donald uh eighty eight
rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
More show after this.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
Welcome back to Rich on tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one
on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Let's go to Johnny in Hacienda Heights, California. Johnny,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 11 (01:06:41):
Hey, Rich, I was a wondering if you would be
able to answer this. It's I len't know about my
one password because you did the article on on on
the on the joannistin thing where and wondering as you

(01:07:03):
switched back to the regular one password, I mean the
regular Apple password.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
Oh from one password? Yes, okay, so you want to
switch back? Okay, So you're paying for one password or
we're using the free version? Is there a free version of.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
Yeah? Exactly. So here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
Here's my recommendation on in general, I like third party
software because you are not tied to any one system
in particular. So if you want to switch right now,
you're saying you want to go to the Apple password manager.
I believe they call it Apple Keychain, So you know,

(01:07:48):
that's great if you're using Apple devices, But what if
you want to switch to a different device. You know,
you want to go to a different browser, or a
different computer, or a different phone, Android, whatever. Now, Apple
did come out with an extension for Windows which lets
you use iCloud keychain, so that is a nice step

(01:08:08):
in the right direction, but I still don't believe you
could use it on Android, which would be a problem
if you ever switched Android. But that's why I always
like third party independent apps. So on the flip side,
you're saying that one password. You know you like the
idea that the Apple keychain is included, right, it's free,
it's part of just Apple and all that stuff, and
one password. You're gonna have to pay for this to

(01:08:30):
use it, and most of the password managers work that way,
where if you want to use it across different devices,
you have to pay.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Some are more expensive than others.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
So my recommendation is if you are only going to
use Apple devices, and you're sticking to the iPhone and
the iPad and a Mac computer, go ahead and safari whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
It's going to be just fine.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
If you are using a combination of devices, then I
would think about using a third part password manager. Now
there are some password managers I like that are free
and do work across various devices. And the first one
is called bitwarden. So if you want a free alternative,
check out bitwarden, b T war d e N and

(01:09:16):
bitwarden is. They have a free level of service. It's
open source, so it's trusted and it's a great little
program if you want to just use a free password manager.
The other one is actually Google Password Manager. So what
Google did is they started with their password manager working
in Chrome, but now they've expanded it where you can

(01:09:38):
actually use it as an auto fill service on the iPhone.
And that's that's also free and it's pretty easy to use.
That's called Google Password Manager. So those are some options.
Again in general, if you're only using Apple products and
you never planned to switch, I like, you know, I
don't typically recommend using that, but it's easy, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
Build and go ahead.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
But if you want to step it up a notch,
and go third party and you don't want to pay,
then I like Bitwarden or Google Password Manager, but I
do think some of these third party password managers, like
one password and also dash Lane, they are really good,
but they are expensive and especially over time, they do
get quite expensive. So great question, Johnny, and ultimately it

(01:10:23):
is up to you what you want to do. Thank
you for the call. Triple eight rich one on one
eight eight eight seven four to two for one zero one.
Let me a couple things of notes here. Verizon making
a big change to its auto pay discount. So all
of the cellular carriers have been forcing their customers to

(01:10:46):
use auto pay if they want to get the best
rate every month, which I don't like, but we have
to do it because it's it's like ten dollars savings
a month, that's one hundred and twenty dollars a year.
So typically they required you to be on on a
debit card or a bank account because those are cheaper
to process than a credit card. Well, now Verizon is

(01:11:07):
taking it up a notch. They're going to require a
bank account or their own Verizon Visa card, which I
wouldn't recommend getting, but you know that's an option, but
if you want to have the biggest discount, which is
ten dollars a month on autopay, you will now require
a bank account or the Verizon Visa card. You used
to be able to use the debit card and get
that discount as well. If you're on Verizon autopay with

(01:11:31):
the debit card, they will continue to honor that discount.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
So no changes.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
If you're like, wait, Rich, I have my debit card
with Verizon because I switched a couple of years ago
for my credit card to get this discount, yes, you
can still leave that as of right now. We don't
know if that'll change in the future. This change for
new customers already took effect, so if you are a
new customer on Verizon you don't have autopay set up
and you go to set it up, you will need
to use your bank account to get that big discount.

(01:11:57):
T Mobile and AT and T have made similar changes,
and it's just, you know, it's just one of those
things that I don't agree with.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
I don't like when companies.

Speaker 1 (01:12:06):
Have access to auto pay, especially on a service that
is not a fixed cost Sure, Netflix, Hbo, Max, Disney Plus.
I don't mind auto pay on those services. I do
mind when it's on things like bills that change, because
what do they do. They like to surprise you and
they've already taken your money and now it's up to

(01:12:28):
you to figure out how to get around that surprise.
Oh my bill is like one hundred bucks extra this month,
Well they're taking out that payment no matter what. And
Google has a new feature, talk to a Live rep.
This brings basically a great feature they've had on Pixel
for a while called hold to Me to all search users.
So now when you search for an eight hundred number
from a company, you may see an icon that says

(01:12:51):
you can talk to a live representative, and it will
give you an option to put in your phone number
and they will call you when a representative is ready.
So this works with major airlines, Delta, American Airlines, Verizon,
t Mobile, Walmart, Best Buy, Ups, grub Hub, State Harm,
State Farm, and Geico. If you call one of those

(01:13:13):
you search for that number on you Google, you might
see an option to say, hey, have Google hold on.
Be it hold for you and call you when the
rep is ready. It's kind of a cool feature, reminds
me of get human dot com. You are listening to
rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich

(01:13:36):
Demiro here kicking off another hour of the show for
you at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. You know,
I was thinking today. I usually take a run before
the show and I do a lot of thinking during
that time, and I was thinking about you as the listener.

(01:13:56):
So the fact that you are listening to this show,
I feel like you are doing something really good for yourself.
You know, we do so many things for other people,
right We're always demanding, you know, people are always demanding
our time, They're demanding our energy, our efforts, and we
have to make our own efforts to do things for us.
And so by tuning into this show and listening to

(01:14:18):
me and hearing about this stuff that's going on in
the tech world, I think you're doing something pretty smart.

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
So I do appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
I always think of you when I'm coming up with
the stories I talk about, or the stories I tell,
or the news tidbits or the things I post to
social media. It is all really to help you take
control of all this tech that's in our lives, because
there's so much of it. And yeah, we can get
in the weeds here, we can get really techy and nerdy.

(01:14:46):
But I think that this show is best for someone
who just wants to keep up with this stuff and
feel smart and understand it. And so thank you for
tuning in. That's basically all I'm trying to say. Rich
on tech dot tv is the website. You can follow
me on social media at rich on tech and the
phone line for the show is triple eight rich one

(01:15:07):
oh one. That's eighty eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. By the way, if you ever
want to come up with a solution to a problem,
there's two things you could do. You can either wells
three things you could or come up with an idea.
You could take a shower, you could go to sleep,
or you can take a run. Those are like the
three things that like every single time I do those,
it's like, oh wait, I need to write this down

(01:15:28):
because things just come to you.

Speaker 2 (01:15:30):
Let's go to.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
Michelle is in mission Viajo. Michelle, you're on with rich
I just.

Speaker 8 (01:15:37):
Have a question. I'm one of those non techy persons. Yes,
I just bought a car that does not have a
ZV player. I'm an avid book on tape kind of girl,
And I want to know if there's a product out
there that has at least some quality to it that
can attach to bluetooth so I can listen to it
at home and in my car.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
Any suggestions, MM, So you have you have CDs with
books on tape?

Speaker 8 (01:16:04):
Yes, and my new car doesn't have a CD player,
nor do I have a CD player at home?

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Okay, oh, okay, So I would love.

Speaker 8 (01:16:10):
To have it attached somehow like a portable. I've seen
them on Amazon, but I don't know if they're any
good quality, if they skip in the car, or if
there's anything else out there that I hadn't thought of.

Speaker 1 (01:16:22):
Well, I mean, the number one thing I would think
that would be easiest is to rip the CD to
a file that you can put on your phone, and
then you can use the bluetooth from your phone to
do that. So that would be one way to do it.

Speaker 9 (01:16:36):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
The audiobook should probably be pretty simple to do that.
The only problem with that is that this is, you know,
audiobooks usually have a lot of chapters, so it could
be a little bit tricky to do that, and then
you have to transfer it to your do you have
an iPhone or an Android iPhone. Okay, so there's a
there's a really easy app that I like for transferring

(01:17:01):
things to iPhone, which is called Walter w A L
t R. But you said you're non techie, so I
just don't know if that route is gonna be the
easiest for you, because you're gonna you know, you've got
to first off, rip the the album. It used to
be really easy with iTunes. I don't know if it's
that easy anymore. It used to be, you know, you
pop your the DV the CD in your computer and

(01:17:23):
you know rip. The problem is most of us don't
even have a CD player anymore, like you said, And
does your computer have a CD drive? Yes, oh it does, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
And are you on Windows or Mac?

Speaker 4 (01:17:35):
Mac?

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):
Oh you are on Mac? Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:17:38):
Well in that case, I mean, if you do have that,
that might actually be a pretty easy thing to do.
So what you do is you would rip the the
audio book to your computer. And rip means it basically
transfers the file from the audio CD to your computer
as an MP three. And you know, there's a couple
of programs that can do that. I'm trying to think

(01:18:00):
of one that I haven't used this in so long
that I gotta I gotta think of one to do.
But once you get that done, you can then use
this Walter program to drag and drop onto your iPhone.
And that's pretty simple, uh, because it's just a Dragon drop.
So that's that's probably the easiest way to do it.
I think that that would work better. I'm looking at
Amazon at the CD players and I see one, and

(01:18:25):
I'm sure you saw this one on there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
It's the Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
This one's about forty seven bucks, the Ara FUNA, and
it says portable CD player with Bluetooth with FM radio.
It's rechargeable, and it's got anti shock protection, and it's
got an OX cable.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
Does your phone have does your car have an OX port?

Speaker 6 (01:18:47):
Yes?

Speaker 8 (01:18:47):
I believe that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:48):
Okay, so I would probably go with that. I mean,
the Bluetooth or do.

Speaker 8 (01:18:52):
You think they're good quality?

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
I mean, I think it's probably fine. I don't think
it's gonna I mean, look, you're you're talking forty six
dollars here. I would probably try that first because it's
going to be the absolute easiest way to do this.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
So I would order this from Amazon.

Speaker 1 (01:19:07):
Obviously, you can return it if it doesn't work, but
I would order it from Amazon. Put the CD player,
put the CD in it. I don't know where you're
gonna put this or you're going to keep it like
on the seat next to you. Like that's the tricky part.
When I was you know, when I was growing Okay,
well then you could do that. When I was growing up,
I had a CD player in my car. This was
before you know they were installed in the car going

(01:19:28):
back aways. And I use some double stick like velcrow
to like velcrow the CD player to the center console,
so you can do that. You can vel crow it somewhere.
But I think that's.

Speaker 8 (01:19:39):
Well then that way, I use it at home and
just plug it into one of my other speakers, like
you know, a portable speaker and have it played throughout
the house.

Speaker 2 (01:19:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:47):
And if it's also if it's if it's Bluetooth, you
can use it with a Bluetooth speaker as well.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
I mean you could.

Speaker 1 (01:19:52):
Look, I would. I would start with this little CD
player on Amazon. See what it does. It's got Bluetooth
built in that means you don't need any wires. It
has a battery built in, which means you don't even
have to you know, you charge it at home, you
bring it into your car. You've got the CD in there,
and now you can just press play connected to the
Bluetooth on your car and if it sounds great, if
it's if it's good.

Speaker 2 (01:20:12):
Done.

Speaker 1 (01:20:12):
It's a very simple solution to a kind of a
complex problem. But if it doesn't sound good, you can
return it and then you can go the route where
you put this stuff on your phone.

Speaker 2 (01:20:22):
But I think that's a little bit too complicated for
right now.

Speaker 8 (01:20:25):
Okay, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:20:26):
I appreciate all right, Michelle, go to the website rich
on tech dot TV. Hit contact once you do all
this and let me know. I want an update so
I can see if this is going to work right.
Thanks a lot for the call. Appreciate that. Let's see
super Bowl. Hard to believe it was just last weekend.
It feels like it was an eternity ago. It was
a big, big Super Bowl. We had a lot of

(01:20:49):
fun in my house watching it. We had a couple
of people over. I told you I upgraded my TV,
so we had a great time.

Speaker 2 (01:20:54):
The TV.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
The four K on YouTube TV looked incredible. One hundred
and twenty three point four million viewers, across CBS, Nickelodeon, Univision,
and NFL plus. This was this was the second most
viewed item in history after the moon landing in nineteen
sixty nine. How did more people watch that back in

(01:21:17):
nineteen sixty nine? That doesn't make sense, right, but I
guess yeah, people were just glued to their TV. Was
there one hundred and twenty three million TVs like in
the US back then? That's seems weird. But anyway, last
year's Super Bowl was one hundred and fifteen million. One
hundred and twenty million who watched on CBS alone, is
the largest single audience ever for a network. Oh interesting,

(01:21:39):
So they just revealed how many people were streaming versus CBS.
So only about three million on streaming three point five million.
Let's see, Kansas City Chiefs have played in and won
two of the most watched Super Bowls ever. I know
that's a sore spot for some of you. Call screen
er Kim sorry, I know she's a big forty nine
Ers fan.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
Among the ten most watched super Bowl, CBS now has
three of them. Why did people watch this Super Bowl?
Why do you think the Chiefs? You know, it was
a big deal for them, but also Travis Kelce and
Taylor Swift call it the Taylor Swift effect. Look you
got yeah, Usher, I mean, look, you got a lot
of things going on here. It was a very it
was a very safe super Bowl. Let's put it that way.

(01:22:23):
You had a great halftime show with a proven talent,
You had two great teams that were, you know, proven
that people love. And you had the third element, which
was this whole Travis Kelce Taylor Swift relationship. And also
I would argue that they made it easy to watch
this year because in years past it's been a little
tricky to figure out, like where's it streaming, what's it doing?

(01:22:43):
Like they got it. They got it down this year.
So again new record for the Super Bowl. I know
I was watching up until you know the last second
of overtime, which is also wild eighty eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
to one zero one. You can follow me on the
website or on social media. It is at rich on

(01:23:04):
Tech coming up. Amazon forgot to mention something when they
said you have to pay three dollars a month to
get rid of ads.

Speaker 2 (01:23:11):
They also took something else away.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
I'll tell you what they took away, and Voodoo is
getting a new name. I'll tell you what that is.
You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out talking technology
with you at triple eight rich one oh one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(01:23:37):
Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
We've got coming up on the show. Jared Newman of Advisorator.
He is a friend of the show, been on many times.
In fact, you crashed his website the first time he
was on because you liked what he had to say
so much. So he's got some great stuff. He's going
to talk about what to do if you are running

(01:23:59):
out of iCloud store bage. He writes a great newsletter.
He was telling a story about this the other day,
and I think he has some good information to share.
Let's talk Roku. Roku now has over eighty million active users.
That is quite a milestone for them. They said that
people streamed over one hundred billion hours on Roku in

(01:24:21):
twenty twenty three. On average, each Roku account streamed four
point one hours per day in the last quarter. Roku
now has more active accounts in the US than the
number of subscribers to the sixth biggest traditional cable and
satellite TV providers combined. Why is this a big deal?
Roku makes money off of ads, and the more people

(01:24:44):
they have that are using Roku, the more data they
have to sell. So we talked about this last week
on the show how TV Manufacturers. You know, they look
at what you're watching on the TV and they use
that data to sell to sell ads against it, and
that's exactly what Roku does. And Roku actually takes it
a step further. They get a little bit of ad

(01:25:04):
time from some of these streaming properties as well, so
they've got a pretty decent business going. But the more
that they you know, you love Roku. Actually it's funny
because you know, I told that story about my mom
switching from her TV, like her firestick went out and
so she had to switch to the Roku that was
built into the TV. And I talked to her last

(01:25:26):
week and I said, or this week and I said, hey, Mom,
how you know how you like in the system the
set up? She goes, I actually like Roku better than
fire TV. I said, what she said, Yeah, I hate
to say that, but I said, well, why do you
hate to say? I mean, it's not that big of
a deal, but why do you like it better? And
she said, I don't know. It's just easier. She goes
and they have all this content on there for free.

(01:25:48):
She said, so she can I can click news and
there's a whole bunch of news stuff I can watch.
And I said, that's interesting because the free streaming services
are the fastest growing right now. People like free And
so the fact that she can just go in there
and fire TV has a free area as well, maybe
she didn't find it, but it's interesting that she picked

(01:26:08):
up on that with Roku. So and I have no
problem with Roku or fire TV or Apple TV. I
will say at this point, I think Apple TV is
the only one that's not hijacking the home screen for ads.

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
And also I don't believe that they sell any.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
Any of your data for ads like fireTV does or Roku.
And is there another one out there? Oh, Google TV? Yeah,
I'm sure Google is, because it's Google.

Speaker 10 (01:26:35):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:26:35):
Voodoo is gonna rebrand a get a rebranding as Fandango
at Home. So Voodo Voodoo announced this on their social
media networks this week. Fandango purchased Voodoo in twenty twenty
from Walmart, and so that's pretty much it. That's what's changing.

(01:26:55):
But you will have the option to link your Fandango
account if you have one. But not much more to
report there except that Voodoo will become Fandango at Home.

Speaker 2 (01:27:07):
Now, a little history on Voodoo.

Speaker 1 (01:27:10):
By the way, I was one of the first people
to cover Voodoo when it first launched. So the way
Voodoo launched, this was a startup before it was purchased
by Walmart and before it was purchased by Fandango, which
I believe is owned by NBC Universal. Voodoo was a
startup and their little magic sauce was that they would
give you this or you'd buy this box.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
It was a Voodoo box.

Speaker 1 (01:27:32):
And what they would do is, since internet was really
slow back then, they would actually download a portion of
the popular movies to the box, so they were sitting
on the box.

Speaker 6 (01:27:44):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
I know this seems so weird now because streaming you
just get everything on demand, But back in the day,
when Internet was really slow and we were just going
from dial up connections to DSL and not everyone had
a really fast Internet connection. So they would basically look
at what people were watching. So if you know, the
new Mission Impossible movie was really popular, they would download

(01:28:08):
the first couple of minutes of that movie in the background,
so like overnight, and while you weren't watching anything, they
would download a portion of this movie so that when
you went to play that movie, it would start really fast.
And now, of course this seems so silly because you
can access anything you want in the world and it
will start really fast. But back when we didn't have
super high speed internet, this made a difference, and so

(01:28:31):
it was it was a really revolutionary idea at the time,
but it kind of was an in between technology because
now we don't need that. And of course when Netflix
came along, their whole thing was that they figured out
a way to start streaming really quickly on any connection
speed almost and so that's really what Netflix does very well,

(01:28:52):
is that they have a lot of technologies surrounding fast
start of movies. You know, no matter what your connection
looks like. Now all of this has become kind of
a moot point because our connections are so fast. But
back in the day, these were real challenges because to
watch a full movie like it just it was trickier than.

Speaker 2 (01:29:12):
It is today. Now it's obviously very easy.

Speaker 1 (01:29:16):
And Amazon has quietly removed support for Dolby Vision and
Dolby Atmost from their ad supported tier of Prime Video
without telling customers. So remember this whole thing where Amazon said, oh,
now we're putting commercials in our programming on Prime Video
unless you pay an extra three dollars a month for

(01:29:36):
our ad free tier, which is kind of annoying to
begin with. Well, now some of these I think it
was Ours Technica that figured out that they also took
away this Dolbie Vision and Dolby Atmost support. Why well,
it all comes down to money, because when these companies
like Amazon put Dolby Vision in Dolby Atmost support on

(01:29:58):
their movie and TV shows, they have to pay a
licensing fee. And so by taking this away from their
basic free which I call it the free tier, even
though people are paying for Amazon Prime, but it is
now their free tier of Amazon Prime Video, they that
is a lot of people, you know, two hundred million people.
Let's say that now they don't have to pay for

(01:30:20):
this licensing for Dolby Vision and Dolby Autmost. So very sneaky, sneaky,
but that's what Amazon did. So if you really like
your high quality video and audio, and Dolby Utmost, by
the way, is spatial audio. So audio typically when you
think about surround sound is kind of like left and

(01:30:41):
right and center. A Dolby Utmost is kind of above you,
so it's like the audio that happens above, So you're
losing that channel basically, So sneaky. I don't like when
companies do stuff they make a big deal about it
and they don't say anything about what they're really doing.

Speaker 2 (01:30:57):
That's what Amazon did. That's the like that.

Speaker 1 (01:31:01):
All right, coming up, Jared Newman is going to talk
about how to free up iCloud storage or what to
do if you're out of it. 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 oh one. That's eight eight eight seven

(01:31:21):
four to two four one zero one talking evs. Went
to the Chicago Auto Show last week. Obviously a lot
of evs there, But what's happening with EV's in the
US registrations In twenty twenty three, Tesla of course dominated,
but Rivian and Hyundai catching on. So a lot of

(01:31:45):
people are saying that electric car sales are falling. That's
not necessarily true. According to the latest data, ev registrations
were up twenty three percent in December and up fifty
two percent for the full year. Tesla led the market
with fifty six percent share. They had six hundred and
forty two thousand plus registrations, mostly thanks to the Model

(01:32:06):
Y and then Ford edged out GM for second place,
but smaller brands like Hyundai and Rivian saw a lot
of growth. Hunday fourth with fifty and eleven registrations, driven
by the Ionic five to six and the Kona Electric,
and Rivian was in fifth place with four percent share
they sold. I guess they had forty six thousand registrations.

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):
I'm seeing a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:32:30):
I mean, at least in LA, A lot of the
Mercedes electric cars like that is like they are everywhere.
And Rivian's going to unveil a new R two, which
is their lower cost suv, very soon, so we're going
to see that coming up on I think it was
March seventh. Joining me now Jared Newman. He is a

(01:32:53):
writer of Advisorator. This is a great newsletter if you
are not subscribed highly recked amend you subscribe to it.

Speaker 2 (01:33:02):
Jared, Are you there?

Speaker 10 (01:33:04):
Yeah, thank thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:33:06):
Welcome to the show. How you doing today, I'm doing great?
What do you do? What's Tell me?

Speaker 1 (01:33:10):
What Advisorator is all about? What is that newsletter all about?

Speaker 10 (01:33:14):
It's my weekly tech advice newsletter I started at about
five years ago, just kind of all the stuff where
when I tell my non nerdy friends about the things
you can do with technology and they're like, oh, I
didn't know you could do that. I was like, well,
let me start a newsletter where I can actually tell
people all the things they didn't realize they could do
or need to know about.

Speaker 1 (01:33:32):
So it is really interesting the stuff that when you
cover technology or you're kind of in the thick of
it every day like I am and you are. There
is so much knowledge that you take for granted that
when you're at a party or you're just out with
friends and you say something and they're like, wait what,
and you're like you didn't know that? And I, you know,
not in a judging way, but just in a wait

(01:33:53):
what Like these things that you just take for granted
that everyone knows and they don't.

Speaker 10 (01:33:58):
Yeah, some of my some of My most popular newsletters
are the ones where I'm not even sure if I
should write them because I'm like, wait, does everybody know
this already? And I'm just going to be telling people
what they already know. And then it turns out the
answer is no. So yeah, including you know this thing
about iCloud.

Speaker 1 (01:34:14):
Yeah, so explain what happened with the iCloud situation. So
you your your newsletter this week says how to handle
iCloud storage, and something happened with your wife, so explain.

Speaker 3 (01:34:24):
She sent me.

Speaker 10 (01:34:25):
She forwarded me an email from Apple that said your
iCloud storage is full, and was like, do I need
to do anything about this? And then I looked at
my iCloud storage and it turns out that my iCloud
storage was also almost full. So it kind of sneaks
up on you.

Speaker 2 (01:34:43):
And so what what did you decide?

Speaker 1 (01:34:45):
I mean, did you just say, okay, let me tap
to expand my storage for another couple bucks a month,
or what did you decide to do?

Speaker 3 (01:34:51):
No?

Speaker 10 (01:34:52):
And the reason is, you know, the thing that really
uses a ton of iCloud storages of course, photos and videos.
I already knew that in our case, we were we
were using Google Photos primarily as our cloud photo storage.
I also use one drive as like another backup, and
I keep photos on my computer, so I don't need

(01:35:14):
neither of us need iCloud to handle our photos. So
sure enough, when I looked at my wife's phone and
looked at my phone, a huge chunk of that storage
was just iCloud photos had been turned on. I don't
even remember how it got turned on my end. I
might have been testing something something, But yeah, in both cases,
it was like three to four of the five complimentary

(01:35:34):
gigabytes you get was being occupied by photos.

Speaker 2 (01:35:38):
But here's the thing, and I'm sure you saw this.

Speaker 1 (01:35:40):
When you went to turn it off, you got that
big scary message that says, are you sure you want
to turn off and delete all your pictures?

Speaker 3 (01:35:48):
Yes?

Speaker 10 (01:35:49):
Exactly, because you know, to be fair, if you are
relying on iCloud photos, or you hadn't thought about photo
backups and you're just doing to your point earlier, you know,
I'm sure there's a lot of folks that just just
assume that their photos are being backed up and aren't
really thinking about it too much, and they just assume
Apple is handling everything for them, which they very melt

(01:36:10):
very well might be, and so uh yeah, you do
kind of need to exercise some caution there and know
what you're doing before you turn that off. But if
you if you know that you have another backup solution
in place, then it's not really a big deal that
you click that button.

Speaker 2 (01:36:25):
Now, a lot of.

Speaker 1 (01:36:25):
People are confused about the photos on your Like if
you're using iCloud for your photos, your iPhone is a
mirror of the cloud, So if you delete a picture
on your phone, it's going to go away in I cloud.

Speaker 2 (01:36:38):
Some people don't realize that.

Speaker 10 (01:36:41):
Yeah, that's true, and it gets into tricky territory because
there's that whole thing of is your phone having all
of the photos they're in I cloud versus you know,
the default is that Apple will delete some photos off
of your phone to make room on your phone, but
keep them an eyecloud and so but the library, the

(01:37:03):
photos app still shows everything that's in that eCloud. So
it leads to some confusion about what's being stored ware
and what happens when you actually delete something.

Speaker 1 (01:37:11):
And this is why I like Google Photos because I know,
basically I think of Google Photos as a vacuum. Once
the photo gets sucked up into the cloud of Google Photos.
It's not going anywhere because I can delete things on
my phone. If I'm not deleting them through Google Photos,
they're not going to be deleted.

Speaker 10 (01:37:28):
Yeah, it's a different philosophy. Like in my mind, I
like that, you know, it's not my camera role. Like
my camera roll is whatever happens to it happens, and
Google Photos is like this other repository where yeah, everything's
on there. And so even if something happens in my
phone and my camera roll is obliterated or I delete
everything off my camera roll, it's still in Google Photos
and it's not actually syncing back and forth that way.

(01:37:50):
Lets some people prefer it the other way, where it's
just that one library that's being managed through the default
photo album on the iPhone.

Speaker 1 (01:37:57):
Now, my kids take giant videos on the iPads. They
let it roll for like an hour, and I have
a two terabyte storage on my iCloud, and I'm not kidding,
it's all taken up and I have no idea what's
taking it up except their stuff. And I tell them,
I'm like, kids, you got to go through and like
delete a couple of these big you know, they'll literally
set like the iPad on their windowsill and record outside

(01:38:19):
as like a security quote unquote camera just for fun,
and it'll be like a giant, giant file that they'll
never delete. So what anyway, what's your takeaway? What's your
guidance for iCloud, Like, what do people need to know?

Speaker 10 (01:38:31):
Well, one thing, we you know, we haven't talked about
the whole iCloud. This is interesting to me because I
learned it in the course of researching as they haven't
realized that the iCloud Photos versus iCloud backup. So even
if you turn off iCloud Photos, there's still the separate
iCloud backup, which is taking everything that's on your phone
and uploading it to the cloud. And if you turn

(01:38:52):
off iCloud photos, every photo that's on your phone still
in the camera roll will still be included in that backup.
So even if you are using Google Photos and then
you take that extra step to turn off iCloud Photos,
you're still burning through all your iCloud storage space on
a separate backup, and then you have to go in
and take another step in say exclude my photos from

(01:39:13):
the back up.

Speaker 2 (01:39:14):
Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 10 (01:39:16):
This whole rabbit hole you can go down. And there's
also the other wrinkle to consider is I message, you know,
because I never really thought of it, like you'd want
a permanent history of all your messages, but I think
a lot of people do, and that ends up eating
up a lot of storage just by virtue of all
the photos and videos that you're sharing back and forth.

Speaker 1 (01:39:35):
Oh my gosh, see iCloud, the iCloud like messages in
the cloud really takes up a lot. Like I think
I'm up to like six gigabytes of storage just to
my I message, which I don't understand. Why does I
message take up so much storage?

Speaker 10 (01:39:49):
Because everybody's sending photos and videos and all that's part
of your history that you're that you're backing up there.
And you know, I think it didn't used to be
the case that we were so used to communicating that way,
but that's how we do it now. And so if
you if you want to have that full history and
you don't want to create offline backups on a macro
PC of your uh, you know, your whole iPhoto history

(01:40:12):
then or iPhone history, then you just gonna have to
pay the price.

Speaker 1 (01:40:15):
I guess one thing that I always recommend people don't realize,
and now it actually Google has got Apple has gotten
hip to this, because I'm looking at my recommendations for
my iCloud storage and it does say to delete inactive backups.
A lot of times. If you upgrade your iPhone, it's
keeping the old backup of your old iPhone and your
new backup of your new iPhone, which is basically almost

(01:40:36):
like a yeah, so that's interesting.

Speaker 10 (01:40:38):
I don't I don't think I had that, but when
I looked on my iPhone, I saw there was, you know,
in the iCloud backup section it set iPhone, but then
I think it would list other devices that you had
also been backing up there. So yeah, it kind of
helps to think of like iCloud backup is a backup
of the device, just what's on the device, and then iCloud,
whether it's messages in iCloud or iCloud photos, is sort

(01:41:00):
of like all the data from all your devices being
sucked up into this big repository.

Speaker 1 (01:41:06):
So, Jared, you cover this stuff for a living. Is
this confusing?

Speaker 3 (01:41:11):
Yes?

Speaker 10 (01:41:11):
And that's why it's so you know, they make it
very easy. It's only a dollar a month to add
that whatever it is fifty gigabytes. So you know that's
how it starts, right, you say, that's just a dollar
a month, Why don't I. I'll just do this and
then I don't have to think about it, and now
you're in, right, and then it becomes three dollars a
month once you need a little more storage. And then
you're like, well, I guess I can do Apple one.

(01:41:32):
Since I'm already paying for this, I'll just add this
other stuff. And now they got you and you're you're
in the Apple ecosystem forever. So just be mindful of
those things, I guess, and know the choices that you have.

Speaker 1 (01:41:43):
And by the way, a dollar a month, there's like
over a billion iPhone users in the world, so a
dollar a month times let's say just half of them
are using iCloud, that's a lot of money. And this
is why Apple Services, they call it, is the fastest
growing money maker for Apple right now.

Speaker 2 (01:42:02):
Yeah, it reminds me.

Speaker 10 (01:42:03):
You know, over on the Google side, they just boasted
I think of having I think the number was one
hundred million Google one subscribers. Yeah, and they were boasting
about that, and I was like, yeah, well, it's because
you turned off unlimited photo storage. So now everybody ran
out of space for photos and Gmail and they have
to pay. So one way or another, you're going to
pay somebody for cloud storage. It's just a matter of

(01:42:23):
deciding who and when and why and where.

Speaker 1 (01:42:27):
If you think about it, it's pretty smart. They've got
our they've got our memories locked up. And whoever thought
about this. Hey, let's put a camera on the phone.
People take more pictures and then we'll get them free
for a while and then we'll charge them.

Speaker 2 (01:42:40):
It's pretty brilliant, actually.

Speaker 10 (01:42:42):
Yeah, and we'll make the photo shooting four K at
sixty free inch or second with Dulby vision. So all
that stuff uses more data than it used to.

Speaker 1 (01:42:49):
Absolutely, all right, Jared, tell folks how they can find
you online.

Speaker 10 (01:42:55):
Yeah, if you want to check out my newsletter, it's
advisorator dot com. And in fact, if you want to
check out the paid version, you can go to advisorator
dot com slash rich on tech. I got a little
discount for.

Speaker 1 (01:43:07):
You, nice, and I also love your You have another newsletter,
cord Cutter Weekly that you keep the big list of
streaming deals. I will link that up on the website
as well. If you're looking for like free codes and
discount codes for all the streaming services. It is a
great resource that's always updated, so I'll put that on
the website as well.

Speaker 2 (01:43:28):
Jared Newman, thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 10 (01:43:30):
Thanks for having me Rich always pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:43:32):
All right, Jared Newman of Advisorator. I'll put the link
on the website. Rich on tech dot tv coming up.
We're going to close out the show in a segment
we call feedback. You are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging

(01:43:52):
out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one
oh one eight eight eight seven four for one zero one.
I don't know why I just gave out the phone number.
We don't have time for anymore calls. I'm just listening
to the song.

Speaker 2 (01:44:11):
Here.

Speaker 1 (01:44:12):
It's time for the feedback segment. These are the emails, comments,
and questions I get from you, and if you'd like
to submit yours, go to rich on Tech dot tv
and hit contact. So many to get through. So let's
just start at the top here. Mike says, regarding putting
a TV outdoors, we had an extra fifty five inch
video that we put out doors. We purchased an excellent

(01:44:34):
waterproof cover from Covers and All. The TV has survived
two So Cal rainy seasons so far. Very heavy duty
material that fully encloses the TV a lot cheaper than
buying a Sunbright or a custom enclosure, comes in many sizes.

Speaker 2 (01:44:48):
Great show, Mike, Yeah, we're getting a.

Speaker 1 (01:44:51):
Lot of messages about people in southern California putting TVs
that are not supposed to be outside outside.

Speaker 2 (01:44:56):
I mean, I guess it could be done again.

Speaker 1 (01:44:58):
I can't fully recommend it, even though I probably won't
do it in my backyard. Why not, I've got the
TV in my garage, SoC says Rich. I'm not sure
why you're pushing evs. The EV, as we know it
is dead. The auto companies are losing money by the millions.
Ford is cutting way back on EV due to losing
tens of millions of dollars each quarter. Toyota and Honda

(01:45:20):
are not even emphasizing EV at all. The EV is
just a SoCal thing. Once you go outside SoCal, everyone
stays away from EV's.

Speaker 2 (01:45:27):
You know what happened to EV's. It hurts. They just
got rid of their EV fleet.

Speaker 1 (01:45:31):
No one wanted to rent them at overseas, they're going
back to regular gas cars once they realize they've been
drinking the EV kool aid. And once you learn how
the lithium ion battery is so toxic to the environment
that you wouldn't want anything to do with it. Once
you learn about the life cycle of the lithium ion
batteries from mining the rare earth material, manufacturing of the
batteries and disposal, you're not doing any favor to the environment. Well,

(01:45:55):
thank you, SoC. I just talk about the news. I
don't create the news. So I mean, I'm not at
the car companies. I'm not making these cars. I'm not,
you know, directing what's happening at the auto shows. But yes,
you still have options and it is clearly within your
rights to go EV or not go EV. Thanks for
the email, Mark says Rich. I love your show, but

(01:46:16):
for God's sake, please make your guests and callers get
off those speakers in bluetooth. You have no idea what
it sounds like on my end, especially your guests. Come
on now, a tech guest talking on tin cans. Better
make them call in on a landline. I have to
fast forward through all that gibberish. Mark well Mark. Again,
I can't control my guests or the callers, but I
do recommend that they connect a certain way. Land lines

(01:46:40):
are very rare these days. I don't know of anyone
that has one. So yeah, we used to say, like,
please call in on a landline on a radio show,
but that's just not the case anymore, Like people just
don't have access to that. Most of the time, it works, though,
and I do listen to the show in my car
to hear what it sounds like to you, and it
sounds pretty good most of the time. Nancy says, we

(01:47:01):
have so many tech issues. I'm ready to go back
to pen and paper. Is it possible for someone to
mess up technology from their body chemistry? As a child,
my mom bought me a watch it didn't work. When
I got married, my new husband bought me an expensive
watch that didn't work. Even though my desktop was less
than ten feet away, the modem told me it wasn't
connected to the Internet. I got the same message from
my printer, and that was less than two feet from

(01:47:23):
the modem. I spent eight hours one day trying to
attach a file. Am I getting punked?

Speaker 3 (01:47:29):
Here?

Speaker 1 (01:47:29):
I could find it and open it, but after closing it,
I couldn't attach it. According to my computer, it either
didn't exist or had to be moved.

Speaker 2 (01:47:36):
Later.

Speaker 1 (01:47:36):
It was there I learned my computer had a glitch
and it wasn't connected to the internet. Nancy, Nancy, you
know what it happened sometimes. Tim says, hey, Rich, I
got the fitbit charged six shortly after you reviewed it.
Bought it last Wednesday, haven't charged it yet. It is
still at twenty seven percent. Thanks for the review and recommendation.
I had been deciding about my next fitbit or another

(01:47:57):
smart watch for some time. It is perfect, Tim, Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:48:00):
Tim. Appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (01:48:02):
Eugene says, I was listening to a recent podcast where
you mentioned decluttering and a dumpster. Rather than using a
dumpster next time, considered donation thrift stores, Goodwill, et cetera,
et cetera. Somehow, I don't think your stuff would be
considered scrap. Enjoy all your podcasts, Eugene, absolutely one percent.
I do donate when possible, and believe me, when they
get some of the stuff I donate at Goodwill, they're

(01:48:24):
scratching their head because they're like, this is like a
brand new tech item and it's just you know, Bobo says,
bring it in next time, But yes, I do donate
whenever possible. The stuff that we threw out in the
dumpster was mostly trash, so and we did donate a
lot of stuff from there. Uh okay, that's going to
be it for the feedback segment. If you want to

(01:48:45):
send me your email, just go to rich on tech
dot TV hit contact, and I love getting your messages.
I'd do my best to reply or read it on
the show. I can't get to them all, but I
do appreciate you sending them in. If you can believe it,
that's going to do it for this episode. You can
find links everything I mentioned to richon tech dot TV.
Find me on social media at rich on tech. Next week,
I'm going to tell you about the AI reading tool

(01:49:07):
that teachers are using that you can use at home
for your kids, and it is incredible. Thanks so much
for listening. There are so many ways you can spend
your time. I appreciate you spending it right here with me.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Rich DeMuro

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

Therapy Gecko

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Checking for Personal Data on the Dark Web & Managing iCloud Storage