Faster Wi-Fi on Planes & What to Do When Your Personal Info Is Leaked

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Reviews are in for another physical AI device and they're
just okay. Well it looks more and more like TikTok
will be banned. And why did Apple users suddenly get
logged out? Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on?
I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech. This

(00:20):
is the show where I talk about the tech stuff
I think you should know about. It's also the place
where I answer your questions about technology. I believe the
tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up
those phone lines at triple A rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one

(00:41):
zero one. Give me a call. If you have a
question about technology, email also open. Just go to Rich
on tech dot tv and hit contact. We've got some
great guests this week. Ryan Ozawa, a native Hawaiian tech
journal and publisher of the Hawaii Bulletin, is going to

(01:03):
join me to talk about the startup scene in Hawaii.
Then later in the show, we've got JR. Rayfiel. He
is tech writer and author of the Android Intelligence newsletter,
so we'll get updated on Android and some tips and
tricks as well. And great interview with Troy Hunt. He

(01:23):
is the creator of haveibenponed dot com. This is a
website that lets you see if your data has been
involved in a breach, and he will discuss how to
check the website and what to do if you see
your information on there. He also talks about those services
that purport to take your information off of the dark

(01:44):
Web and other places. So a great conversation there. Well,
this week I found myself in Hawaii once again. No,
I did not plan that, but I was actually planning
this since October. So you know, if you listened to
the show, that I was in Hawaii for a personal
vacation a couple of weeks ago, and then the opportunity

(02:05):
came up to go back, and as crazy as it sounds,
of course I said yes because I wanted to be
among the first to test out high speed internet on
Starlink on Hawaiian airlines, and this is something they announced
last October. So I emailed the company. I said, Hey,
I really want to get on one of these planes
and test this out. And they said, okay, well we

(02:27):
just announced it. We haven't even installed this yet. I said, okay,
well keep me in mind. So I just kept bugging
them and bugging them and bugging them, and finally it
worked out, and so I flew out of Long Beach, California, which,
by the way, the number one comment I got on
my Instagram when I was posting about the trip is
rich Please don't tell people about Long Beach Airport too late,

(02:48):
I just did. It is an incredible little airport if
you can find a flight out of there. Obviously it's limited,
but what a great airport. I love. We've gotten so
used to like Lax and this huge, giant airport which
is crowded and trafficky and all this stuff, and when
you get to one of these smaller airports, either in
a small town or one of the smaller airports in
the LA area like Burbank or Long Beach. I've never

(03:10):
flown out of Ontario, so I can't speak for that one,
but it was a great experience, very very nice. So
I get on the flight and let me tell you
about Starlink on this flight. So if you're not familiar
with starlink, this is from SpaceX and it's a network
of low orbit satellites. They've been shooting up into outer
space and they just kind of blanket the globe. So

(03:33):
this gives you Internet from space pretty much anywhere. And yes,
there's been satellite internet before, but this one is very,
very fast, faster than we've ever seen before. So I
got on the flight from Long Beach to Honolulu, about
a five hour flight, and the internet starts immediately the
second that you get to your seat. You can start

(03:54):
using starlink. And what Hawaiian has done is they've made
it really easy. There is basically no login. You just
go to your internet, you connect to the it says
starlink on Hawaiian air and you connect and that's it.
It says, oh, by the way, a couple of rules here.
No audio or video calls, no live streaming from your seat,

(04:14):
and no looking at obscene content. So those are the
ground rules. But after that you can pretty much do
whatever you want. It's all free and you can connect
as many devices as you want. And I did interview
the CEO of Hawaiian Airlines and I said, hey, a
couple things. Number one, is this going to remain free?
And he said yes. The reason why it's free is

(04:35):
because we were late to the Wi Fi game. A
lot of other airlines have Wi Fi before us. It's
been slow, it's been not very good, but we wanted
to come out of the gate really strong with this
awesome high speed internet, and we're going to give it
to customers for free. And if you think that people
don't care about this, they do. Because I was looking,

(04:56):
as I always do at other people's phone screens, I
kind of snoop whenever I can. I was watching people
text their friends saying, oh my gosh, I have starlink
on this flight. I have starlink on this flight, and
I did a whole bunch of tests and it was incredible.
There's no other way to describe it other than OMG,

(05:16):
I can't believe we have this up in the air
at this point. So I was getting speeds bursts. I
would say two hundred and two fifty steady, about one
hundred megabits per second. So that's pretty much home internet
speed if you're lucky, if you have a good internet
at home now. I was on a flight a couple
weeks ago coming back from Honolulu. I won't name the airline,

(05:38):
but my internet was eight bucks, which I paid for.
I wanted to catch up on my four or five
hundred emails that I got throughout the week, and guess
what I could not even check email with that internet
connection because it was so bad. And that reminds me
that I do need to request a refund. If you
ever have a bad internet experience. By the way, always
always request a refund. If you cannot do what you

(05:59):
were trying to do, just go to the website and
of that airline and say request a refund. And most
of the time it's very automated. It's like you'll get
a response within twenty four hours and they'll say, yeah,
we've refunded you your money. They don't want people to
have a bad experience. This stuff is not well it
is rocket science. But if it's not working properly, which
sometimes it's not, especially with the old style satellite internet,

(06:23):
it just ask for a refund and they will give
it to you. So the in flight experience was amazing.
What did I do? I tested downloading an entire movie
before I even took off. I've never been able to
do that, and all the years I've been flying, downloaded
in an entire two hour movie or so while I
was still at the gate. Then once I was in
the air, I deleted that movie and redownloaded it and

(06:46):
it was just fine. Took a couple of minutes, and
I actually felt guilty at a certain point that I
was using so much data. I also uploaded and downloaded
like a one gigabyte file that worked just fine. I
was able to check my email. I streamed Netflix, so
there is no need to download anymore. This is a
paradigm shift, and I think it's going to impact the
inflight systems because the inflight entertainment systems, because why install

(07:11):
all of these seatback monitors and these big hard drives
that you have to fill with all these movies when
people can just you know, binge on their networks and
their streaming services that they already own and the shows
are already watching. And I did ask the CEO about that,
and he said, well, they're still going to have some
planes that do have the built in entertainment systems. But again,

(07:32):
I think this is something that we're going to see
phased out over time because people have their smartphones and
once they know they can stream, they're going to do that.
I also tried Peloton just for fun. I didn't bring
the bike in the air, but I just, you know,
why not, so I was able to stream Peloton. What
else did I try? Oh, roadblocks, my kids wanted me
to try roeblocks. They said, Dad, you got to check

(07:53):
the latency. I'm like, how do you know what latency is?
But of course they do. They're kids. They know more
than we do sometimes. So I checked the latency on
Roadblocks and it was just fine. And it was funny
because my kid was playing Roadblocks this morning and he
showed me the latency we had at home. He's like, Dad,
that number is not very good. And I'm like, I
don't know. Maybe a lot of people are on right now.

(08:14):
I'm not sure. But again, this all worked really really well,
and I think we are seeing a big shift with
internet on the planes because you are now fully connected
wherever you are. We were over the Pacific, a tricky
place for traditional internet, and it worked really really good.
Other airlines that are planning to install starlink include Cutter

(08:38):
is that how you say it, Qatar guitarsx JSX, which
is a smaller airline, Air Baltic zip AAR, which I
actually took to Japan. I think it was last year.
They did not have the starlink. Last year when I
took it, they did have Wi Fi. It was fine,
and then Air New Zealand. So and by the way,

(09:00):
Link is kind of early out of the gate with this,
and they have a really good solution. But Boeing and
Amazon are also working on a similar satellite internet solutions.
So it seems like hopefully one of the major carriers
in the US will launch this soon. But I don't
know if it'll be free we'll say, but for Hawaiian
Airlines it is and I did, by the way, not

(09:20):
necessarily tech related, but Alaska is going to acquire Hawaiian
air Lines, which, by the way, I think is very ironic.
The two like most remote states in America, you know,
the two airlines are like linking up, which I find
very cute. But I did ask the CEO. I said,
so is this all moot? Like, is Alaska going to
take over Hawaiian and get rid of the airline? And

(09:40):
he said, no, we are going to operate a same platform,
which tells me you'll be able to book the flights
seamlessly with the two airlines, but they will be two
distinct levels of service. Now, by the way, I've heard
that before with mergers and then when people forget in
a couple of years, they kind of merge all the
brands together. But I you know, Hawaiian was a very
u unique experience. It feels almost like your vacation starts

(10:02):
when you get on that plane. First time I took them,
and so I think they would it would be kind
of silly to get rid of that experience because it
is so unique and so interesting. All right, eight eight
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Let's open up the floodgates.
The lines are open the website rich on Tech dot TV.

(10:27):
Give me a call or an email if you have
a question about technology. You are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you, talking technology. The phone line for the
show eight eight eight rich one O one. That's eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(10:50):
Give me a call if you have a question about technology.
You can also go to the website rich on Tech
dot TV. While you're there, be sure to sign up
for my newsletter. Just sent out a new issue this morning.
It is packed with all kinds of great stuff, tips, tricks,
just all kinds of just I feel like it's just
useful stuff that I think you should know kind of

(11:11):
like this show. By the way, in case you can't hear,
I've got a big smile on my face. Kim, our
call screener extraordinary, just texted me and said, oh my gosh,
this is my jam computer love. And I said, how
did you know? And she said, come on, I've been
in radio for over Should I say how many years?
I don't know? I should I date you? Kim twenty

(11:32):
five years? Wow? We need a bell? So anyway, when
you give Kim a call. That's so the theme today
with the songs, in case you haven't noticed, is going
to be a little bit of a kind of a
tech theme. Kim says, please date me. No one else will.
Ah ouch, I should have read that before I said

(11:52):
that on air. Let's go to Perry in Glendale, California. Perry,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Morning a long time, first time and if you need
a bell, ding ding ding ding ning, there you go.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
And I remember Kim from the Leo days. You you
fill some pretty big shoes, my friend, and you've you've
done an excellent job. That's why I'm calling. I will
try to get to the point. What I'm dealing with
is Windows eleven professional. And then for work, I have
a two thousand and seven office professional, and about a

(12:29):
month and a half ago, my settings went wengo. I'm
able to get incoming, but I can't do outgoing, and
I've gone over the internet and it sounds like the
nine nine to five incoming pop three number is good,
but unfortunately I can't find that sweet spot to get
the U the outgoing SMTP numbers. And I've gone through

(12:54):
a myriad of numbers suggested by the internet.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Oh, the Internet is suggesting all kinds of conflicting information.
You don't say, who would have foun I.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Mean, goodness, gracious, I mean I must have a half
a dozen numbers that I.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Plugged in so frustrating failed.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
And then I get and I get a I got
a myriad of OX eight hundred alerts that I just stopped.
So I called my ISP. They gave me their numbers.
Those were only good if I wanted to go on
their online email address on their side, but for me

(13:32):
third party, they wouldn't touch it. And they said, well,
you need to call you need to call Outlook, and.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Oh, Outlook, Outlook doesn't have a phone number. Come on,
they're just putting off Okay. So here's the here's the
question I've got for you. What is your email service
for both your work and the so you've got. Are
you trying to set up just your work email on
both of these outlooks? No?

Speaker 2 (13:56):
Sure, No, I have Gmail for work. That's working. Fine.
I can get from my I can send from my
work email which is on the same computer, and I
can get incoming uh okay, but unfortunately the outgoing does
not work. So that's that's my issue. It's my my

(14:20):
Outlook account.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Okay. So this is your Outlook account. So the email
address is at Outlook dot com.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Well, it's actually it's no, No, I'm my Outlook account
my third party on my on my system on on
my home computer. It's I don't want to name this,
you know, the i s P. Okay, but if I
did my email address, yeah, so it's an i SP
email address basically like at roadrunner dot net or something

(14:52):
like that.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Charter Okay, So Charter, Okay, that's that's an easy one.
So you go to Charter Charter email setting. Okay, So
the thing is number one most of the time if
you look at the Outlook it will once you put
in your email address, it will figure out the settings.
It will ping the server and it will say, okay,
here's the settings. We know what those are, and it'll

(15:13):
put them in automatically. Now have you tried doing that?
Have you tried deleting the account off of the Outlook
altogether and then starting over.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
No? I have have not. I did reload the Outlook
two thousand and seven professional, but that didn't help at all.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
Well, what I would do is I would actually delete
the email off of the computer all together, and then
I would set it up again. And you know, I'm
looking at the Spectrum setup. It's it's pretty standard for
these email settings, and they even have the automatic configuration
the manual configuration. I think that you just have to
delete the account and start over. The thing is your

(15:55):
your email is probably safe. I say probably, because I'm
not sure you could be downloading it and taking it
off their Spectrum server. But most of the time these
are set up as an IMAP, which means what you're
doing at home is just being reflected on their server
and vice versa. So if you delete the account, it
will just delete the settings for that account and then
you can start over and add it. So what I

(16:16):
would do as a test. If you have like a
you know, an Android phone or an iPhone, I would
try adding the email address there, checking to see if
it works, make sure all your messages are there, and
then I would just delete the account from the old
Microsoft or from the old from the outlook and just
read it and it should find it just fine. I'm
looking at I'm looking at all of these settings. Nothing

(16:37):
looks like it's very special, like it's it's all very
very straightforward. And if if you look at this, I'm
sure you've been on the website. But Spectrum dot net,
Slash support, Slash Internet, Slash Outlook set up very very straightforward.
So if you want email me, I will email you
a link to that. I'll also put it in the
show notes. But my advice just go ahead, delete the account,

(16:58):
set it back up, put in your email address and
it should find those settings automatically. If not, here's the
manual address. Eight to eight rich one on one eight
Coming on next, We're talking tech in Hawaii. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology. The website richon Tech dot tv can follow

(17:23):
me on social media at rich On Tech. So this
week I was in Hawaii and our next guest kind
of an interesting way of meeting them. I was reading
the newspaper when I was in Hawaii the last time
a couple of weeks ago on vacation, and I came
across Ryan Ozawa and he writes a column for the
paper there, and I said, oh, this is cool. This

(17:44):
guy seems to know what he's talking about. He's doing
all these tech things. And so I emailed him and
I said, Hey, when I come out there next time,
can I interview you about the tech scene in Hawaii?
And he said sure. So let's hear from Ryan Ozawa,
native Hawaiian tech journalist, publisher of the Hawaii Bulletin. He's
going to talk about the startup scene in Hawaii. First off,

(18:06):
just tell me about the kind of state of tech
in Hawaii.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
A lot of people would assume that we don't have
a tech industry, but I think because of our isolation
in the Middle Pacific, that kind of innovation is vital
to survival.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
And over the.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
Last fifteen twenty years, we've been seeing a constant growth
in the tech industry, especially now when you're looking at
renewable energy and things about sustainability of something that we
do very well.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
And you said you've covered tech here for twenty years. Yeah,
tell me about that.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
So when I first met up with a startup co
founder here, he was like, we should do a meetup
for everybody we know that's doing tech here. And four
people showed up at a coffee shop in Manoa. I mean, yeah,
in five years that got to two hundred people. Very impressive,
but it has been slow and steady growth. I think
the pandemic was a reset button for everybody, but it

(18:56):
really helped here because people began to see the importance
of being independent without relying on a single industry like tourism.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
And so what do you see when it comes to startups?
What are kind of the commonalities with these startups here?

Speaker 3 (19:13):
A big part of it might be travel tech, but
I do think that energy and sustainability is a big
part of it. We are well on our way to
being our goal, hitting our goal of being fully unsustainable
solar wave energy like that, and startups in that space
are doing well. We have a lot of East meets
West happening here, so Asia their startups and their technology

(19:36):
kind of intersecting with the continent and from Silicon Valley,
for example. I think we're a good meeting point for
that as well.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
And what is it challenging to have a startup in
Hawaii And what are some of the challenges.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
So, certainly the cost of living is very high here.
Taxes are an issue, business regulations. We're working very hard
on making those a little more easier to work with.
But I think that when you're dealing with technology, fortunately
real estate is not something that you necessarily need like
you might in a typical brick and mortar business. I
think another challenge is you want all of the legs

(20:10):
of a full tech ecosystem to exist. So a Tier
one research university we have that, we have more and
more venture capital firms with operations here doing local investments.
We have local startup accelerators, So more and more of
these pieces of the puzzle are coming. We're just having
to build them all over time.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
So we talked about the challenges. What are some of
the benefits of being a startup in Hawaii.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
Well, as we're finding post pandemic, a lot of people
who work in startups and tech from other places in
the world realize that if they can work or startup
business anywhere in the world thanks to the Internet, why
not do it in a beautiful place with perfect weather,
moderate weather, and just the high quality of life versus
cost of living. So we are benefiting in some respects

(20:54):
from a lot of Silicon Valley or even from Asia
tech innovative and investors making a home here and still
having that itch to do something and finding local partners.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
Tell me about this place that we're in right now.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
So this is the entrepreneur's sandbox. It's one of many
co working spaces here, but this one was built in
a public private partnership partnership with a state economic development organization.
So it's one of the tangible examples of a space
where events can happen, where meetings can happen, and where
startups have space. They can get a permanent office or

(21:29):
just rent a desk. And what you want in a
co working space is kind of that overlapping kismet of
energy where you just look over at the next table
and there's someone doing something that you might need. They're
into marketing, you're into UX and UI design, So let's
work together.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
And I think that's great. And what do you like
to cover, like, what are some of the stories that
you've seen or some of the stuff that you like
to cover personally, I.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
Think my background really wants to focus on the education piece,
or what you might call workforce development. You know, rather
than training young people to be cogs in a wheel
of a corporate machine, which is definitely the past, you
want to train them to be entrepreneurs themselves, to be
their own boss, come up with a business that is sustainable,
but they can do something that they excel at and
that they're great at. That could be being a creator

(22:13):
and being a YouTube or TikTok personality. But more and
more you're seeing, especially given Hawaii's unique historic culture, there
is a demand for that. So there are more and
more startups that kind of exemplify native Hawaiian culture or
some of the things that only exist here. The same
reason why people might travel here are same reasons why

(22:35):
they might purchase products or services from here. I think
we're doing better and better every year. The pandemic was
a blessing in disguise, and I think that we're even
now seeing at all levels, including in the government, the
importance of fostering an innovation ecosystem. Across different sectors, education
as well as business, as well as investment, and I

(22:55):
think it's only up from here.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Are people surprised when they find out that startups are
based in Hawaii or there's even a tech culture in Hawaii.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
Even when we were a destination for corporate conferences, a
lot of times it was a liability, like if your
hometown said we're going to a conference in Hawaii, like,
oh right, sure they're going to be working in Hawaii.
But when you talk about technology startups, I think it
adds a little bit of cachet. And because we can
be anywhere, why wouldn't you be here? So I think
it makes more and more sense.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
All right? Once again? That is Ryan Ozawa, a Hawaiian
tech journalist and publisher of the Hawaii Bulletin. He covers
all things technology in Hawaii. Very connected guy. If you
want to link to his uh newsletter, just go to
my website. Rich on tech dot TV eighty eight rich
one O one eight eight eight seven four to two

(23:46):
four one zero one. Coming up, We'll take more of
your questions and I'm gonna tell you why some Apple
users were logged out of their phones and Apple IDs
without any explanation. My name is rich and you are
listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech,

(24:09):
the show where we talk about the tech stuff I
think you should know about. Phone line eight eight eight
rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. So yesterday a bunch of
people reported on social media that they were logged out
of their Apple IDs without any explanation, just suddenly they

(24:30):
were logged out of all their devices. I don't know
how widespread this is, but it definitely seemed to happen
to a couple people that I follow on social media.
So people had to reset their passwords before they were
able to log back in. First thing I did was
check Apple's system status page. I didn't see anything that
said there was any issue. But again, this did seem

(24:53):
to happen to people over the weekend. So if this
does happen to you, if this is some sort of
ongo issue, it seems like a password reset does help. Now,
if you have that stolen device protection turned on, which
a lot of people do, if you try to reset
your password when you're away from a trusted location, this
is where you use your phone, you're the most Let

(25:16):
me give an example, say this happens to you while
you're out at a bar and you try to reset
your password there, your phone is going to give you
trouble because that's not a trusted location unless I guess
you're at that bar a lot and then it says, okay,
we know you're here a lot, so we'll let you reset.
But most of the time that's either work or home.
So just be aware if it happens to you. It

(25:37):
does seem very odd. I thought people were getting hacked.
There's always a concern of getting hacked, so you know,
lockdown those accounts. Please. Let's go to Rosemary in Fontana, California. Rosemary,
you're on with Rich Hi.

Speaker 4 (25:51):
So we have to upgrade per spectrum to a new
I don't know what they call.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
It a box, sure the router and.

Speaker 4 (26:02):
Not the router, just the channel box.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
So okay, yeah, I got it.

Speaker 4 (26:09):
Okay. So and we also have a firestick on the
old channel box. We never had a problem with firestick
never we upgrade. About the same week we upgraded, a
couple of days later, we start getting a message on
our TV screen saying unknown device detective. There's no okay,
there's no cancel we just have to wait for that

(26:30):
message to disappear. So it disappeared. Our fire stick keeps working.
We're able to get onto what we have. We have
a whole bunch of apps that we subscribe to because
we don't have a smart TV, so we have a
whole bunch of apps on fire stick.

Speaker 5 (26:44):
Last night, the.

Speaker 4 (26:46):
Firestick would open, go to the homepage, but our remote
stopped working. It would not work. I looked online for
a whole bunch of different tricks and did everything, three
buttons at the same count, twenty on, plugged on, plug
from the outlet.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Everything.

Speaker 4 (27:04):
Today, we try it again, still nothing.

Speaker 6 (27:07):
It would not work.

Speaker 4 (27:08):
Okay, So is that our spectrum not compatible with our
fire stick?

Speaker 1 (27:13):
You know what, The two things are not related. I
think it's a coincidence that this happened after you got
the spectrum, So I don't I don't think there's any
there's no relationship between these two devices. And you know,
plenty of people have a fire stick with their modem.
I don't think there's any issue. I think there's it's
just a fluke. So I will tell you that my

(27:35):
mom she called me with a similar issue with her firestick,
and I'm not kidding. I must have troubleshooted the heck
out of this thing, you know, over the phone, over
you know, twenty five hundred miles and I finally gave
up and I said, I don't know what's happening here,
like I've never heard of this issue. And yes, we
did all the reset and all this stuff. And my brother,

(27:56):
you know, who's also kind of techie, I sent him
over there and he's like, you know what, I actually
think the fire stick just burned out. And it did it,
just the fire stick went bad. So these things are
not expensive. They do happen. I think with yours the
troubleshooting that I would take number one. When you press
a button on your firestick on the remote, is there

(28:16):
any sort of indication that something is happening on Do
you have a stick or a box? Okay, so it's
on the back of the TV. Have you tried using
your phone as a remote control to see if the
fire TV stick is still functional?

Speaker 4 (28:34):
Did not know you could do that?

Speaker 1 (28:35):
Okay, So that's the first thing I would do is
make sure that your fire TV stick is functional by
downloading the fire TV app to your phone and it's
the fire to let me get the exact name. Do
you have iPhone or Android? Okay, So just download Amazon
fireTV app okay, and that will connect to your will.

(28:58):
That will turn into a remote control for your firestick.
So just make sure that works. That's like the first base,
just to make sure that everything's working on your firestick. Okay.
The second thing I would do, and the reason I
tell you this is because, look, you're having an issue,
but there are many other people listening that may have
similar issues in the future, and I want to give
the proper troubleshooting kind of steps that we can all take.

(29:20):
So this helps everyone with whatever issue you're having with
the firestick, because these things do have issues from time
to time. So first off, download the remote, make sure
everything works. Then once you see that that's working properly,
I would go into the settings on the fire TV
stick and I would do any sort of software update.
Most of the time, the fire TV stick is going
to do its own software updates, but sometimes it takes

(29:41):
longer than if you did it manually. So go into
the settings and make sure your fire TV stick is
up to date fully with the software that it should
have on it. So that's number two, Okay, Okay, now
you're on step number two. So everything your fire TV
stick seems to be working. Your phone is working as
the remote. Now we figure out if this is a
remote control problem. So did you change the batteries in

(30:02):
this remote control several times?

Speaker 4 (30:05):
We had several different new batteries. We've changed them.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Okay, So fresh batteries you put in the remote. Okay,
So once you get to that step that you have
the fresh batteries in the remote, I would I would
do the reset system that you did for the remote. Now,
for some reason, Amazon makes it really tricky to unpair
and repair these remotes. I don't understand why. Maybe it's
to protect the consumer from random unpairings. I don't know.

(30:31):
But there is an official help page on the Amazon
website that you know, like you said, hold the left button,
the menu button, and the back button at the same time,
and they want you to do that when you've unplugged
the fire TV stick. So basically, you unplug the stick,
then you hold those buttons on the remote for twelve seconds.
That will unpair the remote. Then you take the batteries out,

(30:54):
then you plug the fire TV stick back in. It
will say make sure you see that screen that says
remote can be detected. Then you put the batteries back
of the remote, then you press the home button, and
if the leid indicator on your remote blinks blue, it
is paired successfully. So those are all the steps. I know.
It sounds like a lot Rosemary, but it's one of

(31:15):
these things where you have to kind of start at
the beginning and make sure that things are working properly
before we can say, okay, there's a problem with the
remote or there's a problem with the fire stick. But
either way, sometimes these things just go bad and it
could be that you have a bad remote you need
to get a new one, or it could be that
the fire stick went bad. Was what was the message
on the TV screen? You told me you had.

Speaker 4 (31:37):
The message that popped up which we never got before
we upgraded to that new spectrum Fox was unknown device detected?

Speaker 1 (31:48):
And that was that generated on the TV? Or is
that generated from the actual on the TV?

Speaker 4 (31:54):
And we were not on fire sticks? O? Fine, okay,
so that watching regular channels?

Speaker 1 (32:00):
What type of TV do you have? What brand?

Speaker 6 (32:03):
It's an LG.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Okay, it's not.

Speaker 4 (32:05):
It's not a smart TV, which is why we bought
the fire sticks. But it is an LG.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
Okay, so, uh, that's that's an odd message. I'm not
sure why that came up. It is is your is
your TV connected to Wi Fi or internet?

Speaker 4 (32:20):
Well, it's connected everything through spectrum, But is.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
The TV because you said it's not a smart TV,
So do you have that connected to your networking anyway?

Speaker 4 (32:30):
No, everything is connected through the box through the Wi Fi.
I mean we have Wi Fi spectrum. Everything we have
to phone the internet.

Speaker 6 (32:38):
It's the channel box.

Speaker 4 (32:39):
Everything on that. The TV is just it's just a
cable coming running through it. It changed out the cable
and it's just plugged into the outlet.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Got it? And do you have another TV as well
in your house?

Speaker 4 (32:52):
We plugged that one for okay, other.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
Reasons because I was going to say, because you could
test this fire TV stick on that TV as well
and see how long have you had this fire to
know what?

Speaker 4 (33:03):
Yeah, we can, we can, we can, We still can
do that. We will do that and try that. But
I will remember everything that you told me because I.

Speaker 6 (33:10):
Was taking notes.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Okay, very good, and I will link up everything. I
will link up the the instructions, the official Amazon instructions,
because sometimes there are some other instructions out there that
aren't proper, but I'll put the Amazon ones on the
website on the show notes. To get to the show
notes rich on tech dot TV, you hit the light
bulb up at the top. This is show number sixty nine,

(33:31):
and so just look for your question and I put
the link right in there, and it's in real time,
so you can go there right now and find that link. Rosemary,
thanks so much for the call. Appreciate it. Oop Sorry, Okay,
So man, those things that is so so tricky when
that stuff happens eighty eight rich one on one eight

(33:52):
So I don't know what the latest was on the
on the TikTok stuff last week when I talked to you,
but the president has signed a law that bans TikTok.
This is the video you know, you know, TikTok. It's
owned by the Chinese company Byte Dance. So at this
point they now have nine months to sell TikTok to

(34:13):
a US company. If a sale is in progress and
there's progress being made, they can get an extra three
months to complete the sale. If they don't do this,
the app will be banned in the United States. We're
talking almost a year from now, Okay, so we still
have a whole year for the legal ramifications of this
and the debate and all that good stuff. So that's

(34:37):
where we stand right now. We don't know if this
is going to be banned officially, but right now, as
it stands in the US, TikTok has to be sold
or banned. But we still have a year for this
to all sort of figure itself out. You are listening
to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(35:00):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The
phone number eight eight eight rich one oh one eight
eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Give
me a call if you have a question about technology.
Website also an option. Just go to rich on tech
dot tv, hit contact and you can find my email

(35:24):
there or send me an email there. I should say, also,
while you're on the website, you can follow me on
social media. Rich on Tech is where you can find
me on Twitter now called X. How long are we
going to keep saying? Twitter or formerly known as Twitter
or Twitter or X or X or Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube,
LinkedIn so many places, and then I've got some other

(35:51):
links there as well. Sign up for the newsletter for
sure while you're there. It's a great, great easy read.
I usually send it out on Saturday mornings. You could
drink your coffee with it and you'll be like, Oh,
I need to bookmark that. Oh I need to book
Oh I need Oh that's I need to download that.
Oh that's a good website. So you'll have a lot there.
Got an email from one of the earlier callers, Parry

(36:13):
in uh, I guess it was Parry, not Perry Parry
and Glendale Hope all as well. Thanks for taking my
call and your insight success. I deleted my email account
and reloaded it and everything is fine. Now where's the
clapping now here? It is? There, it is. We've got

(36:35):
a live studio audience in here. They got to hold
up that applause signed for them. Okay, let's see. Oh,
Kim hold on. Kim is telling me it must be
pronounced the same because he said Perry like Perry Mason. Okay, well,
maybe Perry is Perry Parry Perry Tomato tomato. Let's go

(36:57):
to Jose in Santa Clara, California. You're on with Wretch.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
How you doing.

Speaker 6 (37:02):
I'm a first time caller. And here's my situation. My
local internet at home. It's Comcast and I have a
two on one cable motormen router. So what was going
on was I was renting this box for five years
from Comcast. I decided the rent is too high to
rent this box. I bought the same exact box at

(37:24):
the local best by. I brought it home and I
own it. And when I brought it home, I had
Comcasts install it. When I installed it on the unit,
it's called an airis two on one motive and router,
and it was a basic sticker on the side with
a generic password and user ID. Comcast hooked it up.
In the last five years, I've never changed the user

(37:45):
ID or password. And I have no idea how to
update the software if I need to. I have no
idea how to log into the RAS box itself. Do
I have a FireWire? I have no idea. Am I
expecting problems? Am I idiot? Tell me what should I do?

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Well, You're not an idiot, that's for sure, Especially the
fact that you're thinking about this stuff. That tells me
that you have a high level of intelligence. So good
job there. So a couple couple of things Number one,
how much were you paying for the rental and how
much did this motive for five years? Oh wow?

Speaker 6 (38:18):
And I bought the modem at the local best buy
for one plus act five years ago. Had a generic
password and modem password on the side of the unit, right,
I can't even say you what it is so basic?

Speaker 5 (38:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (38:31):
Yeah, I'm thinking that probably every fifth unit has the
same password and the same user ID. I've never changed it.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Well, okay, so I mean, yes I would. I would
probably change that. So a couple things just to break
down your question. So it looks like your break even
with this new modem was about seventeen months, and so
what I typically recommend, you know, I think that if
your company is charging you the modem rental fee, you know,
it's tough because if you're staying there for a long

(38:59):
time then and it's it might be better to buy your
own modem. I think sometimes the companies take a little
hands off approach where they kind of scare you and say, oh, well,
if you buy your own modem, we're not going to
help you, and you know that's on you. And then
of course that scares people away from doing what she did.
But once you get it set up. These things are
pretty much set it and forget it. The technology on

(39:19):
modems does not drastically change over you know, the course
of time like you know, so a modem lasts a
really long time most of the time. So anyway, so
to answer your question number one, I think that if
you have a modem that is rented from the company,
typically they are sending through software updates and things like that,

(39:40):
so you since you purchased this modem now. Also, most
of the modems these days, the wife are the username
of the password are typically not generic. Now, the user
ID might be admin, but typically from what I've seen,
the passwords are are pretty complex. So if you do

(40:02):
have a complex password but it's still admin, then you know,
I think you're fine there. Now. If it's admin and
then the word password for the login, then I would
definitely change it. But I think most of the tech
companies with these products have gotten a little bit better
about not using admin password as the password. And again
that's so the way to access this. If you want

(40:25):
to go through and update that information and also update
the firmware on this modem, what I would do is
look on the bottom of the modem. It might even
be on that same exact sticker that you're talking about
that's on the modem, and typically it will have an
IP address, so it might be something like one nine
to two dot one six ' eight dot zero dot one.

(40:48):
That's kind of the default. And so you go to
your web browser on your computer. Make sure your computer
is directly connected to this modem. Don't do it over
Wi Fi because you may disconnect the Wi Fi and
then you're going to have a problem. So make sure
the computer is directly connected with a cable to the
modem if you're trying to make any changes to this modem.
Very very important there. So go to that address on

(41:10):
your computer and it should bring up a login screen.
That login screen will log you into that modem directly,
and then you can go through and you can check
for a software update or a firmware update, I should say,
and you can also change the password. Now I'm telling
you this as what you can do. I'm not necessarily
saying you should do this. This is a little bit

(41:31):
of a higher level of tinkering, and if you are
not fully tech savvy, I don't typically recommend the average
person should do this, because if you make any changes
on that modem. You see a setting in there, you're like, oh,
that looks cool. Let me flip that switch and see
if the Internet is faster in my house. You may
have some problems and then you may have to call

(41:52):
your cable company to have them come out and fix it,
and they're not going to be happy and they're going
to charge you so and you're going to be without
internet for a while. So I would not change these
things unless you know what you're doing. Now with that said,
if you want to see what your options are for
this stuff, you can Google search the RIS ar R
I S which is the brand of the modem that
you just talked about, and the modem model number, and

(42:15):
you should see some of the support pages for that.
So if you go to the RIS website, they've got
like at the bottom it says support and you can
look up. They actually have a picture of every modem
that they make and you can tap it and see
your modem and see the information for it. But again,
if you have a modem that you're renting from a
company like Charter or Spectrum or Exfinity or whatever these

(42:36):
companies are, typically they are sending through the required software updates,
and when your modem resets, it will install those software
updates or keep saying software, but it's really firmware updates,
and they're pretty rare most most of the time. You know,
there's not too many. Now, if you have something like
one of the more modern router modem setups like an
Ero or you know these what's the other brand that

(43:00):
everyone has, any of these mesh networks, they are typically
doing their own software updates all the time, so they're
getting software updates a lot. And so again, if you
have the app on your phone, it should tell you, hey,
we're gonna update or we updated your software overnight. I
typically get those email or those notifications from mine all
the time. So that's my recommendation. But if you if

(43:21):
you feel like you need to change that password because
it's a really generic, simple one, then go ahead and
change it. But you know, don't don't tinker too much
unless you really know what you're doing, because some of
this stuff, once you change it, it could be messed up.
And believe me, I've done that. I've you know, I've
done the thing where I connect and then it's like
you know this and that, So just be careful anytime

(43:43):
you're you're changing those settings. Let's see Samsung eight eight
eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Samsung rumor mill says
the next Galaxy Unpacked event date will be on July
Uly tenth, twenty twenty four, in Paris, France. Why Paris, Well,

(44:07):
they are Samsung is a sponsor of the Olympics, and
that makes a lot of sense. Now the date July tenth,
twenty twenty four. I'm trying to think when Unpacked was
in South Korea. That's the one I went to last year.
It seems like it was around that time. Let's see
when was it July twenty seventh? So is the end

(44:32):
of July July twenty sixth? Yeah, in South Korea? I
went to that one. I hope to go to this
one wherever it is. And let's see here, what are
we going to hear about at Samsung's next Galaxy Unpacked event.
This is not the event for the S twenty five
that we are still on. The S twenty four those
are typically on a cycle that goes from February to February.

(44:56):
This is for the foldable devices. Those are on a
cycle from July to July. So there's a cadence with
Samsung where they put out their S twenty, their S
series in the early part of the year, and then
the foldables in the summer. So we're talking the Galaxy
Z Flip, the Galaxy Z Fold, but there's also going
to be the Galaxy Ring. This is their first smart ring.

(45:19):
So we've got the Galaxy z Fold six, the Galaxy
z Flip six, the Galaxy Watch seven, new wireless earbuds.
And again this is all rumor mill this is not
this is not set in stone. Samsung has not announced this.
But I'm just telling you for planning reasons. If you're
thinking of maybe getting a new foldable, you know, either way,
if you want the latest, greatest, obviously wait until after

(45:41):
the event in July. Or if you want to discount
on the current ones you've had your eye on them,
wait until the event in July. So we're in that
kind of in between phase right now. Now. It's only
you know, the end of April, so you've got May, June, July.
You still have three months to make a decision here.
But anyway, just keeping you up to date. Eight to
eight Rich one eight eight eight seven four to two

(46:02):
four one zero one. Find me online. Rich on Tech
dot TV Coming up. I'm gonna tell you why you
should not solve a fifty dollars problem with one thousand dollars.
I'll explain. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with

(46:25):
you at eight eight eight rich one O one eight
Coming up this hour JR. Ray Fiel, tech writer and
author of the Android Intelligence newsletter. He is going to
talk all things Android, give us the update on the
new features coming out on Android, and also a preview

(46:47):
of what's happening at Google Io a couple of weeks here.
So I'm excited to talk to JR. Eighty eight rich
one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. So I get a call. I'm
on a run this morning, as I typically run before
the show, and I get a call from my dad.

(47:08):
And you know, I've got a rule when my parents
call or my family, I answer the phone, no matter
what I'm doing. And so I answer the call, and hey, Rich,
I'm at the store. My iPhone won't charge. What do
you mean? I won't charge, you know, cee iPhone. I
gave them, by the way, so I typically give my
old devices to a family member instead of selling them.

(47:31):
And so you know, somehow the issue is still mine
because it's a phone that I gave them. So I said,
what do you mean it doesn't charge? Well, I plugged
it in overnight and it just has a big red
battery and it says still find a ble. I said, well,
sounds like the battery is not charging. Well, I'm here
at the Apple store and that's what they said. But
they plugged it in and it charges just fine. It
comes right on. I said, well, sounds like you're charger

(47:53):
is not working. Okay, So you don't think I need
a new phone. No, I don't think you need a
new phone. You just need a new charger. And so
my thesis here don't solve a fifty dollars problem with
one thousand dollars. So depending on who you get at
the store that you're at, right, And it seemed like
he had someone that had the heart of a teacher.

(48:15):
So I like that he was with someone that said,
you know, here's your options. But you know, you could
be in a situation where you have an issue with
your tech and it's a very simple issue, and someone
that's advising you is giving you a very expensive solution.
So this could have been a very expensive solution where
they said, Okay, your thing's not charging, let's get you

(48:37):
a new phone. And in fact, this person did show
them on the battery indicator, and so this might have
been a little bit of a salesy kind of thing.
But you can go on most phones, Android and iPhone
at this point into your battery health and see what
your battery health is. And so my battery health right now,

(48:58):
I'm at ninety nine percent maximum capacity, and I forget
on the Samsung we talked about this, I think you
have to download a separate app to get the battery health.
It's like, I think like a Samsung Members app or
something like that. But that'll tell you the maximum capacity
of your battery. So if you've been using your phone

(49:20):
and charging it over and over, you know for a
couple of years, your battery capacity is not going to
be one hundred percent anymore because your battery degrades over time,
and so your battery capacity maybe eighty five percent. So
if your phone used to last six hours or let's say,
you know on screen screen time, and now it's only

(49:41):
lasting five It could be because your battery is just
not charging the same way it used to charge. Doesn't
mean your phone needs to be replaced. It just means
your battery doesn't last as long. So anyway, he did
say his battery was at seventy nine percent, you know,
the battery capacity, And I said, well, yeah, your phone's
a couple of years old, so it's going to be.
It's a it's a hand me down phone that I
used for a couple of years and now I gave

(50:02):
it to you, so it's going to be at seventy
nine percent. Does that mean it's no good? Absolutely not.
I mean it's still fine until it doesn't work for
you anymore. Now, if you were having to charge it
every half an hour throughout the day, yeah, that'd be
a problem. But anyway, so I said, here's my solution,
Number one. Clean out the port on the phone, the
charging port, because he said it wasn't charging in the car,

(50:23):
wasn't charging at home. Because I said, try different chargers, No,
none of them are working except the one here at
the Apple store. Well, it sounds like it's the charger.
The port so clean out the port. He said, oh,
that's what they're doing. I said, okay, we'll start with that.
But at the end of the day, you can use
wireless charging and try that. So go buy a wireless charger,
spend the thirty forty bucks whatever it is for the

(50:45):
cable and use that. And if you're if the bottom
cable doesn't work ever again, which sounds like it was
working anyway, so that was it, and he bought the cable.
I haven't heard the update, but my point is, don't
solve don't solve a cheap problem with an expensive solution.
This happens all the time in the tech world. We
throw stuff away, we buy something new. You know. It's

(51:09):
one of these things where go through the steps of
figuring out what is happening. Maybe you just need a
software update. Like a good example, your phone is just
being wonky, right, and it's just giving you all kinds
of error messages and it's slow whatever. Well, before you
buy a new phone and spend all that money on
a new phone, why not just do a factory reset

(51:29):
of your phone. Make sure it's backed up before you
do that, but do that factory reset, and then you
can get a clean start and once you reinstall your
apps and whatever, and if you're still having problems, then
you can get a new phone. But again, don't just
like throw away stuff because it's not working properly. Talk
to someone that knows what they're doing. Get them to

(51:50):
help you out figure this stuff out. It's probably a
cheaper solution than getting something new now some tech. Clearly
it's you know, cheaper to get new tech, like in
the case of the fire TV stick. The woman we
talked to earlier. If if all those troubleshooting solutions don't work, yeah,
just spend the thirty five bucks on a new Fire
TV stick. But again, use your judgment. Eighty to eight

(52:12):
rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Rich on Tech dot tv
is the website for the show. Coming up, we are
going to talk to the author of the Android Intelligence newsletter.
We'll talk all things android. You're listening to rich on Tech.

(52:33):
All right, welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
here hanging out with you, talking technology. Let's welcome to
the show Jr. Raphael tech writer and author of the
Android Intelligence newsletter Jr. Thanks for joining me. Hey, Rich
great to be here, Thanks for having me, Thanks for chatting.

(52:54):
So it's actually it's funny. We we scheduled you to
come on the show a long time ago. And of
course this is kind of like the quiet time in
the world of Android because we've got Google Io coming
up in just a couple of weeks. So typically they
put out all their stuff that they want to get
out before the big announcements of io. Explain what Google

(53:16):
io is for maybe someone who doesn't know, Yeah, sure,
So it's one of those things.

Speaker 7 (53:21):
You know, Apple has an equivalent, they call it WWDC.
He's all started out as really geeky developer conferences, and
they still are to some degree, but they've also become
a little bit of a showcase for the companies to
show off their latest and greatest stuff. You know, we'll
always see or at least hear about a new Android version.
We'll see some new hardware, some new pixel devices, and

(53:42):
kind of get a big picture overview of what they're
working on, where they're taking things in.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
The next year.

Speaker 7 (53:48):
And then there will be the super technical developer stuff
as well. But as far as the keynote goes, that's
really become at least half, if not more kind of
aimed at average normal people as opposed to developlopers and
kind of like sort of the state of the Union
for Google and what's new, What's next, all.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
That kind of stuff, which I love because I love
seeing what they're doing and working on. But I'll tell
you what annoys me about it is that I see
all this cool stuff and then they're like, yeah, it's
coming sometime, and it's like, you know, it takes it
sometimes takes a year for that stuff to actually, like
until almost like the next ioe for some of those
features to be released. Yeah, Google and all the tech

(54:26):
companies through that. To some degree.

Speaker 7 (54:27):
Google is particularly bad about it, to the point where
among people who write about and even sort of the
hardcore Android enthusiasts and fans and Google service fans, it's
become an ongoing joke.

Speaker 1 (54:38):
It's sort of the catchphrase is that it'll.

Speaker 7 (54:40):
Reach you in the coming months, and they don't even
give you you know, it's not like in two weeks
or in three weeks. It's in the coming months, and
as you said, that could be seven weeks, it could
be a year. Every now and then there's something that
this announced, it never even comes out, so you do
have to take a certain grain assault that, uh, this
is what they're working on, and then yeah, you can
kind of gauge it a little a new and version,
Yeah that's going to come out at a certain cadence.

(55:02):
But when it comes to the loftier, really high tech, ambitious,
cutting edge stuff, sometimes it's still a little more conceptual
when they're showing it off in an event like this.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
I always say the worst phrase in the tech world
is rolling out to users over thenext dot dot dot,
And it's like, no, when I hear something, I want
it immediately. I want that feature the second that it's available,
which is right now, because you just told me about it.
Which is one thing I kind of like about the
Apple side of things is that when they come out

(55:33):
with a software update, everyone gets it at the same time,
and it's it's pretty you know, blanketed. Versus Google, it's like, oh,
depending on the phone you have, depending on the model,
depending on this that. So anyway, I don't want to
harp on all the negative. Let's talk about the positive.
So what are you looking forward to at Google io
this year?

Speaker 7 (55:51):
So you know, they're always surprises, and I think those
are always the most interesting because the stuff we're expecting,
the new Android version and Roid fifteen we've been hearing
about it is in beta. You know, we're at the
point where a new software version usually isn't earth shattering,
it's nice.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
There are a lot of little niceties.

Speaker 7 (56:05):
I think what'll be most exciting is to see what
we're not expecting yet. There's obviously a lot going on
on the AI front with artificial intelligence, varying degrees of
should you care?

Speaker 1 (56:16):
Is it really going to do anything?

Speaker 7 (56:18):
But but we know that'll be a common theme, a
core thread of almost everything coming up at this year's event.
More than anything, I'd like to see a cohesive vision
for how this stuff is going to show up and
why why we should be excited about it. Not just
because we can or because everyone else is doing it
and it's table stakes right now. But here's what it'll
do for you, you know, in a practical, realistic sense,
and how it will help you today, tomorrow, in the.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Coming weeks, whatever the case is for me.

Speaker 7 (56:42):
Google's always at its best when it's forging its own path,
when it's coming up with something new and unusual. That's
always been true for Android when it's leading the way
doing something different as opposed to just copying and catching up.
And you know, all sides, Apple, Google, both they kind
of go back and forth between here's a cool new
thing and oh yeah, here's what the.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
Other guys did six months ago, and we're going to
catch up. So it'd be nice to see more of that.

Speaker 7 (57:03):
Specifically, in terms of hardware, I'm pretty interested to see
the next wave of Google made Pixel products.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
We're usually around this time.

Speaker 7 (57:10):
We don't see them all, but we'll see probably the
Pixel eight A, which is kind of their mid range,
more affordable phone. This will be the first year that
more than likely nothing officially yet, but more than likely
it'll come with a promise of seven years of software updates.
So I think that's gonna be the big story with that,
you know, for a phone the sills.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like probably my number one phone
recommendation to the average person is the Pixel A series,
because and I get it, iPhones are great, but like
if you want something that's like inexpensive but really good
and just lasts forever, those are great devices.

Speaker 7 (57:45):
Well they're great, and you know they were great for
three years of software support, which was the previous standard.
If they're coming with seven Now, you know we're talking
this year's well, this past year's model, the seven A
was five hundred bucks.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
It's eventually marked down. I think now you can get
it for like.

Speaker 7 (57:59):
Maybe three fifth So even if this year's is the
same a little more, I mean you divide that out
by seven years a bit guaranteed to remain current. And
because Google makes it unlike when you get into phones
by Samsung, Motorola or as you said before, as kind
of any man's land as to if and went up
base will reach you a Google phone, you get him
on the same day or within a few days when
they come out. I mean you're talking about eighty five

(58:20):
bucks give or take a year for the full period
of advisable ownership.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
When it's up to date. That's pretty cool.

Speaker 7 (58:26):
And then on the other end, there's also the pixel
fold to the second jan of Google's folding phone. We
don't know for sure that it'll come out this year.
It came out around this time last year, or was
at least discussed around this time initially, so I'm.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
Really interested to see how they move that forward.

Speaker 7 (58:39):
The folding folding phone realm is just so new and
unusual and a lot to be proven there.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
So I'm intrigued by that for sure. What is your
preferred device the at this point?

Speaker 4 (58:50):
Are you?

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Have you gone foldable or you you know you Samsung?
You Google? What are you doing?

Speaker 7 (58:55):
I always use and recommend Google's own Pixel phones for
most people. A large part of it is just what
we were talking about with the updates. Samsung does a
lot of things well, but it's not consistent when it
comes to providing those software updates, and you know, you
can say, who cares. Some people don't worry about it,
but there's a lot of important under the hood things
going on in terms of security, privacy, all that. So
for me, I carry the Pixel eight Pro, kind of

(59:18):
a higher end model of last year's main flagship. I
spent a lot of time with the Pixel fold. I
really liked it and was super tempted. It was at
the point where I could see myself going there, maybe
with another generation or two. I wasn't quite one over yet,
but it was really the first folding phone that I
could see myself using between the form the software. Unlike

(59:39):
the other foldables we've seen in the States so far,
when it's folded up, it's not just like an awkwardly
skinny candy bar, like a remote control. It was just
kind of like a small phone and then when you
want something bigger, you can unfold it. I really liked it,
even though I didn't personally go for it yet, but
I could have very happily used it for the last
year and been you know, thrilled with it.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
Yeah, I thought I was going to use it, and
I I really do like it. It's just that that
small screen on the outside, even though it's a better
form factor than a lot of them, it just still
felt like I was cramped, and I just I hate
feeling that way when I'm like, well, these we have
so many great modern smartphones. And also I found myself
not opening up the inside screen ever, like why would

(01:00:18):
I need that, Like I just if I'm gonna do
something like that, I'm gonna be on my computer or
I'm gonna be on a tablet. And so I just
didn't really see the point of having this thing that
like I couldn't put a case on. You know, it's heavy,
it's hot, and it's just you know, it wasn't the
best camera on the pixel anyway. And by the way,
I don't back to the Samsung stuff. I don't want to,
you know, be the Samsung defender here, but I will

(01:00:39):
say that Samsung has really stepped up their game in
the past year or two when it comes to software updates.
I think they are doing a much much better job
than they ever have, especially with how many phones they
have to do updates with. So I do think that
that has gotten a lot better in that aspect. So, Okay,
so I want to I gets to me because I

(01:01:00):
know you write the Android Intelligence newsletter. I want people
to get some cool apps and things. So do you
have any like killer Android apps you should download or
any tips that we should know? Yeah? Sure. So.

Speaker 7 (01:01:11):
One one of my favorites, and this is sort of
one of those Android power user tools that you don't
hear about and you know, average people aren't aware of,
but you should know about, is something called buzzkill.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
It is the best way I can describe.

Speaker 7 (01:01:23):
It is kind of like Gmail filters, but for your
phone's notifications. So you can set up it's super simple
to do. You just set up these like if this,
then that rule. So for instance, some things I use
it for like if I get a notification from my
Messages app that has my wife's name in it, meaning
it came from her. I can tell my phone, hey,
remind me about this every few minutes, every two minutes
or ey four minutes, whatever until I acknowledge it, because

(01:01:44):
you know somebody's hear you get a buzz in your pocket,
you don't notice if it's something important, maybe you do
your boss's name whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
Can you also have set ignore forever just asking for
a friend.

Speaker 7 (01:01:53):
Absolutely, And that's my second example. So with my brother,
love him to death, but he's one of those people
who will text like rapid fire, incessantly, lots of little messages,
which you know, fine, whatever, but it reaches a point
where you're in the middle of something and you feel
the buzz, then another buzz, then another buzz, and you
know it's like, I get it, you're messaging me. I
don't need to have a notification for like every seven

(01:02:15):
times you hit to the entry key. So with him,
I haven't said to you when it has messages with
his name, don't let it alert me more than once
every five minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
So you can do a lot of cool stuff. And
it's just it's so easy.

Speaker 7 (01:02:24):
I mean, it's kind of programming, but it's literally just
if this, then that you tap a thing and you
fill in the blanks of if this happens, and you
know it gives you the feels to put then do this.
So that's really one of my favorite kind of next
level power user tools. That's also one of the kind
of cool things that's something unique to Android because of
the way it's able to tap into the system and

(01:02:44):
do certain things that Apple doesn't typically allow.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
Oh yeah, and Apple doesn't allow a lot of things.
We know that. It's funny because like ninety nine percent
of my answers for people when they're like, why can't
I do this on my phone? I'm like, well, Apple
doesn't allow that. That's number one, and so let's start
with that. But you can work around it by maybe
doing this. So all right, tell us about how to
get the newsletter.

Speaker 7 (01:03:06):
So if you just go to the Intelligence dot com,
we've actually got a few.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
So I write one called Android Intelligence.

Speaker 7 (01:03:12):
Colleague of mine Chris Hoffman, who I think you spoke
with a handful of weeks ago, actually yes, writ it's
a great newsletter all about Windows called Windows Intelligence.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
And then we do one together called Cool Tools that comes.

Speaker 7 (01:03:22):
Out once a week and just introduces you to one
interesting off the beaten path tools that will work on
any any kind of device you want, phone, computer, you
name it. So it's all there at the Intelligence dot
Com and you can pick and choose whichever you want.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
All right, JR. Rayfield, thanks so much for joining me
today on the show. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Good to chat. All right. I will put the the
Buzzkill app on the website rich on Tech dot tv,
which look for Jr's name, and you can also subscribe
to the Android Intelligence newsletter.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
If you have a question about technology, you can be
called eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight
eight seven four two four one zero one. Not to
be remiss. Coming up, I will tell you about the
next Apple event happening soon. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. The

(01:04:13):
phone number eight eight eight rich one one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. So
we talked about Google Io. Apple has a couple of
things coming up as well. So coming up very soon
is the company's Spring event. This is happening on May seventh,
and this is a virtual event. As far as I know,

(01:04:36):
I only got invited to a please watch on your
computer screen. And so it's called the let loose event.
And what are we expecting? So the image, you know,
Apple always sends out these invitations to journalists and then
there's like a logo. Usually it's the Apple logo, but
it's done in a way that people read into it, like, oh,
what's this going to mean for the event. Sometimes it's

(01:04:58):
just a particular color they use that might be the
new color of the phone. Sometimes it's the animation that
they show on their social media and it's like, Okay,
maybe this is for VR. This one looked like an
Apple pencil sketching something and so and typically this is
the time when we see the new iPads. So that

(01:05:20):
is what we are expecting new iPad pros. And according
to Bloomberg's Mark German, he has been saying that this
is going to be the most significant redesign of the
iPad pros in years. I don't know what that means exactly,
because they're already pretty forward facing. They've got USBC. The
rumor says that they're going to change the front facing

(01:05:42):
camera to a better location for video chatting. Right now,
it's on if you hold it to the side horizontally.
The cameras on the left side, which is not ideal
for video chatting. So on a computer it's up at
the top right, so that's theoretically where the camera is
going to be moved. Let's see what else. New processors.

(01:06:04):
Obviously that's always a thing they do. Better screen technology.
That's something they typically upgrade new sizes. So the iPad
air maybe an eleven inch and a twelve point nine inch,
so they will make bigger screens there. Let's see the
magic keyboard, which is the keyboard attachment that's always more

(01:06:26):
expensive than you think. If you go into the Apple store,
you're like, oh, I'll take one of those keyboards. You're like, wait,
how much what? They're very expensive. Apparently that's going to
be updated for a more laptop like experience, and then
the Apple pencil itself might get new tips. This is
from the Verge. They say they might be getting interchangeable
magnetic tips and a squeeze gesture. They already have a

(01:06:48):
gesture on there, like a tap gesture, so maybe the
squeeze is like the next evolution of that. iPads are
one of those things that I don't think anyone is
like waiting necessarily for a new iPad. But it's like
one of those things that like when you go in
and I feel like this is happening with a lot
of the technology. Unless it's something that's like super cutting edge,
most people are just when they go in for that

(01:07:10):
next upgrade, they're just like, oh, that's cool, it has this,
it has that, and now I need to decide between
these different models. But it used to be remember when
like a new phone would come out and they would
have a feature where we're like, I need that, now
I need to upgrade. Now with these new tech cycles
where things are just getting refined, people are more just like, Okay,
that's cool. I'll wait until my upgrade and then I'll

(01:07:31):
have that feature. So there you go. Verizon a five
dollars monthly price hike for the Apple Watch smartphone smart
watch plans. So if you have a smart watch with Verizon,
you probably got an email from them that says, hey,
we're raising the price of your smart watch plan by
five dollars a month. So it used to be ten
dollars a month. Now it's fifteen dollars a month. To

(01:07:55):
have cellular on a smart watch that is a lot
especially can say K because I looked up how much
data I used on my smart watch last month. Are
you ready for this? Under two hundred megabytes? Then I
looked up how much my kid, who only has an
Apple Watch, used and it was like fifty megabytes. So

(01:08:16):
not a very good update of this plan because I
feel like this is very expensive. Verizon says the price
increase will allow them to continue improving their network and services.
Oh thank you Verizon for allowing us to fund your
improvements of the network. Now I get it. It's a company.

(01:08:36):
They need to make money, they need to update their network.
I understand all of that, but on the backs of us,
all we want is an Apple Watch with cellular? Why
do I have to pay the extra five bucks? So
I will be honest, all these price increases, so Verizon
had a one to two punch. Last month they raised
prices on their plans, their cellular plan, and then this

(01:09:00):
month they raised the Apple Watch plan. And so I'll
be honest, I switched my wife off of Verizon this morning.
When I got this bill, I said, you know what,
enough is enough? And so her her plan was about
ninety dollars a month, and now she's paying about forty
five a month, so it took me a little bit
of time. It took me about twenty minutes to make
the switch. But I switched her to a third party,

(01:09:22):
one of these mv and o's all unlimited, all included.
And it's scary, and I get it. This is why
people don't switch their cellular plans. This is why people
overpay so much. Do the math. If you're talking forty
five dollars a month times twelve months, that's almost six
hundred dollars for the year. It took me about twenty
minutes to save that amount of money. Now is the

(01:09:43):
service going to be exactly the same? I don't know.
This is why I test things out. But it took
about twenty minutes to switch over, including poorting the phone
number over and that was the main thing my wife
is concerned about. She said, is everything going to work
the same? I said, yes, it should. Now there's always
that asterisk because there could be a problem. Now, I
will tell you, do these companies make it simple to
pourt out your number? Not really? And I was sweating

(01:10:06):
a little bit because there were some issues where it
was like you need to set up a pin number
and then you need to unlock the phone number, and
those one two things, like I had to keep going
back and like checking it, keep giving me errors, and
you only get five tries before they lock you out
of your account. So I was a little bit nervous,
and my wife was like, if I don't have a
phone line when you leave for your radio show, I'm

(01:10:29):
not going to be happy. And I am happy to
report it did work out. But my point is, if
you want to switch, if you want to take that dive,
read all the instructions and make sure you have all
the numbers in a row before you do anything, because
if you run into an issue, you could be without
your phone line for a bit. But if you get
it right, you could save some big bucks. Rich on
Tech dot tv is the website. More rich on tech

(01:10:51):
after this, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
here hanging out with you talking technology at eight eight
rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four two
four one zero one. We got Bobo doing the robo
bobo robo robo bobo.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
Rich on Tech dot tv is the website. Let's see
what else. You can follow me on social media at
rich on Tech. I'm active on Instagram, Facebook, and x
maybe threads. I've been checking out a little bit more
like a little little peak here in there, mostly because
Instagram really pushes it on you. Uh. Rick in San

(01:11:33):
Diego says, Hey, Rich, I'm not very tech savvy and
I'm a little bit paranoid when it comes to phone apps.
I try to use websites instead of apps. However, there
are times I have to use apps, and there are
some apps I would like to get. When it comes
to permissions, many state they can modify or delete the
contents of your shared storage and also state that they
can read the contents of your shared storage. What does

(01:11:55):
that mean exactly? Does that mean anything on my phone,
including emails, can be read and or deleted by the app?
If so, that seems it would be crazy for anyone
to use the app. I realize most apps are legitimate,
but who knows. Plus the info they can get, I
worry they can be hacked. I appreciate your thoughts. Thanks, Rick,
good question. Rick, and I did sort of address this

(01:12:16):
in a show a while back, and in my newsletter
I said how your phone spies on you? And I
went through all the different categories of what apps can
access or request access to So let's be honest, most
apps need certain access to things to actually function. So

(01:12:36):
when it comes to modifying or deleting the contents of
your shared storage, that means that they get a little
section of the storage space on your phone so that
they can read and write their own information. Most apps
would not be able to work if they did not
have that. Now the place where I would say, so
a couple things. Number one, I'm both it sounds like

(01:12:57):
you've an Android, because I don't think I've ever seen
that on an iPhone. But if you have an iPhone
or Android, you can go into on iPhone Privacy and
Security and then you can take a look at all
the different categories they have. So, for instance, let's just
look at contacts. Okay, So I'm looking at contacts and
I can see there are a whole bunch of apps

(01:13:18):
listed here that have access to my contacts. Amazon, Alexa, Gmail,
Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Photos, Instagram, Meta Signal substacks, Sunshine, Teams, Telegram,
and a couple of others. If I want to revoke access,
like why does my metaview need access to my contacts?

(01:13:40):
I don't think it does. So I can turn that
off in the settings. Same thing on Android, you can
go through and look at your permissions. So go into
your settings and let's see where it is on here.
Let's see Permission Manager, Security and Privacy Permission Manager. So
if we go into permissions, let's see permissions used in

(01:14:02):
last twenty four hours. Okay, then I underneath therasays permission manager.
So it's got body sensors, calendar, call logs, camera, contacts,
files and media health, connect location, microphone. So now let's
just say I'm curious about the microphone. So I can
see all of the apps that have access to my
microphone on my phone, and if you don't want one

(01:14:24):
of those apps to have access to your microphone, you
can turn it off. So, for instance, why does PayPal
need access to my microphone? Thankfully I have that microphone
access turned off because there's no reason why PayPal would
need my microphone. Looking through the ones that do have access,
and let's say Snapchat, you're like, well, why does that

(01:14:45):
need access to my microphone? That would be if you're
recording a video, it would want access to your microphone
to record your voice. So again, these are called permissions,
and I think you're onto something which is you need
to be very careful about the permissions that you allow
access to on these various apps. So if an app

(01:15:06):
is asked, you know, an app's job or goal is
to get access to as many things on your phone
as possible. And I mean, I get it. They're you know,
they're trying to make money, they're trying to gather as
much data about you as possible. And there's even things like,
let's say you allow access to all of your photos.
There have been reports where apps can scan the photos

(01:15:28):
in your library and get an understanding of the metadata
inside those photos, so locations, places, people, and I'm not
saying that happens with some of the popular apps, but
it probably does. And so again we just need to
be aware of these things and aware of the fact
that the way I see it, is that your phone

(01:15:51):
is sort of your own garden, right, and all of
these things are trying to get into your garden to
eat the stuff that you're growing, which is your data.
And so you want to keep those things out as
much as possible. Like you have like a broom and
you're just like, you know, there's like a skunk come
in your way, and it's like get out of here,
Get out of here, skunk or you know what eats
you know, I don't know, rabbit is coming to eat

(01:16:11):
the carrots. I don't know. It's a weird I don't
think anyone's ever described the smartphone that way, but anyway, hey,
why not. But the point is always be careful about
the permissions that you allow on your smartphone. That's my

(01:16:31):
bottom line. And now there is one thing that I
think you need to be very careful about, and a
lot of these apps they ask to use Google as
a log in. Now, in general, I think that you
should not do that. I know it's convenient, but I
don't think you should do that. And the reason why
is because these apps will sometimes ask for permissions that
are kind of out of whack. And what I mean

(01:16:54):
by that is that they may ask for permission to
see your Gmail. They may ask for a permission to
see your calendar, They may ask for permission to see
your contents of your Google Drive. And so you need
to be very careful about the apps that you allow
access to your Google account because that usually has a
lot of information in it and what you're looking for
on that screen. If it does ask for like let's

(01:17:16):
say access to your storage on your Google account. Make
sure that it says its own data inside Google Drive,
not just Google Drive blanketly. And if it's looking for
your Gmail access, be very careful about that. Like if
it says we want to be able to see delete
and you know, rewrite the access of your Gmail, just
be careful because why why shouldn'tn app need that? But

(01:17:39):
good question, Rick, I think most of the time, if
you're careful about that stuff, you should be okay, Diana
writes in on the website rich on tech Dot tv
uh in Covena, what password manager app do you use?
Thank you you are the best? Well, thank you, Diana,
You're the best. So my recommendation for password managers, let
me go through is various fold Number one, yes, you

(01:18:04):
should be using one. Number two. Here's my recommendations. If
you are only using Apple products, if you use nothing
else in the world except Apple products, go ahead and
just use iCloud keychain. It's built in. It's simple, it's
across all your Apple stuff. That includes Safari by the way,
So if you're using Safari and you know, let's say
you have a Mac computer, an iPad, and an iPhone,

(01:18:26):
and you're using all Apple stuff, go ahead use iCloud keychain. Great,
it's free, it's included, and it's simple. If you are
using Chrome as your web browser and you want something
that's simple and built into Google, then you can go
ahead and use Chrome's password manager and you can actually
see if you have passwords stored in here by going

(01:18:48):
to passwords dot Google dot com and that will bring
up your Google passwords if you have them. Some of
you may already have them in there, but again that
will work on Chrome. It will fill in your passwords
when you're browsing the web. It also works on your
iPhone or Android as well. On iPhone, you have to
go into settings and look for autofill and if you

(01:19:10):
have the Google app or the Chrome web browser, you
can fill those passwords across your entire phone using Google Now.
I do think personally that a third party password manager
is always the best way to go, and so for
a free solution, I like Bitwarden. And what I like
about bitwarden is that it is very full featured and

(01:19:33):
it's free, so you can pretty much use bitwarden across
all of your devices for free, and it works on
a variety of platforms. The main thing to know about
these password managers is that they lock you in once
you get a whole bunch of passwords into them, and
you're paying every month or every year. It's tough to leave.

(01:19:53):
I mean you can, but most people don't want to
do that. So Bitwarden is free and you get unlimited devices.
That is pretty nice, and it works across a whole
bunch of devices. And the thing to look for in
a good password manager is the amount of devices you
can install it on, and also you know how much
it costs. Now if you want to step up from there,
if you want some extra features, then I like a

(01:20:16):
password manager called dash Lane. And there's also one called
one password, uh one the number one and then password
and again these work across all of your different devices,
and that's the thing you want to look for. Maybe
use an Android phone with a Mac computer, Maybe use
a Windows computer with an iPhone. You want something that
works across all of these devices, that you can fill

(01:20:38):
your passwords easily no matter what device you're on, and
if you have to pay for it, I mean, look,
I think at this point, you know Bitwarden is a
great free password manager, but if you have to pay.
You know, this is they're not that expensive, So I
would you know, if you want to support these companies
that are you know, saving your passwords for you, go ahead,

(01:20:59):
but is free, So that one's always nice, But that's
what I recommend. So I don't think there's one size
fits all for password managers because of the reasons I
just explained. Thanks for the question, appreciate it. Rich on
Tech dot tv is the website phone number eight eight
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
two four one zero one. We've got a great guest

(01:21:20):
coming up this hour, Troy Hunt. He's gonna talk about
what to do when your personal information is exposed in
a data breach, plus more of your questions coming up
right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking
technology at triple eight rich one O one. That's eight

(01:21:41):
Email for the show rich on Tech dot tv. There's
the website. You can email me there or you can
let me let me tell you about what's on the
website real quick while I'm here. So a couple things.
It's it's a little bit different than it has been

(01:22:01):
in the past, so if you haven't been in a while,
check it out. Redesigned it and hopefully it's easy and
self explanatory. But up at the top, I've got links
for my podcast, my TV segments tell you about the
radio show. Then there's a light bulb. The light bulb
will give you real time links to whatever I mentioned
on the show. So if you're listening live and you say, oh,

(01:22:22):
what was that, and you just said, just click the
light bulb. Then you've got contact, which is my email,
and front and center on the website is my newsletter.
So if you read the newsletter, it's a lot of
good information in there. I send one out every week typically,
And then you can scroll down and see my TV segments.
Let's see what else the podcast and some interesting interviews.

(01:22:43):
And then on the right you can see the social
media links that I've got on there, and I added
a new one referral links, so if there's different products
or things that I like, I can throw them in
there and then you get a couple bucks off if
you try them out. And let's talk about YouTube. I
thought this was interesting. So if you have an Apple TV,

(01:23:04):
they have that default screen saver that is basically those
beautiful videos that Apple has shot, you know, all kinds
of cool landscapes and things which a lot of people
have grown to love. But YouTube has gotten slick and
now they show their own screen saver on Apple TV

(01:23:24):
and this comes from nine to five MAC. People are,
I guess, complaining, saying, wait a second, why is YouTube
hijacking my Apple TV screensaver that I know and love.
So when a video is paused, the YouTube screen saver
shows a zooming slide show of YouTube thumbnail art. Now
that's probably not very exciting when you're used to these

(01:23:46):
beautiful like Grand Canyon kind of landscapes. If you don't
have a video pause, the YouTube screen saver shows a
screen show, a screen show of a slideshow of generic
still images from videos. Either way, these both don't sound good.
I have not seen this on my Apple TV. But yeah,
that's interesting. I have seen a very big trend by

(01:24:11):
all these streaming apps where when you pause the streaming app,
they show an AD and I thought that was pretty
interesting because it's actually quite genius because it gets your attention.
You pause your movie, and all of a sudden it
shows an AD. Now I have not seen this on Netflix,
but I have seen it on Peacock and I think
Direct TV had it and maybe HBO Max. But the

(01:24:34):
workaround if you see if you're seeing the YouTube slide show,
when you want to see your Apple TV slideshow, basically
you go into the settings on your Apple TV, look
for screensaver, and you want to start the screensaver now
after two minutes, and that way it kind of it
goes before the YouTube screensaver. So, yeah, I thought this

(01:24:57):
was pretty funny. There is a keyboard me bobo. Did
you see this on Twitter? I don't know if you
saw this, but there's this meme where it's like, look
between the two letters and it basically urges users mostly
on what's that? Did you see it?

Speaker 2 (01:25:16):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
Yeah, I mean come on, I thought it was pretty funny.
It's hilarious and creative. Yeah, I'm wondering who was at
boord to realize something like that. Did you so you
you saw this and you kind of looked. So one
of the examples was, uh, someone would say like, uh,
will you go out with me? And the person would
say like sure, look between the letters H and L
on your keyboard and JK, yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:25:39):
Just kidding it's.

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
Kind of funny. So people are doing all, you know.
So obviously I was sitting there like searching the keyboard
for something that I could do. So here's the one
that I came up with. I said, uh oh, my
kid came home with his report card today. I asked
him how he did. He said, look between the D
and the G and what is that? And F Yeah,

(01:26:02):
you know, goodwill, you'll say as they bring it home.
No help on that report. No, I know they're not,
but I just, I mean, I don't know. I thought
this was pretty funny. It's one of those things where, like,
you know, it's just the I don't know where these
things come from. I mean, if I read more of
this story that I'm telling you about, i'd probably find
out where it was. Uh oh. It first emerged in
twenty twenty one, I guess. Wow. Okay, so this has

(01:26:24):
been around for a while, but it just popped up
on Twitter. So if you see these things, you know
now you know what they mean. I just, you know,
I find this. I'm not a fan of all the
internet culture, like the meme stuff that pops up. It's creative, Yeah,
it's crazy, very creative. And I was really trying to
find one. I did one that fell flat. I said,
oh my gosh, these keyboard memes have gotten out of control.

(01:26:45):
I just heard Dave Matthews renamed his famous song. You
know he's got a song called the Space Between. Yeah,
I said, he renamed his song to look between the
C and the B. And what does it point to?

Speaker 5 (01:26:59):
Okay, I'm telling them, I'm Michael Off.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
Now there's a V and at points to the space
bar the space between. Anyway, that one was really tough.
I think that actually got like there was physical crickets
on my Twitter timeline because people were just like, no, Rich,
I think that was your nerdiness coming out. Was I
was just reaching. I was reaching this strong. That was
a really strong reach. It just did not work. So

(01:27:22):
I thought my my report card one was pretty good though.
That one was good. I laughed at that one. I
saw it all right. How many times have you gotten
an alert? Oh, your information has shown up on the
dark web, or your information has been exposed in a
data breach? Coming up, Troy Hunt, creator of Have I
Been Poned dot Com, is gonna explain what to do
when your personal information is exposed. You're listening to rich

(01:27:46):
on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro
here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight
Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Well you've probably heard
me talk about the website Have I Been Poned? This
is a data breach website that lets you see if

(01:28:06):
your personal information has been compromised. Joining me now is
the guy who created it, Troy Hunt, a web security consultant. Troy,
thanks so much for on the show today.

Speaker 5 (01:28:16):
Hey, Rich, thanks for having me so explain to me
the website.

Speaker 1 (01:28:20):
First off, the name I've you've probably heard it said
wrong a million times?

Speaker 5 (01:28:24):
Did I say it right?

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
And what does that mean?

Speaker 5 (01:28:27):
Yeah? I think you did a pretty good job of it.

Speaker 8 (01:28:29):
Look, it's a gaming culture reference, which is a mispronunciation
of owned. So if you look at your keyboard, the
owned the P key right next to each other, legend
has it someone.

Speaker 5 (01:28:39):
Type poned instead of owned?

Speaker 8 (01:28:40):
And then the name stuck is in You know, Hey,
I've just like shot you in the game, I've owned
you puned you.

Speaker 5 (01:28:45):
So now having been honed.

Speaker 8 (01:28:47):
In information security context is more around having had some
sort of compromise to you in your Digital Life got it?

Speaker 1 (01:28:54):
Okay, very good, Now we know. So the website, let's
you see if your personal information has been compromised. Explain
kind of the functionality of this website and what made
you come up with that.

Speaker 5 (01:29:05):
Well, look, it's really pretty simple.

Speaker 8 (01:29:06):
When there's a data breach and the data's spread out
there around the web to some extent or another, Have
I Been poned? Aggregates it and that puts the email
addresses in there, and then you go along and put
your email address in it says well, your data has
been in a data breach or poned as the term is,
in these various locations. So for example, maybe you're in
the drop box data breach or the LinkedIn data breach,

(01:29:28):
and this is one central repository that can give you
a pretty good overview of that.

Speaker 1 (01:29:32):
How do you find the data that's in these breaches?

Speaker 5 (01:29:35):
Yeah, look, it's fascinating.

Speaker 8 (01:29:37):
Have I Been Paying started just over ten years ago,
and when I initially started it, I went out and
found the data and it was primarily the Adobe data
breach from twenty twenty thirteen or was twenty thirteen, which
made me started, and over the course of time that
very quickly people started to turn around and go, hey,
look there's all these other things out here, you know,
let us send you the data breach for the ones

(01:29:58):
I mentioned, Dropbox, Adobe, all these other things. As of today,
there's seven hundred and sixty seven data breaches in there,
mostly from community contributions, people popping up saying hey, this
data probably should be searchable and impacted parties should know
about it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:12):
What kind of information can you search? You said, the
email address. So you search your email address, it shows
up in the breach, and then what how do you
use that information?

Speaker 5 (01:30:22):
Yeah? Good question.

Speaker 8 (01:30:23):
So the data breach, depending on the nature of the breach,
there's all sorts of different information compromised.

Speaker 1 (01:30:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:30:28):
I keep mentioning LinkedIn and Dropbox because this is the
names that most people will know. They had email addresses
and they had passwords and that was about it. Many
people would have heard of things like Ashley Madison back
in twenty fifteen, where it's like, well, now this is
a this is a hookup site. Imagine the sorts of
personal information that you leave on a hookup site. Now
none of that goes and they have I been paying?
The only thing goes in there is email addresses and

(01:30:50):
then it comes back and says, hey, look, you're in Dropbox,
so your email address and your password are at risk. You're
in National Madison, so your email address, your password, and
your data, birth and your sexuality, and you find on
ready all of these other things are in there as well.
And then you need to decide what action you have
to take to protect yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:31:05):
What are kind of your security recommendations for the average
person to proactively protect their online privacy.

Speaker 8 (01:31:14):
Look, the number one thing by a massive margin is
not reusing passwords. And the one piece of product place
that I have on the website is for a password manager.
Because the only way we can keep our passwords genuinely
strong and unique is we need a.

Speaker 5 (01:31:29):
Tool to do it.

Speaker 8 (01:31:30):
And what we're saying with many of these data breaches,
they begin by password reuse. So maybe it was an
administrator somewhere reuse the same password in one location got compromised,
and then that password use to access the.

Speaker 5 (01:31:42):
Database on another service. For example.

Speaker 8 (01:31:44):
We see many data breaches that are the result of
things like credential stuffing. So this is where we get
lots of data breaches. Email adresses and passwords leaked, packers
get them, they join more together. Sometimes there's billions of
email a dress password pairs, and then they go, let's
just go and try them on all the other websites,
and it's mass automated.

Speaker 5 (01:32:02):
It's done at really really high volumes.

Speaker 8 (01:32:04):
And suddenly, because you've reused your password across sites, someone's
now into your social media, a council or whatever else
it may be.

Speaker 5 (01:32:11):
Where you've you've readused those credentials.

Speaker 1 (01:32:14):
How often do you think someone should be checking your
website when they hear the headlines? I mean, recently we
had the AT and T breach, we had a Roku hack.
So do you go to the website every time you
hear about one of these things?

Speaker 8 (01:32:27):
Look at easy answer is no, because there's a free
notification service. Put your email address in there and you'll
get an email from me if there's a new data
breach that impacts you. The AT and T data is
already in there, Roku has not turned up. It sounds
like Roku is actually an example of the credential stuff
when we just spoke about where it's not that they
have a vulnerability in code per se, but hey, people

(01:32:49):
use the same password on LinkedIn is what they do
in their streaming media box and you know people are
in there, so anyway, if that turns up, that are
going to have a Van Paine and people get an
automatic email if you leave it on the website.

Speaker 1 (01:33:00):
What are the kinds of security questions you're getting and
what are we facing moving forward? Obviously AI is probably
going to play a pretty big role in security moving forward.

Speaker 8 (01:33:10):
You know, probably the most prevalent issues at the moment,
and one of the most common questions is when we
get rid of passwords?

Speaker 5 (01:33:17):
You know, like it is there a passwordless future?

Speaker 8 (01:33:19):
And the sort of joke about it a little bit
because I remember so clearly ten years ago people saying,
you know, it's the password dead yet when we're gonna
get rid of passwords? And that the truth is we've
got more now than what we ever have had. We
are getting very.

Speaker 5 (01:33:31):
Good password alternatives.

Speaker 8 (01:33:33):
People might have seen past keys reference in the past,
lots of services you can use past keys on. We
have things like second factor authentication, universal two factor keys
you can check in the USB drive to authenticate. So
we're moving in a direction where there are alternatives that
The challenge we have is the friction of change and

(01:33:54):
the one thing the poor password doesn't get enough credit.
One thing the password does really, really well is everybody
knows how to use it.

Speaker 5 (01:34:00):
My little kids know how to use.

Speaker 8 (01:34:02):
It, my parents know how to use Everyone knows how
to use a password. And we're trying to sort of
drag people from something that's very familiar and easy to
use through to something that's much more secure but requires change.

Speaker 1 (01:34:12):
Do you like pass keys? Do you think that the
average person should jump into that now or is it
sort of something we should weak to do.

Speaker 8 (01:34:20):
Look, they're a good thing. I certainly use them in
multiple locations. They have upsides and downsides which then get
very difficult to explain to the average lay person, And
I think the average person is, O, hang on, isn't
that just another password? So yeah, it kind of is.
You just don't have to remember it. Your device remembers
it all right? Well, which device on my PC?

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (01:34:37):
It could be your people. Well, then how do I
sink it to my iPhone? Because I log into my
social media from both services. So I think the consumer
centric narrative around how these things work has just got
a bit of a way to go.

Speaker 1 (01:34:50):
What have you learned in the ten years or so
that you've had this website?

Speaker 5 (01:34:54):
So I think this is the lesson for me that
data breaches are a bit of an inevitability and the
way the organization handles it as the defining characteristic of
how they'll be judged.

Speaker 1 (01:35:04):
What do you make of those services that purport to
take down all of your information off the web?

Speaker 5 (01:35:11):
Well intentioned? We'll start with the positive. Well intentioned.

Speaker 8 (01:35:15):
So there are a lot of services out there that
will usually for a fee, remove your data from data aggregators.
So there are these things out there called data aggregators
where you know how you like, You go to a website,
you feel out of competition, and there's a little bit
down the bottom and it says I agree to the
terms and conditions, and I've read them, and you agree
to it.

Speaker 5 (01:35:34):
You never read them, you agree to it.

Speaker 8 (01:35:36):
Somewhere in the terms and conditions that said we may
use your data for a product enrichment or some rubbish
like that, where they then sell that to other people.
They're shady in my view, but they're legally operating. So
the services that are out there offering to remove your
data will remove it from services like that. Now, I
don't want to get spam and marketing material, but what's

(01:35:58):
much Worse than that is attacks and blackmail and extortion
and identity theft. And that's what happens in the much
shadier corner of the web, well beyond the reach of
these services that remove your data. So when we see
things like AT and C, you cannot be removed from
the AT and T data reach because tens of thousands
of people had it now because it's published on the
Internet and it's easily downloaded by anyone. So my concern

(01:36:21):
is that they're well intentioned. They do a good job
of taking you out of the least dangerous places, but
they can't take you out of the worst places.

Speaker 1 (01:36:28):
Troy Hunt tell us how to access the website.

Speaker 5 (01:36:32):
Have I been poned dot Com? That's like owned a
bit with the p all.

Speaker 1 (01:36:35):
Right, Troy Hunt, web security consultant, thanks so much for
joining me today.

Speaker 5 (01:36:38):
Appreciate it. Cheers rich the website.

Speaker 1 (01:36:41):
Once again, Have I been poned dot Com? Pwned? I'll
put a link to it on my website.

Speaker 5 (01:36:48):
Rich on Tech dot TV.

Speaker 1 (01:36:50):
You are listening to you, Rich on Tech. This song
goes out to Kim on the rich On Tech radio show.
It's so good we played it twice. Welcome back to

(01:37:10):
Rich on tech rich on tech dot tv is the
website for the show. Trying to get through a couple
of items of note here before we get to the
feedback segment, so I might go a little fast, but
everything's linked up on the website. Rich on tech dot
tv hit the light bulb for the show notes Rabbit
R one. This is a AI device. It's got a touchscreen,

(01:37:34):
a scrolling wheel, a push to talk button, and the
review units went out this week, so a couple people
you actually had to buy one of these to get one.
I did not get one. I feel like a lot
of these AI products are very early stage and I
just don't see the point compared to having your smartphone.
Maybe I'll change my mind when a good one comes out,
but this one is two hundred dollars. Early reviews say

(01:37:57):
it is sort of unfinit limited buggy at launch, but
it is an interesting gadget for AI tech enthusiasts and
early adopters to experiment with. But it's not a smartphone
replacement just yet. You could do things like ask it
questions using AI, can take pictures of things and identify it.

(01:38:18):
It's got integration with like Uber, door, Dash and Spotify.
But again, all these things are much easier just to
do on your phone, So keep an eye out for
the rabbit are one and other AI devices. They're not
there just yet. Better Business Bureau warning about a new
scam text messaging scam where they send you a text
that says you got to pay your toll for some
sort of road that you went on, and it is

(01:38:40):
not legitimate. I could see why they try this one
because I've been on those toll roads where it's like, oh,
just you know, you go on these roads and ride
now pay later. You get a bill in the mail
for like three hundred dollars, You're like what, So be
careful if you get a text that says you have
to pay a toll, be very very critical of that text.

(01:39:01):
Ring is going to refund customers or sorry, the FTC
is sending five point six million dollars in refunds to
Ring customers as part of a settlement addressing privacy violations
and security failures. I don't know if you remember this.
This was a long time ago, but Ring had like
employees that could see private videos without consent, and so

(01:39:21):
they paid a fine to the FTC. Now the FTC
is sending one hundred and seventeen forty four PayPal payments
to eligible Ring customers who had certain devices during the
timeframes when unauthorized access occurred. Now here's my concern here.
You're going to get this, You're going to see scam
artists trying to parlay this into a scam. So I

(01:39:42):
gonna say, hey, we're the ftc We've got your Ring money.
Just you know, fill out this information or log in
with your PayPal, So be very critical of that as well.
Even though this is legitimate, anything that's legitimate, the scam
artists find a way to trick you. And then I
thought this was pretty cool. This was in the Window
Intelligence newsletter this week. An easy way to share files

(01:40:05):
between any devices on your network. So you know, we've
got quick Share, we've got nearby sharing, we've got air drop.
This isn't a free open source tool, so if you're
always sharing files between your devices and you want something
that's quick and easy, it is called local send. The
website is let me see local send dot org. There

(01:40:26):
are apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. So
you install this program and setup takes about fifteen seconds.
Install the app, open it on your other device. Anything
that's on the same network. You'll it'll show up on
your phone or your you know, whatever the device is.
They'll say, do you want to send this to this device? Sure,

(01:40:47):
let's see now. Keep in mind, the cool thing about
airdrop and quick share is that they are ad hoc,
which means you don't need an Internet connection or a
network for them to work. So this one, you will
need to be on the same network for these things
to work. I think that's the big difference. I've not
tried this, but I love the sound of it. The

(01:41:08):
other one is a web based alternative. It's called snap
drop and snap drop I've used before. It works pretty well.
It is snap drop dot net. So again, all these
sort of like services for sending files between devices. Hopefully
this will all be a lot simpler when Apple allows

(01:41:28):
the rcs on their iPhone, you'll be able to send
big files like a big video file or a big
file or a big picture between iPhone and Android. That'll
be happening later this year. That'll be a huge win
for consumers. All right. Now, time for the feedbag segment.
Feedback plus the mail bag equals feedbag. These are the emails,

(01:41:50):
the comments, and the questions I've gotten from you. If
you'd like to submit yours, go to Rich on tech
dot TV hit contact. Jim in Portland says, hey, Rich,
I've been really thinking a lot about what you said
regarding how we're automating so many jobs, and on one hand,
I think it's cool. On the other, it's not inclusive
and may not be welcome. I'll tell you why I'm blind.
I've found that many restaurants now have touch screens when

(01:42:11):
it comes to ordering food. Of course, they're not accessible,
the ones that are few and far between. If I
go with someone, I can have them help me use
the tablet, But most of the time I'm by myself,
and because of these inaccessible tablets, I'm no longer independent.
And if I ask an employee for help, what's the
difference between that and just ordering from a human. There
was a McDonald's I went to that didn't have anyone
working there except for the people making food. That was

(01:42:34):
not cool. What about the folks like me who like
ordering things a certain way. I know that certain tablets
generally have things already on the menu. I wouldn't settle
for that where a human can write down my order
and hopefully get it right. I do agree you do
agree with you about things like taxis and ubers. However,
I'm a bit leery about leaving everything to automation because
I like to ask questions and I want to know information.

(01:42:56):
I know the world is going to all this cool technology,
and I love toys as much as the next tech nerd.
But people really don't think about including people who can't
always access it. Excellent point, Jim, and I think the
accessibility part of the equation is a huge one. I
think in many ways it adds to the accessibility and
in some ways it does take away. Laurel also commented

(01:43:16):
on the automated cars. Don't like them. Among other things,
they have blocked emergency vehicles going to calls and also
crashed into emergency vehicles going to calls. Fire departments and
police and ambulance companies want to get rid of self
driving vehicles. Laurel Nol in scndido says, Hey, Rich love
the podcast. Listen to one last week where you had
the guy talking about radar apps you can use to

(01:43:37):
track flights. You mentioned flight Radar twenty four. A cool
feature is the ar feature in the corner you point
it at an aircraft in flight overhead and it will
tell you details on that airport, on that airline destination.
Very cool. I also use radar box, flight Aware and
globe Dot a DSB exchange dot. That's a tough one.

(01:44:01):
And of course the app you mentioned Flighty and I
looked up this ADBs exchange. It is so cool. It
shows you an image of every plane in the sky.
It is really cool. And he continues now on AI
taking over jobs. I would rather eliminate the pilot who
blabs on while we're trying to watch TV. I don't know.
I don't want to know where we're flying over. That's
so nineteen seventies. The pilot who keeps his interruptions to

(01:44:24):
a minimum. They are safe in my book. And yes
I am a pilot. All my best. Keep up the
good work. Let's see San Gabriel Don says, hey, Rich,
I love that you covered the what three words app.
I wanted you to know that the app is much
more than handy. I just retired from a forty year
career at the LAFD. The app has literally been a
life saving piece of technology. I love all that you do.

(01:44:47):
I just wanted you to know how important this technology
has become thank you, and Don says, I've listened to
talk radio since I was young falling asleep. That has
gotten too repetitive, so I turned to a few podcasts.
Yours is number one on my list. Glad I help
you fall asleep. It might be to take me a
week to go through the entire show, but everything you
discuss is interesting to this retired guy who likes to

(01:45:07):
investigate how things work. Don. Thank you, Don Rich. I
love your Saturday show and your KTLA segments. I also
applaud your patience with callers. Peter, Thank you Peter. And finally,
Bob and Sharon says, thank you Rich. We love your
show both on TV and radio. Wow. I couldn't have
said it better myself. Thank you for the feedback. If
you want to submit, go to Rich on tech dot TV. Well,

(01:45:30):
if you can believe it, that's going to do it
for this episode of the show. You can find everything
I mentioned on my website. Just go to Rich on
tech dot TV. You can find me on social media.
I am at rich on tech next week. Let me
see what I got coming up next week. Oh, Airbnb's
having a big event. We'll talk about that. Let's see
we'll talk more about dumb phones, you know, the smartphones,

(01:45:54):
the opposite of those. Thanks so much for listening. There
are so many ways you can spend your time. I
really do appreciate you spending it right here with me.
Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Bobo on
the board, thank yourself. Thanks Bobo, there you go, Kim
on the phones. We've got Bill, We've got Julie. Who

(01:46:15):
else makes this show possible? So I don't know. My wife,
she lets me come here and do it, so I
mean that's probably pretty important. And my kids who give
me great ideas, and you, of course, thanks to you.
My name is Richdmiro. I will talk to you real soon.

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Rich DeMuro

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