Summer Tech Roundup: Foldable Phones, AI Music Lawsuit, and EV Innovations

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's the summer of foldable phones with upcoming reveals from
both Samsung and Google. Prime Day is back, How not
to Get Scammed and Xbox comes to the Fire TV Stick.
Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on on rich
Demiro And this is Rich on Tech. This is the

(00:22):
show where I talk about the tech stuff I think
you should know about. It's also the place where I
answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should
be interesting, useful and fun. Let's open up those phone
lines at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

(00:45):
Once again the phone number to call if you have
a question or comment about technology one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Email is
also an option. Just go to the website rich on
Tech dot TV. Hit contact. That will make your message.
Your message will make its way right to my screen

(01:07):
and I do share those on the show from time
to time in real time too, guests. This week, I'm
going to head to VidCon twenty twenty four. This is
an annual convention that brings together digital content creators, their fans,
and industry professionals all in one place. I was there
this week in Anaheim. It was so inspiring and interesting.

(01:30):
So I'm going to talk to some of the organizers
and attendees at VidCon twenty twenty four this hour, next hour.
Chris Mattman. He is the new Chief Data and Artificial
Intelligence Officer at UCLA. So I thought that was really
interesting because this is an entirely new job category. We're
going to talk to him about what that means and

(01:51):
what it means for you if you're thinking about a
role like that. And finally, later on in the show,
Bob Carpenter, President and CEO of g D one Us,
is going to talk about the fiftieth anniversary of the barcode. Yes,
that little thing that my kids like to scan at target,
turning fifty years this week. Now, this week was a

(02:13):
big week for foldable phones. Well, we don't know that
to be the case just yet, but we expect it
to be the case. So a couple of announcements. First off, Samsung.
Samsung finally unveiled where they will hold their next Unpacked event.
It will be held on July tenth in Paris, France. Yes,

(02:34):
I am so excited. It is my first time going
to Paris, France. I will be there for the unveiling,
which will happen at three pm Parisian time and six
am Pacific time nine am Eastern time, and of course
the event will be live streamed on Samsung dot Com
probably on YouTube as well. So what are they expected

(02:56):
to unveil. Well, this is going to focus on their
Galaxy Z series foldable phones, that is the Galaxy Z
Fold six and then the Galaxy Z Flip six. Now,
if you think about those two phones, the fold opens
up like a book, where the flip opens up like
almost a I don't know, keyboard, but the mad libs

(03:18):
how would you describe that? I'm not really sure, but
you know, one opens vertically, one opens horizontally. Now, last
year these were some pretty good phones. They made some
pretty good improvements to them. They made them close flat
like they folded closed flat, which was really nice. This year,
we're hoping for some better upgrades, like maybe to the
cameras and also specifically to the outer screen on that fold.

(03:41):
It is still way too narrow to be highly usable
for the average person, so hopefully Samsung made some improvements
there and made that phone just a little bit more usable.
They're also going to focus a lot on their Galaxy AI,
and this is their blend of different things you can
do on the phone, whether or it's photo editing, whether

(04:01):
it's translating text messages and summarizing notes, things like that.
I think it's really interesting because as much as Samsung
likes to differentiate their phones, they're kind of running into
an issue with Android at large because so many of
the features that they're building into their phones eventually become
a standard Android feature, and so they have to kind

(04:22):
of make these adjustments later on where Google comes out
with these features in Android. So a lot of these
Galaxy AI features are sort of already now being baked
into the Android phones in general, and so Samsung usually
does it a little bit differently, puts their own spin
on it, and sometimes it just becomes a standard Android feature. Now,

(04:43):
the other thing that they are going to unveil is
this highly anticipated Galaxy Ring. So this is their smart
ring that is said to rival the Aura ring, and
I've worn the Aurora ring. I think it's incredible. I've
also been wearing a ring from a company called a
maze Fit and it's really good. These rings, I see

(05:03):
a lot of potential for them because they're simple, they're easy,
they're always on your finger. They're very easy to wear
to sleep, which means you can get really nice sleep
metrics without a big thing on your wrist. And so
the Galaxy Ring, of course, will fit into that whole
ecosystem of the watch and the Samsung phones. And now
you've got the ring, and so that will be really

(05:25):
interesting to see what that's all about. I don't expect
a lot of surprises there. It's probably gonna have a
lot of AI features, but you know, it's going to
do the standard stuff, you know, track your heart rate,
track your oxygen, track your sleeping. And I think that'll
be a nice growth area for Samsung because you've got
a lot of Samsung fans out there and this will
work nicely in that ecosystem. Right now, Samsung doing a

(05:48):
deal where they will give you fifty dollars pre order
credit if you give them your email address. They're also
promising up to fifteen hundred dollars in trade in credit,
so if you have one of these foldable phone owns,
you might get a nice trade in that helps them
pump the numbers, you know, for like the sales and
pre sales and all that stuff. No obligation, you just
give them your phone number or your email address rather. Now,

(06:10):
not to be outdone, Google, just hours after Samsung's big announcement,
they came out with their own announcement. They said, you
know what, hold my beer. We're going to have an
announcement on August thirteenth for our new Pixel devices. And
let's see if I can find the actual invite that

(06:31):
I got from Google. Hey, let's see August thirteenth, Mountain View, California.
This email does not confirm your registration. Please click the
RSVP button. Hey, Rich, You're invited to an in person
made by Google event where we'll showcase the best of
Google AI, Android software and the Pixel portfolio of devices.

(06:53):
So what does that mean? Kind of a head scratcher,
because two things going on here. Number One, these devices
that Google are putting out, or is putting out, I
should say, they're going right up against the Samsung devices. Now,
Google and Samsung work very closely these days. But it's
interesting that they're competing in this foldable space. So we're

(07:14):
gonna see Pixel devices, including the new Pixel fold I'm
guessing that none of this is confirmed. Obviously, they just
said Pixel portfolio. So what does that mean? The rumor
mill is saying there's gonna be the Pixel nine and
two sizes of the Pixel nine Pro. Just what I said,
I said, give me a Pixel nine Pro where I
don't have to have this big phone I can have

(07:35):
all the great features but in a smaller size. So
it sounds like they may be doing that this time around.
We're also looking at a larger pixel Watch three coming
in two different sizes, so the standard size they've got
right now forty one millimeters and also a forty five
millimeter size, which that'll be nice because the bigger screen
does give you a lot more benefit. And then maybe

(07:56):
some new Pixel buds. Now, this is the interesting thing.
This This event is typically held in October, so usually
the cadence is Samsung shows off their devices, then Apple
and then Google. But this year it is now Samsung,
then Google, and then Apple brings up the rear. Now,

(08:17):
we are not expecting any foldable phones from Apple, but
you know, Apple kind of lives in a world of
their own, so it's not like a lot of people
are trying to decide between a foldable phone and the
latest iPhone. But if these things have enough great features,
maybe Samsung and Google might be able to win some
of those potential upgraders from Apple who have already seen

(08:38):
what iOS eighteen is going to bring, and maybe they're saying, eh,
I'd kind of rather maybe try something a little bit different,
little new this time around. Emphasis on AI once again,
both Google and Samsung and Apple, they have all emphasized
their AI offerings. I have been trying out a lot
of this stuff, both from Samsung and Google. It's kind
of all over the place right now because because you know,

(09:00):
there's a lot of this AI stuff, but it's kind
of like not necessarily perfectly baked in. And I'm kind
of curious to see what Apple's going to do because
there's is much more baked into your device where it's
accessing your text messages, it's accessing your email, whereas like
Google's and Samsung's, you know, it's just kind of like
more for translation, more for summarization, and I do like

(09:23):
Gemini for getting some up to date answers, but it's
kind of slow and it's not always like, you know,
the best out there when it comes to these answers.
So we're gonna have to see how this all shakes out.
The other thing that's happening that was announced this week
is Prime Day from Amazon. So Amazon's tenth annual Prime
Day that will happen on July sixteenth and seventeenth. Of course,

(09:45):
as usual, they are promising millions of deals across thirty
five categories for Prime members. So that's the notable thing here.
You do have to be a Prime member. Of course.
They're giving a thirty day trial to Prime available for free.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Some of the things they're promising up to forty percent
off Sony wireless headphones, thirty percent off Peloton products. Peloton
sadly needs the help because you know they're not doing
so great these days. Forty percent off Amazon Basics and
Amazon Essentials. And right now you can get three months
free of Audible and five months free of Prime Music.

(10:21):
So again, Prime Day happening on July sixteenth and seventeenth.
Coming up. I'll tell you how to avoid getting scammed
on Prime Day, all right? The phone number four, the
show eight eight eight rich one On one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one, the
website rich On tech dot TV. We'll get to your
calls next. You are doing something smart. You are listening

(10:43):
to 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 eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,

(11:03):
talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one
zero one. If you have a question about technology, give
me a call. We'll get back to the phone lines
in just a moment. This week I visited VidCon Anaheim.
This is an event that brings together creators, their fans, merchandise,

(11:24):
and brands. It's basically a one stop shop to celebrate
all things creators and the Internet. First, I spoke with
Sarah Tortoreadi about how this event brings all these different
elements together. So what is VidCon all about.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
It is about converging all of the things about digital
media in one place. We've got the biggest creators, We've
got all of the fans of those creators. We have
up and coming creators who are here to learn how
to be the next big creator.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
And we have the industry.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
Anybody who works in the digital media industry, all of
them are here in one place, and it really makes
it a magical experience.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
So what have people come to VidCon for all different things?

Speaker 4 (12:01):
Right?

Speaker 3 (12:01):
The fans come to meet their creators, to see them,
to hear from them, to meet and mingle with other
like minded fans of those creators. The creator check is
for people who are really trying to build their business
online learn how to be the next big creator and
the industry here is here to network here from the
creators to learn about how to really drive their business

(12:22):
forward with what's happening right now in the digital media
and creator ecosystem.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
How do you define creator people?

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Anybody who makes content and content that people watch. You
can be a creator and have five followers, you can
be a creator and have a million followers. It's really
about making engaging content and you know, things that people
want to.

Speaker 5 (12:43):
See and hear about.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Give me sort of a state of the industry of
being a creator and what is that like right now?

Speaker 3 (12:53):
It is the celebrity right, Hollywood is no longer just Hollywood.
It's really like the kids care about people who are
making content, people who are on YouTube, who are on Instagram,
who are on TikTok, And that is what is driving
culture right now, gen z, Gen and Alpha.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
That's what they care about. And a VidCon holds events
in different cities. Now it started out just in one place.
Now you're in different cities.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
Why because we think that there's an appetite for what
we do elsewhere. We have become Mexico in August. This
is our going into our third year and we also
are going to our second year in Baltimore. Content creation
digital content creators are big around the world, and so
what we do has relevance.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Is this the biggest one, the biggest event? Yep.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
This is our thirteenth year. So this is our bread
and butter, which is why it's so big and amazing.
The other two are up and coming, but you know,
we have confidence that we can build them moving forward.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Colin Hickey, also from VidCon, has been with the event
for a long time. He talks about how it's expanded
and changed.

Speaker 6 (13:57):
So start in twenty ten by Hank and John Green
degree brothers who are authors and YouTubers and entrepreneurs and philanthropists.
And it was started in a high regency in Los Angeles.

Speaker 5 (14:07):
It was about twelve hundred people.

Speaker 6 (14:09):
You know, Hank and John just noticed that YouTube fandom
and community was really becoming a thing, and they wanted
to create a convention to kind of celebrate that. And
so we went from twelve hundred people in la and
to you know, fifty five thousand people last year in
Anaheim and we're in We've been to five different countries
and continents, and yeah, we're all over the place.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
What has changed in the thirteen years that you've been
hosting vidcom?

Speaker 6 (14:35):
I think, obviously, I think the size of the convention
is one thing. You know, it was there wasn't these
giant booths back in twenty ten. But like the fandom
has grown, the platforms have grown. Back then, it was
normally just YouTubers and now it's TikTokers and snapchatters and Instagram,
you know. So I think just online video as a
whole was matured and grown up, and we're just making

(14:56):
sure that we're trying to stay consistent with that and
highlight every year.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
So for the people that want to become the next
big thing, are you selling a dream or do you
still think it's really possible.

Speaker 6 (15:06):
I think they're creating stars every day. But we have
kids who was to come to Viccano and buy a
community track ticket. Three years later, they might be on
the side of the building and was one of our
future creators and have a million fans. So I think
some of these kids, we're probably creating superstars every day online, and.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
You've been doing this for a long time, So what
do you like about this? What do you get out
of it? Every year?

Speaker 6 (15:28):
I just love seeing the fans interact.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
A lot of these kids show up.

Speaker 6 (15:32):
They have liked interests, they like the same creators, they
meet at Viccon in person, and they become friends for life.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Alie Rodriguez, an attendee from Coasta Mesa, California, explains to
me the concept of cosplay. Why'd you come to Viccon?

Speaker 7 (15:46):
I came last year and it was really fun, so
I decided to come again.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
What do you like about it?

Speaker 7 (15:51):
I get to meet different creators and it also all
get to waste my money on stuff, and I also
get to dress up. One of the excuses to cosplay,
and I really enjoy doing that.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Explain that to someone who doesn't understand what cosplay is
and why you would dress up.

Speaker 7 (16:07):
Cosplay is like Halloween is like dressing up as a
character for Halloween, but you go to different conventions dressed
up as this as that character, and sometimes you can
make your own like how you do for a Halloween costume,
and it's honestly, like really fun.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Mara Rodriguez is shop running five kids at the event.

Speaker 8 (16:30):
You know what, It's a good outlet for them. It's
a safe space for them to come and just kind
of see their creators that they like to watch on
YouTube or TikTok or whatever. So it's a good way
for them to do in real life versus just always
over the video. But it's good, you know, It's it's clean,
wholesome fun and they just have a glass. It's it's

(16:53):
kind of crazy and NonStop like for three days, but
I think it's worth it.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
What do you think about the difference between the celebrities,
you know, of the previous generation versus today's celebrities, which
are streamers and YouTubers.

Speaker 8 (17:08):
It's really different because obviously you look at celebrities like
in my time, where they were just on the big
screen and you're like, probably not attainable to really get
to meet one of them. But here you come to
these conventions and they are celebrity in their own right
and you get to meet them and they're like super
cool and chill and just very down to earth that

(17:28):
it's like cool, you know, So they don't feel like
celebrity status, but they are just because of the viewers obviously.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
Finally, I spoke with Jordan Matter, a photographer turned YouTuber.
He now has twenty three million subscribers on YouTube and
makes a living off the platform. So how did you
build your channel?

Speaker 9 (17:48):
So I started by doing photography challenges back in the day,
and so the video is as popular as the person
I was photographing. So if I was doing Charlie Demilio
would get a lot of views that kind of thing.
And then I eventually transition over to working with my
daughter because I was missing her, so I wanted to
work with her once in a while, and then that
became very very popular and we've been doing.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
It ever since. And so why do you come to vidcom.

Speaker 9 (18:09):
Because this is where everybody is to talk about everything
creator led and I'm interested and fascinating, and I also
get an opportunity to meet a bunch of people who
watch our videos.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
How long you've been doing this and are you still learning?

Speaker 5 (18:21):
Seven years?

Speaker 1 (18:21):
And yes, never stops. And so tell me about the
life of a creator. What does it entail people? It
looks very easy?

Speaker 9 (18:28):
Is it great question? Because it seems like it's really easy, right, Yeah,
it is the greatest job you can have. So there's
no complaint when I say that we work seven days
a week, and six of the days is to plan
a video and then one day is to shoot it.
So we do all of it to plan out that
one day.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
And what's your tips to aspiring creators? Because kids don't
want to be an astronaut or a lawyer anymore. They
want to be a YouTuber.

Speaker 9 (18:51):
Yeah, and it's a great career, but you got to
do something that is truthful to yourself. So and don't
copy people, do something original, and be consistent. Be consistent.
That's the number of things. Don't give up. Just keep
posting every week, pick a time, pick a day, and
do it every week and eventually you'll find an audience.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
It's been a while since I attended Vidcom, but it
was really impressive to see all of these young people
so infatuated with creators that they can actually meet and
talk to and really get inspiration from. I also love
how Hollywood is changing, the idea of celebrity is changing,
and really the only barrier to entry at this point
is a smartphone. Next up, Vidcom will be held in

(19:30):
Mexico in August, then Baltimore in September. And just to
give you an idea of how big this show has become,
the brand is now owned by Paramount More. Rich On
Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's

(19:53):
eight eighty eight seven four to two, four to one
zero one. The website for the show rich on Tech
dot tv. If you want links to anything I mentioned,
you can hit the light bulb at the top of
the website. If you want to get in touch with me,
just hit contact, and many of you do, so thank

(20:13):
you for that. I do see all the emails. I
can't get to every single one of them, but I
do my best. And if you want to sign up
for the newsletter while you're there, be sure to do that.
I just sent out my new issue today, which talks
about a lot of the things that I talked about
on this show as well. Well you knew this was coming.
The record labels are suing two AI music generators for

(20:35):
copyright infringement. In fact, we played the music that we
created from one of these on the show. So the
RIAA taking action against Suno and Udio. Basically the RIAA,
which is made up of all these major record labels, Sony, UMG,
It's Universal Music Group, and Warner Records, they say, you

(20:55):
know what, how did you train your AI to generate
music on the fly? What did you program your AI with?
What did it learn from? We have a hunch that
it was our songs from our major artists. In fact,
we've heard songs that sound just like Michael Jackson's, that
sound just like Chuck Berry's. So this is going to

(21:16):
go on and on. Obviously, this is one of the
biggest questions in AI at this point. Where are you
getting your training material? Now? Say, some AI systems are
going kind of like the legal route and they're just
you know, they're they're licensing things, and others are taking
more of a fair use route where they're saying, you
know what, we're just kind of using stuff that we

(21:38):
see on the open web, just like anyone else would,
like a human would. And this is kind of a
gray area, and obviously these legal folks will kind of
argue all of this stuff. But there are two sides
to this. I mean, if you think about it, Let's
say I wrote a book and I read all of
the classics, you know, all the Moby Dicks of the

(21:59):
world and all of the different things that people can read,
and then I came up with my own book. Do
you think that book would be influenced by the stuff
that I read as a child or as a teen
in my influential years. Probably, And that's kind of their
argument with this AI. They're saying, look, AI is just
like a human it's like a brain. It's just absorbing
all the stuff that's around it in the world and

(22:21):
then it's spitting out its own kind of stuff. But
these companies that own the materials are saying, not so fast.
You know, these artists need to be paid because you're
you're making stuff that's kind of that's based on their art.
You're writing articles that are based on the New York
Times and the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal articles.

(22:41):
You're creating music that's based on musical artists that we've
paid to create. And so this is definitely the biggest
issue going on with AI services. Where are they getting
their training and we will continue to follow this. But yes,
the record labels, they want their money. They say pay up,
pay up. Let's go to Jenny and Jerry in Costa Mesa. Jerry,

(23:05):
you're on with Rich. Hi.

Speaker 10 (23:09):
Well, I've got a problem with my EPs and super
printer the twenty.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Well, you know I don't take any printer questions on
this show. Jerry, you don't, I don't, so, but I'll
take yours. We'll just hear you out. There's so many,
I joke, because there are so many printer issues, literally
every printer. I don't think I've ever met a printer
that doesn't have an issue. Like even mine has an error.
It's like the equivalent of the twelve o'clock flashing blinking

(23:41):
time on the VCR. Everyone's printer has an error. What's yours? Jerry?

Speaker 10 (23:45):
Well, this is you. You have the four colors, and
you go buy the big things and pill them up
and they last forever, suppose So, okay, I usually just
use the black. I don't use the color stuff ever,
mostly all blacks. Why I got this one, I don't know,
But anyway, I filled the black all up just fine,

(24:08):
but the colors were starting to get down. Maybe like
two thirds of the way down. So I figured, well
out fill those all up, because there's something in the
instructions that tell you if they get to a certain point,
it won't print anymore. Well, about the time that I
read that, it stopped printing. So I went out bought

(24:29):
the four color or three other colors, filled those up.
Now I've got all four of them filled perfectly. Followed
the directions, followed the resetting all the stuff it won't print?

Speaker 1 (24:42):
What is it saying? Why I won't it print? What's
it telling you?

Speaker 10 (24:45):
It's just it's just says it won't even turn onto printing.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Okay, So is there is there a message on it
at all? Or is there a message on the window?

Speaker 10 (24:59):
No message, just the little sing on the printer, you know,
a little small thing, and it just is blanked.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
Okay. So have you unplugged this printer and plugged it
back in?

Speaker 11 (25:12):
Yes?

Speaker 10 (25:13):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (25:13):
And what happens then? Okay, Now when you look at
your the print heads, are they all seated properly? Have
you popped the cartridges out and have you popped them
back in to make sure that they're all seated properly,
because sometimes if the door is not closed.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (25:31):
I followed all the directions for all of that, and
uh yeah, you know, each time set it back up
the way you know, the original setup for the thing
and saying nothing, okay. The other thing only about three
years old, so.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
You know, yeah, oh yeah, this thing should last for
a long time. The other thing, it sounds like it
could be a software issue or something. Is just not
like when you when you've refilled it. It's just not
like regis during again, Uh, is there a way to
do a factory reset on this printer? Can you? Is
there any what? What was the model number again?

Speaker 10 (26:08):
Let's see it's twenty seven, let me do it.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Twenty seven sixty, twenty seven twenty yeah, okay, twenty seven,
twenty seven, fifty seven fifty okay, so let's see if
they're okay. So, uh, the twenty seven to fifty does
have a reset button. So I think what you should
do is basically reset this to factory defaults. And I

(26:35):
think that that that's probably what's gonna help it. Now,
this will take it off of your Are you connected
via Wi Fi on this printer?

Speaker 7 (26:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Huh okay, so it's gonna take it off your Wi
Fi network and you're gonna have to reset it up
on that Wi Fi network. But I think I think
the reset should fix it, because it sounds like if
you're not getting any message, do you see the printer
on your computer when you go to print, like is
it on? Oh it's not even okay, all right, then
it sounds like it might have gotten disconnected from your

(27:03):
WiFi network. I think I think the reset of the
entire printer will will snap this thing back into action.
I'm not sure what happened in the clean and the
refilling process, why why it went dormant on you. But
if you're not seeing it when you go to print
on your actual computer, like if it's not showing up
as an option, then this printer has disappeared off your network,

(27:23):
and so you're not gonna be able to do anything
with it. So it may not be that it's actually,
you know, not working. It may be that your computer
is just not recognizing this printer. So you want to
make sure find the reset button just you know, Google
reset button or Factory Reset twenty seven fifty epsyn and
then once you do that, it will go back to

(27:44):
the factory settings, which means you're gonna have to set
this up from scratch using your computer. So run the
little program on your computer in the settings to find
this printer on and to set this printer up so
it should find it on your network and help set
it up. That should take care of it hopefully. If not,
you may have to get on the phone with EPSYN

(28:05):
and do some troubleshooting with their tech support department. But
that's uh. That's why I don't take printer questions because
there's just too many variables. There's too many things that
can go wrong with a printer in this day and age.
With these printers, they should be very simple. But for
some reason, like my printer, it gives me an error
message that it can't connect to the internet when it's
connected to the internet every single day. It's always been,

(28:27):
nothing has changed, but it's like, hey, if you don't
connect to the internet in the next couple of days,
you're going to lose all your print privileges. Because I'm
on that fancy program with HP where you pay every
month for the privilege of printing from the printer that
you bought at the store. I know, it's a it's
a great everything's a subscription these days, including my own
printer eighty to eight rich one on one eight eight

(28:49):
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Jerry,
thanks for the call, and please submit on the website
and update so I know that you're able to print
one of these days. All right, Coming up, I'll tell
you how not to be scammed on Prime Day plus
team viewer had to hack. I'll explain what that means

(29:09):
for you. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology at Triple A rich one oh one eight
eight eight seven four to two, four one zero one.
Coming up this hour, we're going to talk to Chris Mattman.
He is the new Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Officer

(29:31):
at UCLA. I thought that was an interesting job title,
one that probably didn't exist a year ago, and so
we'll we'll hear what that's all about. Prime Day coming
up here on July sixteenth and seventeenth. Do not get scammed.
Amazon says suspicious email messages increased from five thousand per

(29:52):
week to fourteen thousand per week during the last Prime Day,
and so here's what they say to do. Number One,
verify your purchases on Amazon if you get one of
these text messages that says, hey, we're having trouble with
your delivery. Do not click the link in that message.
They will hack you, They will steal your information, They
will try to do all they can to get info

(30:13):
out of you. Everyone's ordered something on Amazon. Everyone has
a pending package. Instead, go to your Amazon account or
use the Amazon Mobile app to confirm that it's really
a purchase, or if there's any issue, use Amazon's app
and website. They do not ask for payment over the
phone or over email. They will never ask for that,
so it's always through the website. Be wary of any

(30:36):
false urgency. This is a tactic scammers always use. They
try to create a sense of urgency. Hey, we've got
this thing to deliver to you, but we can't deliver it.
We can't finish it because we need this final payment.
Don't do it. Don't be pressured into buying a gift card.
I know it sounds silly, but you know what, I
don't even buy gift cards for people anymore because there

(30:57):
are so many scams. My wife just try to use
a gift card from the Holidays the other day. Didn't work,
just didn't work, and it was like a two hundred
dollars gift card. These things they're getting hacked so often.
People just literally go to stores. They grabbed the gift cards,
they grabbed the numbers off the back you activate it.
They drained the funds. I went to Target to this

(31:19):
was to buy a gift card a couple of months ago,
and they wouldn't even they didn't even have them anywhere anymore.
They're only behind the like the service desk, because they
there's too many issues with it. So the last time
I had to give one to someone, I said, you
know what, Actually, Bobo, you were the last one I
gave a gift card too. Did your just work? Use
it quick? That's my other advice. Yeah, talk to Brittany

(31:41):
when I get home. That's That was the last gift
card I gave to Bobo for his birthday, and I
had to go behind the counter. And you know, cash
seems so like, you know, impersonal, like a gift card
of somewhere where you might use anyway. So the last
gift card I gave to my my niece and nephew,
I just didn't. I just gave him cash because the
gift cards I just didn't want to deal with the scams.

(32:02):
And finally, you can contact Amazon if there's an issue.
But here's the thing. Do not call a number that
you google for Amazon. Go to Amazon's website. At the bottom,
it says get in touch, chat with us. That's the
way you should do it, and then check what others
are saying. If you ever have any sort of scam
issue where you're wondering if this is a scam, go

(32:23):
to the Better Business Bureau scam tracker website. This is
a great website because people are always reporting scams. So
BBB dot org slash scam tracker and you can type
in any keyword. So let's say someone gave you a
job offer through LinkedIn to sell I don't know chihuahuas,
Why would you do that? I don't know whatever? Or

(32:45):
you're trying to adopt a I don't know. There's so
many scams out there. Just search for one of the
keywords on your BBB scam tracker and you will find
other people talking about it. Don't sell pets, adopt them.
Please don't get don't send me the angry. Let's go
to uh Andrew in Huntington Beach. Andrew, you're on with
Rich Hey rach.

Speaker 5 (33:06):
How's it going?

Speaker 1 (33:07):
It is going fantastic. What can I help you with?

Speaker 8 (33:12):
Kind I'm on the road right now.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
My iPhone is when I make a telephone call, I
need to use the speakerphone because the piece by my
ear is so quiet.

Speaker 4 (33:23):
I mean, I can't use it.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Are you on speakerphone right now?

Speaker 4 (33:27):
Right now?

Speaker 8 (33:28):
I'm on my car phone?

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Okay, So what so the the ear piece doesn't work,
it's too it's too soft, and you want to just
switch to speakerphone. Well, I need to use the speakerphone.

Speaker 10 (33:39):
I've my wife to have a fixed Also, I can't.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Play in the stereo music anymore. It just doesn't do it. Well. Okay,
it sounds like it sounds like the ear piece on
your phone is clogged, and that can happen. It can
get blocked up. So I would try, and you have
to be very careful and gentle. But there's kind of
like a little area up to the top of your
phone that, you know, depending on the phone model you have,

(34:06):
you can kind of clean that area out a little bit,
maybe you know, use a little canned air up there.
But if you want to use speakerphone all the time,
if that's the solution, if you can't get this little
earpiece area cleaned out, and that's what the older phones
they have, like kind of that speaker grill up there.
So what I would do is turn on automatic call
routing to speakerphone. And this is an accessibility feature that's

(34:29):
on the iPhone, so you can just have it automatically
answer in speakerphone every time you use it. So you
can turn that on by going into Settings Accessibility and
it's kind of weird. I don't know why they call
it touch. You tap touch, which doesn't make sense because
it's an audio feature, but whatever. And then there's an
option called call audio routing and you want to select speakerphone.

(34:53):
Usually it's set by default to automatic. Again, this is
an accessibility feature, so every time your phone picks up,
it will just automatically into that speaker phone. If you
want to manually do it when you're in a call,
you just go ahead and tap the sound and it will.
It will give you all your options, whether it's Bluetooth,
whether it is the headset piece or or the ear

(35:13):
piece or the or the speakerphone there. So that is
the way to do it, but you know, depending on
your phone, I would I would clear out that little
little earpiece area. Sounds like it got a little jammed up.
So that that happens from time to time, especially when
your phone is getting softer and softer. You're like, what's
happening here, Like is my hearing going or is my

(35:35):
phone just clogged up? And the fact that you're telling
me that you can't hear audio either, like it's not
in stereo anymore, tells me that it's just firing out
of the speaker on the bottom of the phone and
not the speaker on the top of the phone. So, Andrew,
thanks for the call in Huntington Beach. Today, let's go
to Ron in West Hollywood. Ron, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 11 (35:54):
They're Rich. You're a good replacement for Leo. I used
to listen to him all design for years and years
and years. Anyway, I have a Galaxy Galaxy ten. Uh,
it's locked. I can't I've tried everything that I don't
know how it got. My pin doesn't work, and anyway
I'm trying to I don't want to lose all the data.

(36:16):
Oh there's all the everything on it. And so yeah,
everybody could unlock it T Mobile or Samsung or whatever,
but I get to lose all my data. Yeah, and
that's not acceptable. So I went out. I bought a
went out and bought a Pixel eight. I know you
love them. Yeah, I've had nothing but trouble with it.
It just doesn't work like the Samsung. You know.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Well, it's it's different, it's it's sam Yeah. I mean
there's pros and cons of both. But okay, so you
got the Pixel eight. You want to transfer your infoover
or what.

Speaker 11 (36:45):
Well, I would I would happily do that. I can't
do anything with the phone though, because it's locked. Okay,
I mean with the Galaxy, the Galaxy ten, which I wanted.
You know, I would transfer it anywhere. I'd transfer it
to A twenty four or whatever. But you know, you're
really sort of sol when you yeah, when you can't

(37:06):
you can't unlock it. And I've tried everything that I
can think of. And I've also talked to T Mobile
and they said, no, we can't do anything with it.
Will you lose all your data? And I've talked to
Samsung over in Glendale and they said, no, we can't
help you. And so it's like, great, that's fantastic. I've
found one one email one website on the internet. Then

(37:33):
they said, well give so they want twenty six bucks.
I don't care about that. It's just I'd like to
go with someone that's legitimate.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Yeah, well, I mean, look, we've had this, We've had
this question before, and it happens often. And like you said, yes,
if you forget the pin on your phone, you can
easily load up the bootloader, which is what they were
talking about and going to recover, and you can format
this phone and load the software and start fresh. But

(38:07):
with that pin number, there's really no way to access
what's on that device. And this is for iPhone or Android.
It's just it's a safety feature. It's a security feature,
and it's just the way that these phones are built now.
There used to be there used to be a Google
kind of system recovery that when this phone was tied

(38:28):
to your Google account, it would let you do it.
But I have not seen that in many, many years,
and I don't think that this phone would have that feature.
So you may try to enter the code in a
couple times wrong until it says, hey, do you want
to recover your account? If that doesn't show up, this
phone does not have that feature, so it sounds like

(38:49):
because this phone is locked, you're not going to be
able to recover it. And we actually had I remember now,
I remember the caller. This same thing happened, except the
caller had thousands of dollars of bitcoin stored on this phone.
And now I'm remembering. We were going through all the
motions and it was like hopeless, and I said, look,
you have to make it your job to figure out

(39:10):
what your pin code is. Now, Ron, I'm guessing this
pin is just four digits. You got to think hard
and long and figure out what was this code. And
so maybe if you really want this data off of
the phone, you can just kind of put in one
code every day until this thing locks you out. And
the problem is with the lockouts, they get longer and

(39:32):
longer over time. So the first time it may lock
you out for a little bit, next time it's going
to be longer. One more thing you can do. You
can check for a backup of this phone on your
Google website. So go to one dot Google dot com
and you will see it says storage and then backup
and it will say how many devices on your account
You can look through and it will say your device backup.

(39:54):
So right now, I could see I've got four different devices.
These are different devices I've been testing, and I can
see my Galaxy S twenty four Ultra. The last time
it was backed up was fourteen hours ago. I've got
a pixel on there. The last time it was backed
up was yesterday, and I've got an older phone that
says back up incomplete. So you may have a backup
of some of the basics of this device on your

(40:15):
Google account. Check it out. Go to one dot Google
dot com. Uh, I'm sorry, but uh yeah, that's that's
just what's happening here. Yeah, uh eighty eight rich one
on one? What was that bubble? Is it O N
E or the number one? Oh? Sorry, it's O N
E O N E dot Google dot com. On e

(40:36):
dot Google dot com. Uh eighty eight rich one O
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Please remember the pin number that you set
up on your phone. Nowadays they ask you for six digits.
Don't make it something that's easy to guess, but please
make it something that you can remember. You are listening
to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(40:57):
Rich DeMuro here hang out with you talking to technology.
The phone number for the show eight eight eight rich
one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Well it's happened again. I've been
texting people with green bubbles, and what do they say?
Rich What? What? What's changed?

Speaker 4 (41:18):
What?

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Why? The green? I am so sick and tired of
this divide in America. You think there's a divide in America,
The green and blue bubble is the real divide in America.
I'm telling you, these are just regular people that when
I text them, I'm actually scared to text them because
I don't know what they're gonna say to me. I mean,

(41:39):
it's so wild that this is what's happening. So, yes,
I put my sim into an Android phone. And I
don't know if you know what I do for a living,
but I test stuff out. So I'm always trying something new,
and I'm always trying a new phone and a new feature.
And yes, once in a while that involves a non iPhone.
A lot of times it does, and so so it

(42:00):
just cracks me up. It continues to crack me up
when people will say something and I'm like, I don't
know what to say, Like I'm a tech person, like
you know, and they're like, oh, well, it's just it's wild. Anyway.

Speaker 11 (42:13):
I know people that won't date somebody if they don't
have an iPhone, I mean an iPhone.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
I mean that is so ridiculous, so ridiculous. So Samsung's
and iPhones can't mesh. Apparently I don't. I don't get it. Okay,
but here's the good news. Okay, Coming in September, iPhone
will finally support something that's called RCS Rich Communications Services.
What does that mean. It means when you are texting
from an iPhone to an Android and vice versa, it

(42:40):
will show you the delivered, it will show you the
typing indicators. You will be able to send photos and
videos at full resolution. Hall he loujah was my next question.
That's what we need, yes, because I hate getting videos
that looked like it will send over a Nintendo sixty four.
It's ridiculous. And no, and the person on the iPhone,
I mean, now people have an awareness, but you don't
really realize that that's happening. But here's the thing there

(43:01):
the iPhone and I'm not gonna blame Apple, but yeah,
I'm gonna blame Apple. I message is a it's literally
the glue that holds together that three trillion dollar company
or whatever their what's the what's the market cap? Hold on,
let's see what's Apple market cap. I do like the
fact that you can FaceTime anybody, but the iPhone has
to send the Samsung personal link. Yeah, and you can

(43:24):
FaceTime like that, where's our wom Yeah, three trillion dollar company.
I message is the glue that holds together a three
trillion dollar company. And Apple knows this. Why do you
think they've been so protective of I Message? Why do
you think there's not an I message app for Android? Why?

(43:45):
Because it would make it too easy to use an
Android phone and still enjoy those conversations and be on
those group chats with the Apple people. The Apple people
love their little club. It's a little club. They've got
their air pods in nowadays it's just one air pod
in you have you noticed that trend? Oh yeah, yeah,
one AirPod in the year and they say the battery

(44:05):
on the other one, so one does they swap it off? Yes,
my son does that. That is literally I actually asked
people on my Facebook page like why you know, have
they noticed this trend? And I got so many comments,
and one of them was yes, you you have the
two batteries, so you have the one battery, use that
and then when that goes dead, you can swap the
other one. And you know, some people said it's for
safety reasons, so you could be aware of your surroundings

(44:27):
with the one year pod. You know, I'm not knocking it,
but anyway, my point is there's a little club and
that club is finally going like like, you know, there
are other people that are outside that door, behind that
velvet rope, right, they got the androids, and it's like, oh,
let me in, let me in, let me please please.
I know him, Yeah, I see him. I see my
friend there. Let me in. See the one with the

(44:48):
new iPhone. He's got the iPhone sixteen. Wait what so
come September, when when iOS eighteen comes out, all these
issues between the blue and the green bubbles, they will
be solved. Now, I'm not saying Apple's gonna make it,
you know, perfect, because they're gonna They're still gonna keep
a little bit back, right, They're still gonna keep green,

(45:09):
They're still going to keep the blue. But if you
do have these things, yeah, it will be a little
bit better. Okay, enough of my rant team Viewer. This
is a program that I recommend a lot if you
want to help someone with their computer remotely. They were
hacked on June twenty six. But here's the thing. This
was only their corporate IT environment. This does not affect

(45:31):
the consumer data or the consumer product. Something that's very
important to know. So if you see a headline about
Team Viewer being hacked and you say, oh, wait a second,
I've that on my computer, is my computer part of
this hack, which apparently was from a Russian state sponsored
hacking group. This does not include customer data. Team Viewer
says they keep a separate architecture, which means their corporate

(45:51):
IT is separate from their product IT and their product environment.
Team Viewer has been installed on two point five billion devices.
And yes, if you need to help someone with their computer,
this is a remote login software where you can kind
of see their screen and help them do things. It's
very handy, but when you give that power to someone,

(46:12):
you know you have to understand what you're doing. All right,
Coming up, we're going to talk to Chris Mattman. He
has the Chief Data and AI Officer at UCLA. You
are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back, to rich
on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
The phone line eight eight eight rich one oh one

(46:34):
eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one
the website rich on Tech dot TV got an email
from Mark. I was mentioning one dot Google dot com.
Mark says, hey, Fyi, the number or the spelling of
the number will bring you to the right website. So
that's always good when Google figures out stuff like that.

(46:55):
All right, Joining me now, Chris Mattman. He is the
new Chief Data and an Artificial Intelligence Officer at UCLA. Chris,
thanks so much for joining me. Congrats on the new role.

Speaker 5 (47:07):
Welcome to the show, Rich, thanks for having me. Really
excited to be here.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
So tell me number one. I imagine that the AI
officer role is kind of new at a lot of companies.
So I mean, what made you interested in AI? I
know you have a background in data, but what specifically
about AI do you like?

Speaker 4 (47:29):
Yeah, Rich, it is new and really around the world,
the artificial intelligence officer, and you know, basically in the
United States that role is really being defined and guided
by an executive order from the Biden administration that really
focused internally on governments companies and academia to create this

(47:50):
sort of senior level position to really help kind of
guide the ethical use of these technologies which you know
today are changing, already changing our lives, you know, everything
from uh, you know, intelligent assistance by talking to them,
I don't want to set off anyone's Amazon devices or
things like that.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Oh I've done it before, I believe me.

Speaker 4 (48:12):
Or you know, cars and computer visions, smart vehicles, testless
things like that.

Speaker 5 (48:16):
I mean, AI is already here, it's changing our lives.

Speaker 4 (48:19):
And so the recognition of this position what interested me
about it is it's a senior C suite position really
focused on providing that kind of strategy advisement and helping
kind of us get into the future, you know, of
how we use and apply these technologies.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
So what do you see as some of the most
pressing issues right now that not only universities but large
organizations companies have to deal with when it comes to AI.
We sort of talked about one earlier with these uh,
you know, these record labels suing these AI music makers,
and we've seen that over and over with the you know,
the image generators and the text generators. I mean, everyone's

(48:54):
being sued, right now because they're like, where's this uh,
where's this training data coming from?

Speaker 4 (48:59):
Yeah, hundred percent, and that's the periphery that they can
really kind of do legal stuff around right now. Because
the challenge rich, you know, and to the audience is
that even the big tech companies don't have sort of
fundamental understanding of what some of these sort of trillion
neuron neural networks, these biologically inspired models that are similar

(49:20):
to our brains and things like that, even they don't
know exactly what you know, layer a hundred of the
neural network and neuron you know five million is actually learning.
And so because of that, there's a big focus on
how these neural networks, these AI models are trained. That's
based on source data. Source data has bias in it.

(49:40):
Famous story, you know, in the early development of smart cars,
unfortunate unfortunate story is that early smart vehicles didn't stop
when they saw disabled people and or people of color.
The big challenge with that is that most of the
data for training these things was you know, Silicon Valley,
you know, Caucasian folks, and they just simply didn't have

(50:02):
the presence of that data in the training. And so,
you know, the AI models are only as smart as
the data you train them on. So that's a big focus.
Bias in the training data. A big focus is on
the predictions, you know, which is what these models are
actually telling us, and having the confidence in those predictions,
not just well it's going to rain tomorrow it doesn't rain,
but I never told you I was only fifteen percent

(50:23):
confident in that and things like that.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Interesting, So what do you you know, since you're in
this world, you know, people always talk to me. It's
one of the biggest things, you know, for the casual
kind of AI conversation is like do you trust AI?
Do you think it's going to take over the world?
Do you think it's going to harm us? What are
your thoughts on all of that? Like this these ethical
kind of like considerations of AI.

Speaker 4 (50:48):
Yeah, well, I mean, for me, the advice that I
would have for people, and you know, really the reason
that I, you know, moved out of my role in
government after twenty four years. You know, I spent a
long career at NASA working on these longes and data
and eventually in AI too, But the big thing that
you know, reason that I got out of government was
really just to spend the rest of you know, my

(51:08):
remaining years focused on this because I really believe it's
going to fundamentally change our lives, and in particular, you know,
it's going to in the next twenty four to thirty
six months up and existing jobs in particular areas.

Speaker 12 (51:20):
You know.

Speaker 4 (51:21):
One quick thing you might you know have heard about
is there's actually a Senate bill in the California Senate
on the floor, you know, that is focused on customer
call center Senate Bill number twelve twenty that's being debated
right now and presented, and that's all about the use
of AI and call centers. And you know, that's a
really interesting area because you know, in twenty eighteen, Google

(51:44):
demonstrated a technology that could effectively call up a nail
shop make your appointment for you, you know, basically decide,
oh it's not the right nail shop, we need to
go to another one. You know, things like that, update
your calendar, all through voice technology, all through AI and
things like that. So customer call center jobs within the

(52:04):
next twenty four to thirty six months definitely will be disrupted.
You might have heard in the Midwest of trucking jobs,
you know, a million truckers by some estimates could potentially
be displaced if Tesla is successful in building these sort
of autonomous trucks, you know, like the Tesla vehicles. And so,
you know, the message that I have for people is
the answer isn't really telling these these people, hey, well

(52:25):
learn to code, you know.

Speaker 5 (52:26):
I hate that.

Speaker 4 (52:27):
I think that that's wrong. I think we need programs
for a job of skilling, for extracting the subject matter
expert knowledge from these folks whose jobs may be you know,
not directly displaced, but you know, altered in the next
few years.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Yeah, that was Google Duplex the I remember that when
they demoed it on stage and at Google Io and
it was wild. I mean, that video went viral because
it was just so wild to hear a Google voice
call a restaurant or whatever it was is hair salon
to like make an appointment for you and uh yeah.
So and that was before you know, AI was kind

(53:03):
of a big daily talker, you know. That was that
was in early days of this stuff. Okay, so the
jobs now here. I tweeted this the other day. I said, basically,
if a company could replace you with AI, they would,
do you believe that to be true?

Speaker 4 (53:18):
I mean, my perspective on it is whether they would
or not isn't exactly the issue in the sense of
that they can't directly for all jobs right now. So
that's you know the one now, yeah, right now. And
so that's that's the one kind of thing I want
to tell people. You know, It's like tomorrow, you know,
people are like, well, you know, we have the capability
of the terminator now, you know, are we suddenly going

(53:40):
to start fighting wars, you know, with the you know,
the AI based you know, nuclear weapons and all these things.

Speaker 5 (53:44):
And the reality is.

Speaker 4 (53:46):
Like humans control the business processes that still exist, and
the ways that we use AI today are are basically
dictated by them. Now, yeah, Like it's interesting that you
said today. You know, in the future, I certainly could
see companies like looking at headcount and saying, well instead
of needing you know. I mean that was the heart
of the WGA, the writer strike. You know, I helped

(54:07):
to do some legal advisement on the Amendment twenty five
for that, but it was all about the side. I mean,
one of the key things was the size of writing teams. Right, So,
I mean, do I think a studio would you know,
like to not have seven people maybe they would like
to have three and some intelligent assistance.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (54:24):
I mean, obviously these.

Speaker 4 (54:25):
Companies are bottom line driven for profit companies, and you know,
they're always focused on rationalization and headcount and things like that.
That said, you know, can AI do everything that we do?
You know, the big difference is that a lot of
the AIS that people think are AI today, like chat,
GPT and things like that, they're missing elements that we
call actuation.

Speaker 5 (54:45):
In other words, like they can think.

Speaker 4 (54:47):
I mean they can you know, it seems like they're thinking,
they can respond, they can take prompts and whatever, but
they're not like plugged into you know, a Terminator robot
or a Boston Dynamics robot dog and things like that.

Speaker 5 (54:58):
Now people are looking at that.

Speaker 4 (55:00):
I always caution I always caution people that's not as
far away as you think. But yeah, you know, all
of this is and and so to your point, you know,
to your original question rich that you asked me, you know,
why did I basically you know, take this job on.

Speaker 5 (55:14):
Why did I leave these to me?

Speaker 4 (55:16):
These are the fundamental decisions, These are the fundamental things
for the next fifteen to twenty years that aren't just
going to guide a portion of our lives and guide
all of our lives.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Yeah, I totally believe that, and it reminds me. You know,
I've been covering tech for a long time and specifically gadgets,
and you know, we've had gadgets for a long time
that are kind of like programmed to do something right.
They you know, like, let's say you have a little
toy truck that's you know, an RF truck or you know,
radio frequency whatever. It like moves around, it does this,
but like once you layer AI onto that and it

(55:45):
can actually think and do stuff a little bit more autonomously,
that's where it gets interesting. And yeah, it's just a
matter of time before we build these things into robots
and cars and all this stuff. And it really is
fascinating just how much this is going to change in
the next year or too. Any closing thoughts we got
to run, But any closing thoughts, any any tools people
should check out, or any resources you find interesting that

(56:08):
might be helpful.

Speaker 5 (56:09):
Yeah, I mean thanks. And as a parent, you know,
I'll say I got three kids.

Speaker 4 (56:14):
Certainly as parents, you know, there's a lot of thought
right now about, oh, whether you should let your child
use these things in school. My advice use them, use
them because otherwise you're sort of sticking your hand head
in the sand and you're going to be sort of
left behind. Now should your kid write their papers using
all of these things? You know, the things I tell
my children are, hey, use this for creative idea, thinking, ideation,

(56:35):
or whatever. But at the end of the day, make
sure sort of the thoughts and the control are your own.
And for what it's worth, that extends to life. Rich
you know, is the reason that we don't have the
terminators yet is because we're still in control now, you know,
fast forward five or ten years. I hope that's still
the case, but you know that's the case today, and
that's the case for parents.

Speaker 5 (56:52):
So let your kids use it and try it.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
Absolutely. I know my kids are. Chris Mattman, thanks so
much for joining me today the website. Matt Man A T. T.
M A N. N. Dot Ai. Good luck with the
new job.

Speaker 5 (57:05):
Thanks so much for having me on, Rick, You really
appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
All right eighty eight rich one on one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up,
I'll tell you how Xbox is coming to the Amazon
fireTV stick and who has the best five g in America.
The answer coming up. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, Talking Technology. The

(57:27):
website for the show Richontech dot tv. There you can
sign up for our newsletter. You can see my TV segments.
You can read my newsletter and follow me on social media.
I am at rich on Tech.

Speaker 12 (57:42):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Xbox is coming to Amazon Fire TV. How cool is this?
You'll be able to play Xbox games on fireTV sticks
without a console. This will open up gaming to a
lot more people. Now, you do need a couple of things.
You need a Fire TV stick four K Max or

(58:03):
just the standard Fire TV stick four K. Both of
those are anywhere between fifty and sixty bucks and Prime
days coming up, which means those will be discounted. So again,
my advice right now, don't buy anything on Amazon that
you need, like something you have like your eye on,
Like yeah, if you need like soap or something, sure,
But if you have like your eye on something like

(58:25):
a new pair of sneakers, like a fire TV stick, like,
don't buy it right now. Ring doorbell. All this stuff
gets discounted, especially Amazon branded stuff kindles. Add it to
your shopping cart. And then on Prime Day July sixteenth
and seventeenth, look at your shopping car and it will
have like a little each item that's on sale will
have a kind of like a badge that will say

(58:47):
price drop or Prime Day Savings or something like that.
So that's the way I do it. So if you
want to get this Xbox Cloud Gaming again, you need
the Fire TV stick. You need a Bluetooth enabled wireless controller.
You can use an x Xbox controller, you coul use
a PlayStation controller. You also need an Xbox Game Pass
Ultimate membership that's seventeen bucks a month that will give

(59:08):
you access to hundreds of games, including some of the
newer titles like Starfield for as a Horizon five. You
can play Fortnite completely free. So if you just want
to play Fortnite, you don't need a membership, so you
just need the stick and the Bluetooth controller. Pretty cool.
So this is coming from the cloud, So this means
that they're actually going to stream the games to your device,

(59:30):
which is kind of like the holy Grail of game playing,
you know, because you don't need a console, which means
it opens it up to a lot more people. But
the latency is an issue, and of course the quality
of the stream is always an issue. So it's gotten
better over the years, and clearly it's gotten to a
point where Xbox and Microsoft and Amazon feel like they

(59:52):
can offer this, but this is it's also on the
flip side. You don't need a console, so they don't
need to you know, people don't spend money on that hardware.
Let's go to Lisa in Hollywood. Lisa, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Hi. This is Lisa. I'm an empty nester mom with
a twenty two year old son who still has a subscription,
an Xbox subscription on our family Microsoft account. How do
I support him or transfer him his information onto his

(01:00:28):
own account so that he doesn't lose his data?

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Friends and history should be pretty straightforward. So he's part
of the family group. Yeah, okay, so did you add
did are you in charge of the family group?

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
I am okay.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
So you should be able to go into family dot
Microsoft dot com and sign in and find him on there,
and there should be a way to remove him from
that group, so you know, he can he can do
it himself by going to family dot Microsoft dot com
and signing in and then saying leave family groups. You

(01:01:09):
can he can do that, or the organizer can remove
the family member.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
So I was told that that the then he would
lose all of that data and history.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Well, he's going to lose access to the subscription if
it's under your account, for sure, But.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
How do we do it so that he doesn't lose context,
He doesn't lose all his friends and context from the
past decade.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
I don't think he's going to lose that because it's
under his account. So unless he's I mean, if he's
signed in, if he has his own Microsoft account where
he has friended people on that account. Okay, whether he's
in your Family Plan or not, it doesn't affect that
aspect of it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Now, see Okay, so he can just so I don't
need to close down my account and then some how
transfer all of that on his subscription to his account.
He can just move it himself.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Well, the subscription, the subscription is going to be separate.
So if the subscriptions under your name, he's not going
to have that subscription when he leaves the Family Plan
or the Family Great. So he would have to sign
up for that subscription on his own. But his contacts,
you know, his Xbox gamer pals all that stuff should
remain connected to his user name and user ID because

(01:02:29):
that's his own. So whether it's in the Family Plan
or not, as long as he has his user account,
everything should be linked to him. Now, like I said,
if he's playing games or under the family plan, you know,
if you're paying eighteen dollars a month for the Xbox
membership or whatever it is under your family plan, he
will have to do that on his own, but his

(01:02:50):
account should be his account. I mean, the way these
things are set up is that you know, Microsoft wants
you to set one up as soon as you can
for your kid on your lamp and okay, sounds like
you're close to where you need to go.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Yeah, no, no, this is really great. I really I
could use your help.

Speaker 11 (01:03:05):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
Yeah. So, I mean, look, the thing is obviously I
would verify this on the Microsoft website. But to me,
an account is an account, So whether they're coming or
going into the Family Plan, that person still has their account.
So unless all of his friends are under your username,
they would be under his name. So again family dot

(01:03:26):
Microsoft dot com. That's typically where to go to remove someone,
whether you're doing it yourself or if you're the family
member so that's the same website, whether you're removing them
or whether they are removing themselves. So I would say
what I would do is sit down at your computer.
If your kid is you know, in the city or
you know, living nearby, have them come over, sit at

(01:03:48):
the computer together. Make sure you go through all those
screens very carefully, because it will tell you what the
ramifications are of leaving that family account as you leave it.
But I would you know, I would gather that all
of his information will still be intact because it's still
his account. It's just now being sent off. It's like, uh,

(01:04:09):
you know, when you send your kids off to do
their own thing, It's like you gotta they gotta get
their own wings and fly at some point. And that's
what that's what he's going to be doing. Thanks for
the question, Lisa, appreciate it. Eighty eight rich one On
one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Coming up, I'll tell you who has the best five
G in the US. You are listening to rich on Tech.

(01:04:34):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking
technology with you. Eighty eight rich one On one eighty
eight seven four to two four one zero one the
website for the show rich on tech dot TV. So
who has the best five G data performance in the

(01:04:56):
United States? Who do you think it is? I mean,
there's really only three networks at this point, but T
Mobile maintaining its lead in five G performance median download
speed two hundred and eighty seven megabits per second in
March twenty twenty four. This is from Ukla Ookla. They

(01:05:17):
are the folks that whenever you do one of those
speed tests like speed tests dot net that's the company
behind it. So every time you do a speed test,
they are logging that information where you're doing it, from
what you're testing on, and they're putting it all into
this major database. They can come out with facts like
this number two Verizon median five G download speed. Now

(01:05:38):
we're talking download. This is Cellular two D and twenty four,
so not too far behind from T Mobile AT and
T download speed of one five. Now, this is kind
of tricky because there are some variations to this, like
depends what I guess this is just averages or medians,
so that's kind of different. So let's see other things

(01:06:00):
that they said in this report. All carriers have seen
significant performance improvements. Remember when five G came out, everyone
said it was a dud. They're like, what's the big deal,
It's the same as four G. Well it has gotten
better for sure. As these networks continue to build out,
consumer sentiment for five G has improved. The US has

(01:06:20):
climbed from twentieth to eleventh place globally in UCLA's speed
Test Global Index. Rural areas are starting to see performance gains,
so that means they're getting as good as the city locations.
Five G availability has increased seventy six percent having five
G service somewhere. Let's see. Oh, download speeds have improved dramatically,

(01:06:46):
but upload speeds in latency have not improved as much.
And there's still a ways to go here because a
lot of these companies are still building out these five
G networks, Like we're just getting started here. So T
Mobile just acquired US Cellular. That's going to improve their network,
and you know we're gonna see improvements in things like
video streaming and mobile gaming all because of five G.

(01:07:11):
Let's see. Oh. Speaking of which, Verizon this week unveiled
a new logo, a red V with a yellow glow,
So basically they just took the name and put a
little yellow glow on it symbolizing Veritas meaning truth and
Horizon future possibility. Did you know that's what Verizon means,
the truth of a new horizon. Yeah. Now you know

(01:07:34):
if you're ever on Jeopardy and you need that, that's
what it means. So what does this whole Verizon refresh mean.
I don't know. I mean, it's basically there. If you
have home internet with them, I guess they're a big
thing they're pushing right now. Or these bundled services, so
they have like small discounts on streaming services like Netflix
and Hulu and all these things you subscribe through your

(01:07:55):
Verizon account. You bundle it, and it's a little bit cheaper, yeah,
YouTube and all that. I personally, my advice is to
not bundle, even though it saves you money, because in
the long run, it's more of a headache because now
everything is bundled together, so it's not as easy to
drop services and to you know, take advantage of some

(01:08:15):
of the deals that are out there, you know, with
a paying for the year in advance and stuff like that.
But I guess whatever works for you, personally, I would
rather not have these things bundled because it makes things
very confusing. You know, you've got your Verizon bill and
now you've got like ten add ons and you're like,
wait a second, what am I paying for Verizon? What
am I paying for streaming? It's much tougher to keep
track of it. And by the way, the app I

(01:08:36):
like for keeping track of all this stuff is Rocket Money.
I don't know if you've tried it, but I find
it to be really, really helpful. So it used to
be called True Bill and now it's called Rocket Money,
and it's a it's a nice way of keeping track
of all of your subscriptions. It's free for iOS and Android.
Let's go to Mike in Austin, Texas. Mike, you're on
with Rich.

Speaker 12 (01:08:57):
Hey, Rich, thanks for taking my call. Months ago, we
were having a work with a Spectrum and almost daily,
at least weekly, we were having to reset our router.
So around the same time, we also had a printer
that died. So Spectrum came out put in one of
these new routers that can decide whether your equipment needs

(01:09:20):
either two point four or five, and we got a
EPSOM Eco printer. We could not get the eco printer
at all to hook to the router, So it's just
sitting here and I thought, okay, I got to get
something going, so I went and bought a cannon, just
a little cheapy sixty dollars cannon one. And we're having

(01:09:41):
trouble getting back to hook to the router, so Spectrum
I've called them and they said, well, it's not us.
It all started when you changed it. So should we
keep Spectrums router or are there better ones out there
and we should just buy one and quit paying the
monthly fee. That obviously something else works in the house
on it, except that we can't get a printer to

(01:10:03):
hook up to it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
Well, the printer is probably using that two point four
gigahertz network and this Spectrum device even though it's putting
out both networks. The printer may not be smart enough
to find that two point four gigaherts. I'm guessing that
this router, except for the thing that throws me is
the cheapy printer that you bought. Why that's not connecting
because you think it would, but because it's new, But

(01:10:25):
it's also inexpensive, so it may not have the smarts
to do this. So you know, this is a very
very common problem with routers. With IoT gadgets, you know,
people trying to connect to them. The newer gadget's like
your smartphone gonna have no problem. But it's a lot
of these different peripherals, especially the smart home stuff. It's
just all over the place. Sometimes it connects, sometimes it won't.

(01:10:47):
So I pulled up the Spectrum support page, and clearly
this is a known issue because it's like literally on
the how to connect to your wireless network, It's like
one of the bottom main things on the page says
troubleshooting if you can't connect the connect to the two
point four gigahertz frequency on your network. It says, sign

(01:11:10):
into your Spectrum account. On your services page, select Internet,
navigate and select smart, set up smart device two point
four gigahertz, and then select switch to two point four gigaherts.
So that is what you probably need to do. It's
interesting that you sign into your Spectrum account. It must

(01:11:30):
communicate with the router to switch it. So what it's
going to do is it's going to tell that router, hey,
we're trying to set up a device here. Can you
just broadcast that two point four gigahertz network so you
don't confuse the device that's trying to get set up
with that five gigahertz network. So again, this is just
from the Spectrum support website. Clearly a lot of people

(01:11:51):
have this issue, so I would not give up on this.
I think you'll be able to connect it again. Sign
into your Spectrum account on your services page, select Internet,
navigate to the set up smart device and select switch
to two point four gigahertz, and then you can go
into your device on your printer and set that up
again through the you know, the way you typically set

(01:12:14):
it up. If you can't get it to set up,
I might reset the printer again. We had a similar
question earlier, but I would do a factory reset on
the printer. So I don't think that this router that
they gave you is not going to work. I think
that clearly Spectrum is a big company, they have a
lot of customers. This is just a situation where you know,
there's a lot of different things happening. Wi Fi continues

(01:12:35):
to evolve and that's one of the side effects of this.
So Mike and Austin, thanks for the call. Appreciate it today.
One of the apps that I recommend or have recommended
in the past is being discontinued. It's called Google Stack
And I was using this for a long time because
it was a nice dedicated PDF scanner. But Google, in

(01:12:59):
the typical Google fashion, has lost hope for this app
and they are getting rid of it. Google there is
a website. Let's see if I can find it. It's
I think it's let's see Google dead projects. Yeah, killed
by Google dot com. It's everything that Google has killed.
They this company. Now I have to give them credit
because if we didn't, if they didn't kill stuff, that

(01:13:21):
means they weren't trying. But Google is a company that
really tries a lot. They throw a lot at the
wall and they see what sticks, and that's great. But
a lot of stuff that people use sort of gets discontinued.
And so I'm just looking at some of these things
that they've discontinued in the past, like year or so,
Google jam Board, jam Board VPN by Google, one, Dropcam,

(01:13:43):
Google podcasts, Keen. I don't even know what that one was.
Google Domains, Google Optimize, Pixel Pass, Google album Archive, YouTube Stories, Grasshopper,
Conversational Actions, Google street Views standalone. There's so many any
Google Stadia, YouTube originals, YouTube, go, Google surveys. I mean,

(01:14:05):
there's so many. Now let's add Google Stack to the list.
Google Stack is being ended on September twenty third, twenty
twenty four. Users have ninety days from the notification time
to export their documents to Google Drive. They have a
new export tool available to transfer your Stack documents to Drive,

(01:14:27):
and Google recommends using Google Drive for future document scanning
and organization. So there's two ways you can export this.
You can bulk export to Drive. Go into the Stack
app and go click settings and it says export all
documents to Drive. Or you can individually open each document,
share and then share them to wherever you want. But

(01:14:48):
I really like this app, this PDF scanner, because it
was simple, it was clean. So what do I recommend?
You can use Google If you have an Android phone,
Google Drive is typically installed in there. So if you
long press on the icon on your Google Drive app,
you will see there is a little option for scan
and you tap that and now all of a sudden,

(01:15:10):
you have a PDF scanner on your phone and just
hold it over a document and it will instantly scan
that document into a PDF. It's basically the same exact
technology that was built into Stack, but it's now on
your phone. Natively, it's been there forever, but it's just
one thing if you need to scan receipts or whatever.
The other app that I like that is cross platform

(01:15:32):
is Adobe Scan. I have a little shortcut to that
on my homepage. What I like about that is that
it works really well. It scans documents very nicely, cleans
them up greatly, and you can also save it as
a PDF or a JPEG. So once it's saved as
a I just did two scans, one with Google, one
with Adobe. The Adobe Scan came out slightly better. But

(01:15:53):
once it scans it as a PDF, you can save
it as a JPEG as well, so it gives you
kind of, you know, a couple options there, and it works,
by the way, for both iOS and Android. So Adobe Scan,
that's saying. You can also use Google Drive shortcut or
this PDF scanner app called Google Stack that is going away.

(01:16:14):
Eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Coming up, we'll talk
evs right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you
talking technology. The website for the show rich on Tech
dot TV I've got my latest newsletter front and center.

(01:16:39):
The headline is Pixel Paris and Prime Day your tech
summer preview. So in my newsletter this week, I've got
all kinds of good information. I recap my trip to
New York City and New Jersey, talk about the foldable
events that are coming up Prime Day, some of the
deals I like, some of the things I would buy
right now, well, I mean I would put in my

(01:17:01):
cart to see if they go on sale. I link
up my phone stand that I like, a cord holder
that I love for my desk, a portable charger, my
favorite tripod slash selfie stick, and my favorite basic phone case.
That's all in there. Then I've got my TV segments.
This week. I covered text now, which you might have
heard here on this radio show. I also talk about

(01:17:21):
the Fitbit LTE. Let's see I answer some questions. I've
got an app to download cybersecurity throwback tech. My brother
built this cool I don't know what you call it,
a rack, entertainment rack. And on the top is this
old CRT TV with a VCR and we popped in

(01:17:42):
the tape of a VHS of Jurassic Park, and I
got to say it still looks pretty good now. The
TV was like, must have been a thirteen inch TV,
so clearly anything's going to look good on that. But
I was pretty impressed that after all these years, I
mean VHS, it's been a long time since we used VHS,
long time and it still looked good. Anyway, that's all

(01:18:04):
on the website. Rich on tech dot TV. You might
have heard the news this week that Volkswagen invested in Rivian.
I know it seems like an unlikely alliance, but Rivian
needs the help. Volkswagen has the money, so they pledged
up to five billion dollars into Rivian. Rivian stock pop
for a bit. I just checked the price. It's not

(01:18:25):
as high as it was. But this does give this
This does give me hope for Rivian, because as much
as I love Rivian, I'm still not convinced they're going
to be around in a couple years because they are
on the bubble. I would say they've got great cars,
great technology, but you know they are. They've got some
headwinds and their cars are very expensive. They're losing money

(01:18:47):
on them and they need to come out with these
cheaper models that they've teased. But it's still going to
be two years twenty twenty six before they come out,
so we've got a while or is it twenty twenty five,
Maybe it's twenty twenty five anyway, So the deal is
initially Volkswagen is going to give them a billion dollars,
then an additional four billion with all these like rules

(01:19:08):
and regulations. So I don't care about that part. What
I'm most interested in why are they doing this? So
they are looking to accelerate software development and reduce costs
for both companies, and they're talking about this zonal architecture
in their cars. So what this means is it centralizes
electronic control into sort of area specific computers. So instead

(01:19:31):
of having a whole bunch of different computers in the car,
like these control units, it has different computers that I
guess control different zones of the car. I don't know
what all that means. All I know is that it's
probably like a different way of thinking about things. If
you look at a lot of these like you know,
a lot of these traditional car companies, they're still building
their evs the way that they built their gas powered cars.

(01:19:54):
And if you look at the pure EV companies like
a Rivian or a Tesla. They are building their evs
from the ground up as an electric vehicle, So I
think Volkswagen's trying to capture a little bit of that
magic for them and share a little bit of that
money with Rivian. So we'll see what happens. A cool
new app this week called charge ly c h A
r G E l Y. Charge Ly is an app

(01:20:15):
if you have an EV It's available for iOS and
Android and it basically helps you find charging along the way.
It's like a route, a charging routing app, and the
neat thing about this is that you can plan your
entire route from this app before you leave. Now, it's
not perfect. I did test a couple of different routes.
It didn't get everything right. But what's neat about this
is that you can see where the chargers are, get

(01:20:36):
a lot of detail about that. The community can offer
kind of insights on the chargers, so if something doesn't
work or it's broken, or it's not as fast as
they say, that's really useful. But you can also find
amenities like food and bathrooms near the charging stations. That's
a big deal. When you stop for an EV charge,
you want somewhere to go to the bathroom and maybe
pick up a snack. So again, that app is called

(01:20:58):
charge ly cha our g e l Y, and then
tire Rack. I know they're sort of biased because they
sell the tires, but they tested nine EV tire models,
EV specific models and non EV's. They put them on
a Tesla Model three. They checked them out for handling,
noise and energy efficiency, and they came up with the
best overall tires, the most energy efficient, the least energy efficient,

(01:21:22):
the best overall performance, and then the best balance of
performance and efficiency. I will link up that report on
the website rich on tech dot TV. But spoiler alert,
the Michigan Michelin Pilot Sport four S non EV was
the best overall, but the most efficient was the Hancook

(01:21:44):
rich on tech dot TV. Coming up, we're gonna talk
barcodes they're celebrating fifty years. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. We'll
get back to the phone lines in just a moment,
but first let's talk about barcodees. Yes, the little thing
on the back of your packaging. I actually scanned one today,

(01:22:05):
just this morning. My guest is Bob Carpenter, President and
CEO of GS one us here to talk about fifty
years of the barcode. Bob, thanks for joining me, Rich,
it's great to be here. So this is something that
started in nineteen seventy four on a pack of Wrigley's
Juicy Fruit gum, which I loved as a kid. Tell

(01:22:28):
me about the history of the barcode.

Speaker 13 (01:22:31):
Well, the history of the barcode really stemmed from an
opportunity to improve the speed of checkout at retail establishments
in the US. And because before the barcode, as you
and I may remember, you had to manually key in
the price for every single item and a cash register,
which was incredibly slow for the shopper. So the retail
grocery industry got together and looked for ways to become

(01:22:52):
more efficient and ultimately selected the UPC barcode and GS
one to administer the barcode. And as you mentioned a
few years ago, the first barcode scan occurred with a
ten pack of Rigli's Juicy Fruit gum in Troy, Ohio,
and today we estimate over ten billion items are scanned
every single day using a barcode at retail establishments around

(01:23:13):
the world.

Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
Now I'm old enough to remember, back in the day,
Costco actually did not use barcodes. They went against the
grain and they would like call out the number on
the package, and you know, they type it in like
you said. But now that's all changed. They've gotten on
board as well.

Speaker 5 (01:23:29):
They've gotten on board.

Speaker 13 (01:23:30):
But you know you're right because people think it's intuitive.
But when barcodes were first introduced, there was a lot
of concern around I can't see the price in the product.
How can I make sure that whatever's getting scanned is
charging me properly as a shopper. So it was a
pretty significant transition, let alone all the equipment that had
to be installed at the front of a retail store

(01:23:51):
and the commitment from brand owners to tag their products
using barcodes.

Speaker 1 (01:23:56):
So explain to me what your company does. What is
GS one us do with the barcode You said you
administer them. How does that work exactly?

Speaker 13 (01:24:04):
So GS one is a global non for profit standards body,
and we create the standards that is really the data
syntax within a barcode, and barcodes are used at point
of sale, but they're also used all the way through
the supply chain. So think about additional information related to
palettes or cases or batche and lot numbers or expiration

(01:24:25):
dates or item counts. Barcodes that you see on those
larger items in a warehouse follow GS one standards, And
why the standards are important is irrespective of whether a
technology I'm using in my warehouse management system or my
point of sale systems, or whether I'm in the United
States or France or China. Those standards allow technology and

(01:24:45):
retail establishments to automatically read that information and understand what
it means. So GS one is a standards body, and
we administer that standard across one hundred and eighteen countries
around the world.

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
Well, my kids love to scan the barcodes at Target
at the self checkout. They are very good at that.
What exactly information is contained in a bar code, Like
is it just numbers?

Speaker 13 (01:25:08):
Well, today, the UPC barcode that we've known for fifty
years really contains one number called a Global Trade Item
number that signifies the product. But tomorrow we anticipate barcodes
are really going to migrate to QR codes. And QR
codes can hold three thousand and four thousand characters of
data within them, and so all of a sudden you

(01:25:28):
have the opportunity to share with the shopper information around
allergens sustainability content as to how I recycle the product
or how it was grown, or in the event of
a recall, I can scan that product and make sure
that if I've heard about a recall, I don't mistakenly
buy that product and take it home to my family.
So QR codes are going to usher in the next

(01:25:48):
generation of bar codes, and we're working with the industry
to make sure those QR codes can go beep a
checkout through GS one standards and the work we're doing
with brand owners and retailers.

Speaker 1 (01:25:58):
Oh, that's interesting. So you imagine a future where we
will see QR codes on products instead of that standard
line looking barcode.

Speaker 13 (01:26:07):
I think it's going to be a long time before
the UPC barcode maybe disappears, but I think increasingly, certainly,
starting in twenty twenty seven, you're going to see a
lot more products with a QR code and a UPC
barcode together on the product. But over time, for some
brand owners, they're eager to pick up the space on
the package and just have a QR code.

Speaker 1 (01:26:27):
In the future, is there a standard for QR codes
like there is for the UPC because I feel like
there's different styles of QR codes out there.

Speaker 13 (01:26:37):
There is a standard. It was developed by Denzo in
Japan thirty years ago. This year, ironically, they're celebrating their
thirtieth year anniversary, and QR codes do have a standardized
format that they need to follow in order to scan properly.

Speaker 1 (01:26:51):
Are there any security concerns around QR codes. We've heard
that there could be malware embedded in these things. Is
that realistic?

Speaker 13 (01:26:59):
Well, whenever you scan a QR code, you're likely offering
up that information about where you were or your phone
to the person that's providing the app or setting up
the link. So you do need to be concerned about
the fact that you may be revealing a level of
information about yourself that you might not want. So if
you're very concerned about that, you probably should hesitate to

(01:27:20):
scanning QR codes, maybe outside a point of sale or
at your home if you don't want to reveal that information.
But increasingly, what we find is the benefits of scanning
QR codes far outway the concerns around privacy that consumers have,
and we're seeing seventy nine percent of consumers are more
inclined to purchase products if they could scan a QR
code to get that information that they want.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
Okay, so you're saying that this QR code in the
future could not only hold the information for the product,
like the point of sale information, but also we might
be able to scan it with our phone, or would
be able to scan it with our phone to get
more information about that product, something that we're already seeing
on a lot of products. So people are taking advantage
of that. Clearly rich that's exactly right.

Speaker 13 (01:28:02):
Well, we anticipate as a QR code powered by GS
one that provides the benefits of QR codes today with
a lot of rich information around allergens or sustainability content
and also goes beep a checkout like the barcode we've
enjoyed for the last fifty years.

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
Ah. Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Now, are
retailers going to have to upgrade their systems to take
advantage of the QR code scanning at checkout?

Speaker 13 (01:28:25):
Retailers will likely need to make sure that they get
the latest released from their technology providers that run their
front end systems. Typically, that's a pretty simple release that
they need to install because many front end scanners already
are optically enabled because of QR codes that we use
on coupons for examples, or driver's license. So most front

(01:28:46):
end systems already have optical scanning, but they oftentimes need
a new release from the solution provider to be able
to ingest the price point into the back end systems
that retailers operate.

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):
Now, most of what we talked about has been consumer
product and retail, but what about other industries like healthcare?

Speaker 13 (01:29:03):
Yeah, healthcare has been using data Matrix, which is an
equivalent of QR codes similar but a different type of
two D code for a number of years now. But
in healthcare, what we see is the need to connect
the patient with the medical device or the pharmaceutical item
that that patient is using to improve patient safety, to
make sure that the patient gets the right medical device

(01:29:24):
or the right drug, but also to optimize and improve
operations within the hospital. So the same benefits that have
revolutionize the supply chain in the retail space is also
doing the same to provide better patient safety and lower
cost in the context of healthcare.

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
I know there were many downsides to the pandemic, but
I think one of the upsides was really the adoption
of the QR code. Do you think that makes this
transition easier in the future. Absolutely.

Speaker 13 (01:29:53):
It's funny you mentioned that because I traditionally wasn't convinced
that QR codes were going to be the way of
the future. Back in the early twenty tens, it was
a lot of promotion and merchandising activity that I didn't
necessarily think was very prevalent with shoppers. But you're right,
a lot changed with COVID in the United States. But
when you go outside of the United States and Asia

(01:30:15):
and Europe, QR codes have been pretty.

Speaker 5 (01:30:17):
Prevalent and growing very rapidly.

Speaker 13 (01:30:19):
So I think now we're just catching up, and I'm
a believer in QR codes.

Speaker 1 (01:30:23):
Bob Carpenter, President and CEO of gs one US, thanks
so much for joining me today.

Speaker 5 (01:30:29):
Thank you Rich for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:30:30):
The website gs one us dot org slash fifty.

Speaker 5 (01:30:34):
If you want to learn more about.

Speaker 1 (01:30:36):
Fifty years of the barcode, I'll put a link to
the website on mine. Just go to rich on Tech
dot TV. This is rich on Tech. We'll be right back.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking
technology with you. The website for the show Rich on
tech dot TV. You can go there and hit contact

(01:30:59):
to send me a message. Rest assured it does make
it to my inbox. I may not be able to
reply to everything, but I do my best, and I
read selected emails here. Let's get to the feedback segment
and open some of those emails up Neil from Ohio.
I think Neil might be the most prolific writer on

(01:31:19):
the website. He typically emails me. I would say every week, Hey, Rich,
enjoyed the last show, especially having your brother on cool.
You should now know now by now know the first
app that comes in here. Oh, you should know by
now that the first app that comes up in your
app store search is not going to be the one
you searched for. It doesn't matter if it's Apple or Google.

(01:31:40):
The stores have become just like search engines. Read carefully.
Thanks for all that you do. That's right. I did
tap on an app last week that was a total scam.
But yes, tap on the second app, not the first.
No name here. A listener from Newport Beach, California writes
in I like your show, but I really really dislike

(01:32:01):
your bumper music. I don't know what to say because
I personally choose a lot of the bumper music. I
curate it, and so does Bobo, so I don't know
what to say. I like the bumper music mostly Yeah,
you're Bobo is offended. That's it. He's done. Let's see.

(01:32:22):
Dave writes in Rich someone called in with AT and
T internet access and poor Wi Fi. You kept referring
to it as cable. I have AT and T, and
AT and T does fiber to the home. This is
not like cable at all, as there is no modem.
There is a router, but you cannot replace the AT
and T router easily. In my case, the fiber goes
to an ont optical network terminal. This converts the optical

(01:32:46):
stuff to Ethernet, and then that goes to the AT
and T router. The issue is that the router logs
onto the AT and T network with an encrypted handshake
that includes a certificate, so you cannot just replace the
AT and T router. Newer AT and T routers include
the OT built into the router. Okay, AT and T
recommends router pass through if you don't want to use

(01:33:06):
their router, however, it must remain in the path. However,
you can turn off the Wi Fi on the router
and use your own access point for Wi Fi, which
is what I do and what you recommended. I do
not get how AT and T forces you to use
their router, but cable companies cannot do this. Okay, thanks
Dave for the clarification. Yeah, that was That was a
tricky one. The person called in they wanted to set

(01:33:29):
up their EURO with the AT and T fiber and yeah,
they were trying to turn off the pass through or
turn on whatever it was. She writes in I agree
with your advice about adding an Euro. Oh, this is
the same topic or ORB to AT and T routers.
I recently helped my sister who switched from Spectrum to
T Mobile five G home. All of her devices went

(01:33:51):
offline because the call center told her to turn off ORB.
I had her plug the ORBI base into the T
Mobile router, and instantly all her devices reconnected. I explained
to her that the orby is like an extension cord
to the Internet. For those of us in computer science,
this is intuitive, but for most people it's not. We

(01:34:11):
need to be patient when helping others with their tech issues.
Chi I agree. That was the topic of my uh
sort of my initial rant last weekend I just mentioned
I said, look, you know, we take this stuff for
granted that we know how it works, we know how
we understand, you know, And I've said on this show,
I do not have all the answers to every single

(01:34:32):
tech question in the world. Right. What I can do
is I can research, and I can understand, and I
have kind of a general understanding of what the problems
might be. It's not as if I can say, oh, yeah,
I just go to this setting da da da like
for something. Sure, but it's kind of an understanding of, like, Okay,
let's think about this problem and how can we solve it.
So I agree you do have to be patient. Chuck

(01:34:54):
from Temple City, California writes in you mentioned texts Now.
A few weeks ago, I ordered the SIM for a
not too old phone. Yes, it sort of kind of works,
but not really. The app kept closing slash locking up.
Please tell the CEO to blame my Moto G seven
at this point. So I went for Boost for ten dollars.
I use it for a side hustle job. Every piece

(01:35:15):
of software that sort of kind of works is a
pretty big waste of time. Yes, I reinstalled the text
now app and it's still locked up. I'd give it
one star. Will Chuck from Temple City. I did test
out the text now app. I did not have any
problems with it locking up, so I would say it's
probably your phone. But again, you know, this is why
I test stuff out before I talk about it, because

(01:35:37):
I want to have that firsthand experience of how things work.
Bob writes in It's like people email me. They'll say, hey, Rich,
that gadget you just talked about it gets you know,
five three stars on Facebook or Instagram or Amazon. I said, well,
I can't speak for all the people reviewing it. I
can only speak from my experience, and if it works
for me, that's what I'm talking about. Bob writes in,

(01:36:00):
Hey Rich, I thought i'd let you know about a
scam I encountered. I got locked out of my Facebook
account and I don't know why. A guy called me
claiming he could fix my Facebook account. He used any
desk to supposedly help me restore it, but it was
a big lie. He was trying to get money for
me and kept trying to get my Wells Fargo account number.
The number he was used he used was a area
code six oh five for South Dakota. I seem to

(01:36:22):
remember seeing something about Indonesia. He somehow found my Facebook
checkpoint page and was using that to get to me.
I've tried to contact Facebook and Meta, but it's impossible
to get through. I'm letting you know so you can
make people aware of this scam. Old folks like me,
aged seventy eight might get conned. Tell them about this
number and hang up if they get such a call.
Thank you Bob for the warning, and yes, this was

(01:36:44):
a coincidence that you got locked out and someone happened
to call you. They're just calling all kinds of people
hoping one of them falls for their scam. Pat from Tokyo,
Japan writes in Hey, Rich, I enjoyed your recent show
and I'm glad to hear the L word Linux. It's
not for everyone. Those contemplating moving from Windows to Linux
and their PC should know that more often than not,

(01:37:07):
their PC manufacturers have installed proprietary drivers for Bluetooth and
Wi Fi. As an example, if Windows is reinstalled clean,
there's a good chance the Bluetooth and Wi Fi will
not work, and maybe even the display won't perform The
same without the manufacturers drivers. The same story goes for Linux,
which cannot use the manufacturers Windows drivers. Do know that

(01:37:27):
it's possible to purchase a PC that is certified to
run certain Linux distributions. It is best to do the
homework before taking the plunge. Keep up the great work well.
Number one. I love the fact that Pat you're listening
from Tokyo, Japan, one of my favorite cities in the world.
And yes, we did mention the L word last week. Linux.

(01:37:47):
I don't mention it on the show very much because
number one, I don't have a lot of experience in
Linux because I don't use it. I understand the appeal
and I understand why people love it. But we did
discuss last week the pros and the cons. And if
you think Android's complicated, Linux is like the next level.
It's a real DIY kind of thing. I think that

(01:38:10):
it has its place, and you know what, maybe I'll tinker,
Maybe I'll have to get some sort of Linux device
and figure out why I'm so hesitant to talk about that.
But I think this show is for the average person,
and I think that the average person is on a
platform like Windows. The average person's on a platform like Mac.
The average person's on an iPhone, the average person's on Android.

(01:38:33):
That sort of covers it for what I talk about here.
In addition to evs and smart home stuff and websites
and apps and all of that. Linux, I'll be honest,
I almost never get a question about Linux. Jerry from
Atlanta writes in another great informative weekly Tech Update. I'm

(01:38:53):
originally from northern New Jersey slash Ridgewood. I used to
live in Orange County, and that's how I discovered you.
Now I'm retired live in an Atlanta suburb. You provide
a great service. Keep up the good work. And Ridgewood,
New Jersey. I went to Christmas Eve in Ridgewood, New
Jersey every year for my entire life until I moved
to California. That's where my aunt and uncle live, and

(01:39:16):
we had some great nights celebrating Christmas Eve there in Ridgewood.
Nice town, and Forest writes in I don't know if
you remember, but the first time you filled in for LEO,
I sent you an email to say you did great,
and I meant that also. I love your newsletter. You've
got the perfect format, short description of that section's topic
with a link for further reading should the readers find

(01:39:37):
something they want to know more about. On all aspects
of you basically replacing Leo, but with the added advantage
of TV. You are doing great. Keep up the good work.
Aloha Forest and Forest. You made my day with that email,
because take it over this show was no easy feat
and I know a lot of people were wondering what

(01:39:58):
direction was it going to take, how was it going
to continue, and what was I gonna do with it?
And by the way, this is episode number seventy eight,
so year and a half. Woo. It's gone by very quickly,
and that is gonna do it for this episode of
the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned
on my website. Just go to richon tech dot TV.

(01:40:19):
I keep very good notes. You can find me on
social media. I am at rich on tech. Thank you
so much for listening. There are so many ways you
can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it
right here with me. Have a fun and safe fourth
of July. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks to everyone
who makes this show possible. Later

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