Pixel 10 first look, car tracking devices & a landline for kids (136, Aug 23, 2025)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Details on Google's new Pixel ten smartphones. Another streaming service
is hiking prices and the startup that's reinventing the landline
for kids. Plus, as always, your tech questions answered. What's
going on? I'm Rich Debiro and this is Rich on Tech.
This is the show where I talk about the tech

(00:22):
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 eight eight eight rich one oh one. Give

(00:43):
me a call if you have a question about technology.
Email is also open. Just go to Rich on tech
dot tv right at the top hit contact rich on
tech dot tv. Hit contact there. You can also find
the notes for today's show. All right, we got a
full slate of guests this week and they are all excellent.

(01:05):
Jason Lucking, co founder of Payback, is going to explain
how their website helps you get money back when airfare
prices that you already booked dropped. It worked for me,
so we're going to talk about how that does, how
that works, and see Scott Brown, senior editor at Android Authority.
He's been on the show before. We were both at

(01:26):
the Google Pixel event in Brooklyn. He is going to
break it down and he has had so much success.
He started basically his own YouTube channel just a couple
of weeks ago, and man, it is taken off in
such a big way, so that's really cool. And then
later we've got a senior editor from XDA to share
the simple steps you need to know to deep clean

(01:49):
your Windows PC so it runs faster and smoother. That's
going to be a great segment as well.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Well. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
If you're streaming us on ktail plus, thank you for
doing that.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Welcome to watching the show.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
We don't stream in live time, but you can download
that app and stream the show later. We stream the
first ten minutes of it, so if you want a
little behind the scenes, you could see me in my
Chucky Cheese T shirt today. Yes, I'll talk more about
my visit to the new Chucky Cheese concept later, but
this week, Yes, in New York City in Brooklyn for

(02:25):
the Pixel event. I actually I told you my mom
was in town for many, many weeks, so I actually
got to fly back there with her, which was great.
We've only done this a couple of times because she's
always coming back and forth between the coasts, but it's
not always that I have a reason to go back
with her, but I did this time, and so I
got to fly next to her, which was great, and
to me, it was more of a lesson in like

(02:48):
the average person experiencing technology on a plane. So number One,
she opens up her phone, none of her Netflix downloads
were there. How many times does that happen to people
all the time? Number Two, her earbuds wouldn't pair with
her phone. That was another struggle, and also the seatback
and I was trying to help her with that, and
then of course general Wi Fi issues connecting. I showed
her how to connect to the Wi Fi on the

(03:10):
plane and how she can get her messaging for free,
which a lot of the airlines offer. So she was
like text messaging the whole flight. That was pretty cool.
So it was a great experience to be there, mom
up in the air, and we had a smooth journey,
so that was always nice. But I was in town
for the Pixel ten launch. This was not your typical

(03:30):
tech launch.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Let me tell you.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
They were very mysterious. Google was very mysterious about this thing.
They did not invite a lot of people. I was
apparently one of the chosen ones along with I would say,
there's just a couple hundred people there, not your typical
giant swath of tech journalists. This was on a set
in Brooklyn, and it was literally they recreated a late
night talk show set and it was complete with Jimmy Fallon.

(03:55):
He was there, he hosted it. They had applause signs,
They had celebrities on stage, a studio audience, which I
was a part of. All these camera people and they
had a whole bunch of celebs, and they did this
as like instead of just your typical tech presentation, they
did this as almost like a TV show with the
Google Pixel ten series as the starring role. So they
had various guests that came up, like Alex Cooper, she's

(04:17):
a popular podcaster. She came up and demoed something on
the camera. Cody Rigsby, he's a very popular Peloton instructor.
He demoed a feature on the fitness app or sorry,
the fitness of the Apple watch Apple Watch, look at
me falling into the Apple trap? The pixel watch then
the Jonas Brothers, actually a Jonas brother was there talking

(04:40):
about how much they love camera and video on the
Pixel and they actually shot their music video in New
York City on the new Pixel and so they premiered
that as well. And then Stephen Curry was there as well.
Stephan Curry was there as well to I guess he
is the new Google Fitness ambassador, so there he was there,

(05:01):
just on screen, not actually in person. So anyway, small
invite only crowd. It was, you know, it got mixed reactions. Obviously,
the tech press is like, you know, all these hot
takes online, Oh it didn't work, it was so horrible.
It was fine, it was funny. It was different. The
tech people that are interested in the phone are always
going to go out and read the specs and see

(05:21):
exactly what this thing can do. But for the average
person that's just maybe watching on YouTube saying, oh, let's
let me see what's going on here.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
It was fine.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
I mean, I don't know if they'll do it again,
but it was It was good for them to take
that chance. So what did we get at the event?
Brand new Pixel phones. Pixel ten that's the standard phone.
Then you've got the Pixel ten Pro, and that comes
in two flavors, the Pro and then the Xcel, which
is just a larger version of that. So the Pixel
ten has a lot of the things that the Pixel ten,

(05:49):
you know, the pixels known for. It's got all the
AI features, got the same processor, it's got a three
camera lens set up now, so you've got a five
times telephoto zoom lens which is great, ten times optical
quality zoom, and then up to twenty times super rezoom,
which means they're using a little AI to clean up
those pictures. Then when you get to the Pro, and

(06:10):
I think for most people the Base Pro is probably
going to be your best bet overall. I think the
ten is just fine, but I think it's like, if
you want to step up just a little bit, go
with the Pro. But this has the six point three
inch display or a six point eight inch. You get
your choice of screen size basically, and then it comes
with sixteen gigabytes of RAM, which is incredible. I love

(06:32):
that that they did that. Based storage on the Pro
is one hundred and twenty eight gigabytes, but even better
on the Pro Excel it is two hundred and fifty
six gigabytes, So that is awesome. It's got a triple camera,
a similar triple camera setup, except this one can go
one hundred times super rezuom. And so I've got the
phone right here and tested this out last night. I

(06:54):
took a picture of a sign super far away. I
could not believe it. It actually takes it's not really
it's zooming in, but then it takes whatever you zoomed
in on, and it literally just uses AI to kind
of recreate the picture pixel by pixel. And so this
picture I took was of a street sign, and it
looks a little AI ish, but it was just I mean,

(07:16):
it's just wild the things that we're doing now with AI.
I don't even know if you can call that zooming,
because now it's just basically AI is looking at what
you zoomed in on and just making it better. So
we'll see how that works out for people, but it's
a pretty cool party trick. The biggest feature I think
for most people is that they finally added magnets to
the back of the pixel lineup, which is great because

(07:38):
this is the first Android device that has magnets built in,
at least here in the US.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Maybe somewhere else they have them, but not here in
the US.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
So basically, if you know mag safe on the Apple
side of things, this is Google's version. They're calling it
pixel Snap, and so that means you can snap on
all kinds of stuff, And by snap, I mean magnetically
attached while it's charged, Rings, grips, whatever you got you
can put on to the back of these phones with

(08:05):
no extra case necessary, even though you'll probably still want
a case. The other big change no more physical SIM
card slot. It is now e SIM only, which means
electronic SIM. So yesterday when I was setting up the device, yeah,
I ran into a little bit of an issue because
I had to like swap the sin SIM electronically and

(08:26):
I couldn't just push one SIM out of my old
phone and pop it into the new phone. So it does,
you know, for some people that will present a challenge,
but for most people that are just upgrading once every
three years four years, not going to be that big
of a deal. So the pricing for these devices, the
standard phone starts at eight hundred dollars, the pro is
a thousand, the pro Xcel is eleven hundred dollars, very

(08:50):
very good pricing. I think on these phones they didn't
really raise prices as far as I can tell, and
you did get a bump on some of the specs,
and you know just some of the things these can do.
So I really think that they did a great job
with these phones this year. I really really do like
this is the year. If you're going to switch to
a pixel, this is the year to do it. Everything
is finally lined up after ten years. They also showed

(09:11):
off the Pixel ten pro fold. Not much to say
about here except it's still there. The foldable phone dust
resistance is now built in that starts at eighteen hundred dollars.
I don't see a lot of people running out to
get the foldables right now, but it's there and it's
still a nice phone if you like that. Now, when
it comes to some of these AI features, this is
what Google really focused on.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Number one.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
This feature called Magic Q, which is just incredible. When
someone texts you a question, AI looks through all the
data on your phone, your emails, your text your notes,
your photos, and it will surface that information right away.
So all you have to do is tap and click
and it'll send it to that person. So if someone says, hey,
what's Jim's phone number? Again, it'll look in your address
book for Jim's pone number.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Put it right there.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Hey, what's our dinner reservation for tonight? It'll put your
reservation right there. You tap it sends it. Hey, remember
to send those pictures you took of us at the circus.
It'll surface your circus photos and I've got a lot
of them on my camera roll and it will send
them right to the other person. I mean, that is
a really really cool feature. I need to test that out.
Then the other big feature asked to edit, So you

(10:14):
don't even need to know how to use a photo
editor anymore. You just take your picture and then there's
a little text chat underneath it, and you just text
with Google about what you want it to do to
that picture. So you can say, remove the reflection fix
this photo, and AI will do all the fixes for you,
crop it whatever you want, and it'll give you a
whole bunch of options. And then it can also do

(10:34):
a surprise me mode, so if you just want to
see something wild and crazy with your pictures, just tap
surprise me. The other cool feature real time call translation.
So not only are they translating your phone calls on
the other ends for the other person, if they speak
a different language, but it's in the person's voice. So
if I spoke to someone that was only speaking Spanish

(10:55):
and they're speaking to me, they would hear me speaking
Spanish in Rich's voice, I would hear them speaking English
in their voice. They're using AI to do that. That's
a really interesting feature. And then finally, the other feature
they mentioned is something called camera Coach, where basically AI
helps you take a better picture while you're taking it.
I don't see anyone using this, but maybe I'll be

(11:17):
proven wrong. Google definitely took some shots at Apple. They said, look,
they're running a walled garden. We've got open choice messages
like the blue bubble versus green bubble. Give me a break,
this is over. They said, everyone has rcs. Your pictures
are going to look good, your videos are going to
look good. You can see when your Android friends are typing,
or your iPhone friends are replying, or there's emojis and

(11:39):
all that stuff. So they said, look, we get it.
Switching is hard. Apple locks you into all this stuff.
While I'm saying this, actually Apple locks you into all
this stuff and it is really hard to switch. But
I do think that people that have a pixel and
it's a very small amount of people. When they have them,
they've got some of the smartest devices out there. All right,
come up eight eight eight rich one O one. We're

(12:01):
gonna take your calls, your emails. We're gonna have more
of my thoughts, and I'm gonna tell you about the
Chuck E Cheese arcade I visited for kids of all ages.
This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two four to one zero one. Phone lines are open.

(12:23):
Kim is here answering phones. What are you waiting for?
Give me a call? Eight eight eight rich one oh
one Diego in San Diego.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
Hello, Thank you Rich for doing this what you're doing.
I have this MacBook Pro A nineteen I'm excusing nineteen
ninety and after cleaning up everything, all the pictures and
stuff that I didn't need everything, I decided to transfer
everything over. And after transfer anything over, I was gonna
do factor reset and sell it to.

Speaker 4 (12:53):
My friend he's been waiting for it, sure, And.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
Then never did that. It just got stuck on the
little Global, the little Earth thing, and there it went.
I just sat there for hours. I kept rebooting it,
doe to everything that I was supposed to, even a factory.
Where is it that downloaded from the internet? Off the
Internet and everything? I just sat there. So I put
it on the shelf and I just, hey, I'm already

(13:15):
good with my computer. I'll let him and I'll get
to it later. And then the battery went dead. And
for what I learned on the internet, this machine needs
a battery to run.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, you can't.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
And it said that when I transfer everything over, it
did a self execute. It committed suicide.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
So it's so, what's the what's the question? How to
get this thing back up and running? To format it? Is?

Speaker 2 (13:42):
This is your data?

Speaker 5 (13:43):
St want to do that?

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Can I actually get it back and up and running?
I like to sell it. My friend he got another one,
but you can use them for his kid too.

Speaker 6 (13:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Of course this is a twenty nineteen model.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
You said, No, it's an Apple nineteen ninety. It's the
years between sixteen and nineteen. Twenty nineteen is the year
more or less when.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
They Okay, so see, yeah, it's a couple of years old.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
I mean it's still you know, it's still reasonably I
think that the a MacBooks can have like probably almost
like a ten year lifespan. So what is the status
of the computer? It won't boot up at all? Is
that the problem?

Speaker 3 (14:17):
It has a dead battery?

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Has a dead battery?

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Okay, So the question is do you want to replace
the battery to save this or now have you left
it plugged in for like a really long time to
get the battery to maybe come back to life.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yes, and it just it just won't.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
No, was there a problem with the battery before? No,
so it was so it wasn't like, uh, there was
no issue with like the battery was like on its
last legs or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was about there because there's
that crane on when you just go ahead and get
another one. So I did, but it wasn't. It was okay,
it could have been a little bit longer necessuidly brand
new course, but I would say it will give me
about eighty percent, you know what I'm saying, stead of
the usual watching the movie for you know, a couple

(15:06):
of hours or two and a half hours. They wouldn't
do that. I had to plug it in somewhere in
between there.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
Okay, Well, the only thing I can think of is
so your your computer will not come to life because
I had a MacBook that I was able to use
without the battery, and this was a long time when
the batteries actually popped out. You can't pop that out.
So I guess the question is do you want to pay?
I mean, you could sell this to your friend as is,
and they could just get the battery replaced and then

(15:32):
they have a perfectly good computer and then they just
have to reinstall the operating system.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
It sounds that's what that's what they would hang up
with the batteries running. Okay, Like I said before, like
eighty percent that was up in their life. And when
I tried to do factor the reset, I got hung
up on that little the little gold the little earth
looking thing, and then just the bar will will go
about three quarters away and then start back over again,

(15:59):
and you can see it doing its progress, and do
it again, and they just keep recycling, just keep doing that.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
Okay, So it sounds like there's something. Yeah, I mean,
it's tough to know what's what's going on here without
exactly seeing it. I'm a little confused. As to what's happening.
But I would say a couple of things to think about.
You know, leave it plugged in for a while, see
if that brings it back to life. Sounds like you've
already done that. There are some ways to reset. Is
this an Intel based? This is an Intel based?

Speaker 7 (16:27):
Right?

Speaker 3 (16:29):
I could not tell you. I don't.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
I think it is, Yeah, because it's the twenty eighteen,
so there's there is one.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Have you heard of this resetting the p RAM?

Speaker 7 (16:39):
Yes, okay, we.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Tried that, Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
I think it sounds like you might need someone to
do a diagnostic on this to get it or just
bring it to a place where they can actually replace
that battery and get this thing going. I'm a little
confused as to like what is what the status of
that battery is. Sounds like it's working a little bit,
but not necessarily. But I think once you get battery
figured out and this computer turns on, you can easily

(17:04):
just wipe the drive. You can use something like there's
a program that I like called disk drill that will
let you make a recovery drive for this thing. You
could boot it up from there and it'll it should
come back to life. I mean, there's still life left
in this computer. I think, so if you want to
replace that battery or at least get someone that knows
how to get this thing turned on, I think it
might be a good idea.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
All right, Coming up.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Next, we are going to talk about how to recover
a refund if your airfare drops in price. This is
rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich
DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple eight
rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. This week I went to
the first Chuck E Cheese arcade. It's called Chuck's Arcade

(17:48):
location in Brea, California. It was one of the first
people in there. This is their tenth location overall for
this Chuck's Arcade. And this is kind of like a
it's like a new con except from Chuck E Cheese.
That's basically like what I grew up with, right, just
an arcade. So there's no pizza, there's no birthday parties.
It's just all focused on the games. There's no you know,

(18:10):
there's no food in there or anything like that. But
there are prizes, which is fun. So the one I
visited had like sixty games. They were really nice, really new,
like very clean and fresh and modern. And apparently these
these crane machines they call them Clawcades, are I guess
really popular. I know my kid loves these claw games,
so and I won one on my first try, which

(18:30):
is awesome. But then they've got retro titles galagam Is,
pac Man plus the modern stuff. And then each location
has a you know, they've been decommissioning these animatronics from
Chuck E Cheese places, so they have one of them
like in glass that you can see. So this one
had Mister Munch. And then of course there's all a
bunch of like merch you can I'm actually wearing one

(18:52):
of the t shirts that they sell there. It's like retro.
It's all retro merchandise, which is really cool. So yeah,
I mean this is a place that anyone can go to, kids, adults, whatever.
You don't need to have a birthday party. And I
really enjoyed it, and I think it's smart they're putting
them in like they're trying to put them mostly next
to mall food courts, which I think is really smart
as well.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
So if you happen to see a Chuck's arcade.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
And you're wondering what it's all about now, you know,
and if you want to see what it's all about,
I put it on my Instagram at rich On Tech.
I did a little video which is sort of making
the rounds right now at rich On Tech on Instagram
if you want to see the Chuck's Arcade. They do
have locations across the nation, just about ten right now,
so be on the lookout for.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
I love the chuck Eg stuff. I mean, I grew
up going there.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
I love the pizza and the you know, my kids
had birthday parties there, so I think a lot of
people have fond memories of this place for different reasons.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
So anyway, kind of cool, all right.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
This week I was also surprised because I woke up
to an email that said, hey, You've got eighty dollars
back as a refund from United. I said, wait what?
And I forgot that I even had signed up with
this website. But it's called Payback Pai c k dot app,
and we've got Jason Lucking on the line. He is
one of the co founders to explain how this all works. Basically,

(20:08):
it gets you money back when an airfare that you
book the price drops.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Jason, Welcome to the show. Do we have him? Nope, Okay,
I don't.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
He's there, Okay, Jason, Jason, you on im.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
There we go.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
We've got Jason ring the bell. Okay, Jason. So tell
me explain the Payback website, Like, tell me how this works.

Speaker 8 (20:34):
So, so Payback was driven out of my own personal
travel experiences as well nuts and bolts of it. Payback
is a AI driven flight optimization tool, so we automate
the process of optimizing optimizing your flight price for an
already purchased ticket.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
And so as I understand, like basically, all I did
was sign up for the website.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
It's free.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
You phear your confirmation from one of the major airlines,
and then it just watches the price and as soon
as it drops to a certain threshold, it will go
out and request that refund. It's really a credit from
the airline.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Correct.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
Correct.

Speaker 8 (21:13):
So again, you're going to book directly with the airline,
and we focus on American Delta, United Alaska, and we're
in talk with some of the other airlines as well
to grow that.

Speaker 5 (21:23):
And then you, just as you said, you ford the
ticket to us.

Speaker 8 (21:26):
We monitor it throughout the day and so whenever that
flight price drops and a thresholder is nothing below ten dollars,
so any drop over ten dollars, we automate that process
to get you a credit or a refund for the difference. Now,
most of us book non refundable tickets, and non refundable
tickets get you future flight credits and refundable tickets, which

(21:48):
are you know, you pay a bit of a premium
for them, you end up getting that back as a refund,
back to the original method of payment.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
So this surprised me because I think I plugged in
like three flights that I had, and two of nothing
really happened, and this one is I mean it's just
all of a sudden, out of the blue. I've bought
four tickets, so I got twenty dollars each ticket times
for eighty dollars. What kinds of refunds are people seeing? Like,
are you seeing a lot of like a fluctuation in
these prices and people kind of capturing these refunds.

Speaker 8 (22:16):
Yeah, So you know, when we started this again, it
was kind of like a personal thing to start off with.
I'm both a frequent flyer and we fly a lot
with the family, so for me I was thinking this
would be great for frequent flyers, maybe saving on economy classes,
but it's happening on every single class, Economy, business, first class. Obviously,
the ranges vary. We've seen tickets drop once, and we've

(22:38):
seen them drop as many as five or eight times.
Now sixty percent of the time the price has been
dropping below what somebody's originally purchased it for. And the
average if you kind of take an amalgamation of all
those savings, the average savings is two hundred and fifty
dollars per saving, So that might be somebody's getting twenty
dollars here, twenty dollars fifty dollars here.

Speaker 5 (23:01):
And we've seen drops as high as nine thousand dollars.

Speaker 8 (23:04):
Now obviously that was an international first class ticket, but
we're still seeing these big drops on the domestic economy
tickets as well.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Wow, that's wild. So people are definitely capturing it. So
you mentioned the fares it works with, so not obviously
not an economy basic fare. I'm guessing right, because there's
no changes to us.

Speaker 8 (23:23):
The only one that's out is basic economy, which, as
you know, you know, basic economy you have to buy
a seat belt and an issue to the toilet. You know,
it's it's meant to be bare bones at that point. Yeah,
it's anything above basic economy.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
And so how are you getting these refunds? Are you?

Speaker 1 (23:38):
I mean, I assume it's some AI involved in here, Like,
how are you actually reaching out to these airlines?

Speaker 5 (23:44):
Yes, so we use we use AI to monitor it.

Speaker 8 (23:46):
We use AI to converse with the airline on your
behalf to get you that credit for the difference. Now,
what one important thing that we think is really key
is we don't cancel your ticket and rebook you. What
we do is we get it reticketed, so you end
staying on the same confirmation number in the same seat
and I will say ninety nine percent of the time
in the same seat. They may move you from one

(24:07):
aisle seat to another if you're flying with one specific airline,
I wouldn't mentioned that one. But same flight, same seat,
nothing changes for you. You just end up getting a
future flight credit to use on a future flight. And
for me, anybody that is a flies more than three
times a year.

Speaker 5 (24:24):
This is this is a key thing.

Speaker 8 (24:27):
You know, credits are like cash at that point you're
going to be using them again.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Well, here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
I mean, so I know because I book a ton
of flights, and here's here's how most people do it.
Maybe I mean this is how I do it. I
research the heck out of it before I book. I mean,
I sit there, I track it, I look at it
every day. The price goes up, the price goes down,
it goes around, and all of a sudden, I finally
book and I never think about it again. So all
that fluctuation still is happening. I'm just no longer monitoring

(24:52):
it is that kind of what most.

Speaker 8 (24:54):
People exactly, So even in that time of you doing
the initial look and the time you're purchasing it, it's
probably fluctuating throughout the day. I mean, we've seen drops
happen for one hour. We've seen them drop for you know,
multiple days. The precipice of payback is to say when
is the best time to book? You know, I'm a
super analytical person, and I was always thinking, you know,

(25:14):
follow these fads. It's on a Tuesday at six am,
clear your cookies.

Speaker 5 (25:18):
Make sure you know mercury is in retrograde. All these
like running baths on social media.

Speaker 8 (25:23):
And what we wanted people to be able to do
is say, when is the right time to book?

Speaker 5 (25:27):
The right time to book is now?

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Is right now?

Speaker 5 (25:30):
To worry?

Speaker 8 (25:31):
You book when you want to make that initial decision,
and if the price drops, we're going to optimize that
for you anyway.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yeah, because the price is going to go up no
matter what, Like it eventually goes up, like when you
get closer to the date. But like you said, there
might be these things where it just drops and I
and you can see when you log into the website
that you see that graph of like what the flight,
what the price has done for that flight over time.
So here's my big question though, because I've seen similar
startups like this before. Now that this is happening and

(26:01):
you know, people can tap into this thing that probably
was never tapped into these refunds, the airlines are like, oh,
not so fast. We're just going to change our terms
and conditions and you can no longer get a credit.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Are they going to do that?

Speaker 5 (26:12):
So we don't believe.

Speaker 8 (26:14):
So in twenty twenty, United announce that they were removing
change fees forever, permanently, never coming back. One of the
things that you're building towards is partnerships with the airlines
directly we want to integrate into the airlines, and here's
the reason why, is because people that use payback become
more loyal to that specific airline. We recently did a
study that showed sixty seven percent of our users that

(26:34):
receive a price drop are more likely to book with
that dedicated airline again for two reasons. One they feel
better about the ticket that they're flying with, and two
they've got a credit to use with the airline, which
you either.

Speaker 5 (26:46):
Use it or you lose it, and if you use
it amazing.

Speaker 8 (26:50):
Our whole ethos is we want people more, do more
of what you love, go out and see the world,
whether that's domestically or internationally, and that's kind of a
a deep rooted element of payback. So there's a huge
loyalty element with the airlines that we drive forwards.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
It's funny because my holiday flights that I was booking
for the holidays like Christmas, I was waiting and then
when I heard about this website, I actually just booked.
I said to my wife, we could just book these
because if the price goes down, which is what we're
waiting for, we'll just get a credit.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
And that's what happened. By the way. So that's the
flights that we got, and his exactly.

Speaker 8 (27:25):
Price goes up, we do nothing about it. You know,
if the price goes up, let it keep going up.
You know that you paid the best price two months ago,
three months ago, whenever it was that you initially booked
that ticket.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Right, I've got about thirty seconds. What's the cost here?

Speaker 8 (27:40):
So we don't charge anything upfront. We charge a twenty
percent service fee on whatever we save you, so we
don't want it to be any friction of you to
question it.

Speaker 5 (27:49):
Only when you win do we win.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
All right?

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Jason Lucking, co founder of payback pai back dot app.
I'll put the link on the website rich on Tech
dot tv can find it in the show notes. Get
your money back if your airfare price drops. Great idea.
Thanks so much for joining me, Jason. Coming up on
the show, I'll tell you more about the pixel watch

(28:13):
four and your calls. Eighty to eight rich one O
one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Welcome back to rich on tech rich Demiro here eighty
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV
this is episode one three six. So if you go
to the website you want the show notes, or you
want to see my cool Chuck E Cheese shirt, Yeah,
go to the website. Rich on tech dot tv episode
one three six. Hel In Seemi Valley, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 9 (28:50):
Well, thanks, thank you, Rich. I've got a strange problem.
My icons are no longer medium, my preferences medium. They're
larger than small and smaller than medium. The print underneath
them is smaller when I go into my folders and smaller.

(29:18):
I've tried scaling. I've done whatever research I can do,
and I said, well, I don't think it's a virus.
I've run anti virus, and no matter what I do,
it just seems to be smaller.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
I'm assuming it's on Windows.

Speaker 10 (29:42):
Yes.

Speaker 9 (29:42):
The only other thing I can tell you about that
is unusual, and maybe it's at about the same time
I wasn't paying that much attention is about every ten seconds,
my icons will blink off and on against.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Okay, it sounds like it sounds like a scaling issue.
If you ask me, it sounds like somehow your the
scale of your screen got changed. So did suddenly everything
on the screen get smaller?

Speaker 9 (30:08):
Well, I didn't notice it right away, but everything on
the screen, all the icons and the words underneath them
are smaller. And I tried customs scaling I have for
my word documents. I have it set at one hundred
and that's all there.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Okay, and that's but that's that's a setting that is
just for the word app. So there are you know,
when it comes to these computers, there's like global settings,
and then there's settings inside the actual apps. So I'm
going to tell you the places to look that I
think will help fix this. And I think the first
thing is number one, you have to just look at
the scale of your screen. So when you go into

(30:48):
your Windows settings, you can just just go to your
desktop actually and write click and you can go and
hang on, I gotta move something around here so I
can see what I'm doing here display settings, so that
that's the number one place to look. And make sure
that your scale is the right scale. So mine's at
one hundred and seventy five percent. It's based on the monitor,
So just play with that number a little bit and

(31:10):
see if things look the way they used to be.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
So that's number one.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
So again, just write, click on the screen and once
you write click, you're going to go into display settings
and look under scale and layout and just tap that
and you can change your scaling. Now, once you're in there,
you can actually check your text size. That's also in there,
so you can go in there, and this is under

(31:34):
accessibility actually, but if there's like a quick link, so
you can go in there and check your text size,
and right now, minds at one hundred percent, you can
make that much bigger all the way up to once
I tap this, I'm never going to be able to
go back one hundred let's say two hundred and twenty
five percent. So there's a little slider. So again that's
under text size, and you could just search text size

(31:55):
in the Windows search bar at the bottom. The other
thing to do is I think your icons. You said
your icons were looking a lot smaller. So if you
right click again this desktop, you'll see where it says
view and you'll notice there's three options large icons, medium icons,

(32:16):
and small icons. So you might have somehow selected the
medium or small and maybe you still want the large,
So those are the.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
Places do it.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
The other thing is, and it sounds like you already
found this, but if you want a shortcut to just
in general, this is probably a good thing to know
on Windows. But if you just you know, if you
have any vision issues or you want to see something
closer up and you don't want to change a whole
bunch of stuff, you can just press the Windows key
and the plus sign on your computer at the same time,
and it will bring up the accessibility magnifier and you

(32:49):
can zoom into like any part of your page. So
if you're trying to read something that's got tiny text,
or you're just you know, having issues that day, maybe
you just woke up, you know, and you can't see
as well in the morning, just the Windows plus the
plus key will take you there so and then minus
will take you the other way. So those are the
main places I would look how I think those one

(33:10):
of those will fix it. It sounds like because you
said the icons were blinking, that sounds like some sort
of screen scaling or refresh rate kind of thing. So
it looks like something got a little tweaked in there.
But hopefully you can just go in and change those
settings and find something that works for you. Good question today,
Thanks for the call. Eight eight eight Rich one O
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one

(33:33):
zero one.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Let's see, do I have time for another one? Probably not.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Let me do this, so let me tell you about
the pixel Watch four. Pixel Watch four I mentioned earlier.
They had the Pixel w the Pixel Phones, the Pixel ten.
They also unveiled a new watch and so the thing
the headlines to know about the pixel Watch four is
that it is the first smart watch that can call

(33:57):
for help with satellites. So we know we have this
on our phones, some of the recent model phones have this.
Now the watch has it for the first time. And
the only thing to know about this is that it
has to be the cellular that what pixel Google calls
the LTE version of the watch, so it's not gonna
be the regular watch. You do have to have that
cellular modem inside the watch, so it is the more

(34:18):
expensive watch. But if you are some of that hikes,
you're always out in the middle of nowhere without your
phone and you know you just have your watch on. Yes,
you could have cellular, but now you can have the
satellite emergency, which is really cool. So that's that's their
number one new feature. It is free and included on
the device. Then they also have this new domed display.

(34:39):
I didn't really notice a crazy different dome display, but
it definitely looked like the screen was bigger when I
saw it. The battery life has improved, so thirty hours
or forty hours fast charging is improved better, Gorilla glass
easier to fix this thing, and of course everything's more accurate.
All the tracking, sleep trackings more accurate. All these things

(35:01):
are more accurate. So they upgraded the sensors on this device,
and then of course they added this personal AI health
coach with Gemini. This is similar to what Samsung did
and similar to what Apple did. Obviously, AI is making
its way into every part of our lives. But the
other nice thing they have on this is the Gemini AI,
which you can just lift your wrist up to your

(35:21):
mouth and just start talking to AI, so you don't
have to like activate it with a button or anything
on screen. You can just lift your wrist, which is
something you've been able to do with Siri for many years.
But let's be honest, Siri is definitely not as helpful
as Gemini AI because you can get answers to anything
in the world with Gemini. It is a really cool feature.
Three hundred and fifty dollars for the Wi Fi version,

(35:42):
up to five hundred dollars for the biggest LTE version
in stores October ninth, eighty eight rich one oh one
eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you focking technology triple
eight rich one O one eight eight A seven four

(36:04):
to two four one zero one. The website for the
show rich on Tech dot TV. Visit there for the
show notes. Also, you can check out the stories I
do for TV. They're all right there, and follow me
on Instagram at rich on Tech. You see the theme here. Yes,
I posted a couple of things to Instagram this.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Week, and one of them was.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
I'm at the airport and I'd use the self checkout,
and sure enough, it asks me if I would like
to leave a tip?

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Why would I leave a tip for a self checkout?

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Kiosk, I'm not leaving a tip, and it defaulted to
let's see here eighteen percent. By the way, I was
already paying seven dollars for a bottle of water, and
everyone commented is like, well, why would you pay seven
bucks for bottle water? Number one when you're in an arena,
a sporting event, or an airport, there's something or a
movie theater, there's something called suspension of pricing disbelief. You

(37:01):
have to just imagine that a Coca cola cost twenty
dollars when you're at a movie theater or an airport.
And that's the same thing with the water. Now, I
did bring my own water bottle. Yes, I do travel
with a water bottle. When I filled it up at
the airport at one of their fillers, it was hot water,
like literally hot, and I just did not feel like
drinking hot water. So that's why I bought the bottle
of water. Anyway, you can see that there. You can

(37:23):
also see My Chuck's Arcade My Chuck e Cheese Arcade video.
But we went to you know, if you check my
stories too, you can see we went last night to
Dave Matthews's band. We watched them and it was great.
It was a nice show. It was if you like music,
it was a great show. Right didn't play all the
songs that I knew, which I thought was kind of annoying,
but you know, what are you gonna do? I can't

(37:44):
tell him what to play, but it made me think
about something because we knew exactly what time he was
taking the stage, exactly what time he was leaving exactly. Well,
you know people have the set list or whatever. But
like it made me realize, in this world, we don't
leave anything to chance anymore, right, Like everything is planned

(38:04):
out in advance. Like there was a time and I've
lived this life where things were mysterious. Right, your favorite band,
like like Counting Crows, Dave Matthews, they would just show
up on stage whenever they felt like. You didn't know
what time they were supposed to come on, you didn't
have access to Reddit, You didn't know the set list
because you didn't look it up online. Right, I mean,

(38:24):
these are the things that we just do now. How
about going to a restaurant. You go to a restaurant.
So many people I know they study the menu for
hours before they go to the restaurant. What about being
surprised at what's on the menu at a restaurant? Why
can't we just be surprised?

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Now?

Speaker 1 (38:41):
My wife and I debate on that because she loves
to look at the menu. I never ever thought about
looking at the menu at a restaurant before until I
met her. And now it's like we're analyzing the whole menu.
You know, we've got like everything figured out beforehand. What
about maps? You know, I was we were going to
the concert yesterday, and you know the maps. It's like

(39:01):
we knew where to take the turns. You know, ways
is like all it takes you all over the city.
You know, it takes you a million left turns whatever.
But it's like, what about the days when you just
literally drove, Like even on my ride home, I know
exactly where I'm going.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
I still put on my maps. Why.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
I don't know, It's just something we do movies. I mean,
there are apps that will tell you the exact time
to leave the theater. She can go to the bathroom,
run pe. I think it's called. I mean, there is
no more mystery in our lives, in a modern life,
in twenty twenty five, there's no more mystery. Maybe that's
why people are so unhappy. It's nice to have some

(39:35):
mystery in life. What about when people called, they would
call you on the phone, you would just pick up
and say, hello, who is this? Now it's like you
know exactly who's on there. You know who's on the
other end. You don't pick it up half the time.
Picture same thing. You used to take pictures on your camera,
you know, and you'd get it developed. Remember that anticipation
of waiting for the film to be developed.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
We don't have that anymore. Now.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
You take a selfie, you look at it the second later,
and invariably someone's like, I don't like it.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Let's take another one. Sports same thing.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
I mean, instant highlights on your phone packages, Oh this one.
I like package tracking. Like you would order something off
the TV sight on scene. You'd be like, oh, that
looks cool, let me order it. Six to eight weeks
it was a mystery. You would call the thing, or
you'd mail in and order perhaps, and then six to
eight weeks later someone will show up on your doorstep.

(40:27):
I mean, this is it's really this stuff. I get
to think about all this stuff all week long. Sometimes
I remember to mention it. Sometimes I don't.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
John writes in from Orange, California.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
I want to continuously video my game room so I
can make a collage of clips when someone makes a
great shot. What type of camera should I use? I'd
like to have it remote control and wired charging, so
I don't have to keep it taking it down. I
will tell you, John, I've had my Google Nest Cam
running twenty four to seven for over ten years now,
twenty four to seven. For ten years, the thing has
not missed a beat. And you can pay Google to

(40:59):
record in the cloud twenty four to seven. You know,
you have to pay a little bit every month, but
I'm telling you that's the way to go. I've had
this thing plugged in and literally it is never stopped
for ten years, ten plus years at this point. And Google,
when I met with them a couple months ago, they
said that actually, what people like about their devices is
that they last a really long time. Like I have
the Nest thermostat, the original one that's been up for

(41:22):
eleven years now in my house, and I do have
to replace it because it's gonna stop working. But I mean,
that's a great run. Eleven years of not having to
think about this stuff. Let's see, Paul's been waiting for
a while, and Hammett, Paul, you're on with Rich. I'm
here myself. Paul, sounds like you're listening. Paul, you on?

Speaker 2 (41:40):
No, okay, Paul, you were? How do I get this
on hold again?

Speaker 3 (41:45):
Particular one?

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Okay, let's go to Karen in Bakersfield. Karen, you're on
with Rich Hi.

Speaker 6 (41:52):
Rich love your show.

Speaker 11 (41:54):
You're a great teacher. And my question is you could
recommend a rogue buck antivirus software where when you purchase,
then every time you scan, you aren't getting suggestions for
adding utilities and.

Speaker 5 (42:08):
All these things.

Speaker 11 (42:09):
You know, you never feel like you're you're completely protected.
And I know that there'll be you know, enhancements and
so forth, but studies are just you know, bobarding you
to add on.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, and they crawl, They slow your computer down to
a crawl. And it's it's horrific. I mean, it really is,
like honestly, the and I know a lot of people
are gonna like me saying this, but this whole anti
virus kind of thing has gotten out of control. There
are a lot of people, a lot of tech experts
out there that do not believe you need anti virus
on your computer anymore.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Now. I think I'm somewhere in the middle.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
I think that there are we are still up against
a lot of stuff when we are on the internet.
And I think two things. Number one to know. Number one, uh,
Windows computers have built in uh now uh you know
they call it Defender let's see, I think they just
recently changed the name. I think it's all under like
Windows Security now, but they have that built into your computer, so.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
You can use that. As long as it's up to date, you're.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
Going to be just fine for like ninety nine percent
of things that happen on your computer.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
So that's number one.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
If you want to just go into there, you can
just type in Windows Security and it will bring up
all of the security functionality that's built into Windows.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
So you've got virus in.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Threat protection, account protection, firewall, device app and browser control,
and you can tap into something like virus in threat
protection and you can see when the last time your
computer was scanned, when the last time it found something,
what you need to do, the updates that you have,
and oh this is actually something I think someone's someone

(43:43):
emailed about this. But there's also like ransomware protection built
into your computer as well, so you can turn that on.
So I mean, I think Windows has a lot of
stuff that's already built in and I think is fine
for most for many many people. The thing that I
think we're up against the most these days is actually
clicking a lot or being misled online, and so for

(44:03):
that reason I really recommend people using Chrome because Chrome
has built in tools that will actually scan the websites
that you are visiting and the links that you're visiting
to make sure that they are not filled with malware
or viruses or some sort of fishing or whatever. And
so if you go into your Chrome settings and let's see,

(44:28):
I think we go under I got to find where
this is privacy and security. Let's see here, Yeah, privacy
and security. So under that you can tap security, and
they've got this thing called safe Browsing, and the standard
protection is pretty much I think that's just turned on
for most of Chrome. But if you really want the
best protection from Chrome to protect you in real time

(44:50):
with AI, go in and select this enhanced protection under
safe Browsing, and it will warn you about dangerous sites.
It will scan suspicious downloads. I mean, it really does
a lot of stuff to make sure you're protected. And
I check I unlike what you should be doing. I
click a lot of these websites that are that are

(45:10):
bogus or scammy to see what they try to do.
And there are some that literally just try to download
a virus to your computer or malware right away. And
there's others that will just try to, you know, take
your information things like that. So this will protect you
from a lot of that. The other thing I like,
I do like malware bites. I think that's a pretty
good way to scan your computer. There is a website,

(45:32):
by the way, Karen called avdash test dot org. And
if you look at all of the ratings for these
these antivirus software, they're all almost the same at this point.
So what it really comes down to is, like you said,
something that doesn't have a ton.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Of bloatwear involved.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
And I think there is one that I think is
pretty good, this sofos s O p h O s
sofos dot com. It is a little more expensive, and
you know, it's not gonna have like things like VPN
all that stuff necessarily does it I don't think it does.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
But it does have real time protection.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
It does have a lot of good things, and I
think their whole business is just protecting you. So I
think that's what you want to look for, is a
system that is just simple and not trying to sell
you on a thousand other things. Once they have your
email address and once they have you So those are
the things I'd recommend to do. I think that's going
to protect you in like ninety nine percent of the circumstances.

(46:25):
I really think a lot of it comes down to
these links that people are clicking. They're getting malware, they're
getting scammed, and I think that's what we need to
be protected more so than just the random viruses. It's
really the malvertizing and all these pop ups and websites
that we're seeing that I think is the biggest issue
out there right now. So stay protected out there, and

(46:46):
you know, just be smart about what you click and
what you're looking at. Great call, Karen, appreciate the question.
Eight eight eight 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 see Scott Brown
about the pixel of and I'm going to tell you
which streaming service is raising prices.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
Next, this is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
On Tech.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple
eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Two four one zero one. Let's see.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
I feel like this. I feel like Mark is a
regular here. Mark and Woodland Hills Welcome to the show.

Speaker 7 (47:27):
Goon, sir, how's.

Speaker 12 (47:29):
Going we're looking at selling our house and buying another,
and when we move into the new house, we would
like a comprehensive home security system. And I'm wondering if
there's any conventions, you know, like home improvement conventions upcoming
that you know, have all the displays and the tables,
and instead of calling blindly around and having some salesman

(47:49):
pressure us into a system we'd like to, we'd like
to do it hardwired. Also because you know, we know
that the burglars are using Wi Fi jammers now to
overcome people's wireless systems. I was wondering if you have
any suggestions or know of any of these conventions coming
up for home improvements here.

Speaker 10 (48:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
Well, I'm actually going to one. I think it's in
a couple of weeks CDA CE D I A. I
believe it's in Denver this year. But that's really the
home expo for the professional things like you're talking about,
like if you want a wired camera system, you want
you know, the TV that's indoor outdoor, you want the

(48:29):
built in you know at Crestron System all that stuff.
That's why I'm going, so I want to learn more
about these things. It's been a while haven't gone to
the show in like ten years, but that is the
main one. So that's the first place I would I
would check cedia xpo dot com, c E d I
A e xpo dot com. And not only will this

(48:50):
give you an idea of the show, but you can
also look at the exhibitors too, and that'll give you
a good idea of who's at this show and who's
showing off stuff. Because these brands are not necessarily the
brands that you would find at a Best Buy or
a home depot. You know, these are more professional installers
use these brands for the cameras and things like that.

(49:10):
So that's the first place i'd look. You said you're
in Woodland Hills, so I would look at the UH.
I would just go to the you know, Google and
I just typed in home shows and they've got a
whole bunch of California home shows and they've got one
on Riverside, San Diego, Lodie, Sacramento. Now, the problem with

(49:32):
these home shows, a lot of it seems like it
is you know, baths, closets, remodeling. But yeah, the techie
stuff might not be there on display. But that's the
kind of show you want to look for. You want
to look for some sort of home show that's like
more tech focused. I personally, you know, the ones I
go to CS always going to have all this stuff,

(49:53):
But the Cedia one is also going to have a
lot of this stuff that you're talking about. But yeah,
I mean, look, this is this is what people want
these days. They want the full house. Everything has a camera.
They want to be able to remote control access it.
I think some of this stuff, you know, if you're
just like a regular person, you just want like the
beauty of this is that you can do a lot
of this yourself nowadays. And that's what I think has

(50:14):
really been the biggest change in the consumer electronics space
in the past ten years or so, is that it
used to be you had to have someone come to
your house and install this stuff. But when we had
the I think the ring video doorbell really kind of
transformed an entire industry because it was the first time
you could just literally go outside your front door pop
a camera up there, and now with Wi Fi, you

(50:37):
can see what's happening outside your front door. And I
remember doing a story on the very first ring doorbell.
It's called Doorbop back then, and people it was such
a foreign concept that number one, nobody's WiFi was good
enough to reach to the outside of their front door.
So everyone thought this thing sucked because it was like, oh,
this thing doesn't work. No, your Wi Fi signal was

(51:00):
ahead of its time. Your WiFi signal had not caught
up to this technology. And then you know, as soon
as we got that, we got all kinds of other cameras.
And then when Whys came out with their twenty dollars
camera and Blink with their inexpensive cameras, suddenly it's like
you could have a camera everywhere and it was really
really cheap. And so people that want a professional system,

(51:22):
there's always going to be those people. But for everyone else,
the fact that you can do this very easily with
these mainstream brands is really really neat.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
You might have heard the.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
News that the government is taking a ten percent stake
in Intel. What the government putting ten billion dollars into Intel,
So I guess this was the amount that Intel was
supposed to get under the Chipsacked grant to build new
factories here in the US. But now this is actually
an investment by the US. So if Intel does well

(51:53):
I guess the US does well. If Intel doesn't do well,
then the US loses their money. But I think they
could just print more. So what's you know? It's all fake,
It's all phony money anyway, right, I'm not giving this
is not financial advice. I have no idea. I'm just
making a joke. I'm not sure how all that stuff works.
I don't know where the government gets ten billion?

Speaker 2 (52:14):
Is it from me? Is it from Bobo? I think
it's from US. I really do.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
I think we own Intel now at some point, you know,
And here's the thing. Intel recorded nearly a twenty dollars
twenty billion dollar loss in twenty twenty four. It's first
lost since nineteen eighty six. It is struggling. This company
is struggling. I love America, I love American companies. But
Intel has missed the boat on everything mobile. All the

(52:39):
chips inside your phones, they're either made by Samsung or
TSMC or another company Media Tech. They are not made
by Intel. Intel did not figure out how to make
these chips for the phones work, so they just never
really took off. Now, before you yell at me and
say how dare the government investing companies, yes, they've done
this before.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
I have to look it up.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
Financial crisis two thousand and eight, US invested in a
City Group and Bank of America two thousand and eight,
AIG government owned nearly eighty percent of it after one
hundred and eighty billion dollar rescue, GM Chrysler, Amtrak Airlines
Post nine to eleven.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
So yes, this has happened before.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Eighty eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich
On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking
technology triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four to two four to one zero one. I
see the calls, I see the phone lines. We will

(53:41):
get to you in just a little bit. But we've
got a great guest. Actually, the person I was sitting
next to in Brooklyn at the Made by Google event,
c Scott Brown, Senior editor at Android Authority, also has
a great new YouTube channel of his own name and
is just doing really well. He's just basically focusing on

(54:03):
his love of pixel and all things pixel.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
So Scott, welcome to the show.

Speaker 13 (54:08):
Thanks very much, it's great to be here. And yeah,
thanks for being my seating buddy at the show.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
So I guess, what's your first impression, your initial takeaway
from this Google Pixel event.

Speaker 13 (54:21):
Well, obviously, I mean maybe not obviously, but it's been
quite controversial. I think a lot of the traditional tech
fans have been very upset about it because it was
very silly. They didn't focus on hardcore specs, they didn't
even really go over pricing and availability. They just pretty
much had this fun show with all these celebrity guests.

(54:43):
And yeah, I think a lot of people are really
upset about it. But I think I think it was
great because it sort of bridged the divide. You know,
it brought in people who might not care about a
smartphone launch, made them watch it, and now those people
might be like, huh, these pixel phones seem pretty cool,
maybe we should check them out.

Speaker 4 (55:00):
Which those are the.

Speaker 13 (55:01):
People we're trying to convince, Like the farmcore techy's like me, like,
we're already convinced. Like, you don't need to convince us
to get excited. You got to convince you know, the
moms and the dads and the people who just don't care.
You know.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
Well, it's interesting because you say don't care, but I
think the people that have pixels actually care more because
the people I see with pixel smartphones, I usually they're
a little bit elevated, like they they kind of like
sought out that phone for a specific reason and that's
either the Google software or integration, or also the camera

(55:35):
or they they're like, I don't feel like a lot
of people have a pixel that are just they have
it happenstance, right, Like they seek this phone out, I
feel like, and maybe Google knows that, and that's why
they don't focus on specs and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
They say, Okay, the people that want.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
This thing are going to look at the specs eventually,
we're going to focus on what this can do for you.

Speaker 13 (55:54):
Yeah, And that was even reflected in a little behind
the scenes knowledge. So when when companies have big launches
like this, they give journalists the information ahead of time.
They say, we're going to launch this. This is what
it looks like. You know, you can expect the expects
and all that kind of stuff. Here's the pricing whatever,
And then they give us a date and a time
and they say, you can't talk about this until this
date and time comes. And that date and time this year,

(56:16):
for the first time ever, was an hour before the
launch even started. So I think what Google was planning
was was like the nerds, you know, like me, They're
going to get all the information they need well before the.

Speaker 4 (56:27):
Event even starts.

Speaker 13 (56:29):
But then hopefully they'll be like, hey, well I already
know everything that's going on, but maybe I should check
out this show. So I think Google very intentionally made
the show the way that it was. And yeah, tech
geeks are upset about it, but you know what, like tough,
it's not all about you all the time stuff.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
Yeah, so what do you think of the new phone?

Speaker 1 (56:46):
I mean, we've got the Pixel ten, Pixel ten Pro,
the foldable. What kind of struck you with the improvements
that you think is the best?

Speaker 13 (56:56):
Well, the interesting thing is that all the improvements are
under the hood. If you, you know, hold the two
phones that last year's Pixel nine series and this year's
Pixel ten series, if you stack them all next to
each other, even I, you know, it's my job to
be able to tell the difference between them, and even
I would be like, you know, squinting a little bit,
like which ones which because they all look exactly the same.

(57:17):
And so yeah, all the actual updates are under the hood,
and there are a lot of them, and I'm sad
to see that a lot of people online, a lot
of the commentators and comments on YouTube and stuff with
people saying like, you know, they didn't change anything, these
phones are just a rehash, and it's like, no, there's
so much going on. There's a brand new processor that's
that's you know, the first of its kind from Google,
that's you know, much more powerful, and there's a lot

(57:39):
more cool stuff, tons of AI features, new camera upgrades,
better speakers, you know, better display.

Speaker 4 (57:45):
Like I mean, just the list goes on and on,
but you have to go looking.

Speaker 13 (57:49):
You can't just look at the phone and say it
but yeah, but specifically answer your question. The thing that
I'm the most excited about is probably the new ask
photos feature, which I think is super cool. Basically, the
way it works is that if you take a photo
and you open it up in photos and you want
to edit it, you usually have to like use your
your fingers and treat things and fissknobs and move sliders

(58:11):
up and down whatever.

Speaker 4 (58:12):
Now you can just ask.

Speaker 13 (58:14):
You can just put the button and say, hey, you know,
make this photos lighting better, or you know, remove the
person that's.

Speaker 4 (58:20):
Standing behind me or whatever. Edit you can. You can
imagine and it'll just do it.

Speaker 13 (58:24):
And I think that's going to be a game changer
for once again the normal person who just picks up
this phone, it's like, well, why why should I get
this over an iPhone? That alone, I mean would be
something that I think a lot of people would be
really interested in.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
I mean, how many times have you wanted to change
something in a picture but you don't even know where
to start, Like, oh, I'd like to make the sky bluer,
or the I want to remove this object or whatever.
I mean, there's a million crop it zoom in. You know,
people don't know where all these tools are. I mean
the super nerdy techies do, but like the rest of us,
well the rest of people, you know, they may not

(58:57):
know where to I mean sometimes I don't even know
because I'm not like a photographer person. Say so, I
think that feature is great and it can of course
go into AI with like if you want to add
stuff to your picture too, you can do that. I mean,
the Google Photos editing on this device is truly like
next level, Like it's like everything you need in one place.
What about the idea of snapping on the magnetic accessories?
I mean I feel like that's really cool to have,

(59:19):
But I feel like all the cases already had the
ring in it, so it's like you're getting it, but
you know you're already you're going to put a case
on this thing anyway that has that.

Speaker 13 (59:28):
I Well, for me personally, I love it because I
don't have a case. I go, I go nude with
my phones. Oh wow, But I think that for yeah,
for a lot of people who are already adopted into
the too that ecosystem, you know, that's they're.

Speaker 4 (59:43):
Probably not too impressive.

Speaker 13 (59:44):
But the thing that's going to be cool about this
is that now that Google's on board, now there's going
to be more products.

Speaker 6 (59:50):
You know.

Speaker 4 (59:50):
Now it's not just going to be.

Speaker 13 (59:52):
We made this product for an iPhone, because the iPhones
are the only major manufacturer, are the only major smartphones
that have this technology now pixels involved, and then you
know Samsung is right around the corner now, and then
you know one plus and what a role All the
brands are going to start adopting this now that Google has,
So yeah, that's just going to be more stuff, you know.
Sure it may just be like slight revamps of what's

(01:00:14):
already available for the iPhone, but hey, I'll take it.
You know, I'm excited to be able to join the
party of what iPhone users have been using for a
long time.

Speaker 6 (01:00:21):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Now, you have recently started your own YouTube channel called
c Scott Brown. Definitely follow him, and it's become quite
popular because you are focusing It's called a pixel user's perspective,
so you are focusing on what you love about the pixel,
what makes this phone unique. And I've been using the
new one now for twenty four hours and I'm I'm
in love with it. I'll be honest, like, every time

(01:00:43):
I go to the pixel, I remember how smart a
smartphone can be compared to what I talk about in
the iPhone, it's all about hunting and pecking, I call
it because you're always hunting for something to do and
pecking to do something, whereas the pixel puts so much
information in front and center when you need it, and
it's just like less hunting and pecking.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
That's the way I describe it.

Speaker 13 (01:01:05):
Yeah, No, I'm I'm loving the new phones, and yeah,
I have a new channel that's specifically dedicated to pixels.
I'm not I don't only talk about pixels. I have
talked about Samsung phones and other phones throughout the thing.
But it always, like you said, it's a pixel user's perspective.
It's somebody who is using pixels and is deep in
the Google ecosystem, his perspective on what's going on in

(01:01:27):
the world of tech, which is not common. And that's
probably why the channel has been so popular so quickly,
is that a lot of people, even within the Android space,
a lot of tech creators are iPhone users. You know,
you can tell you watch their video and they talk
about how great the pixel is.

Speaker 4 (01:01:44):
But then in the next video you see their Apple Watch,
you know, or or they or they you know.

Speaker 13 (01:01:49):
They show themselves walking around town like you're doing like
photography tests or whatever, and you can see the iPhone
in their hand.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
And the iPhone has the iPhone says, you know, the
cellular carrier on the top, and the other one they're
tech has like no signal.

Speaker 13 (01:02:01):
Yeah yeah, so yeah, so I kind of saw this
gap and it was like, you know, we don't have
like a genuine personality somebody who is really a pixel user.

Speaker 5 (01:02:14):
What do those people think?

Speaker 13 (01:02:15):
And the response has been overwhelming because, like I said,
like this just hasn't existed. So yeah, I'm very excited
about the earliest success of the channel, and it's been
really magnificently all right, all.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
Right, I've got one less than a minute. What do
you think I said, this is the year if you're
going to switch to a pixel, this is the year.
I said that with Samsung with their foldables, they got
those to a place where I think they're about perfect
for now. I think the pixel is about perfect for
now ten years in. Why do you think someone should
try this out and switch?

Speaker 13 (01:02:46):
I think that the number one reason is because Google
is doing everything it can to make you switch. Google
is welcoming you Apple. You know, if you're an iPhone user,
no shade to you or anything. But at the same time,
like Apple is keeping you prisoner. Apple is working hard
to prevent you from leaving by doing all sorts of
dirty tricks behind the scenes, and Google is doing the opposite.

(01:03:07):
Google is opening up its doors wide and saying, come
on in and stay as long as you want, don't
you know, bring your current accessories. You've got all those
mag safe things, keep them.

Speaker 4 (01:03:16):
Come on over.

Speaker 13 (01:03:17):
You want to talk with your friends using you know,
specialized chat features and stuff like that, We've got that too.
It's Google's attitude is very much like come on over,
whereas Apple's attitude is very much the opposite. So I
think that's the number one reason why people should consider,
you know, finally getting out of the Apple prison.

Speaker 5 (01:03:34):
For for maybe a little bit.

Speaker 4 (01:03:35):
See what we'll see what it's like on the other side.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
All Right, them are some fighting words. For sure, we're
gonna leave it there. See Scott Brown. Check them out
on YouTube. See Scott Brown. Good to see you this
week in Brooklyn, and keep up the good work.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
On the YouTube channel.

Speaker 4 (01:03:51):
Thanks so much.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Man, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
seven four two four one zero one. Coming up, I
will tell you streaming service that is raising prices. Next
right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking
technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight

(01:04:15):
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. While
you're there, sign up for my newsletter. It is free.
It's delivered every weekend. They are long, they're involved, but
you know, it's all the stuff that I think you
should know about in the world of tech.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
Kind of like this show. Let's see what else this week?

Speaker 7 (01:04:40):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
Apple TV? Apple TV plus raising prices. There are only
two three things we know in this world to be
true death taxes and streaming service prices will go up.
That's all we know to be true in this world. Yes,
Apple TV plus US raising prices to thirteen dollars a month,

(01:05:02):
up from ten dollars a month. The price he takes
effect August twenty first for new customers. Existing users will
see the change on their next bill within thirty days.
They've had several price increases. It launched in twenty nineteen
at five bucks. Now what does Apple say? You didn't
think F one was gonna pay for itself, did you.

(01:05:24):
I mean, look, they're spending so much money on these
things they're doing, and so it costs a lot of money.

Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
I'm not defending them.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
I mean this is you know, I do the Apple one,
so I pay, like I think it's thirty eight bucks
a month for all their stuff, and that price went up,
and so I'm wondering if that's going to go up
now because of this new price increase on Apple TV Plus.
So anyway, you really got to figure out what you
want out of these streaming services at this point, David
writes in from Dallas, Oregon, listening on KFIR in Oregon.

(01:05:56):
As I used to say before I moved to California,
or on no It's organ he said, I added a
four digit pin to my phone. Now I regret it
because I just want to swipe to one lock like before.
I can't seem to figure out how to remove the
lock screen and go back to the way it was.
Is there any hope of eliminating this extra step. Yes,
of course there is, but you don't want to do that.

(01:06:17):
I cannot recommend that you go out into this world
of ours with a phone without a lock on the screen,
because there's way too much personal information on your phone.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
I remember my dad when.

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
I set him up with the I don't know I
was doing something with this phone. I gave him a
new phone, new iPhone, and was used iPhone. It was
one of my old ones, and I said, all right, now,
set up your fingerprint. I don't want a fingerprint on there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
Why not. I don't want my fingerprint.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
I want to just be able to look at my
phone and it opens and I'm like uh, or he said,
I swipe it and I said, Dad, you have to
have this on there is very important and anyway, it
was a whole thing, but he did put it on there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
But yes, some people just don't want this. You gotta
have it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
You got to add add a pin code, add a fingerprint,
face off, whatever, because there's just too much info on
your phone. But yes, David, to answer your questions, you
can go into settings security on your phone and remove that.
I just can't recommend that. Reggie is in Charleston, South Carolina.
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
Hey, Hey, how you doing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
I'm doing fantastic. What's up?

Speaker 13 (01:07:21):
Hey, I'm in the Mac could say.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
Tracking advice, and I just got.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
A little criteria.

Speaker 9 (01:07:30):
It can't be expensive. I don't need my subscription.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
It has a.

Speaker 14 (01:07:35):
Good range and more importantly, it actually works.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
Can you have me?

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
Well, we can try.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
I can give your options, but without having you know,
here's the deal with the cart, with the tracking of
the car. So a lot of these free trackers, which
we're talking in air tag are similar. They're all going
to work by the beauty of other phones being around them.
So they work on a crowdsourced platform.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
Now, when you.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
Talk about an iPhone or an Android, they are everywhere.
So as long as your phone is are your car
with this little tracker inside is passing another Apple device
or an an Android device, you know you're gonna be okay,
it's gonna get a lock, but it's not gonna be
real time. Like, you're not gonna be able to track

(01:08:24):
your car in real time because these trackers just don't
have that built into them. You'll be able to see
an approximate location and you'll be able to see the
last location, but not in real time. So you have
to understand the limitations of these trackers before you put
one in your car. But with that said, plenty of
people have one of these hidden in their cars and
they use it and they have an idea of where.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
Their car is.

Speaker 1 (01:08:46):
Chances are unless they bring your car into the middle
of nowhere where it never sees another smartphone or the
internet again, you'll be able to get a location on
your car. So couple of options. Number one, obviously, air
tag is you know, the number one option in this area.
Apple invented this entire genre of Bluetooth trackers and so
that is probably your number one option if you have

(01:09:09):
an iPhone and use all Apple products.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
Because that's what they work best for.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
So air Tag is probably my number one because it
is the easiest, it's simple. You pop it in your car,
you see where it is on your phone. You're good
to go. Now, on the Android side of things, Android
has something called the Find My Device Network, and so
you can get things that work with that one. And

(01:09:34):
they've got different brands. Chapolo is one of them. Chapolo
is one of them. There are just there's pebblebe there's
so many of them, but Chaipolo is pretty good. They've
been making trackers for a long time, so I'd look
at them and they're going to work with your iPhone
or sorry, you're Android, and so you can have this
set up with your Android and basically see where your

(01:09:55):
car is on your Android device. Now, if you want
something that's a little bit more into Hendon, there is
the tile Trackers. And tile trackers are platform agnostic, which
in rich On tech World, I love that. I love
when things don't just work on one platform or another,
they work across all platforms. And so that's what you're
gonna get with the with the tile Trackers, which is

(01:10:16):
now owned by Life three sixty and you can install
this and the trick to know about the Tile trackers.
Not only do I really like them, I think they
work really really well. I've got one on my bag.
The thing to know about them is that if there
is not a person in the area using the Tile
or Life three sixty app, you're not going to get
a location. But Tile will even tell you when you

(01:10:37):
log onto the app, it will tell you how many
people around you are using the Tile app. So those
are gonna be the people that are gonna help you
find this car if it ever goes missing, lost, stolen, whatever.
And then finally, there is one other device that I've
not personally tested but people seem to like. It's called
the track Ye t r a c KI and they've

(01:10:57):
got a couple of GPS trackers I think specifically four cars.
The trackers twenty bucks. I'm trying to see if there
is any monthly fee here.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
Today. Yeah, the lowest monthly up. So there you go, Reggie.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
This does not pass your your smell test here for
the nine to ninety five a month.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
But with that said, this is uh, this.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
Is actually a GPS tracker, So there actually is GPS
built into this device, and so that means you are
going to get an exact location of your car.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
No matter where it is, as long as there's GPS.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
Great question, Reggie, Thanks for calling in from Charleston, South Carolina.
Eight to eight rich one on one eighty eight seven
four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
More rich on Tech coming your way right after this.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Tomuro here hanging
out with you, talking technology, Triple eight rich one on
one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
PlayStation Sony PlayStation five raising prices. This week, Sony announced
a price hike for PlayStation five consoles in the US

(01:12:08):
effective well, it's already been effective August twenty first. New
prices are as follows. PS five Standard five hundred and
fifty bucks up from five hundred, Digital Edition five hundred,
up from four to fifty. PS five Pro seven hundred
and fifty dollars. Wow, that's a lot. Sony says it's
responding to a quote challenging economic environment. Prices for accessories

(01:12:33):
is going to stay the same. So yeah, there you
have it, Sony raising prices on the PS five. Let's
go to ron in Corona.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 6 (01:12:47):
Good afternoon, doesn't everybody have a challenging economic situation nowadays.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
Yeah, especially if you have kids and a wife, and
there's various there's various aspects to that.

Speaker 6 (01:13:00):
Yes, for sure. The reason I'm calling is I've been
an Android user. I liked forever, been on the Verizon
family since it was Nextel in the eighties nineties. And
a couple of days ago, my S twenty two hit
the ground and cracked.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
Ouch, did you have a case on it?

Speaker 6 (01:13:19):
I had an Otter case on it. Really still I had, yeah,
and cracked in the upper right hand corner where I
cannot communicate with the keyboard. So I talked to Verizon.
They sent me an S twenty five ultra right. And
now my situation is I can't communicate with the old phone.

(01:13:40):
By the way, when I got the new cover two
weeks ago, the guy says, well, that looks pretty good.
I should give you a trade in moving on, I
can't communicate with it. So, just like Scott said on
your phone call, he's got a brand new phone with
no connections at all, and I need to get that
information off my old phone.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
Any suggestions, I have a couple, So first off, you
this a Samsung.

Speaker 6 (01:14:07):
Samsung twenty two.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
Yes, okay, so.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
You you can plug this into monitor and you can
see what's on the screen. Can you see what's on
the screen or you just can't tap what's on the screen?

Speaker 6 (01:14:18):
I got I can see about eighty percent of the screen,
starting with a little bit down from the top. That's
what I suggested to the Gallop Rises this morning, and
she said, yeah, but then you still can't communicate with it.
That's the problem.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
What do you mean tap on?

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
You can't tap? Okay, what about plugging a mouse into
the bottom of it? You can do that.

Speaker 6 (01:14:37):
I haven't tried that, but I can't see I have
a green screen. Oh I see old blue screen screen.

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
Oh so the screen is is completely bonked as well. Okay, yes,
well that could be a problem. Okay, so that hmm yeah,
without having a wait, now, is this backed up? Are
you trying to get stuff off of here? Is that
what's happening?

Speaker 6 (01:14:59):
It's backed up about two months ago. I've got you
know a lot of my apps and photos especially that
are backed up back to about two months ago. But
I haven't even tried to get them. I'm just trying
to recover the phone if I can.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
Oh, okay, recover the phone. I don't think you're gonna
be able to recover the phone the phone data, oh,
the phone data. Okay, well, I mean you're probably gonna
have to bring it somewhere because you're there is a
way to let's see here, I'm trying to see if okay,
hold on, I'm looking at this. Yeah, so a couple
I'm looking at Samsung. What they suggest, you know? Number one? Yes,

(01:15:35):
connect your you'r to a TV screen or a monitor.
So what you could do if you had I mean,
this is one way of doing it. You can connect
it to a TV screen or a monitor, but you
would also need to connect that mouse because you have
to tap as well. So that's that would be I mean,
there is a way to do this. I don't think
there's there's lost hope.

Speaker 6 (01:15:52):
I just think get that I've got a I've got
an adapter that I can.

Speaker 5 (01:15:55):
Say the bottom.

Speaker 1 (01:15:56):
Okay, So that might be your best way to do it,
is you connect it to a screen and then also
connect a mouse into it, so that way you can
see it on the screen and you can use the
mouse as well. So I think that's probably going to
be your best solution. I mean a lot of people
don't realize that you can do that. But it should
just show up right on the screen as soon as
you plug in that adapter, whether it's a you know,

(01:16:17):
a just a standard USBC thunderbolt or an HDMI if
you have one of those adapters. But yeah, Like I've
got this monitor in my office where I just plug
into Samsung to like charge it, and the screen just
it immediately mirrors onto the big screen. So you can
do that and then plug in a mouse as well.
The trick is plugging it both in at the same time.

(01:16:39):
You could if you plug it into a monitor, you
might be able to plug the mouse into the monitor
and then you can it might that might pass through
to the device to control it as well, So that's
probably your best bet. And then once you have all
that done, you know you can go through and just
get that stuff up to the cloud. But I would
say ron for future reference. I know, people, it sounds

(01:17:01):
like you had some of this stuff backed up, and
you know what I'm gonna say, but you've gotta you
gotta check these backups, yep, you know, because this is
the thing. It's like every time I travel, I take
you know, one hundred and two hundred pictures out and about.
I'm like, what if I drop my phone right now
into the water or you know, I dropped it crack?
Do you lose all that stuff? So now that's a
different situation, but the same thing kind of sticks is

(01:17:23):
like you just have to Some people go into their
iPhone and they don't even realize that it hasn't been
backed up in like months because of something that's stalling it.
So just you know, whether you have an iPhone or
a Samsung, check the backup. And Samsung makes it super
duper easy to back up. You can even back up
to a USB drive.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
Did you know that?

Speaker 6 (01:17:41):
Yeah? So I read that and the same thing. I'm
gonna try that also.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
Yeah, so you can literally, I mean, it makes it
so easy you just literally on that's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
I'm on the on the Pixel right now.

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
But on the Samsung, you can go into your your device,
into your settings and you'll see a section let me
see if it's called back up. Let's say, okay, sorry,
I've got like ten phones here in front of me
I'm looking at Let's see if we go into accounts
and backup right there, so you can see backup data
Samsung Cloud, it will tell you the last time it

(01:18:14):
was backed up. Or if you don't want to deal
with the cloud, you can literally just say backup data
to Google Drive or external storage. You can just plug
in a USB drive to the bottom of your phone.
It will back up everything. Have a backup of these devices.
Because Ron, you did everything right. It sounds like you
had the otter box you had, you know, but it's
just this is life. It throws a curveball, so it

(01:18:35):
all right, Well, keep me posting eight.

Speaker 6 (01:18:37):
Right only to the ground.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
Yeah, I will.

Speaker 6 (01:18:40):
I keep you posting on that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
Okay, thanks a lot, Ron, appreciate the call. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
I think what happened there with Ron's phone is that,
you know, if you if your phone falls let's say
five times, right, and you look at the screen, you're like, oh, who,
nothing happened to it. It might be developing micro cracks
and tiny little things in that that are that are
lessening the strength of that screen. And then finally on
that number six drop, that's when it just goes so sorry,

(01:19:07):
we can't deal with this anymore. The pressure is too much.
Kind of like, uh, you know sometimes in life, he
just crack. You just I had I'm not kidding. I
had a flight attendant on the flight that I thought
was going to I thought they were gonna crack. They
were people were this is I mean, the person next
to me was asking for a drink, like a sparkling water,

(01:19:31):
and the guy's like, we have three different types, which
one would you like? And she's like and you know,
it's tough to hear in the plane, so like she's
talking to him and he but this guy, he was
not having it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:42):
He was like he was just kind of going off.

Speaker 1 (01:19:44):
And I was like, oh, this is why I always say,
because I always order a sparkling water. They've got they've
got three types. I always say, whatever one you've got,
I'll take. I don't care, I don't care what flavor
it is, just give me it. But you know some
people have this flavor preference. Anyway, I was cracking up
because then I watched him throughout the flight and he
was character. I mean, he was talking with everyone. He
was you know, people were ordered.

Speaker 2 (01:20:03):
He was just a character. But he didn't he didn't crack.
He was a nice guy.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
But he really gave the passenger next to me a
hard time about not knowing which drink He's like, can you.

Speaker 2 (01:20:12):
Look at the menu.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):
We put the menu right in front of you. So
here's my solution. Okay, because I'm always looking for ways
of optimizing things. If you're listening United Airlines, that little
menu that you put in the seatback when you get
on the plane, tell people to look at it. Say hey,
we're going to be serving you a drink in about
an hour. Take a look at the menu. Now have
your drink selection ready. Everyone looks at the flight attendant

(01:20:35):
and asks them for every drink that's available. Let's see,
we have apple juice, we have orange juice, we have
coke products, we have that. No, why are they doing that?
They're wasting time? It could be much more efficient. All right,
I digress. Let's go to Craig in de Moin. Craig,
you're on with rich Oh Craig, welcome back to the show.

(01:20:56):
I'm doing fantastic. What can I help you with today?

Speaker 10 (01:20:58):
Okay? Ibouh I sixteen plus okay, I'd stay in the
house of that left me kpie and my batteries rowed
up to a hundred each time, and I let it
go down to seventy five, maybe seventy percent, and then

(01:21:20):
I'd plug it back in, the charge it up to
a hundred, and I'd leave it plugged in all night
to listen to KFI, of course, and did that hood
the battery? Oh y'all read it go all the way down?
Or what?

Speaker 2 (01:21:41):
Let's put it this way.

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):
You are you are putting a lot of stress on
that battery, on that phone by keeping it plugged in
all the time and going through those charging cycles. Now
with that said, you know, is it going to ruin
your battery? You know, probably not. I mean I've got
I've got my phone from last year. I'm at ninety
seven percent capacity. You can go into your iPhone, by
the way, and check they actually put this whole setting

(01:22:04):
in there battery. So go into settings battery and you
can check battery health and you can see how much
capacity you have. After a certain amount of time, the
battery capacity goes down. It's just a function of lithium
ion batteries. And then you can see the cycle count
as well on your device, so you can see the
number of times the iPhone has used your batteries capacity

(01:22:25):
and you can learn more about that. But the reality is,
I use and abuse my phone. I do not care
how I charge it, how much I charge it, what
I do with it, and I'm at ninety seven percent
after a year of heavy, heavy usage and not caring.
So yeah, by keeping your phone plugged in and streaming
all the time and using it twenty four to seven,
it's going to put a lot of stress in that battery.

(01:22:45):
And so you may want to look at the charge
limit inside your phone and either change that or toggle
on what's called optimized battery charging. And those are two
settings that Apple recently added to the iPhone to make
the blast a little bit longer, especially if you're keeping
your phone for a long time. Craig, thanks for the
call today, appreciate it. Good to hear your voice one

(01:23:06):
more time, or once again, I should say. Coming up,
we are going to talk more about the tech news.
I've got a Seattle startup that is bringing back the
landline but just for kids. Plus we've got other guests
to talk about cleaning up your Windows PC. Right here
on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. The

(01:23:28):
website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. You
can go there for all the notes for everything I
mentioned here on today's show, don't forget. You can get
this as a podcast as well. Just search rich on
Tech in your favorite audio app. So if you miss
an episode you want to listen to something again, listening
live is always the best way, but if you can't

(01:23:50):
make it to the show or you need to catch up,
you can always just listen to it on your favorite
audio app. Just search rich on Tech, hit follow, and
all the new episodes will be there. So there is
a Seattle startup that is bringing back the landline for kids.
It's called tin Can. This is actually had a one
of the one of my followers send this to me.

(01:24:12):
It's getting a lot of publicity this week. It's basically
they've got two products. They've got a the tin Can Flashback,
which looks like a phone that we had in our
bedroom back in the day, if you were lucky enough
to have a phone in your bedroom, you know, the
corded phone that kind of closes down on a on
a you know, just like a two pieces. That's number one.

(01:24:34):
That's set's seventy five dollars. Then they've got the tin Can,
which is their phone. It looks almost like a tin can,
kind of similar to a phone, but it's it's got
phone styling, but it literally looks like a tin can
and that's going to be a looks like one hundred dollars,
but it's seventy five on sale right now. So the
flashback phone looks like an eighties wall phone, but it

(01:24:56):
plugs into your router or Ethernet port, so you can
make calls on it. No Internet, no screen, no games,
just voice calls. Of course, there's also parental controlling. You
can say the hours that people can call or talk
in there, and also the contacts that are approved, and
then of course you can call.

Speaker 2 (01:25:14):
Now here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:25:15):
You can call other phones, other tin Can devices for free,
but if you want to call outside numbers, they're going
to charge you ten bucks a month. That's coming soon.
Let's call the party line plan, so you can call anyone.
So bottom line, you buy the device for seventy five
dollars either one of these devices, and you can call
other devices, other tin Can devices for free unlimited. So

(01:25:39):
let's say your kid has a best friend. You talk
to the other parent, you say, hey, let's get our
let's get our kids.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
One of these tin cans. They can, you know, connect
it to the internet.

Speaker 1 (01:25:47):
And now they can call each other as much as
they want talk on the phone.

Speaker 5 (01:25:51):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:25:51):
It's cool, but I think this is a tough sell.

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
Because, let's be honest, kids are already communicating with all
kinds of free apps, all kinds of FaceTime. Now, I'm
not saying that's the best way to communicate because it's
very distracting. Like these kids are playing video games and
they're they're chatting on FaceTime while they do that. This
I get they're trying to bring back the old days
of sort of that one to one connection. You're just

(01:26:18):
on the phone. You're sitting there at your desk, you know,
your feeder up, laying on your bed, got that long
cord on the phone, and you're just talking to someone.
It's like a very classic phone experience. So we'll see
if it takes off.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
I mean, it's cool.

Speaker 1 (01:26:32):
You can accomplish the same thing by going with Umama
or a magic jack and just get a phone at Walmart,
you know, like a standard they still sell those old
school phones, not the rotary, but just like a standard
wired phone. So that's tin Can if you want to
check it out. Tincan Dot Kids and then Alaska Airlines

(01:26:52):
and t Mobile are teaming up for free in flight
Wi Fi. This can't come fast enough. So Alaska, I
guess Alaska and Hawaii, you know they linked up now.
So Alaska's new frequent Flyer program is called at Most
Rewards at MOS at Most Rewards and starting next year,
at Most Rewards members will get free Starlink powered Wi Fi. Yay.

(01:27:15):
Wi Fi on planes is so bad. It took me
an hour just to connect to the Wi Fi on
the plane the other day. Starlink I've tested it on
Hawaiian airlines. It is incredible. It's so fast. You can
literally Next time I fly on a flight that has Starlink,
I'm gonna bring my whole desk set up. I'm gonna
buy my little lamp. I'm gonna bring like a little
you know, water cooler. I'm just gonna s a little

(01:27:37):
plant I can put like near my chair, and I'm
just gonna do business because you can literally get stuff
done if you have Starlink. The other Internet that's all
all over, like the satellite Internet they used to have,
it's just horrible. It's really really bad. So Starlink cannot
come fast enough on these planes. Rollout begins twenty twenty
six on select flights, with full fleet coverage by twenty

(01:27:59):
twenty seven. Now remember United is also doing starlink. It
had like a false start. They put it on like
one or two planes and there's like a problem, so
they have to bring it back. I don't know what
the status is of United with Starlink, but I cannot
wait for that to be on my plane anyway. T
Mobile customers the whole reason. So everyone gets it for free,
but T Mobile customers will get exclusive perks like seamless

(01:28:20):
ad free log on to Starlink. So I guess you know,
with a lot of these free wifis, you got to
like watch like a little ad or something before you
can access it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:28):
T Mobile customers won't have to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:28:30):
By the way, if you are a T Mobile customer,
you've got a phone number with T Mobile, nine times
out of ten you can access the Wi Fi for
free on your plane.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
Just so you know, that.

Speaker 1 (01:28:39):
Amazon Autos added a new customer. I guess Hurts will
be selling used cars on Amazon Autos. So remember we
talked about this last week. They're selling Hyundais through there.
Now you can buy Hurts cars Amazon Autos. All right,
coming up, next, we're gonna talk about cleaning up your
Windows PC. I know you need to do this. I

(01:29:01):
know you need the infos. We're gonna give you the
step by step directions. Coming up next, I'm making your computer.

Speaker 2 (01:29:05):
Run like new. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (01:29:10):
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology the
website rich on Tech dot tv. If you want links
to anything I mentioned here. All right, so we've got
We've talked about a lot on today's show, and one
of the things that comes up over and over and
over with Windows computers, for the most part, is getting

(01:29:30):
them to run smooth and fast and to their potential,
because most of these computers are really good and they
can last a long time. But the problem is all
this gunk that gets sort of like just collected over
the years, and over time you download stuff, you try
it out, you stop using it apps, you're trying to
get all kinds of stuff on your computer. So with
that in mind, we've got Joe Karas Scoria. He is

(01:29:55):
the let's see here senior XDA segment lead for OS
and devices, I mean recently recently had a title change,
So congrats on that, and welcome to the show.

Speaker 14 (01:30:08):
Hello, Thank you so much for having me. It's a
huge quessure to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:30:12):
Yeah, you wrote a great article for XDA Developers about
how to deep clean your PC every year, and so
first off, just tell me, like, what do you write
about typically?

Speaker 14 (01:30:23):
So, first of all, thank you for saying it's great.
I'm glad it resonated. Yeah, So what the kind of
stuff that I wrote about an XCA. Obviously, since I
am segment made for OS and devices, I do write
a lot in those two segments as well, but especially OS.
I run a lot about Windows. More recently Linux I've
been covering in one bit of both.

Speaker 7 (01:30:45):
Whenever I can.

Speaker 14 (01:30:47):
So yeah, and it's a lot about tips and tricks,
and it's not it's we do it less so from
a how to perspective, and more so you probably didn't
know you should be doing this, so like you should
be doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's like a lot of things
because people don't even know what's out there, what's available,
what they should be doing. So your first step in
your article you talked about uninstalling apps, I mean that's
always like the first step. Explain how to do that
in the best way.

Speaker 14 (01:31:16):
Yeah, of course, So you know, the standard way to
an installer apps. You know, you go through your start menu,
open the start menu, there's on apps button.

Speaker 7 (01:31:25):
You can see all of them there.

Speaker 14 (01:31:27):
You know, you can scroll down that list and don't
find a lot of things that you probably don't use
anymore or never used. If you've never looked at at
that list before and when you got your computers, that's
start going a lot of things there that you don't need.
So you can just scroll down that list and if
there's anything that you know you don't need, it can
write make it and there's an install button right there
to remove it. And if you're not sure, it's always

(01:31:50):
a good idea to either google it or you can
just try.

Speaker 7 (01:31:52):
To launch it and see what it does in case you.

Speaker 14 (01:31:55):
Don't know if you actually need it or not, and
then you can decide whether to whether it's an installer
or not.

Speaker 7 (01:32:00):
Yes, it is the standard way.

Speaker 1 (01:32:02):
Yeah, So I mean basically, if you don't if you
don't reckon, can you ruin anything on your computer if
you want to install something that's like like need like
the system needs.

Speaker 14 (01:32:12):
Not really most of the system apps that are on
Windows in the part of Windows, they can't be removed
and words, you might break things that you're used to doing.
It's nothing that you can to restore if you know how,
don't look it up. So it's never going to be
permanent damage or very like that's very like going to happen.
But yeah, if you don't know what you're removing, then
you might end up with something that you used to

(01:32:34):
do that doesn't work anymore because you needed that specific program.
But it is fixable, so it's never something that's permanent.

Speaker 2 (01:32:41):
All right, your next step run a to blow script.

Speaker 1 (01:32:44):
I mean that sounds like uh, I mean is that
something regular users can do or is that for just
advanced users.

Speaker 14 (01:32:50):
So this one is a little more complicated because because
there's a lot of options here and some of these
again can affect certain features that you might be used to,
certain things that you might be used to using. And
you know, one of these are programs that I might
want to check boxes, and there might be a temptation
to just check all of the boxes and disable everything,
and this might have an impact on you if you just like,
if you disabled something like Microsoft Defender, which is the

(01:33:13):
anti virus in Windows and eleven, that'll be a problem
because then you'll have no protection against malware on the
computer by default, So you know, it is something that
you would want to be a little more tech savvy
before you do. Just you want to have some awareness
and take your time to read all the options available
in these scripts to make sure that you don't disable

(01:33:33):
anything that is essential to you.

Speaker 1 (01:33:35):
Now, what about the startup apps, because this is another
thing where you restart your computer.

Speaker 2 (01:33:40):
Next thing.

Speaker 1 (01:33:41):
No, it's like taking an hour because so many things
are popping up as a computer restarts.

Speaker 7 (01:33:46):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 14 (01:33:47):
So you know, we only talked about an installing apps,
and of course that's a very important first step. But
even if you have apps that you do use and
one of them will't create these entries in the startup
in the Windows startup and then will always launch whenever
you turn on the computer, So it just starts to
bog things down more and more as you install more

(01:34:08):
of these programs. And you don't always need these apps
running in the background. Sometimes you just want to have
them and you launch them and you need them, and
then you'll leave them alone. So you know, you can
go into the task manager in Windows on weven. If
you open the task manager, there's a startup tab, which
has a little icon that looks like a speedometer on
a car. And there's a lot of apps there, and

(01:34:30):
you can see like whether those startup entries are enabled
or not, and you can enable, you can disable, you
can disable these pretty freely. This is even less risky
than an installing an app, because only doing is preventing
that app from running.

Speaker 7 (01:34:43):
At startup. You can always launch launch it yourself if
you needed to function.

Speaker 2 (01:34:47):
Oh wow, so yeah, I'm looking.

Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
I'm looking at my list bing wallpaper, co pilot ever,
no iTunes, helper three sixty five, co pilot teams, no
sh in one drive, phone link, so all these things
are running as soon as I turn on my computer.
I don't probably need all those things running every time
I turn on my computer. So again, it just searching.

(01:35:10):
Uh the taskbar says task manager, and you'll see it
looks like you said, it's like a little spetometer, says
startup aps. Just go in there and disable the ones
that you don't need.

Speaker 7 (01:35:21):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 14 (01:35:21):
That's that's a great starting point because a lot of
those that take it all. If you use something like
Adobe Photoshop, the creative concuite always starts with the computer,
and it's a pretty heavy piece of software. So that's
something I usually do every one's own because I only
need it when I open photoshops, so I don't need
it right now.

Speaker 1 (01:35:38):
Yeah, and that's it's it's running as much as it
can to make things faster when it does open.

Speaker 2 (01:35:43):
But just open it up. Okay. What about the driver updates?
How do we check for those?

Speaker 7 (01:35:50):
Okay?

Speaker 14 (01:35:51):
So drivers, there's a few ways that they can be
distributed because there's a lot of pieces to how drivers work.
So Windows updates, you know, when you open the settings
out as the Windows Update section, some driver updates won't
come through there automatically. And then on that page there's
also an advanced absence button, and if you go there,

(01:36:11):
there's then an optional updates section and a lot of
driver updates coming through there. They're not mandatory, but you
can always install them. And then after that, it's also
up to the manufacturer. So if your computer manufacturer will
have a website with drivers, you will have to look
up your specific model, So that's kind of vary from
person to person, but you'll look you can look up

(01:36:32):
your model and there will be a page with all
the drivers available for your PC. And some of them
might be newer. A lot of computers also come with
specific software that updates your drivers automatically, so you can
do that a little more easily without going to the website.
And then you know, in the case of the graphics drivers,
a m D and then VideA and the dedicated software

(01:36:54):
for them that updates drivers. Because graphics drivers are updated
very frequently, so it makes sense to separate them a
little bit from the computer or Windows, you.

Speaker 7 (01:37:04):
Might want to have that dedicated software.

Speaker 14 (01:37:06):
So that's usually the best way to update graphics driverge
as well.

Speaker 1 (01:37:10):
Okay, and this is always uh, you know, people are
always interested in this malware.

Speaker 2 (01:37:15):
What do you recommend?

Speaker 1 (01:37:16):
You know, people think their computers infected, there's something going on.
What do you recommend for scanning for malware?

Speaker 7 (01:37:24):
Right?

Speaker 14 (01:37:24):
So, by the FHONT you know, Microsoft Defender has gone
into indows eleven. I always believe that it's a pretty
solid solution, you know, for daily day use. But when
you're doing a deep clean like this and you want
to make sure that you're getting as much as possible,
like no little things still on your computer, the one
I usually use is called malware Bytes. It's been around

(01:37:45):
for a while. It is to become specifically manware, bite
sometime malware. But yeah, they have a very comprehensive solution.
It's they do have a premium version that offers real
time protection. But if you just want to run a scan,
like on demand, it's free.

Speaker 2 (01:38:00):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
So that's the difference is that if the free one
you have to do the scan. The paid one it
will do scans in the background all the time, real
time exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:38:11):
Okay, good delineation, thank you. Okay. So it runs the
scan and what it unearthed something?

Speaker 14 (01:38:17):
Yeah, generally it will. It's it's kind of a very
good detection engine. So most of them malware out there,
I think I have very good experiences maware. It's very
good at detecting things. If you look at my article.
Actually I wasn't expecting to have any hits when I
was writing that article, but I ran, I ran the
scan in the room at all four four items there.

Speaker 1 (01:38:39):
Oh you found four things that it flags is like, hey,
this stuff you might not want in there. All right,
we'll run out of time. But finally delete temporary files.
What's the deal with that?

Speaker 7 (01:38:50):
Okay, So that's that's the final one.

Speaker 14 (01:38:53):
There's this is the feature that's part of Windows and
it's perfectly safe. There's if you're go into the settings,
they're in the system section, there's a storage page, and
then within that there's a temporary files section, and this
allows you to do it all kinds of things that
Windows stores to speed up certain processes, like there will

(01:39:13):
be icons or things or thumbnails files like that.

Speaker 7 (01:39:18):
There are storages to speed up certain things. You don't
really need them.

Speaker 14 (01:39:21):
A lot of times they might be replaced by other files.
So it's a good idea to run this scan. And
when you when you open the temporary files page, you
don't automatically.

Speaker 7 (01:39:31):
Scan your computer for all the temporary files on there.
And aside from the.

Speaker 14 (01:39:35):
Downloads folder, which you shouldn't select because that we will
have most of your downloaded files. You can select everything
else and don't need all of it, and it will
usually be perfume and fine.

Speaker 1 (01:39:46):
Okay, so that's again just search storage and it'll it'll
be right under the system storage. You'll say temporary files.
All right, great information. I'm going to link up the
article on the website rich on Tech, but if you
want to Google search it it is XDA developers. You
should deep clean your Windows PC every year to keep

(01:40:08):
it running smoothly. Here's how I do it, and my
thanks to Joe for joining us today. Thanks so much
for joining me, Joe, thank you.

Speaker 7 (01:40:16):
So much for the invitation. It's been to wait time.

Speaker 2 (01:40:18):
All right. Now you know how to get your computer.
You don't even need a new one, just clean it
up so easy.

Speaker 1 (01:40:24):
All right, rich on Tech dot tv, I'll link up
that article and coming up we are going to open
up the feedback. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Oh
my gosh, what a great show it has been. It's
not over yet. I'm just saying it's been a good show.
Thanks to you, Thanks to you, thanks to Bobo, thanks

(01:40:46):
to Kim. You know, it's a group effort here, little
part of me. I just posted this to my Instagram
at rich on Tech saw that there's a setting, it
might be a new setting on Facebook where they might
they might be scanning your phone's camera role. Yes, scanning
the pictures on your camera roll. So there are two

(01:41:08):
settings that basically the first one is less nefarious, but
it's still like I don't want them scanning anything in
my camera role. So the first one basically says camera
roll sharing suggestions. So the first one is get camera
roll suggestions. When you're browsing Facebook and I've seen this before.
You're scrolling through Facebook says hey, you took this great picture.

Speaker 2 (01:41:28):
Do you want to share it?

Speaker 1 (01:41:28):
And it shows you one of the pictures you took,
but it says, don't worry, this is private until you
share it. Nah, just turn that off altogether. You don't
need them looking through your pictures. That's number one. Now
here's the scarier one. Get creative ideas made for you
by allowing camera roll cloud processing processing.

Speaker 2 (01:41:47):
What does that mean?

Speaker 1 (01:41:48):
Not only are they looking at your pictures on your
camera roll, they're uploading them to Meta's cloud to analyze
them and maybe affect them with AI or something creative.
And then present you that picture and they said they're
scanning it for things like you know, we'll check for
safety and integrity purposes.

Speaker 2 (01:42:06):
Huh huh, nah, no, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:42:09):
So I would go in personally and change these settings
to off. It looks like the first one is turned
on by default, which is the less nefarious, but the
second one is turned off by default.

Speaker 2 (01:42:19):
But I would turn them both off immediately.

Speaker 1 (01:42:22):
And I just posted how to find these settings It's
pretty easy. Actually, just go into your Facebook settings and
look for it's called camera. Let's see camera role sharing suggestions.
But I posted the full instructions on my Instagram at
rich on Tech, I would say take a look and
uh yeah, nobody. Nobody needs that time for the feedback.

(01:42:44):
These are your emails, your comments, your questions I get
from you. If you want to submit, just go to
richon Tech dot tv hit contact. Bruce writes in your
latest newsletter, you had to be talking about you. You
had to be talking about me being trapped in the
Apple eco system. I almost committed to grabbing a new
Pixel ten after reading about Magic Q. But with my

(01:43:04):
iPhone sixteen pro, max iPad Pro, Apple Watch, iMac, Apple
TV Final Cut Pro and all the Apple subscriptions, the
mountain to change would be too high to climb. What
do you run in here, Bruce? An Apple store? And
then that's the other thing in the back of my mind.
Google's reputation of dropping devices and services after everyone has
adopted them. Great work, Please keep it up.

Speaker 2 (01:43:25):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:43:26):
Uh No from Pico Rivera writes in Hey, rich I
just wanted to share that my husband and I have
been using a cell service called Tello. Since twenty twenty one,
we've had no issues. We pay fourteen bucks a month
plus taxes for five gigs of data with unlimited talking text.
You can adjust the plan to fit your needs. Thanks
for all your tech tips. I enjoy yours newsletters and
TV segments.

Speaker 2 (01:43:46):
Noura great.

Speaker 1 (01:43:48):
Tello is excellent, excellent, excellent. I love them because you
can basically build your own plan and customize it exactly
the way you want. So if you just want five
hundred texts, no data and unlimited talk, you can do
that and it just does the plan price accordingly. George
from Reading Pennsylvania listening on WRAW thirteen hundred says the

(01:44:10):
caller who wanted to keep his old PC running asked
about cleaning it up. I always recommend downloading using Microsoft
PC Manager. It's a free and simple way to clear
junk files and keep things running smoothly. Yes, I've definitely
mentioned PC manager before. It is a easy tool. Just
make sure you're getting the actual official one from Microsoft,
not an impost Day from Eastern Washington writes in I

(01:44:34):
heard your show and wanted to share a couple of
free tools for editing PDFs. Try LibreOffice. They can do
it for free. It does have a learning curve, but
it works.

Speaker 2 (01:44:43):
Also.

Speaker 1 (01:44:44):
If you're having trouble changing file permissions, check out MCO
unlock it. I've used it when I couldn't manipulate a
file and it helped.

Speaker 2 (01:44:50):
I'm not an expert, but both are worth a try.

Speaker 1 (01:44:53):
Yeah, Libra Office is is great. Libra is it, Libra
Libre Office lib It's like a free version of like
Microsoft or Microsoft Office. Luke from the UK rights in
wow are We're all over the place. I listened to
your show every week on the podcast and I enjoy it.
On a recent episode, you talked about securely erasing discs.

(01:45:14):
I don't think the methods you mentioned are secure enough.
If you're donating, recycling, or selling an old PC or
hard drive, it should be overwritten with zeros in one
several times. Windows reset only does this once. I don't
think it overroots the boot, overwrits the boot unless you
reinstall from the cloud. When I erase drives, I use
a bootable OS called shred os. It can do up

(01:45:34):
to seven passes to make sure that data is virtually
impossible to recover. The interface is text base. You navigate
with the keyboard, so make sure you pick the correct
drive if you have more than one for maximum protection,
erase with zeros and then physically destroy the hard drive.

Speaker 2 (01:45:49):
All right, Luke, you're you're running.

Speaker 1 (01:45:51):
Like the uh Fort Knox over there with your stuff.
Bob from Australia rights in man. We are worldwide. One
thing missing from your review of tank inkjet printers is
the cost comparison with cartridge models. It takes about three
to four cartridge replacements using Excel pricing before a tank
printer purchase really pays off, and for some people that's

(01:46:11):
a lot of printing. Ron from Washington says we've been
using the epsoin et twenty seven sixty for years. The
black ink tank lasted us two years. The color tanks
are still a third full after three years. The issue
is the nozzle clog if we don't print enough. The
EPs and cleaning procedure works, but it's a long, repetitive process.
So I made a spreadsheet with colored stripes my printer

(01:46:33):
nozzle exercise A print one every Sunday.

Speaker 2 (01:46:35):
Unscrap.

Speaker 1 (01:46:36):
Okay, let's see here, Okay, Amy says, I sign up
your emails because I love hearing you. I don't have
time to read them until today, but like you talk,
easy to read and understand. I'm a sixty eight year
old single lady. Keeping up with tech is important to me.
Thank you, Thank you, Debrah New Milford, Connecticut. My wife
keeps oh, I said on my newsletter. My wife keeps

(01:46:58):
telling me my newsletters are too long. Dever says she's right.
But the more I read, the more I find useful information.
I'm grateful you're the one gathering the facts.

Speaker 2 (01:47:05):
Kudos.

Speaker 1 (01:47:06):
I like your newsletter, and Ted in Palm Spring says
I listen on one oh four point seven k news
FM in Palm Springs. Thanks for the outstanding show and
long live New Jersey. I grew up in Havertown, a
suburb of Philadelphia. Next week, Jefferson Graham Plus, we're gonna
explain quantum computing. Thanks so much for listening. There are
so many ways you can spend your time. I do

(01:47:26):
appreciate you spending it.

Speaker 2 (01:47:27):
Right here with me. My name is rich Dmiro. I'll
talk to you real soon

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