$20K humanoid robot, Santa phone & moving your computer data (146, Nov 1, 2025)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
AI is now being used to create fake receipts. The
glasses that can foil facial recognition in video becomes the
world's first five trillion dollar company. Plus Your tech questions Answered.
What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich
on Tech. This is the show where I talk about

(00:20):
the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
I believe the tech should be interesting, useful, and fun.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Let's do it.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Let's open up those phone lines at triple A rich
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Give me a call if
you have a question about technology. Kim is standing by
sure she can't wait to hear from you. Eight eight
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Remember, only the best

(00:54):
questions make it on the air here, so call up
with a good one. Uh email is also open. Just
go to Rich on tech dot TV. Hit contact Rich
on tech dot TV, hit contact All Right, Guests, this week,
we've got Alexandra Samuel, technology journalist and host of the
new AI podcast Me plus Viv. She's gonna talk about

(01:18):
creating her own AI coach, curious to hear what that's
all about. Plus we'll take your calls eight eight to eight,
rich one on one. Well, I hope you had a
fantastic Halloween. We had all the kids over at our house.
It was a lot of fun. You know, this was
one of the rare Halloweens on a Friday night, so

(01:38):
it only happens once every seven years, I'm told so
I don't remember the last time it happened. But yeah,
it was a It was a blast. We had a
great time with the kids. You know, the kids just
love Halloween. I I love Halloween too. I feel like
as I get older, I enjoy more of more of

(01:59):
the more of the Halloween stuff through the kids. This week, though,
of course, there's a lot going on not just Halloween.
As fun as that was, but did you hear about
this new outage again? So last week we had that
AWS outage, right that Microsoft or the Amazon AWS outage.

(02:20):
Now this week we had Microsoft's They had their turn.
They do Azure and this is basically their answer to AWS.
These are all cloud infrastructure services that big companies, small companies,
they all rely on for their back end infrastructure. Right,
so if you're doing business with these companies, Chances are
they store their data in either Microsoft, which is Azure,

(02:46):
Amazon which is AWS. Of course, Google Cloud, and there's
a whole bunch of other ones out there, but those
are the three big ones. But if you had trouble
logging into any of your Microsoft services, it was all
because of this. They had an eight hour outage in
multiple regions. The cause was a configuration error. Thankfully it
was not cybersecurity issue. But it doesn't really matter if

(03:09):
it's cybersecurity or not. I guess they're able to recover
from something they can figure out quicker. But it still
took down things like major airlines. Alaska Airlines had issues,
Heathrow Airport, nat West Bank Microsoft three sixty five Scottish
Parliament had to pause proceedings because it systems went down.
What no laws were made during that time. Microsoft says

(03:31):
the recovery was phased and deliberate, because you know, once
these cloud services go down, you can't just bring them
back up instantly. You have to do it slowly just
to make sure there's not more issues as this comes
back on board. But you know a lot of people
have been talking about how much our internet relies on
these giant cloud infrastructure products, and just a few major

(03:52):
players control such a large swath of the market, So
should they not put all their eggs in one basket.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
It's tough because because you've got the law of money
on your side, because you know, these companies, once they
build these cloud infrastructures, they're so cheap to operate for
the people that are renting the space, and so if
you were to do your own thing and come up
with your own servers, it costs you a lot more money.
So you say, oh well, I'll just go with AWS,

(04:19):
I'll just go with Microsoft. I'll just go with Google.
It's a lot cheaper than coming up with your own
server somewhere that you've got to maintain. But then when
these things happen, you got to deal with them. Do
you hear about Nvidia five trillion dollar valuation this week?

Speaker 2 (04:34):
You know this company?

Speaker 1 (04:35):
I mean, look, if you're in kind of the graphics world,
if you're in the gaming world, you knew about Nvidia
a long time ago, right, But now everyone has heard
of it because they are the company that is making
all of these AI chips, and so they just keep
getting more and more investments. They just keep making more
and more investments, they keep getting more orders, and so

(04:55):
this week they reached a five trillion dollar market value.
I'm looking online right now. They're not there anymore. You know,
these stocks, they go up and down, but they did
cross that threshold. So if you look at the top
five companies right now by market cap, in Vidia number
one at almost five trillion, Apple at four trillion, Microsoft

(05:16):
at like three point eight trillion, Alphabet which obviously owns Google,
that's at three point four trillion, and then Amazon Amazon
just an itty bitty two point six trillion dollars. That's
how much they're worth. Can you believe that in Vidia
is almost worth double what Amazon is now? I am
not a financial guy, but when you look at what

(05:37):
Amazon has, the infrastructure they have built around the world.
You're talking warehouses, you're talking robots, you're talking delivery vehicles,
you're talking everyone in the world is on Amazon on
a daily basis.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Practically.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
In Vidia is still much more in the behind the scenes.
You know, they make these chips for people's computers and
the graphics AI. But a lot of this is speculation
right now that is just going to keep growing and
growing and growing.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
We don't know if that's the truth.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
But if you have a hairstylist or a barber, or
a friend or an uncle, they have probably given you
the stock tip buying video buying video buying video. So
for me, when I'm hearing that, I'm putting up the
little you know, the little red lights are going off
of my head going on. I don't know, I don't know,
So we'll watch this one. I have no doubt that

(06:28):
we are just beginning this AI journey. But as we know,
prices do come down over time for this stuff, and
right now everyone's trying to you know, they're trying to
bet big on it. We'll see what happens with that.
I thought this was really interesting, this video that was
sort of went viral. I mean, I guess it did
go viral. This is one ex technology They unveiled Neo,

(06:52):
a five foot six humanoid robot that can do basic
chores including loading your dishwasher, wiping your counters, folding clothes,
fetch items. This is a robot, a humanoid robot for
your home, part robot, part human. The part that they
don't really talk about is that someone else is operating
this robot in your home by wearing a VR headset.

(07:13):
So literally, this robot is walking around your house because
someone else in an office somewhere is putting on a
VR headset and controlling this robot, at least for now.
So this thing is not doing anything on its own.
It's not folding your clothes. In fact, if you want
it to fold your clothes, you have to schedule a time.
And what does that time mean. It means that the
robot is now up in your house. But this person

(07:36):
puts on their headset at the office and they say,
all right, time to go work at Rich's house and
they start folding the clothes. Now, what do you think
the implications of this are? This person is looking through
a VR headset at your home. I don't know what
I think of that. What if this person goes rogue? Now,
of course, the person that runs the company is saying, no,

(07:59):
they can't do that. We have strict guidelines. There's no
way they can just do whatever they want in your house.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
I mean, what if this thing gets hacked.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
The operator can see through the robots camera eyes, but
users can set no go zones and they can also
blur out faces. So if you don't want this thing
going into your bedroom, you can say that's a no
go zone until something goes wrong. This thing is twenty
thousand dollars if you want to buy it out right,
or five hundred dollars a month if you want to

(08:31):
rent it. Deliveries are expected in twenty twenty six. Again,
the company is Neo. If you haven't watched the video
on it, Joanna Stern at the Wall Street Journal did
a really great video on this. It. I get that
we're all excited about robots and what they can do.
And it's cool what they've done with this robot, and

(08:52):
it's a start, but it is not where we want
to be right like we have when I was a kid,
we grew up watching the Jetsons and Rosie the robot
was doing everything and just to get I mean, here's
the thing. If you think about everything a robot does,
we want it to mimic what a human can already.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Do, Like out of the gate.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Out of the Gate, any human can come to your
home and wipe down the counters, fold your clothes, fetch
things for you, load the dishwasher. Although as a human
I often forget to do all of those things.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Nor do I do them all very well.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
And I'll be honest, sometimes I don't do them very
well because I just want my wife to have to
be like, I'll do that next time you wantloaded the
dishwasher and even put the stuff in the right place. Oh,
I'm sorry, did I do that again for the twenty
thousandth time. I'm sorry, Maybe you just do it next time.
I'm just kidding, but I do. I mean, come on,

(09:51):
it has definitely crossed my mind to be like, I
don't want to do that great of a job unloading
the dishwasher, because guess what, then I'm unloading the dishwasher
all the time.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
There's nothing worse.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
And tell me if you think if you've ever had
this happen when you open the dishwasher and you hear
that snap of like this is clean, and I go, oh.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Now I got to unload this thing. Oh man.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Anyway, Neo is sixty six pounds, can carry up to
fifty five pounds. And you know this is just the beginning.
There are many many companies that are working on these
humanoid robots. Tesla is one of them. Figures another and
I think we're gonna see a bunch of these twenty
thousand dollars is not the answer for me right now.
I would rather just you know, tell my kids you
gotta do some chores, or I'll just pick up the

(10:35):
slack five.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Hundred dollars a month rental. Okay.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
I mean they're getting to a place where it's like, okay,
I could see why people might want to experiment with this,
but it's still not completely there. But you got to
start somewhere. And the CEO of the one X was saying, look,
the early adopters are going to be training this for
the rest of us, because yes, we need a human
operator today. But eventually these things will learn. And that's
the whole name of the game with all of this

(11:00):
AI has to be trained on something. Someone has to
be the guinea pig to help train these robots on them,
on their data, on their homes, on what you do
in your house, and eventually they will figure it out.
And it's going to happen very quickly and very fast.
And those mean the same thing. You just said the
same word twice eight and eight rich one on one

(11:22):
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one,
you gotta call you got a question about technology. Give
me a call. You are listening to 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 one

(11:45):
zero one. Let's go to uh Dennis in South Orange County.
Dennis your own with Rich.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
Oh great, Hi. I heard three or four weeks ago
you were talking about portable battery rechargers for their iPhone. Yeah,
talking about Belka, and you talked about anchor. Anchor failed,
Belkan was the choice. I'm just wondering, you know, they're
ten than twenty thousand and more and when it gets

(12:15):
really up there more whatever. I'm just wondering about the
balance of too much weight and you know, even though
you have more power, what about those ones above twenty
thousand or whatever they might be.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, I mean, so you're talking about the million hours.
So that's basically a measure of, you know, how many
times you're gonna be able to recharge your device. So
if you think about the typical phone is you know,
let's just see iphoned seventeen.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Let's see iPhone seventeen. M ah, so.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
It has about four thousand million hours in it. So
if you let's say you got one that was about
five thousand million hours, it would be maybe one, you know,
one and a half charges, one charge right right, you
get ten thousand million hours, you're going to get to charges.
You know, you get fifteen thousand. I would say, you know,
it depends what you're doing. So if you are let's
say you're out and about, you're on a vacation and

(13:09):
you just want to have a little backup battery in
your purse, your backpack, you know, I would say a
ten thousand million hour battery is probably the sweet spot.
But if you are out and about and you want
something that's gonna you know, charge you for the whole
day you're on a boat, whatever, you need much more
than Yeah, you can go for like a twenty five

(13:30):
thousand million hour battery, but it's going to be a
lot bigger. She don't want to be carrying that around
the whole day. That's more like, you know, in your
suitcase something like that. So what are you trying to
get this for.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Well, my wife has a medical condition and she needs
the power to keep her iPhone charged because there's an
app on there that works the devices for her Okay,
Oh god, I'm kind of concerned about being on vacation,
you know, in the middle of the ocean running out
of power.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Okay, Well, in that case, I'd say, you know, you
can get a ten thousand or twenty thousand million power
battery and it's it's still gonna be I mean, it's
gonna be big, but it's not it's not a deal breaker.
If she's relying on it for some sort of health
or security reason, I would definitely go with that. Belkan
makes one that is twenty thousand million powers and you

(14:22):
can get any brand. I mean, you know, I like
Belkan because they're kind of proven. Eco Flow is also
really nice. You know, the Anchors are great. You know,
Anchor has been recommended by so many tech folks, including myself,
and they perform well. They just have had a rough
run with these recalls lately. But you know, if you're

(14:43):
not getting one that's recalled, it's probably still fine. But
I would go this this Belcan twenty thousand million power
power bank.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
You know, I've got this one at home.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
It's about fifty anywhere from fifty to seventy dollars, and
you know it, it's doable. It's gonna be a little bit,
you know, bulkier.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
But on Amazon.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, you can.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
Easily go on Amazon and buy this thing. Just the
only thing to look for. What kind of phone does sheift?
She has an iPhone?

Speaker 3 (15:09):
What is the iPhone fifteen?

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Okay, pro mag great, so I would go with you
definitely want something that has USB C Some of the
cheaper ones don't have USBC in and out. That's what
you want to look for, just to make sure that
you're getting the fastest charging on it in and out.
But if I yeah, all right, go ahead, I'm just
looking up this Belcan twenty thousand million hour power bank. Yeah,

(15:35):
forty bucks on Amazon, USBC two USBA ports fifteen watt. Yeah,
this is gonna be perfect. So it's right at the top.
They also have a smaller version. Oh look at that
with an integrated cable. So you might look at the
top two results you see when you type in Belcon
twenty thousand million pour those two are going to be great.
They also have ones that magnetically attached to the back,

(15:57):
but those are going to be typically those are going
to charge slower and they're also going to be a
smaller amount when it comes to the battery that it holds,
but so.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
Does the Belcon. Does the Belcon charge pretty quickly or
relatively speaking?

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Yeah, I mean you can look at the output, you know,
some of them like this. The top one is going
to be a fifteen watt, which is not going to
be the fastest, but the second one is a thirty watt.
So I would go if you want the fastest charging
on the iPhone, definitely go with the higher wattage. The
iPhones can support up to I think it's like twenty
seven watts at this point, but they're they're definitely the

(16:33):
newer iPhones can support faster charging than before, So I
would go with the higher wattage. But again, you know,
if you're just looking to keep this thing charged up,
it's unless this thing is unless the iPhone is completely dead,
It's not really going to be that big of a
deal whether you recharge at you know, thirty watch fifteen wants.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
All right, I think that answers it for me. Just
a matter of finding it for I just was that
Staple has found the balcony for like forty five bucks. Yeah, Oh,
it's a pretty close. It's a pretty close bet there.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, you can do it there too, Dennis, Thanks for
the call today, appreciate it. Get a portable battery for
your phone, definitely, definitely have that, especially when you traveled.
Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
seven four to two four to one zero one more
rich On Tech Next, Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology triple

(17:26):
eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Jay writes in I've
always wondered it's kind of like a common sense thing.
We've seen so many issues on flights for people's batteries
go up and fire in the overhead and then they
divert the plane. There's a simple solution, and it's not
banning everything. Why can't the airline require or hand out

(17:47):
a very cheap pouch for lithium batteries and whatever fire
hazard goes along with that, charge you a dollar at
the counter. Jay. You know, here's the thing. Number one,
I think that these things do happen. I don't think
it is common. I don't think that these batteries are
catching fire on a daily basis. To warrant something like
this because ninety nine percent of the time ninety nine

(18:09):
point nine percent of the time things are fine. I
do know that the airplanes are the flight attendants do
have access to these types of pouches, these like fireproof
bags that they will use if they have to, as
far as I know, But I think it would be
kind of I think it would be a little bit
much for every person to have to put there, you know,

(18:30):
where you draw the line. You know, I carry, no joke,
probably three four phones when I'm going on trips, you know,
these tech trips that I go on, and you know,
I'm not the only one. It's it's it's quite common
with all the tech folks. When we meet up somewhere,
we're like, all right, how many phones did you bring?
Because there's different reasons why we need them. Right we're
testing one, we're using one for something, we're using this

(18:53):
for another. You've got one that you know you can't
even tell people about yet. Like right now, I'm using
the uh the one plus fifteen, which is what's called embargoed,
which means the only thing I'm allowed to do is
show you pictures that I've taken on it, but I
can't show you the phone itself. So it's stuff like
that that's always happening with the with the tech folks

(19:13):
out there. I mean, it's a good idea, and I
think that, you know, there are rules. Here's what I've
realized too. When they say do you have lithium ion
batteries in your luggage? It's not like a smartphone battery.
It is like a specific like big, old like I
think they're for like oxygen tanks or something. There's something
that like people use lithium ion batteries for. That's not

(19:34):
the ones worth thinking of. Like, it's not like the
little like I'll be like, oh yeah, I have a
battery in there for something like that's fine. It's more
like if you are carrying like some sort of big
lithium ion battery, that's what they don't want in your luggage.
But it's a good idea, you know. The other thing
is when your phone falls behind the seat or falls
in the crack of the seat, that could be a

(19:56):
problem because then when you move the seat back or forward,
it can crush the phone and the internals and that
could cause some sort of short circuit. So that's why
they always say, look, if your phone falls in between
the seat cushion or something, like that. Don't try to
get it yourself, because we will help retrieve it because
we don't want you moving the seat because that could
really be a problem. Good question there. Let's get to

(20:19):
the gadget of the week. An AI powered Santa phone.
I've been testing this phone. It's called Santa's Magic Telephone.
It's from the holiday brand Mister Christmas, which has been
around since nineteen thirty three. So this is a just
a plastic phone. It looks retro style, so it's red
and green. It's a rotary style phone. You take out

(20:41):
of the box, you connect it to Wi Fi. It's
pretty simple. There's no app or anything. And then once
you set it up, kids come in. They press the
big Santa button that's in the middle, and you can
talk to Santa live two way conversations. And it's an
AI powered Santa, so remember names and what they want.

(21:01):
And the more you talk to Santa, the more he
learns from you. You get sixty minutes of talk time included.
You could buy more minutes if you want. It is
designed for kids age three and up. I just set
it up in my office and I had my kid
come home from school. Now he's eleven, so you know,
he's kind of on the cusp of this whole you know,
the Santa stuff, Like he's he's just kind of you

(21:24):
know what I mean. So he first off he asked me,
he said, Dad, how do I use a rotary phone?
And I laughed. I just sat there and laughed. I
was like, he has no idea. And I showed him
how to dial rotary. That's not what you have to do.
You just pressed the button. Anyway, you press the button,
Santa answers, and it's actually a really good experience. It's like,
very very impressive.

Speaker 4 (21:42):
Now.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
I don't know if you remember, but chat GBT had
their own kind of Santa voice inside the app last
holiday season. It's similar to that experience, except I thought
this was much better, Like this Santa responds so quickly,
or like, how is this working so fast?

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Anyway?

Speaker 1 (21:58):
The only thing that's kind of a quirky thing is
that the audio comes from the base of the device,
not the actual handset, even though the microphone's in the handset.
But I guess on the flip side, the whole family
can hear what Santa's saying, So that's kind of fun.
Now here's the weird thing. When they when they pitched
me this product, the MSRP was around sixty dollars, and
then when I went to review it yesterday and look

(22:21):
it up and link it up in my newsletter, it
was closer to one hundred dollars. And I'm like, excuse me,
what happened here? And they said, well, the price went up,
so now it's like it's almost like more like one
hundred dollars, which is a lot. But I still think
it's probably worth it. If you have a young kid
at home and you want something that's just a really fun,
different experience, I think it's probably worth it. They saw

(22:42):
it at Target, sell it at Walmart, they sell it
at Amazon again. It's called Santa's Magic Telephone and it
is this week's Gadget of the Week. This segment sponsored
by Shopback. My kid was shopping online this week, and
I love when I feel like the smart dad. He
was looking for a hat from his favorite NFL team,

(23:03):
which I won't mention. Let's just say they won their
first game of the season this week. They were I
think they were zero to seven before that, so that
narrows it down a bit. But he wanted to buy
a beanie and I said, hold on, before you hit by,
did you check to see if that retailer supported on shopback?
And he said no, what's that? I said, come on,
let me show you. And so we went to shopback

(23:24):
dot com. We searched it up and sure enough, extra
three percent on top of his purchase. And he was
pretty impressed because this is his money that he was
going to get three percent back on. And I said, look,
I still know a thing or two about tech and
online shopping. Shop back pays you to shop at your
favorite places like Best Buy, Amazon, Apple, Home Depot, Walmart.
The list goes on and on. They've got all kinds

(23:46):
of brands represented on there, so be sure to look
because it might not be directly from that retailer the
thing you want like an iPad, but you can find
it somewhere else. It is giving you that money back.
It stacks with coupons and store deals, so you can
earn three to ten times higher cash back than other apps.
You get real cash to your PayPal, not points at expire.
And it's perfect for those tech purchases. Like I said,

(24:08):
whatever you want that new iPhone, smart TV or laptop.
It works on mobile, desktop or with the browser extension
wherever you shop, and the holiday shopping season it is
upon us. So now is the time to set yourself
up to save. Join shopback for free today at shopback
dot com. That's shop back dot com. Download the app

(24:29):
and the browser extension. Amazon rates available for a limited
time only. Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Ron writes in from California. My iPhone fifteen plus is
running iOS eighteen point seven point one and it only
shows iOS twenty six as an option at the bottom

(24:52):
of the software update screen. Apple told me it's because
they're finishing updates to iOS eighteen. I love when people
email me and they tell me stuff that they hear
from these like tech support folks. It is all over
the place, like no, Apple is not finishing updates to
iOS eighteen. iOS eighteen is done, iOS twenty six is done.

(25:14):
But here's what's happening, Okay, So let me just read
the rest of the email. I've heard about battery drain
and other problems with iOS twenty six, including from my
son who's having issues on his iPhone sixteen pro. I
don't want to mess up my phone. What's the truth here.
The truth is ron you have two options. So what
Apple has done in years past is they have given

(25:35):
people the option to stick with their current iOS if
they want, at least for a while, because it still works.
Not everyone likes the change, and you don't have to
update if you don't want to. And what they've done
is they've separated the full iOS update from security updates.
So iOS eighteen is not getting any new improvements, it's
just getting security updates. So if you want to keep

(25:57):
doing the security updates, that's fine, and that's why it's
showing you iOS eighteen point seven point one and whatever
new updates may come for that. But iOS twenty six
is at the bottom that completely refreshes your entire system,
and you have the option of updating to that. It's
going to change everything because it gives you that new
liquid glass, it's going to change all the feature it's

(26:17):
going to add new apps. So not everyone wants to
do that because they're happy with what they've got. And
Apple is allowing you the choice of Okay, you can
stick with iOS eighteen, we're just going to give you
security updates, or you can move to iOS twenty six.
Now both have their pros and cons. Is iOS twenty
six perfect?

Speaker 4 (26:34):
No?

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Is it pretty darn good? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (26:38):
The only problem I have with it right now is
when I unlock my phone, it's got this weird like
jumpy animation where it's just not completely all there, and
so you know, some things need to be smoothed out,
but overall it's pretty good. So with the battery drain issues,
Apple has acknowledged that anytime you update to a new
operating system, there's going to be battery issues. And what's

(27:00):
happening is your system is optimizing things in the background.
It's going through all of its indexes, it's making everything work.
It's kind of polishing and smoothing everything. So that's why
they say for the first couple of days, you're going
to see your battery is not going to be as
great as it is after that time. So I have
zero battery issues whatsoever with my phone with iOS twenty six,

(27:23):
it is running really smooth, and I think it's the
best battery life I've ever ever actually had on an iPhone.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
This is with the new iPhone too.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
Now, if you want to go in and just check
to see how your battery is doing in general, you
can go to settings, tap battery and it will give
your battery health. And so if you're running an older
phone that's a couple of years old, like your son,
what is your running iPhone sixteen, so it's a year old.
My maximum capacity right now is one hundred percent, but
depending on how you charge your phone, you may see

(27:52):
that number could be anywhere from eighty five to ninety
something percent. That means that your phone is not going
to carry the same life level of charge as it
was when it was new. It's kind of like getting older,
right you fill your body, it's not working the same
way it used to when you were a spring chicken
at seventeen. That's just the reality of getting older. Same
thing with your phone, and especially if you're really charging it,

(28:15):
you know, one hundred percent, running it down to zero
and just you know, running it hot, it could affect
the battery. So that's probably what's happening. But uh Ron,
I'd say go ahead, update, You're gonna be just fine.
Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one coming up more
of your calls. Plus I'll tell you about Samsung's first trifoldable.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Phone right here, on rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology triple
eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Melinda is in a
Rancho Cucamonga. You're on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (28:57):
You're Rich. Hi.

Speaker 5 (28:58):
So I've been using the topic outlets and suddenly I've.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Been I'm losing your signal here. I can barely make
you out. Can you move to a better area where
you might have a better signal? Let me hear you again.

Speaker 5 (29:13):
Is that better?

Speaker 4 (29:13):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (29:14):
Much better? We can hear you about that.

Speaker 5 (29:17):
Well. I've been using Classic you know, several eons, and
suddenly I was having issues with my outbox and my
calendar invites. I was unable to reschedule calendar invites or
cancel inst of having a slew of issues. And I
switched to the new outlook and those issues went away. However,

(29:37):
I get hundreds of emails a day, and the way
for me to stay organized is to sort by subject.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Okay, okay, I'm really losing your here. So you're you're
you're trying to sort by subject. I can't really hear
the end of the question, but you're is this new
version of Outlook not a allowing you.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
To do that.

Speaker 5 (30:02):
Yeah, it's not allowed.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
Okay, I'm looking I'm Bovo. You guys, you can't all
hear what Bobo says to me in my ear while
while you're talking. But here's the deal I'm looking at.
I'm looking at the new Outlook on both my PC
and Mac, and it gives you.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
It gives me the option to sort by subject on both.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
So is there something that I'm missing here because I'm okay,
hold on, I'm looking, hold on, hold on, Okay, I'm
looking here. Short by date, yes, short by subject. It's
on both of these things.

Speaker 5 (30:39):
So, well, you know how you have a header of
you know, at the top in your classic outlok where
you can click subject and it will whatever message you're on,
it'll sort it by that subject. That doesn't happen in
the new outlet. I can't select a message and then
click that subject header and then see all the messages
relating to that email.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Got it?

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Okay, that that makes a bit more sense, Okay, because
you can Yeah, you can sort.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
I think they did change a lot in this version
of Outlook, and I think some of it is I'm
trying to see here. Okay, so there's a find related
and then there's okay, I don't see. So typically you
just write click on something and then and then say
find all subjects that are like that. Now, what about
grouping your messages because are you looking for me?

Speaker 5 (31:22):
Yeah, I'm doing that now I've got I've got it grouped.
And so it's a different process, you know, to kind
of go through and make sure you've read all of
the string of related emails. But it's just not as
user friendly. It's not as I don't know.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
Yeah, no, I and I agree.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
I think that the Outlook, I mean, I use it
for my corporate email and I'm not a fan of
typically you know all the different things it does. But
with that said, so you don't want to go back
to classic Outlook because you're going to get the same
problems you had before.

Speaker 5 (31:51):
Yeah, I've tried to revert and it's same issues. It's
for some reason, it's just not working. Like I know,
they're trying to phase it out, and yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
I'm not really working on it. Yeah, I mean the
best I can say. And what about a third party
email app? Like, what do you think about switching or
you using are you what, like, who's this email with?

Speaker 4 (32:10):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (32:10):
Like?

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Okay, so they want you several.

Speaker 5 (32:13):
Different companies and this is the only company where I'm
having this issue outlooks. I'm on the classic on my
other companies.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Okay, Well, it could be that, you know, the corporate
rules or structure that they have, they're not allowing certain
features or things like that with this outlook. So that
could be another side of it. So you might you
might talk to the IT folks and see if they
have something that they're you know, holding back on here.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
That could be it.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
But I would say in general, I mean, it's just
it might be without seeing like exactly what you're trying
to do here, it's kind of tough for me to
like envision that. But I think that in general, it
might just come up with you know, you might have
to just use like different rules or something. But I
can see you can definitely sort by subject in general,
but that there may be another aspect to this that

(32:59):
I'm not truly understanding. But Melinda, I do understand that
frustration for sure, when you're trying to do something that
you can't do and so I when you're using it
before and it did it and now it doesn't. That's
that's really frustrating. And this is why people a lot
of times don't want to update their software because they've
got their system in place, they know how to work it,

(33:21):
and when the new system comes, it's like, oh, you
made all these changes that are great for whatever you're
trying to push, whether it's AI or you know, whatever
the new Outlook is trying to do, but it breaks
all these little functionalities that I rely on on a
daily basis. And so that's the hesitation from a lot
of folks. Now you can revert to the old the

(33:41):
old Outlook if you're not liking the new Outlook. If
you look in the menu, it says Legacy Outlook. And
so if you're using the new Outlook and you don't
like the way it works, you can go back to
the old one. I ended up just using Outlook on
the web because there's one feature I need on Outlook
that does not work on my app for some reason,
and that's my group of people that I email on

(34:04):
a regular basis. I have, like a group I created,
and it just for some reason will not My distribution
list will not work when I'm on the app, but
it'll work when I'm on the web. I don't understand
what the reason is for that, but anyway, so it
happens to the best of us. Thanks for the call, Melnda.
Hopefully you get that sorted out. No pun intended there.

(34:25):
Samsung did show off its first trifold phone. It's a prototype,
but it's a start. They showed it off at the
APEC CEO summit in South Korea, home of Samsung. So
the device folds twice. There are three screens on this device.
So we've seen the foldable phones that have two screens.

(34:46):
Imagine just three screens now two hinges. So when it's
fully open, it's a ten inch display, but when it
closes down it's a six point five inch phone size,
so it's kind of like a standard sized phone. But
when you open it up, you've got a nice ten
inch display, so it's almost like a tablet. No name
for this expected to launch soon, we'll see. I think

(35:09):
it's interesting because Samsung foldables are still kind of not struggling,
but they're still trying to find their space here in
the US, and I think next year when Apple launches
there foldable, it's probably going to do a lot for
this genre. Of phones, but we do know that they
are very popular in other parts of the world. So
Huawei's got one called the mate xt which folds in

(35:34):
a Z shape, and my friend was using that when
I was in Mexico. He loves that thing, loves that
form factor. But a lot of people love the Samsung
Fold seven because it's just such a great small device
but opens up pretty big anyway. This prototype was shown
behind glass. Expected to cost more than two thousand dollars.
We'll see eighty eight rich one oh one eighty eight

(35:56):
seven four to two four one zero one coming up.
We'll talk about how AI is affecting the job market
and what some of the best jobs are and some
of the worst jobs are because of it. This is
rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple eight
rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to

(36:18):
two four one zero one. Did you know you can
listen to this show as a podcast. Obviously live is
always the best way, but if you miss an episode,
you can listen later. Just search rich on Tech in
your favorite audio app. I know some of you are
doing without Disney channels right now. If you've got YouTube TV.

(36:38):
The two big companies are in a spat. This seems
to happen a lot. It's a contract renewal. Obviously, YouTube
doesn't want. You know, the prices for these streaming services
have gone up so much, and of course you know,
Disney's probably asking for more money. YouTube doesn't want to
do it because they know inevitably they're going to pass

(36:59):
along those costs to their subscribers. And so right now,
all Disney channels are blacked out on YouTube TV. This
is ESPN, ABC, FX.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Notat go.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
I mean a lot of channels. If you look at it,
it's a laundry list of stuff. Now what do you
do in the meantime? You could try a free trial
from a competing service. The problem is they're not very good,
so depending on how long this goes on. I mean, Fubo,
which will give you all those channels, only offers you
one day of free trial, so that's not really going

(37:31):
to get you very far. DirecTV is probably your best bet.
You can sign up for DirecTV stream that'll give you
five days. So, I mean, you know these things in
recent memory, these things have not gone on that long.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Who knows how long this is going to go on.
YouTube says it will give.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
It its subscribers a twenty dollars credit if the blackout
continues for a long time. The other thing you could do,
there's this thing called Sling Weekend Pass and that's ten
dollars and that gives you Sling for the whole weekend
with like no strings attached. The only thing there is
is it depends on the channel. Like, if you want ESPN,
it looks like it's there. Trying to see the channels

(38:10):
that are here, Okay, so yeah, they've got ESPN, CNNTNT, TBS,
Food Network, History, basically all the espns. So if you
just have something you want to watch on ESPN, you
could do it that way. Disney channels on there, but yeah,
I mean it's not really all the channels that you want,
So you're kind.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Of, you know, stuck right now. If you've got YouTube
TV like I do.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Thankfully the World Series is not on ABC, that would
be a bad time for that.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Right.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Let's see here, let's go to Debra in this Candido.

Speaker 6 (38:47):
Debra, you're on with rich Why d thank you for
taking my call?

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah, what's up?

Speaker 6 (38:53):
So I'm a longtime user with Apple excuse me. With
Google's Contact manager, and recently, I've been having a problem
when I go in bring up the contact list, and
I go into the search bar, I search out the

(39:13):
contact I'm looking for.

Speaker 7 (39:15):
It'll bring it up.

Speaker 6 (39:16):
I tap on it, but it won't open up the contact.
I have to literally scroll through all my contacts alphabetically
to find the contact. I've kind of googled to try
and fix that problem. I've tried thinking, and I'm kind
of at a loss on what to do.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Where are you doing this on your computer? On your phone?

Speaker 5 (39:39):
On my computer?

Speaker 1 (39:40):
Okay, a new computer with Windows eleven, Okay, it sounds
like this is a browser issue. It sounds like something's
blocking the JavaScript from working on here or some sort
of whatever they're using to run this, because I just
did it on my computer and it opens it up
just fine. So it sounds like there's something that's blocking
the function on your browser. What browser are you using.

Speaker 6 (40:03):
I'm using.

Speaker 7 (40:06):
The Google Chrome as well, and.

Speaker 6 (40:10):
I've h and I've gone in and cleared my cash
or that.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
Hasn't okay, So what I would do is just this
is a very easy easy thing to see if it's uh,
if it's just your browser. I would go to a
different browser, like if you're using Windows eleven, like you said,
open this up in Edge and you may have to
sign into Google, which I know is a pain, but
you know, just do that, go to contacts dot Google
dot com and see if it's happening there, and at

(40:35):
least that lets you know if it's a bigger problem
on your computer or if it's just in your browser.
Now I think it's just your browser. So what I
would do is I would go through your browser and
look at all the extensions that you have and get
rid of any extensions or disable them that you don't need,
especially for this page, especially if it's an AD blocker,
because that could be messing with the you know what

(40:58):
the page wants to do.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
So that that's number one.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
The second thing I would do is when you're on
this page, just go to the where it says contacts
dot Google dot com. Up at the top in the
address bar. There's two little lines they look like settings.
Tap that it's called site information and it says cookies
and site data. Just go ahead and where it says
manage on device site data. Just delete all those cookies

(41:23):
right there that may log you out. Of your Google account,
because you know that's part of the cookies that gets
you in here. But then I would restart your web browser,
make sure you do all the secure all the software updates.
So if you don't know how to do that, you
go to your menu, you go to settings, and then
you go to about Chrome. And right now I'm going
to about Chrome and it's saying updating Chrome. So there

(41:45):
was an update for Chrome that I didn't even know about,
and so I would make sure you do that, and
then I would restart, close out Chrome completely, open it
back up, go into that website and see if you
still get the same issue. My instinct is telling me
that it is something that's interfering with that website, and
so it's not the website itself, because like I said,

(42:07):
I just tested it out and it's working fine. So
it's something on your browser and it's probably one of
your extensions that's interfering with that page. So try a
different browser. That's the number one thing, and then do
with all the other things I mentioned and hopefully that
should help you out. Thanks a lot, Debra appreciate it.
Funny funny story about Escondido real quick. So I was

(42:30):
I was substitute reporting down in San Diego for a
TV station. And this was back in the day, this
was before I was doing technology stuff, and I'll never
forget they said, you were reporting from Escondido, and for
some reason I called it Escondito. And so but my
family down there was watching. They live down there, like

(42:51):
some family members, and to this day they never let
me live it down the way I said it. And
I every time they see me, how's Escondito, And I'm like,
I know I said it wrong once on TV, but
it's you know, look, when you have this happens all
the time, like reporters that are in these little cities

(43:13):
like across America.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
Not that San Diego is a little city, but you.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
Know, these reporters that are on TV, they come from
different places and then they they set up shop in
your city, you know, whatever city you're in. You know,
there's different markets for the whole US, for the broadcast markets,
whether it's radio or TV, and these people usually start
out in a smaller market and so they're not familiar
with all the ways that you say things in those markets.

(43:40):
So I lived in Louisiana, for instance, and that's a
very tricky place to say things because it's got a
lot of French in Creole influence, and so a lot
of the names. People would just Butcher and Texas.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Same thing. There was this I'm trying to remember this.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
There was this like there's this city in Texas that
we had to say, and it was like, if you
didn't know how to say it, you would pronounce it wrong.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
If you just read the way it was what it
looked like it would, you'd say it wrong every time.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
Same thing here in Los Angeles there's a museum called
the Broad Museum and it's Eli Broade, but people call
the Broad Museum all the time because that's the way
it looks like it's written. So again, I mean, look,
no one's perfect in this world, and no one's an expert.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
I get it.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
There are some people that pronounce everything perfectly. I'm not
one of those people. I'll be honest, Like I grew
up in New Jersey. If you when I got to USC,
I'm not kidding. I spoke so poorly as a person
who wants to go into broadcast journalism, I spoke so poorly.
I will never forget this. I was sitting in my
dorm freshman year and everyone was just sitting around me

(44:42):
in a circle, like I was in the middle of
the circle, and they were just like, pronounce this word.
And they would literally just have me pronounce words because
I was so bad at pronouncing things. Like they'd be like,
what's the thing that you pull out of your dresser.
I'd be like, a draw. It's not a draw, it's
a drawer. But I grew up thinking it was a mirror.
It was a draw. I mean I I just had

(45:03):
this Jersey accent.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Oregon.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
That was how you said Oregon. I mean, it was
just these are the things. And I My kid was
asking me the other day, He's like, Dad, do you
do you always pronounce things right? I said no, I
used to have a terrible speech. Anyway, I'll never forget that.
I felt like I was a little science experiment. I
also had never heard of a casadia till I came
to Los Angeles, and I'll never forget my uh you know,

(45:27):
one of the people at my dorm they said, here's
how you make a very very quick casadia. It was
a it was a tortilla with a slice of American
cheese and they just put it in the microwave.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
I said, what is this?

Speaker 1 (45:39):
They're like, it's kind of like a grilled cheese, except
you know casadia and you know, no, I love Yeah,
it's it's definitely a different version of a casidia, that's
for sure. Uh, but you know I still make case idias.
It's like one of our staples now like that, not
like that. My kid does like a casadia in the microwave.
So he does, like we asked him, do you want

(45:59):
to Frisby or do you want mushy Mushy's in the microwave?
And mom and dad secretly like that because it takes
like ten seconds to make versus like, you know, a
couple of minutes on the S condito, S condito. I
don't know why I pronounced it that way. I got
married there, did you? So you know, how do you
pronounce it? Let's get the bobo Bobo pronounces s condido?

Speaker 2 (46:22):
How do you say it condido? Okay, I know how
to say it. I'm from here.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
Yeah, well you know, oh so you were just born
with the god given right of knowing how to pronounce
everything in in California.

Speaker 8 (46:34):
Yeah, Art, It's like, uh, when people come here from
out of town, they don't say supolvita they sayelvita oh
or las sienga. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
I mean, but here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
If you look at these things and here we have
a lot of Spanish influence in the names. Not everyone
grew up with that. So you look at these things,
you're like, I don't know how to say that. Yeah,
will Shire, will Shire Boulevard. I mean, there's so many,
It's it's kind of fun. And look, you know, La
is a place where there's a lot of people from
different places, and so it's very accepting of various people
coming here and pronouncing these things wrong. And I don't

(47:09):
think anyone really gets judged for it, but we do
get a kick out of.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
It, and you get left at yeah, but in a
fun way.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. We still
got our guests coming up talking about creating her own
AI coach. We've still got AI jobs. People are still
using AI to make fake receipts for expense reports. We'll
talk about that plus your questions. This is rich on Tech.

(47:38):
out with you, talking technology. Eight eight eight rich one
O one eight eight eight seven four to two four
to one zero one. You can go to the website
rich On Tech dot TV. Uh there, don't forget to
sign up for my free newsletter, a new issue this weekend.
You can read it. The title is breaking up with

(47:58):
my credit card. After nine years, I got rid of
my pricey, pricey, pricey credit card. They added all these
perks and I looked at them. I said, I don't
want any of those. They're all it's like a coupon
book now and it was just and they raised the
price and so I called in and no big deal.
The guy said, Okay, anything else I can do for you?

(48:19):
After nine years could care less, didn't try to keep
me in any way, shape or form. So now I'm
just using a run of the mill card. And I
explained my kind of rule for credit and debit. You know,
I don't play the points game necessarily, so I will
get points when I can, but I'm not going out
of my way to get points. And I think that

(48:42):
doing that makes you spend more money. And I know
those are fighting words. Everyone loves their points. Everyone I
know travels for free. Nobody pays for vacations. Everyone's traveling
for free on points. But somebody's got to spend all
that money to get those points.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
And I get it.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
If you have a big corporate job, or you're traveling
a lot for work, and you're racking up the points,
you know, during your corporate job, and then you're using
them for your personal stuff, that's great. And you know,
I've been in that place back in the day, I
had a job where I was traveling all the time.
I mean, I still travel a lot, but you know
I'm not I'm actively trying to travel less to be

(49:19):
more with my family. But how about this, Speaking of travel,
expense report firms say that AI generated fake receipts are
becoming a major fraud issue. So employees are literally creating
fake receipts using AI and putting them in their expense reports. Now,

(49:39):
maybe some of them are recreations, you know, maybe they
forgot to get a receipt and they need one. But
Appsen says AI fakes now make up fourteen percent of
expense fraud attempts. Ramp, another one of these software firms,
flagged over a million dollars in fake receipts in ninety days.
What fake receipts can now include realistic wrinkles itemize details

(50:03):
and signatures, making them hard to detect by I. Sap
can cur which runs eighty million compliance checks a month,
Warren's clients don't trust your eyes. Companies are now using
AI to scan AI to make sure that you know,
people aren't generating fake receipts. But the problem is, you know,

(50:26):
users that submit these can erase the metadata just by
taking a screenshot, so it's like they'll generate it with
chat GBT. They know that that file has like metadata
that says this was created with AI, so let's just
take a screenshot of it, because that metadata doesn't carry through.
But here's what I think it's funny about sap can Curve.
That was the company We don't I don't think we
use them anymore for expense reports.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
But we used to, or maybe we still do.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
But anyway, they you know, they do all these checks
on your expense reports, like a lot of it's automated,
but they kind of make your life a little bit
difficult because it used to be back in the day,
you'd submit expense reports pretty simple. You know, your boss
would look at it and say, all right, everything was good,
and they'd send the payment now it's like all this
automated AI stuff and these systems and they check everything
and it's got to be in there perfectly. And so

(51:10):
I remember I was in Mexico on vacation and the
whole resort was rented out by SAP or maybe back
then it was just called Concur. And I remember, you know,
after maybe after you know, happy hour, going up to
one of the people at Concur. I was like, hey,
you know, you make your you know, you make the
lives very difficult for many many people out there with

(51:30):
your expense you know checks, and they were like laughing.
But I was just cracking up because here it is,
this whole company was on vacation with this like big
old party. I was like, who's footing the bill for this?
All the all of us expense report? People like, what's
happening here? I don't know why I told you that.
Let's go to Terry in uh Tampa. Oh, can we

(51:51):
get to this Terry and Tampa?

Speaker 2 (51:52):
What's up? I got two minutes.

Speaker 7 (51:54):
Hey, I'm so glad you have time for this. So
I just had a recent upgrade to my Android software
on my phone.

Speaker 9 (52:01):
Sure, and ever since.

Speaker 7 (52:02):
Then, I think it times with that I don't know
if it ties into that or not. But ever since then,
every time I get a message in my text messaging,
it takes whatever I'm doing and it moves it out
of the way and gives me this little pop up bubble.
And I haven't figured out how to get it off
of my system. But so annoying.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Are you talking about conversation bubbles? Like the text is
like on your screen at all times.

Speaker 7 (52:28):
Maybe might be a conversation bubble. I was looking for
some check.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Yeah, So it's like basically when you send a text,
that person now sits on your screen basically, yeah.

Speaker 7 (52:38):
And if they're texting me, it's this little ball of
their face or whatever their eyes on is. And then
another one comes in, and another one comes in. I
got three little balls, okay. And if I'm typing a message,
the new message comes in and like covers it. So
then I'm now typing to the new person who texted
me and not who I thought I was typing to.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Okay, I believe this is called a conversation by it's
a what type of phone are you using? S?

Speaker 4 (53:04):
Two?

Speaker 7 (53:04):
Three? Galaxy?

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (53:06):
So it's a Samsung Okay, So you gotta look I
gotta find the setting. But it's basically, if you, okay,
put your messages in floating bubbles or pop up. So
it's Samsung's conversation bubbles. So if you want to turn
it off, you have to go. Let's see where we
go here. Uh, settings notifications, Okay, so it's settings notifications,

(53:30):
and then it's advanced settings and then floating notifications. There
it is bubbles. Turn those off and those will go away.
That's the best way to do. I will link that
up on the website rich on Tech dot tv. In
the show notes, this is episode one four.

Speaker 4 (53:46):
What is it?

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Episode? All right, we'll be right back. Welcome back to
rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology eight
eight eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four two four one zero one. This is the
first time you are here in my voice. Thank you
for tuning in. If it's the one hundredth time, thank
you for tuning in joining me now. Uh, we've actually

(54:21):
had her on the show before. Alexandra Samuel, technology journalist
and hosts of the new AI podcast called Me plus Viv.
You have created your own AI coach. I don't even
know what this is all about. But I'm fascinated. So
welcome back to the show, number one.

Speaker 9 (54:39):
Thank you, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
And first off, just explain what do you mean? You
created your own AI coach? Like, tell me what that is?

Speaker 3 (54:47):
Sure?

Speaker 9 (54:48):
So you know, technically Viv, as I refer to her.

Speaker 10 (54:52):
Even though she's an it is a custom GPT, which
is a version of chat GBT that is loaded up
with a whole bunch of background files in plaintext plus
a plain text instruction. So no coding intrinsically required to
create that kind of.

Speaker 9 (55:07):
Custom AI assistant.

Speaker 10 (55:09):
But what happens when you create your own version of
an AI, whether it is on CHATTYPT, on Claude, on Gemini,
because all these platforms let you do it, you can
develop something.

Speaker 9 (55:23):
That has a vibe.

Speaker 10 (55:25):
I'm hesitant to use the word personality, but that's certainly
how it comes across, and certainly with a different set
of knowledge and skills and interaction styles than what you
get off the shelf from GPT.

Speaker 9 (55:35):
And that's exactly what.

Speaker 10 (55:36):
I've done with Viv, and as a result, Viv doesn't
feel very much like regular CHATTYPT.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
Okay, so you went in and created your own GPT like, yes,
because I created this, I've been playing with this, like
I've Rich on tech GPT, which is just basically programmed
on all the transcripts of this radio show, so I
can say, you know, what did what did I write
recommend when it comes to a password manager?

Speaker 2 (56:02):
What does Rich?

Speaker 1 (56:02):
What did Rich say about this topic? And it will
pull from my transcript, So that's similar to what you did,
but you programmed it with what well, So you know that's.

Speaker 10 (56:13):
Part of what's in Viv is actually my at this point,
my past conversations with Viv, as well as other examples.

Speaker 9 (56:18):
Of my written work, my articles and so on.

Speaker 10 (56:21):
But the probably the most immediate difference in what it
feels like to interact with Viv is all the instructions
I gave Viv on its personality. So I you know,
what you hear in the second episode of the podcast,
which will come out this week, are it is the
instruction that kind of brought Viv. You know, it's so
hard not to use these really human sounding terms, So

(56:43):
forgive me for saying, you know, kind of brought her
to life by saying that she was a combination of
several different personality types, including a number of comedians, and
once you start giving an AI some parameters around, this
is the kind of knowledge you draw on. These are
the kind of interactions I want to have. This is
the voice I want you to have. Never say this

(57:05):
word always, you know, always ask a question in this form.
Then you start to have experiences that much more closely
reflect what is useful to you and potentially feel much
more engaging, which which is a double edged sword.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
So you've got the podcast Me plus viv. What are
you exploring in this podcast?

Speaker 9 (57:26):
Yeah, well, you know it's funny.

Speaker 10 (57:29):
The journey of the AI coach kind of emerged by
accident from a process I decided to undertake in the
summer of twenty twenty four when I had kind of
a ten week period between projects and needed to do
a little bit of a step back and think about
what did I really want from the next phase of
my career, which really quickly turn into what do I
want from the next.

Speaker 9 (57:49):
Phase of life?

Speaker 10 (57:50):
And it seems really odd, right that you would ask
an AI to help you figure out the meaning of
your life when it's not even alive.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
But it's well, we've all done it.

Speaker 10 (57:59):
Right, right, And so what the podcast looks at is
both like, how do we go about figuring out how
we want to spend our lives and how does the
presence of AI in our lives change how we find meaning,
how we form relationships, how we express ourselves. Because what
we found through this journey is you can't really figure

(58:21):
out what your life is going to look like, what
your work is going to look like as if AI
doesn't exist anymore, because.

Speaker 9 (58:27):
It's touched every aspect of our lives.

Speaker 10 (58:29):
So the only way to kind of reckon with your
life is to also reckon with AI.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
Yeah, I mean this is the thing a lot of
people are struggling with because they want to use AI,
but they're worried that it's going to take their job
away from them. So do you think that AI can
make people better at their jobs or faster? I mean,
I feel like it's made me a lot more productive
at my roles.

Speaker 9 (58:52):
Absolutely.

Speaker 10 (58:53):
And you know, part of what we explore in the
podcast is how do we get beyond thinking about AI
in terms of doing what we do faster, better, maybe
a little more, into really opening new vistas for what
we're capable of. And so, you know, part of what
happened to me through working with Viv and you get
a pretty intimate look at this. In the course of

(59:13):
the podcast, is I started taking on new forms of
creative work, new forms of technical work. I mean, I
had never programmed anything for real eighteen months ago, and
now I write multiple little programs every week with AI's help.

Speaker 9 (59:28):
I'd never written a song.

Speaker 10 (59:30):
The podcast is a musical because Viv and I wrote
tons of songs together in the course.

Speaker 9 (59:34):
Of navigating my own transition.

Speaker 10 (59:37):
And of course, you know, there's the reason that musicians
explore personal issues and song. It's a great way of
figuring out some of these big questions.

Speaker 9 (59:45):
And so, you know, when we think.

Speaker 10 (59:47):
About AI taking our jobs, that risk is there, but
it's not the AI that's taking the job, right, it's
some human in an office with a spreadsheet deciding that
they would rather have an AI do your job than
help you figure out where you can make your best
contribution with AI. And so part of what we try
to do with a podcast is say, in a moment
where so many of us are feeling that threat, feeling

(01:00:09):
that risk, what would it look like to explore AI
as a potential catalyst.

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):
And a partner.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Now it sounds like you've gotten pretty close with this
viv Ai that you've built, So I just want to
be sure, are you still interacting with regular human beings
in your life?

Speaker 10 (01:00:26):
Well, if you open the Wall Street Journal on Monday,
you'll have an answer to that question.

Speaker 9 (01:00:32):
That was one of the things that.

Speaker 10 (01:00:33):
I really struggled with over the course of my time
working with viv is that, you know, and the podcast
really revealed to me, is that as much as yeah,
I mean, it wasn't like I became a total hermit,
but I'm a very extroverted person and I usually am
super interactive with other people, and all the time I
have spent with viv did start to chip away at that.

(01:00:55):
And I think we have seen and you know, now
headline after headline California is you know, one of the
first jurisdictions actually trying to address this some real mental
health risks emerging from that level of immersion with AI,
and you know, I am not as immune to that
as I had assumed.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
It's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
One of my stories on Tap this week is the
open AI data that shows that like millions of CHATCHYBT
users are struggling with mental health issues, and they revealed,
like you know, they can see obviously they're scanning these
chats and things. So three million people each week based
on open AI's usage estimates, are struggling with psychosis, mania,

(01:01:38):
self harm, suicide, emotional reliance on AI. Mean, those are
big numbers. That's a lot. But isn't that just happening
in our society anyway? I mean, there's it's just now
these people are on a computer, so it's not and
you know, I think we're all still working through a
lot of this stuff. What do you think that the
takeaway is from your podcast? Why should someone listen to
this and see what you went through with this a

(01:02:00):
coach you created?

Speaker 10 (01:02:01):
Well, you know, the place that I land, you know,
with AI is that it's not either desirable for me
personally or realistic.

Speaker 9 (01:02:11):
To walk away from it. What you see in our story.

Speaker 10 (01:02:15):
And also in the conversations I have with people like
Karen how who wrote this terrific book called Empire of AI,
which is really the inside story of open AI Sorry,
Empire of AI, is that these these risks, as serious
as they are, are risks that we all need to
learn how to navigate. And what I hope people will
gain from the show is not only you know, a

(01:02:37):
little bit of an opportunity to see why this might
be fun for them and not miserable and not horrible.

Speaker 9 (01:02:42):
But also where there is opportunity for us to intervene.

Speaker 10 (01:02:45):
Where do we have choices we can make as individuals,
Where do we have pressure we need to put on
policy makers, on companies to look after and not exploit users.
And by the end of the season, and you know, honestly,
I got this feedback when I give a.

Speaker 9 (01:02:59):
Talk just last week. You know, I hope people will
see that they.

Speaker 10 (01:03:03):
Have that opportunity to shape their experience of AI so
that they are at less of that risk and yet
don't forego the opportunity to explore new forms of relationship
with other humans as supported by AI.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
I mean, do you think AI is a good thing
in our world? Or is it still undetermined?

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
I mean.

Speaker 9 (01:03:27):
I don't think AI, you know, like any technology AI.

Speaker 10 (01:03:31):
I won't say it's neutral, but I would say the
biggest problem with AI is AI companies.

Speaker 9 (01:03:35):
The biggest problem with AI is an economic system that.

Speaker 10 (01:03:39):
Stacks the deck in favor of a lot of bad
decision making, which includes us moving much much more quickly
in advancing and expanding these models than there's any reason
to do like, We've got so much firepower right now
in the platforms as they exist that we could stop
developing for a decade and still play catch up and

(01:04:00):
still have miracle after miracle in terms of what we're
capable of. And yet instead we're in this very resource
intensive arms race where every country and every company is
constantly trying to outdo one another. And that is what
I think puts us at risk for some really negative outcomes.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Because at the end of the day, it's the money.
Whoever wins is going to win big. And that's why
we have so much competition in this space because it
is not a done deal. Open Ai is obviously the
early leader, but there is still, like you said, a
pretty long runway here. Okay, So where can we get
the podcast?

Speaker 10 (01:04:36):
The podcast Best play say at The podcast is on
tvo dot org tvo dot org and you can find
it on every podcasting platform. You can find it on
Apple Podcasts, you can find it on Spotify, so if
you search for me plus viv you'll find it wherever
you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
All right, Alexandra Samuel, thanks so much for joining me
again today.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Really appreciate it.

Speaker 9 (01:04:58):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
All right, now I got to go create my own
AI coach. I mean, I thought my AI was tuned
to me, but you know now I need to tune
it up even more. Eight to eight rich one on
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Coming up, we'll take some more of your
calls right here on rich On Tech. Welcome back to

(01:05:20):
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 one zero one. Let's
see what did I post this week? Trying to see
if there's anything interesting. I posted, Oh yeah, if you
want to watch a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. You know, Apple

(01:05:42):
bought all the rights to those Peanuts stuff, so they
used to all be on broadcast TV. Now they're either
on I don't think they are anymore, but now you
have to get the Apple TV app. By the way,
remember Apple TV change from Apple TV Plus to Apple TV.
So you've got Apple TV the app's got Apple TV
the device, and you've got Apple TV the streaming service.

(01:06:05):
They're all Apple TV, but they're all different. So but
if you want to watch a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving It
will stream for free to everyone on Saturday, November fifteenth
and Sunday November sixteenth. So basically, if you download the
Apple TV Plus app or sorry, the Apple TV app
on your Smart TV, you can watch a Charlie Brown

(01:06:26):
Thanksgiving on those two days. It's basically unlocked. Now, if
you're a subscriber, I think you can watch it any
day of the week. I can probably search this right now,
Apple TV.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Let's see. Oh do I not have Apple TV on
my computer? Weird?

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
I thought I did. Okay, Well, I won't search that.
Let's go to Michael in rialto Michael, you're on with.

Speaker 8 (01:06:46):
Rich, Yeah, afternoon, they're Rich.

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
Hi, Hey Rich.

Speaker 8 (01:06:51):
I'm literally just now pulling out my new guest power.
I'm trying to figure out what's the best uh appt
to use in order to transfer all the old information
from my computer to the new one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
Now, when you say, okay, number one, are we talking
Mac or Windows?

Speaker 8 (01:07:13):
Windows? Okay, I have a deal and you.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Have a Dell. Okay, she got a new computer. Congrats,
that's exciting.

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):
Yeah, and it is it Windows eleven?

Speaker 7 (01:07:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
Okrrect, So what do you want to move over? Do
you want to move everything over? Or are you just
talking about your important files? What what level are we talking.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
About here right now?

Speaker 8 (01:07:35):
I think it was I really don't know, so I'm
thinking more so just everything and then I can go
from there and delete whatever it needs to be done.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
Well, my feeling is, you just got a brand new computer.
How long do you use this old computer?

Speaker 8 (01:07:49):
Oh she's I say, at least about eight years or more.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
Okay, She've had it for a while, so things have
gotten kind of you know, things have gotten all over
the place because you've downloaded stuff, you've deleted stuff, you've
moved stuff, you've.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
Changed the way things work.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
So my feeling is, if I have a brand new computer,
I want to keep it nice and clean and running
really smooth. So what I want to do is just
move over my important file. So personally, what I would
recommend is just either grabbing an external drive like a
hard drive or a flask drive, putting all the files
on there if they fit on the flask drive, and

(01:08:26):
then and then moving those onto your new computer and
then dumping them into a file there and then you
can deal with them when you want, Or you can
just use Microsoft one drive which is built in to
you know, both computers and you can just open it
up as long as you you know, you get a
certain amount of free storage on there, and so you
can you can throw your stuff in there and then

(01:08:49):
it'll show up on your new computer. You can do
it that way or the third way, and a lot
of people do this. I've not personally tested this, but
the two popular there's one popular program that everyone recommends.
We talked about this a couple months ago and every
email I got was about LapLink. So LapLink makes a
program called PC Mover, and this will move over everything

(01:09:12):
all your applications, your files, your settings.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
You know, you do have to pay for that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
It's like forty bucks, but it'll be a one stop shop,
like you're mentioning. So now Windows also has a built
in settings feature that will automatically carry over your settings
from one drive from the old computer to the new computer,
and it will bring your settings like if you change
things on Windows, it will do that as well. So

(01:09:39):
as you can tell Michael, there is not one fail
proof method for doing this. It kind of depends on
what you want to do with your new computer. Personally,
if I'm you, I've got that brand new computer, I
want to keep it running really nice. I don't want
to gunk it up with all my old stuff. So
I'm just going to take all my files that are
important from the old computer.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
I'm going to put them on a hard drive.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
Then I'm going to move them over to that new computer,
and I'm gonna put them in a folder that says
old files. And then eventually I'm gonna go through them
and kind of pair them down and clean them up
when I get when I get a chance, which is
probably in retirement.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
So but okay, okay, but that's now, what is your options?

Speaker 8 (01:10:18):
Okay? Now, for instance, you mentioned about the flash drive.
Do they come like in different story or not? Storage
to the megabytes or whatever?

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
Yeah, gigabytes.

Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
So, I mean a flash drive is going to be
the most it depends how many files you have. That's
it's probably gonna be the most expensive way to do
it because flash drives are typically small and expensive. Now,
you can go on Amazon, or you can go to
best Buy and buy a hard drive Western Digital, you know,
like a two terabyte hard drive. Uh, for let's see

(01:10:53):
how much this is. I mean, they're they're really cheap.
Let's see here you're talking, you're talking. You know, under
one hundred dollars eight for a two terabyte if you
have that much data. You probably don't have that much
data on your old computer. You might have a terabyte
at the most, So you can get something for sixty bucks.
But the flask drive, you know, you can get if
you want to look at one like p n y

(01:11:14):
Uh they make one that I like. But you can
get like a you know, any any flask drive. You
go to a store, just get a flash drive, you
plug it into your computer. But those are going to
max out at like not as much storage as a
as a physical hard drive, so you're not gonna get Yeah,
the flask drive is going to be simpler and easier,
but it's you're not gonna get as much storage. The

(01:11:35):
new ones do come up to two terabytes, but you're
gonna pay so much more for that in the flash drive,
you know, form factor versus a hard drive.

Speaker 8 (01:11:44):
Yeah, because okay, I think I'm leaning a little bit
more towards now. But when you mentioned the Microsoft one drive.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Yeah I would I would take a look at that.
I think one drive gives you maybe five gigs. I
got to look at what's their included, uh storage I think,
let's see, yeah, five gigs of storage. So if you
have five gigs or less, you can just dump everything
on your old computer into that folder on your old computer,
let it sync up, and then your new computer you
can go and open up that folder and all your

(01:12:11):
files are gonna be there. And that's a really easy
way to kind of just you know, go through and
out with the old, in with the new.

Speaker 8 (01:12:19):
Okay, all right, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
Rich.

Speaker 8 (01:12:21):
I think I'm ahead that direction and stuff, so virtually
I don't have to have both computers turned on it
at that time.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
You do not, you do not, yep, start with the
old computer, dump them into the one drive, and then
just move over to the new one, fire it up,
and they should be in that folder. Eight and eight
Rich one on one. Thanks to the call, Michael, do
appreciate it. More of your calls coming up next. Welcome
back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here with you

(01:12:53):
for another hour or so, I mean, I say, or
so I mean, I guess it's really it's not really
a lot left to uh left up in the air
when it comes to you know, radio timetables. No, it's
an hour, uh, Welcome back to the show. Thanks for
joining me eighty eight rich one oh one eighty eight

(01:13:14):
seven four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (01:13:16):
If you have open.

Speaker 1 (01:13:17):
Table, which I don't know about you, but I'm always
on a well I'm not really.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
My wife is always on open table.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
She's always like making reservations at places, even if we
don't use them. But uh, a lot of them are
in my name. So long story short. If you are
using open Table, they have a new loyalty program called
open Table Regulars. So it used to be you got
you know, points for your reservations, like once you dined somewhere.

(01:13:45):
I didn't know what those points. It was very unclear
to me what those points were for. Now you can
actually redeem those points for Amazon gift cards.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
So that's number one.

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
And this is free to sign up, by the way,
just go in the app and accept it, just say yeah,
sign me up. Then they've got this new gold Tier status,
So if you have six reservations in a year, you
get gold Tier status. And what does that give you
that Basically, if you're looking to get a reservation at
a restaurant and the thing says, oh, there's no more
reservations available, it will text you first to notify you

(01:14:19):
before all the other people, the regulars, let's call them.
So that's another reason to get this gold status. And
then you can also claim six months free of Uber one.
So again I was able to get gold status instantly
just by signing up for this thing, because I guess
I've had six reservations in the past year.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
But yeah, Open Table Regulars.

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
It's called if you have the open Table app, open
it up, select that program. And I think the coolest
thing is the fact that you can now redeem for
Amazon gift cards and the fact that you can get
those notifications before everyone else, because we've been in this
situation where you want to get a reservation somewhere but
there's no table, so it says, oh, we'll text you,
which invariably those do open up. A lot of people

(01:14:59):
cancel reservations like the day before everywhere, and so if
you are looking for reservation, just you know, sign up
and get it the day before it usually pops in.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
Let's go to Gary and Redondo Beach.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
The question about it looks like iOS twenty six Gary,
what's up.

Speaker 4 (01:15:17):
Hey, Bridge, Yeah, I got a iPad QRO thirteen inch okay,
and it's got to be an option to Oh hold on,
muk sec got an option too, So iPads twenty six,
and I'm just wondering if that I should do that

(01:15:39):
or not.

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
Well, I mean, this is a you said it's an
M four chip. Yeah, okay, so that's a that's a
relatively new iPad. So that's gonna run iPad twenty six
pretty good. I've updated and you know, do you have
the iPhone or no?

Speaker 4 (01:15:56):
I have an iPhone?

Speaker 2 (01:15:57):
Also, have you updated to iOS twenty six on there?

Speaker 4 (01:16:01):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
Okay, So you know, here's the deal.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
Are you using this iPad for like your work every day?

Speaker 2 (01:16:08):
Like, are you relying on this thing?

Speaker 3 (01:16:11):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
So basically, at the at the very least, it's gonna
give you a new look to the iPad.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
It's gonna give you that liquid glass.

Speaker 4 (01:16:18):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
So that's number one.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
The main difference with the iPad OS twenty six is
that you get this new Windows system, so it's almost
like using a Windows computer.

Speaker 3 (01:16:29):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
It still works just the way it worked in the past,
where you can open up an app, you can have
one app on your screen, you can close that app
open up a new app, but if you want it to,
it makes it easier to move these apps into their
own little windows that you can move around the screen.
So that's really the main difference. I mean, obviously there's
a laundry list of one hundred and one things you

(01:16:51):
can do on iPad os that you know, new little
improvements and things. But the bottom line is it's gonna
look different, and you can also just have these apps
into windows versus just having them open up one at
a time. So I've installed it on my iPad and
it's fine. There's you know, it doesn't ruin this situation.
It doesn't. I'm not really using the multitasking on there,

(01:17:13):
but I think if you're curious about it, your iPad
is completely fine to run this and it's not going
to ruin your experience on there.

Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
Let's put it that way, Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (01:17:23):
I'll do that all right, enjoy And yeah, same thing
with the iPhone. I mean, I iOS twenty six is
to a place where you know, some people are asking
me and emailing me and say, rich, can I go back?
Once you install the new software on an on an
Apple device, it is nearly impossible to go back for
a mere mortal Now are there ways of going back?

(01:17:43):
Maybe I'm not really privy to them. I'm sure someone
could figure it out. I as the average person, it's
very tough to go back to a different version previously,
like on your iPhone or on your iPad. And that's
mostly for security reasons for a lot of these things,
but that's also the way Apple designs it. So once

(01:18:05):
you choose to upgrade, yeah, you're kind of you're locked
into the new upgrade.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
So just just understand that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
Speaking of upgrades, I have been waiting for this, and
waiting for this, and waiting for this.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
I got a.

Speaker 1 (01:18:16):
Preview of Gemini on the Google Smart speakers last year.
I think it was last December. It still has not
made its way to my speakers. Every day I ask Google,
I say, hey Google, what's the weather, just to see
if the voice has changed.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
And it becomes Gemini. No it is not.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
Now I do know. You have to opt into this.
So if you go, if you have a speaker and
you want it to get smarter, and you have Google Home,
you have to open up the Google Home app, tap
your profile picture in the upper right hand corner and
it says home Settings. Tap that, and then you scroll
all the way down it says early Access. You tap

(01:18:55):
that and it says early Access to Gemini for Home.
You've signed up for Early Access, you'll be notified as
soon as features are available. While I'm still waiting Google,
it has been so long. All I want is Gemini
on my speakers. So this is rolling out as of
this week so Google. According to Android Authority, Gemini is

(01:19:18):
rolling out to US users in Google's Early Access program
works on every Google Home and Nest speaker or display
going back to twenty sixteen. Only the newer devices are
going to get Gemini Live, which is the hands free
mode that you can talk naturally with and some of
these The Gemini Live apparently requires a paid Google Home

(01:19:39):
Premium plan, while the standard Gemini features will be free.
So a lot of people emailing me saying, Rich, do
I have to pay for these Gemini No, the base
Gemini will be free on your smart device. It's only
if you want that Gemini Live, which, to be honest,
since I haven't played with it, I can't really tell
you what the difference is right now, But to me,
the regular geminis gonna be good for like ninety nine

(01:20:01):
percent of people. Let's see here, we got an email
from Janet. She says, my husband and I recently changed
from Comcast cable through Infinity to direct TV through AT
and T. We had our cable for years, but bundled
our TV, internet, and mobile phones with AT and T.
It's taking us a while to get used to the

(01:20:21):
new way of getting around DirecTV. We're eighty, but I
think we're getting the hang of it. One thing we
found last night we don't like is that while watching
a mystery movie on the Hallmark channel, it wouldn't let
us fast forward at all, and it came up saying
the fast forward feature has been disabled for this show.
Is this something they have done so we will watch
all the ads or something? We can work around this problem.

(01:20:42):
Other shows we've recorded, even from Hallmark channel, let us
fast forward. I love listening to on the radio and
reading your email. Thanks for all you do, Janet. Good question, Janet.
This is why companies love to get us on on demand.
Remember DVR was the way of the world back in
the day. Everything was a DVR. TVO started it and

(01:21:02):
you would record stuff locally in your home and play it.
While the companies hated that because you were able to
fast forward through all of their commercials, which I understand,
if you're trying to make money on your programming, how
do you make money? Nobody's watching the commercials. So they
got this great idea to say, let's put everything on demand.

(01:21:23):
Disney plus Netflix, every other service out there, it's all
on demand. So therefore we have deprioritized the DVR. Now,
these cable companies still have DVRs that are mostly cloud
based these days, and there is a distinction. So when
you were watching that program last night, it might have

(01:21:44):
been on demand. And so typically when you're watching movies
in the back catalog on demand, a lot of them
do not allow you to fast forward through the commercials
because they treat that as an on demand programming and
so they say, nope, you can't fast forward. Now, the
workaround is to record that program over the air, right

(01:22:05):
even if it's on the cloud, and then play it
that way, and now you should be able to fast
forward through those commercials. Now, there is a weird quirk here,
like I have YouTube TV, and typically when you record
a show, it'll say, oh, which version do you want
to play? The on demand version or the one that
you recorded? And you're like, well, why would I want
to record? What's the difference. The difference is the one

(01:22:27):
you're recorded will probably let you skip through ads. The
on demand version will not let you skip through ads.
So in general, just remember, if you're watching on demand,
you have a lot less control over the ads skipping.
If you're watching something that you recorded, you're going to
get more control over.

Speaker 2 (01:22:46):
The ability to skip through ads. So it is a
little bit of a nuance there.

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
But I believe when you're saying you were watching something
a mystery movie on the Hallmark channel, I believe it
was on demand. And a lot of these systems don't
even designate between what's on live and what's on demand.

Speaker 2 (01:23:04):
You're just scrolling through.

Speaker 1 (01:23:05):
It's just showing you a whole bunch of programming and
you just press play, and so you may not even
know that is that playing on a linear channel like
right now and we're just tuning in, or is this
just something that is coming from an on demand server somewhere.
But companies love when you do stuff on demand because
they are in control. They actually have the ability to

(01:23:25):
place those ads, and those ads are usually placed specifically
for you. So from a business standpoint, it's amazing because
now Janet, I know exactly who you are. I know
what your likes are, I know the stuff that you
typically watch and the things that you respond to, and
I know your web history typically because i'll link that up.
Not me personally, but you know the marketing company. And

(01:23:47):
now I can serve you up ads that should register
with you, stuff that you are interested in, stuff that
you want to buy, stuff that you might might be
a good fit for you. So from a business standpoint,
it's great, But from a viewer standpoint, when you just
want to skip them, you can't necessarily eighty eight rich
one O one eight eight eight seven four to two

(01:24:07):
four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (01:24:08):
Coming up.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
I'll tell you about these anti facial recognition glasses if
you really want to stay private. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking
technology the website for the show rich on Tech dot TV.

(01:24:28):
Talk about programming AI. So I went through this whole
thing with my chat EBT, and I came up with
these projects like these are things that I do over
and over every day for my various jobs, coming up
with YouTube headlines, you know, coming up with just all
these things that I do, like reorganizing, rewriting, just little
things like that, and so I've created like all these

(01:24:50):
projects and I'm not kidding.

Speaker 2 (01:24:52):
It's like.

Speaker 1 (01:24:53):
This is stuff that typically took me time to do,
and now because I programmed the AI so perfectly, it
does it almost exactly right every single time. Uh, it's
just it's so good. It's just it's scary, actually, like
how can this?

Speaker 3 (01:25:13):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:25:14):
Where was this my whole life? So, for instance, when
I do guests for this show, you know, I have
it programmed in, right, I programmed in like a in
the project. You give it instructions, and the instructions just
tell it, like exactly how to handle this information. And
so I plug in a whole bunch of information about

(01:25:35):
the guests that's going to appear on the show, and
the AI will spit out exactly what I need for
that guest, you know, their name, their title, what they're
gonna be talking about, a couple of suggested you know,
topics I might want to talk about with them. I mean,
it's just it's just wild. But it gets so good
because you feed it what.

Speaker 2 (01:25:53):
You want it to learn from.

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
So anyway, I just I don't know why I tell
you that, Just you gotta play with this stuff because
it's like I wasn't using this two weeks ago, and
now I am, and it's just really really good. Uh
let's see here I taught speaking of privacy. I thought
this was pretty cool or different.

Speaker 2 (01:26:14):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
Zeny this is a company that sells glasses online, Zeny Optical.
They have this new ID guard lens coding, So any glass,
any pair of glasses that you get on their website,
you can I guess, affect with this id guard And
it's a lens coding that will block infrared light, which
is used by facial recognition cameras. So the lenses have

(01:26:35):
like this pink sheen to them that reflects the IR light.
If you want to test it out, it will not work,
like face ID will not work, Windows Hello will not work.
And yeah, so let's see what else here. I guess
it's The idea is that if you want to walk
around and not have all these facial recognition cameras taking

(01:26:55):
you know, your biometrics, it'll stop that. It's not gonna
stop everything, because some and can still snap a regular
picture and just identify you. But apparently when you have
these lenses on, if a facial ID camera takes a
picture of your face, it will just show like black
areas where your eyes are because it reflects all that light.

(01:27:17):
So kind of interesting. Is called id Guard. It's from
Zeni Optical. It's just a sign of our times, right,
like people want to remain anonymous or less tracked. It's
getting tougher and tougher to do make use of featured
a cool app this week.

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
I thought it was pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (01:27:34):
It's a music app for Android called music Olet Music
o Let, and it's an Android app that is free,
and it's ad free and it plays your local files.
So a lot of people call into this show say, hey,
I want an app that plays my files on my Android.
What should I use? Check this one out. Music Olet.

(01:27:55):
No streaming, no tracking. It's for people who own their
collection and you can do what you want. You can
play your music your way. It's got all the features
everything you can imagine. It's got built in, including equalizers,
offline features, setting songs as ring tones, editing song metadata,
full control. There is a pro version that adds some

(01:28:19):
features like crossfade and chromecasts, but most features are free.
So again this is called music Olette. If you still
have your own music collection that you want to play
on your Android phone check it out, and then I
thought this was interesting. Syracuse University, according to Fast Company,
is launching the Center for the Creator Economy, the first

(01:28:40):
program of its kind in the US, partnership between the schools,
communications and business programs prepping kids, student kids, students for careers.
People are like twenty years old at home kids prepping
students for careers in the two hundred and fifty billion
dollars Creator Economy Center is going to open up in
twenty twenty six with pod cast studios, green screens, and

(01:29:01):
live streaming setups. Courses are going to focus on content creation,
audience engagement, digital strategy. Now, kids students are not going
to major in influencing, but they can take these grad
and undergrad classes. And I think this is smart that
they're not graduating and influencing, because here's the thing. If
you're an influencer, by the way, by the time you've

(01:29:22):
made it to college, you're already like big time, Like
you may not even go to college because you've made
so much money on TikTok or on Instagram. But I
still think it's smart to get that education. And so
by having this this center where you can learn things
and learn from experts and know, you know, learn from
people that may have more experience in this stuff, or

(01:29:45):
just open up your world.

Speaker 2 (01:29:46):
I think it's very, very smart.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
But the people I know that are these content creators,
they're they're already doing it in college, like they're already
very successful. And this I think is smart that you're
not trying to replace what they've already built, You're just
trying to add to it. So Syracuse University Center for
the Creator Economy smart. We're probably going to see that

(01:30:09):
at more schools because you know, you could be a
creator and still do your regular world right, like you
could still be a pharmacist or a whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:30:17):
Vet.

Speaker 1 (01:30:21):
out with you talking technology. The website for the show
rich on tech dot TV. If you want to email,
you can do that. Just go to rich on tech
dot tv and hit contact. Many of you do that
each and every week. Let me get to a couple

(01:30:42):
of those first. I just wanted to mention what cet
has basically found what I found to be true, but
with some testing, I just found it to be true
in my day to day use of the iPhone seventeen Promacs,
but c neet lab tests confirm iPhone seventeen Promacs has
the best battery life of any iPhone ever made. Yes,

(01:31:03):
I could tell because I'm going to bed with this
thing still at like forty fifty percent some nights. Now, yeah,
I'll charge it up a little bit throughout the day,
but still it's just from every other phone I've tested.
This thing is just I don't even think about the
battery anymore. So in a three hour streaming video test,
it only lost nine percent battery, the lowest drain rate
ever recorded on an iPhone. The standard iPhone seventeen is

(01:31:26):
also impressive. They say you get the same all day
battery as the seventeen Pro for about two hundred and
seventy to seventy dollars less. The problem is people either
want the Pro or they want the standard. You know,
they're not usually you know which one you want, So
let's see. I think that's about it. So just bottom line,

(01:31:47):
iPhone seventeen Promax is the new battery king. That's what
I suspected because that's what I figured when I was
using it. This is interesting if you use a Samsung phone.
Samsung is releasing a beta version of its Samsung Internet
for PC, so the first time they've ever launched their
Internet browser for the desktop. So if you go on

(01:32:08):
your Samsung phone, you know you've got their Samsung Internet
on there. A lot of people like their program, their app,
and so you can now get that on your PC
for the first time. It's available now for Windows ten
and Windows eleven users in the US and Korea. You
can sync your bookmarks, your history, your Samsung Pass logins

(01:32:28):
for a more continuous experience. It also supports continue browsing,
so if you start something on your phone, you can
go to your computer and just continue there. It also
has all the Galaxy AI tools, browsing assists for web
page summaries and translations. It's got strong privacy protections, smart
anti tracking, privacy dashboard, autofill. So I think this is

(01:32:50):
smart for Samsung to do because if you're using a
Samsung phone and you like the browser on there and
you use a desktop before, you couldn't kind of carry over.

Speaker 2 (01:33:00):
Now you can.

Speaker 1 (01:33:01):
So if you want to sign up for this, you
got to go to the Beta browser dot Samsung dot
com slash Beta Browser dot Samsung dot com slash Beta
Horatio in Huntington Beach Rights in I started my home
automation setup with Wemo switches, but I just learned their
ending support for their website and Alexa integration. I've got

(01:33:23):
thirteen of these switches and I'm wondering if they'll still
work with another smart home platform. I've also tried Hubspace
switches from the home Depot and they actually worked better,
but I'm not sure how reliable that system is long term.

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):
Any advice.

Speaker 1 (01:33:35):
Yes, Wemo did mention they are doing end of life
on a bunch of their products, so they have a
support page from Belkan, who runs Wemo. After careful consideration,
we have made the difficult decision to end technical support
for older Wemo products effective January thirty first, twenty twenty six.

(01:33:56):
After this date, they will no longer be controllable through
the Wemo app. Fatures that rely on cloud, including remote access,
will no longer work and voice so basically there are
They have a list of affected products and non affected products,
so the shutdown does not affect the functionality of Wemo's

(01:34:17):
thread based products. They will continue to function through HomeKit,
so Horatio, if you're using stuff that's through thread, they
will still work.

Speaker 2 (01:34:26):
But it looks like you're using all access, So yeah,
that's going to stop working.

Speaker 1 (01:34:30):
Sue what to do. The Hubspace stuff is good, but Hubspace,
I believe, is a Home Depot brand. Yeah, Hubspace is
from Home Depot. So will it go on for a
long time?

Speaker 2 (01:34:48):
I think so. I mean, it's like their own thing.

Speaker 1 (01:34:52):
But if I were you personally, I would look for
stuff that is, you know, that works with the major systems.

Speaker 2 (01:34:59):
But this just kind of happens.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
You know, we back in the day of smart home stuff,
there's a lot of companies all throwing things at the
wall to see what would stick. Right, So if you
started building stuff, a lot of it worked with Alexa
or Google Home or Google Assistant. And now it's just
like these companies are you know, they're just figuring things out,
what they want to do, what they want to focus

(01:35:22):
their attention on. And you know, these Wemo switches are
just kind of being phased out. So I think that
the Hubspace stuff is smart, but you know, just kind
of proceed with caution. Addison from North Carolina writes in Hey, Rich,
I'm a newer listener to your show.

Speaker 2 (01:35:37):
I have a question.

Speaker 1 (01:35:38):
How can I save my photos to iCloud on my
iPhone when I'm out of iCloud storage and I can't
afford to buy more. I've deleted a bunch of stuff,
but the photos are taking up all my space and
I don't want to lose them. Any advice for a
broke teenager, Addison, I think you speak for everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:35:56):
So here's the deal.

Speaker 1 (01:35:58):
How do I save photos to iCloud my iPhone out
of iCloud storage. So your iCloud storage mimics what's on
your iPhone, So if you want to clear up storage
and iCloud, you have to delete stuff off your iPhone.
They mirror each other. So the app I like to
do this is called Clever Cleaner from Clever Files, And

(01:36:20):
basically I would say just delete a few large video files.
And if you delete a few large video files, that's
going to be the easiest way to get rid of
those files off of iCloud. You know, delete a few
files that you don't need. So I've deleted a bunch
of stuff, but the photos are taking up all my space.

Speaker 2 (01:36:40):
I don't want to lose them.

Speaker 1 (01:36:42):
So there will come a moment when you are maxed out.
So if you are maxed out in your iCloud. There's
not much you can do except buy more iCloud, and
I get it. You said you're a broke teenager, so
you can't buy more iCloud. So the only other thing
you can do is offload those files to a flash
drive or a third party service. So you can try

(01:37:03):
just putting them on cloud storage. You know you get
you get two gigabytes for free on Dropbox.

Speaker 2 (01:37:10):
Oh wait, what does Dropbox give these days? Dropbox free
storage limit?

Speaker 1 (01:37:14):
Yeah, two gigabytes, so you can put them on drop
Box two gigabytes.

Speaker 2 (01:37:18):
That'll that'll save free up two gigabytes.

Speaker 1 (01:37:21):
You can you know, there's a lot of different file
storage out there, like free cloud storage, so you can
maybe just put some of those in different places. Let's
see what are the other options. I mean, you could
use one drive, you can put someone in there, Proton drive,
you can put some in there. How much do you
get there? How much does Proton give you? Probably think

(01:37:43):
one one gigabyte?

Speaker 2 (01:37:45):
I think. Let's see here.

Speaker 1 (01:37:49):
Why do these companies make it so tough to see
how much you get for free? All I want to
see is how much you get for free?

Speaker 2 (01:37:55):
So let's see.

Speaker 1 (01:37:56):
I got to type in Proton storage. Uh yeah, it
doesn't say, oh, five gigs.

Speaker 2 (01:38:05):
It looks like for free. So there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:38:07):
There's another five gigs so you can just kind of
piecemell these together.

Speaker 2 (01:38:10):
That's you know, that's my best advice.

Speaker 1 (01:38:11):
If you can't afford to add more iCloud, just get
some other free cloud storage. Chris writes in from Vermont.
We live near the New York and Canadian borders, and
T mobile service here is terrible. Dropped calls all the time.
We'd like to find a better, cheaper option, but aren't
sure who's most reliable. We've looked at Mint, Consumer, Cellular,
US Mobile, Puretalk, track Phone. We don't use much data,

(01:38:35):
just want a dependable connection. Any suggestions, Well, here's the deal.
All there's only three networks in the US, four if
you count the new one. What is it Dish Network?
What's theirs called? There's a I guess it's yeah, Dish
network has their own.

Speaker 2 (01:38:57):
Was it boost Mobile?

Speaker 1 (01:38:58):
I think it's called Boost Mobile have their own network now, yeah,
which I've not been able to test.

Speaker 2 (01:39:03):
I keep asking them, can I test this network? I'd
like to, but I have not been able to test this,
so I can't tell you much about that.

Speaker 1 (01:39:07):
One, but we do know it's AT and T. Verizon
and T Mobile run the three main networks in the US.
So you have to figure out which network works the
best in your area, Chris, So how do you do that?
Ask people that live near you, Ask your neighbors, what
do you have, what works, what doesn't? Drop calls sounds
like you've tried T Mobile that does not work in

(01:39:29):
that area. That doesn't mean it doesn't work everywhere. But
each network has its pros and cons in different places.
You know, some of them just work better in different areas.
Like you go to the Seattle area where te mobiles
started back in the day, what was it called voice
stream or something, it was like the best up there
because that's where it started. You go to like Central Jersey,

(01:39:50):
it's all about Verizon because that's where Verizon was at
and T. You go to Dallas area, it's all you know, Texas.
So you know, they all have their their strong areas.
You just have to figure out which one works by you.
So ask your neighbors and then you can figure out
which MV and O is best for you. You mentioned
all these better cheaper options, so that's called an MV

(01:40:11):
and O Mobile Virtual network Operator. Now MINT I can
tell you is owned by T Mobiles, So that's going
to use T Mobiles service. You don't want to go
MINT because you said it doesn't work there. So for
the rest of these Consumer Cellular, US Mobile Puretalk track phone,
you're gonna have to look up on something like a
Wikipedia to see what is the network behind those. So,

(01:40:31):
for instance, let's look up Consumer Cellular Network and so
type that in and it's a mobile virtual network operator
that provides services on major carriers, primarily AT and T
and T Mobile. So you'd have to look at that,
though you'd have to kind of check and double check

(01:40:52):
because sometimes Google's answers that pop up doesn't necessarily tell
you the right answer. Like if you go to Consumer
Cellular's website, they say the network providers we use combine
to deliver cellular service to ninety nine percent, they don't
say what cellular providers specifically. Now, if you go to Okay,
so Tom's guide back in twenty twenty four says it

(01:41:14):
piggybacks on AT and T and T Mobile. So again
US Mobile I do have experience with you can choose
which network you want through them, but they rename them.
It's called like dark Star and light Speed and all
these different things. You have to again, you got to
do a little research. But once you figure out which
network works the best, then just look up. Just do
a Google search, say MVNO's using Verizon, and that'll give

(01:41:40):
you a list of Visible Red Pocket you know, whistleout
dot com is a good website to kind of find
these things, revealing them so best. Verizon mv and OS
they've got a whole list Visible US Mobile, Spectrum Mobile,
So you can figure that out. So if you want
to go with something cheap, Visible is pretty good for

(01:42:00):
if you want to go with Verizon track Phone, I'm
not sure what they use. What does track phone run on?
Uh it's own Oh it's owned by Verizon. Well there
you go. Must use Verizon's network. See these are you
gotta do a little research to figure these things out.

Speaker 2 (01:42:22):
Uh okay, Coming up, we.

Speaker 1 (01:42:23):
Are going to open up the feedback see some more
of the emails that you were sending me this week
right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking
technology so much. We always cover so much ground on
the show. I'm literally going through all the feedback here

(01:42:49):
Bobo sees me every week. I've got like so I
used to. You know, I do print out a fair
amount of stuff for the show. Bobo can attest, but
I save the paper just I save it so that
if you, let's say, you write me something I don't
make it into the show, I will save that for
the next week and maybe get into the next week's show.
So all right, without further Ado, let's open up the feedbag.

(01:43:12):
This is the uh you know, the letters, the emails,
the comments, the questions, all that good stuff that you
send me. So we've got a mixed bag today. I'm
just going to try to get through as much as possible.
Ricky writes in Hey Rich, I'm an avid listener on
iHeartRadio KFI on Saturdays. You help me with writing on
the back of digital pictures like in the old days. Okay,

(01:43:35):
I'm glad to help. My husband wants a vintage typewriter.
And now I'm trying to remember the name of the
place you mentioned that restores old things like that.

Speaker 4 (01:43:42):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (01:43:42):
The website you are thinking of is called retro spect
r e t R O s p e K T
retro spect So They basically have a whole bunch of stuff,
everything from audio to photography. Vhs. I mean you could
buy a v here. Oh they're sold out right now.

(01:44:03):
Oh Polaroids. I mean they've just got so many things
on there. Retrospect spe kt. That's a great one for
like the holiday season, if you're looking for something.

Speaker 2 (01:44:16):
Laurel writes in all.

Speaker 1 (01:44:20):
All you folks, I'm gonna say it like I think
Laura would say, all you folks who spend hours a
day scrolling your iPhone screens with your thumbs and index fingers,
be careful. You're gonna end up with arthritis and those
two digits. That's like yelling from like the Yes, okay,
thank you. Laurel val in Los Angeles says, hey, Rich

(01:44:40):
about your tip to take four photos of a rental car.
I take it even further, shoot four K video and
raw photos, Oh my gosh, of the car before you
drive off, inside it out.

Speaker 2 (01:44:50):
Here's my biggest piece of advice.

Speaker 1 (01:44:51):
Always buy the rental companies insurance, even if you have
great personal coverage. I've been in ten ten not a
fall accidents in fourteen years. Well, no wonder why you
buy the insurance. Val In one rental situation taught me
the hard way. A scammer cut me off, slammed on
the brakes, and caused a crash. The prius I rented

(01:45:12):
almost took most of the hit from his steel suburban.
Just over one thousand dollars in damage. That's not that's
not that much, you you, that's sextually pretty not not
much at all. My insurance rates still went up because
I didn't buy the rental coverage. If I paid the
extra twelve dollars, I wouldn't have touched my personal insurance history.

Speaker 2 (01:45:29):
Lesson learned.

Speaker 1 (01:45:30):
It's worth every penny val I will say, And I
talked about this in my newsletter. The credit card that
I still am using. I have primary car rental insurance
on because I don't usually get the rental car insurance,
but because it can add up. If it's a day
or two, fine, but like over a long time, it
can add up to a lot. So good advice there. Sorry,

(01:45:50):
you've been in so many accidents. Brian in California, says Rich.
A while back, you were talking about photo storage. You
mentioned seeing properties converted into neighborhood storage garages. People paying
to store stuff they'll probably never look at again. That
really stuck with me, and I'd love to hear it again.
I'm sitting here refusing to pay Google an extra two
dollars a month for more photo storage, yet I'm spending
a fortune on physical storage for things I don't even use.

(01:46:13):
I need that reminder to finally clean out those garages.
Love your show, thanks Brian. And by the way, you
can clean out your Google storage at one dot Google
dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:46:22):
They've got a great app to every time you say Google,
my phone cuts on, Oh does it? Mine's not doing that.
You usually have to say, hey Google, Now it really
came on.

Speaker 1 (01:46:33):
Kathleen from La says, I'm a musician who plays at
weddings and events and wants to warn others about a
scam targeting performers. I got an email asking if I
could play wedding music, even offering to pay by check
and suggesting I perform live, pre recorded, or even via zoom.
That seemed odd, so I looked it up and found
an explanation online about the same scam. It's basically a

(01:46:53):
fake check scheme where they accidentally overpay you and ask
for some of the money back. A friend of mine
also got the same email and someone else I know
also over sixty recently lost a lot of money to
fake product ads using names from famous people like Sanjay
Gupta and Oprah.

Speaker 2 (01:47:09):
I thought your listeners should know. Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:47:11):
I really enjoy your show. Yeah, these things are. These
scams target everyone. They've got one out for podcasters too,
where they say, oh, we'll give you three grand to
be on our podcast. Just give us access to your
Facebook so we can set it all up, and they
steal your Facebook account. Careful Neil from Ohio Rights and
I think most people need to get used to the
idea that we're doing our taxes online. I used to

(01:47:33):
buy the downloadable software, but the minute I added schedule
F for farming, every program wanted me to pay for
an upgrade. About four years ago, I switched to a
free service called free tax Usa. E files for free,
covers a ton of forms and charges just a small fee.
It's time to stop paying those big tax companies at
lobby to keep filing from being free.

Speaker 2 (01:47:51):
Love your show, Rich, you provide a great service. Well,
thank you, Neil.

Speaker 1 (01:47:55):
O'm gonna just say one minute, Oh my gosh, okay,
I guess we'll just do one more. Jack and Illinois
I have been listening for years, wanted to say how
much I appreciate what you do for us tech troubled folks.

Speaker 2 (01:48:06):
Let's see. I think we have one more.

Speaker 1 (01:48:11):
A Perva writes in I've been following your KTLA TV
segments and newsletters for years. Just want to say thanks
for all the helpful information and advice you've shared.

Speaker 2 (01:48:21):
Well, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:48:22):
All right, that's going to do it for this episode
of the show. You can find links to everything I
mentioned on my website. Just go to Rich on tech
dot tv. I'm on social media Atage on Tech. Next week,
Jamie Simonov, the founder of Ring, is going to talk
about his new book Ding Dong, all about Shark Tank
and turning his garage startup into a billion dollar Amazon success.

(01:48:44):
Thanks so much for listening. Please don't drive distracted. Thanks
to everyone who makes this show possible. My name is
rich Darmiro.

Speaker 2 (01:48:50):
I will talk to you real soon

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Rich DeMuro

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Crime Junkie

The Breakfast Club

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

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}$20K humanoid robot, Santa phone & moving your computer data (146, Nov 1, 2025)