Amazon Echo home theater setup, best iPhone cleaner & privacy first wireless carrier Phreeli (152, December 13, 2025)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Celebrity impersonation scams drain billions from fans. Well, I didn't
see this one coming. Disney and Open Ai team up
to let fans create AI videos with Disney characters. A
new smart ring turns your finger into a memory button.
Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich

(00:23):
Demiro and this is Rich on Tech. This is the
show where I tech talk about the tech stuff I
think you should know about. It's also the place where
I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech
should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up those
phone lines at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero

(00:46):
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. Give me a call. If you have a
question about technology. Email is also open. You love to
email me, Just go to Richontech dot TV hit contact.
That will get your message to my screen. We got
a couple of guests this week. Peter Kafka, chief correspondent

(01:10):
at Business Insider, is going to break down that whole
big deal between Netflix and Warner Brothers, and now Paramount's
trying to squeeze in there as well. Later, we've got
Nick Merrill, he's gonna explain he's got a new carrier,
new wireless carrier they just launched. It's called Freely pH
R E E L I Freely like speak Freely. It's

(01:31):
a privacy first carrier sign up. I think they only
require a ZIP code. That's it. That's interesting. And then
later on Roberto Baldwin, he is a mobility journalist. He's
going to talk about some of the trends in the
transportation world. Well, I hope you are having a fantastic day.

(01:51):
It is the holiday season. I am doing great wearing
my Windows Ugly Christmas sweater. So if you're tuning in
on the stream, it's not live stream, but on KTLA
Plus we stream the first ten minutes of the show
every week. You can download that app just about anywhere.
You can see what I'm wearing. And it is the

(02:13):
For a couple of years now, Microsoft has sent me
their annual Ugly Christmas sweater. I hate to call it
an ugly Christmas sweater because I think it's great. It's
got Clippy on it, it's got all their icons from
over the years. It's so great. Oh, it's a fun one.
It's funny. I get sent so many ugly Christmas sweaters.
Every party I go to I get to wear one
of them, and it's always a conversation starter. But this

(02:37):
week I went to Amazon Studios. Amazon. It's just truly
unbelievable what they've done. So when I was in college,
I interned at these studios. It used to be called
Culver Studios, I believe. And the house you might recognize it,
I believe. Don't quote me on this. I believe it's

(02:57):
the house from Gone with the Wind. I'm pretty sure
that's or it inspired it or something. I should really
look up this stuff before I let me say Gone.
I'm pretty sure. Let's see correct. The famous Tarra mansion
from Gone with the Wind was a temporary set built
on the backlot of Culver Studios. So I interned there.

(03:22):
Back when I was in college, it was Columbia TriStar
and it was just a regular studio. Now it is Amazon.
It is impressive what they've done with this place. I
was there for an event. They were showing off their
new Echo speakers that just came out. There's smaller than before.
There's two of them. They've got the Echo Studio and

(03:42):
then they've got the Echo dot Max. Now, don't let
the name of the echo dot max deceive you. It
is still a very small echo device. And so I
did a whole demo. We went into a sound studio
where they had the demo with all these things linked
up to the fire TV. And I did not know this,
but you can link up to five of these speakers

(04:03):
with an Amazon fireTV. Now it has to be very particular.
You have to have one of the recent generation fireTV
sticks most of them, I think are the four K
versions in the last couple of years. And also you
can link them up to a fireTV cube and it
has to be a certain generation. I believe it's a
third generation. But I got through this demo and I'm
sitting there, I'm like, wait a second. You can do

(04:26):
surround sound just by plugging in a couple speakers around
a room without running all these wires and cables and
speaker wire and all this stuff. Said, hold on, I
want to try this. And so the programming also included
a fireside chat with OSCAR winning composer Chris Bauers. Young guy,
great guy, very cool. He did the audio for Wild

(04:49):
Robot or I guess I should say soundtrack for Wild
Robot and also The Last Repair Shop, which I've not seen.
I did see Wild Robot. It was incredible, and he
just talked about how sound shapes what we see on
the screen, and how of course, because it was an
Amazon event and they're promoting this immersive audio, he talked
about how immersive audio is changing storytelling. So he said

(05:10):
two things that I really like. Number one, he said,
sound shapes what we see. There's so much about sound
we don't realize that defines how we experience a story.
And think about that when you're watching a horror movie.
The music, the way the things happen in the background
or in the corners of the screen, or the jump
scares that drives the storyline. Just what you hear, what
they're playing in the background as a character is doing something,

(05:33):
affects not only how you feel about what's happening on screen,
but how you feel personally. Are you scared, are you tired,
are you angry? Are you happy? So that was really interesting.
And then the other one was on creativity, which I
really liked too. He said, I chase the naivete of
being a kid when you're young. Fear doesn't stop you.
You just try things now. That one really resonated with me,

(05:55):
because the last time I was at those studios, I
was a college student and I was fearless. I mean,
of course I respected my elders, but I was going
to conquer the world back then. Now I will say,
I'm very happy with what I've done in life, but
as an adult, I don't take half the risks I

(06:15):
took as a kid. I call myself a kid, but
as a college student, I would cold call people, I
would email people, I would send my resume to jobs
that I had no reason to be hired for whatsoever.
And nowadays, of course, it's just not that way. And
so I loved what he said. I chase the naivety
of being a kid when you're young, Fear doesn't stop you.

(06:37):
You just try things. And I see that in one
of my kids, actually probably both, but my older kid,
he's fourteen, and he's just ready to take on the world,
kind of like the way I felt when I was
a kid, where I was going to do better than
my parents. That's the way he feels about me, which
is ironic because I feel like I've done pretty decent
for what I wanted, what I set out to do anyway.

(07:01):
So they showed us, you know, the fireside presentation. Then
they showed us a clip of a movie with these speakers,
and it sounded great, and I immediately they sent us
home with one of the speakers. I connected it to
my fire Cube, I dusted off the dust, I did
all the software updates, and I connected this thing and
I was like, oh MG, this sounds incredible. And I

(07:22):
immediately went on Amazon and ordered three more of the
speakers to build out the full round. But I made
a mistake that I did not realize until I got
the speaker. So I got you know where I live,
you get stuff so quick from Amazon. So it came
the next day, next morning, basically, and I set them
all up. And I realized I was not being able
to set up all four of them together. It just

(07:43):
would only show me two at a time. And I
realized I bought two of the big speakers and two
of the small, or I had two of the big
two of the small. And I looked, of course, typical guy.
I look in the directions afterwards, and it's like, oh no,
all speakers have to be the same. You have to
buy either four of the big ones or four of
the small ones. So my little mix and match thing
did not work. And I didn't realize that until I

(08:05):
read the help page, which, by the way, read the
help page in advance before you do something like this.
So I went back on Amazon. I said, okay, I
got to order two more of these speakers. Amazon cut
me off the website literally said sorry, you've reached your
purchase limit for these speakers. I said, what, So okay,
So I couldn't order those the big ones. I had
to order the smaller ones, and I had to order

(08:25):
them in a different color. That's the only way it
would let me order more. And so now I've got
so many of these speakers at my house. I set
them up. Last night we watched our first movie. I
was expecting it to be f one. It was not,
because we ended up watching a holiday movie. But it
just sounded great and it was so easy. I'm very impressed.
So if you have my thesis here, if you have
an Amazon fireTV, check the help page. I'll link it

(08:47):
up on the website. Rich on tech dot tv. If
you can connect a couple of these echo speakers to
your device, I'm not kidding. It changes everything. And by
the way, you get all the benefits of having smart
speakers in your living room, which I know some people like,
some people don't. But you know, this morning, I was
just able to call out what I wanted to listen to,
ask Alex of questions, all kinds of stuff because these

(09:08):
speakers are now in my living room. And by the way,
I've had Sonos for many years, and I thought about it.
Sonos has sort of been keeping me from being on
the cutting edge with all of this smart speaker stuff
because I've been so invested in what they've done, and
they've been way behind the eight ball. I guess, okay,
are you behind the eight ball when you're bad at
something or you're behind Okay, so they're bad. They've been

(09:31):
bad about the smart speaker stuff. It's just it's not
very good. So now I feel like I am very much.
I can't wait to watch more movies. So check it out.
I'll link it up on the website. I also figured
out fire TV auto plays a whole bunch of ads
when you first turn on your screen. I don't like that.
You can go into your settings and turn that off.

(09:51):
Did you know that? No, they're not going to advertise
that to you. So go into your settings preferences featured Content,
and you'll see two options to turn off auto auto
play for video and auto play for audio. You can
mix and match those two, but I turn them all off.
So now my screen still shows ads, which, okay, what
are you gonna do? But it's much easier on the

(10:14):
eyes and the ears when you first turn it on
less Jarring rich on tech dot TV. I'll link up
all this information there. Rich on tech dot tv eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one
eight eight eight rich one oh one. We are gonna
take your calls right after this. I meant to tell

(10:42):
you earlier, ran out of time, but I want to
tell you about the other systems that can do this
with the speakers. So Apple TV, if you have that,
you can connect home pods, Roku TV, not Roku players,
but Roku TV. They've got these Roku wireless speakers you
can add. And then TCL has this thing called Dolby

(11:03):
at most flex connect. So that's a new thing that
I guess more TVs are probably gonna adopt over the years,
but they're the first out of the gate with it.
I love the name of the speakers, z one hundred
wireless speakers like our station in New York. I love it.
We're not on that station. I mean, we have a station,
a prominent radio station in New York, and I did

(11:23):
see those at the Denver CDA show and very easy
to set up Google TV streamer. That's Google's version of
all this stuff. I cannot find any documentation that says
you can add speakers to that. Minus you could add
Bluetooth speakers, for sure, but I'm not sure that their
Nest speakers work with it. So anyway, lots of options

(11:44):
out there other than just getting a third party soundbar
with all that good stuff. All right, let's go to
Let's go to Brian in Atlanta. Brian, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Hey, how you doing?

Speaker 1 (11:58):
I'm doing well? What can I help you with?

Speaker 3 (12:01):
I got a new Comcast or Extinity router, and my
old iPads and a couple of old laptops will no
longer connect, and I'm wondering if there's anything I can do.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
About Ooh, okay, so you're saying the word old. So
I'm guessing immediately that your Wi Fi router is putting
out a five gigahertz signal and your your iPads are
probably on the old two point four, That's what I'm guessing.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yes, the router does both a five and a two
point whatever.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, okay does Yeah. So when you when you go
on that iPad, do you see well, first off, did
you use the same SSID, like the same Wi Fi
network name and password on your new router or no?

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Oh boy, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Well, like, when you connect on it, is it the
same whatever your Wi Fi network name was. Is it
the same as before? Is just something different?

Speaker 3 (13:01):
The slower speed is the same, the five G.

Speaker 4 (13:06):
Has got a new name.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
Okay, So it sounds to me like maybe these iPads
are trying to connect to the old network. So you
have to go in there, go in your list of
networks and delete the old network and then try to
reconnect them. I think that's going to work. So if
you go into settings on these I'm doing this on
the iPhone, but I think it's the same. You go
to settings, you go to Wi Fi, and then you

(13:29):
go into let's see edit in the upper right hand corner.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Okay, when I'm on Wi Fi.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
You don't have to be on Wi Fi to do
this just yet. You can just do this on your iPad,
but just go you know, make sure the WiFi is
turned on, but just again go to settings Wi Fi
and then the upper right hand corner. If you're on now,
it's a little bit different. I'm on iOS twenty six.
If you're not. If these iPads are running older software,
there may be a different way to do this. But
you basically have to find a way to look at

(14:00):
your saved networks and so on the new iPhone, it
just says edit or no networks, and then you go
in there. You'll see a whole list of all the
saved networks. Find your old network and delete it. Press
the little red button and delete it. So I'm looking
at mine. I've got hundreds of networks saved on my iPhone.
Everything for my barber shop, to Snap when I went

(14:23):
to their offices, to Samsung, to all the very I
got a lot of stuff. I gotta clean this up.
But I think it's getting confused because it's still trying
to use the old credentials on the new network that
might have the same name. So go in there, delete
the saved networks and if I'm just seeing saved Wi Fi.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
The new network has a different IP address or what No, I.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
Think it's just it might have a different password but
the same name, and I think it's just messing it up.
And I think in general, if you forget that network,
it's probably going to be better just to do that. Okay,
So I'm looking at the uh yeah on the Wi
Fi on the Apple. Okay, let's see settings Wi Fi. Yeah,
So that's the thing you need to do. You need
to find your old network and reset it. Now if
none of that works, if you can't figure out how

(15:06):
to do that, there's something called the network settings network
settings reset. So if you go on your iPad and
find that setting, you can reset all of those settings
and then it'll probably find the new network that way.
So I'll tell you where that is. That's under settings General.

(15:27):
Scroll all the way down where it says transfer or reset.
You tap that, and then you say, you tap reset
one more time, and you'll get a whole bunch of
options reset all settings, reset, network settings reset, there's a
whole bunch of other stuff. But you want to do
the reset network settings. That'll clear out all the old
settings on these iPads and then hopefully when you log

(15:49):
onto your new Wi Fi network or you go to
attached to it, connect to it, it will find it.
So try that, Brian, let me know, send me an email,
let me know if that works or not. Here's the deal.
My recommendation. When you get a new Wi Fi router,
you know your cable company says, hey, you got an
old router, you gotta gotta upgrade to a new one.

(16:12):
Use the same network settings that you used on your
old router. That's the SSID, that's your Wi Fi network name,
and then also the password. And the reason why I
tell you to do that is because when you turn
on that new router, all your old gadgets will seamlessly
connect to that new router, that new Wi Fi hotspot

(16:32):
whatever you call it in your house. So that is
a little trick. I made that mistake one time, and
I've got so many smart gadgets in my house, all
these smart devices that are connected, and I upgraded my
router and I used a different SSID and a different password,
and guess what, I had to go around the house
for an hour and a half trying to reconnect everything.

(16:54):
So if you upgrade your WiFi, use the same Wi
Fi network name and password exactly as it is on
your old router and all your gadgets will seamlessly find
the new router. Good question, Brian eight to eight rich
one O one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. The website for the show is
rich on tech dot tv. While you're there, be sure

(17:17):
to sign up for my free newsletter. This is show
episode one fifty two. All the show notes are right there.
We'll be back right after this. Instagram this week is

(17:37):
kind of peeling back the kind of the just letting
you see your algorithm. This is an interesting new feature
that basically they say they're letting you choose the topics
that you want to see more or less of. I
think this is very basic and water down, but if
you want to see it, you can open up Instagram,
tap the reels tab at the bottom, and then there's

(17:58):
a menu icon on the upper right hand looks like
two little hearts with lines, and that will bring up
what they're calling your algorithm.

Speaker 5 (18:05):
Now.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
I think they have a lot more data on you
than what they're revealing here, but it shows you a
couple of topics that you've been into recently, and you
can go in. You can kind of tweak those, change
them a little bit. Let me see what mine is
saying this morning. My algorithm this morning is saying, let's
see here. It's taking a second to come up. Lately,
you've been into innovation in the tech world, parenting life,

(18:26):
and Arizona's desert destinations. Okay, whatever that means. I mean
I did go to Arizona a couple weeks ago. And
then you can add things you want to see more of.
So again, open up Instagram, tap reels at the bottom
menu icon upper right, and you can see your algorithm.
You can review your topics, add or remove topics to
customize your feed. All right, big, big deal that's happening

(18:48):
in play right now. Netflix is trying to buy Warner Brothers,
and then Paramount is kind of squeezing in there as well.
So here to talk about all of that and what
it means for us is Peter Kafka, chief correspondent at
Business Insider. He is the guy you want to follow
for all of this media information. He knows it all. Peter,

(19:08):
thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 6 (19:10):
Thanks for having me Rich.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
So let's let's talk about this. So what did you
think when you saw this news? Was it a surprise?

Speaker 6 (19:18):
It was surprising that Netflix won this auction for Paramount,
Sorry for Warner Brothers Discovery. Lots of folks, including myself,
assumed the Paramount who started the bidding really earlier this
fall was going to end up winning Warner Brothers Discovery
in large part because David Ellison, who runs Paramount, his father,

(19:41):
Larry Ellison, is the second richest man in the world
depending on what day you ask, So they've got essentially
unlimited money.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
Way, let me get that right. Hold on the guy,
the guy who runs Paramount, his dad is the guy
who started Oracle correct. Oh my gosh, wow. Yes.

Speaker 6 (19:57):
So you'll often see headlines saying David Ellison wants to
do this, or David Ellison wants to do that. It's
really Larry Ellison, his dad, because his dad is bankrolling it.
In the same way that when I got out of college,
I bought a car, I bought a Toyota tur Cell,
but it was really.

Speaker 7 (20:13):
My parents Toyota turtseell So.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
That's what's going on there.

Speaker 6 (20:16):
So, in addition to be very rich, Larry Elson is
also a longtime Donald Trump's supporter, and David Elson, who
was not really a Trump supporter but has really become
one in the last year as he's tried to get
this Paramount deal through, has been sort of nakedly sucking
up to Donald Trump, contorting himself to please Donald Trump

(20:37):
in the hopes that won he'd allowed him to buy
a Paramount, and now that he allowed him to buy
Warner Brothers Discovery. So that's the longest. The short answer is, yeah,
I thought Paramount would get it, not Netflix.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
So Netflix, Okay, So why does Netflix want this? They've
built this business from scratch, They've got, you know, incredible
market share with their streaming. Everything they've done I think
I believe is uh, you know, it's kind of like
the new way of doing things versus the old way,
which is Warner Brothers.

Speaker 6 (21:03):
So why do they want this studio? Yeah, it's a
good question. It's unlike anything Netflix has ever done. They
never do big acquisitions. Really, They've bought almost nothing to date,
and their argument has always been why should we go
buy a media company when we can create our own
media company and take the money we'd use to buy
an HBO or something like that and just put it

(21:23):
into programming. So we don't really know if they're thinking
this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to own
a giant movie studio and to own HBO, and it's
just too good to pass up, or is it. Hey,
our growth is slowing and we have more competition, and
we need something to help differentiate us. It can be
a little bit of both. It's one of the ironies.

(21:46):
If you're old, you remember in twenty thirteen, when Netflix
was just starting to do its own original programming, it
did House of Cards, which is deliberately an HBO style show,
and Ted Sarandos, who's now the CEO of Netflix, famously said,
the goal is to become HBO faster.

Speaker 7 (22:05):
Than HBO can become us.

Speaker 6 (22:07):
And so for a long time, a lot of us
thought that Netflix was trying to be HBO because that's
what they said. It turns out Netflix was just trying
to become TV, and that's what they've done. They've become
sort of just everything that's on TV. That said, I
think they could probably still use HBO's higher end content
to help differentiate themselves. So I think on a simple level,
that's what they're looking at, because.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
They're gonna get a lot of back catalog of shows
and movies and things like that. Is there stuff they're
not getting like I see on Warner Brothers, they've got
like CNN, Discovery, Food Network, is all that part of this?

Speaker 6 (22:37):
Or no, No, Warner Brothers only wants the movie Studio
and HBO. That's also what Comcast, who is also bidding, wanted.
It's also, frankly what anyone who was looking at at
Warner Brothers Discovery wants. We don't really think Paramount wants
CNN and those cable channels. The plan their pitch is
to buy them. Our thought, I'm just speaking is sort

(22:59):
of the conventional wisdom is they they were just doing
that because they thought it'd be a cleaner deal, just
easier to buy all of Warner Brothers Discovery than to
buy part of it. That's no longer an issue, but
for now they're saying we will buy the whole thing,
including CNN. That's also relevant because Donald Trump has said
I think CNN should have new owners, which again suggests.

Speaker 7 (23:19):
That maybe he will favor that Paramount bid.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
So what about consumers and all this? I mean, I
am already paying thirty four dollars a month for Netflix. Yes,
I pay for my mom's Netflix. So that's why I'm
paying a little bit more than a lot of people.
But what does it mean? I mean, and I'm also
paying for HBO max. Am I going to be a
cheaper bundle here or are we expecting this to be
more expensive come the future.

Speaker 6 (23:43):
I have never seen prices come down for anything anywhere. Ever,
prices are always going to go up. I think is
there potential that there's a Netflix HBO bundle?

Speaker 1 (23:53):
I think absolutely.

Speaker 6 (23:54):
I think there's an offer at some point where Netflix
says to its customer, like half or more of HBO
customers have Netflix, but not all Netflix customers have HBO,
and Netflix could say, hey, if you're already paying sh
for Netflix, instead of paying fifteen or twenty bucks for HBO,
we can sell it to you for.

Speaker 7 (24:11):
Eight bucks or ten bucks.

Speaker 6 (24:13):
Netflix hasn't come out and said that's what their plan is,
but I wouldn't be surprised if they do that eventually.
Important thing is, even if this deal gets sort of
finalized in the next few weeks, probably months, none of
this is going to happen for at least twelve months,
really closer to eighteen months, maybe even two years before
any of this actually goes into effect.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
What do you make of all the changes we've seen
in streaming. I mean, I get that this is a
relatively young industry, and we've watched it kind of grow
from the Rokus of the world and the Netflixes of
the world to now you know, Apple TV Studios and
Amazon owns owns MGM. I mean, there's just so much
going on with these tech companies. What else is going

(24:54):
to happen?

Speaker 6 (24:55):
Do you think, Well, we assume there's going to be
more consolidation every All of the big media companies that
own what we would call basic cable stations are all
trying to get rid of them.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
Warner Bros.

Speaker 6 (25:06):
Discovery is trying to get rid of CNN and Discovery
and Food Network.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
MTV is shutting down. Is that true?

Speaker 6 (25:15):
Don't that part confuses me? I don't think it is
shutting down. It's it's a brand that is important to Paramount. Still,
they don't have many brands, but Comcast is handing over
most of their cable channels. They're turning that into a
new company called versant A and E is dumping theirs.
So we're seeing the slow death of cable television. That's
not a surprise. Most people listening to this probably don't

(25:38):
pay for cable television. Directly anymore. But still people still
do those businesses still exist, They're going away. They are
going to get replaced with streaming, and there is going
to be more consolidation.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
You will see more of this if sports was not
part of the cable tv package, which right now they're
still hanging on to that because a lot of the
cable TV companies own the sports streaming or the sports channels,
would be a much faster kind of downward spiral. I
think let's talk about this real quick before you go.
Disney open Ai. Did you see that one coming? I mean,

(26:09):
this is like, these are two huge companies teaming up
in this one billion dollar at least a billion dollar
agreement where you'll now be able to use Disney characters
to generate AI images and video.

Speaker 6 (26:22):
It's a little interesting that open ai got that deal
done just because open ai has been sort of like
stumbling around when it comes to intellectual property and Hollywood.
They came out with this image video generation app earlier
this year called Sora, which was just kind of a
free for all kind of let you take your friends
but also people who are actual celebrities and famous people

(26:44):
and do mashups of videos with them. And didn't really
get permission for it. They seem to be following the
you know, ask for forgiveness not permission thing that most
of the big tech guys do. But you have thought
that they would eventually make some deals. Disney is more
so because Disney is so protective of their intellectual property,
and here they're saying to open AI yep, take two

(27:07):
hundred of our famous brands, characters, et cetera, and let
people do user generated content with them. The upside for
that is maybe they do cool stuff and people discover people.
This helps to expose Mickey Mouse to a whole bunch
of new people. The bad side is who knows what
people are going to make with that user generated content.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
They're supposed to.

Speaker 6 (27:26):
Be guardrails against that, but if you've ever gone onto
YouTube or Back of the Day in MySpace or TikTok,
you know there's a real limit to how much policing
you can do when the users are creating content.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
So that's interesting, all right, Peter Kafka, We're going to
leave it there, Chief correspondent at Business Insider, Go follow him,
read his stuff if you're interested in media and technology.
Really great stuff, Peter, Thank you, so much for joining
me today.

Speaker 7 (27:50):
Thank you, rich Sie.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
All right, coming up, we're going to take some more
of your calls at Triple eight rich one on one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 7 (27:59):
God.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
Email from Steve said, thanks a lot, rich I just
ordered four Max speakers and fire TV. It's all your fault, Hey,
don't blame me. I'm just a messenger back after this.
Lewis is in Riverside. Lewis you're there, Yeah, I.

Speaker 5 (28:20):
Am rich Okay, here's my question. I have a Moto
gene stylist five Gen twenty twenty two on the Metro
PCs network subsidiary, you know, key Mobile.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Sure, and I don't.

Speaker 5 (28:33):
Have the ability to schedule sending a text message?

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Why not?

Speaker 5 (28:39):
I do not know my friend, you know, different phone,
different network. I'm he can hit the little three buttons
and it says, you know, in the up right hand corner,
schedule sending.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
A text message.

Speaker 5 (28:52):
Sure, And I hit that little button and that option
doesn't come up it. I can add people on a
text message, different stuff, but not that that's the thing
I want? And is there a way to add that?
Or is that not offered on this phone? Or offered
by metro PCs.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Well it should be offered. So a couple of things
to look at. Number one, the messaging app that you're using.
Do you know what app you're using, or using Motorolas
or using Google Messages.

Speaker 5 (29:23):
I'm just using whatever came out phone it we have
to be Motorolas.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Okay, so download this is this is actually a pretty
easy fix. You just have to download Google Messages. And
are you yeah, so Google Messages, you know you're talking.
Your phone is from twenty twenty two, so they probably,
you know, Motorola might have had their own messaging app
that they were using. Almost all of the major providers
have on Android have switched over to Google Messages because

(29:48):
it supports what's called RCS. So RCS is Rich Communication Services.
It basically allows Android users to text with iPhone users
and each other in a much better way. It's a
much more modern texting protocol. And so you can send
through large photos, large videos, you can see typing indicators

(30:11):
and all that stuff. And part of that is the
ability to schedule a message as well. So I'm looking
at Google Messages right here on my phone, and it's
saying that if I want to schedule a message, I
just dial a number, get into that sort of call
area or that text area, and there's a plus sign
lower left hand corner, a whole bunch of options, including

(30:32):
attach a file, location, contacts, and one of them is
schedule send, and I get the options for later today,
later tonight, tomorrow, or I can pick a date in time.
So again to review Lewis Google Messages, look for it
in the apps in the Google Play Store and you
can download that. All your text messages will follow over.

(30:53):
So if you have a whole bunch of texts already
on your phone, they will all follow over to the
new app and they'll just be there. And then you
should make sure that RCS is enabled on your device
and is enabled on Google Messages. You can go into settings.
It should automatically kind of activate, but it should be
activated there in the settings, or you should be able
to check if it's activated in the settings. And then

(31:14):
once you've got that, then you can use this feature. Now,
I know that on iPhone you can only use the
scheduled messaging if you are texting another person on I Message,
and so that's just a limitation that Apple is built
into the phone. I don't know why, but it's something
that you can do with anyone that's using rcs on

(31:35):
the Android side of things, which includes Android users and
of course iPhone users as well, because when Apple does things,
they only do it to favor the people that use iPhones,
and when Google does stuff, they do to favor everyone.
They don't kind of pick and choose where things work,
and that's what I really like about how they kind
of approach things. Apple's great, it's amazing. They do great stuff,

(31:58):
but ninety nine percent of it is favoring their other products.
Whereas Google and Android, a lot of people say, oh,
why doesn't Android have this, Why doesn't Google have this?
Why don't you just build this in They have one
hundred different vendors, all building their own phones, all making
slight little tweaks on the software, all different hardware specs,

(32:18):
and so it's not as easy for Google on Android
to roll something out to everyone all at once like
it is on Apple, where they control every single aspect
of every single phone running iOS. They know exactly how
to tweak things for iOS because they're the only company,
they're the only pump place that makes it. So with
Android it's a lot tougher because a much bigger open ecosystem,

(32:41):
and that's why we don't always get everything on Android
first day, you know, like some of these features that
they roll out, it takes a while. Like they just
added air drop to the pixel or I guess their
version of it. It's compatible with air drop, and all
these Samsung people of course want the same thing, but
they can't get it first day because now Samsung has
to go in and like check out one thousand phones

(33:03):
that they make and figure out how to make this
work with that. So it's a lot. New gadget this week.
Gadget of the Week is the Pebble Index oh one.
This turns your finger into a memory button. It's a
tiny ring that lets you capture ideas, reminders, and notes
without pulling out your phone. So it's a small smart ring.
It's got a physical button in a microphone. You press

(33:24):
the button, you say what you want, and it's sent
to your phone and you can capture reminders, notes, calendar items,
simple actions, no wake words. It's not always listening. It
only records when the button is pressed. It does work offline.
It is not needed an Internet connection. Nothing's sent to
the cloud, no paid subscription, battery lasts, about two years.
Works with iPhone and Android, and if your phone's not

(33:46):
in nearby, it'll still store about five minutes of audio.
So it's a ring that makes your finger smart and
remembers things. I can't wait to get this thing. I
love taking voice memos. It's seventy five dollars on pre
order now. The price will write to ninety nine dollars
when it ships. It's gonna ship March twenty twenty six.
And again, this is the guy who created the Pebble Watch.

(34:08):
He also created Beeper, remember that back in the day,
not the Beeper, but Beeper app. It was like a
app that would bring all your messaging in line together.
They still have it, but the people who bought people
who make WordPress, bought it from them anyway. Pebble Index
zero one. I cannot wait to get that very very
simple smart ring coming up. Uh Android gets live video

(34:29):
to nine one one calls. Tell you about that and
more of your calls. Next. Welcome back to rich on
Tech Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology
at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. The website

(34:51):
for the show is richontech Dot TV. If you're not
following me on Instagram, I am at Rich on Tech.
Do you see the theme?

Speaker 5 (34:59):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (34:59):
I think figured it out. This week. Android added live
video to nine one one calls. Now I say they did,
but this is rolling out, and in Google's terms, when
they say rolling out, I'm not kidding. I just got
access to Gemini on my home speakers and they're rolling
it out for like months. I saw that feature last year,
so it takes them a while. And again it goes

(35:21):
back to what I was saying about all the different
makes and models of these phones and Android software versions.
But they're doing this through Google Play Services, which very complicated.
But let me just explain the way an Android phone works.
There's sort of two levels of updates. You've got the
updates that the manufacturer makes on their software, that's the
operating system, and then you've got something called Google Play Services,

(35:45):
and those are the core updates that Google makes to
Android itself. Like basically, they could roll out little features
and push them onto phones no matter who the maker
of that phone is, you know, within reason. So that's
what they're doing here with emergency live video. Role out
allows you to share a live video feed with nine
one one responders obviously designed to help in medical emergencies.

(36:07):
They can walk you through CPR. If you're lost, you
can show them where you are, you're under high stress,
you're hiding like a hostage situation, you can, you know,
maybe just show some video and they can help figure
out where you are or what to do. Responders must
request the video. You have to approve it. It's all encrypted.
You can stop it at any time. Apple got this

(36:28):
feature last year on the iPhone. They call it Apple's
Emergency SOS Live Video. So this is rolling out. Keep
in mind all the nine one one dispatch centers, they
all have varying levels of ability because they all have
different software, they all run different programs. It's not nine
on one is not a national thing here in the US,
so it's individual jurisdictions that run nine one one, and

(36:53):
so you have to just keep in mind this may
not be available everywhere and you can't start it anyway.
They have to ask for it. So if you get that,
if you ever call nine one one, hopefully you don't
have to, but if you ever get that, request live video,
like wait, what is this now? You know? Email from
Beverly Beverly says information on my Google calendar disappears after

(37:15):
a few weeks. I feel like I should go back
to paper. My event history is missing. Is there a
way to keep everything available? Or is my past gone? Beverly,
no matter how many ghosts you have in your past,
still never be gone. Those skeletons in the closet are
following you around everywhere. Now I'm just kidding. We're talking
about your Google calendar. Here. Here's what happens. I get

(37:36):
this question. No less than once a week someone says
my calendar is gone. No, it's not gone. Go to
If you're using Google Calendar, you can confirm I have
every single calendar appointment from the beginning of time on
my calendar. You can go to calendar dot Google dot
com from a desktop computer and just tap the search
and search for something from whenever. I mean, I just

(37:59):
search birthday and I can go back to the beginning
of time on my calendar whatever, whatever restaurant you go to,
so it's there. Google does not delete this stuff. They
do not delete your calendar entries. Now, the app that
you're using to access your calendar on your phone or
your computer may not sink all of the calendar entries.

(38:22):
Why because it's a big project to sink ten years
worth of calendar entries. So typically they only sink a
certain amount. Now, if you go on the iPhone, if
you're using the iPhone calendar, which Beverly maybe you are,
go to settings Apps Calendar and you'll see where it
says sink.

Speaker 4 (38:42):
Now.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
I have mindset to all events because I just like
to roll that way. But typically you can do two
events or two weeks back, one month back, three months back,
or six months back. I mean, how many times have
you had to look at an event more than six
months back? So I think, Beverly, you got to change
those settings on your sink. And then on Android, let's

(39:04):
look at the Google Calendar app. I've not looked at this,
so I'm going into settings. I'm guessing it's all there.
Let me see general, let's see is there a way
to sink a certain amount? Let's see here does not say,
does not say? Okay, so I don't think they have
a sink amount on here because it's just Google. I

(39:26):
think they just pull it from the cloud. Yeah, so
you don't need to really sink on there. It's just
gonna automatically come up anyway, whatever app you're using, you
may just have to sink more time. Let's go to
DEVN in Las Vegas. Devin, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 8 (39:42):
Hey, what's going on?

Speaker 9 (39:43):
Rich?

Speaker 10 (39:44):
Happy Saturday, my brother. It's always a pleasure to listen
to the show. Yeah, thank you, Oh oh my pleasure.
Thank you man. There's so many questions that I didn't
know I had just by listening that you answered.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
So thank you.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
Oh that's good. I thought you were going to say
you have more questions after you listen, because that's a problem.

Speaker 9 (40:06):
Rich.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
I love what you talk about, but I don't understand
any of it. I'm like, well, I'm not doing my
job right then, No, You're.

Speaker 10 (40:12):
Doing an excellent job, man, And and that's why I'm
tuned in every Saturday with.

Speaker 4 (40:17):
You, brother.

Speaker 5 (40:18):
Thank you.

Speaker 10 (40:19):
My question here, of course, my question today. So I
have a project I'm trying to do, probably some maybe
i'll say, sixty sixty five inch TVs. I want to
buy four of those and put them on the wall
here and put two side by side and two on top.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Of each other.

Speaker 10 (40:39):
And my question is if I do that as opposed
to having all the TVs on at the same time
and me watching the same game on four different to
four different sets. Is there a way, Well, I'm sure
there's a way. How can I make all of those?
Or is it possible in this case to make all

(41:00):
one game in this situation instead of playing on all
four TVs, just be playing as it's just the four
making one.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
Okay, you want to merge you want to merge the
four TVs into what's you want to make a video wall? Basically?

Speaker 5 (41:13):
Yes, sir?

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Okay, I mean have you done this before? Have you
tried this? What's this for? Is it for a bar
like your house or what?

Speaker 10 (41:20):
No, it's it's just for the house.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Oh wow, okay, well, I mean it can be done.
And I saw it's funny you say this because I
sat and I was mesmerized by a YouTube video about this.
I watched the whole thing. It was like thirty minutes
the guy and there's there's so many of them. So
the best place to look for this is really YouTube.
They have so many of these people, these YouTubers, they
you know, these DIY people. They change their basement into

(41:44):
a video wall because you know, you can use it
for various reasons. You can make you know, like you're
saying you can watch content on it, but you can
also make it look like an outdoor windows and things
like that. So there's a lot you can do with this.
The main thing is it takes a little bit to
do this. It's not straight forward. It is not as
simple as taking the output from your cable box and

(42:05):
just splitting it four ways and it's all gonna work. No, no, no,
that would be way too easy. You know, these TVs,
it's you need number one, you need a video wall
kind of controller and so it's an HDMI device that's uh,
some of them, you know. For you you're talking four TVs,
so a two by two, right, and so you would
get this little video controller. You'd have to plug your

(42:28):
HDMI into that, and then the four HDMI cables from there,
the out you know, the outbound would go into the TVs,
and then of course you'd have to mount the TVs
on the wall. You'd have to make sure you want
ones that are really thin with thin bezels, because you
know there's gonna be a black bar in between all
four of them. And then you may depending on how
the TVs are mounted, some people mount these horizontally. Some

(42:49):
people mount them vertically to make like a window. You know,
you can do things like rotate the screen or the picture,
so there's a lot you can do. It's not necessarily
a simple thing. So if you want a good DIY project,
it's fun and I think it'll work. But at the
end of the day, I've not done this personally, and

(43:09):
I would also suggest before you embark on this, I
would take a look at some of the projector screens
and projectors that they have nowadays, because especially these short
throw projectors they're called, they sit about a foot from
the screen, like at the base of the screen, and
they throw up a one hundred and eight inch picture
or something or even bigger, so you can get significantly

(43:32):
and the video quality is so much better than it
was in the past. So but I think this is
a fun project. If you want to do it, and
you want to make this in Las Vegas, sounds like
a fun thing to do. Just know that you need to,
you know, definitely need one of those video wall controllers.
I'm looking on Amazon. They've got a two x two
four K video wall processor with eleven spice splicing modes
for one hundred and twenty bucks. Then they've got another

(43:53):
one for two hundred and sixty nine, same thing two
by two, So you know, the price varies, and I
think I would be I would go somewhere in the middle.
I'm looking at one for fifty nine dollars. If you're
going to buy four of these TVs you said at
fifty five sixty five inches and put them on your
wall and go through all that. I would definitely spend
a little bit more on this HDMI controller for sure.

(44:15):
And keep in mind, I would test all this stuff
before you mount it, make sure it works, make sure
you can get it to work. That's a fun project.
I mean, I I've actually I love that you're doing
this because I've always wanted to do one of those windows.
They it looks like an out window to the outside,
but it's just really a TV. You know, a lot
of TV studios use them. I just think that would

(44:36):
look really cool in the House'd be fun. If I
ever have a home studio for the radio show, that'd
be a fun thing to do. Devin, thanks for the call,
appreciate it. Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. I
saw one of these windows at CES and I'm trying
to see. Hold on, I'm looking at CS. This is

(44:58):
how I search for stuff that I've done in the past.
It just search like CS, Rich Tomuro virtual window. Let's
see if I can find it. Uh here it is Liquidview.
That's what it was called. Check out liquid View. Such
a cool thing and make virtual windows. I'm looking at it.
It's exactly what you're talking about, except it's just like

(45:20):
a Oh, it's so cool. Digital windows for windowless rooms.
And what they do is they take it a step further.
They don't just sell you the actual screen. They sell
you the content as well. So they've gone out around
the world and they've recorded content for like twenty four
hours in like four K or eight K, and so
that the sun rises and sets it like it's synced
with your wherever you live. And that's called Liquidview thoughliquidview

(45:44):
dot com. I'll link it up on the website, all right,
eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Remember anything I mentioned,
It's all on the website. Rich on tech dot tv.
If you got one of these Aura frames, my favorite
digital Wi Fi frame, I'll tell you about the great
new feature it just picked up rich on tech more
show coming up next eight eight a rich one on

(46:12):
one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero
one got a message from Kim says that Lewis called
back and said, Uh, your scheduling text recommendations worked like
a champ. Thank you so much and that's why he
listens to you. Thank you, Lewis. I'm glad it worked
out for you. Let's go to Mark in uh Saint Petersburg.

(46:37):
By the way, Adam is in for Bobo today. I
was giving him the hand signal to give me a ding,
you know that bell. He said, he doesn't know what
that signal meant. Mark, welcome to the show. What's up? Oh?

Speaker 11 (46:51):
Thank you rich Patsy Outlea, and I just wanted to
ask you a question. I have a iPhone and I
was wanting to try to figure out the easiest way
to clean out all duplicate files and stuff. But every
time you get on one, they after three days or
seven days, they want you to make a subscription. And

(47:14):
I would like to see if there's like an affordable
way or one that's more recommended than others or.

Speaker 7 (47:21):
No.

Speaker 11 (47:21):
I get all kind of pop up eds for the
same type of services.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Yeah, they're all going to well, okay, so a couple
things here. Number one, great question mark. Number one, there
is no cleaner app for the iPhone that does what
cleaner apps do on Android, or on Windows IT or
even on the Mac. It just doesn't work that way.
The way that iPhone the operating system is engineered is

(47:47):
everything is sandboxed, which means apps cannot see data from
other apps unless Apple specifically allows them to. So there's
not an app that can just sit there and access
everything across your phone. That's for security reasons and that's
just by design. So there's not really an app that says, okay,
let's run this app and it finds all the gunk

(48:08):
on your system, the duplicate files, all that stuff. It
can't do that. There are apps that can do parts
of that, and there's also some built in tools on
the iPhone that can do that as well. So let
me show you a couple of these. Number one, the
app that I like to clean up the iPhone with
duplicate photos and things like that is called Clever Cleaner

(48:30):
c l e v Er Cleaner. Now, if you type
it into search on your iPhone, you may come up
with a whole bunch of different random apps that are
going to try to charge you. This one has no
ads and it does not charge you at all. Ever,
Just I'm gonna double check that because the last time
I looked at it, that's the way it was. So

(48:51):
if I type in clever Cleaner, you got to be
sure you're getting the right one too. It's got forty
two thousand reviews right now now, and it's called clever
Cleaner AI cleanup app. And I'm scrolling down the way
I always kind of assess an app is you scroll
all the way down to the information section. And this

(49:11):
is great advice for just any app that you're downloading.
Always scroll down on the app Store and look under information.
It tells you seller size, category, compatibility an app. It
also tells you if an app charges you. So I'm
looking at this other random cleanup app and I scroll down,
and oh, what does this say in app purchases one

(49:33):
week seven dollars ninety nine cents, one year twenty nine
ninety nine. Now, I'm not against paying for ads, especially
or paying for apps, especially helpful ones, but you have
to be aware of what you're getting into. Ninety nine
percent of the apps out there on the App Store.
They just want you to download their app, and then
eventually you're gonna try it and you're gonna use it,
and you're gonna say, oh, I'm running up against this wall.

(49:54):
I need to pay for this now. So I always
like to see what I'm what I'm getting myself into
before I actually download an app. So always when you
download an app, before you download it, check all the
way down under information and look for that in app
purchases area. Nobody looks at that, but it's the best
thing about the App store is that it shows you that.

(50:14):
So anyway, Clever Cleaners is from cleverfiles dot com, So
you can go to that website and that's gonna do
all the cleanup you need for your photos. And it's
really good and it's completely free. Like I said, now,
when it comes to the rest of your iPhone storage,
you can go to iPhone you can go to General

(50:35):
set sorry getting ahead of myself, go to Settings, then
tap General and then tap iPhone Storage and you'll see
a whole bunch of things under recommendations. And that's where
you can review your photos and videos. It'll show you
large photos and videos recently deleted offload unused apps, review
your downloaded media. Messages in iCloud. You can turn that

(50:58):
on to save some space, you large attachments in your
in your messages, optimize storage, you can enable that auto
delete old conversations, review your TV downloads. Oh, they've added
a lot to this. So that is really what you
want to do is Apple will go through and help
you with all that. And again you go into Settings

(51:19):
General and then iPhone Storage and then under your recommendations
tap show wall and I'll give you all the different ways.
By the way, one of the best ways to clear
up space on your phone two ways. Number one, delete
a large video. Number two your podcasts. A lot of
times it downloads a whole bunch of podcasts just keeps
them forever. So if you going on a trip or
something you need to free up some space, quickly check

(51:42):
your podcast downloads. But those are the ways to do it.
Mark Those are the ways to get your iPhone cleaned
up again, not just one app that's going to just
go through everything and help you do that. Those are
pretty much scams. Eighty eight rich one O one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
I will link up clever cleaner on the website. Just

(52:02):
go to rich on Tech dot TV. This is episode
one two. It's right on the home screen. Or scroll
down to radio show and you'll see the episodes. Just
tap one fifty two. All the show notes are there.
All right, coming up, I'm still going to tell you
about this Aura feature on the new Aura feature, and
we'll get to more of your calls right here on
rich on tech. Okay, this Aura frame one of my

(52:33):
favorite gifts of the holiday season. If you have not
gotten one of these, I'm telling you it's a crowd pleaser.
I saw it at Costco yesterday. I was selling for
like a hundred bucks. It is such a great thing,
and I've got one. My family has one, my wife's
family has one. We love it. But anyway, the neat
thing about these frames is there's a lot of Wi
Fi photo frames out there, but the neat thing about

(52:54):
this one is that the software is really good, the
design is really good, and you know, it's just simple.
You can you can email, or you can send a
photo from your phone right to a family member or
a friend's frame, you know, with a little bit of setup.
But now you've got a new feature where you can
text to a frame, so friends and family can text

(53:15):
photos directly to your Aura frame or vice versa. So
that means you don't have to download the app and
you don't need an Aura account for the sender, so
that means it's super super easy. So if you have
like a less tech savvy person in your family, you
can just say, oh, yeah, here, if you want to
send you know, you want to text me a picture
to my frame, here you go. So that's really really cool.
You can, as the frame owner, can approve the phone numbers.

(53:37):
So let's say you've got three people you want to
be able to, you know, that can send photos to
your frame. You just approve their phone numbers in the app.
So this is really really cool. You have to go
into the Aura app as an owner and link your
own phone number and then you can set it all up.
But it's a really really neat way to kind of
it's already easy to add pictures to this frame, but

(53:58):
now the ability just to text them in, I think
adds another layer of awesomeness. Let's see here, let's go
to Stephen in Hawthorn. Steven you're on with.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Rich, Yes, Rich, thank you, thanks for packing this pall Rich.
I just had a question about these AirPods Prove three version, okay,
And the reason why I purchased those is because it
has a language translation feature. Sure, and I've discovered that
it only works it apparently it only works with the

(54:31):
Apple Intelligence.

Speaker 7 (54:33):
Is that true?

Speaker 1 (54:35):
Yes?

Speaker 5 (54:36):
Why?

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Okay? The reason why because I have an old version
of the iPhone iPhone eleven.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
Oh yeah, you need you need you need an iPhone
fifteen Pro or later exactly.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
And it makes me think, is it the Apple Intelligence
that's actually doing the translation rather than the AirPod Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
Well, it's a little bit of both. I mean they're
using Look, I mean they need to there's got to
be a driver for the you know, the translation. I
think Apple Intelligence is part of that. I think that
it's just part of what makes it work. I don't
know exactly how they're doing it, you know, but that's
that's kind of the way that they position it on
the website. They say, look, if you want live translation,

(55:21):
you've got to have the AirPods four with the noise
cancelation AirPods Pro two or AirPods Pro three, iPhone fifteen
Pro or later iOS twenty six or later. Apple Intelligence
turned on Apples, Translate app downloaded, and the latest AirPods firmware,
So it requires a lot of things. And I would say, Stephen,

(55:42):
this kind of falls under what I was talking about
earlier in the show where I didn't read the help
page before I ordered all the speakers. So it's like, oh, shoot,
I need that. Oh my gosh. With that said, you know,
there's also some limitations on the languages too. There's only
a handful of languages that are supported right now. What
language were you trying to translate?

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Well, mostly Spanish, you know, okay, pa, you know.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
I mean that's that's a relatively easy one. There's a
lot of you know, there's a lot of Spanish is
usually like kind of like in the basics of all
these translation apps. I think they added Japanese. The one
that they demoed with me was I think it was Portuguese,
which was kind of unique. The other thing, there's some
news this week too that I believe Google I think

(56:30):
they actually made their translation and this puts a little
pressure on Apple is I think they made their live
translate available to any earbuds now. Yeah, so look at this.
So Google expanded their real time speech translations to any headphones.
This used to be just a Pixel buds thing, so
now it's rolling out in beta. All you need is

(56:50):
a compatible Android phone and Google's Translate app to use
their live Translate feature, which was pretty amazing. That's pretty impressive.
So hopefully Apple will follow suit and maybe they'll open
this up to more stuff. But it sounds like at
this point you need to use that Apple intelligence. Are
you willing to update your phone or upgrade your phone
for this feature or no?

Speaker 2 (57:11):
Yeah, definitely up to upgrade apparently.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Okay, well, all right, sounds like it sounds like an
upgrade might be in your future if you really want
to use that translate Live Translate. It's so funny. I've
got it on my I've got this on my docket
of things to do. I get so many calls and
questions about this live Translate feature. People love this feature.
I mean, it's amazing because it's going to just kind
of continue to to, you know, make our world smaller.

(57:37):
But you've got it on a bunch of devices. So
you've got it on the pixel buds they were the
first to have it. Now you've got it on a
couple models of air pods. AirPods Pro three, AirPods Pro two,
and the air POD's four, but the higher end, the
ones that have active noise cancelation. Now Google, oh, you
also have it on the Meta ray band glasses, so
you've got it there. There's a device called time Kettle,

(57:59):
which I'm still waiting for them to send me a
sample so I can try that. That's a standalone device,
and they also make earbuds, and then you've got now
Google expanding it to any earbuds if you have an
Android phone. That's amazing the fact that you can do
real time speech translation. And don't forget you also have
all of the ais that can do this too. So

(58:20):
you've got Gemini, You've got CHATCHYBT. You flip those into
the live voice and they can translate anything too. I mean,
traveling the world and interacting with people that speak a
different language has gotten so much easier. It's it's quite incredible.
All right, I think we got our guest here. Let's see.
I think Nicholas Merrill is on the line. Nick, are

(58:42):
you there, I'm here, Okay, Welcome to the show. Nick
Nick is founder of a new privacy first carrier called
Freely p h R. E E L. I. So the
big deal about this carrier is that it's a privacy
first and you only sign up with your ZIP code.
So it's really nick, why did you come up with this?

Speaker 12 (59:08):
Well, first of all, thank you for having me on
the show.

Speaker 13 (59:11):
I've been working in the privacy space for a few
decades now, and basically, I feel like the telecom industry,
it collects a lot of information about us, and that
sort of leads to a degradation in our privacy, and
I feel like it's sort of reached a point where

(59:32):
people are upset about it and they want a better
option that doesn't hand over all their info to all
kinds of third parties. So I've been doing research and
development on free software for a bunch of years and
how to make privacy easier. But I understood that to
most people, it's still feels like a lot of work,

(59:55):
and it feels like you need to have a lot
of sort of esoteric knowledge. And we're trying to do
is build it into the service provider, into the mobile provider,
so that all you really have to do is switch
to this company and you get a big privacy game
just by doing that.

Speaker 12 (01:00:11):
So the idea is like, if you can only do
one thing to.

Speaker 13 (01:00:16):
To sort of advance your mission to get yourself better
privacy today, switch to freely.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
So why would I want that? Why do I want
more privacy with my cell phone? Like I you know,
let's say I'm with one of the big carriers. Why
do i want more privacy from my cell phone carrier.

Speaker 13 (01:00:33):
I mean, from what I'm understanding, most people really do.
Private carriers are essentially selling customer data.

Speaker 7 (01:00:43):
To data brokers.

Speaker 13 (01:00:44):
And sometimes it's freeze in advertising, but sometimes it's not.
Sometimes it ends up in the hands of all kinds
of scammers, people that do identity theF Like, once the
information is out.

Speaker 12 (01:00:55):
There, it's sort of beyond your control.

Speaker 13 (01:00:58):
When you sign up for typical phone company account, you know,
you end up having to really give them a lot
of info, right if they if they run your credit
you may have to give a driver's license number, a
social security number, You give them your home address, You
may give them you know, those.

Speaker 12 (01:01:14):
Extra security questions like your mother's maiden name.

Speaker 13 (01:01:18):
Now, when this information ends up getting hacked from the
phone company or getting stolen, your information is out there
and like I've experienced it in the past where I
was using a mainstream phone company and they got hacked,
and then they said, oh, hey, we'll pay for a
credit monitoring service for you for six months. But in
the end, it's sort of like, why do you want

(01:01:38):
to put your information out there when you don't have to?

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
So you've got all these different plans, you know, ranging
from twenty five to eighty five dollars a month. What
about I mean, you're running on a main carrier. I'm guessing.
Can you say which carrier you're on?

Speaker 13 (01:01:53):
Yeah, yeah, we're on T mobiles network.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
Okay, so you're on T Mobiles network. I mean they
were okay with you saying, hey, we're not going to
collect any data from our customers. We're just going to
ask for a ZIP code to sign up. I mean,
why doesn't just T Mobile do that? Then it would
be nice.

Speaker 13 (01:02:11):
If they would. I wish they would. I really do think,
like I say, I'm so old. I remember when you
could walk up to a payphone and drop a din
in and make a phone call without having.

Speaker 7 (01:02:21):
To show ID.

Speaker 13 (01:02:23):
I really think that the right to communicate should universal
and you shouldn't have to.

Speaker 12 (01:02:31):
Hand over all of.

Speaker 13 (01:02:32):
Your most personal info to a company in order to
just communicate. It's a it's a thing that we can't
really almost get away without these days having a cell phone.
So no, I really wish all the cell phone companies
would would collect less info.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
Is there a security risk here? I mean the government?
I mean, I'm sure you know what about the security
aspect of things, like people have been, you know, buying
burner phones for a long time. Sure is this similar
to that? I mean, you're not positioning this says hey,
do bad things. You're just saying, protect our privacy, But
I mean, can't Is there an opportunity for people to
use this for nefarious reasons or is that just everything tech?

Speaker 13 (01:03:10):
We're saying the exact opposite of that, do not do
anything wrong on our phone company. We do not want that.
We don't support that. You know, we're not We're not
against law enforcement's mission. We want law enforcement to catch
the bad guys who are doing bad stuff.

Speaker 12 (01:03:25):
However, we don't think that all.

Speaker 13 (01:03:28):
Of the rest of us, who are not bad guys
should have to give up our privacy in order to uh,
in order to try to deceaver and like, as you noted,
the option to use a burner phone already existed, So.

Speaker 12 (01:03:43):
What we're doing.

Speaker 13 (01:03:46):
Doesn't really get someone more privacy than having a burner phone.

Speaker 12 (01:03:50):
But what it does is it makes it convenient.

Speaker 13 (01:03:53):
You know, you could be on auto pay, you have
all the convenience of using like a regular phone company,
but with more privacy. So I think the thing is
if you want to do the whole go to a
gas station and buy a sin thing and then.

Speaker 12 (01:04:07):
Top it up in cash. That's that's a lot of work.

Speaker 13 (01:04:09):
And that's inconvenient and it's not fun. But you know,
if criminals want to do that, then that's.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
What they're going to do.

Speaker 13 (01:04:15):
And you know, honestly, if someone's doing something wrong, as
I said, I hope law enforcement conches for them. But
what we're out to try to protect the privacy rights
of the ninety nine point nine percent of people who
aren't bad guys.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
What about when I put in my credit card? Isn't
that now I've you know, we've done a lot of
stories on data and data collection, and as I understand it,
there's layers of data that these marketing companies and brokers
just sort of layer together. So if they only have
my zip code, now they narrow it down to like
other things that they'll figure out and kind of match
up about me. So once they have my credit card,

(01:04:50):
it's like, okay, well now you've got your credit card
and your zip code. Now we know who this person is.
So is that possibility here?

Speaker 7 (01:04:58):
Oh yeah, I mean, like one.

Speaker 12 (01:05:00):
I want to make clear we have not solved the
problem of privacy.

Speaker 13 (01:05:03):
There's still there's still many aspects of it that remain
to be worked on. So part of the issue is,
like I mentioned, for getting privacy really really right, it's hard.

Speaker 12 (01:05:15):
It takes a lot of work.

Speaker 13 (01:05:17):
And if I don't know, if you remember those books
from childhood, they were called Choose your Own Adventure.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Of course you know they have there's.

Speaker 12 (01:05:24):
Like decision trees, right, Hey, do you want to go
down this path or that path? Do you want to
go behind this door or that door.

Speaker 13 (01:05:30):
We offer people the option to pay for their phone
service with cryptocurrency if they want, including some of the
more private cryptocurrencies like z cash and Monero.

Speaker 12 (01:05:39):
Now, if you do that, that information doesn't go into
the credit bureaus, that doesn't go to the data brokers.

Speaker 13 (01:05:47):
So we're offering the option to have different levels of
privacy depending on how much work our customers are interested,
willing and interested to put into the effort. We understand
that most people are going to use their regular credit
card with their name on it from their bank because
that's what's easy. And we we we want to give

(01:06:10):
super private options, but we also want to meet regular
people where they are today, and then you know, there's
always the option to sort of increase your privacy, you know,
security as you as you go down the path.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
Well, it's certainly a hot topic and something that I
think is on top of mind for so many people.
I hear. I get privacy emails all the time from
people asking questions about how they can better protect their privacy.
Nick Merrill, thank you for joining me today with the
carrier Freely p h R E E l I dot
com freely cool name cool. Spin on that and I'll

(01:06:49):
put the link on the website. Nick, thanks for joining
me today.

Speaker 12 (01:06:52):
Thank you so much for your time. Rach I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
All right, looking forward to testing that out. I'm got
I gotta get a test see how that works. I'm curious.
All right, eighty eight rich one on one. The lines
are packed. We will get to some of your some
more of your calls after this. Plus what can I
tell you. Oh, I found a uh an Apple Watch
AI app that you know, you can put little AI

(01:07:17):
on your Apple Watch so you can ask it questions.
I'll tell you about that coming up right here. I'm
rich on tech Joy in San Diego. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 9 (01:07:33):
Hi, rich Am I supposed to be on speaker?

Speaker 7 (01:07:36):
Is it okay?

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
I can hear you? Fine, so it's uh, I'll take it.
What's up?

Speaker 9 (01:07:41):
Okay? Well, I'm almost embarrassed to ask because I've gotten
an iPhone fifteen, iPhone, I Pad, I'm AC and I
Mac is still in the box because I'm so h
not picking up even on my iPhone, very very very basic.

(01:08:04):
And I'm used to being older having a textbook that
I can go back to. I know I can go
to Apple support, and someone told me I can simultaneously
set up the iPad and the iPhone to try to
learn things. But all of this is like so far

(01:08:24):
above my learning capacity right now. And I was wondering
if you had a suggestion for a textbook.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
Yeah, well, it's funny. I wrote one of these couple
of years ago. It's not updated anymore, but I did
write an iPhone because I saw how many questions I
was getting about iPhones, and so I wrote a book
called one hundred and one Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone.
And I'm not kidding. It was incredible. I mean people
were buying it like crazy because it was just the basics,

(01:08:54):
I mean, so simple. I started. The first page was
like how to take a screenshot, and it's just like
little things like that, like how to turn your phone on,
how to turn it off. And people loved it because
it was just simple. It didn't assume that you knew anything.
What phone did you switch from?

Speaker 9 (01:09:10):
I still have my landline?

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Okay, so you switch from landline? Okay.

Speaker 9 (01:09:14):
Problem is I for the past twenty thirty whatever year
since I've been retired, I got out of working when
all the technology started to take hold, and I've never
had incremental periods of time to learn these little things
that sort of multiply and exactly what you said. I'm

(01:09:37):
going to look up that book because I don't know
what an icon is, what a widget is, or what
a green shot is that you just mentioned.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
Okay, so you're really learning, Yeah, you're going for the basics. Well,
I understand, and I totally you know, you grew up
in a different time and these are all kind of
new to you, and it's once you figure it out,
it's going to be great, and you're going to get
the hang of it. And believe me, everyone does eventually.
So oh, what I would say is you already know
about the Apple website. So Apple does have an official
Apple Support phone guide, so you can go there iPhone

(01:10:07):
user Guide and again, yeah, like your friend said, put
that on your iPad and then you can follow along
on your iPhone. That's number one. But I would probably
buy a book, a couple of books. There's and I
don't want to I'm not gonna insult you here. I'm
not gonna but there's an iPhone for seniors for dummies.
I'd probably recommend something like that because it's paperback, you
can doubt you can physically hold it and flip through

(01:10:29):
it and have your phone in your other hand, and
you can go through it and learn all the features.
And I think that's probably going to be one of
the best ways to learn this. And they've been making
those those books for a long time. The other thing,
David Pogue used to make something called the Missing Manual.
I don't think that's there anymore. I don't think they've
updated it. It looks like the last time they updated

(01:10:50):
it was a couple of years ago. But I think
the the I hate to even use the term, but
the Dummies book, I think is going to be the
best way to learn joy And I'm here for you.
Sign up for my newsletter. I'll give you the tips,
the tricks, and I'm always here on email as well.
Thanks for the call today, Good luck with that. Eighty
eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Welcome back to Rich on Tech.

(01:11:18):
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Eight
eight eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Get a lot
of feedback about the Amazon Echo speakers and set up
a lot of questions about that. Clearly I was not
the only one that didn't realize that you can connect
those and make a home theater system. Let's see so

(01:11:40):
many emails.

Speaker 4 (01:11:41):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
Also, I want to just tell you about my newsletter
real quick, rich on tech dot TV. If you're not
signed up for the newsletter, you are doing yourself a disservice.
And I'll tell you why. It's because everything that I
mentioned on a weekly basis all the most important stuff
that comes through my desk. I put in this newsletter.
It's stuff that, like this show, I think you should

(01:12:02):
know about. So I put it all in there, I
write it up, I sit there and I send it
out to you, and it's free and people, you know,
it's become like this community. Now, this episode, this issue
is my favorite. I'll just tell you some of the things.
So I talked about the ECHO stuff. I talked about
how I built my own personal AI wine recommendation AI

(01:12:24):
system with chat GIBT. Basically, I took a picture, uploaded
a picture or whatever of all the different wine that
I like over the years, and I told it, here's
what I like. And then now if I'm at a
restaurant and I see a menu, I can literally just
upload that menu to my chat GBT project and it
will give me the best wine glass to purchase based

(01:12:45):
on all of my tastes. And what's smart about that
is that number one. I don't know, if you've noticed
prices of things over the years, they've gone up. And
so if you're like, hey, I want to spend this
much on a glass of wine, give me the best
bang for my buck that'll fit my taste. That's number one.
Number two, you get a wine list, you have no
idea what's on. There could be Italian wines, French wines,
Spanish wines, whatever. You can feed that in and we'll

(01:13:07):
still say, okay, here's the wines we've identified that you
will like based on what you like. So that was fun.
I spent like an hour doing that, and you could
easily do it. So I talk about how to do
that my newsletter. I got the tech Tidbits. Oh, I
also mentioned this. I'll tell you about this app. But anyway,
the tech Tidbits, and then people share their emails. There's
so much in there. Just go to Rich on tech
dot TV, pop in your email address and you'll get

(01:13:30):
this every weekend. And then I'm doing a secondary one
that's just like Q and A. So all the emails
I get, I picked like maybe ten each week to
feature in the the other newsletter. It's like a Q
and A. And by the way, a picture of Bobo's
in here. Bobo's not here today, but there's a picture
of them. Let's see. Alex requested a picture of Bobo,
so I put them in there. But I told you

(01:13:51):
about this app. It's called Chirp c Hirp Chirp, and
it's an Apple Watch app that adds like a voice
assistant chirp dot Watch. And there's no there's no proper
AI assistant on the Apple Watch right now. Don't tell
me Siri is because that's not true. So if there's
no like Google Gemini, there's no chatgybt as far as

(01:14:13):
I know. But this kind of emulates that. So it's
a little tiny app. You put it as a complication
on your screen. You tap it and then it gives
you an answer. So I can say something like, let
me try it in lifetime. So I did that. I
tapped it, and now I just tap press and hold
and let's see what is the best movie coming out
next weekend? Now it's sending the info to Google Search.

(01:14:37):
It uses Gemini. See if you can do this. I
have no signal in here. Oh that's great. There we
go nothing no nothing. What's the best movie at the
box office right now? SquarePants are some of the bigger ones.
Is also David and so Five Nights at Freddy's two
is currently the top earner at the box office, and

(01:14:57):
Zotopia two is also doing pretty well. Okay, so there
you go. You can choose your little voice. I didn't
even know those movies were out. Wow. Okay, five days
of Freday's too. I never even saw the first anyway.
It's called Chirp dot Watch. Check it out. They also make,
interestingly enough, a tiny little web browser for your Apple
Watch screen. I know crazy, I'll link it up on
the website. Rich on tech dot TV. All right, let's

(01:15:19):
go to Brad in Los Angeles, line five. Wow, we
have so many calls. We're using all the lines, Brad,
you're own with Rich.

Speaker 8 (01:15:27):
I'm currently I'm currently on an iPhone eight with Verizon,
and I want to keep the home button. And I've
been researching and it looks like the iPhone se third
generation might be my only hope at this point because
I've aged out on a few apps already that want
iOS seventeen, which is my eight won't get.

Speaker 4 (01:15:46):
So what do you think?

Speaker 1 (01:15:47):
Uh? Yeah, so I'm looking at the list you want.
You still want the home button? Okay, so the eight
and the eight plus for the last kind of mainstream
iPhones to get that. Then you've got, like you said,
the iPhone sees all three read them, have it. The
iPhone SC three was last made in twenty twenty two.
Hold on, I'm checking this on the website and then

(01:16:09):
it looks like I got to go to iOS twenty
six and just see if that's still supported. So at
the bottom of the iOS website they have all the
supported models. Let's see if the se three is still supported,
s oh ow SC two and later. So yes, you're
in luck, Brad. That's your best bet because you can
still run the modern operating system, the latest version of

(01:16:33):
iOS on there, and so you'll still have access to
all your apps and it'll work pretty well. Have you
heard of backmarket dot Com? No, okay, it's a good
place to buy it. They are a well reputable, refurbished
sort of you know, gadget place, and they sell all
kinds of stuff, not just iPhones but everything. iPhone SC

(01:16:54):
from twenty twenty two unlocked will run you one hundred
and thirty eight dollars. How does that sound?

Speaker 8 (01:17:00):
But listen, what's your astimate on how long the that
third generation will last? Because I know then Weimo is
the one that I've been out. It needs the seventeen
and I think it was LA three eleven one is
seventeen as well. iOS seventeen. Those they only two so
far that I've noticed.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
Okay, well with this one, you'll you'll have iOS twenty six,
which is great, and iOS twenty six, I will tell you,
will last for at least, let's see, at least two
more years if you'll have support. So and the reason
I'm telling you that is because you've got the iPhone
se second generation and later right now for iOS twenty

(01:17:37):
six next year, what Apple usually does is they drop
support for the last model. So now iOS twenty seven
will just support the iPhone SE three, and then when
iOS twenty eight comes out, they'll drop support for that
iPhone SE three. So I think you have a good
solid two years of software support. So you got to
do the math. One hundred and thirty eight dollars for

(01:17:58):
two years is that worth it it versus just buying
a new iPhone that's going to give you another six
years of use out of it. So do the math.
But that's that's my thought.

Speaker 8 (01:18:10):
What's that website back market?

Speaker 1 (01:18:12):
Backmarket dot com? Yeah, check it out, and you know
it's a reputable place you can buy it. It's got
oh that's for fair condition. So if you want excellent
is one hundred and fifty four dollars. But they inspect everything,
they refurbish it, they make it really nice. It's a
good place to buy. People really like it. So why
you're not ready to give up the home button?

Speaker 8 (01:18:32):
Huh No, I tried it. Too frustrating for it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
Okay, you'll get used to it. I know you will,
but I know it's it's tough to uh. I know
it's tough sometimes because we get used to things. We
like things a certain way. And yes, I totally understand that.
Let's go to Tom in Tustin. Where's Tom? You would
think it'd be easy to choose the line. That's the
only thing I have to do is tap the number

(01:18:57):
of the line. It is not easy. It's like there's
so many things blinking and this and that. Tom, you're
on with Rich?

Speaker 3 (01:19:05):
Hey, Rich, First of all, thanks for everything you do
for all of us tech dumbings out there.

Speaker 1 (01:19:11):
Oh well, don't call yourself that, but yes, I you know,
I just try to help. So you know, I understand.
This is my world. You've got your world, I've got mine.

Speaker 3 (01:19:20):
This is not really a tech problem. It's an odinity.
I ran into for Amazon last night. I wanted to
order a.

Speaker 6 (01:19:30):
A Gillette.

Speaker 4 (01:19:33):
Razor.

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
Okay, it's a Styler three and one. It's about close
to thirty bucks.

Speaker 1 (01:19:39):
Okay. I was gonna say, do you have to mortgage
your house to do that? Did you have to? I
was gonna say, do you have to mortgage your house
to buy this razor? Because they're very expensive.

Speaker 3 (01:19:46):
Much but it's well, it's electric and yeah, anyhow, sure.
So I you know, normally, for fast delivery on Amazon,
and I am an Amazon member, you have to meet
a twenty five dollar minimum.

Speaker 4 (01:20:02):
So when I.

Speaker 3 (01:20:03):
Placed the order, it shifted me over to Amazon Fresh
and then you have to meet a fifty dollars minimum
in order to get the rapid delivery, right, So I
just thought, you know, it was kind of irritating when
I ran into that. Have you ever heard of that before?

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
Yes? And the reason why is because the razor was
sold by Amazon Fresh and not Amazon. So it's a
little confusing. And this is actually, I think, getting way better.
But so the thing was basically whatever specific razor you wanted,
it was sold by Amazon Fresh and not Amazon. It's
very confusing of the same company, but for certain products

(01:20:44):
they parse it out and they say, okay, this company
and this happened to me the other day. I wanted
to buy this product and it was only sold by
Amazon Fresh, and I had to do a huge order
just to get it, and so I ended up not
getting it. But again that's kind of what happens. Oh,
by the way, I'm looking at this because I looked
up Gillette. This is so cool. They have Gillette razors
for all the NFL teams. How cool is that? What

(01:21:07):
a good gift. I got to get my kid one
of these. That is awesome. Wow, look at this they've got. Yeah,
I'm looking at the forty nine ers right here, but
they've got Gelette Labs Special, NFL, all these different editions.
That is so super cool. Anyway, So the thing is
when you're looking at Amazon, if you don't want that
to happen in the future, you've got to use the

(01:21:31):
the kind of selectors on the side, so it'll say
like prime delivery overnight by eight am, eleven am, and
you got to make sometimes it sells, it says the seller,
and you can choose Amazon. See right now, I can
see there's a there's a check for Amazon Fresh. So
if I check Amazon Fresh, I'm only going to see
stuff that I can get from that store versus Amazon.

(01:21:52):
So that is what happened to you. The different the
thing that Amazon is doing that they've been changing now
is they're actually in co operating fresh food into standard
Amazon deliveries. So for instance, I got a delivery last night,
and my delivery just came in a bag because it's
not being shipped from anywhere. They're just going into a
warehouse that's nearby and they're just pulling the two items

(01:22:13):
and they're bringing them to me. So it's kind of
like almost like an Amazon's version of door Dash, and
we're going to see a lot more of that because
Amazon is now mixing in fresh items, like we're talking
milk and fresh food into your traditional Amazon orders, and
they can't do that by shipping. They're not going to
put that on a truck to ship to you in
a box that takes you know, overnight or two days.

(01:22:34):
They're just taking it from a smaller warehouse that brings
it right to you, kind of cutting out the middleman
of any sort of like delivery time. So anyway, it's
a really interesting concept, but I think we'll see less
of this, hopefully, But I get it, Tom. It's frustrating
when that happens, for sure. All right, eighty to eight
rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to

(01:22:54):
two four one zero one. We got more calls. We
got to talk about this social media band over in Australia.
Kids over there must be losing their minds. No more
social media for them. Probably a good thing for the world.
Australia probably become the smartest country. Now, all right, more
rich On Sack coming your way. Right after this, Let's

(01:23:21):
go to Frank in Apple Lake, New York. Frank around
with Rich Hi.

Speaker 4 (01:23:28):
Rich got a question for you. I'm a senior and
I happen to have a lot of art writers in
my fingers, which means that when I'm you know, typing
on the computer, it's oftentimes the big problem for me,
is there? So here's my question in this AI age,

(01:23:50):
does anybody manufacture a Star Trek voice activated computer where
I could just say computer, go to E they or
computer print what's on my screen? Something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:05):
Yeah, I mean that there is something built into Windows
that is really good. Let's see voice Access Windows eleven,
so that it's it's I believe this is brand new
and this lets you control your entire PC with voice
and I just set it up on my Windows computer here,

(01:24:25):
and I'm telling you, Frank, it's very impressive. Like I'm talking,
I'm looking. It's it's going through like the practice like screens.
And so here's what I said. I said, voice access
wake up. That'll turn on your microphone number one. Then
you can say, uh, click animal friend and it will
select the box on the screen that says dog or cat,

(01:24:47):
and then you can do that and then it says
click cat and it'll click the cat show numbers. I mean,
it's it's basically everything you're talking about. This is what
you want now. You said you have you have some
decksterity like you can and you can turn on the
computer and turn it off and like if you needed to,
like peck a key, you could, right, Yeah, okay, so
this is mostly just for everything in between. So I

(01:25:08):
think this would be a very good thing for you
to try. Do you have a Windows computer and.

Speaker 4 (01:25:13):
It's Windows, Well my computer is broken right now, but
I'm about to get a new one.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
Well I would get a Windows eleven then for sure,
because yeah, I mean, I'm telling you and I think
this is a pretty new feature. It's because I remember
them announcing it and it's yeah, it's it's in the
new version of Windows, like the latest update. I'm gonna
link this up on the website because this is incredible
what they've done. And it's just basically, I mean, I'm

(01:25:39):
telling all the things that you can do here. I mean,
there's just so much you can do. I mean, it
looks like you can go right to websites, you can
surf websites. I mean, it's I think that the main
thing is what you're talking about with Star Trek is
natural language commands, and I think that these are not

(01:26:00):
necessarily natural language just yet. But it does give you
a full voice access guide which you can just like
print out. But I think what's going to happen is
there is a web browser called chat gbt at list
and chat gbt And have you used any of the
AI yet at all? Okay, Well, the AI, what you're

(01:26:21):
talking about AI is already there. So the idea of
just telling a computer what you want to do and
what like, we're already there with chat GBT. So i'd
recommend what kind of phone do you have a smartphone
or no? Yeah, okay, download the chat GBT app to
your phone. Make sure you get the official one. And
there's a special there's a special let me see where

(01:26:45):
it is on here. Go to chat GBT and there's
a special mode called voice. And I'm not kidding. You
will not believe how much you can do with just
that voice. You can just talk back and forth, you
can do calculations, you can ask things, you can ask
it to search a website, bringing you back information, brainstorm.
It is quite incredible, and it's all natural language. And

(01:27:06):
by the way, it's I believe it's free. I think
anyone could access that for free. But I think whereas
a computer, we're not there. I don't think just yet
with the computer. But this thing on Windows I think
is the closest you're going to get. And since you're
telling me you have, you know, it's more of a
convenience thing where you don't want to sit there and
type everything. You want to be able to call out commands.

(01:27:27):
I think this is gonna be really a good combination
for you. Now, the other thing we have, there's a
program called whisper Flow, and this will also change your life, Frank.
It's basically a voice dictation app. So when you're sitting
there trying to do your emails and things like that.
You can use this whisper Flow and it is going

(01:27:48):
to convert what you say into text in probably the
best way you've ever seen in your life. Like you're
not going to believe how good it is. And it
does that with the help of AI on the beat
back end. But I basically do not type out my
my anything on my computer anymore, including my newsletter, my emails.
I do all voice to text because it's gotten so good.

(01:28:10):
So again, just to review Windows Voice Access. It's called
whisper Flow and chat EBT. Download that toolkit and Frank,
I think it's it's really going to improve things for you.
And that justn't doesn't just go for Frank, that's for
anyone you know you're struggling with, you know you want
to We've got We're almost there. We're almost to the

(01:28:33):
point where you can control an entire computer with just
your voice and in a really good way. Rich on
tech dot TV. Coming up, we'll talk to uh, let's
see Roberto. We're going to talk to him about the
car world, transportation, what's going on there with Rivian and others.
Coming up right here, I'm Rich on Tech Roberto Baldwin

(01:28:57):
is a mobility journalist with sae ME Media Group. We
met in New York City at a GM event. We
talked the entire Uber ride to the airport. I figured,
you know what, I got to bring this guy in
the show because he knows his stuff about cars. Welcome
to the show, Roberto, thanks for having me on. Super excited,
absolutely so. It took me forever to get you on

(01:29:18):
this show because you travel so much. What are you
doing all the time?

Speaker 7 (01:29:21):
I travel pretty often, mostly with automakers. I went to
Poland to learn about their supply chain. I went to
the Alps Austrian and then I went to Germany to
learn about the new the Mercedes Benz CLA. I went
to Toyota to talk to them about their proving. It's yeah,

(01:29:42):
it's anything automotive. It's a lot, it's a very it's varied.
It's not just me going and driving cars, which is
a lot of it. There's a lot of like really
sort of deep in the weath of the automotive industry.

Speaker 1 (01:29:52):
You've been covering this stuff for a long time, right.

Speaker 7 (01:29:55):
Oh yeah, for well over a decade before that, I
was a tech journalist. But before all that, I was
a kid in the driveway every Saturday morning with my
dad being told to go get a ratchet or a wrench, or,
in the worst case scenario, I hammer.

Speaker 1 (01:30:10):
Oh wow, So I assume you know how to drive
stick I do.

Speaker 7 (01:30:14):
I own a manual super vr Z.

Speaker 1 (01:30:17):
Oh wow. Okay, I never learned. And my dad also
like to restore cars too. But when he asked me
for any sort of like help, like hey, can you
hold this oil pan or something, I'm just like, no,
I got to go do something.

Speaker 11 (01:30:30):
See.

Speaker 7 (01:30:30):
I tried that, but that wasn't really an option. Unfortunately.
It was. The hilarious part is I was just as
uninterested it seems as you were doing it. But then
as I got older, I found that when I'm working
on a car, I'm very calm. I'm very relaxed. It's
such a departure from our very digital world just to
sit there with a ratchet or a wrench or a

(01:30:52):
host clamp or whatever and sort of fix some vehicle.

Speaker 1 (01:30:55):
Oh one hundred percent. Don't get me wrong. I on
my street there's a car that's like an old Mustang
or something that's just sitting in a driveway for like
ten years now, And every time we walk past that.
I tell my kids, I go, do you think you
could see me as like the dad who like restores
this car? They're like no, but I but I have
the urge to do it, even though I have no
idea what I'm doing. All right, let's talk. Let's talk.

Speaker 7 (01:31:15):
You learned by doing yes, and.

Speaker 1 (01:31:17):
Now with the Internet, of course, there's so many ways
of learning. So let's talk about Rivian. They had their
they had their big autonomy day this week, so give
me an update on what they announced, Like, was there
anything that stood out to you about Rivian? And is
this company like in a good place or should we
be worried?

Speaker 7 (01:31:35):
I think they are in a good place. I think
part of that has to do with Volkswagen had issues
with their software a couple of years ago. They're in
car software, the ID four when it launched ID three
in Europe, when it launched both of those, the software
is very buggy, very laggy, and it really hurt initial
sales for those vehicles and maybe long term sales. Rivian,
on the other hand, they're in car software which really well.
So Volkswagon has given billions of dollars to Rivian in

(01:31:58):
order to help them with their software as a partner,
and so Ribbon's able to use that money to a
you know, produce vehicles. B are the R you know,
the R ones. So we're talking about the R two,
which is their sort of mid size suv. That's the
next item coming up from their lineup. But they're also
looking at enhancing their sort of future of self driving vehicles.

(01:32:21):
Their their level their level three vehicles. Level three is
is hands off and eyes off, so you could be
reading a book, you could be reading a newspaper. A
lot of automakers are working towards this right now in
the United States, only encountering Nevada. Does Mercedes Benz have
something like this, But on the way they're working on,
you know, beginning next year with the updated R ones,

(01:32:45):
you should be able to hands off but eyes on.
You're still in charge of everything that happens. Use that
system on any road, any road with painted lines, so
you could do it on a dirt road, but on
a you know, like a country road, on a back road,
potentially in town. It is sort of a big leap.

(01:33:08):
If you know anything about Blue Crewise or Super Crews,
those both of those systems typically require you to be
geo fenced onto a highway or a freeway. This goes
beyond that. That said, it's still a very difficult proposition.
It's still very difficult for vehicles to understand the road
contextually the same way that a human does. And you

(01:33:28):
still all in charge. So when you come to a
stop sign, when you come to a stoplight, when you
come to intersection, you still have to take over and
do you know, you have to drive while as if
you're just on a long straightaway, the vehicle for the
most part should be able to stay in its lane
without you having to take over control of the storiate.

Speaker 1 (01:33:48):
Well, how does what Rivin announce compared to what Tesla's
already doing.

Speaker 7 (01:33:52):
So with Rivian's announcing and Tesla's actually already doing this
as well, is they had their they're building their own silicon,
which is really actually quite difficult. And when you think
about your iPhones, all the chips inside of there, they're
making millions and millions of those phones. You have the
economics of scale, and the economics that scale comes with
the ability to find, you know, problems like weird edgu cases.

(01:34:14):
For automakers, you're not making millions and millions of vehicles.
If you're lucky you're selling a million, most likely you're
selling a couple hundred thousand a year, So they're going
to have that issue. But one of the really interesting parts,
and actually probably what everyone should be doing, is they're
adding LEDR to their vehicles. When they're talking about a
sort of hands off, eyes off vehicles, so that that

(01:34:35):
means they have the redundancy of light ar, radar and
cameras watching the road. It's that sort of full suite
that allows if something goes, if one sensor can't figure
out what's going on in the world, the other two
can pick up the select.

Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
This is a really big debate. I mean it's really
only a debate with Tesla because you know, Elon Musk
and Tesla they continuously say like, we don't need this,
we're not building this in but every car maker that
I've seen is pretty much using it. And I'll be
honest as someone who has a Tesla, like in the fog,
I don't trust self driving because it can't see anything
that I can't see. And so with light R you

(01:35:11):
can you can see like two four football fields ahead
with these you know this laser I get. I don't
know what is it laser vision?

Speaker 7 (01:35:18):
It's it's so radar is you know, it's it's radio waves.
They bounce off something, it sends this, It sends information
back and the vehicle or whatever you're using, processes of
that information and tells you, oh, this is so far
away and it's so big. With light R it's using light.
So it's lasers, that's what.

Speaker 9 (01:35:37):
It was.

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
Later Okay, I'm just saying that sounds weird, but okay, yeah,
and so it can it can see things more. And
I feel like that, I mean, that seems to be
the way to go. I mean, Tesla's doing a good job,
but like I feel like for overall, it's like all
these companies are doing they're all doing light R now
and they're really pushing to use that.

Speaker 7 (01:35:56):
Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the issues
I think Tesla early on, you know, especially with the
Model three and everything, cost their concerns are really cost base.
They wouldn't say it. You know, there's no dash cam
in or I'm sorry, not a dash can dash cluster
in the Model three and Model why, And they'll tell
us all day it's a design issue. Really, it's about costs.
That's a that's an additional screen, that's an additional wine hardness,

(01:36:19):
that's additional software and development you have to do. So
Tesla has always been very cost conscious and light are
you know, when especially when it first came ten thousand
dollars per unit, is that's a lot of money. Now
they're getting down, you know, five hundred dollars, one thousand
dollars and so the you know, the costs of those
have come down, and compound that with the fact that

(01:36:40):
they really do add an additional it's just this additional
sense of redundancy. And when it comes to self driving cars,
the more redundancy you can add to a vehicle, the
better off your you are. And it's going to make
you know, like like you said, for you you don't
trust it because you know, there's other technology out there
they can do additional information if if if the driver

(01:37:00):
doesn't trust it, then what's the point.

Speaker 1 (01:37:03):
Yeah, yeah, And I think it's mostly just an inclement
you know, conditions and things like that. But you know, overall,
it's it's come a long way, I mean a really
long way on the Tesla for sure. I do want
to talk about this because I get these questions all
the time. People say, why can't we get these cheap
Chinese evs here in the US, I mean over in China,
don't they have all these like super inexpensive EV's And

(01:37:24):
that's just not the case here. What's going on with that?

Speaker 7 (01:37:28):
So the cheap evs in China has to do with
a lot of different For one thing, there's a lot
of incentives that the government has given it to Chinese
automakers and the Chinese battery manufacturers in order to essentially,
uh supercharge that industry. Chinese battery technology is lead, you know,
light years ahead of everyone else right now. But you know,

(01:37:49):
they have they've they've gotten a lot of uh, you know,
influx of money, you know, so incentives from the government.
So there's that. But the ham alligation is a is
a weird word, hamuligation, they want to say it out loud,
but it is creating a vehicle that will meet the
regulatory rules of a region. So in China, their homoligation,
their regulatory rules are different than the United States. And

(01:38:13):
in China people don't really drive all that last, most
people are living in cities that there's a lot of congestion.
It's not the United States, not you know, the big
highways where people are flying down the road to eighty
ninety miles an hour. Over here, we have different rules.
So in order for those really cheap let's say five
thousand dollars, ten thousand and fifteen thousand dollars evs to

(01:38:34):
be built so that they meet the regulatory rules of
the United States, they're going to be more expensive. There's
really not much that I think the bid dolphin or
the seagull is also sold in Mexico and it's like
five ten thousand dollars more than the Chinese version.

Speaker 1 (01:38:52):
Ah okay, yeah, so.

Speaker 7 (01:38:54):
So you know they're in Mexico's f mulligation. Their regulatory
system isn't quite as strict as the United States. So
if you bring that car over the United States, you know,
now you're talking about you know, sometime that's maybe ten
fifteen being twenty five thousand United States, which is still
a deal. I mean, that's really like sort of the
big selling point for the slates. So we are looking
at potential for less sense of evs. But you can't

(01:39:18):
just grab a car from China and bring it over here.
There's there's so many things that have to happen to
that vehicle before you can bring it over and then
of course we have you know, we can get into
the tariff debate and what that means for bringing vehicles
into this country, but it really does come down to
making sure that the vehicle is built safely for the

(01:39:39):
region it's going into and in order for those Chinese
evs that we all see very they are very cheap.
You're like, why can't I get a fifteen thousand dollars EV. Well,
because if you bring that car over here and it
get hits, it gets hit by an F one fifty,
or if it hits a wall or another car or whatever,
it's not going to have the same crash worthiness as
the cars that are built specific for this country. And

(01:40:01):
to be on it, you want to be safe when
you're in.

Speaker 1 (01:40:03):
Oh, yes you do. As someone who was in an accident
a couple of months ago, Yes, yes you do. It
means the world ham alligation new word. Okay, thank you all.
Add that to the list. Roberto Baldwin, Roberto Baldwin, thanks
so much for joining me today. Uh what's the best
way for folks to follow you? Is it on like Instagram? Twitter?

Speaker 7 (01:40:21):
I am on Instagram and I am on blue sky
and it's.

Speaker 11 (01:40:26):
St r g w y s.

Speaker 1 (01:40:28):
Okay, it looks like stringways. I'll link you up on
the website. Rich on tech dot tv, thanks so much
for joining me today. Great conversation. Learned a lot, including
a new word. Coming up. We are going to open
up the feedbag rich on tech dot tv. Submit your
your feedback right now. We've got some of it here.
We're gonna get some more, I guess right back after this.

(01:41:00):
The celebrity impersonation scams billions of dollars. They cost fans
and estimated five point three billion dollars in twenty twenty five.
Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish the most targeted artists.
So here's what happens. Hackers take over verified social media
accounts and then they push fake tickets, merchandise, crypto and

(01:41:21):
all kinds of VIP offers. One in five concert tickets
sold on social media part of a scam or was fake.
This comes from Billboard and Spikers. Spikers is a company
that protects these social media accounts, so it's in their
best interest to let people know that this happens. Fans
are often tricked by fake meet and greets, pre sale links,

(01:41:43):
giveaways and AI. Of course, as you know, is making
all this stuff harder to spot. But imagine you know,
you're a tailor Swift fan. You want to get tickets
to the concert, and they text you and say, hey,
we can offer you these tickets. They just came available
one hundred bucks. Here you go times you know, hundred
people they text that too. I mean it's really wild,
So be careful. And like we learned last week, celebrities

(01:42:06):
do not want to become your friends. They are not
texting you. They're not trying to win your love. It's
a one way street. Let's be real with celebrities. You
see them, you love them, They're not really loving you back.
I mean it's great to feel that they do, but
let's be real. Australia first, I think it's the first
country in the world to have a social media ban

(01:42:29):
for kids under sixteen. They've officially banned TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, snapchat,
x Reddit, twitch threads and others. Platforms have to remove
kids that are under sixteen and block new sign ups. Yes,
this is actually happening in the world. Companies that don't
can pay fines. Now the government says the ban is

(01:42:52):
not perfect on day one. Obviously, there's two sides to this.
The kids probably don't want it, parents are probably split
on it. Tech butanies obviously don't want it. But think
about the addiction and mental health improvements that it will
have on this country. When no kid has it, you know,
nobody worries about the other kid having it. But here's
the thing. I've not been to Australia during this ban.

(01:43:15):
I'd be curious to see, like on the ground, what
it's like like our kids just completely figuring out how
to get around this, our parents helping them get around it.
Or is everyone just like, oh cool, we have no
longer have to worry about this in our lives until
after sixteen life is better. And yeah, it probably is.
So we know that kids are really addicted to this stuff.

(01:43:36):
Their brains are still forming, and it's probably a good
thing that Australia took that, even though the tech companies
do not want that to happen here in the US.
Let's get to the feedback. John Wrights in, I liked
your story on the ring Doorbell. I actually bought one
of the first models and the company invited me to
their Ring Deep Explorers group to beta test new products.
It was a blast trying out all the new gear.

(01:43:58):
They even gave me professionally monitored devices for life. Oh wow.
They ended up using one of my suggestions, adding alarm
profiles so you can switch to preset alerts and device settings.
It's been a fun ride. Holden in Orange County says
I first found you because you featured my company on
your show. But I believe the best part is I
became a fan. I really enjoy what you do. Your

(01:44:19):
stories are interesting, entertaining, and you've saved my bacon more
than once. A couple months ago, I was in a
panic about being forced to move my desktop and laptop
to Windows eleven. Then you did a segment about installing
Windows security updates. Now I've got an extra year of support. Brilliant.
Thank you, Holden. Yes, I remember you coming to the
studio do a story. Diana in California. Thanks for your

(01:44:40):
hard work and incredible knowledge. We are blessed. May God
richly bless your family always. Thank you, Diana. Let's see
Cammy in California. I really appreciate you. It's amazing what
you do and you still answer all your emails, not
all of them, but I do answer a lot. Your
knowledge is so helpful, and you explain things in a
way anyone can understand. And on top that, you've got

(01:45:00):
a lovely family life. Thank you so much. Tell me
that my kids are screaming at me because I'm trying
to take their screen time away, but yes, I do
appreciate it. Carolyn says, I'm a Substack newsletter subscriber. I
was delighted when you took over the tech news on KFI.
You're an everyman nerd in the nicest way. You're down
to earth and explain things so everyone can understand. Keep

(01:45:20):
it up. Thank you, Carolyn. Don we got a lot.
I think it's just the holiday spirit. So many kind
words this week. Don says, thank you for trying to
make tech simple for the rest of us. I always
appreciate how you break things down, even when topics are
way beyond my brain. Dust blessings Don and Jules in
Hawaii says we were on vacation and so you pop

(01:45:40):
up on the Hawaii News. Very cool moment. Congratulations on
your success. Jules. You know I know I'm on in Hawaii.
I know we're on on TV. I'm not sure on
the radio, but I always say, like, shouldn't I be
able to go to Hawaii at any time? And like
right off that entire trip because I'm on TV there, Yes,
I would think so. But it's so funny. I don't
advertise the fact that we're on in a bunch of

(01:46:01):
different places, but people always text me when they're in
their hotel room and they see my TV segment show
up on their hotel room TV and they're like, Rich, wait,
what how am I watch? It always throws people for
a loop. So yes, and then the radio show, obviously
we're on in different places. People don't take a picture
of their radio, but they do text me and say
I was traveling or I was driving through and I

(01:46:22):
found you anyway, thank you. No matter how you consume
this show, that's going to do it. For this episode,
you can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.
Go to rich on tech dot tv. I'm on social media.
Please follow me there at rich on Tech. Next week
we're going to talk to Matt Mazenko. He is the
general manager at Nomo Robo. We've talked about them on
the show. They are the big spam call and text

(01:46:42):
blocking app. So he's going to talk about all the
things that's happening during the holidays with scams. Thank you
so much for listening. There are so many ways you
can spend your time. I really do appreciate you spending
it right here with me. If you want to get
your feedback in for next week, submit that now at
the website. Rich on tech dot TV, hit contact and
I may read your message on the show. One reminder

(01:47:05):
before I go, please please don't text and drive. It's
not just for your safety, but for the safety of
everyone around you. I know it's tempting you get that
message it pops up. Turn on the feature on your
phone where your phone doesn't even ring or doesn't even vibrate,
or doesn't even do a notification. Put that driving mode on.
It'll save you. Just I'm telling you from someone who
had an accent recently. Just you don't want to get

(01:47:27):
involved in that. Please. Thanks to everyone who makes the
show possible. Adam in today for Bobo. Fantastic job. We
got Kim on the phones. Thank you for dealing with
all the calls today. My name is rich Demiro. I
will talk to you real soon.

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Host

Rich DeMuro

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