Coronavirus tracking feature on smartphones

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
How to avoid becoming a victim of ransomware. It's not
just you. There are a lot of random phrases that
trigger virtual assistance. Good earbuds for just twenty eight dollars.
What plus your tech questions answered? What's going on? I'm
Rich Dmiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast
where I talk about the tech stuff I think you

(00:30):
should know about. It's also where I answer the questions
that you send me. My name is Rich Damiro, tech
reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Say hello
to producer Megan. What's up?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hello? How's it going?

Speaker 1 (00:43):
It is going well, you know, as well as things
can go during a major pandemic. I know it's good.
I mean, you know it's going. Yeah, you were off
last week, so how did that get Yes?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, no, it's I think it's important to at least
takes a me time, like once a year or you know,
it was nice to just get a little break. I like,
didn't go on social media.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
I just that's the See. This is the secret to
vacation in twenty twenty. Literally just turn off your phone
and you're on vacation.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Do you know how tough it is to do that though, Like, so,
how many times did you sneak on? Because I know
you did you had to have Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
No, I mean I did sneak on. It was mainly
like the first five days, I just didn't want to
like be on it so much, and so I would
go on it just to see if, like my friend
sent me something funny, you know, on Instagram, but like
I didn't scroll, like I just I really just tried
to like focus on enjoying like having a little bit
of a break, and I felt like it really helped

(01:43):
me like really get into like a vacation.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeahcent I. In fact, my phone is still set to
my annoying vacation mode, which I limited myself to. I
think it was like thirty minutes a day of Twitter
and Facebook and Instagram combined. So every wow, every day,
like right in the morning, I hit that, and then
the whole rest of the day, I'm doing that thing
where it says like fifteen more minutes, fifteen more minutes,
fifteen more minutes, fifty more. I'm like, why am I

(02:07):
doing fifty more minutes like this? But it's it runs
out too early. But when I was on vacation, my
main thing was just not being on social media as
much as possible, and it really does change, because the
thing about social media is it never ends. It never
ever ends, and you can go down down a wormhole
so quickly and just start researching something like someone says
something like, oh wait, what is that? And you just

(02:28):
start researching and you follow it on Instagram, then you
go to Twitter, and then next thing you know, you're
looking on Amazon see if you should buy this thing.
And it's like a whole big thing, and if you're
just off of it, you kind of forget about it.
And yes, it just keeps going, but you're not part
of it.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Well, glad you got some time off. Good to have
you back, even though I have not seen you now
in what four months?

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Oh my gosh, yeah I think it. Did you say
four months?

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah? I think so.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah. I think it's been.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
It's so weird, been enjoyable, just kidding. All right, Let's
start the first story of the day, mac ransomware. And
I don't think that this is gonna affect a lot
of people, but I want people to know about it
because this article in malware Bites has some really good
tips on how to avoid malware and let me just

(03:16):
give you the quick rundown. Most people think that there's
nothing scary with a Mac. You know, there's no viruses,
there's no malware, and for the most part, that is
generally true. But from time to time things do spring up.
And this one is called thief Quest Thief Quest or
a written I think it was called Evil Quest. Yeah,
so researchers are calling it both. But this software has

(03:39):
the ability to search your system for passwords and cryptocurrency wallets,
log which you type. And the way people are getting
it is from downloading pirated software from a torrent website,
and I don't think many of you are doing that.
Maybe you are, I don't know. But the other thing
is that it also has to break through all of
these warnings on your Mac computer. So with the recent

(04:01):
Max I think it was the last operating system, they
started doing this thing where any software you install that's
not from a trusted developer, you get a lot of
Windows that basically prohibit you from installing that software unless
you go into your settings and specifically say I want
to allow this installation. It's under security setting, Security and Privacy,

(04:22):
and then you go to general and it says allow
apps downloaded from and I app Store and identified developers
is what I have as my default. But if it's
not one of those identified developers, it basically just stops
the installation, and you have to know how to go
in there to actually allow it. And so this stops
a lot of stuff from getting on your computer. But
if you ignore all those warnings, which I do because

(04:44):
I do install software from unidentified developers because I'm testing
a lot of stuff and just because they're unidentified doesn't
mean they're bad. It just means that Apple they haven't
entered into like Apple's software program or whatever. Anyway, the
point of this article in malware bytes is that malware
bites will detect this malware and remove it, but if
your files get encrypted, they're not sure how bad because

(05:06):
this system also locks up your software and demands ransom,
so it locks up all your files and then says, hey,
if you don't pay us, we just you know, will
delete all your files. And that happens pretty often on
Windows computers, by the way. So the bottom line to
this whole thing is that this malware bytes blog post
says you always want to have two backups of all

(05:28):
of your important data and one should not be attached
to your Mac at all times because if you just
have like a you know, on a Mac, you can
do that time machine thing. If you just have a
hard drive connected to your Mac, guess what, the ransomware
or the malware will also find its way onto that
hard drive and ruin your backup. So you don't want
to do that. So this guy from malware Byte says

(05:48):
he use his time machine to maintain a couple copies,
then a carbon copy cloner to maintain a couple more,
and one of the backups is always in a safe
deposit box at the bank and he swaps them periodically. Okay,
that seems like a bit much. You could probably just
keep your hard drive. Like how much I go to
my bank for my safe deposit box and I also
count my one hundred dollars bills in there, and then

(06:11):
I have my hard drive right under them. I don't
think you need to do that, but I do see
what he's saying. Keep keep an off site drive, so
a drive that you back up to and keep it
on a shelf in your office, and ideally you would
keep Ideally, what you would do is you'd have an
online backup and a hard drive and just keep them
in different places. That's the main thing. And he says,

(06:31):
if you have a good backup, ransomware is no threat
because the bottom line is if you're regularly backing up
your computer. By the way, I said bottom line about
seventy five times, just now a little rusty. I love
the bottom line. It's always such a great It's like,
bottom line, what are we looking at here? You know,
if you ever go to negotiate a car, it's like
you go back and forth and back and forth. I
was like, just give me the bottom line, like what

(06:52):
is the deal here? How much do you have to
pay for this thing? They got to go into the
manager's office and you sit there. Buying a car is
the worst experience a human adult has to go through.
I think, yeah, one of the worst. So I really, well,
I have a person that I go to and so
basically I only buy cars from like one place now
because I've got a person, And I think people do

(07:14):
find their guy. You know, I got a guy. But
once you find them, like this this woman, I know,
she literally gives me the bottom line price, like out
the door, what is the price? What am I paying?
I don't want to have to deal with.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Well, then it shouldn't be the worst experience.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
It hasn't been. But in my past experience, Megan, I've
bought several cars and it's always been the worst. And
so my next car I will definitely be buying. Remember Carvana,
I'm probably gonna go with that thing, like one of
those kind of things you know, where you just go
online and you buy. It's probably might I'm saving up
for a Tesla, so I mean that will be I
don't think they fool around because I've looked at their

(07:50):
website and there's no fooling around there.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Anyway, You'll know what you want with Tesla. It'll be
very straightforward.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yes, keep backups of your stuff and keep them in
different places and you should be okay. All right, now,
let's see that's you there.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
You are all right. This first question comes from John.
Do you happen to know when iOS fourteen public beta
will be released?

Speaker 1 (08:15):
Hmmm, million dollar question, John. I think any day now.
So from everything that I've experienced on the I did
the developer one on a backup phone and it is fantastic.
I think there are a lot of changes in iOS fourteen.
If there's ever time for a new iOS book. This
would be the time because there are megan so many

(08:37):
changes you will not believe it. And a lot of
them are kind of small things, but they're very useful.
And you know, they said when iOS thirteen came out,
they said they were on like kind of a TikTok schedule.
Where iOS twelve would be a big update, iOS thirteen
would not. Now iOS fourteen is a big, big update.
So not only do we get the widgets on the
home screen, but we also get the app library, which

(09:00):
is basically an organized list of all your apps. But
it's amazing and it's very it's been solid, solid, rock
solid on by the way, my primary phone, which you're
not supposed to do and I do not recommend doing
even with the public beta. Don't install it on your
public on your main device because it could just go wrong.
Like my phone last night, I had my first crash

(09:22):
where it's just the whole thing just like it didn't
erase anything, but you know, and there's little things here
and there, and the battery life is really bad. So
I used to never care about battery life. My phone
is going dead, you know, three quarters of the way
through the day or towards the end of the day.
So it's definitely not something you want to install on
your main device. I'm a tech guy for a living,
so I will take that risk for you. But to

(09:45):
answer John's question, I would say probably any day now
because the developer beta is so solid. I think Apple,
after a couple of weeks of getting the feedback, is
going to be like, all right, we can launch this
to the public as a beta. Don't forget, this is
not the final software. Final iOS fourteen will come out
in September. That's when you should download it. But if
you're tech in client, that's the safest. It's just here's

(10:08):
the main thing you don't want to happen. You don't
want to be in an emergency situation where you need
to call nine one one and your phone crashes and
it does not work. That's kind of like the worst
case scenario. Yeah, Instagram not working or you know. But
there's little things like Instagram may come up with an
app update during the beta and it breaks the functionality
of Instagram because they're not thinking about the beta. They're

(10:29):
thinking about the average person and that's running the final software.
So these are the things you have to think about
what I did was I did a encrypted backup through
iTunes on my computer, and so I have that so
if my phone totally goes could put then I can
just restore it. But that's still a pain. Believe me,
you don't. You don't want to do this.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
So, yeah, you don't want to.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Do this, Let me do it. Let let the tech
folks in your life do it, and then you just
let do it. Yeah, all right. So so this is
interesting and it's something that happens all the time. If
you have an Alexa or a Siri or a Google
Assistant nearby. Eight yep, okay, you you can't hear that.

(11:12):
But something just activated in my office here.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
That's you heard it.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Okay, So there you go. And I don't even know
which one that was. But the point is you have
these things around and half the time you're just going
on your merry life. And they say and they respond,
you're like, what what did I say? I did not
call you out by your keyword or hot word or whatever.
You know, they all have their own phrases that you
have to say. And these computer companies, computer these tech

(11:38):
companies have designed these keywords in a certain way so
that we don't say a variation of them very often,
and so that way, these little assistants can click into
you know, functionality when they need to, only when they
need to. But it doesn't always work that way. And
researchers now say they found over one thousand phrases that

(11:59):
in correctly trigger these virtual assistants, and they did it
through TV shows. They they their whole research papers about
TV shows saying stuff in dialogue that's activating these little
devices in the background. And here's the interesting part about this.
These are local triggers. So how these devices work. There's
it's locally listening for the hot word, right, if you

(12:22):
have SI r I, it's h SII, or if you
have Google, it's I can't even say it because if
I spell it, it's saying it, so it'll it'll trigger it.
And you know, the A word I can't even say
because it's just the A word. So if you say
any of those things, it locally listens and it goes, okay,
I think I heard that, and then it will send

(12:44):
that information to the server if it thinks it hurt it,
and the server will analyze it and say, oh no,
actually Rich said something else, and then it will just
it will just die down, but in many cases it
will still activate. So here's some of the words. For
the A word, you can say unacceptable, election and a
letter and it might trigger her. For Google Home, you

(13:05):
might say okay, cool and okay, who is reading and
it might trigger that one. For Siri, it's a city,
and hey Jerry, and for Cortana Montana. So now you
may try these at home, and they may not work.
Because here's what the researchers are saying. That these things

(13:25):
are so smart that they're updated in near real time
by these tech companies. So once they saw this, they
probably went in and manually tweaked these things just a
little bit so they don't respond to these these phrases anymore.
But they found a lot of phrases, and they haven't
published their full paper, but the bottom line is they
say that these voice assistants can intrude on users' privacy

(13:47):
even when they think their devices are not listening. And
if you're concerned about this, you might want to keep
these things unplugged, turned off, or blocked from listening except
when you actually want to use them, which kind of
defeats the purpose of how the wakeword because you want
them listening so that you can use them. Amazon said
to Ours Technica, which is the writers of this article,

(14:09):
not the paper, just the article. They said, by design,
our weakeword detection and speech recognition get better every day
as customers use their devices, we optimize performance. We continue
to invest in improving our wakeword detection technology and encourage
the researchers of this paper to share their methodology so
we can respond in further detail. So what Amazon's saying
is like, look, we know this happens, but we are

(14:30):
constantly It's like a cat and mouse game. They're constantly
making these things respond in a better way. But it
does happen, and it happens a lot.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
All right. This next question comes from Tara. Can you
talk about the COVID tracker on our phones? I would
like to understand that more.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Good question, time, very timely because this is our story
today on KTLA. And and by the way, I'm very
proud of my graphic that I created for this. Did
you see the blog post because I'm I'm very proud
of this graphic. I did it with Adobe Adobe Photoshop camera.
Oh yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah, Like, if that doesn't

(15:14):
make you want to click. I don't know what's going
to So.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, the reddit.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
It's just so exciting, right, It's like, wait, this is dangerous,
this is fearful, this is interesting, this is Yes, it's clickbait,
but in a way of I want you to know
about this, and and so what happens is I love
my job because I am on the I know things
from people before I even know things. Let me explain

(15:37):
what that means. So I feel like the viewers or
followers that follow me are kind of like my little
eyes and ears in the entire world. So even if
I'm not experiencing something, they are emailing me because they are.
So if they see something on social media that suspect
or weird or interesting, they email me. And when I
get a bunch of these emails, I know something's something's up.

(15:58):
So with this coronavirus tracking, we had done a story
on it a while back, and I thought nobody really cared.
But then during this whole outage with T Mobile a
couple weeks ago, I guess people timed a social media
post to say, oh, you know when that outage happened
on your cell phone, Well, guess what the company secretly
installed coronavirus tracking software. And of course this goes on

(16:21):
fire on social media and it spreads and people ask
me like is this true? And sure enough, it is true.
The software is on your phone if you have an
Android or an iPhone, check it out. You can go
on iPhone to Settings, Privacy, Health and you'll see COVID
nineteen exposure logging. If you go to Android, it's Settings
Google COVID nineteen exposure notifications. This is the fastest I've

(16:42):
ever seen a new feature hit almost every iPhone and
Android in the world in a matter of months. And
what it's doing is it's not tracking you, but it's
framework for tracking systems that states and health authorities are building. Now.
Have they built any frameworks that actually take advantage of

(17:03):
Google and Apple system not really so far. The only
states that have said they are is North Dakota, Alabama,
and South Carolina. Twenty two countries have also expressed interest.
But and according to the person I interviewed as well,
he says that the problem with this system is that
people don't trust big tech anymore, and it all started
to unravel with Facebook's Cambridge Analytical Analytica scandal, And so

(17:28):
the reality is this framework is on your phone, but
it's not activated, and the only way you can activate
it is with an app, and right now there are
no real apps to download. So I know that sounds
very complicated and people are annoyed that this thing is
on their phone, which, by the way, I don't think
you should be, because if we actually had this active,

(17:49):
it would really help in slowing the spread of coronavirus.
Because right now, Megan, do you know how this thing
is spreading.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
By people being around people to have it?

Speaker 1 (18:01):
But like how and where and when? Like we don't
really now need.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
We need like the data.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Exactly, And that's what I'm saying. So if you yeah,
we'll give us data. I am ninety nine percent in
my home, but there are a few times when I
leave my home to go to the grocery store or
go to the gas station or whatever. And so if
I had this on my phone, and let's say I
came down with coronavirus, I would or sorry if if
I no, if I I don't want to say that.

(18:28):
If I got a notification that said, oh, by the way,
you were exposed, I'm like, oh what, oh my gosh,
I need to go get tested, right now, so now
I get tested way earlier than I would have until,
you know, waiting for symptoms to happen or whatever. And
now I can stay inside my house for fourteen days
to let it pass and not pass it on to
anyone in that time. That's why this system slows the spread.

(18:49):
So we shouldn't really be against it. I get it
people don't like to be tracked, but every single expert
that I've spoken to agrees that the system that Google
and Apple came up with does protech individual privacies. They're
not using location, they're not using identities. They're simply using
Bluetooth to measure how close you are to other smartphones.

(19:10):
And that's it. And when one of those smartphones says
one of their owners says, oh I got coronavirus, it
emails or notifies the other phones that you know that
came into contact with it. I mean, it's really a
brilliant system. And anyway, it's not active, it's not really there.
It's not doing anything. But if you want to check
and see what it's doing on your phone, go ahead,

(19:30):
take a look. You can't uninstall it, so it's there.
And I hope that a big state like California or
New York pledges support for this thing. I don't know
why they're not. California should have been on board from
day one. Apple and Google, I'm sure lobbied them, and
they just I don't know why they didn't want to
do it. Maybe they just thought privacy. They didn't they
didn't think it would be a good enough sell to citizens,

(19:51):
And that could be a very valid thing. But it's
unfortunate because I do think as a tech person this
could slow the spread. So okay, yeah, I'll get off
my soapbox. Let's see. Let's talk about YouTube TV. I
don't want to spend a whole bunch of time on this,
but YouTube TV, which is their cable TV offering live

(20:13):
TV all these channels. They are raising the price again,
and the price has gone up from when I first
covered this thing, from thirty five bucks a month now
it is up to sixty five dollars a month. And
what do you get, Well, you get eighty five channels,
which is awesome. They just added all the Viacom channels
be ET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon. And in fact,

(20:35):
when I first covered this, the reason I did not
sign up for YouTube TV other than a free trial
was because they did not have Nick Junior. And what
was the other one? What's the other kid's channel, Disney Junior.
I think they might have had one of those. I
know they didn't have Nick Junior, so I said nah.

(20:55):
But the problem is everyone's going crazy about the fact
that this is so expensive, but the reality is this
is just cable TV, and what do you expect. You're
not gonna get a you know, Spectrum for you know,
Spectrum charging ninety dollars a month and then YouTube charging
twenty and it's the same exact service. It just doesn't

(21:16):
work that way. These companies that own these channels make
money based on charging these cable companies a certain amount
for each channel. So it's just not happening. And as
YouTube tv continues to add channels, they just hike up
the price, just like regular cable. So if you're looking
for an alternative to regular cable, you gotta find an alternative.

(21:37):
And it's what I've done, which I don't have standard cable.
I have a bunch of streaming services and I have
a lot of them, so they all add up to
about what I was paying for cable. But I like
the ability to get rid of them when I want
to sign up when I want to same thing with YouTube.
With YouTube TV, you can pause it if you don't

(21:57):
want it, So maybe what you do you pause it
for six months and then you come back to it.
But I don't see a big need for a cable
package in my life anymore because I like to watch
shows on demand and for my local streaming, I use
an antenna for KTLA and that's all I need. And
so it was funny though. Actually on our vacation when

(22:20):
we went on a road trip, when we were staying
at the hotel, the kids are not aware of regular
TV like channels, so the hotel room had direct TV.
And so I'm not kidding you, Megan. My kids were
so enthralled with the idea of like Nick Junior. They
watched it NonStop because they couldn't believe that like shows

(22:42):
just ran at a certain time. And then the commercials
they were going nuts over because they had never seen
commercials before. And so they're sitting there, Well, they don't
watch TV, they don't watch regular TV, so.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
I know, I just grew up with that, so I like,
that's so wild to me.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
Every single commercial they they called me into the room, Dad,
you got you gotta see this thing. And I'm like, kids,
it's a commercial. And I'm like, okay, that does look
cool because I don't really see him either. But it's
like it was just the funniest It's like.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
The commercials were working on them, like they wanted to
buy everything everything.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
I mean, they were writing things down, they were waiting
for them. Because the commercials come on over and over,
so every time it would come on, they call me
into the room again. And you know, by the way,
we weren't watching TV on the on the vacation most
of the time, but you know, at night when my
wife and I were getting ready for dinner or whatever,
we'd put on TV for them. You know, it's like
just for a little portion. But it was just the

(23:37):
funniest thing because it just it really just made me
realize how out of the loop they are from like
the way I grew up watching cartoons on like a
Saturday morning or after school, where you just tune into
the channel and you see what's on, and nowadays everything
is so kind of figured out. But great question about coronavirus.
I think I answered most of it. So if I didn't. Well,

(23:58):
look at the story at Katila dot com, slash tech,
or just go to rich on Tech dot tv and
look for coronavirus tracking. All right, this was really cool.
I'm always on the lookout for a new poker app,
and easy Poker seems like a real promising app. And
I know I've mentioned other poker apps in the past
to help you host a virtual game because of the

(24:18):
whole stay at home situation, but easy Poker works for that.
But the reality is the guys are the team behind
this devised this as an actual replacement for cards and chips.
So even if you were having a game in your home,
which right now we're not really doing, but if you
could this, you would still use this because everyone's got

(24:40):
a smartphone and it just kind of takes care of
all the I guess, let's it inefficiencies in a standard game,
which is cards, counting, chips whatever. Now, personally, I don't
really want to replace my poker games with my friends
with the chips and everything. I don't want to replace
that experience. I like that, and so I don't think

(25:02):
it's going to replace it. But I think it is
a fun concept, and the concept is you can play
poker at any time with your friends and you can
all be anywhere. So Easy Poker a couple of things
that they did to make it cool. Number one, you
don't have to install like a credit card. You don't
have to register with like a credit card, because all
these like poker apps they want you like a credit

(25:22):
card immediately. Most of them are played horizontally, but you
hold your cards vertically, so you hold your phone vertically,
which is a small thing but it's actually quite important.
And then also you can hide your cards, so you
tap to kind of look at your cards, and then
you can just put your phone down and your cards
you're hidden. It automatically hides those. So again, this was
created by real poker players to emulate what a real
game would be like. It just so happens they launched

(25:44):
it at the perfect time where it also works for
a virtual game. And I kind of tested this out
just a little bit, where you sign up for a
game and then you just text the link to your friends.
They have to download the app and sign up, but
that's it. It doesn't ask them for a credit card or anything,
which I'm wondering what it means for the money, Like
how you would settle out if you're actually trying to
play with real money. Anyway, the website is easy dot Poker,

(26:06):
so I think it's really cool. I want to check
it out with my friends. So far, my friends have
hosted a bunch of these virtual poker games. I have
not played any of them, but I am gonna do
one with this, and I think they're all gonna be
blown away at just how easy and fun this is.
I think it looks really cool anyway. If you want
the real experience, by the way, which gives you the

(26:27):
most out of the app, you're gonna the host is
gonna have to pay forty bucks a year for the membership,
or you can pay six dollars a month, but forty
dollars a year is a way better deal. Pay for
it once, and then you get up to twelve players
and you can customize your game. If you just do
the four players free game, you don't get to really
customize stuff. And there's no video chat on this one.
There's only audio chat, which is probably just fine, so

(26:49):
you can audio chat with your friends while you do this,
or you just fire up Zoom on a separate computer.
You're all on Zoom and you're just playing together. I mean,
it's I think it's such a cool little app I
can't wait to play.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
So that is really cool. Maybe I'll try it. Even
though I've never played poker.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
You never played poker? No, never, Well, Lindsay used to play.
We played a lot in college with my friends, like
pretty much like all the time. And so Lindsay used
to play with us, my wife, and it was funny
because she got good. You know, she got good after
a while. But I don't. I don't think she's played
in a long time.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, I feel like it's a good skill to have.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
It's fun, all right, what's up?

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Okay? Next question comes from Brenda hi Rich was wondering
if you could give me any feedback on how the
Ring security system works. What is the service like? And
I see they have different prices for plans for the monitoring.
I am looking at the apartment. People one my doorbell
would would let's see, my doorbell from what I can see,

(27:54):
will not catch anything. Do you also know if I
have a have to provide permission to install the leasing office?

Speaker 1 (28:01):
All right, let's break some of this down. So she
wants to know number one the ring, So the Ring
works this way. You install the ring on your door,
and when someone walks past it, it will start recording.
It will send you a notification, it will save that clip,
and boom, you're good. Now. To get that feature and
that functionality, you do have to pay for a subscription plan,

(28:25):
and so their basic subscription plan is three dollars a
month or thirty dollars a year. I would always pay
for the thirty dollars a year because you're gonna save
and believe me, you're doing this thing over and over.
You're in, you're out. So I know it doesn't seem
like a lot to save six dollars a year, but
if you do it for five years, that's now an
extra year that you've saved. So I would do that.

(28:46):
And here's the thing about ring doorbells that people don't realize.
If you don't pay for a subscription, they will still
work and you can still look in on your doorbell
or your camera. The difference is that it will not
re cord the clips for you and save them. So
that's the big difference is that you don't get the history.
So what does that mean. It means that if you

(29:07):
were not looking through your door at the moment that
someone walked by, Well, you're not going to capture them,
You're not going to see them, so you definitely It's
kind of one of these things where you kind of
have to pay for it for it to actually work.
And nest cameras are the same way. Now, whyse cameras
are not that way? Why's the little cheap twenty dollars
security cameras? They will record clips for fourteen days on

(29:30):
a rolling basis, So if someone came up to your
camera in within fourteen days, that clip will be saved
to your account for free. So you know, but you
have to know these little delineations. The Pepole camera is
one that they specifically created for people that live in
apartments or condos. It's on sale right now eighty bucks.

(29:50):
That's a fantastic deal. It's very simple to install. I
have not dead up myself, but all you have to
do is remove the existing people, which I imagine you
just unscrew it and then put this in at it's
in the same hole, and then you just screw it
back on and boom. I don't think there's any damage
to the door. There's no drilling of new holes, so
I don't think personally that you need to get permission
from your apartment manager. Of course I'm not your leasing manager,

(30:14):
but I would think that as long as you're not
damaging your building, it should be fine. By the way,
this is a fourth of July sale. This is a great deal.
Fifty bucks off. Wow, that's really good. Wow, so wow,
that's oh wow. It ends on well by the time
a lot of people listen to this, it might be ended.
It's July sixth, But that's a great deal eighty bucks
for this thing. So I would jump on it. And
I think that's going to be a fantastic solution for

(30:36):
a home. When I lived in an apartment, this would
have been a great little solution for my door because
you know, if someone tone up to your door, that's
that's the point of entry for an apartment is your door.
So if you've got a little ring thing on there,
and yes, someone can pull it off or break it,
but I mean, what are you gonna do? That's the
risk you take. So I would say, go for it.

(30:57):
Good question. Do I answer everything in the question she
wanted to know? Yeah? He did. This was really fun
this week, and I love dinosaurs. Jurassic Park is one
of my all time favorite movies, if not my favorite movie.
I have not watched it with my kids just yet,
but I love that movie. I've watched it many times,

(31:19):
and it's just something about the idea of bringing back
dinosaurs and the way they presented it in that movie
was so realistic of like, wow, we might like the
idea of just extracting DNA and kind of rebuilding. It
was to me like very feasible as a kid. So
I loved it, and I was so sad to see
the whole thing kind of come tumbling down. Spoiler alert.

(31:42):
But you can now bring to life ten dinosaurs from
Jurassic World on Google. All you have to do is
search for a dinosaur name on Google on your phone
and just you'll see a little box that says view
in three D and then it will bring up the
dinosaur and you can put it in your backyard. It

(32:03):
kind of so what it does is it uses a
camera on your phone so you can see your surroundings,
but it places the dinosaur in augmented reality in those surroundings.
It's so cool, it's so much fun. I did a
little video about this on my Instagram at rich on
Tech and people went nuts. People went nuts on Facebook.
I always love when I think something's really cool and
then I post it and people think it's really cool.

(32:25):
I'm like, yes, I was justified in spending an hour
doing this video. And then sometimes I post stuff and
it's like, uh, crickets, which is fine too. And you know,
I'm not always right with what I think people would
find interesting, but a lot of times I am. You
were right about the what was the thing we did
that went viral? The uh the pizza of the pizza

(32:49):
oven went viral? The uh Megan Meghan's actually a secret
viral sense sense What is it? Sensei? Sensey? You you
have a knack for for figuring out things that would
go viral. Because we've done that other thing.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
I feel like I haven't had that much. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
The other one was the the rain thing. That was
the first one, the ring thing, remember the rain, the rain,
the umbrella things, the rain.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
Oh yeah, that was me.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
That's still you know, that's that's still one of our
all time greatest hits.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
So I know, but I was, I was. I was
there for the folding, mate, but I didn't shoot that.
That was you.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, but you, but you were you were instrumental in
that because we would we would sit there and we
would do we would run by like the captions. You know,
because a lot of things, when they go viral, I
hate to say a lot of it's the caption. It's
got to be it's got to be quick. It's got
to encapsulate what you're gonna experience. It can't give everything away.
I mean, you can never figure out when something is

(33:51):
going to go viral. But in my history of being
a KTLA, and you know, really I didn't, I've had
a couple of these hits. But like the thing is,
there's always like some sort of surprise or some sort
of payoff that's like really interesting that you want to
share with your friends. That's kind of what I've noticed.
So anyway, the dinosaur thing didn't go viral, but it
definitely did well. And all you have to do is,

(34:13):
like I said, search for one of these names. It
works with Tyrannosaurus, Rex, Velociraptor, Triceratops, Spinosaurus, Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and
Cleosaurus die oh my gosh, Dihosaurus, petrodon and parasse I

(34:34):
stopped at like tyranne.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
Part of dinosaurs what's that The names are the best part.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
I now, if you want to get really geeky, it
does work on Android. It does work on iOS, but
only on certain devices, specifically in ar core enabled device
on Android. But just try it and see if it works.
The one thing that I did not know when I
posted the video that I now know is and this
is really sly on Android's part or Google's part, These sounds,

(35:00):
which are probably the best part of this other than
the dinosaur, only work on Android. So a lot of
these people are emailing me and saying, Rich, I can't
hear the sounds on my iPhone. I'm telling them how
to turn up the volume and change the settings, and
it turns out after further reading that they only enable
the sounds in Google on Android. I'm guessing that's for
some technical reason that the iPhone doesn't offer. I don't know.

(35:23):
It seems like they just did that as a you know,
we gotcha, Yeah, iPhone, ain't that great?

Speaker 2 (35:31):
All right? This next question comes from Lorrain. Reviews on
a cell phone holder for car in Indiana take effect.
Let's see what reviews on cell phone holder? Oh, she
just wants to know about a cell phone holder for
a car. I guess there's a lot that takes effect
on July first, that you cannot hold your phone in

(35:52):
your hand while you drive in Indiana.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Oh wow, Indiana getting on board a little bit late.
We've had that ruling, California. How many years have we
had that? Wow?

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Forever?

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah? Okay, but you know, this is the beauty of America.
Every state makes its own rules, and Indiana felt like
they didn't need oneuntil now. I am so surprised at that.
By the way, that's wild. It is interesting when I
travel to different states, though, like how much of a
difference there is in different states. And that's part of
what's cool about America is that each state does what's
best for themselves. But it's also really weird when you

(36:27):
travel a lot, because it's just like one big law,
Like okay, in Los Angeles, like you can't drink walking
down the street, but in Las Vegas, like bh whatever,
just go ahead, have a giant you know, margarita and
one of those like giant Margarita things like down the street.
It's like what or like New Jersey. It's like I
got out of my car to start pumping gas and

(36:47):
I was like getting yelled at from the guy and
he's like, no pumping gas. And I should have remembered
because I grew up in Jersey, where you can't pump
your own gas. But I'm so used to it in
California that would just go home. I just forget. Yeah.
Or when I moved up to Washington State and I
went to buy we were making Oh my gosh, this
is how this is how dated this is. I was

(37:09):
making apple teenis, remember those when those were like hot?
No you don't because you're so young, but apple teenis
were like the hottest drink going for a little bit.
And so I was trying to find the stuff to
make an apple teeny and I go to like a
liquor store on it. By the way, in California they
sell wine and everything inside like a Ralph's in other

(37:32):
states not the case. Uh, Like you go to these
states and you have to go to like a state
they call it like a package store in some states,
or like a you know a state, like what was
the state? I think it was Washington State. You had
to go to a state liquor store, which, by the way,
we're closed on certain days like a Sunday. So I

(37:52):
mean it's really interesting, just the difference. A lot of
it has to do with booze. Megan. Okay, I know
you know so much. I'm sort of an expert. So
my recommendation for the clip for your car. Oh my gosh.
When I lived in Louisiana, you could drive through and
get a daker through a drive through Daquerri store. Now, yes, yes,

(38:17):
and by the way, before I got there, right before
they they shut down the fact that the passenger could
drink the dakri while you were driving them. But they
shut that down because they said, you know what, it's
probably safer if nobody in the car is drinking. But
what they would do when you got your dakriy is
they would tape down the straw. And that was a
universal sign to an officer that pulled you over there,
like I've not been drinking this. It's the straw is taped.

(38:40):
Do you see the tape? Yeah? I mean is insane,
so wild. All right, let me just tell you about
this what my recommendations are for the clips. If you want,
since it's new to you and you probably want to
spend a little bit of money on a nice clip
for your car, My absolute favorite is called PROCLIPUSA dot

(39:02):
com and you will find a custom solution for your car.
So if you have a you know, whatever car you have,
they've gone into it and they have looked and seen
where the best placement is for a holder for your phone,
and it's all custom. It fits perfectly, your phone snaps in.
They even have great things where like if you have
an iPhone, it just snaps right into the charging cradle

(39:24):
so that your phone is always charging. It's really slick.
It's a little bit more expensive, probably about ninety dollars
for that solution, but I'm telling you it is the best,
and that's what I'd recommend if you want a cheap solution.
I like what's called the key New Airframe and so
just look up the airframe. That's really good, but it's
super easy, super cheap. And then the other one I

(39:45):
like that I've not tested, but I see commercials for
it and it looks really cool is the weather Tech
cup phone. And it's like a you put it in
your cup holder and it holds your phone, and I
like that. It looks really cool. To me. I would
not want to use up one of my cup holders
because I value my cup holders. But if you don't mind,
then go ahead.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
That's a really funny comment after your whole feel about
Yeah's true.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Okay, let's move on. This is this ranks is one
of the all time most popular stories I've done at KTLA,
and I'm seeing a trend. The Wy's camera was one,
but I think this actually beat out the Wyse camera.
I did a story on a twenty eight dollars pair
of wireless earbuds and a thirty six dollars smart watch

(40:30):
from a company called Let's Fit, and people really like
these things. People are buying them. They're telling me that
they bought them, and I will tell you the watch
I'm not as hot on as the wireless earbuds. The
wireless earbuds for twenty eight dollars I was very impressed with.
In fact, I saw them go down to as cheap
as twenty dollars on Amazon. But even at twenty eight dollars,
I thought they were fine. They have a USBC charging cable,

(40:54):
which I thought was great. They come in a little
charging case, you get six hours of playback. I tried
them on my spin bike. I try them with some
runs and they stay in my ears for the most part.
As you know some of these things. They kind of
My wife and I were discussing this last night, and
if you ever use even with your AirPods, Megan, when
you're working out, don't you feel like you have to
push them back in once in a while. Yes, okay,

(41:16):
that's it's just with everything that's like just hanging on
your ear, you just have to push them back in
for more secure. So yes, I had to push them
back in a little bit. But did they fall out.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
No.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
I think that these are a fantastic combination of value
and price. You get the pause on the side, you
get the play on the side, you get the assistant
on the side. And so far every person that's ordered,
not every person, but a lot of people have tweeted
me and said, Rich, I really like these things, and
for twenty eight bucks. If you lose them or they
get damaged or whatever, or you don't even like them,

(41:46):
I mean, you could return them to Amazon if you
don't like them that much. But it's like twenty eight bucks.
I mean, you're not out that much, you know. So
this is a company called Let's Fit. I'll put the
link if you want to buy them. I'm not trying
to sell them.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
To you.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
I'm just saying I'm always to look out for like
a good value, and this seems to be a pretty
good value. Don't get me wrong. These are not AirPods,
and they're not trying to replace AirPods. But you know,
there's different folks that want different things, and I think
this is a great little thing to get. The smart
watch thirty six dollars I thought was fine. I would
not recommend this as my smart watch, but if you

(42:22):
want just basic smart watch functionality, I like the fact
that this thing kind of looks like an Apple Watch,
but it doesn't look cheap. The software is just fine.
It's nothing special. But again, for thirty six dollars, if
you just want a basic watch, that you're saying, hey, rich,
I don't really want an Apple Watch. I just want
something simple and cheap. Boom, there you go. All right, Wow,

(42:42):
we're actually out of time, which I can't believe. But yeah,
this podcast went really fast. Do you want to do?
Do you have a quick question.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
Or no, let's see someone asked, this is kind of quick.
Georgine asked, I listened to quite a few pods, and
I'm wondering, after you've listened to them, is there a
way to delete them individually? They're taking a lot of
taking up a lot of room on my phone, so
I'd like to get rid of old ones.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Oh okay, that's funny. I got this question at work
from Ritchie, our camera guy. He was looking. He was saying,
because if you just let the podcast app on I'm
assuming it's iPhone. If you let the podcast app on
iPhone just do its own thing. When you subscribe, it
will gobble up all of your memory on your phone
because it'll just download a whole bunch of episodes, and
it can take up gigs and gigs, So check for that.

(43:33):
Number one. But number two. The way you do this
is just go to your library and then go to
episodes and swipe from the right to the left on
a particular episode, and that will delete it off your phone,
but it will not unsubscribe you. She's saying she doesn't
want to unsubscribe to the right podcast. Now. Alternatively, you
can go to library and then shows, and then once

(43:53):
you're on a show, hit the menu button and then
delete from library and that will delete all of the
shows down the episodes at once, but it will keep
your subscription, so new shows will still come through, and
I agree with who is It Georgan George Georgia georgane.
I agree these things can gobble up a lot of memory,

(44:15):
but it's very The podcast app on iPhone is not
very intuitive for figuring out what you want to do,
and so I think that this is something that I've
run into where I'm like, wait, I just deleted the
whole show because you think, oh, swipe left to right
on a show and it's like the whole thing is gone.
So again, this is the way to do it for
individual episodes or all of them that you've downloaded real quick.

(44:36):
I mentioned last week that I talked to a travel vlogger,
Josh McNair. He runs a website and a YouTube channel
called California through My Lens. Really nice guy. I just
wanted to share the secrets he has to planning the
perfect road trip, which I concur with number one Roadside
America app. I hope I didn't mention this last week,
but Roadside America app is fantastic for finding all those

(44:57):
unique attractions. You know. I feel like I did mention
this last week, but maybe I didn't. I can't remember.
You weren't here, so you didn't even know. Atlas Obscura
is a website that focuses on bigger cities, so it
helps you find kind of hidden gems in those cities.
Road Trippers is really cool. It's kind of like Google Maps,
but it helps you plot out your stops and the distance,

(45:20):
and not only the distance, but the time between those
stops because most of the time you say, Okay, I
want to drive for four hours at a clip, and
then you know you can plan that out. It will
even tell you your gas estimates yelp. Now I know
you know yelp. But he has a really unique way
of searching it, which is my favorite way of searching
when you're in a city that you haven't been into.
Sort by most reviewed, and this will reveal the places

(45:42):
that people are talking about the most because it has
the most reviews. And then All Trails app is fantastic.
Sort by most popular again to find the best hikes.
I love All Trails Instagram. This is why I said
Josh and I were travel soulmates, because he searches Instagram
the same way I do. I always use it as

(46:02):
a way to kind of peek into the place that
I'm going before I go, whether that's a restaurant and
you go to the recent pictures or the stories because
there's the people that were just there and they're posting
these things, you know, twenty four hours, forty eight hours
ago or even that day, and it's like, oh, that
restaurant is you know, people are wearing masks or not whatever.
You can see exactly what's happening. His example was, if

(46:24):
you're looking for waterfalls on your trip, you know that
the waterfall is running or not. In California, that's kind
of a big thing because they're not always running. And
then YouTube. His method for searching YouTube is don't just
search a city name. Search that city name plus things
to do or city name plus best restaurants or city
name plus best hikes, and that kind of gives you

(46:44):
a visual guide to where you're going. I think those
are all fantastic little Those are awesome little tips. Can
you believe it? That's gonna do it for this episode
of the show. If you'd like to submit a question
for me to answer, just go to richon tech dot
tv and hit the email button at the bottom of
the page. Also, we would love it if you would

(47:04):
rate and review this podcast. It helps other people discover
it and plus, you know, just for vanity reasons, we
like having a lot of good reviews. Just go to
rate this podcast dot com slash rich on Tech. Rate
thispodcast dot com slash rich on Tech, Megan, can you
read one of our latest reviews?

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Yes, let's see. When you think you know just about
everything about household tech, you haven't until you listen to
Rich on Tech. Rich keeps me posted on the latest
tech along with new things to try, from the latest
apps on iOS or Android to home networking and mobile devices.
I'm quite new to his podcast, so more to come.

(47:43):
And that was from Substance Underscore P.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
Unfortunately, Substance Underscore P recently unsubscribed, so just kidding, no, no,
Thank you so much for the five star review. If
you would like your review read on the show, just
go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich on Tech.
And thank you for that awesome, awesome review, Producer Megan.
Where can folks find you on social media?

Speaker 2 (48:09):
I am on Twitter at producer Megan.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
Awesome awesome, and you can find me at rich on
Tech just about everywhere. My name is rich damiro On
behalf of everyone that gets this show to your ears.
Thanks so much, for listening. We'll talk to you real soon.

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Rich DeMuro

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