T-Mobile does damage control after major data hack

Google launches the Pixel 5a; T-Mobile offers assistance in the wake of a major data breach; Facebook introduces virtual meeting rooms called Horizon Workrooms; CES 2022 requires proof of vaccination; how to store a digital vaccine card on your smartphone; Netflix flips on spatial audio; Mastercard says goodbye to the payment stripe.Listeners ask about an alternative to Adobe Acrobat Pro 2020, the best ways to track kids on their way to school, smart home devices that work with HomeKit, extended warranties and tips on cleaning up a Mac laptop.Follow Rich on InstagramFollow Rich on TwitterSubmit a question for RichGoogle Pixel 5aT-Mobile data breach helpHorizon WorkroomsCES 2022Digital vaccine cardsNetflix spatial audioMastercard magnetic stripeAcrobat alternativeKid trackersHomeKit accessoriesCleanMyMacMacKeeperSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Google releases a new pixel, but it's not the one.
How to store a digital vaccine card on your smartphone,
Say goodbye to the magnetic strip on your credit or
debit card. Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on?
I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the
podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think

(00:30):
you should know about. It is also the place where
I answer the questions you send me. I'm the tech
reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Thanks so
much for tuning me in. Welcome to the folks listening
on Facebook Live with their rooms feature, which I love.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
It's weird.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
It doesn't always show up in my app. Sometimes when
I open the app, it's there, other times it's not there.
But it's a fun way to reach a lot of
people that may not listen to the podcast per se,
but then they get to see it on my Facebook
page and they say, hey, what's that? Let me let
me tune in and let me listen, and sure enough
they stick around sometimes.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
So let's see what's been going on this week? Hm?

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Well, my mom was in town for so long that
I felt like I was on vacation in my own city.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
We were you know, going out to eat.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
We were staying out late, we were looking at sites,
we were going places. I'm sure you do this when
people come to visit you, but it's really interesting how
much there is to do that you just don't do
or you take for granted. Like we went to the beach,
we went to Malibu, we went to different restaurants. I
got to shout out my friend Brian Tong for okay,
so I'm not a lobster person.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
I've only had it like once in my.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Life, and I thought it was okay, but I wouldn't
consider myself like I don't really seek it out ever.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
I know people go wild over lobster.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
So my mom, which came out here, said the only
two things I want are fish tacos and a lobster role.
And I said, all right, well, we're in California. I'm
pretty sure we can find those things.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
So fish tacos.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
We found this little place that was a little hole
in the wall. Oh gosh, I can't remember the name,
but it was really it was really good and it
was just a little tiny hole in the wall. We
went there off a yelp and it turned out to
be fantastic. Giant portions.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
So that was cool.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Then I'm browsing Instagram and I see my friend Brian Tong,
you know who covers technology.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
He posted about this place.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
He went to in Malibu that was I think it
was called.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Broad Street Seafood.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Or something like that, and it was a lobster roll
and I'm like, oh, lobster roll in California, in Los Angeles, okay, So.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
I texted him. I said, Brian, is this place legit
or what?

Speaker 1 (02:41):
He's like, absolutely, So my mom and I go and
she gets the lobster roll. I get some fish tacos,
and I will tell you I had one little bite
of the lobster from her role, and oh my gosh,
I am a convert. Oh wow, it was so good.
It was basically just like something anything doused in butter

(03:02):
is really really good and that's it just tasted like
a butter soaked piece of fish, not even I mean,
it wasn't really a fishy, but anyway, it was so good.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Now I feel like I have to go back for
a lobsterole. So it was great. We had a lot
of fun.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
I've also been testing out the Galaxy foldable phones all
this week. Don't quite have my review just yet. But
you know, it's one of these things where I love
the fact that Samsung is trying new things and I
want to love one of these phones and I want
to use one of them like forever, but I just can't.
There's there's too many downsides for me. Like with the

(03:37):
bigger one, I just love that giant screen in the fold.
When you open it up, it's like having a tablet.
You can use it as a kindle, you can read books.
And I just have this like this romanticized version of myself,
like just pulling this phone out and like using it
for all kinds of cool things. But the reality is
it's big and it's bulky, and it's just it's cool.
But I don't think it's ready for primetime just yet.

(03:59):
And the little flip phone is really cool, but the
cameras just aren't there and so and also you got
to flip it open every time, which back in the
day was really easy because you could do it with
one hand and it was a motorol eraser and it
was simple and it was lightweight. This is way more
complicated to open, to flip open every time you need
to use it. And yeah, they made the outer screen bigger,
but it's still not where it needs to be to

(04:21):
actually accomplish anything. So to do anything on this phone,
you still want to open the phone. So it's just
it's one of these things where I think, you know,
my reviews will be good of these devices, I just
can't really recommend the average person to get them just yet. Now,
if you just want a cool flip phone and you're
not like a power user, the Flip is kind of cool,
but the price is still pretty high for you know,

(04:43):
everyday person, like most of the people that text me
or email me or looking for a phone closer to
the five hundred range.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
And so.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
I guess that goes right into my first story. Google
released a new pixel. It's not the pixel that I'm
waiting for, you know, I'm waiting for the Pixel six,
And mark my words, I will switch to the Pixel
six from the iPhone if it's any good. And by
any good, I mean they get the processor right, they
get the memory right, they get the storage right, they

(05:13):
get the screen right, they get the cameras right, which
they usually do, and they get kind of like the overall,
the overall package right. Like the pixel is one of
the best cameras out there, but it's just every year,
like the package is like, ugh, it's.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
A little damaged. You know.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
It's like getting a box from Amazon that's just like
dented in on one side and you're like, ah, I
can't really like, I can't accept this package the.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Way it is.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
So the new Pixel five A with five G say
that five times fast. They call it the latest A
series Pixel phone. So I was talking to my brother
about this and he's like, what does the A mean?
And I said, well, I think it's just a.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Delineation that it's not as high powered.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
But it's confusing because you're gonna have the Pixel six
come out, so you've got the Pixel five A and
then the six. So I guess that makes kind of sense,
but I don't know. Anyway, the phone's gonna arrive in
August twenty sixth. It's a IP sixty seven water resistant.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Let me just go.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
I mean it's basically the Pixel four A five G
with a couple of little upgrades. Okay, the forur A
does not have water resistance. The for A, well, I
guess they're getting rid of.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
The four A five G. This is so confusing, but
it's got a good battery.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
It's got a forty six hundred eighty milliamp hour battery.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
That is huge. I mean that is really really large.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Now, the memory is six gigabytes a RAM, which I
just wish they would stop scrimping on the RAM on
these Android phones and just put in you gotta do
minimum eight twelve is way better. So it's got six.
It's got one hundred and twenty eight gigs of storage,
which is fine. It's got a dual SIM it's got
a six point three inch full HD plus O lead

(06:55):
does not have the high refresh rate screen. It's got
all the camera features you need. It's got the rear cameras.
It's got a dual a twelve megapixel camera and an
ultra wide sixteen megapixel.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Which is fine.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
It would be nice to have a telephoto lens in
there as well.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
You don't get that.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
It's got that slower Qualcom Snapdragon processor, the.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Seven sixty five g boring.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
But it does have a audio jack, which is really cool.
So I would say, honestly, sight on scene, I guess
I was not on the list of Google sent this
phone to pretty much anyone with a with a pulse
except me.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Why did I say something bad about the Pixel.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
They've sent me every Pixel since it ari, since it
came out, and this year they decide now we're just
not going to tell Rich about this. So every single influencer,
every blogger, everyone.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Was tweeting, oh got my free gift from Google.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
And someone like myself, who my audience is actually really
interested in this phone, they did not contact me to
get me this phone to reach. I don't know what
the deal is. I mean, Google, I thought we had
a good relationship. I guess not so anyway, sight on scene. Honestly,
this is probably one of the phones I will recommend
the most this year to the average person. And the

(08:13):
reason I recommend this phone is because it is so simple.
It has all the features you need. And if you're
not a wild power user like you need the best,
the best, the best, the highest specs, the best.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Ram, the best screen.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
If you just want a phone that you can pull
out of your pocket, make phone calls on surf the web,
look at Instagram, take amazing pictures on have great battery life.
That's gonna be the Pixel five A with five G
I mean, that's the bottom line. And by the way,
this phone is four hundred and forty nine dollars. That
is a fantastic price. Under five hundred dollars. You buy it,

(08:50):
you get it. It works, it's gonna last for minimum
three years, and it's It's not the fastest phone in
the world.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
It's not the sexiest phone in the world.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
But guess what it does what you need it to do.
And for that reason, I really like this phone. It's
not the Pixel six that someone like me, who is
a phone sort of power hungry phone nerd needs. It's
just a phone for the everyday person and it you know, yes,
you might say, rich, why not recommend a Samsung? Well, yeah,

(09:19):
the samsungs are fine, but they've they're so busy, They've
got so much going on that unless you're a Samsung person,
you don't necessarily need all the things that Samsung has
going on. I think the Pixel five A is going
to be just fine for a lot of people. So
I hope that I end up getting my hands on
one of these. But honestly, I'm buying the Pixel six
no matter what, so I will I will get that, and.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Of course I'll talk about that as well.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
All right, let's get to the first question of the show.
Let's see, Ivory says rich, due to the price of
Adobe Acrobat Pro twenty twenty, what product do you recommend
that performs similar functions for a Windows ten machine. Now,
Adobe Acrobat Pro.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Twenty twenty is wow.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Is it really four hundred and fifty dollars? WHOA, that
is a lot of money.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Let's see. So what does it do?

Speaker 1 (10:15):
So it's basically the ability to create PDFs. Most of
us are just either printing out a page that is
a PDF, or we're filling in a PDF, or we're
working with PDFs, or we're converting something to PDFs, all
things that you can pretty much do for free. But
if you want to create and like really modify PDFs,
like if your business driven, you need something like Adobe

(10:37):
Acrobat Pro. And so what this does is it lets you,
you know, fill in forms, create and combined PDFs, send
documents with your for signature, send track and confirmed delivery,
add or edit text, reorder, delete or rotate pages. And
you also what's new I don't know anyway, So this

(10:59):
just this is like a This is like Microsoft Word
but for PDFs. So if you need that, you're going
to have to pay for that. Now from what I'm seeing,
it looks like it's about four hundred and fifty dollars,
which is a lot of money. So Ivory if you
want an alternative, The only real product that I know
is from fox It software Foxit, and they have a

(11:24):
PDF editor that is not free. You know, you get
a free trial, but if you want to actually purchase it,
you do need to pay.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
And so if you want.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
The regular PDF editor, there's two versions. There's the PDF
editor and then there's the pro. So the regular one
is going to be one hundred and fifty nine dollars.
The pro is one hundred and ninety nine dollars, and
that's a one time fee.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
So if you want.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Something that's less than half the price of Adobe, it's
going to be.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
This is it, this is fox It.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
So I have not truly played with this software enough
to give you a really good explanation of it versus
the Adobe software. And I assume Adobe is the leader.
They've got the brand name. There might also be a
circumstance where you can subscribe to the Adobe software and
get it for less every month, So that might be

(12:18):
another thing to look into. If you don't want to
do fox it and fox it. You know, it's probably
gonna be fine. I don't know the exact features that
you need.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Did you. Let's see did Ivory. Let's see did Ivory
write what features she needed? Let's see.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Oh, here we go, password protection, combine several documents into
one search, convert pdf into word, and vice versa. Okay,
so yeah, I think that the fox at one is
probably going to do those things. Those are pretty basic functionality.
The convert PDF into word you can actually do with
with Google Docs for free. So if you just upload

(12:57):
a pdf into Google Docs, there's functionality that it will
be used to. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can do that.
I've done that before. It might not be pretty, the
conversion might not be pretty, but it will definitely do
something similar to that. All right, good question, good question,
good question.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
All right, let's talk.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
About the big story of the week, a cyber attack
on T Mobile. So these cyber attacks are really getting
gnarly because it's no longer because these companies have become
such mega corporations with millions and millions and millions of
customers and tons of data. Every time we hear about

(13:34):
one of these major hacks. They just get bigger and bigger.
And this T Mobile one is pretty scary because what
happened is they got a lot of stuff seven point
eight million current T mobile customers, includes first and last names, data, birth,
social security number, social security numbers, I say, social number,

(13:58):
driver's license. Those are all the things that you need
to steal someone's identity.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
They also determined that phone numbers as well as your Imei,
which is the number that oh my gosh, that identifies
your smartphone, was also compromised. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
This is unbelievable. Oh.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
They also identified another five point three million customers that
didn't have social security numbers or driver's licenses on their accounts,
but they still were impacted. So this number just continues
to grow. By the way, there was also forty million
former or prospective T mobile customers who had their oh

(14:41):
my gosh, this is just wild who had their information taken.
So basically you're talking forty eight million plus another five
so you're talking over fifty million people. This is a
major buzzer alert for T Mobile.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
And and I mean, look, what are you gonna do.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
You're gonna are you gonna cancel T Mobile? Probably not
are you gonna switch to AT and T or Verizon?
It could have happened to them.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Now.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
I don't know what the deal is with T Mobile
systems how this happened. Uh, But you know, it's just
one of these things that leaves a really bad taste
in your mouth because this is your highly personal information
that is now floating around on the internet. And I'm
talking floating around. I had a T Mobile account at
one time, and I'm wondering if mine is part of this.

(15:32):
So I mean five point eight forty million customers former customers. Yeah,
basically this is my information as well. So I'm really
angry here.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
T Mobile says none of the information included financial, credit card,
debit or other payment. Well, who cares about that? I mean,
don't use your bank account to pay bills, Okay, that's
number one. At least put a debit or credit card
between you now, you know, if you listen to my show.
Not a huge fan of credit cards because the implications
of them. Yes, I have one, I try to use

(16:06):
it sparingly, but I do like the idea that a
credit card does put a wall between you and your
bank account. So if T Mobile shares my credit card
number out there.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
I really don't care.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Let them charge as much as they want on it,
because guess what, I'm not paying that bill. If it's
not me making that charge, I don't really care. Let
let American Express or Capital One or you know these
Bank of America figure that out. I don't need to
worry about that debit card. You know, there are limitations
on your debit card, Like I remember at some point
it was like a on mine I had.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
I think it was like a five hundred dollars limit.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
You can call your bank and ask them what the
limit is, and you can set like a spend limit
per day. So if let's say someone got a hold
of your debit card number, you can actually limit it
to only authorize like a thousand dollars of purchases a day, which.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
I know that's a lot for me.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
I'm like, I hope I don't spend that much in
a day, but if you did, you know it would
cut off. And that's smart because if a hacker did
get access to your debit card, you know, they can
only do so much damage before you know you figure
it out. And yeah, and in the end, with a
debit card, you'll still probably get your money back. It's
just a little bit more of a headache because it's
your money that's going out and now you have to

(17:20):
get that money back.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
So banks, you know.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
The way that these cards work is that, you know,
if I use my debit card at Target, let's say,
and you know, something happens or it's fraudulent whatever, you know,
Target doesn't get that money from my bank immediately. They
get it on like a thirty day rolling basis. So
if something goes wrong the bank, you know, let's say
it's Bank of America, they just say, oh, Target, by

(17:44):
the way, we're not giving you that thirty three dollars
that rich spent there because that's being contested. And until
that money actually clears the system and everyone agrees that
the transaction was legit, then they'll get that money.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
So that's how that works.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
So it's not like, you know, they get the money immediately. Now,
if it's cash, yeah, it's it's gone. It's out of
your pocket and it's gone. If it's you know, any
other way to pay.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
That, that's like immediate.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
But if it's a debit card or a credit card,
they pretty much you know, have to wait for that
money to clear from the bank. All right, what else
do we need to know? So what is T Mobile
doing about this? They're giving people two years of free
identity services, identity protection from mcaffee or McAfee McAfee.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Okay, that's a big deal. I mean, sign up for
that for sure.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
T Mobile customers should sign up for the free scam
call blocking. Oh okay, let me block those scam calls.
They also tell customers that they should reset their pin
numbers on their account.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Oh. Interesting, they change their little website. Huh, that's interesting.
They said to.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Activate account takeover protection, which I would definitely do. And
it's just one of these things. It's kind of a nightmare.
So I mean, it's out there, it's done. There's not
much you can do about it. It's it's just really
unfortunate that that happened. But my biggest advice is to
not share. Just limit how much personal data you share.

(19:18):
I think I mentioned this in the podcast last week,
but limit how much data you share. That is the
number one thing you can do is just try to
keep it, you know, keep yourself from you know, just
anytime someone asks you for something, think about, do I
really really need to share this information?

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Because you know.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
They'll ask anyone's welcome to ask for anything, and unless
they you know, they push you. Or there's that little
asterisk next to it on a website that says, hey,
if you're using this, you got to put in your
email address, your date of birth or whatever.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
And sometimes I even fake it.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
I'll put in a fake data birth. It's a random website.
Why do they need to know my actual data birth? Like,
no way, I'll just put a fake one in there.
And you know, as long as there's nothing, no harm,
no foul, like, they don't need to really know anything
about me, all right. Next question comes from Christopher. Christopher says,
good morning. My boys are starting to walk to school.

(20:09):
Now is there an inexpensive way to track them? I've
been looking at AirTag and tyle, but I wanted to
see what you thought. Thanks well, thank you Christopher for
inspiring a segment on KTLA. Future segment, I will be
talking about some of these things that I think parents
should look at for tracking their kids. So you mentioned

(20:30):
the AirTag, and the AirTag is probably the first solution
that comes to mind for most people because it's, oh,
it's a tracker. It's twenty nine bucks. It works with
my iPhone, and yeah, it's great.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
It does work. It does what it says it does.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
But you have to remember this is not meant for
people or pets. Now, that does not mean that people
are not using it for people in pets, and you
can there's no law against it. But if you use
an air tag to track your kid, you need to
know the limitations of the air tag. The air tag
is just a battery with a Bluetooth beacon on it,

(21:06):
and that's it. And so what it does is it
actually uses nearby Apple products to get its Internet connection
and then share that location, you know, or share its
location with the network. And so the good news is
there's a lot of iPhones around, there's a lot of
Mac computers, there's a lot of iPads, and as long

(21:27):
as one of those is nearby, it's gonna, you know,
update this little device and you're gonna see the location
on the find my app on your iPhone.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
And that's fine.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Now you have to remember the updates may not be
in real time, so you can see if your child is,
you know, at school, you can see where they are
at any given time as long as the air tag
has gotten a fresh connection or a recent fresh connection
to the internet using you know, a nearby device, and
so that's that's the simplest, cheapest, easiest way. But again

(21:58):
you need to know that it's not real time.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Now.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
If you want real time again, you've got T Mobile
sync Up Tracker. This is a tracker that actually has
a cellular connection and GPS built in. Now, it's not
meant for kids again, but it can work for them
because you can put it on their backpack and you
can get real time tracking. You can check in at
anytime and it will actually connect to the Internet itself.
It connects to the T Mobile network and then you

(22:22):
can also get boundary alerts, so you can set a
boundary around your kids school and as soon as they
enter that boundary, you will get an alert to your
phone that they have entered, or you can do an
exit boundary as well. The battery lasts an average of
three to four DA's, so you're gonna have to charge
this thing pretty frequently, as opposed to the air tag,
which is like once a year. The T Mobile sync

(22:44):
Up is also sixty dollars plus five dollars a month
for service, so that costs money, but you're gonna get
more accurate reporting. Now, if you want something that was
made specifically for tracking kids, check out the geobit. This
is a monitor. I met with the I think it
was the founder of the company at CS a couple
of years ago, and he said, it's great for elderly folks,

(23:05):
it's great for kids.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
You know. You has a.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Built in again, built in GPS, built in cellular. But
the magic here is that they optimized the software for
tracking kids. So that's like the main difference is that
a lot of the software was written specifically with tracking
kids in mind, so you can see real time GPS
location history, and like I mentioned earlier, the alerts when

(23:29):
they arrive or leave trusted places. Now this is a
little more expensive. It's one hundred and thirty dollars plus.
The service starts at nine dollars a month. And by
the way, when I say nine dollars a month, that's
if you you know, do like a three year.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
Contract or a two year contract.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
If you're paying by the month, all of these things
are a little bit more expensive, like fifteen a month.
Next up is gab Watch. Gabb and I have not
tested the gab watch, but I did meet with this
try another product from gab and they're basically a company
that's making like inexpensive unlocked wireless products that are just
pretty easy to use. So this watch is one hundred dollars,

(24:06):
but it's a smart watch, and yeah it's no Apple Watch,
but it's gonna let your kids make phone calls. They
can text, but just to the contacts that you allow.
There's an emergency SOS feature, there's a fun little digital
pet they can play with, and there's a step counter
as well. This service starts at ten dollars a month.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
And finally, if you want like.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
Sort of the most thorough solution, the Apple Watch with
cellular can can really be the best solution, especially if
you're looking for a bridge for your kids to have
one of these tracker solutions but not have a full
fledged smartphone. So the Apple Watch, they introduce this feature

(24:47):
called Family Setup, and so this means you can you know,
typically an Apple Watch always required an iPhone to work,
so you had to have an iPhone, you had to
activate it on your account, they had to work in Unison.
Now they have this thing called Family set Up, where
as long as you have an iPhone or I think
an iPad as well. You can just activate an Apple Watch,
and once you do, it'll just live on its own.
It just does its own thing. And there's two ways

(25:08):
you can do it. It can live on its own
which is Wi Fi, but if you want to use
the family setup feature, you have to use a cellular connection,
and so that means you have to get the price
her Apple Watch with the cellular connection. The cheapest is
the Apple Watch se with cellular that's gonna be about
three hundred and thirty bucks.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
But this can do everything.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
You can make calls, it can track your kid, they
can set them texts including I messages, you can they
can fully track their activity. They can listen to music
on this thing. There's all kinds of apps on it.
So I mean it's an Apple Watch. It's gonna be,
you know, the gold standard of smart watches. And they
have this cool classroom watch face which is less distracting

(25:53):
and I don't believe that the messages come through when
they're in the classroom function, so you can have that
turn on a certain time and turn off at a
certain time during the day.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
So that's a really cool feature.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
This is gonna be, Like I said, you gotta go
with the Apple Watch s with cellular, or you can
go Apple Watch four with cellular and above, and I
believe it's the four and it's three hundred and thirty bucks.
Like I said, service runs about ten dollars a month.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Apple Watch.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Let me just see Apple Watch family set up. Let
me just see what it requires, because I think it
was the Apple Watch for yeah, Apple Watch series four
or later with cellular or Apple Watch.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Se with cellular.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
So if you have an old Apple Watch like you're,
but you have to have cellular on it for this
to really work. I mean, you can activate it without cellular,
but it's just not gonna You're not gonna get the
features that you need without cellular. So I wouldn't even
bother if you didn't have cellular, because honestly, it's gonna
be such a nightmare that sometimes you can get through
to your kid. Sometimes you'd be able to see where

(26:57):
their location is, and other times you wouldn't, based on
whether this thing can find a Wi Fi signal and
also be connected to that Wi Fi signal. So for
that reason, I would definitely not go the Apple Watch
route unless you're prepared to do the cellular plan and
get the cellular model. Otherwise, I mean, unless they're just
using it in the house or something, that's the best.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Way to do it.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
All right, long answer, but good question, Chris, and thanks
for the segment. Watch for it on KTLA soon. All right,
let's talk about Okay, we've all been on Zoom for
you know, a year and a half. I wonder what
the numbers are like on Zoom at this point, Like
they must be so much lower than last year, because
so many kids are back in school and so many
people are back at work. Even though you know, it's

(27:42):
still this virus or whatever, COVID is still just wrecking
havoc on our world. It's so wild that it just
keeps going. But this this idea of a virtual reality
meeting room, this is what face Book has introduced with
their new Horizon Workrooms through their Oculus brand. So Oculus,

(28:06):
you know, is their virtual reality headset and brand, and
so they introduce this thing called Horizon Workrooms, which are
free virtual meeting rooms. And I think this is so
so cool, but I don't see it taking off in
a huge way just yet. But I totally think it's amazing.
And so what is it. It's a virtual meeting room.

(28:27):
You put your headset on and you get into this
room with your colleagues and now you can see each
other as an avatar. You can pick the room that
you want to meet in, so they've all got all
kinds of fun rooms. The rooms get bigger and smaller
depending on how many people are in there. This can
support up to sixteen people in VR, up to fifty total,
because not everyone has a VR headset in fact, like

(28:48):
nobody does, so you know, you might have one person that's.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
Like, can we please do the meeting in a VR please.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
And everyone else like, uh okay, I mean no one
else has VR, but sure you can do VR rich
and then we'll just call in so you can do that.
But they've got all kinds of neat features that you
would need in a meeting, like you know, your desk
and keyboard tracking so you can kind of do mixed
reality where you can when you're typing on your keyboard,
other people will see that. They've got hand tracking, so

(29:17):
you can actually write on like a whiteboard. They've got
your desktop or so you can actually show share your screen.
They've got all spatial audio, which is really cool too,
because spatial audio is allows you to hear people, and
like let's say I'm sitting here at my desk and
i hear someone that's talking on my left, the audio

(29:38):
sounds like it's coming from the left.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
That's what spatial audio is.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
And we're seeing more and more of this, and I'll
have another story about that in a moment.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
But it's just it's such.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
A cool feeling because it literally feels like the person
is where they look like they are, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
So you've got spatial audio, you've got.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
The virtual whiteboards, you can actually draw in VR and
you can and you know, keep that and save whatever
you do. You've got all kinds of different virtual rooms.
I mean, it's just everything you need to actually have
these meetings in the virtual world. But again, like I said,
this is gonna be really really tricky to take off,

(30:16):
because let's be honest. I mean, think about a meeting
that you have at your office. When you had meetings,
I mean, it's basically a bare bones conference room. You know,
people are on their phones, they're distracted, they get in there,
they're sitting on their laptops. Like it's not this like
idealized vision of the future where everyone's like okay, let

(30:37):
me strap on my headset.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
And let's get to this meeting.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Like even with Zoom meetings, I'm always like a couple
minutes late. I'm just plugging in my headphones, like I'm
literally adjusting like which input and output for my speakers,
or like my Bluetooth isn't working, Like it's a mess, right,
Like we're lucky that we actually can, you know, do
some of these meetings and make them, and then you
know people are sick of them. They're you know, let

(31:00):
me go, and they click off so fast that like
you don't even say a bye practically. So to go
from that to a virtual meeting room where everyone has
an Oculus headset and and they're sitting there like using
that Oculus headset and trying to refer to their notes
on their computer, I mean, it's it's gonna be pretty wild.
It's definitely a stretch. But I do see this kind

(31:20):
of thing taking off in the future because it is cool,
and I do think a large element of future work
is going to take place with virtual meetings instead of
face to face, just because people always want to meet
face to face. But I think is as companies can
save money on travel and people realize they don't necessarily
need to travel. We will see more of an emphasis

(31:42):
on this.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Now.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
The other big thing about this is that you're talking companies, right,
And what do you think when you think you're discussing
stuff with your company, it's most of the time it's private.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
You don't want this.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Thing aired anywhere. So you have to wonder, okay, well
if this is you know, with Zoom, you know, it
was a big deal when they first came out, like okay,
what's where is this stuff traveling through? Is it traveling
through servers in China? Is it here in America?

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Like?

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Where where is my stuff going? And you know, that
was a big deal when Zoom first kind of came
to fruition, when people started using it a lot, and
so they got to the bottom of that and they said, hey,
you know, they gave some clear indications of how your
stuff was being used, how private it was. You know,
they introduced end to end encryption, which you know satisfied
a lot of the privacy issues. And so now with Facebook,

(32:28):
you know, we need to know this. They didn't mention
anything about encryption, so they didn't mention that word at
all in their blog posts. So that's probably not happening.
But they did say it's designed to be safe, so
let's see what they say about safety. So safety and privacy.
So workrooms will not use your work conversations and material

(32:48):
to inform ads on Facebook. Okay, sad that they have
to say that, but yes, that's a consideration. The audio
contents of your meetings are processed on Facebook servers, but
they're not stored, but someone can record them and send
us a clip as part of a report. In this case,
we'll use the information to take appropriate action and then.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Delete the recordings.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
So that is a very interesting aspect of this is that,
you know, think about this idea that these meetings are
likely to be recorded, and if someone is you know,
being a little bad in that meeting, or says something
that's not right, or someone doesn't agree with or whatever,
it could be a recording that you know, could not

(33:30):
only It's just there's a lot of implications of this,
so we'll see what happens. I think it's really cool. Again,
it's called Horizon Workrooms. It's from Oculus. I'd love to
try it out.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
I don't have an.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Oculus, but this would this wouldn't be my reason to
get one, but it's definitely the VR stuff if it
came along a little bit more. It's so compelling to me.
I just love virtual reality. There's just not that one
killer application just yet. All Right, Roy has kind of
a wow loaded question here. I'm interested in making my

(34:04):
home more automated with some smart devices. Might you recommend
products that work with home Kit for sensors, wall light switches,
light bulbs, Will light bulbs work by themselves? Or do
they need a smart plug? Smart plugs, outdoor cameras. Thanks
for all the time you put into your podcast, Roy, Well, Roy,
this is quite the question, and I'm gonna try to
break it down and explain. Now, home Kit is definitely the.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
What's the word?

Speaker 1 (34:32):
I love the word fledgling, but I don't think that's
the right term here. Fledgling means, oh, it is a
person or organization that is immature, inexperienced, or underdeveloped.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
So I'm right it is. Home Kit is the.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Most fledgling of the three sort of standards when it
comes to smart home. You've got Google, You've got alex A,
you know Amazon stuff, and you've got home Kit. And
so with Google you've got basically ninety nine point nine

(35:04):
percent of smart home products work with both Google and
Alexa A. Whoops, Okay, well alex A, so you know
ninety nine percent of the stuff works with them. Then
you've got home Kit, and you really got to look
hard because not too many things work with HomeKit. Now,
if you want to look at home Kit accessories, you

(35:24):
can go to Apple's website and you can look at
Apple dot com, slash iOS, slash Home and they've got
all the different things, So you can look at all
the different stuff that works with it.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
It's not that much.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
I mean, you're talking a video doorbell, You've got Logitech
Circle light bulbs, You've got Nano Leaf, Logitech cameras, Wemo
Smart miniplug. So to answer your question, I think that
you have to look at some of these brands. So
I think for your lights, I would go two routes.
I would probably go Hugh Phillips. Hugh the most expense there,

(36:00):
but they're also the most flexible. So let's say you
start building this thing out and you say, this home
Kit stuff is just not doing it for me, Well,
you can switch to you know, the other two platforms,
no problem, because Hugh works with all three. So that's
number one. Number two, what else did you ask about?

Speaker 2 (36:19):
You said wall switches.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
So when it comes to sensors and wall switches, I
think that you're.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Gonna have to look at something like a u oh gosh.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
I think you know, like Weemo is gonna be for
like smart plugs. The wall switches, you're gonna have to
again go with Hugh. Sensors, You're gonna have to go
with Hugh. Outdoor cameras are a little tricky because there's
just not that much And if I look at cameras
literally on on Apple's website there is the UFI Cameras

(36:52):
one model, and then Logitech and and oh and eve Eve,
so you just don't get So for my what I
I've done is I think I really like the the
ring stuff for when it comes to like all around
the house with cameras and things like that. I like
the hue when it comes to lights. And that's basically it.

(37:14):
That's what I've built out, and I'm trying to stick
to those two things because they do work together.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
They work pretty well.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
And the home kit stuff is nice, Like I think
that Apple did a really nice job designing like the
app and everything and it's built into the iPhone.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
And all that good stuff. It's just not there. It's
just not like the stuff that you need.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
And I don't know what the reasoning is, like why
these companies are so loath to like adopt it.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
I probably think that it's just easier to do the
other two.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Less licensing, less hoops to jump through, and I just
think there's so many more products, And if you want
to go super cheap, you can get like a light
bulb for like five bucks at Walmart and it still
works with Google and alex A. So I mean, there's
just so many more options when it comes to these
other platform I think the home Kit stuff is you're

(38:02):
going down a very narrow path with that. And yes,
it will get better, but I just think at this point,
stick to Hugh, stick to Ring, and I think that
those two products, those two product lines will really help
you get you know, the most the most varied out
of you know, like the the most accessories out of

(38:24):
all the different things you can look for. But anyway, Roy,
good luck with building it out and hopefully you know
it all works out for you, all right. I talked
about spatial audio a little bit ago, and Netflix confirmed
to I guess users on Reddit and there's a report
from I Generation. I'm getting this from nine to five Mac.

(38:45):
But Netflix confirm it's rolling out spatial audio support for
iPhone and iPad apps, which is huge. I remember watching
a movie in with spatial audio and it's just fantastic.
I mean, it's really really cool. Yeah, to have air
pods pro or max to use it, but again, it
just means that the audio happens in the area where

(39:07):
you'd expect it to happen.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
So small thing.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
But if you're on you know, i'd say on a plane,
but I'm not even sure you'll be able to hear
it on the plane, but I guess you would if
you're with noise canceling.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
But you know, if you're watching a.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Movie or a TV show that supports it, and you've
got it on Netflix, and you've got the iPad or
the iPhone and you've got the air pods and all
these things are in line, and the stars are also
aligned as well.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
No, that's not it.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
I thought I had like a no, okay, I thought
I had the Princess sound effect, you know, like the
Fantasy Land. But anyway, if all those things are all
those things are satisfied, you will hear the spatial audio,
and once you do it is it is actually very cool.
All right, Since that was such a short story, I'll
just move on to the next story. This is a

(39:55):
sad day in history. Well, you still got a couple
of years, but the magnetic stripe we'll start to disappear
from cards in twenty twenty four. So Master Card is
the first bank to say, you know what, we just
don't need these things anymore now, the magnetic stripe. There's
some history behind this. I don't know if you're old
enough to remember this, but back in the day when

(40:16):
I was a kid and i'd watch my parents use
their credit card, it was a by the way, it
was always American Express, and it was one of those cards,
you know. You put it in this little machine and
it was like a metal like I don't know how
you describe it, but you would physically place the card
down and then there was like this roller thing on top.
They put this little piece of paper with some carbon
in between it, and it would they would go chick

(40:39):
and it would literally you would roll this this rolly
thing over the card and make a physical imprint of
the card onto this little slip, and a lot of
times you would fill out this slip with like the
amount of the transaction and then you would sign this slip. Now,
that is just wild that we've gone from that to

(40:59):
tap and pay in my lifetime. I mean, that is
pretty amazing. And so after the whole there was a
magnetic stripe, and the problem with it is that there
was no authorization. Now, I remember there were certain times
when it was like a big amount the retailer. And
I'm reaching way back into memory here and maybe this

(41:21):
was just made up in my memory, but I remember
like the retailer would actually have to call up like
American Express and be like, hey, we've got Joe Schmoe
here and he's got a a four and seventy five
dollars bill.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
Can we authorize that?

Speaker 1 (41:38):
And they would give you like an authorization number that
you can write down so that you knew the card
was good for that amount.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
So, I mean, think about that.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
When the magnetic stripe came along, it allowed companies to
in real time not only capture the data from the card,
but also authorize the amount and the transaction. And so that,
of course, I'm sure cut down on fraud. It cut
down on all kinds of stuff. It was just more efficient.
And then of course we've got the the the chip

(42:08):
which they added to the card, and the chip brings
another level of of security because now it's a unique
number every time, So every time you dip your little
card in the chip reader, it doesn't exchange the card
number from your card. It actually exchanges a one time
number that is then authorized and the transaction goes through.

(42:29):
So that's even more secure because if that card number
ever got out there, well it wouldn't work again, so
it doesn't really matter.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
And so that was really cool.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
And then kind of at the same time that the
man that the chip came out, we got tapped to pay.
And I remember doing a story with Apple Pay. Oh,
let me se how many years ago? This was Apple Pay.
By the way, if you ever want to look up
a story I did, all you have to do is
type in the keyword Apple pay ktla DeMuro and that's
it and that'll bring you. And so here November seventeen,

(43:00):
twenty fourteen, is when I did a story when Apple
Pay first came out, and I walked out, walked down
Third Street promenade with Apple's Eddie Q and we kind
of went to Panera, went to Disney Store. Some of
the early adopters of the tap and pay, which Apple
never called it that, They always called it Apple Pay.

(43:21):
They wanted you to think it was proprietary, special to them,
when in reality, you know you've got Apple Pay, You've
got it's basically just RFID, and in fact, a lot
of credit cards have it built in right on the
card itself these days. I don't really see the point
of that because I always had my phone with me
and I'd always rather just tap my phone.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
But I guess you know, it's good to have in.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Case you haven't set up the the Apple Pay or
Google Pay or Samsung Pay on your smartphone. But I
just recommend doing that because it's more secure, it's easy,
it's simple. And I actually read an article, I think
it was life Hacker where someone said this was an
added benefit that if you're traveling and you lose your
physical card, they can update the digital card on your phone,

(44:06):
so you actually would still have a way to pay,
which is kind of cool. I think I mentioned that
on the podcast as well.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
But anyway, so with all that said, here is the deal.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
Newly issued master Card credit and debit cards will not
be required to have a stripe starting in twenty twenty four.
In the US it's twenty twenty seven, because we're just
slow here to adopt.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Europe is like so much faster in Europe and Asia
for the chip based transactions and the tap and pay
are just so much so ahead of the US. And
then by twenty thirty three, no master card, credit or
debit card will have magnetic stripes. So there's a big
runway here. But I'm not sad to see it go,
because I mean, it's called progress and we're all good.

(44:50):
So to me, if I could tap and pay everywhere,
that would be amazing. I can leave my card behind.
But it's just not everywhere just yet. Restaurant being the
major holdout, and in the US especially, restaurants do not
come to your table to let you tap and pay
or put the chip in. Although I was at a
restaurant last week with my mom that did do this.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
It was called a Paradise Cove in Malibu. I know.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
We went to Malibu, lat and to my surprise, the
place was like a tourist trap.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
It was great. It was on the ocean.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
You know it was beautiful, but we're talking like twenty
five bucks for a drink because it's like, you know,
there's nothing on the menu that's less than like twenty
dollars because it's a you know, it's you're paying for
the view, right But when they came to my table
for the bill, you know you could they came right
to your table with the little machine that they run
the cart in right away, which I just love. You
tap the card, it does it. Some restaurants i've been

(45:46):
to take it a step further they give you like
a portfolio and you can actually split the bill right
on your check. That would be awesome. That would be
my dream for every restaurant, especially when you go out
with friends. A lot of times, not everyone at the
table is, you know, in agreement that you just want
to split it. Let's say you're with you know, three
other couples. You know, some people want to split it

(46:07):
three ways. Some people don't, and I'm fine with that.
If they don't want to do it, it's fine. Usually
there's an over under of about twenty dollars I've noticed,
but some people are not comfortable. They want to just
pay what they exactly had and that's fine, that's their progative.
But the problem is it's a pain if the server's
trying to do that. And we have the technology where
give me a tablet, let me choose the five or

(46:28):
six things that we had, and give me my total
including the tip in the tax, and I'll pay it
and then I'll move it to the next person. They
choose their five things and they pay their little portion,
and then the final person gets hosed because they're on
the hook for anything that anyone else forgot. No, just kidding,
it's just you know, it'll work out. But I don't
understand why restaurants have not adopted that more often, because

(46:51):
I don't know if it's a tip thing, or you know,
if waiters get cheaper tips because of that or what.
But it just it's probably just the expense of it
and the upkeep and the maintenance.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
But it's just to me. I love the idea that
I can just say, Okay, I had.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
A iced tea, I had a salad, Okay, I had
that appetizer, I had that dessert, I had that main entree,
and oh there's my total boom.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Uh, what was I talking about? I don't even know anyway,
credit card going away?

Speaker 2 (47:21):
All right?

Speaker 1 (47:22):
So we talked about in the last episode about extended warranties.
I said that I never get them, and Tony wrote
in and said, I myself usually don't buy extended warranties on.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
TVs, but I did with a TCL. I'll tell you why.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
The version I was looking to buy I was getting
great reviews, but some people said they were getting ones
with a dirty screen effect. So I bought the warranty
just in case. It wasn't very much. If I remember,
the TV costed about five hundred dollars. I bought it
from Amazon. Sure enough, when I got the TV, there
were some blotches on the screen whenever a screen was
showing a completely white screen or a blue sky.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Not a big deal.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
I didn't want to go through the trouble of sending
it back and not having a TV. About a year
or so later, I decided to go ahead and replace
it under the extended warranty. A repair guy called and
asked what the problem was. I told him about the
dirty screen effect, and he told me to email him
pictures of the screen. He called back and said no
need for him to come by and repair. I would
just get a full refund. A few days later, I

(48:15):
got the full price credited to my Amazon account, so
I basically got a free TV. And while I occasionally
see those blotches, still it's not a big deal. I
thought you'd like to know, Tony Well, sounds like, sounds
like it worked out in your favorite Tony and.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
You know, honestly, I would. I get it. I get
what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
It's like you got your money backs, you can deal
with those little splotches. I am assuming this is not
your primary TV.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
Maybe it is, but I get it.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Like there's Amazon does this thing now even when you
try to return things, They've got some kind of algorithm
that sometimes if it's more expensive for it to be
returned or more trouble for their system, they just say
keep it. And you know, they're experimenting with a lot
of different things when it comes to returns. So you
bought the extended warranty, so so the reality is it

(49:05):
worked out, and yes, sometimes the extend of warranty will
work out like like it.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Did in this case.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
That's not always the case, but I'm glad that it did.
I still don't really recommend them, because you know, there's
you didn't.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Know what was going to happen here.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
You know, you didn't know if this TV was gonna
you know, if you had to slap it back to somewhere,
you know, and bring it back into the store. But
it you know, again, it's just one of these things
where it worked out this time. But there's probably one
hundred other people that bought a TV in that month
that they never made a claim and Amazon just got

(49:40):
free money and split it with a surion or whoever
provides the warranties at Amazon at this point. But anyway,
I'm glad it worked out and it sounds great. And
you know, like I said, I'm not gonna fault you
if you want to buy an extended warranty, and that
makes you feel better when you buy electronics by all
means do it. I'm just saying there's a reason why
these companies offer it. Math works out in the insurance

(50:01):
company's favor. It always does. That's why it's called an
insurance company. But it's also called insurance for a reason.
It gives you peace of mind. And I am as as.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
What am I with my money? I am not?

Speaker 1 (50:15):
I am frugal and as frugal as I am with
my money. There is also something called convenience. There's something
called peace of mind, and there is money that you
have to spend in your lifetime that gives you those
two things. It also gives you enjoyment. And so you know,
if you stay at a nice hotel that costs one

(50:37):
hundred dollars more than a bad hotel, I can't fault
you for that. You've you've got, you know, luxury in
your life. You've got a great feeling, You've got a
great memory. So money does a lot of different things,
and I don't like wasting money, and sometimes things fall
under wasteful spending. But at the same time, I'm not

(51:00):
going to fault you for directing your money to what
gives you a return on that money in any way
that you feel like that's a return. And if you
feel tony that you got the return, that's great. That's
all that matters here. And so I'm just saying in general,
you know, there are circumstances where people feel like they
got ripped off or they feel like it didn't work out,
and so for those reasons, I typically don't recommend the warranties,

(51:22):
but I'm not going to fault you if you go
ahead and do it all right. Another big story this week,
CS twenty twenty two says they will require proof of
vaccination to attend CS twenty twenty two, which is happening
in Las Vegas January fifth through eighth, twenty twenty two.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
Now, as you might.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Recall, I did host the virtual show, the All Digital
Show last year, or I guess it was the beginning
of this year. I do not have any inside knowledge
of CS. They have not contacted me to host this
year's digital show. I don't know if that will happen
again with myself. I hope it does, but I don't know,
and I will be ready to do it if that

(52:03):
call comes in and I'm allowed to do it. But
with all that said, they are moving ahead with the
physical in person version of the show as well. It's
gonna be a hybrid. You're gonna have in person and
you're gonna have digital. I'm assuming, and again I don't
know this, but I'm assuming the in person is going.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
To be scaled back.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Typically there's over one hundred thousand people from around the
world that come to CS. I don't think that will
be the case in January.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
Things are very fluid with this coronavirus and with COVID,
and so who knows, we could be in a really
good place in January.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
We just don't know.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
So I think that they're hedging their bets on this
year's show by requiring the proof of vaccination. And they're
also looking into accepting a proof of a positive antibody
test as an alternative requirement. That has not been solidified yet,
but I guess that's for folks that have had COVID
that may not have this shot, and they say, I

(53:01):
don't need the shot anyway, because I already had it,
and so I've got the antibodies.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
I'm good to go. You know.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
I think that this is, you know, just the way
the world right now. This is what's happening. We're seeing
a lot of places require the vaccine to admit I
see both sides of that argument. And you know, do
I have it?

Speaker 2 (53:22):
Yes? And you know, I.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Got it because it's sort of the best I can
do to protect myself at this point, and I'm just
not going to keep myself from, you know, any downside
of of not having it, right, I just want to
do the best I can do. I know that some
people have reservations about it still, but again, I'm doing
what I did what's best for me in my life.

(53:44):
I wanted to travel to Hawaii. I wanted to travel
home to New Jersey. I want to go out and
do my stories. I want to interface with people, and
I just yes, I know that there's still always an
inherent risk right now with this thing. But again, like
I said, I did the best that I can do.
So CS is doing the best that they can do
by requiring this, and I'm sure that some people will
have a problem with that, but I am sure the

(54:06):
majority of people will be.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Totally fine with that.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
Now, with all that said, since so many places are
requiring a vaccination card or a digital copy or whatever,
I have not run into this just yet, but it
seems like more and more places are doing this, and
so for that reason, I did a story on KTLA
about storing your digital vaccine pass on your phone, and

(54:28):
so there's not one official method. I think most people
are when they go on Google, they look up like,
you know, digital vaccination card, And honestly, I think that
the government probably should have thought about this when they
came out with this weird little cardboard card that someone
writes on that's a record of your vaccine. Like, give
me a break, I mean, come on, we're in twenty

(54:49):
twenty one. Like they there should have been a digital
component to this card from day one.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
But there's not.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
But different states have made their own, like here in California,
where I am. I was very surprised that you can
go on the California Department of Health website and apparently
wherever you get your vaccine, they feed the data into
this website. Because I put my information in and boom,
within a couple seconds, I had a QR code texted
to me. And then you take that QR code and

(55:16):
you can import it into various apps. I think the
easiest my okay, so bottom line solution that I came
up with. And if you get a QR code, like
one of these smart digital health cards that a lot
of these companies are using, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Carbon Health California.
If you get one of these smart health cards, you

(55:37):
download an app called common Pass and it will import
that card into the pass. It will make a nice
digital card that you can then show wherever you need
to show. It doesn't add to your Apple Wallet or
your Google Pay. It will add to Samsung Pay over
the next two weeks, so that's really cool.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
I would hope they would.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Make it so that you can add it to your
app will Pay. I don't know why they didn't do
that off the bat, but they didn't. So anyway, that's
the easiest thing that I can see to do. There
are also a couple other ways.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
You can do it.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
You can obviously just use the Notes app to make
a scan of your card. You can use the drive
app on Android to make a scan. You can also
use if you're in New York, the Excelsior pass. Check
with your I would say, check with your state to
see if they have a digital passport. Check with your
the person who or the provider that gave you your
shot if they have a digital passport. Some of them do,

(56:31):
like Carbon Health, I call it digital passport. I mean
a digital copy of your card the Clear app if
you want to go, if you already have Clear, or
if you just want to use their app, you can
create a digital vaccination card on their app.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
It is free.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
It is different from their health pass If you download
the app, look for it just says digital vaccine card.
You click there or tap there, I should say, and
you follow the steps and you can make a digital
vaccination card. There is no subscription to Clear necessary, and
I like Clear because their app is really nice. It's
very well designed. But those are the basic ways Google

(57:07):
and Apple are actually.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
They are gonna bring. Sorry for that.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
I think you heard my phone ringing through the through
the podcast there. That's that's real high quality podcast there.
When you hear my phone ringing through the podcast, that's
because my phone is plugged in for the Facebook Live.
Oh anyway, so what was I saying?

Speaker 2 (57:32):
I lost my train of thought.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
But anyway, so that's the way to do it, vaccination
card on your smartphone. And yeah, I totally lost my
train of thought. But anyway, that's it.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Let's let's just get to a question. One of the
highest quality podcasts you can listen to. All right, let's
see here.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
I think I have time for one more question. Okay,
So Justin via Instagram says, hello, mister Demiro. I've seen
you on KTLA five. I have a question. Do you
have any tips on how to clean up your Mac laptop?

Speaker 2 (58:04):
Yes? I do. I do this very often.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
Number one tip if you have not done this in
a while, and you're comfortable and a lot of your
stuff is in the cloud, just do a full factory
reset of your computer.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Now. On a Mac, unlike.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
Windows, you can't just say hey, Windows ten has a
feature called like refresh and you just basically it's kind
of like on a smartphone where you can just factory
reset it. Mac doesn't have that just yet. Maybe they
will in the future, but you do. You know, there's
a little bit of not know how involved, but you
can go through and if you look up online clean
install of you know, let's say, what are we on

(58:41):
big sur? So if you do clean install of big
sur you can follow the directions. It does take a
little bit, but that's what I like to do once
a year, is do a clean install of the software,
and that way it gets rid of all little fragments
of garbage and junk and stuff and things slowing down
your system. That's like the nuclear approach. So if you

(59:02):
want a fresh, fresh computer, if you want to reset
the clock on your computer, maybe it's a little bit
of an older Mac laptop, you want to reset the clock,
give you another year before you have to buy a
new one. That's the best way to do it because
you really clean your system off and you get things.
You get to start from scratch once again. Now, if
you don't know how to do that, or you don't
want to do that, or you feel like that's too

(59:24):
much work, the next thing I would do is go
through your entire system and delete everything, all the apps
that you don't need, you don't recognize, you don't want.
I would do that, get rid of the big files
and you know, empty your trash, do all the software updates,
and restart your computer and that should bring things up

(59:45):
to speed a little bit.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
Now.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
The easiest way to do all those things that I
just mentioned is an app called.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
Clean my Mac.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
And so clean my Mac is like every other program nowadays.
Usually there's either like a subscription component or a you know,
a fee component.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
You can do a free trial.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
I don't think it does everything for the free trial,
but that's the best thing I know of. I use
it all the time on my computer. I've used it
for ten years and it's just fantastic. So it's got
every single thing you need in there. It's your cleanup,
which cleans up your system, junk, your mail attachments, your trash, bins.
It's got malware removal, it's got privacy kind of optimizations,

(01:00:29):
it's got speed optimizations, maintenance, it's got an uninstaller that
will uninstall all the little fragments of apps that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
They may leave behind.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
And also my other favorite thing is it can look
for large files taking up space or old files and
it does all of this stuff in one scan. It
sounds like an ad for Clean my Mac X, but
it's not. It's just I'm a big fan of the
program and it just works really well. So the other
program that is kind of the competition, and for a

(01:01:00):
while it was actually kind of a crapwear, but it is.
It is cleaned up its act and it's actually become
legitimate again. It's called mac Keeper, and so mac Keeper
is now legitimate and it will do similar things for
your computer. I have not tested mac Keeper as much
as I have the Clean my Mac because that's what

(01:01:21):
I have installed, is Clean my Mac. So I would
look at those two programs, see which one you think
works best for you. And that is my recommendation because
I think one of those two will we'll do exactly
what you need. Oh, look at that, you know what
that sound means?

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
It is the end of the show.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
That's gonna do it. For this episode of the rich
on Tech podcast. If you would like to submit a
question for me to answer, just go to my Facebook
page Facebook dot com slash rich on tech, hit that
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you can go to rich on Tech dot tv and
right under my name, look in the role icons for

(01:02:00):
the email icon. Hit that send your message, and I
will do my best to answer it in a future podcast. Also,
I would love it if you would rate and review
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(01:02:21):
should listen. You can also go to rate this podcast
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My username across all social media I is rich on Tech.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
You see the theme here. No matter where you live in.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
The US, you can download the free ktla plus app
on Apple, TV, fireTV, and Roku. Scroll down to the
tech section and you can watch all of my TV
segments on demand. TV is where I do my best work.
That's where I Make my Living is TV, so be
sure to watch those segments.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
They are a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
I try to pack a lot of information, useful information,
into a short amount of time. My name is rich Demiro.
Thanks so much for listening. I know there are so
many ways you can spend an hour of your time.
I do appreciate you spending it with me. As always,
stay safe, I will talk to you real soon