Mute might not be what you think on video chat apps

Elon Musk offers a Twitter takeover; a new study finds that the mute button might not work as expected on video chat app; Fitbits will soon monitor for heart issues; T-Mobile brings back unlimited photo and video uploads; Netflix introduces the double thumbs up for stuff you really love.Listeners ask if public WiFi is safe to use, why selecting a long term email address is important, best way to back up pictures across various devices, why apps ask for access to personal information and best smart TV for new cord cutters.Follow Rich!richontech.tvSee 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 (00:10):
Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter. Are you really muted
on your video call? Netflix? Does the double thumbs up?
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 you should
know about. It's also the place where I answer the

(00:31):
questions you sent me. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA
Channel five in Los Angeles. It seems like there is
never a dull moment in the tech industry these days.
We've got new phones, we've got new services, You've got
all kinds of things happening, and the big news this week,
and by the time you listen to this show, this

(00:52):
could have changed. Because this is such a dynamic situation.
But Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter outright forty
three billion dollar deal fifty four dollars and twenty cents
per stock. He is, you know, sort of a this
is kind of a controversial thing. I mean, the reaction

(01:14):
I've seen on Twitter has been fast, it's been furious,
it's been you know, some people think it's going to
be a good thing. Some people think it's going to
be a bad thing. But the reality is it's a thing,
and so again forty three billion dollar deal. Elon Musk
said that, you know, he wants to buy Twitter because
he believes in its potential to be the platform for

(01:37):
free speech around the globe, and he thinks free speech
is a societal imperative. But he thinks that the company
cannot survive or thrive. I guess, he says, I realized
the company will neither thrive nor serve this imperative in
its current form and needs to be transformed as a
private company. So he is offering to one hundred percent

(02:00):
of Twitter. Now, he says that this is his offer.
Fifty four dollars and twenty cents is a fifty four
percent premium over the day he began investing in Twitter.
I'm sure he can look at the filings and see
when he started investing. I think that was at the
end of last year, and a thirty eight percent premium
over the day the investment was publicly announced. Twitter has

(02:21):
extraordinary potential. I will unlock it. That's what Elon Musk said. Now,
this has been a roller coaster because we know that
it was revealed that Elon Musk bought nine percent stock
in the company then the company offered him a board seat.
Then he said no, I'm not going to join the board.
And then he started asking weird questions on Twitter, like,
you know, does Twitter protect free speech? You know, just

(02:44):
all these weird kind of odd things, and some things
got deleted. And it's interesting to watch his rise and
also the kind of transformation into a very polarizing, controversial person.
You know, obviously he has very successful company with with Tesla.

(03:04):
He is doing really interesting things with SpaceX, and you know,
obviously he came from PayPal and made a whole bunch
of money there and did some interesting things there. He's
outspoken and he is a forward thinker. But should he
be in charge of Twitter? A lot of people say no.

(03:25):
I'm just reading the comments today on tech Meme, they
linked up a bunch of the tweets. I mean, I
think more tweets than I've ever seen from anyone or
any particular story. Just a lot of people, the good,
the bad, the ugly, and let's be honest, what a
lot of people are concerned about is this idea of

(03:46):
free speech on Twitter. Twitter has blocked one of their
most prolific tweeters. You remember former President Trump and you know,
Trump had I think he had about eighty million followers.
And this was another thing that that Elon did. He
tweeted out a list of people and he said, is
Twitter dead? You know, these people rarely tweet and they're

(04:07):
like the top, you know, they have the top followers
on Twitter. So it's it's really controversial. It's really interesting,
you know, should Twitter be handled or run by one person?
Right now? Twitter is a publicly traded company. It's got
a board. And keep in mind this is a consumer podcast,

(04:28):
and to be quite honest, I don't talk about Twitter
a whole lot in this podcast because I don't think
Twitter is a very consumer oriented company. Like I don't
think average consumers are on Twitter. And it's clear that,
you know, if you look at their user base, they've
got you know, over two hundred million active users daily,

(04:48):
but only a portion of them are in US, maybe
something like fifty sixty million of them. So when you
look at that compared to something like Facebook and Instagram
and you know these other places out there, you know,
Twitter is just a blip, and so is Snapchat. Really
the two big ones are Instagram and Facebook when it
comes to social media, and so Twitter is small. But

(05:11):
that's part of the argument is should Twitter be bigger?
Should Twitter have more of an impact in the US?
Should it not just be the news folks and the
entertainment folks. And now, of course TikTok is another huge
one and growing very fast, so we'll follow this. I
think that for the average person, I think it really

(05:32):
the deciding factor if if Elon is in charge, I
think changes they're feeling about Twitter. There's a lot of
journalists on Twitter who may not want to support it
as much anymore. Or there's some people on Twitter, you
know that that kind of lean left or right that
may feel like Twitter would become much more of a
conservative place. So you know, I'm not giving you my

(05:56):
my feeling on whether that's right or wrong or what
you know, people should think about. But I'm just giving
you all the facts and kind of what is what's
percolating around the community. And that's really what it is,
is what does this social media network want to be?
Does it want to be a voice of the right,
Does it want to be a voice of the left.
Does it want to be a voice somewhere in the middle.

(06:16):
Should they be censoring people, should they be you know,
just is it? What should Twitter be? And so those
are a lot of questions that need to be answered.
Do I think that Elon Musk is going to finalize
purchase of Twitter. I'm not really sure. I think that
a lot of this is is just kind of shaking
things up a little bit. We'll see. But Twitter's also

(06:37):
a company they answer to shareholders. This is a lot
of money, and so it's just kind of one of
those things that we will follow. And it's quite fun
to watch. I'll be honest as a tech person, it's
quite fun to watch. It's fun to see the reactions.
It's fun to see all of the different positioning of people.
And anyway, so we'll see what happens. By the time

(06:58):
you listen to this. It could all be mute. It
could all be a moot point anyway, because Elon may
drop out of the contention for purchasing Twitter. He may
say nevermind, I changed my mind. All right, let's get
to the first question of the show. Let's see where
are we? Gina says, I have a question about wi fi.
If you're at a Starbucks or McDonald's or any other
retail outlet on their WiFi, how susceptible are you to

(07:22):
being hacked? Can you safely use Wi Fi at a
hotel or on a ship? Several years ago, I was
on a cruise. When we landed, many people got off
and access their phones through a Wi Fi connection at
the port. Later that day many were complaining their phones
had been hacked. So I never use outside Wi Fi.
Just wondering if Wi Fi is safer. Thanks for responding, Gina. Well,
you know, everyone has a story of someone who something

(07:45):
happened to them. The fact that a bunch of these
people got off at a port and their phone was hacked,
I'm not really sure that happened. It's kind of like
this whole idea of you know, everyone has a story
about something thing, right, And I think that in general
public Wi Fi is quite safe and I think you'll

(08:07):
be okay. Starbucks, McDonald's, I mean those companies I think
are probably the most safe. I mean, the chances of
someone getting in and messing with McDonald's or Starbucks WiFi
is pretty pretty low. Now, what I do my banking
on a Wi Fi network? And the answer is no,
would I check my email? Probably? I think it'll be fine.

(08:28):
Don't forget that when you check these services most of
them are going through a secure layer to access that service,
So it's not just like flying over the public internet
to access your information. When you go from your phone
to Gmail or something like that, it's using a secure
kind of transmission socket to access that information, So it's

(08:53):
not just kind of putting your information out there. And
if someone were to sniff that network, typically as long
as it's a secure as long as it's over a
secure connection, you know, from you know, a Gmail or
encrypted or whatever, it will be fine. They're not gonna
be able to see what you're doing. Now, are there
a million and one ways that this could be a problem. Yes,
of course, someone could could set up a fake network

(09:17):
and they could just log all the traffic that's happening
on that network. Someone could log all the unencrypted traffic
over a network and see what's happening there. But typically
when you're exchanging passwords and you're logging into things, most
of that is done over encrypted connections. So I think
you're gonna be okay. But again I would still err
on the side of what am I doing on this network?

(09:38):
So if I'm just doing social media Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
you know, watching YouTube, it's gonna be fine. But if
I'm doing my banking, if I'm doing my budget, if
I'm doing you know, something that's really really highly secure,
I would not use a public network in general, but
for vacation things like that. On a cruise ship, you'll

(09:58):
probably be fine. Now, if you want, you can step
up your connection to a VPN, it'll be a little
bit safer. There's a lot of them out there that
people like, you know. I would just google top rated
VPNs and see from a reputable source like Wirecutter or
you know, PC mag or something like that, and see
what they recommend. But I think that, you know, if

(10:18):
you want to step it up to that, that'd be fine.
But in general, I would make sure that you are
accessing things over a secure connection when you're you're going
to a website that requires that. I would also use
LTE if you can. Now, if you're on a cruise ship,
you probably can't use your cellular connection, so you're gonna
be on their Wi Fi. I would just be really
concerned about the Wi Fi networks that I connect to,

(10:41):
So typically I do not connect to a lot of
random Wi Fi networks. Typically I will connect to a
network if it's trusted, if it's from a place I know,
or if it's from a provider I know, I don't
just you know, find an open network. Remember the days
where you just find an open network and you connect
to it and you'd be like, oh cool, I found
free Wi Fi. I think that my privacy is much

(11:01):
more important than saving a few megabytes of data on
my plan, so I always default to cellular in general.
Now there's another whole thing that I think is actually
more important here, and that's the Wi Fi at your work.
So I think that Wi Fi at work everyone connects
to their Wi Fi at their employer, and a lot

(11:24):
of times to connect to that Wi Fi, you may
have to download some sort of security profile to your
device to be able to get onto that network. And
I think that that actually has more potential for issues
than a different network that doesn't require that, because when
you download one of these trust certificates to your phone

(11:45):
or to your computer, it's giving that Wi Fi network
a little bit more free rain on your device than
a network that doesn't require that. And so what can
they do at your work, Well, you know, they may
be able to monitor the websites that you're going to
they may able to see when you come and go.
There's a lot they can do, actually, depending on what
your company wants to do and how they want to

(12:05):
slice and dicee the data that they're collecting if they
collect that data. So I personally always am very very
cautious about when I connect to Wi Fi and why
and how and for how long and the networks that
I use. So, Gina, I think it's good that you're
thinking about this stuff. I think that if you're just
casually using the Wi Fi network, you'll be fine. But

(12:26):
anytime that you are just a little bit more critical
of the network, I think that's a smart thing in general. Well,
along those lines, let's talk about your video conferencing app. So,
you know, what do we all do when we go
on something like Zoom or teams or FaceTime or whatever.
You know, you mute yourself when you don't want to

(12:46):
be heard by the person on the other end. But
did you ever think that perhaps the video conferencing app
itself might still be listening to you. They're just not
transmitting that audio to the person on the other end. Interesting,
So it turns out these video conferencing apps might still
be listening to you even when your mic is muted.

(13:07):
This is a study from the University of Wisconsin. Students
there took a look at how popular video chat apps
collect data even when the mic is off, and in
a majority of cases, when you press mute, the apps
still access your microphone and many still collect audio snippets.
So to protect your privacy, experts recommend using what's called

(13:28):
the double mute, and this means muting the app, so
pressing that mute button on the app, but also pressing
a mute button on a piece of hardware like on
your headset or the settings on your computer, pressing mute there.
So therefore you have muted both access to your microphone

(13:48):
from your computer at a system level and also through
the app. Now, the study did not reveal specific app
names that may be coming later because they're going to
present these findings at a private conference later this summer.
But this is one of those things that it's kind
of like the stuff that you wonder about when you
use these apps, like, Okay, well I'm muted to the

(14:10):
person on the other side, but the app never said
that I was muted to them. And so with this
study found is that yeah, a lot of these apps
are still collecting little snippets here and there. Some of
them are still collecting a bunch of information about your
audio even when you're muted. And so it's kind of
concerning that when you think your privacy is intact, it

(14:31):
may not be. And now this study actually took it
a step step further. They analyzed some of the audio
using a pretty crude algorithm to see if they could
figure out what you were doing in the background, like
washing dishes or watching TV or whatever. And their algorithm
was able to figure out what you were doing in many,
many cases. And so again when you think about someone

(14:56):
like Facebook or or you know, Zoom whatever, you know
they have very sophisticated systems and computers and people, and
so what could they do with this audio? They could say, well,
we know that ninety seven percent of people are washing dishes,
that the audio sounds like this, so let's send them
some ads about dishwashing detergent. Who knows. I mean, look,

(15:18):
these programs are free in the majority of cases. If
you're not paying for it, you know that you're the product.
So I found this study to be really interesting. I
think it's it needs They kind of threw it out
there without a ton of like background data. Like they
didn't really say which apps this could be they test,
I mean they said they tested, like, well, they test.

(15:39):
I think it said like two hundred apps they tested.
Oh no, they asked two hundred and twenty three video
conferencing users. Okay, but they didn't say which apps. But
they tried out many different video conferencing apps on major
operating systems including iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac checking to
see if the app still access to microphone when it
was muted. Now, if you have an eye iPhone or

(16:01):
an Android on Android, they now have a system wide
toggle in the settings to cut off access to your microphone,
which you know you can do by you know, dragging
down your notification bar. On iOS, it will tell you
when it's accessing your microphone, but it doesn't necessarily let
you turn off access unless you go into the settings

(16:23):
for the app. But that would be kind of a
problem because you'd never be able to use the app.
So I guess my advice if you're really, really truly
concerned about your privacy is to use a pair of
plug in headphones for your computer or your phone that
has a physical mute button as well. That way you know,
you're muting your audio at the source, at the microphone

(16:44):
and also through the app itself. All right, Kenneth writes
in when I joined cal State Northridge Alumni Association, one
of the benefits was to allow me to have a
school related email addrect Thus at my CSUN dot edu.
I've had that as my primary email address for several years.

(17:06):
I have that as my identifying name on many different
providers like Walmart and Amazon. Yesterday, I was informed by
it that SASUN by the end of June, the email
account will be terminated. As such, all alumni member accounts
will be terminated. Only current students and faculty will be
able to continue with those school accounts. This is due
to a reduction in the storage space that Google is

(17:28):
allowing universities. Yes, Google, when it first arrived said free, free, free, forever,
will continue to increase your storage space forever. And then
forever came and they said, oh, never mind, let's not
do that anymore. Let's charge you after fifteen gigabytes. That
happened a couple years ago. As such, I wrote that
he didn't write that as such, that was just an aside.

(17:51):
As such, he says, I'm going to have to jump
through a lot of hoops, get a new Gmail address,
download my stuff to that address, and then contact all
the others with whom I use my former address. So
Kenneth did not actually ask a question in here, You
just kind of left a comment. And I guess this
is kind of a warning to other people that, yeah,
you need to be careful when you choose your email address,

(18:11):
because if you're going with a provider that is maybe
not going to be there in the future, you might
want to rethink. So the safest thing to do is
probably to get your own domain and pay for email
through that because you can continually do that, and you
know kind of if you're paying for it, you're gonna

(18:31):
be able to get that hosted. Obviously, I think Gmail
is pretty safe. I think Outlook is pretty safe. Yahoo
and not so much. I probably wouldn't choose them at
this point. But a lot of people also have similar
problems with their cable company. So they will use their
cable company's email address, and next thing you know, they

(18:52):
move or they switch providers, and now what do you
do Because you've got all your stuff linked in and
the problem with the email addresses is that they are
your recovery email address for many many accounts, and so
if you forget your password, oh hey, let's just email
you a password or your a temporary link to your
email address. And if that email address is not in
use anymore, well now you're kind of out of luck.

(19:14):
Because some of the bigger companies give you alternative recovery methods,
but a lot of the other ones just don't. It's
just your email. So I think that this is a
good kind of just warning to not use random email addresses,
as good as they may seem at the time, for
future reference. So I know that I have an alumni

(19:36):
email address as well. I've used that. I did use
it pretty much exclusively is my email for a very
long time, and then the writing was kind of on
the wall that I didn't really want to use that
anymore after Gmail came out. And of course I always
have my hesitation with Gmail, because you know, it is Google,
and so you're kind of showing your allegiance to one

(19:58):
major corporation, and so I didn't like that idea. But
Gmail seems to be a really good email provider. It's
worked for me for many years, so I do use
that one as well. As a couple others. I've I've
got some help self hosted emails as well. But at
the end of the day, I think that you go
with a provider that's pretty big so that you don't
get stuck in one of these in one of these

(20:20):
situations where you kind of have to back yourself out.
And so I think outlook, let's see largest email providers.
So I think there's like proton Mail is a big one.
Let's see what else do we have here? Oh gosh,
this is from twenty sixteen. Come on, you've got to
have a better provider than that, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Oh, AOL,

(20:45):
Oh gosh. I wouldn't have AOL, that's for sure. Let's
see what else is there. I remember when there was
an email called Juno, and this was back kind of
back in the day when I think AOL was king
and AOL cast money, and so if you had an
AOL account, fine, that was great. But Juno came along
and it was free email and it had a little

(21:08):
tagline at the bottom, and I think ads on the
web service, like the actual app that you downloaded your
computer had ads on it, and so Juno, I thought,
was like the best email in the world, because I
was like, I get this for free. It works outside AOL,
It's never gonna change. It's so great. I had like

(21:29):
an awesome email address because I was like one of
the first users. So my email was like super easy,
like richdat Juno dot com or something like that, and
so I just loved it. And then of course that evolved.
It got bought by I think net zero. Do you
remember that name? Man, all these things net zero? I
think is that even around anymore? I don't know. Let's see,

(21:55):
no net zero brings you to Norton three sixty so
net zero is gone. Wow, just so wild? How all
these things? Oh my gosh, it brought me to the
net zero search page, like a search But yeah, that
was there. I mean, there was a lot of stuff
in the early days of the Internet that kind of
was available and then it went away. Another one that

(22:17):
actually have been quite impressed with over the years that's
been around forever is Google Voice. So I've had a
phone number with them since day one when it was
called Oh my gosh, I'm trying to remember what Google
Voice was before Google Voice previous name, Oh my gosh,
it was like Cloud grand Central, Grand Central, So I

(22:37):
got grand Central. I was working at c NEET at
the time, and I thought it was the coolest thing
ever to have this phone number that rang all of
your different devices. So I don't know why I needed that.
I mean, back in the day, you had a landline,
you had your cell phone, and you had your home phone,
so there were three places where someone could potentially reach you.
And so I thought Grand Central, the fact that you
could just give out one phone number and it reached

(22:59):
you had all these different phones at the same time
was so amazing. And I'm pretty sure the phone number
I have with that with Google Voice is the same
phone number I've had since Grand Central launched in two
thousand and two thousand and six, and it, by the way,
was not very it was it was not around very

(23:20):
long before Google purchased it. So Google purchased it in
two thousand and seven for just a mere fifty million dollars.
So that's what became Google Voice, if you remember that.
I love giving little history lessons because you kind of
forget about this stuff. I mean, I've been doing this
for a while and I am I'm one of those
people that loves to sign up for stuff the day

(23:40):
it comes out. I think, you know, it used to
be a lot. There used to be a lot more
services that came out that were really cutting edge and
really cool and just free and kind of changed your
life in a sign up and you're like, this is
really cool and it's free. This is really cool and
it's free. This is really awesome and it's free. And

(24:03):
now I feel like that's not so much the case anymore.
I think many, I mean things are still coming out
that are really awesome. I think that many of these
companies have gotten hip to the either the freemium model
where you know you're gonna get a feature or two
for free, but the rest of it is going to
be pretty highly locked down and paid, or they just
come out and it's just like now we're just paid,

(24:24):
and we've got to be because there's just no way
we can do this without being paid. I remember Who's
Sweet was another one. So Who's Sweet was this service
that it just it linked up all of your different
social media networks and you can post one thing and
it would go to all the different networks. And I
thought that was so cool until I just Deine told me,

(24:45):
I'll never forget this. We were hosting cs together and
I just Deine. I was you know, asking, I was
picking her brain. I'm like, Justine, how do you have
so many followers in so many places? And how do
you keep up with it? And this was, you know,
you're going on ten years ago, so this was like
the early days of social media. And she was like, Oh,
whatever you do, do not cross post. Whatever you do,

(25:07):
don't cross posts. People want to build their own little
communities and their own little places, and so the post
that you have in one place does not necessarily work
in another place. And that really held with me for
so many years, and I would I would try to
be very unique and have a unique voice on all
my different social media platforms. And then flash flash forward

(25:28):
ten years. Justine and I hosted a CES couple of
years ago, and I said, Justine, I don't know if
you remember telling me this, but you remember telling me that,
you know, we should be different on all these different
platforms and personalize the stuff. And she goes, oh, well, yeah,
there's no way I can do that anymore. And yeah,
that's that advice doesn't hold true anymore. And I was like, what,

(25:49):
I've been following this advice for so long, but here's
the thing. It's still good advice, and of course we
discussed it a little bit more. Of course, you want
to create the You can have similar content, but you
adapt it for the different social media network. So what
a lot of people do when I see this all
the time, they post an Instagram post on Facebook like

(26:13):
the actual maybe a link to it, or they post
a link to a YouTube video. And the reality is
Facebook does not reward that. They reward what's called a
native upload of a video or a native link or
you know, links these days on Facebook don't really do
well at all. But you know, they want native content,
content that is uploaded through their system in their format.

(26:36):
So if you look at something like Instagram when they
came out with their copycat of TikTok, they you know,
people are just downloading their tiktoks and uploading them to
Instagram reels and they said, you know this is just
because I already make this piece of content. It's the
same format, it's vertical, it's the same timeframe. Let me

(26:56):
just upload it to Instagram, and Instagram sensing danger because
they didn't want people to just you didn't want reels
to be a TikTok copycat. That it was and literally
just show TikTok videos. They got hip to that, and
they ended up putting in their algorithm a filter that
would look for you know how when you download a

(27:17):
TikTok video, it puts your username and TikTok kind of
bounces around the screen like that DVD logo on the
TV screen. It kind of bounces around your TikTok video. Well,
Instagram's algorithm searches for that, and if it sees that
on your video that watermark, it says, Okay, we see
what this person's doing here. We're gonna demote that. And

(27:39):
so they demote that video. So, yes, you'll still see
those videos, and if it's a popular video, of course
it's still gonna go viral with that even on there
if a lot of people catch wind of it. But
it's one of those things that's built in because Instagram
wants to reward original content. Now, could you just upload
the same exact video to both services? Yes, you can,
but again and that's much more in a native format

(28:02):
because you're not just downloading something that you uploaded from
TikTok and using TikTok, you know, editing functionality and all
that stuff and then uploading it to Instagram. So again,
it's just this kind of stuff happens with all these
social networks. They want to be their own social network.
They want you to have your own kind of voice
and your own you know, they want you to use

(28:25):
it the way that you engage with your viewers and
not just sending stuff to ten different networks at once.
So I think at the beginning, when we were trying
to handle all these different things, that worked out great.
But as Justine realized and as I realized, as you
went along, like these these services became so different and
kind of what people expected from them became different. Like
on Instagram, you would post a picture, you know, it

(28:48):
wouldn't you wouldn't necessarily just post a screenshot of your
latest article that you posted to the website or whatever,
you know what I mean. And so again, by by
putting those things in a format that the social media
network wanted, would help you in that social media network
gain viewers and followers and also interact with those followers.

(29:09):
And they rewarded that, and they still do in a
big way. I mean, this is very very apparent on
Facebook to me that when you test out some of
the new things that Facebook is doing, like reels, they
are really really rewarding you with that by showing those
to way more people. They're kind of over correcting for

(29:29):
those things, and so they're sending your reels to a
lot more people than that would typically see them. But
as these things mature, the numbers go down and people
are like, hey, wait, hold on, how come I was
getting so many views at the beginning and now I'm
not getting those same views. I haven't really changed anything. Well,
what's changed is that Instagram got what they wanted. They
got everyone to get comfortable with using reels, to uploading

(29:53):
to reels, to selecting reels, to watching reels, and now
they don't need your help as much in uploading that
stuff because the mass amounts of people are uploading stuff.
So they're like, all right, we're good now, so we'll
just now we'll just show your videos to a small
subset of people once again, like we were going to
in the beginning. I don't know what that story was.

(30:13):
I don't even know where how did I get on
that tangent with that story? Oh? Email, Yes, that was
the email question. So to answer your question, choose an
email that you can stick with all right, let's get
to a story about Fitbit. Fitbit devices we'll soon be
able to tell their users about potential heart issues. Fitbit's
got an approval from the FDA to use an algorithm
came up with that identifies atrial fibrillation. This is a

(30:38):
fib that's a form of a regular heart rhythm that
affects more than thirty million people, and those people are
more susceptible to strokes. So the big challenge here is, yes,
you might say, rich, dude, rich, come on, I listened
to the show. I know that the Apple Watch has
had this feature forever. Come on, Rich, Well, two things
on that. Number one, I don't think that the Apple

(31:00):
Watch does this in the background. I believe that you
still have to trigger a manual. If I'm looking at
this watch here and I go to heart or ECG,
it doesn't necessarily take a reading in the background. You
have to put your fingers and complete kind of this
circuit on your watch for it to take a reading.

(31:21):
And if you have a heart issue, maybe people do that,
you know, a couple times a day. But the kind
of idealized version of this is that you would you're wearable,
would be doing this in the background all the time.
But I think the problem with that is that it
uses a lot of battery, it uses a lot of resources,
and that has been a challenge until now. And that's

(31:44):
when Google or I should say Alphabet that owns Fitbit,
they have come up with this algorithm that kind of
looks at the data that your watch is collecting all
the time and analyzes that data for signs of a
FIB and then they will notify you if there is
something unusual. This does not replace a doctor, doesn't replace

(32:06):
the equipment you would typically use to do a real
reading or a thorough reading. But it is a really
really good start and the fact that this gotten FDA
approval is huge. Basically, it gives the wearers of fitbit
specific models of Fitbit, this is not all of them,
and it gives them, you know, another way to track

(32:29):
their health. And I think that is a really really
good thing. So the Apple Watch, I think is fantastic.
I think it's amazing. I think it's saved a lot
of lives. I think that it is telling people when
their heart rate is low, when their heart rate is high,
when they're breathing, is having an issue. I think it
does that but also it can do these manual heart
rate readings. So I think that this is a really

(32:52):
good thing the fact that Apple users are enjoying. Oh yeah,
it also tells you, you know, if you fall, it
can call for help. So I think that these wearables
are getting to a place where they are going to
become so commonplace. And it's like, why would you not
have one of these things on your wrist? I get
the privacy implication, sure, but I feel like the security

(33:15):
blanket that they offer is starting to outweigh any sort
of privacy concerns you may have about these devices. And
so to me, I mean, look at we've got Google
with their They've got things that can I mean, there's
just so much of this going on. I tested the
Google Home that can you know, measure your respiration at

(33:37):
night without even touching you. I mean it just looks
at the waves like it uses like micro micro radar
to like sense the up and down of your lungs,
and it can it can figure out issues there and
tell you how you slept. I mean, we've got the
Aura ring that does a whole bunch of stuff. I'd
still like to test that one out. That's the one
wearable that i'd really like to try out that I

(33:59):
have not tried, and it just seems like it'd be
a really cool thing. But I will say, I think
this is great. I'm so glad that Phippit got this.
It's going to be coming to certain models of the Sense,
the Versa, the Charge, and the Inspire. My only problem
with fitbit is that they seem to take a lot

(34:22):
longer to introduce software features on their devices versus the
Apple Watch. Apple Watch has this nice cadence of regular
software updates with watch os, kind of like iOS. It
just comes out regularly and there's always something new and
things are always getting better. I feel like and maybe
I just haven't worn a fitbit in a while. I
feel like the Fippit is just a little bit behind.

(34:42):
Like they announce these things whenever the fitbit comes out.
They always say like, oh, we're gonna have a blood
oxygen sensor, but it takes like another six months to
a year to arrive on people's wrists. So I think
that hopefully you know now that pipbit is getting much
more integrated with Google and I should say alphabet, I
I guess hopefully there you know, there's more kind of

(35:02):
force behind them to work more closely in getting these
things to people's wrists faster. But I am all for it.
I really think that, uh. I mean one of the
reasons I wear the Apple Watch is that I really
feel like it's like an almost like a safety blanket
where you know, if you go out running and you fall,
like imagine you're hiking in the middle of nowhere by yourself,
which you know you may do once in a while,

(35:23):
and you know, you fall and your watch calls for help.
I mean, that's really really important, and it just doesn't
you know, if you didn't it's it could be the
difference between life and death. I mean, it really really can.
So let's get to another question. Let's see, Uh, Collette says,
I am puzzled. Oh, it says you. I guess the

(35:46):
subject is USB thumb drives. Uh for photo, I guess photostick.
I am puzzled. At one site the reviews oh for
the above are great, and on another site I should
not buy. I have an Android tablet and HP Envy computer.
My husband has a Tashiba laptop and an Android phone.
I would like to take all the photos from each
and put them into one spot. What do you suggest

(36:06):
to someone with minimal tech knowledge? Thank you, Collet collect well,
I would suggest Google Photos. I mean that would be
my first choice in this situation. I think whenever someone
wants to consolidate their photos, I think Google Photos is
the best. You can install it on every single one
of those devices you just mentioned. You can also do

(36:27):
a family share account and so you can have the
photos from both your husband's devices and yours merge. It
works great, It's slicing and dicing, and the search is
just unbelievable. The cloud backup is phenomenal. I would recommend,
of course, having it on a different backup somewhere else,
but you know, you can do that down the line.

(36:47):
But I think that Google Photos would definitely be the
best way to go. You originally asked about the photostick
by Omni. Now I don't know what the photostick by
Omni is, but I have a guess, and I guess
that I probably would not recommend that. So I'm searching
for a photostick by Omni and yeah, let's gosh, let's see.

(37:11):
So just looking at the website. Immediately looking at the website,
it's one of those websites that is just something I
would not purchase something from. So it's it's got the
pop up that says someone from Lincoln, Kansas just purchased
the photo stick. Omni. Oh my gosh. Just now, when
I happen to go to your website, someone just purchased one,

(37:32):
and you're telling me about that. Okay. Also you can
see the pricing. It's like retail is seventy four, this
is fifty nine ninety nine. Then you've got retail. So
basically they're selling a one and twenty eight gigabyte Oh
someone else just bought one from Hagerman, Idaho. Huh. And

(37:52):
they're selling a two hundred and fifty six gigabyte flash
storage drive that looks like a drive that I used
to get at events giving out like candy for free
for one hundred and fifty dollars. Now, if their software
was like unbelievable, yeah, that would be amazing, so I
would I would recommend it. But it I just don't

(38:13):
think that any of this is good, So I'm not
knocking them. I have not tested this. I don't know,
but the reality is, uh oh, I just got a
special offer when I went to click away from the
website they said, Okay, you can get an extra one
for forty percent off. So it's just one of these
websites that is just I don't like it. I wouldn't
order from there, so if you want, if you want. Oh,

(38:36):
and it also says okay, it says as featured on CBS,
Yahoo and Business Insider, so let's go to Yahoo or okay.
So interesting this. I just can't trust this. It's so weird.
They have this like report from a website and the

(38:59):
author you can't click on it, so this is like,
it looks like it's a website. It's so interesting. It
looks like it's a website from a TV station in Houston.
But usually you could click on the author's name so
that you can see all the things that this author wrote.
And I can't seem to find that author. But you

(39:20):
know what, I don't you know what? Actually this author
does look legit. Let's see. Let me just try one
more thing. Weird, what our email address? Let's try one
more thing here? Okay, So it looks like this is
a consumer author or a consumer reporter in Houston, so

(39:43):
she may have she may have actually tested this for real,
so that could be legit let's see on on Okay,
on Yahoo they are using a press release, so they
are literally just linked up to a press release that
is not an actual news story. And then h on
Business Insider, they are linking to a press release of

(40:04):
their own writing. So for all these reasons, absolutely not
what I purchase this. Now you can purchase it. It might
be just fine, but I'm giving my advice. You're tuned
into the rich On Tech Show. So this is why.
Those are all the reasons why when I research a product,
I would not purchase it. So what I would purchase
is something called the sand Disc sand Disk I expand

(40:27):
and they make various versions. You will want the one
that works with the Android phones, and so they have
and I Expand. I think it's either the duel or
let's see they have the let's see shop. Oh come on,
I'm looking for this thing portable drives. I'm trying to
find the sand disc I Expand that I would get,

(40:50):
and they have Anyway, if you just go to sand
Disc I Expand, they have a whole bunch of the
one that I featured on KTLA was really good. So
I just search. Okay, here we go. Ktla USB Drives
and this one is called the sand Disc I expand
Flash drive. Lucks ooh, lucks this is this is deluxe

(41:14):
because it has Lucks in the name. And what I
like about this drive is that it's got iPhone on
one side, a connector for lightning, and then USB C
on the other. You may just need USB with those
different devices, but I'd recommend USBC because you both have
Android phones and so you can plug that into the
bottom of both of those phones. But great question, I
would say, when it comes to the tech questions that

(41:36):
I get, should I get a USB? These things must
advertise like like I can't believe, but the USB drive
for backup photos is probably the top, if not the
top question, one of the top three questions I get.
And it's it's truly remarkable how these companies advertise because

(41:58):
these they're just everywhere, so many questions about them. So anyway,
there you go. There's my answer. All right, Netflix introducing
the double thumbs up for even better recommendation. So not
a big story, not much time to spend on this,
or I don't want to spend a bunch of time
on this, but there will be a new option for
you when you're rating shows on Netflix, and it is

(42:20):
the double thumbs up. Not to be confused with the
two thumbs up. Two thumbs up is Ciskel and eber
Late movie critics that pretty much defined the entire industry.
But this is the two thumbs up. Oh I just
got it on mine. Okay, so I just got it
on my Netflix app and you tap rate, and now

(42:40):
it gives you a down, a thumbs up. A thumbs
down says not for me. One thumbs up is I
like this. Two thumbs up is I love this, And
so when you click that two thumbs up, it will
signify that you want more shows like that for your
personalized recommendations, and that's what you are going to get.
So they just found that the one thumbs up was
just a little I'll lean in the ratings because you

(43:02):
might like something, but you're not like, oh my gosh,
I love this. Like there are certain shows I like,
but then there are shows that I love, love, love,
and so actually I should go into Netflix. I never
really thought about this. I don't really use a whole
bunch of Netflix, but I should go in and rate
the shows that I do like so that I can
get really good like maybe I'll discover shows that I like.
I never thought about doing that, but I'm gonna. I'm

(43:24):
actually gonna do that with some shows and movies because
that way I can get stuff that I like. And
then maybe I'll watch more Netflix and get my twenty
dollars a month worth. I know, everyone that's using my
account gets there, gets my money's worth, that's for sure. Uh.
Let's see what do we want to go to next?
All right, okay, let's go to Marylyn. Marilyn says, I'd

(43:45):
like to understand why developers need access to my personal
information such as photos, contacts, media, ability to make and
or manage phone calls in order to play a game
I've downloaded. Is it really necessary to give them access
to my handset or tablet? Thanks anti cookie, anti cookie,
anti cookie, absolutely not. They do not need this personal information.

(44:09):
This is a data grab. They are trying to get
as much information out of you as possible because they
can sell more ads to you, or better yet, they
can collect information about you and then use that information
to sell your data to other people and make some
quick cash off of that as well sell that to
data brokers. So I love the fact that you are

(44:32):
actually aware of this. I love the fact that you
are cognizant of it and you are noticing this. But
when you download an app, be very very careful and
methodical about the screens that follow the download. You're going
to get questions about all kinds of stuff. Can we
have access to your gpsqu have access to your precise location,

(44:52):
we have access to your contacts, we have access to
your calendar, we have access to your you know, can
we track you across apps? All these different things? Location?
You know, like she said, contacts, media, photos, And Apple
has gotten really good about letting you you know. It
used to be on Android and Apple when you said yes,

(45:14):
it would just be like a blanket yes to like
a lot of different things. Now they've definitely parsed it
out on both operating systems, and Android actually takes it
a step further. So if you don't use an app
for a while, they they revoke they're called permissions. They
actually revoke the permissions of that app. So let's say

(45:35):
you downloaded some random game that is stopping up all
of the data it can because it's just kind of
one of those apps. Well, let's say don't play that
game in six months, Google in the background says we
noticed that Rich hasn't been playing this game, and also,
why do you need access to all Virtus stuff in
the background here, So we are just going to revoke
that access until he opens up this app again, and

(45:58):
then we're going to ask him again if you want
to give his location. And I think that is a
huge win for the operating system. On Android and Apple,
you can go ahead and revoke permissions and take them
back after the fact, but it doesn't do it automatically,
but it'd be nice if it did, and maybe it
will in a future update. Who knows. I mean, WWDC
is just around the corner. And at this point, I

(46:20):
feel like the features that Apple and Android keep adding
are like very similar on both ends. It's like, oh,
we have this, Oh we have this, we have that,
we have this, and it's like they're just kind of
like neck and neck at this point with the different
features they have. But with that said, always always be
very critical about any of the permissions that you give,
especially when it comes to your photos. If you're using

(46:41):
like a photo editing app and it says allow access
to all your photos, just say, hmm, does it need
all my photos or can I just like, let's say
you just wanted to download an app to like retouch
a picture once because you just need to do something,
just give it access to that one picture. That's why
it says on Apple allow access to all photos or
select media. That's what that means. You select that one

(47:01):
picture and say, okay, you can have this picture, but
you can't have all the rest of my pictures because
these companies could, you know, kind of slurp up some
of the data from your the metadata from your other
pictures and kind of see where you take them and
that gives an idea of where you go. So believe me,
these these app developers can be very sneaky, sneaky and
it's it's a lot of it is very legal. You know,

(47:23):
if they're if you're given access to your your location,
you know these apps will ping that access even when
you're not using it. And so that's another question that
Apple now asks. It says, do you want to give
permission to use your location all the time or only
when you're using the app? Now all the time is
way more valuable to them because they can see all
the different places that you go, and they know that

(47:45):
if you go into that coffee shop every single morning
you pause there for two minutes. They know that you're frequenting,
you know, Jim's Coffee on Second Street in Seattle. And
now they can have an advertiser that wants to advertise
against that and say, hey, why don't you come to
Jones Coffee on Third Street and they can send you
a coupon so or targeting ad or whatever they want

(48:06):
to do. So there's a reason for all of this
stuff and why these apps want so much information. It
is your job, as a consumer sad as it is,
to kind of sift through and think about, hmm, do
I need to give them this information? And I sit
here as a very as a smart tech person, and
I sit there and I go, okay, now, what's the

(48:27):
implication of not letting ways have access to my information
at all times? And the implication is now Ways doesn't
know where I am and it can't send me a
time to leave notification. So there are some reasons why
you might want to give these apps certain access that
they are requesting. It's up to you to kind of
figure out and connect the dots as to why they

(48:47):
need that. The famous example, and I almost hate to
use this because it's been so long. But the famous
example is that all the flashlight apps back in the
day that would ask for all the permissions and really
it was a flashlight app which was probably built into
your phone, but it was just collecting so much data
while you had that app installed on your phone, because
then they were selling it to different companies. So same

(49:09):
thing with a lot of weather apps. They do that
as well. So you just have to be very careful
about what data you give up. And if you don't
really care, then don't care. But I think you should
be concerned with any of the data that you are
willingly giving up on a daily basis. Good question, anti
cookie all right, Speaking of Google Photos, the unlimited Google

(49:31):
Photos backup is coming back. I can't believe this, but
just for T Mobile customers, ugh, this is according to
nine to five Google, Google and T Mobile seem to
have a pretty good partnership going. But soon T Mobile
customers will be able to pay fifteen dollars a month
for unlimited Google Photos backup. Now, fifteen dollars a month

(49:53):
might sound like a lot, but right now I'm paying
twenty five dollars a month for I think five terribile
of I guess Google Drive access. Now here's the thing,
the unlimited Google Photos backup. I'm not exactly sure if
this would refer to new photos moving forward or all

(50:13):
of your photos in Google Like, once you activate this
fifteen dollars option, does it magically unlock all that space
in your Google Drive that's being used by your Google Photos.
I'm not sure, and I don't really know. They don't
really explain it in here, but this new two So
basically you get two terabytes of Google Drive storage plus
unlimited Google Photos. So that would be a really, really

(50:36):
big win. In fact, that'd be pretty compelling to me
because I would save ten dollars a month by switching
to T Mobile just to get this one feature. Now,
I've been around the block long enough to know that
features come and go, so I would probably not base
my switching of a wireless carrier on this one feature
because who knows how long this partnership is going to last.
Who knows how long the unlimited photos deal is going

(50:57):
to last, and then you got to switch again if
if something changes or they raise the price or it's
not as competitive. But I would say, if you have
T Mobile and you have a lot of Google Photos.
You're paying fifteen dollars a month for Google Drive storage
or something like that. I would definitely look into this
because the ability to store photos and videos in full

(51:19):
resolution is pretty awesome, especially if you're like me and
you have over two I'm going on three terabytes of
Google Photos, just Google Photos. Oh no, no, no, no,
that's not true. That's not just Google Photos. Let me
say how much I have in Google Photos. If you
want to check to see how much storage're using Google
just go to one dot Google dot com and then

(51:39):
tap storage and I'm using two point three terabytes of
five gigs. That is one hundred and twenty one gigabytes
in Google Drive, thirty five gigs in Gmail. How the
heck do I have thirty five gigabytes of Gmail? I
have no idea two point two terabytes of Google Photos,
and so yeah, I'd like to get that unlimited. That'd

(52:00):
be amazing, because you know, the old pixels were unlimited,
And by the way, I still have the original Pixel
which was unlimited, and you can still use it for unlimited.
So some people have kind of hacked together a system
where you take a picture on your your current phone
and it sends it to that that pixel, and then
that pixel uploads it, so you still get to save
that full resolution. If I was a little bit more

(52:23):
of the old nerd that I was, I'd probably do that.
I'd probably set that up. But at this point I'm
more about convenience, and I don't really want to have
like a Google Pixel server sitting in my house just
to upload pictures. And I'd be like, because the problem is,
let's say you're out on vacation and this happens. You
take your the majority of your pictures on vacation, so
now now you're waiting to get home to back up

(52:45):
all these pictures that are on your phone, and I
think that's very, very dangerous to not have those backed
up in real time when you're on vacation. By the way,
when I'm on vacation, I typically will turn on my
I typically turn off this is this gets a little complicated,
but in Google Photos, you have the option to only

(53:05):
upload over cellular and so are sorry only upload over
Wi Fi, And so typically to save battery, I will
leave that turned on because most of the time I
will you know, I'll be I'll be in you know,
I'll be home at the end of the day, and
I'll get into my Wi Fi zone and I will
have those photos that I took throughout the day uploaded. Now,

(53:27):
when I'm on vacation, it's it's kind of tricky because
I want my photos to be uploaded in real time,
because when you're on vacation, you are doing a lot
of things that you don't typically do. You're in a
lot of places that you wouldn't be in. You're in
a lot of situations that you wouldn't be in. And
I'm talking like, you know, boats and flying on airplanes
and all these different things where you may lose your phone.

(53:49):
And if you lose your phone, and let's say you
have all these photos set to back up on Wi
Fi only, you may not make it back to your
hotel room before these photos get uploaded, and now you've
lost a day's worth of photos because you were taking
them all day. You drop your phone down an elevator
shaft at the hotel, and now it's gone and at
the end of the day, and now all those photos
are just locked on that phone forever. So typically I

(54:12):
will turn on the cellular uploads when I'm on vacation
because that's when those pictures are the most precious. The
downside of that is that you are now eating through
your phone's battery a lot faster because uploading your photos
over cellular takes a lot more battery. And so it's
this kind of like this gentle dance that I have
when I'm on vacation that I want my photos to

(54:32):
be uploaded, but I also want to preserve my battery life.
So I kind of sometimes do it in the middle
where I'll let the photos go up over cellular, but
not the videos because the videos really eat up a
lot of the battery. And so it's just little things
to think about. I mean, this is I just tell
you this stuff because it's this kind of stuff that
keeps me up at night, and I kind of really
try to digest a lot of it and come up

(54:54):
with like good systems, but you know, it doesn't always work.
But that's kind of like what my feeling is. So
get those pictures backed up, please, please, please please please.
All right, let's do one more question from Jan Hey, Rich,
Bob and I are nearing seventy need a smart TV.
We like local news and weather. We're huge sports fans
and have learned how to stream on Netflix. What featureshould
we look for in purchasing a fifty inch center stand.

(55:17):
I'm guessing that just means fifty inch TV. Uh, Thanks
Jen so Jan. I would recommend the Roku TCL six
series Roku TV. I think that's going to give you
everything you need. It's gonna be a fantastic price, It's
gonna have Roku built in, and so you don't have
to deal with like a third party kind of smart
TV situation. You don't have to deal with a not

(55:39):
a very good smart TV situation. If I had my way,
I'd probably recommend the Apple TV as an add on
to any TV. So just find a good TV that
you like and then add the Apple TV. But that's expensive.
I don't know if you have an iPhone because you
didn't mention if you have an iPhone, but I think
that the built in is probably the easiest way to go.
My second choice would probably be one of the Amazon

(56:01):
TVs that has the fire TV software built in, and
or perhaps just getting a fire TV stick that you
can attach to a smart to a TV. This idea
of the smart TV I typically don't like because I
feel like the software is updated more frequently on the
standalone sticks and devices. But when it comes to like

(56:23):
Roku and Fire, a lot of those TVs maybe not
if they're from third parties or not updated, but the
TCL is updated, I know. And also the Amazon TVs
are updated if they come from Amazon. So I think
it's the Omni series is the one that you want
to look for. So those are the TVs that I'd
recommend if you're going built in. Otherwise, I'd say just

(56:43):
get any old TV that you like at Costco and
then just get the add on, which is either the
Fire TV stick or the Roku box or the Apple TV,
and in my preference would probably be probably Apple TV
and then maybe fireTV stick, the Max, and then the Roku,

(57:06):
and I'd go with a Roku device not a stick
because the sticks are historically underpowered. I do like the Max.
I think that one's fine, but I think the Roku,
the really cheap Roku sticks like twenty five bucks, is
going to be very underpowered, especially if you're cutting the
cord and you're using that for everything. Oh wow, look
at that. That audio means it's the end of the show.

(57:29):
That's gonna do it for this episode, If you'd like
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(57:49):
find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech,
and no matter where you live in the US, you
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and Roku. Once you do, scroll the tech section and
watch all of my TV segments on demand. My name
is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are
so many ways you can spend an hour of your time.
I do appreciate you spending it right here with me.

(58:10):
I'll talk to you real soon.