# Travel Tips, Online Privacy & Nintendo Switch 2 Preview

An episode of [Rich On Tech](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1120941458), 6 Apr 2025, 1 h 48 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/e2dbcb5d-f67c-4a90-ac3c-b1b900f9b41b/eee599d7-ba57-4b9c-86e8-b2b601847b80/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=60b5debe-4c1e-4de5-9b9b-b1b900f9b445

Rich shares tips for avoiding pricey roaming charges when traveling abroad. The AirFly Pro 2 lets you use your Bluetooth headphones with in-flight screens. A simple adapter that makes travel more comfortable. Lynn in Murrieta is asking why AT&T is ending email-to-text. The service shuts down in June because presumably not many people are using the feature anymore. Rich also mentioned three easy ways for exchanging files cross platform including LocalSend, FilePizza and PairDrop. Matt Swider from TheShortcut.com joins to talk about his hands-on time with the Nintendo Switch 2 — what’s new, what’s improved, and whether it’s worth the wait. Katie in Garden Grove asks about translation earbuds. Rich suggests TimeKettle M3 and Google Pixel Buds for real-time translation. TikTok gets another 75-day extension as U.S. pushes deadline on a potential ban. Rich shares free ways to remove your personal info from the internet. Ludi in Long Beach reports mysterious files clogging his iCloud storage. Rich suggests checking for hidden files and old backups to free up space. Kyle in Riverside asks if there’s a way to have the iPhone automatically respond to all incoming text messages. Zelle is discontinuing its standalone app due to low usage, with less than 2% of transactions occurring through it. Users can continue using Zelle through their bank’s app without any action required. Rob in Los Angeles is locked out of his Microsoft account from repeated sign-in attempts. Rich says reset your password, turn on 2FA, and sign out everywhere. Cloaked Co-founder and CEO Arjun Bhatnagar will join Rich to share tips and insights on protecting your personal information and online privacy. Want an eye-opening experience? Dial 1-855-75-CLOAK (1-855-752-5625) and you’ll hear how much of your personal data is out there. ChatGPT is free for college students through the end of May. Rich likes the Amazfit Bip 6 smartwatch—plenty of features for just $80. Rich’s son Parker calls in with his take on the new Minecraft movie. A kid’s honest review. Jacqueline in Michigan asks how to move iPhone photos to Android. Rich recommends using Google Photos. Sergio is vision impaired and looking for assistive glasses. Rich mentions Envision, OrCam, IrisVision, eSight and the $350 Ray-Ban Metas. He also suggests trying the OKO app for street crossing. Joel Santo Domingo of Wirecutter breaks down mesh networking—what it is, why it matters, and the best systems to buy. His top choice: Eero 6. Roblox has new tools for parental controls. Rich says the AirFly Pro 2 is a travel must-have. Lets you use Bluetooth headphones with in-flight entertainment. Rich On Tech Episode 116 - April 5, 2025 Rich DeMuro brings you the latest tech news, helpful tips, gadget reviews, and more—plus interviews with industry experts—all in this weekly show. Call 1-888-RICH-101 (1-888-742-4101) to join in! Email your question here. How to Listen: 🎙️ Live on KFI AM 640 – Los Angeles, Saturdays from 11 AM – 2 PM PT 🎙️ Rebroadcast on 710 WOR – New York City, Sundays from 8 PM – 11 PM ET 📻 Syndicated on 450+ affiliates nationwide Get the podcast to via RSS, iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Follow Rich on X, Instagram and Facebook. Download the MP3 here (choose episode, then scroll to bottom of page and look for ”Download”) Paid newsletter subscribers get ad-free, HQ audio here. Referral links for services I like. Amazon storefront for products I like. RichOnTech.tv Links may be affiliate. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Nintendo sets a date and price for the switch to.
[0:05] Speaker 1: TikTok gets another deadline extension. Zell is shutting down its app,
[0:12] Speaker 1: but if you're using it through your bank, you're probably fine.
[0:16] Speaker 1: And how to remove yourself from the Internet for free?
[0:19] Speaker 1: Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on? I'm Rich
[0:24] Speaker 1: to Buro and this is Rich on Tech. This is
[0:28] Speaker 1: the show where I talk about the tech stuff I
[0:30] Speaker 1: think you should know about. It's also the place where
[0:33] Speaker 1: I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech
[0:38] Speaker 1: should be interesting, useful and fun. Let's open up those
[0:42] Speaker 1: phone lines at triple eight rich one oh one. That's
[0:46] Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one,
[0:51] Speaker 1: triple eight rich one O one. Give me a call.
[0:53] Speaker 1: If you have a question about technology. Email is also open.
[0:58] Speaker 1: Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit
[1:01] Speaker 1: contact richontech dot tv hit contact. All Right, we got
[1:08] Speaker 1: a full, full lineup of guests this week. Matt Swider
[1:11] Speaker 1: from the shortcut dot com is going to join to
[1:14] Speaker 1: talk about his hands on time with the Nintendo switch to.
[1:18] Speaker 1: Then we've got Cloaked co founder and CEO Arjun Botnauger.
[1:25] Speaker 1: He's going to join me to share tips and insights.
[1:27] Speaker 1: I'm protecting your personal information and online privacy. And later
[1:32] Speaker 1: Joel Santo Domingo of The Wirecutter is going to break
[1:35] Speaker 1: down mesh networking, what it is, why you need it,
[1:39] Speaker 1: and the best systems to buy well. It is a
[1:44] Speaker 1: spring break and also summer travel coming up, so I've
[1:48] Speaker 1: been getting a lot of questions about how to travel
[1:51] Speaker 1: with your current phone plan or your current phone but
[1:55] Speaker 1: avoid all of those roaming charges, especially internationally. Now this
[2:00] Speaker 1: has gotten a lot easier over the years. I remember
[2:03] Speaker 1: the first time I ever went to Japan, I was
[2:07] Speaker 1: without a phone for basically the moment I got off
[2:11] Speaker 1: the plane to the moment I got to my hotel
[2:13] Speaker 1: room a couple hours later. It was a long, long
[2:16] Speaker 1: train ride, and it was so frustrating. I thought I
[2:19] Speaker 1: had done the right things. I thought I had the
[2:22] Speaker 1: plan figured out. I did not, and it was tough.
[2:26] Speaker 1: Now I ended up getting over it, but in the
[2:29] Speaker 1: meantime I said that would never happen again. And so
[2:33] Speaker 1: here are my tips for making sure that you can
[2:35] Speaker 1: stay connected without coming back home to a giant bill.
[2:40] Speaker 1: So number one, I think the easiest thing to do
[2:43] Speaker 1: is to stick to your current plan. So if you
[2:45] Speaker 1: have a major carrier, that's AT and T, Verizon, T Mobile.
[2:49] Speaker 1: They all offer these international day passes. So if you
[2:53] Speaker 1: just want your phone to work the way that it
[2:55] Speaker 1: works in the States, just use that. That's going to
[2:58] Speaker 1: be twelve dollars a day for AT and T and Verizon.
[3:01] Speaker 1: That lets you keep your phone your same phone number.
[3:04] Speaker 1: Let's you use your data. You don't get a ton
[3:06] Speaker 1: of data in most instances, but you'll get enough to
[3:09] Speaker 1: get you through what you need for the most part.
[3:12] Speaker 1: But that's going to be very pricey. So T Mobile
[3:15] Speaker 1: a lot of their plans actually include free international data,
[3:19] Speaker 1: but the speeds might not be as fast as you're
[3:22] Speaker 1: used to at home. You can pay them to have
[3:24] Speaker 1: faster speeds. Now, if you're on one of those fifty
[3:26] Speaker 1: five plus plans, a lot of those I checked do
[3:29] Speaker 1: not include international data. They might include international texting when
[3:34] Speaker 1: you're overseas, but the data might not be included. So
[3:37] Speaker 1: number one, be sure to check what your plan offers
[3:41] Speaker 1: and what you have. Now here's a little trick. If
[3:44] Speaker 1: you're on one of those very expensive unlimited plans. We're
[3:48] Speaker 1: talking like the ninety dollars a month plan, A lot
[3:51] Speaker 1: of the carriers give you what's called a free roaming day,
[3:54] Speaker 1: and they sort of bank. So even some of the
[3:57] Speaker 1: smaller carriers do this, but if you're on a pricey plan,
[4:00] Speaker 1: you may be banking international days. So if you check
[4:03] Speaker 1: your little account, go on the app, go on the website,
[4:06] Speaker 1: it may say, hey, you have five free days of roaming.
[4:10] Speaker 1: I mean, if you're going on a five day trip,
[4:11] Speaker 1: six day trip, that might be just enough and that
[4:14] Speaker 1: won't cost you a thing. So that's my number one
[4:17] Speaker 1: tip is to either look online, call your carrier, check
[4:20] Speaker 1: your plans, see what's already included, and see how much
[4:23] Speaker 1: it costs to just use what you have. If you're
[4:26] Speaker 1: just going on a short trip, three day trip overseas,
[4:29] Speaker 1: maybe that twelve dollars a day isn't so bad, right,
[4:31] Speaker 1: thirty six dollars still very expensive, but it's going to
[4:34] Speaker 1: be very easy to do that. So that's number one. Now,
[4:37] Speaker 1: if you have one of these mv and o's right
[4:39] Speaker 1: mobile virtual network operator. They go by the names like
[4:42] Speaker 1: Mint Mobile, Consumer, Cellular, Visible, Google Fi. A lot of
[4:47] Speaker 1: those carriers, some of them may not include the international roaming,
[4:51] Speaker 1: but a lot of them are adding it as an
[4:53] Speaker 1: add on, So It used to be the big delineation
[4:55] Speaker 1: for those mv and o's was you didn't pay very much,
[4:58] Speaker 1: but you didn't get a lot of the extra perks.
[5:00] Speaker 1: But nowadays they're starting to add some of these perks
[5:03] Speaker 1: to the plan, and it's getting tougher and tougher to
[5:05] Speaker 1: differentiate between the big, pricey plans and these smaller carriers
[5:10] Speaker 1: with these great unlimited plans. So if you have one
[5:14] Speaker 1: of these mv and o's, really double check to see
[5:16] Speaker 1: what's included and if you're able to add international roaming
[5:20] Speaker 1: to that plan, because sometimes you can, sometimes you can't,
[5:23] Speaker 1: Like I know, Mint Mobile just added it. So that's
[5:26] Speaker 1: another way. Google Fi, by the way, a lot of
[5:28] Speaker 1: their plans at a lot of people like Google Fi
[5:30] Speaker 1: because you can pretty much go all over the world
[5:33] Speaker 1: and it's included in your roaming fees. Okay, or I
[5:38] Speaker 1: guess your roaming is included without additional fees, I should say.
[5:41] Speaker 1: Now here's the second thing. You've probably heard of these,
[5:43] Speaker 1: but they're called eSIMs, and electronic sims are a great
[5:47] Speaker 1: money saving option because eSIMs basically let you install a
[5:52] Speaker 1: temporary wireless plan on the phone that you already have
[5:56] Speaker 1: no physical sim card necessary. It used to be when
[5:58] Speaker 1: you landed in a country, you would buy the physical
[6:00] Speaker 1: SIM card, pop yours out, pop this one in and
[6:03] Speaker 1: you can be on your way. Now you can do
[6:05] Speaker 1: this right from your phone. You download an app. I've
[6:08] Speaker 1: tried a Relo, AI R A l O. I like
[6:11] Speaker 1: them a lot. I've used them in various countries. I've
[6:13] Speaker 1: tried gig Sky gig Sky and they offer a free
[6:17] Speaker 1: one hundred megabyte plan, and then you've got one that's
[6:20] Speaker 1: called Saley and they also are sort of up and coming.
[6:24] Speaker 1: So those are three good places to start. But there
[6:27] Speaker 1: are many many eSIM providers out there, so just do
[6:30] Speaker 1: your research, make sure that it's reputable. But what you're
[6:32] Speaker 1: going to do is download that app here, buy your eSIM,
[6:35] Speaker 1: and then you will activate it. Basically right when you
[6:39] Speaker 1: hit the ground, you'll activate that. Now, keep in mind
[6:41] Speaker 1: most eSIMs are data only, so before you travel, make
[6:46] Speaker 1: sure you enable Wi Fi calling and texting in your
[6:49] Speaker 1: phone settings. That way, even if you're on data only,
[6:52] Speaker 1: you should be able to get your phone calls through
[6:54] Speaker 1: Wi Fi and your texts through Wi Fi calling and texting.
[7:00] Speaker 1: You're wondering does my phone support eSIMs? These have been
[7:03] Speaker 1: around for a while now, even though you might not
[7:05] Speaker 1: have used it or might not be familiar with it.
[7:07] Speaker 1: iPhone ten, R, ten S or newer, they all have
[7:10] Speaker 1: eSIMs enabled. Samsung Galaxy AS twenty and later all have eSIMs.
[7:14] Speaker 1: And the neat thing about an eSIM is usually your
[7:16] Speaker 1: phone can support several of them at once. So even
[7:19] Speaker 1: if your primary carrier is on an eSIM, which you know,
[7:23] Speaker 1: Apple's been doing this for a long time in their stores,
[7:25] Speaker 1: They've been activating eSIMs on the iPhone, you can still
[7:29] Speaker 1: add a second SIM, maybe up to like eight eSIMs
[7:33] Speaker 1: on your phone. It just depends on your phone model. Now,
[7:36] Speaker 1: the main thing you have to check is to make
[7:38] Speaker 1: sure your phone is not locked to your carrier. So
[7:41] Speaker 1: a lot of times these cell phone plans, the big plans,
[7:44] Speaker 1: they don't want you using an eSIM because guess what,
[7:47] Speaker 1: they're a lot more affordable and they want you to
[7:49] Speaker 1: pay more, so they lock your phone to them only
[7:53] Speaker 1: their network. So if you have rise in AT and T,
[7:56] Speaker 1: sometimes you're not able to install an eSIM. So if
[7:58] Speaker 1: you're on an iPhone, you can go in your Settings
[8:00] Speaker 1: General about and look under carrier lock and see if
[8:04] Speaker 1: it says no SIM restrictions, and if you see that,
[8:07] Speaker 1: you're good to go. If it says lock to your carrier,
[8:09] Speaker 1: you're not good to go. On Android, you can go
[8:11] Speaker 1: to a website called imeicheck dot com and you can
[8:16] Speaker 1: type in the secret code from your phone, the Imei code,
[8:19] Speaker 1: which is kind of the universal code for your your
[8:22] Speaker 1: Android phone, and it will tell you if that's locked
[8:24] Speaker 1: to your carrier. I tested it this morning. It does work.
[8:27] Speaker 1: I tried it with a couple different phones. It'll tell
[8:29] Speaker 1: you if it's locked or not. Now, if you're using
[8:32] Speaker 1: an a SIM, you might want to turn off roaming
[8:35] Speaker 1: to avoid any surprise charges. Because even if you leave
[8:37] Speaker 1: your other eSIM on your standard carrier, that may still
[8:42] Speaker 1: activate when you fly to another country. So be very
[8:44] Speaker 1: careful and turn off roaming if you want to avoid
[8:47] Speaker 1: any sort of surprise charges when you come back home. Now,
[8:50] Speaker 1: if you're thinking rich, this all sounds very complicated. I
[8:53] Speaker 1: feel like I don't know, I don't really understand this.
[8:55] Speaker 1: I feel like I'm gonna be hit with all these charges.
[8:58] Speaker 1: The cheapest option is to go old school, and that
[9:01] Speaker 1: is to use airplane mode and turn off your cellular
[9:05] Speaker 1: So turn basically you can turn on your airplane mode.
[9:08] Speaker 1: But then when you have your airplane mode on, which
[9:10] Speaker 1: is going to disable your cellular you could just turn
[9:13] Speaker 1: your Wi Fi on and then just hop around to
[9:15] Speaker 1: hotspots around the city. Now hotspots have gotten a lot easier,
[9:18] Speaker 1: a lot more prevalent in various countries and cities, so
[9:22] Speaker 1: you should be able to find something where you're going.
[9:24] Speaker 1: You may not have coverage the whole time, but at
[9:26] Speaker 1: least you can go to like a cafe or your
[9:28] Speaker 1: hotel and still have coverage, check your messages, and get
[9:31] Speaker 1: to the next place safely. There is an app, a
[9:35] Speaker 1: Wi Fi map app that you can download and you
[9:37] Speaker 1: can help locate free networks on there, so wi fimap
[9:41] Speaker 1: dot io that will also give you the passwords for
[9:44] Speaker 1: a lot of places. I was actually since I installed
[9:47] Speaker 1: this app to test it out, I was at a
[9:48] Speaker 1: place that had free Wi Fi and I said, Hey,
[9:50] Speaker 1: do you want to submit the Wi Fi password for
[9:53] Speaker 1: us to share with other folks? And I said, sure,
[9:55] Speaker 1: why not? I mean it's printed on the you know,
[9:57] Speaker 1: the page in the in the little waiting room I
[9:59] Speaker 1: was in, so not, so you can submit your information
[10:02] Speaker 1: to that app and sort of crowdsource that data and
[10:05] Speaker 1: help other folks as well. Now the trick is someone
[10:07] Speaker 1: emailed me and they said, hey, Rich, well wait a second,
[10:09] Speaker 1: what if I don't have data, how do I get
[10:11] Speaker 1: the information on that Wi Fi app? And I said, oh,
[10:14] Speaker 1: that's they've thought of that. So you can pay the
[10:16] Speaker 1: Wi Fi app to download all the Wi Fi information
[10:20] Speaker 1: for an area. So if you're going to a city
[10:22] Speaker 1: like Rome or something, you can download all that information.
[10:25] Speaker 1: And then of course once you're there, you can use
[10:27] Speaker 1: WhatsApp or other messaging apps like Telegram if you want
[10:30] Speaker 1: to make calls, chats video, just make sure your friends
[10:33] Speaker 1: have that installed as well. And my other tip turn
[10:36] Speaker 1: off your automatic backups on things like your photos and
[10:39] Speaker 1: your cloud, your cloud apps, anything that's going to automatically
[10:44] Speaker 1: back up data in the background or use a lot
[10:46] Speaker 1: of data in the background, your music, your YouTube, your Netflix.
[10:49] Speaker 1: Make sure those are set to Wi Fi only. That
[10:52] Speaker 1: way they don't gobble up all your data. And finally,
[10:55] Speaker 1: one other good tip download offline maps before you go.
[10:59] Speaker 1: Google Maps and Apple Maps support this, so if you're
[11:02] Speaker 1: going to a city, be sure to download the offline
[11:05] Speaker 1: maps in Google Maps or Apple Maps. It's very easy
[11:08] Speaker 1: to do. You can find all of these instructions on
[11:11] Speaker 1: my website. Rich on Tech dot TV. All right, eight
[11:15] Speaker 1: eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
[11:18] Speaker 1: four two four one zero one. We'll take some of
[11:21] Speaker 1: your calls right here on rich on Tech. Coming up next.
[11:33] Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
[11:35] Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one
[11:39] Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
[11:43] Speaker 1: four one zero one. Phone lines are open. Website is
[11:46] Speaker 1: open rich on Tech dot TV. There you can get
[11:50] Speaker 1: notes to anything I talk about. Mentioned international travel. We
[11:54] Speaker 1: know that real ID deadline is coming up. I think
[11:57] Speaker 1: it's May seventh. You gotta get your drivers license upgraded.
[12:01] Speaker 1: But I'm in this weird world where both my driver's
[12:04] Speaker 1: license and my passport expire this summer. So there could
[12:08] Speaker 1: be a scenario where if I don't get these things renewed,
[12:10] Speaker 1: I'm not able to travel even domestically, because you can
[12:13] Speaker 1: use your passport to travel domestically even if you don't
[12:17] Speaker 1: have the real ID. So that's my current plan right now.
[12:20] Speaker 1: So I went online. I don't know if you know
[12:21] Speaker 1: you can do this, but you can renew your passport
[12:23] Speaker 1: now completely online. And so I did that, and the
[12:27] Speaker 1: process was very easy as long as your passport sort
[12:30] Speaker 1: of meets the requirements. And it was like one hundred
[12:33] Speaker 1: and thirty dollars I think to renew my passport. But
[12:36] Speaker 1: I did it all online, took maybe fifteen minutes. The
[12:39] Speaker 1: trickiest part is taking the picture, because you take your
[12:42] Speaker 1: own passport picture, so you have to enlist a friend
[12:45] Speaker 1: because you can't take a selfie. This is not like
[12:48] Speaker 1: you know, the social media world, but you can take
[12:51] Speaker 1: your own picture. You got to stand in front of
[12:54] Speaker 1: some sort of like you know, I think it's like
[12:55] Speaker 1: a white background, neutral background, can't smile. But they give
[12:58] Speaker 1: you a whole bunch of example online of what the
[13:01] Speaker 1: picture looks like for your passport and so you basically
[13:04] Speaker 1: can take it with your smartphone. So, uh, Bobo looks
[13:08] Speaker 1: like he has a question about this? Are you you're
[13:10] Speaker 1: you're wondering about this? You have the Samsung Ultra. Yes,
[13:14] Speaker 1: you could have just took it yourself with the pin.
[13:17] Speaker 1: No you can't anymore, Are you serious? No? They took
[13:20] Speaker 1: that feature away. Yeah, that the new So it's so
[13:24] Speaker 1: funny you say it because that was my initial thing. Now,
[13:26] Speaker 1: of course, you could set a timer, and I did.
[13:28] Speaker 1: I tried it on the tripod and all that stuff.
[13:30] Speaker 1: It doesn't work. You gotta have a friend take it
[13:32] Speaker 1: because you want it to be eye level. But yes,
[13:35] Speaker 1: the new phone, the S twenty five Ultra, they took
[13:37] Speaker 1: the bluetooth out of the pen and so you can't
[13:41] Speaker 1: use it as a little remote control anymore. Why would
[13:43] Speaker 1: they do That's as far as I know. Now you're
[13:45] Speaker 1: now you have me second guessing this. Let me test
[13:47] Speaker 1: this since I have it right here. Yeah, no, you cannot.
[13:50] Speaker 1: You cannot press it anymore.
[13:51] Speaker 2: There.
[13:51] Speaker 1: It used to be the pen and you can still
[13:53] Speaker 1: do it. On the older models, the stylists would act
[13:55] Speaker 1: as a little bluetooth remote control. And yeah, they took
[13:59] Speaker 1: that away on the latest one. Let's go to Lynn
[14:02] Speaker 1: in Marietta, California. Lynn, you're on with Rich.
[14:07] Speaker 3: I'm getting messages that say text messages on my phone
[14:11] Speaker 3: that say Hi, it's AT and T. On June seventeenth,
[14:14] Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, will stop supporting email to text messages.
[14:19] Speaker 3: That means you won't be able to send a text
[14:21] Speaker 3: message to an AT and T customer from an email address.
[14:25] Speaker 3: And I get this when I send, for example, a
[14:28] Speaker 3: photo I've taken on my phone to my laptop because
[14:32] Speaker 3: I want to do something with that photo on my laptop.
[14:36] Speaker 3: What is this about and what's the workaround?
[14:39] Speaker 1: So back in the day when when texting first started,
[14:42] Speaker 1: there was like a little hack where you could literally
[14:45] Speaker 1: email to text. So and all a lot of the carriers,
[14:48] Speaker 1: I think they all supported it. But it looks like
[14:50] Speaker 1: AT and T as of June seventeenth, is discontinuing the
[14:54] Speaker 1: ability to send through email. So it used to be
[14:58] Speaker 1: you could put your phone number, let's to say, three
[15:00] Speaker 1: one oh five FI five one two one two at
[15:03] Speaker 1: text txt dot att dot net or at MMS dot
[15:08] Speaker 1: att dot net. So you could literally turn your phone
[15:11] Speaker 1: number into an email address and you would receive that
[15:14] Speaker 1: as a text message. They are taking that ability away.
[15:17] Speaker 1: Now ninety nine point nine percent of people don't do
[15:20] Speaker 1: this anymore, so they don't really need that feature. So
[15:24] Speaker 1: for you, you're saying that sometimes you do what you
[15:28] Speaker 1: send a photo to your phone through your computer through email,
[15:32] Speaker 1: the reverse.
[15:33] Speaker 3: I send a photo I've taken on my phone to
[15:36] Speaker 3: my computer. But I think they're just based on what
[15:40] Speaker 3: you just said, maybe they're just broadcasting this to anyone
[15:42] Speaker 3: and everyone, because that's not the scenario of me sending
[15:45] Speaker 3: a photo from my phone to my email address.
[15:49] Speaker 1: No exactly. So this is this is like if I
[15:52] Speaker 1: wanted to send you a text message from my computer
[15:56] Speaker 1: email system, I would address it to your phone number,
[15:59] Speaker 1: and you have AT and T and it would it
[16:01] Speaker 1: would come through you to your text message.
[16:03] Speaker 3: But again, email to text means that literally not the
[16:07] Speaker 3: converse of text to.
[16:08] Speaker 1: Email exactly, So you should be fine. Yeah, and by
[16:13] Speaker 1: the way, if you ever want to send something simply
[16:15] Speaker 1: on your own network, there's a great app called local
[16:18] Speaker 1: Send localsend dot org. So if you're trying to do
[16:22] Speaker 1: like cross platform devices like an iPhone to a Windows
[16:26] Speaker 1: computer or you know, Android to a Mac computer, local
[16:29] Speaker 1: send is great. The other one that's really great is
[16:32] Speaker 1: file dot Pizza. File dot pizza lets you transfer stuff
[16:37] Speaker 1: right from your web browser. That's a good one. And
[16:40] Speaker 1: then there's one called pair Drop pair drop dot net.
[16:43] Speaker 1: You just go to that website on both devices and
[16:46] Speaker 1: you can drag and drop files. So three easy ways
[16:50] Speaker 1: to drag and drop files. I get it. Apple users
[16:53] Speaker 1: have air drop. They all love air drop, but air
[16:56] Speaker 1: drop is not so good if you are trying to
[16:58] Speaker 1: send from an iPhone to a Windows computer or from
[17:02] Speaker 1: an Android to a Mac computer. So we need some
[17:04] Speaker 1: of these other ways to do it. And thankfully you
[17:07] Speaker 1: know you can email yourself. You can text yourself if
[17:10] Speaker 1: you've got I message. There's so many ways to exchange
[17:13] Speaker 1: things nowadays, but local send, file, pizza, and pair drop
[17:16] Speaker 1: are all three easy ways to exchange files. All right,
[17:20] Speaker 1: Coming up, we are going to talk about the Nintendo
[17:22] Speaker 1: switch To. We've got details on pricing and availability with
[17:26] Speaker 1: our pal Matt Swider. Coming up next, Welcome back to
[17:38] Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
[17:40] Speaker 1: talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's
[17:45] Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
[17:51] Speaker 1: We'll get back to the phone lines in just a moment.
[17:53] Speaker 1: Website for the show Richontech dot TV if you want
[17:56] Speaker 1: links to anything I mentioned. We're going to talk Nintendo
[18:00] Speaker 1: switch To. Joining me now is Matt Swider. He is
[18:03] Speaker 1: editor in chief of the shortcut dot com, great website
[18:08] Speaker 1: newsletter all filled with like consumer tips and reviews and
[18:12] Speaker 1: all kinds of great stuff. So check it out. Matt.
[18:15] Speaker 1: You went hands on with the switch too, huh?
[18:17] Speaker 4: I did the brand new Nintendo console. It's coming out
[18:21] Speaker 4: June fifth, and it is a significant upgrade if you
[18:25] Speaker 4: were still, you know, carrying around that original Nintendo, that
[18:30] Speaker 4: Nintendo switch that's eight years old at this point, so
[18:34] Speaker 4: it's due for an upgrade. And I got early access,
[18:37] Speaker 4: hands on time with it, and the thing I love
[18:39] Speaker 4: about it is the screen.
[18:41] Speaker 1: It's a lot bigger.
[18:43] Speaker 4: It's seven point nine inches and you think back the
[18:46] Speaker 4: original switch with six point two inches, so it feels
[18:49] Speaker 4: you feel every single extra pixel that's on there. Ten
[18:53] Speaker 4: ADP instead of seven to twenty P. It can be
[18:56] Speaker 4: four K if you plug it into a doc that
[18:58] Speaker 4: you know it does four K on a TV, so
[19:02] Speaker 4: that is great. It's LCD technology, so it's not like
[19:06] Speaker 4: the switch O Lead, which seems like a downgrade. But
[19:09] Speaker 4: that extra extra resolution HDR one hundred twenty frames per second,
[19:14] Speaker 4: that makes a difference. And it's very bright, so that's
[19:17] Speaker 4: really important. It's not like the technology from eight years ago.
[19:20] Speaker 4: So significant upgrade on the screen, all right.
[19:22] Speaker 1: But that just tells me they're going to have an
[19:24] Speaker 1: O LED version down the line, of course, because they
[19:26] Speaker 1: refreshed the original switch throughout the years with like little
[19:29] Speaker 1: improvements here and there, but this is like the real
[19:33] Speaker 1: big improvement the switch too, So June fifth, four hundred
[19:37] Speaker 1: and fifty dollars. Were you surprised at that price tag?
[19:40] Speaker 2: You know what I was?
[19:41] Speaker 4: It was fifty dollars more than anybody expected, and now
[19:46] Speaker 4: that the US tariffs are are in place, people are
[19:49] Speaker 4: unsure if it's even going to be that much, it
[19:51] Speaker 4: could increase, so they delayed the pre order.
[19:54] Speaker 5: That's like the big news.
[19:56] Speaker 4: So it's a you know, the pre orders are supposed
[19:58] Speaker 4: to go live on April ninth, and everybody's waiting for
[20:01] Speaker 4: that moment because it could sell out for delivery on
[20:04] Speaker 4: day one. But now it's delayed indefinitely. The release date's
[20:08] Speaker 4: still delayed. Just to be clear, the release date is
[20:12] Speaker 4: still June fifth.
[20:12] Speaker 1: But why do you think they're delaying the prutors because
[20:15] Speaker 1: they don't know the price tag yet that they're going
[20:16] Speaker 1: to settle on.
[20:18] Speaker 4: I think that's why they didn't make the price tag announcement.
[20:21] Speaker 4: Even during the presentation that had a video presentation that
[20:24] Speaker 4: was online, they didn't even mentioned price. They just said,
[20:27] Speaker 4: you know, go to the website and eventually we saw
[20:29] Speaker 4: four fifty. And now I think it's you know, they
[20:33] Speaker 4: they're giving themselves a wiggle room just in case tariffs
[20:36] Speaker 4: do affect the console price. That on their end, so
[20:40] Speaker 4: they they want that wiggle room. I also think they're
[20:44] Speaker 4: hoping that that's, you know, part of a negotiation tactic
[20:46] Speaker 4: maybe something like that. But the games are going to
[20:50] Speaker 4: be as much as eighty dollars for some of the games,
[20:52] Speaker 4: Mario Kart World.
[20:53] Speaker 5: Digitally will be eighty dollars. It'll be ninety if you
[20:56] Speaker 5: buy it.
[20:57] Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that is wilds it used to be.
[21:01] Speaker 1: I mean these games were like, what fifty, and then
[21:03] Speaker 1: they became sixty. Now we're up to ninety dollars. So
[21:07] Speaker 1: if you actually buy the bundle, which is five hundred dollars,
[21:10] Speaker 1: let's say these prices stick, you know, four to fifty
[21:12] Speaker 1: or five hundred. So four to fifty is without the game,
[21:15] Speaker 1: five hundred includes Mario Kart World, so you're actually saving
[21:19] Speaker 1: thirty dollars there on the bundle.
[21:21] Speaker 4: Yes, And I forty highly highly recommend buying that bundle
[21:26] Speaker 4: if you have any interest in Mario Kart World, because
[21:28] Speaker 4: you're you're gonna save a bunch of money. And I
[21:31] Speaker 4: think that's that's the one that the pre orders will
[21:34] Speaker 4: sell out right away because everybody wants to play that
[21:37] Speaker 4: game and it's a thirty dollars at least thirty dollars savings.
[21:40] Speaker 1: Okay, so what about the joy cons they now detach
[21:42] Speaker 1: and attach and detach magnetically. Did you get to try
[21:46] Speaker 1: that out? Was that aggressive? I did?
[21:48] Speaker 4: Nintendo had a really cool experience in New York City.
[21:50] Speaker 4: It's coming to LA and then Dallas after that. Got
[21:54] Speaker 4: to play tested early and being able to play those
[21:57] Speaker 4: different modes where you're playing in handheld mode, you're playing
[22:00] Speaker 4: in TV mode, and you're playing it with the joy
[22:02] Speaker 4: cons detached.
[22:04] Speaker 5: I was able to detach them and attach them very quickly.
[22:07] Speaker 4: It's a lot a lot more simpler than what it
[22:11] Speaker 4: was before, where you had to kind of do the
[22:13] Speaker 4: sliding mechanism that works sometimes sometimes it didn't work. This
[22:17] Speaker 4: has really strong magnets and it's going to be a
[22:19] Speaker 4: sinch just to detach them and attach them. And hopefully
[22:23] Speaker 4: there's no breakable parts because like it's magnetized. It's really strong.
[22:27] Speaker 4: But you know, we'll see when people do tear downs
[22:30] Speaker 4: stuff like that.
[22:32] Speaker 1: What did it feel like these things to like, you know,
[22:34] Speaker 1: like the magnets they go on like left and right,
[22:36] Speaker 1: But like, did it feel like you can just kind
[22:38] Speaker 1: of break them off, like with is there any part
[22:40] Speaker 1: that in your connect innerconnects between these devices?
[22:44] Speaker 4: I think there is. Well, how they come apart is
[22:48] Speaker 4: that there's little mechanism where you push a button and
[22:53] Speaker 4: it actually has another part that kind of pushes off
[22:58] Speaker 4: of Nintendo switch. So it's it's a very simple mechanism.
[23:03] Speaker 4: It turns out. We thought it would be a lot
[23:05] Speaker 4: more complicated than it actually was, but I don't think
[23:10] Speaker 4: it's I think it's very durable, and I had confidence
[23:14] Speaker 4: that it wouldn't just fall off.
[23:15] Speaker 5: The magnets are pretty strong, so they built it really well.
[23:20] Speaker 4: But I'm sure some people are going to put some
[23:22] Speaker 4: torture tests online on some video so those will be
[23:25] Speaker 4: fun to watch.
[23:25] Speaker 1: Okay, So if it's new feature game chat, so I
[23:28] Speaker 1: guess at the minimum, because there's a new button on here,
[23:31] Speaker 1: a Sea button, you can chat with your friends like
[23:34] Speaker 1: audio chat. But then if you buy the they have
[23:36] Speaker 1: a new USBC camera you can video chat. And this
[23:40] Speaker 1: is kind of like reminds me of Discord or all
[23:43] Speaker 1: these other ways that gamers are already kind of like
[23:46] Speaker 1: video and audio chatting online. So what do you think
[23:49] Speaker 1: of that feature?
[23:50] Speaker 4: Yeah, everybody at the Shortcut, all my entire team. They
[23:53] Speaker 4: want to buy a Nintendo Switch for this feature. Because
[23:56] Speaker 4: Mario Kart World, you can appear against your screen background
[24:01] Speaker 4: so you can like watch what other people are doing
[24:04] Speaker 4: in a you know, there's it supports up to twenty
[24:07] Speaker 4: four people, but the four of us want to play
[24:10] Speaker 4: and kind of taunt each other on camera and have
[24:13] Speaker 4: a lot of fun. There's a new mode called Knockout Mode,
[24:16] Speaker 4: and this seems like a very interactive, almost twitch like experience.
[24:21] Speaker 4: You mentioned discord, a lot of these game chats have
[24:24] Speaker 4: video capabilities. Now Nintendo finally has.
[24:26] Speaker 1: That, okay, and then they're also bringing game cube games
[24:30] Speaker 1: to this as well. Now this will this come to
[24:33] Speaker 1: the old switch as well? I mean, because it's just
[24:34] Speaker 1: going to be part of a Nintendo Switch Online if
[24:36] Speaker 1: you have a subscription.
[24:38] Speaker 5: Yeah, you would think.
[24:39] Speaker 4: I think it's a new Switch to exclusive because they
[24:43] Speaker 4: have a new controller that is coming and you can
[24:46] Speaker 4: buy that separately. So it's a GameCube controller with new
[24:49] Speaker 4: extra buttons on there, and that is definitely something that
[24:54] Speaker 4: you want to experience it. You know, you pay yearly
[24:57] Speaker 4: for the subscription, but this is going to be exclusive
[25:00] Speaker 4: to the new console.
[25:01] Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's interesting. Okay, so let's talk about pre orders.
[25:05] Speaker 1: I mean, you can't. All you can do is put
[25:07] Speaker 1: your email address in right now, right. And then there's
[25:09] Speaker 1: also a report I've read that they were basically requiring
[25:12] Speaker 1: fifty hours of gameplay if you wanted to order it
[25:15] Speaker 1: direct from Nintendo, to like help fend off scalpers.
[25:18] Speaker 4: Absolutely, so, I think that's a really good thing because
[25:20] Speaker 4: we saw during the PS five restock chaos of a
[25:23] Speaker 4: couple of years ago that people were buying, you know, ten,
[25:26] Speaker 4: twenty thirty of the consoles at a time and reselling
[25:29] Speaker 4: them for double their price. That could easily happen. But
[25:32] Speaker 4: with these measures that Nintendo is putting in place, you're
[25:35] Speaker 4: able to you know, say like it goes to it
[25:38] Speaker 4: rewards the players that are actually playing games. So you
[25:42] Speaker 4: need fifty hours of gameplay time, and you need to
[25:46] Speaker 4: have a switch account, you know, or a Nintendo Online
[25:49] Speaker 4: account for over a year, so it's so that the
[25:54] Speaker 4: gamers actually get it. My suggestion, though, is to pre
[25:57] Speaker 4: order it from one of the retail store when the
[26:00] Speaker 4: pre orders go live, because Nintendo's website, it's online website
[26:04] Speaker 4: called my Nintendo Store doesn't go live with their pre
[26:07] Speaker 4: orders until May eighth, and that's really late, so if
[26:11] Speaker 4: they run out of pre orders, you can't really go
[26:13] Speaker 4: back in time and pre order it from Best Buy,
[26:16] Speaker 4: which was April.
[26:17] Speaker 5: Ninth, but now maybe another date.
[26:19] Speaker 4: So try all the major retail stores, just a secure
[26:23] Speaker 4: of reservation and maybe get two reservations because they don't
[26:27] Speaker 4: usually charge their card until they ship. But at least
[26:30] Speaker 4: you'll have two stores in case one gets delayed or
[26:32] Speaker 4: canceled for some reason.
[26:33] Speaker 1: So what do we think? Is this a must have?
[26:36] Speaker 1: Do you upgrade if you already have the Nintendo Switch?
[26:38] Speaker 1: And is it going to be tough to get for
[26:40] Speaker 1: the holidays. I think it will be tough to get.
[26:43] Speaker 1: I think a lot of parents are going to want it.
[26:45] Speaker 4: I think it is a must have if you're playing
[26:48] Speaker 4: the Switch on a even a weekly basis, If if
[26:50] Speaker 4: that's your go to console, if you love Mario games,
[26:53] Speaker 4: Mario Kart World is going to be a blast to play.
[26:56] Speaker 4: They have Donkey Kong Bonanza, a little pun that's gonna
[27:00] Speaker 4: be a lot of fun for both kids and adults.
[27:02] Speaker 4: So I think it's the right console for a lot
[27:04] Speaker 4: of people. It's a little bit pricey, but My word
[27:08] Speaker 4: of warning is don't wait for the price to go down,
[27:10] Speaker 4: because that usually doesn't happen with the Nintendo console. So
[27:13] Speaker 4: if you're putting it off hoping for a sale, you're
[27:16] Speaker 4: probably gonna be waiting a really long time.
[27:18] Speaker 5: With the pre orders, I would get it the moment
[27:20] Speaker 5: they open.
[27:21] Speaker 4: I'm gonna have if you follow at Matt Sweider or
[27:23] Speaker 4: the shortcut dot com and subscribe, I'm gonna have the
[27:26] Speaker 4: moment the preorders go live links to those retailers, because
[27:29] Speaker 4: I do expect them to sell out pretty quickly and
[27:31] Speaker 4: we might get less inventory because of the tariffs.
[27:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't expect any discounts on this. Typically
[27:37] Speaker 1: the way that Nintendo operates is no discounts. Maybe a
[27:40] Speaker 1: bundle is good or some added extra you might get,
[27:43] Speaker 1: but just seeing a slash of one hundred dollars or
[27:45] Speaker 1: something really doesn't happen there. All right, Matt Swider, thanks
[27:49] Speaker 1: so much for joining me. The shortcut dot com is
[27:52] Speaker 1: his website. You were the first place that I learned,
[27:54] Speaker 1: since I follow you on X that the date was
[27:57] Speaker 1: changed or you know, Nintendo put out that statement that said, hey,
[28:00] Speaker 1: we're gonna, you know, change the launch date or the
[28:04] Speaker 1: pre order date. I guess we're holding off.
[28:06] Speaker 4: It makes turning on notifications that's that much more important,
[28:09] Speaker 4: So stand by for that news. Hopefully I get to
[28:12] Speaker 4: inform you and everybody else when the pre orders go live.
[28:16] Speaker 1: Tap that bell, all right, Matt, thanks so much for
[28:19] Speaker 1: joining me. Let's eighty eight rich one O one eight
[28:22] Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
[28:25] Speaker 1: Coming up, I'll tell you why TikTok gets yet another
[28:28] Speaker 1: lifelined right here on rich On Tech. Welcome back to
[28:36] Speaker 1: rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
[28:38] Speaker 1: talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one eight
[28:42] Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
[28:46] Speaker 1: Just one thing we forgot to mention about the switch
[28:48] Speaker 1: from Nintendo in the last segment is will the games
[28:52] Speaker 1: be backwards compatible? So Switch one games will work on
[28:56] Speaker 1: switch to Switch two games will not work on Switch one,
[28:59] Speaker 1: and some games will be switched to enhanced of older games.
[29:05] Speaker 1: So yeah, so bottom line, your mileage may vary, but
[29:09] Speaker 1: it sounds like in general, the old games will work
[29:12] Speaker 1: on the new console, the new games will not work
[29:14] Speaker 1: on the old console. Let's go to Katie in Garden Grove.
[29:20] Speaker 6: Katie, you're on with Rich, Hi, Rich, I've seen advertised these.
[29:26] Speaker 6: They're like ear pods and they translate. So you've just
[29:30] Speaker 6: put this thing on your ear and you can go
[29:36] Speaker 6: to several different countries and it'll translate for you. Have
[29:39] Speaker 6: you heard anything about that?
[29:41] Speaker 7: I have.
[29:43] Speaker 1: I'm concerned that you saw them advertised. Where'd you see
[29:45] Speaker 1: them advertised? Social media? Yes? Yeah, so I would be.
[29:50] Speaker 6: I saw them on Amazon as well.
[29:52] Speaker 1: Okay, well, what's the brand, because there is a brand
[29:54] Speaker 1: I do recommend.
[29:55] Speaker 6: Oh, okay, that's what I'm asking about.
[29:58] Speaker 1: Okay, so they're pretty the Time Kettle, Time Kettle M three.
[30:04] Speaker 1: Those are the most inexpensive, or that I should say,
[30:07] Speaker 1: the least expensive translating earbuds. Now, I have not personally
[30:11] Speaker 1: tested these, but I've talked to many friends who have
[30:14] Speaker 1: and they are known to work pretty well. So those
[30:19] Speaker 1: are probably what i'd recommend. What's the brand that Kettle?
[30:23] Speaker 6: Time Kettle like T I M E K E T.
[30:27] Speaker 1: T L correct Time Kettle M three. Now, they have
[30:30] Speaker 1: more expensive ones. They have a whole bunch of different versions.
[30:33] Speaker 1: This is just the most affordable. So if you want
[30:35] Speaker 1: to spend more, they've got ones that I think are
[30:37] Speaker 1: four fifty you know, a little bit more expensive, but
[30:40] Speaker 1: these are these are which of course bring added features
[30:43] Speaker 1: to them, but these are the kind of the the
[30:45] Speaker 1: budget version of these that kind of work, and people
[30:49] Speaker 1: seem to like them, so they get good reviews. They
[30:52] Speaker 1: they kind of do what you need. I will say,
[30:54] Speaker 1: I think that in general you have to keep your
[30:57] Speaker 1: expectations quite low with technology. You like this because I
[31:02] Speaker 1: in my experience, anytime you're talking about translation, it can
[31:06] Speaker 1: be tricky. Now I think AI has made things a
[31:09] Speaker 1: lot better, but for me personally, when I go abroad,
[31:12] Speaker 1: I use my phone and you just kind of like
[31:15] Speaker 1: use your translate app. Google Translate app will translate. That
[31:18] Speaker 1: will work pretty well for most circumstances. But these are
[31:21] Speaker 1: much more of a you know, if you want like
[31:24] Speaker 1: that idea of someone talking to you, this thing listens
[31:27] Speaker 1: and then in your ears, instead of hearing what they're saying,
[31:30] Speaker 1: you're hearing it in your language. That's kind of what
[31:32] Speaker 1: the earbuds are for. The other earbuds that work to
[31:36] Speaker 1: do this are the Google Pixel buds. And I originally
[31:39] Speaker 1: thought you had to have them on a pixel phone,
[31:42] Speaker 1: but you don't. You just have to have these pixel
[31:44] Speaker 1: buds with an Android phone. Now there are some requirements
[31:47] Speaker 1: for the Android phone, but Google Pixel buds might be
[31:50] Speaker 1: another way to do it because Google Pixel our Google
[31:53] Speaker 1: Translate is really good. The Google Pixel buds are nice.
[31:58] Speaker 1: They are one hundred and seventy nine dollars and so
[32:01] Speaker 1: that is another way. Right now, they're fifty dollars off
[32:03] Speaker 1: typically they're two twenty nine, so that could be another
[32:06] Speaker 1: way to do it. They have an A series, so
[32:10] Speaker 1: they're like cheaper, they're eighty dollars. But I'm not sure
[32:13] Speaker 1: they have the translation feature built in, so I would
[32:17] Speaker 1: check to see if that's a if that's in there,
[32:20] Speaker 1: I'm looking at their website right now, I don't necessarily
[32:22] Speaker 1: see the translate. Oh you know what it does look
[32:26] Speaker 1: like hold on real time translation, So they may they
[32:32] Speaker 1: may not have the full feature translation on the A buds,
[32:34] Speaker 1: but anyway, pixel buds are another way. But I think
[32:36] Speaker 1: time Kettle is kind of like the main brand out
[32:38] Speaker 1: there that's that's doing really well, that gets good reviews.
[32:41] Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of these things advertised, but
[32:43] Speaker 1: I'd be very cautious. And the reason is what a
[32:47] Speaker 1: lot of this stuff comes down to is the software
[32:49] Speaker 1: and the technology. So if the translation technology is not
[32:53] Speaker 1: very good or the software is not very good, it's
[32:55] Speaker 1: not going to be a good experience, and that means
[32:57] Speaker 1: you're going to use them for about two minutes on
[32:59] Speaker 1: your initial you know, you step off the plane or
[33:02] Speaker 1: off the cruise ship, whatever however you're getting there and
[33:05] Speaker 1: you try it and you're like, oh, this is not
[33:07] Speaker 1: this doesn't work, and you're going to be frustrated and
[33:09] Speaker 1: then hopefully there's a good return policy. And on an
[33:12] Speaker 1: item that's advertised on social media, sometimes there is not
[33:16] Speaker 1: a good return policy. So no matter what, I get
[33:19] Speaker 1: so many emails every week from folks that send me
[33:21] Speaker 1: a screen shot or a link they see to something.
[33:25] Speaker 1: These advertisements you see on social media, the products that
[33:28] Speaker 1: we see seem too good to be true, and a
[33:31] Speaker 1: lot of times they are. So just be careful. And
[33:35] Speaker 1: if you're going to these websites that you've never heard
[33:37] Speaker 1: of and buying a product. Number one, if the website
[33:41] Speaker 1: is like, hey, you've got one minute to shop or
[33:45] Speaker 1: time count down, this discount is ending in thirty you know,
[33:49] Speaker 1: thirty minutes, or you know you got to buy this now,
[33:51] Speaker 1: like beware because a lot of you know, those high
[33:55] Speaker 1: pressure sales tactics often mean that they're just trying to
[33:58] Speaker 1: get that sale before you kind of investigate or look
[34:01] Speaker 1: for reviews or what I always do. Check the return policy,
[34:05] Speaker 1: check the contact info. If you can't really find a
[34:08] Speaker 1: good amount of info, there probably not a place that
[34:11] Speaker 1: you want to shop, So just be careful with that stuff.
[34:16] Speaker 1: Let's see here I said that TikTok is getting one
[34:20] Speaker 1: more I don't know. I guess it's another deadline extension.
[34:24] Speaker 1: So TikTok Us divestiture deadline has been pushed now another
[34:29] Speaker 1: seventy five days. This is like the saga that keeps
[34:34] Speaker 1: on going. Now it's mid June. So they had faced
[34:37] Speaker 1: a deadline of April fifth under this whole national security presumption,
[34:44] Speaker 1: but now it is extended one more time. So you
[34:47] Speaker 1: might remember that TikTok was briefly removed from the app
[34:50] Speaker 1: stores both Google Play and also the Apple App Store,
[34:54] Speaker 1: but they returned after an executive order. And now a
[34:58] Speaker 1: bunch of companies are coming forward saying, yeah, we want
[35:00] Speaker 1: to buy this, but nobody's really doing it, so we
[35:03] Speaker 1: don't know what's going on here. Just China not want
[35:05] Speaker 1: to sell it. Do these companies really not want to
[35:07] Speaker 1: buy it is this all just kind of like stirring
[35:09] Speaker 1: the pot. We don't know, but Oracle, Amazon, app, Lovin,
[35:14] Speaker 1: and some investor groups have all shown interest. But of
[35:16] Speaker 1: course China's government must still approve any deal before it
[35:20] Speaker 1: can go through. And we don't even know if they
[35:21] Speaker 1: really want to sell it. I mean, I know they
[35:23] Speaker 1: don't want to, and we're not even sure if they're
[35:25] Speaker 1: willing to, So this is wild. The possibility of banning
[35:30] Speaker 1: TikTok was first publicly mentioned back in July twenty twenty.
[35:33] Speaker 1: I remember rushing out to do a story with a
[35:36] Speaker 1: TikToker to be like, what are you gonna do? And
[35:38] Speaker 1: this goes away, and five years later, here I am
[35:42] Speaker 1: still talking about it, still wasting my breath talking about
[35:45] Speaker 1: TikTok being banned. Eighty to eight rich one oh one
[35:48] Speaker 1: eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
[35:57] Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Tomuro here hanging
[36:00] Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one
[36:03] Speaker 1: oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
[36:07] Speaker 1: one zero one. You can follow me on social media.
[36:11] Speaker 1: I am at rich on Tech. You can sign up
[36:13] Speaker 1: for my free newsletter on the website rich on Tech
[36:16] Speaker 1: dot tv just hit sign up. It is free. Get
[36:19] Speaker 1: it every week. It's kind of like this show. Like
[36:22] Speaker 1: I said this week of my newsletter, the newsletter is
[36:25] Speaker 1: the show is kind of like the newsletter. The newsletter
[36:27] Speaker 1: is kind of like the show. So if you like
[36:28] Speaker 1: the show, you'll probably like the newsletter. If you like
[36:30] Speaker 1: the newsletter, you'll probably like this show. I talked this
[36:34] Speaker 1: week in my newsletter about removing some of your personal
[36:36] Speaker 1: information from the Internet. So if you've ever searched for yourself,
[36:39] Speaker 1: you probably have seen your name, your address, your phone number,
[36:42] Speaker 1: and all kinds of stuff online. This could be used,
[36:46] Speaker 1: you know, for nefarious reasons, everything from stalkers to identity theft.
[36:50] Speaker 1: So the more info out there probably the worse it is.
[36:52] Speaker 1: You know, it depends on your level of eh. I mean,
[36:55] Speaker 1: back in the day, we had the white Pages, remember
[36:57] Speaker 1: that where you can look up anyone. Yeah, I mean
[37:00] Speaker 1: it was a turning point and back to the future.
[37:02] Speaker 1: It's like that whole movie wouldn't happen if he didn't
[37:04] Speaker 1: have the White Pages there to look up where Doc
[37:06] Speaker 1: Brown was. Anyway, I digress. These days, you know, we
[37:10] Speaker 1: probably don't want this stuff online. So if your info
[37:13] Speaker 1: shows up in Google Search. There is a way to
[37:15] Speaker 1: get rid of that. You can tap the three dots
[37:18] Speaker 1: next to a search result that includes your info and
[37:22] Speaker 1: you'll see an option that says remove result. You can
[37:25] Speaker 1: fill out the form and they usually remove that within
[37:27] Speaker 1: a couple of days, sometimes quicker and then. Google has
[37:31] Speaker 1: this free tool called Results about You, which you can
[37:34] Speaker 1: sign up for. It is free. It will monitor any
[37:36] Speaker 1: new search results that include your personal contact info and
[37:40] Speaker 1: they will email you every time you get every time
[37:42] Speaker 1: they find something on the Internet that involves you, and
[37:45] Speaker 1: you can say, yeah, I want to remove that. They're
[37:47] Speaker 1: not going to prove it all the time, but at
[37:49] Speaker 1: least it's a way to kind of automate that process. Now,
[37:51] Speaker 1: keep in mind, removing a link from Google Search does
[37:54] Speaker 1: not delete the source, so that just takes it out
[37:57] Speaker 1: of Google Search, which is where ninety nine point nine
[38:00] Speaker 1: percent of people are going to find it. If you
[38:01] Speaker 1: want to remove the website, you have to contact them
[38:05] Speaker 1: to remove that page completely. You can do an opt out. Now,
[38:08] Speaker 1: there are paid services like Incogni and Privacy b lots
[38:12] Speaker 1: of them out there. They all promise to automate the removals,
[38:15] Speaker 1: but these can be pricey. They can cost twenty dollars
[38:17] Speaker 1: a month or more, and consumer reports found that not
[38:21] Speaker 1: a lot of these services did a very good job.
[38:23] Speaker 1: Two that did well were easy opt Outs and Optry,
[38:28] Speaker 1: and they charge not very much twenty to forty dollars
[38:30] Speaker 1: per year. But keep in mind you probably want to
[38:32] Speaker 1: do this like over and over.
[38:34] Speaker 8: Now.
[38:34] Speaker 1: I think doing yourself is probably the most cost effective.
[38:37] Speaker 1: So easy way to do this just start with the
[38:39] Speaker 1: Google results for yourself, Like just start with the top results, right,
[38:43] Speaker 1: and you can just submit opt out requests for each
[38:46] Speaker 1: of those websites. And if you want to know how
[38:48] Speaker 1: to do that, you can literally most of the time,
[38:51] Speaker 1: you can just google the name of the website, like
[38:53] Speaker 1: if it's white Pages, just say like white Pages opt out,
[38:57] Speaker 1: and they kind of put you through this little process
[39:00] Speaker 1: get everything out of there. But it does work most
[39:02] Speaker 1: of the time. But if you want a directory, the
[39:05] Speaker 1: website delete me dot com has a DIY guide for
[39:09] Speaker 1: like almost every website you can think of, So you
[39:12] Speaker 1: go there, you tap there and it'll tell you the
[39:15] Speaker 1: step by step instructions on how to get rid of
[39:17] Speaker 1: your data. So that's delete me dot com. And then
[39:21] Speaker 1: in the future you might want to consider giving out
[39:24] Speaker 1: your information less right. You know, all these websites I
[39:26] Speaker 1: call it the data grab. They're going to ask for
[39:28] Speaker 1: as much as humanly possible. Like the other day, I
[39:31] Speaker 1: was signing up for something. I was like, really you
[39:33] Speaker 1: need this?
[39:34] Speaker 9: You need that? Do you really need this?
[39:37] Speaker 1: And so sometimes if there's not an asterisk next to
[39:39] Speaker 1: the field that you're filling out, don't fill it out.
[39:43] Speaker 1: Don't give them the extra information. If I'm giving out
[39:45] Speaker 1: my data birth, a lot of times I'll just make
[39:47] Speaker 1: something up. If it's a random website that doesn't need
[39:50] Speaker 1: my data birth, why give them that information. The reason
[39:53] Speaker 1: why they're asking for that is because then they go
[39:55] Speaker 1: into other databases and kind of form this complete data
[40:00] Speaker 1: profile of you by collecting information from a whole bunch
[40:03] Speaker 1: of places. So secondary email, secondary phone number, cloaked email
[40:08] Speaker 1: might work to avoid getting more of this information. I've
[40:11] Speaker 1: got this all on the website rich on tech dot TV,
[40:14] Speaker 1: and coming up later this hour, we're actually going to
[40:16] Speaker 1: talk to the co founder of the website cloaked that
[40:20] Speaker 1: helps you come up with like new identities basically to
[40:24] Speaker 1: use online to protect your privacy. Let's go to uh
[40:29] Speaker 1: Loudy in Long Beach Ludy you're on with.
[40:31] Speaker 10: Rich Yeah LBC.
[40:34] Speaker 11: Long time listening to the show, first time listening to you.
[40:38] Speaker 1: Oh wow.
[40:39] Speaker 10: I want to give my shout out to Leo La
[40:41] Speaker 10: pol It give me informed.
[40:43] Speaker 11: But now you're in man.
[40:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's only been two and a half years,
[40:47] Speaker 1: but you know, I know it's all good. What's up,
[40:51] Speaker 1: Loudy you have?
[40:51] Speaker 12: But finally I have a question. Yes, hey, so listen man,
[40:56] Speaker 12: I have iPhones, right, and I have a fat mini
[41:00] Speaker 12: plan of a two terabyte and it says that it's full.
[41:04] Speaker 10: So I'm looking at it and for myself. Right, it
[41:08] Speaker 10: says that I am using my drive.
[41:13] Speaker 11: I think it's called it.
[41:15] Speaker 8: Drive iCloud drive.
[41:17] Speaker 1: Yep, okay, it isn't.
[41:19] Speaker 8: I'm using two hundred and fifty three gigabytes.
[41:23] Speaker 11: However, I don't have anything in it. When I go
[41:27] Speaker 11: and review files, there's four files that are like one megabyte.
[41:34] Speaker 1: Hmm, okay, So I don't know.
[41:36] Speaker 10: Is it is iCloud drive the same as the iCloud.
[41:42] Speaker 1: Not necessarily so iCloud drive is part of iCloud. So
[41:46] Speaker 1: you're saying how much data do you have? How much
[41:48] Speaker 1: storage do you have on iCloud? You said two terabytes.
[41:51] Speaker 10: Two terabytes and shared with families.
[41:54] Speaker 1: Ah okay, so there that that's probably what's happening here.
[41:58] Speaker 1: So my kids are little our little storage goblins, and
[42:03] Speaker 1: so what they like to do is have these giant
[42:07] Speaker 1: files that take up a ton of storage. So what
[42:10] Speaker 1: you have to do is you have to look. Now,
[42:13] Speaker 1: are you looking on your phone or your computer for
[42:14] Speaker 1: this information?
[42:16] Speaker 9: I'm looking on my phone right now.
[42:17] Speaker 10: I'm actually on my iplone okay. And then when I
[42:20] Speaker 10: look at dry for myself, not the family, it says
[42:24] Speaker 10: that I am using two hundred and fifty three gigabytes. Okay,
[42:29] Speaker 10: but I don't know where that's coming from because I
[42:33] Speaker 10: review the files and four.
[42:35] Speaker 1: Files well, when you look at okay, so when you
[42:38] Speaker 1: tap there is a section. Now they just redesign this. Actually,
[42:41] Speaker 1: Apple made this a little bit easier because, you know,
[42:44] Speaker 1: I feel like iCloud has you know, the storage has
[42:46] Speaker 1: always been sort of a black hole right where you
[42:50] Speaker 1: have no idea what's what's in there, what's taking up
[42:52] Speaker 1: the storage? They have work to make this just a
[42:55] Speaker 1: little bit easier. But there's two things. Number One, Ludie,
[42:59] Speaker 1: I would I would look at your backups that could
[43:01] Speaker 1: be taking up a lot of the storage. A lot
[43:03] Speaker 1: of times people forget to get rid of their old
[43:05] Speaker 1: backups of their phone. So that's number one, and so
[43:09] Speaker 1: I would look into those. And you can look under
[43:11] Speaker 1: your iCloud backups. Like for me, I've got one, two, three, four,
[43:16] Speaker 1: five devices that I have backed up, and two of
[43:19] Speaker 1: them are it looks like a duplicate my iPad. I
[43:22] Speaker 1: have the old one and the new one. So that's
[43:24] Speaker 1: number one. Look at your backups. Now, if you're just
[43:26] Speaker 1: looking at drive iCloud drive, it says manage storage and
[43:31] Speaker 1: you tap that and that should tell you where it's
[43:34] Speaker 1: using up the storage, and it says documents and data
[43:37] Speaker 1: iPhone storage, So those are the places that you need
[43:41] Speaker 1: to look to see what is taking up. Mine says
[43:44] Speaker 1: you have seven hundred and fifty seven gigabytes of files
[43:46] Speaker 1: stored in iCloud, which I don't even know how I
[43:49] Speaker 1: have that much, but the thing, like.
[43:52] Speaker 11: I know, I go to manage storage on the iCloud drive. Yeah, yeah,
[43:57] Speaker 11: it's telling me that I have two hundred gig a
[44:00] Speaker 11: bye files securely story nightcloud.
[44:02] Speaker 1: Oh good, I'm glad they're secure. We can't even find them,
[44:06] Speaker 1: they're so secure.
[44:07] Speaker 12: Yeah, but I don't know what file of those are.
[44:10] Speaker 1: That's what I'm Okay. Now, do you get a section
[44:13] Speaker 1: underneath where it says show large files, because mine sets
[44:17] Speaker 1: review large files and if I tap that, it'll show
[44:19] Speaker 1: me my largest files in here, so it.
[44:22] Speaker 11: Tells me review files.
[44:24] Speaker 9: Do you have that?
[44:26] Speaker 10: Yeah, review file?
[44:27] Speaker 1: Okay, Now when you tap that, is there is there
[44:29] Speaker 1: some big files shown there?
[44:31] Speaker 10: No, there's there's there's four of them.
[44:33] Speaker 11: Man, they're all the thing is one is.
[44:38] Speaker 10: Three megabytes?
[44:39] Speaker 1: Oh wow, Well that's a problem. Uh interesting, Okay, Well,
[44:44] Speaker 1: there's probably some phantom thing taking up your iCloud. I
[44:48] Speaker 1: wonder if there's like a trash you can empty or
[44:50] Speaker 1: something like that. Do you have a Mac computer or no?
[44:53] Speaker 11: Yeah, I got a Mac computer.
[44:55] Speaker 1: So I would go on your Mac computer and see
[44:58] Speaker 1: if you can go into your iCloud drive from there
[45:02] Speaker 1: and see what's taken up the storage there if it
[45:05] Speaker 1: shows you something different, So that's what I would do.
[45:09] Speaker 1: I mean, this is a mystery to me. That's because
[45:14] Speaker 1: I feel like you should be able to see between
[45:16] Speaker 1: your phone and your and your actual iCloud drive what's
[45:19] Speaker 1: taking it up, because that would make the most sense.
[45:22] Speaker 1: The only other thing I can think of, is there
[45:24] Speaker 1: are some of these directories that files make, like I
[45:27] Speaker 1: can see I've got one from pages, I've gotten from numbers, keynote, shortcuts,
[45:32] Speaker 1: text edit. There might be something in there that's taking
[45:35] Speaker 1: up a lot of space. But this sounds like sort
[45:40] Speaker 1: of a mystery, because if you're running up against your
[45:42] Speaker 1: two terabytes because of this, you know that's a problem.
[45:45] Speaker 1: You need to be able to clear this stuff out.
[45:47] Speaker 1: So if you can't figure this out, I would take
[45:49] Speaker 1: it to the Apple Store and see what they say
[45:51] Speaker 1: and just say, hey, look, you know this is telling
[45:53] Speaker 1: me I'm up against my cloud storage. I don't understand
[45:55] Speaker 1: what's taking up all the storage When I'm going into
[45:57] Speaker 1: my iCloud drive and there's nothing in there, I mean mine,
[46:00] Speaker 1: I see seven hundred and fifty eight gigs, but I
[46:02] Speaker 1: can see what's taking up that info or taking up
[46:05] Speaker 1: that storage. And then there's also app syncing to iCloud drive,
[46:09] Speaker 1: which I have three of them, Books, Obsidian, and WhatsApp,
[46:12] Speaker 1: So those could be a problem. But the couple places
[46:16] Speaker 1: you know iCloud storage is is really tricky, I think,
[46:20] Speaker 1: and it still is. It's not as straightforward as it
[46:23] Speaker 1: should be. But I would check check those iCloud backups
[46:26] Speaker 1: for sure, Ludi and uh and if you can't figure
[46:29] Speaker 1: out what's going on in this drive, then you kind
[46:32] Speaker 1: you kind of have to bring into the Apple store
[46:33] Speaker 1: and see what they say. Eighty eight rich one oh
[46:36] Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
[46:39] Speaker 1: I made the joke the other day on TV that
[46:40] Speaker 1: when I retire, I'm going to finally take the time
[46:44] Speaker 1: to organize my photos, my cloud drive, and you know
[46:48] Speaker 1: everything else that's taking up storage in the cloud because
[46:51] Speaker 1: it's like a full time job. It's like nobody has
[46:54] Speaker 1: the time to figure this stuff out. You still won't
[46:56] Speaker 1: do it. I still won't do it, And then I
[46:58] Speaker 1: said it, then I'll travel probably be too late by then.
[47:01] Speaker 1: Eight to eight rich one on one eight eight eight
[47:03] Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero. I guess I'm saying,
[47:06] Speaker 1: don't feel so bad if your cloud storage is a mess,
[47:08] Speaker 1: because everyone's is. Welcome back to rich on Tech eighty
[47:24] Speaker 1: eight rich one o one eight eight eight seven four
[47:26] Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. The website rich on
[47:29] Speaker 1: tech dot TV. Kyle writes in and says, hey, rich,
[47:34] Speaker 1: is there a way for an iPhone to automatically respond
[47:36] Speaker 1: to all incoming text messages with a custom message twenty
[47:40] Speaker 1: four hours a day. I've looked around and only found
[47:42] Speaker 1: options for things like driving mode or customer applies to
[47:45] Speaker 1: certain contacts, but nothing universal. Kyle, Kyle, You're right. There
[47:50] Speaker 1: is no way to auto reply to all texts at
[47:53] Speaker 1: all times, as far as I know. The closest hack
[47:56] Speaker 1: I've found is to turn on the driving mode. And
[48:00] Speaker 1: when you have that on, let's see what's it actually called.
[48:02] Speaker 1: Hold on? It's called yeah, driving, So driving can auto respond,
[48:07] Speaker 1: but only I think to your contacts, your favorites, or
[48:09] Speaker 1: a combination of folks. It's not everyone. So this is
[48:14] Speaker 1: a sort of an Apple thing. It's part of their
[48:16] Speaker 1: operating system. I'm not sure why they don't allow that,
[48:20] Speaker 1: but they did add text message scheduling recently, so that's
[48:24] Speaker 1: a good good sign. But yeah, it would be nice
[48:26] Speaker 1: because sometimes when I'm using like a different phone, like
[48:28] Speaker 1: a test phone, I want to like text everyone, say hey,
[48:31] Speaker 1: if this is important, you know, call me here or whatever.
[48:34] Speaker 1: And the only way I can do it is with contacts,
[48:36] Speaker 1: which I guess is fine. You know, maybe maybe it's
[48:39] Speaker 1: the security things they don't want you like texting. You know,
[48:41] Speaker 1: if some spammer gets a hold of your number and
[48:44] Speaker 1: then they get a spam you know, they get a
[48:45] Speaker 1: reply that says, hey, I'm currently on the beach in Miami,
[48:50] Speaker 1: like call me here, I'm staying at this place whatever,
[48:53] Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So sorry, Kyle, doesn't doesn't
[48:57] Speaker 1: work right now. You might have seen the headlines that
[49:01] Speaker 1: things are changing over at Zel. They are shutting down
[49:04] Speaker 1: their standalone app. Oh my gosh, nobody uses the standalone
[49:09] Speaker 1: Zel app. Okay, let's be honest. So all those headlines
[49:12] Speaker 1: were there to get you to click and read and go,
[49:15] Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's already the way I'm using it. So
[49:16] Speaker 1: starting now, I guess Zell will no longer support sending
[49:21] Speaker 1: or receiving money through the app if you were using
[49:24] Speaker 1: the app, if you are using your bank, your bank
[49:27] Speaker 1: account app, it's all good. You're all fine, So no
[49:31] Speaker 1: action necessary. Over twenty two hundred banks and credit unions
[49:35] Speaker 1: support Zell directly. I guess they thought they were going
[49:38] Speaker 1: to have an app that was a competitor to like
[49:39] Speaker 1: the paypals of the world and the cash apps and
[49:42] Speaker 1: the venmos. But then they realized that people were just
[49:45] Speaker 1: using this through their bank and that was the easiest way,
[49:48] Speaker 1: So just two percent of transactions were happening through the
[49:50] Speaker 1: standalone app. So you can view your old payment history
[49:54] Speaker 1: in the app until August eleventh, so if you need
[49:56] Speaker 1: anything in there, be sure to download it. But going forward,
[49:59] Speaker 1: the app will still be there. It's just going to
[50:01] Speaker 1: focus on fraud education and how to get it through
[50:04] Speaker 1: your bank. So once again, if you're using Zel through
[50:08] Speaker 1: your bank, you don't need to change a thing. And
[50:11] Speaker 1: people like Zel because it's immediate, and it's free and
[50:14] Speaker 1: it's through your bank. And this is really an example
[50:17] Speaker 1: of the big banks coming together to kind of band
[50:20] Speaker 1: against Venmo and all these other payment services. Now, I
[50:23] Speaker 1: think Zell is great when it works. It is a
[50:26] Speaker 1: little scarier than these other apps because there's really no recourse,
[50:29] Speaker 1: like the money's hopping from your account directly to someone
[50:32] Speaker 1: else's account. So I've noticed there's a lot of security
[50:35] Speaker 1: precautions when you're sending money through Zell. But when it
[50:38] Speaker 1: works and you've got a trusted person on the other end,
[50:40] Speaker 1: it's it's great because it's free. So just just beware
[50:44] Speaker 1: the you know, the the implications of sending money like
[50:47] Speaker 1: it's it's like a freeway from your bank account to theirs,
[50:51] Speaker 1: so be just be aware of that. All right, let's
[50:54] Speaker 1: go to let's see here, let's go to Rob in
[50:58] Speaker 1: Los Angeles. Rob, you're on with Rich.
[51:01] Speaker 8: Hi.
[51:01] Speaker 13: How are you doing.
[51:02] Speaker 1: I'm doing fantastic.
[51:03] Speaker 12: My question is.
[51:06] Speaker 8: I have Outlook hot Mail, and I'm people on getting
[51:12] Speaker 8: locked out because there's too many attempts. So it's you know,
[51:19] Speaker 8: my Microsoft account is linked through it, and I know
[51:25] Speaker 8: that I look on my y up for my account
[51:31] Speaker 8: and it shows like one hundred attempts a day for
[51:35] Speaker 8: my Microsoft account.
[51:36] Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a common This is clearly a common
[51:39] Speaker 1: thing that's happening, because it happened to me. I mentioned
[51:41] Speaker 1: it my newsletter. I got a bunch of emails about it.
[51:44] Speaker 1: Clearly there's a bunch of people trying to log into
[51:47] Speaker 1: Microsoft accounts all day long. So are they actually getting
[51:51] Speaker 1: into your account?
[51:53] Speaker 8: Well I'm not sure, but I think so.
[51:59] Speaker 1: But anyway, Okay, well you know.
[52:02] Speaker 8: About the twenty four hours lockout.
[52:04] Speaker 1: Okay, here here's what I recommend, rob.
[52:06] Speaker 13: Getting more and.
[52:07] Speaker 8: More recent as far as like, because I guess I'm
[52:10] Speaker 8: getting more attempts, so it's getting kind of aggregating that
[52:14] Speaker 8: I gotta wait, like twenty four hours because the idiots
[52:17] Speaker 8: are trying to log into my account and it's not.
[52:20] Speaker 1: Me, right, So I hear you, Okay, Well here here's
[52:25] Speaker 1: what I recommend to fix this. Okay, So number one,
[52:30] Speaker 1: I has three things to do. Number one, you've got
[52:32] Speaker 1: to change your password. So that's number one. Change your password.
[52:35] Speaker 1: Make sure it's something that is strong, unique at least
[52:37] Speaker 1: fourteen characters. Use a password generator. You got to turn
[52:41] Speaker 1: on two factor authentication. Turn on two factor authentication. Use
[52:44] Speaker 1: an app if you can. The email thing is with
[52:47] Speaker 1: the code is okay. With the app is much better.
[52:50] Speaker 1: And then I want you to sign out everywhere so
[52:53] Speaker 1: you can go to Microsoft. I will put the link
[52:56] Speaker 1: on the website rich on tech dot tv. But basically,
[52:58] Speaker 1: once you sign into your micro Soft account, you got
[53:02] Speaker 1: to sign into your Advanced Security options on your Microsoft
[53:05] Speaker 1: Account Security dashboard and then you scroll down and it
[53:08] Speaker 1: says sign out everywhere. Once you sign out everywhere, sign
[53:12] Speaker 1: in on just the one place where you want to
[53:15] Speaker 1: access this account with your new password, and hopefully that
[53:19] Speaker 1: should help this. But you know, all those loggin attempts,
[53:22] Speaker 1: this same exact thing happened to my account, and it
[53:24] Speaker 1: was really annoying. When I found that, and I did
[53:26] Speaker 1: go in and change my password, so you can check
[53:29] Speaker 1: for that as well. Let's say I'm trying to find
[53:32] Speaker 1: the link I gave out. It's on my newsletter from
[53:35] Speaker 1: last week eight and eight rich one on one eight
[53:38] Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
[53:40] Speaker 1: Coming up, we'll talk about protecting your personal information online.
[53:49] Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on tech rich DeMuro here hanging
[53:51] Speaker 1: out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one
[53:55] Speaker 1: O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
[53:58] Speaker 1: four one zero one. Thanks for joining me on the show.
[54:01] Speaker 1: Appreciate you being here. We've got a lot of good
[54:03] Speaker 1: information coming your way. Rich on tech dot tv is
[54:06] Speaker 1: the website if you want links to anything I talk about. Uh,
[54:10] Speaker 1: this should be an eye opening conversation. Cloak to co
[54:12] Speaker 1: founder and CEO Arjun Botnager is here to join me.
[54:17] Speaker 1: Thanks for being here, of course, thanks for having me Rich.
[54:20] Speaker 1: So I called this number, what is it? Tell me
[54:23] Speaker 1: what the number is? Eight five five?
[54:26] Speaker 9: Yeah, eight five five seven five two five six two.
[54:29] Speaker 1: Five Okay, So I call that and that's like it
[54:31] Speaker 1: translates into seven seven five cloak or something.
[54:34] Speaker 9: Yeah, say eight five five seven five cloak.
[54:37] Speaker 1: Okay, Now, as soon as you call that number, you'll
[54:41] Speaker 1: be surprised because agreed to by name, and then it
[54:44] Speaker 1: proceeds to tell you your social Security number, your address,
[54:48] Speaker 1: and all kinds of personal information. You go, wait a second,
[54:51] Speaker 1: what is happening here? And it's all kind of an
[54:53] Speaker 1: example of just how much information is floating around on
[54:58] Speaker 1: the internet about you.
[54:59] Speaker 9: Right, that's absolutely right.
[55:01] Speaker 14: There's so much information that we willingly give out and
[55:04] Speaker 14: what companies and corporations and even governments use to tie.
[55:08] Speaker 9: Back to you on around everything.
[55:11] Speaker 1: So I always tell people like, okay, let's say you
[55:13] Speaker 1: go to the grocery store. You give them your phone number.
[55:15] Speaker 1: It's like, oh, no, big deal, that's just my phone number.
[55:18] Speaker 1: They go in and use that phone number to find
[55:21] Speaker 1: every other piece of data about you.
[55:23] Speaker 7: Is that right?
[55:24] Speaker 9: So exactly right.
[55:26] Speaker 14: The grocery store might be doing that. But really it's
[55:28] Speaker 14: not always everyone's the bad guy. We always find that
[55:32] Speaker 14: it might be benign or good that a company's using
[55:34] Speaker 14: your information, it might be malicious. The problem is that
[55:38] Speaker 14: even if someone's good, if they're hacked, compromised, or.
[55:41] Speaker 9: Breached, the problem ends up being the same. So it's
[55:44] Speaker 9: exactly right.
[55:44] Speaker 14: The phone number, or any piece of data, whether it's
[55:47] Speaker 14: for good or bad, gets aggregated, collected, and eventually it
[55:50] Speaker 14: is either to target you, compromise.
[55:52] Speaker 1: You, or watch you. So you run a website called Cloaked.
[55:56] Speaker 1: Explain what that does. What's your idea to fight all this?
[56:00] Speaker 14: Yeah, so, for the longest time, we've always believed, from
[56:03] Speaker 14: the government to corporations to what we're trained is that
[56:06] Speaker 14: let companies keep your information safe. And we all know
[56:10] Speaker 14: that's a funny concept because there's a breach every single
[56:13] Speaker 14: day that impact millions, if not a billion, people worldwide
[56:17] Speaker 14: when their data is exposed. So what we really indexed
[56:20] Speaker 14: on is how can we as individuals be in control
[56:23] Speaker 14: of our own data.
[56:24] Speaker 9: So that's what we do at cloat.
[56:26] Speaker 14: We give you the power to actually think about how
[56:29] Speaker 14: is my identity being out there?
[56:30] Speaker 9: What's exposed? And we help you by cleaning up your
[56:34] Speaker 9: past and protecting your future.
[56:35] Speaker 14: And that's through cleaning your data footprint, actually deleting data,
[56:39] Speaker 14: removing it and then masking your email, phone number, passwords,
[56:43] Speaker 14: soon even credit card and address with new information that
[56:47] Speaker 14: doesn't tie back to you.
[56:48] Speaker 1: So this is the concept of data poisoning. Explain that.
[56:52] Speaker 14: Yeah, so data poisoning is a fairly new concept. People
[56:56] Speaker 14: have talked about it for a while. But your single
[56:58] Speaker 14: data point, for example, why when you call that phone
[57:01] Speaker 14: number it works is because you give up that piece
[57:04] Speaker 14: of data to both the irs and dominos. And because
[57:08] Speaker 14: that one data point never really changes your whole life.
[57:11] Speaker 14: You might have one to two phone numbers, maybe two
[57:13] Speaker 14: to three email addresses, it's very easy to target you.
[57:17] Speaker 14: So data poisoning is this idea that what if one
[57:21] Speaker 14: data point is confusing, it doesn't.
[57:23] Speaker 9: People can't figure out who is it or what is it?
[57:27] Speaker 9: How do you tie back to it?
[57:28] Speaker 14: So what with Cloak we try to introduce is that
[57:31] Speaker 14: the phone numbers you generate, the emails, the passwords, credit cards,
[57:35] Speaker 14: that information is distinct, unique per website or even per person.
[57:40] Speaker 14: But we also think about, well, what if Rich and
[57:43] Speaker 14: I each generate a Cloak phone number and it's actually
[57:47] Speaker 14: the same number. You might use it for best Buy,
[57:49] Speaker 14: I might use it for Target. But when it's stolen, compromised,
[57:53] Speaker 14: or even packaged and sold, it's impossible to tell whether
[57:57] Speaker 14: that's our general Rich, and that's the technology you've developed
[58:01] Speaker 14: to make it very hard to figure out who's who.
[58:04] Speaker 1: Wow, that's interesting and what about I mean, we know
[58:06] Speaker 1: AI is coming on board and people are saying, look,
[58:08] Speaker 1: AI is going to make it so much easier for
[58:11] Speaker 1: people to target you and to put this information together.
[58:14] Speaker 1: Is that happening.
[58:16] Speaker 14: Yeah, So this is where AI enabled threats have grown
[58:19] Speaker 14: over three hundred percent in the last year alone, and
[58:22] Speaker 14: so it's getting worse and worse.
[58:25] Speaker 9: And you might see this if you.
[58:26] Speaker 14: Look at a phishing text that says, and this is
[58:29] Speaker 14: a growing one, Hey, we know you shop at this
[58:32] Speaker 14: local Starbucks, we know where you live, or I know
[58:35] Speaker 14: some stuff about where you walk every day. Now those
[58:39] Speaker 14: aren't actually necessarily humans typing all these messages out. We
[58:43] Speaker 14: leverage technology or even AI to combine a lot of
[58:46] Speaker 14: this data, use AI to kind of figure out the
[58:49] Speaker 14: pattern where your location is, and craft messages and these
[58:53] Speaker 14: are all what scammers or fishers or hackers try to do.
[58:56] Speaker 14: Craft messages automatically using AI that make it feel very
[58:59] Speaker 14: per And that's the biggest risk vector going forward is
[59:03] Speaker 14: that people's systems they're getting more secure, But the biggest
[59:07] Speaker 14: vulnerability are people. And it's whether it's employees and businesses
[59:11] Speaker 14: or us as customers. The way we act and enabled
[59:14] Speaker 14: and leverage technology.
[59:16] Speaker 1: I always say that the scammers sort of take something
[59:19] Speaker 1: that we know, like we've all gotten that text from
[59:22] Speaker 1: our bank that says, hey, did you just make a
[59:24] Speaker 1: purchase here? And you know press one or a reply
[59:27] Speaker 1: one if you did, or why or and and you know,
[59:30] Speaker 1: they take that and they kind of spin it and
[59:32] Speaker 1: they send us that and you're like, wait, is this
[59:34] Speaker 1: for my bank or not? And the next thing you know,
[59:36] Speaker 1: you're getting scammed.
[59:37] Speaker 9: That's exactly right.
[59:38] Speaker 14: And that's where the threats and the vectors are trying
[59:42] Speaker 14: to make it so that you believe it's true, and
[59:45] Speaker 14: the moment you believe it's true, it's all over. I
[59:47] Speaker 14: think I've actually given this an example. I think you've
[59:50] Speaker 14: already talked about it. There's this website Have I Been Boned?
[59:53] Speaker 14: And the author that just recently got compromised because of
[59:57] Speaker 14: a very specific trusting look a message.
[1:00:00] Speaker 9: That they ended up clicking and following through and logging in.
[1:00:04] Speaker 15: Now.
[1:00:04] Speaker 1: I love Troy, he was on this show, but I mean, ah,
[1:00:07] Speaker 1: and I get it, this can happen to anyone, but
[1:00:10] Speaker 1: like I really I'm surprised that that happened to him.
[1:00:13] Speaker 1: I mean, I always said he was tired from you know,
[1:00:15] Speaker 1: jet Lag and all this stuff. But like, I can't
[1:00:17] Speaker 1: believe that he his password manager didn't fill in the
[1:00:20] Speaker 1: site and then he proceeded to fill it in manually
[1:00:23] Speaker 1: and then put the one time code in. It's like, yeah,
[1:00:25] Speaker 1: oh my.
[1:00:26] Speaker 14: Gosh, it's I can't understand how it happens and happens
[1:00:31] Speaker 14: to the best of us. But this is the point
[1:00:33] Speaker 14: that Troy kind of revealed, was that things there were
[1:00:36] Speaker 14: flags along the way. The pass manager didn't flag. The
[1:00:39] Speaker 14: link is a little suspicious, but when you're tired, it happens.
[1:00:43] Speaker 14: I think this is where kind of the hygiene and
[1:00:46] Speaker 14: how we operate for me e, in our own staff,
[1:00:49] Speaker 14: we just don't click links in emails et cetera. Like
[1:00:53] Speaker 14: there's a little bit of homework, et cetera, and the
[1:00:55] Speaker 14: way we operate before we click anything. Even if the
[1:00:57] Speaker 14: link says, hey, there's something wrong, well, we open a
[1:01:00] Speaker 14: new tab and go to it ourselves. Yeah, there's no
[1:01:03] Speaker 14: reason to click the link in the email. You can
[1:01:05] Speaker 14: always go to the website directly and figure out the alert.
[1:01:08] Speaker 1: So what is your advice for consumers? I mean, obviously
[1:01:10] Speaker 1: you'd love if everyone's signed up for your website and
[1:01:12] Speaker 1: use your services beyond that? What do you think?
[1:01:16] Speaker 8: I mean?
[1:01:16] Speaker 1: You know, what's your advice for consumers? How do we
[1:01:18] Speaker 1: deal with this?
[1:01:20] Speaker 9: So I say it's a couple of different problems.
[1:01:22] Speaker 14: Actually, on hand, I think there's the idea of our
[1:01:24] Speaker 14: own personal safety scams, fishing, and also like being annoyed
[1:01:29] Speaker 14: and frustrated with people turning bombarda. So I look at
[1:01:32] Speaker 14: as a problem of safety, a problem of your own
[1:01:35] Speaker 14: spam being annoyed.
[1:01:36] Speaker 9: And a problem of personal privacy.
[1:01:38] Speaker 14: And the way I look at is the first simplest
[1:01:40] Speaker 14: thing I tell people start saying no. And what that
[1:01:44] Speaker 14: means is that between apps that ask for all these
[1:01:47] Speaker 14: permissions like I never give my contact permissions, don't give
[1:01:50] Speaker 14: up every contact you own, don't give up location permissions
[1:01:53] Speaker 14: because you don't have to. And this is where that
[1:01:56] Speaker 14: mindset of we're trained to keep saying yes start hitting
[1:01:59] Speaker 14: to and you'd be surprised. Similarly, at restaurants and Sapphora whichever,
[1:02:04] Speaker 14: they hey, can you give me a phone number? You
[1:02:06] Speaker 14: give me your email? I say no, I don't have
[1:02:09] Speaker 14: to give the information, and they say, oh, no, big deal,
[1:02:11] Speaker 14: no worries. But and you'll realize you don't have to
[1:02:14] Speaker 14: give up. The culture of sharing is that first part,
[1:02:16] Speaker 14: and then.
[1:02:16] Speaker 1: Almost before you proceed to the next part. I was
[1:02:19] Speaker 1: at a new place. This place just opened nearby. I went,
[1:02:22] Speaker 1: I visited. It was a new store, and they're like, okay,
[1:02:25] Speaker 1: let's get your email address for like, you know, promotions
[1:02:28] Speaker 1: and this and that. And I actually felt bad like
[1:02:30] Speaker 1: being like, no, I don't want to give that. And
[1:02:32] Speaker 1: so I did give my email even though I didn't
[1:02:34] Speaker 1: want to, and they proceeded to email me every single
[1:02:37] Speaker 1: day after that. I was like ah, but because it
[1:02:39] Speaker 1: was a human that was like standing there, it's like
[1:02:41] Speaker 1: just this routine thing like okay, now give me your emails.
[1:02:44] Speaker 1: You can get those great offer codes, and you know,
[1:02:46] Speaker 1: I need to come up with a fake email or
[1:02:48] Speaker 1: a you know, spam email for future things like that.
[1:02:52] Speaker 9: Well that's kind of leading to so I didn't want
[1:02:54] Speaker 9: to get gives a part. This is what Cloak does.
[1:02:56] Speaker 14: Like we one of the big things that a lot
[1:02:58] Speaker 14: of companies in our sector do is they say stop
[1:03:01] Speaker 14: doing this or don't give any email address. I think
[1:03:05] Speaker 14: the culture of saying no is the first step. But
[1:03:08] Speaker 14: the part too is we want you to keep you
[1:03:09] Speaker 14: want to get promotions and this is where for Cloak,
[1:03:12] Speaker 14: what we thought about is we'll make a unique email
[1:03:15] Speaker 14: for that local coffee shop. I personally bought something for
[1:03:18] Speaker 14: my partner recently, and I get six emails a day,
[1:03:22] Speaker 14: but all goes to a specific Cloak email you for
[1:03:24] Speaker 14: that website, So I never look at it doesn't matter.
[1:03:26] Speaker 14: But when I need to check on order confirmation CE,
[1:03:29] Speaker 14: I can go right to that single email address and
[1:03:31] Speaker 14: check it. And that's where we start to change the behavior.
[1:03:34] Speaker 14: Where it's step one is stopping, but step two is
[1:03:37] Speaker 14: changing the way you.
[1:03:38] Speaker 1: Share Okay, interesting stuff. I mean I I yeah, I
[1:03:44] Speaker 1: totally agree with the idea of coming up, Like I
[1:03:46] Speaker 1: have a Google Voice number two, which I use sometimes,
[1:03:49] Speaker 1: But then I feel bad when I give people that
[1:03:51] Speaker 1: number because I'm like, well, they're you know I'm giving
[1:03:55] Speaker 1: It's just it's this weird It's almost like this human
[1:03:57] Speaker 1: thing where you feel almost like you're being deceitful by
[1:04:00] Speaker 1: giving out something that protects you. And do you find
[1:04:04] Speaker 1: that and do people react like that? Like I that's
[1:04:06] Speaker 1: the way I feel, I think even.
[1:04:09] Speaker 9: For me, since people know I do Cloak, et cetera.
[1:04:11] Speaker 14: When I give out a phone number I haven't given
[1:04:13] Speaker 14: my personal phone number since twenty twenty one when I
[1:04:15] Speaker 14: started the company, and it's been it's been.
[1:04:18] Speaker 9: A kind of interesting experience.
[1:04:19] Speaker 14: People say, oh, how you giving me a Cloak number,
[1:04:21] Speaker 14: and I think, but I think the idea is that
[1:04:24] Speaker 14: at least what we're trying to enable is that it's
[1:04:27] Speaker 14: not a throwaway or burner. When I give a Cloak
[1:04:30] Speaker 14: number out, I can lock it to just you, so
[1:04:33] Speaker 14: that number is just between us. So when I get
[1:04:36] Speaker 14: the textra call, I know it's just you. It's not spoofed, spam,
[1:04:39] Speaker 14: et cetera. So I try to position is like, this
[1:04:42] Speaker 14: is meant to be more personal. When I'm giving a
[1:04:44] Speaker 14: number out to the shake shack or a restaurant, I
[1:04:47] Speaker 14: was like, well, I'm only hearing from that one entity.
[1:04:50] Speaker 9: And yes, it takes a little bit of a cultural
[1:04:52] Speaker 9: shift and change, but I.
[1:04:54] Speaker 14: What I've realized is yes, when people might react and say,
[1:04:58] Speaker 14: oh are you hiding, But the moment you do it
[1:05:01] Speaker 14: once or twice, it doesn't feel so bad. And I
[1:05:04] Speaker 14: think that's where we start to really push. You've become
[1:05:07] Speaker 14: a bit more organized your emails, text calls, if you're
[1:05:10] Speaker 14: buying a home, which is what we noticed a lot
[1:05:12] Speaker 14: of users do or apartment hunting. There's a lot of
[1:05:15] Speaker 14: noise happening, but once it's all over, you turn it
[1:05:17] Speaker 14: off or delete it. Now it's gone, and I think
[1:05:21] Speaker 14: the benefits out weigh kind of that initial feeling.
[1:05:23] Speaker 1: Don't ever give your email address when you're shopping for
[1:05:26] Speaker 1: a car. That is the worst. You will get those forever.
[1:05:30] Speaker 1: And you know two years in, hey, you're still looking
[1:05:33] Speaker 1: at that Honda. You're like, I bought a car two
[1:05:35] Speaker 1: years ago. What's happening here? They're just going through those lists?
[1:05:38] Speaker 1: All right. Cloaked dot com is the website. CEO our
[1:05:41] Speaker 1: gunbot Naggert, thanks so much for joining me today.
[1:05:45] Speaker 14: Absolutely, and the last second say is do give that
[1:05:47] Speaker 14: phone number a call? That eight five five seven five
[1:05:50] Speaker 14: two five six two five. It's a big eye opener.
[1:05:53] Speaker 1: Yes it is. I made my wife diala and we
[1:05:55] Speaker 1: were like, my kids are like, what's happening right now?
[1:05:58] Speaker 1: All right? Eighty eight our phone number or eight eight
[1:06:00] Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
[1:06:02] Speaker 1: to two four to one zero one. I'll put the
[1:06:05] Speaker 1: phone number for Cloaked on the website rich on tech
[1:06:07] Speaker 1: dot TV. It is eye opening. You dial that number,
[1:06:10] Speaker 1: Believe me, you will be like, wait, what, I didn't
[1:06:12] Speaker 1: even know they had that, especially the social Security number.
[1:06:15] Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Welcome back to rich on tech.
[1:06:20] Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at
[1:06:24] Speaker 1: triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
[1:06:27] Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Let's go to
[1:06:32] Speaker 1: uh Francis in Irvinest, Florida. You're on with Richo.
[1:06:38] Speaker 7: Hello, rich how are you?
[1:06:40] Speaker 1: I am doing fantastic. How are you today?
[1:06:42] Speaker 7: I'm not too bad other than my computer. I did
[1:06:46] Speaker 7: tell me, Hey, I don't I didn't start correctly.
[1:06:50] Speaker 1: Oh no, that sounds like me on a cold day.
[1:06:56] Speaker 7: Yeah, it's hard to put your feet on the floor
[1:06:58] Speaker 7: when you're sleeping.
[1:07:01] Speaker 8: There you go.
[1:07:02] Speaker 1: So what's the problem.
[1:07:04] Speaker 7: Well, I got this blue screen of death and it
[1:07:07] Speaker 7: says automatically pair your PC did not start correctly. Press
[1:07:12] Speaker 7: restart to research your PT which can sometimes fix the problem.
[1:07:19] Speaker 1: Sometimes that's the operative word. Uh oh did this? Sometimes not?
[1:07:23] Speaker 7: You can also press advanced options. I'll tell you something
[1:07:29] Speaker 7: which nothing worked.
[1:07:32] Speaker 1: Nothing's working?
[1:07:34] Speaker 7: Yes, I'm just going The blue screen just stayed there?
[1:07:38] Speaker 11: And so.
[1:07:40] Speaker 1: Does does your computer make any sound?
[1:07:43] Speaker 11: No?
[1:07:43] Speaker 1: Okay? And have you did you change anything on your
[1:07:46] Speaker 1: computer before this happened.
[1:07:48] Speaker 7: No, well I did turned it off and then the
[1:07:51] Speaker 7: next day I turned it on continue and that's what
[1:07:54] Speaker 7: it came up.
[1:07:55] Speaker 1: Oh man, are you is your computer backed up?
[1:08:02] Speaker 7: Backed up? In which way?
[1:08:03] Speaker 1: Like do you have a you know, your important files somewhere?
[1:08:08] Speaker 7: Well, it wasn't really necessary. It's not I don't have
[1:08:11] Speaker 7: much in my computer.
[1:08:13] Speaker 1: Okay, So it's more it's more just getting the computer
[1:08:15] Speaker 1: working again. Got it?
[1:08:19] Speaker 16: Well?
[1:08:19] Speaker 1: The I mean, there are a bunch of things you
[1:08:21] Speaker 1: can try to do. It sounds like you tried to
[1:08:23] Speaker 1: do them with the the advanced startup options and all
[1:08:26] Speaker 1: the repair stuff. But I think have you tried to
[1:08:30] Speaker 1: restart this into safe mode.
[1:08:34] Speaker 7: State?
[1:08:35] Speaker 1: Okay? So that's what I would try as the last
[1:08:37] Speaker 1: resort is see if you can do safe mode on
[1:08:39] Speaker 1: this computer? Is this what? What version of Windows?
[1:08:42] Speaker 10: Is this?
[1:08:43] Speaker 7: Windows?
[1:08:44] Speaker 1: Okay? So Windows ten? H you gotta I gotta look
[1:08:48] Speaker 1: up the way to do that. But there's there's basically
[1:08:49] Speaker 1: a key that you can let's see Windows ten. Let's
[1:08:54] Speaker 1: see boot into safe mode. So that's what you want
[1:08:57] Speaker 1: to look into. And so if you can boot into
[1:09:02] Speaker 1: safe mode, that will start your computer up without a
[1:09:06] Speaker 1: whole bunch of things running. So maybe there's something that's
[1:09:09] Speaker 1: like messing with your computer when it when it turns on,
[1:09:13] Speaker 1: and that's what's causing this screen of death. Now, I
[1:09:16] Speaker 1: think the problem it may be more than that, because
[1:09:19] Speaker 1: if you're getting if you're not getting anything to happen
[1:09:21] Speaker 1: on this computer, I don't know if it's like starting
[1:09:23] Speaker 1: up and then giving you this screen, or if it's
[1:09:25] Speaker 1: not starting up at all, which one do you think
[1:09:27] Speaker 1: it is?
[1:09:28] Speaker 7: Well, it starts up and then gives me the screen.
[1:09:31] Speaker 1: Okay, So it seems like your computer's like going through
[1:09:33] Speaker 1: some motions and then it's like now we can't yeah, okay,
[1:09:37] Speaker 1: So then safe mode may help because it may be
[1:09:39] Speaker 1: something you know. It could be that one of your
[1:09:41] Speaker 1: apps or one of your drivers or something got an
[1:09:44] Speaker 1: update that just does not agree with this system. So
[1:09:47] Speaker 1: that is that's kind of like the main thing that
[1:09:50] Speaker 1: you know could be causing this, I hope. But it
[1:09:53] Speaker 1: looks like you can press the F four key to
[1:09:57] Speaker 1: start in safe mode when your computer starting up. I
[1:09:59] Speaker 1: would check that on just look in your just look
[1:10:03] Speaker 1: in and like Google to see for your specific system.
[1:10:06] Speaker 1: I think that's it. But once you start in safe mode,
[1:10:10] Speaker 1: that basically only starts up the most basic parts of Windows.
[1:10:15] Speaker 1: So it's not going to run every driver, it's not
[1:10:18] Speaker 1: going to run everything, all the apps, all the things
[1:10:20] Speaker 1: that automatically turn on it log in, like, all those
[1:10:22] Speaker 1: things are not going to start. So it's just the
[1:10:24] Speaker 1: base of the operating system. So that if that works,
[1:10:28] Speaker 1: if the operating system comes up, that may fix it
[1:10:31] Speaker 1: in itself, Like it may start up and like repair
[1:10:33] Speaker 1: whatever it needs to do, and then you can restart
[1:10:35] Speaker 1: into regular mode. But if it doesn't, you know, if
[1:10:38] Speaker 1: it doesn't even come up even with the safe mode,
[1:10:40] Speaker 1: then you have a bigger problem. And then if that's
[1:10:43] Speaker 1: if that's the problem, then I would probably look into
[1:10:45] Speaker 1: just kind of if you said, your your files and
[1:10:47] Speaker 1: things are good, you don't have a you know, you
[1:10:49] Speaker 1: don't need to back up whatever. You can just kind
[1:10:51] Speaker 1: of start this computer. I hate to say this, but
[1:10:54] Speaker 1: just kind of start it fresh, like reset the PC
[1:10:57] Speaker 1: and that'll reinstall Windows completely and then it'll start up
[1:11:03] Speaker 1: because obviously then it's a fresh computer at that point.
[1:11:05] Speaker 1: But that is a frustrating thing to happen. It's tough
[1:11:08] Speaker 1: to tell exactly what's going on without seeing it. So
[1:11:11] Speaker 1: if you want to spend money and bring it to
[1:11:13] Speaker 1: a professional. That may help as a last resort if
[1:11:16] Speaker 1: you don't want to do this yourself. But you know,
[1:11:19] Speaker 1: if you don't care, if you're you know, if you
[1:11:21] Speaker 1: can just get this thing and you know, reinstall Windows yourself,
[1:11:26] Speaker 1: that will be the cheapest option. And then you start fresh.
[1:11:28] Speaker 1: And the nice thing about that is, you know all
[1:11:29] Speaker 1: the stuff that you had on there, all the things
[1:11:31] Speaker 1: you collected, you know, a little fragments of programs and stuff.
[1:11:34] Speaker 1: You will notice that your computer will feel new again.
[1:11:37] Speaker 1: So I guess that's the looking on the bright side
[1:11:39] Speaker 1: of your computer completely crashing and not working anymore. But again,
[1:11:43] Speaker 1: try the safe mode and then if that doesn't work,
[1:11:45] Speaker 1: you may want to bring it to professional see if
[1:11:47] Speaker 1: they can figure out what's going on, and if they can't,
[1:11:50] Speaker 1: or if you just want to reset your computer completely,
[1:11:53] Speaker 1: that will be the cheapest option. But the you will
[1:11:56] Speaker 1: have to reinstall everything again, all your programs, all your apps,
[1:12:00] Speaker 1: your browser, just everything will have to be put back
[1:12:02] Speaker 1: on that computer because it will be like new. Thanks
[1:12:05] Speaker 1: for the call, appreciate it. Francis eight eight eight rich
[1:12:07] Speaker 1: one o one eight eight eight seven four to two
[1:12:09] Speaker 1: four one zero one I'll tell you about a smart watch.
[1:12:12] Speaker 1: I like, that's just eighty dollars coming up. Welcome back
[1:12:21] Speaker 1: to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
[1:12:24] Speaker 1: talking technology. Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight
[1:12:28] Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one. Phone
[1:12:31] Speaker 1: lines are loaded, So I don't know what that means.
[1:12:34] Speaker 1: Can people not? You just got a busy signal? Oh
[1:12:38] Speaker 1: well you can try calling if someone drops off. I
[1:12:41] Speaker 1: see on the lines, I hear you. I feel for you.
[1:12:44] Speaker 1: I know some of you have been waiting for a while,
[1:12:45] Speaker 1: but we will get to as many of you as
[1:12:47] Speaker 1: we can. But you know, this show is a balance
[1:12:50] Speaker 1: of things, right, Like I try to get through some
[1:12:52] Speaker 1: of the information that I need. You know, I always
[1:12:54] Speaker 1: say this is the tech news I think you should
[1:12:56] Speaker 1: know about, So I always try to get that plus
[1:12:58] Speaker 1: your questions, your emails, your tweets. I mean, there's so
[1:13:01] Speaker 1: much going on, Jas writes in on Twitter. Hey, Rich,
[1:13:05] Speaker 1: I've got one terabyte on one drive. In March, I
[1:13:08] Speaker 1: spent about an hour each day cleaning it up. I
[1:13:10] Speaker 1: got from six hundred gigs down to four hundred. Every
[1:13:13] Speaker 1: three months, I transfer my camera uploads from dropbox to
[1:13:16] Speaker 1: one drive. Now I will delete pictures I don't want
[1:13:19] Speaker 1: before transferring. Talking about cleaning up cloud storage, Yeah, no
[1:13:22] Speaker 1: easy feat. These companies love just keeping us on there.
[1:13:26] Speaker 1: Chat GBT plus is now free for students. If you're
[1:13:30] Speaker 1: a college student, you can get access to Chat GPT
[1:13:33] Speaker 1: plus just in time to write those final papers. I
[1:13:37] Speaker 1: mean interesting timing on this one. Chat GBT. Chat GBT
[1:13:41] Speaker 1: plus free for all college students in the US and
[1:13:44] Speaker 1: Canada through the end of May. That includes their latest
[1:13:48] Speaker 1: model for writing and image generation Voice Mode Deep Research,
[1:13:53] Speaker 1: which can help with those papers and much much more.
[1:13:56] Speaker 8: So.
[1:13:56] Speaker 1: It's all on the website usually about twenty dollars a month,
[1:13:59] Speaker 1: so basically forty dollars value here. And you know it'll
[1:14:03] Speaker 1: probably make you more efficient during the finals season. So
[1:14:07] Speaker 1: I'll put the link rich on tech dot tv to
[1:14:10] Speaker 1: access that. And then this little smart watch I've been
[1:14:14] Speaker 1: testing from a company called a maze Fit. It's called
[1:14:17] Speaker 1: the BIP six and it's just eighty dollars and I
[1:14:21] Speaker 1: got to say, very very impressed. So this kind of
[1:14:25] Speaker 1: looks like an Apple watch and it does all the
[1:14:28] Speaker 1: things you need. It's got a nice display, it's really bright.
[1:14:31] Speaker 1: You can read it in almost any lighting. Except I
[1:14:35] Speaker 1: noticed with my polarized sunglasses on, which kind of bugs
[1:14:38] Speaker 1: me because that's what I wear all the time. Tracks
[1:14:41] Speaker 1: your heart rate, your sleep, blood oxygen, stress, heart rate variability,
[1:14:46] Speaker 1: one hundred and forty workout modes. Let's see. It even
[1:14:51] Speaker 1: tracks twenty five workouts automatically, you know, like if you
[1:14:53] Speaker 1: start a run or something. It's got maps on it.
[1:14:56] Speaker 1: Two week battery life. Battery life on this thing is
[1:14:58] Speaker 1: a champ good water resistance. It's got AI built in
[1:15:03] Speaker 1: so you can ask it questions and things like that.
[1:15:06] Speaker 1: No subscription, and I even love the food tracking on
[1:15:09] Speaker 1: the app. It's called ZEP. You can take a picture
[1:15:12] Speaker 1: of your food and it basically gives you all the
[1:15:15] Speaker 1: macros and whatever you're trying to track. Or you can
[1:15:17] Speaker 1: just type in what you ate and'll it'll parse it
[1:15:19] Speaker 1: all out. It's really really cool. So anyway, very impressive.
[1:15:23] Speaker 1: This is not an iPhone, This is not an Apple watch,
[1:15:26] Speaker 1: it's not an Android watch. It doesn't run like any
[1:15:29] Speaker 1: of the standard operating system. This is their own operating system,
[1:15:32] Speaker 1: so you don't have access to third party apps, but
[1:15:34] Speaker 1: pretty much everything you need is built in. So if
[1:15:37] Speaker 1: you are just looking for a basic smart watch that
[1:15:40] Speaker 1: does all the little things you need at a really
[1:15:43] Speaker 1: good price eighty dollars. I would check this out a
[1:15:45] Speaker 1: maze fit bipsix. The only thing is, if you're gonna
[1:15:49] Speaker 1: listen to music on this, there's no cellular you would
[1:15:52] Speaker 1: have to transfer MP three's manually through the app, which
[1:15:55] Speaker 1: you can do. But there again, there's no third party apps.
[1:15:57] Speaker 1: You're not gonna find like Spotify, iHeartRadio, know, all those
[1:16:00] Speaker 1: things you're not gonna be on here. You gotta you know,
[1:16:03] Speaker 1: bring your own music. I guess. Anyway, it's available now Amazon.
[1:16:06] Speaker 1: I'll have my video review on KTLA channel five and
[1:16:10] Speaker 1: my website rich on Tech on Monday. Uh, let's go
[1:16:14] Speaker 1: to let's see here. We've got my special guest here,
[1:16:18] Speaker 1: Parker Parker saw the Minecraft movie. This is my son,
[1:16:22] Speaker 1: Parker Parker. Welcome to the show.
[1:16:24] Speaker 13: Hello, thank you for having me.
[1:16:25] Speaker 1: Dad, Hey tell me about you're a big Minecraft fan.
[1:16:30] Speaker 1: So what did you think of the movie?
[1:16:33] Speaker 13: I thought the movie was pretty good. I actually liked it.
[1:16:39] Speaker 13: I thought the you know, the actors were very well
[1:16:42] Speaker 13: picked played, the scenes were well made. It was actually uh,
[1:16:46] Speaker 13: you know, there were some it was like kind of
[1:16:49] Speaker 13: like funny. That's what I really liked about it.
[1:16:52] Speaker 1: So it's a comedy. So you got Jason Momoa.
[1:16:54] Speaker 13: It was a comedy for sure.
[1:16:56] Speaker 1: Jack Black, Emma Myers, Jennifer Coolidge, who you probably remember
[1:17:01] Speaker 1: as the character in American Pie from back in the day.
[1:17:07] Speaker 1: This is getting a forty eight percent of Rotten Tomatoes,
[1:17:09] Speaker 1: So some people are liking it, some people are not
[1:17:11] Speaker 1: liking it.
[1:17:11] Speaker 13: Yeah, I don't agree with the forty eight percent ron tomatoes.
[1:17:16] Speaker 13: I think a lot of the people that like, you know,
[1:17:19] Speaker 13: the people that rate that, I don't think they probably
[1:17:23] Speaker 13: played Minecraft.
[1:17:24] Speaker 1: They have, but old reviewers, they don't know, they don't
[1:17:28] Speaker 1: know the real the games the kids are playing.
[1:17:31] Speaker 13: Yeah, but I mean, I do agree that the plot
[1:17:33] Speaker 13: isn't that well made. I think the plot had a
[1:17:36] Speaker 13: lot more potential, for sure. You know, I was talking
[1:17:39] Speaker 13: about that my friends. I was talking about that. I
[1:17:41] Speaker 13: was looking online and everything, and I don't And I
[1:17:45] Speaker 13: also agree, I don't think the plot is the best.
[1:17:47] Speaker 13: But I'm hoping if they do make a sequel, the
[1:17:49] Speaker 13: plot would be much better, which I think they have
[1:17:51] Speaker 13: a huge opportunity for. But yeah, like I said, the
[1:17:55] Speaker 13: actors were I think the actors were actually well picked
[1:17:59] Speaker 13: and a lot of people were upset that it was
[1:18:02] Speaker 13: live action, which you know, I was. I was upset
[1:18:05] Speaker 13: at first, but then an action was like, Oh, actually
[1:18:07] Speaker 13: I think it would It's cool to have live action.
[1:18:09] Speaker 13: I don't think animated would have been the best.
[1:18:11] Speaker 1: Were there creepers in this Yeah?
[1:18:14] Speaker 7: There were?
[1:18:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, hostile mobs yep.
[1:18:19] Speaker 9: Yeah.
[1:18:20] Speaker 13: And if you if you don't know what Minecraft is,
[1:18:23] Speaker 13: it's basically a game where you survive, you can build
[1:18:26] Speaker 13: whatever you want. Uh, And they just made a movie and.
[1:18:29] Speaker 1: It's yeah, any griefers in the game in the movie
[1:18:33] Speaker 1: creepers griefers? Oh no, a player who intentionally damages other players, builds,
[1:18:39] Speaker 1: or causes problems. I feel like you and your brother,
[1:18:42] Speaker 1: you guys do that to each other.
[1:18:44] Speaker 2: I feel like you're literally just looking up Minecraft terms
[1:18:47] Speaker 2: right now on a computer and you're asking your son
[1:18:50] Speaker 2: about these random Minecraft.
[1:18:52] Speaker 1: That's exactly what we're doing. I know there's probably a
[1:18:57] Speaker 1: pick act in the in the movie.
[1:18:59] Speaker 9: Really do so? Yeah?
[1:19:02] Speaker 8: I really?
[1:19:02] Speaker 13: I think they incorporated a lot of stuff from Minecraft,
[1:19:05] Speaker 13: which I really liked. And you know, if you're thinking, oh,
[1:19:09] Speaker 13: do I need to play Minecraft to watch the movie,
[1:19:11] Speaker 13: you absolutely do not.
[1:19:12] Speaker 1: Oh you don't.
[1:19:13] Speaker 13: Minecraft will make it better. I think you'll understand it
[1:19:16] Speaker 13: a little more. But I like my mom when she
[1:19:20] Speaker 13: watched it, she didn't really play Minecraft that much, and
[1:19:25] Speaker 13: she still understood it. But you know, okay, if you
[1:19:28] Speaker 13: do play Minecraft, you'll enjoy it.
[1:19:30] Speaker 1: Do you wait for streaming or do you see it
[1:19:32] Speaker 1: in the movie theater?
[1:19:33] Speaker 13: That's a big question I was wondering. So I said,
[1:19:36] Speaker 13: if you know, you're a huge Minecraft and you're playing
[1:19:39] Speaker 13: for a while but don't know if it's really worth it,
[1:19:41] Speaker 13: I could go to the theaters. You know, it'll be
[1:19:43] Speaker 13: a fun experience. You know, the audience will probably you know,
[1:19:47] Speaker 13: people that are going or you want to go, and
[1:19:50] Speaker 13: you'll have good laugh. If you don't, you know, you
[1:19:52] Speaker 13: play Minecraft, you don't really you know, like it's like
[1:19:56] Speaker 13: I saw the Minecraft movie just Waittil Comes Home. Yeah,
[1:19:59] Speaker 13: it really it depends you know the price and everything.
[1:20:01] Speaker 13: But I think if you really like Minecraft, go to
[1:20:04] Speaker 13: the movies. I think it was actually a great experience.
[1:20:07] Speaker 1: All right. And if look and if you don't like it,
[1:20:10] Speaker 1: Mom and Dad just spent like eighty bucks, no big
[1:20:12] Speaker 1: deal for like two tickets at least in LA. All Right, Parker,
[1:20:15] Speaker 1: thanks for calling in. Appreciate it.
[1:20:17] Speaker 13: Okay, yeah, I love you.
[1:20:18] Speaker 1: Love you too.
[1:20:19] Speaker 8: Uh y.
[1:20:20] Speaker 1: That's my son Parker with his review of Minecraft, Minecraft
[1:20:24] Speaker 1: the movie. You know, my kids gave up roadblocks in
[1:20:28] Speaker 1: the house and it's been kind of a better place,
[1:20:31] Speaker 1: but now my kid wants to go back to it,
[1:20:34] Speaker 1: So I don't know. It's you know, it's tough every
[1:20:36] Speaker 1: every kid handles these video games differently, right, and even adults.
[1:20:40] Speaker 1: I mean it's just in general anything, you know, it's
[1:20:42] Speaker 1: like it's like, got to use moderation with all this stuff.
[1:20:45] Speaker 1: All right, do we have time for a question before
[1:20:47] Speaker 1: we go to break? Quick one? Okay, quick one? Jacqueline
[1:20:49] Speaker 1: and Michigan. What's your question?
[1:20:53] Speaker 11: Hi?
[1:20:53] Speaker 17: Dare can you hear me?
[1:20:54] Speaker 6: All right?
[1:20:54] Speaker 11: Yes?
[1:20:56] Speaker 17: Either, Thank you so much for all you do I have.
[1:20:59] Speaker 17: I had an iPhone thirteen and I.
[1:21:02] Speaker 18: Switched services, so I went from T Mobile to Exfinity,
[1:21:06] Speaker 18: and when they transferred all the data from the iPhone
[1:21:08] Speaker 18: to the Android, none of my photos transferred over, no videos,
[1:21:12] Speaker 18: no photos, nothing.
[1:21:13] Speaker 17: So I went back to the Exfinity store and said, hey,
[1:21:16] Speaker 17: can you help me? And they said, no, we've done
[1:21:17] Speaker 17: everything we can.
[1:21:18] Speaker 11: You're on your own, right.
[1:21:19] Speaker 9: Oh boo wow?
[1:21:20] Speaker 1: That usually okay. So you want to transfer, you want
[1:21:26] Speaker 1: to transfer your stuff? Okay, So I would say phone thirteen, okay.
[1:21:30] Speaker 1: So I would say, let's see okay, pixel has on
[1:21:33] Speaker 1: its own app, so you want okay. I think the
[1:21:36] Speaker 1: easiest way to do this would maybe be to download
[1:21:38] Speaker 1: Google Photos and let it upload all of the pictures.
[1:21:41] Speaker 1: Do you have more than like fifteen gigs of pictures?
[1:21:44] Speaker 15: Oh?
[1:21:44] Speaker 17: I don't know how much I have. I could look
[1:21:46] Speaker 17: it up, but you said no more than fifteen gigs?
[1:21:48] Speaker 11: Yeah?
[1:21:49] Speaker 1: Are they all an eye cloud or are they actually
[1:21:51] Speaker 1: on the phone on the phone. Okay, that's that's actually easier.
[1:21:54] Speaker 1: So I mean there's look, there are so many ways
[1:21:57] Speaker 1: you can do this. There are many many ways. And
[1:21:59] Speaker 1: what may you transfer from iPhone to Android?
[1:22:02] Speaker 17: Well, we it was a better price right for the service.
[1:22:05] Speaker 17: And I really got to like my iPhone because I'd
[1:22:08] Speaker 17: always been an Android user. And then I got someone
[1:22:11] Speaker 17: gave me this, My dad gave me this iPhone thirteen,
[1:22:14] Speaker 17: and I really came to like it. But then the
[1:22:18] Speaker 17: T Mobile just it was not a good price. So
[1:22:20] Speaker 17: then when we switched, they, of course the mobile or
[1:22:22] Speaker 17: Efinity tells you, oh yeah, everything is super easy. And
[1:22:25] Speaker 17: here we'll give you this free Android and they didn't
[1:22:27] Speaker 17: have any deals on the iPhone, so I said, okay,
[1:22:30] Speaker 17: well I'll switch. And then it's been this and I'm
[1:22:33] Speaker 17: sad because you know, people ask, oh, what about this
[1:22:36] Speaker 17: or whatever? I want to look at a photo and
[1:22:37] Speaker 17: I can't, you know what I mean?
[1:22:38] Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I think the easiest way is going to
[1:22:42] Speaker 1: be to just basically install Google Photos on your old phone.
[1:22:48] Speaker 1: Let it upload all of your pictures and then they
[1:22:50] Speaker 1: will all be on Google Photos on your new phone.
[1:22:52] Speaker 1: I think that's the best way to do it. Jacqueline, Okay,
[1:22:55] Speaker 1: and at least you can have them there. I got
[1:22:57] Speaker 1: to think more about the way you do this. Tipic
[1:23:00] Speaker 1: is during the setup of the phone, you would typically
[1:23:03] Speaker 1: have it bring over all those photos. But unless you
[1:23:05] Speaker 1: want to, unless you want to set up that Android
[1:23:07] Speaker 1: phone all again and go through that process, which I
[1:23:10] Speaker 1: probably don't recommend. But but that's really they they really
[1:23:14] Speaker 1: missed the missed it when they did that. They should have.
[1:23:16] Speaker 17: Yeah, they made me said, they did not help it.
[1:23:18] Speaker 17: They just want to stay all right.
[1:23:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, after that, that's not a very not a very
[1:23:23] Speaker 1: good salesperson. Sadly, no, no, And I went back again,
[1:23:27] Speaker 1: and they did, oh yeah, no. Once you're out of
[1:23:29] Speaker 1: the store, they're like, we're done. We're done with you, Jacqueline.
[1:23:32] Speaker 17: So install Google Photos on my iPhone.
[1:23:34] Speaker 1: Yes, and then and then install it. Log in with
[1:23:37] Speaker 1: your account, with your Google account, and then the same
[1:23:40] Speaker 1: one that's on your Android phone. Let it upload everything.
[1:23:43] Speaker 1: You may have to turn your phone the display settings
[1:23:46] Speaker 1: to never so it doesn't it doesn't lock. Let everything upload.
[1:23:49] Speaker 1: Keep the Google Photos app open. It will upload all
[1:23:52] Speaker 1: those pictures that are on your iPhone and then when
[1:23:54] Speaker 1: you open up Google Photos on your Android phone, they
[1:23:56] Speaker 1: will all be in there in the cloud. And that's
[1:24:00] Speaker 1: probably the easiest way to do it right now. I'll
[1:24:02] Speaker 1: noodle this over during break and think if I think
[1:24:04] Speaker 1: of a better way. But that's probably the best way
[1:24:05] Speaker 1: right now. Thanks for the call, Jaqueline, You appreciate it.
[1:24:09] Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
[1:24:11] Speaker 1: four two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech.
[1:24:20] Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging
[1:24:23] Speaker 1: out with you talking technology. The website rich on Tech
[1:24:28] Speaker 1: dot tv. There you can get show notes, you can
[1:24:31] Speaker 1: watch the segments I do for television. You can listen
[1:24:35] Speaker 1: to past episodes of this show as a podcast. Check
[1:24:40] Speaker 1: out the newsletter. There's a whole lot there. Rich on
[1:24:43] Speaker 1: tech dot TV. This show is always such a journey.
[1:24:46] Speaker 1: I mean, just think about how much we've done already.
[1:24:48] Speaker 1: I mean, we've had great guests on, We've had my son,
[1:24:51] Speaker 1: we've had callers, we've had emailers, we've had tweeters, all
[1:24:55] Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. Let's go to Oh and we still
[1:24:58] Speaker 1: have got coming up this hour. We've got Joel Santo
[1:25:02] Speaker 1: Domingo of the Wirecutter, who's gonna break down mesh networking.
[1:25:07] Speaker 1: So this is that I'd say it's new, but it's
[1:25:10] Speaker 1: been around for a while now. But you know all
[1:25:11] Speaker 1: these little better Wi Fi in your house basically how
[1:25:15] Speaker 1: to get that or outside whatever you need. Let's go
[1:25:17] Speaker 1: to Sergio in Azusa. Sergio, you're on with Rich.
[1:25:21] Speaker 7: Hi.
[1:25:22] Speaker 9: Rich, you got me right in the middle of a
[1:25:23] Speaker 9: bike rest.
[1:25:25] Speaker 16: Well, they come and ask how's your food?
[1:25:27] Speaker 17: Thank you?
[1:25:28] Speaker 16: Hey, Rich, I'm vision impaired. I have one eye that
[1:25:31] Speaker 16: I can see somewhat, the other one I can't. And
[1:25:34] Speaker 16: shout out to your vision impaired nation out during and
[1:25:37] Speaker 16: I know you have a lot of callers. I hear
[1:25:38] Speaker 16: a lot of good tips. I'm calling about the glasses
[1:25:44] Speaker 16: that allow you to have AI and which are the
[1:25:48] Speaker 16: better ones out there that you recommend. I'm also trying
[1:25:52] Speaker 16: to see if your callers can send out any tips
[1:25:56] Speaker 16: for you know, vision impaired accessibility places.
[1:26:00] Speaker 10: And I appreciate everything you do.
[1:26:02] Speaker 1: Oh thank you. Is this something new that that's happened
[1:26:05] Speaker 1: or has this been ongoing?
[1:26:08] Speaker 16: It's been about five years.
[1:26:09] Speaker 11: OK.
[1:26:11] Speaker 16: I wasn't really a tech head, but I used it
[1:26:15] Speaker 16: and everything. I would get frustrated because things would renew
[1:26:20] Speaker 16: before I had a chance to figure out how the
[1:26:21] Speaker 16: old one worked, you know. And so I'm looking for
[1:26:25] Speaker 16: some glasses that I've heard. Facebook has one.
[1:26:29] Speaker 9: I heard there's another one.
[1:26:30] Speaker 10: I think called in the Vision, and you know that
[1:26:35] Speaker 10: I can, Like.
[1:26:36] Speaker 16: I have children, I can read their papers or go
[1:26:40] Speaker 16: through the mail. I just want to, like a lot
[1:26:42] Speaker 16: of vision impaired people, you want to be You want
[1:26:45] Speaker 16: to not have people depend on you. You want to
[1:26:46] Speaker 16: do your independent stuff. And there's a lot of us
[1:26:50] Speaker 16: out there and we appreciate everything you do for us.
[1:26:53] Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to be able to do what you
[1:26:55] Speaker 1: want to do and not have to always have someone
[1:26:57] Speaker 1: helping you do that. That's what I'm understanding. I mean,
[1:27:01] Speaker 1: so from what I've seen, and you know, I'm sure
[1:27:04] Speaker 1: i'll get some messages from the community on this. I'm
[1:27:07] Speaker 1: not an expert in this field, but from what I've
[1:27:09] Speaker 1: seen at the I go to the Sea Sun Accessibility
[1:27:14] Speaker 1: Tech Expo every year, and the glasses that I see there,
[1:27:18] Speaker 1: you know, the specialized glasses are usually quite expensive. So
[1:27:24] Speaker 1: you mentioned you mentioned the Envision glasses. Those look like
[1:27:28] Speaker 1: Google glass. Those are twenty five hundred dollars, so that's
[1:27:31] Speaker 1: you know, that's going to be a very expensive solution
[1:27:33] Speaker 1: to things. There's another glasses called orecam My I three
[1:27:39] Speaker 1: pro and I'm looking at those to see if I
[1:27:42] Speaker 1: can find a price. Doesn't really it looks like you
[1:27:46] Speaker 1: have to contact them. Let's see. Oh hold on, oh
[1:27:48] Speaker 1: there we go. Yeah, those are forty two d and
[1:27:51] Speaker 1: fifty dollars, so that's you know, those are very very
[1:27:53] Speaker 1: expensive as well. And then there's another one I'm looking
[1:27:57] Speaker 1: at Iris Vision. Look like they're using more kind of
[1:28:02] Speaker 1: like a almost like a VR type headset for that.
[1:28:05] Speaker 1: So I've seen a bunch of these. I did a
[1:28:08] Speaker 1: story if you if you I'll link these up. But
[1:28:10] Speaker 1: if you just type in ceasun Ktla DeMuro on Google
[1:28:14] Speaker 1: you'll see my assistive tech coverage from last year and
[1:28:17] Speaker 1: this year, where last year I did a lot more
[1:28:19] Speaker 1: of the glasses in there. But you know, the thing,
[1:28:24] Speaker 1: my takeaway is that these are very expensive, and I
[1:28:27] Speaker 1: think that's why so many people are turning to the
[1:28:31] Speaker 1: ray band metas just for everyday help. And you've got
[1:28:35] Speaker 1: the AI built in, you've got the picture functionality. They're
[1:28:38] Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty dollars, so at the very least, Sergio,
[1:28:42] Speaker 1: I mean, they're worth a try. I'm not sure, you know,
[1:28:45] Speaker 1: depending on what you want to do with them. You
[1:28:47] Speaker 1: know what the functionality is. You know, it may it
[1:28:50] Speaker 1: may vary. It may you may say, well it works
[1:28:52] Speaker 1: for this, but it doesn't work for that. But the
[1:28:54] Speaker 1: things that we kind of had a show maybe last
[1:28:57] Speaker 1: year talking about these things when I tested them, and
[1:29:00] Speaker 1: people just kept calling and saying all the ways they
[1:29:03] Speaker 1: found to use these anything from taking a picture of
[1:29:07] Speaker 1: the back of a product to say and say asking
[1:29:09] Speaker 1: it how do I microwave this? Or what's the instructions?
[1:29:11] Speaker 1: Say here it'll do. I mean, it can do some
[1:29:14] Speaker 1: pretty incredible things, all right. So some of the things
[1:29:17] Speaker 1: last year that I saw at the at the show
[1:29:21] Speaker 1: a company called Site so E Site I wear. That's
[1:29:25] Speaker 1: another specialized Oh this actually saw twice. I saw this
[1:29:29] Speaker 1: at CES as well. So E Site they have glasses
[1:29:32] Speaker 1: as well, but again, you know, very expensive and so
[1:29:35] Speaker 1: if you want to invest that kind of money just
[1:29:37] Speaker 1: to try something, it could be you know, it could
[1:29:39] Speaker 1: be a letdown if they don't do the things you need.
[1:29:43] Speaker 1: Envision we did see those as well. The other one
[1:29:45] Speaker 1: is ocapp Oko. This helps you navigate streets using your iPhone.
[1:29:51] Speaker 1: But Sergio, I try the ray bands for starters. Good
[1:29:54] Speaker 1: question and some of those emails with your suggestions. Next up,
[1:29:57] Speaker 1: why find networking? Right here, I'm rich on Tech. Welcome
[1:30:07] Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
[1:30:09] Speaker 1: with you talking technology. Joining me now Joel Santo Domingo
[1:30:14] Speaker 1: of The Wirecutter to talk about mesh networking. Joel, thanks
[1:30:19] Speaker 1: for joining me, Thanks for having me. So mesh networking
[1:30:23] Speaker 1: been around for a while now, you know, at least
[1:30:26] Speaker 1: ten years I think since Ero came on the scene.
[1:30:30] Speaker 1: What does that mean exactly? Like, what improvement did that bring?
[1:30:34] Speaker 7: Well?
[1:30:34] Speaker 15: Mesh networking is basically with the traditional Wi Fi setup,
[1:30:38] Speaker 15: you've got your router and a cable modem or a
[1:30:41] Speaker 15: combination of the two, which is usually called the gateway,
[1:30:44] Speaker 15: and that provides your Wi Fi in your house. Mesh
[1:30:46] Speaker 15: network will Mesh networking will multiply that. You'll get several
[1:30:51] Speaker 15: routers either two, three, four routers in a box. You
[1:30:54] Speaker 15: set it up, and what that does is it will
[1:30:58] Speaker 15: eliminate dead ze zones in your house. So if you
[1:31:01] Speaker 15: got a room, say your garage, and you want to
[1:31:04] Speaker 15: put a you know, a smart speaker in there and
[1:31:06] Speaker 15: it doesn't quite work, if you have mesh networking, it'll
[1:31:10] Speaker 15: extend the signal, the Wi Fi signal to other parts
[1:31:14] Speaker 15: of your house.
[1:31:15] Speaker 1: Now, there's been extenders in the past, right, like a
[1:31:18] Speaker 1: range extender, and those just took like a bad signal
[1:31:20] Speaker 1: and pushed it further into the corners of your home.
[1:31:23] Speaker 1: Is this the same thing or is this actually take
[1:31:25] Speaker 1: the same signal and put it in all the corners.
[1:31:28] Speaker 15: It takes a signal, it amplifies the signal, and it
[1:31:31] Speaker 15: routes the signal basically, so if you have an extender,
[1:31:35] Speaker 15: it just repeats the signal and that'll work for one
[1:31:39] Speaker 15: room in your house. But if you have you know,
[1:31:42] Speaker 15: a wing of your house, or if you have a
[1:31:44] Speaker 15: house that large, or if you have several rooms in
[1:31:48] Speaker 15: your house that are pretty much unserved by your router,
[1:31:52] Speaker 15: a mesh network can help.
[1:31:54] Speaker 1: Okay, So that's how you know, Like basically, if your
[1:31:56] Speaker 1: cable company or whoever, your internet provider, whatever they gave you,
[1:32:00] Speaker 1: if it's not really working in every corner of your home,
[1:32:02] Speaker 1: that's when it's time to upgrade to the mesh pretty much. Okay,
[1:32:07] Speaker 1: So what about all these different terms we've got right now,
[1:32:10] Speaker 1: You've got Wi Fi six, you've got six E, you've
[1:32:12] Speaker 1: got seven. Do we need to jump on board with
[1:32:15] Speaker 1: all of those?
[1:32:17] Speaker 15: Those are the different generations. Ninety nine percent of the
[1:32:19] Speaker 15: stuff that you have in your house is either be
[1:32:21] Speaker 15: Wi Fi five or six, which have both been around
[1:32:24] Speaker 15: for a while, but they're solidly work. Six E extends
[1:32:29] Speaker 15: it a little bit, extends it too, slightly faster if
[1:32:32] Speaker 15: you're in the same room as a router, and Wi
[1:32:35] Speaker 15: Fi seven will help if you have a lot of devices,
[1:32:38] Speaker 15: or if you have neighbors who have a lot of devices.
[1:32:41] Speaker 1: For example, it sounds like I need to upgrade to
[1:32:44] Speaker 1: Wi Fi seven. I've got a lot of devices.
[1:32:46] Speaker 15: It's not a must do right now, but probably in
[1:32:50] Speaker 15: the next two years. You probably want to be on
[1:32:52] Speaker 15: Wi Fi seven.
[1:32:53] Speaker 1: But doesn't my device have to support Wi Fi seven
[1:32:56] Speaker 1: for it to take advantage of that network?
[1:32:58] Speaker 15: Yeah, that's the rub. You really have to have your
[1:33:00] Speaker 15: laptop on Wi Fi seven and your phone on Wi
[1:33:03] Speaker 15: Fi seven to make it makes sense for you to
[1:33:06] Speaker 15: put it in.
[1:33:08] Speaker 1: And so you test these things out. What are you
[1:33:10] Speaker 1: looking for in your tests? You test these things for
[1:33:12] Speaker 1: the wirecutter, what are you what are you looking for
[1:33:13] Speaker 1: when you test these mesh networks out?
[1:33:16] Speaker 15: You know, first of all, I'm looking for them to work.
[1:33:19] Speaker 15: Some of them work really well, some of them don't.
[1:33:22] Speaker 15: I rent a house to actually check it out. It's
[1:33:25] Speaker 15: larger than the house I currently live in, lots of walls,
[1:33:29] Speaker 15: lots of rooms. Basically, if you're your signal from your router,
[1:33:36] Speaker 15: if it goes through more than two or three walls
[1:33:39] Speaker 15: and ceilings count as walls or Flora's count as walls.
[1:33:43] Speaker 15: If it goes through two or three walls, you probably
[1:33:46] Speaker 15: want to have a mesh network to help repeat that
[1:33:49] Speaker 15: signal around your house.
[1:33:51] Speaker 1: And what about let's say you don't want to upgrade,
[1:33:53] Speaker 1: I mean, what about just like some tips for where
[1:33:55] Speaker 1: to place your you know, your system that puts out
[1:33:59] Speaker 1: the wife, like your router. I guess so most of
[1:34:02] Speaker 1: the routers are like kind of also, they spit out
[1:34:03] Speaker 1: the Wi Fi signal, Right, is that kind of the case?
[1:34:06] Speaker 15: Yeah, pretty much all the routers spit out the Wi
[1:34:08] Speaker 15: Fi signal. It's either gonna be a round box or
[1:34:11] Speaker 15: a square box or a box. Then ten is on it.
[1:34:15] Speaker 15: The most important thing is to not hide it in
[1:34:19] Speaker 15: a closet or a cabinet or something like that. You
[1:34:23] Speaker 15: really want it up high and you want it out
[1:34:28] Speaker 15: in the open because Wi Fi signals don't like to
[1:34:31] Speaker 15: be blocked by things like wood or metal. Another thing
[1:34:35] Speaker 15: is you want to put it in the center of
[1:34:37] Speaker 15: your house or close to the center of your house
[1:34:39] Speaker 15: as possible. I know that's not always case. That's not
[1:34:43] Speaker 15: always possible. Like my router is on the end of
[1:34:45] Speaker 15: my house because that's where the where the internet comes in,
[1:34:48] Speaker 15: the cable comes in. But up high, centrally located, that's
[1:34:54] Speaker 15: really where you want your router.
[1:34:56] Speaker 1: So you're telling me that, like when people walk into
[1:34:58] Speaker 1: my home, the centerpiece of my home should be my
[1:35:00] Speaker 1: WiFi router. Like, hey, this is welcome to my home.
[1:35:04] Speaker 1: Here's my WiFi.
[1:35:06] Speaker 15: Well that's if you want a good signal everywhere, you
[1:35:09] Speaker 15: do want it up up high. You can buy routers
[1:35:12] Speaker 15: like the Euro that you mentioned earlier. It's a small router,
[1:35:16] Speaker 15: so it's small white box. It shouldn't be too obtrusive.
[1:35:20] Speaker 1: Okay, So let's talk about some of these brands. What
[1:35:23] Speaker 1: are some of the best brands that you're seeing right now?
[1:35:25] Speaker 1: Like I mean, I always mentioned, I always recommend Euro.
[1:35:27] Speaker 1: It's been pretty solid for me over the years. What
[1:35:31] Speaker 1: else you know? You've got Euro? How are they doing?
[1:35:33] Speaker 1: And what are some of the other brands that you like?
[1:35:35] Speaker 1: I agree with you.
[1:35:36] Speaker 15: Our top pick is the Euro six right now, and
[1:35:39] Speaker 15: I've just gone through a round of testing with the
[1:35:41] Speaker 15: Euro seven and that's going to be my new pick
[1:35:45] Speaker 15: very soon. I think it's got some improvements. It's a
[1:35:50] Speaker 15: little more expensive, but it's pretty good. It's pretty solid,
[1:35:53] Speaker 15: it's easy to set up. It only took me about
[1:35:55] Speaker 15: five to ten minutes to set up. I do it
[1:35:57] Speaker 15: for a living, but I can see someone who is
[1:36:02] Speaker 15: a novice taking maybe twenty minutes set this up.
[1:36:06] Speaker 1: Now, here's I always give out this tip where because
[1:36:09] Speaker 1: I made this mistake once I changed my Wi Fi
[1:36:12] Speaker 1: router and I used a different password and all my
[1:36:15] Speaker 1: stuff I had to reset up. So I've been saying
[1:36:18] Speaker 1: since then, like, hey, if you're getting a new router,
[1:36:19] Speaker 1: like just use your old Wi Fi username and password.
[1:36:23] Speaker 1: Is that a problem or is that kind of worll? Absolutely?
[1:36:26] Speaker 15: That's that's my top tip for setting up a new
[1:36:30] Speaker 15: Wi Fi router or mesh system. If you have you know,
[1:36:34] Speaker 15: a dozen things or two dozen things, set up speakers,
[1:36:38] Speaker 15: a streaming box, your phones, just use the old password
[1:36:42] Speaker 15: and the old network name and everything will hook right
[1:36:46] Speaker 15: up to it right away.
[1:36:47] Speaker 1: Okay. Any other brands besides euro that you like that
[1:36:50] Speaker 1: are doing good stuff.
[1:36:52] Speaker 15: TP Link, tp Link Deco, Mesh systems are pretty good.
[1:36:55] Speaker 15: Our upgrade pick is the tp link Deco BE sixty three.
[1:36:59] Speaker 15: It's for people who need a little more, a little
[1:37:01] Speaker 15: more performance, more connections. There are two there are two
[1:37:07] Speaker 15: boxes or two routers in the kIPS. If you put
[1:37:11] Speaker 15: the other box in your office, for example, you can
[1:37:14] Speaker 15: plug your laptop right into the box and you have
[1:37:17] Speaker 15: a virtually wired wired signal, which is usually more stable.
[1:37:21] Speaker 1: Okay, but well, how much longer do we have on
[1:37:23] Speaker 1: this format? Okay, I'm gonna we never do this, but
[1:37:26] Speaker 1: I'm gonna. I'm gonna put you on the spot. We
[1:37:28] Speaker 1: got a caller, Chris and Florida who wants to know
[1:37:32] Speaker 1: what to get. Chris, can you explain your situation quickly
[1:37:34] Speaker 1: for Joel?
[1:37:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, Hi Joel, Chris, Miami, thanks for us. Yeah, fifteen
[1:37:41] Speaker 2: living in Miami, living a condo fifteen hundred square feet
[1:37:45] Speaker 2: and it's like very quiet. It's not like that new
[1:37:49] Speaker 2: prefab condo, so it's super quiet. So the walls are
[1:37:51] Speaker 2: kind of thick, and we have the regular original Wi
[1:37:55] Speaker 2: Fi by Google and slow.
[1:37:58] Speaker 11: We have to have two.
[1:37:59] Speaker 2: If I have one, doesn't go very far. I guess
[1:38:02] Speaker 2: now I'm looking at Maybe Euro seven would be nice,
[1:38:05] Speaker 2: a little pricey, but future proof. Maybe eero maybe six
[1:38:09] Speaker 2: plus with I don't want to just say just one room,
[1:38:12] Speaker 2: but maybe extend out over the entire square footage kitchen, bathrooms,
[1:38:17] Speaker 2: dining room, living room area. What would you suggest? Thank
[1:38:20] Speaker 2: you so much for taking my question.
[1:38:22] Speaker 15: Sure, are you going to be worrying about a backyard
[1:38:26] Speaker 15: or a garage or anything like that.
[1:38:28] Speaker 2: No, No, I'm on the sixt floor corner pocket.
[1:38:31] Speaker 15: Yeah, sure, I would probably suggest an euro seven a
[1:38:35] Speaker 15: two pack or maybe a three pack, but probably two
[1:38:37] Speaker 15: pack that I just recently tested one and it covered
[1:38:42] Speaker 15: a thirty two hundred square flashed house, multiple rooms in it.
[1:38:46] Speaker 1: Now, the other side of this is the price. So
[1:38:49] Speaker 1: the Euro seven right now is actually on sale, and
[1:38:53] Speaker 1: this is it's four hundred and seventy nine dollars. That
[1:38:55] Speaker 1: sound about right.
[1:38:58] Speaker 15: The Euro seven I see on Amazon right this second
[1:39:02] Speaker 15: is the two pack that I recommend. It is two
[1:39:04] Speaker 15: seventy nine ninety nine. Oh okay, and three pack is
[1:39:07] Speaker 15: three forty nine ninety nine, so.
[1:39:10] Speaker 1: Okay, so there must be okay, So there's a different level.
[1:39:13] Speaker 1: I see, there's different levels of the of the seven. Okay.
[1:39:15] Speaker 1: And what do you think about these outdoor you know
[1:39:17] Speaker 1: the Eero has like that outdoor extender. What do you
[1:39:20] Speaker 1: think about that?
[1:39:22] Speaker 15: It's very interesting, it's it's weather proofd Apparently I'm going
[1:39:26] Speaker 15: to be testing it out sometime this year alongside a
[1:39:30] Speaker 15: tp link competitor. It looks really cool. You can just
[1:39:35] Speaker 15: plug it in and it'll cook right up to your
[1:39:37] Speaker 15: eurosystem or your tp link system and extend it out
[1:39:41] Speaker 15: to a backy order patio.
[1:39:43] Speaker 1: See got it? Okay? Okay? So I see there's Eero
[1:39:46] Speaker 1: seven and then Eero seven, euro Pro seven, So there
[1:39:50] Speaker 1: you go. There's a little bit of a delineation there.
[1:39:53] Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, when you look, I see how confusing
[1:39:55] Speaker 1: this is for the average consumer. When you go on Amazon,
[1:39:57] Speaker 1: you've got Eero Eero six, Eero six Plus, Ero six,
[1:40:00] Speaker 1: Eero Pro six, ee Eero Mac seven, Outdoor seven, Eero seven,
[1:40:04] Speaker 1: Eero Pro seven. Oh my gosh. Just go to Wirecutter.
[1:40:07] Speaker 1: Check out what Joel has to say. He's got it
[1:40:09] Speaker 1: all linked up there. Joel Santo Domingo, thanks so much
[1:40:12] Speaker 1: for joining me today.
[1:40:14] Speaker 15: Thanks for having me.
[1:40:15] Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. Good information. Gotta have good WiFi, bottom line,
[1:40:20] Speaker 1: gotta have good WiFi. If you don't have good WiFi,
[1:40:22] Speaker 1: what do we have in this world. I don't know.
[1:40:25] Speaker 1: In my house, if the Wi Fi is down, you
[1:40:28] Speaker 1: can't do anything. It is all run by Wi Fi.
[1:40:31] Speaker 1: All right, Coming up, I almost gave the number out.
[1:40:34] Speaker 1: We're gonna do the feedbag. We've got lots of emails
[1:40:36] Speaker 1: that you sent me throughout the week. We'll get to
[1:40:37] Speaker 1: those coming up next. Perfect song for spring Break. Welcome
[1:40:50] Speaker 1: back to the show. We got a lot to get through,
[1:40:53] Speaker 1: so let me just get right into it a couple
[1:40:55] Speaker 1: of news tidbits before we get to the feedbag. If
[1:41:00] Speaker 1: you live in La, the my La three one one
[1:41:03] Speaker 1: app got a major makeover. This is an excellent app
[1:41:07] Speaker 1: that helps you put in requests to the city like
[1:41:10] Speaker 1: graffiti removal, bulky item pickup, pothole repairs, and much more.
[1:41:15] Speaker 15: So.
[1:41:15] Speaker 1: They basically got image recognition now, which is really nice.
[1:41:18] Speaker 1: They just revamped the whole thing. So my La three
[1:41:21] Speaker 1: to one one available in Apple App Store, Google Play.
[1:41:24] Speaker 1: If you don't live in La. No matter where you live,
[1:41:27] Speaker 1: if your city offers an app like this a city
[1:41:31] Speaker 1: services app, definitely download it. It is so quick. I
[1:41:35] Speaker 1: literally report when people just put their bulky stuff out
[1:41:37] Speaker 1: on the curb on my street. I'm like, the city's
[1:41:40] Speaker 1: not just going to come and pick that up. I
[1:41:41] Speaker 1: report it. Boom, It's out of there like the next day.
[1:41:44] Speaker 1: It's really really fantastic, so saves you a phone call.
[1:41:48] Speaker 1: Roadblocks just launched three new parntal controls, so if your
[1:41:51] Speaker 1: kids play Roadblocks, parents can now block specific games from
[1:41:55] Speaker 1: their kids account. They can block individual users from the
[1:41:58] Speaker 1: contacting their kids, including the friends I mean obviously if
[1:42:01] Speaker 1: they don't want to talk to them. You can also
[1:42:04] Speaker 1: see which games your kid plays the most. So this
[1:42:07] Speaker 1: is in the Roadblock Safety Center. You do have to
[1:42:10] Speaker 1: have an account for roadblocks and you link that to
[1:42:13] Speaker 1: your kid's account. But three helpful things. There been talking
[1:42:17] Speaker 1: about this little gadget. Really like it. It's called the
[1:42:19] Speaker 1: twelve South airfly Pro two. We've been talking a lot
[1:42:22] Speaker 1: about travel. They just launched the new version of this
[1:42:25] Speaker 1: little dongle that basically lets you use your own wireless
[1:42:28] Speaker 1: headphones on planes. So you take this Bluetooth dongle, you
[1:42:32] Speaker 1: plug it into any headphone jack. Most of the time
[1:42:35] Speaker 1: people are using this on planes with the seatback entertainment,
[1:42:37] Speaker 1: but you can use it in an older car gym equipment,
[1:42:40] Speaker 1: game consoles, and it basically allows you to use your
[1:42:44] Speaker 1: high quality bluetooth headphones with the seatback entertainment. It's sixty bucks.
[1:42:50] Speaker 1: It's brand new, upgraded, it's got USBC now, longer battery life.
[1:42:54] Speaker 1: You can connect two headsets, two people can listen at once. Anyway,
[1:42:58] Speaker 1: if you are a traveler, this is something to have
[1:43:00] Speaker 1: in your travel bag. Sixty dollars well worth it for
[1:43:04] Speaker 1: the higher quality. I call this in between technology because yes,
[1:43:07] Speaker 1: airplanes are upgrading to Bluetooth to connect your headphones directly,
[1:43:12] Speaker 1: but not all of them have that. And then Verizon
[1:43:14] Speaker 1: right now is advertising this three year price lock, which
[1:43:17] Speaker 1: is nice no price increases on the core monthly price
[1:43:20] Speaker 1: plan for the next three years. Obviously doesn't include the
[1:43:23] Speaker 1: taxes or the fees that they add on, but they're
[1:43:26] Speaker 1: also offering a free phone with trade in, even to
[1:43:30] Speaker 1: existing customers. So let me just do the math for you.
[1:43:34] Speaker 1: If you're on the unlimited Welcome Plan sixty five dollars
[1:43:37] Speaker 1: a month with AutoPlay auto pay, you can get an
[1:43:40] Speaker 1: iPhone sixteen E, a Galaxy S twenty four FE, or
[1:43:43] Speaker 1: a Pixel nine A, basically an average of a six
[1:43:45] Speaker 1: hundred dollars phone. But do the math. So if you
[1:43:49] Speaker 1: signed up for Mint Mobile, which is only thirty dollars
[1:43:51] Speaker 1: a month, you would save sixty five thirty five dollars
[1:43:54] Speaker 1: a month times thirty six months. That's twelve hundred and
[1:43:58] Speaker 1: sixty dollars saving versus Verizon, and minus the six hundred
[1:44:01] Speaker 1: dollars phone that you're getting quote unquote free. That's still
[1:44:03] Speaker 1: saving six hundred and sixty dollars over three years. Now,
[1:44:07] Speaker 1: I get it. Math is hard, people, don't want to
[1:44:08] Speaker 1: do math, But folks do the math please. You'll find that.
[1:44:13] Speaker 1: I get it. It's called inertia. You want to just
[1:44:15] Speaker 1: stick with what you have, you get it, but you're
[1:44:17] Speaker 1: on the hook for thirty six months of paying more
[1:44:20] Speaker 1: for something. So just just investigate all of your options
[1:44:24] Speaker 1: if you're going to take advantage of this. I'm not
[1:44:25] Speaker 1: going to fault you for doing the free phone through Verizon.
[1:44:28] Speaker 1: I'm just saying it's not necessarily free. You are paying
[1:44:32] Speaker 1: for it in the form of higher monthly costs with
[1:44:36] Speaker 1: your plan, where you can get a plan that's much
[1:44:38] Speaker 1: cheaper elsewhere. All right, we got so many emails this week,
[1:44:41] Speaker 1: I don't even know where to start. James from Tustin
[1:44:46] Speaker 1: writes in I was accidentally scammed twice by phony sweet
[1:44:50] Speaker 1: sweepsteak scams online, once for one hundred twenty seven dollars,
[1:44:53] Speaker 1: another for one hundred and forty one. I used a
[1:44:56] Speaker 1: card issued by my bank. When I realized what I
[1:44:58] Speaker 1: had done, I immediately reported them as unauthorized charges. They
[1:45:01] Speaker 1: said they had to wait for the pending charge to finish.
[1:45:04] Speaker 1: They did investigations on both and denied my refund saying
[1:45:07] Speaker 1: they are authorized charges. Ugh, get a new credit card
[1:45:11] Speaker 1: if your card, saying that get a new one because
[1:45:14] Speaker 1: no way. Another scam. Steven and Santa Monica says, hey, rich,
[1:45:19] Speaker 1: I got scammed after taking a survey that looked like
[1:45:21] Speaker 1: it came from Triple A. I just renewed my membership,
[1:45:24] Speaker 1: so I let my guard down. It seemed like a
[1:45:26] Speaker 1: legit reward offer. The site showed two of my saved
[1:45:29] Speaker 1: cards minus the CVV, and I added a third to
[1:45:33] Speaker 1: complete the order. After submitting, I got a strange red
[1:45:36] Speaker 1: error message and no confirmation. Soon after, my credit card
[1:45:40] Speaker 1: company flagged one of the charges, two were legit, one
[1:45:42] Speaker 1: was blocked. It all came from a weird email address,
[1:45:45] Speaker 1: not the one the survey used. I ended up canceling
[1:45:47] Speaker 1: the card. I also spotted similar email scams pretending to
[1:45:50] Speaker 1: be from CVS and State Farm offering an emergency car
[1:45:53] Speaker 1: kit with high end gear. Clearly too good to be true.
[1:45:56] Speaker 1: Steven and Santa Monica listening on KFI, be careful out there,
[1:46:01] Speaker 1: Linda and Huntington Beach says, I'm looking for a good
[1:46:03] Speaker 1: iPhone camera adapter, something with zoom for my iPhone twelve
[1:46:07] Speaker 1: to capture a full moon. I'd love to capture it
[1:46:10] Speaker 1: with my phone. Any suggestions, Uh, probably not going to
[1:46:13] Speaker 1: work very well. There are a couple of things you
[1:46:15] Speaker 1: can get on Amazon that will do this. But if
[1:46:18] Speaker 1: you're really serious about moon photography, there's a thing called
[1:46:22] Speaker 1: Hestia that is very pricey. But if you just go
[1:46:25] Speaker 1: on Amazon and look up basically capture Moon pictures iPhone,
[1:46:30] Speaker 1: you're just like little cheap adapters you can buy that
[1:46:32] Speaker 1: will magnify let's see here. Oh my gosh, so many emails.
[1:46:37] Speaker 1: We had a bunch of people that called in saying
[1:46:39] Speaker 1: how great Costco is to buy a chromebook. Tim writes in,
[1:46:42] Speaker 1: for the caller who had minimal tech needs and never
[1:46:45] Speaker 1: owned a computer, I'd strongly recommend a chromebook from Costco.
[1:46:49] Speaker 1: I recently contacted Costco support and it was beyond excellent.
[1:46:52] Speaker 1: A chromebook should cover everything he needs, mostly web browsing,
[1:46:55] Speaker 1: and it's forgiving something goes wrong. You can easily reset
[1:46:58] Speaker 1: the operating system. A macro PC might be too much,
[1:47:01] Speaker 1: especially if an iPhone feels overwhelming. Great advice. Tim Janine
[1:47:06] Speaker 1: in North Upland says Costco Concierge is wonderful for anything
[1:47:09] Speaker 1: you buy there. Their tech support has always been able
[1:47:11] Speaker 1: to help me. Janie Tony from New Jersey, my home state,
[1:47:16] Speaker 1: writes in, I was hoping the segment with Mark Vino
[1:47:18] Speaker 1: would have been longer. There are lots of people like
[1:47:21] Speaker 1: me frustrated with Apple's iOS. It feels like every update
[1:47:24] Speaker 1: fixes one thing but breaks several others. I've dealt with
[1:47:28] Speaker 1: vertical lines, keyboard glitches, Wi Fi problems, you name it. Meanwhile,
[1:47:31] Speaker 1: they keep focusing on gimmicks like Image Playground instead of reliability.
[1:47:35] Speaker 1: And don't get me started on the Apple Intelligence rollout,
[1:47:38] Speaker 1: promising features that aren't even coming until next year after
[1:47:41] Speaker 1: hyping them for iPhone sixteen. We'll get Mark back on
[1:47:44] Speaker 1: the show. Let's see what else. Oh my gosh, so
[1:47:48] Speaker 1: many emails here. I was trying to find one to
[1:47:51] Speaker 1: end the show, Bobo on a nice note, because you
[1:47:53] Speaker 1: always said I end with the nicest ones. Here we go.
[1:47:56] Speaker 1: Steve writes in, thanks to your podcast, I easily deleted
[1:47:59] Speaker 1: my data and account from twenty three and may I
[1:48:05] Speaker 1: know I had one more nice one? All right? That's
[1:48:06] Speaker 1: going to do it for this show. Links to everything
[1:48:08] Speaker 1: I mentioned on the website. Rich on tech dot tv.
[1:48:10] Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Thanks to you,
[1:48:13] Speaker 1: for listening. My name is rich Demiro. Talk to you
[1:48:15] Speaker 1: real soon.

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