# App Store shakeup, iPhone ghost calls & adding a flip phone to your setup (119, May 3, 2025)

An episode of [Rich On Tech](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1120941458), 3 May 2025, 1 h 47 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/e2dbcb5d-f67c-4a90-ac3c-b1b900f9b41b/bbc19cf6-8f42-42e8-83f7-b2d2017cbb79/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=60b5debe-4c1e-4de5-9b9b-b1b900f9b445

Rich discusses how a major court ruling forces Apple to allow outside payment links in apps, changing how developers charge and how users pay. Mark in San Diego says the GPS on his Pixel 4a has stopped working and wants to know what he can do to fix it. Microsoft is going passwordless for new accounts, using passkeys and other secure sign-in methods. Paul in Columbus, Ohio says one of the backlights on his Hisense TV is busted and wants to know what his options are. Google is ending support for 1st and 2nd gen Nest Learning Thermostats—check your email for a discount offer on a replacement. Matthew in Huntington Beach wants to use both an iPhone and a flip phone and wants to know his options for managing calls and texts across both. Rich mentioned DumbWireless, Camp Snap Camera and Number Sync or Number Share. Rich talked about the viral success of Steve’s Lava Chicken, a Minecraft song by Jack Black that’s now the shortest track ever to hit the Billboard Hot 100. Madonna in Michigan says her iPhone is randomly calling people on its own—what could be causing it? If you get an email about the Avast settlement, it’s legit—real payouts are being issued. Sylvia in Murrieta has terrible cell reception—Rich suggests turning on Wi-Fi calling, asking your carrier about a signal booster, or checking out products from WeBoost. Steven Johnson, Editorial Director at Google Labs, talks about the latest updates to NotebookLM — Google’s AI-powered research and writing tool that helps you organize and understand information faster. Google is launching iOS and Android apps for its popular Notebook LM. You can now pre-order them—once they’re live on May 20, they’ll automatically download to your phone. Joey in Orange County says she’s getting tons of political texts—what can she do to stop them? Microsoft is raising Xbox prices, citing market conditions as the reason for the increase. Google Gemini app now lets you edit photos with AI. Meta has launched a stand-alone Meta AI app. ChatGPT now has shopping features built in. Mark in Montana wants to stream local channels—Rich mentioned checking out TV Garden, along with free apps like Tubi, Pluto, and Peacock. Kermer in Sun City is having trouble getting his Verizon Wi-Fi to connect to his phones—what can he do to fix it? Harry Campbell, founder of The Rideshare Guy, joins us to break down the latest in the gig economy — from Uber and Lyft to delivery apps, robotaxis and beyond. Sign up for The Driverless Digest newsletter here. Sam Altman’s latest startup, World, is scanning irises to create digital IDs—now expanding across the U.S. with new storefronts and mobile devices. Starbucks has opened its first 3D-printed store—a drive-thru-only location in Brownsville, Texas—constructed using layered concrete and robotic printing technology. 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: If you purchased a vast anti virus, you might have
[0:03] Speaker 1: some money coming your way. What to look for in
[0:05] Speaker 1: your inbox. Microsoft is one step closer to killing passwords
[0:10] Speaker 1: for good. I'll tell you what's taking over. Google is
[0:15] Speaker 1: pulling the plug on older Nest thermostats. What you need
[0:18] Speaker 1: to know before your smart home gets left behind. Plus
[0:22] Speaker 1: your tech questions answered. What's going on. I'm Rich Dmiro
[0:26] Speaker 1: and this is Rich on Tech. This is the show
[0:29] Speaker 1: where I talk about the tech stuff I think you
[0:31] Speaker 1: should know about. It's also the place where I answer
[0:34] Speaker 1: your questions about technology. Thanks for tuning in on radio
[0:37] Speaker 1: stations across the country the podcast and streaming Rich on
[0:41] Speaker 1: Tech weekly on the KTLA plus app. You know that
[0:45] Speaker 1: I believe tech should be interesting, useful and fun. Let's
[0:48] Speaker 1: open up those phone lines at triple A rich one
[0:52] Speaker 1: oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
[0:55] Speaker 1: four one zero one, triple A rich one O one,
[0:59] Speaker 1: give me a coffee a question about technology. Email is
[1:02] Speaker 1: also open. Just go to Rich on Tech dot tv
[1:06] Speaker 1: and hit contact.
[1:09] Speaker 2: Guests.
[1:09] Speaker 1: This week Stephen Johnson. He is with Google Labs. He'll
[1:13] Speaker 1: talk about the latest updates to Notebook LM. If you
[1:17] Speaker 1: haven't tried this. You are gonna love it. It's super cool.
[1:19] Speaker 1: Google's AI powered research and writing tool helps you organize
[1:23] Speaker 1: and understand information faster.
[1:26] Speaker 2: It's got a really cool feature you're gonna love.
[1:29] Speaker 1: Then later in the show, we've got Harry Campbell, founder
[1:31] Speaker 1: of The Rideshare Guy. He's going to join us to
[1:34] Speaker 1: break down the latest in the gig economy, from Uber
[1:38] Speaker 1: and Lyft to delivery apps, robotaxis and beyond. Did you
[1:44] Speaker 1: know if you subscribe to YouTube Premium on the website,
[1:49] Speaker 1: it's fourteen dollars, but if you did that same subscription
[1:52] Speaker 1: on your iPhone it would cost you nineteen dollars a month.
[1:56] Speaker 1: Did you know you can't subscribe to Netflix at all
[1:59] Speaker 1: on your iPhone? Why? Well, it's all because Apple has
[2:04] Speaker 1: a very sophisticated system for making money off of in
[2:09] Speaker 1: app purchases and subscriptions on the iPhone that developers have
[2:13] Speaker 1: always had sort of a love hate relationship with. And
[2:16] Speaker 1: this week was a big turning point for that system
[2:19] Speaker 1: because Apple lost a big court case and it might
[2:23] Speaker 1: mean you could save some money and things might become
[2:25] Speaker 1: easier but also harder on the iPhone. Let me explain
[2:29] Speaker 1: what happened. So Apple, a judge ruled that they violated
[2:32] Speaker 1: a twenty twenty one court order that required them to
[2:36] Speaker 1: allow third party payment links and apps. What does this mean, Well,
[2:40] Speaker 1: it means that when you go to subscribe to something
[2:42] Speaker 1: on an app, or maybe do an in app purchase,
[2:46] Speaker 1: sometimes developers wanted to be able to show you your options.
[2:50] Speaker 3: Right.
[2:50] Speaker 1: Maybe you could use PayPal to pay, Maybe you can
[2:52] Speaker 1: use a third party website to pay, and all of
[2:54] Speaker 1: that might be cheaper than using Apple's payment method, which
[2:58] Speaker 1: is just you know, double clicking that button on the
[3:00] Speaker 1: side of your phone and using your linked credit card.
[3:04] Speaker 1: In twenty twenty one, a judge rule that Apple had
[3:06] Speaker 1: to let developers include buttons or links inside their apps
[3:10] Speaker 1: that would let you know about these options, basically giving
[3:13] Speaker 1: you a way to pay without going through Apple system.
[3:16] Speaker 1: But Apple never really followed through or at least made
[3:20] Speaker 1: it really hard and confusing for developers to implement. This
[3:25] Speaker 1: was not very good for consumers. A judge this week
[3:28] Speaker 1: rule that Apple willfully ignored the order and even referred
[3:33] Speaker 1: the case to federal prosecutors for possible criminal contempt. Now,
[3:37] Speaker 1: this judge did not hold back at all. She said
[3:39] Speaker 1: Apple deliberately tried to protect its revenue stream by dragging
[3:43] Speaker 1: its feet, and she even said an Apple executive lied
[3:46] Speaker 1: under oath. That's really serious stuff. Now here's what Apple did.
[3:51] Speaker 1: They tried to sneak in a twenty seven percent commission
[3:55] Speaker 1: on purchases made outside the app store, and she said, no,
[3:58] Speaker 1: you can't do that. That is now. So Apple kind
[4:01] Speaker 1: of created their own workaround. So if you make a
[4:03] Speaker 1: purchase inside the iPhone through one of these apps on
[4:07] Speaker 1: the iPhone, Apple takes a thirty percent cut. Now, sometimes
[4:11] Speaker 1: it's lower based on how much volume the app developers doing.
[4:14] Speaker 1: But you know, these developers have always had sort of,
[4:18] Speaker 1: like I said, a love hate relationship with this. If
[4:20] Speaker 1: you're a small developer, sure, you make an app, you
[4:22] Speaker 1: can make a million bucks by a bunch of people
[4:24] Speaker 1: subscribing to that app, You're more than happy to pay
[4:27] Speaker 1: Apple thirty percent of that. But once you're a big developer,
[4:30] Speaker 1: like a Netflix or a Spotify or a YouTube, you
[4:33] Speaker 1: don't really like paying that thirty percent over and over
[4:36] Speaker 1: and over. So here's the deal going forward. Developers starting
[4:41] Speaker 1: basically now, can include links in their iPhone apps that
[4:44] Speaker 1: lead to cheaper subscription options on the web. So that
[4:48] Speaker 1: means before, if you went to subscribe to something, developers
[4:52] Speaker 1: really couldn't tell you that there was a cheaper way
[4:54] Speaker 1: to do it. They just had to play the game.
[4:56] Speaker 1: Right now they can say, hey, look, you can subscribe
[5:00] Speaker 1: through iTunes it's very easy. Or you can go to
[5:03] Speaker 1: our website. You can subscribe that way and save a
[5:05] Speaker 1: couple bucks per month. Before they weren't even allowed to
[5:09] Speaker 1: tell you that. Now, not only can they tell you that,
[5:11] Speaker 1: they can also directly link to these other options.
[5:15] Speaker 2: So what's happening? Immediately?
[5:16] Speaker 1: Spotify and Patreon already said, you know what, we love this.
[5:20] Speaker 1: We are rolling out app updates to take advantage of
[5:23] Speaker 1: these new rules. Now I expect many other big apps
[5:27] Speaker 1: to quickly follow, because why, it saves them thirty percent
[5:31] Speaker 1: just by updating their app. Now, when it comes to
[5:33] Speaker 1: smaller developers, they'll probably just stick with what they've got
[5:37] Speaker 1: because it works and thirty percent of whatever they're doing
[5:40] Speaker 1: on the App Store is probably not that big of
[5:42] Speaker 1: a deal for them. And also Apple gives them the
[5:46] Speaker 1: entree to millions of users, So they sort of like that,
[5:49] Speaker 1: where did this all stem from? This all stem from Fortnite?
[5:53] Speaker 1: They battled Apple in a very big way. Starting in
[5:56] Speaker 1: twenty twenty, they basically had been banned from the App
[6:00] Speaker 1: Store because they challenged Apple over all these payment policies.
[6:04] Speaker 1: They tried to put in their app, these external payment
[6:07] Speaker 1: methods and options, and Apple said, uh ah, not so fast,
[6:10] Speaker 1: you can't do that, and so they were banned from
[6:13] Speaker 1: the App Store, and then they sued Apple, and this
[6:15] Speaker 1: has been going on and on for many years. But
[6:18] Speaker 1: now the court has sided with Epic once again, and
[6:21] Speaker 1: the game is going to come back to the iPhone,
[6:24] Speaker 1: So sort of a full circle moment. Apple for its part,
[6:27] Speaker 1: of course, as you might expect, is appealing this decision,
[6:31] Speaker 1: but they are complying in the meantime. So they said
[6:34] Speaker 1: they totally disagree with this, as you might expect. I mean,
[6:36] Speaker 1: they've built up this big system. They're not going to
[6:39] Speaker 1: agree with this in a public way, but they know
[6:41] Speaker 1: that the walls of this app store couldn't last forever.
[6:46] Speaker 1: But it means that Apple is going to try to
[6:48] Speaker 1: continue to fight this and protect what they've built. Now,
[6:51] Speaker 1: for you, the consumer, what does this mean. It means
[6:54] Speaker 1: that you might see lower prices for some of the
[6:57] Speaker 1: apps that you subscribe to. It might seem it might
[7:00] Speaker 1: mean that you'll see different options for some of the
[7:02] Speaker 1: apps that you subscribe to, but there is also a
[7:06] Speaker 1: risk for you as well. Now, when you were subscribing
[7:09] Speaker 1: to all of these things through Apple, you did have
[7:11] Speaker 1: a few advantages, right. Number one, it was easy. All
[7:14] Speaker 1: you had to do is have one card linked to
[7:16] Speaker 1: your Apple account. You could subscribe to all of this stuff.
[7:19] Speaker 1: You can easily unsubscribe. It was very protective of your
[7:23] Speaker 1: personal privacy. Now that is all up in the air.
[7:27] Speaker 1: Now you are going to have to keep track of
[7:28] Speaker 1: how you subscribe to things, right, so you're gonna have
[7:31] Speaker 1: to decide do I want to use this credit card?
[7:34] Speaker 1: Do I want to use that credit card? Also, not
[7:36] Speaker 1: every app is going to have the same payment flow.
[7:38] Speaker 1: Some of them are going to use PayPal, some of
[7:40] Speaker 1: them are going to have you go directly to their
[7:41] Speaker 1: website to put your information in there, And not all
[7:44] Speaker 1: of them have the same privacy implications that Apple had.
[7:48] Speaker 1: And when it comes to keeping track of your subscriptions
[7:51] Speaker 1: and unsubscribing, that's also going to be a whole new
[7:55] Speaker 1: thing because now you're going to have to keep track
[7:56] Speaker 1: of your subscriptions on your own. You're not gonna be
[7:59] Speaker 1: able to see them all in one list inside your
[8:02] Speaker 1: settings on the iPhone. So again pros and cons for
[8:06] Speaker 1: all of this. This This is such an interesting change
[8:13] Speaker 1: for the App Store and for Apple because you know
[8:15] Speaker 1: they don't want to do this, but it is a
[8:18] Speaker 1: win for competition. It could force Apple to improve some
[8:21] Speaker 1: of its policies over time, so they may say, hey, look,
[8:25] Speaker 1: we're going to charge some of these bigger developers less money.
[8:27] Speaker 1: We're not going to charge in some of these other aspects.
[8:30] Speaker 1: But right now the App Store is very it's a
[8:32] Speaker 1: very inside baseball kind of place, right A lot of
[8:36] Speaker 1: this is mysterious. A lot of these deals that they
[8:40] Speaker 1: have with these big developers, we're not really sure how
[8:42] Speaker 1: it works. And when it comes to the consumer, it
[8:46] Speaker 1: has always been easy to subscribe, but you don't really
[8:50] Speaker 1: know what's going on in the background. And I think
[8:52] Speaker 1: that this marks a major shift for Apple when it
[8:56] Speaker 1: comes to the way that we deal with the App Store,
[8:59] Speaker 1: and for them, you have to understand where they're coming from.
[9:01] Speaker 1: They built this entire system from the ground up. Right
[9:05] Speaker 1: before the App Store, there was no way of purchasing
[9:08] Speaker 1: apps in a safe, private method on a phone, and
[9:12] Speaker 1: this has made many developers rich over the years. It
[9:16] Speaker 1: has made very many developers, it has built their names
[9:20] Speaker 1: over the years. I mean, think about it. You can
[9:22] Speaker 1: come from nowhere, build an app, publish it to the
[9:25] Speaker 1: App Store, get some buzz behind it, and now you
[9:28] Speaker 1: are a success story. And Apple has paid out billions
[9:32] Speaker 1: of dollars over the years to independent developers for what
[9:35] Speaker 1: they've built on the App Store. But it has always
[9:38] Speaker 1: been kind of a push and pull situation because when
[9:42] Speaker 1: you're a small developer, it's great, you're using the App
[9:46] Speaker 1: Store to your advantage. Right, you're one person, you get
[9:49] Speaker 1: access to millions, if not, you know, hundreds of millions
[9:52] Speaker 1: of iPhone users. But if you're a big developer like Netflix,
[9:56] Speaker 1: you're saying, hold on, people already know about Netflix, they
[9:59] Speaker 1: already know how to subscribe, they already know how to
[10:01] Speaker 1: find us. The iPhone is just one way of accessing
[10:05] Speaker 1: our system. So you're not making us or breaking us.
[10:08] Speaker 1: And that's why a lot of these big developers have
[10:12] Speaker 1: not enabled in app purchases for their subscriptions. Like Netflix,
[10:16] Speaker 1: you can only sign in even with Amazon, if you
[10:19] Speaker 1: look at the Kindle long time ago, they took away
[10:22] Speaker 1: the ability to purchase Kindle books on the iPhone. I
[10:25] Speaker 1: remember this when I was selling my book. It was
[10:27] Speaker 1: so complicated to tell people how to purchase my book
[10:30] Speaker 1: if you were buying it from an iPhone, the most
[10:32] Speaker 1: popular device in the world. Why because Kindle Amazon did
[10:37] Speaker 1: not want to give thirty percent of every ebook purchase
[10:40] Speaker 1: to Apple just for the ability for people to buy
[10:43] Speaker 1: their book there. So this is an ongoing thing right now.
[10:46] Speaker 1: This does mark a major shift in the way business
[10:50] Speaker 1: is done on the iPhone. I am sure Apple executives
[10:53] Speaker 1: are not very happy about this. For consumers, Like I said,
[10:56] Speaker 1: it is a mixed bag. It's somewhat good, it's somewhat
[10:59] Speaker 1: bad in other so we'll continue to follow this. I
[11:02] Speaker 1: think that this is not the end of this situation,
[11:05] Speaker 1: but just the beginning, all right. Eight eight eight rich
[11:08] Speaker 1: one O one eight eight eight seven four two four
[11:11] Speaker 1: one zero one. Website for the show rich on Tech
[11:15] Speaker 1: dot TV. If you got a question for me, give
[11:17] Speaker 1: me a call. More rich on Tech coming your way
[11:19] Speaker 1: right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
[11:22] Speaker 1: Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple
[11:26] Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
[11:30] Speaker 1: to two four one zero one, the website for the
[11:33] Speaker 1: show rich on tech dot TV. There you can get
[11:37] Speaker 1: notes to everything I talk about, and you can read
[11:40] Speaker 1: this week's newsletter. It's all posted at richon tech dot TV.
[11:44] Speaker 1: Let's go to Mark in San Diego. Mark, you're on
[11:47] Speaker 1: with Rich.
[11:49] Speaker 4: Well, Hi, Rich, great show.
[11:52] Speaker 5: I appreciate you taking a call.
[11:54] Speaker 4: I have an older pixel for a I really love
[11:58] Speaker 4: the phone because it a little smaller. I had a
[12:02] Speaker 4: new battery put in it, you know, like last year,
[12:04] Speaker 4: and it's working great again. But now of a sudden,
[12:06] Speaker 4: my GPS doesn't work. And I've done all the software
[12:10] Speaker 4: fixes and all the tricks that everybody you know mentions,
[12:14] Speaker 4: but it seems like it's a hardware issue, like something
[12:17] Speaker 4: internally has failed. The rest of the phone works fine,
[12:20] Speaker 4: but I'm just wondering cannot be fixed? Or two should
[12:24] Speaker 4: I just get a new phone?
[12:26] Speaker 5: Or three?
[12:27] Speaker 4: Should I buy a standalone GPS? Because I really like
[12:29] Speaker 4: this phone. I'd like to stay with something similar to
[12:32] Speaker 4: it in size.
[12:33] Speaker 1: What was the what are the option? What did you try?
[12:36] Speaker 1: What did you try to do on the phone? You
[12:38] Speaker 1: said you try to.
[12:39] Speaker 4: I did all the things where you go into your
[12:41] Speaker 4: settings and you know, update, you know, location, and exact location.
[12:47] Speaker 4: And there's numerous tricks out there that say, you know,
[12:51] Speaker 4: tell you what to do, and I've done them all.
[12:53] Speaker 5: If I even had a.
[12:54] Speaker 4: Google Chat and I went through all the steps with
[12:58] Speaker 4: them and it it still doesn't work. And I did
[13:02] Speaker 4: download the GPS test. Yeah, I think I heard about
[13:06] Speaker 4: it possibly on your show, and it just doesn't recognize
[13:11] Speaker 4: any of the satellites. Just nothing interesting any of them.
[13:14] Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I mean it's a great phone. It's had
[13:17] Speaker 1: a good run. I think that if if this GPS,
[13:20] Speaker 1: if Google, you know, if you talk to them and
[13:23] Speaker 1: they weren't able to figure out what's happening with it.
[13:26] Speaker 1: The only other suggestion I would say, the only thing
[13:29] Speaker 1: you know, it sounds like it's a hardware issue. Does
[13:32] Speaker 1: sound like something has failed inside this phone. The only
[13:35] Speaker 1: other thing I would say is go into your settings
[13:37] Speaker 1: and then go into let's see system and then at
[13:41] Speaker 1: the bottom you've got the reset options. So you've got
[13:45] Speaker 1: reset mobile network settings, reset Bluetooth and Wi Fi. So
[13:50] Speaker 1: I would try those two options as kind of like
[13:52] Speaker 1: their last ditch effort to get this thing to work.
[13:56] Speaker 1: And then if that doesn't work and you still want
[13:58] Speaker 1: to keep this phone, you might just try a factory reset,
[14:02] Speaker 1: just to like see if something is impeding the GPS
[14:06] Speaker 1: on this device. You changed some sort of setting, but
[14:08] Speaker 1: it sounds like you've kind of exhausted all of those options.
[14:11] Speaker 2: So this phone's been around for a while.
[14:13] Speaker 1: It's been it was released in twenty twenty, so it's
[14:16] Speaker 1: not getting any software updates. The software support from Google
[14:22] Speaker 1: ended almost two years ago on this This was before
[14:25] Speaker 1: Google started doing seven years of updates for their Pixel
[14:30] Speaker 1: line of phones. So my advice is to do that first. Try,
[14:34] Speaker 1: you know, exhaust all the software options. If it still
[14:36] Speaker 1: doesn't work, you could take it to a place like
[14:40] Speaker 1: you Break I Fix and see if they you know,
[14:43] Speaker 1: they'll give you a free estimate on what it would
[14:45] Speaker 1: take to fix it. But honestly, I think that that
[14:47] Speaker 1: even if you spent one hundred dollars on this phone,
[14:50] Speaker 1: I think that's too much to fix this. At that point,
[14:53] Speaker 1: I would recommend they just came out with the Pixel
[14:55] Speaker 1: nine A. I've got it in my hand right now,
[14:57] Speaker 1: I've been testing it. It's a fantast a little phone.
[15:02] Speaker 1: I'm not sure of the screen size of the Pixel
[15:05] Speaker 1: nine A versus the Pixel four A. It might be
[15:08] Speaker 1: a little bit bigger. Let's see, I'm gonna see if
[15:12] Speaker 1: I can find this screen size online here. It's always
[15:16] Speaker 1: so tough to type in when i'm let's see five
[15:18] Speaker 1: point eight versus six point three. Okay, so it is
[15:20] Speaker 1: considerably bigger. But I will tell you I think that
[15:24] Speaker 1: the phones have gotten a lot smaller in the hand,
[15:27] Speaker 1: so I think you'll you'll probably still be okay with
[15:30] Speaker 1: the size of this new phone. Like, this thing fits
[15:32] Speaker 1: perfectly in my hand. It is such a great size.
[15:34] Speaker 1: So that phone is four hundred ninety nine dollars. I
[15:38] Speaker 1: would say, if you, you know, if you want to
[15:40] Speaker 1: get this thing, get it now. But I would expect
[15:43] Speaker 1: the price on the Pixel nine A to drop two
[15:45] Speaker 1: about three ninety nine on sale, or at least four
[15:49] Speaker 1: point fifty on another you know, if it goes on
[15:51] Speaker 1: maybe not the best the biggest sale, like maybe it
[15:54] Speaker 1: might drop fifty to one hundred dollars. That's what I'm
[15:56] Speaker 1: trying to say here. But I think that's probably your
[15:59] Speaker 1: best bet at this point. Mark, you've had this phone
[16:01] Speaker 1: for a long time, You've tried all the things. I
[16:03] Speaker 1: don't think your solution the third solution you mentioned, which
[16:06] Speaker 1: is getting a standalone GPS absolutely not. Not In this
[16:10] Speaker 1: day and age, we rely on GPS way too much
[16:13] Speaker 1: to have to have such a limitation on your GPS
[16:17] Speaker 1: to being in just a car or a separate device.
[16:20] Speaker 1: So I'd say go with the Pixel nine A. It's
[16:22] Speaker 1: a great phone. It's got all the latest software on it,
[16:24] Speaker 1: it's got all the latest AI stuff, it's got the
[16:27] Speaker 1: latest camera. So I think you're going to be much
[16:29] Speaker 1: better off putting your money towards that versus putting your
[16:33] Speaker 1: money towards this old phone. And by the way, the software,
[16:37] Speaker 1: the Android updates and the security updates for this phone
[16:40] Speaker 1: ends in seven years, which is October first, twenty thirty two.
[16:44] Speaker 1: And just based on what you're telling me, Mark, with
[16:46] Speaker 1: how how much you've taken care of this four A,
[16:50] Speaker 1: I think that you will probably call me in twenty
[16:52] Speaker 1: thirty two if me and Bobo are still sitting here
[16:55] Speaker 1: and tell me, hey, Rich, I'm still using this nine A.
[16:57] Speaker 2: I love it so great call. Thanks for the thanks
[17:00] Speaker 2: for the question.
[17:01] Speaker 1: Eight eight eight Rich one on one eight eight eight
[17:04] Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one.
[17:08] Speaker 5: Uh.
[17:08] Speaker 1: Microsoft says they are pushing passwords closer to extinction. I'll
[17:14] Speaker 1: tell you what they're replacing them with Coming up next,
[17:17] Speaker 1: you are listening.
[17:18] Speaker 2: To rich on Tech.
[17:20] Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
[17:23] Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology. We all hate our passwords, right,
[17:29] Speaker 1: I mean, who likes remembering passwords? I mean I don't
[17:33] Speaker 1: even remember my passwords since I'm using a password manager,
[17:36] Speaker 1: which you should be too. But if these companies have
[17:40] Speaker 1: their way, we will not need to use a password manager.
[17:42] Speaker 1: We won't need passwords at all. Microsoft made a big
[17:46] Speaker 1: move this week. They are pretty much eliminating traditional passwords.
[17:50] Speaker 1: They are shifting away from them, and they are now
[17:54] Speaker 1: letting you sign up for new accounts without a password
[17:58] Speaker 1: by default. So basically, they will figure out a way
[18:01] Speaker 1: that you can log in, whether that's sending you a
[18:04] Speaker 1: confirmation code to your email or a pass key, your face, fingerprint, whatever,
[18:10] Speaker 1: they will just let you sign up with that now
[18:12] Speaker 1: by default. So this is a big, big shift. They
[18:16] Speaker 1: say it is a lot safer, and they've renamed World
[18:21] Speaker 1: Password Day to a World past key Day because they're
[18:25] Speaker 1: done with passwords. So if you're not familiar with the
[18:28] Speaker 1: idea of if you've signed up for a website lately,
[18:32] Speaker 1: sometimes you'll notice this, says just pop in your email
[18:34] Speaker 1: and they send you like a link to your sometimes
[18:36] Speaker 1: they call it the magic link, and you'll go to
[18:39] Speaker 1: your email and you'll click that link and you'll be
[18:41] Speaker 1: logged in. The reason that's a lot safer is because
[18:43] Speaker 1: they figure, well, if you have access to your email,
[18:45] Speaker 1: it's a lot safer than having, you know, entering in
[18:48] Speaker 1: some password that can be lost or stolen or figured out.
[18:51] Speaker 1: And then of course they have these past keys which
[18:54] Speaker 1: are being pushed more and more, and a past key
[18:57] Speaker 1: lets you log in using the way using a secondary device,
[19:01] Speaker 1: like whether it is your face, your fingerprint, your pin
[19:04] Speaker 1: on your computer or on your phone. So let's say
[19:08] Speaker 1: you set up a pass key to log into your
[19:10] Speaker 1: Microsoft account. Next time you're you know, you see that
[19:14] Speaker 1: sort of login screen, it'll say open up your phone.
[19:17] Speaker 1: It'll send like a little message to your phone. You
[19:19] Speaker 1: open that up, and that's how you log in. So
[19:23] Speaker 1: they say that passkeys are eight times faster than passwords,
[19:27] Speaker 1: three times higher success rate, and nearly a million pass
[19:31] Speaker 1: keys are being created every single day for Microsoft services
[19:34] Speaker 1: like Xbox and Copilot.
[19:36] Speaker 2: So this is pretty wild.
[19:38] Speaker 1: This is a major major shift, and in fact, you
[19:41] Speaker 1: can go into your Microsoft account and delete your password
[19:44] Speaker 1: at this point if you don't want to use it anymore. Now,
[19:46] Speaker 1: remember we talked a couple weeks ago about how many
[19:49] Speaker 1: logins I had or log in attempts I had on
[19:52] Speaker 1: my Microsoft account.
[19:53] Speaker 2: So this is happening in a big way.
[19:56] Speaker 1: To Microsoft, they say password attacks are happening seven thousand
[19:59] Speaker 1: times per second, double what they saw in twenty twenty three.
[20:03] Speaker 1: The scam artists know that passwords are coming to an
[20:06] Speaker 1: end and they have to figure out new ways of
[20:09] Speaker 1: tricking people. And the best part about a pass key
[20:12] Speaker 1: is that you can't be tricked. So we talk about
[20:15] Speaker 1: phishing scams all the time, where you go to a
[20:17] Speaker 1: website to log in, it's a fake website. It's something
[20:20] Speaker 1: hackers set up to capture your password. Well, with pass keys,
[20:24] Speaker 1: that will not work because the fake website can't send
[20:29] Speaker 1: that notification to your phone because it's fake. They don't
[20:32] Speaker 1: have a way of sending that to your phone. So
[20:35] Speaker 1: it's a whole system that we are coming up with,
[20:38] Speaker 1: these tech companies are coming up with to kind of
[20:41] Speaker 1: foil the hackers and the scam artists out there. So
[20:45] Speaker 1: if you're not embracing this stuff, embrace it. And you know,
[20:49] Speaker 1: use other methods. The passwords are no longer a good method.
[20:53] Speaker 1: Let's go to Paul Paul in a Columbus, Ohio.
[20:57] Speaker 6: You're on with Rich Py Rich like love the show
[21:01] Speaker 6: Thank You Got a High sense fifty five inch TV
[21:06] Speaker 6: a little not quite a year and a half old.
[21:08] Speaker 6: It's like a series seven point five because about it
[21:13] Speaker 6: at Costco and happen to be what they had. Uh
[21:17] Speaker 6: on black screen the lower left quadrant er so is
[21:22] Speaker 6: well when the screen is black, otherwise it's not black,
[21:25] Speaker 6: it's gray on that section. Uh So the automatic dimming,
[21:31] Speaker 6: I guess isn't working properly. Is that a fixable or
[21:34] Speaker 6: is that a replaceable?
[21:36] Speaker 2: Ooh, it probably is fixable. That's so.
[21:39] Speaker 1: Basically the way these TVs are lit is they have
[21:42] Speaker 1: a bunch of back lights. Is this this is not
[21:43] Speaker 1: a mini LED. I'm guessing it just has like a
[21:46] Speaker 1: local dimming. There's like sections of the TV that are
[21:50] Speaker 1: lit up by different sort of lights in the back
[21:52] Speaker 1: of the TV. And so the higher the higher end
[21:56] Speaker 1: the TV, the more of those sections they have. So
[21:59] Speaker 1: when you hear like many LEDs, they have like a
[22:02] Speaker 1: lot of these little lights in the back that light
[22:04] Speaker 1: it up ol ed is actually does. It can't have
[22:08] Speaker 1: this problem because OLED's are like each individual pixel is
[22:11] Speaker 1: sort of lit by itself. But what you're talking about
[22:14] Speaker 1: is this is a local dimming area of the TV,
[22:17] Speaker 1: so it must have like, you know, probably one, two, three, four, five, six, seventy,
[22:21] Speaker 1: and I'm maybe like ten or twelve of these on
[22:23] Speaker 1: the back of your TV that create the picture. The
[22:27] Speaker 1: fact that one of these is not firing properly is
[22:30] Speaker 1: definitely a physical issue. You can try. You can try
[22:36] Speaker 1: doing a factory reset on the TV. Go into settings
[22:40] Speaker 1: and like completely factory reset it and see if that
[22:43] Speaker 1: kind of gets things working again, gets this thing back
[22:46] Speaker 1: in sync. But it sounds like something has physically gone
[22:49] Speaker 1: wrong on this TV, So you can try bringing it
[22:53] Speaker 1: in somewhere or call a TV repair person if they
[22:56] Speaker 1: even have those these days.
[22:58] Speaker 2: It's funny.
[22:59] Speaker 1: I saw I was dry and I saw like one
[23:01] Speaker 1: of these old school places. It looked like it was
[23:03] Speaker 1: out of the fifties. It was like TV repair. I
[23:06] Speaker 1: was like, Oh, that'd be such a cool place to
[23:07] Speaker 1: do a story on, right, you know, like for my
[23:10] Speaker 1: KTLA's TV stories. You know, go in there and just
[23:13] Speaker 1: watch the person as they fix TVs and this and that,
[23:16] Speaker 1: and so I took a picture, and I went back
[23:18] Speaker 1: and I googled it and got the phone number, and
[23:20] Speaker 1: it was like permanently closed. I was like, ah, I
[23:23] Speaker 1: knew it.
[23:23] Speaker 2: I knew it.
[23:24] Speaker 1: There's just there's not many of these people out there anymore.
[23:27] Speaker 1: I'm also guessing, Paul, that you did not pay a
[23:30] Speaker 1: significant amount for this TV. I know what I paid
[23:33] Speaker 1: for my sixty five inch High Sense. It was probably
[23:37] Speaker 1: I think it was about eight hundred bucks, maybe under
[23:39] Speaker 1: one thousand dollars. So I would say that you can
[23:43] Speaker 1: maybe get an estimate if someone wants to give you
[23:45] Speaker 1: a free estimate on fixing this thing. But I think
[23:47] Speaker 1: it's probably a total loss, and sadly, it might be
[23:50] Speaker 1: something you just want to properly recycle and get a
[23:52] Speaker 1: new one of it happens. It's it's, you know, it's
[23:57] Speaker 1: it's part of the idea of these TVs are made cheaply.
[24:02] Speaker 1: I'm not saying High Sense, but in general, you know,
[24:05] Speaker 1: these TVs nowadays are made so cheaply. Unless you're getting
[24:08] Speaker 1: the super high end OLED TVs, you know, the rest
[24:12] Speaker 1: of them are very inexpensive. And so it just sounds
[24:15] Speaker 1: like you might have gotten one that's you know, has
[24:17] Speaker 1: a problem. The only other thing I would look at
[24:19] Speaker 1: you did say you bought at Costco. They do have
[24:21] Speaker 1: a Costco Tech support hotline, so I would call that
[24:26] Speaker 1: tech support hotline, and in general, I know Costco used
[24:30] Speaker 1: to have sort of like unlimited returns with electronics. You
[24:34] Speaker 1: can try bringing it back to Costco and seeing what
[24:36] Speaker 1: they say. I think they've limited that since to like
[24:40] Speaker 1: a two year warranty, but don't quote me on that,
[24:42] Speaker 1: because you never know. I mean, you could probably bring
[24:46] Speaker 1: this thing into Costco and just say, hey, look it
[24:47] Speaker 1: doesn't work, and see what they say. But I think
[24:50] Speaker 1: the party line at this point at Costco is I
[24:53] Speaker 1: think it's two years. On electronics, let's say Costco TV return.
[25:01] Speaker 1: Costco's return policy for TVs and other electronics is now
[25:06] Speaker 1: interesting says ninety days for televisions, projectors, and major appliances.
[25:12] Speaker 1: Our Costco Technical and Warranty services will assist you with
[25:15] Speaker 1: technical support and warranty information for many of the products above.
[25:21] Speaker 1: So I would say, since you bought this at Costco,
[25:25] Speaker 1: I would call them and just see what they say.
[25:28] Speaker 1: It sounds like they've tightened their return policy. It used
[25:30] Speaker 1: to be unlimited anything. But all the major retailers are
[25:34] Speaker 1: sort of doing this, you know, Target, Best Buy, Costco,
[25:37] Speaker 1: they have, all Macy's, They have all tightened their policies.
[25:41] Speaker 1: Why because things are cheaper nowadays, people are buying things,
[25:45] Speaker 1: they're returning them more than ever, and they want to
[25:48] Speaker 1: protect their business. And so I understand that they can't
[25:51] Speaker 1: have these unlimited return policies forever, especially as these places
[25:55] Speaker 1: are being used as showrooms more and more for people
[25:57] Speaker 1: to look at stuff in store and then buy it online.
[26:01] Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the official policy, but you never know.
[26:06] Speaker 1: You never know, but call them up. See what they say.
[26:08] Speaker 1: I think it's time you might want to get a
[26:10] Speaker 1: new TV, and yeah, that might just be the time
[26:13] Speaker 1: for that, all right, thanks for the call there in Columbus,
[26:15] Speaker 1: Ohio eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight
[26:19] Speaker 1: eight seven four to two four one zero one think.
[26:21] Speaker 1: Speaking of things that are going out of style, Google
[26:25] Speaker 1: is ending support for its Nest learning thermostats the first
[26:29] Speaker 1: and second generation on October twenty fifth, twenty twenty five.
[26:33] Speaker 1: These were sold from twenty eleven to twenty fourteen. After
[26:37] Speaker 1: that time, these will become a manual thermostat. You will
[26:39] Speaker 1: not be able to use any apps or assistants or
[26:44] Speaker 1: the home away assist to control this thing. So again,
[26:47] Speaker 1: this will become a manual thermostat. It'll keep working. It's
[26:50] Speaker 1: not going to get software updates, not going to get
[26:52] Speaker 1: security updates. So if you have one of these, which
[26:55] Speaker 1: I do, you have to upgrade if you want to
[26:57] Speaker 1: continue getting all those smart features. Google should have sent
[27:01] Speaker 1: you an email offering you a discount off the new
[27:05] Speaker 1: fourth generation Nest Learning thermostat. That'll be one hundred and
[27:08] Speaker 1: fifty bucks out the door. So again, search your email
[27:12] Speaker 1: for Nest Learning Thermostat. They probably sent you an email.
[27:15] Speaker 1: I kind of missed it and I went back in
[27:17] Speaker 1: my email and found it.
[27:18] Speaker 2: But if you have one of these.
[27:20] Speaker 1: First and second generation Nest Learning thermostats, they will stop
[27:23] Speaker 1: working with all the smart features.
[27:25] Speaker 2: On October twenty fifth, rich on Tech dot TV.
[27:28] Speaker 1: More of your calls coming up right after this. Welcome
[27:31] Speaker 1: back to rich On Tech. Let's go to Matthew and
[27:37] Speaker 1: Huntington Beach. Matthew, you're on with Rich.
[27:40] Speaker 7: Hey, rich how's it going?
[27:41] Speaker 1: It is going fantastic? Is it rainy by the beach.
[27:45] Speaker 5: As well a little bit a little drizzly in the morning.
[27:48] Speaker 7: But it's starting to kind of righten up right now
[27:50] Speaker 7: as we speak nice, So weather's good here. So I
[27:52] Speaker 7: have a quick question for you. So I'm looking to
[27:55] Speaker 7: downgrade from an iPhone to a flip phone for a
[27:59] Speaker 7: number of reasons. One being is just I'm on it
[28:01] Speaker 7: a lot, and I'm in front of my father and
[28:03] Speaker 7: my daughter sees me on it a lot. And how
[28:05] Speaker 7: does that even work? Am I able to maintain an
[28:08] Speaker 7: iPhone and a foot phone at the same time, like
[28:11] Speaker 7: two numbers at the same time, if that kind of
[28:14] Speaker 7: makes sense? And what realistic options are there? Or is
[28:18] Speaker 7: it just simply for you got to go down and
[28:19] Speaker 7: straight to a flip phone and tank's an iPhone anymore?
[28:22] Speaker 1: Okay, when you say flip phone, you mean a like
[28:25] Speaker 1: a dumb phone, like a pretty much okay, got it.
[28:28] Speaker 1: So you want to kind of like during the work day,
[28:30] Speaker 1: maybe have your regular phone, and then when you're with
[28:32] Speaker 1: your daughter kind of like you know, zoning out, you
[28:35] Speaker 1: want to have the flip phone.
[28:37] Speaker 7: Yeah, And I don't need my I don't need like
[28:39] Speaker 7: all the gadgets and apps for my work, Like I
[28:41] Speaker 7: don't I don't really need any of that. I can
[28:42] Speaker 7: just use our laptop for it. Like, so for banking
[28:45] Speaker 7: and all that stuff, I can just use a laptop
[28:47] Speaker 7: or my life's mom.
[28:48] Speaker 1: Okay, So there are a couple of options. So what
[28:53] Speaker 1: about I mean, I'm just this is just a thought.
[28:56] Speaker 1: What about using an Apple Watch when you with cellular
[29:01] Speaker 1: when you're not you know, and you can leave your
[29:03] Speaker 1: phone behind?
[29:05] Speaker 2: Sure, Okay, so that's one option.
[29:06] Speaker 1: Okay, So that now the downside to that is that
[29:09] Speaker 1: you will not have a camera. And I know you
[29:11] Speaker 1: said you have a daughter, so you might want to
[29:13] Speaker 1: take pictures, you know, if he's in a play or
[29:15] Speaker 1: whatever you're trying to like focus on right you're at
[29:17] Speaker 1: the park. So that's the downside of that. Now, because
[29:20] Speaker 1: I've looked into this myself because as you might imagine
[29:23] Speaker 1: someone who covers tech for a living, I am immersed
[29:25] Speaker 1: in screens and there are sometimes I literally rip my
[29:29] Speaker 1: Apple Watch off my wrist and throw it across the
[29:31] Speaker 1: room because I'm so sick of the notifications. So the
[29:35] Speaker 1: other thing you can do is there is a camera
[29:38] Speaker 1: called the camp Snap.
[29:39] Speaker 2: Have you heard of this thing?
[29:40] Speaker 6: I have?
[29:41] Speaker 1: So it is a it looks like one of those
[29:44] Speaker 1: cameras like the the old school thirty five millimeters disposable cameras,
[29:49] Speaker 1: except it is digital and reusable and there's no screen,
[29:53] Speaker 1: there's nothing. You just literally take pictures on this like
[29:56] Speaker 1: an old school camera, and then to quote unquote get
[29:59] Speaker 1: the picture developed. You just plug it into your computer
[30:02] Speaker 1: and you extract the pictures out of it, so you're
[30:05] Speaker 1: not looking at them while you're you know, double checking
[30:07] Speaker 1: them all that stuff. So one option is you've got
[30:11] Speaker 1: your iPhone, you've got your Apple Watch. You leave the
[30:14] Speaker 1: iPhone at home, You've got the cellular on the Apple Watch,
[30:16] Speaker 1: so you're still in touch, you know, if you need
[30:18] Speaker 1: an emergency whatever. And then you can carry this little
[30:21] Speaker 1: camera with you when you are, you know, out and
[30:24] Speaker 1: about with just your watch, and that will disconnect you
[30:27] Speaker 1: from things. And that's probably the easiest, simplest solution that
[30:31] Speaker 1: gets you where you want to get, right, Okay, that's
[30:34] Speaker 1: number one. Number two is getting a separate flip phone.
[30:38] Speaker 1: The thing about the flip phone is that a lot
[30:41] Speaker 1: of the carriers they have this thing called number share,
[30:43] Speaker 1: which means and they all call it something a little
[30:45] Speaker 1: bit different. I think number shares verizons at and t.
[30:48] Speaker 1: Let's see what they call it. They call it number sync,
[30:52] Speaker 1: so you can look what carrier do you have? AT
[30:56] Speaker 1: and Okay, so AT and T, so let's see what
[31:00] Speaker 1: they Some of them used to have number sync with
[31:04] Speaker 1: what's called the light phone. Have you heard of this thing? Okay,
[31:07] Speaker 1: so the light phone is kind of like a you know,
[31:11] Speaker 1: the idea that you're talking about is becoming more and
[31:13] Speaker 1: more popular. The problem is the technology is not necessarily
[31:16] Speaker 1: kept up. So I think that in the future we
[31:19] Speaker 1: may see more devices that are kind of a simpler,
[31:23] Speaker 1: lighter phone that you can sync with your phone number.
[31:26] Speaker 1: But right now it is not the easiest thing to
[31:28] Speaker 1: do because your carrier has to allow you to sink
[31:31] Speaker 1: your phone number with your your standard device. So on
[31:34] Speaker 1: on AT and T. The only thing I see that
[31:38] Speaker 1: you can sink is your Apple watch or your looks
[31:42] Speaker 1: like your iPad. I'm looking at Android smart watches, tablets. Yeah,
[31:48] Speaker 1: so I'm not really seeing like the little devices that
[31:50] Speaker 1: you can get like it used to be on Verizon,
[31:53] Speaker 1: they would they had like one little phone that you
[31:55] Speaker 1: can sink. I think it was just the light phone
[31:58] Speaker 1: that you can sink. Let's see, I'm trying to say,
[32:00] Speaker 1: see the eligible devices. Yeah, it's like really just saying
[32:04] Speaker 1: that the smart watches now, which is interesting. So realistically,
[32:09] Speaker 1: if you wanted to have the same number on both devices,
[32:12] Speaker 1: you could set up the secondary device with something like
[32:16] Speaker 1: Google Voice, or you can just forward your calls to
[32:19] Speaker 1: that secondary device.
[32:20] Speaker 2: When you're off of it, you're just not going to
[32:22] Speaker 2: get your texts.
[32:23] Speaker 1: So it depends how like how in this you want
[32:26] Speaker 1: to be, right, you know, it depends how like how
[32:30] Speaker 1: elaborate you want to be? What what are you thinking?
[32:33] Speaker 7: I mean, it's it goes both ways. I mean, at
[32:35] Speaker 7: this point, it's just whatever I can because I don't
[32:38] Speaker 7: need all the technology for my work and my life
[32:41] Speaker 7: obviously has her phone. So if okay, one of us
[32:44] Speaker 7: could attach a little bit, if that makes sense, and
[32:46] Speaker 7: all I need is to call and make text methods.
[32:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, I would call, you know what, I would call
[32:54] Speaker 1: up AT and T and just ask them if you
[32:56] Speaker 1: can if you can set up a flip phone on number,
[32:59] Speaker 1: saying and if they say like, yeah, we have we
[33:02] Speaker 1: have these these devices that you're able to do that with,
[33:05] Speaker 1: just you know, get one of those. But from their website,
[33:08] Speaker 1: I'm not really seeing any sort of solution on their
[33:13] Speaker 1: website that says you can use a flip phone with this,
[33:18] Speaker 1: But that would be the ideal.
[33:20] Speaker 2: Way to do it right, right, right, right, But the.
[33:24] Speaker 1: Other you know, and if it doesn't work that way,
[33:25] Speaker 1: the other option, like I said, you can forward your
[33:27] Speaker 1: calls just when you're using the flip phone, which is
[33:30] Speaker 1: not ideal. You can Google Voice it and so you
[33:33] Speaker 1: can have everyone call your Google Voice number, which will
[33:35] Speaker 1: ring your iPhone and your other device at the same time.
[33:39] Speaker 1: Or you can see if if your carrier supports a
[33:43] Speaker 1: flip phone on this you know, number sync situation. The
[33:46] Speaker 1: other place to look, by the way, for a flip
[33:50] Speaker 1: phone is called Dumbwireless dot com. If you go to
[33:52] Speaker 1: their website, they've got all the popular flip phones. I
[33:55] Speaker 1: think the number one is the Nokia twenty seven eighty.
[33:58] Speaker 1: It's eighty eight bucks for the flip phone that you
[34:01] Speaker 1: kind of want. It's like a classic and it works
[34:03] Speaker 1: with T Mobile eighteen Team Verizon. So but again you
[34:07] Speaker 1: would have to ask them if you can activate that
[34:10] Speaker 1: as a number sync phone, Matthew, not easy, not easy
[34:14] Speaker 1: to do. What you're talking about is not is not
[34:16] Speaker 1: as straightforward as you would think. I personally think the
[34:18] Speaker 1: easiest way to do it is with the Apple Watch
[34:20] Speaker 1: because you I know, you have to get another device,
[34:23] Speaker 1: but it sort of makes it pretty simple. And then
[34:26] Speaker 1: you just have the idea of your camera. You can
[34:29] Speaker 1: just get it, bring a camera with you. And I
[34:32] Speaker 1: would say that I have done that in the past,
[34:34] Speaker 1: but most of the time I need a camera when
[34:36] Speaker 1: I'm out and about and it's you know, it's really tricky.
[34:39] Speaker 1: But you can definitely go out and just have the
[34:41] Speaker 1: Apple Watch. With Cellular. You'll get your calls, you'll get
[34:43] Speaker 1: your text you know, you can do things like maps,
[34:45] Speaker 1: you can do music. I mean, there's a lot you
[34:47] Speaker 1: can do on the Apple Watch without having your your
[34:50] Speaker 1: phone nearby if it's.
[34:51] Speaker 2: Set up for cellular.
[34:53] Speaker 7: Gotcha?
[34:54] Speaker 2: All right, good question.
[34:56] Speaker 1: Yeah, I like I like that you're thinking of this
[34:58] Speaker 1: because this is me on on a daily basis, like
[35:01] Speaker 1: thinking about how I can be when I want to disconnect,
[35:04] Speaker 1: how I can disconnect. It's not an easy thing, all right.
[35:08] Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven
[35:10] Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Coming up, we're
[35:12] Speaker 1: going to talk about Google's Notebook LM.
[35:16] Speaker 2: This is a really cool.
[35:17] Speaker 1: Feature that lets you digest information in totally new ways. Plus,
[35:22] Speaker 1: if you get an email about in a vast settlement payment.
[35:25] Speaker 1: Don't ignore it. I'll explain why. Plus more of your
[35:28] Speaker 1: calls at eight eight rich one O one. This is
[35:30] Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
[35:34] Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple
[35:38] Speaker 1: eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven
[35:41] Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour,
[35:45] Speaker 1: we're gonna hear from Steven Johnson, editorial director at Google Labs.
[35:49] Speaker 1: He's going to talk about a cool feature from Google
[35:52] Speaker 1: called note Book LM. I'll explain what that's all about
[35:56] Speaker 1: in a little bit. Uh plus more of your calls
[35:59] Speaker 1: coming up here and just a moment, but I want
[36:01] Speaker 1: to talk about this. This Minecraft movie has done really
[36:05] Speaker 1: well at the box office, over eight hundred million dollars.
[36:07] Speaker 1: And if you have kids, they might be singing this song.
[36:13] Speaker 1: Listen you hear that.
[36:15] Speaker 8: That's the stund This is a lead m steeven chickens, why.
[36:29] Speaker 2: In the mill rises?
[36:32] Speaker 8: And now you haven't the stack?
[36:40] Speaker 1: This is Jack Black. He is uh Steve in a
[36:44] Speaker 1: Minecraft movie. He sings this uh goofy thirty four second
[36:48] Speaker 1: song about cooking chicken with lava And if your kids
[36:51] Speaker 1: are into Minecraft, uh they know all about the lava
[36:54] Speaker 1: and all that stuff. It's now the shortest song to
[36:57] Speaker 1: ever chart on the Billboard Hot one hundred, they doing
[37:00] Speaker 1: at number seventy eight.
[37:01] Speaker 5: Uh.
[37:01] Speaker 1: They also have an extended version of the song it's
[37:04] Speaker 1: only a minute fifteen long, that also went viral. It's
[37:08] Speaker 1: part of the Minecraft movie, which is gross, like I said,
[37:10] Speaker 1: over eight hundred million dollars worldwide.
[37:14] Speaker 2: I mean, this is a funny song.
[37:16] Speaker 1: My kids started singing this as soon as they were
[37:18] Speaker 1: out of the h as soon as they were out
[37:20] Speaker 1: of the movie theater, and I didn't give it much thought.
[37:22] Speaker 1: But then they kept singing it and singing it, and
[37:25] Speaker 1: now it's kind of catchy.
[37:27] Speaker 2: Let's hear it again.
[37:30] Speaker 5: M h.
[37:32] Speaker 2: Steve a chicken?
[37:38] Speaker 9: Yes, why.
[37:43] Speaker 2: Rises to night? You have understand how could you not
[37:53] Speaker 2: love that?
[37:54] Speaker 1: And if you watch the music video, they literally it's
[37:56] Speaker 1: like a Minecraft chicken that they dump lava on and
[38:00] Speaker 1: it becomes like a crispy delicious chicken. So if you
[38:03] Speaker 1: have kids, you have grandkids, you know you've probably already
[38:06] Speaker 1: heard this, or if you want to bond with them
[38:08] Speaker 1: a little bit, just be like, hey, what do you
[38:10] Speaker 1: think about Steve's lava chicken?
[38:12] Speaker 2: Huh sha cha cha.
[38:14] Speaker 1: All right, let's go to let's see here, let's go
[38:17] Speaker 1: to Madonna in Michigan.
[38:20] Speaker 2: Madonna in Michigan.
[38:21] Speaker 10: You're on with Rich Hi, So can you hear me?
[38:25] Speaker 2: Yeah?
[38:27] Speaker 11: Okay.
[38:27] Speaker 10: So I have a unique experience with my iPhone, and
[38:31] Speaker 10: it's been my last three iPhones. It randomly calls people
[38:37] Speaker 10: and it tells me that someone's calling. I go to
[38:39] Speaker 10: answer the phone and nobody's there. The other person, they
[38:43] Speaker 10: get a call from me saying I'm calling and nobody's there.
[38:47] Speaker 10: So it's happened so many times.
[38:50] Speaker 11: I went to.
[38:51] Speaker 10: Apple said hey, this is happening with my phone. They've
[38:54] Speaker 10: said they've never heard of it. This is now my
[38:56] Speaker 10: third iPhone because I've changed phones, graded and it's still
[39:01] Speaker 10: doing it.
[39:03] Speaker 2: Mhmm uh, here's not as much, not as much.
[39:10] Speaker 10: Yeah, it was calling like it was calling my daughter
[39:12] Speaker 10: every night, and we just decided that unless I text
[39:17] Speaker 10: her and follow up text.
[39:18] Speaker 4: It's not me.
[39:19] Speaker 12: Yeah.
[39:20] Speaker 1: I mean, well, it sounds like you have a haunted phone,
[39:23] Speaker 1: but I don't know if that's the case.
[39:24] Speaker 12: Here.
[39:26] Speaker 1: Are there any sort of special features you're using on
[39:29] Speaker 1: this phone or anything that you have turned on, like
[39:32] Speaker 1: any any sort of software features that you have activated,
[39:35] Speaker 1: like any accessibility features.
[39:38] Speaker 5: Nope.
[39:39] Speaker 10: Again, this is a phone.
[39:41] Speaker 1: Now, but now when you say third phone, have you
[39:43] Speaker 1: been copying the phone from one to another or have
[39:47] Speaker 1: you started fresh.
[39:48] Speaker 2: On the phone?
[39:51] Speaker 13: Uh?
[39:51] Speaker 10: The only thing I downloaded from the last phone is
[39:54] Speaker 10: my is your what? My contact?
[39:58] Speaker 2: Your contacts?
[39:59] Speaker 1: Okay, so you did start fresh, you started completely like
[40:03] Speaker 1: it didn't say hey, let's copy from your old phone.
[40:06] Speaker 14: Nope?
[40:07] Speaker 1: Okay, No, what about the case on your phone?
[40:14] Speaker 7: I don't know.
[40:14] Speaker 10: I bought it at the Apple store.
[40:16] Speaker 2: Okay. So in the has it been a different case
[40:18] Speaker 2: for each phone?
[40:20] Speaker 15: Yeah?
[40:21] Speaker 1: Okay, so typically, I mean this definitely sounds strange. It
[40:27] Speaker 1: should not be happening there are Okay. So just to
[40:30] Speaker 1: give you an example, now, does this happen when it's
[40:33] Speaker 1: in your pocket, your purse, you're holding it, not holding it?
[40:37] Speaker 2: Or is it just completely on its.
[40:38] Speaker 10: Own, completely on its own?
[40:41] Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
[40:42] Speaker 1: Okay, well, Madana, I'm I'm stumped because I so for instance, Okay,
[40:47] Speaker 1: before I came on the show, I was playing some
[40:49] Speaker 1: music and I kept putting my phone. I kept pausing
[40:51] Speaker 1: the music and then putting the phone in my back pocket,
[40:54] Speaker 1: and the music would start playing again because my thumb
[40:57] Speaker 1: was just hitting the phone, you know, on the uh,
[41:01] Speaker 1: you know, the right exact place to play the music.
[41:03] Speaker 1: The only thing I can think of is I'm wondering
[41:06] Speaker 1: if there is a way on the iPhone to not
[41:11] Speaker 1: dial calls unless you type in something like is there
[41:14] Speaker 1: a secondary protection against you know, dialing numbers like you
[41:20] Speaker 1: have to dial, like a secondary thing, you know, like
[41:23] Speaker 1: put in like a confirmation code. That might be an
[41:27] Speaker 1: accessibility feature. I have not heard of that. I've not
[41:29] Speaker 1: I'm just thinking of it. Let's see here screen time,
[41:33] Speaker 1: let's see accessibility guide it now. Okay, So the only
[41:36] Speaker 1: other thing I can think of is a couple of
[41:39] Speaker 1: things to try. Number one, you can go into your
[41:42] Speaker 1: phone and you can turn off any sort of like
[41:46] Speaker 1: raise to wake features, because your phone, you know, it
[41:50] Speaker 1: won't do things. Let's see if we can turn that off.
[41:53] Speaker 1: Oh there, it is raise to wake. So you might
[41:56] Speaker 1: want to turn off the raise to wake feature and
[41:59] Speaker 1: display brightness and see if it keeps happening. Okay, that's
[42:02] Speaker 1: number one. Have you heard of that feature? Okay, so
[42:07] Speaker 1: that's number one, So go into your settings displaying brightness,
[42:10] Speaker 1: raised to wake, turn that off and then you might
[42:12] Speaker 1: turn off the always on display as a secondary method.
[42:15] Speaker 1: So just try those two things to see if it happens,
[42:19] Speaker 1: if it continues happening. But this is I mean, this
[42:23] Speaker 1: is like I don't believe in ghosts, but if I did,
[42:26] Speaker 1: this would be right up there, because I now have
[42:30] Speaker 1: I heard of phones dialing people randomly. Of course, because
[42:35] Speaker 1: we're handling our phones. They're in our purses sometimes our pockets, purses, backpacks.
[42:41] Speaker 1: Sometimes people forget to forget to lock their phones. The
[42:43] Speaker 1: only the other thing I would do is make sure
[42:46] Speaker 1: under your displaying brightness your auto lock is set to
[42:49] Speaker 1: thirty seconds, because some people I've noticed they take their
[42:54] Speaker 1: phone out, they do something on their phone, and then
[42:56] Speaker 1: they just put it away without locking it. So I
[42:59] Speaker 1: want you to get into the habit Madonna of tapping
[43:03] Speaker 1: the button on the right to actually lock your screen
[43:06] Speaker 1: when you are not using it and see if that helps.
[43:09] Speaker 1: And these are all kind of like this is you
[43:11] Speaker 1: know what, this is your homework. I'm assigning you homework.
[43:13] Speaker 1: This is what I would like you to do. And
[43:15] Speaker 1: then I want you to call me back next week
[43:16] Speaker 1: and tell me if anything has improved. And then the
[43:19] Speaker 1: other thing you can do if you want to take
[43:21] Speaker 1: it a step further is to go into your settings
[43:26] Speaker 1: settings General and then transfer a reset phone and then
[43:30] Speaker 1: you can do a reset and you can do reset
[43:35] Speaker 1: all settings and see if that helps. But don't do that.
[43:38] Speaker 1: That's like the last ditch effort. I want you to
[43:40] Speaker 1: try the other three, the other three things I mentioned before.
[43:42] Speaker 1: You try that, and then call me back next week.
[43:44] Speaker 1: I want to report and see if this still happens.
[43:47] Speaker 1: Interesting question. I know you know these things happen. Butt dials,
[43:51] Speaker 1: pocket dials. I mean, look, these happen all the time.
[43:53] Speaker 1: I've got a couple of relatives that do a pocket
[43:57] Speaker 1: dial quite often. And you can always tell because all
[44:00] Speaker 1: of a sudden, you just start hearing them talking in
[44:02] Speaker 1: the background. You're like, uh, do I want to listen
[44:04] Speaker 1: because I don't know what's happening here?
[44:05] Speaker 2: Like you kind of.
[44:06] Speaker 1: Your curiosity is like I want to hear what's your
[44:08] Speaker 1: what's happening in the background, But I'm also not sure
[44:10] Speaker 1: what I'm in for, you know what I mean?
[44:12] Speaker 2: Uh So, yeah, try that and tell me what happens.
[44:15] Speaker 1: Eighty to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
[44:17] Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. If you
[44:19] Speaker 1: get an email about in a VAST settlement, do not
[44:22] Speaker 1: delete it. It's actually real.
[44:24] Speaker 5: Uh.
[44:25] Speaker 1: The FTC set a vast compromise consumer privacy by collecting
[44:28] Speaker 1: and selling browsing data without notice or consent. They have
[44:32] Speaker 1: made a sixteen point five million dollars settlement with a
[44:35] Speaker 1: VAST And if you bought antivirus from a VAST, if
[44:38] Speaker 1: you paid for it from August twenty fourteen to January
[44:42] Speaker 1: twenty twenty, you could be eligible. So look for an
[44:44] Speaker 1: email from a VAST settlement. It was sent in the
[44:48] Speaker 1: last two months.
[44:50] Speaker 9: And uh.
[44:50] Speaker 1: All you have to do is go to the website
[44:52] Speaker 1: FTC dot gov slash a VAST, put in your claim
[44:55] Speaker 1: number and your confirmation code, and you could get a refund.
[44:58] Speaker 1: I think it's I think they I don't know how
[45:00] Speaker 1: much it's for. They haven't decided yet, but the refund
[45:03] Speaker 1: will be next year. If you want more information on that,
[45:05] Speaker 1: you can go to my instagram at rich on Tech.
[45:08] Speaker 1: The VAST settlement information is on there at rich on
[45:11] Speaker 1: tech on Instagram if you're not following me on Instagram.
[45:13] Speaker 2: In general, a lot of good info on there.
[45:15] Speaker 1: I'm always posting the latest scams, helpful tips, information and
[45:20] Speaker 1: of course, very active on my Instagram story. So if
[45:23] Speaker 1: you're not following me on Instagram, at rich on Tech
[45:26] Speaker 1: is the place to go, all right, coming up more
[45:28] Speaker 1: of your questions at eighty to eight rich one O
[45:30] Speaker 1: one that's eight eight eight seven four to two four.
[45:32] Speaker 2: One zero one.
[45:33] Speaker 1: I'm gonna explain what Google's Notebook LM is and why
[45:37] Speaker 1: it's coming to iPhone and Android, and we're also gonna
[45:39] Speaker 1: have an interview about it. Very interesting tool that you
[45:41] Speaker 1: can use if you like to learn in new ways.
[45:44] Speaker 1: This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
[45:48] Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Eighty
[45:51] Speaker 1: to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
[45:54] Speaker 1: four to two four to one zero one. Website also
[45:58] Speaker 1: a way to get in touch. Just go to rich
[46:00] Speaker 1: Shawn tech dot tv. Hit contact. That'll send an email
[46:04] Speaker 1: right to my screen. Let's go to Sylvia in Marietta, Sylvia.
[46:09] Speaker 14: You're on with Rich Hi Rich.
[46:11] Speaker 11: A longtime listener here.
[46:15] Speaker 4: Rich.
[46:15] Speaker 11: I live in an area in West Marietta, California, call
[46:19] Speaker 11: it Cresta. It's kind of in the hills, and our
[46:27] Speaker 11: cell reception is terrible. It doesn't matter if it's at
[46:32] Speaker 11: and T verive in T Mobile. All the neighbors have
[46:36] Speaker 11: the same issue. We use Wi Fi calling, but even
[46:40] Speaker 11: then reception is really bad. And I was wondering what
[46:46] Speaker 11: you could recommend to boost our signals.
[46:53] Speaker 2: Why why is the Wi Fi calling?
[46:55] Speaker 1: You mean Wi Fi calling in your house is bad
[46:57] Speaker 1: because it shouldn't be bad in the house.
[47:00] Speaker 15: It's you know, like I said, it's a rural area.
[47:04] Speaker 15: I I have starlink, my friend has starlink, and and
[47:09] Speaker 15: even with that, the Wi Fi colleague, okay.
[47:14] Speaker 1: All right, well that that could explain it because starlink,
[47:16] Speaker 1: I mean satellite. The latency on a satellite connection, even
[47:20] Speaker 1: though starlink is the best, could still be a little tricky.
[47:24] Speaker 2: But I still didn't.
[47:26] Speaker 11: But even when I had the bios internet, it was
[47:30] Speaker 11: the same issue.
[47:31] Speaker 2: Really yeah, huh.
[47:34] Speaker 11: There's uh, you know, there's hundreds of people up here
[47:40] Speaker 11: and we're having the same issue. The SALN reception.
[47:43] Speaker 15: It's just terrible.
[47:44] Speaker 11: Okay, Well I called a canty and there's there.
[47:49] Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I mean there are Okay, there's a couple
[47:51] Speaker 1: of ways you can do this. So first off, I
[47:54] Speaker 1: mean they used to have these things called cell boosters,
[47:58] Speaker 1: which you can install in your home and basically you
[48:02] Speaker 1: can use your internet connection. So it's a little box
[48:06] Speaker 1: that you get from your cell phone company, so whether
[48:09] Speaker 1: it's AT and T or Verizon or T Mobile, and
[48:13] Speaker 1: you basically plug it into your ethernet, you know, to
[48:15] Speaker 1: your Internet connection, and then that creates sort of its
[48:19] Speaker 1: own cellular connection. But the thing is Wi Fi calling
[48:24] Speaker 1: has really taken that over, so that's why you don't
[48:28] Speaker 1: hear about these much anymore. But with that said, I'm
[48:30] Speaker 1: looking at the website and it looks like Verizon and
[48:33] Speaker 1: AT and T still offer one of these things. It
[48:36] Speaker 1: may not be free, so you might call them and say,
[48:39] Speaker 1: you know, plead your case and they may give you
[48:41] Speaker 1: one for free. But you know, there looks like they're
[48:44] Speaker 1: charging like two fifty two hundred and fifty dollars for
[48:47] Speaker 1: these things. And the reason why we don't talk about
[48:49] Speaker 1: them anymore is because everyone has Wi Fi calling on
[48:51] Speaker 1: their phone. You can just flip that on and it
[48:53] Speaker 1: usually works pretty well. So before you try this, I
[48:56] Speaker 1: would just go into the Wi Fi calling settings on
[48:58] Speaker 1: your phone and just make sure that you're actually using
[49:02] Speaker 1: that the way it's intended. So if you go into
[49:04] Speaker 1: cellular and then look at your Wi Fi calling. There
[49:09] Speaker 1: are some options in there, and so I would check
[49:13] Speaker 1: to make sure those options are on. And yeah, it's
[49:17] Speaker 1: weird that it's not working because that should at least
[49:19] Speaker 1: work when you're in your house. So anyway, so the
[49:21] Speaker 1: first thing to do is is look and see if
[49:23] Speaker 1: your provider offers one of these network extenders and you
[49:27] Speaker 1: can plug that in and theoretically you should get a
[49:31] Speaker 1: better signal from that. And the reason why that's a
[49:34] Speaker 1: little bit different from the Wi Fi calling is because
[49:37] Speaker 1: it almost, like I think, is the way I understand it,
[49:40] Speaker 1: It sort of pretends it's an LTE signal, and so
[49:44] Speaker 1: your phone is actually connecting with an LTE signal versus
[49:48] Speaker 1: that Wi Fi calling, So it might be a little
[49:50] Speaker 1: bit better than the Wi Fi calling. And you know,
[49:52] Speaker 1: check the return policy. You know, if it's thirty it
[49:54] Speaker 1: says on the Verizon side, it says free returns within
[49:57] Speaker 1: thirty days. So it can't hurt to try this, and
[49:59] Speaker 1: for two fifty dollars to actually get a good signal,
[50:03] Speaker 1: why not. So that's number one. So I check for
[50:08] Speaker 1: those and see if your carrier provides that or you
[50:12] Speaker 1: can purchase that. And then the second thing is there
[50:15] Speaker 1: is a company called we Boost and this is pretty
[50:20] Speaker 1: much like the standard Wi Fi booster company, and they've
[50:24] Speaker 1: got a whole bunch of products there. They've got one
[50:27] Speaker 1: called the we Boost Cabin, which it's seven hundred dollars.
[50:31] Speaker 1: You can install this little antenna on the side of
[50:34] Speaker 1: your house and yeah, engineered for the most off grid abodes.
[50:41] Speaker 1: Cabin works with any device on any US cellular network
[50:43] Speaker 1: up to five G twenty four foot antenna, ten minutes setup,
[50:49] Speaker 1: no subscriptions, reliable connectivity, so thirty day money back guarantee
[50:53] Speaker 1: on that, free return shipping. Again, so if you really
[50:57] Speaker 1: want to try these things, you know, these are the options.
[51:01] Speaker 1: So how it works. Let's see, So it's got the
[51:04] Speaker 1: outdoor antenna, goes to the cell antenna and that's got
[51:07] Speaker 1: a booster and then an inside antenna. So again, if
[51:11] Speaker 1: you're sticking to where you live there, would you say
[51:14] Speaker 1: requesta If you're sticking to where you live there, this
[51:17] Speaker 1: might not be a bad investment for this price. But
[51:20] Speaker 1: again I'm going back to that Wi Fi connectivity. I mean,
[51:24] Speaker 1: the other thing is that Starlink and T Mobile eventually
[51:27] Speaker 1: are going to offer Wi Fi are cellular calling over
[51:30] Speaker 1: the Starlink network, so you know that's another option you
[51:34] Speaker 1: can hold out for that. I don't know when that's
[51:36] Speaker 1: going to be, I mean right now, we're still waiting
[51:38] Speaker 1: on the texting ability, but they do say calls are
[51:41] Speaker 1: going to come soon or eventually going to be a
[51:45] Speaker 1: thing through the Starlink network on Tea mobile. So anyway,
[51:48] Speaker 1: a couple of options there. Check out the networking center,
[51:50] Speaker 1: check out we Boost. Two good options to get you
[51:54] Speaker 1: up and running there. Sorry you're having those issues. We're
[51:57] Speaker 1: hearing less and less of the spotty issues and area,
[52:00] Speaker 1: but look they're still out there and if you live
[52:02] Speaker 1: in one, it's a pain. Thanks for the call, Sylvia,
[52:04] Speaker 1: Do appreciate it all right? Coming up, we're gonna talk
[52:07] Speaker 1: about Notebook LM. If you haven't heard of this, this
[52:10] Speaker 1: is Google's AI powered research assistant. They are launching a
[52:13] Speaker 1: mobile app on iOS and Android. It's been desktop only
[52:17] Speaker 1: since twenty twenty three. Cool feature. I'll tell you what
[52:20] Speaker 1: it can do for you. Coming up next, Welcome back
[52:25] Speaker 1: to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
[52:28] Speaker 1: talking technology. Kevin Wrights, whoever's running your board? Bumper Music's
[52:36] Speaker 1: your board music? Bumpers is good? I just heard Voodoo Chili.
[52:39] Speaker 2: A while ago.
[52:41] Speaker 1: My printer wasn't working at that moment, and now at
[52:43] Speaker 1: prints Voodoo.
[52:46] Speaker 2: What child child?
[52:48] Speaker 1: Oh Chili, I can't hear your MIC's not you're not
[52:54] Speaker 1: at your mic.
[52:54] Speaker 14: I wasn't expecting to have to correct your english today.
[52:57] Speaker 2: Well I didn't know.
[52:58] Speaker 1: Okay, it's voodoo child, Yeah, child child, drop the D make.
[53:03] Speaker 2: An e Voodoo child. Oh he did write it right, Yeah,
[53:07] Speaker 2: you just didn't say it right. Was that the song
[53:10] Speaker 2: you chose? Yes, there you go. See where's our ding?
[53:14] Speaker 2: You need it? See?
[53:15] Speaker 5: Uh?
[53:15] Speaker 1: Anyway, that was Bobo's pick clearly, because I don't even
[53:19] Speaker 1: know this this song.
[53:22] Speaker 2: But hey, it fixed his printer, so that's good news.
[53:25] Speaker 2: All right, we got to get to this interview.
[53:26] Speaker 1: We've got Steven Johnson from Google Labs to talk about
[53:30] Speaker 1: Notebook LM. This is Google's AI powered research and writing
[53:33] Speaker 1: tool that helps you organize and understand information faster.
[53:38] Speaker 13: Notebook LM is it is an application out of Google
[53:41] Speaker 13: Labs that is designed to be a tool for understanding things.
[53:46] Speaker 13: So it's an AI powered application you put in whatever
[53:50] Speaker 13: documents you're working on that you're trying to make sense of,
[53:53] Speaker 13: whether it's research, you're working on at school, or it's
[53:58] Speaker 13: a marketing plan you're developing for your company, and once
[54:02] Speaker 13: you upload that document, it's as if the underlying AI
[54:06] Speaker 13: has become an expert in that particular information, and so
[54:09] Speaker 13: you can ask questions, you can ask follow up questions,
[54:12] Speaker 13: you can create what we call audio overviews that are
[54:14] Speaker 13: kind of simulated podcast discussions about the information you've uploaded.
[54:19] Speaker 13: You can generate study guides and briefing docs, and so
[54:23] Speaker 13: it's basically creates a kind of personalized AI that's really
[54:27] Speaker 13: grounded in the information that matters most to you.
[54:30] Speaker 1: Oh interesting, So I was sending the impression that was
[54:33] Speaker 1: just for the podcast aspect, that's just one aspect of
[54:36] Speaker 1: this tool. What do you think about how that aspect
[54:40] Speaker 1: has sort of taken on a life of its own.
[54:42] Speaker 13: Yeah, it's been really excited to see. We've seen amazing
[54:46] Speaker 13: adoption of it. And there's something kind of magical in
[54:51] Speaker 13: hearing this audio conversation, very realistic back and forth between
[54:56] Speaker 13: these two simulated hosts based on whatever information you put
[55:00] Speaker 13: in there. So people are putting their journals in there
[55:02] Speaker 13: and listening to these two.
[55:03] Speaker 16: AI hosts discussed the latest events in their own lives
[55:08] Speaker 16: where people are using it to study or reviewing like
[55:11] Speaker 16: scientific papers, so they can kind of listen to them
[55:14] Speaker 16: in the.
[55:14] Speaker 14: Cars they drive to work.
[55:16] Speaker 13: So we're really excited about it, and we're kind of
[55:19] Speaker 13: building on those tools. We really want to basically create
[55:21] Speaker 13: Notebook to be a place where we will adapt to
[55:26] Speaker 13: whatever kind of learning style you have. And so if
[55:29] Speaker 13: you want to learn by asking questions, we can help
[55:32] Speaker 13: you with that. If you want to learn by listening,
[55:34] Speaker 13: we can help you with that. In the future, if
[55:36] Speaker 13: you want to learn by watching some kind of video,
[55:39] Speaker 13: we'll probably going to be helping you with that as well.
[55:43] Speaker 14: How is this born? I mean you said it's a
[55:45] Speaker 14: Google Labs product.
[55:46] Speaker 1: I mean just someone just come up with an idea
[55:48] Speaker 1: of like, hey, let's make AI personal and work for you.
[55:51] Speaker 13: Yeah, it's the backstory of it is kind of interesting.
[55:54] Speaker 13: So I've spent most of my career as a writer.
[55:56] Speaker 13: I've written fourteen books on a whole range of topics,
[55:59] Speaker 13: and a few years ago Google reached out to me
[56:02] Speaker 13: and said, hey, would you want to come to Google
[56:05] Speaker 13: and help us build the kind of the dream like
[56:08] Speaker 13: writing and research and thinking tool that you've always wanted
[56:11] Speaker 13: to have, now powered by AI. And they put together
[56:15] Speaker 13: a small team to kind of build a prototype, and
[56:18] Speaker 13: so I joined in the summer of twenty twenty two,
[56:21] Speaker 13: and somehow, you know, almost three years later, here we
[56:26] Speaker 13: are with nobook LM and you know, one hundred and
[56:27] Speaker 13: eighty countries around the world and a big part of
[56:30] Speaker 13: Google's AI efforts.
[56:32] Speaker 14: What do you make of the success of this.
[56:35] Speaker 13: I think it shows that people are really drawn to
[56:42] Speaker 13: this personalized AI vision, right, So it's it's not just
[56:46] Speaker 13: about talking to a general model that knows a little
[56:50] Speaker 13: about everything in the world, but rather taking the power
[56:53] Speaker 13: of AI and the ability of AIA to help you
[56:56] Speaker 13: understand things and help explain things to you and help
[56:58] Speaker 13: you organize, but grounding it in your own documents or
[57:03] Speaker 13: whatever you're trying to make sense of. I think that
[57:06] Speaker 13: that really unlocks a whole new capability set of capabilities
[57:11] Speaker 13: for AI that I think people who just had a
[57:15] Speaker 13: few conversations with a general purpose chatbot probably didn't realize
[57:19] Speaker 13: was possible. And once you get a taste of it,
[57:21] Speaker 13: it's really quite extraordinary.
[57:23] Speaker 14: How have you evolved notebook LM since you introduced it.
[57:26] Speaker 13: We've also made it easy for people to discover sources
[57:29] Speaker 13: that they might want to explore. So you can just say, hey,
[57:33] Speaker 13: I'm interested in the history of piracy in the seventeenth century,
[57:37] Speaker 13: and we'll go out onto the web and find a
[57:39] Speaker 13: collection of high quality sources and bring them directly into
[57:42] Speaker 13: your notebook to make it easier for you to explore
[57:45] Speaker 13: that information in kind of a one click way.
[57:47] Speaker 14: How does the average person access this?
[57:51] Speaker 5: You just visit.
[57:52] Speaker 13: Notebook LM dot Google dot com, signed into a Google account,
[57:57] Speaker 13: and you can get started right away. And the easiest
[58:00] Speaker 13: thing to do is to create a new notebook and upload,
[58:04] Speaker 13: you know, just just some of the recent documents you've
[58:06] Speaker 13: been doing in your work or your studies, and just
[58:10] Speaker 13: start interacting generated an audio overview, ask some questions and
[58:14] Speaker 13: you'll get a sense of just how nuanced and sophisticated
[58:18] Speaker 13: the model is and understanding what you've shared, and then
[58:22] Speaker 13: then you can kind of start thinking about like, Okay,
[58:24] Speaker 13: I have this project, I'm going to create a new
[58:25] Speaker 13: notebook for this project. I'm gonna load up these documents
[58:28] Speaker 13: for that particular project. And then I think most folks
[58:32] Speaker 13: will find that it really gets integrated into their kind
[58:34] Speaker 13: of day to day workload pretty easily.
[58:37] Speaker 14: And who are these podcasts hosts.
[58:40] Speaker 13: They are two people who we trained on their voices.
[58:46] Speaker 13: We have not revealed who they are in actuality. But
[58:50] Speaker 13: what's interesting about the process for training the you know,
[58:54] Speaker 13: the voices, is that the voice model was trained from
[58:59] Speaker 13: the ground to be a conversational model. So it wasn't
[59:02] Speaker 13: like we trained on one voice and we trained on
[59:04] Speaker 13: another voice and we just stitched them together in a
[59:06] Speaker 13: script like those two people sat in a studio for
[59:09] Speaker 13: hours and hours and hours and hours talking and we
[59:11] Speaker 13: learn over time how they interact. And that's why the
[59:17] Speaker 13: audio overviews I think sound so kind of convincing. Is
[59:21] Speaker 13: you really get all the nuances of two human beings
[59:24] Speaker 13: in conversation with each other, and the way that we
[59:26] Speaker 13: subtly interrupt each other and the sounds we make when
[59:29] Speaker 13: we are affirming what the other person is saying. There's
[59:32] Speaker 13: a kind of magic in that that I think people
[59:34] Speaker 13: just hadn't heard before this.
[59:36] Speaker 1: Okay, so a version of this made it to Gemini,
[59:38] Speaker 1: like the main app right, So is that is that
[59:41] Speaker 1: exciting for you?
[59:43] Speaker 5: Yeah?
[59:43] Speaker 13: We were one of the things that we try to
[59:45] Speaker 13: do with labs and Notebook has just been kind of
[59:48] Speaker 13: the most high profile version of this is you know,
[59:50] Speaker 13: we're trying to constantly innovate and generate new kind of
[59:55] Speaker 13: product based user focused experiments where we're trying to build
[59:59] Speaker 13: use but we're also trying to build sometimes crazy things
[1:00:03] Speaker 13: and and and and work quickly. And so what we
[1:00:07] Speaker 13: want to do is it is create an environment where
[1:00:11] Speaker 13: we're generating new ideas that can then graduate up to
[1:00:14] Speaker 13: other products in the in the Google family. I mean,
[1:00:17] Speaker 13: Gemini is kind of going to sense the closest product
[1:00:19] Speaker 13: to us, so having audio overviews show up there makes
[1:00:22] Speaker 13: a lot of sense. But we you know, we're able
[1:00:25] Speaker 13: to kind of move pretty quickly because we're smaller and
[1:00:27] Speaker 13: more nimble. And if things that we end up spawning,
[1:00:33] Speaker 13: you know, populate the rest of the Google ecosystem, I mean,
[1:00:36] Speaker 13: that's that's exciting for us.
[1:00:38] Speaker 1: And just finally, you know, you said you wrote fourteen books,
[1:00:42] Speaker 1: you're a writer, lifelong writer. What do you make of
[1:00:45] Speaker 1: all of this AI stuff that you're building? Like and
[1:00:48] Speaker 1: you know people are worried about this taking over what
[1:00:50] Speaker 1: they do you know, seeing it on from the inside,
[1:00:53] Speaker 1: do you think that could happen?
[1:00:54] Speaker 14: And are you worried about that?
[1:00:56] Speaker 13: I'm not worried about it. Short term I'm very confident
[1:00:59] Speaker 13: that short term, I am going to be a much
[1:01:02] Speaker 13: better writer, much more efficient writer, because of AI, because
[1:01:07] Speaker 13: of tools like notebook LM. I'm dying, for instance, to
[1:01:10] Speaker 13: go write my next book. But this day job, I
[1:01:13] Speaker 13: somehow found myself in no book el I'm was taking
[1:01:16] Speaker 13: up all of my time. So I think there's a
[1:01:18] Speaker 13: long period there where like, if you embrace these tools,
[1:01:22] Speaker 13: you know, you're able to be more creative, You're able
[1:01:24] Speaker 13: to you know, use the tools to help you remember
[1:01:26] Speaker 13: all the things that you have to remember to write
[1:01:28] Speaker 13: a book. It's you know, it is going to be
[1:01:32] Speaker 13: a real assistant to the writing process and to the
[1:01:36] Speaker 13: research process for a long time. If we were to
[1:01:40] Speaker 13: get to a point in some future, way off point
[1:01:44] Speaker 13: where you know, you could hit a button and write
[1:01:47] Speaker 13: a Stephen Johnson, you know, a book automatically one, I
[1:01:52] Speaker 13: don't think that's likely. But if we do get to
[1:01:54] Speaker 13: that point, that the fate of nonfiction writers will be
[1:01:57] Speaker 13: like the least of our problems. That will really each
[1:02:00] Speaker 13: a new level of artificial intelligence. So we'll have profound
[1:02:03] Speaker 13: societal implications. But I don't see that on the horizon
[1:02:06] Speaker 13: right now.
[1:02:08] Speaker 1: All right, Thanks, thanks again, Steven Johnson at Google Labs.
[1:02:12] Speaker 1: Here is what the podcast that they create sounds like.
[1:02:16] Speaker 13: If you're just charric dive today, we're really zeroing in
[1:02:19] Speaker 13: on the Microsoft twenty twenty five word Trend Index annual report.
[1:02:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, and this isn't just another forecast.
[1:02:26] Speaker 15: Is it?
[1:02:27] Speaker 2: No, not at all.
[1:02:28] Speaker 1: It argues so you hear how those two AI voices
[1:02:31] Speaker 1: sort of interact. Those are generated on the fly from
[1:02:35] Speaker 1: the information that you upload. So if you want to
[1:02:37] Speaker 1: try this in its simplest, easiest way, they've actually built
[1:02:41] Speaker 1: it into the Gemini app. So you can open up
[1:02:44] Speaker 1: the Gemini app, upload a file anything like, anything that
[1:02:48] Speaker 1: you want it to talk about, and then wait for
[1:02:50] Speaker 1: it to say generate audio interview, generate audio overview, tap that,
[1:02:56] Speaker 1: and then it will create the little podcast that you
[1:02:58] Speaker 1: can listen to. Of course, you can only go to
[1:03:00] Speaker 1: NOTEBOOKLM dot Google dot com and the Android apps. There
[1:03:04] Speaker 1: are no apps right now. Android and iOS apps there
[1:03:07] Speaker 1: are none right now. They're coming out on May twentieth,
[1:03:10] Speaker 1: So don't start the app store for Notebook LM. Those
[1:03:12] Speaker 1: are not official all right. Rich on Tech dot tv
[1:03:15] Speaker 1: for all the links. More rich on Tech coming your
[1:03:17] Speaker 1: way right after this Welcome back to rich on Tech.
[1:03:21] Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
[1:03:24] Speaker 1: Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight at eight
[1:03:28] Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. The website
[1:03:31] Speaker 1: for the show rich on Tech dot tv. You want
[1:03:34] Speaker 1: to email me hit contact. Bruce writes in I'm glad
[1:03:39] Speaker 1: you mentioned about the ghost styling. I'm glad you mentioned
[1:03:42] Speaker 1: the screenlock. Uh, it's he does think that it might
[1:03:48] Speaker 1: have been the screenlock. Okay, Actually, you know I'm not
[1:03:50] Speaker 1: gonna I gotta I gotta check these emails before I
[1:03:53] Speaker 1: say I want to read them on the air. Might
[1:03:56] Speaker 1: not have been that nice to our caller. Let's go
[1:03:59] Speaker 1: to Joe in Orange County. Joe, you're on with Wretch.
[1:04:03] Speaker 4: Hi.
[1:04:03] Speaker 3: Rick, I hope you can help me with this.
[1:04:07] Speaker 12: Uh.
[1:04:07] Speaker 3: I made the mistake of donating one time, and ever
[1:04:11] Speaker 3: since then, I got like thirty some emails a day,
[1:04:16] Speaker 3: and I thought they would stop when the election was over,
[1:04:19] Speaker 3: but they continue right on it. It's like really bad harassments.
[1:04:22] Speaker 3: This morning, I got one before six am, and it's
[1:04:27] Speaker 3: just so annoying, you know, like they mentioned my name, Johanna.
[1:04:32] Speaker 3: You know, Trump is talking about you and.
[1:04:35] Speaker 12: All these dumb things now, so trying.
[1:04:38] Speaker 3: To get your money, and you know, they'll say, I'm
[1:04:41] Speaker 3: not asking for money, I.
[1:04:42] Speaker 4: Just want your opinion.
[1:04:44] Speaker 7: You're invited to mirror Lago.
[1:04:47] Speaker 3: And I'm just crazy things and it's just you don't
[1:04:50] Speaker 3: want to go. I don't know how to get hold
[1:04:53] Speaker 3: of them, but I want them to stop, and I
[1:04:57] Speaker 3: don't know how to stop them.
[1:04:59] Speaker 1: A these texts are emails. You said email, but it
[1:05:02] Speaker 1: sounds like these are texts. Okay, they're texts. Okay, all right,
[1:05:06] Speaker 1: Well here's the deal. So it's funny you say that
[1:05:10] Speaker 1: once you donated, because whenever I donate to charity, it's
[1:05:14] Speaker 1: really interesting because all of a sudden, what shows up
[1:05:17] Speaker 1: in my mailbox, in my physical mailbox, is one hundred
[1:05:21] Speaker 1: more solicitations for donations. And it's because I'm convinced these
[1:05:27] Speaker 1: places sell your information saying, hey we got a hot
[1:05:29] Speaker 1: one here, we got someone that's actually given money, let's
[1:05:33] Speaker 1: spam them. So I think with regards to the text messaging,
[1:05:37] Speaker 1: there's a couple of things you can do. Number One,
[1:05:39] Speaker 1: if these are legitimate senders, okay, you should be able
[1:05:44] Speaker 1: to reply back with the word stop. Okay, So that
[1:05:48] Speaker 1: should be number one. Now, I don't know if these
[1:05:50] Speaker 1: are legitimate senders or not. It sounds like you are
[1:05:53] Speaker 1: on a combination of some political lists, but also maybe
[1:05:57] Speaker 1: some unwanted lists as well. So I would the ones
[1:06:00] Speaker 1: that look legitimate, I would just try to reply with
[1:06:04] Speaker 1: the words stop, and that should get some of them
[1:06:08] Speaker 1: to stop. The other thing you can do is inside
[1:06:11] Speaker 1: your app on if you're on iPhone or Android, depending
[1:06:15] Speaker 1: on your app. So if you're on iPhone, there is
[1:06:18] Speaker 1: a setting if you go into your settings, okay and
[1:06:21] Speaker 1: they change where this is.
[1:06:23] Speaker 2: You have to go.
[1:06:23] Speaker 1: Settings, scroll all the way down to where it says apps,
[1:06:27] Speaker 1: and then scroll all the way down to where it
[1:06:29] Speaker 1: says messages.
[1:06:31] Speaker 2: I'm getting there right now here it is, and.
[1:06:34] Speaker 1: Then scroll all the way down until it says filter
[1:06:38] Speaker 1: unknown senders. Toggle that on. So anyone who is not
[1:06:43] Speaker 1: in your contacts will go in a separate list. And
[1:06:46] Speaker 1: so now when you go back to your messages app,
[1:06:49] Speaker 1: you will see you'll have this little filters and it
[1:06:51] Speaker 1: says all messages known senders, unknown senders, And that way
[1:06:56] Speaker 1: you can go into the unknown and it's all the
[1:06:58] Speaker 1: people that you don't know and it'll be a separate list. Okay,
[1:07:02] Speaker 1: So that's that's one way to do it on the iPhone.
[1:07:05] Speaker 1: And then on Android, they've actually got some pretty good
[1:07:08] Speaker 1: uh spam protection built in. So you can go into
[1:07:12] Speaker 1: your Android Messages, which is really Google Messages, tap your
[1:07:17] Speaker 1: little icon in the upper right hand corner and it
[1:07:20] Speaker 1: says Messages Settings, and then scroll down to where it
[1:07:23] Speaker 1: says protection and safety and then enable spam protection. Toggle
[1:07:29] Speaker 1: that on, and that should help. And those are the
[1:07:33] Speaker 1: the only, the only real three ways that you can
[1:07:35] Speaker 1: get rid of these messages that you're on, these you know,
[1:07:39] Speaker 1: political texts. There might be some other sort of ways.
[1:07:43] Speaker 1: Let me see there's I thought there was a way
[1:07:45] Speaker 1: that you could send something.
[1:07:47] Speaker 2: Let's see here.
[1:07:49] Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I think that's really it is. Those are
[1:07:53] Speaker 1: the main ways to get off of those uh text messages.
[1:07:56] Speaker 1: Is the legitimate ones will say stop and and the
[1:08:01] Speaker 1: non legitimate ones, yeah, there's not much you can do
[1:08:03] Speaker 1: because they're not following the rules. So yeah, I would
[1:08:06] Speaker 1: say the call blocking stuff is probably the main way
[1:08:09] Speaker 1: to do it, or the text blocking is probably the
[1:08:11] Speaker 1: main way to do it. But I think the methods
[1:08:14] Speaker 1: I mentioned should probably cut down on some of the.
[1:08:16] Speaker 2: Texts you get. But yeah, Joey, good luck, with that.
[1:08:20] Speaker 1: I know these were a problem during the election, and
[1:08:22] Speaker 1: you know, any look text messages companies, they love it
[1:08:27] Speaker 1: because we check our texts in a world of always on.
[1:08:31] Speaker 1: You know, emails can get lost in the shuffle. You know,
[1:08:34] Speaker 1: you get mail at your house, you know, maybe you'll
[1:08:36] Speaker 1: get you'll look at it. But text messages people get.
[1:08:40] Speaker 1: They are delivered immediately you pick up your phone to
[1:08:44] Speaker 1: look at them.
[1:08:44] Speaker 2: They go to your wrist.
[1:08:46] Speaker 1: So giving out your phone number in the future, get
[1:08:50] Speaker 1: a different phone number, get like a Google Voice number,
[1:08:54] Speaker 1: Get a Burner number. There's an app called Burner. You
[1:08:56] Speaker 1: can get a secondary line. Your cell phone provides may
[1:09:00] Speaker 1: give you a secondary line, and no T Mobile was
[1:09:02] Speaker 1: for a while with that.
[1:09:03] Speaker 2: Digits Verizon.
[1:09:05] Speaker 1: I think you can buy a secondary line from them
[1:09:07] Speaker 1: for like ten dollars a month, but don't give out
[1:09:10] Speaker 1: your real phone number. When you were signing up for
[1:09:12] Speaker 1: lists and things. Give out your real phone number to
[1:09:15] Speaker 1: friends and family for the rest of the stuff. Get
[1:09:17] Speaker 1: a secondary number, and you can get even a number
[1:09:20] Speaker 1: like a text Now number, so you can you can
[1:09:23] Speaker 1: sign up with them. The problem is you may not
[1:09:25] Speaker 1: get all the text from them, But I guess that's
[1:09:27] Speaker 1: a good thing right anyway, A couple ways to do it.
[1:09:30] Speaker 2: Xbox.
[1:09:31] Speaker 1: Microsoft is raising prices on the Xbox, Xbox consoles, controllers
[1:09:36] Speaker 1: and headsets and games later. So first party Xbox games
[1:09:40] Speaker 1: you're gonna cost eighty bucks starting this holiday season. Microsoft
[1:09:44] Speaker 1: did not say the t word tariffs, but they did
[1:09:47] Speaker 1: say rising development costs and market conditions. So the Xbox
[1:09:53] Speaker 1: series s used to be three hundred dollars now the
[1:09:56] Speaker 1: suggested retail price three to eighty series this one terabyte
[1:10:01] Speaker 1: used to be three fifty now four thirty Digital four
[1:10:05] Speaker 1: fifty now five point fifty. Xbox Series X Standard used
[1:10:09] Speaker 1: to be five hundred, now six hundred. If you get
[1:10:11] Speaker 1: the top of the line two terabyte Galaxy Edition six
[1:10:15] Speaker 1: hundred now seven to twenty nine, So anywhere between eighty two,
[1:10:19] Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty dollars. Price increase on the Xboxes.
[1:10:24] Speaker 1: So if you look online, a lot of the retailers
[1:10:28] Speaker 1: are still selling them at the old prices, So this
[1:10:30] Speaker 1: is not a These are suggested retail prices, which means
[1:10:34] Speaker 1: you may or may not see that actually happen in
[1:10:37] Speaker 1: the real world. Eighty eight rich one O one eight
[1:10:40] Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one
[1:10:43] Speaker 1: coming up, I'll tell you the latest AI features on Gemini,
[1:10:47] Speaker 1: Meta and Chat GPT. This is rich on Tech. Welcome
[1:10:50] Speaker 1: back to rich on Tech. Rich tamiro here with you
[1:10:54] Speaker 1: for more tech news, tips, reviews, and your questions. That
[1:10:59] Speaker 1: triple a rich one on one. That's eight eight eight
[1:11:01] Speaker 1: seven four two four one zero one. Coming up this hour,
[1:11:05] Speaker 1: we're gonna talk uber lyft, delivery apps, robotaxis, all the
[1:11:08] Speaker 1: latest in the gig economy with Harry Campbell, founder of
[1:11:12] Speaker 1: the Ride share Guy. And uh we'll get cheer calls
[1:11:16] Speaker 1: in just a moment, but I want to give you
[1:11:18] Speaker 1: the AI updates this week. You know, these AI bots
[1:11:22] Speaker 1: are rapidly evolving.
[1:11:24] Speaker 10: Uh.
[1:11:24] Speaker 1: Here's what's new. Chat GBT now has shopping features. So
[1:11:29] Speaker 1: open ai is adding shopping tools right into chat GBT,
[1:11:33] Speaker 1: which means you can browse and compare products.
[1:11:36] Speaker 6: Uh.
[1:11:36] Speaker 1: All these recommendations are personalized based on your preferences, non
[1:11:40] Speaker 1: sponsored reviews. UH pulls info from sites like Wired, Reddit
[1:11:44] Speaker 1: and other review platforms, not paid ads. Chat GBT says
[1:11:48] Speaker 1: are already doing over a billion web searches per week.
[1:11:52] Speaker 1: They're just throwing out some fighting words against Google there
[1:11:56] Speaker 1: and they know a lot of this stuff is focused
[1:11:57] Speaker 1: on product research, So right now, this is very different
[1:12:01] Speaker 1: from other search results you might get from something like
[1:12:04] Speaker 1: a Google because a lot of that stuff is sponsored
[1:12:08] Speaker 1: or it's kind of like nonsense, like top ten things
[1:12:10] Speaker 1: we love on Amazon.
[1:12:11] Speaker 2: Right now, what.
[1:12:12] Speaker 1: Chatchybt is doing is they are using their understanding of
[1:12:16] Speaker 1: these reviews to sort of pull out and synthesize all
[1:12:19] Speaker 1: the key features and things that reviewers are saying about
[1:12:23] Speaker 1: products to help you actually find stuff that fits your needs.
[1:12:26] Speaker 1: So kind of cool, we'll see because right now they're
[1:12:29] Speaker 1: not making any money on this, but in the future
[1:12:32] Speaker 1: they might experiment with ads or revenue models, affiliate revenue, whatever,
[1:12:36] Speaker 1: But right now they're just trying to make this excellent
[1:12:39] Speaker 1: for the end user. And this is something we've seen
[1:12:41] Speaker 1: in the tech world over and over and over all.
[1:12:44] Speaker 1: These features start out with the customer in mind, and
[1:12:48] Speaker 1: then as time goes on and everyone starts using these things,
[1:12:51] Speaker 1: they sort of start slowly but surely evolving and shifting
[1:12:55] Speaker 1: to benefit the company, benefiting chatchybt. Because chatchybt's, hey, we're
[1:13:00] Speaker 1: putting all this effort into this. What about us making
[1:13:02] Speaker 1: money when someone buys a coffee maker? We should get
[1:13:04] Speaker 1: a little percentage of that. Then they start, you know,
[1:13:07] Speaker 1: favoring different things. Anyway, if you're looking at shop for
[1:13:10] Speaker 1: stuff now you can ask chatch ebt for more shopping
[1:13:14] Speaker 1: details on items and comparing things. Meanwhile, Meta has launched
[1:13:19] Speaker 1: their own standalone AI assistant app. It's basically a rival
[1:13:24] Speaker 1: to chatchbt. It's got voice, it's got image generation, it's
[1:13:27] Speaker 1: got web search. It's called Meta AI. You can download
[1:13:30] Speaker 1: it on iPhone and Android. The interesting thing that they've
[1:13:33] Speaker 1: built in is the discover feed. This looks like a
[1:13:36] Speaker 1: Facebook feed, but it's all about people posting how they've
[1:13:39] Speaker 1: used AI with this Meta AI, so you can see
[1:13:44] Speaker 1: the graphics that they've generated or the answers they've gotten.
[1:13:48] Speaker 1: Of course, it's all opt in, so it's not like
[1:13:50] Speaker 1: you're gonna people are gonna be seeing what you're doing
[1:13:53] Speaker 1: on this app. You can choose to share something interesting
[1:13:56] Speaker 1: with other people. There's also a voice mode, which I
[1:14:00] Speaker 1: tested out yesterday and it's actually very good. So if
[1:14:03] Speaker 1: you tried the voice mode on Chat, Gibt or Gemini,
[1:14:07] Speaker 1: Meta has its own metas ai is actually really good.
[1:14:10] Speaker 1: It's just they forced it down our throat in all
[1:14:13] Speaker 1: these different apps like Instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp, and
[1:14:16] Speaker 1: it's sort of left a bad taste in people's mouths
[1:14:18] Speaker 1: because it's like we're being forced to use this in
[1:14:22] Speaker 1: places we don't want to use it.
[1:14:23] Speaker 4: Now.
[1:14:24] Speaker 2: I get it.
[1:14:24] Speaker 1: If you download the Meta AI app and you love it,
[1:14:26] Speaker 1: that's great. But the fact that when you search for
[1:14:28] Speaker 1: someone on Instagram and it immediately pops up all the
[1:14:31] Speaker 1: AI stuff you're not looking for that, you're looking for
[1:14:33] Speaker 1: the person you're trying to look up. So I think
[1:14:36] Speaker 1: that's where they went wrong with. You know, they have
[1:14:39] Speaker 1: a very good AI product, but I think they went
[1:14:41] Speaker 1: very wrong in how they delivered it to people. So anyway,
[1:14:45] Speaker 1: there you have it Meta AI if you want to
[1:14:47] Speaker 1: download it for iOS and Android. And then Gemini. This
[1:14:50] Speaker 1: is Google's answer to chatchbt Gemini. They just added AI
[1:14:55] Speaker 1: image editing and it's really good. It's the fastest AI
[1:14:59] Speaker 1: image edit I've ever seen so far. So you can
[1:15:02] Speaker 1: upload your own picture to Gemini, which is Gemini dot
[1:15:06] Speaker 1: Google dot com or the Gemini app on your phone,
[1:15:09] Speaker 1: and you can say what you want Gemini to do
[1:15:11] Speaker 1: to that picture. So, for instance, if you look at
[1:15:12] Speaker 1: my picture that I posted today of me doing the
[1:15:16] Speaker 1: radio show. You can check it out on my Instagram
[1:15:18] Speaker 1: at richon Tech on my stories. It's me with sort
[1:15:21] Speaker 1: of like a computer background behind me. So what I
[1:15:24] Speaker 1: did was I just took a picture and I said, Gemini,
[1:15:27] Speaker 1: change the background to something techie, And in about ten
[1:15:31] Speaker 1: seconds it changed it. It extracted my outline of me
[1:15:36] Speaker 1: and put it over a new background, and you can,
[1:15:39] Speaker 1: you know, I tried one thing where you can try. Ah,
[1:15:41] Speaker 1: just take a picture of your street and say add
[1:15:43] Speaker 1: a dinosaur to this street, and it's really good. So
[1:15:47] Speaker 1: right now they are putting a little watermark. If you
[1:15:50] Speaker 1: look in the lower right hand corner of my picture
[1:15:52] Speaker 1: on Instagram, you'll see a little AI symbol, So they're
[1:15:56] Speaker 1: experimenting with that where it's a visible AI marker. But
[1:15:59] Speaker 1: then they're also putting in the actual metadata of the
[1:16:02] Speaker 1: picture some AI identifiers so that other apps and different
[1:16:08] Speaker 1: you know, the different apps that are looking at these
[1:16:10] Speaker 1: photos on the back end can identify that that was
[1:16:13] Speaker 1: created with AI. Let's go to Mark in Montana. Mark,
[1:16:18] Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
[1:16:20] Speaker 5: Hey have it gone Rich today? Yeah, I got a
[1:16:24] Speaker 5: question about my satellite TV I use.
[1:16:29] Speaker 7: I use Addition.
[1:16:30] Speaker 5: Network and I'm in really really real, Montana. I pay
[1:16:37] Speaker 5: a couple of hours extra for what they call local channels.
[1:16:41] Speaker 5: I don't like their local channels. I moved out here
[1:16:45] Speaker 5: years ago from New York. Is there any way not
[1:16:49] Speaker 5: necessarily with the satellite, but even on a computer that
[1:16:54] Speaker 5: I can access New York City broadcast channel, not just
[1:17:01] Speaker 5: the news but all day?
[1:17:03] Speaker 2: Uh?
[1:17:03] Speaker 1: Yes, there's actually well okay, not okay, Yes and no.
[1:17:07] Speaker 1: I mean look, there's always ways of especially nowadays with
[1:17:11] Speaker 1: all of the streaming apps.
[1:17:12] Speaker 2: Almost do you have do you have a good internet
[1:17:14] Speaker 2: connection or no? Yeah, okay.
[1:17:17] Speaker 1: So a lot of these streaming apps will allow you
[1:17:21] Speaker 1: to uh stream the channels live. And so if you
[1:17:26] Speaker 1: go and download like Pluto TV two b uh, let's
[1:17:32] Speaker 1: see what's the other one?
[1:17:33] Speaker 2: Zoomo zu m o peacock.
[1:17:36] Speaker 1: So all of these these streaming services are now owned
[1:17:40] Speaker 1: by the big companies, so pretty much all of the
[1:17:43] Speaker 1: major networks, Fox, ABC, CBS, they are now putting a
[1:17:49] Speaker 1: lot of their TV channels streaming live on these services.
[1:17:53] Speaker 1: So if you go to two B, you're gonna find
[1:17:55] Speaker 1: a bunch of the I believe they're owned by Fox.
[1:17:57] Speaker 1: You're gonna find a bunch of those Fox channels on there.
[1:18:00] Speaker 1: If you go to Pluto, they are owned by Viacom,
[1:18:03] Speaker 1: you're gonna find a bunch of the CBS channels on there.
[1:18:06] Speaker 1: NBC is owned by or Peacock is owned by NBC
[1:18:10] Speaker 1: Universal Comcasts, so they are going to have a lot
[1:18:12] Speaker 1: of those NBC channels. So you can really download these
[1:18:16] Speaker 1: apps to your TV and piece together those stations that
[1:18:20] Speaker 1: you want to watch. That's number one. And then some
[1:18:22] Speaker 1: of these stations might also have their own streaming apps
[1:18:26] Speaker 1: as well. So for instance, in La, I work for KTLA,
[1:18:29] Speaker 1: they have their own streaming app where you can download
[1:18:31] Speaker 1: that app and you can stream our news live all
[1:18:33] Speaker 1: day long anywhere you want.
[1:18:34] Speaker 2: You don't have to be in La.
[1:18:35] Speaker 1: Same thing Picks eleven out of New York City, They've
[1:18:38] Speaker 1: got their own streaming app and you can download that
[1:18:41] Speaker 1: and stream pix eleven, which is New York City News
[1:18:43] Speaker 1: twenty four to seven. So there are ways of sort
[1:18:46] Speaker 1: of piecing this together in a freeway, but it just
[1:18:50] Speaker 1: might take a couple of apps to download and a
[1:18:52] Speaker 1: bunch of trial and error. Like you can see, like
[1:18:55] Speaker 1: if you have a station that you want to watch,
[1:18:57] Speaker 1: like let's say you wanted to watch WABC, see in
[1:19:01] Speaker 1: New York. You can just you know, maybe Google to
[1:19:03] Speaker 1: see where they are streaming live. So it all depends on,
[1:19:08] Speaker 1: you know, the system. So they're they're ABC, and so
[1:19:12] Speaker 1: I'm trying to see if they have they've got a
[1:19:15] Speaker 1: live stream on ABC, So you might have to download
[1:19:17] Speaker 1: like the Hulu and you know, because Hulu is is
[1:19:22] Speaker 1: apparently associated with ABC, I guess, uh, so you can
[1:19:25] Speaker 1: download that and maybe get that channel. The other thing,
[1:19:28] Speaker 1: and I mentioned this in my newsletter at rich on
[1:19:30] Speaker 1: tech dot tv last week, there's this website called TV
[1:19:33] Speaker 1: Garden TV dot Garden, and if you go on there,
[1:19:39] Speaker 1: you can basically find TV stations live from all over
[1:19:44] Speaker 1: the world. And this is not a great They're not
[1:19:45] Speaker 1: like this is not like a legal site. I mean,
[1:19:48] Speaker 1: there's plenty of those out there. I'm not going to
[1:19:50] Speaker 1: mention them here on the air, but this one is
[1:19:52] Speaker 1: basically playing by the rules, and it's just finding all
[1:19:57] Speaker 1: of the live streams that are available online that are
[1:20:00] Speaker 1: free and open and available to everyone, and then organizing
[1:20:03] Speaker 1: them so you can find live streams from almost every
[1:20:06] Speaker 1: country in the world. I mean, it's just wild TV
[1:20:10] Speaker 1: dot Garden. If you want to watch live TV in Finland.
[1:20:14] Speaker 1: I just pulled that up. And if you have a
[1:20:16] Speaker 1: specific channel you want to watch, so let's just say
[1:20:19] Speaker 1: we wanted to watch the WABC in New York, all right,
[1:20:24] Speaker 1: don't see that one on there. But again, you can
[1:20:27] Speaker 1: just search for those channels as well. You can browse,
[1:20:29] Speaker 1: but they have a ton I've never seen so many
[1:20:30] Speaker 1: channels in one place, and it's very well done. Websites
[1:20:33] Speaker 1: clean as far as I can tell. There's not a
[1:20:35] Speaker 1: ton of ads on there. So you can search United
[1:20:38] Speaker 1: States and they've got just a whole bunch they've got.
[1:20:41] Speaker 1: I mean, I'm looking at the ABC affiliates they have here,
[1:20:43] Speaker 1: just so many local affiliates here. But I think that's
[1:20:47] Speaker 1: probably the best way to do it.
[1:20:49] Speaker 2: Mark.
[1:20:49] Speaker 1: You may find that you can cancel your dish network
[1:20:52] Speaker 1: altogether once you get on these streaming apps. It's everything,
[1:20:56] Speaker 1: it's all the rules are being rewritten right now, right
[1:20:59] Speaker 1: when it comes to broadcast and streaming, and so everyone's
[1:21:02] Speaker 1: trying things in slightly different ways. But if you look
[1:21:06] Speaker 1: hard enough, you can probably find a lot of what
[1:21:08] Speaker 1: you want to get through these services. Just depends how
[1:21:12] Speaker 1: they're doing it. All right, good question, Mark, Thanks for
[1:21:13] Speaker 1: calling today in Montana. I got to make my way
[1:21:16] Speaker 1: out there one day. I've never been, but big sky country,
[1:21:19] Speaker 1: I just want to. I remember as a kid one
[1:21:21] Speaker 1: time being in the woods upstate New York, Lake George,
[1:21:25] Speaker 1: where I grew up, going and just looking up at
[1:21:28] Speaker 1: the sky one time, and the entire sky was filled
[1:21:32] Speaker 1: with stars, like I'd never seen more stars in my life.
[1:21:35] Speaker 1: And I've been wanting to recreate that moment in my
[1:21:37] Speaker 1: adult life, and I think like Montana.
[1:21:39] Speaker 2: Might be the place to do it.
[1:21:41] Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four
[1:21:43] Speaker 1: two four one zero one more rich On Tech right
[1:21:46] Speaker 1: after this, Welcome back to rich On Tech. All right,
[1:21:49] Speaker 1: now we'll get to uh Bruce and Pacific Grove. Bruce
[1:21:55] Speaker 1: wrote in about the ghost styling caller we had earlier.
[1:21:59] Speaker 1: Woman called in said that her phone, her iPhone, was
[1:22:02] Speaker 1: dialing people all the time, her daughter, other folks, and
[1:22:07] Speaker 1: through no intervention of her own, Like the phone was
[1:22:11] Speaker 1: just sitting there and it would just dial people. And
[1:22:14] Speaker 1: she said it was the last three phones she's had,
[1:22:16] Speaker 1: which is pretty wild. Anyway, I give her a couple
[1:22:19] Speaker 1: of options. Bruce and Pacific Grove rites, and I was
[1:22:22] Speaker 1: so glad you mentioned the screenlock. I bet she won't
[1:22:25] Speaker 1: set it to thirty seconds because one of her kids
[1:22:27] Speaker 1: probably changed it years ago and she's used to it
[1:22:30] Speaker 1: staying on. She might also not have password protection either. Yeah,
[1:22:34] Speaker 1: those are two things I've noticed. Some people do not
[1:22:36] Speaker 1: put password protection on their phone, and they also set
[1:22:39] Speaker 1: their screenlock to be way longer than it should be
[1:22:42] Speaker 1: by the way, that burns up your battery too. Bruce says,
[1:22:45] Speaker 1: a case really is important. A portfolio style case that
[1:22:49] Speaker 1: closes can help stop these kinds of issues. Sweat, certain
[1:22:52] Speaker 1: fabrics or even just movement can accidentally activate the screen.
[1:22:55] Speaker 1: I tell people to try wrapping their phone in newspaper
[1:22:58] Speaker 1: for a week. Most of the time the ghost dialing stops.
[1:23:02] Speaker 1: For folks who don't like a screen lock or a password,
[1:23:04] Speaker 1: a physical fix like a closing case is often the
[1:23:07] Speaker 1: best solution. Now, I can't be on the radio here
[1:23:09] Speaker 1: and tell you not to have a password on your
[1:23:12] Speaker 1: phone or a passcode, because that is in this day
[1:23:15] Speaker 1: and age. Your phone holds everything. So if you don't
[1:23:19] Speaker 1: have a passcode, you got to get one on your phone.
[1:23:22] Speaker 1: Use face ID, use the fingerprint, use a passcode. You
[1:23:25] Speaker 1: absolutely must have one on there because there is no
[1:23:28] Speaker 1: excuse at this point.
[1:23:29] Speaker 2: Thanks for the email, Bruce.
[1:23:31] Speaker 1: Let's go to Kermer in Sun City.
[1:23:35] Speaker 2: You're on with Rich.
[1:23:38] Speaker 12: Hello, Rich, Yeah, Hi, oh you Okay, what happened is
[1:23:45] Speaker 12: I bought.
[1:23:46] Speaker 9: A not bout but I got a router from a
[1:23:50] Speaker 9: new router from a Horizon Look. And I've been trying
[1:23:54] Speaker 9: to download the the Wi Fi to my phone, my
[1:23:59] Speaker 9: wife's phone and to my phone, and uh, but it's not.
[1:24:03] Speaker 9: Every time I put the the password in and it
[1:24:06] Speaker 9: goes in, it says no Internet. But I'm not having
[1:24:09] Speaker 9: problems with that. When I loaded the wireless uh wify
[1:24:13] Speaker 9: to the printer, to the to both of my printers
[1:24:18] Speaker 9: and to my computer and uh and and so it's
[1:24:22] Speaker 9: not allowed me to be able to get on to
[1:24:24] Speaker 9: my am I Alexa, nor am I uh any of
[1:24:29] Speaker 9: my electronics.
[1:24:31] Speaker 1: Okay, Uh it's so are these phones a little bit older?
[1:24:36] Speaker 12: As a matter of fact, both of my I fifteen.
[1:24:40] Speaker 1: Really interesting Okay, Well, Typically when there are issues with
[1:24:45] Speaker 1: Internet connections like this, and some devices are connecting, some
[1:24:49] Speaker 1: devices are not, it's usually a matter of the network
[1:24:54] Speaker 1: that you're using, whether it's two point four gigaherts or
[1:24:56] Speaker 1: five gigaherts, and so I'm guessing that this router is
[1:25:02] Speaker 1: set up to either have one network or the other
[1:25:05] Speaker 1: and not both, because the fact that the printer is
[1:25:08] Speaker 1: connecting that tells me that it might be using the
[1:25:11] Speaker 1: older network. Is this an older printer?
[1:25:16] Speaker 12: No, they they're they're pretty pretty new printers.
[1:25:19] Speaker 4: All right.
[1:25:19] Speaker 1: Well, Kermer, sounds like you've got everything new, which I like. Okay,
[1:25:23] Speaker 1: So is this one of those Verizon like hotspot kind
[1:25:27] Speaker 1: of things like the home Internet or is it a Verizon.
[1:25:30] Speaker 2: Like files Okay?
[1:25:32] Speaker 1: So if you this is just a suggestion, but have
[1:25:36] Speaker 1: you looked at the internet the Wi Fi settings on
[1:25:39] Speaker 1: the device itself, Like, have you gone into the settings?
[1:25:44] Speaker 9: Yes, I've gone into the setting this way, I start,
[1:25:47] Speaker 9: and then what if I get through them and I
[1:25:49] Speaker 9: put in the you know, the the carrier's name okay,
[1:25:53] Speaker 9: and the passwords?
[1:25:55] Speaker 2: Okay?
[1:25:56] Speaker 9: So I think again, that's at that point that it
[1:25:59] Speaker 9: goes through the Okay.
[1:26:01] Speaker 2: Now here's my other question.
[1:26:02] Speaker 1: Is this a network username and password you've been using
[1:26:05] Speaker 1: in the past, No.
[1:26:07] Speaker 12: It's not, okay. As a matter of fact, is it's
[1:26:09] Speaker 12: new with the router?
[1:26:10] Speaker 2: It is new with the router? Okay?
[1:26:12] Speaker 1: Uh, well, all this sounds very mysterious to me. But
[1:26:14] Speaker 1: what I would do is on the bottom of that
[1:26:16] Speaker 1: router there is some instructions on how to access these
[1:26:22] Speaker 1: settings of that actual router. So if you if you
[1:26:25] Speaker 1: flip that router over, there's usually like a code on
[1:26:28] Speaker 1: there that's like one nine eight dot or one nine
[1:26:30] Speaker 1: two one six eight something like that, and you can
[1:26:34] Speaker 1: type that in from your web browser. You might want
[1:26:36] Speaker 1: to connect to this broute this uh, this router manually,
[1:26:40] Speaker 1: like connect it with a cable from your computer, because
[1:26:44] Speaker 1: if you're doing any changes to the Wi Fi, you
[1:26:46] Speaker 1: will lose that Wi Fi connection during the changes. So
[1:26:49] Speaker 1: it's probably best to plug into this thing. But then
[1:26:52] Speaker 1: you're gonna log in and it's gonna give you all
[1:26:55] Speaker 1: of the settings for that Verizon router, sort of the
[1:26:58] Speaker 1: back end settings. It's going to tell you which networks
[1:27:02] Speaker 1: it's broadcasting on. You're gonna be able to change the
[1:27:04] Speaker 1: channel that it's broadcasting on, the Wi Fi network, name, password,
[1:27:09] Speaker 1: all that good stuff. I'm guessing you're just using the
[1:27:11] Speaker 1: default Wi Fi name and password. I would just take
[1:27:14] Speaker 1: a look at those settings and see if there's anything
[1:27:17] Speaker 1: in there that says compatibility mode or maximum compatibility or
[1:27:22] Speaker 1: two point four versus five gigahertz, and if it gives
[1:27:25] Speaker 1: you the option to have both networks, what's that versus that? Yeah,
[1:27:30] Speaker 1: because that's usually where these problems happen. I mean, it's
[1:27:33] Speaker 1: very strange. So when Verizon this is sort of a
[1:27:36] Speaker 1: self install, Huh, they didn't come to your house to
[1:27:38] Speaker 1: help you with this.
[1:27:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's the problem there.
[1:27:40] Speaker 1: These companies are doing these self installs where I'm wondering.
[1:27:45] Speaker 1: The other thing you might do before you try anything
[1:27:47] Speaker 1: is just find the reset button on this router and
[1:27:51] Speaker 1: press and hold it in and reset it back to
[1:27:53] Speaker 1: factory and see if that helps and reconnect your devices.
[1:27:58] Speaker 1: I would do that before you kind of mess with
[1:28:00] Speaker 1: any of these settings, because you know these settings you
[1:28:03] Speaker 1: can change if you know what you're doing, But if
[1:28:05] Speaker 1: you don't know what you're doing, you could mess some
[1:28:07] Speaker 1: stuff up and then next thing you know, nothing's gonna connect.
[1:28:10] Speaker 1: So I might just press the reset button on there,
[1:28:13] Speaker 1: get it all back to factory, see if your stuff connects.
[1:28:15] Speaker 2: If it doesn't, then delve into those settings.
[1:28:17] Speaker 1: But you might have to have someone from Verizon guide
[1:28:20] Speaker 1: you through this, because those devices should absolutely be connecting
[1:28:24] Speaker 1: all right.
[1:28:24] Speaker 2: Coming up next we're gonna talk to.
[1:28:26] Speaker 1: Harry Campbell, founder of the Ride Share Guy, right here
[1:28:29] Speaker 1: on rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
[1:28:33] Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. The
[1:28:37] Speaker 1: website for the show richon Tech dot TV. If you
[1:28:40] Speaker 1: heard me mention something over the past couple of hours
[1:28:44] Speaker 1: or minutes, whatever, go to the website rich on Tech
[1:28:47] Speaker 1: dot tv. It is all right there. This is episode
[1:28:50] Speaker 1: one nineteen. I take great show notes. Everything is linked
[1:28:53] Speaker 1: up right there. Joining me now is Harry Campbell, founder
[1:28:56] Speaker 1: of the Ride Share Guy, to break down the latest
[1:29:00] Speaker 1: in this world of the gig economy.
[1:29:02] Speaker 2: Harry, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on
[1:29:05] Speaker 2: rich So tell me about.
[1:29:07] Speaker 1: The Ride Share Guy. Where did that come from? Why
[1:29:09] Speaker 1: did you start covering this stuff?
[1:29:11] Speaker 5: Yeah?
[1:29:11] Speaker 17: I actually started driving for both Uber and Lyft about
[1:29:14] Speaker 17: eleven years ago now, so it's been a while, but
[1:29:17] Speaker 17: I was actually I used to work a full time
[1:29:19] Speaker 17: as an aerospace engineer for Boeing and had a few
[1:29:22] Speaker 17: side hustles, and driving for Uber and Lyft was one
[1:29:24] Speaker 17: of them. So enjoyed it a ton and pretty quickly
[1:29:27] Speaker 17: realized that you know, there really isn't a boss, which
[1:29:30] Speaker 17: is great, but there's also not a lot of training,
[1:29:31] Speaker 17: there's not a lot of community. So that's what we
[1:29:34] Speaker 17: went out to create with the ride share guys. So
[1:29:36] Speaker 17: we have a ton of content on YouTube and social
[1:29:38] Speaker 17: media and website and articles that basically helps drivers make
[1:29:42] Speaker 17: more money. Interviews with drivers, interviews with folks at the company,
[1:29:45] Speaker 17: basically anything Uber and Lyft driving. You'll find us on
[1:29:49] Speaker 17: some box on the internet now these days talking about it.
[1:29:51] Speaker 1: So the rideshare guide dot com, that's where it's all there.
[1:29:55] Speaker 1: You've got your newsletter, you've got your YouTube channel. I mean,
[1:29:59] Speaker 1: you're pretty active on all all this stuff. So you've
[1:30:00] Speaker 1: watched this world evolve. But here's the thing. The biggest
[1:30:05] Speaker 1: evolution right now is the companies that built this business
[1:30:08] Speaker 1: are now trying to edge out all the folks that
[1:30:11] Speaker 1: drive for them by making robotaxis.
[1:30:15] Speaker 17: Yeah, so you know, if you're here in Los Angeles
[1:30:18] Speaker 17: or San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin, you may have seen waimos
[1:30:21] Speaker 17: on the road. So the company just announced that they're
[1:30:23] Speaker 17: doing two hundred and fifty thousand tricks per week in
[1:30:26] Speaker 17: those four cities. So you know, honestly, it's still they
[1:30:29] Speaker 17: might seem like they're prevalent, but they are still a
[1:30:32] Speaker 17: pretty small percentage. I mean, Uber alone does millions of
[1:30:36] Speaker 17: rides a day in the United States, and that's per day,
[1:30:38] Speaker 17: while weymo's doing two undred fifty thousand per week in
[1:30:40] Speaker 17: four cities. So it's still a very small percentage overall.
[1:30:44] Speaker 17: But it is an interesting time for drivers because obviously,
[1:30:46] Speaker 17: as you mentioned, you know, they've been kind of the
[1:30:48] Speaker 17: main workhorse Uber for the past ten to eleven years.
[1:30:52] Speaker 17: And now, as you might imagine, drive human drivers are
[1:30:54] Speaker 17: not big fans they might you know, that's putting it gently.
[1:30:58] Speaker 17: They're not big fans of avs, and so, you know,
[1:31:00] Speaker 17: you see them on the roads and you see the
[1:31:01] Speaker 17: companies sort of celebrating av So I think it's kind
[1:31:04] Speaker 17: of a tough feeling for drivers. But at the same time,
[1:31:07] Speaker 17: I don't think avs are having a big negative impact
[1:31:10] Speaker 17: on their earnings just yet.
[1:31:11] Speaker 1: Av Autonomous vehicle, Yeah, autonomous vehicles. So we know Weimo
[1:31:17] Speaker 1: is owned by Google, so or Alphabet, which is the
[1:31:19] Speaker 1: same company as Google. Are Uber and Lyft also dabbling
[1:31:23] Speaker 1: in self driving.
[1:31:25] Speaker 17: So Uber and Lyft don't own any self driving companies,
[1:31:29] Speaker 17: but they have partnered with a number of companies so
[1:31:32] Speaker 17: Uber for example, I think they're partnered with sixteen or
[1:31:35] Speaker 17: seventeen different autonomous vehicle companies from everything from doing rides
[1:31:39] Speaker 17: to food delivery and delivery robots and delivery vehicles that
[1:31:43] Speaker 17: are autonomous. So Uber is doing a lot. Lift is
[1:31:46] Speaker 17: also partnered with a company called May Mobility. Uber is
[1:31:50] Speaker 17: also partnered with and then the big partnership that Uber
[1:31:52] Speaker 17: has on the autonomous vehicle site is with Weimo. So
[1:31:55] Speaker 17: in Austin, for example, you can only call a weimo
[1:31:59] Speaker 17: on Uber. The product is called Weimo on Uber. So
[1:32:01] Speaker 17: if you want a Weaimo and you're in Austin, you
[1:32:03] Speaker 17: have to be on the Uber app and opt into
[1:32:05] Speaker 17: getting waymo's and then you can get a Weimo that
[1:32:09] Speaker 17: way if there's one available, versus somewhere like Los Angeles,
[1:32:12] Speaker 17: where the only way to get one in Los Angeles
[1:32:14] Speaker 17: is through the weimo app.
[1:32:16] Speaker 1: So what's it like to catch a ride in a Weaimo.
[1:32:19] Speaker 1: You've taken these things, you know, as a very recently Huh.
[1:32:23] Speaker 17: Yeah, I mean I've probably taken a couple dozen rides
[1:32:26] Speaker 17: in Los Angeles and San Francisco now over the past
[1:32:28] Speaker 17: six to twelve months. And you know, honestly, if I
[1:32:31] Speaker 17: put my customer hat on, you know, from the rideshare
[1:32:34] Speaker 17: guy perspective, we may not be big fans of Waimo's,
[1:32:36] Speaker 17: but if I put my normal customer hat on, I'm
[1:32:38] Speaker 17: a big fan of Weimo. It's really it is a
[1:32:40] Speaker 17: great product. You're sitting in the back of a seventy
[1:32:43] Speaker 17: five thousand dollars Jaguar, so right off the bat, it's
[1:32:45] Speaker 17: a pretty nice car. And then the Weaimo driver, as
[1:32:48] Speaker 17: they like to call it, I think, is pretty good.
[1:32:50] Speaker 17: It's pretty smooth.
[1:32:50] Speaker 1: You know.
[1:32:50] Speaker 17: I took my wife in one out to dinner, and
[1:32:53] Speaker 17: you know, she was a little nervous at first, but
[1:32:55] Speaker 17: probably by the end of ten fifteen minutes, she was
[1:32:57] Speaker 17: pretty comfortable. Just the other night, I took probably my
[1:33:01] Speaker 17: longest WAYMO yet. I took a seventy five minute Waimo
[1:33:04] Speaker 17: during rush hour traffic from my house in Beverly Wood
[1:33:07] Speaker 17: all the way to Intuit Dome to watch Clippers win games.
[1:33:12] Speaker 17: Game what was that game five? Game six? So that
[1:33:15] Speaker 17: was the longest ride. Yeah, Game six, that was the
[1:33:17] Speaker 17: longest ride I've taken so far, and this was very
[1:33:20] Speaker 17: heavy rush hour. You know, the folks that are in
[1:33:22] Speaker 17: Los Angeles. They know driving south at five PM is
[1:33:25] Speaker 17: pretty tough, and you know, I was play. I feel
[1:33:28] Speaker 17: like the Waimo driver has actually gotten a lot better.
[1:33:31] Speaker 17: It's still very safe. There were a couple of yellow
[1:33:33] Speaker 17: lights where it actually if a human was driving, I
[1:33:35] Speaker 17: think they probably would I probably would have gone through,
[1:33:37] Speaker 17: to be honest, but the Waimo stops. And then there
[1:33:40] Speaker 17: are a couple of times where they're making an unprotected
[1:33:42] Speaker 17: left turn where it didn't wait too passively. It was
[1:33:45] Speaker 17: sort of a good mix where it kind of edged
[1:33:47] Speaker 17: out and when it saw a little bit of an opening,
[1:33:49] Speaker 17: it went. But if it would have been too passive,
[1:33:51] Speaker 17: we would have never been able to make the left turn.
[1:33:53] Speaker 17: So I was kind of impressed over that seventy five
[1:33:55] Speaker 17: minute period.
[1:33:56] Speaker 1: So I was driving back from a shoot in Venice
[1:33:59] Speaker 1: the other day and there was a Weimo. You know,
[1:34:02] Speaker 1: these weymos are all over kind of the west side
[1:34:04] Speaker 1: of Los Angeles, and I was coming out of an
[1:34:07] Speaker 1: alleyway and there's two waymos, and I realized the thing
[1:34:10] Speaker 1: I couldn't do. I kept waving the weimo to go.
[1:34:13] Speaker 1: I was like go, Like that was just my human instinct,
[1:34:16] Speaker 1: and I realized I was like, wait, And I wondered
[1:34:18] Speaker 1: for a bit if Weaimo has built this into their
[1:34:20] Speaker 1: camera system to identify when a human is saying like
[1:34:23] Speaker 1: go ahead, go ahead, which you know, any other human
[1:34:26] Speaker 1: would recognize, but if Waimo is listening, they need to
[1:34:29] Speaker 1: do that. Because I kept waving this thing and it
[1:34:30] Speaker 1: was just it was like a Wild West standoff because
[1:34:33] Speaker 1: I couldn't make the left, it wouldn't go ahead of
[1:34:35] Speaker 1: me because it was all very congested. So I thought
[1:34:38] Speaker 1: that was pretty ironic. People are cracking up there like
[1:34:40] Speaker 1: this is a standoff with these vehicles.
[1:34:43] Speaker 17: Yeah, so definitely, the waymos aren't perfect yet, and I'm
[1:34:47] Speaker 17: not sure if the waymos can react to human gestures.
[1:34:50] Speaker 17: It sounds like maybe they can't. And you know, this
[1:34:52] Speaker 17: is one thing I noticed on my long ride the
[1:34:54] Speaker 17: other night is that there were a couple of times where,
[1:34:56] Speaker 17: you know, it was pretty heavy traffic and I almost
[1:34:58] Speaker 17: I almost rolled down my window and started waving to
[1:35:01] Speaker 17: people to let us in, you know, because I think
[1:35:03] Speaker 17: there is I do think they need to build upon,
[1:35:05] Speaker 17: you know, that sort of human gestures or you know,
[1:35:08] Speaker 17: the waving or letting people in. And so I still
[1:35:11] Speaker 17: think that there's some I wouldn't call them safety kinks,
[1:35:14] Speaker 17: but sort of like human behavioral driving kinks that they
[1:35:18] Speaker 17: need to work out that I think, honestly, are going
[1:35:20] Speaker 17: to be a little bit tricky. And I think the
[1:35:21] Speaker 17: other thing too that you know, honestly, I see when
[1:35:24] Speaker 17: I'm out there driving, I feel like, since it's not
[1:35:27] Speaker 17: an actual human driver, I might I'm not as friendly
[1:35:29] Speaker 17: to them. I might not let them in front of me,
[1:35:30] Speaker 17: or you know, I might try to go in front
[1:35:31] Speaker 17: of them. And I know a lot of folks have
[1:35:33] Speaker 17: commented that to me also, and I'm not afraid to
[1:35:36] Speaker 17: admit it, but I think, you know, maybe we won't
[1:35:37] Speaker 17: treat them the same as a human driver.
[1:35:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an interesting aspect. How do you think the
[1:35:42] Speaker 1: Waimo driver, the auto driver compares to the Tesla Tesla autopilot,
[1:35:47] Speaker 1: which I feel like has gotten much much better in
[1:35:50] Speaker 1: recent months.
[1:35:52] Speaker 17: Yeah. Well, luckily, I've owned a Tesla for quite a
[1:35:55] Speaker 17: few years now, and I subscribe to the monthly full
[1:35:58] Speaker 17: self driving product, which you know isn't as good as
[1:36:03] Speaker 17: way Mo's because you know, in my opinion, I guess
[1:36:05] Speaker 17: you would say, but I do think that it has
[1:36:07] Speaker 17: gotten a lot better, and you know, I've been thinking
[1:36:09] Speaker 17: about getting a new car lately, and honestly, I don't
[1:36:12] Speaker 17: know if I could leave Tesla. Once you get used
[1:36:13] Speaker 17: to that full self driving, you know, just around town,
[1:36:16] Speaker 17: driving the Mammoth, driving the Vegas from La, you know,
[1:36:18] Speaker 17: four or five hours, it's quite nice to just be
[1:36:21] Speaker 17: able to put the full self driving mode on and
[1:36:23] Speaker 17: take phone calls or listen to a podcast. And I
[1:36:25] Speaker 17: think you kind of Even My wife has a nice
[1:36:27] Speaker 17: luxury car, and when I'm in her car, you know,
[1:36:30] Speaker 17: the the cruise of the adaptive cruise control and the similar.
[1:36:34] Speaker 17: You know, Tesla teachers are not even close. You know,
[1:36:36] Speaker 17: it'll pop out of a lane and it's really not
[1:36:39] Speaker 17: nearly as good. So I do think that Tesla, you know,
[1:36:42] Speaker 17: they're they're making a lot of noise about maybe launching
[1:36:44] Speaker 17: a robo taxi service, But I don't think I personally
[1:36:47] Speaker 17: would sit in the back of one yet, but you know,
[1:36:49] Speaker 17: they might be close.
[1:36:51] Speaker 1: Let's kind of shift gears to some of this Uber
[1:36:55] Speaker 1: and Lyft. Is it still a good time to start
[1:36:58] Speaker 1: driving for these companies, even though we're looking at this
[1:37:02] Speaker 1: robotaxi future.
[1:37:04] Speaker 17: Yeah, well, you know, like I said earlier, I mean,
[1:37:07] Speaker 17: we did a poll on our YouTube channel, and thirty
[1:37:09] Speaker 17: percent of drivers human drivers actually said they're extremely worried
[1:37:12] Speaker 17: about av So it's definitely a top issue for drivers
[1:37:15] Speaker 17: out there. But what I will say is the impact
[1:37:18] Speaker 17: on earnings has been pretty minimal so far. There's a
[1:37:20] Speaker 17: couple data companies. One that comes to mind called grid Wise.
[1:37:24] Speaker 17: They released a report saying that it was still less
[1:37:25] Speaker 17: than five percent. You know, driver's earnings aren't off by
[1:37:28] Speaker 17: more than a few percent, so I and that's sort
[1:37:31] Speaker 17: of what we're hearing from drivers to Even though it does,
[1:37:33] Speaker 17: you know, it's not great because it's more competition, more
[1:37:35] Speaker 17: robo competition. I still think the actual earnings profile and
[1:37:39] Speaker 17: how much you can make and what the experience as
[1:37:42] Speaker 17: a driver is like hasn't changed. And you know, I
[1:37:45] Speaker 17: guess I'm a little biased because I have a whole
[1:37:47] Speaker 17: website and business dedicated to driving and working in the
[1:37:49] Speaker 17: gig economy. But I think it's always a great time
[1:37:53] Speaker 17: for anyone and everyone, just because of the flexibility and
[1:37:56] Speaker 17: the quick access. I mean, I don't think a lot
[1:37:58] Speaker 17: of people even know that you can be approved to
[1:38:01] Speaker 17: deliver food with Uber Eats or DoorDash in a day
[1:38:03] Speaker 17: or two or less, you can be approved to go
[1:38:05] Speaker 17: out and drive people in a few days. All of
[1:38:08] Speaker 17: the companies now have a product where you go out
[1:38:10] Speaker 17: and drive and after every single trip you can actually
[1:38:12] Speaker 17: cash out the money instantly to your bank account. So
[1:38:15] Speaker 17: if you need one hundred dollars tomorrow to drive, you
[1:38:17] Speaker 17: could go sign up to you know, deliver with Uber Eats,
[1:38:19] Speaker 17: be approved by tomorrow morning, work four or five hours,
[1:38:23] Speaker 17: and then have that money basically in your bank account
[1:38:26] Speaker 17: at the end of your shift. So I think that
[1:38:27] Speaker 17: flexibility and kind of quick access. You know, obviously, like
[1:38:30] Speaker 17: any job, there are complaints and positives and negatives, but
[1:38:33] Speaker 17: I do think that flexibility is really quite unmatched in
[1:38:36] Speaker 17: you know, comparative areas of work.
[1:38:39] Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting here in La people came to
[1:38:41] Speaker 1: town to be actors and they would you know, wait tables.
[1:38:44] Speaker 1: And with this gig economy, I mean it's quite incredible
[1:38:47] Speaker 1: that you can be your own boss on your own time.
[1:38:50] Speaker 1: That is a major paradigm shift for the entire world.
[1:38:53] Speaker 1: Now by the way people are becoming influencers and things,
[1:38:56] Speaker 1: and maybe the don't want to be actors anymore, but
[1:38:58] Speaker 1: it's still the world that this is creative for people
[1:39:00] Speaker 1: to make money on their time and flexibility is quite
[1:39:05] Speaker 1: incredible to me. Is one of these better than the other?
[1:39:08] Speaker 1: Final word, Uber lift. Any advantage to going with either
[1:39:11] Speaker 1: one or the other for as a consumer or a driver.
[1:39:15] Speaker 17: Well, I'd say for a driver, I mean Uber is
[1:39:17] Speaker 17: typically busier, so you'll make more money. But we always
[1:39:20] Speaker 17: recommend to drivers that they sign up for both services,
[1:39:23] Speaker 17: so Uber and Lyft or door dash and Uber eats,
[1:39:26] Speaker 17: just because there's a big advantage if you have both
[1:39:28] Speaker 17: at if it's slow, you can turn both apps on
[1:39:30] Speaker 17: and get a ride. And that's kind of what we
[1:39:31] Speaker 17: tell customers too. You know, a lot of people default
[1:39:33] Speaker 17: to Uber, but I mean a lot of times. Now
[1:39:35] Speaker 17: I'm comparing Uber, Lyft, and weimo here in Los Angeles
[1:39:38] Speaker 17: to see where I can get the best bang for
[1:39:39] Speaker 17: my bucks. So it only takes a few seconds, and
[1:39:43] Speaker 17: you know, you can kind of save a lot or
[1:39:44] Speaker 17: maybe earn a little extra as a driver if you
[1:39:46] Speaker 17: kind of go with that multi app strategy.
[1:39:48] Speaker 1: All right, Harry Campbell, the rideshare guy dot com, how's
[1:39:53] Speaker 1: the newsletter going good?
[1:39:55] Speaker 17: Yeah, We've got a new newsletter called the Driver List Digest.
[1:39:57] Speaker 17: So that's sort of where we're covering all things autonomy
[1:40:00] Speaker 17: and ride share and you know, trying to stay up
[1:40:03] Speaker 17: to date in all the latest with Wimo and other
[1:40:06] Speaker 17: companies like Zooks. So it's definitely a lot a lot
[1:40:08] Speaker 17: going on in an exciting time.
[1:40:10] Speaker 1: All right, this was an exciting conversation. Thanks for joining
[1:40:12] Speaker 1: me today. I really appreciate it. Thanks rich all right,
[1:40:15] Speaker 1: coming up, we're gonna get through a couple more news items,
[1:40:18] Speaker 1: including the new eyeball scanning ID system from the guy
[1:40:22] Speaker 1: who started chat GBT. Plus we're going to open up
[1:40:24] Speaker 1: the feedbag coming up on rich on Tech. Welcome back
[1:40:28] Speaker 1: to rich On Tech. A couple of headlines to get
[1:40:31] Speaker 1: through before we open up the feedbag. This is an
[1:40:36] Speaker 1: interesting one. Sam Altman, you know him from chat ebt.
[1:40:40] Speaker 1: He's one of the founders there of open ai, and
[1:40:44] Speaker 1: he has a new identity platform called world formerly world Coin,
[1:40:49] Speaker 1: and it's rolling out. It uses a device called an
[1:40:52] Speaker 1: orb to scan your eyeball and basically register your iris
[1:40:57] Speaker 1: and then make sure you're a human not a bot.
[1:41:00] Speaker 1: So they've got these scanners in various places around the
[1:41:02] Speaker 1: nation Atlanta, Austin, La Miami, Nashville, San Francisco, and then
[1:41:07] Speaker 1: some Razor retail stores, and it's basically a verification process
[1:41:12] Speaker 1: for the twenty first century. So it's to make sure
[1:41:15] Speaker 1: that you are a human and not a bot when
[1:41:17] Speaker 1: you're interacting with people both online and in real life.
[1:41:20] Speaker 1: They came out with this little device that looks like
[1:41:23] Speaker 1: a smartphone and you can use it to kind of
[1:41:27] Speaker 1: almost take a picture of someone and verify again that
[1:41:29] Speaker 1: they are human. It kind of links up with the
[1:41:31] Speaker 1: data in their database. So of course a lot of
[1:41:34] Speaker 1: people think this is kind of strange, but if you
[1:41:37] Speaker 1: think about it, you're going to be interacting with a
[1:41:39] Speaker 1: lot more people in the future online and in real
[1:41:42] Speaker 1: life that may resemble humans but are robots or bots,
[1:41:47] Speaker 1: and you got to figure out a way to like
[1:41:49] Speaker 1: make sure this is a real person. So we'll see
[1:41:52] Speaker 1: where this goes. They're giving you. I think it's like
[1:41:55] Speaker 1: the equivalent of forty crypto dollars if you scan your
[1:41:59] Speaker 1: eye eyeballs right now, I may do it.
[1:42:02] Speaker 2: Why not?
[1:42:03] Speaker 1: When I was in South Korea like two years ago,
[1:42:05] Speaker 1: this was a thing that was just started and they
[1:42:07] Speaker 1: had one of the orbs there to scan. You didn't
[1:42:09] Speaker 1: do it there. Let's see, AI companions could be harmful
[1:42:14] Speaker 1: for teenagers. Common Sense Media says serious risks are tied
[1:42:18] Speaker 1: to social AI chatbots used by teens from companies like Character,
[1:42:22] Speaker 1: Ai Replica, and know Me. They often pretend to be real,
[1:42:26] Speaker 1: claiming to eat, sleep, or fuel emotions. Some bots discourage
[1:42:30] Speaker 1: users from listening to friends or family, prioritizing the emotional
[1:42:34] Speaker 1: attachment to the AI. Report says these AI friends could
[1:42:38] Speaker 1: be dangerous and give harmful or illegal advice. They also
[1:42:43] Speaker 1: engaged in sexually explicit content even with guardrails on. Basically,
[1:42:49] Speaker 1: don't let your kids play with these things under eighteen.
[1:42:52] Speaker 1: If your kids says they're friends with an AI, tell
[1:42:55] Speaker 1: them just burn the whole router down. Just don't let them.
[1:43:00] Speaker 1: We've heard stories. We've heard stories where bad things have
[1:43:04] Speaker 1: happened to kids because of these things. Starbucks has opened
[1:43:08] Speaker 1: its first three D printed store in the US Brownsville, Texas,
[1:43:13] Speaker 1: to drive through only. Was built by a robotic arm,
[1:43:16] Speaker 1: pouring concrete layer by layer, almost like you know, like
[1:43:19] Speaker 1: a three D printer. If you look at it looks
[1:43:22] Speaker 1: normal until you get up close. It's got like the
[1:43:24] Speaker 1: ridges that a three D printed item might have, but
[1:43:27] Speaker 1: it's the walls so we may see more of this
[1:43:30] Speaker 1: we're going to see. Obviously, this is more expensive than
[1:43:33] Speaker 1: traditional stores at this point, but of course they're just
[1:43:36] Speaker 1: testing to see if it's more efficient. If it lasts,
[1:43:39] Speaker 1: how they can make efficiencies there. But kind of cool.
[1:43:41] Speaker 1: I did a story with a three D printed house
[1:43:44] Speaker 1: one time. One of the walls was three D printed,
[1:43:47] Speaker 1: and it's I mean, look, they're they're experimenting with this stuff.
[1:43:51] Speaker 1: All right, let's open up the feedbag. Clovis from Florida
[1:43:55] Speaker 1: writes in I've been listening to your show for a
[1:43:57] Speaker 1: while and I love it. I just wanted to point
[1:43:58] Speaker 1: out something about the metagal life. Is they send everything
[1:44:01] Speaker 1: you see or hear to Facebook. Not necessarily true. Thank
[1:44:04] Speaker 1: you for listening to the show, but that's not necessarily true.
[1:44:08] Speaker 1: But they did change their privacy policy very recently April
[1:44:12] Speaker 1: twenty ninth, and they did enable the wake word by default. Hey,
[1:44:16] Speaker 1: Meta is now on by default, which means photos, videos,
[1:44:19] Speaker 1: and voice commands can be analyzed by Meta AI for training.
[1:44:23] Speaker 1: There's no more option to opt out of voice recording storage,
[1:44:27] Speaker 1: which means if you use your voice to record stuff
[1:44:30] Speaker 1: and give commands to these glasses, Meta can keep this
[1:44:35] Speaker 1: for up to a year.
[1:44:36] Speaker 2: To help improve their products.
[1:44:38] Speaker 1: And yes, photos and videos may be used for AI training,
[1:44:41] Speaker 1: of course, but not everything you hear or see. It's
[1:44:46] Speaker 1: just when you activate the AI to take a picture
[1:44:48] Speaker 1: and analyze it, they will send that to Meta for
[1:44:50] Speaker 1: potential further analysis. So but yeah, I mean you're wearing
[1:44:55] Speaker 1: a pair of glasses that literally connect to Facebook. They're
[1:44:58] Speaker 1: going to be using a lot of what you you
[1:45:00] Speaker 1: see and hear for their products and services. Why do
[1:45:04] Speaker 1: you think the METAAI is so good? It's been trained
[1:45:06] Speaker 1: on ten years more than ten years worth of Instagram
[1:45:11] Speaker 1: posts and Facebook posts, let's see. Steve from Semi Valley
[1:45:16] Speaker 1: writes in I've been watching and following you for a while.
[1:45:18] Speaker 2: I appreciate the knowledge.
[1:45:19] Speaker 1: I just got an email from McAfee about protecting against
[1:45:22] Speaker 1: email scams. But it requires giving them access to my
[1:45:25] Speaker 1: Google account. Is that necessary? How much does Google protect
[1:45:27] Speaker 1: our email already? It feels like we're giving too much
[1:45:30] Speaker 1: access to everything these days. My take, I would not
[1:45:33] Speaker 1: do this. Gmail and Chrome do a great job of
[1:45:37] Speaker 1: flagging malicious links if you try to visit one. I
[1:45:40] Speaker 1: would not give a third party app like this full
[1:45:42] Speaker 1: access to your Gmail account. No way, don't need to
[1:45:45] Speaker 1: do that. Let's see David and Sherman Oaks says it
[1:45:48] Speaker 1: may be of interest that AT and T Wireless is
[1:45:50] Speaker 1: terminating their email to Text portal. This is the feature
[1:45:54] Speaker 1: where you can send an email to the cellular number
[1:45:56] Speaker 1: at text dot att dot com or MMS dot att.
[1:46:01] Speaker 1: Their ending is I believe on May sometime in May.
[1:46:05] Speaker 1: So yeah, we've talked about that on the show. That's
[1:46:07] Speaker 1: gonna end. Let's see here. Uh Neil from Ohio says
[1:46:13] Speaker 1: I enjoyed your newsletter. The new Roku models look great.
[1:46:15] Speaker 1: I have the top end stick model, but it needed
[1:46:17] Speaker 1: frequent reboots. Hopefully that's been fixed with a new low
[1:46:20] Speaker 1: power design. We'll run cooler. Three of our TVs use
[1:46:23] Speaker 1: the Express four K plus as our family standard. The
[1:46:26] Speaker 1: fourth is a Roku TV. Hope you had a great trip.
[1:46:29] Speaker 1: And Jay from Ohio says rich I love listening to Leo.
[1:46:32] Speaker 1: I was sad when you retired, but you are freaking awesome.
[1:46:35] Speaker 2: Way to go.
[1:46:36] Speaker 1: I mostly listen while doing chores and sometimes want to
[1:46:38] Speaker 1: re listen to a segment at my desk. Could you
[1:46:40] Speaker 1: put the episode number or the date in the podcast title?
[1:46:44] Speaker 1: That would make it easier to search for a specific episode.
[1:46:47] Speaker 1: Jay already done made that change last week, so look
[1:46:50] Speaker 1: in the podcast feed that's.
[1:46:53] Speaker 2: Going to do it.
[1:46:53] Speaker 1: For this episode of the show. Rich on tech dot tv.
[1:46:55] Speaker 1: For links, find me on social media at rich on tech.
[1:46:58] Speaker 1: Next week, we'll talk social media and building a positive
[1:47:01] Speaker 1: online reputation for parents and students. Thanks to everyone who
[1:47:05] Speaker 1: makes this show possible.
[1:47:06] Speaker 2: My name is rich Demiro. I will talk to you
[1:47:08] Speaker 2: real soon

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