It is an honor as always to share the microphone with kfi is tech guy Rich Dimiro. You hear him live rich on tech is every Saturday eleven am and then on KTL. I can follow him on his Instagram at rich on Tech, rich on Tech website, rich on Tech dot TV, Rich Goold talk to you again.
They're my friend. Thank you so much.
Hey, good morning too, Chris.
Hey, before we dive into some of the stuff that affects like our computers and our cell phones and things like that, can you help me understand this signal app that is in the news today, because this is the one that the Secretary of Defense and the National securit Advice and the Vice President accidentally added a discredited and terrible journalist who pushes hoax poaxes, so called journalists, they called him, and yet they somehow accidentally added him to
their private chat about classified information.
How does that happen?
Well, I have lots of thoughts on this now. Number one, how does it happen? I mean we all know how this happens. I mean, how many times have you replied to a text in the wrong text? I mean I've done it a million times? How many times have you written an email to someone included them on the wrong You know you included someone by accident because you know you get that autocomplete. So I understand how this all happened.
I think the bigger issue here is why are governments using this messaging app if they're not supposed to be. But again I understand that as well, because how many times does your company tell you to use a certain app to do something? Most of the time, if you're in a corporate environment, it's something they have said, Hey, we pay for teams, we pay for Google Workspace, we want you to text through this, and people use their own preferred personal apps. And that's really what happens here
on a much bigger level. So and I'm not saying I agree with any of those things. I'm just saying that this is kind of like, we're human and we understand why these things happen, but these stakes.
Are bigger here obviously.
Now that's a great point, Rachel.
It's a it's an issue of stakes, and you really humanized it because I, for one, do exactly what you're talking about. I love to use Google Docs. It's super simple. I use Google Docs at work. My company wants me to use the Microsoft three sixty five workspace or whatever that is, right, and I don't like doing that because the Google Docs is super simple for me.
So I get that. But the stakes are a whole lot lower.
If somebody hacks into into my show notes, they might see that I plan on talking about meta with Garyan Shannon today at eight p fifty. They probably don't care. When it comes to military attacks, there are stakes no higher than that.
Yeah, agreed, And now here's the deal. They were using an app that if you're going to use an app that is for secure messaging, Signal is the most secure app out there. It has been known to be the most secure messaging app in the world pretty much for the average person that can download. It is open source, so you know, people can check on this app to see kind of the code behind it, and that's.
What keeps it really secure.
You can only install it on one device at a time, so you you know, this is the reason why I never really used it, because you know the fact is with these encrypted apps not there is almost no messaging app out there that is end to end encrypted by default. There are only two that I know of, and that
is Signal and WhatsApp. WhatsApp has a lot of security implications because it's owned by Meta, and so even though they are securing that app and to end with encryption, they are collecting a whole bunch of other data on you while you're using that app. Signal does not do that. And so if they had to pick an app to share, you know, trade secrets, this is probably the app to do it with. Should they be doing that, Probably not, no matter what, And You're right, the stakes are much higher.
But I'm explaining, like you know, how this happens on a human basis. We gravitate towards the things that we know and like and are easier.
Yeah, I understand that, but also I think this is interesting. Rich are you You talked about how easy it is to respond to an email that's wrong, or to you know, to to respond to a text message to the wrong person. I can't tell you how many times I've told my buddies in a group chat because I'm you know, we're talking about fantasy football. My wife is telling me, you know, pick up milk, and I accidentally tell nine of my best guy friends love you where something sexy tonight? It
is awkward? Wow, And yeah, it's great, it's it's wonderful. And then oftentime relationship, well, the worst part is is that my wife oftentimes will then realize that I'm doing something wrong. She'll start giving me fantasy football advice. I've lost more leagues that way. So, but when it comes to a group text, if I'm trying to add someone to my group chat, I've never used signal, And so this is why I'm I'm asking you, I've never used it. Is it really simple to just simply reply to the
wrong one? For instance, when I reply, when I think I'm replying to my wife, but I'm accidentally telling my group of fantasy football friends I love you, it doesn't bring her in that chat.
Adding somebody to that channel means creating a new.
Chat, right, And I don't know the right And I don't know the logistics of what happened here, how this person got added, But I'm guessing that they thought they added.
Someone else to the group text. Yea, and it was.
Someone you know whoever created this group text. This this journalist from the Atlantic, was in their address book, right, so they must have been communicating with them in some way or shape or form. They typed in a few letters thinking it was someone else, it auto completed to this person and boom they were added. So that's probably
the best explanation for that. I don't think there's a world where they put this person on the group chat in a secretive way to get them kind of to see what's happening, because that it just doesn't make sense with what they were discussing, right, This was a very inside baseball group of people. I mean, you're talking the highest level of our government here on this group chat. So that's the part that I don't think they just
responded and brought him in. I think that it was a group chat that was created or added to later.
And this person was put in mistakenly.
KFCE tech guy Rich Demiro It is Rich on Tech before we check with Amy King at a quick news update here speaking of data security, what's going on with the Google It sounds like they accidentally deleted a bunch of my stuff.
Yeah, well, this is a feature. It's not like Gmail.
It's not photos so the big ones that people rely on or Google Drive like you mentioned earlier. But this is a feature called maps Timeline, which you might not even be familiar with. I was because I really enjoyed it. It's basically a feature inside Maps that keeps track of all the places you visit around the world. So I had this nice list of like three hundred locations that I had been to from day one when I got my Android phone to now or my iPhone, it works
on both. But apparently there was a technical issue a glitch, and this information got deleted and so if you didn't have it backed up, which you probably didn't, it's gone forever. And the whole thing is that Google took this information it used to be saved by by default. They took it off of people's clouds to put it on their phone, so that was more private, and of course that's you know, it turned out to be bad because now there's no backup of it anywhere else.
So and there's anyway they.
Don't consider redundancy when they're doing those doing those switchovers.
That feels like it feels like a kind of a boneheaded error.
Well, it's interesting because they said last year, hey, we're moving this to your phone for your privacy.
So if you didn't specifically.
Back it up and tell us to back it up in your cloud, we're not having We're not keeping that information anymore. So I think that's what happened is people like me who are still kind of in the middle and still had it on their cloud. Yeah, somehow it got deleted and now it's gone forever.
And now you don't even remember that you went to Botswana.
No, I can't remember my time in China Russia.
Exactly what China? Why did you to forget that? That's what all those shots were.
Well, you know, I couldn't even use Twitter when I was there, so it was not fun anyway.
Rich the California Attorney General is the only attorney general that is warning people about their data with twenty three and me. How concerned should I be that twenty three and Me might misplace my spit?
Well, let's put it this way.
Twenty three and Me always one of the top sellers on Amazon's Prime Day every year, like these little test kits are, I mean, they sell tons of them, So I think there's a lot of people that have their
information in these databases. The concern here is that twenty three and Me has filed for bankruptcy protection, and that means there could be another company or group or organization that takes control of all of their information and we don't know, even though twenty three and me in the past has kind of said, look, we have pretty strict rules when it comes to how we protect your data. We don't know if the next company will come along
and play the same way. So the ag here in California says, you know what, you should go and delete your genetic data immediately, And so this has been going around. I posted the instructions on my Instagram, but basically going on their website, which was very slow yesterday, because I guess many many people are doing this. But should you be concerned, I'd say that we it's unknown at this point, but if you feel better having this information deleted, go ahead and download it and get it out of.
There, all right, So maybe a better safe than sorry situation on the jet.
Nothing has changed just yet, but we just don't know.
All right.
I think that's reasonable. Then, Rich you mentioned earlier somebod about your Android phone. Then you mentioned your iPhone. I'm guessing as the tech guy who I incidentally I'm a fan, so let me just fanboy out for a moment. I also know that you have some incarnation of everything that's out there. You've got Samsung Galaxy threes all the way up to Galaxy one hundred and twenty two's that people
won't see for another thirty years. You've got all of those, and then you've also got every iPhone from the first iPhone proto type all the way. People don't know this, but Rich actually has the iPhone twenty one and that.
They'll tell people that I'm under NDA.
Oh sorry, my bad, So Rich, You've got a little bit of everything there. What what's the ladies here with Samsung? I know they're they're looking at a at a software update and I just had to update my iPhone as well because of the AI stuff.
Yeah, and I'm sure you're using a lot of it. I'm just kidding because most people aren't on the iPhone. But you know, I do love the corners that Siri glows with now, I mean, that's pretty cool. My little trick on my little trick on the iPhone with the with the Siri improvements is that Serie is pretty bad.
I use her only to send a text. But if you say, basically, if you preface all of your requests now with ask chat GYBT, it's so much better because it'll just skip the middle man and just go right to chat GYBT. But Samsung, so they they were early on this whole AI stuff. They were they were first out of the gate with the with their AI on their.
Phone in a big way.
And they have been updating their recent phones with this situation. But the basically the new update that they have is one UI seven and they said that finally on April seventh, that will be rolling out to the previous models, starting with the S twenty four series, the Galaxy Fold six and the Flip six. So if you have one of these older models, you will be getting the new one
UI seven on April or starting from April seventh. And Chris, if you're not familiar with the way Samsung works versus iPhone, iPhone pretty much puts everything out on the same day for everyone, like all the supported models, but a lot of the other manufacturers they sort of roll out the software updates and it's kind of frustrating because it takes a lot more time for it to reach the older models.
Oh so you might not know when you're getting the update then.
Yeah, Like they come out with all these new and I actually think some of it is a sales tactic because you know, what does Samsung wants you to do? They want you to buy the new phone, and so I think that that's where they make their money, whereas you know, Google not so much and iPhone definitely not as much. Of course, they depend on those sales. But Apple is a much bigger kind of eco play system right where they know even if you have an older iPhone,
you're still gonna be paying for that cloud storage. You might be picking up an iPad, you might get a MacBook because you love the iPhone so much, you might get a smart watch. So it's a much bigger play, which is why they support so many older devices over the years, as opposed to some of these other companies.
Kaf Tech guy Richarde Merrow rich real quick as we talk about AI, and I have to admit I feel like a fogie when it comes to AI because my adoption on this is really slow. I'm kind of waiting for it to find its footing. I feel like once we start getting some of the king signed out, then I'll invest some time. Otherwise, I feel like everything's changing too quickly. One of those changes, though, sounds like open AI is trying to enhance some of their voice capabilities,
is that right, So I how does this work? When I talk with chat GPT, does it talk back?
Yeah, there's like a there's a now you can always have all the ais kind of read you the answers. That's one way. But then there's this feature that's almost like talking to an AI human, and that is what's the voice assistant. That's what the feature is. Advanced Voice Mode is what it's technically called. Gemini has it, open ai has it with chat GBT and when you activate this, it literally sounds like you are talking to a human being that is the smartest human being in the world.
And open ai says, they just made theirs better. It interrupts you less, it's more natural, it's more engaging. I was talking to it this morning and it is. It's a little basically when you used to take a breath, if you were asking it something, it would jump in and talk. And now it kind of lets you take that breath a little bit and gives you that moment of pause where it doesn't just try to jump in immediately listening.
Like not like my wife, but like a friend.
Yeah theoretically, yeah, because my wife jumps in, you don't even let me get a breath in unbelievable.
Some people do.
Some people do that on the radio, like I've been known to do that. I'll be like, hey, wait, what did you just say something?
Hold on?
How come Siri doesn't do this?
When is Apple going to make their stuff sound like I'm talking like sirious talking back to me like I'm holding a conversation. How long do I have to wait for that to happen? Like you said, Sirius sucks? When does it get better?
Oh my gosh, there's just a big.
Article going around on the internet about how bad AI is on the iPhone, specifically Siri, because she was really first out of the gate and very very good for many years, and now she is way last and it's not getting better for at least another year. So all this stuff that Apple promised with Siri getting better is not even happening for another year. So get used to it.
I don't want to.
Rich on Tech follow him Instagram, rich on Tech and on his website rich on Tech dot tv KFI is tech guy Richdemiro Rick always great talking to you.
Thank you so much, my friend.
Thanks Chris, love it, appreciate it.