TikTok gets grilled. Google launches bar a major acropolips that affects the screenshots you might have shared, plus your tech questions answered.
Yes, thank you.
What's going on? I'm Rich Dmiro and this is Rich on Tech, the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about, and it's the place where I answer your questions about technology. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show. Phone lines are open triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Kim is standing by to get you on the show today. Give me a call.
If you have a question about technology. Email is also an option. Send it over to hello at richontech dot TV. I'll be checking email throughout the show. Well well, well, mister mister Shao Chow goes to Washington. That's what happened this week. TikTok CEO in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee this week, all to talk about concerns
the US has about TikTok spying on users. It turned into kind of a circus there five hours and I think it was like over five hours of I'd call it testimony, but realistically it was a lot of finger pointing, a lot of accusations. I mean, you're talking a guy who went to Harvard, his wife grew up in DC, and he's sitting there defending himself like I've never seen before. Actually, I have seen it before. I've seen it with Facebook, I've seen it with Instagram, I've seen it with Google,
I've seen it with Twitter. Yes, the US government loves to press these tech companies, to press them hard, but guess what, at the end of the day, have we seen anything come from any of these style hearings. Not really. Facebook still works just the way it always has. Twitter well, Twitter has kind of changed, but you know that's for
different reasons. Instagram all the same. I mean, I would argue the bigger problem in this whole situation is really the impact that these apps are having on our society versus the spying. Now, the spying is a big deal when it comes to different governments, but I would also say that this is a wake up call for all of us to think about the privacy implications of our lives. So TikTok, whether or not it is spying on US citizens remains to be seen, right, But this is just
one app. There are many apps that people use on a daily basis, and I just mentioned a bunch of them. Facebook, Instagram, app Chat, TikTok, Twitter. I mean, there's so many apps, and every single one of these apps has a mission and that mission is to either get you to stay on that app as long as humanly possible, get you to pay for something, or take your personal information and use it to sell you stuff. That is what these
apps do. Now, yes, we get some services out of these apps, we get some value out of these apps, of course, that's why we use them. But the unspoken side of these apps is that they are getting stuff from us in a big way. So TikTok just made me kind of think. We're going to talk more about what happened there a little bit later with my guest lance You and Off. But for me, what I want to talk about is privacy in general. So are you really going to wait for the US government to help
you protect your own privacy? No? US government is going to do what the US government does. They're going to do their thing. You need to take control of your own tech world. You need to get into control today. So Number one, you gotta stop speeding through all of those sign up screens. I know we want to get to these products and services as quick as humanly possible, and they know that. Why do you think we scroll
through those terms and conditions in about one second? Nobody can read those terms and conditions as quick as we scroll through them. Then they know that, so they hide a lot of good stuff in there that I've probably never read and neither of you. And I'm not saying you have to read that, but you have to understand that when you sit there and act surprised that a service is taking all of your personal information your location, your GPS and your IP address, and your likes and
your needs and your wants. That's all in the terms and conditions. You're saying, sure do that, So stop speeding through those screens if you really want to see, Like, hold on, this is asking me for my location, This is asking me for access to my microphone. Slow down, Listen to what it's asking you, and think do I want to give that access? Stop using face Book and Google to log into things. I know it's fast again, there's a theme here. Don't be fast, be slow. You
have to understand what they're asking you here. Facebook and Google super easy to log in. Yes, they do that for a reason. That's so that they can see where you're logging in and they can connect the dots between all these different products and services that you sign up for. So don't use Facebook, don't use Google to log in. Apple just a little bit better than those two. But the problem with Apple is that it keeps you in their ecosystem. In fact, with all three of these, it
keeps you in their ecosystem. If you're logged into Facebook, if you use Facebook to log into a dozen different apps, yeah you're gonna stick with Facebook. If you use Google to log into a dozen different apps, you're going to stick with Google. If you use Apple to log into every app, yeah you're going to stick with Apple. It makes it tougher to get out of these products and services.
My advice, create unique, separate passwords for every account. Tech companies are trying to grab as much data as they can off of you. And it's not just tech companies either. By the way, doctor's offices, you ever have to fill out those forms you go into the doctor's office, they ask you to fill out here, take the number one. Why do we still have to fill out forms on a clipboard at the doctor's office. It is the year twenty hold on twenty twenty three. I have to check
because I sometimes say it's twenty twenty two. It's twenty twenty three. Why are we filling out things on a clipboard here? This is what it sounds like when you go into the doctor's office. You see this. They give you this, this big clipboard with all this paperwork on it, and I always say, can I fill this out online? Or didn't I already fill it out? And say now you got to fill it out. One time, actually just flat out refused. I said, no, I filled this out
last time I was here. I'm not filling it out again. They just were like, okay. But on that fill out form, they always ask for your social Security number? Right, Why does your doctor need your social Security number? Why does your dentist need your social Security number? I know why they want it so that if you don't pay your bill, they can come after you. That is not a valid reason for asking for that. And you can say no, by the way, so do that say no? I say
no every single time. Honestly. Sometimes I just write down all zeros and just see what they say, just do it. Try it, don't give out your social what else? Banks? Oh this thing you get every year, you get that little piece of paper in the mail from banks. It's like this opt out notice, and what do we do? We get it, we open it up, you realize it's not a bill or anything you need to do, and you throw it right in the trash. That opt out notice.
What that's doing is it's saying to you, hey, we're your bank, and we have all this personal information about you, and unless you opt out, we are free to share that personal information with any of our affiliates. What's an affiliate? Anyone that wants to pay them for that information. So again, fill out that form, Go to the website, go to Chase Bank, go to Bank of America, go to the opt out section of the website and just say ned rather you not share my stuff. It takes one second,
and I'm guilty this. I I'll be honest. I haven't done it, but I got this advice a long time ago and someone said to do it, and I've thought about doing it, and I will. I will do it now, okay, because it's just less stuff that you'll get in the mail. From all these different companies and less sharing of your personal information. All right, when it comes to your web browser, you gotta turn off third party cookies. What's a third
party cookie? That means when you visit one website, a third party cookie allows that website to share your visit with another website. That's called a third party cookie. Turn those off. You can turn it off in Chrome. They make it look scary. They make it look like you're doing something wrong. You're not. You can turn off third party cookies and it will be very safe to surf
the web. Get an ad blocker. If you're sick of the ads that are following you around on the web, get an ad blocker that can help save you from some of that nightmare of all these different ads that follow you around the web. That's a handy way to do it. Your home network. Someone comes over to your house, Hey, Rich, what's your five five password? What do I do? I send them straight to the guest network. Rich, Why are you giving me the guest network because you're a guest.
You don't need access to my entire home network. Set up a guest network on your home Wi Fi and let your friends log into the guest network, not the network that you use that all of your devices are connected to. You can easily print out a QR code for your network. People can scan it with their phone and then they can log into your guest network. They don't even have to notice the guest network. Don't name it guest network, name it VIP network and let your
friends log into that one. Now, your phone, this is the biggest issue that you have in your life. Think about it. Think about the sensors on your phone, GPS, bluetooth, accelerometer, temperature sensors, magnetic field sensors, gyroscope sensors, heart rate sensors, light sensors, proximity sensors, pressure sensors. You are a walking scientist with this phone in your pocket. I mean you're prepared to like go right to Jurassic Park with what
you've got in your pocket at this point. So you need to realize that every app wants to tap into those those settings and those sensors. So think about when you give permissions to these apps that you download. Give bear basics the minimums. So if it's saying, hey, we want your location, do they need your precise location? Give them your approximate location. Maybe they just need location one time. Stop giving apps blanket permissions. Don't just say yes to everything.
And if it's been a while, go into your settings for your apps and revoke some of those permissions. So, for instance, I looked up TikTok just out of curiosity to see what permissions does TikTok have on my phone. I just went to the settings on the iPhone. I tapped TikTok. It has access to my contacts, it has access to all my photos, it has access to my local network, my microphone, my camera, and cellular data. Okay, I just turned all those off. You can do that
for any app you want. Facebook, Instagram, and Google. There's something called connected apps, third party apps. Turn off those connections. Go in there, take a look see the apps that you've given access to your Facebook, your Instagram, and your Google and turn those off. You don't necessarily need. It's a good idea to just kind of clean those out. Those are called permissions. So a lot of times with Instagram, Facebook, and Google, you give permission to other apps to look
inside those accounts. You can take those permissions back, and it's a good idea, you know, twice three times a year to just kind of see which apps you've given permission to. If you don't recognize one, you don't remember one, get rid of it, revoke its permissions. If it ever comes a time when you need that app to be accessible again, you'll see it'll say, hey, we lost this connection, and there are legitimate reasons for that. But you just
have to realize why these apps want this access. They want to build this web, this network of like the most information possible about you, and by giving them permission, that's what you're doing. You need to take control of your privacy, security accounts and have backups because I get way too many emails about people who get hacked, lose their photos or files because they're not in the cloud. Do this stuff today, please, that's my word to you today.
All right, Coming up on the show, we're going to talk about neck gear. If you have an orbit, it is time to update your software. I'll explain what that acropo lips is. Plus we got lance yulanoff coming up. He's going to talk about TikTok and Google Bard plus Slater. In the show, we're going to visit Outer Edge LA all about NFTs. If you're curious about them, we'll tell you your calls up next at triple eight Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich Demiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. You can follow me on social media at rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Mike is in El Segundo, California. Mike, you're on with Rich. What's happening?
Hey, Rich are I've got an older iPad, maybe about from seven years old, and it won't brouse anymore. And it tells me that I need an iOS that's newer than twelve point seven I believe, and but but that I can't load that.
On the machine.
Do I have any options?
Okay? So this is an older iPad. It sounds like, huh yeah, how how old are we talking?
I'm thinking it's about seven or eight years old?
Oh wow? Okay? And so when you go to the web browser, which browser are you using?
Using Safari?
Okay?
But and uh then I get I get an error note on the machine. So you know you need to update your bios okay?
And so and you can't update past twelve point seven, because that's it. There's no more support for this older version, right, And I've kind.
Of googled around to find if I could find a browser that would accept something that's older, but I haven't been successful though.
Well, okay, that's my question. So when when you can you download app from the app store? Still, because I'm not sure what state this computer this iPad is in. Does it still like the Wi Fi works on it? And can you still do anything on it?
Yeah?
I can do that, but I went to because I thought it might be a browser I could use, but and it downloaded the app when I want to use it once again, it's still required to thirteen or New York.
Okay. So the thing about the browsers on the iPad is that they use something they all share, something called WebKit. And this means that even though there are different browsers on the iPad and available, they all use the same back end software and so that software is provided by Apple. And it's what they're saying is it's basically, your iPad doesn't have the latest software. It's not secure enough to run that version of WebKit that it needs, no matter
which browser you download. So that's I think what you're running into here, oh yeah, because it.
Sounds like.
Yeah, so I would say, yeah, I would say to download something like Chrome or Firefox or any of these other browsers. But they're all going to run on the back end using that WebKit software provided by Apple. So that's that's why I think you're running into this problem. The only I'm trying to think, uh yeah, so do you know how to recycle this thing? Do you know how to get some money for it?
Not?
Off hand?
Okay, So I'll recommend a place that I like because I think this is a pretty old iPad, so you're probably not gonna get much. But there's a website I like called gizmo Go g I z m o g O gizmo goo dot com, and you can pop in your iPad and it will tell you how much you get. Do you know which model this is? Offhand or no?
I think it's an Air.
iPad Air okay, so I'm guessing it's an old, old maybe for okay, So if it's the first generation, you're ready for this. Don't don't spend this all one place. But it looks like they're going to give you eleven dollars and seventy two cents, Mike, all right, iPad iPad Air second generation five dollars twenty five cents. You might be better off just keeping this in your house and using it as a photo display, like turn it into some sort of like you know, photo frame or something.
That's a good idea.
It might be better. All right, Well, good luck and the new iPad, by the way, I would just recommend the standard one. I don't know if you need. I mean, the Air is nice, but it's much more expensive than it depends on what you're doing on this thing, but the standard one's pretty good, and I would before you buy one, just check for some sales. So I always type in iPad deal and then go to Google and
then tap news. And because all the bloggers get affiliate money from these things, they will typically blog about when iPads are on sale. So that would be my recommendation, Mike. And if you want, you can go ahead and recycle it as well, So that's what I would recommend. All right. Thanks, first call, okay, if you want to get on the show. Phone lines are open. It's eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one Uh, let me just tell you
about acropolips real quick. So, if you have a Pixel or a Windows computer, security researchers have determined that when you crop a photo using the default editing tools which is called markup and the snipping tool and Windows, it saves the information in the file that you tried to
cut out of the picture. So if you share this picture with someone, whether that's online or you know, over email, whatever, they may be able to use a tool to recover the data that you tried to cut out of that picture. And there's actually a tool I'll link to on the website that you can try this out. But if you have a pixel, you got to update the software because Google did release a software update that will fix this.
So this has been around since twenty eighteen. By the way, this issue, so update your pixel and for Windows they are now aware of it, but they don't have a fixed just yet. So when in doubt, do not share screenshots involving personal information right now, even if you crop that information out. All right, coming up, we're gonna talk to my pal lance Yulanoff about TikTok on Capitol Hill plus Google Bard. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. My name is rich Demiro
and joining me now. My first guest is Lance Ulanoff. He is the editor in chief of tech Radar. He has spent many years in the tech industry, and also he is the tech guy on Live with Kelly and Ryan. Lance, Welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Hey, I'm just looking at your LinkedIn here and I noticed you have a cool feature on there. You have a pronouncer for your name. I've never seen that before.
Yeah, they introduced that a while ago because you know, I guess just for everyone, but people often mispronounce my last name, so it's helpful for me.
Did I say it right?
Yeah, yeah, you get it right. You did well.
Well.
Thanks for joining me on the show. Appreciate it. Let's talk first, TikTok. So I assume you watched all five hours and forty eight minutes of the testimony.
I watched almost the entire thing. There were a couple of little breaks I had to take, but yeah, I caught the majority of it. It was it was actually pretty frustrating to watch.
I didn't get through the whole thing, but I did watch enough to see that Wow. I mean, these things always go the same, They're they're pretty one sided. Obviously, they kind of ask questions that are a little bit loaded, but they do get some information out there. Like the big the big thing I saw that was they asked the TikTok CEO if TikTok accessed devices on your home Wi Fi. And I was thinking about that. I'm like, hmm, actually it probably could do that, right.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's possible. I Mean, the thing is, you know, we don't know what when an application is installed on your computer or on your phone, and obviously most people at home are using their I find network, Like what does it interrogate and what does it learn about you? We don't know that. But you know, in all fairness, pretty much every application that you install is going to seek out as much useful information as possible. The X factor here being that TikTok is owned by
by Dance. By Dance is a Chinese company, and we are not best of friends with China.
Right now, right, So if they I mean, let's put it this way, even at the very least, if China wanted to get the whereabouts of where people are sort of moving in and about the US, and this is probably the reason why all of these government you know, like these local governments and of course the federal government is saying you can't have this on your phone because at the very least they can track people's movements. That's like very basic location services on a phone. Is that sound right?
Yeah, I mean there's there's location, there's IP information, you know, whether you leave your location services on, which most people do because you use it for maps. I think, yes, there's a there's a there's a world of data that that any company can derive about it. And I do think that's a really strong point that and I think even the CEO of TikTok agreed with this, that government
employees should not have social media on their devices. I mean, it just makes sense, and I don't think that anybody is arguing about that. What it comes down to is the question of whether or not it should be banned and no one should have access to it as opposed to the other option is stronger regulations, which we've all been asking for for tech companies and social media for a long time, and they all just keep talking about it but not actually doing it.
Yeah. Well, I mean it kind of reminds me of like you know, the Motion Picture Association, You've got the people that make the movies rate the movies, right, And so with the tech companies. In an ideal world, they would make their own rules and say, hey, we play by these rules. We want to have our own rules. We're private, see centric, and we're you know whatever. But the reality is they don't have our best interests at heart. They're a tech company. They're trying to make money off
of us. They're trying to get our personal information. Is that right?
Well, there's certainly these are businesses. These are not philanthropies, right, there's no charities out there. They're businesses, and it's a question of how big is the business, How are they going to make money? You know, whether it's selling you something which Apple tends to do, right. They sell you hardware and you're subscribe to software, or they give you something for in quotes free, but they monetize it and they make money through advertising. So then they're selling your interests.
They're selling your eyeballs. That is paying attention to whatever you look at. And that's what TikTok is, right. TikTok is in that area. TikTok monetizes through ad partnerships. I mean, if you are on TikTok, you notice there are more and more ads in there, and so that's how it's that's a trade off that exists across pretty much all of technology. But you said something is very interesting that they don't. There are no rules, right, So different companies
go by different ethos. So, for example, Apple is tends to be more privacy focused than others, right, because they're not ad based. They don't care what we're doing all their devices. What they care about is buy more of our stuff, be in our ecosystem. Whereas Google, well they don't sell you a lot of hardware. They're starting to, but most of their money is made through advertising, so they really need to know what you're doing across their network of things. So they don't have the same kind
of rules and ethos that Apple has. So there's no consistency, and there's no data US data bill of.
Rights, right, different plate. I mean, obviously Europe has much stronger privacy regulations, California has much stronger privacy regulations. But yes, federally that's just not the case. And every company, like you said, kind of does their own thing. I guess my big question is what was your takeaway? Was there anything that surprised you from this this testimony?
Well, I was, you know, I was very interested when I heard him say the CEO too, say that he reports directly to the CEO of Byte Dance. The Bite Dance is a Chinese company, and that CEO is in China, and he may or may not be a member of the Communist Party. And I think that was one moment I'm really kind of fixated on, like, Okay, there's because they weren't getting enough really solid information out of them because they spent too much time just talking about I
don't know what. They just just speak they're making speeches. But I was like, give me details that we can because that's what they can dig into. The other thing was that he owns stock in Byte Dance, So again, these are things that talk to his interests, who controls what he does and who he answers to and how it's going to play out now. That was interesting to me.
And of course Project Texas, which is what is the plan that by Dance slash TikTok now TikTok whatever they're building separately has to protect firewall off American data, which includes setting up almost like a separate company, which I think is called the United States Security Data Security USDs.
Oh wow, that's right there.
I know, I know it was very weird, but that's the name they came up with. There's going to be you know, any legacy data that was left on on service that were controlled by by Dance, it's going to be pulled off. Uh. There, So they're all all the data will be firewalls, all be with Oracle, and they'll have like a board that will populated with people with security backrounds all the US people. Uh, and they'll have oversight. They'll be like an over third party oversite to make
sure they follow all the rules. So I actually thought, all right, that's a start, that's something. But it was interesting because what the officials the lawmakers did is they basically dismissed the entire plan. They really were like me, yeah, they really kind of pick it apart, which is what I wanted. I'm like, go deeper into that because that's what he has to answer for because that's their action plan. You want to know that that's a good action plan.
But wouldn't it solve more problems just to get this controlled by a US company, or to sell make it its own company, like just you know, branch off and I don't know, I mean, maybe you can't do that, but like it seems odd that, you know, I mean, I get that there's a lot of money at stake here and Byteedance makes a lot of money off of this app or there's potential for tons of money to be made. But would it solve all the problems if they just said, hey, we're going to make this a
US company. Now we're going to just start up. I mean, they say they made a big deal about saying how many offices they have in the US and how many employees.
They have here seven seven thousand. I think, yeah, obviously, yes, you are totally right. It would make things so easy. My feeling is I believe that the reason China by Dance will not sell is out of pride. This is a global sensation. They really are excited and happy about it, and they would feel I think they would feel they would lose face to spell it. It would be an embarrassment. They would be, you know, basically kneeling to the US
on this point. That's why they won't sell it. And I will say also that I don't think I don't think a band is actually on the table, partly because of the lobbying, but also because of the thing you mentioned that the deep sort of integration in US and including investment from US parties, So there would be a lot of pushback on doing that, making it like this illicit thing you could only get to it through VPN. So I don't think that's going to happen either. So
we're kind of in this weird spot. But what's strange to me is that it is so rare to find agreement on both sides of the Aisle and the White House on any topic, and here we have one where everybody's there, we're all in agreement. They're like, yeah, bad, this is bad. We should do something, maybe ban it.
So that is the X factor where if they're truly not satisfied, they may press this point and then it goes to someplace that maybe it is something like a band or I don't know, but I just don't think they'll get them to sell them sell it because of the reasons I stated, Well.
It's certainly been a saga of the century for at least a couple I mean, I remember the first time I covered this probably three or four years ago and it's still I just can't believe it's still going on. And we even get into the whole idea of the misinformation that's on TikTok and the self harm and the challenges that are just taking over children's lives and ruining them. So there's a lot going on here, and that's not just TikTok's fault. That is, you know, a social media
thing in general. But that's a whole other conversation. But Lance I'm gonna have to leave it there. How can folks keep in touch with you, follow you all that good stuff?
Obviously tech grad dot com. I have a number of stories to go up there of the US that are in chief, and then of course on Twitter, assuming it doesn't go coput. I'm on Twitter, uh and yes you can find me there and no, yes on TikTok. Yes I am on.
TikTok Okay, we'll check that out. Lancey lan Off, editor in chief of tech Radar and also the tech guy on Live with Kelly and Ryan. Thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate it.
On your Saturday, it was a pleasure talk to you.
All right, talk soon, all right, You're listening to Rich on tech. Coming up, we'll talk about Google Bard that's their answer to chat GPT plus more of your calls at Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You are listening to Rich on tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Don't forget to
sign up for my newsletter. Just go to rich on tech dot T hit the I believe it says sign up for my newsletter. Pretty simple. Now, I will tell you the newsletter is currently dormant, so you may not get an email from me tomorrow. But I am just it's a way to keep in touch. When I've got something important to say, I will put it on there. So that's the way to do it. Rich on tech dot TV. Jamie is in Riverside, California. Jamie, you are on with rich Hi.
Rich thank you for taking the call. I wanted to ask you what the Microsoft upgrade to Wendy eleven. I'm having a difficult time locating like my test manager and task you know, like my files where before I used to go and start look down and it would give you all the information like Microsoft Office, and I can't seem to find that anymore.
So if they've moved everything, yes, that's funny.
If they're like a website, I can find I like the TT so they can kind of maneuver around, or you know, they're like.
A search bar.
What do you suggest, So they moved everything around Windows eleven is uh, they sort of moved everything to the center of the screen now, right, like the whole start button and all that start menu. Yes, And I'll be honest, I have not played with it that much. It's on my list of things to do to kind of check it out and see. So I can't specifically say where all these things are. But I mean, as for resources, I think the easiest thing to do. I mean, these
things don't come with an instruction manual. But no, Microsoft does a pretty good job on their website of doing tutorials. Have you looked at those at all?
No?
Okay, that's where I was much.
Are they for C tutorials or are they just like introducing the new Windows even Well.
They've got a whole bunch of stuff, so I'm looking at it Now I just did support dot Microsoft dot com and they got this section called Meat Windows eleven, and so they've got a whole thing. It tells you about the look and feel, it tells you about how to personalize your experience, the apps and tools, entertainment, gaming, accessibility, creativity, and then it underneath each video it gives you all of kind of like the basics. So how to search obviously,
you know how to do that. You press search or you can you know, tap Windows s, how to make desktop groups, your Microsoft account, keyboard shortcuts that you might find useful, like how about this? Did you know that for voice typing you can do Windows.
H No, but I got to get.
See there you go. How about how about opening the emoji panel? Jamie? Have you done that? It's Windows semicolon. Ok see all right, so this is support dot Microsoft dot com. And then look for the meat Windows eleven section. Now the other thing that's go ahead, well, the other
thing that's really handy. Okay you first, no, you it's like at a stop you know, is that like those stop signs you know where you're like, no, no, you go first, No, you go first, No, you go first, Jamie, you go first, okay, thank you.
I wanted to also ask you, I'm building a new workstation. Before you would be able to just put in a user name, but now it seems like they always wanted to use an email account, like you know, a live or outlook yes, to get connected to the network.
Is there a work around now or is that just the way.
You know the things work now.
That's a good question because I was just setting up a computer and I noticed that same exact thing, and I was like, wait a second, do I really need to put into Microsoft account now? I'm assuming that there is a way to do a local account. Off the top of my head, I don't know, but I assume that when you're signing in, there's probably a tiny little link when when you're setting up the computer that says
to do it offline. So when you're going through, just kind of really take a close look at things and see if there is a section on that sign up area where it says like go offline or do this locally. I'm sure there's a way to do it. I just went ahead and used my Microsoft account because I was
just like, okay, let me just try this. But obviously they're trying to force everyone to do these things a certain way because they want everyone linked in to you know, their main Microsoft accounts because that helps them in the end. But again, I think that's all part of the tutorials. And also, I mean, I know this is a pretty a given, but you know, YouTube is a really good resource for this kind of stuff. I would find some good YouTubers that cover Windows eleven and just kind of
watch some of their videos. I know it's, you know, could be kind of boring to sit through some of this stuff, but if you're really trying to, you know, learn the ins and outs of this new software, that's probably a good way to familiarize yourself at least, just to get some.
Boring.
I don't think it's b but you know, I think that it depends. It depends, like it's just you know, it depends on how interested you are and all these little nuances. But there's definitely a lot of new features, and I feel like Windows has really they just keep changing things a lot, and it's happening very fast right now. I mean, they just you know, especially with this AI stuff, it's all gonna change again, Jamie, that's for sure.
Yeah, that's for sure.
Okay, Well, thank you the mind that I really do enjoy your show.
All right, Well, thank you very much for calling, and I'm gonna put links to everything that I mentioned. I'm taking very good notes. I'm like a student in a college class right now. I'm taking notes as I go along to everything that I mentioned, and I'm putting them
all in the show notes. So after you listen to the show, once this is all posted as the podcast, you can go to my website rich on tech dot tv see the link, and I will have everything that I mentioned inside the link so that you can easily find it. All Right, So I've been talking about this
netgear orb. If you have one of these routers, which you've probably heard people talk about, these mesh router systems, that you put a couple different access points around your house and they work together to create a Wi Fi signal that is everywhere throughout your house. Instead of the old way that is just one router modem in the middle of your house from your cable company or whatever, and that puts out the signal and it never reaches
to the far corners. These new mesh networks, they have different access points you put in different rooms and they all work together to create one Wi Fi signal that works in every corner of your house. So these things are very popular. Ero sort of started the trend and now you've got a whole bunch of them. Neck Your Orby is a very highly rated mesh wireless system. It's very popular and if you have one, you probably want to check for updates because there is some There was
an exploit. Basically, hackers were able to get into this thing, and so you want to make sure that you have this thing patched up. So the bottom line is you don't really need to know what they were able to do with this, because it's besides the point. But if you have a neck gear Orby, go into the app on your phone, go into the settings, check for an update, and update the software so that your network is secure. All right, I've got phone lines open at triple eight.
Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. My name is Rich Dmiro. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich Demiro, hanging out talking technology. This is a show where I talk about the tech. If I can talk, this is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions. You can find me online at rich on Tech.
That's me on all social media. That's Instagram, that's Facebook, and as long as Twitter is still around. That's where all be this week. I know I try to make the entire show about AI, but that is the number one theme of the tech world right now. AI is everything. It's kind of like it reminds me of going to these tech shows when the internet and wireless connections kind of first started, and every product would get an Internet connection. It's like, you have a teacup up, it's got Internet. Oh,
you have a frame, it's got Internet. You've got a speaker, it's got Internet everything. And now we're seeing that same trend with AI. This all started because of chat GPT. If you haven't used it, there is only one way to access it. It is through the website, which is OpenAI. That's the company that makes it. So it's chat dot OpenAI dot com. So do not get scammed into logging into chat GPT through an app or through pretty much
anything else. At this point, there is nothing else. There are products that run on top of OpenAI and chat GPT. But at this point, there is only one legitimate Chat GPT and that is through OpenAI's website. And so if you're trying to like log in with your Facebook, there's a lot of scams out there that have to do with that. Do not fall for them. Do not download an app to the iPhone or from Google. There is no chat GPT app right now, so just don't even
do it. If you want to use chat GPT on your phone, you can bookmark chat dot OpenAI dot com and that will work on your phone, it will work on your computer, and it's all free. Now it gets a little confusing because now there is a paid version of chat GPT called Chat GPT Plus and it's twenty
bucks a month, which is a lot of money. So you have to really have a use case for chat GBT plus to pay twenty bucks a month for this right now, Like you're a developer, you just you know, you just really really need something more than what they give for free. And keep in mind, Chat GBT is sort of locked into twenty twenty one. It is not up to date, it is not current. It's a research tool right now, and so if you're looking for answers that are past twenty twenty one. It just doesn't have
those right now. That will change. But that's the way chat GBT is. And it's an amazing, amazing application program, whatever you want to call it. It's really impressive. But I've been playing with the Google version of this AI stuff. They're calling it barred b A R D. And Google's AI. I've told you about this before. They were kind of their hand was forced in all this stuff. Now, I'm not saying that Google has not been working on a
for a very long time. They have. In fact, Google is using a lot of AI behind the scenes, and almost all of the products that they have, whether it's YouTube, whether it's Gmail, whether it's you know, any app that they have on Android, they use a lot of AI. But they never came out with their version of chat GBT until now because it flies in the face of
their entire business model. And if you want, by the way, to sign up for this, it's barred dot Google dot com and there's a wait list and you will get access. It just takes a little bit of time. So for instance, I signed up the first second it was available. I got access probably an hour later. My son he signed up probably the end of the day that day, which was a couple days ago, and he just got access today, so it could take a few days to get access.
They're rolling this out because it's test. They're trying to see how people use it, how it works, and just to you know, it's just a test. It's an experiment. They're calling it an early experiment. And generative AI means that this AI generates responses based on its knowledge. So nobody has sat there and programmed in these answers. It comes up with them on the fly. So it could be wrong, it could be right, it could be off, it could be amazing. So let me explain. Okay, Number
one Bard. The reason why they're calling it Bard, according to Bard, is that it's an old storyteller. That's what they were called back in the day, like a Bard, and so that's where they got the inspiration for the name. I don't know if that's true. That's just what Bard told me, so we have to take it at face value. But Google says you can use Bard to boost your productivity, accelerate your ideas, fuel your curiosity, fuel your curiosity. I've asked it so many questions in the past week, it's
quite impressive. I've said, Hey, I love this book, recommend me five books just like it. I also asked, give me I like this song, Give me a list of one hundred songs just like that song. It did it. I've asked for recipes. Hey, I have this, this, and this. Can you make me a recipe using those ingredients? Oh? Can you make it healthy? Can you make it vegan? I asked it last night, Can you tell me the best things on the menu at this restaurant I was going to? And it just spit out the answers. Now
here's the thing. It doesn't do as many citations as Bing does with their AI, so Bing will have at the end of their AI answers where it got those answers. Google is not as forthcoming all the time.
Now.
I've noticed sometimes at the end of the answer it will give you a link to where it got that information. Other times it will not, So you don't really necessarily know where this information is coming from. But what's amazing about bard is that it feels like you have literally the smartest person in the world at your desci You can ask anything to this person. It's not always going
to answer it. Sometimes it'll say sorry, I'm AI, I'm not trained on that, or it just gets a little cagey and it says, ah, sorry, Like if you try to like really push the limits of this stuff, there's a lot of guardrails built in right now because they
don't know what these AI systems are gonna say. They've programmed them to work, but they didn't program what they're going to generate, and so it's really anyone's guess as to how people flex the muscles of these different AI programs to make them do things that even the programmers didn't know they could do. For instance, just in the past week, I've asked it to compose a song. I've asked it to write biographies of people. And it's interesting.
If you ask it to write a biography, Hey who is rich Tomuro it will say sorry, I don't know. But if you put in their social media account, say hey who is at rich on Tech? Then it comes back with all the information. So again, it's just the way it's been programmed to do this kind of stuff. I've asked it to. It literally coded me simple websites. I said, hey, can you grab an RSS feed and create a feed of that RSS on this website and play the latest episode of my podcast, and sure enough
it did that. I said, hey, can you code a simple timer on a website and have this screen flash when there's one minute left on the timer? And it did that. I mean, this is really really advanced stuff and it's all free right now. And the reason why I said it flies in the face of Google's business is because there's no ads on it, and as far as I can tell, I'm not sure how they're going to implement ads unless it's a banner ad on this screen.
The other thing that's really unique about it is you can say thumbs up thumbs down if you like the answer. Because it's still learning. It also gives you different drafts of answer, so when you look at an answer, it will say, okay, well, our computer also came up with this, and it will you can look at different versions of the same answer, and you can also hit a Google button at the bottom of the answer to kind of see where where it lies with the Google search results,
how does it compare with those? And so that's unique to Google that I didn't really see on BING. These are all called large language models LLM, and what that means is They feed a whole bunch of information into this large language model, and it goes to town just figuring out what all that information means. And when you ask a question, it reaches into its information database and pulls out the answers that it thinks are right. It's
really really wild. If you haven't tried this yet, it's just and I know there's been so much talk about this stuff in the world, but it is going to change everything. It really really is. And when you sit here and use it, you realize that after a week, I am using Barred as my entire search engine. I don't use Google anymore because I don't need it. I'm asking for answers. If I need a link to a website, sure, but if I want an answer to something, I'm going
to Bard. Now keep in mind this is from Google, it says. Because there are so much information that this is programmed with, this will reflect real world biases, stereotypes, and sometimes this will show up in the answers. The answers can also be inaccurate, they can be misleading, and they can have false information all while being presented confidently, which means Bard may present an answer to you that seems right and you may run with it and it's
just flat out wrong. And the reason you don't know that is because it presents it in such a way where it feels authoritative. And that's the trickiest part to all of this AI and I think what's almost the Achilles heel to it is that because it can be so wrong on stuff and sound so right, we literally as humans almost have to fact check, fact check every single aspect of these answers. And at the end of the day, if you're fact checking all of these answers,
are they really answers. I mean, it's almost more work than in the beginning of when we went to the web. You would type in a search term, you'd go to that website. If the website was trusted, you would trust that information, and you could tell if a website is trusted most of the time if it's from a big name. Sometimes you couldn't. And that's where misinformation on the web comes into play again. So many things you can do with this. I just I really really find this fascinating.
I'm trying to see if there's anything else that Google says that's interesting about this. I think the main thing to know is barred dot Google dot com if you want to sign up and try it out. I've just been having a ton of fun. Can you can ask follow up questions? So if you're writing one thing, you can write a follow up question and say, hey, you know, I'd like to know more about that. You can modify kind of the answer that it gives you by asking
it follow up questions. It's really just phenomenal tools and it's free. This is free, and it's changing. Its going to change everything, especially as they figure out how this is going to be integrated into everyday life, how Google's going to use this, and most importantly, how are they going to get stuff right? Because that's the thing that I'm waiting for is when when can we trust this to really be solid and to give us answers that
we can go with. All Right, I see a bunch of you waiting online to uh to talk to me, So I will get to more of your calls coming up next at triple eight Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Email also open hello at rich on tech dot TV. I'll be right back. Welcome back to rich on tech Rich DeMuro here we were just talking about AI and Google barred
and swell seven on Twitter rights. If I as barred to write a song with me, who owns the copyright? Good question. This is what it's being figured out right now as we speak. I mean, there's a lot of a lot of people using AI now for everything from first drafts of things to artwork, and it's all being debated in the communities that are most at stake here or have the most steak here. I just did a
story with some artists that, you know. They're arguing that all these generative AI art platforms are being trained using artwork that other people made, and so how does that
factor into it? And it's really some interesting questions. I think Hollywood's also trying to figure it out with script writing, but as of right now, seems like the WGA is saying that if AI is used to start the script, the person who actually sort of polishes things up or writes it after that is the person who is the writer of it, and you don't even have to give credit to AI. So there's a lot of things that
are going to be figured out here. I don't think it's going to happen overnight, because anytime you have technology, it's always sort of ahead of the rules and regulations and laws and so. But when there's money at sake, yes, people will figure it out. Turtis is in Fountain Valley, California. Turtis, you're on with Rich.
I Rich, thank you for taking my call.
Yeah, what's on your mind?
So what happened is I have some fluorescent lights in my kitchen and they grew up in the ceiling and I replaced them as Elie okay, And since I replaced him, and that was only about two weeks ago, it's interfering with some of the some of the channels that we get, not all of them, but just some of them. Now, I didn't know it was an nine filter that I could put in.
To stop that, or or what might be.
What kind of lights are they? And what type of TV reception are we talking about? Were talking over the air antenna?
Yeah, we have a haven't having an old type antenna up in the attic that was up there when I bought the house site thirty five years ago.
Oh wow, so we're just using that.
Uh, you know, we did HDTV of course, and usually we get decent signals. But once I put those LEDs in. Uh, it's been interfering with the signals?
How how does it happen? So you turn on so you've got the TV tunto a channel, You turn on the LED lights and what happens? Everything just starts going haywire, it goes.
It just goes to a like a background of a picture, and then it just says, no signals.
Wow. You turn the lights off.
And you know in a few sections it will come back onto the to the channel.
Okay. Well, I mean LEDs uh could emit some electromagnetic radiation according to some of the research I'm seeing. So, but I would think that modern bulbs would be shielded enough to not make that happen in such a pronounced way. So what I would think is what types of lights are these?
Uh?
They're they're LED, but they're not the two types that were there linear or three feet long okay, all of them in the ceiling in the kitchen, in a reverse soft type thing like about eight or ten inches of Okay.
So these are these are pretty sizable light bulbs and this is a sizable array. And it also sounds like are they underneath the antenna as well as the antenna.
On top of them right now.
Unfortunately, the antenna wires. You know, we have like three different connections in our house, and so antenna comes out and there's a split or and then it goes to the other ones in the house and unfortunately right on top of ord.
Yeah.
Okay, well, okay, so's a couple of things maybe you can try. I don't think you want to replace all the lights because that's that's gonna be a problem. But maybe can use like a higher gauge wire that's maybe more shielded. Like, is there like a better cable you can use that that you can run up there or is that not an option?
You mean as far as the TV cable.
Yeah, exactly, like the cable that's yeah, that might be your best bet to start.
There, a shielded, shielded TV cable.
Yeah, I would try that first, and and try that and maybe maybe even if you can get up in the ceiling and uh just re route where that cable goes, maybe keep it, you know, more towards the edge of the house or more towards the sides. But I would try to get like maybe a thicker cable that is more shielded to to sort of shield off some of
the radiation that's coming out of these light bulbs. But also I'd be a little concerned standing under these light bulbs if they're causing this much interference with your TV set, because that could be a problem as well. But turnus good question, really really something I haven't thought of. But I mean, the only thing I could kind of relate is with the Wi Fi connections using the microwave. People don't realize how much the microwave could impact your Wi Fi.
So if you're having trouble with your WiFi, could be your microwave. Coming up next, we are visiting Outer Edge LA. This is an nftxpo. Rich on Tech Coming up next, rich DeMuro here, rich on Tech, Welcome back to the show. Recently, I went to Outer EDGELA, a festival that celebrates the future of the Internet. We're talking Web three stuff like crypto, NFTs, and the blockchain. First I talked to Outer Edge LA co founder Josh Kreeger.
We wanted to create an innovation vessel this celebrate all the incredible converging technologies that are kind of coming together in this special moment in time, and we just think LA is the app center of so much creativity from high technology to art, entertainment, music, fashion, comedy.
It all happens here, and so we want to bring all of.
Those communities together and talk about where this is all is going.
And so, explain to me what's an NFT.
Yeah, So the.
Technical sort of definition, it's a non fungible token. But I like to ask a couple of questions when someone asked me that question, It's like, is there anything in the world physically that you collect?
Right?
Is there any group that you're a member of? Usually the answer for ninety percent of the world is yes. Essentially, what we're doing is we're offering a digital sort of sort of value right of some sort of IP or some sort of ownership, digital ownership that's verifiable using blockchain technology and smart contracts.
How far have you come with this technology over the past couple of years since we started hearing about it?
Oh man, you know, there's a lot of analogies, like one day in web three it might be like seven weeks, or one month is like seven years.
It's been an.
Incredible rapid explosion of innovation, and it's come a long way, but it's still the first inning.
A lot of people are like well, where's all this going? Was this a bubble? We don't really see it that way.
We see it as sort of an experimentation phase over the last year and a half and now it's about real utility.
The reason we're doing this event and calling it out.
Of edge LA is to sort of talk about the real use cases for brands, for membership groups, and for society as a whole.
And we just see that as the beginning.
Where do you see the interest lie with when Crypto's up, cryptos down with NFTs.
Well, what I would say is that there's just been volatility in the markets globally, right, and so obviously smaller markets have more volatility, and crypto is a smaller market relatively speaking to the macroeconomy. At the same same time, I see the interest has been more focused on sort of the everyday use cases which we're talking about here.
So yes, like we've kind of gotten rid of a layer of speculation in the market and that has made the market relative, you know, I would say a little bit smaller than it was, say a year ago, but now it's growing again with people that are looking at true utility.
Next, I met up with Nihar Nilakante who runs Ecosapiens.
Ecosapiens is the world's first carbon backed NFT and it's a digital piece. It's a piece of digital art that offsets your entire years worth of carbon footprint and just one click.
How do you do that?
We work with a carbon project developer in Kenya, so we're actually working with a Kenyan soil carbon project. We bring those credits on chain, right onto the blockchain ethereum, and we disguise it as a piece of digital art called Ecosapian.
And how much does something like this cost me for the year? About one thousand dollars And what's the impact?
It's sixteen tons of carbon and more so, it's an entire year's worth of carbon fort right all your flights, you know, miles, et cetera. And it ends up planning over eight hundred trees and just let first go. You know, I come from a climate background, actually an in venture capital, and when I was thinking about how climate changed to be better addressed in society, a lot of it came down to sort of tokenization of carbon credits and just you know, using NFTs as a way to get people
to make an impact. And that was really the opportunity for me is like maybe you could get people, Maybe you could create a way for people to make an impact on the planet if you disguise impact as you know.
Art.
Sanjay Ragavon is with a startup called Roofstock. They're building a system that lets you buy rental properties one online via NFTs.
About eighteen months back, we started a web three division to make it faster, easier and more transparent to buy and sell dental properties. And so our web three division allows you to actually buy a real rental property in the US using NFT technologies, and you can also get alone on the blockchain, so and the whole process can be done in a few minutes as opposed to the several weeks it takes to buy a house in the US, whereas here on the blockchain, you can instantaneously become a
property owner. And we've actually sold three of these so far. This is on open Sea. We sold one last week. This property is located in Georgia suburb of Atlanta, and it's sold for two hundred and eighteen thousand dollars. But it literally took minutes to close this property. And it's a physical property, it's a real property. Yeah, what do
you think this means for the future of real estate? So, you know, I kind of compare it to the world where we used to hail a yellow cap to go to the airport before and then lift an uber came along and that changed everything. Ultimately, I think the convenience of getting something faster, cheaper, and just a much more pleasant experience for the buyer is going to make a
lot of difference. The fact that we've now done this as a pilot, we've sold a few homes proofs that it can be done in a legally compliant manner, and we hope that this kind of technology catches on and more and more people see the benefits are doing this way in the future.
Digital art is still a big use case for NFTs. Nadia Tiger is with Snark dot r. They're selling NFT art that changes over time.
With dynamic and FTS, it's a co creation process. You as a collector, become a part of the final artwork.
So why would someone want to own something like this?
Why people want to own art? It's the same like for what they did for thousands of years, people collected sculptures, paintings, and now there is a digital era that we are entering with such an interesting angle with blockchain technology. That's still a niche, but we are still on the surface. I believe of this what actually blockchain technology could provide for art.
Finally, I talked to jack O Hollering of Scale Labs about the ups and downs of all things digital. How's the NFT market changed in the past year or so, you know, I.
Think it's really maturing.
From the outside optically, it may look like it's shrunk and that it's gotten smaller, but it's actually the real growth is really coming forward. So the people here today are real builders. They're building with real use cases for NFTs. I think a year ago was more like what can we turn into an NFT? And now it's what can an NFT do? And so the utility and the core functional value is the center focus at this event.
And so what should the average person, what should they know about this market?
Yeah?
I think I think the same rules apply. Look for value, look for real use cases. And I think there are a lot of NFTs that were quick money grabs, and I say steer clear of those. But there are other amazing NFT projects launching that don't even say that the product is an NFT and they use the core values of the tech. So my advice is look for those types of applications, those types of use case. If you're interested in NFTs, want to own NFTs or leverage them or.
Use them, And what is the core value of this technology?
One is immutable ownership.
So if you have an NFT, it's yours.
The other from a user perspective, and you can get gated entry, special access, special access in games or in different online communities or in the real world at ticketing and events, et cetera. But from a build or a creator side, you can actually open up to a global marketplace and capture royalties in an automated fashion. And so I may create an NFT, you buy it, and you sell it to someone else in an automated way. I'm able to capture royalties without you needing to be at
my storefront. So it opens up economies and it smooths out the economic principles in trading and essentially creating a more effective and efficient market.
So compared it to like a baseball card.
Yeah, well, baseball cards are great. There's a huge secondary market for baseball cards. There are NFTs that are like baseball cards. But imagine if that same baseball card let you buy season tickets before people who didn't have that card, They can give you discounts when you came to the game, you had discounts on merchandise for your favorite team if you held that card. These are and if I wanted to sell it, I didn't have to go talk to
the team, I could just sell it to you. And the team is actually going to capture revenue during that transfer and not try to mitigate me my ability to.
Sell it or my ability to own it. So is this exciting for the future of things?
But my prediction is that we're going to see NFTs living across all of the products we use, but we're not going to call them NFTs.
There are going to be new names for them.
The value will come from the intrinsic value and the utility value of the products, as opposed to the speculative hype which we saw in this last wave for.
The market cycle. To see my TV segment on Outer Edge LA, go to rich on Tech dot TV more rich On Tech after this, Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich to Mirror so here a tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles hanging out with you talking technology. By the way, if you want to watch my TV segments, which I cover a variety of tech topics, you can just go to Rich on tech dot tv. I've got a cool YouTube playlist of all of the stories that I do. It's all it runs the gamut, all kinds
of stuff. I mean that NFT expo you just heard me at. I did a video piece there so you can see, you know, bring that to life. What else I've got all kinds of We interview a lot of people, a lot of like a wide range from apps. Let's see. I went to the Student Television Network conference, which is just kind of fun for me. We talked about last week the self heating baby bottle, home pod speaker review. Got my lucid EV review, not really a review, it's just more of like a look see on that one.
All kinds of good information anyway, All at richon tech dot tv. Chris is in Miami, Chris, You're on.
With Rich Hey Rich, good afternoon, stir.
Thank you for having me on. We appreciate it.
Thank you so much. I love your radio show.
By the way, well, thank you. That means a lot. But what's it like in Miami right now because it just finally stopped raining in uh Los Angeles.
Yeah, I've been paying attention to the well KFI am down there in LA as they were talking about the snow recently and lots of rain and flooding and building an arch and so you know, usually all the fun stuff that you get up.
On the radio down the well, it doesn't that's usually not what happens here. When it rains here, everyone goes nuts because it never rains and so we're just not prepared. Like people don't even have like roofs out here in Los Angeles because it's just all sunny. You don't need them. So now I'm just kidding, but you know what I mean, It's like we just don't even think about this stuff until it rains. You're like, oh no, I got to bring in the furniture outside like people live like anyway,
there's just it's indoor outdoor living here. Like people literally have their backyards set up as like you know inside like there's carpets and stuff because it doesn't rain that much. Anyway, I digress. What's on your mind?
Chris? Now?
You know what I wanted to just drop into your world for a few minutes, and getting on air was very easy.
It was a pleasant and really pleasant experience for me.
But I just wanted to find out I certainly have a WiFi right so I have the first generation Wi Fi router, and I have.
All new cats, you know, iphons, iPad, Apple.
Watches, Imax, etc. But looking at the Google Wi Fi routers, they have the new one with the Wi Fi sixteen, and then they had the one before that, which has the potential for being good, but it's it's hiring cont actually than their newer ones. But a lot of routers on the market. Wanted to throw it at you, see if you could toss me something back the ideas on do I need to be using sixty right now? I'm thinking planning for the future.
That sounds like a good idea.
In the interim, I.
Don't know, So I figured i'd see what you have to say about it and then don't have to.
Keep me very long on the car. Just wanted to ask a couple of questions.
But all right, good, good question. This is definitely a topic that a lot of people are curious about because and I sort of talked about these mesh routers earlier but they are very popular because it used to be had one router in the center of your house. Your cable company probably gave it to you, and it would put the signal out and it basically never ever reached all corners of your home, so there'd always be spots in your home, dead spots where the Internet just didn't work.
And this company euro came along and came up with a mesh Wi Fi router, which uses different access points that you put in your home, so instead of one router, you kind of have like three or four sometimes it's two, maybe three if you have a bigger house, and then those will work throughout the house and they all connect together to make one solid, good signal. So you are asking specifically about the Google routers, which now I think it's like the Google Nest. It's let's see what do
they go by. Yeah, Google nets is what they call them.
And so.
I feel bad saying this because you know, I like Google. I really love Google Next WiFi Pro that's what they call them. I love Google, but when it comes to their products. The problem with Google, Chris, is that Google is all over the place, and I feel like they do not put a lot of focus or attention into
things for very long. Not everything, but certain things. And so my fear with going with this Nest Wi Fi Pro is that you purchase it and then Google says, eh, we're kind of over that, We're not going to support that anymore. I feel like there's companies out there that are a little bit more dedicated to this lineup than Google. Google has a lot of stuff out there, and the Wi Fi routers are just one, so I think you'll be fine with them, and I've tested them. They work well,
they're nice, they look pretty good. I haven't speci tested this latest version that you're talking about, the Wi Fi Pro with six to E, but I personally use EUO E ER. They sort of invented the genre, and they are now owned by Amazon, which that's not my favorite. But the good news is I don't think that Euro's going away anytime soon, or that Amazon's going to lose interest in them anytime soon, because it's it's a pretty big business at this point, and it's a pretty viable
business and it's a pretty well known name. So I personally would probably look at Euro first and foremost if you have a problem with Amazon owning it. I mean if you're going with Google, then I don't think you would. But the cool thing about Eero too is that they just have a lot of products and a lot of these things work together. They work pretty well. The downside is that they can be expensive, and these things are
not cheap. So if you look at the different euro they do have a Wi Fi a six E, which I don't necessarily think you need right now. But if you're buying this system and wanting it to last for the next couple of years, which generally we don't switch out Wi Fi very often, so the sixty might be a good way to go, but you're going to pay a lot for that. I mean you're looking at a three pack is four hundred and eleven dollars, a two
pack is three hundred. So the thing about these different systems too, the higher you get, the more internet they can handle. So if you're getting say a four hundred megabit connection from your internet company, you probably don't need these pro models. But if you're getting a gig and above, that's when you want to get into these pro models because they can they can handle that higher bandwidth. So
that's really the delineation there. Now, if you want something that's that's much cheaper and a company that I like, and I think they're doing a really good job. It's called Villo Vlo and these are some folks that deflected from other companies that used to build this stuff. And you can look at their biography and their their company history to see what I mean by that. But they've got some smart people working at this company that I think is doing a really good job, and it's a
lot less expensive. And I think the main thing that may not be as slick with the Villo routers that you would get with something like Ero or Google is the software. And I think the software leaves a little bit to be desired. But the functionality of the system is actually really good, especially for how inexpensive it is. So if you look at their Wi Fi six system, it's one hundred and fifty five bucks for a two pack and that's probably going to be pretty good. And
I've tested this one personally. It's very good. The speeds are very good, it works really well, and so if you want something that's a little bit cheaper, that might be the way to go. If you want it really inexpensive, you can just go with their original that's ninety nine dollars for a three pack. So a three pack Villo Mesh Wi Fi system ninety nine bucks and you're not gonna have any dead zones in your house because I've tested this personally and it works really well. It's fast,
it's efficient, and it does what you need. So Chris, you're asking my opinion, that's how I would rank it. I personally would go with Ero, then Villo, then Google. And it's not that I don't love Google. I do like what they do. I just feel like with their software and hardware, or with their hardware specifically, you just never know. You wake up one morning and Google says, oh, we've discontinued our routers and that's it. Now, where's your support,
where's your service? All that stuff? So good question. That's what I would do. All right, let's real quick talk about Twitter. I know this is everyone's favorite topic. I know two people right now that are actively victims of being hacked on Twitter. So I don't know if that's going around right now or if you know Twitter has gone. It's almost like a rock tumbler right now, like Twitter is just all over the place. But the thing you
need to know about Twitter is that two things. Number one, you can't verify your account with a text message anymore. You need to turn on two factor authentication if you want to keep using Twitter. The only way you can do it right now is by using an authentication app. The apps I recommend our Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, or
an app called auth the au thy. You sign up with those programs and instead of getting a text message, these programs will generate a code every thirty seconds or something like that that you can enter into this app to authorize that it's you trying to log in. If you don't enter that code, the app will not let
you log in. You need to turn this on your Twitter account two factor authentication right now before you get hacked, because, believe me, these people are looking after these Twitter accounts because they know there's a change right now, and they know there's an opportunity to get in there. So please turn it on. All right, pull line's open eighty to eight. Rich one oh one, coming back after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. My name is Rich Demiro, talking
technology with you. Uh, let's go to Susan in Lancaster, Susan. You're on with Rich.
Hi, Rich, I have a sister who is she's not computer phobic, but she's basically a ludite and her computer is dying. I wanted to find out if a Lenovo what is it called the Lenovo? Uh, it's a chrome Book.
Hang on, I'll get my thing right here.
I'm driving, so of course nothing's working.
Yeah, it's the.
Five to one like.
Sorry, and so it's a it's a Lenovo Chromebook. Basically, I don't want you to distract.
From driving there by the idea flex five.
One Okay, Uh, so and so, and you're getting this as a gift for someone, Well.
No, I'm I'm I'm helping her to get a new computer, and I want to get her something that's really really easy intuitive, and the speed and the capabilities aren't that important.
Okay.
You know she goes online and she does email and stuff like that.
Okay, and this is you said this a Chromebook, right?
Yeah?
Yeah, I mean, look, I think that's the way to go for someone who is not necessarily can computer savvy. Now, don't get me wrong, Chromebooks are great. I mean there's you can do pretty much ninety nine percent of what we do on the computers these days is through a web browser, and a chromebook is basically a glorified web browser. And what's nice about it is that there's no viruses to worry about. The software is super simple. It's it's
pretty much always up to date. Like there's no lengthy software update installation kind of situations, you know, if there's ever an update, it just pretty much puts a little notification in the corner saying, hey, start your computer to bring it up to date. And you say, okay, which I think your friend can handle. The only thing I question, do they need a computer or they be okay with a lap a tablet like a like just like an iPad? Or is that too complication?
She has an iPad but manipulating stuff. I mean she does sometimes write stuff. And I don't think the keyboards on the tabs are all that great.
No, I would agree with that. If you're if you're if you want a keyboard and you want to type, I think that the computer, like the laptop form factor is still the best for that. Yeah, so I would agree with that. I would agree with that. Now, how did you land upon this specific Lenovo?
Well, I was I was just and around looking at different options, and I saw that you can get this kind of thing for you know, under three around three hundred dollars, Yeah, which is amazing. So rather than get a whole computer, I thought, well, maybe that's the way.
To go for that for that price.
Yeah, and again the chromebooks are are quite inexpensive. There are some that are even cheaper than that. But I would say to get a decent spect out system, you probably want something that's you know, at least three hundred maybe four hundred depends. But you said, it doesn't really matter with the capabilities. As long as they can get online and do their email and all that good stuff,
it's going to handle that. It's really when you try to do things like you know, when it comes to zoom and the video conferencing, that could be a little bit slower. Okay, she's not no way, okay, so no, no zoom. She's not doing you know, sixteen call, sixteen person calls.
No, she's not editing videos or anything like.
Okay, Yeah, then I think this will be just fine. I think that, uh, you know, if you want to see some recommended chromebooks. You know, I've been playing with the Acer five fourteen. I really like that one. It might be a little it's probably a little more expensive, so maybe not. But acer is A is a well known chromebook manufacturer. Lenovo definitely known for chromebooks as well. Those are probably the two biggest brands that I would recommend for those things.
So great, Yeah, great, okay, thank you so much.
That was exactly what I needed to know.
All right, Susan, enjoy and uh, you know, give your friends some lessons on uh, you know, get them on, like you know, some of these different things that you do. You sound like you're a little bit more savvy.
So well, I've been on.
I've been working with computers since the early eighties, so okay, I could tell I had I had the first.
Oh wow, that's that's going back. That's the that's like the Mac that was named after like Steve Steve, right, isn't that like the old Mac computer?
Yeah, it was the first. It's pre uh you know, pre the uh the little one where you needed the disc.
Oh my gosh wow. Yeah, I mean I'm not going back that old, but I remember like the floppy drive, and I remember having like megabytes of information on a floppy like I mean now, the fact that I just
downloaded yesterday an app to my phone. It was like ninety megabytes on my phone and I'm like, this is wild to think that this came to my phone in about three seconds versus back in the day you'd run your whole computer on a hard drive that was like twenty megabytes and this little tiny flash drive that carried you know, a couple of megabytes of data. So we've come a long way in our in our lifetimes.
Yeah, we sure had well. Back on with a baby Mac, it literally had to take a disc in and out. To run a program, you'd have to take take.
The main disc out.
Oh yeah, it's a new disc in and run it from there.
Was but it was so cute that you did.
Well, we have certainly come a long way. It's it's for the better or for the worse. Have you gotten on TikTok or.
Anything like that, because that's say, no, I'm not, I stay off social media.
Well I don't nothing.
You'd probably you'd probably get a kick out of Like even if you went on YouTube and just kind of search for that Lisa computer.
It might.
Yeah, I was gonna say that might bring back some memories. Yeah right, all right, Susan, were you headed? You said you're in the car. Where are you going?
Yeah, I'm going down to Brentwood to an organizing client.
I go and help her organize.
Nice. I used to live in that area. Very nice. Okay, Well, enjoy Enjoy the beauty of Brentwood, California.
From Brentwood Golf Course.
I used to run around that all the time. Enjoy. Yeah, oh yeah, many many times.
Yeah.
All right, Susan, thanks so much for calling. Appreciate it. And thanks for helping out your friend. That's uh, that's a good friend. When you help them pick out a computer, that's always always good. All Right, We've got more of the show coming up. Phone lines are open triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four two for one zero one. I don't do a lot of different activities, but I do run. That's my main thing. So you will see me running pretty much all over in any city I go to.
It.
It's the only thing you can do in any city that you go to. You can just go out your hotel, take a run, and you know you don't need to have any equipment. It's awesome. All right. My name is Rich Debiro more rich on tech coming up after this. Welcome back to Rich on tech rich on tech dot TV is my website eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Man, we got a lot of calls. Should I take some calls? Or should I do a story?
I feel like I need to do this. Let's see, let's do the story. Uh. Verizon free trial. This is brand new. If you want to try Verizon, if you've been wondering is Verizon right for me? You can try thirty days of service for free, and you can sign up right from your phone. I would say it's simple, but I tried to do it for my phone and my phone got stuck, so I wasn't able to actually get this to work. But I'm telling you because it will probably work on your phone. I got to try
this again. But if you have an unlocked mobile phone that means that you've paid off your phone, or you have an unlocked phone to begin with, you can sign up by downloading the my Verizon app. And once you download the app, right on the home screen, it will say, hey, you want to try a free trial if it recognizes that your phone is capable. And this uses what's called an eSIM, and eSIM is the whole new thing that everyone's using now. It's a simcard that is virtual, it's
in your phone. You don't need one of those little kind of cards anymore on your phone that you plug in or pop in. I guess I should say everyone's going into these eSIMs. So you can literally activate your
phone right from the app. It will give you thirty days of Verizon five G service, unlimited talking text, up to one hundred gigs of four G or five G data, and either four EIGHTYP streaming on four G or four K streaming if you have five GUW, which not every phone supports, but if it does, it'll pick that up and you'll get four K video at any time during your thirty day free trial. You can easily transfer your existing number to Verizon and pick from one of their plans.
But this this is new. So this is kind of like a new trend we're seeing with all of these wireless networks because they're all using e sims. It's very easy for them to offer a free trial, and so you can sign up either online or right from your phone. And I think I know that T Mobile does it. I know that Verizon does it. I'm not sure if AT and T does it, but a lot of the MV and o's do it as well. So you can get a free trial test run right from your phone.
And I've done this on a couple of them. One of them is US Mobile. I signed up for that one and as signed up, it took me like minute and I you know, your phone is activated instantly. So again I put links to everything I mentioned. I'm doing a really good job now of doing the links to everything I mentioned on the website rich on tech dot TV. Once the podcast is published of the show, it'll have everything you need in the show notes, so look for that.
All right, Let's go to Gloria in the Sand Fernando Valley, where it's always Sonny except for the past couple weeks. How you doing, Gloria?
Okay, thanks for calling in.
What's what's on your mind?
I need a new phone. This one keeps fading in and out when I talk to people. And not only that, it takes terrible pictures. It's a Moto G It really is terrible. And there's another question.
The two questions, what is this the two for one show? That's what's the other question? I have an answer for the first one, so that's pretty easy. But go ahead. What's your second question?
Then I go on site and I'm putting in like frankstance just now when you suggested that aufie, I tried to do that and I gave it my g le me see Yahoo account and it said no, it didn't accept it. And I thought, I'm new to you. How do you know I have another account? And so they seem to always know I have a Gmail account and they pretty much want the Gmail account instead of the Yahoo account.
Number.
Well, that makes sense because Gmail's superior to Yahoo. Male, so I get that. Uh, maybe they're just trying to say this is more secure. But let's get your first question first. The phone. So you've got a Moto G. I think you would be better served with a Pixel six A. Have you heard of this phone? The Pixel?
The pixel?
Okay, I had a Pixel a while back and it did take.
Really good Yeah.
Sure, it takes fantastic pictures. This is the phone that I trust with my own mom, So if it's good enough for her, I think that I can recommend this to pretty much anyone. The Pixel six A is uh is three hundred dollars. Here's the thing, though, they are actually coming out with a new version of this, the Pixel seven A, which we believe is going to be announced in May. So if you can wait a couple months,
you can get the latest, greatest version. But if you don't want to wait, I still think the six A is a fantastic phone. So the only downside i'd say is probably the fingerprint sensor could be a little bit better, and so maybe they fixed that with the new one. But I think you'd be fine with this six A. That's the only complaint my mom has is the uh is the fingerprint sensor, okay?
Because I also the audio when I'm listening to things the on news terrible on this motto, I see it I'm going death.
And my doctor said, well, that's good that doc says you're not. Because you know, sometimes we wonder like is it me or is it this phone?
Uh?
Sometimes with the phones, with the way they're the little ear pieces, it could be it's not lining up properly with our ear sometimes and it does sound like it's you know, if you're not right on your ear in the perfect place, that can happen. But I would say overall, the Moto G is probably not the best phone out there. So even at three hundred dollars for this Pixel six A, I think you're gonna have a much much better experience, Gloria, because not only are gonna get the better pictures, you're
gonna get better software. You're gonna get I think the audio on this phone will be fine, and I think that you're just gonna like the experience so much better. And it's.
Like you've talked about, I can wait.
Yeah, I mean, if you can wait for the seven A. The problem is the seven A is going to be more expensive because it's brand new. So this, you know, six A, I think is a pretty good deal. At two ninety nine, I think that's pretty much the best price I've seen on that phone.
That's a good price.
You're right, Yeah, how long have you had this Moto G A little.
Over a year? Too long? I kept taking it back and they kept saying that it's okay, everything is fine.
No, this thing's a limit, and what what's your carrier?
And it didn't matter the carrier because it's changed a couple of times. I went in the Horizon uh to and I when I changed phones, the Verizon refused to let me keep my phone numbers, so I wound up going to what was it tea Mobile and Team Mobile was able to get my phone number keep it and so I stayed with them for a while.
And all right, Gloria, I got to run. They're they're playing playing me off right now. So check out the Pixel six A. It'll work with whatever carrier you have because it is unlocked. Coming up, we are going to talk to Adobe about shopping insights how you are shopping online and in store with Adobe analytics. Coming up right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here. My guest is Vivic Pandea. He is the insights analyst at Adobe. Vivic, thanks for joining.
Me, great, thanks for having me Rich.
So, I love the findings that Adobe always comes up with with their insights. A lot of it is dealing with, you know, Black Friday and the shopping seasons, but throughout the year you come out with stuff, and recently you have now looked into sort of buy now, pay later usage. Tell me what's going on with that because this is something you see on almost every website now.
Cour So, given the inflation effects that are sort of permeating through the markets and the landscape, the consumers are dealing with. We're seeing them continue to drive growth in Buy Now, Pay Later, so its order share is up fourteen percent year over year, and we're seeing how that looks across some of the major categories that run across
e commerce, so grocery, apparel, electronics, home furniture. I would say grocery has been a category that's seen a lot of inflation, and as a result, we're seeing buy now, Pay later utilization up forty percent for order share for those types of buy now, pay later orders, So that's pretty significant, and it's speaking to consumers trying to stretch their budget, drive the sort of purchases and behaviors that got entrenched during those pandemic years, those early pandemic years,
and now they're trying to see how online can help them save money, help them make payments easier.
Interesting and it looks like two of the biggest growth areas are home furnishings and also grocery, which is interesting because traditionally you would not think about buying home furnishings online, you know, that's something you'd go into a store for. And then of course groceries throughout the pandemic that really increased so we saw over ten percent increase year over year in both those categories, which is ironic given that I shop online for groceries and I was looking at
couches the other day as well. Are you saying that people are using this buy now, pay later to shop in those categories or just in general.
Both we're seeing, you know, the shift given inflation from non essentials to essential categories and necessities that consumers need, and home furniture kind of sits on the cusp of that. There are some items that are nice to have for the home, others that feel more like necessities, and in order to make your home comfortable, you really need those goods.
And home furniture, like grocery, saw the seal broken through the pandemic where consumers found, oh wow, that's actually not too bad buying these goods online, buying a seven hundred dollars couch, you know, maybe a couple of thousand dollars across different types of items, and the ease of getting
those goods directly to your home has improved. We're seeing consumers understand that the sort of mail delivery systems that got very stressed during those months of the pandemic, those intense months of the pandemic has eased the supply chains of ease, so that's helping consumers think more in terms of ease and efficiency to get these goods across these major categories.
Now, another insight is that mobile shopping is expected to overtake desktop shopping in twenty twenty three. That is a huge shift.
Absolutely, It's it's not news that people are using smartphones to buy goods, but what we have found to be a really important threshold is when the smartphone would become the dominant shopping and they would see the bulk of their dollars being spent through that phone. And what we're finding is retailers are understanding that they have to really prioritize the mobile experiences that they're serving consumers, making sure that the websites and the apps that they're selling products
on are providing the best output for consumers. Given that's how they're growing markets into these different audiences and where there's momentum in terms of consumers finding them.
It's been such a shift, even for me personally, because it used to be if you really wanted to do serious shopping, you would go to your desktop, and now I feel like with some of these websites, it's easier to shop on the phone and even through the apps. For instance, buying a plane ticket. I've noticed that sometimes it's easier to buy from your phone because you can use your Apple Pay from your phone on the mobile app versus on the desktop where you're typing everything.
In the use case you're describing there is exactly what retailers and travel facilitators have been hoping for, which is given that we have more and more mobile first thinking amongst consumers that they're spending a lot of time on social media across these apps, that the idea that they can bring the large swaths of audiences from those sources to their e commerce properties. It has been a real focus and making it easier can really drive growth for them.
Given where consumers are right now, where they expect a lot of ease and efficiency in buying these goods and having it available for them.
It's all about having that stored payment method that really makes a huge difference on a lot of mobile shopping. If you have to start typing stuff in, you're just like I never mind. Okay. One of the places that is actually a challenge though, is mobile for smaller retailers, and I can understand this for something like a local business that may not have a strong presence on mobile, and you're saying that that is actually hurting them.
It's really paramount that their mobile experience and mobile site it's properties be ready for this traffic and be ready to convert effectively that consumers don't get frustrated on these sites and then say Okay, well I'm going to go shop somewhere else where. This is much easier. So really, we saw a lot of larger retailers invest in this
over the years. We're hoping to see smaller retailers try to pick up the momentum in terms of being able to compete on these types of devices, because it's more important.
Now than ever now. During the pandemic, it was all about picking up at the store and really getting things shipped to your home. But if you couldn't do that, you'd go and you'd do that curb side pickup. I've seen Target has invested very heavily and sort of the curb side pickup situation. But I'm looking at your stature. It says in twenty twenty one, twenty three percent of online orders use the curb side, then nineteen percent in twenty twenty two, and now in the first two months
of twenty twenty three it's down to seventeen percent. So what's happening with curb side pickup?
So it's really a great question that we get to answer through what we're seeing in the categories. When we think about something like grocery, that's still a category that's seeing click, click and collect by online pickup and store momentum because consumers need these goods, they want to get
them efficiently avoid shipping costs, so we're still seeing growth there. However, things like electronics, apparel, these categories are seeing growth come down for them overall, and consumers are more aware that the delivery systems are, you know, moving at a decent pace now, so the urgency around getting some of these goods has sort of slowed down and they're opting in for a sort of efficient habit straight to my door mode of fulfillment for some of these goods as well.
Finally, just explain to me how does Adobe get this information. I'm always curious how Adobe Analytics gets these insights.
Great question, So when we think about our data set that we analyze through Adobe Analytics, it's what we call our aggregated opt in data set. It's anonymized, and retailers opt in to allow us to analyze this data set at this sort of ten thousand foot level because we're able to provide them a lot of value in terms of what we're seeing in terms of broader trends, and we provide them sort of reporting on how they're performing relative to their industry.
Vivic, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thanks very much for having me.
Rich all right, Vivic PANDEA insights analyst at Adobe. You can learn more at Adobe dot com. My name is Rich Dumiro. Will have more rich on Tech right after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich on Tech dot tv is where you can find me online. Let's go to Arthur in Orange County. Arthur, you're on with Rich.
Hey, how you doing, man, I'm doing listen to you on the mornings and Saturday when I'm ubering shown.
Does it make your Does it make your ubering go any faster?
Actually?
It done?
Man makes an iggle back. It's a little bit quicker.
All right.
I got a problem, bro Oh yeah, my laptop is needing a bit locker needs a key of code. I I don't know what to do other than just shut the thing down.
Maybe I should take it in.
I mean, what what what kind of laptop? So it needs a okay, so BitLocker this is It sounds like this is some sort of security program for your computer, encryption program? Did you enable this at some point?
I don't know.
I don't remember, right, that's the thing. This is like something that that you probably don't remember doing, right, That's what it sounds like. Right. What kind of computer is this?
HP?
Okay? And so you turn it on and it says.
What It just tells me where to go the start menu, and you know, it just gives me directions on what to do. But when I tried to control all the lead or something like that, it won't take me out.
Okay, So it's basically locked. The computer is locked up unless you put this code in there, yes, okay, And I don't know what the code is. I don't know, Okay, So I think what what's happening here is that when this computer was set up? How long have you had this computer?
Six months?
Oh? That's it? Yes?
Oh? No, hmm okay. Interesting. I mean, I'm I'm familiar with the idea of it. So I think that typically these are you know, this is a security program that's on computers, and it's an encryption mechanism. So typically and if it's asking for a key, that key is the is the key that unlocks the encryption. So you can't do anything without it. So if you don't have that key, you kind of have a problem. But I think what you can do now, do you have a lot of stuff you need to save on here?
I have some writings and stuff and I was sending out your reader's digests and I was online said that's some of this stuff just isn't going to be saved.
Okay, Rich, I didn't back it up. Okay, Well here's the thing. Number one. Obviously, I always recommend backing up everything, putting you know, if it went in doubt. Try to use the cloud for different things. I'm looking online here and it looks do you have a Microsoft account?
You have to do?
Okay, So it looks like you may be able to get this recovery key by signing into your Microsoft account. Oh okay, So if you have a different device, maybe even your your phone, if you can sign into your Microsoft account and go on there and look for your recovery key. It might be located inside your account settings. So I can't go into my account right now because I can't really you know, navigate to all those places. But I think that that is the first place to look.
Now if you can't do that, like if you if you don't find it there, you know, you may have to just refresh this whole computer, which means start from scratch, and you may need if you don't know how to do that yourself, you may have to enlist the help of someone to format this thing and to start over, which I know is not the answer you want. But I think you know what I think, Chris Arthur. I
think you're gonna find this in your Microsoft account. I've hoped that it's there because the fact that you have a Microsoft account, the fact that you this computer is six months old, I feel like you're gonna find it in there. And I'm trying to look in mind to see if I have I don't have this enabled on any of my computers that I know of, so I don't think i'd have a bit key in mind, But
I think that that's that's where you should look. So let's see security trying to see if there's any sort of digital security options in here, but that's where I go. So just go to like account dot Microsoft dot com, sign in, and then look under your account settings and just see, like under security if it's in there, and let's let's hope that it is, and that way you can put that key in there. It's a forty eight digit code. It looks like so not something you'd remember off the top of your head.
You give up to a good start man, Thank you, and again I enjoyed the program.
All right, well, thanks and thanks for driving us around. You want to tell us a fun Uber story or no, do you have one? That's uh lucky, I don't have one.
I like that poor gentleman yesterday.
That's good.
Yeah, I'm a guy who just doesn't have stories.
All right, Well, that's good, that's good. I was the guy who, by the way, said that the option have an option for talking or not talking, because sometimes I get into the uber and I want to talk and I'm chit chatty right, And other times I'm just tired, I'm dead from the day and I'm just like, please don't talk. So now the Uber app has that option. So do you ever see that? Do people ever say, don't talk to me.
No, not at all.
Interesting. Well maybe it just asks me and it never tells you.
Well, I'm sure you know, when you're you get in the car, people recognize you.
You know, it's funny, you'd be surprised. There's always that thing where they look in the roofy mirror and they're like, are you that guy? It's it happens, believe me. And I'm just like always kind of waiting for it. But you know, it's it's always fine. I mean, look, it's you know, I'm on TV. It's it's something that comes to the territory. All right, Arthur, thanks for keeping folks safe out there on the roads of southern California. I
really appreciate it. And good luck with this computer. I hope you figure this out because I'd rather have you recover this than not. Okay, we're going to get to the feedback section in just a second before we close out the show. But first I want to tell you about this because we've talked about AI so much, Producer Aaron, I think you'd actually like this. This is a new tool that lets you that helps you write your wedding
vows with AI. So this is a website with joy dot com slash writer's block, and you go to this website and it says help me with my wedding toast speech, my love story for my wedding website, registry, gift suggestions, wedding vows, a thank you note, or a polite decline to an invitation, and you type in some of the things that says you can given by whoever you are sibling, best man, mother, father, whatever, highlighting a story and you can type in a couple of stories that you have
with this person. And then you can say in the style of a friend, haiku, a romantic Shakespeare, a therapist, a pirate, a pessimistic x, a TikToker, or an astrologist, and you click inspire me, and it will literally write your entire wedding speech. Now you're gonna have to go through this and you know, fact check because it does take some liberties with the story. But it's pretty good. I tried this yesterday. It's your first draft. So if you need to write a toast for someone, check it
out with joy dot com slash writer's block. Just one of the examples of how AI is changing our world. I remember my brother's speech for me, he might have had a couple of You know, I think a lot of people get that liquid courage when they do these toasts, and sometimes it turns out good, sometimes not so much. Aaron says he's done three, So yeah, it's an art form. All right. Let's get to the feedback segment. Before we got to go here, let's see Richard says, HP Instant
Ink scam. Hey, good morning. I went to cancel HP Instant Inc. And I saw a message that HP would render my already purchased and installed ink cartridge inoperable if I canceled the subscription, then I need to go buy one at a store to use my printer. The one in the printer is still full. Is this real? It makes me so angry. Yes, it is real. I had the same exact thing happen. I went to go cancel my HP Instant Inc. Because I was printing out so much stuff, and I realized, oh, I got to pay
two hundred dollars to buy new cartridges. I guess I'll just stick with the HP Instant Inc. So I up my subscription and now I'm paying thirteen dollars a month to print. Now I do a lot of printing for this show, so it makes sense for me. But I was surprised just as much as you were, Richard. But yes, it's legit. The ink cartridges in your printer are rendered obsolete when that happens. Can you believe that? So weird?
So I literally just had to look at the pricing and I was like, eh, once I added up all the different colors and all the blacking cartridge, Nah, it added up to way too much. All right, that's gonna do it. For this episode of the show coming up next week, I'm taking a test drive in the Hyundai Ionic six EV, so i'll tell you about that. It's been such a ride, in the words of Arthur, what a fun, fun ride. Today. You can find me on social media at rich on tech. The website is richon
tech dot TV. Don't forget to check out my TV segments. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. I'll talk to you real soon.