018 Rich on Tech Radio Show - May 6, 2023

Channel five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the show. Show number eighteen. Phone lines are open at Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call. If you have a question about technology, you can also email me. Email is now open. Send the email to hello at richontech dot tv. So I'm getting a good number of you around town saying that you're listening to the show, that you like the show. I mean, friends and family

tell me that. But you know, I discount that because they sort of have to say that. But when I hear it from you, it means a lot because you don't have to and it's an extra step.

I get my printer driver to work? I mean, you know you can call and ask that, but you know, maybe you're deciding between two security cameras, maybe you're trying to find an app that does something special, maybe you're just stumped on something that you're trying to figure out, or maybe it's more, you know, a longer ended question and like an open ended question like the effect of AI on your job or something like that. So give

me a call Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I'll also put the phone number up on the website if you want to go to the website. It is Rich on tech dot TV. So in case you can't remember the phone number right now there it is. So this week I got to tell you a story because this was kind of funny. This happened to me yesterday.

And I'm a big fan of that show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Like I just watched like every one of those episodes, and just that sense of humor, and if you've watched it, it's a it's a very particular sense of humor. That's

my sense of humor. Larry David always getting into trouble and you know, he's the guy behind Seinfeld, and so it's a very specific type of humor where it's just kind of a observation on life and the little weird, funny things that happen to you sometimes and a lot of times, you know, these things happen and it's kind of like just you and you're just you and your brain kind of going over them. And so I was at the grocery store yesterday, and of course I'm at

the high tech grocery store. I'm at the Amazon Fresh, which is a grocery store that is fully automated. So you walk in and there's a bunch of cameras on the ceiling and they all figure out what you take, and then you just walk right out with the stuff that you want and it charges your card. It's all pretty high tech. It's pretty amazing. Who knows how long

it'll be around. I know that Amazon has a history of starting things and then just getting rid of them, but I'm loving it while it's here because it's literally the fastest way that you can go into the grocery store, grab what you need, and get out. The only thing I don't like is you never know how much you're spending until you get the receipt about an hour later. It's not instance. You don't have any sort of like running total of what you're getting. That's the only downside.

You know, if you ever at the cashier and you're like, oh, I just spent a lot, maybe i'll put that back. Yahble, I'll put that carton of eggs back. I don't know if that would save you bunch. But anyway, so I'm in the store, and we've used this store a bunch

of times, so I knew that one time. You always have to check to see your receipt, and they send you an automated receipt that says, here's all the items that you picked up, and here's how much we're charging you for them, and ninety nine percent of the time. I will tell you, I am quite impressed with this technology. They somehow figure out when you pick up a stick of butter, the exact brand and how many you took.

Even if you take this thing off the shelf, look at it and put it back, somehow the computers figure that out. Now, when I talk to the people at Amazon, they said that it's obviously there's some secret sauce going on there, but you are almost like a human cart, like if you were shopping online adding things to a cart. You are the car. So when you go into that store, even if you go in with your two kids, you

all become the same car. And so if they pick something off off the shelves, it will register that to you. So it's it's pretty impressive what they've done. Anyway, I tell you this because if there's ever something that's a mistake, you can just go in on your phone and say I didn't grab that item, and they will just credit you. They'll give you a refund for that item. Well, one time, you know, you always go through your receipt. My wife went in and I said, hey, did you buy this?

And it was kind of an odd item that we don't usually purchase. She goes, no, I actually took that off the shelf for someone else, and I said, wait what? And so she took it off the shelf that was up high and handed it to someone and we got charged for it because once it goes in your hand, it is linked to you the basket, even if you hand it to another person. I asked Amazon about that and they were like, huh, yeah, I guess that would happen.

So I don't know if they fixed this problem. But yesterday I'm in the store and this kind old woman says, excuse me, can you reach up to that shelf and grab that salsa down for me? And I feel so bad even saying this, but I said, oh, ma'am, I'm sorry, but I can't because I will get charged for that item. And she looked at me like I was like I was an alien, and she just like was like not understanding what I was saying. I was like, I'm so sorry, but like the way this store works, it's high tech.

If I grab that item and hand it to you, I will pay for it. And she just didn't get it, and so I felt so bad and I probably, yes, I probably, looking back, could have eat the cost of the three dollars saucea that I was going to pull down from the shelf for her. But it was the principle of the technology. And so I'm sitting there and

I'm like, this is such a Larry David moment. This is such a curb your enthusiasm moment where this woman I hope she doesn't recognize me from TV because she will have a story to tell forever that this friendly TV guy would not grab the thing off the shelf. So what I did. I actually went over to an Amazon associate and I said, excuse me, can you please grab this thing off the shelf for her? Because if I do it, I know I'm going to get charged. If you do it, I don't know what's going to happen,

but it's better you than me. So moral of the story is, I hope Amazon fixes this technology, but it is the loophole in You know, my wife and I were discussing this later as we laughed about it that if you ever want something for free, just ask someone else to grab it for you that doesn't know. So if you're in an Amazon store, Amazon Fresh, that's automated and someone asks you, hey, can you grab that off the shell for me? Don't fall for the trap because

I don't know if I was getting scammed or not. No, I'm just kidding. I wasn't getting scammed. But oh man, so I'm sorry. This is my formal this is my formal apology to you, ma'am that I did not mean to not take the thing off the shelf. But you know, this technology is still evolving. And I love the Amazon Store, but they need to figure that out because I will gladly take things off the shelf for people at any other store, just not the Amazon Fresh. Okay, I had

to get that off my chest. Let's see what else this week. Couple of things. So, I saw the return of the Jedi movie, which is back in theaters. And I'm not one of these big like Star Wars folks. Like I know. I've got a lot of friends. I live in Los Angeles, I went to USC. There's a lot of Star Wars folks among me, right among my friend group. I'm not one of them, but I love

the movies and I've seen them. But after watching this movie in the theater, I realize that I know nothing about Star Wars like I must have watched these things when I was a kid and forgot everything, and I'm back in So I saw Return of the Jedi they're currently doing like it on the big screen, because it was the whole like May the Fourth be with you the fortieth anniversary. And I just subscribe to that AMC thing, that a list where you get to see as many

movies as you want. So I'm trying to get my money's worth for the twenty five bucks a month. I'm now paying to see movies that I don't see. And so I'm like, all right, fine, I've got a free Wednesday afternoon, let me go to the movies. So I go. I felt guilty it was after work, but you know, I'm going by myself whatever, and I go to the movie theater and it was great. I had such a

great experience. It was so relaxing. But now that I saw this Return of the Jedi, which is out of order because that's like the third movie, I want to see them. Well, I know the Star Wars folks will tell me that was like the sixth movie, but really, to me, growing up with the original Star Wars, that's the third movie. So now I want to see the first twobe I'm like, should I wait for them to be in the theater? But I got to say number one, the movie totally held up like it was such a

fantastic ride from start to finish. It looks so good on the big screen. I gotta say it was just fantastic. Couple other little things. Number one movies by yourself. I didn't know what to think of that because it's not something I typically do, And so I pulled folks on my Instagram and I said, would you go to a movie by yourself? And about seventy five percent of you said, absolutely, no problem. I love going to movies by myself. Or

I would go to a movie by myself. Twenty five percent of you said no, I would not do that, and a lot of you dm me to say that your husbands do it, but you don't. So maybe there's sort of like a divide there between men and women with the whole going to the movies by yourself. For the record, there's only about four of us in the movie theater, by the way, which was awesome because it

felt like a private movie showing. The other thing is that AMC now accepts tap to pay, So round of applause for AMC theaters finally getting with the you know, the year twenty twenty three or I should say, like, I don't know when did I cover a tap to pay? Probably like five, six, seven years ago. So anyway, I'm glad they're finally on board because it just makes life a lot easier. So I was able to do that, So if you haven't been to an AMC, they do that.

And the other thing that people didn't know about because I posted this to the Instagram at rich On Tech as well, is there's a little secret movie bundle you can get with a drink and a soda for five bucks and it's called like the Cameo Combo, and it's only for folks that are part of the AMC like rewards. You don't have to pay for it, you just like maybe you do, I don't know, but if you're part of like the A list or the stubs whatever, you

can ask for this. And it took the guy a little bit to like it was almost like a secret society thing where I'm like, do you do the cameo combo? He's like, what's that? I'm like, oh, you know, like the small drink the small popcorn. He's like, yeah, I think we can do that. And it was like this weird thing where it was like a secret thing where I don't know. So anyway, if you're going to the movies, you go solo, cameo, combo. You'll see me there by the way, say hi, because I am now going to

the movies as much as humanly possible. I liken it to going to the gym, except for the mind. It's relaxing, it's therapeutic, it's nice, and I don't care what setup you have at home, it does not beat the actual movie theater setup and that movie theater experience. So that was a lot of fun. All right, what's coming up on the show today? Where are my notes for what's coming up on the show. We've got so much. Number One, we've got let's see, I had this all written down

and now, of course I can't find it. Coming up on the show, We've got a couple of great guests. We're gonna talk to the CEO of Farmers Fridge. So Farmers Fridge is in the airports. They do this refrigerator that has refrigerated salads that are healthy and fresh. So that's gonna be awesome. We're also gonna go to the Actxpo. This is where all of the future of clean fleet transportation is on display. It's so cool. I'm gonna take

you there. Plus later in the show, so we're gonna talk to the founders of one of my favorite gadgets, the Aura Frame. This is a great gift for Mother's Day. So if you're thinking of trying to find something for that person that's tough to find a gift for, uh, you'd want to stay tuned for that. And of course, phone lines are open at Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Coming up

your calls. Plus, I'm gonna tell you why AI is becoming a problem not only in Hollywood but pretty much everywhere. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. I'm gonna be talking about the topics of the week in the tech world that I think you should know

about and uh websites. Rich on tech dot TV, Robert kicks off this show in Mira, Mesa, California. Robert, you're on with Rich.

you could load onto an iPad or a smartphone. Sure, but they no longer support the application.

best camera, but a couple things. So there's a website called voice Dream, and so they seem to make a very popular app that does exactly what you're talking about. And it's a scanner app. Now I can tell it's a good one because they charge ten bucks right off the bat. So there's not even a free version of that app. So that's called voice Dream Scanner, and it's exactly what you're saying. You scan the page and it

will read it back to you. Now, they also have a free version of that, which is a voice Dream app as well. So there's a free version, but that's one where you have to feed a page into it. So that's for something that you've already had that is scanned. And by the way, the iPhone has a scanner functionality on it. If you go into the files app you

can actually scan documents. So if you want kind of a free workaround, you can get the free app from voice Stream and then you can just combine that with the scanner or the free app and scan the stuff in the other one is natural Reader Naturalreaders dot Com. They have a free app that is very very popular, and that one can read any text that's on that app, so you can copy and paste, or you can use something like a PDF or a document to put that in there as well. And then the other thing is

called read Speaker. I don't have much experience with that one, but that's a text to speech that's more of a voice solution, So I don't think that that's going to be exactly what you need, but it's something to investigate. But those two things, so look up voice Stream and also naturalreaders dot com. I think you're going to find the solution you need. And thanks for calling in today, Robert, appreciate it all.

and the sellers. They want to buy the product, the seller obviously wants to sell it, and they're making it and that's what really is making this pretty exciting right now. There are a few options. Battery electric is definitely one of the big ones. There's a big push on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which we see in both passenger and the commercial sector.

on Tech. I posted a reels last night and it's it's pretty wild just how quiet these trucks are because you're so You're so used to these big diesel trucks being loud. So if you want to hear what they're trying to do for the future, you can see see that there and hear it. Colleen writes in I listened to you on KFI and watch you on KTLA. Colleen in Tampa, Thank you. Colleen. Janet writes in, Hey, rich someone hacked my account, my Facebook account and used my

photo and my account to sell tickets. I contacted Facebook online. I'm getting blocked from getting into my account. I tried a phone number, but the response was not answering calls at this time. Do I write a letter to Mark Zuckerberg? Thank you, Janet Janet. I don't think Mark is replying to letters right now due to accounts being hacked. So I think the place to go is Facebook dot com slash hacked. As far as I know, there is not a phone number that you can contact Facebook at to

get help with that. The best thing that I know of is to go to Facebook dot com slash hacked. You follow the instructions there. I know it's tedious, it's time consuming, it's annoying, but that is the best way to get a hacked Facebook account back. And by the way, if you don't want your Facebook account hacked, set up two factor authentication. That is the best way to do it. Every single person I talk to that gets their Facebook

account hacked is in one of several ways. Number one, they log in to a phishing email that says, hey, log into this page and it's through their Facebook account, and they just gave away their account information, or they don't have two factor authentication on and they don't get that secondary code, and once the hackers get in, it's a pain to get your account back. Let's go to Jim in Punta Gordo, Florida. Jim, you're on with Rich.

four to one zero one. I just wanted to mention quickly this whole AI thing. I mean, this entire show could be about AI. Well, actually, I don't think I've tied to mention AI, so let's not do that. Let's come back after the break and talk about AI. In Hollywood. We've got a big strike going on here and AI is a part of it, so we'll talk about that. You're listening to rich on tech rich damiro here rich on tech Ah a new remake of such a good song. This is by Rita Aura, such a good song. That gosh,

when did that original come out? Fat Boy Slam Praise you. There's a great music video two thousand and seven. Oh my gosh, wow, that was a while ago. Okay, So most of the people listening to that song, or many will not even know that there was an original but I guess that's how it is a lot of stuff in this world, right rich damiro here rich on tech eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to four to one zero one. You also seem to like the email address, So hello at rich

on tech dot tv is the email address. Let's go to Sarah in Ventura. Sarah, you're on with Rich.

it was Logitech's Squeezebox radio. This was this was kind of like back in the day. I guess they still make this, No, but this was a little radio that you could put in your house and it would tune in the you know, any sort of Internet stream and just a wide variety of streams and it was like everything. But that they haven't made that a long time. That was by Logitech, but it says discontinued by manufacturer. That

was the last thing that I remember. But as far as as far as a mobile device, I mean, you're better off with just a pocket radio. I mean, just get a radio that picks up regular over the air radio stations. I don't know if it would get the I think you said the NAA like the weather report from I think that's what you're talking about there, but

I'm not sure. I think that. Yeah, like just an FM tuner, just a standard walkman or something like that would be your best your best bet in that circumstance because the streaming is not going to work without the Internet. So yeah, I mean a smartphone is really what everyone's using. But if you don't want to do that, that's you know, that's not going to work. Thanks for the question, appreciate that. Uh, let's talk about AI because this is something that I

know I could make the entire show about AI. It has really taken such a commanding role in not just the tech world, but the entire world, and everyone's trying to figure out how this is going to affect them, how it's going to affect their company, their bottom line,

and the world at large. Because if you think that this is just going to be used for searching on the Internet and coming up with turn papers, well no, there's going to be a lot more that AI is going to be used for, and a lot of it's going to be good, whether it's medical, whether it's productivity, whether it's optimization, efficiency, all that stuff. AI is going to be great for that, but it's also going to be used in bad ways as well. And we're talking war,

we're talking theft, we're talking crime, we're talking cybercrime. There's so many ways that this can be optimized. But the thing I want to talk about right now is this whole Hollywood strike. So I know that this is very highly WOULD centric because I'm based in Los Angeles and the strike literally, you know, happens outside the front doors

of you know where I work. But this is something that affects you because if you've probably noticed that a lot of your TV shows are already in rerun, especially the late night shows, it's going to take a little longer to trickle down to other things. But some of those shows are just stopping, you know, they're they're just not making new episodes right now. But one of the things that the writers obviously a laundry list of things that they want, but one of the things that they're

concerned about is this idea of AI writing scripts. And it's probably not happening in a huge way just yet, but I see the potential, and I see the potential in a couple different ways. Number One, the writers don't want to be the polisher upper of something that AI writes. So let's say you're a writer, this studio comes to you and they say, hey, can you polish up this script? Well, where did this script come from? Oh, we just got

it out of our AI machine. It just came up with this new action adventure movie or romantic comedy, and we need you to kind of, you know, make sure everything sounds right and the lines sound good, and the characters are all potentially you know, figured out in the proper ways. And so, by the way, that polisher upper job is a lot less expensive than the person who writes the script job. And then this person has to go through all this AI and make sure everything's right

and make sure it looks good and sounds good. So they don't want to be playing second fiddle to AI. I understand that. But the reality is, at some point this is going to be a force in Hollywood because think about it. AI can write things like trivia questions and think about this idea and this is not my idea per se, but this is something that's been kind of percolating. Is that let's say you're writing a screenplay off of a book. Well, in the past, the writer

would read the book and come up with the screenplay. Well, what if you just fed that book into AI and it can pop out the screenplay instantly, or you know, matter of minutes and now you just need someone to go through and make sure everything kind of sounds good with that. Or what if you have a franchise right

back to the Future. You feed it all of the Back to the Future movies and you say, now, right back to the Future four and it writes Back to the Future four based on one, two, and three, Or hey, write me a new Home alone based on all these movies, or a new Jurassic Park or a new Marvel movie. I mean, these are things that it could do because software,

it's smart and it's only getting better. So Hollywood, you know, it's not the only thing that they're picketing about, but this is definitely one of those things that they kind of want to figure out, like where does AI live in Hollywood? Can it write scripts? Can it write stuff? Do we have to polish this up? And so I think that that's going to be something that they're going

to talk about. And I'm not sure that Hollywood is going to give up all the rights to AI right off the bat here because we're so early into AI. But it's one of those things that is definitely a maz consideration. And that's just for Hollywood. That's it's having an impact in almost every industry you can think of. The White House this week had a big summit to talk about AI. So it lasted roughly two hours. They had the President there, he stopped by, the Vice President

stopped by. Then they had leaders from Google, Microsoft, Open AI, and also Anthropic, which is another startup. I believe that they also have Anthropic. I believe they do something similar to chat GPT. Yeah, so they all got in the room and kind of talked about this stuff. Biden said, what you're doing has enormous potential and enormous danger. I would agree with that. They're looking at ethical, moral, and legal obligations of this new technology, and nobody knows how

it's going to be used. I mean, we see how it's being used right now for chat GPT, and people are doing all kinds of things, but we don't know truly how it can be used because we're so early into this stuff. Now, how do you regulate something that potentially has a mind of its own, and that's the way these AI systems feel. You program them, but then they go out into the world and people figure out ways of doing things with them that may not be

what the people who program them intended. And we're seeing that with the Bangs of the world and the chat gbts and the bards. Now they put some guardrails on these systems that they're building, But again, what if someone builds these things on their own. I mean, you could regulate a company like Facebook and Twitter and chat GBT and Google and Microsoft, and they may follow the rules. But about someone who's just writing this stuff in their home and they write a program that does something that

is against the rules or against the regulations. So I think that this stuff is really really big. And it's interesting because you had the Federal Trade Commission chairperson Lena Kahan. She they had a guest essay in the Times on Wednesday, and she talked about how when Google and Facebook were born, and this is true, everyone celebrated what they did. We loved what Google did, we loved what Facebook did, and I would agree with that. We just kind of let

them do their thing. And then ten years later we all said, wait a second, hold on, what about the privacy implications of this? What about the security implications of this? What about the copyright implications? What about all these things that we didn't sort of think of when these first happened. And she said, now we have another option here with this AI. Let's start from the beginning and let's have kind of a critical eye towards this technology right off

the bat. And I think that that's probably smart, because AI is going to be way more impactful than a Google, or than a YouTube, than a Twitter, than a Facebook. This stuff has far reaching implications that we are just beginning to understand now. I'm not saying I have the answer to how to make all this stuff work. I don't. I don't think anyone does at this point. I think we are all figuring this out as we go along.

But the bottom line is that we can't let this just sort of happen in the way that we let other things happen. We need to all come together and figure out what is going to be right and what's going to be best. And believe me, what's right and best right now may not be what's right and best in a year when this stuff is more developed because we are just just at the beginning of this stuff. Woo and it's wild. I mean, I love watching this develop and the things people are doing with it. But man,

I don't know where it's going to go. I don't think anyone does. All Right, coming up on the show, we're going to talk to the founder and CEO of a company called Farmer's Fridge. This is a company that's putting fresh food in more places. I tested it out. I tried out a solid it was delicious. We're going to do that. Plus Apple and Google coming together. You rarely hear this. They're coming together to make air tags safer. We'll talk about that, plus your questions at eight eight

eight rich one oh one. You're 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 oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one.

of man, this is bringing it way back. But my grandma used to sit at the kitchen table and listen to a tiny portable radio like this, and you know, didn't have the screen like the color screen, that's for sure, but it was just a little tiny and it had the antenna on it. And she used to every morning when I woke up, she would be there at the table listening to this radio.

Sea Crane definitely has some stuff. I remember I used to listen to a podcast they advertised Seacrane on there a lot, so that's a good suggestion. Welcome back to rich On location here at Crypto dot Com Arena formerly Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. Joining me now is Luke Saunders. He is the founder and CEO of Farmers Fridge and we're here because they've got three Farmers Fridge locations here. Thanks for joining me, Yeah, thank you so much for having me. All right, so let's talk about

Farmer's Fridge. I first saw this at LAX Los Angeles Airport, and it's a vending machine filled with healthy foods like fresh salads. And I was a little skeptical, I'll be honest, but I ended up getting one on my way out, and then I got one on my way home, so it worked and the salads are fresh. You've got locations all across the nation. Can you tell me how you describe what Farmer's Fridge is.

to the faster. And really the idea was if I built the entire business model around the concept of making real fresh food getting into people quickly, I could solve the problem. And then I backed into the idea for the vending machine because something like one hundred million people a day in the United States actually visit a vending machine to buy something, so clearly it's a very convenient way to get food and get it to more places.

There's about eight million vending machines in the US, so that helped to just make it more convenient, more accessible, and lower the cost to serve fresh food.

ended up in a food court in downtown Chicago. It was objectively the worst food court in Chicago, but it was the only place that would take us, and we had one location, and it was really just to get people to try the food, get some feedback on the concept, and from there we've grown it now to over a

thousand locations across the country. We're in major retail stores across the country, and also have about six hundred and fifty fridges that we operate in hospitals, universities, airports, even places like this arenas.

make dressings from scratch. We're literally cutting up whole heads of lettuce and mixing avocados to make our fresh in house squacamole, and so the whole business is designed to facilitate having that be our process and then get it

to people quickly. A huge component that's made it scalable as we built a lot of technology in terms of where to send all of the food that we're making, but also like how to get fees back from customers if things aren't fresh and improve that, or we can lock a fridge if it goes out of temperature remotely, so all of that has made it so that it's scalable. But the idea is exactly the same as it was at the beginning. You'd get a whole ingredient in make

a dressing from scratch. It's going to taste good. You said to get it to people quickly so they have enough time to buy it before it goes bad.

so beautiful. It actually helps keep the food fresh because you can layer ingredients, so we put like wet and acidic ingredients on the bottom, things like lettuce on the top. So that allows you to have a higher quality meal that lasts long, younger and it really just shows really well in the machine because what we found. I tried so many different ways to tell customers our food was

fresh at the beginning, and over and over again. What we heard when we'd actually talk to the potential customers or people that were intimidated by the vending machine is I'm looking at your food and I want to see that that food looks fresh, and you can tell, like the greens are not wilted, they're not brown, things are clearly handmade. And we were getting that kind of feedback constantly, So that's a big part of why we packaged it that way.

quality caesar salad with chicken. But the idea is to have twenty five skews and have every single one of those be something that you're like, Wow, that was great, I'll buy it again.

algorithm runs. So essentially it's looking at what's the inventory in the network, how many products did you produce, and things like the weather or tsa checkpoint traffic to say this is where we think you should send everything to maximize the profitability and reduce the amount of unsold inventory the next day. So imagine like we kind of get that report and everybody snaps into action. We're picking and packing the food, putting it onto trucks and getting it out.

ten salads. His drivers app he actually carries an iPad with him, will tell him here's where you should actually take this item from this fridge on your route and put it into this fridge on your route, and it's giving them all that feedback in real time. So from start to finish, the whole technology process is about how do you make fresh food scalable? And really that's about inventory management.

about this as healthy food. It's just something that's convenient and affordable and tastes good, and so you want to buy more of it, and so until we're kind of everywhere and that's true, we're gonna keep going.

follow me on social media at rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, and you can always go to the website rich on Tech dot TV. Let's go to Courtney in Huntington Beach. Courtney, you're on with Rich Hi.

tech stuff for six days in a row. Right, So I understand where you're coming from, and I think there are some solutions to this, and I was looking at this for myself actually, So a couple things. Number One, you had the Nokia, the very famous thirty three ten that was a very very famous, you know, dumb phone.

Nokia is a good place to start Now I'm not going to give you specific models because there's so many, but I will tell you you're not going to get five G on these phones, but you will get four G and so these phones will be supported. So the first thing, since you said you have an iPhone, what I would suggest is consider maybe taking a tiptoe away from the smartphone. And maybe that means getting an Apple Watch. And I know that may sound like it's going to bring you

more into this world, but hear me out. So you get the Apple Watch with cellular. You have that on your wrist, and when you are fed up with the endless scrolling and the social media and all of these different things that we are sucked into on our phones, you put the phone away, you turn it off, and you put it in a drawer. And now you've got your phone on your wrist. So you can still get calls, you can still get texts, but you're not going to

be scrolling Instagram. You're not going to be distracted because there's only so much you can do on that tiny Apple Watch. Now, it's not as drastic as going with a dumb phone, but it's kind of a nice middle ground. The thing that you miss in that situation is a camera, and that's really what it comes down to for me, is that I would like to have a camera with me because well, the journalist in me wants that, and

just in general I want that. So if you don't want to go the Apple Watch route, and I think that's a nice way to do it if you want to. You know, like sometimes when I just want to focus on my kids, let's say I'm at like their basketball game or something like that, I will just keep the phone in the car and just have the Apple Watch and just try to It doesn't happen very often, believe me, but that's kind of one method that I'll use to

focus the other thing. Nokia is a good brand. Alcaatel is another brand, alca Tel alcatl and they make a flip phone that is pretty basic. I have the older version of this, it's the Flip three. Now they're up to the Flip four, but this will work as well. Now, again, you can go to all these things, but it's definitely going to be a problem after being on the iPhone for a year. Maybe you'll love it. I don't know, but Nokia and Alcatel are the two places to start.

Now there are some other options. There's something called the light Phone, and I've tested this. It's pretty much a Kindle screen, so it's got an e ink display. It's very small, it's very compact. There's no camera on it as far as I remember, and it's just a very simple device. The only problem on this device is really going to be texting. It's definitely not the best experience for texting, but then again, maybe you want to get

away from texting by having one of these. Now, the light Phone is not cheap, so the Nokia and the alcatl options those are going to be. You can find stuff sub one hundred bucks, no problem. The light Phone, as far as I remember, is a couple hundred dollars. So let's see how much is this thing? North American model? Yeah,

three hundred dollars unlocked, So that's considerably more expensive. And at that price, I think that's why one of these this has been a little bit tougher of a sell for people, because you're looking at this phone and you're like, why is this so expensive?

it looks this looks like the phone that I would like. Now, the problem with the light phone is that it's all screen, so you're dialing the numbers on the screen and all that stuff. The Punked phone, that's how I'm saying it right, actually has buttons on it, which I think are better in that case. And this looks like it was created just for that minimalist lifestyle. And so oh now look at this. Siri was listening on my watch the whole time. See,

this is the problem with technology. Siri just kind of jumps in and gives her two cents on things. But those are the brands that I would look for. I think that all three of those, or all four of those are going to be good options. But I think don't discount the Apple Watch. I know that the Apple Watch seems like it would make you more enmeshed in this whole iPhone Apple world. But I actually think it's it's kind of like a secret way of being disconnected

but still connected. And by the way, all of these devices, or many of these devices that you get, like the light phone and the punk phone, you may be able to add those as a number share on your account. So maybe talk to your carrier about a number share device. Because I was surprised since I was just looking at this for my carrier and I didn't realize, but you could have up to five devices as number sharing. I

thought it was just the iPhone and the Apple Watch. No, it turns out if I wanted to, I could numbers share with the light phone as well. And that means that your same phone number will ring all phones. Now, your mileage may vary depending on your carrier, but those are you know, something to ask the question, just to see if that's a possibility, and go into your carrier store and just tell them what you're thinking and see

what they say. They may say, Oh, we've got this alcatl that you can add to your account for you know, five bucks a month and that will share your phone number. See what they say, Great, question, Courtney. It's something that I think about very very often, because, believe me, I love being connected, but sometimes I just really enjoy being disconnected. And I'm telling you it's not easy. It could be tricky sometimes to do that because you just feel like

you're missing out. All Right, Before we go to break here, I want to tell you about this because I was just talking about cell phones. Check your cell phone bill. I tweeted about this last week because I was going through my bill and sometimes i'll actually download like the PDF of my bill, and I noticed that I was being charged for my wife's Apple Watch that I disconnected

three months ago. So she went from a cellular Apple Watch to a regular Apple Watch, a non cellular and I called up the carrier and I said, hey, can you cancel this line. I don't know if I called or I chatted. I couldn't really remember. Actually, I think I chatted with them online and they said, okay, we'll disconnect it. Well, my bill went down somehow, I don't know how, but sure enough I was still being charged.

Now it wasn't a ton of money, it was only like ten bucks a month whatever, but still I was paying for something that physically didn't even work, like her watch had no cellular connectivity. And so I asked the customer service person, I said, can you tell me the last time that her watch actually used any data for this ten dollars a month that I'm paying? And they said, well, it was about three months ago. I said, yeah, that's what I called to cancel this thing. Now, I will

say the carrier was very nice. I remained calm. I was not mean. I was not, you know, accusing them of doing something wrong. I mean, there was just some sort of miscommunication. And in fact, I thought I was pretty pretty uh in the wrong for not noticing that my bill was, you know, something I was getting. I was paying for something I didn't even have, Like how

did I miss that for three months? So what they did was I said, and I always say, I always try to be very nice to these customer service folks. I said, look, can you make a one time exception? Can you give me a credit? And they said, sure, you know what, We're going to give you a six month credit, and we're going to give you extra five bucks on top of that. So it pays to check your physical bills. Believe me, you never know when you might find a mistake and be nice when you call

in to ask for a correction. I think these companies have a lot of money they can they can give you that sixty dollars credit. All right, more calls Triple eight Rich one on one, let's hear from you. Welcome back to rich on tech Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. Did you know you can listen to the show as a podcast. Yep, you can subscribe.

Just go to rich on tech dot tv, click the podcast icon, and yes, I take good notes about what we talk about in this show, so those are reflected in the podcast as well. So if you've got a link that you're looking for something that I mentioned, or you want to correct me on something, you can find it all in there. Just go to rich on tech dot tv and hit the podcast icon. All right. Phone lines are open at Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

That's what Dale and Oceanside. Did he dial that number and now he's on Dale?

But the little in the last month, and I know because I did this some months ago, the last month, the little button where it says cast to the TV is gone from like all my apps except for YouTube. YouTube casts very easily, and the button that says cast in the Google Home app is gone.

using a Pixel or a Samsung? What are you using?

see if Samsung offers that one. I'm not sure that they do. That may be a pixel thing. But that's number one, okay, So that's number one. Number two. Yes, the Home app has changed every single time I've opened

it in the past, like three weeks. Every time I open it, it's doing something differently, So I'm I don't know if that feature is still in there or why they you know, everything, look, even when I go into it says settings have moved to the settings to have so And this morning it was like, do you want to update all of your items and do you want to choose your favorites? I was like, wait, what, hold on? Hold on? Now they call these things automations that used

to be my routines. So I'm I'm still learning that app and all the new stuff it's doing, because clearly it is really really changed. So when it comes to the actual casting on the apps have I mean usually if you're on the Wi Fi and the TV's on the same Wi Fi, it's the app is the icon is going to show up, the little cast icon and you're saying, that's not happening anymore.

Fi off. And so I realized that I had turned that off, and now I turned it back on and the little cast button showed up. So a couple of things that I would do to troubleshoot, and I, you know, I think that the main thing is to make sure the Wi Fi is on the same networks on both of these devices. Obviously you said that's happening. If it's a device that's connected to the TV, like a Chrome CA, I just unplug it, plug it back in and maybe

that will force the connection again. Otherwise, if it's the TV, check to see if the Wi Fi is on. But in general, Wi Fi the Wi Fi network has to be the same if you're casting something, and it's just one of those things where it shows up natively inside the app when it recognizes that it can connect to something. So if you're not seeing that cast icon inside different apps. I would also open up Netflix because that's the easiest to kind of see if the cast icon shows up there.

I would open up that one and see. So you said it works on YouTube, which means there's some sort of life happening and there's some sort of connection happening between these two devices. But YouTube is Google. Cast is Google, so it's a little bit trickier because Google has some ways of making that connection more so than other apps that may just be using the cast framework there. So those are my suggestions, Dale, I think you're going to get this to work, maybe restart both devices as well

and see if they come back up. And also maybe on that TV, get rid of any like forget any Wi Fi networks that it may have been connected to in the past that could be confusing it as well. But Google casts a great thing when it works, and it's one of those things that you don't realize how good it is until, Like we bring a Chrome cast to hotels, and not every hotel lets you do it, but you can just pop the Chrome cast into the

back of the TV and cast anything. It's a little tricky because they do have to be on the same Wi Fi network. And I had some I'm trying to think how I got around that last time, but it was a little tricky because you can't necessarily use the Wi Fi that the hotel provides. I think I make my phone a hotspot. I think I did that. But the other thing is that a lot of these TVs. You go to these hotels now and they just have

casting built in, like it's just a thing. You connect to the hotel Wi Fi, you say what room number you're in, and wow. Especially the I think was the Hyatt hotels that do this and it just has the casting. But I've seen it in different brands, so it's a great thing when it works and it's fun. Oh, speaking of Netflix, did you know that you can download your entire viewing history. Dwight Silverman in the Houston Chronicle talks about this. We had him on the show last week.

This is really interesting. I was not aware of this until I read his column, and yes, you can download all of your personal data and he downloaded his. I downloaded mine over yesterday and you can see everything, everything you've watched, everything everyone on your account has watched. You can see every single device that is logged into your account. When they log in what they're doing when they're doing it, and it's pretty thorough. I was going through some of

the files. There's a bunch of files. It's not it's not a large file, but it's just a lot of little files. So to do this, you can go to Netflix dot com, slash account, slash get my info. And there's no reason to do this except just for fun. This is not like I'm not telling you this like you should go snooping on all the people that are sharing your account. It's just kind of fun to see all the information that they're collecting because you kind of

forget about this. And the reason why they're doing this is because, well A, I think they're mandated by you know, all these you know, freedom of like the thing where

you can download your Google data all this stuff. But I think they're also kind of flexing a little bit because they're saying, yeah, we know every single IP address that's using your account, we know which device is using it, we know who's the profile, and yeah, we're going to use this information once we start cracking down onsload password freeloaders. So once you request your info, it's not instant, but they'll email you when it's ready and you can see

your full viewing activity. It shows you everything that's happening on there, and then you've got the which shows you all the hardware. But as Dwight explains, the creepiest file on the batch is the one called clickstream. This literally shows you all of the actions taken by users on your account. You can see when someone looks at episode titles, read the description of a movie, or clicked playback, and it's like a it's like a play by play of

exactly what they do on Netflix. It even says something like this trailer for this show auto played on their home screen.

Everything old is new again with Airbnb. So I'm gonna tell you the new feature that is coming back that'll make travel cheaper, plus your calls triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. You're listening to Rich on tech. Oh, I have a show to do. I could listen to

this song forever. This is definitely on repeat. There's something about songs when they just have such a unique hook to them, like there's just you know, the songs are a dime a dozen, but there's just some that break out like this one. It's got such a unique sound and feel and energy to it that it's just you just can't get enough of it. You can just listen to it forever. Rich Tamiro here talking technology with you

at eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up later in the show, we're gonna talk to Josh auerback. He is the COO of Aura Free. This is one of my favorite gadgets of the past couple

of years. And talking to Josh for a reason, because Mother's Day is coming up, and if you're looking for something that would be the perfect gift, not just for mom, this works for any family member, but it's such a great way to send your digital pictures to their frame in their home. It's really cool. So we'll talk about that in some of the new features there. Okay, let's get to Ryan in La Ryan you're on with Rich Hi.

that's number one. Now, this is a desktop, This is a larger computer, so that may not be something that they want per se. I mean unless they have a desktop setup or whatever. But the other thing you could do if you you know, you talked about making a server. I think that the bottom line is do you need the server? And I think that in this day and age,

it's good to have that in your home. I would be concerned about how much power this computer is consuming to to just run a server that you may or may not need, So that's kind of the consideration there. But in general, if you were using it as a server, it'd be good to sort of back up anything that's in the cloud, So whether it's Google Photos, whether it's uh, you know, anything that you're storing online, you can have

it back up to that device. Otherwise, people, you know, you can run sort of a plex server on it or something like that to serve up your video and audio if you're doing that. But personally, I think that it's unless you absolutely one need this thing to be a server, I would probably find another use for it. And I know you're proud of this machine because you built it, so I would try to place this with

someone that could really use it. So whether that's a family member or I would say something like a charity, like a school, maybe set this up for them. I think there's a lot of charities and schools out there that could use this and do that. Maybe a you know, a church, religious organization that could use it, So that would be probably a great use of it. Otherwise, I mean, you're not going to recycle this thing because it sounds

like it's a really good device. So if you don't want to donate it and you want to make money off of it, maybe you could just use one of these sites like a you know, a Facebook marketplace or a let go that or offer up that you could sell this thing, but of course you'd want to have all your personal information off of there. But since you're building computers, I'm pretty sure you know how to delete the information off of this thing. But that those are

my options for an an old computer. In fact, it's funny Ryan that you asked this question because I have an old laptop. So I just got a new laptop. I gave my old one to my kid and then his old one, which is still perfectly fine except for the battery. I've been trying to figure out a use for it, and I've been wondering if I should set it up as a server or I'm not sure.

lot of ways to do this, and just depends. Since this is a big, powerful computer, you might want to place it in the hands of someone that knows the power of that computer and can do something good with it. So great question. Thanks so much for calling in today, Ryan, appreciate you watching me on KTLA. Apple and Google teaming up to address unwanted tracking with devices like air tags.

So this is a new proposal that they are putting out there to the industry to build into iOS and Android a set of standards that would be able to use and alert users about all of these different trackers out there. So, whether it's a Samsung, whether it's a Tile Chipolo, Ufi Security, Pebbleby haven't even heard of that one, all of these devices, if they were near you, your phone would alert you, and you know, not just instantly, but after a while of it tracking you. So the

problem is with these air tags, they're so popular. If you have an iPhone, it tells you that there's an unwanted one yearby do you have an Android, it doesn't tell you that. So now these two companies are working together hopefully by the end of the year, no matter which air tag is on you by accident or you know, if someone's using it for stalking, your phone would alert you. Smart Thanks Apple and Google for working together on this. You're listening to Rich on Tech coming up, Aura Frames

up next. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology.

We also have them on YouTube as well, so there's a YouTube playlist I'll link up on the website so you can subscribe to that and watch them there. All right, I'm excited for my next guest because Aura Frames is one of my favorite gadgets, and every time I mention on TV, people say, Rich this is the best thing I've ever purchased. It's so easy. It's a digital frame

that you can display your pictures on. But it's super easy to get your pictures on the frame because you can send them right from your phone, via email or using the app. So let's bring up Josh hourback here. Coo of Aura frames. Josh, thanks for joining me.

something years, right. The second is that it's Wi Fi connected, so that it connects to the Internet and you can add photos to it from anywhere in the world, and those have been around maybe for ten years. And the third is that it's really good, right, And we pay a lot attention to the little details, the picture quality and the quality of the groom itself, and so that's what that's what's important to us.

phone and also send pictures to this frame. And I've noticed it's almost like a little friendly competition of whenever I get a notification that says that they send pictures, I'm like, oh, I should send some pictures now. Do you find that happens with people?

then the siblings I want for their in laws. Yeah, it just goes out from you know, from family to family, and we have cases, I think the biggest where it had gone across a hundred families, going from in lost and lost and laws. You know, these crazy excitement that people have for this product. Again, you know, as you said, you can add photos to it from anywhere and people just love that.

disappears from the screen. And if you send it to their Aura, they can see it every day. And that's magic, particularly with parents' grandparents, those kinds of things where people get these pictures and they really would treasure them if they could treasure them, and that's what that's what Aura does.

Let's talk about some of the new features. No, sure, let's talk about some of the new features. So you've got this colorizer feature which will take a black and white or a sepia image and colorize it.

bit of color to the picture. And it's a nice It makes it seem a little bit more alive. I really enjoy it.

And I think Aura what sets them apart from some of the other frames that I've tested is really just the quality of not only the frame, but also the app and the way that you get your information to that frame. So again I'll put a link to Aura Frames on my website. Rich on Tech dot TV. All right, coming up, I can't believe it. We're gonna close out.

know how that happens. There's just so many tech things to talk about every week, and of course your questions, I'm gonna try to get through some of the things I wanted to tell you about this week. Airbnb, let's talk about them. They are introducing over fifty new features based on feedback. Airbnb sort of started out as this darling and then there's been sort of a backlash because people complain that it's just as expensive as staying at

a hotel. The list of things you have to do when you check out are just too much, and all the fees and all that kind of stuff has just gotten kind of out of control. And so Airbnb obviously knows that travel is ticking up and there's gonna be a lot of options out there, so they want to compete once again. So they've got these fifty different features

and upgrades that address some of these pain points. But the main one is really the new feature called rooms Airbnb Rooms, and Airbnb is saying that this is going to make travel a lot cheaper, a lot more affordable.

They say eighty percent of private rooms are under one hundred dollars a night, with an average rate of sixty seven dollars a night, and so they're pitching kind of like back to the basics, Like Airbnb started out as people renting rooms in their homes, and they're saying, look, this is still a great way to travel and a very inexpensive way to travel, and so we get it.

It's kind of scary to stay with a random person, but they're trying to make it more approachable, and so they have this new thing called the host Passport, and the host passport lets you get to know the person that you're staying with, and so they have all kinds of fun things on there, like what they like to do, fun facts, where they went to school, what they do for work. There's larger pictures so you can get an idea of who this person is before you stay with them.

And I'm not saying you're staying in their room. I mean it's a private room in their home. But they also have filters that let you see, does this private room have a bathroom? Does this private room have a lock on the door. So again, I mean, look, there's a time and a place for everything. And I think that some people will say, no way, I'll never do that, But there's a lot of people that will say yeah,

it's kind of fun. And I was looking at some of the listings and some of these people, you know, they like one of the people was like an executive at uber, you know, and it's like they're they've rented for like years and it's like, Okay, well, I'd feel comfortable staying with them. But again, it depends on your

level of for with this kind of stuff. Some of the other improvements total price, you can see what the price is with fees before taxes, the checkout, you can see the checkout instructions before you book, because sometimes these checkout instructions could be I always joke like, you know, can you please organize my photo collection before you check out?

It's like that seems a little unreasonable. You can also see if people are getting low ratings for unreasonable chores, you'll be removed from Airbnb, and then if you stay over three months, the service fee will be a lot cheaper. And then they also have this new dedicated twenty four to seven support team which can give you priority access when you're on a trip, so if you need help while you're on the trip, you can get someone more easily. So Airbnb doing a bunch of stuff there on your iPhone.

This week, you probably saw this Rapid Security Response update. Yeah, this is brand new. So this is if you know about the iPhone updates, they can be a chore. They can take a really long time to install. So now they have this thing with iOS sixteen called Rapid Security Response Security Response. These are updates that address pressing issues on the iPhone, like security issues that are pretty major, but you can install them very rapidly and quickly and

without a major restart most of the time. Now, this week's did require a restart, but in the future they may not, so these are much more smaller updates. You'll know because it'll say Rapid Security Response and it will also not have to reboot most of the time, so you should feel comfortable installing these. You'll know that it's a rapid response when it has the letter A at the end, so or I'm not sure if it's just a letter A or if it's going to be a letter at the end of it. So you'll know that

it's a rapid response when it has a letter. But go ahead and install it. It's safe. That's what that's all about. Meanwhile, in Google, you might start noticing blue checks blue check marks next to a sender's name is This is to signify that the sender is verified, and so I think this is pretty smart. With all all the phishing emails out there. You'll probably notice this if you open up an email and it comes from a big brand like Amazon. I also noticed it for a

financial website. It will have a blue check mark. You can hover over the blue check mark to make sure that that is a legitimate sender. You're also going to have this enabled on personal Google accounts soon, so that's a smart thing, So look for that blue check mark. Let's see here. I'm getting to the feedback section. Now, let's get to Dave. Dave says, hey, Rich, I love the show. You're doing a wonderful job. I'm addicted and your topics each week are terrific. Well, thank you, Dave.

Last week you had a caller with questions about adding Android Auto to an older vehicle. This is what I used in my twenty twelve Toyota Prius and it works great. It's all wireless, except the head unit needs some power. It's plugged into the RCA jack to get the sound out into the car radio. Hence the two wires on the left side, and he sent a little picture. The mount is the CD slot, which of course I don't use, and it's totally stable. The company is car Pride from China.

The service and shipping were excellent. I highly recommend I've had no issues so far. Why replace the entire radio if it's not needed? Thanks Dave, Dave, thanks for the feedback. That's excellent. It looks like a good installation. I like it, and I love how you have it mounted on top of the CD player because you don't need that. Let's see here. Hey, rich Dan says, I heard your thoughts about the ring dash cam. I have one that I pre ordered at a discount, but I haven't hooked it up.

I'm not thrilled about paying six dollars a month. All these subscriptions add up. I can't afford a subscription for everything. Your comment on the battery drain has me thinking I only drive fifteen minutes to and from work. I'm thinking that maybe not enough time to charge my vehicle battery. I have an outdoor wireless wisecam that lasts about three months on the battery. I've been wishing for that in a dash cam. Where I parked there is Wi Fi

so the camera can alert me when I'm home. And maybe that's not the perfect solution, but if the camera would keep recorded events on a memory card until we get back to Wi Fi, then that would be a I'd love Thanks for the info, Dan. Yeah, I have a feeling that Wise could really do a good dash cam because Wyse is a very smart company, and I think that's a great solution. Instead of paying that subscription,

they would just record continuously on a loop. Then when you get to your Wi Fi, the camera would go ahead and upload those clips to the cloud. So Wyse has done some great things over the years. Very very good company. I love them. Thanks for the feedback, all right, if you have feedback for the show, Hello at rich on tech dot TV. All right, I'm Rich Demiro. That's gonna do it for this episode, can you believe it?

Next week, I'm headed to Google Io. We're gonna have new foldable phones, probably plans for AI and much more. So be sure to check out the show next week when I give you the whole update from Google Io. You can find me on social media. I am at Rich on tech the website, rich on tech dot TV. Don't forget to check it out for everything I mentioned here, plus the TV segments. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many 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.