026 Rich on Tech Radio Show - July 1, 2023

have a question about technology, email is also open. Send it to hello at Richontech dot TV. Happy. Uh, fourth of July weekend? Is that a thing is fourth? It is fourth of July weekend, right, because fourth of July is coming up, and this is the weekend that precedes it. So it is fourth of July weekend. So good weather, hopefully where you are. Hopefully you've got some plans, you know. I was thinking about if Fourth of July has been impacted by technology, and I think it has. And I'll

tell you how. Drone shows, so I think some of you will be watching and I know this sounds wild, instead of actual fireworks, I think you'll be watching drone fireworks shows. I have not personally seen one of these in the flesh. But I know they're happening, and i know they're happening around town, and I'm sure they're happening where you are, so kind of cool. I mean, you

don't have to pick up all the stuff afterwards. But I think the standard I'm gonna have to do a comparison of the traditional fireworks show and the drone fireworks show. I think that the boom of the fireworks is probably more fun. Although if you live in Los Angeles, and I know this from personal experience, the fireworks continue for about a week in the LA area. Even though somehow fireworks are not allowed in this area, everyone has them.

And I think last year I had to go to work the next morning and I wake up pretty early and it was just all night long. I mean, you want fireworks in your neighborhood, It's happening in Los Angeles. So maybe the drone shows are better.

the driveway, no one's going to hit it in the driveway. Well, I park it on the street, and sure enough, you know, I do my thing inside, my wife leaves whatever, and I come outside. This was late late in the afternoon, so this was all the way, you know, six seven, eight hours later. And the first thing I do when I come outside is look at my car. And it's like, literally, wait, what the heck happened to this car? Someone clearly hit

my car and it was just totally messed up. And I said, and they were all outside playing basketball in front of the house, and I said, none of you notice the car is just totally messed up. And they all look at it like, oh my gosh. First thing I do is look at my car. This is a habit that I just look at my car to see what has happened to it since the last time I was in my car, and so immediately I've got one of these cars that has the full DVR system, right,

so it records from all angles. And I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't want this to happen in my car, but it did. And I've got the best possible outcome. I have got picture, video proof of what just happened. And so I open up my car and I go to the dash cam which is built into the car to it's like a little DVR basically, and I wait for it and it's slow. It's not the best.

It's just like it takes a while to get warmed up, and it gives you a list of all the things happened that all the things that happened in your car while you weren't there. And sure enough it's not there. Wait what I don't have this on video? The hit and run driver, the license plate, whatever, it's not there. Ugh. And I remember I turned off the DVR functionality when I'm in my home area because I park my car

in the driveway. Why would I need that, right? And so first off, I just think to myself, Okay, that was really not a smart move. Rich, But the good news is I've got some other cameras around the house. So let me check the ring cam. So I go to the ring cam, and the ring cam does not capture it because guess what, there's a giant tree in front of where I parked my car, so it captures everything accept my car. I could literally see everything happening

outside my house except where my car is parked. This tree is huge. Okay, let me try the other cameras. I've got some nest cams that record twenty four to seven. Let's check those cameras well. Sure enough they got Well the tree again blocks it. But the audio is there, but none, you know, it's just you can't see it again, the tree is blocking it. So what are my lessons?

And actually I misspoke on the ring cam. The ring cam seese my car, but the ring cam only does motion alerts, so it actually didn't capture whenever this damage happened to the car recorded either before or after or whatever. So here's my lesson. And this is what I said. Don't feel sorry for me. Look, the car is a

mechanical thing, right, so nobody got hurt. Yes, it's a pain in the you know what to get this thing fixed because I already brought it to a place and all parts are a month, and you gotta do this, and it's a whole big thing to get it back to square one. And by the way, don't get me started on spending money on things that gets you back to where you were.

of your cameras. So you probably set up these cameras like your ring cam or your security cameras or your car dash cam and you never thought about it ever. Again, take the minute to go through the app, go through the settings and see how this thing is set up. For instance, on my ring cam, if I would have had the setting to record motion events longer, maybe I

would have captured this. Because the way the ring cam works is it starts to record and then it'll record for like ninety seconds, it'll send that clip to the cloud whatever. But then it stops and there's usually a timeout period to save the battery where it doesn't record right away, because if it just kept doing that, you know, every time the tree moved in front of it, it would just record the whole day and the battery'd be done in like ten minutes. So check the settings on

these things. Also check to see the angles of these things, so in the future, I will probably not park where this big giant tree blocks the view from the cameras, because this whole system would be a little bit easier if I had some information about who hit my car. So go through the settings. Know the limitations of your cameras. Are they on at certain times, are they off at certain times? When do they trigger? How do they trigger?

And also probably consider getting a dash cam because it's one of those things where when something like this happens to you, it's a big headache. And if you can feel just a little bit better knowing that, you can get maybe some recourse on your insurance or your deductible.

So go for a dash cam. And when you look at dash cams, you want to find one that has a motion sensor, so it can have some sort of motion detection or some sort of G you know, G sensor, so if it senses your car moves, it will start recording. And uh, if you have ring already, they've got something called the Ring Cam, which I really like. You know, it's the first generation, so it's obviously they're going to

build upon it, make it better. But that one does record if something you know, uh hits your car, not motion, It won't do motion, but it will do if something actually moves your car. So in this case, that would have definitely triggered.

all of his cameras and couldn't find anything either. So maybe it was a mysterious uh you know self, maybe the car just like self imploded. I don't know. But again, just just be aware of this stuff and don't cry for me. It's not a big deal. The car will be fixed, but it does ruin my perfect record of I guess hitting runs. I don't know, does that go on your record? First thing, I asked the guy at the car place. I was like, Hey, does this make

my insurance go up? He's like, oh, it'll just go up a little bit next time you get your renewal. But no, it doesn't really go up. I'm like, you just said two different things, Like what all right? Coming up on this show, We've got some great guests this week. We've got Sam Rutherford, senior writer for n Gadget. He's gonna have his review of the pixel Fold smartphone. Then we've got Roger Anderson. You might have seen him in the news. He came up with an AI chatbot system

that just messes with telemarketers and robo callers. Then later we've got Buttam Laskin, the co founder and CEO of Swimpley. He's gonna explain how you can make money renting out your backyard pool, which they've been doing for a while, but now also your backyard tennis court if you happen to have one of those you're really fancy, or a

pickleball court. You're really on the cutting edge there. And then later in the show, Jefferson Graham, friend of the show, is going to join to talk about how to take photos of fireworks or should you even bother taking photos of fireworks? But first, as always, it is your turn. Your call is coming up next at triple eight rich one on 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. My name is Richdmuro

and you are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology on this holiday weekend. You know you can follow me on social media. I am at rich on Tech on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And if you follow me on Instagram, you're wondering why haven't you posted in a while? Well, I had something go viral, and anytime something goes VI or you pick up a whole bunch of new people that really don't know who you are.

And so I've been like paralyzed with fear about posting something new because I just imagine all those people are just going to be like, wait, who's this? Let me unfollow them. So I'm just kind of letting it percolate. Let's go to Shana in Brea, California. You're on with Rich.

I know that because I get training at work. I have to watch tutorials for five minutes.

for these They fall for them all the time. And it's a great, great question about Yes, those of us in the workforce, we are constantly being reminded if you get an email from outside your organization, it's marked with big red letters. This came from outside your organization. Do not click on the links. Be cautious. And of course we have to go through those training videos and those little quizzes and things to make us more aware of

all this stuff. So here are two great resources I think are perfect for anyone that's got a loved one that they want to teach this stuff to the first one is called scamspotter dot org. Scam spotter dot org and this is almost like what you do at work, where it lets you go through you can watch some videos about some of the scams that are actually happening out there. You can learn more about those scams, and

then you can test your knowledge about these scams. And this is brought to you by the Cybercrime Support Network and also Google. They work together to create this and it goes through all the different scams that are popular nowadays. It tells you can you spot these things, you know, be skeptical of urgent pop ups, which I've talked to people who get caught on those. Investigate the company on usual payment methods.

where they can buy a gift card. They stop replying. Now, I don't recommend that you do that. In fact, my wife said that she an eight hundred number or some sort of number called her yesterday and she wanted to hear, like was this person real? And so she pressed one. And so I never recommend that you interact with these whether it's a text, whether it's a phone number, whether it's an email. Do not interact, even though I'm telling

you I do it. I do it out of research and out of helping you, and I want to see where these things go so I can understand these scams better. But please do not interact with these things, because what happens is imagine they're like we got a live one. They send to a bunch of phone numbers. If you reply back to them, now they know they can really target you. And it may not be with that scam, it may be with others. So again, scamspotterer dot org.

And the second one is actually from the Better Business Bureau BBB dot org. Slash scam tracker. And this is really handy because you can not only report scams, but you can also understand the scams that are out there. So you can look up a keyword. So right now, some of the biggest scams going around are pet scams, pyramid schemes, consumer fraud lawyers, cash app scams, and tax fraud. And so you can literally type in a keyword usps and see what other people are reporting about that scam.

Type in the word piano. I'm looking at all these different things. Type in an app, blood work. I mean, there's so many different scams. If you type in one keyword, you can teach your loved ones that, hey, other people are having these same exact texts come to them and they are totally totally a scam. Great question, Shana, thanks so much for calling in appreciate it. Phone number is triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. A lot

of people asking about this apple my photo stream. I will explain what you need to know about that a little bit later in the show. We talked about it on a previous show. But for sure, I know it's kind of percolating in the news media again, so I will explain what it means that Apple is shutting down my photostream. But coming up next, we've got a great guest. We've got Sam Rutherford, senior writer for n Gadget. He is going to have his review of the Pixel fold smartphone.

This is Pixel, this is Google's eighteen hundred dollars smartphone. It's a foldable and he says it's got some good things going for it, but also need to know the bad. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Joining me now is Sam Rutherford, senior writer at n Gadget. Sam, Welcome to the show.

to type. But on the pixel Fold, it means you can, you know, all your apps behave normally, and you know, you never feel like you need to open it up, which is kind of an interesting juxtaposition for a foldable device, but it allows you to you know, do more with the outside screen, and then when you open it up, you feel like, hey, this is what I'm going to use for you know, watching movies or multitasking and stuff like that.

and suddenly you have a significantly bigger screen. It just makes everything better, you know, whether you're playing games, you're watching videos, or you're trying to multitask, which is something that like a lot of people don't necessarily think of as possible on a standard device or a standard phone, just because the screen is a little smaller, it's a little more limited, and you don't really necessarily always have the right controls to be able to manage multiple apps at the same time.

So it appears when you need it and then it gets out of the way when you don't. And it's a really interesting approach to make multitasking a little bit more easier but also less kind of in your face all the time.

that take advantage of the pixel folds design. So you know, say, for things like YouTube, you can fold it in half and rest it on the table and you'll get a different UI that makes it you know, so, hey, you want to sit down for lunch and watch a quick video on your lunch, but you don't have the laptop with you.

of extra work on the developers part. You know, they need to convince developers that like, hey, these optimations are or optimizations are worth making, but also get enough devices out in the real world that there are enough customers demanding that developers like, hey, I love what your app is doing, but hey, is there something else that we can do to really take advantage of, you know, this uncoming wave of foldable devices.

nearly as compromise, which is a really big achievement because you know you're working with a completely different design, different form factor, and it's really hard to fit, especially something like a five be ex tel photo lens on a foldable device.

they were able to move the hinges around. That said, you know you do have to have those tight hinges because you know, who knows how many times you're going to open and close this thing over years, and you know people are holding onto their phones longer, and so at I think it's just one of those things that you have to get used to. And it's sort of like, you know, it is a flexible screen. It's made out

of plastic. You can't you know, it's a little bit more delicate than your standard glass phone, and so that means you got to kind of take care of it. You got to baby just a little bit more. But you also have to deal with things like a crease because you know, Google wasn't entirely able to eliminate the crease on their flexible display. That said they were able to minimize it, and you know, from my perspective, I

don't really notice it at all. It's not you know, it's just like you know, the notch on an iPhone or puntole selfie camera in that you know, after a while, you just kind of get used to it and it doesn't even become distraction anymore.

it's still really for early adopters. You know, this is Google's first phone, and you know they've been able to take bits and pieces from you know, previous rivals and competitors.

pronouncing that right? Tanuga at Tanusha Tanusia? Got it? Welcome to the show.

always lost my car, but maybe I didn't. They did say sometimes people have devices they can override cars and these locks and so I wanted to see if you had any advice or ideas of how to sort of prevent that as possible.

That's one of the simplest ways. The other thing is this thing called a relay attack, which is what I think lapd was was talking about. And this is when someone uses sort of a wireless relay system to capture the code off of your key, your keyfob, and then relay that to the car at a different time. So your little key fob that you have in your pocket, it's always generating like a code that will unlock your car.

And so there are systems out there that can capture that information and then use that and sort of pretend emulate that this device is your key and use it to unlock the car. Now, this has been going on for a long time. Obviously, manufacturers have ways of getting around this. They use something called a rolling passcode, so every couple of seconds the code changes on both ends

to keep this from happening. But it can still happen, and obviously if someone is really targeting cars that this just works with, it can happen and it's definitely a thing. So couple things you can do. I think that the number one is to just be aware that this can happen. That's the awareness is number one. Number two, there are Faraday bags you can get for your your keyfob, which you can put them in so that when you're not using the keyfob it is not emitting any sort of signal.

And some of the keyfobs may have a switch on them to turn off the sort of emitting that signal twenty four to seven, so maybe only when you're actually using it it emits it. And of course it depends on the car manufacturer too what they've done to mitigate this. So there's a pretty famous issue with Hyundai's and kias

they have a free software update for millions of their cars. Basically, cars could start low ard a fake KEYFOP and so now there is a software update that's free to Kia and Hyundai owners that will update the alarm software on the car where the alarm will happen longer. And also it requires the key to be in the ignition for the switch to turn the car on. So that's that's a little thing that they did in response to this whole TikTok challenge. I don't know if you heard about

that whole thing. But the two bags that you can get two companies that I've talked about in the past. One is called Silent sln T formally Silent Pocket, and the other one is the off Grid Fold. This is like a little bag you can put your keyfob in and it'll block all signals going to it, GPS, Wi Fi, cellular, Bluetooth, RFID. Now, look, at the end of the day, I'm sorry this happened

to you. I think that this is something that does happen in the world, and it's unfortunate, but it is definitely something that is tougher than it sounds like like. This is definitely more of a targeted sort of attack where they have to get this information off your keyfob. The other thing you can do if you have your keyfob in your house, some of the things I'm reading recommend that you don't keep it by your front door.

Of course, we all keep our car keys by the front door, and that can definitely be an issue because they could pick up the signal from the key and if your car's in the driveway, they may be able to relay that signal to the car in the driveway. So those are just a couple of the ways that you might be able to mitigate this. Definitely on fortunate.

It's definitely sad that people do this, but look, these are crimes of opportunity, and if you look on YouTube, you'll see all kinds of videos about this relay attack and the systems that these folks can use to do it. It's not an easy thing to do, but it can be easy if you know what you're doing and if you have the right hardware. The one story that I watched, it looked pretty complicated to do this to pull this off, but again, people do it all the time. So Tanuja,

I hope that helps you. I hope that helps you figure out what you need to do in the future. I would look first at your car and sort of look up on the internet what type of car you have, what type of system they have for theft, and see if that is a known system that needs an update or has something that may be able to help you. That's probably the first place to start. If it's an older car, it definitely is probably more susceptible to these sorts of attacks, but it may have a software update

for the manufacturer, so definitely check into that. All right, good question. Let's see here. Let's go to Steve. Steve is in Mariata, California. Steve, you're on with Rich.

The six A or the seven A is going to be a lot cheaper than the seven. It's not gonna be as it's not gonna be as full featured as that device. And then the Pixel A, if you want to wait for it, is coming out in October. Obviously that's gonna have some upgrades and some polish, But I think I think you'd be very happy with the Pixel seven. That's probably what i'd go with at this point, so

good question. Of course, if you love those pictures, you're gonna get great photos off of the pixel, no matter what. All right, coming up more of your calls at triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight, seven four to two, four to one zero one. Please rate and review this show on your favorite audio app and share with your friends that you listen. That's the best way we're gonna grow here, all right. Our number one in the can our number two of rich on Tech

coming up right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Tomuro here hanging out with you, talking technology on this holiday weekend. Happy July fourth. Is it July fourth or fourth of July? I think there's like a there's a difference. I think it's fourth of July. Oh, there's no difference, okay. Producer Adam says, no difference. Okay, Happy fourth of July or July fourth, whatever you prefer. Eighty

eight rich one on one eight eight eight. Look at this, Look at all the fours in our phone numbers seven, four to two, four to one zero one. Grace is in Rancho, Cordova, California. Grace, you're on with Rich hi rich.

that's wild? Google Photos two and a half terabytes. Then I've got some family storage situations going on at two hundred gigabytes. So here's what you need to do. You need to go through your storage and figure out what's taking up all of this storage. If it's stuff that you can get rid of, then dump it. If it's stuff you can't, then you're going to have to pay for more storage to get to continue using this. Now,

your Gmail is not going to stop working. You're just gonna not be able to receive or send messages because it's gonna say sorry, storage full. There may be a tiny little grace period in there, but the reality is you're not gonna be able to upload Google Photos. You're just not gonna be able to do a lot of things. Storage starts at two bucks a month, I believe. For I think two hundred gigabytes, which would be more than enough for you at this point. But that's what you

need to do. So there are various ways to free up account storage when you go to that area of one dot Google dot com. And so if I'm looking at my ways to do it, I've got items in trash on trash or spam in Gmail. So I've got one hundred and eighty one megabytes in trash one megabyte in spam, and then I've got five hundred and seventy megabytes of files and trash on drive. I can get rid of all those, free up almost less than a gigabyte.

Then we've got large items, three hundred gigabytes of large items, and I'm looking at emails with large attachments and I can already tell I can review and get rid of a bunch of these. Then I've got large files, and I've got large photos and videos. So again you just have to go through the storage manager on that Google one area and clean up some of these files that you may not need, that may be too big, that are just you know, you just don't need them anymore,

or they're in the trash. Get rid of those. See if that frees up enough space to keep you going for a while. But it sounds like grace. Eventually, if you're going to continue using these products, you're going to have to pay up. And this all goes into my theme for the tech world in twenty twenty three, and that is the free ride is over. We have gotten so used to all of these services that just want to give us their services for free, and for many years it was great. It was a free ride, and

now the free ride is over. The layoffs have happened. In the tech world, the VC funding is tightened up. People want to actually make money. It's not just this free flowing thing where like, let's just get a whole bunch of customers and hopefully the money comes later. No, we've got to we've got to make some money now. And Google, you know, they've got a lot of folks using Gmail, They've got a lot of folks using Google Photos.

They want to make money on those products too. But I do think they're pretty good about giving people the fifteen gigs of free storage. If you look at Apple, they only give you five. And that's been happening since like day one. So really, if you're using an iPhone, you're probably paying for iCloud storage immediately right off the bat. Great question, Grace. Let's talk about Apple for a second. Here, my photostream this is percolating in the news once again.

We talked about a couple weeks ago. But Apple is shutting down this my photostream feature, so it already it already stopped uploading pictures as of June twenty sixth, and now on July twenty six they're just going to eradicate the feature fully. So everyone's whoa, whoa, whoa all these headlines online. Let me just let me type this in photo Apple shutting down. Okay, let me just let me just look at the photo the headlines here. Okay, Apple's

my photostream shutting down. Here's what to do. Let me actually take out photostream because a lot of these headlines. Well okay, anyway, my point is these headlines are scary. But the reality is, I would say ninety nine percent of people are not using this feature, nor have they used this feature in like five years. So if you're using the feature, you probably know about it. And so here's what you need to do. Bottom line. Look at your iPhone, go into your photos app, go into your

albums and look for an album called my Photostream. If you do not have that album, you do not need to worry about this. Go on your Mac computer, open up photos, look for my photostream. Go on your iPad, open up your photos app, look for my photostream. If you don't see that album on your devices, you don't need to worry about it. Stop thinking about this. If you do see that album, then you need to do

one of two things. If you're using iCloud, chances are those pictures are already backed up to iCloud because they were taken on one of these devices and they backed up to iCloud. If you're not using iCloud, then what you want to do is go into my photostream, click that album, look in there, see what photos are in there, and then if there's any photos that you want to save, just tap the photo and then tap the share icon and it says save image. Save that image to your

regular camera role, and then it will back up. However you back up your photos, whether that's iCloud, whether that's Google Photos, whether that's Amazon Photos, it's all the same. It will go in there. You could select several photos at once and do the same thing. So if there's every photo you want to save to your camera role, just go ahead and hit the select up in the upper right hand corner. You can select a whole bunch of photos at once and then just press save and

you should be good to go there. It's one of these things where, yeah, it makes a it makes for a sexy headline because it's scary when Apple changes anything, but the reality is most people do not need to worry about that, but at least you know what's going on.

you know what's going on. Now you can share that wealth of knowledge with your friends. Niantic, the company behind Pokemon Go, it's been it's been a rough run for this company because Pokemon Go is such a great success. It's like, how do you follow that up? Right? It's like a It's like an amazing artist that has like a one hit. They're under so much pressure to come up with something that's amazing, and I feel like that's been Niantic, the company behind Pokemon Go, for so long now.

They had this amazing thing, Pokemon Go. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before, and now they've been struggling to come up with something just as amazing ever since they tried a Harry Potter game and didn't really work out. They've got this new new game called Paradot, which is okay, but again it hasn't seen the buzz like Pokemon Go. With all that in mind, they are closing their Los

Angeles studio. They're laying off two hundred and thirty people, and they're basically saying, look, our expenses were growing faster than the money we're making.

invest in those anymore. They're going to invest in their first party games. So if you're playing Pokemon Go, you see these headlines about Niantic. It's not going anywhere. But I think what Pokemon Go is they're saying, Look, we were onto something a long time ago, these augmented reality games, and now that we see technology like Apple coming out with their Vision Pro headset, these games are going to be good in the future. People are going to want

to play these games. In fact, Pokemon Go may have a whole new life inside the Apple headset, but it's going to be a while. So they've got to kind of get back to the basics, narrow down some of those expenses, and you know, get ready for what the future is, which is ar but it's just not here just yet in a big way with these goggles. So anyway, I figured i'd tell you about that because Pokemon Go is so popular. Coming up, we're going to talk to a guy who created an AI chatbot system for messing

with telemarketers and robo callers. I can't condone this behavior, but it certainly is fun to talk about. You're listening to rich on Tech triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. If you want to get a hold of me. Nobody likes getting spam calls. Robocalls and uh, one person decided to do something about it. This company, Jolly Roger, uses AI technology to troll telemarketers and waste their time.

They generate different characters that distract the telemarketers and keep them on the line as long as possible. The goal is, I guess the theory is that if they're on the line with this this AI chatbot, they can't be calling someone else. Roger Anderson is joining me. Roger, you came up with this technology?

we'll pick up with robots. And the robots are kind, they're patient, they're polite, but they will never divulge personal

information or financial information. But they sound gullible, so it's just the right mix of gullible, funny, realistic, and the telemarketers will will chat with them for as long as they're willing and and your phone is clear, you can keep making and receiving calls, or just go about your day and our robots will chat with your scammers while you while you do whatever you want to do.

of scam and a lot of fraud taking place. So our goal really is to entertain you, protect the network, and really fight these telemarketers and prevent prevent them from scamming. You know, the vulnerable out there, such as the elderly or or anyone else that might be susceptible to be scams. So really we're just we're it's sort of a whimsical service, but a serious mission, and that is to fight telemarketing.

So we'll talk to them a little bit later. First, more of your calls at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech, your friendly tech show. And No, I am not AI. No, I'm not a robot. This is a real voice. I swear. How do I prove this? I don't know if there is a way to prove it anymore. You're listening to rich on Tech. I guess because I make mistakes. Jay is in Guardina, California. Jay, you're on with Rich Welcome to the show.

things better than my Space. There was a lot of like Facebook did the feed, and my Space didn't really have a feed, and I think that's what made Facebook take off in such a big way, is that you saw what your friends were doing versus going to their pages. My Space was sort of like a glorified personal website that lets you see how you were connected to your friends.

And by the way, that was the best feature ever about MySpace was it gave you how you were linked up to someone, because you could look up anyone on that platform and it would show you exactly how you were linked to them. It would say, your friend Jan knows Jim, and Jim knows Bob, and that's how you know Frank. Wow, that's amazing and I've always wanted that feature on Facebook. The degrees of separation, let's call it, and it just never never came. So that's to answer

your question. And I don't know if that's the full answer. I'm sure there's people that could write a documentary about how Facebook took over my Space. But with that said, and I think that all major platforms are always at risk of It's almost like the Roman Empire, right, you have this thing, you built it up, and there's some sort of a achilles heel that someone else figures out

and they take over. And so we've seen the major platforms at this point kind of keep their rain for a while, the YouTube's of the world, the Instagrams of the world. But when you look at something like TikTok that came along, it rocketed to the top very quickly. And who would have thought vertical video on an app would take over the mind space and mind share of all these other apps so quickly, and then the government tries to take it down. But anyway, that's a whole

another talk for another day. But let's talk about your first question, how to make this mac wow? You have a twelve year old iMac. iMac twelve years old, that's a that's doing the math that's yeah, that's a long time ago. So I was gonna say, the new Macs have a way, and you want to kind of clear this thing out to get it nice and fresh and clean and just just surf the web on it and do your banking on it. And that's that's understandable. You

want to get rid of all the crud. So the new Max actually have and all new computers, the Windows computers and the Mac computers have a very easy way to reset to factory settings, just very similar to the way the cell phones have it. In your settings. You can go back to eraseol factory reset and it just brings it back to that factory finish and the way it was set up. There's nothing there except the out of the box software. So the Max have that feature.

The new Max do, and also the new Windows computers do, but the old Max do not. Now they have it, but it's a little bit more. You got to look for it. So what you have to do, and you may not have this, but you have to reinstall the entire operating system from scratch. So what you have to do is you have to start up your computer into what's called mac os recovery mode and the max are a little unique. The way you do this. You turn

on your Mac and you immediately press and hold. When you see the app, press and hold command plus R, and when you see an Apple logo, then you can let go of those So command R, turn on the computer, hold down command R, and just hold that down until you see your Apple logo. Once you do that, you unlock this magic disc utility. And when you're inside disc utility, you can then use that to erase your entire disc. And then once you erase it, you can reinstall your software.

And now this is where it gets tricky. You may have that software available on the computer and maybe on like a partition. I know it's getting very complicated, but you may have to use the original disc that came with your computer. So if you still have that in the box, that'll help. That's all very complicated, and I don't think that's something the average person wants to tackle.

I like to do it. I'm a nerd and I like to start fresh because I test a lot of stuff, you know, So it's like all these little programs that are all just lingering on there anyway. So I tell you all that because it's probably not something that's very simple to do, but it is doable, and it is Once you do it, it's done. And you can find the instructions on the Apple support website. You can find

YouTube videos. But just make sure you sort of like print everything out before you tackle this, or you have a second screen nearby that you can use to follow these instructions, because there will be something that happens that you will not expect and then you will be scrambling to try to figure out how to recover from that. Believe me, it has happened to me, and I'm like, wait a second, this took way longer than I expected

it to take. The other thing you could do, and I've talked about this a lot, is you can just turn it into a Chromebook, and you can use what Google has for free software. It's called Chrome os Flex and you can install that on your old iMac And what that does is it just turns it into a basically a Chromebook and you'll just have Chrome on there.

You'll be able to, you know, do basic things that you could do on a chromebook, surf the web, just whatever whatever you could do on a basic Chromebook you could do on there. And that would probably be a nice way of using it. You said, the processor is pretty good, but that'll run really fast and speedy, and yes, you'll be able to do your banking on there. So

great question, Jay, thanks for the question. I've told you this, and I told you how this Tesla charging standard continues to just become the charging standard and another company has now signed on, so Electrify America. If you have an EV you've probably heard of this company. They make charging stations around the US. They've got eight hundred and fifty charging stations, four thousand individual chargers in the US and Canada. And they said, you know what, Okay, fine, we're in.

We're gonna start building these Tesla chargers into our charging stations. So by twenty twenty five, they will add what's called the North American Charging Standard connector to its charging network. Now, they're not going to drop support for the other charging standards, which is the cs CCS one. They're just going to add this new connector. So when you get up to their charger, you're gonna have the option to charge via the Tesla charger or via the standard chargers that have

been on the other evs for a while now. So again Electrify America. By twenty twenty five, they will start adding these things to their network. So the reality is Tesla came out with their own charging system, and now other companies have adopted this charging system. The first out of the gate was GM. They said, okay, fine, we're switching over to TESTS. Then Ford said, okay, we'll do the same, Volvo okay, we'll do the same, Rivian Okay,

we'll do the same. Who does that leave two of the biggest car companies out there, Hondata I just mixed Honda, Honda, and Hyundai. So you got Hyundai, You've got Honda, You've got Toyota. Out of those three companies, only Hyundai has really shown interest in EVS. Toyota and Honda still have yet to have a mainstream ev car, and so we're still waiting for them to come out with even an ev car. In general, they still think hybrid is the

way to go, So Electrify America jumping on board. And before we go, finally to break YouTube limiting video views if you have an ad blocker. So, if you have an ad blocker on your computer and you're trying to use YouTube and getting around those ads, guess what. YouTube is doing an experiment where they are only letting you watch three video before they show you a message that says, you know what, buddy, enough your ad blocker, stop blocking us,

or else you can't watch any more videos. And so you'll get to watch three with your ad blocker before you have to allow YouTube to show you ads. It also suggests that you subscribe to YouTube Premium, which is what I do. It's very expensive, but then you don't have to deal with any of the ad situation on YouTube in general. But again, if you're wondering what's happening with this whole YouTube situation when you have an ad blocker, yeah,

it's it's by design. Google's saying enough of you getting around our revenue source here, stop blocking our ads, so you'll get three videos before they give you that warning that you got to pay up or disable your ad blocker. All right, more rich on Tech coming up after this. The phone number to call in triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up next, we're going to tell you about a website that lets you rent out

your backyard and make some money doing it. It's the Airbnb of swimming pools and more. Coming up. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology, and you know, the gig economy is a big part of our world. It started with Uber, it continued with door dash, and now people are renting out all kinds of things, including their cars and their backyard. Swimply is a startup that lets you rent out your backyard pool. They've been doing that for years now. They're

expanding into backyard pickleball and tennis courts. Recently I chatted with swimpley co founder and CEO Buham Laskin about how people are renting out their backyards to make some extra cash.

go on the app and find different private pools. Different you can put in filters so how many people you are, whether you want to bring your pet, whether you want to be child friendly or event friendly, and then you can just preserve it by the hour. Since twenty nineteen, we've hosted over a million people and over one hundred and twenty five cities and now we're we're available also in Australia and.

but you don't have to be home. We've hosted over a million people with no incidents today.

the rules. There are charge of their own pricing, how many guests they allow, how experience they need to be, how many adults versus kids, ratio so we give the full control to the owners to operate their business however they want to, and guests gearable to see previous reviews from other players in the area, the families that have enjoyed the experience, and for even more peace of mind, simply offers up to two million dollars per reservation and protection and free of charge.

I am renting out the house, the property, the court usually like three times a week now, so it's become a major avenue of revenue for us.

I will have the link in there. Swimple dot com is the place to go. By the way, did you know you can listen to this show as a podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you never missed an episode just searching your favorite audio app. Rich on Tech. All right, coming up, we've got much more of the show. Many the phone lines are still still filled up. Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one, rich on Tech. Back after this.

Welcome back to rich on Tech, kicking off our number three of the show. Thanks for joining me at triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up in this hour, we've got friend of the show Jefferson Graham. He's going to talk about how to take photos of fireworks? Should we even bother? I'll ask him that question. Also, he's got a hot tip for travel that is a little low tech, so I'll ask him about that as he

embarks on a thirty day road trip. Then we've got this app that I think you should download. It's a life saving tool. Tell you about that and the new password manager that also protects your email. But first let's kick it off with Mark in Lomita, California. Mark, you're on with Rich.

all that good stuff. But if you use your phone, just you know, standard you turn on your phone and open it up in a different country, like they're going to say, okay, welcome to Switzerland. You're now paying ten dollars a day for your your global pass and that'll only give you I think it's half a gig of data a day, which might be enough just to get through what you need. But that's ten dollars a day,

so that can that can add up quickly. But if you're only there for you know, three four days, if you don't mind paying the extra forty bucks, it's very very simple. You don't really have to change anything at all. That's number one. Now you're talking about is an eSIM. So an eSIM is built into the new phones. You've said you have a S twenty one YEAP and have you confirmed that that does have SIM?

in most of the new phones. But what eSIM is, instead of a physical SIM card, you can activate a SIM card through your phone, so you don't need to do anything except just download, download an app, sign up for the app, and it'll say, okay, let's activate a phone line. And so what you do is you can either turn off your other SIM, your standard SIM which is your Verizon, and that way you don't get charged

or anything. Or better yet, you can just turn off the data portion and turn on Wi Fi calling and you'll be able to use your phone if you have Wi Fi, and you'll be able to make and receive calls, send your text, all that good stuff. So that's kind of the options now with the eSIM. There are two ways I recommend doing the eSIM route. One company is called US Mobile, and you download the app and you

sign up for a plan that is pretty inexpensive. So for instance, you're going to Europe, this is twenty dollars, will give you ten gigabytes of data for thirty days. So for twenty bucks you can roam all around Europe for thirty days and get ten gigabytes of data, which is more. I think that'll be more than enough for you. So that's very very simple. The other app I like

is called er low air Alo. Now their ten gigabyte plan just for Switzerland is going to cost twenty four dollars, and so again you buy that through the app and then it leads you through the step by step directions on how to install that on your Samsung phone. I've done this a dozen times. It's very very simple. I've only had one problem with it when I was in Japan on an Android phone. It worked fine on my iPhone, but it would not work on my Android for some reason.

But I've not had that same problem in other places. That was just a specific problem I seem to have. Otherwise it works pretty well. But again, Mark, that's what I'd recommend. Call Verizon first, see if you have any travel past days, see how many days you have use that first. If you want to just have the simplest process,

or if you don't mind paying. Let's say let's say you have three travel past days, you're going for a week, and then you don't mind paying the ten dollars every additional day you're only there, you know, three extra days. That would be thirty dollars total to use your phone as you use it in America. Otherwise, I would look into the eSIM from US Mobile or Ara Loo. I've got both of those linked up on the website, and I think those would work for you. Does that sound like something you could do?

don't do your banking on the Wi Fi. Always use a VPN when you're doing any sort of banking, or just use a cellular connection disconnect from Wi Fi whenever you're doing something like banking.

I will tell you if you switch over to an iPhone because of your son, is that many people have an iPhone and they will be able to help you with that iPhone. So when I wrote a book, I wrote one hundred and one handy tech tips for the iPhone. Why did I choose iPhone because it's almost universal here in the US. People have an iPhone, they know how to they have it, and they know the basics, but they didn't know all the little things you could do

on top of the basics. And so I wrote the book because it would reach so many people with that phone. Android devices are all very different. If you have a Samsung, it's different than a Motorola, it's different from a one Plus,

it's different than a pixel. So that's the reason why these tips and tricks and people helping each other out with the Android side of things doesn't happen as much because you know, chances are if your friend has an Android, they have a totally different model than you have, Whereas if they have an iPhone, it's running pretty much the same software. So they can say, oh, yeah, I know how to turn on the hot spot here, let me show you. So I do think in that case you're

going to be better off. But what type of Android phone do you have?

what you download on your Samsung. It's called move to iOS. And once you download that, this will help you transfer everything over to your iPhone. And so once you have your iPhone, you will literally just connect these two devices and you can move them over. And so it's a very simple, simple process and it basically just connects these things over a Wi Fi network that it creates between

these two devices. So what will transfer over? Your contacts, your message history, your camera photos, your videos, your photo albums, your files, your accessibility settings, your display settings, your web bookmarks, reading this off the Apple support page, your mail accounts, your WhatsApp, your calendars, and any app that is available on both platforms will transfer over. Now, not the actual app, but it will just download that app to the iPhone. So if there's any app that you don't see, you

can just go ahead and download that later. But from what you're telling me, if you're not really happy with this Samsung phone and it's a pretty basic phone, I say get a new iPhone. You can go with the iPhone. I would probably go with the iPhone fourteen at this point and just get the standard iPhone. I think it's going to be leaps and bounds ahead of what you have already. And you could even go to the Apple website and see if they'll give you any money for

that trade in. I don't think they will give you much for that phone, but you may get something now. If you also go through a carrier, they may try to give you a free iPhone. Just know, if they're giving you a free phone, it's not necessarily free. It's pretty much a three year contract where you have to stick with that carrier for three years. And yeah, the phone you won't be paying a payment for, but you will be paying to stay with that carrier for the

time being. So good question, Jan, Thanks so much. But yes, Apple has created an app again called move to iOS that will help you transfer an Android phone to an iPhone. Switching phones these days is quite quite simple, all right, Coming up? More of your calls at Triple eight, Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. We got my friend Jefferson Graham on tap. He's going to talk about taking pictures

of fireworks, and then we've got some more news. I'm going to tell you about a new password manager that actually looks pretty good and an app that you should download that I use probably on a weekly basis. You are listening to Rich on tech. Rich Demiro here, rich on Tech, hanging out on the holiday weekend, talking technology, technology arrests. The phone line is U eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Let's go to Jack in

uh Riverside, California. Jack, you're on with Rich.

that is probably what I would do. Now if none of that stuff works, If you really can't rescue this, I'm hoping that you're backed up, because that's uh, sounds like you're gonna have to reinstall Windows on this thing, or at least restart Windows into a uh, you know, a factory. You've got Windows ten on there, you said, So hopefully you should just be able to go into

safe mode and restart or reinstall this program. But I I this is why I recommend always having a backup, because it just you never know when something like this is going to happen. You're using a program, you're deleting something, you're changing a little setting here or there, and next thing you know, the world goes dark, and now you're like, uh,

what do I do? So again, unplug it, let it rest for a minute, plug it back in, see if it comes back to life, if it doesn't, go into safe mode, and see if you can troubleshoot from there. But otherwise, if that, if none of those things work, you might think about bringing it in somewhere that they can troubleshoot before you delete anything off of this computer.

You don't want to, you know, fully lose everything. So that's what I would do, and maybe bring it into a place like a Shurion or you know, find a local you know, local data doctor and if you have stuff on this that you need, maybe they can help. Let's go to Stella in Santa Monica. Stella, you're on with Rich.

If something is making your phone run hot, delete that app, get rid of it, or update your apps and figure out what's going on with that battery. Stella all right, Coming up Jefferson Graham, we'll talk fireworks photo. So you're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology and on the line my friend Jefferson Graham, formerly of USA Today, now of Photo Walks TV. Jefferson, thanks so much for joining me.

That is small, it's portable, it's light. It works in so many great situations, and it has been fantastic for me as a run and gunner going all over the place from France and Japan and solve it. You know, Solvang I was in Columbus, Ohio, and I'm about to go on a big thirty day shoot between LA and South Dakota, stopping in Colorado and Utah and Arizona and Nevada, in Wyoming and Idaho, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm going to be doing a lot of episodes

doing it this way. So I just got my box full of smartphones and accessories.

you are at writing these things. But you had a tip this week about booking hotel rooms, which is sort of anti to everything we would think of tell me what that tip is.

you've got to go cheap, right. Yeah, So it was two hundred dollars a night, I believe on the Windom site. When I called, she said one fifty, and I said, what gives? And she goes, Oh, the commissions. The commissions are built in, and they're baked into all the sites. Even when you go direct, the commissions are built in. So you always got a call and I'll tell you go ahead.

save you that money. Now, fifteen dollars may not sound like a lot twenty bucks, thirty bucks, but if you're going for thirty days like you just mentioned, that's you know, I cut add up to like one thousand dollars.

And the other knock we have to give on booking and hotels is you get to the place you hate it, You're booked for four nights, you say I want out, and they say, sorry, there's nothing we can do because you went through Booking dot Com. Had you gone direct with us, it would have been no problem. Right.

I know people will love to share their fireworks photos this coming weekend. Do you even bother taking pictures? Can the can the average person get a good fireworks photo?

and run videos. So you have the whole thing. And on the iPhone the minute you start recording with the red button. Right next to the red button is a white button and that's for taking pictures. And you could just hit that over and over again while you've got your backup video going and you can get some great photos.

tripod and do several video clips. Do you know? Remember the best one is the last one, right, So do it a few times and you're gonna get some great stuff.

a Samsung S twenty three? Is that the Ultra?

astrophotography feature. Yeah, photography. Sure, Well, a three hundred X you can and you can run it for one hour. I'm going to be in the bad Lands National Park in South Dakota doing star trails and I really wanted to get it for that. I also like the fact that you can do varial speed time lapses, which you cannot do on the iPhone. I am a time lapse freak. I do them all the time, and basically put you put the camera on a tripod, you press record, and you let us stay there for an hour. But you

don't have any choices. So with the Samsung, they're giving you a choice of five X and ten X, basically making it much faster. And I think that's great. And the other reason I bought the camera, just so everybody knows is I do lead a lot of photo workshops and seminars and I say, here's how you do stuff on the iPhone, and there's always somebody who says, yeah, but how do I do it on the Galaxy? So I want to be better well versed.

of like rapid fire. It's probably too fast for any of us to understand, but I'm going to do my best because there's a lot to get through. First off, a couple stories. Proton Pass so new password manager from the folks that make proton Email, which is a secure email, encrypted email service. They've been running that since twenty fourteen. Proton Mail now they came out with a password manager. And what I like about this password manager is it

is free. Now, of course it's limited in the free scope, but it's still free, and I think it's actually pretty good for what they offer for free. So what they do, what their thing is proton password Manager. I want to just make sure I have this on here. Okay, So it's open source number one, but it also covers your email address. So that's the main difference between this encrypted, open source password manager from proton mail and the others is that this one also generates a one time email

address for your login, similar to what Apple does. They have a program that does that, but then you're linked there. The more hidden email addresses you generate with Apple, the more you are linked to Apple forever. And that's why they do that, because they want you to stay in that walled garden for as long as humanly possible. And I'm not knocking Apple. It's a very smart method of

getting you in there and keeping you there. But if you're using third party apps and websites, I always prefer those because then you can switch when something better comes along. Right now, the iPhone is amazing. What if in in three weeks, some phone comes out that's just incredible, and you want to get out of the Apple ecosystem. Well, it's going to be tough if all your passwords and email addresses are all linked to Apple iCloud. So anyway,

proton pass check it out. Let's see. It creates email aliases, so it's a randomly generated email address. And their argument is that you know these email If a website is hacked, not only do they get their password, your password, which should be random, but then they get your email address, and they say it could be embarrassing depending on the email or the website rather, but it does all these things.

The free version of proton pass supports unlimited logins, unlimited encrypted notes, and a limited number of hide my email addresses and two factor authentication logins. So if you want everything unlimited, you can subscribe. They're offering an eighty percent discount. It's available for just a dollar a month with an annual subscription until the end of July forever, they say, so basically twelve bucks a year. That sounds like, and it's gonna go up to its regular price of four

dollars a month, so forty eight dollars a year. After July, so check it out. It's called Proton Pass and I have not used this personally, but I actually think it looks pretty good. California State Parks teaming up with What three Words. If you watch me on KTLA, you know I've talked about this app in the past. It's called What three Words. They have divided up the entire world into ten by ten foot squares. Every one of those

squares has a unique three word label. So the label for and why would you need this when we have GPS, Well, when you're in a national park, or you're in anywhere, there may be a space in that area that you want someone to meet you at. Let's say you need help your stranded hiker. You're not gonna say, oh, I'm at Dunswood Park. I'm at this ten by ten square foot area, and that way you can find me a

lot easier. And so that's why California State Parks is teaming up with this What three Words app, so dispatchers can find exactly where you are if you have this app and you know how to use it, So download this app What three Words to your phone. And this means every park bench, every parking space, every camp site, any remote spot on a parking trail or a hiking trail has its own what three words address, so you can tell someone exactly where you are with precision down

to ten by ten. How do you use this in the regular world if you're not stranded. Let's just give you an example. My photographer and I we meet at Anaheim Convention Center. There are ten million places you can meet at the Anaheim Convention Center. I send him my what three words for the exact bench that I'm sitting on, and he can navigate right to that bench. It's brilliant. Let's see what else here? Two minutes here, Jose says,

can you help me with a free video editing? And what kind of connection do I need to play the video from an iPhone to a TV for free video editing? I'd recommend cap cut. They also have an adapter Lightning AV adapter that'll give you an hdm MY output on your iPhone. You plug that into your TV. Otherwise, you can use an app called Replica to wirelessly beam the content from your phone to the TV if you have

a Smart TV or an Apple TV. Jeremy, commenting on last week's story about Uber, how my driver said, Oh, I don't live here. I'm just filling in for my brother on his app. He said, hey, rich, Uber does have facial recognition for drivers. It's not every time they log in, it's just occasionally a request to verify who they are through facial recognition. So yeah, they should probably do that every time they get in the seat. And finally, Angel last week was asking about earbuds with no microphone.

He said, yeah, I need to find these for my wife because I still want to live in my house. Haha. I asked my friend Lauren Dragon over at Wirecutter. She took time out from her vacation to find these best Buy sleep A ten earbuds. She said these are pretty much the only things she can think of that do not have a mic because are meant for sleeping. All right, that's gonna do it for this episode of the show.

Check out the show notes at richontech dot tv. Next week the app that can take your vitals just by snapping a selfie once again. You can find me on social media at rich on tech. My name is rich Dmurro. 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. Congrats to Bobo who got married today, Producer Bobo, thanks to Kim on the phones, Adam filling in for Bobo, and everyone who makes this

show possible. Thank you so much for spending part of your weekend with me. My name is rich Dumuro. I will talk to you real soon