Another day, another data breach. This time it's a flight tracking app, how to turn your old devices into a costco shopping spree. And the iPhone bug that crashes your phone instantly. Don't try this one at home. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is rich on Tech. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting,
useful and fun. Let's open up those phone lines at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Again eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Email is also an option. Just go to richon tech dot TV, hit contact and you can send your message right to my screen. On this week's show, we've got a sheish Agarwall. He is going to talk
about the Jubilee TV. This is a streaming device designed with seniors in mind. The twist is that a caregiver can pretty much control the entire TV remotely, so everything from the streaming services to the channel to the volume to the close captions. It's a whole new concept. We'll have him talk about that. Later in the show. We've got author Julio Vincent Gambudo. He's going to discuss his new book, Please unsubscribe. Thanks, this will help you reclaim
your time and purpose in the digital age. And later, US News Vehicle editor Zach Dole is going to talk about Tesla's cyber truck. He's going to give an objective assessment. I know you've seen it on the road. You have thoughts, We have thoughts, he has thoughts. We'll talk about all of that. Welcome to the show. Just watching the news and these NASA astronauts that are stranded in outer space pretty wild. I mean they're not calling them stranded, but
they're pretty much stranded. Their trip was supposed to be eight days, they've already spent eighty and now they're gonna spend an extra six months. So you're talking an eight day trip turned into an eight month trip and they're not back yet. By the way, can you imagine now, if you're on vacation in Hawaii, sure, bring it on.
I mean you'd be broke by the end of that time. But at least to be fun.
But you're in space, and I'm sure there's a little bit of like hesitation and wondering, like is this all gonna work out?
Let's hope it does.
Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, they've already been up there for eighty days, and I guess there's some I don't know, some sort of failures on this starliner. It's gonna return unmanned because of these thruster failures and helium weeks. So they're gonna end up using this SpaceX dragon for return. SpaceX interesting. Anyway, they'll be coming back in February twenty twenty five now, so I hope they packed a lot of food for them. I mean, I know the what
do they drink up their tang remember that? Oh my gosh. Anyway, we're thinking of you. Hope you got hope you can download Netflix up there. That's all I have to say. Like, I don't know what their situation is, like what are the creature comforts when you're in space just floating around? And I know it takes a toll on the human
body as well, So we are thinking of you. And it's just I was talking about this with my kids the other day, because you know, we were just talking about this whole, this situation before we knew what the end result was going to be, and it's just like, can you imagine being in space for all that time?
No?
I couldn't.
All right, this week hopped around the nation, thankfully, I took transportation that is much more proven, just an airplane. I was in Newport Beach and then I went to New York City. So in Newport Beach stayed at this Oh my gosh. I mean, you don't realize what these car companies do. They They have these trips that these journalists go on, and there's pretty much one going on anywhere in the world at any given time. They invite all these journals lists and they bring them in, they
put them up at these places. What was a place called It's called Pelican Hill Resort, the nicest place I've ever been in my entire life. Stayed there for two nights part of this Volvo drive Valvo EX ninety. This is their new flagship seven seater all electric suv. It's got a lot of tech features, got these thor hammer headlights. Now I had to look that up because I thought it was like a movie marketing thing, but no, it's actually just I guess thor is a thing before the movies,
like from back in the day. And so you know, I've got these cool headlights that kind of opening close. Anyway, first Volvo car with lidar, So they made a big deal out of this. I guess that's why they invited me there. But this car is going to collect data and it's eventually going to be able to drive itself. So right now, when they put this car in the road, it's just going to be in a collection phase. So anyone who buys this thing is going to be helping
Volvo train their self driving autonomous driving software. They didn't give me a timeline on when this car is going to be able to drive itself fully, but they said, yes, that is the point. This car will eventually be able to drive itself. That's a big deal. So I know we heard this week that Ford was pulling back on its big electric suv. Talk more about that later in
the show, but they're moving on with this one. This is eighty thousand bucks, gets about three hundred miles on a range on a charge, I should say, which was fine, but I really think the sweet spot for cars these evs is really four hundred miles to not feel that range anxiety, because realistically, let's put it this way, when you get three hundred miles on an electric car, you're really only supposed to charge that to eighty percent. So do the math. You're not getting three hundred on a
full charge. You're really getting less than that. And then as soon as you drive that car a little bit, even though it says to eighty, it's going to drop down to like two seventy two sixty when you start driving. So you have to keep all of this in mind, and that's why the electric cars are very controversial in certain circles. Went to New York City for a company called x GMI. This is a smart projector company, and I got to say, really really cool stuff they came
out with. They showed us all these new products, a bunch of tech people in attendance. Their whole thing is they make these projectors that are really small, portable and bright, and the best feature about them is auto keystone. So if you've ever set up a projector in your life, you know that it's a problem because you have to move it, adjust it up and down, get the picture
just right, you're kind of adjusting the edges. Well, these do everything automatically, so not only does it find the size of the screen that you're aiming it at and adjust to that, but it also straightens the image. And so it's just super simple to set up and very portable, and the models start around three hundred bucks. But just ex Jimmy is the company again, by the way, really really nice stuff they're coming out. They super portable projector that.
Of course, once you see it, you're like, oh, I want that in my life. I'm gonna have that my suitcase every time I travel so I can just watch movies on my hotel room, you know wall.
But that's a cool thing too. These tech events.
I know it sounds like you just go and it's all fun and games, right, but it really is amazing to hang out with all the tech people you know, in the same place, from all the different cities in the world and just swap stories, talk chat, compare notes. I mean everyone at this event, not only the Volvo event in Newport Beach, but also in the New York City event. Now, the car people I'm not as familiar with. I know a bunch of them, but the tech people.
I know a lot of them, and it's like you sit there and you're talking about the latest phones, the latest gadgets, what you like, what you don't like, and it's stuff like of course you can do it on you know, Twitter and stuff, but being in person obviously adds a much better layer to things. So and not just that, but you also get face to face time with the representatives from the companies, and so you learn more about this stuff on a level that you're not
gonna get from a press release. You know, it's it's much more intimate, it's much more just per you know, just driven by face to face communication, which I know is such a weird concept in our world.
AI.
Let me talk about AI, because of course I'm always using AI in new and different ways. And I'll tell you about three ways I used AI this week to help me find wine that I like on a menu, to help me build a salad, and to help me find what to order on a menu. I know it all sounds very weird, but stick with me. So AI in everyday life, wine win. When you are presented with a wine menu, if you're drinking wine at a restaurant, it is the most complex, like you know, thing you
could ever imagine, because how do you buy it? Do you buy it by price? Do you buy it by what you know? Ninety nine percent of the wines on that list you're probably never going to recognize, and they're all overpriced.
You don't know you know what you're getting. So here's what I did.
I told the AI that the couple of wines that I know I like right like the brand names. And I said, Okay, now I'm going to show you a menu, tell me which one I should get based on what I like. And so I took a picture of the menu. You upload it to AI.
It already knows what you like, and it spits out the wines that it things you should order. Brilliant.
I think this is going to change the way I order stuff at restaurants forever, because I'm going to keep programming it to get it better and better. And then by the way, I can say, give me a bottle, you know, under fifty dollars, or give me a glass under you know, ten dollars, or give me the cheapest wine you think that I'm gonna like on this menu.
I mean, this is like AI really in use salad, I went to a salad place, one of those places where you like choose your own salad, and I was like, you know what, let me try having my AI build a healthy salad. So I uploaded all the ingredients that you can choose from and I said, what I like, you know, I want high protein, you know whatever, And I said, build me a salad. And by the way,
don't use any of the premium products. You know, like you know, you get upsold by like certain things that they add your salad that's expensive.
And sure enough, it picked out the stuff and it built the salad.
It it used kale as the base, which was like, okay, I had to like power through a kale salad, but it was still I thought it was pretty interesting.
But here's the funniest part. When I went to pick up the salad.
Instead of salmon, which by the way, I did splurge for, they put salami. Because I guess nobody's ordering salmon in their salad, so they gave me salami, and I said, thankfully. I checked the order before I left and they replaced it.
And then when it comes to the.
Menu of the restaurant, So if you're looking for certain things, let's say you have, you know, sodium issues or cholesterol issues or saturated fat. You want heart healthy, same thing. You tell AI what you want and then you upload the picture of the menu and you say, hey, give me my best choices here. You know, maybe you don't like fish, maybe you like steak, whatever it is, and it will tell you. And the thing about AI, I
get that a lot of times. It's kind of like just making stuff up, so you have to be aware of that. But it also is giving you, like really good information about the stuff on this menu. It says, hey, you know, watch out for that. Like this yesterday it was like breakfast and it was like avocado toast, which I thought was healthy, and it's like, oh, just got to be careful. Sometimes it's got a lot of saturated fat, so you got to be careful with how much you eat or look at the cream on the side or
this or that. So I'm not saying you have to use this every time. I'm not saying you got to, you know, change your whole life. But I just thought it was kind of cool. Some new uses of AI in everyday life eight to eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero.
One give me a call if you have a question about technology.
You are 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. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Well, California became the fifth state that lets you add your
driver's license to uh your phone. This is actually it's interesting because last week I talked about how Apple said they were going to do this, but then Android leapfrog them, and so if you have an Android phone in California, you can now add your state ID or driver's license to Google Wallet, but you can't use it for a lot of stuff.
It's mostly TSA checkpoints right now.
Uh.
But California joins Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, and Maryland and offering this capability. Five hundred thousand folks have already done this in California through the DMV's old program, which is m what do they call it, my driver's I don't know. It's like my driver my digital driver's license or something. But now you can add it to your Google Wallet. So it's only limited to one point five million people at this point because it's a pilot program, so if
you haven't done it, you can do it. I did not do this just yet because I'm kind of you know, I've got two phones that I use primarily, an iPhone and Android, and so I'm curious if I add it to the Android.
Am I not able to add it to the iPhone?
But anyway, if you want to do it, just go to your Android device, open up Google Wallet and then you'll see where it says add to wallet in the lower right hand corner, and then you tap ID card and then it says fly through TSA and then you'll see it says select which state issued your ID Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, and Maryland. So you can if you're in one of
those five states, add your your card to your phone. Again, you can't really use it in many places, but hey, this is a start, and I think it's amazing if we can actually get to the point where our license can be on our phone. It's actually way more private than carrying a regular license. So we'll see what happens there. Let's go to Richard in my home state of New Jersey.
Richard drawn with rich Hey, rich Pleasure in an honor to speak to you.
Yeah, thanks for Colin. What can I help with?
Okay, here's my scenario. I splurged. I got the lg OLED seventy seven inch TV top of the line, went for the top of the line with the Sonos the Art sound bar, big sub warfare for your speakers. I'm almost blind, so when I turn on channel I have Exfinity through Comcast, I needed to tell me what's on the channel. And it's always done that good. After their last update, it comes out so freaking out the whole house shape.
Yeah, oh my god.
I should contact them to adjust it. No idea when you're in and if you have any no.
And here's the thing.
I was just telling my wife last night that I'm ready to throw my Sonos system out the window because they have ruined it.
It is actually ruined.
I've had Sonos for about over I don't know, ten years now, and I absolutely love it.
I'm one of the biggest fans.
And they ruined the devices with the latest software update. This happened maybe a couple months ago, and they came out with the new app that changed everything. I don't know if you've seen the new app, but it's horrible.
Yes, I have it.
I don't like it.
Yeah, it's it's just terrible.
And then they said, you know, they came out with a blog post with the CEO saying, look, we're going to fix this in the next six months. Six months. Who can wait six months? So what you're experiencing is what I'm experiencing. Nothing is working the way it's supposed to be working. I don't know what they did, what
they changed, but nothing in my house. Last night, I turn on music while we were you know, before eating dinner, and I went to close out the app, and co course, the volume doesn't respond anymore on the app for some reason or it's delayed, and then all of a sudden, I touched something on my phone. The volume went to a thousand degrees. So it'splasting through my house. The kids start yelling like, Hey.
What's happening.
What's happening.
I'm like, I know, I know, can't turn the volume down. So Richard, I think this is a matter of you're gonna have to just wait until this app gets better. My question is is it the volume just from the TV? Is it something that the TV is doing like a voice volume? It's doing or something.
Well, it's just the TV's volume that comes through the arc when I'm not watching a regular channel. It's fine when I changed the channel, and again when Xfinity tells me what it's coming on, that's when it's loud. I even contacted, so no, so of course I just got to run around.
Through there in another country.
But yeah, that you know, it sits and it's frustrating.
The only thing I can think of, and this is what I typically do in a situation like this, is go through the like every single setting in the settings and see if there's anything specific for because what's happening is there's like two you know, in your car when you're when you're like listening to music, and then like Google Maps pops in and does like the voice Sometimes that voice volume is different, like a different level than the music volume, and the only time you can adjust
it is while that music are they sorry, this assistant voice is like currently on. So I'm wondering if that's the case here, like while this while this Infinity box is speaking, maybe there's a way that you can go into the app and turn down the volume while that box is speaking, and that's separate from the TV volume. But that's the only thing I can think of. I think that this is just a matter of this entire
system is just not working right now. And I'm I can't tell you how much I went from loving Sonos to actually hating them, Like I physically can't stand having it in my house anymore.
I'm so invested in it.
I've got speakers in every one in my house, in every one of my rooms, and I just can't even use them like I now have resorted to using like my phone, my laptop, my uh you know, I'll just use like the Google Home speaker. Not as good as the soos. But Richard, I feel your pain. I hope that we get a fix here very very soon. Anyway, thanks for calling from New Jersey today. Appreciate it. It was just there, well in New York. I landed in New York though, that counts all right. Coming up, we're gonna
tell you about the Jubilee TV. This is a new set top box design with senior citizens in mind. This is 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. That's eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. We'll get back to the phone lines in just a moment, but first I'm in Hollywood. Joining me now is CEO and co founder of Jubilee TV, A sheish Auger Wall.
Thanks so much for joining me, Rich, glad to be here. So let's talk about what is Jubilee TV.
Uh Doubi TV is a product that allows families to remotely take care and connect with their seniors aging in their own home through the device that seniors are most
familiar with, which is the TV. For seniors, it simplifies the TV experience and for families, it allows them to use an app that they can see what's on the TV, be their tech support, fix anything on the TV, put content live stream from their phone, do video calls, and even keep a watchful eye on their TV watching habits and movement for an extra piece of mind.
So from what I've seen here, it's basically a box kind of like a streaming set top box, but this does not actually have streaming capabilities built in.
You connect your inputs to this box.
So think about a set top box that has a camera on it. It's got some inputs on the back, it's got an output and all this stuff kind of comes into the box.
It displays on the TV.
But the genius part here is that you, as a caregiver or a loved one, can.
Actually not only see what's on their.
TV screen remotely from your phone, you can also control pretty much everything from turning the TV on to the volume, changing the channel, and it's all highly personalized. What was sort of the reason you came.
Up with this, Yeah, Rich, Jubilee TV is a very personal endeavor for me. I was always a TV guy. You know that Apple Harmon made a lot of TV products. But during COVID, I felt really disconnected with my parents and my in laws, and my thought kept on coming back to TV. Why isn't there a device that connects my safe place which is the phone, to their safe place, which is the TV.
That was the birth of Jubilee TV.
And then we went really deep, like we have over seventy patterns, We really really you know this product guys who want to make product really amazing, and we bridge that gap.
And so you've got this this app for the I call the caregiver a loved one's phone where lets you not only see what's on their TV screen, but also control it has that ever been done before?
And no, it hasn't been done before, and I think it will be a while before somebody else manages to capture this because there's so many devices, so many different setups, so many different types of TVs. We can go back to any TV you want, any device and connect it and control it, and there are various control protocols.
How do you master all of that?
It took us years after which now we've come to a point where it's a very simple app. And somebody mentioned simplicity is the key. A very simple big button interface for seniors and a simple app that lets you do powerful things.
So the idea being that, let's say you live in Los Angeles, your mother, father lives in New York, and they have a problem with their TV. You know, the input has changed, or the Roku box is not showing Netflix, it's showing Hulu, and or maybe Hulu got logged out. You were able to control and really assist them from afar not only physically change the input or anything like that, but you.
Can even type in on screen if you need to.
Right, yeah, you could do like somebody said, magic on this.
Right.
We had one person call and said, my mom called and said, my language is Spanish on my set to the box?
How do I change it?
Now?
That person would have to fly four hundred miles to fix that issue. I'm pretty sure. So is that with your box we were just able to change the language back to English. So anything you can think, but not just fixing TVs. You could put shows you know that your mom would want to watch or your parents would want to watch. You can make TV really more interesting. You could also program it such that at a certain time TV turns on and plays.
The content you want to watch.
So there's a user whose father just wants to watch baseball a local team at the first of the month. He programs the box for the rest of the month to turn on the TV and watch your favorite show.
So those moments are really really interesting, you know.
And TV, now the loudest speaker, the largest becomes a very powerful connection surface and.
It goes much deeper than just TV.
It's also a way to connect because you have built in video calling, you have built in messaging, you have built in photo sharing and also video sharing, and like you said, the live streaming, So explain some of those features as well.
Yeah, So, once we had built this, you know, as you said, very powerful interface where you could see the TV and control it. We started to extend that to connection. So the first use case was content, which is what TV is about. The next one is trying to take care of social isolation. Seniors want to age in their own home. They often feel isolated. You want to go visit them, but you can't as much as you're juggling
with other responsibilities. So we build this connection layer very powerful messaging, reminders, photo sharing, video sharing, video calling that allows you to really drop in and seniors to experience those moments. So that was the second layer were built in.
And then there's another layer of kind of safety and security, so you can have an activity feed of hey, we noticed that something was unusual. You get I guess the camera snapshot of things that happen in front of the camera on the device, like if someone else is in the room. I even saw on the app where it said, hey, there are currently two people standing in front of the box. So if there's only one person in that house at all times and you're like, why is there a second?
This box can help you uncover those mysteries as well.
Yeah, Rich, So the third layer of This is what we call activity feed.
You can see patterns evolve.
If you look at Apple Watch six months later, it will say hey, if you observe this pattern with you. Similarly, our box takes care of TV watching and camera and microphone patterns and analyzes them locally on the box. That allows to indicate to families if something is unusual and allows you to keep a watchful eye. And Mom didn't turn on the TV by ten am, something must be wrong because mom always turns on the TV. Mom didn't
turn off the TV that night, I better watch. So all those notifications are super powerful in you trying to remotely take care of your loved one, including movement, voice in the room, the camera, all then locally, it's an extremely powerful Edji box that does this.
And you also mentioned reminders. So can you have a reminder pop up on screen that says, hey, it's ten am.
Time take this medicine?
Yeah?
So reminders is yet another powerful feature. Because as I mentioned, TV is the loudest speaker and the largest screen, and we have full control over it. You can choose to set reminders and you could even force on those reminders that the senior has to acknowledge and takes a picture during that right, so you can choose what degree do you want to go into. So if mom has to take this medicine at ten am, if she misses it
by twenty minutes, then she's in trouble. You better force the reminder and force that that reminder has to be dismissed and you get a notification. If that reminder wasn't dismissed, then alarm bells can go on. So it really becomes a mission critical device at that point.
It feels like it mixes some other technologies that I've played with in the past, like sling box for instance, for viewing kind of like the TV screen anywhere in the world from your phone, that universal remote aspect. So tell me all those things kind of come together in this box. How tough was all of that to bring together? Because you're talking about controlling a Roku or controlling a fire TV stick, controlling different models of television.
Yeah, Riich, it's it's amazing that you actually got all of this because the founding team, and I want to give a shout out to Blake Krekorian was a Slingbox co founder and two days ago was when he passed a few years ago. So and he's one of the co founders of this company.
Or was right.
So that's how and I made one of the first universal remote controls. So that's exactly you see all these elements coming in together that made this happen.
Yes, it was really difficult. It requires a lot of expertise.
We have over I think now seventy patents on this seven years in working.
Nobody else could do this.
Everybody thought this is at least four other startups I know started tried to do this, failed, gave up and never released a product. And so it is really an act of love. We are all engineers at heart. You want to create great products, great experiences and make an impact in this world.
Okay, so the box is two hundred dollars. Where you going to be able to get it? And there is a monthly fee, So explain what that is and what the value is for that what people get for that fee.
Yeah, so you buy the box, it's two hundred dollars.
You can get it on our own site, get Jubilee tv dot com, or you can buy it on Amazon or best Buy. And then a membership fee is twenty nine dollars a month or two sixty nine dollars a year. You get sixty days of free trial, so absolutely we want you to love it. If you don't love it, please return it back to us. It's a product of love.
Ashiesh Agarwall. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Thank you, Rich The pressure is all mine.
Okay.
The product once again is Jubilee TV. I'll put a link to it on my website, rich on tech dot TV. More rich on Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple A Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. We've got Kim standing by to take your call and hopefully get you on this show. Eight eight eight rich one O one and email also an option.
Just go to rich on Tech dot TV hit contact. That will send your message right to my screen. And uh, if you want notes, if you want show notes or a link to something I mentioned, just go to the website rich on Tech dot tv and hit the light bulb up at the top. So, for instance, if you heard our last segment about the Jubilee TV you're like that sounds interesting, just go to the website and hit the light bulb and that will give you all the show notes in real time.
Let's go to Mary in San Diego. Mary, you're on with Rich. Welcome to the show.
Thank you for taking my call.
I love your show.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Quick question. I have an iPhone and as somebody mentioned that I should have a VPN on my iPhone. Is that possible or that's only for the computer? Uh?
No, you can absolutely have a VPN on the iPhone. So it works. Uh, you know, you download the app and you basically install it, sign up for a plan, and it will it will install and work just like.
You know, anything else on the iPhone.
It's a little bit different because it's it's kind of built into the settings on the iPhone.
But you can absolutely have a VPN on the iPhone.
So things to look for in a VPN, uh, you know, it depends what you're using it for. But most of the experts I speak with say, you want one that has a no log policy, doesn't store or sell your browsing data independent audit results. So on their website it will say, hey, here's how we handle our data. Here's someone else that checked it. Out and we check out WireGuard protocol. That is a little bit faster of a connection. I know it sounds like a funny term, but that's
something to look for on the website. Make sure it works across all your devices. So I know you're talking about an iPhone, but you know, see if it works on desktop computers as well. Bandwidth is obviously a consideration. You want to have unlimited ideally because you want to be able to use this as much as you want. These things typically cost around five to ten dollars a month.
There are some free VPNs out there. The one that I would recommend if you're looking for a free one is Proton pro O t O N and they they have a free level of their VPN and it's I think it's a little bit limited. You can use it on one device, but that is one that you know people do trust for the free level of support.
Does that help?
Is there another one that you recommend besides Proton one?
Now, so the the ones that have been recommended in the past by experts on this show over and over. There's one called IVPN so IVPN, and then MOLEVAD m U L l V A D. But you know, there's there's many VPNs out there. There's a lot of good ones. I think it's a matter of just looking for one that fits the pricing that you want and the features that you want. So, for instance, this molevad is basically
five dollars a month forever. Some of them try to get you to pay more upfront and you know, maybe get you to prepay for like three five years or sorry, like three years at once or a year in advance. So it just depends on you know, what you want, what you're comfortable with, and you know, there you go.
Okay, I have With that being said, how can I find out if somebody had had my iPhone or they have access to my iPhone?
They don't, that's the short answer. Ninety nine per unless the person is you know, FBI Special Operations, they do not have access to your iPhone. People think that that people get access to the iPhone. It's really tough, especially remote access. It's just it's nearly impossible. I mean even for law enforcement trying to get into people's phones if they don't have the code, it is really really tricky.
The phones are encrypted unless they have you your password or you know your login information.
Or your past code. It's really really tough.
You know.
I'd be more concerned about Instagram listening to your conversations because I do see that happen on a daily basis, where you mentioned something to a friend and next thing you know it is there's an AD on your phone for it. So, but Mary, if you're concerned about anything like that and you want to be more private on your phone, a VPN is fine.
I think that it depends what you're doing.
But ninety nine point nine percent of the time, unless you're really trying to cover your tracks, there's probably no need for a VPN. If you're in a public place, you're doing sensitive stuff like checking your email on a public network or checking your you know, your banking account, stuff like that, you might want to use a VPN. But my typical recommendation is that if you're doing anything super private on your computer, do it on a cellular
connection versus a public Wi Fi hotspot connection. Let's go to Gary in San Antonio, Texas. Gary, you're on with rich.
Ty Right, Hi, I got a I got rid of my I've one six, got a fifteen plus bro and this thing runs hot. I mean, it won't even charge all the past eighty percent unless you put it in a cool spot, and whether it's sit you know, I was, so even getting a charge to one hundred percent, it is hard to do. And I'm wondering why it's running so hot.
Well, where where are you charging it? Like, are you charging it on the dashboard in your car or is this at home plugged in?
At home plugged in?
And what charger are you using?
Using the one that came with it, or using a like a third party like when you got like a convenience store.
What No, I didn't get a charger with it, but we bought a set of chargers that they're quick chargers, okay.
And are they high quality?
Yeah, okay, far as I know.
Okay.
Well, so when the iPhone fifteen Pro first came out, yes, it did run hot and there were some issues, but that was fixed within the first couple of months. And so you should not be having this phone run hot. Now I get it. It is the summer. I had my phone in the car charging wirelessly, and yes, it does heat up, you know, to a certain extent, depending on the weather and the temperature and things like that.
And you also want to make sure that you're charging your phone on a table, not on a bed, not on anything that's fabric. You know, you want this phone to be able to bathe a little bit, because when you do charge a device, it's it's going to pick up some heat. Now, a lot of that heat is typically dissipated by the plug on the wall versus the phone.
You know, the phones managed kind of that system. So if you're using a charger that's really cheap or something that's you know, you know, something that's third party that's not very good, it could run hotter and it could just not be managing the heat properly.
So yeah, the sense I bought was Nanima.
Yeah, well I haven't heard of that one, so I mean that could be a problem. Is this happening with every phone that you charge on this charger or just this one?
I like charge to one and uh, that's the only thing I run an iHeart radio like going for seven?
Okay, are you running something while you're charging it? Are you are you running something on the phone? Are you streaming it twenty four to seven while you're charging it?
Yeah?
I might have I art running overdoing blue dude.
Okay, Well, I love that you're listening to iHeart all day. That's that.
I appreciate that, but I think that could be part of it. So, you know, phones they do have you know, the management in them for heat management, and they have gotten better over the years and they do. But if you're running something twenty four to seven on it, no matter what it is, the phone's going to heat up, and so it shouldn't be it shouldn't be hot to
the touch where it's like unusable. But a small level of heat on the phone if you're if you're running something on it, if the screen's on all day, if you're charging it all day, that definitely is a possibility. I personally, if this phone is new, would take it to the Apple store just to have them do a check up on it. They could run some diagnostics, make sure that it's all on the up and up, especially while you're in that warranty period.
Gary, thanks for listening.
Thanks for calling in from San Antonio eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple A rich one oh one That phone number eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You have a question about technology, give me a call. Coming up this hour, we've got author Julio Vincent Gambudo.
He's going to discuss his book. Please unsubscribe. Thanks, help you reclaim some of your time and purpose in this digital world.
Uh.
Speaking of which, I'm reading a book right now.
Let's see. It's called The Anxious Generation.
And I'm a little late on this, but man, I want to throw all my tech out the window for my kids. It's just all about how kids are inundated with technology and they can't stop. You know, their little brains are just not programmed to figure out how to stop scrolling on Instagram, or how to stop playing video games, or how to stop visiting you know, those websites on the web. You know what I'm talking about. So really eye opening. I'm only halfway through, but I can't. I'm
like hanging on every word of this book. And I tell my kids when I get home, like go outside, play with worms like I used to do. Just go just get dirt, just go go do something dangerous.
I don't even care.
Just go like we did dangerous stuff as kids, Like you know, I used to climb fences like you, bobo, do you know how to hop a fence?
Like when I was a kid, it was so dangerous.
You'd hop a fence and your fear was like getting caught on the top or getting your foot caught and falling.
Do you know how to hop a fence? I got your beat.
I jumped a roof so, oh okay, I have notts one that's I don't like heights, so I would not be up I went out a roof like once. My dad, you know, he runs a roofing company, so he's always on roofs. He brought me up once, so I'm just like, nope, never mind, don't need to be up here. We had back in the day.
We didn't have video games like online games, so we took bikes and went around the neighborhood. It was a school by my grandmother's house, and we found it way on a roof.
It was like, y'all, let's jump.
Okay, what's your jump to from the top of a one floor building to the grass?
Oh wow?
Yeah, just to see who was all chicken? Yeah it was just a chicken chat. Now I look at it like I was stupid, but yeah, so fun in a moment, but it makes you who you are.
It makes it makes you who you are nowadays. This the thesis of this book, as I'm understanding, is that kids don't take any chances because it's all virtual and there's no chance. In the virtual world you can do whatever you want. You just get another life, you know what I mean. But in real world, if you hop that fence or jump that roof and you got hurt, you're never gonna do it again.
You probably never did it again anyway. I never jumped off the other roofs. You don't need to.
He did it once anyway. I'm not saying to jump off roofs. Please do not do that anyway. So, uh yeah, one of the things, and I'll get to the calls in just a moment here.
One of the things that I was trying to find.
You know, I travel a lot, and I'm always trying to find, like the best restaurant that's close to where I'm staying. And so I was going to New York City and I wanted a restaurant to meet my family at who's from New Jersey, and so there's got to be a way, you know.
I used to use YELP. I don't really use yelp much anymore.
But so I was like, Okay, let me figure out a way to find like a good restaurant that's close to my hotel. So here's what I figured out. Number one, you got to go to Google Maps on the desktop. This doesn't work as well on the phone, but if you go to Google Maps on the desktop, you search for where you're staying, so whether that's a hotel, someone's house, whatever, and then once you search for that and that pops up, you get these things up at the top says nearby hotels.
I don't know why you need another hotel if you're staying at a nearby If you're staying at a hotel, restaurants, things to do, bars, coffee, whatever, you tap restaurants and that will bring up all the restaurants that are within a fifteen minute walking distance of your hotel. And then you can go through and further refine so you can do the price. You could do one dollar, sign up to four. You can do rating, which I would do four point five, just to make sure you're getting a
good place. Cuisine you can choose, you know, for me, I wanted something that was Italian, so I just chose Italian hours. You want to make sure that it's open, you know, during lunch or dinner, whatever you're doing.
And then you.
Can sort by you know, you can see all the places that are within walking distance to your hotel.
And it was great.
So I ended up choosing a restaurant that was like literally six hundred feet from my hotel. We went there, we had a great time. I'll say the food wasn't like the best in the whole world.
It was fine.
I mean, I'm very picky about Italian food, but it was great. And so now I have my new way. Now I do I said, I don't use Yelp, but I will cross reference the restaurant on Yelp just to be sure that's not getting like two stars or something like that. So anyway, try it out. That's my new method for finding a restaurant. Let's go to Richard in Menafee, California.
Richard, you're on with rich.
Oh rich How you doing good?
We had lots of rich lots of Richards on this show. Today, you're the third Richard on this show. What can I help you with?
Yeah, I need to replace my older LGV sixty phone having charging issues with it, and I'm with Verizon and they sent me a couple of offers in the last week. One was for the Pixel pro XL for three dollars and thirty three cents a month. It's like one thousand dollars off.
Yeah.
And the other one is for the Samsung S twenty four Ultra, which they'll do that one for me for seventeen dollars a month. I'm gonna stay with Brydon, so I don't care about the payments. So I wanted to get your opinion on which would be the better phone.
So you're talking the new Pixel nine XL, is that right?
Yeah?
Oh wow?
These are two These are two of the best phones available right now, so and I have lots of thoughts on them. So, but my question is what do you want out of your phone? Because I have my thoughts on which one is better for like the use case. Are you like a extreme photographer? Are you just looking for the best battery life? Do you want the best software? What do you want out of your phone?
I was into photography for a while, but that seems to have dropped off a little bit because that's I wanted the S twenty four. The last year for the Zoom, but I'm finding out I really don't you a zoom that much anymore.
And the Pixel the nine pros has a five x zoom and you can go up to thirty with the with their super rezume, so it works really well. Here's my thoughts. So I think that the Pixel nine pro xcel is a great phone. I think for that three dollars a month that you're talking to me, that seems like a better value, even though it's not a lot. You're only talking fourteen dollars, you know, over time. But still I think that the Pixel is the better software
to me. But I think that the Samsung S twenty four Ultra is probably overall the best Android phone out there right now because it has it's a powerhouse, you know, it's got the best processor, it's got the best screen, it's got an excellent camera. I think that I prefer the Pixel a little bit more in different ways, but it's not as good overall. I think the S twenty four Ultra is, like, you know, a better phone like specx. Wise, now, I think that the Pixel is litle bit easier to
hold in your hand. It's a little bit smoother, a little bit rounder edges. But you know, and I do think I do prefer the Pixel software over the S twenty four Ultra software. But I think that these are two incredible devices.
I tend to keep my phone for a pretty long time, so I'm thinking about the software updates for the for both of the phones, which one will have to because wonder them lasts like seven years of updates. Yeah that's the Pixel phone.
Yeah, the Pixel is getting seven years of updates, but I believe the S twenty four is also getting uh, if not seven, it's getting pretty close to that. It's been a it's been a while since I did this. This was in January, but yes, S twenty four is going to have seven years of updates as well. So you know, if I had to choose, I mean, I think the battery life is excellent on the Pixel this year. I think that the and I've used both of these phones extensively, so I mean, I could.
It's tough.
It really comes down to like a preference of do you like the Pixel software or do you like this Amsung software.
I think that you've.
Never had the Pixel, so I don't know. My daughter has one and she loves the play Well.
Maybe try the Pixel.
I mean, just see if you I think that the software on the Pixel to me feels very very smart, you're also now here's something that might push you over the edge. The Pixel is also going to give you two terabytes of online storage for a year for free, plus their access to their Advanced AI Gemini their Best Gemini AI for free for a year, which is a twenty dollars a month value.
That's one thing I'm thinking about exploring is some of the stuff that AI has to offer. I haven't done it yet, but I'm starting to get tempted to the point where I'm going to jump in.
Yeah.
I mean, these are two of the best, and I really it's it's just tough. If you want to try the Pixel and you want to try that Google software, it does have something a little bit special to it because it does feel very like advanced. I always call the Pixel the smartest smartphone out there, So you know, maybe give that one since it is cheaper. I'm surprised it's cheaper than the Samsung, but maybe just give that
a chance and see what you think about it. But if your daughter has one, it's also kind of nice because if you have any questions you can ask her, hey, how do.
You do this?
Thanks brother?
So, yeah, Richard, I think you're gonna be happy with either of these devices. They are both really really good phones, So thanks for the question. Speaking of smartphones, a new bug in the iPhone causes it to crash immediately. This is wild. Do not do this at home. I've done this. You can look at the video on my Instagram if you want to see what happens. But don't do this because even though it's not a security issue, and even though it doesn't seem to have any lasting repercussions on
your phone, I would still not do this. But if you type, if you go into the app library and you type quotation mark quotation mark colon colon, your device crashes immediately. Now it's not a full crash, so it doesn't like restart your entire phone, but it restarts what's called the springboard, and that's basically their equivalent of the launcher on the iPhone. So you can type into the app library those four little characters, and yes, you will
crash your phone. Don't do it. It's probably not worth it. I do it on my phone because I do it in your name. I do it to figure these things out and just to see how this stuff happens. Doesn't seem like there's any long term effects by doing this. But yes, there will be a software update from Apple to make sure that this is fixed, and that will probably come any day now, because we don't want crashing phones just by typing stuff in. How they figure this out?
Someone just typed a whole bunch of random stuff into the phone and figured it out. I guess eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show richon Tech dot TV. When you stop there, be sure to sign.
Up for my newsletter.
It is free. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at trip rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Hope you're enjoying the show. I know I really enjoy coming in here to do this and talking to you and sharing this information. People are always surprised when you just share like useful stuff, like they're like, oh, wow, nobody does that.
Yeah, well I do and.
Every week been doing it for what is this episode number eighty six. We've done this eighty six times minus some of the days we've had some reruns. So but you know, you still get good information unless you listened since day one to every single show. Even if you heard a rerun, which doesn't happen very often, you'd still
get good information like this. Another data security incident. Flight Aware, an app that I have recommended on this show, says they had a data security incident and you'll have to reset your password. There was a configuration error on July twenty fifth, twenty twenty four, might have exposed users personal information. This includes your user ID, password, email address, and other
account details. All potentially impacted users are required to reset their passwords, so the next time you try to log in, you'll have to reset your password. But here's the takeaway from this is again you cannot use the same password for different websites. So something like this website flight Aware, you're like, okay, cool, I'll log in with this easy password because nobody cares about flight Aware. The problem is you might use that password on another website that someone
does care about. So please use a strong password for every website that you go to that you sign up for. I know it takes a lot of work. I know it takes a little bit more effort, but it will pay off in the end because I can tell you there are websites where you can go to and I can see a list of all of your websites that all of your passwords that have been hacked, just right on the open web. And so you can see that.
And if someone, if a hacker gets a hold of that, they'll take that password and they will try it in a different website. They'll try it in all the popular websites until they figure out one that you've reused it on and they'll hack you.
Happens every single day, Believe me. I get the emails.
Let's go to Joel and riverside. Joel, welcome to the show.
Hey, how are you doing, Rich?
I'm doing fantastic. What can I help you?
Cool?
I was notified earlier in the year about Google domains moving over or migrating to a square space, so the web that I did have is no longer. I finally got my square space information email about a month or two ago. Can I really use AI to try and build me a website?
Absolutely across my feet? Yeah? Why not?
I mean my kid was building a video game this morning with AI. I mean this stuff it's wild. Now here's the thing. What what kind of website are we talking about? Like, is this like a small business.
Real basic for yeah, small you know organic micro farm. You know it's a little organic farm on two acres. Oh wow, And yeah, so you know, I just want to to show everyone in regener it is sustainable practices. You know, let people know when they could come get the fruit. But the main thing is teaching people how to grow their own you know, fruit and vegetables without any pesticides or herbicides.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that's a great That's so what I think is is what AI is going to be useful for in that aspect is is helping you like what you kind of say what you want into the AI and it will clean up your text. So if you say, like let's say you're doing blog posts about this on your website, you can kind of use voice to text on your phone and just say like, okay, first things first, you don't want to use pesticides, so you want to use you know, you want to use good organic soil.
Whatever.
I don't know what it is like you just spout out all the steps for like step one, step two, step three, and then AI will take what you said, and you could just say you can pop it into AI and say clean this up, and now it will say or you can say turn this into a more elaborate blog post about this topic, and it will take what you said, but it will kind of upon that. And now you're the person that's the experts, so you're going to read it over obviously before you copy and
paste it onto your website. But it's basically your knowledge just kind of cleaned up and put in a way that people can understand, and you didn't have to do a ton of work to get that to the website. So I think that's one way of using it now to actually lay out your website. If you're using Squarespace, you can use AI. I'm looking at their tools right now. They've got a whole blog post on how to build their website with AI tools, so they do have them
built in as well. But again, I think you're going to find that you can do a lot with AI to make this process a lot easier, a lot simpler, and your website's just going to look better and it's going to have more information on it, and you're the person that's kind of starting that information, but AI is just expanding upon all of that.
Does that make sense?
Okay? So square Space is almost how Google Domains was, and I could just go in through there and do everything. I don't have to find like a hosting website or anything.
Oh no, no, they do it all. They'll they'll handle it all. So once you're transferred over there, they will they will handle the hosting and the you know, the
actual website. You'll have the domain obviously, and then they have this thing called Squarespace Blueprint AI that will help you create your custom website with your pages, the colors you want, the copy you want, and then you can even use you know, chat ebt to help write this stuff that's coming up on your website or I like Claude much better.
But those are the kind of things that you can do.
And I think that you're gonna find whenever you built this website last, you know, the first time you did it, it's going to be a whole lot easier this time around because everything is just advanced to a place where it's going to take a lot less work to make this stuff look a lot prettier, So Joel.
Thanks for the question today.
Eighty to eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. Coming up, we're going to talk about some strategies for reclaiming your time and purpose in the digital age. That's coming up next right here on Rich on Tech on tech, Rich demro Oh here hanging out with you, talking technology. The phone number is eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Joining me now, Julio Vincent Gambudo, author of Please Unsubscribe.
Thanks.
The paperback is Barnes and Noble Pick of the Month, and I'm excited to talk about this because it seems like we are overwhelmed in our digital lives, so I want some good information on how to fix that.
Julia, welcome to the show. Thanks rage, thanks for having me.
So what made you write this book? You know, it kind of all happened. It started during the pandemic. I just felt like completely overwhelmed and felt like my life had been on autopilot for a long time.
I was running and running and running all.
The time, and uh, you know, tech was kind of supposed to help, right.
That was the sexy Seal when we all bought in and and I kind of found that it was just overwhelming me. So I took the opportunity during the pandemic and in the year that's followed to kind of come off of as much as I could, so I could really determine what was useful and valuable and what wasn't anymore.
Now, when you say unsubscribe, I mean it sounds like you're referring to something like email, But is that just a bigger term for like everything online, like you know, Instagram, feed, all this stuff that just kind of takes up all of our time. Yeah, you know that's the That's the email, and the inbox is really the first place that it starts. But when I use the word, I really mean it at a bunch of different levels, you know.
I mean it at the surface.
Level, all the digital nonsense that were sort of consumed by all the time. I mean it at a social level, right like social media and kind of the people that are that are always popping up and sort of demanding attention, whether or not those are the people you really want to be spending time with. And I mean it at a deeper level, which is really kind of just the the underlying ideas and notions that we have about who we are in the world. Those are subscriptions too. Those
are things that we're committed to. They are ideas that we're committed to. So my writing and my work is kind of about those three levels of subscription. What's your background. I'm a movie maker. I went to film school. I'm an English major. I'm a humanist at heart, right, and I spend most of my time making film and TV. And so a lot of what the book is is is social science. It's certainly opinion, it's some memoir, and it's really a mix of all of that.
Okay, so where do people start? I mean, do you start with the email? Because I okay, so I kind of do this thing where I'm not spying on people, but I kind of like to watch how people use their phone in public, Like I'll kind of see like what's on their screen, right, And I noticed when people scroll through their inbox, it's filled with garbage. I mean I'm talking like all like the emails from every place
you've ever shopped at in your entire life. Right, And then they go to Facebook and they go to you know, they hop around people just hop around on their phones to all these different things and scroll and it just by the time you do it, it's like you've just wasted, you know, another five to seven minutes of your life.
Yeah, and those five or seven minutes are not coming back, and there are five or seven minutes you're gonna spend in an hour from now, and then twice tomorrow and three times the next day.
I mean, you know, the inbox is really important, right.
The inbox is sort of your mind, and to get control over it, you've really got to.
Be mindful about it and be intentional about it.
You know, it's a joke at this point that there are two types of people in the world, right, people who have got zero emails from people who have got thirty three thousand. But you know, getting control over that and sort of separating yourself and your day to day information intake from the barrage of emails and subscription reminders and notifications.
Is really really key.
So you know, yes, obvious, it's it's obvious here, but starting in the inbox is really important. But more important than that, I think, is asking two questions, right, asking how can I slow this down? And where can I put Li's back in. You know, we all write these books to give strategies that are practical for readers, and I certainly want readers to walk.
Away with practical strategies.
But I think if you take a step back, the questions to be answered or asking, are you know, how do I slow this down? And where do I put limits back in? And those are questions that everyone can ask. If you're a busy mom, if you're a busy professional, if you're.
Dealing with work nonsense.
You know that's those have been the two major movements in the last ten years. For sure, speed it up and remove limits. So how do we put those back in? Are important questions to ask.
So when you know, when you talked about this book, when you you kind of did your research for this book, and I just talked about, you know, the idea that people just scroll, did you find anything concerning any trends that you're that you see in your life that you kind of you know, made you want to write this as well?
Well?
You know, for me, well, the most alarming trend in the research actually is that eighty four percent of Americans overestimate or excuse me, underestimate how much they're paying in subscription fees every month, and they underestimate that by about one hundred or two hundred dollars.
So if you put that over a year.
That's about, you know, fifteen hundred two thousand dollars.
Put that over three hundred million people in the American economy, and that's a lot of money that we are sending kind of straight up the ladder without really thinking about it or being conscious about it. And that was what was key for me, was, you know, how can I get conscious about the money I'm spending. The pandemics certainly the ripped the rugout from under me personally and from a lot of people, a lot of small business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of folks who work
for themselves. And obviously that was four years ago, and some people have rebounded and some people have it.
But becoming conscious about my spending was really really important.
Becoming conscious about where I'm putting not only my dollars, but my time, my energy, my eyeballs, what am I watching, where am I giving my attention and my cash was was really important.
And so that was that was pretty eye opening. I have a joke about Netflix. They could basically put anything on the homepage of Netflix, and it would be like the top show the next weekend. Because people will literally watch, like there's stuff on Netflix that nobody in their right mind would ever watch. But because you're paying that money every month and because you log on so much and that's the first thing you see, you'll just watch it. And it's like these horrible shows that are just not
even very good. And people are like, I'll put up with it. And by the way, when you when you were talking about the pandemic and we got all these subscriptions, you know, remember that they started at super cheap prices and now everything yes, and they continue to go up, so.
And that's you know, that's part of That's part of the conversation here, right, is that that you just get an email that that you can reply to, that you can negotiate with, that you really can't even respond to that basically says, hey, we're changing the terms of service, We're changing what you agreed to.
Sorry, if you would agree or disagree anymore.
And if you disagree, here's a labyrinth and a maze for you to go through to unsubscribe. You know, so much of this new initiative, even from the White house called time is money is meant to battle that specific thing, which is I only clicked once to subscribe, and now I've got to find, you know, sort of go through
this maze to unsubscribe. But I love your Netflix joke because I laugh too, and I see it with my friends and colleagues in the film and industry, right like, this show is number one, and I'm glad it's number one, but it's only number one because it's the first thing on the screen and it's the only damn thing up there.
So exactly, I laugh with you on that.
That's the White House initiative you're talking about about the one click, because yes, these companies make it super easy to subscribe in a click, and then when you don't, you know, when you want to get rid of it, it's either hidden now. Not every company is like that, Like there are some good sites that you know, make
things easy to disconnect in this and that. But I always recommend when people are signing up for any sort of subscription that check the like Google how to cancel and see like if it's if it's tricky at all, it's going to be tricky when you actually try to do that.
You know what I mean completely right, and I think that that's that's what the initiative is. It's about balancing the scales and just making it as easy to come off of certain things as it is to go on them. And you're right, it's not every company, for sure, but there are plenty that make it very, very very difficult, and they put that friction back in the process. They
put those pain points back in the process. They want to make sure that you sort of have to think twice, three times, four times, five times before you actually get off of their service. And those are not questions that they're asking, you know, when you get onto their service. So it's really I think about rebalancing those scales. All right, I've got about thirty seconds here. What what what's the key takeaway from the book? Like, if someone gets this book,
what's their key takeaway? What are they going to do? Key takeaway is, well, first of all, there's about one hundred practical tactical strategies in there for being happy and all this chaof But you know, the real takeaway here is step back, reevaluate, be intentional, do some deep thinking about where you want to put your time, money, cash, eyeballs, attention, and then re engage in the world and be a part of it in a really beautiful way.
But definitely take the time out.
We've been sort of sold this idea that we can't step away and we have to be always on and I, you know, I reject that, and I'm sort of calling for people to take the time they need to reevaluate.
Love it.
Julio Vincent Gambudo, filmmaker and author of Please Unsubscribe.
Thanks.
You can find it, of course wherever you buy books. I guess, thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me Rich.
Yeah, you got to remember this stuff. It's easy to get on board. It's tough to get off of that board sometimes because it's just we're on autopilot. I mean, I know, it's this.
Is why companies, I always say, want access to your checking account versus your credit debit card.
That money comes out not coming back.
In very easily. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The phone number is triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you want to send an email in Just go to the website richontech dot TV, hit the contact link, and if you want to see something that I mentioned, maybe some more
information on something I mentioned on the show. There is a light bulb icon at the top of the website. You tap that and it will bring you to the show notes.
This is show number eighty six, so you'll find everything I mentioned right there. We were just talking.
About subscriptions, so I meant to actually mention this in the last segment, but you know, the subscription services, what they're doing right now is they're starting to bundle, just like the good old days of cable. And you may be thinking, as a consumer, oh my gosh, what a great deal. I get to bundle my Disney Plus, my ESPN, my Hulu, my you know whatever. And it sounds great
because you're saving money. But here's what's really happening. You're actually going to be spending more over the long term, because guess what, when you don't need that Espn Plus, you're still going to be paying for it because you're not gonna want to cancel your bundle because, by the way, the price of the bundle is going to have gone up in the time between when you subscribe and the time you want to cancel. So these companies are very
smart at what they're doing. But there is one thing you can actually get for free, but it does come as sort of a bundle if you're paying for cable. So Charter Communications has now linked up with a Paramount to offer Paramount Plus Essential at no extra cost if you're a Spectrum TV select or a ME Plan Latino customer. So if you have one of these two cable plans, you can get Paramount Plus Essential for free. Now it's not really freakuse you're paying for cable. It's just kind
of a bonus. Usually that's about eight dollars a month. You can activate by going to Spectrum dot com slash Paramount Plus on US. Spectrum dot com slash Paramount Plus on US. Again, you have to have that Spectrum subscription, but hey, you know, you can get this streaming service for free and Paramount Plus. It's not one of my favorites, like they don't have a ton, but there's always something on there that's you know, they've got a bunch of stuff.
It's like Paramount Movies. They're also linked up with CBS, so there are some CBS shows on there. Oh it says CBS, b ET, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and paramount stuff.
So hey, why not.
And there's gonna be ads on that, by the way, because it's the Paramount plus essential, so that means there's gonna be some ads there. Let's see, let's go to uh, let's go to Dick in Kettering, Ohio.
You're on with Rich. Welcome to the show.
Well, thank you, Rich, thank you. I was just towing your screener. My friends have gotten I don't know a lot about tech. I took a class cell phones and I purchased my friends purchased it over like at one of the congratus, you know, Rollmart.
Okay, so he took a class itself a well, for a.
While there, it wouldn't charge. Then I called up, you know, the customer service, and they sent me a new one and it's working pretty good. But the only thing they say on there, I went, uh, is the internet is not working their Wi Fi And my friend thinks I need another card, a phone card to pay on it.
Well, you're so, your WiFi is not working at all.
No, But the thing of it is, it's one hundred percent it's doing good. It has Facebook and I can get everything else. But when I make a call, it won't call.
Oh when you make a call, Okay, when.
I make a call.
Yeah, it's working good. Now, Okay, maybe I ought to get this. I think it's twenty four eighty eight. I'm gonna have probably go to Family Mobile to get it. And it's just been pumfling because you know, I've had it like four months and I've never had my friend had one. But it's just puzzling that I've called service, you know, the customer service is just you know, it's funny that I've had so much trouble with these things.
Well, it happens. So what can you do on the phone? Can you you can access the web, but you can't make calls.
Yeah, that's all. It just says Wi Fi not connected and they're not not working and the only thing what you call it just doesn't But it's work another way. Maybe I just they've got the what is it the card? I could probably get maybe a mobile card and then they'll have to call that in to activate it.
Maybe yeah, I would.
Also I'll get a little phone, you know, like you push. My friend might get something like that.
You know, well if you if you bring it in, they're they're probably gonna fix it. What carrier are you on?
No, they don't want it. Well they told me that they don't, and I have a gym City Digital, so they told me. My friends told me, I'm going to just try the card and then go from there. Maybe just get that push button one like a regular landline.
Oh gosh, I don't know if I go with the online Well, here's the deal.
So I would recommend before you go into the store, whatever you do, there's a there's a setting on the Samsung where you can reset the mobile network settings. So if you go into settings under reset, there's an option that says reset Mobile Network Settings. You tap that and
it will reset all of the mobile network settings. So that will include your Wi Fi, that includes your Bluetooth, that includes your cellular and it's gonna take a minute for your phone to kind of like figure everything out again, but that should fix things. And then you're gonna have to reconnect to your Wi Fi and reconnect any Bluetooth devices. So those are the things to do for that. That's what I'd recommend doing. But otherwise i'd bring it into
where you got it and see what they say. Especially if you're paying for service every month. You don't want to be paying for something that you're not actually getting. Thanks for the call, Dick in Kettering, Ohio today, appreciate it. If you go to Costco you got some oldile electronics at home, you actually they actually have a trade in program where you you can exchange your old electronics for a Costco gift card. So the program's open to Costco
members and non members. The trade ins are actually all facilitated by a third party company called Phobio. I was not familiar with this company, but they're kind of a recycling company, so I don't You don't even have to be a Costco customer to do this, but I guess Costco has a deal with them, And usually if Costco has a deal with someone, they're sweetening the deal in a way. So maybe they're giving you a little bit extra for your your purchase it or your trade ins
or something like that. But you can trade in basically all of the electronics you have at home, phones, laptops, tablets, smart watches. You can get up to one thousand bucks for laptops, everything you know, they'll give you a quote before you do this. But the process does happen online. You don't actually have to go into a Costco warehouse. You basically go into the website. You go to this special Costco branded you know, trade in website, and then
you say what you have. They'll give you that estimate, you send it in. They'll give you a box you send it in, and then once they get it, they'll just make sure everything's on the up and up, and if it's good, you'll get your gift card. And it takes a couple of weeks. They can send you a digital gift card to Costco. But again, if you like Costco and you've got the old electronics at home, you want to trade them in. I'm trying to figure out
how this is better than just trading them in. I like a website called gizmo Go, And so gizmo Go is the website that's I've done a story with them. They're here in California and you go to their warehouse and oh my gosh, you've never seen more recycled electronics in your entire life. And they showed me the whole process from start to finish. So if you're looking to trade something in. You could just type it in on this website. They'll give you a quote instantly, and you've
got to figure out how to send it in. They will give you a box if you need it, but you can send it in like iPhone twelve two hundred and eighty bucks, iPhone eleven two hundred ninety nine dollars, Galaxy Note nine one hundred bucks, Amsung, the Watch Series seven one hundred and seventy dollars. Trade in those old electronics, get them recycled, don't throw them in the trash. Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you for another hour talking technology at triple eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour, we're gonna talk cyber truck. Have you seen one of these things on the road? I know, very polarizing. I'm curious to see what our reviewer says about it. Zach Dole from US News. We'll talk about his objective assessment of this new cyber truck. That'll come up later this
hour Waimo reached a milestone this week. Waimo is the fully autonomous taxi service from Google. That's who owns Weaimo. It's really Alphabet. When I say Google, Google, you know, they kind of spun off to the parent company, which is Alphabet owns all the companies that Google, you know, used to own. So it's like it's like Alphabet. You've got Google, which is like search and all that stuff. Weimo deep mind, They've got a whole bunch of stuff.
But Weimo is their autonomous taxi. They now provide over one hundred thousand paid rides per week to the public. It's the first fully autonomous ride hailing service to reach this level. And they're in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
I was in one.
It's very it feels very reassuring, honestly, like it's it's better than some of the ubers I've been in. Nothing against Uber drivers. I love Uber. I've been an Uber person since day one, literally day one in Los Angeles, Like I remember Uber calling me and saying, Hey, do you want to come to this party and we're going to send a car for you like a town car.
Back in the day. It was just like town cars, and I said, wait, what what, how is this.
Going to work because I've I've seen town cars in New York City and they're very expensive. No, this is for everyone now, and so yes, I've been a big fan of Uber since day one, but this is like the next level. This is fully autonomous. They're expanding rides to the freeways up in San Francisco. And when this goes big, like really big, it's going to change things once again because think about the efficiencies you have with a fully autonomous fleet of cars that's just doing rides
twenty four to seven. Yeah, let's see what else.
Let's go to Mark Mark and Woodland Hills.
Mark.
You're on with Rich?
Oh great.
Hey.
I just want to preface by saying I picked up an Uber a UMA and it works great.
Oh you're very.
Happy with it. Just the taxes and that's something you can't avoid anyway, but it works wonderfully.
Yeah.
I ended up because we got a couple of calls about the UMA here, and so I ended up calling the company and saying, hey, you know, can you can you give me some more info on this because I felt like I knew about it, but it had been a couple of years since I tested it, and so they gat I mean the whole rundown of everything and it you know, it's great. I mean you pay basically, you buy the box and you pay for the taxes each month. And they have different obviously add ons and things.
But glad you hear it's work. And what can I help you with?
Mark?
Sorry to digress like that, but my I have some very pedestrian needs when it comes to PC. Not on my phone. I don't use the phone for that, but I need PC video and MP three editing because I like to trim down my MP three for my playlist sure when I go out cycling and whatnot. And I'm looking for something free on PC that I can just trim my videos or even download from YouTube if that's possible.
Super simple.
So the the free MP three audio editor that you know, it's been around forever, open source Audacity.
Have you heard of that one?
No? Sure, sure Audacity A U, D A C I T Y. And that's kind of like the golden the gold standard for something that's free. You know, it's a little looks a little old school for my taste, but if you want something free, it's it's available. It's easy if you're especially if you're just trimming the in and the out of the song.
Totally easy.
And that's something super simple to do. When it comes to videos. A couple other options. Cap cut is is one option on the desktop, so you can use that.
It is full featured.
It's very simple to trim videos and you can you know, you can get you may become an influencer.
Mark I don't know.
That's the problem with cap cut is that it's an and yeah run Bite Dan. Yeah, I don't fancy using their products, and I.
Agree with that, and so I I would say that, and I you know, I would agree with the fact that there is concerns about that. So you know, people put it on their machine. It's fine whatever. So if you don't want something like that. The other free program the name is of oh, Adobe Rush. That's the one I like, so Adobe Rush. Now Adobe the problem with Adobe is that it's a little bulky. So but but their premiere Rush, as far as I know, you should
be able to install and use it for free. You just can't use all the fancy features they do want you to pay. But it's very simple to use it for free. For like the basic things that you're doing. Unless yeah, unless they've changed something on there. So but as far as I know, you can use it without a without a you know, a membership. Now there's other programs out there. Some of them are you know, you know,
there's more expensive than others. They're trying to push you, and I think a lot of them are also Mac based. That's what I'm using. I use Final Cut for everything. You can also use quick Time if you're on a Mac to just trim a video very easily. But I think between those two things, you're gonna find it pretty easy to to just clip whatever you need to clip there. Now you mentioned downloading from YouTube as well. Nope, I think we lost mark okay anyway, so there are two
tools to download from YouTube. Obviously, when it comes to downloading from YouTube, it's really meant for your own personal videos. That's kind of like the you know, I don't know how I got to dance around that topic. I don't know. I don't know what the deal is with downloading from YouTube. But yes, there are many tools that can help you download from YouTube. I don't know what the legality is or the gray area. I don't know but they're out there.
Believe me, that might be something you get in the rich On Tech newsletter. That's my I told people how to block ads this week in the rich On Tech newsletter on the website, very very simply on Android. You literally have to add one piece of text to your to your settings and you block all the ads on your phone and all the trackers. And it's really good. It's very like you don't even have to download an app. It's just built into the operating system. It's very very good.
But that's in the latest newsletter. So if you want to see how to do that, I'm not going to go through it here because it's a little it's not complicated. It's just like you got to go to the certain settings. But I laid all out in the in the newsletter. So rich Tech dot tv is the newsletter. The newsletter that says, scrub your personal info from search results.
I talk about that as well. This week.
Ring has a new camera, a new video doorbell. This week they launched. It's the latest. It's basically their basic video door bell. It's like kind of their most popular one. It's the battery door bell. It's one hundred dollars The new features include head to toe video. So the original rings did not have the head to toe video, which means if someone put a package on your doorstep, the most important thing porch pirates, you wouldn't necessarily see that
package getting stolen. Hopefully you don't see that, but you know if it did, you'd have that video. So now it's one hundred and fifty degrees by one hundred and fifty degrees lens, so much more of a vertical view that you can see everything head to toe. Battery life is better up to twenty three percent better with the common settings. Obviously, if you're recording longer, or if you have more more motion settings that trigger the recordings, that's
going to take up your battery quicker. But that's another thing. They also have this new kind of like push push functionality to like replace the battery. So it's a lot easier to pop on and off from your wall. So if you haven't gone with like the solar attachment, that's a lot easier to do. Remember with these with these ring doorbells, unless you are paying, it's basically just streaming so you can get all the alerts to your phone.
But unless you pay that five dollars a month. You're not going to get the smart alerts they can now tell you if it's a package that's being delivered or a pet or whatever. They tell you like what's at your front door, and the cloud storage. So unless you're paying for that, you're only going to get the streaming. So realistically, Ring was a brilliant, brilliant business model because if you have one of these battery you know, these video doorbells, you don't just want to see the video.
I mean, I get it, that's how it started. But when you when you think about it, you want a recording of that video. And how do you get that recording? Well, you have to have that cloud service. I remember, I mean this is a long time ago, but I remember interviewing Jamie Simmon off, the guy who created this back in the day. I'm talking so many years ago, went to his little Ring offices. This is way before Amazon bought this company for a billion dollars, but I remember
going to his offices. This guy was a young guy, you know, he showing me these cameras and how he came up with it, And he said he came up with the idea for the Ring camera because he was working from home and someone would come to the front door and ring the doorbell and he couldn't see who it was. And of course intercoms back in the day, that was like a common thing. That house not a
common thing, but houses, some houses had intercom systems. Intercom was not video, and so he looked everywhere and he said, there's gotta be a video intercom system, right, and there just wasn't a mainstream, simple video intercom system. And by the way, if you had an intercom system in your house, it was expensive, you know, it wasn't cheap. So by making this it was called it was it called doorbot. Doorbot was the first name for this thing, doorbot. Let
me let me check that. Yeah, it's called doorbot, And they sent me one of the first ones to test and I set it up at the house. Well, I set up at a friend's house and he didn't like it. And here was the problem with the original ring doorbot, which it was called doorbot before it was ring. The wi fi back in the day at houses was not very good and so most people had their WiFi hub in the middle of their house and this doorbell would
be on the outside of their house. So When the first people started buying these and setting them up, what do you think happened? It wasn't a very good experience because your WiFi didn't reach the signal, didn't make it outside, and so people would be like, Oh, this thing's not very good. And of course WiFi got better over the years. People figured out that had to be closer. And they also changed the name because Doorbot sounded too robotic, and
so they changed the name to Ring. Because people hold their front door in a very high regard. That's the entrance to their house, so it needs to be warm, it needs to be inviting, and by doorbot it seemed too mechanical, it seemed too robotic, and so people didn't really like that name, so they change it to Ring. The rest is history. Jamie's doing just fine. Billion dollars Amazon.
When Amazon comes and says we're gonna buy your company for a billion dollars, you'll probably say, yes, I don't even think you have a if you have stockholders, I don't think you have a question of a voice in the matter. Eighty eight rich one On one eight eight eight seven four to two Poor one zero one.
This is rich On Tech.
Welcome back to rich on tech Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Later in the show we're gonna talk cyber truck. And then of course we've got the feedbag. So if you have a question or comment, I guess mostly comments about anything you heard, get it in now rich on tech dot TV. Hit contact and submit it and hopefully I'll read it at the end of the show.
Let's go to Craig in Des Moines, Iowa.
Craig, you're on with Rich. I'm doing great. Hey, how are you, Craig?
Pretty good?
Uh?
Yet?
Today I bought them over the ear headphone.
A wawmark uh thaw handy for one hundred and fifty dollars and the pretty I would badly time and they have the eagle light on the side. They go make it bas here. I want to know how good they headphones or do I take them back?
Well, here's my thought about headphones. Do they sound good to you.
And they sound excellent to me?
Well, then that's all that matters.
I mean to me when I I test a lot of headphones, and I know believe me, and you know, I've tested skull Candies, you know, this very popular brand. They they're definitely you know, on the on the more affordable side of things for a lot of them, which is nice. But really what it comes down to for me when you're reviewing headphones is do they sound good to you? And also do they fit in my ears? So you said these are over the ear headphones.
Yeah, because I got a bit in the heel. I've had them for a while, which you're very good. I think one hundred and eighty dollars. But when I go to bed that night and be them in my eel so wild with both of them. Uh, they tend to hook my eel drums in dry yeah, because it's been.
Trying of my eel. So I don't don't worry about these.
Yeah, they're kind of pushing on them. You know.
They also make some speakers that you can put under your pillow.
Have you heard of those?
And they also make some headphones that are like specifically for sleep and you can you know, they're like kind of softer. I think the brand is Sleepphones, So you might want to check into those because those are Let's see how much they they sent me a pair to tests a while. Oh, okay, those are kind of expensive. Those are uh the one with the cord is forty dollars.
That's the cheapest they make. But then they also have kind of bluetooth versions for anywhere from one hundred to one hundred and fifty, but those are sleep from Want.
But how long? How long is woods? On the call, Candy? I had the long night?
Yeah, Cook, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and go back to say, you know, one of them numbered and I just took them all not too long ago and put them on and.
Tell you and how did they last the whole night.
All night and half of them all day in the day?
There you go.
Now, how do you sleep with? What are you listening to while you're sleeping?
You like that coat the Coast on KFI?
Right?
There you go.
I need to live. I used to live in Lockdown.
There you go.
Well, when I was a kid, I used to fall asleep to the radio every single night.
Love Lines.
I don't know if you're familiar with that show, So it was it was both stimulating and uh, you know, they had some interesting conversations on that show.
But I listened to Zoo remember I'm hitting the three shows.
There you go.
Well, it was a it was a popular show where I was back in uh in Ze what One Hunter in New York.
But yeah, I always.
Listened to uh two stuff falling asleep, but I would have the speaker near the bed or I had an under the pillow kind of thing, but I didn't have I didn't wear my ears. But but Craig, I say, look, if you're if you're liking the skull candy and you think that they are are feeling good and the battery, I think forty hours is a pretty decent battery.
I think stick with them and enjoy. Okay, well, I didn't know.
If they was any good, you know, I mean the little high for my budget, I'm just a dishability. You would it be called a.
Well look, I mean there are there are certainly cheaper headphones out there, but uh you know, and and these are i'd say mid range in the review area. But again, and I think it really comes down to what you think. And I think that if you're liking them and they feel comfortable, I think that's the most important thing because you are wearing them at night. So Craig appreciate the call today, I really do, and they're Oh, Kim sent me a link she looked them up. The name of
these skull Candy might be the Skull the Crushers. Yeah, one hundred and fifty dollars. So yeah, I mean, you know, there's so many headphones out there.
I like the ones.
I'm actually doing a segment for KTLA on Monday about Bluetooth headphones and I'm actually loving the nothing These nothing buds. Well it's CMF buds Pro two and they're very inexpensive. Oh yeah, fifty nine dollars and they're great. They're like just simple and the coolest thing about these earbuds is
the case. They come in fun colors. They have noise cancelation, all that good stuff, but the case has this little like click wheel on it that you can use to adjust the volume while they're in your ear, so it's almost like a fidget spinner.
The case like doubles as a fidget spinner.
But CMF buds Pro two highly recommended, really really like them.
Also love the Sonos.
I mean talk about expensive, and I know I said earlier I kind of poop pooed Sonos, but they do make a really nice pair of headphones. Now the so nos ace they are, I mean, just as good as they're speakers. And I can actually just a volume because they're on my phone and I use my phone volume, not the app eighty eight.
Rich one oh one.
Uh.
Coming up, we're going to talk about the cyber truck.
We're going to get a review, an objective assessment of Tesla's cybertruck. Coming right up on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology the website for the show richon Tech dot TV. If you want links to anything I mentioned here, well, you've probably seen this thing barreling down
the street. I'm sure you've got thoughts. So does our next guest, Zach Dole, is the US News and World Report vehicle testing editor, and he is checking his preconceptions at the door to give us an unbiased look at the Tesla cyber truck.
Zach, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for having great to be here.
So, uh, did you have any preconceived notions before you testro of this thing or what?
I didn't have the highest expectations that, I'll be honest, you know, a lot of the earlier Testli models when they first came out, maybe there were some some glitchy issues, so I kind of expected maybe not the greatest product right off the bat, But I've got to say it's it's an impressive vehicle for sure.
Really, so what what makes it impressive? I mean it's it's certainly looks very unique. I mean it looks like something out of like a you know, dystopian sci fi movie, which, of course, I'm sure Elon Musk, you know that's what he think about.
Exactly, Yeah, Blade Runner or something. It's yeah, I mean you get the highs and the lows. So this thing is so fast, it's so quiet, it's very comfortable. It rides on air suspension, so it's it is very easy to drive. The steering is a little bit tough to get used to. It's steer by wire, so there's no mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the front wheels, and it can go on a dime. I mean, it's
it's very responsive. So like from a usability standpoint, you could easily use this in a city la for instance, and you'll get a lot of looks. I mean, it looks like nothing else on the road. But it's a very usable vehicle. I would say. The downside is that the blind spots are huge.
I was wondering about that.
Yeah, so there's a tonnel cover, a hard cover for the bed. It's a six foot bed, and when it's and it's open state, you can see just fine. But when it's closed, it completely covers up the back window, so you have to use a camera on the center screen to see out of the back window, which is kind of unusual.
Yeah, and if you're driving like you know, like I see obviously delivery trucks they have those all the time, but like if a regular consumer car, is that is that pretty unusual?
I have never experienced that ever.
Okay, very unusual. It is unusual.
Okay, well what about the you mentioned that drive by wire? Is that like does the Tesla not do that the standard like three model or whatever?
Do they not do that?
So they're shifting to that. This is the most extreme version of it I've experienced, where just the smallest inputs on the steering have really pronounced responses. I mean, this thing corners so fast. It's a little jarn to get used to, being honest, but once you are used to it, it makes turning turning circles smaller than like a sedan, you know, like an average compact car.
Wow.
So yeah, it's it's pretty remarkable.
That's now.
Now I heard someone said that this does not have the self driving yet.
Is that true?
I believe they're rolling it out. It's a it comes equipped, ready to go, and there's a software over the air update where they will roll it out. It may have actually just happened or is currently going on.
So let's talk about charging. What's what's the range on this and what's what's the price on this car?
All right, so this is the interesting part. The price I'll start with is kind of a moving target. This one stickered at one hundred one thousand dollars that we tested. Yeah, so originally this edition, the found Nation series was originally around eighty thousand dollars, and then it jumped to one hundred, and the Cyberbeast, which was one hundred, had jumped to one twenty.
There's more of a beast than the cyber truck. It's like even beast here it is.
Yes, So the one I drove had six hundred horse power. The cyber Beast as eight hundred and forty five.
Oh, how does that compare to like, I'm not like a car person, so how does that compare to like a I don't know, like an F one fifty?
Is that like the same?
It will blow the doors off pretty much anything on the road other than maybe another high powered electric car Tesla. It is so fast and it just gets there effortlessly. It's I mean, if you've driven a Tesla before, you're like, yeah, of course I know this, but these the electric motors can put down the power so efficiently. It's it's like driving a muscle car when you when you floor it, it goes wow.
Well, so I saw this on display, like I've seen him on the roads obviously in the LA area, there's many. But I did see this at the Chicago Auto Show in person, and I didn't drive it, but I did get to go in it, and I was actually quite impressed with the fit and sort of finish of it, Like it felt like very beefy, you know, like it felt like sturdy.
You know what I mean.
And so absolutely I had the same takeaway the interior. It's minimalist, you know, that's kind of Tesla's m O. At this point, You've got this big screen in the middle and kind of not much else. But but everything did feel very well put together. I didn't notice any weird build quality issues. It seemed very well sorted.
Yeah, and I watched a guy kick it on the side, like he literally just went up to it, like like just started kicking the door. Because I guess it's you know, the the quality is pretty much there for like the you know, the whole thing.
I guess.
Okay, the other thing that I've noticed with this car, I've noticed a lot of people put the wraps on them to make it different colors and things like that. But I've noticed the standard it's kind of like, I don't know if it's stainless steel, whatever the exterior is, it gets kind of dirty.
Huh.
Yeah, So it's it's kind of interesting they went with the stainless steel. You know, it's it might be stainless, but it's it's not a no upkeep finish. You have to wax it. You have to keep it clean because man, it's a smudge magnet.
You know.
The one eye Drove was a nearly new model, and it already had quite a bit of discoloration on it from bug splatter, from fingerprints, near the doors. I don't know if there's a solution other than wrapping it or you know, keeping the garden hose close by when you park it and sprain it off. It's you know, it's certainly a unique look. I mean this that's stainless on a bright day, it's it sends quite a few reflections around. But yeah, it's a it's a smudge magnet for sure.
Okay, So now that you've driven this thing, you've evaluated it. Who do you think this is for?
I think if you're a pickup truck shopper, you might find something here to like. I mean, it's certainly fast, it can tow eleven thousand pounds, lots of storage space, whether up front and back or in this cargo bay underneath the trunk. But I see more people if their truck shopper is just going for like an F one fifty or you know, another traditional full size pickup. I wouldn't want to toe something very far with this. You know,
you're going to make a lot of charging stops. Three hundred ish miles of range starts to go down quite a bit when you're pulling a heavy trailer. So I hope there's this charging station with a big pull around area for you. It's kind of a vehicle to be seen in. Nothing looks like this. You're going to turn so many heads. People will love coming up and talking to you. It's certainly very cool and I enjoyed it.
We love coming up and talking to you.
I feel like this is a very polarizing car, like people are either like ready to throw an egg at it or they're ready to come up to you and ask you about it. What did you find when you were driving this?
I yeah, when I was driving it, I pulled into a supercharger station, went to fill up, if you will, and it was just like a celebrity came in. I've never had this experience before. People like, what is the can it?
You know?
Everyone wants to talk to you, And I was like, it's not mine, it's not mine, but yeah, I mean, everybody wants to see what this thing looks like up up close and ask asked about it. It's it's like celebrity status, something that I haven't experienced.
I did, I will say when I looked at it at the Chicago Auto Show for as like kind of weird as it looks on the outside, I was so surprised when you get on the inside, it was so beautiful, like it like it actually was like really refined, And I thought that was like surprising because you just assume it's gonna be like this kind of odd interior. But it's like a very like nice comfortable interior for this truck that looks so unique on the outside.
Yeah, it's perfectly normal inside. I mean, it's kind of like any other tussle out there. You know what you're gonna get. It's very minimalist. It's it's really nice, and once you get used to the large center touch screen, it kind of has everything you need. You know, there's certainly a large learning curve initially, just like when you get a new iPad and you're playing around with that, but you get used to it and you find some
muscle memory. But yeah, overall, I'd say, if you have one hundred grand to spend on an electric pickup truck that's shaped like a wedge, this is the car for you.
There you go, Zach, We're gonna leave it there. Zach dol from US News and World Report, Thanks so much for.
Joining me today.
Thanks so much for having me.
All Right, I'll put the full review on the website rich on Tech dot tv. Coming up up, we are going to reach into that feedback and pull out your comments right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology. Oh my gosh, this song is making me realize. It's the last segment. How does three hours go by so fast? I guess time does fly when you're having fun. Before we get to the feedback, one last story, I wanted to mention Assurant.
This is the company that does all the trade in stuff. They said, the average age of mobile devices turned in from trade in or upgrade programs reaches an all time high three point seven years. That means people are keeping their devices longer, because you know, they're lasting longer. Consumers received an estimated eight hundred and twenty nine million dollars in value from device trade ins in just Q two twenty twenty four.
That's just one quarter. Wow, that's us a lot.
iPhone eleven the most frequently traded in device, I, accounting for thirty one percent of the top models. Samsung Galaxy S twenty one was the top Android device traded in for the fifth consecutive quarter. Average age of iPhones that turn in increased to three point eight years, while Android devices decreased to three point five So interesting, the Android users churn them faster and the iPhone users keep them longer.
Experts say that the AI is making people, motivating people to upgrade their devices, and they're predicting a super cycle of upgrades when Apple launches their new AI devices in September. Something to watch out for. All right, let's open up the feedback. Chris writes in I was recently locked out of my eBay account after signing him from a different device.
To regain access, eBay required me to provide very personal information to be run against the public database, including my full legal name data, birth home address, date where my Social Security number was issued, and the age of a known relative. This process felt intrusive and safe. No other organization I've dealt with requires such detailed information for account recovery. I'm concerned about how this data is being used and stored,
whether it puts me at risk for identity theft. Uh yeah, you know, I mean eBay, that's a lot of info, but it's really full name of data, birth home address. I mean, I thought you were going to say social but they it's just that where it was issued. I mean, look, they want to keep that safe. There's a lot of scams on eBay, so I appreciate that they're protecting, but I get it.
It feels very intrusive.
Richard writes in I signed up for LifeLock for one hundred bucks, but I encountered issues when trying to add norton three sixty. When I called for help, the representative insisted on accessing my computer remotely and became angry when I requested a refund instead.
Uh oh, this raised red flags.
I began to suspect it was a scam to access my bank account. I hung up and contacted Apple Card, which immediately refunded the charge. I'm not sure what else LifeLock my duo computer, but this experience leads me to believe they may be running a scams day Safe Richard. I think what happened is you. I don't know what you did. You dial a phone number, but all I know yeah you said when you called for help. I think you dialed a fake phone number, and they prey
upon people that are looking for LifeLock. LifeLock is legitimate, so be careful. Never dial a random phone number that you find on Google for the business you're trying to call, you have to go directly to that business website. Look at the bottom of the page. Make sure you call the right number. People get scammed all the time just searching for a number on Google. Thomas writes in I heard you mentioned TVO in the past tense, as though
it was outdated. I still use in love my decades old TVO premiere, but I know the end is near.
Do you avoid new tvOS?
I also know that coxwill ston stop supporting cable cards.
What are my options?
Yeah, I have not used a TVO in many, many years, Thomas, I was the biggest fan of TVO. You can't even imagine how much I love TVO. I TVO is now more of a service than a hardware. Your option or none of them are as good as TVO was. But Tableau and zapper box are the alternatives to that at this point. But keep using your TVO until it stops.
That's my advice. I love the TVO software. Neil from Ohio says for people needing enterprise AI, many seem to have forgotten about Watson IBM as a whole line of Watson based products that can help create AI chatbots or integrate AI into workflows working with products like Salesforce. It's more than just winning Jeopardy. People are making money every day deploying Watson X for smarter business processes. Sounds like an ad that was not a live read, that was
just someone writing in. Ron and Barbara from Moreno Valley say, we watched your EV charging video and notice a potential downside. Full charges seem to take at least one point five hours. This is significantly longer than the twenty minutes we spend filling up our hybrid. We're wondering do people just sit in their cars during this time or are charging stations typically near restaurants. Yes, the charging most people do not do a full charge when they're on a road trip.
They typically charge for fifteen to twenty minutes and then move on and then they'll charge for another fifteen to twenty minutes after that's up, so, you know, like in another two hundred miles or so. So and yes, they are typically in near restaurants. There's usually a bathroom. That's generally how it is. It's not the same as filling up. People always compare, you know, filling up an EV to filling up gas. It's just not the same process. It's very,
very different. You can also start with a full tank every single day. If you have a charger at home, people forget about that. Tom from Saint Petersburg, Florida writes in, I'm a longtime fan of your show and wanted to suggest Chromebooks as a potential solution for some of your callers. I find them to be a great alternative to Max and PC's, especially primarily for email, web browsing, and cloud based apps. The affordability, cloud first approach, and simplicity are
standout features. Not everyone needs a high powered machine like a Mac with an M four chip. Thanks for considering absolutely. We don't mention chromebooks all the time because it can be very hit or miss, but go definitely with a Chromebook Plus at this point get the highest specs you can. Michelle says, thanks for recommending Uma for our business. It's working great. And can you recommend something to replace word my old Microsoft word thirteen? I can't remember how to
log in. They want monthly charges. Oh, Google Docs. Gotta go Google Docs free easy simple. Janet writes in, thank you Rich for being a man who uses his intelligence and true and honest kindness to help those who don't speak computer, iPhone or all the many electronics you keep us up to date with. I really hope it comes back to you and your family tenfold. I want to thank you for using your quote star power through ktla Instagram to always set great examples of the loving ways.
Oh wow, you treat your lovely wife, beautiful kids, your parents and siblings. You and your wife set wonderful examples of how a loving family relationship should look like in our world today. Wow, Janet, are you related to me?
Thank you?
I was just postings family picks on Instagram. Who knew they were resonating? Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Melissa writes in hey Rich, Love Love, love your radio show, TV segments and social stuff. And finally, Bruce writes in hey Rich's bosses valuable national tech call in program. Remember I do pick the emails that I read, so you know there is a little bias there, I'm sure, but I do thank you.
I do appreciate it.
I actually will say the appreciation I get is truly what keeps me going here. This is a show for you. I love doing this show. I love sharing this information. I go through everything every week and find the stuff that you need to know. There's a lot of flash and trash out there, lots of it, lot of stuff that takes away your attention span. It's nonsense. I do
the stuff here that I think is actually important. And yes there's a hot take once in a while that's going to do it for this episode of the show. Links to on the website everything I mentioned rich on tech dot TV. Find me and my family pictures on social media at rich on tech. Thanks so much for listen. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Talk to you soon.