Google changes its messaging apps once again. Instagram adds Amber Alerts a cool place to stay this summer. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Damiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer the questions you send me. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles.
Hope you're having a fantastic week.
So one thing I love about my job is that I get to do a lot of stuff before anyone else.
Or get to see stuff that people don't get to see. Well, in this.
Case, I guess I just got to see it before anyone else. So Amazon's got this new high tech clothing store here in Los Angeles. It's at the Americana at the Brand and they invited me inside, which was kind of cool. Now, yeah, one can go in at this point, but I got to go in before anyone got to go in, and I got to bring my cameras in, so that was kind of cool.
We got to shoot a segment for KTLA about this.
So why does Amazon have a new clothing store when they just closed all of their physical stores that they opened that were the bookstores and the four Star stores. Yes, they still have the grocery stores and the whole foods, although they're closing some of those as well. Not the fresh but the whole foods. I think they announced like a whole bunch of Nation why that they were closing anyway.
So the Amazon style is our clothing store, and of course it's Amazon, so they got to put like a little twist on kind of the experience, and it's a high tech twist. And the big thing about this store is that when you walk in, they don't have like a bunch of colors and sizes stacked up to the ceiling. They have one of each. And then you scan a QR code and you say, send to my dressing room. And that's how you shop. So you send a bunch of stuff to your dressing room, and then you go
to your dressing room. The stuff is in there, and you unlock the dressing room with your phone. It's all very high tech and cool, but the secret is all in this dressing room. So when you get into this fitting room, there are a couple of things. Number one, it's the clothes that you asked for are in there
already hung up and they look all nice. Then there's a touch screen that tells you what you already have in there, and they have put in other clothes that they think you'll like, well, the computer will think you'll like. So they have an algorithm that says, Okay, Rich likes these kind of shirts. Let's give him three more of those types of shirts. We'll hang him up in there. When he gets in there, he'll look at him and
try him on. Then, to top it all off, there is a special closet inside the fitting room, and I call it the magic closet because it has double doors on it. It's got one door that you can open on your end, and then it's got a back door that the that the employees can open. And so when you request a different size or color from on that touch screen, the employee goes and gets it and puts it inside that closet, and you magically open the closet
and it's there. So they've done this thing for privacy where when the employee is opening the back door, your front door to that closet is locked and closed, and a little red light comes on that says, basically, you can't open the door, and then when they close that back door, the red light goes off. Your door is unlocked.
And you also hear this like chime sound and a nice big bright light or I guess a glowing light kind of illuminates the entire closet from behind, and so that signals to you that, okay, your closer in there.
It's really cool, it's fun. It's very different. I mean, look, you can have a bunch of associates that are just running closed back and forth, like if you say, you know, if you told a human like in another department store, like oh, can you go grab me a thirty four by thirty three instead of this thirty two, and they can go look for it and come back. So it's the same thing, except a little bit more automated, a little more high tech. And so I thought it was
really cool. I think the big thing that's going to make or break this store is the amount of time it takes the employees to not only stock these dressing rooms with your initial stuff, but also the replenishment. So when I was there, it took a good ten minutes to get your fitting room stocked. Like when you say you scan a close a piece of clothing and you say, okay, I'd like this. It took a good ten minutes for
that to show up inside the dressing room. So and then when I requested another size, it took i'd say probably like five minutes.
So you know, it does take some time.
I think if people are frustrated with that time, they won't come back. But otherwise, this has a lot of potential. It's definitely a cool way to shop, especially if you're by yourself, because you don't need to scream out across the room like I usually do my wife, like, hey, len, can you grab me a different size or a different color because this one doesn't fit? And you won't have to do that. So and of course while you're in that room, you can also rate things on that touch screen.
So the touch screen has a whole bunch of clothes on it and it says okay, So while you're sitting there waiting for your next stuff, it says like, oh, you want to go through some clothes and kind of thumbs up or thumbs down some of this stuff, and that can help the algorithm sort of understand you better.
So it's a cool thing. It's called Amazon Style.
It's now open at the Americana at the brand and I'd say check it out if you're in the LA area. Definitely worth a checkout. I'd like to go back and
do some wor shopping. I bought a pair of jeans, I bought some shampoo, and again, Amazon is using a whole bunch of data and algorithms to help stock this store, so they know if these yoga pants do really well on Amazon dot Com and they've never been sold in stores, they're probably gonna do pretty well in stores because they've got a thousands of good five star ratings or whatever. That's similar to what they did in their other stores.
But I guess they realized in those other stores that they opened the kind of the Amazon four star and the Amazon bookstores that people like to buy books online. It's simple, it's easy. You hear about a book recommendation, you don't really need to flip through it.
You can do that all online.
You can get an idea for what the book is, you can read review use, and then you know you don't really need to go into a store to buy it. Even though bookstores still hold a very a very warm spot in my heart.
I love those bookstores.
I just get so many ideas when I go in there, but again, they just realize people like to buy stuff online. Clothing a little different. You want to touch it, you want to feel it, you want to see it. And so this could really work for clothes and maybe boost the clothing sales on Amazon, although I don't think one store would, but I think it'll give them a lot of data if they want to open these up at malls across America. All right, let's get to the first
question of the week. Richard F says, how do I block ads on a Samsung Android phone? The S twenty one fe Great question? Great phone. I gave that phone a very high rating. It's I think four hundred and thirty dollars for a very good phone, and I loved it. So how do you block ads on it? Good question? So you can download an app that blocks ads, like something like block Blowkatta Blockotta block coatta b l O c k A d A, something like that.
There are a whole bunch of apps that.
Will There's ad Guard, there's ad block, I mean, there's so many things that will you origin.
I mean, there's so many.
I don't know if they have an app for the phone but there's so many ways you can block ads these days. I'm both Android and iOS, but the easiest way that I know to do it on Android is to go into your settings, and you go into Settings, and you go into Connections, and then you go into more Connection Settings, and then you select private DNS and you type in under private DNS provider host name. You type in the letters d NS dot ad guard dot com.
So again you go into Settings, Connections, More Connection Settings, Private DNS, Private DNS provider host name, and you type in DNS dot ad guard dot com. What does that do.
It's not an app, it's not a VPN. It's literally just routing all of your phone address information, you know, like when you're looking up a website, it's routing it through this ad Guard DNS server, and so when it gives the phone like, okay, here's how you find Yahoo dot com, Here's how you find Google dot com, here's how you find.
eBay dot com.
Oh, you want a link for double click, we can't find that because they're blocking anything that serves up ads. And so on your phone, you'll notice where the ads typically are. Either there'll be a blank space space, there'll be no AD or there'll be a big giant web URL that says cannot be resolved error, and that's a little annoying, but you know it's better to see that and you know there was an AD there.
But that's really the easiest way.
Ad Guard is a company that a service, whatever you want to call it, that you know, provides ad blocking on pretty much all of the different platforms. It works a little bit differently on all the different like whether you're on desktop, MACPC, or iOS or Android, it works a little different, but at the end of the day, it's it's just a super simple way to get rid
of ads on your phone and it works. Now if you're ever having trouble with a website, whether it's not loading, whether it's an app is not working, you always have to remember that you put in that DNS dot adguard dot com and if something's not working on your phone as it should be, you can go back into there and turn that off and you can turn it off
temporarily and then just go enable it once you're done again. Now, I block ads across my whole network in my home using euro and it does present some problems sometimes for sure. I don't know why, but just you know, like the other day, I was trying to log into an app and it was like, Nope, can't do it because we can't reach something. And you'll notice that sometimes websites don't load or sometimes there's like an error, and so if you ever run into that, you can temporarily disable this
ad blocking. The other thing I've noticed is when I'm searching Google on my phone at home, sometimes these ads, you know, the first like you know, the first three results are typically ads, and most people don't even realize that. I've watched so many people use Google, and I've watched them as soon as they search or something, they literally click the first link at the top that is marked AD, but nobody notices that, and nobody scrolls down like I always do to get to the actual what we call
organic results. And so I've just noticed people over and over they just click those ads right at the top, and typically it will bring you to what you need because either Amazon's buying it or you know, whoever you're searching for has.
Purchased that keyword.
But it's just it boggles my mind that so many people just default to that top, that top result, and I guess that's why Google makes billions and billions of dollars because most people are not very discerning about what they click on the Google results, and Google knows that, which is why those ads.
Do really well for them.
So sometimes if I'm at home and I search for like, let's say someone asks me a question about something, I go to research it and the first link that comes up is that company. I'll sometimes click it or it comes up, but I'm like, oh, that's interesting, let me click that. I can't because it'll literally say like, sorry, we can't find the server. So if that ever happens, you can just go in and switch things up.
All right.
Speaking of Google, Google, you know, I give them a lot of a lot of trouble for always changing things. Google just loves to change things up, and especially when it comes to messaging. I feel like Google has been all over the place lately, especially with a pixel phone and with some of the products they just they're always different, Like the pixel phone, you know.
It's like I just wish that Like if you look at the.
iPhone from day one until now, it has been this really natural slow evolution. You know, it's always been a piece of glass or a you know, glass screen back metal, whatever you know, material they're using at this at the time, kind of the.
Same form factor.
Yes, they've made it bigger some years, smaller some years, but it kind of looks like an iPhone every time you see it, as opposed to the pixel. Every time you get a pixel every year, it's completely different. Like everything about it is different. The design language, the look, the feel, the curves, everything is different. And so it just really bugs me that they like can't evolve something to like just slowly change it and just make it
better every year. And you know, they just make these really big harsh changes sometimes at Google, except with search. With Search they kind of kept the same for many years now, but all the other stuff they kind of make these big like twists and turns and moves and lefts and rights and like we're left, Okay, well I like this yesterday. Now it doesn't work that way. I like this this feature.
Oh it's gone. Anyway.
All that to say that Google is eyeing Google Duo and Google Meet. These are two different video services that they run. Google Duo is more for the mobile phone, Google Meat is sort of for the desktop. If you want to think of these in terms as Google Duo is a competitive FaceTime. Google Meat is an alternative to Zoom, and they both have different features. But Google says, you know what, We're just going to go ahead and merge these two things together, and we're gonna call it Google Meet.
So Duo is going away. It's gonna be called Google Meet. If you have the app on your phone, they're going to rename it to Meet later this year, and it's gonna be one way to video chat using Google products across the board. So if you want, you know, like Duo was really good at video chatting link to a phone number, and so Meat was really good at sending a link to someone and they can video chat. Now
it's gonna be all mixed together. So you can video chat using a link, you can video chat using a phone number, you can video chat using you know, whatever way that they want you to do it.
You know what is it?
So you got a link, a phone number, user name I guess, and then a text message.
I don't know, but that's it. So just know that that's happening.
Those features are going to be merged soon and Google Duo sadly is going away. I remember the day it came out, and now it's going away. Lupita says, my dad is eighty, he wants a smartphone. What is the best cheap phone I can get him? He only wants it for Internet use, for movies and music. He already has a flip phone. Smiley face, Thank you, Lupita, Lupida, great question. But if your dad already has a flip phone,
why does he need another smartphone. I think that you're missing the obvious answer here, and that is an Amazon Fire Tablet. If he wants something that is just inexpensive and can do what you're talking about, I think that the fire Tablet is the way to go, and they're super cheap. You can go with the fire Tablet seven and that is sixty dollars. They just revamped it. It's
brand new. It's got sixteen or thirty two gigs of storage, ten hour battery, two gigs of RAM, which doesn't sound like a lot, and it's probably not probably a little slower than you'd want it to be, but for music and movies it's going to be just fine.
It does have USBC on the bottom.
Now, if you want to slight upgrade, you can go to the eight and that's gonna be ninety dollars, So for thirty more dollars, you can go with the eight and that's gonna give you an HD screen, a little bit more battery life, and a bigger screen as well.
But I would recommend that.
I don't think that your dad wants another phone, unless he's planning on activating this with a cellular line, which I don't think he would if he's looking for an inexpensive, cheap phone. You said cheap, So if you're looking for cheap, I doubt dad wants to pay thirty dollars a month for another line to put data on this phone and where he can use it anywhere he wants. So I would say just go with the tablet. I think that's gonna be the easiest way to do it. And if
he wants a cheap smartphone, a couple of options. There is the Samsung S twenty gosh is it the S twenty one FC S twenty one FV. I think we just reviewed this one. They're not up to the S twenty two. No S twenty one. Oh no, sorry, not the fe I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's the Samsung. Oh my gosh, hold on, it's the h A thirty. Hold on, hold on, I gotta look at my story I just did on KTLA. So we did the Samsung A fifty three five G. That's the one that I would recommend
for him. So the Samsung A fifty three five G is wow. Yeah, it's as low as like I think three hundred and thirty dollars or sorry, four hundred and thirty dollars. But you can get that on sale or even cheaper. So let's see do I say the price tonight?
Did I really? Oh? Wow?
I said for about four hundred dollars, so I would go for that. I think that that's uh. So it's say, this is the problem with with Samsung's website. You go to look at the price and they actually include all this stuff. So it's looking like if you do an unlocked it looks like it's four hundred and forty nine. See it says it has a trade in, so you're getting one hundred dollars for your trade in. So the price of the phone is four hundred and fifty dollars,
but you can get that for cheaper. You just trade in any phone, you get one hundred dollars off. Then I'm looking at honey, they give you another eighty dollars off, so you can get that for considerably cheaper than the price tag. That's one option. The other thing I would look at is the TCL phones. They've got the TCL twenty series.
And the TCL thirty series.
Those are pretty inexpensive as well, so I would do I would look into those, but good question, and just go with the tablet much much cheaper. And Dad's gonna get as Netflix as Hulu Music, if you have Spotify, Amazon Prime, whatever he needs. I think you can go with it that way, all right. Instagram this week is
bringing Amber alerts to the platform. This is a big deal because when I grew up, we had we had missing children on the back of milk cartons, and you know, that was good because a lot of kids were reunited safely, but it was also not perfect because you know, the children that they had to feature could be on a wide swath of wherever those milk cartons were delivered. So with Amber alerts on Instagram, there's a couple advantages. Number One, they're going to show these in the news feed or
in your feed on Instagram. It's going to have a photo, it's going to have a description, and it's also going to have a link to local law enforcement, So whatever law enforcement that is handling that child's case is going to be linked up right through the app, which I think is is very smart and as opposed to the cell phone those only show text descriptions, so by having the picture, it's going to be a big advantage to
this and reuniting these kids safely. Now, the other thing they're going to do is they are using geotagging, So it's going to use a variety of signals to show these to people. And that could be the city that's on your profile, it could be your IP address or where you're located, or if you have location services turned on, they'll use that as well. And so I think that this is pretty smart that these these alerts will be super localized to where they think they need to be,
and that's a pretty big deal. Now, Instagram did tell me that they have been doing this on Facebook since twenty fifteen, and it says they've assisted law enforcement in hundreds of successful child endangerment cases in the US and globally and anyway.
So something to be aware of.
And this Amber alert system, by the way, has led to the successful recovery of more than eleven hundred children since it's founding in nineteen ninety six.
Now, I'm just when you think.
About the seriousness of this, like even one child missing, not where they should be with their parents or their family, their guardians, is incredibly sad and heartbreaking. And so the fact that eleven hundred have been found, you can only imagine how many were or still unresolved. This is completely just absolutely heartbreaking. And I think that if Instagram reunites one child with a family, that is just one hundred percent worth it. And you know you will see those
as you're scrolling through. I know a lot of people get really angry about the Amber alerts on their phones and they always turn them off for any sort of like Silver alert or you know whatever, these like emergency wireless messages. And I get it, they interrupt us, they're loud, they're annoying, but the reality is they do help. And when you can get a lot of people to say, oh, interesting, okay, let me see let me be on the lookout for that,
it could really really make a difference, all right. Bobby says, hey, Rich is Oro a legitimate company identification protection and by using my cell phone to register my banking information? Will the information be at risk? Thank you, Bobby and Alexandria Louisiana. So, Bobby, I had to do some research on ORRO. I actually think you mean Aura A. You are A and I've seen this. It says it protects your identity, your finances, and your sensitive All plans include a million dollar insurance
policy that covers eligible losses. You can try it for fourteen days free, and if I look on the website, the pricing is twelve dollars a month individual, twenty two dollars for a couple, or thirty seven dollars a month for family. But those are if you pay for a year in advance. If you pay monthly, it's basically fifteen, thirty or fifty dollars a month.
That's a lot of money. And what does it do?
It gives you identity, theft insurance, White Glove Fraud Resolution twenty four to seven, Customer Service anti virus a VPN safe browsing, password manager, online account monitoring, personal information and soci security number monitoring, spam call junk mail, people search site removal. Oh wow, that might be worth it right there? Ooh, that's amazing. Identity verification, monitoring, home title and address monitoring, criminal and court records monitoring, lost wallet, and then for
the family you get the child's sociecurity number. You get credit monitoring, credit lock, bank account monitoring, four one K investment account monitoring, monthly credit score, annual credit reports.
So you get a lot.
Is it safe, Yes, I'm sure it's safe. I'm sure it's legitimate. It looks like this is a reputable website. It does a lot of stuff. And do you need it, I think is the big question. And is it worth the fifteen twenty nine or I guess we should say twelve to fifty dollars a month? Is it worth that amount of money to have this protection? I mean that depends.
I think that identity theft is a huge problem. I think that if they can help you recover things, or they can help monitor if your social Security number or one of your accounts.
Gets out there on the open web.
But this stuff is happening a lot, and you know, our information is out there, and it's out there in a big way. Every time one of these services gets hacked, there's a bit of information about us that gets out, whether it's our email address, whether it's our phone number, I mean physical address, email phone number is pretty much out there, SOLI security number. Only when we see these major hacks of like a you know, a big company that had it that you know, that's when we see
those floating around. But I think for what you're getting, if you don't mind the cost, it's probably not a bad deal. If you ever have your identity hacked or stolen, it is a big pain to get that information resolved. And the fact that they do it white Glove Fraud Resolution. Our plan gives you access to our US based White Glove Fraud specialists. They're highly experienced and dedicated to help you recover your identity and assets of your victim of fraud.
So I mean, yeah, that could be worth it. And I think that this is, you know, it's definitely something to look into. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna fault you for having this. If this gives you peace of mind. Along with the other things you get like the VPN, the safe browsing, the password manager, all this account monitoring, credit monitoring, credit lock I mean, that's.
That's pretty good.
It is a little bit expensive, but I think that I think it's not a bad thing. To have, So if you want to go for it or au R is again what it's called good question? You know what, Let's go right into this next question from Ken. Ken said, hey again, after hearing about your recent experience of leaving your credit card at the restaurant in Anaheim, I just had to share my practice of putting a label on
each of my credit cards. I still believe that most people are honest and appreciate my making it easy for them to reach me in the event I misplaced one of my credit cards, my cell phone, or other important items. I make my own labels that have a simple message, please call my cell phone number, and they put the number on if this card is left behind. The sad or maybe good news is that, as it has worked many times over the years. I also display the same
message on the lock screen on my iPhone. It's like chicken soup.
It wouldn't hurt.
I've attached images and I trust that you're.
Not going to share them.
No Ken in San Diego, So, Ken, I love the fact that you are trusting of humans, and I love the fact and I agree with the fact that most humans are good natured, and I think that if you leave your credit card somewhere. Yes, they will call you and say, hey, I found this and do you want to take it back. The problem is, in my case, number one, I left this at Disneyland, so I was not going to go back to get my credit card.
Number two.
I would always be concerned about the number on that card being compromised. Even if the person who found it is a nice person, you don't know how many hands it went through before that person, or how many hands it will go through. Like let's say a waiter found it at a restaurant. They give it to their manager. Well, maybe the manager is nice and says, oh, let me
call this person. Maybe the waiter took a shot of it and a picture of it and sent it to a friend and sold the number for one hundred bucks. You know, I'm just I don't think they would do that, but you never know, so I would be worried that down the line, this credit card could be compromised in a different way, so you can do this. I also don't like the idea of putting my phone number on a credit card, because I don't want anyone to have
more information about me than they need. I don't even sign my credit cards anymore because I know, and I mean, when was the last time someone looked at a signature on a credit card? They just don't, so I don't even sign them because then they don't have that signature. I mean, do you remember when you used to write a check at like the dry cleaners or something.
They used to write every piece.
Of information on that check that was yours, your driver's license, your phone number, your you know, sometimes your date of birth.
Maybe I don't know, maybe they didn't do that.
Your address, they had your you know, your checking account number was right on the bottom. I mean, it was pretty wild what we used to give up back in the day. And now my default is like I'm not like, if I fill out those forms of the doctor's office,
I leave my social Security number off. I mean, if someone really needs it, I will give it to them, But otherwise it's like, no, the default is you're not getting that and you will have to give me a reason why you So just keep that in mind, like, don't give people more information than they need about you, because it's better to let them really give you a reason why before you hand it over.
So that's a good good practice.
But ken, I get it. Yes, people are good. I think that this is fine if it works for you. I personally am not comfortable with doing that because I just don't want any more information on my card. And what I did is I locked my card on the app. So I just went on my app, I locked the card.
It was fine.
And then all of a sudden, when I locked the card, the physical card is locked, but it could still be used for like online transactions, like things that you're that already, like recurring subscriptions and stuff. And then after a week, when I realized my card was not showing up, like I wasn't going back to Disney to get it, but I thought maybe I left it in like my pants pocket or something didn't show up.
I called I got a new card.
And then, of course, as soon as you cancel that old card, all the emails started coming in. Oh, Rich, we can't charge your card. We can't charge your card, We can't charge your card. And it's like, h I put a lot of the recurring stuff on the credit card instead of the debit card because my debit card was taken a while back, and so you know, once I did that, I was like, ah, it's just easier for the credit card and you can't win no matter what if you if your card number is stolen. It's
just a headache, it really is. So anyway, can good comment there? So I don't fault you for that, but I just I'm a little bit more, uh, I guess less trusting.
All right.
Son Nos now has voice control. This is a new voice experience that lets you control your music and your Sonos system with what they call unmatched privacy. So now if you have a son No speaker that's voice compatible, which is only a handful of them, like in my home, I think two of them are, but you can now set up this Son's voice control and you can ask sons to do stuff. And I think there's a big advantage to this because I do have Google and Alexa
support on the on the speaker that I have. Oh yeah, I know you missed something, Alexa. Sorry you missed the command because I wasn't actually talking to you. I know, I'm talking to Alexa here. She doesn't have an answer for that. So the problem with the using the historic commands like the Google or the alex a is that there are other things in your house that respond to that. So I actually think this is quite smart that you can say hey, Sons and it will only trigger your speaker,
which when you want to play music. That's very handy. And so I will tell you I've tried this. I set it up, and so far I've not been able to use it because I first tried Spotify. It was like, sorry, we're not compatible with Spotify, and I was like, okay, fine, YouTube Music, Sorry we're not compatible with YouTube Music. Okay, what are you compatible with? So it's compatible with Sonos, Radio,
Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and Pandora. More services and markets to follow, And the keyword again is hey, Sonos. And by the way, they're using the actor Giancarlo Esposito, who's best known for his roles in Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and the Mandalorian. He is the voice behind the new Sons voice control, so kind of cool. Anyway, there you go. If you have Sonos, definitely check it out in your app, and maybe you have one of
those services that actually works with because I don't. Rick says, hey, Rich, your advice is always helpful. My PC has slowed down. I keep getting pop ups as shown in the attached pictures. Can you recommend a registry cleaner? To resolve some of these issues. Any help would be appreciated.
Rick.
All right, so I'm looking at this picture that Rick sent. Your PC suffers from from slow down and clutter. There are one and fifty seven issues to fix and forty six thousand megabytes to clean up. Broken registry system, junk PC health problems, junk programs, programs slowing down your PC browser cache and tracking in other cookies. Okay, this is
totally scam city. This is being served up by I think it looks like a vast maybe and it's some sort of program that you have in your computer that's just telling you this stuff that it wants you to upgrade, It wants you to pay, it wants you to do something. So I would get rid of this program, uninstall it. And the couple things that I would do is the ways that I clean up the computer is number one, the registry cleaner.
I don't know.
I'm not a huge Windows person, so maybe the registry is like a big thing, But like, I don't think you need to be cleaning out your registry all the time. I think that that's just become like a term that these systems use because it's scary and there's always these errors, and there's always these things that can be corrected, and you don't really know what's going on in there, so it looks like you're doing something when realistically you're probably not.
So what I would do is things number one, uninstall this program. Go through your programs on your UH uninstall and in system preferences, and just literally what's it called in Windows Control Center control panel, go through the uninstaller and just literally go through the list of programs and anything you don't recognize.
Just uninstall.
If you don't need it, you didn't install it.
Just just get rid of it.
Restart your computer, do all the software updates on your computer, and you know, you can clean out your your browser and all that stuff, like just clear the history and stuff manually. But that's what I would do, and then make sure all your Windows is up to date. And if your computer's still really slow, what I would do
is just give it a fresh start. Depending on how old this is, like literally you can go to Windows and refactory format your PC and start fresh, and that'll give you like a whole new life on this computer. If it's like four years old, five years old, that you haven't done this The other thing you can do is check out clean my PC. I do actually trust that program, and so I would say that's probably a better program than Oh, they're no longer developing it. Oh no, oh,
that's it. I guess it's over. Just they just did this, huh wow since December first, okay, twenty twenty one, so it's been a couple months. Okay, Well, anyway, Windows eleven is the last time they're they're supporting it, So maybe use that. The other app is what's it called Should I remove it? They've got that which you can look up kind of the bloatwear on your computer and see
what's going on there. But these Windows computers come pre installed with a lot of bloatwear, and they come they come slow out of the box, which is kind of funny. But that's what I would recommend doing. I don't I don't know this. This program is just kind of scaring you into into, you know, paying for something that you don't need. So that that's my recommendation. Rick, All right, let's talk about Sounder. So I was doing some research. I have no idea how I came across this. Maybe
it was in a magazine maybe whatever. Someone mentioned it I don't know, but I looked it up and like, how do I not know about this? So Sonder is kind of a mix between Airbnb and a hotel. So it's a company that buys rental properties and sometimes they could be as big as a hotel. Sometimes they are as small as like a two unit, three unit, four unit place, and they rent them out kind of self service style, so you rent it on an app, obviously, but you also check in on the app. You unlock
your door from the app. They're not really staffed by people, so you kind of come and go as you please. And you know, there's like self storage service lockers for like your luggage. So I went and I called up Sonder. Took a while to get this figured out, but we finally met up. It took me to a location near lax called the Sonder Lum, which I guess is an old hotel that they're they redid but now they're rebranding it to a different name. I forget what it's gonna
be called. But you know, they showed me kind of what this is all about. This is in thirty cities around the world, at least thirty cities, and the big thing is that it's kind of like an Airbnb because it's very like DIY, but it's also has the quality standards of a hotel chain, so they have like people that professionally clean it, that restock the room.
The rooms are very uniform.
Maybe not across the whole portfolio, but you're gonna get like the same things, like a nice comfortable bed, a bright airy room, good coffee, a coffee maker, a refrigerator, a good Wi Fi, a TV that has a Roku with streaming services on it, and so it's it's just like a really cool like kind of mix between these
two things. And they actually rent a lot of these out on Airbnb as well and the hotel websites, so you know, and since there's no one at the front desk, they've got this thing called the essentials cabinet, which has like extra toilet paper, extra towels, extra coffee pods there, you know, and some of them are really elaborate, like they could have like a gym like the one I. Of course, the one they took me to was like
the best case scenario, right. It was like a really nice, brand new proper had a nice big pool, had a big gym, It had the you know, everything was perfect and brand new. Now I'm not saying all these aren't like that. I just have not stayed one stayed at one of these personally, and so I can't really say like how great they are because I haven't stayed. But I think it looks really cool and it's a good alternative.
And it's also a little bit cheaper than a lot of the places that you might be looking at in that area because it is a DIY.
I mean, think about it.
They are it's kind of like a hotel or an airbnb, but they are literally running these things tech forward, which means you know, you're checking in from your phone.
There's no restaurants.
There's just a lot of overhead in these giant hotels, like when you go to any hotel chain, there's.
Just a lot of overhead.
Like they've got to pay the cleaning people, They've got to pay the you know, the front desk people. They've got to pay a plumber to be there, you know, like all these different things, maintenance, valet, you know, all this stuff. And so by doing away with a lot of the personnel and just having people that are very flexible. So like let's say you run these hotels in San Diego, and you've got you know, these places in San Diego.
You've got three locations. You may have a crew of thirty people shared between those locations, so they're always kind of moving between those three locations instead of having, you know, a Hilton in ten different locations in that in that city, and every one of those Hilton's has a staff of one hundred people. You know, it's so that staff is
very expensive. So by by divvying this up and kind of coming from a tech forward way where most people are just coming and going on their own, it does save a lot of money, and so they're passing some of that savings onto you. So this is called Sounder. You can check it out. I would like to stay at one of these to see just how cool it is. I was very impressed with the room.
It was great.
What I liked about the Roku is that you set your checkout date, so you can sign into your Netflix and your Hulu and you choose your checkout date, and on your checkout date, it just automatically wipes the Roku clean, so it actually reformats the whole thing and wipes all
those user accounts off of it. So that the next person isn't using your Netflix, unlike you know my world where everyone's using my Netflix anyway, So all right, Sherry says, Hey, Rich, I was wondering if you had a chance to check out the Fetch application. You take pictures of receipts to get points, and after you get so many points, you can get gift cards. Do you think it's okay to
use the app? And do you think it's safe? Thanks, Sherry. Sherry, I specifically have not seen Fetch, but I know what it's all about. It's kind of like we did a story with Drop a long time ago. Let's see if that's still around. Yeah, Drop is still around. Let's see what other ones are. There's upside. There's so many of these apps, so upside versus let me do my favorite one, Fetch.
Yeah, there's so many. Let's see there's.
Fetch versus Ibota. I mean, there's so many of these And the reality is the apps are all the same at their heart, and what they're doing is it's a total data play. You are handing over your data and they are giving you points, and those points add up eventually to a gift card or some sort of reward, and there's nothing wrong with it.
These are totally cool, they're totally legal.
Yes, you're handing over a lot of information, and that's the reality of this. It really depends how comfortable are you with handing over all of your data and if you're taking pictures of your receipts or whatever. I mean, what they're trying to do is see what you're buying, trying to see your spending habits, You're trying to just they're just getting a lot of data and then they sell that data to big brands. So if Huggy says, hey, can you give us an idea.
Of who buys our.
Diapers, and they say, yeah, we know all these people because they all sent us their receipts. Obviously, when you first sign up, you probably fill out a demographics form that says you know, male, female, your age, where you live.
How much you may all this good stuff.
So again it's all just a data play and they're collecting as much data as possible so that they can sell that data. On the other end, it's the same thing that a lot of these websites do that collect your that want access to your email program like I think Ratuken, I think is one of them. But like you know, you can like give access to your your email and they will slice and dice your email like
I do one, uh for a service. And the reality is, you know, they look in my emails for my travel receipts and they kind of put it all onto one thing. And it's great, but they're probably collecting data about how I travel, where I go, and they're selling across that or selling against that as well. So not a bad thing. It's just business, and it just depends on how much you want to share. You can look at their privacy policy. Uh so yeah, I mean here's what they do, uh information.
We collect name data, birth, email, billing, shipping, telephone number, any photo, any other information. We collect consumer account and email log in or credentials on digital receipts.
I mean there's a whole bunch of stuff that they do.
So again, it's just it's one of those things where you know, are you comfortable with giving up that data? If you are, and you can game the system and make a couple bucks, twenty five dollars, fifty dollars, whatever it is, I mean, that's fine, that's up to you. So that's but they're legitimate and they're fine, And just make sure that if you go with one of these apps,
it is a legitimate app. You don't want to be giving access to like a whole bunch of different apps or you know, your credit card or all this stuff. Like a lot of them want your logins to your credit card and your bank account so that they can track those transactions for you as well.
And you know, again if you're getting a value out of that.
Like I used to use this thing called true bill and it would look in your bank account and give you a list of all the different subscriptions you had, and I thought it was great, But then, you know, I kind of realized that they're collecting all the data on my transactions and using that, you know, to sell against and I just like, eh, you know, I'll just keep a spreadsheet of my own of my own subscriptions and see how much they cost, and I'll do it myself.
And you know, same thing would drop, we did, a story, would drop. I ended up signing up, and then I was like, am I really comfortable with them seeing every transaction I do online on my credit card, debit card, bank account just to get these points? And I just said no, all right now, here is a loyalty discount that is real. So a couple of weeks ago, I got a text from Verizon. They said, hey, if you thanks, you're eligible for a loyalty discount of ten dollars a
month off your current plan. And I was like, what, give us a call at this phone number for this limited time offer. And I was like, all right, that definitely sounds sketch, Like why is Verzon texting me this?
And I tweeted about it and I never called. And then I saw that droid Life sent a wrote up an article about people on Verizon getting these texts, and they said, yeah, it's legit, and so I called up Verison yesterday, took a little bit, and sure enough, the guy was like, all right, for ten dollars off every month. And I'm like, uh for how long? He's like, uh, just every mo. And I'm like, okay, there's no end date. So if you get one of these texts, it is real.
Apparently I've not seen the ten dollars off of my account just yet. Maybe i'll see it next month, but.
I would call.
I mean, make sure anytime someone's texting you a phone number to call you really want to double check that, make sure that phone number is the actual number, because this could totally be a scam where they could say, Hey, AT and T customer, we're gonna give you twenty dollars off your phone bill every month. Call us at this number to confirm you call the number. They say, Hey, welcome to AT and T. Now, can we have your account number? Can we have your driver's license number to
verify you are who you say you are? Can we have your which credit card you use to pay your bill? And you say, oh, here's my credit card number? And the next thing you know, they're scamming you. So you got to be careful with this stuff. But the reality is this seemed to be real. I didn't have to change my plan. I'd have to sign up for anything. They tried to sell me on a free phone and I said no. But apparently I'm saving twenty dollars or ten dollars off a month. It seems like it's just
for one line. Some people are getting ten dollars a month, others are seeing fifteen, Others are seeing as much as twenty five dollars off a month. There's an entire Reddit thread dedicated to it, and if you're tempted to just call and say, hey, can I get ten dollars off? I guess people are doing that and Verizon's just like, no, if it's not marked on your account, you're not getting it. So I guess this is probably a test because Verizon's last earnings report, it was revealed that they lost.
A whole bunch of customers.
Like there's only a couple hundred thousand, but still that is not good.
These companies have been gaining.
Customers for a very long time and the fact that that's now going retreating is not good for them. And I'm sure that they're trying to stop some of that bleed from happening by offering this. All right, another Verizon story starting now. You can activate an eSIM on a device you already have right from Verizon's website. You can go to Verizon dot com slash bring it, or you can use my Verizon app, and you can activate select
phones that have an eSIM. And a lot of the new phones, like the Samsung's that p sols, the iPhones, they all have an eSIM. And what an eSIM means is that you don't need to go to a Verizon store to get a SIM card. You don't need to go to Target or Walmart or wherever and buy one of the SIM cards and pop it in your phone.
You can now literally go to the Verizon website.
Type in the IMEI number off your phone, which is like the special code off your phone, see if it's compatible, and then they'll ask you for the eSIM number. You type that in and it will activate the phone wirelessly. I mean, you don't have to put anything into your phone.
It's so cool.
And I want to activate this phone I have sitting right in front of me, this pixel, just because I can do that. But I don't want to pay the thirty dollars or whatever it is a month to activate a second line.
But it's pretty cool.
So anyway, if you have a phone that you want to activate, you don't feel like going anywhere, you want to see what the plans are on Verizon. If you have a compatible e SIM device, just go to Verizon dot com slash bring it and you can activate it right from there. All right, final story, Chipotle is now accepting bitcoin now. It's through a third party kind of digital currency app and this is called Flexa, and Flexa is like a company that enables retailers to take digital currencies.
So they support like almost one hundred different digital currencies, not just bitcoin. Bitcoin is just the easy, popular thing to mention, but they also support doge coin, They support, you know, a lot of if you scroll through this list, there's a lot of stuff that they support. So if you want to use this at Chipotle, what do you have to do? You have to download an app and
you have to download the Flexa. There's two apps that you can download, and let me see what those are called, because I downloaded one of them and it is let's see. You have to download Gemini or the spend in sped n app and you go to you link that up to your crypto wallet and then you go to Chipotle and you ask them you pay with bitcoin. Now, when you ask them to pay for bitcoin, they are going to look at you like, what are you talking about?
What do you what do you mean? There's no bitcoin here?
So a lot of people, I guess, we're discussing this online saying that the employees weren't fully aware or wasn't fully working. But I guess the trick is what they need to do is press gift card and once they press gift card. You you'll see a little QR code on your phone.
That's how you pay.
But once you see gift card, once they check gift card, you scan your QR code on your phone. You know, they have those scanners at the checkout and that will that will take the bitcoin out of your account. Now, here's the funny thing about bitcoin is that the price has been up and down, up and down.
Right now, it's really been down.
But that's this is the this is the really tricky thing about bitcoin is that people have been talking about bitcoin being in a you know, a good alternative to the different you know currencies out there like you know, AMX, Visa, MasterCard,
cash coin, PayPal, whatever. But the problem is nobody wants to use it to pay for anything because right now, let's say you put one thousand dollars in bitcoin, it's probably down to five hundred or down to three hundred, depending on when you bought it, right And so you're sitting there saying, I want this money to come back up to what I put in, like at least, you know, break even.
And so why would you go and spend this money.
On a burrito when it's like worth thirty forty fifty percent less than how much you paid for it. And so I think that's the big problem with bitcoin. It's like this chicken versus the egg thing is that we need people to start using these cryptocurrencies on a daily basis at places like grocery stores and and you know, gas stations and you know, different convenience stores and restaurants. But nobody wants to because right now, a lot of people see bitcoin as sort of a quote unquote investment.
You know, they're just they're just kind of playing with it, and it's not really a thing that they're using in their lives day to day.
So it's good that Chipotle is doing this.
You know, three thousand restaurants overnight that accept bitcoin is great, but it's it's one of these things where people are gonna be a little hesitant.
To use it.
A because it's a little confusing, and b because they're just like, nah, I'm good right now, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna buy and hold, you know, and just keep this stuff in my account. So anyway, if you do want to use it, they will give you ten percent off your next purchase at Chipotle. I might do
it just for fun. I mean, like everyone my bitcoin is down, and I'm kind of like, you know, I'm just maybe just not going to look at it for many, many years and see what happens in ten years, you know. But at the same time, I think it's kind of cool, like I would love to start using bitcoin to you know, when my brother I had to pay them back one time for something, I sent them bitcoin, you know, instead of like paying them back with Venmo, and I just thought it was so cool.
It's just kind of fun to do that, because.
You know, it is a it is a very neat way of doing things and kind of a you know, a very not perfect.
It's not perfect, but it's a I don't know.
I mean, you could send it to anyone in the world, the same way you can send it to someone in Japan.
You can send it to.
Someone in Italy, and you can send it to someone in London. You can send it to someone across the street. Like there's no there's just it works the same everywhere. And I love that about it. That's so cool, all right. That sound means that's gonna do it for this episode of the show. If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer, go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com, slash rich on Tech hit the big blue send email button, or go to rich on Tech dot
tv hit the email icon. I'd love it if you'd rate and review this podcast. Just go to the listening app of your choice write a quick line about what you like about this show to help other people understand why they should listen.
You can find me on social media.
I am at rich on Tech, and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free KTLA plus app on Apple TV, fireTV, and Roku, and you can scroll to the tech section and watch all of my TV segments on demand. My name is rich Dmiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me.
Talk to you all soon.