Twitter goes premium for three dollars a month. YouTube gets rid of dislikes, kind of sort of Robinhood gets hacked. Plus your tech questions answered? What is going on? I'm Rich Demiro 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 and yes, yes, send me a lot of them, keep them coming. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Welcome to the folks listening on Facebook audio rooms.
That feature was big.
It's funny with these social media platforms they love to their attention span is very short. So with Facebook, for instance, they were all about these live audio rooms for like a month or two, and you know, whenever I would do one of these, it would promote it across the board to all my followers, and you know, hundreds of people would log in to listen because Facebook was pushing it to as many people as possible because they were
trying to start that feature. Well, now that they don't care about it as much and they've moved on to other things, it's not as popular. You don't see it promoted as much. It's just kind of one of those features that's there. And I'm seeing the same kind of thing happen right now on Instagram. And I don't know if you've noticed, but they've really really ramped up reels. They've ramped up two things in your feed. Number one reels.
Number two suggested posts. So if you're scrolling through Instagram and this happens to me, I'm looking at these posts and I'm like, wait a second, I don't follow that person. It says, oh, suggested because you follow this person or that person, and I don't mind it. But a lot of my feed has become suggested posts. So they're definitely it's definitely becoming an Instagram that was very different than the Instagram many of us signed up for. Also, there's
a lot of moving stuff. There's just a lot going on now.
The reels.
I'll tell you why so many people are doing reels right now is because Facebook is paying bonuses for doing reels.
So I tell you this because I was invited to the program and basically they said, oh, we'll pay a whole bunch of money if you do some reels, and so that is I have not done one, but that's The reason why you're seeing so many people doing reels right now because they're trying to reach these bonus amounts and if they get these bonuses, it could be a decent amount of money, so I don't know, maybe a couple hundred bucks or something.
So that's why you're.
Seeing so many reels in your Instagram feed at this point. But we are here to talk tech. We're here to talk about the questions that you send me. And as you know, I am an open book. I've been talking about the Tesla on social media that's been going well. I've been talking about the Pixel six Pro, which I haven't switched to, but I've been using it alongside my iPhone for like two weeks now, and I'll tell you
I do love the phone. I mean, they're the Pixel six I think is just such an incredible device, except for a few things. Number One, the size is just I can't Maybe this sounds like a broken record from last week's podcast, but it's just such a big phone that you can never get comfortable using it, Like.
It's just so big.
Maybe if you're used to the size of the iPhone thirteen Promax, you'd be fine with this, But I don't think if you have that phone that you'd be switching to this phone. The other thing is the fingerprint sensor is just like absolutely one hundred percent like terrible, Like I've never like it's it's taking a step back maybe five phone generations. I haven't seen a fingerprint sensor this bad in many many phones.
Now.
I do believe in Google, and I think that Google is very much not hardware oriented but software oriented.
So they came out and said, yeah.
Well, the reason why our fingerprint sensor is a little slower than the rest is because it's very It's very secure, and I think ninety nine point nine percent of people would be like, well, let me give up like fifty percent of that security for a fingerprint sensor.
That actually works in a reasonable.
Amount of time. I've gotten to the point where I have a fear of unlocking this device. FO fear of unlocking it FO you, I because I sit there and I'm like, this is gonna take so long to unlock. Let me just go to the iPhone and I'll use that because it's instantly unlocked as soon as you look at it. Now, there are some rumors that face unlock will be coming to the iPhone, but I'm not sure we'll see I mean, I hope so. And by the way, I did find a good case. I think a good
case really makes this phone. And the Spegan I actually picked two that I really like. So Spegan sent over all the cases to test out and I tried them all on the phones, and I found two that I really like. Remember I like a thin case, and so these are thin, but there are also some protection, and they're also grippy. And the two I like are the Pixel six Pro Ultra Hybrid from Spegin and then the Pixel six Pro Liquid Air.
Those are my two picks. But there are you know, maybe.
A half a dozen cases that if you want more protection, you have to upgrade to one of those. And you know, maybe you like that you don't mind the bulk. You know, some people don't mind the bulk because they don't keep their phone in.
Their pocket like I do.
I keep my phone in my pocket, so I want a thin case and a smaller phone. But this, this Pixel has won me over for many, many reasons, and one of them is.
That I forgot how useful.
I forgot how much I call it hunting and pecking you have to do on the iPhone to complete stuff. So on the iPhone, everything is notifications and apps right, nothing is integrated into the fabric of the phone unless it's something that Apple wants, Whereas on Android, apps and notifications are much more woven into the fabric of the phone, so when you buy it or when you download an app, it sort of becomes part of the operating system in
different ways. One example is that I've just keep seeing over and over is that when you get a notification on the pixel, there are action steps you can take right from that notification. So, for instance, if someone you know texts you something I don't know, there's just so many little things that you can do directly from the notification.
And one of the simplest examples is like for Tesla, the Tesla app, for example, there's a notification on your screen that always lets you unlock your car, open the front trunk, open the rear trunk, and so it's like
little things like that where it's really cool. Or if you get a notification from Google Maps about a place that it wants you to review, which I know are kind of annoying, but it'll say something like not useful or didn't go there, which you can just in one click, say I didn't go there, Versus on the iPhone, you'd have to tap into the notification and then tap into the experience to figure out where to.
Go to do all that stuff.
So it's just little things. I'm not saying one's better than the other. It's just more of the differences that I'm pointing out. I still love the iPhone, believe me. It's a pretty amazing device, and I will say I think in some cases it's just a better creator device than the Pixel. I find that I'm more creative when I'm holding my iPhone than i am with a Pixel. I just feel like the Pixel is more a smartphone like it just it kind of anticipates your needs a little bit better.
Let's get to the first story of the week. Twitter.
I don't really talk about Twitter too much because I don't feel like a lot of people use it that are general, everyday people, And that's kind of who I imagine listens to this show. But you know, there are some people that use Twitter that are just regular people. I feel like it's mostly either people kind of in industry or you know, it's not like my mom.
Or my dad or something like that. You know, like the average tech person.
So I don't talk about it too much, but you know, they did something interesting this week. They opened up what's called Twitter Blue, and so for three dollars a month, you get features that the regular free Twitter users don't get. Number one, you get some ad free sites. So when you go to like Washington Post, you open an article from Twitter, La Times, USA Today, The Atlantic Reuter's, a couple others A you don't see any ads on those articles.
So I mean, is that worth three bucks a month? Probably not.
The funny thing is that you don't get a subscription to any of these, So it'd be nice if they bypass the paywall when you clicked on these things. That's not happening, so you still if it's a paywalled article, you're not going to get to see it for free. Let's see top articles. This is my favorite feature so far. So this summarizes all of the top articles people are sharing in your network over the past twenty four hours.
So that's really really useful.
But that also used to be free through a website called Nuzzle, And I'm guessing that did Twitter buy Nuzzle? I thought I said that on the radio. I'm guessing. Let's see, yep, Twitter bought Nuzzle.
Yep. Okay, so yeah, so that's that's the thing.
Like that website was free and I used it every day and I loved it, and then Twitter bought it and they shut it down, and now they're making me pay for it. You also can customize your experience with exclusive app icons, So if you want to change your you know, your navigation icons or the way your Twitter icon looks on your home screen, you can do that. I mean, probably not worth three bucks. The undue tweet is the kind of the big main feature a lot
of people have been talking about, which is fine. It's not an edit button per se, but it's just a delay. So if you have this setup in Gmail like I do, where it delays my email by twenty seconds, so if I think of something or made a mistake, I can undo it. Same thing now with Twitter. So the other thing that's kind of cool, and this is like a very I don't know, one percent kind of person feature, but it turns long Twitter threads into like an easy
to read experience, which is also really nice. You can upload longer videos and that's about it. So I subscribe just to check it out it's fine.
I you don't know.
If I will pay three dollars a month. They would have to do a couple things for me to keep paying three dollars. Number one, they would have to take away the ads.
I cannot deal with the ads on Twitter. They're so annoying.
They're after like every other tweet, and so three bucks a month, one hundred percent. I would be totally down with paying that just to get rid of the ads. And if they threw in the rest of these features, that would be pretty cool too. All right, let's get to the first question of the day. Ron says, how can I delete pictures on Facebook Messenger? Ron, what I
would do typically is press and hold. So whenever you can't find something to do on your phone, it's not very obvious, there's two things you want to look for. Number One, just press and hold on whatever you're trying to manipulate. So if you're trying to like delete a picture, press and hold it and see if a little menu comes up that lets you delete the picture. Indeed, I
think that's the case here with Facebook Messenger. You can do that on your iPhone or Android and it should bring up a delete button that you can.
Get rid of that picture.
The other thing to look out for is a menu icon. So like a menu icon these days, they look like two things. Number one, three little dots in a row, up and down. So just three little dots up and down. Click that or tap that rather, and that should bring up the what we call an overflow menu that you know has the other options for whatever you're trying to do.
And then the other thing is the hamburger menu, and that often will bring up either a slide a slider menu or I'm saying hamburger and slider in one one sentence. It's pretty funny, no pun intended, but that's generally what you do. But in in general with the phones, especially the way the iPhone was designed, you know, they made everything very simple. So press and hold and typically that should bring up what you need to do. Oh also on Twitter, let's get back to Twitter for just a moment.
There's a new feature on someone's profile if you're on iOS. So if you're on iOS and you're using Twitter, it's uh, there's a new little search button on one's profile, and so just go to their profile, you know, just tap on their name and go to their profile, which shows like their bio and how many tweets they've done, and how many people are following. In the upper right hand corner, you'll now see a little search icon like a magnifying glass, and you tap that and then you can type in
a keyword. So if you want to see all the times in my Twitter world that I've ever mentioned the word pixel, you can just search for the word pixel. If you want to see all the times I've ever mentioned I don't know, chuck E cheese. That'd be a tough one to type in, but I probably spelled it wrong, but you know, you can type in Chuck E cheese. So this is really handy. It's it's always a It's
a feature that's always been around on Twitter. It's just been way more complicated to use because you'd have to go and do an advanced search to get this figured out.
So I think that by putting this front and center on someone's profile, it does make things a lot easier because if you saw me say something on TV and you're like, oh, I want to get more information about that, you can just go to my profile, type in a keyword from whatever story I did, and there you can find the tweet that is associated with that story, and not just a tweet, but a lot of times in my course of testing stuff out, I will often tweet
as I go. So I'll be tweeting like little features and little things that I discover, and then I'll put some of those or all of those into my main review on TV, and so you can see kind of my thoughts along the way with the different things that I talk about and review and go to. So simple, simple check for the new search icon on the Twitter profile page of your favorite tweeter.
All right, Stace.
I don't know if it's Stace or stay C because it's STACEE, so that could be Stace, could be Stace. I have a problem getting rid of tech stuff. I have a ton of old memory two hundred chips whoo, as well as cables, motherboards.
Where do I go?
This is a major recycling problem. I'm trying to be sustainable. I know it's toxic. People need to know that there's a threat to the environment inside much. People need to know. Every city is different, but anyone who cares should have the option.
You got one.
Come on, dude, I watch you every day. This is major important. Did I miss one of your reports I watch you every day. Thanks Stace or Stacy. Well, Stacy or Stace, you did miss one of my reports, because I've talked about this several several times in recent memory. I've done two major stories on gadget recycling. The first was with a We visited a gadget recycling I don't know. It's like a waste place, just locally in the La Valley and or San Fernando Valley, I guess I should say.
And it's a place where you could The coolest part about it was that they had this big giant machine that could chop up your hard drive. So if you have a hard drive, it would just grind it to like a million little pieces, and then they would of course take out the important precious metals and then send the rest on their way for recycling. But that was number one, so you can easily go there and bring all your stuff. I think it was called US.
Waste Fernando Valley or was it Glendale. Oh gosh, I can't remember where it was. It might I can't remember. I'll have to look this up, but I'll put it in the show notes.
But it was a nice little place where they you know, they just had a whole bunch of stuff that people bring there to recycle, so you can bring that or there's another website that we did a story with called Gizmo Gizmo Go, and they will pay you for stuff that they can pay you for, but this stuff doesn't sound like anything they would pay for because that's mostly like phones and old laptops and stuff. This sounds like more.
You just need it recycled. And with that in mind, you could just send it to them in a big box. Or better yet, since you're local and they are they're in Chino Hills, you could just take the box of your stuff.
To them and they will recycle.
Now I would contact them first through their website before you just bring something over there. But they have a huge business of recycling this stuff, and yes, they keep it out of landfills, they keep it from ruining the environment, and it's a pretty big operation. And there are many any companies that will do this, and there's also many what do they call green recycling drives on the weekends.
A lot of times are fundraisers for schools where you bring all this stuff and they'll take it for free. But the company that's taking it is actually making money off of this stuff, because what they do is they reclaim the precious metals from this stuff. So they will
pay you for some of these things. Maybe the motherboards might have some value, the memory chips, I'm not sure, the cable's probably not, but they might pay you, you know, pay the organizations that's arranging this fundraiser drive just a little bit of money.
But that's the way I would do it.
Or they'll take it off your hands and then share a little bit of the profit with the fundraising place, but with the nonprofit I should say.
So that's what you do.
But look up those two things, Stace, Look up recycling old gadgets KTLA.
Did I ever tell you how to search?
You?
Just look?
So I've got I've got two. There we go, two stories. Okay, here's the first story. Got a new gadget over the holidays. Here's how to dispose? Okay, yeah, this was the place I went to. We went to a place called e Waste US Electronics Recycling in North Hollywood. And so they'll
take it. And here's the thing. I mean, you know, I ever since I did this story on recycling old gadgets, I have never thrown out a battery ever again, because I realized in that story how bad they are for the environment when you just toss them in the trash. And so I now keep a mason jar and every battery that I use in my house that's you know, triple A or whatever kind of thing, I will throw in to there and then I will go and recycle those.
So good question and get that stuff recycled.
YouTube is going to stop showing dislikes.
This is something that not a lot of people like.
But boom, boom, I need a bad joke sound for my soundboard here. So YouTube says they did an experiment and they got rid of the dislike button, or they changed it so that you could still have the dislike button, but the total number of dislikes under a video was not displayed, and lo and behold, they found that it actually discourages what they call group dislikes or this group
dislike mentality. So they've noticed when a lot of people start disliking a video, people sort of start piling on more dislikes, even though they just do it just to be funny or something. So they said, you know what,
that's not very good for our creator viewer relationships. And so we're gonna still let you thumbs down a video, and we're gonna show the creators the total number of those thumbs down, but we're no longer gonna make it a game where you can see how many thumbs downs this video has compared to how many thumbs up thumbs.
Up they'll still display, So that's basically it.
You know, this is of course getting met with a lot of mixed reactions online. Some people say, well, that's how I can tell if a video is worthless, which I would agree with, because if you had noticed that a video has a lot of thumbs down, you might be like, I'm not gonna watch this. People were disappointed with it, but I guess you'll just have to go by viewcount, and that's you know, it's not the best, So it's going away, you know, rolling out, so it's
not like immediately gone. But if you're a creator, you'll still be able to see these numbers on the back end. But if you're a viewer, you'll still be able to dislike stuff, you just won't be able to see the total number of dislikes. And on the flip side, you can still use that dislike button to craft your YouTube experience.
So the stuff they show you for recommendations.
When you thumbs up and when you thumbs down, it will still all go into that recommendation engine that's personalized just for you. Joe says, Hey, Rich, I'm a SOCW guy born and raised in a long time KTLA five viewer. My family relocated to the Kansas City area. I've been watching Foxford News and today was the first time I saw your tech Smart segment since we relocated. I'm super stoked to know you're on my new local channel. Thanks for keeping us tech smart. Keep up the great work,
Joe Ka. Well, Joe, thank you. That's awesome that you saw me there. So it's kind of funny. I never tell people. I don't make a big deal that we are on and a whole bunch of different markets because it's just not really that important to the stories that I tell. You know, like, I'm just doing my segment, and if you happen to see me in a different city, that's awesome. Now I get a lot of people that say, Rich, I saw you in you know, Hawaii or this or that, and so I love it. I mean it's great, and
so the dirty little it's not a dirty secret. But the little secret is that, yes, I originate out of KTLA, and our segment does go out to a whole bunch of other stations. And so with the company that we're owned by, Next Star, they have like two hundred stations, you know, they all have the potential of running it.
Do all of them run it every day? No, but a lot of them do.
And so it's funny because I didn't know unbeknownst to me, but these there are tracking systems that track the number of times that your story is shown in different places, and PR people use these to see when you do a story that mentions them or one of their you know, whether it's a product, whether it's good or bad. They want to know, and so they want to see the
clip to see exactly what she said. And I was fascinated because someone that I know that does PR actually sent me a copy of this because they said, Rich, we had no idea that your segment airs in so many different places, and said, yeah, I don't really tell a lot of people about that, but it does. And so they ended up I said, well, send me a list, let me.
See where it airs. And so let me just go through some of the places so.
Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, d C, Houston, Texas, Cleveland, Ohio, Sacramento, Saint Louis, Indianapolis, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Can City, Columbus, Ohio, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, Greensboro, North Carolina, Albuquerque, New Mexico, New Orleans, Fresno, Little Rock, Des Moines, Iowa, Champagne, Illinois, Harlington, Texas, Harlingen, Harlingen, Texas, El Paso, Texas, Baton Rouge, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Tyler, Texas, Peoria, Illinois,
Sioux City, Iowa, Terry, terre Hote, Indiana, and Dothan, Alabama.
So pretty cool.
And that's just one story, and that's just happens to be in, you know, in a small period of time. But it's kind of neat to know that you're airing now. We used to do a round robin with a lot of these stations, so I used to know specifically where I did live shots for these places.
But we've changed it up just a little bit.
So that's that's that's kind of a system that we're not We're basically sending out the story where stations can air it whenever they want, and so it's a little bit different these days, but the reality is they're still airing it and it's still fun and it's great when you see me in a different place.
And especially when.
I show up in place like Hawaii and like Las Vegas, I'm like, can I go there?
Like that? Is that an acceptable business expense.
To go visit these places that I air in, because I've got to see what they look like, right Like, I need another look at Honolulu just to make sure that you know this is what it looks like. Anyway, thanks for finding me there, and Joe, tell your friends in Kansas City that you watch and tell them to get tech smart. Robin Hood was hacked, and I don't want to spend too much time on this because it's one of these stories you're like, blah blah blah, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
isn't everything hacked? Well, it's kind of scary when this happens. And so on November three, Robin Hood said someone got access to their to personal information on a whole bunch of people. Now they said, no soci security numbers, no bank account numbers, no debit card numbers were exposed and nobody's nobody lost money as a result of this like, not directly at.
Least, so that's that's good.
But the odd thing is that this was a pretty big, big hack. This was a socially engineered hack, and social engineering means that they didn't really have to guess a password or break into the system. They basically tricked someone into giving them access. They don't say how they did that, but that's kind of scary. So h A customer said, the unauthorized party socially engineered a customer support employee by
phone and obtained access to certain customer support systems. So what I'm guessing happened here is that this was not a customer who called in and said, hey, can you give me the password to your back end systems? This person probably discovered the back end systems or how to get access to those, or how to how to see where they live on a server, and then called an employee by phone and said, hey, Jim, it's a it's Robin over Robin, it's uh, it's it's Tanya over here
in in accounts department. Can you give me that password real quick? Or what's the what's the pin code to get in? I got to do some work on the back end real quick. And the person was probably taken off guard and just gave the information over. Now I'm making that up, I don't know, but that's what I'm saying. That's kind of the idea of a social engineering attack, is that you kind of trick someone into handing over some information that you need that helps you hack a system.
That's scary.
And I saw some screenshots I think they were obtained by motherboard of these systems, and it was you know, some behind the scenes stuff. So anyway, what did they get. They got full email addresses for five million people, full names for two million people, and then for about three hundred people they got names, dates of birth, zip code,
and ten people had even more information revealed. So what I think happened here is that for the you know, the five million and the two million, it was really easy. They just ran some sort of script that extracted like simple stuff. But then to get the like, the real information, they probably had to work a little bit harder, which is why they were only able to get three hundred and you know, twenty people's information on a deeper level.
So anyway, what I would recommend is number one, it's the same security cautions every single podcast.
Number one.
Use a unique, separate password for every website that you visit, that you create a login for. Do not reuse passwords. Do not use variations of passwords. Do not use the same password for two websites. Do not keep a list of those passwords.
You know, I don't know.
Well, you can keep a list somewhere, but as long as it's safe. But I would recommend using a password manager. And yes I am guilty of this too. When you're signing up for a website, you want it to be the fastest possible experience. Ever, take the extra one minute to go into your password manager, generate a password, save the log in, and then copy and paste it into
this new website. I know it's especially tricky on your smartphone to do this unless you're using you know, one of the built in kind of you know, like Apple's iCloud password manager or something that's the android, the smart lock or whatever they call it an android.
But if you're using sort of a.
Third party one, which you know, I would probably recommend for most people, like a dash lane, or like a bitwarden, or a last pass or a one password. I mean, there's so many to choose from. Just pick one that you like, that you think is fair. Bitwarden is totally free for the regular user, so maybe that's where you start. But just use these things and then set up two factor authentication. I went in to my Robinhood account and I noticed that I did not have two factor authentication
turned on. And so as soon as I saw this hack, I said, Okay, let me go turn that on. So I've turned that on and now that's just one more one more barrier between you and someone that's trying to get into your account. Is it going to stop them every single time? Absolutely not. If you listen to the last podcast, they talked about how they're getting around. They're social engineering the two factor authentication codes, and so you just have to do the best you can do to
keep yourself protected. And that's all you can do. All right, Let's get to the next question of the show. Ellie says, good morning, peace to you and your lovely family.
Sir. I know you could help me. I work.
Let's see, it looks like you work at a church, two different churches, and I need to update past Google files that I have on Google slides and Google sheets, but I can't because of space. So this Saturday I followed the link on my Gmail account. Bottom line, I got charged for a year's charge of nineteen ninety nine, but through Apple. I'm confused because my Gmail and Google apps are still saying I'm out of space. I'm so confused.
I'm fifty. I can't afford to be confused. Can you please help me explain what I did wrong and what are the norms I do work? But you can call me.
Call me.
I think I added my credit card to my iPhone wallet. I want I don't want my credit cards on anything on the iPhone. Ellia, Okay, so things just breaking this down. Number one, I don't think that this is a Google storage issue with Google slides and Google sheets. Editing a Google slide or a Google sheet unless these things are dozens and dozens of gigabytes big, there's no way that you're out of space and not able to manipulate those
Google slides and Google sheets. So that's number one. I think it sounds like maybe you are out of space on your on your iPhone and then the year's charge of nineteen ninety nine. I'm not even sure where that comes from, because like on Google, for instance, if we go to storage, the plans. I'm trying to see if I can downgrade. Can they don't even give me the option to downgrade my storage. Wow, I don't even know if they have a plan. That's twenty dollars for the year.
So anyway, bottom line, I think number one do this.
So go to.
Go to one dot Google dot com. Okay, So once you're there, this will help you manage your Google Drive plan. So I want you to go there. On the left hand side, it says storage. I want you to see how much storage you're using. So, for instance, I have five terabytes of storage. It's telling me I'm using two point one of my five terabytes. And breaking it down further, I've got one hundred and twenty five gigs in Google Drive, thirty three gigs in Gmail, which is an outrageous amount
that needs to be lessened. Then I have two terabytes in Google Photos and three ge a third of a gigabyte in my recorder app. So if you scroll down a little bit, it says free up account storage, and now you can go through and free up some of the account storage that you have. And what I would do especially is empty the trash where it says deleted files in your Google drive. I would empty that trash. Now that will give you enough storage to work through
these Google slides and Google sheets. Now you have to figure out where this twenty dollars went. So I think it went to iCloud storage, if I had to guess, But I'm not even sure they have a twenty dollars yearly plan.
I'm not really sure.
But you can go into your subscriptions on the iPhone and to get there, just go into your settings and then your iCloud, which is up at the top, and then it should say subscriptions and see if you have any active subscriptions, and if you need to, you can
cancel those. But it sounds like you've got a couple of things going on here, and I know you're saying you're confused, and I totally understand this because cloud storage is one of these things where it is the trickiest thing that I deal with myself, personally, other people, family members, because think about it. You've got your phone, which has a number a certain number of gigabytes. Then you've got
cloud storage, which has a certain number of gigabytes. But then you have to work to maintain both of those storage mediums, so that let's say you have an iphe that has a sixty four gigabyte limit, but then your Google Drive or your iCloud has you know, two fifty six, and you're like, well, I still have storage. I don't understand, well that storage is living in the cloud and anything that's on your phone is still taking up kind of both those places depending on how you have it set up.
And so that's why you kind of have to go to the source on these things. I think iCloud is really really tricky with storage because they don't really give you, from what I can tell, a very good way of managing it. But you know, you just have to go through and just kind of go through and see what's taking up the storage on your phone and then in your in your cloud drives, and then that way you can kind of organize things and get them to a
place where you're not overpaying. Right now, I'm overpaying every single month, even though it's you know whatever, it is, three bucks a month, But there's no reason for me to pay that.
I'm paying twenty five.
Dollars for Google Cloud storage for five terabytes. There's no reason why I need another two hundred on my iPhone. But somehow, I do because if I want to back up my iPhone, I need that storage across for the two iPhones in my house. So it's very tricky, and I totally understand that you're having trouble with it, and I don't think that you are. You know, you're lesser in any way because of this Elia, because believe me,
it is something that is I think. I don't want to say they make it confusing, but it's confusing, and I get it. Twenty bucks a year not that much. But the reality is, why should we have to pay for anything if we don't need it, or if it's extra, or if it's duplicated. So good question, and hopefully you get that figured out.
Let's see here this is a iCloud for Windows.
According to nine to five Mac, the app has been updated with a password generator and then support for two formats from the iPhone pro raw and pro res. So previously you could use the iCloud utility on your PC to copy and paste passwords that you created on your iPhone. Well now you can actually use it to generate passwords, and so that's kind of cool. I I mean, I guess this is a step towards using iCloud password manager or whatever they call it on the iPhone and also
with a Windows computer. But personally, if I was doing that, I would go with a third party, non platforms specific app like I said earlier, Bitwarden, or a dash lane or a last pass these also, these all work nicely on both platforms. Now, like I said, nine to five, Mac is reporting that the iCloud utility for Windows is getting better at helping.
You use this feature on Windows.
But again with Apple stuff, almost everything besides their own ecosystem is sort of an afterthought. And so if you look at storing your your photos in iCloud, which is great. iCloud is nice. It's your photos are on your phone, but it's only good if you use an iPhone only. So that's why I use Google Photos because I like to see my photos on any device that I log into,
and the same goes for Amazon Photos. You can use that on iPhone, you can use it on Apple, you can use it on your certain TVs, just depends which one.
But you know, Apple stuff is mostly geared towards Apple users, and yes they throw your bone every once in a while like this, but it's not ideal and Anyway, what I'm saying is it's nice that if you started using the iCloud password system on your iPhone and you were kind of frustrated with a computer system on your Windows computer, it does help that now this is available, so update that app and now you can generate passwords there, all right,
Derek writes in Rich do you recommend doing a complete factory reset of a Sony TV before giving it away to a friend? Or is it okay to just sign out of the Google account, delete my installed apps, and do a system data reset instead. Have a tremendous day, Derek. Derek, if you listen to this show at all, you know what I'm gonna say. You do the complete factory reset. And the reason I would do that is because why do you want things lingering any of your personal information?
If you miss something, it can linger now the way that these TVs are set up, I would I would venture to say that when you sign out of the Google account, it would kind of bring it back to a place where the next person can use it. But you just don't know, and why are you gonna take
that chance? And also, over the years of having this TV, you might have changed some settings you might have changed the way the audio format works, or the output or the picture or the screen like you might have adjusted contrast and different color portions or the color What am I trying to say, you know, like the color sliders right. You might have adjusted the output, you might have renamed the HDMI inputs.
Whatever you did, it's nice.
That you're giving this sony TV away to a friend, but don't burden them with all of your old settings. So go ahead, do a complete factory reset, and that way you know your WiFi is disconnected from it. But before you do that, I would just check to see if there's a software update for this TV and that might save your friends some hassles or headaches when they go to set it up again, because it'll you know, it just makes the.
Process a little bit smoother.
But yes, always, when you're giving a gadget away to anyone, complete factory reset is the best way to do it. Make sure that everything is gone and it's back to that screen that says hello or welcome or whatever it is.
In fact, this is a major issue for myself, who is constantly going through gadgets with you know, these these test gadgets that I get you know before I send them back A lot of times, you know, it's it's kind of a process to get these things back into like you know, either the box or either the factory you know reset, and I have to sit there and like it takes me on a Saturday, like, you know, especially if it's an older gadget that I haven't used in a while, I have to plug it in.
I've got to charge it.
I've got to make sure, you know, if it's like a streaming stick, I got to connect it to the t make sure that I can you know, you know, get the HDMI connected and like make sure I can go. I mean, it's a process sometimes, so I get it. But in the end, you always want to protect your personal privacy and so or your personal data and privacy. So Derek definitely definitely do the complete factory reset. That's gonna be the best way to do it, all right.
So this is a really cool feature and something that I'm surprised nobody else has done. But on Prime Video. According to Amazon, they now have a new clip sharing feature. And this is very simple. If you see something that you like in a show, like a funny joke they made, or a funny just anything, anything that you like, you can make a thirty second clip of that and share it out to social media. And this can be done
right from your phone. And this is a Prime Video exclusive only on iOS right now, and they call it.
Let's see does it have a name.
With x ray technology, Prime Video customers can now share their favorite clips from select Amazon original series with friends and family on social media or via direct message. So what I'm guessing this does, because I've not tested this myself, I'm guessing I'm trying to figure out if this actually gives you like the video. I think it does just kind of fascinating to me. Like, so they don't mind if it's a thirty second I guess it's thirty second clip.
I mean if it gets the name or this show's.
Name out there, then why not, right? And So it's funny because I did this the other day with my sister. I was watching a show and they made a joke about vegans and my sister's vegan, and so I just recorded my TV screen. It was just, you know, fifteen second joke and I sent it to her and this is exactly what I did. So now I think people are still going to do that because it's just easier. But this is kind of nice that for social media purposes.
You know, I probably wouldn't share something that I recorded off the screen.
On social media.
Maybe I would, I'm not really sure, but you know, or if there's like an award show, you can clip it. But this is thirty seconds, and so all you have to do once you're on the show, you.
Just hit pause, you hit share a clip.
It'll make a thirty second clip of what you just watched, and you can fine tune it so you can say, you know, I want a couple seconds before, a couple seconds after, but it's only thirty seconds that you get so and then it looks like it puts a watermark of both Prime Video and the name of the show on the video clip. And then once you're ready to share, just hit share and you can upload it. Oh so yeah, it's like a it's a full video. You can upload
it to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, I Message, WhatsApp and more. Now, this only works for a couple of shows right now. The Boys, which I haven't seen, The Wild which I haven't seen, Invincible, which I haven't seen. In Fairfax. With
more original Amazon movies and series to follow. So I think this is one hundred percent brilliant thinking outside the by Amazon, and I think that Netflix should steal this feature immediately because or this should become a standard feature of any of any streaming service, because there's so many little shareable moments that are funny or interesting or you want to say for later or share with your friends, that this is just a no no brainer way to
let people do this in a way that does not infringe.
On copyright or you know whatever, whatever whatever it is.
That was that was weird. I'm like, ah, copy, I don't know.
Dan says, hello, Rich, is there a device or app that can translate foreign language TV shows or films in that can plug into my TV or install my phone? My wife is watching a Turkish show and he says the name which I can't pronounce, and not all shows episodes have English subtitles in YouTube. Thank you for being trying to be a hero for my wife. Thank you, Dan, Dan. I would recommend two things. Now, you sent this from your iPhone, so I would say, on the iPhone, just
use the translate app. So there's a built in translate app now on iPhone you can try that, and it's not gonna install on your TV. But what your wife would do is just kind of prop up her phone underneath the show and it can listen to what's happening
on TV and translate that in real time. Now, I haven't had enough experience with the app on the translate app on the iPhone to actually know if it does exactly what I'm talking about, but I think on if you want, you can also try downloading Google's translate app, and that is available for the iPhone and try the same thing.
Just leave it open. You know, there's like a mic button you can leave it open.
Now.
I don't know how long these apps are going to let you translate for free, but that is, you know, that's the question here. But that's one way of trying to do it. And maybe if she can just get some of the show or you know whatever, that will work.
Now.
The other thing is there's a feature on Android called live caption and it actually works in like several languages now, and that is another option, but you'd have to go. I think it's just available on the Pixel six or the or the pixel lineup, I should say, but I'm not really sure. So that's another option. But that's a, that's a pretty amazing option. Oh wait, I just thought of another option. On Chrome. There is an option, oh but I think it's for English only, But there is
a There is an option under Advanced and Accessibility. Yeah, it's called live caption. And if you go into Chrome Options Accessibility and then live Caption, turn that on. This is pretty powerful and it's pretty amazing. It will live caption anything any video that is playing on your computer. And yes, it would work with YouTube videos, but it's only for English, so it would not work in this in this setting for a Turkish.
Let's say, you know they oh gosh, yeah Turkish.
So I would say, Now, the funny thing is Google came out with this feature on the Android side of things, that you know, on the pixel that does support more languages with that live caption, So I can only I can only imagine that it's just a matter of time
before this makes its way into more places. The live caption feature was on Androids for a long time before it came to Chrome, so I think that it's probably I would say, another couple months, maybe a year before this makes it fully to Chrome, where anything you watch can be translated into any language that you need, so good question there, and hopefully you are a hero to your wife no matter what. All right, best and more
states for ev charging. So what can I say? I have been talking about the Tesla on the podcast, and I will say I still one hundred percent absolutely infatuated with this car.
I love it.
It's the best car I've ever had. I will say the fit and finish of the Tesla is definitely not the best compared to other cars I've had, but it is overall the experience of driving, of using it, of not having to go to the gas station is pretty phenomenal. And it's funny because there's a little debate on Twitter about, you know, how expensive gas prices are, and people were saying, you know, why would you ever drive a gas car
when you can get an electric car? And here's the thing, Like I understand the fact that you do not buy a brand new electric car to save money on gas number one, just because you're putting out all this new money on this new car, that is negating any sort
of savings you might have with electricity. So for instance, for me, you know, not only was a car expensive, but then I had to pay it was like total about fifteen hundred bucks to get the charger installed for the car, and so right there, if you do the math, I was not. I mean, was I spending two let's see, fifteen hundred dollars times divided by twelve months, that's one hundred and twenty five dollars a month. So yeah, maybe I was spending that much on gas, but I don't
think I was. I think I was spending closer to like forty or you'll say, eighty a month on gas for my car because it was a pretty, you know, gas sipping vehicle. Maybe not, but the reality is you're not buying a Tesla or an EV for the savings
right now. In the future, maybe you are, and maybe you are in the way it works out for your math, but I think for most people that are buying it, it is like for me personally, it was it just felt what it just felt like what I wanted to do in my life, like the right thing for me. I just couldn't see myself getting another gas powered car
because I live in Los Angeles mostly I commute. You know, I don't want to contribute to any problems happening with gas, Nor did I like the the progress of our gas prices here in Los Angeles, and so I just said, you know what, I'm doing it and I'm making the switch. And did I save any money in the process. I don't think so. But do I feel great about it?
Yes? And do I love it? Of course?
And have I had to pay for charging like a total of three times only?
Yeah.
So I think that this whole idea of buying an EV to like, you know, avoid gas prices, maybe in the long term it is true. I don't know, But I'm just saying, like, there's always this debate, and I just don't think it's that.
I don't think it's that clear cut. For most people.
They're not going out there to buy an EV and like, oh, just buy a Tesla and you can avoid gas. Like, No, most people can't do that. So most people, if they have their car, they want to stick with it.
I mean I do.
I want to stick with my car as long as possible to save the most money. So anyway, with all that said, that's kind of a side note to this next story, the best and worst US states for EV charging. The reason I say this is because here in California, EV's are so easy, like it's almost a no brainer, But if I in a different state, I would probably have a little bit of pause before I got an EV. And the reason is because there are some trade offs.
Like so, for instance, we went to San Diego last weekend and we went to our friend's house, and you know, I had to check where a charger was near their friend's house because I knew when we got down there we'd be on empty.
And so it turns out.
There was a supercharger literally at the shopping mall near their house, and it was so easy to charge.
It was just it was so simple.
Now on the flip side, yeah, when you charge your car, what do you do if it's in one of these shopping malls. You go in and you spend money. And I don't like that aspect because we did do that, and while our car was charging, you know, we went in and we spent you know, a couple of bucks at the store.
And well, it wasn't a couple of bucks. It was it was like over one hundred bucks.
And so if I would have just gassed up my car, we would have maybe spent five bucks on snacks at the gas station and you'd go. So that's one of the downsides is that you're always like, you know, you have this time to burn and what do you do? You end up going in a store and what are they doing. They're building a lot of these chargers outside stores and restaurants just for that reason. So maybe you have more willpower, maybe you can sit in the car and watch Netflix.
I can't.
I've also have kids, so we walked around whatever anyway. States with the most electric This is according to Electric Electric the website, which is a great website for all stuff ev Let's see number one. States with the most electric vehicles per public charging port. States with the most electric vehicles per public charging port is Arizona, Hawaii, Washington State, So that means that there's a lot of electric vehicles
per port. States with the least evis per charge port or sorry, the best states for public charging points based on mileage is Washington, DC, California, and Hawaii. That's really surprising. I would not think. Maybe that's I don't know, but the top three states for chargers are California and New York and Florida, and of course those are just like huge states.
And then.
California and Florida have the most registered evs. Texas comes in third. Alaska has the fewest number of EV charging outlets, followed by the Dakotas. Wyoming and Montana don't have very much either, but California is pretty much number one in every category. So if you want to cross the board, I mean, it's just they're apparently, according to this table, they've got fourteen million electric cars. And again, this is another thing that you realize you when you have an
electric car. Right now, it's all very novel, right you go to the store, you find little charger, you plug your car in.
It's so great, you don't have to wait. But as these.
Things take off, there is going to be a bigger impact on the grid, on the systems, on the chargers, on you know all those parking spots right now that are in the front of the store, because you know, you got your charger spot, your EV only parking. But I don't know how far out we are, but it's it is fun though.
Right now.
It's fun, I will that's the best way I can describe it. It's just fun. It's it's an adventure. And I tweeted this today, but it kind of reminds me of when I got the first iPhone because it was such a departure from every other smartphone I ever had.
Every day using it was an adventure. The way it worked, the way it sounded, the way you could do things on the screen, the way you could read the newspaper on there, the way you could stream stuff, the way you could watch media, the way you can make phone calls, the way it did all kinds of stuff.
You could run. Maybe you couldn't run with it at that point.
But there's just so many like little easter eggs every day that you're discovering. And that's the same way I feel about the electric car. And so it's fun right now, but there will come a point where it's like the iPhone, it's like standard issue.
Everyone has one.
I mean I say that in a way that you know a lot of people have smartphones now, and so it's not so novel when you see someone pull out a smartphone at a table and you're like, ooh, ooh, show me the cool features, because it's just we all know what the deal is.
Let's see.
That's it for that story. But I thought that was interesting. And by the way, the first iPhone, if you had one, you might remember this, but it was a nightmare nightmare, mikenightmare for making phone calls.
It was so bad, so bad, it.
Dropped every single call and never forgot walking down the street to my dentist. And I think I mentioned this on the podcast once before. I was talking to my best friend and I was saying, you know, I got the new iPhone. Can you believe it? He goes, Dude, I can't understand a word you're saying. You're breaking up so bad. This was back when it was on AT and t's brand new or I don't know, it was on some sort of AT and T network.
It was an exclusive and it was just.
So bad that it was so horrendous to use as an actual phone. Everything else was great, but the phone calls were just so bad. But that's all been fixed now, all right. Final story of the podcast Peloton. I don't know if you heard. They were kind of battered in the last week with their earnings and their projections. This is not CNBC, so I'm not going to get into that.
But the bottom line is that, yeah, Peloton had a moment during the pandemic where people realized they wanted to work out at home, and demand went through the roof and popularity went through the roof, and now that people are going back to the gyms, you know, Peloton is still doing well. And I still think that Peloton made a huge impact in our world. But they're just not going to sell as many bikes going forward or according to their projections, nor did they sell that many in
the past couple of months. So do I think that this means the end of Peloton. Absolutely not. Peloton got us through through the entire pandemic, even though I used it on my bowflex. I used the digital classes and it was amazing, and I still think the instructors are amazing. I think what they're building is really cool, and it might be a little bit slower than what everyone else wants.
I also think they're an acquisition target because you know, another bigger fitness company might come through and purchase them, or consolidate a couple of different types of fitness machines into one. But anyway, so Peloton has a new device called the Peloton Guide. This is a five hundred dollars The best way I can describe it is it's a camera that you put underneath your TV. Kind of looks
like the remote from the Google Chrome Cast TV. It kind of reminds me of the Microsoft Connect from the Xbox. And this uses machine learning to track your progress and movements. So not only does it watch how you exercise and give you feedback on that, but it also helps you figure out which muscles you've worked and recommend other muscle groups that you need to work. It's voice activated, it's got a camera on it, but of course there is the privacy slider so that you can turn it off
at anytime. There's also a heart rate band that goes along with it. So the thing here is that Peloton is trying to create a world where you don't just follow along on the TV with these workouts, but you're actively getting artificial intelligence feedback on your workout exactly what
a what a trainer would do in real life. They would say, rich, you know, you gotta squat a little bit deeper, or you gotta, you know, do this, move your arm this way, or make sure you don't bend your back, whatever the trainer would say.
In real life.
That would be the goal of this new device.
When is it arriving, I don't know when is it arriving.
I don't know when it's arriving. In twenty early twenty twenty two, so that's coming soon.
I think it's cool.
Five hundred dollars is very expensive, but we'll see. I mean, peloton stuff is not cheap. Incidentally to other things about the fitness stuff. Number one, I tested an app that was just like this and it's called on how do you say onx O n y x onyx And it exactly if you want to try this out, you can download this app for your iPhone and you can see it use the camera to monitor exactly how you're working out, and it will give you feedback in real time, and it's actually pretty amazing.
I'll put it in the show notes.
And the other thing is that I tested this thing called climber CLMBR and it's a vertical climbing machine and it's like a Peloton but for vertical climbing. And I got to say, all I have to say is ubsessed. And I told my wife, I'm like, I think I want to buy one of these, even though it's too expensive.
It's twenty eight hundred bucks, but I really really want one.
And it's just the full body workout that I got from it was just phenomenal.
And that's a startup.
But It's always a little scary to spend twenty eight hundred bucks on a startups product because you know, are they going to be around in a year or two and then this twenty eight hundred dollars product could be a brick. And I'm not saying that's going to happen with this company, but you just never know.
All right, that's going to do it for this episode of the show.
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My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I know it's precious. I do appreciate you spending it with me. I will talk to you real soon.