Galaxy S26 Ultra hands-on, VPNs explained & why algorithms are replacing shared culture (163, February 28, 2026)

email is also open. Just go to the website Richontech dot TV. All right, we've got some great guests this week. We've got Lexi Savidi's formerly of cnet. She was at the Samsung event with me. She is gonna help break down everything Samsung, what she thinks of the latest phones and all that good stuff. And uh later, we've got Kim Cavallo from the Global Day of Unplugging. Are you ready to give up your phone for twenty four hours? Could you do it? I did this a couple of

years ago and it was tough. That's happening this weekend? Well, I guess next weekend, I should say so. Kim will talk all about that and how you can help reset your relationship with tech. Well, I just got back from San Francisco, where Samsung held their annual Unpacked event. First time I've been to San Francisco like city proper in a while, and honestly, I was very surprised. The city is much cleaner than it has been in recent years, much more energetic, people are out. I walked the entire

city day and night. The only thing I noticed lots of empty storefronts. So that stuff is going to take a while to come back. And that's not just a sign of San Francisco, it's a sign of just our times in general. You know, all these stores that we used to go to are just not a thing anymore. You know, we go to Amazon and we purchase stuff. So I think that's gonna be a little bit of a long runway for them to get all those stores filled again. But I will tell you, San Francisco is

still such a fun city. Every time I go there, I just realized, like it's such a foody city. It's got so much history, it's got so much personality, and I love this now, the old and the new. So you've got cable cars, which I still think are incredible. The fact that you know, one hundred years later, those are still on the San Francisco streets, but now the streets are filled with these Waimo robotaxis. So you've got old meats new, and I think that's very uniquely San Francisco.

So of course that's all the perfect backdrop for a major tech launch, and that was the Samsung Galaxy S twenty six event. Samsung did bring me there, but of course, you know, they have no bearing on what I say or what I do, no editorial control of what I say here, but they did show me the phones early, and of course I got hands on. I have it right here. Where is it? Here? It is? I can't see it, of course unless you're watching on the streaming show.

But this is the Samsung Galaxy S twenty six Ultra and the cobalt violet color. So I guess that's kind of like a purple dark purply color. And I'm gonna focus mostly what I say on the Ultra because that's where all of that's where all of Samsung's biggest innovations are. So first impression, if you look at the phone, you're gonna say, Okay, that looks like last year's model. Sure, it's familiar, but it is slimmer, and it's also easier

to hold. They definitely rounded the edges and the sides a little bit, so I think it feels much better in the hand. They also moved from titanium back to aluminum, so that makes the phone lighter, makes this frame stronger, and apparently because it's aluminum, you can get the colors to be richer, so it does have like a kind of a richer color than in year's past as well, so the physical form of the phone is great. Other colors include sky blue, white, black, and then they've got

some online exclusives. Then of course we move on to the processor and performance. So this has got a Snapdragon chip inside. Qualcomm is just killing it with their chips right now. They got them in phones, they've got them in computers, and they're fast, and they're optimized for battery life and speed and of course AI, and that's where you saw the biggest performance gains on this phone, all

about AI. They also made the vapor chamber bigger. Now I know that's such a nerdy thing to say about a phone, but a vapor chamber is basically a cooling chamber inside the phone. The bigger it is, the more it can keep it cool under heavy use. Now it is going to charge faster, So we've got now sixty watts of wired charging on this so you're gonna go from about zero seventy five percent battery in thirty minutes.

Then they also improved the wireless charging, so now you're gonna you're on par with the iPhone twenty five watts of wireless charging. So that's gonna be nice and fast. But for some reason, Samsung still has not built magnets into these phones, and I don't understand, but they did put them in this year's official cases. So these phones are ch too ready, I know, another nerdy thing to say.

That just means that when you put one of these chargers that's a CH two charger on this phone, you're gonna get the fastest and most efficient wireless charging.

does that mean. It means that your pictures at night and in low light are going to look better. And I will tell you I walked around San Francisco at night. I took a whole bunch of nighttime pictures and I am super impressed. The pictures take very fast, they look great. The processing. I mean, it's just I am super super impressed. And also they're using AI now a lot more. I know AIAIAI to reduce noise in the lenses per lens for better low light video. And I've got some low

light video I took and that looked amazing. The selfie camera this is they've replaced their hardware image sensor processing with AI. So they've literally gotten rid of a piece of hardware that would process the selfie pictures. And they're saying, oh yeah, a I can handle that now. So that's incredible, and they're probably gonna end up doing that with the

other cameras as well. The other lenses, wider field of view for the selfies, you can fit more people in the lens or in the picture, I should say, lots of AI tools. You can edit photos very easily. A lot of this stuff is built on Google Gemini, so it's very familiar. More ways to create stickers and little shareable images, kind of what Apple did with Image Playground. Document scanning. Oh my gosh, this got such a great upgrade. If you love taking pictures of documents and scanning them

with your phone, this is so much better. Like I love how good the document scanning is. And now you can combine them into PDFs instantly, right from the camera. So this is great for receipts and anything else. They're going to organize all your screenshots into categories. So I took a screen shot the other day. This was so cool. Took a screenshot of a website and next thing, you know, when I went to that screen shot and maybe this was on the old phone but I just didn't never

notice it, but it had like a link. I said, Oh, do you want to go to the original page that you took this from. I said, oh, my gosh, that's so smart. So that's neat. Oh audio eraser. If you ever have trouble hearing things when you're watching videos online, now the audio eraser with one toggle can boost the voice and reduce background noise. That's incredible. Works inside YouTube, TikTok, Instagram,

and Netflix. They also do this thing called agentic AI, which they made a big deal of, where you can basically ask your phone to call you an uber or order you dinner, and AI in the background, no joke, will do all this stuff for you and then bring you to that final screen and you say, Okay, I've not been able to test that because I couldn't get

it to work, but I think it's launching. When these phones work, it can screen calls now like the iPhone can to ask unknown callers, Hey, why are you calling? And then we have the number one biggest feature, the new feature the privacy display. So this is basically a privacy screen without needing to add a screen protector, so if someone's looking at your phone from the side, they can't see your screen. And so what they did was they built two types of pixels into this phone, wide

angle pixels and narrow pixels. Wide pixels are on every phone. The narrow pixels light up when you're using this privacy feature, so you can leave it on all the time just for specific apps, just for notifications. I was on the airplane and I opened up my banking app and I was like, ooh, I don't want this person seeing next door to me sitting next to me. And I said, oh, yeah, it's got the privacy screen. Now. The only trade off is that the screen kind of looks a little washed

out when that's active. So it's not something that I want to use all the time, but it's pretty cool to have all right. Pricing, so the price of the base models did go up by one hundred dollars this year, nine hundred dollars starting eleven hundred dollars for the Plus, but you do get double the memory. The Ultra price is the same thirteen hundred dollars. But here's the rub. If you get the base model, it's two hundred and fifty six gigabytes of storage with twelve gigs of RAM.

But if you bump up to five hundred and twelve gigs of storage, you get sixteen gigabytes of RAM. I think that's the sweet spot. So bottom line, I've just had this thing for a couple of days, but I will tell you I think it's the best Samsung phone I've used so far historically I've preferred the pixel software and the cameras, but now I feel like Samsung's gotten to the point where the software is so good and

it's more powerful. I think it's probably the most capable all around Android phone right now, and I'll talk about it more throughout the show. If you want to see my review or my pictures, you can go to the website rich on Tech dot TV. All right, coming up, we're going to take some of your calls at eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Plus i'll

tell you which password manager is raising prices. That's all coming up right here when rich on Tech continues right after this eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Let's go to Susan in north Ridge. Susan, what's up.

Apple store. They couldn't get the files transferred over using the move to iOS because the files would not come up on the phone. So they said I'd have to my family member would have to figure it out, and so I got tasked with trying to figure out how to do this. The phone she has says you need to use Android file transfer, which doesn't work on moving it from one phone.

I can I have an old MacBook Pro. It's High Sierra, it's really really old. But is there another way that I can get her contact, text messages and photos transferred to her new iPhone Pro.

just use any cloud service you can use. I would download drop Box to the old phone, upload all the pictures to Dropbox, and then transfer them over that way. You can use an app called Blip which you can install in the old phone and the new phone. You can send stuff that way wirelessly. I mean, there's just so many ways to do this that it's tough. Like the official way, since that's not working, it's tough for me to give alternatives because you're telling me the cloud's

not working, the contacts aren't working. I mean, all these things should be in the cloud. The three things you told me. Text messages are tricky. I will tell you that because you can export them, no problem, but there's not a way I know of to import them to the iPhone. I'm also wondering why we need all this stuff on the new phone. I get the contacts, and I think that's probably the main thing that I would get on there. But if you get the contacts, if

you go to OK, here's the thing. There's something that doesn't add up here. The phone is a Samsung. Samsung phones are linked to a Google account. So if you go to your Samsung phone and you go to your Google account there, make sure it's signed in. Your contacts are going to automatically upload. And you can check this out by going to Contacts dot Google dot com from a computer and you can see the list of contacts

there when you sign in. That's number one. You can go to photos dot Google dot com from a computer and confirm that all the photos are uploaded to the cloud, and that's Google Photos. If not install the Google Photos app on there, let them upload to the Google Photos app and then you can install that app on the iPhone and transfer them or just you'll have access to them. That way. You can also do a Google takeout of the photos. Once they're into Google Photos, you can do

Google takeout. You can export them that way and import them directly to iCloud if you want. Now the text messages are a little tricky. So there is a program called SMS Backup and Restore, and if you install that on the Android, you can at least create a backup copy of the messages. I don't know if you'd be able to import those to the iPhone. There's not a way that I know how to do that without a

third party program, which would be something like amazing. The other thing, because it is a Samsung, you can just export everything from this phone to a flash drive. So if you go into your settings and I got to find where this is, Oh my gosh, of course. Okay, we go into settings and we go into I think, is it advanced features. Let's see here. I know it's on here somewhere. I'm gonna type in backup okay, backup

data transfer. Here we go. So if you go to accounts and back up up okay, and once you're in there, you can actually export everything to a flash drive. It says transfer data for device setup or external storage transfer, so you can do either of those things. But there are there are just so many ways of doing this.

I'm just I'm concerned that nothing that you told me is working, so it's tough for me to tell you to try all these things, because if the basic app that Apple's giving you, which has moved to iOS, is not working from Google Play, I can't be guaranteed that all the rest is of this is going to work. Susan, thanks for the call today, appreciate it. Eighty to eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. You know I talk about password

managers a lot. Well, if you use one password, your price is going up. One password is increasing the price of its annual subscription plans on effect on March twenty seventh, twenty six applying at your next renewal date. So if your new renewal date is before that, you'll be okay, you'll get another year. But if it's after that, it's going up. So the individual plan goes from about thirty six dollars a year to forty eight dollars a year.

Family plan goes from about sixty to seventy two, so it's about a dollar more per month depending on the plan you're on. Now here's the deal. This isn't a reason to jump ship. If you're using one password, you like one password, A dollar a month extra is not going to kill you. So stick with it. It's easy. With that said, if you're not using all the features of a paid password manager. So one Password is actually a fan favorite. People love this. I have not personally

used it, but people really do love one Password. So if you're not using all the features though for a paid plan, then you know you should consider switching to maybe a cheaper or free password manager. I personally like Warden because they have a great free version. But let's see, so individual, you're getting about three dollars a month, generate passwords, auto save share items securely with anyone, use on your devices,

get alerts for week passwords. So you know you're getting some features for that three dollars a month, and they've got a whole list of okay, all the different things that you can do there. Anyway, just be aware that when you see that email, it's probably real. Just be of course, on the lookout for the fact that because they're raising prices, you might see some scam emails that try to get you to log in or change things or whatever. Just be aware of that. So one Password

raising prices effective March twenty seventh. Let's go to the phone lines line too. Vincent in Lynnwood California. Vincent, you're on with Rich Hell Rich.

even if they don't update the operating system. So at bottom line, Vincent, even if you got this phone number one, you're going to be happier from the first second you have this phone. It's going to be faster, the screen is going to be better. It does support five G. Actually, hold on, let me just make sure it supports five G. I think it does. Oh, it does not support five G. Wow, I stand corrected. It's still four G. Five G is

iPhone twelve or newer? But it doesn't matter. Look, the device itself is going to be so much better than this Android device that they give you, because I've seen the Android devices that they give out and they're just not very good. So the fact that they're offering an iPhone, even though it's older, it's going to be a world of difference, the camera, just everything. So I would say, get this tomorrow. What's the process for getting it? You just ask for it?

this phone. By the way, an iPhone eleven unlocked is about one hundred and forty three dollars used, so you know it's it's still iPhones just really keep their value for a long time, so that whatever Android phone they've given you for this free government cell phone plan, they're just not very good. They're very basic. The screens are not very good, the power, you know, the processor is not very good. Even you'll notice even the reception on the iPhone is going to be better than this Android

phone you have. And I'm not knocking Android. I'm just saying specifically, the cheap androids that they give out for these government you know, these government subsidized phone plans are just not very good. And that's, you know, it's just the way it is. They're not giving you the highest end phones. They're not even a name brand. It's like a brand you haven't even heard of. I know the brand, I've seen them, but they're not like, they're not very common.

It's not a Samsung, it's not a Pixel. If they would just give people a Pixel ten a or a Pixel nine a, that'd be incredible. But they don't. They give you not a very good phone. Anyway, Vincent, go for it, Enjoy. I think you're gonna like it a lot. Michelle wrote in on the website, Hey, Rich, I got an email about my LGTV account saying I can't log in with Amazon anymore and need to use my lg account instead. It looks like a phishing email to me. Is it legit Michelle, taking a look at this email.

It is legit, and here's what they're saying. Basically, when you first signed into this TV, instead of creating an LG account, or in addition to the LG account, you signed in with Amazon, kind of like when you're browsing the web. It says, hey, sign in with Facebook, sign in with Google, sign in with Apple. You signed in with Amazon, which is not as common, but it's there, and so it's not a phishing email. They're just basically telling you you need to sign in with your LG

email and password from now on. So it doesn't affect any of your subscriptions, your Prime Video, any of that stuff has nothing to do with that. All they're saying is that they're not using that Amazon login anymore. This happens a lot when companies just decide they don't want to have that log in support it anymore. So all you need to know is that you'll either need to create an LG account or you already have one, and so that's the way you're going to log in on

this TV from now on. Good question, DeBie writes in Hey, Rich, years ago, a coworker went to CS and came back saying banking apps were easier to hack and we shouldn't use them. That was about ten years ago. Because of that, I never added my credit card bank to my phone. Has that changed, Debbie? If I told you how many credit cards I added to my phone in the past week. I've used online accounts and banking for years, if not probably since day one since it was available knock on wood,

I've had no problems. The main thing is, obviously you have to use good hygiene, strong unique passwords for all of these accounts, two factor authentication, and the banks go as far as using new and unique ways to authorize you. So, for instance, I was setting up this Samsung phone and I was logging into my Chase app, and I'm not kidding. I had my username, my password, and a two factor authentication code. And then guess what I've never seen this before.

Is said, now take your credit card out of your wallet and tap it to the back of this phone to authorize the use of this app on this phone. I said, what, I would have never thought about. That a wild thing. And I also saw Amazon did the same thing. My mom was trying to buy something and it said, hey, you haven't logged in on this phone before tap your credit card to authorize your account and to make this payment. What now that I don't think

the iPhone does that, but on Android it does. So banks use a lot of security, and adding your credit card or your debit card to your phone, I would actually argue is more secure than actually using your credit card or debit card in person when possible. Always tap to pay, always, always, always, always. Now, if you insert your card with the chip, that is just as secure

as tap to pay. They're both the same. But I would argue that tap to pay is actually more secure because you first have to authorize your phone by unlocking it with your fingerprint or your face or your pin to authorize that transaction, whereas anyone could pop your card into a slot if they find it and make a

payment or make a purchase. Good question, Debbie, Thanks for the email, the website, rich on tech dot TV, the phone line eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one coming up. Oh, we got a lot to tell you. Volvo is recalling a bunch of their electric SUVs, and we've got a new weather app from some notable creators. And I'll tell you what it does. It does rainbow alerts and sunset notifications. I'll explain coming up right here.

I'm Rich on tech. Dave writes in from Colorado, listening on six thirty AM. Hey, Rich, I'm worried about dying alone in my home and no one knowing. Oh wow, we're just getting right into it on this this section of the show. I've been trying to find some kind of tech solution, kind of like the mortality sensor they use in wolf tracking callers that alert someone if the animal dies. So far, I've had no luck. Do you know of anything like that? Wow, that's an interesting question, Dave.

Not really something I've thought about. But actually that's not true. I think about it all the time because I run a lot, and I just always think about and I've talked about this on the show. I know, but like me just laying in a ditch, like how long would it take for someone to find me and figure out who I am and alert my next of kin. That's why when I run, I typically put like an ID in my pocket or like it's so sad. This is

the stuff I think about. But I usually, especially if I'm in like a foreign country, I will put like an ID in my wallet. And you know, the iPhone also has like that emergency thing if you you know, if you're there and someone knows how to access that, you should fill that out the medical ID, and so does Android, and so does Samsung. But I run with just my watch, so that would not work in my case.

So here's my best solution. The Google Pixel Watch has a feature called loss of pulse detection, so if your heart stops, it will call nine one one for you. So that's not exactly a wildlife tracking caller, but that's probably the closest. Now, on the other flip side, they've got the fall detection on the Apple Watch, So I would imagine if you drop dead and you fell, your Apple Watch would recognize that and call nine one one. But at the end of the day, you know, we've

all watched the TV shows. It's going to be a couple of days before someone realizes you're probably you're not going to show up to church or to work, or to some sort of event that you are scheduled to be at, and someone's gonna be like, where's Dave. Come to think of it, I haven't heard from him in a while. Let's go to his house and see what's going on. I hope that doesn't happen. But anyway, those are the solutions that I can think of. Maybe, you

know when it's tricky when you live alone. I mean, there's this whole thing in the US where, you know, I've heard all these studies that you want someone you you want someone to live on their own for as long as possible because it makes them live longer. Right, But if you are never leaving the house, I think that's probably not good. Right, Like, if you're living by yourself and no one comes to visit you, and you don't leave the house, you don't do anything. I think

that's a fast lane to your detriment. But if you're going out with friends and doing things and people are coming over, that's fine. But you know, you heard, you hear these stories of people as soon as they go to like assisted living or something like that, it's like it's the end is near. I'm not an expert in this stuff. I'm just telling you stuff i've heard. Let's go to Lee in Los Angeles. Hopefully Lee, you can brighten us up. Lee. What's up?

starting to get really, really annoying. Contacted. This is basically fraud. I've called the coupany Lifeline people to do investigation. They ever get back to me, and all these guys that hand out the phones in front of the usually there they get once of people and if you don't qualify for one, they go, I've seen this happen. Hold on, wait a minute, and then they get in their little files and they find somebody that they gave one to

and said, Okay, we got you covered. We're going to do this, and their phone starts working and mine's dead. What can we do to stop the fraud in that system.

So the problem is once they get them into people's hands, guess what, they wipe their hands clean, they collect their little commission and they don't care. And so that's the big problem I think with this program. And so what can we do to solve that? I mean, do you want the government to actually do it all from start to finish and you only deal with them, then the program would cost even more. And this is you know, you got a lot going on here. It's not cut

and dry, Lea. But I'm glad you brought some of that to the forefront so people can hear what's going on there. But at least the program's working out for you. That's that's the good news. Thanks for the call today, eight to eight Rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour, we're gonna talk more about the Samsung event. I'm gonna discuss with tech journalist Lexi Savid's. She's gonna talk about what she thinks of the phone and we'll compare notes.

And then later next hour we've got Kim Cavallo from the Global Day of Unplugging. You know, it was in San Francisco this week and they've got those Weimo cars everywhere, like everywhere is a WAIM like. I don't think I saw a regular taxi ubers sure, but I will tell you I had a thought about this. Remember when you get to a town and you jump in a taxi, what's the first thing you do when you get in that taxi? You would ask the person, Hey, what's cool

around here? What's a good restaurant, what's a good place? Where do people hang out? What do people do here? When you're in an autonomous car, there is no soul, no more soul, not to the car, not to the city. It is literally just a transactional agree between you and that car to get you to where you're going, and it navigates those streets, but it doesn't know what's opened, what's closed in a couple of recent years, doesn't know the hot spots. I mean, I guess it does because

it drops people off there. That's just big data. But it just it made me realize that we are slowly eroding kind of the heart and soul of humanity with all this technology that's automated that I love, by the way, but it's like it's just slowly but surely changing the fabric of how we interact as humans. Autonomous cars, that's just the tip of the iceberg. What about the fact that every single person you know is on a different track,

every single person. You're watching one show, they're watching another show. You're listening to one thing, they're listening to other. Remember back in the day, everyone everyone was tuned into the same thing on the TV, on the radio. It was all the same. We would talk about it the next morning at work or at school. What happened last night? I mean, obviously Who Shot Jr? Is probably the most prominent example of that, But for everything American Idol in

recent years, all who won last Night? You know, award shows, that kind of stuff is the only stuff we have nowadays. Anything that's live, whether it's an award show or it is sports. That's basically it. Everything else. You talk to someone, Hey, what are you watching, The last five movies they watch are completely different than the last five movies you watched.

Where when I grew up, a movie open on a weekend and you either saw it or you didn't, and that was it, and you talked about it, and that went for everything, every single thing that was interesting in the world. We all did it and experienced it at the same time. Now it's anyone's guess, and it's an algorithm, by the way, that's directing ninety nine percent of what people are seeing, what they're feeling, what they're thinking. It's

all driven by technology. Now, you know, I love technology, but this really makes me sad, the fact that there is almost zero shared experience in our world today. That's why I think that in person, being with someone, being at dinner with someone, being at lunch with someone, being out with someone, that's really the only way that we can connect anymore with other people. Because you go to work and it's like, oh, I haven't seen that show. Sorry,

I don't talk to me about it. Please. You know, you can comment online, you can feel like you're part of something, but are you really now in some ways, it's amazing. You know, you have a certain you know, disease or a certain ailment, or you know, something afflicting you, and you can go online and find people that have the same exact thing and discuss it with them, or even you know, problem with your technology whatever. That's amazing. I

think that's incredible. The connecting ability of technology is great. But have you ever seen, you know, someone that you you follow, one of your friends that you follow on Instagram, You see what they're up to, but then you talk to them for like five minutes in real life and you really get caught up with them. That to me is interesting. Anyway. I don't know why I brought that all up. It's just you know, when I go running, I think of these things. Let's see what else new

app this week. It's called acme Weather. I know, funny name. It's like reminds me the old cartoons, cartoon characters Actmewather is from the creators of Dark Sky. This was a fan favorite app that was available on I believe iPhone and Android back in the day, and then Apple bought them in twenty twenty immediately shut them down and just integrated their technology into the Apple Weather app. People went nuts when this happened, as you know people do, and

then they forget. But their main thing that they invented with dark Sky was you know how you get those notifications on your iPhone that says it's gonna rain in your area in one minute and you look outside and actually didn't, and then sometimes it does and you're like, oh wow, that actually worked. That was their claim to fame. So now this new app, Actme Weather. There's a couple

of unique things about it. Number one, they say, look, forecasts are not perfect, so we actually show multiple alternate forecast lines, so you can kind of see like, instead of just one trend of oh the weather's gonna be like this, now you can see various takes on what the weather might be. So that's number one. And then they do all kinds of crowdsourcing of what the weather is by you locally, so you can get hyper local alerts.

There's of course doing the minute by minute precipitation notifications. They're bringing that back severe weather warnings. But here's the fun stuff. Rainbow alerts. When there's a rainbow in your neighborhood, you can run outside and ghost check it out Adams laughing, Oh, come on, who doesn't see a rainbow and immediately takes out their phone. They're like, oh my gosh. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't try to find the end of it, not for the pot of gold,

but just to see where it ends. How come we can ever see that? And then sunset notifications, so if there's an amazing sunset, you can get a notification for that as well. Let's see, it's only iPhone right now. Android version is planned, and here's the deal. It's not free, twenty five dollars a year, two week free trials, so

try it out. I downloaded it. It's cool. I mean, I don't know if it'll replace my I don't know if I'm willing to pay twenty five dollars right now for a weather app, but yeah, I mean they're doing some cool stuff. By the way, I was in this is the thing. I was telling Adam this. Adam's in for Bobo today doing the board, and I was telling him saying, you know, half the fun of going to all these events, these tech events are actually just chatting

with other tech people. And so there's this one tech person I know and She's always posting these great pictures on her Instagram and they're like these old school looking pictures, you know, like these they look like a retro camera, right, but it's a digital picture. And so I saw her and I'm like, hey, tell me what the app you use to take these amazing pictures. And she's like, what pictures.

I'm like, you know, all your pictures on Instagram they have this great look to them, and she's like, oh, the best staff for that is called Dispo Dispo Dispo dot Fun. And again I tell you this, I think because I remember because this this app is like twenty five twenty dollars a year, but I will say I took like two pictures with it, and you have it's one of these apps that you have to wait to get your pictures. They don't They don't show your pictures immediately.

Maybe if you pay the twenty dollars you can. We have to wait like twenty four hours or something for them to quote unquote develop. But I will tell you I took two pictures with this app, and I was like, Okay, they do look pretty good. And I've tried so many of these little retro picture apps, but that one is really good, So Dispo dot fun if you want to check it out again. iPhone only. You know all these developers,

they develop iPhone first and then I mean Dispo. I feel like it's been out for a while, and then they forget about androids somehow. There's a lot of Android users out there that want fun stuff like this. And Volvo is recalling forty thousand electric SUVs due to a battery fire risk the EX thirty. Have I test driven this EX thirty? Let's see I've driven some of these. Let's see Doug DeMuro has. Everyone always asks if me and Doug DeMuro, the car reviewer are related. We are not,

but we have spoken about it. We've said a hair Are we related? Okay? EX thirty recall effects twenty twenty four through twenty twenty six model year Volvo EX thirty specifically the single motor extended range and the twin motor performance battery modules supplied by a joint venture linked to Volvo's parent company, Jili. Is it Geely or Gilie? I forget cells could short circuit or overheat. No widespread incidents, but they're proactively doing this because the batteries could be

a fire hazard. Until repairs are completed. Here's the important part. Owners are being told to limit charging to seventy percent. Oh and just avoid parking or charging your vehicle in your buildings or enclosed spaces. Oh, that's easy to do. Just don't park your car near anyone else because your car might blow up. Oh okay, cool. Permanent fix involves replacing affected battery modules free of charge. Analysts estimate the recall

could cost Volvo two hundred million dollars. Two hundred million dollars. Crazy. So you bought one of these cars. You thought you're doing something cool, and now you can't park your car near anyone because it might just burst into flames. But these things are relatively safe in general, the evs. I you know, you know, I talked about my car accident. I didn't even think about this until later, but you know, it was a pretty bad accident, and my car did

not light on fire. It felt safe. But there are like, you know, if you look at like these electric cars, there's like directions on them because you can't cut them open with the jaws of life because they're electrified. So you gotta be like, I guess these emergency people are trained and like where they can actually cut these things open. You do not want to cut in the wrong place. But I guess gas cars. I mean they're filled with gas.

So what's you know? It's all dangerous. We surround ourselves some danger as humans, and we live to talk about it. Eighty eight Rich one O one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. We'll get to the calls coming up right after this. Craig has been patiently waiting in Iowa. Craig, you're on with Rich. How you're going, man, I'm doing well. Welcome back to the show.

there's this feature. There's that feature. But built into the iPhone under accessibility, they've got a section dedicated to vision for people, you know, with any sort of vision issues. So there's a couple of features there that might be important for you. Number one is voiceover, and voiceover will speak items on the screen, so you can tap once to select an item, double tap to activate the select item.

And that's number one. So if you look at this, I mean, there's just so many I don't even understand all the settings in here because there's so many. But what I would do, Craig, is I probably get I know, there's a good institute, like you know, maybe like a institute for the blind or something in your area that can maybe give you some guidance on how to set these things up and sit there with you and get

them set up. But that's probably what I would do, because you've got to figure out what you need exactly. But I think voiceover is probably a good place to start. Siri is also going to be your friend because SERI can do a lot of things on the phone and perform a lot of functionality like you've already figured out. And then you've got let's see here, read and speak, so you've got an accessibility reader that can read things. Speak screens you can swipe down. This might be a

good one. There's speak screen, so you can swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen to hear the content of the screen. So that's a good one. Speak selection. A speak button will appear when you select text Let's see she got that, And then you've got audio descriptions when available, automatically play audio descriptions, so I guess that will do something there. But there's a lot of these a lot of these features in here. There's just so many. But I would look into that that's

going to help you. I don't know. Let's see if we go to voiceover on iPhone, so it's a voiceover is a gesture based screen reader that enables navigation without seeing the screen by providing audible descriptions. So the good news is there's a bunch of there's a way to like help you practice doing this, and you can even ask serious. You can say turn on voiceover and it will it will turn that on for you, Craig. So that's actually interesting. So you don't have to go in

there and figure out where this is. You can just ask Siria to turn it on. And then once you have it turned on, there is a tutorial in there as well. So the thing is you have to you're probably going to need some instruction to kind of get the you know, get the hang of all these things because it's not pure just like voice. But we're getting closer to that. And I think that the AI is

really I know, AI AI AI. But I think AI is probably going to be a huge benefit to the accessibility community because we're finally going to be able to interact with our gadgets in a natural language way. And we're getting close to that, you know, Gemini and this that. But but so far Siri is not necessarily there. And we've heard the trials and relations of Apple trying to make Siri better with AI. It has not worked just yet.

But I would say by the end of this year, when Siri gets her smart upgrade to you know, to be more AI, it's going to be a huge benefit to people because you'll be able to say, like, hey, Siri, whoops, I just said it. You know, do this, do that, check this app. It's a lot of the stuff that you can do on AI apps like Chat, GBT and with Gemini, but it's just not there on the phone just yet. Now Gemini on the Android side of things,

it's it's gotten a lot better. And like I mentioned earlier, with Samsung specifically and also Pixel, they're doing this agentic AI and that means you literally tell AI what you want to do and it will do it. And so on Samsung, what they what they said and what they're introducing is you can say, hey, Google, call me an Uber, and the AI is smart enough to figure out where you are Noepe and now it's telling me I can't

book rides directly. Yeah. Like I said, I haven't been able to figure out how to use it yet, but it's coming out in the next couple weeks. But you'll say, get me a Nuber to the airport and it will literally open up. You'll you can watch your screen and AI takes over. It opens up the Uber app, It selects the IT types in the name of where you are and where you want to go, and then it brings you to the final page and it gives you an alert and says, hey, go ahead, make sure this

is okay. And I guess you could say, you know, just do it, and then you can do the same thing with ordering food. All these things pretty amazing. Eighty eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up, we'll talk more about the Samsung event right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,

talking technology. I've been talking a lot about the Samsung event, and I've been playing with the phone since, uh, think about I don't know about it, maybe maybe three four days now, and so far I'm impressed. It's tough to tell from the outside because it kind of looks very similar to last year's model, but it definitely feels smaller in the hand, more manageable, and thinner. Of course, all that's canceled out when you put on a case, so,

you know whatever. But here to talk about it is Lexi Savids, formerly of Seen It, now on your own doing your own YouTube channel. Welcome to the show.

we're doing what we're doing on our own. So would you like, do you enjoy that aspect of it?

So it's not just tech journalists and media, it's also like really hardcore enthusiasts of the brand that sometimes the brand in this case Samsung invites out and you get to talk to people about, you know, the matter, the things that actually really matter to a lot of users that maybe you and I might not necessarily pick up on immediately.

you think of the the S twenty six Ultra. You've been using it for a couple of days, Like me, what's your initial impression?

difference because of the material. Because we've moved from titanium on the S twenty five Ultra to the aluminum or the minimum as I say, on the S twenty six Ultra, and it just does feel a lot lighter in the hand. It sounds ridiculous when you say it's four grams on paper, but it really does make a difference to me. But as you say, the case can kind of negate that it depends. Samsung gave at least one of my review

units came with the thinnest Samsung case with magnets. I don't know if you've got the same one, but if you're not using a first party case, that thickness can start to add up pretty quickly when you have those extra cases on there.

pocket whatever. But this casey is the thickest of all of them that I put on, but I really love it. And it's funny because it's the exact same case that I have on my iPhone as well. So now I should tell you what it's called, but I can't remember. It's like the case to FI. I think it's clear or something, but it's I'll link it up on the show notes. But what I love about it, Lexi is that it has and you can see this because we're video chatting, It's got this little stand built into the

camera ring. So I love that because you can just prop up your phone. What do you think of the privacy screen? What do you make of that?

I think it's such an interesting technology because for so many years we've been looking at phones and talking about how great it is to have wide viewing angles, so you can see it from all sorts of different angles from the sides, maximum peak brightness and things like that. And now we're kind of going in the opposite direction in terms of privacy. We don't want to be able to see things from the side and so on, at

least other people. So the privacy display is actually turning off individual pixels depending on what you, as the user choose. So there's kind of two types of pixels. Are the ones that are sort of facing forward that you can see, and then there's a wide angle pixels. So when you turn on the privacy display, it's these wide angle pixels that are actually turned off. And there's a couple of different levels as well. You can do it either on a peru basis. You can block kind of individual parts

of the screen such as password input. You can block different apps so just like specifically a banking up, or you can kind of go the maximum privacy display mode, which is a really extra layer, I guess you would say, and it makes the screen look a little bit different as a result, but so.

from the sides, it's a very different looking screen. And it's funny because I was like taking a selfie the other day with the protection on and it was like I was trying to I couldn't see the screen from like this side. I was like cracking up. I was like, oh, yeah, that makes it a little bit tougher.

over my shoulder and seeing what's on my screen when I'm on my pouch, for example.

they are just beautiful screens. So my concern is that this screen was kind of taking a little bit of a step back because of this new technology. But I think in general, like, just looking at it without it on, it's fine, and it's funny every time notification comes in because I have mindset to just black out the notifications, and it's it's kind of cool because I look at the notification from the side and I can't see it. I'm like, Oh, that's the privacy screen. What's your early

advice to folks. I mean, I feel like this is the best phone that Samsung has made in a couple of years. What do you think?

I like not really going to be able to afford that. At least my bank ballance says, no trifle for you, Lexi. So it's nice to sort of see something genuinely different on I guess the candy bar or the slab style phone.

Whether or not people really kind of latch onto it is another thing because I think, as you were saying about, yes, you can definitely tell the difference when that privacy display is on, but I think unless you're looking at it directly against a previous phone or another device that maybe a friend has, you probably are not going to really tell the difference. But you know, you and I, I guess we kind of like do a little bit of pixel peeping,

a little bit at least I do. I put phone side by side and I'm constantly comparing them back and forth.

to be those subtle nuances. And again I'm just interested to see if this really resonates with people who aren't tech journalists, people who aren't covering this day to day to see if it's something that is actually some thing that you know you would upgrade for specifically this feature, or it's just because you are due to upgrade to a new train anyway.

Every time you got a new phone, you got entrade of those features. Nowadays, people are like, Okay, my phone does everything I need it to do. You tell me, you convince me why I need a new one. You can't, and so I will just upgrade when when my phone dies or when the screen breaks or whatever happens. So it's a very different world at this point until we get that holographic display that pops up out of your phone like Star Wars style. We're gonna leave it there, Lexi.

How do people find you online? How do they follow your channel?

really a ripoff. And the FCC is allowing the people, the broadcasters that make up their own regulations about this.

with streaming and that is no easy feat. I don't know if you've looked at Netflix lately, or YouTube or Instagram or TikTok, it's just and you just mentioned a YouTube channel. I mean, so the content is just there, tons of it, unlimited, and this is what these broadcasters are now competing with. So I think what what ATSC and what you call next gen TV? That is their way of better competing with digital streaming services. And the reason why is because this gives them a lot of

the same tools that the streamers have. So as I understand it, you can send out that signal, it's the same signal that you typically would send out, but it is much more identifiable. They can tell how many people are watching it, they can get data back, they can offer data. I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff that they can do with this thing, and what you said, a lot of it is things that have been talked about, nothing has been I mean, yes, you can. You can

go on to the website. By the way, if you want to try this next watchnextgentv dot com and kind of see which channels are available in your area. It'll tell you. But here's the thing. Not a lot of people have the technology to decode these channels. It might be built into your TV, it may not be. Most people are using many people are using now some sort of streaming service to get their TV channels, and unless you're using an antenna, you would not really tap into this.

So you have to figure out if you're using an antenna number one, number two, if your TV can decode these signals, or you may need a third party box. Remember when we went from the analog TV signals to the digital signals. Everyone needed that in between little box that were given away for free for a while to change an analog TV to accept digital channels. But some of the features of next gen TV, what does it offer? Better picture quality? Supports up to four K resolution and HDR,

so that means better picture quality. Obviously improves sounds, so better audio. That makes dialogue easier to hear, which of course people want more consistent volume between the TV programming commercials. Let's see what else. Interactive features so on screen things like stats, polls, like your your news channel could say, hey, vote in our poll right now, and they'll show you

the live results right on TV. I guess they've been able to do that, but you'd be able to do it with your remote right, not a third party device. Bonus content personalized program guides the Internet connection that you were talking about, So you can get all this with just an antenna, but if you connect to the internet, you can get more content, more features. It's still free.

They're still saying no subscriptions uses that regular antenna. But again, like you were talking, the ideas that they could offer more and yes, some of those channels might be a paid you know, a premium plus service or something like that. But again, all this stuff has just been talked about. A lot of these things, a lot of the stuff that you see right now. If you actually tune into one of these channels, they're just doing kind of the basics.

You know, they've got the channel there, they've got the channel broadcasting. They're adding a couple other things. Cause I don't think that many people are taking advantage of this just yet. But if you go to that watchnextgentv dot com, you can check to see in your area if these channels are which channels over the air have this next gen technology? And it looks like a lot of a

lot of markets already are adopting it. Eighty eight Rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two for one zero one more Rich on Tech coming your way right after this. All right, let's go to uh Devin in u so Cal has a question about the new Samsung you're on with Rich.

So when they're activating that privacy feature, they're only turning on those narrow pixels, and that way you can have the whole screen Matt. Let's just say the screen was white, right, like, the whole screen was white, but right in the middle there was a box like a window. That box could be blacked out from the sides because they're only lighting up that part of the screen with the narrow pixels, so you could see it head on, but people on

the sides you can't. And so for that reason, when you look at a screen protector that does the privacy, the film is basically is kind of blocking light from the sides, and so head on you can see it, but from the sides you can't. There's no way to change that or effect that, or to individually light up pixels on that screen to do just the top of the screen, just the bottom of the screen, just when

you activate certain apps. So that is the big difference here, and that's the innovation is that Samsung came up with not just a filter on the screen, they came up with a way to light up just parts of the screen with those narrow pixels. That effectively makes them invisible from the sides. And so that is a fantastic question. But that is the innovation. And again we were kind of discussing does that innovation change the look of the

screen at all. Well, you know, if you're looking at the screen by itself, I don't really see a big difference. I have to now look at it side by side with the S twenty five to see. But you can definitely tell the difference when you toggle this feature on. And it is a cool feature, and I you know, it's one of those things I think consumers will decide is this something they want or not. And if I look at my phone screen right now head on, I could see everything. If I turn it up or to

the side, it looks completely blacked out. So again, those those narrow pixels are activated on my entire screen right now. You can have them turn on for just notifications, just when you open up a certain app. It's really quite interesting. Thanks for the call, Devin, appreciate it. Let's go to let's see here, let's go to William in Santa Clarita. William, you're on with Rich.

this to work on all your devices. So now you mentioned the spam call and stuff like that, A VPN is not really going to cut down on that. So to me, what I like the VPN for is a couple of things Number one if you want. So the other day I was shopping for luggage and I was not using the VPN, and literally every single ad on my phone, any website I went to, any social media, it all turned to luggage ads. Now that's fine because I was looking for luggage, and of course that's what

they want to do. They want to market me luggage they know I'm buying. So if you want, a VPN could help you kind of avoid some of that because it anonymizes some of your searches. Now, it doesn't make you anonymous. And there's a lot of debate over, you know, how these things work and whether you can you know, you can't just sit there and like think that you're going to be invisible on the web because you're using

VPN and people use them for various reasons. But it does confuse the computers because you may be connecting in a different area from a different type of connection. And so you know, on my computer, I've got where I connect to a VPN. I don't use it all the time, but I will use it sometimes if I'm trying to do something special or whatever, or on my phone. I do use it a lot for and the number one reason I use on my phone is because it blocks all the ads across my phone and it also blocks threats.

So the one I'm using is nord and it has this thing called threat protection, and so I love it because when I activate that, everything across my phone, not only the ads are eliminated, but also any dangerous websites that you might visit. They're kind of their VPN is looking at that and saying, Okay, this is a malicious website. Don't allow him to go there. And so that's really good too. So that's you know, those are the main reasons.

The other reason I love it is because when you travel to a different country, you can just connect to a server back home in the US and your entire phone and computer will work the way they work in the US. I'm not sure if you've traveled internationally, but when you travel internationally, your phone and your computer all of a sudden take on, you know, whatever country you're in.

So if you're in Mexico, Mexico City, I was in, and all of a sudden, my computer's showing all, you know, results from the web that are different, and you know, different language whatever. So if you connect to a VPN, you avoid all that and you just it just says, oh Rich is connecting from the US, so let's just show him everything from the US. So what to look

for in a VPN. Number one, I think that it should work on all of your different devices, So make sure that it works on your phone, make sure it works on your computer, make sure it works on your tablet, and that's number one. Number two, you want to look for audit results, independent audit results. So people use these to make their connections more private, and so you want to make sure that VPNs are auditing their connections to make sure that they are private, and so that's really important.

VPNs can also slow down your connection, so you want to look for one that supports the WireGuard protocol, which is faster than the open VPN proto call. Look for one that has lots of servers, no bandwidth caps. And so what are the experts recommend. Molevad is one that a lot of experts like because if you in LA, they've got ads all over the US or ads all over LA from molevad m U L l V A

D and they're very straightforward with their pricing. They explain everything and if you want to see like why they think they're the best, you can read all about it on their website. And they basically do a really good job of like saying, hey, this is why we think we're the best. And they don't fool around the pricing at all. So it's basically like some people don't like that because you can't buy like three years in advance.

It's just you know, you can just buy. It's like five bucks a month, basically, all right, I guess, yeah, let's see. The other one is surf Shark. Surf Sharks another one that people like and they always rank really high. And then the one I mentioned, nord VPN. I really like. Disclaimer, some of these have sponsored my newsletter, so just FYI, but I don't let things sponsor unless I really enjoy them and use them and try them out first, so just be aware. When I tried nord VPN, I really

really did like what they do. But again, there are many out there. I think that these a lot of these VPNs are selling a promise that you know, hey, this is going to change everything about your Internet. I don't know, if you want to always serve for the VPN.

I mean, some people do, I guess if they really want to protect their privacy, But there are some downsides, and especially when you visit websites, they may not always be localized for you because your VPN may be connecting to a server in a different area, and so these websites get confused. And then also they may see a lot of traffic coming to that server from that VPN,

and so they question if you're a human. And so when you're using a VPN, you're going to see a lot of these things, these captures that are like, hey, confirm your human or hey, we've seen a lot of unusual activity from your IP address, so we just want to, you know, make sure that you are human or make sure you're real. And so if you get those and you encounter those, that's because you're on a VPN. But overall, I will tell you I've been using it more and

more because I kind of like the protection. I kind of like the way it blocks ads. I kind of like the way it anonymizes or makes it a little bit more confusing to marketers as to who I am. And so I think that's why we're seeing a lot more people use them. They started out back in the day. People just wanted to watch their sports in different places, or they're you know, programming on Netflix from a different country or something. But so much of this stuff has

gotten a lot easier. You don't necessarily need that anymore. But believe me, there are a lot of people that love using a VPN. William, great question. I will link up some of those VPNs on the website. Rich on tech dot TV. Okay, we got to go to break eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four

to two four one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you about the new Instagram alerts if teens need help, YouTube Premium Light, I'll tell you what they added, and this new app that alerts you if someone nearby is wearing smart glasses. That's all coming up right here. I'm

rich on Tech. I got to tell you I was hanging out and I've said this now three times during the show, but like half the fun of going to these tech events is really talking with the other people there and exchanging ideas and knowledge and all this stuff. That's all, you know, kind of not the main attraction. It's just what happens when you're there, And so you pick people's brains about stuff because there's lots of smart creators and people at these events, and so I'm always

asking them like, how do you do this? What do you use for this? But one of the things I was talking about with someone is Gemini, and they were showing me how they coded an app on Gemini to help them compare photos for their camera tests and things like this, and I said, wait, what, I know my son and I have been coding apps on Gemini, but

I didn't really think about all the implications. And so I've been trying to create this shortcut to do a couple things with pictures forever on the on the Mac computer, and I could not figure out how to do it. It just would not do it. All I want to

do is a couple things. When you take pictures on an iPhone, they come out as ZIP files when you download them from Google Photos, and so I want to I wanted to take that, extract the picture and then optimize it, you know, kind of make it smaller, compress it, make it four x three, strip the metadata, add a water mark, and also change the file name. That's a lot of things to do, right, and you're sitting there in shortcuts, trying to figure out the flow of all

that stuff. I could never get it to work. I put one line of exactly what I wanted to do into Gemini and I said, can you create this app for me? It did it in seconds. Now I have the rich On Tech Optimizer for photos. Unbelievable. You drag

a photo or a ZIP file in there. It extracts the picture, It crops it to four x three, It scans it using AI to come up with keywords that are relevant in the file name, which is good for SEO, and then it strips the metadata, the exit data and the GPS, and then it puts a rich On Tech watermark on it. So if you look at my newsletter today rich On Tech dot TV, you'll see all the pictures in there are now formatted because of this AI tool,

this app that I coded in seconds. And then as I go along, if there's something I wanted different, you just chat with the AI and tell it to change it. So, if you have not played with this, I get it. This is not a tech novice thing, per se. You need a little bit of tech. I guess not really, because I'm not a coder and I made an app literally made the best app I've ever used in my life right now, and it does exactly what I want and you can run it all from Gemini. By the way,

so this feature is called Canvas. So when you go to Gemini, if you want to try making your own little app, just go to tools and tap canvas and that will give you. I mean, it says what, let's write or build together. I'm not kidding when I tell you I've been in technology and working with technology for you know, a couple decades now. This is unbelievable. The fact that I can sit here and create my own app that does exactly what I want it to do is just something that in the history of mankind has

never been available before. It's mind boggling. And by the way, it's free. So if you've been thinking about something that you want to do on your computer, code it, try it. Make it. You got something you do every day? You always, you know, form out a picture this way, you always do something, whatever it is, music, whatever it is, try it. I cannot believe how good this is. And I talked about this a couple of weeks ago. The timer I use for this show now my kid made My kid

is fourteen. He coded a showtimer that takes into account all the breaks, all the commercial time when we have to stop what we call hard stops, soft stop, what is it heartbreak? Soft break? You know some breaks on this show, I can go a little bit longer and we can still go to break. Some I have to hit at exact certain time. Somehow he got them to time out perfectly on this thing. My point is this stuff that you can do on AI. And I understand some people are oh, oh my gosh, but the actual

benefits to people that we're finding are really incredible. So that's just one example. Anyway, if you've been trying to do something, or you know you want to create a little app. I've got like a couple app ideas that we created. We made like little prototypes of them. It's just unbelievable what you can do. That's Gemini Gemini dot Google dot com. And look at the canvas feature and just code your app. See what you can do. Speaking

of apps, there's a new app called Nearby Glasses. This is an Android app that basically can tell you if someone nearby is wearing smart glasses like the Meta ray bands or the Snap Spectacles. The app works by scanning Bluetooth low energy signals. These are little tiny radio beacons. These smart glasses broadcasts so they can connect to apps and phones. It'll tell you, hey, someone nearby is wearing

these glasses. The developer says. The goal is awareness, calling the app a small pushback against the growing always on surveillance from wearable cameras. Kind of interesting. I can see this being useful if you're in a job where you might not want to be recorded.

lot of ads off of YouTube. It does not take ads off of two places that I watch the most, which is shorts and music videos, so you still see ads there, which you might as well. At that point just pay for the fourteen dollars a month, but Premium Light two new features. All right, coming up, we are going to talk about the day of on Global Day of on Plugging, could you give up your phone for twenty four hours we'll discuss coming up next now on

the show. Kim Cavallo from the Global Day of on Plugging, happening March sixth through seventh. Kim, welcome to the show.

addicted to their phones. It's like, put down the phone for one second, please absolutely, And that's what you're saying to do. So explain what the Global Day of Unplugging is all about?

It's been that way for seventeen years. And as you said, this year, the official campaign launches at sundown on March sixth, and at last twenty four hours.

Global Day of Unplugging. You know, some parts of the world, for many people, the smartphone and the Wi Fi are literally a lifeline, so you know, and I'm gonna admit something here on live Radio. I find it impossible to unplug unless my phone is out of sight. I have this horrible habit of picking it up to use the calculator, and then an hour later, I'm watching episode three about some celebrity breakup on TikTok, so I need global of them plugging.

they'll send you stuff all day long, every day. Hey, rich, these cookies are looking pretty good today. Why don't you order one? It's like I don't need that, that's like it, you know, And so a lot of apps do that. They abuse their privileges on our phone and they get us to look at it, and then we go down that rabbit hole of looking at other stuff.

Earth Day. You know, on Earth Day we celebrate and protect the environment. On Global Day of Unplugging, it's our chance to remind each other that the real thing, the person in front of you, those connections are worth preserving.

sense of belongingness. So this year, some participants who attend gatherings and connection with Global Data Plugging will be invited to complete a brief research and formed survey shortly after their event, and then we're going to follow up with a survey several months later. It's led by doctor Tracy Dennis Tawari from New York, the author of Future Tents, a book about anxiety. She's also a director of an emotion regulation Lab at the City University of New York.

She's joined by Jamie Caruth, who's a licensed marriage and family therapist and also a data analyst.

He was I said enough time on the iPad and he said, okay, I'm off my screen. Now I get to do. What I really like to do is be creative. And he just went out and he started like doing. It's so funny because you know, left to their own devices, literally, kids will just be glued to the screen forever indefinitely, right, Yes, but if you let them be kids and play, like I tell my kids, you know, go look under rocks, like look for worms, like just go outside like touched

r whatever. Yes, it really like they want to do that. That's that's also built into their system. It's just who doesn't want that screen that just has all the world's information and flashiness and games at all times. I mean everyone wants that exactly.

what happened with it. So yeah, we really do want people to reach out to us and let us know what they're doing.

books this that versus the digital equivalent. So I think you're getting some you're gaining some ground here.

on your phone instantly. So text Now can basically give you their phone line. Is they have a free essential data plan. So in the past you know, you could download their app and you can get free calling, free texting. But they also had this thing called Free Essential Data where you had to get a SIM card. Right, you have to pay them a couple bucks to mail you a SIM card, and then when you put that in your phone, you can get free calling, free texting, and

free data for apps like ride shares, maps, banking. But here's the deal. Now, you can just go to their website, scan the QR code, get an eSIM on your phone instantly, and basically have a free phone line, free texting, plus limited data access and if you want more data, you can buy it three dollars for a day, nine dollars

for a week, thirty six dollars per monthly unlimited. So again this is for people who are always on, always on Wi Fi, but want a little cellular backup for their you know, their most essential apps, or they just want to buy data. So it's not for everyone, but if you're looking for something like that, or you need something like that, text now check it out. Really interesting

what they're doing there. And then this is silly. Spotify teamed up with Liquid Death to create an eternal playlist earn a cremation Earn with a built in Bluetooth speaker, so your music can keep playing after you're gone. Four hundred ninety five dollars, only making one hundred and fifty of them. This is clearly a stunt, but they have a playlist eternal playlist generator where you answer questions about your eternal vibe, and that's what plays on this thing.

So I do love my liquid Death drinks, but come on, that's kind of silly. All right, Time for the feedback. That's your feedback plus the mail bag. These are the emails, the comments, and the questions I get from you. If you want to submit yours, go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit contact. All right, First up, Candice, He says, Hey, Rich, after your interview with cybersecurity expert JP Castianos about voice cloning scams, I'm pretty sure that's

what happened to my friend's family. They're just regular people, not high profile at all. My friend's dad got a call from someone who sounded exactly like her son, Luke. The caller said he'd been in a car accident in Miami. The woman he hit was pregnant. He needed twelve thousand dollars for bond my friend had warned her parents about scams like this, but before they hung up, the fake Luke gave them a number for a so called attorney

in Dade County. Her dad actually called it, thankfully. The dad felt something was off and called my friend and Luke. While they were all on speaker, the scammers called her mom's phone again. I could hear him clear as day. He sounded exactly like Luke. That's when my friend said, that's not Luke. He's standing right here. The scammers immediately

hung up. It was terrifying. Yes, voice cloning scams. That's why I have these very very guests on my show, so you learn about all this stuff that's happening out there and these voice cloning scams. You might hear it and say, oh, come on, that doesn't really happen. Oh sure does. Look at that. We just got an email about it, Mike and Oneana New York says, I just

wanted to say thanks to your latest newsletter. I'm an assistive technology specialist at a university, and on my way to work, I was actually thinking about what voice to text apps might help our students. I open up your newsletter. There's all section on it perfect timing. I've already installed Typeless and I'm testing to see if it's a good fit for our campus. Keep the newsletters coming well, thank you, Mike.

Gary says, I bundled my AT and T cell service to save some money, and the rep insisted on giving me a quote free Samsung S twenty five. I told her I didn't need it. The next morning, I got an email saying I'd be charged seven hundred ninety nine dollars in twenty three dot twenty three monthly installments. I spent over two hours on the phone trying to cancel it, and now I have to bring it back to the store to return it. I don't like that part. Maybe

you can warn people about this on your show. So yes, the way these free phones work is that you get that charge for seven hundred ninety nine dollars, they credit you back over three years. Basically, they want you to have a phone line active on that device, and you got to keep that phone active for those three years to get that free phone. So yeah, free not always

very free. Nick says when people when I hear people say AI can't do this or that, like have consciousness, I think we just need to define our terms more carefully. Every time we say machines will never be able to do something, history proves us wrong. If we avoid metaphysical or theological ideas like having a soul, I suspect AI will eventually meet most definitions we come up with. Even Google now labels some results as thinking before an AI

overview appears. I'm sure the wording went through plenty of legal review. AI already has issues and they'll likely grow. I'm just not sure our thinking is keeping pace. Ooh deep, thank you.

sitting at home. David. I heard you talk about Chrome os flex on the show and tried to install it on my Dell Latitude with sixteen gigs of RAM and an I seven. There's nothing this thing can't do. I even installed my full featured money Dance personal finance absence it supports Linux. It works seamlessly with my Microsoft three sixty five apps in email, I use my YouTube music and my wireless headphones without any issue. I can even

install different browsers because of the Linux support. You really hit a home run with that advice. This feels like a Chromebook on steroids. Thank you, David. Joseph warns about getting a bill that looked like it was from his gas company. When he tried to click to log in, it says password was invalid. I checked a real bill I had saved and the formats didn't match. They looked similar, but not quite. Just a reminder, these fake utility bills

look very convincing. Let's see here, got a couple more here before we have to go Gary and Connecticut, just want to say how much I enjoy your show and the helpful information you share. I heard you talk about AT and t air on the radio here in Connecticut. Since I'm an eighteen tea customer, sounds like a great way for me to save money. Thanks for the tip and keep up the great work AT. In Los Angeles, I've been listening to the podcast. Really enjoy the show

and Pocket shut down. I was looking for an alternative. You mentioned insta paper, but I actually ended up switching to read Wise. It's been great. You should check it out. And Marta says I love your show. You bring a wealth of information even for those of us who are not very smart about technical gadgets. Thank you for all your knowledge and help Well. Thank you Marta and michel Leane in San Diego. I listen to you every week

on your podcast. Your show has become such a pleasant part of my weekend, and I've learned so much from you and your guests that's helped me personally and professionally. Thank you. Well, let's end it on that, because that's about as good as you can get. Wow, thank you. That's gonna do it. For this episode of the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to rich on tech dot tv. You can

find me follow me on social media. I'm on Instagram at rich on tech, so if you're not following me, please follow me there. Next week, we're gonna have all the details from Apple's big events happening in New York and other cities. Thank you so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I appreciate you spending it right here with me. My name is rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.