We now know what caused that major Amazon outage that took down a huge chunk of the internet. Chat Ebt now has its own web browser and it's a big deal for how you search online. And GM is promising a car that drives itself. You can even check your email while it does the driving. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Jamiro and this is Rich on Tech. This is the show where I talk about
the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting, useful and fun. Let's open up those phone lines at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four
one zero one. Kim is standing by. She will take your call, get you on the air, and hopefully we can have some radio magic here with you on with us. Email is also an option. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit contact. That is Rich on tech dot tv. Hit contact On the show. This week, Kate Ross from Meta is going to talk about their new safety tools and simple ways you can protect yourself
from online scams. Then we've got c nets Scott Stein to talk about his thoughts on Samsung's new Galaxy XR headset. Are you ready to spend eighteen hundred to thirty five hundred dollars on a headset?
You tell me?
And later in the show we'll have the CEO of Vey, they run a remote driven door to door car rental service. They will explain how Vey works.
Well.
I was in New York City this week, very very quick trip for GM's Forward event. This is the company's roadmap where everything all their tech initiatives, cars, AI and autonomy. They said, here's what we're going to do. And I was very confused when I got the invite to the event. I said, wait, GM, New York City, what me? How do I fit into this? And sure enough it was a very very tech forward event. Not a lot of
people there. It's a very small event, but big ripples because they announced a lot of stuff.
GM CEO Mary Barrow was there.
She painted a future were car basically drops you off, picks up your dry cleaning, and gets home in time to take your kids to soccer practice. Yes, we have heard about this idea of cars sort of driving themselves in the future, doing things, even perhaps making money as a robotaxi instead of just sitting in our driveway or sitting on our parking spot at work. That's a bold vision. But i'll tell you what they're actually going to do
in the short term. But the goal is to make a vehicle that's not just transportation, something that makes life easier, more connected, and of course safer. With that in mind, GM unveiled its first eyes off driving system. That's right, you heard me correctly, eyes off driving. It's going to launch in twenty twenty eight on the Cadillac Escalade IQ. This is a honker of a vehicle. They had it in the showroom there where they did the event, and
what a beautiful car. I think it retails for about one hundred and thirty grand, but it's probably worth every penny of that because it is a beautiful vehicle. We're talking giant on the outside, huge on the inside, big screens for your dashboard. Now, this eyes off driving system goes beyond hands free driving because you can take your hands and eyes. You can take your hands off the wheel and your eyes off the road while the car handles the highway.
Wait, what.
Yes, they gave an example of go ahead, check your text messages, go ahead, watch white lotus on the dashboard. That's how confident they are in this system, which is more like I think it's like a level three autonomy. And of course a couple of little digs at Tesla, because Tesla's doing full self driving, but it's what's called supervised, which means you can't take your eyes off the road and you can't take your hands off the wheel.
Now do people do that? Absolutely? Should they be?
No, because this system is not meant for that. So a couple digs, like I said, at Tesla, because GM is using a combination of cameras, radar and ldar, different sensors that can see through fog, the dark, and even heavy rain. Now this is something that Elon Musk has railed against. He said, we don't need all that stuff. We just need cameras. But some of the naysayers out
there say not sure. So GM taking the safe route here with a bunch of sensors, not to the extent that you might see on a WAYMO, you know, the ones spinning around on the top, but there are a bunch of sensors built into the car, and they showed me a whole bunch of demos about how the system can TechEd police, road debris, construction workers, all in real time, even in whether where a human driver would not be
able to see them until it's too late. So we're talking like four football fields ahead versus the average person. I mean, you can't see that far ahead. And they also stress safety. They mentioned that they've already logged seven hundred million hands free miles with their supercrews zero accidents attributed to that system. So does that mean there's been no accidents. No, it means that that system has not caused any of the accidents. So seven hundred million miles.
That's on highways. So if you're wondering, how do other people know that the car is driving itself. A lot of the manufacturers have adopted these turquoise lights. I think Mercedes is using them. Not sure what color they're using, but this gmscally they had on display, had turquoise lights on the sides and on the front, so that other drivers know the car is actually driving itself. It's when those lights are on. So that's really interesting, really amazing.
Of course, we've got until twenty twenty eight for that to happen. What else did they announce a new central compute system, so kind of one liquid cooled AI brain running everything in the car. Instead of dozens of little tiny mini computers, this one unit handles everything, the driving, the safety, entertainment. Kind of think about it as like a tower PC in the middle of the car. And the neat thing about that that one piece of architecture
instead of many, is that faster software updates. One of my biggest issues with traditional cars has been they're so slow to get any sort of update. Well, that's because of the architecture of these cars. There's so many individual pieces they all have to be programmed and updated separately. Now, with just one central processing unit, everything can be updated at the same time. And by the way I learned this at the event, there is no such thing as
a fuse on tomorrow's cars. They're all electronic now. So remember, like I remember back in the day, you know your car would pop a fuse, you have to like pull the thing out and put a new one in. Nah, it doesn't happen anymore. That's a thing of the past in these new cars. And by the way I did ask, I was like Hey, what chip are you using, just out of curiosity in this new central compute computer, and
what do you think? They answered, in Vidia, of course, So those of you that are big on in Vidia, Yes, they are everywhere at this point, and they seem to be the market leader in all kinds of places. Okay, so that's happening in twenty twenty eight. Coming up a little bit sooner. GM cars are going to start using Google's Gemini AI. So if you've tried it, you know it,
you're familiar with it. This is a conversational assistant that can do things while you're in the car, read messages, suggest things up ahead, help you prepare for meetings while you drive, whatever.
You know Gemini.
Longer term, they're going to have their own AI that's sort of tuned to the vehicle, so it might tell you. The example they gave is you're driving and it says, hey, we noticed a rattling on the rear passenger tire. Might want to bring that into to get that checked out. So that was pretty neat. The big other thing they did not mention, but they sort of alluded to, is that, yes, they are moving away from CarPlay, which I think is really sad because I think CarPlay is so great, But
I get it. These cars, the car makers, they're understanding that there's a lot of money in these dashboard systems for various reasons, and so I think that they want to have more control over them versus having Apple or seed control over to Apple.
What else did they announce?
Oh, new battery chemistry, sort of a battery in the middle lithium manganese battery. They've said they've spent a decade developing this. It sits right in the middle, and they replace a lot of the nickel in the battery, which is very expensive with mag I can't even say this word manganese manganese, which is cheaper and more abundant. It also makes the batteries lighter, simpler and easier to build
in the US. And yes, they can be recycled. And finally, they showed off a home energy system again and really going directly against Tesla here. This is a system that can use your EV as a backup power supply during power outages. In some places, you might be able to sell your electricity back to the grid if you had solar as well, and it can be up and running in seconds if the power goes out. And I did talk to an autoanalyst, Sama Bulla Sumid, who has been
on this show. He said GM's plan is ambitious. The eyes off driving at highway speeds is something only Mercedes and BMW have done, and their systems are limited to low speeds. And regulation is going to be an issue because right now only California and Nevada allow this sort of autonomous driving at these speeds at highway speeds. So it's going to be interesting to see in the next three years how this all develops. But really cool, GM forward showing that they are still a leader in autos.
All right, coming up on today's show, the one thing you need to do to protect your Google account. But first it is your turn. We're gonna take your calls. Coming up next at eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. My name is rich Dedmiro. This is rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Let's go to h Jim and Sherman Oaks. You're own with Rich. Hello Jim, you there, Okay, I don't know what's up there?
You go?
How's that?
Is that?
Better?
Yes? Much better?
Oh?
Wait, I hear you?
Sorry about that. I got acquaintance. He's got a he's got his own little radio broadcast on a website. But he wants to have his fans get text blasts, you know, when you know when the shows are going live. Sure, And additionally, he'd like to be able to have email in like you put in your email address and instills it in their Google calendar or their iOS calendar, so it's literally on their plate. They're not going to miss it,
be a text or calendar. Technology is moving kind of fast, so I figured i'd ask you.
I mean, there's a lot of ways to do this.
The bottom line answer is that if you want a freeway, you're going to be very limited. So in this, in this kind of example where you're actually sending text messages, a lot of the mass bulk senders, you know, they got to do things on the up and up, so they're going to charge so budget. Okay, how many people are we talking that he's going to text here? We're talking thousands or hundreds.
Yeah, three thousand, okay, right now.
Okay, so that's a that's a decent amount.
Sure.
So there's a couple of services out there.
Actually got this question with another It was an HOA, I believe they want to like blast out their I don't know, meeting notes or something to all their members, and so we are looking for some services that would do this.
They want to do a calendar too, okay, instill in their calendar.
Okay, okay, Well there's a it's kind of a one two thing because I'm not sure you're going to get the calendar automatic. But the product for the calendar is probably Calendar. That's the one that everyone uses. That's like the most you know, the simple calendar scheduling service.
Yeaheah.
And I think what's going to happen with that is that you can, like Google or Gmail or whatever their their calendar app is is going to or their Gmail or sorry, their email is going to recognize that this is a properly formatted calendar invite, and so it would automatically put that into their their calendar. But the problem is it with Google, but with iOS it works with
all of them. I mean they've got If you're talking about getting it into their calendar automatically, that's a tricky thing because you know the systems are set up or if you've seen the spam that does that, you know, I don't know there's like a spam problem, so that so it can be done.
It's just how you set it on the website.
Yeah, you can do that.
So I mean, look, at the end of the day, I think the best service is going to be the one that lets you ramp up. So I would check to see how much these services cost in the long term when you have more people than less people, because right now you've got a couple thousand, but when you get up to that, you know, like I'm looking at this textedly which does everything that you want, and you can get started for free with fifty text messages. But then when you go up to basic thirty dollars a
month is only six hundred texts a month. So if you're talking, you're going to send out three thousand texts a week.
If you're broadcasting one, right that was fans, that was fans that was spanned I was the Texas per week would only be a few.
Okay, so that.
Yeah, So again I would just look at the long term of this, so like, you know, eighty bucks a month is going to give you twenty four hundred text which is not too bad. Then there's a program called simple Texting, and again they do this by you can say how many text credits do you want? So let's say you want to send a thousand a month, You're talking sixty dollars a month. So that's another way to do it. And they've got, you know, a bunch of add ons and things that you can put in there.
And I'm not sure the calendar thing is a little tricky because what I would do is I would personally include a link to the calendar invite in there to make it really simple that they can just click that link and it will add it to their calendar.
And yeah, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
The other thing you could do is, you know, there's some other ways of doing this that don't cost anything, and that might be a social media route. So you can set up like a group in Facebook. You can also set up sort of a broadcast channel on something like a telegram or a WhatsApp, or you can use Google Voice to send out these things. So there's You can also use something like a substack to create a mailing list that's completely free to send out this information.
So the tools are out there. I think what it really comes down to is minimizing the cost of these tools over time if there's not a return on you know, making money from whatever you're doing here. But again, the things that I recommended are simple texting text and I would check out substack and calendar calendarly all these uh, all these products just you know, they ditched the uh, the vowels. But anyway, thanks for the call, Jim, appreciate it.
Good question.
And the beauty of the world today is that there are just so many free services out there. But if you really want to do something that's that's going to you know, go out to a lot of people or engage a lot of people, typically you do have to pay for those services. That's just the way it is. I did want to mention we we found out the outage. Reason for that massive AWS outage. Amazon is blaming a software bug. It was not a cyber attack, a software
glitch in its own systems. Basically, there was two automated programs inside Amazon's network that started racing each other to update records, but it erased the network entries that they needed, which triggered a domino effect and took down a major database and disrupted so many other tools that AWS runs, and that in exchange affected so many websites. I mean everything from like Snapchat to chat GBT. I mean so many sites were down for hours. I think it was
Monday of the previous week. So it just goes to show how many services are dependent on Amazon's cloud. And there's three main players here. You've got Amazon Aws, You've got Google Cloud, and you've got Microsoft Azure. So between those three, if you're a startup, you're probably gonna run.
On one of those.
And that's why it affected so many places around the country, around the world actually, And the reality of this system, these cloud infrastructures, is that if you have a business and you need to have a server, why would you go out and buy that server and put it in your office and have one and it's like, Okay, you got to update it and maintain it. When you can just rent this server space from Amazon or Google or
Microsoft and ramp up you need it. So you just buy more space as you need it on the cloud. And that's why So many businesses love this because it makes life simple for them and they just pay by the usage. But when something happens like this, it causes a major, major ripple effect.
So now we know.
Eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up, we're gonna talk cybersecurity and how to keep your meta account safe with some new tools they have right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. As you can see,
the theme for this weekend's music is Halloween. You know, I tried watching Ghostbusters with my kids and I'll be honest, they kind of lost attention. They you know, we live in like a TikTok world and it's like it just was not holding their interest.
I was like, you gotta stay tuned for this.
The stay puffed marshmallow man and they just did the slime part was pretty cool though, But we you know, it's just movies back in the day, like when I was growing up, are just so different than they are today. Like today, it's like NonStop from the second you sit down to the end, it's just like one long ride, right, like nothing, you don't even get a second to think.
But movies back.
In the day they had like a little more kind of nuance to them, and I think that, you know, you have this idea in your head of what things were like when you were a kid, but then when you watch it with your kids, you're like, Okay, I don't even know if that's good anymore, Like it's I feel like that's happened with like a lot of the old movies I've watched.
But anyway, joining me now is Meta's Kate Ross.
It is Cybersecurity Awareness Month and Meta's got some new safety tools and tips to make sure you do not fall prey to these online scams that are happening every single day.
Kate, Welcome to the show.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me important topic.
Yeah, so, how much of a problem is this? Like do people like I get emails every day people forward me the scams that they're seeing and they, you know, I kind of look at them. Are people actually falling for these things? Because sometimes you wonder, like, how can anyone fall for this? But clearly they do.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely So you know, the FBI's recent Internet Crime Report that they released in twenty twenty four actually notes that people age sixty and over in the US lost four point eight billion to fraud in that year alone. So it's definitely a big issue in terms of people that are following prey to these scams, but also the amount of money that is being lost. So Meta is really working to make sure we are doing our part.
Just this year alone, we've detected and disrupted close to eight million accounts that are associated with criminal scams centers. So this is a big deal that we are investing a ton to make sure we're rooting these bad actors off of our services.
Wow.
And one of the biggest things is like basically an account takeover where people are as like.
Why do they want my account? Why do they want my account?
Can you explain why someone would want like, let's say they got a hold of my Facebook account, Why would these scammers want that?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think what these scammers are really trying to do is to work and find ways to get information from people, and a way to do that is to create a false sense of trust. So certainly, if you think you know someone that's going to create an environment where someone might be willing to share more
personal information. The other thing that we're seeing scammers do is do things like creating a sense of urgency, right, so maybe pretending you that they are with kind of the government or an official bank or something that you think you might trust. So just some really important tips for people, or are just you know, be thoughtful with people are reaching out to you and asking for information, even if you think you trust them, even if you
think you know them. Take a second, reach out to someone that you know, a family member, a loved one. Just check with them before sharing information. If they're creating a false sense of urgency, like, wow, your accounts are being hacked, I need your information now. Just take a second. It's probably not urgent, and that's probably a red flag. If someone is trying to make you think that something is really urgent and they need personal or financial information from you.
Tell me about this feature on Messenger you're testing. It's like an advanced scam detection. Explain that.
Yeah, so we are rolling out some testing on some new scam detection and Messenger. So when this is enabled and someone sends you a potentially scammy message, and it's a new contact, we will actually warn you and then give you options to send that chat to an AI scam review, and if it does appear that it is scam, we will give you just options right away to address it, so you can either immediately block the contact or report
the suspicious account. So again just trying to add some friction, helping you take a beat, think about this before you engage, and really try to understand what's coming at you.
And then on WhatsApp, I guess people scammers try to pressure people into sharing their screens and then tricking them into giving away sensitive information.
So now you've got this screen share warning. Explain what that's going to do.
Yeah, so I think you know this is something where someone might try to have you share your screen, get you to share personal information like potentially account information, banking information. So what we are launching now on WhatsApp is if you are having video calls, it will automatically give you a warning before you try to share your screen with
someone on those video calls. So again just really helping to make you think a bit before you do something and make sure you really trust the circumstance that you're in before you share potentially private information.
And that's the thing.
I mean, I know there's people thing that are saying, like rich, I can't believe anyone would share their screen and go to their bank and you know, you can
see everything that's on there. But the problem is people actually do and by putting this little bit of friction in between, like when you start a screen share for the first time with someone that you don't know and you say, hey, just heads up, people do this and then you go, oh, wow, I didn't even think about that, and oh I've just got saved from this getting scammed. But it's like those warnings at the counter at the
all the stores now with the gift cards. You know, it used to be people are getting scammed out of gift cards left and right now anywhere you go, the cashier will literally say to you like, hey, just making sure you're not using this as a payment for you know whatever. And it's just you know, the more people know, the better, I guess. Tell me about this National Elder Fraud Coordination Center. You guys are working with them now as well.
Yeah, so Metta just recently announced that we are joining the National Elder Fraud Coordination Center. So this is a great nonprofit that really works to strengthen cross sector efforts to combat fraud. It is targeting older adults. So this is working with law enforcement across multiple jurisdictions as well as industry to make sure that we're kind of collaborating and sharing resources because these bad actors are not operating
in one jurisdiction, They're not operating on one platform. So if we can make sure that we're kind of polling our resources and sharing information across these sectors, we can make sure that we're really targeting these networks and better protect people across all of our services.
My biggest fear is losing access to my Instagram or my Facebook because I do have a decent amount of followers there. So I've kind of locked everything down with two factor authentication. I set up like I think it's not a recovery contact, but something like that where you know, my wife can kind of help me get back in
if I need that help. But explain what people can do to protect their accounts versus just you know, having like a standard password that they've reused a thousand times on the web somewhere.
Yeah. Yeah, So a couple of things you can do I'd encourage everyone listening to visit either Instagram dot com slash help or Facebook dot com slash help, and on those help platforms you can run security and privacy checkups. And this is going to be something that kind of helps run through all the different features on your account to understand if you're doing the most you can to keep your account secure. It's a really user friendly way just to make sure that you're keeping that good hygiene,
doing the best you can. And I would just encourage everyone to do it, you know, even just once a year, just to make sure you're still keeping up with the latest trends. Another thing that you can do on Facebook that's super exciting is you can set up past keys. So basically what this does is it kind of works with features that you might already have set up on your phone. So think about biometrics, using your face to open your phone or a fingerprint to open your phone.
You can have your Facebook account actually use those features through your phone so that you don't have to log a password in and you can just use your biometrics. And that's great because one if you're like me and you always forget your password, I'm not going to forget my face, so I'm going to have easy access to my account. But more importantly for this conversation, you know, a hacker can't hack your biometrics, right, Like that is your face, it's on you. You can access that account
and we know it's you. So it's also a more secure way to make sure that only you are accessing your accounts. So I would encourage folks to visit, like I said, those help centers, just to get all that set up to make sure you're doing what you can to keep yourself secure.
It's interesting. I was watching Black Rabbit on Netflix and the investigator, the person was on I think they were dead on the ground, but they literally took their iPhone and they just like said sorry and they swiped it in front of their face to like unlock the phone to get into it. I was like, wait a second, can they really do that? So when you said that they can't hack your face, I was like, wait a second, I need to check into that because I remember when
that first face id first came out. There's a lot of debate about it, but I need to look into that real quick before we go. Big question, I get what to do if your Facebook or Instagram account is hacked, what's the first thing you need to do to try to regain access to that?
Yeah, so I would say go to that Facebook dot com slash help go through our recovery passes to make sure that we're helping you get back into that. But to your point earlier, you can do some work now to make sure you're setting up those recovery system systems if you go into our security and privacy checkups.
So I would do that work now to.
Just make that easier on the other side, so that you can regain access if you are hacked.
Because most of the time people are getting tricked into handing over their account. It's not as if someone's actively trying, you know, to target just you per se yep, exactly.
So I mean again, just don't you should never be sharing your password. Facebook will never ask you, you know, we'll never call you and ask you for your password, the same you know security that you should take with your banking information, your social security number. You should be really treating your passwords like that as well, because people do want this because then they can use it to trick your friends into doing things because they think they
trust you. So it's just important to be doing that good hygiene, making sure you're doing all you can to keep your account safe because scammers do you want to access it?
All?
Right?
Metas Kate Ross, thanks so much for joining me today. Really appreciate it. Once again, I'll put all the links on the website, but go to the Instagram dot com slash help, Facebook dot com slash help set up those pass keys and do the security checkup on Facebook and Instagram, and do the privacy checkup on WhatsApp. A little work now goes a long way later in protecting your account.
Coming up, we are going to talk about actually more of your calls.
Eighty to eight Rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Plus I do have a feature you should activate on Google to make sure you never get locked out of your account.
There.
This is Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro Here, let's go to Jason in San Diego. Jason, you're on with Rich.
Hey Rich, how you doing.
I'm doing fantastic. What can I help you with?
Thanks for taking my call. I have a question about it.
I'm in the.
I guess you could say I'm in the Apple ecosystem, and I have thousands of songs that I've downloaded over the years, but the album art doesn't match, like mismatched with the songs. So like on my phone, on my Mac, it's matched up. So when I I'm trying to I tried almost everything sinking my phone. The album art just doesn't match up. And so I don't know, it's been like this for years. It drove me crazy.
That would not what to do about it. That would definitely drive me crazy.
So this is this is your own music that you have loaded onto your iPhone or is it music that you're sinking from iTunes on a computer?
And what kind of computer do you have?
The iMac it's got the the the M one chip, you know, the colorful iMac. I have an iPhone sixteen. But this has been happening since before, you know, with older Max. It's been it's songs that I've bought off iTunes and maybe in the early arts, you know, downloaded some songs.
Maybe for free.
Yeah, well it happened like that.
Yeah, that might have something to do with the album art not sinking up to the song.
Okay, I'm curious because I don't know if there is a way on the iPhone to go into the like are you using Apple music to play these songs or to third party app I'm using that iTunes, yeah, to play the song like just a built in like music player on the phone.
Yeah.
Okay, Well there is a way have you and I assume you've tried this, but there's a way on the desktop to go into you know, to grab the album art You've done.
That, yes, yes, look on that.
And so when you go to when.
You go to file library, get album artwork, it doesn't fill in the artwork for the for the songs that you have.
I would go on like the iTunes you know that way, and then yeah, like I would just drag and drop the album art into you know, the space provided.
Okay, okay, got it album Okay, So you're doing it that way. So there's okay. So there's a couple I'm gonna give you a couple of pointers on this, so I think will help. So, first off, built into Apple Music, which is now if you're not using Apple Music, you might want to update to Apple Music versus iTunes because I don't even think they make that for the Mac anymore.
But if you go into your library and then you press file and then it says library, there's an option to get album artwork, And we'll ask you, are you sure you want to get album artwork? And you say get album artwork, and it will go through and look through all of your songs and find the artwork for those songs. Now, that should also sync to your phone
if you are syncing your libraries. Now, if you're not sinking them like, you may have to delete the stuff off your phone and rebring it on because if you're not using Apple like Apple Music Cloud Library, it's not going to just sync between your phone and your computer every single time you plug it in. You have to be using or well unless you plug it in, but you have to basically make sure you're kind of running a sync to get that album art from your computer
onto that phone. So that's one way you're talking about dragging the album art into iTunes. That's fine, but again you have to set then sync that information to your phone. I'm looking at the Apple Music app on the phone and I don't really see a way to sync the album art from the phone itself. Let me just check in the settings and see if there's one, because sometimes Apple puts things. But yeah, let's see library audio download.
Let's see. I'm looking for anything animated art. Nope.
Okay, so I don't really see anything that says you can sync the artwork. But there is a way to say sync library. So if you have that, any content you add from Apple Music or import to iTunes will change across all of you your products there, so your iPhone and your computer. So make sure that that's on the sync library on your iPhone. And then the other way to do it is just to use a third party program. There's one that people have found a lot
of luck with. It's called MP three tag MP three tag, and it looks like there is a I know it's typically a Windows program, but it looks like there is a Mac version. And I'm trying to see MP three for Mac. Yeah, it's in the app store. So MP three tag that will get your stuff. Now that's twenty five bucks, but you know it's going to fix your problem. And I think if you said you got all that free music back in the day, what's twenty five dollars, right, I mean, why not? That's a small price to pay,
but hopefully that should solve it. Jason, I know that's Uh, it's a tricky issue you've got. You know, you're sitting there trying to get this stuff. You know it's there, you know it should be there, and it's not. But hopefully one of those three solutions should get that stuff synced up to your phone. So good question. Thanks for the call today. Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show is rich on tech dot tv.
There you can get show notes. So I know I just mentioned a whole bunch of things to j I will put that all in the show notes. So this is episode one five. That'll take you right there. Just go to the website and you can also submit your questions too. Hit contact up at the top and you can submit your questions. I get I've I'm not kidding. Every week I have a backlog of more and more questions from you, and I get to a majority of them on the show, but I just don't get to them every week.
So I just print them out and I've got.
Them all right coming up, I am gonna I did promise you this Google feature that helps you recover your locked to count. I will tell you about that. We'll have the gadget of the week and much much more. We'll talk about open ai and their new browser right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call
if you have a question about technology. Coming up this hour, we are going to talk with c NET Scott Stein about the new Samsung VR headset. They call it Samsung Galaxy XR. So it's eighteen in a time when I don't think anyone's really trying to spend that much on a headset at this point, especially a first gen device.
But we'll see.
Maybe I'm wrong, and I think it's done some pretty cool things and it is half the price of apples.
So there's that. Uh let's uh, let's go to Kevin in San Clementy. Kevin, you're on with Rich Kevin. Are you there? Going? Once? Going twice? Kevin?
One, two three, Okay, we'll try to get here. Oh there you go. Okay, you're back. Can I hear you?
Are you there?
I am here?
Are you there?
What's up?
A quick question? Well not quick question, but two questions. One regarding spam blockers I e. Norton type of software and then hitting unsubscribed. So when I get a spam email, or let's say I get an email from you on rish On Tech and I want to unsubscribe for that, and I go to the your unsubscribed I get that tomorrow, I'll get you know, uh, Kevin on Tech. I'll get unsubscribed in the next day, I'll get marked on you
know tech. Should I not be hitting those unsubscribed buttons when I get spam email?
Okay, let me give you my uh the rich on tech tried and true method for dealing with spam because this is uh. I you know, I've got my email address pretty much out there, and so if anyone will get a lot of spam, it's me right and my inbox is pretty tamed.
So I will tell you here's what I do.
Number One, if you get a legitimate email from a legitimate sender or sending platform, what does that mean? Something like a home depot, a best buy, a target, or something like a mail chimp. You know, all these platforms that send out emails, like a mailing list program, those are all safe to unsubscri scribe to, no problem. So if you signed up for a coupon at home depot and next thing you know, they're bombarding you with emails, go ahead, unsubscribe.
You can do that. It's safe. They're going to respect that, no problem. Then there is the middle ground.
There's like a thing that you never really signed up for, but it's coming from a legitimate sender. So for me as a journalist, I get put on a zillion and one mailing address lists, but I can tell when the email is coming from a sender that's legitimate, right, like a you know, like I said, a mail Chimp or something like that usually says something like one click unsubscribe
or something like that. So if it comes from one of those constant contact mailchimp substack, those are all going to respect your right to unsubscribe, So you can safely unsubscribe from those. Now, the third type of email you get is completely unexpected, uninvited, and it is just spam, and sometimes they make your way to your spam or
your inbox. So those you do not want to click unsubscric al, right, because that will send a signal to the person sending it or the organization or whoever that Hey,
we got a live one, Let's send them more. And that's how you get bombarded with even more spam emails because a lot of times these spammers are just finding lists online on the dark Web or on the open Web, and they're just they're just importing all those email addresses and blasting them, and then the people that actually open the email or interact with the email, then they will go to a secondary list of Oh, we got some
good folks here, let's email them more. So the way I cut down on that is number one, you can just delete the email without even opening it, or you can report it as spam to your email provider if you really want to, and you know that'll block the sender as well. Sometimes the other thing you can do is let's see you open up Oh yeah, depending on
your email provider, you can block images. So even if you open that mail, the sender would not know that you open that email because nothing is getting sent back. So so a lot of these spam emails and emails in general, they basically phone home. So when you open that email, there's a little tiny tracking pixel in that email, and as soon as that pixel is loaded, you can't even see it's naked to the you know, to the
naked eye, it's invisible. But computers can do that, and so they see, oh, Rich's email, this email address loaded this tracking pixel. Now we know he looked at this, and so then again they'll use that signal as a way to send you more. So what I do is I go into my settings and it's a little annoying, but there's a setting for a lot of email programs to not display external images. So I have asked before displaying external images turned on?
And so what does that mean.
It means that every single image I get, every single email I get, is the images are not loaded. And yes, does it take me an extra click to load those images if I want to see them, Yes, But it saves me a lot of spam because people don't know that I've looked at their email if I've opened it.
So that's the other way to do it.
Now, there are a whole bunch of companies out there that can say, oh, we'll clean up your spam, we'll clean up your inbox. I don't like giving access to my email to a third party, so just be careful with those. And then if you want to unsubscribe from legitimate mailing lists. If you're using Gmail, they just added a new feature. If you tap in the left hand side where it says inbox, starreds, sent drafts, expand that menu and scroll down a little bit and you'll see
something that says manage subscriptions. And when you tap that, it will give you a list of all the people that are emailing you the most, and it will say how many emails they've sent you recently, and you could just tap and say unsubscribe. So this actually puts the biggest senders in a list and you could easily unsubscribe from those. And it's a pretty good little feature. It's not going to be perfect, but again that's Gmail. Under the inbox, scroll down a little bit, you'll see where
it says manage subscriptions. And that's a good way to do it. Thanks for the call, Kevin, Do appreciate it. Eighty to eight Rich one one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one give me a call if you have a question about technology.
Now.
To protect your Gmail account, Google just introduced a new feature called Recovery Contacts.
Set this up.
You have no idea how many people call me or email me and say Rich I can't access my phone number for my Google account. I can't access my recovery email, and they want to send me a code to that email or that phone number, and I can't get it, so that means I cannot log into my account. Don't let this happen to you. They have a feature called Recovery Contacts. You basically pick a trusted friend or family
member who can help verify your identity. So if you lose access, like if you forget your password or you you know, don't have access to your phone or another email account, Google will send that code to your recovery contact. So say it's your spouse, you would just say, hey, Lynn, did Google just send you that code? Give me that Now I can type it into the website and that will help you securely regain access. And they don't have access to your account in any way, shape or form.
They're just almost like, think about it like a two factor authentication, but your friend is the two factor. So do this with someone you trust, even though they couldn't really do anything with this, but you know, just make sure it's someone you trust. Google says it's a simple, private way to add an extra of layer of security and you can add someone you trust by going to g dot co slash recovery, dash Contacts. Okay, you will have to log in if you go to that website
g dot co. That's a standard Google shortcut slash recovery. I'm going to it right now, Dash Contacts. Okay, I just typed it in and yes, it will make you verify you are who you say you are. You log in there and then you can add someone. I'll put that up on the website. Rich on tech dot TV. All right, let's see how long do we have. What do we got?
Oh?
Yes, two minutes. Oh my gosh, I still have two minutes. Okay, let's do let's do an email question. I've got so many email questions here. GW from Pasadena rites in. I've been using TurboTax on my Windows ten computer for years now. They're telling me it won't work for tax here twenty twenty five unless I upgrade to Windows eleven. My computer can't be upgraded, so my only choices are buying a new one using the online version, or switching to another
service like H and R block, all more expensive. I think this is something that's going to catch a lot of people by surprise, GW.
Good point.
But yes, Windows ten Microsoft ended free support and security updates on October fourteenth, which means I think TurboTax is just saying, look, I know that Microsoft is doing the extended security updates and a lot of people have signed up for those to extend Windows ten support, but Turbo tax can't be sure, and so I think they're just playing it safe here and saying, look, we can't let you know. Taxes are a very secure thing and you're
putting all your personal information in here. We don't want to take any chances. So again, TurboTax says you have two options. Upgrade to Windows eleven if your PC supports it, or use Turbo tax online. And I think you'll find that Turbo tax online kind of mimics what the desktop program does. I know they still sell these things in boxes at stores, but you can do a lot of this online. I've gotten to the point where I do
my taxes for my phone practically. That's how that's how simple these things have gotten with all these software updates and things.
So that's a good warning. GW. Thanks for that.
Let's see here. Oh Tom just asked for that. That's interesting. Tom asked the same question that we just had on the air. Let's see finally here, let's see Tom from Los Alamitos says, I keep seeing ads for the game Royal Kingdom. It's promoted as having no ads inside the app. So how does it make money? Are they selling our phone data to someone? I don't understand this business model,
and honestly it's a little scary. Yes, apps like that usually make money by collecting your data and in app purchases. So if you want to get to that next level, you want to skip something, you pay and they make a lot of money on in app purchases even if they don't show ads. So it's always smart to check the app's privacy policy to see what kind of data they're collecting before you download it. And I take it
a step further. If you look on the app store page for any app that you're downloading, there is a section that says in app purchases, and so if you scroll down underneath, let's see where is it okay underneath where it says information in app purchases. So a free game like Roadblocks, oh, you can buy premium for five dollars. You can buy a subscription, you can buy a lifetime. I mean, there's so many things. So check that out. And if I have time, I'll check out this Royal Kingdom.
Let's just see if they have in app purchases, like I wondered, Royal Kingdom. Royal Kingdom free game. So yes, it is free to download.
There it is. But lo and behold we scroll down. Are there in app purchases?
Oh?
You better bet there are.
You can get a mini coin pack for two bucks, King's Favor for seven dollars, Superior Chess for twenty dollars. So yes, these apps are not hurting for cash. Eighty to eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one Coming up. We'll take some more of your calls and I will get to the gadget of the week.
Welcome back to rich On Sech. I've been grooving to this new song from Tame and Paula. If you know them, the songs.
Are usually epic, but this this is called Dracula, and it just came out probably time for the holiday.
Obviously.
I mean, I'm not a marketing specialist, but I mean I just have a hunch. But it's such a it's such a catchy, fun tune. It's like dark but like kinda you know, it's just whimsical. I like that kind of stuff. Uh, are you subscribing to My free newsletter is packed with helpful tips, tricks, and the latest tech news I think you should know kind of like this show. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit sign up. Gadget of the Week this week the Alura Tech e paper Wi Fi digital photo frame. This is
kind of the next generation. You know, we've talked about these digital photo frames, but the next generation of frames. And this is officially a trend. Even though I've been testing this for a couple months now, it's now a trend. The trend is e ink displays. So this is a wireless e paper photo frame that looks more like traditional art. So the alorateech is a thirteen point three inch ePaper frame uses the same technology found in e reader, so the images look like they're printed, not backlit.
And it's cool because you don't need AC power.
So if you want to put a picture like above your mantle or something, and you don't want a wire running to the digital frame, this runs you up to two years on a charge. You know, obviously depending on how much you update it. And again you can this connects to Wi Fi. You can send it right, send photos right from the app. They appear on the screen and you know they've got a white or black mat so you can change it to blend in with your decore.
And it's good for family photos digital r. I had one of those famous picassos in there at some point, so and then I've got family art.
It's pretty cool.
So it's just it's a different way of thinking about an ePaper frame or a digital photo frame. I will tell you it's not going to look as good as a backlit picture, but it looks different. It looks almost like just like an actual piece of art. So I find that art looks really good because it just looks like you would not know that this is digital in any way, shape or form if you look at it. And this is this is three hundred and fifty dollars
available now at a Laura tech dot com. And this ePaper kind of thing is having a moment right now because just this week, the brand that I talk about a lot with these frames, Aura, they just launched their own or a ink frame using e ink with color Display Tech. So again now we're seeing the trend of a couple of companies are doing this and it's just different.
It's cool.
You know, you don't have to run out and change your frame up right away, but it's just kind of nice to know about it, Like if you want to put that frame above your mantle and you don't want something that's a cord dangling, just kind of fun. Gadsut of the Week sponsored by shop Back. This segment is sponsored by Shopback. Holiday shopping is coming. Now is the time to set yourself up to save. Shop Back lets
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Shop back they have on a mobile app, and by the way, they have a browser extension too. That's the easiest way because when you're on a website that's supported, you'll get to pop up that says, hey, do you want to get free money?
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I'm only well, you probably heard.
The news this week that chat gbt launched its own web browser. It's called chat gpt at Liss. And what's neat about this is it works the way that I've been talking about on this show. It's your web browser with chat gybt on the right hand side. So the idea is this is a super assistant that understands what you're doing online and helps you do it faster. So instead of switching between chat gbt and your web browser like you're probably already doing at list, lets you ask
questions in the same window. So it's one window for everything. And what's really neat is that chat gybt can see and read the page that you're on. So if you're on a website, it can understand what that website is and you can ask it questions about that website. Hey, summarize this movie review? Or do you think this product has it compared to other products out there? What's the price like on this product? It could also summarize and
compare information for multiple websites. And the neat thing is I found the killer functionality here is E so I have my Gmail open. I've got the chat EBT. I used to have to copy and paste. Now it just reads the email and says, hey, here's a response. Just you know, here you go copy and paste it right in there. It's so easy anyway. Available now on mac os for free, Windows iOS and Android.
Coming soon. It's called chat GBT at list.
Coming up, we'll talk Samsung's VR headset right here, I'm rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple A Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Well, this week we got a new XR headset, Samsung Galaxy x R VR headset, at a time when you know, we've got a bunch on the market, everything from Apple's top of the line Vision Pro to the Quest headsets to a
lot of other types of headsets out there. So let's see what Samsung is doing differently and whether it's worth the splurge. Joining me now is Scott Stein, editor at Large at c NEET, to discuss Samsung Galaxy XR. You're wearing it right now. It looks a lot like Apple Vision Pro. It does, explain what this is for someone who may not understand what an XR headset is.
Sure, so the Samsung Galaxy XR is their return to VR and AR. Samsung and Google have both been in this space before, but it's kind of in between where Meta is with the Quest headset and Apple is the Vision Pro. From my using it, you know, this is built off chips that are more similar to the Quest headsets, but with the display technology like Apple Vision Pro. But the thing that's different, why are they doing this?
It's all about AI right now.
Gemini.
The ability for Gemini to see live through the cameras and microphones on this headset is the new thing because no other headset is currently doing that, and that's directly related to where they're going next year with smart glasses.
So that's cool.
So wait, anything that you're looking at, like if you're looking at a mountain range or you know, you're fixing a car, you can just say, hey, Gemini, like, explain this to me.
Yeah, so you could say, what with with varying degrees of success, you know, which is true with AI in general, But what it can do is it you could totally see things, So you could say, you know, what is that over there.
It could describe, you know, what's.
In the room with you.
It can describe what's on the screen. It can it can summarize or try to bring up related things to whatever's up there. It could be YouTube or you know, if you brough up Netflix. It has the ability to see stuff. But what I found so far is like knowing exactly where it can control things is a little hit and miss. But I think Google is working on this as a development, you know, stepping stone to figure out what else they can be doing on glasses.
Okay, interesting, So it's got all the AI stuff built in. So I heard you can also do like circle to search on this thing too.
Yeah, so circle the search is kind of a similar to if you want to be more targeted, you could circle a particular area and then it could search for that or give you more information about that. I think it's one of the interesting things is you could be
a little more targeted with where it looks. You also can give it permission to only look at certain apps, so if you're worried about it like seeing everything in your space, which I think is important because we're heading to a point where everyone's afraid of the idea of cameras on your face anyhow, and what is going to go on with tech and big tech and AI with this, there have to be some idea of some privacy cutoffs or abilities to not have it be aware of things too.
How's the quality on this display, like, how does it compare to what Meta's doing and what Apple's doing with Vision Pro.
Yeah, so this is a micro al led display technology which Apple is also using on Vision Pro, and Samsung's resolution for this, to no surprise, is higher and it's four K displays paride, it's a little bit higher. It looks equivalently sharp and good. The one thing is that I would say the total av experience on this headset there's a little more plasticky and the fit is a
little different. It's not as ideal for watching movies. But you can put screens in YouTube and Netflix anywhere, just like Vision Pro, so you know that capability is totally there in this headset.
Okay, now you mentioned the two apps that are that are noticeably absent from Vision Pro, so Apple huge company. I mean how they don't have the support of YouTube and Netflix is beyond me.
On this Vision Pro.
This has it because it's it's from Google, I guess from the side of Google side of things.
But tell me about those apps.
Is that is that kind of like a good thing that these apps are on there because they're so popular.
Yeah, well, Netflix, it turns out when I launched it, I don't I don't see any real difference between that and launching it in a browser. So I don't think it's a tremendous loss that the vision Pro doesn't have it, But it's annoying because I just wanted to able to launch easily and not bring it up in a browser. There's a little surprised so far. I didn't see Netflix having any deep immersive features in the app that's on
the headset. But YouTube is great because it has a lot of built in three hundred and sixty degree and three D and immersive videos that have been there over the years that you can watch on this headset. And that is you can do that in headset if you get into the browser on a quest but you can't do it on a vision Pro. And the other frustrating thing that Apple hasn't gotten into that's even bigger than me is maps. Not that I would navigate with a headset,
but just the ability to explore places. The Google Maps app that's on this headset is great and you can get into immersive views of all sorts of locations. And also there are some locations that have been three D scanned by Google. Not a ton, but some restaurants in big cities. You can go in and you can walk around and look at the space and it's a fantastic use of what you'd.
Use this for.
Now.
When I was at Google's Io, I put on a headset. Was that an early version of this or something? Because it was like it had that was it?
Okay?
Yeah?
So yeah, it was called Project Muhan before I know it's called Galaxy XR. It may have had some design changes, but I think it's very similar to what I wore last year, also getting an early demo of this. There's a band that tightens it. The design of this is more like VR headsets I've seen in the past. Metaquest
Pro had this type of design. There's still a battery pack that this thing has to connect to, which is connected just like the Vision Pro you know, with a tether, which is which is not ideal.
No, but if they're both doing it, I mean clearly there's a reason, because we're just not there yet with all the battery technology to put it on your face. So I guess my question is who needs this? I mean it's it's eighteen hundred dollars, which is, you know, half the price of what Apple's charging thirty five hundred for their headset. But that's all a lot of money for number one, a first generation product and something that I'm not sure I need.
No, you don't need it, And actually I was just talking to someone on the phone about this yesterday. When it comes to this type of tech, I think there's only three types of products right now that you still don't need, but I think are worthwhile getting the Metaquest headsets because they're they're super affordable and they play games.
AI glasses like the basically Meta ray bands at this point, but the Warby Parker one's coming next year, so I'm really fascinated by Google and display glasses, which again you don't need them, but one's made by Extra Real and Vitcher are are fun ways to display everything. Else like Vision Pro Galaxy X are, they're either too expensive too experimental, and I agree with you, I think I think the Vision Pro is far more thinness, but has also been out there a lot longer and is more expensive, but
I don't think people need that either. And I and even though this is half the price, I don't think people need this either. But I think it's it's much clearer with Google and Samsung, they've already laid out and I wrote a story about it today how this is building towards the glasses they're making after this, So it's interesting that they really are using this as a developer platform, and I think that's a lot of why it exists right now.
Yeah, and I've no doubt that this is incredible technology and I love it like it is when you put on one of these headsets, it is a completely different experience than.
What you are used to see the.
World around you overlaid with information and to be able to you know, just being in VR in general. And this is kind of XR, so you can see the world and things. But like, it really is incredible. It's just so expensive that it's tough to like get this into the mass kind of hands of folks.
Yeah, and it's still big. But one of the cool things about this type of design if you've never worn a headset like this, because it doesn't have It's not sticking to your face, it's resting over it. It actually feels when you're wearing it like it's continuing the world
around you. Because I have more sense of the peripheral view, and then the mixed reality which uses the pass through cameras, it just feels like they all blend, which is actually a really neat trick on this versus the vision pro so I could I could still look at something on my phone, I could look across the room and still see stuff in the headset a lot easier. But I think also with Android XR, people should be aware Google is particularly interested in knitting a lot of different headsets
and glasses into the mix. So you know, unlike one manufacturer doing this, we could have many manufacturers developing products here. I'm not sure when they're all going to emerge, but you know, exactly like you could have. You could have other VR headsets coming out, other glasses and other connected things, and that means like you definitely would want to hold off and see what's coming.
Right, Because this is a new platform, Android XR, which means it's kind of like Android. Anyone can take advantage of it, and that means that anyone can one up the other company by making something cheaper, smaller, lighter, faster, whatever. And I like that idea of the mixed reality where it like kind of blends. So if what you're saying is I'm understanding it like I'm looking at something on
my paper. That paper is almost lit up like a digital frame or like of digital newspaper, I can read something on there, but everything else around me I'm seeing, like my actual desktop, which is kind of not being affected in a way.
Yeah.
So, and I think that's going to be a little more what it's going to feel like when you have smart glasses with displays, when they get better and better, that type of tech is going to start feeling like that where it's literally overlaid with your world or you have more focus in a particular part. And I think the openness of this is really interesting. It's not, you know, Gemini AI right now is the main AI that it's using.
But I was asking Google's Android head about this in the story that I think they're aiming to have more AI platforms work on this, and the goal is to work with phones and watches and rings down the road, which are all you know on the Android ecosystem, but Google already exists across a lot of devices and platforms, so it's interesting in terms of, you know where that
could possibly go. Whereas Apple is clearly designing it to work with Apple products, and Meta is a little bit in a corner where they have their own products but that they haven't figured out how to work with everything else seamlessly yet.
Right.
Well, there's a lot going on with Android because there's so many different manufacturers and Gemini has been built into just about everything at this point. It just keeps going. So that's going to be interesting to see how that all develops. All right, Scott Sein, thanks so much from c net. If you want to check him out, just google c net Scott segn. He covers all things vr AR for them and he does a great job at it.
All right, coming up, we are going to talk about Oh we're going to take some more of your calls. Eighty to eight Rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two, four one zero one.
Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Let's go to Kristen in Arcadia. Kristin, you're on with rich Hi, Rich how are you good? Thanks for holding sure?
I was telling about photosticks like the thumb drives that you put it into your computer or your phone and it extracts all the photos and eliminates duplicates and things like that. I was just wondering if you could give me a recommendation on what the best one or the easiest one to use would be.
I don't trust them. I don't.
There's one that's advertised everywhere. I have emailed them to get a to get a sample, you know, to review, to try it, and they will not write me back. So I do not I do not trust the advertised the ones that you see online. So I don't think there's an easy fix for this. I don't think there's a simple way to do this. What are you trying to accomplish? And I can help that way?
I think I'm just trying to get all my photos in one place and just have a bad backup copy of them. But I also don't want ten versions of the same photo in the right in the backup.
So well, I mean, there's so many ways to manage a photo collection, and I think that there's not one way for everyone. I have the What I do is I just dump all my photos into Google Photos and while It does not find duplicates, which is absolutely insane to me. It does find similar pictures and it groups
them together, which makes life a lot easier. So if you took like ten pictures in a row, it will group those pictures now in a stack, they call it, and then you can pick the one that the computer says is the best and just delete all the rest.
And so that's kind of.
A way to management manage it, okay. But what I would say is number one. You probably want if you're going to start organizing your photos, you've got them in your computer, you want to make sure you have a backup first before you do anything. So what I would do is just take your collection, put it on a hard drive and just now you have a backup before you start going in and making changes. That's number one.
And then you can use a program like the one that I've tested that I like is called Duplicate photos Fixer dot com. Duplicate photos Fixer dot com. They have a version for Mac, for Windows, for Android and iOS, and you can use that to get rid of your duplicates on your computer now, okay, And then once you do that, you could go through and kind of do this and then you can back them up. So got it backing them up? Are you on iPhone? Are you on a Mac or Windows?
I'm on a Mac.
Oh you're on a Mac. Okay, so with Mac. You know, there's also another app that I like called Gemini. It's from uh it's from MacPaw and that will find duplicates as well, so you can use you can check out those two programs and see which one you like better. But once you have them on the you know, all figured out and you're kind of you know, you've got them narrowed down to the ones you want, then you can put them into I would do a cloud service and that could be iCloud if you want to keep
it easy. But if you have Amazon Prime, Amazon gives you unlimited photo storage, so you can dump them all into there as a backup and then they can just be backed up into Amazon Photos and that's free. The only downside to that is that it does not give you a lot of storage for videos, so you would just want to do.
The pictures in there.
But the one that I like the most is really Google Photos. I think it's still the best out of everything out there. It's super easy to use and the neat thing about this. You were talking about getting everything into one place. You could actually go to photos dot Google dot com and just drag and drop your albums in there, your your folders in there from your computer
and it will actually sort out the duplicates. So when you're uploading, that's the only time that Google will really do this is it will It will stop you from putting the same picture in twice as long as the picture is identical. If it's similar, you made some changes
this and that, it will you both. But in general, if you drag and drop the same picture, and you can try this, just take a picture and drag it into Google Photos like three times, it will only take the first one and the other ones it will not. And so that's another way of just kind of taking all your photos from this folder on your computer, dragging and dropping them in there, and it will just grab all the first run copies or whatever you want to call it. And Google also has an app for your
computer for Google Photos. It's called let's see what's it called now? I guess they just call it Google Drive at this point, but it will back up your any folders that you want on your computer to Google Photos. So if you type in Google Photos apps, oh wow, why did that do that? Let me see here?
Where is it?
Here?
They are.
So if you go to Google Photos apps, you can find the apps for your different platforms, and one of them is Google Photos your computer and let's see here. Interesting, the link is not working. That's huh, Google, you got
to fix that. But yeah, it's I think it's if you download the Google Drive app, Google Photos is built into there, and so on Google Drive you can go into your preferences and you'll see it says backing up Google Photos, and you just take whatever you can do your whole computer and just you list that as the drive. It will go through your whole computer hard drive, find every photo and upload it to Google Photos. And that's a one way upload, and it's a it's a really
handy way to get all that stuff in there. But Christin, thanks for the call today, appreciate it and get those get those photos organized. I'm gonna wait until I'm retired to do this, because there's just no way I What I do is, at the end of the day, I will go through my Google Photos app and I'll just delete, like anything nonsense from that day or maybe at the end of the week. But just managing everything in my
photos collection is just impossible at this point. And I can tell you because Google tells you how many photos I have in there.
At this point, I am backing up. Let's see what do I got here.
If you go into your Google Photos, there's a little backup complete icon and if you tap that, it'll tell you I've got two hundred and twenty two nine and thirty nine photos backed up. I am not going through those today, that is for sure. Talk to me next week. We'll see if we can do those. HBO Max before we go to break is raising prices once again, the third time in three years. HBO Max going up anywhere
from a dollar to two dollars a month. I do think HBO Max has some good programming, but the premium plan is now twenty three dollars a month. The cheapest plan now eleven dollars a month. You'll start seeing these prices for existing subscribers on November twentieth eighty eight. Rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one back after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple A rich one oh one eight seven
four to two four one zero one. This week I finished listening to the the Michael J. Fox book brand new. It's called Future Boy. So if you love Back to the Future, you will love this book. It is just about that, just the movie. So it gets into his personal life a little bit as he was an actor coming up in the world, but it's mostly about filming the movie. It's a quick, easy read. I listened to it and it was Michael J. Fox reading it, so
that was kind of fun. But it doesn't go into you know, his illness or anything like that, but or medical It just really sticks to this movie and the fact that he, you know, came up pretty fast in the world in Hollywood and then he was doing Family Ties and he was doing Back to the Future at night on the same day, which was just wild to hear and just a little like I didn't realize that Eric Stoltz was the original main character and they did a swap with Michael J. Fox, and you know, of course,
I'm sure people on the set were not happy with that, but it probably would not have been in the movie today. And we don't know, I mean, who knows, but he said he played the role very different from Eric Stultz. They filmed like six weeks of this movie with the first actor and then the rest with Michael J.
Fox.
So I'm a big Back to the Future fan, so I just ate every second of it.
I was just like, I love this, I love this, I love this.
It's just a lot of anecdotes about the set and filming and how they did things.
And it's so weird.
Because you know, I didn't grow up in Southern California, but the whole movie, like, I didn't realize where it was filmed. But yes, it was filmed in southern California, but just at these places that became other places. I mean, I know Courthouse Square at Universal obviously I worked there. I was a backlot tram tour guide at Universal Studios in Hollywood, Yes, I was, so you might have been on my tram at one point. It was a fun job.
You just basically sat there until they needed you to do a tram tour, and then you do the tram tour and then you'd sit there again and wait until they need you again.
But it's fun. There's all these like Hollywood types. I just love talking to you.
Just sit there and chat with them the whole time until your time was up, and then you go up there and you'd memorize your whole spiel, give people a backlot tour, and do it all over again. Let's go to Bob in Sunland, California. Bob, you're on with Rich Here.
Rich, I'm trying to download some medi cassettes from my digital camera to my computer. But for some reason, Windows seems to say that doesn't recognize the devices, and that's to USB. So I'm going, is there some kind of a driver that's available or a program that could use to try to do that? Well?
What type of camera is this? What's the what's the type?
Is it? Sony cassette cameras? I also have two can and still both of them are not able to be recognized by my computer. Now about something called Dazzle. I think it's about Pinnacle and it also says it doesn't recognize the USB connection.
So right, okay, I've done it.
Yeah, go ahead, I've done it before with my old Windows ninety eight. Is this the computer? I believe it not for my own Mac G four, But for some reason it's used that Windows does not support that kind of a device anymore.
Yeah, I think that's what's happening here is that these uh these devices, do they have the standard RCA cables out or no like connections?
Well, they do have the yellow table and the red on one of the cameras. Then the other ones are like a fireworks connection that you could come out also. Yeah, but other than that, I'm not sure what else I could use it to correct to the computer.
Yeah, the direct USB connection is not going to work on these as far as I know, because the USB is just not I don't know what you did in the past how that worked. But typically these cameras are not in a format where the computer can just grab that video off of the camera because it's a it's just not a format where it's it's you can pull it off like if you pop in a cell phone these days, you know you can pull the digital video
off of it, no problem. But these are typically I would assume they're recorded in an analog format, even though if they say digital and so you would need some level of conversion. Now the fire wire that would work, but you'd have to find a mac that has that connection.
I'm not even sure that's that route is worth going down.
I think the easiest way to do this since you still have the camcorder. That's like the toughest part of this whole process. But basically, you can buy one of these VHS to DVD converters which will capture video from your camquorder and put it on your computer. I think
that's the easiest way to do it. That's what I've done, And you just basically hook up your camcorder with those three cables, the red, the yellow, and the white, and then you plug it into this little device that will convert the signal from analog to digital and then your computer records it. So it's a it's a kind of a time stake. It takes a lot of time to do this because it's all done in real time, but
that's the easiest way to do it. And then you get that digital file that you can then trim, edit, upload to YouTube whatever you want, put it in your your photo collection.
That.
Yeah.
So the two that I recommend are and there's a million of these on on on Amazon. And here's the reason why I recommend these two because at the end of the day, it comes down to the software. So Bob, if you are like you know, pretty advanced with things and you can find your way around software and everything. Then go with one of the cheap ones and you can do it that way. But if you want something that's a little bit easier, Roxio makes the easy VHS
to DVD converter. That one's good. You can get an Amazon or Best Buy. And then the other one is called El Gato E L G A t O and that does the same thing, and they both have software that that I think is it's all pretty much the same, but it's just a little bit easier to understand than some of these other companies that I've ordered their products on Amazon and it just comes and it's it's like you can't figure it out. The other thing, and I have not tested this one is the clear Click. So
this is kind of an all in one. It looks like a little black box with a screen on it, and so this way you can bypass your computer completely. So you would connect the camcorder to this little device, press record and it would record it to an SD card and then you could pop out that SD card, put it in your computer and get the video. So yeah, how many tapes do you have?
Unfortunately I have about twenty and they're all about ten years old, family members and stuff like that. So I thought now would be a good time to try to send into my family was still alive to enjoy. But I've been trying a couple of months to figure out how to do it.
Yeah, these two, these two, these three methods will will really help you get a headstart on that. And I think, you know, even if you're spending one hundred dollars in one of these converters, I think that's well worth it for twenty tapes. Your those memories are going to be you know, invaluable in the future. And the other thing is, you know, you'll notice on a lot of these tapes, you know, a lot of these memories have started to
go and so you want to get them. You want to get them digitized because you know, we're talking it's probably been thirty to forty years since you captured some of these videos.
Maybe you know minimum thirty years I'm.
Guessing, right, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, so they decline, you know, in time, just like us. Right, I'm not as as a surprise, I used to be thirty years ago. Anyway, it's a fun project, and it is it is something that does take some time, but is once you get it done. It's if you feel really good getting this, and like you said, you have these cam quarters, which is literally the toughest part. Like when I was doing this, I had to go on Amazon to buy you know, stuff I had to I
had to borrow them from friends and family. But you know it's or sorry I went on ebaying by by a camquarder. But yeah, so anyway, good luck with the project, Bob.
I'll get fixtures, all right.
Another fun thing about this is that once you take those videos. I did this, I dropped them all into Google Photos, and I'm not kidding. It will find people's faces in those videos. So if you want to find a video, a picture, a clip of Grandma, you can find it because Google Photos will say, oh, Grandma's in this video, or whoever it is, Uncle Marty whatever. It's so cool that it goes frame by frame on those videos that you upload and it will identify the faces
in them and the places. So if you captured a video in Italy back in the nineties, you just type in Italy it'll find that video.
So it's really really it to me.
Digitizing your old pictures and videos feels like you're unlocking them for the next generation. And I'll be honest, I did a lot of mine. I still have a lot more to go. Both at my mom's house. She's got a ton of pictures that she's kind of holding on too and not letting me get to and I'm like, mom, I gotta get these things. We did some there when I went home one time, but she doesn't really want to send them to me. It's kind of a thing
where you have to be there to do it. And then the video tapes, I've got a bunch at my place that I still need to do. I'm a busy guy, so you know, it's been proven to be tough to do that. But I did a bunch of them, and I did a lot of the VHS tapes. So did almost all the VHS. But I still have some other versions of tapes, like the High eight and the what was the other version? There was one of like a some version that we used to use for like news
gathering back in the day. So all my old news stuff is on there, like when I first started out in the business. So but it is fun to have those things digitized. And then you got to grab the family bring them into the living room and make them sit through these boring When we used to videotape things, we used to videotape the entire event, like from start to finish. Like it would be like Dad would be on the camcorder and he would just start recording and
it would be like thirty minutes of nothing. Nowadays we only record, like when we have a kid's birthday party, you literally record your kid blown out the candles and that's it. It's like a thirty second clip. You don't have anything else. There's no perspective, there's no you know. It used to be you take the cam cord, you go around the house, be like, you know, Aunt Mabel, say hello, you know, like say hi to the camera and they'd be like hello. They take their cigarette out,
you know, put it down and they say hello. Was your family party like that?
Mine was?
Hey, can you put down that beer and say hi to the kids?
Was your family party like that?
Eighty eight rich one On one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Back after this.
Rich Tomuro here hanging out with you talking technology, triple eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Uh The website is rich on tech dot TV. Uh there you can hit contacts submit your question that way. We were talking about old family parties and uh, I have so many memories. I grew up in a big family, five kids, you know, my parents, and uh so it was just always always it's just always a party, like any day of the week.
But we used to have a lot of family parties because it was always someone's birthday or a holiday. And I won't I won't mention the family member. I don't think they listen, but they might. But I remember my family. I had one family member who always used to say children should be seen and not heard. And I just looked that up thanks to the magic of AI. This the It's an outdated and harmful expression that is widely
rejected today by child development experts. The phrase suggests that children should be presentable but quiet in the company of adults.
Uh yeah.
Traced back to the fifteenth century England, child's thoughts and opinions were less important than an adults. I mean, we know I've got two kids, but believe me, we know that's not the case anymore. Kids are like it's gone, what eighty like? Kids are you know? Kids says one thing. You're like, hold on, what let me hold on? Write that down? That was amazing kidding. But my wife, Corrap says the same thing. She says that she had a family member who's said the same exact thing. Children should
be seen and not heard. That is not the case anymore, and that is not the case kids are now. It's such a different world that we live in where kids are just part of everything now. I mean it's like, I mean it's funny you go to like a fancy restaurant and kids are just there, like on their iPad. It's like dad's paying like eighty bucks for a stake and the kid is literally on like roadblocks.
I could care less that they're there.
Amazon Luna is adding a game Night and free Prime games. So Amazon Luna is Amazon's cloud gaming platform. They just redesigned it and now Prime members get accessed to over fifty games included for free. And one of the big additions is called game Night, which is a collection of twenty five plus family friendly local multiplayer games.
What does this mean?
It means you can play games with your friends in front of your TV like casual games. You can use your phone as a controller, so you scan a QR code on the TV to join in. There's classics like Clue, Ticket to Ride, Angry Birds, and I was wondering if they would include this, and sure enough they did. Jackbox, so you know Jackbox, the party game we played a.
Lot during the pandemic. That is included.
There's also an original title called Courtroom Chaos starring Snoop Dogg. This is an AI powered voice driven improv game where you play out absurd court cases before judge Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg's got his hand in everything. All of this runs on devices you have like your Fire TV devices and your phones, your tablets and that kind of stuff.
So kind of cool.
Anyway, if you have an Amazon Fire TV device, definitely check out Amazon Luna if you want to play games with your friends.
That's fun. Let's see.
Let's see Carlos in Brooksville, Carlos in Florida.
What's up?
Okay, what's going on?
Thanks for taking my call? But what is up with the I get a phone call? It could be an eight hundred number. It could be a local like I'm in the three five two area, coulde it could be a local number.
I look at it.
I don't know. It doesn't say who it is. I pick it up and I say hello, and they're silent. Thirty seconds later it hangs up. Yes, what kind of information are they getting from that?
Well?
Sometimes lately, lately they've been saying. Lately they've been saying goodbye.
Well, here's what I think is happening. I mean, there's so many of these scams out there with these these numbers.
I'm not kidding.
My phone, my personal phone got on some sort of list. I am not kidding when I tell you, Carlos, it is getting a call now almost every fifteen minutes. And thank god that Apple added this call screening feature because that's the only thing I'm saving my number right now. Otherwise I have to change my phone number. But I'm not kidding. I've got unknown callers. I've got twenty two in the past three days, so it's just like non
stop anyway. What they're trying to do I think is active identify, like if your phone number is active, So in general they're calling and there's like, so, what's happening is do scammers feed a million phone numbers into their computer system computer system dials all those numbers automated very quickly gets through to you.
They know that ninety nine percent.
Of those nobody's gonna pick up, nobody's gonna answer, or it's gonna be some sort of call screening, so it just hangs up. But when you pick up your phone and you say hello, all of a sudden, they're saying, like I said earlier, we got a live one. We got one, and then it will take that number in a route it to someone who's in some sort of boiler room somewhere that's taking these calls, and they will pick up and say, oh, hello, Carlos, Yes, we would
love to sell you on this or whatever. You know, you've got to warn out or whatever they try to do to scam you. And that's really what they're doing, is they are trying to get a live lead, and so that kind of delay you're hearing is all of their systems working to kind of, you know, get that call, verify that there's a live human on the other end, and then flip that call to a live scam artist that's going to try to take you for everything you're worth.
The reason why you're hearing goodbye is when something doesn't work like their system, you know, times out, or it doesn't get to a person, or all the scammers are busy, you know, so maybe they're all on calls with other people. So that's what I think is happening there. But there are so many different scams out there. I actually this
is probably why I'm getting so many calls. I answer a lot of these scam calls, and I will try to see like what they're doing, just to kind of get educated on what they're trying to do to us. Because if they're asking, like, hey, Rich, you know, can we get your social just to confirm things, and I'm like, dude, come on, like you got to try harder than that. Thanks for the call, Carlos, appreciate it quickly before we
go to our next inner. Verizon has a new home Internet plan, a wireless home Internet plan called Light twenty five dollars a month. That's after all the discounts, but it's for light Internet users, so think email, web browsing. Streaming shows speeds range from ten to twenty five megabits per second, and it doesn't it slows down after one hundred and fifty gigs, but it always stays online. So anyway, twenty five dollars a month home Internet light from Verizon.
So if you want to get something that's cheap and it just does the trick home Internet light from Verizon New Plan.
Check it out.
Coming up, we're going to talk about rental cars that get delivered to you autonomously. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Christy writes in Rich, I enjoy your Saturday radio show and newsletter. I've learned so much on the past. You recommended a robot vacuum, but I can't remember which one. Can you remind me
what models suggested? And your favorite password manager? Oh, Christy, you just want to know it all. But yes, it's the robo Rock.
Is it the F twenty five?
Hold on, I got to make sure I got this one, robo Rock F twenty five. It's a vacuum mop all in one which I love. And then for password manager for free, I like Bitwarden, which is free, open source works and all the platforms.
It is really really good.
And then Bob writes, in a few weeks ago you raved about whisper flow on your show. I tried it on my Mac and it was really impressive, fast, accurate, and easy. But then I started seeing other user's dictation show up, which made me think they could see mine. Contacted their support. I only got to thank you for your patience. I'm blind and had high hopes for whisper flow, but this is a deal breaker. I hate to go back to Apple Dictation. Is there a reliable, secure dictation
app for Mac that does not require Windows? Yeah, whisper flow should still be perfect.
It is not.
You know, they've got privacy built in. Believe me. I use it on a daily basis. I will tell you. And this might have corresponded to when you had this happen. That AWS outage drove me nuts because nothing was working with whisper flow. And then the other thing is you'll notice this with all these ais. If you're recording and transcribing, you don't say anything. It just hallucinates stuff, it'll make
up things. So maybe that's what was happening. You were pausing or something for a very long time, and that was just bringing up random words that you might have thought were other people's. But with all that said, if you want to try an alternative. There is another one I've been testing. It's called monologue mon monologue, I mean, you know how to spell that monologue for mac And they've got a dictation app that's very similar monologue dot t.
So check it out. Yeah there you go. All right, we've got Thomas vander Oh here from they they are doing remote driven door to door car rental. Let's talk to Thomas about how this is all working. Thomas, thanks for joining me.
Hi Rich be on air here.
Yeah, So what they is there is a complete new mobility service and actually doesn't exist anywhere outside of Las
Vegas these days. And basically how it works is you can just open the way app and you click a button and within a few minutes you just get an electric car delivered to your doorsteps so wherever you are, right and no person in there, because that's been taken care of our remote driver who basically remotely brings you that car, and one that car is in front of your door, you as a customer, you get inside and
you actually drive the car yourself. Right, So then it becomes a car rental and you can do whatever you want with a car, right. You can use it for twenty minutes, for two hours to go grocery shopping, or for two days.
It doesn't matter because it's very flexible.
And at the end of the right, let's say you're in front of your office or in front of your destination. You just get out and you don't have to find parking because then another remote driver comes and parks the car for you.
Okay, this is such a wild concept because you keep saying remote driver. So someone is drying this car remotely from like and I've seen this in the past. I saw Demo another company that was doing this, and basically they were at like a almost like a gaming setup with like a bunch of screens, and they were with a steering wheel in like an office building and they're literally driving the car down the streets of Las Vegas.
Is that what's happening here?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Imagine you know, a centralized office space right where people come.
To work the job of the future.
If you also remote drivers, they come there, they sit
in front of a remote driving station. So you have displaced monitors, you have a remote driving steering wheel, you have gas pedals and brake pedals, and you hear the audio from the vehicle and then in real time video gets transmitted from a vehicle that can be in the same city, right, but it can also be hundreds of miles away, transmit the video and the audio over redundant networks, and then that remote driver basically takes it all into account and then remotely drives that car.
So what do I put on my resume for this remote driver?
Like?
Am I like, oh, I'm good at Mario or Forza.
Yeah, we haven't seen that in CVS, or at least I'm I'm not aware of that. But yeah, we see a lot of remote drivers actually who are Uber drivers, right, who might not like the interaction often with rowdy customers, right, because you don't have this physical interaction with with the person in the car. So we see many folks coming from Uber or Lift. Also a lot of female drivers,
right because of these security benefits. We also have younger folks but also elderly folks, all different kinds of you know, drivers who are interested in new technology and who also really enjoy being surrounded by other teammates to have coffee breaks, have bathroom breaks, right, to have a good time with other remote drivers around you.
It's such a brilliant idea because I lived when I lived in the New York area, I use a thing called zip car. This was many many of your and the toughest part was you had to get to the car to rent it. Now, the whole rental process was automated. You would, you know, open it up with your phone or whatever. I can't remember exactly how we did it, you know, but getting to the car and then dropping off the car at a certain time was always like such a pain. This is you get the car on
demand on the app. It delivers it to the front of wherever you are, and then when you're done with it, you can be at the same place or a completely different place and just someone will remote drive it off exactly.
Yeah, I think zip car is a good comparison to the zip card is obviously car rentals. But I think I mean, we've been working on this now for over seven years with over one hundred and fifty people to make this technology work, and it just doesn't exist anywhere. And the what I find what really drives us is that we believe this new mobility service we.
By the way, we call this driverless rental cars.
Right, so we see the future where hopefully there will be robotaxis kind of the next generation of taxis or right hailing, and then there will be driverless rental cars. This is the concept that that we build, which is the next generation of course of car rental right or car sharing, as well as private car ownership right. And we believe this will significantly change how we live in
cities hopefully. You know, we want to be seen as the company that got rid of private co ownership in cities because they're clogging our streets and not moving very much. And the main reason why we believe it's going to be so so big because it is door to door right, so we don't have to walk and.
You don't have to park.
But at the same time, it's half the price of the next best alternative, which is right hailing right, so it's by far, by far the most affordable way to get from A to B. And by lowering this price point, we really hope that we see a lot of people and we start seeing that using our service. You know, they day in and day out to get from A to B in cities.
So you're doing this in Las Vegas, how do you scale up in other cities and also places where this type of thing may not be allowed.
Yeah, so it's super exciting right now in Las Vegas. Right, so we cross over twenty five thousand trips, right, so you can actually get us in downtown Las Vegas. You can also get us on this strip right where there's all the hotels. We're growing now to one hundred vehicles, right and then beyond that in twenty twenty six. And yeah, we don't want to just be in Las Vegas, but we also want to launch other cities, right, so there is a backlock of cities that we've been talking to. Actually,
a lot of cities really want us to come. How you can imagine this, and we made this public. We recently actually remotely drove in San Francisco right from Las Vegas, So think about that. Unlike, for example, robot taxis where you have to do a lot of you know a lot of time to go into a new city, with remote driving, you don't have to create very intensive you know, three D often based on lighter maps in the city,
but it's a much faster process. So within like one to two weeks, we were able to remotely drive in San Francisco without any person inside, but from Las Vegas, So you can think about that. We have our centralize remote driving center in Las Vegas, and then we can just launch other cities.
So you can activate a new city pretty quickly without you know, building a big, you know place for people to drive remotely.
They could drive from anywhere. In the future.
I imagine people theoretically be able to drive from their homes too.
I mean that's you know, actually, it's funny.
We just had a massive announcement in one of the newspapers where it says a home office for drivers. So many people think that that will be possible. It might be actually also downe in the let's say medium future. But of course, our remote driving center is highly like technology basically of course redundant power, redundant fiber, there's all
kinds of you know, lock ins and so forth. So there's there's a lot of redundancy, safety, security and so forth that happens on the remote driver center side.
So let's say for.
The near future, it will still be in a centralized, centralized location.
We're talking with the Thomas vander Oh of Vey dot iovey dot io. They are basically a rental car that's delivered driver list to your wherever you are, and then you can drop it off wherever you want and the remote driver will pick it up and virtually, I guess I should say, and just drive it back to the next person or whatever. Well, can you ever install this technology in someone's car, like a personal car, like like my car? Could you adapt it to like where I can make money by you using it?
So that's basically down the line what we call integration to personal cars right now. So if you think about our technologies as a camera based system, so we don't need a lot of computers, we don't need light, oars, radars and all like the many senses that robotaxis need. So it's a very very inexpensive technology that you have to put put on vehicles. It takes in order to adapt to a new vehicle model. It takes a few weeks, right, So it's not like that we can just put it
on any car. If you happen to have a Kia Electric e Nero that's the one that we're using, we could also put it onto your personal car. But yeah, it's not that we can just take our technology and put it onto any car right away. Having said that, we have you know, various partnerships in the works. One that we announced with stillentis which is like RAM and
you know Pujol. And the exciting thing is that all the new vehicles that are being produced, they already have cameras, right, They all have the software and the pieces that is
needed to basically make a vehicle remote driveable. So we see a future but that takes probably still like a couple of years, two three years maybe where you start seeing from the production line, you know, personal cars or any kind of vehicle being remote drivable, right because you don't need to add any additional hardware on these vehicles
because they already have the cameras and so forth. So then in your personal car, you can get a car and then say, okay, I don't want to part my own car, so you can get a remote valet or maybe had a few glasses to drink at the party, and that car drives you back right fully, So you have your own personal chauffeur or drives your kids to school, or the Airbnb of cars, you can share your car
with friends and families or with a larger network. So all these things will be possible, but it will take a little bit of time just because that needs full integration with the automobiles.
With the tech stack built into the car. All right, Thomas Vandro a fascinating conversation. Check it out. It's vay dot Io. Next time you're in Las Vegas, get a rental car delivered driverless, and then you drive. You take over and drive it, and then you just return it. Eighty eight rich one oh one. We're gonna do feedback coming up right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. We are going to get right into the feedback segment
because see it is overflowing this week. Jan writes in l L listening and OMG, children should be seen and not heard. Came out of my father's mouth on a regular basis like you. I grew up in New Jersey, Italian family, second of seven. Wouldn't trade it for anything. Enjoy your show. My tech life started selling IBM typewriters, ending with Cisco. I'm obviously much older than you, but thrilled to have been in tech. Thanks for all you do. Jan,
Oh Jan, I'm glad I'm not the only one. Okay, So I guess that was a thing that people said. Karen writes in thank you, I found a great local tech who did exactly what you suggested from my Windows ten to eleven upgrade. I now have a Microsoft account and I'm all set for another year. He's a fan of you two. I watch you regularly on TV. I'm constantly amazed at your knowledge. You're such a nice guy and so smart.
Oh thank you, Karen. I'll let you talk all day.
To take the time to help someone like me who's not very techy, Ron writes in I know I'm a bit behind, but I wanted to mention something that might help the listener who lost music files on their Mac or iPhone. Apple still offers iTunes Match, even though they don't promote it much anymore. It stores all your music in the cloud, including songs rip from CDs, and it
does not count against your cloud storage. You can stream or download your songs anytime, and if you upload a lower quality track, Apple replaces it with a higher quality version. It's about twenty five dollars a year, and I found it worth every penny. Have a blessed day, Rich Thanks for your show. Your attitude, patience, and knowledge are all
greatly appreciated. Love the variety of things you cover. Wow, iTunes Match with sort of this middle technology back in the day when we were going from our own collections to the cloud. But it sounds like they still offer it, and if you have your own collection, easy way to take advantage of that. Paul from Columbus, Indiana says Rich, I enjoy your show, but I wanted to point out
that Apple TV Plus is more than just comedies. They're doing incredible work in sci fi with shows like for All Mankind, Foundation, Invasion, Dark Matter, Silo, Monarch, and The Gorge. That's why I subscribe. If you're into high quality sci fi shows, give them a try. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. I think that was last week I said that I'm paying all this money for Apple TV Plus I only watch like one thing.
Maybe I'll give those a shot.
Todd writes in Rich great newsletter about your Japan trip. I thought I was the only one still using STM bags. Microcenter used to carry them years ago, and I really liked them. Thanks again for your trip report. I'm still looking through your travel gear to see what I can add to my own bag. Yes, last week's newsletter was everything I brought to Japan, and Yes, Ronald writes in along the same notes, Hey, Rich, with all the tech gear you packed, did you have any room left for clothes.
I've heard that if you do what you love is your job, you never work a day in your life. Enjoy my suitcase. My carry on was mostly gadgets. My suitcase was all my clothes, and I've got packing down to a science. Believe me, down to a science. I do not bring one thing that I do not need. Leo writes in, once again, great show. I have to disagree with your advice to toss that spare wired keyboard.
As someone who refurbishes and repairs computers, I've seen plenty of situations where having one on hand can save the day, like when you spill coffee on your main keyboard right before work. Plug in the spare and you're back up and running instead of heading to the store. And yes, keyboards do go bad. Thank you, Leo. Yeah, Leo writes in often too either dispute what I say or agree with what I say.
Either way, I love it. I'm always here for it, Leo. Thank you.
Jim rights in Leo, by the way, works for us, should mention the laptop ELF so they refurbished computers and give them to charity, so the Laptop Elf Project.
Look it up.
Jim rights in, I upgraded my Lenovo to Windows eleven. Geek Squad removed two viruses, deleted twenty eight gigs of temp files, and did a tune up. The upgrade costs one hundred and forty nine dollars. To tune up was ninety nine. They did not replace the hard drive. They upgraded it to be compatible with Windows eleven. What does that mean? My computer is much faster and it was already okay before. Well, good job, Jim Mark says, Rich, I heard you about talking about TVs that won't turn back on.
I've been there.
I thought I was on candid camera the first time it happened. I've had a long history at Samsung, and just recently I had to unplug my TV overnight and hold the power button down for fifteen seconds to discharge it. Believe it or not, that actually fixed the problem. All right, let's see here, uh okay, Rick writes in here's a creative way to stop robocalls. Put in your contacts a friendly ring tones you know when it's someone you want to answer for everyone else, Set a default RINGTNE. In
my case, the CSI Las Vegas theme. Who are you so that when that rings you let it go to voicemail? All right, Rick, that's a lot of work though, to set up everyone as their own ring tone. Les rights in, Hey, Rich, I heard your segment of Microsoft Office and I wanted to share that I've had great success with the open source Libra Office. It can open and save Microsoft Office files with no problem. Always enjoy your show and newsletter. Hope all is well, and Jan writes in to say
thank you. I love your show, which I listened to on seven to ten wor in New York. Thank you Jan for listening there, appreciate it. That's going to 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. I am on social media. You can find me at rich on tech. Next week we're gonna have the journalist on who created her own AI assistant and the app that claims to be even
more secure than Signal. Thank you so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I really do appreciate you spending it right here with me. If you want to get your message into the feedback. Just go to my website rich on tech dot tv, and if you'd like to sign up for my newsletter, it is there as well. Just go to rich on
tech dot tv and sign up. The newsletter is free, so if you want to just get an update every week of all the things that I'm thinking about and talking about and telling you about, it is all there in the newsletter. One reminder before I go, please do not text and drive. Do not drive distracted, not just for your safety but for the safety of everyone around you. Thanks everyone who makes the show possible. We've got yurrel here today. Thank you filling in for Bobo. Bobo is
there supervising. We've got Kim on phones. My name is rich Demiro. I will talk to you real soon.