Google breathes new life into old computers

It feels good to be doing a show that's proper this week, because last week was just you have no idea. So I so I had a problem with my board where whenever I would talk or even not talk, it would just have this like hum and so it sounded just like a metallic I don't know what the deal was, and so I spent like two hours trying different MIC setups, doing different things, moving the board into different plug outlets. I thought maybe it was like the wiring or something,

and nothing worked. So I ended up recording the podcast like directly into my computer with like a USB MIC. I think I don't even remember how I did it because I blocked it all out. But long story short, when I picked up the board to like put it away later on, somehow it shook and I heard like a rattling inside my podcasting board and so my mixer, and so I'm like, wait a second to what's going on.

And I think it's some sort of like little piece that came detached inside, probably from my lack of proper transport when I took it to different places like Chattanooga, in Las Vegas and other places. I've taken it back and forth to the station, and so I think that whatever that little metal thing is in there, whenever it hits something else, it creates some sort of circuit in

the board that makes the hum. So anyway, what I did was, this is my hack, which I can't believe I'm saying this even, but I shook the board to get the little rattling part like into the corner of the board so that hopefully it just stays in like a corner, not touching any metal. And I left my board. Oh gosh, I can't believe that's what I'm doing. Anyway, I'm gonna have the engineers at the station take a look at it. Hopefully they can take this thing apart

and see what's inside there. I'll be curious what actually what actually messed this thing up. Anyway, So if you saw me on Instagram or Facebook at rich on Tech, you already know this. But this is my This week marks my eleventh year at KTLA Los Angeles. I cannot believe it. So, since you're the podcast listener and this doesn't you go out wide, I can tell you a little secret story. But when I joined KTLA, they literally offered me ninety days. Ninety days now, given I had

a fantastic job at another station across town. I wasn't on air, but I was behind the scenes and I had a very very good gig, and it was something that was, you know, I'd never done before. It was you know, as a producer basically, but it was really cool. And you know, I was building something and they come to me and they're like, hey, you want to do this really cool thing. It's it was like everything I wanted to do. It's like my dream to be on

air doing technology. But the reality was they were like, Okay, we'll try you out for ninety days and we'll go from there. I'm like, who wha hold on I'm not leaving a really good job, and I had a kid on the way. I'm not leaving a really good job to go somewhere that's you know, offering me ninety days like that is not going to happen. So I knew that this was a great opportunity, but I really had to just be firm in that because I didn't want to mess up my life, especially with a kid on

the way. And quickly I realized as an adult, you mess up your life in many different ways. But I was a little bit younger and you know, didn't realize that. But anyway, I digress, So long story short. I think they gave me like a year or two contract, and yeah, it's been eleven ever since. So anyway, I don't want to bore you with all my details in my life, but it's been an amazing ride. It's been a really fun time there. KTLA for the most part, has not

changed since I've been there. I mean, yeah, there's been like some changes in management and things like that, but my core job has remained the same, and quite honestly, it's really funny because the easy way to do my job is to just scare people all day long. And to tell them the worst things about technology and how your phone is spying on you and all this good stuff. But I don't do any of that. I actually take

a much more positive approach to technology. But I also let people know what I think they need to know and not just the lowest common denominator of trying to scare you every chance I can. Now, I think that it's very smart for people to be informed, but I also kind of cut through a lot of the clutter of stuff that I don't think you need to really care about, and so I'm not going to give that

stuff the light of day. Honestly, for many many years, I didn't even cover Apple rumors because I had a rule that if it was a rumor, like why would I cover it? It's not something that's happened, Like, well, this is literally speculation, and so I didn't do that for a long time. The Apple rumors are kind of avoidable at this point, which you know, and people kind of like them, myself included so and quite frankly, a lot of them come true at this point. So anyway,

that's my story, My my entire goal. Every story that I present on air is something or on my Facebook or on my Twitter or on whatever it is, is really something that either I find interesting, is something that is an indicator of something to come, or is something that you know you should find useful when it comes to tech. So that's really what guides me, not just the flash and trash that so many other people just do to get clicks and listens and all that stuff

and views. And maybe that's why I'm not more popular. Maybe I should start trying that for the next ten years. But no, I'm just kidding. So let's get to the first story of the week, Sony earbuds. These link buds they're called. This was an interesting one because Sony comes to me, and now that this is all out there, I can give you a little bit of the backstory. But Sony comes to me and they're like, Okay, we've got something super secretive, you know, can you sign this,

can you talk? You know, can you do this? And it's like, okay, sure, what what is this? They wouldn't tell me a thing before they sent me whatever the thing was, and so I'm like, all right, I haven't heard from Sony in a long time. I'm just gonna sort of trust them to send me something that's interesting and we'll see I mean, obviously I don't have to cover it if I open this thing up and it's not very cool. So I get this box that is just like super heavy. I'm like, what in the world

is this? And you know, open up this box you can see some other people. I don't do a lot of unboxings, but some other you know folks do, so you can see what they did with the unboxing. But it's like it came in this like wildly, like a lie laborate locked box that you opened and there's some sort of like Sony's take on an NFT in there. I think, I don't know, but anyway, you open it

up and finally get smaller and smaller. So you find these little link buds, and these are wireless earbuds that have a really unique design and style, and the whole point of them is that you leave them in your ears pretty much all day long so that you can listen to your music, take phone calls, but also hear the world around you. So they've got this really unique open ring design they call it, which kind of pops into your ear. It almost looks like you rotated the

link buds apart and they're small, they're lightweight. Obviously it's sony, so they have really good audio quality and they don't they're not noise cancellation headphones because that would require them to be always on, but they are, you know, they do kind of I guess they have like a clear voice functionality so that you can, you know, people can

hear you better when you talk. But a couple of the unique features three of them that I want to talk about adaptive volume control, so this automatically brings up the volume higher and lower based on your surroundings. Then there's this thing they call wide tap area, so there's a little sensor inside these link buds. Usually you have to kind of tap the actual earbud, but that puts some pressure on your ear every time you do it.

So with this, you can actually tap on your cheekbone right in front of the earbud, and there's a little vibration sensor inside the link buds that you will know if you're double tapping or triple tapping to pause your music or do something else. And then finally there's something called speak to Chat, and this I thought at first was really really cool because what it does is when you talk, it pauses your music. Oh my gosh, amazing. Well then I quickly realized on my first run that

number one, I talk to myself a lot. Anytime you talk to yourself, the earbuds are going to pause. Anytime you cough, they're gonna pause. If you talk to someone else, they're gonna pause, which is kind of the point, but I actually ended up having to turn that feature off because it just wasn't working enough for me. So anyway, really really neat earbuds. There are one hundred and eighty to me, I will say I don't find them to be the most comfortable in my ears. They're They're just fine.

I think that some other earbuds feel better. Personally, I'm not a big earbuds person in general, Like I am not one of those people that keeps earbuds in all the time, even if I'm in the airport or whatever. I just I put them in when I need them, I take them out when I don't, And honestly, I just I'm not a huge, huge earbuds person. And so these are cool, and I love that Sony is trying something totally new and refreshing and different. And I think

they've succeeded, honestly. And this is the other thing about doing reviews kind of under embargo, is that I had these in my hand, and you know, I didn't know what anyone else was gonna think of them. So I had to write my review and come up with all this stuff before you know, you see anyone else's and that's typically what I do in general. But it's just

really interesting. When I saw some of the first reviews coming out, I was like, okay, these you know, I didn't really read them, but I saw some of the headlines and it seemed like everyone sort of agrees that these things are pretty well done, and Sony is definitely doing a pretty good job of doing something different here. So anyway, Sony link Bud's if you want to learn more information about them. All right, so far this is going so much better than the last one. So happy.

It's like my board is just working properly and that's exciting enough. First question, Hey, Rich, without telling me too many trade secrets, can you help me decide on a new phone? I usually purchase them out right, so I want to keep the cost around five hundred. Here's what I need. Number one got to be Android. I had Apple one time and hated it. Number two with like five G keeping up with the Joneses. Number three basic features. I'm not that worried about a fancy camera or waking

me up on time. Just making calls and taking pictures. That's interesting. Number four maybe waterproof. I might drop it in a puddle or a pool if you can help me. Would like to know your thoughts. Thank you, Larry. Larry, I have one word for you, and that is Pixel six. That is going to be the best phone for you. Now, it's a little more expensive than your budget, which is

five hundred, but this phone is six hundred. You might be able to find it, you know, if you trade in something, or you know, maybe someone has it on a deal if you sign up for five or something. But I think that's gonna be the best. And the reason why I think that's the best case scenario for you is that you want Android, you want five G, you want basic features. This has very simple software that's constantly updated, or at least it should be by Google

for at least I think it's five years. It's going to be well water resistant. Nothing's truly waterproof, but it's fine. It's got a good level of water resistance, It's a decently smaller size than the Pixel six Pro. It's got a good camera probably well, it's got the best camera you can get out there, so that's good news. And yes, it will wake you up on time, even though it's not important to you, but you never know when you

want to set an alarm. Now. The closest competition to this phone would probably be the Samsung Galaxy S twenty one fe. It is the same price typically on so it's six hundred dollars on sale. The only difference, I mean, it's really a matter of preference. Do you want Samsung, do you want Google. I would go with Google just because it's a little bit more, it's a little bit simpler to kind of use than a Samsung. But if you want Samsung, if you prefer that, and go ahead.

I am absolutely loving the latest Samsung S twenty two series, and so I have no problem recommending the Samsung. The S twenty one is excellent as well. It's a great phone. I do think the camera is going to be better on the pixel for that price, so that's what I'd recommend. Those two phones are probably the best bang for your book at that price. Tag. All right, speaking of Google, this I think is just phenomenal. I can't get over

how exciting this is. Maybe not for me, but for a lot of people out there that have either an older computer or that work at some sort of nonprofit or a school or even a business. Maybe not so much. I mean they want it for business anyway. This is Chrome os flex. This is a chrome basically, it's software from Google that turns any old Mac or PC into a chromebook. And you're probably familiar with the idea of a chromebook. All the kids were using them during the pandemic.

That's what the schools were handing out like candy. And so it's a very simple computer. It's kind of like what I was talking about with the pixel. It's simple, it works, it's fast, it's speedy. So even on an old computer, this can work. I read up to like computers up to thirteen years old. Let's just say ten years old. Ten year old computers pretty old. But you put this Chrome os flex on it, which is a

free operating system that you download from Google. It's primarily aimed at businesses in schools, but I think it looks like anyone can just download it and install it, but you get all the benefits of sort of a Chromebook on these old PCs or max which those benefits are that it boots up really fast, it doesn't slow down that much over time time, system updates happen in the background. There's no worry about viruses because everything is sandboxed, and

you know, it's all. It doesn't even have much to like run on the system. It's like mostly running from the cloud. Now, the downside of this is that it's mostly meant for things very simple tasks web surfing, watching YouTube, you know, looking at photos, doing your emails, those kind of things. You're not going to be editing a wildly elaborate video on this thing. You're not going to be doing photoshop on it. Yes, you can do those things if they operate in the cloud, but this is primarily

a cloud computer. I think you can install some Android apps on there, so that would work as well. But the reality is, and of course you have Google Assistant. This is just such a cool way that Google has immediately breathed, breathed, given a breath of new life. I don't know how to say that, but just some breathe some fresh air into an old computer. So if you have an old computer around your house you might have

thrown away. This is an amazing way that you can now install this software on that computer and give it to someone, give it to a young kid, or you can give it donate it to a charity, or you know, just whatever. There's so many great things about this and the fact that Google is fully supporting this, at least for now. We all know Google has a very short attention span, but I do think that they will see that this is very popular and continue to kind of

work on this system. Again. It's called Chrome os Flex And just by mentioning this on TV just a response I got clearly there onto something now. I did a story a couple of years ago with a guy named the Laptop Elf, and he does this on the side, so he would take donations of old computers and he would really go to town on getting everything installed in that computer. But it was not easy because there was no sort of like Chrome os that you could just

download and easily install it was. There were some variations on it out there, but nothing official from Google that you can do. So Google making this official and offering it up for free, I think is a huge win for so many people out there, so thank you Google and check it out Chrome os Flex. You can actually just try it out on your current computer, which I'm going to do by running it off off of a

USB drive. You can boot your computer up directly from there and then or I guess you can boot Chrome os flex directly from there and then if you like it, you can actually install it on your Mac or PC. All right, let's get to the next question. Carol says, Hey, Rich, I just saw your segment on Amazon Prime rate increases. One of your suggestions was to combine household accounts. I'm wondering if we combine ours, would one of us lose

our shopping history. Always enjoy your news spots. Thank you, Carol, Carol, good question. Yes, Today on the news, I talked about how Amazon Prime is raising prices for their membership from one nineteen a year to one thirty nine a year with tax in California, that's about one hundred and fifty

bucks a year. And this charge always gets me by surprise because it happens on like January second, and I get a charge for like one hundred and forty bucks or this year was one hundred and thirty and I was like, wait, what I buy for one hundred and thirty dollars? I was hacked and then I realized, oh, no, Prime just renewed. Now, I will tell you I did two hundred and thirty five orders on Prime last year.

There's no way I'm giving up Amazon Prime. I ordered something two things this week, well, many many things this week. I probably placed four orders this week. But you know, in La where I live, the orders literally come either well same day. I'm not seeing as much anymore, but especially next day. I mean same day used to be a thing. I don't. It definitely doesn't show up as much on many products as I order, but the next day definitely is like kind of the standard same day sometimes.

And then of course you know you've got Amazon the groceries with the two hour delivery. I mean, there's just so many benefits backup of the pictures. I use that as my kind of my photo backup for my backup of my backup. I watched like one or two Amazon Prime movies last year, so that's cool. I mean, if those are like five six bucks each, if you rented them, then there you go. That's twelve dollars right there. So

there are so many benefits to Amazon. I don't think anyone can keep up with them or catch up to them at this point. It's gonna take a lot Like Walmart, Target they are, it's gonna take a while for them to figure out the logistics of this. I mean, Amazon has it down. I mean ninety nine percent of the deliveries now come from Amazon vans or the flex workers you know, the gig workers whatever. I mean, it's quite amazing, or the uh postal people. So no matter what it is,

really really like fast and it's efficient. Like they know that if something is small, lightweight and they can just slide it into the post office, it arrives with your your postal carrier, you know, the next day or something. I mean, it's pretty pretty remarkable anyway. So yes, they're

raising their rate to one point forty. And one of the things I mentioned is this lesser known option with Amazon that lets you share your membership with one adult in your household and a couple of teenagers and a couple kids. Now, yes, did Amazon imagine this to be so that mom and dad could have their own accounts, probably, But the reality is Amazon is very loose about the definition of household and I looked at all their documentation. It never says you need to live under the same roof.

It never says that. Now. I'm sure Amazon has ways of cross checking people and making sure you're not just selling half of your membership to someone on eBay or whatever, but the reality is you are. I just said that like seventeen times. But here's the thing, I'll just switch to another cliche. If you have someone like this woman is saying, like Carol is saying, can we you know, it sounds like they have two different accounts in their household,

Like that's wild. Why are you paying double? No combine those accounts and would they lose your shopping history? I don't think so. I mean, think about it. This is just a premium upgrade to an account you already have. It's kind of like upgrading to Spotify premium or any other any other online service where it has a basic free service and then you can upgrade to a paid plan. So that's pretty much the same thing that's happening here. You have an Amazon account, now you're just layering on

Prime membership on top of it. I don't think there'd be any reason why they would suddenly just delete your entire shopping history. So if you have two accounts in your home, absolutely get that shared through your account, and you can do that. I'll put the link in the notes, but it's basically Amazon Household. I think you google Amazon

Prime household and you can find the link through that. Yeah, And you know, it's one of these things where I'll be quite honest, I believe there was a time when I did share my account with someone, a family member that maybe didn't live with me, and I'm pretty sure it worked just fine. Now I'm not saying that was many many years ago. I wasn't really sure. Again, I kind of just saw that I said you could share.

Maybe they've changed the wording, but back then it seemed like you just share your Prime membership with like six people. I think it was like six people at the time, And so I did. I shared it with a whole bunch of people, and they all had their own accounts, they all had their own ordering system. But I paid the bill at the end of the year, which is kind of a common theme with a lot of my family members on my accounts. That's another story for another day.

All right, let's talk about Instagram. Instagram a very simple simple feature update. But Instagram is now allowing you to like stories. There's not much more to say other than that, and I will explain why I think that this is really important for someone like me. So I post a story, I've got a bunch of followers on Instagram, and people

immediately start replying. Now, the only two ways to reply to a story historically on Instagram is to either use one of their pre programmed emojis that pops up when you tap into the little response field, or you can type a message in that same field. And so you can imagine with someone like me, with you know, over one hundred thousand people on Instagram, even if you know one percent of people respond, that's one hundred responses, right,

And so that is all messages. And if people are just responding with a clapping hand emoji or a love or a you know whatever these little emojis they give you, or like a quick note that says like cool, awesome, thank you great, that's a lot for me to go through when it comes to looking at my dms, and so it really does kind of clutter up my dms, and I try to go through all of them to reply to everyone. And so sometimes they just like things

back this or that. So now I think Instagram really has a user the user experience in mind, and kind of streamlining it with this feature. Because now if people like my story, which is kind of like a common thing to do, you just like it just like you would a picture. It will just go on your story page that only you can see, so you can see sort of the insights to your story, like how many people looked at it, how many people clicked your links, that kind of stuff. This will just reside on there.

So it's a very easy way to kind of just build some more analytics into your stories, but also let people respond to them in a way that's much more fluid if they don't really have anything to say. It's just easier and so a lot less clutter there. Now, the way you do it is you're gonna see a little heart icon right in between the text box under a story and the little airplane that lets you share that story to someone else. But or I guess send

that story. I don't know what the little share thing does. I gotta look, but I guess I can check right now. I've got Instagram right here on my phone, so let's see if I go to someone's story. Okay, yeah, it lets you send it to someone else. So the point is this is just so much easier. I have not seen this yet up here on my Instagram, but usually Instagram is one of these I don't know why. Instagram is one of these services that announces things and then

does it so much later, like it takes. It could take a month for this feature to show up on my Instagram. But at least now you know you've got the heads up. You'll soon be able to like stories on Instagram. And absolutely if you want to continue responding to my stories with emojis or a couple of words

here and there, I will take it. But if you want to just like them and say, Rich, hey, I like this, thank you, don't even need whatever implied thank you, then I'm totally cool with that too, all right, Mark says, hey, Rich your recent review of the s twenty two, when you moved your iPhone simcard to the Samsung device, it got me thinking. Do service providers normally charge for an extra device when you do that, or do they only look at the simcard as the device, no matter what

hardware it's plugged into. If the latter, I can see using whatever hardware suits the setting you're currently in, for instance, plugging your SIM into a tablet if you're taking class notes, then switching to a smartphone when you're on the run and want to use a smaller device. Thanks Mark, Mark.

This opens up a fascinating discussion because I'll be quite honest, I have switched SIM cards into so many different devices over the years, but when I switched my iPhone SIM into the Galaxy S twenty two Ultra, it was the first time in years that I had switched a SIM card into not a non upgrade phone, And so the last time when I upgraded my phone to the new iPhone, I actually had to go into the Verizon store to complete the process because something about my SIM card with

the old phone. I guess it was like a four G SIM card. They wanted to give me a five G SIM card my phone was not working properly. I don't think they charged me for that, but I do you. It's interesting because as soon as I put that simcard in the new phone, I got a text message from Verizon saying, hey, we noticed that you switched your SIM. Please go to the website to confirm that this was a change. I was like, Ah, they're gonna charge me

thirty bucks, aren't they for switching the SIM. Now, I don't think they did that, but they could, and I think in the past with other providers, I have definitely swapped out simcards to different devices, and I've had no problems with that because usually the device registers itself on the network. But with all of that said, I don't recommend that you do this regularly because there's a couple things. Number One, they may flag your account for fraud and

then you have a whole headache. Number Two, it's not very feasible to switch your SIM card from a tablet to a smaller device every time you need to do that. That's just going to be a total pain, and I would not recommend doing that. I would recommend getting a data only line or just linking up your tablet to your phone with a hotspot situation. But Mark, it's so funny that you wrote me this because I literally thought of this same exact possibility when I switch that simcard,

because I got that message on my phone. But typically, I will say, in my experience, I've never had a problem moving a SIM into a different device. The only time I've run into issues is with unreleased devices. So let's say someone like A OnePlus sends me a device that is before it's released, and it's you know, a

couple weeks before the public has it. Sometimes I've seen that if a device is not approved on a you know, a carrier's network, And this really only happens with Verizon that and sometimes AT and T. But sometimes that device will not get all of the features. So it may not pick up a five G signal, it may not work with voicemail, it may not do Wi Fi calling. But those those things are pretty rare and they're pretty limited in scope, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

But in general, what I would do is if you move your SIM card, I would if you're just a regular person that's doing this, I would go on your account, make sure everything's on the up and up, and make sure your provider knows about it, just because you do your The thing is, you never want your phone to go out or stop working in a situation when you

really need it. Now, all phones will dial nine one one, whether they have a simcard in them or not, at least that's my understanding, So you should be okay there, But in general I would say that nine one one is one level of sort of like Lifeline. You need that, but just being able to use your phone with data and calling someone else is a whole other thing, and you don't want to lose that access either. So good question, thanks for asking, and uh really really got me to

think on that one. All right, let's talk Uber. So Uber is a service that I have used since day one when it launched in Los Angeles. I've probably told

you the story before, but I will never forget. So I lived in New York before Los Angeles, and we had these things called car services, right, and so where I worked at snet, once in a while, they would give you this voucher that was like one of those old credit card vouchers, like the carbon copy papers, and they would say, here you go, Rich, we know you're working late tonight, go ahead, take a car service home.

Or hey, Rich, we're having a holiday party. Don't drive home, or you know, take a don't take a cab home, here, take a car service. And so you get these little slips once in a while. It was extremely expensive. You know, you didn't even know what it costs because the car service would just charge your company. They had a deal in the back end to make it a little bit more reasonable, but it's very expensive. Then Uber comes along and Uber is like, oh, we're doing this for everyone.

Wait what on demand? Wait what? And so I'll never forget getting picked up to go to this party in Santa Monica and the Uber picked me up and it was like a twenty five dollars ride and I was like, wait, what, how in the world is this possible? Now, maybe it was more than twenty five dollars. I can't really remember, but I know that. All I know is that I took Uber so much. And back in the day, it was just town cars, so it was this really like fancy service with a driver that would get out and

open your door for you. And then they came out with Uber X, and you know, obviously it's just kind of expanded, and now they have different levels of service, so you can choose everything from the fanciest to a car pool. But I tell you all this because Uber. The idea of Uber has always been, well when it first started, was that you would rate the driver and

the driver would rate you. And so they almost came up with this eBay esque perfect store system, whereas the best drivers would get the best passenger, So everyone was always striving to be better, right, and that would make the service kind of almost like at checks and balance, right, And so you saw this little rating. At one point, you never knew your rating. But then Uber finally showed you your rating, and that was a step and it

was out of five. And then now today, starting now this week, you can actually see a breakdown of your ratings. So you can see out of your last five hundred drives, how drivers rated you. Now I have like a four point eighty five, you want to hover around a four point nine, four point eight five, anything higher than they think. You're a new writer, so they may not want to take you anything lower. And you know, you're kind of

like you know, who knows. So you can see these ratings if you go into this what's called Privacy center. And I'm not sure why Uber did not just make it so that you tap on your rating on your profile and it brings you to see your breakdown. That would make the most sense, but they didn't do that. They made this like seventeen taps. So I'm not gonna I'll explain it here, but you have to go to my Instagram at rich on Tech to see the step

by step instructions. But what you want to do is go to the settings menu, so you tap U. Oh gosh, you know, I actually wrote this down on my Instagram. It's much easier to understand than what let me just get to that, much easier to understand than what Uber themselves actually wrote down. So okay, so here's what you do. You go, you open the Uber app, you tap your profile picture, you tap Settings, you tap Privacy, then you tap Privacy Center, then you tap c summary, then you

tap view my ratings. That's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven steps when they could have made this two steps. Open the app, tap your rating, Boom, you see your breakdown. But and what does this all mean? Not much? I mean, I do have some one stars in there. I have no idea how I got those, but it's just one of those things where you can see. I guess it's just giving us more transparency into this whole system, and

that's kind of what the deal is. So if you want to see it, go to my Instagram and see the step by step instructions. I made a little video about it. But oh, I wanted to mention. The best way to avoid a bad rating ready, don't slam the door. Uber says it's easy to accidentally slam a door if you're not thinking about it, and drivers have consistently sighted

door slams as a reason why they deduct stars. And I will tell you I often travel with my kids in the Uber and airports and things like that, and yes, they do slam the door a lot, and so or maybe my wife slams the door. I don't know if someone slam the door, that's for sure. All right, let's get to the next question on the podcast. Hey, Rich, I wonder if you can recommend a safe method to scan my iPhone twelve for any viruses and something to

safely remove them if any are found. I've checked the internet, which I have difficulty trusting, and found these names recommended Total av Norton, McAfee, McAfee, sorry, Bitdefender, Panda. Obviously, I would prefer a free app, at least initially to see if there's anything there i'd recommend. I'd appreciate any guidance you can provide. Thank you very much, Jim. Jim, I'm gonna give you the big old You absolutely do not need to scan your iPhone for viruses. You just don't.

Why is that, may I ask? Number one, if you look at any of these apps, if you search total av and I iPhone, you will never see the word virus. Okay, because guess what. There is not a known virus for the iPhone. There never has been, there probably won't be. There probably won't be. Now there are risks on the iPhone, and there are malware on the iPhone, which maybe you might think that's a virus, but the reality is the classic virus you don't even see. It doesn't even say.

If I search virus on this website, does not bring up anything. And the reason why is because total av knows that they would be kicked out of the app store if they said the word virus, and so they don't. Now I will tell you, I get probably the most emails out of my entire life about total AV. So they are doing one heck of a job advertising all of the scary things that can happen to your iPhone. But let me tell you, there is almost nothing that can happen. The worst thing that can happen on the

iPhone at this point are two major things. Number One, there is malicious software that is made by certain organizations that can infiltrate your phone without you knowing and can can log everything. Can you know, it can really kind of hack your phone in a way that is just you wouldn't even think of, but it can be done now. It is very rare and often it is targeted to

highly specific individuals. Those individuals are heads of state, people with high net worths, people that are you know, high journalists that have you know that are that are you know, someone that's like a state department doesn't like them and they want to keep track of them. So those are kind of the threats that are out there for the average person. The biggest threat on your iPhone is you and and clicking things that are not meant to be clicked.

So if you get a link on your phone from a spam text and you click it, that's going to be the biggest problem. And really the biggest problem there is probably going to be phishing because they say, oh, hey, jam you need to log into your Amazon account and just confirm this charge, and you click that and you log in without thinking. The next thing, you know, your phone your account is compromised. Now am I saying there's no such thing as a virus for the iPhone, absolutely not.

There's always a possibility, there's always a potential. Just in my ten years of covering the iPhone, I have yet to see a wide, a mass market virus for the iPhone that a lot of people are getting infected with. Now. The other thing about the iPhone is that it is sandboxed, so every app sort of runs only in itself and it does not really interact with the other apps or even the operating system at large in a big way. So it's just almost impossible for someone to write a

program that worms its way in. Now, there's always exploits, and there's always people that are trying to figure this stuff out, and yes, it could happen. But do you need one of these apps on your phone to scan for viruses? Absolutely not. What I would do is number one, if you want a VPN, that's fine. That's something totally different that that kind of protects your privacy and your browsing. If you want to protect your browsing, that's another thing. Use a use a web browser like Duck Duck Go

or Firefox Focus that covers all your tracks. That's a that's a whole nother thing. But if you want something that's gonna scan your phone the way it scans a Windows PC for viruses, you just don't need it. Now. Don't take this just for me. I've gotten this question so many times that I did a segment and I called up a security person that knows iOS and knows security and they told me the same exact thing. They said, Yep, Rich, pretty much nobody needs it now. An Android, they did say,

it's probably beneficial. Android operating system is totally different than the iOS operating system. They're getting similar, but they're not the same. iOS does not allow apps access to a lot of things, whereas Android it's much more integrated. So yes, apps do have a bit more freedom, and so there are more things that can go wrong, and we do see a lot more malware on the Android side of things.

Most of the time it's stuff that's taking advantage of permissions or it's doing stuff in the background that it shouldn't. So the way against that is to again, just use your common sense when you download an app. And I'll be honest, I'm a tech a very savvy tech person, and I fell for this the other day. I downloaded

an app. I was setting up the S twenty two Ultra and I wanted to download Google Calendar, and I guess I typed in Google Calendar and I clicked the first link that was you know, it looked like a link, but it was for Google Calendar. It was just an AD that was masquerading. I must have missed it. Maybe I was tired, whatever, just didn't notice a little ad symbol. I start installing this app and it's like, first thing I get is like a big AD and I'm like,

wait what Google has ads? Wait what? And then it's like, okay, log into your calendar. I'm like, wait what. I've never had to log into Google Calendar. So I back out. The ic is so similar to Google Calendar icon and I look at the name of the app again and sure enough it was like, very similar to Google Calendar, but it wasn't. And I was like, look at this. If this can happen to me, yeah, this is how

these people get preyed upon, All these people that download stuff. Again, Google billion billion, billion billions dollar business, right and their business all comes from ads. What do people do when they search on Google? They just look at the first link and Google knows it. They just click that link, and nine times out of ten it is an AD. It is not the organic search link are search result,

I should say, And that is very important. And this is why, honestly I would recommend some sort of ad blocker on your system because these are just misleading people half the time. And so you know, it's just one of these things where I do think people are being very misled. And a lot of times it happens with travel. So when you star search for a hotel, you think

you're making the reservation with the actual hotel. Now you just got a link from some random a travel site that's advertising top of the list, and now you're booking through them. You book your hotel room, it's non refundable, there's no there's no questions asked, there's no refunds, you can't get a hold of someone, and now you know you're you're out the two hundred bucks if you need

to change your hotel room or switch things. So again, it takes a level of savviness that I'm not I'm not going to fault people for, but you know, some of these systems are built to help people fail, and you really really need to be on your guard and so yes, with iPhone twelve, you're not going to need a virus software. But does that mean nothing can happen to your phone? No, I think there's I think many

worse things can happen than a virus. And ninety nine point nine percent of those things are you clicking a link that you shouldn't be clicking, or typing in information into a password that you shouldn't be clicking, or putting in, or getting fooled in some way. And so that's what I think is more important to focus on than installing some sort of app that you think is going to save you. Just you know, you just need to be you just need to realize this stuff. And so, Jim,

I'm not picking on you. I'm just saying you raised a very good question, and these companies clearly advertise based on fear and saying, hey, you need something to protect your iPhone, when the reality is we need to learn more as humans about social engineering and how that is truly how I would say most people get hacked these days. All right, let's move on to the next story. This

is this is pretty wild. This. You know, we see lots of industries being impacted by the smartphone and things that you can do on your smartphone that you were never able to do before, and now you can take it an at home vision test through your smartphone. And so this is a first of its kind vision test for something call let's see if I can get this right? Press press be Oh did I get that right? Press bopia.

That's we'll just call it that. So press biopia is an age related vision condition affecting eighty five percent of people over forty. And so what it does is if you know someone like this, you know what's happened. All of a sudden, They're holding their menu just a little bit. It's either let's see is it closer or further? Let's see? Uh it is, let's see it is. It causes people to have difficulties seeing up close, and they find themselves having to hold a menu, phone or book at arm's

length distance to see properly. You probably know someone that you see that you've seen holding something a little far away and kind of adjusting their vision. So I tried out this app. It's actually really cool. It's called the my Reader Number app. It's three dollars by the way. It's from a company called iq e y e que.

I'll put the link in the show notes. But you hold your phone up to your nose and then you and there's some text on the screen, and you just slowly bring your phone back until the item comes into focus. And it uses some sort of sensor on the iPhone. At least I think this is IOWA. Is it iOS only? Um? It doesn't save it. Yeah, it's only iOS for now, But it uses some sort of sensor. I'm guessing the depth sensor to see how far away your phone is

and when your eyes come into focus. And so clearly there's a measurement of if you're you know, eighteen inches away, then clearly you might need some help. If you're five inches away, you probably don't. But I came up okay, So that's good news. But it's a really neat little test that you can take it home. It's three dollars, it's one time, and it's you can use it as many times as you want. It's a one time fee. Now,

this this situation is very easy to fix. I guess just magnifying glasses can can fix it, like you know, lenses, magnifying lenses, I should say. And so I guess the bottom line for this app is to not only educate consumers, but also maybe there's a sales portion where they sell you glasses. They give you the information you need to figure out what reading glasses you should get, what strength you should get. So I guess they're saying that a

lot of people. Yeah, it just looks like a lot of people just kind of guess at the store, like what prescription. I don't know if it's a prescription per se, but it's just you know, you just kind of pick out what might work for you, whereas this app can give you actual specifics on sort of what you need, like how much magnification you need. So anyway, I thought this was really cool. This is called the my iq My Reader Number app, and it's a personalized results for

reading and computer glasses. So check it out. It's just something cool to try and see how it works for you. I'm not a doctor, so I can't vouch for the fact that it's a replacement obviously for any sort of professional opinion. But if it's something that you were just doing on your own and you want to supplement that, then kind of seems cool, all right, Bob writes in Google Chromebook Software. Hey, Rich I write this note from a very low end Dell inspa on fourteen that used

to be too aggravating to use. It was very slow on the network and constantly telling me the disk space was too low. It had only three gigabytes available from the included Windows ten that came with it. I had to use an SD card to store files. After using the free Chromebook Google software, it is now a fantastic little laptop. Performance is very good and available disk space is around nineteen gigabytes. Google hit a home run with this one regards Bob desktop support person that is fantastic

to hear. Bob, of course, is talking about the Chrome OS Flex, so it sounds like he was faster than me and installing this on his Dell in Sprawn the old computer. So I'll be quite honest, I may be installing this on my mom's computer because she does not do anything on her computer that requires the Windows software.

It's been slow since day one when I bought her this computer, and this will make it much more secure, and pretty much all she does is use Chrome, so I think that this is a perfect use case to do that. In fact, I've been itching for a flight home to New Jersey. So maybe this is what I do. Maybe I'll go home, I'll do a story on installing the software on her computer. Sounds like a win when love when things work out like that. Anyway, Bob, thanks for the feedback. I cannot wait to try this again.

It sounds exactly like what I was saying that It's just really one of these things that Google did a nice job for helping breathe new life into these old systems. All right, very quick story with Facebook. Facebook is renaming the news feed. It is now called ready for this, drum roll, please feed the feed. Not nothing, it's just feed.

So they announced this on Twitter. They said, starting today, our newsfeed will now be known as feed happy Scrolling, and it has been known as the news feed since the feature was introduced more than fifteen years ago, according to The Verge, which is just wild that we've been using Facebook for that long. But here's the thing. I think that Facebook wants to get away from news in their in their language, because it delineates if there is a news product on Facebook, which I'm not sure there is.

Is there a newsproductnews dot Facebook dot com? Let me say, uh, there is oh Facebook News? Interesting? Yeah, there totally is a news I didn't even know that. Wow, it's like a whole news thing. I guess it's interesting. It's from some of your so oh, that's really into It's like a news page. I keep saying that that Facebook is basically the AOL of twenty twenty two. It's the same thing. You've got your video chat, you've got your video messaging,

you've got everything except email. You know, you're surfing different things, You're looking at people's posts, you're surfing the web in there. I mean not really, but you know, but it's basically if you installed it would not be too wild to have a Facebook operating system, right that just like the Chrome operating system that it just installs on a laptop and everything you do is through Facebook. If they had email,

it would be possible. I meany, I've got videos on there, they've got news, they've got your feed, they've got messaging. I mean, there's so many things you can do on Facebook. It's just basically the AOL of twenty twenty two. But anyway, what was I saying, So the news feed? Yeah, so

there is a news product. So I think that feed just represents something that is more you know, we had this whole thing with misinformation and fake news and the election and politics and Cambridge Analytica, and so I think they just want to get away from the fact that, hey, look, whatever's in this feed, like, we're not really the arbiters of all things fair and just in this feed, we're just sort of letting your friends have a free for all. And so that's why it's called the feed. It's not

the news feed any more. So that's my take on it. Now, say what you will about Facebook, It's still a very popular place where people go. And I would venture to say that the number one place people get news these days is probably the Facebook feed, probably YouTube, probably Instagram. I mean it's kind of scary, quite honestly. And this is why it goes back to what I do as a reporter, is I try to, you know, put things

out there that are that are good and factual. I mean, that's like the number one goal obviously, but not everyone does that. I mean I see stuff on TikTok that's just like it's is it true? And I'm not. I don't want to knock the younger generation, but I mean a lot of their information is coming from TikTok, and that is just scary because you see these things on TikTok, these new challenges, and my kids will you know, my

kids will give me theories. My kid now says, hey, Dad, you know I saw on YouTube that this and this. I'm like, that's not true. Oh that is not true at all. Well it's just a theory. Well stop watching theories. But the problem is the YouTube algorithm will just keep serving up all the same garbage that you start watching, and it will just continue to feed on itself. It's like a it's just like a circular hamster wheel of like trash that it will just continue to feed to

you if you go down that path. And you know, people do go down these paths. And it's like my feed is like ninety nine percent smartphone videos, you know, people reviewing phones and camera tests and all stuff, because that's what I primarily watch on YouTube. And so it's just one of these things where I don't know what the answer is. I don't have an answer. I mean, I think editors are the answer, obviously, and I think

that that reputable news sources are the answer. But I will tell you that when I post stuff on Facebook in the news feed. People are always saying rich, that's

not true. Like they're literally fighting me a newsperson, a journalist who is paid by a news organization to research and to post stuff that's factual, and they're saying rich, fake news, that's not real, or that's not new, there's nothing new to this, And I'm like, I don't even want to fight back because I'm like, I'm sorry, but this is real and it is new, and it is news, and whether you like to believe it or not, that's

just the way it is. So all right, they go off enough there, all right, Hey, my name is Kitty. Hopefully you can help with a simple question about my Instagram account. Since I'm new to Instagram today, I noticed my clear search history was missing from the security section of my Instagram settings, and now I don't know where to find it. Is this a new upgrade for Instagram or did they do away with that? I don't know how to clear out my Instagram search history now. Thank you.

Any info can help, Thank you, sincerely, Kitty g Ktla Rich Demiro viewer, So, Kitty, great question. In fact, you know, it could be quite embarrassing because you might search for something that maybe you don't want other people to see. Or maybe you just search for something quickly and now all of a sudden it's on your search history and if someone picks up your phone they see it, and you're just like, I don't you know you need to

explain something. Why should you have to explain yourself. You're an adult. You can search whatever you want, okay, But the reality is that, uh, you know, if you want to clear this search history out, here's what you need to do. So, uh, go into your Instagram, tap in the search field and it says see all. So you tap there and then it will say recent searches clear all. You hit clear all and there you go and your searches will be cleared out. Good. Good question, kitty, And

you know, hey, clear out that stuff. Do what you want. It's your life, and uh you know I'm not gonna fault you for it. All Right, time for one more question. Uh, Hey, Rich, my wife and I watch you regularly for many years on KTLA and always enjoy your tech updates. We need a recommendation for an inexpensive but clear video security camps. Anything you suggest is greatly appreciated. Thanks for your continuing excellence, Best regards Dwayne and Jackie in his spy Yeah, California,

super easy. I'm just gonna recommend the Wyse cameras. Wy Z not to be confused with Ways, but Wyze is just fantastic. The cameras are twenty thirty bucks. You can get a whole bunch of them. They have every type of camera you need, whether it's wireless, completely wireless, or a camera you plug in, or a weather proof camera or a camera that pans back and forth, they will they have something for everything you need and it's just simple,

it's easy. I think they're a great value. Camera quality is excellent, and they've just really done a nice job over the years of continuing to evolve their cameras. It's a bunch of guys or a bunch of people from they used to work at Amazon, and they saw clearly how Amazon created its own products and sold those very good deals when it comes to like the Echo stuff and all those and just said, hey, I think we can do that too, and they came up with cameras.

And the cameras are very very good. I've been using them for a very long time and I've never had an issue, and I'm quite impressed with what they do. Oh wow, you know what that sound means. That's gonna do it for this episode of the show. If you would like to submit a question for me to answer, just go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com slash rich on Tech hit the big blue send email button, or go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit the email icon. Also, I would love it if you

would rate and review this podcast. I told you not to rate last week's episode because it was so different, so feel free to rate this week. Just go to the listening app of your choice write a quick line about what you like about this show to help other people understand why they should listen. That is the best thing you can do, and thank you so much for doing that. Just explain to people why you like this show.

You can find me on all social media at rich on Tech and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free KTLA plus app on Apple, TV, fireTV, and Roku. Once you do, scroll the tech section and watch all of my TV segments on demand. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending it with me. I will talk to you real soon.