Google Pixel 6a gives a lot for less

fantastic next day or weekend. Whenever you happen to listen to this show. I don't know. You could listen to it in a year from now. You could be listening from the future or the past. Who knows. All right, So what is going on? Man? So much to talk about? So many things? So last night I was out I kind of late for a school night. I know I do it sometimes only for really good reasons. But last night we were out at this event. It was a pizza making event where they, you know, have these pizza

ovens that are cool and techie and all that. So I did a segment, but the person who was cooking the pizzas is this guy named Chris Bianco, and if you're not familiar with him, he's kind of a big deal in the pizza making space. I mean, he's a big deal in the chef space all that kind of stuff. And so it's this is what I think is so interestingly fascinating about being a reporter like I am because I know this guy Chris, and this has happened plenty

of times, you know, follow him. Wanted to go to his restaurant in Phoenix, which I didn't make it too, but he just opened one up in LA But it's like one of these things where like I never expect to meet this person that I really think is cool, and then here I am interviewing and making pizza with

this guy you know last night. Just amazing fascinating. This happens over and over and over, and this is one of the things I always talk about which is so fun about being a journalist is that you are put into situations that average people are not put into. You are talking to people that average people don't get access to, and you get just access to things that you know, sometimes regular people don't get access to. That's really fun.

And your job is to take that and to kind of bring that experience to the people watching or listening or reading. And you know, I hold that to a It is very near and dear in my heart, the fact that I am entrusted to do that. And if you didn't like it, you know, I don't know, Like it's definitely like I see, It's one of these things that it just keeps me going because it's so much fun to have that honor and privilege. And I get it. I'm just a regular person. The people I'm talking to

are just regular people. We're all just human. But it's just a really cool kind of like I don't know, like I really there's a reason, like the answers that he was giving yesterday about making pizza or just so fun and interesting. So anyway, I'll have that story soon on KTLA. But the other thing I want to talk about is I'm always trying to make this show less I guess, more green, you know. And so in the past I've tried things where I've used my iPad to

do the show. I have used the web to do it, like just looking at you know, things, But this time I actually resubscribe to Evernote and I tweeted this a couple of minutes ago. But I resubscribe to Evernoe and so I'm using that today to produce the show. And it's pretty amazing because just by you know, subscribing to Evernote again, I am now saving a ton of paper

by not having to print this stuff out. We'll see if the shows is good, but I don't know, we'll see, But it's just one of these things that it's like a small change that really makes a big difference. So if I'm stumbling a little bit more than typical on the show, that's why, because I'm saving the Earth in the creation of this show. All right, let's get to the first topic of the show, which is the Google Pixel six A. If you're watching on Instagram right now,

you see it. It is right there. Google Pixel six A is Google's least expensive smartphone. It is four hundred and fifty dollars and it is a phenomenal device at that price. So what do I like about it? This is the Sage green color, which is really cool. What I love about it is the price four hundred and

fifty dollars. So many people come to me. Now you may sit there and say, oh, rich, Come on, everyone gets an iPhone everyone Not everyone wants an iPhone, right, And so the reality is there are a lot of people out there. There are a lot of people that want different options, and one of those options is a different kind of phone that is a little bit less expensive than an iPhone, and the Pixel Phone is that phone. So the Pixel six A. You know, what do you get?

You get a really good size phone. I love the size of this phone. You get excellent software, you get an amazing camera. The Pixel camera is known to be really really good, and I can vouch for that because I've used it many times. The fingerprint reader a little bit sluggish, a little bit slow, and the refresh rate on this phone is definitely not the highest, and so it does feel a little bit more sluggish on the screen. It's tough to explain because the screen can feel sluggish.

But the phone is actually really fast. It's got the latest processor in it, Google's tensor processor, which is really good. So it's a fast phone. I was editing video on this phone and it's just phenomenal. But the screen itself kind of the things that move on the screen are a little bit slower than you'd expect. Which is kind of weird because it's the thing that you probably won't notice, but I do because my current phone is a much faster refresh rate, and so you do notice those kind

of things when it comes to the camera. Excellent for everyday shots. No optical zoom, wide angles. A little bit less wide than some other flagship phones, but that's fine. There's this fun feature called Magic Eraser, which will erase random people and objects out of your photos. There's another new feature called Camouflage, which will kind of let's say you took a picture of your kid and there's like a big cooler in front of it, or some sort

of big distracting object. You can just basically circle around that object and it will make that object sort of blend in with the screen. It will make it less vibrant. Let's see. Biggest downside, like I said, is just the fingerprint and the sluggish screen. Otherwise, this is a really really good phone. Now let me just say one thing about it. Though. It's four hundred and fifty dollars right,

which sounds pretty cheap. But the Pixel six, which is this phone's older sibling, which has slightly better specs, or I should say better specs. That phone was on sale for four hundred and ninety nine dollars on Prime Day. So basically, I'm telling you that this phone should be at a target price of three hundred and ninety nine dollars on sale at some point before the end of

the year. I'm expecting this to be that price before the holidays because of the fact that it's older sibling, which sells for closer to I think it's six hundred dollars. It was let's say it's four ninety ninety five ninety six ninety nine, so it was two hundred dollars off. So my point is, this is a great phone. Keep

your eye on it. No need to purchase it right now, but just put it in you know, put it in the back of your head, put it in your Amazon cart, or just look for kind of deals on this phone. At three ninety nine. I think at four point fifty it's still a good deal. But three ninety nine I think is still a pretty good deal too, So just watch for that price drop. All right, let's get to the first question of the show. Victoria says, is there a way to stop or curb spam emails that are

flooding my inbox and junk. Thanks appreciate any help. Victoria love your segments on Fox forty. Fox forty in Sacramento. Yes, uh, Fox forty has been a great station over the year, so thanks for watching there in Sacramento. I'm actually going to visit Sacramento for the first time very soon, so I'm excited about that. All right. So stopping or curbing spam emails, Number one rule, do not unsubscribe. Do not interact with any spam email. If you get a spam email,

do not. I would rarely even open it, But if it you know, in the rare chance that it comes to your inbox, I would not open that email. Delete it immediately. Do not press unsubscribe in a spam email. That will just cue the spammers to let you know that they've got a live email address and they will actually send more spam. So don't do that. If it's a legitimate spam email, like something from Macy's or Home Depot,

those aren't really spam. You've actually signed up for those at some point and now you just continue to get emails. So you can safely unsubscribe to a company that sends you an email that is a legitimate company or a service or something like that. But if it's an unsolicited thing, do not unsubscribe. You don't want to do that. To curb these things, what I would do is look up how to not load remote images. You can do this on Apple, you can do this on Gmail, you can

do it. You should be able to do it on most email providers. But you want to turn off remote load images. What does that do? So a lot of times these email spammers will put little pixels or little pixel It's like a tiny, tiny image in your email that you may not even see or any image in there. And when you load that image, it cues to them that this is a good email because that image was loaded. If it's never loaded, they don't know that you actually

opened it. So I would say that definitely turn off remote image loading. Turn off remote image loading. Just google that. Plus like you know, Gmail, Windows Mail, whatever. Disable automatic image loading is what a lot of these providers call it. But again, once you do that, these providers will not be able to tell that you open their email, even if you didn't interact with it in any other way.

So definitely turn that off. It's gonna be a little bit of an annoyance because every email now will not have images by default, but I do it for all of my emails, and you can turn it on per email, or you can turn it off, turn it on for the entire sender. So it'll say at the top of a new email, it'll say turn on images for this email or all emails from this provider. So definitely do

that I get. I'm honestly, I don't even think I get any spam at this point, like maybe once in a while, and if I do, I'm very surprised that it comes through because it just doesn't really happen as much. When it does, I'm like, oh wow, I can't believe it. There's more spam. All right, good question, Thanks for watching. All right, let's get to the next topic of the day. Samsung. Samsung says they have sold well this is the weird thing.

At first I thought that it said they sold ten million foldables last year, but now I'm reading it again and it says last year, we saw almost ten million foldable smartphones shipped worldwide. So I'm not sure that they sold ten million or the industry sold ten million, because there are other companies that make foldable phones. The first time I the first time I ever saw a foldable screen. I was at CS and it was just it was pure magic. And again, this is why I love my job.

I mean, I'm hands on with this thing that you just my eyes and my brain and my body had never experienced before. And I'm sitting there and I take a screen and I just fold it in half. How wild is that? I just totally amazing. And so we did a little This is when I was starting to This is when I was just starting to do like

reels and stuff on Instagram. Don't even think they were called that back then, but I did a little video showing that, and it, you know, kind of went viral and it was just so cool because people had never seen the screen, like an LCD screen or LED screen, whatever you want to call it. Folding in half. Now it's commonplace. Samsung says it's becoming even more commonplace. It's just been three years since since they introduced the foldable phone, and their first one was kind of a little bit

of a problem, right. The problem was that the screen was kind of if it got a little piece of dust behind the screen, the whole thing went bad. So they figured that out for sure. Now they're shipping two phones that are really good, the Galaxy Fold the Galaxy Flip. Seventy percent of people choose the Flip over the Fold. The Flip is the smaller phone. It literally looks like this except imagine it looks like a standard smartphone, except it just literally folds in half. The Fold is kind

of a bigger phone. It folds almost like outward. And so one of them folds up and down top to bottom. One folds left to right, and when you open up the fold, it basically looks like a tablet screen. And that's much more for productivity seekers. And they say that seventy percent of people choose the Flip and then thirty

percent choose the Fold. Now, the reason why Samsung's saying all this is because on August tenth, they're having a new event, and in that event, they will show off their upgrades to the Fold and the Flip, which I expect to be better cameras. I don't know if they're gonna make them thinner or lighter. Maybe they'll get you know, a little bit of increases in those areas, but I

think that's gonna be tough. But I think the main takeaway from these phones last year is that the cameras were good, they just weren't as good as the flagship. So hopefully we'll see better cameras because that would push more people to get these, because you're not sacrificing the camera to get this cool foldable form factor. I love the Galaxy Flip. In fact, I would probably use that as my daily driver, except the camera just wasn't up to par with what I needed on my phone on

a daily basis. So again, August tenth Unpacked will be a This will be a virtual event, so it's not in person. I can't go to this thing, but I will get the phones hopefully and be able to test

those out soon. The other thing is if you're even thinking that, even even considering that you might get one of these phones, go to Samsung's website and you just put in your email address and you get a two hundred dollars reserve credit, so one hundred dollars off the phone, then one hundred dollars up to one hundred dollars off accessory. So I feel like that's a pretty good deal just for putting in your email address. You don't there's no obligation,

it's not like reserving a Tesla or anything. It's you're just putting in your email address, and if you do purchase it on pre order, you'll get this really good deal. All right. A lot of questions coming through on the Instagram. G Baxter six ninety five says, well, they have software upgrades on August tenth for the S twenty two Ultra. I don't know. I mean, the S twenty two Ultra has been getting regular software updates. That thing has been

phenomenal with the upgrade cycle with the the software. I think Samsung is just doing a really great job with software updates to kind of keep these phones fresh. The big update that we're expecting is called one UI. I think it's five point zero now at this point, and that's the entire kind of the entire interface is going to get a refresh. They haven't said when, but it's happening at some point, so stand the lookout. They'll probably show off some of those things when they're showing off

the new phones next month, all right. Doug Sandra says, hey, Rich, I belong to a group of seven in a text, some iPhone users and some Android users. If I like a text and I read it. If I like a text that I read and I add a heart to it, it repeats the whole text again instead of just showing the original text with the heart. Any idea is about this dilemma. Thank you Sandy, sent for my iPhone. Yes, Sandy, this is a great example of the disconnect between iPhone

and Android. So what you're doing is using a proprietary feature inside I message or messages on the iPhone called reactions. And there are a couple of reactions. I would go through them right now, but my phone is in use. But one of them is like a thumbs up, one is a heart, one is a haha, and there's a couple.

More So, when you press and hold an I message and leave one of those reactions, an I message device aka an iPhone or an iPad or a maccomputer on the other end can interpret that reaction and show it as a little tiny heart or a ha haa on top of your message. But when an Android gets that reaction, it doesn't know what to do, and so it is sent through as a Sandy liked and then whatever your message was. This happens all the time, and so the reality about this is that this is a proprietary feature

on Apple. Again. I've talked about this in the past, but Apple I Message. That's a proprietary system and Apple doesn't have to make that work with Android. It'd be nice if they did, and I think they really should because many people here in the US use I Message. People outside the US could care less about I Message. Nobody outside the US uses I Message. Yes, it's done, but it is not common. They use WhatsApp, they use Facebook Messenger, they use a whole host of things, but

they do not care about I Message. I Message here in the US is number one. It is what it is the standard of messaging for some reason, and it's a proprietary system that does not work on all platforms, which in my mind is a big old I don't like that I use I Message because everyone I know is on it, and it's a very convenient way to send things, and if you send a picture through text, it looks horrible. Now, the rest of phones in the

world use something called RCS. RCS is basically I Message, but a standard that every phone can use, and Apple has refused and decided to not accept that standard on their iPhones. Being very clear about this because what Apple's choosing to do is basically, give you a feature that's really cool, but it's proprietary and it doesn't work on

any other device except their devices. It's amazing, it works great, but it would be nice if Apple said, you know what, let's either give I Message to the world as an app that you can download and use with your friends, or let's also accept this other way of texting, which is called RCS, which would enable all of those iPhone I message features, but for every phone on Android and iOS. So my point is, I guess all of this is to say that yes, this is just an iPhone thing.

That's why your Android friends see it. It makes Android users annoyed, It annoys the iPhone users, it gets people to go to iPhone I guess I don't know. But on the flip side, Google has recognized this little problem that you speak of, and in the latest version of the Messages app. So this is not this is an app you would have to download, It's called Messages and

it's from Google. They take that little heart and they translate it into the actual reaction on the other side on Android because they realize that this message is coming through that is kind of annoying. And so that's what they do. So if you download the messages app, you can get that to work. But Sandra, you're on an iPhone, so that's actually not going to work on your end. This would only happen on the other person's end if they adopt that messaging program. I know, very complicated and

would all be solved. Like I got my whole family to download Telegram, and it's been amazing because guess what, I don't have to deal with a couple of people that use Android in my family, a couple of people that use iPhone. We are all on the same playing field. If I send a giant video through it looks the same on everyone's phone, whether you're using iPhone or Android. If someone sends a picture, it works a if someone

switches devices, it's all the same. So this is the kind of stuff we could have if Apple did not decide to be so proprietary with their I Message. And it's amazing that I Message has taken off in such a nice way. It's great for Apple, but it would be really nice if they brought it to everyone. Where's my tiny violin? All right, let's get to the next story. Netflix Netflix Netflix Netflix is one of the most or if not the most popular streaming service out there. They're

doing really well, but they've got this little problem. You see. It's all of these people that I call klingons. And I'm guilty of it, not myself, but I let a lot of people. Can I say this, There may be people that have access to my account. I may have given them that access. They may not live in my household. If you're gonna ban me from Netflix, go ahead, take away my Netflix account. I don't know what do you

I mean? That'll save me twenty dollars a month. But the reality is a lot of people do this, I think, to the tune of about one hundred million people. And Netflix knows this. And Netflix is in this period now where for many many years it was growth growth growth growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, grow, everything was going up. Now they're in this time of okay, oh hold on, don't go, don't go, don't go, because it's gotten to a saturation point where people they know Netflix,

they know what they want on there. If it's not on there, they have no problem either getting rid of it or just not subscribing or actually canceling or you know whatever. So they've had some problems in the last two quarters their subscriber numbers. Actually they lost subscribers, which is pretty wild for a company that has built subscribers for so many years now fifteen to be exact. So all of this to say that Netflix is now testing a way to get some of those klingons to actually

pay up. And so this is the new plan. They have this new at a home feature that they're testing in South America, Central America, not in the US just yet, so you don't have to be scared just yet of this. But basically, when you go to log in from a TV that is outside your home, right it will say, are you sure you want to log in from here?

Because this doesn't look like your house. So what we're gonna do is, we're gonna give you two weeks to watch all you want on this service, but after that you're gonna have to pay up because we're pretty sure this is not your house and we know you have a TV in your house that's logged into Netflix. And so in some countries it's basically about three dollars a month depending on where you live for this extra house. You may say, rich, I've got a vacation home in

a different place, it'll be fine. Vacation home will probably be fine. Rich I travel a lot, and so I should be able to watch Netflix wherever I want. Yes, you will be able to watch Netflix wherever you want. Netflix is not stupid. They know. They can tell in a heartbeat who is using their accounts as a klingon and who is actually just using their accounts sort of where they travel and where they go and where they vacation.

If you're going on vacation for more than two weeks in a in a vacation home, then you know what, more power to you. That's amazing, and you probably should pay for Netflix in that separate location. Nomes kidding, uh uh, just kidding, just kidding. That was a joke. So the

reality is Netflix is they They are not stupid. They know from IP addresses, they know from patterns, they know from AI when people are when when friends of subscribers are logging in versus when the actual subscriber is logging in. So they're just sort of, you know, turning up that little knob, turning up the heat just a little bit, and they're gonna see what happens, and eventually they may roll this out to all of their accounts. But look, we have we have lived in a world with these

streaming accounts that have been very free flowing. These streaming accounts they charge you, you know, a certain amount of month and you can basically share your account with as many people as you want, as long as there's there's limitations on how many people can stream at the same time. You may have two streams simultaneous, you may have one,

you may have four. But the general consensus is that there are people out there that are just sort of free loading, and those need to convert, at least some of them need to convert into actual paid accounts. Now I'm not talking if you have a college student off at college. Look, if that's happening and you're getting these paid messages, you will you will email Netflix and tell them and say, hey, look, my kids off at college.

This is a this is a person in my household that lives somewhere else for eight months out of the year. But they're still in my household, and they're my student, they're my you know, my my college student. They're in my family. And of course, you know it'll be great. Uh G. Baxter says nothing about phones, but Yakima Washington, misses you. Oh wow, how do you remember from Yakima, Washington so long ago? But thanks? That was a I

was so young. Uh. You know. It's so funny how as you go through life, like the things that I liked when I was young, or things I dislike are things that I like now. So for example, when I was young, I really loved everything big, you know, like big chains, big box chain restaurants, like anything that was like sort of standardized. And now as I get older, I really don't like that kind of stuff because, and don't get me wrong, I'll go to Best Buy and

I use Amazon and all that stuff. But I'm talking like, I like the mom and pop places. I like when things are small. I like when things are run by a single person because that's kind of like the fabric of America, you know, these little businesses. So that kind of stuff is funny. The second thing is that I really did not like small towns, Like I wanted a big, big city to live in, And of course I live in Los Angeles now, so I picked one of the

biggest cities and I love it. But there are definite benefits to smaller cities, Like when I lived in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Yakima, Washington. I could not wait to get out of those places. I was so I had one foot on a plane and one foot in the city because I just didn't understand. I literally said at some point, why would anyone live here? Not on TV, obviously, but I just didn't understand. And now I understand. I get it. You have a family, you want small you want a

nice park in your neighborhood. You want nice mom and pop shops, you want a little town square. You want When I ran down the street in Shreveport, Louisiana, people would wave at me while I was running and I was on TV, so I thought, Okay, maybe they know me from TV. But no way, this is my first week here. There is no way every person is waving to me from television. And the reality was that people just wave to other people in small towns. It's what

you do. You acknowledge a fellow human passing you on the street. That does not happen in Los Angeles, and if it does, people think you're weird if you're waving to them on the streets. They're like, Okay, what's wrong with this person right now? Why are they waving at me, and I have something on my face? Am I drag?

Like I was trying to tell a person the other day that something was like hanging out of their trunk on the freeway and I was like honking at them, and I was like hong honk, you know, like, and I was waving, but I was like literally worried for my life because I was like, Oh, this person thinks that I'm like trying to do something silly, right, and so, you know, it's just anyway, It's just it's just sad. But you look at this is this is the reality. Oh my god, I've said reality like ten times in

this podcast. This is just grow It's called growing up, right. I have a family now. I did not have kids. Back then. I wanted to go out to cool places. I wanted a party. I wanted to hang out late at night. Now I want to go to bed. I want to watch a movie in my own house. It's just it's just kind of the thing that happens as you get older. And I don't think there's necessarily something wrong about that. It's actually the way it should, you know,

It's just the general way it happens. And I guess it's kind of you live and you learn, you change. But it's really funny because I guarantee you there's something in your life right now that you either make fun of your parents for, or your grandparents or a friend in a different place in life, and eventually, at some point you will get to that place and you'll be like, Okay, now I get it. And so it's just one of

those little things. But there's still a lot of things I still like that I liked when I was a kid. So anyway, all of that to say that Netflix is going to be charging. So all right, let's get to the next question, shall we. Justin Justin What a cool name. Justin Justin says, have you reviewed Brooklyn Girl? Wow? Thanks for buying a badge. I don't know what that means, but thanks for doing that. That's awesome. I'll talk about small life, a small town life more. All right, Jetson says,

have you reviewed T Mobile Home Internet? Did I miss it any good or bad news? I'm thinking of dropping AT and T for cable and Internet. The inflating bills are ridiculous. Any word on T Mobile would be great. Thanks Jetson, Justin Justin j E S T T O n okay. So I have not specifically tested out T Mobile Home Internet, but I'm familiar with it. I did test out Verizon's similar version of it, and it was fantastic,

and I one hundred percent recommend it. The thing to know about this, So what he's talking about, or what they're talking about, is that you get this box. It's basically a wireless hotspot for your entire house. So you know right now, if you have cable internet from team from AT and T or let's it the other one FiOS or Spectrum or Comcast Infinity, whatever, someone comes to your house. They run a wire from the telephone pole to your house and then they run that little cable

to a box. That box spits out a Wi Fi signal that you use in your entire house. Well, these new home Internet services from T Mobile and Verizon, they shortcut all of that. They take the wireless signal in from the cell phone towers to a wireless box, and that box then turns that into a Wi Fi signal that you use for your entire house. I know it sounds wild and crazy, but that's a thing that they can do now because of the five G spectrum is so good that it can power all of these devices

in your house simultaneously. So what you need to look out for. Number one, the prices are excellent. They're trying to get people to sign up. Yes, the prices will eventually go up, just like cable. You know when you first got internet, Remember it was like thirty five bucks a month, and then it's slowly but surely it just keeps creeping up. Same thing's going to happen with these services.

But right now, because they're new and people are trying to you know, they're trying to get your attention, they're very inexpensive. So if you can switch to T Mobile or Verizon's five G Home Internet, definitely give it a chance. Now, it's not available everywhere. Your home has to be approved for it to actually be there, and there's another caveat

the speed. So what I would do is, before you sign up for this, you need to find someone with T Mobile or Verizon five G and you need to bring them into your house or wherever you would put this little box. You put them near a window typically, and I want you to do a speed test on your phone. So download the app called media or met

ere just like like a Medior in the sky. Download that app, make sure your WiFi is off on your phone, make sure you're on the T Mobile network or the Verizon network, and you want to do the speed test and home loans by Octavio on the Instagram says he's got the T Mobile Internet, the home La Home Internet in La. It's fifty dollars a month, like I said, and he says it's excellent. So well, I don't know if he said it was excellent. He just said he

has it, so tell me if it's excellent. But again, if you have a high if you have good fast internet at your house, this is going to be a great way to sort of get around those wired cable companies that have had a lock on home internet for so long, and that luck that they've had means that it just hasn't been very competitive. Now, if you live in a house like mine, where I do have two providers, it is actually to your advantage. But many homes do

not have two providers. They have one provider and you're stuck with them and that's it. You have no other options. Or you have two providers and one is really slow and the other one's really fast. Where I happen to live. I've got two providers. They're both fast, and I basically ping pong between them. So for the past couple of years, I've had one service which is really fast, but the

price keeps creeping up just a little bit. And so when that price gets to a point where when I call for you know, the price just went up, and I will call and say, hey, look I can go to the other people for a cheaper price. They are competitive when they hear that, so it definitely helps. But you have to be calling your cable company every single year to negotiate a better price. You have to be calling SiriusXM if you have them, do not let SERIOUSXM

renew your subscription at the current price. If you have termin X, if you have any of these bug services, you've got to call them when the price goes up, and they know you have options. So you have to call and you have to get a better service price monthly because that's how you save money. And you're right just in These inflating bills are absolutely it's it's unlike

anything I've ever seen. Every single monthly bill that I have has gone up in the past six months and yeah, sure, it's five dollars, two dollars, three dollars, ten dollars, but that all adds up. Maybe it's an extra fifty to one hundred dollars a month. Plus the groceries are going up. So we're all in this interesting time of we've been. You know, it was great times for many years with you know, a lot of money flowing and prices were cheap.

Now we're in kind of a little bit of a I don't know what it is, but it's definitely a correction for some of these things. And I don't I don't see prices going back down in a huge way. I think that the prices will kind of stick to where they are and maybe other things will kind of like gas will come down a little bit. But we'll say, I'm not an economist. I don't know. J nineteen sayss have you gotten your Amazon TV yet? Mine is delayed? No,

mine is not delayed. If you were following me on Instagram, you know that this one hundred dollars TV deal, A lot of people were questioning me, and I have a bone to pick with those I'll tell you something. I was really sad that you did not believe that I had on very good authority. I don't just go on TV and talk about things without cross checking them several times. So when I had good word that this Amazon TV was going to be fifty dollars for a fifty what was it a fifty five inch TV or a fifty

inch TV on Prime Day? This TV? It was Amazon Fire TV. Why am I not signed it into Amazon? I can't see what my TV is. Let me see if it'll let me see this. This was a Prime TV for fifty bucks, all right? Sorry? This was a TV Amazon TV for one hundred dollars and it was either fifty or fifty five inches. I can't remember. Oh, here's my order. Okay, let's see it was a okay, a fifty inch Amazon Amazon four Series four k UHD smart TV. It is currently selling for two hundred and

ninety nine dollars. Many of us got it for one hundred dollars. I can see my order right here. It is getting delivered soon. It is not delayed as far as I can tell. This is a It's not going to be the best TV in the world, but for one hundred bucks for a fifty inch TV, that's pretty good anyway. My point is I mentioned that on TV. It went completely and insanely viral, and it was a limited time deal, and so people were losing faith in me. They were calling me a liar. They were saying it

was a scam. They were saying Amazon was scamming them. They were saying that the price was another price, and I said, hold tight, this is a limited time deal. We don't know when this deal is going to hit. Amazon does these things called lightning deals where they just boom, well it hit, and when it hit, is sold out in about six minutes. But I will tell you I got many messages from people that follow me on Instagram at rich On Tech that they were able to purchase

the TV. I was not a liar. I was not a scammer. It was not a schemer. This was a real thing, you know, and you had to be there, and you had to be there at the right time. It's like any other deal that you see, you don't always get it. Have you ever been to a Black Friday sale? I have waiting out in line. The first twenty five people go in and they say, oh, that's it. That thing's sold out. And it happens every time. So again I'm glad that some a lot of people stuck

with me. But you know, the haters and the naysayers. I was actually quite sad because I don't report fake news. I don't. I don't even report close to that. In fact, when you see stuff, ninety nine percent of my stuff is so unhyped that it may not even get the traction that it deserves because you know, I don't really hype things up. I tell people what they need to know. That's like this podcast. I tell you what you need to know, and I don't do it in a scary means.

I don't do it in a flashy means. I just tell you stuff. And I told you about the TV it was a good deal. It was going to sell out all those things out in my blog post. And if you chose to listen, maybe you got it. If you chose to not believe me, you were you know, some people were just going off and off and off, and I'm like, you're spending more time yelling at me when this this prime day is not even over yet.

So anyway, my number one goal, and if you follow me on Instagram, which if you're watching on live Instagram, now I'll give you the secret to what I do. This is my number one secret. I'm giving it to you right now. The secret is I am trying to help you. That's it. That is the the number one thing that I do in every single aspect of my life, whether it is my TV report, whether it's a post on Instagram, whether it is a Facebook post, I try to help you. That's the bottom line. That's all I do.

Now do I brag on my Instagram about, you know, what I'm doing, who I'm hanging out out with, where I'm going. I try not to because does that really help you? No? Now am I going to show you parts of my life that I think are fun and behind the scenes and it may not have an aspect of helping you, probably, But the reality is I went

to Rome. Most people when they go to Rome, they sit there and they post all the pictures of their gelato and of you know, the amazing pasta they eat in their first class seat, which I did not fly. By the way, By the way, you never see economy class on Instagram stories. Have you noticed that nobody flies economy class on Instagram? Everyone seems to be flying first. Why are they flying first? Because that's what they choose to show you that one time they upgraded on their

miles to a first class seat. Suddenly that's the seat they show you they're sitting in. Okay, good, great for you. Economy is just fine. I like economy. Plus it's a little extra leg room. I've said I can go anywhere in the world. Yes, I've flown first in my lifetime. Doesn't happen all the time, no, But the reality is every single person I follow on Instagram only flies first. Amazing. Good for you. Anyway. My point is, you know, when I went to Rome, I made a story out of

it for TV. Nobody asked me to do that. KTLA didn't say, hey, can you do a story on your vacation. I just wanted to. I was going through my travel and I'm like, oh my gosh, these are little things that like will help other people, and so I chose to share those things on TV and in my stories. Did I share my gelato? Of course? Did it look delicious? Yes? Did you want some of that? Of course you did, and you know some of you probably go to Rome

because of that. But was that my intention? No? My intention is just to have fun here, help you out and do the best I can So anyway, was that considered going off? I don't know, but it sure felt that way. Let's get to the next story, all right, Amazon Prime Video. Amazon Prime Video is getting a makeover.

Starting this week, Amazon Prime Video is rolling out this new redesigned experience on Fire TV devices is de Android app and Connected living room devices, iOS and web to follow, which it's a little kind of knock on iOS there because they're like, oh, we're updating everything except iOS. It'll get there. But that's kind of funny because most apps update iOS immediately. The app is going to launch with six primary pages, home Store, Find Live TV Free with ads,

and my stuff. I will tell you Amazon Prime Video. There's a lot of good stuff on there, or some good stuff, I should say. It is impossible to navigate impossible. It is impossible to see what's included in your subscription. It's impossible to see the top stuff that people are watching. It's just really, really not good because Amazon is mixing two things. They're mixing stuff that you can watch for free with Prime, but they're also mixing in stuff that

you can rent, which is very confusing for people. So they're trying to make that easier. So now there's going to be two clear icons. A video that's included is gonna have a blue check mark. Something that you can rent by or subscribe to will have a shopping bag icon, which makes a lot of sense. They're also gonna kind of move sports into its own little hub, which is handy because now you can watch Thursday night football on

Prime Video. And my favorite thing that they're doing, they are adding a top ten chart to show you stuff that's trending or popular stuff, trending stuff, and that's just so much handier. I it's funny, I am. I was talking about like I like small things and whatever, like mom and pop shops, But I actually do love the idea of the top ten chart because I just liked seeing I like seeing what other people are watching because

sometimes things bubble up to the top. I don't consume a lot of a lot of you know, like I don't know what people are watching on TV. I mean unless you see stuff, you know, trending in the news. But like, you know, there could be a show that's really popular that I may not discover because I'm not watching those kind of things, or I'm not checking out whatever I'm not keeping up with, like Entertainment Weekly anymore. So this I think is really handy. So what was

I watching on Prime the other day that I watched? Oh, I watched House of Gucci on Prime and I thought it was great because I saw that House of Gucci was coming out on Prime and I was like, all right, let me watch. I'd just been to Rome and so I wanted to watch that. I thought it was a good movie. I know some people some people thought it was good, some people didn't, But I thought it was a great I just loved it because it took place in Italy or a lot of it. I thought the

acting was so over the top. Jared Leto was excellent. What a lady Gaga was phenomenal. I mean, she really is a great actress. But and then the other guy, who's the guy from Girls. His name is evading me right now, but the guy from Girls, I thought he was really good too. And I felt like the acting just got more and more intense as the movie went on. Like I think as they were filming it, They're like, let's just be more over the top with our Italian

I sense and whatever. So I enjoyed that movie. I thought it was pretty good. Not everyone likes it. But anyway, that was on Prime for free, and so I feel like I got my Amazon Prime fill because I was like, all right, I watched one movie for free on Amazon Prime this year. That is a major win in my book. I love watching free movies because I subscribe to so many of these services that I pretty much will only

watch a movie if it's free. Although I did go to the movie theater the other day and that was great. All Right, enough about me, Rich, just gab on about your life. Let's talk Adelia Ar's questions. Ar has a question. I watch KTLA and I think you talk about how some backup drives has had a glitch or something that make your files disappear. This happened to me when I updated my old Passport for Mac backup drive because the

old ones stopped working when I updated to Catalina. I've kept both backup drives in case something can be extracted. Let's see here, I'm seventy years old, I'm analog. I'm completely must by this. Not to mention uh losing all my writing files since nineteen ninety six, I've lost everything. There are many files in trash, but it's not accessible. Can you help I used to have a Mac guy come to my house but became unreliable and overcharged. Thank you.

Ar all right, I think I know what happened here. And first off, I'm very sorry that you lost your files. That is extremely frustrating and horrible. Uh. This is why I tell you you have to back up. And I don't wanna know harp on this whole backup situation. But you have to have your files in two places. You have if you have your files on a physical hard drive. Let's say this is a physical hard drive. You can't

just have this here. You also have to have this mirrored somewhere in the cloud because or you have to have two drives. You can't just have if a file is just here and only here, it will go away. Eventually it will be gone. You will lose it. That's the bottom line. It's just the reality of how things work. It's called Murphy's law. It will go away. You need

to have your files in two places, ideally three. What I think happened in this situation is that when you plugged in your hard drive, the Mac computer said, hey, do you want to use this as your time machine? And you said, why yes, I do it's a backup drive, and Mac proceeded to eradicate all the files on that drive to make room for the new files and to format that for time machine so all may not be lost.

What I recommend doing in this situation is you need to go on Yelp and you need to look up data recovery service and you need to find call the top two places in your area that are closest to you and just talk to the people on the phone explain the problem. One of those people will be will be very nice to you and you'll feel like you have a connection with them, And when you do, that's the person that you use to actually try to get

this data back off your drive. It may not be cheap, it may not be easy, you may not get everything, but this is a professional needs to go in and see if they can recover these files. Usually, when a computer wipes files off a hard drive, it doesn't actually delete those files on the first pass. It just deletes all references to those files, so they're still on there.

A computer just can't access them easily. Now, if you do a really secure wipe, which we call a a two pass, three pass, four past seven pass wipe, or you put zeros on there to really delete things. In that case, those files are permanently gone. But if you're just formatting a drive or any sort of like media, typically those files are still on there until they're rewritten over or you do a second pass on those files, and then they're really gone. So that's what i'd recommend

you do. You got to find a good data person in your area and just talk to them and see if you can get that data back. I'm sorry that that happened to you. Mike Carpenter asked, what's that phone that you're using? That is the Pixel six A that I'm currently reviewing, or actually my review is up, and Alejandro in La said, when and how often do you go on with Handle? I go on with Bill Handle KFI AM six forty eight am on Tuesdays, eight am on Tuesdays, and I do Wednesday with Jennifer Jones Lee

at five am. And that reminds me I need to email. I'm trying to start up this new food tech segment as well on KFI, and so that would be on the weekends. But that's still kind of in talks, all right. Next story, Apple fifty million dollars settlement over defective mac key MacBook keyboards, these butterfly keyboards, which I had and was a pain in the you know what. Apple finally admitted that they were not the best keyboards in the world.

They affected MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro keyboard. They were sticky, they were unresponsive. If you got a little dust in there, it was tough to type. This affects people who bought MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro models between twenty fifteen and twenty nineteen in seven states California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, in New Jersey, New York, and Washington. Apple of course

denied any wrongdoing, but they will pay out. So the payouts are expected to be four hundred dollars to people who replaced a couple of keyboards, one hundred and twenty five dollars to people who replaced one keyboard, and fifty dollars to people who replaced key caps. It does nothing for people like myself that went and purchased a new laptop because I couldn't deal with the old keys, and I actually ended up giving my old laptop to my son, who has not complained about it, but he's not the

same kind of typer as I am. He's not on it all day doing emails. So again, just be on the lookout. We're gonna hear about this. Two things to be on the lookout for. Number one, you may have some money coming your way. And the second thing is that there's gonna be scam artists that try to capitalize on this settlement, So don't fall for any scams. Live News twenty four to seven says you're gonna compete with the Fork Report. No, I'm not competing with the Fork Report.

I'm going to talk on the Fork Report. Neil over there at the Fork Report. We did one little test run last week and or two weekends ago, and so the idea is that we would talk about some of these you know, fake not fake foods. I should say, these new foods like the food tech that I that you generally see me talking about and so and Loggie Wolf says, if I got the keyboard replaced on a twenty seventeen MacBook Pro by Apple, can I still get the money coming my way? Yes? I do believe that

would qualify. So if you paid to have that replaced, it looks like you'll have about one hundred and twenty five bucks coming your way three ninety five if you paid for a couple of keyboards. Let's get to the next question of the show. Sue says, the other day, my kids went to camp on a field trip. My daughter did not take her cell phone because camp discouraged it and she would have to get a locker. What would a tech watch be a help if I can call and text her if needed. My coworkers say, talking

in a watch phone does not work very well. Oh ow, Instagram's telling me I'm at my limit. We are an Android family. What do I buy for my kids to communicate with them if their phone is not available like they were when they were at Magic Mountain? Thank you, Sue. All right, Sue, Look, the number one smart watch out

there is the Apple Watch. You can go cellular. That's why with my kid it was expensive, but we bought him an Apple Watch with cellular and it's it's basically you have to pay for the watch cellular version, which is a little bit more expensive, and then you have to pay ten dollars a month for the cellular service. I also got a little He broke his first one, so the next one we got him was a little screen protector that you snap on. It was ten bucks.

It's fantastic. It's gonna save the screen because kids are all over the place. The other hand hits things, but that is the best way. We use it. With my son. It is fantastic. He can text back and forth on I message, he can make phone calls. It works anywhere. You do not need an iPhone to use it. However, you do need an iPhone to actually activate it. Again, I don't want to go off on Apple, but this is a This is a decision Apple made to make

you stick in their ecosystem. So you need an iPhone to act activate an Apple Watch that does not need an iPhone to operate, just saying once the iPhone is activated, it works on its own. So theoretically you could use a friend's iPhone to activate this. I'm not sure you can use an iPad because I don't think the watch app is on there. But again, this is a little decision that Apple makes. I really think that they should

let you activate this Apple Watch online. It's still ten bucks a month, But you know, I mean, why, why why do they make you do this? I don't know. So to answer your questions, sue the only other option for Android is you can go with a watch from Samsung. They've got LTE versions of their watches. You can do that.

I have not tested it lately. I did put in a request with Samsung to test new watches that if they come out, which I'm expecting them to, I did say, hey, can you can you please give me one of those to test out and try it, and hopefully that will happen. The other option is some of the little watches from something like T Mobile or Verizon. In my experience, they are not very good. They're just not and they're bulky. The software is not good, they don't work very well.

The Apple Watch is just the software is like butter, it just works. It's just amazing. So the other thing I'm hoping will happen, There's going to be a pixel watch that will have an LTE version that's coming out sometime and that will work with Android. That will be a great option when it happens. It does not happen just yet. The other thing is perhaps because Google bought Fitbit, perhaps they will make an LTE version of the Fitbit. That would be amazing too. But otherwise your options are

pretty limited. When you're on Android. It's if you have any iPhone in the family, I would say just go with a with an Apple Watch. The cheapest Apple Watch you can get is the Apple Watch se that's there's probably gonna be a new version of that in September, so if you can wait, I would wait on that. But that would be the best best case scenario. All right, we'll get to another question here. This is just a compliment, it looks like Jennifer says, Hey, Rich, thanks for talking

about the I Exit app earlier this year. We recently road tripped California to Tennessee and back and driving our diesel pickup towing our camping trailer. I use the trucks version of the app to find truck stops and parking areas throughout our trip because we need a diesel and we were far too long for any regular gas station. The app did a great job. We would not have known about it if not for you. We appreciate what you do. Keep up the good work. We listen to

your podcast, follow you on social media and more. I feel like a stalker, but whatever, Jennifer Laguna Hills. Oh that's funny, Jennifer. I guess you probably if you're listening to the podcast. Thanks for writing in about this. The I Exit app is one hundred percent. You need it on your phone if you are road tripping at all this summer or anytime or driving and you need to find what's up ahead at the exit ahead. So let

me just give you a scenario. You're driving up to Washington State and you really want, I don't know, pick some restaurant whatever, like fast food that's not like the standard, right, it's not McDonald's, or you know, Taco Bell or something

you want. Maybe it could be Taco Bell because they're not at every stop, but maybe you want like Burger King, or maybe you want Chick fil A, or maybe you want Canes, or maybe you want you know, some of these little regional chains like what was Culver's right, So

those are not going to be at every stop. With this app that you do instead of searching Google Maps and seeing like, oh, there's a Culver you know an hour away, what this does is it just lists all of the exits up ahead, and it tells you what restaurants are at those exits, or you can search and it'll tell you which exit up ahead will have it.

So it's a fantastic gap. Not only does it do that, it also tells you the gas prices at each exit, and it tells you the exit up ahead with the cheapest prices, so you don't have to drive twenty five thirty five forty miles out of your way. It just says, hey, look, don't stop the next exit. Stop at the one after that, and they'll have the cheapest gas prices. So I exit is great. The other app I want to mention that I am a total believer in now is called Upside.

So I mentioned it on it might have been in the same No, it wasn't in the same one. Maybe it was. Upside was an or is an app that gives you refunds or cash back on gas and so I obviously have an electric car, so I'm not filling up with gas. But my wife has a gas car and so I've been using it to fill up her car, and the cash back is great. You get you know,

it's not a ton of money. You're not going to retire on the money you get back from Upside, but it is something, and if you refer friends, you get more. So I'll put my referral link in the notes. But you can find that on my website, rich on tech dot TV. But if you sign up through there, you get a little bonus. I get a little extra on my first or fill up or your first fill up, something like that. But what I've been doing, I've gotten

the bulk of my refunds on groceries. So there's this one grocery store that I like to go to just for fancy meals. So I only go there, you know, a couple times a month, but you get One time it was like twenty percent back, another time it was ten percent back. Now I've noticed the more I go, the less they're giving me. Like this weekend it's six percent back. So you know, someone was asking earlier what's

on the menu for tonight. But usually on a Friday night, if I'm making like a nice steak or something, I will go and get it at this certain grocery store in town that I feel like has better meat than other grocery stores, and it happens to be on upside. So I've been getting You know, if I spend one hundred bucks there on a dinner, which you know you could easily do these days, you know, it'll be like the first time I did it, was like twenty dollars back,

which is pretty cool. So anyway, upside rich on tech dot tv for the link. I think it's still on there. Let me see. You might have to scroll down a little bit. Let's see is upside on there. No, it's not, so I'll put it on there. I'll put the upside referral link on there so you can see. I think you have to use my code to get the bonus cash back. But it's pretty cool. I'm impressed it's it's again.

It's not going to be something that you, you know, make a ton of money through, but it is kind of a cool little way of getting some extra cash and it definitely helps. Okay, where was I think, uh oh, shoot, we run out of time here. I just uh, okay, Amazon, I'll just go through a couple of stories. I want to mention Amazon bought a doctor's office, one medical. I think they have a bunch of these in La or at least a couple. And now Amazon owns a chain

of doctors' offices. I know it sounds weird, but these but I feel like, again, this is going back to the whole mom and pop thing, Like most doctor's offices are sort of like small businesses. My doctor small business they're usually they're usually aligned with some sort of hospital or like medical group, but it's still very small, and I kind of like that for doctors. But I would also like more digital elements to be built in, like the ability to make an appointment online, the ability to

pay your bill online. So all that stuff is sort of lagging when it comes to doctors and dentists. They're getting better, but it's one of these things where I think Amazon will have an impact. What I don't like about this is that Amazon sort of lives by that, you know, ride hard and fast and kind of like,

you know whatever, give up on things very quickly. So they could they could buy this company, do it for a year and just decide nevermind, just doesn't work, and then they'll sell it or get rid of it or close it. So I hope they don't do that. They paid three point nine billion dollars for this chain of high tech doctor's offices. We'll see it's a it's a primary care membership, so you do have to pay a membership fee to be a part of this, which, you know,

access to healthcare is tricky enough. A lot of people do not want to pay extra for these boutique medical firms. I know, if you have a lot of money, you can do it, but I you know, like I've I've looked into this because I'm like, oh, it's so nice a concierge a doctor's office. But it's just, you know, it's like, you pay enough for doctor's offices, and so you don't really want to pay even more for that. Right,

Let's see what else. Microsoft is putting in this little feature into teams called Microsoft Viva Engage, which literally is Facebook for your work inside teams, So be on the lookout for that. And Chevy unveiled a Chevy Blazer EV. It's a suv. It's gonna start at about forty five thousand dollars, although we all know those are probably gonna

be tough to get at that price point. So but I love any competition in the EV space, and so the fact that Chevy is coming out with a really cool looking Blazer, and hey, this may be my next car. I think for my next EV, I'll go with an SUV. But I plan on I bought my Tesla, so I plan on keeping my Tesla for as long as humanly possible until that battery has like one mile left on it. I will continue to drive that Tesla. It's kind of like an iPhone where it just keeps getting software updates

to make it better. And I'll tell you the autopilot has gotten way better. So it used to do this thing. If I was driving autopilot at you know whatever, sixty five miles an hour and I was coming up near a truck. As a human, my instinct is to kind of slow down when I'm going if I was going between two giant semis or something. Right. Not everyone does that, but I do that because it's just like, all right, I gotta be on my guard a little bit. But

this Tesla would just like it. It reminds me of that movie with Denzel Washington, like Flight I think it was called, where it was like thread the Needle, Thread the Needle, where he's just like zooming up and he's he's all stormy and he's kind of hung over, so he's like threading this needle, just driving that plane like boom. That's the way it felt on the Tesla, and so I'm like always like, eh, let me slow down a

little bit. Well, now, the Tesla, clearly people have felt like me in those situations where, now, if you're going really fast and a car is not going as fast next to you, like a big truck. I noticed this morning it kind of slowed down just a little bit, just a tenC bit, pulled back just to you know, get past that truck in a safe manner, and then it kind of went again. So little things like that

that continue to get better on the Tesla. But anyway, the Chevy Blazer TV will be launching in twenty twenty three as a twenty twenty four model year, and this is going to go anywhere between I would I say two fifty to three fifty miles an hour, two hundred and fifty to three hundred and twenty miles on a charge. Again, it's a range of two hundred and forty seven miles for the base one. And oh okay, so there's a

the most expensive is gonna have three twenty. The cheapest is going to have two hundred and forty seven on a charge. So we'll see. The cool thing about this this car, too, is I have a feeling it's gonna be among the first to get Apple's new car Play because both screens are digital. Chevy and Apple have had a really good relationship with CarPlay, and I think that this will be one of those new cars to take advantage of the car Play that does both screens, which

is gonna be really really cool. That music does mean that's gonna do it. For this episode of the show, If you're on Instagram, stick around for a couple minutes. I will answer a few of your questions off air here. If you would like to submit a question for me to answer, go to my face book 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. Go to the listening app of your choice. Write a quick line about what you like about this show to help other people understand why they should listen. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free KTLA plus app on Apple, TV, Fire TV, and Roku. Once you do, scroll to the tech section, you can 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 really appreciate you spending it right here with me. I'll talk to you real soon.