Google wants to monitor your sleep

a fantastic day wherever you are. So I just used task grab it for the very first time, and this is a company that I kind of actually forgot about. To be honest, you know, I always have this list of things I want to do around the house, but I just never do them, and I know it's bad. It's bad. It's bad. I've been on a kick though. I've really been trying to be more productive in twenty twenty one, get through all the things that I need

to do that. You know, a lot of these things, like these little things on your to do list, you know they cost money, and so you don't necessarily want to do them because you don't want to spend the money but then you sit there and you're like, why am I not doing this? Why am I not doing this? And it really comes down to like just kind of coordinating and just saying like, look, I can do it.

You know, It's like it's not that expensive sometimes. And so that was the case with some ring lights that I wanted to put up that I've had sitting around my house for a while. And so finally I forget. I actually got a pitch from task grab It for something totally unrelated, and I was like, oh my gosh, I forgot about task grab It, And so I went on the app and I looked I had my old account because I did a story with task grab It, like many many years ago. Let me see how many

years ago? This was task grab It KTLA uh May sixth, twenty fifteen. Okay, so five six years ago. That's a long time ago. So I, you know, so I created an account back then when you know when I did the story with them, but they arranged it, so I, you know, I met up with a tasker. We did a couple of tasks, blah blah blah. It was really cool. Ikia bought them. Anyway, long story short, I booked this guy on task grab it to install these ring lamps, and I got to say he did a great job.

He was a little late, but it was finding you was such a nice guy that I really didn't mind. And total for the two lights was a hundred bucks. I mean that's pretty good in my you know, I'm not a electrician, but I think a hundred bucks is pretty good. And I love how it's all through the app.

It's on demand. You chat with the person that you you know, want to use, so you know, you can look at you put in what you want to do, and then it gives you kind of like the taskers that can do that, and then you pick one you you know, I guess book them and then you kind of chat with them. The funny thing is if people wanted to get around this, they could, They could just chat and then say like, oh, just call me and

then arrange the job. But then you don't, you know, it's like you're it's kind of like you don't want to do that. You know, you don't want to get around these systems that these tech company built because there's protections built in for you and the person that's doing the work at your place, So you know, it seems like why wouldn't I just you know, contact them outside of task grab It and just say, hey, can we

arrange this for twenty bucks less? But I don't know, not really worth it and I love having the receipt in there and it's great, So I gotta say a great little job. I think they did a nice job. Everything's working nicely, and I don't know, check it out. I'll put the link to task grab It in the show notes so you can check them out if you have stuff to do around the house, like putting stuff together.

I still have another thing, so I'll be honest. The other thing, this is the reason why I thought of it, is because we got a basketball net for Christmas and I still have not put it together, and so I need to get a tasker to do that as well. And again it gives you like a little you know, price and everything like how much it's estimated to be. Anyway, I would recommend it. I think task grab It you

did a great job. Thank you. All right, let's talk about the first item of the week, the new Nest Hub. And I love the Nest Hub. It's one of my favorite smart displays. But I'll be honest, I'm having a little envy with the Amazon side of things right now because of all the stuff that works with their stuff. Whenever I go into the Amazon four Star store, I always look at like I saw the new what is it,

the Echo ten, which just looks so nice. It just it follows you around, and I'm definitely gonna buy one. I think I'm gonna get one for my mom and my dad because then I can video chat with them from across the country and they don't. You know, the problem with video chatting on the phone is that it doesn't you know, it's just annoying to hold your phone, it's shaky. This will follow you around. It kind of swivels left to right, and it's just easy for video chatting.

And my wife was like, oh my god, It'd be perfect for our kitchen because then we can chat with your mom while we're cooking. We often chat while we're cooking and it will just follow us left to right. The Nest Hub Max sort of does that, but it does it on the camera only. Anyway, I digress. The new Nest Hub Ub. You know, this is like their smaller smart display, and what I love about their smart display is the fact that it has Google built in,

so of course I love that. But it also displays your Google Photos, which is really really nice because if I got one of these Amazon ones, I wouldn't be able to show my Google photos because they don't play nice. Of course, you know, you have to live in a silo with all these things. But the new Nest Hub hundred bucks. It does all the stuff that it typically does, but the big new feature is this Motion Sense, which is a radar that's built in low power radar, and

it tracks your sleep, so it watches you breathe. It also has a microphone built in, a thermometer built in, temperature sensors. I should say, so you get this report of exactly how you slept, and you can see your disturbances like coughing and storing. And Google is sending me one to test, so I can't wait. I know people think it's creepy that Google is watching you sleep, but no, no, no, sleep is very very important right now. The Apple Watch

is severely in the sleep department. Fitbit is great, but they're owned by Google, so I mean, and you also have to wear something on your wrist. This you don't have to wear anything you just go to bed, and it kind of senses that there's a sleep activity happening.

And I asked them, I said, well, what about the rest of the stuff that's happening in the bed, and they said, no, we only look at sleep, and you know, I'm sure it sees other stuff, but it it just doesn't count that in your you know, in the activity. So I know that's going to take a little bit of getting used to. People are definitely not open to the idea of Google sensing all this stuff. But I

think it's great. I think it's awesome. I think that the data that you're getting outweighs any sort of the privacy concerns. And yeah, it's weird that it's recording audio and in your bedroom, but I think it's it's kind of neat to have that sleep data. So after a couple of weeks of getting this sleep data, it's going to give you information on how to improve your sleep.

So maybe you should go to sleep earlier, Maybe the temperature is not right, maybe a toss and turn all the time, and you can you know, maybe your allergies are acting up with the coughing, the snoring is keeping you up. You just don't know until you see this data.

The only thing that's kind of weird is you would think this would be a free feature, but clearly they have plans to charge for this because it says sleep sensing is available as a free preview until next year, which means that's an indication that this will be a Theoretically,

they'll charge for it next year sometime. I think they're trying to figure out how this is gonna exist with Fitbit because Fitbit has a premium subscription of I think it's ten dollars a month, so of course we'll it be free for those people, probably, but I think they're still trying to figure that out. But anyway, the new Nest Hub is one hundred bucks. Their pre orders are open right now. I don't know when the Nest Hub is available. I think in the next month. But cool feature.

I have my Nest Hub in the bedroom. I love it in there because it doesn't have a camera. You get all the you know. I just did a routine where it turns on my night my bedside lamps every night at sunset with a nice candlelight color and puts on some smooth music so I can relax before I go to bed. So I think it's it's a great little device for the bedroom. And I think that Google definitely knows that, because they're Google, they know everything. All right,

let's get to the first. Uh, let's get to the first question from Lester Rich. I have an epsn et twenty seven to twenty. Recently, I got a message that some documents would not print after some past date in March because Google retiring some app. Lots of sums in here. All of a sudden, I can't print anything from my iPhone ten s Max. My wife can't print from her iPhone twelve pro. The epsoin iPrint app just twirls indefinitely and never finds the printer. Is there a solution sent

for my iPhone? Lester? Lester, you ignored all of the emails that you got about this app and some impending doom, and now you're having problems just like they imagined you would, and you're emailing me for a solution. So, uh, look, I don't want to say, come on, Lester, you gotta you gotta be on top of this stuff, but the reality is you got to be on top of this stuff.

And clearly I don't know what's going on here. I don't know what why the Google said they're retiring some app or whatever EPSOM said, but it kind of warned you. And now it's like, oh, and now that I want to actually print something, I can't do it. So here's my advice. Uh, I don't think that the printer stopped working with the printer app. Perhaps it's a new app you need or whatever. So what I would do is I would delete your printer from the wireless network and

you know, reform at it to like factory specs. You know, just do the do a hard reset, and I'm sure there's instructions online on how to do that. Usually push a pin some sort of uh you know, paper clip in some sort of hole in the back of the printer for a couple seconds, let it restart, or maybe a hold down two buttons, whatever you do. Get that back to factory. Then I would delete the app from

your phone and I would start over. Reconnect the printer to your network, download the app to your phone, log it all in, sign it all up, and see if that helps. Let me know. But that's what I would do personally, or you know, go ahead and look in your email for that Google message and see what they were saying was gonna change and make this program not work so well, But Lester, I know. I'll be honest, I have something similar happening. This thing called eb which

is a photo device. They sent me an email that said until unless you update this device, it's not gonna work after June fifteenth or whatever. And sure, sure enough, they've been sending this email to me for two months. I've not updated the device. But to be fair, I don't really use the device, so I don't need it. But if I ever did later on in the year, I'll be the same. I'll be in the same boat as Lester. So I'm not I'm not kind of pooh poohing you, Lester. I'm just saying that we're human. This

is what we do. We put things off into the last possible minute, and then all of a sudden, it's like, now, what was I supposed to do there? And it's too late. All right, Let's talk about a feature on Chrome I thought was really cool. I just think this is really amazing, and pretty much Google has added close captioning to the entire web. Any audio or video that you can watch on Chrome, you can now close caption and this is through a feature called live caption, and you can turn

it on in Chrome Settings. This is Chrome on your desktop and you basically turn this on and anytime you start playing a video, it starts transcribing it, which is just really phenomenal. So, I mean, I'm talking anything, even in like your Google Photos. Let me try. Let me try doing this. So let's see if I have a video on my Google Photos, I'm gonna play and let's see here, let's see if it actually does it press play? Why is this selecting? Oh? I see I've got something selected. Okay,

so impressing play. So my kid is doing some multiplication and he yep, look at that. I'm gonna do four time seven. Oh this is so amazing. I just it's such a cool feature. I know you can't hear what he's saying, but I can see it. I'm just so you turn it on, you go into settings, and then you go into accessibility or Advanced Accessibility, and then it

says live caption. You have to have the latest version of Chrome for this, but it works across social and video sites, podcasts, radio content, personal video libraries like I just said, Google Photos, video players, and most web based video or audio chat services. So again, if you're doing a video chat like a Zoom or a Google Meet inside your browser, not on the third party app, but inside Chrome, you can get a transcription in real time

of what the person's saying. The transcriptions are created on device, which means the content does not leave your computer, which means that it's private or as private as it can be. It works offline, which means you don't even have to have an Internet connection, and that's basically it. I have a video of this, I'll put it in the show notes. I think it's amazing for accessibility, and not just accessibility,

but for many reasons. I've just left this on and it's just kind of cool that I can see whatever is being said on my computer. I can now just read on the screen and you can move around where it is and kind of I don't know if you can resize it, but you can resize it a little bit, I know. But it's just a great little, great little feature, and so I'm totally cool with this again, Chrome Live Caption. Check it out. I've got a video on it, and

it's just a great accessibility feature. Or it even works when your volume is down in your computer, So your computer can be muted as long as that audio is coming through the web. As you know, if the volumes down, you can still see what's being said. All right, let's get to the next question. Deborah, I have a Note nine. I keep getting all these messages that I have to move my photos to Microsoft. One note, my gallery on my Android currently backs up to Google Photos. Is that

completely stopping as of April first? Will I lose what's in Google Photos? After April first? Is Google Photos going away? And now I have to use crappy one note, her words, not mine with a little limit of fifteen, I'm guessing she's meaning gigabytes. Well, my photos taken on my iPhone on my phone no longer backup to Google Photos as of April first. If you could clearly explain, it would be much appreciated, Deborah, deborrah, No, you don't have to

worry about any of this stuff. So there's two things. There's a couple of things going on. So the message that you're getting on your note is a Samsung message with regards to one note. So Samsung used to have this thing called Samsung Cloud, but they have basically I think given up on that, and now they're moving everyone to Microsoft one note. Samsung and Microsoft have gotten very cozy, and so I think that they're just saying, you know what, Look,

they know how to do cloud storage. Let's just lean on them for this. So all their cloud storage is sort of moving to one note. But anyway, so a couple things going on here. Google Photos will not be affected. This has nothing to do with your Google Photos. I know it's a little confusing because you're using Google Photos on your phone. That's a Samsung that's giving you this message. But this only has to do with Microsoft. If you the Samsung Cloud as your backup for your photos. So

I don't think you have to worry about anything. I think that you can do the migration now if you want, But you don't really have to worry about anything with Google. Nothing is changing with Google Photos with respect to your storage. Now. There is something that's happening with Google Photos later on this year, and I think it's happening. Oh gosh, Oh my gosh. Now I need to remember when this is happening. But Google Photos is changing. Oh yeah, June first, Okay,

Oh my gosh. So now we're confusing a couple different things so let me explain what's happening. So on Google Photos, which you say you do use as of June first, anything that you upload, any new photos and videos will count against your fifteen gigs of free storage, so that will be changing on June first. Now, I don't think most people have to worry about that because for a majority of people, you don't. Really you're not going to

hit up against that limit. Now, if you're someone like me who's using two terabytes of Google storage, yeah, I'm definitely gonna be affected starting June first, but I've already been doing the high quality forever so it really doesn't matter. But for the rest of you that if you're just using the high quality in Google Photos, it's starting on June first, that will count towards your storage. I know

it's very confusing. Basically, think about it this way. Anything you've had in Google Photos up until now will continue to be free forever, and it will not take away from your storage as of June first. Anything you upload, whether it's high quality or original quality, will take storage in your Google Photos. If you go over fifteen gigs, you will have to start paying. It's like two or three dollars a month for a couple hundred gigs, so

it's not really that big of a deal. But yes, Google is going to start charging for Google Photos, going back on a promise that they made many years ago that Google Photos was going to be free and unlimited, and I never said forever, but they kind of implied that. And it's it's definitely unfortunate that all these tech companies as they get bigger, as everything moves to the cloud,

as there gets to be less competition. Yeah, they're kind of, like I said, the vice grip is just tightening just a little bit on us, you know, and especially on our pocketbooks or our wallets. So I don't think you have to worry too much debor That's that's my main that's my main takeaway here. So I think that's but you do need to know that if you want, go into your Google Photos app, and I would check to see just how much, just how much storage you're using.

So if you open your Google Photos app, press your little profile icon in the upper right hand corner, and it will tell you how much storage you're using out of your storage on Google Photos. That's what i'd recommend to do. All right, let's move on to Instagram, which was down for just a little bit today, but no big deal, let's back up. It seems Instagram is working

to make it a little bit safer for teenagers. We know that you know you're supposed to be thirteen to join any of these online services, right, But kids, of course lie, parents help them lie. I'm guilty of it. My kids have accounts on things, and I get it. It's not right, it's not the law, but you know,

this is what people do. So kids under thirteen are not supposed to have an Instagram account, but believe me, if you've been around any child in your lifetime, you know that a lot of them do have Instagram accounts under thirteen. So how do they get around it? Well, they just put in a different data birth big deal. So Instagram says that they understand that this happens. They can't really do anything about it because there's no real ide verification for kids under thirteen. How are you going

to do that? Right? So they're now using AI to figure out, Okay, we see this kid is on here. We think they're under thirteen, So we're going to apply these special rules to their account. Number one rule, adults aren't gonna be able to DM them. So adults, if they try to send a DM to someone under eighteen that Instagram has identified is under eighteen, whether or not they said that for real, it's not gonna work. It's gonna say sorry, you can't send a message to this kid.

And so that's number one. Next one is going to be if kids are interacting with an adult, like if they're following an adult and they can you know, they could DM them, and the adult exhibits some weird behavior, potentially suspicious behavior, like if they send a large amount of dms to kids all the time or under eighteen, Instagram is either going to block the conversation, it's going to send a message along with the conversation saying, hey, you might want to just be on your guard when

you text with this person. So that's the second thing they're doing. Next thing they're doing is they're gonna try to convince young people to make their accounts private. And of course we all know this is a problem too, because what do these young kids want to do. Every one of them wants to be an Instagram influencer or a YouTube star, so they don't want to have their

account private. They want to be out there for everyone, but they are not a parent that knows we don't want you to have a public account, but the kids don't want to listen to that because they want the public account. So Instagram is going to gently nudge them towards choosing a private account when signing up. If they don't, they're going to send them notifications later on benefiting highlighting the benefits of a private account, and reminding them to

check their setting. So again, this is all kind of a first step. They're just trying to make it a little bit, a little bit more friction between some of these pain points that they've noticed. And so I think that's that's the name of the game here. It's not going to stop all the problems on Instagram with young people and adults, but I think it should be just enough sometimes to you know, if they get rid of ten percent of of bad interactions, you know that's an improvement, right,

So ideally be one hundred. But this is the reality of the world we live in. I mean, it's tough to do that. So there you have it, Instagram making some changes. All right, Let's get to the next question. Kevin says, Hey, Rich, I love the advice and help you give have you heard of any issues with the iPhone update fourteen point four point one? My SE is turning off and battery is dropping to zero percent? Thanks

so much, Kevin, Uh, Kevin. Without knowing exactly which iPhone s you have, if you have the old SE, like the original that came out in I don't know, a couple of years ago, many many years ago, I think that your battery could just be really bad. And so the first thing I would do, well, here's how I

troubleshoot this. If it's your if it's an old SE, I would look into settings and then let's see settings battery and look at where it says battery health, and it will tell you the maximum capacity of your battery. So if your battery is at you know, forty percent or something, it might be time to bring your phone to an Apple store, get a new battery installed, or perhaps consider a new phone. If it's the old SE, the original iphe S first generation, Let's see when did

that come out? That premiered in twenty sixteen, so it's been about five years, which is probably enough for your battery to be pretty pretty burnt on that one. So if it's that phone. That's what i'd recommend. If it's a new iPhone se that recently came out and the batteries dropping to zero percent, well you probably want to take it to an Apple store and see what's going on. But also check that battery health. See what's going on in the battery health, see what's draining the battery. It'll

tell you over the last ten days. Like I can see on my iPhone that Instagram uses my battery the most than Twitter, than the camera, than Facebook, then Google Photos, and so that's kind of what you want to see what's going on there. And if it's something's like really draining your battery, you know, maybe consider getting rid of that app or restricting the background activity on it or

something like that. The other thing I would do is go through all your apps and delete any that you don't need or want anymore, and restart your phone and make sure that your software is properly updated. But those are the steps that I would take to see why your battery is dropping down to zero. I mean, you know, my battery drops down to zero too, but you know

it's because I'm using my phone. So and the iPhone twelve is significantly a larger consumer of battery than previous iPhone models that in my experience, So my iPhone eleven pro before. I mean, I could go a whole day and I'd still have, you know, fifty percent left or something insane. And now I you know, by the end of the morning, after I've just gone through like my quick you know, beginning of my work day, I'm down to like, you know, eighty percent or seventy percent. So

definitely the iPhone twelve. But you have an iPhone se So I don't even know why I'm telling you that, because none of it applies anyway. All Right, cybercrime, this is a problem. This is a real problem. Cybercrime four billion dollars in losses in twenty twenty. This according to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, which two thousand complaints per day in twenty twenty, and probably a lot more in twenty twenty because you know, we're all working from home,

people are checking their email more. So they said it was twenty percent more than twenty nineteen, which I believe. And I'm just telling you this because you know, I think that you should be aware of the scams that are propagating the Internet, and we know, there are just scammers around all corners of the web. I mean, it is just unbelievable. How many people email me with a scam that say, you know, rich, I just got this text, I just got this email I just got is this legit?

And it's it's really tough for the average person to kind of sort through all this stuff, especially with the phishing scams. Those are just unbelievable and they're unrelentless. You know, it's like you get an email from your credit card company and you have to sit there and look at it for twenty minutes wondering is it legit? Is it not legit? I mean, it's really a problem. So top

three types of compromises are business email compromise. Okay, that means when you get an email from someone at your work and it looks like it's coming from someone at your work and you click a link and it's not so good. Ransomware attacks that's a huge one. Ransomware attacks are when you know, you download some software to your computer and boom, it's just like, oh gosh, what did

I just do? Next? Thing? You know, you can get windows that say like, oh, you got to pay us some bitcoin for ransom or whatever, and that's a that's a big mess. Then you have tech support scams, which this one is just I think this affects a lot of average people because they get to pop up and it says, oh, you got to call this one eight hundred number to call Microsoft to figure out what's going on with your computer. And next thing you know, you

call the number and then say, Okay, thank you. We see a problem on your computer and can you please navigate to this website And they make you navigate to some website and it downloads software to your computer and they're like, okay, please click yes, and you click yes, and next thing know, they've taken over your computer and now they've got you paying to get your computer fixed.

And it's a whole big thing. And believe me, when you think people don't fall for this, be on TV for a week and see the emails that you get from people. I mean, sometimes I'm just I can't believe my eyes when I'm reading this stuff. I just feel feel for these folks that just you know, got duped. And I'm like, I don't know what to say. I really don't know what you can do, except you know, you got to move on because your computer is compromised.

You already spent the six hundred dollars. I mean, hopefully you can get that back from your credit card company.

But it's it's a mess, it really is. So please be aware of these things and share these I post these, you know, these scams that people send me on my Facebook page from time to time Facebook dot com slash rich on tech, and I do that because I understand that some people that follow me are tech savvy, but a large majority or not, and so I want to make sure that the tech savvy people are keeping the

non tech savvy people up to date. You know, you get these emails, Like my dad texted me and he said something about an email and I was like, well, you didn't You didn't reply to that, right, He's like, no, no, no, I didn't. I'm like, okay, I mean he had something up for sale on Craigslist and I get, you know, some of these emails to this certain email address he has, and I'm just watching the scams roll in, one after another,

one after another. Oh my gosh. So if you're listing stuff on these public you know, uh, directories of sales, you know, where you sell something like a used. Good. You gotta be really careful because half the people, you know, I'm always like, what's the angle here? What are you trying to scam me out of? You know? So just be very very careful, all right, Darlene says, good morning, Rich. My friend's husband just got back from the hospital. He

kept trying his password and his iPhone is disabled. What can he do to get his password reset? My friends are in their seventies. Um ooh, that's not good. So the iPhone is disabled, Well, that's a problem. You're basically gonna have to reformat your iPhone. As far I know, I don't think that there is a way for you to recover that passcode, because that would be a security

issue for the iPhone. I mean, maybe you know there's some sort of crazy, you know, high tech tool out there that could do that, but I don't know of it. So I know this isn't what you want to hear. But I would say if the device is completely disabled, like if you like can't even ever open it again,

then you're gonna have to format it. But if you still have a way to try another code, I would ask your your friend that got out of the hospital to really think hard and to really just use that muscle memory is in his or her brain to just like kind of press the numbers without looking the way they did before the hospital. So, I don't know. I mean, that's a that's a really tough one because you can't really recover the passwords on these things. They're just not set up to do that as far as I know.

I mean, so, uh, you got to remember those pass codes. And if you the good news is if the phone was backed up to iCloud, you could format the phone and then you could bring your data back down, So you're not gonna lose a whole lot of stuff. But it's definitely a pain and it's not fun. And you know, you're saying, these people are in their seventies, they're not gonna be the ones to do it. I mean, you're gonna have to help them do this, Darlene. So, oh gosh, yeah,

this whole password situation. Oh you know what, I should probably mention this while we're on the topic of passwords. So I mentioned last week that I talked to the CEO of Bitwarden. I don't know how much I said about that, but I gotta say Bitwarden is fantastic. So if you're looking for a free password manager, I can't recommend Bitwarden more highly enough. I mean, it does everything you need. I saw the demo of it. It's great.

You get everything you need in the basic free version pretty much except you get you don't get passwords sharing with a family member on that free level. You can upgrade to the paid level for that. And the sharing is actually quite helpful because you don't really want to be texting passwords back and forth with your loved ones because that puts them at risk. So you want to use a password manager to share it with them securely.

And the way you do this is you just put in their email address boom, the password manager shares it encrypted with them. They can now either see it on their side or you know, add it to their passwords. It's pretty it's pretty slick actually, But with Bitwarden, that's one of the features that they do keep. They hold that back for the premium users. Now, some people did email me and they said, Rich, she didn't mention that you can get that if you go to Bitwarden's organizational plan.

Like the business plan basically includes two persons sharing, but that gets a little confusing because that is technically a business plan. Yes, it's you know, you need individual plans to sign up for the business plan. But like I do a consumer segment on TV for consumers, and I had to stick to what consumers are comparing. You know, there could be a lot of plans out there that you know, that are free for an organization, but I'm

not talking about that. And I think that if you're savvy enough and you want to set up the business plan and do the organizational plan for two persons sharing, fine, But I personally am talking about personal plans. That's what I compared in my segment. So I think that that's like a delineation that needs to stay. You know, I need to stick to because my audience is watching for

a consumer standpoint. And so when I compared consumer things, so the consumer version of dash Lane, consumer version of last Pass, consumer version of what's the one password that people like? I pick things that I thought were free, And so what I honed in on is dash Lane has a free option, but you can only access your passwords on one device. Last Pass has a free option.

You can only access your passwords on one type of device, so tablets or computers, or mobiles, or I think tablets and mobiles are in the same Dropbox now has a free option, but it's limited to fifty passwords. You also have Google. They have a free option called password Manager, but that's limited to Chrome, Chromebook, and Android. And then you have apple'sy Cloud, which of course is limited to Apple products. So I'll put the whole article linked up

on the show notes. But if you're not using a password manager, which if you're listening to a podcast, you probably are, But at the same time, you got to get started with one of these things because they are just essential. So you get the password manager, you come up with the master password, and then you protect the password manager master password with two factor authentication, and that's

really the best you can do. That's pretty much the best you can do in this day and age, unique strong passwords for every website created by a password manager, which is then backed up by a two factor authentication. That's pretty much you know, you know, if you're doing that, you're doing pretty well. Let's see, let's go to this story.

Western Digital, one of the biggest I get so many emails about and I'm sure we talked about this on the last show, but this whole idea of sticking a flash drive into your iPhone and offloading the pictures, and so it's one of the most popular questions I get and sand Disk has a new device called the I expand flash drive. Looks sounds so nice, doesn't it. Oh that's nope, nope. I'm looking for my sound effects. So I don't have that one anymore. I used to have

like enchanted, like whatever. So this has lightning on one side, USBC on the other side, which is fantastic for plugging this into your iPhone. It has great software that will copy all the photos from your iPhone. You can then delete the photos off your iPhone, but I don't recommend you doing that unless you have them backed up somewhere

else besides this little flash drive. But you can take this little flash drive and then you can connect it to your computer and upload those pictures to some sort of cloud service as well. Now you can do this all from your iPhone without this, But a lot of people just like the idea of having their pictures on sort of a little hard drive. This is not my preferred solution. I like to have everything in the cloud.

But at the same time, you know, there's a lot of people out there, and everyone likes what they like to do. Some people don't want to be in the cloud. So if you did that, I would put them on this little device and then also copy them to a hard drive, and now you have your photos in two places.

If you really wanted to get specific, I would give that hard drive, you know, keep it at like your friend or family's house, because you don't want it in the same house as your flash drive because if something ever happened, God forbid, you lose both devices. So again, this is a whole You know, there's a method to the madness when it comes to being overly cautious with all this stuff. But you know, at the same time, I've seen a lot of stories and I've gotten a

lot of emails, so these things do happen anyway. The iPhone are the sand disc I expand flash drive looks again, works to move files between the iPhone, the iPad pro, the Mac computer, any other USB type C devices, including Android. So again, the idea is that you can plug this into anything you have and exchange files either way or

just put files on there. You may not know that you can plug a flash drive into your iPhone or your Android and it will show you that on files you can you can browse the files like you would a hard drive. It really works pretty well. Uh. You get a USB C sorry USB three point zero, and of course it has the I Expand Drive app, which you know you can use to transfer things back up your phone, contacts, photos, all that kind of stuff. The drive comes in sixty four gig, one, twenty eight, and

two fifty six. Prices are MSRP of forty five, sixty and ninety dollars. So of course you get your best bang for your buck with a two fifty six, because that's ninety dollars, which would be let's see here, so let's do ninety divided by two fifty six equals thirty five cents of gigs thirty five times sixty four, So that would bring the sixty four gig to twenty two dollars if you did the math the other way, so which it's forty five dollars. You're paying a twenty dollars premium.

So I would just I would just go with the two fifty six, if you know, or one twenty eight split the difference. I know it's a little bit more expensive, but you know, you're getting a lot more capacity, and these drives are are these files are very big these days. All right, let's get to the next question. Uh oh fuugh, Okay, I put this question in here because I was going to talk about the bit Warden stuff right after this question. But you know, you know mey, This podcasts all over

the place. But anyway, Hey, Rich, I'm always afraid to trust password apps. Here's my solution. Tell me what you think. Pick a word, name, et cetera. Pick a number, cap the first letter of the website. Pick a character. Example, Rich Rock's twenty one capital E dollar sign equals eBay, Rich rocks twenty one capital A dollar sign equals Amazon. Then any website I go to, I know my password due to the first letter of the page. I've been using this for years. Once in a while, I change

up the word good, bad, not safe enough. Thank you you Rock. Uh. I'm gonna say now, I think you're ahead of the game by having unique passwords for every website. But there's a there's a keyword when I say passwords need to be strong and unique. These are not what I would call strong passwords because it's a pattern and

they're very easy to figure out. If I was able to figure out eBay, I can figure out Amazon, or if I happen to see your eBay and in Amazon, I see what's going on there and I figure out the pattern, and I say, oh, well, I guess if it was hey, hey needle, or what's that word? What's that hey needle? What's that website that does the home goods? Yeah, hey Needle, I was like, Hey Needle, I can already tell the password would probably be rich Rocks twenty one

h dollar sign So I don't recommend this system. I think you're you're you're on the right path of getting unique passwords, but they're just not strong enough, and I would just I would just convert over to a password app. The fact that you say you don't trust it, I think you need to trust it because they're not infallible.

But I think they are pretty darn good, and every single tech person I know uses one, and I think that as long as you're protecting it with two factor authentication and you pick a strong master password, I think you're going to be pretty good, and I think you'll be much happier with the results because you can make passwords that are impossibly complex and when I talked to bit Warden, the CEO told me that fourteen characters is kind of the sweet spot for a good password, So

that's what I'd recommend. I'd recommend fourteen characters strong passwords saved in a password manager, and you can get even wilder. You can use like one of these ub keys. Definitely want to use two factor for all your websites that you log into and just you know, the most security you can, the better, the more, the better. You know, nobody ever complains about having more security except when you

actually try to access your own websites. Oh, let me give you another tip that I got from the CEO of Bitwarden. This I had never heard before, but I love it. So now, how all these websites they ask you to give up highly personal information like these security answers. So the main security answers you get are your dog's name, the street you grew up on, your mother's maiden name,

your first car, your high school mascot. I mean these are things that like you can pretty much figure out if you're friends with me, or you know, if you do a quick Google search on like ninety nine percent of people, or look at their Facebook page. So for that reason, you don't want to use real answers for those questions. So for that reason, I always just picked random answers to these questions and wrote them down. But

the CEO of Bitwarden takes it a step further. He told me you generate another password for these answers and then save it in your notes. So all these password management apps, once you save the password for the website, that's just one field. There's another field if you look in there called notes, and in there you can just type in notes for that website. Well, you type in mother's maiden name and let me just generate a password,

and I'll tell you what it is. P T five five I D L F at sign MB explanation point Z three QN. Okay, no, I'll take no symbols. Let's just do letters T J A K B k x A A G T seven G Y three. Uh. Yeah, I don't think that anyone is going to figure that out as a mother's maiden name. So that's what you do, and you put that in as your mother's maiden name, and then you copy that and put it in your notes. I think this is just an amazing tip. Now, if you're a security expert out there, let me know if

you think there's a problem with that. I could see. The only problem I could see is that if you had to use a system where you had to verify this like verbally, that could be a problem. There are some websites that do that, and I also hate that. So I have to sit there and say something verbally that is a very personal piece of information that this person is somehow typing into the website to confirm. So that's why I love the idea of coming up with

basically another password. It's all it is. And so next time you encounter these random questions on a website that says, you know, what's your favorite food, what did you want to be when you grow up? What's your favorite ice cream flavor? Just pick four random questions and make up four random passwords, put them in or whatever, and next thing, you know, just save them and there you go. I mean, I had to this is I tweeted about this, but this whole COVID situation is like a total land grab

for personal information. I had to register for a COVID test and I'm not kidding, Like they want to know every thing, and I'm like, Why do you need all this information? To what degree you need like every single thing about me? Why do you need all that? You know my kid has to do like a certain app. You got to check in on an app to like go back to school. And it's like all this stuff you gotta you gotta give over to this random app I've never heard of so I can drop my kid

off to school. It's like, what, No, So I've been using this new system and it's so far, so good. It may, you know, blow up in my face if I ever need to remember one of these you know, these things like mother's maid a name, because I just may not be able to figure it out if I didn't take proper notes. So keep those proper notes and back up make sure that I don't know. I guess you can back up your your file for your from your from your password manager. I'm sure there's an export

to back it up. And then you got to encrypt that, make sure that's encrypted, and back to Oh my gosh, it just goes on and on and on. Okay, let's talk Apple Maps. Speaking of COVID, Apple maps now displays COVID nineteen vaccine vaccination locations Apple map users can now find the closest pharmacies and healthcare providers offering COVID nineteen vaccines. It's through a partnership with vaccine Finder. All you have to do is search, hit the search bar and Apple

Maps and then you'll see COVID nineteen vaccines. Or you can use the fine year by menu, or you can ask Siri where can I get a COVID vaccination. It'll list the hours, address, phone numbers, and a link to the provider's website. Right now, they've got twenty thousand locations. This is great, but it really it's probably not that useful right now because just because a place has a COVID link to a vaccine does not mean you're gonna get an appointment very easily. All depends on where you live.

So as we get more and more of these vaccines available and people can just go ahead and make a appointment at the place closest near them, this is gonna be great, but right now vaccine appointments are still a little hit or missed depending on where you live. In fact, this was my KTLA story today. It was about these computer programmers that are making their own websites that are sort of like megawebsites that scrape information from all of the pharmacy websites and put it on one page. So

one of those websites is called find my Vaxla. That's finemivaxla dot com. That's just for the LA area. If you're in New York. Turbovax dot info. Turbovax dot info. It's like TurboTax with a v dot info. But the big one is vaccinespotter dot org. And I talked to the guy Nick who created this website. Smart guy doesn't make any money on it, just kind of does it because he's a computer programmer. He was frustrated trying to get his parents or his grandparents for I don't know,

someone an appointment. And so now he's scanning all the pharmacy chains across the US. And if you look like if you click Alaska, you can see the pharmacy chains like Walmarts, Walgreens, you know, whatever's over there, and it tells you the vac oh the vaccine type as well. Interesting. So he does a great job. They all do. But they're doing this, you know, the kindness of their own hearts.

And I figured this out the hard way too. It's like I was trying to get my parents vaccines in New Jersey and believe me, oh my gosh, just trying to navigate all these websites. There's just so many of them. It's like, I get it, but it's also just really frustrating. And I'm a tech person, and so for my parents, they're not going to sit there online for an hour a day looking for appointments scouring all these various sites. Some of them ask you to put all your information

in before you can even look. So that's what these sites do. And so you know, it's a good thing that we have this availability, that we're getting more availability, and it's just it's making it easier to find. But these guys did a cool job of getting this information on one page and making it a lot easier than going from site to site to site to site to site. This will tell you if there's appointments. It's not always perfect.

Believe me. It can say there's an appointment, you go to the website and no, it's gone, because guess what, you're not the only person looking at this website. There's thousands of other people scouring the web for these appointments. All right, Uh, hello, I recently received an email from AT and T stating they were changing from Direct TV. Do you know what that means for someone who has

Direct TV? The information we are to read is nineteen pages, just wondering if you heard anything about this and if we now have to take AT and T instead of Direct TV. Thank you very much for reading this email. Enjoy learning from you on Fox four in Kansas City. Thank you. Joan, Joan, good question. So I had to do some research on this one because I wasn't totally familiar. I know that AT and T. This is kind of

a weird thing. AT and T kind of sold DirecTV, which, by the way, they just bought DirecTV a couple of years ago, and now they're selling it, but they're selling it but keeping an interest, so it's still kind of their company, but it's got a third party that's kind of running, which is called TPG. I know, so confusing, But here's this section of their little letter that I think is pertinent to you, and it says seamless customer transition.

Once the transaction is completed, existing AT and T video subscribers will become new Direct TV customers and will be able to keep their video service and any bundled wireless or broadband services, as well as HBO Max plus any associated discounts. When the transaction closed closes, all existing content deals, including Sunday Ticket will become part of what they call

new Direct TV. Customers will continue to have access to premium content via DirecTV, and AT and T will receive AT and T TV will receive the same services, channel lineups, and customer care. So it sounds like AT oh my gosh, so confusing. AT and T TV and Direct TV are going to be similar, like kind of aligned. And I think the reality here is that the right on the wall for direct TV, it was a fantastic way of delivering TV to people back in the day, but now it's kind of a not a not so much Well

maybe it is a sinking ship. I don't know what the what the term is for it, but it's just the returns are not increasing on that. It's it. They're going down every year because more and more people just continue to cancel services like direct TV in favor of subscription services and also of uh, you know, cable that's delivered over the internet and so you just don't need to have a satellite dish in your yard anymore. And so I think long story short for you, Joan, I

don't think you have to worry about anything. I think that there there might be some change in the name or change a lot, you know, changes in the lineup or something like that. But I think it sounds like for now at least, everything's going to stay the same and the uh, the customers that are at and T video customers will become direct TV customers, and I think Direct TV customers will just kind of remain Direct TV customers. So hope that helps with the transition there. But thanks

for watching on Fox four Kansas City. I know a lot of people love to watch on that. I get a lot of emails from you in Kansas City, so thank you. Well, if you go to an Apple store, you probably want to be nice. This is an article from Apple Insider based on a TikTok video that has

kind of gone viral. Former Apple store employee says, you know what, if you're really nice to the Apple store employees, they might surprise and delight you by h maybe doing a repair that might cost money and give it you for free. And so this TikTok user says that rude customers you know, come in all the time. Of course they do. I mean, we get that it's everywhere. You're gonna get your problem fixed, but you're gonna have to

pay for it. But if you're really nice, and of course this doesn't happen every time, but these staff members are apparently empowered to, you know, go above and beyond. And if you're really nice and you're really amazing, Matt, we might just do a little repair for you for free. And so gives the example of you come in with a water damage phone. You're not supposed to be able to replace those without a fee, but you know what, Nah,

we'll just give you fore replacement. And I can definitely see this happening because it's one of those things where it doesn't really cost Apple to it doesn't cost them much to give you like a refurbished phone, and so why not and if you're really nice, and it's something that these people see and they kind of, you know, they get a you know, I don't know if there's like an allotment you get every week of like surprising delights,

but I can definitely see this happening. And I remember one time I brought my laptop and I bought a brand new laptop and it crapped out after I don't know, not even a couple of weeks, and so I brought into the Apple Store and it was a logic board that fried, and the guy was like, all right, hold on, let me go get you a new a new MacBook from the back and I'll just swap it out. And so I was like, oh my gosh, that's so cool.

Now I get it. It's it's under the warranty. So this is not like, you know, they're not they won't doing me any favors. But the reality was he well, actually the story ends badly because he could have swapped it out, but he couldn't because once he looked it up, he said, oh, you bought this from Amazon. I said yeah. And oh no, he said, did you not buy this from the Apple Store. I said no, I bought it from Amazon. He said, I can't replace that. It's a

third party. So back then Amazon was not an authorized reseller of Apple computers, and so it was basically like a gray market. I don't know how they got them,

but they couldn't replace it at the store. So I'd just send it back to Amazon, which was fine, and from that day on, I've always bought my Apple stuff from Apple, but now you know I say that, but even if you go on Amazon, it's still a lot of the Amazon stuff is I think they have a deal with Apple now where it is direct, they're like a third party reseller, and so is a lot of the local stores you see, and especially Best Buy. So I think this was when Apple wasn't as big as

they are now. It was when these places would kind of third party sell their stuff. But now it's all legit and I think you get the same exact benefits wherever you go. But anyway, my point is that I was really nice. The guy was really nice. He was like, all right, sure whatever, but then he kind of I guess maybe he couldn't do it. So anyway, they didn't

surprise him to light me. But I've been in the Apple Store plenty of times for things, and believe me, I think that they are really great there, and the fact that you have that genius bar is just really fantastic anywhere in the world. I was in Japan once and my my MacBook Air hard drive crashed, which was the worst thing ever. I didn't know what was wrong, but I just couldn't start up my computer, and I could not believe that I was able to make an appointment.

They did a little you know, analytics on it, and they said, oh, you're hard drives fried, so you need a new one. And I said, well, I'm not going to leave it here because you know, I got to fly back. But thank you, and you know, I felt better. I didn't have a computer that whole trip, which was kind of a problem, but I used my producer's computer

for that trip to kind of write my stories. But anyway, it's just one of those things where this is the this is the kind of service, the top level of service you get from Apple, you know, and this is why people love them. And I found that out. So anyway, let's get to another question. Let's see Laurie says, what's the best and safest way to print out full text message conversations from my phone to my computer so I can print them out? Thank you, Luri, Lauri in Pasadena.

I did not know a way. I don't, I don't. I get this question over and over. I don't know why people need to print out their texts, but they need to print them out all the time for some reason. So uh, I don't know. I recommend just taking screenshots and printing those out. But if you need to actually print a text message from your phone, there's a website. I have not tested it, but it's called print text

Messages dot net. And you know, they've got an app that you can download for the Mac computer, which yeah, I'd be a little sketch, a little, you know, a little worried about that. But they also have an Android app. So the Android app I think is probably fine because it's just going to access Android works very differently. Any any program can pretty much access mobile sms, so I think you'll be fine with that. But it is five dollars to access this and get the full, the full

use out of it. And I actually got an email back from Lauri saying that she paid the five dollars and it worked. And so I guess if you need to print out your text messages, print text Messages dot net is the place to go. There you go. Lori in Pasadena tried it out. All right. Let's end with the BMW I four. This is the first all electric sedan from BMW. You know BMW had that. I gosh, what is it? I don't know what it was called that electric car that was you know, it was kind

of their first. It was a little funky, little funky design. People love it, and you know, I considered getting one at one point. But this I four looks like a BMW standard, you know, like an X three or or what do they call X three or no, sorry, I three. The X is these SUVs. But this looks like a like a typical like a three series, except it's an electric and they call it the I four. It looks really cool, three hundred miles range, and it's a little

bit less than Tesla according to tech Crunch. But you know, the reality is, we now have a BMW all electric sedan that looks just like a regular BMW. And the reason I share this is because I've been testing out a lot of electric cars lately, and I gotta be honest. I was all set on the Tesla three, and then all of a sudden I started testing these other electric cars. I'm like, oh my gosh, there's so many of them,

you know, like the Chevy Bolt Euv I tested. You got this new BMW, You've got the new Volkswagon, which I really love, the ID four. But I'll be honest, the more I test these cars, the more I kind of think to myself, it's not just the car, it's really Tesla as a company. It's the reason why people choose Apple for the iPhone. Is an entire company that is dedicated to this car that they created from the ground up to be electric and to be amazing and

to be awesome. And the software and the hardware and everything works together, and that's really what you're getting. You're getting in an iPhone of a car. And so the more I thought about, ugh, do I want to Volkswagen that they're kind of like, you know, they're tiptoeing in And yes, these are big car companies with a lot of money and they can figure things out, but at the end of the day, they're an older company that does things in old ways in addition to the new ways,

whereas Tesla only does things in the new ways. And I get it, Like I always say, there's a lot of different people in this world. You don't have to agree with me. But the more I think about it, the more I just kind of want the Tesla because I'm buying into a world not just like an electric car. And so for that reason, I'm kind of like, yeah, I think I just need to go with Tesla and I'm not gonna I don't think I'm gonna buy it

anytime soon. I think, you know, it's like my car's fine, I don't need a new car, but definitely getting a little Tesla electric car and vat there. That's for sure. It's starting to creep in on me, you know what I mean, Like, ah, that would just be nice, you know. And people love their Teslas, I know, believe me, I see them all the time. But I would get my windows tinted. I don't know why that's on an option on the website. That's gonna do it for this episode

of the show. If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer, you can do it two ways. Just go to rich on Tech dot tv slash podcast hit the microphone button to leave a voicemail, or go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash rich on tech and hit the big blue send email button. Also, I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it. Go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich on Tech. You can find me on all social media at rich on Tech.

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you check it out. Just download KTLA Plus on Apple TV, Fire TV, or Roku, open it up, scroll down and look for the tech section, and boom, you can watch my segments. Like my sister did the other day. I think it's the first time she's ever seen me on TV, and she just kept sending me screenshots. She's like, you're funny. Oh, this is so cool. That's awesome. Yeah, been doing it for ten years. 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 do appreciate you spending it with me. Stay safe, I will talk to you real soon.