A personal update on the wildfires in Los Angeles. Meta makes a one eighty when it comes to moderating posts. Coverage from CS twenty twenty five in Las Vegas, plus your tech questions.
What's going on?
My name is Rich Damiro and this is Rich on Tech. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. Now. I believe that tech should be interesting, useful and fun. This week, of course, in Los Angeles, tech took on an entirely new meeting with the wildfires.
Here.
Not only did it help people stay connected and it continues to do so, but there were vital apps and services people relied on to not only keep tabs on the fires, but also their homes and their lives. We're going to open up the phone lines at triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one because this is such a special show today. I will pretty much take or entertain
any call. So if you want to give me an update on your situation in Los Angeles, you have a tech question, Kim will take your calls and we'll get you on the air here, give me a call eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Email also open. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv hit contact you can contact me that way. Very excited for one of my guests coming up this hour, Nick Russell. He
is the VP of operations at watch Duty. This is the app that has been helping people stay informed during the fires here in the LA area. This app has seen a surge in downloads and so many people. This is probably I think it became like the top app in the app store because of this, and it just it really has some incredibly helpful information. We'll have Nick Russell join us here and talk about that app. Later on in the show, a couple of folks from CS twenty twenty five.
Matt Swider of the shortcut dot com.
Will join me to talk about some of the stuff he saw there, and lance Yulanoff, editor at large for tech Radar, He will talk CS twenty twenty five as well. Now, as you know, I am based in Los Angeles. This was a really interesting week for me because I'm here in Los Angeles now, but I had to come back early from Las Vegas. So CS twenty twenty five happened in Las Vegas this week. It's pretty much the largest tech event of the year, with the exception of the
iPhone launch in September. This is where over one hundred thousand people descend upon Las Vegas to see the latest and greatest from all the tech companies. Well, let me give you a timeline of exactly what happened, because, as you know, I'm also a reporter at KTLA Television here in Los Angeles, which has been wall to wall with these fires that broke out here since basically two Tuesday, I believe. So let me explain the timeline. So I'm
in CS in Las Vegas. You get out there early, so last Sunday I was on my way there and Monday morning, so Sunday already the CS stuff starts. Monday, it all goes on, and around eleven am on Monday, I'm just scrolling through first thing in the morning on my.
X and what do I see.
I see a post from the National Weather Service Los Angeles and this post is like I'm rubbing my eyes because I'm like, wait, what life threatening and destructive windstorm coming to the LA area. And I said, there's no way, this must be a mistake, you know, And when you're scrolling through X sometimes things are parody accounts or fake or you know, nonsense, and so I'm just double checking. I'm like, where what I mean? This is National Weather Service?
Like this can't be fake. And I texted to my wife. She's like, I haven't heard anything about this. I look around online, no mention whatsoever. So I repost it on my Instagram and just say, hey, you know, be aware of this, but I'm in CS and we continue our coverage. Well, then all of a sudden, the fire start the next day around ten thirty am, and we're already about by this time, this is Tuesday, We're already three days into
our CS coverage. So we had one story that aired on KTLA, we had a lot of coverage already going on that we've edited, and next thing you know, it's like, no, we're going.
Wall to wall.
So my photographer and I, who you know, we both live in Los Angeles, made the decision to stay in Las Vegas.
It was safer there at that point.
Checked on our families, they were both okay, not in harm's way, and we just continue to do our work while we kind of monitor the situation, and I'm not kidding. Words spread through CS very quickly about what was happening because all the TVs and things were tuned to what was happening in LA. And every single person that came up to me if they saw KTLA am my badge, or saw Los Angeles rich, how you doing, how's your family doing?
How is you know?
How's everyone in Los Angeles? And the answer was I don't really know. So my wife happens to be from the West side of Los Angeles, went to school in the Pacific Palisades, and so many people. I mean our wedding, one of our wedding showers, was held at a home in the Pacific Palisades. I mean this is an area that from before this happened, nobody even heard of the Palisades. I mean, you've heard of Beverly Hills. That is a
really upscale neighborhood that the entire world has heard of. Well, Pacific Palisades is very similar, except nobody's heard of it until now, and of course for the wrong reasons. But this is an enclave, a very wealthy area of Los Angeles, you know, on the side of a mountain, and it is you know, ocean views from many of the homes. There a lot of generational wealth, a lot of people that have made been very successful in their lives, and this is where they chose to live.
And it was an amazing place.
And to see the stories and to hear the stories of destruction there was just heartbreaking. And it still is and we're still learning now. Some friends we have, their homes are fine. Some people we know their homes are completely lost. And imagine, by the way, a lot of these people had almost no no time to get out of there, like we're talking. They just left with the clothes on their back, and that's it. Imagine being in that situation.
What do you do?
What do you take out of your house in that time? You're not even thinking clearly, You're literally going to pick up your kids at school and getting out of dodge and you come back a week later, three days later, to even if you can see your home, if you're able to get back to.
It just gone.
Or your neighborhood completely gone, or every house around you is gone and your house is standing. Now, how do you feel with that? So these are the stories that I'm getting now. My wife also works at a school where a lot of the students live in the Palisades, and so she just all day. She was crying for three days straight, getting the emails from her students about their homes and their situation. And you know, think about this.
These are people who go from the absolute upper echelon of life, right they have everything they need, they have everything they want, They've got a beautiful family and home and place to live, to absolutely the worst possible situation.
You can imagine. Imagine that just for a second.
Now for me, I continue to cover CS and we went on and this this goes to the dichotomy of Los Angeles as well. So in La, you know, the tech started coming in for me, you know, like, hey, rich are you okay? Is your family okay? How are things going? And La is a big place and at the beginning we were fine. You know, our home was not in any danger. Where we live was very safe. That did change yesterday. But you know, we're getting texts and emails from friends everywhere, you know, just asking. And
here's the interesting thing about La. La is a very big place. And I was I was worried about, you know, driving back to LA from Las Vegas because I wasn't sure, you know, Or the freeway is going to be shut down? Are the roads going to be impacted? Am I gonna be stuck in my electric car for hours on end on a freeway that I can't move on and my
battery goes dead? I mean, these are considerations. We got a lot of electric cars here in La too, or California, and so this is the the idea of Los Angeles. There's so many places, right, so you may live in Los Angeles and not be affected by this at all. I mean emotionally, of course, physically with smoke. Visually, I mean you could see the smoke from these fires from our home and from many homes across Los Angeles.
That's how big they are.
But you know, you may still go to work, you may still My wife, you know, when she finally left the house, she drove past the CPK, So I can't believe I was just seen all these people eating dinner in there. You know, life is normal. I mean, it's it's weird to think about that, but life goes on in different places, in different pockets. My mom watching at home, you know, twenty four to seven, said she watched the news from five pm to one am couldn't take her eyes off the TV screen.
I understand it.
These are images that we you see in movies, and here they are happening in real life to real people and really affecting their lives in a way that nobody ever wants to experience. Driving into the studio today, you know, last night we were uncertain if we were even going to be able to do this show from the studio.
Originally I planned on doing the show from Las Vegas, and you know that was of course derailed and came back here, and then all of a sudden it was a question of are we doing the show from here because can we get into the studio. And then my producer, you know, Bobo, you know, he was not able to get here in an easy way. He had to go around in circles because he couldn't get through all the roadblocks.
And driving to work, I mean it looked like one of those apocalyptic movies with the National Guard and the police blocking almost every road to the mountain. I mean big, big equipment. We're talking army equipment, military equipment. This is the kind of stuff that you know, people with large guns. You're just sitting there going, wait, what world. Is this
what is happening right now? And by the way, in these moments, you realize how much control the government has over you because here's your home in your neighborhood and you are not allowed to go there. Think about that for a second. There's your home, you have no idea if it's standing or not, and you are not allowed to go in. And I understand it's for the safety of everyone, it's for the looters that we've seen, it's for a million and one reasons. But think about that,
your home you cannot check on. Imagine what that feels like for a second. So it's been interesting in Los Angeles, let's put it that way. On this show, we're obviously going to do a mix of things, right so this is a show about technology. I'm going to give you as many tech updates as I can. We're going to talk about the wildfires because that is what people are talking about right now. This is what people This is top of mind and there's a lot to go through.
We were packing our go bags last night. Where do you start? Is everything scanned? Where's our wedding album? Where's our driver's license, where's our passport? What do we need to bring if we can never come back here eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. My name is rich Dumuro. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology of course, uh talking wildfires as well. City of Los Angeles in an interesting place
right now. But what I will tell you is people come together in situations like this, and it really gives me a lot of hope for humanity because not only do the big companies you know, try to do what they can, but I think just individual people.
I mean my.
Wife, you know, her school started, you know, donation center, and I saw this over and over on Instagram. Various places started donation drives, and just the amount of things that people brought to donate is just incredible. People want to help. My friend Jefferson Graham he mentioned today in his newsletter. You know, he talks about all the stuff
with taking pictures and backing up your photos. You talked about all that, but at the end of his newsletter he mentioned, you know, a quick note about the supposed death of traditional TV right because everyone's streaming. But think about this, what did you tune into to learn about the fires. Did you go to Netflix, did you go to Amazon Prime? No, you probably went to KTLA, or you probably went to your local radio station, or you probably went to one of the other broadcast stations. So
I've been working in TV now for twenty years. Yeah, it's a long time, and I'm not kidding.
I remember.
I remember this like it was yesterday, my first day up in Yakima, Washington, and TVO was just sort of coming on the horizon and everyone said, that's it. TV is over, TVO done, And they said, now you know what, local news probably be okay because people like to watch it live.
And that's true.
How many times have you recorded the news to watch it later? Probably not very much. Let's go to Raoul in Arcadia. Raoul, you're on with Rich.
Hi, Rich, thanks for taking my call.
Absolutely, what's happening.
We're in the middle of it there in Arcadia, and a lot of our workmates all live in the fire area and have no power. What I noticed as an amateur prepper, I carry lots of portable power banks, solar powered nonsolar powered. I have some in my car and
many at home. But I noticed surgeons that couldn't go to their homes sitting at the hospital because they're on ten percent power and they have to charge before they go home because they have nowhere no way of charging their phones at home, and they're woefully unprepared for having no power at home. Nobody seems to have poor power banks. So now everybody's scrambling asking me for information or advice what to get and all that. And I was wondering, if you have any suggestions.
Yeah, great, great question.
This was something that in our house we were I was like told my wife isid, Hey, you got to charge up the uh the portable backup you know device to weve got like one of those big ones. So just being at CS this, you gotta be prepared. I mean, I'm not kidding. When I go out to a trade show or a football game, I make sure that my phone is at one hundred percent no matter what, and I put it on low power immediately. So if you're in a situation like this, like anything that could happen,
you need to be prepared. You have to have a backup battery. Now there are many of them, there's mint, there's whole house backups. Now at this point, the company that really made these popular Jackerie. They were all over cs and these things are giant, giant battery So imagine the batter the portable battery pack you have for your smartphone, but just a lot bigger. It's got every plug imaginable.
And the new ones come with solar panels, so you can set up those solar panels and have this thing recharged. And I will tell you solar does not charge things very quickly, so this is not something that you're gonna just like say, oh, it's gonna be at zero percent, let me put those panels out. No, you want to have this thing charged up first off. So Jackerie, they were telling me, you know, one of their best sellers, they've got portable power stations and those start at let's
see what price. I think they were telling me that some of their most populars are like five, six, seven, eight hundred dollars. So yeah, I mean they go up to thirty five hundred dollars for the giant rolling ones. They've got the portable ones that are two thousand dollars. Then they've got smaller just keeps going down. The cheapest one they've got is one hundred and twenty nine dollars, so again, get one of these things and talk to
your power company. Look on their website. They may have a rebate that lets you purchase these for free, depending on where you live. So Jackerie is a big goal zero goalzero dot com. They make a lot of the portable power stations with solar. They were an early early adopter of solar power and solar generators and power banks. A lot of people that can't know about this company, but Goal zero is another big one. Eco Flow. I actually have this hat right here. Let me grab this hat.
So I've got this hat right here from Ecoflow and this hat I picked up at CES. It's a solar powered hat. So I'm putting it on and you see this thing. Bobo's laughing, but it's it's I mean, I'm not kidding you.
Put this thing on.
It looks like a you know, kind of a big floppy hat. It's got solar panels all around it. You plug your phone in, you walk around, two hours, will charge up your phone.
I look like a witch, like a witch. That is a witch hat.
But hey, you should post that on social media. So I will post it on social media. So look at rich on Tech. I'll post it I'll take a picture during the break. But I'm not kidding. You have this thing and you don't have to worry about charging your phone. I mean it's a solar powered hat. This thing is about one hundred bucks. That's from Ecoflow. So check out those brands and please anchors another one. Just get a portable battery for your smartphone. Make sure it has USBC
charge them up. Make sure they are fully charged. These things lose about five percent a year in charge, so charge it up.
It should stay charged up. Coming up, we're going to talk.
To uh the watch duty app, which has been a lifeline in this situation. Welcome back to rich on tech rich Demiro here talking technology. Eight e' eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four.
One zero one.
I know the lines are jammed today. I can see that a lot of folks calling in. So if you want to send an email, just go to the website rich on tech dot TV. Hit contact. You can send an email there. I will read it, and you can also go to the website for show notes. So I just meant a bunch of the portable battery and chargers.
You can go there.
Rich on tech dot TV hit the light bulb icon to get more information about that.
Let's see.
My next guest is someone I'm really excited to bring on. Nick Russell is VP of operations at watch Duty. This is an app that has just been just invaluable for people keeping up with the fires and learning about them. And this app really really has just had so many
downloads in the past week or so. Now, I don't want to toot my own horn, but I did go back in my notes and I looked at the first time I mentioned this app to my followers, and that was on December twentieth, So thankfully you had the heads up, but I know a lot of people are just discovering it.
Now.
Let's bring on Nick Russell, VP of Operations at watch Duty. Nick, thanks so much for joining me today.
Yeah, thanks for having me rich and appreciate your ongoing support as well.
Yeah, I mean, it's just incredible what this app has done. First, just explain what watch Duty is.
Yeah, So, watch Duty is a free emergency learning service that's available through the app Store for free, as well as online at app dot watch duty dot org, and our primary goal is to give you actionable information on disasters occurring around you when seconds count, and right now that's specifically wildfire, but in the future we want to expand that.
So tell me about the last week. What's been going on with the Los Angeles downloads. I mean, obviously, you know you probably saw hundreds of thousands of new downloads.
What have you been holding up?
Yeah?
No, I mean it's like where do I start. This week has been just monumental, but it's so hard to focus on how well Watch Duty has been doing and serving when I think about the devastation in southern California. But since the beginning of the Palisades fire, we have had just short of two million new downloads of the app, bringing our total downloads to five million, and our active user as well over ten million.
And so this.
Week we're probably say that we've successfully sent out two hundred and twenty million push notifications to the southern California area. Just trying to keep everybody informed as this is a very dynamic and fluid.
Situation that is wild Oh my gosh. Okay, So, and I'm looking at the app store right now on the iPhone. At least you guys are featured right on the homepage. And I don't know if I can see the top downloads at this point, but I'm assuming you are probably up there in the top downloads.
Yeah, actually it's it's unimaginable. But we spent most of the week ahead of CHATVPT as the number one free app in the app store, which is just mind boggling to think of being ahead of chat GPT.
That is wild. That is really well.
It goes to show that when people need, you know, trusted, actionable information, you know, this is where they turn. Okay, so explain how the app is updated, because this is like a volunteer effort, or explain that whole situation, like how is this app getting its information?
Yeah, this is a bit long winded, but it's certainly worth it. So the way that we operate is we have a team of active retired firefighters, dispatchers, first responders, and radio enthusiasts that are operating twenty four to seven behind the scenes in Slack. That's our internal communications system, and so within Slack, we have signals coming from a
plethora of sources of potential new wildfire ignitions. Once we identify that there is in fact a wildfire that has begun, either through radio traffic or our other partnerships that we have. We begin posting that in the Watch Duty app and we start telling a story from the start of ignition until the threat passes or the last engine leaves. And we do this much like sports reporting, so that people get those granular details like the fires five eight, and
it has a rapid rate of spread. Structures are immediately threatened on Corona Drive, for instance, and so then people can take that information and start acting on their own emergency. And then we continue that story as the fire evolves and escalates, and usually de escalation comes sooner rather than later. But fortunately with these wind events, that's not something that we've seen happen a lot.
Yet.
How many states are you operating in currently?
We operate in twenty two states.
And so that's just and that's all just people that are kind of what you just said, monitoring things and updating this stuff.
Yeah, so the way the process generally happens is folks right into us, maybe they're retiring from the fire service, or they have some time in their off days. Same rings true with dispatchers as well as a radio enthusiast. And then what we do is we do a panel interview, a full background check, and then we bring them onto the team. And these are all a bunch of like minded people, people helping people. They just want to get
this information out. Many of us, including myself, live in the wildland, so we know what it's like to be evacuated, and we know the information we're looking for and we've identified those challenges and so that's the stuff that we're looking to get to communities is just basic information that's clear and easy to understand, accurate and timely.
Now, speaking of that, what do you guys qualify as sort of the critical alert?
You know?
How on the iPhone there's like a feature where alerts can break through if they are deemed like from a critical nature?
Are you is?
Are your notifications classified as that? Like if I went to sleep? You know, here, here's the big question we had last night. You know, we were in the area where you might have to evacuate, and so we're like, well, wait a second, how do you go to sleep? Like, what do you when do you wake up? What do you how do you know when it's time to go?
Yeah, no, that's a great question and it's certainly a challenge. And so we are approved to deliver critical alerts that being said that it's not something that we have yet done, not because we don't want to. We just want to find an explainable balance of when we send a critical
alert versus when we don't. So that's something I anticipate coming out this I want to say this upcoming fire season, but this one hasn't ended yet, but we anticipate this into Q two of twenty twenty five, hopefully at the start of the next fire season.
What inspired the creation of this app?
So, our co founder and CEO, John Clark Mills, had a rich history in tech. He's developed many software companies and sold those and so he moved to a rural area in northern Sonoma County here in the North Bay, and about six months after he moved in, he experienced several events where helicopters are flying over dropping water, he's seeing smoke, and he's going all over the place trying to find information, and at times he finds bits and pieces,
but it's really difficult. And then finally, really the genesis of WATCHD came when he was evacuated to the Wallbridge fire and when he left, he started looking back trying to find out where the fire had started, where it was going evacuation resources, and after the fourth website and social media platform that he visited and finally got a piece of the story together, he said to himself, man, there's kind of be a better way to do this, And so he learned more about wild land suppression and
response and then set out to build Watch Duty, and just one year later it was born with the original three counties. And so this has really become a labor of love for all of us. We all started as volunteers in the wildland, experiencing these things and then taking our experiences and building.
Off of them to help other people.
And you know that's obviously grown tremendously since August and twenty one to today, but it's always been a passion of all of ours to help folks.
Are you seeing a lot of donations or new memberships because you know this is all free for the most part. Are people stepping up to sort of support your mission here?
Yeah?
I know people have stepped up fantastically. The memberships are always the baseline, easiest way to support ensuring the app stays free forever and it will never have ads in it regardless, but those membership levels help with that.
And then you know, if folks can visit.
Watch duty dot org forward slash donate, those donations are tremendous. You know, we're one hundred percent nonprofit and we rely on that stuff to remain in operation. We're certainly not going anywhere anytime soon, but donations are certainly welcome to the suburb.
Any advice you want to give to users that are using this app during these emergency situations.
I want to take it a little bit broader. Watch Studio is a great resource and I highly encourage everyone to utilize it, download it, live by it, share it with your friends. We will we will be here twenty four to seven to help you. But this fire is a wake up call because stopping devastating wind driven wildfires is no easy task and it's not something that we're going to overnight. And so having a plan and making preparations and advance of these events well in advanced seasons
and advance is extremely important. And developing plans with your family for how you will act when these fires begin, whether it's in the middle of the day, the middle of the night, having a meeting location so that you're not searching for loved ones. I think that's super important and everybody taking this as a learning point and taking those steps I think is a really good idea.
Yeah, great advice.
As last night we were scrambling to find you know, the locks to our safes and kind of like the passports and where everything was and where our wedding album was. I mean, you don't want to be doing that at the last minute. So I know, growing up in my family, my dad is a roofer. He always had a plan for us to escape the house if there's ever a fire, and so we had this like ladder that would like roll down the side of the house. And of course
we were scared, very scared. When he rolled that thing out and said this is how you get out of the house, We're like, yeah, for you to say, mister ruffer, but for us, you know, we're not walking down this ladder that was gonna you know, all right. The website is once again, tell me the website watchduty dot org.
Yep, Watchdudy dot org.
It's available on iOS and Android. Uh. It's also available through the web browser, so download the app, turn on those updates. Nick Russell, VP of operations at Watch Judy, thanks so much for.
Joining me today.
Thank you Rich take care.
Thanks for everything you guys have done eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. More of your calls rich on tech dot TV. Welcome back to rich on Tech Rich DeMuro here talking technology at eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. We've been talking a lot about the wildfires, a lot about technology and its role in all of this.
Nothing will replace your home, nothing will replace the memories lost. And I am thinking of everyone that has been impacted by this. I mean really really just everyone knows someone right that is impacted by this. And so no matter what, even if your home is still safe and sound, you're thinking about how you can donate, how you can support your friends, their families, anyone. And I do love that aspect of our world that people do come together during
these times. Now, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of finger pointing, there's a lot of complaining, there's a lot of blaming, and that's always going to be there. But at the end of the day, what I see is the good in all of this, and people really do want to help each other. Let's go to Susan in Santa Monica. Susan, you're on with Rich.
Hey, Rich, thank you so much for a great show, and thank you for the question the gentleman posed about backup power and your great answer.
Thank you.
So I'm in Santa Monica. I've never felt the need until now to get a smartphone. It was not a good feeling the other night when I thought I may have to get out of here, and knowing I do not have connection to the internet. What is the simplest, easiest, basic phone that I might get. It could be a flip could I don't what do you think the basic, simplest, easiest phone. So if I had to go, and it'll be for emergencies only, I do not need to use it.
All the time.
Do you want a smartphone or a flip phone? I don't.
You know what, just as long as I can get to the Internet when I leave, okay.
Then you want a smartphone. Flip phone is going to be really tricky with the internet. So I would say a smartphone, okay, and I'd go with the simple smartphone. And what I do is I would go something like I mean, you could go you can go with an iPhone. Obviously that's going to be, you know, the gold standard of phones. But those are also going to be expensive. So if you're talking you're only going to use this thing once in a while, you may not need to
do that. But if I was going to recommend an iPhone, I'd probably say just get a refurbished iPhone, something that's inexpensive. You can go on Amazon renewed and look up the iPhones that they sell there. They sell refurbished iPhones and they're a little bit older, so they're a little bit less expensive. And so that's that's one aspect. Let me just see what they're apple, what their iPhones are going for. So you can get an iPhone twelve for two hundred
and fifty bucks, you get an iPhone eleven. I may not go iPhone eleven. That might be a little bit too old. I go, you know, they've got an iPhone fourteen for four hundred dollars. So they've got an se second generation for one hundred and thirty eight dollars, So you can get a cheap iPhone. Contrary to popular belief, Yes you can buy a cheap iPhone. We're talking under four hundred dollars under three hundred, under two hundred.
So that's if you want an iPhone.
The reason I'd say iPhone is just because it's you got the accessories, it's gonna work, it's going to be simple. People know how to use it if you need to ask for help. So that's number one. And then what I would do is just buy a prepaid plan, so I would just pay for the year in advance, So something like a Mint Mobile, you want to pay for the entire year all at once, and that way you don't have to think about paying for the plan, you know, month to month, just pay for the whole year at once.
And they've got plans that start at let's see, five gigabytes fifteen dollars a month. So if you buy twelve months twelve times fifteen, one hundred and eighty dollars up front, so you can do that. Wow, Okay, you can get unlimited right now if you pay for the Wow. That's an incredible deal. Unlimited right now on Mint mobiles fifteen dollars a month for twelve months. If you pay for that one hundred and eighty dollars, you have unlimited data for twelve months. That's a great deal. That's just a
limited time offer. Right now, I'm just looking at their website. That's news to me, so I would do that. You can also, if you want, you can go to a retailer like a Walmart and buy like a SIM there. But the thing is most of these phones have eSIMs and you can just activate them right there. The other one that might work is Mobile X because they have
a plan that's really cheap. They've got a plan that starts at like four dollars a month, and so you can get that plan and you only pay for the data that you use, and so that may be a cheap way to sort of just have this phone running without paying a lot. But I personally like the idea of just paying in advance for the whole year. So that's what I would do. And again, if you want to look at an Android side of things, I would
say the Pixel. So I know I talk about Pixel all the time, but I just think it's a very simple phone. It works, and they've got a couple different models. And actually Google just started selling Pixel renewed so refurbished, so let me look at what their prices are. So they just opened up a certified refurbished Pixel store on the Google Store. So you've got the Pixel seven Pro, which is pretty new. That's that's starting at six twenty nine.
So that's too expensive for what you're talking about. But you can go with the refurbished Pixel six A for two hundred and fifty dollars and that's again that is outright.
You don't have to pay monthly.
You don't have to think about, you know, how much you're paying for this phone every month, because the idea for you, Susan, is that you want to have this phone and service ready to go. So all you have to do is charge this thing up, keep it charged up, and that's that's what you need. And you mentioned the battery. Get a portable battery pack. Make sure that you have that charged up as well, so that way you always
have this phone at the ready. And I will say throughout this time, the service providers have been doing a pretty good job of the connectivity in the areas. I mean, obviously, if you're in the real burn areas, that area has
been trickier than others. But you know, surrounding La, the networks have withstood a lot and they've these companies are brought in a lot of additional kind of what do they call them, cows sells on wheels, and now that you even have satellite connectivity as well, that is one aspect I will talk about after the break, is the satellite connectivity that we are now getting into and it's making staying connected a whole lot easier in situations like this.
T Mobile has it, Apple has it, Pixel has it, Amazon starting it. I'll tell you all about that coming up right here on rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Richdmuro here hanging out with you, talking technology, obviously giving you lots of updates on tech's role in helping folks out with these wildfires, getting them information, getting them updates, getting them to safety, keeping them connected. There's just a whole lot to talk about here today on
the show. But I was at and I am going to get to the satellite connectivity and how Ate and T Verizon Mobile, Uber Lift, all these different companies have responded in the wake of these wildfires here in Los Angeles. But I do want to talk about CS for a bit because that's where I was this week and everyone there very very well aware of what was happening in Los Angeles.
But there was a lot to see.
You know, this is the one of the largest tech events of the year, certainly one of the largest tech trade shows. I think the only one that may be bigger by people is IFA in Berlin. But that show you're allowed to bring friends and family. This show in Las Vegas is not open to the public. So they get over one hundred and thirty thousand people to Las
Vegas that are all in the industry. They're all tech folks either working as media in you know, salespeople, marketing people, startups, just everyone that's buyers.
I mean, there's so many.
And every single person that came up to me was asking about how Los Angeles was faring, how I personally was faring, and so, like I said, my post La has always been ready for its close up. We just really never expected it to look like this. I mean, what a way to put a city on the map, right. But here are some of the things I saw at CS twenty twenty five that I thought were interesting. First up, AI powered robots. So Samsung they have this thing called Bali.
It looks like a ball, It's a robot. It rolls around your house. Set for release in twenty twenty five, it can interact with your smart home devices, it can perform household tasks. It can even project video and images onto surfaces. So it's all controlled via voice. And we didn't know if this was actually gonna come out or not,
but it is now. This was really interesting. If you have a robot vacuum in your house, you know how it gets stuck on like a sock or something that's just like standing in front of it or sitting on the ground. So this robo Rock vacuum, the Z seventy, has a robot arm. So this arm pops out of the top of the vacuum and picks up the item and deposits it somewhere else. I mean, it looks like
something out of a sci fi movie. But this apparently is coming out and robo Rock is a popular brand of vacuums other than Rumba, and so I saw this thing in action and it was wild. They just kept going up and down and up and down, and.
It turns around.
I mean, it really has a whole articulating little robot arm. There AI companion robots. I think these are kind of silly, at least at the offset, because they it's just like, okay, it's like a Teddy Rockspin but with AI. So this one Maroumi. This one was a there's no point to this robot except to spark conversation. So it looks like a little sloth that grips onto your purse and it just sits there and it's not really it doesn't do anything except just move its head left and right, up
and down. It looks very like lifelike, like it's very emotional, but it's just there to spark conversation. So they say that, you know, people are in their own world nowadays, and someone sees this on your purse, what is that? And
then you might talk with that person. Then another one is called roe Pet, and this one had led eyes, like little screens for eyes led displays, and you know, this has CHATCHYBT built in so you can pet it and it'll make little noises and react to your warmth and just kind of be a companion robot for you. Cold Snap is an instant ice cream machine, so think
ca cup machine, but for frozen desserts. So you can make smoothies, you can make ice cream, you can make frozen yogurt, protein shakes, whatever you want.
You put the pod in takes two minutes.
It cools it down, instantly, freezes it spits out the tree under two minutes. Now, this is a very expensive system three thousand dollars, but they are working on a system for the home right now. To imagine this would be for like a car dealership. And I tried the vanilla ice cream. It was delicious, and the inventor told me he got the idea from a six year old when she or his daughter. I afrigat how she was, but she's like, how come we can't do this for
ice cream? I'm watching him make the cake cup. He said, let me try it a mini hologram box. So you stand in front of a screen and next thing you know, you're in this little box in three D as a hologram. This is from Hollow Connects and it's a mini hologram box.
Again.
I think it was about three thousand dollars. But the idea is that you would go somewhere and this would either be a conversation spark, you know, or a customer service person could be in there, and you know, it's just one more way to kind of communicate versus the flat FaceTime view. This is now three D so you don't need special glasses or anything. A sus showed off the zen Book A fourteen. This was a super lightweight laptop, less than two and a half pounds. I picked this
thing up. I thought it was one of those fake laptops you would see at like an open house, like that they have on the desk, and it's like one of those props. That's how light it fell, and that has all the new AI features. So that's really cool. This I absolutely want. It's called the Plantiform. It's a high tech planter. So this thing looks like an alien space capsule crashed down into your home and is growing plants. So it uses fog ponics, not water. It uses a
mist of fog to grow the plants. And it just looks really cool. So you put again everyone's running with this idea of the cakeup pod. So you put a little pod in the machine that has plants and soil and nutrients, or maybe not soil because I think it's all hydroponics. But you put it in there and it grows the plant, and it's supposed to be easier than any of the other hydroponic plant growers out there.
And I want this thing.
I think it was a little expensive though, maybe six hundred dollars, but definitely a conversation starter because you see all this fog coming out of it and it just looks cool. If you love your pet, you got to get them the pet Cube UV filtration water fountain. So they've had water fountains for pets for a long time. This one has a UV filter, so it actually cleans the water, kills all the bacteria inside, letting your cat
or dog drink super pure water. I mean, when I was a kid, I used to drink out of the hose, but you know, we can't do that anymore, even with our pets pawport. This is a smart pet door. So I didn't realize, but if you live in somewhere like Arizona or something, you might have little unwanted critters that come into your house through the pet door.
So this is a smart pet door.
You put a little bluetooth beacon on your pets collar and only they can come in or out, and you can also set curfews. You can say you can only go in or out during these times, and only that animal can open up the pet door. And it's all high tech and smart and you get the reports and things. That's the Pawport smart pet door, and it fits over your standard pet door, so it's like a retrofit kind of thing. Now, these were really cool. The x Real
augmented reality glasses. I've heard about these for years. I've never really tried them. They have a new version, but think it's like the easiest augmented reality glasses I've ever tried. You put the glasses on, They've got little screens inside. You plug them into your smartphone or your computer using a standard USBC connection, and next thing you know, your phone screen is projected in front of you. It's hovering in a giant screen. I want these, I want these.
I want these. These I will use on the plane, I will use these on the couch. I will just sit there. It's like having your phone with all of your apps and everything you already know, just on a bigger screen, so you can actually control your phone and see what's happening on this big giant screen projected. Really really cool. I think they start around maybe three to five hundred dollars, but just the technology, the price is just going to continue to come down. But really really cool.
X Reel Let's see Samsung was showing off their latest Frame TV, so is Amazon. They were showing off both of these smart TVs double as artwork when they're not in use. So that's kind of like the new thing about TVs. You never have to turn them off. They will just show like a screen saver when you're not using them. I'll be honest, Samsung has this technology down. When you look at this screen, it looks like a printed piece of art. The new ones are the pros.
They look even better. I mean, this is really really neat stuff. The Amazon Fire TV will do the same thing. It's a lot cheaper. It just doesn't look as good. Screens are a little bit more reflective the art. You can tell it's a screen. But with the Samsung Frame TV, it's really really convincing.
Looks like a piece of art.
The other thing Amazon showed off was their Project Kuyper. This is their answer to SpaceX's Starlink and so this is a constellation of satellites that Amazon is going to launch into outer space to provide broadband around the world.
What does that mean?
According to the rep I was talking to, it's going to be cheaper and it's going to be faster than what Starlink is doing. Competition is a good thing. So now we have two viable satellite broadband operators operating by the end of this year. And what is that going to do is going to drive down prices, hopefully for all internet because now you've got options. When you live in your home, you may not want to get the
traditional providers. You may want to just go satellite because it's so feasible and the prices they didn't talk price, but they said it'll be cheaper than starlink and the speeds will be faster. So the basic one was four hundred up and down. It's four hundred megabits per second up and down. They've got a smaller one for like camping that's one hundred up and down. And they've got a bigger antenna that's for companies and enterprise that's a
thousand up and down. So Amazon's gonna start launching its satellites this year. They've got eighty three launches planned. Keep an eye on that one. Scout ev this is a rugged electric vehicle. It kind of looks like a Rivian. Can't wait for this one, and they were very hip on This is a brand that's old, that they're bringing back. It's got a hybrid system too, so they've got a gas engine. You can add on to this thing like a small gas engine, so you can have rain, no
range anxiety. So that's really cool. This was a little controversial. The pink Cam paintball security camera. So imagine a security camera that recognizes an intruder on your property and spits out a paintball at them.
And that paintball can have like a.
Special I don't know, a substance in it that you know, they can only see under a black light or something, so you kind of mark the person. It also works with unwanted animals as well. This was interesting. The Rome Rome functionality. This is a portable device that combines a soda stream and a hydroflask. So imagine you put your water into this, you know, just a water bottle. You put the cap on and you press the button and it turns it into sparkling water. Fifty bucks. It's called Rome.
And then finally, optic Wash. My kids saw this one on my photo album on my phone. He said, I want that, and I said, well, it's three thousand dollars. This is a mini car wash for your glasses. You might have seen these things in the airport. The optic washing machines. They're big. Now they made a small version for your home and it just uses water. Sprays of water.
You put the glasses in, it sprays them, cleans them UV Santa's sanitizing, and then it blows them off with a little bit of air and your glasses come out really clean, as opposed to sort of rubbing them with a cloth. That's the optic wash. When I ask the price, take a deep breath. Three thousand bucks. I said, who can afford a three thousand dollars glasses cleaning machine? And the representative said, well, I should have a yacht. It
worked pretty nicely there. I said, yeah, that sounds about right. All these linked up on the website rich On Tech dot TV eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one eight eight eight rich one oh one Back after this, I'll tell you how the big tech companies are responding to the wildfire relief. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Let's go right to Jerry in thousand Oaks. I know he's been holding for a while.
Jerry, you're on.
With rich Okay, thank you. I'm glad you're get in touch with you.
Yeah, absolutely, I watched your question.
Install a landline that doesn't use uh not Wi Fi, but it doesn't use the Internet but uses the modem instead.
Okay, yeah, so you want it.
Well, what do you mean by modem because uh, you know most of the land lines now.
It is uh it's a move box you plug into your wall outlet. Yes, then you plug your phone directly into that. Yes, in the one company I did find, what's forty dollars per month?
Okay, well the company, I'll tell you the ones that I recommend. Uma.
Oom ah, that's the one I recommend because you can get started very inexpensively. And this is now this will accommodate a classic landline phone, but it's not actually a landline. So what you're talking about the landline traditional traditionally refers to pots pots, which is plane old television or plane old television plane old telephone service. Now almost no company is really doing that unless they have to in an
area where they offer what's you know, a copper phone line. Right, So most of the companies have switched to offering what's called vope service voiceover IP that is your voice going over the internet. But you can get these little boxes that pretty much function as a conduit for your traditional phone. So if you want to buy a cordless phone, a corded phone, you know the old school phones that used to have you plug them into this box, and this box plugs into your Internet.
So the one I like is Uma.
You can get the UMA box for looks like one hundred dollars on the website.
I know.
Walmart also has an UMA deal as well, so you can go there and check it out. But UMA service is zero dollars a month, so all you have to do is pay for the taxes and fees each month. And so I'm looking up my zip code here for my zip code, that's about eight dollars a month. So that's what I would do. There are some other companies that offer similar service. There's Vontage. I don't know if
Vantage is doing. I don't know if they're doing the residential Oh they still are, Okay, So residential Vantage is ten dollars a month, and I think you have to get yeah, okay, So Vantage is another one, and then the other one is magic Jack. Now I covered magic Jack back in the day. It was actually just so mysterious to people that you could get a phone jack.
It looked like your regular.
Phone jack, but it's transferred to your calls over the internet, and that is uh let's see how much that is. That is fifty dollars. It plugs into your computer, So that one. I think that one's a little bit different because you do need a computer for that one. So I would I would recommend going with the UMA because you don't need anything special and it just kind of works.
It just sits there and works forever. So Jerry, that's what I would recommend, and I think that's gonna be probably your best bet.
Thanks for the call.
Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. So speaking of these phone companies, let me just go through what the various phone providers are doing to, uh, you know, help relieve folks in California with their either service or Wi Fi charging their phone. So AT and T let's start with them. So they're waiving overage charges to provide unlimited talk, text and data for customers through February fifteenth,
twenty twenty five. Now that may change depending on, you know, the extent of the loss. They also contribute one hundred thousand dollars to Red Cross. They set their system. Their network in southern California is holding strong. They're restoring service and areas experienced disruptions. And they have two public charging stations, Westwood Recreation Center and the Pasadena Convention Center, and then they've got public Wi Fi access at Arcadia Community Center.
They also operate First Net, so this is kind of like a separate band on their spectrum that is for public safety people, and so a lot of people subscribe to that as well. If you're on a post paid or prepaid you are also getting unlimited talk, texts, and data through February fifteenth. And if you have an iPhone with the satellite communications, so that's iPhone fourteen or newer, this doesn't matter. You know, any of the service providers
that you have. You've got satellite connectivity. And I got my first satellite message today from someone with the fires and it was pretty cool. It said this message was sent over satellite. Google Pixel nine also has that. Let's see Verizon. Let's see Verizon's waving domestic call text data usage through January nineteenth through January eighteenth in Los Angeles, Orange Riverside, San Bernard. You know San Diego and Ventura
also for the same. They're doing the same for Straight Talk, Track Phone, Total Wireless, Simple Mobile, Walmart, Family Mobile, Net, ten Go Smart, and Page Plus.
So you realize how.
Many companies these major companies own or operate. Let's see what is T Mobile doing unlimited talk, text and data to T Mobile, Metro by T Mobile and Assurance wireless customers in impacted areas. They've also increased data for Mint and Ultramobile. They also activated starlink so you get direct to Cellular. If you don't have an iPhone and you have a T Mobile phone, you can dial nine one one if you see the starlink icon in your phone.
So they've activated that. It's not been approved fully, but they got conditional approval. Eighty eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. Eighty eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Uh. Phone lines are open pretty much kind of taking a lot of different calls today. So if you have something about the fires, you want to share
your story, I'm opening to that. Or tech questions, whatever you want, maybe just want to say HI, maybe just need someone to talk to throughout this whole thing. I'm here for you. Eight A eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Before the break, I was talking about how all the different tech companies are sort of providing and helping with relief. During this time, I thought this was interesting that t
mobiles network uses is AI. So it's something called cognitive self organizing network. And so I guess the new antennas on their cell towers they move and I've seen this technology before with Wi Fi, but I didn't realize they were doing it with cell phone towers. But the antennas automatically tilt to give the best signal strength where it's needed, so they kind of move around a little bit. That
helps them expand coverage and prevent congestion. So I was not aware of that, but that is a very smart idea and it makes a lot of sense. So again AI even helping keep us connected. And then Spectrum, this is a large provider in the Los Angeles area. They have over two hundred and fifty thousand Spectrum Wi Fi access points nationwide, but they've opened up thirty five thousand of them in the LA area to everyone. And I
tested this out yesterday. It works flawlessly. Just open up your phone and look for the Spectrum free trial Wi Fi access point and just connect to it and it's just one click. You don't have to give him your phone number, you don't have to have an account. It's all free and I got great speeds, So this is a really nice help. If you need to, you can locate one of these. Usually you can go to like a local park or some it's outside. It's not in
your house. You're not accessing your neighbors internet, it is. These are hotspots that they've set up around the city on like telephone poles, so be sure to look for that. And then Uber and lyft. Lyft is doing discounted rides. CalFire Relief twenty five will get you two free rides if you're going to a shelter getting a resource, and then you can also round up and donate, and then Uber has a forty dollars ride credit if you use Wildfire twenty five to take a trip to an evacuation shelter.
All right, with all that said, one of my favorites, Lance Ulanov one of the hardest working guys in technology.
I'm not kidding.
You can't catch this guy at CES because he's doing so much. He's the editor at large for tech Radar. He is back home the Lance did you did you catch the CS bug?
Yeah?
I may if.
I apologize for the sound of my voice, but yep, every year.
Like clockwork, Yeah, it happens. I take these pills. I call them horse pills because that's how big they are. They are literally like good luck trying to swallow these things, and they taste horrible. It tastes like garlic and all kinds of nastiness.
That boy, that really sounds great.
Love Hey, but it kept me healthy. I'm not kidding. I swear by these things. I mean it's so gross, but I took one in the morning, one at night, and I you know, a lot of hydration. But CS is not easy to stay healthy at because it's so dry there. There's so many people, everyone's coughing, everyone's touching gadgets and anyway. So hopefully feel better. But Lance, first off, as someone who is not in California, what is your
sort of perspective on these wildfires? Like, are people following them where you are, or people glued to their teas.
Yeah, I mean, I think we're all following it. We're all seeing on our social media feeds. The really weird thing about this tragedy is, I guess because of where it's located, there.
Are people I know, you know, people from the.
Industry whose houses have been affected, their childhood homes. Like it's weird the number of people I actually know that have been impacted, which is, you know a lot of times when things happen in the country or in the world, you're involved and engaged, but you're not touched directly. So I'm a little bit surprised about that. I've been somewhat obsessively going through it, and I think a lot of
people have so many questions about it. It's so scary, and you know, clearly obviously my heart goes out to everyone there, you know, and I know that there's been all sorts of stuff shared about how people can help, and hopefully everyone's looking at that.
Yeah, And I think that the reason for the connection is that, like I said earlier in the show, this is a part of la that you never hear about.
It's a beautiful place that very successful people live, but it's not in the news because there's nothing that happens there except people just raise families and they're you know, it's people that have made it most of the time, and to have this happen to them is just such uh, you know, it's just it's really like the worst possible nightmare for someone who thinks they live in a community that's just so beautiful and amazing and overlooks the ocean.
And it honestly just reminds you of our common humanity. Right.
You may look at somebody and say they're extremely successful, their celebrity, they're wealthy, they're hot, high level at their their industry, and you see this and you see the loss of you know, their everything they've ever had, you know, every memory, all of their important stuff, and you and you can it's incredibly relatable to anyone. And so that's you know, obviously, that's just what's been going through my mind.
Yeah, absolutely, thanks for that. Okay, So let's talk ces you're there, What what stands out this year? What do you think about the first off, the attendance. I know it was impacted by people with la like some people had to go back early.
Some people didn't come at all. What do you think about the attendants?
I generally so, at least the first couple of days, I was like, this is more crowded, there's more people here. By day day three it seemed to calm down a bit, but I still think the tend's pretty high. Here's the thing, It's a little hard to tell because if you're you know, if you haven't gone there, and you haven't been going for years, you won't know that.
This year they were going through a big change with construction.
Servery's funneled in different ways, which actually changed the flow and changed the perspective on how many people were there. But you know, I went to what's called Eureka Park or all the startups are. I was in Central Halls and North Hollows and West Hall, and sometimes I was pushing through crowds.
Yeah, and and talk about the you know, like I really kind of it was so clear to me why we go to these things, And it really is partly to see people as well, Like you really do, see all the people that you email with throughout the year, all the people you know, like you and I we live on separate coasts. We didn't actually get to say hi this time around, which is and we saw each other,
but you know so quick, you're you're always working. But you know that's another aspect of this, that in person sort of connection.
Yeah.
Yeah, And you know, so there was a company called ro Kid that had been trying to reach me apparently since November, and I finally kind of the last day that I was there, I wandered over and the woman to see me face to face. She got much more excited than she should have because she's like, I've been emailing you for demons here.
Yeah, And so it's that, you know, that personal connection.
And then of course, you know, touching and experiencing the products because you know, I'll get a ton of press releases, I'll sit on zoom calls, people show me something. But being there and I experienced a lot of technology. I tried so many different things. I met so many different robots, you know, I wore so many different pairs of glasses. You know, I touched laptops and you know, all the
stuff that's right there. Making a tangible like that makes it, you know, much more reliable into it's a direct connection to people and how these technologies might impact their.
Lives anything that stands out to you, anything that you really were wowed by.
You know, I felt like the show got off to a really good start for me because one of the first things I saw was that Lenovo desktop, a laptop, I should say, I think it's the Think Gen six, and it's a laptop that literally starts as a fourteen inch clamshell style, you know, you open it up, the screen extends vertically, it rolls. It's an old screen that rolls out of a very you know, small hinge, you know, the regular sized hinge, and just goes up to sixteen
point seven inches. I've seen rollable screen technology before, but I was impressed because this is a real product.
Business people in particular, I think are really going to like it.
So, you know, I thought that was great and I liked it, and obviously we gave it an award. There's a lot of television technology, but I think the thing that stood out for me is what High Sense is doing with their just where they're taking Mini LED RGB technology. So typically in a Mini LED you get just one the blue light, but now they're giving the three colors.
And if you give the three colors, you transform the image, you make it that much better, and you make the colors better, but you also make the blacks better because you can you don't have to just turn on the light. You can dim it down for when you're trying to make a specific color.
So that to me was impressive.
And what's funny is that that came in one hundred and sixteen inch size. But everybody's talking about, oh my gosh, High Sense made one hundred and thirty six inch. I think it was not mini LED but the other kind of LED. But basically, oh I got a really big TV. But it was not new technology. So for me, I'm always focused on what is the innovation? What have they done that's brand new?
I think High Sense is killing it.
I really do like I think that there it's interesting to watch the rise of some booths. Someone needs to do a visualization of CS, like some booths get really big while others get smaller.
Some people aren't there.
Yeah or disappear. I mean, what who do we like? Google this year had no major presence that I saw Microsoft.
Microsoft Intel used to own this corner Central Hall. Microsoft used to own a similar space. Google has Google used to be really big in the parking lot.
I know that sounds silly, but the parking lot is a viable area.
It's like a it's called I'm sorry, it's called the silver lot, and just you know, it's a very important space. BMW did the big rollout of their i think it's called.
The Panoramic Eye Drive, which.
Is really their introduction of AI to the dashboard, and they did not spare expense here. They brought in, you know, a couple of Ken Young and I'm forgetting the other.
Couple of celebrities.
Basically they brought in to announce it and it was very splashy, and they made gigantic dashboards and the steering wheel and it was just it was it was wild and for me, you know, it was a youth. It was a really big theme of the entire show that AI was everywhere. Oh yeah, and more so than just you know, last year, AI was kind of like the coming out party. Everybody's got a everybody's product had it, but we didn't really understand how we were going to
use it. This year, people were showing us how it's going to impact our lives, like and they weren't saying in the distant future. They were saying this year, you know, it's coming this year. Delta their one hundredth anniversary at the Sphere, which was another big keynote, and you know they're doing they're doing your concierge AI that's going to be introduced throughout the year. They're updating all of the in flight entertainment. They're working with Tom Brady who was there.
But you know, again, you felt like, these are real things that we're going to be doing with AI in the very short term.
Yeah.
It used to be at CS you would talk to someone for like twenty minutes about a product and all of a sudden they'd be like and you know, we'll think about doing something with this, and you're like, no, like what. This year, I did feel like there was much more of like, no, this is come. Like even with the BMW with the panoramic eye drive stuff, I was like, when's this happening? They said new models like at the end of twenty twenty five or whatever, like what.
Yeah, that was a big surprise, and it was exciting because it looked really cool and fun.
I mean, obviously it'll be normal sized, not giant size. If you see the pictures, she'll be like, oh, oh, come.
On, everyone's gonna hate it.
You know, no, no car maker can make any meaningful change without people hating on it, right, Like, no matter what, there will be haters. I thought it looked pretty clean and slick inside. I thought it was pretty cool.
Yeah, yeah, I think so. You know, it's not just one giant screen. It's a series of screens, and it's integrated into steering wheel and I'm i'm one of my favorite things on these newer cars are the three D heads up displays because for a driver, they don't really want to be glancing at screens left and right. What they want to be doing is seeing the information right in their field of view, but not in a way that obscures it. And that's what these heads up displays do.
And so that's part of the whole experience here. So I thought, you know, I remember when BMW first introduced the eye drive, and it was primarily.
A knob yeah that people like that.
That you would move and hold into, and that was really it, and we thought that was exciting. This is so many generations. This is the full sort of the full realization of the concept.
All right, Lance we're speaking with lance Yulanoff and he's with Tech Radar.
Where can we go for your coverage?
Oh yeah, tech radar dot com.
And also please do check out our TikTok with we've shot I think well, I shot over forty videos, but in total we must.
Have shot about sixty sixty five and we're touching.
If you want to see what it's like to play with and touch any of these devices and these new technologies, check it out.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. The phone line if you want to get on in is eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website rich on Tech dot tv. Do me a favorite sign up for my newsletter. Like I mentioned earlier, if you were on my newsletter, I mentioned the watch Duty app back in the December twentieth edition. December twentieth. People are just hearing about this app for
the first time this week. I've been using it for months, and so that is the kind of insight that you get when you sign up. You are ahead of the curve. That is really what it comes down to. And people email me every single day, every single day. I get emails, I get text messages, I get dms, I get tweets, and a lot of it is questions that I've answered on this radio show or in my newsletter. And I'm not saying that you should hear and listen to every
single thing I do. But I'm just saying the newsletter is a really good way of sort of these are the things. And I say this on this radio show every single time. This is the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's not everything, it's not every single item in the news. It is this stuff that I think you, as the modern tech consumer, should know about and be informed of. It's the cool stuff. It's the stuff that helps you. It's the stuff that gives
you an edge. It's the stuff that keeps you ahead. That's really what it's all about. So go to Rich on tech dot tv. Sign up for the newsletter. It is completely free and just you know, you'll be one step ahead of the curve. Let's go to Jerry in Hatfield, Pennsylvania.
Jerry, you're on with Rich.
Hi Rich. For about four or five months now, I've been having problems with my audio. I receive programming over my dish, and I also have an antenna so I can get direct at local stations and what happens. It seems like when I listen to the cable news people when they have a pal of people talking and they talk, and the women's voices they shot up for being clipped and very hard. Not a problem with the men, only the women. And I don't have a problem with the
YouTube on the computer or anything on myself. On this only through the the satellite and the news programs. And I was wondering, have you heard anything about this?
No? But what so it's only happening when you watch.
TV that that's that's correct. Yeah. And on the TV I have the druggy equalizers and I just as all I can. That's it still come through.
That's that's what I was going to say.
It has something to do I'm assuming with your equalizer settings changed them and you've changed okay, And so so I'm guessing now you said you watch YouTube and it doesn't happen.
Is this YouTube on the same sound system?
No, I don't watch YouTube on a laptop. I listened to KFI on my cell phone. Yeah, so I got several TVs, so that happens. All So it's gonna be either the Dish network or the cable programming or or somehow they're clipping the audio.
Yeah, it definitely sounds like it's something related to either the box, a setting on the box, or the programming itself. I mean this, I don't I don't know if there's a widespread issue. Now that we brought it up on this show, perhaps other people will, you know, email me and say, hey, Rich, I have the same problem. But having worked in TV news for many years, it's not something that we're doing. It's not something that we're actively modifying.
But with that said, there's a lot of audio settings, and I think if you're playing with the equalizer that could be part of the issue. So the you know, if it's a high pitched voice thing, maybe it's the high frequency that's you know, messing with that. So maybe just adjust the settings to balance the high frequency. I don't know, it's weird that it's happening on all three of your TVs. I would also try to see if
you have some sort of like dialogue enhancer. I know a lot of these systems now have a clear audio kind of enhancement product, and so that might be something to look into. That's a tricky one, Jerry, I'm not sure. All I know is that we watch with the subtitles on in our house because it's much easier to follow along, even though it live news.
Sometimes those could be challenging as well, because they're not always one hundred percent right.
Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you at eight eight eight rich one o one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. How did you find the saddest Taylor Swift song? I mean, some of them are really sad. This one don't know. She well, she's kind of angry in the latest stuff getting back at folks.
It is it bad that I haven't listened to her latest album?
No, I mean I don't. I'm not a big of a swifty as I know. You call me a swifty.
Every single time will play a song I like Taylor Swift. You know why, I'll tell you why. I've told you this before. It's a connection to my wife. I get it because she likes Taylor Swift and I never really cared, you know, too much about her. And then the fact that she likes her so much. It's just I don't know it brings me joy. Yeah, it's weird, that's.
Not I get it. I just always figured like she'd get into relationship break up and have a number one album.
Yeah and rinse and repeat.
Yep.
All right, before we get to Howard and Palm Desert, We're gonna get to you in a second. Biff writes in with a bone to pick. He says, Rich vonage for home is not ten dollars, it's eleven ninety nine plus twelve dollars in taxes twenty two to eighteen total. Come on, dude, you are way off well.
Biff, double check my sources.
And so I went to the Vantage website. I put in my entire shipping address and information because they do hide the taxes and fees a little bit. And indeed, uh, let's see, yeah, indeed, nine ninety nine a month.
It is nine ninety nine a month.
Taxes and fees add up to let's see two dollars federal tax, two dollars emergency, two dollars state tax, and like under two dollars county tax. Total seventeen oh six do today recurring charges sixteen dollars thirty seven cents, so bif I'm not way off, I wasn't even off, said ten dollars a month. That's how much it is. So unless I'm proven otherwise, that seems to be right anyway, Thanks for the email. Eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four.
One zero one. Howard impalmdsert what's up.
Well, I'm finding a trip to trance in the very near future and I want more information about the translation real time earphones.
What your take is on.
So I had a lot of conversations about these at ces. There's a startup named Time Kettle t I M E K E T T l E dot co. They are sort of the leader in these earbuds that translate in real time, and they have them for as cheap as it looks like one hundred and fifty dollars. So the main thing about the earbuds this is the difference with the pricing. So the more expensive they are, the more they can do at the same time. So if you think about the cheap version or the I guess the
inexpensive entry level, it's more like a walkie talkie. Someone speaks in their language, it waits it processes and then it comes through in their language in your ears. Now with the more expensive translate earbuds, this is more of a real time experience, so they can be interrupted. It's back and forth. But pretty much everyone I talked to,
Time Kettle is the best of the interpreter earbuds. But Howard, having been to Paris this year, I would say it depends if I would rethink if you actually need these, it may be unnecessarily complicated. You can download on your iPhone the Google Translate app. You can download the or it's already built into the iPhone the Apple Translate app. Both are pretty good, and I think that that might be all you need to get through a trip, as long as it's just a you know, tourist trip to
the uh, you know, to that area. So that's what I would recommend. I mean, I think that there's so many ways to keep in touch nowadays with headphones, h or with just in general these translating Sorry, my phone's responding to me now because I said Google. But if you want to look at the time Kettle, do that. I think that this is also getting built into a lot of other products. So the Meta ray band, Smart glasses have this technology built in where they can translate
the audio in a couple different languages right now. I think French is one of them. I have not tested that on my headphones. I do need to try that out. But that's what I would say is try to get around without spending more money on these earbuds. But a lot of them are doing this, I mean, especially with CHATCHYBT. I mean, it's just gotten so much easier to get around these cities without knowing the language. And by the way,
I'm it's interesting. You know they've got this the big the big program that does the translation is Babel b A B B E L and that Well, okay, so you say Babel, you say Babel. I say Babel because they do, all right? Why do they have ads on the yeah, okay, all right.
Well I'm wondering if it's related.
I'm reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and they have what's a translating fish called the Babelfish, and I'm wondering if Babbel got their inspiration from babel fish in this book. So many things that we have in our society, like these names and things like you don't realize they're all inspired by something. Now you're reading the book or you have it on a tablet, I'm actually listening.
So you're not reading. Well, I don't know. Is that not reading?
Yes, it still takes your brain power. So I typically, I typically don't challenge me on this. I typically listen to nonfiction and I read fiction. And I'll be quite honest, I'll tell you why, because nonfiction books are harder.
They are.
There's like, you know, a book like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There's so many terms in there that are not like typical English, right, like these weird names and things like that.
It was it a movie? Yeah, it was a movie a while ago. Most define was in it.
Oh there you go. Are we talking about the same thing? To the Galaxy? What happened in it?
It's been so long since I've seen it.
Uh, well, anyway, good good movie.
You should read the movie, read the script and maybe I'll remember it. I'll read the script. I'll listen to the script anyway. It's so, it's so many things.
When you read books and you like learn or you listen to them, whatever your preferences, you really you realize just how much is inspired by these classic things. Anyway, I do want to get to some news that happened this week, and of course now you know now I've got the no more time here on the segment. But Meta, big, big, big one to eighty out of Meta this week revamping all of their content policies for quote free expression, so
major changes to basically their content moderation. Ending its third party fact checking program in the US. They're going to re place it with a community note system, which is inspired by X So basically, instead of having fact checkers look at posts, they're just gonna have random people or I guess people that are I don't know signed up to do this that can say, hey, this is not true or this is true. So they're going to have
various contributors. They're going to scale back their automated content moderation systems. Some people will like this because I know a lot of people have been flagged for things that are kind of weird.
But it's going to.
Cause a lot of problems in the beginning.
Of course, while people get used to these new lesser restrictions.
I guess they're going to use those automated content moderation systems for high severity violations like terrorism and fraud less severe policy violations will need someone to report it before it's enforced. So basically, if you post something on Facebook, nobody sees it, but it's horrible.
It'll stay there.
Now if someone reports it, then maybe someone will take a look at it. So they're basically trying to open up the pathway for more expression and saying, look, if nobody's seeing this or nobody cares, then fine, leave it on there.
Now.
I'm not saying I agree with any of this. I'm just saying what is happening. There's two sides to all this. Political content will be back into feeds and if you engage with it, you're going to see more of it. So a lot of people love their political content on Facebook, and they've noticed that it changed when they said, ah, we're getting out of politics. In fact, they were starting to demote news in general on Facebook. And so that's all coming back. Account recovery process and appeals is going
to be simpler. They're going to use more AI and more reviewers to make sure that you can get your account back if you are flagged or something like that. Restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity will be eased. A lot of people talking about that because you know, these are hot topic, you know, powder keg topics on social media.
People just love to say what they want and next thing, you.
Know, it starts a whole sparks of conversation, not always the best conversation. And so they're gonna say, we'll see what happens with all this. And the trust and safety teams are relocating from California to Texas and that's where they're going. So again, Meta, it's going to be a free for all for a while at least and until these programs sort of they figure out what's working and what's not. But you know, some people are very excited about this. Gonna be more like X, you know X
free speech, free speech, free speech. You know, some people are gonna leave Meta because of this. But at the end of the day, this is a major major shift. Mark Zuckerberg, you know the video he put out, My jaw just dropped. It's a total complete departure from what he has been saying for the past couple of years.
And you know, this is the company, the social media platform that banned President Trump back in the day, and now not only are they welcoming him back, but they're embracing sort of what he stands for on these platforms with respect to free speech and what Elon Musk is saying over at X Complete Complete Change. Not everyone likes this, some people on one side, some people on the other. As always eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one.
Coming up, I'll tell you what Apple is saying about Siri and privacy. They came out with a post on that and the new AI app for iPhone.
Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at eight eight eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. We've been talking a lot about the fires in Los Angeles. Uh wow, I just got an alert from Google about the fires, which is interesting. I know they said they were going to send out information, but you know, technology has really been instrumental in helping people keep up with all of this,
and it's quite been quite incredible. We had the rep from the app watch duty on, I mean the text messages. I don't know if you heard about this little issue they had in Los Angeles, but they were sending out these alert texts, and I guess I don't know if the machine went haywire or what, but all of a sudden, people were getting these evacuation texts and they were not
in the area of evacuation. And I knew something was a little suspicious because I'm on the phone my wife and she said, we just got an evacuation and I said, no way, they were not in the evacuation area. And I said, send me the text. And I look at the text, and sure enough, it's just a generic text that just says evacuate now. And it came out a couple minutes later that it was a mistake. Now they didn't say it was a human mistake, or they didn't.
I can't.
I couldn't really understand what the mistake was, like how that happened. But then it happened a couple more times. So it does make you wonder, like you have to double check all of this stuff, you know, no matter what. But you know, for people already on on Edge, that was not a good not a good thing that happened here in la website. Rich on tech dot TV, if you want to email me, you can go there. Remember
last week I talked about Apple. We heard this whole settlement with Siri, how it was spying on people, eavesdropping, selling your your what you talk about with Siri to advertisers. Well, Apple came out with a post saying none of that's true. We do not spy with Siri. And so here's what they kind of outlined in their post. Because you know, when these class action suits get settled, the company doesn't really have a say at the end of the day. They just can tell you what they want because there's
nothing in court that's sort of sworn to. So it just becomes like, hey, let's just give our side of the story. So Apple said number one, Siri processes as much data as possible directly on serve on devices, reducing you know, server cloud servers, So that protects your privacy because the device is doing it. Requests that you make to Siri are not tied to your Apple account. Instead, you get a random identifier that ensures your anonymous nature.
Audio recordings are not stored unless you opt in to improve Siri. You can opt out at any time. That used to be the opposite. I think they change that. The first time. There was a little issue with Siri, and then they have this idea of the private cloud compute.
So this is what they're doing to tackle AI because AI questions are so personal in nature, and so what they're doing is they have these servers they've set up that when your iPhone is not powerful enough to handle the AI processing, they send it to these private cloud compute servers that they've set up that are literally I mean I went through a whole seminar with Apple on this. I mean, the way they set these things up, it's like so anonymous and so like it deletes the information
immediately asked. If it comes up with the answer, it wipes all the data clear off of the system. So it's almost like a memory where it's it's not remembering that stuff, it's just processing it and then deleting it. So and Apple, by the way, said in this post as well, they do not use Siri data for advertising, marketing, or sales.
To third parties. So all those.
Sexy headlines you saw that said, oh Apple Siris spying on you. It's eavesdropping, it's listening to your conversation so it can sell you nikes. No I knew it wasn't doing that. Uh Grock this is the X has this feature. It's called grock AI. So this is elon Musk's AI. Basically, you've got chat GBT, you've got Claude, you've got Mistral, you've got bing AI, I guess they use I guess copilot without uses Chat GBT. A lot of different flavors of AI out there, but this one is from X
and it's called XAI. So it is now a standalone app for the iPhone and iPad. So if you want to try something a little different, grock is a little bit how do we say, unhinged unhinged AI, A little less rules apply. It's got conversational and humorous tones to differentiate itself from CHATCHBT and Claude. It can make images, it can summarize texts, it's got real time data from X in the web. Now, I will tell you just going, you know, kind of not getting into the politics of
all this stuff. They've actually built a pretty good AI tool that does have a lot of information And if you are still on X you can try it out on any post. There is a little XAI icon in the upper right hand corner. So if you're looking at a post on Twitter and I thought This was actually pretty smart. You can tap that XAI in the upper right hand corner and it will analyze the post and it will search all the information in that post and then give you perspective on that post an AI answer
about that post. So, for instance, I tweeted the other day, day four and eighty seven of CES, and I tapped a little XAI to see if you can understand what I meant, like if it was understanding my humor, And sure enough it got it. It understood it said Rich as being humorous about CES because it's so long, and some people joke that it takes so long and it's a long week. And so anyway, you can download that right now. It's grock gr ok for the iPhone. Coming up,
we're gonna talk more CS. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology, talking about the wildfires, very fluid situation here in Los Angeles where we broadcast the show. The images and videos coming out of this city over the past week have been really horrific and just impactful. I mean, so many people affected by what's going on in these natural disasters. And it's not over. That's it's still happening. It's still very
very active. So thinking about everyone that is affected by this, and that ranges from people who have experienced the worst a loss of home, people have lost their lives and their livelihoods, and also all the people that just know people associated in that area. It is a wide swath of Los Angeles that is with breaking hearts right now. Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one the website for the show rich on tech dot tv U. Matt
Swider is uh, he's with the shortcut dot com. He was at CS twenty twenty five with me. He's joining me now, Matt, I know you used to live in the LA area. What are your thoughts on this whole wild wildfire situation.
It's certainly devastating, you know, It's it's like watching a horror movie. And you know, we all know people who live there and are you know, on the front lines of this. And so as we were at CEES, we kind of felt very helpless, uh, you know, playing with all the tech, but you know, watching our friends and loved ones kind of go through the worst.
Yeah, I mean that that was tough. I mean I wrote about this in my newsletter today. It's like we were there, and it's it's it's a really tough position to be in because here it is you're at one of the biggest tech events of the world. Your family is safe, in my case, my photographer's family is safe, and it's like, what do you do? And by the way, coming back at some point, like you know, I was on my on the phone my wife every the whole day. It's like, well, is it safer to come back right now?
I mean, we were really moving towards her and the kids coming out to Vegas for the week just to get out of the way. And so it was a really really interesting position to be in. I guess as a reporter you have some thoughts on on helping out with the wildfire release relief.
Absolutely absolutely so.
Uh, my friend Tommy and his wife lost their home and I have a techie angle for you, as I always do, in making a donation to them, I found out how to maximize that donation mostly through you know, go fund me, very popular payment platform. And if you have you know, if you want to donate to Tommy or a loved one on the shortcut dot com, I have a post out there for it. There's a way to do it that will maximize your donation. You can pay with a credit card, so don't pay with a
debit card where you don't get any points back. But I found out Apple Pay. By paying with an Apple card. Through Apple Pay, you'll get two percent cash back or two percent back, right, and then you can donate or put that into a savings account or just deposit it into your.
You know bank account eventually.
So by I donated five thousand dollars my friend and I got one hundred dollars back. Normally, with a regular credit card, I would have gotten you know, you know, fifty bucks back, or with a you know, bank transaction, got zero dollars back. So I can reuse that money to go visit them, and you know, why not get double?
Is my thinking.
The other thing is, and this is something you could fall for and I I kind of almost f fell for it. Go fund me will send a set you up with a fourteen percent tip for themselves.
Okay, I've wondered about this. I've wondered about this. I feel guilty when I see this, you know, I'm like, do I support them?
Do I not?
So tell me what your thoughts are so Basically, when you do a transaction on the GoFundMe platform and a lot of these platforms that take donations, they ask for a small cut to sort of quote help them run the platform.
Absolutely, and you know what, don't feel bad.
They're already profitable enough on their own through you know, transaction fees and so forth, so you know on the back end they'll they'll take a little bit of a cut already, but so they don't need this like self appointed fourteen percent tip that was seven hundred dollars. In my case, I put it down to one cent, which I did feel bad about.
You can actually put it down to zero.
I fell for the fact that even at when you put in exactly zero dollars, they will have a nagging message up there looking like it doesn't work. It can be zero dollars. You can proceed to just give the whole amount that you want to your friends, which is something I did. So I have that post on the shortcut dot com if you want to go over those directions. But those two tips get money back based on points.
You know, double with Apple, pay with an Apple card, and don't leave that tip to a plant pin platform that's already you know, fully funded.
Okay, so this is interesting because I actually this clarifies a lot and a lot of people are going to be using gofund me in the next couple weeks. I mean, it's very popular in general. But okay, So if let's say I set up a GoFundMe and I get I've raised one hundred dollars, I actually don't see one hundred dollars, right, Yeah, I see less than that.
I've been looking into that, and it's it's two point nine percent plus thirty cents per donation from what I've read.
Right, Yeah, So they're making money no matter what it's not, So you shouldn't feel bad. You're saying, when they ask for this extra tip, you're just giving them more money, which I get it. If you have the money and you feel like it and you want to just be generous, go ahead. But you're saying, don't feel guilty about not doing it because they're still out of that one hundred dollars. I'm only going to see ninety seven. As the person who's getting those donations. Let's say I was the recipient.
Correct everything I've read, they're getting money regardless, So they don't need and an egregious amount of fourteen percent. That's that's a lot to take from the donator who could just donate even more money or you know, spend that money elsewhere, So no need to do that. The tiny text of enter custom tip is so easy to mess I know a lot of your listeners will probably not
even say that. I didn't even see it at first until I saw seven hundred dollars extra on there in the final bill, and as I wait a minute, so I went back clicked on that tiny text and then changed that too. You can change it to the zero dollars.
Yeah, and we're not We're not dunking on GoFundMe. I think that this has been an incredible way for anyone to raise money for any cause, but it is not a nonprofit. They have a nonprofit arm. And I will say, having used GoFundMe in the past for both my sister and my father, who both went through cancer, I got a donation. I don't know, maybe for my dad or my sister or both, but they actually donated to my cause, like I think at one point, I think they gave
seven hundred and fifty dollars. They said, hey, we just want to be generous in your in your cause.
Now?
Is that because I'm rich to Miro and I tweeted about it. Maybe I don't know if they do that for everyone, you know, but I think they do that for people. But I think obviously since they could see anyway. My point is it's a nice company. They're doing good things. Just you know, you don't have to tip if you don't want to. All right, let's talk about ce s Matt what what what are your What's your main takeaway this year?
Main takeaway is there's a lot of conceptual gadgets out there that are finally becoming products and look really cool. I don't know if you saw what we gave on the shortcut, the Best in Show award winner, but it's the robo rock with It's a vacuum that has an arm. It looks like it's from a like a movie, horror movie. It has an arm that comes out of the robot vacuum and picks up socks, trash, and other items underwear that kind of get in the way.
You know, if you've got a lot of underwear on your floor, I don't know what's happening in that apartment.
It's you get some lazy sometimes and like you know, clothes and laundry is strewn about.
So I get it. I've been there.
So this is kind of a they say it's coming out. It feels a little more conceptual, but anything under three hundred grams it'll be able to pick up with a robot arm. But it looks like a regular robot vacuum other than this really cool feature. So we gave that the Best and Show at CES award because it just really felt like almost the segue to a Jetson style robot.
Remember Rosie the robot. We're getting there.
Yeah, what else did you give awards to?
We gave an award to the best Laptop issues zen Book A fourteen was really cool. The LGG four was our top TV. You know, the Samsung Frame Pro TV came really close. That was really cool. And we gave an award to two shares two gaming chairs. You know, that's very rare for us to choose too, but one was conceptual. They were both from a company, a gaming company called Razor. Razor makes excellent gaming chairs. I'm actually
sitting in one of those right now. But they came out with a new one and The reason I like that is it's the Razor Iscor V two X, and it's more than half the price of the one I'm sitting in, and it has a lot of the core features. It's three hundred dollars, it has, you know, a lot of the erogronomics, and it's it backs off some of the over the top lumbar support that you know, not everybody needs, but it opens it up to a lot
more gamers. The one piece of advice I give people when they buy gaming chairs, don't buy that one for ninety nine dollars. If you can help it. That's on Amazon. Those tend to, you know, fall apart very quickly and not be perfect. The Iscor Razor line of chairs is pretty amazing, So you get what you pay for. If you're you're springing, you know, and spending three hundred dollars for a gaming chair, that one.
That the one I'm sitting is over six hundred dollars.
I realized that when I read it for last year, it's not for everybody. This one, the price point is right the other gaming chair. This one's conceptual as well. I talked about c Yes being conceptual. It is a uh, it's it's a project r lysle right, and it is a hot and cold gaming chair. You can you know, it has this blateless fan system that either makes it cool or heats the chair up.
W Yeah, why would you want to be heated up?
I feel like you're you're getting sweaty playing games anyway, But I get the cool.
New York City is a little bit frigid right now. Okay, I feel like a lot of times I spring for the you know, the heating system and I have to like pause my gaming session and get up and turn it on. If I had that in the chair, it's kind of like heated seats. Why is that limited to a luxury car? So I'm surprised no other tech company has done this before. But yeah, it seems like something they're actually gonna make. I'm I'm totally uh in love
with this idea. It turns orange for hot, blue for cool, and also green because that's Razors color.
So definitely one to look forward to if they come out with that.
I've been playing with the Razor mechanical keyboard like they're a really nice one and it's you know, the people love Razor stuff.
It's really slick.
It's got all the lights, the RGB and you know, it's just got all the features you need.
It's a little price.
You know, this stuff could be expensive, but I think, like anything else, if you you know, and this is what always happens, you recommend something. I recommend something. You know, maybe it's a little bit more than people want to spend. They go to Amazon, they type it in and of course you know these other companies they hijack the search by putting in like something that's half the price. You're like, all right, I'll just go with that, and you do
get what you pay for. And you have to remember big companies like a Razor, they have R and D, and they have quality control, and they use parts and they do things in a way that is like, you know, not gonna explode or not gonna like catch on fire or something. So you have to keep this in mind when you go with that really cheap thing on Amazon.
Just remember that absolutely.
I've done that with lights before they were on sale for Amazon, and I didn't know what the company was. I got them, and then I spent probably two months trying to track down a cricket in my kitchen, and every time I went into the kitchen. I couldn't find the cricket because it would just you know, they would go silent. I realized it was the very cheap lights I got and they were just humming.
So I realized that was it. So you get what you pay.
For, all right, Matt Swider of the shortcut dot Com, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thanks Rich.
All right, coming up, we are going to open up the feedbag. We're gonna see what you've been emailing me all week, and uh we'll do that right after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. A couple of headlines to get through before we get to the feedbag. Tvo make it a comeback. They're going to debut a new TVO Sharp TV in February, taking on Roku and fire TV.
We'll see.
I love Tvo, I loved it in the past. We'll see if it can still hang with the big boys. Disney and Fubo are merging their live TV services. Disney is partnering with Fubo to combine Hulu Plus Live Tv, with Fubo creating a joint venture. They're gonna have six million subscribers. Let's see do they say the name of the new service. I don't know the name. I'm assuming it's gonna be Fubo. Maybe it's because of a lawsuit.
And then Dell.
They are copying the iPhone naming convention, So no more xps and INSPI on now. It's going to be the Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Promax, which I actually think is a smart idea, very very smart idea. I know people are giving them a lot of grief for that, but I think it's very smart because you know that the Pro Max is better than the Dell, and you know the Dell Pro is better than the Dell, and you know that the Pro Max is better than the del Pro. And the Sony Honda Aphila one electric car now has
reservations open for eighty reservations opening California. With a two hundred dollars deposit, you can get this new car, which is sort of like a PlayStation on wheels. It's been on display at CS for the last couple of years. Sony and Honda joint developed it. I don't know why you'd pay ninety thousand dollars for it, but hey.
You can have it. It's available. Let's get to the feedbag.
Chuck writs in I use the Burner app as a second phone number for my customer contact in my job. Recently, they deactivated my account without warning, making my social media and marketing materials with that number useless. They won't explain why, only saying they have the right to do this. It was a great app for years, but I wanted to warn others if their work is tied to the app,
it could vanish instantly. Be careful, yes, Chuck, that is always a consideration when you use one of those phone numbers, one of those apps. They can always just get rid of it at any time, and you may not have recourse. Laurel rights in I'm eighty three, I'm so glad. I grew up in the nineteen forties and fifties. We didn't have TVs, the internet, or smartphones for entertainment. We played outside, rode bikes, climb trees, jump rope, read books.
My mom read me a story every night.
I avoid social media and find those platforms for meeting people online dangerous. A friend of mine worries about his granddaughter meeting the wrong people online. But how can parents keep their kids away from devices when it seems like everyone has one. It's sad that parents don't spend Many parents don't spend quality time with their kids because they're glued to their own screens.
Very true.
Mark from Santa Barbara wrights in I listened to your program about surge suppressors. He recommended at least two thousand jewels and mentioned they don't last forever. I recently upgraded two older power strips near my TV, including my rebuilt nineteen seventy three duel turntable, and replaced three in my home office. I even added USB charging porch from my iPhone and iPad. Thanks for the tip. Appreciate the guidance. Gale from San Diego. Rights in Rich. Thanks for your
advice on photo scanning. Last March, my sister and I started organizing over a thousand of our parents photos. Instead of paying for scanning, we found a youth scanner at an estate sale for twelve dollars and did it ourselves. Every Sunday we spent hours organizing and scanning old black and white photos, keepsakes, and letters from my dad's World War II service. It felt like a family reunion.
Every week.
We saved everything to flash drives and gifted them to family members for Christmas. It was one of the best experiences of our lives. All of this was inspired by your program. Thank you for what you do and Happy New Year, Gail. You get the silver star or the gold star for making my day. Randy from Florida writes in Rich. I was listening as you guided someone through finding a specific setting on their phone. May I suggest using the search function in the settings menu instead of scrolling.
It's a faster way to locate the exact option and make the adjustment.
Yeah.
I do like to give people the basis of where things are, but I agree that could be a.
Good way to do it as well. Let's see what else. Oh my gosh, so many emails.
I was listening to your show on tape delay and discussion of the NordVPN guest about two factor authentication. It's a great security feature, but I've noticed a problem with how Amazon handles it. If you do it too many times, Amazon's inform me I can't get a link until later. Even when I waited until the next day. The delay was frustrated. Frustrating. I wanted to share this in case others have experienced similar issues, or you weren't aware. Thanks
for discussing these important tech topics. Yes, they could lock you out if you try to access too many times, so be aware of that and remember those recovery codes. All right, that's going to do it for this episode of the show. Links to everything I mentioned on the website rich on tech dot tv. I'm on social media at rich on tech. Next week i'll give you my thoughts on the one plus thirteen plus we'll talk to the guy who's efforting the real life Jurassic Park. Yeah,
that's going to be an interesting one. Thank you so much for listening. I know there are so many ways you can spend your time I really do appreciate you spending it right here with me. My thoughts to everyone impacted by the wildfires in Los Angeles. The world is with you right now. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible, including Bobo, who had to break through barriers to get here. My name is not really My name is rich Dumuro. He didn't break any rules. I'll talk to you real soon.