What's going on. I'm Rich Damiro and this is rich on Tech, 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. You can find me online at richon tech dot tv. There you can also submit your question for me to answer. Just go to rich on tech dot tv and hit the link that says contact. I get a lot of emails every single week, so I do my best to answer some of those personally, but many times I will just
address them on the show. I hope you had a great holiday. We are now coming up right against the new year, if you can believe it. So I figured I would take this opportunity to clear out the mail bag and get through a bunch of the questions that you have asked me. Let's start with John. John writes in and says, is there such a thing as an Internet phone that plugs into the USB port on my PC and is able to make phone calls? Keep in
mind that I don't want a monthly subscription. I just want to purchase it and use it as a backup phone in case my smartphone is not working. That way, I'll be able to make a call to the customer service. John. That's a good question. But here's the thing. Most of the time calls are going to go through the internet these days, so most of the phone services are what's called VoIP voice over IP. A couple of ways you can do this. There is a device called magic Jack.
This was a thing when this first came out. It was revolutionary because this came out when you would still pay whatever it was for landline service. And this came out and you would plug it into your Internet and then you would plug your old school telephone jack into this, and they call it the magic Jack, and you would buy it once there was no subscription and you could make unlimited calls, I think even long long distance calls. And so the Magic Jack at this point is forty
five dollars. You plug it into the USB connection on your computer and then you can plug a phone into that. It's forty five dollars for twelve months of service. Another piece of hardware is called uma Ooma, and this came out kind of after Magic Jack, and this was also seemingly too good to be true because you would plug it into your Internet, you'd pay a fee and you would get service for a lot cheaper than you would
get from your typical phone company. And so this device at this point is one hundred dollars and phone service is free. And I believe when this came out it was unlimited like forever. So people are just like, wait a second, how is that possible? But this again is called uma Ooma and they do have this. But this plugs into your internet service, and so you would plug that into your router and then you can plug a phone into that. So that's another option if you want
a you know, sort of a landline experience. The other thing you can do is you Google Voice. Just sign up for a free Google Voice phone number. And I've had a Google Voice number forever. I'm trying to remember what Google Voice was called before. Oh, it was called Grand Central. I just remembered that. I must have signed up for Google Voice the first minute it was available, and it was called Grand Central. And why it was called that is because it would link up all of
your different phones. So back in the day, you had a landline number, you had a business phone number, and you had a cell phone number. Potentially you know, multiple numbers, and so this would this would bring them all into one place. So people would call this one number and it would call out to all your different phones and ring them at the same time so that you could answer. And it was pretty magical. Google bought the company like within days, it felt like, after this launch, but it
was really really cool. Now it's called Google Voice, and Google Voice is completely online. So you can sign up for a free phone number and make calls right through your computer. And you can just plug in a standard you know, headset, So if you have of like the plug in headset or a USB headset, you can use that, or you can go on Amazon and order an actual sort of headset that like an operator would use. There you go, John, some good options for getting your phone calls through your computer.
All right.
Next up, Sherry writes in we are AT and T customers. My husband lost his phone, but we still owe the contract. Do you know where we could order a good used iPhone to add to our plan? Great question. This is what happens when you sign up for one of these free phones from the cellular carriers. If you lose your phone or break it or something like that, you are still on the hook for the thirty six months or whatever they ask you to sign when you get that
free phone, So just keep that in mind. If you're getting a free phone from your carrier, it is definitely not free. They take the price of that phone, they divide it up by twenty four to thirty six months, and they give you that as a credit every month until you fulfill those twenty four to thirty six months. So if something happens to your phone, you will still have to pay for the service. And so that's what's happening here. Two places i'd recommend. First off, you can
go to Apple themselves. They have on their website a refurbished area. It's called Apple Certified Refurbished, and it's odd because there's really not that much available on their website. So right now as I check it out, they have an iPhone twelve Mini. They have an iPhone twelve, iPhone twelve Pro, and iPhone twelve Pro Max. But the cheapest here is an iPhone twelve Mini for four hundred and
twenty nine dollars. You said you didn't say which phone you have, so I'm not sure what you're trying to replace, but the iPhone twelve is four hundred and forty nine dollars. That's still pretty expensive. You said you wanted something cheap. So the second place that I would look is Amazon. Amazon has a refurbished section of their website, and so if you search on Amazon for Amazon Renewed, you can go there and check out the smart phone section and
then narrowed down by Apple. And so if we look at if we sort by cheapest, there is an an iPhone S, but that's the first generation. You probably don't want that one. That one's pretty old. But they have an iPhone se second generation renewed for at and T one hundred and fifty five dollars, so that's pretty inexpensive. You can get an iPhone eight for one hundred and fifty nine dollars, an iPhone ten for one hundred and seventy three dollars, iPhone ten S for one hundred and
eighty four dollars. Now, the one thing that I would caution you on is I would make sure that this phone that you get runs the latest Apple software, which is iOS seventeen. So if you're going to get one of these refurbished phones, you want to get one that is compatible with iOS seventeen. And at this point that is the iPhone S second generation, and then the iPhone ten R and up, so that would be the iPhone ten, ten S, tens max, the iPhone eleven, all the way
up to the iPhone fifteen. So make sure you get a phone that is still compatible with the current software because you want to make sure that you can still get those software updates. Next up, subject line, Someone's listening to my phone and the name is Corona. Name is false because I'm scared. Okay, I have changed my phone number and my simcard many times, yet it still seems that someone or someone's is listening to me on my phone and when I'm home. What can I do to
stop this? I have proof that one of the person is the cell phone employee where I pay my cell phone bill in person. Please help if you can. Okay, Well, you know what. I am open to many questions on this show, but I don't think that someone is listening to your phone unless you are a secret agent or a head of state or some sort of diplomat. Most of the time, regular people, no one's really interested in
your converse. So I think that maybe this is a case of you know, you're just maybe a little paranoid. So I think that you don't need to do anything. If I were you, you can go ahead and factory reset your phone. That should take care of things if you really think that someone is listening to your phone. The only software that is known in a big way to exploit the iPhone I'm assuming this an iPhone is the Pegasus software. That spyware is typically aimed at very
specific individuals with a lot to lose. So if that's not you, then I think you're probably okay. I would just do a factory reset on your phone. You said you change your phone number and your simcard many times, so maybe do a factory reset on your phone and that should clean things up and take care of any any oddities that you're experiencing. You are listening to rich on Tech. If you want to submit your message or the show, go to rich on Tech dot tv. Hit
the link that says contact. My name is rich DeMuro. More rich on Tech coming your way right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Consumer Reports tested cables. You know everyone's buying these new USB
c cables. So Consumer Reports tested seven charging cables ranging from four dollars and eighty eight cents to twenty nine dollars to see which ones lasted the longest. They tested USB c for Android and also for iPhones in two durability tests twisting and a ninety degree bending until the cable broke. So they actually did test lightning cables too.
I guess people are still buying those. So the twenty nine dollars Apple Lightning cable and the six dollars and fifty five cent Amazon Basis USBC cable survived eleven five hundred bands without breaking. They say that's equivalent to over six years of use. They tried other brands from Walmart and five below. Those bent us eight hundred times less than six months of use. So I guess cheap cables really you get your money's worth. You know, you get
what you pay for. Let's see the let's see price, brand, name and thickness were not reliable indicators of durability. The cheap Amazon Basics USBC cable dramatically outlasted price yer branded cables. So what do they recommend? The Apple Lightning cable the official one for the iPhones and the Amazon Basics USB C cable because of their outstanding durability. So there you
have it. Look at that. You can get the six dollars and fifty five cent Amazon Basics USB C cable that'll work for the iPhone and Android now, and then if you want Apple, you probably still want to go with the standard Apple line cable twenty nine bucks. By the way, you see why Apple didn't want to switch to USPC because the cables now six dollars and fifty five cents versus the twenty nine dollars they were getting for a quote unquote you know premium cable. Let's go
to John in Los Angeles. John, you're on with Rich.
Hi.
Rich, I have a problem with my email. I bought a dot com domain about twenty plus years ago, and somewhere along the line I set it up so that email going to that domain, any name, would get forwarded to my Gmail account. And then a couple of weeks ago it stopped working, and I couldn't really remember where I set that up. I checked the records. It said something with Outlook. I don't remember setting anything up with Outlook.
So I did a search for a company that would for a price would catch all my email to that domain and forward it to my Gmail. But all I find is email companies I want to sell me whole email packages. Yep.
So you just want to forward. You just want to forward from from that that domain, right, and it's just is it one email address or several?
Well, I set it up as a catch all, okay, catch all the email because sometimes people would misspell my name and that would get bounced back. So that's why I set that up.
Okay, Well, I'll tell you what I use, and there may be more out there, but this one is the one that I've used for years and it works really well, and it's I think five bucks a year. Now. Remember this does not include any sort of email storage or email box nothing. This is just like you said, straight up forwarding. And you're gonna have to check to see if they can do a catch all email box where you can just anything you write to that domain, it
will forward it to your Gmail. But the one that I use is Hover dot com h O V E er and I pay I think it's five dollars a year and all they do is forward, and so my hello at richontech dot TV. It's just a forwarded email. It goes right to my Gmail when someone emails at. So Hover ho Veer is the one that I use, and you will need to you know, obviously, you have to know your domain information to get that forwarded over.
So you'll go to Hover, you'll sign up for an account and then you'll put all your information in for your domain. You will have to verify that you own that domain, and once you do, you can set up just what's called an email forwarding. Now you can also set up an email inbox as well. That's more like twenty dollars a year, but you can just get email forwarding for five dollars a year. And the question is,
let's see mail sent to distinct role based addresses. Help at can forward to one central mailbox, so doesn't let you send emails from your domain, so you you know this is only for receiving. But I think that's the main thing is that you just have to check. It's been a while since I set this thing up, so I'm not sure if they do a catch all email, but if they do, that would be pretty easy. But
that's what you want to look for. You just want to look for what's called email forwarding and not email hosting, So good question, John, let me know if that works out. Richon tech dot tv is my website. You can use the UH the email form there to let me know. Let's go to UH Mickey in camerio. Mickey, you're on with Rich.
Hi, Good morning, Rich. I just had a questioning that we are nearing the holidays. I've given out gift cards for Walmart, Target, you know, so they can use to purchase things, you know, or you know, whatever they need,
groceries and whatnot. But I want to know, are all cards, whether it's Amazon, Target, Walmart, the grocery stores, can those be used online instead of us using our bank and our own credit cards, you know, because of you know, for personal reasons and for you know, privacy protection for so, can.
They all be used online? Like if you buy one at Target in the store, can you use it on their website? Yes, it depends. Yeah. The short answer is it depends. There are certain types of gift cards that are online only, there are some that are in store only, and there are some that work in both places. The answer is you have to look at the back of the card to see what it says, and you have to look at the card online if you buy it online to see if it says you can use it
in store. The reason why I tell you this is because I use an app called Raise r Aise, and this is an app that lets you buy and sell gift cards. So let's say you're going to Old Navy and you know you're going there and you want to purchase, you know, fifty one hundred dollars worth of stuff there. You could go to this website, raise dot com or the app and buy a gift card for Old Navy, and it's discounted because how are they getting that gift card.
They're getting it from someone that got this gift card from gram that doesn't want it, and they want to unload it because it doesn't cost them anything to get rid of it at a at a lesser price than the face value. So let me give you an example. Let's say that I have a birthday party. Someone gives me a one hundred dollars gift card to what's that store with all the candles that bed bathroom, not bed bathroom, bed Bathom body Works, the one that sells all the
like fancy selling smelling candles. So let's say I get that and I'm I said, you know what, I'm not getting any pumpkin spice candles this year. I'm just gonna get rid of I'm not gonna get I'm gonna get rid of this gift card. I can go on Raise and sell that gift card. They will give me cash for that, and then I hand over that gift card to them. Now they're going to give me let's say seventy five dollars, But to me, that's found money because I'm you know, this gift card was given to me
for free. Then Raise will go and they will sell that gift card to other people for let's say ninety five dollars. And now you're getting one hundred dollars gift card for ninety five. Raise makes that spread of seventy five to ninety five dollars that they sold it to you for, they make twenty bucks. You get a discounted gift card. Everyone's happy in this process. Next time you get a gift card, just read the fine print and make sure that you can use it online and in store.
A lot of them, like I said, are dual purpose. They will work in both places. And I'm looking, for instance, I'm looking up an Amazon gift card. So you can buy a one hundred dollars Amazon gift card on the Raised website for ninety seven dollars and eighty three cents and it says digital delivery, valid online and in store. But there are some gift cards that you go to and it will say only valid, you know, in store. So Walmart, let's see what they say. Yeah, valid online
and in store. So I think with the big ones, you're going to be fine. And I think that you know, it depends on some of the smaller retailers, some of the more obscure retailers, you may not be able to use them in both places, whether it's online or in store, because every gift card is a little bit different, and the way that you get these gift cards, you know, depending on where you buy them from, could be a little different. So great question eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. This is rich On Tech rich Demiro here, rich On Tech, Welcome back to the show. I'm here in Westlake Village, California, with Clay Alexander, CEO of Ember. You may know this company for its temperature controlled mugs, but now they are branching out into all kinds of temperature control systems. The latest product is a self warming baby bottle system. Clay, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me Rich, I'm happy to be here.
So a lot of folks may know Ember for the mugs. This is the first product that I tried from Ember, and it's a temperature controlled mug. Tell me the idea behind that.
So actually it started with with scrambled eggs. Okay, So in two thousand and nine, I had just sold my light bulb to GE. It was the world's large brightest led light bulb and GE had bought the rights to it. And I was sitting there, you know, thinking, Okay, what am I gonna do next with my life?
Right?
And I was eating scrambled eggs with my wife in the kitchen. I get about halfway through my eggs and my eggs get cold on my plate. This happens every time I eat scrambled eggs.
So I thought.
I remember looking down and thinking, okay, this is the twenty first century. At a bare minimum, my dinner plate should be able to keep my food at a decent eating temperature. So I've been inventor since Berth and I thought, okay, let me make I started strapping RC car batteries and temperature control circuitry to the bottom of the dinner plates in my kitchen.
I'm sure, I'm sure your wife loved you.
No, I was making a big, giant mass in the kitchen with electronics and wires and benchtop power supplies and all that good stuff. So I created the world's first self warming innerplate and I started eating my meal off of it, steaks, salmon, et cetera. You get halfway through the meal, thirty minutes later, you're taking your time. You cut into the salmon, steam still comes out. It's the
perfect temperature, perfect bite. So I had invented this, and I remember thinking to myself looking around the kitchen, going gosh, coffee mugs, soup bowls, shafing dishes, baby bottles, all the things that can benefit from temperature control. And the real question was, well, where do we start right And at that time, this is back in twenty fourteen fifteen, when I was making this decision, coffee, high end coffee was
on the rise big time. So we created the world's first self warming coffee cup, and we made prototypes and I remember drinking out of it, carrying it around town and it looked like a crazy invention.
I had batteries strapped to the side and wires and.
Circuitry, but the user experience was phenomenal because you got thermosignetti and all these others, and those are dual wall vacum insulation. The temperature that you pour in is what it holds it at. If you pour hot coffee, brood coffee comes out at one hundred and eighty degrees, burns your mouth, or you wait for a very long period of time for tacool, you get distracted, you go back,
and now it's too cool cold. So I thought, gosh, what if I could What if we could create technology that actually locks your drinking temperature in whatever your preferred specific drinking temperature is. You set it in a number mug.
One thirty five, for instance, is mine. And every time I pour a cup of coffee, no matter where I am, and I poured a number mug, it goes to one hundred and thirty five degrees on the nose, and every sip, every sip, no matter where I go, it's battery powered, carried around the meetings, et cetera, is at one hundred and thirty.
Five degrees Okay, so let's talk about the self warming baby bottle system. This is brand new from Ember over ten years in the making. Where did the idea for this come from?
Okay, this is a great story. So my beautiful daughter, Charlotte was born eleven years ago and my wife did most of the feedings. Every once in a while it was dad's turn. And I remember Charlotte waking up in the middle of the night crying, you know, starving. It's like I'm carrying her downstairs, going into the kitchen, getting a bowl of water, running the water in the sink, warming up the water, putting the baby bottle in the water. It's bobbing around because you know, my wife didn't want
me to use the microwave. And then you're like squirting milk on your wrists and you're going, I'm a new parent. I have all these other anxieties about parenthood, and I don't know if this temperature is right.
I'm just trying to sense it on my wrist.
So it was a very honestly, the anxiety level was very high at that time for me as a parent, and I thought there's got to be a better way. And I thought, gosh, what if the baby bottle could warm the milk itself right up to the perfect body temperature and you know when it's ready. And that was kind of the origin idea.
And so now we've got the baby bottle. It comes with this sort of warming puck on the bottom. Can you explain how it works.
There's a puck that you can throw in your back pocket or anywhere, and you can basically throw the bottle on the puck and it warms milk or formula up to body temperature within less than five minutes. And part of the beauty of it is if you want to keep the milk cold for on the go, we also have that comes in the kit that we just launched, a what we call a thermal dome. So the cold milk comes out of the fridge with the bottle and you throw it on the puck. You throw the thermal
dome over it. It's all magnetic, it just sucks together. The thermal dome will keep the milk in the bottle cold for up to four hours on the go. So you have this little like we call it like an infant feeding kit, throw in your diaper bag, throw it in your backpack on the go, and when you know your baby is hungry. You just open up your iPhone or Android Divide and you go to the umber Baby app.
You click warm Milk. It actually warms the milk while the baby bottle is in your bag, and then it just notifies you when you're ready on either your connected watch or on your phone.
And if you don't want to necessarily use the app, which you probably want to, because if you have something like this, you're into apps and phones and stuff. But there's also a physical button on the bottom of the puck that you can just press five lights. When they all light up, it lets you know that the milk is at the right temperature. The baby bottle is super lightweight, lighter than you would think. It is all dishwasher safe.
All of the parts that touch the milk the puck obviously is the electronics, and you also kept the bulk of the electronics in the bottom, like the Bluetooth is not near the baby bottle itself.
That's right, soar in the early days, in our first version of the umber Baby bottle, we put the battery technology and the Bluetooth radio and such in the bottom of the bottle is part of the bottle, just like an Ember mug right, And in a lot of early focus groups, parents said, you know, I don't really want a bluetooth radio near my baby's face. I don't really
want a batteries. So we we pivoted and we re engineered the product so that we put the bluetooth radio on, the batteries and all that stuff into a little kind of hockey puck that you throw in your back pocket that's magnetic to the bottle.
That way the bottle.
The bottle has you know, a microprocessor, heaters and temperature control sensors all kind of embedded in there safely, but there's no you know, batteries or bluetooth radio or any of that kind of stuff. So it's it's all solid state electronics in there.
And safety for this this is something that you know, babies are going to be holding.
Yeah, So safety has been a number one priority for us from the very very beginning. And one of the things that we really wanted to make.
Sure we got right is the heating.
Right.
We never wanted to be over body temperature, so you know, ninety eight point five degrees in this case. And so we actually designed the Ember baby bottle with three independent circuits that run inside the bottle. If the first circuit fails, right, if the milk goes up, you know, ninety eight point six boom. The second circuit kicks in senses that it went a point of a degree up and then opens
the circuit, essentially killing heating. If the second circuit fails, there is a third circuit that can then catch it. So it is absolutely bomb proof, never go. It will never go above that body temperature. And so that took us actually probably almost two years to engineer just what I was saying right there, this triple redundancy.
The self forming baby bottle system from ember Cells for four hundred dollars. Some people may balk at.
That price, so in the future we'll launch less expensive versions that just have maybe one bottle and one put but at launch, we want to have an entire system that really takes care of you, and it's an infant feeding system.
Any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
I would say, honestly, grit to go from an idea in your mind to building a global brand. It's definitely the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
X ten.
And I would just say, you like the reason that I like can't sleep at night, work seven days a week, et cetera. Is because of my passion of what I'm doing right, Like, I'm so excited about every product that we create and launch. And if you don't have that passion, you're not gonna have the grit and the determination to actually pull it off. And especially when you go through tough times, you just got to keep pushing that big giant boulder up the hill.
Clay Alexander, CEO of EMBER and founder, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thank you, Rich. It was great to have you all right.
If you want to learn more about what Ember's doing, check out the website. Just go to rich on Tech dot TV. I'm richidibureau more of rich on Tech after this, welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you, and my guest is Larissa May, a digital wellness activist and founder of Half the Story, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering the next generation's healthy relationship with social media. They definitely need that. Larissa, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thank you for hosting me.
So give me a little background on yourself. Why did you start this and what's the goal I.
Started Half the story eight years ago as the first you thought organization tackling the intersection of mental health and tech because of my own negative experience of social media when I was in college, I almost lost my life due to my very toxic relationship with technology mixed with my depression. I saw that after going through treatment that they asked me about physical wellness, sexual wellness, but they
never asked me about the drug of my POTT. So I started to ask the hard questions about technology and mental health and wanted to build an organization that would give the next generations the tools that they needed to emotionally thrive in the digital age.
So what do you think now, having gone through all of that, what do you think is the problem?
Well, I think there's really two major problems. One is that there's then virtually no regulation or systems in place to ensure that technology is safe for young minds. And on the flip side, kids that are getting on technology are not cognitively ready to really engage with the amount of content that's coming at them, and the algorithms are really manipulating and taking advantage of our most vulnerable minds.
And so it's really a bifurcated issue. And I believe that if there is change in the actual infrastructure and design of the tech, while the next generation also gets the tips and tools that they need to have agency and empowerment, we can perhaps build a better world.
Do you feel like care the tech companies about this?
I think that they have to care because there's actually a business case for caring when you think about the next generation of consumers and where they're going to be placing their trust in their time, that transparency and care, especially for mental health is so critical, especially amongst gen Z.
The what is kind of like the first step to all this? Do the parents need to know more about this? Do they need to be concerned about social media? Yeah?
First and foremost, I would say for any parent that's listening, the longer you can wait for your child to get a screen, the better. Their brains are just literally not wired to deal with what technology is creating, and it's taking advantage of the Olympic system and the very emotional part of their brains. So the more that you can keep them away from it, the better, I would say.
The second thing is that the reality is if your kid already has a device, the abstinence idea doesn't really work, and you need to be able to engage your kid and really get curious about what is supporting them, what they like on technology versus what's hurting them, and set radical boundaries within your household and actually lead by example. So many parents come to us wanting to figure out how to fix their kids, but they're the ones that are on the phone at the dinner table or going
to bed with their partner with their screens. So you really have to set that example from the start. And the last thing I would say is really teach your kids how to unhack their tech. I mean, tech was built to hack their minds, but there are things that you can do to build speed bumps their stopping cues into your phone to help your kid at least deal with the amount of cognitive load that they're experiencing.
Okay, so you mentioned the roadblocks and you mentioned, you know, parents kind of like leading by example. Can you give some specifics on like do we use like this the app settings to like you know, set timers? Is it screen time? Like what can we do? Yeah?
So, first and foremost, for any parent that has a kid on social media, I would advise that you actually subscribe to Google RT's and all of the blogs, the social platform that your kid is on. There are a lot of safety actually a lot of safety tools that the platforms have been created, but they don't really do a great job at marketing them, so parents don't use them.
We are actually at a research conference this week and one of the major platforms reported that less than ten percent of parents that have kids on the platforms are actually taking advantage of the safety features or teaching their kids.
How to use them.
So first, make sure you're up to date on what the platforms have in place to make it at least a little bit better of an experience. The second thing that you can do as a parent is to give your kids tools to help them with navigating this. And so there's two really great apps that I use. One
is called the one SEC app. The other is called the Opal app, and the one SEC app actually gets really slows down, so if your kid opens an app, it doesn't just open the app, it actually creates a bit of a delay and gets your kid to really think about why they're opening that app and to answer that question, to build that speed bump or to slow
that down before they're just mindlessly opening the platform. The opal app is a great tool for both mobile and desktop that allows you to block certain apps at certain time of the day and make that routine so that you can wake up and count on the fact that all your social platforms will be blocked. So those are
two tools that I really like to use. But lastly, you know, some of the simple things that you can do are hiding your social media apps far back in your phone if you have an iPhone, you know, putting as many of them as possible into one of those little square pods and putting that a couple slides backs that you really have to think and you really have to ask yourself about why you're getting on your attack before.
You do it.
Okay, So again, the apps are one sec, oh any one sack sec and then opal, O p A L. And I'm looking at these and you know, I've covered tech for a while and I these are great. I mean they look like I love the idea, and I do one hundred percent agree. It's all about like, if you put these apps front and center on your phone, you know you're going to be on them a lot, You're going to be consuming them a lot because it's just when you're you know, you have a free minute,
you're going to open them up, and that's just human nature. Okay, So you also have let's see the government intervention. So what specific kind of like changes would you like to see implemented for all this? Do you think it's a government thing?
I mean, right now.
We're basically giving kids keys to a car that haven't been tested or don't have a seat belt. So I think that if the average American team is going to be spending eight hours of their day behind the screen, there has to be some level of accountability in systems because right now there is no incentive for these companies to really build tax safer other than that maybe you know, they want to have brand trust with the next generation.
But there needs to be some tracks and balances. And so, for example, one of the things that we worked on in California that just passed a couple of weeks ago actually make social media platforms remove any sexual abuse content that's on the platform of minors. Twenty five percent of sex trafficking cases of adolescence in California happened through the Internet, and up until a couple of weeks ago, that content
was roaming freely. If any of that content was reported to the social platforms, they weren't required to do anything, but now they have to respond within thirty six hours. So that's just like one example. You would be I hope anyone hearing this horrified that it took twenty years to pass something like that, But that's really the state
that we're in as we think about the future. What I believe we need to start doing is actually adding more agency into the algorithmic processes, especially for young people. So for example, if a young person is struggling with their mental health and they don't have and their entire feed is bad mental health and things that are triggering them, but you're never asked to refresh your interests once you've
actually logged onto a social platform. So I would like the government to be able to empower these social platforms to allow more agency amongst consumers when it comes to
the algorithm. And to be honest, I think it's a happy middle ground between you know, completely restricting the design and also giving the users more agency on their experience, and then you know, just on the third side, I think we need to be investing in more research and the government does outside of the social media platforms, there's more money inside the platforms with neuroscientists that are hooking kids than there is money flowing into the researchers outside
of the platforms really understanding the implications of what technology is doing to young people and all minds.
For that matter.
That's because the one side that they're investing in is the one that provides the returns with the cash that they make. And so and by the way, I love the idea of sort of a reset button on the social media networks, like for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, anything like TikTok, YouTube, like hey reset, reset my interests. Let's let's start over here. Even the music services like that would be useful too.
We only have a couple seconds here. Just how can parents spot this potential social media addiction or obsessive behavior?
Problematic social media use typically is when your child is spending a lot of time alone, putting themselves in their room, replacing the basic human needs with screen times, showing signs withdrawals almost like many mental illness symptoms. And so if your child is also visibly showing signs of distress when you remove their device, that's a sign that they probably have a problem.
Uh, Larisa, We're going to leave it there. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. It's the end of the year. I am cleaning out the mail bag. I get so many emails from you. I figured it would be a good time to answer a bunch of those. So if you want to submit your question, you can go to the website rich on
Tech dot tv. There is a link that says contact and if you want to follow me on social media, you can find me on x You can find me on Facebook and of course Instagram, where I am hanging out most of my day. I am at rich on Tech on all of those and I post a lot of good tech tips and things throughout the week. So definitely follow me on Instagram at rich on Tech. All right, without further Ado, let's get to the first question. Dana says,
moving to France and still want texts. Dana says, I'm moving to France and would like advice on the best and or most economical way to still receive identity verification texts with the US number. Mercy Well, Dana have fun in France, very exciting for you to be moving there, and I love the fact that you are using two factor authentication on your accounts. And so I understand that these accounts are set up, some of them are from the US, and you want to continue with the US number.
There's a couple of ways you could do this. My initial thought is Google Voice. That's probably the easiest way, and so you can set up a Google Voice number for free, and then you can go into your accounts and change the phone number to Google Voice and get that confirmation text that way, and that will work no matter where you are because it's all through the Internet, and of course you can have those texts forwarded to
a phone number of your choice over in France. The only issue I see there is that not every single two factor authentication text works with Google Voice. Most of them do, and I think for the most part it will be fine, but you may run across a service or two that does not work it's not compatible with that. So in that case, the other thing I would do is if you can't use the Google Voice number, is
use a two factor authentication app. And so there are several apps out there that you can use for your
two factor authentication codes. And the way that these work is that instead of the company texting you a code that you then enter on the website to continue to log in and let it proceed, you would just open up this app on your phone, and every twenty or thirty seconds or so, this app is generating a new code, and that code is just like the one that you would get texted to you, but it is coming from your own device, and so in a lot of ways
it's actually more secure because the two factor authentication codes through a phone number could be unencrypted, whereas these are safe and secure on your phone. So a couple of apps I can recommend to do that. Google Authenticator is one, Microsoft Authenticator is another, and then there is another app called auth the autchy, So any of those will work. What you do is you sign into the website that you want to set up two factor authentication on and it says how do you want to set this up?
With an authentication app or a phone number? Using your phone, you will scale and a QR code on your computer screen and that will link the two together. The main thing you want to think about here is that you don't want to lose that authentication app. You want to use one that is cloud based so that you can move to a different device or move that to a different account. But those are the ways that I would recommend getting those identity verification texts as you call them
with a US number. Let's go to Miriam. Miriam says, hey, Rich, I hope you are well. Thanks for being there. On Saturday night, my car play stopped working. Up until then, I was able to listen to my music, use GPS, and make and receive hands free calls. I have a twenty twenty three Volkswagen Jetta and an iPhone thirteen. Now the wheels just spin and spin on the car and the phone. They're looking for each other. I've talked to Apple support, Volkswagen, and I'm talking to Verizon as well.
I can't do what they recommend because the wheels won't stop spinning. Any suggestions. I appreciate you sharing all of your knowledge with us. Miriam. Well, Miriam, uh, I would say that this is just a temporary issue, and I hope it is. You've got a very late model car, You've got a very new iPhone, so I think that this is just a temporary problem. So it depends I'm not sure how you're connecting here, whether it is plugin, whether it is wireless car play. Since it is a
newer car, it may have that feature. But what I would do to troubleshoot this is to a couple things. First off, I would delete the phone from your saved phones on your car, So go into the settings on your Volkswagen, delete the phone out of the settings, and so that means it is no longer paired with your car. Then I would go into your iPhone and delete the car from my Bluetooth settings. So I would go into settings Bluetooth and find that Volkswagen and hit that little
eye and say forget this device. Then I would restart both of these things. So i'd turn your car off and on, restart your iPhone. And then before you go ahead and pair these things back up, I might do a quick I might do a quick software update, and so I would do make sure my software is up to date on my iPhone. And if you can, I'm not sure if this Volkswagen has any sort of Internet connection, but if you can go into the settings and see if there is a software update for the Volkswagen, I
would do that as well. So I would do those things, and then once you're all linked up, you can go into your settings, and then if you want to look at your car play, it's under Settings General and then car Play, and you can see the different cars that are linked up. You can hit forget this car before you try to link them up one more time. So a lot of times those things get stuck in there, some kind of change happens on either the phone or
the car, and it's just I don't know. It just takes a little bit for those things to link up again. But there's no reason why a modern Volkswagen and a modern iPhone should not be able to link up. So if you still have a problem, I would bring it to the dealer and see what they can do. This thing is probably still under warranty and they should be able to help you out. Next up, Brian says Rich, I enjoy your show, I miss Leo, but you've filled
empty space. Just find your misadventures are a great source of amusement for my wife. Have you ever encountered my problem here? It is earlier this year, we spent three weeks in Taiwan. We both took our phones. She switched out to a local simcard while I just used Wi Fi. I did nothing to my settings, but I did install a VPN. Since our return, my phone insists that it's
still in Taiwan. I get Taiwanese ads on YouTube sites like eBay, give me Taiwan dollar prices and Taiwan's shipping options, and all sites I go go by local time in Taiwan. My phone shows Los Angeles local time, of course, but not on the internet. I've been all through Safari trying to reset it to California. So what gives appreciate your input? Okay, So I definitely have this issue every time I go overseas, and the last time I had this happened to me.
I was in Berlin and I'm searching. You know what happens is when you go to a foreign country, the IP address of your phone. When these services see it, they reset to that IP address, so they say, oh, this person is visiting us from Taiwan. Let's make sure we serve up the local version of this website. So in your case, I'm guessing that you went to YouTube while you were there. I'm guessing that you went to eBay while you were there, and I'm guessing that you
went to Google while you were there. So first thing I would do is delete your history and website data on Safari. So you can go into settings on your iPhone and then tap Safari and scroll all the way down and it says clear history and website data, and so you press the big red button there and that will clear it out. I would say clear out all history. Just keep in mind that will probably log you out of many of the websites you're logged into.
Now.
I did write this down the last time I went to Berlin because it took me a while to figure this out. But on Google, if you're still getting the foreign search results, go to Google dot Com, tap settings in the lower right hand corner. Then you go to search settings and then other settings. So again we've gone like one, two, three deep at least. And then you want to choose English, English and United States for the
results region instead of current region. So basically, when you go into Google the search settings, you want it to say English results instead of the current region. If you leave it to current region, no matter where you travel when you search, you're going to get local results in that language and that are local to that area. But if you set this to English once. No matter where you go, you're always going to get those English results. Thanks for the question, Brian. That is one that stumps
a lot of people when they travel internationally. They come back home and everything sort of sticks to the foreign country that they were in. My name is rich Dumuro and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you at Triple eight. Rich one oh one. All right, let's bring up Stephanie. Stephanie was scammed through Facebook Marketplace
and Stephanie, thanks so much for joining me. I appreciate you sharing your story because I do think it's going to help people.
Of course, I'm happy to definitely help and share what I learned in my experience on Facebook Marketplace.
Okay, so what let's what were you selling and tell me how you posted it and all that good stuff, Like what you're selling?
What? So selling a furniture set for my in laws?
Okay, pretty standard, correct, but it was a.
High dollar value. So I put five thousand dollars for twelve piece dining room set. Wow, that attracted certain people.
Okay, so this was a this was like like I've got a futon on there right now, and it's like fifty bucks, So this is this is high end stuff, so you think interesting. So you think that's what attracted these scammers because they're like, oh, this person might have some money because they're selling a very expensive furniture set.
Yes, okay, because I lifted it and within five minutes, maybe ten, all of a sudden, I had probably at least five.
To ten inquiries if it was still available and wanted to buy it.
Oh wow, interesting, okay, So what happened? What do they say in these inquiries?
So they're asking if it's still available, and I would respond yes, but I was trying to be fair, so I would go in order of who initiated the conversation first, and then they would ask they wanted to give more, So of course I got happy.
They wanted to give you more money than you're asking for this thing, correct, okay.
Which again I was like, this is weird, but kind of exciting that maybe I did do it too low, but I was gonna just kind of be weary of it at first, and a lot of the information coming through was i'll give you fifty two hundred, I'll give you fifty five hundred. The next one was, I'll give you six thousand, and I did get into a bidding war with one gentleman who was a scammer and another customer, and they kept trying to outbid one another for it, so I got up to sixty seven hundred dollars.
Wow.
Again, being excited, I told the one I said, unfortunately, i'ministic with the first person who bid sixty seven and just end up bidding war back and forth. I appreciate your time and I'll keep you posted.
And this is all through what phone or text or how is this through messenger?
Facebook?
Facebook messaged me, Okay, did you look at their profile at all? Like did you check them out? Like to see what their deal was?
Not at first?
Okay, And what I started noticing was a lot of users created were joined Facebook in twenty twenty three, so this year, so they were new, correct, which was weird because that didn't seem correct.
So I was like, okay, well, I'm going to put you to the side. But this gentleman wasn't a twenty twenty three user. I believe he was a twenty sixteen user.
So I was like, okay, okay, yeah, because we look for little hints to see if these people are legitimate, because okay, they have a lot of reviews, they have a lot you know, they've been around for a while, so we feel like they might be more legitimate. That's what you kind of did.
He started continuing the messaging of can I Zell you? So I thought, sure, that doesn't seem to be weird. Sure, I'll give you my email and you can. You can send me money via Zell. And that's where it started to become the scam was he they spoofed a Zell email and made it look like I couldn't have the funds because I didn't have a Zell business account, and
that I needed to resolve the issue. And it was in order to resolve the issue, I had to send three hundred dollars to the user and then it would clear the situation. It would resolve it.
Okay. And at this point, did you send that money?
No? I was like, that seems weird.
Okay, why am like?
Because they overpaid? So we had agreed on sixty seven hundred and he sent seven thousand and said will you send the three hundred back? And I said, well, yes, I'm not going to take seven thousand. That's not what we agreed upon, and then the email came through from Zell saying I had to send it back, and I was like, well, this is weird. So then I checked the account first of all, and I didn't get seven
thousand dollars. I didn't get sixty seven hundred dollars. So after speaking with my husband, I said, this seems weird. I'm going to call Zell. And sure enough, I actually walked into another like a you know, situation with calling a quote unquote Zell customer service account which was not Dell.
Oh so that's how they got you. Where did you get that phone number from?
I googled it and of course I have the number, but I don't have the website.
So you google the phone number for Zell came something came up on Google. You dialed the number that you saw on your screen, and it connected you to a scam artist, which was unrelated to the original scammer. Yes, scammers be scamming.
Correct.
Oh my gosh, it's like no matter where you go, I.
Avoided a scam because I didn't see that didn't seem right. So I was like, okay, we're gonna call and I walked into another scam.
Wow, so you actually thought you were protecting yourself and you walked right into another spider web of scam artists that is really it's like a one two punch right there.
Yes, like they're getting really smart, okay, really really smart.
So you call the Zel person and to this unbeknownst to you, it's not actual Zel. And then what happened where.
He's walking me through un quote unquote how to set up Azell business account and I said, well, I don't want a Zell business account. I just kind of want to resolve this and deal with the furniture sale and move on. And I'm not trying to create a business. That's not what my end game is. And he said, no, I understand, man. We're going to get you set up to get the money resolved. As I'm talking to him, I had a bad feeling and I said, how do
I know you're not going to take my money? And he goes, ma'am you called me, oh wow, oh you? And I said that's a really valid point.
You're right.
I sought you out.
You didn't seek me out. As we're going through quote unquote setting up a Zell account, he has me logging into any desk, which, oh, wow, do and he sees my information, which, again, knowing I had a bad feeling, I said, this doesn't track. But I've used any desk for work related issues, so I thought that's not odd in that respect. And I'm starting to move money around and send it out to people I don't know. But he said I'll get it back, and I said, I'm
going to get this money back. He says, yes, we're just moving money around. You're going to transfer the money out and it's going to come back to you. I said, okay. Again, this doesn't seem all right, and my gut is yelling at me to like end the call. I finally said, I need to finish this call later when my husband gets home, and he said, sure, no problem, we'll call you back whenever you want. But at that point, I already excelled money out to two people. I didn't know.
How much did you sell?
Fifteen hundred total?
You realize as soon as you hung up that this was a problem, yes, yes, And how did you feel?
Oh? Terrible?
I said. I literally tried to avoid getting scammed and walked into another scamp. As I'm talking to the second scammer, the first scammer is blowing up the messenger, asking you know why I haven't transferred the money? What's going on? Did I read the letter?
You know?
I need to follow the email that they'd sent and I need to do what the email says and everything will be fine. And finally when he got he seemed to obviously be getting aggressively angry. I finally told him, unfortunately, I can't send you the money back because my account was hacked due to fraudulent activity and I cannot access any money, so thank you. And that's kind of where he was like, well, that's because you didn't follow the email. If it's no, no, no, no no, that's you know, not
understanding me. I cannot access the money, there's nothing to access, nothing to send you, so I'm not going to do that. And he was getting mad, and then I finally just blocked him. After having to deal with the fraud department at my bank.
Wow, okay, so I've got to go. But did you get any of this money back where you're able to reclaim it?
I was, And if you ever have an issue with well.
It's all your bank bottom line. What's what's your advice to people.
If it's too good to be sure it probably is, and listen to your guys.
Stephanie, thanks so much for calling me today. I appreciate you sharing your story. I know that's a tough story to tell, but I do believe that if you listen to these stories and hear more of them, you realize the warning signs.
Of course, absolutely, thank you for listening.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here on location in New York City where Google has just announced their latest Pixel eight smartphones. You've got the Pixel eight and the Pixel eight Pro. Joining me now to talk about them is Stephanie Scott with Google, and you are the product manager for Pixel Yes, I.
Lead the Pixel eight and the Pixel eight Pro lines.
So pixel phones to me have always been all about the camera, all about AI. Are you really sort of doubling down on those two areas this year?
I would say we have amazing advancements in both of those areas this year. For the camera, we've upgraded all of the hardware on the Pixel eight Pro, so you're going to see huge leaps and improvements there, as well as bringing amazing new post capture and editing tools, things like Audio Magic Eraser that let you take out unwanted
noise in your videos. We have things like best Take that will let you help select images of faces where people really look their best, and brand new features like Magic Editor that let you reimagine a shot maybe a little bit more like how you remembered it. And then for helpful AI, we have a number of new features
there as well. New features like Summarize they can help sort of read a webpage and synthesize it for you, or even things like direct my Call where you actually have more ambient or helpful, helpful tips and tricks for answering a phone call.
So I will say, every time I use the Pixel devices, I truly feel like it is a smartphone, like it puts the smart in phone because it almost thinks for you. And with these AI editions, you almost feel like you have super control over a lot of your photos and videos and things like that. Let's break down some of these features. Okay, so first off, you mentioned a new one which is the audio eraser. Explain that.
Yeah, So Audio.
Magic Eraser is an amazing new feature that we've added for videos. And when you take videos, a lot of times you're trying to capture the sound from a subject. So maybe it's a musician or a child doing a performance,
but there could be unwanted background noise. So if you're recording in New York City, there could be you know, sirens or an ice cream trucks that goes by, or a bird chirping, and the feature intelligently separates those sounds out into layers and then lets you have the ability to turn those those unwanted noises down so you can really listen to the intended subject.
Yeah. I was playing with this feature and it really separated out like the voice versus the background noise, and you can adjust each of them like its own level, like almost as if you recorded them independently. Yeah.
No, it's really great, and it's it's great because it makes it so easy. It really gives gives you those three options in the UI and lets you have complete control over all of them.
Now, this next feature, I think is going to be the most controversial when it hits the you know, the open marketplace, The best Take, because it's so unique and it's it's stuff that you could do before if you are a photo editor, but now anyone can do this in the palm of their hand. This best take feature. You take a group picture or you take even a selfie, and it will let you like, you know, changed the way the face looks. It can give a smile. Well you explain it.
Yeah, yeah, so I can explain. So this feature is really built for those group.
Shots where you're taking a picture, you know, with a group of friends or maybe family. And I don't know about you and your friends, but with me, a lot of times someone's blinking, someone's looking away from the camera, and so you end up with a shot where most people look good, but someone's not looking at the camera.
So it's taking from that series of photos that you took at that time and helping you actually choose from the faces in that series or group of photos, another face where someone maybe looks a little bit better, or is looking at the camera or has their eyes open, to create one amazing shot where everyone looks their best.
Yeah. So you take six or seven photos and you go through them, you swipe, and every single one you analyze, you zoom in on the person's face. There's always something a little bit off, and so now it's taking the best of all those photos merging them into one great picture.
Yeah, And it gives you again, a lot of controls. You can go in and che the smile maybe you like, because not everyone wants that big goofy smile, you know, maybe someone wants a little more muted expression. So I can't wait personally to use this for my holiday card this year. We take it with my cat. It's always a little chaotic, and so it's just nice to be able to have have a little bit more editing control.
There.
Will it work on animal faces?
No, it does not work on animal faces. But I can choose a picture where my cat is looking good and then correct my face.
Ah, okay, got it. Well, maybe next year. The upgrade for the for the dogs. People love the dog and cat features on these like photo apps. All right, so let's talk about the operating system updates because Google announced that they will do seven years of updates for the pixel. Explain what that means.
Yeah, so for Pixel, we've you know, we've offered you know, multiple years of feature updates in the past. We also have featured drops, which brings newer features to people that may have a pixel that's several years old. But this year we have a new offering that's really meaningful with which is seven years of OS security and feature drops, so offering users and sort of for Pixel eight and eight pro a guarantee that we will be supporting these devices.
For that time.
I mean that's a really long time, so this phone will pretty much be good to go for that long.
Yeah.
We're excited to have this exciting announcement for users and being able to support them as if they're planning on using the device even longer.
Yeah.
They also announced on stage that if you're kind of the tinkering person, you can fix your own phone. Tell me about that.
Yeah, So we have a partnership with I fix It, and so we make parts and repair manuals available. So looking to again help support users that are looking for longevity in their devices.
I may have to try to just replace a screen, because the last time I did that was many many years ago with an iPod. I replaced the battery and I was so proud of myself, But that was like many many years ago.
Yeah, I would say it's definitely an area that's progressing and we're worth trying again.
What about people that have the current Pixel phones? Are there any features you announced that they can see on their phones?
Now?
I think the only one we announced today was the new Fold feature that provides translation using taking a capability of the two screens, so being able to do an interpreter mode and how use the dual screens on the Fold display to be able to more easily do a translation between two people having a conversation.
What's been the response on the Fold I.
Honestly, I think it's a really innovative product. It's a sort of a cutting edge and we're really bringing and taking advantage of the larger screen to do even more in terms of you know, photo editing or camera features, so a really amazing space to innovate.
AI is a huge part of the Pixel devices. I feel like it's always been a big part with Google Assistant and all the photo features, but now you've got these call screening features. You say that people with Pixel phones get like fit two percent less spam calls. Tell me about some of those features that you announced today.
Yeah, I absolutely love our calling features. So we have a number of different features, everything from you know, direct my Call, which helps you when you're calling a business for example, to be able to navigate phone trees, to things like crystal Clear calling that remove background noise using AI, to things like hold for me.
That literally save you hours of your day by not having to wait on hold.
The new one we announced today is an advancement to direct My Call and call screen where you actually have more intelligent response suggestions, so you don't even have to pick up a call to respond to a call. So if you imagine, for example, a UPS driver is calling and asks where should I leave the package?
Or can I leave the package?
You'll actually get suggested responses and you can say things like leave it by the door, you know, and not even have to pick up the phone to give them that instruction, which is great.
So you work with this phone on a daily basis, I imagine you're pretty much invested in the pixel lineup and you feel like it's probably one of the best phones out there. If someone is thinking about switching to this phone, that is a really tough thing for the average smartphone user to do because they've got a big life in their previous phone. What's your advice for them?
My advice is to give it a go. I think there's a lot of new features here, amazing cameras to try, all the new helpful calling features and smarts features on board.
So it's a really great time to try a pixel all.
Right, So you've got Pixel eight starting at six hundred ninety nine dollars. You've got Pixel eight Pro starting at nine hundred ninety nine dollars. Also, there's a deal I saw if you pre order you might get a free watch.
I think we have some amazing pre order promotions going on right now, so definitely worth giving those a try.
And when are these available?
These are available October twelfth.
Okay, October twelfth.
There you go.
Stephanie Scott with Google. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Thank you so much.
Rich.
Okay, I'll have more about the Pixel eight and Pixel eight Pro my website. Just go to richon Tech dot TV. We'll take more of your calls after this. Give me a call triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Tomuro here hanging out with you, talking technology on location. We've done interviews in the plane. This is the first time I've done an interview on
a boat. We are in Long Beach and joining me now is Mitchley of ARC Boats. Thanks for joining me.
It's great to be here and we are excited to have you out on our one of our boats.
So this is an all electric boat. Describe what we are on right now.
This boat that we're on now is called the ARC one. It is the first model boat that we brought to market. It's a twenty four foot fully electric power boat, capable of five hundred horsepower and software limited to forty.
Miles an hour.
And I've already been on it spoiler alert, and it's quite incredible. It's quiet, it's smooth, it's powerful. Tell me about the company. Let's start with ARC You're based in Los Angeles, and what are you trying to do?
This company didn't even exist three years ago, and at this point we have already manufactured and delivered the ARC one to our initial customers. The entire company is now focused on the next model we're bringing to market, which is a mass market wakesport boat.
If you zoom back out.
As a company, our goal is to electrify everything on the water. Electric boats make a ton more sense than gas boats across pretty much every aspect of boating. The ownership experience is much nicer, they're quiet. We can hold an interview on a boat, you're not smelling fumes. They're far more reliable, they're less expensive to operate, and the experience of operating one itself is so much better thanks
to software and the technology on this boat. The hard part is actually putting enough energy on the boat to move through water at high speeds and with a lot of power. That is what we specialize in. We build our holes, our battery packs, and a lot of the systems that go into this boat in house in our manufacturing facility in Los Angeles.
So, Mitch, what made you wake up and say I would like to electrify a boat.
I'm a lifelong boating enthusiast. My parents were boating enthusiasts, and particularly water ski enthusiasts.
They love to slalom ski. So I grew up out getting dragged behind a.
Boat with wakeboarding and knee boarding and water skiing and weightsurfing.
This is what I love to do with my time.
I also have a degree in mechanical engineering and spent a while portion of my career as a software developer, and this is kind of the marriage of all of those things, my passion and my actual career.
When I tell people I'm going out on an electric boat, they say, oh, a duffy because people think of a low powered or slower kind of boat. That's not what you set out to build.
No, we absolutely want to change the perception of electric boats in the same way that most people associate electric cars with performance, with really fast zero to sixty times. We are here to change the perception of electric boats on the water, and hopefully your experience today made that point.
So we're on the arc one. This is the boat that you initially sold. You made a couple dozen of them, and now you're onto Well, tell me some of the features of this unit that we're on.
So this was a limited edition boat that was our first entrance into the market, into the marine space. It consists of two battery packs. Each one of those battery packs is larger than pretty much anything you'd find in an electric car. In total, it's two hundred and twenty kilos of battery capacity, which, as a point of references, roughly three times the size of a Model Y battery pack. The boat is laid out in an open seating arrangement.
Given that everything is.
Packaged below the floor, that affords a lot of space, a lot of space for storage and a lot of space for seating on the boat of this size.
It's a big boat. It's got a lot of space. It's got a lot of space for people. Again, it's fast, it's quiet. There is absolutely no scent to the boat. There's no fumes, there's none of that boating scent that you kind of associate with being out on the open water. It's a very simple setup. So you've got just the steering wheel, the throttle. You've got this nice big screen which is kind of very Tesla esque in the center, which is showing maps, music. There's even a backup camera.
I guess if you can call it a back it's a back camera. I should say. You see your current speed, your current battery, You've got a compass, the water temperature, and also the water depth. Do you think that this appeals to someone who has grown up with an iPhone or someone who is driving a Tesla.
Absolutely.
We want to make better boats and we hope that those boats and expect that those boats will appeal both to people that have grown up boating and people that are brand new to it. By making boats far easier to own and far less expensive to actually operate, it opens up the market These are simply better boats. They solve the main pain points with gas boats today.
What about the charging situation? How long does it take to charge? How much time do you get out in the water on a charge?
We think in terms of usage time.
We want people to be able to use their boat exactly how they want to use it for a full day, plug in at the end of the day, and wake up the next morning with a boat that is ready to hit the water again. In practice, that tends to
mean three to five hours of active usage time. That is a much better experience than what you gas boat owners deal with today, lugging gas cans down to a dock and filling it up manually, having to go twenty minutes away to the nearest marina to pay ten dollars a gallon, or any of the other creative solutions people come up with.
Are the chargers readily accessible?
Absolutely.
This boat uses what's known as a CCS one charger. It is the same style of charger that you use for any electric car on the road today. And another awesome part about electric boats is that they tend to have easier access to power. When you look across a marina today, most of those marinas actually already are equipped with what is known as shore power, because even gas boats use electricity to power refrigerators or bilge pumps or
other accessories on the boat. You can just plug straight into that, plug it into your boat, and again wake up the next morning with the charge. Boat docks tend to be the same way.
You've got the ARC One already. People are using this out in the world. You're learning a lot of data from that, and you're now building your mass market electric boat. What can we expect from that.
The next boat we're bringing to market is a mass market wakesport boat. We'll have more to share about that soon. But as with a lot of new technology, the goal is to, over the course of our development time, make the technology more accessible to more people. Our goal is eventually for every boat on the water to be electric. It makes sense from a customer perspective, from a product perspective, and from environment perspective. We want to make it happen, and we want to make it happen quickly.
How much are we talking for this boat for the buyers that already have it, and also the upcoming model.
This boat was the ARC One was three hundred thousand dollars. That's a all in price that includes trailer delivery and best in class service. That might say like a lot, but gas boats today of this size routinely sell for that amount of money. Boats just tend to be more expensive than automotive. Having said that, our goal is to drop the price of these boats over time.
Performance wise, we were doing some what do you call them s turns, S curves, and it was pretty wild. This boat goes very fast, it has a lot of maneuverability. It feels like you have a lot of control in this boat. Are those advantages of the electric system.
Yeah, So one of the things that we have designed into this boat is the ability to go quickly from zero up to top speed. You also get a lot of torque at low speeds, which makes it easy to pull a wake quarter or water skier out of the water,
and it also makes the acceleration quite fun. So we were out there doing what are known as hole shots, which is when you pin the throttle down and let the boats software take over and accelerate that boat up to tops and then turn that into s turns where you're cranking the wheel left and right and going back and forth and really experiencing how sporty this boat is. We are not taking away from any part of your experience.
This is absolutely better than what you're experiencing today on gas boats.
All right, Mitch Lee, one of the founders of ARC. Tell folks how they can learn more about the company.
Go to arcboats dot com.
Thanks so much for joining me today out on the open water. If you want a link to that, I'll put on my website. Rich on Tech dot tv. More rich on Tech coming your way. If you have a question about technology, give me a call. The number is Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. My name is Rich d'miro and you are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website is rich Tech dot tv. Once you go there, you can see all of the previous segments that I've done, not only for TV, but also for this radio show. Subscribe to the podcast and you can follow me on social media. I am at rich on Tech. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
But I also get a lot of emails from you with questions, so today I figured i'd take some time to answer those. Let's go to the mailbag. Patrick says, Hey, Rich, hope you're well, buddy. So my Android works like a charm on the home Wi Fi, but my girlfriend's iPhone is always having issues. She calls it a dead zone when she's here. Any suggestions, Patrick, I have noticed that there is a pretty big difference in the way the
iPhone works with Wi Fi versus certain Android phones. I find that the reception on Android can often be better. I'm not sure why that is. I mean, it could be the case on your girlfriend's phone, it could be the way she's holding it. Just kidding. That was the joke from a long time ago when there was an antenna issue with the iPhone and Steve Jobs famously said that people were holding their phones wrong. That is not the case. These modern phones should be able to pick
up a pretty good signal. But with that said, there are some things you can try to do. So number one, you can have her try taking off the case from her phone to see if that makes a difference. Obviously, restart the phone. See if that makes a difference. Disconnect from the Wi Fi and then reconnect, and by that I mean go into the Wi Fi settings and actually press that little eye forget the network, restart the phone, and then bring the phone back onto the network. See
if that helps. The other thing she can try to do is a network settings reset. So if you go into your settings and then General and then reset, there is an option for network settings reset. Now, this will clear out all of her connections, not just Wi Fi but also cellular and Bluetooth, so she will have to reconnect any device that she is connected to her phone.
The cellular connection will find itself again. But that is a way that you can try to troubleshoot this situation and see if she can get a better signal on her phone. Let me show you exactly how to do that. You go into Settings and then you go into General and you scroll all the way down. It says transfer or reset phone. You tap that, and then you tap reset. I know it sounds scary, but you get a whole bunch of options reset all settings, reset network settings, and
then you can even tap that one more time. You have to put in your passcode and then that will reset all of the network settings. She will have to reconnect her car Bluetooth, She will have to reconnect any earbuds or AirPods or any Bluetooth headphones, and also the Wi Fi connections at her work and your place. Thanks for the question, Patrick, Marlene says, what is the best antivirus protection for three iPhone, four teens and two iPads? Also?
Is there a good password protection software to keep passwords secure? Well, Marlene, I'm gonna make your day and tell you that you don't need virus protection on iOS devices. You just don't need it. The way that the iPhone is configured, it is really really tough to get a virus. It might be impossible, I'm not sure, but there is a spyware for the iPhone. It is very rare. I don't think
your phone is going to get it. There have been limited cases where there's been evidence of spyware and malware on iPhones, but for the average person, it is very very rare, and there is And in fact, even though if you search in the app store for anti virus on the iPhone, you will find a million apps that sort of suggest they will give you virus protection on the iPhone. They don't. They cannot, and the reason they cannot is because of the architecture of iOS. iOS is
set up as a sandbox. Pretty much every every single app that you install on iOS is living in its own little silo and it can't really interact with other apps unless it's done in the way that Apple has allowed, and they have made very strict precautions on how apps can interact with each other. Now, this is not the same for Android. Android, yes you can get you could potentially get a virus or malware on Android. It might
be a little bit easier, but there's various reasons for that. Now, the other thing about the iPhone is most, if not all, of the software, unless you jail break, it has to come from the app store, and that software is scanned for viruses, and it is also scanned for malware, and it is just generally checked to make sure that it is secure. So if you are installing your apps from the iPhone app store, there is no need for antivirus protection. The one thing you do have to be careful about, Marlene,
is what you click on, because yes, you can. Still there are things called zero day attacks, there are things where there are exploits for the I. It does happen from time to time. The way that it happens typically is through a text message. So the main thing you need to be careful about on the iPhone is what you click and what you download, and also what you enter your personal information too. So if you are getting some sort of text that says, hey, we've got a
package for you from USPS and there's a problem. We need you to log in here with all of your information, that's really where you're going to have a problem now when it comes to passwords. So if you are just using the iPhone, I'd recommend iCloud keychain. If you're just using iOS devices, that'll work nicely and it's safe, it's secure, it keeps your passwords across all of the different Apple devices.
If you want something a little bit more full featured that you're going to use on a couple different devices, Bitwarden is free and it works across various devices, So that's a good one. And Google actually has some pretty decent free software as well, built into the Chrome web browser and it does work pretty nicely on the iPhone. And if you want something that's paid, I like the
software from dash Lane. I also like proton pass. Again, Marlene, I did cross check this with a with a tech expert, a cybersecurity expert, who agreed with me, you pretty much for the average person don't need virus protection on iOS devices. Finally, Carrie says, do you have anyone complaining about the Apple Watch not charging to one hundred percent after updating to iOS ten. Mine does not last all day now. The battery dies at the end of the day. It is
so frustrating. Good question. I'm glad that you noticed this major change when Watch OS ten came out. That's when I noticed it. I noticed it was only charging up to eighty percent. And the reason why Apple made this change is for battery health. They want the batteries on these things to last longer, and the amount of time that your battery lasts on the Apple Watch is directly related to the age of your watch and also what
you're doing on that watch. If you are not doing any sort of GPS tracking or athletic tracking or fitness tracking, your battery is going to last a lot longer than someone who is going on a hike with GPS or recording a workout with their heart rate for a long time. So the first way is while your watch is charging.
If you want it to charge fully, make sure that your watch is charging, tap your watch to show the charging screen, then tap the circle with the green or yellow charging icon, and then you'll tap charge to full now, and that will charge your battery to one hundred percent. If you want your Apple Watch to charge to one hundred percent every single time, you're going to have to go into your settings and change a setting to make
that happen. There's a setting that seems to be on by default at this time, which is called optimized battery charging. If you want to change that and turn it off and have your Apple Watch charge to one hundred percent every single time, tap the digital crown on your Apple Watch, scroll down to your settings. So let's find that I'm doing this as we speak here, and then you want to scroll down to battery and you have to do
this on the Apple Watch itself. You can't do this through the settings on your phone, which is kind of odd. And now, right now, mine is saying last charge to optimized limit, and so if you want to change that, you have to tap battery health and then you'll see the option for optimized charge limit. Right now, Mine, is on. If you want your battery to charge to one hundred percent, every time you can toggle that off, will it ruin your battery? I mean over a period of long time. Yes,
the battery does degrade on any device like this. So it's up to you. If you keep your Apple Watch forever and you want your battery to last a really long time, maybe consider leaving the optimized charge limit on. But if you want the maximum battery, you probably have to turn it off. Thanks for the question. Carry If you have a question for me, go to my website richon Tech dot TV. Hit the link that says contact
and you can submit your question right there. My name is rich Damiro and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Let me tell you about this feature called reading Mode. Now I can't take credit for finding this. I got to give a shout out to
Jimmy is Promo on YouTube. He covers all Samsung stuff and he had a great video about this reading mode that I was not aware of. And it is really really cool. So it basically makes any article on your Android phone easy to read, makes it big, and it takes out all the distractions, but it also reads it to you. And there have been ways of doing this before on Android, but this is very very simple, and
it involves a Google app called reading Mode. So if you go to the Google Play Store, you search reading Mode, you select that reading Mode app, you install it, you open it up. There are a couple little things to set it up, and basically what you need to do is just set up what you want the shortcut key to be to activate this feature. And on my phone, I set it up where the volume up and the power button. Now we're talking Android here, this is not iPhone.
So on the Android you would set because power down and our volume down in power is the screenshot key, So I set it as volume up and power. You press those two things together and instantly it will make whatever article you're reading super easy to look at with big fonts, whatever colors you want, if you want more contrast, whatever, and it can also read that article to you aloud. It cuts out colors, tones and marks down the white to lower contrast. To make this all easier on the ice.
It is fantastic, not just as an accessibility feature, but for anyone who just wants to listen to articles or just read articles in a much easier, eager, less distracted mode. So again it's called reading Mode. Search for it in the Google Play Store. It is a Google app. So if there's other apps named reading Mode, look for the one from Google. Again, I'll put it all on the show notes go to Rich on tech dot TV for those. All right, if you have a question, give me a
call Triple eight Rich one oh one. Karen is in Thousand Oaks. Karen, you're on with Rich.
Hi there, thanks for taking my call.
Hey, thanks for calling.
Sure. I have an iPhone. I've had one since two thousand and seven and I have it backed up with iCloud. And my daughter got married and I decided that it would be a great idea to back up the photos somewhere else. So absolutely, yeah, it's easy to do it
on Google Photos. So I started the process downloading it on my phone, and it ran out a memory really fast because it was backing up all my photos from my phone and I have a lot yep, and so I stopped the I stopped it, and I so I started playing around a little bit and I deleted a photo and it said, okay, we're going to delete the photo from iPhoto. So I stopped. I didn't delete anymore. But then it it took all like on Google Photo, it was completely full, and it wanted more money so
to back up everything another ten bucks a months. So now I feel like I'm being held hostage by them, and so I stopped all the access to photos from my iPhone to Google. Sure, which is fine, but now it says that I can't get my email for Google.
Because our account is maxed out and they're connected exactly. Yeah, okay, so with Google you get fifteen gigs of storage I believe, like included.
Right right, but I already pay, but you pay for iCloud. I do can dogs because I have twenty thousand photos.
Yeah okay, So here's the dilemma. So you've got these basically you're kind of okay. So two things I guess. Two part question here are you're not going to use Google anymore for this?
Correct?
Okay, so we can get those photos out of there. The other thing is do you are you an Amazon Prime member?
I am?
Okay, So have you heard of Amazon? Photos. Yes, have you used it?
No?
Okay, So I would recommend since you're an Amazon Prime member and you're using this as your secondary backup, so your photos are basically in They're almost in two places. Some of them are on your phone. I'm not sure if your phone carries all twenty thousand physically on your device. I don't know if you have that much storage on
your phone. It may or may not. But they are backed up in iCloud, So that's one place they're backed up, and of course you want them backed up in a second place, which would be one of these cloud apps. So since since you're already paying for Amazon, I would say install the Amazon Photos app and let your photos back up there, and that way you have a secondary copy. Because I don't think it Icloud's going away anytime soon.
I don't think you're gonna have an issue with that, but just in case, you will have a pretty sizable backup of your photos, especially as you take new ones on your Amazon account as well. Now that will take care of moving forward. So to get rid of these photos out of Google, I would just go ahead delete the Google Photos app off of your iPhone. You don't need to do anything first, Before you do that, just go ahead and delete it.
Okay.
Then I would go to photos dot Google dot com on your computer and you can go ahead and select photos in there and delete them. And I believe once you go in there, let me try this real quick. If you select like one photo, you should be able to select a bunch at a time and just go ahead and delete those. And when you delete them from the web interface, not going to delete off your iPhone at the same time because it can't talk to your your iCloud anymore. Does that make sense?
I think?
So.
Let me just one other thing I have in iMac and I don't have iCloud on my Mac because I didn't want them if I took if I deleted them off on my phone, I didn't want them to delete them off my computer.
Okay. Well, so the way that iCloud works is it's a it's a everything syncs to iCloud. So if you're looking at your photo collection on your Mac, it's going to be the same exact collection that's on your phone. That's if you go to iCloud dot com, it's all the same. And it's very confusing for people because they think because it's on an app on their phone, it's different than what's in the cloud or what's on you know, their computer if they're sinking it. So that is a
little confusing. But my my main point here is that if you're if you're not wanting to use the Google Photos aspect of anything, just go to the Google Photos website and that anything you do there will not connect through to iCloud. So if you go through and delete all these pictures on Google Photos, they will only delete on the Google Photos cloud and it's not going to redelete them off of your iCloud photo collection. Okay, So and you can go through and you know, try to
bulk delete. I think you can select one thousand at once or something like that. But you can just go through and kind of delete as many as possible. And I believe you can just kind of click in the corner of the photo and then drag over to kind of select multiple photos at once and that then then just go ahead and delete them. Then you can empty the trash and you should see your storage kind of clean up there. So good question, Karen. I know it's confusing.
This photo cloud collection stuff is really not easy, especially when you start using multiple different providers. So good question there, and get that stuff cleaned up so your Gmail works again because it is connected. All right, more of your calls coming up. Eight eight eight rich one oh one. I hope you're having a fantastic day. Did you know that you can listen to this show as podcast. Just search rich on tech and your favorite audio app and be sure to subscribe. Then you can go to rich
on tech dot tv to find the show notes. I take very good notes about what we talk about here. So if you're looking for a link to something I mentioned, chances are it's in there. And by the way, if you're not downloading the app for the retailer that you're shopping at, I highly recommend you do it. You know why, because they're trying to get people to use their apps, and what does that mean. They are putting discounts inside
the app. I'm telling you any story you go to, whether it's Target, whether it is Best Buy, whether it is a fast food place, download the app. All these quick service restaurants, all of the coupons and discounts are inside the apps. See you take five extra minutes to download the app and place your order. That way, I'm telling you it will save you money. My name is rich Demiro, and you are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to richon Tech on location here at Crypto dot Com Arena formerly Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. Joining me now is Luke Saunders. He is the founder and CEO of Farmers Fridge, and we're here because they've got three Farmers Fridge locations here. Thanks for joining me, Yeah, thank you so much for having me. All Right, so let's talk about Farmer's Fridge. I first saw this at LAX Los Angeles Airport and it's a vending machine filled
with healthy foods like fresh salads. And I was a little skeptical, I'll be honest, but I ended up getting one on my way out, and then I got one on my way home, so it worked and the salads are fresh. You've got locations all across the nation. Can you tell me how you describe what Farmer's Fridge is.
Yeah, So, Farmers Fridge is a fresh food company. We make fresh food every single day in a centralized kitchen, and then we distribute that through a network of automated smart fridges and in retail locreations across the country. And really the idea is very simple, how do you make fresh food as accessible as a candy bar?
How did you come up with the idea for this company?
Yeah, so I came up with it because I was a traveling salesman. I was driving one thousand miles a week. I was flying all the time, and one of the biggest problems I had was trying to figure out what I was going to have for lunch every day, and how to have something that wasn't just fast food or some kind of snack from a gas station. And I realized you could make fresh food at scale and get it to more people. You just had to get it
to the faster. And really the idea was if I built the entire business model around the concept of making real fresh food getting into people quickly, I could solve the problem. And then I backed into the idea for the vending machine, because something like one hundred million people a day in the United States actually visit a vending machine to buy something, so clearly it's a very convenient way to get food and get it to more places.
There's about eight million vending machines in the US, so that helped to just make it more convenient, more accessible, and lower the cost to serve fresh food.
And so where was first location and how many locations do you have now? And in what types of places are these smart fridges in?
Yeah, So when I got started, I thought the best part of the idea was we were only going to take up, you know, twelve square feet and I could go pretty much anywhere and in a lot of places restaurants couldn't go. But it turns out that a lot of people were very skeptical about the idea of installing of anding machine full of fresh food in their office building or the lobby of the hospital or something like that. So we ended up in a food court in downtown Chicago.
It was objectively the worst food court in Chicago, but it was the only place that would take us, and we had one location, and it was really just to get people to try the food, get some feedback on the concept, and from there we've grown it now to over a thousand locations across the country. We're in major retail stores across the country, and also have about six hundred and fifty fridges that we operate in hospitals, universities, airports, even places like this arenas.
So tell me about making this food. It's got to be fresh. You make it in Chicago, but somehow it makes its way to Los Angeles and it still tastes fresh. So how do you do that?
Yeah?
So when I started, at the very beginning, I was making the food, I was delivering the food. I was building the fridges, and we still do things pretty much the same way. So I would actually drive down to the produce terminal in the morning, get the freshest product I could get it in, chop it up, put it in the jar, and get it to that fridge. So we have just continued to do that business model, but now we just do it tens of thousands of times a day. So we get whole ingredients in, we make
dressings from scratch. We're literally cutting up whole heads of lettuce and mixing avocados to make our fresh in house squacamole, and so the whole business is designed to facilitate having that be our process and then get it to people quickly. A huge component that's made it scalable is we built a lot of technology in terms of where to send all of the food that we're making, but also like how to get feedback from customers if things aren't fresh and improve that, or we can lock a fridge if
it goes out of temperature remotely. So all of that has made it so that it's scalable. But the idea is exactly the same as it was at the beginning. You'd get a whole ingredient in make a dressing from scratch. It's gonna taste good. You just have to get it to people quickly so they have enough time to buy it before it goes bad.
Let's talk about some of the food that's in this fridge. So these solids are served in sort of plastic jars. Is that what you call them?
Yeah, it's a plastic jar. So the idea at the beginning, I was actually trying to figure out what kind of packaging to use that would help reinforce freshness. And my brother in law actually recommended these mason jar salads he had seen on Pinterest, and so I initially thought it was a crazy idea, but once I started testing with them,
it just looks so beautiful. It actually helps keep the food fresh because you can layer ingredients, so we put like wet and acidic ingredients on the bottom, things like lettuce on the top. So that allows you to have a higher quality meal that lasts longer, and it really just shows really well in the machine because what we found I tried so many different ways to tell customers our food was fresh at the beginning, and over and
over again. What we heard when we'd actually talked to the potential customers or people that were intimidated by the vending machine is I'm looking at your food and I want to see that that food looks fresh, and you can tell, like the greens are not wilted, they're not brown. Things are clearly handmade. And we were getting that kind of feedback constantly, so that's a big part of why we package it that way.
And so in the machine, I see all types of different salads. You've got wraps, you've got hard boiled eggs in there. Like you said, chips and guac. What's some of your top sellers.
So actually the chips and guac is a top seller, which makes a lot of sense for us because we actually are making that guacamolean house. We're adding peg go to the top. There's no preservatives, nothing, and then it's only I have a few days shelf life, so you cannot buy a product like that anywhere else, and I think the average price is four fifty. The caesar salad is one of my personal favorites. It's just a very
high quality caesar salad with chicken. But the idea is to have twenty five skews and have every single one of those be something that you're like, Wow, that was great, I'll buy it again.
And what type of price point are we talking?
So the product's range in price from three dollars all the way up to about ten dollars on the high end, our average item is about six fifty. You can also get a discount if you're using our app. There's a loyalty program, but then we also offer twenty five percent off at the airport. So on average, our average ticket is actually lower than McDonald's.
So tell me about the tech that helps you get these solids in these machines.
Yeah, So the core technology for Farmer's Fridge is really about inventory management, so we can see in real time what's in every single fridge across the country, and then every day we're making tens of thousands of meals, and so the idea is we don't actually know where they're going until the end of the day because that gives us as much time the day to get the sales data from the fridges, and then a cost function algorithm runs.
So essentially, it's looking at what's the inventory in the network, how many products that you produce, and things like the weather or tsa checkpoint traffic to say this is where we think you should send everything to maximize the profitability and reduce the amount of unsold inventory the next day. So imagine like we kind of get that report and everybody snaps into action. We're picking and packing the food, putting it onto trucks and getting it out.
To the fridges.
And over the last year we've even invested in pushing that prediction downstream. So what that means is we make it once at our initial production facility, but then we'll make it multiple points along the way. So when a driver gets to the airport, let's say a flight got in late and a bunch of people were hungry. He
bought ten salads. His drivers app he actually carries an iPad with him, will tell him here's where you should actually take this item from this fridge on your route and put it into this fridge on your route, and it's giving them all that feedback in real time start to finish. The whole technology process is about how do you make fresh food scalable? And really that's about inventory management.
The one question I had was when I bought my salad and I took it on my flight, how long do I have to eat this? How long can I keep this salad out of the fridge and still consume it safely? Yeah?
So, I mean, obviously I recommend eating the salad when you get out of the fridge for just taste and quality, because it's cold and it's crisp. But generally speaking, the guidelines for fresh food or you want to keep it under forty degrees. If it's over forty degrees after four hours, you definitely want to throw it away. US For example, the fridge actually if it goes above forty degrees for more than an hour will shut down.
You cannot buy anything.
So but in general, if you're a consumer, you're on your flight, you have before our flight, you bought that salad, you should still eat it. Is my recommendation.
What's the goal of all this, what's the goal of Farmer's Fridge. The goal is really simple.
Farmer's Fridge wants to make fresh, healthy food as accessible as a candy bar. And what that means is you should anytime you see a candy bar, have the option to also get a salad, not because you shouldn't have a candy bar, but just because we're going to give people the option.
We don't even want you to think.
About this as healthy food. It's just something that's convenient and affordable and tastes good, and so you want to buy more of it. And so until we're kind of everywhere and that's true, we're gonna keep going.
Luke Saunders from farmers Fridge dot com, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me, appreciating on coming up more of your phone calls at Triple eight rich one oh one, you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Website for the show is richon Tech dot TV. Now it's time
for the feedback segment. These are the emails and the comments I get from you, and for the last show of the year, I figured I would do something special. Now I post a lot on social media, but I can't always respond to each and every comment. But I do read a lot of them, so I figured for this show I would read your comments about the show. It was a big change for me to start something new after Leo had been doing this for so long.
But fifty two shows later, if you count this one, I am so glad you stuck with me, and hopefully I found some new listeners as well. And by the way, we're gonna do this again next year. I can't wait to bring you more tech news, more interviews, more tips, more tricks, more gadgets to make your life easier and help you feel more informed. Without further ado, let's go to the feedbag. Art says, very impressed with how you inform the masses about cyber and social media. Yes, that's
a big part of the show. Cyber security is a huge deal in this world, and just staying ahead of these scam artists is a big part of avoiding falling victim to a lot of this stuff. Jim says, you are the best. Rich listening as always from Phoenix, Arizona. Thank you Jim for listening from Phoenix, Arizona. Caroline says I loved you on TV then on Tech Tuesdays with Handel.
Thank you, Rich, You are so kind giving advice to the seniors and others that are not tech savvy, not in big letters, and yes, the advice to seniors and others that are not tech savvy. That is the whole point of this show. Is that I want the average person to be informed about this stuff. That is the thing. Techi's can listen and enjoy the information, but if you're not techie, you can still listen and enjoy learning in a very easy to understand way. Ronnie says, love your show,
kept it sweet and simple. Sue says, always learn something new on your informative show. Thank you, Sue, I'm glad that you do that. Greg says Merry Christmas twenty twenty three. Much happiness and blessings to you and your lovely family. Happy Holidays, Happy Holidays, and Merry Christmas to you as well. Greg. Jeffrey says, I am a local truck in southern California and listen to Rich every Saturday morning. I believe I was even one of his first listeners ever asking questions
on the radio. When he started it was about my Apple TV. Let me see, Jeffrey, do I remember that one? I think I do. Actually, I think your Apple TV was I don't know, it's been a while. I can't believe from day one to now we have gone an entire year. That is wild. Mike says, Rich, thank you, my friend for taking my call in question. It is always great to talk with you, buddy. Your radio show is amazing. Keep up the good work. Merry Christmas to
you and your family. Merry Christmas to you, Mike. Mike was a listener of this show when I did it as a podcast. There were many iterations of this show, so it started out as a Facebook live which became a podcast, and I would basically just sit in front of my computer and I rigged up a way to have people call in the show from their cell phone and I answered it on my cell phone. It was not pretty, believe me. We have a much better system now with Kim and our call screener and our phone system.
But it was fun and some of the same people called over and over. Mike was one of them. Thanks Mike, Guy says, as always great stuff in caps. Thank you guy, Lily says, listening to you while I do my Saturday house chores, I enjoy your show from La Joya. Thank you, Lily, listening from La Joya. That is a beautiful place. Bruce says, you are considerate, you care, and we appreciate your efforts.
Thank you rich Well. Thank you Bruce for noticing that, because I do try to be considerate, I do care, and I'm glad you appreciate my effort because it is a lot of effort. I work five days at the TV station that I come in here to do the radio show, and so believe me, I do this because I really love it and I really do want to reach as many people as possible and help them with their technology. Susan says, never miss you listening now, You're
the best. We listen every Saturday on KFI. Thank you Susan for listening on KFI, our big station in Los Angeles. Michelle says, I really like your radio show. I listened on the iHeart app while working at home. I've been working on shortcuts. I built one to detect when I'm at the office to turn down my ringer volume. Good stuff,
Thanks Michelle. We talked about shortcuts on the show. We had Matthew Cassanelli on the show, and he talked about those little sort of programming hacks you can do on your iPhone that automate certain tasks, So I'm glad that you figure that out. Maria says, thank you for all the good information you give us. Rich Mike says, was just listening to Rich on tech in the car. Keep bringing us to good tech. It always amazes me when people come up to me and they say, Rich, I
can listen to you in my car. It's still even though I know how radio works and I know this show, but it's still just wild to me that you can tune in. And I think this really occurred to me when I was on vacation and I just found a local station that was playing the show and I could hear myself. It was a tape show, and it was just I only do that a couple times a year, but it was just so wild to hear myself on a random radio station in a town. It was really
really cool. Pat says, great show on KFI. Jim says, absolutely nobody does it better than Rich with two thumbs up. Elvira says, I learned so much from your show. I am not very techy, but with your show, I have learned a few things. Thank you, Elvira. That is the hope here Karen says, sometimes I listen to live and podcast. Oh wow, double dipping. Thank you Karen for listening to both. Hey, you know if you miss something live, you get the podcast.
Why not. Casey says, great show, but it was a rookie move to say Alexa as many times as you did. A couple of weeks ago, my echoes lost their robot minds. This is a real problem because I'm always talking about these smart assistants, you know, whether it is Google, whether it's alex A, whether it's Siri, and they activate and you're usually listening on the device perhaps that these things are they're in the room, and yeah, it's a problem. So I'm trying. Drew says I've listened to you every
week through your podcast. I love your show and the format. Thank you. I appreciate it. Eileen says, we really enjoy the show. Betty says, love your show.
Rick.
I love when people call me Rick because I don't ever call myself Rick, but people do. Oh wow, we got a bunch more. Let's see here. Leo says, great show. Always educational and I'm so happy to listen to something on the radio that is about someone who sincerely wants to help another. Thank you well, thank you, Leo. I don't think that's the Leo, but it is a Leo. Jones says every weekend I listen, and Frank says, I would love to listen to your show. However, I acquired
a BMWIFO full electric and it has no AM radio. Frank, yes, you and all the tesla's out there. In Los Angeles, you can actually listen on Coast HD two. They simulcast the show or the KFI signal, I should say, But in other cities it all depends. I think in some cities the AM stations are on an HD two. You just have to look for that information. But you can always use an app as well to listen live. Richard says, Hey, Rick,
I really enjoy your show. Up the good work. Erica says, all the time I listen, I learned something new each week. Thank you, Daniel, and Alabama says, great show and great moving into the slot. Although I've always been a podcast listener, Leo or rich versus the radio do mostly to my location. Thankfully, that means I was listening to you for quite some time before the transition. Rick says, I've listened to Leo for years. I was disappointed in his retirement, but you
have stepped up to the plate. Very well. Good job, Oscar, says long time listener. Enjoy your one of a kind show providing a gambit of information, tips and help. Oscar, thank you so much, and I appreciate all of the kind words. Believe me, it does not go unnoticed. I love when I hear from you, and I love the feedback on the show, good or bad. Believe me, I do take the constructive criticism as well. But it sounds
like you like the show. So I'm gonna keep doing what I do and thank you so much for listening. You can always find me on social media. I'm mostly on Instagram, but I'm also on Facebook and x. I am at rich on Tech on all of those places. Now, if you don't subscribe to this show as a podcast, just search rich on Tech in your favorite audio app and you'll never miss a thing. And if you like what you hear right here, be sure to watch my TV segments. I cover a wide variety of tech topics.
Just go to Richontech dot tv to watch them. If you can believe it, that's going to do it. For one year of this show. Next week we'll get a preview of CS in Las Vegas, one of the biggest tech shows in the world. That's where I'm headed next. Thank you so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I really do appreciate you spending it right.
Here with me.
Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible, Bobo, Kim, Bill, Adam Robin, Julie, the engineers, and of course you. My name is rich Demiro. Have a happy New Year. I'll talk to you real soon.