Mint alternatives & avoiding online selling scams

I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Phone lines are now open at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one eight eight eight rich one oh one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Email is also open. Just go to richon tech dot tv. Once you get to the website, hit the link that says contact, put your message in there and it will make its way right to my screen. Got some great

guests this week. We're going to talk to Larissa May, digital wellness activist and founder of Half the Story. This is a nonprofit focused on educating, advocating, and mitigating the harms associated with social media and tech new use, especially in teens. So I'm very excited to talk to Larissa. Plus we've got a guest that is going to tell their story about how they got scammed trying to sell

something online. This happens a lot, and I think the more we know about how these scam artists operate, the better we can protect ourselves. Let's see what else. Ah, it is November? Can you believe it? I can't November? I mean, where did this year go? Now? Depending on your standpoint, maybe it went fast, maybe it went slow. Maybe you're clinging on to it. Maybe you can't wait

for the holidays. I don't know. But for me, we celebrated Halloween and I was looking at the you know, I look at my I've got all my photos in Google Photos, and so I get these little memories up at the top, and I'm not sure if they're actually healthy for me or actually detrimental, because sometimes I get really sad. I've got two kids, and they have grown

up very fast, according to Google Photos. Like I look at these pictures that they show me, like the other day for Halloween, and it's of my kids first Halloween twelve years ago. Where did that time go? And then it clicks through and it keeps showing you the pictures. And I think in the future we're gonna have better ways of displaying our digital pictures. I don't know if

you have a good way of doing it. I've got a couple of like digital frames and different things, but ideally I think that i'd have multiple frames around the house, all showing my Google Photos collection the best shots. But the problem is all these tech companies love to silo their products these days, and so because I've got Fire TV on my main TV, my Google Photos don't play nice there. I've got Apple TV in the playroom and Google Photos doesn't play nice there. I've got an Aura

frame in the front room. Google Photos doesn't play nice there. But I do have a Google Nest and Google Photos does play nice there. Where's my bell? Oh my gosh. But anyway, so I do think over the years, hopefully we'll figure out a way of sorting through all these pictures. Google's doing a decent kind of a decent job of it,

but it's not the best anyway. I tell you this because I noticed as I was flipping through my photos up at the top the memories on Google Photos, that I can't believe how much better pictures have gotten over the years, especially Halloween pictures, because typically we take these at night, and night photos are very challenging for cameras, especially smartphones with those tiny lenses, tiny sensors. But over

the years I've noticed they just keep getting better. Like the first pictures of my kid on Halloween twelve years ago, we're pretty blurry unless your kid is sitting exactly still. It's really tough to get that picture of a child or anyone in the dark. And now, as I was flipping through, I noticed, Wow, they're getting better and better. And then this year I was looking at our latest picture we took kind of like a group shot with all of our friends, and it looked really good. But

I did do a little trick. I brought this little light with me. It's not a flashlight. It's almost like one of those like, ah, gosh, it looks like a pen light, but the entire side of it is a big bright light, almost as if it's a one of those light bulbs you would hang up like in the garage, like a long light bulb, like a tubular light, but on a little stick. I don't know where I got it, picked it up at like a trade show, and so I put the camera towards us and then I held

this light as well, and I'm not kidding. The pictures came out really good. So my point is, yes, you can use a flash for your pictures, but it never looks very good. It looks like a flash on the picture. This looked really good. It was like our little trick. We were all joking about how good it looked. Okay, what else flights? I know that everyone's trying to book travel for the holidays, or you might be trying to go somewhere. Everyone's always asking me, Rich how do you

book your travel? I will tell you. I use one website to book my travel, and I'm on there like eight hours a day. I don't even know how I get work done because I'm literally always on Google Flights. So the website that I use is flights dot Google dot com, and I always start my searches there. And what I do is I put in where I'm going, I put in my dates, and then I press done and I press explore and or search, you know, depending

on your dates. So if I'm putting in you know, where I'm going, let's say back to New York City, I would put that in and then you press search and then once you do this, Now, there are two types of people out there when it comes to travel. The first is they just want the absolute cheapest flights for the place that they're going to on the dates they're going, and that's fine. Google Flights is really good at finding that. Then there's a second person like me,

who is very particular. I want a certain amount of stops, which is usually none. I want the one carry on bag. I don't want to pay the basic economy, and I also want specific times. And so what I do is I go through and I put all of those filters on, and then again I take a fresh look at these prices, and then once I get the flights I want, I select them and I track the prices and then I wait for Google to tell me about a price drop.

So at any given time, I've got three or four flights that I'm tracking to different places I want to go, and I'm waiting for that price drop. And as soon as I get that notification on my phone, hey, this this flight went down twenty nine percent, I will then book the other website that I really like, and it might cost you a little bit, but it's really really good. It's called point dot me, po nt dot me, point me, and I think they might give you a little bit

of something for free. But if you put in my code, which still seems to work, it's called rich on tech. If you type that in there, you get like a month for a buck, and it's well well worth it because this searches for all of your points, so you can link if you have any credit card points or airline points, miles whatever. It will find you the best flights using your points. And they do a really good job because they search everything all at once. There's no

way you could do this on your own. And I found a great flight for my mom a couple months ago on Jet Blue. Might have been a year ago at this point, but it was so impressive because I was like, wait, what, that's a really good price. And sure enough, sometimes there's just really good point deals out there, and so point dot me is a really good place to find those.

it or unlock it, which is pretty fun. And maybe it's just when you lock it one of the other. It's got a Bluetooth speaker in the center console that you can pull out, so it's always charged. It's got a flashlight in the door, which is cool. You can pull that out. That's always charged. The maps are great, the screens are great, no lag on the software whatsoever. The driving is really nice, smooth, solid, not too stiff. It's got tons of space inside, lots of cargo space.

It's got a air compressor in the back as well as a standard electrical outlet. But here, oh and it's by the way, ninety seven thousand dollars, so it is a lot of money for this car. But here is the problem that I found with it. I loved, loved, loved driving this Rivian RNs, this suv. The problem was when it came to charging. Now, I will tell you I'm not sure what the problem was, but I could not get this thing fully charged. It was either taking

too long or the charging was too slow. I tried various chargers and it just I was not having it. It was really like it gave me range anxiety. This thing gets about three hundred miles to the charge. They have a one that gets about four hundred as well. But I will tell you this my takeaway from my experience with the Rivian. I love all of these third party evs that are not Tesla, right. The problem is

the charging infrastructure. I live in California, where we have the best charging in the nation, and it's still not good enough for all of these random evs. And that is why all of these companies are adopting the Tesla superchargers next year. In the next year, BMW four GM, Nissan, Volvo, Toyota, Rivian, they're all switching to Tesla superchargers. What does that mean? Well, charging is gonna get a whole lot better. But will the Tesla superchargers keep up with all of the extra demand.

That is the big question we don't know. And for starters, all these companies are gonna put out some sort of adapter early next year. Or throughout next year, and then eventually with the twenty twenty five model years, it's just gonna be Tesla. Tesla's connector is going to be built into these cars, so it's gonna be a great But I will tell you the charging is the issue. If you have a charger at home, charger at work, and you're just commuting with any of these electric cars, no problem.

It is the road trip that's a problem, specifically with this Rivian. This is an suv that is meant to be an adventurous suv. What do you want to do? You want to take it on the road, you want to take it to national parks, you want to drive it off roading, whatever you do in this thing, that was the problem. I had no problem finding chargers. They

just didn't perform as fast as I wanted. And that is the biggest downside I see to any car that you're getting that is an EV that is not a Tesla right now, you will have to deal with charging. If you're charging on the road, If you're just driving a work no problem anyway. Lots of comments on my Instagram at rich on Tech about the Rivian. You can peruse those at your leisure coming up. We're gonna take

your calls at triple eight Rich one oh one. Plus, I'm gonna tell you about the best charging cables for your iPhone and Android eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here 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 Basics USBC cable survived eleven thousand, five hundred 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 USBC 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 USBC 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 Lightning cable twenty nine bucks. By the way, you see why Apple didn't want to switch to USBC 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.

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 youmail. But all I find is email companies. I want to sell me whole email packages.

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 that. So Hover Hoveer 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. Richontech dot tv is my website. You can use the email form there to let me know.

Coming up more of your questions at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I mentioned earlier that I am on social media on Instagram. You can find me at rich on tech on most of the major platforms. That's Instagram, that's Facebook, that's x also threads. I will tell you I've been using a little bit more of threads this week, So if you find me on there, I'm like I just said, I'm at rich on Tech, and I've been having kind of fun.

to AI. You are listening to rich on Tech. It's true, it's all because of you.

George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. And it all comes from an unfinished demo originally recorded by John Lennon in the nineteen seventies, but they never had the technology to extract his voice from this really poor recording and create the song from it. They tried in the nineties and it didn't really work, like the technology was just not there.

So they took another chance, I guess a couple of years ago, two years ago, and they said, you know what, a year ago, and they said, let's try this again, and the AI was now good enough to clean up the vocals from John Lennon in the original demo, and then they created the rest of the song around it. So they recorded new chorus with the you know, it's

just wild. The whole thing is just It gave me chills the first time I listened to this song, and it's there's also a little mini documentary online about it, you know, behind the scenes, how they made it, because it's just truly incredible that we were able to use AI to do this in the year twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three. Now, what I think is really interesting too is that this same technology are very similar technologies

built into the pixel phone. So I told you about the Pixel eight Pro has this new feature called Audio Magic Eraser, and that is essentially the technology that they used to clean up this demo, because the AI picks out the audio from the track from the demo and separates it from all the other stuff that's on there, all the hissing, all the popping, all the other background noise,

and it does that same thing on the Pixel. So if you take a video of your kid saying their first words and the dog's barking in the background, or is a trash truck going by and you hear that, you can use Audio Magic Eraser to just hone in on what your kid is saying and get all rid of all the rest of the background stuff. So it's a pretty wild song. I highly recommend you listen to

it. It might give you a chills like it did for me, because it's just so wild to think that this originally was recorded so many years ago and now, thanks to technology, it is an entire song. So again, the song is called Now and then I'll put a link to it in the show notes at richontech dot tv and you can listen to the whole thing. But wow, just incredible. Following up on the question, we got earlier about forwarding email. Michael says cloud flare will forward emails for free, so

I would have to check that out. But cloud flare is a popular website that kind of does a lot of different functionality for different domains and stuff. But Michaels saying that it will forward your email for free, so that's interesting, that's new to me. Let's go to Chuck in Laguna, Nigel, Chuck, you're on with Rich.

bunch of these things. I mean, if you've got the plug in hybrid, that's kind of like the original. I feel like that's like the original plug in hybrid vehicle. But I know a lot of people were talking about the Kias and the Hyundai's that have these. But I really think it comes down to personal preference. I mean, you know, what do you like? What do you want? Do you want a small car again? I mean, Prius has been around forever, That's going to be always a

great choice. But just looking at some of these on a car and driver, there are a lot of these cars out there. I think personally, I think the Prius Prime, like, the Prius is looking really really good, like the new design. I never thought I would say that. I never thought i'd say a Prius looks really good. But but to me,

the Prius looks really really good. And also the Rav four that they have a plug in hybrid as well, So I think those are gonna be something that, you know, you stick to, those you're gonna get you know, you stick to maybe the Hyundai, the Kia, and the Toyota, you're probably gonna get the most bang for your buck out of those brands. There are also some from Ford. I mean, but you can go high end BMW, but I think the Toyota or the the Kia and the Hundai are probably going to be your best bang for

your buck. The range, let's see what the range is on the Prius. So the Prius, let's see if we can get back down there. Let's see, Prius Prime gets forty miles. So what I would say is if you have a place to charge you and you get to work, that's pretty good. You know, most people's commutes are about

thirty miles max. So I mean, I think the average commute in America, let's see, and I know there's some people that are, you know, more than that, but the average commute in the US, yeah, twenty six point six miles, so it's under thirty miles. Now that's a one way commute, so that means when you get to work, you'd have to charge up. And if you have a charger at work, that'd be great. That means your commute is entirely free.

And that's the beauty of these cars is that, Like I was saying, if you're just charging at home and work, you're gonna be fine. But it's when you go on those road trips, and so if you have a plug in hybrid, it's gonna give you a little bit more peace of mind. When you're on that road trip, You're gonna be okay. No matter where you go, you can still get there because you've got the backing of that gas engine. But I don't know, I really like the Prius.

I think the Prius Prime is a really good looking car. But again, it comes down to how much you want to spend. I mean, maybe you want something like, you know, a nicer BMW. I don't know, but it really comes down to what you want to spend. But I think for me personally, the plug in hybrid is kind of like a stopgap right now between a pure gas car and an electric car, which seems like the market is moving to. So good question, Chuck. I'm glad you were

on the the cutting edge there many years ago. By getting that early. Well, if you have HBO Max and you've had it for a while, well they're taking some features away from you. And if you got the email, you already have the heads up. But if you're on this fifteen dollars and ninety nine cent a month HBO Legacy plan, HBO is removing some features from your plan. The feature they're removing four K video. So before if you got to watch a movie in four K, you will no longer be able to do that. You can

now only watch them in HD. This starts on November or December fifth. So if you want to still watch in four K, guess what, you got to pay up four dollars more a month. So now you got to get onto their nineteen dollars and ninety nine cent a month plan four dollars more. So. When Warner Brothers bought this, you know this stay it's this whole big thing. I think HBO Max was started by AT and T when they bought it, or they owned HBO. Now it's owned

by Warner Brothers Discovery. They switched it over to HBO Max about six months ago and they said nothing's gonna change for at least six months, and guess what. As soon as six months is up, they're like, okay, everything's changing. The other thing you're getting now is one less stream at the same time. So used to be able to watch on three streams at once. Now you can only watch on two, and you can download a certain amount of I think it's thirty items unless you upgrade and

you get one hundred. So it's really confusing. But basically, if you are on the Hbo Legacy Plan, you'll still be able to watch all the stuff that you've been watching. You're still going to pay the same price. You just don't get the same quality. You don't get as many downloads, and you don't get as many simultaneous streams. The simultaneous streams thing is not that big of a deal unless you're sharing your plan with a bunch of people and they all happen to be streaming on a Friday night

at the same time. You may notice the impact there. Four K is kind of annoying because we've gotten so used to these four K TVs and now I can't tell the difference. I'll be quite honest, it's tough to tell the difference between HD and four k But at the same time, if you do have a four K HDR set, you will no longer get that four K HDR, which, of course, you want to watch things in the best possible format, right, I mean, why would you want to

watch something that's not in the best possible format. So anyway, just be on the lookout for that email from HBO Max. And the best part was the way they positioned it. They said, let me, let me get up, let me get the email here I put I put out my Instagram at rich on text. So if you want to read what has said current features new features. So they had the audacity to show you this as new features,

and they were worse than the current features. I mean, come on, that is like just really really not nice. Eighty eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell you how you can get a Thanksgiving dinner for free just by downloading an app. Plus, we've got our guests coming up a little bit later on to tell us about how teenagers can avoid some of the harms of social media. You are listening to rich on Tech.

Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one producer Bobo. I know you wanted to play your favorite song, so I let you thank you for playing that. I know you were asking. You keep asking, You're always asking. Can I play the Barbie song? Can I play the Barbie song? Can I play the Barbie song? Yes, you can play the Barbie song. Let's go to Terry in Temecula. Terry, you're on with Rich?

correct it? And what's going on here?

the underlying technology. But what I think is happening here is it sounds like a clean the cookies and cash on your web browser, and I think that will help. So if you are using Chrome, you will look to the go to the website chat dot OpenAI dot com and there is a there's actually it's a new icon if you've updated Chrome lately, but it's it looks like,

I don't know, some like a little settings icon. It's a circle and you click that and it's if it's next it's next to the home button, so it's like home, and then this little it says viewsite information if you hover over it. If you if you hover over that, it will open up information about this website, and one of them is site settings, So if you click that, it will tell you all of the information about that website. What I would do is I would delete your data

and you can reset your permissions as well. And then when you go back to chat GBT, you should be taken to the login page because now it has cleared all of that information out and once you log in again, it should work. Because now here's the deal. There is some This is a free service and it is an experimental service, so it doesn't always work every single time. So there may be times when you try to use chat gbt where it returns an error or it doesn't

do what you expected to do. That is rare, and it does happen though it happens to me. It happens on the other website that I like called Claude dot ai. And by the way, Terry, if you have a chance, check out my other favorite ai which is Claude clad dot Ai Claude dot ai that's made by a company named Anthropic, And this is kind of like the biggest competitor to chat GPT. I personally, I know these are fighting words. I personally think it's better, but it's different.

It's it's more data analysis. It's more it can get through a lot of you know, you can throw like a Comma separated value file at it. You can throw an Excel Excel spreadsheet, you can throw a PDF at it, you can paste in a ton of text and it can really go through that and figure things out. Keep in mind, none of these are up to date with current information. They may have a you know, some information

that's that's current, but it's not up to date. If you want something that's fully up to date and Terry, you can check out this one as well. It is barred dot Google dot com and Barred is Google's AI. And so again we've got chat GPT, you've got Claude, and you've got Bard. Those are of the top three ais right now and the ones that i'd recommend trying. But again I think it's a matter of your web browser. Something got a little messed up in there, and that's

what's causing that error message. And yeah, you're not going to find someone that you can just email or talk to at CHATGBT. It's just not that kind of service. And if we notice with all of these online services, there's pretty much no or limited customer service. There's not a traditional phone line you can call with a lot of these online services, so you do need to try to figure out how to do these things. On your own,

but Terry, that's what I would recommend doing again. You just clear the data on this website, so you can go in and click that little setting's icon next to the URL and under site settings delete your data. And if you want to do this for your entire Chrome browser or whatever browser you're using, you can just use the option that says clear browsing data and that will

get rid of it. Usually gives you an option if you want to cookies and site data, that's the stuff that you want, and all the cookies in site data is probably what's messing you up there. So good question. Thanks for the call today. Appreciate that. Speaking of Chrome, Chrome on iOS got a small but notable feature that I actually really am enjoying. You can now move the address bar in Chrome on iOS to the bottom of the screen. This matches what Safari did. I believe they

changed it in iOS. It might have been iOS sixteen, definitely iOS seventeen. But if you noticed when you go to Safari on the iPhone now the URL bar is now at the bottom of the screen. You can move it back to the top if you are a creature of habit or you like it better up there. But I've moved the Chrome address bar down to the bottom and I like it. It's actually easier to reach depending on how big your phone is. It's just a little

bit simpler, and it matches what Safari does. So if you have, you know, on the iPhone, even if you set a default browser, sometimes things open in Safari anyway, just the way Apple works their magic. You know how that is. But you know, so now there's not you won't be able to tell as much between the two. So if your fingers like the muscle memory. But so

here's how you do it. Open up Chrome on your iPhone and all you have to do is look at the URL bar and press and hold on it and you'll get this option that says move address bar to bottom. Or if you move it to the bottom and you want it back at the top, you can just press and hold again and it says move move address bar to the top. So that is the main thing. Apparently Google says people were asking for this. I think that Google did this because it makes it tougher to tell

Chrome apart from Safari. So if you're using Safari and then you switch to Chrome, you may be annoyed that the address bar is up at the top, so I think that's the reason why they did that.

think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. Phone lines are open. Triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. You can also email me. Go to rich on Tech dot TV hit contact. So lots of people are doing right now. I like the way you did that. Uh, coming up on the show. I'm gonna tell you how I can

get that free Thanksgiving dinner just by downloading an app. Yes, I'll get to that very soon. We've got some great guests coming up today as well. We've got a guest named Stephanie who says they got scammed by trying to sell something online. They're going to share their story so that we can learn from it and not have the same thing happen to us. And we've got Larissa May, a digital wellness activist. Larisa is going to talk to us about social media and teen use and how, you know,

the stuff that parents need to know. Parents, grandparents make sure that these kids are not ruined by social media. And I say ruined. I don't say that lightly because yeah, it's not going to ruin their lives, but it can and it has and it does on a daily basis. So we'll hear what Larisa has to say. Let's go to Mickey in camerio. Mickey, you're on with Rich.

at it and see what it says on the back. Now, this is getting rare and rare that these have a delineation like this, especially with the big retailers like a Home Depot or a Target, or to Amazon, I mean Amazon, you know, if they even have any more online in person stores. Like, that's a good question. Could you use an Amazon gift card that you purchase at like an

Amazon Fresh grocery store. 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 on 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 Grandma 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 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, be odd bathroom 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 gonna 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, but you have to be careful because I found out the hard way one time when I bought a gift card off of this website that it was it was digital only, it was only to be used online and not at the physical retailer. So when you buy these

gift cards, you do need to check to see. So 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 Rai's 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, Larissa, sorry, Mickey, And I think that you know, it depends on some of the smaller retailer, some of the more obscure retailers, you may not be able to use them in both places, whether it's online or in store. So, for instance, let's

look at Macy's. I think the one that I was that that got me was home Depot. So if you look at the home depot now valid online and in store, So anyway, I think a lot of them are probably gonna be fine. But anyway, just check to see what the redemption details are 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. I know

the holidays are coming up. Gift cards are the easy thing. So in my house, my mom she is now she's come around because now she'll give us gift cards. But she went a long time without giving gift cards because she thought that was the easy way out. She thought a gift card was just too simple. It you didn't have a lot of thought put into the gift. It

was not something that was personalized. And I kind of fought that for many years because I said, you know what, but you're still picking the place that you're giving them that gift card to. And also it's very convenient, and gift cards are kind of this. It's almost like a

double edged sword. I think some gift cards, like the Visa gift cards and the Amex gift cards, while they seem really good because you can use them anywhere, I'm the least fan of those because let's say you get a visa gift card for one hundred bucks and you use you have a balance of eight dollars and seventy two cents. Well, sometimes it could be tough to use that gift card balance because it's not like a regular gift card where let's say you have a balance on

the home Depot card. You just swipe that card and they say, okay, there are seven dollars and it uses it with a visa one. Sometimes that could be a little trickier to use that remaining balance. Now I will tell you I do have a little hack. You can take that Visa gift card and redeem it to an Amazon account. So if you go to Amazon and buy an e gift card, you can add that Visa gift card as a payment method on your account, and then whatever the balance is, check the balance on that card.

You can put in seven eighty two cents and buy that as an Amazon gift card. I've done this many many times. In fact, whenever I get an Amazon A Visa gift card, I literally just go straight to Amazon and convert it to Amazon because it's so much easier to use now. The other tip I have for using a visa gift card is use the entire amount at once. So if you go to a place like Gap or Home Depot or whatever and you have a visa gift card,

use the entire amount at one time. So if you don't have a purchase that's big enough to cover the entire amount of that Visa gift card, save it for the next time. I'm telling you, it will save you a headache. But in general, I prefer gift cards that are for a brand, specifically because I do think they

are easier to use. The other tip I have is that if you get a Target gift card, you can add it to the Target app, so if your kids like and the other thing I do is my kids will get a Target gift card and I will transfer it to their Apple Watch their Apple Cash. So I will take the gift card for twenty dollars and I will give them to twenty dollars in their Apple Cash, which they can then use anywhere. So there's lots of ways to slice and dice these gift cards, but at

the end of the day, people love getting them. We have a whole stack of them at home right now. And I say we need to go to the mall and just have a gift card day where you use every single gift card because sometimes these things can linger for a very long time. Okay, I told you about the Thanksgiving dinner for free. Let me tell you how

to redeem this. And by the way, if you want to use that raise website, I'm going to put a link on my show notes at rich on tech dot tv where if you use it for the first time, you can get five dollars off your first gift card purchase. It's like a referral link I've got, So if you want to do that, that's pretty good. Okay. The app is called Ibota Ibotta. They are doing their free Thanksgiving

promotion for the fourth year in a row. This will give you one hundred percent cash back on a Thanksgiving meal from November first through twenty second. So what you do is you download the app. You have to be a first time user, I believe to get this free meal, and you can get cash back on a turkey on mashed potatoes, on corn muffin mix, and a couple other things like the basics cranberry sauce and the way this

app works it's one of those cash back apps. So when you go shopping at the grocery store, you know, you may buy a product that you know, a different brand that they want you to buy, and you can submit your receipt and get cash back on that. So that's how I bought a works And during Thanksgiving they do this promotion for the free Thanksgiving dinner and so if you go to Ibota and by the way, I've got a link to download the app on my website,

rich on tech dot tv. Here it is free mashed potatoes, free gravy mix, free corn muffin mix, the Jiffy corn, which, by the way, was the first thing I ever learned how to cook when I was a kid. It's like two ingredients, free cranberry sauce and a free turkey. The turkey is the most fourteen dollars thirty five cents And you can buy these at any retailer. You don't have to do it at a specific place. You can do it at Target, Walmart, wherever. You know these various retailers.

They've got all the different brands near you. So it's kind of a fun little thing to do. I think the entire benefit might be about twenty dollars max. But it's still kind of fun just to get it. So again. The website is I Bought a Ibotta Free Thanksgiving Dinner. This runs from November first through November twenty second. You can go to my website rich on tech dot tv for a link to the app, and you can also refer your friends. If you refer your friends to this app,

you'll get some entries in this program. They're doing free Thanksgiving for life, and so they'll give you, I don't know, free Thanksgiving dinner, I guess for the rest of your life. So they started this during the pandemic. They've done ten million. Ten million Americans have gotten free Thanksgiving meals from them, and they're saying it's part of their mission to make

every purchase rewarding and help you save. And they hope that once you redeem this Thanksgiving dinner, you use this app to buy stuff, to buy little products, you know, twenty five cents back here, fifty cents back there, dollar back here. Rich on tech dot tv is the website triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,

talking technology. Coming up, we're gonna talk to Stephanie. Stephanie says she was scammed by someone on U I believe it was Facebook Marketplace, and she's going to share her story so that we can all avoid the same fate. Triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Stephen is in San Diego. Steven, you're on with Rich all right, Rich, Yeah, I am.

this is the coolest thing ever. You take all of your services, all of your bank accounts, all of your credit cards, all of everything you have investments, and I didn't have a lot, but it was just so cool to see it all on one page. And I thought that was just such a genius idea. And so Mint became very very popular, very fast, and then into it bought it quickly after it opened. I think it only

like a year or two later. And of course they ran it pretty much as it was when it opened, but of course they added more like sales to it, Like I remember towards the end it was really like salesy, like selling me credit cards, selling me, you know, loans, whatever, but it still had that core functionality the two things I loved, well, the main thing I loved about it was kind of like the one page for all of

your accounts. Now, if you're a Mint user on the regular, you know that there was always like connection errors with your accounts, Like you just log on and be like, sorry, we're having trouble connecting to this service, and you'd be like ah, and you'd have to like refresh or wait till the next day whatever. So that never went away. But now Into it says they are shutting down this

popular budgeting app on January first, twenty twenty four. They say you can download your transactions if you want, so you need to do that now before January first, so you have until the shutdown date, which doesn't give you much time. But you can export all of your transactions. And if you've noticed a lot of these financial services now, they don't allow you to download all of your back transactions. Sometimes only go back sixty or one hundred and twenty days.

So if, like Steven said, if you've got to five ten years worth of stuff on there, you're not gonna be able to get that back very easily. So if you're using Mint, I would highly recommend that you download your transaction data if you want to keep that for the future. Now, the other thing about this is that they will be switching people over to Credit Karma, which

is also owned by into It. Into It is also the folks behind They have a bunch of things like I think QuickBooks and all that, so they own a bunch of companies. If you go to into It you can see all yeah, QuickBooks, TurboTax, But they want everyone to use credit Karma now. To me, Credit Karma has always been a website that's more about selling me credit products like a credit card or a loan, and that's kind of like what I said Mint did towards the end.

So they say that some of Mint's services will be transferred over to Credit Karma, but we're not sure if the monthly budgeting service is going to be transferred over. They do say they are going to do that feature where it shows you everything on one page. Now, I logged onto Credit Karma very quickly just to see kind of what they offer. But once you switch over, I don't think you can go back to Mint, so you may want to just hold off before you do anything

that transfers your account number over. So to answer your question, Steven, I am still on a quest to figure out what the best replacement app is, but it depends what you want to do. If you want to see everything on one page, there's an app called Monarch, which I did not test just yet. But the problem is all these new apps want to charge you money. So there's two

that are really good. One is called Copilot. It's available for iOS only, and that's the one that I initially downloaded because a lot of people are downloading that app, and it's good, but it's expensive. You got to pay every year to use app. But it does seem to do the kind of everything on one page and the budgeting. The other one is from the Dave Ramsey team called every Dollar, and again you do have to pay if you want the premium features of that app. There's another

one called pocket Guard. I have not tested that one. You need a budget y nab. A lot of people use that. I've tried it in the past. It is way too complicated for me. The other one, if you want something that I have used in the past that I think is really good, used to be called Personal Capital, it's now called Empower. Empower that will show you all of your accounts in one place. So it really depends do you want to use this to budget or do you want to use it to see everything in one place.

I don't use these apps to budget. To budget, I use an Excel spreadsheet. I've used that for the last twenty years of my life. Every single Friday, I go on I put all my accounts on there, all the different transactions, and I create what's called a zero based budget. I will still continue to use Excel to do that, but again a lot of people checking out these different apps. I think it really comes down to what works best for you. Which one do you take a liking to.

Coming up next, how not to get scammed selling stuff online. 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. I'm busy taking notes, so I take notes throughout the entire show, and I put them in the show notes. So if you download the show as a podcast, you can see the show notes there. You can also go to rich on Tech dot tv to see the show notes in real Uh. Well,

it's kind of they do happen in real time. But to get the link, I guess you'd have to go to x for now because they don't post until the podcast. But if you go to the uh, if you go to rich on Tech on Twitter, I guess now it's called XU, you can see the show notes and I will put those out in real time. So all these budgeting apps that we just talked about, that's where they are. I just listed a whole bunch of them. Let's see here. I was just putting the links in co pilot monarch

pocket guard. You need a budget, every dollar in power. So I will be doing a story about this on TV as well, because you can use credit karma. It'll be fine. But you know, it's like it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, the fact that Mint is, you know, into it is doing this to Mint, Like, why why are you switching us when everyone likes this program? I don't know. Not a good not a good look.

All right, let's 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.

So I got up to sixty seven hundred dollars. Wow, and again, being excited, I told the one I said, unfortunately eministic with the first person who bid sixty seven and end is bitting war back and forth. I appreciate your time and I'll keep you posting.

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 situation with calling a quote unquote Zell customer service account which was not Dell.

he's unrelated to their initial stammer. And 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.

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 right, and my gut is yelling at me to like end the call. And after moving money around and sending it out to two people I didn't know, but of course the scammer knew. 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 had exeled money.

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 to send you. And that's kind of where he was like, well, that's because you didn't follow the email. I s's no, no, no, no, no, that's you know, 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.

an account, I didn't have to do anything. I could just change the email address and then it's dot Doug dot com. I'm sorry, so I used my name at Dug dot com. Yes, it just filters and suentative to my email and it's perfect I have that not for about a month.

I'll put the link on the on the show notes as well. So good, good call about that.

Automatic threat detection, instant notifications and yeah. So I mean, look, it's one of these things where it's kind of like antivirus software. It's kind of like malware stuff. It's like you feel good having it because you feel like you're protected. But I would say, you know, all routers have a level of protection built into them. They all have a

firewall that's built in. And if you're just setting it up and keeping it, you know, the standard way that the it comes from the factory and it you know, obviously you're using a strong password with that router. I think you should be okay, but I would probably take the free year, and typically with free year subscriptions, you're usually able to cancel the recurring subscription right away. So if you're ever doing a free trial, typically you can

go in on that account. You don't have to wait until next year, because what they want you to do is forget about it, and next thing, you know, you get charged on your card and you say, ah, it's too much effort to go back and you know, figure this out and get my refund, and so you keep it for the next year. And so now you've just gotten two years of this, you know, for the price one,

but still you're paying for it. So what I do is, whenever I sign up for a free trial, I always go into my account and I see if I can cancel right away. And usually it'll give you either a warning sign that says, hey, you're about to cancel this, but you'll still have access through next you know, whatever the end date is of next year, and I say, okay, that sounds great, and I press cancel and I still have access to that for the year. It just doesn't

automatically renew. Now, if it says you'll lose access immediately, I decide, Okay, do I really need this and in the case I want to keep it for that free year, I would just snooze my email for a year, maybe you know, two weeks before that renewal date, and that'll pop up in my inbox and then I will take action at that point. If I don't have an email provider that has a snooze functionality, then I will just set a reminder in my reminders and have that pop up.

But I use this news functionality. That's like the easiest. And if you have one of these smart speakers at home, like a Google or Alexa, you can just say like, hey, remind me and say the date to check out this service or to check up on my Netgear Armor subscription. But ELSA, that's probably what I would do is just take the free year. Why not see how it works and just either cancel immediately or just set a reminder to cancel. But you know, free year, why not see

what works what doesn't work. I think the biggest downsides, according to some of the reviews that I'm looking at online, is that it could impact your internet performance because it is a security program, so you may have times when you try to go to a website it won't load. You may try to, you know, download something it won't download. So those are kind of like the downsides of any type security program. And you know, people that use ad

blockers know this. People that use any sort of VPN or network you know, monitoring or filtering, there's always some issues that occur because of that. So if you're okay with that stuff and you're wondering, like, why is this going wrong, you know that's that might be the reason. So good question. Thanks for listening to the show, Thanks for having a cool name, and thanks for calling today. Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven

four to two four one zero one uh. Still coming up in the next hour of the show, we're going to talk to Larissa. Larissa May is a digital wellness activist founder of Half the Story. So if you want some tips about your kids and social media and your teens on their phones all the time, Larissa is going to offer some of the things that they talk about when it comes to that. Plus, we still got to

talk about all this Apple stuff. New M three chips, a new iMac, new laptops, and their discontinuing one of their Apple music plans. You are listening to Rich on tech. We got plenty more show coming up. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out talking technology. We talked about Mint shutting down as of January. First, a lot of people use Mint for budgeting and also aggregation of all the different you know, financial accounts in

one place. Got an email from Chuck. He said, Dave Ramsey's offering his every dollar for Mint users for two months for free. Go to everydollar dot com slash Mint. So every dollar, I think is free, but to get the real you know, to get the real use out of it, you do have to pay. I'm not sure how much it is, but you can get two months for free of premium access if you go to that website. The one that I'm probably most interested in, quite honestly,

is called Monarch. And the reason for that is because the I who was one of the first guys who started Mint is running Monarch now. And he says CEO says that Mint was free, but it made money by giving users financial offers which cause problems, and they don't, you know, into it doesn't need credit Mint anymore because they have credit karma. And they said that a free personal finance app doesn't work like the business model does not work. So that's why I'm noticing that all these

apps that are replacing it are paid subscription apps. And so Monarch, which can import Mint data, says it's fifteen bucks a month. Wow, that's a lot. But it does have financial planning and other things. But yeah, it looks like you're gonna have to get a subscription if you want something that's really good. That's the way it's going. Remember, I consider this under that that umbrella of the free ride is over right. We used to have all these things for free in the online world, and now it's

like not companies to make money. Let's go to Henry in I don't know if you're Louisiana or La Henry. You're on with Rich.

in my own. So I wondered what your outlook was on the tech careers for newer people, but who are skilled in the next maybe twenty four months, Well, what kind.

you're leaning towards a smaller company. And I think what you're going to like about that is that it's going to be more hands on. It's going to be more human interface. You know, there's going to be more much more human interaction versus a large company where you may just be doing, you know, jobs for nameless, faceless both company and employees. You know, you may be just doing stuff for people who don't really know. And it sounds like you, based on what I'm hearing, since you went

back to school, you took that initiative. It just sounds like you want to be a people person and you want to be interacting with maybe a smaller company that you get more hands on time with everything and more face to face time with everyone. So I think you're in a good place. I think that computer technology jobs

are always very good. I think that the tech world we've definitely seen a little bit of a downturn recently, but a lot of that had to do with COVID and the fact that companies had a lot of extra people on the payrolls and they saw some efficiencies with AI and some of the new technologies that have come out, and you know, so we saw a little bit of

a cleanup there. But you know, I think at the same time, moving forward, there's always going to be a need for people like you, and especially someone that I just just talking to you, it feels like you have that extra little bit of push, that extra little bit of you know, just that extra that that people want, that that really attracts people to you. And so I'm feeling you and I think that, uh, no matter what you're gonna do, you're gonna be successful in this second journey.

But I say start with a smaller company. Start small, and if you don't like it, if you feel like you're too much, you know, boxed in, you can always go bigger. And you know the big the big companies have their pros too, but the small companies, I think in this, in this stage in life, I feel like you'll enjoy that a little bit more, especially as someone who's just starting out in this, uh, in this journey,

in this role. But that's my advice. And I think that you know, when it comes to jobs and it comes to all this this job and career stuff, we have definitely seen through COVID. It's just talking about this with some friends. Everything changed, right, Like it used to be your work for company, You put in your time and you just kind of shut up about things, whether you liked it or not and you whether it was good for your personal uh you know, self value worth

and feeling. You just kind of did what you did. And now that has all been kind of spun around. You know, when COVID hit people are working from home, they were reevaluating, they had the time to think about what they were doing on a daily basis, and they just realized, like, you know what, I want to be happy and work. And that was a major paradigm shift

in our economy here. And I'm not saying everyone's able to just quit their job and you know, move on like that's not something that can be taken very lightly. People have you know, they have demands on them, they have responsibilities, they have families, they have loyalty. But you know, what we learned is that we want to feel better about what we're doing on a daily basis. And I think that you figured that out and you're going to move on into something that is, you know, a better

fit for you now. And there's many people that are trying to do that. So I guess my advice is be happy. You should be happy. You should be happy doing what you do. I work six days a week, I am happy probably three of those six days nose you kidding, I've just seen if Bobo's listening. No, you should be happy. And there are days. Look, you're always gonna have a bad day everyone, we're all human. We're gonna have a bad day here and there. You're gonna

be mad at your boss, You're gonna be frustrated. You're gonna come into work and say, I don't feel like doing this. That is human. That's why we're here. We interact with each other, we talk to each other. We're here to support each other. We're here to figure out the best role. But if you are just pushing papers and you are super unhappy at what you're doing, there's

something better out there for you, guaranteed. Believe me, there are people at work really really hard in this world and they enjoy their time here and you just have to figure that out, thank you. And it's just a matter of figuring out. It's a process of you know, sometimes it takes a little bit. And believe me, I had my sister, for instance, she was one of these

executive types. She was, oh my gosh, she was doing great at the company she worked at, and she worked there for many, many years, I think over ten years and one day she woke up and said, you know what, this is not for me anymore. Like I love having my four oh one k I love having you know, the energy of opening up new stores and managing people and all this stuff, and it's great, and I love this company for ten years, but you know what I'm done, and now I'm going to do something that is more

interesting to me as a human. And she dropped everything in the corporate world and went to personal training and health and as she found her own health journey, you know where she was drinking tons of coffee and eating donuts and all this stuff, and then just realize, you know what, I want to be healthier as a human. I want to help other people be healthier. And now she does personal training and she does nutrition coaching and

all that stuff, and she loves it. And you know, the bad days are few and far between, because when you're doing something you love, it's really fun and you're smiling, and by the way, you bring other people into that energy. And so people always tell me when I'm doing this show and I'm on TV, like rich, I really like what you do. It's because I love it. I love helping you. Getting Stephanie to tell her story, getting you know, people to call in and explain what they're doing, and

doing interviews, and it's all to help you. That is what I find the most interesting in this world is being that conduit to which you learn and to you feeling more confident about technology. I don't just sit here and tell you this stuff because I feel like it's

interesting to me. No, I hope it's interesting to you, so that when you're out and you're out in the world and you're hanging out with your friends, and you're at your job and you're doing stuff or you might be getting scammed, you sit there and you say, oh, wait a second, I heard something about that. Why you know, I heard something about that plan changing, or I heard something about that app or I heard this can be easier.

I heard this website that can make life better. So that's why I do this, And I hope that you find what you do in your world the same reasoning. Why do you do what you do? Sometimes we don't want to think about it because it gets scary because you think like, oh wow, I really don't like what I do and it's going to cause a big change in my life. And we get comfortable We're creatures of habit, we're humans. We like routine. I love routine. I love routine.

I'm like a lot of people. If you put take me out of my routine when I travel, when I'm on the road, I'm out of my routine and I get thrown all out of sorts. But I still enjoy it. But yes, we all like our routines. We like getting up, we like having our coffee or whatever we do in the morning. We like, you know, watching TV at night, sitting on the couch. Like people like routine. It is tough for us to get out of that and to

get out of our comfort zone is not easy. But again, sometimes you do have to take stock of what you're doing in this world and figure out is it for me? And you know, sometimes when you shake things up, it's the best thing you've ever done in your life. Believe me. Uh, the thing that you didn't think of sometimes is like the best solution of stuff anyway. Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four

one zero one. We'll take a few more calls. We've got some more guests, and I got to tell you what Apple announced this week, including new iMac new laptops in a new color. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology and some life advice. Apparently, Oh how that turned into such profound life advice eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four

to two four one zero one. Email is still coming in about Mint in the replacement page, says, I like Simplify for my budgeting money manager. It's by Quickening and it is subscription, but it does not seem too outrageous. It gets good reviews from Wirecutter and PC mag And I thought Quicken was owned by into It, but guess what,

they sold it in twenty sixteen. So that's interesting. So if you're looking, you know this is gonna be one of those things where you just have to kind of you have to try them out and see, like, look at the features before you sign up. Okay, it's two thirty nine a month. That's not too bad. And I like the fact that it right off the bat they tell you that it's gonna cost money because some look, if you're not paying for something, there is something that

you are using. If you're not paying a fee for a service. You are the fee. Your data is the fee. So the fact that you're paying for this quick and simplify and you're paying right up front two dollars thirty nine cents a month, you know, it goes to show me that it's a quality product, because they're not just you know, it's not just a data play. Let's go to Lewis in Riverside, California. Lewis, you're on with Rich.

never be able to use it. It's literally locked to buy Apple. And if you activate an iPhone, you'll see it says activating and so what that means is it's linking that account to that phone. So if someone else tries to use it or tries to steal it, they just won't be able to use it. And that's what's happening here. She've got to figure out either look in the records, if she left any records, and you can see if the password is in there. Maybe the son

knew the mom's password. And you know, by the way, if it's a delicate time right now, you know, if this just happened, maybe wait a little bit, but you know, that's that's really what you need to do is figure out her log in information for iCloud, and that's the only way that you're going to be able to get this phone up and running for another person. Now, the other thing you may be able to do, you may be able to contact Apple and explain the situation. They

do have. They do have provisions for people that pass away, and there are I believe that you may be able to contact them and show them, you know, a death certificate or something like that. That may help. But I don't know if that would work in this case, but it may. But that's something that you, you know, you can look on Apple Support, Apple dot com. You can check to see if they have anything about that. But that's really the best way to do it. There's no

way to just clear this phone off. There's no way this phone is going to work without having that that log in, because that was that's the only way to decouple it from her account and sign it up fresh under a new account. Thanks for the question, Lewis, appreciate the call today. By the way, speaking of Apple quietly discontinued their five dollars a month Apple Voice Apple Music

Voice plan. This was a plan that they introduced a couple of years ago, twenty twenty one, this was a plan that you can access Apple Music exclusively through Siri. So they said, you know what, we'll charge you less five bucks a month, but you can only ask for music via Siri and you could not manually open the Apple Music app. You couldn't add songs to your library or do anything with this voice plan. It was very limited.

But now they're getting rid of it. So I don't know what's going to happen if you have that Apple Voice music plan. I guess they're going to try to charge you ten ninety nine a month.

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.

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.

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 to tips and tools that they need to have agency empowerment, we can perhaps build a better world.

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, are 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 unhaf 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.

all ages. I mean, I think young people are really affected, but there are many adults that are negatively affected by the things that they see on social media, whether it is, you know, they're jealous of what their friends are doing, or they feel left out if they see something. You know, there's a lot of that.

But it's certainly something that's impacting all of humanity, especially as now we're entering into the era of regenerative generative AI, which is completely changing the landscape and is almost like our next Internet revolution.

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.

going to open them up. And that's just human nature. Okay. So you also have 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.

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 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.

useful too. We only have a couple seconds here. Just how can parents spot this potential social media addiction or obsessive behavior?

You're listening to Rich on tech, Rich on tech, Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology, closing out the show here, what a great show. I love the back and forth with you. That's the best part, not only the calls, but the emails, the tweets, the texts. Let's get through some news before we get to the feedback segment. Apple this week had a scary fast event. They announced the new generation M three chips, the three, the M three Pro, and the M three Max. These

are all built using a three nanometer process. What does that mean, Well, they're faster and they're more efficient. So these things ever since Apple started making their own chips, they are just incredible. And this time around they include better support for like streaming video. So that means if you're watching a lot of YouTube or just any streaming, but I mean the websites that it supports, it will the battery will last even longer and it will be

even more efficient. With that battery life is better too, up to twenty two hours now on the MacBook Pro, so that is quite incredible. So a couple of new computer they came out with these new chips. Let's start with the laptops MacBook Pro. They announced new fourteen and sixteen inch MacBook Pro models with the M three, M three Pro, and M three Max chips. They all have better performance over the previous chips. Of course, the M three fourteen inch starts at sixteen hundred, the M three

Pro starts at nineteen ninety nine. M three Max starts at twenty five hundred dollars. They ship on November seventh, and they've got this new color, Space black, that is for the M three Pro Max models. So if you want a laptop that is space black, that's kind of cool. It's different, and I believe the last time they had a black laptop was like ten years ago or something like that. So they say the M three Max has eleven times faster performance than the Intel sixteen inch MacBook Pro.

That's my old laptop which my son is still using, by the way, eleven times faster than that, that is just wild. Then they've got the new twenty four inch iMac with an M three Chip says it's two times faster than the M one iMac. So if you're looking at upgrade twice as fast, not too bad. Let's see two times faster, two and a half times faster than the twenty seven inch Intel Imax, which they didn't come out with the new twenty seven inch, which I know a lot of people are sad about. They want that

bigger screen. This comes in seven colors, and let's see it now has Wi Fi six E, better Bluetooth, and up to four USBC Thunderbolt ports. It starts at twelve ninety nine. I'll just give you a word to the whys. Don't buy the base model of the iMac. It's usually better to get the one step up on that. A couple other things this week Zoomo Play, Xumo Play Play dot Zoomo dot com. I did not know about this service. I'm doing a story with Spectrum about their new Zoomo

box and I stumbled upon this website. It's kind of like Pluto TV and all those free ad supported websites. You can watch two hundred and ninety channels and it does not require an account. Works on mobile devices, smart TVs, Roku, Fire, TV, whole bunch of stuff you can watch for free. Zuomo

Play search it. It's pretty cool. I gotta say, it's like two B or Pluto, and it's just one more option for free stuff with all these streaming services costing more lately, Samsung, if you're thinking of getting the new phone, you might want to wait. S twenty four might come out even earlier this year. A new report from South Korea says Samsung's going to launch the Galaxy S twenty four on January seventeenth. Last year, it was February first.

They just keep making this earlier and earlier every year, So January seventeenth the rumored launch event for the next S twenty four. This is their flagship phone, and supposedly it's going to have a titanium frame just like the iPhone fifteen Pro, and it's going to have a lot of AI features, so we'll see. And then finally, Apple Arcade. Eight new games coming to Apple Arcade this holiday season, including Disney Dreamlight, Valley Arcade, Football Manager twenty twenty four,

Touch Sonic Dream Puzzles, and Dragons. There's gonna be updates and the app that I downloaded already, which is available if you pay for Apple Arcade is called Let's see what is this called? It's called oh not word knot, so I was already playing that. It's kind of like a little crossword puzzle game. So that's kind of fun. All right, Let's get to some feedback before the show ends.

of myself as Seinfeld, but I'll take it. I totally will. I totally have that sense of humor. Cassandra says, I truly enjoy listening to your show on set Saturdays on KFI AM six forty. It is such an informative and entertaining way to learn more about tech and the best ways to navigate through everyday issues. Cassandra, thank you. Cassandra and let's see. Oh and we'll end with a Karen or no, her name is Karen. Love your show, but heard your response to the person who wanted to use

the bark stopping gadget on our neighbor's dogs. Sadly, speaking with your neighbor first can often backfire with them getting totally aggressive and combat combative. Both of my kids have neighbors with horrible barking dogs. They tried one of these gadgets and they totally worked brilliantly. I would just say, you know, talk to someone that knows something about animals, because I don't know how safe these things are. All right, if you can believe it, that's going to do it.

For this episode of the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to rich on tech dot tv. You can find me on social media at rich on tech. Next week we'll talk Apple, we'll talk Amazon and some new cars. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. My name is rich Tdimiro. I will talk to you real soon.