Why everyone's rushing to download something called Blue Sky, and why you might want to join them. If your password is one two, three, four five six. The good news is you're not alone. The bad news is that's bad news. Amazon's new secret store where everything is under twenty bucks. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I
answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's fire up those phone lines at triple eight Rich one oh 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. Email is also open. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit contact. That's where you can also send your feedback for the feedbag later in the show.
Guests.
This week we've got former USA Today Tech columnist and current AARP Tech editor at bag. He's going to talk about tech support for your parents. And later we've got turn it In's Annie Checatelli. She is going to discuss the impact of AI on education. Well, it was fight Night in America once again, but this time with a twist. This was one of the first major sporting events that Netflix well try to stream. They've done some stuff in the past. Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson, Did you watch it?
Probably many many people did. It was sort of a technical disaster. Now, I'm not blaming Netflix here. I'm not going to say that this is bad that they did this. You've got to start somewhere, But it gives us perspective. This is a huge company with lots of smart people, and we are still just in the beginning stages of fakeing this stuff out. Now, There's been lots of live streams before, but I think that this goes to show both the popularity of something like this and also the
fact that Netflix has some work to do. All kinds of streaming problems with the show last night frustrated viewers all over the world. Lots of people, including myself, reported buffering and connectivity issues. Some people had to wait a long time for the show to actually start, and then some people got this black screen of death, which I also got, and depended kind of on a lot of things.
Whether you know where you lived, how you were accessing it, whether it was on mobile, whether it was on your TV. But you know, Netflix really struggled to handle so many people watching this event at the same time, Netflix has over almost three hundred million subscribers, and every single one of them had access to this at no extra cost. So it's not like the days of pay per view, where you're paying fifty bucks and you better have a
clear screen because you're paying for that. No, this was available to everyone, which is incredible and amazing, but also it goes to show that it takes a lot to stream something on this level. So of course people were on social media, including myself, joking about all the things that went wrong.
It wasn't even clear half the time.
So at first when I first tuned in, I thought it was incredible because it was looking very clear, and then all of a sudden it started buffering, and then all of a sudden it started dropping out, and then all of a sudden it started not working, and then all of a sudden, when it came back, the video.
Quality was not very good.
So even if you had a good connection like myself, like a fiber connection, you still had issues. So do we know how many people watch this? We don't know exactly. Netflix has not said just yet do we know how much money it generated. One report said eighteen million dollars at the stadium itself. Seems like a lot. I'm sure these these guys that fought got paid a lot of money. I'm sure all the product placement and sponsorships generated a lot of money.
But here's the thing.
Netflix wants to get into live streaming in a big way. Somehow Amazon has been able to figure it out. But you know they run that infrastructure AWS, so if anyone could do live streaming and has the servers for it, Amazon's got it figured out.
Now.
I don't know how many people are watching those Prime football games if it's the same as this level, but they've got it figured out. But Netflix is set to stream two NFL games on Christmas Day, and you can bet a lot of people are going to be watching those because everyone's going to be at home and everyone wants to watch those games. So we will have to see if Netflix can get their act together in the next what is it, six weeks or so to resolve those technical issues.
But at the end of the day, it.
Was still interesting to see the entire US and maybe the world at large come together to watch something in a world of fractured and fragmented streaming programs, and everyone's on a different wavelength, and everyone's on a different level, and everyone's watching a different show. It's kind of cool to still have things that bring us all together. And last night was one of those times when pretty much
everyone you knew was watching that. All right, moving on now, also this week, if you heard there is a new social network that is suddenly popular.
It is called blue Sky.
Doesn't that just sound nice? So blue Sky gained more than two million users in the past few weeks many people after the election, Over fifteen million people are now on blue Sky. Now, keep in mind that sounds like a big number, but X and Threads have hundreds of millions of people. So why are people coming over to blue Sky. Well, many are unhappy with Elon Musk his support of the new president, and they also say that they're mad that X is going to train its ai
on their posts. But come on, if you're on Instagram, if you're on Facebook, if you're on pretty much any system that you're not paying for, you are the product and they're going to train on your stuff. So that's like kind of a weak excuse to leave. But at the same time, people are doing it and I'm seeing a lot of momentum on this blue sky.
So what is it?
Well, it looks a lot like Twitter in the old days, I mean, almost identical to Twitter. And well that's probably for a reason because it was started in twenty nineteen by one of the founders of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, but he left and it was invite only for a long time. So that's the reason you didn't really hear about it very much. People that were nerdy, people that were in
the know. Of course, they knew about this. They've been They're gonna say, I've been on this for a year now, and you're gonna say, okay, thanks, do you want to meddle? But many people are discovering it, So what can you do on it? It's the same as Twitter. You can follow people, they can follow you back. You can post text, you can post photos, you can post videos, you can repost, you can like. But here is the thing. It is much more open source and decentralized as opposed to something
like Twitter that is run by one person. Well, many people work there, but you know, Elon Musk is at the Helm, so this is much more open source and decentralized.
What does that mean.
It means that one organization doesn't really own or control your data. So if you ever want to leave blue Sky, you can, and it's simple, and you can take all of your data with you somewhere else. So if something else comes up better, all your stuff will just move
over to that platform. And so that's really interesting, it's really unique, and I think this is going to the idea of Web three Web three point zero, where it's like more of these things are much more decentralized and they all sort of work together and you can take your information and your services wherever you want to go with them. Now, I will tell you, having used blue Sky for the past couple of days now, it's nice and a lot of people are popping up on there.
I see a few problems. Number one, it's tough to find people on there because you have to pretty much search for them by name. There's no way to import your address book, which would be really handy, so you
can't do that. I mean, there are some tools. Someone told me about a tool where you can take your Twitter followers and it will scan them, but you have to do that in Chrome, and it seemed a little wonky, and I think you have to give access to one of your accounts to do that, which I never really liked doing. But I guess people are making these lists of like various people in groups, like all the journalists on the Tech Journalists. Here's a list and you can
follow all of them at the same time. So that's kind of a cool feature too, But otherwise I'm kind of loving it. I've already got almost a thousand followers on there, so it's like being back in the old days. It's like you're starting something new, You're in something fresh. I have not gone off x just yet. I'm still there. But now I'm just posting to all these places on
a daily basis. Facebook, X, Blue Sky, what else, Instagram, So there's a lot and people are gonna get kind of tired of posting to all these different places, but right now it does feel kind of fun. I mean, I joined I remember the day I joined Facebook pretty much the first day I could. I remember the first day I joined Twitter back in the day when I could.
And it's fun. It's fun to be on kind of the round level of these services because there's things that you find that are great, and there's just a lot of growing problems too. So if you want to find me, I am on there at rich On Tech and kind of fun on Blue Sky, and we'll see what happens with it, all right. The other big story this week, Bitcoin once again has surged to a record hive over ninety thousand dollars a coin.
Why.
Well, a lot of it is because of the President elect, who has a pro crypto stance, and many people are optimistic about this digital currency, which means they're putting more money into it. Also, institutional investors are putting money into it. Things like retirement accounts and ETFs were approved by regulators and they've seen a lot of cash flowing in. Bitcoin has now become the world's eighth largest asset, surpassing silver.
That's pretty wild, but remember cryptocurrency remains highly volatile. You have to know what you're doing if you're getting in on this. I've kind of all kinds of people texting me saying, rich should I get it. I can't give you the advice on that. If you've got money to lose, sure go ahead, but this is not something that you can say, I'm gonna put this money in here, it's gonna be there forever. We don't know that to be true.
So remember this is an investment like anything else. It could go up, you could lose it all, but you know, it is kind of fun to watch what's going on with it. This is not financial advice, but if you're looking for a place to get it, coinbase is popular, PayPal has a way to buy crypto, Venmo has a way, and cash app those are all very easy ways to buy it. Of course, do your research before you invest
in anything. And that doesn't go for just crypto. That's any time you put your money in something where.
It could go away.
All right, Coming up, your call is eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. My name is rich Damiro and you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich to Buro here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show is Richontech dot tv. A couple things you can do when you're there. First off,
sign up for my newsletter. It is free. I send it out every week and it's got a lot of great helpful tech information in there. You can also watch the stories that I do on TV. You can hit the light bulb if you want links to anything I mentioned on the show. I put my Blue Sky user name in there. If you want to follow me, I'm just at rich on Tech. You can just search rich on Tech. You'll find me on Blue Sky and then you can hit contact if you want to send an email to me.
Or the show.
Let's go to Marcello in Galita, California. Marcelo, you're on with Rich.
Hi.
Rich, thank you for taking my call this morning. I'm calling because I have a friend who mentioned to me that he has bitcoin lost somewhere on one of his old phones in an old account, and he got in the early two thousands, like he said, he bought it through PayPal and I and I got to thinking, maybe you know of a company that helps you gain access to your old account and get access to your old bitcoin with maybe they charge a fee or something. Given you information regarding.
That, Oh good question.
Probably a lot of people trying to figure out what the status is of the bitcoin. Did I buy some back in the day, because I know so quick story Marcelo. I did a story with bitcoin back in Oh my gosh, I think it was bitcoin ATM.
Let's see when I did.
This, probably in twenty oh gosh, twenty seventeen, I don't know, it was a long time ago. But I purchased twenty dollars worth of bitcoin and I did the math and it would be several thousand. I mean now with the ninety thousand point, it would be you know, it'd be like probably five six thousand bucks at this point.
I don't know. Don't don't quote me on the math.
My point is I went back to that story and I tried to freeze frame the little QR code they gave me, because I just threw out the sheet as soon as I was done with the story. I was like, this isn't going anywhere, and I tried to go back to that story and freeze frame the video where I pulled a little receipt out of the Bitcoin ATM where it has my QR code with my access to it. I was like, can I scan this and recover this bitcoin? I couldn't, but I agree there's gonna be a lot
of people that are wondering how to access this. So it is tough. And here's my advice moving forward. If you are signing up for anything where you're buying bitcoin, especially if you are signing up with one of these wallets, they give you what's called a recovery phrase, so you
need to remember that. And I specifically remember many years ago signing up for a bitcoin service and I got the recovery phrase, and I have no idea where it is, and I can't remember if I actually bought bitcoin on that account either, but my kid and I were trying to go through and we were like signing into coinbase and signing into all these apps to see. With that said,
it is very, very tough to recover this stuff. Because if you're buying it through a big company, then it might be easier, but if you're buying it through one of these wallets and you lose it, you're not really going to get it back. So there are a couple of resources online. I cannot vouch for them, but I can tell you what has been featured before in various publications, and one of those is Cryptoasset Recovery dot com, so that's one of them. I don't know how much they
cost to do this, let's see pricing. Oh wow, so password recovery, if they figure it out, they will take twenty percent of your wallet. So if you had one thousand dollars in there, they take two hundred dollars, which probably a small price to pay. But this is a story out of Motherboard. They are talking about back when I don't think Motherboard's still around, but they were talking about how these This is a father son team in New Hampshire, and I guess they're just trying. They know
people need this. So and then there's another one I found called keychain x dot io and this says Wallet Recovery Services trusted since twenty seventeen. And they've got a whole bunch of information on there as well.
So let's see.
Keychain x can decrypt most types of cryptocurrency, wallets, Ethereum. Okay, so they've got basically they they may help you do that, but again you're gonna pay to get this done. So how how much does your friend have does he say.
He said he bought it like in two thousand and six, or anybody put in one thousand dollars?
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, so he thinks he's got a lot there.
Oh, my gosh, two thousand.
Yeah, I'll talk on the information and I appreciate it, all.
Right, pass on the info that's said. Oh my gosh, okay, so bitcoin, let's see they bought it. Let's see they bought it for one thousand dollars, and let's see calculate, so that'd be worth.
Okay, hold on, let's see.
Okay, so that'd be worth ninety one thousand dollars at this point. That's just that's just a quick calculator. I don't know if that's correct or not, but that's pretty wild. Oh that's not taken into concern. Oh okay, hold on, I got to look up the buy price from two thousand. Okay, hold on, bitcoin price so in two thousand it was let's see, we got to go back. Oh, I guess I can't even look up. I can't even look up the price in two thousand. Bitcoin price two thousand was like,
oh my gosh, that's a long time. Okay, Yeah, that's it's worth more than ninety thousand dollars.
That's that's worth a lot of money.
Oh my gosh, okay, yeah, I would pay to have someone figure that out.
All right, good question.
Marcelo Please, No matter what you're signing up for, whether it is bitcoin, whether it is crypto, whether it is an account that you open up at Facebook or anything, please remember your account password. I don't know what it is about people that just they refuse to use a password manager. Get a password manager. Bitwarden is completely free. All you have to do. It's like a little notebook.
Just write down your username and password as you sign up. Yes, it takes you an extra three minutes to sign up for a website because you have to do a little legwork to generate the password and save it. But I do it every day, and I'm telling you it has saved me so many times. I just set up a new computer. I said, oh, I'll never forget the password to this computer. I forgot it as soon as I set it up, and of course it was in my wallet. Please use a password manager. Eight A eight rich one
oh one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology this week. If you like Google, you might like their new app for the iPhone. They released their AI app, a standalone Gemini AI app for the iPhone. So this is something you could access in the past, but you had to go through the Google app. Now Gemini AI is standalone, so that means you can go
to the app store search for Gemini AI. Just be careful because there's a lot of impersonators whenever you search for these main AI brands, so make sure you're getting that the one that is actually from Google. I'll put a link on the website. Rich on tech dot TV go to the show notes. But what can you do with Gemini AI. Well, this is this is Google's version of Chat GPT, so you can text it, you can ask it questions. There's a camera mode. It also has
Gemini Live. This is their conversational mode, so you can talk to AI in a natural language. And I was hanging out with Google this week in New York City and they talked about how they have not only can these things speak forty different languages, which is just absolutely wild, but the names of these these Gemini Live characters, I guess you can call them whatever you want to, however
you want to describe them. They all are inspired by heavenly bodies, so they didn't want to name them traditional names because they thought it'd be weird. If you know, like remember we have Siri and we have the alex A one. But you know, Google Assistant never really had a name, but Jem and I. They wanted to come up with these interesting kind of names that were much more kind of mysterious, because you don't want to say, oh, I'm talking to Bob. You know you're just talking to
Let's see, where's the voices. So here's the voices.
I'm ready to be your voice. If you like what you hear, choose me to start talking.
So that's URSA.
Feel free to keep exploring until you find the perfect voice.
That's Vega.
You can always change voices later.
I'll be here whenever you're ready to talk.
And this is Nova described as calm mid range. Here's Pegasus s.
It's about the other voices. Swipe to explore or pick me to start engaged in deeper voice Eclipse.
Is it good to meet you?
Give me a chance or check out the other options Energetic.
Maybe I'm your style, Pick me and I can be the voice you hear.
Why why does he sound a little down? He doesn't sound like I don't know if you let's go back. This is dipper hold it.
Maybe I'm your style, Pick me and I can be the voice you hear.
I feel like he might read like one of those like romance novels late at night.
I don't know. It sounds like the guy at the bar that just brought you a drink. Yeah, I don't know that's that one anyway.
So so all, so this is actually if you haven't tried this, now is your time.
Now.
Gemini Live used to be a feature they had to pay for. I'm not sure if they open that up for free now, but that is the So there's various options once you download this app, but that live thing is something you should really try.
It's in the lower right hand corner. It looks like kind of a voice.
But the neat thing about this is that you can now just access Gemini AI a lot faster on the iPhone. Now, there are some hang ups because it is the iPhone. The way it's constructed, it can't access other apps on the phone unless they're Google properties. So it can do things like Google maps and link up with YouTube music, but it's not gonna be able to like do other things on your phone like Siri would be able to do, so just keep that in mind.
But it's kind of cool.
I would definitely recommend downloading it. And the thing about that's neat about Gemini is that it's up to date with all of Google's information, so that's kind of a little leg up against some of these other AI chatbots out there that may not be as fresh like Google AI. Gemini really has all the information you need, so if you're looking for like answers to questions about things that just happened, you can get those answers a lot easier
on Gemini compared to some of the other things. Now chat GBT just introduced web search results not as good and also it's a premium feature, so Gemini has that built in for free, even on the free level. So anyway, Gemini for iOS, you can check it out. Let's go to Mark in Los Angeles. Mark, you're on with.
Rich All Rich, I'm a Mac guy since nineteen eighty four. I'm about to buy either an iMac or a Mac Many and one of my considerations is that if I buy a Macmini, I will have to get an external monitor. The Apple monitor is awesome, but they love it as much as I do, and it's kind of expensive, so I'm looking to either. I would look to a four
K monitor, which would be less. So I'm curious as to your thoughts on the visual experience of that monitor, which admittedly would be awesome, and a four K monitor, and what brands you trust if I were to go to a four K monitor of a different of a different kind. I haven't had to buy a monitor in a very long time.
Well, all the.
Specs are kind of amazing now, you know, all over the place.
Yes they are. So I will tell you as someone who just got the Macmini. So Apple sent along the Macmini to test out. And I've never had a Mac Mini before, and they just sent the most basic one.
It was.
It's like the basic version of it. So it's got the sixteen gigs a RAM, it's got the standard M four chip. It's not the pro. And I'm telling you, Mark, I'm in love with this thing. I was on it this morning, I was on it last night. My wife is like, are you coming to bed? I'm like, I'm still playing on this computer. The screen is huge. They sent one of the studio displays, so it's the standard studio display, which I get is sixteen hundred bucks.
But it's a twenty seven.
Inches seven inch That's what I have I have a like a Circle twenty thirteen iMac and it's just they just don't support it anymore. It won't it won't stop working, you know, it never gets right, of course, but I need to replace it. And if it didn't cost so much, it wouldn't be a I wouldn't think about it.
Yeah, well, yeah, there are many other monitors that are a lot cheaper.
I think.
Obviously, Apple of course has a little bit of you know, sinner between their monitor and their computers, but you don't really need that. But I will tell you as far as between the iMac and the Macmini, I would go with the Macmini for sure, just because I love the idea that this thing is so small. It's got ports on the front, which I really like, so you can plug in things, and it's just it's always there and it's just simple and it's nice.
So when it comes to.
Buying the monitor, we actually had a guest on and the guest was Matthew S. Smith, So look him up. He's got actually i'll send I'll put the links in the show notes, but he mentioned all of the monitors that he recommends. I don't have it off the top of my head, but he had a great and a whole buyer's guide, so he explained like the difference between the monitors, which ones he likes, and I've got it. I'll put it all in the show notes, but it was from what I remember, he had some pretty strong
opinions on things. He also maintains the PC mag Monitor Buying Guide, so I would look there and let's let's see PC mag.
Let's okay here, but that's where Matthew Smith Matthew S.
Smith, And if you look at if you look at his information on there, he's got all the monitors that he recommends on PC mag. That's I'm trying to look it up. Of course I can't find it while I'm talking to you. Monitor Buying guide on PC mag. Let me see that real quick. Here we go best monitors of twenty twenty four. So I mean they recommend, yeah, some of these standard brands that you would know, like
the Lenovo, Dell HP A SEUs. But he explains in his interview what to look for, and I think that's the main thing is there's so many specs that he sort of like explained what he thinks are the things that you should mainly look for in these.
Monitors so available on your website.
Yeah, I'll link it up on the show notes.
I can't find it right now while we're talking on the air, but it was it was basically everything you need to know. Like I love when these experts come on they just say, look, this is what I like. I've said all these things. This one's like five hundred bucks and it's going to be fantastic. So but I would say the main difference between the iMac and the Macmini is, you know, the iMac is sort of like stuck in time, like once you get it, that's it.
I mean Mac Minnie kind of the same way, like you're not going to really be upgrading a lot of stuff on there. But I just like the idea that you're bringing your own components. So again, you can get that nice big display that you want, you can get a keyboard that you like.
I mean, you could do that with the iMac as well.
But I guess the only difference is, and this is something that Matthew talked about, was whether you should get a webcam built in or not, and he he said he does not like the webcams built in, and the reason is because you know they're usually higher quality when they're not built in and they're also you know, it's just much better.
Yeah, here's his buying guide. Okay, I found it.
Okay, so he so his best monitor overall is the Dell Ultra Sharp PIXEO is the best budget monitor for one hundred and fifty bucks. I don't think you want that one. The best budget four K is a Dell that's three hundred bucks. Best budget gaming monitor is also Dell. So he really likes the Dell stuff. MSI best Gaming monitor, Alienware, best gaming monitor a sus they make the best high refresh rate monitor that's a thousand bucks, and best budget.
As when they say gaming monitor, what's different between a gaming monitor and just a good computer like the like the like the studio display. Is there something different from a gaming monitor and Apple's expensive monitor.
I believe it's the refresh rate. I think that's mainly what it is and how it handles that.
I'm not a gamer, yeah.
So you probably don't need to worry about that, but that's I think that's the main thing. And he explains it. Let's see, yeah, yeah, higher a refresh rate, but he was also explaining how the refresh rates you know, for standard computing, you don't really need something that high. So I'm looking at the Let's see if you look at the the Apple studio displays. See like Apple doesn't even mention their refresh rates on their main page because most people are not looking at that.
You know, you know it's going to look good.
This does okay. Interesting, So the studio monitor does have a camera built in. I did not didn't even notice that on one And the other thing that the Apple monitors are doing now is they have the the iMac. The only separate the only thing that's a little bit different. It's got the downward facing camera. So it's called desk view. So you can put like a piece of paper if you're doing a zoom like in front of the monitor
and it will look down at that. So if you're sharing like things on your desk, you can do that. So that's one thing the iMac does that I'm not sure that the studio display does. But that's something to look for anyway. Great question, Yeah, I'll link it up rich on Tech dot TV.
Look for the show notes. This is show number. What is it?
This is 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. Richon tech dot tv is the website we've been talking about. Blue Sky. Bobo just found me on there. I just found him blue Sky. You can find me on there at rich on Tech. If you've adopted or are trying out that new social media platform.
Let's go to uh Kent. Let's see here Kent in Huntington Beach, Kent. You're on with rich Hi.
Rich.
I have a iPhone, twelve promats and two hundred and fifty six gigabytes. I've got like fifteen gigabytes left, but he can't download the last seventeen or eighteen iOS so enough says I don't have enough memory.
Oh you don't have enough memory? Okay, So well, so you said how many gigs you have left on your phone?
Fourteen? Like fourteen and a half.
Oh okay, and so and iOS eighteen is saying that's not enough.
Yeah, when it when it? When the downloads is it's point like four.
Well okay, but that's that's the download. But that doesn't take into consideration what this thing needs to do on your phone. So it doesn't just because the download is that amount. It wants a certain amount of space on your phone to make sure that nothing gets corrupted or it needs it needs some space to work, is what I'm trying to say. So, is there any way you can free up like a couple of gigs on your phone?
Yeah? I could it, just it would be nice if they would tell you what they need, or you know, built them in such a way that even if you i mean, because you you know, you pay a lot of money for these things in the storage, they should make it so that it works and you still get your usable storage, not always having to delete stuff.
Okay, So I'm looking at some things, some reports online and it's saying that for iOS eighteen, it looks like you need about twenty gigs of storage available. Now Apple doesn't I don't think they published this, but that is what people are reporting you need.
So yeah, I've heard people with sixty four gigabytes. They're really I mean, they're they're deleting them a ton of stuff from they're telling and still can't do it.
Sixty four you mean like sixty four total?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know that is yeah, that's unfortunate because here's the thing, like, for a long time, and many in the tech world gave Apple a lot of you know, a lot of trouble for this is that for many, many years they were selling phones that were understored, right, you had way less storage than people needed for today's current applications, which you know, if you're taking any sort of four K videos or you know,
even if you're downloading a lot of apps. I mean apps today are like three hundred megabytes sometimes so and that you know, just for like an average like Facebook or something, So you do need much more storage than you think on your phone. And also a lot of people think that they can just buy their way to more storage with iCloud, when you know you can in a way, but it's also kind of linked to your phone,
so it's not that easy. But and I do wish Apple would say on the on the actual you know, when you're downloading this or trying to download it, like, hey, you need one more gig of storage before we can install this, instead.
Of just yeah, you need to pree it up this and then we can download it or a different way to do it on your computer or something else.
Yeah, and by the way.
They should also say, like, here's three files you can delete that we think you don't need. So do you know how to free up space quickly on your phone or have you have you come up with a plan for that or no.
I haven't really, I mean I have. I have a lot of photos and videos, and I have a Google backup and Prime backup, so I could I could delete a lot of.
Those, Okay, So the easiest way to do it is if you go into oh see, I've I've got the new iOS eighteen, but I think it's similar, but I think under general I'm not sure if they still have it, but it says iPhone storage.
This might be new.
I know they have an iPhone storage somewhere on your iOS. It may not be under general, but there is if you find maybe just search for iPhone storage and what they do is they give you recommendations for what you can do to free up some storage. So, for instance, I'm looking at my phone, Netflix is holding fifteen gigs and that's just stuff I've downloaded on Netflix. I could easily get rid of that. Those are like downloaded shows.
I can easily get rid of those. In the meantime to download iOS eighteen and then re download those shows Instagram eight gigs, podcasts, five gigs, voice memos four gigs. So again, those are some low hanging fruit. Pretty easy to get rid of those things without even deleting your files or videos. But typically what I tell people to do is as long as they're backed up somewhere else, is you can delete some of the longest videos that
you have on your iPhone. And I think even Apple makes that tricky to find those, but sometimes they put them under the recommendations. But on Android it's pretty easy. You just go into your files app and you just sort by the largest files. But on on iPhone, you can go into your videos and you can just look at the times of the videos and find the ones. Let's see, can you sort view options? No filter, Nope, can't.
It doesn't let you sort by biggest videos unfortunately, but that's you know, an easy way to do it is just to look for a video that's over, you know, like I'm looking at one that's uh, let's see here, maybe like fifteen minutes long or something ten minutes.
It would be nice, it would be nice if they gave you the same storage on iCloud that you buy on your phone, so that if you have to do a total reset or something, you not have to like buy in it for a month or whatever just to save it and put it back.
Yeah, well there isn't.
That doesn't always work because I've had the genius part lose a bunch of my stuff when they set it downloaded to the cloud and it did.
Well, that's not good. But there is a feature that Apple did introduce this year or last year with iCloud, which is I'm trying to find the exact name of it, but yes, here it is. It's temporary iCloud storage. I'll link this up in the show notes. So this is
actually something they did that's pretty good. So if you have if you're switching to a new iPhone and you don't have enough iCloud storage to back up your current device, they will automatically expand your iCloud storage to accommodate everything on your phone so that you can move it over to your new one, and then once it's moved over to the new one, Apple will delete that information after twenty one days. So that's actually kind of a nice
thing they did. Understanding that people don't always have as much eCloud as they have storage on their phone. But you also have to remember Kent that Apple makes a lot of money on iCloud storage. That's one of their biggest growing areas of money for that company. This is rich on Tech. Welcome to another hour of rich on Tech. My name is rich DeMuro, talking technology with you at eighty to eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Welcome one, Welcome all.
We are here to chat technology tech news this week, your issues, new apps, all kinds of fun stuff. The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. While you're there, be sure to sign up for my free newsletter packed with a lot of the interesting stuff I mentioned on this show. It's kind of similar, except all in an easy to read format. You can also email
me from the website. Just hit contact And if you want notes or a link to something I mentioned here, just go to the website and click the light bulb and that will bring you to the show notes. I've got lots of shows. This has show number ninety eight, so you can find that there as well. How good is your password? Nord Pass, you know one of the password manager programs. They have a vested interest in this stuff. But they've been studying passwords for four six years, and uh,
apparently password habits are not improving. Even with all the people like myself that are saying you got to get a better password, people are still using week week passwords, and this is for their personal systems and their company computers. One two three, four five six is the most common password for the fifth time in six years. Now here's the thing. You may say, Oh, I do one two
three four five six exclamation point, that'll keep them out. No, these uh, these hackers use sophisticated programs that can figure out these passwords in seconds. In fact, looking at their website NordPass dot com slash a most common password list, Uh one two, three, four five six, you might think seven eight nine.
Adding to the end is going to be better. No one two.
Okay, So in the top ten, you've got the combination of knowing one two, three, four, five six, seven eight nine, and you've got password coardy one two three one one one one one one one secret Secret is number nine. Yeah, that'll keep them out. I Love you number eighteen, Dragon number twenty monkey number twenty one password with a capital P number twenty six. Yeah, that'll that'll keep them out. Target one two three, tinkle number twenty nine. Oh bobo,
they found your password. Oh yours is twinkle, of course, twinkle twinkle, Uh cordy with a G number thirty three. Uh okay. It just goes on and on and on. Now, by the way, all of these passwords, every single one of them, until you get to the word the number number one O eight, which is seven seven five eight five two one. Every single one before that takes a second less than a second to crack using software. This one takes uh four minutes, but they'll still crack it.
Let's see anything that's seventeen minute. Wow, So if you use the password unknown, that actually takes seventeen minutes to crack. So I guess, at the at the very least, if you're okay. So it looks like interesting. So Nicole takes two minutes, Anthony takes seventeen to crack. They recommend a password of at least twenty characters long. You will never remember a password that's twenty characters long. Plus you have to mix uppercase, lowercase numbers, and symbols. Never reuse passwords
across accounts. Consider going passwordless. You can use an option like passkeys. It's kind of funny. I've only set up pass keys on like one account, but every time I log into that account, I love it because it's so easy. You just unlock your phone and it puts you into the account. It's super, super easy. And of course, use a password manager. Use a password manager. I talked about it. You can use there's so many. There's a Bitwarden that's free, nord pass one password dash.
Lane, there's so many.
Just pick one and use it and secure that with a good password and make sure that you do not lose your recovery key. Let's go to Paul in Columbus, Ohio. Paul, you're on with Richel.
Huh. I love it.
I'll just give you a hard time.
Yeah, I've got a Tshiba notebook that I'm donating to the local library at the old computer, but it was hardly used and it still boots up the better. He's good, mom. I want to wipe it so they could put Linux or Chrome Plus or something like that on. But I've got Windows seven right now.
Oh okay, Yeah, So that's trickier because the new versions of Windows have an easy way to wipe them. The old ones do not, So what are you trying to do? What have you tried to do with this?
Oh? I know I'm having not much because I didn't want to screw something up. But I know there was a stuff stuff I looked up. It said to go to restore and recover. I think it was. Yeah, I mean at the end of the matter of fact, I've heard you talk about this to some extent in the path.
Yeah, I mean, you can't screw much up because this computer is you know it's going You're just going to recycle it. But so on Windows, let's see here. So Windows eight, Windows eight and ten and eleven obviously have an easy way to do this. Windows seven does not. So there are a couple of couple of apps you can use to do this if you want to just erase the hard drive. One of them is killed disc. Have you heard of that one? Okay, so that's one. There used to be one called DBAN, but I guess
that one is not really maintained anymore. But that's what that did in the past, is that you would basically make a put it on a drive like on a CD drive. You'd put it in the drive and as soon as you turn on that computer, it would see that program and it just erase everything. So it seems like it's still available. But last I heard, I got an email from a listener last year, Dave, and he said that d BAN is abandon where it has not been maintained in many years. It's full of bugs and
it won't boot on a lot of systems. So he says there is two things that he recommended, which is n wipe and a bootable version of that called shred os. So those are the the things that you can look up. But apparently, you know, all of these look like they take a little bit of know how to do, so it may not be that easy if you if you know, if you don't have the full know how, what about just putting what about just putting the chromos on there? That the chromos flex.
Flex you know, I said plus was flex. Okay? Could with that overright the window?
It should if you if you put it on there, as long as you're installing it and not just running it off the you know, off the us B because you can run this off a USB drive, but if you actually install it on there, you can you know, that'll that'll format everything, it'll wipe everything.
Off, so you might try that. Yeah, okay, and that that'll make it.
I don't even care if Windows seven was on make sure whether there's not much data on it otherwise, but they didn't want to erase it other one.
Yeah, no you won't. You won't need that. It's because once it's on there.
So basically, you you create this bootable USB drive and then uh, that's it. You install it on your your mac. Uh, well let's see it on trying to see what's going on here. Okay, Yeah, you install it on your PC or MAC to replace the operating system and that's it. And it's that's pretty easy. Maybe just do that and that way you give it to them already ready to go.
Okay, thought chickie.
Yeah, Chrome os Flex it's called. I'll put that in the show notes as well. Yeah, we got a quick minute.
Okay. I've got an older Ethernet switch that I've got my television and Apple Box connected to, and sometimes I'm getting a pause or a problem with buffering, and I'm just wondering if the switch could cause an old switch could kill it. That's like eight or nine sports on.
I don't think so, I mean a switch is going to be at minimum one hundred. You know it's it's a minimum one hundred. So there's no way that that's going to cause buffering on these systems.
So what's causing me to get pauses in the middle of a program? Have you radically?
Have you tried connecting the device via Wi Fi to your router and see if it still happens.
No, it's hard Everything is hard wired at this point.
Can you disconnect that hard wire or no?
Yeah, I could sure, I would use a yet or t a cube.
Okay, well yeah, I mean you shouldn't be experiencing buffering the fire TV cube has that's actually like the highest powered fire So I would say what I would try to do is I would do two things. I would first off, connect You might need a long Ethernet cable to do this, depending on where your router is, but I would connect the fire TV Cube first. I would just try it over Wi Fi and see if the
problem persists. And if that problem persists and you know, it's the cube itself and it's not the actual Internet connection, then the second thing I would do is connect. If it's still happening that way, then I would connect the fireTV Cube directly to your router with an Ethernet cable
and see if it happens there. So if it continues to happen with all the different methods of connecting, then you know it's something with your fire TV Cube and Paul, what I would do is my favorite solution is to just bring that back to factory settings and see if that continues to happen. You might have installed an app on there something that's just not agreeing with it, and
it's that's what's happening and causing that stumble. But today, in today's day and age, unless you're watching the Netflix Live fight, you shouldn't really have buffering issues.
It's just the way it is.
Eighty to eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show richon Tech dot tv.
Let's see.
We got an email from Brian in San Diego. He says, Hey, Rich, I love your show. I have a question about video editing. Is there a software or app that can automatically edit video clips into a full video. I have hours of go Pro footage from a motorcycle trip from San Diego to the bottom tip of South America, but the amount of footage feels overwhelming. Is there something I can automatically go through and find parts of clips that are good and cut them out and combine them with other clips?
Thanks keeps the keep the show rolling, Brian.
Yes, there are programs that can do this, but I will tell you every time I've ever tested one, it's pretty horrible. They're just nothing will replace an actual human being going through the video and formatting it for the video that you want. So I understand, and this is just a common occurrence. We shoot so many pictures, so many videos, and when it comes to placing those together,
it is not easy. Now, as someone who edits video every single day of my life, I find that of course, I want to have the ultimate say to what these videos look like, and I can trioge pretty quickly and find stuff, but I get it. It's it's a lot of work. It's not easy. But there are some programs that will do this, and you can try them out and see what happens. The first is actually built into GoPro.
So GoPro knows that this is an issue for people that shoot a lot of GoPro stuff, so they have what's called go pro Quick qu I K. So if you download that app, and I don't think you have to pay for it, but yeah, you can import your go pro video into there and it will come up with a little highlight reel. And all of these, by the way, will come up with a highlight reel that
lets you eventually tweak it to what you want. So go Pro not only will it take the the the video footage that you've shot on GoPro, but any other camera, so it can be anything. So I've tried that in the past. It's pretty good. And all of these programs are really looking for you know, they're looking for smiling faces, they're looking for the action in the shot. You know, they're programmed to look for certain things in the video
clips that might make that something that you want to see. Eventually, they're not human beings, so they don't always get it right, but they will do that. And also this go pro Quick can auto sync the edits to music. You can change the video speed you've got filters that you can choose from, so that's go pro quick Quik.
I've tried it.
I've never really I don't think I've ever posted a video that has been made automatically. I just haven't because they just they're never like they're they're almost there. The other one that I used to use, I don't know if this is around anymore, but there's one called Magisto M A G I t O, but it doesn't I don't know if this is actually around. It looks like they might have been purchased by Vimeo, and this one was actually it looks like it's still on here.
Yeah okay, oh yeah it was. Yep, it was purchased by Vimeo.
It looks like no, it says it was updated in twenty twenty four, so I might try it. Magisto is another one that I've used in the past. Again, it's just okay. The other one, I mean, obviously the big one is cap cut. So cap cut is gonna have this feature built into it and you can upload your stuff. It will come up with a little clip reel and this might be just fine. This might be all you need is just a quick clip reel of the stuff.
That you shot.
But I find that if you really want to do this, download one of these apps, like I would say, download a cap cut or download you know, any of these video There's so many video editing apps, but cap cut is one that I really like. Splice is the other one that I like. I think that's that's both iOS and Android, but those are those are both easy ways
to kind of do this on your phone. But for me personally, if I'm doing something that that's a bigger project, I'm doing this on my computer with final cut Pro. You can also get final Cut Pro on your iPad if you have if you have a recent iPad, I think you have to have an m chip in the iPad to use final cut Pro, but it's like five bucks a month.
But that might be an easy way to do it on your iPad.
And you might find, Brian, that you enjoy doing this, you know, once you start getting into it, you might find that you really like, you know, because what you do is just take all the clips that you have, put them all in the timeline and just go through each clip and just kind of triage it, like just clip the parts out that aren't interesting, delete the clips that aren't interesting, and then clip the little areas of the clip that's interesting, and then you'll just keep going
from there. So now you're twenty minutes of footage becomes ten minutes of footage, You're ten minutes a footage becomes five minutes a footage, You're five minutes of footage becomes three minutes, and just keep going through. So those that's the way I usually do it if I have a lot of stuff to work with, great question and have fun. That sounds like a fun trip. Now let's get into your Amazon News before we have. We've got ed Bag
coming up. He wrote for USA Today for many many years and now he is the current AARP Tech editor. He's going to talk about remote solutions for helping your aging parents with their technology challenges if you don't live near them, or we'll we're just.
Going to talk in general.
I've been wanting to talk and see he edited all the events over the years, so we'll talk to him in just a moment. But let me give your Amazon News. So first off, Amazon doing their Black Friday sale starts November twenty first, so they're doing it for a week November twenty first through December second. That might be longer than a week, and of course they're promising all kinds of stuff.
Oh look at this.
You can get gas savings for the first time this year, twenty five cents a gallon for Prime members. So buy your gas during Prime Week. I mean you probably have to buy it anyway, don't wait. Amazon also launching their competitor, I guess their answer to Timu. It's called Amazon Hall. This is a section that sells stuff that's just twenty dollars or less. Many items are priced under ten dollars
summer as low as a dollar. Here's the catch. It takes you one to two weeks to get this stuff delivered Amazon, which has made their name on super fast delivery. The last time I got something delivered, I ordered it that night and I got it delivered between four and seven am. So this you have to wait up to two weeks. I guess to compete with Timu. I guess it's cheaper. Four dollars shipping fee for anything under twenty five dollars, fifteen dollars return window, eight thousand return locations.
You can get an.
iPhone sixteen case for a bucks seventy nine, kitchen tongs for four ninety nine winter gloves for three dollars twenty one cents, table runners for two dollars ninety nine cents. Amazon dot Com slash haul you can only shop from your phone. Coming up next, Ed Bag, we'll talk tech right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. We'll get back to those phone lines in just a
moment at eighty eight rich one oh 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. The website for the show Richontech dot tv can also hit contact there and send me an email. Joining me now is a former USA Today Tech columnist and current AARP Tech editor.
Ed bay Ed Welcome to the show.
Hey, Rich, how you doing?
I am doing fantastic. So we've seen each other at many of the tech events over the years. How many years did you cover tech for USA Today? It was a long time.
It was a long time, about twenty years, actually twenty years over twenty years. Yeah, it's hard to believe. It goes fast.
And do you remember kind of the first thing that wowed you there? Because twenty years are talking, Oh, this is pre iPhone.
It's pre iPhone. I mean, there were a lot of things through the years. I mean I remember early on being excited about the first Kindle for example, Wow, going back. But the iPhone, of course, as we know, I'm not breaking news here, changed so much. And I was fortunate to be one of four reviewers who got to review the initial iPhone ahead of ahead of its launch, and
that was an interesting time, to say the least. And I remember giving it a pretty glowing review and I called it a prodigy and I said, like, some of them burn out. Well I guess the iPhone didn't burn out.
No, that has been quite the quite the amazing thing for Apple. But here's the thing, and this happens with a lot of tech products. When you're reviewing things in a vacuum, especially something that different that no one had ever really seen before. I mean, you're by yourself, You're reviewing this thing, and you're like, I don't know, like,
are people going to like this or people not? Like it was very limited when it first came out, but it was so different that it was tough to compare it to other things.
So exactly exactly, it was limited, but it also was very cool. I mean, you know, it didn't have things that we all take for granted now. You know, there was no app store to take one example back then, and of course through the years we know how that changed.
Yes, no turn by turn directions.
I mean they had they had Google Maps on there, but it wasn't the turn by turn that we all know and love today. I remember when the Motorola I think it was called the Droid Bionic came out with it. It was the first exclusive turn by turn. It even came with like a harness for your car to like set it up like a GPS device.
You know.
Yeah, I mean so many things over the years. So tell me about ARP as the tech editor. What's what's happening.
Well, well, I'm writing a column Tech Ask kind of asked the Tech Guru column in which we're taking questions from readers and so you know, I'll give a plug there send in your questions.
What are the concerns that readers are.
Well people, you know, it's interesting because we're dealing with the fifty plus crowd. I mean there's a lot of people who want, you know, hold on to landlines or their old phone numbers and things like that. You know, so we get we get interested in things like that certainly, Like you know, it's very hard to generalize. Sometimes people think, oh, a certain generation is in his tech savvy, but you know, lots of people have grown up through the years with
technology who are certainly in the ARP crowd. So you know, the people at every end of the spectrum in terms of technology.
And and post fifty at is not that old.
It's not.
Maybe when I was a kid, I thought it was, but now I don't think that's that old. Let's talk about some of the stuff in your recent One of your recent articles or one of the recent articles in AARP talked about access, like remote access. You know, if you have a parent that's across the miles they need some help with their computer. Is there a way to give that remote tech support?
There?
There is. There are several ways. And it's interesting because many people, you know, if you work for a company, for example, you may have had situations where you know, an IT person in your organization will will literally take control of your computer remotely, and if you feel comfortable with it, you let them access you know, have at
the cursor and do what they have to do. Well, you can actually do that, say with with you know a parent or a grandparent who, as you say, lives miles and miles away and you can't you can't answer the support call and go to their house.
Easily.
Built into Windows, for example, is something called the Windows Quick Assist and literally when you press control Windows, the Windows logo key and the queue simultaneously, it brings up this thing and there's some boxes there and a tool appears. It's a pop up window, and it creates a code that the person helping with being you in this case,
shares with the person needing help. And again, if they feel comfortable with this, uh, you can literally take over their computer and you're now the I T person for your for your mom or your dad or your grandparents.
Wow.
And that's built in two Windows, built into Windows. I did not know that.
Yeah, Yeah, there are some alternatives. There are a bunch of programs out there. I frankly haven't tested them, but they're programs with names like any Desk and there's something called detail Service and help wire and team Viewer.
Uh.
There's a lot of ways to do that. There's a lot of remote programs out there, but again, you've got this one built right into Windows. That's wild can be very helpful.
Now I'm curious because okay, look at it. I just looked it up and it says learn to protect yourself from tech support scams. Because here's the thing, ed, we know that these these scam artists, one of the biggest ways they take over people's computers is they tell them to download some software, right they say, okay, now we're going to lead you through. Could this be used nefariously in that way as well? Like should people be aware
of that? Like if someone if someone that's not your kid says, hey, let's connect using quick Assist, don't don't allow it.
Absolutely, you always have to keep your guard up, especially nowadays. You know, Uh, scams, I mean we unfortunately, it's it's the way of the world. There are a lot of scams out there, and AI is helping perpetrate some of that.
I guess.
The bottom line here is do not do not grant full access to a device to anyone you do not trust. Uh, And even if it's somebody you think is a relative. Make sure you know when you're when you're on one of these things, uh, you know, be on the phone too. At the same time, you know, Uh, that's always, you know, a helpful and easy thing to do. And even if you're able to disconnect what you are because obviously, if you take over my computer and I don't like what
you're doing, I can put you off. But before I do that, who knows what damage you might do?
What about AI? Because you know everyone's using it.
I was just doing a talk to some folks the other night and I said, look, don't be afraid of AI, Like, try it out. You're not going to break anything. And if you don't know how to use it, literally, you could ask AI. You know, if I'm trying to figure out how to do something, I will ask AI how to ask it.
I'll say, hey, how would I ask you to do this?
And it will tell me yeah, and sometimes exactly. And that's a good, good use case for it, you know, because it you know, it helps your brainstorm. You know, what what is it? I forgot to ask? What is it I should be asking? Who should I should be asking?
Now?
Of course we are, you know, we have to make sure that the answers that you're getting are accurate. You know, there's something out there that the tech community has called hallucinations, where it sounds like what you know, it sounds like a really authoritative, plausible answer, but guess what, it might
be made up or wrong. Now that stuff's getting a little bit better, some of the companies behind this are beginning to be a little bit better at providing sources for the information that that's being you know, sent to you. But you really have to be careful with what you're getting back.
Yeah, and that's the thing, Like nobody really wants to sit there and fact check everything. But I've been using Perplexity, which I really like for the you know, gives these answers and then I'll give you like kind of where it got the answers. I know that all of them are really starting to do that more and more. Like I've noticed, you know, Gemini kind of I think they
kind of pioneered the the Google one. Well, I guess Perplexity always did, but now I've even noticed because chat gybt has the web search built in, I think you have to be premium.
To get it.
But yes, I know right now, Yeah.
They're giving some uh what do we call it citations back in the day, right when you wrote a book report.
Exactly exactly, and you know, I tell people have fun with AI. You know, when I first started playing around with it, I would be in a restaurant with my family and and I remember one one time, We're at a pizza place where it was cash only, and I suddenly panic because I don't know about you, but I don't carry that much cash for me anymore. And I
so I'm gonna ask. I'm gonna have chat Gypt, I think it was at the time, write a little on the spot, little script about a scene about what it is if you're in a restaurant without you know, without cash. And it did it, and you know, it was not an episode of Law and Order or anything, but it wasn't bad. And then I'd said, well make it, you know, add a character or make it better or jazz it up somehow, and it would do that. And that was
early on. So you can have fun with AI too, but just be careful if you're you know, be careful about using it for something that's really serious, well, finance, health, et cetera.
How did you get out of the restaurant without the cash?
My wife had kid?
Okay, well I was so, I just I was at a restaurant the other night with my family in New York City actually, and I forgot to I locked my wallet in my suitcase because I left the room and I left it in the room to go on a run, and when I went out to dinner, I forgot to bring it, and so I'm eating dinner, and of course I was actually treating for dinner. So I was like, you guys won't believe this, but I actually forgot my wallet. And my family was like, I mean, now they all
had their cards, so I could, you know. It wasn't like we couldn't pay for dinner, but actually was able to add my card from my payment. I actually have a credit card app, you know, like one of my bank apps, and it lets you add the card to your wallet right from the app, and so I thought that was kind of cool. I was like, oh, this is why that's here. So I didn't even need the physical card and I was able to tap to pay. I asked the waiter, did do you take tap to
pay here? And he's like, yeah, we do. I'm like all right, I'm like I will pay that way.
You were ready to wash dishes.
Yeah, well, I was gonna just have my family pay and I'd be like sorry, I said, I'd treat. But you know you're paying any AI that you like, anything that you're using.
Well, I'm trying to play around with everything at this point. You know, I'm interested in in where AI is going with with healthcare, and really there's a lot of as you know, again, I'm not breaking news here to say that everybody is involved with this in some way. So I'm playing around with everybody and they all have, you know, things I like and things that could certainly be better. But I I it's hard to say I would. It's hard to pick a favorite, if.
You will, Yeah, we're definitely, I mean, I'm the same way. I'm using so many different ones. All right, A r P tech editor ed Big, We're gonna leave it there. What's the best way for folks to follow you these days?
Well again, come come at us at a r A a r P dot org slash tech a ar P dot org slash tech. Al So look for my tech Guru column which is in the main members the only section of ARP. So join AARP if you're not already remember and of course read our magazine, two, ARP Magazine and the ARP boet.
Thanks, Ed, appreciate it.
More Rich on tech right after good to be with you.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I got to tell you the gift of the year, and I said this probably last year, but it is just unbelievably amazing.
Uh.
I gave my dad one of those Aura frames a U R A and uh I didn't really know if you would even like it, Like it's a digital picture frame, right, And I am not kidding. I have never ever in my life seen me give something to my dad that was so quickly and universally loved. I've just never seen
anything like it. Like literally, he could not believe how amazing it was that he could see the pictures that he takes on his phone on his kitchen counter and he's like, it's just he just keeps adding them and adding them and adding them and adding them. And I said, well, you know, you know everyone else can add pictures to this frame as well from our phones, and it's just it's just such an incredible thing that once again I just can't help but recommend it.
So it's a U R A.
And it's just I've tried a lot of these different digital frames. I think that this brand is the best because it's so simple and easy to use, and also the software is really good and that makes a big difference. I mean, I remember back in the day when digital frames first started, you had to put like an SD card into them, and that's how you got the pictures on there.
This is all Wi Fi.
And the cool thing is you can when you go home for the holidays, you can set this up for your family member and then you can still continue to put pictures on that frame from your phone where you live. So I'll put a link in the show notes or a A U R A. And it's pretty pretty amazing. I just thought of that because I got a notification that my dad added more pictures to his frame. That's why I thought about it, said, your dad has added twenty more pictures to his frame.
Let's see here website for the show.
Rich on tech dot TV, James wrote in question on Apple Passwords, Hey, Rich, I have if I have everything Apple computer, iPad, phone, is it okay to use Apple Passwords as my password manager instead of one pass et cetera. Thank you, enjoy your show. And listening to you on KFI on Tuesday mornings. Thanks Jim and Dana.
Point.
Yes, so I think Apple Passwords is perfectly fine. Apple Passwords is brand new. It is in iOS eighteen. It is a full fledged passwords app. You can put all your passwords in there. It will generate passwords, it will do the two factor authentications. You can look for your Wi Fi passwords in there. It will also handle pass keys, so it does everything you need. Now here's my caveat This is great if you only use Apple products. If you don't, if you are thinking of switching, or use
a combination of products, I don't recommend this. Now if you use a Windows computer, they do have a plug in that will make this work. But you know, Apple's heart is not in anything that's not Apple. In fact, they make it actively tough for you to use their stuff with non Apple stuff. So I would say they probably begrudgingly made the password manager work for Windows computers, but they know that. Okay, you might have an iPhone plus a Windows computer. Fine, we'll give you this functionality.
But I would say, James, in your instance, yes, if you have everything Apple and you're sticking to Apple forever, fine, use it, but so like even okay, let me just look at my Okay, so my passwords here. So like I'm looking to see if there's a way to export all my passwords to another device. Now, almost every single password manager in the world pretty much lets you export your passwords to another program if you want to switch. Of course, I'm not finding that in the Apple passwords.
Let me look in the apps. Let me see if it's in the Maybe it's in the apps. Let's see passwords. Okay, can you export? No, I don't see any way to export my passwords. So that would be my number one red flag is that if you're using something like a dash lane or a one password or a Bitwarden or nord pass, there's a million of them out there, they all let you export your stuff so that you can switch to another program. Apple, I don't see that functionality.
So that's one thing. Number two, I don't think it's that easy to use, honestly, Like, I'm looking to see if I want to add a new item, and it's just okay, I think I'm just I think it's better than nothing. Like obviously, it just locks you into their ecosystem more and more and sure, it's easy and it's gonna work with all their Safari and all this stuff. But to me, I would just feel better if you
signed up with a third party app. But again, James, if you're just gonna use Apple stuff, fine, it's gonna work and it's better than nothing. So that's that's the main thing is that's better than nothing. Let's see another question here. Dennis writes in from San Clementy. Hey, Rich, I've lost my email, which was SBC Global dot net the Southern Bell. They were bought by Yahoo and years later Yahoo was bought by AT and T and three months ago I opened up my email and nothing's there. James,
Oh sorry, this is Dennis. Dennis Yahoo has I guess they purchased or they whatever. It's switched over to Yahoo mail now. So as I understand, if you go to Yahoo dot com and log in with your original SBC globe Net email address and password, your emails should be there. Same thing with Cox if you have Cox Cable whatever it was Cox Internet and your email used to be through Cox. Yahoo also purchased that, or I guess they.
I don't know if they purchased it or they were seated it whatever, it was, it's handed over to Yahoo. They're handling it now. Same thing with AT and T. It's all Yahoo mail now. So just go to Yahoo dot com your Yahoo mail and log in with your original log in and it should come over. That says, I understand it, So let me know. Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up to sad day in history. The guy who voiced that You've got mail is no
longer with us. I'll explain. Eighty eight rich one on one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome to another hour of rich on Tech. My name is rich Demiro. Glad to have you with me here hanging out talking technology. The website for the show Richontech dot tv. The phone line for the show eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight.
Seven four to two four one zero one. Sad Week.
The voice behind You've Got Mail has died. Elwood Edwards was the iconic voice behind aols You've Got Mail greeting. He passed away at seventy four in North Carolina. Now he recorded that famous phrase You've got mail, along with welcome, file's done, and goodbye. I can't do it as good as he did back in nineteen eighty nine. He recorded that and guess what he was paid just two hundred bucks for it. His wife, Karen, was a customer service rep at the company and volunteered him for the job.
This is when Steve Case was running the place, and uh, just so wild that you can imagine that his wife was like, hey, would you mind recording these things? We're doing something at work, and next thing you know, you are literally the voice of millions of Americans checking their email on a daily basis and logging onto the internet.
Edwards maintained a successful career in broadcasting. He made appearances on shows like The Tonight Show, and he just you know, he never really did much more than the You've got mail stuff, but kind of cool, just so cool that I think he said, he didn't really make a lot of money on that, but he was able. You know, he had a nice career in broadcasting. I think he worked at a local TV station. But anyway, we all
know that phrase. We've all said that phrase. There was a movie of the same name, and I remember having AOL by the way back in the day, and I remember they had a section. AOL was like all little sections. It was like sports entertainment news, and then there's a section called like Internet. And I remember every day I'd log onto my computer waiting for that little Internet to switch from like coming soon to like now you can access the Internet.
And one day it just switched, and I was like, oh my gosh, where do I go? And I don't even know.
I think I probably went to like yahoo dot com because there's like nothing on the Internet. I mean there was, but it was like mostly like you know, universities and personal web pages and things like that. But what a wild ride it's been, that is for sure, what a wild ride.
Let's go to.
Julie in Downy, California.
Julie, I hear you. Can you lower your radio in the background so we can hear your lovely voice?
Oh my gosh, Okay, can you hear me now?
I can hear you now.
It's like the Verizon guy before he went to sprint.
Okay, how's that sound great? What can I help you with?
Okay?
Sorry about that?
Okay.
So, my mom, who is an iPhone iPad user, is looking to get a new iPad because hers.
Is not holding a charge and she can't update some of her apps anymore.
Okay, okay, So she doesn't want to spend the.
Money for a pro.
She doesn't want a mini. And when I started to research, I was looking at either ninth or tenth generation or is there something else?
No, I just go with the tenth the tenth generation iPad for mom. I think that's going to be on sale over the holidays a lot. I'm already seeing. Uh looks like the lowest price already is let's see two sixty nine. Usually it's about three fifty, so.
It's already on sale. Let me see how much it is on UH.
So on Apple's website it is the standard price, right, which is three fifty all right?
Sorry to me? Three nine is that? Well?
Hold on, wait, that's really weird. If I on their main website, it says three forty nine. Oh, I'm on the education store. Okay, got it. Sorry, I got to exit that. So three hundred and fifty bucks for this thing. If you go online and you look at the different websites, Amazon on selling it for about three twenty BJS, which I don't think you're in Downey. I don't think we have those out here on the West coast. But that's
they're selling it. For two seventy So I think that's a good indicator of where we might see that price go over the holidays.
But that's uh, yeah, we don't have a BJ's here in California.
No, we don't, so no, but you know Costco may sell it for that for a similar price.
Right another, what did you say that price was?
Again, that was two seventy nine, So I'm looking at let's see here. Yeah, so Amazon had it as low as three hundred, so I would say, yeah, it looks like it looks like the price point that most people are going to have it at is probably around three hundred. If you wait until Black Friday, like specifically that day, you're probably going to get it for a little bit cheaper.
But I think in the weeks leading up to it, it's going to flirt with that three hundred dollars price point, and maybe places like Costco and BJ's, because they are membership member only, they don't have their prices as heavily advertised outside of the store.
It might be a little cheaper in there, but.
That's don't go with the ninth Don't go with the ninth generation just because these things are already old to begin with. Like the tenth and the ninth, so I think they you know, the tenth is already from a couple of years ago, so I would I would definitely. Wow, I believe it's a I believe it's a twenty twenty two model. Let me look, uh macro Rumors. So there's a great website called mac Rumors Buyer's Guide. And if
I look at the iPad, let's see here the iPad. Yeah, the iPad has been out for seven hundred and sixty days since so that's two years. But here's the thing. You know, what is mom doing on this thing?
She looking up named the medicines and reading books and not really place any games, and she uses it to look up information. Yeah, it can be dangerous.
This is well as long as she's not.
You know, uh, does you have her credit card attached to Apple pay to maybe take that away from.
Mom, because yeah, no, she does.
It's very easy to spend money on these things. These little iPads are literally just like they're literally like your extension of your bank account to like every company. That's what really the iPhone is. It's like I was ordering DoorDash last night, which I try not to do because it's so expensive, and my wife gives me a hard time because I go through like fifteen apps to see
which one is the cheapest. But these things, really the iPhone revolutionize spending money in the easiest way ever, with no friction. I mean, if you really think about it, that's really what the iPhone has done. Anyway, So I think the iPad, this ten generation iPad, will be just fine for mom.
Okay, wonderful, Thank you so much.
Appreciate it all right, Julie, have a great day there and downy. So a couple of resources for looking for deals. Number one, Google Shopping. They just revamped Google Shopping. It's completely new, so if you haven't been to it in a while, check it out Google dot Com, slash shopping. If you type in iPad tenth generation, it's gonna give you all the places that sell it that are on their kind of like network and how much they're selling
it for. So and I should have mentioned this though for mom, for the nine year old mom as well, she could go refurbished and save even more money. So there are some places, like a gizmo Go you can buy refurbished goods. Let's see, it's back markets. That's one of them where you can buy refurbished goods. So there's a lot of places you can go and buy these things that are cheaper. What was the other one that I just found out about Tiptop, So you can go
to Tiptop and buy stuff there. So there's a lot of ways you can save money. Amazon renewed anyway, So the shopping websites to look for the couple ways I look for deals. Number one is Google Shopping. Yahoo actually does a lot with shopping as well, so Yahoo's shopping.
And then the other one I like to do is just type in the product that you want into Google, so Apple, iPad, tenth generation, and then instead of just scrolling through the links, actually hit the news tab and you will find that you will see articles about sales related to the iPad or whatever product you're looking for. Why do you find those It's because all of these bloggers it's in their best interest to post links to these product deals because they get a little tiny cut.
It's called affiliate marketing. And so anyone who posted Amazon link, myself included, they might get a little tiny bit of that link. If you if you buy something from them, they might get like one percent of that you know, maybe on an iPad like a dollar or something. I mean it's pennies, but it's still added up times. You know, with these big blogs, millions of people buying off of them, they get some money every month. So again you can see Tom's guide number one link. iPad tenth generation is
my favorite iPad. It's one hundred and fifty dollars off in an early Black Friday deal one hundred ninety nine dollars that was on Amazon. The other way to track these prices is to install Honey, which I really like. And Honey has this thing called drop list, and once you put an item in your shopping car on Amazon or save it, it will email you when that price drops.
And I'm not kidding.
So I wanted to get a new ring spotlight for my house, and it was typically you know, I don't know whatever it was, but I got an email from Honey. I just put it in my shopping cart and just waited, and I knew this thing was going to go on sale, and sure enough, Honey emails me and says, hey, this thing's on sale for one hundred and thirty bucks, and let's.
See how much it is now. Ring Spotlight.
I think it's a floodlight camera I got. Let's see, Yeah, it's up to two hundred dollars right now. I paid one thirty. So again it's it's you're not going to sit there on Amazon and check the prices every single day, but honey is. And so I save seventy bucks on this thing just because I installed this shopping helper.
Now, obviously honey is.
You know, it's a business and they're making money because I think when you click the link that they send you they get a little percentage of that. But hey, they save me seventy bucks, so it's all good. Anyway, I'll put all of these in the show notes rich on tech dot TV. Today's show is ninety eight. So I know people email me and they say where do
I find the show notes? Just go to rich on tech dot tv and you hit the light bulb right at the top, and that will bring you to the rich on tech show wiki and you can look up just peruse the notes. You can find out how to listen to the podcast, how to listen live, where you can find me on social media. It's all there. Rich on tech dot tv is the place to go. All right,
coming up, install have another guest. This hour, we're gonna talk to the folks that make this software that scans papers at schools to see if they were written with AI. That's gonna be interesting, and coming up right away the break, I'll tell you about dealing with flight anxiety the apps that might be able to help. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. So this week I went to New York City. This actually might have been a
limit for me. I went for twenty four hours, left la seven am on I don't know Tuesday morning was it? And I returned Wednesday night at eight pm.
So it was.
Basically, well, I guess, is that more than twenty four hours. It's a little bit more than twenty four any one night in New York City. It was a lot.
It was.
It kind of tested even myself, not because I minded doing all that travel in that time, but it was really because I love New York City and it's such a fun place. So I went to dinner with my family on the night I was there. I actually, I think I mentioned I used AI to find the restaurant. So I used AI to find the restaurant. It was fantastic. If you want to see by the way, they did this thing at the Italian restaurant table side Tierra Mesoue,
which it was just fantastic. It's like they made the Tierramisioue right right there table side, which I'd never seen before. So I posted it to my Instagram at rich On Tech and it was fantastic the restaurant. This is what I love about these little walkable cities like that, is that you just walk like we're walking down the street, nothing is around, and all of a sudden, I'm like, I think the restaurant's right Oh, there it is, and
it's right across the streets. It's a little, tiny, cozy Italian restaurant, nicely lit, decorated for the holidays, and it was just so nice and that the owner was there, his wife was there, We're chatting with them. It was packed, and it's just it feels like you're in a movie because it's cold outside, but it's cozy inside. Everyone's just chatting their big jackets and stuff, except for me, who did not realize that it was cold there. So I
ended up having to go for a run. I went for a run right when I got off the plane and it was freezing. I mean, I'm talking wind whipping all over my ears and I shorts and.
I just you know, it was just so wild. But I had a great time.
Speaking of flying, if you're one of these anxious flyers, and I know a lot of folks are, I am not, I personally love flying. I think it's a miracle of technology, and I love to put my faith and trust in these amazing engineers and pilots that know how to do this stuff, because I don't know how it works, honestly, Like I am in this metal tube that is as big as a house with three hundred other people, and somehow it is the most comfortable thing to take off
from lax and land in New York City. How is that possible? And I'm sitting there like, oh, ring the button, Come, I have another drink please?
How is that a thing?
Like you are literally sailing through the air at six hundred miles an hour at thirty five thousand feet It just works.
Ninety nine point nine percent of the time.
So anyway, needless to say, I love flying, But I know there's some white knuckle folks out there.
If you're one of those people.
Travel and Leisure wrote an article about these apps that can help nervous flyers. So the first one is called Flying Calmly. This is available for the App Store and Google Play. It gives you turbulence forecasts up to thirty six hours ahead, so it shows you if there's going to be turbulence on your flight. Now, I don't know about you, if I'm a nervous flyer, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing to
know it. But I do know someone close to me that is a nervous flyer and they look up the turbulence forecast for the flight, and I think that they feel better if they know they're going into the flight when it's not going to be turbulent e. And if it is going to be turbulent e if that's even a word, they feel better knowing that, Like that's a predicted thing, right, it's not just like random. By the way, the best book I ever read that made me a
very confident flyer was by Patrick Smith. And trying to get the name of the book here, let's see he wrote the book Let's see Flying Ask the pilot. That was the book. Great, great book. And I read this book, and I don't know if this book made me. I think if you don't like to fly, this book might make you a more scared flyer. But for me, someone who already liked it, it was like, okay, this is anyway, Ask the Pilot by Patrick Smith. It's a great book
to read if you're a scared flyer. The other things that they mentioned in this article sore so Sore is another app that will tell you fear management lessons and also a G force reader, so you can see the G force on your plane through this app. Okay, I think all these apps are actually secretly trying to make people more scared. And then the one I like is terbly t rbli dot com and this gives you the turbulence forecast for your flight. You can just do it
on the website. But what's interesting is it gives you the historical data, so it tells you the most turbulent routes and the most turbulent airports. So I had a feeling that in North America some of the most turbulent airports. Okay, so the most turbulent airports of twenty twenty three in North America number one Portland number two, Denver number three, Las Vegas. I knew it was Las Vegas. Flying into
Las Vegas is like white knuckle. You're gripping that seat the entire time you're landing because it's just like you're being whipped all over the place.
What is white knuckle.
It's like when you hold something so tight that your knuckles turn white.
Okay, never saw that? You never you never like, held on for dear life. I don't know, it just happens. No, that's the first time I've ever heard it.
Oh, it's it's terminology, but I you know, maybe you know. My point is it's when you're nervous and you're just hold you're holding on for dear life. You've heard that, you get it now, but I didn't know you was before. You've heard of that though, holding on for dear life. Course, Yeah, so that's like I think it's similar. I think it probably comes from like you can see your bone through the skin.
Maybe I don't know.
I guess they're playing me off. Then they also have the most turbulent routes. Nashville. I knew it. Another one Nashville. I flew in there and that was a you know, a knucklebiter. Is that what they call it all has to do with your knuckles? If rich on tech dot TV, I'll link up the the apps and we're gonna talk to turn it In CEO, the folks would turn it In coming up next. Welcome back to rich on tech Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The
website for the show rich on tech dot TV. If you want the links, hit the light bulb for all the stuff I just mentioned about. The flying Joining me now is turn it In cpo Annie checkatelly.
Annie. Welcome to the show.
Thanks Rich. Happy to be here and excited for the conversation.
Absolutely So we're talking about turn it In.
I know does some sort of you you can explain, but you know, in schools AIS having a big impact because it's being used for everything, not just students, but everyone's using AI for just about everything at this point, and so this is a real issue when it comes to grading papers and students turning in stuff that don't really care if they, you know, work the system.
So explain what turn it In does.
Sure so, turn it In is a company that's been around for over twenty five years now.
It got started.
With the beginning of the Internet taking shape and teachers feeling that many students were going to different sites and copying and pasting and putting it into papers. So different technology, similar problem in a different age, and so turn it in. Originally was was created to find what we call cop be paced plagiarism and to let teachers know when we saw either there was a lot of matching between a student paper and a site or perhaps even another paper that a.
Different student charge in.
So really focused on academic integrity to help students really create their own original thinking. And then with the advent of chat GBT. So the end of twenty twenty two was the release of chat GPT, but it wasn't the
first time we'd started working on generative AI. Chat GPT or GPT three five came out actually in June twenty twenty, so we got to play around with it in advance to really learn the statistical patterns of generative AI in writing, and so we were able to learn early, and so when it came out, a lot of our customers and teachers were quite afraid. I think that the sentiment has changed.
I think there's still a lot of fear. But those first two months there were, you know, articles being written everywhere such as like it's the end of the paper, it's the end of the essay, Everyone's going to cheat. And so even the New York public schools actually banned it. It was January of twenty twenty three, in the hopes of preventing any problems. There was like an early chaos, and we created an AI Writing Indicator so that teachers would have insight into whether or not AI was.
Being used in papers.
And so we've come a long way and it's been quite a journey since then.
Wow.
So at the end of the day, it's very similar. The teacher feeds the paper that the student writes into your software and it tells you if it's plagiarized basically, or if it's coming from AI.
Pretty much so, yes, the student turns it in through their normal usually a learning management system, and then yes, the teacher is able to see what parts of the paper were either matching with a different paper or predicted as AI writing.
And how accurate are you? Like, how does this you know?
There's so many papers out there, and I guess when you say if it matches another paper, I think of all the movies where they pull like at the fraternity house. Like they pull like the filing cabin open. They're like, okay, here's your science report that you can just copy and paste. But how accurate is your technology?
Yeah, so we can divide that up.
So the copy paste the example of you know, pulling a paper from a database of past papers, that's harder to do with turn it in nowadays. And so in that situation, it's actually quite easy because we show the teacher the paper or the website or the journal article that it matches. Right, So there's what we call it, you know, a smoking gun there. It's very easy to point out where that match happens. Whereas AI it's not as simple.
Right, we're not matching to something.
We're using statistics patterns to determine if something was written by AI. And in terms of the accuracy, there are two parts, and it's really important to understand this. There are two parts of accuracy that make up whether the effectiveness of a tool. The first is and the most important is the false positive rate.
So that is when we say, or another tool.
Says that something was written by AI and it was actually written by a human. And so what we do is we maximized to we reduce that as much as possible, So we will change the well how much we catch in order to keep that below one percent, So less than one percent of papers will be flagged as having over twenty percent AI.
In total, whereas.
We probably miss on the other side, we probably miss about fifteen to twenty percent of AI we let go by so as to keep that false positive break down.
So what I mean, I guess the question is if I use AI to write my paper, what is this looking for? So looking for just AI? Is it using AI to look for AI? Like it knows that a you know, an AI writs in a certain way, and can a human you know you said you have the false positive and stuff. So I mean, obviously there are instances where a kid probably says, no, I wrote this whole thing and it was clearly just CHATCHBT.
Like absolutely, and so yes, we use AI to detect AI. So because of our history, we have a lot of data on how students write, just not how humans right, but how students write.
Is it all these papers that were fed in back in the day for the copy paste.
Yes, yes, and so we have this trove of data that shows us statistically how students put together words in different types of scenarios.
Uh.
And then we have that model and we trained it, and it compares itself to how a large language model put together puts together words and sentences.
And a large language model the way it writes is not for completeness of thought.
So when we write something, we think about, Okay, we're going to make a point here, and we have the end in mind. When we're writing, we know that we have to complete a thought that at the end is going to make a statement or an argument or whatever it is that our.
End goal is. And LM does not have an end goal in mind. It goes word by word by word by word.
That's just predictabor meaning that's exactly what it is.
It's just predicting the next word.
And so it's always pulling the most probable next word, which humans rarely do they do, but it's rare, especially in the number of successions. So some of the safety measures we have on our AI indicator is that we won't make a prediction if the if there's less than three hundred words, and that's unique to our We feel we need that much text to really make a judgment that we can provide insight into So that's one of those examples.
So can a student kind of check their own like, do you have like a consumer facing tool that people can access to like put their stuff into to see if it might be flagged?
We do not.
We debate this a lot, and we debate it and we talk about it with our.
Customers because I know why we debate it now.
I just thought of the reason, because then I would just take my paper and I'll just keep tweaking one word at a time until it said, oh no, this was totally written by a human.
Now I guess yeah.
We do offer.
I mean we are working on how we can do that in a safe way. For instance, how do we do that in a way that the teacher knows that they did that. And so in our future iterations of our product, we're really looking more not so much about detection, but more about that transparency, so that assumption that you know what, we're all going.
To use this in different ways. What are responsible ways of using this?
Okay, and I have coached this.
I've got less than a minute, so I want to I just want to. I got less than a minute, so I want to. I want your advice for students and teachers about this whole situation, like, what is your you know, you've been working with this company for a long time. What's your advice to students and teachers here?
Yes, I have three teenagers and my husband teaches high school English, so this is a very common discussion at my house. So the number one thing is play with it yourself, right, get accustomed to it. If you've not open chat, GBT or a tool like that, use it.
Also, ask your students to use it in front of you.
I bet they're already using it in different ways, whether it's summarizing things or making things easier. Ask them to use it in front of you, even for a paper, and see how they're using it, and you can learn kind of the productive ways in the unproductive ways. And then when you're talking to your cheek, your student, your kids, teacher, ask them their philosophy on how much they think and what types of assignments it's appropriate. This is all about
being transparent. It's not about you know, punitive, you know, making this child punished because they use it, but helping them understand the right way to use it.
All right, any check Itatelly from the plagiarism detector tool turn it in dot com. Thanks so much for joining me today. Really interesting coming up, Rich, We are gonna have your original thoughts. Nothing chatchybt coming up. It's gonna be your original thoughts. It's the feedbag right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology, and it is time once again for the feedbag. So if you don't know what the feedbag is. I get a lot
of emails from you, a lot. Like when I say a lot, I can sit down and do emails indefinitely, like literally all day, all day, every day.
But I love it.
And if you know, if you've ever written me, you might get a response because I do enjoy writing back to you. But these are the emails, the comments, the questions, all the things that you send me that I find interesting and I read them here in the feedbag if you want to submit something for the feedbag. And by the way, feedbag is a combination of feedback and mail bag, so that's where feedbag comes from. Yes, I just thought it was clever and funny, and so we call it
the feedbag. Well I call it the feedbag I mean, there's really no one else.
It's just me.
It's literally me, so Rich on tech dot TV hit contact if you want to get your message in on the feedbag. Manny writes in hey brother, I love my ray band Metas. I had them about a year now, only a couple of issues. Battery life is short. I only get about sixty to ninety minutes of music at work. Also, they don't handle recordings at live concerts well if you're upfront, too much noise for the mic. Hope you and the
family are well. Yeah, we talked a lot about these ray Bandmetas, so many questions and comments about them last week.
I am loving them. Everyone. I show these things too.
They absolutely just love it, and I'm continuing to find more and more uses for them. So they are fun. Agnes writes in Hey Rich, I'm definitely not a techie. However, I listen to you every Saturday and learn something new. Just heard you talking about the Aura frame you got for your dad. My kids got one for my husband and me a couple of years ago, and we love it.
It.
Sits where we can see it and at our kitchen table. It brings a smile to our faces seeing memories with our kids and our grandkids, and yes, all of us add to it, which makes it amazing to see pictures we didn't add. I'm actually looking at my aura as I type this email. Thanks for your great show and information, Agnes. Yes, I'm telling you this is the easiest gift to get anyone, because it just you can't look at this thing and
not smile. You think that you look at your photos on the phone, You don't you realize that there's just so many pictures locked onto your cell phone that you never look at. And so by day you know, maybe not day one, there is going to be amazing, but you know, day three, day four, as you get into a routine of saying, oh, I took a good picture today, let me share that to my frame or my family's frame. It's really a great thing. I'll put the link in the show notes. Dat writes in Hi, Rich, my name
is Dat and I'm blind. I love your show, sir, you make tech real fun. I'd like you to have more guests on that are experts on assistive technology on your show to keep us disabled folk updated on the latest unique tech for us. Please talk more about accessibility on your show thank you for a great show every week.
That is a good point.
We have had guests in the past talk about accessibility, and I have gone to the season Accessibility conference, but we will. I will make it a point to actually book more guests that talk about these things, because there are just so many things that are happening on a daily basis that affect you know, the low vision, the
blind community, and just accessibility in general. Tech is such a huge driver for accessibility, and so we do need more of that, and I will absolutely keep that in mind and book more guests for that.
Thanks for that, Thanks for that that.
Jay David writes in don't know if this will be seen, but transition lenses need to be broken in by leaving them in bright sun or under ultraviolet light to get dark. If you wear them enough outside, they'll eventually darken. In the past, I've put them in my backyard facing south. My latest pair was treated at the store of the UV device for about ten minutes and they got extremely
dark fully broken in. Huh So I mentioned that the ray bands have transition lenses that go darker, but I said they didn't get very dark and interesting, so Jay David says that you got to leave them outside. Okay, I'll leave them outside for a little bit. I feel like I have noticed they've gotten darker over time, but they're still They're not like sunglass dark. You know, it's not like you. You know, So it's like anyway, Bonnie,
Oh gosh, this is all about the ray bands. I would like to buy a pair of those ray bands. Only problem is, no one thinks there's a large enough market for people with smaller heads, slash faces, slash wrists, and thus we get left out of the cool stuff because it looks ridiculous on us. Thanks for all the great info you share, Bonnie. You know it's funny. Every product that's a wearable that I test, someone's not happy.
On one side.
Some people are like, oh that watch is too small, Oh that watch is too big. So there are many I think tech companies are getting hip or to the fact that people want a variety of these devices and various sizes. So the ray bands do come in various sizes. So I think that you should give give him a check. Daniel from Rutherfordton, North Carolina. He says he listens to the podcast and writes in hey rich regarding the caller who wanted to consolidate and sort photos from multiple external drives.
I suggest Mileo Photos. They have free and paid plans, work across platforms and devices. Many people love it. I've used it a little, though I'm not really a photo hoarder. All right, Mileo Photos if you want a photo management I personally still think Google Photos is the best. In fact, I just finished a project that I've been trying to accomplish for probably eight years now, and that is consolidating all of these different drives I had of my photos,
like backups, and getting them all into Google Photos. Because Google Photos, I don't know if you know this, but it's not going to put in duplicates. So if you have photos in different places, it will upload those photos and it won't put them in your collection if they're duplicates, which is really nice. So I just I was uploading I mean I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes of photos that I was uploading, and it all went in there and it's fine, and now I finally have that.
Now my second phase is to go into Google takeout and actually download a copy of all my Google Photos. Christopher from Commerce Georgia says, on your November ninth show, you spoke about home internet provided by cellular companies. I use T Mobile home Internet and I love it for the price and speed. I browse email, stream Netflix, Discovery Plus and Paramount Plus and keep my devices updated. It works perfectly for all of that without any complaints. The speed is perfect.
Good to know.
Neil from Ohio writes in, I just want to say the cybersecurity Lady was great last week and today's newsletter is fantastic. I'm counting on you to help us stay more private and save more money. Thanks and keep them coming. Thank you, Neil.
Let's see.
Paul writes in, I agreed about what you said about the poor quality of Netflix movies. It was always a challenge to find something worthwhile watching, and I usually ended up disappointed in the acting or the plot. I finally
gave up and canceled my subscription. In these times of rising prices, I was shocked, shocked, shocked to borrow Claude Rains's line from Casablanca to get an email from my visible phone provider saying my monthly fee is going down by five dollars for me being a loyal customer of
six years. Thanks for all that you do well. Thank you, and yes that is I joked last night on Netflix on Instagram that if you were watching Hot Frosty on Netflix, you should stop because we needed the bandwidth for the fight. And Kim emailed me and she said, is that a real movie? And I said, yes it is. It's on the homepage of Netflix, and you know it's one of their Hallmark movie esques. Anyway, I have not watched 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 richontech dot tv. You can find me on social media, including my new found account at blue Sky. I am at rich on Tech. If you haven't gotten on there, check it out. It's kind of fun. It feels like you're part of something new. Next week, we'll have the Wirecutter on to talk about holiday deals and how to use AI for your recipes and to bake. Thank you so much for listening. There are so many
ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Bobo on the board today, Kim on the phones. My name is Richdmiro, I will talk to you real soon