OnePlus 12 Smartphone & Mother of All Data Breaches

place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe the tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up the 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 an option. Just go to rich on Tech dot tv hit the link that says contact. We got some great guests on the show

this week. Juan Carlos Bagnell, some gadget guy on YouTube, will join me to review the new one plus twelve smartphone getting a lot of good reviews, and I think his will be positive as well.

bring your wife to work day. Bobo brought Britney in, his beautiful newlywed wife, so thanks for joining us here in the studio. She might she may pick some mus I picked the first song, so well, maybe let her pick something. Uh okay, So this is really wild. I switched to the Samsung Galaxy S twenty four Ultra this week to really put it through its paces. I don't do this very often. The last time I did it was with the Pixel fold where I actually switch my

personal SIM card and phone number into the phone. And it's kind of a big deal because it changes everything, right, but I really wanted to see kind of like it's been a while since I was in an Android and I kind of wanted to see like day to day what it was like, and it's been amazing. This phone is really really impressive. When I say this is the most powerful phone I've ever tested, it truly is. I mean, the screen is just impeccable. The software I've even gotten

used to Samsung's little special flavor of one. UI have gotten used to that it is fast. The antenna places where my iPhone did not have a signal or work very properly. This thing is just blazing fast. The powerful nature of this thing is just really incredible.

much fun. The little AI features not using them as much, but the Circle to search is like it's just such an incredible feature where you can scribble anything you want on your screen, circle highlight whatever, and it will reverse search that on Google. So if you're on like Instagram, whatever, you want to see the shirt that someone's wearing, like the brand, whatever, just circle it and you can buy it.

Friend number one we texted and he wrote Android question mark. I figured i'd spare you the complaining about the green bubble and I said, yeah, I know, I'm testing the new Samsung phone. Friend number two, Okay, thanks green bubbles. And then he put a little emoji that I don't know what it means, but it looked like it was like two eyes looking off to the side. Acquaintance this oside, I bobo said, Okay, side eye, that's what it is. Acquaintance.

I don't even really know this person. And we texted a couple of times and she said, also, I noticed your green bubble. I take it you're using the new phone. Random person. Uh call screener Kim. This just happened a couple of minutes ago. I didn't say anything, didn't prep this at all. I just texted her from the green bubble. She goes, also, you're turning my text green today. Ew must be tech with that Samsung phone. And she made

me switch to WhatsApp. So, Kim, I love you, but oh my gosh, this is what you have to deal with. And so this is why I love doing this actually, because I get to see what it's like to have to, you know, put up with this stuff.

this rash? Like no, I'm trying to enjoy my night. But that's what people do. They proceed to pull out their phone and ask me to, you know, figure out something. Well for family, of course, I've got a soft spot in my heart. And so my mom, Well, let me tell you.

up the kids on the way to school. Call my mom just casually. She's like, oh, good thing you called. I'm like, oh, why, Well, my phone. My TV's not working. What do you mean your TV's not working? I would just stop working. Well, what do you mean, Well it comes on? But nothing comes on? I said, well is your fire stick? You know, just got the Amazon fire stick that I set up on a Roku TV, and you know, sure enough, we go through this whole troubleshooting stuff.

And I don't know if you know, but like troubleshooting from three thousand miles away with someone who is, you know, not necessarily tech savvy is not the easiest thing. So she's pulling out the HDMI, she's pulling out the power cord, and I have to make sure she gets all this stuff back in. I can't figure it out. So what I do. I go to my brother justin you're on the line. This is my actual brother who I had to bring in to actually help me with my mom's set up. Did you help her get this set up?

I'm like, all right, fine, it hasn't been connected to Wi Fi and whoever knows how long, so let me let me do the update. Ten minutes later, comes back and the Wi Fi is disconnected again. It must I think it factory reset the TV. So I get it back on my Wi Fi. And you know how much of a pain it is to enter in all the little password symbols through the control, the remote control.

eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website is richon Tech dot tv. You can hit contact there to submit a message for me or a note for the show in the feedback segment. Let's see what else so on Instagram, it's at rich on Tech. Let's go to Jim in Claremont, California. Jim, you're on with Rich Hi.

detect the other language that the person's speaking. It will listen to that and then translate it and play it back in the language that you can understand, and you can just have a back and forth conversation like that. Is it perfect, No, but it's pretty good. I mean, if you can imagine that, you can just call someone in Japan. They can answer the phone a restaurant and speak in Japanese and you can understand what they're saying, and they can understand what you're saying, all because of

this middleman translation. That's pretty incredible. So that's one way you can do it. The other translation feature they have built in is in the text messaging app, and so you can type a message and literally translate it. It'll be translated in real time, so when that message arrives, no matter what it says and what language, it will figure that out and translate it into the language that you understand. And then the third way that it can

translate things is with a translator app. And so when you are sitting there talking to someone, it's a two way app, so on your side of the screen it has your language and on their side of the screen it has their language, and then it translates back and forth.

And the neat thing they did here is that you can hold the phone between you and one half of the screen is sort of rotated so that they can read the bottom half of the top half and you could read the other side, so you don't have to like flip the phone around.

can translate text on screen. I mean, there's really a lot Like our phone is getting to the point where you can pretty much, you know, deal with any language you want on this phone and it works. Jim, thanks for the call today, and Clairemont appreciate that beautiful day here in southern California. So a lot of people outside, I guess enjoying the warm weather for the first time before it rains again. All right, let me get through two quick AI stories, because AI is incredible, but it's

also messing things up. So AI, these fake AI Taylor Swift images are spreading across the internet. These are explicit images that were generated using AI of Tailor Swift, and as you can imagine, not very nice. People are not happy about this. We haven't heard officially from Taylor about this, but they were spreading on x formerly Twitter for a while, read it and Facebook, and it took a while for

these things to get taken down. A lot of people saw these images when they were searching for Taylor Swift related things, and as you can imagine, not a good thing. Apparently they stem from this toxic telegram group dedicated to sharing abusive images of women. So you might be saying, well, how did they generate these things, because these AI systems don't they block this stuff? Well, yeah they do, but people spend their entire day trying to figure out how

to get around these things. So they didn't necessarily say make me an image of Taylor Swift. They used words that might generate images similar to Taylor Swift. And then somehow I haven't seen these, so I don't know what they look like or what they were doing, but apparently they were pretty bad. So this is not the first time we're going to see this. This is not the last time we're going to see this. This is going to be this idea of a deep fake. We are just going to see more and more of this and

it's going to get more and more real. And so especially with celebrities people in the public light, you are not going to be able to believe what you see when you see those pictures. Then when it comes to the election, we know that this is going to be the election of AI and it is going to have a huge impact in this election. With misinformation and all kinds of stuff, whether it's pictures, whether it's videos, whether it's audio. So we have the first AI generated audio

robo call. This happened in New Hampshire. It was purportedly President Biden urging Democrats not to vote in the primary. And this call apparently was sent to a lot of people they got it. I listened to it. It sounded like Biden, and apparently they use this this eleven Labs audio feature that basically you just need a couple of minutes of people's voice to generate an AI voice, And I thought this sounded very convincing. And the problem is

people are getting these calls. You don't know is it real? Is it fake? Grobal calls are a part of the election, So how do you know if this stuff is real? How do you know if it's fake? You just have to be on guard. Anything you see, anything you hear, especially when it comes to celebrities election stuff, you might say, wait a second, is that real? You just got to think about it, because this AI stuff is really getting realistic. Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven

four to two four one zero one. Coming up, We're going to talk about the new one plus twelve smartphone getting a lot of accolades. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich to me Zo here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. It is quite the year for smartphones. We just talked about the new Samsung Galaxy S twenty four series. Uh, there's a new mint Pixel

phone which I'll talk about a little bit. But we also have a new one plus phone, the one plus twelve, and this is a powerhouse of a phone as well, very different than the way Samsung approaches things. But joining me to talk about this phone is onan Carlos Bagnell, some gadget guy on YouTube. I highly recommend that you follow him there. He does great in depth reviews of smartphones and also other things.

The battery is larger, but even though the battery is larger than even the most expensive Samsung, it charges substantially faster. Their charge standard on this phone can go from completely empty to completely full in roughly thirty three minutes.

dec you don't. I don't think you see ads on TV for one plus like you put Samsung, Apple and Pixel.

the dusty back corner of a carrier store. They weren't paying to really put them up right next to Samsung's and Apples.

to go very very marginly. We're going to sell the most aggressive technologies that we can get our hands on. We're gonna cut prices as much as we can, and in a way, I bet you they are probably balancing out some of those costs against their previous carrier relationships. So this is a very exciting strategy for a brand that has consistently delivered very good value for the money and now trying to push that strategy even a little bit further.

like a fun candid indoors right. The image doesn't fall apart. You can still catch a moment of people laughing or hugging. You're not shoving your phone right into their face to try and get like this moment and distract from what's going on. It's a really good candid lifestyle kind of photography solution. And the Ultra Wide is similarly a very

high resolution, high performance sensor. So I would still say like an iPhone Pro or a Galaxy Ultra is likely going to outperform this phone, but at hundreds of dollars more. And when you put this up against the phones that cost the same from Apple and Samsung, these cameras are noticeable improvements in terms of hardware the physics of how we capture and play with light. One plus has the win in the sub one thousand dollars but still premium category of phones.

getting the best phone that they offer? Am I getting the nicer phone? Am I getting the more budget friendly phone. You can look at the price tags, obviously, but I feel like that is part of the education. That's part of the on ramping to someone who's considering one of these is you do kind of need to do your own research. It's not as established as iPhone, iPhone fifteen, iPhone fifteen Pro, Galaxy S Series twenty four to twenty four plus Ultra. We kind of understand this a little

bit better. But when I go dollar for dollar, there really isn't anything I find on an iPhone fifteen plus or an S twenty four plus that I would recommend. There's better screen tech, better charging tech, longer battery life, bigger battery, better camera sensors. One plus has a very very clear shot at I think what is the weakest segment of Apple and Samsung currently, Apple and Samsung doing

way better Above one thousand dollars. One plus is seeing a clear opportunity to kind of hit Apple and Samsung where they're most vulnerable.

happen to anyone. And I the main thing when you're getting scammed is that you're under some sort of pressure, whether it's time, whether it's money, whether it is someone else telling you to do something. And so that sort of happened to us, and we did end up getting scammed in a huge way. But I'll explain basically, after the play, trying to get a ride home, right called the Uber Uber circling around. It's pouring in Los Angeles. Now La shuts down when it rains because people here

do not know how to deal with the rain. We don't have umbrellas, we don't have boots, we have nothing. We were wearing shorts and flip flops most of the time, and so when it rains it gets pretty wild anyway, So I was under pressure after this play ended. As you can imagine, there's thousands of people spilling out onto the streets of Hollywood Boulevard and I can't meet up with the car. And my wife is like, what's going on?

What's happening? And I'm not blaming her, but it's like one of these things where you want to get home like you're done, you know, and so.

where's the meter. I'm like, oh, no, there's no meter, there's no sign it was it was a taxi, but I think the person was off duty and just picking up rides, and so I was like, oh no, we're going to be taken here, Like I have no idea how much this ride's going to be whatever, you know, are they going to request cash, I don't know. So long story short, we got home safely, which was my main goal. The ride ended up being about three times the price of the Uber, but I was perfectly fine

with that because we were home safe. But my lesson learned is that when you're under pressure, that's when you are susceptible to being scammed. When you're trying to do something fast, you're doing something hasty, stop and think. Because if I would have thought like why is there no light on this car? And when I get in, why is there no meter in this car? Those would have been two red flags that would have made me get out of that car.

THEIRS is not available in many locations. But let me see AT and T five G Home Internet. I gotta find out what this name is. Internet Air there it is AT and T Internet Air. So I would go on the web and I would check all three of these. I'm sure you're getting targeted ads for this T Mobile one, which is just fine. But the main thing is if you don't have a good wireless signal at your home,

it's not going to be that good. So the good news is none of these have contracts, so you can call up you can get this thing shipped to your house. It's basically plug and play. You plug it in your window, it pulls in that signal and then it broadcasts that signal out as a so it takes in a cellular signal and converts that into a Wi Fi signal that you would then connect this TV too. So that's what I would recommend. See which one I would start with AT and T just because your service is through AT

and T and you know it works. So I would check to see if their Internet Air is available at your location. It is in very limited areas so it may not be, but I would check to see if that one's available first. Then I would move on to Verizon T Mobile to a price check, see which one is cheaper for what you get and the speed you get and I think as far as this powering what you want to do, which is just stream stuff on

your TV, it will absolutely work one hundred percent. So if you're streaming stuff on your phone already, it's the same thing, it's the same signal. It'll just be on your big screen TV. So good question, Lauren, Thanks for calling in today from San Diego. Let's see we got an email question here. Let's see. Jay says, I would like to connect my mom's phone remotely to assist her with installing apps or guide her on how to use the phone. Is there a free app that we can use.

What would be your suggestion? She has a Samsung Galaxy A fourteen. Thank you, Jy. I would recommend the free app called team Viewer. Team Viewer they make an Android app. They also make an app for basically every platform, whether it is Windows, whether it's Mac Os, whether it's Linux, Chrome, Raspberry Pie. You know what that is Android and I so you can download this for free. It's a paid service if you're a company, but for personal it is free. And so if you just type in team Viewer Android

on Google, you can search it. You can install that on her phone. Then you can install it on your desktop, and what you do is you basically there is a special code that the app will generate on her phone. You ask her for that code and you can log in from your device and basically take over the screen. And that should work with no problems. That's the app that I use for my mom's computer and it works

just fine. And of course you have to do it with their permission, and there's like a one time access or you can link them up permanently and have more access. Thanks for the email, and let me tell you about this. The mother of all data breaches. Massive data breach with twenty six billion records was discovered Onlines, probably the largest data leak in history. Not necessarily new, but it was compiled from thousands of previous breaches. So they took all

this information that was flowing around. They put it into one megaaload usernames, passwords, emails, phone numbers from places like LinkedIn, Twitter, Tencent, MySpace.

to two four one zero one. 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. Coming up this hour. Mitch Goldstone of scanmyphotos dot com.

So you might have gotten an envelope in the mail if you run a small business that says you can claim your share of the five point five billion dollar settlement if you accepted Visa or MasterCard from January first, two thousand and four through January twenty fifth, twenty nineteen, and you might have thrown you might have be ready to throw it out and say, wait, this is probably junk mail.

I finished watching Killers of the Flower Moon. This is a epic three plus hour movie that's trying to get through all the Academy Award nominees, and this, I think takes the cake as the most paused movie I've ever watched in my life because it was three hours and thirty minutes or something like that, and with two kids and two jobs and a wife and some other things happening in the world, I can't sit in front of a TV for that amount of time without getting up

and pausing, and so I think I paused this movie probably like thirty seven times, also over two days. But I did switch to a new app for my movie watching, and I think that you should check it out. It is called just Watch, and I was using one called Real Good r ee L g oo D, but I find that just Watch is actually kind of easier, and

I'm really digging it. I haven't paid for the pro they give you everything for free, but there's one pro feature that's actually kind of nice, and it lets you sort your movie list like your little watch list, by time, like the run time, So if you only have, like you know, if you're Friday night, you don't feel like

staying up very long. You want to see the shortest movie on your list, you can sort it by runtime, but they charge you two dollars and fifty cents a month for that, so I subscribe for a couple of months just to you know, why not right anyway, the app is called just Watch. And if you know me, if you listen to this show, you know I refuse to watch any movie that that are not streaming on one of my services because I pay for so many

of them. So I've got all of the Academy Award movies on my little list here, and it tells me where they're playing and if they're playing for free. So I think next up is going to be The Holdovers because that's on Peacock, and so I can watch that for free since I pay for Peacock. Let's go to Let's go to Stanley in Bettsville, Ohio.

with a fresh start. But if you don't want to do that, there's a couple of ways around this. Number One, if you're trying to use a program that's going to bring over, like the applications and things like that can get kind of tricky, so I don't typically recommend that.

But if you want to bring over your software, your files and things like that, you know you can dump those all into something like one drive which is built into the Windows computer on the you know, the old one, and then you know, on the new computer just reaccess

those and bring those over. Now, you may have too many files and that's not going to work, and so you know, you don't want to spend the money on buying cloud storage for that to happen, but you can also just put them on an external hard drive and you can back them up to a drive and then

bring that drive over to the new computer. The main thing is that you're probably still going to have to unless you're cloning a drive, You're probably still going to have to bring over your applications, which means you're gonna have to reinstall those on the new computer as well. Now Windows used to have sort of a migration tool built in. They do not anymore, which is probably why this computer company is offering to sell you some software.

The popular software is PC mover from LapLink. That may be what they're selling you forty bucks online. So if that, you know, if you want it to be easy and simple and you want to use the software transfer, then go ahead. It's it's going to make life a little bit easier and you know everything's going to be pulled over to the new computer. Personally, I'm just much more hands on and I like to know what's happening and what's being pulled over and what settings are changing and

all that kind of stuff. So I would like to do this myself. But I don't see any problem with doing this. If you want to make life easy for yourself, go ahead. That's probably the best way to do it. Thanks for the call there in Bettsville, Ohio. Stanley appreciate it. Let's go to Richard in Saint Charles, Illinois.

the way your computer works. But if you want to just do the updates that are security related, when you're looking at that update screen, you should have the choice to choose the individual updates that you want to do. You could tell which ones are security related. Because they're typically marked that way, but other times there's a bigger update that will change some of the things on your computer. So I would say it's best to do the updates

just if you want to keep your computer protected. There is no way to stop the updates easily, as.

from never happening. I mean, really, you can defer them for as long as you want to keep them from happening for a certain period of time, but eventually you know you're probably gonna have to do these things, and.

yourself at a disadvantage. I understand it changes things. I know sometimes you get these things on there and they're just you know, they change the way your computer works or runs. But they still are very important to do. So my advice is to always do them. I know it changes, but if you want to put them off, you can pause them for a while and keep them at bay for just a little bit. But I always recommend doing them all. Right, coming up, let's see what

can I tell you about. Speaking of security, if you have an iPhone, there is a new security setting that I definitely think you should turn on. And Apple is changing big changes over in Europe. I'm not sure they'll trickle here to the US, but Apple is overhauling its app store in response to this new European Union digital law, and so I will tell you what you need to know about that, plus the website. Rich on tech dot TV.

If you have a question for me, you can call in Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven

four to two four one zero one. By the way, if you hear something I mentioned on the show and you want to link, just go to rich on tech dot tv slash wiki wiki and that will give you the live show notes for the show that you are listening to right now. You can always get the show notes later at richon tech dot tv, but if you go to wiki, it will give you the ones that are basically happening in real time, like everything's being written down.

Let's go to Gordon. Gordon is in Costa Mesa. You're on with Rich.

I have no problem with you sticking with that. I personally think that the MacBook Air is a really easy to use computer that is.

with something that you buy at Costco. So if that's if you do have a membership there, I would go in there see what they have. And when it comes to laptops on the Windows side, you know they have some gaming laptops and things like that. You don't need those. But if it's just a standard laptop like an a sus or an Acer. I would get something that has sixteen gigabytes of RAM. That's kind of the minimum that I would look for. And then for the hard drive,

probably like a one terabyte hard drive. You could probably be okay with a five to twelve gigabyte, but I think a one terabyte drive along with sixteen gigabytes of RAM is going to be best. And then when it comes to the processor, when it comes to Intel, the higher the number the better. And so if you're looking at like say an Intel, you know they usually go by Core I five, Core I seven, Core I nine. If it's like a three, that's probably going to be

you know, that's on the low end of things. I look for at least a five or a seven on the Intel processors. So that's really what it comes down to is look for those specs. Make sure you're getting something that that it's decent specs that's going to last you a long time, versus something that's just you know, five hundred dollars a best Buy and it's like a chromebook style thing and it's not going to last you very long because you got a long time out of

this last computer. I'm very very impressed Now, when it comes to the Apple side of things, the Apple the MacBook Air M one is a little bit older. But this thing was on sale for like seven hundred and fifty dollars over the holiday, so I'm checking to see what the price is now. Oh, it's still seven hundred and fifty bucks. And so if you want to switch to the Apple side of things, this MacBook Air from

twenty twenty has an M one chip. It only has eight gigs of RAM and a two hundred and fifty six gigabyte hard drive, so that on the on that aspect, the spect are not very good. But this is going to be a very fast computer and I think that's and it's going to last a long time and there's not a lot of bloatwear on the Mac computer. So I hope that helps. But I would say go to Costco and that's probably the best place to start. And if you need to, you can email me a picture

of those the two that you're trying to decide between. There. Believe me, people have done it before, so that might be the best way to do it. All right, Thanks for the call. Gordon calling in today from Costa Mesa. Okay, so there is a new feature on the iPhone if you have an iPhone that you need to enable. It is called stolen Device Protection. This is an iOS seventeen point three, So if you haven't updated your phone to iOS seventeen point three, you'll need to do it. I

talked about this. This is all because of the Wall Street Journal. If you turn on the setting, it will now require your face ID or your fingerprint, or a one hour delay before allowing big changes to your account like changing your Apple ID password or disabling fine min and so this will add an extra layer to your phone.

In case someone steals your phone and also figures out your passcode, they won't be able to make major changes to your phone that will enable them to not only steal your phone, but also rob you of your identity and your data and your financial apps. So it basically puts one level of protection between you and the bad people. Go to iPhone settings face ID, and it's under Stolen Device Protection. If you don't see that new feature, you

got to do a software update again. iPhone Settings face ID, Stolen Device Protection.

you also did something really interesting. You run a small business and you somehow secured a five point five billion dollar payment card settlement, and it all relates to this you brought into prop. Tell me if you can hear this, if you're of a certain age when you went to the store. That's the sound you heard when you checked out. It is a credit card. What do you call this thing? Credit card?

out to Visa and MasterCard. The biggest mistake they never took my call from Purchase New York and in San Francisco, and all I wanted to do was ask why are these rates going up?

tobacco industry. Mister Wildfang was Janet Reno. Worked with Janet Reno Department of Justice, and we got together and they explained to me that Visa and MasterCard were both owned by the same banks, Wells Fargo, ba of a chase, all of them city and they also had the same board of directors, and twice a year, millions of merchants like scan my photos would get a letter saying your

rates are going up. But we got two letters, one from Visa, one for MasterCard and on the same day and the same rates.

It's a massive, its largest antitrust suit in US history. And I know every one of your listeners around the country right now who are business owners, are thinking, well, how do I get involved?

who did gets more. But if you're no longer in business, and I know a lot of people that listen to rich and tech from you and from years ago, may no longer be in business, you still get it from two thousand and four to twenty nineteen, and all you have to do is fill out the form. We put everything on the scan my Photos website as well. If you just go to in the news or the blog, right up front all the information and there's a direct

link to help with the claims administrator. All of that so really easy.

it comes from the payment card Interchange Fee settlement. So again, if you ran a small business and you know, even if you're not running that business anymore, you may have a portion of this money coming your way, but you have to put in the claim for it.

that first you step off the plane. You try to use your card, even debit or credit, and it's like it gets locked up, and you're like, oh no, now I got to deal with this card being locked up. So thank you for doing that. It's very exciting. And quickly before we go, give me an update on scan myphotos dot com. This is a huge business that you run just keeping people's memories digitized forever.

once again payment Cardsettlement dot Com. Well, this week Apple made some or is announced some major changes to the way it's doing business in Europe, all in response to this new Digital Markets Act, which takes effect in March twenty twenty three. Over in Europe. This is all for the EU. The reason I'm telling you this is because a it is a huge shift in the way Apple does business, because Apple historically, traditionally has run a very

clared shop. You buy the iPhone, they make the phone, they make the software, they make the hardware, they make the app store, they make the payment system. It is all very apply and then all the accessories you buy are mostly Apple stuff.

way without jail breaking. Banks and other services will be allowed to offer competing payment methods inside their apps, so you no longer have to use Apple Pay as your default. Maybe you want to use Samsung Pay, Maybe you want to use PayPal pay, maybe you want to use Venmo pay, maybe you want to use Google Pay.

their own framework. The whole point of these changes is that, you know, it's to limit the power of big tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft in areas like app stores and payments, because right now they have a lot of power. You buy the iPhone, you subscribe using Apple Services to any app that you want to download

in there. Now, this is going to have profe implications, mostly over in Europe, and I think that I don't really see a lot of this stuff happening in the US unless Apple is compelled to do it here for some reason. But in Europe this is a huge shift, and I'll be honest, there's a big debate online about whether this is going to be good for consumers or bad for consumers. I think that you can see both

sides of that. So on the one side, let's say your kid plays roadblocks, and if you buy roebucks from roadblocks directly on the iPhone, maybe they're cheaper than if you buy the roebucks through Apple's payment system, and so

in that way it will be nice. But on the flip side, and Apple has said that this is going to open up a lot of security and privacy risks for fraud, for hacks, and the reason for that is that you can now get tricked much more easily on an iPhone because you are using methods to pay, methods to download apps that are not vetted, and so there will be many opportunities where people will stumble because you think you're buying one thing and it turns out you

might be buying another. So you're taking outside of that guarded security wall that Apple offers right now, and it is going to be kind of a free for all. So we'll continue to watch that. But again, big changes in the way that Apple is doing business over in Europe, and it's going to be a big deal. Ed is in Las Vegas? Ed, you're on with Rich?

You get fifty hours of internal storage, you can add external storage.

again no subscription fees. So the main things you don't get no four K support, no you know, no watching outside of the house. And it is a little buggy. From my friends that have used this, they say that there are some software bugs. But Tableau this is brand new for the second generation of it, and it was just purchased by Scripts, by the way, the big news company, and so they are pushing this thing hard. And I believe the price is about one hundred dollars, so I

say one hundred percent. If you have a good signal over the air and you want to get over the air shows and you want to record them, absolutely go for the Tableau. I think it's a fantastic device. Just be aware of the software bugs that you might encounter, but know that they are continually upgrading and making this thing better. Thanks for the call today, Ed in Las Vegas, Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to

rich on Tech. Another hour of the show coming your way, plus time for your calls to Triple eight Rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is a show where I talk about technology and answer your questions. It's the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's a lot of stuff to tell you about here, But silly me, I've been telling you all these you know, different web

addresses to go to. But the easiest place I forgot about this feature on the website that has a nice big banner at the top. So if you go to rich on tech dot tv, just tap the big red banner at the top and that'll take you right to the links for today's show. So I know I've mentioned a lot of stuff. I mentioned that just watch app for the streaming services. I mentioned this sole and device protection for your iPhone that you should turn on. I mentioned the link to check if your data is involved

in that mother of all data breaches. We mentioned the one plus twelve smartphone, the payment card settlement, Tableau TV, so many different things. So if you want links to anything that I mentioned, just go to rich on tech dot tv hit the big red banner up at the top. Coming up this hour, I'm gonna tell you about being ghosted. What the Better Business Bureau says, you can get ghosted by your tax preparer. You don't want that to happen. New Pixel features coming soon to the Pixel that. I've

played with them and they are pretty cool. Plus, we have a guest, John Faulkner of Clean Fleet Report is going to have his review of the Kia EV nine. This is the three row s u V e V first of many. First, let's go to Matt in Seal Beach, California. Matt, you're on with Rich Rich. Hi, welcome to the shop.

and a two point five bigabit jack. I would love to get two point five gigabits coming out of that through a hard line, but I'm unable to because the only two point five big a bit jack is taken up by the connection from the O n T to the mesh system. And I'm basically looking for a unit that has you know, multiple two point five out or a solution to get that that hard line.

mean you're talking. This thing is five hundred and ninety nine dollars for a one pack, and uh, if you look on this thing, this is meant for these super high internet standards that you're that are now starting to come about. Like at my house, I have a one gigabit connection, but they actually I think it goes up

to five gigabits in my house. I've not upgraded that because I just don't need that much, but it is nice to have if you can, so I think the short answer is most of these are not meant for that type of speed just yet. We're just starting to see them come into the marketplace. So if I were you, I would take a look at the super high end offerings from You already have euro so it may be worth it to just see if you can add one of these. It's called the EO Max seven. See if

you can add that to the mix. And I think it should be backwards compatible with your other devices. So you would have to spend six hundred bucks on this thing, which is a lot. I don't know if this thing has gone on sale just yet, you know, I mean it's on sale, like available. I don't know if it's actually been discounted yet. But that's probably the one that you want to look at to see if they have

if that'll do what you need. But this one definitely handles speeds up to nine point four gigabits wired and wireless up to four point three gigabits, so that would definitely take care of what you need if you're looking for that high end speed. Otherwise, you know, I'm looking at the back of it by the way, and there are one two, three four ports on the back and there's two two point five gigabit ports and then ten to ten gigabit ports, so you would be covered with that.

But we're going to see much more of this come about in the next six months to a year, probably see many more of these. K for the question, Matt, You've got some serious speed. Matt's got a serious need for speed there in Seal Beach. Thanks for the call today, Triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Gary writes in Hey, Rich, you mentioned that Samsung is providing seven years of security updates with the S twenty four. How long will they

provide monthly updates. Samsung doesn't make it easy to find this information. The S nine started with monthly updates, then went to quarterly, then semi annual. Their mid range phone start with quarterly then go to semi annual. Is Google any better in this regard? Do they offer monthly updates for the seven years on the Pixel eight? I'd like an Android phone that provides monthly security updates as long

as possible. Thanks Gary, Well, Gary, you're right that the new Samsung does offer seven years of OS and security updates, and on the Pixel eight lineup, they're also offering seven years of updates as well. Now here's the thing. Nobody is guaranteeing the frequency of those updates. So with Google, they used to guarantee that the updates would come out on a monthly basis, the first Monday of the month.

They have gone away from that. And the reason they've gone away from it is because people were setting their calendars to it and then getting angry when they didn't deliver, and that puts a lot of pressure on the company, especially over seven years, to come out those software updates. So Samsung has said, yes, we will support this for seven years, but we're not going to give you a rundown of exactly the timeline of that, so it may come out, you know, when necessary, but they will keep

it up to date. Same thing with Pixel phones. They are now just coming out with the updates as necessary when they can, on their own schedule. So that's the deal with that. Tony writes in Hey, Rich, after listening to your podcast, I heard a caller talking about Verizon quietly raising their prices without us knowing. I immediately checked my bill, and yes they are. I'm tired of their antics. Living in New Jersey and I travel along the East coast,

Verizon is dominant. I'm thinking of at least switching to their Visible and going with a thirty five dollars plan. I drive all night and I stream a lot. My question is if I switch my iPhone and Apple Watch to Visible and then next year upgrade my phone, it doesn't give Visible as a provider when I check out and using Apple's finance for two years, it only gives AT and T, T Mobile and Verizon. Would I just choose Verizon as always? Thank you sir for what you do, Tony. Uh, Tony, No,

you could not just choose Verizon. You can you can't just choose Verizon because you're that's for a Verizon plan. So if you're going with a visible plan, the whole thing is that you would actually get a cheaper price on the plan over the couple of years. So they're not going to give you that financing deal. Now, if you've heard from me, I don't recommend financing in general. I always say save up for it and buy it

out right if you can. I understand that most people don't like to do that these days, but you know, I'm just telling you what I feel. But Apple does have a program called the Apple iPhone Upgrade Program, and that is basically their own own version of a financing program that gives you a new iPhone, you know, every twelve months or every year, whatever it is.

with them. So yes, you can get the Visible service for thirty five bucks a month or one of these other MV and o's that are much cheaper. But if you're on one of these big unlimited plans, which you typically have to do to get that financing or that quote unquote free phone, they're making, you know, twenty thirty dollars off of you every month kind of built into

the price of your plan. If you do the math and you look at the old plans that used to pay for your phone, like let's say five, six, seven years ago, when you paid two hundred dollars for a smartphone, basically you would pay less for your phone, but more for your plan. Now you just pay more for your plan and are less for your plan and more for your phone. It's all the same. The math works out at the end of the year, if you do it like three years, it's about the same exact price. They

just moved things around. It's like a it's like one of those games, you know with the cups and the balls. Is there a name for that game? Bobo is laughing. Bobo really perked up there. I don't know what I said it's a cups and balls game. I mean, come on, that's what it is. I'm sure there's a name for it. Let's see cups. I just keep saying cups and balls. No, it's a cups and balls game. It's a it's a

magic game. Yeah, see Bobo. Get all right? Triple A Rich one o one eighty eight seven four two four to one zero one. Uh. Coming up, we're gonna talk to John Faulkner of Clean Fleet Report. He's going to review the Kia EV nine. The website once again, rich on tech dot TV. If you're not following me on Instagram, I highly recommend that you do that.

It said heard it mentioned on the radio. Click here you can get the links to anything I've talked about Rubyl wrote in on Twitter or I guess formerly known as Twitter now X. The cups and balls is called shell game.

out what those things might be. So you basically link it up to your checking account or your credit card or your debit card and all the little like items the transactions it will identify and like, let's say you make a transaction that you know, you buy a plane ticket, It'll be like, well, was this for business? And you can keep it and then give that's your tax person, or they can do the taxes later. Again, that's called fly finn Ai really cool iOS and Android. Speaking of taxes,

don't be ghosted by your tax preparer. According to the Better Business Bureau, these are fly by night tax preparation offices. They offer large or fast refunds, and at the end of the day they ask you to sign your own tax return even though they prepared it. That is the red flag. They don't use a prepare tax ID number, which if you are using someone to prepare your taxes, they have to sign them with this P ten PTI N prepare tax ID that basically links them to your taxes.

Doesn't put you, you know, it doesn't take you off the hook if something goes wrong, but just the irs knows that someone helped you with your taxes. So what these people do is they help you with your taxes, they get you this big refund or whatever they promise it, and then they they're never to be found again, and then you're stuck with a major headache. So only allow your refunds to be deposited in your own account. Review your return, make sure it has the proper signatures on it.

Watch out for any of these pop up tax prep places that may try to ghost you and leave you with a major headache.

this is a new free online tax filing service. It's a pilot with only twelve states this year, but it means you can completely file your taxes through the IRS website for free. And they're doing it in Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Nevada, Hey you say Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. And so this doesn't necessarily have income limits,

but it does have certain situations that apply. So if you have like a lot of deductions, or you have a whole bunch of like interests or something like that, you won't be able to use it. But you can look on the direct file website and see if you can do this, and if you can, it's all free. And so this is for your federal tax filing. You'll still have to file your state taxes the other way.

But this is all because TurboTax, which was trusted previously with the free tax filing, basically allegedly hid their free service from Google searches and tricked people into paying for stuff they didn't need to pay for. So the IRS trusted into it TurboTax with the free file service for many years, and people would get there and they think they're filing for free, and then all of a sudden they be like, oh no, you got to pay this amount.

And so now the IRS is doing their own thing and of course into it and TurboTax say they did nothing wrong.

to the official one. IRS dot com is a okay, it's a way to like pay your taxes and stuff. But it's not affiliated with the government, so they're sort of come on, government, like, you should just take that website because that's that's probably confusing to a lot of people. New pixel features coming out January thirty. First, you now have two new pixel phones in Mint. Pixelate Pixelate Pro are available in this new Mint color. Pixelate Pro can

now take body temperature using the thermometer app. I tested this out. It is so cool. It feels like the future. You take the phone, you wave it over your forehead and it will take your temperature. And it took a lot for Google to figure this out, but this was now we know when the when the Pixel eight pro first came out, had this little had this little temperature sensor on it, and we're like, this thing is pointless because you can only use it to take the temperature

of objects, like they said, you cannot use this on people. Well, the plan all along was to get this thing to a place where you could use it on people. And it was very complicated because you're holding your phone over your forehead and swiping it. So Google had to come up with a lot of different things and algorithms and a way to help you do that. And it's really good. And so now if you have a Pixelate Pro, you can update the thermometer app and it will take temperature

of humans. The other feature coming out is circle to Search. I've already talked about how cool that is. You can search anything on your phone just by circling it or scribbling over it. That is going to make Instagram stalking so much easier. And I joke, but if someone shares a pair of sneakers that they have, like the other day, someone posted last night a picture of a meal they were having and on the plate it said.

link for. Just go to the website. Hit the big red banner at the top of the screen that says heard it mentioned on the radio, Easy as that there are a whole bunch of three row electric SUVs set to hit the market. One of the first is the twenty twenty four Kia EV nine. John Faulkner of Clean Fleet Report has driven it. John, Welcome to the show.

the ones that have all will drive dual motors. Two hundred and thirty for the Wind, two eighty for the Land Model, and the one that I drove is the GT Line and that's two hundred and seventy miles, but that has the most horse power and power and torque and it's a So when it comes down to which one you're looking for, this is a true family vehicle, and Kia has made a statement that they are going after families, and so you have to make a decision do you want because that is a price bread fifty

six three ninety five to seventy five three ninety five, So you have to say, okay, do I want that? Extra horse power and torque when you get into the all will drive once you could tow up to five thousand pounds, So maybe that's the sideration. But if you're just driving around town doing a lot of commuting and such, probably the best one is the light long range where

will drive single motor. That's sixty thousand and sixty ninety five and that's your three hundred and four all electric driving range.

to drop. And that's that that isn't a mystery to anybody. So it really comes down to how are you going to use this vehicle? If you're going to be doing a lot of driving, then in long distances, then you may want to be going with either a hybrid or a plug in hybrid suv or a pure gasoline model.

that's the beauty of this. That the eight hundred bolt architecture that this vehicle has, you're gonna be able to you can be able to get that. You're gonna be able to get that extremely fast charging which is ten to eighty percent and twenty five minutes, and that's that that that's that's fast. If you're on a road trip, if you're going from here to here to Las Vegas and you need to stop, and again everyone listening, I'm

in southern California. So if you're driving California to Las Vegas, you want to stop halfway there, you plug it in and in twenty five minutes, after you've gone and gets over to eat and drink, you're charged up again. You're on your way again. So charging now is really not the issue anymore as far as speed goes.

you ever heard. So but you don't need that. It is it's really quiet, it's really smooth, The handling is really amazing. Obviously, with all wheel drive, which is the model that I had, you have you have a you have an electronic torque vectoring which basically in simple terms, is it puts a power to the wheel that demands it the most, so you're going around the corner it needs it needs power to the right front wheel or

the left rear wherever. Once it does, it automatically seamlessly, the cars just it handles amazingly.

federal tax credit limit. For that you can they should qualify and all of the EV nine's fully loaded to fall under that eighty thousand.

at rich on Tech. Let's get through a couple of stories before I get to the feedback segment. Ring is sunsetting its request for assistance tool in the Neighbors app. So this was for law enforcement. If they needed help with an investigation, they could put out a request for assistance to people that may have ring video doorbells in the area and get the video from those doorbells. But of course, with the user permission, they would submit it. But Ring says, you know what, We're not going this

direction anymore. Agencies can no longer use request for assistance to obtain videos now they need a warrant. So they're still inviting public safety agencies to post tips, updates, and events in this app. But critics didn't like this. They thought that they turned ring doorbells into too much of a surveillance tool that was unchecked, and so law enforcement

now will need a warrant to request video. They could still go door to door and ask for this stuff, but it's not going to be an easy request for assistance tool now inside the Neighbors app. Neighbors is kind of like Rings version of Citizen. New Egg has a new refurbished program so you can buy resale products top pre owned products at competitive prices, Apple products, GPUs abs,

gaming PCs, monitors, laptops, tablets, phones, vacuums. It's all part of New Egg Refreshed, and you get a ninety day guarantee with this, so ninety days New Egg refresh if you're looking for refurbished stuff at a cheaper price. US Mobile this is maybe a carrier you haven't heard of, but they have a very competitive plan now if you pay for the whole year in advance, fifteen dollars a month for a ten gigabyte data plan, unlimited talking, text,

ten gigabytes of hotspot, and international calling and texting. They even have better plans that are a little bit more, but US Mobile with a really really competitive plan fifteen bucks a month for ten gigs of data, unlimited talk and text, hotspot and international calling. Google has an app called art Selfie two. This uses AI to transform your selfies into over twenty five different historic art styles works

inspired by Claude Monet, Johannes Vermiir Renoir, and more. And the cool thing about this not only is it fun to see yourself in these styles, but then you get little facts about the art style you so you're learning while you're having fun with Generative AI. It's basically their secret way of teaching you about art by doing something fun. Art Selfie two is available through the Google Arts and Culture app, So if you're a teacher out there, it's

kind of fun get this for your students. Google Arts and Culture. It's available on iOS and androids called art Selfie two.

to be an easy way to do that. If you're waiting for that Apple Car to launch, well, it's been pushed back. The car that we've heard so much about, but yet see no evidence that it's coming out twenty twenty eight at the latest. One hundred thousand bucks for this car and it's not going to be as self driving as Apple wanted. Apple. I'm telling you just buy Lucid, solve all your problems. Buy Lucid today. You can have an Apple car tomorrow. And Lucid basically operates like an

Apple car. It's about this, It's very similar. It's expensive, it's premium, it's luxurious. It'd be a perfect match. Go ahead, buy Lucid and you could get your Apple car soon. You heard it here first. And finally, T Mobile Tuesday's app it's switching to what's called Tea Life. This rolled out to iOS devices on January twenty fifth. Android release

is coming soon. So basically, if you're using the T Mobile Tuesday's app, it is now called Tea Life and it has a whole bunch of other stuff inside the app, so it's like not your account information, but it's like more than just a T Mobile Tuesday's app.

order of importance. Number one, people need to stop being so stupid. Number two, who answers a robo call these days? Stupid people? That's who? Well, I mean, you don't know if it has the caller ID number three. Why would appla it campaign think a fake AI robo call would be useful? Because people are stupid? See the problem here proved me wrong. The level of stupidity today is exponentially higher than it was thirty years ago, headed towards idiocracy

at an accelerating pace. Pat, Yes, and no, I think that we just have more access to information and things, and it's just, you know, we know more about this stuff. If someone got a fake phone call years ago or saw an image on you know whatever sent to their house, they wouldn't necessarily be able to share it with everyone else. Now it's instant sharing everywhere, so we just know more

people that are falling for stuff. Renee says, Hey, we heard you on your show talk about an app that can be put on the phone and control another phone, like adjust the volume, brighten the screen. I didn't catch the name, and I want to look into it. My father in law is constantly putting his phone on mute or darkens the screen. He lives far away, and I can help him a lot instead of calling the police for a welfare check, then they have to fix his phone.

I lost all my data on my iPhone thirteen. Apple support is useless. A hacker can change my phone number and password and Apple cannot change it back. They say it's a security issue. I was in the middle of a conversation when my phone shut down. Opened it up again, and the message told me I had been locked out. Conversations with Apple Support was a They said nothing they can do. As the day passes, there are more inconveniences to overcome. My Apple idea is worthless and I have

zero help. Backstory. I got an email from Apple Support inform me I was charged thirty dollars. I checked there was no such charge. I clicked here, being busy, I received the email. I thought nothing of it. Three minutes later, I was locked out. With as careful as I've always been, I got sucker punched. Yes, this is a huge issue. You were fished and they do this all the time.

Twenty four to seven. Please be careful and like I said with my taxi story, when you're doing things fast and hastily, that's when you fall victim to this stuff. Steve and I feel for you. Believe me, sorry that happened to you. If you can believe it, that's going to do it. For this episode of the show, you can find links to everything I mentioned. Just go to richon tech dot TV. Find me on social media at rich on tech next week we'll talk about the Apple

Vision Pro which is launching. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. My name is rich Dimiro. I will talk to you real soon