Rich On Tech Radio Show 001 - January 7, 2023

Now you're probably wondering what happened to Leo. If not, thanks for knowing who I am, and please let's keep it that way. Leo Laporte has retired from this radio show and after nineteen years, he finally gets to enjoy his weekends. And now I'm the new guy. That's right, You've got me for your guide for all things technology. My naming once again is rich Demiro. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles, and now

now I'll be hosting this very show every week. If you want to do some research on me, you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at rich on Tech. My website is richon Tech dot tv. You are in for something special. I mean, every day, you know things happen, things change, But this is the first. This is the very first episode of rich on Tech. I've never been more excited. This has been a lifelong dream of mine.

Uh if you've listened to my podcast over the years, this show is going to be largely similar to that, except that didn't have you as a live caller, which has been the thing I've wanted to do for so many years. You get to connect with me. I'm going to reveal the new phone number for the very first time. Are you ready here? It is eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight rich one oh one one triple eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Write it down, commit it to memory.

This is the phone number you need to know if you need some tech help and guidance whenever, I'll be here for you. So give me a call. We'll get some of your questions in today's show. We'll see if we can help you out, and just have fun. This is going to be a back and forth. This is not just me talking to you. This is you. You are part of this show, and you're a big part of it because without you, there is no show. You have questions, I have answers. We'll get the you know,

we'll get this all figured out. It's going to be fun. My plan is to make this the most useful show you listen to each and every week. I'm gonna pack it with tech tips, reviews, cool new apps and websites, plus information to keep you safe from scams and other online issues. I mean, think about it every day. I'm covering this stuff for KTLA. I'm seeing a lot of stuff come through. I'm going to a lot of things, talking to a lot of people. I'm going to bring

that information right here. I'm also excited to bring on interesting guests to talk about a wide range of topics. It's going to be different, it's going to be you know, I find tech to be a wide swath of things. It's not just one thing. Tech is all is gadgets, but it's also how do people do their jobs with technology? What apps do you use to stay organized and to stay focused and to stay productive. That's the kind of stuff that I want to explore in this show. All right,

So a little bit about me. All Right, I'm just a regular person who loves tech. I've always loved tech. I mean, I've been thinking about technology since I was a kid. I remember waiting to get on the internet, this thing called the Internet when AOL was a thing, and AOL was sort of this, you know, it was part of the Internet, but not really. And I waited every day as a kid for that little Internet link on AOL to light up. That's how nerdy I was.

I'm originally from New Jersey, right outside New York City, and my typical job throughout the last couple decades has been a TV reporter. And I started out as a reporter, as you would in a small market Yakima, Washington. I moved my way up to Shreveport, Louisiana. Then I went to Los Angeles, then I went to New York and then I came back to Los Angeles. And in that time where I really cut my teeth as a tech person was at cnet in New York City. And Wow,

what a fun place to work. I mean, to go from looking at a website like ce neet to actually being on a website like cenet. I got to see it all, I got to do it all. I was there for the launch of the iPhone in New York City in two thousand and seven. It was such a phenomenal time. I could still remember being in the Apple Store in that launch day like it was yesterday. In fact, the song that you just heard, the lead singer of that song was inside the Apple Store and I got

to talk to him for a little bit. I mean, just what an incredible experience. Now, I've been covering tech for more than a decade at KTLA TV in Los Angeles, and it has been so much fun. I wake up early. You know, I talked to people. I've traveled around the world doing my job, to countries including China, including Japan, Ireland, England, Spain, Portugal, I mean, you name it. I've seen tech in different places.

And what I love about that is that, you know, we grow up here in America and we see how we do things, but when you go to other places, you see how other people do things and it could be a little bit different than the way we do stuff. So it gives you depth, it gives you perspective. But really my secret weapon is you. Your emails, your messages, your responses to my TV segments. Help me know what is important, What are you thinking about? What do you want to know about? I mean, I don't have all

the answers. I don't wake up and just know everything there is to know about technology. I explore and I figure it out, and I also know the ways to figure this stuff out, and that really helps me out. I'm going to do my best to use my knowledge to help you out. I'm on a journey just like you with all of this stuff. You know, I get a gadget for Christmas and I got to figure it out, just like you. I've got a wife, i've got two kids,

I've got a full time job. I've got a lot to juggle, and you know, reading the manuals has never been my forte. I kind of like to figure it out as I go along. And in twenty twenty three, I'll be figuring out how to get organized. Like digital photos and files, they've become a mess, just like yours have. I bet I've got Google Drive, I've got Apple Cloud Storage, I've got my phone. I've got all kinds of things in different places, and I want to figure out how

am I going to dupe? How am I going to organize? That's my goal this year. Also, how to become more productive, how to keep tracking my notes. I've been journaling on a daily basis, which is really fun? What's the best to do list? App I've been trying to figure that out. My hope with this show is to inspire you. It's to make you smile, it's to make you think, it's to make you laugh, and overall, just make you enjoy our time together. That's really what it's all about. You're

giving me your time. If that's not fun, then you probably got to go somewhere else. It's got to be fun for this to be interesting. Now. I just got back from CS twenty twenty three. This is the big tech show in Las Vegas. I've been going to this for over a decade and this year things were back in full swing. Last year, the year before, it's been a little rough for the show, obviously because of the pandemic. But this year it was. It was pretty incredible. There is so much to see. I did not get to

see it all. But you know, people complain about ces. They say how big it is, they say how annoying it is, how they get sick, how they get tired, how they have to walk. I will embrace every bit of that because at the end of the day, this is where you see the stuff that I'm going to be talking about for the next year or two. This is where I get to see my friends. This is where I get to see pr folks that I connect with over email and I just know them by an

email account. This is how business gets done in person. I get it. We've been remote, we've been hybrid. You could do your job from anywhere these days. But when you're in person, you actually get to connect with a human being, and that is still the most magical experience we have as humans. You're listening to me right now through some sort of speaker or headset, and we feel connected. But if you see me in person, it's a whole different world. You get to say, hey, rich you know,

I like what you do. I see thanks for this, I like that post. It's just a different connection that you can't have any other way in this world. But I'll take this too, because this is really fun. At CS always the TVs. They're getting bigger, they're getting slimmer. Eight K still a buzzy thing. We also saw wireless TVs. I drove to CES because I like driving. I like my time. I like that time in the car to just kind of enjoy and you know, disconnect from the world.

I mean, it's a couple of hours where I can't check my social media while I'm driving, and it's kind of a glorious thing. Is CS a ton of work? Absolutely? Is it all worth it? One hundred percent. I even got to go to a concert. While I was there, I saw Imagine Dragons, and you know, everything you do there is for a reason. Imagine Dragons was presented by Dolby. It was in their theater that they have at Park MGM,

and it was presented and Dole me at most. So again, everything you do just adds to that perspective that you have as a journalist, as a tech person, and quite honestly, if you haven't seen Imagine Dragons, very inspiring concert. I had a fantastic time. I went with my photographer Luis. It was late, we were tired, it was after a full day of work, and we really really enjoyed ourselves and I can't say how inspiring that concert was. I never realized just what an impact someone like that can

make on me. All right, coming up, we are going to take your very first call at one eight eight eight rich one oh one. Again. The phone number to the show is triple eight seven four to two four one zero one. That is the direct line for me. If you don't call, I've got some questions that you've emailed me. Again. I'm at rich on Tech on social media,

my website rich on tech dot tv. Coming up, we're gonna talk ab the airline, the major airline that is now giving free Wi Fi not just to select passengers but to all passengers, and does that mean we're going to see more of that? Plus Apple Fitness, I'm going to tell you about their latest workout, which I don't think I've ever done before, but you know what, maybe I'll try it. My name is rich dmiro. You're listening to rich on Tech. More of the show after this,

plus you your calls coming up. Welcome back to the show, rich DeMuro here rich on Tech. It's a whole new show here on the radio, taking your calls, talking about technology and just breaking down the news of the week. We're going to talk about CS some of the cool things I saw there. We're going to talk to Brian Tong, mister CS, one of my good friends who hosts the show every year. He was there with me in Las Vegas. We'll talk about some of the cool stuff we saw

and most importantly, we're taking your phone calls. The phone number is triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. If you're thanks joining once again. My name is Rich Demiro, new host of this radio show called Rich on Tech. All right, let's do this. This is another little piece of history.

is the connection between your phone and your carrier. So whether you have Verizon, T Mobile, at and T or one of the smaller carriers out there, that's a direct connection between your phone and the tower. You've seen them all over town, you know. Sometimes they look like trees. Sometimes they just look like a bunch of speakers on a pole. That's a direct connection. That's also the most secure connection you can have between your phone and the network.

So if you're doing anything like banking, anything really private. I always recommend turning off Wi Fi and using just the direct cellular connection. Now, when you get into your car, your car could have two connections, So the Wi Fi connection in your car, your car may be equipped with a cellular connection. A lot of the new cars are

equipped with that. And that cellular connection means that you pay a monthly fee or it's somehow included in the price of your car, and it is connecting to a network. And the benefit of that is that your car probably has a higher powered antenna than your phone, which means you're going to grab a signal in more places with the LTE or the five G connection in your car. And so your car is physically or I guess wirelessly connected. If it was physically connected to the cellular tower, you

wouldn't go very far. But your car is wirelessly connected to the cellular tower, and that is giving a cellular connection to your car. And this can power things like streaming music. It can power things like streaming radio, and also the maps in your car and anything else that your car may use, you know, software updates, all that kind of stuff. Many cars today, I mean this is going back many years have those sort of connections. Now, why would you want your phone to connect to the

Wi Fi that your car is emitting. Well, you might want a stronger connection in more places. You also might have a limited data plan on your phone, and maybe you want to use the data plan that's on your car, So those are some of the reasons why you might want to do that. The other reason is, you know you can use features like Android Auto wirelessly, so if you're not connecting to your car, Android Auto would not be able to connect wirelessly to take over the screen

in the center console. So that's definitely another reason why you'd want to connect to the Wi Fi in your car, even if you're not using a Wi Fi connection per se, But that's the way your phone is is communicating with that center screen to take it over. Now, at work, this is a tricky topic because I'm also not a big fan of connecting my phone to the in work

Wi Fi. Not that I'm doing anything wrong at work, but quite honestly, companies do have tracking software that they can potentially use on the Wi Fi networks at work, and depending on how your Wi Fi at work is set up, it could be very secure and you may have to accept some sort of what's called a trust certificate to actually use that Wi Fi, or you may have to use a network that is very insecure and open network. And the reality is these days Wi Fi

is pretty secure for the most part. Unless someone's using a sophisticated device to sort of sniff out what's happening on the network, you're probably going to be okay. But I just rather there are so many implications of when you join a Wi Fi network, how you can be tracked and followed and monitored and notified, and I just would rather stay out of all of that. So typically, unless I'm doing something that requires a big download or a big upload, I'm just staying off the Wi Fi

connection at work. If you have an unlimited cellular pro A plan on your phone, why do you need to be on the Wi Fi. It's something to think about. And I'm not saying that you have to, you know, disconnect from your company's Wi Fi today, but it's just one of those things. Maybe ask some questions like, hey, how is the Wi Fi set up, or what's the

limitations or what are you monitoring for? Because you know, we do a lot of personal stuff on our phones, and most of it's encrypted so you should be okay. But the reality is, you know, they could potentially see when you come and go to work. They could see where you hang out at work. They can see when you connect, they can see when you disconnect, they can see websites that you go to. There are a lot of implications of any network that you connect to, and

Bluetooth is very similar. So I think that knowing about this stuff and being away of it is the smart thing. And Mary, I think that you know, just asking these questions like this is a smart thing because you're curious and that's always the first step to just being on top of things. So thank you Mary in Downy, California for having the very first question on the Rich on Tech radio show. We've got a lot more in store coming up. We're going to talk to Brian Tong. He

has a podcast, he has a YouTube channel. He used to be at Cena and he is the host of CS for the past couple of years. So we are going to talk about CEES twenty twenty three and all the fun stuff we saw with guest Brian Tong. Coming up. My name is Rich Demiro. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. My name is Rich dmiro and this is the show where we talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer the questions that

you call in with. Joining me now is Brian Tong. He's a content creator for technology. He's this year's host of CS twenty twenty three and an all around nice guy. Brian. Welcome to the show and history once again. You're the first guest on this brand new radio show. How you doing on this day?

on CEF. Even the amount of people here the show feels like maybe around eighty five to ninety percent of what we normally get, and I think that's actually a good thing. There's a point where CS was getting too crowded, and now that things have kind of changed, there's people that aren't going to come back to conventions as much.

But I think the energy and also more than I think, we've seen a lot of companies who during this roughly two and a half year period have done things that I don't think they might have done if things were kind of going year after year iner you know, and just kind of be more iterative. I think it for the companies to really be a lot more innovative.

you see the small stuff. So one of the trends we saw this year is I guess we're going to have wireless TVs because LG had THEIRS on display and then there was a startup the name is evading me right now, maybe you remember it, but they also had a wireless TV. LG still had a plug the startup they did not have a plug at all, Like it's a phone a TV that you reach arge, did you see either of these?

higher refresh rates. The big thing here is, though, people that are really into this whole minimalist design, one of the biggest things that you always have to struggle with is wires. These are first world problems, rich, but no wire a table clutter of TVs right, and can you imagine just literally mounting a TV now truly no wires.

It would look so clean, so beautiful and get all the benefits of Dolby autmost Audio, Adobe Vision Video four K one hundred and twenty herd Like, this is a big this to me for the home get or junkie who's been waiting for this for arguably ten years and has been told it's coming. The fact that LG now has it nailed down tells me that it's actually here. I mean, LG is a brand y. I own an LGTV, and it.

no problem. So we will see wireless TVs. It'll give you this the flexibility to I remember every time I got a new apartment back in the day, your TV was determined by where that little cable came up in the floor, like from the last personally is it? And now it's like to go from that to just putting your your entertainment stuff where you want it in your room, and then your TV where you want it is a whole bay thing. All right, let's talk about this this

BMW color changing car. Did you get to see that?

black and white patterns. But this year they wrapped it on a streamlined car design to really actually take advantage of these e ink panels. So for people that aren't familiar e ink, which is like on an Amazon kindle,

you're familiar it being in black and white. There are companies that make e ink that actually is in color, and so what BMW has done is essentially partnered with one of those companies and wrapped a car, but wrapped it specifically with this car is designed with Queen lines to allow this ink raped to be just really tight. It just looks like it's it's been dipped in this stuff and it's yeah, it's incredible in amazing to see. I have some video footage that that that'll be going

up about it, but it's captured everyone's imagination. There's not a single person who hasn't seen it that said they loved it. I talked to BMW and the person who's responds her name is a doctor Stella. I can't remember her last name, but she's been a part of this project from the beginning. It's been really a true passion project for her. And she talks about the advances of even the rap that they put on. If you when there's cut lines, you know, a car has grooves and whatnot.

You actually cannot cut this ink material too many times otherwise it pretty much breaks down the electrical signal that goes through a panel and then would prevent it from sending a single that allows it to change color.

It's like a it's like a technology exhibition, and they have a better charging network right now, but as time has gone on, charging networks will continue to grow. These other companies that are behind, they're actually garnering more interest because of think about this, right, Honda and Sony partnering together and then also using a Qualcom ship inside it. Those are three tech giants basically saying, hey, we need to work together as a you know, a triple threat. Yeah,

to make something that is special. Like they've seen the landscape and they're not trying to do this alone.

Did I get the right one?

It's a little bit better than four G. Now what you really want to look for is this new thing. This is five G plus five GUW and five GUC. So you're on Verizon. When you see five GUW, that means ultra wideband. That means you're getting Verizon's best, absolute, most cutting edge network, and it's going to be really fast, Like I'm talking faster than almost all the Wi Fi networks that you're using. And I've seen speeds that are

just incredible on these UW networks. For T Mobile, it's five G u C And I was in Vegas over the last week and T Mobile had a lot of

UC there. Ultracapacity, that's what that means. And it just means that that's the real, real, you know, the spectrum that these carriers have been wanting for so many years that enables them to do so many more things like home internet, like really basically ditch Wi Fi altogether at some point in our lives because these networks are going to be so ubiquitous and so fast and just so capable that we won't really need that. So how do you know which icon or which service you're on? On

the iPhone? You swipe down from the upper right hand corner and then it'll show you in your control center, you know, Verizon five G, five GUW. There's also a couple of settings you can look at on the iPhone. If you go into your settings and Cellular, you can actually choose which network you want to be on. You can say, you know, I only want five G or

I only want LTE. And the reason why you might want to switch networks is because, let's say you're in a really congested place, like a stadium, and maybe that stadium is not fully upgraded to you know, these new five G networks, and so you're having trouble getting a tweet through or a picture through to Instagram. Sometimes it might be helpful to drop back to an LTE network because guess what, less are on it now, because everyone wants to be on the fancy new five G network.

That's kind of the bottom line with these networks. I think that the thing to know is that number one, they're not everywhere. So these carriers are very much still working on their five G networks, and that means sometimes you may see a five G signal, sometimes you may not. You may see a five G in one place, you may see lt E in another. You may see the UW or the PLUS or the UC in various places.

Usually at this point, the PLUS, the UW, and the UC are in you know, city centers, freeways, stadiums, downtowns, anywhere there's a large amount of people. They've sort of built out the ultra capacity in those areas first, and then eventually it will make its way to more neighborhoods. I know Verizon, I was just talking with them about this and they were telling me that they're getting there. You know, they've covered a bunch of the population in the US, but there's still work to do. You also

may see fluctuations in some of these networks. Sometimes they work really well. Sometimes you may have some trouble. And I know that some of the carriers are actually proactively texting users in certain areas saying, hey, look, we're working on the towers in your neighborhood. You may have some you know, some spotty connections, or you may be using a connection that's from a network that's or a tower that's further away. So just be aware. I know where

I you know, work on a daily basis in Hollywood. Yeah, go ahead, Rick, would you want to add.

power all my stuff. But that's what this spectrum allows them to do because UW and you see is so broad and it's got so much power it enables you to do that.

Doorbough and we tested it at Katla. This must have been ten years ago, and you know, it was kind of wonky. It was the first of its kind. And I said, you know, you did pretty well. You know, selling too Amazon for a billion dollars. And so I think Ring, you know, they invented the genre. I think that they have the most products that sort of work around it. I think Whys is really good too, But it just it kind of depends on what other smart home stuff you have. Do you have any other products

from different companies? Do you have Alexa, do you have Amazon?

So I think you have to kind of pick an ecosystem and then go from there because once you start mixing and matching, it's very complicated. Things will change later on, but that's where we're at right now. Carlos, thanks so much for your question. You are listening to Rich on Tech. My name is rich Demiro. We'll have more of your calls and more news tech news coming up. Welcome, back to Rich on Tech. My name is Rich Dmiro and this is the show we talk about the tech stuff

I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer the questions you ask me. If you're just joining, you might be wondering what happened to Leo? Where is Leo? Well, I hope he's sleeping in today. After nineteen years, Leo Laporte has retired from this radio show. And now you've got me. I am your guide through all things tech. We're gonna have a great time. Today is the beginning of something new, of something fun, something different. And I don't know if you can tell, but I'm

a pretty positive guy. I've got a pretty positive outlook on things. And that's just the way I roll, you know. I feel like we are all given this opportunity here to just enjoy, right. And if you go through and you're sitting there and you're seeing everything in a negative light and a critical light, I think critical is good. I think negative is not good. There's a difference between the two. It could be subtle sometimes, but it's there. And yes, I am very critical of a lot of things.

And believe me, you should see me try to make a decision about something. It doesn't come fast. You know, my wife at the you know, anytime we have to do something, whether it's book a plane ticket or you know, just anything at a store, there's a lot of thought that goes into it. And there's a reason for that, because I am critical of the decisions I make and the things that I do and the stuff that I

put in my life. And that's all for a reason, because, like I said, we get one chance to be here, and I want to make it as good as possible. And I hope that you joining me here today is part of that journey, part of that excitement, and part of that positivity. We're going to talk about tech. I mean, that's what this show is all about.

one eight eight eight rich one oh one. You can find me on social media on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook. What else is there out there? I think those are the big ones. I am at rich on Tech on all of those. I'm also the tech reporter for KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. So if you see me on your morning TV and you say, wait, is that the same guy? Yep, it's the same guy. It's me getting up early during the week and then here on

the weekends to do this show. So it's a lot of fun to do it all because during the week I see so much stuff, you know, come through my desk, and it's like, now I get some time to really talk to you about it in depth. And TV is great, but it's quick. You know, you say that what did he just say? What was that? Hold on? That looks really cool? And now you've got think of this as office hours, Right, you see something cool on TV? Hey, Rich can I ask you more about that?

You don't need that anymore. You just need an iPhone or I think an iPad as well. But Apple Fitness Plus is sort of Apple's online fitness clos and it of course has a high tech twist. It gives your you know, data from the Apple Watch if you have one of those. But it's really well done and I think this this got me through the pandemic. They launched it during the pandemic when you know, nobody could go to the gym. They didn't do that on purpose, It just timed out that way, and so I started doing

it during the pandemic and it was fantastic. And you know, I did also the Peloton stuff. But I go back and forth between Apple Fitness. I think they're really good for their classes and I really like Peloton for the actual bike workouts and the running workouts. So you kind of can choose what you want. But anyway, Beginning January ninth, that's in a couple of days here, Apple Fitness Plus will introduce a new workout, kickboxing. I've never done that before,

so you can try kickboxing now. You know, it can be intimidating to do one of these classes at a big gym, right. I remember the first time I went to like a spin class at the gym. It was so intimidating. I don't think I ever went again, because you know, how do you clip those shoes on? How do you do the bike? How do you adjust this stuff?

Like you feel like, oh, everyone knows what they're doing and I don't, And so it could be really alienating at a gym to try new things and to even use a piece of equipment that you've never used before, because there's always someone else that's like, hey, can I get on there? I know what I'm doing, and you're looking around like, am I the only person that doesn't know what I'm doing in here? So this could be

a good way to try kickboxing. So, starting January ninth, Fitness Plus is adding kickboxing as a new total body cardio workout type. You don't need any equipment. Workouts are ten, twenty or thirty minutes and that's What I love about Apple Fitness Plus is that you basically it's almost like a search engine for workouts, so you can narrow down and say, oh, I've got a pair of dumbells, I'll use those, or I want to do upper body, or I want to do lower body, or I want to

do ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes. It's really fantastic, So check that out. My favorite are the strength training workouts on there, because you know, they teach you how to do the stuff that you're doing and it doesn't really require much equipment at all, maybe a couple of, you know, dumbbells. They also have this new sleep meditation, so I know, sleep is becoming like a thing, right.

I mean it's always been a thing, but we're seeing more of an emphasis on the health benefits of good sleep. And I think some of that's partly due to the wearables that we're seeing, like the Aura ring and of course the Apple Watch and all the other wearables that measure your sleep, and so people are interested in how

am I sleeping. Oh, I got a bad night's sleep last night because I went out all night and I went bed late, or I got a good night's sleep because I took care of myself before I went to bed and it was kind of nice to, you know, relax without my screen for an hour. So we're learning that sleep could be good for us. And so with that in mind, now there is a brand new sleep meditation theme, and so they've got nine other themes for meditation,

including calm, gratitude, resilience, and creativity. But they're going to do new sleep meditations every week. So that's a good way I might try that. I, because I wake up so early on a daily basis, don't really have trouble sleeping when you're so exhausted at the end of the day. He just kind of collapse into bed. But you know, there there are days when you're like I could use like a disconnection from the world for a couple of minutes before I turned down. And finally, Apple Fitness Plus

will have new episodes of Time to Walk. I really discounted Time to Walk when it came out. It came out during the pandemic, and I was like, I don't need to walk to someone talking to me, and it took me a while. I actually started trying it when they did Time to Run, and I was like, all right, running's kind of more my thing. I'm a big runner. I love running. Let me try running with one of these audio guided experiences, and I fell in love with it.

It's such a great thing. If you haven't tried it, give it a chance. But walk is basically very similar. It's you know, you any you know, you go outside, you walk. You pop one of these things on and they're adding you know different. They're not always celebrities, but they're important people, notable people. And Jamie Lee Curtis is going to be new She's gonna kick off the fifth season of This Time to Walk And basically every week there's a different person that you can walk with and

you kind of learn from them. They play music, they talk. It's really cool. I mean, if you like the person, it's like bonus points. Otherwise you learn. Jason Siegel made famous on How I Met Your Mother, He'll also be on there. Jose Andres, the Spanish Chef, he'll also be on there. Cheryl Lee Ralph, she stars in Abbott Elementary, a very popular show. She will be on there as well. So again, check it out. Apple Fitness Plus is not free, but you can often get a free trial if you

have the Target app. They're like almost a Target and Best Buy are always offering like free trials for this, so check that out. Otherwise, it's ten bucks a month or eighty dollars a year for Apple Fitness Plus. All right, speaking of free tea, Mobile and Delta Airlines teaming up to give all passengers free in flight Wi Fi. Now I love this. I've watched Wi fi go from non existent on flights to very expensive on flights, too cheaper, like on my last United flight it was like eight

bucks to now free. So Delta sky Miles members will get free WiFi. Oh there's the catch, you got to be a sky Miles member. Well, it's free to sign up and you could actually do it on the plane. So beginning February first, you will get free Wi Fi. There's no really no strings here. You'll get to connect your tablet, your phone, your laptop, whatever you need. And the best part is if you forget to sign up for sky Miles on the ground, you can actually sign

up for free while you're on the plane. Now, this is sponsored by T Mobile. So do we know if this is something that's permanent or if it's something that's you know, you know, something that may expire after T Mobile says all right, we're done. But the reality is this is amazing. I used to think that the plane was like the last kind of quiet time where you can disconnect from the world because you didn't have Internet.

But you know, as I get older and more war and it's just it's a time where maybe you just want to be connected and check your messages and do things. It's kind of nice to have that Wi Fi connection. So next time you're on a Delta flight, starting February, first free Wi Fi thanks to T Mobile, you don't have to be a T Mobile customer. And I think what's great about this is hopefully, hopefully it'll push more

airlines to offer free Wi Fi. I know Jet Blue does, but among the major carriers now, Delta is the first to do that. All right, once again, my name is rich Dmiro. You are listening to rich on Tech. Coming up, we're going to take more of your calls at eight eight eight rich one oh one. Plus, we're gonna talk about LG's color changing refrigerator. Yes, a refrigerator door, four of them that change color. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. I'm Rich Demiro and

Angie is in Huntington Beach. Angie, You're on with Rich. Oh we lost Angie. Sorry, Angie, try to back you know, still learn how to use a phone. Here. Laala is in Orange Laala, You're on with Rich.

thinking about, you know what I mean? Like I may that may not be something in my life, but you may have something in life and I'm like, oh, that's interesting, and I get some of my best tips my reels. By the way, I'm at rich on tech. If you're not following me, I think it's kind of fun. Like I really put a lot of myself on Instagram, So that's that's kind of what you're talking about is just you know, it's a It's a wide range of stuff from junk food that I eat to you know, tech stuff.

So what's on your mind today.

to do that. So the way that these work typically is that you know, you sign up for one of these virtual mailbox services, They get your mail, they scan your mail in so you can see if it's important and if their system is good, you know, you can just trash mail virtually, like right from your app or your desktop and say, okay, you can throw that out. You can throw that out. Oh, that one I actually need to go grab from the box, and then of course you may be able to get packages there depending

on your plan. I think it's great. I think it's something that you should do if you trust the company. The fact that this ipostal one has twenty five hundred locations is a good sign because the main thing is that you just want this to be around for a while, and they're saying that the according to their website, the

number one digital mailbox service worldwide. Now, the downside is you just need to know what this plan includes, so it may not include certain things, you know, and that's that's what kind of you have to look at for that nine to ninety nine a month, like, what do they give you? You know, do you get packages there? Can you get mail there? I'm looking at this maximum names per address one personal name. You know, receive first class mail in packages, So it looks like you can get

all this stuff. Now I'm looking here. It says free storage is thirty days and that's for mail, and then free storage for boxes ten days and that depends on the side to the box, and then five days for really big boxes. And of course you can probably pay more for them to forward you this mail if you don't want to go in, So this is probably good of also for someone who has like an RV or

travels a lot. I've had a Peo box pretty much my entire life because I find it to be very convenient and it's simple and you can give out that address without worrying. When I publish my book there, you know, people could come and they could pick up the book if I signed it, they could just go there and grab it. So there's many, many benefits to having a

Peo box. I think virtual is a next logical step, and what you're really paying for is that service that allows them to scan your documents, and let's be honest, ninety nine percent of the mail we get physical mail you don't really need, you know, it goes right into the trash. And so they're banking on the fact that most of the mail they don't have to store. They just scan it. It goes in and you can look it out on your app and sort of flick it left or right, kind of like a Tinder for mail.

Do I need this? Yes? Do I not need that?

talk about tech stuff and answer your tech questions. Phone lines are open triple eight rich one oh one, eight eight eight rich one oh one. My name is Rich DeMuro and uh just got back from CS twenty twenty three in Las Vegas, and so much to see there. I mean, there's just no way one human being can see it all. And I was there for a week Monday through Friday, and uh, you know, I try my best, but there is just I mean, I think over three

thousand exhibitors this year, not to mention the crowds. Not to mention, it's spread all of cross Las Vegas. It's not just in one place. You know, it's in the convention Center. There's also the new part of the convention Center that is like a ten minute walk from the old convention center. And then you've got the hotels and the hotel rooms and the suites, and then you've got the ballrooms. I mean there's a lot. I think one day I did what I do, twenty thousand steps in

one day. That's I think that's a lot. Anyway, don't worry about me. I thought it was fun to walk all these things. But one thing I saw that was pretty cool. LG new refrigerator called the mood Up and this is just you know, it's look, I don't expect you to buy this refrigerator tomorrow. But what I love about stuff like this is it just shows that this is what's going to happen in the future, Like why choose the color of your refrigerator when you don't have

to when you can change it? And so the mood up has four panels on it, and each one of these panels is an LED screen, so it's not like a computer screen per se, but it's an LED panel that lets you change the color. So it's kind of like a matte finish on the panel. If you don't want it to be a wild and wacky color, then it can just kind of blend in as a standard refrigerator color, whatever that may be for you and your kitchen.

But if you want to have some fun, you can choose from twenty two colors for the upper refrigerator and nineteen for the lower. I don't know why the differential there, Like why can you only do twenty two on the top and nineteen on the bottom. I'm not sure, but the top is the refrigerator and the lower is the freezer. You can also have themes season Place healing and pop Healing.

Elicits a feeling of well being through the use of soft soothing colors, creating a calming mindfulness space mindfulness that's a word we've heard a lot about. I thought this was pretty neat. It's just neat to be able to change the color. You can have some fun. Obviously, it

can do different things. There's also built in Bluetooth, so you can connect this to a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop, or a PC and listen to music from your favorite streaming apps, so if you want to, you know, if you don't have like a dedicated speaker in the kitchen. You know, people gather in the kitchen when you have a get together. No matter where you put the your doors, people always seem to come back to the kitchen and stay there. I don't know why. It's just the way

it is. It's just the place. It's the one place in the house that was never intended for people to hang out in. And yet every single time you have people over, where do you hang out in the kitchen? I don't know. That's just the way it is. I don't mind it. You can stream music. Let's see what else can you do? You can have notifications from your door, so if you leave the door open. You know, you've ever like left your refrigerator door open just slightly, and

it's you know, emitting all that cold air into your house. Well, now the refrigerator door can blink to let you know, hey, this is not fully closed. My mom always said that it costs a nickel every time you open the refrigerator door. And so I do not keep the refrigerator door open for very long. You know, I'm not one of those people that just linger and looks like no, no, I go into the fridge. I open that door with purpose. I know exactly what I'm getting, I know where to

look for it, and it's closed within seconds. Because you know, that's the way I grew up. He didn't leave the refrigerator door opened very long. It also has motion sensor, so it knows when someone walks into the kitchen, so it can blink kind of like a little welcoming blinking light when you walk into the kitchen, saying like oh, hey, fridge, I know you're here. I see you. From midnight snackers, the freezer door can illuminate brighter at night time to

help you guide your way to the fridge. Does anyone really midnight snack? This is like something that's just sort of overplayed in like you know, stories and TV shows. No one actually midnight snacks do they. I can think of like zero times in my life when I got up in the middle of the night and got a midnight snack. If you challenge me on that, gimme a call.

Triple eight rich one oh one. I've gotten up in the middle of the night and I've watched like an episode of a TV show, like if I can't sleep, and I told you, most of the time this doesn't happen, but if it does, I will get up. And I'm the kind of person that will just sit in front of the TV and watch an episode of Seinfeld or something like. I'm like, I'm using my time, and then you know, I'll fall asleep after that. But I'm not going to just sit there and like toss and turn

forever and again. Once the refrigerator is you know, if you don't want the color, you can just do Lux gray or Lucks white, pricing all that stuff. Not really sure on this new mood up TV from LG, but kind of cool. I'm digging it. I think that some of the stuff we see coming out is it seems like it could be hokey, but at the same time, why not. I think that it'd be kind of cool. To be able to color change my fridge, especially if you have people over them. We all have those color

changing lights, or a lot of us do. So why not Mark is in Houston. Mark, you're on with Rich on Tech. What's up? Mark? You're on?

You know, you may have extra signal in certain places, you know, and obviously this starlink covers like everything, but the reality is, you know, I think with the iPhone adding satellite capability to their phone, for most people in most situations, that's probably going to be enough. I think that starlink with T Mobile once they get this up and running, which by the way, is going to take a while. And also we may not see support from

every phone. Did they announce that they're going to have every phone compatible with this, because it probably will require a different antenna, I don't know. With this technology, T Mobile planning to give customers text coverage practically everywhere in the continental US, Hawaii and parts of Alaska, Puerto Rico,

and waters even outside of T Mobile signal. So you know, again, it would be just messaging which is already available through the iPhone on the iPhone fourteen with satellite right now, to anyone has an iPhone fourteen, this is not even available yet, and it's planned and it's text messaging, which is great, which Apple is just giving you emergency messaging, so that's another differentiator here. But eventually T Mobile and Starlink will give voice and data coverage. But that's eventually,

that's like beyond beyond, So this is early thing. I think that they wanted to build some buzz for this new feature, and I think it's cool, and I think it just again goes to show what's coming, but it's not here. And I don't think that you choose your

carrier based on this. I think that if you want the satellite technology for peace of mind right now, I think the iPhone is the only game in town, and the iPhone fourteen models specifically with the satellite over SOS, and it's slow, and that's probably the way this one's going to be. It's a slow process to connect, it's a slow process to send messages. But the idea and the reality is that it's already saved lives, it will continue to save lives, and we will have connectivity at

this point. If you have an iPhone fourteen, you're pretty much never disconnected from help anywhere you are in the US, and that's the idea here with T Mobile as well in the US and other places that you'll be able to not only get help but also text people as well. But it's a long ways off, and I think it's a little confusing because people might think they have this

already or we're on the cusp of it. But with Team Mobile, they didn't really say what the timeline is on this, so it's going to be a bit and I think that you choose the carrier. I always give people the advice choose the carrier that works best where you live and where you work. Talk to some folks and see where those two things are, and that's the best carrier for you right now. If you're upgrading your phone, good question. Thanks for calling in, Mark from Houston, Texas.

Rich tamiro here with you on a rich on Tech Saturday. We'll have more of your calls. Plus we'll talk about the gadget that helps you talk to your pet. Coming up. Welcome back to rich on Tech Omrich damiro answering your tech questions and talking about important topics happening in the tech world. Let's go to Angie in Huntington Beach. Angie, I think we got disconnected your back.

there right now. When it comes to like adding a third party sort of like tracking device to this, I don't see that being a possibility. The tracking devices are small, but they're not that small, and there's no way that you would be able to put something like an air tag on this or any sort of you know, even tile.

They're just not small enough to work with this. Now on the flip side, the trend we're seeing is that more and more companies are building what's called fine My, which is Apple's branded location you know, tracking into devices. And so it could be that, you know, it could be as simple as a software update, or it could be simple, or it could be you know, a future

pair that you get. But you said, these are very expensive, so I don't imagine you're wanting to get a different style or pair anytime soon, right, you know, it might.

company codes what you're able to do there. So I would check there, what are you going to do in the meantime, I mean, how have you actually like lost these where you've gone like, oh no, where is this? Or has it just been like you've noticed that they've fallen off?

there's not really much. I mean, it's it's you know, and I'm sure if you just got these for the first time, you're probably getting used to them, and that's probably contributing to, you know, whether you feel them on your ears or not. And so I think that that's all probably part of why you've lost them a couple

of times. It's like anything else, you know, you're still getting into the into it, you know what I mean, And so it may be a while before you say, oh, I just hold on, I took off my mask and these things. Where did they go?

it comes to hearing aids because of that. You know, this is this is an industry that used to be controlled by just a few players, and now that pretty much they've opened it up to many, many different companies able to offer these things immediately over the counter without a prescription. You know it's going to change things.

device called Fluent Pets. Okay, and I saw this in person, and you know, look, we all want our pets to talk with us. We talked to pets, do they always talk back? Not necessarily. I mean, we can communicate with them in our own way. But this Fluent pet, it's called fluent Pet connect, allows you to let your pet talk to you. And here's how it works. So it's a bunch of these recordable sound buttons and you place

them on sort of this board of interlocking tiles. They look like a rubber matt almost, and you program this button to say something in your voice, so you can say something like water or bone. And then guess what you see where this is going. When your pet wants water or a bone, what do they do? They press this button. So you teach them to press this button that then sounds your voice when they want something. And I watched this dog do this when the trainer showed

the dog two different toys. One was a ball, one was one of those like sort of you know, cloth bones. The dog pressed the right button and it took a little bit for the dog to do it, but it did it. Now that's a visual thing, but eventually, I think you know, if your dog already goes like to the door when they want to go to the bathroom, it's not a big leap to think that you can do this. The system is one hundred and sixty dollars, the tiles are seventy. It's going to be available in

February twenty twenty three. Again, it's called Fluent Pet Connect. If you want your pet to talk to you, well, look at it. That's going to do it. For this hour of the show, Hour number two of the brand new rich On Tech Show is in the books. Next hour, we're going to talk to an expert about what you need to do now that last pass has been hacked. More of your calls and more tech coming up. Welcome back.

You're listening to rich on Tech. I'm Rich Demiro, and this is the show where we talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions. Phone lines are open at triple eight Rich one oh one. Now you're probably wondering, if you're just tuning in, what happened to Leo Laporte. He's well, he's just retired from radio, so after nineteen years he gets to sleep in. And now you've got me. I'm your new guide for all things technology right here.

I'm also the host on KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles, where I do a tech report. I've been doing that for many many years there, and now in addition to that, I will be doing this. So think of this as sort of your office hours. You can see me on TV and you can now call me to get my opinion on things. And yeah, sometimes it's just straight up my opinion. It'll be based in fact. Sometimes it's just kind of what I like. Sometimes it's obviously comparisons and

knowledge that I bring to the table. You can find me on social media. I am on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at rich on Tech and my website is rich on tech dot tv. So join me there. I have a lot of fun on my Instagram, especially, you know, it's not always tech. You know, like yesterday I posted birthday cake kitkats. Have you ever seen those? I never did, and I was tempted. I didn't buy them, but I was very tempted. I'm a sucker sometimes for all these

like you know, anything like funfetti flavor. Let's be honest, you know, I think Funfetti is a you know, they're wondering how pumpkin spice became so big, right, They're like, Ah, we have this flavor that's really good, but why did pumpkin spice become so popular? I think Funfetti has the ability to do that same thing.

you know, the biggest tech show in the world. You've got techy people there, and so I figured, you know, historically it's a place where you exchange a lot of business cards, right, And I'm a tech guy, So I'm like, I can't have a physical business card, Like come on, I do, and I've had the same ones for many years, and I'm always like hesitant to give them out because I'm like, shouldn't we be doing something smarter, better and more efficient than a piece of paper that we cut

and print with stuff? And so before CES, the night before, I tested three different digital business card apps, cause I was like, you know what, I'm going to try to use a digital business card and I'll just cut to the chase here. I'll just tell you no one likes

digital business cards. It's just a fact of life. And I'll tell you why this is what I realized in trying to share my digital business cards so many times, is that when you're sharing a card with someone, it is a quick thing where basically you say, oh, and here's my card, give me a call, get in touch, let's hang out, let's do business whatever, and they take it and they put it in pocket and they forget about it until they get home they empty their pocket

and say, oh, yeah, I need to call Rich. Let me put his number in my phone, or let me email him, or let me look him up. Whatever it is. With a digital business card, people need to take action immediately, and that is what breaks this whole business business card continuum because nobody wants to do something in that moment because the next person is walking up to them, or they're, you know, doing something next on their calendar, or they're going to their next meeting. They don't have time to

deal with your contact information at that very moment. So I tested three of these things. The first is called Popple popl and the way that a lot of these does keep messing up on that digital business cards work is that you can scan a QR code and then I'll bring up your information. You can text someone your digital information. Usually it's a link to your digital business card. You can email them your business card. There's a lot of ways to share, and most of these apps support

all the different ways. So, for instance, Popple actually the way that they started and it's popl This was a physical device like a little sticker that you could put on the back of your iPhone. You could tap that to another iPhone or any NFC enabled phone and it would trigger your information to pop up on their phone. And so it was pretty cool. But now people have gotten very used to QR codes. We don't really need

to tap anymore. You can just you know, scan someone else's QR code, and so that's the primary method of sharing is a QR code. So you can put it in your Apple wallet, you can put it in your Google wallet, and then someone you know, you just pull up your QR code, someone scans it and now they have your information on their phone. But here's a thing.

It typically just brings up a website, and on that website they have to do something, whether it's you know, download your information or follow you on Twitter or Instagram. So unless they're ready to do that at that very exact moment, it could be tricky, so Popolite says, probably the slickest out of all of these. It's probably the most like, you know, kind of the youngest, freshest looking app out of all of them. And many of these apps, by the way, have a customizable web page that's kind

of your business card. But also it has like lead capture, so if you're like a salesperson that's constantly meeting new people, or anyone that's meeting new people and you want to remember how you met them, you can also capture their information so when they add their your card to their phone, you know, the card will prompt them and say, hey, do you want to send back your information a rich So poppol looks pretty slick, it works really well. It's

probably one of my top picks for sure. And they just added this feature where you can have a QR code that works without Internet, so when the person scans that, they don't need Internet on their phone, or you don't need internet on your phone to make that work, which

is kind of cool. That's a brand new feature. I haven't tested it, but that came into play because a lot of the people I was talking to and trying to give my card to were international, and so they have either their you know, cellular data turned off, or they hadn't connected to the Wi Fi or whatever. It was just a little bit complicated. So that's another consideration,

all right. The next app that I tested is called Hi Hello, and this app what I like is that the card, like the digital business card that it gives you, is really slick looking. It looks really nice, and so it's got this cool format. You can, you know, change how it looks. It's got all your information right on one page. So what someone could do when they see this is they could screenshot your information if they pull

that up. So some of them, like poppol will just show like a Twitter icon or an Instagram icon, and so you can't really like screenshot that. If you just want to do this in a hurry, but with high Hello, you could just screenshot the whatever the business card that pops up and boom, Now you can add it to your phone later on when you have time. And again

it all comes back to what I noticed. Every single person I was trying to share this with, none of them wanted to deal with my contact info at that very moment because they had better things to do with their lives. And so that's that. My big takeaway is like, oh okay, that's interesting. But like Poppel, this allows you to share via QR code, email text. This actually can

write to an NFC device. If you have an NFC device that you want to write it to, you can add it to Apple Wallet and I like the look of it. And again it keeps track of the people that you send your stuff to so that you can follow up with them as well. Okay, the final one that I tested is called link l n Q, and this I would say is probably like the most business y out of all of these different apps, and so link li in q I actually like it the best for a certain reason. And the reason and this is

what I've decided. The reason is that you can send your information as a text to someone. And what it does is it will send that text with a link to your business card, but also your business card embedded in that text, so your VCF card if you've ever gotten a text where it's like, you know, basically a contact card, and you can download that right to your phone.

So what I like about this is that when I text someone my information, they have the option to not have to deal with it at that moment because my contact card is in their text now. So later on when they're you know, at the end of the night or whatever, when they're going through all their different texts, they can say, oh, yeah, Rich DeMuro shared his information.

Here it is and I can download that. They can download that card right to their phone when they have the time to do it, as opposed to having to deal with it right then and there. The downside to that setup is that this link comes from a link phone number. So the implication for most people or you know, what most people might do is just reply back to that text it does say this came from rich DeMuro like it'll it kind of like nudges them to make

them realize that it's not my text number. But that's the only downside is you have to pay extra if you want it to come from your text number, so which I'm not ready to pay for any of these apps just now, but that's that's kind of where it is. So anyway, poppol high Hello and Link l A n Q. But the bottom line is I'm probably going back to a regular business card because it just seems to be the easiest. That's what I prefer, and it seems like

a lot of people prefer that as well. All right, let me just do one quick story before we get to calls in a moment here after the break But Ring, you know Ring, the video doorbell company, they came out with a Ring car cam. So one of the most popular questions I get is when or which you know, which one of these car cams should I get these? You know, everyone wants one of these little cams for their car, and now Ring has one. And it's really cool because it looks nice, it's easy to set up,

it works with Ring. It can record whenever there's a you know, an event detected like a break in. But there's also sensors to kind of detect when something's happening around your vehicle. If you get stopped for a traffic stop, you can say ALEXA record and your camera will start recording even if your car's parked. This is a two hundred and fifty dollars camera. Again, it works with Ring. It's called the Ring Carcam. It's coming out soon. It

looks really cool. It's one hundred ninety nine dollars if you pre order it. So if you know you want this thing, probably now's the time to get it if you have Ring on your house and you've got the whole subscription. Now this also has LTE built in, so you will have to pay an extra six dollars a month if you want that LTD LTE capability, which is cellular. But I think this is gonna be something I'm gonna recommend, especially if you like the Ring video doorbell. It'll integrate

with all your other cameras and it looks slick. I haven't tested it, but it's got cameras that look out and also into your car. So Ring carcam brand new unveiled at CES twenty twenty three. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Give me a call triple eight Rich one oh one with your tech question, and coming up, we're going to talk to an expert about what you need to do if you were involved in that last pass hack. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Rich tamiro

here which on Tech radio show. We are talking technology and taking your questions. Dale is in Minster, Ohio. Dale, welcome to the show.

talking about. Sure, And here's my predicament. I can't afford to buy a new computer, can't upgrade to Windows ten. And I don't want to put you on the spot to recommend anything over the air. But if you were in my say, if it was you in my situation, what would you do?

What what like browser are you using? Using like Chrome or something.

So that means that you could be at risk for certain things. Now, if you're doing most of your stuff online, most of your stuff on websites, many of your programs are running in the browser, you probably should be Okay. I might recommend running Chrome if you can. If you can download that and run it, it's got a lot of protections built in. I mean Edge does too, and so does Firefox to an extent. But you know, I think that that's the main thing, is knowing what you're

up against. Other than that, I mean, I would plan for a new computer at some time, maybe over the next year, and you know, you can go. If you're not doing anything that's truly intensive on this computer, you could probably get away with a Chromebook. And I look into Asher on the Chromebooks. I've been testing one and they've got a lot of great models and a lot of different price ranges. But you want to get one that definitely has the best specs that you can afford

on your budget. You say you're on a fixed income, So I would just put away a little every month for the next couple of months and until you get enough that you can upgrade this system. But it's not going to stop working anytime soon. And yes it's an older system. Windows eight point one is not ideal, but it just got to end of support in three days, so it's not like it's going away anytime soon.

they look for exploits and they exploit them. And that's kind of the main thing that you're up against. So again, it's probably not going to be a huge thing you need to worry about in the next day or two. But again, plan for a new computer, do some research, figure out if a Chromebook's going to be good. And it sounds like it would be fine for what you need. I'd go with that. And I think you're going to be just great. So Dale, thanks for the question in Ohio.

I appreciate it. Let's go to Ed in Huntington Beach, Ed, what's on your mind?

really know how. I've got so many passwords on there, I don't really know how to get to back out of that last path. And and.

last last pass breach. Last Pass is a very popular password manager and if you hear me talk at all. On any of my segments, I'm always talking about the importance of strong passwords, two factor authentication, and also having a password manager. So then when you see in the news that last pass is hacked, not just once, but twice, you're like, rich, where are you leading me here? Because maybe it was safer for me to write my stuff down on a piece of paper. I still think it's

better to use a password manager. Lots of things, though, we were taken in this breach. Website URLs for stored passwords and user names, billing addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, company names, all kinds of information. Now Here to break it down is Roger Grimes. He is a data defense data driven defense evangelist at NOBI four and one of the most interesting people I interviewed at KTLA in the past year. We talked about security. Roger, thanks for joining me,

glad to talk. So let's break this down. First off, can you give me a summary of what happened with last past. I believe they were hacked in eight in August and they said no, no, everything's fine, and all of a sudden it comes out, oh no, no, actually things aren't so fine. So what's the deal.

two hundred and fifty six bits of encryption. That's really good, but a lot of other information wasn't. So, you know, even at the very least, if they're not getting your passwords, they could at least know what websites you belong to and probably do some spear phishing attacks right and saying hey, we're from this website, we need you to change your password or something like that and then get your real password and that sort of stuff.

This is probably the seventh compromise that they've had since they've been in existence, but so it's they're starting to cause some trust issues. But I would still say for existing customers, I think the majority of your passwords are probably safe. If your master password that protected that your

last password manager was twelve characters are longer. If it's not, If your password was something weaker than twelve characters long with a little bit of complexity, you know, uppercase lowercase numbers, then you probably need to not only change your last master password, but all the passwords that you stored in immediately.

let's say you're loging for Amazon and Google. You store those inside the manager, so you log in once and then it sort of logins logs in for you using your data. So if I had a week password on my last Past account and didn't have two factor authentication enabled, am I worse off?

then get access to your encrypted passwords. So, you know, and let me say, I think Last Past that they've been requiring a twelve character password for at least a couple of years. So if you've gotten last pass in the last three or four years, you probably already have a twelve character password. If you didn't you joined before that. Again, if you if you have something weaker than a twelve character password, well you need to go ahead and change that.

But I think the key thing is I think everybody should use a password manager because people that don't reuse the same passwords across multiple websites, and the risk of doing that is far greater than your password manager being compromised.

a different password for every website. But hackers on average will compromise one or two of your websites every year and you don't know that. You know, oftentimes you don't know that they did, and then your passwords are out there. So if you have a pattern, like some people are like, you know, go Bucks or go Cubs or something like that,

and they add something different to the end. If you have a pattern, hackers will quickly, over a couple of years, see that pattern and go, oh, you know, let's go try you know, frog A for Amazon and see if

that works. So you really need to let a password manager which will create truly long and complex, perfectly random passwords do it, and the password manager will create them and use them and you don't need to even know if they are, Like I can't be fished out of my password because I don't know what they are right now?

words that we add a couple of things to. In order to be perfectly safe, it needs to be twenty characters or longer. I have friends who routinely break eighteen character passwords that people have made of every day, and they're not even the least you know, the elite advanced guessers I'm talking about. So let me say it again. If it's perfectly random, twelve characters or longer is fine if you make it up out of your head. If you want it to be truly unguessable, uncrackable, it needs

to be twenty characters. Nobody wants to use a twenty character password, create or use the twenty So use the password manager. Let it do the hard work.

into Persian cats. Well, if the hackers got that information, let's say, from last pass, and they now know that Roger seems to really like these Persian cat website he apparently raises these things or something like that, Well, that can become this intimate email where person's like, oh, I've got this great Persian cat deal for you. And so you're not expecting it to be you know, a hacker in a traditional sense, because it's not anything you know,

widely used. It's something specific. This person had to know some information about you in order to use it.

Bay Bucks tickets. A spearfish is that they're using some intimate information that the general public doesn't know about in order for you to for some you know, to let your guard down and have a little bit more trust than you otherwise would if they just hit you with some generic phishing email.

Email has size limits and texting degrades the images. I usually use Facebook Messenger, but there's got to be a better way. Thanks Jim. At the end of his email says, a seminar on time travel will be held two years two weeks ago. That's my kind of guy. Great question, And this is the kind of stuff that you know, it always comes up when you're with a group of

people and you need to share something with them. And I find that this happens at family gatherings or when you're with your friends at a table and you take a group picture and everyone's like, oh, airdrop, airdrop, air drop. Air drop is phenomenal. But the problem with air drop is that it's only iPhone to iPhone or iPhone to mac or iPhone to iPad or iPad you know. You know what I'm saying. It's an Apple thing. And so if you are texting someone, people are like, oh, what

do you texting me? This tiny video for well, it didn't start out tiny, but because it went through SMS into the iPhone, it's tiny. So a couple things here. Number one, if you're going iPhone to iPhone, it's always going to be Okay, so the message I message is going to be just fine. If you're going iPhone to Android, it's not going to be fine. If you're going Android

to iPhone, not going to be fine. If you're going Android to Android and you are on a reasonably newer phone and you've activated what's called the chat feature and you're using the Google Messages app, it's going to be fine. The problem is, really what it comes down to is Android to iPhone, iPhone to Android, how do you exchange those files? Now, there are many many ways you can do this, and the reason why air drop is so cool. And by the way, Android has its own it's called

Nearby Share. If you haven't looked into it, it's fantastic. You can. You know, Android has air drop built in. It's called Nearby Share, and it's it's a feature that's on most modern or i think all Android phones at this point, and if you haven't checked it out, try it. But the problem is it only works from Android to Android. But if you haven't and you've got Android friends that's the way you share big stuff among your phones, try it.

I mean, it's really really phenomenal. Obviously, use air drop if you're on iPhone to iPhone. I think the best way is really, yeah, one of these messenger apps. So what you have to do is ask your friend when you're transferring, Hey, which app do you use? Maybe they used Telegram, maybe they use Facebook Messenger, maybe they use a signal or WhatsApp. I mean, chances are there's one of these products that they're using that you're also using, and that's the best way to get that large, high

quality file to them. Now what I like to do is just kind of skip all that. Now, the best thing I ever did was sign up my entire family for Telegram. So we are all on a group chat on Telegram and it makes life very very easy because we all have different phones. And also I don't want to really be limited by the phone that you know,

I am using. If I'm using Android and they're using iPhone, and they're using Android and I'm using iPhone, why be limited to all these different things that you know, these limitations that some of these companies put on us. So when you find that common ground, it's really nice. And many people in the US have found common ground with I Message. And if you're not part of that blue bubble system, you know, people get bent out of shape because you mess up the group chat. I'm not a

big fan of all that stuff. That's why I signed up everyone for Telegram and said, let's use this because we know it's going to work. And I use it for work. I use it for my family. I use it for my wife, and it just makes life so much easier. If I'm testing an Android phone, my wife could text me the exact same way she does if we're using iPhones together with I message. So that's number one. Get your friends on the same page with a cross platform solution. If that doesn't work, what I like to

do is send them a link. Send them a link, upload the file or the video. I'm guessing we're talking about videos here, or photos, I guess upload it to something like Dropbox or Google Drive or if you're using Google Photos. You can send a link that way, and when you send a link, they're going to get the high quality picture because it's a link, it's in the cloud,

and there's no storage limits. I mean, obviously up to your plan limits, but there's no sort of like sending limits where you know, I can't send a one gigabyte file because obviously that's not going to work through email, but if it's a link, the file is held in the cloud until the other person on the other end downloads it. Facebook Messenger, I really feel like Jim is

kind of the sea way to do this. The other thing is it's probably not best for big files, but Instagram, if you use like the messenger functionality on there, that's a pretty good cross platform solution. I don't know if the pictures are sent truly high quality, but they're probably gonna look better pictures and videos than they would if you send them through you know, just standard SMS. And so that's another option. Personally, I'm my default is to

use Google Photos. I will send you know, a link with a bunch of pictures or a couple of pictures, and then I'll use Dropbox if it's more business oriented. There's also a whole host of different companies out there, like we Transfer that can send stuff. But really the problem is, you know, all of this stuff, if you're sharing it through the cloud, has to go up to the cloud first, and that could present some issues, especially if you're in a place with spotty service. And that's

why people like I message are sorry. They like air drop is because it can work at hoc, which means your phone is directly connecting to that other phone, and that's the big differentiator. Now, when I mentioned the nearby

Share on Android, same thing. It is ad hoc so and nearby Share is actually even a little bit smarter than air drop because nearby Share will detect what situation you're in, so it can detect, you know, whether it might be best to share it over the Internet, whether if it's a small tiny file, whether it can share it over Bluetooth, whether if it's a small file, or whether it can share it over you know, direct Wi Fi and direct WiFi is probably going to be the

fastest out of any of those, and Bluetooth is another way of doing it, but that's not really something that people want. The other app that I like that I've used over the years for myself that I've found to be pretty fast is called Send Anywhere, And you know, it does require if this is kind of if you're doing it yourself, you know, you would have to have that on both devices, But if you wanted to send

a large file to yourself, that can work. But Telegram also has this feature where you can have you know, and even WhatsApp just out of this where you can send messages to yourself. So look into those and I think one of those solutions should be good. But until we have you know, everyone on the same page with like cross platform, we're going to continue running into these

issues with compatibility. Okay, over at CS. One more product I saw which I thought was pretty neat, is called the bird Buddy, and I love the idea of this. This is a connected bird feeder. Now they've had that for a while, started as a Kickstarter. The thing they announced that CS that's brand new is a humming bird feeder,

and they think they call themselves tech for Nature. So the idea is that all these birds fly into our yard on a daily basis or weekly or monthly, the bird feeder will take pictures and videos of those birds now humming birds included, and not just take pictures but also identify the species. So it uses AI to identify And how does this all work, Well, it sort of gamifies the birds that fly into your backyard. So the way the the CEO and founders said it is it's

kind of like Pokemon Go for birds. So the feeders are about two hundred dollars. Again, it's called bird Buddy, I think it's a fun idea. My brother is a big birder. Is that what they're called birders? But he would love this, And I think I hope he's not listening, because this is definitely the next gift I'm getting him because it just sounds like so much fun. A bird feeder, I might get a bird. I might become a burder,

a birdwatcher. I don't know what's the term? Bird buddy is the gadget some each Facebook dot com, slash rich on Tech hit the big blue send email button, or go to richon Tech dot tv hit the email icon. You can also download the KTLA plus app to watch me on TV. Thanks to everyone who made this first show possible. Robin, Julie, Bill, Kim, Laura, Annie, Matt, my wife, my kids, and of course Leo, my mom, my dad. My name is rich Demiro. 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. I'll talk to you real soon.