Rich On Tech Radio Show 002 - January 14, 2023

one oh one. And once again, my name is Rich Dmiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles and now coming to you live on radio station's Coast to Coast. Now, as many of you know, Leo Deporte has retired from radio and this is the new show, so welcome, very exciting. This is episode number two. Now, many of you wrote to me, tweeted me, DMed me. You let me know that you listened last week, and I am very grateful

about that. Thank you. But I did not realize that I had so many esteemed radio critics in my audience. It was kind of fun to hear from so many of you. Alex said, good job, but yeah, you sounded a little nervous because of that, it seemed like you were rushing deep breath and you'll be fine. Okay, here we go, deep breath. I know you know. When I was growing up, I learned you didn't want any dead airtime on the radio. So I felt like you had to fill every second with something, with some word, with

some phrase, with something pithy, something interesting. Mario said, avoid speaking with what could be described as vocal fillers, such as certain uses of the word whatever. Did I really say whatever?

with that? I think so. Mike said, super duper great show was very tech diverse, focused, and very appreciatively moved quickly. Meliki and those were his words. Thanks Mike, and thank you for listening. This show will continue to evolve just like the tech I talk about in it. This is episode number two. I'm still getting the hang of this. Yes, I do TV during my weekdays, and so radio is

new to me. And it's really fun because I get to talk about this stuff for just a little bit longer than I get to talk about this stuff I do on TV. But it's all the same stuff, and

that's the beauty of it. So if I find something interesting during the week, and I've got a pile of stuff here to talk about, that's the whole point of this show is it's really too you know, you're busy, you're doing your work, you're doing your job, You've got your kids, you've got your family, you've got travel, whatever you're doing, you know, you're taking care of you and

I'm taking care of the tech side of things. And so the whole point of this is to, you know, have me talk about the tech stuff that I think you should know about. And that's what we're gonna do here this week. Speaking of kids, I actually went to a movie with the kids, and this is kind of a big deal. I know a movie does not seem like a big deal, but it is because most of the time, what are we doing we're streaming stuff at home, and this was a movie we actually saw Puss and Boots,

which was funny. By the way, all the Shrek movies are pretty funny. And you know, I'm not a big like kids movie, especially animated movie person, but when they get it right, like when they get the jokes to work for the kids and the adults, I mean, that's a win in my book. And this was this was like on point, so highly recommend seeing it. But going to the movies was kind of a big deal because a it's expensive and the movie is streaming at home,

so yeah, it was a little more expensive. Like this movie is one of those like they're you know, they're like experimenting with where it's like thirty bucks to watch at home, which if you think about how much I've paid for three tickets, it was about the same. So of course at home you only get to watch it once. I guess that's the same in the movies. But it was much more comfortable to be at home. You've got your couch, you've got no overpriced popcorn. You know, I

can make my own popcorn. I've got my own soda and drinks, and you know, candy could pause the movie if you want to get up to do something. But I think that's the problem, right, So when we got to this movie theater, the seats are comfy. They had heated seats. I've never seen that before in a movie theater. So here I am turning on the heat on a seat.

It was like a you know, it's felt like one of those blankets, you know, those like heated blankets for your back, like if you're having like a you know, and I just happen to have like a little stretch in my back that kind of hurt. So I'm like, all right, this is cool. I'm getting like a back therapy session and a movie all in one. So that was cool. You know, the kids are not really bopping around as much as they would at home because it's a movie theater. And when you're in a movie theater

something comes over you. It's like a hypnosis that you just sit there and watch the screen. It's so big, it's larger than life. And so that was kind of the whole point of this. That was my thesis of this whole movie is that you know, we've replaced so many things in our lives with new, better, digital on demand and sometimes doing things the old way just feels right,

and a movie is one of those examples. Now, I know the movie business has been impacted greatly by all of this streaming and people with their big TVs and this and that, But when you actually go to a movie, I don't think you have a bad experience. I mean, when I was a kid, yeah, the ground was sticky and you threw your trash on the ground, right. I mean, now people take their trash and they put it in the trash can at the end of the movie theater

when you walk out. I mean, that's an improvement. But this whole experience because I had such a good time. You know, every time I go to a movie in the theater, which is not very often, I always like plan my reach to the theater. I'm like, I'm going to a movie next week. I can't wait. I'm taking Tuesday off of work and I'm just gonna sit in that theater and watch a matinee. And you know, it never really happens until like another six months. I'm like,

ah see, I should have come earlier. I should have come to the movies again. But it got me thinking of all the different ways that we sort of do things digitally versus the old analog way. And one of these questions I proposed as I'm trying to get organized in the new year, I said to folks on Twitter, I said, hey, do you use paper or digital for your daily planner, for your to do list? For your notes? And I got so many people chiming in, you know,

paper is better, digital is better. Here's the app I use. And so I went down this sort of rabbit hole of trying out all these different apps for my to do list and my daily notes. And I've used, you know, all the suggestions people were telling me, and I did come to a conclusion of one app that I really like. The problem is it's twelve dollars a month, and I don't know if I want to be that organized, Like it's my organization worth twelve dollars. I'm not sure, but

so far I really like it. It's called noe Plan, and I like it is because it's a very simple thing that not many apps offer. Many apps offer you the ability to do a to do list, which is fine, and then some have a calendar. This one puts it all together, so every single day you get a fresh page for your calendar. That you can just take notes on. It's kind of like a notebook for your calendar, and that's the way I operate. Like every day, I'm like, Oh,

that's a cool website. Let me where do I put that? Do I put it in my notes? Do I put it in my to do list?

a better person. I think I'm much more organized. I can see my notes from every single day this week, and it doesn't get lost because you can refer to the day before the next morning, so things that were still on your list or your notes that you kind of didn't get to you say, oh, yeah, that was

something I wanted to do. But this, of course got me thinking about all these different things that we've just done digitally, Like remember all the things we used to have on paper receipts, movie tickets, concert tickets, newspapers, records. I saw a record player at CS that connects with sons and I've never had a I mean I had a record player as a kid in my house, but

I was like, I need this record player. And it's an expensive record player, but it connects with Sonos, which I have in my house, and I just thought it'd be cool to put a record on. And then I told my wife about it, and she was like, a, do we really need a record player with all the streaming music we have? I said, I don't know. It sounds kind of fun. I mean you got to change the record every forty minutes, but I mean that's a

small price to pay, right. Sometimes it give me a challenge to sort of adopt these new digits things, but then we get used to it. Like my mom, she flew home the other day and I gave her her boarding pass for the first time on her smartphone. I said, Mom, I'm not printing this out for you. You're going to use your phone as your boarding pass. And she was very hesitant, but I said, you're going to do this, and you're gonna And she was so proud of herself when she

got home with just her phone. Remember if you lost your plane ticket was gone forever. I mean that that was the way things worked back in the day. Money is digital. I mean we were asking around the office the other day who uses, you know, cash, who has cash on them? And only a handful of people actually raise their hand. But if you ever try this, try this for me, Take a twenty dollars bill and try to spend it like using the cold, hard cash in your hand. For some reason, it takes longer to come

out of your hand than tapping your phone. I don't know why. It's just like this thing like I can tap my phone no problem, but if I have to hand over cash, man, it's just a whole nother world. Anyway, this is the kind of stuff I think about on a weekly basis, And this is the kind of stuff I'm putting in my new app that I like, called note Plan. So I decided it it's a combination of No Plan and Microsoft to do for me, and that's

what I'm gonna stick with for the new year. All Right, I've got a great show planned for you today coming up. Bitcoin is up, Tesla is down. I've got the Google Drive shortcut you need to know about. We're gonna talk TVs later. We're gonna talk to a psychology professor about whether big social media companies are really ruining teenagers' lives. Plus, the phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one. That's triple eight rich one O one. You

are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions. Phone lines are open. It is triple eight rich one oh one, Triple eight rich one O one. Andy is in Pine River. Andy, You're on with rich.

you know, I mean, that's all I was. It was an accounting packet. It was a file cabin with accounting packete. So I never jumped into the hole let's buy a computer, and I never did it, and it kind of left me in the dust down the line because I never wanted a smartphone. I just so here I am. You know, it's twenty twenty two or twenty twenty three now, and I don't have a smartphone. I'm off the grid as far as you can get. I don't have a landline, I don't have an I got nothing.

their phone for the first time. I mean, I do think about the fact that I wear an Apple Watch and I've got this connection that is just sort of on my wrist at all times, like you know, during the day, So you know, I think there's a there's a reason to sort of wonder about that stuff, but I'm not sure there's anything that's concrete, especially with the five G signals. I mean, that's pretty standard on most phones at this point. But I think the Pixel six

A is really going to be your best bet. I think that you'll love the ability to use your voice to search on that phone. It's got great voice search, it's got a great camera. I think the software is very simple, and also the software updates quite frequently, so you'll get new features on that phone for a few years. So if you're looking to invest, like I said, three fifty four hundred bucks on a phone, I think it'll

last a long time. I know everyone has the iPhone, and the iPhone is great, it's a fantastic device, but you know there are other phones out there, and especially for someone like yourself that's just getting into it, I think that the Pixel six A is going to be great for you. The only downside, and I'll tell you this about getting the Pixel, is that your friends probably don't have that, so when you have trouble with your phone, you can't really ask a friend, Hey, how do I

put this into airplane mode? Or how do I put this into you know, how do I change the Wi Fi? Because most of your friends are probably gonna have iPhones, so that would be the argument to maybe get a basic iPhone if you don't want the Pixel. But great question, Andy. I wish I had more time to hear about your your rock star past, because I feel like there's a lot there, and I think that you've probably got some some cool stories there. But thanks for calling the show.

I appreciate it. All right. Phone lines are open triple eight rich one oh one. That's one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. All right. Speaking of smartphones, if you're in the market for a new Samsung, I would hold off because Samsung is going to hold their next event they call them Unpacked events in February February first, to be exact, this is their first in person event in three years, and this is for the Galaxy S series, so this is their top

of the line phones. The S twenty three is what we're expecting to see here. Samsung says it will be the epitome of how we define the ultimate premium experience. In fact, this was the last event that I went to before COVID stopped all of the events, so I was up in San Francisco. It was at this really

cool location. I can't remember what it was called, but it was so neat and it was packed, and I remember there were little signs that had to take our temperature because it was February something and it was just at the beginning of COVID and they were like, Okay, well we're still having this, but you know, everyone take your temperature and you'll be fine. And I'm not even sure masks were a thing at that point, but this was the last event I went to before the entire

world came crashing down. So again, February first, we're going to hear all about the new Samsungs. All right, coming up, My guest is a psychology professor. She's going to talk about Seattle public schools in the lawsuit against the big tech social media companies, and whether TikTok is really ruining our teenagers' lives. I'm also going to talk about Bitcoin being up, Tesla being down, and the Google drive shortcut you need to know about. My name is Richdimiro. You

are listening to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here, rich on Tech. You are listening to rich on Tech on the radio. This is the show where we talk about tech stuff and answer your questions. Phone lines are open at triple eight Rich one oh one. So I should probably mention that I am on social media. It's a big part of my day actually Instagram at rich on Tech. So I'm looking through some of the things I've posted lately. I you would be surprised at how much time I

spend sort of crafting Instagram posts. And I don't know why, because you know, it's just fun and I love I think the combination, like when they came up with Reels, which I know is a direct copy of TikTok, But for me, Instagram is sort of where my followers are, so I kind of stuck with it and it's just fun. Like I got this video editing program that I use on my phone called Splice, which a friend recommended. So I was, okay, I guess I'll tell you the whole story.

But I was editing reels on my phone and using the built in editor on Instagram, and it was just it was horrific, like I couldn't do anything, like it just took me hours on end to try to like do one thing, and so I ended up. I saw my friend who was posting, and I said, hey, how are you getting these things so good? Like what how are your posts always so amazing? He goes, dude, don't use the built in editor. He's like, you got to use this program called Splice, and so I downloaded it.

Of course it's like a little free trial, and then it costs me money, but it has changed my life because it's so great and it just works so well. And so now I'm editing things on Splice all the time, and it's just it's almost like a hobby, and you know, I don't have to do it, but it's just great and it's fun. And so anyway, some of the things I posted recently, some of the more fun ones. This Lenovo notebook that is just wild. It's got like two

giant screens. It's a yoga notebook, so it just folds in a million different ways. I've got the Ring carcam on there, which is the new ring you know them for their video doorbell. They've got a new camera for your car. And then I've got this cookie shot robot that is inside Caesar's Palace. I've got this glow in the dark basketball that I got my kid or well, we got sorry, my cut my nephew. We got him one of these things. Then we've got this Britta water

filter for your countertop. We've got the Ring Flying Drone camera. I mean, it's just Oh. I've got this thing that it's like a pet I don't know what you call it, a flowbe for pets. It's just cool. It's just fun. So anyway, check it out at richon Tech on Instagram if you want to see some of my reels on there.

And yes, I answer people's questions on there too, Like people are always surprised when I write them back and say, you know, like they'll comment on stuff, and I don't really expect to return message when I text someone through Instagram, and I'm always surprised that I never get them. But when I right back to people, they're surprised they do get them. And I do spend a fair amount of time doing that again Instagram at rich on Tech if you want to join in the fun there. So bitcoin

a little surprise. Woke up this morning and I saw an email that bitcoin was over twenty k. Now, this is not the show where I'm gonna sit here and talk about the nuances of the bitcoin price, but I feel like this is a pretty big change in bitcoin because it is above twenty thousand for the first time since early November. And that's when ftx collapsed, you know, that platform that was doing things a little, I don't know,

not so right, and everything came crashing down. And so the whole thing about bitcoin is everyone was really into this during the pandemic, and people were investing money and they were excited. And yes, you still have a lot of people that are excited, but then you have a lot of people that have invested a lot of money and now have to be excited because they wanted to go back up so that they recoup some of their losses that they've sustained over the last couple of years.

And so I think that's where we're at is there's an excitement again because I looked at the numbers and you know, by the time you listen to this, if you listen, you know later if you're not listening live, you know, the numbers could be down again. But if you look at the past month of bitcoin, it's up like sixteen percent. Like where did that come from? And I kind of I just stopped looking. I stopped looking at the app that I used for this because I just got bored and I was like, all right, you

know what, this money is gone. It's never coming back. I don't have a ton of money in it, but I've got some and I just you know, it's gone. I just figured it was written off forever. But who knows, Maybe it's not so. Bitcoin definitely going up, but if you remember the high, it was over sixty five thousand dollars at one point, and this is the price per coin. I'm not a bitcoin expert, but you know it goes

by coin. And I remember my friend who is a big sort of crypto person, he was emailing me back when bitcoin was starting, and he's like, hey, you got to cover bitcoin for your you know, tech report or it's this thing is like over I think the coin was over one hundred dollars and I was like, I don't know if I'm getting into all this digital currency stuff, but sure enough, he was right, and I probably should have invested back then, but that didn't really work out anyway.

So if you have bitcoin and you want to take a look at it once again and not feel so depressed, now's the time to do it. But I wouldn't sell just yet. I mean, actually, you know what, I'm not giving investment advice. You can do whatever you want. But I think it's one of these things where it's just kind of at this point, you just kind of kind of wait and watch. Speaking of Bitcoin being up, Tesla is down. This week. Tesla cut prices across the board on a lot of its cars. And you know, people

have been kind of mixed about Elon Musk lately. I say that nicely because most people have been like, not very nice about Elon Musk. But he's been making a lot of changes both at Twitter and Tesla, and so Tesla some massive price drops. The Model Why is now thirteen thousand dollars less than it was just a few days ago. That's almost twenty percent cheaper than it was. So let's look at some of these prices. The Model three old price about forty seven thousand, now the new

price forty four thousand. Model Why was sixty six thousand, and the new price is fifty three thousand. That's thirteen thousand dollars less. The Model Why Performance was seventy thousand, now it's fifty seven thousand. These are still very expensive cars. And you know the thing about the Tesla is there's a lot of competition that's grow. It's just the competition

continues to pile up against these cars. Now, I still think that Tesla still has the best charging infrastructure, and I think that makes the biggest difference for this company than any other car you get. And I've heard horror stories people that have other evs. You know, it can be tricky. Now, with that said, if you are commuting with this car, you know, any any EV you are just fine. If you're charging at home or you're charging at work. Most people are commuting, you know, maybe thirty

miles each way to work. That I think that's the average in America. Most of these cars can do sixty miles in a day, no problem, you know, many of them. The new ones can do two, three hundred miles in a day. You know. Then you've got the lucids that can do like five hundred miles in a day. But we don't really need that. I mean, I've done road trips. I'm not driving five hundred miles before I stop to get a drink or go to the bathroom or something. I mean, you know, two hundred miles is just fine.

I mean, I think it's more of peace of mind because we've gotten so used to the gas cars having a five you know, four to five hundred mile range perhaps, But with electric cars, if you're just getting one to commute, you'll be fine. If you install a charger in your garage or if you have charging at work, you'll be

just fine. With any of these electric cars, I think the Tesla the advantage is it's got that that charging infrastructure that allows you to take road trips and be just fine because you can pretty much find a Tesla charger supercharger anywhere. Now there are many electric chargers around, they're just not that fast many times. And what people realize the first time they take their non Tesla EV on a road trip is, oh, wow, I pulled up

to this charger and it's a slow charger. So I gotta stay here for an hour to get this thing charged, or I gotta stay for forty five minutes to get any kind of range on this thing, whereas a Tesla it could be, you know, fifteen twenty five minutes to get a charge, and if you want a full charge, you know, you just got to stay there for half an hour or something with some of these really fast chargers.

So the other thing about these Tesla is that I think is happening here is that they are now once again eligible for this seventy five hundred dollars US tax credit. And that's a change at the beginning of the year. So it's there's been a lot of changes with all of this stuff. And the Tesla prices have just been all over the place in general over the past couple of years, but this, this price cut is pretty big.

I'm trying to see if there's something that I'm quoting Electric by the way, that's a good blog that covers all this stuff. Trying to see if Elon Musk said anything. I guess he cited inflation and just kind of the changing nature of this whole thing. But that's a pretty big deal if you had your eye on a Tesla. Now with that said, I think there's a lot of other cars out there that if you just can wait a year for a new EV I think that there's a lot of cars out there to consider, and things

just continue to get better with evs. I mean here in Los Angeles we're on based. I mean EV's have been a thing for a while. I think in other cities, you know, it's a good option if you just want to be on the cutting edge, or if you like different things, or like I said, if you're just commuting with a car, that's kind of the way to do it all. Right, coming up, we're going to talk about another streaming service that is hiking prices. This just is

happening with all of them. Plus we're going to talk TVs later on in the show. I've got some great recommendations for Super Bowl TVs. And of course phone lines are open at Triple eight. Rich one on one. You are listening to me Rich DeMuro here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to the show, Rich DeMuro here. This is rich on Tech, the show where we talk tech stuff and answer your questions. Ron is in Downey, California. Ron, you're on with Rich.

issues failed, and I don't know what to do. I've searched on the internet for some command line codes to reset things, and I'm kind of at a loss.

might be interfering with your connection. So I would get rid of any programs on this computer I don't need anymore or don't recognize. I would delete those, and then of course restart the computer one more time. I'd go into my Wi Fi settings. I would delete any networks that I'm no longer using, including the old network, and then again I would restart, and then I would try connecting this to my mobile phone. So turn on the hot spot setting on your mobile phone. You can go

into settings, turn that on. It'll it'll generate a little mobile hotspot just like your regular WiFi in your home, and try connecting to that. If it doesn't connect to that network, then you know you have a bigger problem here. And it's not just the fact that your WiFi has decided to stop talking to this computer. If you are able to connect to the hot spot, you can use that, of course. But then once you've got that connection uh completed, now you can go back to the other Wi Fi

and see if that one works. And if it works, you're good. If not, then you're gonna have to investigate a little further. And it could you know, if it connected to the one on your phone, it's probably not a big problem because the hardware seems like it's intact, So then it could be something with how your router is configured. And that's getting a little bit more technical then,

you know, than most people want to deal with. But that's kind of the uh the steps I would take ron those are you know, those are the steps that I would take to troubleshoot that and hopefully you can get on there. I would just be careful if you're doing taxes or anything, you know, very secure on a

computer that's that old. I would make sure that your software is up to date and there's no no issues with that computer because you know, that's that's some private stuff there, so you want to make sure that computer is secure. Thanks for the call, Uh, We've got is it Gay in Woodland Hills.

plug it in, the computer recognizes it and it works. Now, I'm not sure exactly how far you can go with this DVD device, Like you probably don't want to get like a DVD burner or anything like that, because it's probably not going to be able to burn DVDs or do anything very elaborate, but you should be able to play them. And from everything I'm seeing, it looks like you're going to need some software to do that as well,

which VLC should should take care of that. VLC is a great sort of it's almost like a Swiss Army knife of apps. It will play almost anything, and so you can you know, you can use that to play the DVD. It'll play almost any file. It's a great program that a lot of people rely on. When you find a file that just doesn't work, try VLC. And it's an open source program that should work. So that's that. I mean, you're gonna have to invest a little bit.

I'm not sure how much those drives cost anymore, maybe thirty to fifty dollars for one of those drives. When it comes to switching over from last Pass to Bitwarden, and you know, it's a logical thing to do because last Pass has had so many issues The issue is you probably have to have a file that is going to be readable by Bitwarden, and I'm guessing that's a you know, Comma separated value. Anyway, last pass is going to export your file. Bitwarden's going to take that file.

But for it to read it, you know, you've got to have no encryption on there because the file, you know, it has to be able to see all your passwords and your user names. So once it's in Bitwarden, it's going to be encrypted again. But yes, I think what you're referring to is you probably want to get rid of that file almost immediately because it is going to

be pretty insecure. And that's the concern is you don't want to keep that password file on your computer because someone could just crack open that file and see everything that's in there because of the way you need to export it. But I love Bitwarden. I think it's a great program. I think that's a smart thing to do. So thanks for calling from Woodland Hills this morning. You're

listening to Rich on Tech. Coming up later in the show, I'm going to talk about the Google Drive shortcut you need to know about, plus the streaming service that's hiking prices similar story these days. My name is Rich Damiro. Give me a call Triple eight rich one oh one. Welcome to rich on Tech. This is the show where we talk about tech stuff and answer your questions. My name is Rich Jamiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five

in Los Angeles. During the week, I am covering technology for ATLA, keeping track of all the trends and things that you need to know about, and on the weekends right here talking with you about the stuff that happens during the week. And there's a lot of it. A lot of things are little, some things are big. Depends on the week, depends on you know, sort of the new cycle of things. But there's always something. There's always

something changing in the tech world. If you want to keep up with me, I am on social media at rich on Tech. My website is rich on tech dot tv. That's also where you can watch my TV segments. So it's where I sort of take a deep dive into different things, new gadgets, kind of cool. Last night we were watching Shark Tank. One of the stories I did last week, I met with a startup that was going to be on Shark Tank and they were on last night, and I guess spoiler alert since it's already aired. They

got a deal, which is kind of fun. So it was kind of neat to watch them because I just had interviewed them at their place in Hollywood and then seeing them on TV that night. But of course Shark Tank was taped like months ago, but they couldn't tell me what the outcome was, so I got to watch it live. Kind of cool, kind of fun. They did a well, I guess it's It was called Cabinet, and it's basically a new way for your medicine cabinet like

reusable pill bottles, cool idea. Hbo Max announces its first price hike, effective immediately. I mean, I don't know if you've seen the trend, but pretty much every single streaming service that I have has gone up in the past I don't know, six months to a year. I mean, every single one of them, just like clockwork. So I'm paying more for my YouTube TV paying sorry, not YouTube TV,

what's the other one? Just YouTube? I guess YouTube premium went up from like I think it was seventeen ninety nine to twenty two ninety nine, and then my Apple storage went up. Netflix went up. Actually, I think the Netflix was the one that didn't go up because I was subscribed to the highest. I can't you know, I can't even keep them straight anymore because so many of these things came in And the thing is they've got you on that automatic payment. So realistically, what are you

gonna do. You're gonna stop subscribing to Netflix because of a dollar price increase? I don't know. I mean some people consider it, I guess, but in my house, you know, people if I mention anything about switching up services, it's like, oh, no, you can't do that. I may watch that one day, okay. But Warner Brothers, which owns HBO Max Warner Brothers Discovery, raising the price for the first time since it launched

two years ago. So effective Thursday, January twelfth, the price went up from fourteen ninety nine to fifteen ninety nine a month, So that's about a seven percent increase. According to Variety, existing subscribers who are already paying fourteen ninety nine a month will see their rate increase to fifteen

ninety nine a month effective next billing cycle. So Saturday, February eleventh, I guess if you if basically, if your subscription is passed that day, Like if you get billed on the twelfth, the thirteenth, whatever, you're going to see it on the next cycle, not this one, because it

didn't have time to catch this cycle. And then they said they told Variety that the price increase of one dollar will allow us to continue to invest in providing even more culture defining programming and improving our customer experience for all users, the company said in a statement. So one dollar makes a big difference. I guess when you have seventy million subscribers, then you know it's seventy million dollars a month. You just printed at a thin air,

and maybe a couple of people will drop it. But I don't think so. I think that once you're on these this cycle, remember Hbo when you had it as part of your cable company. It was really tough to get rid of because you had to call someone and you had to say, you know, you know, Sopranos just ended. I'm not really watching anything on there. I don't really I can't justify the twenty dollars a month, And they'd say, no problem, sir, we can give you Hbo for the

next six months. For five dollars a month and he said, okay, fine, I'll keep it. Now. You can't really do that. I mean, some of these will do that. Like I had Paramount Plus and I went to cancel it and it said, hey, you know, keep it for another three months for you know, ninety nine cents or whatever it was. So some of them do have some of these like systems programmed to try to keep you even when you get rid of it, But I don't know if they're savvy. Most of them,

like Netflix is literally just like you. You you say cancel, and it's like canceled before you even breathe, like before you even click. It's like, oh, shoot, did I really just do that? Uh oh h Now I got to go back because some of them are just merciless. They'll just cancel immediately. Like you don't even get that like confirmation screen that says please stay so HBO Max, don't be surprised when your price goes up. Joe is in Los Angeles? Did I get that right?

TV may or may not work. I think that's the biggest consideration. Do you want to be able to listen to all of the audio through this TV on headphones or is it just certain things like you're maybe just your streaming. No.

But I think that might work, and that will take the optical audio output and it will send that to the Bluetooth transmitter and then your Bluetooth sound bar will pick up that signal, and of course you can hear things through there, and that should work with all the audio that runs through the TV. So whether it's the dish, whether it's the Roku box. The other solution you could use or try is you know Roku boxes, the rokup remote. A lot of them have like a little headphone jack

on the side. Does yours have that or no?

So absolutely, you know that does work. But then our thing is that maybe perhaps making uh you know, utilizing the Bluetooth or gaming a game a capable. That's that's what I was asking. But that what you just said, it actually does work.

Just search Bluetooth transmitter for TV on Amazon and pick one that you think is you know, either highly rated, lots of reviews and people say it works and try it and if it doesn't, you can always return it. But that's that's what I do. So thanks for listening. Is it's still raining outside in Los Angeles because.

rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. This is the show where we talk about technology and answer your questions. My name is Richdmuro. I am at Rich on Tech. On social media, oh gosh. Speaking of social media, Seattle Public Schools filed a ninety one page lawsuit against the companies behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube. They

say that these apps are ruining kids' lives. Now, I'm a parent and my kids are not on social media, but they are on devices, and I've seen the impact of that, and I think that there's a lot to unpack here. Joining me is professor of psychology Gene Twangy. She is author of Eye Jen why today's super connected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy, and completely unprepared for adulthood. Gene, thanks for joining me.

to other people. There's seeing all the things you're missing out on. There's the amount of time that teams are spending on social media, which is not a coincidence because the algorithms on these apps are designed to keep people on the apps for as long as possible and keep them coming back as many times as possile.

same should possibly be true for social media. Yet there's lots of kids on these platforms and minim they are supposed to be thirteen. It's not enforced, and these platforms were not designed for children, they were designed for adults.

what's good, what's bad. As kids, you may not have that, and I think that's another issue that we see here. What's your recommendation to parents about all this? What do you think parents can do to either understand this more or you know, act with their teams? I mean do they The problem is the teenagers are all on it, so you can't stop them from being on there.

it in the middle of the night. But then, you know, don't allow your kids to have social media until they're at least thirteen. That's actually the way it's supposed to be under the law. And consider having that age be sixteen or even eighteen.

his account that he's with his real age. So I don't know what to say as a parent. It's really really tricky. And I understand if you're listening and you're saying, Rich, these are really really tough things to stand firm on, But I get it. My name is Rich Dmiro. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich Damiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Taking your calls at triple eight Rich one one. That's one eight eight eight seven four

to two, four to one zero one. You can find me on social media at rich on Tech. You can even email me rich on Tech. Dot tv is the website. Got a dm on Instagram and this is Alejandra says. Do you know how do you know if some apps are listening to your conversations? How do you disconnect them? It's a good question. Now, I know this gets into some sort of conspiracy theory kind of things, but it's

a valid argument. It's a valid question of you know, well, number one, what qualifies as an app spying on you? Are you just thinking about audio and video or are you thinking about location as well? So I would consider all three of these things. Also, your camera, could it be monitoring that? Your microphone could it be monitoring that. Now this all comes to sort of the forefront when remember how a lot of people and I guess people still say this, but they say that Facebook is listening

to them because the ads on there. You see an ad on Instagram, and it's uncanny. It's like something that you just talked about with your friend and you said, they must be listening to me because I'm seeing an ad for the dog food that my friend was telling me about, or the mattress or the sneakers or anything.

And everyone's had it happen to them, myself included. And I come from the background of there's just no way that Facebook is listening to our microphones, to millions and millions of people, billions of people and scanning for keywords

and then matching up those keywords. But it is uncanny, and it is quite remarkable how many times this happens, and I'm talking even if you go to a friend's house for dinner or something and something that you mentioned in your conversation with them shows up on your Instagram feed,

and it just happens. It's happened to everyone now. The way Facebook and Instagram explain it is that their systems are so smart and so high tech that they understand that if someone recently bought something on one website and now your phone is in the vicinity of that person, they figure, well, they might have talked about it, and they serve up that. I don't know, it sounds like that would be pretty complicated in its own right, but

that's sort of their explanation. Don't forget they're tracking you on pretty much every website you go to, whether it's on your phone, whether it's on the web. And here's what I would say. I would recommend checking your permissions. So I don't think that these apps are spying on you in the way that you may think traditional spying happens,

but they are collecting a fair amount of information. So if you go on the iPhone into your settings and this is just something you want to look at, let's just choose an app so you can go to your settings and just on your main page, scroll all the way down and you can look at something like Instagram. So let's just do this right now, here is Instagram on my phone. Okay, I got to get my abcdefgh am. I the only person that has to spell out the

alphabet every time I want to see where a letter falls. Okay, So now I tap Instagram and it says allow Instagram to access. You've got location, you've got contacts, you've got photos, you've got microphone, you've got camera, Syrian search, background, cellular data, and notifications. So location is a big one, and there is a reason why it wants access to all of

this information. Location is so that if you want to tag the restaurant you're at, when you go to tag it, it shows the closest things to you, the closest restaurants, the closest points of interest, and you can easily select one and tag your photo with that. So there's a reason why they want that. Now, there are some settings here where if you dive into that, you can allow location access. Never ask me next time while using the

app or precise Location. Now, I would turn off precise Location because I don't think Instagram needs to know your precise location. Now they can understand your general location. If you want to tag stuff, that's fine. Next up contacts. Contacts helps you helps them figure out who they should suggest to you. So if they look at your contacts and they sync them up on the back end, they can suggest someone in your feed that you're friends with that's in your address book, or someone you work with,

or someone that you've exchanged contact info with. And next thing know now their network grows photos. Pretty self explanatory. They want to scan your photos to help you upload stuff. Microphone and camera. Now, if you're not taking pictures inside Instagram, you may not need access to camera. And if you're not doing Instagram stories with audio and video, you may not need the microphone. And so you can turn those

off safely until you need them again. Now, when you swipe over for stories, it may ask you, hey, we need access to this, and you can't do anything until you give that access again. So the other thing is that when you're on the iPhone or on Android, in the upper right hand corner of the iPhone, it will have a little light when when something's accessing your camera. Oh, it's actually moved to the center Now, when something's accessing your camera, you'll see a little dot towards the center

middle top part of your phone. And so that little microphone or that little light means that a camera is accessing or some app is accessing your camera. If you see, I believe it's an orange light. That is when something's accessing your microphone and similar on the Android devices they do that as well. So if you open up your camera in the upper right hand corner there it is in the upper right hand corner, it'll have a little green dot that means that an app is actively using

your camera. And you can just test this out, just open up your camera app. So the concern and the reason why they did this, I think is because people were saying, you know, Instagram's accessing my camera and my microphone without me knowing. Well, theoretically, if they were, you would see that light light up. So if you ever see that light light up when you're not using the app, that you think, then you have a problem. But that's kind of my general you know, quick lesson in are

your apps spying on you? I don't think they are, but they are collecting a lot of data and they do know a lot and they mix it, by the way, with other forms of data. So just keep that in mind. The less permission is the better. That's my advice. Billy is in fuller tin. Billy, you're on with rich what's happening?

G is how it's getting its cellular signal. But it's putting out this five gigaherts signal by default, where you ab to change the signal from the router to be also two point four because that's usually in the setting.

You could get an adapter. Have you thought about it.

time for an upgrade for the laptop. I hate to recommend an upgrade, but you know, if you figured it out with the tech from T Mobile, and you also you know, called me, but I would, I would try to figure it out. Maybe just give the Lenovo folks a call with tech support, see what they say. They may know something that I don't, but that is definitely frustrating. And of course if you have this as your home Internet, you want it to work, that's for sure. So good question.

We're getting a lot of Wi Fi questions. Apparently a lot of people have trouble with their WiFi. It's one of those things where I was testing a gadget one time, like this plug, and it just I could not get it to connect to my Wi Fi. For anything I did, it just would not work. And I tried so many different things, but sometimes it just happens, all right. Coming up in the show, I'm going to talk about the Google Drive shortcut you need to know about. I learned

about this this week. It's fantastic. I'll tell you why people are mad about Twitter all over again. And plus we'll talk TVs later in the show, specific recommendations on what to get. You're listening to Rich on Tech, give me a call at Triple eight rich one oh one.

Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is rich DeMuro, taking your calls, answering your questions and also talking about the tech stuff that happened throughout the week, things that are interesting, things of notes and stuff you can use like this. So I basically use Google Drive every day of my life. It's just a necessity. And it's one of these things where when I want to do a new document, it takes me a bit to figure it out. You know, you got to go to the bookmark of

Google Drive. You gotta say, I mean, it's like a ten step process, right. You gotta click new, and you gotta click Google Docs and you gotta decide do you want a document, do you want to template? It just takes a couple of seconds. So I knew about this, but I had forgotten about it because this is nothing new. But once you commit it to memory, it'll be a whole lot easier. So if you go to a web browser and use Google Docs, if you just type doc dot new, it will give you a brand new Google Doc.

It is like magic. And so when I figured this out the other day, I was in the newsroom, I went around and screamed to everyone, do you use Google Drive, Do use Google Docs? You need to know about this. Do you know about it, and I heard the oohs and ohs coming from the various folks in my newsroom because it's just one of those things that saves you time and time. You know, saving time is fun. Other things you can do. By the way, you have to be signed into your Google Drive for this to work.

If you're not, it will attempt to open up the new file, but it will have to ask you to sign in first. So if you get the sign in page that means that you're not signed into Google. I don't know how you'd be signed out. I mean, I don't think I ever signed out unless I have to. But you can also create a new Google slides presentation

if you type slide dot new, slide dot new. You can do a new spreadsheet if you type sheet dot new, S H E E T dot new, a new Google form if you type form dot new, f O, R M dot new, a new Google site site dot new. And one of the other ones I might use is a new calendar event cal dot new, and so if you type that in you can get a new calendar event.

that's how they're doing this. So let's go to Google slash shortcuts and there's a whole list of shortcuts that they've got. But you know, those are the those are the important ones. I think that the doc dot new is just so handy. Write that down because you never know when you need it, and thank me for it. Now, I guess, don't thank me. I didn't do it. People are up in arms about Twitter once again, all over again.

So when Elon Musk bought Twitter, people went nuts over it, and you know, there's a lot of discussions about people whether they're going to stay on Twitter, whether they ditch Twitter. You know, there's there's a couple of changes, things settled down, and now people are back up in arms because they have changed the feed on Twitter. So when you open up the Twitter app now it defaults to what's called a for you feed. Twitter did not invent the for

you feed. They are just doing what every other social media company at this point is doing, which is the for you. Let me explain. TikTok sort of started this. You know, you had Okay, you had Facebook back in the day. Then you had Instagram and Twitter, and all of these websites operated pretty much the same way. You followed people, and if someone posted something, you would see what they post in your timeline in the order that

people posted it, mostly your friends. Well, then all of a sudden, they weren't getting the engagement they wanted, because who's to say that when someone posts something it's interesting. So now they started to reorder your feed and prioritize things based on what they think you might like to see first. So if it's one of your friends, you know that just had a new kid, you would see that at the top of your feed because that's probably the most important thing in your feed. This is called

an algorithmically you know, an algorithmically ordered feed. And they started doing that, but it was still your friends. Then you had TikTok come along, and TikTok said, you know what, we don't really care who you're following, We're just gonna show you a whole bunch of stuff that you might like. And they called it your for you page, and it

worked really well. It still works really well. You watch one video on TikTok about a certain topic, and next thing you know, you're gonna see a whole lot of videos about that topic. It's just how their algorithm works. And they're gonna start it sprinkling in other things and see what you react to, what you like, what you linger on, what you click, what you interact with, who you follow and so TikTok and why people can go viral on TikTok and why people find it so addicting

is that TikTok doesn't care who you follow. I mean, yes, use that as one signal, but TikTok really just wants to show you stuff that it thinks you will interact with.

And now the other websites have seen this Instagram, Facebook and they're saying, Okay, we're going to kind of do the same thing because it seems to be working for TikTok, and people engage with this stuff because if you like pictures of you know, cats, and you know, cute cats in funny poses, you know, like you know, like those what of those Angetti's like pictures, you know, like the kids that were like in like different you know, flowers

and stuff. Remember those? You know, maybe you like cats and you know, I don't know, just in silly kind of situations. And so next thing, you know, it's like, well, we're going to show you this cat picture that's really silly because so many people across the world have loved it, So if you like this, you're gonna love it too.

And then they get that interaction and things go viral and the creators like it and everyone is happy except for the folks on Twitter right now, because Twitter has always been this world of you follow people for a reason and you want to see what they post. Well, now you see a whole bunch of stuff in your for you feed and that's the default. And so some people may argue that it's better in a way because now you're exposed to different thoughts, ideas, people, things, accounts

you may want to follow. You can always go back to the regular following by swiping. But the problem is it always goes back to the for you when you reopen the app, so it doesn't stick to the following and there's no way to set a default where hey, I only want to see stuff from people that I follow, And so sure you can manually swipe every time you get into Twitter, but who wants to do that. It's a lot of work. So that's why people are up

in arms. People are saying, once again, I'm leaving Twitter. I noticed that all the people that say they're going to leave Twitter, they're back. I mean, I haven't really noticed a substantial change in my feed, Like I haven't noticed oh yeah, that person I used to love is gone. I've noticed that the followers seem to be up, and the interaction seems to be up, and I seem to

be having more fun on Twitter. I don't know. So I don't know if all the changes have been as horrible as people have made them out to be, but it seems to be an evolving place. But anyway, so if you use Twitter or any of these services, that's what's going on all right. Coming up in the show, I've got a couple of things to talk about this new social engineering trend. It's a scam. It's got kind of a yucky name, but you definitely need to know

about that. You need to know why you should not be paying to use chat GPT, at least not right now. And we're going to talk TVs later in the show. My name is Rich Dmiro. You are listening to Rich on Tech. We'll be back after this. Welcome to rich on Tech. My name is Rich DeMuro. This is the show where we talk about technology and answer your questions.

A lot of stuff this week about scams. I'm always interested in the latest scams and I'm always posting about them on my social media at rich on Tech if you want to follow me. By the way, I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. And this is a new show. This is a tech show that has been reinvented, reborn, kind of changed up. A lot of things have stayed the same, but you know,

we're switching things up a little bit. So if you feel like it's a little different, that's for a reason. It's you know, it's a new show. So I'm going to try to pack it with information and news you can use. Obviously, i'll take your calls, but the main thing here is to just when you're listening, you feel like you are smart about technology. That's the takeaway that's what I want the goal to be. Every single week, I want you to feel like I've listened to Rich

And yeah, Rich doesn't have all the answers. I don't know everything there is to know about technology, but I'm learning, You're learning, and hopefully we all learned so that we can, you know, we can be in charge of our gadgets. We can you know, not get scammed. We can you know, spend our money in places that make sense. So that's kind of the goal of the show, and I will continue to evolve the show to make that happen. It's

a work in progress and it's it's new. This is only episode number two, so it will get it will change and evolve and breathe and live just like you know it should. This is an interesting new social engineering scam. It's got this weird name. It's called pig butchering. I mean, that does not sound fun. Definitely don't want that to happen to you. But the analogy is apparently with fattening up a pig than butchering it for all it's worth. And yeah, that's not very appealing, I guess. But here's

the thing, and you know, anyone can be scammed. This is not you know, scamming is not like an old person thing. It's not like a dumb person thing. It can happen to anyone. And because we have so many tools in our world now that make it easier than ever to hand over your heart acquired hash and it

can go to anyone, anywhere quickly. That makes scams even more interesting to scam artists because it's not just like oh, stealing twenty bucks from someone that you see in person, or getting a check from someone or their credit card. Now it is like Venmo, gift cards, PayPal. I mean, there's so many ways that people can scam people, and

it's a worldwide thing, not just local. And so that's why you hear so much about scams because it just you know, if you get one percent or even a half a percent of people to fall form, it could be a lot on a big level. So here's how this new pig butchering works. It begins with sort of a cold call or a text. Right, So you may get a text that just says, hey, it was good to catch up last week, and you say, what what do you mean good to get I don't know this person,

what are you talking about? And so in an act of common courtesy, you tell either the caller or the texter that you know, sorry, I think you got the wrong number, and next thing you know, they strike up a conversation with you and it sounds, you know, oh I'm sorry, Oh gosh, I you know, I must have the wrong number, and they start talking with you. And what they're really doing is they're trying to establish a

relationship with you. And the closer and deeper they can get this relationship, the more they might be able to scam you. Now you may be thinking, oh, come on, rich, who's going to fall for this? People do, and not everyone is as savvy as you may think. And a lot of people, especially people that come from kind of an older school mentality of courtesy, and you know, let me write this person back to say, you know, sorry, of the wrong number whatever, They could be targeted by this.

And so once the scammer gets the person in a place where they think they are fattened up, you know, that relationship is established, that's what they go in for the kill. And that's when they try to get, you know, them to sign up for some sort of app, maybe some sort of financial platform that may try to scam this person out of their money. And so once they get this going on, next thing, you know it's over.

You know, they get this person hook line and sinker, they get them to fall for this, and you know they trusted this person because they built this relationship with them. Now, I don't know. I think it'd be tough for me to fall for something like this, but I will tell you that I have texted folks and said, hey, it's rich with KTLA, everything good, blah blah blah, and I sit there and I think about it. Oh wait a second. I just gave this person my name. I just gave

them where I work. And if I had the wrong number, if I was off by a digit, if this person, in any way, shape or form, wanted to take advantage of me, they probably could because they can say, yeah, we're up for lunch next week, where do you want to meet? And you know it's not even the right person because they now know your name and who you are. So you just have to think about this stuff. Just be very careful because there are people out there that

are actively looking to take advantage. I got an email from Chase this week, and they sent a whole email about learn how to spot a scam, and a lot of this stuff might be commonplace, but they went through. I thought it was actually a pretty good email coming from a big bank saying, you know, look, scammers pretend to be someone they're not. They trick you into providing information again, access to your account. Here are some of the scams that are going around, and you want to

keep your account safe from these. So number one online shopping. They set up a fake online store and they ask you to pay in ways other than a debitter credit card. So obviously the whole point of that is, you know they don't want you to pay with debitter credit because you get some some you know you're safe from some of the scams out there. If you use a debit or credit card, it puts a little buffer between you

and this bad person. But if you pay by a check or cashier's check or transfer the money instantly, then you know they've got that and you're not getting it back or Venmo or any of these other ways. Pay yourself. A person pretending to be an employee ask you to transfer money to yourself to resolve a fraudulent activity. I mean, come on, don't fall for that. One grandparent someone impersonating a loved one and a crisis, claims their car broke

down or they lost their wallet. They need money right away. Tech support. Oh my gosh, I've seen this one so many times. I can't believe it. But yeah, people get these messages on their computer screen. It says, hey, it's a tech support here. We noticed there's a problem with your computer. Call this number and we'll fix it. And

people fall for this every single day. I've talked to very smart people, I've interviewed them, and they fall for it, because again, it's social engineering, appealing to, you know, our good side. It's appealing to our good nature. It's appealing to just like, oh, I got to solve this problem. I got all my stuff on my computer. I can't stand to lose it. Here. Let me call this number

to Windows Support and figure it out. Utility shut off A person may pose as a utility employee saying your service is going to be stopped unless you pay them immediately. You might think who's going to fall for this? But I was at dinner a couple of weeks ago and my friend told me that his family members fell for this, and uh, in fact, it involved some of his money

as well. So this happens and not everyone you know, for me, you know, in sitting around this table, we were all talking about how we would figure this out, be like, well, wouldn't you log into your account, wouldn't you see if you owe any money? Wouldn't you get a big red letter in the mail like five or ten times saying like you owe this money before you

resolve this. But the way these scam artists got this person is that they they really preyed upon the immediacy of this and this person had something going on they didn't want to you know, story in the holidays, they had people over, they didn't want their power to go out, and so they paid, and of course it was a big scam. Following tips, Oh, romance, that's another one. Scammer

creates a fake profile. I mean, I'm sure I'm not on the dating apps, but I'm sure this is must be a huge concern on these dating apps when you try to text people back and forth, and of course there's just a lot of scammers on there. You got to be careful there because you know, once you get love involved, that's a whole other level of scamminess. All right, How to protect yourself, guard your personal information. Don't give

it out. I don't give information out to anyone. You gotta be very careful about who you give your information out. Don't act immediately. These scammers often they're preying upon our time and sort of the immediacy of the solution. Don't act immediately. Use a lot of caution when you're sending money. I talked about this earlier in the show. But you can send money so fast using things like zell, Venmo or PayPal. Just be very very careful and make sure

you know who the recipient is. Once that money goes, it's not coming back, I'll be honest. It's just it's a one way street with these apps. You're never getting your money back if you paid out to someone that you shouldn't, and also if you have to credit or debit cards. They do give you a little bit of protection in these circumstances, and I guess that's why Chase is sending it out. Similarly, Chat GPT, you've probably heard about this. Everyone's talking about this amazing new website. Do

not pay to use Chat GPT right now. There is no paid chat GPT as of right now. There's a bunch of apps. If you search in the app store. Chat GPT. This is this new search engine that's supposed to take on Google. It's amazing artificial intelligence. It's free. If you want to use it, just go to the website chat dot OpenAI dot com and that is the way you can use it for free. Again chat dot OpenAI dot com. Yes, in the future they may have a paid service, they may have a paid app, but

that's not happening right now. So if you're looking for an app on the App Store or Google Play for chat GPT, do not pay for them, do not download them. Just go to the website on your web browser chat dot OpenAI dot com. And by the way, if you have not used chat GPT, you got to try it out. It is quite phenomenal. It's in beta, it's a test, but this is going to give Google a run for its money. In fact, Google's entire business in every business.

I mean, it's really quite phenomenal. What you can ask this thing. One app was charging eight bucks a week to use it. And by the way, these apps are totally free. You don't need to use you don't need to pay for an app. There's not even an official app. I mean, I guess there is right now, but again it's it's free to use. So chat GPT is free. How many times I have to say that? I don't know. Coming up, we're gonna talk TV. I'm very excited for my guests. He is the senior editor at Digital Trends.

He's going to talk about the best team for Super Bowl Sunday, which is coming up. We're also going to talk about the tracker that I've been using in my wallet. It's really really cool. You can give me a call triple eight Rich one oh one one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech, the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about and answer your questions. My

name is Rich DeMuro. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles, hanging out with you today, taking your calls, and just talking about the stuff that has happened throughout the week. This show is all about, you know, useful tech information, and that's really my goal is to make this super super useful, So not just the stuff I talk about, but also the calls that we take.

or twenty dollars and two dollars a month. And I've had, you know, my my credit debit card on file with them, and then my my card number change, so interrupted it just the convenience of this doesn't feel great. And also I'm wondering if that's the best value for me to do, and also if I want to stay married to Google, you know, going forward. I mean, it's really handy and I don't want to lose this Gmail account, But I

guess I'm putting it all out there for advice. You know what, what do you think is the best way to go both there's a fight, you pay or to another service? What do you think?

Everyone signed up. It was amazing, It worked really well, and it was also supposed to increase as it went along, like they had this little ticker on the homepage that showed that your storage was always increasing, like every second of every day. And then, of course Google became a wildly successful company. So many people signed up and they realized, oh wait, we actually have to pay for the storage that we're giving to people for free. And so now

things have changed a lot. Google Photos, like you said, is also linked and it's the same thing. Google Photos started out completely free, and then they started to kind of, you know, turn the ratchet a little bit on people and say, uh, you know, you got to pay so I'm in the same boat I am. I've got Gmail, I've got Google Photos. I'm up to paying I think, like I think it's twenty five bucks a month because I've got such a lot of storage in there and

I'm trying to pair down. So here's what I recommend. Number one. I think I think you stick with it. You can continue to pay the two dollars a month. I would obviously, I would probably pay the twenty dollars a year just to save the you know, the twenty percent or whatever they give you discount. But what I think you should do is see if you can get under.

What they do is they give you a fifteen gigabyte limit for free, so you can see if maybe you can get over that, get under that fifteen gigabyte limit. And there's a couple ways of doing that. Number one go to a website called one dot Google dot com. And inside this website they have an area called clean up Storage. And so not only is that website let you see what's taking up your storage, but you can also use it to sort of clean up your storage.

And so if you look at that website, it will show you the items that you have in trash or spam, and so I'm looking, I've got two hundred and thirty nine megabytes of emails and trash. I've got forty megabytes and spam. I've got nine hundred megabytes almost a gigabyte of files and trash in my Google Drive. Then it shows me my large items, so it says I can gain up to two hundred and eighty gigabytes by freeing

up all this stuff. So I've got emails with large attachments, I've got large files, large videos and files or sorry, large photos and videos, and I can review those. And then you also have this thing called unsupported items, So inside your Google Photos you may have unsupported items that you can review and clean up. So that's the place to start. Have you looked at any of that stuff?

And for me, I'm taking a lot of video, so there's going to be a lot of those kind of files in there. The other thing you can do is that if you go to Google Photos on your phone, and Google is, by the way, added all of these tools in the last like year, because or year or two, because you know, people are getting much more savvy about this, because they're when when you're forced into paying or when you have to start paying, you're a little bit more critical.

You're like, oh wait a second, let me see do I really have all this stuff in there? Do I need it? So if you go into your Google Photos and then you tap your profile picture in the upper right hand corner, then you tap managed storage, it'll give you a whole bunch of tools you can use where you can review and delete large photos and videos, videos from other apps, screenshots, which right now I've got two

gigabytes of those, and then blurry photos. And the other thing that I do is I'm pretty brutal about going in my Gmail and I will search using the search bar in Gmail for anything that has a large attachment. And so you can just tap in there, say has attachment, and then put a size limit on there of like you know, over ten megabytes and go through and see or just over twenty five megabytes and see what you can get rid of that way. So there are many

options for clearing this stuff out. But I agree we're all in this area of you know, once you're on that payment train, it's tough to get off, all right. Coming up next, we're going to talk TVs with a special guest, the best TVs for Super Bowl coming up. Welcome back to Rich on Tech, the show where we talk about tech stuff and answer your questions and have

on fantastic guests like this guy. Caleb Dennison is the editor at large for Digital Trends and he is a TV expert, and we're going to talk about TVs for Super Bowl because it's coming up. Caleb, Welcome to the show.

The stuff that makes the light has gotten better and better over the years. So when we start hearing terms like mini LED, they're just using much tinier little LED light and more of them, which gives you a brighter picture and a little bit more control over which part of the picture is bright and which part is dart so you get better contrast out of the mini LED

TV with the o ED TVs. Again, each pixel is making its own light, so when you turn it off, it's completely off, which means you get perfect black levels. Very good colors come out of that as well.

moments on the screen. Then you would a higher end LED TV because they tend to put anti reflective or anti glare coatings on those TVs so you get a little bit less of that glare. That tends to be a problem mostly when you got a lot of lights in the room and you're trying to watch something dark. When you're watching something like the super Bowl, there's a lot of bright colors and brightness happening on the screen, and you're less likely to run into a reflection problem

with something like that. It's mostly when you're watching movies and there's lots of dark scenes, and that I think brings us to an important point. When people buy TVs for the Super Bowl, they're thinking about the Super Bowl, right, and how good it's going to look for the sports, But think about the other things you use your TV for.

You like to watch a lot of movies. You know, in the time when the super Bowl is not on, you might want to get a TV that's going to look great for movies as well, and anti glared coating can really help when you're watching during the day.

possibly buy. We're seeing manufacturers back down from that now. There were not that many aktvs at the big Cees Electronics show that you and I were just at and I think that is that's basically saying the brands have got it. They're like message receives you guys aren't interested in AK, so we're going to quit trying to shove it down your throat so much. I would not worry about getting an AKTV right now.

really great performance as well. So those are both good good options to look at.

the Sony A ninety five K is the one. If you want a larger screen size but equally premium performance, I'd be looking at the lg C two that guy goes all the way up to eighty three inches. I believe it is, and that is just an outstanding television all the way around.

works pretty well. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Bruce is in the San Gabriel Valley. Bruce, you're on with rich what's up?

wireless microphones. But I think the best way to do this is realistically with a couple of cameras and I think a mixer as well, because you're going to want to feed all of this audio and video into one place that you can then send out to Zoom. So there's a couple of ways to accomplish this if you want to do it with maybe just you know, software based experience. There's something from Logitech that I really like called Mevo M e v O and M e v o dot com. That's Mevo M e v o dot com.

And this started out as one camera. Now they have multiple cameras that you can kind of link up together and you know, you can place some in different areas of the room, so you got like three different cameras, maybe one wide, one close up, one side whatever. And then the beauty is the app they have, So the app kind of brings it all together and you can live stream to different things, so you can live stream

to like you know, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter. But the other thing you want to do is you can use this as a webcam, and Zoom is one of these supported platforms. So that is sort of a more of a software based solution that you can use, which I

think would work really well. But if you want to get into more of a hardware solution, which I think might be better in this situation, you know, you might have to look at just some cameras and a computer and then also a mixer with microphones, because if you're talking about a big room for two hundred people that are sitting there, you probably want some microphones because these cameras are not going to be super close up to the person. They're not going to be right in front

of them like it would on a computer. So in that case, I would just get a mixer. I mean, Road makes some of the best mixer out there, especially for these, you know, these kind of solutions. So you get that, you get a couple of microphones, maybe lav

mics that people can put on. You connect those to the mixture, and then you put that out and they have a USB out on that mixture to your computer that you're going to be bringing all this stuff in on so you've got the cameras coming in and you've got the mixed audio coming in as well, and then it goes on to Zoom. So it's it's going to take some work, it's going to take some set up, it's going to take some you know, trial and error. But you know, and also you'll evolve this as you

go along. So the stuff that you use day one, you know, you may not use that day thirty. And you know, there's some there's some more dedicated hardware solutions out there too, Like if you go to Zoom's website or just type in Zoom hardware. You know, Zoom has like a whole area of recommended cameras and so they've got different appliances for zooming. And this is really expand did over the last couple of years because of the

whole work from home kind of stuff. But if you go to Zoom, their website is actually zoom dot us, Zoom dot us slash hardware, you've got all kinds of stuff. So I think that's probably your best place to start is just look there for some of the different things that they recommend, and they even have it for room types they've got a huddle room which is two to seven people, a conference room which is seven to nineteen people, and a hybrid classroom which is fifteen to twenty five.

So because you're even larger than that fifteen to twenty five, you're gonna want to look into into a more kind of studio solution where you're kind of rolling your own solution, like I mentioned, with a combination of software and hardware. But the good news is you're in Los Angeles. There's a lot of production people here, and there's a lot of stores you can go into, like physical stores like

Sammy's Camera. You know that's a local place that has a lot of kind of this stuff there and just talk to people and see what they recommend, what of a people used, what have other people done, and you know that would be my start. So great question Zoom. It's funny. I had to do a zoom yesterday and I used to have a good zoom setup in my home when I was doing remotes for TV during the pandemic,

and it was nicely set up. It was never perfectly set up, Like the lighting was never as good as I wanted, camera was never as good as I wanted. But it worked, And yesterday I had to do a zoom with someone and it's just my camera looked horrible. My lighting was bad. I mean, unless you have a good setup, sometimes these zoom calls you just it's like I'd rather just be in person sometimes because they're just you know, you gotta have a good setup. You gotta

have one of those ring lights and all that good stuff. So, uh, great question. Thanks for that. All right, let me quickly tell you about this card finder. I've been using Chipolo card Spot. This is an air tag, but for your wallet. It's made by a company called Chipolo c h I p O l O. It's called the card Spot and it looks like a credit card, but it uses the Apple find My network to locate your wallet. So this

slips into your wallet like a credit card. It costs about thirty five dollars and you can use the find My app on your iPhone to find where this is. So it's using all the other Apple devices in the world to locate your wallet, just like an air tag. But an air tag is too thick to put in your wallet. Now, how did they get this to fit in your wallet? Well, the battery is not user replaceable, so you pay thirty five dollars for this. It lasts about two years. It will help you see where your

wallet is on a map. You can play a sound so you can hear where your wallet is. You can see the last known location. I'll send you alert if you leave your wallet behind. But when the two years is up, you can then just send this back in. They will recycle it, replace the battery, and they'll send you a new one for seventeen bucks. So Topolo card Spot highly recommend checking it out. If you want the power of an air tag in your wallet, that's going

to do it for this episode of the show. If you want to submit a question for me to answer, you can go to my website Richontech dot tv and hit the email icon. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech. If you want to see my TV segments, you can find me on YouTube KTLA channel or you can download the ktla plus app. Next week, I'm going to share my favorite apps for journaling. Yes, my goal is to journal in the new year. I think there's so many benefits to journaling, so I'll tell

you what I found there. Once again, my name is rich Dmiro. Thanks so much for listening, especially to episode number two. We're building this thing up. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I really do appreciate you spending it right here with me. I'll talk to you real soon