Smartphones have their worst year of sales in a very long time. Amazon deletes some big time prime benefits, a new scam that involves doc you sign emails. Plus your tech questions answered? What is going on? I'm Richdemiro and this is Rich on Tech. This show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about, and it's a place where I answer your questions. Phone lines are open right now at triple eight rich one
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one eight eight eight rich one oh one. Once again, I'm the tech reporter for KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles, and here with you live coast to coast. Welcome to show number four. Let me see four fingers yep,
I just put up three fingers four there. If you're wondering where's Leo Laporte, Well, Leo has retired from radio and this is the new show, so I'm going to be hanging out with you right here to talk about technology, gadgets, cars, pretty much anything nowadays. I mean, I don't think there's a place in our world that doesn't have technology.
I don't think technology is not touched something.
Let me think, because I've been covering tech at Kati Ley Now for twelve years and pretty much anything you can think of qualifies as tech and I really love my job there. I mean, it's such a phenomenal spot to be in where I get to do things and experience stuff as a journalist that a lot of people don't get the opportunity to do, and a lot of times I could do it first, which is you know, I'm just selfish in that way where I think it's really cool when I'm the first to do something, the
first to see something, the first to try something. And this was really neat this week to first for me actually. So first off, UPS said, hey, do you want to come take a ride in our first ever electric semi truck? And I said, of course, why would I not want to do that? And so this, you know, some of these things take a long time to figure out, and
this UPS story was an example of that. I mean we're talking this probably took four to six weeks to plan out, and so we had it all planned out, we got it figured out, and I get to the UPS facility in Compton, California, and They've got this big old semi all shined up nice, and you know, it's it's electric, a semi truck that's electric. Now, the funny thing is I've actually ridden I didn't drive it. I've
ridden in this semi truck before. It's a company E Cascadia from Freightliner, and I got to ride in this thing a couple of months ago, and it was it was really cool. Now this was the real thing. That was like sort of a prototype sales vehicle. This was the real thing, like UPS is going to be using
this truck. And so I got in it. We took a ride around Compton and it was just wild, and I got to talk to the driver who's been you know, all the people at UPS I spoke with, by the way, had been working there like thirty years, so I guess it's a good job. And it was just so wild to be in this giant semi truck that is all electric and driving around. So the range on this thing anywhere from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and thirty miles. People are wondering about the charging. It gets
about an eighty percent charge in ninety minutes. Obviously that's with the best charger. You can imagine. They've got one of them already installed. At the UPS plant and it can carry up to eighty thousand pounds. This one we were driving was about fifteen thousand because we just had an empty container behind us. And again this is another part about I love about my job. I mean, how often do I get to just sit there with a truck driver, someone who's been driving these semis for years,
and just get to pick his brain. That's what's so much fun. So we drove around this thing, I picked his brain. We shot a story for KTLA and it was just eye opening that this is going to once again change the way that UPS does things. And you know, they went on with all their you know pr stuff where they have a fleet of all these clean vehicles and this is their first of ten electric semi trucks they're going to take delivery of. There's actually another one
there too. Didn't drive that one, or actually I didn't drive either of them. I was a passenger in this thing. But still just wild. And you know, the comments, of course I post this stuff on my social media and the comments just start coming flowing in. And of course everyone's an expert on electric cars and electric trucks and whether this will work and whether it won't work, But the reality is, this is the future, this is what's
going to change the way companies do business. And this truck is quiet, it's smooth, it's fast, it's got a lot of pickup and it was just really fun. So I'm gonna put that together for KTLA very soon and we'll have a whole story on it. But again, it just all goes into kind of my brain and gives me the perspective of how technology is changing the way
that every company, large and small does business. Now, another thing I did this week, Now this was a first for me, not a first for some people, but I got into a self driving car up in San Francisco. So I went to San Francisco yesterday and while I was up there, I got a ride in a Weymo car. Now know if you're familiar with Weymo, but this is a fully autonomous taxi And this was spun out of Google. I believe they're still owned by Alphabet which is Google's
parent company. But very very smart people here, let's be honest. And this car is a Jaguar all electric. They've outfitted with all kinds of things, So it's got ldar, it's got cameras, it's got radar, and it's kind of this space looking vehicle, and you hail it just like you would an Uber or a lift from an app. We hailed it just like anyone else on the street. We were with someone from the company, so obviously we were sort of taken under their wings for this, but otherwise
the thing was operating just the way it would. We saw it driving around the street, we called for it. It took you a couple minutes for it to arrive to us, just like it would in Uber, and it picked us up. And this was wild because I have been in autonomous cars before, but this was fully autonomous with no one behind the wheel except what they call it's called they call it Waimo Driver. That's their software
and it's AI infused software that drives you around. So what they do is they map these cities out, They really map them out to a very high degree, and they figure out where they can park, where they can drive, what's safe, what the speeds are, and then they take all that information and the AI uses it to make informed decisions as it's driving. So we got in this car and I didn't know what I was going to feel like because I had been in autonomous cars, but
again with a safety driver behind the wheel. And I got in this car and I felt very safe it pulled over. You have the app where they've got a couple of smart things built into this app where it can lead you to the car, and the car uses your phone's bluetooth to kind of figure out where you're standing, but it kind of stops in a safe place. You may have to walk a little bit to get it. Then once you get to the car, you can unlock
it with your phone. You can honk the horn on the car so that if you're visually impaired, you can kind of get an idea of where the car is located. You can play a melody on the car, so if you want to play a little bit of music, that can help lead you to the car as well. And it also displays your initials on the top of the car, so you know that that Weimo is for you. And then we got in the car and it was me and my photographer and a PR person from Weimo, and
we just went We went to Ben and Jerry's. We just took it a standard drive and I programmed in where I wanted to go. We went to Hayte Ashbury, which is a very famous intersection in San Francisco. And the car took us and it was just wild to watch that steering wheel turning, to watch it go around cars. This is San Francisco. This is not some closed track where it's super easy to drive. There were cars darting out in front of us, There was bikers, there are
people crossing the intersections. We had to go around cars that were double parked, and this car did this all with ease. When I tell you, I was so comfortable inside this car. It gave me a lot of hope for this technology. And by the way, Weaimo is bringing these cars to Los Angeles. In fact, if you live in the LA area, you may see them already riding around right now. They're in their sort of mapping face
where they're figuring out the entire city. They haven't said where they're going to drive, but you can already in San Francisco pick up a car just like you would and Uber and it will self drive you where you need to go. This is just wild stuff to me. Now, like I said, Weimo's not the only company that's doing this. You've got a company called Cruise, which is operating in
San Francisco, Austin, and Phoenix. Then you've got Motional, which is operating in Las Vegas, and then Weaimo is operating in Phoenix, San Francisco and coming soon to Los Angeles. So what I experienced yesterday feels like the future. And I don't think it's going to be right for every drive, but it's safe. It's going to keep people from being distracted. It's going to keep people from speeding. I mean, it's
going to keep people from human error. And yes, there will be missteps by the AI that runs these computer systems, but at the same time, we are going to have autonomous cars riding around our streets, not only taking us on taxi rides, but eventually our cars will be like this as well. And being in this car yesterday just made me realize how far this technology has progressed. From the first time I got into an autonomous car where
I just took a loop. It was in Japan. This was probably ten years ago, and it was a loop inside a closed track with a whole bunch of computers, a whole bunch of systems, and a safety driver and we just went around in a circle. And that was sort of nerve wracking, and to go from there ten years ago go to taking a ride in San Francisco on public streets is pretty incredible. So Waimo, thanks for the ride, and again I'll have the story on KTLA very soon. And look out for those cars if you see one.
Every person.
I was out running in Santa Monica the other day and every person was gathered around these cars that were parked on the side of the street because they've all these worrying like sensors and things. It just looks it looks very futuristic, So keep an eye out for those. I've got a great show of planned for you today. I've got a couple of guests. We're going to talk to Mark German, he covers Apple for Bloomberg. He's going
to tell us all about Apple's upcoming virtual reality headset. Later, we're going to talk to a podcaster, Tom Merritt, a great podcaster. He's going to join me and talk about the new Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios. We're going to talk about Amazon getting rid of a prime perk, a new scam involving those DOCU sign emails plus your calls.
At Triple A.
Rich sorry, eight eight eight rich one oh one. I'm Rich DeMuro. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is Rich DeMuro, talking technology with you today. The phone number to call in is eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's triple eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. You can find me on Instagram. I am at rich on Tech if you want to see some of the things I talk about here on the show. Karen is in Riverside. Karen, you're on with Rich Karen You here?
Nope, okay, let's I am.
Oh there you are. Hello, Welcome, Hi, welcome to the show. Service you provide, oh well thanks, I if I can figure out the phone lines, it'll be a better service.
I know that feeling sometimes, Oh.
I feel it every day. I mean, you know, when you're playing with tech all day. Believe me, things go wrong and I'm like, okay, come on, I got to figure this stuff out. So what's happening in your life? What's going on?
I have a pixel to phone and I was getting ready to go get a new one because I knew that it was slowly done, and I dropped it and it broke. We transferred all the information and I thought everything was fine, but I found that not the entire calendar came over, and so I had things back to twenty eighteen. It only transferred the calendar from twenty twenty one forward. How can I go back and get my old calendar?
Well, what do you use for your calendar?
It's just the calendar that's on the phone.
So it's just a Google login with your calendar. Yes, okay, So if you go to a desktop computer and it may have just transferred over newer stuff just to just to kind of save space, or you know, it just said like, hey, we're just going to do from today forward. But typically, I mean I use Google Calendar, and I've got my calendar from forever. I mean I could look up events that I had on there from years ago. So I think that the it could be the sync on your phone. That could be one thing. It could
also be that it just didn't transfer. So what I would recommend it is going to a desktop computer going to calendar dot Google dot com.
Have you ever gone there?
No?
Okay, So if you go there, see if your calendar is on that page. And for me, for instance, I've got one, two, three, four, five, six seven different calendars that I have on one main calendar, and if your calendar is on there, check for it and then you can start going back to December, November, whatever year you want to check back and see and see if your events are there. They should be there now. If they're there, that means that the events have not been lost, So
that's one way you can access them. And then on your phone, I would go into the calendar app and take a look at the settings. And so I'm going to see in the Google Calendar app if there is a setting to say how far back you sink? I know on the iPhone calendars there are let's see so general looking to see and I don't really see a place where it's saying like hey, you know, like on iPhone it says how many events you know do you
want to sink like a year, six months? But typically because everything on Google is in the cloud, it really wouldn't say that, you know, it would just kind of put those in there, no problem. So I would check on the desktop and see if that's if that has your events there, and if it doesn't, then the other solution is to do you still have the old phone?
The pixel I do.
Okay. So if that's if you still.
Have your old phone, there's someone that could probably help you get those off of there. And that would mean either going somewhere because you can't see the screen right on this old phone.
Correct.
Yeah, so that's the problem.
So you need someone that can actually access this without seeing that screen, which would take a little bit of know how to you know, like maybe one of these places like a U break ie fix could do that and and download that information off your phone without seeing the screen. But I would go to the Google calendar on your desktop, and that's the place to start. So calendar dot Google dot com. See if your events are there.
And if this is a Google calendar, now it may not be you know, do you log in with Google like a Gmail account or do you log in with like your work account.
You know what?
It just comes up from my app. I don't sign in.
Okay, So it's definitely so it sounds like it's just your Google account that you're using. So if it's your Google account, I think that these events are not lost.
I think you're gonna be okay. And I think that if but the first place to check, like I said, is that website and once you go to the website, see if they're there, take a nice breath, sigh relief, and then it's just a matter of sinking them back to your phone and that will take you know a little bit more figuring out of why they're not sinking there and going into your settings and seeing if you can maybe tweak some of those to do the older events as well. That may be, you know, you may
just have to clear it out. You click the calendar and click it back on, like turn it off, turn it on. That may force a recink.
Does that all make sense?
It does. It's interesting though, because I have text messages back to twenty eighteen.
Right, So it took those, which is yeah, yeah, but it.
Didn't take all the calendar.
Yeah, I want to take those.
I delete those after a year because they do take up a lot. But it sounds like I think you're going to be okay. I think these things are still existing somewhere. I just think it's a matter of getting them to your phone, and I think forcing a recink might help as well. There is another setting that you may want to look into, if you go into your settings, if you look under Google on your phone, like Google Services and there's a sink area and that may help
you as well. I have to find it on the phone, but there is.
Like a.
Place in your settings where you can sink things as well, so that may help. But I have a feeling these things are around if you're using Google Calendar. They didn't get deleted. That's my thought here, Karen, So report back to me.
Okay, I will thank you so much.
All right, thanks so much for calling the show. All Right, we got a lot more coming up on the show, including we're going to talk about Amazon Prime Man. They're paring down benefits for people, so if you use grocery delivery, you want to hear about this. Plus smartphone sales worst year ever last year in a long time. I'll explain about that. Plus we'll take more of your calls, and we're going to talk to Mark German about Apple's new virtual reality headset. Mark breaks all the big Apple news.
We're going to talk to him in just a bit. You're listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is rich Dimiro. You're listening to 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. My guest is Mark German. He's a reporter for Bloomberg News and he has been scooping Apple for years now. Mark, Welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Thanks.
So, your latest article on Bloomberg is about Apple's new mixed reality headset, and we've been hearing a lot about this over the years, but you seem to think that this is very near to release.
Tell me about that.
Yes, so, I believe that the Apple Mixed Reality headset, I'm for about seven eight years of development, will be arriving this year, right, and it'll be their first major new product category since the Apple Watch. It's going to be a pretty big deal. I think it's a bit of a risk for Apple for reasons I'm sure we'll get into. But I think at the same time, it's going to be very technologically advanced. It's going to be a superior product to what's currently in the market in
terms of AR and VR. But it really depends on the app ecosystem, how this gets priced long term, how they position it, and if there's really a killer app in order for it to take off.
So paint us a picture of what this device will look like we've seen reality, you know, we've seen VR headsets from Meta, We've seen them from HTC and some other companies.
What will Apple look like?
So Apples will be unique. And then it'll have a curved front. It'll look similar to Skith goggles that it'll have cushions on the side. They'll have some sort of speaker array on the left and right sides. It'll have over a dozen cameras positioned outside the device in order to create what's known as an augmented reality pass through mode. So typical AR glasses, they have glass lenses, so obviously you can see in front of you. In this case,
they'll use cameras to create that effect. Inside will be two very high resolution displays four K each. Those are made with Sony for Apple micro led displays to do the virtual reality effect. And then the other cameras inside and outside the device will be for analyzing your eyes
that's on the inside. Outside it'll be too in addition to see your environment, to scan your body, your arms, your legs, your upper body, torso, and what have you in order to create a realistic rendering of what you look like.
Wow, and so with all these sensors. This is this is really far ahead of what Meta has on their basic headset. I have not tested the recent one that just came out. How does it compare.
There's really one main comparison, and that's the underlying technology. That's the mixed reality tech. So Meta uses a similar system where they have displays to present virtual reality and external cameras to create an augmented reality pass through mode. The other, you know, comparison you could make is that I think neither device really has a killer app or
use case. You'd be buying this because you're a tech fan, right, not because you're buying it to actually do something, whereas you might buy the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple watch, you know, for fitness, and obviously everyone needs a phone, everyone wants some sort of computer. That's why you get an iPad or an entertainment device. This would be a new category without a very clear use case. So I think Apple and Meta are very similar in that regard.
Now you said that it has all these sensors.
This is to power some sort of eye and hand tracking capabilities, because many of these headsets you need to hold some sort of device to see where your hands are and to select things. You believe that you'll be able to select things using just your hands and your eyes.
That's right, So this is going to be primarily ie in hand controlled. Every time Apple releases a new major product category, they like to talk up a new input method. With the iPod, that was the wheel. With the iPhone and the iPad, obviously that was touch, and with the Apple Watch, they really positioned the digital crown as that.
New input method.
Now, I think you can make an argument the crown didn't really take off. It's a small part about how you use the Apple Watch, but that's how they presented it. And I think when they present this headset, which I think will be called the Reality Pro, their major talking point will be the eye and hand control. So look at something to to identify it, to select it, pinch your thumb and your index finger together to actually take action on that item.
Okay, so let's talk about some of the things you'll be able to do with this headset. Obviously, Apple has a very deep developer base, many many great apps for the iPhone. I imagine developers will be very excited to make apps for this device. But in addition to apps, immersive video content you're talking about FaceTime, video conferencing, meeting rooms, even create an external display for your computer inside this headset.
That's right, So tapping into your other Apple devices, whether that's your phone, your iPad, your Mac and integrating using the phone's keyboard as the keyboard for the headset, extending your max display. Those will be key parts of the headset. And then the other important thing to note is that this will run many of the different iPhone apps already available in sort of VR and AR versions, whether that's Apples apps or third party apps. This will have an
app store, third party app ecosystem. But I think the real challenge for Apple will be, in addition to lacking a key killer feature, is going to be the price point. So this is probably going to cost around three thousand dollars at the outset, and so I think that's going to put this device really out of reach for many people.
I mean, I think the combination of a three thousand dollars price tag, along with a very limited appeal for the technology it's still being very early, combined with a killer app or reason to buy the device, is going to really you know, risk Apple's reputation for smash hit new product categories.
This is more of a slow burn for Apple because this is where the future we expect to go, and I have to get in at some point. Is this the right product for them to get in with or should they have tried to get somewhere of a cheaper product?
You know, I.
Really think that now is a really opportune time for them to strike, given the if they really believe that this is the future. And I tend to agree that the future is standalone AR glasses with iPhone like capabilities and I like price and iPhone like battery life. You know, I think it's going to be five to ten years before you're able to get there, right, And they do need it to prepare for that future. They need to
set the foundation for that. If they waited a couple of years, they could probably get this down another thousand dollars or so. But the time is right given the competitive landscape right now is extraordinarily weak.
And so the timeframe you're thinking is they talk about it in the next couple of months, Developers get to really take a deep dive at WWDC, which is typically in June, and then we may have this by the holidays.
Does that sound right.
Sounds right to me.
Wow.
I mean, obviously there's a strong chance that this doesn't debut until June, but I'd be very surprised if it doesn't debut by June.
Well.
WWDC is the big gathering of all the developers for Apple apps up in San Francisco typically, and so it's a great time. If they didn't reveal this until then, it'd be tough for them to sort of get umped about that and have people attending that that want to talk more about virtual reality and augmented reality. I think one of the big advantages here is the.
Fact that it will have the app store, or at least a portion of it the catalog, available right out of the gate.
So you will have iPhone apps available right other gate, So just like you can run iPhone apps on an iPad or just back then at the beginning of the iPad, one of the key things they noted was you can run the iPhone apps on the iPad. I think you'll be able to run iPad and iPhone apps on this headset, but you're really going to want new apps created for this device, specifically to tap into AR, to tap into VR. Some of the faster processors and such. I think that's
going to be something you see happen. But I think developers are probably going to have to really consider how quickly they want to jump onto this platform given the price point. Right, developers are going to have to invest a lot of time, resources, and money to build applications for this, and so they're probably going to take a slogo approach as well to try to determine if this
thing's really going to take off. Knowing Apple, they'll get it right eventually, but I think it's going to take a little bit of time.
And another key point is that you're thinking you will not need an iPhone to use this, And of course Apple has a very good network of their own stores where they can easily demo this new product.
Definitely they want to position this is sort of a halo product that's going to drive traffic to Apple retail source, drive marketing to Apple. And maybe you come to play with this Apple headset inside the store and you leave with AirPods. That's not too bad for Apple.
Either, absolutely, and you'll probably want the air pods to use for this as well. Mark German is a reporter for Bloomberg. His newsletter is called Power on his Twitter is at Mark German Mark.
Thanks so much for joining me. How do you get all these Apple scoops?
Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it and great to finally be on here. And anyone listening to this, please do tune into power on every Sunday.
Excellent and I'm not going to your last I didn't think you would. All right, coming up more of your calls plus tech news and tips.
If you want to join in. The phone number to call is triple eight rich one oh one. My name is Rich Damiro. You are listening to Rich on tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. I'm Rich Damiro, hanging out with you here talking about technology. The phone lines are open triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. All right, let's go to Bill. Bill is in Torns, California. Bill, you're on with Rich. What's going on?
Hey?
Rich, thank you for taking my call. So I have a Macintosh at work and I would like to access it from my Mac laptop at home. And I know there's you have like paid sponsors advertising those monthly fee things, but it's rare that I want to do that, but I know that Apple has like Apple Remote Access built in, and there's a bunch of different weird free apps, but
they get really bad reviews. I just want to be able to once WHI I'll log into my computer and you know, maybe control what's running on my office computer from my home Mac laptop got their way to do that without getting one of these monthly fee things. I used to use something called Chicken to the VNC many many years ago. I don't even if that's still an option.
That's quite the name for that product. I haven't heard of that one. Chicken of the VNC.
Wow, okay, yeah it worked.
Yeah, But okay, a couple of things. First off, is your work going to allow you to do this?
Well, yeah, it's it's my own business. So there's there's just one If there's one computer at my office and I live, like, you know, a few miles away, and I just want it once in a while. I got my laptop, I'm like, man, I wish I could, you know, look at something on my database. But right, you know, then I have to drive into work and then turn It's like it's kind of pain of the next and I leave my computer on at work anyway.
Yeah, so there's well, there's two things.
So first off, have you tried because Mac you know they have they have Apple Remote Desktop built into the Mac software.
So have you tried that? And is that not working?
I have?
Yeah, I've tried it and it's not working. And I don't know if I should hire like a tech guy to come over and explain it to me, because it just didn't seem to It just didn't work. It was given me.
I watched YouTube videos and what the YouTube.
Video has said was not what I was seeing on my machine. And maybe it was gifven operating system I'm using. I'm using both machines. I think they're running Big Surve, the most most up to date, uh you know, but like for example, on one uh YouTube video, it said when you click on you know, remote management, it will give you like an IP address of all you have
to do is log into that. Well, on my computer at work, when I click on you know remote management, it gives me this whole like web address that you know, it doesn't work, so I'm not quite sure what I'm doing.
Well, yeah, and that could be that your network work is set up to not allow remote access into this computer. You know, it may be set up a certain way where for security reasons, it's not allowing, you know, someone to just pop into your network from outside of the network, and that could definitely be a situation that is something that you would have to figure out with, you know, with an it person.
Yeah, that's like a router thing.
Yeah, and it's been a while since I've done this with my personal MacBook and okay, So so basically the program that I would recommend if you want to just try something easy, and this is the one that I use. So my mom lives across the country and she's got her computer set up and sometimes she needs help doing things, and so I use a program called team Viewer.
Have you heard of that I have?
Okay, and so this has a completely free solution and it should be able to do what you need to do.
It's always worked for me. Yeah.
So it's an app and they do have price you know, they do have paid products, but if you want to use it free for personal use. Now this you know, this runs a little bit of a gray line with whether this is personal or business use. But you know, team Viewer you can download it and you can log onto your Mac from wherever you want. And it's it's pretty simple.
Okay, wonderful and you you've had good success.
With that, I've had.
I mean, my mom is not a tech person, even though she had a tech kid. So if she can tell me the pat Now there's two ways of doing it. There's a little passcode that can be generated, and she can read that to you to make sure you know, for security reasons that you're the you know, a trusted person logging into their computer. But or you can just save that that passcode as well on your device.
That's probably what you'd want to do.
But once you have this running on the one, yeah, once you have this running on your other computer, anytime you want to log in, you just you know, fire up the app on your side, connect to the computer. It'll be displayed on the screen if it's saved after the first time you do it, and you'll just see that screen. You'll you'll see your the other computer screen on your screen and you can just use your mouse and keyboard to control it just like you would you know, any other computer.
Now, there may be a little lag or to lab I.
Do the app on both machines, correct, yep, Okay, and I can control the one. I can actually control the computer from my laptop.
Yeah, at the other end.
Yep, you'll see that.
Okay, yep, that's right.
That's what I recommend.
And you know, and also I think you should give the other you know, the Mac remote desktop. I think you should just try to use that first, just maybe give that another spin, just because that's a little bit of a cleaner solution because it's built in. But you know, if it's not working for you, you just try the team viewer and see if that works.
I prefer the remote desktop because it is built in and that's what it's for. I'm just again a not that tech savvy, and I figured maybe it was my router not letting me get in to the back end of that, you know, like there's forwarding stuff and.
I don't understand.
Yeah, exactly, that's where you get into. Now here's the thing. Once you yeah, once you once you get into that remote login, it's like I'm looking at it on this computer and you've got to type in this whole address to get to your network, and your network just may not allow that to happen. And that's what I think is going on, especially if you're using, you know, like a router from the cable company or something like that.
Like they just may block those incoming requests, which is typical because that's much more secure.
So got it.
All right, We'll try to eave you and let me know what happens. Thank you, I will, all right, Bill, thanks a lot. All right, big changes to Amazon Prime. So Amazon Prime. I just paid my one hundred and I think it was one hundred and fifty five dollars for the year, and I've I've been a Prime member since day one, and I've loved it. When I first I will never forget signing up for Prime. I told my my wife, my then girlfriend, I said, can you
believe that Amazon? I think it was like it was either fifty nine or eighty nine bucks a year, sixty nine something like that. I was like, can you believe they're going to send us stuff second day deliver for seventy bucks a year or whatever the initial price was. She's like, no way, because back then shipping was so expensive. I mean, you wanted second day shipping on anything, you know,
you're talking fifteen thirty dollars an item. It was just not something that was inexpensive and I said, no, they're going to send us stuff for a whole year. This way, we're going to get it the second day after we order it. And so I've been a subscriber ever since. But quite honestly, Amazon has been pairing down some of
their benefits for people. And I got this email. Starting February twenty eighth, twenty twenty three, Amazon Fresh delivery orders this is from a grocery store that they own under one hundred and fifty dollars will incur a service fee. What so, it used to be thirty five bucks for free delivery and then you tip them, so you know, it was still expensive to do this. It was still a premium service, but you were paying for that prime you know membership that took care of some of this charge.
Now it's delivery charges will be three dollars and ninety five cents for orders from one hundred to one hundred five fifty dollars, six dollars, ninety five cents for orders from fifty to one hundred dollars, and nine ninety five for orders under fifty dollars. And they took away this perk. I think it was last year. Whole Foods deliveries they
made nine ninety five. I think it's just a flat fee, and so people were up in arms about that, and then they came out and they said, well, Amazon Fresh deliveries are still free if you spend thirty five bucks. And now a year later, Amazon Fresh deliveries are changing. And this is a product that a lot of people, you know, got used to over the pandemic, this grocery delivery situation, and now with this fee, it makes it like, I mean, unless you feel like paying extra for stuff,
why would you do this? You're going to pay three ninety five, six ninety five or nine ninety five for your orders? No way, especially an order under fifty bucks. Now that seems like a lot of money. And people are complaining they don't want to do this, and I don't blame them. This is a lot of money, especially when you're paying all this money a year for these perks, and to not have that perk is to me not very good. So Amazon, you may lose some subscribers over this.
I'll tell you that.
All right, coming up, we got more of your calls, We've got more stories. We're gonna talk about why I love the bookstore over Amazon.
Oh more, Amazon stories.
Plus we're gonna talk about that DOCU signed scam you want to definitely be aware of. You're listening to rich on Tech on rich Dmuro, give me a call eight eight eight rich one oh one. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is rich Damuro, sitting here talking technology with you at triple eight rich.
One oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. My website is rich on tech dot tv. There you can find all the recent stories I've done for KTLA. You can watch those there, and anything I post that's interesting, I'll usually put it right there. I was in the airport yesterday, I was flying to San Francisco for the day, and I walked into, you know, like the little bookstore kind of convenience store there and you know, to get a water, and I saw the books.
And I'm always drawn to books, even though I typically use a kindle, you know, I love reading, and so I just kind of browse the books for like two minutes, and I found like five books I wanted to read in those two minutes. And so I posted to my Facebook and Instagram and I said, how is it that I can browse Amazon for hours? And still not decide on a book to buy yet. I can walk into a bookstore and find a bunch that I want to read immediately.
I mean, why is that.
Amazon has every book known to man and this bookstore just had a small selection. But I'm sitting there going, oh, I want to read that. Oh I want to read that. And so of course the comments came in, lots and lots of comments. And I'm not the only one that feels this way. And believe me, I love my kindle. I absolutely love reading on the kindle because it's simple, it's but there's also something about the book. And Marie said, it's multisensory. Reading is a tactical experience. There are smells
associated with paper, there's texture, there's depth, there's more. Libraries are so critical. When you're looking for one book, you spy another, you grab it, you read a little bit. It inspires you, it grabs your interest. That's I think very true because I started reading some of these books, like you just flip to a page and open them and read them. Jim said, merchandising cover art sucks you right in. Patricia said, it's the nostalgia of the actual book in hand.
The smell.
It gets at you at the first crack of the page, makes you want more and more. Janet says, nothing beats a relaxing time than holding an actual book or magazine just to feel the pages, the smell. I put a Sadly, I put a couple of the books that I saw there in my Amazon shopping car. Is that wrong because it was like five bucks cheaper. Melanie says. It's an analogous to all of the streaming options on TV and I still can't decide what to watch.
That is so true, So true.
I'd sit there and I try to have all these systems in place for watching movies on the streaming services. I have an app called Real Good. There's also an app called Just Watch that I really like, and whenever someone tells me how a good movie, I will put it in this app and I'll say, Okay. The next time I sit down on a Friday night to watch
a movie, I will look at the app. I will pick the top movie from that, you know, my list of things that are streaming on the services that I pay for, and I'll watch it and guess what happens exactly, not that I go. I don't know if I feel like I'm in the mood for that movie tonight, Let's watch something else, And so I sit there for twenty minutes.
And again, back in the day, walk into a blockbuster. What did you do?
You picked out five or six movies that you wanted to watch, And we used to come home with a handful of movies that we'd watch over the weekend. And again, maybe it's all the visual nature of this, where you can pick up the movie, look on the back, look on the front, read the synopsis.
Just like the books.
Let's see, Judy said. My late husband was a techi. We used to have these discussions all the time. I loved browsing through bookstores. I used to tell them it was relaxing to crawl up on a comfy chair with a good book. Not the same with an iPad or a kindle. That's just me, no, not just you. Apparently a couple hundred comments on this, so clearly people like books. But when I travel, I like the iPad or sorry, the kindle. I don't read on an iPad. I don't
I like that e ink display on the kindle. That's what I really like, because it just doesn't have any reflection. It works, It's simple, and it's just it feels like the printed page, even though it's not so. Anyway, I told my wife I'm going to buy a book, a real book, and read it, and she's like, what don't you like your kindle?
Who knows?
All right, coming up, I've got a great guest, Tom Merritt is going to join me. Tom's a great podcaster, good friend, and he is I'm a little jealous of Tom. He has been to Super Nintendo World, which is opening at Universal Studios, Hollywood on February seventeenth. He's already been, and I'm so jealous because I've wanted to go to this since they announced it, but they will not return my emails over at Universal, so I have not been
invited to any of the press things, which I don't know. Anyway, we'll talk to Tom about his thoughts on the whole new place. Let's talk to lou in the meantime. Lou Is in Phoenix. You're on with Rich all right, One of these days I'm going to figure out Louis there, Okay, let's go to.
Let's go to Corey in Highlands, California. Corey, are you there? Okay?
One of these days, I will figure out the most simple of items in this room, which is the phone.
Well, you're only on day four, so give yourself some grace.
There, it's day four.
But I even put little numbers next to the buttons on the phone, Let's say one, two, three, four five. Could it not get much easier than pressing the corresponding anyway, Corey, what's going on?
I'm an executive coach and I coach clients in the US and internationally, and I send them a link, and I'm the one that creates it. I've had zoom ways years before all the pandemic hit, and I've always used it, and I always see if somebody comes in, either on a phone or tries to come in on video. But I just like to check every once in a while if it's still secure. Can anybody come in that I cannot see? Or is already can anybody hack in?
Well there's always a possibility of that, but is it likely no if you have the right guardrails on. So in your zoom, how are you sending these? Are you sending the same invitation to everyone? Or are you sending like your personal meeting room orre you're sending a new invitation. How are you sending these invitations to people?
I create a new invitation each time with the you know, not a regular That's one of the reasons why I use THEIRS. So it's random, okay, and I just send a new one every single time to every single.
Client, okay.
And the settings on your invitation. Do you have the waiting room enabled?
No?
Oh, okay, So you want just have it where they can log in before me, if you know, they can get in before me, okay, so like if they get there a minute early.
Yeah, that's something you want to change. So for sure, turn on the waiting room and that way only persons that you admit to the video can watch what you're doing, so that that would be the number one thing I would do, and I do that on mine obviously. Are you using a passcode?
Yeah?
Okay, so you've got the passcode, which is good, and that's that's going to be like for nine of you know, people trying to get into your if they figure out the meeting ID and they happen to be on there at the exact same time, and then they happen to figure out the passcode, all three of those things would have to happen for them to get into your meeting, and that's probably not going to happen, but there are people who spend a lot of time trying to figure
out these systems, and so it could happen. But I would definitely put on the waiting room. That's one of the main things we learned during the pandemic when people do you remember the term zoom bombing?
Yeah?
So, and it, believe me, it happened. I actually made the mistake of tweeting a link to a public room one time just to test something out on zoom and I couldn't believe the people that came into this room and the stuff they were doing was like I had to look away from my screen because it was like I didn't know what I was seeing, but it was not good. And so, believe me, there are people that like to mess with other people out there, especially on
the internet. So turn on the waiting room. And then the other thing you can do if you want to be really secure, do you record these conversations or no?
No?
Okay, So if.
You really want to give your clients and you a good amount of you know, a feeling that this is very secure, I would turn on what's called end to end encryption.
Have you heard of that?
Yeah?
Okay, So when you go on to Zoom, it kind of looks like things are pretty secure because you see that little lock in the left hand corner, right, Have you clicked that right? It looks like a little badge with like a shield, and it has a check mark and it's green. Right, So if you click that, it'll give you kind of like the information about that Zoom meeting and it'll say encryption enabled. Now, there are different levels.
The default encryption is not the highest level because obviously the higher level encryption costs Zoom more money, so they want to just enable the basic encryption, which means encrypted in transit, which means when you're doing that stream, no one can really just tune into that stream on the web if they find that data going back and forth from your computer to the other computer. But there are
ways of kind of unlocking that video stream. And so for that reason, you would want what's called end to end encryption. And that means that nobody, not even Zoom could could potentially look at this stream. And so you can enable that by going into your settings. You have to go on the web and you go into settings. So you have to log into Zoom dot Us, log into your account, go into settings and under security, scroll down and it'll say allow use of end to end encryption,
and you toggle that on. It's going to ask you to confirm your phone number and then you can turn on that feature and you can use end to end encryption on your calls, and that's going to be the most secure. You may not need that, but I'm just giving you that.
As an option, okay, And I might actually have an account at that level. I'll just go in right now and check to see if I have in there.
Yeah, it's not on by default.
I mean obviously they want to keep it off for you know, the majority of people. So it saves Zoom money because especially with a free product, are you paying for Zoom or.
Is this a free version?
Oh no, I'm paying?
Are paying?
Okay, so they may they may enable it for paid customers by default, but I'm not sure. So go in there and again it's you know, the website settings and then allow use of end to end encryption, and that's really going to be between that and the waiting room. I think your calls are going to be pretty secure. I mean We've run like the whole world on Zoom for two years, so I think it's it's pretty darn.
Good, right.
And just I don't know if you heard yet that Zoom did. I just got the email a day or two ago that says they are bumping up the accounts by a dollar, so I wondered when that was going to happen. They have, you know, the whole world listening, so they might as well.
Oh yeah, I mean I think that. So what it used to be? What fourteen ninety five a month or something?
Yeah, that's one of the levels.
Yeah, so now and how much are you paying for this?
I think a little bit more, but I haven't checked in a while. I did do the fourteen ninety nine and I think I bumped it up to the next level. Yeah, and mine does say that encryption is enabled.
But well that's encryption but not necessarily end to end. So definitely check that setting. But here's the thing I would I would consider if you're paying a monthly, I would consider looking at the yearly because you can save about seventeen percent if you're going to use it, and you're using this for your business and you know you're
going to use it for the next year. I always recommend paying the year in advance for something like this, because why not, You're you're just you know, you're spending more each month just to have that flexibility of canceling when you're probably not going to if, especially if you're running your business on it.
Right, Okay, thanks for the reminder.
That's good.
All right, Corey, Thanks so much for the call, and thanks for listening. I appreciate that. Coming up, we're going to talk about smartphones. Smartphones had their worst year last year in a very long time. Plus I'm going to tell you just kind of the stuff I like out of this Samsung, Apple, who's on top? How many they sold? All that good stuff?
Plus your calls.
Triple eight rich one oh 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. My name is Rich Demiro sitting here talking technology with you. The phone number is triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight rich one oh one. Mary Anne is in Laguna, Nigel, Mary Anne.
You're on with Rich.
Hi. Rich.
How are you doing.
I am doing fantastic. How are you?
I'm good?
I'm good. I'm a little frustrated with Apple. I don't know if you have any good advice for me, other than what I would call a potential paper weight. I have an old Apple air Pad, the original one. It's a tablet, okay, I think I got it in twenty thirteen, and it keeps asking I use it for work. But now in the last couple of weeks, I can't get Google Google Chat to work. It wants me to keep upgrading all my apps, and it says it's not supporting the new upgrades. So am I kind of out of
luck with this? Or is there a reset up can do? Or what do you think?
So your your iPad is it? It turns on, it's functioning, and everything it does work.
I can play iTunes, I can do some surfing with the web. Some websites aren't loading though the way they used to.
Do you have the iPad with you right now?
I do?
Can you go into settings? I want to see what the exact model this is. So if you go into settings and then general and then about can you do that for me?
Yeah? So I've got it's a software version that's running is twelve point four point two.
Okay.
Model name is iPad.
Air, so it's just the iPad air. So it's the original iPad air. Okay, yeah, okay, interesting, Okay, So iPad is on iPad os is on sixteen, so you're running, you know, four generations before and sixteen is only going to run on iPad air third generation and later. So if you go to the website Apple dot com and you, you know, go to the iPadOS, you've got mac os, You've got iPadOS, and you've got iOS and then you've got tvOS. So each one of these has a certain
amount of gadgets that they run on. And I understand the frustration, believe me, because you've got this device. It still works fine, but it's not getting the latest software update. But the reality is Apple is actually one of the better companies that really does a pretty good job of letting software run on pretty old devices. In fact, if you look at iOS sixteen, sorry, let me just see
what this one runs on, it runs on phones. Because people every year, whenever they come out the new software, people go they get up.
In arms because they're like, well, now it doesn't run on my phone.
But if you look at iOS sixteen, which is like amazing, cutting edge, brand new software. It runs all the way back on the iPhone eight iPhone eight, and so let's just cross reference when that came out iPhone eight launch. You're talking twenty seventeen, so you're talking three six years so far.
That's pretty good.
You know, companies like Samsung and Google, they promise, like a lot of them have been promising like three years, maybe maybe four. So this is pretty good six anyway. All that's to say that I understand the frustration, but have you done the software update and it and it just says you can't do anymore When you.
Go to it just says, sorry, I can't do it.
So when you go back one segment, you know we said about so if you go to software update under general, what what does it say under that? Does it say up to date or what does it say?
It says checking for update. And so it's kind of thinking, right now, I'll tell you when Wow.
It turns out turns out I have a software update on my phone Marion Oh date iOS sixteen point three. But it takes so long to install these updates that I just wait a while.
Now.
I used I used to be one of the people that was like doing it the second it came out, and then my phone it got like a bad update one time, and my phone didn't work for twenty four hours until Apple decided to come out with a fix. And so now I wait a little bit. I wit like a couple of days. This has been out for like a week, I feel like, but so long story short,
The problem is the security of these apps. Some apps just won't run on the older software because security reasons, or they need a certain aspect of that software to be able to run properly, and they just don't have it on the older software. You know, you're creating apps for today, you couldn't really think about what the old software has that you may need.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, it sure does. So I guess I'm stuck with either using the limited functionality that it still offers me. Or is there any trade in value on this?
Do you think rich?
I know I've had it like ten years. I think I got it in twenty thirteen.
I don't know.
Apple will tell you if you go on their website, if you put a new iPad in your car and then look for the trade in value, it will tell you. But I and iPad Air original generation of I'm going to a website called gizmogo dot com which will buy anything from you. They'll give you sixty six bucks for it. So I would I would maybe do that and put that towards a new one.
Yeah. Yeah, because I really like the functionality of a tablet. I have a PC a laptop, but it's a lot, it's cumbersome. I have the tablets my go to. So I hear you, well, okay, so gizmo dot.
Com is that the gizmogo dot com? All right, I got a head out, but uh or got to go to a break. Thanks for calling. We'll be back with more after this, including a new scam that involves doc you sign emails. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro hanging out with you talking technology. You can find me on all social media at rich on Tech. Got some cool things on
my Instagram today. I've got my drive in that way mo I was talking about earlier, that autonomous taxi ride in San Francisco. I did a quick little reels about that. And if you're into lasers, my kid he made me purchase a lazer for him, and he was convinced it would be able to pop a balloon. I did not believe it, and sure enough we bought some balloons. He aimed the laser at the balloon and get popped. You can hear me go wow. I can't believe it because
I recorded it the first time I saw it. So if you want to see any of those reels Instagram dot Com slash rich on tech. Lou is in Phoenix, Arizona. Lou you're on rich Yeah.
Can you hear me?
Okay, I hear you just fine? How are you hey?
You can help me decorry if I should use a vice or a hammer on my cell phone. And my bluetooth head said, I use with the cell phone.
Uh oh, that doesn't sound those don't sound like good options. I assume you're not happy with these Bluetooth.
Well, I was going to do one or the other, and I thought, hey.
Call rich first, So what's what's happening with it?
Well, when regardless how I die, if I use the phone to dial, or if I use voice to dial with it, or if I press the button on the blue tooth and dial, it dials the numbers, okay, usually I can hear the telephone ringing of the other party and when they answer. Sometimes they can hear me, sometimes they can't. Usually I can hear them saying hello, Hello, Hello, but they can't hear me. You ought to try booking comedy shows without being able to talk to people.
Oh that's yeah, Well, comedy business is a tough business to being in general.
So imagine with.
The bluetooth issues. Yeah, what type of devices are we talking about here?
Okay, we're talking about a Jabra Stealth or the Top forty five. They're similar, and the problems with both of them, and the phone is a pixel for a Okay, I figure there must be some type of a menu somewhere that makes attention.
Well, so now is it? Is it all the time? And so you're you're saying you're having trouble with two different bluetooth headsets.
Yeah, they're both made by job Bro Okay. And the thing is sometimes they can hear me, sometimes they can't, right, And of course I can't tell if they can or can't. So what I do many times is just hit the speaker button and go to speaker right, and then they can hear me. But then I can't take notes and do other stuff while you know, I'm on the phone.
Okay, Now this job or stealth. Is this a newer model or is this an older model?
Well, the forty five is a newer model, the stealth is I think an older model.
Okay, so the job a stealth. So first, okay, So here's what I would do to try to troubleshoot this number one. So first off, I would make sure all the software is up to date. So the Pixel software. I'm not sure if the Pixel four A is still getting software updates at this point. It's it's been out for a little bit. So make sure that you're up to the latest software on that.
I think it is.
Okay, and you've done that, You've done all the software updates there.
Yeah, I don't know if I'm not sure how you can update the software on your bluetoothes.
Well, okay, so that's another thing. So I'm looking at this stealth online and there was a there was a Bluetooth update back in twenty eighteen. So you're talking the stealth device is at least, you know, a couple of years old.
You're talking five years old.
So yeah, and there says there solved an issue where the headset in some cases would not connect when tapping the voice button, so that you know, that could be part of the problem. So the way to download this is to download the Jabra Assist app, and that's on Google Play, So download Have you searched for that Jabra Assist.
Okay, so that's that's probably not.
Load notches of stuff on my phone.
Okay, Well, that's probably the first place to go then, so I would just go to the Jabra Assist app. And it's weird because, you know, even you, when I'm hearing this issue, I think in the back of my head that every gadget has some sort of like firmware.
Update or software update.
But it's kind of funny to think that a Bluetooth headset would have that. But this does, and so they may have fixed this problem. And you know, sometimes these little these little bugs do happen. What's the other one, the Jabra forty.
Five, you said, yep, Talk forty five.
Jabra Talk forty five, and so.
I think it's a new year. I think it's.
Recent, so that's a more recent So it looks it's very similar looking to the Stealth one and this one, let's see if they have a firmware update there.
Yep.
November fifteenth, twenty twenty one performance and stability improvements.
So what I would do?
That was my birthday?
Oh happy birthday. Very nice.
So you got a birthday gift of Maybe this Bluetooth is going to work properly once you do this. So download the job or Assist app, connect these two to your phone, do the software update. I'm sure the app will lead you through that. And then once you do that, restart everything. Restart your phone and turn off this turn it back on. You might even try disconnecting this device from your phone once you do the software update, like disconnect it completely, like depair it, and then repair it
to your phone, and that may force the connection. But I think if you follow those steps, I bet you these things will work a whole lot better.
I hope. So he can I tell you about my comedy?
Uh? Sure, very quickly, Yes, if you have a fast act.
Yeah. My website is arizonalud dot com and you might laugh if you go there. Or you can google America's Favorite old Man. I'll be number one. Or you can ask Alexa, Who's America's favorite old man. They'll say, here's loo I love it.
I love it? All right. Well I'm in Phoenix. I have to come see you one of these days. Okay.
Hey, I'm going to be in the LA area in first part of March.
Is it a clean act or what friendly?
I don't use I don't use foul language, but I do delve into adult concepts. I do mostly pre benefit shows for veterans.
And very cool. Well, thank you for that.
That's a schedule on my website.
Yeah, that's awesome Arizona, Lou. No, it's fine.
Hey, it sounds like you're doing great stuff.
So I love it.
And once you get those bluetooth therapieces working, maybe you'll have double the bookings.
Hey, I hope. So right now I'm working on Florida.
Thanks a lot, Lou, appreciate it. Have a great day.
All right, let's talk about Uh, let's go from that to this scam. So I'm always trying to keep you up to date on all these scam artists because they are really trying to you know, what did I get the other day? I got one that was really good and I was like, wow, this is it's just wild.
So this is a.
Phishing scam that involves docu sign email. So if you've ever bought a house, or a car or signed a contract. You know you've done docu sign. You know how it works. You get this email from DocuSign. It says, hey, click here, you choose a signature. I don't know how that's legal. You choose, you know, and it writes your signature for you, and now you've just signed your LifeWay. Well that's all
good and fine if it's legitimate. But these scam artists, these hackers are sending these emails that look like they originate from docu sign, but they contain a link in an HTML attachment, and once you click to open the view completed document, guess what. It is not a good thing. They're going to try to steal your information. They're going to try to download something to your computer. Perhaps it
redirects to a malicious link. And because of the way they're doing this, they're actually hiding the malware in that empty image attachment. So that means that the emails are bypassing virus scanners.
So you could still get caught up in.
This thing, even if you have a virus scanning software on your system. So the bottom line about this phishing attack and phishing is when someone sends you an email and they try to get your personal information by you just entering it in basically, So the bottom line is, if you are not expecting a docu sign email, you're not buying a car, you're not buying a house, you're not signing a contract for a new job, you're not a lawyer, you're not a doctor, whatever.
Just don't open it.
Now.
If you think you're expecting it and you're wondering about it, then you know, call the person on the other end and say, hey, did you send me this? But don't just open these things up. In fact, I think I got this. That's now that I think about it, I think this is what I got. And I you know,
it's funny. I've a company I work for sends us these emails that are like they try to get you to teach you a lesson about, you know, security online, and so they'll send you something, hey, just review this picture. Let us know what you think. And I'm like, I wasn't thinking. I wasn't supposed to review a picture. And then they say, gotcha when you click the link. So if you see this docu sign email and you're not expecting it, just don't click it. Coming up, I'm gonna
talk about smartphone sales. We're gonna talk about the new Super Nintendo World opening up at Universal Studios. I've got a guest who's already been in advance of the opening. Plus, we're gonna take more of your calls at Triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. We'll be back after this. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Comrade Jamiro hanging out with you here talking technology at triple eight
rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Dial that number, give me a call, we'll talk about technology. Amazon introduced a new service called RX pass. So earlier I was talking about how Amazon got rid of their Prime benefit with free grocery delivery, and now they're introducing another benefit. This is OURX pass, So kind of interesting. Five dollars a month for more than eighty common health condition medications.
So this is a new benefit for Prime members that gives you affordable access to commonly prescribe generic medications. Now, the five dollars a month is not for one medication. The five dollars a month is for as many medications as you need, and you can get them all delivered for free. There's no hidden markups, there's no fees, at
least not right now, and it's available in most US states. Now, if you have Medicare or Medicaid, you're not eligible for this, and Amazon says Prime members, who typically take two or more medications per month to manage chronic or ongoing health conditions, could save significant time and money with this.
Five dollar RX pass subscription.
Now, it doesn't seem like you can use your flex spending to pay for this, if you're wondering about that. But here's the thing. Not in California. This is not available in California, which is kind of a bummer because that's a big state. But I'm guessing they say they're in forty forty eight states, but are forty two states rather Sorry, that's what happens when I try to type and talk at the same time. So I was trying to look up some of the medications that they offer
for this. So one low price, five dollars is for all of it. Let's see generic for a lipitur, they've got five bucks. Well, bututrin generic five bucks, now five dollars.
If you needed both of those.
That's a flat fee for as many of these medications as you need a month. Let's see Propisha is on there, Lexapro is on there, Zoloft. Now, these are all the generic versions of these, obviously, but those are the brand names that I know, Crestor. I mean, you see the advertisements on TV. So if you pay for prescriptions more than this, if you have one of these chronic conditions, and you're paying more, and you're an Amazon Prime member and you live in one of these states, that you
can get this, then it might be worth it. So will it work in your state? Let me see, there's a way to Okay, OURX pass is not currently available to California, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington, so if you're in one of those states, you can't
get it. Those are some pretty big states, California, Texas, Washington. Yeah, so I'm guessing in those places, with Washington is Amazon's hometown, I'm guessing in those places that there are heightened restrictions on what can be sent through the mail or some sort of restriction with pharmacies. So that's why they can't do it there. But our ex pass.
There you go.
This is interesting too. So I was talking about the scam scam artists trying to scam us, and they spend all day doing this. So what's really interesting and the trend I've noticed with all of these scam kind of texts and emails we get, they're all based on actual real emails that we get. So if you've ever been to the store and you go to buy something and you get a text your card has declined, and you get a text to your phone it says.
Hey, was that just you at Target?
Did you just try to spend you know, forty eight dollars and seventy two cents. Press one for yes, press new two for no, or text back one or two, and so you say, yeah, that was me I just got I was trying to buy something at Target. And you decline the charge and so you press you you text back one and it will say okay, try the transaction again, and you do it and it goes through.
That's their fraud prevention at work. And these big companies like Chase an American Express, it seems like they're protecting you, but they're really not. They're protecting their own interest. And so they're saying, we don't really trust this transaction, we don't really want to be on the hook for this fifty eight bucks, so we'll just we'll just decline it and then make this person text us back. So it's
on them, really. And it's great when it works and it's a a charge that they do don't let through and it protects you. And I've had this happen, but I've also had charges go through. I've had my card hacked and you know, the person somehow used it in where was it?
One time? It was in Spain.
It was actually at a what was the The place was called a I'm gonna not say the name, right Carrie four.
It is like c A R R E f O U R.
And so I was like, how is this person using my card in Madrid right now when I'm sitting here. And so when I went to Europe it was I think it was last year, you know, I was in Europe and I went past one of these stores. I was like, oh my god, that was the play that was the place where they used my card. And in that case, I didn't get any fraud prevention thing. You always seem to get the fraud prevention when it's you.
Now.
Another time I was out at a restaurant and I used my card and typically and this way I always recommend, by the way, using your tap to pay. If you can set up Apple pay or Google Pay or Samsung Pay, or use the chip in your card, that is all much more secure. In fact, try not to even use anything with your card, like use your phone when possible. If you can tap to pay, use it. It's the most secure because think about it, nobody even sees your card.
They don't see your card number. What's exchanged is a one time card number, which means the retailer, even if they got hacked, if someone got a list of all the credit cards used at Target that day, yours would not be on there. What would be on there is a one time use number that nobody else could use again. And so you're protected that way. So when people say, like Rich, I use tap to pay, absolutely use it.
It's really really good. So one time I was at a restaurant and you know, of course I always try to use the tap to pay, and I'm at the restaurant, I hand over my credit card and in about thirty seconds while the person walks away, with my card. I get a message from my credit card saying, hey, your card was just used in like Indiana.
Said what? And I watched that movie what's it called?
Emily the Criminal, I think, And it's about all about like credit card theft and all this stuff, and so I realized how they do this. I mean, it's a really sophisticated operation. So anyway, my point is, these these scammers try to emulate the stuff that we really get and they try to trick us. So I tell you all of this because Verizon right now is sending out these text messages that are offering valuable customer discounts anywhere from ten to twenty five dollars off your wireless bill
per month. It arrives by text message. It says, hey, you're a great customer. Call this number. We'll give you ten to twenty five dollars off your bill. It's actually legitimate. They did it last year. I was one of the people that got the messages. I saved ten dollars a month on my bill. And so if you get this text, it's very confusing because you're sitting here going, hey, who's trying to trick me here? And it's odd that Verizon would send a text that looks like this, but this
is the second time they've done it. So if you get a message that says to your customer, you're from Verizon, you're very loyal, we want to offer you this, there's a phone number in that message to call. Now, I'm telling you this message is legitimate, But what I would do is just google the phone number to make sure that's the actual Verizon phone number, because what scam artists are going to do is they're going to emulate these texts and say, hey, we're with AT and T or
we're withth T Mobile. Here's ten bucks off a month, give us a call and you call that number. What are they going to do? Say, Hey, what's your phone number, what's your pin code?
What's all this?
And by the time you give them all that, they've just stolen your account. So just be aware of these things. But again, it's confusing because the hackers try to target us using the systems that we're familiar with. You're listening to rich on Tech. Give me a call triple eight rich one oh one. We'll talk to you coming up next. Rich Demiro here, rich on Tech. You are listening to the show where we talk about technology and take your calls at Triple eight rich one oh one. I'm the
tech reporter for KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. You may see me on TV from time to time, or maybe on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook pretty much. Let's see which one am I on the most. Probably Instagram. I think it's Instagram. Twitter is more for like just fleeting little thoughts. Facebook is more. You know, I've got to really have a reason to post a Facebook.
But I love it.
I mean, got a lot of you on there that you know you love commenting, which I do read the comments, believe me. If you send me a message, a DM or you comment, I read most of them. But I can't always reply to every single one of them because it would be a full time job. So I do try, and I get some of my best story ideas from you just texting and tweeting and all that good stuff. So keep them coming, and believe me, I do get a laugh from a lot of the stuff, and I
will try to like some times if I do. Nowhere else I get a lot of my ideas is my kid. I've got an eight year old that I think I'm going to have a weekly segment of how he's getting around all of the restrictions I have in place. So I told you last week how I came into his room and he was watching something on YouTube. I don't even know how he got on there. But this week, since I kind of locked down YouTube a little bit more, I come into the room and he's facetiming with his friend.
And guess what. He just figured out that his friend could share her screen to his iPad and they can sit there and watch YouTube videos because she's got no restrictions on her side, and so they.
Just watched stuff together.
I really had to laugh at his ingenuity here, because you know, as parents, it's really tricky because you can set up all these boundaries for your kids and it's kind of like you know you're gonna It's kind of like when I was a kid, your parents had rules in your house. Then when you went to your friend's house, they had a whole different set of rules, and a lot of times those rules, depending on the friends you made,
were a lot better than the rules you had. Like I remember sleeping over a friend's house one time and we were going to bed and I was like, oh, I gotta go brush my teeth and he's like what, it's like, I don't brush my teeth before bad I'm like, wait, what you don't brush He's like, nah, I don't have to. I'm like in my rules in my house, it's a rule you gotta brush your teeth before you go to bed.
And then there was like snacks, you know, all kinds of different rules, and so kids, you know, they appreciate the rules the other homes because they can do things that they can't normally do at their house anyway. So the same thing kind of follows for all this tech stuff.
It's like you can have all these rules and restrictions on your kid's iPad or your kid's computer, but as soon as they go to someone else's house, you know, they're just gonna be on their friend's iPad that has no limits or screen time or you know, they could download any game they want. So that was the newest
hack that my kid figured out. The other one he figured out because YouTube is currently banned on some of the devices or there's a time limit, is that he just goes to the Google Home which is like the little smart speaker slash display, and he'll just ask that to play a YouTube video, and so he'll just sit there and like, you know the room that has the
Google and he'll just watch the video there. So I'm telling you, these kids are very They're very tricky, and it will serve him well in life later, but right now as a parent, believe me, it is you know, I get a laugh at the end of the day, but in the moment, it's really, oh my gosh, Like I'm just like, why are you in Why are you in my bedroom?
Oh?
Because there's a little Google home there so you can watch the video there. It's it's pretty amazing.
These kids. They'll figure stuff out. Where there's a where there's.
An Internet connection, there's a way, and they will figure it out. And the only reason, by the way, that he had because his iPad turns off at a certain time each night, and I was like, how is he still on this iPad even after you know the time where it's supposed to lock up. And it turns out that I left FaceTime open because I figure, well, FaceTime is kind of like the phone that I used to
have in my room. You could always use it. It was like you call your friends, but now FaceTime allows you to do so much more than just call your friends. You know you're sharing memes, you're texting back and forth, you're you know you're on I message and you know you're also sharing screen now, So got to watch these kids. They're they're very tricky little beings. Mitch is in Denver. Mitch, you're on with Rich.
It rhymes Hi.
Rich, Just get turned on your show. Thanks, really nice, really nice. I'm first off, I got to give you the buy description of the total opposite techie. Not not along by any stretch. I'm a functioning computerization illiterate, okay, and uh, I just found and purchased a pair of they're light they're called they're more or less their light bulb,
socket installed security cameras. So instead of you know, going through the whole thing of hardwire and a ring and all that and paid for a service to you know, to keep to monitor it, you just as long as you have Wi Fi and you have a socket and a clear view for the little camera. If you hook you link it up with the Wi Fi, you can monitor it. And you can even you can even put a card into you know, the record footage.
Sure, but I think I tested one of these ones. It's just simple. You plug it in, you screw it into the light socket. It's got the power from the light socket. It's got a camera on it, and it records. I believe I tested one of these. Yeah, okay, exactly, So what's going on with that?
Well, okay, I excuse me. I got them, and I I went to I'm an Android, So I went to the Google App Store and took the very the description of the the app for the for it and downloaded that. And then when I go to pull up the app to activate it to sync it with the Wi Fi, it just it just stalls. It doesn't progress on and let me, you know, let me linked up and and get it to work right, and I just you know, beings, I don't have any I'm telling you a screener. I
don't have a problem with sports guy. So I have a problem with like taking a ESPN and loading it on my smartphone and that works for me. But I've never done a device app like that, and I'm wondering if maybe I'm approaching it wrong to where I'm not sure.
Ok Okay, So a couple of things. So first off, what do you have an Android or iPhone?
Uh?
Android?
Okay, you have.
Android and so you download the app. How is there a QR code to scan for the app? Like, how do you know you have.
The right app?
Yeah, it has it does have a scan code or you or you know, I can put the search engine. Uh, but I usually use the app and it it'll it'll take it and it'll it'll load it up and you know, and then I'll open it. But the initial page just the link you're supposed to hit that so you can start the process to link it up. It just falls.
It doesn't It doesn't actually work that you know.
Do you have anyone in the home or do you have an iPad that you might be able to use, or anyone in the home with an iPhone that you can try to see if the app works there? Just to activate this camera, I could.
Try my wife, my wife's phone. I haven't put that application on her, okay on her series is Android also, so I could do that. I No, I hadn't tried that.
Well, I was thinking because you know, sometimes you know, Android and iOS apps can be vastly different depending on how they code them, and so it could be that the Android app has a you know, a bug in it or something that's just not playing nicely, and so I was thinking, if you can try it on an iPhone or an iOS app, you might be to see if you can at least get it to work and know that this camera works. So is there a return policy on this thing if it doesn't if you can't get it to work, I.
You know, to be honest with there were only thirty bucks. So I kind of thought, okay, well I'll take a I'll take a wild stab at it. And the thing I've you know, it's funny rich because I can get it, and I don't know why it'll do a self check, so I know that the actual the actual bulb will do We'll go through the motions with its with its movements. And when I thought, okay, I've linked up, but it must do a self check and I can't even get that every time, and I've I've erased and retried loading
up the app. I've even tried different uh, different companies apps for the like.
Well, I don't think.
I don't think the different companies apps would work. But here's the other thing. So what this app is doing is it's basically the camera is putting out its own Wi Fi network that your phone needs to pair with and connect to, and then it's provisioning the bulb to connect to your Wi Fi network eventually, So there is a little bit of time involved in that process. How long are you letting this app load up for the
first time when you try to connect the bulb? Have you waited a good like two minutes?
Yeah? Yeah?
I at first I thought, you know, I could probably it probably link up pretty quick my router while I'm trying to do it. I've got my router, my Wi Fi router, about one and a half foot away from it. But I thought, okay, there's not a problem with distance or you know, getting a poor pickup of the Fi.
One more question. When you turn on this bulb, if you go into the Wi Fi settings on your phone, does do you see the bulb Wi Fi network? Because it should emit its own Wi Fi network? Does it say like light bulb or something, whatever the brand is. Do you see that in your Wi Fi settings? Have you checked for that?
I had looked, excuse me, I had looked. I don't see it in that? Is that the same the same page where it tells your your active Wi Fi network.
It would be listed under like available networks. So I would Here's what I would do. I mean this and this is this is what I would do. So my advice is to see if you can download the app on your wife's phone. It could be just you know, whatever version of Android you're running or whatever, the app
just doesn't agree with your phone. Believe me, I've I've set these things up and they can be very frustrating sometimes And in one case I wasn't able to get something set up at all that should have been very easy. And in other case is when I tried an iPhone versus an Android. Sometimes the iPhone works very easy to set it up, sometimes the Android. So if you can try a different device to set this up, that would be my first That would be my first line.
That's what I would do.
If you can't get that to work, I mean, it may just be that this is not going to play nice with your network. There could be some you know, some network settings that might be tweaked, you know, whatever band this phone is on versus the the Wi Fi band that this light is on. But the other thing is it kind of just goes to show that with a lot of these products that are not ring, that are not wise, you know, you don't know what you're getting.
Sometimes they're going to work, sometimes they're going to be fine, other times they're going to be very frustrating. And so that's just what happens with some of these third party products that you know, we just don't really know where they're coming from or and the software is really the biggest thing. So when it comes to all these smart home devices, the software really differentiates.
The good stuff from the bad stuff.
And Mitch, hopefully you get this thing to work, but try those steps that I mentioned. I think that trying it on a different device would be best. And if you want to keep trying on your device, uninstall the app like you said you did, but then restart your phone and then restart the app. The other thing you do to flip this bulb and to try to you know, kick it into gear is to unscrew it and screw it back in a couple of times, and that usually it into getting into like the factory set up mode
one more time. So and look on those support pages and see if there's anything pertaining to that app. All right, coming up, we're going to talk about why smartphones are not selling.
Plus we're going to talk to Tom Merritt my guests, who has already been to the Super Nintendo World opening soon at.
Universal Studios, Hollywood. You're listening to me rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. My name is rich Jamiro hanging out and talking technology with you. Thanks for listening and being.
Part of the show.
By the way, triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one, this show is really all about you. It's all about helping you understand technology, helping you stay.
Ahead of some of this stuff, and also.
Not falling for a lot of the scams out there, because there's a lot of them. I mean, you feel like sometimes people are just scared to even use a computer or their phone. They don't want to hit the wrong button or the wrong they don't want to mess something up. And I'm here to tell you that most of the time you'll be okay. There's not really a lot of things that you can totally mess up. Well I guess there is, but will help you make you
feel like you can do anything you want. So that last caller, Mitch made me think of a couple of things. He was having problems with this light bulb that he bought this light bulb camera and it made me think of two things. Number One, so when I first started setting up smart home devices, they were so complicated. I mean, the process to set these things up were just it took forever.
It was annoying.
You had to There's just a lot of hoops to jump through. And now things have gotten very very easy. In fact, the last kind of couple of smart home things I set up, I couldn't believe how easy they were. A lot of times you just scan a QR code and it just does everything in the background. It connects it to your Wi Fi, it'll connect it to your phone, it'll get it to the app. I mean, it's really
really well done. So one of the things I was thinking is I was for so many years scared to change my Wi Fi network because I didn't want to reconnect all of these smart home devices. And then someone was like, Rich, you know, you can just use the same Wi Fi you know, password and network ID and
everything will just carry over. And I was like what, And so sure enough, I replaced my router one time when I was trying, you know, to upgrade it, and I just use the same information and everything just followed it over. I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh my gosh. So that's a great tip if you're ever concerned you don't want to swap out your your modem or your router or you've done it in the past and you had to choose a new Wi Fi network
and reconnect all your stuff. If you know if your system is secure, like if your username and ID, you know your your Wi Fi, you know the network name and the password is still secure and you can still reuse it, go ahead and then all your stuff will carry over, which is really great. Now, remember anything that's connected to that network in the past will find the new network. So only do that if you trust all the items on your network. The other thing is this
story out of Massachusetts Minichog Regional High School. They've got a smart lighting system they installed at this school that broke and now all the lights are stuck on. So this green lighting system, seven thousand lights were installed over a decade ago, and it was supposed to save money, but the software that runs it apparently failed in August twenty twenty one, and nobody's been able to turn off the lights ever since. It's been seventeen months, so teachers
have been unscrewing the light bulbs. Some people have been flipping the breakers parts of the school to turn off the lights. They can't even dim the lights to show the kids a movie in the classroom or the board in front of the room. Lights are always full brightness. I mean, not very not very good situation. So what is the lesson learned here? The lesson here, and this is something that you can apply to your own home, is that you got to be smart about how you
install this smart home stuff. You can't think that it's always going to work properly. And so for that reason, you probably want to have a switch somewhere and you probably want to be able to change the setup in some way. So in my house, I went through and I kind of regroup things. And so if you say a certain thing like turn off the lights in one room,
it may turn off all the lights. And so you just have to think about this stuff when you set up your smart home devices in advance, like, Okay, how would I work these lights if they you know, if the switch breaks or if the software doesn't work, or I can't turn them off from my phone, or I can't turn them off from you know, my voice control.
So just think about that when you set it up, and it'll just make you think of the way that you know, you might set these things up in a way that there are a couple ways to control the lights. What was the other thing that happened? One time I was controlling the lights in one room and they turn on the lights in another room where I think someone in the house was sleeping to remain unnamed, and it's like,
you woke me up, Oh my gosh. And it's like, because I'm always testing something, right, Oh, another time I was testing if you say, like Alexa or Google, like happy Halloween or something, it like changes all the lights in your house. And I didn't know it changed every single light and turn on the TV and started playing scary music. And so imagine everyone in my house running out of their room saying, what what's going on? Because
I said, you know, happy Halloween. So anyway, smart home stuff very fun as long as you've got it right.
All right.
Coming up, My next guest is Tom Merritt. He is a podcaster, Extraordinary host of daily Tech news show, and he has been to Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios, Hollywood. I'm so jealous We're going to talk to Tom next about what's good and cool about this new land. Welcome back to rich On Zech. My name is Rich DeMuro. We are hanging out and talking technology. Phone lines are open at Triple eight rich one oh one. My next guest is a well known technology journalist podcaster and he's
written a couple of books. He hosts daily tech news show and his name is Tom Merritt. Tom, I'm laughing because the music intro they played.
Did you hear it?
No?
I didn't catch it? Or was it?
It was?
How do you talk to an angel?
That's how I feel talking to you, Rich, That's.
How I feel talking to you. Welcome to the show, Tom.
Oh, Thanks man, it's really good to be here.
Thanks for inviting me on.
So, okay, I'm a little jealous because you have been to the Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios, Hollywood. It opens February seventeenth. You somehow got in, and I want to hear all about it. So was it fun?
It was?
It was really fun.
It was both bigger and smaller than I expected. And I'll explain that basically, you walk in and you are inside of a Nintendo. They did a great job with the colors and the decorations and animatronics, things like the little plants from Mario over there, popping up and down. It is a little smaller in the sense that.
Once you've done the big.
Ride Mario Kart, there's some fun little games to walk around and do.
There's the Toad Cafe, go get a bite to eat.
But there really is only the one big main attraction.
So this is sort of a new land inside Universal Studios, Hollywood, and it's all based around Nintendo. And so if you're a Nintendo fan, you play these games grown up or now, it will probably be fun. So they've got this Mario Kart Challenge, Bowser's Challenge ride. Then they've got, like you said, the restaurants. They've got the bean Pole, they've got Bowser's Castle, they've got this power up band. So let's talk about
the ride, Mario Kart, Bowser's Challenge. It's got sort of aspects of ar Tell me about that.
Yeah, So, once you've made your way through the line, which like all.
The amusement parks, has a long.
Line, but they do a lot of fun things to keep the entertained along the way, you get into an area where they instruct you how you're going to put on this visor, and they give you a hat. It's a Mario hat, so you put that on, you get ready, you go down, You get in the car and there's a visor there that snaps on.
It's pretty easy.
It's magnetic.
And then as you're going through the ride, there are some things along the way in real life, but mostly what you're looking at is other carts as if you're inside the video game and you actually have control that let you steer the car with the other people you're in the car with, as well as shoot turtles at some of the virtual cars in front of you to try to gain points, so you really are riding inside the video game.
What would you give this ride out of a ten?
Out of a ten, I give it an eight. Wow. I had a lot of fun on it.
I wish I didn't have to wait so long in line to do it.
And once you've done it once, I think you.
Get a sense of how to rack up the points.
Better because they give you a leaderboard at the.
End that tells you how many points you got and everything.
But it really is fun.
If you're a person who likes these kinds of video games, especially these simple Mario Kart video games, which I don't know about you, but I've played with my family. It does give you a sense that you're inside the game.
Oh and that's the beauty of all Nintendo games is that first party games at least, is that they're just fun for the whole family. And I think that's probably part of the reason why this opened at Universal Studio, because the parents know the games, the kids know the games, and everyone knows these characters. And I'm trying to remember. I feel like this opened in Japan at some point before the US.
Right.
Yeah, they opened the Japan version in March of twenty twenty one, so it's been kicking around there for a while. It's a little bit bigger there. So they have a couple of rides. One of the things they did is they took the Yoshi part of the Yoshi Ride and they put it in the line waiting area in Hollywood, So you're gonna still get some of that experience as you're walking up to get ready to ride to Mario Kart.
My guest is Tom Merritt. He is a podcaster and host of daily technewshow dot Com goes by Ace Detect on Twitter. Can you explain why I've always wondered that.
The short version is it was a user name I picked in the late nineties and it's stuck.
Okay, got it.
We're talking about the new Supernintendo World at Universal Studios, Hollywood. It opens February seventeenth. I imagine it's kind of like before a new gadget comes out, Like there's not a reason to go to Universal right now before the seventeenth, because like my kid is like, I want to go to Universal. I'm like, we got to wait till after the seventeenth at least because this new area is opening. So this other thing they've got is this power Up Band.
Do you have any.
Experience with that? Do you know what that's all about? It's an interactive wristband.
Yeah, this is something that is good to know before you go in. When once you've decided to go, make sure you head right to the Mario Band or the power Up Band sales area if you want to take part in it.
You don't have to take part in it, but it's going to let you do.
More things and collect points and add them to an app and all that sort of thing. But the main thing you want to do is to get one of the bands. They are forty dollars, so it's not going to be for everybody, but if you decide that that sounds like forty dollars worth of fun, you're going to get a band that you'll take home with you. It's
a nice, big collectible band. They have them in various characters, so there's a Mario colored one, there's a Princess Peach one, there's a Luigi one, there's a Bowser one, and then the band has what's called an NFC chip inside of it so that you can walk around the park and collect coins. So they'll be like three dimensional power boxes pole boxes that you can hit and your band will
then record that you have collected the coin. And in fact, if you do the Mario Kart Ride, any of the coins you collect on the Mario Kart Ride go into your account.
There's a QR.
Code on the back of the band that you can pair with the Universal app and be able to access all your points. And I didn't try this last part, but apparently you'll then be able to take those coins and attach them to your Nintendo account and apply them to some of the points based stuff that are available.
There, very elaborate, I mean, and it's okay, so forty dollars.
I get it.
You're at a theme park. I mean you can't get like a churro for less than ten bucks.
So right, and it is something you get to take home with you. Yeah.
Yeah, it's like one of these things.
There's like certain places in the world where you just have to have a suspension of all money disbelief.
It's like a.
Theme park, an airport, where else let's see. Yeah, it's like, yeah, a ballpark. Yeah, you're like, wait, when's the beer thirty eight dollars? Oh, at the stadium? I get it, So okay. Anything else of note? Did you go to the Toadstool Cafe or did you sample any They've got Toadstool Cheesy Garlic knots, super mushroom soup, Piranha plant caprece, Mario Bacon cheeseburger, Luigi Pesto chicken burger, question Block Tieramie Sue, and Princess Peach cupcake. Did you try any of those things?
I can't say that we did. We did peek in and gotta look at it. The food looked nice. It looks more like they had named it things. They put some sprinkles and decorations on it to give it a little Nintendo flare, but the line for that was also incredibly long because it was new and in preview, so people wanted to get a.
Crack at it.
So yeah, I can't. I can't tell you if.
It delivers on the flavor profile as promised or Now.
First off, a little rich on tech trivia. You know, I used to work at Universal Studios. I was the tram tour guide when I was in college. Oh nice, So I used to be one of those people that led you around the back law and did all the corny jokes and stuff. This may be too inside baseball, but where is the actual Nintendo World located?
Right?
That was an interesting thing that I wanted to find out too. So when you come into the park, you're kind of upstairs, and you walk through the main street, and then you pass by Harry Potter and you go through Simpsons and then you take escalators down and anybody who's been there before knows, oh, right, that's where the Mummy rides, right right, That's where the Transformers Gerastic World.
Now they're revamping maps from showing my Age Graphic World So the Nintendo World is located kind of straight off the escalators. You kind of go a little bit to the right and heads straight. And I looked at a map to double check this. There used to be a studio or a warehouse or some structure there, so this is not a ride that they've removed.
They tore down a building and created Nintendo World in the space they freed up there.
Okay, very cool, All right.
Super Nintendo World opens at Universal Studios, Hollywood, February seventeenth, twenty twenty three. Just in a couple of weeks here, So Tom quickly tell us about you. You do a show called Daily Tech News Show and a bunch of other stuff as well. But how can folks find you and listen?
Yeah, the idea with Daily Tech News Show is Sarah Layne and I and the whole team really enjoy looking through all the tech news every day, and we want to make it easy for other people to understand what's going on since there's so much of this technology out there, So we boil it down into thirty minutes to day that'll keep you up to date, make you the person who's most up to date on tech in the room, and you can find us at Dailytechnewshow dot com or
if you've got a podcast app you use, just type in Daily Tech News Show we'll pop right up.
All right, Well, thanks so much for joining me today, Tom, I appreciate it, and a little bit of more trivia for you. Tom and I used to work together at CNAT for a brief moment, so that was pretty cool as well. I went on one episode of buzz Out Loud back in the day and it was I think that was the first time my voice was ever on audio. All right, thanks so much for joining me, Tom, appreciate it. Can't wait to visit the new Nintendo World at Universal Studios.
Coming up in the show, I'm going to talk about the smartphone sales why they're down.
Plus we'll take a couple more calls at Triple eight.
Rich one oh one. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. I'm Richtamiro hanging out talking technology with you. Smartphone sales in twenty twenty two were not very good. Worldwide smartphone shipments declined eighteen percent.
Year over year. That was in the fourth quarter.
Then when you look at the year, down eleven percent, so they sold The good news is the carrier, the manufacturers. You know, they shipped one point two to one billion units. But guess what, that's the lowest annual number since twenty thirteen. So what happened? Why are people buying less phones? Well, consumer demand, inflation, economic uncertainties, and the reality is phones are lasting longer, so people are feeling they don't need to upgrade as often. And last year I think we
had some really good phones. I mean, the Pixel seven was amazing, the iPhone fourteen was really good. And this year we have the you know, the S twenty three coming up very soon from Samsung. I know there's a lot of excited folks for that, but the reality is people are keeping their phones thirty six to thirty nine months now. They're no longer getting a new one every year. You just don't see the reason to do that. I mean, unless you're me, I get one, gotta keep it fresh,
you know, swap it out every couple of months. Anyway, So what does this mean for you? Well, on a positive note, and this is all by the way, according to IDC, you may find more generous trade in offers and promotions because these companies and these carriers want to sell you phones. So how did the major I keep saying carriers, but it's really the manufacturers Apple and Samsung here in the US. How did they do so last year? What do you think is on top Samsung or Apple worldwide?
It's actually Samsung. You might think because we live in America. In the US, Apple is very popular, but Samsung actually sells more phones worldwide. Last year they sold two hundred and sixty million phones, Apple two twenty six million, So market share for Samsung twenty one percent, Apple eighteen percent. They were both down though last year, like I mentioned. So anyway, it's a good time to be a consumer
with new phones. I know the prices seem to keep going up on these phones, but there are some good deals out there if you're looking for a new one. Let's go to Let's see if I can get this right. Janet is in Santa Monica. Janet, you're on with Rich Rich.
Well, when I was on hold, I drove my son to a boy Scout project which was cleaning up and beautifying tong the springs. So that's one suggestion as to help getting your son off excess technology.
H I love that suggestion. Put them to work. I love it anything in the real life. This is I'm actually a big fan of that. So like after school, like they you know, for some reason, they have like a half day once a week, I will literally take them like directly to a hike or some sort of like outdoor activity because to me, the longer they're out of the house the better because it's less screened. So great idea on that one, ultimately.
But the reason I'm calling is you started telling a story which I found very interesting, about how the waitress at the restaurant took your phone away for thirteen seconds and then immediately somebody somewhere else was charging stuff. And you said you figured out how they did it, and so I was waiting for you to say, Okay, how did they do it? And I was yelling at this at the radio. But then I said, okay, that's not helping.
So I decided to call you and ask you a good question.
Okay, So first off, it was well, it was a waiter actually, but I'm not blaming the waiter for what happened. And it wasn't my phone. It was actually my card. So that's what I was saying. Typically I use my phone to tap to pay and so only if they have to pry my credit card or my debit card out of my hand while I actually use the physical card, because nine times out of ten, it's way more secure to use your phone to tap to pay because no
one sees your number. Now, at a restaurant you are you are particularly at risk because someone is taking your card into another place where you don't see that card for a while. In other places in the world, they have these little machines they bring to your table and they will put your card into the machine, or you can tap the machine and they'll do the entire bill right at your table side. That's mostly in Europe and Asia.
Here in the US, they still take your card to a machine somewhere off, you know, somewhere else in the restaurant, swipe your card or whatever, and do the transaction that way.
Now.
I don't know if the person that took my card at this restaurant was stealing the number. It could have been a coincidence, but it just so happened. That was the first time I used my physical card in a very long time, and I got a message from my bank within minutes saying, hey, did you just use you know.
Did you just use your card.
It was at some it was like a gas station in Indiana or something, and I said no, and so sure enough, after that night, I had to get a new card. And so I don't know if it was related, but I'm just saying when you're using your physical card, and especially when someone else is taking that card away from you, there's always a chance something can happen. So the moral of the story is not really to blame the restaurant or the waiter. I have no idea if it was related. It's just, you know, use tap to
pay when possible. People are very hesitant to set that feature up because they don't trust it or they don't know if it's secure. It is very secure, Janet. Do you use that tap to pay or no?
No, But I think I will because you know, I charged tickets on Ticketmaster one time, and within minutes somebody you know, across the country was charging stuff on that card as well. Yeah, so I'm always looking for a more secure way to charge things.
Yep.
And I've had that happen too. I bought something on a website once and the second I put in my credit card information on that website, and it was a website. It wasn't like a big website. It was a smaller website that I was ordering like a car accessory from. And it was the first time I shopped there, and sure enough, as soon as I put my card number in, it was like bing. I got an email that said, Hey, did you just use your card in this place? I said no, and so I had to get that card.
And it's very frustrating to have to get your card number or placed, because you know, you have these cards saved to pay for Netflix and things like that, and if you have to get a new card number, sometimes will carry over the information to the new card. Other times you gotta you know, the last time this happened to me, I got all these things saying you better change your card number or else. So, Janet, does that help with some of the explanation there some of the mystery out of that.
It does help, And I'm going to start using my phone more and I appreciate your advice.
Thank you.
All right, thanks a lot. So where's your kid cleaning up today?
To the springs?
Okay, Tonga Springs, you know where that is?
It went It's adjacent to Uni High, Okay, I know where that is yeah, good, excellent.
I was just it. It's the original site where when they discovered Santa Monica, the missionary and explorer said, the springs look like the tears of St. Monica. So that's how the city got its name. And it is still there and it's beautiful. We try to keep it just like the native solid hundreds of years ago.
Amazing.
All right, I'm going to check it out next time i'm over there. I love to run in Santa Monica. I'll park at the inspiration point there and do a nice run along the ocean. So beautiful, beautiful area. Thank you, Janet, and thank you for listening. That's going to do it for this episode of the show. Next week, big big news from Samsung. We have the launch of the S twenty three smartphones. I will be at the event in San Francisco. It's Samsung's first in person event in three years,
so I can't wait. I'm looking forward to that. I'll tell you all about those new phones. And if you'd like to submit a question for me to answer, maybe you don't feel like calling, you can email me.
Just go to my website.
Richon tech dot TV, hit the blue big blue email icon and You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech. I hope you joined me there. On Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Check out my TV segments on the free KTLA plus app for your smart TV. My name is rich Dedmiro. 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