Roku upgrades, phone hack fears & how to recover lost texts (118, April 26, 2025)

you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe the tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up those phone lines at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call. If you have a question about technology. Email is also an option. Just go to the website rich on Tech dot TV. All right, we've got some great guests this week. Three very interesting guests. Tim Macalino,

co founder and CEO of Bandana. He's going to talk about his startup for helping workers land better hourly and entry level jobs for free. Really interesting there. And then Justin Hendrix a little bit later on, CEO and founder of Tech Policy Press is going to talk about all of the antitrust trials going on right now, Google, Meta Uber. There's a lot happening. We'll tell you what it means

for you. And then later in the show, Tim O'Hearn, software engineer and author of Framed a villain's perspective on social media, he's going to have a new take on how social platforms really work. Well, I hope you're having a great day. I was in New York City this week to attend a Roku event, and it was kind of interesting because I wasn't really aware that Roku held events, and so when they invited me out there, I said, you know what, Yeah, I'm going to go because I

want to hear what Roku's all about. People that have Roku's love these things, right. They're simple, one of the the earliest streaming boxes ever and it is progressed ever since, but still at its core. I think Roku keeps things simple and really focuses on the end game, which is just to get you to watch stuff on your TV as much as you can, right, because that's what streaming is all about. So a couple of things at this event. Number one I said to them and said, Hey, did

you guys, do you do events? They said, no, this is probably our biggest yet, and so they did have the CEO and founder, Anthony Wood up on stage. He came up and spoke and talked about how he started Roku. I think it was back in two thousand and two, was the original synthesis of the company, and then two thousand and eight was their first streaming box. Now as I remember it, I am pretty sure their first streaming box was a Netflix co brand box. Like that was it.

It was just a way to watch Netflix. And then later on they sort of branched out and created their own operating system and their own software and their own brand. That's the way I remember it. I have to fact check that. But now they came out with two new streaming sticks. They've got the uh, the Regular and the Plus. And these things are pretty inexpensive, thirty dollars and forty dollars.

The forty dollars level gives you four k hdr. I'd go with that one, obviously, because in this day and age, go with the four khdr. But these are the smallest sticks they've ever come out with. They are thirty five percent smaller than before and They're also designed not to block the other HDMI port. So in the past, you know these things that you stick in the back of your TV, they might block the other ports, take up two spaces. That's not very good. So this makes it

a lot easier. It kind of looks like just one little stick you put in there, and then it's got a little power cable that you can actually now plug into your TV's USB port. So that's the other thing. You don't need an extra power brick. So they told me they worked really hard to make these things super power efficient, which means they are fully self contained on the TV that you're plugging it into. So i'd say ninety nine point nine percent of TVs have a USB

port in the back that can be used for your power. Now, in the past, if you tried to plug it into there, you may not have gotten enough power to power these sticks.

I have played with these. I can't give you my review just yet, but I will say that I think that Roku did a really nice job in kind of just continuing the progress they've made over the years with these things. The other thing, they announced two new smart home cameras, so Roku. They used to have a partnership with Whys where they would make all their cameras and it was kind of Roku branded, But now they're making their own two battery powered outdoor cameras, the Regular and

the Plus. You see the trend they have here. The Regular is just fifty bucks. The Battle Camera Plus is sixty dollars. The standard camera's gonna last up to six months on the battery. The Plus model is gonna last up to two years on a charge. So that means you can just put this thing up, set it, and forget it. Obviously, it's going to depend on how many times this thing is triggered and recording and how much you live stream from it. But up to two years

not bad. They say they have a twenty thousand million hour battery on this thing. Now. Both cameras have HD video they've got spotlights on them, they're weather resistant, they've got two way audio, and you can plug in a solar panel, so if you want to keep this thing powered up forever, you can do that. I've got a ring camera that I plugged a solar panel into and I've never had to think about it ever. Again, it gets the sun during the day, charges up the battery inside,

and that thing pretty much runs twenty four to seven. Now, the thing to know about these cameras, you get free live view, so you can live stream these without a subscription. If you want them to record clips to the cloud, you will have to get a subscription, which is optional starts at four bucks a month. But again that's pretty much what we're seeing with all of these smart cameras

out there, So just one more option. And of course, if you have the Roku camera with a Roku device in your house, you get some integrations like picture and Picture. You can monitor your camera while you're watching your show. So if you have a baby at home, you know you want to watch their crib or whatever, you can do that. You have a dog, whatever, you want to monitor the front door, wait for your pizza to arrive while you're watching your show. You can do all that.

Some other notes from the Roku event. They're in ninety million homes globally and they're the number one selling TV operating system in the US, Canada, and Mexico. So they had that big partnership with TCL. I guess they still do. And they also have their own TVs and Roku is a very popular TV maker. In fact, a lot of people just call it the Roku TV. Even if they have a TCL TV, they just say, it's my Roku TV. Let's see what else. Oh yeah, they're gonna do smart projectors.

So you know, you've this big trend of all these backyard projectors. So the thing out those projectors is that a lot of them run either third party operating system softwares or a Google software. But now Roku is working with projector manufacturers to put their operating system into these projectors. So they're expecting their first product this summer. They haven't announced who that partner is going to be. But basically, the nice thing about this is that it will have

that built in Roku experience. So the operating system you know you love at home on your TV will be the same thing that powers your outdoor projector, and they're saying they're going to have projectors that support up to one hundred inch screens. So I got a little preview of that, saw the reference design that they had, and I mean, it's what you know and love. Except outside the other thing with the software, they've got the daily trivia now, so on Roku they've got weekly trivia. I

guess people really like to play that. It's all about pop culture and stuff. Now they're doing that daily, so you can access that on the home screen and if you want, you can access the vault as well, so if you like to do a little daily trivia, you can do that. I mentioned last week that I've gotten into crossword puzzles and now I'm doing those like on a daily basis. So I understand the idea of when you get into something you kind of just go all in.

You want to like do that every day, and so if you're doing that weekly trivia, now you can do it daily on there. And then the other thing, the Roku City screensaver, which apparently people love. I was looking at this thing on my setup at home, and you know, it's got little things going on there. There's like all these little Easter eggs, So I guess people like to

kind of just sit back and watch that. But it's getting its own tile on the home screen, so you can toggle it on whenever you want to check out what's going on there. But I will say, just without giving my thoughts on the new product, just kind of refreshing myself with the Roku software. It really does what you need, which is it kind of lets you customize your home screen the way you want it. It's got all the apps that you need pretty much. I wasn't able.

I didn't see any missing apps that I wanted to get on the Roku system. And it's just very simple and it kind of works, and I like the remote, so again I understand why people like this, right. So there you have it. The Roku announcements from the event in New York City, they also had the Iron Chef Morimoto. He was there carving up one hundred and sixty one hundred and seventy pound tuna and he was making some sushi.

I guess he has a show on Roku. They're doing originals now, so he has a show, So he was there and they did have samples of the sushi he made. I did not partake, mostly because I was so busy. They also had some puppies on hand, so they had puppies there. I don't know why. I guess they had a puppy cam with their cameras. That was the catch there, or the connection I should say. But yeah, it was a fun event overall, very nice event. And again, lots

going on with Roku. Those those products, at least the streaming sticks are in stores on May sixth, so available then if you need an upgrade, there you have it, all right. Eighty to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the sho show rich on Tech dot TV. If you have not checked out this week's newsletter, go to the website. It's linked up there. Talk more about the Roku stuff in my trip to New York City.

Always love a good trip there, so much fun there. All right, coming up, we'll take some more of your calls right here on rich On Tech Steve and Tarzana Steve. You're on with rich Oh good.

pull back out. Do you have any suggestions for software that might help me organize my folders and files and eventually just drop them into something that looks a little bit more organized. And I've been able to do so far.

on needing to do this now. I know you have a million folders or files and different things, and it sounds like you want to get those organized, which is fine. But by the time you get those organized, I mean, the time and f or you're going to spend on organizing those is just too much. And so I think a better way to go about it is just to find a tool that lets you search through those things

and maybe search even inside of those. So I think that you know, if there's not something that's available right now, it's gonna be here very soon, especially with the advent of AI search. And even if you look in the general search on your computer, you're gonna find that it's

gotten a lot better over the years. With that said, you know, there's a couple of There's one tool that Dropbox has called Dropbox Dash, and this is a AI powered system that lets you find pretty much anything across your computer, across Dropbox, across any you know, all of your content. You can even connect like Outlook and Gmail and Google Drive. So I would look into that first.

I'm not sure. I know I have access to it, I'm not sure if that's because I signed up for the beta or if I'm a subscriber of Dropbox, but that is the first thing i'd look at, and if they don't have access for that, that is the type of tool that I would look for. Dropbox Dash is what I mentioned there. So otherwise, you know, my main system that I use is basically I used to do everything like I used to literally go through my drive

and make folders for everything. But then I realized why I'm looking ninety nine percent of the time looking for a keyword anyway. And so what I've done is I've kind of defaulted to my cloud drive searches instead of my computer search. So when I need something in my Google Drive, I'll actually go to the Google Drive search and type in a keyword. And now the Gemini is built in that's gotten really good at finding things that

are in the files. And then with my Google Photos that I use, you know, the AI there has just gotten so good that I mean literally, I was looking for a picture for my newsletter yesterday and I wanted the original Apple Watch. I wanted a picture of me with the original Apple Watch, and so I just typed in, I said Apple Watch April twenty I think it was the twenty fourth, twenty fifteen, and it just showed all the pictures of me with the Apple Watch on that day.

So again, I think the better way of thinking about this is moving forward, maybe organize your stuff into maybe just years. Like That's what I've done now is I'll just have in my Google Drive twenty twenty five and everything for twenty twenty five. I'll just toss in there, and eventually if I want to make kind of subfolders in there, I'll do that. So I think moving forward, that might help. But in the past, all those files and things that you have, you're just going to spend

so much time going through those. Now with that said, there are a couple of tools that you know might be worth looking into. There's one called directory opis on Windows. So directory Opus. If you think about opis, you know it's kind of a commander tool. So this is going to let you do all kinds of things with your folders, sort, group, filter them, find your files, locate, locate duplicates, synchronize backups

at tags and descriptions, convert images. So again, and that's going to let you do a lot of the things that you want to do all at once, but it's going to cost you eighty nine to eighty nine bucks. It looks like for a light free personal laptop license install on one computer one year of free updates than twenty five dollars after that, so that's one. Looks like

there's some freeware out there called Total Commander. This was last updated February nineteenth, twenty twenty five, So that's out there. Enhanced search, compare files, multi renamed tool compare Editor. So there's there's a lot of tools inside Total Commander that might help as well. And then of course I would be on the lookout for some of these AI tools

that let you search your entire computer. I just downloaded one for Mac called Raycast, and that's kind of like the idea similar similar idea where it does a lot of shortcuts and things, so if you want to find images or whatever, it's all sort of in there. So that's kind of what I would stick to, is looking for these new AI tools. I'm gonna keep an eye out on them for you, Steve, and I'll mention them in my newsletter if I find one. But that's that's

what I've resorted to. I think AI is just making this stuff so much easier. There's just not a big reason to organize files anymore as far as I know. All Right, thanks for the call. Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. As we expected, Nintendo switch To pre orders sold out almost instantly. Pre orders opened on April twenty fourth. They sold out fast, and now many retailers like Walmart, Target, Game Stop, and Best Buy are

all out of stock. The switch To starts at four hundred and fifty dollars. Go with the five hundred dollars Mario Kart bundle if you are going to buy that game, because it's eighty bucks by itself. So you can still register interest on these websites or Nintendo's website. This switch To release date is June fifth, but I can tell you right now this is probably gonna be one of those things that's still really tough to get right up and through the holidays, because this is gonna be the

hot seller this year. Switch to Amazon has not started selling the console just yet. All right, Coming up, we're going to talk about a job website that can help you find local gigs near you. Hourly gigs they're doing it a different way that's coming up right here on rich on Tech. So if you're not following me on Instagram, I am at rich on Tech. You can find more information there, posting the latest scams and some personal stuff as well. Speaking of personal joining me now. Tim Mcalino

is a co founder and CEO of Bandana. He is from my home state of New Jersey. Welcome to the show, Tim, Hey, Rich great to be on. So tell me about Bandana. You're trying to fix a broken job search system. You've got this startup that helps workers land hourly and entry level jobs. What did you identify in the job search that made you want to start this company?

you want to see how much it pays. You want to see the salary ranges broken down, whether it's hourly, weekly, monthly, yearly, and then we go above and beyond that, and we even show things like what your income tax is, so you can actually know what your take home pay is every time you look at it job.

love to have on our platform. So you'll see a lot of those entry level office jobs from Fortune five hundred companies that are hiring all across California and New York, New Jersey, and those are really our bread and butter right now, is these hourly jobs and then these entry level jobs in general, for both salaried and hourly roles.

it's this company that's hiring for this job. This is the listing that they put up exactly from that company that posted it.

And what we see is this response is every time we host something, even if the even if we're hosting up to a thousand people, that will get filled up in less than twenty four hours because of how many people come up to us and they're like, Hey, not only did you help me find a job, but you help me prepare for that job.

been really critical for us. And then I think and where we're available is we're available in New York, New Jersey, California, Chicago, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC, and by the end of the year will be out nationwide.

If you're looking for an entry level job, retail job, food service, I mean, all these industries they've got listed here, check it out. Is a really well done website, Bandana dot com. Tim, thanks for joining me.

take the unusual traffic from your computer network. Uh. This fake checks to see if it's really you sending the request and not a robot. And you know, I wasn't even searching for anything and brought this message. And I've been giving it off and on. And also when I call them friends or family in Mexico, they always tell me that my phone sounds weird, that they hear man voices on the background every time. What does that mean?

that off in your settings if you'd like. You don't need to have that on, but it kind of just encrypts your traffic, makes it a little bit more private, so you're actually getting some privacy benefits there. So if you don't want that, just search for iCloud private relay, and you can turn that off if you don't like it. So that's number one. Number two, the voice in the background,

I'm not sure that you know. It used to be when when cell phone signals were analog, there was a lot of static, a lot of distortion, a lot of overlap with the signals. But now that they're digital, we rarely get that.

the phone, redialing and you get a clearer connection. So that probably explains the second part of it. Rose. So I think you're fine. I think your your your phone is not hacked. If you wanted to search to see if there was some spyware on your phone, which again I don't think you need to do this. Uh, there are a couple of a couple of big spyware programs out there that these you know, foreign entities will typically use to target folks, but not regular people most of

the time. But there is a a spyware analyzer built into an app called I Amazing, and it's gonna it's gonna cost money to download that and to do that. I don't think you really need it, but that's number one. The other one is a startup that they came out with an app called am i Secure. This launched last year and it's basically a way to scan your iPhone to see if there are any indicators of these apps, these spyware apps on your phone. That's again that's called

am I Secure. You know, again, not too many downloads on that one, because you know, people don't typically need this stuff on the iPhone.

they're called. That's like basically software that you can install on your phone outside of the Google Play Store. On iPhone you can't. Basically, it's not easy to install software outside of the App store here in the US at least, so I think you're probably safe, I think on Android.

If you're on Android, i'd run something like a malware byte just to check and see if you have But in general, my guidance for this is go through your phone regularly and you know, do some maintenance on it, right, clear your browser cash, clear your history out, and also go through your list of apps and uninstall any apps that you don't need anymore, you don't recognize, and then go through and do software updates on both your apps

and on your phone itself. So make sure that your phone is updated, and then restart your phone every once in a while. And the other thing on Android is you can do an update on Google Play Services, which will kind of update your phone to the latest security and features that Android offers outside of the operating system updates, and you can find that typically if you go on the Samsung phone, it's usually listed in your settings under

secure security. You can check for that. All right, good question, Rose. I'm glad you're looking out for your phone making sure that you are not hacked. It is a valid question. Is a valid concern, especially on computers these days, we're seeing a lot of issues there. Phones definitely a little bit trickier for that stuff to be installed. So thanks for the call today. Eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you want to stay ahead of this stuff, if

you follow me on Instagram at rich on Tech. That's where I post a lot of these things that are are messing with people. I post. You know, people they have now gotten into the habit of sending me all of the latest scams that they're running into on the email, and so people will just send them to me. I'll kind of analyze them, take a look, and if I think it's something that I haven't seen before a lot of people haven't seen, I will share that. But this

stuff happens. Like my mom yesterday, she texts me, she says, hey, rich she calls me Richard. She said, I can't get my Netflix to work. And I got an email from Netflix that says my pain method needs to be updated, and she forwarded me the email. I said, well, number one, I pay for your Netflix, so no, your payment method does not need to be updated. Number two. That is

a scam that's been going around. So again they target people and they hope to catch them in their weakness, which is, oh, I pay for Netflix, my payment method is up. Oh I gotta put that number in right now, and that's when they steal your information, all right. Eighty to eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website rich on tech dot tv coming up. These ray band Meta smart glasses got a new update. They added some really

cool features, including live translation. I'll tell you about that, plus Gmail new feature lets you unsubscribe from some of these newsletters you have in bulk. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology website rich on tech dot tv. Hit contact if you want to send

me an email. Coming up this hour, we've got Justin Hendrix of Tech Policy Press to share insights on the Google and Meta antitrust trials and what it means for you. Let me tell you about these ray Band Meta smart glasses. They just got smarter. I got to say, this is the product of the year. I think that if you have not tried these things, you will be amazed at just how good they are. And we've talked about them at length on this show. They're basically smart sunglasses cooperation

between Meta and ray Band. They have cameras, they have microphones built in speakers, you can listen to music, you can ask AI, hey, what am I looking at. But the new feature is well, a couple of new features. They just rolled out a couple of new software updates. Number one, live translation is available everywhere now. So I tried this out yesterday. I downloaded a Spanish language pack.

I fired up a YouTube video of someone speaking in Spanish, and while they're speaking in Spanish, in my ears, I can hear them speaking in English. It is incredible. It is the future. It works. Supported languages include English, French, Spanish, and Italian. And so that's number one. I would like to see how this would work on the streets, right, like, if you're in Italy someone speaking to you in Italian, Like, I'd be curious how good the mics are at picking

up what they're trying to say to you. But I guess it's kind of like your ears. You listen to them, you tuoe not everything else. So I got to try that. But it's there and it's pretty pretty incredible. That's one of the big questions I get on this show is like, how do I live translate stuff in real time? And that's it. Beyond that, they gave support now for you can send messages and make calls through Instagram, which is part of you know, they already have WhatsApp and Messenger.

Those are all Facebook products, so there you go. And then they also have support for Spotify Music, Apple Music, and Amazon Music, so that's really cool. And then the other thing that they're doing that's coming soon is a hands free AI that sees what you see and can respond in real time. That's kind of like the new thing that everyone's doing, whether it's Gemini or chat GYBT. It's this idea of having the AI look through your camera and give commentary on what it is looking at.

It is quite impressive. Gemini just added that feature on the Samsung phones and the Pixel phones. It's pretty incredible. Chat Gybt has it. I think it's just for Plus subscribers like me, but it's really interesting to just have AI looking at what you're looking at and just commenting. Really going to be the wave of the future there, especially with these smart glasses. Google is working on a pair that does that, so that is going to be a big part of the future. Agnes writes in from

Huntington Beach, listening on KFI. I have a Pixel eight phone. I'm devastated. I was texting with my son and I tried to delete a message that wasn't turning out right. I use the delete feature, thinking it would erase just that one text, but its deleted urn entire conversation. I've researched online and everything says there's no way to get deleted text back. Is there anything you can suggest to help this? Sad Mama, Agnes, I am sorry that happened

to you. For some reason, Google Messages does not have a recycle bin, so I don't know why they don't have an area that puts all your deleted messages and keeps them for thirty days. Because sometimes you delete stuff and you say, oh no, I need that back. iPhone, for what it's worth, does have that. So if you delete a message you want to get it back, you can tap edit and it says show recently deleted Google messages. You need to get that feature in the meantime, Agnes,

most of your research is correct. There's really not an easy way to get this back. There is one place I'd like you to look, and that is your Google device backups. So you said this a pixel, I'm thinking that it's getting backed up to Google. So go on to one dot Google dot com and then tap storage on the left hand side and scroll down and it should say your device backups and I can see mine. I have got my Galaxy S twenty five Ultra Pixel ninefold Pixel nine pro. Yeah, I've got a lot of

devices that I test. And just tap that device your pixel eight and then see details. And if it says SMS and MMS messages and there's a number next to it, your backup is somewhere in the cloud. Now here's the thing. If it backed up right after you deleted, then those messages might still be gone, but at least you can go in and check. So if it's there, what I want you to do is go into Google Takeout and

you can download them takeout dot Google dot com. Scroll down to where it says messages, messages and conversation history from your backup, and you select just that and you hit download and it will give you all of those messages. Now they're not going to be in a very easy format, but at least you will have them. And this is a lesson for the future. Number one, do things slow. I know people we always like to do things fast, and you know, sometimes you don't know what the outcome

is going to be. The other thing you do. There is an app called SMS Backup and Restore, So if you want an ongoing backup of your text messages on Android, you can install that app and do a backup every so often. You can do it every hour, every day, every month, every week, whatever you want, but it will it will back up all of your messages, put them in Google Drive, drop box, wherever you want to store them,

even on your phone if you want. But at least if something like this happens again, you would be able to go back to that last backup and get those messages. So those are the solutions, but agnes I will tell you sadly, it's not easy to get those things back, and it's really unfortunate, unfortunate that Google Messages does not have a recently deleted area because they have sort of forced everyone on Android to use Google Messages. Yes, you're still open to using any messaging app on Android, but

Samsung Messages is going away and they're directing people. Verizon Messages went away and they're all directing people towards Google Messages. So that's sort of the main messaging app on Android, and the fact that it does not have a recently deleted is really bad. So we need to get that Google. Thanks for the email. Let's go to Brian in north Ridge. Brian, you're on with Rich.

all your cookies, clear your cash fials. Well, you know that just totally disrupts everything. Is there a solution there?

one website. Right It says, right now, I'm on Google dot com. It says connection is secure. I've got location turned on, microphone turned on, third party signed in turned off, and then I've got cookies and site data. So the main thing when you're clearing out the information for a website is that cookies and site data. So for those that may not know, when you log into a website, that website leaves what's called a cookie on your browser,

and that cookie says, we've already authenticated Brian. We know that he's logged in here before. We're gonna save either his username or his username and his password, so next time he comes here, we're just gonna log in for him. And so that's what enables you to stay logged in on a website. And some websites keep these pretty much indefinitely like your email. Some clear them out pretty much within a certain amount of time, like your bank account

is going to log you out no matter what. So if you want to find that information, it'll say inside that little site data it says cookies and site data. Click there and it says manage on device site data and you can go in there and just delete the individual cookies for that website. And so all of these cookies for Google, if I deleted them right now, I would be logged out of my Google account. So I don't want to do that now. The other way is

to go into settings. And if you go into you know, you press the little settings it's the three dots up a right hand corner, or you can go into your menu on your browser, whatever one you have, go into settings and you'll see under Privacy and Security it should say third party cookies, and then if you scroll down, you should see a list of all of the sites

that are allowed to have these third party cookies. So I've got a whole bunch of them online, and you can go in there and where it says see all site data and permissions. Now I've got a list of every single website I've ever visited and the cookie that they saved, And so you can go by most visited, or you can search. So let's see if I've got SOCl gas online. Sure enough, I do, so I can go in there my account soacal gas, and I can

delete just those cookies. But again, if you want that information for something like a Firefox you said you use, or an opera very similar, it's the same thing. Just click the padlock to the left of the website address in the address bar, clear cookies and site data. That will get it cleared for just that website. But again, you're looking for the cookies and site data for just the individual sites, not all of your websites that you're on.

So they all let you do this, And Brian, it's a good question because it's very frustrating when these tech support folks tell you, oh yeah, just clear your browser history, and you realize you got to sit there and log into every website afterwards. Half the people don't even know they're a lot lugins for their websites. Use a password manager, by the way, make that process a lot easier. I'll put links to some of this information on the website.

Rich on tech dot TV, all right, coming up, I promised the Gmail feature that lets you unsubscribe from newsletters in bulk. I'll tell you how to access that coming up right here on rich on Tech. Let's go to Kelly in Los Angeles. Kelly, you're on with rich Hello.

that way you can get around that. It sounds to me for your situation now, typically when a phone goes dead, when it gets down to two percent and then zero, it does take a little bit longer for it to come back to life because your phone is gonna you know, it's gonna take a little bit for that battery to get to a place where the phone is going to want to turn on. But you're telling me the phone's

getting hot. When that's happening and it's not coming back on, and you've left it on the charger for three to four hours. So it sounds to me, do you have a different cable to try.

could have a bad selling there. So I would either try to take this back to where you got it and see what's going on, or you can take it to a place like you break I fixed, they can do a quick assessment for free to see what's going on. But if this thing is, you know, a very inexpensive phone, it just may be that it's just not very good. So good question, Kelly. It sounds like you went through all the proper steps of trying a different power adapter,

trying a different cable, letting it cool down. The only other thing I can say is maybe a little blast of canned air inside the power port, just to see if there's anything that's blocking it or anything that's caught up in there. Sometimes you got your phone in your purse or your phone in your pocket. It has a tendency to collect some items in that power port, maybe

lint or dust, kind of like a belly button. You know, you might have a little little lint in there thanks to the call Kelly eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I have not heard of that brand of phone. Are you cell phone? Let's see? Yeah, that's a okay, wow, here we go. Yeah, this this is I do see the brand. Okay, the Arida you can get on Amazon for thirty bucks or sorry, eBay for thirty dollars. So it is a brand. I just never heard of it.

Gmail is rolling out a new feature now, I say rolling out. Go to your phone, check to see if you have it. If you don't, don't send me the angry emails. It is rolling out, and Google has a tendency of taking their time when they roll out these features on my phone. I've got it on both my iPhone and Android, so it is out there. But it's called Manage Subscriptions, and so this is a way that

you can clean up your inbox. It'll show you all of your subscriptions and promotional newsletters and senders in one place. So to find this see if you have it, open up your Gmail app, tap the menu icon on the left hand side, scroll down right under your trash. You will see a new option that says manage subscriptions. You tap that, it will give you a list of all of your subscriptions, listed in order of how many times are emailing you per month or week or whatever. The

top one is at the top. And then you can just tap the little icon of the envelope to the right and it says unsubscribed. You want to stop getting messages from this mailing list. You tap it and it will help you unsubscribe to that. So a nice easy way to do it rolling out on Android, iOS and the web. So again, Gmail, Manage Subscriptions. Look for it in the left hand menu where you would find your inbox, your stard your important emails. It'll say right under trash,

manage subscriptions. If you don't have it, check again later. This is rolling out on Gmail, but a nice helpful way to help you get rid of some of that clutter inside your email inbox. All right, eighty to eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up, we are going to talk about Google, Meta Uber, all these anti trust trials and what they mean for you. Coming up right

here on rich on tech. If you're following the news, a lot of big company, a lot of big tech companies on trial with the government, anti trust, all kinds of allegations and things happening, So here to talk about that. Justin Hendricks, CEO and founder of Tech Policy Press, Welcome to the show. Justin, Thank you for having me. So you follow this stuff quite closely. Based on the name

of your website, Tech Policy Press. A lot of people thought that this new administration would be a little easier on some of these big tech companies, but that's definitely not something we're seeing right now. Huh.

that ruling came back last August. As you point out, Judge Meta famously wrote Google is a monopolist and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly, essentially in violation of the Sherman Act, you know, the law that is kind of the grandaddy law of all an aditrest law in the United States. And now we're in the remedies phase. It's a new trial that's all about sort of thinking through what exactly has to be done to remedy the fact that Google's monopolists.

information up in search results. So when you start to tinkle with Google, the tinker with Google, you really potentially are doing some fairly fundamental things that people will see have an effect in the way that they interact with technology. That could be through search, it could be through their mobile operating system, it could be through just simply the choice to use an alternative product.

as Gemini or else. And so it's all this kind of behind the scenes stuff that happens that you know, when you log you know, you just you fire up a fresh Android phone and Gemini's on there. You're like, oh cool, But then we we heard in this trial that they pay Samsung a lot of money to be the default on the Samsung phone. So do you think consumers understand all this stuff that's happening in the background that these tech companies do to stay dominant.

preloading Chrome Google Play on its handsets. And and yeah, it's been very interesting, you know, so far in this trial to see some of the folks that have come forth to testify who would like to, you know, get a crack at that search market. And you mentioned Perplexity. You know, another one that was represented this week was was open Ai.

Let's move on to Meta. What happened with them? Because they had this big trial where the government was saying that they bought Instagram basically just to keep it I guess, not to make it grow as much or something. What happened with them?

But this idea essentially that meta Mark Zuckerberg, they bought Instagram in order to prevent it from competing with their monopoly over that market. And that's the contention here. Whether that's the case will be what's determined in this trial.

at that time Facebook. Of course, he testified for over six hours, and I suspect that, you know, any eventual decision there will be some reference to the points he raised.

tech policy dot Press. Thanks for joining me today, Rich you all right, coming up. We'll take some more of your questions at triple eight Rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. And I've got some interesting downloads for you this week. Uh, new products and services. It'll make your life a little bit easier. You're listening to Rich on tech Walter. You're on with Rich.

tap to change tools. The squeeze. You can squeeze the pencil, so it gives you, you know, options when you do that haptic feedback, so it actually vibrates to let you know when you've done something Find My which is you know, you can find the Apple pencil and the find My app when something goes wrong. Now, like you said, this is expensive. Both of these Apple pencils, you know, the standard one's eighty dollars, the upper one, the pro is

one thirty. So my question is when researching these alternatives, you know they have to be significantly deeper than those prices because you are going to lose out on all of that Apple functionality. Like you said, you've tried some of these cheapis on Amazon, and yeah, they might work as a stylust, but there's gonna be a lot of lag. You're not gonna have that deep integration with the Apple ecosystem,

which is what you know Apple is so famous for. Now, with that said, there is only one stylus that Apple themselves sort of promotes and has had featured over the years, and that is the Logitech Crayon. Now, as the name implies, this might be more like you know, a kid sort of device. It doesn't have to be used for kids, but it's just kind of a bigger, thicker stylus for the iPad. But the thing is that is seventy dollars now unless and it's also lightning so they have not

updated that in a long time. So that's number one. Then if you look at something like zag, Zag has what's called the pro Stylust two and this is compatible with all iPads from twenty eighteen to present.

you're not going to get all those features. So this is going to do a bunch of the things that you need, but it's not going to be as sort of integrated with the iPad os as these other uh, you know, Apple made pencils. Will be then you have Finally, the third option is the ad donnit A D O N I T S E two. So the AD donnit. Sorry, there's one more option after this, but the add donnit. I've not tested it, but just checking some of the reviews on Amazon, they don't get the best reviews and

it's got that flag of frequently returned product. Amazon has been adding this banner to certain pages on on products that are returned a lot, and so that's kind of like an you know, hey, you might not want to get this because a lot of these things get returned, and so that's just a little way of letting you know, like if you don't want to deal with a headache this thing. Most people have found that it doesn't work

the way they think it does. With all that said, there is one that actually gets good reviews, and I'd probably recommend trying it out, even though I have not tested.

It comes from ESR, which is a pretty good budget maker of accessories and gadgets, and they have the Digital Pencil which works from twenty eighteen models to twenty five models of the twenty twenty five models of the Apple iPad, and it is just thirty dollars, it's got a decent number of reviews, it's got four and a half stars, does not have that flag of you know, frequently returned product, and so that's probably the one that I would check out first. You can order it from Amazon, easily return

it if it doesn't work. But that's probably the top all alternative that I would go with versus the standard Apple pencil or Apple Pencil Pro. So you're talking thirty dollars versus eighty or one hundred and thirty, So it's significant savings if it works for you. If you just need something that's going to circle documents, highlight things, stuff like that, it's probably going to be your best bet. No wireless charging on that one. It does have a

plug in, so just be aware of that. The other thing is if you're doing art on the iPad, I'd probably recommend the Apple pencil the models made by Apple, because those are going to give you the best options and the most compatibility with the iPad. Walter, great question over there in Temecula. I know this happens a lot. People like to buy things that are cheaper on Amazon, and you realize that, you know, especially with Apple stuff, you know, a lot of their stuff unless it's sold

in the Apple Store. It might work, it's just not going to be as good, and so you're not going to get that great experience and then you're going to be complaining about doesn't work. So but try the ESR one. I think that one looks the best out of all of those cheap alternatives or budget alternatives to the standard Apple pencil. Great question, Walter, Thanks for listening, and thanks

for subscribing to the newsletter. If you want to get in on that, just go to the website rich on tech dot TV, pop in your email address, and I send it out once a week typically, and it's pretty much my brain to your inbox. It's kind of all the stuff that I find throughout the week or things I want to comment on in the tech world, just like this show, except I guess the print version of that. All right, couple items of note. Meta has launched a

new video editing app. It's called edits, So if you want an alternative to TikTok's cap cut, you can download edits for iOS and Android and it's basically free. You do have to sign in with Instagram, but you can do all the things that you need to do to make your Instagram videos and stories look good. That includes caption. So again, it's called edits. You can search it up. It's available for free for iPhone and Android. Let you

edit your video for free. TV TV dot Garden this is a website that lets you stream live TV from around the world. You can tap random channel to discover something new, or you can just search a country. They've got a bunch of channels on there, including a lot of like news channels, sports channels, no sign up required channels have there's news, there's sports, there's cooking, there's movies,

all kinds of stuff from over one hundred countries. And if you're saying, like rich, why are recommending this sketchy website, No, it is legit. Like they're they're just collecting all of these free streams that they find around the world and putting it into one directory. So again, TV dot Garden.

It's a nice clean interface. It's not cluttered. You're not gonna find like, you know, the latest sports game, like the big NFL games that people find online, you know, on these bootleg sites, but you're gonna find like the legitimate stuff that is streaming. And finally found this this week. If you're looking for an alternative to Grammarly, there's a chrome. There's a plug in for all the brows called language Tool, and uh, Grammarly for me, it was just getting a

little bit overbearing. It was like giving me too many suggestions, trying to change too many things. All I want is basic spell check when I'm writing, and so, uh, letter tool is free, it's open source, and it's available for Windows, Mac everything pretty much. And yes there is a paid version, but the free version is working for me just fine. So I'll keep you up to date on whether I like that or not. But so far, so good. Language

Tool is uh. Language tool. Dot org is where you want to go eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. All that linked up on the website rich on Tech dot tv. Back after this, Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Phone lines are open. Website rich on Tech dot tv on social media. You

guessed it at rich on Tech. Like I said, I was in New York this week, went to dinner and the restaurant we went to. I've got this little system for picking restaurants, by the way, so I look for my hotel is any anytime going out, I just go to you gotta go. You gotta do this on a desktop.

It doesn't work on your phone for some reason. But if you go to Google Maps and then you search for where you're staying, right so no matter where you are, let's just say you're at a hotel, I'll just pick one down downtown and then you'll see once you search for that place, you'll see at the top of Google Maps it says nearby hotels, restaurants, things to do, bars, coffee. Now they've got some of these options on the phone,

but they just don't work the same. So what I do is tap restaurants, and I typically want a place I can walk to, and so I will look. As soon as you tap restaurants, then you've got this thirty minutes down at the bottom, you've got walking or driving. So I will choose fifteen minutes as my maximum walking time.

And then you go to your filters. And so if you really want something that's like highly rated four point five, that's not like those are the ratings like a generalized rating that people give it, not like there's no traditional like zagit or whatever. This is just like an aggregated score. So four point five is pretty good, Like not many

restaurants get that. So if you want to find the places that people go to, you can tap that and then you can go to all filters and you can say, you know how many dollars signs you want the cuisine you want. But typically once you have that list of restaurants, now you've got restaurants that are within fifteen minutes walking distance, and then you can look at the number of ratings they have, So anything that's got like in the thousands, people are going to that place a lot, and then

you can just kind of narrow down from there. It's it's just a very easy way to sort of narrow down some of the popular places near you instead of trying to search through all these different things find the place or look through reviews and that. But this is just my easy go to way and it usually works every single time. It works. The other way to do it is on Yelp. If you just want somewhere that's really popular, you could just open up the Yelp app

and then just sort. You can tap restaurants and then sort by most reviewed, and that basically gives you, like the They may not be the best restaurants. You'll still have to use your your judgment to figure out which one you want to go to. But those are like the places that are most visited, most reviewed, most talked about. And that's just you know, again, if you're in town, if you've got friends and all that stuff, like, sure,

ask them for a recommendation. But if you're just in town for one night, you want to find a decent place. Those two systems that I use pretty much work every time. Anyway, that led us to our restaurant that we went to. It was called a Piccora Bianca and nice place. It was packed the whole time. But they had this thing on the table that I loved. And yes there's a tech angle to this. They had a QR code on the table that you could scan at the end of

dinner and pay your bill from your phone. And I've seen this before at restaurants, but this was the best implementation I've seen. Because you scan it, it was clear, it was easy. It says do you want to pay the full bill or do you want to pay for just your items or do you want to split the bill. And so if you're in one of those groups where everyone's like, you know, saying, oh I got the I had one less French fry, so I paid five dollars less.

Like you can say, okay, fine, everyone go to your app, choose the things you ordered, pay for it. Now. For our group, we had split a bunch of appetizers, and so it was tricky to do the whole like, oh, I'll pay for just what I had. So then we just said okay, well I'll just split the bill. And you know, there's five of us, and it said how many people do you want to pay for? I said too, I was paying for me and my mom, and so

divided the whole thing up. I paid for us and I used Apple Pay and you could use Google Pay whatever you want, and the bill was done. So I looked up, of course, this company, it's called Sunday s u n Day Sunday app dot com. So if you have a restaurant, I guess my thesis here is, please adopt this technology. It is so easy. It's so much better than asking the waiter, hey, can you split the bill or this or that, because it gives people options

on how they want to pay. Now, the only thing that's a little bit weird about this, I took a picture of the QR code on the table to like put in my newsletter, And you can scan that QR code at any time and kind of spy on what people are ordering at that table because that QR code is specific for that table and it's linked to their POS system, their point of sale system, their hospitality system. And so last night I scanned it as just a test, and I could see all the things that people were

ordering at that table. So I guess they're not too concerned, because who's going to sit there after they left a restaurant scan this QR code again and then pay for someone else's dinner. It's probably not going to happen. There's nothing like nefarious you can do with that QR code. But anyway, I thought that was really cool. I love when restaurants make life easy, and I'm all about that.

Like these restaurants they go in there and they're like, oh, you can't split the bill, or you can't do this, or you can't do that. It's or I'm adding all this. You know, the new thing is all these fees they add to the bill. This was just a nice breath of fresh air. It was just like the way you want to check out simple easy. I liked it all right, let's go to let's see here Michael in Capistrano Beach. You're on with Rich.

different ways from a biological standpoint. But then there's the idea of all these things like Neurolink and these companies that are working on sort of add ons to our brain. So what do I think I think it's going to happen. I think that we are just at the beginning of

this now. I think there's gonna be a lot of pros for people like quadriplegics, people that have some sort of brain damage, and people that you know, of different abilities that you know might be confined to a wheelchair, like there may be breakthroughs that will allow these people to get around like regular, you know, like average human beings. And so I think that there is good in this stuff.

And I was reading a whole article, I think it was on the plane about the original guy who got the brain implant from Neurlink, and you know, he was just talking about how it changed his life. Like he the guy was just this, you know, he had a regular body and all of a sudden he got into I think it was a was it a car accident? And next thing you know, you know, he's confined to a wheelchair and barely can move at all. And he said, when they put this thing in his brain. They approached him.

He said it was amazing. He can move a cursor on a computer. Like he said, everything that he had to do with the assistance of a person, he can now do a lot of this stuff by himself. Maybe not moving around per se, but like just being online. Like imagine that you can't move, you can't can a mouse computer things that you were accustomed to doing, and all of a sudden you can't do that anymore. How

frustrating it is. And so he said, things that would take him, you know, an hour to kind of move or do something on the computer screen, he can now do in seconds just by looking at it, just by thinking about moving the cursor to the left or the right, or selecting something, it happens on screen. So I think, you know, but on the flip side, once we start embedding people with this technology, of course that technology is hackable, it is programmable. There will be, you know, people that

try to abuse this stuff. So I think that no matter what, we are in for it. And I was reading something too about cars, you know how you know, we think about all these cars that can do things, they can drive themselves, you know, security cameras on cars, like all this technology that's built into cars. You know, there are people working twenty four to seven to try to figure out how to hack that stuff and use

it to their advantage in various ways. Now, stealing a car is one thing, but you know, can you imagine if all the self driving cars slam themselves into walls? I mean, you know there's someone out there working on trying to make that happen. Because they're evil. I hope that doesn't happen. But again, people do have to look into this stuff to try to patch the exploits that

other people may find. And so there's always someone that's looking for the holes in this software, in the programming, in the hardware, no matter what, whether they're going to use it for good or for bad. But yeah, I mean, we are just at the beginning of all this stuff. And I talk about this a lot too, the idea

that AI right now, we've got it. It's been you know what two years that we've had it, and we've been playing with this stuff, and everyone loves, you know, some of the things that CHATCHYBT and Gemini and Perplexity can do. But right now it is so basic. Just imagine when they start building this AI technology into robots, like I'm talking humanoid robots that many many companies are working on, like these these robots that can walk around and sort of think for themselves, do for themselves, act

for themselves. So this stuff is happening. It's going to happen, and we need to be ready for all aspects of this no matter what a good movie to watch. It's a little little silly, and I hope I'm not giving too much away, but it's been out for a while, but Companion, we sat down to watch kind of a horror movie. I don't want to give away the premise, but just it's interesting. So again, that's kind of along the lines of what we're looking forward to in the future.

Good question. Thanks for the call, Michael, appreciate it. Eighty to eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour, we're going to talk to a software engineer who wrote a book about how social platforms really work. You are listening to Rich on tech. Let's go to George in Los Angeles.

I mean the external microphone doesn't connect with the tablet. I don't know if I need a nap or I did a comparable wireless microphone. I tried with two different microphones and it's not working.

that could be the first problem. Do you know that this phone is compatible with an external mic?

these phones support the external MIC. I know the Pixel does, obviously, the iPhone does, the Samsung, the high end models do. The One Plus can still be hit or miss, but nowadays usually it typically does. But this is an A fifteen model, which you know, if you're looking at a phone that's a more of a budget minded device, they may not build in all of those things. So what I would do is go online, find the specs for this.

Make sure you can find maybe a YouTube video or someone that actually says, hey, this does support an external microphone. That's number one. That's going to save you a lot of headaches. The second thing to do, George, is to make sure that this is compatible with or this microphone that you have. This setup is going to work. So a lot of these microphones that you find on Amazon sometimes are very hit or miss. I use the Dji, which is the kind of the gold standard for wireless microphones.

It's expensive, but it works. It does exactly what you need, and it's really good. There are other brands out there that are cheaper that will also do it, but just make sure they have a lot of reviews and people saying that they actually work. If you want to get one of those cheaper brands on Amazon, like if you search Dji, Mike or road Wireless Mic for iPhone and those come up, just make sure that a lot of people have verified yes they do actually work. But the

other one is the road mics. People like those. But there's a whole bunch of these microphones on Amazon that you can get. Some of them are as small as a button.

don't want to invest in a new phone. A lot of these microphones will record into themselves, so they will actually have built in memory on the microphone. You can press record. You can record the audio separate from the video and then use an app like Final Cut to sync those up. So that's what we'll do. If we have a problem with the audio or it's not embedded

on the video, we'll just sync it up later. So that's another option where you can just record the audio separate from the video, bring it into an editing program. Like final cut or premiere, and then synchronize the audio to the video. I mean, that's what they used to do in Hollywood with that clapboard. You know, they always recorded audio separate, so they use that clapboard to sync

it up. All right, good question, George. Something to look out for on your smartphones if you are going to be creating content because those wireless mics, I call it the best invention of the last decade for me. They're just so handy. Coming up, we are going to talk to Tim O'Hearn. He is a author of Framed. He's got a new take on how social platforms really work. That's up next. Welcome back to rich on tech rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology the website

for the show richon tech dot TV. Joining me now is Tim O'Hearn, a software engineer and author of Framed, A villain's perspective on social Media. Thanks for joining me, Tim.

violation on a social media site. So in the early days, which I would say twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, we found that we were learning so much about the underside, about all the rule breakers and this spectrum of enforcement, realizing that of course these social media platforms don't want people spamming and don't want people being disrupted, but we actually found that we were less of a priority compared to the people actually doing really bad, really illegal stuff.

a platform. So there are all these awkward, like weird symbiotic relationships between each one of these groups that aren't obvious to someone who's being beckoned to sign up for a social media service to begin with.

encourage addictive behaviors. So you think at scale, there are entire teams within big tech who are just trying to ratchet up those metrics a little bit more and that means getting people to spend more time online.

I'm an adult, I sort of understand this stuff. I get what I'm up against, right, Like Instagram's goal is to get me to never close Instagram in my entire life. Like that's their goal. And you can do that. The swipe, the reels, the stuff, it's never ending. But kids, you know, they're not as evolved because they're still they're still growing. So what do you think parents need to know about all this?

comedy skit, But we do give babies iPads. And I see it all over New York City here where tons of kids are mindlessly looking at these things because it

keeps the kid entertained. But what you don't realize is that when they're looking at apps that are designed like slot machines and stuff, when it comes time to function in society or learn in the classroom sometimes, you know, schoolroom learning is not as exciting or enthralling as these experiences, so it can have some absolutely terrible consequences.

is like even the format. I mean, I come from a classic news background where you know, we do news segments and I get it the news is not perfect, but you know my segments are, and so I you know, I do things that are It's informational, you know, Yeah, it could be fast paced, but I mean if you look at something like TikTok, it's like there's a cut every second because people's you know, they're going to look away, And I've talked to TikTokers that say that they have

to follow that format or else people scroll away if it's not changing fast enough. So some of this stuff seems to be changing the fabric of sort of our brains in the way that we perceive information as well.

you had quick cuts, quick cuts quick cuts. The first time I really saw it, I thought this is ridiculous. But now, as you said, it's standard almost everywhere.

for subtitles. Plus the feedback. We are going to open up the feedbag coming up next on rich On Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech, Rich de miro here. Apple Watch celebrates ten years this week. Ten years. I know I've worn worn one on my wrist almost that entire time, and I think it's game changing. I tell people a lot of times that I like the Apple Watch better than the iPhone, just because it's always there. It's simple. It does what I need, tracks my workouts,

you know. Of course you've got the rings, all these things. April twenty fourth, twenty fifteen, that's when the first Apple watches came out. I was there at the launch day. They sold them at high end stores. In addition, well I don't trying to remember. Why was at like such a high end store for it. It was like a little boutique. Now, of course, the Apple Watch very popular now. The original Apple Watch was more about like fashion. It did not start out as this like really health and

fitness focused device. But now, of course it's health, it's fitness. It tracks you know, all kinds of stuff except blood ocken because they took that away. Yeah. One of the features I thought was interesting back in the day. I wrote about this in my newsletter today, digital touch. Did you know? I thought they took it away, But you can still do it. If you go to a text message, press the plus sign next to the message field and select digital touch, and then you tap two fingers on

your screen, it'll send your heartbeat to the other person. Yeah, it's called digital touch. It's really weird. I thought that they got rid of that. And last night when I was doing some testing, I was like, wait, that's still there. What news service called text ai lets you text ai. Text dot Ai is the website. But basically you just go to the phone number and you text it and it works with your traditional SMS. So just text it and ask a question. It will text you back. No

download required. It can help with plans, recommendations, answers, anything else. Built by former Tesla and Walmart Labs employees. Again, the website text dot Ai. It's free to use. They do not sell your phone number as far as they say text dot ai. If you have a Google Pixel seven A, you got some problems to do battery maybe it's swelling or popping. You can get a free battery replacement. So you got that bulging back cover your phone looks thick man?

What am I talking about here? Rapid battery drain? You got to check eligibility online. But yes, this is the Pixel seven A. If you have some battery swelling, check out. It's called the Pixel seven A Extended Repair Program. I'll put the link on the website. AT and T is adding cruise ship coverage to its International day Pass, so the International day Pass now works on cruise ships twenty dollars per day, so it's pricey, but you know, if you're on a cruise, you know it's like one free drink.

I guess twenty bucks you saved paid for this five hundred megabytes of data plus unlimited talk and text, and it worked on land and sea, surf and turf, so no extra charge when you step off. The ship covers more than four hundred cruise ships. Obviously they have to be in this AT and T coverage zone to work, and there's no data overages. So if you hit that five hundred megabytes, which by the way, is not very tough to hit, your speeds will slow down, but you

will stay connected. But most of the time when you hit those data speed bumps, you're just gonna be able to like check your email. Let's see what else. Yeah, so AT and T International Day Pass it's called Man, we're just going through a lot of notes here. MAX. The free ride is over seven dollars and ninety nine cents. If you have someone clinging onto your account, the extra member add on is now available, So if you have

someone that's using your MAX log in. Yeah, remember this is to be called HBO Max and Max and they change the color of the logo. They're all over the place, But you know what I'm talking about. It's the service that lets you watch HBO shows and other stuff. So the primary account holder can now invite one friend or family member outside their household for eight bucks a month. If you want to pay for them, extra members get

their own login. They can stream on one device at a time and access everything, or if you don't want to pay for them, they can transfer their profile to move all of their history, recommendations, and settings. This is only available if you subscribe to Max directly, not if you're a bundle user. But basically, the bottom line is the free ride is over. If you've got people sharing your password, they're going to get that screen that says, hey,

you should sign up for your own account. As far as I can tell, you don't have to just yet, but they're going to continue to ratchet this up until they get all the memberships they want out of the freeloaders. And Netflix, they have a new subtitle option. I don't know about you, but in my house we watch a lot of shows with the subtitles on, even though we don't need to. But with all the commotion in the background, the kids playing, Yeah, they got their iPads, all those

things going on, talking to their friends. This is just an easy way, you know, instead of saying what they just say, you just got the subtitles on. But Netflix knows this, so now they've introduced a new type of subtitle that just includes the words themselves and not the audio cues. So your typical you know, subtitles have things like music swells or phone buzzes. They don't have that anymore.

Now it's just the words that people are saying. So you can see two choices, now English for dialogue only, and then English CC if you want the full closed captions. And this will be on every so will beyond more shows moving forward, but right now, it's starting with the season five of the show You, which I have not watched, but I guess that's a popular show. Netflix says half of viewing hours in the US already happen with subtitles on. And don't forget you can customize the subtitles by size

and font. Some people forget that. Feedback now, Michelle writes in after hearing us talk about the recent settlement payout for Facebook and Zell, I thought the email I got was spam. It said I had a forty dollars payment pending, and it gave me a deadline to click a link. I looked up the case and even called both the settlement administrator and Zel. Turns out it was legit. I'd signed up for it years ago and totally forgot. After some hesitation, I followed through. I'm now forty dollars and

sixty seven cents richer. So if you see that Facebook settlement through Zell, yeah, I guess you can claim it. Just be careful because, like we know, the scam artists will play prey upon something that's real and turn it into something that's fake. Gail from Oakland says, is there an easy way to turn a handwritten page of my well formed cursive into text using my iPad pro? Yes? Chat gbt. Take a picture of whatever you're writing and upload it to chat GBT. It will read it and

convert it into text. It's fast and that's accurate, and if you're saying you have good cursive, it'll be easy to do that. Good question. Christopher from Justice Illinois writes in is there a way to see what devices are connected to my WiFi? Yes? There's an app called fing fing iOS and android give you a list of all the connected devices. Good if you think someone's freeloading on your network. Fing dot com slash app. Liz writes in

we're all big fans of you here at work. You make the tech talks interesting and we all learn so much. Thank you, Liz. I appreciate the kind words. Really do. That's going to do it for this episode of the show. You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to rich on tech dot tv. If you want to get in on the feedbag, click contact and send me a message. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on tech. A lot of the things that I mentioned here on the show I will

post there try to make them shareable for you. Went to Disney this week and found a actually Bobo gave me a hidden trick photospot in Disney California Adventure. So if you're headed the California Adventure, check that out. Pretty cool. Next week, Harry Campbell, the rideshare guy, is going to share the latest in the gig economy, robotaxis and more. Thank you so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time. I really do appreciate

you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Adam in today for Bobo, appreciate your hard work back there, Kim on phones, and you of course for listening. Thank you. My name is rich Demiro. I will talk to you real soon