Samsung says no new Note smartphone this year

to a close. I did a story with some kids the other day at a camp and if you can believe it, school starts August sixteenth for a lot of the schools in Los Angeles, which when I was a kid, we always started after a labor day, which I feel like makes more sense. But I don't know. I mean, what do I know? As a parent, it's it's I guess you want your kids to go back, But I don't know. It seems so early, Like I'm like, how many weeks is the summer nowadays? One thing I do like, though,

is that reviews are coming in for Villo. This is the Mesh networking system I talked about. That's sixty dollars, and it's always you know, as a tech person, it's always interesting to do reports on things that are brand new and nobody's ever seen them before, because typically, you know, a manufacturer will send me something and I'll have hands

on time before anyone else. And you know, they have this thing called an embargo, and then they lift that embargo at a certain time and everyone who had it secretly or I guess, comes out and says, oh, I've had this for two weeks and here are my thoughts on it. And so that's what happened with this Villo Vlo by the way, And I was like, okay, well I think it's really good. But I put my review out there and you know, started seeing other people's and

you know, people were saying it was pretty good. But then I really wait for all the folks that write me to tell me if they purchased one and what they think of it. And the good news is, oh, music's still on there. Look at that. The good news is the reviews are in and people are telling me they love it. So they're saying they're getting a great signal.

They're liking it. It's boosting their Wi Fi and I'm very happy because you know, it's like, Okay, I thought this was really good, I shared it, and clearly it is. Let's start with Samsung this week. Samsung is having an event on August eleventh, and Samsung is not like Apple where they just keep everything sort of secret until the big day. They keep some stuff secret, and you know, but they get a lot of hints, right, at least

Samsung does. Apple doesn't really give any hints. So Samsung's been coming out with a couple of blog posts in anticipation of their big event, and the latest is a blog post that is titled the next era of smartphone innovation is about to unfold. And I'm guessing the pictures they're showing at the top are of the old foldable phones because they wouldn't show the new ones, right, But they say, you know, all kinds of well, let's just get to the good stuff basically. Well, one thing they

they did a little knock on the open ecosystem. They said, as we enter this new era of agile transformation, I believe that open ecosystems are the only way to accelerate innovation and give people more freedom to create their own experiences that are best for their lifestyles. Now, I got to give that a major because that's really a knock

against Apple. Apple's been going through this lawsuit with the whole you know, Epic games and all this stuff, and basically Apple is saying the reason why they're so closed down is because they want to keep things secure, and that's probably true, but only to an extent. And I will say that I am continually impressed with how much Apple has been able to do with such a closed system.

Like the other day, I asked to play a song on my phone and it did go to Spotify automatically, which historically that didn't happen, but now Siri apparently learns which music service you're using, and I flip between a whole bunch of them, and so clearly I've been using Spotify the most lately to test the whole downloading to Apple watch the music thing, and Siria apparently has taken

notice of that. So anyway, in a few weeks, they say they're gonna unleash their latest and greatest Galaxy Z series, and they say they completely improved or we kept improving the category with our second generation of foldables, the Galaxy Z Fold two and the Galaxy Z Flip with more screens and more of the features. Now they're saying the third generation are going to open up amazing multitasking capabilities

and enhanced durability. Let's see what else at Samsung, Open and Secure are never mutually exclusive again, that knock on Apple. And for our third generation of Galaxy Z phones, we have more partner apps that make use of the versatile fold out format, optimize video with Google Duo watching videos, and flex Mode on YouTube which they've already done. Multitasking in teams. So what else? Oh, the Z flip is

more durable with stronger materials. But here's the thing they buried all the way, talk about we have this phrase in journalism called burying the lead, right, and talk about burying the lead all the way. At the end of this blog post they mentioned, oh yeah, by the way, instead of unveiling a new Galaxy Note this time around,

what so no note this year? Spoil alert, no Galaxy Notes, so they said, but they're going to build an s pen into one of the Galaxy Z family devices, which is probably going to be the fold not the flip. I know, all these things are so complicated, all these terms but anyway, August eleventh, if you were excited for

a new note, not happening. And that's kind of a big change for Samsung because typically the note is where Samsung puts all of its best new things, so all of its best new camera tech, all of its best new screen tech, all of its best new tech in general. And so now I guess the Fold is going to

be the new flagship. And remember that they did make the S pen compatible with the last generation of S twenty one devices, I think just the high end devices like the S twenty one Ultra, but you can see they're getting away from that reliance on the S twenty one Ultra basically became a note device, just without a little sleeve to put the note in or the stylus in. So anyway, August eleventh, all things will be answered. Let's

get to the first question. AJ says, Hey, Rich, I'd like to download Oregon Ducks football picks from Instagram from my own entertainment. How do I do that with efficiency? Thanks? Love your content. You know that when I first came to California, I called Oregon Oregon, and I'll never forget being in my freshman dorm room and my friends were like, no, no, it's Oregon, Oregon. I was like, Oregon, there's no Oregon, no Oregon. So anyway, maybe it is Oregon, but I

think it's more Orgon at this point. But anyway, I digress, as I typically do on the show. But the thing that I like the best, and I use this pretty much every day, it is a Chrome extension called Image Downloader. I know, such a complicated name, image downloader, and I give you a website, but I don't really have a website. It just search image downloader on Chrome. And you should see the extension. Let me see how many users are

using this extension. See if I'm the only one? No, a million plus users from Vlad Sabev, So clearly people like this. But what I love about this little Chrome extension is that no matter what web page you're on, this does not handle videos, but it does handle any

image on a page. So whatever web page you're on, you just hit the downloader button and next thing you know, it will show you all the images on that page and you can download them like get you get individual download links for all of those and so it's just a really simple way of capturing an image and on a you know, a full resolution of that image versus

like a screen shot. And also it shows you sort of the multiple versions of that image on a page, so if there's like a little thumbnail image, you'll be able to tell and that's not the one you want to download. You want to download the one that's bigger. And you can also set parameters like I only want pictures that are bigger than you know, one hundred pixels or you know, images that are only on a link.

So it's really a really great little app and I use it every day for my job, you know, for editing purposes if I need a picture off a blog post or something really really easy. And I did test it. It does work with Instagram. And you may want something that's for your phone, and I'm sure there are apps out there that can do this on your phone. I just did not research that, so I don't know, nor have I used that, but I know a lot of people use that, like repost app, which may do it,

but I don't know if it downloads it. But if you search the app store, are you on iPhone? Doesn't say if you're on iPhone or not. But I would just try it on your desktop, just go to the Instagram page that you want. Once you download that and click the little image downloader and you should get the pictures that you need. All right. So two way video calling with Zoom is now available on Amazon Fire TV

Cube and this is big. I tweeted about this and I kind of always imagine this, you know, we call it a lean back experience, right, the idea of just sitting on your couch and be able to watch you know, streaming services or looking at your family pictures. But the idea of video chatting, for some reason, has yet to come to the television, and I don't know why. Now, yes, there are some solutions out there, like Facebook's portal, but what is the deal? Why is there such a holdout?

Is it just because people use their phones? But if you've ever video chatted on a phone, I feel like there's a lot of pressure. There's a lot of pressure to hold your phone in front of you. There's a lot of pressure to hold your phone steady. People are moving around all the time. So I don't feel like the phone is a good way of video chatting unless

you know, it's quick, it's simple, it's easy. You know, most people have a phone nearby but I feel like this idea of video chatting on the couch would just be so much better if you had a webcam on top of your TV and you just to sit back and you just talk to the other people on the

other end. And for me, you know, I've got my family on the East Coast, it would be so nice to just have my parents or my siblings just in front of their TV because we just relax, you know, and we all just could sit there in our houses and chat with each other. Well, anyway, this is a

reality with the fire TV Cube. Last year they launched a lex Oh alex A. I had someone write me in and said, of Rich, if you want to say that word on your podcast, you can say alex A. So I'll say alex A. So if you want, you can use alex A to video chat on your Fire TVQ. But Zoom is much more popular, and so now you can use the Zoom ap. But here's the thing. Look at all the stuff you need to access to a

video calling. You'll need to connect a webcam that supports USB video class whatever that is with at least seven to twenty P resolution and thirty frames per second, using a micro USB to USB adapter. Now, who in their right mind, that's the average person that this is targeting, is going to know how to do that. And I like to use my mom as an example. That's the example here. If I'm like, mom, we can finally video

chat on the TV. Just go out and get a UVC USB video class camera with a seventy seven to twenty P resolution and thirty frames per second. Plus you know that micro USB to USB adapter you've been wanting to use, Yeah, you can use that too. No, no one's going to know how to do this, So why don't you just make a software update that lets you plug in a regular video camera to a regular I guess it's only micro USB on the back, but it's just one of these things that like this is why

this stuff hasn't taken off. This is way too complicated. And yes, all the techies that Amazon are saying this is so cool, we can finally do this, but no real person knows how to do this, and even myself, I don't want to go out there and buy all this stuff. I will to try it out, but it just needs to be easy. We've got Apple TV, We've got firetvqube by the way. Firetvcube is a high end fire TV, so not even a lot of people have that.

Most people have the sticks, and you're not gonna be able to plug a webcam into the stick Roku same thing. They've got USB on the back of the big ones. But most people have the sticks. And so until we get a very simple method for plugging a webcam, a normal webcam into the back of these TV it's just not gonna happen. And yeah, the TV manufacturers just do it themselves, cut out the middleman. Why do we need why do we need all these boxes? I mean, I like them, but a lot of people just use your

smart TV. Oh, look at Amazon, put the links. Okay, so the webcam I have, the Logitech C nine twenty does have. It is compatible. They actually were kind enough to include a list of compatible webcams and a list of compatible micro USB to USB adapter so you know, look, it's not tough. It's just one of these things where to do all this is kind of a lot. But

I don't know. I'm tempted. I'm tempted to literally gift My mom does use fire TV, so I'm tempted to now gift her a cube and then all these other little bells and whistles so that we can video chat. But I think the other side of this is who really wants a video camera on top of their TV staring at your living room the whole time. I mean, it's just one of these things where maybe if there's a shutter on these Let me see, do any of these video cameras have a shutter, because that would be

probably the only way that the average person would do that. Okay, that one does not have a shutter. This one does not have a shutter. This one does not have a shutter, and that one does not have a shutter. So there would probably have to be some sort of shutter mechanism to really make this thing take off. And I don't know if that's gonna happen. Anyway, it is available. It's available now, and you can join zoom meetings using a

fire TVQ. All right, Robert has the next question. Hey, Rich, I bought a Fitbit Charge four and was wondering if the fitbit app is the best choice to use with an iPhone. I see there are other apps that claim to connect better with Apple Health. What have you heard, thanks, Robert? Robert, I would say stay away from the third party apps, they are not. I guarantee you they're not going to

connect to Apple Health better than what Fitbit does. And quite honestly, I think the reason why you're looking is because Apple Health probably and I don't know this for certain, but I'm pretty sure that Apple Health does not connect to Fitbit at all. Now I may be wrong on that, and you can you can correct me on that if I'm wrong, But I think that because Fitbit is made by Google, and Google is warring is you know, frenemies with Apple, as is everyone these days, I think that

the Fitbit app would be your best way to do it. Now, there is one other thing you can do, and I think this actually would be your best bet if you want that. Now. Here's the thing. What Apple Health does really well is it integrates health data from various places. And so if you want sort of one thing, you know, to look at all of your data, Like let's say you do a yoga class through an app, and let's say you do something on your fitbit and then you go for a run using Apple Health. You know, it's

like or Apple Workout app or whatever. You know, maybe you want all that stuff in one place and so I understand why you'd want Apple Health. But here's what I've done, and it actually works pretty well. And I know Fitbit works with it because they're both Google. But you can download the Google Fit app, and as far as I can tell on my phone, Google Fit does somehow siphon the information out of Google Health and it

will also take the information from the fitbit app. So if you have both those things feeding into the fitbit app, now you've got a one stop shop where you can have all of your fitness data in one place. And Google Fit is actually quite nice. It's simple. I really like the design. They have some good tips on you know, some insights into what it learns from you as you work out. So I think that's that's probably the way that I would go. So good question. And again this

is what bugs me. It bugs me that all these tech companies force us into these silos. And I just hate being forced into a silo because it doesn't give us as much freedom to choose the services and the products that we want to use. And don't get me wrong, you know, there's a lot of it that works together, but a lot of it does not, and it gets

kind of tricky. When you know, things just arbitrarily say well, we're not going to work together because you know that's a that's a product that's kind of in competition with us, or you know, you got to build things our way, or you know, it's the highway. So that's where we're at. It's just a reality of the tech world, and maybe

that'll change in the future. We're seeing some progress with that, especially as these anti trust you know, there's inklings of anti trust always kind of pitter pattering through the through the hallways of tech. So as that kind of scare stays with these tech companies, it sort of you know, makes them want to do things that help the consumer.

And so if those you know, if that threat wasn't there, I can't imagine the world we live in because I feel like a lot of stuff is kind of you know, I test a lot of stuff, and I just see the silos that people build, and so I don't like those. All right, let's get to the next story. Instagram, this is everyone's favorite social media app. Instagram has some new privacy what do you call it, some new safety measures

for teens. So number one, obviously we know that there's this big push and pull when it comes to young people on social media. If I, as a parent, had my way, I would never allow my kid to have a cell phone until they were like thirty five. But that's just not the reality. You know, you want to be able to get in touch with their kids, and next thing, you know, they want to be able to get in touch with their friends, and they want to be on social media. They want to become an influencer.

They want to be on YouTube, they want to watch it, then they want to make videos, and all of this stuff is theoretically forbidden under thirteen, but we know that that's not happening. You know, kids are signing up, they're using different you know, data births, they're they're using their parents' phone. So it look, the reality is it's there. Kids are on these things, and so Instagram knows that and they're trying to do things to make it a bit of

a safer experience. One of those new things is defaulting people under eighteen into private accounts. Now depends where you are in the US. It's well, let's see, starting this week, everyone who is under sixteen years old or eighteen in certain countries will be defaulted into a private account. When they join Instagram. Now, so in the US, I believe it's sixteen. But here's the thing this is when they

say defaulted, it sounds better than it is. I mean, the kids who are signing up for this are the most tech savvy people out there in the world. So they're not gonna miss a little tiny menu that says, you know, do you want to be you know, they're gonna miss the thing where says private, where they can switch it to public. They're not going to keep kids

from switching it to public. They're just going to default. Now, if that saves or if that you know, deflects ten percent of sign ups to being into or defaulting them into you know, private, then I guess that works. I mean, anything's better than nothing. Now, if they have a private account, obviously you know the rules. So people have to follow you to see your posts, you have to choose to

allow others to reshare your content. People can't comment on your content, they can't see your content at all in places like Explore or on hashtags. So that's a that's a good thing I think for kids. Now, Again, like I said earlier, a lot of kids want or these are teens, a lot of teens want to become influencers, and so they're probably going to go to public or you know, hey, they might just say, oh yeah, I'll stay private, like all I care about my friends. So

that's cool. Now for the teenagers or young people they say that already have a public account on Instagram, Instagram is going to show them a notification saying here's why we think you should be private, and then show them how to change their privacy settings. The other thing they're doing is using AI to not only identify adult accounts even if you lie about your age, but also to identify creepy adults. And they don't use that term, but

they call it potentially suspicious behavior. These are accounts that belong to adults that have been blocked or reported by a young person for example. So this is not everything, it's just one thing. And so using this technology, they won't show young people's accounts and explore or anything suggested to adults. And let's see, if they find young adults accounts by searching for their user names, they won't be able to follow them. So I mean, Instagram, you know,

it's kind of weird. I would call this like shadow banning almost except you know, shadow banning is kind of like when your stuff is not really shown to a lot of people because you've broken some sort of rule. That is, you're not really aware of that, but Instagram doesn't really tell you. They just kind of don't show your stuff to as many people. And you know, this

kind of happens with Instagram accounts as well. There's a thing you can do called restrict and so if I, let's say, for example, I'm on my Instagram and someone's really annoying me with their comments, I can restrict them and they can still comment, they can still see my stuff, they can still interact with my stuff, they can like it. But guess what, anything that they do is not viewable by anyone except them. So it's kind of like this. It's a shadow ban I mean, it's a shadow band

that any Instagram user has the ability to enable. So the other thing they're doing is changing how advertisers can reach young people. Basically, they're only going to let them target on age, gender, and location and not interests. All right, Mike says, my seventeen Honda Pilot did not come with a CD player. I'd like to have my entire CD collection on an MP three player. I want the ability to play by artist, by genre, or by album. What do I buy? Thanks, Mike, Mike, I would recommend an

iPod Touch. That's you know, two hundred dollars for an iPod Touch. If you don't want to spend that much, then I would look on eBay. I am sure you can find an iPod Touch for cheaper than that price

if you want to. Yeah, that's all i'd recommend. I would not go back further because the iPod like, you know, if you go with like an iPod Classic or an iPod you know, clickwheel, whatever, these I forget the little one that I have at home, Like it's an old school one that I bought my wife a long time ago, but it's like a really thin one. It's like the solid state drive. I would go with an iPod Touch. And the reason why I would go with that over any other sort of MP three player, I mean, there's

a million ways you can do this. But you said you want the ability to play by artists, by genre, or by album, and I'm guessing a twenty seventeen Honda Pilot probably has some iPods smarts built into it. And what I mean by that is that it will interface with your iPod to show the the sorting methods that you want, which is artists, genre, or album, and so I think that is probably the best way to do it. You can easily hook it up into your car. You

probably you probably have a USB pour in there. I'm trying to think my old car. Oh, yeah, I think that'll Yeah, you'll be fine. Twenty seventeen is not even that old, so I think you'll be okay. But yeah, you can get just a standard Apple lightning connector you pop it into the bottom of the iPod Touch and

now you've got your whole collection. You can throw the iPod touch and your you know, run that wire nice so it looks nice and clean, and you know, put the thing in your compartment or something, or just you know, stow it out of out of view. And you can do that now if you want me to recommend some apps. So for the CD player, you know, you can still rip CDs using iTunes, I believe. I mean, I don't think they took that out of there, but if you can't, there's a lot of yeah, well, I don't know if

they still do this. Let's see on iTunes on PC. I'm not sure that Mac does it anymore. Ooh, that could be a problem. I don't see anything on the uh, let's see iTunes Mac. Oh you know what, let me say, let me just see something because this says Windows. Yeah, that's so weird. I don't know if you can do it on a Mac anymore. I know they've got finder how to rip. Yeah, okay, let's see this was updated. Oh yeah, yes, of course you can. Okay, yeah, so you can do it. Oh, use the music app on

your Mac. Choose music preferences in general. When a CD is inserted, choose the option import CD, and you import the CD into your library and then you can put it onto your iPod. The other thing you can do, if you want to just a one off kind of thing or just a dragon drop, is a program called Walter wa lt R. And that's a great dragon drop option. Walter Pro just transfers pretty much any file onto your iPhone or iPad. It's thirty bucks and it's really easy,

and it puts it in the right place. So it'll put like a book into the booksapp, it'll put the MP three's into your music app, it'll put photos into the photos app, so it's really really smart and very easy. That's a Dragon drop method. Good question. I know it's been a while. I mean, I used to have this car that I really wanted. I'm trying to remember what the deal was. It was an old BMW and I'm trying to remember what the deal with this car was.

It was gosh, there were some there. It had like support for the iPod but it was very like limited, but I wanted to use like a streaming service, but I wanted I don't know anyway, I can't really remember what the story was. But anyway, I got rid of it. And you know, now my new car is car Play, so it's all good. It wasn't my car anyway. It was my wife's car, so I never I never had it. I would just drive it once in a while, and it did drive very nice. I have to say, all right,

PlayStation five, let's see. PlayStation five now has surpassed ten million units sold, and Sony says it's their fastest selling console in history. It is outpaced to PlayStation four, So I don't think this means that it's sold more than the PlayStation four, because clearly that's probably sold a lot. This is the fastest selling console. So there's a lot of ways to mix, you know, in slice and dice numbers and present them in a way that makes things

look very successful. But the reality is this has sold more units in a short amount of time. But here is what the interesting part about this is. To me, I find it fascinating that this is so hard to get. So the fact that they've sold ten million. If you were able to get this device, how many would they have sold? So that's what I find interesting about this. And Sony does acknowledge in this little post about the shortages,

because this has been really bad. I mean, the PlayStation five launched on November what was it, November twelfth, twenty twenty. Hard to believe it's been you know, seven almost eight months now. I mean we're almost coming up to another holiday season where this thing is still going to be

you know, could be potentially tricky to get. Apple and their earnings call this week said that the iPhone could be tough to get because there's some little pieces in there that are are getting held up on the supply chain. So again we're seeing these shortages for everything, and Apple gave a little hit that the iPhone could be a problem. Now I don't. I don't know if a lot of people are gonna be upgrading this time around, because the iPhone twelve was so good, but and I think they

called it like a super cycle or whatever. It was like a big upgrade for a lot of people. But I think that who knows, I mean people up to me. People just upgrade their phone when they need a new one after three four years, so it's no longer a yearly thing except for the real enthusiasts. So anyway, just be prepared if anything gets a little tight with the iPhone supply. But Sony does say we have a lot of work ahead for us as demand for PS five

continues to outstrip supply. I want gamers to know that while we continue to face unique challenges throughout the world that affect our industry, improving inventory levels remains a top priority for Sie Sony Interactive Entertainment. All right, next question here from Bernadette. Hey, I'm working on a book about my one hundred and one year old mom. Wow. Mom has a lot of tape recordings that are that are that after trying to write down and then input into

word has turned into a logistical nightmare. Working on a PC with Windows ten. I was told Dragon was a possibility, but as you know, there's no refund policy once purchasing software. Another plan B was recommending hiring someone recommended it was hiring a freelance stenographer. However, at a rate of two twenty five an hour, that's a little too rich. No pun intended for my almost empty pocket, FYI a proceed. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to nonprofit charities.

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated. Bernadette, Well, Bernadette, I have just a solution, and it's so dang easy. It is already on your computer. Or let's see. Uh, did you say you're using Word? Yes? You did, Okay, so you've already got Word if you have a subscription to Office three sixty five, which is like seven bucks a month. I know you said you've got an only almost empty pocket,

but this is about your cheapest solution. You can upload these audio recordings into Word and it will transcribe them automatically, and it's amazing. I've done this before. It I think it's unlimited. I've uploaded like an entire podcast episode and I did get the entire transcript and it's pretty pretty good. So for my Larry David fans out there, I'd say it's pretty pretty pretty good. Bad bad impression, but yeah,

so I mean that's what I would do now. I think the biggest challenge here reading your question is I have a lot of tape recordings, so I don't know what format these tape recordings are in. But that is what you're gonna have to do. You're gonna have to get those into a digital format to get those into Word. So you got to figure out how to do that.

You might need some help with that. An easy way to do that is just to buy a cable on Amazon which is like a you know, a standard headphone jack cable, but it has two headphone jacks on either end. You plug one into the device that plays the tape, you plug the other into the input jack on your computer, and you use whatever recording app that's on your computer to record these into a digital format. Then you take that digital file and you upload it to Microsoft Word.

How do you upload it to Microsoft Word? Well, I need I need to go into let's see, let me look in Microsoft Word. Because if you're listening and you're like, rich, that's a cool feature. How do I do it, and I don't really tell you how to do it. That's not very useful, now, is it. So you open up a new Word document and we just happen to have a subscription to Word through our com company. There is a dictate button on the toolbar there should be, and

the I'm talking this is the web version of Microsoft Word. Okay, so you have to use that. Now. Next to that dictate it looks like a little microphone. There is a down arrow or a carrot pointing down. You press that and then it reveals a transcribe button and yes, I know, I say button weird, and it says generate a transcript by uploading your audio data, which can be a wavefile, an MP four, an M four A, or an MP three to start a recording and or start a recording.

So you can upload audio. Oh wow, you can just start a recording. You can do it right from there. But I would just upload the audio and you can do three hundred minutes a month, so you may, you know, depending on how long these things are that I think is new but maybe not interesting. I've never seen the three hundred minutes a month, but okay, well, three hundred minutes a month is definitely a bummer, but that might depend on your subscription minds of corporate. I don't know

what the deal is. So the other thing you can do is use what's called descript de script descript dot com. And this is gonna cost you a little bit. Again, it's none of these things are free. When things, when things are truly useful, they are not free. And I've noticed this over and over. If you want real software that does and solves real problems, it's gonna cost you. And so let's see. You can do three hours of transcription one time for free twelve dollars. You can do

ten hours a month. So basically you're looking at if you don't want to do the word thing, you can just use descript and it would be twelve dollars for a month of ten hours. So depends on how much you got. I mean, I don't really know how many recordings you have, but the ten dollars a month might be fine. Now, if you want to go twenty four dollars a month, you can go thirty hours of transcription, So maybe that's it. Maybe all you need is one month, And I would do, believe me, if I pay the

twenty four dollars. You definitely definitely want to go and use the entire thirty hours. Do not split that job up, like make it your your job every day to do that. So thanks for the question. Verizon has some new mobile hotspot plans, and I'm getting a lot of questions about mobile hotspots because people are still really hip on this

whole work from wherever thing. And I understand. I mean, I came back to work and we had, you know, no masks on, and next thing, you know, a week later, all this is changing, and it's very it's very dynamic right now. When just when I thought things were getting a little bit better, all of a sudden, it's like, nope, put on those brakes. I'll keep my thoughts about that to myself, but you know, nonetheless, this is what we

find ourselves in. And so we are in a world where, you know, businesses continue to delay people going back to the office and for some people they really like that. And you know, a mobile hotspot is a way to get a nice solid internet connection wherever you are. Now. Of course your phone can do that, but you know, a dedicated hot spot definitely has its advantages. So the new plans Essential twenty bucks a month for Verizon customers, and that is that's going to give you fifteen gigs

of data. Forty dollars a month for Verizon customers, gives you five g and fifty gigs. Sixty dollars for Verizon customers will give you five g and one hundred gigs. And then you've got Premium, which is eighty dollars for Verizon customers, and that gives you five g and one hundred and fifty gigs. So if you're really really a road warrior, the eighty dollars one hundred and fifty gigs

will be fine. Now, if you have a Verizon plan, you know, obviously a lot of these plans come with mobile Internet and you can use that, you know, maybe start with that before you get a dedicated hotspot. So yeah, whether you need this is kind of up to you. But some of these plans are more expensive if you don't have a Hoverzon plan. So you know, it all depends on what you're doing. If you're traveling every month, you know, a standalone plan would be nice, you know,

or standalone sorry I should say standalone hot spot. But if you're not traveling that much, I mean I find that the hotspot on the the phone works pretty well. I mean, the dedicated hotspot is just nice because you can set it up and just leave it there, like if you go to a hotel room, you know, and I talked about this before on the podcast. It's just nice to just like kind of leave it there. You know. You don't have to really think about it much. When

you come into the room. It connects, when you get out, it disconnects, and that's it. So I do like that aspect of it. All right, Let's get to another question here, speaking of vaccinations, Patricia says digital vaccinated passport. Hey, which I don't know if you covered this already, but which digital passport is best to use as proof of COVID nineteen vaccinations? Patricia, Patricia, there is not a one size

fits all solution for this just yet. I know we've heard of some of the you know, some of the companies trying to come up with this, but your best bet at this time is really to just download the app from the company that gave you. I feel like I talked about this before, but I think your best bet is just to download the app from the company that gave you. The vaccine. So whether that's you know, carbon Health here in Los Angeles or Clarity whatever, just look into that and see if they have an app.

And sometimes in those apps they have a way to sort of integrate the proof of vaccination into you know, either Apple Wallet or Google Pay. And actually Google itself announced that they are actively working to bring the vaccination codes into Google Pay. Now. I don't know what the status of that is. It's probably gonna be a while, but you know, and it always takes longer than you think.

But I think the best thing right now is just to keep a copy of that of that vaccination card on your phone and obviously just keep it safe somewhere, you know, in your house, you know, but keep a snapshot of it. I've the only time it came in

handy for me so far is at Krispy Kreme. When I was at Krispy Kreme buying a donut and I saw a little sign that said if you're vaccinated, you get a free Krispy Kream, and I said, oh, I have this, And sure enough, I showed the card on my phone, which I had taken a picture of because I was traveling, and they were like, here you go. Free Krispy Kreme, and I thought that was great. So I anyway, I enjoyed that. It was a very delicious donut.

Krispy Kreme, by the way, seven seconds in the microwave, and it tastes just like it would fresh out of the oven, you know, or if you are been to a Krispy Kreme, you know how they do it. They do this thing like where they have the the Krispy Kreme's hot like they're coming off this like conveyor belt. And I think back in the day you used to be able to ask for one if you came in

there while it was physically making the donuts. You could be like, hey, can I have a sample, and they would give you one along with a little hat like a paper hat. Now I don't know if they still do that, but I specifically remember doing that when I was living in Shreveport, Louisiana, when Krispy Kreme came to town, it was like a big deal. And Los Angeles, I don't think they have as many locations, but you know,

it's one of those things. Story from the Associated Press says that if you want to keep your phone safe from hackers, all you have to do is reset it. And this little article or this I don't know what you call it. I don't know where this originated from. Well, I guess it says. Let's see, as a member of the secretive Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Angus King has reason to worry about hackers. That a briefing by security staff this year, he said he got some advice and had

keep his cell phone secure. Turn it on, turn it off. That's it, And this is actually some decent advice. The reasoning that this that they give for turning the phone on and off is the fact that a lot of what Apple and Google have done is protected kind of the core base of your phone. So if a hacker is trying to get into it, they can't really get into like the deep dive of your device where they would need to really kind of do whatever they want,

like wreck havoc on your phone. Now, especially with the iPhone, this is the case, and you know it's happening more and more with the androids as well. But the iPhone, you know, I always talk about this idea of things being sandboxed, right, so when you have an app, it only kind of works with itself. It doesn't really interface with other apps, and if it does, it only does it in a way that Apple allows. We're on Android. There's definitely more leniency. But is that a word leniency

more lenience? I don't know, but it you know, it does more, but it's you know, they're tightening things too over there. But anyway, the reality is how a lot of these hacks now work is you know, they're called zero day exploits, where it's kind of like a hole that they find that they exploit very quickly. And so for that reason, a lot of these things run in like the main memory, like the quick memory, not the deeper memory that stores all the info on your phone.

And so if this idea of restarting your phone is right, what would happen is when you restart, the phone kind of takes stock of what's running in the local memory and it basically doesn't allow anything it doesn't recognize to run because it's highly secure. So, yes, is there a way around that? Of course there always is, you know, hackers will find a way. But this is saying to restart your phone about once a week if you really want to protect your privacy. I mean, I can't say

not to do that. I probably restart my phone. Now, when I'm on Android, I restart much more often than iPhone iPhone. It could probably go a couple I mean, probably a month without restarting, But sometimes I will restart just to kind of clean things up, clear things out, do whatever you do to, you know, to get the phone kind of back to you know, a fresh restart kind of situation. But that's the idea of this, of this turn your phone, turn your phone on and off

once a week. I don't know. I'm not gonna not recommend doing it. It's definitely an interesting take on the whole hack your phone thing, I would say, and I'm I'm loath to say this, but I feel like most people's phones are not really at risk of hacking. I think that there are much bigger concerns out there, and I think that clicking on nefarious links is a big concern. I think that you know, subscriptions that you subscribe to that you forget about and you get charged twenty bucks

and sometimes even more. I think that's a problem. I think there's a lot of other things, you know, stealing your personal information willingly like handing it over. So I think that there are a lot of things that happen on smartphones that are pretty bad. I think that a lot of these high level, you know, hack attacks that we hear about, you know, for the average person, if you're not a journalist or you're not someone that's you know, government agent, you know, regular person, you know, is it

going to happen to you? It could. Chances are you know that you're not the target, but you could be in a drive by. I don't know, it just it just sort of depends. But anyway, I would say, think about it. At least you know about it. But I think that it's one of those things that if you don't do it, it's not like it's not like you have to sit there and set a time or to restart your phone once a week. But it's not gonna hurt if you do it, just for the mere fact

that it's a nice thing to do. Anyway. But it's an interesting thought, and it's one that I hadn't really heard before. I've interviewed a lot of security people, and I've never really heard this take. So whenever I haven't heard something before, it's always like, Okay, that's that's interesting, and I can see why they recommend it. But I don't necessarily know if I'm going to adopt that practice,

even though I probably do it anyway. I mean, I do turn my phone on and off once in a while, maybe not once a week, but anyway, Now when you think about turning on and off your phone, you think about making it more secure, and so maybe you'll do it more often. All right, Bob writes in and says I did get an Euro router, but I've had connection problems with my Canary. I'm told by Canary that Canary

will not work with mesh routers. All other connections are fine, regards, Bob. Yeah, Bob, you bring up a point that we hear every once in a while, This whole idea of these mesh routers not playing nice with some of these IoT devices, Internet of things, and the Canary that you're talking about, if you're not familiar, if you're listening, is a it's kind of an all in one security camera slash security system.

And the reason I think it's not working with it is because Canary probably works on a two point four gigahertz, whereas the Euro is spitting out a five gigahertz, and they do this thing where it kind of they call it band steering. It tries to get the devices to connect to the five G because that's the better signal. Now it's not always the better signal. So there's two signals typically put out by a Wi Fi router five

g five gigaherts and then two point four gigarherts. Two point four gigahertz travels further, but it's not as fast. Five gigaherts doesn't travel as far, but it is faster. It's a faster connection. So that's why a lot of the new gadgets that you're using, like your iPhone and your you know, your laptop, are using mostly five gigahertz connections.

It's a lot of these Internet of things that use just a two point four and a lot of times it's fine, but I've definitely run into situations myself now, Bob. What I would recommend is on the Euroo app, there is a little setting in there that will temporarily disable five gigahertz connections, and it's pretty smart how euro did this. So what they did is they give you kind of

a timed option. So if you go into the app, you go into i think it's like Advanced Settings, and it says you know, force something to the effect of force two point four or you know whatever, and you click it and next thing, you know, the router will reset. It'll reset into just two point four, and that's when

you can set up your canary. And then once your canary is on board with a two point four, it's gonna stick there, it's gonna stay there, and then you can, you know, just continue to use it and the rest of your network will actually the EURO will then restart and it will still continue doing dual band two point four and five. I know this is very tricky, but it's a smart way of Eero to get around this

problem of something's not connecting. Now, it doesn't always work, because I was testing a plug like an outdoor plug, and it would only connect to two point four and I could not get it to connect to my EURO no matter what, it just would not do it. It was actually a wise plug. And it was quite embarrassing actually, because I was on a Facebook or an Instagram live trying to show people how easy it is to set up a plug, a smart plug outside and it just

would not connect. And I'm like, all right, let me take a pause here, let me try this again, and I probably spent an hour on that thing trying to get it to work. I emailed whys and they were not really aware of the issue. They said it it shouldn't have happened. So I ended up buying just another another plug, a smart plug from Greenie or is it Greeny or Genie. I forget, but it's one of the cheaper brands on Amazon, and it works just fine. It

was like eighteen bucks still working. So now the Villo that I mentioned earlier, that's a sixty dollars meshrouter. The interesting thing about that is that they're well aware of this issue, just like ero Is, but they made it even easier. They they basically set up the router so it automatically figures this out and it will just kind of help these devices connect to the two point four. So what I'm guessing they do is they must ping

the device say okay, can you accept a five gigahertz connection? No? Okay, Well here's the other one we can do. And so I think that's what they're doing, just to make that a little bit easier and make people have less issues with these with these things connecting. So Dell is this is an article out of the Register. I don't know if you know this, but I used to edit this website called tech Meme tech meme dot com. It's still my favorite tech website of all times. And they actually

don't write tech stories. They do write headlines. But the way this website works is the person who started it, Gabe Rivera, He basically programmed in an algorithm that kind of takes into consideration all these different tech websites, so they get fed into this entire system, and then it kind of figures out the way of laying out stories on a web page that are popular and what people are clicking, what people are reading, and not just one story.

You can see all the sources of these stories. So what's really powerful about tech Meme is, like, let's say pretty much every story out there except for reviews, has one source, and then all the blogs rewrite that story just citing that source, or sometimes they don't cite it at all. But what tech Meme does is it brings them all together. And then the magic part is that

it figures out who had the original story. And when it figures out who had the original story, it generally puts that as the main link and all the other ones below it. Now it doesn't always put that as the main link because sometimes it's trying to, you know, show stories that are you know, a little bit more

easy to read. Like there's a lot I don't know, there's a magic sauce to it that I'm not at liberty to explain, but you know, there's definitely a rhyme and reason to the way things are laid out on this website. But anyway, it's a great website. And they have an article from the Register that talks about how if you're trying to buy a high powered gaming PC, well you better not be shipping it to California and five other states that include Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

And so specifically it's this alien ware Aurora Rise in addition R ten Gaming desktop. And if you go to the website, which I did, it's literally like a big giant warning label that says, if you try to let me, let me read you exactly what it says, this configuration cannot be shipped to California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont or Washington due to power consumption regulations. Any orders bound for

those states will be canceled. And so this computer is so you know, power hungry that you can't you can't have it in California. I mean, it's pretty wild with you know, you think, okay, I've got a computer my house and it's like it's using too much energy for the state of California. It's pretty wild. Next thing that's

going to happen is on let's see December ninth. They're going to target computers with high speed networking capability, multi screen notebooks, and computers with cyclical behavior whatever that is, and also monitors with high refresh rates. Those are gonna be covered by these rules as well. So you know, it's one of those things that you kind of it's like a little bit of a head scratcher. But you know, we've heard how bitcoin computers can really use a lot

of energy. I guess gaming computers do too, But in general, I guess my takeaway is if you have a computer and it's not going to sleep or the you know, the monitors not going off, it's probably best to go into your power settings and make sure that that thing shuts off or goes to sleep after a certain amount of time. If you have a laptop, most of the time they do that anyway. But I've walked past plenty

of computers in my lifetime. They're just on like twenty four to seven like all the time, and so you don't want to be contributing to that problem. So because maybe if we you know, if we do this right, we won't have to ban these energy hungry PCs. Valerie emails. I get this email every probably every other day. Valerie says, Rich, have you heard of the bolts Pro charger? What do you think about it? Thanks? Valerie. I hope I didn't answer this in my last Did I answer this in

my last one? Let me say I might have answered this question in my last podcast, but I'll just say I'll give it. I'll give the answer again because I get this email so often. Clearly, boltz Pro is advertising on social media. Clearly, it's just unbelievably amazing what it does. Clearly, the first ad is for boltz Pro. And if you look at all the reviews, I'm looking at one, two, three, the first four websites. Now, typically if there was a big review on this thing, it would you know, it'd

be pretty clear. I'm looking at this and yeah, the first review that I see is from a website called the Signal Santa Clarita Valley, Santa Clarita Valley's number one local news source. And this is totally advertorial because it's not talking about the charger as a review. It's literally just linking to the charger, so that's bogus. Then we've got a Quora website and yeah, people are saying that it's probably not legitimate there. Then we have the bolts

Pro Oh wow. Then we have the Kent Reporter and it's another sponsored content, so that's definitely. And then we have the Lifestyle and tech looking blog and written by John our resident tech gadget expert. He's an avid gardener and has a black belt in karate. And this is their actual website, but it looks like a style blog, a lifestyle blog, and it says advertorial right at the top. And this is just a standard USB charger. This is something you can order on Amazon from anchor and you know,

no big deal, so don't don't buy it. That's that's my recommendation. By the way, at the end of the website it says this is an advertisement and not an actual news article, blog or consumer protection update, so clearly you know it's just one of these things that it all adds up to just don't just stay away from it.

I mean, it's so it's so interesting that there's this entire cottage industry of stuff advertised that's just so good and so too good to be true that people buy it and it's just total like you don't need to buy it, like just just go to a website like Amazon and buy the real thing. All right, If you have SiriusXM, you might want to check into the Platinum VIP subscription. This is brand new, and I should qualify that if you have SERIOUSXM in two cars, that's when

you should look at this. So Serious XM I think with the new Pandora owners is definitely kind of cleaning things up a bit. I've always joked how every year my wife has Serious XM in her car, and every year, you know, I call and it's like a three hundred and thirty dollars renewal fee, and then I call in and it's like, oh no, sir, we can It'll be sixty bucks for the year. Oh okay, but you have to do that every year. You got to call in. Now I've noticed they actually let you do it online.

It used to be when you said I want to cancel, you had to call in. Now they're giving you some offers on the website. Now they may not be as good as calling in, but you know, you can still kind of do it without any human interaction, which is my preferred way of doing things. But the Serious XM Platinum VIP gives you up to two cars, so you can have a radio in each car, you know, a Serious XM login for each as well as special perks including Serious XM events whatever, but nobody cares about that.

Plus VIP customer service with priority call handling. So it says it's thirty five dollars a month. This includes every channel, so you get all the channels. It says it's thirty five dollars a month, which you know, for two cars, it's not too bad. But I guarantee you can get

it for cheaper. The offer that I saw when I logged in was it was either like one hundred bucks for six months or one hundred bucks for twelve months, which I tried to change for my wife's subscription so that I can get it in my car as well. You know, I like to sample what's going on, you know, in different mediums and so you know, but it would not let me switch for some reason. It just was

not having it. So but if you have two cars with serious XM and you like what you have there, then I would definitely check into the new platinum offering. Oh well, you know what that sound means? Is going to do it for this show? Wow? How does the time go by so fast when I do this show? If you'd like to submit a question for me to answer, it's very easy. You can just go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit the email icon, or you can go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash

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download it. You can find me on social media at rich on Tech and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free KTLA plus app on Apple TV, fireTV, and Roku. Then scroll to the technology station or section. Why is it say station here? Oh? Now I just gave it away that I read this. Scroll out to the technology section and watch all of my TV segments on demand. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do

appreciate you spending it with me. Stay safe, I'll talk to you real soon.