Samsung has a new premium phone at a more accessible price, Plus it has AI On day one, Adobe predicts record breaking holiday e commerce sales. I'll tell you the best days for discounts and the top items to watch. And a popular smart TV has a new way to put ads in front of your face. I'll tell you which one and how to turn them off so you can watch your TV shows in peace. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich
on Tech. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that 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 also an option. Just go to Rich on tech dot TV up at
the top, hit contact, send me a message. It will make its way to my inbox. We've got some great guests this week. C Nets Scott Stein will compare Meta's Quest three, their new ray band, smart glasses upgrades, and their new AR prototype glasses. They call them O'Ryan. Remember last week I told you about Snap Spectacles. Well, I can't remember if I actually told you about him or not, but I know I saw him and he's going to compare in contrast because he's actually warned both of them.
And how does this.
Sound to take an air taxi high above traffic. We're going to talk to Jobe Aviation's Eric Allison about their new all electric air taxi. I saw this this week and I have high hopes no pun intended. And later we're going to talk to Parent Collective founder Samuel Chapman. He's going to talk about social media safety and the recent impact of all the those school phone bands on student well being. Well, before we start, I do want to say a warm happy birthday to my mom. Mom,
Happy birthday. It is her birthday today. I did call her and she had a great night last night with the family. I am not there in New Jersey to celebrate with you this year, but I will be out there soon. So thanks as always for listening to this show, and have a great birthday today.
My mom has taught me so much.
She had five kids, by the way, that is that is no easy feat and she's still smiling, so that's a good thing.
Anyway. Happy birthday, Mom.
Let me tell you about how I got in trouble for trying to help you out.
This is just wild and it.
Really just goes to show why I started a newsletter, why that I am on this show and trying to do things to you know. Like I say in the beginning, I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. So let me tell you about my recent experience on Instagram. My Instagram is ruined at this point, and I'll tell you why.
So.
I don't know if you saw this.
I'm sure you did for a while, but there was this thing going around on Instagram that said goodbye Meta AI and attorney has advised us to put this on. Failure to do so may result in legal consequences.
You have to post this statement.
If you don't post, you're okay with them using your information and photos. I don't give Meta or anyone else's permission to use any of my personal data, profile information, or photos. This went around for a couple of days and it spread like wildfire. Now give me a break. This is not real. It's a fake legal warning, like you can't just post something on your Instagram stories or your Facebook and expect to change the relationship the legal
terms and conditions between you and Facebook. It doesn't work that way. No attorney told people to do this. Now, I don't know why people do this. They like to spread this stuff and it's just funny. It's like a chain letter back in the day. This has been going on since the beginning of the internet, right, these fake warnings and things that people say.
Copy and paste, post and tell your friends.
So I saw this, and I saw a bunch of people emailing me about it, asking me if it was real.
I said, all right, I got a post about this.
So I take the post, I screenshot it, and I put like a big bogus over it, and then I posted it with an explanation of why it's not real and all this stuff. Well, I could tell that Instagram was not showing it to a lot of people because you can see kind of like the likes and the comments, and they really weren't coming in. I was like, ah,
that's interesting. They probably think I'm spreading this, as you know, misinformation. Well, sure enough, I wake up the next morning and I get a couple stern warnings from Instagram saying we.
Have marked your post as false.
You should not be spreading false information and misinformation, and we had to take your post down. And they showed me like a picture of the post where it was like, this is false, it's been debunked, it's fake.
And I was like, you've got to be kidding me, like this is it's scanned.
You know, AI is always scanning the stuff that you upload to these social media networks and trying to figure.
Out what you're uploading, if it's real or if it's fake.
And of course they've heightened all of this stuff in recent years with the advent of all this fake news and things like that. And so my post that clearly any human being in the world could understand was factual and helpful and true, but their AI didn't. And so then not only that, not only did they take my post down and send me all these warnings, they said, oh, by the way, we've we've flagged your account now because
you're spreading misinformation. So now your account quality has been lowered, So your stuff that you post will now be shown lower.
In people's feeds.
So if I post something important in the future, you probably won't see it because face face, Instagram says, now this guy's spreading false information. Also, you know, if I monetized my account in a big way, you no longer eligible for monetization. Instagram used to these things where like they get influencers to post and they give them like bonuses.
They don't really.
So it's funny because when reels first started, Instagram was paying people to post reels because they wanted to take over TikTok, and so they give you like a bonus if you reached like twenty thousand views on reels.
And what happened.
All the influencers went to post those things, and yes, I got a little money myself, and I tried it out and okay, sure, But then all of a sudden, as soon as reel's got popular, I guess what they did. Oh, they pulled back the reins on that, and nobody gets it now. Now they're doing the same thing with threads. I'm not eligible for that. But yes, if you're noticing
people posting on threads, that's why, because they're getting a kickback. Anyway, I tell you all that because my Instagram is ruined now because not only is my stuff not being shown to people as much, but also when I go on Instagram, I don't know how this happened, but now it's not showing me posts from people. So when I go on to Instagram, now it shows me one post from someone I follow and it says you've seen all of your new posts from the past three days, move on, and
then it goes into like suggestions. My point is, look, you got I was trying to do the right thing. It did not work, and I think that anyone Now I don't have a huge following on these platforms. So some people make like an actual living on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube, and can you imagine losing that overnight your entire platform? And so you got to be careful with this stuff and think about it. Facebook is really controlling a lot of things out there. Instagram, Facebook,
and now threads. And people are all about threads because we know what happened with Twitter, and people are kind of, you know, moving away from that in certain circles, and so they're moving to threads because it's seen as a better alternative.
But guess what, Now you've.
Got three major information platforms all controlled by one company. You do something wrong, your loggin gets hacked and boom. It affects all three of these things. So that brings me my second part of this, which is the most common thing that people email me. They say, hey, my social media account was hacked, whether it's Facebook or Instagram, and they say, rich, can you help me get it back? And I really can There's not much I can do.
I mean, yes, I did a story once where we reached out to Facebook and they did help a woman get her account back, but they don't do that on a regular basis for me, especially not with the amount of emails I'm getting. So let me just explain really quickly how this happens, okay, and what you can do about it. Number one, What typically happens is you get an email or a notification that says there's been a problem with your account and you need to log in
here and fix it. And you go, oh, no, I don't want to lose all my pictures from that I posted over the past ten years. You log in and all of a sudden you realize that was totally bogus.
And so what you just.
Did was hand over your username and your password to hackers. And what do they do. They immediately go and take over your account. They change your email address, they change your password, they might even change other information on your account. They start sending out scams messages to all of your followers trying to get them into crypto scams, whatever, and you can't get back in. So the official way to get back in if this ever happens to you is
Instagram slash hacked and Facebook dot com slash hacked. That doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna work. It's a frustrating process. I've talked to many people who go through it, and it takes a long time.
I'm not kidding. It's almost like you are.
A one of those you know, if you're hijacked or whatever, Like if you're yes, like you're a hostage. You have to literally hold up like a newspaper with like your ID and the date today's date, to like have them prove that it's you to get your account back. It's
pretty wild. So I'm telling you all of this because I need you to set up two factor authentication two day for both your Instagram and your Facebook accounts that will protect you because let's say you mistakenly clicked one of these links and you hand over your username and password, they will get this thing that says, oh, now give us that two factor code, and you're gonna get a message that says, hey, did you just log in from Russia? And you're gonna go no, and then you'll be like, oh, okay,
I just totally got taken. And the thing is it will save you in that moment. Now you need to go and change your password and all that stuff, but at least you'll be saved from your account getting hacked. So do that today. And do not use the same password on different accounts.
Please.
I've said this over and over, and the reason I'm telling you this is because what they're gonna do is they're going to take that password and use their name. You just hand it over, and they're going to try on all the other popular accounts out there. So now you're gonna get hacked across other accounts because you reuse that password. Please use a password manager, set up two factor authentication. If you take nothing else away from me today.
On this show.
Those are the two most important things, because all of this frustration can be solved so easily. And I'm not saying these situations are perfect. These protections, but in ninety nine percent of the circumstances. They will protect you. So try it out. Please set it up, and please do not reuse the same passwords. Apple has a new passwords app and iosaighteen Bitwarden is free, and I also like
dash Lane as well. Use one of those to set up your passwords and your two factors, and you will be a much happier person and you don't have to deal with all this stuff now.
I don't know. For me, I don't know what I'm gonna do.
Hopefully one day my account will come back to one hundred percent, but right now it's kind of sad.
All right.
Coming up on today's show, I'm gonna tell you about Samsung's new affordable smartphone. I'll tell you about that, and we're gonna take your calls. You're up next at eighty 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. My name is rich d'muro and you are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Producer Adam came up with the term for those things that people share online, the bogus uh you know, disclaimers, misclaimers. It's like a combination of misinformation and disclaimer smart uh.
Rich on tech dot.
Tv is the website to go to if you haven't signed up for my newsletter, do that so you can get all the stuff that Facebook and Instagram.
Won't show you. Let's go to Arnold in Rancho Kukumonga Arnold drawn.
With Rich good One. Hey, I recently added about six or seven apps to my phone, and all of a suddenly I'm getting this. When I try to take a picture or do I just log in, I get this, A game pops up or an AD pops up, and I can't stop it, killing me, driving me crazy.
That is that is really annoying. Okay, so a couple of things. What did you want to install the apps?
I've tried to uninstall a few of them, but I haven't done them all yet. And I saw some instruction on the internet about going into safe mode and uninstalling them first or something. But you know what, yeah, and you know, you know, you know, I tried Google setting settings. I just have had no success.
Okay.
Now the other thing is are these coming up from apps or are they coming up as Chrome notifications, because that's that could be a difference. Like if they're popping up if it's a Chrome kind of browser, that could be a an app that you said, yes, i'll take notifications when you're browsing the web, and next thing you know, it's sending you all these notifications that look like, so what does the screen look like?
That's that's popping up.
The game will come up like you know, the last you want to install it, or just will be an advertisement for what you know, just just advertising whatever, financial hotels, travel, whatever.
So frustrating when I.
First check in, you know that I'm trying to take a quick quota.
They said, yeah, okay, well, first thing you do, I'll tell you. I'll tell you all the steps that I would do. Okay, So first things first, you got to go through and uninstall all these apps that you install to get rid of them. And you don't need to do it in safe mode. You should be fine with just uninstalling them. So go into Google Play or just find the apps in your in your drawer and just uninstalled.
Or actually I would just you know, just go into Google Play and look at a list of all of your apps and then uninstall them from there, or or go into your app drawer, whatever you want to do. Once you do that, restart your phone see if it happens again. If it's still happening, then something else got installed. So make sure you're looking for all the apps on
your phone that maybe it's side installed another app. And then you probably want to go into Chrome and if it's served up from Chrome, I would clear all of your browsing data. So go into Chrome, go into your settings. It says delete browsing data, and I would do you know, all time, and I would.
Just get rid of all that.
So that will get rid of it'll reset all the cookies, the cash, everything, the history, any of those pop ups that are happening, and that should that should fix it. But if it doesn't again. Once you're done with all these steps, restart your phone after each step. Then the next thing I would do is go into your settings. On the Samsung, they've actually have a malware scanner built in, so go into the settings and then under Device care,
scroll all the way down. It says, let's see whereas I say app protection and then it says turn on app protection to stay safe from malware and other suspicious activity. Turn that you can turn that on and it's going to scan for any issues, and if it doesn't find anything, the next thing I would like you to do is to download an app called malware Bytes. Malware Bytes does have a malware scanner in it as well, and you can do that. But I think between those steps you
don't need to do all of those steps. I would just do them in the order I mentioned them, and once you do them in that order, one of those things should take care of it.
I have a feeling this is.
Being served up by a rogue website that you visited on Chrome and it is now delivering Chrome notification pop ups at that look like ads, and I think that's what's happening. So thanks for the call today, Arnold. Very very frustrating trying to take a picture and it's just not really cooperating. Speaking of Samsung, they've got a new phone.
It's called the S twenty four FE. This used to be short for Fan Edition, so basically this is kind of a full featured Samsung Galaxy, but at a cheaper price, so more expensive this year it's six hundred and fifty dollars, but don't buy it at that price.
Do not buy it at that price.
It will go on sale, So do not pay six hundred and fifty dollars to this phone. But it's got great feature It's got a six point seven inch screen, it's got a bigger battery than last year. It's got a fifty megapixel wide angle lens, got an eight megapixel telephoto with three times optical. It's got an ultra wide and a ten megapixel selfie. The big thing that Samsung is promoting on this phone is that it's got AI
built in from day one. We all know that the AI features on the newest iPhones are delayed, so Samsung is using that to their advantage, saying, hey, we've.
Got AI right now.
And I did take this phone out last night take some pictures at the pumpkin patch, and I am impressed with the pictures. I thought the pictures were actually pretty good. So if you're looking for a relatively inexpensive phone compared to some of the ultras out there, the Samsung Galaxy fe not a bad deal.
Check it out brand new. I'm not even sure what day it's shipping.
Let's see beginning of over third eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up, we're gonna talk to Scott Stein of c neet about augmented reality glasses.
This is rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. So this week, U meta man, we're talking a lot about Facebook. This week they had their event called Meta Connect. This is when they show off all of their new products and features and things like that. And uh, the big headline was that they came out with these augmented reality glasses they call Oriyan.
You can't buy them.
They cost anywhere from like a thousand to ten thousand dollars. They are prototype, but they showed a whole bunch of people put them on and it's almost like a holographic display when you look through them. So I think what's interesting here is that Snapchat came out with augmented reality glasses last week and now Meta this week. And when we see two major companies doing stuff like this, we realize that this is happening. Here to talk about it is Scott Stein from CNET. He covers this stuff for
a living there. So tell me first about these Orion glasses, like, was it the future or what?
Well, it's the future where.
I think things need to go. You know, it's basically like the convergence point. So yes, but it reminded me a bit of vision pro in the sense that you see a lot of pieces coming together from the landscape, but not necessarily in the form that it needs to be. Vision Pro, I think is in terms of size and the bulkiness, but Orion is in terms of just even producing it. You know, that's the right size, but the cost and the software and even the resolution aren't there yet.
And what were you able to do? Like what was the demo that you saw?
Yeah, so I got through about forty five minutes of stuff, and a lot of it kind of felt some of us felt like vision pro in the sense that you've never used that before, where there's a grid of apps and I used eye tracking to locate the app. But what was interesting is to do pinch gestures to open the apps. I didn't use any cameras in front of me. I used a wristband that I wore that used EMG, which is a type of neural input sensor that can
check electrical impulses and turn them into gesture awareness. So I would tap it to open the app. Then I would look, you know, look at a simulated incoming call that I would answer that they set up in the room where somebody was actually talking to me, but it wasn't you know, like live and out there in the world. And watch some videos. I got to play some games that were kind of like VR games where I tilted my head and use my eyes to control where the
ship was shooting and use my fingers to shoot. And played the three D ping pong where we were standing across the table and I was, you know, playing with someone else, one of the other team members, using my
hand to hit the paddle. And you know, those are kind of like VR, kind of like AR mixed reality things that have been out there, but the fact that they're happening on wireless glasses that are that small, uh, with a with a really good viewing area and that type of wristband that's really new.
So and just a quick refresher explain what augmented reality is versus virtual reality.
Yeah, so virtual reality is something where the whole world is blocked off and you're inside a three D you know landscape like a like an Oculus quest Meta quest that's out there, and augmented reality is the idea of putting that into the real world and seeing things that exist in overlaid or you know, three D or hovering into the real world. And some of that's already available now. When you see mixed reality headsets like the vision pro requests three, they use cameras that show you the real
world and then layer it. What these glasses do and AR headsets do is they actually have transparent lenses, so you are seeing the real world, but it's giving this ghostly layer of what you know when Bark Zuckerberg called holograms, but they're basically that you know, three D display tech, but without blocking out the real world.
Okay, so that's interesting because you know Zuckerberg used this holographic description Snapchat. I don't believe said the word holographic. I was at that event and I tried those on and you did as well. What did you think the difference was?
Like?
Was the you know who did this better?
Totally similar concept. The difference is in a lot of the nuances, you know, Snapchat viewing area is much narrower. You probably know it is like you can see areas of your viewing area where the three D effects you know, kind of cut off.
Yeah, it's like a postage stamp in the middle of the screen. Like it's like postage stamp in the middle of the screen. Imagine that's where the overlay area is. Yeah, it's like tall but very narrow. Med is is much better.
You did not see those edges, although also Metta had demos that you know, cleverly show things that are you know, in your area and not trying to overlap, almost like the original Apple watchspases. You know that we're designed well, you don't see the border as much, but you know still it's wide seventy degrees, which.
Is what it is.
Is actually less wide than what you have on a VR headset, which already feels a bit like a scuba mask. So it's not that it's your entire area, but it's close enough that you don't see that cutoff point. And the resolution was actually a little bit lower than stuff I've been used to, and Meta admitted that, you know, it was totally fine for icons and videos and stuff, but nowhere near where you'd want to watch a movie in it, you know, like something like Apple Vision pro
is like a cinema quality experience. This is not that it's not even aiming to be. Well, it is aiming to be, but it's not there yet. They're talking about having to improve the resolution, but it.
Will get there.
And I think at this point, and you can you can tell me what you think, but I think we've reached the tipping point now where, like I said, we have two major companies working on this and getting it to a really great demo in a small kind of form factor. The technology is just going to continue to evolve.
So I do believe that we will be walking down the street with sunglasses or glasses that do have the heads up display that tell us you know, who's calling in the corner, the music that you're playing, what you're listening to, identify that plant that you're looking at.
Do you think that's going to be a reality.
Yeah, I think so. I think it's only a matter of whether you choose to have it personally, kind of like when smart watches came out, some people wanted them, some people didn't. Or the battery life, you know, the battery life and the power and how you connect to it met is using this processor puck kind of like a little computer. It's kind of like a stand in for a phone, you know, but phones, to me, that's what it is. Phones right now, you know, already have
lower battery life than many would like. And you want to think about connecting something like glasses, but there's no protocol, there's no system for that yet from either Google or Apple. And I feel like we're seeing these glasses trying to figure it out before maybe in the future we have phones that are more powerful that are able to handle that. And yeah, but I think it's I've seen it for years, so I kind of I've always believed that it's possible.
But you're right, we're seeing now that it is happening, and I think that's that's a real turning point where they're putting it together. They're showing all the pieces and yeah, we didn't think we'd wear wireless eyebuds, all of us, and we didn't think we'd wear smart watches and that happened too.
Yeah, and it is interesting because you mentioned the protocol, like, yeah, of course Google, Android, Apple, they would love to have a way for these glasses to interact so they can run all the processing on the phone and the glasses are just sort of a display. But of course these tech companies like Meta especially would love to have this takeover, you know, independent of something like iOS or Android, because that would be a win for them.
Yeah, and I see a similarity there between Snap Spectacles and Meta Orion and that they're both companies will you know that have phone apps that have that don't have their own over the OS ecosystem, but are trying to find ways to drive stuff. Met is a lot bigger and has a lot more pieces to that puzzle. But yeah, that's exactly it. And I feel like that still needs to be solved, like you know, use vision pro or questadsets and things at home because they can't be phones.
They can't go around outside for a variety of reasons. And Orian the demo was indoors. It was all on a self contained network. But in the future, when you wear it around, it will have to be like a phone, or it'll have to learn how to navigate that same you know landscape. Qualcomm's been trying to solve those things too, you know, in the weeds lurking around through all of these products, and that's been a sign of you know those aspirations.
All right, Scott, we're gonna leave it there.
Thanks so much for joining me today, Scott Stein at cnet. He's been covering VR and AR for a while now, so if you want to read up on all that stuff, jets Scott on social media. Scott, thanks so much for joining me today. Hey, thank you, rich all right, great day. And by the way, little little trivia, me and Scott. I think we went to the same magic store growing up, right, the mecha magic?
Did you I know about the one I did go? Where was mecha magic?
Mecha Magic? I think it was like in like somewhere in New Jersey. I feel like that's for anyway it was. It was a while ago, amazing. I went to Ron Joe's and I went to Tannin's. But now I'm gonna have to look out for look up, to look up for yours, look up Mecha Magic. I think it was in Bloomfield, New Jersey. I think anyway here and oh my god.
Wish it was still open. Oh no, I never went there.
Okay, that's a shame.
I wish I had.
Thanks, Scott, appreciate it all right.
Eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I knew Scott was into magic. I had a feeling because he's in New Jersey that we went to the same but I guess not eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
More of your calls right up next, Let's go to Diana in Torrance. What can I help you with?
Thank you so much for taking my call. And I had called in a while back to your show with a question about how to log in remotely and screenshare from my Max to other computers, and you helped me with a great suggestion, which was team viewer.
Great.
We'll leave the call right there. Thank you, No says kidding. Now you're having a problem with it.
Well, it worked, you know. I figured it out without too much trouble, and I got it working, and it was working great for a while, like maybe a month or two, and then all of a sudden, one day it started just logging me out after five minutes with seemingly no explanation, and so I couldn't see I thought
it just became like glitchy or flaky. And then I have different devices, different computers and iPhones, and iPads that I used to do this, and then I caught, like on one of the devices a message that said something like, oh, you're using too much, which I'm not. I'm just using it either sometimes they do some streaming or else I'm
helping my parents troubleshoot their computers. And so since I'm trying to use the free license, I don't even begin to know how to get help for this, or how to how or why my account got flagged like this.
Yeah.
So, so the way that Team Viewer works is it is, you know, it's kind of a freemium thing, so they do have you know, their main business is obviously selling this to people who pay them, right, and that's how they make it and survive and all that good stuff. But then they give away a free version for personal use. Now I think, you know what happens is there must be a limit on the free use because they don't want people that run companies using this for their company,
because then why pay for it. Ever, so I think that they must have some sort of algorithm in place that tells them, Okay, we see this person logged in every day or every you know whatever, and we're using it this much and so we will flag those accounts. It's probably an automatic thing that happens just to kind of protect the business model. So you could try to I don't know what the service is like through them, to get in touch with them and say, hey, you know, I'm using this personally.
How many hours a day are you using this? You think.
It was well, not not a regular not consistently in a long period of time every day, but some on some days I might use it for quite a while, and then it might be you know, days in between when I use it, So it's not it was not on a consistent basis or anything.
Okay, but I but I did have.
Like various different devices I would try to connect to.
Yeah, and you know, so I think I think what's happening is you're just flagging their systems. So you can try to get in touch with them and appeal and say, hey, look, you know, i'm personal I'm just using this to do this and whatever. The other thing you can do is try a different program, which is uh, it's see. The problem is, I think it's a little bit more complicated
to set this up. There's one called rust Desk, and it is completely free, but I think that this is a little bit more complicated because it looks like you have to self host with like your own server, which I think is is way too complicated for you know, the average person set up. I think that's what you know, that's that's the problem with all of these systems is that there needs to be like a conduit for it
to go through. And I think that that, you know, there is a cost involved for this company anytime you're on it. So the other thing you can do is, depending on what you're trying to do, there is Chrome Remote Desktop, and so that one is a lot easier. It's basically a very quick, easy installation, So I think that might be a good place to just check and see if that works for you. Because this is free and it basically lets you access your computer, you know,
through a phone, a tablet or another computer. So that is another thing that I would look at. And it's pretty simple. It works on iOS or Android, and it's like very very simple. That's called Google Chrome Remote Desktop and there are no I don't even think they have a paid plan for that one. I think it's just completely free. So I would check those Diana and otherwise, So again start with appealing like go on the customer service with Team Viewer. See what they say, like, hey, okay,
your account got flag. Explain to them if you can do it might be like a ticket like an email system. That's what I'm guessing. And then if that doesn't work, you can't really get that to work again.
The alternative is rust desk.
You might also want to pay, like there's so many companies like go to my PC and all these other companies that you know, you can pay for any desk. I mean, there's many many paid services here. You might even pay for Team Viewer if you feel like it's worth it. But those are some of the big ones. But Chrome Remote Desktop is another alternative that you may want to look into. Thanks for call Diana, appreciate it. In torrents today, let's see oh lgtvs ads on the screen.
Oh my gosh, we cannot escape advertising. It's everywhere on our smart devices. So now LG Premium O led TVs are showing people ads screen full screen screensaver ads on their smart TVs. The ad appears before the typical screen saver starts. The ads are for various things, could be LG zoned services, other partners You could disable this by
going into the TV settings. There's a little switch that says don't show screensaver ads, but we are seeing these everywhere Amazon, Google, Roku, Apple TV is really the last place where there's not a lot of home screen ads.
Worst comes to worst. You can also just pull your TV.
Out from the internet if you don't need that smart TV functionality, you know, turn off that Wi Fi or take it out of the internet. Eighty eight rich one o one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one. We're Rich on Tech right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
Welcome back to the show.
Phone lines are open at eight eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up in the show, We've still got some great guests. We're gonna talk about flying air taxis. I don't know if you watched The Jetsons like I did when I was a kid, but I've dreamed of a flying car of course, back to the future. I mean, who doesn't want this, Well, probably a lot of people, but I do. I mean, how many times have I been stuck in traffic and I'm just like
I would love to fly over this. Uh, that reality is actually getting closer than you might think. We're going to talk to a guest about that. Uh, and later in the show, we're gonna talk about social media and kids and all the issues that they have with that. You know, I'm always testing something, by the way, this
week a couple of new products. It's honey, I you know, I do my job at KTLA, so I'm a tech reporter here in Los Angeles on the rate on the TV station, and then when I go home, it's like all these boxes to open and like, you know, test out these products, set them up this and that. So this week a couple of products I was testing. First off, the new Google TV streaming box. So you know you've got streaming boxes from Roku, You've got Apple TV, You've got Fire TV is that it Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV,
and then you've got all the smart TVs. But then Google used to have like a Chrome cast and the streaming boxes or streaming dongles. Now they've got like a streaming box. It's a hundred bucks and it's pretty cool. It looks just like Google TV. If you've been using that, I know, my TV has Google TV built in, but this is like in a box that's supposed to be a little bit more powerful, a little bit better. But I thought was so funny when I set this thing up. Well,
number one, there's no HDMI cable. First thing I noticed, I'm like, where's the HMI cable. I can't connect this thing to the TV. So I had to pull the HDMI cable for my Apple TV, which is black, and the the little Google TV is like a cream color, so it just completely does not match. Like Google, you should have included if you're gonna make a device that's not like a standard color like, you should include the
HDMI cable. So people like me, I could see this box and it like really bugs me that one of the cables coming out of the back is black and one is white, and so it's just like this weird kind of like it needs to you know, it needs to blend in anyway. But I'm not the only person that noticed it didn't come with an HDMI cable. A
lot of people are commenting about that online. But the thing that I thought was really interesting is that you go through all this hassle of getting like a streamer, like a streaming box, and then what do I find on it? They've got this new thing called Google TV free Play, and it's like one hundred and fifty channels of like free stuff you can watch. But the best part is that's nothing new. The best part is they've made it so you can flip through the channels, just
like an old school TV. So we've come completely full circle of you know how you sit in front of your TV and you can't find anything to watch. You go through all this hassle of getting like a streamer, like a streaming box, and then what do I find on it?
They've got this new thing called Google TV.
Free Play, and it's like one hundred and fifty channels of like free stuff you can watch. But the best part is that's nothing new. The best part is they've made it so you can flip through the channels, just
like an old school TV. So we've come completely full circle of you know how you sit in front of your TV and you can't find anything to watch, and you don't want to start stuff on Netflix because then it goes into that little bar of like, oh you just watch this, like continue watching You're like, no, I didn't, I just just chose like to watch a trailer for that. So sometimes you just want stuff playing in the background. Just like old school TV, right when you got home,
used to just turn on the TV. It played stuff. It just played forever, whether it was a news or you know, yeah see Adam knows. But with this streaming stuff, you can't just come home and like turn on the TV. You have to like use that brain power to like select what do I want to watch? And you're not gonna put like your Netflix show that you're binging on in the background. You want something like news or sports or whatever just like playing. And now anyway, so now
you can do that. So it's got all these channels and I was flipping through and it was just so cool because I was like, you can press up and down on the remote and just flip through all these they're streaming, they're not coming in through an antenna or cable. They're just free. And so what did I land on? Supermarket Sweep? I was watching a Supermarket Sweep from like I don't know how many twenty years ago when was that show on?
But as a kid, that show was so fun.
You know, they're running through that grocery store, pulling all these I always wondered there must have been a rule in that show where you couldn't just like sweep the stuff off the shelf into your cart, like with a big scoop of a hand, because people didn't do that. They like pick stuff off the shelves and like put it in the basket, So there must have been a
rule for that. But the thing is that these old shows have like a new life because people just want stuff on in the background, and so they've got like channels that show like, you know, all the old you know, late night TV shows, Johnny Carson. They have shows channels that just show like crime dramas the whole time. So it's pretty interesting.
Anyway.
That's called Google TV free Play. It's really I mean, this box is fine. I think that the Google stuff is really cool. Apparently two hundred and seventy million people use Google TV every month. So if you're looking for a new kind of like streaming streaming box that's a little different from the Apple TV, the Roku, the fire TV, this is a nice alternative.
Also.
The other thing I liked is it has a find my Remote button on the back, so you lose the remote and the seat cushions, you go up to the actual streaming box.
Theer's a button on the back of it.
You press it and the remote makes a sound, which you know, some of the other things do that as well, but that's that's the other cool feature. I thought you could also make screen art with AI. It's really good at like finding movies and stuff with AI. So if you want like a really cutting edge kind of like I don't know, streaming system, I think Google's doing a
good job. The other thing I'm testing, we often will get a cat as a foster, and so I said, look, we usually get kittens that if like nor and they're messy and they take over your whole house, and there's usually like a couple of them, like two three kittens that you're getting at a time. Well, this company, Nakasa Nia Casa. I've always been fascinated with this idea because I don't really want a cat, but I like the
idea of cats, and my kids love cats. But the litter box is always like such an issue, right you got because who's end up who ends up cleaning the litter box?
Like me?
Whenever we have these you're really on with this uh things today? Yes, Okay, Adam doesn't talk to me. He only talks me through the ringing of that bell.
Anyway.
So I've been I've had this thing to set up for like a couple of months now, and I've been waiting for the right opportunity to test out this self cleaning litter box.
And maybe you've seen them.
They have some that like you put the litter in and they rotate around to scoop out, you know, whatever the cat does in there. This one actually kind of sits flat, like an open which they say the cats like better because they can see around the box when
they're going to the bathroom. And then as soon as they're done, you know, it kind of feels the weight of the cat jump in there, and a couple of minutes later, it kind of turns upwards, almost like those like rides at the carnival, like those boats, you know, like go back and forth. It does that, and it gets all the droppings like into this little catch area like a little tray, and so you can go like two weeks without cleaning the kitty.
Letter.
I mean, we'll see, I'm testing it, we'll see, But already the cat used it once today and as soon as the cat jumped out, the litter cleaned itself. You could hear a little stuff like falling into the bottom. I thought that was pretty cool. Not cheap this one is. It looks like it's currently on sale for about five hundred bucks. So that's probably what keeps most people from saying, oh, this would be a great thing to have in my house.
But when you do that math over time, I mean, this is like a this is like again the stuff that we imagined right that would be in the future, like your litter box would clean itself. We actually have that now. But a lot of this stuff is just you know, it's so prohibitively expensive for most people that they don't get it. But I do know people that have, like I think the whisker is the other one, the one that rotates, and people who have.
These things absolutely love them.
So anyway, the cat we got, by the way, is an adult cat, and it was like a stray that they found, and they're like, be very gentle with it. It's gonna be you know, skittish and this and that. This cat is like it's like a dog. It follows you around the house and it just literally is just like the happiest little cat I've ever seen. And by the way, it's like small, it's like fully grown, but
it's small. So my entire family are cat people. They we literally we have a Telegram family group chat, and ninety nine percent of the telegram messages are just my family taking pictures of their cats doing stuff. And I'm like, really anyway, and it's cute, but you know, you have to be into that stuff. If you woke up and you found that your Kespersky anti virus on your computer was replaced with a new program called ultra AV, well you're not alone.
All of a sudden.
Earlier this month, people found that this program just changed names. The Kespersky uninstalled itself and installed this new program called ultra AV, and people were like what they were concerned. They were confused, as many people are in general, wondering if this was malware. And sure enough, Ultra av purchased the business from Kespersky. Because I don't if you remember, we talked about this on the show a while back,
the US banned Kespersky because of its Russian origins. I guess it's based over in Russia, and they said, no, they can't have that on us.
Computers.
I mean, we saw what happened with CrowdStrike, you know where that was a mistake, and look how many computers it took down. Imagine if a company wanted to take down computers in the US. And you know, I'm not saying that Kespersky is nefarious in any way, shape or form, but if they wanted to be, they could because they're on a lot of computers.
A lot of programs could do that.
So anyway, so this was purchased by a company called Pango Group. They have VPN brands as well, and people were like, well, you never told us you were going to do this, and Pango.
Said, yeah, we did.
We notified you like September fifth, starting via email, in app alerts, website notices, and of course what do you do. You ignore all that stuff until you know this happens. And they're like, wait a second. What So if you have ultra av I can't vouch for it. I can't tell you if it's good or bad. But if you had a subscription with Kesperski, that's what happened, and your subscription will follow over, so you will get charged by this new company when your subscription is up.
What I personally would do is ditch it all together. You know, let your.
Subscription go, like just cancel it and then you know, let the let the subscription run out, and then you know, most people say you can pretty much use the Windows Defender built into Windows Microsoft Defender and that should be just fine. As long as you keep that up to date inactive, you should be okay. The bigger issue these days is really phishing. I mean viruses in malware and ransomware.
Of course, have a backup of your computer, but the main way people are tricked these days is really through phishing emails, text messages. So that's what you need to be on the lookout for to not get tricked. Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. When we come back, I'll take some more of your calls, some of your emails, and I'll tell you why Disney the Free Ride is over,
Disney Plus cracking down on password sharing. I'll explain how they're doing it and if your college student will be able to watch outside your household.
This is rich On Tech. Let's go to Robert in Alhambra. Robert, you're on with.
Rich Hey, thanks you kicking to that call, Rich, I'm looking for a new phone. I'd like something that can open and close apps with the voice commands and make phone calls.
Okay, so you're you're interested in all the in the voice command aspect.
Yes, I'm visually impairied.
Okay, what do you have right now?
Sam sum?
Okay? And what don't you like about? It doesn't and not have the features and.
The opening closing the apps is not very good.
Okay.
I mean, I know you know the answer that I have is going to be pretty stereotypical. But I think the iPhone does a great job with the with the accessibility features.
I really do. Have you looked into that?
No?
Really?
Yeah, I mean I I think that the They've got a feature called like voiceover, which can read pretty much anything on your screen. They've got Siri and you can you can basically program this thing to do whatever you need it to do. When it comes to accessibility, Like if you go into the accessibility section of the iPhone, there are just so many features.
Now.
I think the pixel is pretty good too. I think Google is doing a good job. But I really think that Apple is kind of like a leader in this area. I mean, I'm looking okay. So for vision, you said, visually impaired vision's got. They've got voiceover, which will pretty
much read anything on your screen. They've also got live recognition, so it will literally detect what you're pointing your phone at, so it'll tell you like what you're you know, if that's a door, if that's a you know, walkway, whatever it is. I mean, just there's so many options just in this one voiceover area, speech, Braille recognition, audio commands, rotor activities, typing, navigation style, navigate images, large cursor. I mean, there's so many that's just voiceover.
Then you've got.
Zoom to make the screen a lot bigger display in text size, and it's got I mean, Robert, I'm telling you the the options you have in here, I really think are gonna help you out motion. You can reduce motion spoken content, you can speak pretty much anything that's on the screen. Then you've got eye tracking that's a brand new feature in iOS eighteen, so you can actually, if your mobility impaired, you can actually use your eyes
to control the screen without touching the screen. That is a feature that you know, people accessibility worlds have been talking about and working on for years and it's just now built into the iPhone. That's pretty amazing. There's hearing, there's all kinds of sound recognition. So if you want your phone to tell you when you know there is a smoke alarm going off or some sort of other sound that it can recognize, it will tell you that
with a visual notification on there. So I think that the iPhone is probably going to be the best way to go now the model number. If you're just using this for kind of day to day stuff, I don't think you necessarily need the iPhone sixteen. They do sell other versions of this phone right now, officially from Apple.
You can get the iPhone SE, the iPhone fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen.
So I would say, if you're just needing like a basic phone, the iPhone fourteen is going to be fine. It's a couple of years old, and it's going to be, you know, just a little bit cheaper than the current phone. Let's see how much are they selling that for. Uh, it's going to be six hundred dollars for the iPhone fourteen. So if you want to, I wouldn't go with the iPhone SE right now. That's kind of the one that
still has the home button on it. The problem with the iPhone se is that it's kind of aging out of the software updates, so it's not going to get a software update after probably not after this year, I'm guessing. So it's not going to last you very long. So I would go with the fourteen six hundred dollars. I think Robert set up those features. If you need someone to kind of help you set up those features, I really think it's going to be a way better situation than what you've got right now.
So and I think Samsung does a good job.
I just I think that from what I see and hear from Apple, Like when I go to Apple events, they actually make a point of talking about the accessibility features. Like they make a point of saying, here's what we are actively doing to make these devices easier for people of all abilities to use. And they're always thinking about this stuff. I mean the the not just the iPhone, but the Apple Watch and the I mean they just added the ability to use air pods as hearing aids, the air pods pros two.
So I mean, imagine all the people.
That already have AirPods out there that can now just turn them into hearing aids when this software update hits.
It has not hit just yet.
I mean, these are really incredible things that're they're pushing forward. And I think that Google, I think, does a lot of stuff for accessibility.
I don't hear about it as much through Google, but.
I think that when I go to their events, it's definitely a topic that they are. You know, it's prevalent at the events as well, Like they've had people on stage that talk about it. They've had special guests, and they do show how they're helping along people, you know, varying.
Abilities use their devices as well. But I think the.
iPhone is going to have the widest ranging features and also if you need help, you can go to an Apple store and they will be happy to help you walk you through some of these features. Thanks for the call today, Robert eighty to eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up, we're going to talk to some from Joby Aviation. They are creating an electric air taxi. Hear all about
how you can soar over traffic coming soon right here. Next, here's a topic I've been thinking about ever since I watched The Jetsons as a kid flying cars. Now, we're not there just yet, but a new flying air taxi might be the next best thing. A startup named Jobi is working on a four seater vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that source above traffic. Recently, it was on display in LA and I talked to their chief product officer, Eric Allison about it.
So Joby is a company that's developing a vertical takeoff and landing all electric air taxi and also developing a service that will be able to deliver that air taxi to you anywhere you.
Want to an app on your iPhone. Okay, well let's break it down. So first off, yeah, give me the idea of this kind of aircraft versus a typical plane or helicopter.
So our aircraft is uses new technology, the technology of batteries, electric motors, high performance electronics to be able to take up and land vertically like a helicopter, but then transition to forward flight like a regular airplane. So but that gets us the flexibility of a helicopter with the efficiency of an airplane. Then what it lets you do as well is do all that with low noise. So we bring all that together basically to have high efficiency, have
low noise, great operating costs. To make air taxis something that people have wanted to do for a really long time actually possible in the very near term.
So what is the benefit of an air taxi?
So our air taxi lets you wherever you are. You can open up your phone in with one of our partners like Uber or Delta, select where you are, and then basically get a ride to where you want to go. But instead of being stuck in traffic, which I know that consumers in LA get stuck on average to what like one hundred hours I think of traffic per year you're sitting in you can just fly through the air at up to two hundred.
Miles an hour.
So a trip that might take an hour and a half to go from someplace like downtown LA to lax could take seven or eight minutes and set so freeze you from the traffic in a way that you just can't right now with any other technology.
Yeah.
So there will be landing designated takeoff and landing areas, so we call them skyports or verteports, basically places where the aircraft can take off and land just kind of like a heliport would be with the old technology of helicopters, And what we'll do is use rideshare to connect you with wherever you are to those verteports, and then from wherever the kind of remote vertiport is to where you want to be. So it's an end to end journey, but it's going to be through a couple of different
vehicles depending on how close you are. If you can walk or bike or something to that verteport.
And so tell them about the aircraft itself. I mean, you said it's electric, you said it's quiet. What else do we need to know? It looks pretty simple.
Yeah, So it's four seats, so four passenger seats and one pilot, so it's operated by a commercially rated pilot. It can take off and land vert just like a helicopter. Right here in this configuration, the propellers are pointed up, but once it takes off, it transitions forward and those propellers come down and point forward just like a regular aircraft.
It can fly really quietly.
So if it was flying over here at about one thousand feet, which is like low even for a helicopter, it basical would be silent. You wouldn't hear it as it flies over and in takeoff and landing, we could have this conversation if the aircraft was three hundred feet away and we wouldn't have to raise our voices.
We did a demonstration flight last year in New York City.
Actually we flew off of the Lower Manhattan Heliport within a mayor press conference with the mayor there and just kind of did a little circuit around over the river.
And it was amazing that to.
See people's response because helicopter noises a real problem, and when places that actually have an option to use helicopters in a regular basis, people don't like.
The racket all right.
So I know the question that is on a lot of people's minds is safety.
How safe is something like this?
So that's what's really incredible about this new technology. So that what we've done is taken a new approach to how we design and build aircraft that actually lets us add in kind of unprecedented levels of redundancy and kind of architecture that really makes this kind of a remarkable machine.
So I'll give you an example of this.
So in our aircraft, there's not just one battery, there's four batteries, and each of those four batteries are completely independent, and they're hooked up to different motors in such a way that if you had a failure of one of
those batteries during flight, you could still operate safely. And then in the motors themselves, each motor is actually two motors that are combined together, and each of those two motors are driven by two different sets of electronics, and those electronics are driven by different battery.
When are we going to see something like this in a city like Los Angeles?
So we are hard at work.
We've got almost two thousand people at JOBI, the vast majority of which are.
Working on FA certifications.
So in order to launch commercially in the US, we have to be certified with the FAA, just.
Like any other commercially operated aircraft. We're working hard at that.
We publish a quarterly update basically on how we're doing relative to all the steps and certification.
It's a very long process.
That has a really high bar and so you know, we're we're happy to be going through it, but it's a lot of work.
Cost Obviously, you're not selling this to the general public, you're operating it.
But what can someone expect to pay for a ride in.
This so we think that we can launch at something like Uber black pricing per seat.
So that's our goal is to launch kind of in that range.
So kind of it's a you know, like a premium ride, so kind of for a depending on the trip, right, so kind of on a per mile basis, kind of Uber black like pricing per seat.
We think that as we are able to develop.
That network, get more verteports installed, kind of have more efficiency overall, and how we get filled more seats on demand, we'll be able to drive that price down more towards Uber x like pricing on a per seat basis as we get more and more volume of people using these types of aircraft for air taxis on a regular basis.
What's the range on this aircraft often? How long does it take to recharge?
So we are able to service flights for up to one hundred miles, so that's kind of the target max distance that will serve in terms of our flights. And then we actually have designed it to be rechargeable during the loading and off loading period of when we have this air taxi service operating, so you know, when it lands at the vertiport, whoever is in it will get out, and then more people will get in the pilot will
do their checks before they take off again. And we've designed an open specification actually that we call GEEKS, which is the Global Electric Aircraft System, that charging system actually that is actually a charging system designed explicitly for electric aircraft.
They're in an air taxi operation.
And if these were everywhere, what do you think the impact is on transportation?
So I think that's one of the most exciting things that if we think about just even taking starting to take a small dent out of the amount of traffic. You know, studies have shown that you just take a few percent of cars off the road, particularly during peak times, you actually start to see an overall benefit to the overall system.
I'm over and over and over again.
I think that for me, like the idea of being able to go to work, you know, go out for dinner and not be stuck in traffic. I mean, even in the best case scenario, if you matter how much you want to pay for ground transportation, if you're you know, going from here to Dodger Stadium or something on a Thursday evening, it's just going to take a really long time. And to have an option that I can do that in seven minutes or eight minutes instead of an hour and a half.
That's that's amazing.
And I think that it starts to change our relationship with mobility. It starts to change about how we think about moving around our cities, and I think it makes a world a better place.
So I'm really excited to see us launch.
You've taken test flights, I imagine.
Yeah, so we actually have flown I think it's over ten thousand miles of test flying so far on our prototype. So we have several prototypes that our facility up up in near Monterey, California. Marina is the airport that we
fly out of for our test flights. We actually have one of our airplanes up at Edwards Air Force Base just north of Palmdale, right here in the LA Region, where we're working with the Air Force on under an innovative program doing some test flying of one of our aircraft up there to show some of the utility for this new type of technology and a logistics context for the Air Force on a military base as well.
Have you flown in it? I have not.
All of our flights so far either remote a test pilot so far and I'm not a test pilot.
How would you describe How would they describe what it feels like? Does it feel like a helicopters? It feel like floating, It feels different than a helicopter.
It's just like a different type of a machine.
And so they love it, they want They are very excited to do lots more flying and we're really excited to have more people experience this as our system matures and as we move through that testing with the FAA to get to our full commercial launch.
Once again, that was Eric Allison of Joby giving us a glimpse into the future of urban transportation. The company is targeting a launch next year. And a bit of trivia for you. Joby Aviation was started by the same guy who created Joby Gorilla pods, those flexible mobile tripods for smartphones. I'm Rich Deimiro more Rich on Tech coming your way right after this, Jeff, you're on with Rich.
Yeah, thanks for taking the call. The reason I'm calling is we have a couple of us with several Apple
iOS devices in our household. One set of them on my account actually doesn't have any problems like the other one does, but my wife's account on both of iPhone and the iPad constantly need We've tried a lot of different things, but ultimately the only fix for our problem is to get the email to sync from Yahoo gmails okay, Icloud's okay, but constantly and battling why the the emails on the Yahoo emails on her iOS and Apple iPad and iPhone not always together, but at least one of
them will just not sink.
So delete, So delete an email from one of those devices and that's not deleted on the other one, or what's the problem.
Yeah, that as well as we just don't have the current you know, emails come through. It might be a day or two with the last one showing when we know that there's been other emails.
That's weird.
OK. The only thing for that is we've found so far as we go in to the settings for mail, delete the Yahoo account at it back in and then it's okay for a period of time, maybe a day or two, maybe a week or two. But we constantly have to do that, and I never have the problem she does. She has more read emails than I that are in I don't know if that's the reason, you know, I tend to delete them you know, read them to do something with them and delete them. But that's the
only real difference. We both had the same model iPads, iPhones and kind of you know, subscription or is this a whatever service we have with Yahoo?
Is this a Yahoo email address through Yahoo? Or is it through like cops or something like that.
No, through through Yeah?
Yeah, okay, Well look, I mean, you know, I was going to suggest deleting the emails and uh and readding them. That's usually the way that's going to work because sometimes these accounts, if they're they've been added a long time ago, you know, the protocol was different.
But it sounds like she's done that. When was the last time you.
Did that across Have you deleted them across all the different devices and then readded them?
Well, yeah, I just did last night, went through and deleted the Yahoo account from the iOS mail on the phone, and then about a half hour later did it to the iPad. So they're all thinking now right and then I stop, you know, okay, well look it will it'll eventually stop. It hasn't stopped thinking yet, but it seems like it will.
If I had a dollar for every time someone had a problem with Yahoo email, I don't know what the deal is, and they just revamped it and it's supposed to be better. I mean, I remember when Yahoo email is like, you know, it's really good, and now people just complain about it for some reason.
I don't know why.
But look, I think the easiest thing to do here in this situation, if you're not if it's not sinking properly, is to use the Yahoo app to to check the email. Is there a reason that she doesn't want to do that, because that would make it work for sure.
Well, we can except that the r that she uses both Gmail and the Yahoo as well as I do, and it's in one list that it's something with your calendar, and it's all in one list. And if you want to just say creative, you know, invite someone sends you an invite into Yahoo, it's a little more. I don't know if it's easier, but it's least consistent the way you do it, you know. Yeah, and it is the Gmail.
But yeah, that's we realize that's the possibility too, because going into the app, it's it's all we think.
So yeah, so the only other thing you could do is perhaps, I mean, I'm really trying to I don't.
There's no reason why this should not work.
I mean, if she's using the only other thing I can think of is that the way that her her mail is set up on the device. Are these recent devices? Are they older devices?
No, We've had them both for year or two.
Okay, so it's a recent yeah.
And the only thing I can think of is the background sinking is not working, like when she deletes an email, like the the mail app is just not like updating somehow, and that's you know, it's not sending the signal to Yahoo to say, hey, you know.
Get rid of this email or put this in this fold or whatever. Uh.
That's the only thing I can think of the other The only other thing I might say is if you can go into your Yahoo account and check to see if if there's like signed in devices or anything like that and get rid of any of those devices. And I'm trying to sign into my Yahoo account, I can't
seem to get the code that I need. But I would go into the like your Yahoo account and see if there's anything under like authorized devices, authorized applications, whatever it is you sometimes they call it permissions, third you know, third party permissions whatever, and just get rid of those
devices and see if that's messing it up. So there might be a section just go through all like kind of the settings on the Yahoo account and see if there's anything where you can get rid of old phones, get rid of old connected devices, and just see if that helps if you remove those, because one of those
might be messing it up as well. So otherwise, I mean, I would just suggest using the Yahoo mail account or the email app and seeing if that works, because there's no reason why this shouldn't sync to the email app on the iPhone or iOS devices. I mean, it's pretty straightforward imapp connection. The only other thing I would do is once you delete it off of all of the devices, like you said that, you have to delete it and reauthorize,
maybe restart the device and then at it again. That's the only other thing I can think of, But that's a that's an interesting one. And the good thing about the show, if someone else is happening that issue, they can email me and let me know Rich on tech dot tv hit contact Jeff.
Hopefully you figure that out.
But again, the backup is to use the Yahoo email app, and you know that's gonna work for sure, So that might be I know it's not ideal because it's nice to have all the emails in one list and all that stuff, but that's a surefire away around this issue. Let's go to Paully in uh Michigan. Polly, you're on with Rich.
Hey, Rich, you made me laugh about old school TV, and I was thinking, you don't have an old school television channel changer until you need vice scripts.
Oh my gosh, that's what like the the old like rotary knob. Are you talking like that used to pop off the TV?
Yeah, because the that's always frolks.
Oh my gosh, that's like that's really bringing it back. That's like, uh, you have to get up to change the channel, right you did?
Yeah?
Oh my gosh, that's that's like that's not like almost probably the beginning of my time.
I'm not sure.
Like I think my first memory was like the cable box like changer like that slid left and right. I don't remember that. No, anyway, that was really old school back in New Jersey. Maybe it was a Jersey thing. Anyway, what can I help you with, Polly.
I have a business and had a YouTube channel, and the YouTube removed it permanently. I'm just hoping you had some advice. They said it was dude to spam and hate speech or something like that, which they would give me no examples, and I appealed it. They denied it. I wonder if you had any advice, and they said, I can't have another channel again.
Oh my gosh, what did you do, Polly? What was your channel about.
Humming Bird theaters? What so devices?
Oh?
Come on, really, really, Polly, that is wild and nobody at YouTube would would they read your appeal?
And they still said no.
It sounded pretty automated when they denied the appeal too.
Hmm. Interesting.
Well, the only thing I can think of, so you log into YouTube and you've got nothing. You can't get in, got nothing, Okay. The only thing I can think of is you have to write a letter. Use AI write a letter, and you've got to send another appeal and tell them this is your channel, this is the content. The only thing I can think of is that you got hacked on this channel somehow and someone else did something on your behalf that you did not know about.
That's the only thing I can think of. But if you're running a Hummingbird YouTube channel and we're talking about hummingbird like feeders. You should be okay. You got to get that channel back, Polly. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you for another hour right here on rich on Tech. The website for the show rich on Tech dot tv. If you want links to anything I mentioned here,
hit the light bulb icon up at the top. This is show number ninety one and get links to anything I talk about on this week's show. If you want to send me an email, just go to rich on Tech dot TV. Hit contact. You can send an email there. I've got lots of emails, I've got lots of stories
to talk about, and lots of phone calls. I mean, I guess it's a good problem to have, but I can never make it through everything that I want to in a given week on this show because I try to prioritize you live callers like Rick in Thousand Oaks.
You're on with Rich Hi, I'm what I'm looking for is a program or an app that would sync with my bank so I can see sort of real time what my bank bounces. I know I could go online and look, but you know, we do still write checks and I hope that that, but have some way to manually enter a check in that I write and you know, the bank doesn't know about it till it hits them.
Oh yeah, like a budgeting Okay, so you're talking like more like a budgeting program.
Okay.
Well, I mean I'll tell you what I do. I just use a spreadsheet. I mean, that's the easiest way to do it. That's free and simple.
I mean it's like, you know, I tried that with Excel all But the problem I'm having is, you know, between my wife and I, we're making multiple ATM purchases a day. We just don't seem to use cash. And you know, you buy gas, you go out to lunch, you know, go to the doctor, there's cocaine. It's just and you know, it's just hundreds of dollars over a few days.
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what I do.
So there's two ways you could do this, and I do something kind of different that because I I'm not a fan of using my credit card, so I want to spend cash when possible because that way I can stay within budget.
And it sounds like that's what you're doing as well.
So what I do is I actually set up a separate debit card just for all those days to day expenditures. So I'm sure there's like an average of what you're spending on this stuff. You can put that into that debit card every week and then you don't have to track it as much. And what I do is my wife and I both we just know the balance every day.
So let's say that I want to buy a new shirt, and I look in this balance on this account, the special account that we have we call fun money personally, and if there's only you know, a ten dollars left in that account and the shirt that I want is thirty, well, guess what, I can't buy the shirt.
Now.
That's just a very simple example. Hopefully we keep enough in there where it's like you can do the things that you need to do. But that's what we're doing, is we're every single transaction. I don't have to monitor the day to day transactions of the cope at the doctor's office, the Jersey mics I get for lunch, whatever it is, because it's all coming out of that account
that we've kind of figured out. You know, I reassess every six months or so, how much do we spend on you know, eating out, how much do we spend on clothes, how much do we spend on this? And then you kind of put that amount in each week to this account. Now that kind of takes a whole
nother method, but it would definitely solve this problem. And because you're writing checks and doing all this stuff, that would be something when you write a check you can easily use the spreadsheet to take that out of your standard checking. Now that's just one simple way of doing it that I've come up with because again, none of the other methods for me would work, which is, I don't want to come to a giant credit card bill every month and sit down and be like, okay, now
how do I pay this? So that's what I've done. Now, there are budgeting apps out there. There are many many budgeting apps out there. I mean that, you know, there's Every Dollar by Dave Ramsey. There's a winnab which is you need a budget Rocket Money has I don't think they can. I don't think Rocket money lets you put in a check though, but really you need like a budgeting software. So I would say Every Dollar's probably going to be something that works for you. But it's like
kind of a paid it's like a freemium thing. I've tried that you need a budget. I don't really, it's way too complicated for me. And I'll be honest, I just every time this happens, I just keep going back to the spreadsheet and that's what I use over and over the spreadsheet with that the method I just told you about. I call it a reverse credit card because basically you're putting money in before you spend it.
But have you heard of any of those programs I mentioned?
I have not, But it's just something I've been frustrated with and trying to figure out a way. And I thought, and it hurts me, like you know, if it's sinkd Very often I would see a really pretty accurate thing, you know, it's on my phone or something. But then I'm kind of worried about you know what if I'm walking into a Starbucks when it starts thinking or something. Yeah, you know that it might be you know a security.
Issue, right, Well, yeah, it's if it's.
On three times a day with my bank, that's a lot of activity.
Yeah, and it is. And most of these things, don't you know, they they sink sort of like on demand. You know, like if I if I go into like let's say Rocket Money or something like that, it's not SYNCD in the background. It's like sinking when you open the app. I think for that reason also, I think they have to pay. There's like a third party company like plaid is typically the company that connects your bank to these apps. And I think that, of course that's
not a free service. These these apps have to pay every time they ping that service. So now, what would be nice if your bank lets you do this, You know, if your bank, because that's what most people are doing, is they're checking their balance on their debit card and then they spend, right, So it'd be nice if you can add that check into the the app itself from your bank and say, hey, look, I spent twenty five dollars on this check, you know, reflect that on my account.
That would make too much sense because banks, obviously, you know, just being a little bit real here, they probably want you to overdraft or they probably want you to spend too much, so they're not going to make it that easy for you. But that would be a nice feature for them to do that.
You know. I like my method. I've used it for many years.
It works very very well, and it's simple, and again I only have to worry about that account once a week or so. And again you get that side, that side benefit of you're not overspending and you can spend as you want because you just look at that balance. If you have five hundred dollars in there, you can spend up to five hundred dollars, you know, as long as you have your you know, make sure that you've
got all your stuff covered. But I think the every Dollar app would probably be closest to what you're talking about because you could do it from your phone and you could put those transactions in as you go along, and you can also reconcile. So the paid part of that app is that it reconciles from your bank is says, okay, you just had three new transactions come through. Where do the you know, what are those four?
Like?
Is that for your I don't know, You're you're dining out fund or whatever it is. So that's that's probably the best way to do it. I think that budgeting is not easy. It's it's a very complicated process, even with all these apps, because if you think about it, you know, they all want to make money. They want to have some sort of freemium thing and they want to make your life easy, but also they have a
business to do. So again, I've tried every single one of these apps, every single money app out there, and I come back to I've been using a spreadsheet for fifteen years and every Friday.
Open up the spreadsheet, go through all the stuff.
I literally have to input every single item into that spreadsheet, balance it out, and make sure that it's like a checkbook, you know, make sure that it's all balanced and the money's there. But with the exception of what I call that fun money account, I call it a reverse credit card. So that is money that already goes in there, and so when you know, let's say you put in you know, three hundred dollars a week, and that money you can do whatever you want with because you're actually doing your
main bills from your standard checking account. So I know this gets a little nuanced, but it's a very simple way of kind of Okay, you know, your electricity bill is do every month on the eighteenth, you put that
in the budget. That goes in the budget on the spreadsheet, But you don't know that you're going to go out to Starbucks after work with a friend and get a coffee for six dollars and you know, seventy five cents whatever charging nowadays for one of those lattes, And so that just comes out of the fun money and you don't have to think about it now.
You just know that balance on fun money.
Is four hundred and ninety three dollars and you've got that to spend until the next week rolls around, or payday or whatever you want to do. But that's a good Another good topic which a lot of people ask about too, Rick, thanks for the call, is how to
see your net worth on one page? And so there used to be a great app for this called Mint, which I remember I was working at k CAL News here in Los Angeles, k CAL nine and Mint came out and it was like the first app that put all of your accounts in one place, Like you could now take your credit card, you know, your car if you had a car payment, you could put that in there, your savings account, your four to one K and you can put it all in one place and it would
literally take every transaction, reconcile and show you your net worth on one page. And this was mind boggling yeah, this was probably fifteen years ago, and it was so cool to see everything in one place, all the transactions. You can make a budget, you could do this, you could. I mean, it was just so so cool. It was the first time that I think people saw like their net worth in one app, and that was great and they had a great run until you know, they got
purchased and it just got run into the ground. And now it's called credit Karma, I think, which is just not very good. And I'd say like ninety nine percent of people who switched to that do not like it. Uh so they've been looking for a new app to see all of their net worth on one page. And I'll just go through these quick. The ones that I like.
I do like Rocket Money, which I think is really really cool, Like I used that yesterday actually to budget because it shows you on a calendar every single one of your bills, so you can go through the month and literally on you know, September first, you have this bill due September second, and it figures that out by linking up to all of your accounts, so even if you forgot that you have a bill coming up, like a recurring bill like I pay for Dropbox on I
think September thirtieth or something like that. It remembers that even though that's only once a year that I pay for that, it knows it's on that calend, and you're like, oh cool, let me put that in the budget. So Rocket Money's really good. Betterment b E T T E R M E n T. Betterment is really cool for seeing all your stuff on one page. The one that I think is the best and the easiest is called Empower E M P O W E R. If you just want to see your net worth on one page.
Empower Personal Dashboard. They've got an app for iPhone and Android. That one's really good. It used to be called Personal Capital. They change the name, but it's such an easy way to see that and it's actually, you know what, rick to answer your question they do on this app, it does say you can budget, So maybe try that one and see if they let you put your checks in there.
And then there's one from Fidelity.
I've not tried this, but it's called Fidelity Full View, and same thing. You can see all of your accounts and uh, you know it's neat because you've got money in one account, but you know, you've got money in this account, that account. That account puts it all together and it does net worth, so it takes all the accounts and you can actually see what kind of your final balance is like the stuff you have, the money you have minus the money you owe.
How much is that you know? Leftover? Great question, Rick, Thanks so much for the call.
Toda eight thousand, oaks eighty eight, rich one o one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. My two favorite things, two favorite topics, money and tech collide here on the rich on Tech Show. Coming up, speaking of money, Disney, the free ride is over. No more sharing your password. I'll explain how they're cracking down.
Coming up.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. Hit contact to get in touch, or hit the light bulb icon to uh see anything I mentioned here. I've just talked about apps, second budget and apps I can help you see your net worth. That's all on the website. Rich on Tech dot TV Show number ninety one. Hit the light bulb to get the show notes. It's all there, very succinct, very clear,
very very handy. Oh, while you're at the website, sign up for my newsletter. That's always the best way to hear from me. I put all these little tips and things in there. By the way, if you're scrolling through Facebook and you see your own picture in AI, like an AI generated image of you, do not be alarmed.
Yes, you should be alarmed.
So Meta had their Meta connect this week and they mentioned that they're really pushing AI down the throats of everyone that uses Facebook. Apparently a lot of people are actually using their Meta AI. Even though when it first started people were like, how do I turn this thing off?
It's actually quite good.
So if you want to use a completely free version of AI, metas ai is actually really good. And why is it good Because it's been training on your posts for the past twenty years or so, so that's why it's so good. Well, when did Facebook come out? Let's see Facebook launch date? Facebook February fourth, twenty two thousand and four. Oh, can I get a ding that's exactly twenty years? Come on, let's see anyway, Facebook twenty years? Yes,
thank you? So yes, they've been training their AI on your posts, and so they're trying to get people to like use this like AI generator called Imagine Yourself. So they're just going to start generating pictures of you in like different situations. Like you might be scrolling through Facebook and see you like as like a medieval king or queen, and you're like, what is that my face? And it'll get your interest, so you'll click and you'll try using that.
You'll be like, oh cool, I want to see myself as a surfer on a skateboard, you know, fighting dinosaurs, and then all of a sudden, next thing, you know, it boosts their numbers. You might come back and try it more. The images that you see will not have will not be shared with the public. They're just on your feed for you to see. So you're not going to see like your grandma's image on your feed in AI unless she posts it. But anyway, just beware. Just
giving you the heads up. That's what I do here. I tell you what's happening. What's going to happen. Disney Plus cracking down on paid sharing, sorry, cracking down on password sharing. They call it a paid sharing program. So basically, like I say on this show, the free ride is over. Disney Plus used to be seven bucks a month all the Disney movies you could ever watch till your eyes would bleed out of your head. And it's now expanded to I think it's I don't know how much it's
up to. It's a lot more than seven bucks a month. I know I'm paying more. And you can't share. You know, it used to be you could have your you could have your account with so many people. They't they didn't even care. But now you can't share it. So you've got options. If you want to share your account outside your house, you can add one extra person for seven to ten dollars a month, and non household members can also transfer their profile if.
They already have one, to their own.
And if you're away from your house, like if you're trying to watch your on vacation, you're probably gonna get a message that says, hey, hold up, we gotta verify this as you. So we're gonna send you a text message or an email with a code and you have to say, yeah, that's me and pop in that code.
So that helps.
Like someone that let's say you live in California, You've got your friend sharing your account in Minnesota. They try to log in, they're gonna have to text you and be like, hey, can I get that code? And even then Disney might not allow the log in to proceed because they might sniff out the fact that all of your connections are in California except for that one. And unless that's a college kid, you know that's in your family and your household, they're not going to allow it.
So just be aware. Free ride is over.
Let's go to Kevin in Malibu. Beautiful place. Kevin, you're on with Rich Rich.
Good afternoon. Good to hear your voice.
Thank you. What's up?
Rich?
I got a big problem here on our iMac in a contacts program. Yeah, my information is starting to miss going away. The contacts are missing and dressors are missing. Notes are missing as simple as well. I use my mother as an example. I had all her passwords lifted in the notes. I see you there now is her phone number?
Well that's not good. Don't keep the passwords in the notes. You've talked about this on the show Highly Insecure.
So well that's the next one.
That's for another day.
But yes, use a password manager iOS eighteen passwords built in. What are you using? Where are these kept normally? Are they kept in iCloud? Are they kept in Gmail? Where are these kept?
Well, what I'm concerned with is the contact app on my iMac. I'm running high Sierra. I called the Apple and we looked into it and I told him this was missing. He looked at my screen and we put in the time machine and went back and in June I had all the information on time machine. But now in September on the actual app it's gone.
Okay, And again, how are you sinking these? Are these stored in eye cloud?
This is just on the iMac, but yes, it is connected to i cloud.
Okay.
So what I would recommend is going to icloudicloud dot com seeing if the contacts are in there, and that's the best way. But again you've got to go to that time machine backup and download them and then re upload them to this app, and you got to figure out why they're actually going away every time.
This is rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology.
Now.
Typically on this show, I like to keep things light, fun, interesting, obviously, always and helpful. And we are seeing a movement here in the US where people are realizing and by the way, this is serious conversation. People are realizing that some of this tech is not always the best for us and for everyone, especially when it comes to teenagers and even adults.
I mean, this stuff affects people in various ways. Joining me now is Sam Chapman is founder of Parent Collective, and this is an organization that is working to bring awareness to things like the dangers of social media. Sam, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me so give me the background. I know you had a tragedy in your family and I would like you to tell me about that, and this is why we came to this place to talk.
Huh.
Yes, Well, I'm sort of the cautionary tale. Three and a half years ago, we were on lockdown and we thought our children were in the safest place possible in our home. But it turns out one of the most dangerous items you can give your kids our cell phone or laptop, and a dealer on Snapchat, driven by their algorithms, found our son by networking through his school. Other schoolmates had the quick ad feature on and that as a drug dealer to network with everyone they're connected to.
A colorful drug menu was.
Offered something free to our son because what was being offered is addictive if it doesn't kill you, and addictive for life. So lethal dose of fentanyl was delivered to our home like a pizza after we were asleep, and we found our son dead on the floor, tried to resuscitate him and failed. The EMT showed up and tried, and then the coroners came and we told the police, let's contact Snapchat and find out about this dealer.
See what the profile says.
And we were in Santa Monica at the time, which is actually where snap Inc. Is located, and the police told us that they don't bother calling, that they don't help.
Snap Inc. Doesn't help in these cases.
In fact, we found out later through the DEEA that snapped chat users were being notified when law enforcement was looking into their profiles, so in a way, they were collaborating with these people. And to this day, Snapchat is an active drug market. My wife likes to say that if you put your kid on social media, it's like dropping him off in the most dangerous drug filled neighborhood and hoping they do well for themselves.
Wow.
Well, I'm sorry to hear that, and I'm glad you're here to share what you've learned in this situation and you've been working on Now I know you're working on something called Sammy's Law.
What's the status of that.
Well, Sammy's Law right now is in the House of Representatives. It's HR five seven seven eight, and we're hoping to get it passed in the lame duck session coming up.
It's gone pretty far.
It's gone to committee and we've got a bipartisan group of sponsors and sponsors. It would require third party safety software on any social media or a gaming platform with children. And this technology exists today. It stops seventeen school shootings, called the police over a thousand times when there was imminent harm, and given warnings to parents over a million
times when something dangerous or illegal happened on their children's devices. Unfortunately, on most of the platforms where our children are frequenting, they don't allow it, like TikTok, Snapchat, Discord, the gaming
platform and the instant messaging platforms of meta. So the reason is because those companies get rewarded by the stock market when they announce the number of users every quarter, and if they do something that would limit the number of users, including kicking drug dealers off, their stock price would take a hit. And for some of these companies, like Snap Inc. They've never made a nickel in their
entire existence. The only income they've ever reported is from the money that Wall Street has given them, the interest on the money. So stock prices everything to them. User health is not.
Now, you know.
So let's talk for a minute about this idea of talking to your kids. How do you think parents should start a conversation? Were you blindsided by this? And you know, do you think that you can give parents some ideas on how to like make sure that something like this doesn't happen in their home.
So until the law has changed, it's going to be very hard to stop it. Snapchat, for instance, exists because the snaps disappear, and so unless you're literally looking over your child's shoulder if they're on Snapchat, you can't monitor
it without the third party safety software. After our Sun died, I asked their CEO to put that technology on his platform, and he refused because they keep their data private because they are selling it to advertisers to target advertising and get more money for it, and they didn't want it cycling through another company. Sammy's Law forbids the third party safety software provider from using the information for commercial purposes. It's only for safety purposes, and you're not allowed to
do things under the bill. You're not allowed to do things like out LGBTQ plus kids. You're not allowed to out or give notices to parents about reproductive choices like
abortion or birth control. It's really there to guard against drug dealing to your child, or firearms sales, or human trafficking which is going on a sexploitation, which is when someone gets your kids to send a nude pick to them by sending one to your child and then they blackmail the child with the picture, threatening to tell the parents.
Or the teacher or their schoolmates.
And believe it or not, this is happening more often to young boys than to young girls, which is a surprise. Sammy's law also would be active on the largest gaming platforms, and those are particularly dangerous because your children are playing with adults and they don't even know it, and they think it's one of their best friends. And the adult may be playing with your kid for months before they set the hook and try and do some harm.
Yeah, I know my kids are.
They're always asking me for something like Discord or you know, it's interesting because all these games, you know, they try to have some some precautions built in, right, like filters and things like that. But the smart people that are trying to take advantage, they're always telling your kids to Hey, let's start this conversation on Discord, or let's sign up on this server, let's use this chatting app.
And that's the whole point is to get.
Outside of that chat system that they have built into some of these gaming services like the Roadblocks of the World and things like that, because they know that it's limited in what they can get away with in there, and so rich.
Yeah, so that's exactly it, and that's why we need a law. We need all of them to protect at once, so that they don't give up competitive advantage to the other platforms or allow the kids to just switch from one platform to the other. It's why the one off safety features that they announce aren't effective, number one, because they're mostly pr games, and when they are effective, they
just drive the kids to another platform. There was a congressional hearing coming up, and you may have heard Instagram decided to change the way they function the day before that hearing. And that's happened at all the hearings that we parents have gone to. So they put the default settings on private for kids, but any kids how to change those default settings in a second, and it really wasn't a change at all.
It was a PR stunt.
So what do you think about any of the tools or apps that are available now? Is there anything that you think parents can do in the meantime? I mean, the law is obviously something that would you know, it's going to take a long time to happen, if it ever happens.
But do you think there's anything parents can do in the meantime.
Well, a couple of things.
The first thing is I advise, as sort of a quid pro quo for giving them these devices, that you require all of the user names and passwords for the devices and the software that they're using. And that way, in an emergency you can check or if you have a problem kid, you can spot check. But like I said, on Snapchat, the snaps disappear, so there's nothing to check. Of all the platforms, I would say that Google has the safest ones. They have the most easy to operate parent device controls.
They don't allow a lot.
Of the curse words and the sexuality and the things that can be found on the other platforms. So I would just say that YouTube is the safest of them.
You know, Google seems to.
Take this very seriously. Nothing is perfect. The most important thing is the longer you can keep them off of the platforms, the better. The longer you can go without giving your kid social media, the better. Bark has got the third party software that I was talking about. Their site is Bark dot us. We have no commercial relationship
with them. They also make a safe phone. So if your kid's bugging you for a phone, depending on what age you permit that if you buy one of these safe Bark phones, you'll be buying yourself an extra year or two.
All Right, we're gonna leave it there, Sam, Thank you so much. Sam Chapman from the Parent Collective the Web. Do you have a website or how can people find more information?
Yesparentcollective dot org.
Okay, Sam Chapman, thanks so much for sharing your story and sharing those tips.
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Thank you rich All right, coming up, we're gonna have more rich on tech right here and get into some of your emails and things that you sent me throughout the week.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. So Adobe already forecasting a record breaking twenty twenty four holiday shopping season.
This is all online. Total shopping spending.
Expected to reach two hundred and forty billion, up eight percent over last year. They're expecting major discounts up to thirty percent off across a lot of categories. Best days for discount Thanksgiving days. People shop on Thanksgiving Day. I guess so toys, appliances, furniture, and sporting goods. Best day to score those deals. Black Friday best day for TV deals.
We know that.
Computers Saturday after Black Friday best day for computer deals. And if you're looking for electronics and apparel, the best day is Cyber Monday. Some of the trends social media influencers driving sales. Yep, that makes a lot of sense. Some of the top sellers bluey toys, PlayStation, iPhone, and various video games. I think you could read that like any year. It's like always the same video games, iPhones
and toys and This is interesting. This year, AI tools gaining traction, so people are using them for research and also recommendations.
And I will agree to that.
It's my kid's birthday coming up, and my wife and I were trying to figure out what to get them.
I said, let's ask AI. And I'm not kidding.
We got the most thorough list of ideas I've ever seen in my entire life. No website visit necessary, and that's what's worried to some of these websites that you know you do affiliate links and research and things like that. It's just go to AI and you find all the information you need succinctly and easily.
All right, let's get to the feedback.
These are your emails, comments, questions that you write in at the website. Rich on tech dot tv hit Contact. Christian from Cypress writes in, I have a mother in law who is in her late seventies and a widow. She has a partial grasp of modern tech, but luckily she checks in with me for most of the help. She was watching Amazon Prime via her Apple TV one day.
The movie she was watching paused and a message came up on the screen that said her account was locked due to payment, and she needed to call the number on the screen to unlock and continue watching. She then proceeded to call and was supposedly speaking with Amazon to clear it up, but you guess what happened. After getting contacted by her bank Wells Fargo fraud department, over ten thousand dollars went missing. She realized that the whole exchange
was a scam and she was swindled out of the money. Afterwards, she took steps to fix the problem, changing her account number and passwords. She even contacted Amazon, who never heard of this scam, were thankful for her telling them police report was filled out and we really want this message to go out to your audience. Rich I know you have a vast audience of citizens who need to know this new and elaborate scam. We hope you can speak to it and share this turmoil. So this is interesting.
I'm really curious how this happened. Because Apple TV is very secure Amazon Prime, I can't imagine a message coming up during a movie. So I'm really curious how this happened. And it may be that things were a little confused. Maybe the message popped up somewhere else while she was
watching the movie like on her phone. But I do know there is some scams that are similar, Like there's one going around on Roku where it would say your account was locked and you have to call this number to unlock or whatever, and a lot of people fell for that. So just be aware anytime you see a message like this and you're calling someone you're the outbound call, even if they're the inbound call, it's a scam. Ninety nine point nine percent of the time, Roku's not going
to stop your system from working. They're just going to literally send you an email say hey, you need to update your credit card.
That's it, not going to call you for your bank account information.
David writes in I think you should stress the importance of safekeeping recovery codes for major accounts like Microsoft and your password authenticators. Sometimes people forget the backup of security apps doesn't include the underlying security recovery codes, and replacing them becomes a pain when something when one does something stupid like wiping an old iPhone when you trade it in for a new one. I am looking forward to
passwordless security becoming the norm. Yes, if you get those recovery codes when you're setting up an account, especially an important account. Save those codes that will keep you from getting a major headache later trying to get access to that account later on in life. Save those codes, put them in somewhere very safe. Laurel writes in about the iPhone reports last or a couple in the past couple weeks. I wouldn't have an iPhone if someone gave me one
for free. It would drive me nuts trying to see all that information on those tiny screens. I noticed you didn't mention how much they cost.
Why not? Well, I think I did, But.
You know people have gotten used to those tiny screens, Laurel, thanks for the comment.
Let's see here, Lisa.
When listening to you broadcasting from Las Vegas, I found myself wondering, how's that set up? It sure doesn't sound like you're in a hotel room. Maybe you are. How do you manage the phone calls, the music? I'd like a peek behind the curtain. Oh, great and powerful tech dude, Lisa on the road to SoCal from Surprise, Arizona, Lisa, you'd be surprised.
How amazing it is. I mean, it's it's a system that the engineers that are much smarter than me.
Set up, and I bring it around in a suitcase and somehow we connect in it.
The microphone said, sounds good.
The system connects to our systems here, and it's quite impressive. I could do that show from anywhere, and you wouldn't even know if I didn't mention that I was in Las Vegas. So it's it's incredible, a little more complicated than doing TV from other places, but TV have live shots, you know. Same thing. Jim writes in Hey, Rich, you need to become an honorary Jew so you can pronounce the Yiddish words correctly. Chutzpa is pronounced hutspa.
Did I get that right? Hutspa.
It means having a lot of nerve or a lot of confidence, or if you're pronouncing it with the Yiddish accent, you could do ch like a soft k, like the way some people pronounce hankkah, which, of course most people pronounce that hankah. Okay, I'm reading this all wrong anyway. That's the Yiddish lesson for today. I don't actually speak Yiddish, but my late mother did take care Jim.
Thank you Jim for the Yiddish lesson. I will do. They have dual lingo for Yiddish.
I don't think so, Shirley writes in, Hey, Rich, thanks for all of you, Thank you for all the tech info you TV viewers and radio listeners.
Best to you, Shirley. Thank you, Shirley.
That's a good way to end the show here, if you could believe it. And every week I say this, I can't believe how fast this show goes. If you want three hours of your life to go really fast, get a radio show, because I'm telling you, it just flies by. I have so much more to talk about, so many more things to go through, so many emails, comments, questions, and it's just not enough time in the day to do it. Thank you so much. You can follow me
on social media. I'm at rich on tech on Instagram, Facebook, and x You can find everything I mentioned on my website rich on tech dot TV. 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 today, Adam, thanks for filling in Kim over on phones, my family who puts up with me testing all this tech all day long, and most importantly you thank you for listening.
My name is rich Demiro. I will talk to you real soon