Surprisingly good $40 earbuds

Welcome to my friends listening on Twitter spaces. Sometimes when I'm recording the podcast just depends how I'm feeling if I want to live stream it or not. There's a little bit more pressure with the live stream because you kind of see people coming in and out, maybe people are clapping whatever they're doing. But the reality is it's just me and you for the next hour here, and we're going to talk about some of the stuff that I think is important. All right, let's talk about the

new lockdown mode on iOS sixteen. This is for the iPhone. So this is a mode on the iPhone you probably will never have to use, but it is in extreme security mode. Do you remember back in the day, I think it was President Obama who had a BlackBerry for a long time, and everyone was kind of giving him a little bit of grief because it's like, come on, get an iPhone. And then it came out that you can't just give the president an iPhone because of the

security implications of the iPhone. Now, eventually that changed, and I don't know if we lessened the security on the president's phone or we just decided it was fine. But you know, we do know that presidents, I think even Obama towards the end, and we know other presidents have

had the iPhone, so I guess now it's fine. But anyway, the reality is if you are a journal or a dissident, or an activist, or a head of state or someone with a high net worth, you are targeted all the time, and you're targeted by malware, by spyware, by governments trying to get in on your phone. There's all kinds of threat levels that you are exposed to. And so Apple

knows this. For the average person, I mean, we always hear about security with the phones, but the reality is, for the average person, the biggest security risk is themselves, and that is because they may click on a link that either tries to steal their information via phishing. In the worst case scenario, it may download malware to your phone, but that is like very very small chance, especially with the way the architecture of the iPhone is designed. That's

just really really tough to do, but it happens. And so now this new lockdown mode is to gear towards protecting a very small number of users who may be a risk of a highly targeted cyber attack. And the feature is going to be built into iOS sixteen. It's also going to be built into the iPad and the new mac os Ventura. Right now, it's in the betas, it will be in maybe not the public beta, I'm not sure, but it will be in the final version that's released in the fall. So lockdown mode is turned

off by default. You can enable it in the Privacy and Security section. And once it's turned on, here's what's going to happen. Messages app most message attachments will be blocked. In coming FaceTime calls from people who don't know those will be blocked. Web browsing will be impacted. A lot of the JavaScript type things, anything that requires a little bit of extra things to run on the web browser. That will be blocked. Shared albums on the photos app

will be blocked when the device is in lockdown. Wired connections will be blocked or I guess when the device is locked, but they do that anyway. Figuration profiles will be not accessible. So the phone kind of becomes a very basic device that you can use to make and receive phone calls, and nothing can sort of make its way onto that device. So whether it's you know, spyware, malware, any sort of key loggers, whatever that these organizations might be using to spy, it just won't be possible to

put that on the iPhone. And so again, this is something that not a lot of people need, but it's really really smart that Apple has this mode on the phone because if someone needs this, it is available, and it's available quickly, simply, and it's accessible to everyone from a person who's just speaking out against their government to someone who is, you know whatever, I mean, any sort of situation you're in, maybe you're in a country that you don't feel safe in and you're worried about spying,

you can act this mode. So again iOS sixteen lockdown mode coming in the fall on the iPhone. All right, let's get to the first question comes from Dave. Hey, my name is Dave. It appeals. It appears my email has been compromised. I'm getting a ton of emails from people that I don't know, who seem to think that I've sent them a scamming type of email. I've placed a complaint with the FTC, but I haven't received any type of help from them stopping the emails I'm getting. Well,

I didn't expect them to stop them. Is there anything you know of that I can do? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Dave. Dave, it sounds like your email account was hacked or compromised. Most likely just compromised, like you said, Uh, probably in one of two ways.

Either I'm guessing that and I don't want to place the blame on you, but I'm guessing that at some point you clicked a link and logged in with your email or handed over your password unwillingly or I should say unwittingly, like you didn't know this was happening, and once they got a hold of your email, they then turned your email into a bot account that would then send out emails on your behalf with spammy messages and the reason why they do that is because when hackers

get a hold of your email account, that's a good email account, and so the chances that your email will go through the spam filters on Gmail and Outlook and Yahoo and all these other things is pretty good because your email account has a track record of being legitimate, and so they use that to their advantage. So what can you do, Well, what you need to do is

change your password immediately, if that's even possible. If you can still try to log in from a web page, log in, change your password, and then I would go in and set up two factor authentication. You're emailing me

from an att dot net email address. I'm not sure if that's the one that got compromised, but if it is, a just definitely go in, try to change the password, turn on two factor authentication, and then the other thing I would do, and you're gonna have to search to see how to do this is what's called log out

of all active devices. So most of the systems these days, some of the big social media companies, the apps, the email the Googles of the world, they have provisions for helping you log out of any device that you've previously authorized and then what that does is it triggers a new authorization. So to understand this better, you know, you log into your email on your computer at work, and

you know, let's say you're your personal account. You don't necessarily have to log into that every single day when you come into work. Maybe once every couple of weeks. It might ask you to reauthorize your password, but for the most part, you just sit down, you go to Gmail dot com and it's already logged in somehow magically.

So they're doing that with a combination of cookies and also so some sort of algorithm security that they have built, saying, Okay, it seems like this is pretty secure, seems like there's not anything weird happening on this computer. We're going to allow this connection until we think that something changes. And in the case of that manual change that I talked about, if you trigger that, it's something that will log out.

It sends a little notice to all these systems that are logged in, saying the next time someone tries to use this account, ask them for their password again. And you can do this on Netflix, you can do it on I believe Google. I know you can do it on their Apple you can log out devices, so basically you want to look for a functionality to log out all active devices. Sometimes you can even see a list of these devices, but that is probably what you want

to do, Dave, to reclaim this email. If it's an email that you don't really care about anymore, you can delete the account completely. But it depends what type of account you're using. But that's what I would recommend. This happens every day. Don't use the same path word over and over. That's number one. Definitely use a password manager if you can, and use two factor authentication on every single account that you can think of that supports it, and not just two factor. But I would use an

app to generate the authentication codes. I would not just send them to your text message because phone numbers can be compromised and it's much more secure to do it to an app. And I know this stuff is so it's so complicated, and I think I talked about this when I was in when I came back from my trip, but you know, I was in New Jersey just kind of dealing with my family and watching how they deal with stuff. And it's a real struggle for people with

these passwords and with the security. I mean, people stay logged in on a computer and if that thing gets logged out, like their entire world goes away because they don't know whether where their password is and they don't know how to get back in, or they don't know which email address they used, or they don't know where they saved it. I mean, it's pretty wild how loosey goosey people are with this password and security stuff. And

I just to me, I don't get it. I do get it, because there have been times when I've wanted to quickly log into a website where I'm ready to just throw all caution into the wind and say all right, let me just use whatever, and then I'd have to sit there and say, no, wait, what's the repercussion of this later? Later? Yeah, it's going to be easy for me to log in, but if I don't take good notes and if I don't put down the information that I need later, it's going to come back to bite me.

And so good example, I was trying to log into my kids. We set up like a frequent flyer account for him when he was born and we've been using it ever since, and I was like, oh, I'm curious how many miles my kid has racked up in this account? And sure enough, I went into my password manager and

I had no recollection of I had his password. But then, because it had been so long, that I logged in and asked me for his security questions, and of course I couldn't come up with the answers because I never use real answers for security questions because that's too obvious. So I always make up answers or use answers that are not true. But you have to keep track of those answers because the problem is when you come back to answer those, they're not the true answers, Like what's

the color of the house you grew up in? Why would I use that when someone could look up the house I grew up on Google Maps and see what color it is. And now Google Maps let's you go back in time, so you could just go back in time and see all the different colors of that house over the years. So my advice is to actually use another generated password in place of these answers. Now, not every website lets you put in your own answer, but a lot of them do. Some of them make you

select them. If they make you select them, just select a random answer. I usually take a screenshot of that and then I will put that in a secure place, or I will write down the question and answers in my password manager in the notes section. Of course, I did neither of that, so I had to figure out the answers to these questions, which was not easy. So that's my advice. But you got to just keep on

top of this stuff. I know it's complicated, I know it's a pain, but it's I'm telling you, just a couple of minutes of time on the front end, we'll save you a lot of headaches on the back end. All right, let's talk about these forty dollars earbuds. So I had these forty dollars one plus earbuds sitting around my house for I don't know, a couple weeks at least maybe a month or two before I got around

reviewing them. Because they're earbuds, I get sent so many earbuds and ninety nine percent of the time I put them in my ears for about ten seconds and I say, Nope, these are not the ones, and that's it. Now. These I put in my ears after I got back from Rome, and I meant to take them to Rome, but I didn't want to test them on the trip because I needed noise cancelation earbuds, so I waited till I got back. I put them my ears. I was like, all right,

let me try these for a workout. Immediately as soon as I put them my ears. There's certain types of earbuds that when you put them in, they sort of like magnetically attached to your ears. I'm not saying with magnets, but they just feel like they just fit so perfectly that they're not going to come out, and I'm like, oh, okay, that's a good first sign. Then they were easy to pair. They don't have fast pairing, but they were easy to pair because they have a little button on the back

and they were paired in seconds. And the next thing you know, I'm playing music, it sounds good, I'm working out. They don't fall out of my ears, and I'm just like, Okay, I think I'm onto something here. I think these are a winner. And so I kept using them for a little bit, and then I did an interview with someone at nine to five Google who also reviewed them, and he agreed that he really liked them and didn't want to like them because of the price tag, and I

think the OnePlus Nord buds are a winner. Forty dollars and what do you get? You get simple wireless earbuds. They come in a case that is definitely an odd shape. It's a little bit bulky, it's a little bit not sort of ergonomic in your hands, but it works. It charges the earbuds. You get seven hours on a charge and then thirty hours if you include the case, so that's a pretty good charge. Then you also have USB

C on the back, which I like. So they didn't put the micro USB C or micro USB which some it's actually happening a lot less. But you know, that's one way that manufacturers can be a little cheap with things. Let's see what else unique design. They've got tappable areas on the side so you can play, skip and pause your music. They're comfortable, Like I said, they stay in your ears. There's four microphones total for high quality phone calls.

I made a phone call to my brother. He said it sounded excellent, so as opposed to sometimes when I call him when I'm testing earbuds, and he said, what are you in a cave right now? He said, none of that the sound is excellent. Like I said, there's no sensor, so when you pull all these out of your ears, I've gotten so used to these sensors on

all these earbuds that will play and pause music. That did not happen this time because these don't have those built in sensors, so you will have to do that manually. The music sounds good. It's not the best sounding earbuds I've ever tested, but again, forty dollars, so you get what you pay for. You get a lot of features for this forty dollars. They're good for just everyday use. I would not recommend these if you are traveling with them on a plane because they don't block out a

lot of exterior sound. They do block out some because they kind of seal up your ears, which typically I don't like. But these are totally comfortable. But they're good for music, good for phone calls, good for exercising. They're on sale now again. They're called the one plus nord Buds. They only come in one color, black slate. They're on

sale at Amazon and OnePlus website. Personally, i'd get them from Amazon just because they're easy to return if you end up not liking them, but we did feature them on KTLA, so they were sold out out after about two seconds. So of course I put them on TV in the five am hour, and I immediately got the emails from people saying you can't purchase them, but I you know, look Amazon, they restock stuff pretty quickly. I assume these will be restocked, so I would just continue

to kind of monitor there. But you can also buy them from the OnePlus website as well. I've I don't know what that purchase experience is like for these, but it says it's free shipping, so I don't know, Maybe take your chances there. But again, one plus nord Buds, nord is sort of their inexpensive line of phones, and then Nord is, I guess just their budget stuff in general. But I love the one plus What were they the one plus buds pro last year, but those were closer

to one hundred and something dollars. These are like forty bucks. I'm not kidding. Really really great deal for inexpensive headphones, so go check them out. I'll put the line in the show notes. Brenda says, Rich, I'm hoping you have some suggestions. My eighty eight year old father keeps falling for scams on his computer. He has a PC. Originally I was hoping he wouldn't need an email, because that's

how the scams get him. Trying to find out if there's a good computer printal lock or something I could do to protect him. I'm going to get him a new Gmail account, and I didn't know if I should get him a Chromebook or any computer. I know this isn't worded very well, but I think you could understand what I'm asking for. Thank you so much, Brenda, Brenda, I get it. Your dad keeps falling for the oldest tricks in the book, which these scam artists have gotten

very very good at. The phishing scams, the Amazon emails, the emails that want your phone number and your address and your logins and oh, your Gmail account is messed up. I mean, there's so many scams out there. A lot of them have to do with phishing, which they send an email that looks like it's something legitimate, and next thing you know, you log in and your account is cut, or they ask you to send them gift cards, or they want you to put in your credit card number

so you can fix something, whatever it is. It's it's all out there. It's happening every single day. And yes, the elderly, less tech savvy, or anyone honestly can fall for these scams given the right circumstances. And I always give the example of our banks. So banks like to send a lot of emails and text nowadays with fraud alerts. Hey did you just use your credit card? Here? Press one or reply one to say yes, reply to to say no. Hey, we're just confirming that you purchase this,

or hey, your your membership is confirmed. Click here to you know, check out the details whatever. Anyone can fall for this stuff, and it's just a matter of taking a little bit of a pause. And in fact, I'm gonna quote from this website that I'm going to refer you to scamspotter dot org. So here are the three golden rules of scams. Number one, slow it down. According to the website, scammers often create a sense of urgency

so they can bypass your better instincts. Take your time and ask questions to avoid being rushed into a bad situation. If you need to act fast, just don't do it. Number two, spot check do your research to This is again from the website scamspotter dot org. Do your research to double check the details you're getting. If you get an unexpected phone call, hang up, look up the bank, the agency, or the organization that's supposedly calling, and get

in touch with them directly. The IRS does not call you. Your phone company does not call you. Your bank does not call you, your Google does not call you, the whatever, Amazon does not call you. These companies rarely call, and they rarely call and ask for immediate action. Number three, stop, don't send. No reputable person or agency will ever demand payment on the spot. Often scammers tell you to go buy gift cards, which are meant to be given as a gift, not as payment under a threat. So if

you think something feels fishy, it probably is. Do not send gift cards. So it's at Target the other day they have a signed by the gift card section that says, if you're buying this gift card to send us a payment to someone, don't do it. I don't even understand how someone could fall for that, but again I'm not judging.

People do. And what they do is they make you scratch off the back of the gift card, read them the numbers and the code and they use that gift card instantly, it's untraceable, it's done, it's fast, your money's gone. They they get the money, and you never hear from them again. So again, the website I would show your dad is scamspotder dot org. Watch the little videos with him, take the quizzes, and share this with your friends, because I'm telling you, it's just really, really a wild West

out there on the internet. And you're sitting here listening to a podcast. You're a little bit more tech savvy than the average person, telling you. People fall for this stuff every single day. Smart people. I get the emails. Believe me, parents of people, siblings of people, friends of people, regular people. You don't have to be quote unquote stupid to fall for this stuff. You don't have to be

uneducated to fall for this stuff. You just have to be a human being that is highly, highly targeted with these social engineering scams. These scam artists spend all day coming up with ways of getting stuff from us, and believe me, it just takes one tiny little mishap for it to happen to you. So you know, don't laugh, but really feel for these people, because it's really sad when a kid talks to their parent, and their parents starts telling them something and you're like, hey, you know,

you were totally scammed. And we've all been scammed in our lives in so many little ways. I told the story, or maybe I didn't tell it here, but I told the story of how you know, we ate it at a tourist trap in Rome because we were hungry, we were tired, we were hot, we were sweaty. We just wanted to sit down and eat. And we sat at a restaurant that was totally just kind of a tourist trap. Food was overpriced, food was not very good. Did it ruin our lives? No? Would I say I was scammed? Yeap,

kind of. I mean the person give us a good, a good spiel about why we should eat there, and we did. You know, you spend a little bit more money than you should on something, You get a dent removed by someone, you know, whatever. We get scammed all the time in lots of little waste. Does it always ruin our lives, No, but it happens. It's you know, you could get over sold on something, you could pay more than you should for something. It's just it happens in lots of little ways, so just be aware of

it and try to help people when you can. All right, Amazon Prime new benefit you get a year worth of grub Hub Plus. Grub Hub Plus is their subscription. I don't know what you call membership. So if you basically, if you have Amazon Prime, you can go to a website and sign up for a free year of Grubhub Plus.

Now I don't use grubhub, so I can't tell you how good Grubhub Plus is, but I know that you get discounts on things, you get free delivery on things, or reduced delivery fees on orders that are like over twelve dollars. But here's a reality. If you think you're saving money in any possible way with any food delivery service, you are absolutely just out of your mind right now.

Because food delivery is not cheap. It is not a deal it is It's never going to be a better deal than going and picking up the food yourself or cooking at home. Now, with that said, is it convenient, of course, is it nice to have, Yes, But to think that you're saving money somehow even with one of these Grubhub Plus memberships, you're not. You're gonna be spending more on delivery because you actually have this member. Amazon knows that, Grubhub knows that. Why do you think they're

offering it to you for free? Now, with all that said, yes, I have Door Dash whatever they call it, dash Pass. It's included in my credit card, so I have it. Do I spend money on it once in a while? Yes? I do. Is it more expensive than buying salads that I can go and make myself or pick up? Absolutely? Was it really convenient the other night when I just wanted dinner fast on the table, when I was just home with the kids by myself. Sure? Did I overspend

on salads? Of course I did. Was it easy? Cheat? Not cheap? But was it easy and simple? Yes? It was. So I'm not saying you can't do this, but I'm just saying, don't think that you're like getting ahead by getting this free Grubhub perk from Amazon. This is a marketing deal. It helps Amazon, it helps Grubhub, and that's the reality here. Normally Grubhub Plus is nine ninety nine a month. Once you activate it, you will get twelve months free, or I should say twelve months included in

your prime membership. Now, after the twelve months. It does auto renew, so you need to realize either you put something on your calendar that says cancel before the end of the time, or you just go ahead and cancel immediately someplace I always check whenever I sign up for something, I always check to see if I can cancel my subscription or membership or whatever immediately, and if I can,

I'll do that. Sometimes it'll just say it'll say on the you know, in the account settings, it'll say, if you cancel now, you will still have access to your to your whatever through the date. So it will tell you that. On Apple you can do that a lot, except with a lot of the Apple subscriptions, on a lot of the uh you know, you know, third party apps,

But you just have to check. Like I sign up for a free trial of Paramount Plus the other day, and you could go in right after you sign up and just cancel, but you'll still have your Paramount Plus membership through the end of the time. You can you can tell usually if you can do it right on the page on your account when you go to cancel,

it should usually tell you you'll still have access. Again, speaking of scams, this wasn't a scam, but I totally paid for two months or three months worth of Audible after I meant to cancel, because I just kept forgetting to cancel. It was on my list. But again I got charged three months, you know, one month, two month, three months at fourteen ninety five for stuff I didn't really want to buy. But is it the end of

the world. No, So what I did was I finally canceled because I remember to do it, But I, you know, just bought three books. When you the thing they changed about Audible it used to be even if you canceled your membership, your Audible credits would last and you could still use those even after you cancel. Well, Amazon got hipped to that and they said, oh, let's actually make this a little tougher for people. Let's make them make

their decisions now before they cancel. And so if let's say you have two credits in your Audible membership and you say I want to cancel, It'll say, okay, you're gonna lose these credits right away. So you have to go back in. You got to shop for books, you got to use those credits, and you have to cancel.

And so what happened to me is that I started this little process of buying and using the audible credits, but then I kind of forgot to go back and cancel, and so that happened another month, and then it happened another month, and finally this month I remembered and I did it. So would I call it a scam, No, It's it's kind of like they just are getting over on you because you're just forgetting. You get busy and

you kind of forget about this stuff. So anyway, when in doubt, you can cancel things immediately and or set a reminder to trigger, but you know, just make sure you don't get taken like I did. All right, uh, Stacy says Rome question. I want to be sure I have the right tap to pay. I sent you a message on Instagram, but I don't know if you see those is the tap to pay by off Gate. Thanks for everything, Stacy sent from my iPhone. So, Stacey, it's

actually funny. I got this question a couple of times. And this is why I try to explain things in very easy to understand terms. Because I mentioned in my Rome piece I did a piece, you know, I went

to Rome. I did a little kind of travel tips piece when I came back to KTLA and I mentioned that you should set up tap to pay on your phone because it's accepted nearly everywhere you travel, and it's really easy, it's safe, it's secure, it's fast, and I was very surprised how many places in Rome took tap to pay. It was just very, very easy to use. And a lot of people texted me and said, rich, which app is tap to pay? I see a bunch of them, and I had I didn't realize I have

to explain this, but I should explain this. But tap to pay is the technology, it's not the app. But I am sure if you search in the app Store, there are a bunch of scammy apps that use the term tap to pay so that you download them. And I don't know what their endgame is, but they probably either try to ski or get some sort of payment out of you. I'm not sure. I haven't looked them up, but I got this question enough where I realize that

clearly there are those apps in the app Store. So tap to pay is the technology that means that you hold your phone over a reader making a tapping motion. You don't actually have to touch your phone to the reader, but you hold your phone over this little receiver on

the reader. It looks like a little Wi Fi symbol on its side, and you tap there or you hover there, and your phone exchanges the payment information with the terminal, So instead of swiping, instead of dipping your card, you just hover your phone and it wirelessly transmits your credit or debit card number to the reader. And what I like about Tap to Pay is that it transmits a

one time code. So if you're using a debit card or a credit card credit card, I know we don't care as much, but you still should care because if you do have to change your number if it's hacked, it's a pain because that happened to me, and it's like I'm still getting like, oh, your credit card can't be authorized. Ugh. So with debit card, it's definitely most annoying because it's linked to your checking account and that

money goes away very quickly. So what you want to do is set up your credit or your debit card on this Tap to pay and it transmits a one time code, which means if that retailer is ever hacked, your number is safe. Because all the numbers that these hackers get on the back end when they hack something, it won't work. It only worked that one time, and so that's what's really nice about tap to pay and that's also why I recommend using it now. There are three tap to pay apps in the US that I

know of that work on the iPhone. It's just one. It's Apple Pay. And Apple has not been forced to open up their tap to pay to any other third party app, although I think some of the companies are trying to get that changed because tap to pay could be from anyone the other ones. On an Apple Pay is built into the iPhone. You just have to set it up. You can open up Apple Walla and set it up on the Android. You have your choice of two that I know of, and that is Google Pay

and then Samsung Pay. And I don't know if Samsung Pay works on non Samsung Pay devices, but you can try it. Samsung Pay versus Google Pay is really a preference. I used to prefer Samsung Pay because it had a little trick built into the Samsung phones, and that is it worked even on credit card terminals that were not Tapped to Pay enabled. I know, very complicated, but Samsung very many years ago bought this company. I think it was called loop that they had a wireless technology that

would broadcast a signal. They had a special antenna inside Samsung phones that would broadcast a signal to the magnetic stripe receiver on a credit card terminal, and you actually really kind of just tapped your phone there. Your phone would somehow emit a strong enough magnetic signal that this magnetic reader could read, and it would work on any credit card terminal, even credit card terminals before tap to pay was a big thing. I'll never forget trying this

out for the first time. I was at someplace in Marina del Rey here in California, and it was like a lunch place, and the credit card reader was one of those that were like a swipe on the actual like you know, the cashier is sitting behind a screen where it's like a touch screen where they tap and some of them are swivel mounted now, but back then it was just literally a fixed terminal with a touch

screen and then a swipe reader on the right. And so the person was like, Okay, it'll be whatever, ten dollars forty eight cents and let me, you know, swipe your card. And I said, oh, I said, I'm testing this new tech. Where I can use my phone as a credit card, and they're like, oh, that's not gonna work. I'm like, no, no, it will work. But sure enough it didn't work. But I'm sitting there like tapping the

side of their terminal. They probably thought I was like trying to hack the system because nobody knew about this, you know, this Samsung tap to pay system. It was so embarrassing. It ended up not working, and I kept saying, let me try one more time, and the cashier was actually friendly enough to let me try it a couple times before they're like, all right, kid, no more, We're done with this. You know, do you have a regular credit card? And so finally it didn't work and I

got my regular credit card out. But at the end of the day, the Samsung system was kind of cool because it would work in a lot of mom and pop shops that didn't have tap to pay set up just yet, but the credit card terminal was there typically where you either swipe your card or dip it. But it was kind of cool. But then they ended up stopping that technology. They stopped building it into their phones. I forget which phone. It was either the S twenty

or the S twenty one. I think it was yes, twenty maybe, but they stopped building that technology in and so that's when I stopped favoring Samsung Pay because it was there's no longer an advantage over Google Pay unless you just like the way Samsung Pay worked. But just

these little things I have over the years. You know, I've been working at KTLA and testing technology for like what fifteen years now, and so well, I've been working at KTLA for over ten but before that, I did cover technology as well for cnet and some other places, and so I've been testing technology in one form or another for many many years. And it's just so funny

the things that you have to do. You know, Like I was on a plane once and I was testing out a VR headset for watching a movie, and it's just like people were probably looking at me like what in the world is this person doing, you know, And it's the thing, the silly little things you have to

do to test out this technology. You know, we're on vacation, I asked my wife, I'm like, hey, do you mind if we, you know, use this thing on the beach or you know, can you can you get a shot of me trying this out or whatever, and it's it's just always like kind of a little eye roll. But now I've got kids in on it, so my kids will really help me out. I'll be like, hey, can you just get a shot of me doing this or whatever.

But it is fun. It's just funny the things that you you know, technology is evolving, it's ever changing, and it doesn't always work exactly the way it's supposed to on day one, and so you know, but I do enjoy testing this stuff out. It just takes a little bit longer and people think you're a little bit nutty sometimes anyway, So those are the tap to pay situations

you need to be aware of. Pick an app, whether it's Apple Pay on your iPhone, definitely definitely use it, or pick Google Pay or Samsung Pay on the Android. All right, let's get to the next story of the week. E three is returning in twenty twenty three. E three I call it the Video Game Convention now it's more of an interactive entertainment show. It's finally coming back to the Los Angeles Convention Center the second week of June

twenty twenty three. Many people thought this show was completely dead. It has been put on for many years by the Entertainment Software Association. It looks like they still own the show, but it went away during COVID and then it kind of came back as a virtual thing, you know, but it was not. It just lost its luster. In person still the way to go with a lot of these big shows, and it is coming back. They made an announcement that they are now teaming up with this company

called whereas it read pop, I guess. They put on a lot of shows, including packs, the New York Comic Con and Star Wars celebration. So E three twenty twenty three will welcome back publishers, developers, journalists, content creators, manufacturers, buyers, and licensers. The event will highlight digital showcases and feature in person consumer components. So it sounds like this is a win for video game fans. In recent years it has been open to the public. It looks like they

will probably continue to do that again. Registration will be announced in late twenty twenty two. Media creators, industry professionals and fans. There you go. Fans are encouraged to visit the website for updates. SO again E three returning in twenty twenty three. So video game. Folks, mark your calendar second week of June if you want to travel to Los Angeles or just kind of if you're in LA.

Definitely a place to go. COVID took a really hard hit on a lot of these in person things, but this is the year a lot of them are coming back or potentially next year if they couldn't get their act together for this year. All right, let's get to the next question. Let's see this comes from no one. They didn't put a name. I would like to purchase the locator tags to put on my trailer and off road car. I am not an Apple person. I have looked at several that need to be charged every two weeks.

What type do you recommend? Thank you? If you don't have Apple products, I would recommend Tile instead of Apple. The ones that you're looking at that need to be charged every two weeks, those are GPS receivers and if you really want like the most secure tag for your trailer and off road car, yes, I would recommend those. I know there's a bunch of I think T Mobile makes one that's a GPS tracker. There are some other ones out there, but the reality is if it's a

GPS tracker. The battery is gonna die very quickly because GPS takes a lot of battery to continually update the location. The way that the air tags work and the way that TILE works is a combination of Bluetooth and a finding network, and so there is not actual GPS on these devices. What's happening is when a locator device gets nearby, and a locator device could be an Android phone with the Tile app installed on it, or an iPhone that is just nearby with the air tags, or I guess

with Tile as well. But those devices kind of ping the locator device and they say, oh, okay, here I am, and the locator device says, okay, I know I'm in this little area, so that must be the area that the tag is in. So they're not exact, they're not precise, and they're not real time, but they still give you

a pretty good idea of where things are. And they also have built in audible tones, and when it's when it's within range of Bluetooth, like near your phone, you can use a Bluetooth to really hone in on the location of these tags specifically, So if you don't have Apple, I would recommend looking into Tile. Tile is the second best when it comes to the locator tags, and I would say they are a distant second because Apple just has way more, way, way, way more products attempting to

locate their tags than Tie does and Tile has. They're getting better because I think people have really ramped up the knowledge of these tags, and so more people are using Tile because of air tag is kind of the halo effect. But also I think that Amazon activated what's called Amazon Sidewalk, which also works with Tile, so many more devices are sort of linked in to this finding network for Tile. But that's what I recommend. Check them out.

And you know, I don't know if it's gonna work, but it's better to have it on there than to not. All right, let's talk about what do you want to talk about gas prices? Let's talk about gas prices. So I did a segment on KTLA about expensive gas prices. I know, very expensive, but I was trying to find some new ways to sort of, you know, cut down on some of these expensive gas prices. So I saw a lot of these gas stations want you to pay

through their app. So I noticed seventy six has an app, has an app exon mobile has an app, and all of these apps, the trick is that they want you to sign up for their rewards program. They'll give you a little bit of either cash back or points based on that. But then if you pay by linking your checking account, they'll give you a little bit more cash back. And I typically would not recommend doing that. I'd say, just use your card at the pump because it's much easier.

It's just quicker. I know a lot of people get cash back on their credit cards. So but in this case, you know, I think because gas prices are so high, you've got to look for some new ways of saving even more. Anything helps, Even if you could save five to ten cents a gallon with the prices this high, it's better than nothing. And so what these companies want

you to do is pay through your checking account. And the reason why they like your checking account is because they pay less fees and so they pass along some of that savings to you. And so I wouldn't typically recommend giving out your checking account to various companies. But if it does save you some money, do your research

see if it's worth it. It's only worth it if you go to the same station I wouldn't say sign up for every rewards app from a gas station and put in your checking account number on all of them. No way. I think that you pick and choose, like one gas station that you like, and then kind of hone in on that. Obviously, you can use gas Buddy, you can use gas Guru, you can use ways to

find low gas prices. Also, an app called i Exit is really good and their prices are very much updated and it can tell you where to go for the best gas price, especially when you're traveling on the freeway or the highway and you're on a road trip filling up. You know, most of the time we just stop at the most convenient station. But if you have this power and knowledge of knowing that the gas station two stops ahead is cheaper than the exit right up ahead, then

that is good knowledge. It's power, and that will translate into savings. The other app that I've been testing out, which I think is kind of cool. Now, you know, if you listen to this show, I do drive a Teslas, so don't say I'm biased and I don't know anything about gas price. I still do have a gas car in the family, and so it is definitely something that we look to save money on when we fill up, but this upside app can help you do that because it's an app that's like a cash back rewards app.

And typically I wouldn't really recommend these things in the past because they're kind of a hassle. But I did test it out, not with gas, but with groceries, and so a grocery store was giving a bunch of cash back. I think it was like eighteen percent, which is pretty wild. So I went in there. You have to So what I did was I had to activate the deal from the app. Then I had to put in my credit card number on the app. You only have to put in your first six digits in the last four you

activate the offer. You go in there and you just shop as usual, and that's it. You have like a window of time to shop. I think it was four hours. And so somehow they figure out that you actually indeed shop there. I guess they somehow scour the credit card numbers on their back end. I don't know if the grocery store shares that with them. I have no idea, but somehow the next morning it said, up, we verified your purchase, and it knew exactly how much I spent

and I got my eighteen percent cash back. It was like seven bucks. I thought that was pretty cool, and it was like somewhere I would go normally to shop. It wasn't like I was going out of my way. Now, the idea of this app is that it is marketing to you. So I've talked about this in the past. They are not doing you a favor, They are not helping you out. They are marketing to you. So you may not know it, but eventually you will purchase a pizza at a place that has twenty percent off through

this app because you think it's a good deal. And it may be. But again, this is all marketing, and so that's the end game here, is that they're trying to get you to eventually spend more money or money that you wouldn't typically spend, and that's why they give you these cash back deals throughout the the regular money that you're spending, to get you to spend even more eventually. Look, I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying these are the facts of how these things work. These things

are not doing you a favor. They are marketing machines that are built to help market things to you. And that marketing could be a new restaurant that opens up and it may say, hey, twenty five percent off if you go get a burger at this new restaurant. But I mean, is that a bad thing? Not necessarily if you're gonna buy a burger anyway, if you're gonna go get dinner anyway, why not go to the places twenty five percent off and give it a try so upside app. You can find the link on my I'll put it

on the show notes. But they also have this referral system where you can earn money off of people that sign up under you and then people that sign up under them. So it's kind of like a little pyramid scheme, although I technically don't know if it's called that. I'm not saying it's that, but it feels that way because anyone who signs up under your link, you get a little cash back from them, and anyone who signs up

from them, you get a little off of them. It's kind of like this little thing, but it does add up and it seems to be worth it. I mean, look, if you're gonna save money on gas going to the station that you typically go to and it's a better deal. Why not? But again I did try it, so I was telling you about that one. So upside app is the details on that. Pam says, Hey, Rich, happy fourth. Can you recommend a monthly budget slash bill tracker app?

There are so many out there as always, Thank you, Pam, Pam. I don't really use too many of these budget and bill track apps. I did use true Bill at one point. I thought it was great. Mint is also a good one that I've used throughout the years. I think that one's good. Personal Capital is one that seems to be pretty good as well. They're all they're all kind of the same thing. They all aggregate your different accounts that you have and put them all into one place and

you can see your net worth. They also have some sort of monthly bill slash budgeting built into them, slash subscription trackers, so you can see the things you're subscribed to. Quite honestly, I use a spreadsheet. I use an Excel

spread or just a spreadsheet. I should say that I go in every single week and I put in everything that I expect to spend and the money that I expect to have come in, and I get it to zero, and so I've basically spent all of my money on paper before I've gotten it, and then as I go along the week, I put in the transactions that I do and continue to make sure that everything is zeroed out, putting in money for savings, putting in money for you know, kids, college,

whatever I can throughout the way. But again, it's a very manual process. There is no easy way that I've found to do this. There are many apps that promise to make it easy, but quite honestly, I've been doing this method for fifteen years now and I find it to be the best method for actually seeing where your money's going and directing your money to where you want

it to go. I know I'm a little weird in that aspect, but I don't think that there is a simple automated way to do your budget because you're you know, it's just you got to figure out where your money's going, where it's going before the month starts, and then direct it towards those places. And for me personally, I just find that that putting all the money down and spending it on paper before I get it gives me a better understanding of how much spending ability I have that month.

Some months are are worse than others. You know, you get these big bills that come in, you get these unexpected charges. You know, you're paying for your insurance that month, and it's a little bit more than the month before. And so again it's just it's just easier for me to do this spreadsheet and figure it all out on paper and then just kind of when I do get those things in, just mark them off and continually optimize

and and save. That's the best advice is to really save and to always be optimizing what you're spending your money on. All right, let's get to the final spot, the final talking point. I'm gonna talk about some of the editing apps I like. I did a segment on KTLA because I will admit that an editing app called well, I'll tell you about it in a little bit, but

this editing app really changed my life. So I was really struggling to edit my Instagram reels and I follow a guy named Zach Honig Honing I think you say is his name. He I believe, used to be with the Points guy and now he's off at a different startup. But he's a big travel guy. He's just traveling all the time, and so his tips are really really handy. Let me see if I can find him on here Instagram Zach h O n I G. Yeah, Zach Hoenig h O nig. And he's just very very handy person.

Oh wow, he's got one hundred and nineteen thousand followers, so clearly people like like what he's what. He's tweeting our instagramming about as much as I do. And so he wrote me, I forget, but I just said, oh, your stories are so I forget what I said to him. But he was like, oh dude. He's like, don't use the built in Instagram editing. He's like, use an app called Splice. That's what I use. And I downloaded it. It was a two week free trial. It was very

expensive to purchase. It was like seventy bucks for the year. But I said, you know what, I kind of like, do this for a living, so let me let me actually pay for this, and so I did, and I will tell you it has changed my life because it's so much better to edit on that app than anything else that these built in editors give you on the

social media apps. And so I'm telling you that because I don't think you need to go out and buy Splice for seventy dollars for the year, or even three dollars a week, which I think is what they charge if you buy it weekly. But there are two other apps I think are really good. Splice is the best. I'll just tell you that. But yes, not everyone wants to pay for editing. If you just want to do this for fun, for friends, for family, for your Instagram, you probably want to use a free option, and that

is probably why cap Cut. Cap Cut is the most popular free video editing app. It is always at the top of the app store lists. It's for I wes and Android. This app is amazing. There are so many features built in to help you make creative reels. It is great. The downside is that it's owned by TikTok, so if you are not comfortable with that reality, you may want to use the different app. But it is really really good. There is just about every editing tool

you can think of built into cap Cut. Inshot has been around forever. You might have used it back in the day to help squeeze your your four x three Instagram pictures into a square with some borders on the side. Now they have a fully robust editing app. This one is fully free as well, but they will try to pay you make you pay to upgrade, but you don't have to if you don't. There are on screen ads just about everywhere. There's also a watermark logo, but you

can get rid of that by watching an ad. And it's just a great all around editing app. It does work really well with both photos and videos. And finally, like I mentioned, Splice is really good. But Splice is definitely a little bit more on the high end because it does cost more money. All right, So those are the three apps I recommend. Oh wow, and if you want, by the way, check out my Instagram reels. I do you know, I don't put a tonnel work into them, but I do enjoy doing those and I do enjoy

coming up with those on a reasonably regular basis. All right. That sound means that is going to do it for this episode of the show. If you would like to submit a question for me to answer, just go to my Facebook page, Facebook dot com, slash rich on Tech hit the big blue send email button, or go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit the email icon. Also, I would love it if you had a rate and

review this podcast. Just go to the listening app of your choice write a quick line about what you like about this show to help other people understand why they should listen. You can find me on all social media. I am at Rich on tech and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free KTLA plus app on Apple, TV, Fire TV, and Roku. Scroll to the tech section and you can watch all of my TV segments on demand. My name is Rich Demiro. Thank you so much for listening. There are so many

ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thank you. I'll talk to you real soon.