Survival Tech

The one thing hackers want you to know about Bluetooth on the iPhone, When Disney will crack down on password sharing, and which music service is raising prices? Why you should clean your smartphone band, your smart watch band, I should say, and your tech questions answered? What's going on? I'm Rich Dimiro and this is Rich on Tech. You know the show is live because I make mistakes like a real human.

No AI here.

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. And guess what phone lines are now open so you can hop on and join in. It's triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Email is also an option. Just go to rich on tech dot tv and hit contact. Saw the teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie last night, Mutant Mayhem, and the movie was fine. It was definitely a unique form of animation.

This is a mistake.

There's no storm barreling towards southern California. And sure enough, I go to a KTLA website and one minute before they had posted Hurricane Hillary or tropical storm headed towards southern California. And I said, wait, what when does this ever happen? And sure enough this app was right. And so now I'm really a fan of this app. So what's neat about this app is that it can do all kinds of weather predictions. It can track the storm, it can show you the trajectory. It just does it

Make sure you know where this stuff is.

If you have one of those like portable like those giant battery packs like Jackerie is a company that makes them portable power, make sure you charge those up as well. And of course find your radio if you have a portable radio. Those are really good in situations like this. Now, there's an app that I tested which I thought would

Really really useful.

So I got my name to show up on different phones in my house, but I can never get the messages to carry through. But there's also a public group chat, which theoretically anyone in your neighborhood that has this app could hop on and chat. That would be really useful if the internet went out or if the power went out. But quite frankly, I could not get this to work. So you can download it, you can try it see if it works with your loved ones in your house.

It works really well. If you're just.

On iOS, you can use find my to see where friends and family are that are linked up with you, you know that are all on your Apple ID or people who have agreed to share their.

Location with you.

Now on Android, there's a little feature that's actually quite useful. This is on Google Maps. If you locate yourself, you'll see a blue circle on the map. If you tap that circle up will pop up a message that says share location. You can share your location with anyone for a predetermined amount of time. You can say share my location for an hour, or share my location until I turn this feature off. That's a really handy feature and it does work cross platforms, so that's very very nice to.

Know out now.

When it comes to SOS, this is there's a bunch of built in emergency features on the iPhone and Android. You should familiarize yourself with this. On the iPhone, if you press and hold the power button and the volume up button for a couple of seconds, you will see emergency call. So that way you can immediately activate the

We were in what was would turn out to be Katrina.

And we were in Mobile, Alabama, I believe when it hit, and it was or where we Pensacola, I can't remember. We were somewhere in the south and we were in place. And the toughest thing in the morning was when this storm was just beginning to hit, was trying to find gas. We must have driven for an hour to find gas. And so that is another thing that's always smart to gas up. I never, at this point in my life life, I never go to sleep without less, you know, less

So I have a I have two daughters, nine and eleven, and it seems like all their schoolmates have phones and they're not clamshells. They're all smartphones. I'd like to get your opinion on how to desk to monitor. I have two old old iPhone sevens that I was thinking about getting on and giving those to them, but you know, I don't want to have to ask for their phone

Yeah.

Well, first off, good luck, because this is not easy, and I have two kids, and you know, I've got a whole bunch of precautions in place, and let me tell you, it's a headache. But it's also good at the same time, and it's also very, very complicated. Just today, my kids were complaining because they couldn't use Facebook Messenger to chat with their friends because I had it blocked at the network level, because you know, just because why do they need that? But now they're getting to the

And then if you want something that's.

More full serviced, I would check out two services. The first is Bark b A RK. These are parntal controls that do all the things that you were talking about, monitor social media, texting, but you have to understand that some of those things are limited based on the iOS operating system. And the other one is AURA au Area, So I would check those things out. Those are the main platforms that I would look at, and I think using a combination of those things is going.

To help you.

The router that I like that has Bark built in is Villo Vilo, so you can check that out. They have a partnership with Bark and so you can get everything.

Kind of all in one.

But Dennis, no easy solution to this, but definitely I'm glad as a parent that you are looking into this and you are being proactive.

Good luck with that, all.

Right, coming up, we're going to talk about robo calls, why do we get them, and how to stop them right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. We've all had that phone call, the spam call, the scam call.

The robo call.

They are annoying and True Caller is one of the apps that is trying to battle these calls. On the line is Clayton Leah Bratton of True Caller. Thanks so much for joining me today, be.

Rich, thanks for having me soho really great to be here.

Yeah, let's talk about robo calls in general, because I don't understand in twenty twenty three why we're still getting them.

Can you explain?

Yeah, I think the reason why we're getting them that is, as long as humans have had money, somebody else has wanted to take it from them. And the people who are perpetrating these fraudulent schemes are both astute technologists, so they know how to get through the systems, and they are very accomplished psychologists and social engineers, and so it's just a numbers game, right If they're able to get through to vulnerable people, and we think that we're not vulnerable,

So you mentioned that they're trying to you know, scam us or get money. I mean, is that really always what it comes down to, where they're trying to sell, like even like a sales pitch.

Is that like a scam usually?

Well, I think it's important for people to remember there are legitimate global calls, right. It could be a pharmacy, it could be traveling hospitality, and they use machines to dial masses of people for notifications. School systems aren't known for that. That's technically a robo call.

But when they are.

Used for nefarious purposes, they're not always outright fraud, like giving your credit card or send me an Apple gift card or something like that. Sometimes they're just collecting your personal information. So it could be a senior citizen, a medicare fraud scam, and all they really want to do is to get more detailed personal information they can leverage for identity theft in the future. So it's not always a clear cut of just asking for money, it's gathering more information.

All right.

So the number one question I always get when it comes to robo calls and scam calls is how did they get my phone number?

Where are they getting this from?

Interestingly enough, right, there's they multi source this from anywhere you've ever put in So you've seen the data breaches that large communications and enterprises have had, large retailers have had, Right, maybe you put your phone number into a point of sale system for a loyalty club, some retailer, or what we really see now is that people have been trading their privacy for the convenience of social media, and they put so much information about themselves out in social media

So, how do they make the phone number look like it's coming from either a number near me or my number?

What does that? Why do they do that just to make me answer?

Yeah?

So what?

That's called neighbor spoofing, and it's just human nature to say, oh, that looks like it's from my area code.

It's a much higher probability that that's someone.

That might know me or that I might have a relationship with, might do business with, and that neighbor spoofing has proven very effective. Now I do have to credit the Federal Communications Commission and carriers for implementing something called stirshaken, which is basically a handshake protocol to say this is a very number, it does belong to this carrier, and that has greatly reduced at least the spoofing, if not the robo call volumes, because.

There's other methods.

And the reason you can do that is because as soon as we went to a voice over internet protocol or internet or internet phone right then you're not necessarily just some analog service over copper lines. You can put anything you want in the front of that message and the header message to say anything you want. And so again, enforcement is in. Policy are working to a certain extent, but you've got to be vigilant and you've got to

Okay, before we get to some of the things that true caller does, I want to know, do you have any general tips on how to like, do we just stop sharing our phone number?

I mean that's kind of impossible.

It's like the phone number is everything now, like every service wants us to log in with our number.

Yeah, it really is your identifier. And I think that there's a difference between being paranoid and vigilant, right. I think that there's obvious cases where maybe you know, you might want to quesquestion. I wouldn't treat it quite as closely as they do my social Security number, but I would be selective about it, right. And of course, if it's an unknown call, it's easy to say, well, just

That matter, right, And that's the crutch of this whole thing, because Okay, so like my wife, she'll sit there and the phone will ring and it's a different number, and she'll be like, I'm not answering that. I said, wait a second, our kids are like at school or at their friend's house, Like we don't know whose number that is. Like my rule is like if my kids aren't with me, I always have to answer the number.

Absolutely.

If you you just describe, you know, called the soccer moment, Right, You've got all these play groups and teams and all the people that you know that aren't going to be in your contact right from the school and all the activities, and then you have somebody like you yourself, a journalist. You're getting blind calls all the time, callbacks all the time, and you can't afford not to answer the call. If you're a salesperson, if you're a realtor, right, your livelihood

And so what do you make of the call filtering apps that the carriers put out versus what you put out?

You know? So I think that the first of all, we are compatible with it.

We are like, like I said, the last line of the fence or a layer, that last layer on top of those.

So I think that they're okay, right. What they're trying to do is to maintain.

A decent database of suspicious numbers and try to identify callers as they come in. And it's bundled into your plan, and it does a decent job, right. My concern is that sometimes they could be blocking calls you know, falls positive, or you could be blocking calls that they really should be getting through. I would be, you know, be mortified if my parents didn't get a medical call or a

Okay, So explain to me what True Caller does. And the reason why this whole thing came up is because I said on my previous show, I said, well, I was a little concerned with putting my phone number into True Caller because when you sign up, they want your phone number, and are they sharing that with spammers?

Are they selling that?

I mean, can you explain, you know, how this works and if that's actually happening, because I feel like that's a common thing I hear about.

Yeah, I think it is fairly common that there are apps out there who ask you to put your information in there and then they monetize that data.

That absolutely does not happen a True Caller.

I would say that the user and subscriber information is absolutely Sackri saying. The only reason it's there is that if you and I are both True Caller users, that we are verified with one another, we can communicate through the platform. There's a you can imagine there's many entities that would like to license this, you know, the largest caller idea and spam blocking data in the world. Absolutely not,

And so this happens in real time, and just explain quickly how it works on your phone and does it work the same on Android and iOS?

Oh, that's a really good question. Now it doesn't, and so you know, a true call. Ever since the birth of Android, we've been the most comprehensive communications management you know, spam blocking and caller idea application. And it's very feature rich because an Android, you can actually see the phone number coming in and then you can say you can quire the data, you can actually enrich that data as it comes in. On iOS, as you know, it's very locked down and so you can't do the same thing.

So we spent a good bit.

Of the last couple of years developing an iOS solution and it's quite clever.

What we've done.

We have the ability to take the most frequently called numbers and spammers in a twenty four hour period and push them right to the device, right, And so that's just a couple of millions, so we're able to and it's constantly being updated.

With AI and mL.

Then we've also created a series shortcut right so that you can call it live call D and you can literally as a phone call is coming in.

And say hey, serious or true caller.

And that goes against our entire database of like seven billion numbers, right, So that's that's yeah. And then we've developed we've developed some advanced features like call screening where we can actually interact and engage with with the caller in a turn on whether you're going to take that call or not. That not only helps you take those calls that matter, but it's also something that just stops to get dead guys dead in their tracks, but you

All Right, we may have to leave that for another conversation because I'm out of time here, but thank you so much, Clayton Leah Bratton of True Caller. Check out the app. I'll put a link on the website Rich on tech dot TV. They do have a free level and then also some premium levels that do add some interesting features, including call recording and some other things.

Clayton, thanks so much for joining me today.

Thanks for having me.

Rich.

All right, more of your questions coming up next to triple eight Rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Carmen is in Hollywood, California. Carmen, you're on with Rich.

Thank you morning, Good morning.

Question two questions thes prover up that might have to need internet whenever I need it, if I need it?

Good question.

So it depends on the emergency SOS you're using. So with the iPhone, if you're using the standard dialing nine one one. You actually all you need is access to any cellular service. So if you are on the latest software on the iPhone, if you ever notice at the top it says SOS when you don't have a signal, what that means is that your phone can tap into any of the three major wireless carriers to send out

Will go through as well texting.

You can also text nine one one in a lot of places, so know about that. And then there is this new emergency it's called Emergency over SOS. Sorry, let me get the exact name. It's called Emergency SOS via Satellite and this is only on the iPhone fourteen and iPhone fourteen Pro models, and this is when you are outside of cellular and Wi Fi coverage, you will still be able to dial.

It's not necessarily nine one.

It is emergency services, but it's actually staffed by some folks that Apple has created and hired and set up, and so will they will receive. It's not a phone call, it's actually a text and that will work anywhere you

It may not one caveat here.

It says it may not work in places above sixty two degrees latitude, such as northern parts of Canada and Alaska. So hopefully you don't find yourself in a place where this doesn't work. But that's kind of like a fail safe place that does not require an Internet connection.

Carmen, thanks for the question. Appreciate that.

Let's go to Ted in South Dakota. Ted, you're on with Rich.

Okay, I'm looking for UPS that can handle extreme temperatures hot, both hot and cold.

So you want a UPS that actually works in different various conditions. So I'll tell you the way that I research products so that you can do the same. So I don't have a UPS, so I've never actually purchased one of these but this is an uninterruptible power supply, and this is basically a giant battery that you can connect to your electronics. So it has a connection for various gadgets that you can plug into this thing. And the idea is if the power goes out, this will

There's a range for these.

Now, if I go over to best Reviews dot com, which is owned by Nexstar, the company I work for on TV, they recommend APC as well and also CyberPower. So now this is telling me that APC and CyberPower are the two that I want, and they say the best of the best is the APC. And then they also have the CyberPower listed as a one that they like as well. And then if I go to Amazon and I search for a ups backup, the best seller

All right.

I talk about the website rich on tech dot tv. That is where you can go to get more information on anything I mentioned here. So if you go there, you can not only see the things that I mentioned on the show. At the top of the screen, it will say looking for something I mentioned on the radio, so you can tap that and in real time it is updated with the different things that people ask and the links that I put in to everything that I

All right, coming up.

On the next hour, I'm going to tell you about the one thing that hackers wants you to know about, how Bluetooth works on your iPhone. You're listening to rich on tech, all right, let's talk about the iPhone. And there's this big hacker conference called Defcon. This happened in Las Vegas over the last week and they.

Did something interesting there.

A security researcher used a small vice costs about seventy bucks to create pop up messages on nearby iPhones using Bluetooth. Now, these messages wanted people to share their Apple ID or password with a nearby Apple TV. And now, as you might expect, the people at attend this kind of conference are pretty smart, so they didn't fall for it.

But it was an experiment.

Number one to show that if you turn off Bluetooth on iPhones, there's actually two ways of doing it, and most of us do it the way that doesn't really turn it off. And I'll explain that in a second. So the way that most people use the Bluetooth on iPhone is you use what's called the Control Center, and that's when you swipe down from the upper right hand corner and you toggle the little Bluetooth icon. That doesn't

The wrong way.

If you think it's off, it's not actually off, and that way, in that way, someone could still try to hack you. And number two, it's to show that there are many, many methods of trying to get us. And it's not just the spam text and it's not just the robo calls. It is stuff like this where they try to engineer or reverse engineer our phones and social

And the same goes for Wi Fi.

By the way, if you're toggling Wi Fi off in the control center, it's just toggling it off that connection that it's actively connected to. If you truly want to turn off any sort of Wi Fi on your phone, you have to go into settings. I know it's a weird delineation, but it's something that you know, people like myself know about, but I don't think a lot of other people even think about. I did something interesting this week. I signed up for a mobile driver's license through the

And let's put it this way.

Anyone who checks an ID that is looking at that ID and looking at the person standing in front of them, the person is, you know, maybe not the age they need to be. You are not fooling anyone. Give me a break. I can tell how old someone is, and I can tell if someone is of a certain age.

I get it, maybe if they're right on the cusp.

But when you have a thing that says you're twenty six and you're really seventeen, come on, they know what's happening, and they're just letting it slide. Now, with the new digital driver's license and age checks, that is not gonna happen anymore because they're going to be scanning your license. And I'm not talking the barcode on the back. This is a QR code that's on your phone. And so basically with California they're testing this new mobile driver's license.

It's just a computer system.

But this pilot is limited to one point five million participants. Now it's been going on for a couple of days. Now, they may have hit that already. As you might imagine, the comments on my Facebook page about this where wide ranging. A lot of people don't want to do this because why do they want to have more information out there than they need to Why do they want a digital

So why go through the whole hassle of all this.

Well, I like to be on the cutting edge, I like to try new things, and I just wanted to see what this is all about.

But at this point, even if you.

Download and sign up for this, you still have to carry your physical driver's license. And you know, there's some there's some definite things that come along with this. Whether you like it or not, this is just a precursor to what's going to happen in the future, and that is that all driver's licenses will eventually be digital. That's just the bottom line. It's gonna happen, kind of like the way credit cards are now. It was like at the beginning of the wallets, the digital wallets, you could

But a lot of people.

Let's see phone number triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you have a question about tech, give me a call. If you have Disney Plus, they are going to start the password sharing crackdown. Netflix is they were the first to take this dive, and they said, you know what,

It should be.

Seems like you're a friend of a friend that's logging in on your friend's account. Hey, if you still want to keep using this, you got to pay. And what happened a lot of people just said never mind, okay, fine, I'm done, and a lot of other people said, okay, fine, I'll get my own password and my own sign up and my own payment. And so they got a lot of new people to subscribe. And so now Disney is saying, okay,

What does that mean, queue the.

Cash register, chiching, because it means they will find ways to make people pay or stop streaming on their friends accounts right now. The only thing that Variety found in the customer agreement for Disney Plus, ESPN and Hulu says that customers may not share your log in credentials with third parties, but they don't specify if a third party is friends or family or someone that doesn't live in the same household. So again, come twenty twenty fourths, you've

I remember the first time it happened to me. I logged in.

I was trying to log in on my VR headset and Netflix was I was like, oh, no, we're sorry, your household is in another state. You need to pay, And I said, wait, what I pay for this? And sure enough, when someone on my account had logged in it sets the household as their area, and I was like, oh, that's how it works, and so they said, yeah, confirm

Know, I mean, who knows. Maybe I shared the password with them a long time ago. I can't remember. It's tough to remember all this stuff.

All right.

Rich On Tech is the name of the show.

You are listening to rich DeMuro here talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one.

Uh.

Coming up this hour, we are going to talk to Desmond Wheatley, President and CEO of Beam Global. They've got a really cool solution for ev charging that fits into a parking spot. You are listening to rich on Tech Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one is the number if you want to hop on the line and ask me a question about technology. Let's go to Kevin in Las Vegas. Kevin, you're on with Rich.

Hey, Rich, how are you? Thanks for taking the call.

I'm doing great. Thanks for calling.

I have a strange issue going on. I have a Phillips Hugh lights installed in my house. And just to give you a little background, last year I had the Geek Squad install for me echob thermostads, schleg door locks. I put that in Phillips Hugh sinkbox and lights around my TVs and then just lights in all the lambs.

Oh you're in it. You're in a minute, right.

So I took the sink boxes off because they just made the TV take minutes to start up, literally two or three minutes to get the TV to start. And I called the Geese Squad back once they tried to fix it, they saw it happen. So I just eventually took.

That off.

Largely.

Okay, but here's the issue I have. I wake up in the morning and I hit a good morning thing that should turn on all the lamps in the house. And what will happen is they all turn on but then slowly and I can sit there and look at the app and I can see it happened. A light will turn on in the kitchen, then one'll go down to one percent in my office, and then the family room will you know, prove them will turn out and if I turn those back on, other ones go out.

Well, okay, so when you say the good morning thing, is this a voice command?

No, it's a it's a button. You know, I created a button, and I have all the lights on there. When I hate good morning or good night, it'll it'll turn them on or turn them off.

Okay, And how did you create that?

I created that in the Apple Home app. Okay, all right, So I put all the lights in there, and then you know, had them you know which ones I wanted to turn on, which ones I wanted to turn off when I said, you know, good night.

Okay. So here's what I think is happening.

And this this I think has to do with routines. So the way that these lights work is that it's you know, and Phillips, you are very great. I mean, they're really nice, and they in all of these lights. By the way, I've tested all the different brands, and none of them are perfect. I think that the Phillips are near perfect, Like they work really well, but they're also very expensive, which is why you know a lot of people are shy away from them, and they are

That's the way it works.

And the only reason I say that is because I've got lights in my in my office that are on a routine through Google Home and it's really weird to when you when you when the routine works, it's fine, but when it doesn't work, when one of the lights is out, it will say all these weird things like light number one is not responding, or light number one is not dimming. Light number one can't change the color like it'll respond, And so I know that it's doing things in a sequence, and so.

That is what I think is happening.

The way to change that or solve it, I would make sure everything's updated because there are you know there there have been many many updates to these smart lights in the last couple of months, and I don't know is Phillips on with matter.

Let's see the thing that's coming up yet. Matter.

So matter is like the new kind of standard for all of these lights, and so if you could update these to work with matter, I think that might be a nice thing to do and see if it simplifies kind of this little system that you have that you've built. The other thing I would do is I would try to build a similar routine inside the Phillips Hoe app if that's possible. I've got a couple of my things on a routine there and it does seem to work more so than any other routine.

I have the two routines that I have.

That work the best I've built through Amazon Alexa and also through the just Phillips app. So might try playing with those things to see if that works. But I agree, Kevin, you've got a lot of things set up on here, so I think there's like a lot riding on the line, and none of this stuff is perfect. But if it's working at the end of the day, I think that's

Appreciate it real quick.

If you have a smart watch or a fitbit, you might want to clean the band. A recent study by clean the band that sounds like a band name. Recent study by researchers found that almost all Apple watches and Fitbit wrist bands have harmful bacteria on them. They tested plastic, rubber, cloth, leather, and metal bands. Ninety five percent of them had dangerous bacteria. People who wore smart watches during workouts had the most bacteria. Let's see the type of material also affects bacteria. Rubber

Welcome back to Rich on Tech.

Rich DeMuro here hanging out talking technology with you on location in the city of Los Angeles.

We are standing under a.

Sustainable self contained ev charging solution. It is being deployed in cities across America and the world. And joining me now is Desmond Wheatley, the CEO of Beam Global.

You make these things.

Welcome to the show, Rich, Thanks very much for having me.

Yes, we're very proud of this product to your Our ev ARC electric vehicle, autonomous renewable charger, invented, designed, engineered, and best of all manufactured here in the United States, providing the driving on sunshine experience to customers all over the US and as you said, increasingly internationally as well.

So the device is self contained and sustainable. So it looks like a giant solar panel plus a battery on top of a flat panel that lays in a parking spot. So this fits in a standard parking spot, and you can deploy ev charging, and not just EV charging, but all types of charging pretty much anywhere you can place one of these.

You're exactly right, So the ev ARC fits inside a standard legal sized parking space fantastically. It doesn't reduce available parking in any way at all, because the vehicle is actually able to park on the ballast and traction pad, which is what gives the unit stability and ensures it doesn't blow away in hurricane force winds or during an earthquake or something like that. So you're getting all of this power generation being fed into vehicles or into other devices.

Tell me about the different components I mentioned kind of briefly. It has a solar panel on top. Explain to me what's happening with this beam device.

Yes, we're converting sunlight into electricity. We're doing that in a hyper efficient way because we have a patented tracking solution, and that causes the solar array to follow the sun as it moves across the sky in a really clever way. That gives us about twenty five percent more electricity than we'd anticipate from a fixed solar array fix. Rolary is still good, but trackings even better because twenty five percent more electricity means twenty five percent more miles driven by

So you've got the battery and not only do you have at least two car chargers, but you also have plugs and USB. So someone if this was in a park, for instance, someone could come and charge their phone from this device. And there's also an emergency component as well.

Explain that.

Yeah, So actually we set them up to charge as many as six vehicles at the same time. So picture a flea operator like Los Angeles. Six fleet vehicles can plug in at the end of shift. The next time when they come back and use those vehicles, they'll be full again. We call this daily range replenishment. It's a fantastic way to.

Fuel your vehicle.

Gone are the days of going to the gas station and hanging around and pumping liquid, carcinogens and everything into a tank in your vehicle. Now you're just plugging in, just like you would plug in your cell phone while you're doing something else. Six vehicles charge. End of shift. But you're right, there are other things we can do

I mean, it's definitely interesting to have that ability as well. How much of a charge can one of these provide?

An EVRC electric vehicle Autonomous Renewable charge is going to generate and store enough electricity to provide up to two hundred and sixty five driving miles in a day. Now, the average US sedan drives thirty point four miles per day. Fleet vehicles like we commonly charge around twenty miles a day.

How much does one of these costs and how does that compare to actually digging and building out power lines?

And that's that's exactly the right question, because the fact the matter is the answer to how much one of these things costs is less. It costs less than the voided costs of construction, less than digging the trenches, less than pulling the wires, less than pouring the concrete. The average selling price on This is about seventy thousand dollars.

Work and everything else.

It takes about two years to deploy a grid tie charger in New York City by the time you go through planning and construction electrical work, which we do the same thing in under one hour and far less expensively.

This is a big unit, Like I said, it fits in a standard parking spot, but you've got a big solar panel on top, you've got a battery.

It's all kind of.

On this hinge mechanism, I guess, or you know some sort of thing that holds it up this big bar, and then you've got this platform.

Is this safe? Pople might wonder? Can I park under this? Can I step under?

This?

Is this safe?

Designed, invented, engineered, manufactured in these United States of America. This is a very robust product. It's designed and in fact independently stamped to withstand wins of one hundred and sixty miles per hour. But it's done much better than that. In the Caribbean. It survived one hundred and eighty five mile in our Category five hurricane wins. It's flood proof to nine and a half feet, and there is nothing

Tell me about that team you're based in San Diego.

We're based in San Diego. Yeah, we're again fantastic. It's a meritocracy. We are for merit, but I think we seek out merit in places that some others ignore. We have veterans, we have workers disabilities, we have immigrants like me. We even have people who have had who have a dodgy history, but have paid their price to society. We're very proud of that team. With diversity, we get a lot of input. We got a lot of very clever ideas and their mission driven. I mean, we're letting Americans

Where is this being used well.

At the moment, Better than half of our customers are fleet operators. So as I mentioned US Army, the Marine Corps. By the way, we are from the Marine Corps. Guys take off their uniforms and mirror mort and then they walk two miles to our factory and we put them in our Uniform Veterans Administration, so we have federal government.

Them are some fighting words when it comes to, you know, traditional gas cars, but I will admit driving EV is a lot of fun. Where are you from, by the way.

I'm from Scotland originally, and I'll say this about driving an EV driving there's only one thing better than driving an EV, driving on sunshine.

That's what we provide.

But yes, I'm from Scotland originally. America has been very very good to me. I'm trying to be good bye to it. So thank you for guys.

Where can folks find out more about the ev RC and.

Beam The best place, of course to go is our website which is Beam four all dot com. So that's b E A M F O R A L L dot com.

Desmend weekly from Beam Global.

Thanks so much for joining me today.

That's been my great pleasure.

Rich thanks for having me.

More rich on Tech coming your way.

If you have a question about technology, give me a call. It's triple eight Rich one on one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

We'll be right back.

Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Man.

If I had just a tenth of the energy that our last interview had, maybe this show would be more popular or less.

I'm not sure.

Uh triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You can find me online at rich on tech dot tv. There you can see some of the stories I cover for television. You can see show notes for past shows, subscribe to the podcast, and you can find me on social media. I'm on Instagram x formerly Twitter, Facebook, threads all at.

Rich on Tech.

Let's go to John in Newbury Park, California. John, you're on with Rich.

Yeah, Hi, Rich, thank you. I just got a quick question. We've been using cable for a long time and the price just keeps going up and up and up, and I'm trying to get a sense of how streaming is different, maybe better than cable, and what's the downside of streaming.

Good question.

Well, there's a big report out this week that streaming has become more expensive than cable, and I do not believe that to be true. Here's the thing. When you are streaming, you are in control. You pay for cable, You're paying eighty five ninety bucks a month for a bunch of stuff you don't need. When you're paying for streaming, you're paying seventy five dollars for a bunch of stuff you don't need. That was a joke, no, I mean, but the reality is, yes, the prices of streaming services

You know?

It used to be when you had cable you would pay, like I said, ninety bucks a month and you'd get all these channels whether you watch.

Them or not.

With streaming, you decide what you want to subscribe to. Now you've heard of the big streaming services like Netflix and YouTube TV and Sling TV, and you know all these other you know, Hulu and Disney Plus. But there are a whole bunch of smaller streaming services out there as well.

So a couple of resources for you, John, Which number one?

I say, just dive in and do it to cut the cord.

You'll be very very happy.

You can go to a service like Real Good R E E, L, g OO D and you can see all of the streaming services that you can subscribe to now again the popular ones Netflix, Amazon Prime, Showtime, Hulu, FX Stars, crunchy Roll, But there are literally hundreds of streaming services like fandor Epics, Fear Factory, Let's see what else, Freeform, free V that's a free one, Fubuu TV, Funimation, there are so many scream Box Science, I mean things I've never even heard of, popcorn flix Plex. So there's a

Now.

A couple things to keep in mind very quickly is cable TV bundles versus a streaming service like Netflix. There are services like YouTube TV, Sling TV, and Fubu that are basically replacing cable TV that gives you a whole bunch of channels that you would traditionally get from a cable TV provider, like the Food Network, HGTV, Bravo, all those different channels that you may or may not need.

Same thing.

The station I work for, KTLA has an app called Ktla Plus. You download that and you can watch for free. So I think this is kind of the thing that's happening across the nation, is that people want to be able to choose when and how and what they watch. And also they you know, they decide with their dollars what is important to them. If you don't want Netflix, if Netflix isn't making the kind of program that you want anymore, you can.

Get rid of it. And it's very very easy.

Good question, John, but I say go for it. I was a little hesitant to cut the cord. Probably gosh, there's probably been five years at this point. My wife was very much against it and would I would never look back at this point. All Right, A lot of you have emailed in let's see, Jill says, are all of the cell phone companies equal? I live in southern Cali, Alifornia. I'm currently an AT and T customer. I only have one line. I'm looking for less expensive service. What should

I said, the old models will be cheaper.

All right. Coming up later this hour, we're going to talk about ady T and their new alarm system that you can install yourself, plus more of your questions at triple eight rich.

One on one.

Welcome back to rich on Tech, Rich DeMuro talking technology with you at triple eight Rich one O one. That's eighty eight eight seven four to four to one zero one. If you have a question about technology, give me a call. You can also email. Just go to rich on Tech dot tv hit the contact button there. You can follow me on social media at rich on Tech if you like what you hear. Let's see what else a lot to talk about. Oh, this hour we're gonna talk about Let's see. This is the ad T self setup. So

Let's go.

Let's go to the phones first. Let's go to Paul. Let's go to Paul and Columbus, Ohio. Paul, you're on with Rich.

Hey, Rich, good luck with the storm too. I hope that doesn't cost too much disaster out there.

I appreciate that California. You can't deal with rain to begin with, by the way, So if it just exactly yeah, so you've seen the video. I mean, if it's like just regular rain, it's tough out here. So we'll hopefully we'll be okay, but we'll see. We don't know what can I help you with.

Okay, I'm trying to help a friend. I'm semi techie. She's very non techy. He's got an all computer probably five years old, running Windows ten, and she has issues with the USB ports. There's eight ports all together, a couple in the front, couple and the some in the back, and they'll just stop working. And then so it can plug it into another port and it may or may not work. And then you go back later after turning a computer on and off or whatever, and it can

Okay?

Have you and so you physically went over there and checked them out?

No?

I had not, Okay, I think I think that might be a good first step.

And you said, this was what type of computer?

A Dell?

Okay, that's a small tower.

And it's about five years old, right, And are all of the us bees on one sort of I guess card on this computer or they in different places?

Like are some in front, some and back?

Yeah, there are some in front and someone back, So I'm guessing that it's not the same card, but I'm not positive about it, Okay.

And has she plugged the peripherals into the front, Like if it do they all stop working? Because that seems really odd that they would all stop working, even the ones that are in different locations.

That's what I thought too, But like I say, it's it's intermittent. Sometimes the back will work, sometimes the funnel work, and then sometimes none of them are working.

Interesting, Okay, Well, it sounds like if it's you know, there's two things that could be happening here. It could either be a physical hardware issue or it could be a software issue. And it sounds like you kind of ran her through and got the system cleaned up and

Now.

In my experience, sometimes these little computer tests could be pretty bad. Like it comes up with either stuff that's just like give me a break, or it may come up with something that's real.

I don't know.

Uh, that's the first thing I would do. The other thing is, let's see there's another there's another. Okay, let's see. So they have like a list of like ten things to do. Obviously, you checked for physical damage.

I would do that.

Check the cable, you know, like, have her plug in something else that is different than what she's been plugging in. Maybe that's it. Okay, now you've got this hard Hardware Diagnostic Tool. Now this one you might need to be there for because it starting up the computer and then pressing F twelve while you are starting the computer to get into the you know, one time boot menu. So once you get into there, you can do the Dell

So that's another thing you could do. Again.

That's called the Dell Support Assist, and that's when you boot up the system. Otherwise, I mean, you know, I would plug the USB device into a different computer. See if it stops working on that computer. Make sure Windows is up to date. There's a thing that you can refresh the USB controller. Let's see, disconnect all of the devices press Windows.

Are Oh wow.

This gets a little little tricky because you gotta you got oh wow. This is like getting into the Universal Serial Bus controllers and the Windows Device Manager. That might be something that you want to go over there, Paul and do yourself. But if you want, you can uninstall the USB host controller and then restart the computer and then reinstall that.

I don't know that may be that maybe a little bit much.

If it doesn't work after all that, maybe get someone from Dell to look at it.

I'm not sure.

It doesn't sound like it's still in warranty, so I think, you know, it's one of these things where it's best to be in person. This is one of those issues that could be a million different things. And after you've gone through your standard troubleshooting, which it sounds like you've done, which is why you're calling me, it's it's just.

Kind of a mystery.

So I would get some physical help on this computer to see what's going on. Let's go to Brian in Long Beach, California.

Brian, you're on with Rich.

Hello, Rich, Hey, good afternoon.

What I wanted to ask about. I had a broken phone and then I had to get the replace right and I got on replacement phone, use the same number and the new phone. It thinks Google accounts that I haven't used in three years, you know sometime way to say it up and I need to be able to think the Google counts that.

I have been using for the last two and.

A half years.

Could you get me with that, so you've got Okay, So you had a Google account on your old phone, you broke the phone and you got a new phone. Yeah, okay, what kind of phone is this? Android or iPhone?

Andrew it?

Okay? And so what happened? Who logged into this new phone for you?

I called the company and I want they did work through with me?

Okay, okay, it sounds like you so, and you're saying that the account on this phone is an old account that you used to use and you no longer use.

Three years ago. I never did really use that did establish it though, but you.

Never really used it, and you want to go back to the other account.

Okay, I want.

I wanted to count that I've been using for the last two years, got it?

Okay?

So, uh in Google, if you go on your new phone, okay, now do you have the Do you have the information for this account that you want to use?

Yes?

Okay? And that then I run into the problem with the second authentication, that's the phone number have to use. I do have a password and I do have a screen name. But but some kind of way when the count was stayed up, I stayed up with a second authentication, but I no longer have that phone two years ago. And the second authentication is phone number of verification.

And you don't have the phone.

You don't so it's trying to send a two factor authentication to a device that you no longer have or a phone number you don't have.

Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, So what you need to do is go through Google.

Account recovery and this may take some time because they're gonna have to verify you. So uh if you go, let's see here, So you've got to go. Gosh, you're gonna have some trouble with this, but you're it's it's gonna take some time.

But basically you want to go.

Uh, there's a link if you Google recover Google account, uh, and it will bring you to a help page on Google Support dot Google dot com.

And I would give.

You, uh the the web address is accounts dot Google dot com slash sign in slash recovery.

Okay have you done this before? Have you done? Have you tried this yet? Okay?

Count the web page and I learned information about the second authentications, but uh, when it told me, when it told me to go there, UH didn't ask me for password to get into the sign athentication where I could change.

It, right, Okay, do you have do you Okay? So basically you have to do what's called an account recovery. You have to go to this account recovery page.

Uh.

This is not the standard sign in page that Google has. So the standard signing page is just going to say, hey, we need you to do this, and then it's going to say forget your password or you can't access it, and it's going to take you through some steps. This is a special place built just to get you to recover your account. So you go to this accounts dot Google dot com slash sign in, slash recovery, and you want to answer as many of the questions as you can.

Okay.

What you want to do is use a computer or a tablet where you might have signed in before it sounds like you can't do that, or a browser that you've signed in, or a location where you've previously signed in. What Google's looking for are clues that this is actually.

You trying to do this.

It may ask you for an old password, it may ask you for security questions, it may ask you to put in an email address that you've used. But that's what you want to do, and you want to answer as many of those questions as possible, and that's going to kick you through the process and hopefully recover this account. That is the best chance you have at getting this account back. The bigger advice I have if you're listening and are trying to, you know, get into your old

Coming up right here.

Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out talking technology with you at Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Email is at rich on tech dot tv. Hit the contact button and a lot of you like to email. So we've got producer Adam with one of the questions that you've emailed in Adam.

Yeah, Rich, I got a question here from Michael. Michael. He says, I have a question regarding Wi Fi. What is the best way to get Wi Fi for my mother who is a senior at her residence. Besides the cable companies? Are there any government programs? So, Rich, how are you going to help Michael out with that good question?

Let's see.

So okay, okay, I thought he said she was at a senior residence, but it's just at her residence, so that okay. I mean, look, you don't have to necessarily go through the cable companies. That's kind of the traditional way. But there are some companies that are now offering wireless internet and this is all because of the new five G networks, even though they're offering them on a combination of five G and LTE. So one of them is team O Home Internet and this is put out by

It's just wireless.

It's pulling a cellular signal and then rebroadcasting that as Wi Fi. And this is best if you have a solid five G signal at your mom's house. And it's very inexpensive if you're doing auto pay. Wow, they just raise the price. You used to be twenty five Now it's thirty bucks a month. So you can check availability. If you go to t Mobile Home Internet, you can

I don't know if that's if you have.

Verizon for your cellular signal, but that is the same thing, except it's through Verizon. I did test this, and I tried this box out. It's very easy to plug it in. It puts out the Wi Fi signal and it's pretty good. So again, Verizon Home Internet and T Mobile Home Internet. Don't think AT and T has jumped on that yet. Now the second part of your question, are there any government programs with these two services? You could check out

But first we're going to talk to Ben Shown of nine to five Google about.

ADT self Set Up Security system.

You are listening to rich on Tech.

Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you. On the line is Ben Shown, senior editor at nine to five Google. Ben, thanks so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me on.

All right, so let's talk about your review of the ADT self set Up Security System. This is a departure from ADT, which we typically think of as having really super long contracts, professional installation. What is this system all about?

Yeah, so self setup is what the name implies. You get the delivery to your house comes in a box. You can set everything up through an app. You can put it all in yourself honestly, it doesn't take that long. If you just have a few sensors and stuff, it might take half an hour. It's just a quick and easy setup, and really it's like a do it yourself kind of approach.

And this is competing against something like Ring, but it also replaces what Google used to have for their own Nest Secure.

Yeah, so it's similar to Rings simply save all of those But in terms of what Google had, they had something called Nest Secure.

It launched several years ago.

It was a standalone security system that was kind of designed to self monitor, so you could do everything yourself. It didn't have to be monitored by somebody, but you could get monitoring for monthly fee. Google discontinued it after a few years of not really doing anything with it, and just I think next year it's going to shut down. It won't be accessible through.

The app anymore.

It really won't be working anymore, which is a shame, and it kind of left a lot of people out to dry. But Google gave out discounts with ADT because they are heavily invested in this system.

With ADT, it's a.

Tightly integrated system and the point is for it to be a replacement because Google is not making their own.

Explain the hardware is this hardware ADT hardware, is it Google hardware? Is it a combination? And what types of sensors and cameras can you get with the system.

Yeah, so it is a combination of the two. The security hardware is primarily ADT. You have a hub from ADT that is the center of every setup, and then you have sensors which can be door and windows sensors, motion sensors. I think they have a fire alarm, but they also have just a bunch of different security and smart home sensors. Those are all made by ADT and

So there's an element of professional monitoring here in addition to the kind of app alerts and things exactly.

Yeah, you have the option to do it completely on your own for no costs. But if you want monitoring, you can pay twenty five dollars for ADT's monitoring just of alarms, and then you can pay an extra fee on top of that, depending on how much storage you want for them to.

Be able to tap into your Google feed.

And if you didn't want ADT, if you just wanted to self host this sort of say, can you do this without paying anything month?

Yeah, So if you want to use it completely on your own, kind of like Nest Secure was, you can use it like that. You'll end up getting monitoring for like the first month or so as a free trial, but after that you don't have to pay anything. You just pay for the cost of the hardware, which depends on the package you buy.

So how was it to install this yourself?

It was really easy. It takes, you know, like I said, about a half an hour or so. It's all really well put through the app. You'll set up the hub wherever you want it, and then you'll set up each sensor. And the cool thing especially is they will when you buy the system. When it comes you sign into your account, it will show everything you bought already in the app.

You just have to pair it.

So why do you think Google is doing this? Why do you think they're partnering with ADT? I mean it's a pretty big company. Obviously, I get the name recognition, but it seems like when I think of ADT, I think of big, long contract, very expensive. Maybe they come to your house to install it, which is nice. I mean professional installation always nice. But this is kind of like a one to eighty from everything they've done in the past.

Yeah, I think it's kind of a benefit for everybody.

I think ADT realizes that a lot of people don't want those long contracts, they don't want professional installation and you know, really expensive hardware. They sometimes they just want to know when their door has been tripped or something like that, and this makes that way more affordable and

What about the track record of Google? We always speak about this. You know, Google has a history of you know, coming out with the product, supporting it for a while, and then kind of moving on or changing gears. Do you see that happening with this.

That is a totally valid concern.

I think the things that make it a.

Little easier to trust in is won the eighty T name.

Because ADT supports their products for years and years and years. You can replace things over time. And also Google actually does have a really good track record with supporting most Nest products. For instance, the nestcam that was released back in twenty fifteen, like a long time ago at this point, is still working. It's still getting updates today, and it actually will be poorted pretty soon into the Google Home app, so it'll work the same way as the modern mess cameras.

I'm looking at some of the pricing on the ADT website, and if you start the kind of the cheapest package starts about one hundred and seventy five dollars with monitoring

Yeah?

I think for some people doing it professionally will matter, will be important because you know it's securing your home, so it is an important thing. I think the appeal of this, like I said, is you know you're not

All of that. It is completely up to you and you can customize it however you want.

So for the money, who do you like best? Do you like ring? Do you like what Google's doing with ADT or simply Safe or is there another solution out there that you think is best.

Actually I have trouble coming up with the idea of some ideal DIY security system.

I don't think there is anything that's ideal.

I really do like ADP is set up, though, because you have the option to just use it on its own. I was using a simply Safe system for a while, and really a lot of the good features are locked behind the subscription. But with this system for ADT, the only thing that you're paying for that monthly subscription is the monitoring. Everything else, the automations and the app to tie in with Google Nest, everything is still working even if you don't pay for it.

Any other things that you found in the course of your review that you want to mention that you think people should know about, I think.

The only thing you should know about is that the hub the keypad is not the most user friendly interface in the world.

So it's going to be a little tricky when you have a guest come over.

Ah, okay, that's actually one of the few times that my alarm system was tripped, was a house guest and they weren't able to turn off the alarm quickly enough. It wasn't this system, but I guess it can happen with any of them. So if you're not too familiar with that process, All right, Ben, how can folks find you online?

Oh? You can find me every day at nine to five Google dot com.

And I'm also on Twitter, threads, Instagram, everything else at Nexus.

Ben ben Shone, Senior editor at nine to five Google. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Thanks for having me more rich.

On Tech head in your way. If you have a question about technology, give me a call. It's triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two or one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you. What a great show it's been so far, but there's still more.

All right.

So there is a feature on my website richon Tech dot tv where you are able to leave me a voicemail. And uh, you've done that, so Adam, can we play one of these voicemails.

What is a good free computer cleaner?

Oh, good question. A couple of them.

This was actually emailed to me several years ago by someone who does this on a daily basis, cleans out computers. And these are the programs that they recommended that I should recommend. So one of them is called C Cleaner, and this is they say the world's most popular PC cleaner.

And there's a free version.

Obviously there's a it's a freemium model, like everything works on a freemium model. You can get it for free, but of course they would like you to pay to get more features. But the free version will do the basics and try to get some of these things off your computer and cleaned up. So C Cleaner is number one. Then you've got this product called super Anti Spyware dot Com and that's if you've got some spyware on your computer, you can check to see if you've got things is

Adam looking for a website to cancel background noises to hear a conversation in a video.

I love how meta this question is because there are background conversations in his.

Question.

So was that a joke? I don't think so, that's I love that, Okay. I will tell you this is the best kept secret in the world, and you're gonna love this. It's called Is there even a name? For this thing I don't even know. It's called Adobe Adobe Enhance and it's a free tool. It removes noise from voice recordings with speech enhancement. And I'm not kidding. This thing is absolutely fantastic. You can upload audio files. You get one hour a day duration, five hundred megabytes maximum

It is just quite incredible.

So that will remove the background information and it works really really well. All right, I've got a couple more questions. Did I email you another question?

Or no?

I don't think I did? Did I you did?

Oh?

I did?

Oh?

Okay, let's hear another. We get so many questions via email, Adam, go ahead.

We have an email here from Jacqueline.

What up?

Jacqueline? Jacqueline says, is there a safe way to get all my years of photos safely off of my phone and iPad? I enjoy your TV tips. Thanks so rich. Jacqueline has to destroy some evidence, I guess can you help her?

Let's see.

Okay, I just got a new gadget, so this is a this is a very This might be the all time most popular question I've ever gotten in my history of reporting on technology.

So basically, you see these ads.

On late night TV and on the web for these little USB drives you can plug into your phone. I don't like any of those except for a couple. PNY just came out with a new one. You might recognize PNY. They make a lot of great memory type products. This is called the Duo link iOS USB three point two

Your iPhone.

Now, remember I do like you to have your photos in several places, so don't just put it on this drive and have that as your only place. You should also back these up to the cloud. If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can use Amazon Photos for free unlimited to upload.

As long as you keep paying for Amazon Prime.

Again, that's called the duo link iOS USB three point two dual flash drive. That's what I'd recommend to get those off your phone. Sand Disc also makes something similar. I'll put this all on my website at richontech dot TV. All right, let's get to the feedback. Now, these are things that you have emailed me.

Let's see.

Aaron says, thank you for mentioning about the computer and malware advertisement scam for tech support. As I mentioned two weeks ago, this happened to me. Thank you for your advice on helping me fix the problem. Aaron, That's why I mentioned this stuff because you never know when it's going to happen to me. Page says, I'm glad you decided to answer the email about how to load a file onto a flash drive. Please don't assume everyone's a techie.

Thank you, Jim.

I would have to test that, but yes, if it turns it off in the settings, that would be great. That's one way to do it for sure. You can also ask Siri to restart your phone. That's very handy. Angela's commenting on the California driver's license. She says, I would like it if I could put it in my phone. The less stuff in my physical wallet, the better. One hundred percent agree, Angela. I can't wait to have everything digital. I literally carry no keys. I will tell you that