Twitter hopes you'll pay to see certain Tweets

tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. I hope you are having a fantastic day, although as I record this, it's one of the earlier, earlier times right now, but I'm having a good day. It is. It's always, you know, it's always fun. I really look forward to the podcast because I feel like it's a real dedicated group of listeners that I really like to hear, kind of the extended version of the things that I talk about on TV or on my tweets or on my

Facebook page. And so it was fun. Last week I was in Las Vegas, so I'm sure you heard a little. The show sounded just a little different. I thought it sounded okay. I listened to some of it just to hear how it sounded. I thought it was good. I was in Las Vegas for two things, the fifty thousand dollars folding House, which got a lot of play on TV. People loved it on the web. So many questions, so many questions. I didn't have the answers any of the questions.

People are asking me about plumbing, and people are asking me about foundations, and I don't know all. All I know is I want one of those in my backyard. I would love to have an ADU like that in my backyard. It's this fifty thousand dollars foldable house, basically

their twist on modular homes. And I think I mentioned this last week is that they make it eight feet across, which doesn't require any special wide load signs or trucks when you're bringing it down the highway, and so once they get it on site, they unfold it it becomes this great little casita. So I really really really want one of those, but I'm sure I'm one of one

hundred thousand other people that want it as well. I was also in Vegas for the Flyover Ride, which we aired on KTLA today, and it's this ride that's basically like Disney's California Soarin or the old Back to the Future ride if you're of a certain age at Universal Now it's called the Simpsons Ride, but it's the same thing. You sit in these chairs and they kind of move in front of this big giant screen in front of you.

This one in Vegas is a little bit more modern because it was recorded in eight K and it was also you know, it has like six axes of movement instead of just two that the traditional rides have. I thought it was great. I thought it was very exciting. My wife and kids watched the story today, They're like, we need to go there. We need to go and go on that ride. And so I never wanted to bring my kids to Vegas, honestly, Like it was just one of those things where like, I don't bring my

kids to Vegas. You know, it's an adult place. And now as they get older and my kids get older, and I'm kind of I mean, they're not that old, but you know, as I need to find things to do with them, I'm like, we could find some stuff to do with the kids in Vegas. And so there are a lot of things you can do there. I mean there's like I looked up I've been keeping a list of like all the different things that kids can

do in Las Vegas. You know, I keep away the gambling and all the other little cards that they hand out on the streets, if you know what I mean. But there's like a Neon museum. They would love Circus Circus, even though I wouldn't typically go there, but they would love this flyover ride. They would love the aquarium at the at the Mandalai Bay, they would love the pool at the Mandalai Bay. Just seeing the sites would be really fun. So there's definitely a lot. We'll plan a

trip at one of these points. I don't think right now is the time, but maybe once we get through a little bit of this situation that's happening in the world, we can go. Also, if you watch me on KTLA, new studio made its debut, which was really cool. They've been working on this studio that I used to use, same room, but they kind of they brought it down to the beams and then built a brand new studio.

That's really cool because I mean, I love these people that know how to do this stuff because I don't. But they made it so that there's like a bunch of different angles and it looks so much better on TV, and like, I can shoot my stories in there, and it's just really really cool. So I'm excited for that, and I'm excited about our first story from Twitter. Uh. They introduced a feature this week called super Follows. The name of the game with all these social media networks

right now is like, are you gonna pay me? It's like show me the money? Remember that movie back in the day, Jerry Maguire, Show Me the Money. So we've been doing and I say we as like, you know, I'm in with all the creators out there, but you know, creators have been putting out content on these various social media I networks like Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and what's the other one, TikTok and YouTube and some of

them pay, some of them don't. But the reality is people want to make money if you're if you're building a living on these various social media sites. And I think that a lot of them have come up with some pretty unique ways. I don't think it's there just yet, because well let me talk about this real quick. The

super Follows. So what it is is, it's basically, if I'm a creator on Twitter, I can charge you either three dollars, four dollars or ten dollars a month to follow me and get my exclusive content, so I can do exclusive tweets, I can do, you know, whatever whatever I want to do, I can do behind the scenes,

you know, early previews, subscriber only conversations. So like if you're a subscriber to me and I have like a tweet, I would look through the replies and you know pick, I guess respond to the people that are my super followers because they get that extra little thing. So will this work? I don't know. I mean, I think that three, four, ten dollars is not that much, but it is when you add it up to everything else. I mean ten dollars.

I mean you're talking that's Netflix level. Now. I think some of this may be in response to sort of what OnlyFans is doing, and I think, I mean, I don't know what the rules are on Twitter when it comes to material like that, but I feel like this could be part of that business, you know, where if you're a someone who's you know, might go to only fans. Now you have this on Twitter. It's just a little bit easier. It's a broader platform. It's simpler. You can

have regular followers and super followers. So it's interesting. Now this adds to the Twitter's other features called tip Jar, which lets you just tip anyone on Twitter if they were able to sign up for that, and then ticketed spaces, which is kind of like what I'm doing on Facebook right now, which is my podcast Live, but I would charge people to listen to that, which you know, again, I talk about this in my podcast all the time.

I am employed by a TV station and so that is where I make my living, and so all this other stuff I do, when it comes to my podcast and my YouTube and my Facebook and my Instagram, it's not really a big it's not a big charge for me to like monetize those platforms because my living is made on TV and through a regular job. So it's more of just kind of accenting all that stuff, I guess, complementing all of the things that I do on TV, like by tweeting and by doing all this stuff. So

but I think this is really cool. I think it's really neat that that creative people have a way to monetize what they're doing. I mean, can you imagine if you had a million followers on Twitter, and you could charge three dollars to your most dedicated followers, whoever wants to do that. And now let's say you get one hundred thousand of them. Well, let's say you just get ten thousand of them out of a million. That's thirty thousand dollars a month. I mean, that's a pretty good

living for just tweeting. So they're starting with four people. A makeup artist, a let's see as someone who's like a comedian I gues, a sports guy, and an astrologist. So those are the four people you can also apply to be to offer up a super follow subscription, it's a wait list, which means aka, good luck. You have to have ten thousand or more followers, be at least eighteen years old, and have tweeted twenty five times in

the last thirty days in the US. And if you want to subscribe to someone, you can go to their profile and there's like a little subscribe button that you can press. So this is only available on iOS right now and Android and Twitter are coming soon. Twitter dot Com and Twitter says, don't worry, public tweets are not going anywhere all right, Let's get to the first question of the day, Shelley says, I've been using unroll me

for getting rid of unwanted emails. It is just not kept up like it had any suggestions for another app to help clear those unwanted spam email, preferably free TiO a, which it took me a minute to realize that means thanks in advance, Shelley sent for my iPad. So, Shelley, unroll me. UH was kind of the de facto standard when it comes to unwanted emails. And they were purchased by I don't know how you say this, but it's Raccotin.

It's an intelligence company, and so what they're doing is they're doing a service for you where they are scanning your emails. You have to give them approval to go inside your email box, which some people may not be comfortable with UH, and I would be very weary about I don't know if it's weary or what's the what's the term when you're you just gotta be careful when you give unfettered access to your Gmail right or your

email account because there could be problems there. But these companies, you know, if they're on the up and up, like unroll me, as a legitimate company. So anyway, they go into your email box, they scan it all, they look for emails that are subscription emails, and then they present you with those and they say, do you want to unsubscribe to these? And you can do that. It's easy, it's simple. They take care of it. But in the meantime, in the background, what they're doing it's a data play.

So they're now actually also analyzing all your receipts from Uber and all your Target receipts and whatever things they can find in there that can help them come up with data, and that data they then sell to other people. So they can say, oh, a lot of people are traveling to Milwaukee right now, and here's how we know this because we have we saw a bunch of travel receipts to Milwaukee. And by the way, flights there are

generally two hundred and fifty dollars. A lot of people are buying this doll from Target right now, and so again they're getting all this data. So that's the main one. I don't know why it stopped working for you, because

nothing has changed with them. But what I would do in this case is I'm not familiar with any other of these sites, but I would use the old versus search, and so I did unroll me Versus and there's one called clean Fox, and there's one called Mailstrom, and I looked up Mailstrom, and I thought that one actually seemed pretty good. The other one, the Fox one, is like out of the UK, so it may not be as

good here in the US. But mail Strom looks pretty legit and it says unsubscribing to delete thousands of messages in just a few clicks. Now, if I'm doing my due diligence on this, uh, if I'm looking at you know this, I'm kind of looking at the pricing, I'm looking at their Twitter. I'm just looking to make sure that they are legit. And so for your free trial, you get five thousand emails. Basic you is nine dollars

a month or sixty dollars a year. So you can try this one out, but it's a little more expensive. So they just tweeted a couple of weeks ago, and so I think that they look pretty trustworthy. They've you know, they're from Baltimore, Maryland. So that's the one that I would take a look at. Is is Mailstrom M A I L S T R O M and unroll me. I used unroll me when I when I did a story on it a while back, and it was fine.

I just don't really like giving access to my email account to a lot of places because it's just it's a little tricky. And if you ever want to see who you who has access to your email, all you have to do is go to Google third Party Permissions and there's a you go to my account dot Google dot com slash permissions and you can see which third party apps have access to your account. So I can tell yeah, see, there's a lot of these that have Yes, see,

I can see what has access to Google Drive. All okay, So a lot of these games that my kids play have access to Google Play, which I don't like. Ooh see, I don't like this one. Oh see this one. This is bad. This is really bad. So I just found one that my kid gave access to somehow on my phone. Kicked the buddy has access to Google Drive ooh see, and delete its own configuration data and Google Drive. Okay, that's okay. Its own configuration data is okay, but I'm

still removing access to that. You really want to be careful when it says has access to full Google Drive. So see edit create and delete all of your Google Drive files. That's the red flag. You got to be sure you trust this trip. It also has access to my full Gmail, but I like that because they scan my Gmail to look for any reservation thing. So anyway,

my account dot Google dot com slash permissions. I know I went off on a tangent, but I think that's really important to go through there and to make sure that these websites that you authorize with your Google account don't have permission forever if you don't need that. All right, let's get to the next story. Windows eleven available on

October fifth. Microsoft announced that it will be a free upgrade to eligible Windows ten PCs, and also PCs that come preloaded with Windows eleven will be available for purchase on that day. So little background on Windows eleven not a huge It doesn't look like a lot of huge changes. But again we're just seeing this slow evolution to things looking more modern, more clean, more fresh, you know, more simple designs. The sounds bring you a sense of calm

and ease, which is cool. The start menu is at the center now of the screen instead of on the side, and that's mainly because monitors are getting bigger and different and different configurations, and it's just easier for the start menu to be in one place. All these kind of

like snap layout things are also built in. I love this little app on my Mac called Rectangle, which helps me move windows to different places on my screen, like the left half, the center half, the bottom half, the top half, the top left, the top right, the bottom right,

the first third, the second third, maximize center. So I love having that ability because a lot of times on my MacBook, I've got the sixteen inch MacBook Pro, I want to put one window as a third of the entire screen, and then another window as a quarter of the entire screen, and so this lets me really easily do that. And so Windows has had similar things like the I think it was called Snap, but it was more limited. This is much more robust in how you

can arrange your Windows. They also built Microsoft Teams integrated into the taskbar. There's widgets, and the one feature that will not be launching is Android apps. They said they were going to be able to run on Windows eleven, but it looks like that ran into a roadblock, and so now Microsoft says we look forward to continuing our journey to bring Android apps to Windows eleven and the

Microsoft Store through our collaboration with Amazon and Intel. This will start with a preview for Windows insiders over the coming months. And so what that means is that a lot of people will not be getting that from day one. It looks like it's delayed until twenty twenty two. From everything I was reading, the free upgrade starts on October fifth to Windows eleven, but that does not mean that you have to upgrade on that day. Now, if you're a nerd like me, of course you cannot wait for

something like this to come out. And of course I will be upgrading the Windows laptop that I have, and I can't wait to see all the changes and what's new. I've not been running the beta or whatever the tester

version is that they put out. But if you are eligible for the upgrade, eventually your computer will give you a little notification that says, hey, you can upgrade to Windows eleven if you want, or if you're a real nerd, you can actually go to your settings and then Windows Update and then check for updates and you can see if it's ready for your device. But Microsoft is giving this a long runway they say most eligible devices will

be offered the upgrade by mid twenty twenty two. So that does not mean, you know, they're not going to just put out this to every PC on day one. They say they're going to roll this out based on intelligence that consider hardware eligibility, reliability metrics, the age of device,

and other facts that impact the upgrade experience. So if you have a really old computer, Microsoft's not going to push Windows eleven on you day one because they're like, look, we're gonna let this person kind of you know, sit with their computer they've got and we'll we'll offer it to them last because we figure since they've got in a computer that's seven years old, they probably aren't really looking to upgrade to Windows eleven on the first day.

Whether and if you have like a really nice, high powered computer, they're thinking, Okay, this is gonna download fast, this is going to run fast. Let's get this to this person. They seem like they're more of a power user. So it's a smart way to do it. But the real nerds will find it no matter what. So it really doesn't matter. That's for the average person that is just you know, sitting there looking at their computer and saying, oh,

Windows eleven is available. I'll click the X on that notification because I'm just gonna stick with what I know for as long as humanly possible. If you want to do that, If you don't want to upgrade at all, you can stick with Windows ten. Microsoft says they're going to support Windows ten through October fourteenth, twenty twenty five. All right, let's get to the next question. Larry says, I'm going on a big trip at the end of September. I got a new smaller slash, lighter weight yet powerful.

I need a new smaller, slash, lighter weight, yet powerful phone charger for my LG Android phone. Got a couple of recommendations something pocket sized, thanks sent from Yahoo Male on Android. And my thing is to just go with Anchor, a n K er. So if you go on Amazon and you search Anchor, you will find the Anchor power Core. The one that I would recommend is the ten thousand. It's small, it's compact, it fits in your pocket. Oh, it actually comes in different colors now, so you can

get it in white, red, blue, or black. This thing has sixty two and forty six ratings on Amazon. A lot of people have purchased this thing and they continue to purchase it. And it's small. It's small, it's lightweight. It's going to charge a Samsung probably twice. Sorry, you have an LG, so it's probably gonna charge it twice. Now, the thing I don't like about this, you're it's a little bit cheaper. They have They have various versions, so

it kind of depends what's important to you. For me, I ideally would like a USB C in and out and that's going to be just a little bit more costly than this this one. So this one looks like it's micro USB for the input and then it's USB for the output. It says USBC on here, but I guess you can use the USBC cable like on the other end to charge your phone. So anyway, the main thing to know about this is look for the type

of connector you want. If you're going USBC to USBC, that's going to be the fastest for charging your Android device. USB A to USBC is going to be just a little bit slower. And yeah, that's basically it. And then ten thousand million hours is going to be a smaller device, but the larger that number, So Let's say you go with a twenty thousand million amp hour battery, You're gonna get more charges on your phone. So if you're going on a big trip, I'm guessing you're gonna be out

and about for the whole day. Let's say you're going to Italy or Europe or something, so you want to have this in your pocket so that if your phone dies from all the pictures you're taken and all the

GPS and stuff, you can easily charge it. This would give you basically two charges of your phone, and I think that would be enough for one day because you also have the charges on your like the charge on your phone, so that would give you basically three times the use of your smartphone, which I think is pretty pretty legit. So that's what I would recommend. If you want a bigger device, just go with more millionamp hours.

Twenty thousand would probably give you like four charges, but again that's gonna be a much bigger device, So it's always a push and pull with this kind of stuff. You just have to as long as you know what you're getting into. That's really the best thing. Now. Mofi also makes excellent charging cases, or I should say charging They used to do a lot of charging cases, not so much any more, but a lot of charging bricks. And so that's a brand if you if you really

want a good brand, that's another good brand. But they're going to be a little bit more expensive than Anchor. I'm sure you can even get one from Amazon Basics on Amazon's website if you really want to go cheap, but with batteries and stuff, I would go with brands that I trust, and I've tested both Anchor and Mophi, and those are the two that I really like. Next story up is Apple announced the first states to get

the digital driver's Licenses and Apple Wallet. So the first two states that you will be able to scan your license and store it in your iPhone will be Arizona and Georgia. This is a huge deal. Now they kind of talk about they don't really talk about where you can use this ID right now. They're saying just they only mention the TSA. So if you're you know, at a liquor store or you know, you know, trying to get into anything that requires ID, I don't know if

you'll be able to use this. Let's say you get pulled over and you got to show your your ID. I'm not sure that the police would accept the ID driver's license on your phone just yet. Now maybe they will. Maybe. When I looked up Arizona and Georgia, it seems like they already have a digital driver's license program that's existing, it just wasn't integrated with the iPhone and Apple Wallet as deeply. So maybe you can in those states just

show your digital license. I'm not sure. Here in California, we don't have this ability just yet, but the next states to roll this out are Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah. They will be next. So here's how this works. You scan your driver's license with your iPhone, and then you take a selfie and you move your face around and somehow, with that combination the one two punch, your state figures out that you are who you say you are.

And now you have a digital copy of your driver's license or your state ID in Apple Wallet. And then when you want to present it, you can just double tap or you can just double click your Interesting it says you can just tap your iPhone. Okay, I'm guessing if it's still access the wallet. Of course, you double click the SERI button. On your iPhone, which will bring up your Apple Wallet and you pull your ID, you select that, and then you don't show that to the

TSA person. You actually just tap your phone to a reader. And I really like this for a lot of reasons. So I was in Target the other day we happen to be buying a bottle of wine, and I just think it's really funny that at a place like Target, I, who is mister privacy centric, just hand over my ID to this random cashier that then looks at all the information on my ID, where I live, how old I am, my date of birth, you know, my height, my weight, everything, and they just type in my day to birth and

you know, send me on my merry way. So I always found that really interesting that we just hand over our IDs to so many random people, right, And so what Apple is saying that this is actually more secure because when you tap your phone to that little reader, it's actually just verified the information that the TSA needs to give that person a green light check. Now I'm guessing it also somehow displays my picture because it's that's the only information it needs to link me up to

what's on my phone. But in the background, it's verifying. Okay, this is this person's date of birth that checks out, this person is clear to fly today that checks out. And this person's name matches their ticket that checks out. We don't need to show the agent any of that information. All we need to show you is, hey, does this person's picture look like who they say they are? Cool, because we've verified all the other stuff on our own

on the back end. So I think that's really powerful, especially if some retailers start to accept this tap as the preferred way of showing your ID, because it does make things a lot more safe and secure for people. There's also potential for fraud, and I think that Apple and all these states that are allowing this probably understand that, and they've probably thought through some of these scenarios that people can try to get over on. And I think that,

you know, that's above my pay grade. I mean, I have to just trust that they figured out that kind of stuff. But Apple, when it comes to security and privacy, says Apple and the states do not know where or when users are presenting their IDs, which is kind of surprising. I would think that they would get a list of that, but you know, for tracking purposes, for later on, but you know, maybe not. And they also support this mobile standard. So just because Apple is out front on this does

not mean that this will not come to Android. In fact, I have no doubt this feature will will be on Android at some point. It's just not there just yet as far as I know. So I think this is great. I'm very excited about this. I can't wait till it comes to California because you know, my goal is to get rid of my wallet. And I did a little video on my Instagram about this little Apple mag Safe wallet that I was attaching to my iPhone and it was great. I used it in Vegas. But there are

pros and cons to that. It's a little bulky on my phone, and some times it's just easier for me to carry my wallet because I can carry more cards. But I like the idea that eventually I will be cashless. I will be just tap to pay and tap to ID. That is a really interesting future. Laurie says, Hey, Rich, I want to take my son's pictures and video from his wedding off of my Mac. What do you suggest I use to back up these pictures on an external drive?

Thanks so much, Lori Well, Laurie, I would recommend a couple of things. Number One, I don't think you should just have them on an external drive. I think that's a good place to have them, but I don't think that that's the only place, and so that's pretty easy. I mean, what I would do is just get a Seagate drive or you know, or a Western Digital drive on Amazon. They're both basically the same price. Let me

see how much of those are going for. So if I go a Seagate portable two terabyte external hard drive USB three three point zero is sixty dollars on the Mac, you probably don't even need two terabytes. You probably only need one terabyte, which is fifty dollars. So you get one of those, you plug it into the Mac, you drag everything over onto the drive, and you are done. Now. I would not stop there. I would also upload these pictures to a cloud service, and with that cloud service,

my personal preferred would be Google Photos. And the reason why I like Google Photos is because once these pictures from the wedding and videos are in there, you can now go through and give names to the faces in those photos and videos. And so if you want to see all the pictures of Edna at the wedding. You can click Edna's face and now you see all the pictures of her, and you can send those off to her, or make a book about them, or you know, print them out, whatever you want to do. So it just

gives you more flexibility with organizing those photos. It also just gives you another place to store those photos. Let's say this little portable drive that you get brakes or you know who knows you lose it, there's still at

least you have a copy on Google Photos. Now, on Google Photos, the default is this, uh well, actually, you know, I'm not sure what the default is anymore, but I would use the original resolution on Google Photos because you don't want to lose any quality with these pictures, because you know, these are precious. These are pictures that your son had at his wedding, and you don't want to lose those, that's for sure. All right, let's get to the next story. This is something that I got a

lot of emails about. Low Cast is shutting down. So low cast is this streaming service that lets you stream local channels and it was pretty cool for people that used it because it was kind of a stop gap between antenna and the streaming services. Now in many cities, the streaming services include all the channels that you want. Here in Los Angeles, KTLA is not on streaming services except our own. And so when we were not on

any streaming service, how do you get us? Well, you had to have an antenna or cable, and so a lot of people turned to different solutions, you know, watching us on the web. I think we were on low Cast, although I'm not really sure if KTLA was on there because I never used it. But my mom did in New York, New Jersey, and she liked watching Channel seven ABC, and the only way to get it without an antenna, well that she didn't have to pay too much for was low Cast, and so we set her up with that.

It was like a five fifty a month you pay, and it was great. She loved it. It worked great well. They basically shut down overnight, and so in all these cities including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Orlando, New York, LA, Miami, Madison, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, Tri cities. In Washington is that where I used to live, Yakoma area, Tampa Bay. It shut down overnight, so boom, it's gone done. So the big networks ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC they

did a copyright infringement lawsuit. This is according to the Streamable website. And they said, Nah, you can't do this. This is our stuff. You can't just sell it, you can't resell it, you can't say that you're putting up antenna's and just send this to people's houses, because we have our own streaming services and we want to control this. And so I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of whether I think they're right or wrong, but this is the reality that we're in. Other startups have

tried this. They have. There was another one. I can't remember what the name was, like Arable or Arrow or something like that, but it was a company that put tiny antennas on roofs, like a farm of antennas. And their argument was that no, no, we're just we're just putting we're just selling antennas to people virtually, and we're just giving the stream from that antenna to people's computers or their phone. And again, the court was not having it, and so they shut that down. It took a little

bit longer for low casts. That was actually kind of impressed how long they survived. It's been a couple of years for sure, but they are now shut down. And so a lot of people emailing me rich, which what do I do? How do I watch my local stations? And I said, I can't help you with that. I mean, all the local stations in LA are on streaming services. Yeah, they're just way more expensive to access. And when it

comes to KTLA, there's it's a no brainer. We have a free ktla plus app that you can download to Roku, Apple TV and also Fire TV, so you can get us. And quite honestly, that's all I care about, because that's why I work for and to me, that's what I'm watching. If I'm watching local news and all the shows that you get on the other networks, you know, like if you're watching a show on ABC, NBC, CBS, whatever, a lot of those are available on the streaming services, and

so I get it. Yeah, this is definitely not ideal, but it's going to force a lot of people to subscribe to more expensive streaming services. But this is you know, I don't write these rules, and I'm not in charge

of saying whether this should be allowed or not. And this is just how the cookie crumbles, and so low cast is shut down and it goes from five to fifty a month that you paid for that as a donation, or maybe you just watch the ads too, you might need to now spend twenty thirty forty fifty sixty seventy eighty dollars on a streaming service. So it's not ideal in any way, shape or form, but that's what's happening. And so if you're if you're looking for KTLA, you

can download the KTLA Plus app. If you're looking for other stations, a lot of them do stream for free. Like I know that, I think CBS does. I'm not sure about the other ones. I just don't watch them enough to know. But you know, there are ways, there are streaming services to get this. And at the end of the day, get an antenna. If you really want this stuff for free, spend the you know, fifty bucks, buy an antenna. The company that I like is Glide

gl No, it's not Glide. Antennas Direct is the one I like, and they also own Mohu. Now Mohu, So get an antenna installed in your house and then if you really want to have a DVR functionality, you can get a thing called Tableau t a b l oh and that can give you GVR functionality. And by the way, all that the antenna plus tableau. Yeah, you have to pay one time out of pocket, but after that it's all there's no monthly fees for that for the basic services.

So that's what's happening there. And yeah, Rance says, good morning, Rich I'm a retired welder, and that should answer it. I have a question. I don't know if that makes sense. I have an iMac now, but it's about four years old and getting slower. What is the best computer for me? I just do a little banking, mostly search. The Mac is easy for me. Are they still a little safer than the others? Please help this old man, Thank you, Rance, Rance. I don't know if you need a new iMac. Four

years old is not that old for an iMac. I think what you should do with this iMac is get someone that you trust, get someone that you know, get some help and actually just reformat this and reinstall the operating system fresh. So yeah, your computer might be a little bit slower than was from day one, but four years old is for what you're doing. If you're doing just a little banking and mostly search, you don't really

need a high powered, horsepower system to do this. I think four years old, you could probably get another two three years out of this computer, So that would be my first choice. Find someone that's knowledgeable about this and say, hey, can you do a clean reinstall of my operating system on my iMac? That is the question to ask, and you can bring it to a local place. Go on Yelp, look for a local Mac shop and they should be

able to do that for you. You can also, depending on the Mac the iMac, see if you can add memory to this. I know it's been a while since they've allowed that, but if that's a possibility, you can do that. You know, it could be your internet connection

that's slow. But if you're going to buy a new computer, I would just recommend going with the base new iMac, which is the iMac M one, and that thing's just going to blow you away because it is it is extremely fast, and it's going to be way faster than your old computer. But again, I don't necessarily think you

need a new computer. This is a problem that could be solved with maybe just redoing the software, because you know, over time our computers get kind of bogged down with all the little fragments of things that you know is on there, all the little you know, the software gets bloated. You delete stuff it's still on there, parts of it. The other thing you might do is just change your web browser. You can maybe try changing to Safari or Microsoft Edge if you're not already using one of those.

If you're using Chrome, Chrome is notoriously slow on a lot of Mac computers and computers in general, so especially the more things you have installed, the more extensions you've got, So you can switch to Safari and see if that works for you. That might just feel like a new computer right there. But again, I personally would go through and delete everything on this computer, back it up of course first, and then do a clean install, and then

just just copy your files back. Don't do like a restore from backup on time machine, because that's just gonna put all the garbage back on there. So I would not do that. The other thing you can do is run an app like Clean my Mac, and that might give you a little new lease on life with this computer. Clean my Mac is the program that I like, and it will go through and scan your computer for old files, big files stuff. You know, it can help you uninstall

all your programs that you don't need. So that's the kind of the light way of doing this. But I would definitely squeeze another year about out of this computer, at least a year. I think you can get two more years out of this computer, all right. There's some new rules over in China when it comes to online

video games, and this definitely got people up. In a little hubbub on my Facebook page, people were talking about these rules because over in China, apparently they have a big problem with kids being addicted to video games, and honestly, I don't think it's much better here in the US. I know in my house it is a struggle with these games. I know I've talked about this before, but roadblocks is blocked, so there's not even roadblocks in my house,

and it's still a problem. The only thing my kids really play is Minecraft, and once they get on there, they can't stop. I mean, my older kid is a little bit better than my little kid, but it's a real problem. And I get it. They love it. They love what they're doing, and I think it's cute. And I think it's fun, but it's this weird thing that gets over on them that they just can't stop playing it.

They just want to play forever. And my wife and I joke, I mean, last night, it was kind of an off night, so we let the kids play their iPads and eat dinner at the table with their iPads. Well, my wife and I watched the TV show and that's kind of a treat. But the reality is we just joke, We go, we don't even know our kids are in this home because they are in the playroom playing the video games and they just are so they just don't

even care about anything else at that point. Once they're on these games, it's like they can just play forever until we're like, Okay, it's time, it's over. And there's been times when we say it's over and it gets pretty messy. You know. Kids get angry, they get mad, they call us names, they throw their iPad And I am sure I am not the only parent listening to

this or the only parent that's experienced this. I think this happens a lot, and I think that a lot of parents the default is just to say it's just easier to let this go. And to not deal with it and to let my kid play and give my kid on access as much as they want. But that is I think that that's a problem. And so anyway, here over in China, they've got new rules. So here are the rules for online video games in China. No playing during the week and on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

No Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You get one hour a day and week on public holidays you get three hours a day. No more than three total hours during the week. And by the way, there's also times you can play, so you have to play, you can't play past a certain time. This is weird. It doesn't really make sense what they mentioned here in the Wall Street journale. They say they will only be permitted to play between eight pm and nine pm, So eight pm at night on Friday night

to nine pm the next day. I don't know if that makes sense, but so yeah, they also have to register these online video games with an anti addiction system, and then users have to register using their real names and government issued IDs. Now this is China, so yeah, they have a little bit more of a hold over the people there that you know, they can't really it's a whole different world over there. Let's put it that way.

So these rules are in effect. I'm sure there are ways of circumventing these rules, but this, this is what the baseline is. Now. I'm not advocating for these rules in the US. I don't. I don't think that, you know, we need to be this drastic, but I think that it is a challenge, and I don't know what the answer is. I think that helping kids limit definitely, putting those limits on the devices really helps. You know. We use screen time and there's a device called Circle that

we've used in the past which is really good. And then when it comes to YouTube, I block it throughout the week and then on Friday I unlock it all right, unblock it at a network level, so in on my router, on my euro I just say, you know, block YouTube all week, and then on the weekends it's unblocked. Now, the pain about doing that is that it affects me. So I can't look up a YouTube video on my Google homes during the week, and I can't just sit

on the couch. I can't tell you how many times I've sat on the couch and said, oh, let me look at my YouTube subscriptions and ah, sorry, can't access the network. And it's like, uh all because of my kids, Like I don't get to enjoy my YouTube that I want to watch, and then I got to go into the app and I gotta unlock it, and I gotta do this and that, and it's a whole big thing. And the best part is that when my kid, he checks every single day to see if YouTube just happens

to be unlocked. So if I unlock it to watch something in the afternoon and I forget to relock it, he'll he'll find it immediately when he gets home from school and he's like, oh, I'm watching YouTube because it was unlocked. I'm like, how'd you figure that out? He's like, oh, I just check every day. So these kids are there. There's something else. Now. When I was a kid, yes, I got I got the Nintendo thumb from playing RC pro Am so much and Zelda and all these different

games and Super Mario Brothers. But there was a limit to this, like it wasn't online, your friends weren't always online. These games are much stickier these days because you go online and some of your close friends might be playing at that point, or some of your friends that you've made online are playing, and guess what, there's always someone playing, and so there's always an excuse for my kids. Oh well, Jay Dog seventy four twenty nine is on and I'm like,

who's that? Like one of my friends on Minecraft. So it's just an uphill battle for parents. But I think that putting some of these things in place is a good thing for parents to do because I think it really really helps. All right, let's get to another question. Felix says, Hey, Rich, I wanted to see if you can help me with a suggestion or recommend a good Wi Fi router. I just recently bumped up my internet speed on AT and T to one thousand megabits per

second one gig. I'm using the Wi Fi modum that AIGHT and T gives you. If I have it hardwired to my computer, I get about eight to nine hundred down, But on Wi Fi get one twenty, I unplug it, reset it, I still get the same. So what would you recommend? Would you suggest a Wi Fi router to get faster wireless speeds? Thank you, Felix. So, Felix, a couple things. Number one, AT and T just introduced an extender, and so I would get that if I were you, And let's see if I can find it. Uh, where

is it? Oh gosh, oh, here we go. Let's see what it's called. It is called the AT and T Wi Fi six Gateway and Extender. So I this just launched on August fourth, and so what I would do is I would call AT and T and I would ask them to give you this AT and T Wi

Fi six Gateway and Extender. And that's the easiest solution because AT and T already gives you your Internet and this is the proper term, is the BGW three twenty and so I think that's the easiest way to do it because that way, you are going through AT and T. They can't give any gripes about you know, oh we can't help you because you're not using our router. And

so it's a lot easier. Now. I don't know how much this costs, but the Wi Fi six Gateway lets you connect more more devices on the network, gives you better coverage. It's triband and Wi Fi six enabled, and it says you get seventy five percent improved download speeds and ninety percent when you're using a Wi Fi six enabled devices plus connectivity in your entire home. Wi Fi six devices include the iPhone eleven and the S ten, which means it'll also include devices past that as well.

The air Ties Wi Fi six Extender seamlessly extend. It connects you with your Wi Fi gateway to create a mesh network throughout your house. So I would do that. That would be my solution. If you don't want to go with AT and T solution, then I would go with Eero e e R Eero Pro is going to give you that faster speed. That's what I have. I do not get my one gig speed around my house. I get closer to five hundred, which is about half of what I would ideally be getting. But that's kind

of what the reality is with Wi Fi. You get kind of half of what you're paying for around the house. So I think that the AT and T solution is much simpler, much easier, and just more straightforward. And I don't know how much they I don't know how much they charge for that, but that's my indication of what I think you should do because it's just the easiest. I also did a story on something called Villo vil Oh and it's a mesh network system for just sixty bucks.

Now that does not go up to the full speed. You're not gonna get the full wired speed or the full You're not gonna get the full one gigabit throughout your house. This is probably gonna be closer to a five hundred solution. So if you want the full, I would go with what AT and T is offering you. All right, let's talk about Facebook and Instagram. You might get a notification on your Instagram that they need to

know your data birth. Why are they doing this, Well, they're trying to weed out situations and posts and advertising that might not be appropriate for people under eighteen. Now, a lot of people have already given their data birth to fate Instagram, and so it's probably not really even a thing for me. I looked in my settings and sure enough, my Instagram already had my data birth from Facebook, and so they share that with Facebook shares that data

with Instagram. So if you want to check to see if your data birth is already on your Instagram, just go to Instagram, then Settings, then account, then personal information again, Instagram Settings, Account, personal Information, and does it say data birth if it's already there you're not going to get

this prompt. But what I thought was interesting about this prompt is not only are they going to let users kind of dismiss it a couple of times before it's required, they can tell if you're lying when you answer this question because they're using artificial intelligence, so they're looking at the posts that you have made or when people comment

happy birthday, and that's just one signal they're using. And so when you do this, they will and you say, let's say you say you're eighteen on this thing, or let's say you're let's say you're a thirteen year old and you say you're eighteen, and Facebook's like, hmmm, I don't know, because a lot of people are wishing you a happy seventeenth birthday last year so or sorry, a happy fourteen birthday, whatever, happy thirteenth. You know what I'm saying.

Their data will go through and then if you lie, they will say, I don't know, we don't think that you're actually telling the truth. So we are actually going to request for you to verify your age in a different way, which they didn't say how, but you know

that could be uploading an ID or whatever. So Facebook's getting real serious about this stuff, and I think we're seeing these social media companies get more and more serious about protecting users and putting in safeguards and getting a little just tightening things up just a little bit because there is always that threat of government regulation, and so far these companies have really had a lot of leeway in what they do and they want to do things.

It's kind of like I think I've talked about this before. It's kind of like the movie the movie rating system that is voluntary from the movie company. So the companies that make movies tell us what the rating of the movie is, who it's appropriate for, and you know, that's that's that's an interesting place to be, and of course it's an advantageous place to be because they keep pushing the envelope. Right. A PG thirteen movie is just a little racier than a PG thirteen movie from the nineties

or the eighties, or if they even had. I forget what the first movie was that was PG thirteen. I think it was. My friend told me it was like Indiana Jones or something. I don't know. Don't quote me on that one, but anyway, so that's what's happening with the Happy birthday stuff and the Facebook posts. They don't care about your birthday because they want to wish you

a happy birthday. They care because a they want to be able to target more ads towards you, but they want to be able to target less appropriate things or I guess things that are not appropriate towards miners. They want to make sure that they're trying to keep that stuff away from them as much as possible. There's another place you might see this happy birth or this birthday question is when you look at a post that might

be sensitive or graphic. So when you look at one of these posts, they may ask you, hey, before you look at this post, let's just verify your birthday real quick. And again, if you lie, they'll say, hmmm, that's interesting because our data tells us that you're not this age. And again, I just think it's really fascinating that Facebook and Instagram are using artificial intelligence to kind of figure out how old we are, and most of us just

hand over this information by ourselves. But the reality is if they're using AI to do this, just think of all the different things they're using AI for. It does not end at this. There is so much stuff that they are that they are using AI for. It's just it's pretty pretty unbelievable, just amazing actually and also kind of scary. All right, AJ says, hey, Rich, what are your recommendations to back up a MacBook Pro computer wirelessly? I've been using Western Digital MyCloud. It's not stable. I

appreciate your content and enjoy your podcast, thanks aj. Aj. Here's what I would do with that Western Digital MyCloud. I would format that drive and I would set it up as a time machine. And time machine has the ability to link up wirelessly. That my cloud should have a Wi Fi network built in. It should give you access to that time machine drive through your Mac. So those steps once again, make sure that whatever's on your computer is already backed up somewhere because you're gonna erase

this MyCloud. Then I would format the MyCloud on your Windows computer as a as a drive with a time machine, you know, open up time machine, it says, hey, do you want to use this drive as a time machine drive, and then you know, connect that that my my cloud drive to your computer wirelessly and it will just it will just back up to that that using time Machine.

I know I'm totally screwing this up, but The time Machine is a feature on the Mac and it can be done by plugging in an external hard drive, or it can also be done wirelessly. As long as you set up a drive as a time Machine drive, once the Mac sees that drive on the network, it will start wirelessly backing things up to that drive. So the trick here is to make sure that the MyCloud drive has a time Machine set up on it, which will require you doing that through your Mac and then also

being on your network. And I believe that's the software through the Western Digital MyCloud software. You're not using their software to actually back up, but you are using their software to just kind of get this drive on the wireless network, if that makes sense. So I've done this in the past. It's simple, it's pretty painless, and anytime you open up your MacBook computer it will start syncing

to the wireless time Machine. I've stopped using time Machine these days because quite honestly, all my stuff is in the cloud and so I don't really need a backup of anything on my computer. In fact, if my computer hard drive ever crashes, I see it as a blessing into because I get to set my computer up fresh and start over. Again, knock on wood. I hope that doesn't happen. I don't really want that to happen, but that's the way I see it, and so yeah, that's

that's my thing. All right. Let's do one more question here before we go. Marty says, Hey, Rich, can you recommend an authenticator app for seniors? It has to be user friendly and not complicated. Thank you, Marty, sent from my iPhone. So there's a couple authenticator apps that I would recommend. I Marty number one. I love that you are looking into an authenticator app because two factor authentication is the most important thing you can enable on any

and all of your accounts that support it. What two factor authentication is is this, you have a password on your account. That password is probably easily hackable by a hacker. They can get into your account in a million different ways if you just have a password, especially if you're using that password everywhere. But when you bring an authentication app into the mix, or two factor authentication, even if a hacker logs into your account, what happens is it says, okay,

you logged in. That's cool. Now what's the the two factor authentication number? We just texted to you or that's displayed on your app, and the hacker goes ah, foiled again, and then they pull off their face like they do in Scooby Do at the end and they go, oh, get you kids. And so you foil them because chances are they don't have access to both your password and your smartphone, and they can unlock your smartphone and they can get the text and they can type in this

secondary code. Now, SMS works, but it's not as good because SMS can be hacked as well, it can be redirected. You know, it's just not as good. But these authentication apps are pretty good because they live on your phone, they're linked up to the website, and they just generate

a different code every thirty seconds or so. And so what you do is you go into something like let's say Facebook, you set up two factor authentication, and you link it up to this little app, usually by scanning a QR code from the app on your phone screen, and then it says, okay, here's your Facebook code, and it changes every thirty seconds, and when you go to log into Facebook, you'll log in with your password, but then it says, okay, now can you please enter the

code from your authenticator app, and chances are only you have access to that authentication app. And so you open the authentication app on your phone, you look at the code and you type it in and Facebook says, okay, you now typed in your password. You now typed in the authentication code, and we're going to grant you access to this account. And that is the most secure way

I know of for getting into accounts. Now there might be some even more secure ways, but they're much more complicated, and for that reason, just use one of these apps. So the three that I like are called Authyauty, and then Google has one called Google Authenticator, and then Microsoft has one as well, and it's the same. They're they're all the same. They're basically all the same. Just pick one that you like. If you want to use Microsoft

Mobile Phone Authenticator authenticator app that works. If you want to use the Google Authenticator that one works, or you can use Authie which is kind of a third party one. But either way, just just pick one of these and use it and that's it. Now. The caveat to this is you don't want to lose access to this authentication app, because if you do, it's kind of a pain. So when you set up this process of authentication two factor authentication. Each website is going to give you a list of

backup codes. Keep those codes in a safe place, even if you have to print them out and put them in a file somewhere in your house. That I wouldn't recommend that, but that's you know, if you have to do that, do it. What I would recommend is copying and pasting those codes into your password management app, which I hope you're using as well. So those are the things that I would recommend. And you know, you got

to secure these accounts. You got to just get these things secured because hackers are working twenty four to seven to get access to your accounts. And believe me, they are very very smart and they will just try anything to get access to your accounts. I don't know what they want access for. I mean, there's clearly an endgame that you know, they can do a lot of stuff with your personal data. But that's a whole nother conversation. That's going to do it for this episode of the show.

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