Apple Watch gets its blood Oxygen feature back. Google launches a new way to find the exact flight deal. You want a new take on the classic Super eight camera, Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Tamiro and this is Rich on Tech. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe the tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up those phone
lines at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Give me a call.
If you have a question about technology, you can also send an email. Just go to rich on tech dot TV. Hit contact rich on tech dot TV, hit contact. All Right, We've got some great guests for you this week. Uh Brett Bristow, the creator of Tech with Brett, is going to share tips and tricks to make your smart home work the way you want it to. He is really, really great. He's gonna have some good stuff to share.
And also another fantastic guest this week David Lombard, founder of the Laptop Elf Project, he's going to talk about the best ways to securely erase, recycle, or donate your old maccomputer or.
Your Windows PC. He's gonna be great as well. Well.
Thanks for tuning in to the show. Really appreciate you being here. Thanks for watching on KTLA Plus if you're streaming it there. We don't stream the show live. I've mentioned that from week to week, but we do record the first ten minutes of the show and then we put that on KTLA Plus, which is a free app that you can download pretty much on Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, Samsung TV. So if you want to see a little behind the scenes of the show here, you
can watch that for free no matter where you live. Also, thanks for tuning us in wherever you're listening from. My mom has been in town, so that's always been interesting. We actually extended her time here, which is wild. Most people are trying to, you know, get there. Well, my most my wife, if she was a typical wife, would probably be trying to get my wife, my mom out of town. But it's been fine. We actually extended her flight to stay out a little bit longer. It's been great,
great to have her around with the kids. But you know, when you have someone in town, your schedule is just completely thrown out a whack, right, We've been going out to dinner on nights. I would never think about going out to dinner. Crammed with activities, you know, sight seeing, going around town, and you know, we're just trying to have a good time and make the most of it. You know, my mom lives on one coast, I live on another, and so anytime she's in town, we're trying
to make the most And she's been very excited. She has been picking the bumper music for this very show, So if you like the bumper music, she's been doing it and I've been getting a lot of emails about it, so people clearly like her taste in music. She already picked next week's music, so we already have next week's planned as well. This was also a big week for me personally. I dropped my kid off to high school for the first time. I cannot believe it. I was
I'm not sure who was sadder, me or him. I sat in my car and just was not doing well after I did this, just thinking about all the you know, just the vastness of the school compared to where he was throughout his whole life. You know, you got him at home for the first couple of years, preschool, elementary school, middle school, and now high school.
And it's just wild.
So this is coming from the person who left home at seventeen, by the way, flew across the country by myself on a plane which I'd only been on like three times before, and made my new life in la as a college student. And my wife always says, it was like this TV show Felicity, where they literally just drop you off with like your suitcases. I got dropped
off by a taxi. There's no uber back. Then got dropped off at the entrance to the school and the school was closed because moving day was the day before, so I was like, all right, well now what so I'd to like find another entrance. It was a whole big thing. Anyway, I made it. I mean, it's okay, I'm doing fine. So I guess perseverance, right, You got to have a little grit in life. Speaking of grit, I did go to the DMV this week to get my real ID, and I got to say I was very,
very impressed. So I think the last time I walked into a DMV was at least ten years ago, so things have gotten much more modern and updated since then. The toughest part for me was getting an appointment. That probably took a few i'd probably say a month or two to get the appointment. I checked DMV locations that weren't near me, because all the ones near me were
just slammed. But I found one that was like a little bit further out, and I get there and the main thing you have to know is you have to do everything online first. Thankfully, I looked at that email they sent me because I was not going to and the day before my appointment, I just online and my emails and it said like, hey, you might want to fill out your information.
Maybe I said you had to.
I wasn't really reading it that clearly, but I ended up starting on the information and I was like, oh wow, no, there's a lot you have to fill out online first, And so I filled it out all online. So I was very impressed with how smooth the process was. You upload all of the documents right from your computer or your phone. That was really neat, and then they give you a barcode that you print out and you bring
in with you. And so I get in there, and they say, all right, you're a little bit early, so just come here, you know, at this time, get there, get in line. Woman does quick you know, they verify the information. It's all done digitally, which I thought was great. You take a quick eye test, fingerprint, and then you take a photo and you tap to pay to pay the fee, which I thought was really smart too. And then the best part was and this happens a lot.
You know, I'm on TV here in Los Angeles, and you know this happens from time to time where people will go through a whole transaction with you, right, they'll do the whole thing. They'll check you out at the grocery store, they'll help you, you know, pick out clothes at the mall, whatever it is. But then at the end, the very end, when you're ready to leave, like, oh, and by the way, I love your segment. It's like, Okay,
you could have said that at the beginning. I probably wouldn't have been any nicer to you, because I'm always nice, believe me.
But it's just funny.
You go through this whole thing and this woman at the end is like, oh, I really love your segment on TV. So anyway, glad She likes it, so I hopefully will have my real ID very soon. But I did, you know, I did get an interesting question from someone on social media. They wrote me and they said, Rich, I can't believe you're okay with giving your fingerprint to the DMV.
And I didn't even think about it.
I'm like, all right, I just this is part of the process, right, I had to get my social my fingerprint, Like they know who I am. They can have me in that database, and they can, you know, if I ever do anything, you know, commit a crime or whatever. You know, they scan the you know, it's like those TV shows. They scan the database of all the fingerprints
and boom, there he is. But I thought about this and I was like, wait a second, do we have the right as a human to be anonymous, right, Like can we be an anonymous person that lives in America and just kind of does our own thing, or should we be part of this massive database that they can search and cross reference. They've got the bio the biometrics on all of us. I mean, I'm already in that for the TSA. And it got me to thinking. I was like, I don't know, like it feels like we
should be kind of allowed to just roam freely. But can we in today's modern society. I'm not sure, but I thought about it, and I remember as a kid they fingerprinted me, right Like, as a kid, you went through and you go to school and they would fingerprint you and and I guess that was for like the
police in case you went missing or something. I'm not sure, but the point is for me, someone who's grown up in this digital world, like, I'm very privacy centric, but I think a lot of the up and coming kind of Gen xers or gen z ors whatever they call them now, Gen Alpha, they don't really have as many
expectations of privacy as we did growing up. Right, Like, when we grew up, everything was analog and so you had to go in the you know, it was the the wildest thing that you can go in the white pages and literally find someone's address in there, Like it was just so crazy to think about that. And now you can go online and search anything and find anyone's address, home address, email, phone number, whatever. So I don't have an answer for that, but I just thought it was
very interesting. It made me think speaking of the old days, AOL. I know you heard the news ending its dial up service on September thirtieth, twenty twenty five. Now, I don't know who is still using AOL dial up in this day and age. Clearly some people were, but not a lot of people because they're getting rid of this. But if you remember, AOL was it in the nineties and early two thousands, we could all recite that sound by heart, that modem screeching sound. AOL was king. I mean, they
were the largest dial up provider in the US. They were the Internet for a lot of people, even though they weren't really the Internet. I mean, they eventually had had access to the Internet, but it was really like when you first went to AOL, it was sections. It was like entertainment, sports, you know whatever, and you would click and you would just go into these things that were sort of designed by AOL. It wasn't the Internet at large. Now it eventually it became just a way
to get on the Internet. And remember dial up just how complicated it was. You had to wait for the connection. If someone picked up the other phone line in the house, it would mess things up. Census data shows about one hundred and sixty three thousand US households still use dial up as of twenty twenty three, that seems like a lot of people now AOL is not going away. I know a lot of people still love it. They love the email or they you know, for better or worse,
they still use the email, but they're gonna still. AOL's not going anywhere. It's just the dial up Internet that's going any that's going away. And I remember because my mom not to put her on blast, but she is a big AOL user, and I remember trying to switch her from the dial up AOL to just the standard Internet connection and she didn't trust it. Like you know, I said, Mom, you could go to like high speed internet and still access your AOL. She didn't trust it.
She said, no, I want to dial up. Said well, you know that's going to cost you an extra twenty bucks a month or whatever it was. But remember there was times when you couldn't even get through. You would literally dial up to AOL and it be a busy signal. You couldn't get on the internet. And now we just take for granted everything anytime on demand. I remember the first time, actually I could still remember the first time that I got on AOL and got on the internet.
I logged on every day after high school and I would go to this little portal where aol said we are building the Internet. You're gonna be able to access it soon from here. And I just went there every day. Yes, I was a nerd even back then, and I would just look and to see if I can get on the Internet. And sure enough, one day it was like, all right, here you go. And I didn't know where to go because like, who knew a website. I think
I went to like Yahoo. Maybe I don't even know if they had Yahoo back then, but now and then.
I remember.
Another memory I have is when I first got internet in college and I showed my friend streaming video and it was as little as a music video. I think I was using Excite at home. I think that was the Internet provider road I think it was before Roadrunner, and I remember showing him the video. I said, look at this is the future. You're gonna stream video on the Internet and it was postage stamp sized and he was like, rich, really, nobody's gonna watch this. And sure enough,
now everything's delivered through streaming. All right, coming up on this show, we are going to take some of your calls at eight eight eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. I'll tell you how Apple brought back the blood oxygen feature to the Apple Watch, plus more tech news. My name is Rich dmiro. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Got a packed house today. We've got Bobo on the boards. Is it the boards? I guess the board? Maybe just one board to run the show. Kim on phones, you know, Kim and I we have a little side conversations throughout the whole show via text message, and she is she said. The reason the DMV person did not say anything until the end of the transaction is she wanted to make sure that I was a nice person.
Before she said anything.
And I guess that's probably true because that happened at dinner the other night. You know, we were like halfway through the dinner and you know, I get it. I'm on TV in Los Angeles. So it's one of these things where you never know the thing about you know, if you watch someone this is this is probably true of any like what I would say, micro celebrity like myself. If you know that person, you know them. If you
do not know them, you don't know them. It's not like an actor in a movie like we were watching last night, where you're like, oh.
Yeah, I know that guy.
I know them, I've seen them, I don't maybe don't know their name, but I know them.
For me, it is not that way.
It is either you know or you don't, because you've either watched me or you didn't. And so if I'm going out, it's always like this idea of like, okay, do they.
Know that they not.
People generally tell you when they know, sometimes they don't, and they send me a text message afterwards when I'm at home, which is kind of weird. Dell's an ocean side you're on with Rich.
Good morning, thank you so much for your show. You've helped me before and I really am I appreciative.
Oh thank you. Love to hear that.
Yeah. No, I am the very happy owner of our Galaxy S twenty four Ultra. And one morning when I woke up and checked my phone, I went to send a text and the alphabet was rearranged. Ooh yeah, all the keys were in like a different place, and I think there are different keyboards.
I would have went right back to sleep.
You know, I know, I know. It's well, I've just been voice texting. OK then, so, but it's really frustrating. How do I fix it?
Okay, you're trying to get your your keyboard back on the Samsung. Well, I mean there are different layouts. In the US, we typically use the quirdy qwert y that's the standard layout, but there are all kinds of layouts you can choose. Now, I use g board, so I'm not as familiar with Samsung keyboard, but that is built
into all the Samsung phones. But what I would do is when you're typing, so go into some sort of field that you can type on your phone, and at the top of the keyboard there should be a little gear icon and if you tap that gear icon, it will bring you to the settings for that keyboard, which is the Samsung keyboard that you're using all the way. At the top it should say languages and types and if you tap there, I'm thinking that this is what happened.
I don't know how it happened or why it happened, but something got changed. So if you tap up in there, you'll see where it says quirdy. And I'm guessing. I don't know what these other options are, so I've never even seen them before.
But one is.
Called quartz that's another option, I guess. And then there's a zerdi and then there's three by four. Tap three by four just to see what that looks like, because I've never ever heard of that for a keyboard.
So now I've got this.
Oh wow, oh three by four is your T nine like the old days, remember when you had to like just tap out a text on like the one through nine keys. Oh that's okay. I never knew that it was called three by four. So you can do that if you want to. That's interesting if that's built in there. Okay, I didn't realize that. If we go back in, let's look at azerdi that is going to set up your keys. Oh A, Z, E R T, y uio p okay. So it's a little bit different than Oh wow, that's
really different. So I think that's what you want to do, is just go back into the languages and types and under English tap quirty and that should bring you back to the standard uh or I guess I should say what many of us are used to when it comes to the keyboard. Thanksdale and ocean Side. Hopefully that fix it fixes it. Appreciate the kind words. Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. So Apple has brought blood oxygen
monitoring back to the Apple Watch. So they brought it back for the Series nine, the Series ten, and the Ultra two watches in the US. If you want to get the blood oxygen feature back, you have to update both your iOS and your iPhone and your watch OS to get it.
Now.
I did this on both my watch and the phone, and yes it's back, but there is a difference. It almost operates the same way. So you go to your Apple Watch, you tap to get into your apps, you tap blood oxygen, and you take your reading. But then to look at the reading you get they can no longer display on the watch because of this whole patent dispute. They now display on the iPhone. So I actually got
when the reading was done. I got a little notification on my iPhone that the reading was ready, and so you tap into there and it will show you the reading in.
The health app.
So it's pretty much the same. By the way, my reading was fine. It's pretty much the same as it was before, except you just can't see the results on your Apple Watch screen. So this is all because of a patent dispute they had with this Massimo company, and so I guess they're they're not settling that, but they just figured out a way around it. Eight eight eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Rich on Tech dot TV
coming up. I'll tell you what Kodak has to say about rumors it's going out of business. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. Can follow me on social media. I am at rich on Tech. You see the trend there.
Yeah.
Kodak says it is not going out of business, contrary to all the reports it's closing or going bankrupt. They say the confusion came from a routine accounting note in a government filing. Company says it has a plan to pay off what it owes and stay in business, and they expect a big cash boost in December that will help them pay down debt. I don't know what that cash boost is, whether they bring them back the thirty five millimeter camera. Kodak says sales are steady, business is healthy,
and it's optimistic about the future. Of course they say that, but come on, let's be honest. When was the last time you bought something with the Kodak brand name on it?
Now?
This is an example of a company that it's interesting when you go out of the US to these trade shows in other places, they're more like almost like a licensing company at this point, Like people know the Kodak brand, and so if you're in a different country, you're wanting to buy a nice American brand name like this. And so you see a lot of licensed gadgets with the Kodak name. And they've had a few things here and there, but I know they're never going to recapture what they
had in the past. And I think it's tough with the company like Kodak that owes a lot of money to a lot of people, probably to to recapture or to have something that really propels them again like that, like they used to have it's tough. I mean it's tough when you have something so big and then you never really are able to capture that again. I mean we've seen tech companies throughout the years, as it happens over and over. You have an amazing product, like let's say,
like a TVO. I mean that like revolutionized TV, dvring things before streaming, right, But you know they never had another follow up to that. There's probably a long list of I mean, GoPro, I mean, look at that same thing. They were the way to record things and they still are for action sports and stuff like that. But you know, the iPhone came along, and then it came along with the wide angle lens, and you know, things just change. And really, actually, now that I think about it, the
iPhone has just impacted everything. It's like everything we had that was good, the iPhone just took over. So blame them. Let's go to let's see John in Los Angeles. John, what's up?
Yeah, Rich, I'm just trying to figure out. I'm sixty years old. Started out at cal Poly. I used to write software, you know, in basic right nineteen eighty.
Oh wow, nice, and then self.
Taught myself everything electrical contractor for a career, and I wanted to find out is there some place I can go back and get a little more structured education to you know, really understand about IP addresses and when I set up my router instead of just kind of fumbling my way through it. Is there something that's a little more structured, a little more that you know, everybody wants to teach me an entire education. I don't. I don't want to do that. I just want to pick up
some some some pointers and some structure. If that makes sense.
Oh, yeah, absolutely, you know I just do Yeah, I can.
I can wire it all and tie it all down and put it all together. And physical part is great, but I really need to get a little a little bit out of the ether and get a little more focused on IP addresses and specifically what I'm doing.
Yeah, no, I hear you.
Any suggestions or ideas.
I do my my biggest one of my biggest wins. I was so proud of myself. This was before mesh, you know, routers and networking and all that stuff. But I had my apartment. This was many years ago, and I couldn't get a Wi Fi signal in the other stretch of the like the other end of the apartment,
and so I was so proud of myself. I took an old router, I formatted it, I installed like I forget what the software was called, like DDRS or something on it, and I put it and I and I connected it with an Ethernet cable and I was able to get the router to take the signal and put it in that other area and kind of blast it to the house. But I think the signal was the same as the other one. But anyway, it was just it all worked and it was so great. I was like,
oh my gosh, I did this. Anyway, So I just did a story about this for TV. We're gonna erit very soon about basically learning technology, you know, outside of school. And yeah, you can go back to school and you can take a course and you do all this stuff. But like, there are so many platforms online to learn and a lot of it's free. You may have to pay for some of it depending on what you want
to do. But I'll give you the one. I think there's probably two, I think three actually that you really like. So number one Courserah if you haven't heard of that, COURSERA is is basically a place where you can learn anything you want. And right now the AI stuff is really really hot. But you know, they have some free lessons. Some of it is paid, you know, but I think it's like sixty bucks a month unlimited, like you can take these at your own time. And they've got everything
from quick lessons to certificates. So if you want to actually get a certificate that you can put on your LinkedIn your resume, you can do that as well. And a lot of those you can complete in under six months. Then there's one called ed x ed X. Let me see what the website is. I just have the name ed x ed X.
Let's see dot org.
And these are all kinds of I mean, they've got all kinds of skills and classes and you know, from big names, and I'm sure you can type in what you need so you can do you know, executive education courses, certificates, master's degrees or a bachelor degree if you want. So it's sort of like a one stop shop for just finding all kinds of things. And if we type in you said, IP IP addresses, I guess that would be like under networking. You know, there's networking basics and security
Networking and storage essentials. I mean there's so many, and they all say the brand that's offering them as well, so that's another place to look. So let's say networking basics and security, which I think you're past, but yeah, let's see audit course. I don't know how much that one costs, but anyway, you got that on there. And then the other one is class Central, so class central dot com. This is almost like a like a Google,
but for all online learning. So anything you want to find, it will search all of the different places that offer online courses, and so we're talking everything from Stanford, Google, Amazon, I mean there's so many look at this, thirteen hundred universities, one hundred provide and seventeen hundred institutions and it's all under that search. So if you wanted it, you know, to look up. Yeah, I mean TCIP which you're talking about,
or IP addressing. Two hundred and fifty six courses available, and the neat thing is you can sort them by the highest rated the relevancy. I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff and it gives you all the information you need before you sign up. So University of Washington Computer Networks it tells you how much it is right on there, free online course. So I mean this is this is pretty amazing and it just leads you right
to where you are. So if you're trying to further your career, further your job, just pick up some new skills. I mean, yes, YouTube is a great place to start, but if you want to get a little bit more serious, one of these online courses can really help. And I think John, that's probably your best bet is to check out those three places.
Microsoft also has their own hub for learning. It's called Microsoft Learn.
Google has one, and then LinkedIn has one, IBM has one they call their Skills Build, LinkedIn Learning is LinkedIn. So I mean there's just there is no there is no shortage of information available and I get it, like you were saying, you know, everyone wants to teach you this and that, but like these are very highly targeted courses to what you want to learn. And by the way, it's not just for it, it is for all kinds
of stuff in this world. So great question, John, Thanks so much and appreciate the call today.
Eight eight eight.
Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. If you want to email. You can also do that. Rich on tech dot TV. I know I just gave you a lot of resources. You're sitting there trying to write them all down. Do not worry about that. Just go to the website. Rich on tech dot tv. I've got the show notes there. They're not there just yet for what I just said, because it takes me a minute to get them on there.
But this is episode one thirty four, and so if you visit in the next couple of minutes, they will be on there.
And uh yeah, enjoy.
Before we go to break, the Better Business Bureau is warning of fake passport renewal websites. Be careful because now that you can renew your passport online, which I did, and it was a very easy process.
Look at me.
In one month, I got my passport and my real ID. I am ready to travel and I'm ready to be tracked. So these websites, here's the deal. Anytime there's a legitimate thing you could do online, there's some sort of bogus website that's trying to prey upon you. Right, So what do people do they search on Google renew passport online? And what do you think The first five sponsored links are these bogus websites that will charge you to fill out a form. By the way, they're charging a processing
fee to fill out a form that's free. Now is that illegal?
I don't know. I mean they're just helping you, right, But is it shady? Yes? So what do you need to do? Number one?
If you are filling out and renewing your passport, you can do it online.
It's not free.
You do have to pay, you know, the government a little bit. I think it was one hundred and fifty bucks. But you can go to the make sure you're going to travel dot state dot gov. If you're putting your information in a different website, don't do it. The victims said they lost their money, but they also handed over personal details like their Social Security number and their data birth US Passport renewals, you know, you can be done online if you qualify. You have to you know, you qualify.
You got to fill out a little thing and see if you qualify. Mostly I think it's for renewals, but just make sure that you are you're going to that travel dot state dot gov site avoids sponsored links. Anything that's at the top of your Google that's sponsored with the passport renewal is probably someone that's going to charge you more.
So just be careful.
And this is the thing, like I often my mom is in town, and so she shown me the stuff on her Facebook and her Google searches, and a lot of the stuff that comes up as a sponsored link is kind of bogus. And so I personally use like an ad blocker, and I also use Nord has an awesome feature that I love. If you subscribe to their VPN, they've got this threat blocker and not only does it block like threats, but it also happens to block ads,
which you know, I get it. People need to make money on the Internet, So I understand why the ads are there. But if I'm getting scammed because of these ads that are targeting me, that's a problem. And so that's why I don't feel bad blocking them. And it's my internet, it's my screen, it's my web browser.
I could do what I want.
Eighty eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. We'll get back to your calls and I'll tell you why Yahoo is uh cutting its free storage when we come back. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Uh, let's go to I can't see the name on the screen. Is it Chris in Orange County? There you go, Chris in Orange County?
Are on with Rich?
Yeah?
Hey, Rich, thank you very much, appreciate your time. Hey, I do a lot of podcasting actually broadcasting of live sports, and I do everything via Logitech's product and maybe familiar with Mivo cameras. They're a great little tool to use for what I'm doing in my broadcasting. I've got a question about Wi Fi connectivity because my workflow is cameras into an iPad. I've got a hot spot that's designated
to create my signal to connect things with. But I run into problems with latency and bitrate and all that with the cameras having to be adjusted just because I'm having problems with connectivity, and I'm just looking for a better means and support tool that might be able to eliminate the dropouts, eliminate the bitrate and the latency issues that I encounter, and something that has pretty good range.
Any thoughts on.
That, well, I think it all comes down to what are you using to broadcast out like a hotspot or using your phone or using a dedicated.
Are using a hotspot? So I use a Nighthawk, which is a very powerful tool, and you know, I align with you know, various networks that are available out there with different companies, and the tool works well. But you know, obviously, if I'm in a place where there's a bunch of iPhones that are being used, I'm pinging the same tower everybody else is. Yeah, I all cut in line because
I've got an isolated signal. My concern is is, you know, we've heard things around cellular bonding and different things, et cetera, et cetera, but it's very expensive often yep, and just kind of wondering what your thought process is into how to improve it because I can run multiple cameras and I'd love to have center field first base, you know, I've got behind home plate, but I can't do that because of the fact that my Wi Fi connectivity often is slow and sluggish.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, look, it comes down to you know, consumer versus pro tools, And like you said, you know, when we're broadcasting, we use cellular bonding, which of course is taking various signals and merging them together and it's making one signal.
So if one if one.
Of the carriers drops out a little bit, you know, the other carrier picks up the slack. But that, like you said, is very expensive. So if you're talking just kind of over the counter stuff, I mean, obviously, a wired connection is going to be the absolute best way to do things. Even if you were doing a wired connection from your you know, your iPad, it sounds like you're broadcasting from the iPad to the hot spot. The mevo camera, I'm guessing is connecting to the iPad and
the iPad to the hot spot. So if you can get that connection wired, that would that would help immensely.
You know.
I think it also has to do with the signal that you're using. So you said you're using a hot spot, but you know, you're at the mercy of wherever you happen to set up that hot spot and whatever this the that signal is in that area, and there's two things that are going on. Number One, the signal may not be that good in that area, and that's what's
causing the dropout and the problem. Number Two, you may be using such a large amount of data on this system every month that your carrier is deprioritizing your signal because there's too many other people in the area that need to get their calls and data through. It's saying, look, this guy we know is gobbling up a ton of data, so we're going to just kind of put him on the back burner for a little bit. And that can happen.
I mean, these networks, these companies have the ability to do what's called network congestion management, so they will sit there and prioritize different types of data based on the user and based on the level of account. So a lot of people talk about, you know, when you have like a nice premium data plan from one of the big carriers like an AT and T, T Mobile, Verizon, when you're paying that one hundred dollars a month, you're going to be on the top tier of data priority
unless you go over your limits. And if you go over, you know, they say, oh, you get unlimited hotspot. Well nothing's really unlimited anymore, so they may really limit you after using fifty gigabytes or on a hundred gigabyte. I think AT and T is the only one that has a plan where they will not limit you in any way. I think it's like one hundred I don't know how much it is a month, but it's it's a pricey plan.
But they will not deprioritize your data. So I think those are some of the things you have to look at. I think if you really want to get serious, you know, if you had something like a starlink where you know it was going to be a dedicated and pretty much the same signal everywhere you go, that's probably a better
way to do it. So, you know, I think for the most part, this probably works for a ninety nine percent of the time, but there are just some times where it's just not going to be you know, it's just not going to be as good. And we've seen this, like I, you know, I broadcast from all kinds of places all the time, you know, going live on TV. Now for the radio, you know, obviously you don't really need as much bandwidth for the radio when I do
a remote show versus TV TV. I mean even TV don't even need that much, but you still need it. But the other thing about the going live from places is that but you know, if you get higher end equipment, if you get equipment that is, you know, a hot spot that is meant for more consumers versus professionals.
It's just not going to be as good. It may not pull in as strong of a signal.
The one I use for the radio show remote is this like high end hot spot that's like you know, I guess it uses cellular bonding. I think we're just using one network, but it has the potential to use more than one network.
But anyway, it's a great question, Chris. It's definitely.
As people are broadcasting more of these Little League games and various sports around the nation, you know, they're broadcasting them wherever they are. I've got a friend at work that's actually doing this and he uses a starlink and
he's just said it's game changing. It's truly unbelievable that he can broadcast a game no matter where he is, in the middle of nowhere with Little League or whatever he's doing, and with all the off the shelf kind of products and software, it's just pretty incredible what you can do. Thanks for the call today, Chris, appreciate it. If you have Yahoo email, by the way, or actually, you know, I'm gonna do that when we come back, because we don't have enough time for that, but I'm
gonna I'm gonna answer this question from Lisa. Lisa writes in I received two class action lawsuit notices recently, including one tied to the AT and D data breach. I must have gotten one hundred of these emails this week. How can I verify these are legitimate? Go to the website Topclassactions dot com. That's where I go to type in AT and T and you'll see the website that's the legitimate one. Just make sure that's the one you're
getting the email from. And that's when you're going to eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Website is rich on
Tech dot tv. This is episode one three four. A lot of you go into the website to look for information on those learning websites I mentioned, they're all linked up there. John and Los Angeles asked where he can continue his education, and you have lots of places you can do that online, so it's all linked up on the website. Rich on tech dot tv. While you're there, sign up for my free newsletter, the one my wife says is way too long every week she reads it.
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Sign up for it. You be the judge.
You know, you don't have to read it all. You can skim it whatever you want to do. Coming up this hour, we've got Brett Bristow, a creator of tech With Brett, he's got a great YouTube channel. He's going to share all kinds of tips and tricks about smart home tech. And I'm gonna ask him about the fact that a lot of people are unhappy right now with the way Google has been operating their Google homes. Like when you ask it a question, it basically just defaults to the web.
Now.
It used to give you an answer. Now it's just like, oh, here's what I found on the web. So I think they're making that transition a gemini. So in the meantime, it's not as good. This week I did test out a new printer, the EPSOM Eco tank Et twenty nine eighty. Get a lot of questions about these. You know, I've got the HP this is This is a different one because you basically squeeze it. You don't really squeeze the ink into it. You just let the ink drop into it.
It's like these little almost look like injectors that you put into the device and it puts the ink in there instead of replacing a cartridge. And so you've got these bottles that you put in you fill it up. That was the trickiest part. I was just worried that the ink was gonna get everywhere. It didn't. Thankfully, the bottles they the ink apparently last for a very long time.
You can refill it easily. And I found the setup of the printer was actually quite simple because they did this interesting thing where they just kind of lead you through the process with an app. So on your phone, you've got the app and it almost chats with you back and forth. So it's like chat style where it says okay, now, first things first, do this you go okay? I did that? Goes okay? Now do this, and you
do that, and then it sends you a picture. It says, all right, now see this part, open up that flap or whatever. So that was really cool. So I got this thing set up. It was very easy to get set up and all, like I said, all from my phone. The thing that really threw me off was loading the paper because I'm so used to that trayloader. This has a rear top loading design, so you put the paper kind of in the back of it and then it kind of comes through it. So that threw me for
a loop. But I will tell you the advantage of that is for swapping paper, so when you want to put in different paper sizes, you no longer have to do it. You know, pull out the tray, put in the other paper. And it's especially handy for printing photos because if you have a five x seven or four x six photo paper you want to put in there, you can easily just pop out the eight and a half by eleven paper and put in the photo paper.
So I love that feature and I've been printing all kinds of pictures because of it.
It's quiet, it works well.
It's a little bit slower than the HP I think but overall, I think the software is better designed and simpler. Like HP is always pushing you to kind of purchase their protection plans and their ink plans and all this other stuff, but the EPSOM just sort of does what
it needs to do, which is be a printer. The other downside is that there's a tiny display on the front which is really small, and you have to like navigate it using all these buttons on the front of the device, which it would have been way easier if that was just a touch screen. Maybe they have a version that's more expensive that has a touchscreen. But the price here three hundred and twenty nine dollars, which I
would say watch for a sale. That seems like the regular price, Like you could probably get it on sale at some point. Maybe this is brand new, I'm not sure. The refills for the ink are about seventy five dollars for all of the ink, and I think the ink is supposed to last for a couple of years, so I'm curious to see if that's the case. Overall, very very impressed, I really kind I was using the scanner on the printer yesterday. It was great, very simple, and
really it's very hands off with the software. Like you saw the app on your phone, but you can print from Android and iPhone without installing really much more. You don't have to go through the app if you don't want, you just kind of natively print to it.
So I thought that was cool. Next up, I'm.
Gonna test the HP version of this, I guess because epsyn is coming out with these ink tank printers. HP decided, hey, we need an ink tank printer now, and so it's the five to one oh one and I've got that to test as well, so I'm gonna see if that's a better system too. So anyway, ink tank printer is kind of different than what you're typically used to with the with the cartridges, but I like it. Also, Oh,
this is this is really wild. Ring now if you if you say yes, and I think you probably have to be on some sort of paid plan if I'm guessing, but they are now sending AI notifications, so not only you know the ring if you have a ring doorbell, it just says like someone's at your front door. No, now it looks at the video using AI and it will describe what's happening in the video. So someone literally just came to our house delivering food that was not meant for us, and it says person is moving on
the porch with bags. Person is standing on the porch holding a plastic bag. And then this morning when I came back from my run, it said, you know, person is it does like child adult moving towards your front door with earphones. I mean it's really specific and actually quite useful because you can see in an instant if
something's important or if it's not. So if you don't have the AI toggled on, you know, if you have a Ring device and you're paying for I think you have to have a subscription or some sort of extra add on whatever, it's worth trying it out. The difference is, and I'll tell you what the big difference is is that because it's AI, they have to send your video to RING servers for processing. So yeah, your video is probably passing through Ring at some point because it's got
to deliver it to your phone. But because it's looking at that video to analyze what's happening in the video, there was some sort of like little warning that said you have to be okay with this?
Do you agree? And I said, yeah, sure.
I mean if your Ring cameras are in public places, which is, by the way, they should be at your house, you know, front yard, backyard, door. It shouldn't be that big of a deal because it's nothing that nobody else can see.
I mean, I guess they're inside. That's different. Let's go to Mark and woodn Hills. Mark, you're on with rich A.
Hi.
Rich. I just want to make you know I've been a cable cutter since nineteen ninety eight because most of the stuff was just rubbish and you know, junk food for the mind, right, But it was the ro Coup that really turned me on back to entertainment and programming. I picked up a Roku four. I have a stick that I take when I go and travel. The Ultra is awesome, but my problem is with the Roku number four. It seems to be a rather common reputation and problem
for folks. What it's it's known for whining and grinding sound. I mean, it will still pour out. I use it on a TV that I don't use often, but when I turn it on after a couple of minutes, it starts grinding and all weird sound. And I've looked online and the only solution I've seen thus far. Was somebody suggested, turn it upside down and see if the noise goes away.
What was the solution? I'm sorry I missed that. What was the solution?
Oh yeah, yeah, I've seen it once or twice. People said, yeah, I turn it upside down.
In other words, well that can help.
I mean this so it's making some sounds. I mean this, this player specifically is going on what ten years old? So and I think, what's happening here? It's got to be the fan because there's no moving parts inside this thing except a fan, I'm guessing, so that's got to be what's happening. So have you tried? I mean, there's if you're trying to, you know, save this thing, which you know after ten years. I mean, look, Rocus are great, by the way, I love them. The Ultra, like you said,
is fantastic. They've got a great range of apps. Pretty much every app is if it's available, is there. I you know, I love Roku because they pretty much And the guy who started it for it, what his name is off the top of my head, James might have been his name, but he basically I was at an event and he said, like I built this because this is what I wanted to be able to watch TV, right, And so I think that out of all the companies out there that make these streaming sticks, they really have
like the viewer in mind. And that's what I think is the greatest thing and why people love Roku because if you think about it, you know, when I put on my Google TV, they're trying to sell me all kinds of stuff. There's ads everywhere. You know, there's like here's what's you know, They're trying to get me to download apps and this and that. Yeah, same thing with Fire TV. I mean Fire TV is just like a vessel for like all things Amazon and whatever ads they
can do. Apple TV is great, but it's Apple. So it's like, oh, here's our way or the highway, right, like we don't we don't they care about you, but only to a certain extent. They really care about, you know, the way they want to do things. But Roku is like this independent. It's like Switzerland. It's like, hey, we want to remain independent of everything. We're just gonna give
you what you want. But I would say, Mark, if you're trying to solve the issues here, maybe a little canned air if there's a place to like spray that in there.
I mean, you could try opening it. I wouldn't really recommend that because who knows what's going to happen there, could you know, be electrical shock whatever. But yeah, the fan is probably what's causing this. After ten years, it's probably.
Did you Yeah, you live in La so I mean look the air, it's probably just got a lot of gunk in there, right, I mean that's probably what's happening. So that's what I recommend. Or I mean, look, Roku's are not that expensive.
I get it.
This thing has been going for ten years. It's great, but you know, you can get a new one if this one is just really annoying. And to me, if I'm trying to watch TV and I'm hearing a whining, worrying sound, that's going to be really obnoxious. I barely like to watch TV with the you know, the washing machine on or something like that in the background, dishwasher. But yeah, so did you solve this problem or no?
Uh no, sir? Yeah, And you're right, it's a wonderful. It just it was a game changer. I do watch a lot of Pluto, which I can put on my phone, even you know, pick up. But the Roku and Pluto allow you to, uh, if you're in the news like I am a lot, you know, politician, like international perspectives on what we don't hear here is very important. So this Roku for I don't use as much, mainly because of that. But the Ultra is just fantastic. I have in my office and in the background I'm listening to
this or that. Yeah, I'm gonna have to tear it apart and maybe louve it in some respect. I didn't want to break it open, but I guess I'm gonna have to.
Yeah, keep me posted. I'm curious.
I mean, look, it's probably not got that much inside, right, It's got a couple of things going on in there. It's if there's screws on the bottom, you can open it up easily, you know, obviously make sure it's not plugged in or anything like that. He thinks, Yeah, I mean there's you know, just see what you got and you know, and if it doesn't work out, you know, probably get a new one. I mean, they're they're like I said, you're the man.
Thank you, Mark, appreciate the call.
Today.
Eight to eight rich One O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. I'll tell you why Yahoo is cutting its free storage. Coming up next, Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Richontech Dot TV. UH eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. You know, not every song Mom picks is gonna work out. No that I don't know what that was, but that that was, uh, that was strange.
Uh.
Yahoo Male is cutting their free storage apparently from one terrorbyte to twenty gigabytes, So you know, I got a couple of emails about this from folks. Seems like a big deal. I mean, if you're going from a terrorbyte to twenty gigabytes, that is a ninety eight percent reduction. But Yahoo, in a support page, says that users over the limit are going to get email notices and a grace period before their service is impacted.
Yahoo calls the.
Change reasonable and they, you know, they say that the I guess the reasonable limit, you'll you'll be fine for a while. I guess once you're over the limit, though, you cannot send or receive emails until you free up your space or better yet, which is what they probably want you to do is upgrade. So now they have paid plans one hundred gigs for two dollars a month, one terabyte for nine So you're telling me you used to get the terabyte for free and now it's ten
dollars a month. See this is weird because okay, Yahoo mail Plus, Oh that's that's interesting. Yahoo Mail Plus is two hundred gigabytes with no ads for five dollars a month. So here's the deal. We have become accustomed to not paying for email. Most people out there just don't pay for their email unless you have a business or something like that special address that you want.
But most people just get like a.
Gmail, a wel, Yahoo, Outlook, dot com, and they just don't pay for email. And so the fact that Yahoo is now trying to get people to do that, you know it's worth a try. But the thing is like, okay, so if you're on something like a Gmail, right you get fifteen gigs of storage for free, that's fine. But the thing that Google has. The advantage they have is that they have a whole bunch of other products you're using that you might use storage on, so it's linked
to your Google Photos. It's linked to your drive, it's linked to your docs, and so it might seem more reasonable to pay five dollars a month, two dollars a month, ten dollars a month, or you know, whatever you pay for Google because you're getting a whole bunch of stuff. So for this, two dollars a month for one hundred gigs not bad? But does that? Does Yahoo? I don't even know what Yahoo services? What do they have it these days? I mean, it's just what do they have
at this point? I don't think they have like a Yahoo drive. They have Yahoo Mail, Yeah, who's secure? Yahoo Support, Yahoo Fantasy yeah. I mean it's not like they have a I don't think they have like a Yahoo drive or even Yahoo Photos. Does Yahoo have a Photos? I don't think they do. I mean it used to be Flicker as part of that, but they're gone. They're part of their own thing now there's I think they're smug
mug bought them. Uh anyway, So yeah, if you're affected by this, I would go to the help page on I'll put the link to the help page. But they're going to give you tools to manage your space, to get rid of you know, big files. And things like that.
The other thing is you can try that's easy. It's just empty your trash after deleting your emails, because otherwise it's still taking up storage and they probably so once you put the emails in the trash, they probably stay there for a certain amount of time before they fully delete. So if you don't delete them, if you want to reclaim your storage instantly, you could just empty the trash instantly. But I think you know it's just you'll know if
you're affected by that. Speaking of email, Richard and Calabasas says, I have way too many old emails in Gmail, almost two hundred thousand, and I want to delete them from particular senders in bulk. The problem is Gmail only seems to let me do fifty at a time. Here's the trick to that, Richard. You have to go to your desktop. Go to your desktop. And what I do is, I've told you this, I am ruthless when it comes to cleaning out my email. I do have a ton of
emails in Gmail. But what I do is, when someone sends me an email I want to get rid of all the emails. I just take their email address and copy and paste it and so copy that in, put it in the search bar, and now all of the emails from that person comes up. And what you want to do is tap the select icon, the box right underneath the froom up at the top almost and that
will select all their emails. And if there's more emails that are not on that first page, it'll pop up with a little thing that says, hey, do you want to select all emails in the conversation, like all one thousand? Tap yes, and it will select every email from that person and then you can delete them. Now, keep in mind your screen takes a second or two to refresh, so if it looks like nothing's happening, it's it's deleting the oldest emails first, and it's making its way to
that first email in the top. Eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up, we're talking tech with Brett right here on rich On Tech. Welcome, Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple A rich one oh one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. What you can't see at home is what I see, and what I see is Bobo our boardop And when I do something silly or most of the time when I mess up, he just falls on the floor laughing.
And that's what he's doing right now.
So you don't see that I do, and uh, it's just it entertains me every time. Uh, but I see the calls. I know We've got you going to get to the calls in just a few minutes. Right now, we've got Brett Bristow on, creator of Tech with Brett. He runs a popular YouTube channel that's all about smart home and technology.
And Brett, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me on, Rich.
So tell me what was the you know, why did you create this YouTube channel? Like what was your kind of first idea for it? And it's taken off?
I know.
Yeah, Well, when I was growing up, I was surrounded by technology, and then as more technology came out, I found that there was missing pieces of people on YouTube talking about certain parts, especially how they're going to be used by a consumer like me. So I began starting with the smartphone I had, and talked about how to use all the things that you can do, because definitely we're not using all the features that these products have.
So I began to demo different tutorials on what these can do and made YouTube videos about how they can benefit your life. Because you've already bought it, why not make the most out of it.
What was that first phone?
The first phone I think was a Galaxy S five and I remember making a video of me dunking it in water and then my daughter drank the water. Then you just dunk the phone real nice brat. Yeah, hey, it was a fun video. We had a great time.
Oh my gosh, that was so it's so wild because now phones, I mean, they're not boring, but like the features, like we understand their water proof or this or that, but like when these phones first came out with these unique features, Like I remember going to a hotel pool with one of the Galaxy S whatever when it got water resistance, and I brought it to the pool and like took under, you know, pictures of my kid, Like we went swimming.
So it was like kind of fun, you know.
Now it's like okay, yeah, it's like everything is like table stakes, Like okay, it's water resistant, what else can you do? And yeah, some of your most popular videos are the ones that tell you all the things you can do with these gadgets, which you know most people are not. They're not getting the most out of all of them. So that's good that you do that. So give me the current state of smart home tech. Who do you think is winning?
Uh?
Who is winning?
Right now? It's kind of all over the place. I'm still a Google Home fan. Alexis doing great, But there's some other third parties like home Assistant. I don't know if you've heard about that, but that's a lot of people are going that way where it's kind of all done on your own, at your own home, with your
own server. I haven't got there, but a lot of people are leaning that way because they're tired of waiting for these other companies to come out with these features that work across the board with all products.
Well, that's interesting. Is that kind of like what Thread is on these other ones? Because I know Thread does everything locally, but that's not the same thing, is it.
Yeah, Thread is kind of like a protocol that you can use. So Home Assistant has all the protocols, at least they say they do, so you can take whatever kind of device you have and then incorporate it into their platform, where others like Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa. You can use specific devices that are kind of built that, but Thread has allowed you to add pretty much all of these different devices into those platforms as well.
Oh I see Home Assistant is like open source. That's cool exactly. Yeah, oh okay, So you have to have a little how would you run this? Like would you run out on like a computer or something in your home?
You can You can totally do that all on your own, but they do sell a little I think it's one hundred dollars box that you can then apply. I haven't done this myself, but everyone tells me I need to because it answers all the problems with smart homes. But it's a little thing you can add to your home like a hub and then start working from there.
It sounds like it's much more hands on, like it's not for the average like the average person could plug in a Google Home or a smart speaker from Amazon and be up and running in like ten seconds. This seems like you have more control over what you're doing, but it's more for like tinkerers that know what they're doing.
Exactly where I myself, I like to have it, I pick it up, I set it up and it's ready to go. I don't need a tinker with too much to get it working the way.
I want it to.
Now, you mentioned Google Home that you're a big fan. Now I know my Google Home in recent months has pretty much just given answers from the web at this point, like anything you ask it, it's like it's not really it's like in this in between phase of it used to be Google Assistant, it's not yet Gemini. What is happening with that? Like, are we gonna get Gemini on these Google Home devices?
Yeah, this is something I've been waiting for for a long time because Google's really pushing Gemini and I'm on the public beta preview or whatever. So I do currently have Gemini on my Google Home speaker. So you may be able to do it in the settings. You can actually go in and switch if you want to use Google Assistant or if you want to switch it to Gemini, which is rolling out to certain devices that you can
use it. And I've been using that on my devices at home and there's some good things that work great. Other things it's still trying to figure out how to do and learning and it's a stepping process. But I think they're headed in the right direction.
I'm on the public preview and I check like every day if I can get Gemini, and like, it's just not. It's either I'm looking in the wrong place or it's just not available to me just yet. So I am, yeah, I don't have it just yet still, So but once you have it, I mean that should make things a lot better.
So is Gemini.
It can answer questions, but it can also control the smart home stuff.
Yeah, so the main thing I'm using it for still is controlling my smart home stuff, so it now has all that integrated. One of the new things that I've noticed is if I set a timer, I can now see the timer on my Android phone without having to ask again and again when the timer's going to run. So there's some integration there. There's still some things like I asked it to turn off a fan last night, but it turned off the wrong fan, so we're still
getting that kind of worked out. But then there's some extra integration, like if you have a Google Nest camera, the new Nest cameras can understand what's happening in the scene, so I can actually ask when my son was in the backyard camera and it will let me know when it last saw him.
Oh, that's cool. That's it.
I was just talking about the Ring notifications I'm getting that are AI. So Ring is using AI to look at what's happening with the video camera and it will send you notification saying not just someone's at your front door, it'll say there is a delivery person with a bag at the front door, you know, something like that.
So yeah, very similar to what that's doing. And it's really helpful. You can go on the app too, and it shows you know, this person was on their phone under the umbrella in the backyard, and I'm like, wow, that's pretty cool to have all that detail that you can even search through.
Yeah, that's cool.
Any standout gadgets you've been testing recently that you would recommend.
That I would recommend. Well, this year has been the year of robots at my house, so we've been doing all kinds of robot vacuum in mops, robots, lawnmowers. I don't have a pool, but I've also tested out a few robot pool cleaners, and the latest ones is the Narwal. I just test out their new Narwal Flow, which mops perfectly in the home and vacuums up everything. So makes our house a lot cleaner as we have all these kids running around to make it dirty every day.
Yeah.
Wait, how many kids you have? We have four kids? Okay, four kids. Yeah, that's a lot. My parents had five.
I've got two and I we're good with two because it's it's it's a lot, you know, kids are My kid just went to high school this week, so I'm like, oh, it's it's wild.
So there's a lot to clean up, that's sure.
Well, I've got one of those robotic vacuums the now, the narwalal Flow. Is that an upright or is that an actual? Like it just goes by itself. It just goes by itself, so okay, all on its own. You can have it run while you're sleeping and it mops and vacuums and does everything. Okay, Yeah, that's handy. I mean, I've got the upright one from robo Rock and I
love it. I mean, is it is so cool to be able to mop and vacuum at the same time, because you would think that it wouldn't be good at either of those, but it's really good at both of those things.
That's the favorite product I brought home from my wife. She loves how it's just so quick and easy to quickly get it done.
Yeah, okay, So let's talk about a common question. I know you got probably a lot of emails from people that watch your channel on YouTube Tech with Brett. What are some of the common questions you get these days about technology and smart homes.
So one of the biggest things is how things are going to work together or how you can have them work together. So you know, what smartlights should I get to incorporate it into my smart home if I want them to automatically turn off at night, or when I open a door with a sensor. So those are some of the big things that people are focusing on, and in my life that's what I use mainly, just simple
little products that benefit my life. Like we have a garage without a window, and nobody ever wants to go in there if it's dark. So I have a little door sensor right on the door. You open the door, and it automatically turns on the lights that are on a smart light switch. So the grudge has never been dark to us, even though it's just because we're opening the door. The light's automatically tron, which is a huge benefit to our lives.
Yeah, and it's such a small thing, but this is what I find about the home. The smart home tech stuff is like it's like you set it up once and hopefully it works for a very long time. But it really like changes the dynamic of things in your home, and it seems intimidating at first to like set it up. Like I've got a system in my kitchen where I've got those lights underneath the cabinets and I set up
a sensor, like a motion sensor. So every time I walk into my kitchen, the lights under the cabinets come on, and I love it. And I set it up like years ago and it still works. And it's just one of those things that was like, yeah, it took a little bit to figure out, but once you do. Or in the hallway, I've got a light that you know, you've got a sensor in the hallway and every time you get near that hallway, the light comes on. And by the way, at night, the light comes on at
a varying brightness, like a lower brightness. So it's like these little things that like once you figure it out and you get it up and running, it really does impact your life in a pretty beneficial way.
Yeah, you're talking advanced automations now, but clearly pretty easy to do and something that changes the way you run life and it makes things easier and more fun kind.
Of Now in your home? Can anyone else figure out these automations? Because that's the thing, Like if I do something wrong, my wife is like, why isn't this work?
And I'm like, I give you.
A minute here, Like something changed, clearly, Yeah, that's That's been a.
Problem on a few things I've added. So whenever I'm adding a new product to the home, I think about is everyone going to be able to use this? So I really like products that you can easily use, Like I use Cassada smart light switches in my home and they have controllers right on your light switch, or I can go on the app and control everything, or I can set up automations where at nine o'clock at night and the light automatically turns on and then it turns
off at a certain period of time. So I like having all the different ways you can control the home instead of me being the only one that knows how to do anything.
Yeah, that's a good one, all right. We got less than a minute. Any useful apps or websites you want to recommend before we go.
You know, I think we talked about Gemini, but even just using Gemini, they have this new video feature you've probably talked about a lot, but that you can ask it questions. And my dad's even using that to help him learn how to use his Alexa better. So there's kind of some integration there that you can use. Because now they're pretty smart.
All the AI.
Yeah, I mean AI is everywhere, and yes, I know people are scared of it and it's apprehensive, but it's it does do some really cool things when it works right. Brett Pristo Tech with Brett is the YouTube channel all kinds of tips and tricks to help you make your tech work the way you want it to check them out on YouTube.
Thanks for joining me today, Thanks so much. Rich all right, I'll put.
The link to Brett's YouTube channel my website rich on tech dot tv coming up. We'll take your calls at eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two.
Four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on tech.
Eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Rich on tech dot tv is the website. If you were listening to the interview with Brett, I got everything you mentioned linked up on the website rich on tech dot tv. Let's go to Kathy in Los Angeles. Kathy, welcome to show.
Rich. Hi are you.
I'm doing fantastic. Thank you for asking.
Okay, here's my question. I am a reseller on eBay, posh, CRAIGSLISTA. I have a lot of clothing items with tags, the original tags A lot of them have, especially from Macy's. In order to return the items, there is a sticker with a barcode. Yes, and if you don't have that sticker with the barcode, it looks like you can't return it.
Correct.
Well, my question is if I sell the item to somebody, can they access that credit card information?
Oh that's a great question. So those little barcodes, let's see. So the Macy's barcodes, I'm gonna see if there's anything documented about what's on those What info do they hold? So I think that barcode what I think it does? I know they started this to combat theft and you know, fraudulent returns and things like that, So I think that barcode links up that item to a particular receipt, and
I think that's all it does. But I don't think that's that barcode specifically holds any information that you could scan to see it. Now, you could get a barcode scanning app on your But the thing is what that does is it's just going to give you it doesn't don't they have a number listed on the barcode underneath it?
You mean like a bunch of numbers.
Yeah, yeah, So I think what it's doing is it's just it's just that barcode is just giving those numbers. That's all it's doing. Now, if you were if you had access to Macy's database, you could pop those numbers into a database and then see what Macy's has connected to that. But the average person does not have access to that.
So so anyway, if I sell it to somebody in another state when there's a Macy's, they go they can take it to Macy's and go, hi, I would like to return this. Would they be able to return it without physical receipts?
Well, I don't know does Macy's allow you to do that? Because I think that they basically did. So when you go to Macy's.
Have you.
I haven't returned to Macy's in a while. But basically, do they just scan that little barcode on the clothing.
And that's it? Yep, and it brings up everything? Now, why would you?
Okay, So if that's the case, maybe you just don't include these barcodes.
On the on the No.
No, I just removed like four today, I thought, because I'm really LERI of barcodes. Which leads me to another question. Because I buy a lot on Amazon and the box is the banks, there are tons of barcodes. Yes, I rip off my address, but there's still all these bar codes. Should I rip everything off or cover it?
Uh?
No?
I don't think you need to anything. That is.
It is a great question as well, because I often wonder this when I reuse a box from Amazon. So a lot of those barcodes are just internal to their system and so they're not going to have any personal identifiable information that links them to you. The main thing that might link them to you is if there is a tracking number on there from a major tracking company like a UPS or a FedEx.
But you know Amazon doesn't love their own stuff really Yeah?
Well ah, well yeah, so I would take those off because what you could do is, now here's the thing. It may not show your address, but it may show where it was delivered. So let's say you live in you know, you said you live in LA. Let's say you lived in a very specific city that this package was delivered to. It would say that name of that city if someone popped in that tracking number, so that
you know. And I think it's good that you're you're aware of all these different things, because yes, we should be questioning this stuff and making sure that if you're reusing something or you're, you know, sending something to someone, you know, even something as simple as a picture from your smartphone, it may include your GPS information in there. So you have to think about these things as you do this stuff.
What do you mean a picture like if I take a picture for eBay, can somebody actually find information about the photo?
Theoretically, but eBay and many of the social media sites they strip that what's called exif data exif they strip that, they strip that information.
Hold on, let me, I'm getting a website here. Oh my god, what's that? What I mean?
It's like, for example, which is even worse, Craigslist. If i'm selling locally, yes, or offer up, and there's the photos I take. Somebody can actually kind of research.
Okay, yeah, so I'm looking I'm looking here.
Uh okay, so yes, So Craigslist does strip the exift data. So here's what I would do. So I would there's a there's a great website called Jeffrey's Exift Viewer, And I know it's a it's a weird name, but it's a super simple website. And you can take an image either a file or a URL. You can pop it into this website and it will tell you if the image data is in that website, and so you can.
Now here's the thing. Not every website strips this information, which is why it's best to do it on your own before you post these things, because it could be embedded in there. So look, Kathy, I don't want to scare you. I think you're you're doing okay, and most people are not. You know, most people are good people that are buying this stuff, and it's fine, but I would be aware of this. And so if I were you, before you upload your pictures anywhere, I would just use
a simple tool to strip the exit data. And I you know, I have a tool that I use that I do that with every time TENI fy T, I n I f y.
You can use that.
I've got it.
Yeah, I'm gonna put it all on the website. I'll put everything on the website. So great questions, Kathy, really appreciate it. Really, you know, you got to think about this stuff. Privacy is very important, especially in the digital world. It is very easy to share this stuff, and once it's out there, it's tough to take back. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four
two four one zero one. All right, So before the break we were talking about EXIF data, and I feel like I need to talk about it a little bit more just to help you understand what this is. So and then we'll get to the calls, I promise. But basically, when you take a picture, your phone puts information into
that picture, including GPS location of where that picture was taken. Now, typically when you share that picture, that information is embedded in the file and someone that knows what they're doing could see where that image is on a map. So let me give you an example. You post you're selling a car, and you post a picture of your car
and your driveway on some form on the web. Well, someone could theoretically download that picture, pop it into a viewer, and see exactly the GPS coordinates of where that picture was taken.
This This happens all the time.
You know.
There's been many documented cases where celebrities post something and someone that's smart goes in and says, hey, you know you're sharing your address too. Now, many of because they've gotten hip to this, many of the major sharing platforms like an X, like a threads, like a Facebook, they typically strip this data out of these pictures when you
upload them. They keep it and of course they use it for their own benefits, which is they can tell exactly where you're uploading this picture from or where you took this picture, and they slice and dice that data in a million different ways and use it for all kinds of stuff.
But that's besides the point.
But they make it so that that picture doesn't have that metadata if you download it. So if I go on Facebook and download five random pictures from people that posted them, there shouldn't be location information in those pictures.
So you're safe in that way.
But I would argue that you probably want to remove this data no matter what you want it in your pictures because it helps you see your pictures on a map and search for where you took pictures and things like this. But if you're sharing them outside of your phone, you probably want to get rid of this. Now, if you look at the iPhone, when you go to share a picture with someone, there's actually an option up at the top that says do you want to include the
location data? So if you look at it right at the top, when you go share, it says location is included, and you can tap options and you can turn that off. And so that picture, when you share it with someone, wherever you're sharing it, where they're uploading it, whatever you're doing, that location data will not be embedded into that picture. I'm gonna check on Android and see if it's got it on there. Let's go to the gallery on the Samsung.
Here's a picture I just took. Let's go share, and I see up at the top it says one image options. Tap the options and there it is include location data. So turn that off if you don't want your location included. How is this helpful. Let's say you meet someone online and you're chatting with them, they say, hey, send me a picture. You can take the location data off that picture. I mean, it's really like you probably never even noticed this was an option when you're sharing photos, but now
that I told you about it, you'll notice. Now there's a couple websites I mentioned Jeffrey's Eggs if you were clearly that is no longer being updated. So I've found some new ones that do something very similar. So if you want to take a picture that you've gotten, just take any photo from your library, download it and pop it into this website and see what happens.
Exif editor dot io.
As soon as you upload that picture, it will show you on a GPS map where that picture was taken if the information is in there, and then it gives you an option to scrub that metadata as well. Jimple jimpl dot com. You can drag and drop a picture in there, or you can take a URL from a website photo and put it in there and you can see if the person left the metadata in there. And I'm not telling you this to be nefarious. I'm telling this to you because you need to know about this.
This is really important stuff.
Now.
If you want to get rid of the metadata on your pictures, I told you the two ways to do it when you're sharing a picture on your iPhone or you're Android. There are also apps on your iPhone and Android that will help you remove this data from your pictures.
I don't have a good recommendation for that right now, but on the web there's a website called priv metapriv meta dot com, and I like this one because it can be done completely offline, So you can turn the Internet off on your computer and you can still remove the metadata from a photo. And so you can just drag a photo in there and press removed metadata. It
will download that picture immediately without the metadata. So I would say, at the very least, if you're sharing pictures to a major website, just put them through this first, so that the website doesn't have access to that metadata, and then the person downloading it doesn't have access either.
The only little caveat to this, because I remove metadata from iphotos all the time, is that sometimes if it strips the metadata, it strips more than the location photo maybe turned upside down or something, because inside that metadata it also tells the computer, Hey, the person took the photo this way like this was this is the right way up. So sometimes you may have to rotate your photos. You'll notice that will happen from time to time. Anyway, I'm gonna put this all on the website. Rich on
tech Dot TV again, episode one thirty four. You just gave me a great idea for a TV segment, so I will be doing a TV segment on this soon as well. It's one of those things that I take for granted, and I think a lot of techies take for granted. But people average person just doesn't realize how much information is embedded in a photo when they send it to someone else. So it's very good to know that information. All right, Let's uh, let's see here. Let's
see here. Sue is in Long Beach. Sue, you're on with Rich. Sounds like more privacy question, Huh.
Yes. The last color that just called was asking about farcodes and all that, and I've always wondered and someone told me once because traveling, occasionally you stay in a hotel and the path the card that you use as your key, that I always take them home because someone said, don't leave them in the room because there's all your information is embedded in that card. Is that true?
No? Not true?
That is that is false. Here's the deal. So let's let's just say, let's just say you're Marriott, right, would you put all of your guests personal information, including their credit card, on this thing that can be lost, stolen, easily taken, whatever.
No, you would not. So is there information on these cards? Absolutely? Is it anything that links you to anyone else? No? Or your credit card information? No?
So I I do not worry about these cards. You know, these major hotel chains definitely think about this stuff in advance. In fact, the reason why we have these cards is because if you look at them, your your room number is not listed on that card for a reason, because think about it, if you found that card, you know, laying by the pool, what would you do. The first thing some would do is go to that room and steal everything in it. So there's no personal information, personally
identifiable personally identifiable information. So what might be you know, there might be exceptions to this, Like in the old days, there was a magnetic strip on a lot of these. Now most of them are RFID, so there used to be a magnetic strip that may have contained information, So I'm saying, so am I saying that you can never find information on these cards? No, But the modern hotels that are using these tap cards, most of them are programmed in a way to protect your personal information and
your credit card. So I don't think there's any reason to worry about leaving them. But I personally, you know, sometimes I'll take one home if I think they're cool. That's the only reason. But I will also, you know, you can give it to the front desk, and that way you ensure to a much higher degree that if there was anything on these cards, it's not going to land in the wrong hands.
That make you feel better.
Yes, thank you very much for confirming that for me.
Yeah, absolutely, Sue.
I'm actually quite impressed with these cards because they somehow I don't when I go to a hotel. I'm impressed that these things even work, and they somehow program them to only work for a certain period of time. So if you get like late checkout for a hotel room, which I often we'll ask for, they have to reprogram your cards because your card is typically going to stop working at eleven am. Now, every hotel is different.
Don't you know. Come, you know, emailing me.
If rich I was able to open my door at eleven oh five, Okay, you may be able to do that once in a while.
I'm not sure.
But the thing is, all of these hotels, modern hotels, using modern key card systems. You know, they're always thinking about the privacy and security of their guests, and so it is in their best interest to make sure that they are not encoding your credit card number, your name, your room number on those cards. Can it happen sure?
Did it happen in the back in the past. Maybe, But again I think that most of these cards just include some sort of you know, token or exchange number that just basically the system looks that up to see if it can unlock that door. Now, if you had access to their back end system, like I said, with the Macy's barcode, could you get more information perhaps? But you know, for me, what you know, it's interesting with hotels because I'm always thinking about privacy and security always.
I mean, I'm not kidding.
I picked up my kid from school early yesterday and my school called me to make sure the person picking them up was okay. And I said, you know, as my mom picking up my kid, and they called me and said, we're sorry, mister Demiro, we have to confirm that it's you allowing this person to pick up your kid, and I said, yes, it is me. They said, okay, thank you for that verbal okay, And when my mom and kid got back into the car, I said, okay,
Now here's how I think as a tech person. Here's okay, let's say you are going nefariously to pick up some random kid at a school, maybe you're trying to kidnap them, whatever. Here's how that would work.
You would have this.
You would hijack the person's phone number, right, so you have the person's control of their cell phone. Now you've got the person's cell phone in your command. And then the school calls you to say, hey, is this okay, we're calling the parent. You've now voice cloned that parent's voice. And when they call that phone, you say, yes, I'm the parent, it's okay, they can take my kid. This is the stuff I think about. This is the stuff
we are up against. And you may be laughing, you may be saying, oh, that's out of that's wild, but no, there are people thinking about this stuff. So you as a as a consumer, as an average person, as a person that's just out there living your life, you have to always think about the potential of fraud, of security issues, of privacy issues, no matter what. Now that may sound far fetched, but this is happening on a daily basis. Maybe not with kids, but with all kinds of voice.
People are out there trying to figure out ways to scam us every day, especially using new technology. So just I guess my bigger point with the hotel is anytime I go to the front desk to say like, hey, can I get a new key or a key mate, or can I get into my room if the housekeeping is outside, I always want them to either ask for my ID or somehow confirm that that is my room without just letting me in, because that.
Would be a major security issue.
Eighty eight Rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two, four one zero one. This is Rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple eight rich one oh one eighty eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Uh, Sandford is in Santa Barbara. You're on with Rich Hi.
Rich, you know I've been listening to you since day one. For you to replace my mentor unbelievable. You're wonderful.
No, how do you?
How do you get this job? Uh? Well, I mean you, you reference you, you reference your mother constantly. It's wonderful. I I you know I have some problem. Is I hope you can help me? I? No, no, I know. I'm dying of three cancers, one reoccurring recently. But the UCLA got the worst treatment. It was horror. The whole thing. My whole life is based around one thing, me being entertained. When I'm lying in hospitals and nursing homes staring at the ceiling, I need to be have a projector. That
is so simple that I just say that. Just I just flip the switch and it goes on and I can see everything I want to see above me while I lie there, complete.
Disarray.
It's just it's just horrible.
Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but I hope you're getting well.
And no, no, no, there's no way out of this. You have three cancers and five other life threatening medical conditions. You're not getting out of this. This is inevitable. I've I'm currently speaking to you on a motoroller is E four that has a instant projector on it, but something old garbage. I need a projector that is direct Wi Fi to whatever phone I have in my hand. I don't need an app to go through. I don't need it.
I just need it just to turn it on and it says this projector right over here it is goes Wi Fi to my phone and I just hit it and it's on.
Well, okay, Well, first off, I'm happy to be here for you. I'm glad that you like to listen and appreciate this show. That really means a lot to me, more than you think, or more than you know, I should say.
So, are you able to call me off the air?
Yeah?
Well, well we can get Kim to get your info and we can do that.
But I want to tell you something really cute. I when I was born in nineteen fifty one, my birth certificate says on it father's occupation, and it says radio announcer at where That's right kfi?
Really absolutely Who is he?
Well, you wouldn't know him. His name is Red Row and he was one of the very first announcers to do commercials live and then he went to television. He started morning talk show television on CBS. Oh wow, it's.
So cool. Long history with radios, that's amazing.
But as I listened to you and do you reference your mother and thinks I just go this guy WHOA. I like how you talked to the last collar and spoke of things that could be It was wonderful about things that you know, people don't think of, about staff taking in this and that. That's great. Man.
Yeah, well, I'm usually a very positive person, but I do think my mind, you know, I'm always thinking in that that aspect of what could go wrong here? What is the what is the implication of anything, especially when it comes.
To tel I'm sure you'll get over that eventually.
So let's let's talk about what you're what you're calling in for. This idea of uh a projector that you can connect your phone now, I think it's.
A small like a little TV thing that projects to wherever I wanted to do and it just needs to go direct Wi Fi. I don't need the apps in between.
I need to be well.
Here's here's the issue I'm I'm thinking of with direct Wi Fi. So most of these apps that you want to that you want to mirror to, they don't necessarily like the idea of their content being mirrored, you know, without their approval. So a lot of the apps, especially when it comes to projectors, they want to be casted if if that's the you know, if the the projector supports casting. So a couple of ways you can go here. Number one, I think the best projector if you want
something that's small. Nebula makes a projector called the Capsule, which is really incredible.
It's the size of a soda can.
It's super simple and it's easy and it's got good software and so you can use that, but I don't know if you're gonna be able to actually cast to it versus or sorry a Wi Fi direct versus casting. So I'm looking at their page to see if they support. Yeah, mostly Chrome cast. You know, Netflix cannot be Chrome cast or mirrored, but you can, okay, So it does say you can mirror Android device to the projector, so you can do that. Now, it depends what app will allow that,
that's for sure. It's it's going to depend on apps, but you've got that option. So that's number one. The other brand I like is x Jimmy x g I m I and they make some portable projectors. They're not as small, but they make one called the Mogo which is really nice as well, and they do have casting there. So the other thing Sanford that I would say to look into is X reel that X real glasses.
You can just put on.
You can be sitting in any position and see something projected above you and those connect write to your phone, no intermediary apps, so that might be the way to go. Thanks so much for the call today. I really appreciate it. Eighty to eight rich one oh one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. David Lombard is founder of the Laptop Elf Project and he is here to talk about the best ways to securely, erase, recycle, or donate your old Mac or PC.
David, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Rich appreciate the invite. Good to see you again.
Yes, we did a story for KTLA on TV a couple of years ago and you've been doing this ever since. So you've got tell me what the Laptop Elf Project is.
So there's a couple of us volunteers, doctor Leo and me.
We collect unwanted working laptops, small desktops and tablets. We wipe and refurbish them and give them to public school teachers and to nonprofits that help low income families and individuals. I'm almost twenty five hundred units donated so far.
Oh wow, that's amazing.
And so you take these computers, people think, oh, this computer is no good anymore, but you're like, no, no, no, it's still good.
How long do you think a computer can actually last?
So for most average users using email some web stuff, probably five to ten years, depending upon when they buy it during the operating system cycle. Now for heavy users like gamers, people who do video editing or something like that, their hardware is going to age out in probably three to five years, even less, because the demands of that work is.
Going up there. And if you're doing AI, you.
May need a new computer every year because the demands of that field is really really growing.
Wow.
What about this whole thing with Windows ten. I know people are worried about the Windows ten security up dates are ending in October. I know Microsoft said they're going to give like an extra year for that if you sign up, But what's the deal with that?
So yeah, so Windows ten has been out there for about ten years. A lot of people we're able to update their Windows seven or eight computer to Windows ten, but the door is closing this October. They are offering an option to extend it for a year, but that's just kicking the can down the street. So what we're doing is we want to We're helping people understand how they can wipe their computers, eliminate all the data, all the programs, so they can then give those computers away.
We have the laptop our project. We'd love to have them, or they can give them to another charity, or they can take them to e waste if they're not working. But the key thing is get your data and programs.
Off of that device.
Yeah, that's the thing that I think a lot of people are very worried about because we have a lot of information on these computers.
So what is the process?
I mean, you know, if it's if you have a newer computer, it's a lot easier than the older computers.
Right, Yeah, that's right.
So Windows ten and eleven have built in processes to erase and reset a computer. I mean, very quickly, go to settings, go to recovery, look for reset, and make sure you delete all files and clean the drive.
It's a very quick process to get to that point.
It'll probably take overnight, maybe a bit longer to completely clean the computer. That's Windows ten eleven. Windows eight process is similar. I've stepped it out. You can go to my Laptop lf project Facebook page and see the details on it. Newer macs also have the same thing built into them. You can either go into a system properties and look for the option to transfer or reset a computer. On older Max, you simply shut down the computer, hold down the command and higher key power it back up.
Hold those key down till the Apple logo appears. Then you can get into recovery and erase your drive. Windows seven is a bit of a problem. They did not include a Windows tool to erase the drive. Some manufacturers did. But there are some free apps out there that you can use to completely erase your drive. And one of the ones that I have seen, I have not used myself, but has good reviews, is called disc whipe.
It's from discwipe dot org.
It's free, it looks like it has a great reputation, good reviews from PCMag.
And other places.
Okay, so disc wipe that's a good one.
And then the older Max that could be a little tricky, right, like if you're if you're not like very savvy on the computer, or do you think someone could figure out how to do that?
They can figure out how to do it. And here's the great thing about Max. No matter how long you've had your Mac, whether you bought it, knew, or was given to you, you can call Apple support and they're very excellent. Telephone support can stick you through the process of erasing and resetting your Mac. That's something that's not available with Windows machines unless you're paying for a premium service plan.
Oh wow, good to know.
Okay, so if you're trying to do it, they will walk you through that process, even on an older computer without paying anything.
Heads.
Okay, so you do this every day.
Do you run into any issues with getting these things wiped clean?
Yeah?
So there are some. So typically the machines were given. First of all, we do not log into a machine that we're given. We don't want any passwords, we don't see the data. So there are some tools that we can use to boot up the machine. One of them that is called dban dB AN and that wipes the hard drive by overriding the hard drive with random ones and zeros. Some machines are just very stubborn and they
just won't boot to that. So what we can do, and you can do this with older machines too, simply open up the case and pull out the hard drive. You need some small screwdrivers. But once you've done that, what we do then is we will electronically wipe that drive using bench software we like many tool Partition Wizard, or if you don't have anything like that, you've got a ballpen hammer, well there's the old ballpin hammer approach. Take it out, prop it against the wall, and give
it a few good whacks. Pretty much take care of any disk drive. Heart Desktop drives are really sturdy, so just focus on beating up the interface in the electronics. But you can always physically destroy a draw destroy a drive if you can't electronically wipe it.
You can also if you don't feel comfortable doing that, and by the way, wear glasses and the protective stuff. But if you don't feel comfortable doing that, you can also take it to a There are recycling like e waste facilities like you mentioned that have like disc shredders. And I watched this process and it was it was wild, and this drive goes in, it comes out as just little tiny pieces of shredder stuff, like almost like a paper shredder.
Yeah, that's cool.
That's like NSA level data destruction. You know, nothing that's going to be poured from that drive.
Ever again, would you ever recommend Okay, because I know we and we're going to get into this where you can take devices like let's say you can't boot your computer up. Let's say it's so old that you can't wipe the data and you're not comfortable taking the drive out. Would you recommend let's say you brought this to a recycling center, wuld you ever recommend taking taking it there without wiping it or taking your data off.
So the thing is, unless you know the recycling center uses a process like you described Rich, if you like, take it to a staple store or to a Best Buy or to La County's had your just ways dispose a facility up by the up your lax, They're just going to throw that into a stack of devices to be parted out or shredded for metals. So you don't really know for sure that it's going to get you know it's going to get wiped if you have critical
data on their income tax forums business information. Candidly, it'd be worth it to take it to a commercial shop. It's not going to cost a whole lot of money for them to open up the case, take that hard drive out, and then they can either electronically shred.
It or physically destroy it. Yeah, but your data, your data is too valuable to risk it going into unknown hands.
Yeah.
I mean, what I'm hearing is that there are lots of options for getting this done, and if you don't know how to do it, there are some places that can help for sure, So recite donate, Like how do you know you said these computers can last for you know, uh, up to nine years, let's say, depending on you know your usage. So when do you recycle or donate?
So so, obviously the one key thing if you notice that your laptop has a bulging case or the seams on the laptop are starting to come apart, that's the time to take immediate action. That computer's battery is bulging and could potentially explode or catch fire. That's an immediate call to take that to a either repair shop or take it to e waste. Typically, what's going to the triggers for getting a new computer. For knowing it's time is you're no longer getting security updates. So if you've
got Windows ten, you're going to stop this October. If you're running a Mac, you're running Moderay, you're not getting you're not getting updates anymore, and even Venturable start getting updates. So if you stop getting security updates, that's the time you need to buy a new computer, and then look at what's the best thing to do with over if you're all going to still functional again. Laptop Elf Project would love to have it o their charities will take it.
So there's life remaining in those computers.
We have software we can put on to extend the usable life for those donated computers for teachers and for nonprofits.
Yeah, that's I'm guessing you're referring to the Chrome os flex, which basically turns like any laptop into a Chrome book, which is what a lot of the schools use. So even if it's not powerful enough to run like Windows or Mac at this point, or the security updates aren't there, it can still run that Chrome, which is based like a web browser based program.
Okay, so you like.
Best Buy, you like Staples, obviously you can donate to Laptop Elf if you're in the LA area, there's other There's other nonprofits too wherever you live that I'm sure would take these. Tell me about some of your favorite tools and websites. You mentioned a couple of them, but tell me some of the others.
So for our rook bench's some that we use all the time. One is called Crystal disc Info. It's available from Crystal dot info, and basically it gives you a computer tool where you can get the smart values off of the hard drive and that tells you that the hard drives condition green, yellow, or red, operating temperature. It
tells you if there's too many bad sectors. So it's a very good tool to assess whether or not that hard drive is good, is getting weak it needs to be replaced, or is definitely critical and you could lose your data. So that's one favorite for everyday use. I use for Internet speed, I use speed dot cloudfare dot dot com. At speed dot cloudflare dot com you get upload and download speed, latency jitter. It's a very handy
tool to check your internet connection. Now on my workshop machine, I have many tool Partition Wizard and what we use that for if there's a machine that we can't erase the hard drive by booting onto it, we'll pull the hard drive connected to that workshop machine and many tool partition Wizard will do that process of overriding ones and zeros over the entire hard drive that in from is unretrievable.
I mentioned d ban dB a n dot org.
It's a free tool if you set it up on a flopping on excuse me, a USB drive using a rufous or another burner, and then you boot the d ban and it overwrites the drive entirely. Speaking of tools, a lot of machines that run Windows ten are not eligible for the for the Microsoft sanctioned Windows eleven upgrade, but if you use a rufous tool and the Windows eleven also you can download. We've had great success and installing Windows eleven on many machines not otherwise eligible for
the Windows ten upgrade. It bypasses the TPM two point zero requirement, it bypasses the requirement for Microsoft account and it also by it also significantly loosens the requirement for RAM and for processors. So we've had great success in using that tool to boost some Windows ten machines up to Windows eleven.
Great information, Uh, David Lombard, it is with the Laptopelfproject. It's Facebook dot com slash the Laptop Elf Project. David, you said you've done twenty five hundred computers. I mean, you know you're doing this as a nonprofit. Is what is fun about this for you? What do you like about all this?
Well?
I mean, of course, doctor Leo and I are tinkerers. We love to play with technology. We've been doing it for I mean for me, I bought my first computer in nineteen eighty two. But the real joy comes from talking to the teachers and the nonprofits. One of the teachers I gave a very nice Windows eleven laptop two. One of his students took that laptop all the way through Window of ten, all the way through high school and into college, and she would not have otherwise been
able to get a laptop of that quality. So, I mean, the feedback and the teachers and nonprofits is really what brings the joy to this.
Love it all right, We're gonna leave it there. Facebook dot com slash the Laptop Elf Project. David Lombard, thanks so much for joining me today. Really appreciate it. Get those computers wiped, get them cleaned up, get them donated, recycled. You've got lots of options. I'll link up all the things that he mentioned on my website. Richontech dot tv coming up, we're going to open up the feedbag.
Thank you, rich Rick.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. A couple of items to get to before we open the feedbag as promised. First off, remember National Public Data. This was the website that was hacked in twenty twenty four. They leaked billions of records, including social security numbers. Well, now the site is back under new ownership as a quote free people search engine.
So what does that mean.
While it's got a whole bunch of information about you in there, so you probably want to opt out of this. So go to National Public Data search for your name, copy your profile URL, and you can paste it into the website's opt out form. Now I got an email from some of this said, hey, I tried to do this and it's not working there. I'll be slammed because basically every website is recommending that you remove your data at this point, so maybe wait until things settle down
over the next week, next week or so. Surprisingly, my information was not in there, so I was not able to remove it, but I did find a bunch of other people I know, so yeah, I would get that out of there. Google Flights has a new Flight Deals. This is an AI tool, so instead of like putting in all your dates and filters and this and that, you just describe your ideal trip. So for example, week long trip this winter to a city with great food, or ten day ski trip with fresh powder. AI understands.
It looks through all of Google's data for airlines and booking sites and it will tell you what it thinks would be great.
So this is in beta.
It's not available to everyone just yet, but it's at Google dot com, slash travel, slash flights, slash deals.
I'll put the link on the website.
Not available for me just yet because it's rolling out, so you may not have access right away. There's a new app called Cassette. This is really neat. It's only for iPhone, but it plays random clips from your iPhone videos, kind of like the idea of popping a VHS tape into the player and you don't really know what's on that tape and so it just kind of pops up a moment. So just install the app. It goes through
your videos on your iPhone. You press one of the VHS tapes it shows and it brings like a little clip from that that video. It's really cool, it's fun. It's free. If you want to select specific clips, you can pay eight dollars. But this is just an independent app from an independent developer, and it's just fun.
I had a lot of fun with it.
Cassette C A S S E T T Again, I'll put a link on the website.
And also retro camp Snap.
They make these cool cameras that have no playback on them, no screens, kind of like a point and shoot camera. They now have a digital video camera inspired by the classic Super eight camera CS eight. There's no playback on it, there's no deleting. You just shoot video and then you can enjoy it late. It's one hundred and fifty dollars usually two hundred shipping in mid September. You can choose
from various aspect ratios. Got five vintage inspired filters, and it's got the trigger that you pull and you get one clip off of that. Built in mic for audio. It's got retro looking battery and memory meters. Comes with a little bit of internal memory. You can expand it with more USBC. And this is not for everyone. It's just someone who might might have had one of these in the past and want something that's kind of fun.
Someone that's a creator wants to do something different. But it's all about distraction free, screen free video recording, just like their camp snap camera, which I love because you take it. It's almost like an old school disposable camera. You just take pictures on it and then you plug it into your computer and you can seal those pictures. Then all right, time for the feedback. These are the emails,
the comments, and the questions I get from you. If you want to submit yours, go to richon tech dot tv hit Contact. Diane from Lapuente writes in my daughter was crocheting a pair of Knights gauntlets for a costume and posted her progress online. A woman reached out wanting to buy a pair, then claimed she had accidentally sent
over five hundred dollars and needed a refund. Without checking your bank account, my daughter followed instructions from a man posing as PayPal support, who convinced her to send three hundred dollars. He was trying to get the rest when I walked in and ended the call. We later found the money had been moved through cash app to buy bitcoin. Her bank would not help and cash app said the money was gone. I hope you'll share this again to warn younger people about the scam. Thank you, Diane. That's
the thing. People think it's just old people that are scammed. No, it's actually a lot of young people because they are not hipped to the scams. So keep in mind it's a lot of people getting scammed, not just old or young. Jay writes in from Hot Springs. Microsoft Edge has a built in scareware blocker designed to stop those fake full screen pop ups claiming your computers infected and telling you
to call a number or download software. It uses machine learning to detect these scam pages and show you a warning it's not on by default. To enable it, open Edge, go to Settings, Privacy, Search and Services, then toggle on enable AI to block malware. What a cool feature. I mean, you have to be using Edge, but turn that on for sure. Jony and Carmel, I appreciate your recommendation for
the robo rock rechargeable wet dry vacuum cleaner. For almost a year, I looked at similar floor cleaners and read all the reviews but didn't make the leap. But on Prime Day about the one. You recommend it and we love it. We have hardwood floors and a hairy white golden retriever. I don't think my floors have ever been cleaner. It's so easy to use. Thanks for making life a little easier. I love that robo rock. It is a
fantastic device. Kathy writes in I listen to your podcast every time I get in my car, sometimes more than once, because they're so full of information. I'm a seven year old woman who's always loved technology. I even had one of the first iPads before most people heard of them. I may not grasp as much as I used to, but I'll keep learning as long as I can. I just love your podcast and how you make tech easy to understand. Kathy, you get the award for making my day.
Thank you.
You can find links everything I mentioned on the website. Rich on tech dot tv next week we'll talk all things Google pixel. Thank you so much for listening. My name is rich Demiro. I will talk to you real soon.