Apple sets a date for its next big event. Facebook makes smart sunglasses that actually look pretty good. Amazon has new smart TVs. Plus your tech questions Answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer the questions you send me. I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. This show is
geared towards the tech. Well, how do I explain? It's it's consumer tech, so you know, obviously it appeals to people that are that are super into tech because they want to hear how I answer these questions, and they want to, you know, maybe pick up a thing or two that maybe they don't even know about. But the average person can listen to the show and really learned something, and that's that's kind of always been the charge of
the show. I'm on TV in Los Angeles and other cities around the nation, and so I get a lot of emails from people. You know, it's just seeing me on TV and saying, Hey, I'm gonna ask this random dude a question about technology, and then they get really surprised when I send them back an answer and that becomes this podcast, and so it's a lot of fun. You know, a lot of the questions are very much
similar that I get. I see the same ones over the years, you know, dealing with Wi Fi, dealing with account hacking, dealing with iPhone upgrades, dealing with iPhone versus Android, dealing with the best cheap smartphone. So there's a lot of like recurring themes that I get, which is but a lot of people have, you know, even though their situation is unique, it does, I guess, translate to a lot of different people out there that are listening. So
that's the purpose of the show. Thanks for tuning in. I've talked about this before, but more and more of you are listening, which is really really nice, So thank you for that. It feels good. It feels good to know that people like this show they continue to listen to it. And let's just get into the first big story of the week. California. California Apple announced their special event is happening on Tuesday, September fourteenth at ten am Pacific.
The tagline is California Streaming and the invitation that they sent to myself along with other journalists which really isn't an invitation. Anyone can watch this on YouTube. So it's not like the old days where I used to fly up to San Francisco or San Jose or Coopertino or wherever I would go. Apple in the past held their events in assorted places all around San Francisco. You know,
these cool old theaters. Sometimes they were on campus, other times they were just you know, they were everywhere convention centers. Now they've you know, they've built their own Steve Jobs Theater in Coupertino. They got to use it, I believe, you know, you know, three times. Maybe we were up there before COVID shut everything down. So that's the reality of this. Oh sorry, I got I got spooked for a second. I'm trying a new setup. I'm testing a
mobile setup with my mixer board here. So I've got it connected to this little battery called an omni charge. And this omni charge thing is like the Rolls Royce of portable batteries. It's twenty thousand million amps. It's got a regular AC plug on it, then it has USB, then it has USB C. Then it also has a barrel port, which I think is for charging. And then it has wireless on top. So if you want something that just can power anything anywhere, even with a regular plug,
this thing is really cool. A little upwards of one hundred bucks, but it's so I'm testing plugging in my mixture into this device to see if I can take my show on the road, so to say, and not need a plug wherever I go. And so I just got spooked out because this the display went off on it. But I'm at eighty eight percent and I've been on for four minutes, so I think we're good. And I started at ninety percent. So I'm kind of seeing how much battery this thing if it can get me through
a whole show, which hopefully it can. Anyway, if you listen to the show, well you know I digress. So let's get back to the Apple event September fourteenth, twenty twenty one, happening at ten am Pacific. So, like past events in the past year and a half, this is going to be recorded. It doesn't seem to be live. It says broadcasting from Apple Park. It does not say live streaming from Apple Park. So what's going to be
announced at this event? Obviously iPhone thirteen, we don't know if that's going to be the exact name of it, but that's the model. Then we have the Apple Watch Series seven. Those are the two things that we're pretty much guaranteed to see during this event, and the rest is all up in the air. There could be some new AirPods they you know, since it's California streaming, I have to imagine they're going to blend in something about the Apple TV Plus service. I mean, why would they say.
I mean, maybe they're just making a joke California Streaming, but I don't know. It seems like maybe Apple TV Plus is in there. We haven't heard much from Apple TV Plus in a while. So the iPhone thirteen, if you're holding out for this at this point, obviously don't buy a new smartphone, but if you're holding out for the iPhone thirteen, doesn't seem to be a whole lot different from the iPhone twelve, but same form factors. Basically, they're going to use the same housing for these phones,
so you're gonna have the mini to the max. And the main thing is faster chips. Mac rumor says faster five G tech. I'm not sure what that means. They say the biggest change will be the one hundred twenty Hurtz Pro Motion display for the Pro Models, which would be really cool. So that's smoother scrolling when you're on things like Twitter and Facebook and all that good stuff.
And then always on display has been a rumor. I don't know that would be a huge I mean, I'll just explain why I love always once because I miss a lot of stuff. On my Pixel it's always showing me the weather, the time, and my next appointment. And on the iPhone, the screen I just call it dead because it's just there, and I miss appointments all the time because of this. Now you can blame that on me. You could say, Rich, well, you're you're lazy, You're not
that smart. You know, maybe you're just not really with it. But I mean, yeah, sure I could take the blame. But I'm gonna blame it on my phone because that's what I like to do. I like to place the blame somewhere else. So my phone does not alert me, and I've got the Apple Watch on and it gives me the little notifications for meetings, like a half an hour before and then ten minutes before, and I still miss stuff. I don't know what happens here, it's like,
what is going on? So on my pixel you can't miss it because it shows you the next meeting for like so long and you just you know, your phone's right next to you. So anyway, always on would be really cool. As for the Apple Watch, apparently it's gonna be a little flattered design look more like the iPhone which iPhone design At this point, the iPhone twelve to
me has the perfect smartphone design. In fact, in the year that is launched, I have not held a phone that feels better in the hand than the iPhone twelve. So Apple did a really really nice job on that. That's pretty much it. I'm not going to go into like all the rumors, but the bottom line is when the new stuff comes out, the old stuff is either discontinued. So there could be this scenario where the iPhone twelve will no longer be available and it will be the
iPhone eleven and the iPhone thirteen. Sometimes they throw us that loop, and I'm not a big fan of that, but prices definitely come down for stuff in the past because you know the reason why they do that is because if you're sitting there in the Apple store and you can go, well, I can get the iPhone twelve, or I can go iPhone thirteen. We'll all save money and go iPhone twelve. They don't want you to do that.
They want you to go with the newest, latest, greatest, So they make you They put a little challenge in your way. They say, well, you get your choice of the iPhone eleven or the iPhone thirteen. You're like, oh gosh, iPhone eleven it's like two years old. It's like, eh, two year old smartphone. Oh no way, and so therefore you spend more money on the iPhone thirteen. Anyway. Can't wait to see what Apple launches. Should be exciting California
streaming September fourteenth, ten am Pacific. I will be there virtually of course. All right, let's get to the first question. Dan said, a while back, you mentioned some of the better free virus detectors for Mac computers. Any chance of an update to that list? Thanks Dan and Carrie Illinois. Dan, I use a website for this. Basically I always recommend a vast or AVG, but apparently a vast I think we talked about it in the show is being purchased by Norton I'm not sure what that's going to do
to the quality of the antivirus. I'm sure in some ways it'll be better. In some ways it'll be worse because they're probably gonna try to sell you on more things. But he's a website called avdashtest dot org and you can look at the best anti virus for home business smartphones. Now, I personally don't think you need antivirus on a Mac computer at this point in time. But if you really want to feel secure, then sure, go ahead. I just
don't think that you need it. I actually think that people these days need more protection against social engineering hacks than actual viruses, because we're kind of hip to viruses that you know, Oh here's a PDF, open it up immediately, and also run this macro so that we can take
over your system. Like most people don't fall well, maybe some people do, but at this point, you know, we're not really a lot of our stuff is being done in the cloud, and it just doesn't have the same amount of issues as it used to when we were exchanging files all the time, and especially word documents and stuff like that that might have macros that run that take over your system or install spyware. So I just don't think we need it, really, but if you want it,
you can get it. But a vast is what they're saying is their number one top pick for security for mac os, So I would go with that for now, but I don't necessarily think you need it. And the social engineering I was talking about really comes down to things that get email to you and trick you, or things that get texted to you and trick you, or websites that try to trick you. That I think is a much bigger problem and one that is not easily
solved by some of this antivirus. You can't antivirus could maybe identify the website is a little bit odd, but it can't keep you from putting your password in there and then now being hacked. So that's what i'd recommend, and a good question because people love their antivirus. That's for sure. Big business this antivirus stuff. All right, let's get to the next story. Facebook. Oh how appropriate that I said story. Facebook has a new pair of smart
sunglasses called ray Band Stories. These are going on sale for two hundred and ninety nine dollars and I have not gotten mind just yet. Facebook is sending me a reviewers unit. They sent them to everyone. You know, I've realized that I'm on the B list or maybe even C or D of these reviewer units. So it's fine. I've come to accept that. But that's you know, that's just I'm happy to be on these lists, honestly, because
not everyone is. And so the fact that Facebook reached out and said, hey, we can get you a pair of these things if you'd like, if you'd want to test them out, I say sure. And then the next day I see that every reviewer in the world has got them two weeks ago. So that's fine, but I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. So Facebook ray Bands Stories they're called. So these are sunglasses that actually look really cool. They look like normal or I
should say typical ray bands the wayfarers. They've got two front facing cameras in them for capturing videos and photos. Then they have this new app from Facebook called Facebook View and so that app connects to the camera. You can take pictures by saying Hey Facebook, which is another yet another wake word. I'm gonna say, why aww, yet another wake word. So now we have Hey Facebook, it'll take a video or a picture. I'm not sure which one. I guess you can say, hey Facebook, take a video
or hey Facebook, take a picture. That's the extent of that right now. But the cool thing is these clips can be shared to any app on your phone, not just Facebook or Instagram. And I'll be honest, like, I think this is really really cool. And the way that these look, the way that they function, I feel like these could be the sunglasses that actually break through into mainstream. Now. I don't think it's gonna happen overnight, but for me personally,
I'm on so many stories. I'm on so many different shoots and stuff, and I see a lot of cool stuff and it takes a lot of work to sit there and remember to Facebook or story or Instagram stories or whatever. And I just don't do it because I just forget and the to have these on all the time and just kind of you know, tap at a little shutter button on your temple and next thing you know, it records a little clip and then you can share
it later on. I think that's really cool. Now. The other thing, quite honestly, that keeps me and I'm very honest with you, because you're a listener of this podcast, and I don't say all this stuff on TV, but when you're listening ear to ear to what I'm saying, I think that I have a responsibility to be, you know, open and honest with you because you're spending all this time listening to my voice. And so quite honestly, one of the reasons I don't share so much on Instagram
Stories is I'm on TV. I'm a public figure. You know, probably not everyone likes me out there, and you know, if I'm sitting there in real time sharing every restaurant I'm eating at, or sharing every single place I'm at in real time, there could definitely be some security concerns there. I don't think the average person has that. Perhaps they do with an X that could be keeping watch over them, or you know, if some one is just I mean, look at you. Think about how much information we put
on Instagram and Facebook these days. I mean, you can see where or get an understanding of someone is in almost near real time, so it is a concern. Anyway. I've talked about this thing where Instagram should really have a delayed post feature where you can post in real time, but it will just delay your post for you know,
twenty four hours. I mean, that would be perfect. You don't have to do it for every post, but I think that would be a really smart thing for them to do, not just for engagement, because I think more people would share if they knew that this was not going to be shared for twenty four hours. And I get it, Yes, there are some things you want to
share in the moment, but most things can wait. I mean, if you're watching kind of a film reel off someone's life, like does it really matter if you see them in that moment at that cool hotel in Miami or the next day, it doesn't really matter, And depending on when you look at the story, it could be twenty four
hours later anyway. So the reality is I think that that would be a really cool way to drive engagement and also make people feel a little bit more secure, And especially with these glasses coming out, because if I had a delayed post feature, I would probably post like everything I do, because why not, it's kind of fun to share. So these glasses, if they're reminding you of Spectacles, which are from Snapchat, Yes, now I tested Spectacles and I will tell you they were not my cup of tea.
They only worked with Snapchat, and yeah, you could export the video and post it to other apps, but it wasn't very easy and they didn't look very good. They looked very like these are glasses with a camera in them, and I think Snapchat was going for that, but I think that really kind of burned them in the end, because no one wants to wear those. These look like regular sunglasses, and in fact, people may not realize that
they are cameras. So the other cool thing about these is that they've got Bluetooth built in, so you can take calls, you can listen to music or podcasts, and from what I remember with the Echo frames from Amazon, I loved that ambient audio feature. Just being able to listen to music without my ears being plugged up or being able to take phone calls was really cool. Except in the case of those glasses, they were just window glasses, so it wasn't really something that I wanted to wear
when I didn't need to be wearing glasses. So these are sunglasses, which I wear a lot. I live in Los Angeles and so these I'm very very excited for. These five megapixel camera on These things can capture. According to the Verge, over three dozen thirty second video clips or five hundred photos before the memory fills up and you know it's a battery. And also some lights to indicate that you're recording or when you need to to
charge these things. And so again, I don't think the audio and video quality on these are going to be the best. You know, this is miniature stuff that is very first generation, so I think it's going to get better. But from what I saw on Instagram a couple of the people Joshua Vagara that shared some one of these influencers that I follow, I thought the video quality that he shared looked awesome. I mean, I thought it looked great, and it looks really fun. He was like taking the
glasses off, turning him around, looking at himself. I mean, I thought it was really cool. So anyway, two hundred and nine and nine dollars available right now. I will have more on them in the future when I get
to test them out. Batteries holding steady at eighty five percent, well, I guess it's not really holding steady, but batteries at eighty five percent and we're yeah, about a quarter of the way through, So that's pretty good, Nina writes in Hello, do you have any suggestions for transferring eight millimeters videotapes to digital files. The camera they were shot on is no longer working, Thank you, Nina, Nina. I did a story on this many years ago on KTLA and I
transferred a bunch of my stuff. It is. It is a long process. It's not quick, and it's not easy. And a lot of times, like you said, the camera that you have, you no longer have access to, or it doesn't work, or it's just not very good. And so I think that doing it yourself is fun and it's in you know, it's an easy DIY. I mean, maybe not easy, but it's a it's a DIY that you can do and accomplish because it's not overly complicated.
You basically get one of these devices which i'll mention, you connect your camera or your video player to it, and then you record on your computer. And then the toughest part is actually the files, like whether you trim them or chop them or whatever you do, but toss them all in Google Photos no matter what, because it identifies the people inside those photos and even the places in the videos, sorry I should say in the videos.
And so it's it's really, really powerful stuff, and so I can go and check out all the photos of my grandma, you know, even though I didn't even know she was in some of these birthday party videos, but there she is, you know, So that's really neat. Okay. Two I tested were el Gato Video Capture for Mac and the Roxio Easy VHS to DVD three for PC. Both of these are pretty much the same. They are a dongle that you plug in via us BE to your computer and then you use the little cables I
think they're called RCA cables to plug in your video player. Now, you said that your cam quorder no longer works, So what I would recommend for that eight millimeter is I would go on eBay and you can buy a cam quarder. Now, before you do that, I would just talk to some family and friends. That's what I did, and you can borrow one of these. Someone's got it laying around the
house and oh, yeah, I've got that. So I borrowed a VCR from my father in law and I borrowed a trying to remember where did I get the VHS camera? Was it? I don't remember? The sorry, the whatever camera I used? I use an eight millimeter and I don't really remember where I got it. I think maybe I bought it on Amazon. I can't remember. Sorry, on eBay, I can't remember. But anyway, they're both back to their rightful owners. So yeah, I'm trying to remember where I
got the camera. Anyway, That's what i'd recommend now, if you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself, if you feel like a I don't want to deal with this, I don't know how to do it, I would just recommend going on Yelp and you can find someone that will do this near you. And so all I would do is type in VHS and even if you just type that in the AI will take over and it should Let's see, if I type VHS, it'll immediately VHS to digital, VHS to DVD. You type VHS to digital and you
will find all kinds of places near you. So my thing is that I don't really want to send these out because these are my precious video tapes, and so I want these done locally, and I want them at
a place where I can bring them in. And so you will find people that you know, someone just has a little you know, camera shop or a video production facility or whatever and they just do this on the side, or they do it as their business, but no matter what, call them up, ask them if they do it on location, and how much it is per tape usually it's fifteen twenty bucks a tape, and how they deliver you the
final product, which these days should be digital not. You don't want them on DVD because that's way too complicated to ever rip again. Or I should say transfer to digital because I've got all all this stuff on DVD from when I was a reporter in Louisiana, and getting that onto a digital format that's not DVD like a you know, just a regular file is kind of a process, and so I would not recommend getting them on DVD
at this point. All right, let's talk Amazon. Amazon is coming out with its own TVs, and Amazon is really
they are. I'm reading this book Amazon Unbound right now, which is an excellent book all about Amazon and all about how evil Amazon is and how bad they are and how terrible Jeff Bezos is, which I joke because that's kind of like the point of the book, like it's just like everything is just terrible about Amazon, which is conflicting to me because I mean, I really like Amazon, and I think the impact that Amazon has had in my life has been amazing. So let me give you example.
Everyone says Amazon is evil, right, Okay, so let's go to Target and buy the stuff that you need, or let's go to a local place and buy the stuff that you need. Let me give you an example from my personal experience. My kid needed stuff for baseball, and so you know, you can go to the local sports shop and they may or may not have what he needs in stock, and if it's in stock, it's not guaranteed to be in his size. Where on Amazon you can search, you can read reviews, you can ask friends,
and what's the link of this thing? So I understand there's this thing of like Amazon has just pulverized so many businesses. But you know, it's this is the natural progression of our world. I mean, you can't stop it. It doesn't like the old days of the mom and pop on Main Street, like is just not happening anymore. Like nobody's sitting there saying, oh, I'm gonna start a small you know whatever. Now you can still do that
and be successful. And by the way, you can sell your stuff on Amazon and Etsy and all kinds of other places, and so it's not like it doesn't happen anymore. But this this whole idea that Amazon is just pure evil, Like I'm just not sure I agree with that. And I think that, you know, Amazon is on a lot of things in recent years to get better. And you
have to remember this is a new company. I mean, yeah, they've been around for twenty something years at this point, but a lot of these companies are finding their way in the world. And yeah, what Amazon did on day one may not be the same thing that they did day you know, forty five thousand, which it's interesting I mentioned day one, but that's Amazon's mantra is they actually want to do things as you would do them on day one. Like and I'll give you an example for myself.
I've been at my job for ten years, and so there are things that I do that I find myself wanting to change, but I can't because it is human nature to just continue doing things the way that you do them. And I sit there and I'm like, ah, Rich, you should really try to do this differently. But I'm like, but I know this works, and I know that this is the way I've done it in the past, and so we want to challenge ourselves and we want to
continue growing and evolving. And so that's that day one mantra of Amazon, which you know, you got to give them credit for. And I think that we all need a little bit of that. And so sometimes I will lenge myself to do things on my own or in different ways, and it may not always work out, but that is kind of like what I've personally realized is a way to continue growing as an individual and as
an employee and as a presenter or whatever, you know, journalist. Anyway, all of that to say, Amazon has its own new TVs and so these are called the Omnia TVs. And I had some notes, Okay, Omnia series smart TVs. They've got four K ultra HD. And the big new feature here is that these are Amazon TVs. Like they're branded Amazon. They're not TCL, they're not Visio, they are not Toshiba, they're not Pioneer, they're not Westinghouse, they're not Insignia. They
are Amazon. And so it's called fire TV Omni series. Oh Omni, I say, Omnia Omni. Omnia is a club in Vegas. So four K ultra HD and the big thing is this new hands free alex A feature, And the hands free feature is that you can basically ask alex A all kinds of stuff like, hey, tune into Channel five, or tune into the ballgame, Hey play some new play a newly released movie, which why would you
ever ask that? Play newly released movies? Like, oh, I guess you can ask like play whatever the movie name is, okay, And you can also find your favorite TV show. So basically, they've built in a souped up version of alex or alex A that can really just get you to stuff without a lot of searching. And we need that because that's that's a necessary thing. So they've got four k Ultra HD. And let's see some of the other features of these TVs that I had Oh right here, sorry, okay,
I did have notes. Wow, look at this. So they've got a forty three inch all the way up to seventy five inch models, and they've got support for HDR Dolby Digital Plus. Does it have Dolby at Mos Dolby at Mos. The other thing is you can, oh, the TVs don't seem to have doll No, the TVs do not have Dolby at most because only the new firestick does it looks like? But anyway, these TVs are an amazing deal, and in fact, I may be tempted to purchase this. I was gonna get the Google TV, but
now I'm like, hmm. Amazon is definitely a larger platform than Google is. And this TV ready for this is eight hundred and twenty nine dollars for a sixty five inch TV. I mean, that is just unbelievable to me that I can get a really nice TV for that price. So also, you can hook up Echo speakers like the Echo Studio and other Echo smart speakers wirelessly for immersive sounds.
That's kind of cool if you want to, like you know, I mean, Amazon has just built such a great ecosystem with all their Echo products and alex A products, so you're not going to be law at a loss for stuff to connect to this, right. It works with ring doorbell, so if someone rings your doorbell, you'll see their video on your screen. So there's just so many things that this really. It works with cable it works with streaming,
it works with music, gaming, all kinds of stuff. It's kind of reminds me of that fire TV cube that kind of controlled your cable box and stuff, except now that's built into this TV. So I think this is very compelling. TikTok is also going to be on here. Wow, I mean, come on, that's a win. I haven't watched TikTok on the big screen, but there is some interesting
stuff on there. I will say. Also, you can connect a webcam to the back of this TV and you can do zoom, you can do alex a calling video calling. So I mean there is a lot that you can do with this TV. I think it's a really fantastic value. So and a lot of people love the Fire platform, the Fire TV platform, so it's just an easy win
to just go with the TV that has built in. Now, if you've listened to this podcast for a long time, you're thinking yourself rich dude, bro, you never say you always say not to go with a TV that has a software smart's built in, And yes, I agree, and very good catch on my part or on your part about me. But here's the thing. This is a platform that is pretty well developed. This is a platform that
is established. It's a platform that is dominant, and I don't really see an issue if you want this TV at this price and you want something that's very simple. I don't really see a huge issue in recommending this. So yes, I always like the fact that you can be independent and purchase your TV separately and then add a streaming stick or a box to the TV and the software is better and it's updated more. But I
don't think that's the case here. I think that you'll be just fine with this, and so for that reason, I'm going to recommend it and say go for it if you want it. I may this may be my next TV. Let's see when's it a available. It is available October twenty seventh, So let me give you some of the pricing. Forty three inches four hundred about four hundred bucks, fifty inches five hundred, fifty five inch, five to sixty sixty five inch eight twenty nine and seventy
five inch is eleven hundred bucks. That is unbelievable. Now, they also came out with the new Fire TV Stick four K Max. This is the first time they've updated the Fire TV stick in a while. It's a little bit more expensive. It's fifty five dollars, but it's forty percent more powerful than before, and it has Wi Fi six and it also supports four K four k UHD HDR and HD ten plus, as well as Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, so you are covered and you can
connect the same speakers wirelessly. So this little Firestick Max is excellent. I would not recommend buying that right now because it is fifty four ninety nine, which means it is priced to go on sale. This will be on sale for forty four ninety nine. It'll be on sale for fifty dollars, So fifty five dollars. Yes, it's not that expensive in the scheme of things, but I know
you can get it for cheaper. And so what I would do is just put an alert on Camel Camel Camel and pop in this fire TV stick for Kmax, and you'll get an alert this is hey, this thing's on sale. It will go on sale. I guarantee it, So just wait for that, all right, Let's get to the next question, Daniel says rich. When my wife uses her iPhone to pay at Starbucks, her screen goes dark or blackened. To get back to white screen, she has to swipe up and reset the brightness. Is there a
reason for this? Starbucks is the only place that does this. It looks like it's an older model iPhone, thank you, Daniel, Daniel. What's happening here is that the phone is automatically adjusting the brightness to let her scan the code to pay for things at Starbucks. And what's happening is somehow, well, it's going darker after it's done, or it times out or something, or maybe this phone is just a little bit older and it doesn't want to it's not coded
properly with the software. But that is what's happening. It's something to do some of these apps where you scan the screen, like whether it's a you know, an app for your boarding pass or an app at the grocery store or you know, the target app. They all basically do this thing where they boost the brightness of your screen to make it so that it's easier for the laser to scan the screen. And it used to be
a real problem. Now it works much better than it used to, and a lot of places are actually instead of using standard barcodes or using QR codes, which is a lot easier because it's image recognition versus actually scanning lines, and so for that reason, it's a lot easier for these systems to recognize the QR codes, and that's why you've seen such a strong adoption of those. But in this case, something's going something's going wrong. It's it's something
you know. I'd recommend uninstalling the app and reinstalling it, restart the phone. But I think it could be that this phone is just maybe not coded properly for this for what's happening here, because you're saying the screen is going dark when in reality the screen should brighten up and then usually it was, so when the thinking is happening is it's brightening up, and then it's when the phone is adjusting back down to the standard brightness. It's
bringing it way down and way too down. The only other thing I'd do is I go into your settings on your phone and make sure that automatic brightness under display is is chosen. I would show you exactly how to get there, but I'm on my Facebook broadcasting live here to Facebook rooms, and so I can't go into my settings without I'm not sure if it stays live
in the background. So that's what I would do, is just go into your display settings on your iPhone settings display and look for anything with brightness and there should be an automatic one, and that should that should help you out there. But yeah, that's an odd problem. But you know that, Daniel, the new iPhone thirteen's coming out, so you can just buy a new one. Just kidding. I know every every tech person ever, like back for like ten years, would be like, oh, the solution of
this problem is just buy something new. So no, we should. We should have the stuff that we have, work with with what we want to work. So that's the way it should happen. Hulu is raising prices and I posted this on my Facebook page and I was kind of a little snarky, and I said, you know, did you think that streaming would be any different than cable? I mean, really we are. We are a couple of years into streaming and guess what, everyone cut the cord so that
they could save money. And is it really saving much money? Maybe? But I think there are some advantages to streaming that are still true. That's still hold true and number one, Okay, let's let's just talk about Hulu first before I go into my diatribe about this. Is that? What does that mean? Diatribe? Why sometimes I say these words I don't even know what they mean. Diatribe a forceful or bitter verbal attack
against something. Okay, yuess that is a diatribe. Uh. So Hulu is raising the prices on October eighth, So plans are going up by a buck. So if you pay six dollars, you're gonna be paying seven dollars for the ads. If you pay twelve dollars, you'll be paying thirteen dollars for no ads, which is what I pay for. But mine's part of this like weird bundle, so which I didn't realize until I went and checked my prices and I said, oh, you're part of that Disney Plus bundle.
And I was like, oh, I don't even know. I got ESPN Plus, So I get ESPN plus, Hulu Plus and Disney Plus or is it Hulu? Yeah, Hulu Plus, No, just Hulu? Yeah, I guess I don't know anyway, So what is the deal with this? Yeah, these prices are going up, these these streaming services they lord us in with with lo Loo prices, we all canceled cable and now we're on we're on the wagon with these things. We are we are on the train and it's uh, it's it's great. I love the streaming stuff. I think
it it's an amazing thing. To have access to I like it. It's simple. But what I don't like is that everything's scattered. Now. You know, when someone mentions a TV show, you got to run through your laundry list of cable of services and be like, oh is it on that channel? Oh is it on I don't even know where that's playing. So but and if you don't subscribe, you gotta subscribe, Like the Paul Patrol movie my kid wanted to watch, so I did, like the thirty day
free trial of of what's it called? I could see the Little Mountain Paramount Plus so that was from August twentieth or about August seventeenth, probably gonna expire about September seventeenth. And by the way, one little tip, you do know that you can cancel subscriptions before they expire. That's like an unknown thing that like ninety nine percent of people
don't really realize. But yeah, when I subscribe to Paramount, as soon as I subscribe, I just go in and cancel, and that way you don't get charged for the next month, by surprise. And you can do this on Apple, on iPhone, on Android, on all these things that you have to cancel online. Now the only one I've noticed that doesn't do it, and I've mentioned this before is Apple themselves.
They say, oh, if you cancel, we're gonna take your subscription away immediately, which is kind of like a way of keeping you being like, ah, let me just let me just inch a little closer to that renewal date, and then of course you forget and you get charged, like in the case of me with various things, but it's mostly like that was Apple News. Plus I did that.
It was like ten bucks. I was going on some flights, so I wanted to subscribe to that, and I was like, oh, I'll just you know, I'll just cancel it right away, and I couldn't. And I was like, oh, I'll remember to cancel it. Of course I didn't, and I've paid another It's only ten bucks, but still so yes, sorry, Hulu they're doing They're really trying to push people towards the Disney Bundle, which is gonna be fourteen dollars a month. That's still the same price, but that includes Hulu with ads,
which I'm not a fan of. I like to have my stuff ad free, so I pay a little bit more for that premium, and I guess what was my big point about this. The big point about all these streaming services is that, yeah, it's a little bit more complicated, but the reality is you can cancel and start up at any time, and it's so much easier than it
was in the past. You know, in the past, you'd have to call the cable company, which meant most people that subscribe to HBO or the Disney Channel kept it forever because there's no way you're gonna sit there on the phone with a cable person, who, by the way, can also convince you to keep it or give you a deal to keep it. And you know, it's just way more work. And so with the with the self
service stuff. I mean, when you go to like whenever Netflix sends out like a price increase email, they're like, you know, you can always cancel your account. Like they just like stand there with their their hands on their on their hips and they're like, you know, you can cancel if you'd like to. You're like, oh, okay, Netflix, I mean, my gosh, I've been a subscriber for so long, but I mean that's what I mean to you, Okay, I can go to my account and cancel. Uh. What
was my other point? My other point is that I got in like a big huff and a puff when I saw this, and I'm like, all right, this is this is ridiculous. All the streaming services they keep going up by you know, I pay eighteen bucks a month for YouTube. I pay sixteen a month for Spotify. So I went through and I added up all of my subscriptions and I was like, I'm gonna see how much I'm paying for all these things, and it came out
to like sixty five dollars a month. And I'm like, okay, well, I mean, granted, yeah, it's more than it used to be. Like when Netflix first came out, it's like nine bucks and that was it. And then all these other things came out, and of course you're watching one show on each one of these services, and you need the music for the whole family. I need YouTube Premium for the whole family. And I was like, okay, sixty five ninety nine or sixty five dollars is not all that terribly
bad for all of these services. I get to watch a show on anything I want basically with no ads, so that's not too bad. And when I told my wife, she's like, yeah, that's really not that bad. Isn't that still cheaper than cable? And yeah, I think we're paying two hundred a month for direct TV and that included our internet service back in the day. And now I'm paying like ninety for Internet and then sixty five for this, so you know, almost almost too, but not quite there.
So I'm still a little bit saving, but it's still a lot. I mean, it's still like when I look at YouTube seventeen bucks a month, Like, am I really watching seventeen dollars worth of YouTube a month? I don't think. So that includes the music service, but I've grown to love Spotify and I just can't give that up now.
So now I had to subscribe to that. So I was using the free YouTube music that was included, and I just once I got a little taste of Spotify, really really tough to go away from that at this point. So prices are going up, that's the bottom line, and they will continue to go off, that's for sure, all right, Lynn says Rich. Does there exist a way to send an auto response back to junk mail or is there a way to set one up? Lately I've been getting a chunk of thirty a day at one time from
one center in the UK. This is an addition to regular junk mail. I blocked them every day. This has been going on for a few weeks and they have a they've figured out a way around the blocking. If they got a response back saying you've been blocked for every one of these pieces of junk mail sent, it could easily shut them down. It might also create a way to curtail the junk mail business going forward. Thank you. My non Facebook friend asked me to reach out to you, Lynn. Oh,
thank you, Lynn. But here's the thing. You do not want to send them back a message that says you've been blocked. Don't do that. What that does is it tells them that you are reading this message, and you are an active participant in this email account, and you are ready to receive messages at any time and the email works. So you do not want to do that. That is number one. Number two when it comes to these senders. A lot of this stuff comes in waves right now. I've just I've been getting a lot of
the very similar junk email. It's the similar. It's just everything looks the same. It's like one line, then a big graphic in the middle and that's it. And I've been getting a lot of that, and it's probably because we've seen a lot of recent hacks and my email address is floating around and what do I do? I just delete them? So, Lynn, what I think is the better solution here is two things. Number One, you can
use the report spam button on your email. Most of the emails have it, so if you're using, you know whether it's Gmail or whether it's Yahoo or anything else. Usually there is a way to report an email as spam, and so on Gmail, I can see it right up at the top. It says report spam. Looks like a circle with a little exclamation exclamation mark. Isn't that weird?
Don't we say? Let me just say you ever wonder you ever notice how you say words really fast and they are not actually the words like explanation mark, explanation explanation mark. It almost sounds like I'm saying explanation mark. No, it's an exclamation mark. So but who says that? Who enunciates an exclamation mark? Maybe some people do. I don't.
So you can do that. But I think what's better, and this is I think something that is really really he to do in your email is I would not load images on my email because every email these days is it's got a little a little bit of baggage connected to it. And that baggage is what's called a tracking pixel. And that little tracking pixel is so tiny you can never see it with the naked eye. But what it does is it reports back a lot of information.
It reports back when you opened an email. It reports back the IP address that you open the email from, so they know your location. And it might even report back the type of device that you opened the email on. So all that information basically tells the spammers and the scammers that, oh, we got a good one. We got a hot lead right here. We got Lind's email address, and it is a good one because she keeps responding to us. Hey, I'm not here, I'm not here, I'm
not here. Please stop doing this, and we're gonna keep doing it. So go into your email settings, whether you're on Gmail or Yahoo or anything. And Gmail settings have gotten very complicated by the way. Look for something that says images, and under the Gmail general settings it says images always display external images, or ask before displaying external images. I have the ask before displaying external images clicked and You can also do this on your smartphone as well.
And what that does is it pretty much stops these tracking pixels from working because if the tracking pixel is not loading, cannot it cannot send back information about how it was loaded and where it was loaded and who loaded it, and so you basically stop these scammers in their tracks. And so it's a it's an easy way. It's not fool proof, but it's an easy way to kind of just give one more line of defense between you and these scam artists. And so I've got it. Yeah,
is it more annoying? Of course all these emails on my phone. When I get an email that I want to look at the picture, I have to press display external images each time manually. But that's fine because it's really emails that I want to interact with, and yeah, they're immediately sending tracking pixels. Now, another side of this is that a lot of the PR professionals that I know and love and that send me emails, a lot
of them use tracking pixels in their emails. And why do they do that, Well, they want to see if a journalist like myself read their pitch and open their email, and then they can harass me the next day and say, hey, just following up here on my email, And if you have that enabled, they know that you read it at eight thirty in the morning and you didn't respond, and so they at least knew it got in front of
your eyeballs. So I have that turned off. And it probably frustrates a lot of people because when they get a report of all the journalists that they sent an email to mine comes up rich on tech as a big question mark. We don't know did Rich open it? We can't tell, and so that frustrates them. So make them work for their mone a little bit harder, That's what I do. So that's what I'd recommend doing. Don't load external images by default on your email, and it
will keep you just a little little bit safer. Next story, and talked about this on KTLA today. This is the surprising way that hackers gain access to your Facebook account and the best way to keep them out. This is a story that was about six months in progress because I get so many emails from people that say, hey, Rich I was hacked on Facebook. Can you help? And they want my help, But then I say, okay, will
you go on TV and talk about it? And I can use your your story to kind of be the bedrock of a big story on TV that can help a lot of people. And they all say, oh, no, on, on, I want to do that. Okay, Well I finally found one person who you know I email back. Every time I say, well, you talk about this on TV, everyone says no, except for this woman, Pam del Ray. She's a realtor in Arcadia, California, which is near Pasadena. And she said, cherylll go on TV. And I said, really,
you'll go on TV? Okay, yes, won the jackpot and I kept thinking it was too good to be true, but she sure enough. We got to her office. She talked to me about what happened, and she got hacked on Facebook. They took over her account, they took over other accounts, and I actually emailed Facebook as well, saying, hey, can we talk to someone at Facebook? Like how do these people hack these accounts? Why do they hack them? And much to my surprise, Facebook said, sure, will give
you someone. It took them a real long time, but they did deliver someone and the person explained how and why these hackers do it. And when I say, the surprising way that hackers do it. They're not actually most of the time hacking directly through your Facebook. What they're doing is they're figuring out your easy to figure out password on your email and that's how they're getting into
your Facebook accounts. So once they have your email, they have it's so much more valuable because now they can unlock all of your accounts from banking to Venmo, to PayPal, to Facebook to Instagram. And what they do is they have Okay, so first they gain access to your email account. Now they've taken it over. You can't get into your email. Now they go to Facebook and they do I need a password reset. And that password reset guess where it goes.
It delivers right to the email account that they now have control over, and so they can reset your Facebook account. They can reset your Venmo account, your Instagram, your PayPal, and that's what they proceed to do. So how do you keep this from happening to you? You know what I'm going to say if you've been listening to this podcast, it is all about a little magical thing called two
factor authentication. Two factor authentication means that even if they got access to your email account, now they go to log into your Facebook account and Facebook says, Okay, we see it's you, but we need you to type in this other code that we're going to text your phone or it's going to be generated by an app like authy or Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator. And the hacker goes, oh, crap, can I say that on a podcast? I guess I can probably say anything. Oh no, I what am I
gonna do? I can't. I don't have this extra code, And they are foiled. They are stopped in their tracks and Scooby Doo comes by and they proceed to pull the mask off of the hacker and reveal their true identity. Did I make that joke in the last podcast? I think I did. Sometimes I forget, you know, it's a week between podcasts, and I just you know, it's like a fresh it's a fresh start every week because you know, new people are listening every week, so you could be
newly listening and not get any of the references. So best way to protect yourself go and enable two factor authentication not just on your Facebook account, but also on your email, and not just on your email, but also on your bank And not just on your bank, but on any account that you log into that supports it that you hold near and dear to your heart. Anything with banking, credit cards, email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, anything, Google,
get two factor authentication enabled on it. Get yourself an app. That's the easiest way to do it, an app like authy or Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator. And once you set up the app, it'll give you know, it kind of links into all these accounts and generates codes for all these different accounts. It's much more secure than getting a text message to your phone. But I Am not
going to scoff for the text message. If that's where you want to start, just start with the text a text code to your phone number, and it's still better than nothing. So that's what you want to do on Facebook. I've got the article on how to set it up on the show notes. The other thing you can do for Facebook is set up trusted contacts. This is where you pick two or three friends that they will contact and say, hey, is rich DeMuro really who he says
he is? And then they give that person a code that they can give you, and then it'll help you get back into your account. And then finally, if you do get locked out Facebook dot Com slash hacked is the place to go. And yeah, you're not necessarily going to get your account back immediately or ever, but that is the best way to go and do it. And so, you know, Facebook said, look, this is not a Facebook issue, this is a this is an entire Internet issue. And
I would agree with that. Facebook is just one of the bigger places it happens because oh they've got you know, two point seven billion people on there. That's a lot of people to hack, all right. Ross Craig writes in Good Morning, Rich My wife received a low heart rate notification from her Apple Watch Series six. Her heart rate was down to thirty five beats per minute. We proceeded to our hospital to the emergency room. She was hooked up to an ECG or EKG. They noticed the issue
with her heart. The machine was going nuts. They came in with the crash cart and had her hooked up just in case she took a turn for the worse. The cardiologist said she would need a temporary pacemaker. I was in the room when they did this. The next day she had a permanent pacemaker installed. Please have your listeners seek medical attention if they're resting in their watch gets a warning of a low or high heart rate. We never thought to try out ECG on her watch.
Ross in Saint John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Wow, Ross, thank you for sharing that story. I know Ross is a regular listener of the podcast, so I'm glad that you shared this. And it's scary, but I'm glad your wife got the help she needed. I'm glad that the Apple Watch did its job. But yes, this is a great reminder to set up these health features on your
Apple Watch. You can go into the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and what I do, and this is what I do for everything, whether I'm a you know, I go through every single setting on every single device I have. Why because I want to see what's available to me. So on Apple Watch, I will just go through the Apple Watch app and just back out of every menu back in, go in, go out, go in, go out, and just follow every menu tree and just see like, what does this thing do? What are these
features that it has. I'll do the same thing when iOS fifteen comes out on the iPhone. I'll just go through and see what every single one of my options are. And the reason why you want to do that is because you may have set up this watch really fast and really, you know, without really paying attention. And now it's a year in and you may not have activated the heart rate notifications when you first set it up, or you may not have activated the activity feature or
the noise feature. You know, the Apple Watch can tell you when you're in a loud environment that's gonna be too loud for your years and eventually hurt them. So go in and check out these features. And it's a good reminder to do that. I love the Apple Watch. I've said over and over. You know, it's going to be really tough for me when I go to the
Pixel six later this year when that comes out. If I indeed switch, I've got to figure out a system where I can keep the Apple Watch and ideally keep the Apple Watch with cellular, because the way I see the Apple Watch with cellular, it's kind of like a life saving device because if I'm on a run and I fall and I can't call nine one one, the watch is going to do it for me. And that is some pretty powerful stuff. And this thing is just
going to continue to get more powerful. It's already giving people alerts when their heart rate is too high or too low. It's already giving people notifications when the noise level is at a place that might do some irreparable damage to their ears. It's already at a place where if you fall and take a hard fall, it will call nine one one for you or text your family
and friends. So this thing is amazing, and it really just keeps getting better, and to me, it's one of these things where I can't imagine my life without it because it's just so smart, and it's kind of like an extension of my body at this point, Like if I fall in a random place, hopefully there's cellular service, I will get help, hopefully because my Apple Watch will
call for it. If I'm at a concert or in a and an environment that I don't realize is really loud, like I can shift and figure out how to keep myself safe. So it's an amazing, amazing device, And I thank you for your input, and I hope your wife gets healthy. Okay, let's get onto this last story before I go. But Rumba, their latest robotic vacuum, will not how should we say, distribute pet waste all over your floor.
And I'm being very kind when I do this, But apparently there's a problem with roomba's And I don't have a dog, but apparently with rumbas, they used to run over pet droppings and smear them over all over people's floors and you would come home to a real, real big mess, when the whole point of the roomba was to not have a mess when you came home. And I've noticed this with my Rumba, which I absolutely adore. It will go over cables and suck those up, and
that's a problem. And I haven't gotten the deal with the dog stuff. But this thing otherwise is fantastic. But the new Rumba, the J seven plus, is the top of line vacuum. It comes in at about and fifty dollars, but it's got new software that now recognizes chords, which is amazing and pet waste, and so it will it
will avoid these things at all costs. And if you look at this stuff that Rumba posted on their twitter, the CEO posted on his Twitter page, it's pretty funny, like, I mean, they did it kind of tongue in chic, but they did. They made like a hundred pieces of pet poop and in different shapes and sizes and just it's so like Oh my gosh, Like, this is what
they had to do. They had to teach the AI these little cameras in the rumba to recognize what it looks like and make sure that it doesn't run it over. And that's what they did. And so if you want a little chuckle, I'll put the link in the show notes. But it's it's pretty funny. I got a what's the guy here? It is Colin Angle. That's his name. Colin Ang is the uh I guess? Is he the CEO of Rumba. Yeah, CEO and founder of I Robot. Wow. Oh I Robot, the company that runs Rumba. But anyway,
uh yeah, so if you get the new one. Now, for the rest of us that have older rumbas, the reality is that hopefully this will be built in eventually with a software update or trickle its way down to some of these cheaper rumbas. That is the hope. Oh listen to that sound music to my ears, maybe not to yours. Maybe you're like rich, keep going, Please do one more question. No, I've gotta gotta go. That sound means it's gonna do it for this episode of the show.
If you'd like submit an answer for me or question for me to answer. This is not jeopardy. You submit the questions, I give you the answers. Just go to my Facebook page, Facebook, dot com, slash rich on Tech hit the big blue send email button. You can also go to my website rich on Tech dot tv and look for the email icon. Also, I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast. Just write a quick line about what you love about it to
help other people know why they should listen. Go to rate this podcast dot com, slash rich on Tech, or you can do it if you can figure out how to do it inside the Apple Podcasts app or whatever podcast app you use. You can find me on all social media. I am at rich on Tech. Took me many years to get that username, so please put it to good use by hitting that follow, subscribe, follow, whatever button however it is on the social media network. Don't keep me a secret. Tell your friends about me. No
matter where you live in the US. You can download the free Ktla plus app on Apple TV, Fire TV, and Roku. Once you do, scroll to the tech section and watch all of my TV segments on demand. I've said this before, but that is where I shine TV. I do TV segments that are so fun, and they're so thoughtful and thoughtfully crafted, hand crafted, So watch them there on your big screen TV. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways
you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending it with me. I will talk to you real soon. H