Latest / Stampede of Truth / Rich On Tech - (Best of) Free TV antenna tips, smarter scam protection & better home Wi-Fi (195, October 10, 2026)

Transcript

Rich On Tech - (Best of) Free TV antenna tips, smarter scam protection & better home Wi-Fi (195, October 10, 2026) · Stampede of Truth

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's going on? I'm Rich DeMuro, and this is Rich
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: on Tech. This is the show where I talk about
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: We've got Bobo in studio. We've got Kim on the phones.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: You listening, thank you so much for being there. Phone
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: lines are open, 888-RICH-101. That's 888-RICH-101. 742-4101-888-RICH101. Give me a
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: call if you have a tech question, need some advice,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: or maybe you just want to share something interesting you've
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: discovered in the tech world. You can also send me
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: an email. Just go to richontech.tv and hit contact. I
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: can't guarantee that I can respond to all of your messages,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: but I will say, if you've been emailing me in
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the past week or so, and you've noticed that sometimes
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: my responses are a lot quicker, I will tell you why.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: There is a reason. It is because of the new
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Pixel 11 Pro, the feature called Rambler on there, where
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: basically the voice-to-text is so good that I can read
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: your email. If it's an easy question I can answer
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: right off the top of my head, I can just
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: ramble the answer and it perfectly formats it and sends
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: it off to you. So that is why you're seeing
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: some faster answers these days. It's all because of technology.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Guests on the show this week, we're hearing from Steve Wiseman,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: founder of Scamicide. He's going to discuss the latest scams
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: he's seeing, emerging frauds, and stuff that you can do
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: to protect yourself. And later in the show, Miriam Dwar,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: host of the Mobile Tech Podcast. We're going to talk
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: about the phone I just mentioned, Google's new Pixel 11 lineup. Well,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: one of the big stories this week is Meta. Meta
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: is on trial, whether Instagram and Facebook harmed kids. This
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: is a landmark trial happening right now in California. Well,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: not right now, but it's happening now. Not as we speak,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: but it's happening. You know what I mean? This could
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: change how Facebook and Instagram work for kids and teens.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: 29 states are behind it, but the current trial involves California, Colorado, Kentucky,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and New Jersey. They're taking the lead here. These states
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: are accusing Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram to hook
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: young users. Also misleading parents about safety, improperly collecting data
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: for kids under 13. That's probably the least of their
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: concerns at this point is the improper data collection. Meta,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: of course, denies any wrongdoing. They say they have invested
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: heavily in teen safety. Have they? Well, that's what we're
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: going to find out through testimony like this. The big
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: testimony this week came from Arturo Bahar. He is a
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: former Meta engineering director and a safety executive. He testified
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that Mark Zuckerberg created a culture where growth and engagement
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: came before child safety. Now, think about that for a moment.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Do you believe that? Do you think Facebook prioritized growth
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: over anything else, even child safety? We can't answer that
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: right now, but we all have seen the growth of
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: their platforms that have been on fire for the past,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, when did I sign up
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: for Facebook? I can still remember. It was 2007. So
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: it's almost been 20 years of Facebook. And it's big.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: I know that you may say, oh, only the olds
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: use Facebook. Not true. A lot of people are on Facebook.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people, everyone, I would say, out
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: of all of the social media platforms, everyone is on Instagram.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Instagram is the equalizer. Whether you want to be on
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Twitter or not, whether you want to be on TikTok
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: or not, whether you want to be on Facebook or not,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Instagram is one that I think everyone can still agree
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: on that that's where people go. this Arturo Behar said
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: that Zuckerberg was basically the point man. If he wanted
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: something done, it would be done. If he didn't want
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: it done, well, it didn't get done. That's understandable, I bet.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: One other claim he made, he said that Meta had
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the technology that could identify users who were under 13,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: but basically they didn't really do much about that. They
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: kind of took a don't ask, don't tell kind of
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: stance on there. Now, I would believe that because here's
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: the thing. When my kid signed up for Claude and
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: started chatting with it, and he's under 13, I'm not kidding.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Within two hours, Claude said, sorry, we think you're a kid.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: No more access for you. It was almost immediate where
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: they use those signals to say, sorry, we understand that
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: you're a kid. That's it. You're cut off. Instagram, now
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: they've said in recent years that they're trying to find
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: more signals and put teens into certain buckets, but They
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: didn't do it in a big way before. He also
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: said that Instagram did this take a break feature and
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: it was ineffective because it wasn't on by default and
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: it was very easy for teens to ignore. I think
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: when I first reported on that, you just basically had
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: to dismiss it and it was like, okay, it goes away. Meta,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: what do they say about all this? They point to
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: hundreds of employees working on safety. They say they've built
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: tools and protections for young people. And they also say
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: that the states saying that all this social media addiction
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: and harm might not be all correct. You know, there's
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of people that say that these social media
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: platforms have harmed kids. There's some people that say, well,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: have they? I mean, there's a million aspects to this.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: How do you trace it right back to just social media?
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: How do you trace it right back to Instagram? Kids
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: are doing a lot of different things. But the stakes
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: here are big. Now, Facebook in their testimony or their
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: promotion of this has said, look, this is going to
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: cost us $ 1. 4 trillion. That's more money than this company has.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: And so please feel sorry for us. But the state's
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: attorney general say, no, it's probably more like hundreds of
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: millions of dollars. Facebook meta, they want to make it
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: seem like this is going to break them. The trial
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: expected to last for about six weeks. I think the
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: takeaway here is this. Number one, You still have to
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: be a parent. That's number one. Just because Facebook loses
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: in this trial or Meta loses does not really change
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: anything moving forward. Sure, they may have to redesign the app. Sure,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: they may have to take away endless scrolling or all
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the notifications. But there's always going to be something else
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: that comes along that's similar. And there's already other tools
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: out there that teens are using, like Snapchat, like TikTok.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: So that means just because the state attorney generals win
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's like, oh, parents can breathe a sigh
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: of relief. Everything's going to be fine with their kids. No,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: there's so much out there as a parent that you
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: have to be aware of still. Now, this may be
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: a big slap on the wrist for them and say, okay,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: you got to change things. You knew something was wrong
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: and you didn't do anything about it, but we still
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: have to be parents and we still have to be
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: aware of how these apps work, how our kids are
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: using them. And most importantly, the fact that our kids
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: are smarter than us. when it comes to these apps.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: And so even if you try to put these safeguards
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: in place, guess what? The kids know ways around them.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: The kids know how to try something else that gets
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: around it. But I think the biggest thing that we
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: can get from this trial is, did Facebook make their
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: app addictive? Did they know they were doing that? Did
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: they know that when you log on, it's like a
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: little slot machine? When you see those hearts in the corner,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I'm an adult. And that's still... appeals to me. When
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: you see the hearts, when you see the comments, when
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: you see the likes, they know what they designed. They
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: designed a mini slot machine in your pocket and adults
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: fall prey to it as well. I mean, every adult
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: I know can hardly stop scrolling. And why not? It's
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the most information you've ever seen in your life. The
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: stuff that you're into more and more and more and
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: more and more. And I'm guilty of it. Everyone's guilty
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: of it. You go to check a notification on your phone.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Next thing you know, you're scrolling. And it's been five
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: minutes before you stop. So the states are hoping for
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: a big tobacco moment. Meta is hoping that this all
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: blows over. But I think at the end of the day,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: this does bring awareness. We need to be aware of
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: what is happening, the impact of technology on us. Technology
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: is not inherently good or bad. No matter what you have,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: whatever tool that's been invented in this world over time
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: could always be used for good or for bad. Now,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: the design of those tools, could it be faulty? Could
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: it be addictive? Yes, that can come out and that
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: could be understood. But at the end of the day,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: we are humans. We need to live with this stuff.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: We are going to continue to live with it. And
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: kids who are at a disadvantage because their brains are
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: not exactly well-formed just yet, they are at the biggest
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: disadvantage because this is where this could take them over.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: They could feel depressed. They could feel sad. They could
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: feel FOMO. All things that adults can feel too, but
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: we can work with it better. Kids, they're not fully
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: there yet, so they can't work with it. So I
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: think this is going to be an interesting case to watch.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: No matter what happens, I think it's good for us
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: to understand that these companies are out there for themselves
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: and They're not there for us. They're not there to
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: make our lives better, to make our lives, oh my gosh,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: we want to show you 10,000 cooking recipes because you
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: want to make the best salmon on Friday night. No,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: they want you to be on their app for as
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: long as humanly possible. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. You want to hop
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: on the phone lines. You want to get on the show.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Give me a call. We got lots to talk about
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: today on Rich on Tech. 888-RICH-101. All right, let's get
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: through a few stories. We'll take another call. Drone delivery.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Coming to a town near you. Both Amazon and Uber
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: hyping up their drone delivery. Amazon says Prime Air is
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: going to reach 500 cities and towns by the end
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: of 2026, up from just 11 today. How is that possible?
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: They say eligible orders can arrive in as fast as
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: 30 minutes, with most showing up in about an hour.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: They say more than 60% of the items people buy
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: most on Amazon are light enough to qualify. Groceries, medications, electronics,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: household items. Prime members get free drone delivery on orders
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: of $ 50 or more. Under those prices, they have to
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: pay a little bit. Amazon's already operating in Phoenix, Tampa, Detroit, Houston, Dallas,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: San Antonio, and Waco. Coming soon, Chicago, Atlanta, Cleveland, Syracuse,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and Boise. Not to be outdone. Uber Eats, partnering with
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: a company called Zipline to bring drone delivery of your
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: burrito to cities across America. First Uber Eats drone delivery
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: is expected later this year. Their goal is to do,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: get this, ready? 1 million drone deliveries per day by
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: the end of 2029. Zipline says it can deliver in
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: about 5 to 10 minutes. Let's see. But yeah, it's
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: just wild. Also, Amazon, I don't know if you've checked
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: for this lately, but they just added this in my area,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: but they've got this Amazon now thing. And so if
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: you go to amazon.com slash now, I can get something
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: delivered in 28 minutes. And this is just regular delivery,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: but it's like through, I don't know who they send
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: in 28 minutes, but I can order, look at this.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: I can order hummus and have it delivered in 28 minutes. Oh,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I can order a steak. So these companies, this idea
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: of like instant delivery is, is coming fast. It is
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: really happening. Speaking of drones, Flock. This is the company
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: that is getting all the flack for those roadside license
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: plate cameras. Guess what? They're already moving on to something new.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Police drones. So they're still doing the license plate cameras,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: but they're already thinking about, okay, how can we advance this?
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: So they call these drone as first responder systems. They
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: launch when a 911 call comes in and basically it
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: flies to the scene before the police get there. Flock
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: says the drones can fly up to 60 miles an hour,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: operate up from 400 feet up. They have 40 times
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: zoom on them. The average arrival time is about 86 seconds.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: And they can read license plates from the air, apparently
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: from up to 2,000 feet away. Flock says this is
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: one of the fastest growing aspects of their business. And
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: let's see, one interesting stat. Flock says the drone can
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: resolve about 20% of calls without sending an officer. Oh,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: that's what they're doing.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: It saves money because basically the drone goes there and
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the dispatch is like, okay, everything looks good there. We
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: don't have to send someone. All right. That's interesting. Rich
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: on Tech is sponsored by Incogni. Did you hear that?
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Listen very carefully. That's my phone. Yeah, I've got three
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: of them sitting right here. And that's literally what it
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: sounds like. No scam calls, no scam texts. I love
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: the silence. My phone is silent. Your phone probably not
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: as quiet. Here's why. Data brokers are selling your personal
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: information like there's no tomorrow. It's your phone number. It's
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: your home address, your email, your family members, your political affiliations,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: even where you bank. The scammers that are blowing up
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: your phone, they did not get lucky. They bought your
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: information and they will keep buying it over and over again.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Until you make it stop, like I did, with Incogni's help.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Incogni automatically removes your personal information from hundreds of data
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: brokers and those people search sites. You know when you
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: search your name? Come on, you've done it. You know
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: you have. You search your own name, and it's got
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: your address, it's got where you live, it's got all
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the people you've ever lived with, your roommates, your family members.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Incogni sends the legal removal requests, and then they follow
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: up and keep monitoring so your info stays off those lists.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: If scammers can't find you, they can't target you. If
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: spammers can't find you, they can't bother you. So get 60%
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: off right now at incogni.com slash rich. That's incogni.com slash rich.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: I-N-C-O-G-N-I dot com slash rich. Because the sweetest sound your
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: phone can make is nothing at all. Speaking of phones,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: let's go to line two. Let's see here. We've got
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Kathy in Victorville. Welcome to the show.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: Hello.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Hi, Kathy. What's up?
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Hi.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: I missed part of your show today. They were talking
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: about scams.
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: And I was thinking, I don't know if anybody else
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: called in on this, but I got a phone call
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: this week or the end of last week, and I
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: don't normally answer the numbers when they come up, and
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: I don't know who it is. I let them leave
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: a message, but I accidentally picked this one up, and
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: they asked for me by name. First and last name.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: And I asked them who was calling. They said they
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: didn't identify other than that they said they were a
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Medicare provider. And they were calling because they wanted to
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: find out if I had received my new Medicare card.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: And is that true? I just told them I wasn't
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: aware that I needed a new Medicare card. And then
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: they hung up on me. So I actually felt like
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: they were trying to verify or get my Medicare number.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Probably.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: And so I don't know if that's another scam going around.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: I have not heard of that one, but it does
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: not surprise me. And so I think what's happening is, okay,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: so I'm looking up, yeah.
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, so it's probably, at the end of the day,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: they probably want you to either do something where you're
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: handing over your personal information, they're charging you some sort
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: of fee, or they are asking you to activate a card.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I guess they did reissue some Medicaid cards or Medicare
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: cards for people, so that could be maybe related to this.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: The other thing is, anytime there's a scam, there's always
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: some aspect of truth, and that's what they're sort of
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: twisting to get your attention. So they may have sent
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: out new cards in the past couple of years and
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: now they're saying like, oh, you have to do this.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: But I think you did the right thing. The fact
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: that it came from a random number, the fact that
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: they hung up on you tells me that they were
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: probably up to no good. So you did the right thing, Kathy.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: And yeah, stay safe out there. It's really bad. Rich
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: on tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. I got
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: a bunch of questions from folks about an antenna that
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: I had mentioned. I said, you know what? Hold off.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Let's get an expert. And it just so happens that
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Danny in Charlotte, North Carolina, said on the TV antenna discussion,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's important to clarify you can't necessarily just
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: buy any antenna and expect it to get all the
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: channels you want. You need to choose the right antenna
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: for your location. There's a YouTube channel called Antenna Man
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: that does a great job explaining the different types of antennas.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: He might be a great guest for your show. And
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: sure enough, I reached out to Tyler, the antenna man,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: and he's joining us right now. Tyler, thanks for joining
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: me today. Thanks for having me. Okay, so I can
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: see your video, Radio Camp, but I can. And you
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: seem like a young guy. How the heck did you
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: get into antennas?
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: Oh, it's a pretty crazy story. When I was five
• 17:39
  Speaker 5: years old, my parents had a a TV from the
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: 80s just sitting on the floor of their bedroom. I
• 17:45
  Speaker 5: plugged in, turned it on, played with the knobs, and
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: it was picking up a local TV station with nothing
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: plugged into it. And I asked my mom at the time,
• 17:52
  Speaker 5: I was like, how is this getting a TV station?
• 17:55
  Speaker 5: There's no cable plugged into it. And she said the
• 17:57
  Speaker 5: invisible airwaves. That just really fascinated me. Growing up, instead
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: of having a Game Boy and an N64, I had
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: a Game Boy-sized TV, and I'd take it with me
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: everywhere to just try to get you know, channels over
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: the air and what I could get, even if it
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: was fuzzy, just fascinating me how like invisible airwaves work.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. When I was a kid, they had
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: a Sony. I wanted this thing so badly. It was
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: like a Sony, like TV, handheld TV with an antenna.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: And yes, Watchmen. What was it?
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: Sony Watchmen.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Watchmen. That's what it was.
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: And I wanted this thing so bad. I think it
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: was like $ 300. And of course, that was a ton
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: back then for me. But it was such a cool... Anyway,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: so obviously, I'm in broadcasting, TV and radio, and I'm
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: also fascinated by this stuff. So you've made a living
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: out of it, teaching people on YouTube. So what is,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I guess, number one, why would someone want an antenna
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: in 2026? You know, I hear this occasionally.
• 18:56
  Speaker 5: People kind of downplay antennas, but they're insanely underrated because
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: it's a one-time expense that gets you 50 to 100
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: free high-definition channels. Major networks, including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox,
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: even the CW and KTLA, you can get for free
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: with an antenna.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: And it kills me.
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: I have a lot of friends in their low to mid-20s,
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: and they sign up for like four or five streaming
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: services to stream all the NFL games and market. But
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: all the NFL games broadcast for free on the local affiliates.
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: So if they just had an antenna, they could get
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: those channels for free. And mainly, getting back to my point,
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: an antenna is a one-time investment. It can be as
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: little as $ 25 or as much as $ 100- something. But once
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: you spend that amount, you get free channels for life,
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: and you don't have to worry about buffering, reduced picture quality.
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: channel blackouts, which are happening a lot more often. People
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: sign up to these streaming services thinking that they're safe,
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: but then you have a retransmission dispute and then put
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: it in plain English, you lose the channel for several
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: days or up to a week.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, while these companies that have a lot of money
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: duke it out to get more of your money somehow.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: What should we look for when we buy an antenna?
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: So a lot of people, when they first go to
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: buy an antenna, the first thing they do is they
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: go on Amazon and they type in TV antenna or
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: HD antenna and buy one of the first few that
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: they see. That's actually the wrong way to do it
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: because Amazon is flood with a whole bunch of very
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: bad antennas, mainly from overseas, and they don't work well.
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: I've tested them out and most of them just get
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: one of five channels that I can usually pick up.
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: with most basic antennas that are made, you know, or
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: at least marketed in the US. So when someone's buying
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: an antenna, it's very important to buy an antenna that
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: not only looks like an antenna, but is of decent size.
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: It doesn't have to be massive, but it should look
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: like an antenna. It shouldn't look like a child's toy.
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: Another good tip I have is to stick with a
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: familiar brand name, that be RCA, Antennas Direct Clearstream, Channelmaster, Winegard,
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: and there's a newer company called Televis. These are reputable
• 21:12
  Speaker 5: US-based antenna companies that make quality products. Their antennas might
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: cost a little bit more than that generic antenna you
• 21:19
  Speaker 5: see on Amazon. But let me tell you, it's way
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: worth it compared to all the headaches you'll have trying
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: to lock in channels from a cheap antenna on Amazon.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Indoor versus outdoor. How do you know you need one
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: or the other?
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: That's a good question. So I say in general, if
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: you're within 30 miles of the broadcast towers, you can
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: typically get away with an indoor antenna. But indoor antennas
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: are a little tricky because they have to be in
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: the exact right spot, not only in terms of the
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: side of your house facing the broadcast towers, but sometimes
• 21:52
  Speaker 5: moving an antenna a foot or two can have a
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: huge impact on reception. So if someone's starting out with
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: an antenna, it's fine to start with an indoor antenna.
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: But for a lot of people, depending on the building
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: material of the home, especially if they're, you know, 20
• 22:05
  Speaker 5: or 30 miles further than the broadcast towers, they may
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: need an outdoor antenna. And in lieu of setting up
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: an outdoor antenna, another option is setting up an antenna
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: in the attic if people don't want to, you know,
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: climb their roof or run a wire inside their house.
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: Another good option is, as I said, just set it
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: up in the attic, run a wire down the TV
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: or connect it to a wireless tuner. That's a little
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: bit easier for some people.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: So any mistakes that you see over and over that
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: people make when it comes to antennas? I mean, other
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: than buying like the first thing they see on Amazon.
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: Well, that's definitely the number one issue I see is
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: people buy the wrong antenna either. It's a cheap, generic
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: antenna from Amazon. And, granted, most things you buy on Amazon,
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: you buy a phone charger, you buy a laptop or
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: something on Amazon, it's probably going to work fine. That's
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: not the case with TV antennas. Most of them on
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: there are junk and you really have to go through
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: the weeds. But I would say that... Can I repeat
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: the question again? I lost my.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Train of thought.
• 23:02
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just any mistake that someone makes besides
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: the Amazon stuff.
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah. So another mistake that people make is that
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: they buy an amplifier when they don't need one. People
• 23:13
  Speaker 5: think amplifiers are better and they're boosting the signal. What
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: they can also do is add a whole bunch of noise.
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: So you may have a fair to weak signal, but
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: when you start adding noise to it, it makes reception worse.
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: Another mistake that I commonly see is that people have
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: the antenna in the wrong spot. So they just kind
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: of put up an antenna, point it and hope for
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: the best. That does work in a lot of cases,
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: but in other cases, if you're in what I consider
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: a fair to weak signal area, typically 35, 40, 50
• 23:42
  Speaker 5: miles in broadcast towers, you kind of have to spend
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: a little bit of time trying the antenna in different locations,
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: connected to a small TV as a guide, or even
• 23:51
  Speaker 5: a signal meter, just kind of lock in the channels.
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: But I'd say the number one mistake people make is
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: they buy the wrong antenna, They set it up in
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: the wrong spot, and then they do one of a
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: dozen things to mess up their reception, whether that be
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: adding an amplifier or connecting it to an unpowered splitter.
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: That's what some people do is they just connect the answer.
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: They see a splitter, and they go, ooh, let me
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: just connect it to the splitter. It will go to
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: all the TVs in the house. Well, those unpowered splitters
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: have signal loss, and that will kill your signal. You
• 24:18
  Speaker 5: need an amplifier before that.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 24:20
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Um, and then I just want to ask about the
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: idea of like a website. Like, is there any, like,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: I know you have your own website, but are there
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: any websites that you lead people to, to like help
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: you figure out how many channels you can get or
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: where you should aim these things or what type of
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: antenna to get?
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: So the most accurate website is called rabbit ears.info. It's
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: not as user-friendly as some of the other sites I'm
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: about to mention, but it is hands down the most accurate.
• 24:46
  Speaker 5: You type in your address and it runs a reception report,
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: shows you how strong and weak the channels are. what
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: channels you'll pick up, and typically what antenna you need.
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: It'll say if it's strong, you can get away with
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: an indoor antenna. If it's fair, you'll need a small outdoor,
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: and if it's weak, you'll need a large outdoor. Two
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: other websites that work pretty well is the FCCDTV Reception Maps.
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: I don't know the exact website, but if you Google it,
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: it'll come up. It works the same way. You type
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: in your address, and it'll show you the stations listed
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: in your area. It's been on and off recently. Sometimes
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: it works, sometimes it doesn't. But another very easy to
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: use website is called antennaweb.org. That's antennaweb.org. Same thing, you
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: type in your address, it shows you available stations. The
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: only reason I typically don't recommend it on its own
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: is it's very conservative with the results. So there'll be
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: times where it'll say either the signals are very weak
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: or you won't get any channels in your location when
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: in reality you can I typically use that and rabbit
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: ears.info kind of compare the two and go in the middle.
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: All right. We got a, just a little bit of
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: time here. I want to get some of your absolute recommendations.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: So maybe can you give me two recommendations like under
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: 50 bucks, under a hundred dollars for what you like?
• 26:02
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 26:02
  Speaker 5: Under $ 50, um, two decent indoor antennas is a set
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: of Phillips rabbit ears and the channel master flat Tena.
• 26:09
  Speaker 5: There's also this outdoor antenna called the Mornix all outdoor antenna.
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: It's relatively small, about like 35 bucks works well. Under $ 100,
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: a little bit better antennas, typically outdoor antennas. See, antennas
• 26:20
  Speaker 5: direct element. Any of the ClearStream models that are sold
• 26:24
  Speaker 5: all over Best Buy. So you go to Best Buy,
• 26:25
  Speaker 5: you'll see a ClearStream 2V, MaxV. Those work well. And
• 26:29
  Speaker 5: then a 5-star Yagi. So if you go on Amazon
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: and just type in 5-star Yagi, it's a little bit
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: larger of an antenna, but pretty inexpensive, about $ 70, $ 80.
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: That works pretty well too.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: You said the Marinoxol. How do you spell that?
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: Mornixol, spelled M-O-R-N-I-X-O-L. It's a weird name, but it's a
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: decent antenna.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: And then the Yagi, how do you spell that? Y-A-G-I. Okay, Yagi. Okay.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Antenna Man, tell people how to find you on YouTube
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: or online in general.
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: Well, YouTube, just type in Antenna Man, and then my
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: website is antennamanpa.com. I live in Pennsylvania, so I put
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: that at the.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: End of it.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: But your signal goes everywhere. Tyler, thanks so much for
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: joining me today. Really appreciate it. Excellent information. I learned
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: so much. And whenever I learn, I'm sure there's someone
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: else that learned as well. So I really appreciate you
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: coming on the show today.
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: Thanks again for having me.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: All right. Can't wait to set up an antenna now again. Yeah.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Back after this. Let's go to the phone lines. Let's see.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Let's go to Rick on line two. Rick in Seal Beach,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: Yes, I have a cell phone service with a secondary
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: carrier that carries a rental line from another major carrier.
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: I want to get a second line with one of
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: these type carriers that offers international service where I can
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: call from a foreign country to the U.S. or I
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: can call, somebody in the U.S. can call me, or
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: I can call in that country. Most of these secondary
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: carriers don't offer that. Is there any way to do this?
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: What's the best way to do this?
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Are you trying to go to another country and make
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: a call back to the U.S., or are you trying
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: to call another country from.
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: The U.S.? No, I occasionally go on cruises to other countries.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: If I'm in another country and I have an emergency
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: or I want to call the U.S. on my cell phone,
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: or someone wants to call me while I'm in the
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: other country, How is that done? That's done.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: There's a couple ways to do it. So number one,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, since you mentioned you have an MVNO, so
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: you're right. A lot of the MVNOs, that's one of
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: the downsides is that you may not have all the
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: features that you would get on a fully paid, you know,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: like a $ 100 plan from Verizon or T-Mobile or AT & T.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: A lot of those, of course, include international roaming or
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: they have international features. Um, but some of the, I
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: think it's coming up in the world because like mint
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: mobile for a long time did not have international features.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: Now they do. So they recently added like international roaming. Um,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: I think you have to pay for some of it.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's included in some of their plans, but they
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: did add it. So I'm trying to find it on
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: their website, international roaming. Um, yeah, so they've got, uh,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: stay connected with talking texts in 180 countries. So, um, Yeah,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: you can add it. Okay. So one, three, 10 day pass.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: So number one, I would call your MVNO and ask them, hey,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: do you have an international roaming pass? And so for
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Mint Mobile specifically, a day is five bucks, gives you
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: a gig. of high-speed data, 60 minutes of talk, 60
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: minutes of text messages, $ 10, you can get unlimited data,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: 200 minutes of talk, 200 minutes of text. So that's
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: one way to do it. Call your MVNO or at
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: least go on their website. And it may take you
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: a little bit to find it, but go scroll down
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: to the bottom and see if it says anything about
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: international roaming. That's number one. The other way to do
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: it is to get what's called an eSIM. And so
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: you can basically add an additional phone line to your phone.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Most of the modern smartphones support this. Keep in mind,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: your phone typically has to be unlocked for this to work.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: So if you are paying your phone off or something
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: like that, it may not be unlocked. Like if you
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: bought it through your carrier and you're paying it off
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: over 24, 36 months, they all have different rules on
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: when they unlock that phone. So you would have to
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: first check to see if your phone is unlocked. You
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: can call your carrier and ask them. And on the
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: iPhone and Android, sometimes you can look in the settings.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: It'll tell you. But easier maybe just to call your
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: carrier and say, hey, is my phone locked? And if
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: it's not locked and it's a phone that supports an eSIM,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: you can add basically a second line. And so some
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: of the companies that I like is called Airolo, A-I-R-A-L-O.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: There's a company called Holafly. I guess it's Olafly, H-O-L-A-F-L-Y.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: They all have weird names. The other one is Saley, S-A-I-L-Y.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: There's also one that I tested recently, and it's called Simby, S-I-M-B-Y-E, Simby.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: And what's interesting about them is that they actually give
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: you a real phone number and call. So The trick
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: about these eSIMs, they're just starting to get phone calls.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: A lot of them used to be just data only.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: And you'll see with a lot of the main countries,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: they're finally starting to get where when you install this thing,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: you can actually make phone calls too. So that's a
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: very important distinction to know. So a lot of them
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: used to be, you would just get data. And so
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: most people were like, okay, fine. I'm in another country.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: All I need is to go on Google Maps, navigate, whatever,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: call a car. I'm fine with just data. But then
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: when you went to make a phone call, you're like,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: wait a second, how do I make a phone call?
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: And if you didn't have wifi calling, or if your
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: carrier doesn't enable that, it would be kind of tricky.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: But a lot of them now, or more of them
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: are getting actual real numbers and phone calls. So one
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: of them that does that is called Simby, S-I-M-B-Y-E.com. And
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: I tested this. And basically I installed this on my phone.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: It gave me a real phone number and you're able
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: to use it in other countries and it's prepaid. So
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: You would just search on here, like, I'm just going
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: to search Italy. And it sort of depends on like Italy.
• 32:17
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: If you want just a regular eSIM, it's $ 2. But
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: if you want Italy with calls and a phone number,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: it's $ 30. So yes, you're going to pay a little premium,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: but it's going to be like using your phone overseas.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about the roaming situation because
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: even with Wi-Fi calling, sometimes some of the carriers get
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: a little tricky with that. They may charge you for that.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: They may charge you certain rates because you're using your
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Wi-Fi calling internationally. So if you use one of these
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: eSIMs with a phone number, it bypasses your carrier completely
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: and you can rest assured knowing that you can travel
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: to these countries and not have to worry about getting
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: knocked with a huge bill when you get back. So
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: that is what I'd look at. I'd look at SimBuy.com first.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Really depends on the country that you're going to, whether
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: they support the calls and whether that works in the
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: country that you're going to. And also you mentioned cruising.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: So if you're on a cruise ship, typically you're locked
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: into whatever they offer you on the ship. A lot
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: of people ask that question. I've never been on a cruise,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: so I can't really tell you how that works, but
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: We've got the cruise expert, Bobo. Now, what do you
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: do with your phone on these cruises? Do you just
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: turn it off or what?
• 33:23
  Speaker 8: Put it on airplane mode so I don't have to
• 33:24
  Speaker 8: worry about nothing. Yeah, because they have Wi-Fi, but it's
• 33:26
  Speaker 8: super expensive, I've heard, right? Yeah, it's pretty pricey, so
• 33:28
  Speaker 8: I don't really use it if I'm there. I'll have
• 33:34
  Speaker 8: maybe get one device phone Wi-Fi, and then that's it.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's not cheap. It's like they know they've
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: got you. But you don't have a choice. You're a
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: captive audience. I mean, you're in the middle of nowhere
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: on the sea.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: They're controlling the connection.
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: Pretty much.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Now, the connection's gotten a lot better, though, because of
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: things like satellite internet, like Starlink and all that. Like
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: I've heard the connection on these ships has gotten a
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: lot faster and easier, but it's still very expensive.
• 33:57
  Speaker 8: The cool thing about it is I know I have
• 33:59
  Speaker 8: AT & T.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: So AT & T is like we get coverage in
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of countries. So you might want to check that.
• 34:05
  Speaker 8: At the most, you might only be without your phone
• 34:07
  Speaker 8: for a day while you're at sea because you're cruising.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: And the fees for cruising are way expensive.
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Now, also, AT & T specifically has a cruise pass.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Like if you are on AT & T, it works
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: on over like a couple hundred cruise ships and it
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: looks like it's about $ 15 to $ 20 a day. So
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: long story short, when it comes to international roaming, this
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: is probably one of the most popular questions I get.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just one of those things that like,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: it's still, even with all the barriers down when it
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: comes to making calls and things like that, like roaming
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: is still a bit of an issue. It's gotten a
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: lot better, but the phone call specifically is still even
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: more of an issue than data. Data is pretty easy.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: You can latch on to free Wi-Fi. You can get
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: an eSIM that's super cheap and get your data. But
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: when it comes to actually making and receiving phone calls
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: in different countries, you're going to have to talk to
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: your carrier, get a roaming pass. It's either included on
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: your account or you can purchase a day pass on
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: your account. A lot of the big carriers offer them.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: That's the easiest thing to do if you just want
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: to use the same phone number and use your phone
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: the way you have it. That's pretty simple. Good question, Rick.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Thanks for the call today from Seal Beach. Hopefully you're
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: enjoying some sun there. Welcome back to Rich on Tech.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you, talking technology. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: This is the show where we talk about the tech
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: place where I answer your questions, take your calls, your emails,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: however you want to get in your information, or I
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: guess your concerns. You need some tech advice, whatever it is,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: we will handle it. Believe me, we've taken all types
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: of calls over the years. It's all good. Website for
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: the show, richontech.tv. If you want to go there, you
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: can get the show notes, subscribe to the podcast, watch
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: my stories from TV. But this is your show. This
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: is really the stuff that I think you should know about.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: And that's what I try to do. So let's go
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: to Julie.
• 36:20
  Speaker 6: Julie.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: In Riverside, kickoff hour number two. Hi, here you are. Yes,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: you're on. What's up?
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 36:33
  Speaker 9: I listen to AM radio for my news and everything.
• 36:39
  Speaker 9: If the power goes out, the phone goes out, what
• 36:45
  Speaker 9: I want is you suggest what I can buy That
• 36:51
  Speaker 9: would be like a solar power radio or a wind-up
• 36:56
  Speaker 9: radio or something. So when the power goes out, I
• 37:02
  Speaker 9: still have access to you.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: You just want to be able to listen to the
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: radio when the power goes out.
• 37:13
  Speaker 9: Yes!
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Well, that's an easy question. I mean, you got to
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: get a hand crank radio. Have you gotten one? Do
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: you shop on Amazon at all or you want to
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: go into a store?
• 37:23
  Speaker 9: Okay. This is my suggestion. This is why I'm asking you.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 37:29
  Speaker 9: Because I, I've heard of Amazon. I'm sorry. I'm not
• 37:35
  Speaker 9: supposed to say the name, but I've also heard of
• 37:39
  Speaker 9: C crane.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: I was going to say C crane. Yeah.
• 37:44
  Speaker 9: I don't know. I want your input on what I
• 37:48
  Speaker 9: can buy because I want to do it this month.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Well, I hear you've got the, uh, the folks in
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the background, uh, rooting for C crane. Well, I would say, look,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: if you want, I mean, C crane is known. They've
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: been around forever, very high quality radios. Um, and they
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: do have emergency radio. So they do have a radio that, um,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: has a hand crank. Let's see if I can find
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: it on their website. I'm looking for that.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: I see emergency. Interesting. I saw it when I was.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: I'm looking for... I saw it when I was on Google,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: but now I don't see it when I go to
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: their website, which is weird. But anyway, the long story
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: short is that all you need is a... There's lots
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: of solar radios or hand crank emergency radios. REI sells them.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: I'm even looking at target.com. They sell them. Amazon sells them.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: I've got one at home I've had forever. It's a
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: little American Red Cross one. There's so many of these things.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: If you want to shop locally, you can go to
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: any emergency supply store, or you can just buy it online.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: They do have a lot of these things. That's one
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: way of doing it. Here's the C-Crane C-Radio solar and
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Bluetooth with emergency crank. That sells at REI.com. They've got
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: one at REI, or you can order it on C-Crane
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: for about $ 100. So that is going to give you
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: everything you need. It's got solar on the top. It's
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: got a little hand crank if you need it. Oh, yeah,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: there it is. Wow, that's great. So that's going to
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: be a great little one. That's obviously on the more
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: expensive side of things, but it also has Bluetooth. It's
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: got the weather bands. It's got the weather alert. So
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: that's probably a good one. I'll link that one up
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: on the website. That's probably a really nice one. If
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: you go on Amazon, you can find really cheap hand
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: crank radios. The other thing you can do, and I
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: think this is kind of a bigger issue with our
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: electronics that we have, Thanks for the call, by the way, Julie.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I do appreciate it. I think the bigger issue we
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: have is all of our electronics when the power goes out.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: So that is what we need to be prepared for
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: if there was an outage. And knock on wood, it's
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: been a while where I live. When I first moved
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: to where I live, there were a bunch of outages,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: like long outages. And we got a little bit spooked
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: because when you have an outage that runs a So
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: we haven't had one, thankfully, in a while, but that
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's not going to happen again in the future.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: So the thing that I would recommend that you look
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: into if you want more of a total home solution, well,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: maybe not your whole house, but all your gadgets, is
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: something called a portable power station. And these are made
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: by a bunch of different brands. Two that I've tested
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: personally are from Jackery and then EcoFlow. And what's neat
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: about these is that they're just basically like, if you
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: imagine that portable backup battery that you have for your
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: cell phone. This is just a giant version of that
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: with a lot more ways to plug stuff in. So
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: it will have a standard AC outlet on it. It
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: might even have a, I think it's what is like
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: a two, maybe not a 220 volt, but it'll have
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: just various outlets on it. It will have USB ports
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: on it, big and small, you know, USB-A, USB-C, just
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: lots of ways to get power to your devices. And
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: the power that it holds is a lot more than
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: that little tiny power adapter or portable battery pack for
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: your phone. And these things run anywhere from, let's see,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at the pricing here. So if you wanted
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: like just a small one, let's see here, trending, let's see. Okay, seven,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: they go all the way up to $ 8, 000. That's like
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: a whole home power. That's like next level. But like
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: a standard smaller one, let's see, money saving options. Yeah,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can get these things for maybe three, four, yeah, three,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: four or $ 500. So that's what I'd recommend. And then
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: the neat thing is about a lot of these is
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: that you can put a solar panel on it as well.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: So that means that if the power stayed out for
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: a long time, you'd be able to recharge this with solar.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Now we know solar power is pretty slow to recharge
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: these things, but at the end of the day, it's
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: better than nothing. And these hold a lot of power.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: So what you do is you charge them up by
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: plugging them into, you know, whatever, your outlet at home,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: and you charge this thing up. It's like a giant battery.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: And then that stays charged up. And by the way,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: the charge lasts a long time. The last time I
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: asked an expert about this, they said basically expect a
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: few percentage drop every six months. So let's say you
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: charge it to 100% on January 1st. You might check
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: it on July 1st, and it might be down to...
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: maybe anywhere from 90 to 95%, depending on the quality
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: of the battery that is inside this thing. So it's
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: not like you need to sit there and recharge it
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: every day or keep it plugged in. If you wanted to,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: you could, I guess, but it's probably not recommended to
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: do that because that probably wears the battery down. Anyway,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: so the two brands that I mentioned again, Jackery and EcoFlow,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: they are called portable power stations. And people use these
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: for camping, they use them for RVs, anything. You can
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: go as far as having your whole home backed up.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people will do... If you've heard
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: of the Tesla power walls, they were the first to
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: do it. You would capture that solar energy from the
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: solar panels on your house, and then you put it
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: into that battery that is in your garage. And then
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: when you have a power outage or anything, you could
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: run your house, your electricity and things off of that.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: So you're not using your standard electricity from the utility company.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: You're using it from the solar first, and then... maybe
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: if you need a little bit more, you can go
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: out to the utility. But these also work in another
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: way where if your house, the power goes out, you
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: can just use them. The other thing that people are
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: doing now is the cars. So a lot of these
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: EVs that people have, you can plug your home into
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: the EV and it will send the power from the
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: EV to your home. And so a lot of the EVs,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: you'll see commercials like this. I think Ford, when they
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: were doing their Ford Lightning, they kind of made a
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: lot of commercials that showed your house is plugged into
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: the car. And Tesla was kind of like the major
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: outlier here where they didn't allow that to happen. But
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: I just read that they now have the new Tesla YL.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: It's like an extended edition. And I believe you can
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: plug your house into this one. Let's see, two-way electricity.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: I think that's what it is. I think that's what
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: they were saying. Um, with this setup, oh yeah, it gets,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: it's fine. The Tesla model Y finally gets V2L. Oh,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: so maybe it was the Tesla Y. Anyway, I got
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: to look at, I'm just spitballing here, but I think
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: that they've changed that now. But anyway, if you have
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: an electric car, yes, you can plug your home theoretically
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: into that car and run your, some of your appliances
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: and things off the battery from that car. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. If
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: you have a question, give me a call. If you
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: have a comment, you can email richontech.tv. Hit contact right
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: at the top. You are listening to Rich on Tech.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here, hanging
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology at 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Well, if you
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: have YouTube... Oh, by the way, I looked up the
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: caller we had. Julie asked about a portable radio that's
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: solar powered and maybe hand crank. And I found one
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: on Amazon for 29 bucks. It's the Foss Power Emergency
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Weather Radio. It's got a 7,400 milliamp hour portable power
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: bank built in, which is great. That means it'll charge
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: your phone maybe twice. AM, FM, USB, solar, hand crank, charging,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: battery operated, SOS alarm, flashlight, indoor, outdoor emergency. Orange is
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: the color. Oh, they have a whole bunch of, oh,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: they've got orange, black, green. You can get it in
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: any color you want. 29 bucks. And it's got 37,000 reviews.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: So clearly people are buying this thing. So I put
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: the link on the website, richontech.tv. This is episode 185.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: If you want the link, Rich on tech.tv. I also
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: linked up the, uh, the sea crane radio that, uh,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Julie and the, the peanut gallery. Is there a full
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: moon today? I don't know. Based on some of the
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: callers we've gotten today, I feel like there might be
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: a full moon, but I think last night it was a,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: it was the moon that was like going away. It
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: was beautiful, but it was, I don't think it was full.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: All right. Uh, if you have Peacock, uh, or sorry,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: if you have YouTube premium, you are going to get
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Peacock premium, uh, uh, in early 2027. So you're going
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: to get the ad supported Peacock premium plan, not the
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: ad free premium plus tier. Peacock premium usually costs around
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: $ 11 a month on its own. YouTube premium is currently
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: $ 16 a month. So this is a significant deal. Uh,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: let's see what else YouTube says. Subscribers will have the
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: option to upgrade their Peacock membership. So if you already
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: pay for, um, I guess if you want the ad-free version,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: you'll be able to upgrade. And let's see what else here.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: I guess my advice is don't cancel Peacock just yet
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: because this is not coming. It's not coming like immediately,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: but why are they teasing this in so advance? Like
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: we got six months before this is even going to happen.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing. These bundles are getting so out
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: of control. Every single company now is teaming up with
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: another company to offer a bundle for streaming when the
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: whole point of streaming is that we got to pick
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: our own services. Like this is going back to cable
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: and the whole problem with cable is fine. It's great,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: but it's like, let me pick the channels that I want.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: I don't need 150 channels. I just need these seven
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: or 10 channels. And that's what we got to do
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: with streaming. But now to get the best bang for
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: your buck, all the streaming services are teaming up. And
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: so you feel dumb if you are buying all these
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: services individually because you're paying more than bundling. But sometimes
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: the bundle has stuff you don't need, which is back
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: to cable. You get this circle that we're in? So
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I personally am staying strong. I am still individually buying
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: most of my services, except I will tell you Peacock,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I get as an add-on because I have a membership
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: to Apple One. And so they only charge me, I
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: think it's like $ 11 for Peacock a month for the,
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: for the ad free version, because I already have, I mean,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: it's just, it's so confusing. Like, please just, just give
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: us like someone needs to come out with a service
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: that lets you pick the streaming services individually. But if
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: you pick like three or five, you get to save
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: a couple bucks every month, come up with that. So
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: I can just go on there. And I know, I
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: know I'm already waiting for the emails. I know Verizon
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: does that. They let you pick a bunch and you
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: get to save money. I know that, um, Amazon has
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: a bunch where you can pick and you save money.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Roku does that, but they don't do it the way
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: I'm talking where I want to pick what I want.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: And just if I, like, as soon as I hit
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: three services, like, oh, cool. Now you save $ 2 a month. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: Let's go to Karen in La Palma. Karen, you're on
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: with Rich.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: Hi, Rich.
• 49:20
  Speaker 10: A avid listener to you on the radio and KTLA.
• 49:23
  Speaker 10: A while ago, you brought up a site or maybe
• 49:27
  Speaker 10: an app that would screen out your information on different
• 49:32
  Speaker 10: websites like Cluster USA or Fast People or Find People.
• 49:36
  Speaker 10: It was free. I downloaded it, and I have been
• 49:39
  Speaker 10: able to avert probably 200 different sites with my name
• 49:42
  Speaker 10: on it, but I don't remember what it was called,
• 49:45
  Speaker 10: and I want to share it with my family.
• 49:47
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: I believe you are talking about the– you're in California, right? Yeah,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: La Palma.
• 49:53
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: So are you talking about the delete, request, and opt-out,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: the drop?
• 49:57
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 49:58
  Speaker 10: It sounds like it. You had it on your site
• 50:02
  Speaker 10: and I followed all the instructions to do it. So honestly,
• 50:05
  Speaker 10: I don't remember because I just followed what you said.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, well, thank you.
• 50:08
  Speaker 10: You talked about it before and you had like.
• 50:10
  Speaker 7: What to do.
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: Well, I like when people follow me blindly. That's the
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: best because you're just like, Rich said it. I will
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: just do it without even writing it down. But it worked.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: But you trust me.
• 50:20
  Speaker 10: My number, my husband's number, I've been able to get
• 50:24
  Speaker 10: rid of a Fast People USA, Find Me, this and that,
• 50:28
  Speaker 10: Cluster USA. And I get emails every once in a
• 50:31
  Speaker 10: while saying, we found you on the internet. And then
• 50:34
  Speaker 10: it shows me the number and I'm able to disapprove
• 50:36
  Speaker 10: it being on there.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. I think, okay. So I think what you're
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: talking about might be, okay, so I'll tell you the
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: couple of services I've mentioned over the past year or two. And,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: you know, one of these is probably it. But anyway,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: so the first I'm mentioning, and you should do it
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: if you live in California, actually, today is the first
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: day this weekend that they are actually doing these requests.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: So it's called Delete, request an opt-out platform. It's called
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: California Drop. And it's at privacy.ca.gov. And that is a
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: website where it's free. And they will take your information
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: down from data brokers. And that's starting right now. So
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: if you sign up, they'll get your information off from
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: hundreds of brokers. The other one that I've mentioned over
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: the years is this. Google has something which is called
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Results About You. And this might be what you're talking about.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Because what happens is Google... If you put in your information,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Google will find that information online anytime your name pops up,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: your phone number, and they will take down not the
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: original information, but they'll take down their link to it.
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: I think that's it.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: That's probably it. And that's a good one because it
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: just makes it one step tougher for people to find you.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: If they want to find you, they will. But most
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: people just go on Google, search your name, your address, whatever,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: phone number. that will mean it won't come up. So
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: that is called Google results about you.
• 51:56
  Speaker 10: So we would go to Google first and then do what?
• 52:00
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Just type in results about you and Google, you should
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: see it right at the top. It'll say results about you.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: You can, you can tap into there and fill out
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: your information and then Google will start sending you messages
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: whenever it finds your info online saying, Hey, do you
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: want us to take this down only? But keep in mind,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: That's only from Google. They're not going to take it
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: down from the other websites. That's what you need something
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: like Drop for, and that's a California thing only. So
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: if you live outside California, you've probably heard me talk
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: about our sponsor, Incogni. They do that for all the
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: data brokers nationwide. They will do that for anyone that
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: lives anywhere. That is a paid service.
• 52:38
  Speaker 10: How do you spell Incogni?
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: I-N-C-O-G-N-I, Incogni. And so that is a paid service, again...
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: You can use a combination of these. You could also
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: do this yourself if you go to these individual websites
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: and request the takedown, but the automation is a little
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: bit easier. 888-RICH-101, back after this. Welcome back to Rich
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you, talking technology.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: One of the big topics on the show, and by
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: the way, we'll get back to the calls in just
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: a moment, 888-RICH-101 if you want to get in the queue. 888-RICH-101.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: One of the big topics we talk about here on
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: the show recurring is scams. And they are just everywhere.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: It's not new. They've been going on forever. They just
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: continue to get more sophisticated and technology is enabling more
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: of them. And it's everywhere. It's on your phone. It's
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: on your text. It's on your email. It's on your computer.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: So here to talk about all of this is the
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: founder of Scamicide.com. This is Steve Wiseman. Welcome to the show.
• 53:44
  Speaker 6: Good to be with you.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: So tell me, give me a little background for folks
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: that may not know. What do you do with Scamicide?
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: You cover this stuff on a daily, but you got
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: the scam of the day. Tell me about that.
• 53:56
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, this is something I've been involved with
• 53:59
  Speaker 6: scams for about 15 years. And actually, I'm a professor
• 54:04
  Speaker 6: at Bentley University in Massachusetts. But before I was a
• 54:08
  Speaker 6: professor there, I taught college courses in the state prison
• 54:12
  Speaker 6: system and met some of the scammers who would come
• 54:16
  Speaker 6: to say, you know, back when they did it, it
• 54:19
  Speaker 6: took skill. Now any kid with a 14 year old
• 54:22
  Speaker 6: with a computer can do it. So I started Scamicide
• 54:25
  Speaker 6: because I saw how vulnerable everybody is to scams. It's
• 54:29
  Speaker 6: not just seniors. It's it's not just, you know, people
• 54:33
  Speaker 6: who are maybe maybe not that sophisticated. It really is everyone.
• 54:37
  Speaker 6: So when I started about 15 years ago, I figured
• 54:40
  Speaker 6: I'd do a scam of the day, something new to
• 54:43
  Speaker 6: warn people about. And I wondered if I would have
• 54:46
  Speaker 6: enough of them. And so 5,500, 6,000 scams later, we
• 54:52
  Speaker 6: don't run out of any.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's wild. Okay, so let's talk about the hot
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: topic right now, AI. Is AI actually making, like, is
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: it arming these scammers with new tools that just make
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: everything easier?
• 55:05
  Speaker 6: Yeah, unfortunately, you know, one of my mottos is things
• 55:08
  Speaker 6: aren't as bad as you think. They're far worse. And
• 55:12
  Speaker 6: AI has enabled less sophisticated scammers to be able to
• 55:18
  Speaker 6: perpetrate scams that are far more sophisticated than what they
• 55:22
  Speaker 6: would be able to do in the past, including you
• 55:25
  Speaker 6: could go to the macro and the micro. So on
• 55:27
  Speaker 6: the macro, looking at the danger of the country, You know,
• 55:31
  Speaker 6: we saw recently where hackers from Iran have managed to
• 55:36
  Speaker 6: hack into the municipal water systems in about half a
• 55:41
  Speaker 6: dozen states around the country. Well, the FBI just in
• 55:44
  Speaker 6: the past week put out a memorandum and a warning
• 55:49
  Speaker 6: in which they indicated that using AI, the Iranian scammers
• 55:55
  Speaker 6: were able to gather information as to which municipalities were vulnerable,
• 56:01
  Speaker 6: where they were vulnerable, create the script to go in
• 56:04
  Speaker 6: there and perpetrate these scams. And so we're seeing that there.
• 56:08
  Speaker 6: We're also seeing it with, you know, a lot of
• 56:10
  Speaker 6: scams come from Malaysia, Southeast Asia, North Korea, China, and Nigeria,
• 56:18
  Speaker 6: and places where perhaps, you know, we would see the
• 56:21
  Speaker 6: email or the text message and the grammar was horrendous.
• 56:24
  Speaker 6: I mean, it was sometimes amusing. Now with AI, they're
• 56:29
  Speaker 6: able to have the scams that you get in your
• 56:31
  Speaker 6: text message, in your email. They look perfect. Or they're
• 56:36
  Speaker 6: using a voice clone. You know, you're familiar with the
• 56:41
  Speaker 6: grandparent or family emergency scam. Now that voice on the
• 56:46
  Speaker 6: end of the phone is the voice of your child,
• 56:50
  Speaker 6: your grandchild. And they know where that grandchild is because
• 56:54
  Speaker 6: they've been gathering that information through AI on social media.
• 56:58
  Speaker 6: So AI is making it a lot worse.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: That is wild. And it makes you think twice before
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: posting anything with any sort of information on social media because, okay, fine,
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: you put one thing. Well, you put another thing, you
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: put another, you gather all that together and it really
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: shows a true picture of like your whole life. Okay,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: so someone, I was at a wedding and someone was
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: telling me, everyone just got into talking about scams. And
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: someone was telling me that some of these people that
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: are doing scams, you mentioned some of the crime syndicates,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: but some people are actually being held beyond their will
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: to do these scams. Have you ever heard of that?
• 57:32
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it actually is happening. And there are these major, actually,
• 57:38
  Speaker 6: cities in Myanmar and Cambodia and Southeast Asia where people
• 57:44
  Speaker 6: are lured to these jobs. from out of the country
• 57:48
  Speaker 6: or even from within the country. And they think they're
• 57:52
  Speaker 6: getting some computer job, but in fact, it's human trafficking
• 57:56
  Speaker 6: and forced to do these romance scams, investment scams, and
• 58:01
  Speaker 6: others attacking the United States and the UK. And this
• 58:05
  Speaker 6: is something that there hasn't been enough international attacks on
• 58:12
  Speaker 6: to stop them. And it's like whack-a-mole. If you manage
• 58:14
  Speaker 6: to shut down one of these cities, They pop up
• 58:17
  Speaker 6: somewhere else. And then you even get certain countries gave
• 58:21
  Speaker 6: one of these major crime syndicates some award for the
• 58:25
  Speaker 6: money that they were bringing into the country. So it's
• 58:29
  Speaker 6: really horrendous.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's changing topics. Your router. How does your router
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: put you in danger of identity theft?
• 58:38
  Speaker 6: Yeah, here's one of the things. You know, we don't
• 58:41
  Speaker 6: even think about our router, but it's really, really important.
• 58:44
  Speaker 6: This is how we connect to the internet. And it's
• 58:46
  Speaker 6: not just our computer. It's our smart TV. It's any
• 58:51
  Speaker 6: devices that you may have that are connected to the Internet.
• 58:54
  Speaker 6: It can even be your smoke detector. So what happens
• 58:57
  Speaker 6: is the scammers, what they do is they find out
• 59:02
  Speaker 6: the default passwords on some of these routers because people
• 59:06
  Speaker 6: don't change their default passwords. So from the routers. they
• 59:11
  Speaker 6: then get into your computer or they manage to hack
• 59:15
  Speaker 6: into your TV and then through the router and then
• 59:18
  Speaker 6: to your computer. And bam, the next thing you know,
• 59:21
  Speaker 6: they're into your online banking. So if you have a
• 59:26
  Speaker 6: older router that doesn't automatically update, you may want to
• 59:29
  Speaker 6: get a newer router. You definitely want to make sure
• 59:34
  Speaker 6: that you're updating your router with the latest patches. And
• 59:39
  Speaker 6: there are things on there like network segmenting so that
• 59:43
  Speaker 6: you could keep people who get in from going somewhere.
• 59:46
  Speaker 6: And even most security software is what we call blacklisting.
• 59:50
  Speaker 6: It blocks known problems. But with your router, you can
• 59:54
  Speaker 6: have something called whitelisting, which won't allow anything to come
• 59:59
  Speaker 6: in unless you previously approved it. And this is something
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 6: that more people should consider doing.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you have a couple of devices in your home,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: you can say only these devices are allowed to be
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: used on my router unless I allow another one and
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: you add that number to it, usually like the MACID
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: ID or something. Let's talk about customer service numbers. People...
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming this is when people Google the number. Tell
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: me about this.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 6: Yeah, this is interesting. And there are a lot of
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 6: companies that we deal with that may not even have
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 6: customer service numbers. You know, you have to go to
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 6: them online. But you go to a Google search, and
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 6: it comes up top that the customer service number for
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 6: whatever you're looking for, it's the scammer. Now, they do
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 6: it two ways. One, you get the really sophisticated ones
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 6: who manage to manipulate the algorithms used by Google and
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 6: Bing and the other search engines. So they come up high.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 6: The others are the lazy ones. They buy an ad.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 6: And you'll see this sometimes. I went to get an
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 6: employee identification number for a client of mine. And I
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 6: went online to see where in the IRS I go.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 6: The IRS website was about four down. There were these
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 6: others that were paid. And that's what happens. The scammers
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 6: do it. So trust me, you can't trust anyone. You
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 6: absolutely have to verify when you're doing a customer service
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 6: number that you're really getting the real one. So go
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 6: to your bill. Go to a website that you know
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 6: is accurate.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: So you mentioned the scams of the day. You're up
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: to like almost 6,000. I mean, this is never ending.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: It just continues to go on and on and on.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: Do you think there's any like main advice you share
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: with folks about how to protect themselves? You got about
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: a minute.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 6: And, you know, the big thing is don't click on
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 6: a link. Don't download an attachment. Don't provide personal information
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 6: for any communication unless you've absolutely verified it. That email,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 6: they can make the email address look legitimate. They've also
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 6: gathered information to make you susceptible to it. That text message,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 6: they can spoof a phone number so it looks like
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 6: it's coming from something legitimate. Trust me, you can't trust anything.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 6: You've got to verify.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: And, okay, the website, by the way, is scamicide, S-C-A-M-I-C-I-D-E.com, scamicide.com.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: It's just what we're up against. And I always ask
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: everyone that I talk about with scams, Do these things
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: actually happen? Are people actually getting scammed? Bottom line.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 6: Yeah, everyone is getting scammed. And it's not just seniors.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 6: Seniors have a part of our brain that deals with
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 6: skepticism that makes them more vulnerable. Anybody can be scammed.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 6: Look at the people that were scammed by Bernie Madoff
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 6: and others. So we all need to be really skeptical
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 6: and always verify.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: All right, Steve Wiseman, thanks so much for talking with
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: me today. The website, scamicide.com. Go there for your scam
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: of the day. And the more you know, the better
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: you can protect yourself. That's really what it comes down
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: to because there's so many variations on these things. Knowing
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: the signs of what a scam is, is really your
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: best protection. Steve, thanks for joining me today. My pleasure.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 6: 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Back after this.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here, hanging
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: out with you. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Meta agreed to a huge teen
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: safety settlement this week, and Instagram is about to change.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: So Meta has agreed to pay up to, and there's
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: all kinds of numbers out there, but it's like $ 16, $ 17,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: $ 18 billion. Drop in the bucket for this company. And
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: that's over 10 years, which means people are going to
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: forget about this, or who knows what's going to happen
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: in that time. But there are pretty big changes to
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: how people under 18 can use Instagram and Facebook. They
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: did not admit any wrongdoing. So we actually don't have
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: a definitive, like, did Meta make these apps to be addictive?
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: We don't have that. Because once you settle, you say,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: we're going to settle, but we're not going to admit
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: any wrongdoing. And all the attorney generals were like, okay, fine,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: we'll take the money. But the big change, default two-hour
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: daily limit for teens. That's combined against Instagram and Facebook.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: Parents can turn that off and direct messages don't count
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: towards that limit. Then you get a reminder. After 15
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: minutes of continuous use, it'll say, hey, do you still
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: want to be on here? And then after 60 minutes
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: and 90 minutes, you'll get more. No late night scrolling.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: Instagram and Facebook are going to be blocked for teens
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: from midnight to 6 a.m. That's wild. So your feed, stories, explore,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: and reels will not work. Messaging will be available. Then
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: you've got school mode. So most push notifications are going
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: to be muted from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m., then
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: blocked again from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. I mean,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: do you see what's happening here? They are just sort
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: of getting rid of everything that makes this fun, but
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: also addictive. Or supposedly. Like counts are going to be
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: hidden for users under 18. Cosmetic procedure filters will be banned,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: so you can't make yourself look good.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: And.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: Teens will have the option of a non-personalized feed instead
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: of an algorithm-driven feed. I mean, talk about boring. Could
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: you make this app any more boring? What else is
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: going to happen? Meta says parents will be notified if
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: a teen sets up a secondary account to try to
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: get around all this stuff. And they're going to verify
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: teens are teenagers using a whole bunch of signals. Now,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: they've had those signals before. They just weren't really using
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: them in a big way. Now, they're going to have
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: much better detection capabilities. kids under 13 who shouldn't have
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: accounts at all. And then 13 to 17 will automatically
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: get these limitations. Now, here is the part that I
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: think is really tricky. What do you think a teenager
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: is going to do? You think they're going to sit
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: there and follow all these new rules? Absolutely not. What
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: are they going to do? They're going to either try
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: to get around them, ask their parents to turn off
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: all these requirements. Mom, dad, this is so boring. Come on,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: Johnny doesn't have this. And the parents are going to go, okay, cool.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: We'll turn them off. Or they're just going to flee.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: They've got TikTok. They've got YouTube, Shorts. They've got Snapchat.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: They've got a million and one other ways of getting
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: in touch with each other, posting pictures, posting videos, watching videos.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: You think they're going to deal with all this nonsense
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: now on Instagram and Facebook they're not even using, by
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: the way. The kids are not using Facebook. That's something
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: that the kids used to use and then the adults
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: started using it. The kids said, oh, it's not cool anymore.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: You guys use it. Sure, go ahead. And that's fine.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: So if TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube don't follow in on this,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: which is what Meta wants, none of this really means
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: anything because basically Meta is just going to become a
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: no man's land. Teens are just going to get away
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: from it. So I think that this thing, it's good
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: that we came up with this settlement and all that money,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: by the way, is going to go to the States to,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: I think it was like almost all the States agreed
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: to this, except for a bunch of them that still
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: want to do their own thing. But a lot of
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: that money is going to go to teen programs to
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: help them with teen mental health and suicide prevention and
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: just all the things that fund teen programs. So that's
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: where the money is going to go eventually. But does
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: this solve the problem of these addictive apps for both
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: teenagers and adults? Probably not. Is it going to make
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: Instagram a lot less interesting to teens?
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: Will TikTok, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram What's the other one?
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: YouTube follow through.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: We'll see. We'll see how much pressure comes down on
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: them to do the same things. But you look at
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: this app. It's like there's nothing fun about it anymore.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: And I'm not there is a problem here. Like teens
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: cannot get enough of this stuff. So can adults. They can't.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: No one can. It's a slot machine in your pocket.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: I've said that since day one. I mean, you give
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: me a slot machine. I mean, now we have adults
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: have it. Cal Shee and Polymarket and all these betting apps.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, we have taken everything that you had to
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: go drive somewhere. You know how annoying it is to
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: drive to like a casino? That's why they put them
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: in like random places. Because, you know, you didn't want
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: to be there every day. And now they're everywhere. All right.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: Let's see. Do we have time for a call here?
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: Let's see.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: Let's see here.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: Gary.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 6: Well, hello, Rich.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 7: How are you doing?
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: I'm doing well. What's going on?
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 7: Well, thank you for taking my call, first of all.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 7: I've talked to you before. I'm a wildlife photographer, and
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 7: I go out to the desert a lot and up
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 7: into the mountains. And with my T-Mobile phone, I dropped Verizon.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 7: I finally have had it with them. So now with T-Mobile,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 7: how do I get this phone to go into the
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 7: satellite mode when I run out of connection and I
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 7: need to make a call and there's no satellite service,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 7: meaning no cell phone service?
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: You said you switched to Verizon?
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: No, no, no.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 7: I switched away from Verizon and I went to T-Mobile.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, you went to T-Mobile.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: Is Starlink included on your account?
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 7: No, because I'm a prepaid customer.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: They don't give it on prepaid.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 7: Oh.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: So you've got a couple options. Number one, does your
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: phone support satellite? That's number one. What kind of phone
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: do you have?
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 7: That's what I wanted to ask you here, Richard. It's
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 7: a Samsung Galaxy A54.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think the A-series supports satellite.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 5: Oh.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: Let me see. A-series satellite. I think it's just... Let's see.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: Hold on.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: Hold on.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: Actually, hold on. It might. I could be wrong here.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: Hold on. I know they do the premium series.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 7: Let's see if it's on the S series phones.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: The S series phones, the galaxy S. Um, I'm trying
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: to see if it's a series. Okay. Select a sense. 2025.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: Samsung has supported satellite communication on select galaxy flagship and
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: galaxy a series. So you need to, okay. So what
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: you need to do is look in your phone.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 7: I'm in the studies right now.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: Under connections, it would tell you, it would say satellite
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: if it's supported there. So it should say connections, and
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: you scroll down. It says satellite networks under mobile hotspot.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 7: I'm seeing Wi-Fi calling. Wi-Fi.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: Yep. Keep scrolling down to under data usage, mobile hotspot,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: satellite networks. Do you see satellite networks?
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 7: I don't see that much.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: If you don't see that, I would, well, if you're
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: on prepaid with T-Mobile, they're not going to give it
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: to you anyway. You got to be on a full
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: plan with them. So what you can do is you
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: can add it to your plan. I think it's like
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: 10 bucks a month, but call up T-Mobile, see what
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: they say, see if you can add it. And I
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: would also just verify, I'm going to look right now
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: when we go to break, see if that A54 supports
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: the satellite, but it says the A-series does support it.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: But the way that, you know, the way that, sorry,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: Samsung does it is it's all based on your carrier.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: The carrier has to provide it. It's not like Pixel.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: It's not like Apple where it's built into the phone.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: On Samsung, the provider does the satellite. More Rich on
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: Tech right after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you, talking technology. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: We have gotten through a lot on this week's show,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: haven't we? Let's go to Carol. in Huntington Beach. Carol,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: you are on with Rich. What's up?
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: Hi, Rich. I want to ask a question. For years,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: we've had Spectrum Cable, I mean, Spectrum system, the router
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: and the modem that ran our cable, and everything was
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: fun and wonderful. And then we switched to streaming. And
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: we were having a whole... all kinds of problems because
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: the router and the modem sat on a desk in
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: our kitchen, a little enclosed desk in our kitchen. And
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: I've even put an extender in the bedroom for the
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: bedroom TV. But the bedroom TV would always buffer, and
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: I'd turn on Hulu, and it would go back to
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: the home page. You know, it wouldn't stick. And the
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: living room TV, it would freeze. Couldn't turn it on
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: or off at all.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: And.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: So the spectrum guy was out one day, and he
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: picked the modem, I think the tall one, off the
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: desk that's in the kitchen, put it around the corner
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: on cabinets, and everything started working again.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: But he said, you need to have a mesh system
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: for your house.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: And he said, I don't know a lot about it
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: because he's not a tech guy. He was just a
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: spectrum guy. So we did. We got a TP-Link Deco
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: Wi-Fi 7 mesh system, and my son hooked it up.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: And it seems that our Internet's running a little bit slower,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: and now we're having on the TV in the living room.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: That was freezing.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: It's not freezing, but it is– it's not connecting right away.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: And it comes up and says, you're not connected. Try again.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: You're not connected. Try again. And after three tries, it disconnects.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: So I was just wondering if the mesh system is
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: for us or do I have to have this modem
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: sitting on the shelf because it's not a very pretty
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: thing because it was working that way before. I was
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: just wondering what your... um ideas were on these mesh
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: systems because i'm i am having this one little problem
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: the internet is a little bit slower does your internet
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: get slower when you put in a mesh system no.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: It should be faster it should be more reliable um
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: it sounds to me like well number one how large
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: is this home.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: We're talking oh it's about um 1700 square feet okay
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: 1700 square feet okay so yeah um.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: The standard router from Spectrum should be able to cover
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: that if it's in the right place. And it sounds
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: like you had a little bit of a window where
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: it was doing okay, but it didn't. What was the
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: problem with the router? You just don't like that it's
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: out in the middle of the house or something? It
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: was just a bad place?
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when he took it off the desk, now it's
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: out in the middle of the house for everybody to see,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: and it's pretty ugly.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: And we also would have to drill a hole. through
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: the cabinet to hook it up because all he did
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: was just move it around the corner so he had
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: the big old cable, right? So we would have to
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: drill a hole. So he was the one who suggested
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: go with the mesh system. But, you know, I did,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: and I'm running up on a 30-day window of return here,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: and I just don't know if I'm having trouble with
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: the mesh system is that the way we hook, maybe
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: the way we hook.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: Yes, I think it is. I think it is because
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: the problem is even though the mesh system talks like,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: so the way the mesh system works is it's got, it's,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: it kind of has like its own little network that
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: talks to each other. And so it says like, Hey,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: how's your signal over there? It's good, but it could
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: be better if you adjust to this channel, it'll be better.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: And they kind of work together to give you that
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: blanket system. But the problem is if your original signal
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: is not good, So did you put this thing back
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: in the closed desk?
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's what's happening. So you really can't put a
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: Wi-Fi access point in an enclosed place. And the reason
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: is because it immediately cuts off the signal to about
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: half or even less of what it should be. And
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: so what's happening is your other TP-Link receivers are getting
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: a bad signal to begin with, And then they're trying
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: to rebroadcast that signal and it's even worse. So you've
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: got to figure out how to at least have your,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: your initial node somewhere out in the open. It doesn't
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: have to be in the middle of the house because
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: the good news is how many of these nodes do
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: you have? Two or three?
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: Three.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: So if you've got three, what you want to do
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: is just kind of put them around the house, put
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: the first one wherever you need it, but it has
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: to be out and then put another one somewhere else
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: and then put the other one in another area of
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: the house and they should all be able to speak
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: that way. And again, I would recommend a tool too.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: I was actually going to talk about this on the
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: show today. There's an article in ZDNet about this hidden
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: tool on Samsung, which I can help you diagnose your Wi-Fi,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: which I did at my house. And it's pretty eye-opening.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: You can actually walk around your house and see how
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: the signal changes. So I'm going to recommend an app
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: for you. If you don't have a Samsung, it's called
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: Ubiquiti Wi-Fi Man. W-I-F-I-M-A-N. And you can download that. If
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: you have an Android or iPhone, you can download that
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: and you can kind of walk around and see what
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: the signal is in different places in your home. And
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: that will help you get a better signal. The other
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: thing is, it also depends on the TP-Link. If it's
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: connected to the Spectrum router and that router is also
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: putting out a signal, they could be interfering with each other.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: And so... there is a way to go into that
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: spectrum router and say, please don't broadcast a wifi signal.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: And you might have to have your kid, you know,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: or if you're super techie, you can figure that out.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: But basically you have to go in, there's a code
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: printed on the bottom of that thing usually where you
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: can access it and turn off the internal wifi that's
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: coming out of the spectrum device. And that way they're not,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: they're not competing with each other. Do you still see
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: the spectrum signal in your home when you, like the
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: old network when you're logging in stuff?
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the old network. I've got the old network on
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: all our tablets, phones, everything like that. The new network's
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: on the television.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay. So that's another thing. These things, they're competing
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: with each other. And so you want to choose one.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: But I would say at the end of the day, look, Carol,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: if you're able to get the signal to all your
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: devices and everything's working fine, Without the mesh network, then
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: just go with that. You don't have to pay the extra.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: You can return it. It's simpler. It's easier. It's less cables.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: But I do think that the mesh network is probably,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: in general, sounding like how many devices you have and
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: the different TVs and the different rooms. It's overall going
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: to be a better system in the future as long
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: as you can get it to kind of work the
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: proper way. So, yeah.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: But I have to get it off the desk.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: You have to get it off the desk. It's got to,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: you just can't have it closed up like that because
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: you're just, you're, you're literally cutting it off at the
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: knees like immediately. Like you're saying like, like people put these,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: they put the routers in a closet, they put it
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: under a table, they put it, you know, behind the
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: TV and, all those things immediately just take that signal
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: and just block it. And so it's really working with
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: a much lesser signal to try to get to all
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: your different devices. And as we know, they need a
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: good signal to get all these things that we're doing
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: these days on streaming. But the good news is, I
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: think if you play with the access points a little bit,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: you should be able to get them to a place
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: where they will work really well in your home. And
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: I've had a mesh network forever. Um, if ever since
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: I interviewed the guy who started Eero, his name was Nick,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: still is Nick Weaver. Um, this, I mean, he was
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: a kid when he came to KTLA. I'm not kidding.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: I thought it was a joke because he was so
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: young and he said, yeah, I created a better wifi system.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: I said, you were what? And he's like, and sure enough,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: you know, he sold that to Amazon for, I don't
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: know how many millions or billions of dollars, but that
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: really revolutionized the wifi, uh, systems in homes because It
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: reminds me of when people got the first ring doorbells,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: the video doorbells. It's like they couldn't get the signal
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: to outside the house because our Wi-Fi was never meant
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: to accommodate all these different things in our homes and
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: all these different places. And of course, over the years,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: we just keep adding more and more devices. And so
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: you need kind of like a good system that plays
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: kind of a traffic conductor with your devices. And that's
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: what these access points do is they really manage the
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: signal to say, okay, we need this over here. We
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: need that over there. We need this device to have more.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: And so it really does help to have that signal
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: over time versus just the standard router that you place
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: under your TV or near your TV. So anyway, Carol,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: thanks for the call today. If you want to find
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: that Wi-Fi tool on the Samsung phone, you can go
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: into your settings, connections, Wi-Fi. you tap the three dots,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: you select intelligent Wi-Fi, and then tap the intelligent Wi-Fi
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: version seven times. I know, silly, but it's in there.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: And it's called Connectivity Labs. I will put those instructions
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: on the website as well as the Wi-Fi Man app
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: from Ubiquiti, which is a pretty big company in Wi-Fi
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: systems and just networking in general. People love them. When
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: I was at Cedia, their booth was like, I mean,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: nerds love this kind of stuff, but it was like
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: mega nerds. And I was like, well, what are those
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: nerds doing? I want to go over there. And sure enough,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: they had cool stuff. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101, richontech.tv. Welcome back to
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: talking technology. The website for the show is richontech.tv. If
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: you're not following me on Instagram... I highly recommend you
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: do so. Just find me at Rich on Tech. There
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: I post a lot of the scams that I find,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of the stories that I show you on TV,
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: and just whatever I'm thinking throughout the day, I'll usually
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: post it there. So at Rich on Tech on Instagram,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: if you're not following me there, do that for sure.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: Sign up for the newsletter on the website, richontech.tv. I
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: took a run this morning and I was testing a
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: bunch of different things. I've been testing the Oura Ring, which...
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, I'm not ready for my review just yet,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: but I love that thing. I am like, I was
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: so wrong about the first model. I tested it many,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: many years ago. I did not like it, and it
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: took me a couple years, but this new one is
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: really good. And I think it's a combination of the
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: fact that it is small enough and lightweight enough that
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: you forget that it's on, but it also does a
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: lot of things. Like this week, I got my, what
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: do they call it? my biological age versus like, or sorry,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: my heart age versus my biological age. And it says
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: my heart is eight years younger than I am, which
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: is great. But I'm like, I mean, here's some app
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: that I'm just sitting here like, Oh, cool. I'm doing great.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: Like obviously talk to your doctor about this stuff. But
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: I was like, show my mom today and like all
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: your vitals. It tells you if you're getting sick. I mean, it's,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: it's really impressive and it takes a while to collect
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: all this data. So it still hasn't collected like, it
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: needs like 90 days of data for your body clock,
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: whatever that means. And then for that heart thing I
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: was telling you about, the heart health, cardiovascular age, it
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: tells you it takes a while to get that information.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, even this one, my nighttime blood pulse, sorry,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: blood pressure, it dips, but it's supposed to. And so
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: it's telling me that that's actually good. So, I mean,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: this is really, really interesting stuff that's all coming from
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: a ring. Anyway, I tell you that because I was
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: testing that on my run. I was testing the new
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2. And then I was testing
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: this new feature on Spotify called Running Mode, which is basically,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like a personalized soundtrack for runs. So
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: you pick your workout style, whether you want steady run intervals,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: pyramid training, the length, the target cadence, the type of
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: music you're in the mood for. And then it makes
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: this playlist. What I didn't realize is that the playlist
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: was actually almost like a Peloton workout, where it has
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: a little coach that's telling you, okay, now for this
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: next song, run faster, as fast as you can. Okay,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: for this one, just take an easy pace. And so
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty cool. I mean, I've tried
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: different coaching run things, and this is a good one
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: because it's built into Spotify. But anyway, it was great.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: It's called Running Mode. You can find it on the
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: iPhone only right now, and only if you're a premium subscriber.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I'd subscribe to Spotify for this,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: but it's nice that it's there. And of course, it's
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: iPhone only right now, not Android, which, why?
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 4: Why?
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: Why does every app do that? They always come out
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: iPhone first and then, oh, when we get to it,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: we'll think about Android in six months or a year.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: Another app that does that is called Flighty. You've heard
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: me talk about this app. I love it. It's been
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: an iPhone exclusive for years now. But now a developer
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: took it upon themselves to come up with an Android equivalent.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: It's called Aviate. This is the Android equivalent of Flighty.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: And it's not the same company. It's not a copy.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: It is its own app. And it does a pretty
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: good job. I tested it yesterday with my mom and
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: my son's flight. Weirdest thing yesterday. I've never seen this
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: happen before in my entire lifetime of flying. But I
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: got an email that their flight was canceled. I was like, what?
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: And so I go online. It's like, yeah, your flight
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: is canceled. They refunded the pre-board. I ordered them some
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: food before they got on and they canceled that. And
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: I was like, wait, what? Well, it turns out they
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: just changed the flight number. They reinstated the flight and
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: just made a new flight. And I said, well, I've
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: never heard of them. I understand when you have to
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: change out equipment, whatever, but I've never heard of them
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: canceling the flight. And it was a completely different flight
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: number at the same exact time, same exact everything, except
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: everyone's orders got reset. Some seats got moved around and
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: it was just completely just different. I go, but the same.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: Never heard of that before in my life. Anyway, I'm
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: guessing there's some sort of reason why the airline did that.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: Instead of just changing the plane, they changed the whole
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: flight number. I don't know why. Anyway, this app did
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: pick up on it and it told me, hey, this
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: flight was canceled. And then I found the new flight
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: on there. Anyway, it tracks the flight numbers, your boarding pass,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: organization for your trip, like packing checklists, calendar syncing. It's
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: got all kinds of tracking for the actual flight. And
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: what I loved about it, I've never seen this before.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: On your home screen, like on your lock screen, it
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: will show you kind of a live track of the flight.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: It tells you what, like, how high, you know, what
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: the altitude they're at. And then also what percentage of
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: the flight they're done. So I was watching it. It's like, okay,
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: the flight is 37% done now, 47%, 57%. It was
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: just so cool. No ads. They don't sell your information,
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: but there are some free features. If you want all
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: the good stuff, you got to pay. You can pay
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: for like two bucks for a week. So if you
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: just want it for one little trip, that's cool. $ 40
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: a year, $ 200 lifetime. So anyway, again, it's called Aviate.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: If you fly a lot on Android, I would definitely
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: get it. Obviously, Flighty is still the gold standard over
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: on the iOS side. Let's see. Oh, another thing. If
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: you are a T-Mobile customer, you had lost service this
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: week during their outage on Monday. They had like a
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: nationwide outage. They're not giving automatic credits, but according to Reddit,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: people are getting up to $ 20 if you ask. So
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: if you were impacted by that outage from T-Mobile, I
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: would call up and ask them for a credit. Some
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: people get $ 5, some people got 10, some people got 20.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: But the bottom line is kind of like what I
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: was talking about earlier in the show. with the Uber
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: situation is squeaky wheel still gets the grease. So T-Mobile
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: is not giving an automatic outage credit, but if you
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: call up their representatives know, okay, we'll give this person
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: five bucks, 10 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever it is. And
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: then finally, before we get to our guest in the
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: next section here of the show, another thing that happened
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: was the Samsung messaging app shut down and everyone has
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: to be pushed over to Google messages. Not everyone likes
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: Google messages. So a developer is making an unofficial replacement
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: that looks just like Samsung messages called messages by Ozarks made.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: And it looks just like. Samsung messages. And I guess
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: it does support RCS, but again, you gotta be careful
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: because messaging apps do have a lot of your data. Anyway,
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: it was called a Ozarks made. If you want to
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: check it out, I'll put a link on the website,
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: rich on tech.tv rich on tech continues right after this
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: as sort of a Welcome back to Rich on Tech.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you, talking technology. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: We've got a great guest to talk to, Shelley Brisbane,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: author of iOS Access for All. Joining us now to
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: talk about accessibility features and helpful tips. Shelley, thanks for
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: joining me.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: Hi, Rich.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: It's great to be here. All right. And the website
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: is Brisbane.net, B-R-I-S-B-I-N.net. So tell me, how did you get
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: involved in discussing accessibility features and functionality? You've been doing
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: it for a long time.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 11: Yeah, so I've been a tech journalist for long before that.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 11: I specifically covered Apple and Macintosh stuff at Mac User
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 11: Magazine back in the day.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: And then I.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 11: Am somebody who's visually impaired, but I had never really
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 11: written about accessibility until, like, 10, 15 years ago when
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 11: I realized there was so much accessibility stuff out there,
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 11: but there just wasn't any written material available. So that's
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 11: how I got started because I was writing about things
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 11: I knew as a user. And then people had questions
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 11: about their different disabilities and how they interacted with their devices.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 3: So that's where that came from.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: Where do you think we're at with tech gadgets with accessibility?
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: I feel like Apple does a pretty good job of
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: building these features. And do you feel like other manufacturers
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: are doing the same?
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 11: I think Android, Google via Android does a really good job.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 11: Microsoft does. Most of the platforms really are good. There's
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 11: no platform where I would say if you have a disability,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 11: avoid it at all costs. Apple gets a lot of
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 11: credit for being first and having really robust features. But
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 11: I think you can't go wrong with some of what
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 11: Microsoft and Google offer as well.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, good to know that. What do you think some
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: of the best accessibility features are built into the iPhone
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: right now?
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 11: So there's one called Live Listen. which allows you to
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 11: use your AirPods, if you have them, and your iPhone
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 11: de facto hearing aids. So you might be in a
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 11: noisy environment like a restaurant or somewhere, and you can
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 11: move your phone close to the person who's sitting across
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 11: from you, and you could hear what they're saying more
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 11: easily if you have your AirPods on to listen. So
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 11: even if you don't have a significant hearing loss, that's
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 11: some way for somebody who may be older and has
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 11: a little bit of a hearing loss to kind of
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 11: pick that up. Also, dark mode is really great. If
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 11: you think the light background of a lot of iPhone
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 11: screens is a little too much, if you would like
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 11: it a little more easy on the eyes, just flip
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 11: to dark mode. And it's a lot easier to see. Now,
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 11: that's the reverse for people who have something like macular degeneration,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 11: where they want the screen as bright as possible. But
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 11: if you're like me or if you're like a lot
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 11: of people I know, dark mode is a real eye saver.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: Now, you've been writing about this stuff and covering it
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: for a while. Do you think that this has improved
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: over the years?
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 11: The features in general have– I think the basics have
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 11: been there for a while, but they are adding– I
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 11: think all the companies, and Apple especially, are adding new things.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 11: They're making the features that exist better, and they're also
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 11: adding new things. We talk about AI and machine learning,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 11: and that affects accessibility too because there are things that–
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 11: AI allows to be described for you, say, if you're
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 11: blind or visually impaired, through the camera that haven't been
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 11: possible before. So all that's kind of new. And there
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 11: are ways in which accessibility features are kind of leading
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 11: the way, those AI machine learning features. And there's a
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 11: thing called Assistive Touch on the Apple Watch and on
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 11: the iPhone, so that if you have some physical disability
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 11: and it's hard to do touch gestures, Assistive Touch can
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 11: help you out with that. And those features have sort
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 11: of come into the mainstream now, but they started out
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 11: as accessibility features.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting. Now, if you look at both the iPhone
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: and Android, there is an entire section dedicated to accessibility.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: So if you have not explored this, there's a lot
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: of features in there that are useful for people of
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: all abilities, I would say. You may find something in
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: there that can help your workflow that is meant for
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: someone with a disability, but you may say, oh, this
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: is really handy for me to use. And so on iPhone,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: it's just settings, accessibility, and on Android, settings, accessibility. You
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: have to scroll all the way down. On iPhone, it's
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: up at the top. On Android, it's all the way
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: down at the bottom. So just so you know that.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: What about voice assistants? How good are they when it
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: comes to accessibility these days?
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 11: Well, I think they're really helpful for somebody who wants
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 11: to quickly access something, whether they have a physical disability
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 11: or a visual disability, and it might be easier to
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 11: Long Beach Peninsula residents have been ordered to evacuate, and
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 11: Newport Beach has.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: Closed all beaches and piers due to flooding related to
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: tropical storm Rachel.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: A meeting to consider giving L.A. County control of key
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: functions for homelessness programs.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 11: Siri has some issues in the Apple world. There are
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 11: a lot of things it does do. I use it
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 11: every day. But sometimes Siri has some issues and there
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 11: are rumors and hopes that Apple will be improving Siri
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 11: this year. And so I would look out. I don't
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 11: think you can discount Apple or Siri. And so I
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 11: guess voice assistants in general are very helpful to somebody
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 11: with a disability. And the quality of your experience is
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 11: going to depend on which platform you use and also
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 11: what you want it to do.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, do you think someone
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: could completely use their phone just by voice at this
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: point or no?
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 11: Not really.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think you can do a lot of things.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 11: I mean, people think of like what Siri and Amazon's version,
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 11: which I don't want to say the name because we
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 11: don't want to trigger everybody. But what those device what
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 11: those voice assistants do, there's there's certain things you think
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 11: of a voice assistant doing, which is kind of separate
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 11: from how you use your phone. Like you can't say, Siri,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 11: please read all the email in my inbox and tell
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 11: me which ones are important. That's sort of an AI
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 11: machine learning kind of a thing. But you can say, hey,
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 11: set me a timer or turn on my lights or
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 11: remind me when it's time to get ready for Rich's show.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, hopefully we'll get that Siri feature later this year.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's the rumor, right? I mean, because I
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: feel like Jim and I could probably do that. I
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: don't know if I could read it, but it might
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: be able to. And so, you know, do you get
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of emails from people because you've covered this
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: for so long? And what are the common kind of
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: like threads that people are asking you? Like, what do
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: people want when it comes to accessibility?
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 11: Well, that's kind of too quick because the emails I
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 11: get are, how do I do a thing? And it
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 11: may be because they're newly using accessibility tools or maybe
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 11: they have some in their life. I hear a lot
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 11: from a lot of people who have somebody in their
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 11: life who may have newly had a disability or somebody
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 11: who's just like, wait, I hear that the iPhone can
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 11: do this thing, but I can't figure out how to
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 11: do it. Because a problem with accessibility features growing so
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 11: much is that like everything else in the settings app,
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 11: there are just so many of them. And so some
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 11: people have trouble finding it. As far as what they want,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 11: I think it's what you were talking about, having voice
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 11: assistants or some other means to do more on your
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 11: phone than you can do now. And it's like all
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 11: the things that you do that cause some friction. Like
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 11: if gestures are physically hard for you, you'd like to
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 11: talk to your phone. If vision is your issue, you'd
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 11: like the phone to talk back to you. And so
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 11: I think it's more of what it already does. And
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 11: as our phones become more capable themselves, we have more
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 11: expectation of the accessibility tools, too.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: We're talking to Shelly Brisbane, Brisbane.net, journalist for a long
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: time and accessibility expert. Talks a lot about all the
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: features you can find on your phones and gadgets related
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: to accessibility. Longtime book, iOS. Let's see, iOS access for all.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: And so you can find that as well. Do you
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: have any tips, tricks, anything that people should look into
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: if they need advice on this stuff, like any apps
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: that you really like or websites that they should consult?
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 11: Well, advice on it is, I mean, I could plug
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 11: my book, of course, because iOS Access for All is
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 11: all about accessibility in the iOS world. But also, if
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 11: you want to know just what these devices will do
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 11: for accessibility, like if you have a disability and you're
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 11: not sure, hey, is there something out there for me?
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 11: Apple.com slash accessibility actually has a pretty comprehensive rundown of
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 11: what Apple is I don't have a URL on the
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 11: Android side, but I'm sure that it exists. And if
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 11: you once you understand what the features are available by default,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 11: then you can sort of dig in and go, OK, well,
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 11: I'm blind or OK. Well, I don't see as well
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 11: as I used to. What are the things there that
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 11: are able to help me? And I think, you know,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 11: there are a lot of also in your communities or
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 11: in your states that. If you have newly acquired a
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 11: disability or maybe your disability has gotten a little more severe,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 11: there are agencies, rehab agencies that are specifically out there
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 11: to train and assist people who have acquired disability. And
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 11: a lot of that includes technology training. So they teach
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 11: people how to use their phones in ways that they
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 11: didn't use before. So if you're a new voiceover user
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 11: or if you're a new switch control user, there are
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 11: training programs out there, usually through your state or local government,
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 11: that can assist you if you want to get a
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 11: few steps.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 3: Ahead of the game.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: How would I find those? Is there like a search
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: I would look for?
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 11: I would probably search for either state rehab agency or
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 11: state services for the blind or for those with physical
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 11: disabilities or whatever. I mean, the great thing about modern
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 11: search is that you can be fairly generic in what
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 11: you search for and eventually get to where you want
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 11: to go. So I'm in Texas, for example, and the
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 11: agency that does that is the, oh, now see, now
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 11: I'm about to forget the acronym.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: I can't remember.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 11: But I would focus it specifically on the state that
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 11: you're in. You'll also learn what makes you eligible for
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 11: these disability services because sometimes seniors have access to services.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 11: Even if a lot of folks who are seniors and
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 11: who are getting disability experiences don't necessarily think of themselves as, oh,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 11: I'm not disabled. I'm just older. I have a little
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 11: trouble with hearing or seeing that I didn't used to have.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 11: There are still sometimes state services that are available to
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 11: assist you because they can teach you how to use
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 11: the devices you already have, like your phone, in a
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 11: way that sort of supports the disability that you might have.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: Wow, some great information. The website, by the way, apple.com
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: slash accessibility, like you mentioned, and surprise, surprise, android.com slash accessibility.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 11: I should have just guessed that.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you never know with Android because sometimes, you know,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: since there's so many different manufacturers of these phones, it
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: could be different. So it's always slightly different depending on
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: who makes the phone. But Android has added a lot
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: of stuff in recent years, and it looks like they
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: did put it all on the website. So, Shelley, it's
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: been a pleasure to chat with you. The website, Brisbane.net.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for coming on today.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 11: Thanks for having me.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun. Yeah, really appreciate it.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: Welcome back anytime.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: The website richontech.tv slash 177. If you want to connect
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: with Shelly and follow her, I'll put a link to
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: her website and everything she mentioned there. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Back
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. We're going
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: to get right into the feedback because it is overflowing
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: this week. We got a bunch of emails about electronic
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: stores across the country. I mentioned how there is a
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: lack of stores after Fry's and all these other places
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: went out of business, Radio Shack. Craig wrote, there's a
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: great little electronic store in Costa Mesa called Marvac. They've
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: got everything from connectors and cables to switches. Tim in,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: where is he? We use JK Electronics in Westminster. Not
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: as good as Orvac was, but still a good option.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: And more importantly, it's still open. Charlie, again, another vote
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: for Marvac and Costa Mesa. Herb in Youngstown, Ohio. Check
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: out Army's, A-R-M-I-E-S. Electronics is basically an electronics parts supermarket. Brad,
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: Elliott Electronics in Tucson is excellent. They're online as well.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: There's also a surplus electronics and aviation store next door.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: So basically, yes, there are still places where you can
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: find these, you know, like nerd heaven stores, you know,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: like that just, we love just like perusing the aisles
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: and finding all this random stuff. Not as many as
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: there used to be, but they're still out there. Thanks
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: for the emails. Kathleen, I listened to the show a lot.
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: I hadn't heard about this scam. I fell for it.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: I was visiting a website. I showed one of those
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: Cloudflare pages asking if I was human. I clicked yes.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: It asked me to do more things, including typing codes.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: I trusted the site, so I went with it. Later,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: a scan found a Trojan on my computer. I spent
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: the day cleaning up everything, changing my passwords. I learned
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: this is called a click fix or fake captcha attack.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: Definitely something your listeners should watch out for.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Kathleen. I actually made a video about this
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: on my Instagram because of you. So I explained this
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: scam and what to look out for. Go to my
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: Instagram at Rich on Tech to find it. Thank you, Kathleen.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry that happened to you. Phil, here's a quick
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: Windows 11 tip. The snipping tool can help grab text
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: from places where you normally can't select or copy it.
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: Press the print screen key, open up the snipping tool,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: choose scan text, and then select and copy whatever text
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: you need. My colleagues didn't know about this feature. I
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: figured your listeners might not either. Yes, that's a good
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: feature to know. It's a good way to get around
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: when you can't copy and paste something. I use what's
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: on Chrome. They have something called the Google Lens that
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: lets you basically copy and paste any text even on
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: a picture. So you can add that to your toolbar.
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: Robert in Ridgecrest, my 64 gigabyte iPhone didn't have enough
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: space for an iOS update, so Apple suggested offloading apps.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: I did that and later discovered some of the apps
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: are no longer available, so I couldn't reinstall them. More recently, though,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: I tried updating through iMazing on my Windows PC. It
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: successfully installed the newer version of iOS without offloading anything
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: from my computer. So if your iPhone is too full
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: to update normally, using a computer may be another option. Yes,
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: you can update through a Mac or PC if you
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: don't have enough space, not just through iMazing. I have
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: not done this, but apparently you can just use Finder
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: on a Mac or iTunes on a PC, and the
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: computer downloads the update files to your computer. the computer
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: downloads the update files instead of your phone. So basically
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: it bypasses all the device storage limits. So if you
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: need to do that, that's a good tip. Gary in Scottsdale,
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: regarding your recent discussion about air tags, I think people
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: should avoid putting trackers where they're easy to spot. A
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: thief can simply remove a visible air tag. I hide
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: mine in my luggage, including behind the liner. I've hidden
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: one inside the padded handle of my briefcase. When I
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: ship boxes, I'll tape an air tag inside those too. Well, Gary,
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: now you just gave away your hiding spots. But hopefully
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: that shouldn't be a big deal. John in Yukon, Oklahoma.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: You recently had a caller looking for a replacement for
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: Microsoft Publisher. Another option is to buy an older version
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: of Office instead of subscribing. I'm still using Office 2013,
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: including Publisher, to produce a monthly newsletter from a bike club,
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: and it works great. You can find older copies for
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: sale online, but you need to make sure you're finding
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: a legitimate licensed copy with a valid product key. Yeah,
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think the Publisher program is going
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: to stop working unless you're subscribing. But if you have
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: the actual software, it should continue to work, right? Bob
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: in Charlotte, North Carolina, regular emailer to the show. For
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: listeners looking for electronic treasures, don't forget about Hamfests. What
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: is that, a bunch of pigs? No. It's an amateur
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: radio thing. You don't need an amateur radio license to attend.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: I think of them as a mix of a trade
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: show and a flea market for radio gear, electronics, parts,
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: and all kinds of RF equipment. Many are annual events
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: put on by nonprofit amateur radio clubs. The website ARRL.org
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: is a good place to look for ham fests. No
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: bacon there, just electronics. Come to a ham fest. It's delicious.
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 4: Jane.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: I always listen to your podcast. I'd love to leave
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: a rave review, but I haven't been able to figure
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: it out. I listen on Apple podcasts. I'm 89 years old.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: I love technology and I keep up the best as
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: I can. Can you educate me on how to leave
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: a review? So on iPhone, open up Apple podcasts, search
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: for my show. Once you find it, scroll down to
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: ratings and reviews.
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: That's all the way at the bottom. I see. Oh,
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: and then it says, tap, write a review and then
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: hit submit. If you want a shortcut, there's a website
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: called rate this podcast, by the way, my pal, Jefferson Graham,
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: friend of the show. He said it was really impossible
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: to do this on the desktop. So do it on
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: your phone. I can leave ratings on the show. Yeah,
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: not you. You're not allowed to, it's like employees can't
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: do it. Oh yeah. Sorry, Bobo, Steve. I've been listening
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: to tech shows on KFI since the early days. Um,
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: I think this is the best show for listener interaction
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: and news about what's happening in technology. It's down to earth,
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: easy to share with others, and covers what works and
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: what doesn't, whether you're Apple, Android, or Linux. Oh, probably
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: Linux thing I'm not sure about. Thank you for always
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: being honest and straightforward with your information. Steve, thank you.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: You made my day. Charles with a tech dad joke
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: in Shelby, North Carolina. What do you call a bee
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: that lives in America?
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 6: USB.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: USB. What do you call a BC that lives in America? USBC. Gerald,
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: I'm a few weeks behind, but if nobody's mentioned it, Wapakoneta,
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: Ohio is pronounced Wapakoneta. I think. I probably still got
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: it wrong. It's also famously the birthplace of Neil Armstrong,
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: the first person to walk on the moon.
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 6: Jennifer.
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 3: Jennifer.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: I watch KTLA in Los Angeles, so I see your
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: stories all the time. But today I'm in Chicago watching
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: WGN and suddenly there you are. They aired a couple
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: of your segments. I had no idea you aired outside LA. Congrats.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Jennifer. Yes, this show and my KTLA segments
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: are on across the country in various places. I don't
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: make a big deal about it because guess what? It
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: only matters that you're seeing it and that's the important part.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: Chris in Denver, I'm a longtime listener and Denver native.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you discovered the Cherry Cricket. It's one of
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: my favorites. I've been eating there off and on for
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: 45 years. Thanks for all you do. Cherry Cricket is
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: a must visit for sure. And go to my newsletter today, richontech.tv,
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: and read how to find the best places to eat
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: in various cities that are cool and local and unique.
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: That's going to do it for this episode, richontech.tv. Follow
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: me on Instagram at richontech.tv. There are so many things
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: you can do with your time. I appreciate you spending
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: this show possible.